When Aurore Dupin went to Paris she found herself in the
Rue Thiroux, where Madame Dupin had taken a suite of rooms,
or, as the French say, an 'appartement.' For this 'appartement'
the old lady paid a high rent—more than she could
afford, indeed; but she clung to the ancient custom of a flat
with a large drawing-room, where the friends of the host and
hostess could meet once or twice a year. During the rest of
the time it was kept shut, and all but rich and fashionable
people lived in their bedrooms. As Madame Dupin never gave
parties at all, she might have done without the salon and
housed herself for half the price, but that she would have
thought beneath her dignity, and would have starved first.
Though Ursule was left behind at Nohant, Aurore had
other playfellows, with one of whom, Pauline de Pontcarré,
she did lessons. Pauline was a very pretty little girl, much
less heedless than Aurore, and less in the habit of losing her
gloves and dropping her handkerchief. Madame Dupin was
always praising her for being so well brought up, and wishing
that Aurore had such nice manners; but instead of this
making Pauline hated by her new friend, Aurore admired her
beauty and was quite fond of her. Three times a week they
had lessons together at Madame Dupin's in music, writing, and
dancing. The dancing-master came direct from the opera,
and was one of the best in Paris; the writing-master was also
a person of high reputation, but unluckily he was of opinion
that a graceful attitude at a desk was of more importance
than a clear hand, and Aurore soon became very impatient
with his teaching.
On the other three days Madame de Pontcarré (who, unlike
Madame Dupin, loved walking) came to fetch Aurore to her
own house, where Pauline was awaiting them.
It was Madame de Pontcarré herself who taught them geography
and history by a method invented by the Abbé Gaultier
that was much in fashion at that period. It sounds as
if it must have been like those used in the kindergartens
to-day, for everything was a sort of game, and played with
balls and counters. But best of all the hours spent at Madame
de Pontcarré's were those when Aurore sat and listened to her
friend singing and playing, or learned from her some of the
principles of musical composition. This was even a greater
joy than the romps with Pauline's cousins in a big garden
in the Rue de la Victoire belonging to Madame de Pontcarré's
mother, where there was plenty of room for blindman's buff,
or for the game known in Scotland as 'tig.' In this game—barres
was the French name—the children were formed into
two camps, the object being to take as many prisoners as
possible. Sometimes they all dined together and afterwards
the dining-room was cleared out, and they played games in
which their mothers or even the servants joined. How
horrified old Madame Dupin would have been at the noise
they made! She would not have thought them at all 'well
brought up.'
Aurore gives a very funny account of the way in which
Hippolyte danced, for he lived at home and only went to
school for certain classes. It was all very well for him and
Aurore to laugh secretly when M. Gogault, the dancing-master,
entered the room 'like a zephyr cutting a caper'; but it was
M. Gogault's turn to smile when Hippolyte, who was more
heavy and awkward than it was possible to imagine, nearly
brought down the house when he did his steps, and shook the
walls in his attempts to chasser. If he was told to hold his
head up and not to poke, he took his chin in his hand, and
kept it there all the time he was dancing. And all this he
did with the utmost seriousness, and with no idea of being
troublesome. But at school he only got into mischief, and
when the whole Dupin family returned to Nohant in the
spring, it was thought best for Hippolyte to go with them.
It was there during the next few months that, in the
intervals of play and laughter, Aurore first paid attention to
the conversation of her elders as to the result of the Russian
campaign and the future of France. Nowadays it seems to
us almost impossible to believe that for a whole fortnight no
news was received of the French Army of 300,000 men, and
still more that Napoleon, 'the man who filled the universe
with his name and Europe with his presence,' should have
disappeared like a pilgrim lost in the snow. At Nohant
no one spoke of anything else, till one night this child of
eight, who had silently brooded over the words of her elders,
had a curious dream, so clear that it was almost a vision.
She felt herself hovering in the air above endless white plains,
with the wandering columns of the vanished army straggling
they knew not where, and guided them towards France.
When she awoke she was as tired and hungry as if she had
taken a long flight, and her eyes were still dazzled by the snow.
In the summer of 1813—the year of the victories of Lutzen,
Bautzen, and Dresden—prisoners of war were sent to all parts
of the country, many of them not even under a guard. The
first prisoner that the children noticed was an officer sitting on
the steps of a little pavilion at the end of their garden. His
shoes were dropping to pieces though his coat and shirt were
of the finest material, and in his hand he held the miniature
of a woman suspended from his neck by a black ribbon, which
he was examining sadly. They both felt awed—they did not
know why—and were afraid to speak to him. But in a moment
his servant came up, and the two went away silently together.
