





Nothing, half a century ago, more resembled every other carriage gate
than the carriage gate of Number 62 Rue Petit-Picpus. This entrance,
which usually stood ajar in the most inviting fashion, permitted a view
of two things, neither of which have anything very funereal about
them,—a courtyard surrounded by walls hung with vines, and the face of
a lounging porter. Above the wall, at the bottom of the court, tall
trees were visible. When a ray of sunlight enlivened the courtyard,
when a glass of wine cheered up the porter, it was difficult to pass
Number 62 Little Picpus Street without carrying away a smiling
impression of it. Nevertheless, it was a sombre place of which one had
had a glimpse.

The threshold smiled; the house prayed and wept.

If one succeeded in passing the porter, which was not easy,—which was
even nearly impossible for every one, for there was an _open sesame!_
which it was necessary to know,—if, the porter once passed, one entered
a little vestibule on the right, on which opened a staircase shut in
between two walls and so narrow that only one person could ascend it at
a time, if one did not allow one’s self to be alarmed by a daubing of
canary yellow, with a dado of chocolate which clothed this staircase,
if one ventured to ascend it, one crossed a first landing, then a
second, and arrived on the first story at a corridor where the yellow
wash and the chocolate-hued plinth pursued one with a peaceable
persistency. Staircase and corridor were lighted by two beautiful
windows. The corridor took a turn and became dark. If one doubled this
cape, one arrived a few paces further on, in front of a door which was
all the more mysterious because it was not fastened. If one opened it,
one found one’s self in a little chamber about six feet square, tiled,
well-scrubbed, clean, cold, and hung with nankin paper with green
flowers, at fifteen sous the roll. A white, dull light fell from a
large window, with tiny panes, on the left, which usurped the whole
width of the room. One gazed about, but saw no one; one listened, one
heard neither a footstep nor a human murmur. The walls were bare, the
chamber was not furnished; there was not even a chair.

One looked again, and beheld on the wall facing the door a quadrangular
hole, about a foot square, with a grating of interlacing iron bars,
black, knotted, solid, which formed squares—I had almost said meshes—of
less than an inch and a half in diagonal length. The little green
flowers of the nankin paper ran in a calm and orderly manner to those
iron bars, without being startled or thrown into confusion by their
funereal contact. Supposing that a living being had been so wonderfully
thin as to essay an entrance or an exit through the square hole, this
grating would have prevented it. It did not allow the passage of the
body, but it did allow the passage of the eyes; that is to say, of the
mind. This seems to have occurred to them, for it had been re-enforced
by a sheet of tin inserted in the wall a little in the rear, and
pierced with a thousand holes more microscopic than the holes of a
strainer. At the bottom of this plate, an aperture had been pierced
exactly similar to the orifice of a letter box. A bit of tape attached
to a bell-wire hung at the right of the grated opening.

If the tape was pulled, a bell rang, and one heard a voice very near at
hand, which made one start.

“Who is there?” the voice demanded.

It was a woman’s voice, a gentle voice, so gentle that it was mournful.

Here, again, there was a magical word which it was necessary to know.
If one did not know it, the voice ceased, the wall became silent once
more, as though the terrified obscurity of the sepulchre had been on
the other side of it.

If one knew the password, the voice resumed, “Enter on the right.”


One then perceived on the right, facing the window, a glass door
surmounted by a frame glazed and painted gray. On raising the latch and
crossing the threshold, one experienced precisely the same impression
as when one enters at the theatre into a grated _baignoire_, before the
grating is lowered and the chandelier is lighted. One was, in fact, in
a sort of theatre-box, narrow, furnished with two old chairs, and a
much-frayed straw matting, sparely illuminated by the vague light from
the glass door; a regular box, with its front just of a height to lean
upon, bearing a tablet of black wood. This box was grated, only the
grating of it was not of gilded wood, as at the opera; it was a
monstrous lattice of iron bars, hideously interlaced and riveted to the
wall by enormous fastenings which resembled clenched fists.

The first minutes passed; when one’s eyes began to grow used to this
cellar-like half-twilight, one tried to pass the grating, but got no
further than six inches beyond it. There he encountered a barrier of
black shutters, re-enforced and fortified with transverse beams of wood
painted a gingerbread yellow. These shutters were divided into long,
narrow slats, and they masked the entire length of the grating. They
were always closed. At the expiration of a few moments one heard a
voice proceeding from behind these shutters, and saying:—

“I am here. What do you wish with me?”


It was a beloved, sometimes an adored, voice. No one was visible.
Hardly the sound of a breath was audible. It seemed as though it were a
spirit which had been evoked, that was speaking to you across the walls
of the tomb.

If one chanced to be within certain prescribed and very rare
conditions, the slat of one of the shutters opened opposite you; the
evoked spirit became an apparition. Behind the grating, behind the
shutter, one perceived so far as the grating permitted sight, a head,
of which only the mouth and the chin were visible; the rest was covered
with a black veil. One caught a glimpse of a black guimpe, and a form
that was barely defined, covered with a black shroud. That head spoke
with you, but did not look at you and never smiled at you.

The light which came from behind you was adjusted in such a manner that
you saw her in the white, and she saw you in the black. This light was
symbolical.

Nevertheless, your eyes plunged eagerly through that opening which was
made in that place shut off from all glances. A profound vagueness
enveloped that form clad in mourning. Your eyes searched that
vagueness, and sought to make out the surroundings of the apparition.
At the expiration of a very short time you discovered that you could
see nothing. What you beheld was night, emptiness, shadows, a wintry
mist mingled with a vapor from the tomb, a sort of terrible peace, a
silence from which you could gather nothing, not even sighs, a gloom in
which you could distinguish nothing, not even phantoms.

What you beheld was the interior of a cloister.

It was the interior of that severe and gloomy edifice which was called
the Convent of the Bernardines of the Perpetual Adoration. The box in
which you stood was the parlor. The first voice which had addressed you
was that of the portress who always sat motionless and silent, on the
other side of the wall, near the square opening, screened by the iron
grating and the plate with its thousand holes, as by a double visor.
The obscurity which bathed the grated box arose from the fact that the
parlor, which had a window on the side of the world, had none on the
side of the convent. Profane eyes must see nothing of that sacred
place.

Nevertheless, there was something beyond that shadow; there was a
light; there was life in the midst of that death. Although this was the
most strictly walled of all convents, we shall endeavor to make our way
into it, and to take the reader in, and to say, without transgressing
the proper bounds, things which story-tellers have never seen, and
have, therefore, never described.






This convent, which in 1824 had already existed for many a long year in
the Rue Petit-Picpus, was a community of Bernardines of the obedience
of Martin Verga.

These Bernardines were attached, in consequence, not to Clairvaux, like
the Bernardine monks, but to Cîteaux, like the Benedictine monks. In
other words, they were the subjects, not of Saint Bernard, but of Saint
Benoît.

Any one who has turned over old folios to any extent knows that Martin
Verga founded in 1425 a congregation of Bernardines-Benedictines, with
Salamanca for the head of the order, and Alcala as the branch
establishment.

This congregation had sent out branches throughout all the Catholic
countries of Europe.

