Her lessons she soon began to do with the
other children in the class, and for the rest she was placed
under the special care of one of the younger Sisters, Soeur
Lucie by name.
Like Madelon, Soeur Lucie had been brought, a little ten-year-
old orphan to the convent, to be under the care of one of the
nuns who was her aunt; and it was, perhaps, on this account,
that she was chosen by Mademoiselle Linders as a sort of
_gouvernante_ for her niece. But there was no other resemblance
between this placid, fair-haired, blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked
Flemish girl, whose early recollections were all of farms and
farmyards, of flat grassy meadows watered by slow moving
streams, of red cows feeding tranquilly in rich pastures, of
milking, and cheese-making, and butter-making, of dairies with
shining pots and pans and spotless floors, and our vehement
brown-eyed Madelon, who in her ten years had seen more of the
world than Soeur Lucie was likely to see if she lived to be a
hundred. Soeur Lucie had passed a happy, peaceful childhood in
the convent, and, as she grew up into girlhood, had listened
submissively to the words of exhortation which urged her to
give up the world and its vanities, which she had never known,
and by such voluntary renunciation to pass from a state of
mere negative virtue into that one of superior holiness only
to be attained beneath the nun's veil, and behind the convent
grating.
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