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_ 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-Francois 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 Moliere with an idea, was still
in existence in September, 1845; it was for sale by a bric-a-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. _
Read next: VOLUME II - COSETTE: BOOK SIXTH - LE PETIT-PICPUS: HAPTER X. Origin of the Perpetual Adoration
Read previous: VOLUME II - COSETTE: BOOK SIXTH - LE PETIT-PICPUS: HAPTER VIII. Post Corda Lapides
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