N one of those narrow, sheltered valleys which are to the gaunt desolation of the Bolivian Andes what the green wádis are to the arid wastes of the Soudan, lies the little Franciscan monasterio of Our Lady of Many Sorrows. Such, at least, is the " devotion" of the tiny chapel attached to the miniature convent, and by this name the whole establishment has come to be called. Protected on three sides from the biting winds of the snowy sierras by the steep walls of the lofty mesa above, the valley opens only toward the east; whence come soft breezes warmed by the sun of equatorial Brazil, and heavy with the moisture of the far off Atlantic. These, with the irrigation furnished by the stout stream which brawls past the quiet retreat on its way to the distant Amazon, have made it possible for the good fathers, by dint of much patience and hard labor, to create a veritable garden in the wilderness; and, save for the bleak tableland towering overhead, and the gleam of a single ice-crowned peak away to the eastward, to forget that they are perched nearly twelve thousand feet above the ocean tides, in the very heart of the barren Cordilleras.

Though it was distant not more than three leagues from the city, which we may miscall La Vega, I had been a resident of the latter for many weeks without so much as hearing the convent mentioned. In the one dingy bookstore of which the city boasted, I had sometimes met a monk of the Order of St. Francis, evidently bent, like myself, on finding such relief as was possible, among the scanty collection of books, from the intolerable dulness of life in an inland South American town. Beyond a courteous "good morning, señor," or "good evening, señor," he never showed any disposition to talk, however, although his appearance had aroused my interest from the first. Not more than fifty years of age, tall and spare of form, he bore him

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self with a dignity as far removed from the slovenly carelessness of so many of his brethren as was his whole air from the vacant self-complacency, or sour discontent, so common to his caste. Though clad in the coarsest garb affected by the extremists of the Order, his bearing was essentially that of a polished man of the world; while his handsome, clean-cut face was stamped with the look of resolute self-control one sometimes sees in men who have walled up their past, and keep their eyes bent sternly on the path leading from it. Altogether a most interesting face; but one whose reserve forbade any approach to a nearer acquaintance.

One gloomy afternoon, as I was reading with some attention an old number of the Revue des Deux Mondes, the friar entered the shop, and, with a polite salutation, passed to his customary seat at the back of the room, and was soon deep in a large volume. Perhaps an hour had elapsed when, noticing the rapidly increasing darkness, I went to the door, and found the rain descending in sheets, and the steep street turned into a mountain torrent ankle-deep. The voluble expressions of regret from the bookseller at the inconvenience thus caused us, brought the monk to the doorway as well, and on seeing the condition of affairs out of doors, he turned to me and said: "We shall be prisoners for several hours, I fear, señor." Accepting his advance, I hastened to express my satisfaction at having agreeable companionship, at least; and we readily drifted into a conversation about books which lasted pleasantly enough until the rain ceased and the street was again passable. Before starting homeward I gave my new acquaintance a card, with an earnest invitation for him to join our bachelor household at breakfast any day he might elect; warning him that we were nearly all "heretics," though his welcome would be none the less sincere on that account. He thanked me with apparent cordiality and promised to take me at my word,

though not very soon, perhaps." He added as we parted, "You, too, must come out to our little cabin, señor, without waiting upon ceremony. Anyone will tell you where it is. Ask for Fray Bento. You will be a very welcome visitor, and I shall be glad to show you our library."

On my mentioning this invitation to our host, Don Gaspar, a wealthy young Spanish merchant who was a devout Catholic and generous supporter of the church, he seemed not a little surprised. "You must surely go, Don Alberto," he said; "it is an honor that is done you." In answer to my inquiries as to Fray Bento, he had not much to say. A learned man and a good one, but not often seen at such reunions of La Vegan society as were frequented by other priests. Indeed, he scarcely went anywhere but to old Doña Theresa's, the widow of a rich merchant of the place who had married abroad. She was an Italian, and so was Fray Bento, and this was a bond between them. But he was a good padre (with much emphasis) and greatly beloved of the Indians. And it was a marked compliment to be asked to go to see him at the convent, especially as I was a heretic; so I must not fail to go.