There is nothing unusual in the Latin Church in these grafts of one
order on another. To mention only a single order of Saint-Benoît, which
is here in question: there are attached to this order, without counting
the obedience of Martin Verga, four congregations,—two in Italy,
Mont-Cassin and Sainte-Justine of Padua; two in France, Cluny and
Saint-Maur; and nine orders,—Vallombrosa, Granmont, the Célestins, the
Camaldules, the Carthusians, the Humiliés, the Olivateurs, the
Silvestrins, and lastly, Cîteaux; for Cîteaux itself, a trunk for other
orders, is only an offshoot of Saint-Benoît. Cîteaux dates from Saint
Robert, Abbé de Molesme, in the diocese of Langres, in 1098. Now it was
in 529 that the devil, having retired to the desert of Subiaco—he was
old—had he turned hermit?—was chased from the ancient temple of Apollo,
where he dwelt, by Saint-Benoît, then aged seventeen.

After the rule of the Carmelites, who go barefoot, wear a bit of willow
on their throats, and never sit down, the harshest rule is that of the
Bernardines-Benedictines of Martin Verga. They are clothed in black,
with a guimpe, which, in accordance with the express command of
Saint-Benoît, mounts to the chin. A robe of serge with large sleeves, a
large woollen veil, the guimpe which mounts to the chin cut square on
the breast, the band which descends over their brow to their eyes,—this
is their dress. All is black except the band, which is white. The
novices wear the same habit, but all in white. The professed nuns also
wear a rosary at their side.

The Bernardines-Benedictines of Martin Verga practise the Perpetual
Adoration, like the Benedictines called Ladies of the Holy Sacrament,
who, at the beginning of this century, had two houses in Paris,—one at
the Temple, the other in the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève. However, the
Bernardines-Benedictines of the Petit-Picpus, of whom we are speaking,
were a totally different order from the Ladies of the Holy Sacrament,
cloistered in the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève and at the Temple. There
were numerous differences in their rule; there were some in their
costume. The Bernardines-Benedictines of the Petit-Picpus wore the
black guimpe, and the Benedictines of the Holy Sacrament and of the Rue
Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève wore a white one, and had, besides, on their
breasts, a Holy Sacrament about three inches long, in silver gilt or
gilded copper. The nuns of the Petit-Picpus did not wear this Holy
Sacrament. The Perpetual Adoration, which was common to the house of
the Petit-Picpus and to the house of the Temple, leaves those two
orders perfectly distinct. Their only resemblance lies in this practice
of the Ladies of the Holy Sacrament and the Bernardines of Martin
Verga, just as there existed a similarity in the study and the
glorification of all the mysteries relating to the infancy, the life,
and death of Jesus Christ and the Virgin, between the two orders, which
were, nevertheless, widely separated, and on occasion even hostile. The
Oratory of Italy, established at Florence by Philip de Neri, and the
Oratory of France, established by Pierre de Bérulle. The Oratory of
France claimed the precedence, since Philip de Neri was only a saint,
while Bérulle was a cardinal.

Let us return to the harsh Spanish rule of Martin Verga.

The Bernardines-Benedictines of this obedience fast all the year round,
abstain from meat, fast in Lent and on many other days which are
peculiar to them, rise from their first sleep, from one to three
o’clock in the morning, to read their breviary and chant matins, sleep
in all seasons between serge sheets and on straw, make no use of the
bath, never light a fire, scourge themselves every Friday, observe the
rule of silence, speak to each other only during the recreation hours,
which are very brief, and wear drugget chemises for six months in the
year, from September 14th, which is the Exaltation of the Holy Cross,
until Easter. These six months are a modification: the rule says all
the year, but this drugget chemise, intolerable in the heat of summer,
produced fevers and nervous spasms. The use of it had to be restricted.
Even with this palliation, when the nuns put on this chemise on the
14th of September, they suffer from fever for three or four days.
Obedience, poverty, chastity, perseverance in their seclusion,—these
are their vows, which the rule greatly aggravates.

The prioress is elected for three years by the mothers, who are called
_mères vocales_ because they have a voice in the chapter. A prioress
can only be re-elected twice, which fixes the longest possible reign of
a prioress at nine years.

They never see the officiating priest, who is always hidden from them
by a serge curtain nine feet in height. During the sermon, when the
preacher is in the chapel, they drop their veils over their faces. They
must always speak low, walk with their eyes on the ground and their
heads bowed. One man only is allowed to enter the convent,—the
archbishop of the diocese.

There is really one other,—the gardener. But he is always an old man,
and, in order that he may always be alone in the garden, and that the
nuns may be warned to avoid him, a bell is attached to his knee.

Their submission to the prioress is absolute and passive. It is the
canonical subjection in the full force of its abnegation. As at the
voice of Christ, _ut voci Christi_, at a gesture, at the first sign,
_ad nutum, ad primum signum_, immediately, with cheerfulness, with
perseverance, with a certain blind obedience, _prompte, hilariter,
perseveranter et cæca quadam obedientia_, as the file in the hand of
the workman, _quasi limam in manibus fabri_, without power to read or
to write without express permission, _legere vel scribere non
addiscerit sine expressa superioris licentia_.

Each one of them in turn makes what they call _reparation_. The
reparation is the prayer for all the sins, for all the faults, for all
the dissensions, for all the violations, for all the iniquities, for
all the crimes committed on earth. For the space of twelve consecutive
hours, from four o’clock in the afternoon till four o’clock in the
morning, or from four o’clock in the morning until four o’clock in the
afternoon, the sister who is making _reparation_ remains on her knees
on the stone before the Holy Sacrament, with hands clasped, a rope
around her neck. When her fatigue becomes unendurable, she prostrates
herself flat on her face against the earth, with her arms outstretched
in the form of a cross; this is her only relief. In this attitude she
prays for all the guilty in the universe. This is great to sublimity.

As this act is performed in front of a post on which burns a candle, it
is called without distinction, _to make reparation_ or _to be at the
post_. The nuns even prefer, out of humility, this last expression,
which contains an idea of torture and abasement.

_To make reparation_ is a function in which the whole soul is absorbed.
The sister at the post would not turn round were a thunderbolt to fall
directly behind her.

Besides this, there is always a sister kneeling before the Holy
Sacrament. This station lasts an hour. They relieve each other like
soldiers on guard. This is the Perpetual Adoration.

The prioresses and the mothers almost always bear names stamped with
peculiar solemnity, recalling, not the saints and martyrs, but moments
in the life of Jesus Christ: as Mother Nativity, Mother Conception,
Mother Presentation, Mother Passion. But the names of saints are not
interdicted.

When one sees them, one never sees anything but their mouths.

All their teeth are yellow. No tooth-brush ever entered that convent.
Brushing one’s teeth is at the top of a ladder at whose bottom is the
loss of one’s soul.

They never say _my_. They possess nothing of their own, and they must
not attach themselves to anything. They call everything _our_; thus:
our veil, our chaplet; if they were speaking of their chemise, they
would say _our chemise_. Sometimes they grow attached to some petty
object,—to a book of hours, a relic, a medal that has been blessed. As
soon as they become aware that they are growing attached to this
object, they must give it up. They recall the words of Saint Thérèse,
to whom a great lady said, as she was on the point of entering her
order, “Permit me, mother, to send for a Bible to which I am greatly
attached.” “Ah, you are attached to something! In that case, do not
enter our order!”


Every person whatever is forbidden to shut herself up, to have _a place
of her own, a chamber_. They live with their cells open. When they
meet, one says, “Blessed and adored be the most Holy Sacrament of the
altar!” The other responds, “Forever.” The same ceremony when one taps
at the other’s door. Hardly has she touched the door when a soft voice
on the other side is heard to say hastily, “Forever!” Like all
practices, this becomes mechanical by force of habit; and one sometimes
says _forever_ before the other has had time to say the rather long
sentence, “Praised and adored be the most Holy Sacrament of the altar.”


