tions in the chapel are interminable. As for the
number and duration of their prayers we can convey no better idea of
them than by quoting the ingenuous remark of one of them: "The prayers
of the postulants are frightful, the prayers of the novices are still
worse, and the prayers of the professed nuns are still worse."

Once a week the chapter assembles: the prioress presides; the vocal
mothers assist. Each sister kneels in turn on the stones, and confesses
aloud, in the presence of all, the faults and sins which she has
committed during the week. The vocal mothers consult after each
confession and inflict the penance aloud.

Besides this confession in a loud tone, for which all faults in the
least serious are reserved, they have for their venial offences what
they call the coulpe. To make one's coulpe means to prostrate one's self
flat on one's face during the office in front of the prioress until
the latter, who is never called anything but our mother, notifies the
culprit by a slight tap of her foot against the wood of her stall that
she can rise. The coulpe or peccavi, is made for a very small matter--a
broken glass, a torn veil, an involuntary delay of a few seconds at an
office, a false note in church, etc.; this suffices, and the coulpe
is made. The coulpe is entirely spontaneous; it is the culpable person
herself (the word is etymologically in its place here) who judges
herself and inflicts it on herself. On festival days and Sundays four
mother precentors intone the offices before a large reading-desk with
four places. One day one of the mother precentors intoned a psalm
beginning with Ecce, and instead of Ecce she uttered aloud the three
notes do si sol; for this piece of absent-mindedness she underwent a
coulpe which lasted during the whole service: what rendered the fault
enormous was the fact that the chapter had laughed.

When a nun is summoned to the parlor, even were it the prioress herself,
she drops her veil, as will be remembered, so that only her mouth is
visible.

The prioress alone can hold communication with strangers. The others can
see only their immediate family, and that very rarely. If, by chance,
an outsider presents herself to see a nun, or one whom she has known and
loved in the outer world, a regular series of negotiations is required.
If it is a woman, the authorization may sometimes be granted; the nun
comes, and they talk to her through the shutters, which are opened only
for a mo