The foster-sisters

by Lucy Ellen Guernsey

The abbess—such was her rank—had her carriage and the ladies their servants, and they were by no means particular about keeping their enclosure, as it is called, but visited and were visited themselves as long and as often as they pleased. I heard all the story many a time from Mother Prudentia, who had learned it, in her turn, from a very old nun, who well remembered those days.

But presently there came a wonderful change. The famous Mother Angelique was made abbess of Port Royal when hardly twelve years old, and was converted afterward by the preaching of a wandering friar, himself a very bad man, which shows how good may sometimes be done even by wicked men. No sooner did the Mother Angelique become really religious herself than she set about reforming her house. The nuns, for the most part, seconded her with enthusiasm. No more gay visitors were admitted. No more feasts were given or fine clothes worn. No more worldly songs were heard. Instead one saw nothing but religious ceremonies, works of charity, instructing and clothing of poor children, and the like. Hours of silence were multiplied and strictly observed, as were also the church services.

This change of affairs was greatly admired in some quarters, and as severely condemned in others. Mother Angelique went about the country visiting the different houses of the order and ours among the number. Our own abbess was a young lady of that same noble family of Crequi, and at that time about four and twenty.

"She was as beautiful as an angel, so Mother Benedict used to say, and greatly admired," (I quote Mother Prudentia's own words), "but she never seemed happy in all her gaiety, and, even at its height, she would pass whole nights watching and weeping in the church, or in her own private chapel. Some said she had been in love with a poor young cousin, who disappeared, nobody knew exactly how, though every one might guess; and the lady being offered her choice of the cloister or a gay courtly bridegroom, chose the first." And then, if she were in a very confidential mood, Mother Prudentia's voice would sink to a whisper, as she told how the poor young man was believed to have been put to death by his own relations at a spot in the chase where no grass or flowers ever sprung afterward.

However that might be, the abbess hailed Mother Angelique as though she had been an angel from Heaven. They spent long hours closeted together or pacing up and down the cloistered walk which runs along the side of the cemetery. There was a change in the house as sudden as that at Port Royal. The carriages and horses were sold, all superfluous servants dismissed, and the fare reduced to the plainest sort. No more visits were made outside the walls and none received, except at the regular times when the sisters were allowed to talk with their friends through the grate in the parlors, in proper convent fashion.

Mother Prudentia said that most of the younger nuns fell into these new ways easily enough, and were as enthusiastic as the abbess herself, so that they had to be checked, rather than urged; but the elder women were not so pliant. They liked their amusements, their good dinners and suppers, and their gossip with visitors from outside; and the abbess ran some risk of being murdered in her own house. Indeed, it was believed that a severe illness which befell the lady about that time was the effect of poison administered by a certain Italian nun who was the most bitterly opposed to the new state of things.

For a while everything prospered. The Abbess was determined, and seemed to have a real genius for government. She lived to see all her measures carried out, and was succeeded by a spiritual daughter of Mother Angelique's, who had been sent, with two or three others, to assist in the work of reformation. The great revenues were used in maintaining schools, in assisting the poor, and in establishing and endowing a second house of our order in Toulon, to which daughters of trades-people and the like were admitted; for none but ladies of noble birth were allowed to renounce the world at our house. From all I can hear, the abbess and her successor were true Christian women according to their lights, and so, I am sure, were our own dear lady and most of the family in my day.

But troublous times were at hand. The Port Royalists, or Jansenists, as they came to be called, got into difficulty with the government and with the Jesuits, who carried things with a high hand in France, as, indeed, they do still, by all accounts. The whole family of the Mother Angelique, with all who adhered to them, were pronounced heretical, disobedient to the Pope, and altogether reprobate, and various bulls and proclamations were issued against them by Pope and archbishop, king and council.

Our house suffered with the rest, for the sake of the opinions which they refused to renounce. Their revenues were pillaged, their lands confiscated, their old priest and confessor was thrown into prison, where he died; and though the sisters were allowed to retain possession of their house and garden and enough land to raise a little corn and oil and to pasture a few cows and sheep, it was rather on sufferance and because they were under the protection of that same noble family of Crequi, which happened to be in high favor at court.

Such was the state of things in my day. The house was almost ruinous, and the vineyard, the olive orchard, and all together, furnished us with a scanty subsistence. True, we children and the young novices always had enough to eat, such as it was; but I fancy the Abbess and the elder nuns kept more fasts than were in the calendar, while their robes bore the marks of much careful mending and darning. Be this as it might, I never heard a complaint. The good ladies were as cheerful as possible, and in their hours of recreation would laugh and frolic like school girls. They had formerly taught a little school for the children of the neighboring village, and a few still came, almost by stealth, to receive instruction in religion and needlework, and such other things as were considered fit for them. We were not permitted to mix with these children; but we knew them all by sight, and we were allowed to make little presents for them, such as pincushions, caps, and aprons.