The Substitut informed me one day that he was making a “retreat” for three days at the Monastery of La Trappe d’Aiguebelle, and asked me if I would care to accompany him.  To pass three days in a Trappist Monastery certainly promised a novel experience, but I pointed out that I was a Protestant, and that I could hardly expect the monks to welcome me with open arms.  He answered that he would explain matters, and that the difference of religion would be overlooked.  So off we started, and after an interminable drive reached a huge, gaunt pile of buildings in very arid surroundings.  The “Hospice” where visitors were lodged stood apart from the Monastery proper, the Chapel lying in between.  It was explained to me that I must observe the rule of absolute silence within the building, and that I would be expected to be in bed by 8.15 p.m. and to rise at 5 a.m. like the rest of the guests.  It was further conveyed to me that they hoped that I would see my way to attend Chapel at 5.30 a.m., afterwards I should be free for the remainder of the day.  Talking and smoking were both permitted in the garden.  I was given a microscopic whitewashed cell, most beautifully clean, containing a very small bed, one chair, a gas-jet, a prie-Dieu, a real human skull, and nothing else whatever.  We went to dinner in a great arched refectory, where a monk, perched up in a high pulpit, read us Thomas a Kempis in a droning monotone.  Complete silence was observed.  At La Trappe no meat or butter is ever used, but we were given a most excellent dinner of vegetable soup, fish, omelets, and artichokes dressed with oil, accompanied by the monks’ admirable home-grown wine.  There were quite a number of visitors making “retreats,” and I had hard work keeping the muscles of my face steady, as they made pantomimic signs to the lay-brothers who waited on us, for more omelet or more wine.  After dinner the “Frere Hospitalier,” a jolly, rotund little lay-brother, who wore a black stole over his brown habit as a sign that he was allowed to talk, drew me on one side in the garden.  As I was a heretic (he put it more politely) and had the day to myself, would I do him a favour?  He was hard put to it to find enough fish for all these guests; would I catch him some trout in the streams in the forest?  I asked for nothing better, but I had no trout-rod with me.  He produced a rod, such a trout-rod!  A long bamboo with a piece of string tied to it!  To fish for trout with a worm was contrary to every tradition in which I had been reared, but adaptability is a great thing, so with two turns of a spade I got enough worms for the afternoon, and started off.  The Foret d’Aiguebelle is not a forest in our acceptation of the term, but an endless series of little bare rocky hills, dotted with pines, and fragrant with tufts of wild lavender, thyme and rosemary.  It was intersected with two rushing, beautifully clear streams.  I cannot conceive where all the water comes from in that arid land.