From the great danger thus incurred they derived but a very moderate amount of pleasure. The most “interesting thing” they found were some unintelligible pages about the sins of young boys.
They played in an alley of the garden bordered with a few shabby fruit-trees. In spite of the extreme surveillance and the severity of the punishments administered, when the wind had shaken the trees, they sometimes succeeded in picking up a green apple or a spoiled apricot or an inhabited pear on the sly. I will now cede the privilege of speech to a letter which lies before me, a letter written five and twenty years ago by an old pupil, now Madame la Duchesse de ⸻, one of the most elegant women in Paris. I quote literally: “One hides one’s pear or one’s apple as best one may. When one goes upstairs to put the veil on the bed before supper, one stuffs them under one’s pillow and at night one eats them in bed, and when one cannot do that, one eats them in the closet.” That was one of their greatest luxuries.
Once—it was at the epoch of the visit from the archbishop to the convent—one of the young girls, Mademoiselle Bouchard, who was connected with the Montmorency family, laid a wager that she would ask for a day’s leave of absence—an enormity in so austere a community. The wager was accepted, but not one of those who bet believed that she would do it. When the moment came, as the archbishop was passing in front of the pupils, Mademoiselle Bouchard, to the indescribable terror of her companions, stepped out of the ranks, and said, “Monseigneur, a day’s leave of absence.” Mademoiselle Bouchard was tall, blooming, with the prettiest little rosy face in the world. M. de Quélen smiled and said, “What, my dear child, a day’s leave of absence! Three days if you like. I grant you three days.” The prioress could do nothing; the archbishop had spoken. Horror of the convent, but joy of the pupil. The effect may be imagined.
This stern cloister was not so well walled off, however, but that the life of the passions of the outside world, drama, and even romance, did not