Among the Visitandines the one who enters says: “Ave Maria,” and the
one whose cell is entered says, “Gratia plena.” It is their way of
saying good day, which is in fact full of grace.

At each hour of the day three supplementary strokes sound from the
church bell of the convent. At this signal prioress, vocal mothers,
professed nuns, lay-sisters, novices, postulants, interrupt what they
are saying, what they are doing, or what they are thinking, and all say
in unison if it is five o’clock, for instance, “At five o’clock and at
all hours praised and adored be the most Holy Sacrament of the altar!”
If it is eight o’clock, “At eight o’clock and at all hours!” and so on,
according to the hour.

This custom, the object of which is to break the thread of thought and
to lead it back constantly to God, exists in many communities; the
formula alone varies. Thus at The Infant Jesus they say, “At this hour
and at every hour may the love of Jesus kindle my heart!” The
Bernardines-Benedictines of Martin Verga, cloistered fifty years ago at
Petit-Picpus, chant the offices to a solemn psalmody, a pure Gregorian
chant, and always with full voice during the whole course of the
office. Everywhere in the missal where an asterisk occurs they pause,
and say in a low voice, “Jesus-Marie-Joseph.” For the office of the
dead they adopt a tone so low that the voices of women can hardly
descend to such a depth. The effect produced is striking and tragic.

The nuns of the Petit-Picpus had made a vault under their grand altar
for the burial of their community. _The Government_, as they say, does
not permit this vault to receive coffins so they leave the convent when
they die. This is an affliction to them, and causes them consternation
as an infraction of the rules.

They had obtained a mediocre consolation at best,—permission to be
interred at a special hour and in a special corner in the ancient
Vaugirard cemetery, which was made of land which had formerly belonged
to their community.

On Fridays the nuns hear high mass, vespers, and all the offices, as on
Sunday. They scrupulously observe in addition all the little festivals
unknown to people of the world, of which the Church of France was so
prodigal in the olden days, and of which it is still prodigal in Spain
and Italy. Their stations in the chapel are interminable. As for the
number and duration of their prayers we can convey no better idea of
them than by quoting the ingenuous remark of one of them: “The prayers
of the postulants are frightful, the prayers of the novices are still
worse, and the prayers of the professed nuns are still worse.”


Once a week the chapter assembles: the prioress presides; the vocal
mothers assist. Each sister kneels in turn on the stones, and confesses
aloud, in the presence of all, the faults and sins which she has
committed during the week. The vocal mothers consult after each
confession and inflict the penance aloud.

Besides this confession in a loud tone, for which all faults in the
least serious are reserved, they have for their venial offences what
they call the _coulpe. To make one’s coulpe_ means to prostrate one’s
self flat on one’s face during the office in front of the prioress
until the latter, who is never called anything but _our mother_,
notifies the culprit by a slight tap of her foot against the wood of
her stall that she can rise. The _coulpe_ or _peccavi_, is made for a
very small matter—a broken glass, a torn veil, an involuntary delay of
a few seconds at an office, a false note in church, etc.; this
suffices, and the _coulpe_ is made. The _coulpe_ is entirely
spontaneous; it is the culpable person herself (the word is
etymologically in its place here) who judges herself and inflicts it on
herself. On festival days and Sundays four mother precentors intone the
offices before a large reading-desk with four places. One day one of
the mother precentors intoned a psalm beginning with _Ecce_, and
instead of _Ecce_ she uttered aloud the three notes _do si sol_; for
this piece of absent-mindedness she underwent a _coulpe_ which lasted
during the whole service: what rendered the fault enormous was the fact
that the chapter had laughed.

When a nun is summoned to the parlor, even were it the prioress
herself, she drops her veil, as will be remembered, so that only her
mouth is visible.

The prioress alone can hold communication with strangers. The others
can see only their immediate family, and that very rarely. If, by
chance, an outsider presents herself to see a nun, or one whom she has
known and loved in the outer world, a regular series of negotiations is
required. If it is a woman, the authorization may sometimes be granted;
the nun comes, and they talk to her through the shutters, which are
opened only for a mother or sister. It is unnecessary to say that
permission is always refused to men.

Such is the rule of Saint-Benoît, aggravated by Martin Verga.

These nuns are not gay, rosy, and fresh, as the daughters of other
orders often are. They are pale and grave. Between 1825 and 1830 three
of them went mad.






One is a postulant for two years at least, often for four; a novice for
four. It is rare that the definitive vows can be pronounced earlier
than the age of twenty-three or twenty-four years. The
Bernardines-Benedictines of Martin Verga do not admit widows to their
order.

In their cells, they deliver themselves up to many unknown macerations,
of which they must never speak.

On the day when a novice makes her profession, she is dressed in her
handsomest attire, she is crowned with white roses, her hair is brushed
until it shines, and curled. Then she prostrates herself; a great black
veil is thrown over her, and the office for the dead is sung. Then the
nuns separate into two files; one file passes close to her, saying in
plaintive accents, “Our sister is dead”; and the other file responds in
a voice of ecstasy, “Our sister is alive in Jesus Christ!”


At the epoch when this story takes place, a boarding-school was
attached to the convent—a boarding-school for young girls of noble and
mostly wealthy families, among whom could be remarked Mademoiselle de
Saint-Aulaire and de Bélissen, and an English girl bearing the
illustrious Catholic name of Talbot. These young girls, reared by these
nuns between four walls, grew up with a horror of the world and of the
age. One of them said to us one day, “The sight of the street pavement
made me shudder from head to foot.” They were dressed in blue, with a
white cap and a Holy Spirit of silver gilt or of copper on their
breast. On certain grand festival days, particularly Saint Martha’s
day, they were permitted, as a high favor and a supreme happiness, to
dress themselves as nuns and to carry out the offices and practice of
Saint-Benoît for a whole day. In the early days the nuns were in the
habit of lending them their black garments. This seemed profane, and
the prioress forbade it. Only the novices were permitted to lend. It is
remarkable that these performances, tolerated and encouraged, no doubt,
in the convent out of a secret spirit of proselytism and in order to
give these children a foretaste of the holy habit, were a genuine
happiness and a real recreation for the scholars. They simply amused
themselves with it. _It was new; it gave them a change_. Candid reasons
of childhood, which do not, however, succeed in making us worldlings
comprehend the felicity of holding a holy water sprinkler in one’s hand
and standing for hours together singing hard enough for four in front
of a reading-desk.

The pupils conformed, with the exception of the austerities, to all the
practices of the convent. There was a certain young woman who entered
the world, and who after many years of married life had not succeeded
in breaking herself of the habit of saying in great haste whenever any
one knocked at her door, “forever!” Like the nuns, the pupils saw their
relatives only in the parlor. Their very mothers did not obtain
permission to embrace them. The following illustrates to what a degree
severity on that point was carried. One day a young girl received a
visit from her mother, who was accompanied by a little sister three
years of age. The young girl wept, for she wished greatly to embrace
her sister. Impossible. She begged that, at least, the child might be
permitted to pass her little hand through the bars so that she could
kiss it. This was almost indignantly refused.






Nonetheless, these young girls filled this grave house with charming
souvenirs.

