These three pictures are from the life. I possess others, as
marked and as little agreeable, but I will spare my reader the
exhibition of them.
Doubtless it will be thought that I ought now, by way of
contrast, to show something charming; some gentle virgin head,
circled with a halo, some sweet personification of innocence,
clasping the dove of peace to her bosom. No: I saw nothing of
the sort, and therefore cannot portray it. The pupil in the
school possessing the happiest disposition was a young girl from
the country, Louise Path; she was sufficiently benevolent and
obliging, but not well taught nor well mannered; moreover, the
plague-spot of dissimulation was in her also; honour and
principle were unknown to her, she had scarcely heard their
names. The least exceptionable pupil was the poor little Sylvie
I have mentioned once before. Sylvie was gentle in manners,
intelligent in mind; she was even sincere, as far as her religion
would permit her to be so, but her physical organization was
defective; weak health stunted her growth and chilled her
spirits, and then, destined as she was for the cloister, her
whole soul was warped to a conventual bias, and in the tame,
trained subjection of her manner, one read that she had already
prepared herself for her future course of life, by giving up her
independence of thought and action into the hands of some
despotic confessor. She permitted herself no original opinion,
no preference of companion or employment; in everything she was
guided by another. With a pale, passive, automaton air, she went
about all day long doing what she was bid; never what she liked,
or what, from innate conviction, she thought it right to do. The
poor little future religieuse had been early taught to make the
dictates of her own reason and conscience quite subordinate to
the will of her spiritual director. She was the model pupil of
Mdlle. Reuter's establishment; pale, blighted image, where life
lingered feebly, but whence the soul had been conjured by Romish
wizard-craft!
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