But in '65 Mademoiselle Clarice was fifteen years of age, and a very
charming performer on the pianoforte, as the good nuns at the Convent of
the Sacred Heart, at Vevinord, told the father. Mademoiselle Madelon was
looking forward to her fourteenth anniversary, and she, too, was a very
pretty pianist, and altogether a young prodigy of learning and goodness,
as the nuns told the master of Cotenoir. The demoiselles of Cotenoir
stood high in the estimation of pupils and mistress; they were a kind of
noblesse; and the simple-minded superioress spoke of these young persons
with some pride when she described her establishment to a stranger. It
was a very comfortable little colony, a small world enclosed by high
walls. The good mothers who taught and cherished the children were for
the greater part ladies of superior and even exalted station; and there
was a gentleness, a tenderness, in their care for these young lambs not
always to be insured by the payment of an annual stipend. It must be
confessed that the young lambs were apt to be troublesome, and required a
good deal of watching. To the eye of the philosopher that convent school
would have afforded scope for curious study; for it is singular to
discover what exceptional vices the youthful mind can develop from its
inner consciousness, in homes as pure as this. There were black sheep
even in the convent of the Sacre Coeur, damsels marked with a sign that
meant "dangerous.
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