when any one had the intention of becoming a nun.  “But,” said I to her, “how can I know if I wish to remain in your house, if I am not permitted to examine it.”—­“Oh, that is quite useless,” replied she, “I am very sure that you have no vocation for our state,” and with these words immediately shut her wicket.  I know not by what signs this nun had satisfied herself of my worldly dispositions; it is possible that a quick manner of speaking, so different from theirs, is sufficient to make them distinguish travellers, who are merely curious.  The hour of vespers approaching, I could go into the church to hear the nuns sing; they were behind a black plose grating, through which nothing could be seen.  You only heard the noise of their wooden shoes, and of the wooden benches as they raised them to sit down.  Their singing had nothing of sensibility in it, and I thought I could remark both by their manner of praying, and in the conversation which I had afterwards with the father Trappist, who directed them, that it was not religious enthusiasm, such as we conceive it, but severe and grave habits which could support such a kind of life.  The tenderness of piety would even exhaust the strength; a sort of ruggedness of soul is necessary to so rude an existence.

The new Father Abbe of the Trappists, settled in the vallies of the Canton of Fribourg, has added to the austerities of the order.  One can have no idea of the minute degrees of suffering imposed upon the monks; they go so far as even to forbid them, when they have been standing for some hours in succession, from leaning against the wall, or wiping the perspiration from their forehead; in short every moment of their life is filled with suffering, as the people of the world fills theirs with enjoyment.  They rarely live to be old, and those to whom this lot falls, regard it as a punishment from heaven.  Such an establishment would be barbarous if any one was compelled to enter it, or if there was the least concealment of what they suffer there.  But on the contrary, they distribute to whoever wishes to read it, a printed statement, in which the rigors of the order are rather exaggerated than softened; and yet there are novices who are willing to take the vows, and those who are received never run away, although they might do it without the least difficulty.  The whole rests, as it appears to me, upon the powerful idea of death; the institutions and amusements of society are destined in the world to turn our thoughts entirely upon life; but when the contemplation of death gets a certain hold of the human heart, joined to a firm belief in the immortality of the soul, there are no bounds to the disgust which it may take to every thing which forms a subject of interest in the world; and a state of suffering appearing the road to a future life, such minds follow it with avidity, like the traveller, who willingly fatigues himself, in order to get sooner over the road which leads him to the object of his