Of the outward forms and ceremonies of religion Madelon could
not, indeed, remain entirely ignorant, living constantly, as
she did, in Roman Catholic countries; but her very familiarity
with these from her babyhood robbed them in great measure of
the interest they might otherwise have excited in her mind,
and their significance she was never taught to understand. As
a rule, a child must have its attention drawn in some
particular way to its everyday surroundings, or they must
strike it in some new and unfamiliar light, before they rouse
more than a passing curiosity; and though Madelon would
sometimes question her father as to the meaning and intention
of this or that procession passing along the streets, he found
no difficulty in putting her off with vague answers. It was a
wedding or a funeral, he would say, or connected with some
other ordinary event, which Madelon knew to be of daily
recurrence; though none such had as yet had part in the
economy of her small world; and priests, and nuns, and monks
became classed, without difficulty, in her mind, with doctors
and soldiers, and the mass of people generally, who made money
in a different way from her father, with whom, therefore, she
seldom came into personal contact, and with whom she had
little to do--money making being still her one idea of the aim
and business of life.
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