Moselle; pallid hill-sides blooming with mystic roses where the
glow of the setting sun still lingered upon them; an arch of
clearest, faintest azure bending overhead; in the center of the
aerial landscape of the massive walls of the cloister of Pfalzel,
gray to the east, purple to the west; silence over all,--a
gentle, eager, conscious stillness, diffused through the air like
perfume, as if earth and sky were hushing themselves to hear the
voice of the river faintly murmuring down the valley.

In the cloister, too, there was silence at the sunset hour. All
day long there had been a strange and joyful stir among the nuns.
A breeze of curiosity and excitement had swept along the
corridors and through every quiet cell.

The elder sisters,--the provost, the deaconess, the stewardess,
the portress with her huge bunch of keys jingling at her
girdle,--had been hurrying to and fro, busied with household
cares. In the huge kitchen there was a bustle of hospitable
preparation. The little bandy-legged dogs that kept the spits
turning before the fires had been trotting steadily for many an
hour, until their tongues hung out for want of breath. The big
black pots swinging from the cranes had bubbled and gurgled and
shaken and sent out puffs of appetizing steam.

St. Martha was in her element. It was a field-day for her
virtues.

The younger sisters, the pupils of the convent, had forsaken
their Latin books and their embroidery-frames, their manuscripts
and their miniatures, and fluttered through the halls in little