1.C.6.5. DISTRACTIONS
ABOVE the door of the refectory this prayer, which was
called the white Paternoster, and which possessed the property
of bearing people straight to paradise, was inscribed in large
black letters:—
"Little white Paternoster, which God made, which God said,
which God placed in paradise. In the evening, when I went to
bed, I found three angels sitting on my bed, one at the foot,
two at the head, the good Virgin Mary in the middle, who
told me to lie down without hesitation. The good God is my
father, the good Virgin is my mother, the three apostles are
my brothers, the three virgins are my sisters. The shirt in
which God was born envelopes my body; Saint Margaret's
cross is written on my breast. Madame the Virgin was walking
through the meadows, weeping for God, when she met
M. Saint John. 'Monsieur Saint John, whence come you?'
'I come from Ave Salus.' 'You have not seen the good God;
where is he?' 'He is on the tree of the Cross, his feet hanging,
his hands nailed, a little cap of white thorns on his head.'
Whoever shall say this thrice at eventide, thrice in the morning,
shall win paradise at the last."
In 1827 this characteristic orison had disappeared from the
wall under a triple coating of daubing paint. At the present
time it is finally disappearing from the memories of several
who were young girls then, and who are old women now.
A large crucifix fastened to the wall completed the decoration
of this refectory, whose only door, as we think we have
mentioned, opened on the garden. Two narrow tables, each
flanked by two wooden benches, formed two long parallel lines
from one end to the other of the refectory. The walls were
white, the tables were black; these two mourning colors constitute
the only variety in convents. The meals were plain, and the
food of the children themselves severe. A single dish of
meat and vegetables combined, or salt fish— such was their
luxury. This meagre fare, which was reserved for the pupils
alone, was, nevertheless, an exception. The children ate in
silence, under the eye of the mother whose turn it was, who,
if a fly took a notion to fly or to hum against the rule, opened
and shut a wooden book from time to time. This silence
was seasoned with the lives of the saints, read aloud from a
little pulpit with a desk, which was situated at the foot of
the crucifix. The reader was one of the big girls, in weekly
turn. At regular distances, on the bare tables, there were
large, varnished bowls in which the pupils washed their own
silver cups and knives and forks, and into which they sometimes
threw some scrap of tough meat or spoiled fish; this
was punished. These bowls were called
ronds d'eau. The
child who broke the silence "made a cross with her tongue."
Where? On the ground. She licked the pavement. The
dust, that end of all joys, was charged with the chastisement
of those poor little rose-leaves which had been guilty of
chirping.
There was in the convent a book which has never been
printed except as a unique copy, and which it is forbidden to
read. It is the rule of Saint-Benoit. An arcanum which no
profane eye must penetrate. Nemo regulas, seu constitutiones
nostras, externis communicabit.
The pupils one day succeeded in getting possession of this
book, and set to reading it with avidity, a reading which was
often interrupted by the fear of being caught, which caused
them to close the volume precipitately.
From the great danger thus incurred they derived but a
very moderate amount of pleasure. The most "interesting
thing" they found were some unintelligible pages about the
sins of young boys.
They played in an alley of the garden bordered with a few
shabby fruit-trees. In spite of the extreme surveillance and
the severity of the punishments administered, when the wind
had shaken the trees, they sometimes succeeded in picking up
a green apple or a spoiled apricot or an inhabited pear on the
sly. I will now cede the privilege of speech to a letter which
lies before me, a letter written five and twenty years ago by
an old pupil, now Madame la Duchesse d — one of the most
elegant women in Paris. I quote literally: "One hides one's
pear or one's apple as best one may. When one goes up stairs
to put the veil on the bed before supper, one stuffs them under
one's pillow and at night one eats them in bed, and when one
cannot do that, one eats them in the closet." That was one
of their greatest luxuries.
Once— it was at the epoch of the visit from the archbishop
to the convent— one of the young girls, Mademoiselle Bouchard,
who was connected with the Montmorency family, laid
a wager that she would ask for a day's leave of absence— an
enormity in so austere a community. The wager was accepted,
but not one of those who bet believed that she would do it.
When the moment came, as the archbishop was passing in
front of the pupils, Mademoiselle Bouchard, to the indescribable
terror of her companions, stepped out of the ranks, and
said, "Monseigneur, a day's leave of absence." Mademoiselle
Bouchard was tall, blooming, with the prettiest little rosy face
in the world. M. de Quelen smiled and said, "What, my dear
child, a day's leave of absence! Three days if you like. I
grant you three days." The prioress could do nothing; the
archbishop had spoken. Horror of the convent, but joy of
the pupil. The effect may be imagined.
This stern cloister was not so well walled off, however, but
that the life of the passions of the outside world, drama, and
even romance, did not make their way in. To prove this, we
will confine ourselves to recording here and to briefly mentioning
a real and incontestable fact, which, however, bears no
reference in itself to, and is not connected by any thread
whatever with the story which we are relating. We mention
the fact for the sake of completing the physiognomy of the
convent in the reader's mind.
