that mass may be
said in the chapel to-morrow for the repose of the soul of him whose
name is written here."

And I gave her Guido Ferrari's visiting-card, adding in lower and more
solemn tones:

"He met with a sudden and unprepared death. Of your charity, pray also
for the man who killed him!"

The old woman looked startled, and crossed herself devoutly; but she
promised that my wishes should be fulfilled, and I bade her farewell
and passed out, the convent gates closing with a dull clang behind me.
I walked on a few yards, and then paused, looking back. What a peaceful
home it seemed; how calm and sure a retreat, with the white Noisette
roses crowning its ancient gray walls! Yet what embodied curses were
pent up in there in the shape of girls growing to be women; women for
whom all the care, stern training and anxious solicitude of the nuns
would be unavailing; women who would come forth from even that abode of
sanctity with vile natures and animal impulses, and who would
hereafter, while leading a life of vice and hypocrisy, hold up this
very strictness of their early education as proof of their
unimpeachable innocence and virtue! To such, what lesson is learned by
the daily example of the nuns who mortify their flesh, fast, pray and
weep? No lesson at all--nothing save mockery and contempt. To a girl in
the heyday of youth and beauty the life of a religieuse seems
ridiculous. "The poor nuns!" she says, with a laugh; "they are so
ignorant. Their time is over--mine has not yet begun." Few, very few,
among the thousands of young women who leave the scene of their quiet
schooldays for the social whirligig of the world, ever learn to take
life in earnest, love in earnest, sorrow in earnest. To most of them
life is a large dressmaking and millinery establishment; love a
question of money and diamonds; sorrow a solemn calculation as to how
much or how little mourning is considered becoming or fashionable. And
for creatures such as these we men work--work till our hairs are gray
and our backs bent with toil--work till all the joy and zest of living
has gone from us, and our reward is--what? Happiness?--seldom.
Infidelity?--often. Ridicule? Truly we ought to be glad if we are only
ridiculed and thrust back to occupy the second place in our own houses;
our lady-wives call that "kind treatment." Is there a married woman
living who does not now and then throw a small stone of insolent satire
at her husband when his back is