No Food Outside the Common Table

Between their regular common meals they take special care that no one should presume to indulge his palate with any food. Take the times when they are walking casually through gardens or orchards, where the fruit hangs temptingly on the trees and not only brushes against their chests as they pass through, but also lies on the ground, offering itself to be trodden underfoot. Since it is all ready to be gathered, it could easily tempt those who see it to indulge their appetite, and by the chance offered them and the sheer quantity of fruit it could stir even the strictest and most abstemious to long for it. Yet they consider it wrong not merely to taste a single fruit, but even to touch one with the hand, except what is set on the table openly for the common meal of all, and supplied publicly for their enjoyment by the steward’s catering through the service of the brothers. [a]