Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the one hundred twenty-third chapter of Les Miserables.

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>> Brie Carlisle: Take a look in the book and let's see

what we can find.

Take it chapter by chapter. One

fight at a time.

so many adventures and mountains

we can climb

to give word for word, line by

line, one bite at a time.

>> Brie Carlisle: Welcome to bite at a time books where we read you your

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>> Brie Carlisle: Values today well be

continuing.

Les Miserables by Victor

Hugo chapter

five distractions

above the door of the refectory

this prayer, which was called the White

Paternoster and which possessed the property

of bearing people straight to paradise, was

inscribed in large black letters

little white paternoster, which God made,

which God said. Which God placed in

paradise. In the evening when I went to

bed, I found three angels sitting on my bed,

one at the foot, two at the head, a

good Virgin Mary in the middle, who told me to lie down without

hesitation. The good God is my

father. The good virgin is my

mother. The three apostles are my brothers.

The three virgins are my sisters. The

shirt in which God was born envelops my body.

St. Margaret's cross is written on my breast.

Madame the Virgin was walking through the meadows, weeping for

God when she met Monsieur Saint John.

Monsieur Saint John, whence come you? I come

from Absalom. You have not seen the good God.

Where is he? He is on the tree of the cross,

his feet hanging, his hands nailed, a

little cap of white thorns on his head.

Whoever shall say this thrice, at eventide, thrice

in the morning, shall win paradise at last.

In 1827, this characteristic

orison had disappeared from the wall under a triple coating of

daubing paint. At the present time, it is finally

disappearing from the memories of several who were young girls then,

and who are old women now. A large

crucifix fastened to the wall completed the decoration of this

refectory, whose only door, as we

think weve mentioned, opened on the garden.

Two narrow tables, each flanked by two wooden

benches, formed two long parallel lines

from one end to the other of the refectory.

The walls were white, the tables were black.

These two morning colors constitute the only variety in

convents. The meals were plain and the food of

the children themselves severe. A single dish

of meat and vegetables combined, or salt fish, such

was their luxury. this maager fare, which was reserved for the

pupils alone, was nevertheless an exception.

The children ate in silence under the

eye of the mother whose turn it was,

who, if a fly took a notion to fly or to hum against

the rule, opened and shut a wooden book. From time

to time. This silence was

seasoned with the lives of the saints. Read aloud from

a little pulpit with a desk which was situated at the foot of the

crucifix. The reader was one of the big

girls. In weekly turn, at, regular

distances, on the bare tables, there were large

varnished bowls, in which the pupils washed their own silver

cups and knives and forks, and into

which they sometimes threw some scrap of tough meat or spoiled

fish. This was punished.

These bowls were called ronsdieu.

The child who broke the silence made a cross with

her tongue, where on the

ground she licked the pavement.

The dust that end of all joys was

charged with a chastisement of those poor little rose leaves which had

been guilty of chirping. There was in the

convent a book which has never been printed, except as a

unique copy in which it is forbidden to

read. It is the rule of Saint Benoit

an hyrcanum which no profane eye must penetrate.

Nemo regulus siu

constitutionis nostras

externis communicabethe.

The peoples one day succeeded in getting possession of this

book and set to reading it with avidity,

a reading which was often interrupted by the fear of

being caught, which caused them to close the volume

precipitately. From the great danger

thus incurred, they derived but a very moderate amount of

pleasure. The most interesting

thing they found were some unintelligible pages about the sins

of young boys. They played in an alley of

the garden bordered with a few shabby fruit trees.

In spite of the extreme surveillance and the severity of the punishments

administered when the wind had taken the

trees, they sometimes succeeded in

picking up a green apple or a spoiled apricot or an

inhabited pear on the sly.

I will now cede the privilege of speech to a letter which lies

before me, a letter written five and 20 years

ago by an old pupil, now Madame La

Duchesse day one of the most elegant women in

Paris. I quote literally,

one hides ones pears or ones apples as best 1

may. When one goes upstairs to put the veil on the bed

before supper, one stuffs them under ones

pillow, and at night one eats them in bed,

and when one cannot do that, one eats them in the

closet. That was one of their greatest

luxuries. Once

it was at the epoch of the visit from the archbishop to the

convent, one of the young girls, Mademoiselle

Bouchard, who was connected with the Montmorency

family, laid a wager that she would ask for a

days leave of absence, an enormity, and so

austere a community. The wager was

accepted, but not one of those who

bet believed that she would do it. When the

moment came, as the archbishop was passing in front of the

pupils, Mademoiselle Bouchard, to the

indescribable terror of her companions, stepped out of

the ranks and said, monseigneur, a days leave of

absence. Mademoiselle Bouchard was

tall, blooming, with the prettiest little

rosy face in the world. Monsieur

d'Aquillain smiled and said, what, my dear

child? A days leave of absence? Three

days, if you like. I grant you three days.

The prioress could do nothing. The archbishop

had spoken horror of the convent,

but joy of the pupil. The effect may be

imagined. The stern cloister was

not so well walled off, however, but that the life of the

passions, of the outside world, drama and even romance,

did not make their way in. To prove this, we

will confine ourselves to recording here and to briefly

mentioning a real and incontestable

fact, which, however, bears no reference

in itself, too, and is not connected by any thread

whatever with the story which we are relating. We

mention the fact for the sake of completing the physiognomy of the convent.

