odical publication called l'Intrepide, asked to be allowed
to enter the convent of the Petit-Picpus as lady resident. The Duc
d'Orleans recommended her. Uproar in the hive; the vocal-mothers were
all in a flutter; Madame de Genlis had made romances. But she declared
that she was the first to detest them, and then, she had reached her
fierce stage of devotion. With the aid of God, and of the Prince, 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. Madame 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:[15]
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.

These verses in sixth century Latin raise the question whether the
two thieves of Calvary were named, as is commonly believed, Dismas and
Gestas, or Dismas and Gesmas. This orthography might have confounded the
pretensions put forward in the last century by the Vicomte de Gestas, of
a descent from the wicked thief. However, the useful virtue attached to
these verses forms an article of faith in the order of the Hospitallers.

The church of the house, constructed in such a manner as to separate the
Great Convent from the Boarding-school like a veritable intrenchment,
was, of course, common to the Boarding-school, the Great Convent, and
the Little Convent. The public was even admitted by a sort of lazaretto
entrance on the street. But all was so arranged, that none of the
inhabitants of the cloister could see a face from the outside world.
Suppose a church whose choir is grasped in a gigantic hand, and
folded in such a manner as to form, not, as in ordinary churches, a
prolongation behind the altar, but a sort of hall, or obscure cellar, to
the ri