The Secret of the Blue Trunk Read Online Free PDF

travelling and personal expenses. I gave the rest to the community. I had never thought, never even dreamt, that this journey could become a reality.
    How lucky I was to be able to experience such an adventure in a foreign country. But I would only really believe it when the day of the great journey arrived. Time passed slowly, too slowly.

Leaving for Europe
    A week before my adventure began, I couldn’t keep still anymore. The preparations were complex and I found it terribly difficult to stay calm. The nuns had to call me to order several times. I talked too loudly, I laughed without reason. But how could anyone keep calm before such a grandiose undertaking? The experience I was about to embark on was most extraordinary for a girl like me. I was quite unprepared for it.
    In all my young life, I had only known horse-drawn carriages. But to complete the long journey that would take me to the port of Saint-Malo in France, I had to travel by motor car, by train, and transatlantic liner!
    The two nights before my departure, I just couldn’t get to sleep. I tried to picture the various stages of the trip, but didn’t succeed very well. Everything was confused and abstract. I had only seen trains, ocean liners, and the sea in photographs.
    The night before leaving, I didn’t sleep at all. I checked the contents of my suitcase several times, as thin as it was: some underwear, a black tunic, and a white blouse identical to the one I wore every day, two exercise books, a pencil, holy pictures, two white cotton head coverings that had to be worn to identify girls who were beginning their novitiate. I also took the old doll Sister Marguerite had given me when I first came to the convent and a personal letter from her.
    I would reread it often all through my new life. She wished me good luck. In Europe, she said, I would be able to perfect my sewing skills because it was one of the best places in the world to do so. In Brittany, moreover, I would learn lace-making if I wanted to. She told me once again how dear I was to her and assured me she would always cherish me. I cried when I read that. Sister Marguerite was an extremely important woman to me. She was really my second mother.

    On October 15, 1930, I was eighteen and ready for the first day of the rest of my life.
    As on every other morning, the wake-up bell rang at half past five. The two Eudist fathers and Sister Romuald, who would be travelling with us, would arrive at seven. Two other postulants from Chicoutimi were leaving with me to go through their novitiate in Europe: Sister Éva Tremblay and Sister Thérèse Martel, a cousin of mine whom I’d never met.
    I washed, rushed through my breakfast, and made my way to the chapel to pray before leaving. I placed my fate in the hands of God and the Virgin Mary, in whom I had complete confidence. I asked them to guide me in this utterly unknown world. I confided my anxiety to them. I would no longer be sheltered as in the convent. I would be immersed in the outside world for over a week. The nuns had actually mentioned a ten-day journey to me. So I would be in contact with a huge number of people. “How should I act in society? That is why I ask you, God and merciful Blessed Virgin Mary, to protect me during this great odyssey.”
    Then I ran to the dormitory, although running was forbidden, picked up my suitcase, went to the convent’s front door and waited as quietly as I could. It was half past six. Two nuns who were talking to each other in the hall came up to remind me that the fathers wouldn’t be here until about seven. I told them that time was passing too slowly and I would rather wait for them by the door. That way I could be sure they wouldn’t forget me.
    Fifteen minutes later, the two other postulants joined me in the doorway. They were just as overwrought as I was. We held hands. We needed to stay calm and definitely not shout.
    Mother Superior came to give us her last recommendations. She warned us against