Les Misérables, v. 2

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 <