dance attendance at the churches, and relate all the details of their
household and their little sins to these bullies, as to their grand-dad.
--I grant there is some danger when the confidant is a handsome bachelor.
--There is no need to be handsome, sir. With the women, the cassock gives
charms to the ugliest. I have known a sweet and lovely creature become mad
after one of these rogues who had a head like a pitchfork. He did with her
what he wished. He made her devout, shrewish, and the worst of whores. Yes,
yes, they say that the red breeches get over the women, but the black gown
bewitches them. Explain that if you can. They want to know what is
underneath that wicked cassock. Something strange, mysterious, monstrous
attracts them. Women love enormities, and besides it must be said,
especially and above all, forbidden fruit.
The Captain had mounted his favourite hobby, I could only let him go on.
--They are vice incarnate, and know how to employ every means to seduce.
Religion, the confessional, the bible, the Mass, Vespers, the New
Testament, all the holy business is an auxiliary for them. For instance,
conceive anything more disgusting than that pardon promised beforehand to
guilty women. Play the whore all your life, deceive your husband, have
fifty lovers, provided that at the end you lament your faults, God will
have only tenderness for you, and will receive you with open arms. I should
like to know if by chance their Jesus had taken a wife, what would have
been his opinion then of the woman taken in adultery; but he remained
single and consequently incompetent to decide upon that delicate matter.
All that, you see, is an encouragement to debauchery and a stimulant to
lewdness. A devout woman, when she is young and pretty, is on a slope which
leads quite straight to Monsieur le Curé's bed.
XVIII.
THE VISIT.
"Stupefied, the pedant closed his
mouth, and opened his eyes."
LÉON CLADEL (Titi Foyssac IV).
If there are any beings as blind as the husbands, they are certainly the
fathers; with the latter, as with the former, blindness reaches its utmost
limits. Since Molière no one laughs at them any more, and I don't know why,
for they always deserve to be laughed at, while all the sarcasms have
fallen on the head of the unhappy husbands.
Folly and injustice! Conjugal love is as respectable as paternal affection.
Love is as good as affection, and what the heart chooses is quite as good
as what the blood gives you.
Why then do they complain if it is papa who is deceived, and laugh if it is
a husband. Exactly the contrary ought to occur. Paternal love is egotistic.
It is for the most part vanity and self-love. The father looks for his own
likeness in his offspring, and if he believes himself to be an eagle, his
son naturally must be an eaglet. Most frequently he is only a foolish
gosling, but the father insists on finding on him an eagle's plumes. If
then he is deceived in his hopes, which are only a deduction from his own
infatuation, it is certainly permissible to laugh at it.
While the husband....
This is what I observed to Durand, which put him in a great passion.
--Because my daughter has gone to Mass? And you say: "fathers are blind."
Here is a self-contradictory individual. One can see plainly that you are
not a father, or you would alter your theories. Hang it! You can't say I am
enchanted at it, but you must put yourself in a man's place. She is a
child, who leaves school, mark that well, where she was obliged, compelled
to perform her religious duties, and one does not break off in a couple of
days the habits of ten years like that. Give her time to reach it. I reason
with her; hang it, I can't do everything in a day. When she goes from time
to time to Mass, on Sunday, it does not follow that she is becoming
religious. I am a free-thinker, but I am a father also, and what would you
have a father do when two pretty arms take hold of your neck and a sweet
little coaxing voice whispers to you, "Let me go there, my darling papa."
Hang it, one is not made of wood, after all!
--Neither is the Curé made of wood.
--You make one shiver. Can my daughter have anything in common with your
peasants' Curé? I say again that it is purely for diversion that she goes
to Mass. And I understand it. Where can she show her new dress? And what
place is more favourable for this little display than going into and coming
out of church?
--Then the Church is a spectacle like another. There are chants, music,
tapers, perfumes, flowers, the half-light which comes through the coloured
windows.
