“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.”
CHAPTER V—DISTRACTIONS
Above the door of the refectory this prayer, which was called the white Paternoster, and which possessed the property of bearing people straight to paradise, was inscribed in large black letters:—
“Little white Paternoster, which God made, which God said, which God placed in paradise.
In the evening, when I went to bed, I found three angels sitting on my bed, one at the foot, two at the head, the good Virgin Mary in the middle, who told me to lie down without hesitation.
The good God is my father, the good Virgin is my mother, the three apostles are my brothers, the three virgins are my sisters.
The shirt in which God was born envelopes my body; Saint Margaret’s cross is written on my breast.
Madame the Virgin was walking through the meadows, weeping for God, when she met M. Saint John.
‘Monsieur Saint John, whence come you?’
‘I come from Ave Salus.’
‘You have not seen the good God; where is he?’
‘He is on the tree of the Cross, his feet hanging, his hands nailed, a little cap of white thorns on his head.’
Whoever shall say this thrice at eventide, thrice in the morning, shall win paradise at the last.”
In 1827 this characteristic orison had disappeared from the wall under a triple coating of daubing paint.
At the present time it is finally disappearing from the memories of several who were young girls then, and who are old women now.
A large crucifix fastened to the wall completed the decoration of this refectory, whose only door, as we think we have mentioned, opened on the garden.
Two narrow tables, each flanked by two wooden benches, formed two long parallel lines from one end to the other of the refectory.
The walls were white, the tables were black; these two mourning colors constitute the only variety in convents.
The meals were plain, and the food of the children themselves severe.
A single dish of meat and vegetables combined, or salt fish—such was their luxury.
This meagre fare, which was reserved for the pupils alone, was, nevertheless, an exception.
The children ate in silence, under the eye of the mother whose turn it was, who, if a fly took a notion to fly or to hum against the rule, opened and shut a wooden book from time to time.
This silence was seasoned with the lives of the saints, read aloud from a little pulpit with a desk, which was situated at the foot of the crucifix.
The reader was one of the big girls, in weekly turn.
At regular distances, on the bare tables, there were large, varnished bowls in which the pupils washed their own silver cups and knives and forks, and into which they sometimes threw some scrap of tough meat or spoiled fish; this was punished.
These bowls were called ronds d’eau.
The child who broke the silence “made a cross with her tongue.”
Where?
On the ground.
She licked the pavement.
The dust, that end of all joys, was charged with the chastisement of those poor little rose-leaves which had been guilty of chirping.
There was in the convent a book which has never been printed except as a unique copy, and which it is forbidden to read.
It is the rule of Saint-Benoit.