When I came to myself, I was at the
extremity of weakness, and was craving for food to recruit my strength. My landlord sat watching me. He, too, looked pinched and shrunken; he
had heard of my wounded state, and sought me out. Yes! the struggle
still continued, but the famine was sore: and some, he had heard, had
died for lack of food. The tears stood in his eyes as he spoke. But
soon he shook off his weakness, and his natural cheerfulness returned. Father Bernard had been to see me—no one else. (Who should, indeed?) Father Bernard would come back that afternoon—he had promised. But
Father Bernard never came, although I was up and dressed, and looking
eagerly for him. My landlord brought me a meal which he had cooked himself: of what it was
composed he would not say, but it was most excellent, and with every
mouthful I seemed to gain strength. The good man sat looking at my
evident enjoyment with a happy smile of sympathy; but, as my appetite
became satisfied, I began to detect a certain wistfulness in his eyes, as
if craving for the food I had so nearly devoured—for, indeed, at that
time I was hardly aware of the extent of the famine. Suddenly, there was
a sound of many rushing feet past our window. My landlord opened one of
the sides of it, the better to learn what was going on. Then we heard a
faint, cracked, tinkling bell, coming shrill upon the air, clear and
distinct from all other sounds. “Holy Mother!” exclaimed my landlord,
“the Poor Clares!”

He snatched up the fragments of my meal, and crammed them into my hands,
bidding me follow. Down stairs he ran, clutching at more food, as the
women of his house eagerly held it out to him; and in a moment we were in
the street, moving along with the great current, all tending towards the
Convent of the Poor Clares. And still, as if piercing our ears with its
inarticulate cry, came the shrill tinkle of the bell. In that strange
crowd were old men trembling and sobbing, as they carried their little
pittance of food; women with tears running down their cheeks, who had
snatched up what provisions they had in the vessels in which they stood,
so that the burden of these was in many cases much greater than that
which they contained; children, with flushed faces, grasping tight the
morsel of bitten cake or bread, in their eagerness to carry it safe to
the help of the Poor Clares; strong men—yea, both Anversois and
Austrians—pressing onward with set teeth, and no word spoken; and over
all, and through all, came that sharp tinkle—that cry for help in
extremity. We met the first torrent of people returning with blanched and piteous
faces: they were issuing out of the convent to make way for the offerings
of others. “Haste, haste!” said they. “A Poor Clare is dying! A Poor
Clare is dead for hunger! God forgive us and our city!”

We pressed on. The stream bore us along where it would. We were carried
through refectories, bare and crumbless; into cells over whose doors the
conventual name of the occupant was written. Thus it was that I, with
others, was forced into Sister Magdalen’s cell. On her couch lay
Gisborne, pale unto death, but not dead. By his side was a cup of water,
and a small morsel of mouldy bread, which he had pushed out of his reach,
and could not move to obtain. Over against his bed were these words,
copied in the English version “Therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed
him; if he thirst, give him drink.”

Some of us gave him of our food, and left him eating greedily, like some
famished wild animal. For now it was no longer the sharp tinkle, but
that one solemn toll, which in all Christian countries tells of the
passing of the spirit out of earthly life into eternity; and again a
murmur gathered and grew, as of many people speaking with awed breath, “A
Poor Clare is dying! a Poor Clare is dead!”

Borne along once more by the motion of the crowd, we were carried into
the chapel belonging to the Poor Clares. On a bier before the high
altar, lay a woman—lay Sister Magdalen—lay Bridget Fitzgerald. By her
side stood Father Bernard, in his robes of office, and holding the
crucifix on high while he pronounced the solemn absolution of the Church,
as to one who had newly confessed herself of deadly sin. I pushed on
with passionate force, till I stood close to the dying woman, as she
received extreme unction amid the breathless and awed hush of the
multitude around. Her eyes were glazing, her limbs were stiffening; but
when the rite was over and finished, she raised her gaunt figure slowly
up, and her eyes brightened to a strange intensity of joy, as, with the
gesture of her finger and the trance-like gleam of her eye, she seemed
like one who watched the disappearance of some loathed and fearful
creature.