portion! Save your life! M. Madeleine, you can dispose of an old man
as you please."
An admirable joy had transfigured the aged gardener, and his face
seemed radiant.
"What do you wish me to do?" he continued.
"I will explain. Have you a room?"
"I have a cottage behind the ruins of the old convent, in a corner
which no one visits, with three rooms."
"Good," said Jean Valjean; "now I will ask two things of you."
"What are they, M. le Maire?"
"First, that you will tell nobody what you know about me; and secondly,
that you will not try to learn anything further."
"As you please. I know that you can do nothing but what is honest, and
that you have ever been a man after God's heart. And then, again, it
was you who got me this situation, and I am at your service."
"Enough; now come with me, and we will go and fetch the child."
"Ah," said Fauchelevent,"there is a child!"
He did not add a word, but followed Jean Valjean as a dog follows its
master. In less than half an hour, Cosette, who had become rosy again
by the heat of a good fire, was asleep in the old gardener's bed. Jean
Valjean had put on his cravat and coat again; the hat thrown over
the wall had been found and picked up, and Fauchelevent took off his
knee-cap and bell, which now adorned the wall by the side of a door.
The two men were seated near the fire at a table on which Fauchelevent
had placed a lump of cheese, biscuits, a bottle of wine, and two
glasses, and the old man said to Jean Valjean as he laid his hand on
his knee,--
"Ah, Father Madeleine! you did not recognize me at once; you save
people's lives and forget them afterwards! Oh, that is wrong, for they
remember you; you are an ungrateful man."
CHAPTER X.
HOW JAVERT ONLY FOUND THE NEST.
The events of which we have just seen the back, so to speak, had
occurred under the simplest conditions. When Jean Valjean, on the
night of the day on which Javert arrested him by Fantine's death-bed,
broke out of M---- jail, the police supposed that the escaped convict
would proceed to Paris. Paris is a maelstrom in which everything is
lost and disappears in the whirlpool of the streets: no forest can
conceal a man so well as that crowd, and fugitives of every description
are aware of the fact. They go to Paris to be swallowed up, for that
is at times a mode of safety. The police are aware of this too, and
it is at Paris they seek what they have lost elsewhere. They sought
there the ex-mayor of M----, and Javert was summoned to assist in the
search, and in truth powerfully assisted in recapturing Jean Valjean.
The zeal and intelligence he displayed in this office were noticed
by M. Chabouillet, Secretary to the Prefecture under Count Anglès,
and this gentleman, who had before been a friend to Javert, had the
police-inspector of M---- appointed to the Paris district. Here Javert
proved himself variously and--let us say it, though the word seems
inappropriate when applied to such services--honorably useful.
He thought no more of Jean Valjean--with these dogs ever on the hunt
the wolf of to-day causes the wolf of yesterday to be forgotten--until
in December, 1823, he, who never read newspapers, read one. But Javert,
who was a legitimist, was anxious to learn the details of the triumphal
entry of the "Prince Generalissimo" into Bayonne. When he had finished
the article that interested him a name--the name of Jean Valjean at
the foot of a column--attracted him. The newspaper announced that the
convict Jean Valjean was dead, and published the fact in such formal
terms that Javert did not doubt it. He musing said, "That is the best
bolt;" then threw away the paper, and thought no more of the subject.
Some time after, it happened that a report was sent by the Prefecture
of the Seine et Oise to that of Paris about the abduction of a child,
which took place, it was said, under peculiar circumstances, in the
parish of Montfermeil. A little girl of seven or eight years of age,
who had been intrusted by her mother to a publican in the town, had
been stolen by a stranger. The child answered to the name of Cosette,
and her mother was a certain Fantine, who had died in an hospital, it
was not known when or where. This report passed under Javert's eyes,
and rendered him thoughtful. The name of Fantine was familiar to him;
he remembered that Jean Valjean had made him laugh by asking him for
a respite of three days to go and fetch this creature's child. He
remembered that Jean Valjean was arrested at Paris at the very moment
when he was getting into the Montfermeil coach, and some facts had led
to the supposition at the time that he had taken a trip to the vicinity
of the village on the previous day, for he had not been seen in the
village itself. What was his business at Montfermeil? No one was able
to guess; but Javert now understood it. Fantine's daughter was there,
and Jean Valjean had gone to fetch her. Now this child had just been
stolen by a stranger. Who could the stranger be? Could it be Jean
Valjean? But he was dead. Javert, without saying a word to anybody,
took the coach at the "Pewter Platter," and went off to Montfermeil.
He expected to find here a great clearing up, but only found a great
obscurity. At the beginning, the Thénardier, in their vexation, had
chattered, and the disappearance of the Lark produced a sensation in
the village. There were at once several versions of the story, which
finally settled down into an abduction, and hence the police report.
Still, after he had got over his first outburst of temper, Thénardier,
with his admirable instinct, very speedily comprehended that it is
never useful to set the authorities at work, and that his complaint
about the abduction of Cosette would have the primary result of fixing
the flashing gaze of justice upon himself, and many dark matters he was
mixed up in. The thing that owls least like is to have a candle brought
to them. And then, again, how would he get out of the fifteen hundred
francs which he had received? He stopped short, put a gag in his wife's
mouth, and affected amazement when people spoke about "the stolen
child." He did not at all understand; he had certainly complained
at the first moment about his little darling being taken from him so
suddenly; he should have liked to keep her for two or three days longer
through affection; but it was her grandfather who had come to fetch
her in the most natural way in the world. He added the "grandfather,"
which produced a good effect, and it was on this story that Javert
fell upon reaching Montfermeil: the grandfather caused Jean Valjean to
fade out of memory. Javert, however, drove a few questions like probes
into Thénardier's story: "Who was this grandfather, and what was his
name?" Thénardier answered simply, "He is a rich farmer; I saw his
passport, and I fancy his name was M. Guillaume Lambert." Lambert is a
respectable and most reassuring name, and so Javert returned to Paris.
"Jean Valjean is really dead," he said to himself, "and I am an ass."
He was beginning to forget the whole affair again, when in the course
of March, 1824, he heard talk of a peculiar character who lived in the
parish of St. Médard, and was surnamed the "beggar who gives alms."
This man was said to be an annuitant, whose name no one exactly knew,
and who lived alone with a little girl of eight years of age, who
knew nothing about herself except that she came from Montfermeil.
Montfermeil! that name constantly returned, and made Javert prick
up his ears. An old begging spy, an ex-beadle, to whom this person
was very charitable, added a few more details. "He was a very stern
person; he never went out till night; he spoke to nobody, except
to the poor now and then, and let no one approach him. He wore a
horrible old yellow coat, which was worth several millions, as it was
lined all through with bank-notes." This decidedly piqued Javert's
curiosity. In order to see this annuitant closer without startling
him, he one day borrowed the beadle's rags and the place where the old
spy crouched every evening, snuffling his orisons through his nose,
and spying between his prayers. "The suspicious individual" really
came up to Javert, thus travestied, and gave him alms. At this moment
Javert raised his head, and the shock which Jean Valjean received on
fancying that he recognized Javert, Javert received on fancying that
he recognized Jean Valjean. Still, the darkness might have deceived
him; and Jean Valjean's death was official. Javert felt serious doubts;
and when in doubt, Javert, a scrupulous man, never put his hand on
the person's collar. He followed his man to No. 50-52, and made the
old woman talk, which was no difficult task. She confirmed the fact
of the great-coat lined with millions, and told the story about the
thousand-franc note; she had seen it; she had felt it! Javert hired a
room, and took possession of it that same night. He listened at the
door of the mysterious lodger, in the hope of hearing his voice; but
Jean Valjean saw his candle through the key-hole, and foiled the spy by
holding his tongue.
On the next day Jean Valjean decamped; but the noise of the five-franc
piece which he let drop was noticed by the old woman, who supposed that
he was about to leave, and hastened to warn Javert. Hence, when Jean
Valjean left the house at night, Javert was waiting for him behind the
trees with two men. Javert had requested assistance at the Prefecture,
but had not mentioned the name of the individual whom he hoped to
seize. That was his secret, and he kept it for three reasons: first,
because the slightest indiscretion might give Jean Valjean the alarm;
secondly, because laying hands on an old escaped convict supposed to be
dead, on a condemned man whom justice had already classified forever
among "the malefactors of the most dangerous class," was a magnificent
success, which the older policemen of Paris would certainly not leave
to a new-comer like Javert,--and he was afraid lest he might be robbed
of his galley-slave; lastly, because Javert, having artistic tastes,
was fond of anything unexpected. He hated those successes which are
deflowered by being talked of a long time beforehand, and he liked to
elaborate his masterpieces in the darkness and suddenly unveil them.
Javert followed Jean Valjean from tree to tree, and then from street
corner to street corner, and had not once taken his eye off him; even
at the moment when Jean Valjean fancied himself the safest, Javert's
eye was upon him. Why did Javert not arrest him, though? Because he was
still in doubt. It must be borne in mind that at this period the police
were not exactly at their ease, and the free press annoyed them. A few
arbitrary arrests, denounced by the newspapers, had found an echo in
the Chambers, and rendered the Prefecture timid. Attacking individual
liberty was a serious matter; the agents were afraid of being deceived,
for the Prefect made them answerable, and a mistake was dismissal.
Just imagine the effect which would have been produced in Paris by the
following short paragraph reproduced by twenty papers,--"Yesterday
an old white-haired grandfather, a respectable fund-holder, who was
taking a walk with his granddaughter, eight years of age, was arrested
and taken to the House of Detention as an escaped convict." Let us
repeat also that Javert had scruples of his own; the warnings of his
conscience were added to those of the Prefect, and he really doubted.
Jean Valjean had his back turned to him, and was walking in the dark;
sorrow, anxiety, despondency, the fresh misfortune of being compelled
to fly by night and seek a chance refuge for Cosette and himself in
Paris, the necessity of regulating his pace by that of a child,--all
this had unconsciously changed Jean Valjean's demeanor, and imparted
to him such a senility, that the very police, incarnated in Javert,
might be deceived and were deceived. The impossibility of approaching
close, his attire as an old émigré tutor, Thénardier's statement
which made him out a grandpapa, and lastly, the belief in his death
at the galleys, added to the uncertainty that clouded Javert's mind.
For a moment he had the idea of suddenly asking for his papers; but
if the man was not Jean Valjean, and if he were not a respectable
fund-holder, he was in all probability some fellow deeply entangled in
the meshes of Parisian crime; some leader of a band who gave alms to
hide his other talents, and who had his "pals," his accomplices, and
his lurking-places, where he could conceal himself. All the turnings
this man made in the streets seemed to indicate that all was not quite
right with him, and arresting him too quickly would be "killing the
goose with the golden eggs." Where was the harm of waiting? Javert felt
quite certain that he could not escape. He walked along, therefore,
in great perplexity, asking himself a hundred questions about this
enigmatical personage. It was not till some time after that he
decidedly recognized Jean Valjean in the Rue Pontoise, by the brilliant
light that poured from a wine-shop.
There are only two beings in the world that thrill profoundly,--the
mother who recovers her child, and the tiger that finds its prey
again; but Javert had the same thrill. So soon as he had positively
recognized Jean Valjean, the formidable convict, he noticed that he
had only two companions, and asked for support at the police office in
the Rue Pontoise. Before catching hold of a thorn-bush, people put on
gloves. This delay and the halt at the Rollin Square to arrange with
his agents all but made him lose the trail; but he quickly guessed
that Jean Valjean wished to place the river between himself and his
hunters. He hung his head and reflected, like a blood-hound putting
its nose to the ground to lift the scent, and then, with the powerful
correctness of his instinct, walked to the Austerlitz bridge. One
remark of the toll-collector's put him on his track. "Have you seen
a man with a little girl?" "I made him pay two sous," the collector
answered. Javert reached the bridge just in time to see Jean Valjean
leading Cosette across the moonlit square; he saw him enter the Rue du
Chemin Vert St. Antoine; he thought of the blind alley arranged there
like a trap, and the sole issue from it by the little Rue Picpus; and
in order to stop the earth, as sportsmen say, he sent off a policeman
by a detour to guard the issue. A patrol, which was returning to the
arsenal, happening to pass, he requested its assistance; for in such
games as this soldiers are trumps, and, moreover, it is a principle
that, in forcing a boar from its lair, the hunter must be scientific,
and there must be a strong pack of hounds. These arrangements made,
Javert, feeling that Jean Valjean was caught between the blind alley on
the right, his own agent on the left, and himself behind, took a pinch
of snuff. Then he began playing and enjoying a delicious and infernal
moment; he let his man go before him, knowing that he held him, but
desiring to defer as long as possible the moment of arresting him;
delighted at feeling him caught, and at seeing him free, and watching
him with the pleasure of the spider that lets the fly flutter for a
while, and the cat that lets the mouse run. The claw and the talon
have a monstrous sensuality in the fluttering movements of the animal
imprisoned in their prisons. What a delight such a strangling must
be! Javert was playing. The meshes of his net were so solidly made,
he was certain of success, and now he only needed to close his hand.
