“No; and I have sometimes wondered whether it would have been a good thing for them if Sister Magdalen had entered a year sooner. I think she might have saved Thérèse, or perhaps she might have gone the same way herself. They were a good deal alike in some things; but, happily, Magdalen is not so high-minded; she knows better how to submit.”
“Then she has submitted?”
“Yes: when she first took the vows, she used to write a great deal in her cell; and la mère found that it was sometimes poetry. Then she used to sing, sometimes in the night, and very often indeed in the day; but they were not always hymns that she sang. Now, la mère said this would never do, and that nobody must bring the vanities of the world within these walls; so she took away the ink and paper she had, and put the oldest of the sisters into the next cell, to inform her if she heard her sing any thing but what we all sing.”
“And how did she bear this?” cried Mary, indignantly.
“She took it very quietly, which was the best thing she could do; for there was no help for it, you know. At first, she was rather unsociable, though never so much so as poor Thérèse; but she came round by degrees, and now, though the sisters still joke her about her gravity, she is very like the rest, and can be as droll as the merriest of them: there is no occasion to pity Sister Magdalen now.” And the nun looked amazed at Mary’s expression of grief.
“You do not mean,” she continued, “that you pity Magdalen as you pity Thérèse?”
“More, a thousand times more!”
“Mais cela est inconcevable! when I tell you that Sister Magdalen is so happy! c’est inconcevable!”
And inconceivable it remained to her, while she followed Mary’s hasty steps down to the abbess’s parlour, where her party were waiting for her. Lively tongues were busy on all sides, exchanging adieus, and uttering last jokes. La mère herself rallied Mary on her gravity, observing that she was almost solemn enough to be a nun. Mary escaped as soon as she could. While within the gates, a sense of oppression weighed upon her, as if she were in a prison: when she trod the grass on which shadows from the trees were dancing, and felt the breeze blow in her face, tears sprang forth, and she thought with a less tumultuous grief of the fate of poor Thérèse, and even of Sister Magdalen.