'In three months she goes to the _messe d'une heure_.'
'What is the "messe d'une heure?"' I asked.
'A priest,' he answered, 'must celebrate Mass fasting; and in strictness
ought to do so before noon. But to accommodate fashionable ladies who
cannot rise by noon, priests are found who will starve all the morning,
and say Mass in the afternoon. It is an irregular proceeding, though
winked at by the ecclesiastical authorities. Still to attend it is rather
discreditable; it is a middle term between the highly meritorious
practice of going to early Mass, and the scandalous one of never going at
all.'
'What was the education,' I asked, 'of women under the _ancien regime_?'
'The convent,' he answered.
'It must have been better,' I said, 'than the present education, since
the women of that time were superior to ours.'
'It was so far better,' he answered, 'that it did no harm. A girl at that
time was taught nothing. She came from the convent a sheet of white
paper. _Now_ her mind is a paper scribbled over with trash. The women of
that time were thrown into a world far superior to ours, and with the
sagacity, curiosity, and flexibility of French women, caught knowledge
and tact and expression from the men.
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