t, died a member of
this Order.

The Carmelites are the most rigid in their requirements of service. They
are small numerically and live behind high walls, and renounce forever
the sight of the outside world, never leaving their cloister, and being
practically dead to home and friends, sleeping, it is said, in their own
coffins.

Instances have been known of a sister's assuming vows of special
severity, as in the case of Jean Le Ber, of the _Congregation de Notre
Dame_, a daughter of a merchant in the town, who voluntarily lived in
solitary confinement from the year 1695 to 1714--nineteen years of
self-immolation, when her couch was a pallet of straw, and her prayers
and fastings unceasing. She denied herself everything that to us would
make life desirable or even endurable--sacrificed the dearest ties of
kindred, and pursued with intense fervour the self-imposed rigours of
her vocation. Yet, it was not that in her nature she had no love for
beauty nor craving for pleasure, for in the sacristy of the Cathedral,
carefully preserved in a receptacle in which are kept the vestments of
the clergy, are robes ornamented by her needle that are simply marvels
of colour, design and exquisite finish. The modern robes, though
gorgeous in richly-piled velvet from the looms of Lyons, heavy with gold
work and embroidered with angels and figures so exquisitely wrought as
to look as if painted on ivory, yet do not compare with that done by
the fingers that were worn by asceticism within the walls of her cell.
In the spare form, clad in thread-bare garments, there must have been
crushed down a gorgeously artistic nature which found visible expression
in the beautifully adorned _chasubles_ of the priests and altar cloths,
which are solid masses of delicate silken work on a ground of fine
silver threads, the colours and lustre of which seem unimpaired by time.
Six generations of priests have performed the sacrifice of the mass in
these marvellously beautiful robes, the incense from the swaying censors
of two hundred years have floated around them in waves of perfume. The
taste and skill with which high-born ladies of that time wrought
tapestries to hang on their castle walls were consecrated by her to
religion, in devoting to the Church, work which was fit to adorn the
royal drapings of a Zenobia.

Without the magnificence which distinguishes the cathedrals, some of the
rural shrines are full of interest. The church of _Ste. Anne's_, an