Madame resumed her narrative.
You see how much my country required a revolution of some kind. At the end of fourteen years M. Danry wrote two penitent letters, one to the Minister of France; the other to Madame de Pompadour, full of tears, of penitence, and prayers for mercy; describing his hair, which from being a rich brown, had now become thin and grey; his wasted form and exceeding misery, adding that he had almost lost all his faculties by the very monotony of his captivity; but these sorrowful productions—the keen outpourings of a broken spirit and a broken heart—were never delivered.
Years rolled on.
Louis XV. and his Pompadour were gathered to their fathers; Louis XVI. succeeded, and thereafter, poor M. Danry died in his dark dungeon; and when the Bastille was demolished, his two sorrowful letters were found in the Governor's house with their seals unbroken. Mademoiselle Karalio showed them to me, with cold irony in her intelligent eyes, when I was weeping for the terrible death of my uncle, the Major de Losme.
The terrors of the Revolution, as detailed to me by Mademoiselle, and the horror I felt on hearing that my gentle mother had been guillotined for no other crime than being an aristocrat and the sister of De Losme, filled me with such a disgust for life, that I conceived the idea of taking the veil in some convent remote from Paris (the vicinity of which was far from safe), and of retiring for ever from a world of which I knew but little, and in which I had so few ties; for my father was then serving abroad, having command of the French troops in the islands of Martinique and Guadaloupe.
These resolutions were warmly seconded by him, as he had once made a vow, after a narrow escape in battle, if he ever had a child, to dedicate it to the Church; and by the Ursulines with whom I had lived for seven years, and among whom I made many dear and amiable friends, his views were earnestly urged. I redoubled all the austerities we had hitherto practised, and, inspired by a religious fervour, on which I now look back with astonishment—for I was barely twenty—spent nearly my whole time in the chapel of of our establishment and on my knees.
I had commenced my five years' noviciate, and measures were in progress for my removal, together with all the younger ladies of our house, to a more remote convent of the order, when one day a card was brought to me by a lay sister. It was inscribed—
"Le Chevalier de Losme."
I started on receiving it, and remembered that this gentlemen, my cousin Adrien, had long been absent with the army in India, and under the circumstances of his recent bereavement, I could not decline to receive him. I could neither repress the blush that rose to my cheek, or certain emotions of awkwardness and curiosity, when I remembered that it had once been a favourite project of my mother and her brother the major of the Bastille, to marry me to this identical cousin, and that he was cognizant of their wish.
I adjusted my hood and veil, adopted my most severe and demure expression of face, and in presence of Madame the Superior, awaited, with something of an inward flutter, the entrance of my cousin.