blest ends. "Peace, and rest, and time for
heavenly meditation," they had cried, stretching out weary
hands to this quiet little harbour of refuge, and perhaps--who
knows?--they had there found them.

Such, then, was this little world in which our Madelon
suddenly found herself placed to her utter bewilderment at
first, so alien was it to all her former experiences, so
little could she understand of its meaning, its aims, its
spirit and intention; no more than, as it seemed to her, those
around her understood her, or her wants and wishes. To her,
the convent only appeared inexpressibly _triste_ and dreary, a
round of dull tasks, enlivened by duller recreations, day
after day, for ever bounded by those blank, grey walls--no
change, no variety, no escape. The bare, scantily-furnished
rooms, the furniture itself, the food, the nuns' perpetual
black dress, and ungraceful headgear,--Madelon hated them all,
as she gradually recovered from her first desolation, and
became alive again to external impressions; and, as the first
keenness of her sorrow wore off, this vague sense of general
unhappiness and discomfort showed itself in an attitude of
opposition and defiance to every one and everything around
her. From being helplessly wretched and cross, she became
distinctly naughty, and before long our Madelon had drifted
into the hopeless position of a child always refractory,
always in disgrace, a position from which, when once assumed,
it is almost impossible for the small hapless delinquent to
struggle free.

That Madelon was very naughty cannot be denied, and the fact
surprised no one so much as herself. The nuns, accustomed to
all sorts of children of every variety of temper, of every
shade of docility and wilfulness, of cleverness and stupidity,
found nothing astonishing in one more perverse little
specimen, but Madelon could not understand it at all. She was
not used to feeling naughty, and did not know what it meant at
first. In her life hitherto, when she had been as happy as the
day is long, she had had singularly few opportunities for
exercising the privilege of every child of Adam, and
exhibiting her original waywardness. But it was far otherwise
now, and she could not understand why she always felt cross,
always obstinate, always perverse; she only knew that she was
very miserable, and it was quite a discovery to be told one
day that it was because she was naughty, and that if she were
good, she would be happy.