At certain hours childhood sparkled in that cloister. The recreation
hour struck. A door swung on its hinges. The birds said, “Good; here
come the children!” An irruption of youth inundated that garden
intersected with a cross like a shroud. Radiant faces, white foreheads,
innocent eyes, full of merry light, all sorts of auroras, were
scattered about amid these shadows. After the psalmodies, the bells,
the peals, and knells and offices, the sound of these little girls
burst forth on a sudden more sweetly than the noise of bees. The hive
of joy was opened, and each one brought her honey. They played, they
called to each other, they formed into groups, they ran about; pretty
little white teeth chattered in the corners; the veils superintended
the laughs from a distance, shades kept watch of the sunbeams, but what
mattered it? Still they beamed and laughed. Those four lugubrious walls
had their moment of dazzling brilliancy. They looked on, vaguely
blanched with the reflection of so much joy at this sweet swarming of
the hives. It was like a shower of roses falling athwart this house of
mourning. The young girls frolicked beneath the eyes of the nuns; the
gaze of impeccability does not embarrass innocence. Thanks to these
children, there was, among so many austere hours, one hour of
ingenuousness. The little ones skipped about; the elder ones danced. In
this cloister play was mingled with heaven. Nothing is so delightful
and so august as all these fresh, expanding young souls. Homer would
have come thither to laugh with Perrault; and there was in that black
garden, youth, health, noise, cries, giddiness, pleasure, happiness
enough to smooth out the wrinkles of all their ancestresses, those of
the epic as well as those of the fairy-tale, those of the throne as
well as those of the thatched cottage from Hecuba to la Mère-Grand.

In that house more than anywhere else, perhaps, arise those children’s
sayings which are so graceful and which evoke a smile that is full of
thoughtfulness. It was between those four gloomy walls that a child of
five years exclaimed one day: “Mother! one of the big girls has just
told me that I have only nine years and ten months longer to remain
here. What happiness!”


It was here, too, that this memorable dialogue took place:—

_A Vocal Mother_. Why are you weeping, my child?

_The child_ (aged six). I told Alix that I knew my French history. She
says that I do not know it, but I do.

_Alix_, the big girl (aged nine). No; she does not know it.

_The Mother_. How is that, my child?

_Alix_. She told me to open the book at random and to ask her any
question in the book, and she would answer it.

“Well?”


“She did not answer it.”


“Let us see about it. What did you ask her?”


“I opened the book at random, as she proposed, and I put the first
question that I came across.”


“And what was the question?”


“It was, ‘What happened after that?’”


It was there that that profound remark was made anent a rather greedy
paroquet which belonged to a lady boarder:—

“How well bred! it eats the top of the slice of bread and butter just
like a person!”


It was on one of the flagstones of this cloister that there was once
picked up a confession which had been written out in advance, in order
that she might not forget it, by a sinner of seven years:—

“Father, I accuse myself of having been avaricious.

“Father, I accuse myself of having been an adulteress.

“Father, I accuse myself of having raised my eyes to the gentlemen.”


It was on one of the turf benches of this garden that a rosy mouth six
years of age improvised the following tale, which was listened to by
blue eyes aged four and five years:—

“There were three little cocks who owned a country where there were a
great many flowers. They plucked the flowers and put them in their
pockets. After that they plucked the leaves and put them in their
playthings. There was a wolf in that country; there was a great deal of
forest; and the wolf was in the forest; and he ate the little cocks.”


And this other poem:—

“There came a blow with a stick.

“It was Punchinello who bestowed it on the cat.

“It was not good for her; it hurt her.

“Then a lady put Punchinello in prison.”


It was there that a little abandoned child, a foundling whom the
convent was bringing up out of charity, uttered this sweet and
heart-breaking saying. She heard the others talking of their mothers,
and she murmured in her corner:—

“As for me, my mother was not there when I was born!”


There was a stout portress who could always be seen hurrying through
the corridors with her bunch of keys, and whose name was Sister Agatha.
The _big big girls_—those over ten years of age—called her
_Agathocles_.

The refectory, a large apartment of an oblong square form, which
received no light except through a vaulted cloister on a level with the
garden, was dark and damp, and, as the children say, full of beasts.
All the places round about furnished their contingent of insects.

Each of its four corners had received, in the language of the pupils, a
special and expressive name. There was Spider corner, Caterpillar
corner, Wood-louse corner, and Cricket corner.

Cricket corner was near the kitchen and was highly esteemed. It was not
so cold there as elsewhere. From the refectory the names had passed to
the boarding-school, and there served as in the old College Mazarin to
distinguish four nations. Every pupil belonged to one of these four
nations according to the corner of the refectory in which she sat at
meals. One day Monseigneur the Archbishop while making his pastoral
visit saw a pretty little rosy girl with beautiful golden hair enter
the class-room through which he was passing.

He inquired of another pupil, a charming brunette with rosy cheeks, who
stood near him:—

“Who is that?”


“She is a spider, Monseigneur.”


“Bah! And that one yonder?”


“She is a cricket.”


“And that one?”


“She is a caterpillar.”


“Really! and yourself?”


“I am a wood-louse, Monseigneur.”


Every house of this sort has its own peculiarities. At the beginning of
this century Écouen was one of those strict and graceful places where
young girls pass their childhood in a shadow that is almost august. At
Écouen, in order to take rank in the procession of the Holy Sacrament,
a distinction was made between virgins and florists. There were also
the “dais” and the “censors,”—the first who held the cords of the dais,
and the others who carried incense before the Holy Sacrament. The
flowers belonged by right to the florists. Four “virgins” walked in
advance. On the morning of that great day it was no rare thing to hear
the question put in the dormitory, “Who is a virgin?”


Madame Campan used to quote this saying of a “little one” of seven
years, to a “big girl” of sixteen, who took the head of the procession,
while she, the little one, remained at the rear, “You are a virgin, but
I am not.”







Above the door of the refectory this prayer, which was called the
_white Paternoster_, and which possessed the property of bearing people
straight to paradise, was inscribed in large black letters:—

“Little white Paternoster, which God made, which God said, which God
placed in paradise. In the evening, when I went to bed, I found three
angels sitting on my bed, one at the foot, two at the head, the good
Virgin Mary in the middle, who told me to lie down without hesitation.
The good God is my father, the good Virgin is my mother, the three
apostles are my brothers, the three virgins are my sisters. The shirt
in which God was born envelopes my body; Saint Margaret’s cross is
written on my breast. Madame the Virgin was walking through the
meadows, weeping for God, when she met M. Saint John. ‘Monsieur Saint
John, whence come you?’ ‘I come from _Ave Salus_.’ ‘You have not seen
the good God; where is he?’ ‘He is on the tree of the Cross, his feet
hanging, his hands nailed, a little cap of white thorns on his head.’
Whoever shall say this thrice at eventide, thrice in the morning, shall
win paradise at the last.”


In 1827 this characteristic orison had disappeared from the wall under
a triple coating of daubing paint. At the present time it is finally
disappearing from the memories of several who were young girls then,
and who are old women now.

A large crucifix fastened to the wall completed the decoration of this
refectory, whose only door, as we think we have mentioned, opened on
the garden. Two narrow tables, each flanked by two wooden benches,
formed two long parallel lines from one end to the other of the
refectory. The walls were white, the tables were black; these two
mourning colors constitute the only variety in convents. The meals were
plain, and the food of the children themselves severe. A single dish of
meat and vegetables combined, or salt fish—such was their luxury. This
meagre fare, which was reserved for the pupils alone, was,
nevertheless, an exception. The children ate in silence, under the eye
of the mother whose turn it was, who, if a fly took a notion to fly or
to hum against the rule, opened and shut a wooden book from time to
time. This silence was seasoned with the lives of the saints, read
aloud from a little pulpit with a desk, which was situated at the foot
of the crucifix. The reader was one of the big girls, in weekly turn.
At regular distances, on the bare tables, there were large, varnished
bowls in which the pupils washed their own silver cups and knives and
forks, and into which they sometimes threw some scrap of tough meat or
spoiled fish; this was punished. These bowls were called _ronds d’eau_.
The child who broke the silence “made a cross with her tongue.” Where?
On the ground. She licked the pavement. The dust, that end of all joys,
was charged with the chastisement of those poor little rose-leaves
which had been guilty of chirping.

