, without any precautions or care, all the
difficulties, perils, and ailments of infancy.

M. Bontems, first valet de chambre of the cabinets, served as her
guardian, or curator; even he acted only through the efforts and
movements of an intermediary. It was wished that this young Princess
should be ignorant of her birth, and in this I agree that, in the midst
of crying injustice, the King kept his natural humanity. This poor child
not being meant, and not being able, to appear at Court, it was better,
indeed, to keep her from all knowledge of her rights, in order to deprive
her, at one stroke, of the distress of her conformation, the hardship of
her repudiation, and the despair of captivity. The King destined her for
a convent when he saw her born, and M. Bontems promised that it should be
so.

At the age of three, she was withdrawn from the hands of her nurse, and
Madame Bontems put her to be weaned in her own part of the world.
Opportune,--[She was born on Sainte Opportune's Day.]--clothed and
nourished like the other children of the farmer, who was her new patron,
played with them in the barns or amongst the snow; she followed them into
the orchards and fields; she filled, like them, her little basket with
acorns that had been left after the crop was over, or ears of corn that
the gleaners had neglected, or withered branches and twigs left by the
wood-cutters for the poor. Her nude, or semi-nude, arms grew rough in
the burning sun, and more so still in the frosts. Her pretty feet, so
long as the fine season lasted, did not worry about being shod, and when
November arrived with its terrors, Opportune took her little heeled
sabots like the other country children. M. and Madame Bontems wrote
every six months to inquire if she were dead, and each time the answer
came that the little Moor was in wonderful health.

The pastor of the neighbouring hamlet felt pity for this poor child, who
was sometimes tormented by her companions on account of her colour. The
good cure even went so far as to declare, one day when there was a
sermon, that the Virgin Mary, if one was to believe respectable books,
was black from head to foot, which did not prevent her from being most
beautiful in the sight of God and of men.

This good cure taught the gentle little orphan to read and pray. He often
came to her farm to visit her, and probably he knew her birth; he was in
advanced age, and he died. Then Opportune was placed with the
Augustin