How fervently I used to bless the headache or cold that permitted me to slip up to bed after supper, and escape from the evening recreation into the more peopled and interesting solitude of my own thoughts. Things may be better since my day. Tennis, bathing, golf, cricket, and racing may now be admitted as feminine pastimes in those holy establishments where I spent so many miserable and profitless years. I hear that even baths are introduced, and that it is no longer deemed by French nuns an offence against modesty to wash oneself. But I recall a very different state of affairs—a state so curious that my French friends do not like to credit it when I assure them of it. I was fourteen when I was sent to school in France to acquire the tongue of courts and diplomacy. On the first morning that I awoke in the long, white-curtained dormitory, I proceeded to wash and dress myself as I had been taught to wash and dress in English convents. I had deposited my dressing-gown on my bed, and was splashing my neck with water, when, to my astonishment, a nun approached me noiselessly, lifted my dressing-gown from the bed, and holding her shocked glance averted murmured, _La pudeur, mon enfant, la pudeur_, as she covered my dripping neck in the folds of my dressing-gown. When I clamoured for an explanation, I was told it was not considered decent in France for a young girl to wash her neck. We were worse off than the young gentlemen of Stanislas, whose feet are washed once a week; ours were washed only once a fortnight, and then a cloth was kept over them, lest the sight of our naked feet in the water should lead to the loss of our souls. For the years I was there, nobody, to my knowledge, ever had a bath of any kind. However, this is all changed, I am happy to say. French nuns have had to move with the times and accept the modern institution of baths. I hope they have also grown to accept the institution of men. When I was at school we were strictly forbidden to lift our eyes to a man’s face. When the old doctor of eighty passed through the courtyard, if any of us happened to be about there was an instant cry of alarm, _Baissez les yeux, mesdemoiselles. Il y a du monde._ _Du monde_ always meant the wolf in trousers and coat, and we were invited ever to tremble, blush, and lower our eyes in the dreadful creature’s presence. It was a garrison town, and whenever we walked abroad and found officers upon our path nuns would skurry down our black-robed ranks, crying in terrified undertones, _Baissez les yeux, mesdemoiselles. Messieurs les officiers vous regardent._ Will any one explain to me the mental and moral value of such training? Is it not shocking that innocent girls should be bred in the notion that there is any reason why they should not look men frankly and simply in the face? [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER VI NATIONAL INSTITUTIONS