and again, and the good little nun, delighted to find at least one pious disposition in her small rebellious charge, was always ready to comply with her request, and went over the whole list of saints and their lives, not sparing one miracle or miraculous virtue we may be sure, and telling them all in her simple, matter-of-fact language, with details drawn from her daily life to give a touch of reality, which invested the mystic old Eastern and Southern legends with a quaint naive homeliness not without its own charm—­like the same subjects as interpreted by some of the old Dutch and Flemish masters, in contrast with the high-wrought, idealised conceptions of the earlier Italian schools.  But it was through the medium of these last that Madelon saw them all pass before her—­St. Cecilia, St. Catherine, St. Dorothea, St. Agnes, St. Elizabeth—­she knew them all by name.  Soeur Lucie almost changed her opinion of Madelon when she discovered this—­for about a day and a half that is, till the child’s next flagrant delinquency—­and Madelon found a host of recollections in which she might safely indulge, as she chatted to Soeur Lucie about the pictures, and galleries, and churches of Florence, not a little pleased when the nun’s exclamations and questions revealed that she herself had never seen but two churches in her life, that near her old home and the convent chapel.

“Oh, I have seen a great many,” Madelon would say, “and palaces too; I daresay you never saw a palace either? but I like the churches best because of the chapels, and altars, and tombs, and pictures.  At Florence the churches were so big—­oh! as big as the whole convent—­but I think the chapel here very pretty too; will you let me help you to decorate the altar for the next fete, if I am good?”

So she chattered on, and these were her happiest hours perhaps.  Sometimes she would be allowed to accompany Soeur Lucie to the big kitchen, and assist in the grand compote-making, which seemed to be going on at all seasons of the year.  There, sometimes helping, sometimes perched on her favourite seat on the corner of the table, Madelon would forget her sorrows for awhile in the contemplation of the old farm-kitchen with its rough white-washed walls, decorated with pots and pans, and shining kettles, its shelves with endless rows of blue and white crockery, its great black rafters crossing below the high-pitched ceiling leaving a gloomy space, full of mystery to Madelon’s imagination; and then, below, the long white wooden table, the piles of fruit, the busy figures of the nuns as they moved to and fro.  Outside in the courtyard the sun would be shining perhaps, the trees would wave, and cast flickering shadows on Madelon, as she sat, the pigeons would come fluttering and perching on the window-sill, and Soeur Lucie, whilst paring, cutting, boiling, skimming, would crone out for Madelon’s benefit the old tales she knew so well that she could almost have repeated them in her sleep.  Madelon only begged