The chapel was dim, cool, and filled with the odor of the fresh flowers on the altar and the incense used at the morning service. The nun and the young girl knelt for a few moments to offer up thanks to God as the preliminary obligation of their reunion, and invoke the Friend above all others who is not only the great I am, but Love itself. Fleurange soon rose up at a sign from the mother, and followed her into a well-known apartment on the ground floor called the garden parlor.
Like all convent parlors, it had no other furniture but a square table in the middle of the room, some straw-bottomed chairs ranged around, a book-case with a large crucifix on the top, and a statue of the holy Madonna on the other side, at the foot of which stood a vase full of flowers. What distinguished this parlor from all others of the kind was the view through the broad arched window on one side, and on the other through the open garden door. The beautiful landscape we have already described, bounded on the distant horizon by the sublime but graceful outline of the mountains, had in the foreground an abundance of flowers more carefully cultivated than is usually the case in convent gardens. At the right, the eye caught a glimpse of the arches of the cloister, and on the left the dense shade of a small grove of orange-trees now in bloom, beyond which was an orchard with vines interlacing the fruit-trees, and a carefully cultivated vegetable garden—the principal resource of the convent larder. Some doves were flying between the cloister and the garden, and during the hours of conventual silence there was no other sound within the peaceful enclosure but the noise of their cooing. But at recreation time the cloister, as well as the garden, resounded with the voices and laughter of the children, and Mother Maddalena’s parlor was not always as quiet as when she ushered Fleurange into it.
The door was scarcely closed when the nun took the young girl’s face between her hands, and attentively examined it, as if she would read the depths of her soul.
Mother Maddalena was about fifty years of age at this time. She had been uncommonly beautiful in her youth, and there was still a regularity and nobleness in her time-worn features which were set off by the white bandeau and guimpe that encircled her face like a frame to a picture. A long black veil fell in deep folds nearly to the ground. Her black eyes were uncommonly large and mild, and had an extraordinary expression sometimes seen in eyes devoid of any other beauty, and is exclusively peculiar to those which reflect that mysterious and ineffable joy which Bossuet calls “incompatible,” and says, to be tasted, “il faut qu’elle soit goûté seule.” Such was the look, full of divine joy and superhuman peace, now fastened on Fleurange, whose limpid eyes did not avoid the scrutiny, but remained fastened on those of the Madre. Only her pale face flushed and then grew paler than before.
“Poor child! poor child!” said Mother Maddalena at length after a long and silent examination. “Alas! how much she has suffered.—But no evil has tarnished her heart.” With her right hand she made the sign of the cross on Fleurange’s pure brow, and then pressed her lips to the same spot, adding, with a smile of satisfaction: “The Angel Gabriel, to whom I confided her at parting, has restored her to me, like a faithful guardian whose inspirations have been obeyed.”
Whether Fleurange now lost her customary self-control, or did not try to conceal her feelings in Mother Maddalena’s presence, while the latter stood looking at her silently, she burst into tears.
“Yes, I understand,” said the mother—“a great effort was required to overcome the natural tendencies of the heart, to act and to speak without the relief of weeping!—But my poor child succeeded, and is weary from the exertion—” She continued in a softer tone: “But it is the weary and heavy laden that have the promise of finding rest, and it is in this house especially that this rest awaits those who ask it of him who has promised it, and who alone can give it!—Come,” continued she in a firmer tone, after allowing Fleurange to weep some time in silence—“come, my dear Gabrielle, lift up your heart—the heart so susceptible of pain! Try to rise a little above your sufferings—sufferings which enfold the germ of so great a joy!” murmured she to herself, “whereas the joys of the world contain the germ of so much suffering!—Come, my child, come with me.”
The last words were uttered in a tone of mild authority. Fleurange unhesitatingly rose, and followed her across the garden, now exposed to the ardor of the sun’s says, into the small grove where the foliage was so dense that it was cool at mid-day. A flight of steps led to a little oratory in this peaceful solitude, where the pupils assembled towards sunset for prayers; but now it was entirely empty.
Mother Maddalena seated herself on a bench in front of the oratory, and Fleurange took a place near her.
“Now tell me, not only what I already know, but what I am still ignorant of.”