later; and the convent cook, though a nun, was a veritable cordon bleu. Besides, the Superior when she saw that I had made up my mind to stay for the appointed time, took pity on me, and used to come in to see me just now and then. She indulged in much gentle merriment at my expense, when she found how miserable I had been. As time passed, too, the nuns, in their long, trailing, black gowns, seemed a touch less ghostly, as they flitted up and down the terraces with their rosaries in their hands; and at length I summoned courage to address one of them whom I encountered in the garden. She met my advances most cordially, and, to my infinite surprise, talked away in the most voluble fashion. And little wonder either, for, as I soon discovered, I was for the time being the one and only person to whom she could talk. The nuns are forbidden to address each other excepting during the recreation hour; but they may chatter as much as they like to strangers. When she drew up this rule, the founder of the Order was no doubt under the impression that there would be no stranger in the convent for them to chatter to. They certainly made the most of the chance my visit afforded them; during the two months it lasted, they probably talked more than during the previous ten years. As soon as they knew that they could count on a welcome, every moment's leisure they had was spent in paying me visits-just for the pleasure of hearing a human voice it seemed to me. Before long I was well acquainted with them all, and very interesting women they are some of them.

This community numbered then some forty members, the eldest of whom was above ninety, and the youngest well under twenty. There were among them women of the most varied types, yet they almost all bore a family resemblance to each other, for they had the same compressed, self-restrained look in their faces, as if they could not, even if they would, let themselves go. There was the same monotonous ring, too, in most of their voices, and a certain indefinable something about them that made one think instinctively of a machine. Some of them had spent practically their whole lives in the convent, had been sent there straight from school; because, being richer in ancestors than in guineas, the task of finding eligible partis for them seemed hopeless. Others, and they the great majority, had sought a refuge there of their own free will, and only after giving the outside world a trial. Not a few had set their friends at defiance by going there, and had left behind them both wealth and rank.

The Superior, who is of a French Légitimiste family, is one of the most beautiful old ladies I have ever seen. She is slight and

fragile, and has a low, sweet voice and a singularly gentle, caressing manner. The expression of her face is quite otherworldish in its serenity: to look at her one would think she was as ignorant as the angels of this world and its ways. But never were appearances more deceptive. Delicate as she seems, she is as strong as a horse, and boasts that she has never had a day's illness. With all her sweet deprecative manner she has a will of iron, and rules her community wisely and beneficently, but as the veriest autocrat. She makes her influence to be felt far and wide; great ladies consult her upon all occasions-her constant visitor, when I knew her best, was an Orleanist Princess-and bishops and even cardinals are said to seek her advice. And therein they show their wisdom, for she is certainly an amazingly clever woman-shrewd, practical and with plenty of sound common sense. She thinks clearly, acts righteously, and has a perfect genius for organisation. Although more than thirty years have elapsed since she quitted the world, she is in close touch with it even to-day. She is keenly interested in politics and knows to a nicety the state of parties in every capital in Europe. To hear her talk of English statesmen and their measures one would imagine she had spent her whole life in London; yet she is equally well-acquainted with the doings of their confrères in Vienna, Paris and Berlin. How she obtains her information even those who live with her have no idea, but it is certainly not by reading-I never saw her with a book in her hand. Then she follows closely all the social movements of the day, and has clearly-defined opinions on artistic and the Index notwithstanding-literary subjects. Her conversation is quite delightful, terse, bright and witty, yet always kindly in tone in spite of its little undercurrent of mockery. I have often wondered what could have induced such a woman to bury herself in a convent; and when I once suggested to her that by so doing she had made the world the poorer, her answer was an odd little laugh.

The most talented woman in the convent, with the exception of the Superior, is Sister Hélène, the daughter of a well-known agnostic of the aggressive type. She was brought up in the strictest tenets of the "L'Eglise: voilà l'ennemi" school; and was taught from her earliest days to look on priests and nuns as being much on a par with charlatans. Her father, who was proud of her keen wits and sharp tongue, and who had trained her himself for the fight, used to boast that clericalism would find in her some day a formidable opponent. When she was twenty-two he declared she was the only woman he had ever met with who did not understand the meaning of the word superstition. Then she

was summoned away from Paris to tend an aunt who was dying, and spent some three months in a remote country district. What occurred while she was there no one knows; but, on her return home, she calmly informed her father that she had made up her mind to be baptized! If she had said she was going to murder all the crowned heads in Europe she would not have excited more consternation. A battle royal followed, for she and her father were all in all to each other, and the ground had to be fought inch by inch. It lasted a whole year, but Hélène never wavered; she left the old man to die alone and sought peace for herself in the convent. She was a cold, hard woman when I knew her, a propagandist by nature I should say. While talking to her I always felt as if I were in a witness-box undergoing crossexamination at the hands of a counsel who knew much more about me than I knew myself. She has done good service, I hear, by her writings for the cause she has espoused.