After that, such numbers passed by that the peasants paid
no attention to them, and even Aurore and Hippolyte speedily
grew accustomed to the sight. One morning, in spite of the
stifling heat, they were again playing near the pavilion, when
one of these poor wretches passed and flung himself wearily on
the steps. He was a German with a simple good-natured
face, and the children went up and spoke to him, but he only
shook his head and answered in French, 'me not understand.'
Then Aurore made signs to ask if he was thirsty, and in reply
the man pointed to some stagnant water in the ditch. They
contrived to convey to him by violent head-shakings that it
was not good to drink, and, further, that he must wait a
minute and they would get him something. As fast as they
could, they ran to the house and brought back a bottle of
wine and some bread, which he swallowed. When he had
finished, and felt better, he held out his hand repeatedly
and they thought he wanted money. Not having any themselves,
Aurore was going to ask her grandmother for some, but
the German, guessing her intention, stopped her, and made
signs that he only desired to shake hands. His eyes were
full of tears, and he was evidently trying hard to say something.
At last he got it out: 'Children very good.'
Filled with pity they ran back to tell Madame Dupin, who,
remembering how her own son had been taken prisoner by the
Croats, gave orders that every day a certain number of bottles
of wine and loaves of bread should be placed in the pavilion
for the use of these unfortunate Germans. Every instant of
freedom that Hippolyte and Aurore could get was spent in
that pavilion, handing slices of bread and cups of wine to the
weary creatures sitting on the steps, who were so gentle and
grateful for the unexpected help. Sometimes, when three or
four arrived together, they would sing to their little hosts
some of their national songs before they left. Their talent
for singing and dancing gained them friends all through the
country, and now and then gained them wives also.
The troubled years from 1814 to 1817 passed away and
Aurore remained at Nohant with her grandmother, who was
constantly growing more and more helpless from a stroke of
paralysis. Aurore was left very much to herself, but studied
music under the organist of the neighbouring village, learnt
history and geography, and read Homer and Tasso in translations.
But her real life was the one she created for herself,
presided over by a mystic personage to whom she gave the
name of Corambé. In her mind, he represented all that was
kind and pitiful, and in the thickness of a wood in the corner
of the garden she made him a temple. That is to say, she
decorated the trees which stood about a round green space,
with coloured pebbles, fresh moss, or anything else she could find. A sort of altar was next put together at the foot of
a large maple from whose boughs hung wreaths of pink
and white shells, while trails of ivy reaching from one tree to
another formed an arcade. Empty birds' nests, chaplets of
flowers and moss were soon added, and when the temple
was done it seemed so lovely to the child that often she could
hardly sleep at night for thinking of it.
Aurore sets free the captive Birds at the Altar of Corambé.
It is needless to say all would have been spoilt for Aurore
had the 'grown-ups' guessed at the existence of her precious
temple or of Corambé. She took the greatest care to pick
up her shells and the fallen birds' nests as if she really hardly
knew what she was doing, and was thinking of something
else all the time. Never did she enter the wood except
when alone, and then from a direction different from that
which she had taken before.
When the temple was ready, it was necessary to know
what the sacrifice was to be. Nothing dead should be offered
to Corambé. Of that she was certain. Then if no dead sacrifice
was to be laid before him, why should he not become the
champion and deliverer of living objects in danger of death?
So Liset, a boy older than herself and her faithful follower, was
ordered to catch birds and butterflies and even insects in the
fields, and carry them to her, unhurt. What she was going to
do with them, he neither knew nor cared, for Aurore had
kept her secret well. Great would have been his surprise
had he known that daily these captive swallows, redbreasts,
chaffinches, or dragon-flies were borne tenderly to the altar
of Corambé, and there set free. If one happened to perch
for an instant on a branch above her head before disappearing
into the blue, a thrill of ecstasy ran through the priestess.
But one day Liset, who had been sent to look for her,
caught sight of her white frock as she was entering the wood.
And with his words:
'Oh, ma'mselle, what a pretty little altar!' the spell of her
story was broken, and it is a spell that can never be cast twice.
