The priest removed the peas from my limbs, and led me to a tomb under
the chapel, where he left me, with the consoling assurance that "THE
DEAD WOULD RISE AND EAT ME!" This tomb was a large rectangular room,
with shelves on three sides of it, on which were the coffins of priests
and Superiors who had died in the nunnery. On the floor under the
shelves, were large piles of human bones, dry and white, and some of
them crumbling into dust. In the center of the room was a large tank of
water, several feet in diameter, called St. Joseph's well. It occupied
the whole center of the room leaving a very narrow pathway between that,
and the shelves; so narrow, indeed, that I found it impossible to sit
down, and exceedingly difficult to walk or even stand still. I was
obliged to hold firmly by the shelves, to avoid slipping into the water
which looked dark and deep. The priest said, when he left me, that if I
fell in, I would drown, for no one could take me out.
O, how my heart thrilled with superstitious terror when I heard the key
turn in the lock, and realized that I was alone with the dead! And that
was not the worst of it. They would rise and eat me! For a few hours
I stood as though paralyzed with fear. A cold perspiration covered my
trembling limbs, as I watched those coffins with the most painful and
serious apprehension. Every moment I expected the fearful catastrophe,
and even wondered which part they would devour first--whether one would
come alone and thus kill me by inches, or whether they would all rise
at once, and quickly make an end of me. I even imagined I could see the
coffins move--that I heard the dead groan and sigh and even the sound of
my own chattering teeth, I fancied to be a movement among the dry bones
that lay at my feet. In the extremity of terror I shrieked aloud. But
this I knew was utterly useless. Who would hear me? Or who would care if
they did hear? I was surrounded by walls that no sound could penetrate,
and if it could, it would fall upon ears deaf to the agonizing cry for
mercy,--upon hearts that feel no sympathy for human woe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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