I was isolated for a week before my baptism and for a week afterwards, as I was to be confirmed one week after the event.
My mother, Aunt Rosine Berendt and Aunt Henriette Faure, my godfather Régis, Monsieur Meydieu, Jeanne’s godfather, and General Polhes, Régina’s godfather, the godmothers of my two sisters and my various cousins, all came, and revolutionised the convent. My mother and my aunts were in fashionable mourning attire. Aunt Rosine had put a spray of lilac in her bonnet, “to enliven her mourning,” as she said. It was a strange expression, but I have certainly heard it since used by other people besides her.
I had never before felt so far away from all these people who had come there on my account. I adored my mother, but with a touching and fervent desire to leave her, never to see her again, to sacrifice her to God. As to the others, I did not see them. I was very grave and rather moody. A short time previously a nun had taken the veil at the convent, and I could think of nothing else.
This baptismal ceremony was the prelude to my dream. I could see myself like the novice who had just been admitted as a nun. I pictured myself lying down on the ground covered over with the heavy black cloth with its white cross, and four massive candlesticks placed at the four corners of the cloth, and I planned to die under this cloth. How I was to do this I do not know. I did not think of killing myself, as I knew that would be a crime. But I made up my mind to die like this, and my ideas galloped along, so that I saw in my imagination the horror of the sisters and heard the cries of the pupils, and was delighted at the emotion which I had caused.
After the baptismal ceremony my mother wished to take me away with her. She had rented a small house with a garden in the Boulevard de la Reine, at Versailles, for my holidays, and she had decorated it with flowers for this fête day, as she wanted to celebrate the baptism of her three children. She was very gently told that, as I was to be confirmed in a week’s time, I was now to be isolated until then. My mother cried, and I can remember now, to my sorrow, that it did not make me sad to see her tears, but quite the contrary.
When every one had gone and I went into the little cell in which I had been living for the last week and wherein I was to live for another week, I fell on my knees in a state of exaltation and offered up to God my mother’s sorrow. “You saw, O Lord God, that mamma cried, and that it did not affect me!” Poor child that I was, I imagined in my wild exaggeration of everything that what was expected from me was the renunciation of all affection, devotion, and pity.
The following day Mother St. Sophie lectured me gently about my wrong comprehension of religious duties, and she told me that when once I was confirmed she should give me a fortnight’s holiday, to go and make my mother forget her sorrow and disappointment.
My confirmation took place with the same pompous ceremonial. All the pupils, dressed in white, carried wax tapers. For the whole week I had refused to eat. I was pale and had grown thinner, and my eyes looked larger from my perpetual transports, for I went to extremes in everything.
Baron Larrey, who came with my mother to my confirmation, asked for a month’s holiday for me to recruit, and this was granted.
Accordingly we started, my mother, Madame Guérard, her son Ernest, my sister Jeanne, and I, for Cauterets in the Pyrénées.