ity conferred on
suffering humanity. The vast convent of rue de la Glaciere continues to
serve as a shelter for these holy women, and as a sort of hospital for
the sick. For close on a hundred years, generation after generation of
those living near its walls have heard the convent clock sound the hours
in solemn tones; so, too, the convent chapel's shrill-voiced bells have
never failed to remind the faithful that the daily offices of their
church are being said and sung by the holy sisters within the hallowed
walls.

In the vast quarter of Paris, peopled with hospitals and prisons, the
convent shows a stern front in the shape of a high, blackened wall. A
great courtyard gate, in which a window with iron bars and grating is
the only visible opening to the exterior world.

About half-past six in the morning, slightly out of breath with his
rapid walk from the Metropolitan station, Jerome Fandor rang the convent
door bell. The sound could be heard echoing and re-echoing in the
vaulted corridors, till it died away in the stony distance. There was a
silence: then the iron-barred window was half opened, and Fandor heard a
voice asking:

"What do you want, monsieur?"

"I wish to speak to Madame the Superior," replied Fandor.

The window was closed again and a lengthy silence followed. Then,
slowly, the heavy entrance gate swung half open. Fandor entered the
convent. Under the arched doorway, a nun received him with a slight
salutation, and turned her back.

"Kindly follow me," she murmured.

Fandor followed along a narrow passage, on one side of which were cells,
whilst on the other, it opened by means of large bays, on a vast
rectangular cloister quite deserted. A door-window in the passage was
ajar: the nun stopped here and said:

"Kindly wait in this parlour, and be good enough to let me have your
card. I will inform our Mother Superior that you wish to see her."

The room in which our journalist found himself was severely furnished:
its walls were white, on them hung a great ivory crucifix, and here and
there, a simple religious picture framed in ebony. A few chairs were
ranged in a circle about an oval table: on the floor, polished till it
shone like a mirror, were a few small mats, which gave a touch of
common-place comfort to the icy regularity of this parlour, set apart
for official visits.

What emotions, what dramas, what joys, have had this parlour for a
setting! It is there that the life of the cloiste