ntemplation is, like prayer, one of humanity's
needs; but, like everything which the Revolution touched, it will be
transformed, and from being hostile to social progress, it will become
favorable to it.

The house of the Petit-Picpus was becoming rapidly depopulated. In 1840,
the Little Convent had disappeared, the school had disappeared. There
were no longer any old women, nor young girls; the first were dead, the
latter had taken their departure. Volaverunt.

The rule of the Perpetual Adoration is so rigid in its nature that it
alarms, vocations recoil before it, the order receives no recruits. In
1845, it still obtained lay-sisters here and there. But of professed
nuns, none at all. Forty years ago, the nuns numbered nearly a hundred;
fifteen years ago there were not more than twenty-eight of them. How
many are there to-day? In 1847, the prioress was young, a sign that
the circle of choice was restricted. She was not forty years old. In
proportion as the number diminishes, the fatigue increases, the service
of each becomes more painful; the moment could then be seen drawing near
when there would be but a dozen bent and aching shoulders to bear the
heavy rule of Saint-Benoit. The burden is implacable, and remains the
same for the few as for the many. It weighs down, it crushes. Thus they
die. At the period when the author of this book still lived in Paris,
two died. One was twenty-five years old, the other twenty-three. This
latter can say, like Julia Alpinula: "Hic jaceo. Vixi annos viginti et
tres." It is in consequence of this decay that the convent gave up the
education of girls.

We have not felt able to pass before this extraordinary house without
entering it, and without introducing the minds which accompany us, and
which are listening to our tale, to the profit of some, perchance, of
the melancholy history of Jean Valjean. We have penetrated into this
community, full of those old practices which seem so novel to-day. It
is the closed garden, hortus conclusus. We have spoken of this singular
place in detail, but with respect, in so far, at least, as detail and
respect are compatible. We do not understand all, but we insult nothing.
We are equally far removed from the hosanna of Joseph de Maistre, who
wound up by anointing the executioner, and from the sneer of Voltaire,
who even goes so far as to ridicule the cross.

An illogical act on Voltaire's part, we may remark, by the way; for
Voltaire would have de