"In contrast to these, five-and-twenty figures, entirely robed in black from head to foot, were ranged on each side of the room, prostrate, their faces touching the ground, and in their hands immense lighted tapers. On the foreground was spread a purple carpet bordered round with a garland of freshly-gathered flowers, roses, and carnations, and heliotrope, the only things that looked real and living in the whole scene; and in the middle of this knelt the novice, still arrayed in her blue satin, white lace veil and jewels, and also with a great lighted taper in her hand. "The black nuns then rose and sang a hymn, every now and then falling on their faces and touching the floor with their foreheads. The whole looked like an incantation, or a scene in Robert le Diable. The novice was then raised from the ground and led to the feet of the Bishop, who examined her as to her vocation, and gave her his blessing, and once more the black curtain fell between us and them. "In the _second act_ she was lying prostrate on the floor, disrobed of her profane dress, and covered over with a black cloth, while the black figures kneeling around her chanted a hymn. She was now dead to the world. The sunbeams had faded away as if they would not look upon the scene, and all the light was concentrated in one great mass upon the convent group. "Again she was raised. All the blood had rushed into her face, and her attempt to smile was truly painful. She then knelt down before the Bishop, and received the benediction, with the sign of the cross, from a white hand with the pastoral ring. She then went round alone to embrace all the dark phantoms as they stood motionless, and as each dark shadow clasped her in its arms, it seemed like the dead welcoming a new arrival to the shades. "But I forget the sermon, which was delivered by a fat priest, who elbowed his way with some difficulty through the crowd to the grating, panting and in a prodigious heat, and ensconced himself in a great armchair close beside us. He assured her that she 'had chosen the good part, which could not be taken away from her;' that she was now one of the elect, 'chosen from among the wickedness and dangers of the world'--(picked out like a plum from a pie). He mentioned with pity and contempt those who were 'yet struggling in the great Babylon,' and compared their miserable fate with hers, the Bride of Christ, who, after suffering a few privations here during a short term of years, should be received at once into a kingdom of glory. The whole discourse was well calculated to rally her fainting spirits, if fainting they were, and to inspire us with a great disgust for ourselves.