seem too severe. She was about to remove into the house, when,
lo! she received word that, it having come to the knowledge of the
convent that the husband of Madame was a heretic, he could not be
allowed to occupy any tenement of the Communaute.

Although this cloistered sisterhood is vowed to perpetual seclusion,
once a year even heretics may gaze upon their pale faces. This annual
occasion is the prize-day of the school they teach, when the school-room
is decorated with white cloth and paper roses, the _cures_ of
neighboring parishes and the Maire of our ville, with invited
distinguished guests, occupy the platform, and the floor below is free
to everybody furnished with invitation-cards.

I had always longed to enter these prison-like walls and gaze from my
tempestuous distance upon those peaceful lives set apart from earth's
rush and turmoil in a fair and blessed haven of the Lord. I longed to
see those pure visionaries, pale spouses of Christ, and read upon
illumined faces the unspeakable rapture of mystic union with the Lamb of
God.

Monsieur le Docteur S----, our family physician, is also physician of
the convent.

"You will see nobody," he said, remarking my sentimental curiosity
concerning cloistered nuns,--"you will see nobody but a lot of
lace-mending and stocking-knitting old maids who failed to get
husbands."

I had already heard queer stories of our old doctor's forty years of
attendance upon the convent, and I was not so easily discouraged. I was
especially anxious to see the Mother Superior, having many times heard
the story of her flight in slippers and dressing-gown from the
breakfast-table to bury herself forever within the walls that have held
her now these twenty-five years. In all these years her unforgiving
father has never seen her face, nor she his, although they live within
stone's throw of each other.

"Know about him? of course she does," answered Victoire to my question.
"She knows all about him, and more too. Do you suppose there is an item
of news in the whole town that those cloistered nuns do not hear? If you
had been educated by them, as we were, and pumped dry every day as to
what went on in our own and our neighbors' families, you would not ask
that question."

Victoire and I penetrated into the convent that very same day. We
followed a crowd of women, _paysannes_ and _citoyennes_, into
a sunny court paved with large stones and arched by the noontide sky,
but unsoftened by