Periwinkles thrive in semi-shade; their flowers stand out in the twilight. Their petals collect dew and rainwater, which remain on the face of the flower for some time.
‘I lived in a shady park where the birds used to twitter,
Where tears smiled in the blue eyes of the periwinkles …’
(from ‘To André Chenier,’ ‘A André Chenier‘, Les Contemplations, 1856). André Chenier, who is remembered here, was a young poet of great promise who was guillotined quite pointlessly in 1794, only three days before the end of the Terror, and buried at the Picpus cemetery with other victims of the Revolution. The private cemetery, which today only the original victims’ families may use, was later consecrated as a chapel in 1841, built on the site of a former convent, and became home to a new congregation of the order of nuns of the Perpetual Adoration of the Sacred Sacrament. Jean Valjean and Cosette find sanctuary, and Cosette her education, at the fictional convent of ‘Little Picpus.’ Hugo was never to deny the ‘collateral damage’ of the Revolution, but was resigned to it for the sake of human progress.