Bab Bab 124 · 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-Benoît. 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 upstairs 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 Quélen 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’Œil de Bœuf_. It was in this gallery, which had only a

circular bay, an _œil de bœuf_, 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

Léon, and who died afterward, in 1830, as cardinal and Archbishop of

Besançon. 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 Sérent, 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

Zétulbé, 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

Zétulbé. 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 _émigré_ gentleman, blind and penniless,

who was playing his flute in his attic, in order to pass the time.