y neat and
cool, but lacking the martyr's skull. They asked if it were not to be
seen. "Ah, yes, poor Pere Brebeuf!" sighed the gentle sister, with the
tone and manner of having lost him yesterday; "we had it down only last
week, showing it to some Jesuit fathers; but it's in the convent now,
and isn't to be seen." And there mingled apparently in her regret for
Pere Brebeuf a confusing sense of his actual state as a portable piece
of furniture. She would not let them praise the chapel. It was very
clean, yes, but there was nothing to see in it. She deprecated their
compliments with many shrugs, but she was pleased; for when we renounce
the pomps and vanities of this world, we are pretty sure to find them in
some other,--if we are women. She, good and pure soul, whose whole life
was given to self-denying toil, had yet something angelically coquettish
in her manner, a spiritual-worldliness which was the clarified likeness
of this-worldliness. O, had they seen the Hotel Dieu at Montreal? Then
(with a vivacious wave of the hands) they would not care to look at
this, which by comparison was nothing. Yet she invited them to go
through the wards if they would, and was clearly proud to have them see
the wonderful cleanness and comfort of the place. There were not many
patients, but here and there a wan or fevered face looked at them
from its pillow, or a weak form drooped beside a bed, or a group of
convalescents softly talked together. They came presently to the last
hall, at the end of which sat another nun, beside a window that gave a
view of the busy port, and beyond it the landscape of village-lit plain
and forest-darkened height. On a table at her elbow stood a rose-tree,
on which hung two only pale tea-roses, so fair, so perfect, that Isabel
cried out in wonder and praise. Ere she could prevent it, the nun,
to whom there had been some sort of presentation, gathered one of the
roses, and with a shy grace offered it to Isabel, who shrank back a
little as from too costly a gift. "Take it," said the first nun, with
her pretty French accent; while the other, who spoke no English at all,
beamed a placid smile; and Isabel took it. The flower, lying light in
her palm, exhaled a delicate odor, and a thrill of exquisite compassion
for it trembled through her heart, as if it had been the white,
cloistered life of the silent nun: with its pallid loveliness, it was
as a flower that had taken the veil. It could never have uttered the
b