The nun led him through long corridors, which appeared to turn back upon themselves, and which at last opened into a rather spacious cloister, the centre of which was occupied by a mass of rose bushes and orange trees, in the middle of which burst forth a stream of water, which fell with a loud sound into a white marble basin.
The walls of this cloister, towards which opened the doors of some thirty little chambers, were garnished with a number of pictures of a mediocre character, representing various episodes in the life of Our Lady of Solitude, or of Tucuman.
The old man merely threw a disdainful look upon these paintings, half effaced by time and weather, and continued to follow the nun, who trotted on before him, causing at every step a jingling of the heavy bunch of keys suspended to her girdle.
At the end of this cloister there was another, on the whole like the first, only the pictures represented different subjects—the life, I believe, of St. Rosa of Lima.
Arrived nearly halfway through this cloister, the nun stopped, and after having fetched her breath for a minute or two, she cautiously gave too slight taps at a black oak door, curiously sculptured.
Almost immediately a gentle and musical voice pronounced from the interior of the little chamber this single word:
"Adelante."
The nun opened the outer door and disappeared, after having with a sign requested the old man to wait for her.
Some minutes passed, and then the inner door opened, and the nun reappeared.
"Come in," said she, making a sign for him to approach.