One is a postulant for two years at least, often for four; a novice for
four. It is rare that the definitive vows can be pronounced earlier
than the age of twenty-three or twenty-four years. The
Bernardines-Benedictines of Martin Verga do not admit widows to their
order.
In their cells, they deliver themselves up to many unknown macerations,
of which they must never speak.
On the day when a novice makes her profession, she is dressed in her
handsomest attire, she is crowned with white roses, her hair is brushed
until it shines, and curled. Then she prostrates herself; a great black
veil is thrown over her, and the office for the dead is sung. Then the
nuns separate into two files; one file passes close to her, saying in
plaintive accents, “Our sister is dead”; and the other file responds in
a voice of ecstasy, “Our sister is alive in Jesus Christ!”
At the epoch when this story takes place, a boarding-school was
attached to the convent—a boarding-school for young girls of noble and
mostly wealthy families, among whom could be remarked Mademoiselle de
Saint-Aulaire and de Bélissen, and an English girl bearing the
illustrious Catholic name of Talbot. These young girls, reared by these
nuns between four walls, grew up with a horror of the world and of the
age. One of them said to us one day, “The sight of the street pavement
made me shudder from head to foot.” They were dressed in blue, with a
white cap and a Holy Spirit of silver gilt or of copper on their
breast. On certain grand festival days, particularly Saint Martha’s
day, they were permitted, as a high favor and a supreme happiness, to
dress themselves as nuns and to carry out the offices and practice of
Saint-Benoît for a whole day. In the early days the nuns were in the
habit of lending them their black garments. This seemed profane, and
the prioress forbade it. Only the novices were permitted to lend. It is
remarkable that these performances, tolerated and encouraged, no doubt,
in the convent out of a secret spirit of proselytism and in order to
give these children a foretaste of the holy habit, were a genuine
happiness and a real recreation for the scholars. They simply amused
themselves with it. _It was new; it gave them a change_. Candid reasons
of childhood, which do not, however, succeed in making us worldlings
comprehend the felicity of holding a holy water sprinkler in one’s hand
and standing for hours together singing hard enough for four in front
of a reading-desk.
The pupils conformed, with the exception of the austerities, to all the
practices of the convent. There was a certain young woman who entered
the world, and who after many years of married life had not succeeded
in breaking herself of the habit of saying in great haste whenever any
one knocked at her door, “forever!” Like the nuns, the pupils saw their
relatives only in the parlor. Their very mothers did not obtain
permission to embrace them. The following illustrates to what a degree
severity on that point was carried. One day a young girl received a
visit from her mother, who was accompanied by a little sister three
years of age. The young girl wept, for she wished greatly to embrace
her sister. Impossible. She begged that, at least, the child might be
permitted to pass her little hand through the bars so that she could
kiss it. This was almost indignantly refused.