There was another hospital and a
prison in the street, which naturally gave it rather a gloomy aspect,
but once inside the courtyard of the Convent there was a complete
transformation. One found one's self in a large, square, open court with
arcades and buildings all around--the chapel just opposite the entrance.
On one side of the court were the rooms for the patients, on the other
nice rooms and small apartments which were let to invalids or old
ladies, and which opened on a garden, really a park of thirteen or
fourteen acres. The doors were always open, and one had a lovely view of
green fields and trees. The moment you put your foot inside the court,
you felt the atmosphere of peace and cheerfulness, though it was a
hospital. The nuns all looked happy and smiling--they always do, and I
always wonder why. Life in a cloister seems to me so narrow and
monotonous and unsatisfying unless one has been bred in a convent and
knows nothing of life but what the teachers tell.
I have a friend who always fills me with astonishment--a very clever,
cultivated woman, no longer very young, married to a charming man,
accustomed to life in its largest sense.
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