ver spoken to her
about them, nor made her aware of their existence; but
presently, with more confidence, as she remembered that he was
to have told her all about them when she was older. There were
the legends and histories of the saints, for instance, in
which Madelon learnt to take special delight, though it way be
feared that she regarded them rather as pretty romantic
stories, illustrated and glorified by her recollections of the
old pictures in Florence, than as the vehicle of religious
instruction that the nuns would willingly have made them. She
used to beg Soeur Lucie to tell them to her again and again,
and the good little nun, delighted to find at least one pious
disposition in her small rebellious charge, was always ready
to comply with her request, and went over the whole list of
saints and their lives, not sparing one miracle or miraculous
virtue we may be sure, and telling them all in her simple,
matter-of-fact language, with details drawn from her daily
life to give a touch of reality, which invested the mystic old
Eastern and Southern legends with a quaint naive homeliness
not without its own charm--like the same subjects as
interpreted by some of the old Dutch and Flemish masters, in
contrast with the high-wrought, idealised conceptions of the
earlier Italian schools. But it was through the medium of
these last that Madelon saw them all pass before her--St.
Cecilia, St. Catherine, St. Dorothea, St. Agnes, St.
Elizabeth--she knew them all by name. Soeur Lucie almost changed
her opinion of Madelon when she discovered this--for about a
day and a half that is, till the child's next flagrant
delinquency--and Madelon found a host of recollections in
which she might safely indulge, as she chatted to Soeur Lucie
about the pictures, and galleries, and churches of Florence,
not a little pleased when the nun's exclamations and questions
revealed that she herself had never seen but two churches in
her life, that near her old home and the convent chapel.

"Oh, I have seen a great many," Madelon would say, "and
palaces too; I daresay you never saw a palace either? but I
like the churches best because of the chapels, and altars, and
tombs, and pictures. At Florence the churches were so big--oh!
as big as the whole convent--but I think the chapel here very
pretty too; will you let me help you to decorate the altar for
the next fete, if I am good?"

So she chattered on, and these were her happiest hours
perhaps.