_The child_ (six years old), sobbing.--I said to Alix that I knew my French history. She says that I don't know it, but I do know it.
_Alix_, the grown-up girl (just nine).--No. She does not know it.
_Alix_.--She told me to open the book haphazard, and ask her a question out of the book, which she would answer.
"I opened the book as she said, and I asked her the first question that I came across."
It was here that the profound observation was made about a rather dainty parrot which belonged to a lady boarder. "How well bred it is! It eats the top of the slice of bread and butter, just like a lady." In one of these cloisters was also picked up the following confession, written beforehand, so as not to forget it, by a little sinner of seven years of age:--
"My father, I accuse myself of having been avaricious.
"My father, I accuse myself of having committed adultery.
"My father, I accuse myself of having raised my eyes to gentlemen."
It was on one of the benches in the garden that the following fable was improvised by rosy lips six years of age, and listened to by blue eyes of four and five years:--
"There were three little cocks, which lived in a place where there were many flowers. They picked the flowers and put them in their pockets; after that they plucked the leaves and put them in their play-things. There was a wolf in those parts, and there was a great deal of wood; and the wolf was in the wood, and all the three cocks."
It was here too that the following sweet and affecting remark was made by a foundling child whom the convent brought up through charity. She heard the others speaking of their mothers, and she murmured in her corner,--"My mother was not there when I was born." There was a fat portress who could continually be seen hurrying along the passage with her bunch of keys, and whose name was Sister Agathe. The grown-up girls--those above ten years of age--called her Agathoclès (Agathe aux clefs). The refectory, a large, rectangular room, which only received light through an arched window looking on the garden, was gloomy and damp, and, as children say, full of animals. All the surrounding places furnished their contingent of insects; and each of the four corners had received a private and expressive name, in the language of the boarders. There were Spider corner, Caterpillar corner, Woodlouse corner, and Cricket corner; the latter was near the kitchen, and highly esteemed, for it was warmer there. The names had passed from the refectory to the school-room, and served to distinguish four nations, as in the old Mazarin College. Every boarder belonged to one or other of these nations, according to the corner of the refectory in which she sat at meals. One day the archbishop, while paying a pastoral visit, noticed a charming little rosy-faced girl, with glorious light hair, pass, and he asked another boarder, a pretty brunette with pink cheeks, who was near him,--