FOR A STILL HUNT A DUMB PACK.
[CHAPTER I.]
STRATEGIC ZIGZAGS.
An observation is necessary here about the present pages and others which will follow. It is now many years that the author of this work—forced, he regrets to say, to allude to himself—has been absent from Paris, and since he left that city it has been transformed, and a new city has sprung up, which is to some extent unknown to him. He need not say that he is fond of Paris, for it is his mental birth-place. Owing to demolitions and rebuilding, the Paris of his youth, the Paris which he religiously carried away in his memory, is at this hour a Paris of the past. Permit him, then, to speak of that Paris as if it still existed. It is possible that at the present day there is neither street nor house at the spot where the author purposes to lead the reader, saying, "In such a street there is such a house." If the readers like to take the trouble they can verify. As for him, he does not know new Paris, and writes with old Paris before his eyes in an illusion which is precious to him. It is sweet to him to fancy that something still remains of what he saw when he was in his own country, and that all has not faded away. So long as you move about in your native land you imagine that these streets are matters of indifference to you, that these roofs and doors are as nothing, that these walls are strange to you, that these trees are no better than the first tree you come across, that these houses which you do not enter are useless to you, and that the pavement on which you walk is made of stones and nothing more. At a later date, when you are no longer there, you perceive that these streets are dear to you, that you miss these roofs, windows, and doors, that the walls are necessary to you, that you love the trees, that these houses, which you did not enter, you entered daily, and that you have left some of your feelings, your blood, and your heart, on these paving-stones. All these spots which you no longer see, which perhaps you may never see again, and of which you have retained the image, assume a melancholy charm, return to you with the sadness of an apparition, make the sacred land visible to you, and are, so to speak, the very form of France: and you love and evoke them such as they are, such as they were, obstinately refusing to make any change in them; for you cling to the face of your country as to the countenance of your mother. Let us be permitted, then, to speak of the past at present: we will beg our readers to bear this in mind, and will continue our narrative.
Jean Valjean at once left the boulevard and entered the streets, making as many turnings as he could, and at times retracing his steps to make sure that he was not followed. This manœuvre is peculiar to the tracked deer, and on ground where traces are left it possesses the advantage of deceiving huntsmen and dogs; in venery it is called a "false reimbushment." The moon was at its full, and Jean Valjean was not sorry for it, for as the luminary was still close to the horizon it formed large patches of light and shade in the streets. Valjean was able to slip along the houses and walls on the dark side and watch the bright side; perhaps he did not reflect sufficiently that the dark side escaped his notice. Still, in all the deserted lanes which border the Rue de Poliveau he felt certain that no one was following him. Cosette walked on without asking questions; the sufferings of the first six years of her life had introduced something passive into her nature. Moreover—and this is a remark to which we shall have to revert more than once—she was accustomed to the singularities of her companion, and the strange mutations of fate. And then she felt in safety as she was with him. Jean Valjean did not know any more than Cosette whither he was going; he trusted to God, as she trusted to him. He fancied that he also held some one greater than himself by the hand, and felt an invisible being guiding him. However, he had no settled idea, plan, or scheme; he was not absolutely certain that it was Javert; and then again it might be Javert ignorant that he was Jean Valjean. Was he not disguised? Was he not supposed to be dead? Still, during the last few days several things had occurred which were becoming singular, and he wanted nothing more. He was resolved not to return to No. 50-52, and, like the animal driven from its lair, he sought a hole in which to hide himself until he could find a lodging. Jean Valjean described several labyrinths in the Quartier Mouffetard, which was as fast asleep as if it were still under mediæval discipline and the yoke of the Curfew, and combined several streets into a clever strategic system. There were lodging-houses where he now was, but he did not enter them, as he did not find anything to suit him, and he did not suppose for a moment that if persons were on his trail they had lost it again.
As the clock of St. Étienne du Mont struck eleven he passed the police office at No. 14, in the Rue de Pontoise. A few minutes after, the instinct to which we have referred made him look round, and he distinctly saw, by the office lamp which betrayed them, three men, who were following him rather closely, pass in turn under this lamp on the dark side of the street. One of these men turned into the office, and another, who was in front, appeared to him decidedly suspicious.
"Come, child," he said to Cosette; and he hastened out of the Rue de Pontoise. He made a circuit, skirted the Passage des Patriarches, which was closed at that hour, and eventually turned into the Rue des Postes. There is an open space here, where the Rollin College now stands, and into which the Rue Neuve St. Geneviève runs.
We need hardly say that the Rue Neuve St. Geneviève is an old street, and that a post-chaise does not pass along the Rue des Postes once in ten years. This street was inhabited by potters in the 13th century, and its real name is Rue des Pots.
The moon threw a bright light upon this open space, and Jean Valjean hid himself in a doorway, calculating that if the men were still following him he could not fail to have a good look at them as they crossed the open space. In fact, three minutes had not elapsed when the men appeared. There were now four of them, all tall, dressed in long brown coats and round hats, and holding large sticks in their hands. They were no less alarming through their stature and huge fists, than through their sinister movements in the darkness; they looked like four spectres disguised as citizens. They stopped in the centre of the square, and formed a group as if consulting, and apparently undecided. The leader turned and pointed with his right hand in the direction Jean Valjean had taken, while another seemed to be pointing with some degree of obstinacy in the opposite direction. At the moment when the first man turned the moon lit up his face brilliantly, and Jean Valjean recognized Javert perfectly.
[CHAPTER II.]
IT IS FORTUNATE THAT THE BRIDGE OF AUSTERLITZ WILL CARRY WAGONS.
Uncertainty ceased for Jean Valjean; but fortunately it still lasted with the men. He took advantage of their hesitation, for it was time lost by them and gained by him. He left the gateway in which he was concealed, and pushed on along the Rue des Postes toward the region of the Jardin des Plantes. As Cosette was beginning to feel tired, he took her in his arms and carried her. No one was passing, and the lamps had not been lit, on account of the moon. He doubled his pace, and in a few strides reached the Goblet pottery, on the front of which the moonshine made the old inscription distinctly visible:—
"Du Goblet fils c'est içi la fabrique:
Venez choisir des cruches et des brocs:
Des pots à fleurs, des tuyaux, de la brique,
À tout venant le Cœur vend des carreaux."
He left behind him the Rue de la Clef, skirted the Jardin des Plantes, and reached the quay. Here he turned; the quay was deserted, the streets were deserted. There was no one behind him, and he breathed again. He reached the Austerlitz bridge, where a toll still existed at the time, and he handed the tollman a sou.
"It is two sous," said the man; "you are carrying a child who can walk, so you must pay for two."
He paid, though greatly vexed that his passing had given rise to any remark. A heavy wain was passing the river at the same time as himself, and also proceeding to the right bank. This was useful for him, as he could cross the whole of the bridge in its shadow. On reaching the arches of the bridge, Cosette, whose feet were numbed, asked to be put down; he did so, and took her by the hand again. After crossing the bridge, he saw a little to his right building-yards, towards which he proceeded. In order to reach them he must cross an open brilliantly-lighted space; but he did not hesitate. His pursuers were evidently thrown out, and Jean Valjean believed himself out of danger; he might be looked for, but he was not followed. A little street, the Rue du Chemin Vert St. Antoine, ran between two timber-yards; it was narrow, dark, and seemed expressly made for him, but before entering it he looked back. From the spot where he was he could see the whole length of the bridge of Austerlitz; four shadows had just come upon it, and were walking towards the right bank. The four shadows were the four men.
Jean Valjean gave a start like a recaptured animal. One hope was left him,—it was that the four men had not been upon the bridge at the moment when he crossed the large illumined space with Cosette. In that case, by entering the little street before him, he might escape, if he could reach the timber-yards, kitchen-gardens, fields, and land not yet built on. He fancied that he could trust to this little silent street, and entered it.
[CHAPTER III.]
CONSULT THE PLAN OF PARIS IN 1727.
After going three hundred yards he came to a spot where the road formed two forks, and Jean Valjean had before him, as it were, the two branches of a Y. Which should he choose? He did not hesitate, but took the right one, because the other ran towards the faubourg, that is to say, inhabited parts, while the right branch went in the direction of the country, or deserted parts. Still they did not walk very rapidly, for Cosette checked Jean Valjean's pace, and hence he began carrying her again, and Cosette laid her head on his shoulder and did not say a word. At times he looked back, while careful to keep on the dark side of the street. The first twice or thrice that he turned he saw nothing, the silence was profound, and he continued his walk with a little more confidence. All at once, on turning suddenly, he fancied that he saw something moving on the dark part of the street which he had just passed. He rushed forward rather than walked, hoping to find some side lane by which he could escape, and once again break his trail. He reached a wall, which, however, did not render further progress impossible, for it was a wall skirting a cross-lane, into which the street Jean Valjean had entered ran. Here he must make his mind up again whether to turn to the right or left. He looked to the right; the lane ran for some distance between buildings, which were barns or sheds, and then stopped. The end of the blind alley, a high white wall, was distinctly visible. He looked to the left; on this side the lane was open, and at a distance of about two hundred yards fell into a street, of which it was an affluent. On that side safety lay. At the moment when Jean Valjean turned to his left in order to reach this street, he saw at the angle formed by the street and the lane a species of black and motionless statue; it was evidently a man posted there to prevent him from passing. Jean Valjean fell back.
The part of Paris where Jean Valjean now was, situated between the Faubourg St. Antoine and la Rapée, was one of those which have been utterly transformed by those recent works which some call disfigurements, others beautifying. The fields, the timber-yards, and old buildings have been removed, and there are now brand-new wide streets, arenas, circuses, hippodromes, railway stations, and a prison, Mazas,—progress as we see with its corrective. Half a century back, in that popular language all made up of traditions which insists on calling the Institute "les Quatre Nations," and the Opéra Comique "Feydeau," the precise spot where Jean Valjean now stood was called "le Petit Picpus." The Porte St. Jacques, the Porte Paris, the Barrière des Sergents, the Porcherons, the Galiote, the Celestins, the Capucins, the Mail, the Bourbe, the tree of Cracow, Little Poland, and Little Picpus, are names of old Paris swimming on the surface of the new. The memory of the people floats on the flotsam of the past. Little Picpus, which by the way scarce existed, and was never more than the outline of a quarter, had almost the monastic look of a Spanish town. The streets were scarce paved, and hardly any houses lined them; excepting two or three streets, to which we are about to refer, all was wall and solitude. There was not a shop or a vehicle, scarce a candle lighted in the windows, and every light was put out by ten o'clock. The quarter consisted of gardens, convents, timber-yards, and kitchen-grounds, and there were a few low houses with walls as lofty as themselves. Such was the quarter in the last century; the Revolution fiercely assailed it, and the Republican board of works demolished and made gaps in it: rubbish was allowed to be shot there. Thirty years ago this quarter was disappearing under the erasure of new buildings, and now it is entirely obliterated.
Little Picpus, of which no modern map retains a trace, is very clearly indicated in the plan of 1727, published at Paris by Denis Thierry, Rue St. Jacques, opposite the Rue du Plâtre; and at Lyons by Jean Girin, Rue Mercière. Little Picpus had what we have just called a Y of streets formed by the Rue du Chemin Vert St. Antoine dividing into two branches, the left-hand one taking the name of the Petite Rue Picpus, and the right-hand that of Rue Polonceau. The two branches of the Y were joined at their summit by a sort of cross-bar called Rue Droit-mur. Any one who, coming from the Seine, reached the end of Rue Polonceau, had on his left Rue Droit-mur, turning sharply at a right angle, in front of him the wall of that street, and on his right a truncated prolongation of the Rue Droit-mur called the Cul-de-sac Genrot.
It was here that Jean Valjean was; as we said, on perceiving the black shadow standing on watch at the corner of the Rue Droit-mur and the Petite Rue Picpus, he fell back, for this phantom was doubtless watching for him. What was to be done? He had no time to retrograde, for what he had seen moving in the shadow a few moments previously in his rear was of course Javert and his squad. Javert was probably already at the beginning of the street at the end of which Jean Valjean was. Javert, according to appearances, was acquainted with this labyrinth, and had taken his precautions by sending one of his men to guard the outlet. These conjectures, which so closely resembled certainty, whirled suddenly in Jean Valjean's troubled brain like a handful of dust raised by an unexpected puff of wind. He examined the blind alley; that was barred. He examined the Rue Picpus, a sentry was there, and he saw his black shadow distinctly thrown on the white moonlit pavement. To advance was falling into this man's clutches; to fall back was throwing himself into Javert's arms. Jean Valjean felt himself caught in a net which was being slowly hauled in, and looked up to Heaven in despair.
[CHAPTER IV.]
ATTEMPTS TO ESCAPE.