Aurore, however, did not always have dryads and cherubs
and wonder-working spirits for company; Hippolyte would
not have allowed anything of the sort, for he liked Aurore to
be with him, whatever he was doing. They had many friends
too, both boys and girls, with whom they climbed trees, played
games, and even kept sheep, which means that they did not
keep them at all, but let them trample down the young wheat
in the fields or eat it, if they preferred, while they themselves
were dancing. If they were thirsty, they milked the
cows and the goats; if they were hungry they ate wild apples
or made a fire and cooked potatoes. Aurore's particular
favourites were two girls called Marie and Solange, daughters
of a small farmer, and whenever she could get away she ran up
to the farm, and helped them seek for eggs, pick fruit, or nurse
the sickly little lambs. And apart from the pleasure the others
took in all this, Aurore found one of her own, for the orchard
became transformed by her fancy into a fairy wood, with little
creatures having sharp ears and merry eyes peeping from
behind the trees. Then her dreams would be roughly dispersed
by Hippolyte's voice, summoning her to the most
delightful of all the games they ever played, which was to
jump from some high place into the mountain of sheaves
piled up in the barn.
'I should like to do it now, if I dared,' says Aurore thirty
years after.
At length it occurred to Madame Dupin that Aurore was
thirteen, and needed better teaching than M. Deschartres
could give her, and, still worse, that the child was running
wild, that her complexion was getting ruined, and that if she
was ever to wear the thin elegant slippers worn by other young
ladies, she must grow accustomed to them before the sabots,
or wooden shoes worn by the peasants, had spoilt her for everything
else. She wanted, in fact, proper training, so her grandmother
was going to take her to Paris at once, and to place
her in a convent.
'And shall I see my mother?' cried Aurore.
'Yes; certainly you will see her,' replied Madame Dupin;
'and after that you will see neither of us, but will give all
your time to your education.'
Aurore did not mind. She had not the slightest idea of the
life she would lead in the convent, but it would at any rate be
something new. So, 'without fear, or regret, or repugnance,'
as she herself tells us, she entered the 'Couvent des Anglaises,'
where both Madame Dupin and her own mother had been imprisoned
during the Revolution. This, of course, gave the
convent a special interest for Aurore.
The Couvent des Anglaises was the only remaining one of
three or four British religious houses which had been founded
in Paris during the time of Cromwell, and as a school, ranked
with the convents of the Sacré-Cœur and of l'Abbaye-aux-Bois.
Queen Henrietta Maria used often to come and pray in the
chapel, and this fact rendered the Couvent des Anglaises
peculiarly dear to English royalists. All the nuns were either
English, Scotch, or Irish, and nearly all the girls—at least,
when Aurore went there—were subjects of King George also.
As it was strictly forbidden during certain hours of the day to
speak a word of French, Aurore had every possible chance of
learning English. She learnt, too, something about English
habits, for the nuns drank tea three times a day, and invited
the best behaved of the girls to share it with them. All was
as English as it could be made. In the chapel were the tombs
bearing English texts and epitaphs, of holy exiles who had died
abroad. On the walls of the Superior's private rooms hung
the portraits of English princes and bishops long dead, among
whom Mary Queen of Scots—counted as a saint by the nuns—held
the central place. In fact, the moment the threshold
was crossed, you seemed to have crossed the Channel also.
The Mother Superior at the date of Aurore's entrance was
a certain Madame Canning, a clever woman with a large
experience of the world.
Like many children brought up at home, Aurore had
read a great deal in her own way, but was very ignorant of
other subjects familiar to girls younger than herself, who had
been educated at school. This she was well aware of, so it
was no surprise to her, though a disappointment to her
grandmother, when she was confided by the Superior to the
pupils of the second class, whose ages varied from six to
thirteen or fourteen. Aurore was never shy and did not in
the least mind being stared at by thirty or forty pairs of eyes,
and at once set out to explore the garden and examine
everything in company with one of the older girls, in whose
charge she had been put. When they had visited every
corner, they were called to play at 'bars,' and as Aurore
could run like a hare, she soon gained the respect of her
schoolfellows.
The three years passed by Aurore in the Couvent des
Anglaises were, she tells us, happy ones for her, though almost
without exception her schoolfellows were pining, or thought
they were, for their homes and their mothers. But after the
free life and country air of Nohant the confinement and lack
of change tried her, and for a while she grew weak and languid.
