The Argosy — page 131: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Ir6 A ROMANCE OF THE CLOISTER. By Miss BETHAM-EDWARDS. UST outside the quaint little Franche-Comtois town of St. Aubin- J aux-Ailes, nestled amid its vine-clad hills, stand the Protestant church and parsonage and the house of the cloistered Carmel- ites. As if symbolising the friendly, or at least, neutral attitude of two congregations, once at such deadly enmity, the straggling garden of the presbytery touched the walled-in recreation ground of the convent. ‘The shouts of the pastor’s children at play must often have reached the white-robed sisters as they took daily exercise ; but whilst from their loftier windows they could if so minded watch the movements of their neighbours, no eye, ever so curious, could pene- trate the feminine Bastille to which a score-and-odd of human entities had voluntarily consigned themselves. Automatic figures in light dra- peries could be occasionally discerned amidst the foliage. ‘That was all. The little chapel attached to the convent was, however, accessible to the outer world. It stood within a few yards of the road, and the iron gate, fast locked and bolted at other times, was thrown open during mass and vespers. Stray worshippers and inquisitive idlers might then see the cloistered nuns, sitting mute as statues behind the iron screen that divided them from the rest. Were they young, withered, ecstatic or despairing? Who could tell? Service over, they hastily disappeared, as if glad to have the prison door closed upon them once more ; that brief reminder of a world to which they were dead again got over. Before the open church doors stretched the high road, the quietest imaginable ; yet the rural postman trudged by bearing glad and sorrowful news to the humblest home ; cheery peasants might be seen wending their way to market ; happy lovers sauntering arm-in-arm ; and, ever and anon, the white cloud of the distant railway speeding towards Paris or Geneva. And close at hand, too, lay St. Aubin; a mere townling; nothing to be called excitement stirring its quiet streets; the daily routine of existence repeating itself with clock-like monotony throughout the year. But the roar of a modern Babylon, the near neighbourhood of Paris itself were hardly more contrasted with the death-in-life of the Carmelite convent. Li In the month of May, with an irony that could only escape the stray ~ mystic or would-be Saint Theresa, this living tomb was turned into a fairyland of flowers. It is the month consecrated by the Catholic Church to the Virgin, when magnificent floral displays and costly musical services attract vast multitudes to the cathedral, and the Gomichbooks.com