In order to understand the following, the reader must form an exact idea of the Droit-mur lane, and in particular of the angle which the visitor left on his left when he turned out of the Rue Polonceau into this lane. The lane was almost entirely bordered on the right by poor-looking houses, on the left by single slim-looking edifices, composed of several corps de logis, which gradually rose from one floor to two as they approached Little Rue Picpus so that this building, which was very lofty on that side, was very low on the side of Rue Polonceau, where, at the corner to which we have alluded, it sank so low as to be only a wall. This wall did not run parallel with the lane, but formed a very deep cant, concealed by its corners from any observers in Rue Polonceau and Rue Droit-mur. From this cant the wall extended along Rue Polonceau up to a house bearing the No. 49, and in Rue Droit-mur, where it was much shorter, up to the frowning building to which we have referred, whose gable it intersected, thus forming a new re-entering angle in the street. This gable had a gloomy appearance, for only one window was visible, or, to speak more correctly, two shutters covered with sheet zinc and always closed. The description of the locality which we are now giving is strictly correct, and will doubtless arouse a very precise souvenir in the mind of the old inhabitants of the quarter.
The cant in the wall was entirely occupied by a thing that resembled a colossal and wretched gateway; it was a vast collection of perpendicular planks, the top ones wider than those below, and fastened together by long cross-strips of iron. By the side of this gate was a porte-cochère of ordinary dimensions, which had apparently been made in the wall about fifty years previously. A linden-tree displayed its branches above the cant, and the wall was covered with ivy on the side of the Rue Polonceau.
In Jean Valjean's desperate situation this gloomy building had an uninhabited and solitary look about it which tempted him. He hurriedly examined it, and said to himself that if he could only enter it he might perhaps be saved. In the centre of the frontage of this building, turned to the Rue Droit-mur, there were old leaden drain-pipes at all the windows of the different floors. The various branches which led to a central pipe formed a species of tree on the façade; these ramifications with their hundred elbows imitated those old vine branches which cling to the front of old farm-houses. This singular espalier of lead and iron branches was the first thing that caught Jean Valjean's attention. He put Cosette down with her back against a post, bidding her be silent, and hurried to the spot where the main pipe reached the ground. Perhaps there might be a way to scale it and enter the house; but the pipe was worn out, and scarce held in its cramps. Besides, all the windows of this silent house were defended by thick iron bars, even the garrets. And then the moon shone full on this front, and the man watching at the end of the street would see Jean Valjean climb up; and then what was he to do with Cosette? How was he to hoist her up a three-storied house? He gave up all idea of climbing by the pipe, and crawled along the wall to re-enter Rue Polonceau. When he reached the cant where he had left Cosette he noticed that no one could see him there. As we stated, he was safe from all eyes, no matter on what side; moreover, he was in the shadow, and then, lastly, there were two gates, which might perhaps be forced. The wall over which he saw the linden-tree and the ivy evidently belonged to a garden in which he could at least conceal himself, though there was no foliage on the trees, and pass the rest of the night. Time was slipping away, and he must set to work at once. He felt the porte-cochère, and at once perceived that it was fastened up inside and out, and then went to the other great gate with more hope. It was frightfully decrepit, its very size rendered it less solid, the planks were rotten, and the iron bands, of which there were only three, were rusty. It seemed possible to break through this affair. On examining this gate, however, he saw that it was not a gate; it had no hinges, lock, or partition in the centre; the iron bands crossed it from side to side without any solution of continuity. Through the cracks of the planks he caught a glimpse of coarsely-mortared rag-stone, which passers-by might have seen ten years back. He was forced to confess to himself with consternation that this fancied gate was simply a make-believe; it was easy to pull down a plank, but he would find himself face to face with a wall.
[CHAPTER V.]
A THING IMPOSSIBLE IN GASLIGHT.
At this moment a hollow, cadenced sound began to grow audible a short distance off, and Jean Valjean ventured to take a peep round the corner of the street. Seven or eight soldiers were entering the street. He could see their bayonets gleaming, and they were coming toward him. These soldiers, at the head of whom he distinguished Javert's tall form, advanced slowly and cautiously, and frequently halted; it was plain that they were exploring all the corners and all the doors and lanes. It was—and here conjecture could not be wrong—some patrol which Javert had met and requested to assist him. Judging from the pace at which they marched, and the halts they made, they would require about a quarter of an hour to reach the spot where Jean Valjean was. It was a frightful thought; a few moments separated Jean Valjean from the awful precipice which yawned before him for the third time. And the galleys were now not merely the galleys, but Cosette lost forever; that is to say, a life resembling the interior of a tomb.
There was only one thing possible. Jean Valjean had one peculiarity, that he might be said to carry two wallets; in one he had the thoughts of a saint, in the other the formidable talents of a convict, and he felt in one or the other as opportunity offered. Among other resources, owing to his numerous escapes from the Toulon galleys, he had become a perfect master in the incredible art of raising himself without ladder or cramping irons, and by his mere muscular strength, and holding on by his shoulders and knees, in the right angle of a wall, to the sixth floor if necessary,—an art which rendered so terrible and so celebrated that corner of the yard in the Paris Conciergerie by which the condemned convict Battemolle escaped twenty years ago. Jean Valjean measured the height of the wall above which he saw the linden-tree, and found that it was about eighteen feet. The lower part of the angle which it made with the gable end of the large building was filled up with a triangular mass of masonry, very common in Parisian corners. This mass was about five feet high, and the space to be cleared from the top of it was not more than fourteen; but the difficulty was Cosette, for she could not climb a wall. Abandon her? Jean Valjean did not think of it, but carrying her was impossible; a man requires his whole strength to carry out such an ascent, and the slightest burden would displace his centre of gravity and hurl him down. He required a rope, but he had none. Where was he to find a rope at midnight in the Rue Polonceau? Assuredly at this moment if Jean Valjean had possessed a kingdom he would have given it for a rope. All extreme situations have their flashes, which at one moment blind, at another illumine us. Jean Valjean's desperate glance fell on the lamp-post in the blind alley. In those days there were no gaslights in the streets of Paris; at nightfall lamps were lit at regular distances, which were pulled up and down by a rope that crossed the street and fitted into a groove in a post. The end of the rope was kept in an iron box under the lantern, of which the lamp-lighter had the key, and the rope itself was protected by a metal case. Jean Valjean leaped across the street, burnt the lock of the box with the point of his knife, and a moment later was again by Cosette's side holding a rope. Such gloomy finders of expedients when struggling with fatality set rapidly to work. We have mentioned that the lamps were not lit on this night; the one in the blind alley therefore was naturally extinguished, and any one might have passed close without noticing that it was no longer in its place.
The hour, the place, the darkness, Jean Valjean's preoccupation, his singular gestures, his coming and going, were all beginning to alarm Cosette. Any other child would have begun crying kindly long before; but she confined herself to pulling the skirt of his coat. The noise of the approaching patrol constantly became more distinct.
"Father," she whispered, "I am frightened; who is coming?"
"Silence," the unhappy man replied; "it is Madame Thénardier."
The child trembled, and he added,—
"Do not say a word, but leave me to act: if you cry out or sob she will catch you and take you back again."
Then, without hurry, but without doing anything twice over, with a firm and sharp precision, which was the more remarkable at such a moment, when the patrol and Javert might be instantly expected, he undid his cravat, fastened it under Cosette's armpits, while careful not to hurt her, fastened the rope to the cravat, took the other end in his teeth, took off his shoes and stockings, which he threw over the wall, and began raising himself in the corner of the wall with as much certainty as if he had cramping irons under his heels and elbows. Half a minute had not elapsed ere he was astride the coping. Cosette looked at him in stupor, without saying a word; for Jean Valjean's mention of the landlady's name had frozen her. All at once she heard Jean Valjean say to her in a very low voice,—
"Lean against the wall."
She obeyed.
"You must not say a word, or feel frightened," he continued.
And she felt herself lifted from the ground, but before she had time to look round she found herself on the top of the wall. Jean Valjean placed her on his back, took her two little hands in his left hand, and crawled along the wall till he reached the cant. As he had suspected, there was a building here, whose roof began at the top of the bastard gate and descended in a gentle slope nearly to the ground, grazing the linden-tree. This was a fortunate circumstance, for the wall was much higher on this side than on that of the street, and Jean Valjean could scarce see the ground, so far was it beneath him. He had just reached the sloping roof, and had not yet loosed his hold of the coping, when a violent uproar announced the arrival of the patrol, and he heard Javert's thundering voice,—
"Search the blind alley; all the streets are guarded, and I will wager that he is in it."
The soldiers rushed forward into the alley Genrot. Jean Valjean slipped down the roof, still supporting Cosette, reached the linden-tree, and leaped on the ground. Either through terror or courage the child had not said a word; her hands were only slightly grazed.
[CHAPTER VI.]
THE BEGINNING OF AN ENIGMA.
Jean Valjean found himself in a large garden of most singular appearance, one of those gloomy gardens that appear made to be looked at in winter, and by night. This garden was of an oblong shape, with a walk of tall poplars at the end, tall shrubs in the corner, and an unshadowed space, in the centre of which an isolated tree could be distinguished. There were also a few stunted fruit-trees bristling like brambles, vegetable plots, a melon-bed, whose frames glistened in the moonlight, and an old well. Here and there were stone benches that seemed black with moss; the walks were bordered with small gloomy-looking and upright shrubs; grass covered one half of the walks, and a green mould the other half.
Jean Valjean had by his side the building by help of whose roof he had descended, a pile of fagots, and behind the latter, close to the wall, a stone statue whose mutilated face was merely a shapeless mask appearing indistinctly in the darkness. The building was a species of ruin, containing several dismantled rooms, of which one was apparently employed as a shed. The large edifice of the Rue Droit-mur had two façades looking into this garden at right angles, and these façades were even more melancholy than those outside. All the windows were barred, and not a single light could be seen, while at the upper window there were scuttles as in prisons. One of these frontages threw its shadow upon the other, which fell back on the garden like an immense black cloth. No other house could be noticed, and the end of the garden was lost in mist and night. Still, walls could be indistinctly noticed intersecting each other, as if there were other gardens beyond, and the low roofs in the Rue Polonceau. Nothing more stern and solitary than this garden could well be imagined; there was no one in it, as was natural at such an hour, but it did not look as if the spot were made for any one to walk in even in bright daylight.
Jean Valjean's first care was to put on his shoes and stockings again, and then enter the shed with Cosette. A man who is escaping never considers himself sufficiently concealed, and the child, who was still thinking of Madame Thénardier, shared his instinct for concealment. Cosette trembled and clung close to him: for she could hear the tumultuous noise of the patrol searching the street and lane, the blows of musket-butts against the stones, Javert's appeals to the men whom he had posted, and his oaths, mingled with words which could not be distinguished. At the expiration of a quarter of an hour this species of stormy grumbling appeared to be retiring, and Jean Valjean could scarce breathe. He had gently laid his hand on Cosette's mouth. The solitude in which he found himself was so strangely calm, however, that the furious uproar so close at hand did not even cast the shadow of a trouble over it. All at once in the midst of this profound calm a new sound burst forth,—a heavenly, divine, ineffable sound, as ravishing as the other had been horrible. It was a hymn, that issued from the darkness, a dazzling blending of prayer and harmony in the dark and fearful silence of the night: female voices, but composed at once of the pure accent of virgins and the simple voices of children,—such voices as do not belong to earth, and resemble those which the new-born still hear, and the dying begin to hear. This chant came from the gloomy building that commanded the garden, and at the moment when the noise of the demons was retiring it seemed like a choir of angels approaching in the dark. Cosette and Jean Valjean fell on their knees. They knew not what it was, they knew not where they were; but both man and child, the penitent and the innocent, felt that they must fall on their knees. The voices had this strangeness about them, that they did not prevent the edifice from appearing deserted; it seemed like a supernatural chant in an uninhabited house. While the voices sang, Jean Valjean thought of nothing else; he no longer saw the night, but an azure sky. He fancied that the wings which we all of us have within us were expanding in him. The singing ceased; it had probably lasted some time, but Jean Valjean could not have said how long, for hours of ecstasy never occupy more than a minute. All had become silent again: there was no sound in the garden, no sound in the street; that which threatened, that which reassured, all had vanished. The wind shook on the coping of the wall some dry grass, which produced a soft and melancholy sound.
[CHAPTER VII.]
CONTINUATION OF THE ENIGMA.
The night breeze had risen, which proved that it must be between one and two in the morning. Cosette said nothing, and as she was leaning her head against him, Jean Valjean fancied that she was asleep. He bent down and looked at her: her eyes were wide open, and she had a pensive look which hurt Jean Valjean. She was still trembling.
"Do you feel inclined to sleep?" he asked her.
"I am very cold," she answered; a moment after she continued,—
"Is she still there?"
"Who?" Jean Valjean asked.
"Madame Thénardier."
Jean had forgotten the way he had employed to keep Cosette silent.
"Ah," he said, "she is gone, and you have nothing to fear."
The child sighed, as if a weight had been taken off her chest.
