I quite won the heart of Sister St. Anne by giving her the true English recipe for distilling lavender and making the Queen of Hungary's water. I grew attached to the good nuns, who were all very kind to me. My knitting lessons were extended to some of their number, and even to the Superior herself, who asked Mother Mary to allow me to teach her, saying that it was a kind of work that would just suit her. Mother Mary gave the desired permission, adding that her sister was happy in having time for such employments. As for herself, she never had a moment to sit down to her needle from morning till night.
"Yes; but you see, dear sister, we are so differently situated," answered Mother Superior meekly. "Our house works so quietly and easily. You see we have no sisters but such as are of good family. We are not obliged to take up with any riff-raff the king may choose to send us, as you are over there."
I can't say I found the Superior a very apt scholar. I never succeeded in teaching her how to turn off a heel, and at last in despair, I suggested that she should knit a rug for the cat, which was a great personage and much petted, though she had no vocation whatever. The rug went off better, but I rather doubt whether puss has had the benefit of it to this day.
On the whole I was not unhappy during the two weeks I remained at the Ursuline convent at Marseilles. I did my best to please Mother Mary, and succeeded pretty well. I think she appreciated my efforts, for really most of the other girls were trials—idle, mischievous, and bending all their efforts not to learn the arts the nuns tried to teach them. I except Desirée, who was always docile, and the poor girl whom I had thought I knew. I got into conversation with her one day over our work, and at last she told me she had seen me before.
"Do you not remember stopping in your travelling carriage to speak to my aunt, the day after our vineyard was destroyed? The lady with you gave my aunt some money."
"Yes, I remember well," I answered. "What became of your father?"
"He was not my father, but my mother's stepbrother," was the answer. "He had adopted me, and I was betrothed to his son. My lord the marquis shot him dead with his own hand. My betrothed was arrested on some pretext of poaching, and sent to the galleys, and I, because I would not give him up and go into service in the Marquis' family, was sent here. It does not matter. Baptiste is dead, and I would as soon be here as anywhere—rather a thousand times than in the house of that wretch! I cannot be worse off. Maybe they will let me live out as a servant."
This is a fair specimen of what may be done by a tyrannical landowner in France. By all I hear, things must have grown worse instead of better. It is a wonder if they do not have an explosion some day which will blow them all sky-high.
