"'Well, then, why not send him to my school at Saint-Michel de Frigolet?' M. Donnat would say. 'The good air alone will give him rosy cheeks in a fortnight. And he will be watched over and taught his lessons; and when he has been well educated he will find an easier occupation than a carpenter's.'
"'Ah, sir! But when one is poor!'
"'Don't trouble about that. We have up there I don't know how many doors and windows to mend. I can promise your husband more work as a carpenter than he will know how to get through; and so, my good woman, we shall settle the matter of fees.'
"So this child would also find himself at Saint-Michel, with those of the butcher, the baker and the candlestick-maker, and by these means M. Donnat collected into his school about forty boys, of whom I was one. Out of them all, I and a few others were there for a money payment, but three-quarters of them were paid for in kind, or by the labour of their parents. In a word, M. Donnat had solved the problem of the Bank of Exchange, quite simply and without any fuss, which the celebrated Proudhom tried in vain to establish in Paris in 1848....
"In those days Saint-Michel was of much less importance than it has since become. There was left just the cloister of the Augustinian monks, with its green in the middle of the court; to the south the refectory and chapter-house; then the dilapidated church of St. Michael, with its frescoes of the damned, and of demons armed with forks, and the battle between the devil and the great archangel in the middle; and then the kitchen and stables.
"But apart from this little group of buildings there was a buttressed chapel, dedicated to Our Lady of Succour, with a porch in front of it. Masses of ivy covered the walls, and the interior was lined with gilded carvings which enclosed pictures said to be by Mignard representing scenes in the life of the Virgin. Anne of Austria, mother of Louis XIV, had given these decorations in accordance with a vow she had made to the Virgin if she should bear a son.
"This chapel, a real gem, hidden in the mountains, had been saved during the Revolution by the good people who piled up fagots under the porch and hid the entrance. It was there that every morning in the year, at five o'clock in summer and six in winter, we were taken to hear Mass; it was there that I prayed, I remember—we all prayed—with a faith that was really angelic....
"The little hills all around were covered with thyme, rosemary, asphodel, box and lavender. In odd corners there were vines, which produced a wine of some repute-the wine of Frigolet; patches of olives on the lower slopes; plantations of almond-trees, twisted, dark and stunted, on the stony ground; and wild fig-trees in the clefts of the rocks. This sparse vegetation was all that these rugged hills could show; the rest was nothing but waste and scattered rocks. But how delicious it smelt! The scent of the mountains at sunrise intoxicated us....
"We became as rugged as a troop of gipsies. But how we revelled in these hills and gorges and ravines, with their sonorous Provençal names ... eternal monuments of the country and its language, all embalmed in thyme and rosemary and lavender, all illumined in gold and azure. Oh, sweet land of scents and colours and delights and illusions, what happiness, what dreams of paradise thou didst reveal to my childhood!"[31]
This idyllic existence came suddenly to an end. M. Donnat, being frequently away collecting pupils, neglected to educate them when he had found them, and being anxious to increase his numbers took pupils who paid little or nothing, and they were not those who ate the least. One morning the cook disappeared.