Accompanied as he was, the idea of resistance was impossible, however
energetic, vigorous, and desperate Jean Valjean might be.
Javert advanced slowly, examining and searching as he passed every
corner of the street, like the pockets of a thief; but when he reached
the centre of the web he did not find his fly. We can imagine his
exasperation. He questioned his watchmen, but they quietly declared
that they had not seen the man pass. It happens at times that a stag
will escape with the pack at its heels, and in such cases the oldest
huntsmen know not what to say. In a disappointment of this nature
Artonge exclaimed,--"It is not a stag, but a sorcerer." Javert would
have gladly uttered the same cry, for his disappointment was midway
between despair and fury.
It is certain that errors were committed by Napoleon in the Russian
war, by Alexander in the Indian war, by Cæsar in his African war, by
Cyrus in the Scythian war, and by Javert in his campaign against Jean
Valjean. He was probably wrong in hesitating to recognize the ex-galley
slave, for a glance ought to have been sufficient for him. He was
wrong in not apprehending him purely and simply at No. 50-52. He was
wrong in not arresting him, upon recognition, in the Rue Pontoise.
He was wrong to arrange with his colleagues in the bright moonlight,
although certainly advice is useful, and it is as well to interrogate
those dogs which deserve credence. But the hunter cannot take too many
precautions when he is following restless animals, like the wolf and
the convict; and Javert, by displaying too much anxiety in setting
the blood-hounds on the track, alarmed his game and started it off.
Above all, he was wrong, on finding the trail again of the Austerlitz
bridge, in playing the dangerous and foolish trick of holding such a
man by a string. He fancied himself stronger than he really was, and
that he could play with the lion as if it were a mouse. At the same
time he imagined himself too weak when he fancied that he must procure
help; it was a fatal precaution, and the loss of precious time. Javert
committed all these faults, but for all that was not the less one of
the cleverest and most certain spies that ever existed. He was, in
the full acceptation of the term, a dog that runs cunning; but where
is the man who is perfect? Great strategists have their eclipses, and
great follies are often made, like stout ropes, of a multitude of
fibres. Take the cable thread by thread, catch hold of all the small
determining motives separately, and you break them one after the other,
and say to yourself, "It is only that;" but twist them together and you
have an enormity. It is Attila hesitating between Marcianus in the East
and Valentinianus in the West; it is Hannibal delaying at Capua; it is
Danton falling asleep at Arcis-sur-Aube.
However this may be, even at the moment when Javert perceived that Jean
Valjean had slipped from his clutches he did not lose his head. Certain
that the convict could not be very far off, he established watches,
organized mousetraps and ambuscades, and beat up the quarter the whole
night through. The first thing he saw was the cut cord of the lantern.
This was a valuable sign, which, however, led him astray so far that it
made him turn all his attention to the Genrot blind alley. There are
in this alley low walls, surrounding gardens which skirt open fields,
and Jean Valjean had evidently fled in that direction. The truth is,
that if he had gone a little farther down the blind alley he would in
all probability have done so and been a lost man. Javert explored the
gardens and fields as if looking for a needle, and at daybreak he left
two intelligent men on duty, and returned to the Prefecture of Police,
looking as hang-dog as a spy captured by a robber.
BOOK VI
PETIT PICPUS.
CHAPTER I
NO. 62, RUE PICPUS.
Half a century ago nothing more resembled any ordinary porte-cochère
than that of No. 62, Petite Rue Picpus. This door, generally half
open in the most inviting manner, allowed you to see two things which
are not of a very mournful nature,--a court-yard with walls covered
with vines, and the face of a lounging porter. Above the bottom wall
tall trees could be seen, and when a sunbeam enlivened the yard, and
a glass of wine had enlivened the porter, it was difficult to pass
before No. 62 and not carry away a laughing idea. And yet, you had had
a glimpse of a very gloomy place. The threshold smiled, but the house
prayed and wept. If you succeeded, which was not easy, in passing the
porter--as was, indeed, impossible for nearly all, for there was an
"Open, Sesame," which it was necessary to know--you entered on the
right a small hall from which ran a staircase enclosed between two
walls, and so narrow that only one person could go up at a time: if
you were not frightened by the canary-colored plaster and chocolate
wainscot of this staircase, and still boldly ascended, you crossed two
landings and found yourself in a passage on the first floor, where
the yellow distemper and chocolate skirting-board followed you with a
quiet pertinacity. The staircase and passage were lighted by two fine
windows, but the latter soon made a bend and became dark. When you had
doubled this cape, you found yourself before a door, which was the more
mysterious because it was not closed. You pushed it open, and found
yourself in a small room about six feet square, well scrubbed, clean,
and frigid, and hung with a yellow-green sprigged paper, at fifteen
sous the piece. A white pale light came through a large window with
small panes, which was on the left, and occupied the whole width of the
room; you looked about you, but saw nobody; you listened, but heard
neither a footstep nor a human sound; the walls were bare, and the room
unfurnished--there was not even a chair.
You looked again, and saw in the wall facing the door a square hole
covered with a black knotty substantial cross-barred grating, which
formed diamonds--I had almost written meshes--at least an inch and a
half across. The little green sprigs on the yellow paper came right up
to these bars, calmly and orderly, and the funereal contact did not
make them start or wither. Even supposing that any human being had been
so wondrously thin as to attempt to go in or out by the square hole,
the bars would have prevented him: but though they did not let the
body pass, the eyes, that is to say, the mind, could. It seemed as if
this had been thought of, for it had been lined with a tin plate, in
which were bored thousands of holes more microscopic than those of a
strainer. Beneath this plate was an opening exactly like the mouth of
a letter-box, and a bell-wire hung by the side of this hole. If you
pulled this wire, a bell tinkled, and you heard a voice close to you
which made you start.
"Who is there?" the voice asked.
It was a female voice, a gentle voice, so gentle that it was
melancholy. Here, again, there was a magic word which it was necessary
to know; if you did not know it, the voice ceased, and the wall became
silent again, as if the terrifying darkness of the tomb were on the
other side. If you knew the word, the voice continued,--"Turn to the
right." You then noticed, facing the window, a door, the upper part
of which was of gray painted glass. You raised the latch, walked
in, and experienced precisely the same expression as when you enter
a box at the theatre, before the gilt grating has been lowered and
the chandelier lighted. You were in fact in a species of box, scarce
lighted by the faint light that came through the glass door, narrow,
furnished with two old chairs and a ragged sofa,--a real box with a
black entablature to represent the front. This box had a grating; but
it was not made of gilt wood as at the opera, but was a monstrous
trellis-work of frightfully interlaced iron bars, fastened to the
wall by enormous clamps that resembled clenched fists. When the first
few moments were past, and your eye began to grow accustomed to this
cellar-like gloom, you tried to look through the grating, but could not
see more than six inches beyond it; there it met a barrier of black
shutters, connected and strengthened by cross-beams, and painted of a
ginger-bread yellow. These shutters were jointed, divided into long
thin planks, and covered the whole width of the grating; they were
always closed. At the expiration of a few minutes you heard a voice
calling to you from behind the shutters, and saying to you,--
"I am here; what do you want with me?"
It was a loved voice, sometimes an adored voice, but you saw nobody,
and could scarce hear the sound of breathing. It seemed as it were an
evocation addressing you through the wall of a tomb. If you fulfilled
certain required and very rare conditions, the narrow plank of one
of the shutters opened opposite to you, and the evocation became an
apparition. Behind the grating, behind the shutter, you perceived,
as far as the grating would allow, a head, of which you only saw the
mouth and chin, for the rest was covered by a black veil. You caught a
glimpse of a black wimple, and of a scarce distinct form covered by a
black pall. This head spoke to you, but did not look at you, and never
smiled. The light that came from behind you was so arranged that you
saw her in brightness and she saw you in darkness; this light was a
symbol. Still, your eyes plunged eagerly through the opening into this
place, closed against all looks; a profound vacuum surrounded this form
clothed in mourning. Your eyes investigated this vacuum and tried to
distinguish what there was around the apparition, but in a very little
time you perceived that you could see nothing. What you saw was night,
emptiness, gloom, a winter fog mingled with the vapor from a tomb; a
sort of terrifying peace; a silence in which nothing could be heard,
not even sighs; a shadow in which nothing could be distinguished,
not even phantoms. What you saw was the interior of a nunnery, the
interior of that gloomy and stern house which was called the Convent of
the Perpetual Adoration. The box in which you found yourself was the
parlor, and the first voice that addressed you was that of a lay sister
who always sat, silent and motionless, on the other side of the wall,
near the square opening which was defended by the iron grating and the
tin plate with the thousand holes like a double visor.
The obscurity in which the grated box was plunged, resulted 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 not see any portion
of this sacred spot. Still, there was something beyond the shadow;
there was a light and life amid this death. Although this convent was
the most strictly immured of all, we will try to enter it and take the
reader in with us, and describe, with due regard to decorum, things
which novelists have never seen, and consequently never recorded.
CHAPTER II.
THE OBEDIENCE OF MARTIN VERGA.
This convent, which had existed for many years prior to 1824 in the
Rue Picpus, was a community of Bernardines belonging to the obedience
of Martin Verga. These Bernardines, consequently, were not attached
to Clairvaux, like the Bernardine brothers, but to Citeaux, like
the Benedictines. In other words, they were subjects, not of Saint
Bernard, but of Saint Benedict. Any one who has at all turned over
folios knows that Martin Verga founded, in 1425, a congregation of
Bernardo-Benedictines, whose headquarters were Salamanca, and which had
Alcala as an offshoot. Such a grafting of one order upon another is not
at all unusual in the Latin Church. If we confine our attention merely
to the Order of St. Benedict, we find four congregations attached to
it, beside the obedience of Martin Verga; in Italy two, Monte Cassino
and St. Justina of Padua; two in France, Cluny and St. Marco, and nine
orders,--Valombrosa, Grammont, the Celestins, the Calmalduli, the
Chartreux, the Humiliated, the Olivateurs, and the Silvestrines, and
lastly, Citeaux; for Citeaux itself, while trunk for other orders, is
only a branch with Saint Benedict. Citeaux dates from Saint Robert,
Abbot of Molesmes, in the diocese of Langres, in 1098. Now it was in
529 that the devil, who had retired to the desert of Subiaco (he was
old, did he turn hermit?), was expelled from the temple of Apollo in
which he resided, by Saint Benedict, a youth of seventeen years of age.
Next to the rule of the Carmelites, who walk barefoot, wear a piece
of wicker-work on their throat, and never sit down, the hardest
rule is that of the Bernardo-Benedictines of Martin Verga. They are
dressed in black with a wimple, which, by the express order of Saint
Benedict, comes up to the chin; a serge gown with wide sleeves, a
large woollen veil, the wimple cut square on the chest, and the coif,
which comes down to their eyes,--such is their dress. All is black,
excepting the coif, which is white. Novices wear the same garb, but
all white, while the professed nuns also wear a rosary by their side.
The Bernardo-Benedictines of Martin Verga practise the Perpetual
Adoration, in the same way as those Benedictines called the ladies of
the Holy Sacrament, who, at the beginning of this century, had two
houses in Paris, one in the Temple, the other in the Rue Neuve St.
Geneviève. In other respects, the nuns of the Little Picpus to whom we
are referring entirely differed from the ladies of the Holy Sacrament;
there were several distinctions in the rule as well as in the dress.