Strange to say these nuns, taking them as a whole, are above the average in point of looks. Several of them are decidedly handsome, and two-Sister Christine and Sister Bernadette-are strikingly beautiful. Sister Christine is one of those women of whom the lily is an emblem. She is tall and slight and has golden hair and a face a Greek sculptor might have dreamed of There is a weary troubled look though in her large, blue eyes; and she never tries to conceal the fact that she has lost all hope of finding anything worth having on this side of the grave. I never saw her smile but once, and that was when she told me the doctors were sure she would be gone before another Christmas came round. She was betrothed, it seems, to a man whom she worshipped her own cousin-whom she had chosen for herself out of a crowd of suitors; for not only was she a beauty, but a great heiress. And on the very morning of her wedding-day he eloped with her nearest relative-a plain-looking woman of thirty, who had already a husband!

Sister Bernadette is Irish by descent, by nature, too, to her finger ends, and she has real Irish blue eyes. I should not be very much surprised if she doffed her convent trappings some day or other, for, although she seems fairly well content with her lot, she was never intended to be a nun. Besides it was all owing to a mistake that she ever went to the convent. Her lover was drowned before her eyes, only a stone's-throw away from where she was standing, within a week from the day appointed for their marriage. In the first paroxysm of her grief she insisted on entering the convent; for she was firmly convinced that her heart was broken, convinced, too, that she had only a few months to

live. She was threatened with consumption in those days. Under the sunny Italian skies, however, she took a new lease of life; and then, as time passed, she woke up to the fact that, though hearts may be bruised, they don't break All that could be done she did to cherish her grief; she clung to it, fondled it, made much of it, but if the Fates had wished her to play a tragic rôle they should have made her in a different mould. When I made her acquaintance she was one of the brightest and cheeriest of little mortals, bubbling over with the mere joie de vivre. She cracked jokes low down to herself, I verily believe, even when she was going about with her chaplet in her hand. She looked upon my visit as a special mercy vouchsafed to her by St. Joseph.

Sister Edward has had an interesting career judging by her face, but what it was I have never heard. She has a wonderfully beautiful voice, and manages it with a skill that suggests a professional training. Quite a little crowd would assemble outside the convent walls on a Sunday afternoon to hear her sing in the chapel. The Orleanist Princess, I noticed, seemed to know her well. Sister Marie-Joseph had been attached to the Court of the Empress Eugénie, and it was her experience there that had given her her distaste for the society of her kind. One of the nuns had renounced the world because, whereas nineteenthcentury men were not to her liking, her friends were bent on providing her with a husband. Another had made her way to the convent, because the husband she would have chosen for herself preferred her sister. The majority of them, it seemed to me, were there because things had gone wrong with them in life; they had missed their chance, in fact, of a place among the few who are supremely happy. And as it is thus with them they are probably happier in the convent than they would be elsewhere. Whether or not they are better women, is another question. With some few exceptions they struck me as being more selfcentred than even the ordinary run of worldlings. Again and again when I was among them I saw them, kindly and tenderhearted though they seem, manifest a callousness to the sufferings of others that was quite startling. They are so bent on securing their own well-being-working out their own salvation they would call it that they have never a thought to bestow on the well-being of others, not even of those whom they have left behind them in their own homes.

Just as I was becoming quite accustomed to the ways of life in the convent, another visitor arrived, one who came there sorely against her will. She was an Italian, the niece of a very distinguished personage, who, having never before given her a

moment's attention in his life, suddenly bethought himself, when she was about eighteen, that it would be well to arrange a marriage for her. With this purpose in view he sent a confidential priest to see what she was like, and the report brought back was quite awful. The girl, the priest declared, could hardly read or write; she spoke the wildest patois, and knew no more of the decencies of life than the veriest gutter child. She had passed all her days in the country with her mother, who had left her entirely to the care of servants, and had never even given her a teacher. The uncle was furious and appealed for help to the Superior, who promptly volunteered to take charge of the little savage, and try what could be done towards transforming her into a presentable member of society. The girl was solemnly handed over to her keeping, and was informed that she would be allowed two years in which to fit herself for the duties of her station. If by the end of that time she were, in the opinion of the Superior, capable of taking her place in the world without being a disgrace to her relatives, a husband would be found for her; but if she were not-tant pis pour elle. She would never again see the outside wall of the convent.

In spite of her gross ignorance the little countess was bright and intelligent in those days; and although her manners were those of a peasant, in appearance she was decidedly attractive. She was as wilful and wayward, though, as a spoilt child: she had evidently been brought up in a home where liberté, egalité, et fraternité were the order of the day, and had no respect whatever for authorities and powers. "I don't see why old people should be treated differently from young ones," she told me frankly; they are neither wiser nor better, and they are a lot more unpleasant." To transplant such a girl to a convent was positive cruelty. The first time I saw her she was a perfect Ishmael, treating even the Superior in the most cavalier fashion, and at open war with the nun who had been appointed to act as her governess. In a week though all that was changed; she was heart and soul in her work, and as eager to become civilised as even her distinguished relative could have wished. By some means or other the fact had been brought home to her that therein lay her one chance of escaping from the convent. And the convent she hated as only Italians can hate; and she hated everything connected with it, the nuns above all.

Only those who have lived in a convent can realise how quickly time passes there, when once one has fallen under the spell of the place. One day is so much like another that they come and go almost unnoticed-there is nothing indeed to mark them. Even