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Adèle
Joseph Stefanelli, SM, 565 pp.
$16.00 hardbound, $13.00 softbound
Set of Adèle and Companions of Adèle:
$25.00 hardbound, $20.00 softbound

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Life at the château soon settles into a peaceful routine. Unlike her parents, who in their younger years had experienced the life of Paris and of the royal court, the elaborate balls and the social events of the aristocracy, the diversity of the great Capital, and all the advantages that money and power and influential friends can obtain, Adèle will live her life in relative obscurity on a country estate, and with limited resources that pose not only inconveniences for her but much more importantly pose limitations on her efforts to help others. Her days are divided between her exercises of personal spiritual development and her outpouring of love and concern for the less fortunate. She takes part in the daily routines of the château, enjoys immensely the companionship of her mother, of her father, of Charles and their little sister.   

Under the guidance, first of Catherine-Anne, then of Monsieur Ducourneau, her schooling continues. She is able to solidify and synthesize what she has learned at various intervals and in summary fashion from her mother while they were in exile. Her education is basic: reading, writing, arithmetic. It apparently does not give large place to the fine arts normally associated in the ancien régime with the education of young aristocratic women. She learns neither music nor painting, but does learn sewing, embroidering, housekeeping and management of the estate. Later, when her father and mother will both be absent from Trenquelléon, it is Adèle who supervises and directs the household and the care of the far-flung lands. Supremely important to her is her continuing education in matters of the spirit, in prayer, and in the exercises of her religious faith. The atmosphere of the château is most conducive to this development. Some neighbors, and even some friends, seem to speak of it rather despairingly as a "monastic environment." For Adèle, it is a period of preparation for the day when she will enter Carmel. She is still convinced that she is called to be a Carmelite nun: in France, if religious orders are eventually restored; otherwise, in Spain in San Sebastián. With this thought in mind and after consultation with her mother, she asks Monsieur Ducourneau to draw up a rule of life. This early in 1802, when she is not yet thirteen years old.