the sad patience of long anguish. We asked
her if she was recovering. " Oh no," she said.
"Je souffre partout — I suffer all over." And
one of the women added, pathetically, " Poor
child! she suffers so much!"

At the further end of the salle were two
white-curtained beds, empty, and our brisk
little guide told us that sometimes persons who
required special care, and could not have it in
their own homes, came to the hospital to be
nursed by the nuns. Such persons pay a little
pension, and occupy these curtained beds, or,
if their case require it, have a private room.
On leaving the great salle we passed two or
three smaller wards of which the doors stood
open, and which had each a few occupants;
but these we were not invited to enter, and our
guide led us on to the children's nursery.
There were but three in-doors — one a baby
newly-born that day, who, with her mother,
would be transferred to the general hospital of
St. Louis at the end of fifteen days, if both
were well enough; another, a four-months-old
boy, fatherless and motherless; and the third, a
little maid of three years, strong enough on her
feet, after the measles, to make us a dot of a
curtsey and say, " Bon jour, mesdames," at the
bidding of the bonne in charge — a kind, chatty,
motherly body, not a nun.

There are many more men than women at the
Hôtel Dieu, because the invalid soldiers are
nursed there — and very good and comfortable
the nursing must be. " Night and day," said
our guide, " the ladies watch and tend the sick;
the work is very hard, and it afflicts the heart
to see them suffer; but the good God gives
them that vocation, and they are happy. They
are not to be pitied; oh no! they are not to
be pitied."

We were introduced to the kitchen just at
the crisis when dinner was being served up.
Such a kitchen! such a dinner! such vast
joints of beef and mutton, such excellent
smells, such a fervent heat! There was a nun
superintending the business, and our guide
venturing on the liberty of opening an oven door
to show us its extent, was routed by a warm
cook with a long ladle; and beckoning to us,
with a shrug of her shoulders, trotted off laughing.
It was not the best moment for visiting
the kitchen apparently, and all was at such a
glow we did not envy those we left there.

From the kitchen we went to the linen-room,
cool as that was hot, and arranged with an
admirable precision; and from the linen-room to
the pharmacy. Then we left the house, and
crossed the green court where were several
convalescent men, and a little boy who ran
away, and would not stand and say " Bon jour,
mesdames," even at the command of a pallid,
dark-eyed youth, who stretched out a languid
arm to catch him, but fell short of success by
an inch or two, which he was over-feeble and
listless to retrieve. From the shady green
court we passed into the park where cows
were feeding, and a nun walking under the
trees in company with a woman and a little girl,
well enough to play out of doors. And then
we ascended to The Point of View, a conical
hill cut in terraces spirally, from the top of
which we overlooked the town, with its fine
spires of St. Pierre, St. Etienne, and St.
Sauveur, the river and the distant levels of this
monotonous rich country, where the roads run
straight as rulers, and the fields are divided by
dykes for hedges. We overlooked, too, a
triangular bit of ground enclosed in high walls,
and waving with long rank grass — the burial-
place of the nuns, who lie there without name,
or stone, or any memorial; all the vanities of
the world left behind them at the gate of the
sanctuary.

What a change, what a difference, between
the yesterday and to-day of the famous Abbaye-
aux-Dames at Caen! The first nun who took
the vows there was Cécile, a daughter of the
Conqueror and his wife; and the abbess, named
Matilda, after the royal foundress, assumed the
title of Madame of Caen, which her successors
perpetuated. On the day of Holy Trinity her
arms were set up over the town gates, and all
the tolls were paid to her officers, who rode in
state through the streets, as if in assertion of
her lordship. The abbey was richly endowed
at its foundation, and received large subsequent
additions to its revenues. Ladies of rank
entered into its gay seclusion, received visits from
their friends, corresponded in Latin with the
canons of Bayeux, loved literature, wrote verses,
and took part in all the religious processions
of the town. The abbess had her country-house
at Ouistreham by the sea, and went over often to
England to look after her lands and estates there.
These high-born dames renounced neither the
world nor the flesh in making themselves nuns,
and the grille was not so fast shut but that the
devil got in amongst them occasionally too.
Wild spirits, whom veil and vows could not
chasten, varied the canticles of the day by the
introduction of witty, wicked railleries and
jests on the mysteries of the faith. Councils
rebuked in vain the license of the ladies' tongues,
and in the sixteenth century it became necessary
to impose a thorough reform on the
convent. About the same epoch the Calvinists
also reformed it in their destructive fashion,
and flung out the bones of Matilda from her
grave. But the abbess, Anne de Montmorenci,
piously gathered them up, and restored them
to their stone coffin, where they lay until the
revolutionists cast them forth again in 1793.
Once more they were re-buried, and the
sarcophagus with ancient brass that now covers
them, was raised in the sanctuary to mark the
last place of their rest.

The abbey was suppressed by the Constitutional
Assembly in 1790, and remained void
until the establishment of the Hôtel Dieu was
transferred thither from the Ile St. Jean, where
it had existed for six hundred years — an excellent
choice of locality for the sick, but the
lovers of antiquity regret the destruction of the
ancient hospital, which took place immediately
it was vacated; and even more the necessary