CHAPTER IV

GAYETIES


None the less, these young girls filled this grave house with
charming souvenirs.

At certain hours childhood sparkled in that cloister. The recreation
hour struck. A door swung on its hinges. The birds said,
"Good; here come the children!" An irruption of youth inundated
that garden intersected with a cross like a shroud. Radiant faces,
white foreheads, innocent eyes, full of merry light, all sorts of auroras,
were scattered about amid these shadows. After the psalmodies,
the bells, the peals, and knells and offices, the sound of these little
girls burst forth on a sudden more sweetly than the noise of bees.
The hive of joy was opened, and each one brought her honey.
They played, they called to each other, they formed into groups,
they ran about; pretty little white teeth chattered in the corners;
the veils superintended the laughs from a distance, shades kept watch
of the sunbeams, but what mattered it? Still they beamed and laughed.
Those four lugubrious walls had their moment of dazzling brilliancy.
They looked on, vaguely blanched with the reflection of so much
joy at this sweet swarming of the hives. It was like a shower
of roses falling athwart this house of mourning. The young girls
frolicked beneath the eyes of the nuns; the gaze of impeccability
does not embarrass innocence. Thanks to these children, there was,
among so many austere hours, one hour of ingenuousness. The little
ones skipped about; the elder ones danced. In this cloister play
was mingled with heaven. Nothing is so delightful and so august
as all these fresh, expanding young souls. Homer would have come
thither to laugh with Perrault; and there was in that black garden,
youth, health, noise, cries, giddiness, pleasure, happiness enough
to smooth out the wrinkles of all their ancestresses, those of the
epic as well as those of the fairy-tale, those of the throne as well
as those of the thatched cottage from Hecuba to la Mere-Grand.

In that house more than anywhere else, perhaps, arise those
children's sayings which are so graceful and which evoke a smile
that is full of thoughtfulness. It was between those four
gloomy walls that a child of five years exclaimed one day:
"Mother! one of the big girls has just told me that I have
only nine years and ten months longer to remain here. What happiness!"

It was here, too, that this memorable dialogue took place:--

A Vocal Mother. Why are you weeping, my child?

The child (aged six). I told Alix that I knew my French history.
She says that I do not know it, but I do.

Alix, the big girl (aged nine). No; she does not know it.

The Mother. How is that, my child?

Alix. She told me to open the book at random and to ask her any
question in the book, and she would answer it.

"Well?"

"She did not answer it."

"Let us see about it. What did you ask her?"

"I opened the book at random, as she proposed, and I put the first
question that I came across."

"And what was the question?"

"It was, `What happened after that?'"

It was there that that profound remark was made anent a rather
greedy paroquet which belonged to a lady boarder:--

"How well bred! it eats the top of the slice of bread and butter
just like a person!"

It was on one of the flagstones of this cloister that there was
once picked up a confession which had been written out in advance,
in order that she might not forget it, by a sinner of seven years:--

"Father, I accuse myself of having been avaricious.

"Father, I accuse myself of having been an adulteress.

"Father, I accuse myself of having raised my eyes to the gentlemen."

It was on one of the turf benches of this garden that a rosy mouth
six years of age improvised the following tale, which was listened
to by blue eyes aged four and five years:--

"There were three little cocks who owned a country where there
were a great many flowers. They plucked the flowers and put them
in their pockets. After that they plucked the leaves and put
them in their playthings. There was a wolf in that country;
there was a great deal of forest; and the wolf was in the forest;
and he ate the little cocks."

And this other poem:--

"There came a blow with a stick.

"It was Punchinello who bestowed it on the cat.

"It was not good for her; it hurt her.

"Then a lady put Punchinello in prison."

It was there that a little abandoned child, a foundling whom
the convent was bringing up out of charity, uttered this sweet and
heart-breaking saying. She heard the others talking of their mothers,
and she murmured in her corner:--

"As for me, my mother was not there when I was born!"

There was a stout portress who could always be seen hurrying
through the corridors with her bunch of keys, and whose name was
Sister Agatha. The big big girls--those over ten years of age--
called her Agathocles.

The refectory, a large apartment of an oblong square form, which received
no light except through a vaulted cloister on a level with the garden,
was dark and damp, and, as the children say, full of beasts.
All the places round about furnished their contingent of insects.

Each of its four corners had received, in the language of the pupils,
a special and expressive name. There was Spider corner,
Caterpillar corner, Wood-louse corner, and Cricket corner.

Cricket corner was near the kitchen and was highly esteemed.
It was not so cold there as elsewhere. From the refectory the names
had passed to the boarding-school, and there served as in the old
College Mazarin to distinguish four nations. Every pupil belonged
to one of these four nations according to the corner of the refectory
in which she sat at meals. One day Monseigneur the Archbishop
while making his pastoral visit saw a pretty little rosy girl
with beautiful golden hair enter the class-room through which he
was passing.

He inquired of another pupil, a charming brunette with rosy cheeks,
who stood near him:--

"Who is that?"

"She is a spider, Monseigneur."

"Bah! And that one yonder?"

"She is a cricket."

"And that one?"

"She is a caterpillar."

"Really! and yourself?"

"I am a wood-louse, Monseigneur."

Every house of this sort has its own peculiarities. At the beginning
of this century Ecouen was one of those strict and graceful places where
young girls pass their childhood in a shadow that is almost august.
At Ecouen, in order to take rank in the procession of the Holy
Sacrament, a distinction was made between virgins and florists.
There were also the "dais" and the "censors,"--the first who held
the cords of the dais, and the others who carried incense before
the Holy Sacrament. The flowers belonged by right to the florists.
Four "virgins" walked in advance. On the morning of that great day
it was no rare thing to hear the question put in the dormitory,
"Who is a virgin?"

Madame Campan used to quote this saying of a "little one" of seven years,
to a "big girl" of sixteen, who took the head of the procession,
while she, the little one, remained at the rear, "You are a virgin,
but I am not."