In the abbey it is this pervasive hush that falls like a leaden pall upon the stranger who has rushed in from the talking universe. Are these priests modern survivals of the rapt solitaries of India? The days pass, and the world, which seemed in hailing distance to you at first, has receded to dim remoteness. You stand at the window of your room looking out, and hear in the autumn trees only the flute-like note of some migratory bird, passing slowly on towards the south. You listen within, and hear but a key turning in distant locks and the slow-retreating footsteps of some dusky figure returning to its lonely self-communings. The utmost precaution is taken to avoid noise; in the dormitory not even your guide will speak to you, but explains by gesture and signs. During the short siesta the Trappists allow themselves, if one of them, not wishing to sleep, gets permission to read in his so-called cell, he must turn the pages of his book inaudibly. In the refectory, while the meal is eaten and the appointed reader in the tribune goes through a service, if one through carelessness makes a noise by so much as dropping a fork or a spoon, he leaves his seat and prostrates himself on the floor until bidden by the superior to arise. The same penance is undergone in the church by any one who should distract attention with the clasp of his book.
A hard life, to purely human seeming, does the Trappist make for the body. He thinks nothing of it. It is his evil tenement of flesh, whose humors are an impediment to sanctification, whose propensities are to be kept down by the practice of austerities. To it in part his monastic vows are addressed--perpetual and utter poverty, chastity, manual labor, silence, seclusion, penance, obedience. The perfections and glories of his monastic state culminate in the complete abnegation and destruction of animal nature, and in the correspondence of his earthly life with the holiness of divine instruction. The war of the Jesuit is with the world; the war of the Trappist is with himself. From his narrow bed, on which are simply a coarse thin mattress, pillow, sheet, and coverlet, he rises at 2 o'clock, on certain days at 1, on others yet at 12. He has not undressed, but has slept in his daily garb, with the cincture around his waist.