ightful sheet of iron bristling with bolts which only turned on its
hinges in the presence of the archbishop.

With the exception of the archbishop and the gardener, no man entered
the convent, as we have already said. The schoolgirls saw two others:
one, the chaplain, the Abbe Banes, old and ugly, whom they were
permitted to contemplate in the choir, through a grating; the other the
drawing-master, M. Ansiaux, whom the letter, of which we have perused a
few lines, calls M. Anciot, and describes as a frightful old hunchback.

It will be seen that all these men were carefully chosen.

Such was this curious house.

CHAPTER VIII--POST CORDA LAPIDES

After having sketched its moral face, it will not prove unprofitable
to point out, in a few words, its material configuration. The reader
already has some idea of it.

The convent of the Petit-Picpus-Sainte-Antoine filled almost the whole
of the vast trapezium which resulted from the intersection of the Rue
Polonceau, the Rue Droit-Mur, the Rue Petit-Picpus, and the unused lane,
called Rue Aumarais on old plans. These four streets surrounded this
trapezium like a moat. The convent was composed of several buildings
and a garden. The principal building, taken in its entirety, was a
juxtaposition of hybrid constructions which, viewed from a bird's-eye
view, outlined, with considerable exactness, a gibbet laid flat on the
ground. The main arm of the gibbet occupied the whole of the fragment
of the Rue Droit-Mur comprised between the Rue Petit-Picpus and the Rue
Polonceau; the lesser arm was a lofty, gray, severe grated facade which
faced the Rue Petit-Picpus; the carriage entrance No. 62 marked its
extremity. Towards the centre of this facade was a low, arched door,
whitened with dust and ashes, where the spiders wove their webs,
and which was open only for an hour or two on Sundays, and on rare
occasions, when the coffin of a nun left the convent. This was the
public entrance of the church. The elbow of the gibbet was a square
hall which was used as the servants' hall, and which the nuns called the
buttery. In the main arm were the cells of the mothers, the sisters, and
the novices. In the lesser arm lay the kitchens, the refectory, backed
up by the cloisters and the church. Between the door No. 62 and the
corner of the closed lane Aumarais, was the school, which was not
visible from without. The remainder of the trapezium formed the garden,
which was much lower than t