Every Beguine cooks her own little dinner in her own little pipkin;and there was half a score of them, sure enough, busy over their pots and crockery, cooking a repast which, when ready, was carried off to a neighboring room, the refectory, where, at a ledge-table which is drawn out from under her own particular cupboard, each nun sits down and eats her meal in silence. More religious emblems ornamented the carved cupboard-doors, and within, everything was as neat as neat could be: shining pewter-ewers and glasses, snug baskets of eggs and pats of butter, and little bowls with about a farthing's-worth of green tea in them--for some great day of fete, doubtless. The old ladies sat round as we examined these things, each eating soberly at her ledge and never looking round. There was a bell ringing in the chapel hard by. "Hark!" said our guide, "that is one of the sisters dying. Will you come up and see the cells?"The cells, it need not be said, are the snuggest little nests in the world, with serge-curtained beds and snowy linen, and saints and martyrs pinned against the wall. "We may sit up till twelve o'clock, if we like," said the nun; "but we have no fire and candle, and so what's the use of sitting up? When we have said our prayers we are glad enough to go to sleep."I forget, although the good soul told us, how many times in the day, in public and in private, these devotions are made, but fancy that the morning service in the chapel takes place at too early an hour for most easy travellers. We did not fail to attend in the evening, when likewise is a general muster of the seven hundred, minus the absent and sick, and the sight is not a little curious and striking to a stranger.
The chapel is a very big whitewashed place of worship, supported by half a dozen columns on either side, over each of which stands the statue of an Apostle, with his emblem of martyrdom. Nobody was as yet at the distant altar, which was too far off to see very distinctly; but I could perceive two statues over it, one of which (St. Laurence, no doubt) was leaning upon a huge gilt gridiron that the sun lighted up in a blaze--a painful but not a romantic instrument of death. A couple of old ladies in white hoods were tugging and swaying about at two bell-ropes that came down into the middle of the church, and at least five hundred others in white veils were seated all round about us in mute contemplation until the service began, looking very solemn, and white, and ghastly, like an army of tombstones by moonlight.
The service commenced as the clock finished striking seven: the organ pealed out, a very cracked and old one, and presently some weak old voice from the choir overhead quavered out a canticle;which done, a thin old voice of a priest at the altar far off (and which had now become quite gloomy in the sunset) chanted feebly another part of the service; then the nuns warbled once more overhead; and it was curious to hear, in the intervals of the most lugubrious chants, how the organ went off with some extremely cheerful military or profane air. At one time was a march, at another a quick tune; which ceasing, the old nuns began again, and so sung until the service was ended.
In the midst of it one of the white-veiled sisters approached us with a very mysterious air, and put down her white veil close to our ears and whispered. Were we doing anything wrong, I wondered?
Were they come to that part of the service where heretics and infidels ought to quit the church? What have you to ask, O sacred, white-veiled maid?
All she said was, "Deux centiemes pour les suisses," which sum was paid; and presently the old ladies, rising from their chairs one by one, came in face of the altar, where they knelt down and said a short prayer; then, rising, unpinned their veils, and folded them up all exactly in the same folds and fashion, and laid them square like napkins on their heads, and tucked up their long black outer dresses, and trudged off to their convents.
The novices wear black veils, under one of which I saw a young, sad, handsome face; it was the only thing in the establishment that was the least romantic or gloomy: and, for the sake of any reader of a sentimental turn, let us hope that the poor soul has been crossed in love, and that over some soul-stirring tragedy that black curtain has fallen.
Ghent has, I believe, been called a vulgar Venice. It contains dirty canals and old houses that must satisfy the most eager antiquary, though the buildings are not quite in so good preservation as others that may be seen in the Netherlands. The commercial bustle of the place seems considerable, and it contains more beer-shops than any city I ever saw.
These beer-shops seem the only amusement of the inhabitants, until, at least, the theatre shall be built, of which the elevation is now complete, a very handsome and extensive pile. There are beer-shops in the cellars of the houses, which are frequented, it is to be presumed, by the lower sort; there are beer-shops at the barriers, where the citizens and their families repair; and beer-shops in the town, glaring with gas, with long gauze blinds, however, to hide what I hear is a rather questionable reputation.
Our inn, the "Hotel of the Post," a spacious and comfortable residence, is on a little place planted round with trees, and that seems to be the Palais Royal of the town. Three clubs, which look from without to be very comfortable, ornament this square with their gas-lamps. Here stands, too, the theatre that is to be;there is a cafe, and on evenings a military band plays the very worst music I ever remember to have heard. I went out to-night to take a quiet walk upon this place, and the horrid brazen discord of these trumpeters set me half mad.
