The pale face of the monk became so livid and his smile so strange, that Raoul, whose eyes were still fixed upon him, felt as if this smile had struck to his heart like an insult.
The monk's eye again flashed, but that was all; he merely repeated his phrase, "I will go," -- and he went.
In the space of five minutes the monk turned around to ascertain whether he was followed or not.
"What a horrible face that monk has," said De Guiche.
'"Stay!" said the monk, raising his right hand in the air, and directing an angry glance by turns at Alice and the eldest sister.
'There was a sullen darkness in the sky, and the sun had gone angrily down, tinting the dull clouds with the last traces of his wrath, when the same black monk walked slowly on, with folded arms, within a stone's-throw of the abbey.
'With the indifference or abstraction of one well accustomed to the change, the monk glided into the house, and entered a low, dark room.
There were indeed few books of any kind, and these few belonged to the monks and priests.
Here in the great hall, when work was done and the evening meal over, were gathered all the monks and their guests.
"How many departed monks were required to upholster these six parlors?"
Here and there, in ornamental alcoves, stretched upon beds of bones, lay dead and dried-up monks, with lank frames dressed in the black robes one sees ordinarily upon priests.
I like to look at statues, however, and I like to look at pictures, also --even of monks looking up in sacred ecstacy, and monks looking down in meditation, and monks skirmishing for something to eat--and therefore I drop ill nature to thank the papal government for so jealously guarding and so industriously gathering up these things; and for permitting me, a stranger and not an entirely friendly one, to roam at will and unmolested among them, charging me nothing, and only requiring that I shall behave myself simply as well as I ought to behave in any other man's house.
With this agreeable speech, Monks turned short upon the matron, and bent his gaze upon her, till even she, who was not easily cowed, was fain to withdraw her eyes, and turn them them towards the ground.
'You think women never can keep secrets, I suppose?' said the matron, interposing, and returning, as she spoke, the searching look of Monks.
'The loss of their own good name,' replied Monks. 'So, by the same rule, if a woman's a party to a secret that might hang or transport her, I'm not afraid of her telling it to anybody; not I!
