The huge drum towers of the entrance gate recall old dreams of romantic adventure. But for the strange silence of the place, it might almost excite expectations of clattering cavalcades, and one knows not what medley of bright figures in harmony with the mediæval background. But the silence broods on, unbroken. A black kitten is the only living thing that meets the view as we pass through the shadows of the gateway. A dishevelled grey village has grown up within the walls, its steep street climbing upward to the summit of the hill, while a cypress-guarded convent stands within its own high walls. Here the sisters pass their lives, doubly immured. If some unhappy nun tried to escape, she would not only have to penetrate the stern boundaries of her retreat, but to scale the ramparts of the fortress into the bargain; the engines of State and Religion arrayed against her; of this world and the next. It prompted one to carry the significant symbol further afield, and to follow in imagination the fortunes not only of the fugitive nun but of the escaping woman!
As we begin the ascent of the desolate street, the black kitten slips coquettishly across the way, at a slant, her tail high in the air, like a ruler, as the School-Board essayist happily puts it. We hail her as alluringly as may be, but she is away beyond our reach up a little outside staircase leading to the doorway of one of the few habitable houses. From this eminence she looks down upon us mockingly, clearly enjoying our disadvantage. This piques us and we engage in pursuit. The imp finally vanishes into the doorway, and presently a miserably clad, dejected-looking woman emerges. Evidently the kitten had announced to her the advent of visitors. She leads the way, a huge bunch of keys in her hand, the kitten following in a self-willed, flighty sort of fashion. While we are trifling with ancient walls and gruesome dungeons, the kitten is busy catching phantom mice among the heaps of fallen masonry that encumber the grassy hill-top, forlorn remains, indeed, of human habitations.
CASTLE OF ST. ANDRÉ, VILLENEUVE-LES-AVIGNON.
By E. M. Synge.
The little chapel of the convent strikes with a chill as we enter—surely it is something more than a chill; a sense of something deathly. In a flash comes the horrified sense of the death-in-life that is hidden behind these mysterious walls. One needs no detail, no assurance; the whole beats in upon the consciousness, steals in like an atmosphere, as we stand in the shadow looking at the little flower-decked altar, musty and tawdry with its artificial flowers and flounced draperies.
"Of what Order are the Sisters?" we inquire, in undertones, after a long silence.
"Sh—h," warns a reproving voice from a hidden part of the chapel, which had been so arranged as to leave the west-end of it invisible to all but the inmates of the convent.
"C'est une des soeurs," whispered our guide, and we turned and left the devotee to her prayers.
A truly amazing thing the human spirit! There are times when one feels entirely divorced from it, as if one were studying its manifestations from the point of view of an alien race. And there is no epoch so baffling to the modern mind as the mediæval. The ancients seem normal, straight-going, and eminently human as compared with the men and women of the Middle Ages.