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AUSTERITIES
One is a postulant for two years at least, often for four;
a novice for four.
It is rare that the definitive vows can be pronounced earlier
than the age of twenty-three or twenty-four years. The Bernardines-Benedictines
of Martin Verga do not admit widows to their order.
In their cells, they deliver themselves up to many unknown
macerations, of which they must never speak.
On the day when a novice makes her profession, she is dressed
in her handsomest attire, she is crowned with white roses, her
hair is brushed until it shines, and curled.
Then she prostrates herself; a great black veil is thrown
over her, and the office for the dead is sung.
Then the nuns separate into two files; one file passes close
to her, saying in plaintive accents, "Our sister is dead";
and the other file responds in a voice of ecstasy, "Our sister
is alive in Jesus Christ!"
At the epoch when this story takes place, a boarding-school
was attached to the convent--a boarding-school for young girls
of noble and mostly wealthy families, among whom could be remarked
Mademoiselle de Saint-Aulaire and de Belissen, and an English
girl bearing the illustrious Catholic name of Talbot.
These young girls, reared by these nuns between four walls,
grew up with a horror of the world and of the age.
One of them said to us one day, "The sight of the street
pavement made me shudder from head to foot." They were dressed
in blue, with a white cap and a Holy Spirit of silver gilt or
of copper on their breast.
On certain grand festival days, particularly Saint Martha's
day, they were permitted, as a high favor and a supreme happiness,
to dress themselves as nuns and to carry out the offices and practice
of Saint-Benoit for a whole day.
In the early days the nuns were in the habit of lending them
their black garments.
This seemed profane, and the prioress forbade it.
Only the novices were permitted to lend. It is remarkable
that these performances, tolerated and encouraged, no doubt, in
the convent out of a secret spirit of proselytism and in order
to give these children a foretaste of the holy habit, were a genuine
happiness and a real recreation for the scholars. They simply
amused themselves with it.
It was new; it gave them a change.
Candid reasons of childhood, which do not, however, succeed
in making us worldlings comprehend the felicity of holding a holy
water sprinkler in one's hand and standing for hours together
singing hard enough for four in front of a reading-desk.
The pupils conformed, with the exception of the austerities,
to all the practices of the convent.
There was a certain young woman who entered the world, and
who after many years of married life had not succeeded in breaking
herself of the habit of saying in great haste whenever any one
knocked at her door, "forever!" Like the nuns, the pupils
saw their relatives only in the parlor. Their very mothers did
not obtain permission to embrace them. The following illustrates
to what a degree severity on that point was carried.
One day a young girl received a visit from her mother, who
was accompanied by a little sister three years of age. The young
girl wept, for she wished greatly to embrace her sister. Impossible.
She begged that, at least, the child might be permitted to
pass her little hand through the bars so that she could kiss it.
This was almost indignantly refused.
AUSTERITIES
One is a postulant for two years at least, often for four;
a novice for four.
It is rare that the definitive vows can be pronounced earlier
than the age of twenty-three or twenty-four years. The Bernardines-Benedictines
of Martin Verga do not admit widows to their order.
In their cells, they deliver themselves up to many unknown
macerations, of which they must never speak.
On the day when a novice makes her profession, she is dressed
in her handsomest attire, she is crowned with white roses, her
hair is brushed until it shines, and curled.
Then she prostrates herself; a great black veil is thrown
over her, and the office for the dead is sung.
Then the nuns separate into two files; one file passes close
to her, saying in plaintive accents, "Our sister is dead";
and the other file responds in a voice of ecstasy, "Our sister
is alive in Jesus Christ!"
At the epoch when this story takes place, a boarding-school
was attached to the convent--a boarding-school for young girls
of noble and mostly wealthy families, among whom could be remarked
Mademoiselle de Saint-Aulaire and de Belissen, and an English
girl bearing the illustrious Catholic name of Talbot.
These young girls, reared by these nuns between four walls,
grew up with a horror of the world and of the age.
One of them said to us one day, "The sight of the street
pavement made me shudder from head to foot." They were dressed
in blue, with a white cap and a Holy Spirit of silver gilt or
of copper on their breast.
On certain grand festival days, particularly Saint Martha's
day, they were permitted, as a high favor and a supreme happiness,
to dress themselves as nuns and to carry out the offices and practice
of Saint-Benoit for a whole day.
In the early days the nuns were in the habit of lending them
their black garments.
This seemed profane, and the prioress forbade it.
Only the novices were permitted to lend. It is remarkable
that these performances, tolerated and encouraged, no doubt, in
the convent out of a secret spirit of proselytism and in order
to give these children a foretaste of the holy habit, were a genuine
happiness and a real recreation for the scholars. They simply
amused themselves with it.
It was new; it gave them a change.
Candid reasons of childhood, which do not, however, succeed
in making us worldlings comprehend the felicity of holding a holy
water sprinkler in one's hand and standing for hours together
singing hard enough for four in front of a reading-desk.
The pupils conformed, with the exception of the austerities,
to all the practices of the convent.
There was a certain young woman who entered the world, and
who after many years of married life had not succeeded in breaking
herself of the habit of saying in great haste whenever any one
knocked at her door, "forever!" Like the nuns, the pupils
saw their relatives only in the parlor. Their very mothers did
not obtain permission to embrace them. The following illustrates
to what a degree severity on that point was carried.
One day a young girl received a visit from her mother, who
was accompanied by a little sister three years of age. The young
girl wept, for she wished greatly to embrace her sister. Impossible.
She begged that, at least, the child might be permitted to
pass her little hand through the bars so that she could kiss it.
This was almost indignantly refused.
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