of which
the Sisters display a conspicuous costume--a white dress held round the
waist by a belt of scarlet leather, a red cloak and a blood-coloured
scapulary on which the name of Jesus is embroidered in blue silk, with a
crown of thorns, a heart pierced with three nails, and the words _Amor
Meus_.

At first Durtal thought Madame Bavoil slightly crazy, and while she
poured out a passage by Jeanne de Matel on Saint Joseph, he looked at
the priest--who gave no sign.

"Then Madame Bavoil is a saint?" he asked one morning when they were
alone.

"My dear Madame Bavoil is a pillar of prayer," replied the Abbe gravely.

And one afternoon, when Gevresin was away in his turn, Durtal questioned
the woman.

She gave him an account of her long pilgrimages across Europe,
pilgrimages that she had spent years in making on foot, begging her way
by the roadside.

Wherever the Virgin had a sanctuary, thither she went, a bundle of
clothing in one hand, an umbrella in the other, an iron Crucifix on her
breast, a rosary at her waist. By a reckoning which she had kept from
day to day she had thus travelled ten thousand five hundred leagues on
foot.

Then old age had come on, and she had "lost her old powers," as she
said; Heaven had formerly guided her by inward voices, fixing the dates
of these expeditions; but journeying was no longer required of her. She
had been sent to live with the Abbe that she might rest; but her manner
of life had been laid down for her once for all: her bed a straw
mattress on wooden planks; her food such rustic and monastic fare as
beseemed her, milk, honey and bread, and at seasons of penance she was
to substitute water for milk.

"And you never take any other nourishment?"

"Never." And then she would add,--

"Aha! our friend, you see I am in disgrace up there!" and she would
laugh cheerfully at herself and her appearance "If you had but seen me
when I came back from Spain, where I went to visit Our Lady of the
Pillar at Saragoza! I was a negress. With my large Crucifix on my
breast, my gown looking like a nun's--every one asked: 'What can that
woman be?' I looked like a charcoal-burner out for a holiday; no white
to be seen but my cap, collar and cuffs; all the rest--face, hands and
petticoats--quite black."

"But you must have been very dull travelling about alone?"

"Not at all, our friend, the Saints kept me company on the way; they
told me at which house I should find a lodging for the ni