"Indeed, it is impossible! I will rest on my cot for a few minutes, and then I will go and take my poor little Marie Perdue on my bosom and rock her to sleep. I hear her fretting now; and when I hush her cries, she also soothes my heartache."

"I will send you something; and I will come to you, before vespers," said the abbess, kindly, as she glided away from the room.

Salome lay alone on the cot, with closed eyes and folded hands, praying for light to see her duty and strength to do it.

She expected, in answer to her earnest prayers, that scales should fall from her eyes, and impressions pa.s.s from her heart, and that she should see her love in monstrous shape and colors, and be able to thrust him from her heart. Instead of which, she saw him purer, truer, n.o.bler, than ever before. With this perception came a sweet, strange peace and trust which she could not comprehend, and did not wish to cast off.

She arose and went into the infants' dormitory, and took up the youngest and feeblest of the babes--the one which, on her very first visit, had so appealed to her sympathies, and which she had adopted as her own.

This child, like many others in the asylum, had no known story.

A few days before Christmas, late in the evening, a bell had been rung at the main door of the Infants' Asylum.

The portress who answered it found there a basket containing an infant a few weeks old. It was cleanly dressed and warmly wrapped up in flannel; but it had no sc.r.a.p of writing, no name, nor mark upon its clothing by which it might ever be identified.

The portress took it into the dormitory, where it was tenderly received and cared for by the sisters on duty there.

The case was too common a one to excite more than a pa.s.sing interest.

On the next day after the arrival of the infant, it happened that the mother-superior brought Salome there on her first visit, when the misery of the motherless and forsaken infant so moved the sympathies of the young lady that she immediately took it to her own bosom.

Subsequently, since she had devoted herself to the care of these deserted babies, she took an especial interest in this youngest and most helpless of their number.

She named it Marie Perdue, and stood G.o.dmother at its baptism.

It lay in her arms often during the day, and slept at her bosom during the night. It had grown to know its nurse, and to recognize her presence and caresses by those soft, low sounds, half cooing and half complaining, with which very young babes first try to utter their emotions or their wants.

Now, as she took little Marie Perdue from the cot, the child greeted her with sweet smiles and soft coos, and nestled lovingly to her bosom. And peace deepened in Salome's heart.

She sat down in a low nursing-chair, fed the child with warm milk and water until it was satisfied, and then rocked it and sang to it in a low, melodious voice, until it fell asleep.

She was still rocking and singing when the rosy-cheeked and cheery young Sister Felecitie came in.

"Our holy mother was going to send your dinner in here, Miss Levison; but I think it must be so dismal to eat one's dinner alone on Christmas day, so I pleaded to be allowed to plead with _you_ that you will come and dine with us young sisters at the second table, which is just as good as the first, I a.s.sure you, only it is served an hour later. Will you come? Say yes!" urged the merry and kind-hearted girl.

"I will come, thank you; though I did too moodily decline the invitation of the abbess," said Salome, rising and placing her sleeping charge upon its little cot.

"Now! what did I tell you about the children and the dolls! Look there!"

gleefully exclaimed Sister Felecitie, pointing to a row of cots where about a dozen infants lay asleep, clasping their dolls tightly.

"Yes, the tiny mimic mothers really do love their doll babies," Salome confessed with a smile.

As they went out of the dormitory they pa.s.sed into the children's day-room, where about twenty infants, from one to two years old, were at play--some sitting on mats or creeping on all fours, because they could not yet stand; some walking around chairs and holding on to support themselves; and some running here and there, in full possession of the use of their limbs.

All rejoiced in the possession of little dolls.

"Look at them!" exclaimed Sister Felecitie, gleefully.

"We tried the least little ones with other toys: but, bless you, nothing else pleases them so well as dolls. We once tried the little yearlings with rattles, which we thought, it being noisy nuisances, would please them better; but save us! If any one doubts the doctrine of original sin and total depravity, they should have seen the three year-old babies fling down their rattles in a pa.s.sion and go for the other babies' dolls, to seize and take them by force and violence; and the corresponding rage and resistance of the latter."

"All that was very natural," said Salome, with a smile.

"Oh, yes, natural, and perhaps something else too, beginning with a 'd.'

They call children 'little angels.' Yes. I know they are, when they are sound asleep," exclaimed the sister, laughing.

"If they are not angels, they have angels with them. I feel they have, for when I am in their sphere, I possess my soul in peace."

As the young lady said this, the children noticed her presence for the first time, and all who could walk ran to her, cl.u.s.tered around her and thrust their dolls upon her, for inspection and approval.

All this Salome bestowed freely with many caresses and gentle, playful words.

Then the children sitting on the mats reached out their dolls at arm's-length, and screamed to have them noticed.

Salome made her way to these little sitters, while all the other children, clinging to her skirt, attended her, impeding her progress.

It was a great confusion.

The merry little sister laughed aloud.

"Now!" she said, gayly. "You are in their sphere, do you possess your soul in peace?"

"Something even better. My soul goes out to them, delighting in their innocent delight!" answered Salome.

And after she had patted their heads and praised their dolls, and pleased them all with loving notice, she followed her conductress from the children's play-room through the long rectangular pa.s.sage that led to the nun's refectory.

The sisterhood, abstemious nearly all the days of the year, feasted on certain high holidays.

The Christmas dinner, laid for the young nuns in the refectory, would have satisfied the most fastidious epicure. But I doubt if any epicure could have enjoyed it half as well as did these abstemious young women, whose appet.i.tes were only let loose on certain high days and holidays.

Salome wondered at herself, who but two hours before had given way to a storm of pa.s.sionate sobs and tears, yet now felt a strange peace of mind that enabled her to enter sincerely into the happiness of those around her.

In the afternoon, the convent was visited by a large number of benevolent people in the neighborhood, who brought their Christmas offerings to the poor and needy of the house.

These visitors were shown through all the various departments of charity, and left their offerings in each before they went away.

"I do wish _one_ thing," said little Sister Felecitie, as she lingered near Salome, after the departure of the visitors.

"What do you wish, dear?" inquired the latter.

"Why, then, that the good people who give to our poor, whatever else they give, would _always_ give the children dolls and the old people tobacco.

The children _never_ can have _too many_ dolls, nor the old people _enough_ tobacco."

"But is not the use of tobacco a vicious habit?"

"I _hope_ not. It makes the poor old souls so happy."