CHAPTER IV.

GAYETIES.

For all this, though, the young ladies filled this grave house with delightful reminiscences. At certain hours childhood sparkled in this cloister. The bell for recreation was rung, the gate creaked on its hinges, and the birds whispered to each other, "Here are the children." An irruption of youth inundated this garden, which with its cross-walks resembled a pall. Radiant faces, white foreheads, ingenuous eyes, full of gay light--all sorts of dawn--spread through the gloom. After the psalm-singing, the bell-ringing, and the services, the noise of girls, softer than the buzzing of bees, suddenly burst out. The hive of joy opened, and each brought her honey; they played, they called each other, they formed groups, and ran about; pretty little white teeth chattered at corners; in the distance veils watched the laughter, shadows guarded the beams,--but what matter! they were radiant, and laughed. These four mournful walls had their moment of bedazzlement; vaguely whitened by the reflection of so much joy, they watched this gentle buzzing of the swarm. It was like a shower of roses falling on this mourning. The girls sported beneath the eye of the nuns, for the glance of impeccability does not disturb innocence; and, thanks to these children, there was a simple hour among so many austere hours. The little girls jumped about and the elder danced, and nothing could be so ravishing and august as all the fresh, innocent expansion of these childish souls. Homer would have come here to dance with Perrault, and there were in this black garden, youth, health, noise, cries, pleasure, and happiness enough to unwrinkle the brows of all the ancestry, both of the epic poem and the fairy tale, of the throne and the cottage, from Hecuba down to La Mère Grand. In this house, more perhaps than elsewhere, those childish remarks were made which possess so much grace, and which make the hearer laugh thoughtfully. It was within these four gloomy walls that a child of four years of age one day exclaimed,--"Mother, a grown-up girl has just told me that I have only nine years and ten months longer to remain here. What happiness!" Here too it was that the memorable dialogue took place:--

_A vocal mother_.--Why are you crying, my child?

_The child_ (six years old), sobbing.--I said to Alix that I knew my French history. She says that I don't know it, but I do know it.

_Alix_, the grown-up girl (just nine).--No. She does not know it.

_Mother_.--How so, my child?

_Alix_.--She told me to open the book haphazard, and ask her a question out of the book, which she would answer.

"Well?"

"She did not answer it."

"What was it you asked her?"

"I opened the book as she said, and I asked her the first question that I came across."

"And pray what was the question?"

"It was, '_What happened next?_'"

It was here that the profound observation was made about a rather dainty parrot which belonged to a lady boarder. "How well bred it is! It eats the top of the slice of bread and butter, just like a lady." In one of these cloisters was also picked up the following confession, written beforehand, so as not to forget it, by a little sinner of seven years of age:--

"My father, I accuse myself of having been avaricious.

"My father, I accuse myself of having committed adultery.

"My father, I accuse myself of having raised my eyes to gentlemen."

It was on one of the benches in the garden that the following fable was improvised by rosy lips six years of age, and listened to by blue eyes of four and five years:--

"There were three little cocks, which lived in a place where there were many flowers. They picked the flowers and put them in their pockets; after that they plucked the leaves and put them in their play-things. There was a wolf in those parts, and there was a great deal of wood; and the wolf was in the wood, and all the three cocks."

It was here too that the following sweet and affecting remark was made by a foundling child whom the convent brought up through charity. She heard the others speaking of their mothers, and she murmured in her corner,--"My mother was not there when I was born." There was a fat portress who could continually be seen hurrying along the passage with her bunch of keys, and whose name was Sister Agathe. The grown-up girls--those above ten years of age--called her Agathoclès (Agathe aux clefs). The refectory, a large, rectangular room, which only received light through an arched window looking on the garden, was gloomy and damp, and, as children say, full of animals. All the surrounding places furnished their contingent of insects; and each of the four corners had received a private and expressive name, in the language of the boarders. There were Spider corner, Caterpillar corner, Woodlouse corner, and Cricket corner; the latter was near the kitchen, and highly esteemed, for it was warmer there. The names had passed from the refectory to the school-room, and served to distinguish four nations, as in the old Mazarin College. Every boarder belonged to one or other of these nations, according to the corner of the refectory in which she sat at meals. One day the archbishop, while paying a pastoral visit, noticed a charming little rosy-faced girl, with glorious light hair, pass, and he asked another boarder, a pretty brunette with pink cheeks, who was near him,--

"Who is that?"

"She is a spider, sir."

"Nonsense; and this other?"

"Is a cricket."

"And this one?"

"A caterpillar."

"Indeed! and what may you be?"

"I am a woodlouse, Monseigneur."

Each house of this nature has its peculiarities: at the beginning of this century Écouen was one of those places in which the childhood of children is passed in an almost august gloom. At Écouen a distinction was made between the virgins and flower-girls in taking rank in the procession of the Holy Sacrament. There were also the "canopies," and the "censers," the former holding the cords of the canopy, the latter swinging the censers in front of the Holy Sacrament, while four virgins walked in front. On the morning of the great day it was not rare to have people say in the dormitory,--"Who is a virgin?" Madame Campan mentions a remark made by a little girl of seven to a grown-up girl of sixteen, who walked at the head of the procession, while she, the little one, remained behind: "You are a virgin, but I am not one."