They came at last, by long circuits, to an open place, at the end of which rose a wall with a large gate in the middle. The carriage stopped.
"You have only to ring," said the peasant, showing Durtal an iron chain along the wall; and he added,
"Then you remain here?" and the peasant looked at him with astonishment, turned about, and drove up the hill.
Durtal remained as one crushed, his portmanteau at his feet, before the door; his heart beat violently; all his assurance, all his enthusiasm, had vanished, and he stammered: "What will happen to me within?"
And with a swift feeling of dread, there passed before him the terrible life of the Trappists; the body ill-nourished, exhausted from want of sleep, prostrate for hours on the pavement; the soul trembling, squeezed like a sponge in the hand, drilled, examined, ransacked even to its smallest folds; and at the end of its failure of an existence, thrown like a wreck against this rude rock, into the silence of a prison, and the dreadful stillness of the tomb!
"My God, my God, have pity upon me!" said he, as he wiped his brow.
Mechanically he looked around, as if he expected some help; the roads were deserted and the woods were empty; no sound was heard in the country, or in the monastery.
"At any rate I must make up my mind to ring;" and, his limbs sinking under him, he pulled the chain.
The sound of the bell, hard, rusty, grumbling, sounded on the other side of the wall.
"Get up and don't be a fool," he said to himself, as he heard the clatter of a pair of sabots behind the door.
This opened, and a very old monk, clad in the brown cloth of the Capuchins, looked at him inquiringly.
"I come to make a retreat, and I wish to see Father Etienne."
The monk bowed, took up the portmanteau, and made a sign to Durtal to follow him. He went with bent head and short steps across an orchard. They reached a grating, passed on the right of the vast building a sort of dilapidated chateau, flanked by two wings advancing on a court.
The brother entered the wing close to the grating. Durtal followed him along a corridor into which several grey doors opened; on one of these he read the word "Auditorium." The Trappist stopped before it, lifted the wooden latch, ushered Durtal into the room, and after some minutes he heard repeated calls on the bell.