[Sidenote: Refectory, Kitchens and Infirmary]
Close by the cloister is the refectory--an aisleless hall with a wooden roof. Across the east end is a high table for the officers--the whole place resembling the great hall in a castle. Most of the brethren sit at very long tables running up and down the apartment; and near the high table is a still higher pulpit mounted by a winding stair. Here a monk will droningly read a Latin homily while his associates are expected to eat and hearken in silence.
The kitchen with its great fireplaces adjoins the refectory. At the entrance to the dining hall, just as in the castle, there is the lavatory, a great stone basin with many taps, convenient for washing the hands. Since some brethren are sure to be sick, there is a separate infirmary, a well-arranged suite with places for sleeping, dining, and even a little chapel for those too feeble to get to the church.[91] The abbot has lodgings of his own where he can entertain distinguished visitors, although he is expected to mingle freely with his fellow monks and not to assume solitary grandeur. The less exalted guests are put in a special _hospitium_ in the court. The monastery never turns away any decently behaving wayfarer; but the guest master, a canny old religious, naturally provides better quarters and supper for those likely to put a denier in the alms box than for those who may have just fled the provost.
This is a bare summary of the important buildings of the establishment. If St. Aliquis had been a Cistercian convent, following the rule of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, its structures would have been extremely plain--no mosaics, stained glass, silken hangings, or floral carvings in the church; nor anything else calculated to distract the monks from thinking upon the heavenly mysteries. Said he, austerely: "Works of art are idols which lead away from God, and are good at best to edify feeble souls and the worldly." Bernard was a mighty saint, but all do not follow this hard doctrine. The monks of St. Aliquis, for their own part, are sure that the Heavenly Ones are rejoiced every time they add a new stone leaf to the unfading foliage about the cloister arches, or carve the story of David and Jonathan upon the great walnut back to the prior's seat in the chapter house.