In the centre of the front, or northern, face, stood the chapel, a beautiful little Gothic temple, surmounted by a steeple and a gilded cross; on each hand, in a line with the chapel, stood the buildings containing the cloisters, dormitories, and refectories of the nuns and novices.

On the east front stood the Foundling for abandoned infants; the Asylum for orphan boys and girls, and the Home for aged men and women.

On the south end were the offices, kitchens, laundries, store-houses, gas-house, and so forth, for the whole establishment.

Finally, on the west front, farthest removed from the asylums, were the academy buildings, containing school and cla.s.s-rooms, dormitories and refectory for the accommodation of pupils.

It was in these west buildings that Salome had lived and learned during the years she had spent at the Convent of St. Rosalie. She had never entered any other part of the establishment except the chapel, and on the north front, which was reached by a long pa.s.sage running with an angle from the school-hall to the chapel aisle.

The square courtyard within the enclosure of these buildings was paved with gray flag-stones, and adorned in the centre by a marble fountain.

But no footstep ever crossed it except that of some lay sister occasionally sent from the cloisters to the office, on some household errand. So no opportunity was afforded of making the courtyard a place of meeting between the "young ladies" of the academy and the poor little children of the asylums.

The academy opened from its front upon its own gardens, lawns, shrubberies, and other pleasure-grounds, the resort of its pupils during their hours of recreation.

Thus Salome Levison, with all her school-mates, had been completely cut off from all intercourse with the objects of the convent's charity during the whole period of her residence at the academy, which, indeed, covered the greater portion of her young life.

Now, however, since her return to the convent, she had been domiciliated in the nun's house on the right of the chapel, and possessed, if she pleased to exercise it, the freedom of the establishment.

On the Sat.u.r.day before Christmas (which would also come on Sat.u.r.day that year) the abbess went into the room occupied by her invalid guest.

Salome was seated in the white easy-chair beside the window, and near the porcelain stove. She was dressed in a deep mourning wrapper of black bombazine, and an inside handkerchief and undersleeves of white linen.

Her pallid face and plain hair, and the severe, funereal black and white of her surroundings, made a very ghastly picture altogether.

The Sister Francoise sat there in attendance on her.

The mother-superior dismissed the nun, took her vacated seat, and looked in the face of her guest.

Salome seemed utterly unconscious of the superior's presence. She sat with her hands clasped upon her lap and her eyes fixed upon the floor.

"Salome, my daughter, how is it with you?" softly inquired the abbess, taking one of the limp, thin hands within her own, and tenderly pressing it.

"I am the queen of sorrow, crowned and frozen on my desert throne,"

murmured the girl, in a trance-like abstraction.

"Salome, my child!" said the mother-superior, gazing anxiously into her stony face, whose eyes had never moved from their fixed stare; "Salome, my dear daughter, look at me."

"'I am the star of sorrow, pale and lonely in the wintry sky.'"

"My poor girl, what do you mean?"

"I read that somewhere, long ago,--oh, so long ago, when I was a happy child, and yet I wept then for that solitary mourner as I am not able to weep now for myself, though it suits me just as much," murmured Salome, in the same trance-like manner, still staring on the floor, as she continued:

"Yes, just as much, just as much, for--

"Never was lament begun By any mourner under sun That e'en it ended fit but one!"

"Salome, look at me, speak to me, my dear daughter," said the abbess, tenderly pressing her hand, and seeking to catch her fixed and staring eyes.

Salome slowly raised those woeful eyes to the lady's face, and asked:

"Mother, good mother, did you ever know any one in all your life so heavily stricken as I am?"

The abbess put her arms around the young girl and drew her head down upon her own pitying bosom, as she replied:

"Have I ever known one so heavily stricken as you? My child, I cannot tell. 'The heart knoweth its _own_ bitterness,' and one cannot weigh the grief of another. Salome, you have been heavily smitten; but so have many others. Daughter! I never do speak of my own sorrows. They are past, and 'they come not back again.' But I think it might do you good to hear of them now. Child! like _you_, I never knew a mother's love; but there were three beings in the world whom I loved, as _you_ love, with inordinate and idolatrous affection. They were my n.o.ble father, my only brother, and my affianced husband. Salome, in the Revolution of '48, my father was a.s.sa.s.sinated in the streets of Paris, as yours was in his chamber at Lone. My brother, true as steel to his sovereign, was guillotined as a traitor to the Republican party. Last, and hardest to bear, my affianced lover--he on whom my soul was stayed in all my troubles, as if any one weak mortal could be a lasting stay to another in her utmost need--my affianced lover, false to me as yours to you, was shot and killed in a duel by the lover, or husband, of a woman, for whom he had left his promised bride! Daughter, did I ever know any one who was so heavily stricken as yourself?" gravely inquired the abbess, laying her hand upon the bowed head of her guest.