--Without speaking of the fellows covered with gold-tinsel who repeat in
unknown language the pater-nosters to which no one listens. It is enough to
make one burst with laughing, and, if I had not my cabbages to plant, I
would go myself now and again and entertain myself at these masquerades
which are as good as the theatres at the fair, and to complete the
resemblance, it only costs a couple of sous.
--But the principal person of the troop attracts the looks, and the danger
is there.
--Your priestling is young then?
--And vigorous. Strong appetites. When I see him rambling in the village, I
begin to say: "Good people, the cock is loose, take care of your hens." It
is like your Curé of Djidjelly.
--I am easy on that ground. The black cock will not come and rub his wings
here. He knows now that he has mistaken the door; they have informed him
regarding me, and he will not be so rude as to come again.
But just at that moment the servant came into the room quite scared, and
said:
--Here is Monsieur le Curé.
--Who? what? said Durand; and turning towards me, Shall I receive him?
Well, we shall have a laugh!
He was still undecided, when Marcel glided into the room.
XIX.
HARD WORDS.
"I will speak, Madame, with the liberty
of a soldier who knows but ill how to
varnish the truth."
RACINE (_Britannicus_).
The old soldier, upright, with his hand leaning on the back of his
arm-chair, let the priest come forward with all the agreeableness of a
mastiff which is making ready to bite.
The latter bowed gravely, and, although he felt himself to be in hostile
quarters, took the seat offered him with an easy air.
Meanwhile his bearing and pleasant look produced their usual effect.
Imbued with the theories of the army, which of all surroundings is that in
which one judges most by the appearance, where a good carriage is the first
condition of success, where in fact they salute the stripes and not the
man, the Captain was, in presence of this handsome young fellow, recalled
to less aggressive sentiments.
--Hang it! he said to himself, what a splendid cuirassier this fellow would
have made! What devil of an idea has shoved him into a cassock?
War being the most sublime of arts, as Maurice de Saxe remarked, there are
few old officers who understand how a man can choose another profession by
inclination.
--I come, Monsieur le Capitaine, said Marcel, to pay you my visit as
pastor, although perhaps a little late. But you are aware doubtless that I
have had the honour of knocking once already at your door.
--You should not have troubled yourself, my dear sir, and you should adhere
to that; I belong so little to the holy flock.
--I owe myself to all, said Marcel smiling, to the bad sheep--I mean to the
wandering sheep, just as to the good ones; to watch over the one, to bring
back and cure the others.
--Oh! Oh! Well, sir shepherd, you are losing your time finely, for I am a
worn-out goat.
--There will be more joys in heaven over one sinner that repenteth....
--That is the story of the 99 just persons that you are going to tell us;
we know it, and, let me tell you, it is not encouraging for the 99 just
persons.
The Curé, seeing himself on dangerous ground, hastened to leap elsewhere.
--This is a charming little house, Captain; it is a sweet retreat after
toilsome and glorious years, for you have had numerous campaigns, have you
not?
--Fifteen years in Africa, thirty-two campaigns, thirty years' service, two
wounds, one of them received at Rome when we fought for that old bully Pius
IX.
Marcel had gone astray again; he quickly seized hold of the wounds.
--Ah! two wounds! And are they still painful?
--Sometimes, when the weather is stormy. And yours?
--Mine, Captain! but I have none. I have not had like you the honour of
shedding any blood for our Holy Father.
--A pretty cuckoo. It doesn't matter, you may have got a wound somewhere
else.
--Where? enquired Marcel simply.
--How do I know? We get them right and left, when we are least thinking of
it.
--Like all accidents.
--Well, if you had been the chaplain of my regiment, you would have had a
famous accident. He was a right worthy apostle. He wanted to teach the
catechism to the daughter of our cantinière, a bud of sixteen, and the
little one put so much ardour into the study that the Holy Spirit made her
hatch. Her parents beat her unmercifully, and the poor girl died of grief.
Our hero, who knew how to get himself out of it with unction as white as
snow, did not all the same betake himself to Paradise. A pretty Italian
gave him his reckoning. _Quinte_, _quatorze_ and the _point_. Game
finished. He died in the hospital pulling an ugly face. That was the best
action of his life. Well, old boy, what do you say to that?
