A FEW PROFILES FROM THE SHADOW.
During the six years between 1819 and 1825 the prioress of Little Picpus was Mademoiselle de Blémeur, called in religion Mother Innocent. She belonged to the family of that Marguerite de Blémeur who was authoress of the "Lives of the Saints of the Order of Saint Benedict." She was a lady of about sixty years, short, stout, and with a voice "like a cracked pot," says the letter from which we have already quoted; but she was an excellent creature, the only merry soul in the convent, and on that account adored. She followed in the footsteps of her ancestress Marguerite, the Dacier of the order; she was lettered, learned, competent, versed in the curiosities of history, stuffed with Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and more a monk than a nun. The sub-prioress was an old Spanish nun, almost blind, Mother Cineres. The most estimated among the "vocals" were—Mother Saint Honorine, the treasurer; Mother Saint Gertrude, first mistress of the novices; Mother Saint Ange, second mistress; Mother Annunciation, sacristan; Mother Saint Augustine, head of the infirmary, the only unkind person in the convent; then Mother Saint Mechtilde (Mlle. Gauvain), who was young, and had an admirable voice; Mother des Auges (Mlle. Drouet), who had been in the convent of the Filles Dieu, and that of the Treasury near Gisors; Mother Saint Joseph (Mlle. de Cogolludo); Mother Saint Adelaide (Mlle. D'Auverney); Mother Miséricorde (Mlle. de Cifuentes, who could not endure the privations); Mother Compassion (Mlle. de La Miltière, received at the age of sixty, contrary to the rule, but very rich); Mother Providence (Mlle. de Laudinière); Mother Presentation (Mlle. de Siguenza), who was prioress in 1847; and lastly, Mother Saint Céligne (sister of Cerachhi the sculptor), who went mad; and Mother Saint Chantal (Mlle. de Suzon), who also went mad. Among the prettiest was a charming girl of three-and-twenty, who belonged to the Bourbonnais, and was descended from the Chevalier Roze, who was called in the world Mlle. Roze, and in religion Mother Assumption.
Mother Saint Mechtilde, who had charge of the singing arrangements, was glad to make use of the boarders for this purpose; she generally selected a complete musical scale, that is to say, seven assorted voices, from ten to sixteen years inclusive, whom she drew up in a line, ranging from the shortest to the tallest. In this way she produced a species of living Pandean pipes, composed of angels. The lay sisters whom the boarders liked most were Sister Saint Euphrasie, Sister Saint Marguerite, Sister Saint Marthe, who was childish, and Sister Saint Michel, at whose long nose they laughed. All these nuns were kind to the children, and only stern to themselves; there were no fires lit except in the schoolhouse, and the food there was luxurious when compared with that of the convent. The only thing was that when a child passed a nun and spoke to her, the latter did not answer. This rule of silence produced the result that in the whole convent language was withdrawn from human creatures and given to inanimate objects. At one moment it was the church bell that spoke, at another the gardener's; and a very sonorous gong, placed by the side of the sister porter, and which could be heard all through the house, indicated by various raps, which were a sort of acoustic telegraphy, all the actions of natural life which had to be accomplished, and summoned a nun, if required, to the parlor. Each person and each thing had its raps: the prioress had one and one, the sub-prioress one and two; six-five announced school hour, so that the pupils talked of going to six-five; four-four was Madame Genlis' signal, and as it was heard very often, uncharitable persons said she was the "diable à quatre." Nineteen strokes announced a great event; it was the opening of the cloister door, a terrible iron plate all bristling with bolts, which only turned on its hinges before the archbishop. With the exception of that dignitary and the gardener, no other man entered the convent; but the boarders saw two others,—one was the chaplain, Abbé Banès, an old ugly man, whom they were allowed to contemplate through a grating; while the other was M. Ansiaux, the drawing-master, whom the letter which we have already quoted calls "M. Anciot," and describes as an odious old hunchback. So we see that all the men were picked.
Such was this curious house.
CHAPTER VIII.
POST CORDA LAPIDES.
After sketching the moral figure, it may not be time lost to indicate in a few words the material configuration, of which the reader already possesses some idea.
The convent of the Little Picpus occupied a large trapeze, formed by the four streets to which we have so frequently alluded, and which surrounded it like a moat. The convent was composed of several buildings and a garden. The main building, regarded in its entirety, was a juxtaposition of hybrid constructions, which, looked at from a balloon, would very exactly form a gallows laid on the ground. The long arm of the gallows occupied the whole of the Rue Droit-mur, comprised between the Little Rue Picpus and the Rue Polonceau; while the shorter arm was a tall, gray, stern, grated façade, looking on the Little Rue Picpus, of which the carriage-entrance, No. 62, was the extremity. Toward the centre of this façade dust and ashes whitened an old, low-arched gate, where the spiders made their webs, and which was only opened for an hour or two on Sundays, and on the rare occasions when the coffin of a nun left the convent; this was the public entrance to the church. The elbow of the gallows was a square room, used as an office, and which the nuns called the "buttery." In the long arm were the cells of the mothers, sisters, and novices; in the short one the kitchens, the refectory, along which a cloister ran, and the church. Between No. 62 and the corner of Aumarais Lane was the school, which could not be seen from the exterior. The rest of the trapeze formed the garden, which was much lower than the level of the Rue Polonceau, and this caused the walls to be much loftier inside than out. The garden, which was slightly arched, had at its centre and on the top of a mound a fine-pointed and conical fir-tree, from which ran, as from the boss of a shield, four large walks, with eight smaller ones arranged two and two, so that, had the enclosure been circular, the geometrical plan of the walks would have resembled a cross laid upon a wheel. The walks, which all ran to the extremely irregular walls of the garden, were of unequal length, and were bordered by gooseberry-bushes. At the end a poplar walk ran from the ruins of the old convent, which was at the angle of the Rue Droit-mur, to the little convent, which was at the corner of Aumarais Lane. In front of the little convent was what was called the small garden. If we add to this ensemble a court-yard, all sorts of varying angles formed by the inside buildings, prison walls, and the long black line of roofs that ran along the other side of the Rue Polonceau, as the sole prospect, we can form an exact idea of what the house of the Bernardines of Little Picpus was five-and-forty years ago. This sacred house was built on the site of a famous racket-court in the 16th century, which was called the "Tripot des onze mille diables." All these streets, indeed, were the oldest in Paris; the names Droit-mur and Aumarais are very old, but the streets that bear them are far older. Aumarais Lane was before called Maugout Lane; the Rue Droit-mur was called the Rue des Eglantines, for God opened the flowers before man cut building-stones.