ooks about ancient history, and pretending
to herself that she was each of the heroes in turn. But even Plutarch
was a poor substitute for home life, and when her fifteenth birthday was
drawing near she began to wonder if she _could_ stand it any longer.

'I considered,' she says herself, 'if it would be possible for me to
return to the world, and even to get married, without telling my father
or mother, for the yoke had become unsupportable.' Perhaps, she
reflected, she might go to La Rochelle, where some of her Huguenot aunts
were living, and though she had no wish to change her own religion, yet
she was sure they would protect her. As to the difficulties of a young
abbess travelling through France alone, they did not even occur to her,
and she seems to have arranged her plans for escape without informing
the good ladies of their expected visitor.

* * * * *

The day Angelique had fixed for her flight had almost come when she fell
very ill of a sort of nervous fever, chiefly the result of the trouble
of mind she had been going through, though the unhealthy marshes round
Port Royal may have had something to do with her illness. Monsieur and
madame Arnauld at once sent a litter drawn by horses to fetch her to
Paris, where the best doctors awaited her. Her mother hardly left her
bedside, and for some time Angelique was at rest, feeling nothing except
that she was at home, and that the old dismal life of the convent must
be a dream. But as she grew stronger her perplexities came back. She
_could_ not bring such grief on her parents, who loved her so much, yet
the sight of her aunts in their beautiful dresses with long pointed
bodices, and the pretty hoods that covered their hair when they came to
inquire after her, revived all her longings for the amusements of other
girls. Again she kept silence, but secretly induced one of the maids to
make her a pair of corsets, 'to improve her figure.'

* * * * *

It may have been the sight of the corsets which caused monsieur Arnauld,
whose keen eyes nothing escaped, to take alarm. At any rate, one day he
brought a paper, so ill-written that it could hardly be read, and
thrust it with a pen into Angelique's hand, saying, 'Sign this, my
daughter.'

The girl did not dare to refuse, or even to question her father, though
she did manage to make out a word or two, which showed her that the
paper contained a renewal of the