About this time there was in the convent a mysterious person
who was not a nun, who was treated with great respect,
and who was addressed as Madame Albertine. Nothing was
known about her, save that she was mad, and that in the
world she passed for dead. Beneath this history it was said
there lay the arrangements of fortune necessary for a great
marriage.
This woman, hardly thirty years of age, of dark complexion
and tolerably pretty, had a vague look in her large black eyes.
Could she see? There was some doubt about this. She glided
rather than walked, she never spoke; it was not quite known
whether she breathed. Her nostrils were livid and pinched as
after yielding up their last sigh. To touch her hand was like
touching snow. She possessed a strange spectral grace.
Wherever she entered, people felt cold. One day a sister, on
seeing her pass, said to another sister, "She passes for a dead
woman." "Perhaps she is one," replied the other.
A hundred tales were told of Madame Albertine. This
arose from the eternal curiosity of the pupils. In the chapel
there was a gallery called L'OEil de Boeuf. It was in this
gallery, which had only a circular bay, an oeil de boeuf, that
Madame Albertine listened to the offices. She always occupied
it alone because this gallery, being on the level of the first
story, the preacher or the officiating priest could be seen,
which was interdicted to the nuns. One day the pulpit was
occupied by a young priest of high rank, M. Le Duc de Rohan,
peer of France, officer of the Red Musketeers in 1815 when
he was Prince de Leon, and who died afterward, in 1830, as
cardinal and Archbishop of Besancon. It was the first time
that M. de Rohan had preached at the Petit-Picpus convent.
Madame Albertine usually preserved perfect calmness and
complete immobility during the sermons and services. That
day, as soon as she caught sight of M. de Rohan, she half
rose, and said, in a loud voice, amid the silence of the chapel,
"Ah! Auguste!" The whole community turned their
heads in amazement, the preacher raised his eyes, but
Madame Albertine had relapsed into her immobility. A
breath from the outer world, a flash of life, had passed
for an instant across that cold and lifeless face and had
then vanished, and the mad woman had become a corpse
again.
Those two words, however, had set every one in the convent
who had the privilege of speech to chattering. How many
things were contained in that "Ah! Auguste!" what revelations!
M. de Rohan's name really was Auguste. It was evident
that Madame Albertine belonged to the very highest
society, since she knew M. de Rohan, and that her own rank
there was of the highest, since she spoke thus familiarly of so
great a lord, and that there existed between them some connection,
of relationship, perhaps, but a very close one in any
case, since she knew his "pet name."
Two very severe duchesses, Mesdames de Choiseul and de
Serent, often visited the community, whither they penetrated,
no doubt, in virtue of the privilege Magnates mulieres, and
caused great consternation in the boarding-school. When
these two old ladies passed by, all the poor young girls
trembled and dropped their eyes.
Moreover, M. de Rohan, quite unknown to himself, was an
object of attention to the school-girls. At that epoch he had
just been made, while waiting for the episcopate, vicar-general
of the Archbishop of Paris. It was one of his habits to come
tolerably often to celebrate the offices in the chapel of the
nuns of the Petit-Picpus. Not one of the young recluses
could see him, because of the serge curtain, but he had a sweet
and rather shrill voice, which they had come to know and to
distinguish. He had been a mousquetaire, and then, he was
said to be very coquettish, that his handsome brown hair was
very well dressed in a roll around his head, and that he had a
broad girdle of magnificent moire, and that his black cassock
was of the most elegant cut in the world. He held a great
place in all these imaginations of sixteen years.
Not a sound from without made its way into the convent.
But there was one year when the sound of a flute penetrated
thither. This was an event, and the girls who were at school
there at the time still recall it.
It was a flute which was played in the neighborhood. This
flute always played the same air, an air which is very far away
nowadays,— "My Zetulbe, come reign o'er my soul,"— and
it was heard two or three times a day. The young girls passed
hours in listening to it, the vocal mothers were upset by it,
brains were busy, punishments descended in showers. This
lasted for several months. The girls were all more or less in
love with the unknown musician. Each one dreamed that she
was Zetulbe. The sound of the flute proceeded from the
direction of the Rue Droit-Mur; and they would have given
anything, compromised everything, attempted anything for
the sake of seeing, of catching a glance, if only for a second,
of the "young man" who played that flute so deliciously,
and who, no doubt, played on all these souls at the same
time. There were some who made their escape by a back
door, and ascended to the third story on the Rue Droit-Mur
side, in order to attempt to catch a glimpse through the gaps.
Impossible! One even went so far as to thrust her arm
through the grating, and to wave her white handkerchief.
Two were still bolder. They found means to climb on a roof,
and risked their lives there, and succeeded at last in seeing
"the young man." He was an old
emigre gentleman, blind
and penniless, who was playing his flute in his attic, in order
to pass the time.