I now dined and traversed leisurely the Place du Panthéon homewards, passing through the Rue de l’Estrapade into the Rue des Postes, once famous for its convents. This is to a pious man, and one who lives a little back into the past, a holy region; it is consecrated by religious recollections beyond all the other spots of Paris. Here in this single “Rue des Postes,” was the old “Couvent des Dames de St. Augustin,”—“des Dames St. Thomas,”—“des Dames Ursulines,”—“des Dames de la Visitation!”—“de l’Adoration Perpetuelle,”—“du St. Sacrement.”
Alas, how many pretty women, born to fulfil a better destiny, are mewed up in perpetual youth, within those dismal cloisters! Here, too, were the convents of the “Filles de l’Immaculée Conception,”—“de la St. Providence,” and finally “les Filles de Bonne Volonté.” It is the very region of repentant lovers, of heart-sick maids, and all the friars and holy nuns of the romances.
Towards the close of a summer’s evening, one’s fancy sees nothing here but visions and spectres. You will descend, in spite of your reason, with Madame Radcliffe, into the subterranean chambers of the convent, and into the solitary prisons, where you will see poor Elena and her iron table, her dead lantern, her black bread, her cruche of water, and her crucifix; and you will see the wretch Schedoni bare the bosom of the sleeping maid, hanging over the dagger. It is his own miniature!—his own daughter! And then you will walk through the long row of silent monks and smoky tapers, in the funeral of a broken-hearted sister, the sullen bell of the chapel giving news that a soul has fled.
The evening was still and solemn; and the sun just descending on your side of the globe; and lured by the novelty of the place, I travelled slowly onwards through a narrow lane to the Faubourg St. Marceau.
This street is different from all that I have seen in Paris; it is perhaps different from anything that is to be seen upon the earth. The houses are so immensely high that not a ray even in the brightest mid-day reaches the pavement, which is covered with a slimy mud. The darkened and grated windows give to the houses, the look of so many prisons. A chilling damp and horrid gloom invest you around; you feel stifled for want of air. Now and then, the whine of a dog, or the wailing of a beggar, interrupts the silence, and sometimes a sister of charity, wrapped in her hood and mantle, passes quick from one house to another. I went out of this street willingly, as it was growing more horrible by the coming night, into the purer atmosphere of the Seine. And thus ended my adventures for the day.
END OF VOL. I.
T. C. Savill, Printer, 107, St. Martin’s Lane.
[1] We learn from tradition that Julian never washed hands or face, or suffered any kind of ablution, unless, perhaps, at his christening. In a word, he was a very dirty emperor. Is it not strange that his “Baths” should be the only monument remaining of him in Paris? I presume they are named ironically, or from the old rule of non lavando.
[2] Louis, by a royal edict, ordered that no other building should be constructed in Paris until this work was completed, under a penalty of imprisonment and ten thousand francs fine. It was something in those days to be a king. One has now to ask the Deputies everything, even to gilding the ceilings of the Madelaine.
[3] It is called also the Place de la Concord, and the Place Louis XV.