Page 835 - les-miserables

four nations. Every pupil belonged to one of these four na-
tions according to the corner of the refectory in which she
sat at meals. One day Monseigneur the Archbishop while
making his pastoral visit saw a pretty little rosy girl with
beautiful golden hair enter the class-room through which
he was passing.
He inquired of another pupil, a charming brunette with
rosy cheeks, who stood near him:—
‘Who is that?’
‘She is a spider, Monseigneur.’
‘Bah! And that one yonder?’
‘She is a cricket.’
‘And that one?’
‘She is a caterpillar.’
‘Really! and yourself?’
‘I am a wood-louse, Monseigneur.’
Every house of this sort has its own peculiarities. At the
beginning of this century Ecouen was one of those strict
and graceful places where young girls pass their childhood
in a shadow that is almost august. At Ecouen, in order to
take rank in the procession of the Holy Sacrament, a dis-
tinction was made between virgins and florists. There were
also the ‘dais’ and the ‘censors,’—the first who held the
cords of the dais, and the others who carried incense before
the Holy Sacrament. The flowers belonged by right to the
florists. Four ‘virgins’ walked in advance. On the morning
of that great day it was no rare thing to hear the question
put in the dormitory, ‘Who is a virgin?’
Madame Campan used to quote this saying of a ‘little

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