CHAPTER I.

THE OLD CONVENT.

IF one thought anything of omens (which I do not in general, though I confess I would rather not see the new moon through glass) I might think it a bad one that my first distinct recollection is of a fall. It happened in this wise: I was sitting on the edge of the great fountain basin, eating a bit of spice cake, and watching some vernons—so they call the little wild canaries in that part of the world—which were flying in and out of the great ivy on the north wall, where I suppose they had young ones. In my interest in the birds, I forgot that my perch was both narrow and slippery. I leaned backward, the better to obtain a view of the bird's nest, which I could but just see, and so doing I lost my balance, and down I went into the water.

Luckily for me, there was help at hand, for the basin was deep and I was small. Mother Prudentia was just coming for water, and pulled me out before I had time to scream more than once. If I had seen her so near, I should not have been sitting there, for the thing was strictly forbidden. But she pulled me out and carried me to the dormitory, where I was quickly undressed and well scolded at the same time, and popped into bed.

I spent the rest of the day dully enough, but a little consoled by the gift of a second piece of spice cake and the company of my doll, which the good mother's relenting heart allowed me, after I had sobbingly confessed that I was very sorry, and would never do so again. I think she would even have let me get up but for the fear of my taking cold and having consumption. Mother Prudentia was fully convinced that all English women died of consumption, sooner or later.

To this day, the smell of a bit of fresh spice cake will bring that whole scene before my eyes. I can see the arched cloisters surrounding the paved court, with the old fountain well in the centre. I can look through the great pointed doorway and see a second court, with a tall cross in the centre surrounded by low grassy mounds, where generation after generation of the sisters rested in peace. I can smell the odor of the roses which grew so luxuriantly in the corner by the little postern door which led into the church, and the wild lavender and the rosemary, which had sprung up in those places—alas, very many—where the marble pavement had gone to decay, or the cloister walls and arches were in ruins. I can feel the very brooding, yet not stifling heat of the summer day in June, and breathe the air smelling not only of the aromatic herbs which so abound in that country, but also of the fresh breath of the sea.

I may say this association was the beginning of these memoirs. For as I was speaking of it to my dear Lady the last time she came to visit me, she thought a little, and said she to me:

"Lucy, why don't you write out the recollections of those days? They would be interesting to the children, by and by. You are a Corbet on both sides, and you know the Corbets have always been famous for writing chronicles. Come, take pen in hand, and have something to read me when I come again."

"And what is to become of my children's lessons and clothes?" I asked.

"Let the children mend their own clothes. It will be all the better for them, and you have no need to be doing such work at all. Anne Penberthy ought to take all that off your hands."

"And so she does," I answered, seeing that, by making use of the first excuse that came to hand, I had given Amabel a false impression. "Anne is a good girl and a faithful, if one ever lived; but I must have something to do when I sit down, and I tire of knitting, after a while."

"Well, then, try writing, for a change," said my Lady, smiling; and then she began to talk of one of the girls who had fallen and hurt her knee (it was Bridget Polwarth, of course—trust her for that, poor child!), and no more was said at that time.

But when evening was come, and the children were all abed, except two or three of the elder ones, to whom Anne was diligently reading a new book which my Lady brought down to us, then I began to think of what my Lady had said that morning. I had plenty of time, and my eyes are very good, so that I really hardly need glasses at all, except to do fine darning and the like. I have had an uncommonly good education (though I say it that shouldn't, perhaps), and I have passed, with my dear Lady, through many strange chances and changes in this mortal life. Why should I not write all these things down for the benefit of my Lady's children? And so it has come to pass that I have really taken pen in hand and begun this memoir, if it deserves so grand a name.

My first clear recollections are of the convent in Provence, where I was bred with Mrs. Amabel Leighton till I was about sixteen years old. The convent had once been a very wealthy establishment; and I have heard that, in the early days of Louis Fourteenth, the abbess used to entertain company in princely style, with more of magnificence and luxury than any of the gentry round about, and, in fact, with more than at all befitted a religious house.

But there was nothing of that sort done in my day. The means were wanting, even if our good mother had cherished any such desires. I am sure she did not, though, doubtless, she would have liked to have new hangings for the church, to repair the cloisters, and make the refectory at least weather-proof, and perhaps to mend our cheer a little on feast days. But the resources were hardly large enough at that time to furnish us with food and clothes, and so all these things remained undone. However, the elders of the house consoled themselves with the thought that they suffered for righteousness' sake, and were laying up merit thereby, and the young ones were happy in their youth; so we were a very cheerful household, after all.

Our foundation was one of those numerous offshoots from one of the great orders, which, under different names, are found all over Europe, and, as I said, had at one time enjoyed a princely revenue, of which the best use had not always been made. The convent was, in some way which I do not understand, a kind of dependency of the neighboring noble family of Crequi, and was a very convenient place wherein to bestow unmarried and portionless sisters, plain daughters, or those to whom it was not convenient to give large dowries, and other inconvenient female relations.