The ground was damp, the shed open on all sides, and the wind grew more cutting every moment. He took off his coat and wrapped Cosette up in it.
"Are you less cold now?" he said.
"Oh yes, father."
"Well, wait for me a minute."
He left the ruin and began walking along the large building in search of some better shelter. He came to doors, but they were closed, and there were bars on all the ground-floor windows. After passing the inner angle of the edifice he noticed that he had come to some arched windows, and perceived a faint light. He raised himself on tip-toe and looked through one of the windows; they all belonged to a large hall paved with stones, in which nothing could be distinguished but a little light and great shadows. The light came from a night-lamp burning in the corner. This hall was deserted and nothing was stirring in it; and yet, after a long look, he fancied that he could see on the ground something that seemed to be covered with a pall and resembled a human form. It was stretched out flat, with its face against the stones, its arms forming a cross, and motionless as death. From a species of snake which dragged along the pavement, it looked as if this sinister form had the rope round its neck. The whole hall was bathed in that mist of badly-lighted places which intensifies the horror.
Jean Valjean often said afterwards that, although he had witnessed many mournful sights in his life, he had never seen one more chilling or terrifying than this enigmatical figure performing some strange mystery at this gloomy spot, and thus caught sight of through the darkness. It was frightful to suppose that it might be dead, and more frightful still to think that it might possibly be still alive. He had the courage to place his face to the pane, and watch whether the figure would stir; but though he remained for a time which appeared to him very long, the outstretched form made no movement. All at once he felt himself assailed by an indescribable horror, and he ran off toward the shed without daring to look back; he fancied that if he turned his head he should see the figure walking after him and waving its arms. When he reached the ruin he was panting, his knees gave way, and the perspiration was running down his back. Where was he? Who could have imagined anything like this species of sepulchre in the heart of Paris? What was the strange house? An edifice full of nocturnal mystery, calling souls in the darkness, the voice of angels, and when they arrive, suddenly offering them this frightful vision; promising to open the bright gate of heaven, and, instead, opening the horrible gate of the tomb! And it was really a mansion, a house which had its number in a street. It was not a dream; but he was obliged to touch the stones in order to believe it. Cold, anxiety, apprehension, and the emotion of the night brought on him a real fever, and all his ideas were confused in his brain. He approached Cosette. She slept.
[CHAPTER VIII.]
THE ENIGMA INCREASES.
The child had rested her head on a stone and fallen asleep. Jean Valjean sat down by her side and began gazing at her; gradually, as he looked, he grew calm and regained possession of his freedom of mind.
He clearly perceived this truth, the basis of his future life, that, so long as she was there, so long as he had her by his side, he would require nothing except for her, nor fear anything save on her account. He did not even feel the cold particularly; for, though he had taken off his coat, it was to cover her. Still, through the reverie into which he had fallen he had heard for some time past a singular noise, like a bell being rung, and it was in the garden. It could be heard distinctly, though faintly, and resembled those cattle-bells which produce a gentle melody at night in the grazing fields. This noise made Jean Valjean turn, and he saw that there was some one in the garden. A being looking like a man was walking among the melon-frames, rising, stooping, and stopping with regular movements, as if he was dragging or stretching out something on the ground. This man was apparently lame. Jean Valjean gave the continual, trembling start of the unhappy; everything is hostile and suspicious to them; they distrust the day because it allows them to be seen, and night because it helps in surprising them. Just now he shuddered because the garden was deserted, and now he shuddered because there was some one in it. He fell back from chimerical into real terror; he said to himself that Javert and the police had probably not gone away, that they had, in any case, left watchmen in the street; and that if this man discovered him he would give an alarm and hand him over to the police. He gently raised the still sleeping Cosette in his arms, and carried her behind a mass of old furniture in the most remote part of the shed; Cosette did not stir. From this spot he observed the movements of the being in the melon-ground; the strange thing was that the noise of the bell followed this man's every movement. When he approached the sound approached; when he went away the sound went away. If he made a sudden movement a little peal followed the movement, and when he stopped the noise ceased. It appeared evident that the bell was fastened to this man; but in that case what could be the meaning of it? Who was the man to whom a bell was fastened as if he were a ram or an ox? While asking himself these questions he touched Cosette's hands; they were chilled.
"Oh, Heaven!" he said.
And he asked in a whisper,—"Cosette!"
She did not open her eyes. He shook her sharply, but she did not awake.
"Can she be dead?" he said to himself; and he rose shivering from head to foot.
The most frightful thoughts crossed his mind pell-mell. There are moments when hideous suppositions assail us like a band of furies and violently force the bolts of our brain. When it is a question about people whom we love, our prudence invents all sorts of follies. He remembered that sleep in the open air on a cold night might be mortal. Cosette was lying stretched out motionless at his feet. He listened for her breath; she was breathing, but so faintly that it seemed as if the respiration would cease at any moment. How was he to warm her? How was he to wake her? All that did not refer to this slipped from his mind, and he rushed wildly from the shed. It was absolutely necessary that Cosette should be in bed before a fire within a quarter of an hour.
[CHAPTER IX.]
THE MAN WITH THE BELL.
Jean Valjean walked straight up to the man whom he saw in the garden, and while doing so took from his pocket the rouleau of silver. This man was looking down, and did not see him coming, and in a few strides Jean Valjean was by his side, and addressed him with the cry, "One hundred francs."
The man started and raised his eyes.
"One hundred francs to be gained," Jean Valjean continued, "if you will find me a shelter for this night."
The moon fully lit up Jean Valjean's alarmed face.
"Why, it is you, Father Madeleine!" the man said.
The name uttered thus in the darkness at this strange spot, by this strange man, made Jean Valjean recoil, for he expected everything save that. The man who addressed him was a stooping, lame old man, dressed nearly like a peasant, and wearing on his left leg a leathern knee-cap, from which hung a rather large bell. It was impossible to distinguish his face, which was in the shadow; still the man had doffed his bonnet, and said all in a tremor,—
"Oh, Lord, how did you get here, Father Madeleine? Which way did you come in? Why, you must have fallen from heaven. Well, if ever you do fall, it will be from there. And then, what a state you are in! You have no cravat, no hat, and no coat! Do you know that you would have frightened anybody who did not know you? No coat! Oh, my goodness, are the saints going mad at present? But how did you get in here?"
One word did not wait for the next, the old man spoke with a rustic volubility in which there was nothing alarming; and it was all said with a mixture of stupefaction and simple kindness.
"Who are you, and what is this house?" Jean Valjean asked.
"Oh, Lord, that is too strong!" the old man exclaimed. "Why, did you not get me the situation, and in this house too? What, don't you recognize me?"
"No," said Jean Valjean; "and how is it that you know me?"
"You saved my life," the man said.
He turned; a moonbeam played on his face, and Jean Valjean recognized old Fauchelevent.
"Ah!" he said, "it is you? Oh, now I recognize you."
"That is lucky," the old man said reproachfully.
"And what are you doing here?" Jean Valjean asked.
"Why, I am covering my melons!"
Old Fauchelevent really held in his hand at the moment when Jean Valjean accosted him a piece of matting, which he was engaged in spreading over the melon-frame. He had laid a good many pieces during the hour he had been in the garden, and it was this operation that produced the peculiar movements which Jean Valjean had noticed from the shed. He continued,—
"I said to myself, there is a bright moon and it is going to freeze, so I had better put these great-coats on my melons." And he added, as he looked at Jean Valjean with a grin, "You should have done the same. But how have you got here?"
Jean Valjean, feeling himself known by this man, at least under the name of Madeleine, only advanced cautiously. He multiplied his questions, and curiously enough they changed parts,—he, the intruder, became the questioner.
"And what is that bell you have on your knee?"
"That?" Fauchelevent said; "it is that they may avoid me."
"What on earth do you mean?"
Old Fauchelevent gave an inimitable wink.
"Oh, Lord, they are only women in this house, and lots of girls. It seems that I should be dangerous to meet, and so the bell warns them; when I come they go."
"What is this house?"
"Oh, nonsense, you know."
"Indeed I do not."
"Why, you got me the gardener's place here."
"Answer me as if I knew nothing."
"Well, it is the Convent of the Little Picpus, then."
Jean Valjean's recollections returned to him. Chance, that is to say, Providence, had brought him to the very convent in the Quartier St. Antoine where Fauchelevent after his accident had been engaged on his recommendation two years back. He repeated, as if speaking to himself,—
"'Little Picpus'!"
"But come, tell me," Fauchelevent continued, "how the deuce did you get in here, Father Madeleine? For though you are a saint, you are a man, and no men are admitted here."
"Why, you are!"
"Well, only I."
"And yet," Jean Valjean continued, "I must remain."
"Oh, Lord!" Fauchelevent exclaimed.
Jean Valjean walked up to the gardener and said in a grave voice,—
"Fauchelevent, I saved your life."
"I was the first to remember it," Fauchelevent answered.
"Well, you can do for me to-day what I did for you formerly."
Fauchelevent took Jean Valjean's muscular hands in his old wrinkled and trembling hands, and for some seconds seemed as if unable to speak; at length he exclaimed,—
"Oh, it would be a blessing from Heaven if I could repay you a slight portion! Save your life! M. Madeleine, you can dispose of an old man as you please."
An admirable joy had transfigured the aged gardener, and his face seemed radiant.
"What do you wish me to do?" he continued.
"I will explain. Have you a room?"
"I have a cottage behind the ruins of the old convent, in a corner which no one visits, with three rooms."
"Good," said Jean Valjean; "now I will ask two things of you."
"What are they, M. le Maire?"
"First, that you will tell nobody what you know about me; and secondly, that you will not try to learn anything further."
"As you please. I know that you can do nothing but what is honest, and that you have ever been a man after God's heart. And then, again, it was you who got me this situation, and I am at your service."
"Enough; now come with me, and we will go and fetch the child."
"Ah," said Fauchelevent,"there is a child!"
He did not add a word, but followed Jean Valjean as a dog follows its master. In less than half an hour, Cosette, who had become rosy again by the heat of a good fire, was asleep in the old gardener's bed. Jean Valjean had put on his cravat and coat again; the hat thrown over the wall had been found and picked up, and Fauchelevent took off his knee-cap and bell, which now adorned the wall by the side of a door. The two men were seated near the fire at a table on which Fauchelevent had placed a lump of cheese, biscuits, a bottle of wine, and two glasses, and the old man said to Jean Valjean as he laid his hand on his knee,—
"Ah, Father Madeleine! you did not recognize me at once; you save people's lives and forget them afterwards! Oh, that is wrong, for they remember you; you are an ungrateful man."
[CHAPTER X.]
HOW JAVERT ONLY FOUND THE NEST.
The events of which we have just seen the back, so to speak, had occurred under the simplest conditions. When Jean Valjean, on the night of the day on which Javert arrested him by Fantine's death-bed, broke out of M—— jail, the police supposed that the escaped convict would proceed to Paris. Paris is a maelstrom in which everything is lost and disappears in the whirlpool of the streets: no forest can conceal a man so well as that crowd, and fugitives of every description are aware of the fact. They go to Paris to be swallowed up, for that is at times a mode of safety. The police are aware of this too, and it is at Paris they seek what they have lost elsewhere. They sought there the ex-mayor of M——, and Javert was summoned to assist in the search, and in truth powerfully assisted in recapturing Jean Valjean. The zeal and intelligence he displayed in this office were noticed by M. Chabouillet, Secretary to the Prefecture under Count Anglès, and this gentleman, who had before been a friend to Javert, had the police-inspector of M—— appointed to the Paris district. Here Javert proved himself variously and—let us say it, though the word seems inappropriate when applied to such services—honorably useful.
He thought no more of Jean Valjean—with these dogs ever on the hunt the wolf of to-day causes the wolf of yesterday to be forgotten—until in December, 1823, he, who never read newspapers, read one. But Javert, who was a legitimist, was anxious to learn the details of the triumphal entry of the "Prince Generalissimo" into Bayonne. When he had finished the article that interested him a name—the name of Jean Valjean at the foot of a column—attracted him. The newspaper announced that the convict Jean Valjean was dead, and published the fact in such formal terms that Javert did not doubt it. He musing said, "That is the best bolt;" then threw away the paper, and thought no more of the subject. Some time after, it happened that a report was sent by the Prefecture of the Seine et Oise to that of Paris about the abduction of a child, which took place, it was said, under peculiar circumstances, in the parish of Montfermeil. A little girl of seven or eight years of age, who had been intrusted by her mother to a publican in the town, had been stolen by a stranger. The child answered to the name of Cosette, and her mother was a certain Fantine, who had died in an hospital, it was not known when or where. This report passed under Javert's eyes, and rendered him thoughtful. The name of Fantine was familiar to him; he remembered that Jean Valjean had made him laugh by asking him for a respite of three days to go and fetch this creature's child. He remembered that Jean Valjean was arrested at Paris at the very moment when he was getting into the Montfermeil coach, and some facts had led to the supposition at the time that he had taken a trip to the vicinity of the village on the previous day, for he had not been seen in the village itself. What was his business at Montfermeil? No one was able to guess; but Javert now understood it. Fantine's daughter was there, and Jean Valjean had gone to fetch her. Now this child had just been stolen by a stranger. Who could the stranger be? Could it be Jean Valjean? But he was dead. Javert, without saying a word to anybody, took the coach at the "Pewter Platter," and went off to Montfermeil.
