Mademoiselle Chanel Read Online Free PDF Page A

passages countless times, rounding the cloisters that circled the fountain. The scent of white camellias from the gardens suffused the air. Everything was as familiar as my own body, down to the mosaics in the walkway, so trodden upon during hundreds of years they were almost indiscernible.
    For an inexplicable reason, today I paused to stare at the mosaics, trying to make sense of the pattern, as if it might ease the simultaneous relief and disappointment crushing me inside. The abbess had decided I wasn’t ready. As she had done with Julia, she intended to retain me here until I declared a vocation or I was old enough to be evicted.
    “They represent the number five.”
    I spun about, startled to find I was no longer alone.
    “Didn’t you know?” said the abbess, a wry note in her voice. “I thought you’d read everything we had to offer by now and were fully aware of the meaning of those figures.”
    I looked back at the mosaics. “Five?” Now, I saw the repetition, the same five figures or five-pointed stars, duplicated over and over. “Why that number?”
    “Had you been paying as much attention to your catechism as you do to other matters, you would know it is our most holy number, the perfect embodiment of God’s creation: wind, earth, fire, water, and, most important of all, spirit. Everything we see around us contains these five elements. Five is the most sacred number in the firmament.” She motioned. “Come. I sent to the sewing room for you but Sister Thérèse returned word that you were unwell.”
    She didn’t ask the cause of my discomfort. Following her in silence, my heart pounding hard in my ears, I had to stop myself from placing a hand to my chest to subdue it.
    In her chamber, she pointed me to the stool before her desk. Once I sat, she paced to the window. She didn’t speak for such a long moment, I began to fear she was going to confront me with my continued disobedience, ordering that I never set foot in the library again. Then she said abruptly, “I have welcome news. Though you may doubt His compassion, God has seen fit to look upon you and your sisters with favor.”
    She wanted me to take the veil. She had decided my life for me. Suddenly, the walls closed in around me. I was grateful for the care the nuns had given me, the stability and refuge, and the chance to discover myself. I had also accepted that my father was never coming for us, nor had he intended to. But I still had my sisters to support. I couldn’t do it as a nun.
    She turned around. “I wrote to your family. It took me some time to locate them, but they have returned word that they are willing to receive you.”
    “Family?” I echoed. “I have no family, Reverend Mother.”
    I meant it. Though I had long ceased to expect anything of Papa, I had not forgotten how my mother’s sisters had sent us away, out of sight and out of mind, inconveniences for which no one wanted to assume responsibility.
    “Oh, but you do.” She retrieved a paper from her desk. “Your father’s sister Madame Louise Costier has written to say she can place you and Julia with her own younger sister, Adrienne, in the boarding school at our blessed convent of Notre Dame in Moulins, near where the family resides. You can spend holidays with them and, in time, seek an apprenticeship that might lead to a permanent position.”
    Upon this announcement, she waited for my response. My hands clenched in my lap. It was exactly what Sister Thérèse had told me: the news I had been waiting for. But without even glancing at the letter the abbess held like a portent from heaven, I said firmly, “I do not know any Madame Louise Costier. You must have been misinformed, Reverend Mother.”
    Part of me deliberately refuted her, though I knew no one could fool the abbess. Another part of me had to see the evidence with my own eyes, for how could I have family willing to receive me? Where had they been these past seven years?
    “I surely have not. You