Aplaca, mi Dios, tu ira,
Tu justicia y tu rigor.
Por los ruegos de Maria,
Misericordia, Señor!
Santo Dios, Santo fuerte, Santo inmortal,
Liberanos, Senor, de todo mal.
At the refectory, each sister has an earthenware plate and jug, with a wooden cover, an earthenware salt-cellar, and a wooden spoon. Opposite the place of the superior is a skull, the only distinction. They are allowed no linen except in sickness, and wear only a brown mantle and white serge scapular, with a black veil, which covers them from head to foot. They are rarely allowed to walk in the garden, or to go out in the corridor in the sun to warm themselves. Their house is like a cellar, cold and damp; and they have no fires. Even at recreation they are not allowed to sit, except on the floor; and silence is rigidly observed, except for two hours during the day. They have only five hours sleep, not going to bed till half-past eleven, on account of the office. At eleven, one of the novices seizes the wooden clapper, (or crecella,) which she strikes three times, pronouncing the words: "Praise be to our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the Blessed Virgin Mary, his Mother; my sisters, let us go to matins to glorify our Lord." Then they go to the choir, singing the Miserere. They are called again in the same manner at half-past four by a sister who chaunts a verse in the Psalms. At night a sentence is pronounced aloud, to serve as meditation. It is generally this:
My sisters, think of this:
a little suffering,
and then an eternal recompense.
They see absolutely no one, receiving the holy communion through a slit in the wall. The English lady was the first person they had seen face to face, or with lifted veils, for twelve years. They play the organ of the chapel, which is a public one, though they themselves are entirely invisible; and they are not even allowed to see the altar, which is concealed by a heavy black curtain drawn across the grating looking into the church. They have an image of their great foundress, the size of life, dressed in the habit of the order, and to her they go night and morning and salute her, as to a mother. Their convent is rich in relics, beautiful pictures, and crucifixes, brought in by different religious, especially the Duchesse de Bega, who became a Carmelite about fifty years ago. But their chief treasure is an original picture of St. Theresa, for which she sat by command of the archbishop, and which has lately been photographed for the Duc de Montpensier. It is a very striking and beautiful face, but quite different from the conventional representations of the saint. When it was finished, she looked at it, and exclaimed naively: "I did not know I was grown so old or so ugly!" There is also in this sacristy a very beautiful Morales of the "Virgin and a Dead Christ," and a curious portrait of Padre Garcia, the saint's confessor. Up-stairs, in her own cell, they have her cloak and shoes, and the glass out of which she drank in her last illness. The stranger was courteously made to drink out of it also, and then to put on the saint's cloak, in which she was told "to kneel and pray for her heart's desire, and it would be granted to her."
But the most interesting thing in the convent is the collection of MSS. They have the whole of the "Interior Mansion," written in her own firm and beautiful handwriting, with scarcely an erasure; besides quantities of her letters and answers from St. John of the Cross, from St. John of Avila, from Padre Garcia, and a multitude of others. The superior is elected every three years, and the same one cannot be reelected till three years have elapsed. They require a "dot" of 8000 reals, or about a hundred pounds; but their number is full, and several candidates are now waiting their turn for admission. The government has taken what little property they once had and gives them at the rate of a peseta (two reals) a day, so that, poor as their food is, they are often on the verge of starvation.
It was with a feeling almost of relief that the English lady found herself once more in the sunshine outside these gloomy walls; yet those who lived within them seemed cheerful and happy, and able to realize in the fullest degree, without any external aid, those mysteries of divine love and that beauty of holiness which, to our weaker faith, would seem impossible when deprived of all sight of our Lord in his tabernacle or in his glorious creations. We are tempted to ask, why it is that convents of this nature are so repugnant to English taste? Every one is ready to appreciate those of the sisters of charity. People talk of their good deeds, of the blessing they are in the hospitals, of the advantages of united work, etc. etc.; but as for the enclosed orders, "They wish they were all abolished." "What is the good of a set of women shutting themselves up and doing nothing?" Reader, do they "do nothing"? We will not speak of the schools; of the evening classes for working women; of the preparations for first communions and confirmations; of the retreats within their sheltering walls for those of us who, wearied with this world's toil and bustle, wish to pause now and then and gain breath for the daily fight, and take stock, as it were, of our state before God. These and other works like these, form almost invariably a very important portion of the daily occupation of the cloistered orders. But we will dismiss the thoughts of any external work, and come to the highest and noblest part of their vocation. What is it that is to "move mountains"? What is it that, over and over again in Holy Scripture, has saved individuals, and cities, and nations? Is it not united intercessory prayer? Is it nothing to us, in the whirl and turmoil of this work-a-day life, that holy hands should ever be lifted up for us to the Great Intercessor? Is there no reparation needed for the sins, and the follies, and the insults to the majesty of God, and to his sacraments, and to his Mother, which are ever going on in this our native country? Does it not touch the most indifferent among us to think of our self-indulgence being, as it were, atoned for by their self-denial?—our pampered appetites by their fasts and vigils? It is true that our present habits of life and thought lead to an obvious want of sympathy with such an existence. It has no public results on which we can look complacently, or which can be paraded boastfully. Everything seems waste which is not visible; and all is disappointment which is not obvious success. It is supernatural principles especially which are at a discount in modern days! Surely the time will come when we shall judge these things very differently; when our eyes will be opened like the eyes of the prophet's servant; and we shall see from what miseries, from what sorrows we and our country have been preserved by lives like these, which save our Sodom, and avert God's righteous anger from his people. [Footnote 186]
[Footnote 186: In a simple but touching French biography of a young English lady who lately died in the convent of the "Poor Clares" at Amiens, the writer's idea is far more beautifully expressed: "A cette heure de la nuit, peut-ètre qu'une jenne fille du monde, martyre (sans couronne) de ses lois et de ses exigences, rentre chez elle, épulsée d'emotions et de fatigues. En longeant le mur du monastère et en entendant le son de la cloche qui appelle les recluses volontaires à la prière elle se sera adressée cette question: 'A quoi servent done les religieuses?' Je vais vous le dire: à expier. Après cette nuit de plaisir que vous venez de passer au théatre ou au bal, viendra une autre nuit—nuit d'angoisses et de supréme douleur. Vous étes la étendue sur votre couche de mort en face de l'éternité ou vous allez entrer seule, et sans appui. Peut-étre vous n'osez, ou vous ne pouvez prier; mals quelqu'un a prié pour vous, et faisant violence au ciel, a obtenu ce que vous n'etiez pas digne d'espérer. Voila d quoi servent les religieuses.">[
One more curious establishment was visited by our party at Seville before their departure, and that was the cigar manufactory, an enormous government establishment, occupying an immense yellow building, which looks like a palace, and employing 1,000 men and 5,000 women. The rapidity with which cigars are turned out by those women's fingers is not the least astonishing part. The workers are almost all young, and some very beautiful. They take off their gowns and their crinolines as soon as they come in, hanging them up in a long gallery, and take the flowers out of their hair and put them in water, so that they may be fresh when they come out; and then work away in their petticoats with wonderful zeal and good humor the whole day long. The government makes 90,000,000 reals a year from the profits of this establishment, though the dearest cigar made costs but twopence!