Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com

est of her possessions to the poor and to God. The inconsolable lady had lingered on for twenty years
awaiting death in this premature tomb, praying night and day for the soul of her father, making her bed
on the cold ground without even a stone for a pillow, clothed in sackcloth, and living only upon such
bread and water as the compassionate might deposit on the ledge of her window—thus receiving charity
after bestowing it. At her death, at the moment of her passing to another sepulchre, she had bequeathed
this one in perpetuity to women in affliction—mothers, widows, or maidens—who should have many
prayers to offer up on behalf of others or of themselves, and should choose to bury themselves alive for
some great grief or some great penitence. The poor of her time had honoured her funeral with tears and
benedictions; but, to their great regret, the pious lady had been unable to receive canonization for lack of
interest in the right quarter. Nevertheless, those among them who were not quite so pious as they should
have been, trusting that the matter might be more easily arranged in heaven than in Rome, had frankly
offered up their prayers for the deceased to God himself, in default of the Pope. The majority, however,
had contented themselves with holding Rolande’s memory sacred, and converting her rags into relics.
The town, for its part, had founded, in pursuance of the lady’s intention, a public breviary, which had
been permanently fixed beside the window of the cell, that the passer-by might halt there for a moment,
if only to pray; that prayer might suggest almsgiving, and thus the poor recluses, inheriting the stone cell
of Mme. Rolande, be saved from perishing outright of hunger and neglect.
These living tombs were by no means rare in the cities of the Middle Ages. Not infrequently, in the very
midst of the busiest street, the most crowded, noisy market-place, under the very hoofs of the horses and
wheels of the wagons, you might come upon a vault, a pit, a walled and grated cell, out of the depths of
which a human being, voluntarily dedicated to some everlasting lamentation, or some great expiation,
offered up prayer unceasingly day and night.
But all the reflections that such a strange spectacle would awaken in us at the present day; that horrible
cell; a sort of intermediate link between the dwelling and the grave, between the cemetery and the city;
that living being cut off from the communion of mankind and already numbered with the dead; that lamp
consuming its last drop of oil in the darkness; that remnant of life flickering out in the pit; that whisper,
that voice, that never-ending prayer encased in stone: that eye already illumined by another sun; that ear
inclined attentive to the walls of a tomb; that soul imprisoned in a body, itself a prisoner within that
dungeon, and from out that double incarnation of flesh and stone, the perpetual plaint of a soul in
agony—nothing of all this reached the apprehension of the crowd. The piety of that day, little given to
analyzing or subtle reasoning, did not regard a religious act from so many points of view. It accepted the
thing as a whole, honoured, lauded, and if need be, made a saint of the sacrifice, but did not dwell upon
its sufferings nor even greatly pity it. From time to time the charitable world brought some dole to the
wretched penitent, peered through the window to see if he yet lived, was ignorant of his name, scarcely
knew how many years ago he had begun to die, and to the stranger who questioned them respecting the
living skeleton rotting in that cave, they would simply answer: “It is the recluse.”
This was the way they looked at things in those days, without metaphysics, neither enlarging nor
diminishing, with the naked eye. The microscope had not been invented yet for the examination either of
material or spiritual objects.
Examples of this kind of living burial in the heart of the town were, although they excited but little
remark, frequently to be met with, as we have said before. In Paris there was a considerable number of
these cells of penitence and prayer, and nearly all of them were occupied. It is true the clergy took
particular care that they should not be left empty, as that implied lukewarmness in the faithful; so when