บทที่ บทที่ 122 · AUSTERITIES

One is a postulant for two years at least, often for four; a novice for

four. It is rare that the definitive vows can be pronounced earlier

than the age of twenty-three or twenty-four years. The

Bernardines-Benedictines of Martin Verga do not admit widows to their

order.

In their cells, they deliver themselves up to many unknown macerations,

of which they must never speak.

On the day when a novice makes her profession, she is dressed in her

handsomest attire, she is crowned with white roses, her hair is brushed

until it shines, and curled. Then she prostrates herself; a great black

veil is thrown over her, and the office for the dead is sung. Then the

nuns separate into two files; one file passes close to her, saying in

plaintive accents, “Our sister is dead”; and the other file responds in

a voice of ecstasy, “Our sister is alive in Jesus Christ!”

At the epoch when this story takes place, a boarding-school was

attached to the convent—a boarding-school for young girls of noble and

mostly wealthy families, among whom could be remarked Mademoiselle de

Saint-Aulaire and de Bélissen, and an English girl bearing the

illustrious Catholic name of Talbot. These young girls, reared by these

nuns between four walls, grew up with a horror of the world and of the

age. One of them said to us one day, “The sight of the street pavement

made me shudder from head to foot.” They were dressed in blue, with a

white cap and a Holy Spirit of silver gilt or of copper on their

breast. On certain grand festival days, particularly Saint Martha’s

day, they were permitted, as a high favor and a supreme happiness, to

dress themselves as nuns and to carry out the offices and practice of

Saint-Benoît for a whole day. In the early days the nuns were in the

habit of lending them their black garments. This seemed profane, and

the prioress forbade it. Only the novices were permitted to lend. It is

remarkable that these performances, tolerated and encouraged, no doubt,

in the convent out of a secret spirit of proselytism and in order to

give these children a foretaste of the holy habit, were a genuine

happiness and a real recreation for the scholars. They simply amused

themselves with it. _It was new; it gave them a change_. Candid reasons

of childhood, which do not, however, succeed in making us worldlings

comprehend the felicity of holding a holy water sprinkler in one’s hand

and standing for hours together singing hard enough for four in front

of a reading-desk.

The pupils conformed, with the exception of the austerities, to all the

practices of the convent. There was a certain young woman who entered

the world, and who after many years of married life had not succeeded

in breaking herself of the habit of saying in great haste whenever any

one knocked at her door, “forever!” Like the nuns, the pupils saw their

relatives only in the parlor. Their very mothers did not obtain

permission to embrace them. The following illustrates to what a degree

severity on that point was carried. One day a young girl received a

visit from her mother, who was accompanied by a little sister three

years of age. The young girl wept, for she wished greatly to embrace

her sister. Impossible. She begged that, at least, the child might be

permitted to pass her little hand through the bars so that she could

kiss it. This was almost indignantly refused.