Page:Napoleon (O'Connor 1896).djvu/364

348 She has many accomplishments, music and drawing, which make a decent and high occupation for idle Princesses. She has just the semblance of religion, restraining her to its minutest practices, but she has been taught how to dispute on the dogmas, for her future husband may be schismatic. As for morals, by a carefully arranged mystery, the Archduchess is allowed to ignore the fact that in nature there exist beings of different sexes. With precautions which only the casuists of the great Spanish schools could conceive of, they strove in every way to safeguard her innocence, going to refinements of modesty that became pruriency. In the yards there were only hens, not a single male bird amongst them; there were only hen, canaries in the cages, no songsters; there were no male dogs in the rooms, nothing but females. And the books—such contemptible books—are expurgated, scissors in hand, pages, lines, even words, cut out, without it ever occurring to the cutters that, in the face of these gaps, even Archduchesses would think. It is true that a governess, an ayah, who afterwards became a great lady, kept a tight rein on even dreams. It was she who held complete sway indoors, assisted at the lessons, directed and controlled the games, kept watch over the domestics and the junior school mistresses. She did not quit the pupil either day or night. As the care of the Princess was an important matter, and belonged to the domain of politics, the holder