From a Nun's Diary

November 9 – It is my last night at home, so it is no wonder that sleep forsook me and would not seal my eyelids. My eyes stayed wide open while the moonlight poured into them, stealing into my room from a facing window.

The voices of the night birds drifted to my ears, stirring in me a feeling I am powerless to define — is it regret? Or anguish, or remorse, or what?... Tonight I have understood that there is a great sacrifice in this matter, a sacrifice I chose of my own full will on the day I opened my heart to my father — a Protestant, whose creed rejects monasticism — and told him of my desire to enter the monastic order and spend my life within the walls of the convent, driven by the idealism of young girls. How my poor father tried to turn me from this resolve, out of pity for my youth; but his attempts availed nothing, and no persuasion had any effect on me.

In the end he could do nothing but yield to my wish, saying: "Mary, if you cannot go on with what you have resolved, or if some day you should need the world... do not forget that I am waiting for you."

My father's words kept ringing in my ears with a continuous ring, and I could almost see them written on the walls of my room — yes, my room, on this last night... Tomorrow I shall have — or rather we shall have — a room of a new kind. Yes, we; for a nun must not say mine — there is no room for individual ownership in the convent... Everything must be common property for all who take refuge in the convent... And I think it will be hard to accustom my tongue to attaching the plural pronoun to every word — to say our convent, our prayers, our books, our food, and so on.

The only thing I can attribute to myself is my sins and my transgressions — and these are things I would not in the least mind sharing with others.

November 10 –

I entered the convent... and I felt a shudder of awe as I slipped in through the dread iron gate. I do not know the source of the awe that swept over me — I, who lived at the convent school all through my school years, and it was there that the idea of the monastic life first came to me.

But now the matter is quite different. I entered the convent first as a schoolgirl, drinking of its culture and then bidding it farewell forever. And now I enter it as a nun, offering up her youth in it as an offering on the altar of sacrifice.

Nor am I the only one of the schoolgirls whose resolve has settled on the monastic life: there is Madeleine, and there is Jane, and others besides.

We were brought in to the Mother Superior, who looked at us with a look wavering between tenderness and sorrow. She welcomed us with grave words, then asked one of the sisters to lead us to the quarters where we shall live while we are in the period of probation — the period in which we receive the principles of the monastic life, and during which we grow accustomed, by degrees, to the roughness of living, before we put on the black habit and swear the oath of fidelity... forever!!

November 12 –

Today a nun they call Mother Martha came to us and assigned to each of us the kind of daily work she must perform. My share was mopping the floor of the chapel — hard work, no doubt, especially as I am not used to such tasks, which I consider arduous for a pampered girl like me. But what cannot be avoided must be borne; so I began to mop, and weariness and exhaustion soon overtook me.

And memories of home came pouring over my mind... my father and my brothers, and the soft life they lead, and this rough life I chose of my own free will — what had I to do with it...?

December 15 –

Yesterday I was the cause of a disturbance of order during one of our religious lessons. While Jane — she too a nun on probation — was reading to us the rules of the order, she reached a passage pointing to the duty of a nun to keep away, as far as possible, from the world of men. At that moment I looked at Jane and smiled, and she smiled too, for my smile reminded us both of that old man who takes his seat every evening near the entrance of the convent, alone with his pipe and his newspaper, and with whom Jane never stops joking and chatting. The Mother Superior noticed these smiles we exchanged and looked at us in a way that stirred up laughter on our bench; and then Jane could no longer go on reading and stopped. The Mother motioned us to go out, and she had an account to settle with us, wavering between rebuke and reproach.

January 7 –

We were informed yesterday that the period of probation will last six months, during which we shall receive continuous religious instruction and keep up the prayers without pause; then a confirmation ceremony will be held for those who prove their complete readiness to continue

the life of the convent.

For my part, now that I have tasted convent life, I find the matter not so easy as I used to imagine;