not forsaken her darling
Ishmael.

I happened to be with Madame de Mortemart when one of the aged sisters
brought her this letter. On reading it she was much affected. I feigned
ignorance, and asked her kindly what was the reason of her trouble. She
wished to hide it; but I insisted, and at last persuaded her to let me
see the note. I read it calmly and with reflection, and afterwards said
to the Abbess:

"What! You, sister, whose distress and horror I witnessed when our stern
parents shut you up in a cloister,--are you now going to impose like
fetters upon a young and interesting person, who dreads them, and rejects
them as once you rejected them?"

Madame de Mortemart replied, "I was young then, and without experience,
when I showed such childish repugnance as that of which you speak. At
that age one knows nothing of religion nor of the eternal verities. Only
the world, with its frivolous pleasures, is then before one's eyes; and
the spectacle blinds our view, even our view of heaven. Later on I
deplored such resistance, which so grieved my family; and when I saw you
at Court, brilliant and adored, I assure you, my dear Marquise, that this
convent and its solitude seemed to me a thousand times more
desirable than the habitation of kings."

"You speak thus philosophically," I replied, "only because your lot
happens to have undergone such a change. From a slave, you have become
an absolute and sovereign mistress. The book of rules is in your hands;
you turn over its leaves wherever you like; you open it at whatever page
suits you; and if the book should chance to give you a severe rebuke, you
never let others know this. Human nature was ever thus. No, no, madame;
you can never make one believe that a religious life is in itself such an
attractive one that you would gladly resume it if the dignities of your
position as an abbess were suddenly wrested from you and given to some
one else."

"Well, well, if that is so," said the Abbess, reddening, "I am quite
ready to send in my resignation, and so return you your liberality."

"I don't ask you for an abbey which you got from the King," I rejoined,
smiling; "but the favour, which I ask and solicit you can and ought to
grant. Mademoiselle d'Amurande points out to you in formal and
significant terms that she cannot enrol herself among the Virgins of the
Lord, and that the gentle Hagar of Holy Writ may not forsake Ishmael.
Such a confession plainly hin