The
picture would be unjust to truth, did we not recognize, what, from our
knowledge of human nature, we must expect, a conventual life of far less
elevated and refined order. We should expect that institutions which
guarantied to each individual a livelihood, without the necessity of
physical labor or the responsibility of supporting a family, might in
time come to be incumbered with many votaries in whom indolence and
improvidence were the only impelling motives. In all ages of the world
the unspiritual are the majority,--the spiritual the exceptions. It was
to the multitude that Jesus said, "Ye seek me, not because ye saw the
miracles, but because ye did eat and were filled,"--and the multitude
has been much of the same mind from that day to this.
The convent of which we speak had been for some years under the lenient
rule of the jolly Brother Girolamo,--an easy, wide-spread, loosely
organized body, whose views of the purpose of human existence were
decidedly Anacreontic. Fasts he abominated; night-prayers he found
unfavorable to his constitution; but he was a judge of olives and good
wine, and often threw out valuable hints in his pastoral visits on the
cooking of maccaroni, for which he had himself elaborated a savory
recipe; and the cellar and larder of the convent, during his pastorate,
presented so many urgent solicitations to conventual repose, as to
threaten an inconvenient increase in the number of brothers.
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