News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1888-03-08
THE SILENT NUNS.
A Visit to the Convent of Bernard
ines-A Strange Order.
From the Pail Mall Gazette

[From the Pail Mall Gazettel
A correspondent in the south of France
sends description of visit he has
made to the convent of the Bernardines
at the village of Anglet, near Bayonne
After first calling at the neighboring
| convent of the Sister Servants of Mary
a community whose life is spent in labor
IN their own fields or in attending the
SICK and lndigent-the visitor passed
through a dark grove of pines to the gate
| of the Bernardines.
A notice begging him not to speak
above a whisper, meets him, and he
| passes down a long deserted, but we'll
kept garden, towards the long low range
OF buildings inhabited by the fifty nuns
vowed to silence. Arrived at the en-
trance, after some two or three soto
YOce attempts to be heard, with result
like the burlesque song of ''Shout, boys,
shout, but in a whisper, Sister Servant
Mary in her familiar uniform appears.
whispering that is her lot to act as
guide. From II 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-one at
least of whom is only twenty years of
age, and cannot take the full VOWS till
June-share the allotted portion of 81
lence and solicitude. Some few of the
nuns are living still who began their
cOnventual life nearly half a century ago
in straw huts on the bare sand.
A story is told of Empress Eugene,
who, having parted many years before
from a school friend in Madrid, learned
that the girl had taken refuge among
the Bernardines. People say that she
had been extremely beautiful, and it is
added that she had, when both were
young, crossed the Empress's path and
become her rival. The costume worn
by the Bernardines is designed to hide
the face and figure: q funnel-shaped
hood of coarse white flannel is drawn
over the head and eyes, and a short
mantle and full skirt of the same mate
rial conceals the figure. The Empress
obtained u 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 visitor tainted at the
sight that met her eyes. People hint
that lifelong scars and fearful mutila-
lions lurk under these shroud-like wells,
which are assumed as much in mercy to
the passersby as MOI tifcation to the
wearer. Two English children, who
gazed with awe-struck faces on the fig
ures in grave clothes which move
stealthily about the gardens on their
errands of mercy to plants and flowers, |
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, |
lstless and heavy step of these unhappy |
creatures it is easy to gather the state |
of their minds, which, if not altogether |
Respondent, must be utterly motionless |
and dazed.
When the order was first founded by |
the good Canon of Bayonne, who estab-
lished the whole community, handful |
of Sisters slept in rough cabins on the |
ground, and worshipped in a stunted |
chapel made of as'sort of trellis of sticks,
stuffed with straw. AS the community |
grew richer, the cells improved, till they |
took their present not ambitious form of |
a 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 an
chorites i'll the little cofin-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 year the sister
vowed to silence may hold intercourse
with her father and mother, but with no
other relation. Speech is also occasion
ally permitted with the superior, but
never between the nuns. Their needle
work, which is exposed for sale, is pain
full to see, because it betrays the dwarf
ed and crippled souls within. Some
wretched cardboard needle-books bear q
lumb and piteous prayer for the soil
5ary; others are tortured into the shape
IF collins, filled with little paper flowers.
Even the vigorous green plants standing
n q chapel so narrow that the walls
seem to close upon the intruder, are
strung with a kind Of coral in red wool,
is if all natural taste and healthy admi-
alton had vanished. To these solitary
beings, who never set foot beyond the
'hadowy plantations closing in their
neagre world, it may be that the walls
10 not fit so tightly, and that, by dint of
gazing at them and nothing else they
Tanish, and only the pious inscription,
'Dieu seuP' remains.