He expected to find here a great clearing up, but only found a great obscurity. At the beginning, the Thénardier, in their vexation, had chattered, and the disappearance of the Lark produced a sensation in the village. There were at once several versions of the story, which finally settled down into an abduction, and hence the police report. Still, after he had got over his first outburst of temper, Thénardier, with his admirable instinct, very speedily comprehended that it is never useful to set the authorities at work, and that his complaint about the abduction of Cosette would have the primary result of fixing the flashing gaze of justice upon himself, and many dark matters he was mixed up in. The thing that owls least like is to have a candle brought to them. And then, again, how would he get out of the fifteen hundred francs which he had received? He stopped short, put a gag in his wife's mouth, and affected amazement when people spoke about "the stolen child." He did not at all understand; he had certainly complained at the first moment about his little darling being taken from him so suddenly; he should have liked to keep her for two or three days longer through affection; but it was her grandfather who had come to fetch her in the most natural way in the world. He added the "grandfather," which produced a good effect, and it was on this story that Javert fell upon reaching Montfermeil: the grandfather caused Jean Valjean to fade out of memory. Javert, however, drove a few questions like probes into Thénardier's story: "Who was this grandfather, and what was his name?" Thénardier answered simply, "He is a rich farmer; I saw his passport, and I fancy his name was M. Guillaume Lambert." Lambert is a respectable and most reassuring name, and so Javert returned to Paris. "Jean Valjean is really dead," he said to himself, "and I am an ass."
He was beginning to forget the whole affair again, when in the course of March, 1824, he heard talk of a peculiar character who lived in the parish of St. Médard, and was surnamed the "beggar who gives alms." This man was said to be an annuitant, whose name no one exactly knew, and who lived alone with a little girl of eight years of age, who knew nothing about herself except that she came from Montfermeil. Montfermeil! that name constantly returned, and made Javert prick up his ears. An old begging spy, an ex-beadle, to whom this person was very charitable, added a few more details. "He was a very stern person; he never went out till night; he spoke to nobody, except to the poor now and then, and let no one approach him. He wore a horrible old yellow coat, which was worth several millions, as it was lined all through with bank-notes." This decidedly piqued Javert's curiosity. In order to see this annuitant closer without startling him, he one day borrowed the beadle's rags and the place where the old spy crouched every evening, snuffling his orisons through his nose, and spying between his prayers. "The suspicious individual" really came up to Javert, thus travestied, and gave him alms. At this moment Javert raised his head, and the shock which Jean Valjean received on fancying that he recognized Javert, Javert received on fancying that he recognized Jean Valjean. Still, the darkness might have deceived him; and Jean Valjean's death was official. Javert felt serious doubts; and when in doubt, Javert, a scrupulous man, never put his hand on the person's collar. He followed his man to No. 50-52, and made the old woman talk, which was no difficult task. She confirmed the fact of the great-coat lined with millions, and told the story about the thousand-franc note; she had seen it; she had felt it! Javert hired a room, and took possession of it that same night. He listened at the door of the mysterious lodger, in the hope of hearing his voice; but Jean Valjean saw his candle through the key-hole, and foiled the spy by holding his tongue.
On the next day Jean Valjean decamped; but the noise of the five-franc piece which he let drop was noticed by the old woman, who supposed that he was about to leave, and hastened to warn Javert. Hence, when Jean Valjean left the house at night, Javert was waiting for him behind the trees with two men. Javert had requested assistance at the Prefecture, but had not mentioned the name of the individual whom he hoped to seize. That was his secret, and he kept it for three reasons: first, because the slightest indiscretion might give Jean Valjean the alarm; secondly, because laying hands on an old escaped convict supposed to be dead, on a condemned man whom justice had already classified forever among "the malefactors of the most dangerous class," was a magnificent success, which the older policemen of Paris would certainly not leave to a new-comer like Javert,—and he was afraid lest he might be robbed of his galley-slave; lastly, because Javert, having artistic tastes, was fond of anything unexpected. He hated those successes which are deflowered by being talked of a long time beforehand, and he liked to elaborate his masterpieces in the darkness and suddenly unveil them. Javert followed Jean Valjean from tree to tree, and then from street corner to street corner, and had not once taken his eye off him; even at the moment when Jean Valjean fancied himself the safest, Javert's eye was upon him. Why did Javert not arrest him, though? Because he was still in doubt. It must be borne in mind that at this period the police were not exactly at their ease, and the free press annoyed them. A few arbitrary arrests, denounced by the newspapers, had found an echo in the Chambers, and rendered the Prefecture timid. Attacking individual liberty was a serious matter; the agents were afraid of being deceived, for the Prefect made them answerable, and a mistake was dismissal. Just imagine the effect which would have been produced in Paris by the following short paragraph reproduced by twenty papers,—"Yesterday an old white-haired grandfather, a respectable fund-holder, who was taking a walk with his granddaughter, eight years of age, was arrested and taken to the House of Detention as an escaped convict." Let us repeat also that Javert had scruples of his own; the warnings of his conscience were added to those of the Prefect, and he really doubted. Jean Valjean had his back turned to him, and was walking in the dark; sorrow, anxiety, despondency, the fresh misfortune of being compelled to fly by night and seek a chance refuge for Cosette and himself in Paris, the necessity of regulating his pace by that of a child,—all this had unconsciously changed Jean Valjean's demeanor, and imparted to him such a senility, that the very police, incarnated in Javert, might be deceived and were deceived. The impossibility of approaching close, his attire as an old émigré tutor, Thénardier's statement which made him out a grandpapa, and lastly, the belief in his death at the galleys, added to the uncertainty that clouded Javert's mind. For a moment he had the idea of suddenly asking for his papers; but if the man was not Jean Valjean, and if he were not a respectable fund-holder, he was in all probability some fellow deeply entangled in the meshes of Parisian crime; some leader of a band who gave alms to hide his other talents, and who had his "pals," his accomplices, and his lurking-places, where he could conceal himself. All the turnings this man made in the streets seemed to indicate that all was not quite right with him, and arresting him too quickly would be "killing the goose with the golden eggs." Where was the harm of waiting? Javert felt quite certain that he could not escape. He walked along, therefore, in great perplexity, asking himself a hundred questions about this enigmatical personage. It was not till some time after that he decidedly recognized Jean Valjean in the Rue Pontoise, by the brilliant light that poured from a wine-shop.
There are only two beings in the world that thrill profoundly,—the mother who recovers her child, and the tiger that finds its prey again; but Javert had the same thrill. So soon as he had positively recognized Jean Valjean, the formidable convict, he noticed that he had only two companions, and asked for support at the police office in the Rue Pontoise. Before catching hold of a thorn-bush, people put on gloves. This delay and the halt at the Rollin Square to arrange with his agents all but made him lose the trail; but he quickly guessed that Jean Valjean wished to place the river between himself and his hunters. He hung his head and reflected, like a blood-hound putting its nose to the ground to lift the scent, and then, with the powerful correctness of his instinct, walked to the Austerlitz bridge. One remark of the toll-collector's put him on his track. "Have you seen a man with a little girl?" "I made him pay two sous," the collector answered. Javert reached the bridge just in time to see Jean Valjean leading Cosette across the moonlit square; he saw him enter the Rue du Chemin Vert St. Antoine; he thought of the blind alley arranged there like a trap, and the sole issue from it by the little Rue Picpus; and in order to stop the earth, as sportsmen say, he sent off a policeman by a detour to guard the issue. A patrol, which was returning to the arsenal, happening to pass, he requested its assistance; for in such games as this soldiers are trumps, and, moreover, it is a principle that, in forcing a boar from its lair, the hunter must be scientific, and there must be a strong pack of hounds. These arrangements made, Javert, feeling that Jean Valjean was caught between the blind alley on the right, his own agent on the left, and himself behind, took a pinch of snuff. Then he began playing and enjoying a delicious and infernal moment; he let his man go before him, knowing that he held him, but desiring to defer as long as possible the moment of arresting him; delighted at feeling him caught, and at seeing him free, and watching him with the pleasure of the spider that lets the fly flutter for a while, and the cat that lets the mouse run. The claw and the talon have a monstrous sensuality in the fluttering movements of the animal imprisoned in their prisons. What a delight such a strangling must be! Javert was playing. The meshes of his net were so solidly made, he was certain of success, and now he only needed to close his hand. Accompanied as he was, the idea of resistance was impossible, however energetic, vigorous, and desperate Jean Valjean might be.
Javert advanced slowly, examining and searching as he passed every corner of the street, like the pockets of a thief; but when he reached the centre of the web he did not find his fly. We can imagine his exasperation. He questioned his watchmen, but they quietly declared that they had not seen the man pass. It happens at times that a stag will escape with the pack at its heels, and in such cases the oldest huntsmen know not what to say. In a disappointment of this nature Artonge exclaimed,—"It is not a stag, but a sorcerer." Javert would have gladly uttered the same cry, for his disappointment was midway between despair and fury.
It is certain that errors were committed by Napoleon in the Russian war, by Alexander in the Indian war, by Cæsar in his African war, by Cyrus in the Scythian war, and by Javert in his campaign against Jean Valjean. He was probably wrong in hesitating to recognize the ex-galley slave, for a glance ought to have been sufficient for him. He was wrong in not apprehending him purely and simply at No. 50-52. He was wrong in not arresting him, upon recognition, in the Rue Pontoise. He was wrong to arrange with his colleagues in the bright moonlight, although certainly advice is useful, and it is as well to interrogate those dogs which deserve credence. But the hunter cannot take too many precautions when he is following restless animals, like the wolf and the convict; and Javert, by displaying too much anxiety in setting the blood-hounds on the track, alarmed his game and started it off. Above all, he was wrong, on finding the trail again of the Austerlitz bridge, in playing the dangerous and foolish trick of holding such a man by a string. He fancied himself stronger than he really was, and that he could play with the lion as if it were a mouse. At the same time he imagined himself too weak when he fancied that he must procure help; it was a fatal precaution, and the loss of precious time. Javert committed all these faults, but for all that was not the less one of the cleverest and most certain spies that ever existed. He was, in the full acceptation of the term, a dog that runs cunning; but where is the man who is perfect? Great strategists have their eclipses, and great follies are often made, like stout ropes, of a multitude of fibres. Take the cable thread by thread, catch hold of all the small determining motives separately, and you break them one after the other, and say to yourself, "It is only that;" but twist them together and you have an enormity. It is Attila hesitating between Marcianus in the East and Valentinianus in the West; it is Hannibal delaying at Capua; it is Danton falling asleep at Arcis-sur-Aube.
However this may be, even at the moment when Javert perceived that Jean Valjean had slipped from his clutches he did not lose his head. Certain that the convict could not be very far off, he established watches, organized mousetraps and ambuscades, and beat up the quarter the whole night through. The first thing he saw was the cut cord of the lantern. This was a valuable sign, which, however, led him astray so far that it made him turn all his attention to the Genrot blind alley. There are in this alley low walls, surrounding gardens which skirt open fields, and Jean Valjean had evidently fled in that direction. The truth is, that if he had gone a little farther down the blind alley he would in all probability have done so and been a lost man. Javert explored the gardens and fields as if looking for a needle, and at daybreak he left two intelligent men on duty, and returned to the Prefecture of Police, looking as hang-dog as a spy captured by a robber.
[BOOK VI]
[PETIT PICPUS.]
CHAPTER I
NO. 62, RUE PICPUS.
Half a century ago nothing more resembled any ordinary porte-cochère than that of No. 62, Petite Rue Picpus. This door, generally half open in the most inviting manner, allowed you to see two things which are not of a very mournful nature,—a court-yard with walls covered with vines, and the face of a lounging porter. Above the bottom wall tall trees could be seen, and when a sunbeam enlivened the yard, and a glass of wine had enlivened the porter, it was difficult to pass before No. 62 and not carry away a laughing idea. And yet, you had had a glimpse of a very gloomy place. The threshold smiled, but the house prayed and wept. If you succeeded, which was not easy, in passing the porter—as was, indeed, impossible for nearly all, for there was an "Open, Sesame," which it was necessary to know—you entered on the right a small hall from which ran a staircase enclosed between two walls, and so narrow that only one person could go up at a time: if you were not frightened by the canary-colored plaster and chocolate wainscot of this staircase, and still boldly ascended, you crossed two landings and found yourself in a passage on the first floor, where the yellow distemper and chocolate skirting-board followed you with a quiet pertinacity. The staircase and passage were lighted by two fine windows, but the latter soon made a bend and became dark. When you had doubled this cape, you found yourself before a door, which was the more mysterious because it was not closed. You pushed it open, and found yourself in a small room about six feet square, well scrubbed, clean, and frigid, and hung with a yellow-green sprigged paper, at fifteen sous the piece. A white pale light came through a large window with small panes, which was on the left, and occupied the whole width of the room; you looked about you, but saw nobody; you listened, but heard neither a footstep nor a human sound; the walls were bare, and the room unfurnished—there was not even a chair.
