Thus, at bottom, the institution was really good, and if it had to be cauterized it was merely essential to remove the inert or corrupted parts and preserve the healthy and sound parts.--Now, if we take only the monastic bodies, there were more than one-half of these entitled to respect. I omit those monks, one-third of whom remained zealous and exemplary-the Benedictines, who continue the "Gallia Christiana," with others who, at sixty years of age, labor in rooms without a fire; the Trappists, who cultivate the ground with their own hands, and the innumerable monasteries which serve as educational seminaries, bureaus of charity, hospices for shelter, and of which all the villages in their neighborhood demand the conservation by the National Assembly.[2243] I have to mention the nuns, thirty-seven thousand in fifteen hundred convents. Here, except in the twenty-five chapters of canonesses, which are a semi-worldly rendezvous for poor young girls of noble birth, fervor, frugality, and usefulness are almost everywhere incontestable. One of the members of the Ecclesiastical Committee admits in the Assembly tribunal that, in all their letters and addresses, the nuns ask to be allowed to remain in their cloisters; their entreaties, in fact, are as earnest as they are affecting.[2244] One Community writes, "We should prefer the sacrifice of our lives to that of our calling . . . . This is not the voice of some among our sisters, but of all. The National Assembly has established the claims of liberty-would it prevent the exercise of these by the only disinterested beings who ardently desire to be useful, and have renounced society solely to be of greater service to it?" "The little contact we have with the world," writes another "is the reason why our contentment is so little known. But it is not the less real and substantial. We know of no distinctions, no privileges amongst ourselves; our misfortunes and our property are in common. One in heart and one in soul. . . we protest before the nation, in the face of heaven and of earth, that it is not in the power of any being to shake our fidelity to our vows, which vows we renew with still more ardor than when we first pronounced them."[2245] Many of the communities have no means of subsistence other than the work of their own hands and the small dowries the nuns have brought with them on entering the convent. So great, however is their frugality and economy, that the total expenditure of each nun does not surpass 250 livres a year. The Annonciades of Saint-Amour say, "We, thirty-three nuns, both choristers and those of the white veil, live on 4,400 livres net income, without being a charge to our families or to the public. . . If we were living in society, our expenses would be three times as much;" and, not content with providing for themselves, they give in charity.