“Herr Bailiff, they have reason to thank God that the late storm and their mental troubles have done them no harm.”

“So—­I would these Augustines kept kirschwasser among their liquors!”

Peterchen entered the convent, where his presence alone was wanting to proceed to business.  The mules were housed, the guides received as usual in the building, and then the preparations for the long-delayed examinations were seriously commenced.

It has already been mentioned that the fraternity of St. Bernard was of very ancient origin.  It was founded in the year 962, by Bernard de Menthon, an Augustine canon of Aoste in Piedmont, for the double purposes of bodily succor and spiritual consolation.  The idea of establishing a religious community in the midst of savage rocks, and at the highest point trod by the foot of a man, was worthy of Christian self-denial and a benevolent philanthropy.  The experiment appears to have succeeded in a degree that is commensurate with its noble intention; for centuries have gone by, civilization has undergone a thousand changes, empires have been formed and upturned, thrones destroyed, and one-half the world has been rescued from barbarism, while this piously-founded edifice still remains in its simple and respectable usefulness where it was first erected, the refuge of the traveller and a shelter for the poor.

The convent buildings are necessarily vast, but, as all its other materials had to be transported to the place it occupies on the backs of mules, they are constructed chiefly of the ferruginous, hoary-looking stones that were quarried from the native rock.  The cells of the monks, the long corridors, refectories for the different classes of travellers, and suited to the numbers of the guests, as well as those for the canons and their servants, and lodging rooms of different degrees of magnitude and convenience, with a chapel of some antiquity and of proper size, composed then, as now, the internal arrangements.  There is no luxury, some comfort in behalf of those in whom indulgence has become a habit, and much of the frugal hospitality that is addressed to the personal wants and the decencies of life.  Beyond this, the building, the entertainment, and the brotherhood, are marked by a severe monastic self-denial, which appears to have received a character of barren and stern simplicity from the unvarying nakedness of all that meets the eye in that region of frost and sterility.

We shall not stop to say much of the little courtesies and the ceremonious asseverations of mutual good-will and respect that passed between the Bailiff of Vevey and the Prior of St. Bernard, on the occasion of their present meeting.  Peterchen was known to the brotherhood, and, though a Protestant, and one too that did not forbear to deliver his jest or his witticism against Rome and its flock at will, he was sufficiently well esteemed.  In all the quetes, or collections of the convent, the well-meaning Bernois had really shown