His mother bit her lips, bent over Ivo, embraced and kissed him. "Be pious and good" were the last words she sobbed out. She got on the car; the dun started, after looking around at Ivo, as if to take leave also; Nat nodded once more, and they were gone.
Ivo stood with his hands folded and his head sunk upon his breast. When he raised his tearful eyes and saw nothing of the loved ones, he ran out into the street to get one more look at the car: from the town-gate he saw it speeding on the dusty road. He stopped and turned to go back. Everybody around seemed so cheerful, and he alone was sad and a stranger! In the car his mother took her rosary and prayed,--
"Dear, holy Mother of God! Thou knowest what a mother's love is: thou hast felt it in sorrow and in joy. Preserve my child; he is the jewel of my heart. And, if I do a sin in loving him so much, let me atone for it, not him."
When Ivo reached the convent it was time for the afternoon service; but he found no devotion this time: his heart trembled too much with weariness. For the first time in his life he found himself in church without knowing it: he sang and listened unthinkingly.
This one circumstance was a feature of the life on which he was about to enter: the actions of his own will fell into the background; directions and precepts dictated his steps. His existence now became legally and strictly monotonous. The story of one day is the story of all.
The boys slept in large halls under the supervision of an usher. At half-past five in the morning a bell rang, which brought in the famulus, who lighted the lantern hanging from the roof and summoned them all to prayers. Then there was breakfast at the common table, succeeded by hours of private study which lasted till eight o'clock. The schools now began, and continued until dinner-time, after which there was an hour of "recreation,"--that is, of a walk taken under the eye of a functionary. After some more hours of instruction the boys were permitted to play in the yard, but never without being watched by a person in authority. The constraint indicated by the enclosed space was never relaxed even during "free time;" nowhere was there room for a spontaneous pleasure to spring forth, nowhere a moment of unreconnoitred solitude.
At home Ivo had been the pet of the family: when he sat at his books, his mother made it her especial care to see that no noise was made near him; scarcely was any one permitted to enter the room, and an impression was made as if a saint was engaged in working miracles there. Here, on the contrary, when the studies were resumed after supper, whispers would be heard here and there, which distracted his attention and took away the edge of his industry. Those who know the inscrutable power that often animates the soul which mirrors itself in its own thoughts or drinks in the thoughts of others, who are acquainted with that mute intellectual commerce which extends its organs and spreads its fragrance like a budding flower, will appreciate the regret of Ivo at never being left to himself. He was no longer his own property: a society moved him as if he had been one of their fingers or teeth.
At nine o'clock there were prayers once more, after which every one was compelled to go to bed. Here, at last, Ivo returned to himself, and his thoughts travelled homeward, until sleep spread its mantle over him.
Thus it happened that for some days Ivo felt as if he had been sold into slavery. Nowhere was there a trace of free will; every word and every thought was hedged in by injunctions and commandments; the inflexibility of the law raised a cold high wall before him wherever he turned. It is a consistent deduction from the essence of every Church which has reached the development of a fixed and unchanging form of ritual and tenet, to begin in early youth with the task of tapping the fountain-head of individual self-regulation in the hearts and minds of its pupils, and of clapping them into the iron harness of its unbending forms. But the highest effort of education should be to draw out this self-regulating principle, and not to repress it; to educe the laws of right and wrong from the workings of the young mind, and not to nail a foreign growth upon the stock after having deadened the source from which alone a healthy fruitage could spring.
Ivo was so low-spirited that a single harsh word sufficed to bring tears to his eyes. Some of the naughtiest of his companions discovered this, and teased him in all sorts of ways. Many of these boys were of the coarsest stamp,--had left the most humble abodes behind them, and found every thing their hearts desired in the good food and the care taken of all externals. They noticed that Ivo was easily disgusted, and often amused themselves by getting up a conversation at the table which made it impossible for the poor boy to taste a morsel. At such times his mother's arrangement with the stewardess was of the greatest service to him.