ellows, and
seems to have been decidedly popular with the authorities as well, in
spite of the high spirits which amid congenial company found vent in
harmless mischief and a sort of organized playful insubordination. The
school had two parties: the _sages_ or good girls, and the _diables_,
their opposites. Among the latter Aurore conscientiously enrolled
herself and became a leader in their escapades, acquiring the sobriquet
of "Madcap." These outbreaks led to nothing more heinous than playing
off tricks on a tyrannical mistress, or making raids on the forbidden
ground of the kitchen garden. But the charm that held together the
confraternity of _diables_ was a grand, long-cherished design, to which
their best energy and ingenuity were devoted--a secret, heroic-sounding
enterprise, set forth as "the deliverance of the victim." A tradition
existed among them that a captive was kept languishing miserably in some
remote cell, and they had set themselves the task of discovering and
liberating this hapless wretch.

It is needless to say that prisoner and dungeon existed in their
girlishly romantic brains alone, but easy to see how such a legend might
possess itself of their imaginations, and to what bewitching exploits it
might invite firm believers. The supervision was not so very strict but
that a _diable_ of spirit might sometimes play truant from the
class-room unnoticed. The truants would then start on an exciting
journey of discovery through the tortuous passages, exploring the
darkest recesses of the more deserted portions of the convent; now
penetrating into the vaults, now adventuring on the roofs, regardless
of peril to life or limb. This sublimely ridiculous undertaking,
half-sport, half-earnest, so fascinated Aurore as to become the most
important occupation of her mind!

The teaching provided for the young ladies appears to have been of the
customary superficial order--of everything a little; a little music, a
little drawing, a little Italian. With English she had the opportunity
of becoming really conversant, as it was the language commonly spoken in
the convent, where also she could not fail to acquire some insight into
the English character. This she has treated more fairly than England for
long was to treat her. Few of her gifted literary countrymen have done
such justice to the sterling good qualities of our nation. Even when, in
delineating the Briton, she caricatures those peculiarities with which
he is