The abbess—such was her rank—had her carriage and the ladies their servants, and they were by no means particular about keeping their enclosure, as it is called, but visited and were visited themselves as long and as often as they pleased. I heard all the story many a time from Mother Prudentia, who had learned it, in her turn, from a very old nun, who well remembered those days.

But presently there came a wonderful change. The famous Mother Angelique was made abbess of Port Royal when hardly twelve years old, and was converted afterward by the preaching of a wandering friar, himself a very bad man, which shows how good may sometimes be done even by wicked men. No sooner did the Mother Angelique become really religious herself than she set about reforming her house. The nuns, for the most part, seconded her with enthusiasm. No more gay visitors were admitted. No more feasts were given or fine clothes worn. No more worldly songs were heard. Instead one saw nothing but religious ceremonies, works of charity, instructing and clothing of poor children, and the like. Hours of silence were multiplied and strictly observed, as were also the church services.

This change of affairs was greatly admired in some quarters, and as severely condemned in others. Mother Angelique went about the country visiting the different houses of the order and ours among the number. Our own abbess was a young lady of that same noble family of Crequi, and at that time about four and twenty.

"She was as beautiful as an angel, so Mother Benedict used to say, and greatly admired," (I quote Mother Prudentia's own words), "but she never seemed happy in all her gaiety, and, even at its height, she would pass whole nights watching and weeping in the church, or in her own private chapel. Some said she had been in love with a poor young cousin, who disappeared, nobody knew exactly how, though every one might guess; and the lady being offered her choice of the cloister or a gay courtly bridegroom, chose the first." And then, if she were in a very confidential mood, Mother Prudentia's voice would sink to a whisper, as she told how the poor young man was believed to have been put to death by his own relations at a spot in the chase where no grass or flowers ever sprung afterward.

However that might be, the abbess hailed Mother Angelique as though she had been an angel from Heaven. They spent long hours closeted together or pacing up and down the cloistered walk which runs along the side of the cemetery. There was a change in the house as sudden as that at Port Royal. The carriages and horses were sold, all superfluous servants dismissed, and the fare reduced to the plainest sort. No more visits were made outside the walls and none received, except at the regular times when the sisters were allowed to talk with their friends through the grate in the parlors, in proper convent fashion.

Mother Prudentia said that most of the younger nuns fell into these new ways easily enough, and were as enthusiastic as the abbess herself, so that they had to be checked, rather than urged; but the elder women were not so pliant. They liked their amusements, their good dinners and suppers, and their gossip with visitors from outside; and the abbess ran some risk of being murdered in her own house. Indeed, it was believed that a severe illness which befell the lady about that time was the effect of poison administered by a certain Italian nun who was the most bitterly opposed to the new state of things.

For a while everything prospered. The Abbess was determined, and seemed to have a real genius for government. She lived to see all her measures carried out, and was succeeded by a spiritual daughter of Mother Angelique's, who had been sent, with two or three others, to assist in the work of reformation. The great revenues were used in maintaining schools, in assisting the poor, and in establishing and endowing a second house of our order in Toulon, to which daughters of trades-people and the like were admitted; for none but ladies of noble birth were allowed to renounce the world at our house. From all I can hear, the abbess and her successor were true Christian women according to their lights, and so, I am sure, were our own dear lady and most of the family in my day.

But troublous times were at hand. The Port Royalists, or Jansenists, as they came to be called, got into difficulty with the government and with the Jesuits, who carried things with a high hand in France, as, indeed, they do still, by all accounts. The whole family of the Mother Angelique, with all who adhered to them, were pronounced heretical, disobedient to the Pope, and altogether reprobate, and various bulls and proclamations were issued against them by Pope and archbishop, king and council.

Our house suffered with the rest, for the sake of the opinions which they refused to renounce. Their revenues were pillaged, their lands confiscated, their old priest and confessor was thrown into prison, where he died; and though the sisters were allowed to retain possession of their house and garden and enough land to raise a little corn and oil and to pasture a few cows and sheep, it was rather on sufferance and because they were under the protection of that same noble family of Crequi, which happened to be in high favor at court.

Such was the state of things in my day. The house was almost ruinous, and the vineyard, the olive orchard, and all together, furnished us with a scanty subsistence. True, we children and the young novices always had enough to eat, such as it was; but I fancy the Abbess and the elder nuns kept more fasts than were in the calendar, while their robes bore the marks of much careful mending and darning. Be this as it might, I never heard a complaint. The good ladies were as cheerful as possible, and in their hours of recreation would laugh and frolic like school girls. They had formerly taught a little school for the children of the neighboring village, and a few still came, almost by stealth, to receive instruction in religion and needlework, and such other things as were considered fit for them. We were not permitted to mix with these children; but we knew them all by sight, and we were allowed to make little presents for them, such as pincushions, caps, and aprons.

As I remember it now, I believe the ladies lived in perpetual expectation of being turned out on the world or shut up in convents of some other order; but they did not allow their fear to hinder them in the discharge of their duties, or what they believed to be such. How many times I have wished that these poor souls could have come under the influence of such preachers and teachers as we have had of late years in England. What a difference would the doctrines of free grace and salvation have made in their lives.

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