THE LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF A HOLIDAY IN S1VITZ E

RL AND.

V.—THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE.

the Chartreuse,—a wild place in his own diocese,—and seven stars rising from the ground which went before him to show him the way to the appointed site ; and thereupon the next day he received a visit from seven strangers, of whom St. Bruno was the 'cadet\ entreating him to give them some place in his diocese where they might serve God, "remote from worldly affairs, and without being burdensome to men." My old boyish interest in the place was revived last year by Mr. Matthew Arnold's tine Stanzas front the Grande Chartreuse, which scent to me to resemble a perfect water- colour in the fresh and dewy tints of their landscape, and to breathe a most musical, if also a somewhat self-conscious and carefully attuned meditative sadness over that stern and brooding ascetic faith that he could neither heartily enter iuto nor yet adequately replace. Accordingly, after quitting Chamounix we made our way by Geneva to this grandly situated city, and have employed the last two days,—perhaps, on the whole, the most remetnberable of our holiday,—in a visit to the great Carthusian monastery.

Grenoble is evidently not a place much visited by tourists. The

best inns in it, instead of commanding the grand sweeps of the Drac and the Isere, which unite just below Grenoble, and the great range of the Cottian Alps beyond, have not a much finer view than Mr. Pickwick's lodgings in Goswell Street. The mar- ket-place is on the right hand and the market-place is on the left, and almost all that you can see is the market-place before you. The inns are towny, and therefore noisy, and what has made them worse for us is that there are some soldiers quartered in the place, whose Colonel appears to reside here. There are sentries before the door, and the guard is changed twice in the night,— not without much military rattle. Moreover, the inhabitants of Grenoble prefer to assemble for nightly gossip before the door of the hotel,—perhaps by reason of the presence of the sentries,—and there they converse till about two in the morning, when they dis- perse for one hour and a half, and reassemble before four fur the same purpose. Add to this that the gallant Colonel occupies him- self for at least two hours in the midst of the night in dashing his boots in different directions about his room, which is next ours, and clattering his sword against the furniture, and that all the bells of the hotel appear to ring into our room and are alarums which go off (about every half-hour during the night) with immense ex- plosions just at the head of my bed—(an arrangement which seems to us rather cruel, as we are not expected to do any of the waiting, and those who are, avoid the horrors of the summons),—and you will see that the ascetic practices of the Chartreuse were fortu- nately broken to us by sharp mortifications of the flesh at Grenoble.

