On issuing from the crypt, we encountered a young monk who had evidently been sent in search of us.  The mass was over, and the court-yard was nearly emptied of its crowd.  In the farther court, however, we found the people more dense than ever, pressing forward towards a small door.  The monk made way for us with some difficulty,—­for, though the poor fellows did their best to fall back, the pressure from the outside was tremendous.  Having at last run the gantlet, we found ourselves in the refectory of the monastery, inhaling a thick steam of fish and cabbage.  Three long tables were filled with monks and pilgrims, while the attendants brought in the fish on large wooden trenchers.  The plates were of common white ware, but the spoons were of wood.  Officers in gay uniforms were scattered among the dark anchorites, who occupied one end of the table, while the bourgeoisie, with here and there a blue-caftaned peasant wedged among them, filled the other end.  They were eating with great zeal, while an old priest, standing, read from a Sclavonic Bible.  All eyes were turned upon us as we entered, and there was not a vacant chair in which we could hide our intrusion.  It was rather embarrassing, especially as the young monk insisted that we should remain, and the curious eyes of the eaters as constantly asked, “Who are these, and what do they want?” We preferred returning through the hungry crowd, and made our way to the guests’ house.

Here a similar process was going on.  The corridors were thronged with peasants of all ages and both sexes, and the good fathers, more than ever distracted, were incapable of helping us.  Seeing a great crowd piled up against a rear basement-door, we descended the stairs, and groped our way through manifold steams and noises to a huge succession of kitchens, where caldrons of cabbage were bubbling, and shoals of fish went in raw and came out cooked.  In another room some hundreds of peasants were eating with all the energy of a primitive appetite.  Soup leaked out of the bowls as if they had been sieves; fishes gave a whisk of the tail and vanished; great round boulders of bread went off, layer after layer, and still the empty plates were held up for more.  It was grand eating,—­pure appetite, craving only food in a general sense:  no picking out of tidbits, no spying here and there for a favorite dish, but, like a huge fire, devouring everything that came in its way.  The stomach was here a patient, unquestioning serf, not a master full of whims, requiring to be petted and conciliated.  So, I thought, people must have eaten in the Golden Age:  so Adam and Eve must have dined, before the Fall made them epicurean and dyspeptic.