“It’s my fault! It’s my fault!” she kept exclaiming.
My Aunt Faure came to see me nearly every day. My mother was in Scotland and came back by short stages. My Aunt Rosine was at Baden-Baden and was ruining the whole family. “I am coming back,” she kept writing from time to time, when she wrote to ask how I was. Dr. D’Espagne and Dr. Monod, who had been called in for a consultation, did not think there was any hope. Baron Larrey, who was very fond of me, came often. He had a certain influence over me and I willingly obeyed him. My mother arrived a short time before my convalescence and did not leave me again. As soon as I could be moved she took me to Paris, promising to send me back to the convent as soon as I was quite well.
It was forever, though, that I had left my dear convent, but it was not forever that I left Mother Ste. Sophie. I seemed to take something of her away with me. For a long time she made part of my life and even to-day, when she has been dead for years, the recollection of her brings back to me the simple thoughts of former days and makes the flowers of youth to bloom again.
Life for me now began in earnest. Cloister existence is one of unbroken sameness for all. There may be a hundred or a thousand individuals there, but everyone lives a life which is the same and the only one for all. The rumor of the outside world dies away at the heavy cloister gate. The sole ambition is to sing more loudly than the others at Vespers, to take a little more of the form, to be at the end of the table, to be on the list of honor. When I was told that I was not to go back to the convent, it was to me as though I was to be thrown into the sea when I could not swim.
I besought my godfather to let me go back. The dowry left to me by my father was ample enough for the dowry of a nun. I wanted to take the veil.
“Very well,” replied my godfather, “you can take the veil in two years’ time, but not before. In the mean time learn all that you do not yet know, and that means everything, from the governess your mother has chosen for you.”
That very day an elderly, unmarried lady with soft, gray, gentle eyes came and took possession of my life, my mind, and my conscience for eight hours every day. Her name was Mlle. De Brabender and she had educated a grand duchess in Russia. She had a sweet voice, an enormous sandy mustache, a grotesque nose, but a way of walking, of expressing herself, and of bowing which simply commanded all deference. She lived at the convent in Rue Notre Dame des Champs, and this was why in spite of my mother’s entreaties she refused to come and live with us.
She soon won my affection and I learned quite easily with her everything that she wanted me to learn. I worked eagerly, for my dream was to return to the convent, not as a pupil but as a teaching Sister.
CHAPTER IV
IN FAMILY COUNCIL ASSEMBLED
