The nun who was with me led me through the cellar, passing to the right of the secret burying place, and showed me the door of the subterraneous passage, which was at the extremity towards the Congregational Nunnery. The reasons why I had not noticed it before, I presume, were that it was made to shut close and even with the wall, and all that part of the cellar was whitewashed. The door, which is of wood, and square, opens with a latch into a passage, about four feet and a half high. We immediately got upon our knees, commenced saying the prayers required, and began to move slowly along the dark and narrow passage. It may be fifty or sixty feet in length; when we reached the end, we opened a door, and found ourselves in the cellar of the Congregational Nunnery, at some distance from the outer wall; for the covered way is carried in towards the middle of the cellar by two low partitions covered at the top. By the side of the door, was placed a list of names of the Black nuns, with a slide, that might be drawn over any of them. We covered our names in this manner, as evidence of having performed the duty assigned us; and then returned backwards on our knees, by the way we had come. This penance I repeatedly performed afterwards; and by this way, as I have occasion elsewhere to mention, nuns from the Congregational Nunnery, sometimes entered our Convent for worse purposes.
We were frequently assured, that miracles are still performed; and pains were taken to impress us deeply on this subject. The Superior often spoke to us of the Virgin Mary's pincushion, the remains of which it is pretended are preserved in the Convent, though it has crumbled quite to dust. We regarded this relic with such veneration, that we were afraid even to look at it, and we often heard the following story related, when the subject was introduced.
A priest in Jerusalem once had a vision, in which he was informed that the house in which the Virgin had lived, should be removed from its foundations, and transported to a distance. He did not think the communication was from God, and therefore disregarded it; but the house was soon after missed, which convinced him that the vision was true, and he told where the house might be found. A picture of the house is preserved in the Nunnery, and was sometimes shown us. There are also wax figures of Joseph sawing wood, and Jesus as a child, picking up the chips. We were taught to sing a little song relating to this, the chorus of which I remember.
"Saint Joseph charpentier,
Petit Jesus ramassait les copeaux
Pour fair bouillir la marmite."
St. Joseph was a carpenter, little Jesus collected chips to make the pot boil.
I began to speak of miracles, and I recollect a story of one, about a family in Italy saved from shipwreck by a priest, who were in consequence converted and had two sons honoured with the priest's office.
I had heard before I entered the Convent, about a great fire which destroyed a number of houses in the Quebec suburbs, and which some said the Bishop extinguished with holy water. I once heard a Catholic and a Protestant disputing on this subject, and when I went to the Congregational Nunnery, I sometimes heard the children, alluding to the same story, say at an alarm of fire, "Is it a Catholic fire? Then why does not the Bishop run?"
Among the topics on which the bishop addressed the nuns in the Convent this was one. He told us the story one day, and said he could have sooner interfered and stopped the flames, but that at last, finding they were about to destroy too many Catholic houses, he threw holy water on the fire, and extinguished it. I believed this, and also thought that he was able to put out any fire, but that he never did it, except when inspired.
The holy water which the Bishop had consecrated, was considered much more efficacious, than any blessed by a common priest; and this it was which was used in the Convent in sprinkling our beds. It had virtue in it, to keep off any evil spirits.
Now that I was a nun, I was occasionally sent to read lectures to the novices, as other nuns had been while I was a novice. There were but few of us, who were thought capable of reading English well enough, and therefore, I was more frequently sent than I might otherwise have been. The Superior often said to me, as I was going among the novices: