The doors of the little one-story dwellings opened from
the pavement, and within you saw fat madame the mother moving about her
domestic affairs, and spare monsieur the elderly husband smoking beside
the open window; French babies crawled about the tidy floors; French
martyrs (let us believe Lalement or Brebeuf, who gave up their heroic
lives for the conversion of Canada) sifted their eyes in high-colored
lithographs on the wall; among the flower-pots in the dormer-window
looking from every tin roof sat and sewed a smooth haired young girl, I
hope,--the romance of each little mansion. The antique and foreign
character of the place was accented by the inscription upon a wall of
"Sirop adoucissant de Madame Winslow."
Ever since 1692 the Gray Nuns have made refuge within the ample borders
of their convent for infirm old people and for foundling children, and it
is now in the regular course of sight-seeing for the traveller to visit
their hospital at noonday, when he beholds the Sisters at their devotions
in the chapel. It is a bare, white-walled, cold-looking chapel, with the
usual paraphernalia of pictures and crucifixes. Seated upon low benches
on either side of the aisle were the curious or the devout; the former in
greater number and chiefly Americans, who were now and then whispered
silent by an old pauper zealous for the sanctity of the place.
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