The Legend of Sister Beatrix

by Charles Nodier

Such was, according to the handwritten records of the province, the origin of the church and convent of Our Lady of the Flowering Thorns.

Two centuries had passed since the death of THE SAINT, and a young virgin in her extended family was still, according to custom, the sister custodian of the holy tabernacle, which means that she took care of it, and that it was her job to open the tabernacle on feast days when the miraculous image was shown to the faithful. She it was who had the care of maintaining the ever new elegance of Our Lady's ornaments, of removing the dust from them and the harmful insects, of picking, to compose her crown or to adorn her altar, the most gracious flowers in the garden in their growth and the most chaste in their colour, forming chains, garlands and bouquets that attracted in their turn, through the great stained glass window open to the rising sun, a multitude of purple and azure butterflies, aerial flowers indicative of solitude. Among these tributes the flowering thorn was always given preference when in season, and, imitated in lieu of all the others with an art that the good nuns had stolen the secret of from nature, it rested on the breast of the beautiful Madonna as a thick clump knotted with a silver ribbon. The butterflies themselves might have slipped up sometimes, but they did not dare to dwell on these celestial flowers which were not made for them.

The sister custodian at that time was called Beatrix. Eighteen years old at most, she had scarcely been told how pretty she was, for she had entered Our Lady's house when she was only fifteen, as pure and unspoilt as her flowers.

There is a happy or disastrous age at which a young girl's heart understands that it was created to love, and Beatrix had reached it. But this need, initially vague and anxious, had only made her duties more dear to her. Unable to explain then the secret motions that agitated her so much, she had taken them to be the symptoms of a pious fervour which accuses itself of not being ardent enough, and which feels obliged to love enthusiastically and to the point of madness. The unknown object of these loving tendencies eluded her lack of experience, and among the objects that occupied the senses of her ingenuous heart, if we can put it like that, Our Lady alone seemed to her worthy of that deep adoration for which life itself could scarcely suffice. This cult of every passing moment had become the one thing her mind dwelt on, the one thing that charmed her solitude. It filled even her dreams with mysterious languors and ineffable acts of worship. She was often to be seen stretched out in front of the tabernacle, breathing out to her divine patron prayers that were interspersed with sobs, or wetting the space around the altar with her tears, and the celestial Virgin smiled no doubt, from the top of her eternal throne, at that happy and tender mistake on the part of the innocent, for the Holy Virgin loved Beatrix and liked to be loved by her. Besides, she had perhaps discerned in Beatrix's heart that she always would be loved by her.

About that time there occurred an event that raised the veil under which Beatrix's secret had remained so long hidden to herself. A young lord in those parts, having been attacked by murderous footpads, was left in the forest for dead, and, though he had only preserved at most the feeble semblance of a life about to be extinguished, the convent servants transported him to their infirmary. As the daughters of chatelaines at that time were, from their earliest years, in receipt of formulas and recipes with respect to the healing art, Beatrix was sent by her sisters to the bedside of the dying man to help him. She put into practice all she had learned of that useful body of knowledge, but she counted more on the intercession of the miraculous Virgin Mary, and her long and laborious vigils, divided between the cares of a sick nurse and the prayers of a servant of Mary, obtained for her all the success she had hoped for. Raymond re-opened his eyes to the light and, in doing so, recognized his benefactress. He had already seen her occasionally in the very castle she had been born in.

"What's this?" he cried. "Is it you, Beatrix? Is it you I loved so much in my childhood years and that the too soon forgotten acknowledgement of that love by your father and mine had permitted me to hope for as a wife? What grievous twist of fate has let me see you again, chained by the links of a life which is not made for you, and cut off, without any going back, from that brilliant world that you were the principal ornament of? If you yourself chose this state of solitude and abnegation, Beatrix, I swear to you, you have my word, that it was because you did not yet know your own heart. The commitment that you made in your then ignorance of those feelings that are natural to all that breathes, is null and void before God as it is before men. You have carelessly betrayed your destiny as a wife, as a lover, and as a mother! You condemned yourself, you poor, dear child, to long days of boredom, bitterness, disgust that no pleasure henceforth will be able to assuage the long sadness of! It is however so sweet to love, so sweet to be loved, so sweet to live again through what one loves in the objects that one loves! The pure joys of affection add to life twofold, threefold, fourfold. What tenderness there is in having a friend who worships you, who enhances each moment with ever new causes for pleasure, who only lives to cherish you or please you. The innocent caresses of pretty children, so fresh, gracious, happy to be alive, and that a barbarous whim would then have sent into oblivion! This is what you have lost! This is what you would have lost, Beatrix, if blind obstinacy keeps you in the abyss you have plunged in! No," he continued even more exaltedly, "you will not be ignorant of the plans of your God and mine, who has only brought us back together that we may be forever reunited! You will willingly submit yourself to the vows of a love that begs to enlighten you! You will be Raymond's wife as you are his sister and his beloved! Do not turn away from him your eyes full of tears! Do not pull back your hand that trembles in his! Tell him that you are willing to follow him and never to leave him again!"

Beatrix did not answer. She could not put into words what she felt. She escaped from Raymond's weakened arms and went away troubled, trembling and distraught to fall at the feet of the Virgin, her consolation and her support. She wept as she had previously, but now it was no longer with an aimless and obscure emotion, but with a feeling stronger than piety, stronger than shame, stronger, alas, than that holy Virgin whose aid she called upon in vain, and her tears, this time, were hot and bitter. Many days in a row she was seen, prostrate and a supplicant, and no-one was surprised because all of them in the convent knew of her passionate devotion to Our Lady of the Flowering Thorns. She spent the rest of her time in the sick room of the wounded man whose recovery now no longer depended on assiduous nursing.

One night when the church was closed, when all the nuns had gone back to their cells, when everything, including prayer, was silent, Beatrix went slowly into the choir stalls, put her lamp down on the altar, opened the door of the tabernacle with a trembling hand, turned away with a shiver, lowering her eyes, as if she were afraid that the queen of the angels would strike her down with a look and threw herself on her knees. She wanted to speak and the words died on her lips or were strangled by her sobs. She drew her veil and her hands to her brow. She tried to compose herself and calm down. She made one final effort. She managed to tear from her heart a few mixed up sounds, without knowing if she was uttering a prayer or a blasphemy.

"Oh celestial benefactress of my youth!" she said. "You that I have so long loved alone, and who will always remain the sovereign of my soul, whatever the unworthy sharing I involve you in! Mary! Heavenly Mary! Why have you forsaken me? Why have you allowed your Beatrix to fall prey to the awful passions of hell? You know I have not given in without a struggle to the passion that devours me! Today the die is cast, Mary, and cast forever! I shall serve you no longer, for I am no longer worthy to serve you. I shall go far away to hide from you the eternal regret my sin fills me with, the eternal bereavement of my innocence which you are unable to restore to me. Let me still now worship you! Have mercy on the tears I shed and which at least prove how remote I have been from the cowardly betrayals of my senses! Welcome the last of my tributes as you have welcomed all the others! If zeal for your altars is worth some gratitude on your part, send death to this wretch who implores you for it before she leaves you!"

Having spoken these words, Beatrix got up, and, with fear and trembling, approached the image of the Holy Virgin. She adorned it with new flowers, seized those that she had just replaced, and, ashamed for the first time in her life of the pious use she made of them that she no longer had the right to, she pressed them to her heart, in a scapular that had been blessed, so as never to part with them. After that she gazed one last time at the tabernacle, cried out in terror and fled.