1.C.6.4. 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 mouths 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."