On her arrival at Lyons, the fatigue and emotions of the journey told on her. An agonizing pain in the spine to which she was subject after any undue exertion obliged her to remain at the hotel, lying down on the sofa nearly all day.
The following morning, her father took her to the monastery. Like Abraham, he conducted his child to the mount of sacrifice, and with his own hand laid the victim on the altar; but no angel came to snatch away the sacrificial knife and substitute a meaner offering for the holocaust. He left her at the inner gate of La Trappe.
She wrote to me some weeks after her entrance.
"I was less brave at parting with my beloved ones than I ought to have been," she said; "but, on account of the pain that kept me lying down in the midst of them nearly all the previous day, I had not been able to pray as much as usual, and so I had not got up strength enough for the trial-time. I seemed to have let go my hold on our Lord a little and to be leaning on them for courage; but, when I had been a few hours before the Blessed Sacrament, the pain calmed down, and I began to realize how happy I was. I am in great hopes that I have found the will of God."
One trifling incident which gave innocent delight to Mary I must not omit to mention.
She was asked on entering what name she wished to bear in religion, and on her replying that she had not thought of one and would rather the prioress chose for her, "Then we shall call you Mary Benedicta," said the mother. "The saint has no name-sake amongst us at present."
The only thing that disappointed her in the new life was the mildness of the rule and the short time it allotted for prayer!
It may interest my readers and help them to estimate the spirit of the novice to hear some details of the rule that struck her as too mild.
The Trappistines rise at 2 A.M. winter and summer, and proceed to choir, chanting the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin. Mass, meditation, the recital of the divine office, and household work, distributed to each according to her strength and aptitude and to the wants of the community, fill up the time till breakfast, which is at 8. The rule relents in favor of those who are unable to bear the long early fast, and they are allowed a small portion of dry bread some hours sooner. I think the novices as a rule are included in this dispensation. The second meal is at 2. The food is frugal but wholesome, good bread, vegetables, fish occasionally, and good, pure wine. Fire is an unknown luxury, except in the kitchen. The silence is perpetual, but the novices are allowed perfect freedom of converse with their mistress, and the professed nuns with the abbess. They converse occasionally during the day amongst each other by signs. They take open-air exercise, and perform manual labor out-of-doors, digging, etc. In-doors, they are constantly employed in embroidering and mounting vestments. Some of the most elaborately wrought benediction-veils, copes, chasubles, etc., used in the large churches throughout France, are worked by the Trappistines of Lyons.
They retire to rest at 8. Their clothing is of coarse wool, inside and outside.