Page 845 - les-miserables

CHAPTER VI

THE LITTLE CONVENT

In this enclosure of the Petit-Picpus there were three
perfectly distinct buildings,—the Great Convent, inhabited
by the nuns, the Boarding-school, where the scholars were
lodged; and lastly, what was called the Little Convent. It was
a building with a garden, in which lived all sorts of aged
nuns of various orders, the relics of cloisters destroyed in
the Revolution; a reunion of all the black, gray, and white
medleys of all communities and all possible varieties; what
might be called, if such a coupling of words is permissible, a
sort of harlequin convent.
When the Empire was established, all these poor old dis-
persed and exiled women had been accorded permission to
come and take shelter under the wings of the Bernardines-
Benedictines. The government paid them a small pension,
the ladies of the Petit-Picpus received them cordially. It was
a singular pell-mell. Each followed her own rule, Sometimes
the pupils of the boarding-school were allowed, as a great
recreation, to pay them a visit; the result is, that all those
young memories have retained among other souvenirs that
of Mother Sainte-Bazile, Mother Sainte-Scolastique, and

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