The following morning we were to ride up the mountain to the Sagro Eremo.  Convent hours are early, and soon after the dawn we had convoyed our female companion down the hill to the little forestieria for breakfast, where the padre forestieraio gave us the best coffee we had had for many a day.  George Eliot declared that she had had an exceptionally good night, and was delighted with the talk of the magnificently black-bearded father, who superintended our meal, while a lay brother waited on us.

The former was to start in a day or two on his triennial holiday, and he was much excited at the prospect of it.  His naif talk and quite childlike questions and speculations as to times and distances, and what could be done in a day, and the like, amused George Eliot much.  In reckoning up his available hours he deducted so much in each day for the due performance of his canonical duties.  I remarked to him that he could read the prescribed service in the diligence, as I had often seen priests doing.  “Secular priests no doubt!” he said, “but that would not suit one of us!”

Our ride up to the Sagro Eremo was a thing to be remembered!  I had seen and done it all before; but I had not seen or done it in company with George Eliot.  It was like doing it with a new pair of eyes, and freshly inspired mind!  The way is long and steep, through magnificent forests, with every here and there a lovely enclosed lawn, and fugitive peeps over the distant country.  On our way up we met a singular procession coming down.

It consisted of a low large cart drawn by two oxen, and attended by several lay brothers and peasants, in the centre of which was seated an enormously fat brother of the order, whose white-robed bust with immense flowing white beard, emerging from a quantity of red wraps and coverings, that concealed the lower part of his person, made an extraordinary appearance.  He was being brought down from the Sagro Eremo to the superior comfort of the convent, because he was unwell.

At the Sagro Eremo—­the sacred hermitage—­is seen the operation of the Camaldolese rule in its original strictness and perfection.  At the convent itself it is, or has become, much relaxed in many respects.  The Camaldolese, like other Carthusians, are properly hermits, that is to say, their life is not conventual, but eremitical.  Each brother at the Sagro Eremo inhabits his own separately built cell, consisting of sleeping chamber, study, wood-room, and garden, all of microscopical dimensions.  His food, exclusively vegetable, is passed in to him by a little turntable made in the wall.  There is a refectory, in which the members of the community eat in common on two or three festivals in the course of the year.  On these occasions only is any speech or oral communication between the members permitted.  There is a library tolerably well furnished with historical as well as theological works.  But it is evidently never used.  Nor is there any sign that the little gardens are in any degree cultivated by the occupants of them.  I remarked to George Eliot on the strangeness of this abstinence from both the two permitted occupations, which might seem to afford some alleviation of the awful solitude and monotony of the eremitical life.  But she remarked that the facts as we saw them were just such as she should have expected to find!