It is a necessary part of this story to explain how I have come by it,
or rather, how it has chanced to have me for its writer.
I was very much impressed one day by a certain nun of the order calling
themselves Little Sisters of the Poor. I had been taken to these
sisters to support the recommendation of a certain old lady, the former
door-keeper of his studio, whom my friend Cecco Bandini wished to place
in the asylum. It turned out, of course, that Cecchino was perfectly
able to plead his case without my assistance; so I left him blandishing
the Mother Superior in the big, cheerful kitchen, and begged to be shown
over the rest of the establishment. The sister who was told off to
accompany me was the one of whom I would speak.
This lady was tall and slight; her figure, as she preceded me up the
narrow stairs and through the whitewashed wards, was uncommonly elegant
and charming; and she had a girlish rapidity of movement, which caused
me to experience a little shock at the first real sight which I caught
of her face. It was young and remarkably pretty, with a kind of
refinement peculiar to American women; but it was inexpressibly,
solemnly tragic; and one felt that under her tight linen cap, the hair
must be snow white. The tragedy, whatever it might have been, was now
over; and the lady's expression, as she spoke to the old creatures
scraping the ground in the garden, ironing the sheets in the laundry, or
merely huddling over their braziers in the chill winter sunshine, was
pathetic only by virtue of its strange present tenderness, and by that
trace of terrible past suffering.
She answered my questions very briefly, and was as taciturn as ladies of
religious communities are usually loquacious. Only, when I expressed my
admiration for the institution which contrived to feed scores of old
paupers on broken victuals begged from private houses and inns, she
turned her eyes full upon me and said, with an earnestness which was
almost passionate, "Ah, the old! The old! It is so much, much worse for
them than for any others. Have you ever tried to imagine what it is to
be poor and forsaken and old?"
These words and the strange ring in the sister's voice, the strange
light in her eyes, remained in my memory. What was not, therefore, my
surprise when, on returning to the kitchen, I saw her start and lay hold
of the back of the chair as soon as she caught sight of Cecco Bandini.
Cecco, on his side also, was visibly startled, but only after a moment;
it was clear that she recognised him long before he identified her. What
little romance could there exist in common between my eccentric painter
and that serene but tragic Sister of the Poor?
A week later, it became evident that Cecco Bandini had come to explain
the mystery; but to explain it (as I judged by the embarrassment of
his manner) by one of those astonishingly elaborate lies occasionally
attempted by perfectly frank persons. It was not the case. Cecchino had
come indeed to explain that little dumb scene which had passed between
him and the Little Sister of the Poor. He had come, however, not to
satisfy my curiosity, or to overcome my suspicions, but to execute a
commission which he had greatly at heart; to help, as he expressed it,
in the accomplishment of a good work by a real saint.
Of course, he explained, smiling that good smile under his black
eyebrows and white moustache, he did not expect me to believe very
literally the story which he had undertaken to get me to write. He only
asked, and the lady only wished, me, to write down her narrative without
any comments, and leave to the heart of the reader the decision about
its truth or falsehood.
For this reason, and the better to attain the object of appealing to
the profane, rather than to the religious, reader, I have abandoned the
order of narrative of the Little Sister of the Poor; and attempted to
turn her pious legend into a worldly story, as follows:--