It was nearly a fortnight before I was able to ride out to the convent. The rough track wound around the base of the bold mountain spur which formed an effectual barrier to easy intercourse between the city and the little valley of the Franciscans, and then followed up the course of the rapid stream already referred to. There was a warmth and softness in the air of this secluded nook very different from the harsh atmosphere of the more exposed town; and as the path approached the monks' retreat it passed through hedges of wild heliotrope and fuchsia and by well cultivated fields, where a number of Indians, directed by a cowled friar, were at work on the irrigating ditches. The wicket of the convent was opened by a young brother who insisted on taking care of my horse, telling me that Fray Bento would be found in the inner court-yard. Passing through the outer patio, whose centre was occupied with a pretty rosebed surrounding a fountain, I entered

the inner one, which was wholly given up to flower-beds and medicinal plants. Here was Fray Bento, diligently spading over the earth about a tall and robust geranium-tree which stood in the midst of a plat of heart's-ease and violets. He seemed unfeignedly glad to see me, and, after bringing his task to a convenient point, started to show me through the establishment. It was small, exquisitely clean, and painfully bare in all its appointments. Except the library and gardens, there was nothing about the place to relieve its air of gloomy isolation. In the former was, however, a passably liberal collection of books and a huge pile of old manuscripts dating from the time of the Spanish conquest; while the latter contained a profusion of flowers and shrubs which, in that ungenial soil, were themselves a monument to the patience and industry of the brothers. Fray Bento explained that each of these had an assigned task, either in the garden, or in the fields outside, or about the building; and he evidently took great delight in the perfect condition of the large bed allotted to himself. I remarked that his violets, while surpassingly large and beautiful, had no perfume, and said that this a common defect at such altitudes-must be a great deprivation to him.

"No," he answered, with some sadness, "it is that which makes it possible for me to have them."

"But, father," I remonstrated, “surely they lose much of their loveliness in being odorless. It is as though a beautiful child were dumb.”

"True, son; but being dumb, they can never offend," he said; and with some abruptness called my attention to other things.

His manner impressed me strongly ; for he was the last man from whom one should have expected to hear a remark which savored so much of the professional cant of the conventional padre. But, whatever the cause, he clearly meant what he said; and that it was coupled with some sombre thought was evident from the shade of pain remaining on his face.

As we strolled through the pleasant. sunny paths, he talked freely of himself

and his companions, to many of whom he smilingly introduced me as "A heretic come to judgment."

"You think it a prison life, no doubt, my son," he remarked, "and so it is in many ways; but it is better so. Petty as it seems in all its details, this very pettiness makes us the more accessible to the wretched, the ignorant, and the suffering among our fellow-creatures. There can be no cure for the wrong man does to man; when it is done, it is done; but for one we harm in our lives we have the opportunity of helping hundreds. That is, if we but take our eyes off ourselves, my son; off our useless regrets as well as our vain hopes." This was disappointing. Here was a keen-witted, high-bred, liberal-minded ecclesiastic, apparently so wedded to the formal routine of his calling, that twice within the hour he had fallen into the language of Thomas à Kempis while conversing with a stranger who could not be expected to share either his convictions or his enthusiasm. And yet, I could not bring myself to believe that this was mere talking for effect. The whole thing was a puzzle, and I took the first occasion for retiring, somewhat in doubt as to the correctness of my high estimate of Fray Bento's intellectual attainments and breadth of views. He, however, was again perfectly natural and unconstrained as he walked to the wicket, and in promising to breakfast with us before long showed all of his notable ease of manner and graceful courtesy.

Within a few days he made good his promise, joining us at breakfast with a pleasant apology for his want of ceremony. On this occasion he proved himself to be, beyond question, a brilliant and highly educated man, exhibiting a familiarity with secular affairs which was all the more agreeable by reason of a total absence of that assumption of worldliness so often noticeable in his class in their hours of relaxation. He displayed a keen insight into the larger questions of European politics, lamenting that his knowledge of American public affairs was limited to the study of De Tocqueville. With the speculations and researches of modern scientific thought he was also at home, and in

protesting, as he did, against their tendency toward materialism, he argued from a logical rather than a clerical standpoint. In talking of literature, too, he showed a broad range and sympathy which was most attractive; and we were not a little surprised when, upon one of our number offering to send up to the convent a collection of the latest foreign papers and reviews, he replied, with some decision, that he " never read a European journal." A few minutes later, with some suddenness, he took his leave, urging me to repeat my visit to the monasterio as soon as convenient.

Our acquaintance grew rapidly. I sought his society often and spent many delightful hours with him in studying the manuscripts of the convent library; while he became a regular visitor to our quarters and established himself as a warm favorite with all our party.

