companions. Since then the life of the little community has been easy
and tranquil.

The extremely welcome visitor is received at the island stairs by a
porter in uniform and led by him along the sunny cloisters and their
very green garden to a waiting-room hung thickly with modern paintings:
indifferent Madonnas and views of the city and the lagoon. By and by in
comes a black-bearded father, in a cassock. All the Mechitarists, it
seems, have black beards and cassocks and wide-brimmed beavers; and the
young seminarists, whom one meets now and then in little bunches in
Venice, are broad-brimmed, black-coated, and give promise of being hairy
too. The father, who is genial and smiling, asks if we understand
French, and deploring the difficulty of the English language, which has
so many ways of pronouncing a single termination, whereas the Armenian
never exceeds one, leads the way.

The first thing to admire is the garden once more, with its verdant
cedars of Lebanon and a Judas-tree bent beneath its blood. On a seat in
the midst another bearded father beneath a wide hat is reading a proof.
And through the leaves the sunlight is splashing on the cloisters,
pillars, and white walls.


[Illustration: THE ARMENIAN MONASTERY AND THE LAGOON]


The refectory is a long and rather sombre room. Here, says the little
guide-book to the island, prepared by one of the fathers who had
overcome most of the difficulties of our tongue, "before sitting down to
dine grace is said in common; the president recites some prayer, two of