their sustenance by the nuns at Funchal, Madeira, and the fairy frostwork of sugar seen on great occasions in French convents.  No womanly art is a stranger to the deft fingers of cloistered nuns.  Bookbinding is a pursuit well known among them, as is also the mounting in delicate filigree of the “Agnus Dei” or waxen representation of the Lamb of God, blessed by the pope at Easter and distributed throughout Christendom from the papal metropolis.  Another convent industry is the preparation of the wafers used in the celebration of mass.

These Dominicanesses rise at four in the morning and dine at eleven, making after that only one slight meal in the evening—­bread and vegetables, for instance, or a saucerful of macaroni.  At stated times they assemble in the chapel for the singing of the “divine office,” and always have an early mass, at which the whole community receives holy communion.  This is administered by the priest through a square opening in the iron grating dividing the nuns from the altar.  At eight, or at latest nine o’clock in the evening, all are in bed, whence they rise again at midnight (in some orders at two o’clock in the morning, but this custom involves rising somewhat later, generally five o’clock) for matins and lauds.

The duties of separate departments are judiciously divided among the sisters.  There is the infirmarian; the econome, or housekeeper, to whose share falls the supplying of the larder; the librarian, the sacristan, the portress (often in cloistered orders this position, which is exceptional in its exemptions, involves the ordering of outside business matters), the care-taker of the garments and linen, the gardener, the secretary, the mistress and sub-mistress of novices.  The house is managed like clockwork.  Punctually as the bell rings each sister goes to the task appointed for that hour, and leaves it, no matter how important or absorbing it may be, for the duty appointed by the rule for the next division of time.  Silence prevails among the sisters at almost all hours:  for at most three times a day speech is permitted, and seldom for more than half an hour at a time.  During meals one sister reads the Lives of the Saints aloud.  Each in her turn takes the place of server at table.  The superioress alone has power to dispense with the rule of silence in case of necessity, as she transacts most of the business, social or legal, of her community.

During the year of novitiate the novices are under the direct rule of the mistress of novices, whose authority over them is paramount, though she herself is of course under a vow of obedience to the superior.  When a novice receives a visit from one in the world she is accompanied by the “mistress,” and if the visitor be a near relation and a woman the curtain behind the grating is withdrawn; if only a friend, the visitor does not even see the nun, as the thick curtain is drawn, and the only communication possible is by speech.  It is generally possible,