--I have not exactly understood, replied Marcel, trying to keep his
countenance.
--You are very hard of understanding. I will tell you another story and I
will be clearer. I see what you want--the dots on the i's.
Marcel rose up alarmed.
--No, no, cried Durand. Don't get up. Don't go away. Since you are here, we
must talk a little. Stay, it will not be long. It is the story of a cousin
of mine, or rather a cousin of my wife. Another of your confraternity. He
was curate or deacon, or canon, in fact I don't know what rank in your
regiment. At any rate, a bitter hypocrite; you will see. Under pretence of
relationship, he used to pay us frequent visits. You can think if that
suited me, who already adored the cassock! Besides, on principle, I
detested cousins. It is the sore of households, gentlemen; you must avoid
it like the plague. Monsieur le Curé, if you have a pretty servant, beware
of cousins. I only say that. My wife used to say to me: "What has this poor
boy done to you that you receive him so badly? Are you jealous of him? Ah!
I know very well, it is because he belongs to my family, and you cannot
endure my poor relations." So to have peace I tolerated my cousin. He,
convinced that little presents maintain friendship, used to make us little
presents. There were tickets for sacred concerts, lotteries for the benefit
of the little Chinese, rosaries blessed by the pope, pebbles from
Jerusalem. Nothing wrong so far. My wife availed herself of the concert
tickets; the rosaries were put into a drawer, and I threw the pebbles into
the garden. But soon his gifts changed their character. He brought us some
hairs of St. Pancratius, a tooth of St. Alacoque, a rag which had wiped
something or other off St. Anastasius or St. Cunegunda. My wife clasped her
hands, was in ecstasy and transported with joy, and I went and brought up
my dinner. I foresaw the time when he would bring us extraordinary things;
a louse of St. Labre, a testicle of St. Origen, the coccyx of St. Antony,
the parts of St. Gudule or the prepuce of Jesus Christ.
The Curé rose again.
--I see that my presence is _de trop_ here, Captain; pardon my having
disturbed you.
--Not at all. Good Lord. Not at all. Sit down. It gives me extraordinary
pleasure to talk to you. Besides, I have not finished the story of my
cousin. Sit down, I pray you; I resume.
He had given a very pretty engraving, a reproduction of a picture by
somebody, _Jesus and the woman taken in adultery_. My wife had had it
framed very carefully, and had hung it up in our bedroom: a bad sign. That
seemed to say to me, "See, my friend, imitate Jesus." One day returning
home very quietly, I surprised both of them, squeezed one against the
other, holding each others hand, looking at the picture with emotion. I
took the little cousin by the shoulders, and I threw him out of doors. I
never saw him again. Do you understand the moral?
--Yes, Captain, I understand, said Marcel rising again, and this time fully
decided to go away. But the door opened, and Suzanne showed herself on the
threshold.
XX.
KICKS.
"I should have wished, mischievously,
to put him in the wrong, and that a
thoughtless or insulting word on his
part, should serve as a justification for
the insult which I meditated."
A. DE VIGNY (_Servitude et Grandeur militaires_).
She had on her school-girl dress of black, which made the whiteness of her
complexion more dazzling, and imparted something grave and serious to her
beauty.
She was hardly eighteen, and already by the harmonious outlines of her
bust, by the undulating movements of her hips and above all by the flash of
her great dark eyes, one foresaw in this young girl, still a child to-day,
the woman of to-morrow: a daughter of Eve of our modern civilization;
forward, precocious, charming.
She was one of those the sight alone of whom is the most radiant and the
most dangerous of spectacles, and who, like others, distilling holiness and
blessings from heaven, shed around them a perfume of love.
The bright fire of their heart shines out in their look; it reveals itself
in the sound of their voice, in their gestures and in their walk.
Everything in them is soft, trembling, passionate. Sweet creatures who see
only one goal in life, love, and, when the goal is missed, death.
