第 一百二十 章 · NUMBER 62 RUE PETIT-PICPUS

Nothing, half a century ago, more resembled every other carriage gate

than the carriage gate of Number 62 Rue Petit-Picpus. This entrance,

which usually stood ajar in the most inviting fashion, permitted a view

of two things, neither of which have anything very funereal about

them,—a courtyard surrounded by walls hung with vines, and the face of

a lounging porter. Above the wall, at the bottom of the court, tall

trees were visible. When a ray of sunlight enlivened the courtyard,

when a glass of wine cheered up the porter, it was difficult to pass

Number 62 Little Picpus Street without carrying away a smiling

impression of it. Nevertheless, it was a sombre place of which one had

had a glimpse.

The threshold smiled; the house prayed and wept.

If one succeeded in passing the porter, which was not easy,—which was

even nearly impossible for every one, for there was an _open sesame!_

which it was necessary to know,—if, the porter once passed, one entered

a little vestibule on the right, on which opened a staircase shut in

between two walls and so narrow that only one person could ascend it at

a time, if one did not allow one’s self to be alarmed by a daubing of

canary yellow, with a dado of chocolate which clothed this staircase,

if one ventured to ascend it, one crossed a first landing, then a

second, and arrived on the first story at a corridor where the yellow

wash and the chocolate-hued plinth pursued one with a peaceable

persistency. Staircase and corridor were lighted by two beautiful

windows. The corridor took a turn and became dark. If one doubled this

cape, one arrived a few paces further on, in front of a door which was

all the more mysterious because it was not fastened. If one opened it,

one found one’s self in a little chamber about six feet square, tiled,

well-scrubbed, clean, cold, and hung with nankin paper with green

flowers, at fifteen sous the roll. A white, dull light fell from a

large window, with tiny panes, on the left, which usurped the whole

width of the room. One gazed about, but saw no one; one listened, one

heard neither a footstep nor a human murmur. The walls were bare, the

chamber was not furnished; there was not even a chair.

One looked again, and beheld on the wall facing the door a quadrangular

hole, about a foot square, with a grating of interlacing iron bars,

black, knotted, solid, which formed squares—I had almost said meshes—of

less than an inch and a half in diagonal length. The little green

flowers of the nankin paper ran in a calm and orderly manner to those

iron bars, without being startled or thrown into confusion by their

funereal contact. Supposing that a living being had been so wonderfully

thin as to essay an entrance or an exit through the square hole, this

grating would have prevented it. It did not allow the passage of the

body, but it did allow the passage of the eyes; that is to say, of the

mind. This seems to have occurred to them, for it had been re-enforced

by a sheet of tin inserted in the wall a little in the rear, and

pierced with a thousand holes more microscopic than the holes of a

strainer. At the bottom of this plate, an aperture had been pierced

exactly similar to the orifice of a letter box. A bit of tape attached

to a bell-wire hung at the right of the grated opening.

If the tape was pulled, a bell rang, and one heard a voice very near at

hand, which made one start.

“Who is there?” the voice demanded.

It was a woman’s voice, a gentle voice, so gentle that it was mournful.

Here, again, there was a magical word which it was necessary to know.

If one did not know it, the voice ceased, the wall became silent once

more, as though the terrified obscurity of the sepulchre had been on

the other side of it.

If one knew the password, the voice resumed, “Enter on the right.”

One then perceived on the right, facing the window, a glass door

surmounted by a frame glazed and painted gray. On raising the latch and

crossing the threshold, one experienced precisely the same impression

as when one enters at the theatre into a grated _baignoire_, before the

grating is lowered and the chandelier is lighted. One was, in fact, in

a sort of theatre-box, narrow, furnished with two old chairs, and a

much-frayed straw matting, sparely illuminated by the vague light from

the glass door; a regular box, with its front just of a height to lean

upon, bearing a tablet of black wood. This box was grated, only the

grating of it was not of gilded wood, as at the opera; it was a

monstrous lattice of iron bars, hideously interlaced and riveted to the

wall by enormous fastenings which resembled clenched fists.

The first minutes passed; when one’s eyes began to grow used to this

cellar-like half-twilight, one tried to pass the grating, but got no

further than six inches beyond it. There he encountered a barrier of

black shutters, re-enforced and fortified with transverse beams of wood

painted a gingerbread yellow. These shutters were divided into long,

narrow slats, and they masked the entire length of the grating. They

were always closed. At the expiration of a few moments one heard a

voice proceeding from behind these shutters, and saying:—

“I am here. What do you wish with me?”

It was a beloved, sometimes an adored, voice. No one was visible.

Hardly the sound of a breath was audible. It seemed as though it were a

spirit which had been evoked, that was speaking to you across the walls

of the tomb.

If one chanced to be within certain prescribed and very rare

conditions, the slat of one of the shutters opened opposite you; the

evoked spirit became an apparition. Behind the grating, behind the

shutter, one perceived so far as the grating permitted sight, a head,

of which only the mouth and the chin were visible; the rest was covered

with a black veil. One caught a glimpse of a black guimpe, and a form

that was barely defined, covered with a black shroud. That head spoke

with you, but did not look at you and never smiled at you.

The light which came from behind you was adjusted in such a manner that

you saw her in the white, and she saw you in the black. This light was

symbolical.

Nevertheless, your eyes plunged eagerly through that opening which was

made in that place shut off from all glances. A profound vagueness

enveloped that form clad in mourning. Your eyes searched that

vagueness, and sought to make out the surroundings of the apparition.

At the expiration of a very short time you discovered that you could

see nothing. What you beheld was night, emptiness, shadows, a wintry

mist mingled with a vapor from the tomb, a sort of terrible peace, a

silence from which you could gather nothing, not even sighs, a gloom in

which you could distinguish nothing, not even phantoms.

What you beheld was the interior of a cloister.

It was the interior of that severe and gloomy edifice which was called

the Convent of the Bernardines of the Perpetual Adoration. The box in

which you stood was the parlor. The first voice which had addressed you

was that of the portress who always sat motionless and silent, on the

other side of the wall, near the square opening, screened by the iron

grating and the plate with its thousand holes, as by a double visor.

The obscurity which bathed the grated box arose from the fact that the

parlor, which had a window on the side of the world, had none on the

side of the convent. Profane eyes must see nothing of that sacred

place.

Nevertheless, there was something beyond that shadow; there was a

light; there was life in the midst of that death. Although this was the

most strictly walled of all convents, we shall endeavor to make our way

into it, and to take the reader in, and to say, without transgressing

the proper bounds, things which story-tellers have never seen, and

have, therefore, never described.