CHAPTER I--NUMBER 62 RUE PETIT-PICPUS

  Nothing, half a century ago, more resembled every other carriage gatethan the carriage gate of Number 62 Rue Petit-Picpus. This entrance,which usually stood ajar in the most inviting fashion, permitted aview of two things, neither of which have anything very funereal aboutthem,--a courtyard surrounded by walls hung with vines, and the faceof a lounging porter. Above the wall, at the bottom of the court, talltrees were visible. When a ray of sunlight enlivened the courtyard, whena glass of wine cheered up the porter, it was difficult to pass Number62 Little Picpus Street without carrying away a smiling impression ofit. Nevertheless, it was a sombre place of which one had had a glimpse.

  The threshold smiled; the house prayed and wept.

  If one succeeded in passing the porter, which was not easy,--which waseven nearly impossible for every one, for there was an _open sesame!_which it was necessary to know,--if, the porter once passed, one entereda little vestibule on the right, on which opened a staircase shut inbetween two walls and so narrow that only one person could ascend it ata time, if one did not allow one's self to be alarmed by a daubing ofcanary yellow, with a dado of chocolate which clothed this staircase, ifone ventured to ascend it, one crossed a first landing, then a second,and arrived on the first story at a corridor where the yellow wash andthe chocolate-hued plinth pursued one with a peaceable persistency.Staircase and corridor were lighted by two beautiful windows. Thecorridor took a turn and became dark. If one doubled this cape, onearrived a few paces further on, in front of a door which was all themore mysterious because it was not fastened. If one opened it, onefound one's self in a little chamber about six feet square, tiled,well-scrubbed, clean, cold, and hung with nankin paper with greenflowers, at fifteen sous the roll. A white, dull light fell from a largewindow, with tiny panes, on the left, which usurped the whole widthof the room. One gazed about, but saw no one; one listened, one heardneither a footstep nor a human murmur. The walls were bare, the chamberwas not furnished; there was not even a chair.

  One looked again, and beheld on the wall facing the door a quadrangularhole, about a foot square, with a grating of interlacing iron bars,black, knotted, solid, which formed squares--I had almost saidmeshes--of less than an inch and a half in diagonal length. The littlegreen flowers of the nankin paper ran in a calm and orderly manner tothose iron bars, without being startled or thrown into confusion bytheir funereal contact. Supposing that a living being had been sowonderfully thin as to essay an entrance or an exit through the squarehole, this grating would have prevented it. It did not allow the passageof the body, but it did allow the passage of the eyes; that is tosay, of the mind. This seems to have occurred to them, for it had beenre-enforced by a sheet of tin inserted in the wall a little in the rear,and pierced with a thousand holes more microscopic than the holes ofa strainer. At the bottom of this plate, an aperture had been piercedexactly similar to the orifice of a letter box. A bit of tape attachedto a bell-wire hung at the right of the grated opening.

  If the tape was pulled, a bell rang, and one heard a voice very near athand, which made one start.

  "Who is there?" the voice demanded.

  It was a woman's voice, a gentle voice, so gentle that it was mournful.

  Here, again, there was a magical word which it was necessary to know. Ifone did not know it, the voice ceased, the wall became silent once more,as though the terrified obscurity of the sepulchre had been on the otherside of it.

  If one knew the password, the voice resumed, "Enter on the right."

  One then perceived on the right, facing the window, a glass doorsurmounted by a frame glazed and painted gray. On raising the latch andcrossing the threshold, one experienced precisely the same impressionas when one enters at the theatre into a grated _baignoire_, before thegrating is lowered and the chandelier is lighted. One was, in fact, ina sort of theatre-box, narrow, furnished with two old chairs, and amuch-frayed straw matting, sparely illuminated by the vague light fromthe glass door; a regular box, with its front just of a height to leanupon, bearing a tablet of black wood. This box was grated, onlythe grating of it was not of gilded wood, as at the opera; it was amonstrous lattice of iron bars, hideously interlaced and riveted to thewall by enormous fastenings which resembled clenched fists.

  The first minutes passed; when one's eyes began to grow used to thiscellar-like half-twilight, one tried to pass the grating, but got nofurther than six inches beyond it. There he encountered a barrier ofblack shutters, re-enforced and fortified with transverse beams of woodpainted a gingerbread yellow. These shutters were divided into long,narrow slats, and they masked the entire length of the grating. Theywere always closed. At the expiration of a few moments one heard a voiceproceeding from behind these shutters, and saying:--

  "I am here. What do you wish with me?"

  It was a beloved, sometimes an adored, voice. No one was visible. Hardlythe sound of a breath was audible. It seemed as though it were a spiritwhich had been evoked, that was speaking to you across the walls of thetomb.

  If one chanced to be within certain prescribed and very rare conditions,the slat of one of the shutters opened opposite you; the evoked spiritbecame an apparition. Behind the grating, behind the shutter, oneperceived so far as the grating permitted sight, a head, of which onlythe mouth and the chin were visible; the rest was covered with a blackveil. One caught a glimpse of a black guimpe, and a form that was barelydefined, covered with a black shroud. That head spoke with you, but didnot look at you and never smiled at you.

  The light which came from behind you was adjusted in such a manner thatyou saw her in the white, and she saw you in the black. This light wassymbolical.

  Nevertheless, your eyes plunged eagerly through that opening whichwas made in that place shut off from all glances. A profound vaguenessenveloped that form clad in mourning. Your eyes searched that vagueness,and sought to make out the surroundings of the apparition. At theexpiration of a very short time you discovered that you could seenothing. What you beheld was night, emptiness, shadows, a wintry mistmingled with a vapor from the tomb, a sort of terrible peace, a silencefrom which you could gather nothing, not even sighs, a gloom in whichyou could distinguish nothing, not even phantoms.

  What you beheld was the interior of a cloister.

  It was the interior of that severe and gloomy edifice which was calledthe Convent of the Bernardines of the Perpetual Adoration. The box inwhich you stood was the parlor. The first voice which had addressed youwas that of the portress who always sat motionless and silent, on theother side of the wall, near the square opening, screened by the irongrating and the plate with its thousand holes, as by a double visor.The obscurity which bathed the grated box arose from the fact that theparlor, which had a window on the side of the world, had none on theside of the convent. Profane eyes must see nothing of that sacred place.

  Nevertheless, there was something beyond that shadow; there was a light;there was life in the midst of that death. Although this was the moststrictly walled of all convents, we shall endeavor to make our way intoit, and to take the reader in, and to say, without transgressing theproper bounds, things which story-tellers have never seen, and have,therefore, never described.