I confess I was a little shocked to find that we could go by omnibus to the very gates of the ascetic solitaries. Eight hundred years ago, Hugh, Bishop of Grenoble, represented seriously to St. Bruno, according to Butler, "the dismal situation of that solitude, beset with very high craggy rocks, almost all the year covered with snow and thick fogs, which rendered them not habitable." This situation, however, continues the biographer, "did not daunt the servants of God ; on the contrary, joy painted on their faces expressed their satisfaction in having found so convenient a retirement cut off from the society of men." But surely it would have daunted the austere recluse to have been threatened with an omnibus from Grenoble full of visitors every day at noon, during the season, returning at 3 p.m. to the city ? Or what, indeed, would his opinion have been of the very excellent liqueur manufactory by which the brethren win their bread, as well as the means for their large and generous charities. Though solitude and austerities are still, as ever, their profession, the world regularly supplies them with a stream of awe-struck admirers, while they supply the world with a very agreeable and wholesome liqueur at moderate prices. Thus have eight centuries enabled "the world" to gain ground on even its most bitter and systematic foes, smoothing the way for it into the wilderness, and even teaching these haters of the world them- selves to consult in the inmost recesses of their refuge its . tastes and appetites. Some remark to this effect I dropped, not entirely to the satisfaction of a Munich priest of extremely reactionary politics and thoroughly Ultramontane theology, who was with us as we journeyed up to the Chartreuse, in com- pany with a Bavarian student who was evidently intended for a priest, but seemed to me to be in a rather recalcitrant attitude of mind. The priest only grunted an assent to my remark on the horror with which St. Bruno would have regarded our conveyance. Perhaps he thought such reflections would not be of an edifying tendency to the mind of his gloomy young companion. I conjecture that the latter was being carried about by his sacerdotal tutor to all the places best calculated to overpower the youth's objection to what seemed to be his intended calling. He had been taken to Corps, about thirty miles from Grenoble in the opposite direction to the Carthusian Convent, to see "Our Lady of La Salette," just before his visit to the Chartreuse, and the priest assured me that all the miracles reported of that locality were perfectly genuine, and that miraculous cures still take place there every week. But in spite of all this, the youth looked sulky and obdurate ; nor do I think that he had a companion well fitted to subdue his mind into the attitude of spiritual humility or wonder. Certainly, if I may judge by the hard laugh with which the old gentleman accompanied his hope that Prussia and France might fall to blows while South Germany had "the pleasure,"—such was his Christian expression,—of looking on, and the business-like toue in which he assured me that the Church at large was already disposed to accept the dogma of the infallibility of the Pope, and that if the Council of December, 18G9, should declare it, he should thenceforth believe it without hesitation, he seemed to me about the last man in the world who could have helped to steep any youthful imagination in that sense of awe and mystery which would best predispose it to the renunciation of earthly hopes. The little omnibus into which we changed at St. Laurent le Pont took us up through one of the wildest of ravines to the monastery, by a road that was, on a very small scale, almost as fine a little piece of engineering as bits of the St. Gothard or the Stelvio. It wound above the bed of "the Dead Guyers," which was roaring away, sometimes beside us, sometimes at an immense depth beneath us, passed through narrow clef ts,—gates in the rock,—which towered above us a sheer perpendicular height of many hundred feet on both sides, as straight as if they were hewn gate-posts, and then, again, tunnelled through the rock for scores of yards together. The thick black pine forests that covered both sides of the ravine for the whole distance from St. Laurent le Pont to the monastery,—a drive of about an hour and a half,—no doubt protect the road in a great measure from avalanches in winter, and render its

repairs less expensive, besides adding greatly to the solemnity and wildness of the situation.