There are women who are but half women. They are quickly recognized; vulgar
and awkward, they hide under their ungraceful petticoats the instincts of
man, and masculinity is displayed up to their corsage. They form the
fantastical cohort of learned women, of the disciples of Stuart Mill and
rivals of Miss Taylor, hybrid natures which may possess a heart of gold and
a manly soul, but are incapable of being the joy of the hearth.
Others are women to the tips of their rosy nails, to the root of their
abundant hair; women above all by their faults, that is to say their
weaknesses, and this weakness is one of their attractions. Impressionable
and easily led, they become, according to the surroundings which hold them
and the destiny which urges them, heroines or saints, courtesans or nuns,
but invariably martyrs of that blind despot, their heart.
They are Magdalene or St. Theresa, Madame de Guyon or Heloïse, the nun in
love with Jesus or the light girl in love with the passer-by.
In a second the priest had understood this sweet nature, or rather he had
felt it, and his quivering nostrils inhaled the keen perfume of pleasure,
while his look was lost in ecstasy. It was but a flash, but if beneath the
watchful eye of the Captain it appeared impossible, the young girl could
read the dumb language which every woman understands.
She came forward, blushing.
--This is my daughter, said the Captain.
--I believe, said the Curé, with a bow, that I have had the pleasure of
seeing Mademoiselle several times already in our modest church.
--And you concluded therefore that my daughter was going to increase the
blessed flock. Don't be misled, comrade.
Suzanne cast a look of reproach upon her father.
--What! said Marcel, hurt, must not Mademoiselle follow her religion? work
out her salvation?
--Her salvation? There is a word which always makes me laugh. It reminds me
of my Colonel's wife who, when her husband gave orders for a review and
parade for Sunday, said, "My dear, you want then to deprive the poor
soldiers of the holy Mass, ought they not to work out their salvation?" A
magnificent creature, sir, but too much inclined to the cassock.
Her husband, however, had nothing to complain of, for one fine morning he
picked up the stars of his epaulets in some sacristy or other. What have
you come for, my child?
--Nothing, papa. I knew Monsieur le Curé was there and I came in.
--I was having a little edifying conversation with Monsieur, and you have
interrupted us, but we can talk of something else: You hold the first rank
now, gentlemen, continued the Captain, I must do you that justice; and as
times go, it is better to be the son of a bishop than of a general. I
myself, if I had only had some high influential canon for my father, should
have reached the highest offices. Come, you seem to me to be a good fellow,
and I want to give you a word of advice. If papa is a bishop, make use of
him, and don't stagnate in this village, you will get no good there: I tell
you so on my word of honour! I suppose that with you, promotion is as it is
with us?
"The cup of humiliation is full," said Marcel to himself. Nevertheless, he
answered, I don't understand exactly what you mean by that.
--I mean by that that promotion is a lottery from which they begin by
withdrawing all the big numbers to distribute them to Monsieur Cretinard
whose papa is a millionaire, to Monsieur Tartuffe whose papa is a Jesuit,
or to a Marquis de Carabas whose mamma has the good graces of my Lord the
Bishop, and they make the poor devils draw from the rest. It is so in the
army--and with you?
--Among the clergy, sir, promotion is generally given to merit.
--I don't believe it; for if it were so, you would be a bishop at least.
Don't blush, it is the general report.
--Captain....
--No false modesty. I hear your virtues praised everywhere. There is a
chorus of praises from every quarter. My friend here was just declaring to
me that all the women are wild about you.
--Sir ... cried the Curé, blushing up to his ears, and not daring to raise
his eyes to Suzanne, who sat in a corner, convulsively turning over the
leaves of an album.
--Don't protest, we know that true merit is modest; besides, I was by way
of asking myself, if I should not beg you to complete my daughter's
education.
--You are making pleasant jokes, Captain, and I ask your pardon for not
being able to rise to the level of these witticisms. I see that my visit
has been unseasonable. It only remains for me to make my excuses and to say
to Mademoiselle, how pained I am to have made her acquaintance under such
unfavourable auspices, but I hope....
--Stop that, Monsieur le Curé, interrupted Durand in a curt tone.
Marcel made a low bow, but as he withdraw, he caught an appealing look from
Suzanne.