Twice in every month the girls were allowed to spend the day
with their friends, and on New Year's Day they might sleep
at home. Of course, in the summer there were regular holidays,
but Madame Dupin decided that Aurore had better stay
at school and learn all she could, so by that means she might
finish the regular course earlier than usual, and save money.
It was then the custom of all schools both in England and
France to keep the girls under strict watch, and never permit
them to be one moment alone. The garden was very large,
and Aurore at least would have been perfectly content to
remain in it, had not such elaborate precautions been taken to
prevent the girls even seeing through the door when it was
opened, into the dull street outside. These precautions
enraged the others, and only made them eager for glimpses
of a passing cab or a horse and cart, though on their days of
freedom they would walk through the most brilliant parts of
Paris with their parents, and never trouble to turn their
heads. But Aurore was only amused at what irritated them,
and felt, for her part, that
Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage.
It was foolish, she thought, to make so much fuss about
nothing; but after all, what did it matter?
Now both the big and little classes had divided themselves
into three camps: the 'good' girls, who would probably one
day become nuns; the 'demons,' or rebels, who were always
inventing some new kind of mischief; and the 'idiots,' who
were afraid to take sides. These profoundly despised by the
rest, would shake with laughter over the pranks of the 'demons,'
but put on a solemn face at the appearance of one of the
mistresses, and hastened to cry at the approach of danger:
'It was not I!' 'It was not I!' unless they went further and
exclaimed, 'It was Dupin,' or 'it was G.' 'Dupin' was
Aurore, and 'G.' a wild Irish girl of eleven, tall and strong and
truthful and clever, but utterly unruly, and the terror of
the 'idiots' of the younger class.
As soon as Mary G. discovered that Aurore did not mind
being teased or being thumped on the shoulder by a hand
which might have felled an ox, she felt that she had found
a friend who would join in her maddest tricks. Aurore's
education in this respect was not long in beginning. The
very next day as the mistress was handing round books and
slates to the class, Mary quietly walked out, followed in two
or three minutes by Aurore. Both girls went to the empty
cloister, and began to talk:
'I am glad you came,' said Mary. 'The others are
always making excuses for getting away, and declaring their
noses are bleeding or they want to practise, or some stupid
old story like that. I never tell lies; it is so cowardly. If
they ask me where I have been, I don't answer. If they
punish me—well, let them! I just do as I like.'
'That would just suit me.'
'You are a demon then!'
'I should like to be.'
'As much as I am?'
'Neither more nor less.'
'Accepted,' answered Mary, giving Aurore a shake of the
hand. 'Now we will go back and behave quite properly to
Mother Alippe. She is a good old thing. We will reserve
ourselves for Mother D. Ah, you don't know her yet! Every
evening outside the class-room. Do you understand?'
'No. What do you mean by "outside the class-room"?'
'Well, the games after supper under the superintendence
of Mother D. are dreadfully dull. So when we come out of
the dining-room we will slip away, and not come back till it is
time for prayers. Sometimes Mother D. does not miss us, but
generally she is enchanted that we should run away, because
then she can have the pleasure of punishing us when we come
in. The punishment is to wear your nightcap all the next
day, even in chapel. In this kind of weather it is very pleasant
and good for the health, and though the nuns you meet cry
'Shame! shame!' that hurts nobody. If in the course of a
fortnight you have worn many nightcaps, the Superior
threatens not to allow you to go out on the next holiday, but
she either forgets or forgives you at the request of your parents.
When you have worn the nightcap so long that it seems to have
grown on your head, you are locked up for a day. But after
all, it is better to give up amusing yourself for a single day
than to bore yourself perpetually of your own freewill.'
Aurore quite agreed with Mary's reasoning, and found
the time very long till supper. The whole school had meals
together, and then came the hour of play before prayers and
bed. The older ones went to their large and beautiful study,
but the rest had only quite a little room where there was no
space to play, so that they were thankful when the evening
was over. In leaving the refectory there was always a
certain confusion, and it was easy for both big and little
demons to slip away down the ill-lighted passages to the dark
side of the cloisters.
Here Aurore, with Irish Mary for her guide, found a number
of girls assembled, each with something in her hand. One
held a stick, another a pair of tongs, a third a poker. What
could they be going to do? 'Dupin' asked herself. Something
exciting, of course; but she never guessed that it would be
her favourite game of 'pretending.' For all these strange
weapons were intended for the deliverance of a prisoner who
was hidden in a dungeon somewhere under the convent.
