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Flammarion, C., Carroll, L, - Death and its mystery: before death

218 DEATH AND ITS MYSTERY

A doctor of the neighborhood had gone to visit two convents in this village, one of men and one of women.

''We were received", he writes, "in the most cordial manner by Father Dallain, the Superior of the former, who also had authority over the second. After we had walked about in the two convents, he said to us : 'I now wish to show you gentlemen, one of the most curious things in the ladies' convent.'

And he had an album brought in in which we admired some very perfect water-colors. There were birds, landscapes, and marines.

'These very successful drawings, ‘ he said, ‘have been made by one of our young nuns who is blind.'

And this is what he told us about a charming bunch of roses, one bud of which was blue.  

‘Sometime before in the presence of the Marquis of La Roche-jaquelein and several other visitors, I called in the blind nun and asked her to sit down at a table and draw something.  We spread out colours for her and gave her pencils, brushes, paper, and she at once began on the bouquet which you see. While she was working they several times placed an opaque body, cardboard or board, between her eyes and the paper and the brush continued to move with the same regularity. To the observation that the bunch was a little slim, she replied :  'Very well, I will make a bud grow out from the joint of this branch." While she was working at this correction some one replaced the carmine with the blue; and she did not notice the change, and that is why you see a blue bud.'

"The Abbe Dallain" adds the narrator,  ‘was as remarkable for his science and his fine intelligence as for his great piety, and I have never met anyone who has inspired more affection and veneration."