nates mulieres, and caused great consternation in the
boarding-school. When these two old ladies passed by, all the poor young
girls trembled and dropped their eyes.

Moreover, M. de Rohan, quite unknown to himself, was an object of
attention to the school-girls. At that epoch he had just been made,
while waiting for the episcopate, vicar-general of the Archbishop of
Paris. It was one of his habits to come tolerably often to celebrate the
offices in the chapel of the nuns of the Petit-Picpus. Not one of the
young recluses could see him, because of the serge curtain, but he had
a sweet and rather shrill voice, which they had come to know and to
distinguish. He had been a mousquetaire, and then, he was said to be
very coquettish, that his handsome brown hair was very well dressed in
a roll around his head, and that he had a broad girdle of magnificent
moire, and that his black cassock was of the most elegant cut in the
world. He held a great place in all these imaginations of sixteen years.

Not a sound from without made its way into the convent. But there was
one year when the sound of a flute penetrated thither. This was an
event, and the girls who were at school there at the time still recall
it.

It was a flute which was played in the neighborhood. This flute always
played the same air, an air which is very far away nowadays,--"My
Zetulbe, come reign o'er my soul,"--and it was heard two or three
times a day. The young girls passed hours in listening to it, the vocal
mothers were upset by it, brains were busy, punishments descended in
showers. This lasted for several months. The girls were all more or
less in love with the unknown musician. Each one dreamed that she was
Zetulbe. The sound of the flute proceeded from the direction of the Rue
Droit-Mur; and they would have given anything, compromised everything,
attempted anything for the sake of seeing, of catching a glance, if only
for a second, of the "young man" who played that flute so deliciously,
and who, no doubt, played on all these souls at the same time. There
were some who made their escape by a back door, and ascended to the
third story on the Rue Droit-Mur side, in order to attempt to catch a
glimpse through the gaps. Impossible! One even went so far as to thrust
her arm through the grating, and to wave her white handkerchief. Two
were still bolder. They found means to climb on a roof, and risked their
lives there, and succeeded at last in seeing "the you