at not the slightest danger to her convent was to be
apprehended. In the meanwhile the hour appointed for the commencement
of the solemnities arrived, and the nuns prepared themselves for mass,
praying and trembling with the apprehension of approaching events. The
bailiff of the convent, an old man, aged seventy, with a troop of armed
servants, whom he had posted at the entrance of the church, was their
only protection. In nuns' convents, it is well known, the sisters
themselves, who are well practised in every sort of instrument, are
their own musicians, and they play with a precision, a feeling, and an
intelligence, which we often miss in orchestras of men, probably
because there is something feminine in this mysterious art. Now it
happened, to increase the embarrassment, that the conductress of the
orchestra, Sister Antonia, had fallen sick of a nervous fever some days
before, and the consequence was, that the whole convent was in the
greatest tumult about the performance of a suitable piece of music, to
say nothing of the fact that the four profane brothers were already
visible, wrapped in mantles among the pillars of the church. The
abbess who, on the evening of the preceding day, had ordered the
performance of a very old Italian mass, by an unknown master, with
which the greatest effect had always been produced on account of its
peculiarly sacred and solemn character, and who was now more than ever
bent on her purpose, sent again to sister Antonia to know how she was.
The nun who took the message, returned with the intelligence that the
sister lay in a perfectly unconscious condition and that all notion of
her conducting the music must be entirely given up. In the meanwhile,
there had already been several very critical scenes in the convent into
which more than a hundred impious persons of all ranks and ages, armed
with hatchets and crowbars, had gradually found their way. Some of the
guards who stood at the portals had been shamefully annoyed, and the
nuns, who, engaged in their holy offices, had from time to time
appeared singly in the porticoes, were insulted by the most unseemly
expressions. At last the bailiff retreated to the sacristy, and there
upon his knees implored the abbess to stop the festival, and to seek
the protection of the commander in the city. But the abbess was
immoveable, insisting that the festival which had been instituted for
the honour of the Deity must take its course. She remind