“It is glorious.  It is not the penitential austerity of the liturgy as it is used by the Franciscans or at La Trappe:  it is luxury offered to God, the beauty He created dedicated to His service, and in itself praise and prayer.  But if you wish to hear the music of the Church in its utmost perfection you must go to the neighbouring Abbey:  that of the Sisters of Saint Cecilia.”

The Abbe paused, whispering to himself, thinking over his reminiscences; and then he slowly spoke again,—­

“Wherever you go, the voice of a nun preserves, merely by reason of her sex, a sort of emotion, a tendency to the cooing tone, and, it must be owned, a certain satisfaction in hearing herself when she knows that others can hear her; so that the Gregorian chant is never perfectly executed by nuns.

“But with the Benedictine Sisters of Sainte-Cecile all the graces of earthly sentimentality have vanished.  These nuns have ceased to have women’s voices; the quality is at once seraphic and manly.  In their church you are either thrown back I know not how far into the depth of past ages, or shot forward into time to come, as they sing.  They have outpourings of soul and tragical pauses, pathetic murmurs and ecstasies of passion, and sometimes they seem to rush to the assault, and storm certain Psalms at the bayonet’s point.  And they do assuredly achieve the most vehement leap that can be imagined from this world into the infinite.”

“Then it is a very different thing from the Benedictine service of nuns in the Rue Monsieur in Paris?”

“No comparison is possible.  Without wishing to reflect on the musical sincerity of those good Sisters, who sing quite suitably but humanly, as women, it may be asserted that they have neither such knowledge, nor such soul-felt aspiration, nor such voices.  As a monk remarked, ’when you have heard the Sisters of Solesmes, those of Paris sound provincial.’”

“And you saw the Abbess of Saint Cecilia.  Why, when I think of it, is not she the writer of a Treatise on Prayer (Traite de l’Oraison) which I read when I was at La Trappe, and which was not, I believe, regarded with favour at the Vatican?”

“Yes, she it is.  But you are making the greatest mistake in imagining that her book was not approved at Rome.  It was examined there, like every book of the kind, through a magnifying glass, strained through a sieve, picked over line by line, turned inside out and upside down; but the theologians employed in this pious custom-house service acknowledged and certified that this work, based on the soundest principles of mysticism, was learnedly, impeccably, desperately orthodox.

“I may add that the volume was printed privately by the Abbess herself, helped by some of the nuns, in a little hand-press belonging to the convent, and has never been in circulation.  It is, in fact, an epitome of doctrine, the essential extract of her teaching, and was more especially intended for those of her daughters who are unable to have the benefit of her instruction and lectures, because they live away from Solesmes, in other convents that she has founded.