Page 847 - les-miserables

she entered. She departed at the end of six or eight months,
alleging as a reason, that there was no shade in the garden.
The nuns were delighted. Although very old, she still played
the harp, and did it very well.
When she went away she left her mark in her cell. Ma-
dame de Genlis was superstitious and a Latinist. These two
words furnish a tolerably good profile of her. A few years
ago, there were still to be seen, pasted in the inside of a little
cupboard in her cell in which she locked up her silverware
and her jewels, these five lines in Latin, written with her own
hand in red ink on yellow paper, and which, in her opinion,
possessed the property of frightening away robbers:—

Imparibus meritis pendent tria corpora ramis:
Dismas et Gesmas, media est divina potestas;
Alta petit Dismas, infelix, infima, Gesmas;
Nos et res nostras conservet summa potestas.
Hos versus dicas, ne tu furto tua perdas.

On the boughs hang three bodies of unequal merits:
Dismas and Gesmas, between is the divine power. Dismas
seeks
the heights, Gesmas, unhappy man, the lowest regions; the
highest
power will preserve us and our effects. If you repeat this verse,
you will not lose your things by theft.

These verses in sixth century Latin raise the question
whether the two thieves of Calvary were named, as is com-

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