An early traveller mentions the complaint made by an old woman who remembered the Cistercian monks before the Revolution. "When I was young," she said, "the good brothers did not think it beneath them to speak to a pretty girl." And she told of some of the tricks they played. "A young monk would tie a bell round his neck and run about in the wood. The girls, thinking this was a straying cow, would pursue it. Then he would start out of a clump of bushes and frighten us. When we ran away, he would come after us, and there was such screaming and laughing; and who was the worse for it, I should like to know?"
Now, among the Trappists, there is no going out and larking with the girls. Their food is of the most meagre description, neither meat nor fish, but vegetables, eggs and milk; and one meal alone in the day. Butter is forbidden, water is the sole beverage. Their soup is cabbage boiled in water; a few potatoes are allowed, and each monk receives half a pound of black bread. After such a meal, no desire could enter into any monk to play hide and seek in the woods with the pretty dark-eyed lasses.
We drove on to Nantes. In the neighbourhood was the château of Count Walsh, and as the Bonds were acquainted with the Walsh family these latter called on our party at the hotel, and some of ours drove out to lunch with the Count and Countess at their château.
The Walsh family is of Irish origin. The head of it was the Count de Sérant, who possesses a noble château on the Loire between Angers and Nantes, said to be one of the finest in France. The founder of the family came from Ireland with a regiment he had raised in aid of James II. For his services, loyalty and valour, he had the title of Count of Sérant conferred on him by Louis XIV. James is said to have created him a duke, but this title is hardly claimed in France. One of the family, a captain in the navy, conveyed James II to France, on his abdication; another fitted out a vessel for Charles Edward, the Young Pretender.
The late Count had been preceptor to the Duc de Berri; and the assassination of his pupil, February 13, 1820, completed the affliction of the Count, who had previously lost two sons on the field of battle.
