Marguerite Audoux

Marie Claire Marguerite Audoux

Book Excerpt: ...mée's classroom. She put on a timid kind of voice, and said, "Sister, here is a new girl." I expected to be scolded; but Sister Marie-Aimée smiled, kissed me several times, and said, "You are too small to sit on a bench, I shall put you in here." And she sat me down on a stool in the hollow of her desk. It was ever so comfortable in the hollow of her desk, and the warmth of her woollen petticoat soothed my body, which was bruised all over by tumbling about on the wooden staircases, and on the stone ones. Often two feet hemmed me in on each side of my stool, and two warm legs made a back for me. A soft hand pressed my head on to the woollen skirt between the knees, and the softness of the hand and the warmth of the pillow used to send me to sleep. When I woke up again the pillow became a table. The same hand put bits of cake on it, and bits of sugar and sweets sometimes. And all round me I heard the world living. A voice with tears in it would say, "No, Sister, I didn't do it." Then shrill voices...