الفصل الفصل 123 · GAYETIES

Nonetheless, these young girls filled this grave house with charming

souvenirs.

At certain hours childhood sparkled in that cloister. The recreation

hour struck. A door swung on its hinges. The birds said, “Good; here

come the children!” An irruption of youth inundated that garden

intersected with a cross like a shroud. Radiant faces, white foreheads,

innocent eyes, full of merry light, all sorts of auroras, were

scattered about amid these shadows. After the psalmodies, the bells,

the peals, and knells and offices, the sound of these little girls

burst forth on a sudden more sweetly than the noise of bees. The hive

of joy was opened, and each one brought her honey. They played, they

called to each other, they formed into groups, they ran about; pretty

little white teeth chattered in the corners; the veils superintended

the laughs from a distance, shades kept watch of the sunbeams, but what

mattered it? Still they beamed and laughed. Those four lugubrious walls

had their moment of dazzling brilliancy. They looked on, vaguely

blanched with the reflection of so much joy at this sweet swarming of

the hives. It was like a shower of roses falling athwart this house of

mourning. The young girls frolicked beneath the eyes of the nuns; the

gaze of impeccability does not embarrass innocence. Thanks to these

children, there was, among so many austere hours, one hour of

ingenuousness. The little ones skipped about; the elder ones danced. In

this cloister play was mingled with heaven. Nothing is so delightful

and so august as all these fresh, expanding young souls. Homer would

have come thither to laugh with Perrault; and there was in that black

garden, youth, health, noise, cries, giddiness, pleasure, happiness

enough to smooth out the wrinkles of all their ancestresses, those of

the epic as well as those of the fairy-tale, those of the throne as

well as those of the thatched cottage from Hecuba to la Mère-Grand.

In that house more than anywhere else, perhaps, arise those children’s

sayings which are so graceful and which evoke a smile that is full of

thoughtfulness. It was between those four gloomy walls that a child of

five years exclaimed one day: “Mother! one of the big girls has just

told me that I have only nine years and ten months longer to remain

here. What happiness!”

It was here, too, that this memorable dialogue took place:—

_A Vocal Mother_. Why are you weeping, my child?

_The child_ (aged six). I told Alix that I knew my French history. She

says that I do not know it, but I do.

_Alix_, the big girl (aged nine). No; she does not know it.

_The Mother_. How is that, my child?

_Alix_. She told me to open the book at random and to ask her any

question in the book, and she would answer it.

“Well?”

“She did not answer it.”

“Let us see about it. What did you ask her?”

“I opened the book at random, as she proposed, and I put the first

question that I came across.”

“And what was the question?”

“It was, ‘What happened after that?’”

It was there that that profound remark was made anent a rather greedy

paroquet which belonged to a lady boarder:—

“How well bred! it eats the top of the slice of bread and butter just

like a person!”

It was on one of the flagstones of this cloister that there was once

picked up a confession which had been written out in advance, in order

that she might not forget it, by a sinner of seven years:—

“Father, I accuse myself of having been avaricious.

“Father, I accuse myself of having been an adulteress.

“Father, I accuse myself of having raised my eyes to the gentlemen.”

It was on one of the turf benches of this garden that a rosy mouth six

years of age improvised the following tale, which was listened to by

blue eyes aged four and five years:—

“There were three little cocks who owned a country where there were a

great many flowers. They plucked the flowers and put them in their

pockets. After that they plucked the leaves and put them in their

playthings. There was a wolf in that country; there was a great deal of

forest; and the wolf was in the forest; and he ate the little cocks.”

And this other poem:—

“There came a blow with a stick.

“It was Punchinello who bestowed it on the cat.

“It was not good for her; it hurt her.

“Then a lady put Punchinello in prison.”

It was there that a little abandoned child, a foundling whom the

convent was bringing up out of charity, uttered this sweet and

heart-breaking saying. She heard the others talking of their mothers,

and she murmured in her corner:—

“As for me, my mother was not there when I was born!”

There was a stout portress who could always be seen hurrying through

the corridors with her bunch of keys, and whose name was Sister Agatha.

The _big big girls_—those over ten years of age—called her

_Agathocles_.

The refectory, a large apartment of an oblong square form, which

received no light except through a vaulted cloister on a level with the

garden, was dark and damp, and, as the children say, full of beasts.

All the places round about furnished their contingent of insects.

Each of its four corners had received, in the language of the pupils, a

special and expressive name. There was Spider corner, Caterpillar

corner, Wood-louse corner, and Cricket corner.

Cricket corner was near the kitchen and was highly esteemed. It was not

so cold there as elsewhere. From the refectory the names had passed to

the boarding-school, and there served as in the old College Mazarin to

distinguish four nations. Every pupil belonged to one of these four

nations according to the corner of the refectory in which she sat at

meals. One day Monseigneur the Archbishop while making his pastoral

visit saw a pretty little rosy girl with beautiful golden hair enter

the class-room through which he was passing.

He inquired of another pupil, a charming brunette with rosy cheeks, who

stood near him:—

“Who is that?”

“She is a spider, Monseigneur.”

“Bah! And that one yonder?”

“She is a cricket.”

“And that one?”

“She is a caterpillar.”

“Really! and yourself?”

“I am a wood-louse, Monseigneur.”

Every house of this sort has its own peculiarities. At the beginning of

this century Écouen was one of those strict and graceful places where

young girls pass their childhood in a shadow that is almost august. At

Écouen, in order to take rank in the procession of the Holy Sacrament,

a distinction was made between virgins and florists. There were also

the “dais” and the “censors,”—the first who held the cords of the dais,

and the others who carried incense before the Holy Sacrament. The

flowers belonged by right to the florists. Four “virgins” walked in

advance. On the morning of that great day it was no rare thing to hear

the question put in the dormitory, “Who is a virgin?”

Madame Campan used to quote this saying of a “little one” of seven

years, to a “big girl” of sixteen, who took the head of the procession,

while she, the little one, remained at the rear, “You are a virgin, but

I am not.”