IX

yodeling, the while they work, and jesting and laughing. The stokers, with flaming, swollen eyes, their tawny complexion waxing a brilliant bronze, their sweat making golden furrows therein, with their pikes and pitchforks busy, are terribly magnificent to behold. Here be men who would destroy Bastilles for you, if it were nominated in the bond. And there is the monk-foreman⁠—the kiln is of the monastery’s estate⁠—reading his breviary while the lime is in making. Indeed, these sodalities of the Lebanons are not what their vows and ascetic theologies would make them. No lean-jowled, hungry-looking devotees, living in exiguity and droning in exinanition their prayers⁠—not by any means. Their fleshpots are not a few, and their table is a marvel of ascetism! And why not, if their fat estates⁠—three-quarter of the lands here is held in mortmain by the clergy⁠—can yield anything, from silk cocoons to lime-pits? They will clothe you in silk at least; they will lime-wash your homes and sepulchres, if they cannot lime-wash anything else. Thanks to them so long as they keep some reminiscence of