Page:Twelve Years in a Monastery (1897).djvu/89

Rh months were devoted to classics and rhetoric, fifteen months to philosophy, and two years and a half to theology. During that period our life differed little from the régime described in the preceding chapter. We rose at a quarter to five, dragged through the long programme of religious services, and commenced study at eight; six or seven hours per day were devoted to study and the remainder of the time was occupied as has been described.

We had taken the irrevocable vows three years after leaving the novitiate, though, in any case, few of us would have thought of reconsidering our position. All our thoughts went forward in anticipation to the priesthood, the ‘finis studiorum,’ as we equivocally called it, and we found many means to enliven the dull and insanitary life which must be traversed before reaching it. No vacation was allowed during the whole of the period, but once or twice per week we had the luxury of divesting ourselves of the heavy robe and taking long walks in ordinary clerical costume; once or twice per year, also, we were granted a day trip to some local haunt when our monastery had tided over its first financial difficulties.

For at the commencement of the period we had ample practical illustration of the meaning of a vow of poverty—which is more than even a mendicant friar really bargains for nowadays. Under one superior, a timid and narrow-minded friar who had been worked into office to serve the purposes of a