1.C.6.6. THE LITTLE CONVENT
IN this enclosure of the Petit-Picpus there were three perfectly
distinct buildings,— the Great Convent, inhabited by
the nuns, the Boarding-school, where the scholars were lodged;
and lastly, what was called the Little Convent. It was a
building with a garden, in which lived all sorts of aged nuns
of various orders, the relics of cloisters destroyed in the Revolution;
a reunion of all the black, gray, and white medleys of
all communities and all possible varieties; what might be
called, if such a coupling of words is permissible, a sort of
harlequin convent.
When the Empire was established, all these poor old dispersed
and exiled women had been accorded permission to
come and take shelter under the wings of the
Bernardines-Benedictines. The government paid them a small pension,
the ladies of the Petit-Picpus received them cordially. It was
a singular pell-mell. Each followed her own rule, Sometimes
the pupils of the boarding-school were allowed, as a great
recreation, to pay them a visit; the result is, that all those
young memories have retained among other souvenirs that of
Mother Sainte-Bazile, Mother Sainte-Scolastique, and Mother
Jacob.
One of these refugees found herself almost at home. She
was a nun of Sainte-Aure, the only one of her order who had
survived. The ancient convent of the ladies of Sainte-Aure
occupied, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, this
very house of the Petit-Picpus, which belonged later to the
Benedictines of Martin Verga. This holy woman, too poor
to wear the magnificent habit of her order, which was a white
robe with a scarlet scapulary, had piously put it on a little
manikin, which she exhibited with complacency and which she
bequeathed to the house at her death. In 1824, only one nun
of this order remained; to-day, there remains only a doll.
In addition to these worthy mothers, some old society
women had obtained permission of the prioress, like Madame
Albertine, to retire into the Little Convent. Among the
number were Madame Beaufort d'Hautpoul and Marquise
Dufresne. Another was never known in the convent except
by the formidable noise which she made when she blew her
nose. The pupils called her Madame Vacarmini (hubbub).
About 1820 or 1821, Madame de Genlis, who was at that
time editing a little periodical publication called l'Intrepide,
asked to be allowed to enter the convent of the Petit-Picpus as
lady resident. The Duc d'Orleans recommended her. Uproar
in the hive; the vocal-mothers were all in a flutter; Madame
de Genlis had made romances. But she declared that she was
the first to detest them, and then, she had reached her fierce
stage of devotion. With the aid of God, and of the Prince,
she entered. She departed at the end of six or eight months,
alleging as a reason, that there was no shade in the garden.
The nuns were delighted. Although very old, she still played
the harp, and did it very well.
When she went away she left her mark in her cell. Madame
de Genlis was superstitious and a Latinist. These two words
furnish a tolerably good profile of her. A few years ago, there
were still to be seen, pasted in the inside of a little cupboard in
her cell in which she locked up her silverware and her jewels,
these five lines in Latin, written with her own hand in red ink
on yellow paper, and which, in her opinion, possessed the property
of frightening away robbers:—
Imparibus meritis pendent tria corpora ramis:
Dismas et Gesmas, media est divina potestas;
Alta petit Dismas, infelix, infima, Gesmas;
Nos et res nostras conservet summa potestas.
Hos versus dicas, ne tu furto tua perdas.
These verses in sixth century Latin raise the question
whether the two thieves of Calvary were named, as is commonly
believed, Dismas and Gestas, or Dismas and Gesmas.
This orthography might have confounded the pretensions put
forward in the last century by the Vicomte de Gestas, of a
descent from the wicked thief. However, the useful virtue
attached to these verses forms an article of faith in the order
of the Hospitallers.
The church of the house, constructed in such a manner as to
separate the Great Convent from the Boarding-school like a
veritable intrenchment, was, of course, common to the Boarding-school,
the Great Convent, and the Little Convent. The
public was even admitted by a sort of lazaretto entrance on
the street. But all was so arranged, that none of the inhabitants
of the cloister could see a face from the outside world.
Suppose a church whose choir is grasped in a gigantic hand,
and folded in such a manner as to form, not, as in ordinary
churches, a prolongation behind the altar, but a sort of hall,
or obscure cellar, to the right of the officiating priest; suppose
this hall to be shut off by a curtain seven feet in height, of
which we have already spoken; in the shadow of that curtain,
pile up on wooden stalls the nuns in the choir on the left, the
school-girls on the right, the lay-sisters and the novices at the
bottom, and you will have some idea of the nuns of the Petit-Picpus
assisting at divine service. That cavern, which was
called the choir, communicated with the cloister by a lobby.
The church was lighted from the garden. When the nuns
were present at services where their rule enjoined silence,
the public was warned of their presence only by the folding
seats of the stalls noisily rising and falling.