was miserable, till one night, in a moment of desperation, she jumped out of bed, seized it with both hands, and flung it with all her might through the window into the garden below.  She was frightened when she heard the crash of falling glass, for in her excitement she had never stopped to open the window, but greatly relieved, notwithstanding, to think that her enemy was gone, and slept more soundly that night than she had done for a long time previously.

Next morning, however, Madelon had a cold, a pane of glass was found in fragments on the gravel walk beneath the window, a skull was discovered, lying among the long grass on the lawn; one can fancy the exclamations, the inquiries, the commotion.  Madelon, though not a little frightened, avowed boldly enough what she had done, and so far gained her end that the skull never reappeared, and a safe precedent was established for Soeur Lucie’s future guidance; but she got into great trouble at the time, and gained moreover the unenviable distinction of having committed a deed of unparalleled audacity.  After this, what might not be expected of such a child?  The nuns at once formed a bad opinion of her, which they owed it to themselves to confirm on the occasion of each succeeding offence, by a reference to this past misdeed which had first taught them of what enormities she was capable.

Matters were no better when there came to be a question of lessons.  Madelon did not mind the actual learning, though she wearied a little of the continued application to which she was unused; but she resented to the last degree the astonishment that her ignorance on all sorts of subjects excited both in the nuns who taught her, and in the other children in the class, and which was expressed with sufficient distinctness.  “Never studied geography, nor history, nor arithmetic!” cries Soeur Ursule, who superintended the school; “not know the principal cities in Europe, nor the kings of France, nor even your multiplication table!” These speeches, with strongly implied notes of admiration after each sentence, and illustrated by the expression on the faces of a small, open-mouthed audience in the background, roused Madelon’s most indignant feelings; she rebelled alike against the injustice of being held up to public reprobation for not knowing what she had never been taught, and against the imputations cast upon her education hitherto.  “I can do a great many things you cannot,” she would answer defiantly, “I can talk English, and German, and Italian—­you can’t; I can dance—­you can’t; I can sing songs, and—­and, oh! a great many things that you cannot do!” A speech of this sort would bring our poor Madelon into dire disgrace we may be sure; and then angry, impenitent, she would go away into some corner, and cry—­oh! how sadly—­for her father; for the happy old days, for Monsieur Horace, too, perhaps, to come back, and take her out of all this misery.