190 



AMERICAN JOURNEY. 



[Chap. V. 



apparatus, etc., from Paris, in the top story. Some of the 

 fathers were always with the boys, both at night and in play 

 hours. 



What touched him most was the cloistered nunnery of 

 Le Bon Pasteur.* Mr. Clark had obtained a special order of 

 admission from the Bishop. " Scarcely any layman had been 

 admitted,'' Philip writes, "and certainly no non-Catholic before 

 me. The orders were that we should be shown the entire estab- 

 lishment without reserve. ... It is a society for the reception 

 of penitent women. I never like to look criminals in the face, 

 or mad persons : hospitals I do not mind ; that is only suffering 

 which one ought to face bravely, as medical men and Sisters of 

 Charity do. However, Mr. Clark would hear of no reason 

 against going ... so we went to a spacious cruciform house 

 in Sherbrook Street, standing in a large garden enclosed by 

 a high wall. I thought of the 4 wicket-day J at Port Royal. 

 We applied for admission at the outer gate; and the portress, 

 having first asked our business through the grating in the 

 middle of the door, let us in. We went through passages and 

 rooms, all ornamented with pictures and emblems and beautiful 

 texts of Scripture. At last we were seated in the outer parlour, 

 separated from the inner by a wainscot below, and a lattice 

 and sashes. Presently the sash was thrown up, and behold 

 the Lady Superior, seated in a chair, with a very simple dress, 

 not unlike the pictures of the Port Royalists, to whom Mr. C. 

 handed the Bishop's letter. She received us very graciously, 

 and had been previously notified of our visit. She was of 

 middle age, looking very benevolent and at the same time 

 decided. Fortunately she was from Paris, and I understood 

 her speech pretty well,j as she also did mine. . . . Every- 

 thing was perfectly white, almost dazzling, for cheerfulness ; all 

 sorts of ornaments in every room, and evidently intended to 



* 4 4 Organized in 1844 by a company of Parisian ladies of the Order of 

 Le Bon Pasteur, established in 1640 by Pere Eude in Caen, Normandy : " 

 there were (1859) twenty-seven sisters and seventy penitents. 



t He found a difficulty in making out the Canadian French. He was 

 told that the language and pronunciation is principally of the Norman 

 dialect, and has undergone little change from the time of Louis XIV. 



