“Vocations!”

“Certainly.  Mania in the majority of cases is nothing else than possession.  In fact some authorities are inclined to say that it is exceptional to find it otherwise.  And in the other cases it is generally the force of an exceptionally strong will that has lost its balance, and is powerful enough to disregard all ordinary checks of reason and common sense and human emotion.  Well, a character like that is capable of a good deal.  Each case is, of course, completely isolated in this department as in all others.  It is incredible to think that less than a hundred years ago such patients were herded together.  The system now, of course, is to surround them with completely healthy conditions and completely self-restrained attendants.  That gradually rebuilds the physical and nervous conditions, and exorcism is not administered until there is sufficient reserve force for the patient partly, at any rate, to cooperate.”

Monsignor was silent.  Again he felt bewilderment at the amazing simplicity and common sense of it all.

“I am taking you,” said the monk presently, “to the central quarter—­to the monastery proper.  It is there that the main body of the monks live.  The church is remarkable.  It is the third largest monastic church in the world. . . .  We are just entering the quarter now,” he added.

Monsignor leaned forward as the air darkened, and was in time to see the great gates swinging slowly together again as if to meet after the car had passed.  It was still twilight as they sped on, and he perceived that they were passing, with that extreme and noiseless swiftness with which they had come, up some kind of tunnel lit by artificial light.  Then again there was a rush of daylight and the car stopped.

“We must go on foot here,” said the monk, and opened the door.

The priest, still marvelling, stepped out after him, and followed through a postern door; and then, as he emerged, understood more or less the arrangement of the buildings.

He stood on the edge of an enormous courtyard, perhaps five hundred yards across.  This was laid down with a lawn, crossed in every direction with paved paths.  But that at which he chiefly stared was a church whose like he had never set eyes on before.  It was the sanctuary end, obviously, that faced him; the farther end ran back into the high walls, pierced here and there by low doors, with which the court was surrounded.  The church itself rose perhaps two hundred feet from floor to roof.  It was straight from end to end, the line broken only by a tall, severe tower at the point where it joined the wall of the court; and running round it, jutting out in a continuous block, like a platform, was a low building, plainly containing chapels.  The whole was of white stone, unrelieved by carving of any kind.  Enormous narrow lancet windows showed above the line of chapels, springing perhaps forty feet from the ground, and rising to a line immediately below the roof.  The whole gave an impression of astounding severity and equally astounding beauty.  It had the kind of beauty of a perfectly bare mountain or of an iceberg.  It was graceful and yet as strong as iron; it was cold, and yet obviously alive.