"
"And who was he?" inquired the Vicar.
"He was a young rake in Paris, tonsured for the sake of the family
benefices, who had for mistress no less a lady than the Duchess de
Rohan-Montbazon. One day, returning from the country after a week's
absence and letting himself into the house by a private key, he
rushed upstairs in a lover's haste, burst open the door, and found
himself in a chamber hung with black and lit with many candles.
His mistress had died, the day before, of a putrid fever.
But--worse than this and most horrible--the servants had ordered the
coffin in haste; and, when delivered, it was found to be too short.
Upon which, to have done with her, in their terror of infection, they
had lopped off the head, which lay pitiably dissevered from the
trunk. For three years after the young man travelled as one mad, but
at length found solace in his neglected abbacy of Soligny-la-Trappe,
and in reviving its extreme Cistercian rigours."
"I had supposed the Trappists to be a French order in origin, and
confined to France," said the Vicar.
"They have offshoots: of which I knew but one in Italy, that settled
some fifty years back in a monastery they call Buon-Solazzo, outside
Florence, at the invitation of the Grand Duke of Tuscany.
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