In both ways I
am deeply indebted to her; and I hope always to remember the
obligation.
The circumstances under which the story came to be related to me
may be told in very few words.
The interior of a convent parlor being a complete novelty to me,
I looked around with some interest on first entering my
painting-room at the nunnery. There was but little in it to
excite the curiosity of any one. The floor was covered with
common matting, and the ceiling with plain whitewash. The
furniture was of the simplest kind; a low chair with a
praying-desk fixed to the back, and a finely carved oak
book-case, studded all over with brass crosses, being the only
useful objects that I could discern which had any conventional
character about them. As for the ornaments of the room, they were
entirely beyond my appreciation. I could feel no interest in the
colored prints of saints, with gold platters at the backs of
their heads, that hung on the wall; and I could see nothing
particularly impressive in the two plain little alabaster pots
for holy water, fastened, one near the door, the other over the
chimney-piece. The only object, indeed, in the whole room which
in the slightest degree attracted my curiosity was an old
worm-eaten wooden cross, made in the rudest manner, hanging by
itself on a slip of wall between two windows. It was so strangely
rough and misshapen a thing to exhibit prominently in a neat
roam, that I suspected some history must be attached to it, and
resolved to speak to my friend the nun about it at the earliest
opportunity.
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