of the holy habit, were a genuine happiness and a real recreation for the scholars. They simply amused themselves with it. “It was new; it gave them a change.” Candid reasons of childhood, which do not, however, succeed in making us worldlings comprehend the felicity of holding a holy water sprinkler in one’s hand and standing for hours together singing hard enough for four in front of a reading-desk.
The pupils conformed, with the exception of the austerities, to all the practices of the convent. There was a certain young woman who entered the world, and who after many years of married life had not succeeded in breaking herself of the habit of saying in great haste whenever anyone knocked at her door, “forever!” Like the nuns, the pupils saw their relatives only in the parlor. Their very mothers did not obtain permission to embrace them. The following illustrates to what a degree severity on that point was carried. One day a young girl received a visit from her mother, who was accompanied by a little sister three years of age. The young girl wept, for she wished greatly to embrace her sister. Impossible. She begged that, at least, the child might be permitted to pass her little hand through the bars so that she could kiss it. This was almost indignantly refused.
IV
Gayeties
Nonetheless, 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