says all the year, but
this drugget chemise, intolerable in the heat of summer, produced fevers
and nervous spasms. The use of it had to be restricted. Even with this
palliation, when the nuns put on this chemise on the 14th of September,
they suffer from fever for three or four days. Obedience, poverty,
chastity, perseverance in their seclusion,--these are their vows, which
the rule greatly aggravates.

The prioress is elected for three years by the mothers, who are called
meres vocales because they have a voice in the chapter. A prioress can
only be re-elected twice, which fixes the longest possible reign of a
prioress at nine years.

They never see the officiating priest, who is always hidden from them
by a serge curtain nine feet in height. During the sermon, when the
preacher is in the chapel, they drop their veils over their faces. They
must always speak low, walk with their eyes on the ground and their
heads bowed. One man only is allowed to enter the convent,--the
archbishop of the diocese.

There is really one other,--the gardener. But he is always an old man,
and, in order that he may always be alone in the garden, and that the
nuns may be warned to avoid him, a bell is attached to his knee.

Their submission to the prioress is absolute and passive. It is the
canonical subjection in the full force of its abnegation. As at the
voice of Christ, ut voci Christi, at a gesture, at the first sign,
ad nutum, ad primum signum, immediately, with cheerfulness, with
perseverance, with a certain blind obedience, prompte, hilariter,
perseveranter et caeca quadam obedientia, as the file in the hand of the
workman, quasi limam in manibus fabri, without power to read or to write
without express permission, legere vel scribere non addiscerit sine
expressa superioris licentia.

Each one of them in turn makes what they call reparation. The reparation
is the prayer for all the sins, for all the faults, for all the
dissensions, for all the violations, for all the iniquities, for all the
crimes committed on earth. For the space of twelve consecutive hours,
from four o'clock in the afternoon till four o'clock in the morning, or
from four o'clock in the morning until four o'clock in the afternoon,
the sister who is making reparation remains on her knees on the stone
before the Holy Sacrament, with hands clasped, a rope around her neck.
When her fatigue becomes unendurable, she prostrates herself flat on
her face against the ea