Les Misérables, page 135
CHAPTER IX--A CENTURY UNDER A GUIMPE
Since we are engaged in giving details as to what the convent of thePetit-Picpus was in former times, and since we have ventured to opena window on that discreet retreat, the reader will permit us one otherlittle digression, utterly foreign to this book, but characteristic anduseful, since it shows that the cloister even has its original figures.
In the Little Convent there was a centenarian who came from the Abbeyof Fontevrault. She had even been in society before the Revolution. Shetalked a great deal of M. de Miromesnil, Keeper of the Seals under LouisXVI. and of a Presidentess Duplat, with whom she had been very intimate.It was her pleasure and her vanity to drag in these names on everypretext. She told wonders of the Abbey of Fontevrault,--that it was likea city, and that there were streets in the monastery.
She talked with a Picard accent which amused the pupils. Every year,she solemnly renewed her vows, and at the moment of taking the oath, shesaid to the priest, "Monseigneur Saint-François gave it to MonseigneurSaint-Julien, Monseigneur Saint-Julien gave it to MonseigneurSaint-Eusebius, Monseigneur Saint-Eusebius gave it to MonseigneurSaint-Procopius, etc., etc.; and thus I give it to you, father." And theschool-girls would begin to laugh, not in their sleeves, but undertheir veils; charming little stifled laughs which made the vocal mothersfrown.
On another occasion, the centenarian was telling stories. She saidthat _in her youth the Bernardine monks were every whit as good as themousquetaires_. It was a century which spoke through her, but it was theeighteenth century. She told about the custom of the four wines, whichexisted before the Revolution in Champagne and Bourgogne. When a greatpersonage, a marshal of France, a prince, a duke, and a peer, traverseda town in Burgundy or Champagne, the city fathers came out to haranguehim and presented him with four silver gondolas into which theyhad poured four different sorts of wine. On the first goblet thisinscription could be read, _monkey wine_; on the second, _lion wine_; onthe third, _sheep wine_; on the fourth, _hog wine_. These fourlegends express the four stages descended by the drunkard; the first,intoxication, which enlivens; the second, that which irritates; thethird, that which dulls; and the fourth, that which brutalizes.
In a cupboard, under lock and key, she kept a mysterious object of whichshe thought a great deal. The rule of Fontevrault did not forbid this.She would not show this object to anyone. She shut herself up, which herrule allowed her to do, and hid herself, every time that she desired tocontemplate it. If she heard a footstep in the corridor, she closed thecupboard again as hastily as it was possible with her aged hands. Assoon as it was mentioned to her, she became silent, she who was so fondof talking. The most curious were baffled by her silence and the mosttenacious by her obstinacy. Thus it furnished a subject of comment forall those who were unoccupied or bored in the convent. What could thattreasure of the centenarian be, which was so precious and so secret?Some holy book, no doubt? Some unique chaplet? Some authentic relic?They lost themselves in conjectures. When the poor old woman died,they rushed to her cupboard more hastily than was fitting, perhaps, andopened it. They found the object beneath a triple linen cloth, like someconsecrated paten. It was a Faenza platter representing little Lovesflitting away pursued by apothecary lads armed with enormous syringes.The chase abounds in grimaces and in comical postures. One of thecharming little Loves is already fairly spitted. He is resisting,fluttering his tiny wings, and still making an effort to fly, but thedancer is laughing with a satanical air. Moral: Love conquered by thecolic. This platter, which is very curious, and which had, possibly,the honor of furnishing Molière with an idea, was still in existencein September, 1845; it was for sale by a bric-à-brac merchant in theBoulevard Beaumarchais.
This good old woman would not receive any visits from outside _because_,said she, the _parlor is too gloomy_.
