1.C.6.3. AUSTERITIES
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 Belissen,
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-Benoit
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.