"Go
away, Adolphe, you are very naughty, and I do not love you;
mamma always kisses you, and she never, never kisses me!" This
little speech, uttered by our poor saintly Superior when she
was but eight years old, may perhaps give the key to much in
her after life; and if we cannot, with an admiring sisterhood,
henceforth count this unhappy, soured woman in our catalogue
of saints, we will at least grant her a place amongst the
great company of "might-have-beens," most inscrutable problems
in this puzzling life of ours, and so bid her a not unkindly
farewell.
Madelon, meanwhile, knew nothing of these things; she had
taken the fever also, and while death was busy in other parts
of the convent, she lay unconscious in her little cell,
tossing in delirium, or lying in feverish stupor, with Soeur
Lucie coming softly in and out. In this desolated overworked
household, the child had come to be considered as only another
item of trouble, hardly of anxiety; for her life or death just
then was felt to be of the very smallest consequence to any
one. The one tie that had bound her to the convent had been
snapped by her aunt's death; if she lives, think the nuns--if
indeed they find time to think of her at all--she is a burthen
on our hands; if she dies, well then, one more coffin and
another grave.
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