The instruction given by the Dames de la Congrégation was not, however, any better than that of other institutions of the kind, if the morals were. The amount of education regarded as necessary for a French girl of good family at this period was, in fact, very meagre; even girls of the highest classes being allowed to grow to womanhood in astonishing ignorance. Madame du Deffand says that in the convent where she was placed nothing was taught except “reading and writing, a light, very light tinting of history, the four rules, some needle-work, many pater-nosters—that was all.” Madame Louise, the sister of Louis XVI., did not know her alphabet at twelve, so says Madame Campan. Madame de Genlis taught her handsome sister-in-law, the favorite of the Duke of Orleans, to write after she was married. Madame de Genlis herself at twelve years of age had read almost nothing. Manon Phlipon’s acquirements when she entered the convent, at a little over eleven years of age, were certainly much greater than those of these celebrated women at her age. It is probable that her instruction was far above that not only of the girls of her age in the school, but of the most advanced pupils, perhaps even of some of the good sisters themselves. The superior training of the new pupil was soon known. The discovery caused her to be petted by all the sisterhood, and she was granted special privileges of study. She continued her piano lessons and drawing, so that she had sufficient work to satisfy her active nature and to make the leisure given her sweet. This leisure she never passed with her companions. Her frame of mind was altogether too serious to permit her to romp like a child. The recreation hours she spent apart, in a quiet corner of the silent old garden, reading or dreaming, permeated by the beauty of the foliage, the sigh of the wind, the perfume of the flowers. All this she felt, in her exalted state, was an expression of God, a proof of his goodness. With her heart big with gratitude and adoration, she would leave the garden to kneel in the dim church, and listen to the chanting of the choir and the roll of the organ. Sensitive, unpractical, fervent, the imposing and mystic services allured her imagination and moved her heart until she lost self-control and wept, she did not know why.