...
This account of twenty-four hours will stand for the whole of that first
week of Bessie's exile. Only the walks of an afternoon were varied. In
company with dull, neuralgic Miss Foster the two pupils visited the
famous stone-quarries above the town, out of which so many grand
churches have been built; they compassed the shaded Cours; they
investigated the museum, and Bessie was introduced to the pretty
portrait of Charlotte Corday, in a simple cross-over white gown, a blue
sash and mob-cap. Afterward she was made acquainted with a lady of
royalist partialities, whose mother had actually known the heroine, and
had lived through the terrible days of the Terror. Her tradition was
that the portrait of Charlotte was imaginary, and, as to her beauty,
delusive, and that the tragical young lady's moving passion was a
passion for notoriety. Bessie wondered and doubted, and began to think
history a most interesting study.
For another "treat," as Janey Fricker called it, they went on the Sunday
to drink tea with Miss Foster at her mother's. Mrs. Foster was a widow
with ideas of gentility in poverty. She was a chirping, bird-like little
woman, and lived in a room as trellised as a bird-cage. The house was on
the site of the old ramparts, and the garden sloped to the _fosse_. A
magnolia blossomed in it, and delicious pears, of the sort called "Bon
chretiens," ripened on gnarled trees. This week was, in fact, a
beautiful little prelude to school life, if Bessie had but known it.
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