There was in the convent a book which has never been printed except as
a _unique copy_, and which it is forbidden to read. It is the rule of
Saint-Benoît. An arcanum which no profane eye must penetrate. _Nemo
regulas, seu constitutiones nostras, externis communicabit_.

The pupils one day succeeded in getting possession of this book, and
set to reading it with avidity, a reading which was often interrupted
by the fear of being caught, which caused them to close the volume
precipitately.

From the great danger thus incurred they derived but a very moderate
amount of pleasure. The most “interesting thing” they found were some
unintelligible pages about the sins of young boys.

They played in an alley of the garden bordered with a few shabby
fruit-trees. In spite of the extreme surveillance and the severity of
the punishments administered, when the wind had shaken the trees, they
sometimes succeeded in picking up a green apple or a spoiled apricot or
an inhabited pear on the sly. I will now cede the privilege of speech
to a letter which lies before me, a letter written five and twenty
years ago by an old pupil, now Madame la Duchesse de ——, one of the
most elegant women in Paris. I quote literally: “One hides one’s pear
or one’s apple as best one may. When one goes upstairs to put the veil
on the bed before supper, one stuffs them under one’s pillow and at
night one eats them in bed, and when one cannot do that, one eats them
in the closet.” That was one of their greatest luxuries.

Once—it was at the epoch of the visit from the archbishop to the
convent—one of the young girls, Mademoiselle Bouchard, who was
connected with the Montmorency family, laid a wager that she would ask
for a day’s leave of absence—an enormity in so austere a community. The
wager was accepted, but not one of those who bet believed that she
would do it. When the moment came, as the archbishop was passing in
front of the pupils, Mademoiselle Bouchard, to the indescribable terror
of her companions, stepped out of the ranks, and said, “Monseigneur, a
day’s leave of absence.” Mademoiselle Bouchard was tall, blooming, with
the prettiest little rosy face in the world. M. de Quélen smiled and
said, “What, my dear child, a day’s leave of absence! Three days if you
like. I grant you three days.” The prioress could do nothing; the
archbishop had spoken. Horror of the convent, but joy of the pupil. The
effect may be imagined.

This stern cloister was not so well walled off, however, but that the
life of the passions of the outside world, drama, and even romance, did
not make their way in. To prove this, we will confine ourselves to
recording here and to briefly mentioning a real and incontestable fact,
which, however, bears no reference in itself to, and is not connected
by any thread whatever with the story which we are relating. We mention
the fact for the sake of completing the physiognomy of the convent in
the reader’s mind.

About this time there was in the convent a mysterious person who was
not a nun, who was treated with great respect, and who was addressed as
_Madame Albertine_. Nothing was known about her, save that she was mad,
and that in the world she passed for dead. Beneath this history it was
said there lay the arrangements of fortune necessary for a great
marriage.

This woman, hardly thirty years of age, of dark complexion and
tolerably pretty, had a vague look in her large black eyes. Could she
see? There was some doubt about this. She glided rather than walked,
she never spoke; it was not quite known whether she breathed. Her
nostrils were livid and pinched as after yielding up their last sigh.
To touch her hand was like touching snow. She possessed a strange
spectral grace. Wherever she entered, people felt cold. One day a
sister, on seeing her pass, said to another sister, “She passes for a
dead woman.” “Perhaps she is one,” replied the other.

A hundred tales were told of Madame Albertine. This arose from the
eternal curiosity of the pupils. In the chapel there was a gallery
called _L’Œil de Bœuf_. It was in this gallery, which had only a
circular bay, an _œil de bœuf_, that Madame Albertine listened to the
offices. She always occupied it alone because this gallery, being on
the level of the first story, the preacher or the officiating priest
could be seen, which was interdicted to the nuns. One day the pulpit
was occupied by a young priest of high rank, M. Le Duc de Rohan, peer
of France, officer of the Red Musketeers in 1815 when he was Prince de
Léon, and who died afterward, in 1830, as cardinal and Archbishop of
Besançon. It was the first time that M. de Rohan had preached at the
Petit-Picpus convent. Madame Albertine usually preserved perfect
calmness and complete immobility during the sermons and services. That
day, as soon as she caught sight of M. de Rohan, she half rose, and
said, in a loud voice, amid the silence of the chapel, “Ah! Auguste!”
The whole community turned their heads in amazement, the preacher
raised his eyes, but Madame Albertine had relapsed into her immobility.
A breath from the outer world, a flash of life, had passed for an
instant across that cold and lifeless face and had then vanished, and
the mad woman had become a corpse again.

Those two words, however, had set every one in the convent who had the
privilege of speech to chattering. How many things were contained in
that “Ah! Auguste!” what revelations! M. de Rohan’s name really was
Auguste. It was evident that Madame Albertine belonged to the very
highest society, since she knew M. de Rohan, and that her own rank
there was of the highest, since she spoke thus familiarly of so great a
lord, and that there existed between them some connection, of
relationship, perhaps, but a very close one in any case, since she knew
his “pet name.”


Two very severe duchesses, Mesdames de Choiseul and de Sérent, often
visited the community, whither they penetrated, no doubt, in virtue of
the privilege _Magnates mulieres_, and caused great consternation in
the boarding-school. When these two old ladies passed by, all the poor
young girls trembled and dropped their eyes.

Moreover, M. de Rohan, quite unknown to himself, was an object of
attention to the school-girls. At that epoch he had just been made,
while waiting for the episcopate, vicar-general of the Archbishop of
Paris. It was one of his habits to come tolerably often to celebrate
the offices in the chapel of the nuns of the Petit-Picpus. Not one of
the young recluses could see him, because of the serge curtain, but he
had a sweet and rather shrill voice, which they had come to know and to
distinguish. He had been a mousquetaire, and then, he was said to be
very coquettish, that his handsome brown hair was very well dressed in
a roll around his head, and that he had a broad girdle of magnificent
moire, and that his black cassock was of the most elegant cut in the
world. He held a great place in all these imaginations of sixteen
years.

Not a sound from without made its way into the convent. But there was
one year when the sound of a flute penetrated thither. This was an
event, and the girls who were at school there at the time still recall
it.

It was a flute which was played in the neighborhood. This flute always
played the same air, an air which is very far away nowadays,—“My
Zétulbé, come reign o’er my soul,”—and it was heard two or three times
a day. The young girls passed hours in listening to it, the vocal
mothers were upset by it, brains were busy, punishments descended in
showers. This lasted for several months. The girls were all more or
less in love with the unknown musician. Each one dreamed that she was
Zétulbé. The sound of the flute proceeded from the direction of the Rue
Droit-Mur; and they would have given anything, compromised everything,
attempted anything for the sake of seeing, of catching a glance, if
only for a second, of the “young man” who played that flute so
deliciously, and who, no doubt, played on all these souls at the same
time. There were some who made their escape by a back door, and
ascended to the third story on the Rue Droit-Mur side, in order to
attempt to catch a glimpse through the gaps. Impossible! One even went
so far as to thrust her arm through the grating, and to wave her white
handkerchief. Two were still bolder. They found means to climb on a
roof, and risked their lives there, and succeeded at last in seeing
“the young man.” He was an old _émigré_ gentleman, blind and penniless,
who was playing his flute in his attic, in order to pass the time.






