the conduits were to run with wine, and there was to be a big show generally. But Thursday was a soaking wet day: it rained all day "cats and dogs," and the procession was quite out of the question. There was nothing to be done but postpone the festival till the following day, and as that, of course, would be Friday, and consequently a fast-day, the banquet could not take place.

He decreed

The Pope, however, was a man of resource. that the wet Thursday was a dies non, and " didn't count,” as children say, and consequently the following day would be the real Thursday. It is to be presumed that by another "bull” (in both senses) he afterwards put matters right again; but on this point the legend is silent.

I pass over several phrases which have no legend attached to them, and conclude with "en revenant de Pontoise,"—the story connected with which is interesting if not historic.

A Princess Marguerite had a castle constructed at Pontoise, and, according to the genial custom of the time, had it provided with a trap-door, down which objectionable visitors might be shot into the vault below-the floor of the vault being thoughtfully studded with sharp spikes, to "mak sikker," as Kirkpatrick said when he stabbed the Red Comyn. The castle was finished and the princess took possession, but the builder, being a conscientious man, wished to see that the numerous secret passages were in good working order before he sent in his bill.

In the course of his wanderings, he came close to the boudoir of the princess, at the precise moment when the confidante was asking her royal mistress how she intended to pay for this "desirable residence." The princess owned that it would be very inconvenient for her to settle the account, but she had thought of a good plan, which was to invite the builder to dinner, drug him, and drop him down the trap to handsel his own spikes.

Forewarned of what he had to expect, the builder let himself out of the castle by a secret door, and worked all night

bringing in armfuls of brushwood, hay, and straw, with which he covered up all the spikes. The next day he was invited to dinner, went, and knew no more till he was awakened out of the sleep into which the drug had cast him by a knight in a comatose condition tumbling on the top of him. In the course of the evening, two other knights "dropped in "-literally, not figuratively. When they had all slept off the effects of their drowsy syrup, the builder introduced himself, and led them out of the castle by the secret door. They rode straight to Paris, and went to the palace, where the King was sitting, with the Princess by his side. She "started like a guilty thing” when she saw the quartet of her supposed victims enter, and in a quavering voice asked whence they had come. "Madame," they replied in chorus, "we have just returned from Pontoise!"

It seems a pity to spoil a story so dramatic, but I am bound to state that the historians ascribe a different, and more recent, origin to the expression. The Parliament of Paris, having refused to ratify a little financial scheme which the Regent Orléans and John Law wished to pass, was banished to Pontoise, July 1, 1720. After an exile of five months, the members capitulated, and were allowed to return. This ignominious "climb-down" "climb-down" made them feel made them feel very much ashamed of themselves, and the Parisians said of any one who had an embarrassed or shame-faced air, "He looks as though he had just come back from Pontoise!"

ROBERT B. DOUGLAS.

No. 71. XXIV. 2.-AUG. 1906

H

"THE CONVENT'S NARROW

ROOM"

HE scene was a grey stone-built convent in the Irish. country. It had the charm of the convent surroundings. Monthly roses in flower on the walls, although it was winter: jessamine opening its stars of pale yellow. The convent ran round three sides of a quadrangle, of which the church made the fourth side. The feeling of it was very conventual: the Gothic arches of the cloister had a charm of their own, although time had not yet laid his beautifying hand upon them.

Within the convent the Gothic intention was repeated. The brown doors with their pointed arches; the high, beamed ceilings; the whitewashed walls; the crucifixes on the walls, the austere furniture, spoke eloquently to the worldly visitor of the life of contemplation and peace.

Then the nuns came flocking in, in a soft crowd like flocking doves, so glad to see a visitor from the outside world. They sat round in a half-circle, their hands hidden under their black scapulars, their eyes innocent and outward looking like the eyes of children, their complexions unflawed, the framing of the white coif and black veil enhancing the freshness and purity of the charming faces. Only one or two of the older nuns had a sad and somewhat pinched look, as though they wanted sunlight or open air.

The convent was one that exists under a very easy rule:

The intention of the founder was not for austerities. Her intention, in fact, was a very kindly and human one, although somehow or other it has been frustrated. She founded her congregation of nuns with the primary intention that they should visit the poor in their own homes; yet her spiritual daughters to this day have for sole occupation the keeping of a poor-school, often in a depopulated district. They never go outside the four walls of their convent enclosure from the time they enter it. They are even buried within the walls. They never come in contact with human suffering or sorrow or sin, or any other of the things that go to make up the human burden, although many of them have all the courage and devotion to carry the Cross of Christ into the dark places of the world. They are obliged by some mediæval feeling about the immurement of women to lead the sterile life till they die. Yet they who have had the courage and the strength in their youth to give up all the human joys are surely the material out of which to make a great ameliorative force in human affairs.

The nuns sat round me in a flock, and one of the elder ones had been very ill. There was a very sweet sisterliness between them, as you could see from the way they talked and laughed, the way the youngest, rosy-cheeked novice, looked with laughing eyes towards the good careworn face of the Reverend Mother.

66

I'm so sorry you have been ill," I said to the invalid sister.

"Indeed we get a deal of illness, dear," she replied.

66

Ah, the sedentary life, I suppose," I suggested.

I had evidently touched a sensitive place. The invalid sister and the Reverend Mother looked in each other's eyes. "No, dear," said the Reverend Mother; "it isn't so much the sedentary life. It's the dreadful, dreadful monotony."

It was an amazement to me. I had known the convent all my life, known it as an easy, friendly, cheerful place, where one did not come upon too hard counsels of perfection, where

the nuns loved to hear who had a new frock, and who was going to be married, and who courting; and even the latest fashion of wearing the hair, although their own was kept shorn under the coifs.

There was a tragedy in the kind innocent eyes of the Reverend Mother.

"It's the dreadful, dreadful monotony, dear. We don't realise it when we come in as young girls. Think of fifty, sixty years between these four walls! We don't go out even to be buried. Oh, if they'd only let us visit the poor round about us! What a difference it would make!"

The speech has followed me ever since like a cry. Doubtless it is a cry which has never reached the ears of the authorities; but it is one which must be heard in many a convent. The dreadful monotony! And the need to do something beyond teaching a handful of peasant children how to read and write and do sums, with no special aptitude or equipment for the art of teaching.

In

The immurement in the Middle Ages had its reasons. the first place, considering what violent and armed times those were, there would have been no safety for nuns walking abroad. In the second place, the nuns of the stately old Orders were given abundant occupation. The chanting of the Divine Office in itself took many hours of the day. Then, it was a scholarly life. The nuns were concerned with the fine arts, with the illumination of manuscripts, the embroidering of vestments, painting, music; there were learned nuns and artist nuns, as well as learned friars and artist friars. There must have been outdoor life, too, or how do we come to have Dame Juliana Berners' "Treatise on Hawking"? And St. Teresa, the foundress of the severest order of nuns, seems to have gone to and fro, up and down the world as she would, crossing rivers and mountains, to be with a Duchess in her accouchement; and being pretty well at the beck and call of the many who wanted the Mother, doubtless as much for her immense common sense and humanity as for her holiness.