The foster-sisters

by Lucy Ellen Guernsey

We were very happy together, Amabel and I. No difference was made between us in any respect that I remember. We learned the same things, dressed in the same way, and slept in the same kind of little white covered beds in our own corner of the dormitory. There were three or four other pupils, but they were all but one, very much older than ourselves—quite young ladies in fact.

Dénice was our only playmate. I don't know what her other name was or whether she had any, but I have fancied since that she might have been a daughter of some unhappy Protestant family, torn from her parents by the cruel hand of persecutors and shut up at St. Jean to be made a good Catholic. Such things were common enough in those days. She was a thin dark child, shy and shrinking in her manners with her elders, but a capital playfellow and the best of story tellers. She was three or four years older than Amabel and myself, and had great influence over us, which she always used for good. A better child never breathed, and her early death was my first real grief.

Our household consisted, beside the pupils whom I have mentioned, of about eighteen members in all—

First of course came the Abbess. She was a middle-aged lady when I first knew her, and very handsome but worn with cares, fasts, and vigils, and so bent she looked much beyond her real age. I have nothing but good to say of her. I think it likely from what I now remember that she was not without a tinge of that spiritual pride which is nurtured by nothing more than by the voluntary humiliations required by the Roman church within all religious persons so-called. But as a ruler of her family, nobody could be more just, firm, and kind. She allowed herself no indulgences that were not shared by the rest of the community, and as I believe often denied herself absolutely necessary food and clothing to add to the comfort of the old and feeble members of the household. She was an excellent manager, overseeing everything, yet not like many notable women wasting her time in doing work which belonged to other people. While I believe she knew to a single olive and a single ounce of wool everything which her fields produced, she did not interfere vexatiously with the sisters who had charge of these things, but allowed them to manage in their own way. We little ones went to her for an hour every day to receive a special religious instruction, and she used to make these hours very pleasant, dismissing us usually with a bit of cake or fruit or some other little treat. We children at least adored her.

Next came the Mother Assistant, who was Mother Superior's right hand in all that pertained to the management of the house and farm, though I do not think there was much sympathy between them in other things. Mother Assistant was a narrow-minded woman, to whom the framework of religion was everything. She had a particular and fanatical devotion to the Saints, which was not, or so I think, the case with Mother Superior. I have an idea that she was annoyed at the state of ostracism, so to speak, in which we lived, and that she would not have been sorry to return to the old ways, and make, peace with the Church and the archbishop; but, of course, this is only an impression, such as young folks often pick up concerning their elders. She was not fond of children, and I don't think there was any love lost between us.

Then came several other officers.

The Mother Sacristine, who had the whole charge of the Church, the vestments, etc. And many a weary hour did the good mother spend in darning rent hangings and moth-eaten altar cloths (for these little pests have no more respect for the ante-pendium of an altar than for an old laborer's Sunday coat), and trying to furbish up the once rich vestments which would never look anything but faded and shabby after all her pains.

The Mother Bursar had charge of the purse and the money, when there was any. She had, as I think, only one serious worry in life, and that was, that fast as she might, she would always look fat and jolly, her cheeks and chin would always be rosy, and her face break into dimples whenever she smiled, which was very often. As to the perennial want of money, she regarded that, not as a worry, but as a cross, which is a very different matter.

Mother Prudentia was mistress of the novices, and of us young ones as well. She was a good woman, according to her lights, as the abbess herself, very fond of young people, and rather too much given to indulging them, if anything. Certainly, we children had very easy times with her. She was a born gossip, and loved nothing better than to gather us round her and tell us tales by the hour, of Mother Angelique, her work and her trials, of the Mother Perpetua, who instituted the reform, of endless saints and martyrs, of various mothers and sisters whom she had known, and sometimes, also, of giants, dwarfs, fairies, and the like. We had a certain feeling that these latter tales were a kind of contraband goods, and I fear we did not like them the less on that account.

Our sisters were, I suppose, much like any other collection of ladies of the same age and breeding, except that the sense of living under the ban of persecution and suffering for the truth's sake gave a kind of elevation to their characters not always found in convents. Mother Prudentia once told me that, at a visitation made by the Bishop or some other great functionary, the nuns then in the convent had been offered the choice of entering any other religious house they pleased; but not a single one had availed herself of the permission.