head. He had leant his face on his hands, unable at first to

bear the intolerableemotion that surged like a whirlpool in his
heart, when that well-known voice vibrated under the arcading,

with the sound of the sea for accompaniment.
Storm was without, and calm within the sanctuary. Still that

rich voice poured out all its caressing notes; it fell like balm
on the lover's burning heart; it blossomed upon the air--the air

that a man would fain breathe more deeply to receive the
effluence of a soul breathed forth with love in the words of the

prayer. The alcalde coming to join his guest found him in tears
during the elevation, while the nun was singing, and brought him

back to his house. Surprised to find so much piety in a French
military man, the worthy magistrate invited the confessor of the

convent to meet his guest. Never had news given the General more
pleasure; he paid the ecclesiastic a good deal of attention at

supper, and confirmed his Spanish hosts in the high opinion they
had formed of his piety by a not wholly disinterested respect.

He enquired with gravity how many sisters there were in the
convent, and asked for particulars of its endowment and revenues,

as if from courtesy he wished to hear the good priest discourse
on the subject most interesting to him. He informed himself as

to the manner of life led by the holy women. Were they allowed
to go out of the convent, or to see visitors?

"Senor," replied the venerablechurchman, "the rule is strict.
A woman cannot enter a monastery of the order of St. Bruno

without a special permission from His Holiness, and the rule here
is equally stringent. No man may enter a convent of Barefoot

Carmelites unless he is a priestspecially attached to the
services of the house by the Archbishop. None of the nuns may

leave the convent; though the great Saint, St. Theresa, often
left her cell. The Visitor or the Mothers Superior can alone

give permission, subject to an authorisation from the Archbishop,
for a nun to see a visitor, and then especially in a case of

illness. Now we are one of the principal houses, and
consequently we have a Mother Superior here. Among other foreign

sisters there is one Frenchwoman, Sister Theresa; she it is who
directs the music in the chapel."

"Oh!" said the General, with feigned surprise. "She must have
rejoiced over the victory of the House of Bourbon."

"I told them the reason of the mass; they are always a little
bit inquisitive."

"But Sister Theresa may have interests in France. Perhaps she
would like to send some message or to hear news."

"I do not think so. She would have come to ask me."
"As a fellow-countryman, I should be quite curious to see her,"

said the General. "If it is possible, if the Lady Superior
consents, if----"

"Even at the grating and in the Reverend Mother's presence, an
interview would be quite impossible for anybody whatsoever; but,

strict as the Mother is, for a deliverer of our holy religion and
the throne of his Catholic Majesty, the rule might be relaxed for

a moment," said the confessor, blinking. "I will speak about
it."

"How old is Sister Theresa?" enquired the lover. He dared not
ask any questions of the priest as to the nun's beauty.

"She does not reckon years now," the good man answered, with a
simplicity that made the General shudder.

Next day before siesta, the confessor came to inform the French
General that Sister Theresa and the Mother consented to receive

him at the grating in the parlour before vespers. The General
spent the siesta in pacing to and fro along the quay in the

noonday heat. Thither the priest came to find him, and brought
him to the convent by way of the gallery round the cemetery.

Fountains, green trees, and rows of arcading maintained a cool
freshness in keeping with the place.

At the further end of the long gallery the priest led the way
into a large room divided in two by a grating covered with a

brown curtain. In the first, and in some sort of public half of
the apartment, where the confessor left the newcomer, a wooden

bench ran round the wall, and two or three chairs, also of wood,
were placed near the grating. The ceiling consisted of bare

unornamented joists and cross-beams of ilex wood. As the two
windows were both on the inner side of the grating, and the dark

surface of the wood was a bad reflector, the light in the place
was so dim that you could scarcely see the great black crucifix,

the portrait of Saint Theresa, and a picture of the Madonna which
adorned the grey parlour walls. Tumultuous as the General's

feelings were, they took something of the melancholy of the
place. He grew calm in that homely quiet. A sense of something

vast as the tomb took possession of him beneath the chill
unceiled roof. Here, as in the grave, was there not eternal

silence, deep peace--the sense of the Infinite? And besides this
there was the quiet and the fixed thought of the cloister--a

thought which you felt like a subtle presence in the air, and in
the dim dusk of the room; an all-pervasive thought nowhere

definitely expressed, and looming the larger in the imagination;
for in the cloister the great saying, "Peace in the Lord,"

enters the least religious soul as a living force.
The monk's life is scarcely comprehensible. A man seems

confessed a weakling in a monastery; he was born to act, to live
out a life of work; he is evading a man's destiny in his cell.

But what man's strength, blended with patheticweakness, is
implied by a woman's choice of the convent life! A man may have

any number of motives for burying himself in a monastery; for him
it is the leap over the precipice. A woman has but one

motive--she is a woman still; she betrothes herself to a Heavenly
Bridegroom. Of the monk you may ask, "Why did you not fight

your battle?" But if a woman immures herself in the cloister,
is there not always a sublime battle fought first?

At length it seemed to the General that that still room, and the
lonely convent in the sea, were full of thoughts of him. Love

seldom attains to solemnity" target="_blank" title="n.庄严；(隆重的)仪式">solemnity; yet surely a love still faithful in
the breast of God was something solemn, something more than a man

had a right to look for as things are in this nineteenth century?
The infinitegrandeur of the situation might well produce an

effect upon the General's mind; he had precisely enough elevation
of soul to forget politics, honours, Spain, and society in Paris,

and to rise to the height of this lofty climax. And what in
truth could be more tragic? How much must pass in the souls of

these two lovers, brought together in a place of strangers, on a
ledge of granite in the sea; yet held apart by an intangible,

unsurmountable barrier! Try to imagine the man saying within
himself, "Shall I triumph over God in her heart?" when a faint

rustling sound made him quiver, and the curtain was drawn aside.
Between him and the light stood a woman. Her face was hidden by

the veil that drooped from the folds upon her head; she was
dressed according to the rule of the order in a gown of the

colour become proverbial. Her bare feet were hidden; if the
General could have seen them, he would have known how appallingly

thin she had grown; and yet in spite of the thick folds of her
coarse gown, a mere covering and no ornament, he could guess how

tears, and prayer, and passion, and loneliness had wasted the
woman before him.

An ice-cold hand, belonging, no doubt, to the Mother Superior,
held back the curtain. The General gave the enforced witness of

their interview a searching glance, and met the dark, inscrutable
gaze of an aged recluse. The Mother might have been a century

old, but the bright, youthful eyes belied the wrinkles that
furrowed her pale face.

"Mme la Duchesse," he began, his voice shaken with emotion,
"does your companion understand French?" The veiled figure

bowed her head at the sound of his voice.
"There is no duchess here," she replied. "It is Sister

Theresa whom you see before you. She whom you call my companion
is my mother in God, my superior here on earth."

The words were so meeklyspoken by the voice that sounded in