850 Les Miserables
assistant mistress; Mother Annonciation, the sacristan;
Mother Saint-Augustin, the nurse, the only one in the con-
vent who was malicious; then Mother Sainte-Mechtilde
(Mademoiselle Gauvain), very young and with a beautiful
voice; Mother des Anges (Mademoiselle Drouet), who had
been in the convent of the Filles-Dieu, and in the convent
du Tresor, between Gisors and Magny; Mother Saint-Joseph
(Mademoiselle de Cogolludo), Mother Sainte-Adelaide
(Mademoiselle d’Auverney), Mother Misericorde (Ma-
demoiselle de Cifuentes, who could not resist austerities),
Mother Compassion (Mademoiselle de la Miltiere, received
at the age of sixty in defiance of the rule, and very wealthy);
Mother Providence (Mademoiselle de Laudiniere), Mother
Presentation (Mademoiselle de Siguenza), who was prior-
ess in 1847; and finally, Mother Sainte-Celigne (sister of the
sculptor Ceracchi), who went mad; Mother Sainte-Chantal
(Mademoiselle de Suzon), who went mad.
There was also, among the prettiest of them, a charming
girl of three and twenty, who was from the Isle de Bourbon,
a descendant of the Chevalier Roze, whose name had been
Mademoiselle Roze, and who was called Mother Assump-
tion.
Mother Sainte-Mechtilde, intrusted with the singing and
the choir, was fond of making use of the pupils in this quar-
ter. She usually took a complete scale of them, that is to say,
seven, from ten to sixteen years of age, inclusive, of assorted
voices and sizes, whom she made sing standing, drawn up
in a line, side by side, according to age, from the smallest to
the largest. This presented to the eye, something in the na-