You looked again, and saw in the wall facing the door a square hole covered with a black knotty substantial cross-barred grating, which formed diamonds—I had almost written meshes—at least an inch and a half across. The little green sprigs on the yellow paper came right up to these bars, calmly and orderly, and the funereal contact did not make them start or wither. Even supposing that any human being had been so wondrously thin as to attempt to go in or out by the square hole, the bars would have prevented him: but though they did not let the body pass, the eyes, that is to say, the mind, could. It seemed as if this had been thought of, for it had been lined with a tin plate, in which were bored thousands of holes more microscopic than those of a strainer. Beneath this plate was an opening exactly like the mouth of a letter-box, and a bell-wire hung by the side of this hole. If you pulled this wire, a bell tinkled, and you heard a voice close to you which made you start.
"Who is there?" the voice asked.
It was a female voice, a gentle voice, so gentle that it was melancholy. Here, again, there was a magic word which it was necessary to know; if you did not know it, the voice ceased, and the wall became silent again, as if the terrifying darkness of the tomb were on the other side. If you knew the word, the voice continued,—"Turn to the right." You then noticed, facing the window, a door, the upper part of which was of gray painted glass. You raised the latch, walked in, and experienced precisely the same expression as when you enter a box at the theatre, before the gilt grating has been lowered and the chandelier lighted. You were in fact in a species of box, scarce lighted by the faint light that came through the glass door, narrow, furnished with two old chairs and a ragged sofa,—a real box with a black entablature to represent the front. This box had a grating; but it was not made of gilt wood as at the opera, but was a monstrous trellis-work of frightfully interlaced iron bars, fastened to the wall by enormous clamps that resembled clenched fists. When the first few moments were past, and your eye began to grow accustomed to this cellar-like gloom, you tried to look through the grating, but could not see more than six inches beyond it; there it met a barrier of black shutters, connected and strengthened by cross-beams, and painted of a ginger-bread yellow. These shutters were jointed, divided into long thin planks, and covered the whole width of the grating; they were always closed. At the expiration of a few minutes you heard a voice calling to you from behind the shutters, and saying to you,—
"I am here; what do you want with me?"
It was a loved voice, sometimes an adored voice, but you saw nobody, and could scarce hear the sound of breathing. It seemed as it were an evocation addressing you through the wall of a tomb. If you fulfilled certain required and very rare conditions, the narrow plank of one of the shutters opened opposite to you, and the evocation became an apparition. Behind the grating, behind the shutter, you perceived, as far as the grating would allow, a head, of which you only saw the mouth and chin, for the rest was covered by a black veil. You caught a glimpse of a black wimple, and of a scarce distinct form covered by a black pall. This head spoke to you, but did not look at you, and never smiled. The light that came from behind you was so arranged that you saw her in brightness and she saw you in darkness; this light was a symbol. Still, your eyes plunged eagerly through the opening into this place, closed against all looks; a profound vacuum surrounded this form clothed in mourning. Your eyes investigated this vacuum and tried to distinguish what there was around the apparition, but in a very little time you perceived that you could see nothing. What you saw was night, emptiness, gloom, a winter fog mingled with the vapor from a tomb; a sort of terrifying peace; a silence in which nothing could be heard, not even sighs; a shadow in which nothing could be distinguished, not even phantoms. What you saw was the interior of a nunnery, the interior of that gloomy and stern house which was called the Convent of the Perpetual Adoration. The box in which you found yourself was the parlor, and the first voice that addressed you was that of a lay sister who always sat, silent and motionless, on the other side of the wall, near the square opening which was defended by the iron grating and the tin plate with the thousand holes like a double visor.
The obscurity in which the grated box was plunged, resulted 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 not see any portion of this sacred spot. Still, there was something beyond the shadow; there was a light and life amid this death. Although this convent was the most strictly immured of all, we will try to enter it and take the reader in with us, and describe, with due regard to decorum, things which novelists have never seen, and consequently never recorded.
[CHAPTER II.]
THE OBEDIENCE OF MARTIN VERGA.
This convent, which had existed for many years prior to 1824 in the Rue Picpus, was a community of Bernardines belonging to the obedience of Martin Verga. These Bernardines, consequently, were not attached to Clairvaux, like the Bernardine brothers, but to Citeaux, like the Benedictines. In other words, they were subjects, not of Saint Bernard, but of Saint Benedict. Any one who has at all turned over folios knows that Martin Verga founded, in 1425, a congregation of Bernardo-Benedictines, whose headquarters were Salamanca, and which had Alcala as an offshoot. Such a grafting of one order upon another is not at all unusual in the Latin Church. If we confine our attention merely to the Order of St. Benedict, we find four congregations attached to it, beside the obedience of Martin Verga; in Italy two, Monte Cassino and St. Justina of Padua; two in France, Cluny and St. Marco, and nine orders,—Valombrosa, Grammont, the Celestins, the Calmalduli, the Chartreux, the Humiliated, the Olivateurs, and the Silvestrines, and lastly, Citeaux; for Citeaux itself, while trunk for other orders, is only a branch with Saint Benedict. Citeaux dates from Saint Robert, Abbot of Molesmes, in the diocese of Langres, in 1098. Now it was in 529 that the devil, who had retired to the desert of Subiaco (he was old, did he turn hermit?), was expelled from the temple of Apollo in which he resided, by Saint Benedict, a youth of seventeen years of age.
Next to the rule of the Carmelites, who walk barefoot, wear a piece of wicker-work on their throat, and never sit down, the hardest rule is that of the Bernardo-Benedictines of Martin Verga. They are dressed in black with a wimple, which, by the express order of Saint Benedict, comes up to the chin; a serge gown with wide sleeves, a large woollen veil, the wimple cut square on the chest, and the coif, which comes down to their eyes,—such is their dress. All is black, excepting the coif, which is white. Novices wear the same garb, but all white, while the professed nuns also wear a rosary by their side. The Bernardo-Benedictines of Martin Verga practise the Perpetual Adoration, in the same way as those Benedictines called the ladies of the Holy Sacrament, who, at the beginning of this century, had two houses in Paris, one in the Temple, the other in the Rue Neuve St. Geneviève. In other respects, the nuns of the Little Picpus to whom we are referring entirely differed from the ladies of the Holy Sacrament; there were several distinctions in the rule as well as in the dress. The nuns of Little Picpus wore a black wimple, the former a white one, and had also on their chest a Holy Sacrament, about three inches in length, of plate or gilt brass. The nuns of the Little Picpus did not wear this decoration. The Perpetual Adoration, while common in Little Picpus and the Temple house, leaves the two orders perfectly distinct. This practice is the only resemblance between the ladies of the Holy Sacrament and the Bernardines of Martin Verga, in the same way as there was a similitude, for the study and glorification of all the mysteries attaching to the infancy, life, and death of the Saviour, between two orders which were greatly separated and at times hostile,—the oratory of Italy, established at Florence by Philippe de Neri, and the oratory of France, established in Paris by Pierre de Bérulle. The Paris oratory claimed precedence because Philippe de Neri was only a saint, while Bérulle was a cardinal. But to return to the harsh Spanish rule of Martin Verga.
The Bernardo-Benedictines of this obedience abstain from meat the whole year; fast all Lent, and on many other days special to themselves; get up in their first sleep, from one to three A.M., in order to read their breviary and chant matins; sleep in serge sheets at all seasons, and on straw; never bathe or light fires; chastise themselves every Friday; observe the rule of silence; only speak during recreation, which is very short; and wear coarse flannel chemises for six months, from September 14th, which is the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, up to Easter. These six months are a moderation; the rule says all the year, but the flannel chemise, insupportable in the heat of summer, produced fevers and nervous spasms. Even with this relief, when the nuns put on the flannel chemise on September 14th, they suffer from fever for three or four days. Obedience, poverty, chastity, perseverance,—such are their vows, which are greatly aggravated by the rule. The prioress is elected for three years by mothers called "Mères Vocales," because they have a voice in the Chapter. She can be re-elected only twice, which fixes the longest possible reign of a prioress at nine years. They never see the officiating priest, who is hidden from them by a green baize curtain nine feet high. At the sermon, when the preacher is in the chapel, they draw their veil over their face; they must always speak low, and walk with their eyes fixed on the ground. Only one man is allowed to enter the convent, and he is the Diocesan Archbishop. There is certainly another, who is the gardener; but he is always an aged man, and in order that he may be constantly alone in the garden, and that the nuns may avoid him, a bell is fastened to his knee. The nuns must display absolute and passive submission to the prioress, and it is canonical subjection in all its self-denial. They must obey as if it were the voice of Christ, ut voci Christi, at a nod, at the first signal, ad nutum, ad primum signum; at once, cheerfully, perseveringly, and with a certain bland obedience, prompte, hilariter, perseveranter, et cœca quadam obedientiâ,; like the file in the workman's hand, quasi limam in manibus fabri, and are not allowed to read or write anything without express permission, legere vel scribere non ediscerit sine expressa superioris licentia. Each of them performs in turn what they call the "reparation." This reparation is a prayer for all the sins, faults, irregularities, violations, iniquities, and crimes performed upon earth. For twelve consecutive hours, from four in the evening till four the next morning, the sister who performs the reparation remains on her knees, on the stone before the Holy Sacrament, with her hands clasped, and a rope round her neck. When the fatigue becomes insupportable she prostrates herself with her face on the ground, and her arms forming a cross,—that is her sole relief. In this attitude she prays for all the guilty in the world; it is a grand, almost a sublime idea. As this act is accomplished in front of a stake on the top of which a wax candle is burning, it is called either "making reparation," or "being at the stake." The nuns through humility, indeed, prefer the latter expression, which contains an idea of punishment and abasement. Making reparation is a function in which the whole soul is absorbed; the sister at the stake would not turn round were a thunder-bolt to fall behind her. Moreover, there is always a nun on her knees before the Holy Sacrament; this station lasts an hour, and they relieve each other like sentries. That is the Perpetual Adoration.
The prioress and mothers nearly all have names imprinted with peculiar gravity, recalling, not saints and martyrs, but the incidents in the life of the Saviour,—such as Mother Nativity, Mother Conception, Mother Presentation, and Mother Passion; still, the names of saints are not interdicted. When you see them, you never see more of them than their mouth; and they all have yellow teeth, for a tooth-brush never entered the convent. Cleaning the teeth is the first rung of the ladder, at the foot of which is "losing the soul." They do not call anything "mine;" they have nothing of their own, and must not be attached to anything. They say of everything "ours,"—thus, our veil, our beads; if they were to allude to their chemise they would say "our chemise." Sometimes they grow attached to some trifling object, a book of hours, a relic, or consecrated medal; but so soon as they perceive that they are beginning to grow fond of it, they are obliged to give it away. They remember the remark of Saint Theresa, to whom a great lady said, at the moment of entering her order,—"Allow me, Holy Mother, to send for a Bible to which I am greatly attached." "Ah, you are still attached to something! In that case do not come among us." No one must lock herself in under any pretence, or have a room of her own; and they live with open doors. When they pass each other, one says, "The most Holy Sacrament of the Altar be blessed and adored!" and the other answers, "Forever." There is the same ceremony when one sister raps at another sister's door; the door has scarce been touched, ere a gentle voice is heard saying hurriedly from within, "Forever." Like all practices, this one becomes mechanical through habit; and a sister will sometimes say, "Forever," before the other has had time to utter the long sentence, "The most Holy Sacrament of the Altar be blessed and adored!" Among the Visitandines, the one who enters says, "Ave Maria," to which the other replies, "Gratiâ, plena;" this is their greeting, which is truly full of grace. At each hour of the day three supplementary strokes are struck on the chapel bell, and at this signal, prioress, vocal mothers, professed nuns, lay sisters, novices, and postulants break off what they are saying, doing, or thinking, and all repeat together,—if it be five o'clock, for instance,—"At five o'clock, and at every hour, may the most Holy Sacrament of the Altar be blessed and adored!" and so on, according to the hour. This custom, which is intended to break off thoughts and ever lead them back to God, exists in many communities, the form alone varying. Thus at the Infant Jesus they say, "At the present hour, and at every hour, may the love of Jesus inflame my heart!"
