strolling beggar of the usual sort. Thus, in the third picture, we see Madame Venus sitting in the refectory seeking to still her hunger; but the food is too coarse for her, and she tastes nothing but the cloister wine. They offer her a coarse, woolen nun's-dress, which, however, she scorns to wear. The only other dress they have on hand is the thin gown belonging to a beggar who died in the cloister a short time before. This she consents to put on; and although, here and there, her beautiful white skin peeps through a tear in the old rags, she seems to think this better than to be confined in the black shroud of the sisters. Her little boy has also been provided with a shirt, and is now being passed around from hand to hand, and lap to lap; for each of the nuns is eager to caress him. While they are sitting thus, on the best of terms, the priest of the place comes to have a talk with the abbess. He suspects something wrong, and stands on the threshold, dumb with amazement, and devours this strange beggar-woman with his eyes. But the little rascal of a boy goes up to him, and succeeds in making his reverence fall over head and ears in love with the strange lady, and scatter his older sentiments for the abbess to the four winds. A fourth sheet shows him as he strolls up and down the little cloister garden with Madame Venus, passionately declaring his love. At the window stands the pious mother of the convent, torn with jealousy; and it requires little imagination to foresee that her ecclesiastical friend has hardly turned his back before this dangerous guest is, under one pretext or another, thrust rudely forth into the wide world again, with her little boy--who is tired, and would have liked to sleep instead of having to wander about in the stormy night. But a house or hut is nowhere to be found, while, on the other hand, suspicious-looking groups pass by them: gypsies, who cast covetous eyes at the beautiful child; and one of them--a wicked, toothless old hag--actually catches him by the skirts of his little gown. But, fortunately, he glides out of her hands like an eel, and flies into the thicket, and his mother after him: who is so lost in thought that she scarcely heeds the danger. 'Where can all the others have gone?' is the question over which she broods ceaselessly.