Earl Hubert's Daughter Part 31

"Father, do you wish _me_ to be a nun?"

"Never!" hastily answered Bruno. "Nay, my Beatrice; I should not have said that. Be thou what the Lord thinks best to make thee. But I do not want to be left alone again."

Beatrice's heart was set at rest. She had terribly feared for a moment lest Bruno, being himself a monk, might think her absolutely bound to be a nun.

They soon reached the Franciscan Convent. The Abbess, a rather stiffly-mannered, grey-haired woman, received her young guest with sedate kindliness, and committed her to the special charge of Sister Eularia. This was a young woman of about twenty-five, in whose mind curiosity was strongly developed. She took Beatrice up to the dormitory, showed her where she was to sleep, and gave her a seat on the form beside her at supper, which was almost immediately served.

Beatrice noticed that whenever Eularia helped herself to any thing edible, she made the sign of the cross over it.

"Why dost thou do that?" asked the young Jewess.

"It is according to our rule," replied the nun. "Surely thou knowest how to cross thyself?"

"Indeed I do not. And I do not see why I should."

"Poor thing!--how sadly thou lackest teaching! Dost thou not know that our Lord Christ suffered on the cross?"

"Oh yes! But why must I cross myself on that account?"

"In respect to Him!" exclaimed Eularia.

"Pardon me. If one whom I loved were slain by the sword, I should not courtesy to every sword I saw, because I loved him. I should hate the very sight of one."

Eularia was scarcely less puzzled than Beatrice.

"It is the symbol of our salvation," she said.

"I should look on it rather as the symbol of His suffering."

"True: but He suffered for us."

"For which reason I should still less admire that which made Him suffer."

Eularia shrugged her shoulders.

"Thou art very ignorant."

The discussion slumbered until they rose from supper; when Eularia seated Beatrice beside her on the settle, and offered to instruct her in the use of the rosary.

"What a pretty necklace! I thought nuns did not wear ornaments?"

"Ornaments! Of course not."

"Then what do you do with that?"

"We pray by it."

"Pray--by--it! I do not understand."

"We keep count of our prayers."

"Count!--why?"

"Why, how could we remember them else?"

"But why should you remember?"

"Poor ignorant child! When thou comest to make confession, thou wilt find that the priest will set thee for penance, so many Aves and so many Paternosters."

"What are those?"

"Dost thou never pray?" gasped Eularia.

"I never say so many of one thing, and so many of another," answered Beatrice, half laughing. "I never heard anything so absurd. The holy prophets did not pray in that way."

"Of course they did!" exclaimed Eularia. "How could they obtain help of our Lady, without repeating Ave and Salve?"

"How could they, indeed, before she was born?" was the retort.

"Oh dear, dear!" said Eularia. "Why, thou knowest nothing."

Beatrice privately thought that she would prefer not to know all that rubbish. Plenty of it was served up to her before she left the convent, by the holy Sisters of Saint Clare.

It was nearly three weeks before Bruno came for her, and very weary of her hosts she was. They were no less astonished and dismayed by her.

The ignorant heathen would not wors.h.i.+p the holy images, would not use holy water, would not kneel before the holy Sacrament, would not do this, that, and the other: and, not content with this series of negations, she actually presumed to reason about them!

"What dost thou believe?" despairingly demanded Sister Eularia at last.

"I believe in G.o.d," said Beatrice gravely. "And I believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Sent of G.o.d."

"And in the Holy Ghost?" asked Eularia.

"If I understand you, certainly. Is it not written, 'The Spirit of G.o.d hath made me'?"

"And in holy Church?"

"I do not know. What is it?"

"How shocking! And in the forgiveness of sins?"

"a.s.suredly."

"And in the resurrection and eternal life?"

"Undoubtedly."

"And in the invocation of the holy saints?"

"I believe that there have been holy men and women."