The Bernardo-Benedictines of Martin Verga sing the offices to a grave, full chant, and always in a loud voice, during the whole of the service. Whenever there is an asterisk in the missal, they pause, and say in a low voice, "Jesus, Mary, Joseph." In the service for the dead they employ such a deep note that female voices can scarce descend to it, and there results from it a striking and tragical effect. The sisters of Little Picpus had a vault under their high altar for the burial of their community, but the Government, as they call it, would not allow coffins to be placed in this vault, and they therefore left the convent when they were dead; this afflicted and consternated them like an infraction. They had obtained the slight consolation of being buried at a special hour and in a special corner of the old Vaugirard cemetery, which was established in a field that had once belonged to the community. On Thursday these nuns attend high mass, vespers, and all the services, as on Sunday. And they also scrupulously observe all the little festivals unknown to people of the world, of which the Church was formerly so prodigal in France, and still remains so in Spain and Italy. Their stations in the chapels are innumerable; and as for the number and length of their prayers, we cannot give a better idea than by quoting the simple remark of one of them,—"The prayers of the postulants are frightful, those of the novices worse, and those of the professed nuns worse still." Once a week the Chapter meets, the prioress presiding and the vocal mothers assisting. Each sister comes in her turn to kneel on the stone, 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 penances aloud. In addition to the loud confession, for which all faults at all serious are reserved, they have for venial faults what they call "la coulpe." The penitent prostrates herself on her face during service in front of the prioress, who is never addressed otherwise than "our mother," until the latter warns the sufferer, by a slight tap on the arm of her stall, that she can get up. The nuns perform this penance for very trivial things; breaking a glass, tearing a veil, an involuntary delay of a few seconds in attending service, a false note in chapel,—that is enough. This penance is quite voluntary, and the culprit (this word is etymologically in its place here) tries and punishes herself. On festivals and Sundays there are four singing mothers, who chant at a large lectern with four desks. One day a singing mother was striking up a psalm, which began with the word Ecce, and said instead, quite loud, ut, si, sol; and for this absence of mind she underwent a penance that lasted the whole service. What rendered the fault enormous was that the congregation laughed.
When a nun is summoned to the parlor, even if she be the prioress, she pulls down her veil in such a way as only to show her mouth. The prioress alone can communicate with strangers; the others can only see their nearest relations, and that very rarely. If by chance a person from the outer world requests to see a nun whom she had formerly known or loved, a lengthened negotiation is required. If it be a woman, the permission may possibly be granted. The nun comes and is spoken to through the shutters, which are only opened for a mother or a sister. We need hardly say that permission is never granted to men.
Such is the rule of Saint Benedict, aggravated by Martin Verga. These nuns are not gay, rosy, and fresh, as we find sometimes in other orders; they are pale and serious, and between 1825 and 1830 three of them went mad.
[CHAPTER III.]
SEVERITIES.
Any one desirous of joining the community of Martin Verga must be at least two years a postulant, sometimes four, and four years a novice. It is rare for the final vows to be taken before the age of twenty-three or twenty-four years. The Bernardo-Benedictines of Martin Verga admit no widows into their order. In their cells they undergo many strange macerations, of which they are not allowed to speak. On the day when a novice professes, she is dressed in her best clothes, wears a wreath of white roses, has her hair curled, and then prostrates herself; a large black veil is spread over her, and the service for the dead is performed. Then the nuns divide into two files, one of which passes her, saying in a plaintive voice, "Our sister is dead," and the other answers triumphantly, "Living in Jesus Christ."
At the period when this story is laid, there was a boarding-school attached to the convent, the pupils being young ladies of noble birth, and generally rich. Among them could be noticed Mlles. de Sainte Aulaire and de Bélissen, and an English girl bearing the illustrious Catholic name of Talbot. These young ladies, educated by the nuns between four walls, grew up with a horror of the world and of the century; one of them said to us one day, "Seeing the street pavement made me shudder from head to foot." They were dressed in blue, with a white cap, and a plated or gilt Holy Ghost on the chest. On certain high festivals, especially Saint Martha, they were allowed, as a high favor and supreme happiness, to dress themselves like nuns, and perform the offices and practices of Saint Benedict for the whole day. At first the nuns lent them their black robes, but this was deemed a profanity, and the prioress forbade it; so the novices alone were permitted to make such loans. It is remarkable that these representations, doubtless tolerated in the convent through a secret spirit of proselytism, and in order to give their children some foretaste of the sacred dress, were a real happiness and true recreation for the boarders; they were amused by them, for "it was a novelty and changed them,"—candid reasons of children, which do not succeed, however, in making us worldly-minded people understand the felicity of holding a holy-water brush in one's hand, and standing for hours before a lectern and singing quartettes. The pupils conformed to all the practices of the convent, though not to all the austerities. We know a young lady who, after returning to the world and being married for some years, could not break herself of hastily saying, each time that there was a rap at the door, "Forever!" like the nuns. The boarders only saw their parents in the parlor; their mothers themselves were not even allowed to kiss them. To show how far this severity was carried, a young lady was visited one day by her mother, accompanied by a little sister three years of age. The young lady cried, because she would have liked to kiss her sister but it was impossible. She implored at least permission for the child to pass her hand through the bars, so that she might kiss it; but it was refused almost as a scandal.
[CHAPTER IV.]
GAYETIES.
For all this, though, the young ladies filled this grave house with delightful reminiscences. At certain hours childhood sparkled in this cloister. The bell for recreation was rung, the gate creaked on its hinges, and the birds whispered to each other, "Here are the children." An irruption of youth inundated this garden, which with its cross-walks resembled a pall. Radiant faces, white foreheads, ingenuous eyes, full of gay light—all sorts of dawn—spread through the gloom. After the psalm-singing, the bell-ringing, and the services, the noise of girls, softer than the buzzing of bees, suddenly burst out. The hive of joy opened, and each brought her honey; they played, they called each other, they formed groups, and ran about; pretty little white teeth chattered at corners; in the distance veils watched the laughter, shadows guarded the beams,—but what matter! they were radiant, and laughed. These four mournful walls had their moment of bedazzlement; vaguely whitened by the reflection of so much joy, they watched this gentle buzzing of the swarm. It was like a shower of roses falling on this mourning. The girls sported beneath the eye of the nuns, for the glance of impeccability does not disturb innocence; and, thanks to these children, there was a simple hour among so many austere hours. The little girls jumped about and the elder danced, and nothing could be so ravishing and august as all the fresh, innocent expansion of these childish souls. Homer would have come here to dance with Perrault, and there were in this black garden, youth, health, noise, cries, pleasure, and happiness enough to unwrinkle the brows of all the ancestry, both of the epic poem and the fairy tale, of the throne and the cottage, from Hecuba down to La Mère Grand. In this house, more perhaps than elsewhere, those childish remarks were made which possess so much grace, and which make the hearer laugh thoughtfully. It was within these four gloomy walls that a child of four years of age one day exclaimed,—"Mother, a grown-up girl has just told me that I have only nine years and ten months longer to remain here. What happiness!" Here too it was that the memorable dialogue took place:—
A vocal mother.—Why are you crying, my child?
The child (six years old), sobbing.—I said to Alix that I knew my French history. She says that I don't know it, but I do know it.
Alix, the grown-up girl (just nine).—No. She does not know it.
Mother.—How so, my child?
Alix.—She told me to open the book haphazard, and ask her a question out of the book, which she would answer.
"Well?"
"She did not answer it."
"What was it you asked her?"
"I opened the book as she said, and I asked her the first question that I came across."
"And pray what was the question?"
"It was, 'What happened next?'"
It was here that the profound observation was made about a rather dainty parrot which belonged to a lady boarder. "How well bred it is! It eats the top of the slice of bread and butter, just like a lady." In one of these cloisters was also picked up the following confession, written beforehand, so as not to forget it, by a little sinner of seven years of age:—
"My father, I accuse myself of having been avaricious.
"My father, I accuse myself of having committed adultery.
"My father, I accuse myself of having raised my eyes to gentlemen."
It was on one of the benches in the garden that the following fable was improvised by rosy lips six years of age, and listened to by blue eyes of four and five years:—
"There were three little cocks, which lived in a place where there were many flowers. They picked the flowers and put them in their pockets; after that they plucked the leaves and put them in their play-things. There was a wolf in those parts, and there was a great deal of wood; and the wolf was in the wood, and all the three cocks."
It was here too that the following sweet and affecting remark was made by a foundling child whom the convent brought up through charity. She heard the others speaking of their mothers, and she murmured in her corner,—"My mother was not there when I was born." There was a fat portress who could continually be seen hurrying along the passage with her bunch of keys, and whose name was Sister Agathe. The grown-up girls—those above ten years of age—called her Agathoclès (Agathe aux clefs). The refectory, a large, rectangular room, which only received light through an arched window looking on the garden, was gloomy and damp, and, as children say, full of animals. All the surrounding places furnished their contingent of insects; and each of the four corners had received a private and expressive name, in the language of the boarders. There were Spider corner, Caterpillar corner, Woodlouse corner, and Cricket corner; the latter was near the kitchen, and highly esteemed, for it was warmer there. The names had passed from the refectory to the school-room, and served to distinguish four nations, as in the old Mazarin College. Every boarder belonged to one or other of these nations, according to the corner of the refectory in which she sat at meals. One day the archbishop, while paying a pastoral visit, noticed a charming little rosy-faced girl, with glorious light hair, pass, and he asked another boarder, a pretty brunette with pink cheeks, who was near him,—
"Who is that?"
"She is a spider, sir."
"Nonsense; and this other?"
"Is a cricket."
"And this one?"
"A caterpillar."
"Indeed! and what may you be?"
"I am a woodlouse, Monseigneur."
Each house of this nature has its peculiarities: at the beginning of this century Écouen was one of those places in which the childhood of children is passed in an almost august gloom. At Écouen a distinction was made between the virgins and flower-girls in taking rank in the procession of the Holy Sacrament. There were also the "canopies," and the "censers," the former holding the cords of the canopy, the latter swinging the censers in front of the Holy Sacrament, while four virgins walked in front. On the morning of the great day it was not rare to have people say in the dormitory,—"Who is a virgin?" Madame Campan mentions a remark made by a little girl of seven to a grown-up girl of sixteen, who walked at the head of the procession, while she, the little one, remained behind: "You are a virgin, but I am not one."
[CHAPTER V.]
AMUSEMENTS.
Above the refectory door was painted in large black letters the following prayer, which was called the "White Paternoster," and which had the virtue of leading persons straight to Paradise.
"Little white Paternoster, which God made, which God said, which God placed in Paradise. At night, when I went to bed, I found three angels at my bed,—one at the foot, two at the head, and the good Virgin Mary in the middle,—who told me to go to bed and fear nothing. The Lord God is my father, the good Virgin is my mother, the three apostles are my brothers, the three virgins are my sisters. My body is wrapped up in the shirt in which God was born: the cross of Saint Marguerite is written on my chest. Madame the Virgin weeping for the Lord went into the fields and met there M. St. John. 'Monsieur St. John, where do you come from?' 'I have come from the Ave Salus'. 'You have not seen the Lord, have you?' 'He is on the tree of the cross, with hanging feet, nailed-up hands, and a little hat of white-thorn on his head.' Whosoever repeats this, thrice at night and thrice in the morning, will gain Paradise in the end."[1]
In 1827, this characteristic orison had disappeared beneath a triple coat of whitewash, and at the present day it is almost effaced from the memory of those who were young girls then, and old women now.
A large crucifix fastened to the wall completed the decoration of this refectory, whose only door opened on the garden. Two narrow tables, with wooden benches on each side, formed two long parallel lines from one end to the other of the refectory. The walls were white, the tables black; for these two mourning colors are the sole variations in convents. The meals were poor, and the food of even the children scanty; a single plate of meat and vegetables or salt-fish was the height of luxury. This ordinary, reserved for the boarders alone, was, however, an exception. The children ate and held their tongues under the guardianship of the mother of the week, who, from time to time, if a fly dared to move or buzz contrary to regulation, noisily opened and closed a wooden book. This silence was seasoned with the "Lives of the Saints," read aloud from a little desk standing at the foot of the crucifix, the reader being a grown-up pupil appointed for the week. At regular distances on the bare table there were earthen-ware bowls, in which the pupils themselves washed their cups and forks and spoons, and sometimes threw in a piece of hard meat or spoiled fish; but this was severely punished. Any child who broke the silence made a cross with her tongue. Where? On the ground: she licked the stones. Dust, that finale of all joys, was ordered to chastise these poor little rose-leaves that were guilty of prattling. There was in the convent a book of which only one copy was printed, and which no one was allowed to read,—the "Rule of St. Benedict,"—a mystery which no profane eye must penetrate. Nemo regulas seu constitutiones nostras externis communicabit. The boarders succeeded one day in getting hold of this book and began perusing it eagerly, though frequently interrupted by a fear of being surprised, which made them close the book hurriedly. They only derived a slight pleasure from the danger they incurred; for the most interesting portion was a few unintelligible pages about the sins of lads.
