A month had passed away since the events we have described. One Sunday evening, after vespers, the Abbess of Sainte-Radegonde de Peyssac came forth last from the church at the end of the convent garden, now and then turning her tear-reddened eyes toward a dark thicket of yews and fir-trees, with such an expression of longing and regret that one would have said that her heart was in that spot and seeking to detain her there.

Before her, the nuns, veiled and silent, walking in single file along the path to the convent, seemed like a long procession of phantoms returning to the tomb, followed by another phantom who left the earth behind regretfully.

One by one the nuns disappeared beneath the sombre arches of the cloister; the superior followed them with her eyes until the last one had entered, then let them fall upon the capital of a Gothic column half buried in the grass, with an indescribable expression of hopeless despair.

"Oh, my God! my God!" said she, placing her hand on her heart, "thou art my witness that I cannot endure this life, of which I did not realize the true nature. I sought solitude and obscurity in the cloister, and not the constant scrutiny of all these curious eyes."

With that she raised her head, and took a step toward the little clump of firs.

"After all," said she, "what matters the world to me, since I have denied it? The world has done me naught but injury; society has been pitiless to me, and why should I concern myself with its opinions,—I, who have sought shelter with God, and depend upon him alone? But perhaps God frowns upon this love which lives on in my heart and consumes it. In that case, may he either tear it from my heart, or tear my heart from my body!"

But no sooner had the poor desperate creature pronounced these words than, casting her eyes upon the gown she wore, she was horrified at the thought of the blasphemy of which she had been guilty, so out of harmony was it with her saintly costume. With her thin white hand she wiped away the tears that glistened on her eyelids, and, raising her eyes to heaven, consecrated her life to everlasting suffering in a single look.

At that moment she heard a voice at her ear; it was the voice of the sister who kept the door of the convent.

"Madame," said she, "there is a woman in the parlor who wishes to be allowed to speak to you."

"Her name?"

"She refuses to tell it except to you."

"To what class in life does she seem to belong?99

"She seems a person of distinction."

"Still society, society!" murmured the abbess.

"What answer shall I give her?"

"That I await her coming."

"Where, madame?"

"Bring her hither; I will listen to her here in the garden, sitting upon this bench. I need the air; I stifle when I am indoors."

The portress withdrew, to reappear a moment later, followed by a woman whom it was easy to recognize as a woman of distinction by her garments, which were handsome, although of sombre hue.

She was rather below the average height; her rapid gait lacked something of nobility perhaps, but her presence exhaled an indescribable charm. She carried under her arm a little ivory casket, whose polished whiteness contrasted sharply with the black satin of her jet-trimmed dress.

"Madame," said the portress, "this is Madame la Supérieure."

The abbess lowered her veil, and turned toward the stranger, and as she saw that she kept her eyes turned upon the ground, and that she was deadly pale and trembling with emotion, she bestowed a kindly glance upon her, and said:—

"You expressed a wish to speak with me, and I am ready to listen to you, my sister."

"Madame," replied the stranger, "I have been so happy that in my pride I have thought that not even God himself could destroy my happiness. To-day God has breathed upon it, and I feel that I must weep and repent I have come to seek shelter here, so that my sobs may be stifled by the thick walls of your convent, and that my tears, which trace a furrow upon my cheeks, may not make me a laughing-stock to the world; so that God, who might seek me amid scenes of merry-making, would find me weeping in the sanctuary, and praying contritely at its altar."

"Your heart is deeply wounded, I can see, for I too know what it is to suffer," replied the young superior; "and in its agony the heart cannot clearly distinguish between what really is, and what it desires. If solitude, mortification of the flesh, and to do penance are what you need, my sister, come to us, and suffer with us; but if you seek a place where you can give vent freely to your grief and your despair, where no curious gaze will be fastened upon you, oh, madame! madame! fly from this place, and take refuge in your own room, where the world will see you much less than you will be seen here, and the hangings of your oratory will absorb the sound of your sobs much more effectively than the planks of our cells. And God, unless the enormity of your crimes has compelled him to turn his eyes away from you, will see you wherever you are."

The stranger raised her head, and gazed in profound amazement at the young abbess who talked in such an extraordinary strain.

"Why, madame," said she, "should not all who suffer seek the Lord's help; and is not your establishment a consecrated station upon the way to heaven?"

"There is but one path that leads to God, my sister," replied the nun, carried away by her despair. "What do you regret? For what do you weep? What do you desire? Society has turned a cold shoulder upon you, your friends are false to you, you lack money, or some transitory sorrow has made you a believer in everlasting misery; am I not right? You are suffering at this moment, and you fancy that you will suffer always thus, even as, when one sees an open wound, one fancies that it will never close. But you are mistaken; every wound that is not mortal will heal; so suffer on, and let your sorrow take its course; you will be cured, and then, if you are bound to us, suffering of another sort will begin; and that suffering will be in very truth unending, implacable, and past endurance. You will look out, through a barrier of brass, upon the world, to which you cannot return; then you will curse the day when the door of this holy hostelry, which you take for a station on the road to heaven, closed upon you. This that I say to you is not in strict accordance with our rules perhaps,—I have not been abbess long enough to know them thoroughly,—but 't is in strict accord with the feelings of my heart, and it is what I see every hour, not, in my own case, thank God! but all about me."

"Oh! no, no!" cried the stranger, "the world is at an end for me; I have lost everything that made the world attractive to me. No, madame, have no fear; I shall never regret it, never,—I am sure I shall never regret it!"

"Then the sorrow that afflicts you has a deeper source? Instead of an illusion have you lost a reality? Have you been separated forever from a husband, or child—or from a friend? Ah! then I pity you with all my heart, madame, for your heart is pierced from side to side and your wound is incurable. In that case, come to us, madame; the Lord will comfort you; he will replace the friends or kindred you may have lost with us, who form one large family, a flock of which he is the shepherd; and," added the abbess in a lower tone, "if he does not comfort you, which is quite possible, there will remain to you the last poor consolation of weeping with me, who came hither like yourself, in quest of comfort, but have not yet found it here."

"Alas!" c............