rses, under the wheels of the carts, as it were, a cellar, a
well, a tiny walled and grated cabin, at the bottom of which a human
being prayed night and day, voluntarily devoted to some eternal
lamentation, to some great expiation. And all the reflections which that
strange spectacle would awaken in us to-day; that horrible cell, a sort
of intermediary link between a house and the tomb, the cemetery and
the city; that living being cut off from the human community, and
thenceforth reckoned among the dead; that lamp consuming its last drop
of oil in the darkness; that remnant of life flickering in the grave;
that breath, that voice, that eternal prayer in a box of stone;
that face forever turned towards the other world; that eye already
illuminated with another sun; that ear pressed to the walls of a tomb;
that soul a prisoner in that body; that body a prisoner in that dungeon
cell, and beneath that double envelope of flesh and granite, the murmur
of that soul in pain;--nothing of all this was perceived by the crowd.
The piety of that age, not very subtle nor much given to reasoning, did
not see so many facets in an act of religion. It took the thing in the
block, honored, venerated, hallowed the sacrifice at need, but did not
analyze the sufferings, and felt but moderate pity for them. It brought
some pittance to the miserable penitent from time to time, looked
through the hole to see whether he were still living, forgot his name,
hardly knew how many years ago he had begun to die, and to the stranger,
who questioned them about the living skeleton who was perishing in that
cellar, the neighbors replied simply, "It is the recluse."

Everything was then viewed without metaphysics, without exaggeration,
without magnifying glass, with the naked eye. The microscope had not yet
been invented, either for things of matter or for things of the mind.

Moreover, although people were but little surprised by it, the examples
of this sort of cloistration in the hearts of cities were in truth
frequent, as we have just said. There were in Paris a considerable
number of these cells, for praying to God and doing penance; they were
nearly all occupied. It is true that the clergy did not like to have
them empty, since that implied lukewarmness in believers, and that
lepers were put into them when there were no penitents on hand. Besides
the cell on the Greve, there was one at Montfaucon, one at the Charnier
des Innocents, another I hardly k