1.C.6.9. A CENTURY UNDER A GUIMPE
SINCE we are engaged in giving details as to what the convent
of the Petit-Picpus was in former times, and since we
have ventured to open a window on that discreet retreat, the
reader will permit us one other little digression, utterly foreign
to this book, but characteristic and useful, since it shows that
the cloister even has its original figures.
In the Little Convent there was a centenarian who came
from the Abbey of Fontevrault. She had even been in society
before the Revolution. She talked a great deal of M. de
Miromesnil, Keeper of the Seals under Louis XVI. and of a
Presidentess Duplat, with whom she had been very intimate.
It was her pleasure and her vanity to drag in these names on
every pretext. She told wonders of the Abbey of Fontevrault,
— that it was like a city, and that there were streets in the
monastery.
She talked with a Picard accent which amused the pupils.
Every year, she solemnly renewed her vows, and at the moment
of taking the oath, she said to the priest, "Monseigneur Saint-Francois
gave it to Monseigneur Saint-Julien, Monseigneur
Saint-Julien gave it to Monseigneur Saint-Eusebius, Monseigneur
Saint-Eusebius gave it to Monseigneur Saint-Procopius,
etc., etc.; and thus I give it to you, father." And the school-girls
would begin to laugh, not in their sleeves, but under
their veils; charming little stifled laughs which made the
vocal mothers frown.
On another occasion, the centenarian was telling stories.
She said that in her youth the Bernardine monks were every
whit as good as the mousquetaires. It was a century which
spoke through her, but it was the eighteenth century. She told
about the custom of the four wines, which existed before the
Revolution in Champagne and Bourgogne. When a great
personage, a marshal of France, a prince, a duke, and a peer,
traversed a town in Burgundy or Champagne, the city fathers
came out to harangue him and presented him with four silver
gondolas into which they had poured four different sorts of
wine. On the first goblet this inscription could be read,
monkey wine; on the second, lion wine; on the third, sheep
wine; on the fourth, hog wine. These four legends express
the four stages descended by the drunkard; the first, intoxication,
which enlivens; the second, that which irritates; the
third, that which dulls; and the fourth, that which brutalizes.
In a cupboard, under lock and key, she kept a mysterious
object of which she thought a great deal. The rule of Fontevrault
did not forbid this. She would not show this object to
anyone. She shut herself up, which her rule allowed her to
do, and hid herself, every time that she desired to contemplate
it. If she heard a footstep in the corridor, she closed the cupboard
again as hastily as it was possible with her aged hands.
As soon as it was mentioned to her, she became silent, she who
was so fond of talking. The most curious were baffled by her
silence and the most tenacious by her obstinacy. Thus it furnished
a subject of comment for all those who were unoccupied
or bored in the convent. What could that treasure of the centenarian
be, which was so precious and so secret? Some holy
book, no doubt? Some unique chaplet? Some authentic
relic? They lost themselves in conjectures. When the poor
old woman died, they rushed to her cupboard more hastily
than was fitting, perhaps, and opened it. They found the object
beneath a triple linen cloth, like some consecrated paten.
It was a Faenza platter representing little Loves flitting away
pursued by apothecary lads armed with enormous syringes.
The chase abounds in grimaces and in comical postures. One
of the charming little Loves is already fairly spitted. He is
resisting, fluttering his tiny wings, and still making an effort
to fly, but the dancer is laughing with a satanical air. Moral:
Love conquered by the colic. This platter, which is very curious,
and which had, possibly, the honor of furnishing Moliere
with an idea, was still in existence in September, 1845; it was
for sale by a bric-a-brac merchant in the Boulevard Beaumarchais.
This
good old woman would not receive any visits from outside
because, said she, the parlor is too gloomy.