meeting. Those who got there first were not to wait for those who might
be detained by punishment or unusual surveillance. Each one was to do
her best to scoop out the wall. It would be just so much done toward the
next day's work. There was no chance of any one's noticing it, as no one
ever went down into that blind hallway given over to mice and spiders.

We dusted each other off, regained the cloister, slipped into our
respective class-rooms, and were ready to kneel at prayers with the
others. I forget whether we were noticed and punished that evening. It
happened so often that no single event of the kind has any special date
in the great number. Still we could often carry on our work with
impunity.

The search for the great secret and the dungeon lasted the whole winter
I spent in the junior class. The wall was perceptibly damaged, but we
were stopped by reaching wooden girders. We looked elsewhere, ransacked
twenty different places, never having the least success, yet never
losing hope.

One day we thought we would look for some mansard [Footnote: Mansard:
having two slopes.] window which might be, so to speak, the upper key to
the so ardently desired subterranean world. There were many such
windows, whose purpose we ignored. There was a little room in the attic
where we practiced on one of the thirty pianos scattered through the
establishment. We had an hour for this practice every day, and very few
of us cared for it. As I always loved music, I liked to practice. But I
was becoming more of an artist in romance than music; for what more
beautiful poem could there be than the romance in action we were
pursuing with our joint imaginations, courage, and palpitating emotions?