Mostly, it is to be feared, the monastery is associated in mundane minds with that subtle and luxurious _liqueur_ which has been brewed by the white-robed monks of St. Bruno for ages past; and was until quite recently, when the establishment was broken up by government decree and the real formula of this sparkling _liqueur_ departed with the migrating monks. The opinion is ventured, however, that up to the time of their expulsion (in 1902), the monks of St. Bruno combined solitude, austerity, devotion, and charity of a most practical kind with a lucrative commerce in their distilled product after a successful manner not equalled by any religious community before or since. [Illustration: S. Bruno] The Order of St. Bruno has weathered many storms, and, during the Terror, was driven from its home and dispersed by brutal and riotous soldiery. In 1816 a remnant returned, escorted, it is said, by a throng of fifty thousand people. The cardinal rule of the Carthusians is abstemiousness from all meat-eating; which, however, in consideration of their calm, regular life, and a diet in which fish plays an important part, is apparently conducive to that longevity which most of us desire. It is related that a certain Dominican pope wished to diminish the severity of St. Bruno's regulations, but was met by a delegation of Carthusians, whose _doyen_ owned to one hundred and twenty years, and whose youngest member was of the ripe age of ninety. The amiable pontiff, not having, apparently, an argument left, accordingly withdrew his edict. Of all these great Charterhouses spread throughout France, _La Grande Chartreuse_ was the most inspiring and interesting; not only from the structure itself, but by reason of its commanding and romantic situation amid the forest-clad heights of the Savoyan Alps. The first establishment here was the foundation of St. Bruno (in 1084), which consisted merely of a modest chapel and a number of isolated cubicles. This foundation only gave way--as late as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries--to an enlarged structure more in accord with the demands and usage of this period. The most distinctive feature of its architecture is the grand cloister, with its hundred and fifteen Gothic arches, out of which open the sixty cells of the sandalled and hooded white-robed monks, who, continuing St. Bruno's regulation, live still in isolation. In these cells they spent all of their time outside the hours of work and worship, but were allowed the privilege of receiving one colleague at a time. Here, too, they ate their meals, with the exception of the principal meal on Sundays, when they all met together in the refectory.