y of the invalid, treated her patients abruptly, roughly, was
crabbed with the dying, almost flung God in their faces, stoned their
death agony with prayers mumbled in a rage; was bold, honest, and ruddy.

Sister Simplice was white, with a waxen pallor. Beside Sister Perpetue,
she was the taper beside the candle. Vincent de Paul has divinely traced
the features of the Sister of Charity in these admirable words, in which
he mingles as much freedom as servitude: "They shall have for their
convent only the house of the sick; for cell only a hired room; for
chapel only their parish church; for cloister only the streets of the
town and the wards of the hospitals; for enclosure only obedience; for
gratings only the fear of God; for veil only modesty." This ideal was
realized in the living person of Sister Simplice: she had never been
young, and it seemed as though she would never grow old. No one could
have told Sister Simplice's age. She was a person--we dare not say a
woman--who was gentle, austere, well-bred, cold, and who had never lied.
She was so gentle that she appeared fragile; but she was more solid than
granite. She touched the unhappy with fingers that were charmingly pure
and fine. There was, so to speak, silence in her speech; she said just
what was necessary, and she possessed a tone of voice which would
have equally edified a confessional or enchanted a drawing-room. This
delicacy accommodated itself to the serge gown, finding in this harsh
contact a continual reminder of heaven and of God. Let us emphasize
one detail. Never to have lied, never to have said, for any interest
whatever, even in indifference, any single thing which was not the
truth, the sacred truth, was Sister Simplice's distinctive trait; it was
the accent of her virtue. She was almost renowned in the congregation
for this imperturbable veracity. The Abbe Sicard speaks of Sister
Simplice in a letter to the deaf-mute Massieu. However pure and sincere
we may be, we all bear upon our candor the crack of the little, innocent
lie. She did not. Little lie, innocent lie--does such a thing exist? To
lie is the absolute form of evil. To lie a little is not possible: he
who lies, lies the whole lie. To lie is the very face of the demon.
Satan has two names; he is called Satan and Lying. That is what she
thought; and as she thought, so she did. The result was the whiteness
which we have mentioned--a whiteness which covered even her lips and her
eyes with r