THE ORPHELINES IN THE ENCHANTED CASTLE

The orphelines are back again, and welcome. Madame Flattot and her 20 orphan girls move to an old castle in the forest of Fontainebleau. The new setting proves too much for vivid imaginations and they are soon seeing themselves as 20 princesses in an enchanted castle. The orphan boys, who are to be housed in another wing, are awaited and visualized: as the most chivalrous of knights. When the boys finally arrive, the day-dream is wrecked for, ""How craven! Our knights are throwing mudballs at us"". The boys refuse the chivalrous role in trick after trick. The girls may throb to fairytales and tradition, but the closest the boys come to acting out the past is their threat to blow up the castle on Bastille Day. However, their conversion is total when they are adopted into the French Scouts. They saturate themselves in the ritual of kipling's The Jungle Book and each one is committed to doing one good deed a day. They have become ""knights"" and, their ""princesses"" won't trust them one medieval inch. s usual, the orpheline story is tucked full of good things -- there are laugh- loud moments and touches of pathos.