Once a month we meditate particularly on death, and offer all our devotions as a preparation for our last end. When mass is over, and the thanksgiving for our communion is ended--no, not ended, for it can never end; but while it is still ascending from our hearts, our dear mère, who is as pale as the wife of Seneca, goes forward and kneels before the grate that separates the choir from the chancel, and says in earnest tones the litany for a happy death. Her voice trembles as she repeats the awful petition: "When my eyes, obscured at the approach of death, cast their dying looks toward thee, O merciful Jesus! and when my lips, cold and trembling, pronounce for the last time on earth thy adorable name--" "Merciful Jesus, have pity on me!" sighs every heart in response. The impression of these prayers pursues the mind all day. "Lord, in that strait, the Judge! remember me!" * * * * * On St. Andrew's day we buried one of the nuns, who was about ninety years of age and quite superannuated. This death did not affect me so much as that of Sister Sophie. The transition from old age to the grave seems so natural that it excites less horror than when one dies in the full vigor of life. Mère Ste. Ursule was of a noble family of La Vendée. At the age of sixteen she entered a community of Poor Clares, one of the most rigid orders of the church; but, during her novitiate, the great French Revolution swept away nearly every vestige of religion, and the nuns of St. Clare were driven out from their quiet cells into the world. When the _gendarmes_ forced them to leave the convent, these emissaries desecrated every thing and broke and threw out the sacred emblems. As Sister Ursule, who had a most tender devotion to her whom Châteaubriand styles "the divinity of the frail and the desolate," was leaving the cloister she had loved so much, she turned to give it a last look, and saw a small statue of Notre Dame de Grâce standing on the convent wall. She said to one of her sister nuns, "It seems as if the Blessed Virgin reproaches me for leaving," and she turned back to save the statue from insult. The _gendarmes_ did not oppose the design of the young novice, and this _bonne Vierge_ was for more than sixty years the ornament and tutelary genius of the cell of Mère Ste. Ursule, after her re-entrance into religion. With all the fervor of southern devotion toward Mary, she used to prostrate herself daily before this statuette, and when fallen into second childhood she would pour out her heart in effusions of child-like simplicity at once charming and poetic. She often said to her novices: "When I am dying, place my _bonne Vierge_ on my bed beside me."