At a hundred years’ distance, the mountain spirit reappears in a refractory lamb, as, after eighteen hundred years of exile, the East shone through the eyes and in the visage of Esther. This look cast no dread fascination, but rather a gentle warmth, it caused heartstrings to slacken without surprise, it weakened the hardest will by its mild heat. Esther had overcome hatred, she had astounded the rakes of Paris, and in the end that look and the sweetness of her smooth skin had bestowed upon her the dreadful nickname which already provided the inscription for her tomb. In her, everything was harmoniously in character with a peri of the burning sands. Her forehead was strong and proudly designed. Her nose, like that of the Arabs, was fine, narrow, oval-nostrilled, well-placed, turned up at the edges. Her red, fresh mouth was a rose without blemish, orgies had left no mark upon it. The chin, modelled as though by a sculptor in love, was of milky whiteness. One thing which she had not had time to remedy betrayed the courtesan fallen too low: her torn nails had not yet recovered their elegance, so much had they been deformed by common household cares. The young boarders began with jealousy of her miracles of beauty, but ended in admiration. Before a week had passed they had taken the simple Esther to their hearts, interested by the secret misfortunes of a girl of eighteen who could neither read nor write, to whom all knowledge, all instruction were new, and who was about to bring to the archbishop the glory of the conversion of a Jewess to Catholicism, to the convent the festival of her baptism. They forgave her her beauty, finding themselves her superiors in the matter of education. Esther had quickly taken on the manner, the gentleness of voice, the bearing and attitudes of these daughters of distinction; finally she recovered her first nature. The change was so complete that, at his first visit, Herrera was astonished, he whom nothing in the world seemed able to surprise, and her superiors complimented him on his pupil. These women had never, in their teaching career, met with a nature more amiable, a more Christian gentleness, truer modesty, nor so great a desire to learn. When a girl has suffered the misfortunes which had overwhelmed the poor boarder and expects such a reward as the Spaniard offered Esther, it is almost certain that she will renew those miracles of the first days of the Church which the Jesuits brought about in Paraguay.

‘She is an edification,’ said Mother Superior kissing her on the forehead.

This essentially Catholic word told all.

A form of bomesickness

DURING recreation, Esther discreetly questioned her companions about the simplest things in the world, which to her were like life’s first surprises to á child. When she knew that she would be dressed in white on the day of her baptism and first communion, that she would wear a white satin hair-band, white ribbons, white shoes, white gloves, with a white bow on her head, she burst into tears in the midst of her astonished companions. It was the opposite of the scene of Jephthah’s daughter upon the mountain. The harlot feared to be understood, she attributed her dreadful melancholy to the joy the spectacle caused her in anticipation. As there is certainly as great a distance between the customs she was giving up and those she was adopting as there is between the savage state and civilization, she exhibited the grace and simplicity, the depth, which single out the wonderful heroine of The Prairie. She also, without knowing it herself, was gnawed at by the love in her heart, a strange love, a desire more violent in her who knew all than it is in a virgin who knows nothing, although both desires had the same cause and the same purpose. During the first months, the novelty of a secluded life, the surprises of her instruction, the tasks she was taught to perform, the practices of religion, the fervour of a devout resolution, the sweetness of the affection she inspired, above all the exercise of the faculties of awakened intelligence, all helped to keep her memories in check, even her efforts in creating a new memory; for she had as much to unlearn as to learn. We have more than one memory; the body, the mind, each have their own; and nostalgia, for example, is a sickness of the physical memory. During the third month, the impetus of this virgin spirit, straining with outstretched wings towards paradise, was thus, not tamed, but impeded by a muffled resistance whose origin was unknown to Esther herself. Like the sheep of Scotland, she wanted to feed apart, she could not conquer the instincts developed by debauchery. Was she reminded of it by the muddy streets of Paris which she had abjured? Did the chains of her dreadful broken habits cleave to her by forgotten seals, and did she feel them as, according to doctors, old soldiers still feel pain in the limbs they have lost? Had vice and its excesses so penetrated to her marrow that holy water could not yet reach the demon hidden there? Was the sight of him for whom such angelic efforts were being made necessary to her whom God must forgive for mingling human with divine love? The one had led her to the other. Was a shift of vital force taking place in her, in such a way as to cause suffering? All is doubt and darkness in a situation which science has not deigned to examine, fearing to compromise itself with an immoral subject, as though doctor and writer, priest and statesman were not above suspicion. A doctor stopped by death showed nevertheless the courage to begin studies left incomplete. Perhaps the black melancholy to which Esther was a prey and which darkened her otherwise happy life derived from all these causes; and incapable of guessing what they were, it may be that she .suffered like the sick who know nothing of medicine or surgery. The fact is curious.