Kabanata Kabanata 125 · 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’Intrépide_, asked to be allowed

to enter the convent of the Petit-Picpus as lady resident. The Duc

d’Orléans 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.15

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.