United States or Republic of the Congo ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I stood up, with my father holding me, and waved his blue silk muffler which I had taken from his neck. After this I sat down in the carriage and fell asleep, only rousing up again when we were at the heavy-looking door of the Grand-Champs Convent. I rubbed my eyes and tried to collect my thoughts. I then jumped down from the diligence and looked curiously around me.
I preferred to the pearls that were offered me by princes the pearls of the rosary I was telling with my fingers; and no costume could compete in my mind with the black barege veil that fell like a soft shadow over the snowy-white cambric that encircled the beloved faces of the nuns of Grand-Champs.
I felt a genuine vocation for the convent when distressed about losing the prize, and a genuine vocation for the theatre when I was hopeful about winning the prize. With a very natural partiality, I discovered in myself the gift of absolute self-sacrifice, renunciation, and devotion of every kind qualities which would win for me easily the post of Mother Superior in the Grand-Champs Convent.
I heard nothing of Britannicus, for I was far, far away, at Grand-Champs, in my dormitory there. "Well, what do you think of it?" asked my godfather when the curtain fell. I did not answer, and he laid his hand on my head and turned my face round towards him. I was crying, and big tears were rolling slowly down my cheeks, those tears that come without any sobs and without any hope of ever ceasing.
There's a quarrel going on!" We were suddenly silent, listening with all our ears. "Don't be stupid! It's idiotic! It's the Grand-Champs Convent!" "How am I to get my shako back?" These were the words we overheard, and then, as a soldier suddenly appeared astride on our wall, there were shrieks from the terrified children and angry exclamations from the nuns.
Leonie Dubourg, an old school-fellow of mine at the Grand-Champs convent, sent me fifty tin boxes each containing four pounds of salt butter. She had married a very wealthy gentleman farmer, who cultivated his own farms, which it seems were very numerous. I was very much touched at her remembering me, for I had never seen her since the old days at the convent.
The Grand-Champs Convent, which I was about to enter, had a prescribed uniform, and my cousin, who loved sewing, marked all my things with the initials S.B. in red cotton. My uncle gave me a silver spoon, fork, and goblet, and these were all marked 32, which was the number under which I was registered there.
I then saw the sweetest and merriest face imaginable, with large child-like blue eyes, a turn-up nose, a laughing mouth with full lips and beautiful, strong, white teeth. She looked so kind, so energetic, and so happy that I flung myself at once into her arms. It was Mother St. Sophie, the Superior of the Grand-Champs Convent.
In my fancy I proudly rejected the princes, I rejected the kings, refused the pearls and the palaces, and declared that I was going to be a nun, for in the infinite grey sky I had caught a glimpse of the convent of Grand-Champs, of my white bed-room, and of the small lamp that swung to and fro above the little Virgin all decorated with flowers by us.
Word Of The Day