The afternoon was so far advanced when I returned to the convent, that
it was clearly impossible to reach Besançon at five o'clock, and
consequently there was time to inspect the Brothers and their buildings.
The field near the convent was gay with haymakers; and the brown monks,
with here and there a priest in _ci-devant_ white, moved among the hired
labourers, and stirred them up by exhortation and example,--with this
difference, that while it was evidently the business of the monks so to
do, the priests, on the other hand, had only taken fork in hand for the
sake of a little gentle exercise. One unhappy Jacques Bonhomme made hot
and toilsome hay in thick brown clothes, plainly manufactured from a
defunct Brother's gown; for, to judge from appearances, a cast-off gown
is a thing unknown. It was good to see a Brother, in horn spectacles of
mediæval cut, tenderly chopping a log for firewood, and peering at it
through his spectacles after each stroke, as a man examines some
delicate piece of natural machinery with a microscope; to see another
Brother, the sphere of whose duties lay in the flour-mill, standing in
the doorway with brown robe and shaven crown all powdered alike with
white, and a third covered from head to foot with sawdust; or, best of
all, to see an antique Brother, with scarecrow legs, and low shoes which
had presumably been in his possession or that of his predecessors for a
long series of years, wheeling a barrow of liquid manure, with his gown
looped up high by means of stout whipcord and an arrangement of large
brass rings. The Brother whose business it was to do such cooking as
might be required by visitors, grinned in the most friendly and
engaging manner from ear to ear when he was looked at; and, by fixing
him steadily with the eye, he could be kept for considerable spaces of
time standing in the middle of the kitchen, knife in hand, with the
corners of his mouth out of sight round his broad cheeks. His ample
front was decked with a blue apron, suspended from his shoulders, and
confined round the convexity of his waist by an old strap which no