The nuns of Little Picpus wore a black wimple, the former a white one,
and had also on their chest a Holy Sacrament, about three inches in
length, of plate or gilt brass. The nuns of the Little Picpus did not
wear this decoration. The Perpetual Adoration, while common in Little
Picpus and the Temple house, leaves the two orders perfectly distinct.
This practice is the only resemblance between the ladies of the Holy
Sacrament and the Bernardines of Martin Verga, in the same way as there
was a similitude, for the study and glorification of all the mysteries
attaching to the infancy, life, and death of the Saviour, between two
orders which were greatly separated and at times hostile,--the oratory
of Italy, established at Florence by Philippe de Neri, and the oratory
of France, established in Paris by Pierre de Bérulle. The Paris oratory
claimed precedence because Philippe de Neri was only a saint, while
Bérulle was a cardinal. But to return to the harsh Spanish rule of
Martin Verga.
The Bernardo-Benedictines of this obedience abstain from meat the whole
year; fast all Lent, and on many other days special to themselves;
get up in their first sleep, from one to three A.M., in order to read
their breviary and chant matins; sleep in serge sheets at all seasons,
and on straw; never bathe or light fires; chastise themselves every
Friday; observe the rule of silence; only speak during recreation,
which is very short; and wear coarse flannel chemises for six months,
from September 14th, which is the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, up to
Easter. These six months are a moderation; the rule says all the year,
but the flannel chemise, insupportable in the heat of summer, produced
fevers and nervous spasms. Even with this relief, when the nuns put
on the flannel chemise on September 14th, they suffer from fever for
three or four days. Obedience, poverty, chastity, perseverance,--such
are their vows, which are greatly aggravated by the rule. The prioress
is elected for three years by mothers called "Mères Vocales," because
they have a voice in the Chapter. She can be re-elected only twice,
which fixes the longest possible reign of a prioress at nine years.
They never see the officiating priest, who is hidden from them by a
green baize curtain nine feet high. At the sermon, when the preacher is
in the chapel, they draw their veil over their face; they must always
speak low, and walk with their eyes fixed on the ground. Only one man
is allowed to enter the convent, and he is the Diocesan Archbishop.
There is certainly another, who is the gardener; but he is always an
aged man, and in order that he may be constantly alone in the garden,
and that the nuns may avoid him, a bell is fastened to his knee. The
nuns must display absolute and passive submission to the prioress,
and it is canonical subjection in all its self-denial. They must obey
as if it were the voice of Christ, _ut voci Christi_, at a nod, at
the first signal, _ad nutum, ad primum signum_; at once, cheerfully,
perseveringly, and with a certain bland obedience, _prompte, hilariter,
perseveranter, et cœca quadam obedientiâ,_; like the file in the
workman's hand, _quasi limam in manibus fabri_, and are not allowed to
read or write anything without express permission, _legere vel scribere
non ediscerit sine expressa superioris licentia._ Each of them performs
in turn what they call the "reparation." This reparation is a prayer
for all the sins, faults, irregularities, violations, iniquities, and
crimes performed upon earth. For twelve consecutive hours, from four
in the evening till four the next morning, the sister who performs
the reparation remains on her knees, on the stone before the Holy
Sacrament, with her hands clasped, and a rope round her neck. When the
fatigue becomes insupportable she prostrates herself with her face on
the ground, and her arms forming a cross,--that is her sole relief.
In this attitude she prays for all the guilty in the world; it is a
grand, almost a sublime idea. As this act is accomplished in front
of a stake on the top of which a wax candle is burning, it is called
either "making reparation," or "being at the stake." The nuns through
humility, indeed, prefer the latter expression, which contains an idea
of punishment and abasement. Making reparation is a function in which
the whole soul is absorbed; the sister at the stake would not turn
round were a thunder-bolt to fall behind her. Moreover, there is always
a nun on her knees before the Holy Sacrament; this station lasts an
hour, and they relieve each other like sentries. That is the Perpetual
Adoration.
The prioress and mothers nearly all have names imprinted with peculiar
gravity, recalling, not saints and martyrs, but the incidents in the
life of the Saviour,--such as Mother Nativity, Mother Conception,
Mother Presentation, and Mother Passion; still, the names of saints
are not interdicted. When you see them, you never see more of them
than their mouth; and they all have yellow teeth, for a tooth-brush
never entered the convent. Cleaning the teeth is the first rung of
the ladder, at the foot of which is "losing the soul." They do not
call anything "mine;" they have nothing of their own, and must not be
attached to anything. They say of everything "ours,"--thus, our veil,
our beads; if they were to allude to their chemise they would say
"our chemise." Sometimes they grow attached to some trifling object,
a book of hours, a relic, or consecrated medal; but so soon as they
perceive that they are beginning to grow fond of it, they are obliged
to give it away. They remember the remark of Saint Theresa, to whom a
great lady said, at the moment of entering her order,--"Allow me, Holy
Mother, to send for a Bible to which I am greatly attached." "Ah, you
are still attached to something! In that case do not come among us."
No one must lock herself in under any pretence, or have a room of her
own; and they live with open doors. When they pass each other, one
says, "The most Holy Sacrament of the Altar be blessed and adored!"
and the other answers, "Forever." There is the same ceremony when one
sister raps at another sister's door; the door has scarce been touched,
ere a gentle voice is heard saying hurriedly from within, "Forever."
Like all practices, this one becomes mechanical through habit; and a
sister will sometimes say, "Forever," before the other has had time
to utter the long sentence, "The most Holy Sacrament of the Altar be
blessed and adored!" Among the Visitandines, the one who enters says,
"Ave Maria," to which the other replies, "Gratiâ, plena;" this is
their greeting, which is truly full of grace. At each hour of the day
three supplementary strokes are struck on the chapel bell, and at this
signal, prioress, vocal mothers, professed nuns, lay sisters, novices,
and postulants break off what they are saying, doing, or thinking, and
all repeat together,--if it be five o'clock, for instance,--"At five
o'clock, and at every hour, may the most Holy Sacrament of the Altar
be blessed and adored!" and so on, according to the hour. This custom,
which is intended to break off thoughts and ever lead them back to God,
exists in many communities, the form alone varying. Thus at the Infant
Jesus they say, "At the present hour, and at every hour, may the love
of Jesus inflame my heart!"
The Bernardo-Benedictines of Martin Verga sing the offices to a grave,
full chant, and always in a loud voice, during the whole of the
service. Whenever there is an asterisk in the missal, they pause, and
say in a low voice, "Jesus, Mary, Joseph." In the service for the dead
they employ such a deep note that female voices can scarce descend
to it, and there results from it a striking and tragical effect. The
sisters of Little Picpus had a vault under their high altar for the
burial of their community, but the Government, as they call it, would
not allow coffins to be placed in this vault, and they therefore left
the convent when they were dead; this afflicted and consternated them
like an infraction. They had obtained the slight consolation of being
buried at a special hour and in a special corner of the old Vaugirard
cemetery, which was established in a field that had once belonged to
the community. On Thursday these nuns attend high mass, vespers, and
all the services, as on Sunday. And they also scrupulously observe
all the little festivals unknown to people of the world, of which the
Church was formerly so prodigal in France, and still remains so in
Spain and Italy. Their stations in the chapels are innumerable; and as
for the number and length of their prayers, we cannot give a better
idea than by quoting the simple remark of one of them,--"The prayers
of the postulants are frightful, those of the novices worse, and those
of the professed nuns worse still." Once a week the Chapter meets,
the prioress presiding and the vocal mothers assisting. Each sister
comes in her turn to kneel on the stone, and confesses aloud, in the
presence of all, the faults and sins which she has committed during
the week. The vocal mothers consult after each confession and inflict
the penances aloud. In addition to the loud confession, for which
all faults at all serious are reserved, they have for venial faults
what they call "la coulpe." The penitent prostrates herself on her
face during service in front of the prioress, who is never addressed
otherwise than "our mother," until the latter warns the sufferer, by
a slight tap on the arm of her stall, that she can get up. The nuns
perform this penance for very trivial things; breaking a glass, tearing
a veil, an involuntary delay of a few seconds in attending service,
a false note in chapel,--that is enough. This penance is quite
voluntary, and the culprit (this word is etymologically in its place
here) tries and punishes herself. On festivals and Sundays there are
four singing mothers, who chant at a large lectern with four desks.
One day a singing mother was striking up a psalm, which began with the
word _Ecce_, and said instead, quite loud, _ut, si, sol_; and for this
absence of mind she underwent a penance that lasted the whole service.
What rendered the fault enormous was that the congregation laughed.
When a nun is summoned to the parlor, even if she be the prioress,
she pulls down her veil in such a way as only to show her mouth. The
prioress alone can communicate with strangers; the others can only see
their nearest relations, and that very rarely. If by chance a person
from the outer world requests to see a nun whom she had formerly known
or loved, a lengthened negotiation is required. If it be a woman, the
permission may possibly be granted. The nun comes and is spoken to
through the shutters, which are only opened for a mother or a sister.
We need hardly say that permission is never granted to men.
Such is the rule of Saint Benedict, aggravated by Martin Verga. These
nuns are not gay, rosy, and fresh, as we find sometimes in other
orders; they are pale and serious, and between 1825 and 1830 three of
them went mad.
CHAPTER III.
SEVERITIES.
Any one desirous of joining the community of Martin Verga must be
at least two years a postulant, sometimes four, and four years a
novice. It is rare for the final vows to be taken before the age of
twenty-three or twenty-four years. The Bernardo-Benedictines of Martin
Verga admit no widows into their order. In their cells they undergo
many strange macerations, of which they are not allowed to speak. On
the day when a novice professes, she is dressed in her best clothes,
wears a wreath of white roses, has her hair curled, and then prostrates
herself; a large black veil is spread over her, and the service for the
dead is performed. Then the nuns divide into two files, one of which
passes her, saying in a plaintive voice, "Our sister is dead," and the
other answers triumphantly, "Living in Jesus Christ."
At the period when this story is laid, there was a boarding-school
attached to the convent, the pupils being young ladies of noble birth,
and generally rich. Among them could be noticed Mlles. de Sainte
Aulaire and de Bélissen, and an English girl bearing the illustrious
Catholic name of Talbot. These young ladies, educated by the nuns
between four walls, grew up with a horror of the world and of the
century; one of them said to us one day, "Seeing the street pavement
made me shudder from head to foot." They were dressed in blue, with a
white cap, and a plated or gilt Holy Ghost on the chest. On certain
high festivals, especially Saint Martha, they were allowed, as a high
favor and supreme happiness, to dress themselves like nuns, and perform
the offices and practices of Saint Benedict for the whole day. At first
the nuns lent them their black robes, but this was deemed a profanity,
and the prioress forbade it; so the novices alone were permitted to
make such loans. It is remarkable that these representations, doubtless
tolerated in the convent through a secret spirit of proselytism, and in
order to give their children some foretaste of the sacred dress, were a
real happiness and true recreation for the boarders; they were amused
by them, for "it was a novelty and changed them,"--candid reasons of
children, which do not succeed, however, in making us worldly-minded
people understand the felicity of holding a holy-water brush in one's
hand, and standing for hours before a lectern and singing quartettes.
The pupils conformed to all the practices of the convent, though not
to all the austerities. We know a young lady who, after returning to
the world and being married for some years, could not break herself of
hastily saying, each time that there was a rap at the door, "Forever!"
like the nuns. The boarders only saw their parents in the parlor; their
mothers themselves were not even allowed to kiss them. To show how far
this severity was carried, a young lady was visited one day by her
mother, accompanied by a little sister three years of age. The young
lady cried, because she would have liked to kiss her sister but it was
impossible. She implored at least permission for the child to pass her
hand through the bars, so that she might kiss it; but it was refused
almost as a scandal.
CHAPTER IV.
GAYETIES.
For all this, though, the young ladies filled this grave house with
delightful reminiscences. At certain hours childhood sparkled in this
cloister. The bell for recreation was rung, the gate creaked on its
hinges, and the birds whispered to each other, "Here are the children."
