Historic buildings : $b as seen and described by great writers
History
Historic buildings : $b as seen and described by great writers
Architecture -- History; Art -- Study and teaching; Historic buildings
Passing through the sacristy, where lay several piles of rich
embroidered vestments, purposely displayed for our inspection, we
regained the cloister which led to our apartment, where the supper was
ready prepared. We had scarcely finished it, when the Coadjutor and the
fathers who had accompanied us before, returned, and ranging themselves
round the fire, resumed the conversation about St. Bruno.
It grew rather late before my kind hosts had finished their narrations
and I was not sorry, after all the exercise I had taken, to return to
my cell, where everything invited to repose. I was charmed with the
neatness and oddity of my little apartment; its cabin-like bed, oratory
and ebony crucifix; in short, everything it contained; not forgetting
the aromatic odour of the pine, with which it was roofed, floored and
wainscoted. The night was luckily dark. Had the moon appeared, I could
not have prevailed upon myself to have quitted her till very late; but,
as it happened, I crept into my cabin, and was by “whispering winds
soon lulled asleep.”
Eight o’clock struck next morning before I awoke; when, to my great
sorrow, I found the peaks, which rose above the convent, veiled in
vapours, and the rain descending with violence.
After we had breakfasted by the light of our fire (for the casements
admitted but a very feeble gleam), I sat down to the works of St.
Bruno; of all medleys one of the strangest. Allegories without end; a
theologico-natural history of birds, beast and fishes; several chapters
on paradise; the delights of solitude; the glory of Solomon’s temple;
the new Jerusalem; and numberless other wonderful subjects, full of the
loftiest enthusiasm.
I had scarcely finished taking extracts from the writings of this
holy and highly-gifted personage when the dinner appeared, consisting
of everything most delicate which a strict adherence to the rules of
meagre could allow. The good fathers returned as usual before our
repast was half over, and resumed as usual their mystic discourse,
looking all the time rather earnestly into my countenance to observe
the sort of effect their most marvellous narrations produced upon it.
Our conversation, which was beginning to take a gloomy and serious
turn, was interrupted, I thought very agreeably, by the sudden
intrusion of the sun, which, escaping from the clouds, shone in full
splendour above the highest peak of the mountains, and the vapours
fleeting by degrees discovered the woods in all the freshness of their
verdure. The pleasure I received from seeing this new creation rising
to view was very lively, and, as the fathers assured me the humidity of
their walks did not often continue longer than the showers, I left my
hall.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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