Pupil at the Abbey

I was eight and a half when Léonie left boarding school and I replaced her at the Abbey.⁴⁷ I have often heard it said that the time spent at school is the best and happiest of one’s life. I wasn’t this way for me. The five years I spent in school were the saddest in my life, and if I hadn’t had Céline with me, I couldn’t have remained there and would have become sick in a month. The poor little flower had become accustomed to burying her fragile roots in a chosen soil made purposely of all kinds with roots frequently indelicate; and she had to find in this common soil the food necessary for her sustenance!

You had instructed me so well, dear Mother, that when I went to boarding school I was the most advanced of the children of my age. I was placed, as a result, in a class where the pupils were all older than I. One of them was about thirteen of fourteen and she wasn’t too intelligent, but she was really adept at influencing the students and even the teachers. When she noticed I was so young, almost always first in the class, and loved by all the Sisters, she experienced a jealousy pardonable in a student. She made me pay in a thousand ways for my little successes.

As I was timid and sensitive by nature, I didn’t know how to defend myself and was content to cry without saying a word and without complaining even to you about what I was suffering. I didn’t have enough virtue, however, to rise above these miseries of life, so my poor little heart suffered very much. Each evening I was back at home, fortunately, and then my heart expanded. I would jump up on Papa’s lap, telling him about the marks they were giving me, and his kiss made me forget my troubles. How happy I was to announce the results of my first composition, one in sacred history, where I missed getting the maximum grade by one point only, and this because I didn’t know the name of Moses’ father. I was then the first and was wearing a beautiful silver badge. Papa rewarded me by giving me a pretty little coin worth four sous. I placed it in a box which was to receive a new coin of the same value every Thursday. It was from this box that I drew my offerings on the big feasts when there were special collections for the Propagation of the Faith or similar works. Pauline, delighted with her little student’s success, gave her a pretty hoop to encourage her in her studies. The poor little thing needed these family joys very much, for without them life at the boarding school would have been too hard.