years of age, clad in a
stuff dress of the Carmelite tan color, and wearing a long rosary at her
waist; a white cap tied under the chin, and a long black veil, closely
encircled her thin, sallow face. A number of deep wrinkles had impressed
their transverse furrows in her forehead of yellow ivory; her marked and
prominent nose was bent like the beak of a bird of prey; her black eye
was knowing and piercing; the expression of her countenance was at once
intelligent, cold and firm.

In the general management of the pecuniary affairs of the community,
Mother Sainte-Perpetue would have been a match for the most cunning
attorney. When women are possessed of what is called a talent for
business, and apply to it their keen penetration, their indefatigable
perseverance, their prudent dissimulation, and, above all, that quick
and exact insight, which is natural to them, the results are often
prodigious. To Mother Sainte-Perpetue, a woman of the coolest and
strongest intellect, the management of the vast transactions of the
community was mere child's play. No one knew better how to purchase a
depreciated property, to restore it to its former value, and then sell
it with advantage; the price of stock, the rate of exchange, the current
value of the shares in the different companies, were all familiar to
her; she had yet never been known to make bad speculation, when the
question was to invest any of the funds which were given by pious souls
for the purposes of the convent. She had established in the house the
utmost order and discipline, and, above all, an extreme economy. The
constant aim of all her efforts was to enrich, not herself, but the
community she directed; for the spirit of association, when become a
collective egotism, gives to corporations the faults and vices of an
individual. Thus a congregation may dote upon power and money, just as
a miser loves them for their own sake. But it is chiefly with regard to
estates that congregations act like a single man. They dream of landed
property; it is their fixed idea, their fruitful monomania. They pursue
it with their most sincere, and warm, and tender wishes.

The first estate is to a rising little community what the wedding
trousseau is to a young bride, his first horse to a youth, his first
success to a poet, to a gay girl her first fifty-guinea shawl; because,
after all, in this material age, an estate gives a certain rank to a
society on the Religious Exchange, and has