Morning journal and courier., 1888-02-23
sILEnT NUNS.
A Visit to the Convent of Bernardines-
A SingGlarlY Strange order.
[Erom the Pail Mall Gazette

A Visit to the Convent of Rernardfnes-
A singGlarly Strange order.
From the Pail Mall GszetteI
A correspondent in the south of France
sends description of a visit he has made to
the convent of the Bernardines at the viii
lage 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 INDECENT
the visitor passed through dark grove of
pines to the gate of the Bernardines.
A notice begging him not to speak above
whisper meets him, and he passes down a
long deserted, but well kept garden, towards
the long, low range of buildings inhabited
by the fifty nuns vowed to silence. Arrived
at the entrance, after Some two or three soto
vsce attempts to be heard, with result like
the burlesaue song of 'Shout, boys, shout,
but in whisper" Sister Servant of Mary
in her familiar uniform appears, whispering
that it is her lot to act guide. From
twelve 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 ereatures-one at least
of whom is only twenty years of age and
cannot take the full VOWS till June-share
the allotted portion of silence and solitude.
Some few of the nuns are living still who
began their conventual life nearly half CEN
fury ago in straw huts on the bare sand.
A story is told of the Empress Eugene,
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 had been extremely
beautiful and it is added that she had, when
both were young, crossed the empress path
=, TI,o
by the Bernardines is designed to hide the
face and figure; funnel-shaped hood of
coarse white flannel is drawn over the head
and eyes, and short mantle and full skirt
of the same material conceals the figure.
The empress obtained dispersation 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 mot her eyes. People hint that lifelong
sears and fearful mutilations Turk under these
shroud-like wells, which are assumed as
much in mercy to the passers~by as morti-
fication to the wearer. Two English chill
dren, 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 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, 1istless and heavy step of these
happy creatures it is easy to gather the state
of their minds, which, if not altogether de-
spondent, must be utterly motionless and
dazed.
When the order was first founded by the
good Canon of Bayonne, who established the
whole community, handful # Sisters slept
in rough cabins on the ground, and wor-
shipped in a stunted chapel made of sort
of trellis of sticks stuffed with straw. AS
the community grew richer the cells i'm
proved, till they took their present not am
bilious form of a low range of stable build
ings, each cell being but little larger than a
horses stall, Here the words "God only"
meet the eye, coarse1y printed on white; and
in every cell tenanted by these poor anchor
ties in 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 per.
haps' as two cells; and here once a year the
sister vowed to silence may hold intercourse
with her father and mother, but with no
other relation. Speech is also occasionally
permitted with the superior, but never be-
tween the nuns. Their needlework, which
is exposed for sale, is painful to see, because
it betrays the dwarfed and crippled souls
within. Some wretched cardboard needle
books bear dumb and piteous prayer for
the solitary; others are tortured into the
shape of collins, filed with little paper
flowers. Even the vigorous green plants
standing in chapel so narrow that the walls
seem to close upon the intruder 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 planta-
tions closing in their meagre world, it may
be that the walls do not fit go tightly, and
that by dint of gazing at them and at moth
ing else they vanish. and only the pious in
scription "Dieu seul' remains.