Although most of the girls were of high birth, the little Princess, soon to be Queen, was of higher rank than any of the others. Her seat was a little apart from theirs, and by various small tokens of this kind her position was recognized.
Now one day it happened that Mercedes committed some fault. Perhaps she was late in rising, or failed in some other way to carry out the convent rules. The fault was not serious, and the Sisters did not think it necessary to enforce the punishment; but Mercedes, blushing very much, went of her own accord to the corner where she knew she ought to stand, and staid the appointed time. You see she felt that if she was of too high rank to receive punishment from others, the duty of inflicting it upon herself was her own. Noblesse oblige.
Although the illustrations I have given you have all been from royal families, where, I suppose, the motto originated, I am sure you will be able to apply it to hundreds of other cases, and will believe that nobility of character obliges us with still more force to do the best things always, though we are bound by no outward law.
THE SUN AT MIDNIGHT.
There are portions of our globe, away toward either pole, where the sun remains above the horizon for about two months of the year, making one long day. During this period the pleasant alternations of morning, day, evening, and night, are unknown in those regions; and there is also a long season of night, when the sun is not seen at all. This must be still more unpleasant, because it is winter-time. The pale cold moon sheds a chilling light at times over the snow and ice, and the aurora borealis flashes its splendors through the heavens. The cold is so great that old chroniclers, writing about the arctic regions, pretended that when the inhabitants tried to speak, their very words froze in coming out of their mouths, and did not thaw out till spring. It is not safe to believe all that old chroniclers tell us, and perhaps in this case they only tried, in an extravagant way, to make their readers understand how very cold it was in that Northern land.
Our next picture shows the pleasanter side of arctic life, when the sun is above the horizon most of the time, and disappears from sight for short periods only. Many travellers have gone as far as the famous North Cape, in Norway, for the sake of seeing the sun at midnight. Among them is Du Chaillu, whom many of our readers know through his interesting books about Africa. He stood on the very edge of the cape one July midnight—that is, it was midnight by the clock—and saw the sun descend nearly to the horizon, and then begin to rise again. Far to the northward stretched the deep blue waters of the Arctic Ocean; close around him was a bleak, dreary, desolate landscape. A few blades of grass sprouted at the edge of the cape. Further back, in places sheltered from the winds, the ground was clothed in rich verdure, and adorned with flowers. Still further inland were little patches of dwarf birch, scarcely a foot high, crouching close to the ground to escape being torn away by the furious winds that sweep over the land. There was none of the abundant life that we see around us in our fields and woods. A spider, a bumble-bee, and a poor little wanderer of a bird, were the only living things Du Chaillu saw.
But he beheld the sun at midnight. As the hour of twelve approached, the pale orb sank almost to the horizon, the line of which it seemed to follow for a few moments, as it shone serenely over the lonely sea and desolate land. It was a sight never to be forgotten by one who had travelled hundreds of miles to witness it.