l.
I was just eighteen years of age when my desire to become a nun reached
its highest point, and then received its final overthrow.
Mildred Bankes, who had returned to Rome, and was living as a novice
with the Little Sisters of the Poor, was about to make her vows, and the
Reverend Mother took me to see the ceremony.
Never shall I forget the effect of it. The sweet summer morning,
tingling with snow-white sunshine, the little white chapel in the
garden of the Convent, covered with flowers, the altar with its lighted
tapers, the friends from without clad in gay costumes as for a festival,
the bishop in his bright vestments, and then, Mildred herself, dressed
as a bride in a beautiful white gown with a long white veil and attended
by other novices as bridesmaids.
It was just like a marriage to look upon, except for the absence of a
visible bridegroom, the invisible one being Christ. And the taking of
the vows was like a marriage service too--only more solemn and sacred
and touching--the bride receiving the ring on her finger, and promising
to serve and worship her celestial lover from that day forward, for
better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, as
long as life should last and through the eternity that was to follow it.
I cried all through the ceremony for sheer joy of its loveliness; and
when it was over and we went into the refectory, and Mildred told me she
was returning to England to work among the fallen girls of London, I
vowed in my heart, though I hardly understood what she was going to do,
that I would follow her example.
It was something of a jar to go back into the streets, so full of noise
and bustle; and all the way home with the Reverend Mother I was forming
the resolution of telling her that very night that I meant to be a nun,
for, stirred to the depths of my soul by what I had seen and remembering
what my poor mother had wished for me, I determined that no other life
would I live under any circumstances.
Then came the shock.
Notka biograficzna
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