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moniteur has orders to move on at a brisk pace, and he does. At the end of the line, last of all, walks the Frère Substitut—a pale worn little man, nearly forty years old. He very seldom speaks of himself. All we know is that he was a solicitor, and has come here thinking to find rest from the world. And all day long he has to carry about soutanes, boots, combs, brushes, and what not, supplying all the wants of the community, and bustling about like Martha, when the repose of would suit him better. Still, wan and wearied as he is, he seems very patient, and self-will has all but died out of him. Perhaps something tells him that he may soon find rest enough, and that in little more than a year’s time all will be over for ever.

The Lecture on the Rules, or Conference, follows Rodriguez. The Master, a man of evidently sanguine, bilious temperament, though both elements of his character are well under control, comes into the room—not on tiptoe, and yet with a noiseless step—kneels down, and says a short prayer, after which he asks a novice for an abstract of what was said last time. His manner is cool, restrained; his style almost dry; end yet his voice thrills at times with suppressed emotion; his gestures are almost as few as those of an ordinary English speaker; he speaks in so low a key as not unfrequently to be inaudible, were it not for his very distinct utterance of each word. This manner of lecturing, though perhaps disappointing to one who expects the noisy pulpit eloquence of the south of France, is, however, specially calculated for those to whom the oratorical “ways and means” of creating a sensation have become contemptible through familiarity. Here emotion must spring from no other source but the subject itself and the thoughts directly connected therewith; the speaker cannot keep himself too much in the shade. Hence this attempted suppression of all feeling—this outward dryness—this low pitch of the voice. The hearers, whether pupils fresh from the study of Bossuet and Cicero, barristers from the law courts, or young vicaires accustomed to criticise the sermons of their fellow-priests, might otherwise have been too sorely tempted to forget that the Conference is a lesson to be acted upon, not a performance to be judged.

The Master’s voice drops; the Conference is over, and he goes out. Then follows the Repetition—a strange scene of apparent hubbub, rendered still more striking by the solemn silence in which the “still small voice” of the Master has been heard. Groups of novices, each of them with a note-book in his hand, are told off by the Admoniteur. One in each group begins reading his notes; his voice rising louder and louder as other voices rise in succession, until twelve or more are speaking at once in the room—not a large one—and the din becomes almost deafening. To an outsider this would appear excessively ridiculous; but here, intent on comparing and correcting notes, they do not even remark the clamour that is going ornt around them.

Again, after a short visit to the chapel, the novices proceed in single file to the garden, to learn a few verses of Scripture. This is the “Exercise of Memory,” the only study (with that of foreign languages) permitted by St Ignatius. Foreign languages even were not allowed in my time, and for two whole years I did not speak English, though there were