Their features appeared generally to be coarse and
vulgar. The chapel itself was perfectly plain, and unadorned but by a few
of the customary figures and paintings, representing disgusting situations
of saints and martyrs under voluntary torture and privation. Lamps that
"shed a pale and ineffectual light," crucifixes, and images of the Virgin
and Son, were duly scattered about the niches of the chapel.
From the chapel we were conducted to the superior's room, a small
scantily-furnished apartment, with however an appearance of greater
comfort than elsewhere about the building, from the presence of a plain
chair and table, some religious books, a cot, and a little fire. The
superior himself possessed somewhat more of the aspect of a gentleman than
the rest of the brethren, as well as the dim light of a lamp allowed us to
observe his figure; of which certainly, whatever might have been his mode
of living, rotundity formed no such feature as I have seen among the jolly
monks in Spain and Portugal. He related to us the habits of his order,
from which we learnt further particulars than had been related by the
_cicerone_. Silence seemed to be the rule of the establishment during the
whole twenty-four hours, the exceptions being very few: one of the
brethren, we were told, had never been known to speak for about thirty
years, in accordance with a vow, and was supposed to have become dumb.
When one monk met another, the salutation was limited to this simple
expression--"Brother, we must die.
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