Certainly it would have been impossible to have invented
a better place in which to hide any number of prisoners than
the immense cellars and vaults and dark holes of all sorts,
that ran underneath. The building itself was more like a
village than a house, and, since its foundation, had been
constantly added to and altered, so that it was full of irregularities
and steps up and down and roofs at different heights,
and passages which once led to something but were now blocked
up. On one side of the garden, whose magnificent chestnut
trees were the pride of the nuns, stood small houses in
which lived noble ladies retired from the world, but free from
vows. There was besides a very large vegetable garden for
the use of the convent, which at this time contained about
a hundred and thirty people. It was possible, if you stood on
tiptoe, to snatch a glimpse through the grating of melons or
grapes or feathery pinks, but the door was not easy to climb,
and only two or three of the bolder girls had ever managed to
penetrate into the enclosure and taste these forbidden
joys.
The legend of the concealed prisoner had been handed on
from generation to generation of school girls, as well as the
terrors which were half a joy, that thrilled through them as
they crept along the narrow passages, ending no one knew
where—perhaps in the Catacombs, perhaps in the baths of
Julian, perhaps outside Paris itself! Who could tell? Could
life have any feeling more exciting in store than the sensation
that at any moment your feet might meet the empty air, and
that you might fall into one of those terrible pits common
in castles of the Middle Ages, known by the evil name of
oubliettes or holes of forgetfulness? And many of these
dangers were not at all imaginary, whatever the 'prisoner'
might be.
It was the knowledge of the heavy punishments that
would fall on their heads in case of discovery that made it
a point of honour with the demons to risk everything in
order to explore this underground world. Very few, however,
gained an entrance to these vaults during their school
lives, and only then after years of patience and perseverance.
The memory of these heroines was kept green, and
their names whispered reverently 'to encourage the
rest.'
In Aurore's day the question had come up again—the
burning question of how to get into the underground world.
Not by the main door which led to it, that was clear; for close
by were the kitchens, where nuns passed continually! But
if the main door was barred, there must be a hundred other
doors or walled-up staircases, by which you could get there;
and if these failed, there was always the roof.
Now, the very last thought that would occur to most people,
if they want to penetrate into an underground passage, is
to go first on to the roof; but then they are not school girls,
and have forgotten all about these things, if, indeed, they
ever knew them. To Aurore and her friends it was a matter
of everyday knowledge that 'the longest way round is the
shortest way home.' Had not Aurore sat breathless for days
together over Mrs. Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho, and her
companions lain awake trembling at the recollections of
Scotch or Irish ancestral ghosts?
Why, even in the convent, where the great dormitories were
filled with girls and the terrors of loneliness were unknown,
did they not shudder sometimes in the dark in the certainty
that they caught the echo of the sighs, the groans, the clanking
of chains of the victim?
As to whether it was always the same victim who had to
be rescued, or whether in every generation a fresh victim was
somehow mysteriously supplied, nobody inquired and nobody
minded.
On the never-to-be-forgotten evening of Aurore's initiation
into the company of the demons, she was conducted by the
rest of the band into the oldest and most irregular part of the
convent. At length they found themselves standing on a
gangway with a wooden railing, ending in a little room, from
which there was no outlet. By the light of their single taper
they beheld a staircase below them, also with a wooden
railing, and protected at the top by a strong oaken door. In
order to get on to the staircase it was necessary to drop from
one balustrade to the other—and the more experienced of the
explorers strongly suspected that both of them were worm-eaten—while
the staircase hung over black depths which no
eye could penetrate.
It was an adventure which required a good deal of courage,
but not one of the girls flinched. Isabelle, one of the oldest
of the demons, claimed her right to go first, and accomplished
her dangerous feat with the resolution of a heroine.
Mary followed with the calm of a gymnastic professor, the
remainder as best they could, but somehow or other they all
managed to arrive safely on the staircase. At the foot was
another little hall or room, without door or window or issue
of any kind; but this, for some strange reason, caused the
girls more joy than regret.
'Certainly,' they said, 'nobody would make a staircase
which went nowhere! There must be some way out and we
have got to find it.'
So the little taper was divided into several parts and each
girl began a careful examination of the walls, pressing the
plaster, which they hoped might conceal a ring or a button
that, if touched, would reveal an opening. What would have
happened if a sudden blast had blown out their candles, they
never thought, for they had no means of lighting them again;
and, of course, none of the Sisters had the slightest idea where
they might be. Happily this did not occur, and though the
surface of the walls was perfectly smooth, Isabelle declared
that when she tapped the part under the staircase it sounded
hollow.
