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The nuns were very sweet and gentle with me, but I would have liked them better if they had been rough. There was something in me that distrusted suavity and desired brusqueness. I was not sensitive about harsh contacts, and I did not fear or resent punishment. Consequently, I not only imposed myself on my sisters, who were less robust than I, but upon my teachers, who could not control my spirit. Mirrors being forbidden in the convent, I put sheets of paper behind the panes of glass in the doors, and dragged the girls to them to look at themselves. And this seemed an ingenious perversity that staggered the nuns.

My two sisters having gone through their preparation for First Communion, my mother took them to Rome to receive the sacrament from the hands of the Pope. She took me, too; and, although I had not been prepared, the Pope gave me communion at the same time, saying that I was a “little angel,” because I had fair hair and blue eyes. When I returned to the convent and the nuns heard that I had received communion without the preparation, they were outraged. “Well, then,” I said, “isn’t your Pope infallible?” And this shocked and silenced them. Altogether, although I lost many recreation hours by having to do “impositions” as punishment for small rebellions, school failed to subdue me, and I kept a wilful freedom of mind.