“She has not taken the veil; she is at the convent
of Our Lady at Tours.”
The next morning Ronald and Malcolm set out on their
journey to Tours.
Arrived at Tours, Malcolm took a quiet lodging in
a retired street. Colonel Hume had furnished
him with a regular discharge, testifying that the
bearer, Malcolm Anderson, had served his time in the
2d Scotch Dragoons, and was now discharged as being
past service, and that he recommended him as a steady
man for any employment for which he might be suited.
Malcolm showed this document to his landlord in order
that the latter might, as required by law, duly give
notice to the police of the name and occupation of
his lodger, and at the same time mentioned that the
relations of his wife lived near Tours, and that he
hoped through them to be able to obtain some sort
of employment.
As soon as they were settled in their lodgings they
went out, and after a few inquiries found themselves
in front of the convent of Our Lady. It was a
massive building, in a narrow street near the river,
to which its grounds, surrounded by a high wall, extended.
None of the windows of the building looked towards
the street, upon which the massive gate, with a small
wicket entrance, opened.
“What building is this?” Malcolm, in a
careless tone, asked a woman who was sitting knitting
at her door nearly opposite the entrance. “I
am a stranger in Tours.”
“That needs no telling,” the woman replied,
“or you would have known that that is the convent
of Our Lady, one of the richest in Touraine, and they
say in all France. Though what they do with their
riches is more than I can tell, seeing that the rules
are of the strictest, and that no one ever comes beyond
the gates. They have their own grounds down to
the river, and there is a walk along the wall there
where they take the air of an evening when the weather
is fine. Poor things, I pity them from my soul.”
“But I suppose they all came willingly,”
Malcolm said; “so there is no need for pity.”
“I don’t know about willingly,”
the woman said. “I expect most of them
took the veil rather than marry the men their fathers
provided for them, or because they were in the way
of someone who wanted their lands, or because their
lovers had been killed in the war, just as if grief
for a lover was going to last one’s life.
Besides, they are not all sisters. They say there’s
many a lady of good family shut up there till she will
do her father’s will. ‘Well, well,’
I often says to myself, ’they may have all the
riches of France inside those walls, but I would rather
sit knitting at my door here than have a share of
them.’”
“You are a wise woman,” Malcolm said.
“There is nothing like freedom. Give me
a crust, and a sod for my pillow, rather than gold
plates inside a prison. I have been a soldier
all my life, and have had my share of hard knocks;
but I never grumbled so long as I was on a campaign,
though I often found it dull work enough when in garrison.”
