"What a singular chance!" she exclaimed, when I had told as much of my story as was necessary. "Why, we have at this moment a community of Cistercian nuns in the house here! Their monastery is being repaired, and in the meantime we have permission from the bishop to harbor them. See," she went on, pointing to a row of windows whose closed Persiennes were visible at an angle from where we sat, "that is where our mother has lodged them. You can speak to the prioress, if you like, but of course you cannot see her."
I was more struck by the strange coincidence than overjoyed at being so near the solution of my difficulty. I could not, however, but take advantage of the opportunity. Sister Madeleine, which was the little nun's name, ran off to ask "our mother's" permission for me to speak with their Cistercian sister, and in a few minutes returned with an affirmative.
I was led to the door of the community-room, and, through a little extempore grating cut through the panel and veiled on the inside, I held converse with the mother abbess.
A few words assured me that Sister Madeleine had been mistaken in supposing her guests to be the daughters of St. Bernard. They were Poor Clares—an order more rigorous, even, than the Trappistines; bare feet, except when standing on a stone pavement or in the open air, when the rule is to slip the feet into wooden sandals, are added to the fasting and perpetual silence of Citeaux. Of this latter the abbess could tell me nothing—nothing, at least, of its actual existence and branches in France, though she broke out into impulsive and loving praise of its spirit and its saintly founder, and the rich harvest of souls he and his children had reaped for our Lord.
Here, then, was another respite. It really seemed probable that, if, in a quarter so likely to be well informed on the point, there was no account to be had of a Trappistine convent, there could not be one in existence, and Mary, from sheer inability to enter La Trappe, might be driven to choose some less terrible rule.
Mary meantime had set other inquirers on the track of St. Bernard, and soon learned that the novitiate was at Lyons. The name of the monastery is Notre Dame de toute Consolation.
After some preliminary correspondence with the abbess, the day was fixed for her to leave Ireland and set out to her land of promise.
She came, of course, through Paris. It was three years since we had met. I found her greatly altered; her beauty not gone, but changed. She looked, however, in much better health than I had ever seen her. Her spirits were gone, but there had come in their place a serenity that radiated from her like sunshine. We went out together to do some commissions of hers and the better to escape interruption, for this was in all human probability to be our last meeting on earth, and we had much to say to each other.
We drove first to Notre Dame des Victoires, where, at her constantly recurring desire, I had been in the habit of putting her name down for the prayers of the confraternity, and we knelt once again side by side before the altar of our Blessed Lady.