An irruption of youth inundated this garden, which with its cross-walks
resembled a pall. Radiant faces, white foreheads, ingenuous eyes,
full of gay light--all sorts of dawn--spread through the gloom. After
the psalm-singing, the bell-ringing, and the services, the noise of
girls, softer than the buzzing of bees, suddenly burst out. The hive
of joy opened, and each brought her honey; they played, they called
each other, they formed groups, and ran about; pretty little white
teeth chattered at corners; in the distance veils watched the laughter,
shadows guarded the beams,--but what matter! they were radiant, and
laughed. These four mournful walls had their moment of bedazzlement;
vaguely whitened by the reflection of so much joy, they watched this
gentle buzzing of the swarm. It was like a shower of roses falling
on this mourning. The girls sported beneath the eye of the nuns, for
the glance of impeccability does not disturb innocence; and, thanks
to these children, there was a simple hour among so many austere
hours. The little girls jumped about and the elder danced, and nothing
could be so ravishing and august as all the fresh, innocent expansion
of these childish souls. Homer would have come here to dance with
Perrault, and there were in this black garden, youth, health, noise,
cries, pleasure, and happiness enough to unwrinkle the brows of all the
ancestry, both of the epic poem and the fairy tale, of the throne and
the cottage, from Hecuba down to La Mère Grand. In this house, more
perhaps than elsewhere, those childish remarks were made which possess
so much grace, and which make the hearer laugh thoughtfully. It was
within these four gloomy walls that a child of four years of age one
day exclaimed,--"Mother, a grown-up girl has just told me that I have
only nine years and ten months longer to remain here. What happiness!"
Here too it was that the memorable dialogue took place:--
_A vocal mother_.--Why are you crying, my child?
_The child_ (six years old), sobbing.--I said to Alix that I knew my
French history. She says that I don't know it, but I do know it.
_Alix_, the grown-up girl (just nine).--No. She does not know it.
_Mother_.--How so, my child?
_Alix_.--She told me to open the book haphazard, and ask her a question
out of the book, which she would answer.
"Well?"
"She did not answer it."
"What was it you asked her?"
"I opened the book as she said, and I asked her the first question that
I came across."
"And pray what was the question?"
"It was, '_What happened next?_'"
It was here that the profound observation was made about a rather
dainty parrot which belonged to a lady boarder. "How well bred it is!
It eats the top of the slice of bread and butter, just like a lady."
In one of these cloisters was also picked up the following confession,
written beforehand, so as not to forget it, by a little sinner of seven
years of age:--
"My father, I accuse myself of having been avaricious.
"My father, I accuse myself of having committed adultery.
"My father, I accuse myself of having raised my eyes to gentlemen."
It was on one of the benches in the garden that the following fable was
improvised by rosy lips six years of age, and listened to by blue eyes
of four and five years:--
"There were three little cocks, which lived in a place where there were
many flowers. They picked the flowers and put them in their pockets;
after that they plucked the leaves and put them in their play-things.
There was a wolf in those parts, and there was a great deal of wood;
and the wolf was in the wood, and all the three cocks."
It was here too that the following sweet and affecting remark was made
by a foundling child whom the convent brought up through charity. She
heard the others speaking of their mothers, and she murmured in her
corner,--"My mother was not there when I was born." There was a fat
portress who could continually be seen hurrying along the passage with
her bunch of keys, and whose name was Sister Agathe. The grown-up
girls--those above ten years of age--called her Agathoclès (Agathe aux
clefs). The refectory, a large, rectangular room, which only received
light through an arched window looking on the garden, was gloomy and
damp, and, as children say, full of animals. All the surrounding places
furnished their contingent of insects; and each of the four corners
had received a private and expressive name, in the language of the
boarders. There were Spider corner, Caterpillar corner, Woodlouse
corner, and Cricket corner; the latter was near the kitchen, and highly
esteemed, for it was warmer there. The names had passed from the
refectory to the school-room, and served to distinguish four nations,
as in the old Mazarin College. Every boarder belonged to one or other
of these nations, according to the corner of the refectory in which she
sat at meals. One day the archbishop, while paying a pastoral visit,
noticed a charming little rosy-faced girl, with glorious light hair,
pass, and he asked another boarder, a pretty brunette with pink cheeks,
who was near him,--
"Who is that?"
"She is a spider, sir."
"Nonsense; and this other?"
"Is a cricket."
"And this one?"
"A caterpillar."
"Indeed! and what may you be?"
"I am a woodlouse, Monseigneur."
Each house of this nature has its peculiarities: at the beginning of
this century Écouen was one of those places in which the childhood of
children is passed in an almost august gloom. At Écouen a distinction
was made between the virgins and flower-girls in taking rank in the
procession of the Holy Sacrament. There were also the "canopies," and
the "censers," the former holding the cords of the canopy, the latter
swinging the censers in front of the Holy Sacrament, while four virgins
walked in front. On the morning of the great day it was not rare to
have people say in the dormitory,--"Who is a virgin?" Madame Campan
mentions a remark made by a little girl of seven to a grown-up girl
of sixteen, who walked at the head of the procession, while she, the
little one, remained behind: "You are a virgin, but I am not one."
CHAPTER V.
AMUSEMENTS.
Above the refectory door was painted in large black letters the
following prayer, which was called the "White Paternoster," and which
had the virtue of leading persons straight to Paradise.
"Little white Paternoster, which God made, which God said, which God
placed in Paradise. At night, when I went to bed, I found three angels
at my bed,--one at the foot, two at the head, and the good Virgin Mary
in the middle,--who told me to go to bed and fear nothing. The Lord
God is my father, the good Virgin is my mother, the three apostles
are my brothers, the three virgins are my sisters. My body is wrapped
up in the shirt in which God was born: the cross of Saint Marguerite
is written on my chest. Madame the Virgin weeping for the Lord went
into the fields and met there M. St. John. 'Monsieur St. John, where
do you come from?' 'I have come from the _Ave Salus_'. 'You have not
seen the Lord, have you?' 'He is on the tree of the cross, with hanging
feet, nailed-up hands, and a little hat of white-thorn on his head.'
Whosoever repeats this, thrice at night and thrice in the morning,
will gain Paradise in the end."[1]
In 1827, this characteristic orison had disappeared beneath a triple
coat of whitewash, and at the present day it is almost effaced from the
memory of those who were young girls then, and old women now.
A large crucifix fastened to the wall completed the decoration of this
refectory, whose only door opened on the garden. Two narrow tables,
with wooden benches on each side, formed two long parallel lines from
one end to the other of the refectory. The walls were white, the
tables black; for these two mourning colors are the sole variations
in convents. The meals were poor, and the food of even the children
scanty; a single plate of meat and vegetables or salt-fish was the
height of luxury. This ordinary, reserved for the boarders alone, was,
however, an exception. The children ate and held their tongues under
the guardianship of the mother of the week, who, from time to time,
if a fly dared to move or buzz contrary to regulation, noisily opened
and closed a wooden book. This silence was seasoned with the "Lives of
the Saints," read aloud from a little desk standing at the foot of the
crucifix, the reader being a grown-up pupil appointed for the week. At
regular distances on the bare table there were earthen-ware bowls, in
which the pupils themselves washed their cups and forks and spoons,
and sometimes threw in a piece of hard meat or spoiled fish; but this
was severely punished. Any child who broke the silence made a cross
with her tongue. Where? On the ground: she licked the stones. Dust,
that finale of all joys, was ordered to chastise these poor little
rose-leaves that were guilty of prattling. There was in the convent a
book of which only one copy was printed, and which no one was allowed
to read,--the "Rule of St. Benedict,"--a mystery which no profane eye
must penetrate. _Nemo regulas seu constitutiones nostras externis
communicabit._ The boarders succeeded one day in getting hold of this
book and began perusing it eagerly, though frequently interrupted by a
fear of being surprised, which made them close the book hurriedly. They
only derived a slight pleasure from the danger they incurred; for the
most interesting portion was a few unintelligible pages about the sins
of lads.
They played in a garden walk bordered by a few stunted fruit-trees. In
spite of the extreme watch and the severity of the punishment, when the
wind shook the trees they at times succeeded in picking up furtively
a green apple, or a spoiled apricot, or a wasp-inhabited pear. I will
here let a letter speak which I have before me, a letter written by an
ex-boarder five-and-twenty years ago, who is now the Duchesse de ----,
and one of the most elegant women in Paris. I quote exactly. "We hide
our pear or our apple as we can. When we go up to lay our veil on the
bed before supper we thrust it under a pillow, and eat it at night in
bed; and when that is not possible we eat it in the closet." This was
one of their liveliest pleasures. On one occasion, at a period when the
archbishop was paying a visit at the convent, one of the young ladies,
Mademoiselle Bouchard, who was related to the Montmorencys, laid a
wager that she would ask him for a holiday,--an enormity in such an
austere community. The wager was taken, but not one of those who took
it believed in it. When the moment arrived for the archbishop to pass
before the boarders, Mademoiselle Bouchard, to the indescribable horror
of her companions, stepped out of the ranks and said, "Monseigneur,
a holiday." Mademoiselle Bouchard was fresh and tall, and had the
prettiest pink-and-white face in the world. M. de Quélen smiled, and
said,--"What, my dear child, a day's holiday! Three, if you like; I
grant three days." The prioress could do nothing, as the archbishop
had said it. It was a scandal for the convent, but a joy for the
boarding-school. Just imagine the effect!
[Illustration: "She glided along rather than walked."]
This harsh convent, however, was not so well walled in but that the
passions of the outer world, the dramas, and even the romance of
life, entered it. To prove this, we will briefly describe a real and
incontestable fact, though it is in no way connected with the story
which we are narrating. We mention the fact in order to complete the
physiognomy of the convent in the reader's mind. About this period,
then, there was in the convent a mysterious personage, who was not a
nun, but was treated with great respect, and called Madame Albertine.
Nothing was known about her except that she was mad, and that in the
world she was supposed to be dead. It was said that behind the story
were certain monetary arrangements necessary for a grand marriage. This
woman, who was scarce thirty years of age and a rather pretty brunette,
looked vacantly around with her large black eyes. Did she see? It was
doubted. She glided along rather than walked; she never spoke, and
people were not quite sure whether she breathed. Her nostrils were
pinched up and livid, as if she had drawn her last sigh: touching her
hand was like touching snow, and she had a strange spectral grace.
Wherever she entered she produced a chill; and one day a sister seeing
her pass, said to another, "She is supposed to be dead." "Perhaps she
is," the other replied. A hundred stories were current about Madame
Albertine, and she was the eternal object of curiosity with the
boarders. There was in this chapel a gallery called "L'œil de Bœuf,"
and it was in this place that Madame Albertine attended service. She
was usually alone there, because, as the gallery was high, the preacher
could be seen from it, which was prohibited to the nuns. One day the
pulpit was occupied by a young priest of high rank, le Duc de Rohan,
Peer of France, officer in the Red Musqueteers in 1815, when he was
Prince de Leon, and who died about 1830, a cardinal, and Archbishop
of Besançon. It was the first time that this M. de Rohan preached at
the Little Picpus. Madame Albertine usually sat in perfect calmness
through the service; but on this day, so soon as she perceived M. de
Rohan, she half rose, and cried aloud, "Why, it is Auguste!" The whole
community looked round in stupefaction, the preacher raised his eyes,
but Madame Albertine had fallen back into her apathy; a breath from
the outer world, a flash of light, had momentarily passed over this
set face, then faded away, and the maniac became once again a corpse.
This remark, however, made everybody in the convent who could speak,
talk incessantly. What revelations were contained in this "Why, it is
Auguste!" It was evident that Madame Albertine had moved in the highest
society, since she knew M. de Rohan, spoke about so great a nobleman in
such a familiar way, and was at least a near relation of his, since she
knew his Christian name.
Two very strict Duchesses, Mesdames de Choiseul and de Serent,
frequently visited the community, doubtless by virtue of their
privilege as _Magnates Mulieres_, and terribly frightened the boarders.
