|
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 de---- 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.
|
