The great Pascal, in spite of the Jesuits’ noses, is buried here; and an old tower, in the neighbourhood, recals the memory of the renowned Abbey of St. Genevieve. I have visited, several times, the library of this institution, and paid my respects to its one hundred and fifty thousand volumes, and thirty thousand manuscripts. This, like all the other places of Paris, where they keep books, is filled constantly with readers, and, like every other institution of the kind, is open gratuitously to the public.
I spoke of Val de Grace in my last letter. A little to the east of it, and of not less historical importance, is the church of St. Medard; to which I stretched, also, one of my solitary walks, and took a seat among the worshippers. Faint hymns, chanted at a distance, as the still evening comes on, have lured many a wandering sinner from the wickedness of the world. This is the church so famous for its miracles, called the “convulsions,” which once filled the whole city with alarm; and were not discontinued, until the archbishop had placed a strong military guard around the tomb of father Paris. You know the placard put up by some wag on this occasion:
“De par le roi, defense à Dieu,
De faire miracle en ce lieu.”
The young girls used to have fits at this tomb, which gave them comical twitchings of the nerves. Some would bark all night long at the door of their chambers, and others leap about like frogs all day. Sister Rose supped the air with a spoon, as your babies do pap, and lived on it forty days; another swallowed a New Testament, bound in calf. Some had themselves hung, others crucified, and one, called Sister Rachel, when nailed to a cross, said she was quite happy—“qu’elle faisait dodo.” In their holy meetings, they beat, trampled, punctured, crucified, and burnt one another, without the least sentiment of pain. All this was done at St. Medard, under Louis XV., and attested by ten thousand witnesses.
Large packages of the earth were exported to work miracles, in the provinces and foreign countries. One of these miracles is told in a song of the Duchesse de Maine.
“Un decrotteur à la royale,
Du talon gauche estropié,
Obtint par grace speciale,
D’etre boiteux de l’autre pied.”
Some of these fanatics were found, forty years afterwards, in the dungeons of the Bastile, at its destruction in 1789.
There is one point in religion, in which there are no heretics out of Scotland—the music. The choir of voices, which assisted the organs in this church, seemed to be almost divine. One feminine voice, singing occasionally alone, had all the powers of enchantment; swelling sometimes into a strain of almost religious frenzy, and then melting softly away till there was nothing between it and silence; and just in front of me, and in full view, sat a handsome woman, wrapped entirely in her devotional enjoyments, who seemed placed there expressly to give effect to the music; her shoulders, arms, and features, all moved in exact unison with its harmony. I wish you could have seen her beautiful countenance as she presented it to the firmament; her sainted smile which beamed out and waned away upon her lips; the devout expression of her eyes, how illuminated as the music rose, how languishing in its dying notes; how she expired, and then came to life again! I do not hope to see again on the earth a more vivid picture of religious rapture.
Devotion, I believe, exalts a woman’s beauty to its highest perfection; there is no picture so beautiful as the Madonna, and, if I were a woman, I would be religious, if for no other motive, just from vanity. No one doubts that the human countenance is modified by the feelings cherished in the heart, and she who cherishes the mild and benevolent Christian affections, cannot be otherwise than very pretty. If there are any ugly women in the world, it is because they have not been brought up religiously. I sat thinking all this over, till night came on, and I felt one or two of sister Rose’s twitchings.
I am going to tell you next of the Chapelle de St. Nicholas; which you will find intrenched under the Palais de Justice. This is the “Sainte Chapelle,” made famous by the Lutrin of Boileau. It is the most classical, as well as the most holy of the churches of Paris. It was built by St. Louis. It was here he stowed away the relics he brought from the Holy Land. The “real crown” was one of them, which he bought for eighty thousand dollars, and which, walking barefooted, and bareheaded, and preceded by all the prelates and dignitaries of the kingdom, in solemn procession, he deposited in this shrine. There were, besides, Moses’ rod and a great many other such miracles, which the Emperor of Constantinople manufactured, they say, expressly for his use. And, also, a great variety of presents from popes, cardinals, and other holy men, of less equivocal value. A light was burnt here, as in the Temple of Vesta, and a priest waked and watched over them at all hours of the night. They are now—what remains from the sacrilegious and pilfering fingers of the Revolution—in the sacristy of Notre Dame; and their place is supplied by old musty records of the Palais de Justice; lawyers’ declarations, and nasty crim. con. cases—even to the receipt of the Marchioness de Brinvilliers for making the poison she tried so effectually upon her father, husband, and brother. Boileau is buried in this chapel, made immortal by his verses.