Something long forgotten stirred restlessly in Irene’s heart. “But these are my vestal virgins!” she thought, with a thrill of emotion—those beloved vestal virgins that had always so deeply appealed to her imagination, and whose disappearance she had so often regretted. It seemed to her that no reforms and no amount of progress could ever give back to women the high position occupied in ancient Rome by the handmaidens of the goddess Vesta. Everyone had bowed before them; with a movement of the hand they had the power to pardon prisoners condemned to death; they were present at all ceremonies, games, and performances, and formed the principal ornament of the Courts of the Roman Emperors. And here, suddenly, Irene had found them again, less mighty and less dazzling, perhaps, but more mysterious instead, and more poetical. The service continued, and the church gradually filled with people: elegant ladies, dirty workmen, little old men and little old women, even small children brought there by religious nurses. They all joined in the hymns, and sang with the nuns. There was something strange and touching in the mingling of all those hoarse, old, untrained voices with the soft music of the choir, descending, like the song of angels, from the mauve gallery. Many of the worshippers were weeping bitterly, on their knees. From time to time the singing stopped, and one of the nuns, opening a prayer-book, read a prayer, in a soft, melodious voice. Irene watched her future companions with great emotion. They seemed so dignified, so refined, so completely _comme il faut_; life among them, indeed, promised to be charming. Nothing in their habits and manners could ever jar on her or shock her. She remembered, with a shudder, the Russian nuns who wander from village to village, collecting money for the building of churches, lifting their dirty dresses high, and showing their equally dirty, red, rough, thick peasant legs. The service came to an end. Slowly, gracefully, the white dignified figures of the Sœurs Mauves floated away and disappeared. In their places appeared several fat, active little nuns, in short black robes, with enormous mauve bows and little white veils. They extinguished the candles, running from one candlestick to another, never forgetting their reverend genuflexion when passing the altar. “Serving-women,” thought Irene, and the thought pleased her that she would not, even in the convent, cease to be a lady accustomed to the services of a maid. For a moment she was ashamed of the thought, but immediately justified herself: “Of course all idea of dirty work is impossible in those long snowy robes, those white slippers, and floating, shimmering veils!”