In this enclosure of the Petit-Picpus there were three perfectly
distinct buildings,—the Great Convent, inhabited by the nuns, the
Boarding-school, where the scholars were lodged; and lastly, what was
called the Little Convent. It was a building with a garden, in which
lived all sorts of aged nuns of various orders, the relics of cloisters
destroyed in the Revolution; a reunion of all the black, gray, and
white medleys of all communities and all possible varieties; what might
be called, if such a coupling of words is permissible, a sort of
harlequin convent.

When the Empire was established, all these poor old dispersed and
exiled women had been accorded permission to come and take shelter
under the wings of the Bernardines-Benedictines. The government paid
them a small pension, the ladies of the Petit-Picpus received them
cordially. It was a singular pell-mell. Each followed her own rule.
Sometimes the pupils of the boarding-school were allowed, as a great
recreation, to pay them a visit; the result is, that all those young
memories have retained among other souvenirs that of Mother
Sainte-Bazile, Mother Sainte-Scolastique, and Mother Jacob.

One of these refugees found herself almost at home. She was a nun of
Sainte-Aure, the only one of her order who had survived. The ancient
convent of the ladies of Sainte-Aure occupied, at the beginning of the
eighteenth century, this very house of the Petit-Picpus, which belonged
later to the Benedictines of Martin Verga. This holy woman, too poor to
wear the magnificent habit of her order, which was a white robe with a
scarlet scapulary, had piously put it on a little manikin, which she
exhibited with complacency and which she bequeathed to the house at her
death. In 1824, only one nun of this order remained; to-day, there
remains only a doll.

In addition to these worthy mothers, some old society women had
obtained permission of the prioress, like Madame Albertine, to retire
into the Little Convent. Among the number were Madame Beaufort
d’Hautpoul and Marquise Dufresne. Another was never known in the
convent except by the formidable noise which she made when she blew her
nose. The pupils called her Madame Vacarmini (hubbub).

About 1820 or 1821, Madame de Genlis, who was at that time editing a
little periodical publication called _l’Intrépide_, asked to be allowed
to enter the convent of the Petit-Picpus as lady resident. The Duc
d’Orléans recommended her. Uproar in the hive; the vocal-mothers were
all in a flutter; Madame de Genlis had made romances. But she declared
that she was the first to detest them, and then, she had reached her
fierce stage of devotion. With the aid of God, and of the Prince, she
entered. She departed at the end of six or eight months, alleging as a
reason, that there was no shade in the garden. The nuns were delighted.
Although very old, she still played the harp, and did it very well.

When she went away she left her mark in her cell. Madame de Genlis was
superstitious and a Latinist. These two words furnish a tolerably good
profile of her. A few years ago, there were still to be seen, pasted in
the inside of a little cupboard in her cell in which she locked up her
silverware and her jewels, these five lines in Latin, written with her
own hand in red ink on yellow paper, and which, in her opinion,
possessed the property of frightening away robbers:—

Imparibus meritis pendent tria corpora ramis:
Dismas et Gesmas, media est divina potestas;
Alta petit Dismas, infelix, infima, Gesmas;
Nos et res nostras conservet summa potestas.
Hos versus dicas, ne tu furto tua perdas.15


These verses in sixth century Latin raise the question whether the two
thieves of Calvary were named, as is commonly believed, Dismas and
Gestas, or Dismas and Gesmas. This orthography might have confounded
the pretensions put forward in the last century by the Vicomte de
Gestas, of a descent from the wicked thief. However, the useful virtue
attached to these verses forms an article of faith in the order of the
Hospitallers.

The church of the house, constructed in such a manner as to separate
the Great Convent from the Boarding-school like a veritable
intrenchment, was, of course, common to the Boarding-school, the Great
Convent, and the Little Convent. The public was even admitted by a sort
of lazaretto entrance on the street. But all was so arranged, that none
of the inhabitants of the cloister could see a face from the outside
world. Suppose a church whose choir is grasped in a gigantic hand, and
folded in such a manner as to form, not, as in ordinary churches, a
prolongation behind the altar, but a sort of hall, or obscure cellar,
to the right of the officiating priest; suppose this hall to be shut
off by a curtain seven feet in height, of which we have already spoken;
in the shadow of that curtain, pile up on wooden stalls the nuns in the
choir on the left, the school-girls on the right, the lay-sisters and
the novices at the bottom, and you will have some idea of the nuns of
the Petit-Picpus assisting at divine service. That cavern, which was
called the choir, communicated with the cloister by a lobby. The church
was lighted from the garden. When the nuns were present at services
where their rule enjoined silence, the public was warned of their
presence only by the folding seats of the stalls noisily rising and
falling.






During the six years which separate 1819 from 1825, the prioress of the
Petit-Picpus was Mademoiselle de Blemeur, whose name, in religion, was
Mother Innocente. She came of the family of Marguerite de Blemeur,
author of _Lives of the Saints of the Order of Saint-Benoît_. She had
been re-elected. She was a woman about sixty years of age, short,
thick, “singing like a cracked pot,” says the letter which we have
already quoted; an excellent woman, moreover, and the only merry one in
the whole convent, and for that reason adored. She was learned,
erudite, wise, competent, curiously proficient in history, crammed with
Latin, stuffed with Greek, full of Hebrew, and more of a Benedictine
monk than a Benedictine nun.

The sub-prioress was an old Spanish nun, Mother Cineres, who was almost
blind.

The most esteemed among the vocal mothers were Mother Sainte-Honorine;
the treasurer, Mother Sainte-Gertrude, the chief mistress of the
novices; Mother-Saint-Ange, the assistant mistress; Mother
Annonciation, the sacristan; Mother Saint-Augustin, the nurse, the only
one in the convent who was malicious; then Mother Sainte-Mechtilde
(Mademoiselle Gauvain), very young and with a beautiful voice; Mother
des Anges (Mademoiselle Drouet), who had been in the convent of the
Filles-Dieu, and in the convent du Trésor, between Gisors and Magny;
Mother Saint-Joseph (Mademoiselle de Cogolludo), Mother Sainte-Adélaide
(Mademoiselle d’Auverney), Mother Miséricorde (Mademoiselle de
Cifuentes, who could not resist austerities), Mother Compassion
(Mademoiselle de la Miltière, received at the age of sixty in defiance
of the rule, and very wealthy); Mother Providence (Mademoiselle de
Laudinière), Mother Présentation (Mademoiselle de Siguenza), who was
prioress in 1847; and finally, Mother Sainte-Céligne (sister of the
sculptor Ceracchi), who went mad; Mother Sainte-Chantal (Mademoiselle
de Suzon), who went mad.

There was also, among the prettiest of them, a charming girl of three
and twenty, who was from the Isle de Bourbon, a descendant of the
Chevalier Roze, whose name had been Mademoiselle Roze, and who was
called Mother Assumption.

Mother Sainte-Mechtilde, intrusted with the singing and the choir, was
fond of making use of the pupils in this quarter. She usually took a
complete scale of them, that is to say, seven, from ten to sixteen
years of age, inclusive, of assorted voices and sizes, whom she made
sing standing, drawn up in a line, side by side, according to age, from
the smallest to the largest. This presented to the eye, something in
the nature of a reed-pipe of young girls, a sort of living Pan-pipe
made of angels.

