Nothing, half a century ago, more resembled every other carriage gate
than the carriage gate of Number 62 Rue Petit-Picpus. This entrance,
which usually stood ajar in the most inviting fashion, permitted a view
of two things, neither of which have anything very funereal about
them,—a courtyard surrounded by walls hung with vines, and the face of
a lounging porter. Above the wall, at the bottom of the court, tall
trees were visible. When a ray of sunlight enlivened the courtyard,
when a glass of wine cheered up the porter, it was difficult to pass
Number 62 Little Picpus Street without carrying away a smiling
impression of it. Nevertheless, it was a sombre place of which one had
had a glimpse.
The threshold smiled; the house prayed and wept.
If one succeeded in passing the porter, which was not easy,—which was
even nearly impossible for every one, for there was an _open sesame!_
which it was necessary to know,—if, the porter once passed, one entered
a little vestibule on the right, on which opened a staircase shut in
between two walls and so narrow that only one person could ascend it at
a time, if one did not allow one’s self to be alarmed by a daubing of
canary yellow, with a dado of chocolate which clothed this staircase,
if one ventured to ascend it, one crossed a first landing, then a
second, and arrived on the first story at a corridor where the yellow
wash and the chocolate-hued plinth pursued one with a peaceable
persistency. Staircase and corridor were lighted by two beautiful
windows. The corridor took a turn and became dark. If one doubled this
cape, one arrived a few paces further on, in front of a door which was
all the more mysterious because it was not fastened. If one opened it,
one found one’s self in a little chamber about six feet square, tiled,
well-scrubbed, clean, cold, and hung with nankin paper with green
flowers, at fifteen sous the roll. A white, dull light fell from a
large window, with tiny panes, on the left, which usurped the whole
width of the room. One gazed about, but saw no one; one listened, one
heard neither a footstep nor a human murmur. The walls were bare, the
chamber was not furnished; there was not even a chair.
One looked again, and beheld on the wall facing the door a quadrangular
hole, about a foot square, with a grating of interlacing iron bars,
black, knotted, solid, which formed squares—I had almost said meshes—of
less than an inch and a half in diagonal length. The little green
flowers of the nankin paper ran in a calm and orderly manner to those
iron bars, without being startled or thrown into confusion by their
funereal contact. Supposing that a living being had been so wonderfully
thin as to essay an entrance or an exit through the square hole, this
grating would have prevented it. It did not allow the passage of the
body, but it did allow the passage of the eyes; that is to say, of the
mind. This seems to have occurred to them, for it had been re-enforced
by a sheet of tin inserted in the wall a little in the rear, and
pierced with a thousand holes more microscopic than the holes of a
strainer. At the bottom of this plate, an aperture had been pierced
exactly similar to the orifice of a letter box. A bit of tape attached
to a bell-wire hung at the right of the grated opening.
If the tape was pulled, a bell rang, and one heard a voice very near at
hand, which made one start.
“Who is there?” the voice demanded.
It was a woman’s voice, a gentle voice, so gentle that it was mournful.
Here, again, there was a magical word which it was necessary to know.
If one did not know it, the voice ceased, the wall became silent once
more, as though the terrified obscurity of the sepulchre had been on
the other side of it.
If one knew the password, the voice resumed, “Enter on the right.”
One then perceived on the right, facing the window, a glass door
surmounted by a frame glazed and painted gray. On raising the latch and
crossing the threshold, one experienced precisely the same impression
as when one enters at the theatre into a grated _baignoire_, before the
grating is lowered and the chandelier is lighted. One was, in fact, in
a sort of theatre-box, narrow, furnished with two old chairs, and a
much-frayed straw matting, sparely illuminated by the vague light from
the glass door; a regular box, with its front just of a height to lean
upon, bearing a tablet of black wood. This box was grated, only the
grating of it was not of gilded wood, as at the opera; it was a
monstrous lattice of iron bars, hideously interlaced and riveted to the
wall by enormous fastenings which resembled clenched fists.
The first minutes passed; when one’s eyes began to grow used to this
cellar-like half-twilight, one tried to pass the grating, but got no
further than six inches beyond it. There he encountered a barrier of
black shutters, re-enforced and fortified with transverse beams of wood
painted a gingerbread yellow. These shutters were divided into long,
narrow slats, and they masked the entire length of the grating. They
were always closed. At the expiration of a few moments one heard a
voice proceeding from behind these shutters, and saying:—
“I am here. What do you wish with me?”
It was a beloved, sometimes an adored, voice. No one was visible.
Hardly the sound of a breath was audible. It seemed as though it were a
spirit which had been evoked, that was speaking to you across the walls
of the tomb.
If one chanced to be within certain prescribed and very rare
conditions, the slat of one of the shutters opened opposite you; the
evoked spirit became an apparition. Behind the grating, behind the
shutter, one perceived so far as the grating permitted sight, a head,
of which only the mouth and the chin were visible; the rest was covered
with a black veil. One caught a glimpse of a black guimpe, and a form
that was barely defined, covered with a black shroud. That head spoke
with you, but did not look at you and never smiled at you.
The light which came from behind you was adjusted in such a manner that
you saw her in the white, and she saw you in the black. This light was
symbolical.
Nevertheless, your eyes plunged eagerly through that opening which was
made in that place shut off from all glances. A profound vagueness
enveloped that form clad in mourning. Your eyes searched that
vagueness, and sought to make out the surroundings of the apparition.
At the expiration of a very short time you discovered that you could
see nothing. What you beheld was night, emptiness, shadows, a wintry
mist mingled with a vapor from the tomb, a sort of terrible peace, a
silence from which you could gather nothing, not even sighs, a gloom in
which you could distinguish nothing, not even phantoms.
What you beheld was the interior of a cloister.
It was the interior of that severe and gloomy edifice which was called
the Convent of the Bernardines of the Perpetual Adoration. The box in
which you stood was the parlor. The first voice which had addressed you
was that of the portress who always sat motionless and silent, on the
other side of the wall, near the square opening, screened by the iron
grating and the plate with its thousand holes, as by a double visor.
The obscurity which bathed the grated box arose from the fact that the
parlor, which had a window on the side of the world, had none on the
side of the convent. Profane eyes must see nothing of that sacred
place.
Nevertheless, there was something beyond that shadow; there was a
light; there was life in the midst of that death. Although this was the
most strictly walled of all convents, we shall endeavor to make our way
into it, and to take the reader in, and to say, without transgressing
the proper bounds, things which story-tellers have never seen, and
have, therefore, never described.