At last, about a stone's throw below the gates of the monastery, — even in the nineteenth century an omnibus may not venture to draw up absolutely to its door, — we were told to alight, and after climbing a hundred yards more, the ravine opens out into a soft green plateau, shut in on two sides by steep overhanging rocks, while the thick forest lines the gradual slope of the mountain in front. Here, in that cold but stately palace to the right, where long stretches of white wall tell of corridors many hundreds of feet long, and a number of slim white towers springing from pointed Gothic roofs mark out against the dark background of pine forest the belfry, the chapel, the refec- tory, the prior's cell, and the other official localities of the monas- tery, dwells the General of the Carthusian Order, with some thirty brothers, and also about ten or twelve priests who are not monks. Opposite this stately enclosure, on the left of the green plateau, is a little white house with a tall white chimney, where dwell a few kindly women, in the dress of sisters of charity, who entertain the womankind among the visitors ; for though the most enthusiastic and devout of the pilgrims to the Chartreuse are women, no woman is allowed ever to enter its gate Theymay only look upon it, like Moses on the Promised Land, from the Pisgah of the adjacent mountain side. The good women, in this asylum for lady pilgrims, are themselves only winked at by the Superior of the Order because they facilitate visits which are no doubt in every way profitable, both by bringing donations to the Order, and by bringing customersforthe liqueurs. They are tolerated only on condition of keeping as much out of sight as possible; and even so, it is evidently required of them to profess complete ignorance of the arrangements of the monastery. To all the questions my wife asked, their stereotyped answer was, " Je ne sais pas, Madame," though on many points even I, who was only one night within the walls of the monastery, was able to satisfy her. The good women, being there at all only on sufferance, were, no doubt, taught that it was good taste to seem to be cut off from the monastery by as great a gulf as if they had lived miles away. I had to leave my wife in this little women's outbuilding, and to solicit hospitality for myself within the walls of the Chartreuse. And very hospitable the monks are of their hermit's fare. No flesh or fowl ever enters their walls, and the fisb,—apparently a, flabby carp is the only kind they habitually receive,—was to my mind worse than none. But bread, omelettes, potatoes, cheese they give you in plenty, and very good of their kind, with a thin vie ordinaire, which it seems to be expected that you will dilute plentifully with water. At least, as I was the only heretic there, and I saw that the dozen or so Catholic Frenchmen all diluted their wine plentifully with water, I followed the example, though I found the water redundant. We were not even allowed coffee or tea, though I found that this rule was relaxed for the ladies at the outbuilding. At the same time the brethren allowed us a glass each of their admirable and very wholesome liqueur, partly perhaps from an innocent pride in it, and partly from a wise commer- cial prudence. I found my wife suffering more from the scanty fare than I had done. She could not manage the omelettes, and the good sisters had asked in dismay what, then, Englishwomen did consume, to which a voluble French lady replied for her with a mixture of envy and scorn,—" Ros-bif, bif-stak, cotelettes, portere,"—a catalogue of dainties over which the sisters opened their eyes wide, and sighed with a certain air of yearning in which scorn was not mingled. I was much struck with the white and bloodless faces of the two or three Carthusian brothers whom I saw. One of them, if not the Superior, certainly high in office, came in to say a word of courtesy to the strangers after their dinner, and there was a sweetness and refinement in his voice as he hoped that the Chartreuse had not been inhospitable to us, which was in striking contrast to the harsh and uncultivated voices to which I listened at midnight in the chapel, chauntiog the litanies and hymns.

We wandered late in the afternoon through the woods and meadows above the monastery. The turf was dyed a rich lilac by the lovely autumn crocus, which grew luxuriantly all round. The evening sun fell on cream-coloured oxen, with black patches on their shoulders and a bright crimson fringe hanging low over their meek, pleading eyes, to keep off the flies, as they dragged heavy loads of pine trunks out of the forest ; while a lay brother (I suppose) in the usual white woollen dress of the order, his white cowl hanging back over his shoulders, and a heavy pastoral-looking staff in his hand, accompanied the woodmen with their wains, superin- tending the operations as he stood at the oxen's head. I could

not help thinking, as I watched the party urging and spurring the oxen, and signing them this way and that, as the poor creatures struggled with their load up the steep, uneven bank, and some- times remonstrated with an inarticulate groan against the arduous duties imposed on them, that for us to decipher the real mind within those white-cowled brethren, or for them to decipher the real mind at work within the bosom of their guests, was far more difficult, if not impossible, than to interpret the thoughts of the meek, struggling oxen before us. What were the real motives of these thirty or forty ascetics ? had they really hated the world? Did they find peace in their austere solitude ? Did they love the silence, and the monotony, and the midnight matins, and the long dark cloisters, and the bare cells, and the bleak courts, with the cold plashing fountains ? Did the motto I saw on one of these solitary little homes, " 0 solitudo,

vera beatitudo !" represent the true feeling of most Of them, or only what they hoped to find when they entered it? Had they

ever felt the enthusiasm of solitary joy ? And did the feeling last, or was that long line of cells, for the most part, a line of prisons that had closed on every hope? I had far less means of even guessing the answer to such questions as these, than of forming some probable judgment of the thoughts of the poor oxen that never had spoken and never could speak to tell them. The world that was accessible but closed, was far, far more beyond my reach than the world that was absolutely inaccessible except to conjec- ture. Surely human life is the mystery of mysteries.

