Their education did not go beyond the limits imposed by confessors, who were chosen by their mother from the strictest and least tolerant of the Jansenist priests.  Never were girls delivered over to their husbands more absolutely pure and virgin than they; their mother seemed to consider that point, essential as indeed it is, the accomplishment of all her duties toward earth and heaven.  These two poor creatures had never, before their marriage, read a tale, or heard of a romance; their very drawings were of figures whose anatomy would have been masterpieces of the impossible to Cuvier, designed to feminize the Farnese Hercules himself.  An old maid taught them drawing.  A worthy priest instructed them in grammar, the French language, history, geography, and the very little arithmetic it was thought necessary in their rank for women to know.  Their reading, selected from authorized books, such as the “Lettres Edifiantes,” and Noel’s “Lecons de Litterature,” was done aloud in the evening; but always in presence of their mother’s confessor, for even in those books there did sometimes occur passages which, without wise comments, might have roused their imagination.  Fenelon’s “Telemaque” was thought dangerous.

The Comtesse de Granville loved her daughters sufficiently to wish to make them angels after the pattern of Marie Alacoque, but the poor girls themselves would have preferred a less virtuous and more amiable mother.  This education bore its natural fruits.  Religion, imposed as a yoke and presented under its sternest aspect, wearied with formal practice these innocent young hearts, treated as sinful.  It repressed their feelings, and was never precious to them, although it struck its roots deep down into their natures.  Under such training the two Maries would either have become mere imbeciles, or they must necessarily have longed for independence.  Thus it came to pass that they looked to marriage as soon as they saw anything of life and were able to compare a few ideas.  Of their own tender graces and their personal value they were absolutely ignorant.  They were ignorant, too, of their own innocence; how, then, could they know life?  Without weapons to meet misfortune, without experience to appreciate happiness, they found no comfort in the maternal jail, all their joys were in each other.  Their tender confidences at night in whispers, or a few short sentences exchanged if their mother left them for a moment, contained more ideas than the words themselves expressed.  Often a glance, concealed from other eyes, by which they conveyed to each other their emotions, was like a poem of bitter melancholy.  The sight of a cloudless sky, the fragrance of flowers, a turn in the garden, arm in arm,—­these were their joys.  The finishing of a piece of embroidery was to them a source of enjoyment.