by Victor Hugo
CHAPTER X.
ORIGIN OF THE PERPETUAL ADORATION.
This parlor, almost sepulchral, which we have described is a thoroughlylocal fact, which is not reproduced with the same severity in otherconvents. In the convent of the Rue du Temple, which, it is true,belonged to another order, brown curtains were substituted for theblack shutters, and the parlor itself was a boarded room with whitemuslin curtains at the windows, while the walls admitted all sortsof pictures,--the portrait of a Benedictine nun with uncovered face,painted bouquets, and even a Turk's head. It was in the garden ofthis convent that the chestnut tree grew, which was considered thehandsomest and largest in France, and which had the reputation amongthe worthy eighteenth-century folk of being "the father of all thechestnut trees in the kingdom." As we said, this convent of the Templewas occupied by Benedictines of the Perpetual Adoration, who greatlydiffered from those Benedictines who descended from Citeaux. This orderof the Perpetual Adoration is not the oldest, and does not date backbeyond two hundred years. In 1640 the Holy Sacrament was twice profanedat an interval of a few days, in two parish churches, St. Sulpiceand St. Jean en Grève,--a frightful and rare sacrilege which stirredup the whole city. The Prior Grand-Vicar of St. Germain-des-Prèsordered a solemn procession of all his clergy, in which the PapalNuncio officiated, but this expiation was not sufficient for twoworthy ladies, Madame Courtin, Marquise de Boucs, and the Countessde Châteauvieux. This outrage done to the "most august Sacrament ofthe Altar," though transient, would not leave their pious minds, andit seemed to them that it could alone be repaired by a "PerpetualAdoration" in some nunnery. In 1652 and 1653 both gave considerablesums of money to Mother Catharine de Bar, called of the Holy Sacramentand a Benedictine nun, for the purpose of founding for this piousobject a convent of the order of St. Benedict. The first permission forthis foundation was given to Mother Catharine de Bar by M. de Metz,Abbé of St. Germain, "on condition that no person should be receivedunless she brought a pension of three hundred livres, or a capital sumof six thousand livres." After this the king granted letters-patent,which were countersigned in 1654 by the Chamber of Accounts and theParliament.
Such are the origin and legal consecration of the establishment ofthe Benedictines of the Perpetual Adoration of the Holy Sacrament atParis. Their first convent was built for them in the Rue Cassette, withthe funds of Mesdames de Boucs and Châteauvieux. This order, as wesee, must not be confounded with the Benedictines of Citeaux. It was adependency of the Abbé of Saint Germain-des-Près, in the same manneras the Ladies of the Sacred Heart are subjects of the general of theJesuits, and the Sisters of Charity of the general of the Lazarists. Itwas also entirely different from the order of the Bernardines of LittlePicpus, whose interior we have just shown. In 1657 Pope AlexanderVII. authorized, by special brief, the Bernardines of Little Picpusto practise the Perpetual Adoration like the Benedictines of the HolySacrament, but the two orders did not remain the less distinct.
