Alas! I was not destined to have that great joy. One morning in January, when we were all assembled in the chapel for mass, I was surprised, and had a foreboding of coming evil, when I saw the Abbé Lethurgi go up into the pulpit before commencing the mass. He was very pale, and I turned instinctively to look at the Mother Superior. She was seated in her regular place. The almoner then began, in a voice broken with emotion, to tell us of the murder of Monseigneur Sibour.
Murdered! A thrill of horror went through us and a hundred stifled cries, forming one great sob, drowned for an instant the priest’s voice. Murdered! The word seemed to sting me personally even more than the others. Had I not been, for one instant, the favorite of the kind old man! It was as though the murderer, Verger, had struck at me, too, in my grateful love for the prelate, in my little fame of which he had now robbed me. I burst into sobs, and the organ accompanying the prayer for the dead increased my grief, which became so intense that I fainted. It was from this moment that I was taken with an ardent love for mysticism. It was fortified by the religious exercises, the dramatic effort of our worship and the gentle encouragement, both fervent and sincere, of those who were educating me. They were very fond of me and I adored them so that even now the very memory of them, fascinating and restful as it is, thrills me with affection.
The time appointed for my baptism drew near, and I grew more and more excitable. My nervous attacks were more and more frequent, fits of tears for no reason at all, and fits of terror without any cause. Everything seemed to take strange proportions, as far as I was concerned. One day one of my little friends dropped a doll that I had lent her (for I played with dolls until I was over thirteen). I began to tremble all over, as I adored that doll, which had been given to me by my father.
“You have broken my doll’s head, you naughty girl!” I exclaimed. “You have hurt my father!”
I would not eat anything afterwards, and in the night I woke up in a great perspiration, with haggard eyes, sobbing:
“Papa is dead! Papa is dead!”
Three days later my mother came. She asked to see me in the parlor, and making me stand in front of her, she said:
“My poor little girl, I have something to tell you that will cause you great sorrow. Papa is dead.”
“I know,” I said, “I know,” and the expression in my eyes, my mother frequently told me afterwards, was such that she trembled a long time for my reason.
