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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: for a marriage, from the slated belfry, and proclaim throughout the
neighbourhood that another soul has gone to God.
At night, under the conduct of my kind Irishman, I took my place in
the gallery to hear compline and SALVE REGINA, with which the
Cistercians bring every day to a conclusion. There were none of
those circumstances which strike the Protestant as childish or as
tawdry in the public offices of Rome. A stern simplicity,
heightened by the romance of the surroundings, spoke directly to
the heart. I recall the whitewashed chapel, the hooded figures in
the choir, the lights alternately occluded and revealed, the strong
manly singing, the silence that ensued, the sight of cowled heads
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