Les Misérables
“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.
CHAPTER VI—THE LITTLE CONVENT
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.
CHAPTER VII—SOME SILHOUETTES OF THIS DARKNESS
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.
CHAPTER VIII—POST CORDA LAPIDES
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