Page 841 - les-miserables

Nothing was known about her, save that she was mad, and
that in the world she passed for dead. Beneath this history
it was said there lay the arrangements of fortune necessary
for a great marriage.
This woman, hardly thirty years of age, of dark complex-
ion and tolerably pretty, had a vague look in her large black
eyes. Could she see? There was some doubt about this. She
glided rather than walked, she never spoke; it was not quite
known whether she breathed. Her nostrils were livid and
pinched as after yielding up their last sigh. To touch her
hand was like touching snow. She possessed a strange spec-
tral grace. Wherever she entered, people felt cold. One day a
sister, on seeing her pass, said to another sister, ‘She passes
for a dead woman.’ ‘Perhaps she is one,’ replied the other.
A hundred tales were told of Madame Albertine. This
arose from the eternal curiosity of the pupils. In the cha-
pel there was a gallery called L’OEil de Boeuf. It was in this
gallery, which had only a circular bay, an oeil de boeuf, that
Madame Albertine listened to the offices. She always oc-
cupied it alone because this gallery, being on the level of
the first story, the preacher or the officiating priest could be
seen, which was interdicted to the nuns. One day the pul-
pit was occupied by a young priest of high rank, M. Le Duc
de Rohan, peer of France, officer of the Red Musketeers in
1815 when he was Prince de Leon, and who died afterward,
in 1830, as cardinal and Archbishop of Besancon. It was the
first time that M. de Rohan had preached at the Petit-Pic-
pus convent. Madame Albertine usually preserved perfect
calmness and complete immobility during the sermons

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