Father Dolomier—­from his face he would have been an able contestant of bonnets d’ane with Pupasse, if subjected to Madame Joubert’s discipline—­evidently had the same method of judging as God, although the catechism class said they could dance a waltz on the end of his long nose without his perceiving it.

There is always a little air of mystery about the first communion:  not that there is any in reality, but the little ones assume it to render themselves important.  The going to early mass, the holding their dog-eared catechisms as if they were relics, the instruction from the priest, even if he were only old Father Dolomier—­it all put such a little air of devotion into their faces that it imposed (as it did every year) upon their companions, which was a vastly gratifying effect.  No matter how young and innocent she may be, a woman’s devotion always seems to have two aims—­God and her own sex.

The week of retreat came.  Oh, the week of retreat!  That was the bonne bouche of it all, for themselves and for the others.  It was the same every year.  By the time the week of retreat arrived, interest and mystery had been frothed to the point of indiscretion; so that the little girls would stand on tiptoe to peep through the shutters at the postulants inside, and even the larger girls, to whom first communion was a thing of an infantile past, would condescend to listen to their reports with ill-feigned indifference.

As the day of the first communion neared, the day of the general confession naturally neared too, leading it.  And then the little girls, peeping through the shutters, and holding their breath to see better, saw what they beheld every year; but it was always new and awesome—­mysterious scribbling in corners with lead-pencils on scraps of paper; consultations; rewritings; copyings; the list of their sins, of all the sins of their lives.

“Ma chere!”—­pigtails and sunbonnets hiving outside would shudder.  “Oh, Mon Dieu! To have to confess all—­but all your sins!  As for me, it would kill me, sure!”

And the frightful recoils of their consciences would make all instantly blanch and cross themselves.

“And look at Pupasse’s sins!  Oh, but they are long! Ma chere, but look!  But look, I ask you, at them!”

The longest record was of course the most complimentary and honorable to the possessor, as each girl naturally worked not only for absolution but for fame.

Between catechisms and instructions Madame Joubert would have “La Vie des Saints” read aloud, to stimulate their piety and to engage their thoughts; for the thoughts of first communicants are worse than flies for buzzing around the forbidden.  The lecture must have been a great quickener of conscience; for they would dare punishment and cheat Madame Joubert, under her own eyes, in order surreptitiously to add a new sin to their list.  Of course the one hour’s recreation could not afford time enough for observation now, and the little girls were driven to all sorts of excuses to get out of the classroom for one moment’s peep through the shutters; at which whole swarms of them would sometimes be caught and sent into punishment.