When the two old ladies passed, all the poor girls trembled and let
their eyes fall. M. de Rohan was, besides, unwittingly the object of
attention among the boarders. He had just been appointed, while waiting
for a bishopric, Grand Vicar of the Archbishop of Paris, and it was
one of his habits to serve mass in the chapel of the Little Picpus
Convent. Not one of the young recluses could see him, on account of the
baize curtain; but he had a soft and rather shrill voice, which they
had managed to recognize and distinguish. He had been a Mousquetaire;
and besides, he was said to be somewhat of a dandy, had fine chestnut
hair curled round his head, wore a wide scarf of magnificent moire,
and his black cassock was cut in the most elegant style. He greatly
occupied all their youthful imaginations. No external sound penetrated
the convent, and yet one year the sound of a flute reached it. It
was an event, and the boarders of that day still remember it. It was
a flute which some one was playing in the neighborhood: it was the
same tune, one now very aged, "Ma Zétulbé, viens regner sur mon âme,"
and it was heard two or three times a day. The girls spent hours in
listening, the vocal mothers were upset, brains were at work, and
punishments were constant. This lasted several months; the boarders
were more or less enamoured of the unknown musician, and each fancied
herself Zétulbé. The sound of the flute came from the direction of the
Rue Droit-mur. They would have given anything, compromised anything,
attempted anything, in order to see, if only for a moment, the young
man who played the flute so exquisitely, and at the same time played
on all their minds. Some of them slipped out through a back door and
ascended to the third story looking out of the street, in order to try
and see him through the grating; but it was impossible. One went so far
as to pass her arm between the bars and wave her white handkerchief.
Two others were even bolder; they managed to climb on to the roof, and
at length succeeded in seeing the "young man." It was an old émigré
gentleman, blind and ruined, who played the flute in his garret in
order to kill time.
[1] This Paternoster is so curious that the translator has quoted the
original.
"Petite Paternôtre blanche, que Dieu dit, que Dieu fit, que Dieu mit en
Paradis. Au soir, m'allant coucher, je trouvis [_sic_] trois anges à
mon lit couches, un aux pieds, deux au chevet, la bonne Vierge Marie au
milieu qui me dit que je m'y couchis, qui rien ne doutis. Le bon Dieu
est mon père, la bonne Vierge est ma mère, les trois apôtres sont mes
frères, les trois vierges sont mes sœurs. La chemise ou Dieu fut né,
mon corps en est enveloppé; la Croix Sainte Marguerite à ma poitrine
est écrite. Madame la Vierge s'en va sur les champs. Dieu pleurant,
recontrit M. St. Jean. Monsieur St. Jean, d'où venez-vous? Je viens
d'_Ave Salus._ Vous n'avez vu le bon Dieu, si est? Il est dans l'arbre
de la Croix, les pieds pendans, les mains clouans, un petit chapeau
d'épine blanche sur la tête. Qui la dira trois fois au soir, trois fois
au matin, gagnera le Paradis à la fin."
CHAPTER VI.
THE LITTLE CONVENT.
There were within the walls of Little Picpus three perfectly distinct
buildings,--the great convent inhabited by the nuns, the schoolhouse
in which the boarders were lodged, and, lastly, what was called the
little convent. The latter was a house with a garden, in which all
sorts of old nuns of various orders, the remains of convents broken up
in the Revolution, dwelt in common; a reunion of all the black, white,
and gray gowns of all the communities, and all the varieties possible;
what might be called, were such a conjunction of words permissible, a
hotch-potch convent. Under the Empire all these dispersed and homeless
women were allowed to shelter themselves under the wings of the
Bernardo-Benedictines; the Government paid them a small pension, and
the ladies of Little Picpus eagerly received them. It was a strange
pell-mell, in which each followed her rule. At times the boarders were
allowed, as a great recreation, to pay them a visit, and it is from
this that these young minds have retained a recollection of Holy Mother
Bazile, Holy Mother Scholastica, and Mother Jacob.
One of these refugees was almost at home here; she was a nun of Sainte
Aure, the only one of her order who survived. The old convent of the
ladies of Sainte Aure occupied at the beginning of the 18th century the
same house which at a later date belonged to the Benedictines of Martin
Verga. This holy woman, who was too poor to wear the magnificent dress
of her order, which was a white robe with a scarlet scapulary, had
piously dressed up in it a small doll, which she was fond of showing,
and left at her death to the house. In 1820 only one nun of this order
remained; at the present day only a doll is left. In addition to these
worthy mothers, a few old ladies of the world, like Madame Albertine,
had gained permission from the prioress to retire into the little
convent. Among them were Madame de Beaufort d'Hautpoul and the Marquise
Dufresne; another was only known in the convent by the formidable noise
she made in using her handkerchief, and hence the boarders called her
Madame Vacarmini. About the year 1820 Madame de Genlis, who edited at
that period a small periodical called _L'Intrépide_, asked leave to
board at the Little Picpus, and the Duc d'Orleans recommended her.
There was a commotion in the hive, and the vocal mothers were all of
a tremor, for Madame de Genlis had written romances; but she declared
that she was the first to detest them, and moreover she had reached
her phase of savage devotion. By the help of Heaven and of the prince
she entered, and went away again at the end of six or eight months,
alleging as a reason that the garden had no shade. The nuns were
delighted at it. Although very old, she still played the harp, and
remarkably well too. When she went away she left her mark on her cell.
Madame de Genlis was superstitious and a Latin scholar, and these
two terms give a very fair idea of her. A few years ago there might
still be seen, fixed in the inside of a small cupboard of her cell, in
which she kept her money and jewelry, the following five Latin verses,
written in her own hand with red ink on yellow paper, and which, in her
opinion, had the virtue 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."
These verses, in sixteenth-century Latin, raise the question whether
the two thieves of Calvary were called, as is commonly believed, Demas
and Gestas, or Dismas and Gesmas. The latter orthography would thwart
the claims made in the last century by the Viscomte de Gestas to be
descended from the wicked thief. However, the useful virtue attached
to these verses is an article of faith in the order of the Hospitaler
nuns. The church, so built as to separate the great convent from the
boarding-school, was common to the school, and the great and little
convents. The public were even admitted by a sort of quarantine
entrance from the street: but everything was so arranged that not one
of the inhabitants of the convent could see a single face from the
outer world. Imagine a church whose choir was seized by a gigantic
hand, and crushed so as no longer to form, as in ordinary chapels, a
prolongation behind the altar, but a sort of obscure cavern on the
side of the officiating priest; imagine this hall closed by the green
baize curtain to which we have referred; pile up in the shadow of this
curtain upon wooden seats the nuns on the left, the boarders on the
right, and the lay sisters and novices at the end, and you will have
some idea of the Little Picpus nuns attending divine service. This
cavern, which was called the choir, communicated with the convent by a
covered way, and the church obtained its light from the garden. When
the nuns were present at those services at which their rule commanded
silence, the public were only warned of their presence by the sound of
the seats being noisily raised and dropped.
CHAPTER VII.
A FEW PROFILES FROM THE SHADOW.
During the six years between 1819 and 1825 the prioress of Little
Picpus was Mademoiselle de Blémeur, called in religion Mother
Innocent. She belonged to the family of that Marguerite de Blémeur
who was authoress of the "Lives of the Saints of the Order of Saint
Benedict." She was a lady of about sixty years, short, stout, and
with a voice "like a cracked pot," says the letter from which we have
already quoted; but she was an excellent creature, the only merry
soul in the convent, and on that account adored. She followed in the
footsteps of her ancestress Marguerite, the Dacier of the order; she
was lettered, learned, competent, versed in the curiosities of history,
stuffed with Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and more a monk than a nun. The
sub-prioress was an old Spanish nun, almost blind, Mother Cineres. The
most estimated among the "vocals" were--Mother Saint Honorine, the
treasurer; Mother Saint Gertrude, first mistress of the novices; Mother
Saint Ange, second mistress; Mother Annunciation, sacristan; Mother
Saint Augustine, head of the infirmary, the only unkind person in the
convent; then Mother Saint Mechtilde (Mlle. Gauvain), who was young,
and had an admirable voice; Mother des Auges (Mlle. Drouet), who had
been in the convent of the Filles Dieu, and that of the Treasury near
Gisors; Mother Saint Joseph (Mlle. de Cogolludo); Mother Saint Adelaide
(Mlle. D'Auverney); Mother Miséricorde (Mlle. de Cifuentes, who could
not endure the privations); Mother Compassion (Mlle. de La Miltière,
received at the age of sixty, contrary to the rule, but very rich);
Mother Providence (Mlle. de Laudinière); Mother Presentation (Mlle. de
Siguenza), who was prioress in 1847; and lastly, Mother Saint Céligne
(sister of Cerachhi the sculptor), who went mad; and Mother Saint
Chantal (Mlle. de Suzon), who also went mad. Among the prettiest was
a charming girl of three-and-twenty, who belonged to the Bourbonnais,
and was descended from the Chevalier Roze, who was called in the world
Mlle. Roze, and in religion Mother Assumption.
Mother Saint Mechtilde, who had charge of the singing arrangements,
was glad to make use of the boarders for this purpose; she generally
selected a complete musical scale, that is to say, seven assorted
voices, from ten to sixteen years inclusive, whom she drew up in
a line, ranging from the shortest to the tallest. In this way she
produced a species of living Pandean pipes, composed of angels. The
lay sisters whom the boarders liked most were Sister Saint Euphrasie,
Sister Saint Marguerite, Sister Saint Marthe, who was childish, and
Sister Saint Michel, at whose long nose they laughed. All these nuns
were kind to the children, and only stern to themselves; there were no
fires lit except in the schoolhouse, and the food there was luxurious
when compared with that of the convent. The only thing was that when a
child passed a nun and spoke to her, the latter did not answer. This
rule of silence produced the result that in the whole convent language
was withdrawn from human creatures and given to inanimate objects.
At one moment it was the church bell that spoke, at another the
gardener's; and a very sonorous gong, placed by the side of the sister
porter, and which could be heard all through the house, indicated by
various raps, which were a sort of acoustic telegraphy, all the actions
of natural life which had to be accomplished, and summoned a nun, if
required, to the parlor. Each person and each thing had its raps:
the prioress had one and one, the sub-prioress one and two; six-five
announced school hour, so that the pupils talked of going to six-five;
four-four was Madame Genlis' signal, and as it was heard very often,
uncharitable persons said she was the "diable à quatre." Nineteen
strokes announced a great event; it was the opening of the cloister
door, a terrible iron plate all bristling with bolts, which only
turned on its hinges before the archbishop. With the exception of that
dignitary and the gardener, no other man entered the convent; but the
boarders saw two others,--one was the chaplain, Abbé Banès, an old ugly
man, whom they were allowed to contemplate through a grating; while the
other was M. Ansiaux, the drawing-master, whom the letter which we
have already quoted calls "M. Anciot," and describes as an odious old
hunchback. So we see that all the men were picked.
Such was this curious house.
CHAPTER VIII.
POST CORDA LAPIDES.
After sketching the moral figure, it may not be time lost to indicate
in a few words the material configuration, of which the reader already
possesses some idea.
The convent of the Little Picpus occupied a large trapeze, formed
by the four streets to which we have so frequently alluded, and
which surrounded it like a moat. The convent was composed of several
buildings and a garden. The main building, regarded in its entirety,
was a juxtaposition of hybrid constructions, which, looked at from a
balloon, would very exactly form a gallows laid on the ground. The long
arm of the gallows occupied the whole of the Rue Droit-mur, comprised
between the Little Rue Picpus and the Rue Polonceau; while the shorter
arm was a tall, gray, stern, grated façade, looking on the Little Rue
Picpus, of which the carriage-entrance, No. 62, was the extremity.
Toward the centre of this façade dust and ashes whitened an old,
low-arched gate, where the spiders made their webs, and which was only
opened for an hour or two on Sundays, and on the rare occasions when
the coffin of a nun left the convent; this was the public entrance
to the church. The elbow of the gallows was a square room, used as an
office, and which the nuns called the "buttery." In the long arm were
the cells of the mothers, sisters, and novices; in the short one the
kitchens, the refectory, along which a cloister ran, and the church.
