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Only Lucy wished she had not written that letter to Uncle Ben from Florence: that rather troubled and penitent letter on the subject of dress. He might misunderstand might do something foolish. And apparently Uncle Ben did do something foolish. For a certain letter arrived from Boston on the day after the seminarists' invasion of the garden.
But the self- denying Mothers struggled bravely through their poverty, and by the generous aid of benefactors in France, they managed not only to continue their alms to the adults and to retain their seminarists, but by degrees considerably to increase the number of these last. Among the first pupils were some of very tender age, little ones of six and less.
Mentally, she could hardly be maturer than the hero-worshipping girl in the procession of Miss Vincent's young seminarists. Probably so, but she carried magic. She was of the order of women who walk as the goddesses of old, bearing the gift divine. And, by the way, she had the step of the goddess.
We were then shewn three halls, in which we found at least one hundred and fifty seminarists, ten or twelve schoolrooms, the refectory, the dormitory, the gardens for play hours, and every pain was taken to make me imagine life in such a place the happiest that could fall to the lot of a young man, and to make me suppose that I would even regret the arrival of the bishop.
Then Lucie threw herself on to a sofa, and with her chin in her hands, and in the posture of a chimera on the look out for the pleasures she wishes, continued gravely: "We lived at the end of a quiet street behind the cathedral, a street in which pots of carnations stood on the window ledges, through which the seminarists went twice a day, as if it had been a procession, and where I was bored to death.
It was the scene witnessed at the railway station all over again, the same woeful camping in the open, whilst the bearers and the young seminarists who acted as the secretary's assistants ran hither and thither in bewilderment. "We have been over-ambitious, we wanted to do things too well!" exclaimed Baron Suire in despair.
They make hardly any converts, but then they console themselves by saying, that the Roman Catholics who make all these sacrifices do it from a bad motive, teach idolatry, &c. They had an intelligent, cheerful look, greatly superior to that of the Roman Catholic seminarists generally in Europe. The priests bear testimony to their aptitude in learning, their docility and good conduct.
We were then shewn three halls, in which we found at least one hundred and fifty seminarists, ten or twelve schoolrooms, the refectory, the dormitory, the gardens for play hours, and every pain was taken to make me imagine life in such a place the happiest that could fall to the lot of a young man, and to make me suppose that I would even regret the arrival of the bishop.
He would return to the refectory, as if relieved of some great crime. The seminarists on duty, wearing blue linen aprons, and having their cassock sleeves tucked up, brought in the vermicelli soup, the boiled beef cut into little squares, and the helps of roast mutton and French beans.
A long procession of seminarists came in from the college which is under the shadow of that great church, two by two, in black cassocks and short white surplices. Many were tonsured already. Some were quite young. Margaret watched their faces, wondering if they were tormented by such agony as she.
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