attendance upon the convent, and I was not so easily discouraged. I was
especially anxious to see the Mother Superior, having many times heard
the story of her flight in slippers and dressing-gown from the
breakfast-table to bury herself forever within the walls that have held
her now these twenty-five years. In all these years her unforgiving
father has never seen her face, nor she his, although they live within
stone's throw of each other.

"Know about him? of course she does," answered Victoire to my question.
"She knows all about him, and more too. Do you suppose there is an item
of news in the whole town that those cloistered nuns do not hear? If you
had been educated by them, as we were, and pumped dry every day as to
what went on in our own and our neighbors' families, you would not ask
that question."

Victoire and I penetrated into the convent that very same day. We
followed a crowd of women, _paysannes_ and _citoyennes_, into
a sunny court paved with large stones and arched by the noontide sky,
but unsoftened by tree or flower, and surrounded by the open windows of
dormitories. Over the threshold we had just crossed the nuns pass but
once after their vows,--pass outward, feet foremost, deaf and unseeing,
to a closer, darker home than even their cloistered one. Some of them
have seen nothing beyond their convent walls for forty years, while one
has here worn away sixty years.

_Sixty years_ without one single glimpse of sweet dawn or fair
sunset, without one single vision of the sea in winter majesty of storm
or summer glory! _Sixty years_ without sound of lisping music
running through tall grass, without one single whisper of the æolian
pines, or glimpse of blooming orchards against pure skies! _Sixty