As a rule, the convent seemed utterly shut off from the rest of the world, and save for the occasional presence of the few Indians working in its fields, there was no sign of life stirring in the neighborhood. But two or three times I had found quite a little crowd of the men and women of the mountain tribes gathered about the wicket, with Fray Bento in their midst, receiving their trifling offerings and saying a few kindly words to each. A handful of coca leaves, a few ears of purple maize, or a quart or two of dried potatoes, would be laid on the stone bench, along with a wild cat's skin, or the pelts of chinchillas, or a hank of alpaca yarn, with now and then a little package of cinchona bark, or a bunch of gay feathers contributed by some more venturesome Indian who had been lately in the Yungus, or hot valleys, of the eastern slopes. One tall, fine-looking young fellow once brought a small quill filled with shining golddust as his gift; but, when asked where he had gathered it, had worldly wisdom enough to merely say with a wide sweep of his arm toward the eastern horizon, that he had "found it down there." Upon my remarking upon the practical nature of his devotees' alms, Fray Bento said, with much earnestness :

"They come, at least, from the heart, and are often all their givers possess

in the world. They are for my bell, which I want to get to hang in the belfry there." He pointed to the low tower between the convent gate and the entrance to the chapel, which had no bell, although the stout beam for swinging one was already in place and painted.

"We have no bell," he continued, "except the little one you hear tinkling sometimes; and I thought it would be such a good thing to get a big, deeptoned one whose sound would go up on the mesa, where our children could hear it. Besides, my son, it seems to me that there is something in the voice of a great bell, especially at night in a lonely spot like this, which goes straight into our hearts and wakens our memories as nothing else can. And it is well for us not to let our memories sleep too long; some less than others." As he paused, there was the drawn look about his face which I had before seen and connected with some peculiarly sad recollection in his mind.

"The bell will cost a great deal of money," he added, in a moment; "more than twelve hundred pesos by the time it is dragged over these mountains from the coast. But we have nearly a thousand now and it will soon be enough. It has only taken us eight years to get this."

He spoke with naked simplicity in saying this, and it was clear that there was no thought of complaint, much less of insinuation, in his remark. He told me that our generous young host, Don Gaspar, from time to time sent for all the various offerings of the Indians and allowed him a liberal value for them all, with interest on the money until the sum should be complete. Then his firm would purchase the bell in Lima and have it brought up to the convent; so that Fray Bento would have no care about its transportation.

"Our poor people will be happy when they hear it away off in their villages," he said; "and I shall be better for it, I know. It will make me less cowardly, surely." And he turned into the library with me and commenced to talk about the manuscripts we were examining.

On my mentioning to my companions, one day at dinner, Fray Bento's ambition to secure a bell for his convent, and

proposing that we should quietly do something, through Don Gaspar, to hasten its purchase, that impulsive young Castilian said that he and his fellowCatholics present were willing to make good one-half of what was wanting if we "heretics" cared to give the remainder. This we gladly agreed to do; and Don Gaspar undertook to get the bell up from the coast without the knowledge of Fray Bento; so that the latter might receive it and have it mounted by Easter, which was always a great feast with his Indian "children."

He himself never again alluded to the matter, although more than once I had come upon him standing by the wicket, surrounded by his picturesque contributors. Indeed, he had not again referred even remotely to his religious sentiments, nor given any further indication of those deeper personal feelings which he had allowed to escape him on the two occasions mentioned. One odd proceeding was, however, several times repeated. Now and then, as we were sitting together in the salon of our house, or strolling through the porticos of our courtyard, he would suddenly offer some hasty apology and leave us with a singular precipitation. This became a matter of discussion among our party, and it was remarked that it had always occurred some time after we had finished our cigars, so it could not be because they annoyed him. In thinking the thing over I became satisfied that it was connected in some way with the habit of one of our number to adjourn after smoking to an adjoining room, and play for a half-hour or so on the piano. Still, this scarcely explained Fray Bento's brusqueness; for he had often expressed a love for music and shown an excellent knowledge of it, and I knew that both our player and his instrument were above the average in quality. As this might be the cause of our guest's hasty departures, however, I determined to mention the subject frankly to him and assure him that it would be no deprivation for us to postpone our concert. One afternoon, as he and I were pacing along his favorite walk-a path through the fields outside the convent wallsafter having been confined for several hours in copying together an old chron