A Fair Penitent | Page 4

forth. The only man, however, who really attached her to
him, was an actor at the Theatre Francois, a famous player in his day,
named Quinault Dufresne. Mademoiselle Gautier seems to have loved
him with all the ardour of her naturally passionate disposition. At first,
he returned her affection; but, as soon as she ventured to test the
sincerity of his attachment by speaking of marriage, he cooled towards
her immediately, and the connection between them was broken off. In
all her former love-affairs, she had been noted for the high tone which
she adopted towards her admirers, and for the despotic authority which
she exercised over them even in her gayest moments. But the severance
of her connection with Quinault Dufresne wounded her to her heart.
She had loved the man so dearly, had made so many sacrifices for him,
had counted so fondly on the devotion of her whole future life to him,
that the first discovery of his coldness towards her broke her spirit at
once and for ever. She fell into a condition of hopeless melancholy,
looked back with remorse and horror at her past life, and abandoned the
stage and the society in which she had lived, to end her days
repentantly in the character of a Carmelite nun.
So far, her history is the history of hundreds of other women before her
time and after it. The prominent interest of her life, for the student of
human nature, lies in the story of her conversion, as told by herself. The
greater part of the narrative--every page of which is more or less
characteristic of the Frenchwoman of the eighteenth century--may be

given, with certain suppressions and abridgments, in her own words.
The reader will observe, at the outset, one curious fact. Mademoiselle
Gautier does not so much as hint at the influence which the loss of her
lover had in disposing her mind to reflect on serious subjects. She
describes her conversion as if it had taken its rise in a sudden
inspiration from Heaven. Even the name of Quinault Dufresne is not
once mentioned from one end of her narrative to the other.
On the twenty-fifth of April, seventeen hundred and twenty-two (writes
Mademoiselle Gautier), while I was still leading a life of
pleasure--according to the pernicious ideas of pleasure which pass
current in the world--I happen to awake, contrary to my usual custom,
between eight and nine o'clock in the morning. I remember that it is my
birthday; I ring for my people; and my maid answers the bell, alarmed
by the idea that I am ill. I tell her to dress me that I may go to mass. I
go to the Church of the Cordeliers, followed by my footman, and taking
with me a little orphan whom I had adopted. The first part of the mass
is celebrated without attracting my attention; but, at the second part the
accusing voice of my conscience suddenly begins to speak. "What
brings you here?" it says. "Do you come to reward God for making you
the attractive person that you are, by mortally transgressing His laws
every day of your life?" I hear that question, and I am unspeakably
overwhelmed by it. I quit the chair on which I have hitherto been
leaning carelessly, and I prostrate myself in an agony of remorse on the
pavement of the church.
The mass over, I send home the footman and the orphan, remaining
behind myself, plunged in inconceivable perplexity. At last I rouse
myself on a sudden; I go to the sacristy; I demand a mass for my own
proper advantage every day; I determine to attend it regularly; and,
after three hours of agitation, I return home, resolved to enter on the
path that leads to justification.
Six months passed. Every morning I went to my mass: every evening I
spent in my customary dissipations.
Some of my friends indulged in considerable merriment at my expense
when they found out my constant attendance at mass. Accordingly, I
disguised myself as a boy, when I went to church, to escape
observation. My disguise was found out, and the jokes against me were
redoubled. Upon this, I began to think of the words of the Gospel,

which declare the impossibility of serving two masters. I determined to
abandon the service of Mammon.
The first vanity I gave up was the vanity of keeping a maid. By way of
further accustoming myself to the retreat from the world which I now
began to meditate, I declined all invitations to parties under the pretext
of indisposition. But the nearer the Easter time approached at which I
had settled in my own mind definitely to turn my back on worldly
temptations and pleasures, the more violent became my internal
struggles with