In the establishment of the sisters of Our Lady of Thirty-Six Sorrows, you sleep in attic dormitories; you are fed meagrely on scraps of meat and spoiled vegetables, and you pay twenty-five sous a day to the institution. That is to say, the sisters withhold twenty-five sous from your wages, when they have secured a place for you. They call that getting you a place for nothing. Further, you have to work from six o'clock in the morning until nine in the evening, like the inmates of prisons. You are not allowed to go out. Meals and religious exercises take the place of recreation. Ah! the good sisters do not bore themselves, as M. Xavier would say; and their charity is a famous trap. They rope you in finely! But there it is,—I shall be stupid all my life. The stern lessons of experience, the succession of misfortunes, never teach me anything, are of no use to me. I am always crying out and raising a row, but in the end I am always victimized by everybody.
Several times comrades had spoken to me of the sisters of Our Lady of Thirty-Six Sorrows.
"Yes, my dear, it seems that only very swell people come to the box,... countesses,... marchionesses. One may chance on astonishing places."
I believed it. And then, in my distress, I remembered with some feeling, booby that I am, the happy years that I spent with the little sisters of Pont-Croix. Moreover, I had to go somewhere. Beggars cannot be choosers.
When I arrived, there were forty housemaids there. Many came from a great distance,—from Brittany, from Alsace, from the south, girls who had never yet had a place,—awkward, clumsy, with livid complexions, sly airs, and singular eyes that looked over the walls of the convent at the mirage of Paris lying beyond. Others, not as green, were just out of a place, like myself.
The sisters asked me whence I came, what I knew how to do, whether I had good references, and whether I had any money left. I told them all sorts of things, and without further inquiry they welcomed me, saying:
"This dear child! We will find her a good place."
We all were their "dear children." While waiting for the promised good place, each of these dear children was put at some work, according to her faculties. Some did cooking and housework; others worked in the garden, digging in the soil, like navvies. I was promptly put at sewing, having, said Sister Boniface, supple fingers and a distinguished air. I began by mending the chaplain's pantaloons and the drawers of a sort of monk who was just then preaching a retreat in the chapel. Oh! those pantaloons! Oh! those drawers! Surely they did not resemble M. Xavier's. Then they intrusted to me tasks less ecclesiastical,—quite profane, in fact,—the making of fine and delicate linen garments, among which I again found myself in my element. I participated in the making of elegant bridal trousseaux, of rich baby-linen, ordered of the good sisters by charitable and wealthy ladies who were interested in the establishment.
At first, after so many shocks, in spite of the bad food, the chaplain's pantaloons, the lack of liberty, in spite of all the fierce exploitation that I could plainly see, I felt a sense of real relief amid this calm and silence. I did not reason much; I felt rather a need of prayer. Remorse over my past conduct, or, rather, the weariness resulting from it, prompted me to fervent repentance. Several times in succession I confessed to the chaplain. He was a queer man, this chaplain, very round and red, a little rude in manner and in speech, and afflicted with a disagreeable body-smell. He asked me strange questions, and insisted on knowing my favorite authors.
"Armand Silvestre? Yes. To be sure, he is dirty. I would not give you his works instead of the 'Imitation.' No, not that; yet he is not dangerous. But you must not read impious books, books against religion,—Voltaire, for instance. No, never; never read Voltaire,—that is a mortal sin,—or Renan, or Anatole France. They are dangerous."