In sun-baked Nyons, water could be got anywhere by driving a tunnel into the parched hillsides, when sooner or later an abundant spring would be tapped.  These French trout were either ridiculously unsophisticated, or else very weary of life:  they simply asked to be caught.  I got quite a heavy basket, to the great joy of the “Frere Hospitalier,” and I got far more next day.  Though we had to rise at five, we got no breakfast till eight, and a very curious breakfast it was.  Every guest had a yard of bread, and two saucers placed in front of him; one containing honey, the other shelled walnuts.  We dipped the walnuts in the honey, and ate them with the bread, and excellent they were.  In the place of coffee, which was forbidden, we had hot milk boiled with borage to flavour it, quite a pleasant beverage.  The washing arrangements being primitive, I waited until every one was safely occupied in Chapel for an hour and a half, and then had a swim in the reservoir which supplied the monastery with water, and can only trust that I did not dirty it much.  I was greatly disappointed with the singing in the severe, unadorned Chapel; it was plainsong, without any organ or instrument.  The effect of so great a body of voices might have been imposing had not the intonation (as kindly critics say at times of a debutante) been a little uncertain.  As Trappists never speak, one could understand their losing their voices, but it seems curious that they should have lost their ears as well, though possibly it was only the visitors who sang so terribly out of tune.

I was taken all over the Monastery next day by the “Pere Hospitalier,” who, like his brown-frocked lay-brother, wore a black stole over his white habit, as a badge of office.  With the exception of the fine cloisters, there were no architectural features whatever about the squat, massive pile of buildings.  The modern chapel, studiously severe in its details, bore the unmistakable imprint of Viollet-le-Duc’s soulless, mathematically correct Gothic.  Personally, I think that Viollet-le-Duc spoiled every ancient building in France which he “restored.”  I was taken into the refectory to see the monks’ dinners already laid out for them.  They consisted of nothing but bread and salad, but with such vast quantities of each!  Each monk had a yard-long loaf of bread, a bottle of wine and an absolute stable-bucket of salad, liberally dressed with oil and vinegar.  The oil supplied the fat necessary for nutrition, still it was a meagre enough dinner for men who had been up since 3 a.m. and had done two hours’ hard work in the vegetable gardens.  The “Pere Hospitalier” told me that not one scrap of bread or lettuce would be left at the conclusion of the repast.  The immense austerity of the place impressed me very much.  The monks all slept on plank-beds, but they were not allowed to remain on these hard resting-places after 3 a.m.  Their “Rule” was certainly a very severe one.  I was told that the monks prepared Tincture of Arnica for medicinal purposes in an adjoining factory, arnica growing wild everywhere in the Forest, and that the sums realised by the sale of this drug added materially to their revenues.