I remembered all that Sister Appoline had told me, and Mother Ste. Sophie, too. I remembered, also, that when Rachel had gone out of the garden, looking very pale, and holding a lady’s arm for support, a little girl had put her tongue out at her. I did not want people to put out their tongues at me when I was grown up. _Conservatoire!_ That word alarmed me. The duke had wanted me to be an actress and he had now gone away so that I could not talk things over with him. He went away smiling and tranquil, after caressing me in the usual friendly way. He had gone—caring little about the scraggy child whose future had been discussed. “Send her to the _Conservatoire_!” That sentence uttered so carelessly had come like a bomb into my life. I, the dreamy child, who that morning was ready to repulse princes and kings; I, whose trembling fingers had that morning told over chaplets of dreams, who only a few hours ago had felt my heart beating with emotion hitherto unknown to me; I, who had got up expecting some great event to take place, was to see everything disappear, thanks to that phrase as heavy as lead and as deadly as a bullet: “Send her to the _Conservatoire_!” And I divined that this phrase was to be the signpost of my life. All those people had gathered together at the turning of the crossroads. “Send her to the _Conservatoire_!” I wanted to be a nun and this was considered absurd, idiotic, unreasonable. “Send her to the _Conservatoire_” had opened out a field for discussion, the horizon of the future. My uncle, Félix Faure, and Mlle. Brabender were the only ones against this idea. They tried in vain to make my mother understand that with the hundred thousand francs that my father had left me I might marry. But my mother had replied that I had declared I had a horror of marriage, and that I should wait until I was of age to go into a convent. “Under these conditions,” she said, “Sarah will never have her father’s money.” “No, certainly not,” put in the notary. “Then,” continued my mother, “she would enter the convent as a servant and I will not have that! My money is an annuity, so that I cannot leave anything to my children. I, therefore, want them to have a career of their own.” My mother was now exhausted with so much talking and lay back in an armchair. I got very much excited and my mother asked me to go away. Mlle. Brabender and Mme. Guérard were arguing in a low voice, and I thought of the aristocratic man who had just left us. I was very angry with him, for this idea of the _Conservatoire_ was his. Mlle. Brabender tried to console me. Mme. Guérard said that this career had its advantages. Mlle. Brabender considered that the convent would have a great fascination for so dreamy a nature as mine. The latter was very religious and a great churchgoer; “_ma petite dame_,” was a pagan in the purest acceptation of that word, and yet the two women got on very well together, thanks to their affectionate devotion to me.