Between No. 62 and the corner of Aumarais Lane was the school, which
could not be seen from the exterior. The rest of the trapeze formed the
garden, which was much lower than the level of the Rue Polonceau, and
this caused the walls to be much loftier inside than out. The garden,
which was slightly arched, had at its centre and on the top of a mound
a fine-pointed and conical fir-tree, from which ran, as from the boss
of a shield, four large walks, with eight smaller ones arranged two and
two, so that, had the enclosure been circular, the geometrical plan of
the walks would have resembled a cross laid upon a wheel. The walks,
which all ran to the extremely irregular walls of the garden, were of
unequal length, and were bordered by gooseberry-bushes. At the end a
poplar walk ran from the ruins of the old convent, which was at the
angle of the Rue Droit-mur, to the little convent, which was at the
corner of Aumarais Lane. In front of the little convent was what was
called the small garden. If we add to this _ensemble_ a court-yard, all
sorts of varying angles formed by the inside buildings, prison walls,
and the long black line of roofs that ran along the other side of the
Rue Polonceau, as the sole prospect, we can form an exact idea of what
the house of the Bernardines of Little Picpus was five-and-forty years
ago. This sacred house was built on the site of a famous racket-court
in the 16th century, which was called the "Tripot des onze mille
diables." All these streets, indeed, were the oldest in Paris; the
names Droit-mur and Aumarais are very old, but the streets that bear
them are far older. Aumarais Lane was before called Maugout Lane; the
Rue Droit-mur was called the Rue des Eglantines, for God opened the
flowers before man cut building-stones.
CHAPTER IX.
A CENTURY UNDER A WIMPLE.
As we are giving details of what was formerly the Little Picpus
convent, and have ventured to let in light upon this discreet asylum,
the reader will perhaps permit us another slight digression, which has
nothing to do with the story, but is characteristic and useful in so
far as it proves that a convent can have its original people. There
was in the little convent a centenarian, who came from the Abbey of
Fontevrault, and before the Revolution she had even been in the world.
She talked a good deal about M. de Miromesnil, keeper of the seals
under Louis XVI., and the wife of a President Duplat, who had been a
great friend of hers. It was her pleasure and vanity to drag in these
two names on every possible occasion. She told marvels about the Abbey
of Fontevrault, which was like a town, and there were streets in the
convent. She spoke with a Picard accent which amused the boarders;
every year she renewed her vows, and at the moment of taking the
oath would say to the priest: "Monseigneur St. Francis took it to.
Monseigneur St. Julien, Monseigneur St. Julien took it to Monseigneur
St. Eusebius, Monseigneur St. Eusebius took it to Monseigneur St.
Procopius, etc., etc., and thus I take it to you, father." And the
boarders would laugh, not in their sleeves, but under their veils,--a
charming little suppressed laugh, which made the vocal mothers frown.
At other times the centenarian told anecdotes. She said that in her
youth the Bernardines took precedence of the Musqueteers; it was
a century that spoke, but it was the 18th century. She described
the Champenois and Burgundian custom of the four wines before the
Revolution. When a great personage, a marshal of France, a prince, a
duke and peer, passed through a town of Champagne or Burgundy, the
authorities addressed and presented him with four silver cups filled
with four different sorts of wine. On the first cup was the inscription
"ape-wine," on the second "lion-wine," on the third "sheep-wine," and
on the fourth "hog-wine." These four mottoes expressed the four stages
of intoxication,--the first that enlivens, the second that irritates,
the third that dulls, and the fourth that brutalizes.
She had a mysterious object, to which she was greatly attached, locked
up in a cupboard, and the rule of Fontevrault did not prohibit this.
She would not show it to anybody; she locked herself in, which her
rule also permitted, and hid herself each time that a desire was
expressed to see it. If she heard footsteps in the passage she closed
the cupboard as hastily as she could with her aged hands. So soon as it
was alluded to, she, who was so fond of talking, held her tongue; the
most curious persons were foiled by her silence, and the most tenacious
by her obstinacy. This was a subject of comment for all the idlers
and gossips in the convent. What could this precious and hidden thing
be which was the centenarian's treasure? Of course some pious book or
unique rosary, or well-tried relic. On the poor woman's death they ran
to the cupboard, more quickly perhaps than was befitting, and opened
it. They found the object under three folds of linen; it was a Faenza
plate representing Cupids flying away, and pursued by apothecaries'
apprentices armed with enormous squirts. The pursuit is full of comical
grimaces and postures; one of the charming little Cupids is already
impaled; he writhes, flutters his wings, and strives to fly away,
but the assassin laughs a Satanic laugh. Moral,--love conquered by a
colic. This plate, which is very curious, and perhaps had the honor of
furnishing Molière with an idea, still existed in September, 1845; it
was for sale at a curiosity shop on the Boulevard Beaumarchais. This
good old woman would not receive any visitors, "because," as she said,
"the parlor is too melancholy."
CHAPTER X.
ORIGIN OF THE PERPETUAL ADORATION.
This parlor, almost sepulchral, which we have described is a thoroughly
local fact, which is not reproduced with the same severity in other
convents. In the convent of the Rue du Temple, which, it is true,
belonged to another order, brown curtains were substituted for the
black shutters, and the parlor itself was a boarded room with white
muslin curtains at the windows, while the walls admitted all sorts
of pictures,--the portrait of a Benedictine nun with uncovered face,
painted bouquets, and even a Turk's head. It was in the garden of
this convent that the chestnut tree grew, which was considered the
handsomest and largest in France, and which had the reputation among
the worthy eighteenth-century folk of being "the father of all the
chestnut trees in the kingdom." As we said, this convent of the Temple
was occupied by Benedictines of the Perpetual Adoration, who greatly
differed from those Benedictines who descended from Citeaux. This order
of the Perpetual Adoration is not the oldest, and does not date back
beyond two hundred years. In 1640 the Holy Sacrament was twice profaned
at an interval of a few days, in two parish churches, St. Sulpice
and St. Jean en Grève,--a frightful and rare sacrilege which stirred
up the whole city. The Prior Grand-Vicar of St. Germain-des-Près
ordered a solemn procession of all his clergy, in which the Papal
Nuncio officiated, but this expiation was not sufficient for two
worthy ladies, Madame Courtin, Marquise de Boucs, and the Countess
de Châteauvieux. This outrage done to the "most august Sacrament of
the Altar," though transient, would not leave their pious minds, and
it seemed to them that it could alone be repaired by a "Perpetual
Adoration" in some nunnery. In 1652 and 1653 both gave considerable
sums of money to Mother Catharine de Bar, called of the Holy Sacrament
and a Benedictine nun, for the purpose of founding for this pious
object a convent of the order of St. Benedict. The first permission for
this foundation was given to Mother Catharine de Bar by M. de Metz,
Abbé of St. Germain, "on condition that no person should be received
unless she brought a pension of three hundred livres, or a capital sum
of six thousand livres." After this the king granted letters-patent,
which were countersigned in 1654 by the Chamber of Accounts and the
Parliament.
Such are the origin and legal consecration of the establishment of
the Benedictines of the Perpetual Adoration of the Holy Sacrament at
Paris. Their first convent was built for them in the Rue Cassette, with
the funds of Mesdames de Boucs and Châteauvieux. This order, as we
see, must not be confounded with the Benedictines of Citeaux. It was a
dependency of the Abbé of Saint Germain-des-Près, in the same manner
as the Ladies of the Sacred Heart are subjects of the general of the
Jesuits, and the Sisters of Charity of the general of the Lazarists. It
was also entirely different from the order of the Bernardines of Little
Picpus, whose interior we have just shown. In 1657 Pope Alexander
VII. authorized, by special brief, the Bernardines of Little Picpus
to practise the Perpetual Adoration like the Benedictines of the Holy
Sacrament, but the two orders did not remain the less distinct.
CHAPTER XI.
THE END OF LITTLE PICPUS.
Toward the beginning of the Restoration, Little Picpus began to
pine away; it shared in the general death of the order, which after
the eighteenth century began to decay, like all religious orders.
Contemplation, like prayer, is a want of humanity; but, like all that
the revolution has touched, it will be transformed, and will become
favorable to human progress, instead of being hostile to it. The house
of Little Picpus became rapidly depopulated. In 1840 the little convent
and the school had disappeared; there were no old women or young girls
left; the former were dead, the latter had fled away. _Volaverunt._
The rule of the Perpetual Adoration is so strict that it horrifies;
novices hold back, and the order is not recruited. In 1845 a few lay
sisters were still found here and there, but no professed nuns. Forty
years ago there were nearly one hundred nuns; fifteen years ago there
were only twenty-eight; how many are there now? In 1847 the prioress
was young, a sign that the choice was becoming restricted. She was not
forty years old. In proportion as the number diminishes the fatigue is
augmented; the service of each becomes more painful; and the moment
may be seen approaching at which there will be only a dozen sore and
bent shoulders to bear the heavy rule of St. Benedict. The burden is
implacable, and remains the same for the few as for the many; it used
to press, but now it crushes. Hence they die out. At the time when the
author of this book still resided in Paris two died,--one twenty-five,
the other twenty-three years of age. The latter can say, like Julia
Alpinula: _Hic jaceo. Vixi annos viginti et tres._ It is owing to this
decadence that the convent has given up the education of girls.
We were unable to pass by this extraordinary, unknown, and obscure
house without entering it, and taking with us those who are reading--we
trust with some advantage to themselves--the melancholy story of Jean
Valjean. We have penetrated into this community so full of those old
practices which seem so novel at the present day. It is a closed
garden. _Hortus conclusus._ We have spoken of this singular spot in
detail, but with respect, so far, at least, as respect and detail are
compatible. We do not understand everything, but we insult nothing. We
keep at an equal distance from the hosanna of Joseph de Maistre, who
ended by consecrating the hangman, and the sneers of Voltaire, who even
jeered at the crucifix.
There is a lack of logic in Voltaire's attitude, be it said in passing;
for Voltaire ought to have defended Jesus as he defended Calas; and
even for those who deny the Divine incarnation, what does the crucifix
stand for? The good man murdered. In the nineteenth century the
religious idea is undergoing a crisis. We unlearn some things, and we
do well, provided that in unlearning one thing, we learn another. There
must be no vacuum in the heart of man. Some demolitions are made, and
it is well that they should be made, but only on condition that they
shall be followed by reconstructions.
In the meanwhile let us study the things which are past. It is
necessary to know them were it only to avoid them. The counterfeits of
the past take on false names, and try to pass themselves off for the
future. This ghost, the past, may falsify his passport. We must learn
to unmask the trick. We must be on our guard against it. The past has a
face, superstition; and a mask, hypocrisy. We must identify the face,
and tear off the mask.
As for the convents, they offer a complex question,--a question of
civilization which condemns them, a question of liberty which protects
them.
BOOK VII
A PARENTHESIS.
CHAPTER I.
THE CONVENT AS AN ABSTRACT IDEA.
This book is a drama in which the hero is the Infinite. The second
character is Man.
Under these circumstances, as a convent happens to lie on our road, we
ought to enter it. Why? Because the convent, which belongs as much to
the East as to the West, to antiquity as to modern times, to Paganism,
to Buddhism, to Mahometanism, as to Christianity, is one of the lenses
which man brings to bear on the Infinite.
This is no place to develop unrestrictedly certain ideas; still, while
we maintain absolutely our reservations, our restrictions, and even
our indignation, we ought to acknowledge, that whenever we find in man
the sense of the Infinite, well or ill conceived, we are seized with a
feeling of respect. In the synagogue, in the mosque, in the pagoda, in
the wigwam, there is a repulsive side which we detest, and a sublime
side which we reverence. What a subject for meditation for the spirit,
and what a boundless revery is the reverberation of God on the human
wall!
CHAPTER II.
THE CONVENT AS AN HISTORICAL FACT.
From the point of view of history, of reason, and of truth, monastic
life must be condemned.
Monasteries when they abound in a nation are tourniquets applied to
circulation, oppressive fixtures, centres of idleness where centres
of activity are needed. Monastic communities bear the same relation
to the great community of society that the mistletoe does to the oak,
or the wart to the human body. Their prosperity and their plumpness
are the impoverishment of the country. The rule of the monastery,
salutary at the beginning of civilizations, useful in bringing about
the subjugation of brutality by the spiritual, is harmful in the ripe
strength of a nation. Further, when it relaxes and when it enters into
its period of decadence, as it still sets the example, it becomes
harmful by the very reasons which made it healthful in its time of
purity.
