Saint Amulfia lived in the seventeenth century. Her parents were French petits bourgeois, uneducated, poor, almost peasants. From her earliest childhood, she was greatly attracted by convent life, and always nursed the dream of one day becoming a nun. Her relations tried to dissuade her from this project, and wished her to marry. Amulfia, however, found all men repulsive, and the very thought of marriage filled her with horror and disgust. For a long time, lacking the dower without which no one is accepted in Catholic convents, she was unable to join the order she had chosen. At last, however, after the death of her parents, their small capital being divided among the children, she took her portion to the convent, and was received as a novice.

From the very first days of her entry, she astonished all the nuns by her humility, and the fervency of her prayers. At night, in her cell, she chastised herself with ropes, ran needles into her fingers, and covered herself with wounds. As always happens when the organism is weakened by torture and privation and a constant state of nervous exaltation, she began to see visions. Christ appeared to her, and she spoke with Him, as with her heavenly bridegroom, who claimed her as exclusively His own, and forbade her to continue even her friendly relations with a good and kind young nun for whom she had felt a special sympathy on entering the convent. “Si elle ne se retirait pas des crÉatures,” threatened the Heavenly Bridegroom, “Il saurait se retirer d’elle,” and the saint obeyed, and turned away from her friend.

These visions were known to the whole convent, but did not astonish anybody. The other nuns also held converse with God, and sometimes on the most trifling subjects. For instance, there was one who greatly disliked cheese which, for this very reason, her superior had once ordered her to eat, as a penance. So she went to church, threw herself on her knees before the Crucifix, and prayed for five hours, with tears and sobs, for strength to eat her little piece of cheese. At last, she heard a voice, ordering her to arise, and make yet one more effort. She obeyed, and the miracle was accomplished: although with shudders of disgust, she yet succeeded in swallowing the cheese.

Not only God, however, but also Satan played a great part in the lives of the nuns. On one occasion, for instance, an absent-minded novice fell down the stairs, but managed not to hurt herself. She told of her experience in the following words: “Satan pushed me at the top, but a guardian angel was waiting at the bottom, and caught me in his arms.”

There was only one nun in the convent who saw no visions. This was Sister Jeanne, the matron of the hospital, a busy, active, energetic woman, devoted to the sick who were brought to the hospital from the village. Saint Amulfia’s biographer spoke of this sister with great severity. “She so completely exhausted her charity in favour of the sick whom she tended,” he said, “that she had none left for the sisters who were her subordinates in this work.”

Having received Saint Amulfia as assistant nurse, Sister Jeanne constantly scolded her for her clumsy carelessness. Saint Amulfia, indeed, had spent so great a part of her time in conversation either with God or with Satan, and had grown so absent-minded, that she was completely incapable of giving a patient a spoonful of medicine, or a cup of beef-tea, without spilling them all over the bed!

At last, from a novice, Saint Amulfia became a full-blown nun, and from this time onward called Christ her “Celestial Husband.” The visions continued, and the conversations became so grotesque that Irene, on reading them, sometimes quite involuntarily burst into peals of laughter. She always, however, immediately and reproachfully stopped herself, thinking in horror:

“How dare I? What am I doing? She was a Saint!”

With every page, however, Irene’s perplexity grew. What if there were similar saints among the Soeurs Mauve? What if (God forbid!) she herself should become a saint? Irene tried to console herself with the thought that all this had taken place in the seventeenth century, in days of ignorance and mental darkness—on the other hand, however, she remembered that that had been the century of Corneille, MoliÈre, Racine, the brilliant Madame de SÉvignÉ, the golden age, indeed, of French literature. Beyond this, the entire arrangement of life in a Catholic Convent was new to her, and surprised her exceedingly. She had imagined a refuge for women who had been disappointed in life, and who longed for a quiet harbour where they would be sheltered from the storms of the world, and where, safely anchored at last, they could end their days in holiness and prayer. She had imagined the relations of the nuns to each other, as polite and friendly, much like those of well-bred people staying in the same hotel, and meeting each other every day at dinner. In reality there appeared to be a severe rÉgime, by which she, Irene, would be obliged to submit in every way to the will of her Superior, who might be a trivial-minded, common person, capable of forcing her subordinates to spend their time in performing such “sacrifices” or “great deeds” as eating something they did not like, or occupying themselves with something useless that could not interest them.

Irene shuddered at her own carelessness. Having made no enquiries whatever, she had painted for herself an imaginary romantic picture, and had been on the point of sacrificing in its favour the personal liberty she had always enjoyed. What, if on closer acquaintance, the happiness of that unknown, much-dreamt-of convent life proved to be an illusion? What if she should afterwards wish to escape from it, and it were too late, no return being possible? There came back to Irene’s recollection long-forgotten stories of unloved wives or unwanted daughters, who had been hidden away in Catholic convents, and whom no one had afterwards succeeded in saving or even tracing. For that matter, thought Irene, there was not even, in her case, anyone who would trouble about trying to trace her—so terribly alone was she in the world! For the first time in her life, she shuddered with sheer fright, and, together with this sudden fear, the thought of Gzhatski as her protector flashed through her mind.

“Yes, there is a man who will not let any harm come to me!” she thought. “He is of the kind that would find and save his friends, if they were at the end of the earth, or at the bottom of the sea!”

Irene threw down the book that had so disturbed her peace of mind, but her restlessness, nevertheless, grew. Assisi lost its charm for her, and a sudden spell of bad weather offering itself as an excuse, she hurried her departure, and returned to Rome.

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