Winter 1620-1624

The four sister, Madelon, Marion, Beatrice and Denisete knew that the moment to leave their father's castle for the Convent would come sooner or later, so the morning when Cornille, their wet-nurse, came to prepare them for the departure didn't took them aback.Madelon, the oldest one, secretly smiled, a little relieved by the situation: she was the only one who went to the Convent to join the order.Her sister were sent in the Convent along with her only because they were getting older and their parents were too poor to hire private tutors.They were going to learn the decorum, how to act in public and how to become proper wives.

Even since she had been a little girl, Madelon never wanted to get married and live the kind of life her parents had.Not that she considered their life a disappointment.She simply wanted to serve God and back off from the world where she had been born 18 years ago.

While her three younger sisters cried when they said good bye to their parents, brothers, sisters and servants, Madelon simply hugged her mother and got into the carriage, refusing to look back to the castle and abandoning the realms where she spent her childhood.

All this time, Marion, Beatrice and Denisete hugged each other and continued to weep their lost freedom.Madelon didn't even try to comfort them.

Their first night in the Convent passed without major events.The four girls were quietly greeted by a sister who also guided them to the dormitory.They missed the dinner, arriving too late, so they had to fall asleep still hungry and tired from the long journey.Beatrice, the youngest of the four sisters, cried herself to sleep, while Marion, who still missed her twin sister, Agnesot, tried to comfort her younger sisters.

After their first year in the Convent, Madelon finally became one of the Ursulines, while Marion, Beatrice and Denisete continued to live in the Convent, rarely receiving letters from their family.

Because of that they learned about their brother's fate only a year later, when Marion discovered a hole in one of the old stone walls and decided to run back home.Of course, after an hour of roaming through the streets of the closest town, a clergyman saw her and recognized the girl belonging to the Order because of her attire.By the evening, Marion was already back in her room, doing penitence and listening to reproofs.Of course, the fact that she almost fell asleep praying didn't improve everyone's opinion on her.(Un)Fortunately, the young girl couldn't care less about that.

While her two other sisters, Beatrice and Denisete tried to accept and fulfil their duties, Marion used every opportunity to escape and turn her tail to the manager.If the sisters told her to sleep on her back, with her hands beside her body, she would simply fell asleep with her face in the pillow.If she had to work from Monday to Saturday and spend the Sundays praying, she simply swung the lead all week long and pretend to work all Sunday long. She even slunk into the abbess' room where she knew she could find a mirror to admire herself.At least she and her other two sisters weren't coerced to cut their long hair.

But the long back wool skirts, made to measure lasses and country girls, along with the white bonnets that Beatrice said were identical with those protestant English peasant women had to wear were meant to hide any attempt of coquetry.

By the end of 1624 Marion seemed to sing a different tune, while Denisete and Beatrice already dreed their weird.