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Updated: October 29, 2025
Woe unto us, if we choose to rest, as though it were a time of peace and security, while as yet no sign appeareth in our life of true holiness. Rather had we need that we might begin yet afresh, like good novices, to be instructed unto good living, if haply there might be hope of some future amendment and greater spiritual increase. Psalm xxv. 17. Of meditation upon death
Under her other superiors or abbesses are appointed over the various departments, whose duty it is to look after the nuns and novices, and the children in training for nuns. The most rigid espionage is kept up throughout the whole establishment; and if any of these superiors or abbesses fail to do the duty assigned them, they are more severely punished than the nuns.
It would be nice to sit here on the bench all her life and watch through the trunks of the birch-trees the evening mist gathering in wreaths in the valley below; the rooks flying home in a black cloud like a veil far, far away above the forest; two novices, one astride a piebald horse, another on foot driving out the horses for the night and rejoicing in their freedom, playing pranks like little children; their youthful voices rang out musically in the still air, and she could distinguish every word.
Beyond all doubt, there was not in France any equal number of persons possessing in an equal degree the qualities necessary for the judicious direction of public affairs; and, just at this moment, these legislators, misled by a childish wish to display their own disinterestedness, deserted the duties which they had half learned, and which nobody else had learned at all, and left their hall to a second crowd of novices, who had still to master the first rudiments of political business.
At their head came the prioress in the white garb of her order, her head enveloped in a long veil, her face pale and convulsed with suffering, and her hands, which held a golden crucifix, tightly clasped over her breast. Following her in pairs came the nuns, first those who had grown gray in the service of the Lord, then the young ones, and finally the novices.
Even the few who, like State Counsellor Viglius, still firmly adhered to her, did so less from attachment to her person than from vexation at being displaced by novices and foreigners, and from being too proud to serve a fresh apprenticeship under a new viceroy.
That strength and tact were needed to rule them is shown by one amusing if lamentable episode. A very religious virgin was placed in authority over the novices, and she was so hated by them on account of her severity that even after her death the young nuns could not forget; and rushing out, they trampled upon her grave, with curses, until the mound became a hole half a foot deep.
Then far away they heard a slight tapping on the trees; and almost at the same moment another sound caused the hearts of the two novices to jump. It was a quick cuck-cuck, accompanied by a rapid and silken winnowing of the air. Then an object, which seemed like a cannon-ball with a long tail attached, came whizzing along. Major Stuart fired a bad miss.
Canisius took this proverb for his text, but turned it to say, "Give every month a jolly welcome, for it may be your last." After the talk, the novices, according to custom, discussed amongst themselves what had been said. It came Stanislaus' turn to speak. He said: "What Father Canisius has just told us is a holy warning for all, of course.
For, though they were violently driven out of some convents to the great towns, and the convents were profanely turned into dwellings for seculars, and some of the fathers suffered violence, and even death; yet, in the country and other remote places, they ever remained in the convents, celebrating the divine office according to the custom of religious, their preachers preaching to the people and performing their other functions, training up novices and preserving the conventual buildings, holding it sinful to lay aside, or even hide, their religious habit, though for an hour, through any human fear.
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