"Oh! Rose, you have never been in a convent! Thank your stars, my dear, or your gods, if you have any; and pray that you never may be. The discipline, the dulness, the wearisome routine, made one feel like a wild beast in a cage. I think I should have torn somebody in pieces if I had stayed. There was nothing to see, nothing to do, and nothing to learn. Though I was such a little rebel, I had neither been stupid nor idle at school, and there was little they taught in the convent, except needle-work, that I didn't know fully better than my instructors. So I ran away. I am ashamed to tell you how I managed it--what lies I told, what feelings I simulated, what smiles I lavished to induce a young man, whom I had only seen three times and spoken with twice, to assist me in my flight. He called it 'un enlèvement;' but I think I managed all the details, and had, therefore, the less difficulty in giving him the slip within an hour of my escape from prison. He was a 'friseur,' I believe. He told me he was an artist. I certainly shouldn't have known him again in a week's time, but he was useful to me, and I think he said his name was Adolphe. "No friends--no money. A run-away school-girl, and loose in the streets of Paris. Can you wonder that my wits are sharpened, my opinions somewhat advanced? I was self-reliant, however, and had no intention of starving, so I pawned a black silk jacket of my own, and a bracelet Adolphe had lately given me. I regret to say the latter ornament fetched but a few francs. I had capital enough now to keep me a few days, and felt that I could afford to make my own bargain with an employer, whatever might be the task or the terms. "Perhaps it was because I could do without it for the moment, that I obtained an engagement the same day to sing at one of the 'Cafés Chantants' that abound in the outskirts of Paris. In a low dress, at sixteen, singing to two hundred people I had never seen before, I give you my word I wasn't the least shy. Truth to tell, my blood was up. I had detected in the Manager's politeness, and the readiness with which he met my terms, something of that predatory tendency which I had already learned from books, from reflection, from the experience of others, affects the dealings of men towards ourselves. I was ten times better in defence, I knew, than he could be in attack; and I felt a fierce pleasure in pondering how I could turn his own weapons against himself.