"LOVELY IN DEATH THE BEAUTEOUS RUIN LAY."
The chant of vespers had long ceased. The Angelus had rung its last summons to invoke a blessing upon life and death at the close of the day. The quiet nuns filed off from their frugal meal in the long refectory and betook themselves to the community or to their peaceful cells. The troop of children in their charge had been sent with prayer to their little couches in the dormitory, sacred to sleep and happy dreams.
Candles flickered through the long passages as veiled figures slowly and noiselessly passed towards the chapel to their private devotions. Scarcely a footfall reached the ear, nor sound of any kind, except the sweet voice of Mere Madelaine de St. Borgia. Like the flow of a full stream in the still moonlight, she sang her canticle of praise to the guardian of the house, before she retired to rest:
"Ave, Joseph! Fili David juste!
Vir Mariae de qua natus est Jesus!"
Lady de Tilly sat listening as she held the hands of her two nieces, thinking how merciless was Fate, and half rebelling in her mind against the working of Providence. The sweet song of Mere St.
Borgia fell like soft rain upon her hard thoughts, and instilled a spirit of resignation amid the darkness, as she repeated the words, "Ave, Joseph!" She fought bitterly in her soul against giving up her two lambs, as she called them, to the cold, scant life of the cloister, while her judgment saw but too plainly that naught else seemed left to their crushed and broken spirits. But she neither suggested their withdrawal from the Convent, nor encouraged them to remain.
In her secret thought, the Lady de Tilly regarded the cloister as a blessed refuge for the broken-hearted, a rest for the weary and overladen with earthly troubles, a living grave, which such may covet and not sin; but the young, the joyous, the beautiful, and all capable of ****** the world fairer and better, she would inexorably shut out. Christ calls not these from the earthly paradise; but the afflicted, the disappointed, the despairing, they who have fallen helplessly down in the journey of life, and are of no further use in this world, these he calls by their names and comforts them. But for those rare souls who are too cold for aught but spiritual joys, he reserves a peculiar though not his choicest benediction.
The Lady de Tilly pondered these thoughts over and over, in the fulness of pity for her children. She would not leave the Convent at the closing of the gates for the night, but remained the honored guest of Mere Migeon, who ordered a chamber to be prepared for her in a style that was luxurious compared with the scantily furnished rooms allotted to the nuns.
Amelie prevailed, after much entreaty, upon Mere Esther, to intercede with the Superior for permission to pass the night with Heloise in the cell that had once been occupied by her pious kinswoman, Mere Madelaine.
"It is a great thing to ask," replied Mere Esther as she returned with her desired boon, "and a greater still to be obtained! But Mere Migeon is in a benevolent mood tonight; for the sake of no one else would she have granted a dispensation of the rules of the house."
That night Lady de Tilly held a long and serious conference with Mere Migeon and Mere Esther, upon the event which had driven her nieces to the cloister, promising that if, at the end of a month, they persisted in their resolutions, she would consent to their assumption of the white veil; and upon the completion of their novitiate, when they took the final vows, she would give them up with such a dower as would make all former gifts of the house of Repentigny and Tilly poor in the comparison.
Mere Migeon was especially overjoyed at this prospect of relieving the means of her house, which had been so terribly straitened of late years. The losses occasioned by the war had been a never- ending source of anxiety to her and Mere Esther, who, however, kept their troubles as far as possible to themselves, in order that the cares of the world might not encroach too far upon the minds of the community. Hence they were more than ordinarily glad at this double vocation in the house of Repentigny. The prospect of its great wealth falling to pious uses they regarded as a special mark of divine providence and care for the house of Ste. Ursule.
"Oh, Mere Esther! Mere Esther!" exclaimed the Lady Superior. "I feel too great a satisfaction in view of the rich dower of these two girls. I need much self-examination to weed out worldly thoughts.
Alas! Alas! I would rather be the humblest aunt in our kitchen than the Lady Superior of the Ursulines. Blessed old Mere Marie used to say 'a good turn in the kitchen was as good as a prayer in the chapel.'"
Mere Esther reflected a moment, and said, "We have long found it easier to pray for souls than to relieve bodies. I thank good St.
Joseph for this prospective blessing upon our monastery."
During the long and wasting war, Mere Migeon had seen her poor nuns reduced to grievous straits, which they bore cheerfully, however, as their share of the common suffering of their country. The cassette of St. Joseph, wherein were deposited the oboli for the poor, had long been emptied. The image of St. Joseph au Ble, that stood at the great stair, and kept watch over the storeroom of corn and bread, had often guarded an empty chamber. St. Joseph au Labeur, overlooking the great kitchen of the Convent, had often been deaf to the prayers of "my aunts," who prepared the food of the community.
The meagre tables of the refectory had not seldom been the despair of the old depositaire, Mere St. Louis, who devoutly said her longest graces over her scantiest meals.