Bernanos had been hired in 1947 to write the dialogue for a film screenplay, through Raymond-Léopold Bruckberger and the scenario writer Philippe Agostini, based on the novella "" (literal translation, "The Last on the Scaffold" or "Song at the Scaffold", the published title of the English translation) by Gertrud von Le Fort. The novella is based on the story of the Martyrs of Compiègne at the monastery of Carmelite nuns in Compiègne, northern France, in the wake of the French Revolution, specifically in 1794 at the time of state seizure of the monastery's assets. It traces a fictional path from 1789 up to these events, when nuns of the Carmelite Order were guillotined.