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in a bad humour, and the most laughable when in a good one.

After Mass, until half-past seven, the novices read a commentary upon Holy Scripture. But let it not be thought that they may choose the commentary which they prefer, or the part of the Bible they like best. They have to submit their preferences to the Master, and he chooses for them. So likewise for all the books read in the Novitiate; so likewise for everything else. From the moment they rise till the time when they stretch their limbs in bed, they are under obedience—drilled all day long. The lesson of self-denial is taught them, not by a few great sacrifices, but by a continued series of trifles to be given up. Obedience is incessantly present, in season, and, one might think, out of season too. See the novices going down into the refectory; it is a fast-day, and all of them must pass by the Master, standing at the door of his room. Why? Because they must ask permission to take the frustulum, a morsel of bread allowed by dispensation to all who fast. And if they do not wish to avail themselves of the dispensation? They must also ask leave not to avail themselves of it! “We,” said a Capuchin friar to me one day, “we have severer penances than you; and yet you have more to endure. One can little by little get hardened to the scourge, but not to never doing one’s own will.” Perhaps the good Capuchin was right.

After breakfast, work; travaux manuels, It is not the Admonitor who commands here, but the Frère Directeur des travaux. Novices must, from the very beginning, learn to obey their companions, so as to have less difficulty in doing the same in after-years; and if Superiors are afterwards strongly advised to give hints and counsels, rather than orders and commands, it is quite the contrary now: the Directeur des travaux has to say: Go there, and they go; Do this, and it is done. Novices, being extra fervent, can support without so much danger an extra dose of obedience; and besides, O Ignatius, hast thou not learned, when yet a soldier of the world, that the strength of cannons is tried by firing them with extra charges?—so, each novice goes and humbly asks for work.

There is plenty to do. Sweeping rooms and passages and garden paths; waxing the floor of the private chapel—terrible work!—down in the cellar, drawing wine, or up in the garret cleaning shoes; or out of doors, digging; or within, laying the table for dinner: not one novice is unemployed. Some are sitting in the lecture-room, to learn the way of making rosaries, disciplines, haircloths, and those chains whose sharp points enter into the flesh. A dozen or more are working under the superintendence of a strict, morose, lantern-jawed Brother, who has a little of the Buonaparte type in his face, and a good deal of sombre obstinacy in his character; he will remain in the Society only five years, making himself generally disliked, and brooding over imaginary wrongs done to him. In a corner are two of the youngest Brothers, one of whom sometimes glances at the other full slily, and then shakes with suppressed laughter; for that other is engaged upon an awful girdle, at least six inches broad, ordered for penitential purposes by some tough old Father. All this is very pleasant to see; but the sly Brother is a trifle too friendly, though perhaps he does not know it as yet; it is