Those of the lay-sisters whom the scholars loved most were Sister
Euphrasie, Sister Sainte-Marguérite, Sister Sainte-Marthe, who was in
her dotage, and Sister Sainte-Michel, whose long nose made them laugh.

All these women were gentle with the children. The nuns were severe
only towards themselves. No fire was lighted except in the school, and
the food was choice compared to that in the convent. Moreover, they
lavished a thousand cares on their scholars. Only, when a child passed
near a nun and addressed her, the nun never replied.

This rule of silence had had this effect, that throughout the whole
convent, speech had been withdrawn from human creatures, and bestowed
on inanimate objects. Now it was the church-bell which spoke, now it
was the gardener’s bell. A very sonorous bell, placed beside the
portress, and which was audible throughout the house, indicated by its
varied peals, which formed a sort of acoustic telegraph, all the
actions of material life which were to be performed, and summoned to
the parlor, in case of need, such or such an inhabitant of the house.
Each person and each thing had its own peal. The prioress had one and
one, the sub-prioress one and two. Six-five announced lessons, so that
the pupils never said “to go to lessons,” but “to go to six-five.”
Four-four was Madame de Genlis’s signal. It was very often heard.
“C’est le diable a quatre,”—it’s the very deuce—said the uncharitable.
Tennine strokes announced a great event. It was the opening of _the
door of seclusion_, a frightful sheet of iron bristling with bolts
which only turned on its hinges in the presence of the archbishop.

With the exception of the archbishop and the gardener, no man entered
the convent, as we have already said. The schoolgirls saw two others:
one, the chaplain, the Abbé Banés, old and ugly, whom they were
permitted to contemplate in the choir, through a grating; the other the
drawing-master, M. Ansiaux, whom the letter, of which we have perused a
few lines, calls _M. Anciot_, and describes as _a frightful old
hunchback_.

It will be seen that all these men were carefully chosen.

Such was this curious house.






After having sketched its moral face, it will not prove unprofitable to
point out, in a few words, its material configuration. The reader
already has some idea of it.

The convent of the Petit-Picpus-Sainte-Antoine filled almost the whole
of the vast trapezium which resulted from the intersection of the Rue
Polonceau, the Rue Droit-Mur, the Rue Petit-Picpus, and the unused
lane, called Rue Aumarais on old plans. These four streets surrounded
this trapezium like a moat. The convent was composed of several
buildings and a garden. The principal building, taken in its entirety,
was a juxtaposition of hybrid constructions which, viewed from a
bird’s-eye view, outlined, with considerable exactness, a gibbet laid
flat on the ground. The main arm of the gibbet occupied the whole of
the fragment of the Rue Droit-Mur comprised between the Rue
Petit-Picpus and the Rue Polonceau; the lesser arm was a lofty, gray,
severe grated façade which faced the Rue Petit-Picpus; the carriage
entrance No. 62 marked its extremity. Towards the centre of this façade
was a low, arched door, whitened with dust and ashes, where the spiders
wove their webs, and which was open only for an hour or two on Sundays,
and on rare occasions, when the coffin of a nun left the convent. This
was the public entrance of the church. The elbow of the gibbet was a
square hall which was used as the servants’ hall, and which the nuns
called _the buttery_. In the main arm were the cells of the mothers,
the sisters, and the novices. In the lesser arm lay the kitchens, the
refectory, backed up by the cloisters and the church. Between the door
No. 62 and the corner of the closed Aumarais Lane, was the school,
which was not visible from without. The remainder of the trapezium
formed the garden, which was much lower than the level of the Rue
Polonceau, which caused the walls to be very much higher on the inside
than on the outside. The garden, which was slightly arched, had in its
centre, on the summit of a hillock, a fine pointed and conical
fir-tree, whence ran, as from the peaked boss of a shield, four grand
alleys, and, ranged by twos in between the branchings of these, eight
small ones, so that, if the enclosure had been circular, the
geometrical plan of the alleys would have resembled a cross superposed
on a wheel. As the alleys all ended in the very irregular walls of the
garden, they were of unequal length. They were bordered with currant
bushes. At the bottom, an alley of tall poplars ran from the ruins of
the old convent, which was at the angle of the Rue Droit-Mur to the
house of the Little Convent, which was at the angle of the Aumarais
Lane. In front of the Little Convent was what was called the little
garden. To this whole, let the reader add a courtyard, all sorts of
varied angles formed by the interior buildings, prison walls, the long
black line of roofs which bordered the other side of the Rue Polonceau
for its sole perspective and neighborhood, and he will be able to form
for himself a complete image of what the house of the Bernardines of
the Petit-Picpus was forty years ago. This holy house had been built on
the precise site of a famous tennis-ground of the fourteenth to the
sixteenth century, which was called the “tennis-ground of the eleven
thousand devils.”


All these streets, moreover, were more ancient than Paris. These names,
Droit-Mur and Aumarais, are very ancient; the streets which bear them
are very much more ancient still. Aumarais Lane was called Maugout
Lane; the Rue Droit-Mur was called the Rue des Églantiers, for God
opened flowers before man cut stones.






Since we are engaged in giving details as to what the convent of the
Petit-Picpus was in former times, and since we have ventured to open a
window on that discreet retreat, the reader will permit us one other
little digression, utterly foreign to this book, but characteristic and
useful, since it shows that the cloister even has its original figures.

In the Little Convent there was a centenarian who came from the Abbey
of Fontevrault. She had even been in society before the Revolution. She
talked a great deal of M. de Miromesnil, Keeper of the Seals under
Louis XVI. and of a Presidentess Duplat, with whom she had been very
intimate. It was her pleasure and her vanity to drag in these names on
every pretext. She told wonders of the Abbey of Fontevrault,—that it
was like a city, and that there were streets in the monastery.

She talked with a Picard accent which amused the pupils. Every year,
she solemnly renewed her vows, and at the moment of taking the oath,
she said to the priest, “Monseigneur Saint-François gave it to
Monseigneur Saint-Julien, Monseigneur Saint-Julien gave it to
Monseigneur Saint-Eusebius, Monseigneur Saint-Eusebius gave it to
Monseigneur Saint-Procopius, etc., etc.; and thus I give it to you,
father.” And the school-girls would begin to laugh, not in their
sleeves, but under their veils; charming little stifled laughs which
made the vocal mothers frown.

On another occasion, the centenarian was telling stories. She said that
_in her youth the Bernardine monks were every whit as good as the
mousquetaires_. It was a century which spoke through her, but it was
the eighteenth century. She told about the custom of the four wines,
which existed before the Revolution in Champagne and Bourgogne. When a
great personage, a marshal of France, a prince, a duke, and a peer,
traversed a town in Burgundy or Champagne, the city fathers came out to
harangue him and presented him with four silver gondolas into which
they had poured four different sorts of wine. On the first goblet this
inscription could be read, _monkey wine_; on the second, _lion wine_;
on the third, _sheep wine_; on the fourth, _hog wine_. These four
legends express the four stages descended by the drunkard; the first,
intoxication, which enlivens; the second, that which irritates; the
third, that which dulls; and the fourth, that which brutalizes.

