Motherless
before she could speak, she had entered the convent as a pupil at three
years of age, and had taken the veil at seventeen. Her father had married a
great heiress, whose only child, a daughter, was allowed to absorb all
the small stock of parental affection; and there was no one to dispute
Anastasia's desire for the cloister. All she knew of the world outside
those walls was from hearsay. A rare visit from her lovely half-sister, the
Marquise de Montrond, had astonished her with the sight of a distinguished
Parisienne, and left her wondering. She had never read a secular book. She
knew not the meaning of the word pleasure, save in the mild amusements
permitted to the convent children--till they left the convent as young
women--on the evening of a saint's day; a stately dance of curtsyings and
waving arms; a little childish play, dramatising some incident in the
lives of the saints. So she lived her eighty years of obedience and quiet
usefulness, learning and teaching, serving and governing. She had lived
through the Thirty Years' War, through the devastations of Wallenstein, the
cruelties of Bavarian Tilly, the judicial murder of Egmont and Horn. She
had heard of villages burnt, populations put to the sword, women and
children killed by thousands.
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