She saw herself gathering flowers and
planting them, unknowing why they wilted and would not grow, despite
her constancy in watering them. Next, she saw confusedly the vast town
and the vast house blackened by age, to which her mother took her when
she was seven years old. Her lively memory showed her the old gray
heads of the masters who taught and tormented her. She remembered the
person of her father; she saw him getting off his mule at the door of
the manor-house, and taking her by the hand to lead her up the stairs;
she recalled how her prattle drove from his brow the judicial cares he
did not always lay aside with his black or his red robes, the white
fur of which fell one day by chance under the snipping of her
mischievous scissors. She cast but one glance at the confessor of her
aunt, the mother-superior of a convent of Poor Clares, a rigid and
fanatical old man, whose duty it was to initiate her into the
mysteries of religion. Hardened by the severities necessary against
heretics, the old priest never ceased to jangle the chains of hell; he
told her of nothing but the vengeance of Heaven, and made her tremble
with the assurance that God's eye was on her.
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