Kabanata Kabanata 128 · 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-François 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 Molière with

an idea, was still in existence in September, 1845; it was for sale by

a bric-à-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_.