After 1871, France was politically isolated, traumatized by the loss of Alsace and Lorraine, the events of the Commune, and by unrest in Algeria. Publishers specialized in edifying literature believed that the country would only recover its lost glory if its youngest citizens – notably girls – became politicized. This article analyzes two novels about girls placed in the role of taking care of young colonial subjects at home. The intervention of exogenous elements into the girls’ bourgeois existence serves to regulate the girls’ problematic behavior, and familiarizes them with a colonial world. This education eventually transforms them into fully-developed French women able to participate in the regeneration of Empire. These two novels exemplify Hachette’s editorial strategy and show that at the end of the nineteenth century, childhood, femininity, propriety, and politics were more tightly linked that previously thought.