This discovery threw the whole party into a state of
wild excitement.
'We have found it at last!' they cried; 'this staircase
leads down to the cell where living victims have been buried.'
They jostled each other so as to place their ears against the
wall, but strange to say, in spite of their fervent wish, they
were compelled to confess that they heard nothing. All,
that is except Isabelle, who persisted in declaring that they
must every one of them be deaf, as the sounds of groans and
clanking chains were quite plain.
'Then we must break down the wall,' said Mary, 'and the
sooner we begin the better.'
In an instant the wall was attacked by the collection of
arms the girls had brought with them. Tongs, pokers, shovels
were all brought into play, but luckily without making any
impression on the stones, which otherwise might have come
rattling about their heads. Besides, the demons dared not
make too much noise, for they were afraid of being heard, as
they did not know exactly in which part of the convent they
might happen to be.
Only a few pieces of plaster had fallen when the warning
bell for prayers clanged through the building. How they
contrived the upward climb from one balustrade to another,
they never knew, and that they were able to do it at all was
almost a miracle. Down they dashed along the passages,
brushing the plaster from their dresses as they ran, and arrived
breathless as the two classes were forming to enter the
chapel.
During the whole winter they worked at the wall, but,
persevering though they were, the obstacles encountered
were so many that at length they decided it was sheer folly
to waste more time on it, and they had better try to force an
entrance by some other way.
There was a little room—one of many under the roof—which
contained one of the thirty pianos of the convent, and
there Aurore was accustomed to practise for an hour daily.
From its window could be seen a whole world of roofs, penthouses,
sheds, and buildings of all sorts, covered with mossy
tiles, and most tempting to the adventurous. It seemed
quite reasonable that somewhere amongst the buildings should
exist a staircase leading to the underground passages, and
one fine, starlight night the demons met in the little music-room,
and in a few minutes they had all scrambled from the
window on to the roof six feet below them. From there they
climbed over gables, jumped from one incline to another, and
behaved in fact as if they were cats, taking care to hide
behind a chimney or crouch in a gutter whenever they
caught sight of a nun in the garden or courtyard beneath
them.
They had managed to get a long way downwards when
prayer-time drew near, and they knew they must begin their
return journey. As the Latin proverb tells you, it is easy
enough to go down, but what about getting back again?
And to make matters worse, the demons had not the slightest
idea where they were. Still, they contrived to retrace some
of their footsteps and at last recognised to their joy the
window of Sidonie Macdonald, daughter of the general. But
to reach this window it was necessary to spring upwards
a considerable distance, and the chances of hitting exactly
the right spot were very few. Aurore, at any rate, almost
lost her life in the attempt. She jumped in too great a hurry,
and very nearly fell thirty feet through a skylight into a
gallery where the little class were playing. As it was, her heel
struck against the glass, and several panes went crashing
in their midst. Clinging to the window-sill, with her knees
scratched and bleeding, Aurore heard the voice of Sister
Thérèse below accusing Whisky, Mother Alippe's big black cat,
of fighting with his neighbours on the roof and breaking all
the windows in the convent. Mother Alippe warmly denied
that her cat ever quarrelled with anyone, and in spite of
her wounds and her danger, Aurore burst into fits of laughter
at the hot dispute, in which she was joined by Fanelly
stretched in the gutter, and Mary lying in a 'spread-eagle'
on the tiles, feeling about for her comb. They heard the nuns
mounting the stairs, and discovery seemed inevitable.
Nothing of the sort, however, occurred. The overhanging
gables preserved them from being seen, and as soon as they
felt they were safe, the young demons began to mew loudly,
so that Sister Thérèse proved triumphantly that she was
right, and that the mischief had been caused by Whisky and
his friends!
This being happily settled, the girls climbed at their
leisure into the window where Sidonie was quietly practising
her scales, undisturbed by the noise in the cat-world. She
was a gentle, nervous child, who had no sympathy with a
passion for roofs, and when a procession of demons entered
her room she hid her face in her hands and screamed loudly.
But before the nuns could hurry to the spot, the girls had
dispersed in all directions, and, up to the end, the blame of
the broken window was laid upon Whisky.