Les Miserables, Wilbour Translation

ABOVE the door of the refectory was written in large black letters this prayer, which was called the white Paternoster, and which possessed the virtue of leading people straight in to Paradise : "Little white paternoster, which God made, which God said, which God laid in Paradise. At night, on going to bed, I finded (sic) three angels lying on my bed, one at the foot, two at the head, the good Virgin Mary in the middle, who to me said that I should went to bed, and nothing suspected. The good God is my father, the Holy Virgin is my mother, the three apostles are my brothers, the three virgins are my sisters. The chemise in which God was born, my body is enveloped in; the cross of Saint Marguerite on my breast is writ; Madame the Virgin goes away through the fields, weeping for God, meeted Monsieur Saint John. Monsieur Saint John, where do you come from? I come from Ave Solus. You have not seen the good God, have you? He is on the tree of the cross, his feet hanging, his hands nailing, a little hat of white thorns upon his head. Whoever shall say this three times at night, three times in the morning, will win Paradise in the end."

In 1827, this characteristic orison had disappeared from the wall under a triple layer of paper. It is fading away to this hour in the memory of some young girls of that day, old ladies now.