Our parlor where the nuns received their guests was a large room sparely furnished with a few very hard chairs, and a most ghastly picture of the death of St. Francis. About one-third of this room was shut off by a grille or grate, as is usual in such places, and behind this was our station. The outer room was occupied by the Bishop, and two or three attendant priests. Mon seignor was a short, stout man, with rather rebellious white hair, and an expression of a kind of pompous fussiness. He was speaking in a loud and somewhat angry tone to one of his attendants, and I caught the words— "Intentional disrespect—make an example—perverse rebellious woman—" all of which seemed to come as it were from the depths of his stomach. We entered slowly, the sisters taking their places with folded hands and down-cast eyes, with as little apparent trepidation as if about to assist at any ordinary ceremony. The Bishop turned sharply around, and spoke before the Abbess had time to advance to the grating. "So madame! This is the way you receive your Bishop! Did I not send a messenger to acquaint you with my coming? Why then were you not here, prepared to receive me with due respect?" "Mon seignor!" answered the Superior calmly. "It is not according to the rules of our house for us to await visitors in the parlor. I am bound by those rules, and if our Holy Father the Pope were to honor us with a visit, I would do no otherwise." The Superior had the best of it, for a nun is bound to obey the "constitutions" of her house to the smallest article, as the Bishop knew very well. But of course, that did not make him feel any more amiable. He was evidently getting ready for a crushing reply, adjusting meantime his glasses on his nose, for he was very short-sighted; but he rather spoiled the effect by getting into difficulties with the string, which held them around his neck. At last however, the glasses were in their place, and he prepared to open his Episcopal batteries. "Madame!" he began in the sternest tone—but there he stopped. He could now see Mother Superior's face, which I presume he was unable to do before. I never saw so sudden a change. His face seemed to soften and grow youthful in a moment; his lip quivered with a smile, which quite transformed him. He spoke in a very different tone from that in which he began. "Madame! Is it possible, that I see before me Jacqueline de Rozier?" It was now the turn of the Abbess to change color. She grew very white, but it was with a steady voice that she answered—"That was my name in the world, Mon seignor—and you?—" "And I am Henri Garnier—" said the Bishop. "They told me that you had died in the Indies, by the bite of a poisonous serpent," said the Superior, who had quite recovered her color. "I rejoice Mon seignor, to see you in life and health and filling such an exalted station."