"Yes, there was no sadness about it, or at least it had a special sadness of its own; you shall judge. On the eve of the day that the postulant was to take the habit, she was presented to the abbess of Bourbourg by the governor of the town. Bread and wine were offered to her, and she tasted them in the church itself. On the morrow she appeared, magnificently dressed, at a ball which was attended by the whole community of nuns, where she danced, then she asked her parents' blessing, and was conducted, with violins playing, to the chapel, where the abbess took possession of her. She had for the last time seen, at the ball, the joys of the world, for she was immediately shut up, for the rest of her days in the cloister."
"The joy of the Dance of Death," said Durtal, "monastic customs and congregations were strange in old days."
"No doubt, but they are lost in the night of time. I remember, however, that in the fifteenth century there existed under the rule of Saint Augustine an order strange indeed, called the Order of the Daughters of Saint Magloire, whose convent was in the Rue Saint Denys at Paris. The conditions of admission were the reverse of those of all other charters. The postulant had to swear on the holy Gospels that she had been unchaste, and no one believed her oath; she was examined, and if her oath were false, she was declared unworthy to be received. Nor might she have brought about this condition expressly in order to enter the convent, she must have well and truly given herself over to sin, before she came to ask the shelter of the cloister.
"They were in fact a troop of penitent girls, and the rule of their subjection was savage. They were whipped, locked up, subjected to the most rigid fasts, made their confessions thrice in the week, rose at midnight, were under the most unremitting surveillance, were even attended in their most secret retirement; their mortifications were incessant and their closure absolute. I need hardly add that this nunnery is dead."
"Nor likely to revive," cried Durtal. "Well then, Monsieur l'Abbé, we meet on Sunday in the Rue Monsieur?"
And on the assent of the abbé, Durtal went his way, with the strangest ideas in his head about the monastic orders. The thing would be, he thought, to found an abbey where one could work at ease in a good library, there should be several monks, with decent meals, plenty of tobacco, and permission to take a turn on the quays now and then. And he laughed; but then that would not be a monastery! or only a Dominican monastery, with monks who dine out, and have, at least, the amusement of preaching.
I.
On Sunday morning, on his way to the Rue Monsieur, Durtal chewed the cud of his reflections on the Monasteries. "It is certain," he thought, "that in the accumulated filth of ages, they alone have remained clean, are truly in relation with heaven, and serve as interpreters between it and earth. But we must thoroughly understand and specify that we are speaking only of the cloistered orders, which have remained, as far as possible, poor...."
And thinking of the communities of women, he murmured as he hastened his steps: "Here is a surprising fact, which proves once more, the incomparable genius with which the Church is endowed; she has been able to bring into common life women who do not assassinate each other, and obey without recalcitrancy the orders of another woman—wonderful!