'O la petite Dorothé!' she cried,'quel bonheur de vous revoir! Est-ce vraiment la petite Dorothé?'
As I sat watching her while she talked to my mother, all the old thoughts and feelings came back to me with a rush. I was in some awe of her: I could not treat her as if she were an ordinary person. All the old respectful tricks and turns of speech came back to me, though I imagined I had forgotten them. My mother was telling Mère B. of how busy I had been since I had left the convent—of the books I had written and all about them;—but I felt as small and insignificant as the child of ten, and could only answer in monosyllables—'Oui, ma mère,' or 'Non, ma mère.'
At our request, we were shown over the convent. Many memories it brought back—some pleasant, some painful; for a child's life never runs on one smooth level—it is ever a series of ups and downs. We were taken into the refectory. There was my place at the corner of the table, where at the first meal I sat and cried because, when asked if I would like a tartine instead of pudding, I was given a piece of bread-and-butter. Naturally, I had thought that tartine meant a tart. And there was the very same Sister laying the table, the Sister who used to look sharply at my plate to see that I ate all my fat and pieces of gristle. She remembered me perfectly. Many were the tussles, poor woman, she had had with me.
Mère B. showed us the chapel, where we used to assemble at half-past six every morning, cold and half-asleep, to say our prayers before going into the big church. Many were the beautiful addresses the Mother Superior had read to us; many were the vows I had made to be really very good; many were the resolves I had formed to be gentle and forbearing during the day—vows and resolves only to be broken soon.
We wandered through the garden between the beds of thyme and mint and late roses, and Mère B. spoke with tears in her eyes of the time when they would have to leave their happy convent home and migrate to some more hospitable land. 'It is not for ourselves that we grieve,' she said: 'it is for our poor country—for the people who will be left without religion. Personally, we are as happy in one country as in another.'
I picked a sprig of sweet-smelling thyme as I passed, and laid it tenderly between the pages of my pocket-book. If the garden were to be desecrated and used by strangers, I must have something to remember it by.
What memories the dear old convent garden brought back to me! There was the gravelled square where we children skipped and played and sang Breton chansons all in a ring. There was the avenue of scanty poplars—not so scanty now—down which I often paced in rebellious mood, gazing at the walls rising high above me, longing to gain the farther side and be in the world. Outside the convent gates was always called 'the world.' There was the little rocky shrine of the Virgin—a sweet-faced woman in a robe of blue and gold, nursing a Baby with an aureole about His head. Many a time I had thrown myself on the bench in front of that shrine in a fit of temper, and had been slowly calmed and soothed by that gentle presence, coming away a better child, with what my mother always called 'the little black monkey' gone from my back.
Very soon the convent atmosphere wraps itself about you and lulls you to rest. You feel its influence directly you enter the building. You are seized by a vague longing to stay here, just where you are, and leave the world, with its ceaseless strivings and turmoils and unrest, behind you. Yet how soon the worldly element in you would come to the fore, teasing you, tormenting you back into the toils once more! It was with a feeling of sorrow and a sensation that something was being wrenched from me that I bade good-bye to sweet Mère B. at the garden gate, with many embraces and parting injunctions not to forget the convent and my old friends.
