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’Un, deux, trois,

Marquez les pas,

Faites la ré-vé-ren-ce,’

chanted the little master.

How Madeleine wished she were he, a light, artificial little creature, with no great claims on life.

But her fears became a certainty, when going into the closet where they kept their pattens and brushes, Jeanne commanded her in icy tones to take her ‘dirty brush’ out of her, Jeanne’s, bag. And that was all. If they had been boys, uproariously contemptuous, they would have twitted Madeleine with her lie, but being girls, they merely sneered and ignored her. She felt like a spirit that, suspended in mid-air, watches the body it has left being torn to pieces by a pack of wolves. Days of dull agony followed, but she felt strangely resigned, as if she could go on bearing it for ever and a day.

It was during the Fronde, and Jeanne and her friends had a cult for Condé and Madame de Longueville, the royal rebels. They taught their parrots at home to repeat lines of Mazarinades, they kept a print of Condé at the battle of Rocroy in their book of Hours, and had pocket mirrors with his arms emblazoned on the back, while Madame de Longueville simpered at them from miniatures painted on the top of their powder boxes or the backs of their tablets. As the nuns, influenced by the clergy, were strong Royalists, and looked upon Condé as a sort of Anti-Christ, the girls had to hide their enthusiasm.