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“Oh no! we long for nothing,” said Agathe, lightly: “a holy life, you know, and certainty of heaven, are far better than the sin and misery of the world. But look on this side: you have not seen what I brought you to see yet.”
They looked, and saw a multitude of the chimneys of Tours, but little besides. Perceiving them at a loss, Agathe pointed between two piles of building, crying, “Mais voyez donc! you do not look. There is the great road from the north; and there is not a carriage which comes from Paris that we may not see from this place as the road winds.”
“This exceeds every thing,” thought Mary: “to talk one moment of a holy life, and the next to be proud and pleased to see the carriages come from Paris! I wish we could get away.”
Her composure was somewhat restored, however, by a conversation which she contrived to obtain with one of the more serious nuns whom she met in her way down. In her she found neither enthusiasm nor levity: she did not pretend to despise or to fear the world, or believe that she must be perfectly holy and safe, because she had left it. She was thankful, she said, for peace and freedom from care; she had no family ties to bind her to society, and had felt so forlorn in her youth, from being an orphan, that she had longed for an asylum above every thing; she had obtained her desire, and was satisfied. Mary wished to know how far the improvement of the intellect was checked, and how soon the natural feelings were deadened or perverted by the discipline and influences of this strange community; but this was tender ground. She could scarcely make herself understood without wounding the feelings of the persons she compassionated. She enquired, however, whether there was not a great difference of rank and education among the young persons admitted. Not so much, she was told, as appeared to be generally thought.
“Since you took the vows, have the candidates been, for the most part, companions to you?”
“Yes. We have two or three who are sadly vulgar; but the rest have been educated in a convent like myself, except poor Sister Thérèse and Sister Magdalen, whom you might see going to her cell as you came in.”
“Why poor Thérèse? what became of her?”
“She died, poor thing, four years after she came in. I was really relieved when she was gone, for I am sure she was very wretched. Some of the sisters said she must have been in love when she took the vows; but I believe she was not.”