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 ago with St Elowen’s blessing, for the Foundress herself was a girl here, more than a hundred and sixty years ago, before ever she came home to Kent and built a school of her own.
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.
Madame Hortense Verchamps
Warm, and thoroughly serious, and a professional rival of Miss Winthrop in the most cordial possible way. Each wants her girls to be the best of the two, wherever the two should meet.
Camille Rousseau
Emily’s guide across the sea, and then her closest friend. She is the great-great-great-granddaughter of Colette Rousseau, who was Honoria Elowen’s schoolgirl best friend, and whose unfinished promise is the whole of the second book.
Père Anselme
Ancient, and patient, and the keeper of a dove-headed key these fifty years, which nobody has ever thought to ask him for. Some keys wait a long time.
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, in which St Elowen’s is beaten by half a length, entirely honourably, and wins the school’s lasting respect in the losing.
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.
At St Elowen’s we keep a light so that no girl need feel alone in the dark. On the Seine they keep a light for a stranger they will never meet. Neither school knew. For a hundred and sixty years, neither school knew.