up some little
boarders and novices who paid for their keep: a contact full of danger
and unpleasantness for the children, as one may see by the Aubany
affair.

There was no real confinement, nor much internal order. In the
scorching summer nights of that African climate, peculiarly oppressive
and wearying in the airless passes of Ollioules, nuns and novices
went to and fro with the greatest freedom. The very same things were
going on at Ollioules in 1730 which we saw in 1630 at Loudun. The bulk
of nuns, well-nigh a dozen out of the fifteen who made up the house,
being rather forsaken by the monks, who preferred ladies of loftier
position, were poor creatures, sick at heart, and disinherited, with
nothing to console them but tattling, child's play, and other
school-girls' tricks.

The abbess was afraid that Cadiere would soon see through all this.
She made some demur about taking her in. Anon, with some abruptness,
she entirely changed her cue. In a charming letter, all the more
flattering as sent so unexpectedly from such a lady to so young a
girl, she expressed a hope of her leaving the ghostly guidance of
Father Girard. The girl was not, of course, to be transferred to her
Observantines, who were far from capable of the charge. The abbess had
formed the bold, enlivening idea of taking her into her own hands and
becoming her sole director.

She was very vain. Deeming herself more agreeable than an old Jesuit
confessor, she reckoned on making this prodigy her own, on conquering
her without trouble. She would have worked the young saint for the
benefit of her house.

She paid her the marked compliment of receiving her on the threshold,
at the street-door. She kissed her, caught her up, led her into the
abbess's own fine room, and bade her share it with herself. She was
charmed with her modesty, with her invalid grace, with a certain
strangeness at once mysterious and melting. In that short journey the
girl had suffered a great deal. The abbess wanted to lay her down in
her own bed, saying she loved her so that she would have them sleep
together like sisters in one bed.

For her purpose this was probably more than was needful. It would have
been quite enough to have the saint under her own roof. She would now
have too much the look of a little favourite. The lady, however, was
surprised at the young girl's hesitation, which doubtless sprang from
her modesty or her humility; in part, perhaps, from a comparison of