day, none fear, none tremble like Sister Infelice, in the cloister of the Ursulines. She seems to hear the very sabres beat on the convent wall. When a tropic hurricane sweeps up the gulf at night she falls on the cold stone floor and covers her head, as if the very lightning might reveal that form she loved so well, the great Virginia colonel. To Infelice he was ever young, ever the heroic saviour of St. Louis. That time could have changed him had never occurred to her,—he was a type of immortal youth.
Infelice never speaks of these things, not even to her father confessor; it is something too deep, too sacred, a last touch of the world hid closer even than her heart. And yet she believes he is coming,—that is the cause of all this tumult and cannonading. Her hero, her warrior wants her, and none can stay him.
And when the cession is fairly over and he comes not, the disappointment prostrates her utterly. "He cares, he cares no more! The Virginians? Did you say the Virginians had come?"
From that bed of delirium the Mother Superior of the Ursuline house sent for the Mayor.
"I beg to be allowed to retire with my sisterhood to some point under the protection of His Catholic Majesty of Spain."
"Going!" exclaimed Monsieur le Mayor of New Orleans. "For why? You shall not be disturbed, you shall have full protection."
"Do you stand for France, revolution and infidelity?" gasped the aged mother, denouncing the Mayor.
The people pled, the Mayor went down on his knees. "Do not abandon our schools and our children!" But the Mother Superior was firm.
Twenty-two years had the Donna De Leyba been a nun. The old official records are lost, but out of twenty-five nuns in the establishment we know the sixteen of Spain went away.
All New Orleans gathered to see them depart. When the gun sounded on Whitsunday Eve, sixteen women in black came forth, heavily veiled. The convent gardens were thronged with pupils, slaves knelt by the wayside,
