Читать книгу Madeleine: One of Love's Jansenists онлайн

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Julie began nervously to shut and open one of her hands; Madeleine looked at it. It was small and plump and rather dirty, and on one of its fingers there was a little enamelled ring, too tight for it, and pressing into the flesh. It looked like a small distracted animal; Madeleine remembered a beetle she had once seen struggling on its back. Its smallness and dirtiness, and the little tight ring and its suggestion of the beetle, for some reason touched Madeleine. A sudden wave of affection and pity for Julie swept over her. In a second she was down beside her, with her arms around her, telling her not to cry, and that it didn’t matter. And there she was found some minutes later by the Reverend Mother, from whom she received a panegyric of praise for her forgiving spirit and a kiss, which she could well have dispensed with.

Then the whole thing was explained; an anonymous letter had been sent to the Reverend Mother saying that the writer had seen, on the evening of the demonstration in favour of Condé, two girls masked and hooded, evidently of position, as they had attendants with them, and that they were laughing together about their escape from the Convent. The Reverend Mother had never thought of connecting with the affair Jeanne’s and Julie’s early retirement that evening. Now she had just got a letter from Maître Prunier informing her that it had come to his knowledge that his daughter and her great friend had been walking in the town that same evening. He had learned this distressing news from one of his servants whom Jeanne had got to accompany her on her escapade. He bade the Reverend Mother keep a stricter watch on his daughter. She had sent for Jeanne and Julie and they had told her that it was only through coercion that Madeleine had played any part in the escapade.