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CHAPTER III
PAULINE ENTERS THE CARMEL

I was eight and a half when Leonie left school, and I took her place at the Benedictine Abbey in Lisieux.  The girls of my class were all older than myself; one of them was fourteen, and, though not clever, she knew how to impose on the little ones.  Seeing me so young, nearly always first in class, and a favourite with all the nuns, she was jealous, and used to pay me out in a thousand ways.  Naturally timid and sensitive, I did not know how to defend myself, and could only cry in silence.  Celine and my elder sisters did not know of my grief, and, not being advanced enough in virtue to rise above these troubles, I suffered considerably.

Every evening I went home, and then my spirits rose.  I would climb on to Papa’s knee, telling him what marks I had, and his caresses made me forget all my troubles.  With what delight I announced the result of my first essay, for I won the maximum number of marks.  In reward I received a silver coin which I put in my money box for the poor, and nearly every Thursday I was able to increase the fund.

Indeed, to be spoilt was a real necessity for me.  The Little Flower had need to strike its tender roots deeper and deeper into the dearly loved garden of home, for nowhere else could it find the nourishment it required.  Thursday was a holiday, but it was not like the holidays I had under Pauline, which I generally spent upstairs with Papa.  Not knowing how to play like other children, I felt myself a dull companion.  I tried my best to do as the others did, but without success.

After Celine, who was, so to say, indispensable to me, I sought the company of my little cousin Marie, because she left me free to choose the games I liked best.  We were already closely united in heart and will, as if God were showing us in advance how one day in the Carmel we should embrace the same religious life.[1]

Very often, at my uncle’s house, we used to play at being two austere hermits, with only a poor hut, a little patch of corn, and a garden in which to grow a few vegetables.  Our life was to be spent in continual contemplation, one praying while the other engaged in active duties.  All was done with religious gravity and decorum.  If we went out, the make-believe continued even in the street; the two hermits would say the Rosary, using their fingers to count on, so as not to display their devotion before those who might scoff.  One day, however, the hermit Therese forgot herself—­before eating a cake, given her for lunch, she made a large Sign of the Cross, and some worldly folk did not repress a smile.