The Institut Sainte-Colombe
You have crossed the water. This is not our school, and it does not wish to be. It is older, and greyer, and quite sure of itself, and it keeps a light of its own that it has never once thought to compare with ours.
The Institut Sainte-Colombe stands on the banks of the Seine, founded long before St Elowen’s, and entirely without reference to it. It has its own long history, and has never had the smallest need of ours.
Its colour is dove-grey. Its emblem is the dove. Its tower is not a bell-tower but a colombier, a dovecote, and at dusk the birds come home to it in a slow grey turning, and the whole school stops, without being told to, to watch.
Who is here
Madame Hortense Verchamps
Warm, and thoroughly serious, and entirely unsentimental about anything except her girls, for whom she would go to war.
Camille Béraud
Every new girl at Sainte-Colombe is given a marraine, a godmother, to steer her through the first bewildering fortnight. Camille has had a great many of them over the years, and has never yet found one she did not eventually, grudgingly, adore.
Père Anselme
Ancient, and patient, and in charge of the boats, the landing stage, and the stretch of the Seine that belongs to the school. He has been here longer than any mistress, and he speaks to the girls exactly as he speaks to the river, which is to say, seldom, and to the point.
How the year goes here
There is La Chandeleur, and the crêpes, and a procession of candles. There is the Wednesday excursion into Paris, when the grey city opens like a book. And there is the regatta on the Seine, which the whole school takes entirely too seriously, and trains for as though the honour of France depended on it.
The river-candle rite
On the right evening, each girl sets a small candle upon the water and lets the Seine carry it away into the dark.
You make a wish as you set it down. But not a wish for yourself. That is the rule. You wish for whoever finds the light, downstream, though you will never know who they are, or whether anyone finds it at all. You send your light to a stranger.
We keep a light for someone we will never meet.