he level of the Rue Polonceau, which caused
the walls to be very much higher on the inside than on the outside. The
garden, which was slightly arched, had in its centre, on the summit of
a hillock, a fine pointed and conical fir-tree, whence ran, as from
the peaked boss of a shield, four grand alleys, and, ranged by twos
in between the branchings of these, eight small ones, so that, if the
enclosure had been circular, the geometrical plan of the alleys would
have resembled a cross superposed on a wheel. As the alleys all ended
in the very irregular walls of the garden, they were of unequal length.
They were bordered with currant bushes. At the bottom, an alley of tall
poplars ran from the ruins of the old convent, which was at the angle of
the Rue Droit-Mur to the house of the Little Convent, which was at the
angle of the Aumarais lane. In front of the Little Convent was what was
called the little garden. To this whole, let the reader add a courtyard,
all sorts of varied angles formed by the interior buildings, prison
walls, the long black line of roofs which bordered the other side of the
Rue Polonceau for its sole perspective and neighborhood, and he will
be able to form for himself a complete image of what the house of the
Bernardines of the Petit-Picpus was forty years ago. This holy house
had been built on the precise site of a famous tennis-ground of the
fourteenth to the sixteenth century, which was called the "tennis-ground
of the eleven thousand devils."

All these streets, moreover, were more ancient than Paris. These names,
Droit-Mur and Aumarais, are very ancient; the streets which bear them
are very much more ancient still. Aumarais Lane was called Maugout Lane;
the Rue Droit-Mur was called the Rue des Eglantiers, for God opened
flowers before man cut stones.

CHAPTER IX--A CENTURY UNDER A GUIMPE

Since we are engaged in giving details as to what the convent of the
Petit-Picpus was in former times, and since we have ventured to open
a window on that discreet retreat, the reader will permit us one other
little digression, utterly foreign to this book, but characteristic and
useful, since it shows that the cloister even has its original figures.

In the Little Convent there was a centenarian who came from the Abbey
of Fontevrault. She had even been in society before the Revolution. She
talked a great deal of M. de Miromesnil, Keeper of the Seals under Louis
XVI. and of a Presidentess Duplat, with who