Page:Life in Mexico vol 1.djvu/242

222 ballads with a good deal of taste. The elder nuns helped us to everything, but tasted nothing themselves. The younger nuns and the novices were grouped upon à mat a la Turque, and a more picturesque scene altogether one could scarcely see.

The young novices, with their white robes, white veils and black eyes, the severe and dignified madres with their long dresses and mournful-looking black veils and rosaries, the veiled figures occasionally flitting along the corridor;—ourselves in contrast, with our worldly dresses and colored ribbands; and the great hall lighted by one immense lamp that hung from the ceiling—I felt transported three centuries back, and half afraid that the whole would flit away, and prove a mere vision, a waking dream.

A gossiping old nun, who hospitably filled my plate with everything, gave me the enclosed flag cut in gilt paper, which, together with her custards and jellies, looked less unreal. They asked many questions in regard to Spanish affairs, and were not to be consoled for the defeat of Don Carlos, which they feared would be an end of the true religion in Spain.

After supper, we proceeded up stairs to the choir, (where the nuns attend public worship, and which looks down upon the handsome convent church,) to try the organ. I was set down to a Sonata of Mozart's, the servants blowing the bellows. It seems to me that I made more noise than music, for the organ is very old, perhaps as old as the convent, which dates three centuries back. However, the nuns were pleased, and after they had sung a hymn, we