coarsest kind possible.

Their bed is a small truckle, boarded, with a single covering,
generally a blanket, no mattress nor pillow; and, as in the former
time, no fire is allowed but one in the great hall, which they never
approach.

Within these three years a small cabaret has been built near the
Convent for the accommodation of those who may occasionally visit it,
the buildings that remain being but barely sufficient for their own
members, which have been rapidly increasing since its restoration. In
this cabaret I took up my abode for the night, in preference to the
accommodation very kindly offered me by Frère Charle, and retired to
rest, wearied with the day's excursion, and fully satisfied, that all
I had heard, all I had imagined of La Trappe, was infinitely short of
the reality, and that no adequate description could be given of its
awful and dreary solitude;

Monsieur Elzéar de Sabran, in a poem called Le Repentir, lately
published, describing this Monastery, says very justly;

Témoins d'une commune et secrète souffrance,
Ces frères de douleur, martyrs de l'espérance,
D'une lente torture épuisant les degrés,
Constamment réunis, constamment séparés,
L'un à l'autre étrangers, à côté l'un de l'autre,
Joignent tout ce malheur encore à tout le nôtre,
Jamais, dans ses pareils cherchant un tendre appui,
Un coeur ne s'ouvre aux coeurs qui souffrent comme lui.