To their minds, nothing could be worse in the strange houses where they were to go than the maternal convent.
Why did the father of these poor girls, the Comte de Granville, a wise and upright magistrate (though sometimes led away by politics), refrain from protecting the helpless little creatures from such crushing despotism?
Alas! by mutual understanding, about ten years after marriage, he and his wife were separated while living under one roof.
The father had taken upon himself the education of his sons, leaving that of the daughters to his wife.

He saw less danger for women than for men in the application of his wife's oppressive system.

The two Maries, destined as women to endure tyranny, either of love or marriage, would be, he thought, less injured than boys, whose minds ought to have freer play, and whose manly qualities would deteriorate under the powerful compression of religious ideas pushed to their utmost consequences.

Of four victims the count saved two.
The countess regarded her sons as too ill-trained to admit of the slightest intimacy with their sisters.

All communication between the poor children was therefore strictly watched.