It Began in Vauxhall Gardens

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The Convent Notre Dame Marie stood on an incline above the town—of it and yet apart from it. Like a guardian fortress, it commanded views of the winding river. Its hard granite walls seemed to stand in defiance of intruders and in contemptuous scorn of the ruined chateau which occupied a similar position on the opposite side of the river.

It was said that both Convent and chateau had been built long before the days of gay King Francois, and that when that King had passed along the river, he had lingered. Beautiful buildings attracted him as did beautiful women, and he had taken a fancy to the chateau and the town's girls. He had extended the chateau and dallied with the women of the town until, tiring of them both, he passed on.

As the Mother Superior was fond of pointing out, the residents of the chateau had been Revelry and Sin; and now it was nothing but a ruin—a pile of stones here, the remains of a wall there, a spot to which people might climb in order to enjoy a picnic. Last year an Englishman had broken his leg scrambling over the ruins and had had to spend many weeks at the Auberge Lefevre, to his great discomfort but to the considerable profit of the Lefevres. Yes, the chateau represented Sin and the Convent Virtue. This, said the Mother Superior to the little ones in her charge, was a significant lesson to all who looked from the ruins to the solid walls of the Convent Notre Dame Marie. One was the house which had been built on a rock; the other the house which had been built on sand.

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