Page:Vagabond life in Mexico.djvu/56

54 the jasmine, and the clematis, with its beautiful flowers, grew in charming confusion, I passed many long hours, dreaming of my native country and absent friends. A mysterious charm drew me to this fresh and rustic retreat. A quaint device, cut on the trunk of a sycamore, which threw its branches across my bower, often attracted my attention: In silentio et in spe erit fortitudo tua. My soul felt strengthened and soothed in this solitude. In this wild and uncultivated garden I was charmed into a forgetfulness of the world, where the only sounds that reminded me of life were the buzzing of the humming-birds among the rose-bushes, the tinkling of bells, and the distant droning of the organ.

I scarcely ever saw any one in the garden. One monk only seemed to share with me a predilection for this peaceful inclosure, and, above all, for the arbor, from which I almost always saw him escaping at my approach. He was the same man whom I had so often watched in the cloisters with such a fearful curiosity. Sometimes I surprised him watering the garden borders, or giving his care to those flowers which grew near the grass-grown walks. My imagination soon found some romantic link between this melancholy old man and the forsaken bower. I resolved to enter into conversation with him. A conscience so troubled as his seemed to be might surely be able to make some curious revelations; but, after repeated attempts to rouse him from his habitual taciturnity, I was forced to give it up as hopeless. With hands crossed, and face turned to the ground, the monk, every time he met me, quickened his pace and vanished from my sight. I looked at him always with intense interest, as the intellectual though stern expression of his