The snow was falling now in big, slow flakes, a great fire blazing
under the chimney with its cipher and enigmatic motto, as they sat
down to the leek-soup, the hard eggs, and the salad grown and
gathered by their host's own hands. The long stone passages through
which they passed from church, with the narrow brown doors of the
monks' dormitories one after another along the white-washed wall,
made the coquetries of the Prior's own distant apartment all the more
reassuring. You remembered that from his ninth year he had been the
pet of princesses, the favourite of kings. Upon the cabinets,
chests, book-cases, around, were ranged the souvenirs received from
various royal persons, including three kings of France, the fair
Queen of Scots, Elizabeth of England; and the conversation fell to,
and was kept going by, the precious contents of the place where they
were sitting, the books printed and bound as they had never been
before--books which meant assiduous study, the theory of poetry with
Ronsard always accompanying its practice--delicate things of art,
which beauty had handled or might handle, the pictured faces on the
walls, in their frames of reeded ebony or jewelled filigree.
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