Year: 1861

THE MONASTERY Of THE ELEVEN POOLS.


The following story is very illustrative


both of the prohigacy and asceticism Of


the era Of Louis XIV. It appears that


the young and handsome De Rance was


the most dissipated of all the dissipated


abbes of the priest-haunted Court. His


excesses were the talk even of people


who were so accustomed to excesses TO


notice them. In 1867 the small pox was


raging in Paris, and about the same time


the able was desperately in love with


Madam de Montbazon, celebrated beau


ty. Calling on her, one day he found the
servants away and the doors open, and


walked up to her room without waiting
to be announced. He opened the door
and in a leaden coffin beheld the headless
form Of the lady he had loved so passion
ately On the ground by its side was the
once beautiful head itself, now a hideous
mask. The small pox had attacked her
in the most violent form, and in a few
hours she was dead. Her servants,
dreading the contagion, had sent for the
first coffin that could be found. 1t was
too short and they had resorted IN the
horrid expedient Of decapitation to meet
the difficulty. Her lover had come in at
the very moment that they were gone to
fetch the hearse to carry the body away.
He staggered back from the awful sight
and escaping from the house, vowed to
bury himself alive for the rest of his
days. And he did so.


In the centre Of a dense huge forest
near Evreux, in Normandy, is close
narrow valley, still as a grave and dark
as pit Around it the jealous cliffs rise
high and steep, and the forest itself pen
etrates into the abyss, as if to add to its
gloomy darkness. In the bottom Of it
eleven foul and stagnant pools load the
heavy air with sickness, and in the mid
die of these there stood the once famous
monastery of La Trappe. 1t was den
of thieves. The monks, secure in their
foul pit, far from the world, and protected
by the pathless forest, issued in lawless
bands at night, armed to the teeth, and
themselves along the highway
rushed out to plunder the unsuspecting
They were known in the pro-
vince as The Bandits of La Trappe."


Among these men De Rance went
alone, unarmed, and little by little gained
an ascendency over their minds till he
brought them one after another to quit
heir lawless life, and return to one Of
lsceticism. But the rules he enjoined
could not but be severe, and he made


hem more and more so. Bread, water
md vegetables was all their food. The
furniture of their cells was replaced by
ruckle bed of rope, rug and a human
ikull. The silence of the gloomy valley
was doubled by the terrible silence inn
posed for the sake Of security on its half
lead inhabitants. The stalwart, but now
wasting figures of the once lawless monks
passed one another without a word
Their sealed tongues were loosed only
or one hour on Sunday, and then it was
o speak on matters of faith and doctrine.
The world was, or seemed to be forgot
en-, shut out, forgone forever. None f,
Knew his fellows name, except the abbot
limself Each new conner took a new
lame when he renounced the world, and |
nee father and son lived there togeth-
II unknown till the latter died. 1t was
hen that on his tombstone the father |
cad the young mans name. Pain and
elf torture were courted as redemptives
nd De Rance once turned away novice
because he noticed that while wedding he
'ushed aside the nettles to prevent be-
ng stung.


In such grave did De Rance bury
himself, and the Trappists were the won
Ter and the admiration of the age. J