[Footnote 2: Règlements de L'Abbaye, La Maison-Dieu Notre Dame de La
Trappe, par Dom. Armand de Rancé.]

The Monks of La Trappe were not only immersed in luxury and sloth, but
were abandoned to the most scandalous excesses; most of them lived by
robbery, and several had committed assassinations on the travellers
who had occasion to traverse the woods. The neighbourhood shrunk with
terror from the approach of men who never went abroad unarmed, and
whose excursions were marked with bloodshed and violence. The Banditti
of La Trappe was the appellation by which they were most generally
distinguished. Such were the men amongst whom M. de Rancé resolved to
fix his abode; all his friends endeavouring to dissuade him from an
undertaking, they deemed alike hopeless and dangerous.

"Unarmed, and unassisted," [3] says his historian, "but in the panoply
of God, and by his Spirit, he went alone amidst this company of
ruffians, every one of whom was bent on his destruction. With
undaunted boldness, he began by proposing the strictest reform, and
not counting his life dear to him, he described the full intent of his
purpose, and left them no choice but obedience or Expulsion".

[Footnote 3: The work from which I have taken this, is a translation
by Mrs. Schimmelpenninck of Dom. Claude Lancelot's Narrative,
published in 1667. The present regulations not differing from the
former, I have extracted some of the most important.]

"Many were the dangers M. de Rancé underwent; plans were laid, at
various times, to poison him, to waylay and assassinate him, and even
once one of his monks shot at him; but the pistol, which was applied
close to his head, flashed in the pan, and missed fire. By the good