Part 13 (1/2)

”She scourged herself with branches of juniper and holly, then poured vinegar into her wounds, and sprinkled them with salt, she slept in winter on the snow, in summer on bunches of nettles, or pebbles, or brushes, put drops of hot lead in her shoes, knelt upon thistles, thorns and sticks. In January she broke the ice in a cask and plunged into it, and she even half-stifled herself by hanging head downwards in a chimney in which damp straw was lighted, but that is enough; indeed,” said the abbe laughing, ”if you had to choose, you would like best the mortifications which Benedict Labre imposed on himself.”

”I would rather have none at all,” answered Durtal.

There was a moment's pause.

Durtal's thoughts went back to the Benedictine nuns: ”But,” said he, ”why do they put in the 'Semaine religieuse,' after their t.i.tle Benedictine Nuns of the Blessed Sacrament, this further name, 'Convent of Saint Louis du Temple?'”

”Because,” said the abbe, ”their first convent was founded on the actual ruins of the Temple prison, given them by royal warrant, when Louis XVIII. returned to France.

”Their foundress and superior was Louise Adelade de Bourbon Conde, an unfortunate princess of many wanderings, almost the whole of whose life was spent in exile. Expelled from France by the Revolution and the Empire, hunted in almost every country in Europe, she wandered by chance among convents seeking shelter, now among the nuns of the Annunciation at Turin and the Capuchins in Piedmont, now among the Trappistines in Switzerland and the Sisters of the Visitation at Vienna, now among the Benedictines of Lithuania and Poland. At last she found shelter among the Benedictines in Norfolk, till she could again enter France.

”She was a woman singularly trained in monastic science and experienced in the direction of souls.

”She desired that in her abbey every sister should offer herself to heaven in reparation for crimes committed; and that she should accept the most painful privations to make up for those which might be committed; she inst.i.tuted there the perpetual adoration, and introduced the plain chant, in all its purity, to the exclusion of all others.

”It is, as you have been able to hear, there preserved intact; it is true that since her time, her nuns have had lessons from Dom Schmitt, one of the most learned monks in that matter.

”Then, after the death of the princess, which took place, I think, in 1824, it was perceived that her body exhaled the odour of sanct.i.ty, and though she has not been canonized her intercession is invoked by her daughters in certain cases. Thus, for example, the Benedictine nuns of the Rue Monsieur ask her a.s.sistance when they lose anything, and their experience shows that their prayer is never in vain, since the object lost is found almost at once.

”But,” continued the abbe, ”since you like the convent so well, go there, especially when it is lighted up.”

The priest rose and took up a ”Semaine religieuse,” which lay upon the table.

He turned over the leaves. ”See,” he said, and read, ”'Sunday 3 o'clock, Vespers chanted; ceremony of clothing, presided over by the Very Reverend Father Dom Etienne, abbot of the Grande Trappe, and Benediction.'”

”That is a ceremony which interests me much.”

”I too shall probably be there.”

”Then we can meet in the chapel?”

”Just so.”

”These ceremonies of clothing have not now the gaiety they had in the eighteenth century in certain Benedictine inst.i.tutions, amongst others the Abbey de Bourbourg in Flanders,” said the abbe smiling, after a silence.

And since Durtal looked at him questioningly--

”Yes, there was no sadness about it, or at least it had a special sadness of its own; you shall judge. On the eve of the day that the postulant was to take the habit, she was presented to the abbess of Bourbourg by the governor of the town. Bread and wine were offered to her, and she tasted them in the church itself. On the morrow she appeared, magnificently dressed, at a ball which was attended by the whole community of nuns, where she danced, then she asked her parents'

blessing, and was conducted, with violins playing, to the chapel, where the abbess took possession of her. She had for the last time seen, at the ball, the joys of the world, for she was immediately shut up, for the rest of her days in the cloister.”

”The joy of the Dance of Death,” said Durtal, ”monastic customs and congregations were strange in old days.”

”No doubt, but they are lost in the night of time. I remember, however, that in the fifteenth century there existed under the rule of Saint Augustine an order strange indeed, called the Order of the Daughters of Saint Magloire, whose convent was in the Rue Saint Denys at Paris. The conditions of admission were the reverse of those of all other charters.

The postulant had to swear on the holy Gospels that she had been unchaste, and no one believed her oath; she was examined, and if her oath were false, she was declared unworthy to be received. Nor might she have brought about this condition expressly in order to enter the convent, she must have well and truly given herself over to sin, before she came to ask the shelter of the cloister.

”They were in fact a troop of penitent girls, and the rule of their subjection was savage. They were whipped, locked up, subjected to the most rigid fasts, made their confessions thrice in the week, rose at midnight, were under the most unremitting surveillance, were even attended in their most secret retirement; their mortifications were incessant and their closure absolute. I need hardly add that this nunnery is dead.”