Since we are engaged in giving details as to what the convent of the
Petit-Picpus was in former times, and since we have ventured to open a
window on that discreet retreat, the reader will permit us one other
little digression, utterly foreign to this book, but characteristic and
useful, since it shows that the cloister even has its original figures.
In the Little Convent there was a centenarian who came from the Abbey
of Fontevrault. She had even been in society before the Revolution. She
talked a great deal of M. de Miromesnil, Keeper of the Seals under
Louis XVI. 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
every pretext. She told wonders of the Abbey of Fontevrault,—that it
was like a 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,
she said to the priest, “Monseigneur Saint-François gave it to
Monseigneur Saint-Julien, Monseigneur Saint-Julien gave it to
Monseigneur Saint-Eusebius, Monseigneur Saint-Eusebius gave it to
Monseigneur Saint-Procopius, etc., etc.; and thus I give it to you,
father.” And the school-girls would begin to laugh, not in their
sleeves, but under their veils; charming little stifled laughs which
made the vocal mothers frown.
On another occasion, the centenarian was telling stories. She said that
_in her youth the Bernardine monks were every whit as good as the
mousquetaires_. It was a century which spoke through her, but it was
the eighteenth century. She told about the custom of the four wines,
which existed before the Revolution in Champagne and Bourgogne. When a
great personage, a marshal of France, a prince, a duke, and a peer,
traversed a town in Burgundy or Champagne, the city fathers came out to
harangue him and presented him with four silver gondolas into which
they had poured four different sorts of wine. On the first goblet this
inscription could be read, _monkey wine_; on the second, _lion wine_;
on the third, _sheep wine_; on the fourth, _hog wine_. These four
legends express the four stages descended by the drunkard; the first,
intoxication, which enlivens; the second, that which irritates; the
third, that which dulls; and the fourth, that which brutalizes.
In a cupboard, under lock and key, she kept a mysterious object of
which she 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 her rule allowed her to do, and hid herself, every time that she
desired to contemplate it. If she heard a footstep in the corridor, she
closed the cupboard again as hastily as it was possible with her aged
hands. As soon as it was mentioned to her, she became silent, she who
was so fond of talking. The most curious were baffled by her silence
and the most tenacious by her obstinacy. Thus it furnished a subject of
comment for all those who were unoccupied or bored in the convent. What
could that treasure 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, and opened it. They found the object beneath a triple linen
cloth, like some consecrated paten. It was a Faenza platter
representing little Loves flitting away pursued by apothecary lads
armed with enormous syringes. The chase abounds in grimaces and in
comical postures. One of the charming little Loves is already fairly
spitted. He is resisting, fluttering his tiny wings, and still making
an effort to fly, but the dancer is laughing with a satanical air.
Moral: Love conquered by the colic. This platter, which is very
curious, and which had, possibly, the honor of furnishing Molière with
an idea, was still in existence in September, 1845; it was for sale by
a bric-à-brac merchant in the Boulevard Beaumarchais.
This good old woman would not receive any visits from outside
_because_, said she, the _parlor is too gloomy_.