Los Angeles daily herald., 1888-03-01

Marble. Albert Beverley, F. J. Moll,
Jr., H. Burton, E. F. Kubel, H.
Jay Hanchette, DR.. E. M. Geiffith,
H. /. Rodman, E. G. Daley, M. ].
Waldheimer, Louis Gottschalk and
G. E. Day. A vote of thanks was
unanimously rendered to Justice
Austin for the use Of the Courtroom.
SILENT NUNS.
A Visit to the Strange Convent Of
Bernardines.
A correspondent in the south of
France sends a description of the
visit he made to the convent of the
Bernardines at the village of Anglet,
near Bayonne. After first calling at
the convent Of the Sister Servants of
Mary, community whose life is
spent in labor in their own fields, or
in attending the sick and INDECENT
the visitor passed through dark grove
OF pines to the gate Of the Bernartiines.
A notice begging him not to speak
above whisper meets him, and he
passes down long deserted, but
we'll kept garden, toward the long
low range Of buildings inhabited by
the fifty nuns vowed to silence. Ar
rived at the entrance, after some two
or three soto voce attempts to be
heard with result like the burlesque
song of "Shout, Boys, Shout, but in a
Whisper" Sister Servant Of Mary
in her familiar uniform appears,
whispering that it is her lot to act
as guide. From IL o'clock each
day she is on duty, and as the
Bernardines are not permitted by
their vows to speak, and become, of
necessity, shy, timorous and strange,
without some such conductor little
could be known of these sad lives.
What their crimes are there is no one
to say. Fifty human creatures
at least of whom is only 20 years of
age, and cannot take the full vows ill
June-share the allotted portion of
silence and solitude. Some few of
the nuns are living still who began
their conventual life nearly half
century ago in straw huts on the bare
sand.
A story is told of the Empress Eu-
gene, who, having parted many
years before from school friend in
Madrid, learned that the girl had
taken refuge among the Bernardines.
People say that she was extremely
beautiful, and it is added that she,
when both were young, crossed the
Empress path and became her rival.
The costumes worn by the Bernar-
dimes is designed to hide the face and
figure; funnel-shaped hood of
coarse white flannel is drawn over the
head and eyes, and a short mantle
and full skirt of the same material
conceals the figure. The En-
press obtained a dispensation from
the Pope to speak to her friend face
to face; but it is said that when the
nun threw off her hood her royal visi-
trr tainted at the sight that met her
eyes. People hint that lifelong scars
and fearful mutilations lurk under
these shroud-like wells, which are as
sumed as much in mercy to the
passers-by as a modification to the
wearer. Two English children, who
gazed with awe-struck faces on the
figures in grave-clothes which move
stealthily about the gardens on their
errands Of mercy to plants and flow
ers, were heard to raise the question
whether the nuns are dead before
they are buried, or buried before they
are dead-a point which it would
truly be hard to solve. There is in
the movement of walking so much
character, that from the detected,
listless and heavy step of these unhap-
py creatures it is easy to gather. the
state of their minds, which, if not al
together respondent, must be utterly
motionless and dazed.
When the order was first founded
by the good Canon of Bayonne, who
established the whole community, a
handful of sisters slept in rough cab.
ins on the ground and worshiped in
stunted chapel made of sort of trellis
of sticks stuffed withsstraw. AS the
community grew richer, the cell inn
proved till they took their present not
ambitious form of low range of
stable buildings, each cell being
but little larger than horses
stall. Here the words "God
only' meet the eye,. coarsely
printed on white, and in every cell
tenanted by these poor anchorites,
in the little coffin-like chapel in
which they pray, these words stamp
themselves on the mind. The parlor
which bears the same legends
square wooden box as large, perhaps,
as two cells, and here once a year the
sister vowed to silence may hold in
tercourse with her father and mother,
but with no other relation. Speech
is also occasionally permitted with
the superior, but never between the
nuns. Their needlework, which is
exposed for sale, is painful to see be-
cause it betrays the dwarfed and Grip
pied souls within. Some wretched
cardboard needle-books bear dumb
and piteous prayer for the solitary:
others are tortured into the shape of
cofiins, filed with little paper flowers.
Even the vigorous green plants
standing in chapel so narrow that
the walls seem to close upon the in
truder, are strung with kind Of
coral in red wool, as if all natural
taste and healthy admiration had
vanished. To these solitary beings,
who never set foot beyond the
shadowy plantations closing in their
meager world it may be that the walls
do not fit SO tightly and that, by dint
Of gazing at them and at nothing else
they vanish, and only the pious in
scription "Dieu seul" remains.-[ Pail
Mall Gazette.
The CObblerss Song.
"l'll put new soles ON these wornout shoes
That will never crack or break"
And the cobbler laughed as he carved the