The cloister has had its day. Monasteries, helpful to the early
education of modern civilization, have checked its growth, and hindered
its development. As an educating force and a means of formation for
man, the monasteries, good in the tenth century, questionable in the
fifteenth, are abominable in the nineteenth. The monastic leprosy has
eaten almost to the bone two great nations, Italy and Spain, the one
the light, the other the splendor of Europe for ages; and at our own
time, these two illustrious nations have only begun to heal, thanks to
the strong and vigorous treatment of 1789.
The convent, the old convent for women especially, such as it still
appeared at the threshold of this century, in Italy, in Austria, in
Spain, is one of the most gloomy concretions of the Middle Ages. The
cloister, this very cloister, is the point of intersection of terrors.
The Catholic cloister, rightly so-called, is all filled with the black
rays of death.
The Spanish convent is especially doleful. There in the dim light,
under misty arches, beneath domes made vague by the shadows, rise
altars massive as the Tower of Babel, lofty as cathedrals; there in
the gloom huge white crucifixes hang by chains; there stand out naked
against the ebony background, huge white Christs of ivory--more than
bloody, bleeding; frightful yet grand, the elbows showing the bone,
the kneepans showing the ligaments, the wounds showing the flesh;
crowned with thorns of silver, nailed with nails of gold, with drops of
blood in rubies on the forehead and tears of diamonds in the eyes. The
diamonds and rubies look wet, and draw tears from those down below in
the gloom,--veiled beings, whose sides are wounded by the hair shirt
and by the scourge with iron points, their bosoms crushed by wicker
jackets, their knees galled by prayer; women who believe themselves
brides, spectres who believe themselves seraphim. Do these women ever
think? No. Have they wills? No. Do they love? No. Do they live? No.
Their nerves have turned to bone, their bones to stone. Their veil
is woven of the night. Their breathing under the veil is like some
tragic respiration of death. Their abbess, a phantom, hallows them and
terrifies them. The Immaculate is there, implacable. Such are the old
monasteries of Spain. Retreats of fearful devotion, caves of virgins,
savage wildernesses.
Catholic Spain was more Roman than Rome itself. The Spanish convent was
pre-eminently the Catholic convent. It had a touch of the East about
it. The Archbishop, kislar-agar of heaven, locked up and watched this
seraglio of souls reserved for God. The nun was the odalisque, the
priest was the eunuch. The devoted were chosen in their dreams, and
possessed Christ. By night the beautiful young man descended naked from
the cross and became the rapture of the cell. High walls guarded from
every living distraction the mystic sultana who had for her sultan the
Crucified One. A mere glance outside was an infidelity. The _in pace_
took the place of the leather sack. What they threw into the sea in the
East, they threw into the earth in the West. In both places, women's
arms were writhing; for these the sea, for those the grave; here the
drowned, there the buried. Dreadful analogy!
To-day, the champions of the past, since they cannot deny these things,
have adopted the course of making light of them. They have made it
the fashion, this convenient and strange way of suppressing the
revelations of history, of weakening the commentaries of philosophy,
and of getting rid of all troublesome facts and all grave questions.
"Matter for declamations," say the able ones. "Declamations" repeat the
fools. Jean-Jacques, a declaimer; Diderot, a declaimer; Voltaire on
Calas, Labarre and Sirven, a declaimer. They have made it out now that
Tacitus was a declaimer, that Nero was a victim, and that we really
ought to feel very sorry for "poor Holofernes."
Facts are obstinate, however, and hard to disconcert. The writer of
this book has seen with his own eyes, within eight leagues of Brussels,
and that is a part of the Middle Ages which every one has at hand, at
the Abbey of Villers, the dungeon-hole in the middle of the meadow
which used to be the court-yard of the cloister; and on the banks of
the Thil, four stone cells, half under ground, half under water. These
were the _in pace._ Each of these cells has the remains of an iron
door, a latrine, and a barred window, which from the outside is two
feet above the water, and from the inside is six feet above the floor.
Four feet of river wash the outside of the wall. The floor is always
wet. The tenant of the _in pace_ had for a bed this wet earth. In one
of these cells there is a broken piece of a collar fastened to the
wall; in another may be seen a kind of square box made of four slabs of
granite, too short to lie down in, too low to sit up in. They put into
that a human being with a stone lid over her. This exists. You can see
it. You can touch it. These _in pace_, these cells, these iron hinges,
these collars, this high window, close to which flows the river, this
stone box closed with a granite lid like a tomb, with this difference,
that here the corpse was a living being, this floor of mud, this sewer,
these oozing walls,--what declaimers these are!
CHAPTER III.
ON WHAT TERMS THE PAST IS VENERABLE.
The monastic system, as it existed in Spain, and as it exists now at
Thibet, is to civilization a sort of consumption. It stops life short.
It depopulates, nothing more nor less,--claustration, castration. It
has been the scourge of Europe. Add to this the violence so often
done to conscience, the forced vocations, the feudal system resting
upon the cloister, primogeniture pouring into the monastic system the
overflow of the family, these cruelties of which we have just spoken,
the _in pace_, the mouths sealed, the brains walled up, so many unhappy
intellects thrown into the dungeon of eternal vows, the taking of the
veil, the burying alive of souls. Add the individual sufferings to the
national degradation, and whoever you may be, you feel yourself shudder
before the frock and the veil, these two shrouds of human invention.
However, on some points, and in some places, in spite of philosophy,
in spite of progress, the monastic spirit persists in the midst of
the nineteenth century, and a strange reopening of the monastic sore
astonishes at this moment the civilized world. The obstinacy which old
institutions show in perpetuating themselves is like the stubbornness
of rancid perfume demanding to be used on our hair, the pretension of
spoiled fish clamoring to be eaten, the persecution of the child's
garment demanding to clothe the man, and the tenderness of corpses
coming back to embrace the living.
"Ingrates!" says the garment. "I have sheltered you in the bad weather.
Why do you cast me off?" "I come from the deep sea," says the fish.
"I was once the rose," says the perfume. "I have loved you," says the
corpse. "I have civilized you," says the convent.
To this there is one answer: "Yes, in times past."
To dream of the indefinite prolongation of things that are dead, and
the government of men by embalmment, to restore to life dogmas that
are rotting away, to regild the shrines, to replaster the cloisters,
to reconsecrate the reliquaries, to refurnish the superstitions,
to galvanize the fanaticisms, to put new handles on the holy water
sprinklers, to set up again monastic and military rule, to believe in
the saving of society by the multiplication of parasites, to impose
the past on the present,--this seems strange. There are, however,
theorists for these theories. These theorists, sensible men in other
respects, have a very simple expedient. They varnish the past with a
coating which they call social order, divine right, morality, family,
respect for ancestors, ancient authority, sacred tradition, legitimacy,
religion; and they go about crying, "Here! take this, my good people."
This logic was known to the ancients. The soothsayers used to practise
it They rubbed with chalk a black heifer, and said, "She is white."
_Bos cretatus._
As for us, we respect the past here and there, and we spare it always,
provided that it consents to stay dead. If it tries to come to life
again, we attack it, and we try to kill it.
Superstitions, bigotries, hypocrisies, prejudices, these phantoms,
though they are only phantoms, are tenacious of life; they have teeth
and claws in their obscurity, and we must grapple with them body to
body, and make war upon them, and war without truce; for it is the
fate of humanity to be condemned to eternal combat with phantoms. The
spectre is hard to take by the throat, and throw to earth.
A convent in France in the full noon of the nineteenth century is a
college of owls blinking at the daylight. A cloister in the open act
of asceticism, in the very midst of the city of '89, of 1830, and of
1848,--Rome blossoming in Paris,--is an anachronism. At any ordinary
time, to lay an anachronism, and make it vanish, we need only to make
it spell out the date. But we are not in ordinary times.
Let us fight.
Let us fight; but let us distinguish. The essence of truth consists in
never exaggerating. What need has she of exaggerating? There are some
things that must be destroyed, and there are some things that need only
be lighted up and looked at. Kind and serious examination, what a power
it is! Let us not use fire where light will answer even purpose.
Given the nineteenth century, then, we are opposed on general
principles, and in all nations, in Asia as well as in Europe, in India
as in Turkey, to cloistered asceticism. Convent means bog. Their
putrescence is undisguisable, their stagnation is unhealthy, their
fermentation breeds fever and wasting pestilence in nations, their
increase becomes one of the plagues of Egypt. We cannot think without
fright of those countries where fakirs, bonzes, santons, caloyers,
marabouts, talapoins, and dervishes multiply like swarms of vermin.
This said, the question of religion still remains. This question has
phases which are mysterious and almost fearful. Let us look at it
steadily.
CHAPTER IV.
THE CONVENT FROM MORAL STANDPOINT.
Some men unite and live together. By what right? By the right of
association.
They shut themselves up at home. By what right? By the right which
every man has to keep his door open or shut.
They do not go out. By what right? By the right to go and come, which
implies the right to stay at home.
There, at home, what do they do?
They speak in low tones; they lower their eyes; they work. They
renounce the world, cities, sensual joys, pleasures, vanity, pride,
interest. They are clad in coarse wool, or coarse canvas. Not one of
them has any property of his own. In entering, he who was rich makes
himself poor. Whatever he has he gives to them all. He who was what the
world calls well born, the nobleman and the lord, is the equal of him
who was a peasant. All have the same cell. All bear the same tonsure,
wear the same frock, eat the same black bread, sleep on the same straw,
die on the same ashes. The same sackcloth on the back, the same rope
around the loins. If it is the rule to go barefoot, all go barefoot.
One of them may have been a prince, this prince is the same shade as
the others. No more titles, family names even have disappeared. They
bear only Christian names. All bow beneath the equality of baptismal
names. They have dissolved the fleshly family, and have formed in their
community the spiritual family. They have no longer any other kindred
than mankind. They help the poor, they heal the sick. They elect those
whom they obey. They call each other "brother."
You stop me, and you exclaim, "But that is an ideal convent."
It is enough that such a convent is possible to make it my duty to take
it into account.
This is the reason that in the preceding book I have spoken of a
convent in a tone of respect. Putting aside the Middle Ages, putting
aside Asia, reserving the consideration of the historical and political
question from the purely philosophical point of view, outside of the
necessities of militant politics, upon the condition that the monastery
should be wholly voluntary, and should shut up only those who freely
consent, I should always regard the claustral community with attentive
and on some accounts reverend gravity. Where the community is, there is
the commune; where the commune is, there is human right. The monastery
is the result of the formula: Equality, Fraternity. Oh, how great is
Liberty! What a glorious transfiguration! Liberty is all that is needed
to transform the monastery into the republic.
Let us go on.
But these men or these women, who are behind these four walls, they
wear sackcloth, they are equal, they call each other brother. Very
well; but is there anything else that they do?
Yes.
What?
They look into the darkness, they fall upon their knees, and they clasp
their hands.
What does that mean?
CHAPTER V.
PRAYER.
They pray.
To whom?
To God.
To pray to God,--what does this mean?
Is there an infinite power outside of us? Is this infinite power a
unity, immanent and enduring,--necessarily material, because it is
infinite, and if it lacked matter, in so far it would be circumscribed;
necessarily intelligent, because it is infinite, and if it lacked
intelligence, again it would be limited? Does this infinite power
awaken in us the idea of the essence of things, while we can only
ascribe to ourselves the idea of existence? In other words, is it not
the Absolute of which we are the Relative?
While there is an infinite power outside of us, is there not an
infinite power within us? Do not these two infinites (what a fearful
plural!) rest one upon the other? Does not the second infinite depend
upon the first? Is it not its mirror, its reflection, its echo, an
abyss concentric with another abyss? Is this second infinite also
intelligent? Does it think? Does it love? Has it a will? If both these
infinites are intelligent, each of them has volition, and there is an
Ego in the infinite above, as there is an Ego in the infinite below.
The Ego in the one below is the soul; the Ego in the one above is God.
To bring by thought the infinite below in contact with the infinite
above is called praying.
Let us take nothing from the human spirit; to suppress anything is
wrong. Let us regenerate and transform it. Some of man's faculties are
directed toward the Unknown,--thought, revery, prayer. The Unknown
is an ocean. What is conscience? It is the mariner's compass of the
Unknown. Thought, revery, prayer, these are great mysterious rays; let
us respect them. Whither tend these grand radiations of the soul? Into
the darkness; that is to say, to the light.
