If our visit to Saint-Cyr had been paid in the year 1689, we might have been in time for a rehearsal of “Esther,” or even (thrilling thought!) for the famous “fifth” performance, where Madame de Sévigné sat between Madame de Bagnols and the Maréchal de Bellefonds, in “the second bench behind the Duchesses,” and showed her appreciation by an absorbed attention and “certaines louanges sourdes et bien placées” which had their reward. For the King was so gratified that he actually came and spoke to her. “Madame, I am told you like it.” “Sire, what I feel is beyond expression.” “Said his Majesty to me: ‘Racine is very clever.’ Said I to him: ‘Indeed, Sire, he is very clever, but these young people are very clever, too.’” And off she goes for the torchlight drive to Paris, thinking less, one suspects, of Racine and the “very clever young people” who acted his piece, than of her own clever self, and the triumph she had scored over her friends, who were merely fashionable or pretty. Alas! Dates are stubborn things, and the date of Marie Jeanne’s arrival at Saint-Cyr (1690) precludes all possibility of her having been (for instance) the “youngest of the Israelites” on this occasion, and peeping out from behind the curtains to see that brilliant audience. There were many people in France who, if they had been questioned about the matter, would have said it was just as well for herself. For it was not the sturdy good sense of the Curé of Versailles, alone, that was now awake to the danger of turning the heads of the young actresses; almost everybody who gave any thought to the matter saw how much justice there was in his blunt criticism that this was the way to train up theatrical “stars,” not “novices.” The fact that Saint-Cyr did not primarily set itself to train up “novices,” but rather good wives and mothers, lessened in no way the force of M. Hébert’s strictures. And Madame de Maintenon was not slow to perceive her mistake, and to repair it energetically. It happened, accordingly, that it was into a very quiet Saint-Cyr—a very dull Saint-Cyr, according to the girls, who had lived through the excitement of the “Esther” performances of the year before—that Marie Jeanne found herself. Now, one day was exactly like another, and anybody who knew the time-tables could tell, exactly, what every little girl in the place was doing at a given hour. That makes it all the easier for us, who have left Marie Jeanne and her companions, the Rouges, at their morning lessons, and must now come back to finish the day with them. The classes are nearly ended now, and there is a general, and not unpleasant feeling, that it is getting near dinner-time.