They played in a garden walk bordered by a few stunted fruit-trees. In spite of the extreme watch and the severity of the punishment, when the wind shook the trees they at times succeeded in picking up furtively a green apple, or a spoiled apricot, or a wasp-inhabited pear. I will here let a letter speak which I have before me, a letter written by an ex-boarder five-and-twenty years ago, who is now the Duchesse de ——, and one of the most elegant women in Paris. I quote exactly. "We hide our pear or our apple as we can. When we go up to lay our veil on the bed before supper we thrust it under a pillow, and eat it at night in bed; and when that is not possible we eat it in the closet." This was one of their liveliest pleasures. On one occasion, at a period when the archbishop was paying a visit at the convent, one of the young ladies, Mademoiselle Bouchard, who was related to the Montmorencys, laid a wager that she would ask him for a holiday,—an enormity in such an austere community. The wager was taken, but not one of those who took it believed in it. When the moment arrived for the archbishop to pass before the boarders, Mademoiselle Bouchard, to the indescribable horror of her companions, stepped out of the ranks and said, "Monseigneur, a holiday." Mademoiselle Bouchard was fresh and tall, and had the prettiest pink-and-white face in the world. M. de Quélen smiled, and said,—"What, my dear child, a day's holiday! Three, if you like; I grant three days." The prioress could do nothing, as the archbishop had said it. It was a scandal for the convent, but a joy for the boarding-school. Just imagine the effect!
"SHE GLIDED ALONG RATHER THAN WALKED."
This harsh convent, however, was not so well walled in but that the passions of the outer world, the dramas, and even the romance of life, entered it. To prove this, we will briefly describe a real and incontestable fact, though it is in no way connected with the story which we are narrating. We mention the fact in order to complete the physiognomy of the convent in the reader's mind. About this period, then, there was in the convent a mysterious personage, who was not a nun, but was treated with great respect, and called Madame Albertine. Nothing was known about her except that she was mad, and that in the world she was supposed to be dead. It was said that behind the story were certain monetary arrangements necessary for a grand marriage. This woman, who was scarce thirty years of age and a rather pretty brunette, looked vacantly around with her large black eyes. Did she see? It was doubted. She glided along rather than walked; she never spoke, and people were not quite sure whether she breathed. Her nostrils were pinched up and livid, as if she had drawn her last sigh: touching her hand was like touching snow, and she had a strange spectral grace. Wherever she entered she produced a chill; and one day a sister seeing her pass, said to another, "She is supposed to be dead." "Perhaps she is," the other replied. A hundred stories were current about Madame Albertine, and she was the eternal object of curiosity with the boarders. There was in this chapel a gallery called "L'œil de Bœuf," and it was in this place that Madame Albertine attended service. She was usually alone there, because, as the gallery was high, the preacher could be seen from it, which was prohibited to the nuns. One day the pulpit was occupied by a young priest of high rank, le Duc de Rohan, Peer of France, officer in the Red Musqueteers in 1815, when he was Prince de Leon, and who died about 1830, a cardinal, and Archbishop of Besançon. It was the first time that this M. de Rohan preached at the Little Picpus. Madame Albertine usually sat in perfect calmness through the service; but on this day, so soon as she perceived M. de Rohan, she half rose, and cried aloud, "Why, it is Auguste!" The whole community looked round in stupefaction, the preacher raised his eyes, but Madame Albertine had fallen back into her apathy; a breath from the outer world, a flash of light, had momentarily passed over this set face, then faded away, and the maniac became once again a corpse. This remark, however, made everybody in the convent who could speak, talk incessantly. What revelations were contained in this "Why, it is Auguste!" It was evident that Madame Albertine had moved in the highest society, since she knew M. de Rohan, spoke about so great a nobleman in such a familiar way, and was at least a near relation of his, since she knew his Christian name.
Two very strict Duchesses, Mesdames de Choiseul and de Serent, frequently visited the community, doubtless by virtue of their privilege as Magnates Mulieres, and terribly frightened the boarders. When the two old ladies passed, all the poor girls trembled and let their eyes fall. M. de Rohan was, besides, unwittingly the object of attention among the boarders. He had just been appointed, while waiting for a bishopric, Grand Vicar of the Archbishop of Paris, and it was one of his habits to serve mass in the chapel of the Little Picpus Convent. Not one of the young recluses could see him, on account of the baize curtain; but he had a soft and rather shrill voice, which they had managed to recognize and distinguish. He had been a Mousquetaire; and besides, he was said to be somewhat of a dandy, had fine chestnut hair curled round his head, wore a wide scarf of magnificent moire, and his black cassock was cut in the most elegant style. He greatly occupied all their youthful imaginations. No external sound penetrated the convent, and yet one year the sound of a flute reached it. It was an event, and the boarders of that day still remember it. It was a flute which some one was playing in the neighborhood: it was the same tune, one now very aged, "Ma Zétulbé, viens regner sur mon âme," and it was heard two or three times a day. The girls spent hours in listening, the vocal mothers were upset, brains were at work, and punishments were constant. This lasted several months; the boarders were more or less enamoured of the unknown musician, and each fancied herself Zétulbé. The sound of the flute came from the direction of the Rue Droit-mur. They would have given anything, compromised anything, attempted anything, in order to see, if only for a moment, the young man who played the flute so exquisitely, and at the same time played on all their minds. Some of them slipped out through a back door and ascended to the third story looking out of the street, in order to try and see him through the grating; but it was impossible. One went so far as to pass her arm between the bars and wave her white handkerchief. Two others were even bolder; they managed to climb on to the roof, and at length succeeded in seeing the "young man." It was an old émigré gentleman, blind and ruined, who played the flute in his garret in order to kill time.
[1] This Paternoster is so curious that the translator has quoted the original.
"Petite Paternôtre blanche, que Dieu dit, que Dieu fit, que Dieu mit en Paradis. Au soir, m'allant coucher, je trouvis [sic] trois anges à mon lit couches, un aux pieds, deux au chevet, la bonne Vierge Marie au milieu qui me dit que je m'y couchis, qui rien ne doutis. Le bon Dieu est mon père, la bonne Vierge est ma mère, les trois apôtres sont mes frères, les trois vierges sont mes sœurs. La chemise ou Dieu fut né, mon corps en est enveloppé; la Croix Sainte Marguerite à ma poitrine est écrite. Madame la Vierge s'en va sur les champs. Dieu pleurant, recontrit M. St. Jean. Monsieur St. Jean, d'où venez-vous? Je viens d'Ave Salus. Vous n'avez vu le bon Dieu, si est? Il est dans l'arbre de la Croix, les pieds pendans, les mains clouans, un petit chapeau d'épine blanche sur la tête. Qui la dira trois fois au soir, trois fois au matin, gagnera le Paradis à la fin."
[CHAPTER VI.]
THE LITTLE CONVENT.
There were within the walls of Little Picpus three perfectly distinct buildings,—the great convent inhabited by the nuns, the schoolhouse in which the boarders were lodged, and, lastly, what was called the little convent. The latter was a house with a garden, in which all sorts of old nuns of various orders, the remains of convents broken up in the Revolution, dwelt in common; a reunion of all the black, white, and gray gowns of all the communities, and all the varieties possible; what might be called, were such a conjunction of words permissible, a hotch-potch convent. Under the Empire all these dispersed and homeless women were allowed to shelter themselves under the wings of the Bernardo-Benedictines; the Government paid them a small pension, and the ladies of Little Picpus eagerly received them. It was a strange pell-mell, in which each followed her rule. At times the boarders were allowed, as a great recreation, to pay them a visit, and it is from this that these young minds have retained a recollection of Holy Mother Bazile, Holy Mother Scholastica, and Mother Jacob.
One of these refugees was almost at home here; she was a nun of Sainte Aure, the only one of her order who survived. The old convent of the ladies of Sainte Aure occupied at the beginning of the 18th century the same house which at a later date belonged to the Benedictines of Martin Verga. This holy woman, who was too poor to wear the magnificent dress of her order, which was a white robe with a scarlet scapulary, had piously dressed up in it a small doll, which she was fond of showing, and left at her death to the house. In 1820 only one nun of this order remained; at the present day only a doll is left. In addition to these worthy mothers, a few old ladies of the world, like Madame Albertine, had gained permission from the prioress to retire into the little convent. Among them were Madame de Beaufort d'Hautpoul and the Marquise Dufresne; another was only known in the convent by the formidable noise she made in using her handkerchief, and hence the boarders called her Madame Vacarmini. About the year 1820 Madame de Genlis, who edited at that period a small periodical called L'Intrépide, asked leave to board at the Little Picpus, and the Duc d'Orleans recommended her. There was a commotion in the hive, and the vocal mothers were all of a tremor, for Madame de Genlis had written romances; but she declared that she was the first to detest them, and moreover she had reached her phase of savage devotion. By the help of Heaven and of the prince she entered, and went away again at the end of six or eight months, alleging as a reason that the garden had no shade. The nuns were delighted at it. Although very old, she still played the harp, and remarkably well too. When she went away she left her mark on her cell. Madame de Genlis was superstitious and a Latin scholar, and these two terms give a very fair idea of her. A few years ago there might still be seen, fixed in the inside of a small cupboard of her cell, in which she kept her money and jewelry, the following five Latin verses, written in her own hand with red ink on yellow paper, and which, in her opinion, had the virtue 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."
These verses, in sixteenth-century Latin, raise the question whether the two thieves of Calvary were called, as is commonly believed, Demas and Gestas, or Dismas and Gesmas. The latter orthography would thwart the claims made in the last century by the Viscomte de Gestas to be descended from the wicked thief. However, the useful virtue attached to these verses is an article of faith in the order of the Hospitaler nuns. The church, so built as to separate the great convent from the boarding-school, was common to the school, and the great and little convents. The public were even admitted by a sort of quarantine entrance from the street: but everything was so arranged that not one of the inhabitants of the convent could see a single face from the outer world. Imagine a church whose choir was seized by a gigantic hand, and crushed so as no longer to form, as in ordinary chapels, a prolongation behind the altar, but a sort of obscure cavern on the side of the officiating priest; imagine this hall closed by the green baize curtain to which we have referred; pile up in the shadow of this curtain upon wooden seats the nuns on the left, the boarders on the right, and the lay sisters and novices at the end, and you will have some idea of the Little Picpus nuns attending divine service. This cavern, which was called the choir, communicated with the convent by a covered way, and the church obtained its light from the garden. When the nuns were present at those services at which their rule commanded silence, the public were only warned of their presence by the sound of the seats being noisily raised and dropped.
[CHAPTER VII.]
A FEW PROFILES FROM THE SHADOW.
During the six years between 1819 and 1825 the prioress of Little Picpus was Mademoiselle de Blémeur, called in religion Mother Innocent. She belonged to the family of that Marguerite de Blémeur who was authoress of the "Lives of the Saints of the Order of Saint Benedict." She was a lady of about sixty years, short, stout, and with a voice "like a cracked pot," says the letter from which we have already quoted; but she was an excellent creature, the only merry soul in the convent, and on that account adored. She followed in the footsteps of her ancestress Marguerite, the Dacier of the order; she was lettered, learned, competent, versed in the curiosities of history, stuffed with Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and more a monk than a nun. The sub-prioress was an old Spanish nun, almost blind, Mother Cineres. The most estimated among the "vocals" were—Mother Saint Honorine, the treasurer; Mother Saint Gertrude, first mistress of the novices; Mother Saint Ange, second mistress; Mother Annunciation, sacristan; Mother Saint Augustine, head of the infirmary, the only unkind person in the convent; then Mother Saint Mechtilde (Mlle. Gauvain), who was young, and had an admirable voice; Mother des Auges (Mlle. Drouet), who had been in the convent of the Filles Dieu, and that of the Treasury near Gisors; Mother Saint Joseph (Mlle. de Cogolludo); Mother Saint Adelaide (Mlle. D'Auverney); Mother Miséricorde (Mlle. de Cifuentes, who could not endure the privations); Mother Compassion (Mlle. de La Miltière, received at the age of sixty, contrary to the rule, but very rich); Mother Providence (Mlle. de Laudinière); Mother Presentation (Mlle. de Siguenza), who was prioress in 1847; and lastly, Mother Saint Céligne (sister of Cerachhi the sculptor), who went mad; and Mother Saint Chantal (Mlle. de Suzon), who also went mad. Among the prettiest was a charming girl of three-and-twenty, who belonged to the Bourbonnais, and was descended from the Chevalier Roze, who was called in the world Mlle. Roze, and in religion Mother Assumption.
