“Well, as I say, ’twas wide and fair and perfectly ordered, and there was a fountain where a poor ball still was tossed up and down, up and down upon the current, till I used by times to snatch it off in very pity and toss it into a posy-bed to rest awhile, but Sister Marina always found it and put it back. Then there were bosquets, where the sun never came; and there were bordered walks, and benches under some great cork-trees at the foot of the garden; and there were, in their time, Annunciation lilies as fair and sweet as that Señor Don Gabriel laid at the feet of Madonna Mary, and roses like those among which she laid her little Jesu to sleep; and there were incense trees where the berries and gums and bark grew that the sisters gathered so solemnly, and dried and brayed in a special mortar, and that smelt so sweet when the sister thurifer swung her censer up and down, and this way and that, to keep it alight till the priest who said mass on the great days was ready to take it from her.
“And there were goldfish in the fountain and birds in the trees,—oh, such glorious birds, and some of them so sweet of song! and there was a pond where the nuns fattened great fishes for Friday dinners, and feasted better on them than on the flesh of other days.
“But I was going to tell you of a time, one of the last times I ever walked in that garden or slept in my little whitewashed cell at Dolores. Ah, now, mayhap I had been a better girl had they left me there. Well, we walked up and down the wide grassy middle alley, the sisters, and Inez de Soza and I, and all of us were merry, for the Mother Superior was in a good temper and the prioress had got on her talking-cap, and we girls and the novices asked no better than to laugh at all our elders’ jests and cry Oh, marvelous! to all their stories, when all at once the sister portress came down the old mossy steps from the house, and kneeling to the Superior, who bade her rise, for it was recreation time and all rules were relaxed, she told her that a Dominican friar was at the gate with a comrade and asked lodging in the priest’s chamber outside the wall.
“‘But surely! When did we refuse hospitality to a holy man, Sister Juana?’ replied the mother. ‘Have him in with his comrade and give him supper in the sacristy; when he has refreshed himself I will see him there.’
“‘But he also begs permission to preach to the sisters,’ persisted old Juana, who was as obstinate as a mule; and as the Mother paused upon her reply, Inez and I who held her hands cried,—
“‘Oh, do, reverend Mother, oh, do let us hear a sermon!’ and she laughing said:—
“‘Well, yes, perhaps ’twill turn your hearts from the world to religion as I have not been able to do.’
“So we walked another turn or so and then went into the chapel, which was full of that soft purple shadow that fills such places as the night falls without. The wide door to the garden stood open, and I placed myself at the end of the bench so that I could well look out and see and smell and listen to the world while the friar should talk of religion.
“Oh, maiden, ’twas as strange an hour and as sweet as ever I knew or shall know! Outside was that fair garden, with the last rays of the sun touching the crests of the trees, the palms and cork-trees and acacias, and the fountain vainly leaping up to reach the sunlight, and the birds at their vespers, and the blinding sweets of the posy-beds, and just outside the door a great banana-tree that swayed and rustled in the breeze, and threw its long green leaves like wooing arms in at the door as if to drag me out, wooed me so strangely that if I looked and listened too long I must have yielded and leaped out to its embrace. And inside there was the dusky chapel with the pictures of the saints glimmering from the walls, and the white Christ upon his cross with his eyes downbent to mine, and such a passion of pleading in them as seemed to drag the heart from my breast, and the sisters in their white robes and rosaries, tinkling beads, and the blue cross sewed upon the breast of each fading into the white, and their pure profiles downcast as they listened; and there above us all in the dim obscurity of the place the pulpit, of some black wood, and rising out of it that gaunt gray figure of the friar, his face pale and worn, his eyes ablaze with the fervor of his thought, his emaciated hands upraised, and his air now that of an angel of mercy, now a minister of vengeance and wrath.