It was a dark, still, cloudy night.  Above was the black mass of the convent dimly defined against the sullen sky; she took one glance at it before she bade it farewell; all was silent, not a light shone from its windows, not a tree waved above the surrounding walls.  Behind her hung the great cloud of smoke that ever darkens over the city of Liege.  Here and there a sudden glare illuminated the gloom of the surrounding hills; it came from the furnaces of the great iron-foundries; before her stretched the dusky road, between hedges and trees and scattered houses, soon lost in the obscurity beyond.  Not a footstep could be heard, not a leaf rustled as Madelon and her bundle emerged from their hiding-place; but the child felt no alarm at the silence and solitude—­the darkness and loneliness of the road could not frighten her.  Indeed she was naturally of so courageous a temperament, and just then, through joy and hope, of so brave a spirit, that it would have been only a very real and present danger that could have alarmed her, and she did not even dream if imaginary ones.  She almost danced as she went along, she felt so free and happy.  “How glad I am to have quitted the convent,” she thought to herself; “how triste it was, how dismal!  How can people exist who always, always live there?  They do not live, I think, they seem half dead already.  Aunt Therese, how mournful and cold she always looked; she never smiled, she hardly ever spoke; she was not alive as other people are.  Soeur Lucie told me that she would be a glorious saint in Heaven, and ten thousand times more happy than if she had not lived in the convent; how does Soeur Lucie know, I wonder?  If so, she must have been glad to die—­it was, perhaps, for that, that she made herself so miserable, that she might not dread death when it came; but that seems to me a very foolish way of spending one’s life.  And if to be like Aunt Therese was to be a saint, I am sure all the nuns were not so.  How they used to chatter and quarrel sometimes; Soeur Marie would hardly speak to Soeur Lucie for a week, I remember, because she said Soeur Lucie had made Aunt Therese give her the best piece of embroidery to do, after it had been promised to her.  I do not believe that; I love Soeur Lucie, she was always kind to me, and never quarrelled with any one.  Oh! even if I had not made that promise to papa, I could never, never, have been a nun; I have done well in running away.”

She walked on for a long time, her thoughts running on the scenes she had left behind, on the last two years of her life; she had no remorse now, no regrets at their having come to an end.  To our lively, independent, excitable Madelon, they had, as we know, been years of restraint, of penance, of utter weariness; and never, perhaps, had she felt them to be so more keenly than in these first moments of her release.  But she would have found them harder still without the memory of Monsieur Horace, and her promise to