In the readers mind about this

time, there was in the convent a mysterious person who

was not a nun, who was treated with great respect,

and who was addressed as Madame Albertine.

Nothing was known about her, save that she was

mad and that in the world she passed for dead.

Beneath this history, it was said, there lay the arrangements of

fortune necessary for great marriage.

This woman, hardly 30 years of

age, of dark complexion, intolerably

pretty, had a vague look in her large black eyes.

Could she see there was some doubt about

this? She glided rather than

walked. She never spoke.

It was not quite known whether she breathed.

Her nostrils were livid and pinched as after yielding up

their last sigh, to touch her hand was like

touching snow. She possessed a strange,

spectral grace. Wherever she entered,

people felt cold. One day, a sister,

on seeing her pass, said to another, sister, she

passes for a dead woman. Perhaps she is one,

replied the other. A hundred tales were told

of Madame Albertine. This arose from the

eternal curiosity of the pupils. In the chapel,

there was a gallery called Louis le de Bouve. It

was in this gallery, which had only a circular bay

in Le Boeuve, that Madame Albertine

listened to the offices. She always

occupied it alone because this gallery, being

on the level of the first story, the preacher or the

officiating priest could be seen which was

interdicted to the nuns. One

day, the pulpit was occupied by a young priest of high

rank, Monsieur le duc de Rohan, peer of

France, officer of the red Musketeers in

1815 when he was prince de

Lyonne, and who died afterward in

1830 as cardinal and

archbishop of Bis en Caen. It was the

first time that Monsieur de Rohan had preached at the

Petit Picpus convent. Madame

Albertine usually preserved perfect calmness and

complete immobility during the sermons and services

that day. As soon as she caught sight of Monsieur de Rouen, she

half rose and said in a loud voice amid the silence of the

chapel, ah, Auguste. The whole

community turned their heads in amazement. The

preacher raised his eyes, but, Madame Albertine

had relapsed into her immobility. A breath

from the outer world. A flash of life had passed

for an instant across that cold and lifeless phase,

and it then vanished and the madwoman had become a corpse

again. Those two words, however,

had set everyone in the convent who had the privilege of

speech to chattering. How many things

were contained in that awe? Auguste?

What revelations? Monsieur de

Rohans name really was August.

It was evident that Madame Albertine belonged to the very

highest society, since she knew Monsieur de

Rohan, and that her own rank there was of the highest,

since she spoke thus familiarly of so great a lord.

Not there existed between them some connection of

relationship, perhaps, but a very close

one. In any case, since she knew his pet name.

Two very severe duchesses, mistems de choisel,

and de Sorrente, often visited the

community whither they penetrated, no doubt in

virtue of the privileged magnates milaris,

and caused great consternation in the boarding school.

When these two old ladies passed by. All

the poor young girls trembled and dropped their eyes.

Moreover, Monsieur de Rohan, quite unknown to

himself, was an object of attention to the

schoolgirls at that epoch. He had just

been made while waiting for the episcopate. Like

our general of the archbishop of Paris, it

was one of his habits to come tolerably often to celebrate the

offices in the chapel of the nuns of the petite picpus.

Not one of the young recluses could see him

because of the serge curtain. But he had a

sweet and rather shrill voice

which they had come to know and to distinguish.

He had been a mouseketer. And then he was

said to be very coquettish. That his handsome brown hair

was very well dressed in a roll around his head. And that he

had a broad girdle of magnificent moor. And, that his

black cassock was of the most elegant cut in the world.

He held a great place in all these imaginations of 16

years. Not a sound from without made

its way into the convent. But there

was one year when the sound of a flute

penetrated thither. This was an

event, and the girls who were at school there at the time still recall

it. It was a flute which was played in the

neighborhood. This flute always

played the same air, an air which is very far away

nowadays. My, zeti birde,

come rain o'er my soul. And it was heard

two or three times a day. The young girls passed

hours in listening to it. The vocal mothers were upset

by it. Brains were busy. punishments

descended in showers. This lasted for

several months. The girls were all more or

less in love with the unknown musician. Each

one dreamed that she was Etolbe. The

sound of the flute proceeded from the direction of the rude roit

mirror. And they would have given anything,

compromised everything, attempted anything

for the sake of seeing, of catching a glance,

if only for a second. Of the young man who played that

flute so deliciously

and who no doubt played on all these souls at the same

time. There were some who made their escape by

a back door and ascended to the third story on the ruderoit

Merrside in order to attempt to catch a glimpse through the

gaps. Impossible.

One even went so far as to thrust her arm through the grating

and to wave her white handkerchief. Two

were still bolder they found means to climb on

a roof and risk their lives there, and succeeded at

last in seeing the young man. He was an old

migraine gentleman, blind and

penniless, who was playing his flute in his attic

in order to pass the time.

Thank you for joining Byte at a time books today while we

read a bite of one of your favorite classics.

Again, my name is Bree Carlisle, and I

hope you come back tomorrow. for the next bite,

don't forget.

>> Brie Carlisle: To sign up for our

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>> Brie Carlisle: M

time

so many adventures and

mountains we can climb

take your words go word line by

line, one bite at a time.