Mother Saint Mechtilde, who had charge of the singing arrangements, was glad to make use of the boarders for this purpose; she generally selected a complete musical scale, that is to say, seven assorted voices, from ten to sixteen years inclusive, whom she drew up in a line, ranging from the shortest to the tallest. In this way she produced a species of living Pandean pipes, composed of angels. The lay sisters whom the boarders liked most were Sister Saint Euphrasie, Sister Saint Marguerite, Sister Saint Marthe, who was childish, and Sister Saint Michel, at whose long nose they laughed. All these nuns were kind to the children, and only stern to themselves; there were no fires lit except in the schoolhouse, and the food there was luxurious when compared with that of the convent. The only thing was that when a child passed a nun and spoke to her, the latter did not answer. This rule of silence produced the result that in the whole convent language was withdrawn from human creatures and given to inanimate objects. At one moment it was the church bell that spoke, at another the gardener's; and a very sonorous gong, placed by the side of the sister porter, and which could be heard all through the house, indicated by various raps, which were a sort of acoustic telegraphy, all the actions of natural life which had to be accomplished, and summoned a nun, if required, to the parlor. Each person and each thing had its raps: the prioress had one and one, the sub-prioress one and two; six-five announced school hour, so that the pupils talked of going to six-five; four-four was Madame Genlis' signal, and as it was heard very often, uncharitable persons said she was the "diable à quatre." Nineteen strokes announced a great event; it was the opening of the cloister door, a terrible iron plate all bristling with bolts, which only turned on its hinges before the archbishop. With the exception of that dignitary and the gardener, no other man entered the convent; but the boarders saw two others,—one was the chaplain, Abbé Banès, an old ugly man, whom they were allowed to contemplate through a grating; while the other was M. Ansiaux, the drawing-master, whom the letter which we have already quoted calls "M. Anciot," and describes as an odious old hunchback. So we see that all the men were picked.
Such was this curious house.
[CHAPTER VIII.]
POST CORDA LAPIDES.
After sketching the moral figure, it may not be time lost to indicate in a few words the material configuration, of which the reader already possesses some idea.
The convent of the Little Picpus occupied a large trapeze, formed by the four streets to which we have so frequently alluded, and which surrounded it like a moat. The convent was composed of several buildings and a garden. The main building, regarded in its entirety, was a juxtaposition of hybrid constructions, which, looked at from a balloon, would very exactly form a gallows laid on the ground. The long arm of the gallows occupied the whole of the Rue Droit-mur, comprised between the Little Rue Picpus and the Rue Polonceau; while the shorter arm was a tall, gray, stern, grated façade, looking on the Little Rue Picpus, of which the carriage-entrance, No. 62, was the extremity. Toward the centre of this façade dust and ashes whitened an old, low-arched gate, where the spiders made their webs, and which was only opened for an hour or two on Sundays, and on the rare occasions when the coffin of a nun left the convent; this was the public entrance to the church. The elbow of the gallows was a square room, used as an office, and which the nuns called the "buttery." In the long arm were the cells of the mothers, sisters, and novices; in the short one the kitchens, the refectory, along which a cloister ran, and the church. Between No. 62 and the corner of Aumarais Lane was the school, which could not be seen from the exterior. The rest of the trapeze formed the garden, which was much lower than the level of the Rue Polonceau, and this caused the walls to be much loftier inside than out. The garden, which was slightly arched, had at its centre and on the top of a mound a fine-pointed and conical fir-tree, from which ran, as from the boss of a shield, four large walks, with eight smaller ones arranged two and two, so that, had the enclosure been circular, the geometrical plan of the walks would have resembled a cross laid upon a wheel. The walks, which all ran to the extremely irregular walls of the garden, were of unequal length, and were bordered by gooseberry-bushes. At the end a poplar walk ran from the ruins of the old convent, which was at the angle of the Rue Droit-mur, to the little convent, which was at the corner of Aumarais Lane. In front of the little convent was what was called the small garden. If we add to this ensemble a court-yard, all sorts of varying angles formed by the inside buildings, prison walls, and the long black line of roofs that ran along the other side of the Rue Polonceau, as the sole prospect, we can form an exact idea of what the house of the Bernardines of Little Picpus was five-and-forty years ago. This sacred house was built on the site of a famous racket-court in the 16th century, which was called the "Tripot des onze mille diables." All these streets, indeed, were the oldest in Paris; the names Droit-mur and Aumarais are very old, but the streets that bear them are far older. Aumarais Lane was before called Maugout Lane; the Rue Droit-mur was called the Rue des Eglantines, for God opened the flowers before man cut building-stones.
[CHAPTER IX.]
A CENTURY UNDER A WIMPLE.
As we are giving details of what was formerly the Little Picpus convent, and have ventured to let in light upon this discreet asylum, the reader will perhaps permit us another slight digression, which has nothing to do with the story, but is characteristic and useful in so far as it proves that a convent can have its original people. There was in the little convent a centenarian, who came from the Abbey of Fontevrault, and before the Revolution she had even been in the world. She talked a good deal about M. de Miromesnil, keeper of the seals under Louis XVI., and the wife of a President Duplat, who had been a great friend of hers. It was her pleasure and vanity to drag in these two names on every possible occasion. She told marvels about the Abbey of Fontevrault, which was like a town, and there were streets in the convent. She spoke with a Picard accent which amused the boarders; every year she renewed her vows, and at the moment of taking the oath would say to the priest: "Monseigneur St. Francis took it to. Monseigneur St. Julien, Monseigneur St. Julien took it to Monseigneur St. Eusebius, Monseigneur St. Eusebius took it to Monseigneur St. Procopius, etc., etc., and thus I take it to you, father." And the boarders would laugh, not in their sleeves, but under their veils,—a charming little suppressed laugh, which made the vocal mothers frown.
At other times the centenarian told anecdotes. She said that in her youth the Bernardines took precedence of the Musqueteers; it was a century that spoke, but it was the 18th century. She described the Champenois and Burgundian custom of the four wines before the Revolution. When a great personage, a marshal of France, a prince, a duke and peer, passed through a town of Champagne or Burgundy, the authorities addressed and presented him with four silver cups filled with four different sorts of wine. On the first cup was the inscription "ape-wine," on the second "lion-wine," on the third "sheep-wine," and on the fourth "hog-wine." These four mottoes expressed the four stages of intoxication,—the first that enlivens, the second that irritates, the third that dulls, and the fourth that brutalizes.
She had a mysterious object, to which she was greatly attached, locked up in a cupboard, and the rule of Fontevrault did not prohibit this. She would not show it to anybody; she locked herself in, which her rule also permitted, and hid herself each time that a desire was expressed to see it. If she heard footsteps in the passage she closed the cupboard as hastily as she could with her aged hands. So soon as it was alluded to, she, who was so fond of talking, held her tongue; the most curious persons were foiled by her silence, and the most tenacious by her obstinacy. This was a subject of comment for all the idlers and gossips in the convent. What could this precious and hidden thing be which was the centenarian's treasure? Of course some pious book or unique rosary, or well-tried relic. On the poor woman's death they ran to the cupboard, more quickly perhaps than was befitting, and opened it. They found the object under three folds of linen; it was a Faenza plate representing Cupids flying away, and pursued by apothecaries' apprentices armed with enormous squirts. The pursuit is full of comical grimaces and postures; one of the charming little Cupids is already impaled; he writhes, flutters his wings, and strives to fly away, but the assassin laughs a Satanic laugh. Moral,—love conquered by a colic. This plate, which is very curious, and perhaps had the honor of furnishing Molière with an idea, still existed in September, 1845; it was for sale at a curiosity shop on the Boulevard Beaumarchais. This good old woman would not receive any visitors, "because," as she said, "the parlor is too melancholy."
[CHAPTER X.]
ORIGIN OF THE PERPETUAL ADORATION.
This parlor, almost sepulchral, which we have described is a thoroughly local fact, which is not reproduced with the same severity in other convents. In the convent of the Rue du Temple, which, it is true, belonged to another order, brown curtains were substituted for the black shutters, and the parlor itself was a boarded room with white muslin curtains at the windows, while the walls admitted all sorts of pictures,—the portrait of a Benedictine nun with uncovered face, painted bouquets, and even a Turk's head. It was in the garden of this convent that the chestnut tree grew, which was considered the handsomest and largest in France, and which had the reputation among the worthy eighteenth-century folk of being "the father of all the chestnut trees in the kingdom." As we said, this convent of the Temple was occupied by Benedictines of the Perpetual Adoration, who greatly differed from those Benedictines who descended from Citeaux. This order of the Perpetual Adoration is not the oldest, and does not date back beyond two hundred years. In 1640 the Holy Sacrament was twice profaned at an interval of a few days, in two parish churches, St. Sulpice and St. Jean en Grève,—a frightful and rare sacrilege which stirred up the whole city. The Prior Grand-Vicar of St. Germain-des-Près ordered a solemn procession of all his clergy, in which the Papal Nuncio officiated, but this expiation was not sufficient for two worthy ladies, Madame Courtin, Marquise de Boucs, and the Countess de Châteauvieux. This outrage done to the "most august Sacrament of the Altar," though transient, would not leave their pious minds, and it seemed to them that it could alone be repaired by a "Perpetual Adoration" in some nunnery. In 1652 and 1653 both gave considerable sums of money to Mother Catharine de Bar, called of the Holy Sacrament and a Benedictine nun, for the purpose of founding for this pious object a convent of the order of St. Benedict. The first permission for this foundation was given to Mother Catharine de Bar by M. de Metz, Abbé of St. Germain, "on condition that no person should be received unless she brought a pension of three hundred livres, or a capital sum of six thousand livres." After this the king granted letters-patent, which were countersigned in 1654 by the Chamber of Accounts and the Parliament.
Such are the origin and legal consecration of the establishment of the Benedictines of the Perpetual Adoration of the Holy Sacrament at Paris. Their first convent was built for them in the Rue Cassette, with the funds of Mesdames de Boucs and Châteauvieux. This order, as we see, must not be confounded with the Benedictines of Citeaux. It was a dependency of the Abbé of Saint Germain-des-Près, in the same manner as the Ladies of the Sacred Heart are subjects of the general of the Jesuits, and the Sisters of Charity of the general of the Lazarists. It was also entirely different from the order of the Bernardines of Little Picpus, whose interior we have just shown. In 1657 Pope Alexander VII. authorized, by special brief, the Bernardines of Little Picpus to practise the Perpetual Adoration like the Benedictines of the Holy Sacrament, but the two orders did not remain the less distinct.
[CHAPTER XI.]
THE END OF LITTLE PICPUS.
Toward the beginning of the Restoration, Little Picpus began to pine away; it shared in the general death of the order, which after the eighteenth century began to decay, like all religious orders. Contemplation, like prayer, is a want of humanity; but, like all that the revolution has touched, it will be transformed, and will become favorable to human progress, instead of being hostile to it. The house of Little Picpus became rapidly depopulated. In 1840 the little convent and the school had disappeared; there were no old women or young girls left; the former were dead, the latter had fled away. Volaverunt.
The rule of the Perpetual Adoration is so strict that it horrifies; novices hold back, and the order is not recruited. In 1845 a few lay sisters were still found here and there, but no professed nuns. Forty years ago there were nearly one hundred nuns; fifteen years ago there were only twenty-eight; how many are there now? In 1847 the prioress was young, a sign that the choice was becoming restricted. She was not forty years old. In proportion as the number diminishes the fatigue is augmented; the service of each becomes more painful; and the moment may be seen approaching at which there will be only a dozen sore and bent shoulders to bear the heavy rule of St. Benedict. The burden is implacable, and remains the same for the few as for the many; it used to press, but now it crushes. Hence they die out. At the time when the author of this book still resided in Paris two died,—one twenty-five, the other twenty-three years of age. The latter can say, like Julia Alpinula: Hic jaceo. Vixi annos viginti et tres. It is owing to this decadence that the convent has given up the education of girls.
We were unable to pass by this extraordinary, unknown, and obscure house without entering it, and taking with us those who are reading—we trust with some advantage to themselves—the melancholy story of Jean Valjean. We have penetrated into this community so full of those old practices which seem so novel at the present day. It is a closed garden. Hortus conclusus. We have spoken of this singular spot in detail, but with respect, so far, at least, as respect and detail are compatible. We do not understand everything, but we insult nothing. We keep at an equal distance from the hosanna of Joseph de Maistre, who ended by consecrating the hangman, and the sneers of Voltaire, who even jeered at the crucifix.
There is a lack of logic in Voltaire's attitude, be it said in passing; for Voltaire ought to have defended Jesus as he defended Calas; and even for those who deny the Divine incarnation, what does the crucifix stand for? The good man murdered. In the nineteenth century the religious idea is undergoing a crisis. We unlearn some things, and we do well, provided that in unlearning one thing, we learn another. There must be no vacuum in the heart of man. Some demolitions are made, and it is well that they should be made, but only on condition that they shall be followed by reconstructions.
In the meanwhile let us study the things which are past. It is necessary to know them were it only to avoid them. The counterfeits of the past take on false names, and try to pass themselves off for the future. This ghost, the past, may falsify his passport. We must learn to unmask the trick. We must be on our guard against it. The past has a face, superstition; and a mask, hypocrisy. We must identify the face, and tear off the mask.
As for the convents, they offer a complex question,—a question of civilization which condemns them, a question of liberty which protects them.