The social circle was narrowed every year—the number of nuns fell to 20—15—12! About this time a new question, still more appalling than the other, flashed across the mind of every inmate of Nonnenwerth. It was not as to who should be the first to—
“Leave the warm precincts of the cheerful day,”
but who was likely to be the last to wander in solitude round the deserted chambers, recalling the well-known features of each departed tenant,—or, who was to be the last on the bed of sickness or death, without a sister’s smile to soothe her sufferings—or a sister’s tear to mark the spirit’s flight? This new subject of reflection absorbed all others. Even religion failed to calm the troubled imagination of frail mortals placed in such singular and unnatural circumstances! Any one of them could reconcile herself to the idea, however triste, of dying in society—but none of them to the horrible thought of living in solitude, and departing unwept!
“On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the dying eye requires.”
This little community resembled a Tontine, but with all the advantages of such an institution completely reversed and turned into calamities. In the civil Tontine, every lapse of life renders the remaining lives more valuable—in the Tontine of the convent on the Rhine, it rendered them more miserable—the consummation, the ultimatum of human misfortunes, being still reserved for—the last Nun of Nonnenwerth!
In one short year of epidemic influence and moral depression, the solemn requiem was six times heard in the convent chapel, for the repose of souls no longer to be troubled by mundane cares or fears. This reduced the sisterhood to six.
There are physical pains which the body cannot long sustain—and so are there moral prospects on which the eye of reason is unable to dwell. This was one of them. The remaining nuns took immediate steps to secure other asylums—and soon afterwards separated from each other, and from Nonnenwerth—for ever! The island reverted to the state, and the convent was converted into a caravansera, whose doors are ever open to the travelling novice, without reference to age, sex, creed, or country.
This short history will suggest various reflections to the mind. The legislator will see that solitude is more formidable to many minds than death itself—while the philanthropist will be convinced that monastic institutions are contrary to nature, and, as such, can never exist, without constant supplies from society at large. The vanity of human wishes is well illustrated by the history of Nonnenwerth. The nuns thought themselves fortunate in securing a beautiful, healthy, and tranquil asylum for life—little knowing how soon the convent would appear to them more horrible than the dungeon of a prison!