Some of these compositions were all but laughable, that of the Ninth Station, to mention one:  Christ lying at full length on His face, and being pulled up by a rope tied to His bound hands; it looked as if He were learning to swim.  Still, but for feeble and vulgar incidents, clumsy and obvious details, what strange scenes suddenly rose before his mind, distinct from the mass:  Veronica on her knees before Jesus, was really distracted with grief, really fine; the borrowed or copied figures of the other persons represented disappeared; even in the least original of these compositions the coarse, unsatisfactory utterances of these monks spoke an almost eloquent language; and this because intense faith and fervour lurked in the work.  A breath had passed over those faces, and they were alive; the emotion, the voice of prayer, was felt in the silence of this conventional crowd.  This Way of the Cross was matchless from this point of view:  Monastic piety had introduced an unexpected element, giving evidence of the mysterious power it has at its command, infusing a personal emotion, a peculiar aroma, into a work which, without it, would never indeed have existed.  These Benedictines had suggested the sensation of kneeling worship and the very fragrance of the Gospel, as artists of wider scope had failed in doing.

Their attempt, however, had begotten no following, and at this day the school is almost dead, producing nothing but feeble prints for old women designed by the lay-brothers.

How, indeed, could it have been anything but still-born?  The idea of doing for the West what Manuel Pauselinos did for the East, of eliminating study from nature, imposing an uniform ritual of colour and line, of compelling every artistic temperament to squeeze itself into the same mould, shows an absolute misapprehension of art in the mind of the man who attempted it.  The system was bound to end in ankylosis, in the paralysis of painting, and this, in fact, was the result.

At about the same time with these Religious an unknown artist, living in the country, and never exhibiting in Paris, was painting pictures for churches and convents, working for the glory of God and refusing all remuneration from priests or monks.  Durtal knew his pictures, and they had suggested much the same reflections as those aroused by the Benedictine paintings of Beuron.

At first sight Paul Borel’s work is neither cheerful nor attractive; the phrases he used might often have made a partisan of the modern smile; and besides, to judge his work fairly it is indispensable to get rid of part of it, to refuse to see anything but that which has evaded the too-familiar formulas of commonplace unction; and then what a spirit of manly fervency, of ardent piety, filled and upheld it.