Suddenly, and without any preparation, down fell the black curtain like a pall, and the sobs and tears of the family broke forth. One beautiful little child was carried out almost in fits. Water was brought to the poor mother; and at last, making our way with difficulty through the dense crowd, we got into the sacristy. "I declare," said the Countess ——- to me, wiping her eyes, "it is worse than a marriage!" I expressed my horror at the sacrifice of a girl so young, that she could not possibly have known her own mind. Almost all the ladies agreed with me, especially all who had daughters, but many of the old gentlemen were of a different opinion. The young men were decidedly of my way of thinking; but many young girls, who were conversing together, seemed rather to envy their friend, who had looked so pretty and graceful, and "so happy," and whose dress "suited her so well," and to have no objection to "go, and do likewise."
I had the honour of a presentation to the bishop, a fat and portly prelate, with good manners, and well besuiting his priestly garments. I amused myself, while we waited for the carriages, by looking over a pamphlet which lay on the table, containing the ceremonial of the veil-taking. When we rose to go, all the ladies of the highest rank devoutly kissed the bishop's hand; and I went home, thinking by what law of God a child can thus be dragged from the mother who bore and bred her, and immured in a cloister for life, amongst strangers, to whom she has no tie, and towards whom she owes no duty. That a convent may be a blessed shelter from the calamities of life, a haven for the unprotected, a resting-place for the weary, a safe and holy asylum, where a new family and kind friends await those whose natural ties are broken and whose early friends are gone, I am willing to admit; but it is not in the flower of youth that the warm heart should be consigned to the cold cloister. Let the young take their chance of sunshine or of storm: the calm and shady retreat is for helpless and unprotected old age.
——-, to whom I described one of these ceremonies, wrote some verses, suggested by my account of them, which I send you.
In tropic gorgeousness, the Lord of Day
To the bright chambers of the west retired,
And with the glory of his parting ray
The hundred domes of Mexico he fired,
When I, with vague and solemn awe inspired,
Entered the Incarnation's sacred fane.
The vaulted roof, the dim aisle far retired,
Echoed the deep-toned organ's holy strain,
Which through the incensed air did mournfully complain.
The veiling curtain suddenly withdrew,
Op'ning a glorious altar to the sight,
Where crimson intermixed its regal hue
With gold and jewels that outblazed the light
Of the huge tapers near them flaming bright
From golden stands—the bishop, mitre-crowned,
Stood stately near—in order due around
The sisterhood knelt down, their brows upon the ground.
The novice entered: to her doom she went,
Gems on her robes, and flowers upon her brow.
Virgin of tender years, poor innocent!
Pause, ere thou speak th' irrevocable vow.
What if thy heart should change, thy spirit fail?
She kneels. The black-robed sisters cease to bow.
They raise a hymn which seems a funeral wail,
While o'er the pageant falls the dark, lugubrious veil.
Again the veil is up. On earth she lies,
With the drear mantle of the pall spread o'er.
The new-made nun, the living sacrifice,
Dead to this world of ours for evermore!
The sun his parting rays has ceased to pour,
As loth to lend his light to such a scene….
The sisters raise her from the sacred floor,
Supporting her their holy arms between;
The mitred priest stands up with patriarchal mien.
And speaks the benediction; all is done.
A life-in-death must her long years consume
She clasped her new-made sisters one by one.
As the black shadows their embraces gave
They seemed like spectres from their place of doom.
Stealing from out eternal night's blind cave,
To meet their comrade new, and hail her to the grave.
The curtain fell again, the scene was o'er,
The pageant gone—its glitter and its pride,
And it would be a pageant and no more,
But for the maid miscalled the Heavenly Bride.
If I, an utter stranger, unallied
To her by slightest ties, some grief sustain,
What feels the yearning mother, from whose side
Is torn the child whom she hath reared in vain,
To share her joys no more, no more to sooth her pain!