The convent was on the side of
a bare yellow hill, where bees made a hot buzzing in the thyme.
Below was the sea, blazing with a million shafts of light; and
overhead a blinding sky, which reflected the sun's glitter like a
huge baldric of steel. Now the convent was built on the site of an
old pleasure-house which a holy Princess had given to our Order; and
a part of the house was left standing with its court and garden. The
nuns had built all about the garden; but they left the cypresses in
the middle, and the long marble tank where the Princess and her
ladies had bathed. The tank, however, as you may conceive, was no
longer used as a bath; for the washing of the body is an indulgence
forbidden to cloistered virgins; and our Abbess, who was famed for
her austerities, boasted that, like holy Sylvia the nun, she never
touched water save to bathe her finger-tips before receiving the
Sacrament. With such an example before them, the nuns were obliged
to conform to the same pious rule, and many, having been bred in the
convent from infancy, regarded all ablutions with horror, and felt
no temptation to cleanse the filth from their flesh; but I, who had
bathed daily, had the freshness of clear water in my veins, and
perished slowly for want of it, like your garden herbs in a drought.
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