Whilst overhead
The convent windows gleamed as red
As the fiery eyes of the monks within,
Who with jovial din
Gave themselves up to all kinds of sin! 
Ha! that is a convent! that is an abbey! 
Over the doors,
None of your death-heads carved in wood,
None of your Saints looking pious and good,
None of your Patriarchs old and shabby! 
But the heads and tusks of boars,
And the cells
Hung all round with the fells
Of the fallow-deer. 
And then what cheer! 
What jolly, fat friars,
Sitting round the great, roaring fires,
Roaring louder than they,
With their strong wines,
And their concubines,
And never a bell,
With its swagger and swell,
Calling you up with a start of affright
In the dead of night,
To send you grumbling down dark stairs,
To mumble your prayers;
But the cheery crow
Of cocks in the yard below,
After daybreak, an hour or so,
And the barking of deep-mouthed hounds,
These are the sounds
That, instead of bells, salute the ear. 
And then all day
Up and away
Through the forest, hunting the deer! 
Ah, my friends, I’m afraid that here
You are a little too pious, a little too tame,
And the more is the shame. 
’T is the greatest folly
Not to be jolly;
That’s what I think! 
Come, drink, drink,
Drink, and die game!

MONKS. 
And your Abbot What’s-his-name?

LUCIFER. 
Abelard!

MONKS. 
Did he drink hard?

LUCIFER. 
Oh, no!  Not he! 
He was a dry old fellow,
Without juice enough to get thoroughly mellow. 
There he stood,
Lowering at us in sullen mood,
As if he had come into Brittany
Just to reform our brotherhood!

A roar of laughter.

But you see
It never would do! 
For some of us knew a thing or two,
In the Abbey of St. Gildas de Rhuys! 
For instance, the great ado
With old Fulbert’s niece,
The young and lovely Heloise.

FRIAR JOHN. 
Stop there, if you please,
Till we drink so the fair Heloise.

ALL, drinking and shouting. 
Heloise!  Heloise!

The Chapel-bell tolls.

LUCIFER, starting. 
What is that bell for!  Are you such asses
As to keep up the fashion of midnight masses?

FRIAR CUTHBERT. 
It is only a poor unfortunate brother,
Who is gifted with most miraculous powers
Of getting up at all sorts of hours,
And, by way of penance and Christian meekness,
Of creeping silently out of his cell
To take a pull at that hideous bell;
So that all monks who are lying awake
May murmur some kind of prayer for his sake,
And adapted to his peculiar weakness!

FRIAR JOHN. 
From frailty and fall—­

ALL. 
Good Lord, deliver us all!

FRIAR CUTHBERT. 
And before the bell for matins sounds,
He takes his lantern, and goes the rounds,
Flashing it into our sleepy eyes,
Merely to say it is time to arise. 
But enough of that.  Go on, if you please,
With your story about St. Gildas de Rhuys.