[21] Twenty pounds.
[22] Children from five to seven years of age did not attend school; but there was a considerable number of them at the Abbaye-aux-Bois, under the care of the younger nuns.
[23] The Catéchisme de Montpellier was a Jansenist catechism; its doctrines were openly proclaimed by the ladies of the Abbaye-aux-Bois.
[24] Baron Antoine Portal, consulting physician to Louis XV. and the successive sovereigns until Charles X., was Professor of Anatomy at the Museum, President of the Academy of Medicine, and a friend of Buffon and Franklin. His long career was devoted to remarkable works. By command of the Academy of Sciences he drew up a report in 1774, on the effects of noxious fumes, amongst others, of coal, on man. This small work was reprinted several times, and translated into four languages at the expense of the Academy; although the least important, it is best known of all his works. He died in 1832, aged eighty-seven.
[25] About three pounds.
[26] Twelve hundred pounds. We must not lose sight of the fact that at the Abbaye-aux-Bois the education was exclusively devoted to forming future “great ladies,” and differed entirely from that of the middle class.
[27] Privilège du Roi, a preface authorising the publication of a work, granted in the king’s name.
III
The story of the Vicar of Saint Eustache—Hélène in the white class—Death of Mademoiselle de Montmorency.
Hélène had taken the greatest aversion to Mother Quatre Temps and her punishments. The more so that, thanks to her, she had been twice delayed from promotion into the white class, not being considered worthy of preparation for her first communion.