so much the more effect upon
the simple-minded, that all these partnerships in the work of salvation,
which end by becoming immensely rich, begin with modest poverty as
social stock-in-trade, and charity towards their neighbors as security
reserve fund. We may therefore imagine what bitter and ardent rivalry
must exist between the different congregations with regard to the
various estates that each can lay claim to; with what ineffable
satisfaction the richer society crushes the poorer beneath its inventory
of houses, and farms and paper securities! Envy and hateful jealousy,
rendered still more irritable by the leisure of a cloistered life, are
the necessary consequences of such a comparison; and yet nothing is less
Christian--in the adorable acceptation of that divine word--nothing has
less in common with the true, essential, and religiously social spirit
of the gospel, than this insatiable ardor to acquire wealth by every
possible means--this dangerous avidity, which is far from being atoned
for, in the eyes of public opinion, by a few paltry alms, bestowed in
the narrow spirit of exclusion and intolerance.

Mother Sainte-Perpetue was seated before a large cylindrical-fronted
desk in the centre of an apartment simply but comfortably furnished.
An excellent fire burned within the marble chimney, and a soft carpet
covered the floor. The superior, to whom all letters addressed to the
sisters or the boarders were every day delivered, had just been opening
she first, according to her acknowledged right, and carefully unsealing
the second, without their knowing it, according to a right that she
ascribed to herself, of course, with a view to the salvation of those
dear creatures; and partly, perhaps, a little to make herself acquainted
with their correspondence, for she also had imposed on herself the duty
of reading all letters that were sent from the convent, before they were
put into the post. The traces of this pious and innocent inquisition
were easily effaced, for the good mother possessed a whole arsenal of
steel tools, some very sharp, to cut the pager imperceptibly round the
seal--others, pretty little rods, to be slightly heated and rolled round
the edge of the seal, when the letter had been read and replaced in its
envelope, so that the wax, spreading as it melted, might cover the first
incision. Moreover, from a praiseworthy feeling of justice and equality,
there was in the arsenal of the good mother a little fum