Bildungsromans; Boston (Mass.) -- Fiction; Saint Lawrence River -- Fiction; Upper class -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
But this landscape and the Jesuit Barracks, with all their merits,
are nothing to the Ursuline Convent, just under our back windows,
which I told you something about in my other letter. We have been
reading up its history since, and we know about Madame de la Peltrie,
the noble Norman lady who founded it in 1640. She was very rich and
very beautiful, and a saint from the beginning, so that when her
husband died, and her poor old father wanted her to marry again and
not go into a nunnery, she didn't mind cheating him by a sham
marriage with a devout gentleman; and she came to Canada as soon as
her father was dead, with another saint, Marie de l'Incarnation, and
founded this convent. The first building is standing yet, as strong
as ever, though everything but the stone walls was burnt two
centuries ago. Only a few years since an old ash-tree, under which
the Ursulines first taught the Indian children, blew down, and now a
large black cross marks its place. The modern nuns are in the garden
nearly the whole morning long, and by night the ghosts of the former
nuns haunt it; and in very bright moonlight I myself do a bit of
Madame de la Peltrie there, and teach little Indian boys, who dwindle
like those in the song, as the moon goes down. It is an enchanted
place, and I wish we had it in the back yard at Eriecreek, though I
don't think the neighbors would approve of the architecture. I have
adopted two nuns for my own: one is tall and slender and pallid, and
you can see at a glance that she broke the heart of a mortal lover,
and knew it, when she became the bride of heaven; and the other is
short and plain and plump, and looks as comfortable and commonplace
as life-after-dinner. When the world is bright I revel in the
statue-like sadness of the beautiful nun, who never laughs or plays
with the little girl pupils; but when the world is dark--as the best
of worlds will be at times for a minute or two--I take to the fat
nun, and go in for a clumsy romp with the children; and then I fancy
that I am wiser if not better than the fair slim Ursuline. But
whichever I am, for the time being, I am vexed with the other; yet
they always are together, as if they were counterparts. I think a
nice story might be written about them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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