The culinary monk knew nothing of the history of his convent, beyond the
bare year of its foundation, and displayed a monotonous dead level of
ignorance on all topographical and historical questions: to him the
_Pain d'Abbaye_[38] meant nothing further than the staff of life there
provided, and he neither knew himself nor could recommend any Brother
who knew anything about the glaciere. He was a German, and we talked of
his native Baiern and the modern glories of his capital; and when his
questions elicited a declaration of my profession, he passed up to
Saxony, and pinned me with Luther. Finding that I objected to being so
pinned, and repudiated something of that which his charge involved, he
waived Luther, of whom he knew nothing beyond his name, and came down
upon me triumphantly with the word Protestant. I explained to him, of
course, that the worthy Elector, and his friends who protested, had not
much to do with the Anglican branch of the Church Catholic; and then the
old task had to be gone through of assuring the assembled Brothers that
we in England have Sacraments, have Orders, have a Trinitarian Creed.
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