My Double Life | Page 9

travel with
me and see some beautiful countries."
"Oh, I will be good!" I exclaimed; "I'll be as good as Aunt Henriette!"
This was my aunt Faure. Everybody smiled.
After dinner, the weather being very fine, we all went out to stroll in
the park. My father took me with him, and talked to me very seriously.
He told me things that were sad, which I had never heard before. I
understood, although I was so young, and my eyes filled with tears. He
was sitting on an old bench and I was on his knee, with my head resting
on his shoulder. I listened to all he said and cried silently, my childish
mind disturbed by his words. Poor father! I was never, never to see him
again.

III
CONVENT LIFE
I Did not sleep well that night, and the following morning at eight
o'clock we started by diligence for Versailles. I can see Marie now,
great big girl as she then was, in tears. All the members of the family
were assembled at the top of the stone steps. There was my little trunk,
and then a wooden case of games which my mother had brought, and a
kite that my cousin had made, which he gave me at the last moment,
just as the carriage was starting. I can still see the large white house,

which seemed to get smaller and smaller the farther we drove away
from it. I stood up, with my father holding me, and waved his blue silk
muffler which I had taken from his neck. After this I sat down in the
carriage and fell asleep, only rousing up again when we were at the
heavy-looking door of the Grand-Champs Convent. I rubbed my eyes
and tried to collect my thoughts. I then jumped down from the
diligence and looked curiously around me. The paving-stones of the
street were round and small, with grass growing everywhere. There was
a wall, and then a great gateway surmounted by a cross, and nothing
behind it, nothing whatever to be seen. To the left there was a house,
and to the right the Satory barracks. Not a sound to be heard--not a
footfall, not even an echo.
"Oh, Mamma," I exclaimed, "is it inside there I am to go? Oh no! I
would rather go back to Madame Fressard's!"
My mother shrugged her shoulders and pointed to my father, thus
explaining that she was not responsible for this step. I rushed to him,
and he took me by the hand as he rang the bell. The door opened, and
he led me gently in, followed by my mother and Aunt Rosine.
The courtyard was large and dreary-looking, but there were buildings to
be seen, and windows from which children's faces were gazing
curiously at us. My father said something to the nun who came forward,
and she took us into the parlour. This was large, with a polished floor,
and was divided by an enormous black grating which ran the whole
length of the room. There were benches covered with red velvet by the
wall, and a few chairs and armchairs near the grating. On the walls
were a portrait of Pius IX., a full length one of St. Augustine, and one
of Henri V. My teeth chattered, for it seemed to me that I remembered
reading in some book the description of a prison, and that it was just
like this. I looked at my father and my mother, and began to distrust
them. I had so often heard that I was ungovernable, that I needed an
iron hand to rule me, and that I was the devil incarnate in a child. My
aunt Faure had so often repeated, "That child will come to a bad end,
she has such mad ideas," &c. &c. "Papa, papa!" I suddenly cried out,
seized with terror; "I won't go to prison. This is a prison, I am sure. I

am frightened--oh, I am so frightened!"
On the other side of the grating a door had just opened, and I stopped to
see who was coming. A little round, short woman made her appearance
and came up to the grating. Her black veil was lowered as far as her
mouth, so that I could scarcely see anything of her face. She recognised
my father, whom she had probably seen before, when matters were
being arranged. She opened a door in the grating, and we all went
through to the other side of the room. On seeing me pale and my
terrified eyes full of tears, she gently took my hand in hers and, turning
her back to my father, raised her veil. I then saw the sweetest and
merriest face imaginable, with large child-like blue eyes, a turn-up nose,