In a cupboard, under lock and key, she kept a mysterious object of
which she thought a great deal. The rule of Fontevrault did not forbid
this. She would not show this object to anyone. She shut herself up,
which her rule allowed her to do, and hid herself, every time that she
desired to contemplate it. If she heard a footstep in the corridor, she
closed the cupboard again as hastily as it was possible with her aged
hands. As soon as it was mentioned to her, she became silent, she who
was so fond of talking. The most curious were baffled by her silence
and the most tenacious by her obstinacy. Thus it furnished a subject of
comment for all those who were unoccupied or bored in the convent. What
could that treasure of the centenarian be, which was so precious and so
secret? Some holy book, no doubt? Some unique chaplet? Some authentic
relic? They lost themselves in conjectures. When the poor old woman
died, they rushed to her cupboard more hastily than was fitting,
perhaps, and opened it. They found the object beneath a triple linen
cloth, like some consecrated paten. It was a Faenza platter
representing little Loves flitting away pursued by apothecary lads
armed with enormous syringes. The chase abounds in grimaces and in
comical postures. One of the charming little Loves is already fairly
spitted. He is resisting, fluttering his tiny wings, and still making
an effort to fly, but the dancer is laughing with a satanical air.
Moral: Love conquered by the colic. This platter, which is very
curious, and which had, possibly, the honor of furnishing Molière with
an idea, was still in existence in September, 1845; it was for sale by
a bric-à-brac merchant in the Boulevard Beaumarchais.

This good old woman would not receive any visits from outside
_because_, said she, the _parlor is too gloomy_.






However, this almost sepulchral parlor, of which we have sought to
convey an idea, is a purely local trait which is not reproduced with
the same severity in other convents. At the convent of the Rue du
Temple, in particular, which belonged, in truth, to another order, the
black shutters were replaced by brown curtains, and the parlor itself
was a salon with a polished wood floor, whose windows were draped in
white muslin curtains and whose walls admitted all sorts of frames, a
portrait of a Benedictine nun with unveiled face, painted bouquets, and
even the head of a Turk.

It is in that garden of the Temple convent, that stood that famous
chestnut-tree which was renowned as the finest and the largest in
France, and which bore the reputation among the good people of the
eighteenth century of being _the father of all the chestnut trees of
the realm_.

As we have said, this convent of the Temple was occupied by
Benedictines of the Perpetual Adoration, Benedictines quite different
from those who depended on Cîteaux. This order of the Perpetual
Adoration is not very ancient and does not go back more than two
hundred years. In 1649 the holy sacrament was profaned on two occasions
a few days apart, in two churches in Paris, at Saint-Sulpice and at
Saint-Jean en Grève, a rare and frightful sacrilege which set the whole
town in an uproar. M. the Prior and Vicar-General of Saint-Germain des
Prés ordered a solemn procession of all his clergy, in which the Pope’s
Nuncio officiated. But this expiation did not satisfy two sainted
women, Madame Courtin, Marquise de Boucs, and the Comtesse de
Châteauvieux. This outrage committed on “the most holy sacrament of the
altar,” though but temporary, would not depart from these holy souls,
and it seemed to them that it could only be extenuated by a “Perpetual
Adoration” in some female monastery. Both of them, one in 1652, the
other in 1653, made donations of notable sums to Mother Catherine de
Bar, called of the Holy Sacrament, a Benedictine nun, for the purpose
of founding, to this pious end, a monastery of the order of
Saint-Benoît; the first permission for this foundation was given to
Mother Catherine de Bar by M. de Metz, Abbé of Saint-Germain, “on
condition that no woman could be received unless she contributed three
hundred livres income, which amounts to six thousand livres, to the
principal.” After the Abbé of Saint-Germain, the king accorded
letters-patent; and all the rest, abbatial charter, and royal letters,
was confirmed in 1654 by the Chamber of Accounts and the Parliament.

Such is the origin of the legal consecration of the establishment of
the Benedictines of the Perpetual Adoration of the Holy Sacrament at
Paris. Their first convent was “a new building” in the Rue Cassette,
out of the contributions of Mesdames de Boucs and de Châteauvieux.

This order, as it will be seen, was not to be confounded with the
Benedictine nuns of Cîteaux. It mounted back to the Abbé of
Saint-Germain des Prés, in the same manner that the ladies of the
Sacred Heart go back to the general of the Jesuits, and the sisters of
charity to the general of the Lazarists.

It was also totally different from the Bernardines of the Petit-Picpus,
whose interior we have just shown. In 1657, Pope Alexander VII. had
authorized, by a special brief, the Bernardines of the Rue
Petit-Picpus, to practise the Perpetual Adoration like the Benedictine
nuns of the Holy Sacrament. But the two orders remained distinct
nonetheless.






At the beginning of the Restoration, the convent of the Petit-Picpus
was in its decay; this forms a part of the general death of the order,
which, after the eighteenth century, has been disappearing like all the
religious orders. Contemplation is, like prayer, one of humanity’s
needs; but, like everything which the Revolution touched, it will be
transformed, and from being hostile to social progress, it will become
favorable to it.

The house of the Petit-Picpus was becoming rapidly depopulated. In
1840, the Little Convent had disappeared, the school had disappeared.
There were no longer any old women, nor young girls; the first were
dead, the latter had taken their departure. _Volaverunt_.

The rule of the Perpetual Adoration is so rigid in its nature that it
alarms, vocations recoil before it, the order receives no recruits. In
1845, it still obtained lay-sisters here and there. But of professed
nuns, none at all. Forty years ago, the nuns numbered nearly a hundred;
fifteen years ago there were not more than twenty-eight of them. How
many are there to-day? In 1847, the prioress was young, a sign that the
circle of choice was restricted. She was not forty years old. In
proportion as the number diminishes, the fatigue increases, the service
of each becomes more painful; the moment could then be seen drawing
near when there would be but a dozen bent and aching shoulders to bear
the heavy rule of Saint-Benoît. The burden is implacable, and remains
the same for the few as for the many. It weighs down, it crushes. Thus
they die. At the period when the author of this book still lived in
Paris, two died. One was twenty-five years old, the other twenty-three.
This latter can say, like Julia Alpinula: _“Hic jaceo. Vixi annos
viginti et tres.” _ It is in consequence of this decay that the convent
gave up the education of girls.

We have not felt able to pass before this extraordinary house without
entering it, and without introducing the minds which accompany us, and
which are listening to our tale, to the profit of some, perchance, of
the melancholy history of Jean Valjean. We have penetrated into this
community, full of those old practices which seem so novel to-day. It
is the closed garden, _hortus conclusus_. We have spoken of this
singular place in detail, but with respect, in so far, at least, as
detail and respect are compatible. We do not understand all, but we
insult nothing. We are equally far removed from the hosanna of Joseph
de Maistre, who wound up by anointing the executioner, and from the
sneer of Voltaire, who even goes so far as to ridicule the cross.

An illogical act on Voltaire’s part, we may remark, by the way; for
Voltaire would have defended Jesus as he defended Calas; and even for
those who deny superhuman incarnations, what does the crucifix
represent? The assassinated sage.

In this nineteenth century, the religious idea is undergoing a crisis.
People are unlearning certain things, and they do well, provided that,
while unlearning them they learn this: There is no vacuum in the human
heart. Certain demolitions take place, and it is well that they do, but
on condition that they are followed by reconstructions.

In the meantime, let us study things which are no more. It is necessary
to know them, if only for the purpose of avoiding them. The
counterfeits of the past assume false names, and gladly call themselves
the future. This spectre, this past, is given to falsifying its own
passport. Let us inform ourselves of the trap. Let us be on our guard.
The past has a visage, superstition, and a mask, hypocrisy. Let us
denounce the visage and let us tear off the mask.

As for convents, they present a complex problem,—a question of
civilization, which condemns them; a question of liberty, which
protects them.




