For all this, though, the young ladies filled this grave house with delightful reminiscences. At certain hours childhood sparkled in this cloister. The bell for recreation was rung, the gate creaked on its hinges, and the birds whispered to each other, "Here are the children." An irruption of youth inundated this garden, which with its cross-walks resembled a pall. Radiant faces, white foreheads, ingenuous eyes, full of gay light--all sorts of dawn--spread through the gloom. After the psalm-singing, the bell-ringing, and the services, the noise of girls, softer than the buzzing of bees, suddenly burst out. The hive of joy opened, and each brought her honey; they played, they called each other, they formed groups, and ran about; pretty little white teeth chattered at corners; in the distance veils watched the laughter, shadows guarded the beams,--but what matter! they were radiant, and laughed. These four mournful walls had their moment of bedazzlement; vaguely whitened by the reflection of so much joy, they watched this gentle buzzing of the swarm. It was like a shower of roses falling on this mourning. The girls sported beneath the eye of the nuns, for the glance of impeccability does not disturb innocence; and, thanks to these children, there was a simple hour among so many austere hours. The little girls jumped about and the elder danced, and nothing could be so ravishing and august as all the fresh, innocent expansion of these childish souls. Homer would have come here to dance with Perrault, and there were in this black garden, youth, health, noise, cries, pleasure, and happiness enough to unwrinkle the brows of all the ancestry, both of the epic poem and the fairy tale, of the throne and the cottage, from Hecuba down to La Mère Grand. In this house, more perhaps than elsewhere, those childish remarks were made which possess so much grace, and which make the hearer laugh thoughtfully. It was within these four gloomy walls that a child of four years of age one day exclaimed,--"Mother, a grown-up girl has just told me that I have only nine years and ten months longer to remain here. What happiness!" Here too it was that the memorable dialogue took place:-- _A vocal mother_.--Why are you crying, my child? _The child_ (six years old), sobbing.--I said to Alix that I knew my French history. She says that I don't know it, but I do know it. _Alix_, the grown-up girl (just nine).--No. She does not know it. _Mother_.--How so, my child? _Alix_.--She told me to open the book haphazard, and ask her a question out of the book, which she would answer. "Well?" "She did not answer it." "What was it you asked her?" "I opened the book as she said, and I asked her the first question that I came across." "And pray what was the question?" "It was, '_What happened next?_'"