“Sometimes Madame de Rochechouart, on returning from the schoolroom, would come into her cell, and say: ‘My sister, it is shameful for a nun to be still in bed.’ Thereupon Madame de Sainte Delphine would reply: ‘I have taken no vow not to sleep to my heart’s content.’ Madame de Rochechouart would then say: ‘Well, Hélène, you must make my sister get up.’ I would call Sister Leonard, then she would close her curtains, put on her chemise, and dress herself without doing her hair. She looked charming thus, when dressed, with her head still bare; she kept her hair rather long, for fear of catching cold; it was of the most beautiful colour. She next washed her head in tepid water, and put on her guimp and veil. ‘Madame,’ I would say, ‘is there nothing you have forgotten?’—‘No, nothing to-day.’ But scarcely had she entered the library[63] when she exclaimed: ‘Hélène, I have forgotten my hand-kerchief.’ I would run to fetch it; sometimes it was one thing, sometimes another. She would keep me thus running about all the morning, but I was so fond of her that I did not mind it.”
FOOTNOTES:
[60] This department consisted of a large hall, entirely fitted up with drawers for the archives; a second hall containing the library of the repository, and a room for the nuns in charge.
There were four ladies, two secretaries, six pupils, and two lay sisters.
[61] There were two nuns at the turning box, and five pupils.
[62] Prime, a term of the Roman Catholic Liturgy, the first canonical hour succeeding lauds, beginning at six in the morning.
[63] The library at the Abbaye-aux-Bois occupied three large halls, contained sixteen thousand volumes, and possessed a very complete collection of theological works.
VII
Mademoiselle de Choiseul and her mother—Madame de Stainville’s romantic adventures—Mademoiselle de Choiseul’s wedding—Taking the veil.
“My intimacy with Mademoiselle de Choiseul increased day by day; we had everything in common, our books, our trinkets, and even the keys of our drawers and writing desks, were mutually in each other’s possession.