d the old gentleman appeared to be a man of position
and character, who was accustomed to be addressed, and not to make
advances. He walked with the two ladies towards a beautiful flower-bed,
and placed himself with his companions upon a seat. But the girl was
restless, and walking up and down along the edge of the meadow, she
gathered the hidden violets. The young man remained standing as if
rooted to the spot, staring at the stone steps which led up to the
cloister-door, as though he must find out what various destinies had
already gone in and out over them.

Meanwhile, the old gentleman said to his wife, "That elegant young man
appears to me to be a gambler, who has lost all his means at one of the
neighboring baths. Who knows but that he wants to borrow money of the
Lady Superior?" She laughed at her husband for being disposed to see
now, for the third time during this journey, a criminal or a ruined man
in the persons they chanced to meet.

"You may be right," said the old gentleman; "but that's the mischief of
these showy, establishments, that one supposes everybody he meets has
something to do with them. Besides, just as it happened with our
daughter--"

"What happened with me?" asked the girl from the meadow. "Why,"
continued the father, "how often, when walking behind you at the baths,
have I heard people say, 'What beautiful false hair!' no one now thinks
that there is anything genuine."

The girl laughed merrily to herself, and then adding a violet to the
nosegay on her bosom, called out, "And I believe the stranger is a
poet." "Why?" asked the mother. "Because a poet must be handsome like
him." The old gentleman laughed, and the mother said, "Child, you are
manufacturing a poet out of your own imagination; but, silence! let us
go, the portress is beckoning to us."

The convent door opened, and the visitors entered. Behind the second
grated door stood two nuns in black garments with hempen cords about
their waists. The taller nun, an old lady with an extraordinarily large
nose, told them that the Lady Superior was sorry not to be able to
receive any one; that it was the evening before her birth-day, and she
always remained, on that day, alone until sunset; that there was a
further difficulty in admitting strangers to-day, as the children--for
so she called the pupils--had prepared a spectacle with which to greet
the Superior after sun-down; that everything was in disorder to-day, as
a stage had been ere