"Oh, yes, good mother, you have," murmured the weeping girl, in a voice full of tears. "Your fate has been very like my own--you, like me, were motherless from your infancy; you, like me, spent your childhood and youth in this very convent school. Your father, like mine, met his death at the hands of an a.s.sa.s.sin; your lover, false as mine, abandoned you for a guilty love. Ah! your sorrows have been very like mine, only much heavier and harder to bear." And Salome drew the caressing hands of the abbess to her lips and kissed them over and over again, as she repeated, "Oh, yes, good mother, much heavier and harder to bear than mine."

"I do not know that, my daughter; but I do know, if I had set myself down a grieving egotist, to brood over my own individual troubles, in a world full of troubles, needing ministrations, I should have lost my reason, if not my soul."

"But you came back to your convent, as I have come, for refuge," said Salome.

"Yes, I came here to give my life to the Lord; not in idle, selfish prayers and meditations for my own soul's sake; no, but in an active, useful life of work. And I have found deep peace, deep joy. So will you, my beloved child, if you take the same way. But you must begin by shutting the doors of your soul against the thoughts of your sorrow, and especially by banishing the image of your false and guilty lover every time it presents itself to your mind."

"Oh, mother! mother! I loved him so! I loved him so!" cried Salome, bursting into a paroxysm of sobs and tears, the first tears she had been able to shed over her awful sorrows.

The abbess was glad to see them; they broke up the fatal apathy as a storm disperses malaria. She gathered the weeping girl to her bosom, and let her sob and cry there to her heart's content.

When the gust of grief had spent itself, Salome lifted her head and dried her eyes, murmuring:

"Yes, I loved him! I loved him! but it is past! it is past! I must forget him, henceforth and forever!"

"Yes, daughter, you must forget him, for to remember him would be a grievous sin. And you must forgive him, though he meditated against you the deepest wrong," said the abbess, solemnly.

"I will try to forgive the wrong-doer and forget the wrong, but oh!

mother, mother, it will be very hard to overlive it! Oh, I hope, I hope, if it be Heaven's will, that I shall not have to live very long," said Salome, with a heavy sigh.

"That is the way I felt in the first bitterness of my sorrow: but the feeling pa.s.sed away in duty-doing. And now, although I know that in the next life every need and aspiration of the soul will be fulfilled, yet I find such peace and joy here, that I am willing, yes and glad, to live in this world as long as my Lord has any work for me to do in his vineyard."

"Tell me what I ought to do, and I will try to do it," said Salome, with another deep sigh; for her very breathing was sighing now.

"You know that this is Sat.u.r.day, the last Sat.u.r.day before Christmas,"

said the abbess.

"Is it? I did not know, I have taken no note of time."

"And to-morrow is Sunday, the last Sunday before Christmas."

"Yes, of course."

"Daughter, you have not been to chapel once since your arrival among us."

"Ah, no! I came from the infirmary here, and I have not left this room to go anywhere since!" sighed Salome.

"That is not because you are not able to do so, but because you are not willing. You have allowed yourself to sink into a sinful and dangerous lethargy of mind and body in which you have brooded morbidly over your afflictions. You must do so no longer. You must rouse yourself from this moment. You must go with us to-night to vespers. To-morrow morning you will attend high ma.s.s. A fellow-countryman of yours, Father F----, an Oratorian priest from Norwood, England, will preach. He will do you good. Since the days of St. John, the beloved disciple, no wiser, more loving, or more eloquent soul ever spoke to sinners," said the abbess.

"But--coming from England!--If he should recognize me!" exclaimed Salome.

"Why, do you know him?"