een him at Chaudfontaine. Henceforth
Madelon and her father were alone.

Madelon, then, by the time she was eight years old, had learnt
to sing, dance, speak several languages, to write, to play
_rouge et noir_, and _roulette_, and indeed _piquet_ and _ecarte_,
too, to great perfection, and to read books of fairy tales. At
ten years old, her education was still at the same point; and
it must be owned that, however varied and sufficient for the
purposes of the moment, it left open a wide field for labour
in the future years; though M. Linders appeared perfectly
satisfied with the results of his teaching so far, and showed
no particular desire to enlarge her ideas upon any point. As
for religion, no wild Arab of our London streets ever knew or
heard less about it than did our little Madelon; or was left
more utterly uninstructed in its simplest truths and dogmas.
What M. Linders' religious beliefs were, or whether he had any
at all, we need not inquire. He at least took care that none
should be instilled into his child's mind; feeling, probably,
that under whatever form they were presented to her, they
would assuredly clash sooner or later with his peculiar system
of education. For himself, his opinions on such matters were
expressed when occasion arose, only in certain unvarying and
vehement declamations against priests and nuns--the latter
particularly, where his general sense of aversion to a class
in the abstract, became specific and definite, when he looked
upon that class as represented in the person of his sister
Therese.

Of the outward forms and ceremonies of religion Madelon could
not, indeed, remain entirely ignorant, living constantly, as
she did, in Roman Catholic countries; but her very familiarity
with these from her babyhood robbed them in great measure of
the interest they might otherwise have excited in her mind,
and their significance she was never taught to understand. As
a rule, a child must have its attention drawn in some
particular way to its everyday surroundings, or they must
strike it in some new and unfamiliar light, before they rouse
more than a passing curiosity; and though Madelon would
sometimes question her father as to the meaning and intention
of this or that procession passing along the streets, he found
no difficulty in putting her off with vague answers. It was a
wedding or a funeral, he would say, or connected with some
other ordinary event, which Madelon knew to be of daily
r