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These postulants of fortune in their half-visible state once more bore some resemblance to the young ladies who had stood in decorum answering compliments between the figures of the dance the night before. On cautious shoe leather the march began. One voice, two voices, and finally a low chorus intoned and repeated,
She appoints their officers and their temporal prince. It is she who admits postulants, who fixes the dates of ordinations, pronounces interdictions, graces, and penances. They render her an account of their administration and the employment of their revenues, from which she subtracts carefully her third share, as the essential right of her crosier of authority."
In the assembly, provincial ministers were appointed, to whom power was given for admitting postulants into the Order; which the Founder had previously reserved to himself.
Some of the postulants fearing the test, became pale or crimson with agitation, and either answered nothing, showing by their silence that they could not swallow the pill, or, if they answered at all, declared that they could not believe he was speaking seriously, and that they were not galley-slaves. These he dismissed at once as unfit to be received into the Order.
I hear nothing more of Prince Ferdinand's garter: that he will have one is very certain; but when, I believe, is very uncertain; all the other postulants wanting to be dubbed at the same time, which cannot be, as there is not ribband enough for them.
Some nerve might have been required, had he made this announcement in the midst of an excited crowd of Italian postulants for the franchise; but from this experience he was saved by the precautionary measure taken by the senate.
She procured her postulants in the towns that lie scattered between Troyes and Paris, and she as often travelled on foot carrying her little bundle of poor clothing, as she did in the public conveyances, that were disagreeable to her, because the roads were rough, and the companions she met were frequently dissolute libertines, although her modest exterior and edifying conversation frequently silenced their licentious discourses.
The heroic young postulants, with Sister Bourgeois, formed a sort of travelling community, of which she was the head, and during the passage performed regular devotional exercises before the statue of Our Lady of Good Help.
As for the number and duration of their prayers we can convey no better idea of them than by quoting the ingenuous remark of one of them: "The prayers of the postulants are frightful, the prayers of the novices are still worse, and the prayers of the professed nuns are still worse." Once a week the chapter assembles: the prioress presides; the vocal mothers assist.
At present my knowledge is confined to the fact that the second storey in the new wing is the novitiate, and that there are four novices and two postulants." The Reverend Mother smiled, and after a pause Evelyn added "But Sister Veronica is very young." "She is older than she looks, she is nearly twenty. Ever since she was quite a child she wished to be a nun.
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