“Il ne faut jamais se laisser trop voir, même à ceux qui nous aiment.”
It was not very definitely known what Mademoiselle Brun taught in the School of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart in the Rue du Cherche-Midi in Paris. For it is to be feared that Mademoiselle Brun knew nothing except the world; and it is precisely that form of knowledge which is least cultivated in a convent school.
“She has had a romance,” whispered her bright-eyed charges, and lapsed into suppressed giggles at the mere mention of such a word in connection with a little woman dressed in rusty black, with thin grey hair, a thin grey face, and a yellow neck.
It would seem, however, that there is a point where even a mother-superior must come down, as it were, into the market-place and meet the world. That point is where the convent purse rattles thinly and the mother-superior must face hunger. It had, in fact, been intimated to the conductors of the School of the Sisterhood of the Sacred Heart by the ladies of the quarter of St. Germain, that the convent teaching taught too little of one world and too much of another. And the mother-superior, being a sensible woman, agreed to engage a certain number of teachers from the outer world. Mademoiselle Brun was vaguely entitled an instructress, while Mademoiselle Denise Lange bore the proud title of mathematical mistress.
Mademoiselle Brun, with her compressed mouth, her wrinkled face, and her cold hazel eyes, accepted the situation, as we have to accept most situations in this world, merely because there is no choice.
“What can you teach?” asked the soft-eyed mother-superior.
“Anything,” replied Mademoiselle Brun, with a direct gaze, which somehow cowed the nun.
“She has had a romance,” whispered some wag of fourteen, when Mademoiselle Brun first appeared in the schoolroom; and that became the accepted legend regarding her.
“What are you saying of me?” she asked one day, when her rather sudden appearance caused silence at a moment when silence was not compulsory.
“That you once had a romance, mademoiselle,” answered some daring girl.