she went along, she felt so free and happy. "How glad I am to
have quitted the convent," she thought to herself; "how _triste_
it was, how dismal! How can people exist who always, always
live there? They do not live, I think, they seem half dead
already. Aunt Thérèse, how mournful and cold she always
looked; she never smiled, she hardly ever spoke; she was not
alive as other people are. Soeur Lucie told me that she would
be a glorious saint in Heaven, and ten thousand times more
happy than if she had not lived in the convent; how does Soeur
Lucie know, I wonder? If so, she must have been glad to die--it
was, perhaps, for that, that she made herself so miserable,
that she might not dread death when it came; but that seems to
me a very foolish way of spending one's life. And if to be
like Aunt Thérèse was to be a saint, I am sure all the nuns
were not so. How they used to chatter and quarrel sometimes;
Soeur Marie would hardly speak to Soeur Lucie for a week, I
remember, because she said Soeur Lucie had made Aunt Thérèse
give her the best piece of embroidery to do, after it had been
promised to her. I do not believe that; I love Soeur Lucie, she
was always kind to me, and never quarrelled with any one. Oh!
even if I had not made that promise to papa, I could never,
never, have been a nun; I have done well in running away."

She walked on for a long time, her thoughts running on the
scenes she had left behind, on the last two years of her life;
she had no remorse now, no regrets at their having come to an
end. To our lively, independent, excitable Madelon, they had,
as we know, been years of restraint, of penance, of utter
weariness; and never, perhaps, had she felt them to be so more
keenly than in these first moments of her release. But she