The grandeur of democracy is in its denying nothing and abjuring
nothing of humanity. Next to the right of man comes the right of the
soul.
To crush out fanaticism, and to reverence the infinite, such is the
law. Let us not be content to prostrate ourselves under the tree of
Creation, and to contemplate its immense branches full of stars. We
have a duty,--to work for the human soul, to distinguish between
mystery and miracle; to worship the incomprehensible and reject the
absurd; to admit as inexplicable only what we must; to make faith more
healthy, to remove from religion the superstitions that encumber it; to
brush the cobwebs from the image of God.
CHAPTER VI.
ABSOLUTE GOODNESS OF PRATER.
As to the manner of prayer, all are good, provided that they are
sincere. Turn your book upside down, and be in the infinite.
There is, as we know, a philosophy which denies the infinite. There is
also a philosophy, in pathological classification, which denies the
sun; this philosophy is called blindness.
To set up as a source of truth a sense which we lack is the consummate
assurance of a blind man.
The strange part of it lies in the lofty, superior, and pitying
airs which this groping philosophy takes on in the presence of the
philosophy which sees God. You fancy you hear the mole exclaim, "How I
pity the poor men with their sun!"
There are some eminent and able atheists, we admit. These at bottom
being brought back to the truth by their very ability, are not sure
that they are atheists; it is scarcely more than a matter of definition
with them; and at any rate, if they do not believe in God, being great
minds, they bear unconscious witness to His existence.
We hail in them the philosopher, while we deny relentlessly their
philosophy.
Let us go on.
It is wonderful, too, to see how easily they amuse themselves with
words, A metaphysical school of the North, a little impregnated with
fog, thought that it was making a revolution in the human understanding
when it replaced the word "Force" by the word "Will."
To say "the plant wills" instead of "the plant grows;" this would
amount to something, if they added "the universe wills," Why? Because
it would lead to this: the plant wills, then it has a self; the
universe wills, then it has a God.
To us, however, who, unlike this school, reject nothing _a priori_, a
will in the plant, which this school admits, seems more difficult to
admit than a will in the universe, which this school denies.
To deny the will of the infinite, that is to say, God, is impossible
without denying the infinite. This we have demonstrated.
The denial of the infinite leads straight to nihilism. Everything
becomes "a conception of the mind."
With nihilism no argument is possible; for the logical nihilist doubts
the existence of his opponent in the discussion, and is not quite sure
that he exists himself.
From his point of view it may be that his own existence is only a
"conception of his mind."
He does not see, however, that all that he has denied he admits in the
lump by merely using this word "mind."
In short, no way is left open for thought by a philosophy which makes
everything end in the mono-syllable "No."
To "No," there is but one answer, "Yes."
Nihilism has no range.
There is no nothing. Zero does not exist. Everything is something.
Nothing is nothing.
Man lives by affirmation even more than by bread.
To see and point out the way is not enough. Philosophy ought to be
a living force; it ought to have for end and aim the amelioration
of mankind. Socrates ought to enter into Adam, and produce Marcus
Aurelius; in other words, turn the man of selfish enjoyment into the
wise and good man. Change Eden into the Lyceum. Knowledge ought to be
a stimulant. To enjoy life, what a poor aim, what a mean ambition! The
brute enjoys. To think, that is the true triumph of the soul.
To hold out thought to quench men's thirst, to give to all men as an
elixir the idea of God, to make conscience and knowledge fraternize
in them, and by this mysterious partnership to make them just,--this
is the work for real philosophy. Morality is a blossoming of truths.
Thought leads to action. The absolute ought to be practical. The ideal
must be brought into such form that it can be breathed, drunk, and
eaten by the human soul. The ideal is the very one to say, "Take, eat;
this is my body, this is my blood." Knowledge is a holy communion.
Thus it ceases to be a sterile love of knowledge to become the one and
sovereign means of human advancement, and from philosophy it is exalted
to religion.
Philosophy ought not to be an arch built over mystery, the better to
look down on it, merely as a convenience for curiosity.
Postponing to another time the development of this thought, we content
ourselves now with saying that we understand neither man as the point
of departure nor progress as the goal, without these two motive forces,
faith and love.
Progress is the goal, the ideal is the type.
What is the ideal? It is God.
Ideal, absolute, perfection, infinite,--all mean the same.
CHAPTER VII.
CARE TO BE EXERCISED IN CONDEMNING.
History and philosophy have eternal duties which are at the same
time simple duties. To oppose Caiaphas as a high priest, Draco as a
judge, Trimalcion as a law-giver, Tiberius as an emperor,--that is a
duty simple, direct, and clear, and gives no room for doubt. But the
right to live apart, even with its objections and its abuse, must be
demonstrated and handled carefully; monasticism is a human problem.
In speaking of convents, these homes of error but of innocence, of
wanderings from the true path but of good intentions, of ignorance but
of devotion, of torture but of martyrdom, we must almost always say yes
and no.
A convent is a contradiction: its aim, salvation; its means, sacrifice.
The convent is supreme selfishness having as its result supreme
abnegation.
To abdicate in order to reign seems to be the motto of monasticism.
In the convent, they suffer in order to enjoy. They take out a letter
of credit on death. They discount in earthly night the light of heaven.
In the convent hell is endured in advance of the heirship to paradise.
The taking of the veil or the frock is a suicide recompensed by
eternity.
Mockery on such a subject does not seem to us to be in place.
Everything there is serious, the good as well as the bad.
The just man frowns, but never sneers at it We can sympathize with
indignation, but not with malignity.
CHAPTER VIII.
FAITH, LAW.
A few words more. We blame the Church when it is steeped in intrigues.
We scorn the spiritual when it is not in accord with the temporal; but
we honor the thoughtful man wherever we find him.
We bow to the man who kneels.
A faith of some kind is necessary to man. Alas for him who believes
nothing!
We are not necessarily idle because we are absorbed. Labor may be
invisible as well as visible.
To reflect is to labor; to think is to act.
The folded arms labor, the clasped hands work. The gaze directed to
heaven is a labor.
Thales stayed immovable for four years. He founded philosophy.
In our opinion, monks are not drones, and hermits are not idlers.
To think of the future life is a serious business.
Without withdrawing at all from the position which we have just taken,
we believe that a continual reminder of the tomb is good for the
living. On this point the priest and the philosopher agree. _We must
die._ The Trappist Abbé replies to Horace.
To mix with his life some presence of the tomb is the law of the wise
man; and it is also the law of the recluse. Here recluse and wise man
agree.
There is such a thing as material growth; we are glad of it. There is
also such a thing as moral grandeur; we insist upon it.
Thoughtless and hasty spirits say: "What is the use of these figures
motionless by the side of mystery? What purpose do they serve? What
good do they do?"
Alas! In presence of the darkness which envelops us, and which awaits
us, not knowing what will become of us in the dispersion of all things,
we answer, "There is no work more sublime, perhaps, than that which
these souls are doing." And we add, "There is, perhaps, no work more
useful."
Those who always pray are needed for those who never pray.
In our opinion, it all depends on the amount of thought that enters
into the prayer.
Leibnitz in prayer, this is grand. Voltaire in adoration, this is
sublime. _Deo erexit Voltaire._
We are on the side of religion against religions.
We believe in the worthlessness of supplications and the sublimity of
worship.
Besides, at this moment through which we are passing, a moment which
luckily will not leave its imprint upon the nineteenth century, at
this hour when so many men have the forehead low and the soul far from
lofty, among so many beings whose code is selfish enjoyment, and who
are taken up with material things, ephemeral and shapeless, he who
exiles himself seems to us worthy of veneration.
The monastery is a renunciation. Mistaken sacrifice is still sacrifice.
To mistake for duty a serious error, this has its noble side.
Taken by itself ideally, and looking on all sides of truth until we
have exhausted impartially all its aspects, the monastery and still
more the convent for women,--for in our society woman is the greatest
sufferer, and her protest appears in this exile of the cloister,--the
convent for women has undeniably a certain grandeur.
This cloistered life so austere and so sad, some of whose features we
have pointed out, is not life, for it is not liberty; it is not the
tomb, for it is not lasting. It is the weird place from which is seen
as from the crest of a high mountain on one side the abyss in which we
now are, on the other, the abyss in which we shall be; it is a narrow
and misty boundary which separates two worlds, cast into light and into
shadow by both at a time, where the weak ray of life blends with the
flickering ray of death; it is the penumbra of the tomb.
While we do not believe as these women do, we live like them by faith;
and we have never been able to think, without a kind of terror,
religious and tender, without a sort of pity mixed with envy, of these
devoted creatures, trembling and trusting, these souls humble and
proud, who dare to live on the very border of mystery, waiting between
the world which is closed, and heaven which is not yet open, faced
toward the light which they do not see, having only the consolation
of thinking that they know where it is, longing for the gulf and the
unknown, with eyes fixed upon the motionless darkness, kneeling,
distracted, stupefied, shuddering, half lifted at times by the deep
breathing of eternity.
BOOK VIII
CEMETERIES TAKE WHAT IS GIVEN THEM.
CHAPTER I.
HOW TO GET INTO A CONVENT.
It was into this house that Jean Valjean had fallen from heaven, as
Fauchelevent said. He had climbed the garden-wall which formed the
angle of the Rue Polonceau; the hymn of angels which he heard in the
middle of the night was the nuns chanting matins; the hall which he had
caught a glimpse of in the darkness was the chapel; the phantom he had
seen stretched out on the ground was the phantom making reparation;
and the bell which had so strangely surprised him was the gardener's
bell fastened to Fauchelevent's knee. So soon as Cosette was in bed
Jean Valjean and Fauchelevent supped on a glass of wine and a lump of
cheese before a good blazing log; then, as the only bed in the cottage
was occupied by Cosette, each threw himself on a truss of straw. Before
closing his eyes Jean Valjean said, "I must stop here henceforth",
and this remark trotted about Fauchelevent's head all night In fact,
neither of them slept; Jean Valjean, feeling himself discovered and
Javert on his track, understood that he and Cosette were lost if they
entered Paris. Since the new blast of wind had blown him into this
convent Jean Valjean had but one thought, that of remaining in it.
Now, for a wretch in his position, this convent was at once the most
dangerous and the safest place,--the most dangerous, because as no man
was allowed to enter it, if he were discovered it would be a crime, and
Jean Valjean would only take one step from the convent to the prison;
the safest, because if he succeeded in remaining in it who would come
to seek him there? Inhabiting an impossible spot was salvation.
On his side, Fauchelevent racked his brains. He began by declaring
to himself that he understood nothing. How was M. Madeleine, in
spite of all the surrounding walls, here? And convent walls cannot
be passed at a stride. How was he here with a child? People do not
scale a perpendicular wall with a child in their arms. Who was this
child? Where did they both come from? Since Fauchelevent had been in
the convent he had received no news from M----, and did not know what
had occurred there. Father Madeleine had that look which discourages
questioning, and moreover Fauchelevent said to himself, "A saint is not
to be cross-questioned." It was only from a few words which escaped
Jean Valjean that the gardener fancied he could come to the conclusion
that M. Madeleine had probably been made bankrupt by the hard times,
and was pursued by his creditors; or else he was compromised in a
political affair and was in hiding, which idea did not displease
Fauchelevent, because, like most of the peasants in the north of
France, he was a stanch Bonapartist. M. Madeleine had chosen the
convent as his asylum, and it was simple that he should wish to remain
there. But the inexplicable thing, to which Fauchelevent constantly
recurred and which addled his brains, was that M. Madeleine was here,
and here with this child. Fauchelevent saw them, touched them, spoke
to them, and did not believe it. The gardener was stumbling among
conjectures and saw nothing clear but this,--"M. Madeleine saved my
life." This sole certainty was sufficient, and decided him; he said to
himself, "It is my turn now." He added in his conscience, "M. Madeleine
did not deliberate long when he had to get under the cart to save me,"
and he decided upon saving M. Madeleine. He, however, asked himself
several questions, to which he gave divers answers. "After what he did
for me, should I save him, if he were a robber? All the same. If he
were an assassin, would I save him? All the same. Since he is a saint,
shall I save him? All the same."