I was asked if I would like to attend the matins, which began at a quarter to eleven at night, and lasted, I believe, till after three a.m. I said that if my Protestantism were not an objection I should ; but I found that I was considered comparatively blameless for heresy, being only an Englishman, and that I might attend if I pleased. Accordingly, after nearly two hours' rest on my straw bed, I dressed and entered the dark gallery of the chapel. Guest after guest followed me, till it had about a dozen occupants, my friend the Munich priest alone bringing a candle with him, that he might join in the offices. The chapel below was very dimly lighted, with just one or two wax candles. When the bell tolled the white-robed monks entered, each bearing his own taper with him, which he put low down in his seat, so as to light the book from which he read when he needed it. At other times these tapers (as if they were in a dark lanthorn ) seemed completely extinguished. Reading by a priest, and very harsh, guttural chaunting (without music), alternated for the whole time I stayed. The pronunciation of the Latin was so different from that to which I am accustomed, and the singsong of the intoning was so difficult to follow, that I scarcely distinguished a single sen- tence in two hours and a half, and all the strangers but one— Catholics. though they were,—had dropped off again to bed before I left. But to me there was a curious fascination in trying to conceive the motives and inner life of that strange company, as I listened to their rude, discordant voices, saw here and there the gleam of their white cowls as they bent over their books, and remembered that these long midnight services constitute the chief social diversions of their lonely life. They never meet, 1 believe, in the week time, except at vespers and matins,—mass being reserved for Sundays and festivals. No one enters their private cells, so that the social feelings, so far as they have any, must be chiefly kept alive by the short afternoon and long midnight services. And I an bound to say they sang and responded as if the crash of their rugged voices were a relief to their loneliness. As the moon struggled through the dark windows on to that strange scene, which goes on day after day, and year after year, and century after century, with so little of what we should call human interest, I could not help lamenting how little light I had gained as to the inner life of the convent. I stole back to my cell down the ghostly cloister, and listened to the fountain in the great court beneath my window, with a mind as unsatisfied as ever, and yet not without recognizing the dreamy charm of such a solitude. The chaunting had not ceased, and I could still hear the rough voices drone out now and then ; the crucifix at the foot of the bed glimmered peacefully in the moonlight; and I fell asleep wondering whether the holy Bruno, whose unintellectual but powerful face, as painted in its last grim agony, I had seen in one of the great rooms of the monastery, had really led the majority of his followers to the peace for which he sighed. His motto was, " Anticipaveruut vigilias oculi mei ; turbatus sum et non sum locutus ; cogitavi dies antiquas; et annos mternos in mente habui. Ecce elongavi fug,iens, et mansi in solitudine." "Mine eyes prevented the night-watches. I was troubled and I did not speak. I thought on the days of old and kept in mind the eternal years. Behold, I fled away far, and dwelt in solitude." And with what result ? 1-Es biographers say that to him at least it was serenity null even gaiety of soul. As to less single spirits, who shall say ? Bat this at least these strange monuments of solitary religious passion ha& effected. They have buoyed out for a careless world the course of an inward life of faith and love as intense and absorbing as it is usually invisible.

As we wound our way back the next- day on mules over the mountains and the

klpino meadows soft suffused With rain, whore thick the crocus blows,"

we said to ourselves that even in the midst of London turmoil, and when bathed deep in "daily labour's dull Lethean spring," it would be impossible, again to ignore the depths front which such life as the Carthusians'—be it sweet or bitter—is fed. We shall often go back in imagination from the fever of Loudon life to

"The silent courts, where night and day, Into their stone-carved basin cold

and where The splashing icy fountains play ;"

"Ghostlike in the deepening night Cowled forms brush by in gloaming white,"

and not at least be again tempted by a flippant philosophy or a fever of care, to doubt the fathomless depth of that spiritual life which asks nothing more for itself than prayer and solitude, and, at the end, one of those massive stone crosses, engraved only with initials, to mark in the fair and blooming graveyard—the only spot that I saw brightened by colour within the walls,—the place where the worn-out frame of the brother finds rest at last.

A WORKING Max IX SEARCH OF REST.