The foster-sisters

by Lucy Ellen Guernsey

The good ladies kept their hours very strictly, revered the constitutions and rules of their order as much as the Scripture itself, or perhaps a little more, considering that they knew a good deal more about them, sang endless litanies and read all the books they had. In their hours of labor they worked in the garden and orchard, made beautiful cakes and sweetmeats (I only wish I had Sister Lazarus' receipt book), and were especially famous for their candied fruits, very few of which were ever tasted within the convent walls.

They did a great deal of embroidery and made lovely lace with the needle. Mother Angelique had disapproved of fancy-work, but the lace and embroidery were too important as sources of revenue to be disregarded. Now and then a sister disappeared for a few days, and then it was understood that she was in retreat,—that is, she shut herself up for a special season of fasting and prayer. The rules of convents are such that one may live in a religious house as a pupil for years and yet know very little of the interior workings of the family; but we were so few in number, and so poor withal, that we were thrown very much together.

The three elder pupils mostly kept by themselves, and we saw very little of any of them except Desireè. She would sometimes condescend to play with us, and usually ended by leading us into some scrape. She was the only one destined by her friends for the veil, and certainly she had the least vocation for a religious life. Marguerite and Athenais were grave, serious-minded girls, and would, I think, gladly have remained in the house; but their friends had different views for them, and they were taken away to be married.

I have said the house was a large one, and had once been very magnificent. There were two long rows of cells for the nuns, who formerly numbered fifty or sixty. There was a range of superb apartments formerly allotted to the abbess, but they were shut up and disused. The house was built around two courts, which were connected by a tall Gothic arch. The court, about which were the offices and the rooms in which we lived, was paved with fine slabs of marble, many of which, in my time, were cracked, broken, and displaced.

The fountain, in which I took my involuntary bath, stood in the centre, and was, as I remembered it, a very curious piece of workmanship. It was a great round basin, supported on a short stem, and was covered on the outside with sculpture. The figures were worn with time and weather; but one could easily trace cupids, dancing girls, and figures with goats' feet, all intermixed with garlands of leaves and flowers. The basin was always filled with clear cool water, which had its source somewhere in the hills back of the house, and which ran out of a conduit pipe into a paved channel, and so into the mountain stream which watered our garden.

On one side of the court was the church and a chapel, which last was mostly used nowadays, the sacristy and other apartments belonging thereto. Joining the church at right angles were the refectory and parlors and the rooms used by the present abbess, or Superior, as she preferred to be called, and other apartments, whose use, if they had any, I knew not, for I never saw them opened in my time. On the third side were the different offices and various storerooms for wood, charcoal, etc., as well as for the products of the farm. Above these were the ranges of cells, most of which stood empty, except for some small remains of furniture.

The outer court was, as I have said, the cemetery for the sisters, though I hardly think they could all have been buried there. It was marked by no stones except the marble cross in the centre, and the grass grew with rank luxuriance over the sunken mounds which marked the resting-places of the dead. Around this court, also, ran a range of cloisters, all paved with marble and adorned with carving of beautiful design. But here, also, the pavement was broken and the ornaments falling to decay. Here, as I have said, were situated the private apartments of the old abbesses, and others which were used for guest chambers under the old regime, but which were now always shut up and locked. How we used to wish we could see these rooms, which we thought must be very magnificent!

In one corner of this court was a very deep and disused well, into which we used to look with wonder and awe. When the sun was in the right direction it was possible, by gazing intently, to discern, about half way down, the remains of a very rude and narrow spiral stairway, which went winding down into the darkness. We used to drop little pebbles into this well, and listen, with breathless expectation, for the hollow resounding splash in the unseen waters below. Mother Prudentia used to say that this place was not really a well, but a disused entrance to certain very deep and extensive caverns below the house.

Only two sides of this court were surrounded with buildings. The others were formed by the walls which separated it from the inner court on one side and the gardens on the other. The cloisters, however, ran all around, and were famous places to play in on wet days.

The garden was beautiful. It lay on a sunny slope facing the south, and was well sheltered from the cruel winds which sometimes visit that part of the country. I never saw elsewhere such banks of violets and thickets of roses and jasmine. There were old, old orange trees, all gnarled and rough, but bearing the sweetest of thin-skinned fruit. There were tuberoses and great bushes of lavender and rosemary, and more flowers than I can remember, and caper plants growing in the old ruined brickwork, fragments of which peeped everywhere, and gay Lent lilies, and clumps of tall white ones, which we used to consider specially sacred to the Virgin. Oh, I cannot pretend to enumerate the charms of that garden.