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Soeur Séraphine was slender and beautiful, so beautiful in her gray dress and white coif, that every new girl longed to dress like her, and all the girls made up romances about her, no one of which was true. Both ladies were good as bread, and everybody loved them, even people who loved no one else; old Cruchon, the milkman, for example, who announced boldly that he hated all human kind.
Two years of récreation in the garden, with its high box hedges, and its brick-paved alleys from which the girls were set once a week to remove the weeds and mosses that came sprouting up between the small bright red bricks. (Thus they learned, Madame would explain, the ceaseless industry and perseverance of Nature, overcoming every obstacle; besides strengthening the muscles of the back in a manner altogether special.)
It was a delightful garden, with its square plots of flowers and vegetables, alternating along both sides of the broad central allée which ran its entire length; its fruit trees fastened primly to the brick walls, like ones hair in curl-papers, as Patricia said; its currant and gooseberry bushes, and the great grapevines that buried the lower wall in a mass of heavy green.
The grande allée was not bricked, but was covered with sand, white and firm and delightful to run on. Was it not rolled every morning by Margoton, daughter of Anak, the gigantic gardener and chorewoman? Here the girls might run at will (within bounds of health, prudence, and good taste, as Madame explained) either for mere pleasure and exercise, or by way
of preparation for the Courses , which were held here; the races for the Pommes dAtalante , the little gilded apples which were more coveted than any other school prize. Of this more hereafter.
Two years of quiet evenings in Madames own parlor, the dim, pleasant room with its dark shining floor and old tapestries, its wonderful chandelier of Venetian glass and the round convex mirror that was so good (said Soeur Séraphine) for repressing the sin of vanity in the breast of the Young Person. We sat upright on cross-stitch tabourets, and knitted or embroidered, while Madame or the Sister read aloud, Télémaque, or Paul et Virginie, or La Tulipe Noire.
It was a happy time. Dull, some of the girls found it; Stephanie, for example, who pined for excitement; Rose-Marie, who was desperately homesick for Aigues-Mortes (thought by some the dullest place in Europe); Loulou, who considered all study a forlorn waste of time.
Honor loved it all, and was happy; but as Madame Madeleine frankly said, Honor would be happy anywhere.
She carries her world with her! Madame would shrug her kind shoulders under their little white shawl. We are but scenery, ma mie !
Whereupon Soeur Séraphine would sigh and murmur, Poor Honor! poor dear child! and say a special prayer to Ste. Gêneviève for her favorite pupil.
There were ten of them: three Americans, Patricia Desmond, Maria Patterson, and Honor herself, the rest French or French-Swiss. Rose-Marie was the oldest and had been there longest; poor Rose-Marie, so good, so dull, the despair of all except Soeur Séraphine, who never despaired of any one. Loulou was the youngest, a little mouse-like girl afflicted with a devouring curiosity, which was always getting her into scrapes: scrapes, for which Stephanie, who, I am sorry to say, was somewhat similarly afflicted, was apt to be partly responsible.
Stephanie was pretty, lively, sentimental, and always in love with somebody. She had tried worshipping Patricia, when she first came, but that, Patricia intimated to her quietly, was a thing she could not endure, and the sooner she, Stephanie, dropped it, the better for all concerned. Since then there had been little love lost between the two girls. Stephanie transferred her adoration to Honor, who took it simply, as she took most things, and thought it was wonderful of Stephanie to care for her.
Vivette was pretty, too, indeed, most of the girls were pretty, a fact which gave Soeur Séraphine more pleasure than she felt it quite right to take in anything so temporary and ensnaring as flesh and blood. But, she would reflect, Vivette, for all her beauty, was serious. Tiens! If she should prove to have a Vocation! When this thought first came to her, Soeur Séraphine felt her heart sink in a strange and certainly a very sinful manner. She loved her vocation; for herself, it had been a heavenly refuge from certain tragic sorrows of her youth. When her convent had been broken up a few years ago, she had been at first like a homeless bird, till the good elder sister, long widowed, had come to her, and folded her in strong, tender arms, and taken her away to Vevay, to share her home, her work, and all her good, peaceful life.
Yes; but why then did Soeur Séraphines heart sink at thought of Vivettes having a vocation for the cloister? Well, because the little Sister desired that everybody might be happy; and in her heart of hearts she would have liked to see every young girl blissfully married to a young man without fault, of marvelous beauty, large fortune and irreproachable lineage. That was all. Of course, where a young person had a real vocation, it was another matter. Vivette had hitherto shown no signs of special piety, but what would you? She was yet young. If even an unuttered thought should in any mysterious way turn her from heavenly paths, that would be grievous sin on the part of the thinker. Satan was very watchful, and her own heart, Soeur Séraphine reflected, was desperately wicked. The Sister did penance for this, and fasted on a feast day, to the amazement of the girls and the great distress of Madame Madeleine.