sure of the centenarian be, which was so precious and so secret?
Some holy book, no doubt? Some unique chaplet? Some authentic relic?
They lost themselves in conjectures. When the poor old woman died,
they rushed to her cupboard more hastily than was fitting, perhaps, and
opened it. They found the object beneath a triple linen cloth, like some
consecrated paten. It was a Faenza platter representing little Loves
flitting away pursued by apothecary lads armed with enormous syringes.
The chase abounds in grimaces and in comical postures. One of the
charming little Loves is already fairly spitted. He is resisting,
fluttering his tiny wings, and still making an effort to fly, but the
dancer is laughing with a satanical air. Moral: Love conquered by the
colic. This platter, which is very curious, and which had, possibly,
the honor of furnishing Moliere with an idea, was still in existence
in September, 1845; it was for sale by a bric-a-brac merchant in the
Boulevard Beaumarchais.

This good old woman would not receive any visits from outside because,
said she, the parlor is too gloomy.

CHAPTER X--ORIGIN OF THE PERPETUAL ADORATION

However, this almost sepulchral parlor, of which we have sought to
convey an idea, is a purely local trait which is not reproduced with the
same severity in other convents. At the convent of the Rue du Temple,
in particular, which belonged, in truth, to another order, the black
shutters were replaced by brown curtains, and the parlor itself was a
salon with a polished wood floor, whose windows were draped in white
muslin curtains and whose walls admitted all sorts of frames, a portrait
of a Benedictine nun with unveiled face, painted bouquets, and even the
head of a Turk.

It is in that garden of the Temple convent, that stood that famous
chestnut-tree which was renowned as the finest and the largest in
France, and which bore the reputation among the good people of the
eighteenth century of being the father of all the chestnut trees of the
realm.

As we have said, this convent of the Temple was occupied by Benedictines
of the Perpetual Adoration, Benedictines quite different from those who
depended on Citeaux. This order of the Perpetual Adoration is not very
ancient and does not go back more than two hundred years. In 1649 the
holy sacrament was profaned on two occasions a few days apart, in two
churches in Paris, at Saint-Sulpice and at Saint-Jean en Greve, a rare
and frightful sacril