playing, with the pictures and the music of old days, and which, for the present, in her new life, found its clearest expression, not in the nuns’ teaching, for, kind and affectionate as it in truth was, it was marred from the first to Madelon by the inevitable exclamation of wonder and horror that she should not know all about it already—­not in the questions and answers in her catechism, nor in the religious dogmas and formulas which she accepted, but could hardly appreciate—­not in all these, but in the little chapel with its gaudy altars, and twinkling lights, its services, and music, and incense.  Indeed, apart from all higher considerations, the pictures, the colouring, the singing, all were the happiest relief to the child, who, used to perpetual change and brightness, wearied indescribably of the dull, colourless life, the uniform dress, the want of all artistic beauty in the convent.  Her greatest reward when she had been good was to be allowed to join in the singing in the chapel—­her greatest punishment, to be banished from the evening services.

No need, however, to pursue this part of little Madelon’s history further.  With the nuns’ instruction, and the learning of her catechism, vanished all that had distinguished her, in this respect, from other children of her years and station.  She had learnt most of what can be learnt by such teaching, and for her, as for others, there remained the verifying and realization of these lessons, according to her capacity and experience.  Only, one may somehow feel sure, that to this passionate, wilful little nature, religion would hardly present itself as one simple sublime truth, high, pure, and serene as the over-arching, all-embracing heaven, through which the sun shines down on the clashing creeds of men; but rather as a complex, many-sided problem, too often at variance with her scheme of life, to be felt after through the medium of conflicting emotions, to be worked out at last through what doubts, questionings, with what perplexities, strivings, yearnings, cries for light—­along this in nowise singular path, no need to follow our little Madelon.

For the rest, she imbibed readily enough at this time many of the particular views of religious subjects affected by the nuns, at first, indeed, not without a certain incredulity that such things could be, when her father had never spoken to her about them, nor made her aware of their existence; but presently, with more confidence, as she remembered that he was to have told her all about them when she was older.  There were the legends and histories of the saints, for instance, in which Madelon learnt to take special delight, though it way be feared that she regarded them rather as pretty romantic stories, illustrated and glorified by her recollections of the old pictures in Florence, than as the vehicle of religious instruction that the nuns would willingly have made them.  She used to beg Soeur Lucie to tell them to her again