A CENTURY UNDER A WIMPLE.
As we are giving details of what was formerly the Little Picpus convent, and have ventured to let in light upon this discreet asylum, the reader will perhaps permit us another slight digression, which has nothing to do with the story, but is characteristic and useful in so far as it proves that a convent can have its original people. There was in the little convent a centenarian, who came from the Abbey of Fontevrault, and before the Revolution she had even been in the world. She talked a good deal about M. de Miromesnil, keeper of the seals under Louis XVI., and the wife of a President Duplat, who had been a great friend of hers. It was her pleasure and vanity to drag in these two names on every possible occasion. She told marvels about the Abbey of Fontevrault, which was like a town, and there were streets in the convent. She spoke with a Picard accent which amused the boarders; every year she renewed her vows, and at the moment of taking the oath would say to the priest: "Monseigneur St. Francis took it to. Monseigneur St. Julien, Monseigneur St. Julien took it to Monseigneur St. Eusebius, Monseigneur St. Eusebius took it to Monseigneur St. Procopius, etc., etc., and thus I take it to you, father." And the boarders would laugh, not in their sleeves, but under their veils,—a charming little suppressed laugh, which made the vocal mothers frown.
At other times the centenarian told anecdotes. She said that in her youth the Bernardines took precedence of the Musqueteers; it was a century that spoke, but it was the 18th century. She described the Champenois and Burgundian custom of the four wines before the Revolution. When a great personage, a marshal of France, a prince, a duke and peer, passed through a town of Champagne or Burgundy, the authorities addressed and presented him with four silver cups filled with four different sorts of wine. On the first cup was the inscription "ape-wine," on the second "lion-wine," on the third "sheep-wine," and on the fourth "hog-wine." These four mottoes expressed the four stages of intoxication,—the first that enlivens, the second that irritates, the third that dulls, and the fourth that brutalizes.
She had a mysterious object, to which she was greatly attached, locked up in a cupboard, and the rule of Fontevrault did not prohibit this. She would not show it to anybody; she locked herself in, which her rule also permitted, and hid herself each time that a desire was expressed to see it. If she heard footsteps in the passage she closed the cupboard as hastily as she could with her aged hands. So soon as it was alluded to, she, who was so fond of talking, held her tongue; the most curious persons were foiled by her silence, and the most tenacious by her obstinacy. This was a subject of comment for all the idlers and gossips in the convent. What could this precious and hidden thing be which was the centenarian's treasure? Of course some pious book or unique rosary, or well-tried relic. On the poor woman's death they ran to the cupboard, more quickly perhaps than was befitting, and opened it. They found the object under three folds of linen; it was a Faenza plate representing Cupids flying away, and pursued by apothecaries' apprentices armed with enormous squirts. The pursuit is full of comical grimaces and postures; one of the charming little Cupids is already impaled; he writhes, flutters his wings, and strives to fly away, but the assassin laughs a Satanic laugh. Moral,—love conquered by a colic. This plate, which is very curious, and perhaps had the honor of furnishing Molière with an idea, still existed in September, 1845; it was for sale at a curiosity shop on the Boulevard Beaumarchais. This good old woman would not receive any visitors, "because," as she said, "the parlor is too melancholy."
CHAPTER X.
ORIGIN OF THE PERPETUAL ADORATION.
This parlor, almost sepulchral, which we have described is a thoroughly local fact, which is not reproduced with the same severity in other convents. In the convent of the Rue du Temple, which, it is true, belonged to another order, brown curtains were substituted for the black shutters, and the parlor itself was a boarded room with white muslin curtains at the windows, while the walls admitted all sorts of pictures,—the portrait of a Benedictine nun with uncovered face, painted bouquets, and even a Turk's head. It was in the garden of this convent that the chestnut tree grew, which was considered the handsomest and largest in France, and which had the reputation among the worthy eighteenth-century folk of being "the father of all the chestnut trees in the kingdom." As we said, this convent of the Temple was occupied by Benedictines of the Perpetual Adoration, who greatly differed from those Benedictines who descended from Citeaux. This order of the Perpetual Adoration is not the oldest, and does not date back beyond two hundred years. In 1640 the Holy Sacrament was twice profaned at an interval of a few days, in two parish churches, St. Sulpice and St. Jean en Grève,—a frightful and rare sacrilege which stirred up the whole city. The Prior Grand-Vicar of St. Germain-des-Près ordered a solemn procession of all his clergy, in which the Papal Nuncio officiated, but this expiation was not sufficient for two worthy ladies, Madame Courtin, Marquise de Boucs, and the Countess de Châteauvieux. This outrage done to the "most august Sacrament of the Altar," though transient, would not leave their pious minds, and it seemed to them that it could alone be repaired by a "Perpetual Adoration" in some nunnery. In 1652 and 1653 both gave considerable sums of money to Mother Catharine de Bar, called of the Holy Sacrament and a Benedictine nun, for the purpose of founding for this pious object a convent of the order of St. Benedict. The first permission for this foundation was given to Mother Catharine de Bar by M. de Metz, Abbé of St. Germain, "on condition that no person should be received unless she brought a pension of three hundred livres, or a capital sum of six thousand livres." After this the king granted letters-patent, which were countersigned in 1654 by the Chamber of Accounts and the Parliament.
Such are the origin and legal consecration of the establishment of the Benedictines of the Perpetual Adoration of the Holy Sacrament at Paris. Their first convent was built for them in the Rue Cassette, with the funds of Mesdames de Boucs and Châteauvieux. This order, as we see, must not be confounded with the Benedictines of Citeaux. It was a dependency of the Abbé of Saint Germain-des-Près, in the same manner as the Ladies of the Sacred Heart are subjects of the general of the Jesuits, and the Sisters of Charity of the general of the Lazarists. It was also entirely different from the order of the Bernardines of Little Picpus, whose interior we have just shown. In 1657 Pope Alexander VII. authorized, by special brief, the Bernardines of Little Picpus to practise the Perpetual Adoration like the Benedictines of the Holy Sacrament, but the two orders did not remain the less distinct.