XXI.
THE PAST.
"Look not upon the past with grief, it
will not come back; wisely improve
the present, it is thine; and go onwards
fearlessly and with a strong heart
towards the mysterious future."
LONGFELLOW (_Hyperion_).
Marcel returned home exceedingly indignant. Although he had not expected an
over-cordial reception from the old Captain, whose irascible character and
surly ways were known to all, he did not think that he would have carried
so far his disregard of the most elementary propriety.
"It serves me right," he said to himself, "what business had I there?
Nevertheless, on reflection, I have lost nothing. My reception by this old
dotard has taken away for ever my wish to go back there: and who knows what
might have happened, if I had had free admission to that house, if I had
met a friendly face and a kindly welcome? Oh, fool! I have found all that
in the sweet look of his adorable daughter, that appealing look which
seemed to implore my indulgence and pardon for the malevolent words of that
ill-bred soldier. Come, think no more of it, drive back to the lowest
depths those foolish thoughts which excite the brain. All that he does, God
does well. I was on the brink of the abyss; one step more and I should have
rolled to the bottom. Let me stop then, there is still time. Let me forget,
forget. Forget! better still, I will write and ask to be changed. Could I
forget her if I were to meet again that burning look, which pursues me to
the steps of the altar, and troubles me to the bottom of my soul?"
He wrote in fact and began his letter ten times afresh. What could he say?
What reason could he bring? He had filled this cure for scarcely six
months. What pretext could he raise before his superiors? And how would any
complaint from him be received at the Palace?
Night came. He felt himself oppressed by a vague and indefinable grief.
Then little by little the present vanished. His infancy rose up before him.
He saw it again as in a glass, smiling, simple, pure; and he forgot himself
in these sweet memories.
In proportion as we advance in life, we are attached to the things of the
past. It clothes itself then with those brilliant colours with which we
love to invest what we have lost. Youthful years, bright with poetry and
sunlight, come and gild the gloomy and prosaic nooks of ripened age, the
twilight of the eternal night.
The young man full of illusions and dreams pursues his road without casting
a look backwards. What matters, indeed, the past to him? He expects nothing
but from the future. Proud at having escaped from infancy, at arriving at
the age of man, at flying on his wings, he pities the years when he was
small and weak, ignorant and credulous.
But when he has met with obstacles and ruts on that road which appeared to
him so wide and so fair, when he has torn his heart with the first briars
of life, when his thought has ripened beneath the sun of passions, and his
soul, stripped of its illusions, feels all chilly and bare amidst the ice
of reality, then he returns to the joys of infancy, he warms himself again
with the memory of his mother, and sits once again in the pleasant corner
of the family fire-side, on the little stool of his childhood.
Marcel saw himself again at the little seminary of Pont-à-Mousson, on the
benches, all blackened with ink, of the school-room, studying with ardour
the _Epitome_ or the _De Viris_ beneath the paternal eye of Father Martin,
a father aged 24, a deacon with curly hair, as timid as a maid. Then he ran
in the long corridors, or in the great square court lined with galleries
shaded by the chapel. He remembered his joy when he had slipped on some
excuse into the Seniors' garden: "Ah! there is little Marcel, come here,
you brat!" And everyone wished to give him a caress.
Then, the first time when he was called to the honour of serving the Mass.
He had thought of it a week beforehand, full of emotion and fear. At length
the day has come. He is dressed in the white surplice, wearing on his head
the red cap. He would have wished the whole world to see him; but the
pupils alone were present, and that diminished his happiness.
Father Barbelin, the censor, a severe but just man, officiated. He trembled
in every limb, as he responded the sacramental verses to this formidable
functionary. That was a great business; his little comrades called him in a
whisper from behind: Marcel! Marcel! and laughed and nudged each other,
while the elder ones, their nose in their book, with sanctimonious face and
ecstatic look were wrapt in God.
Then his success, his entrance to the great seminary at Nancy, his first
sermon in the chapel. His voice trembled at the commencement, but little by
little, growing stronger, taking courage, inspired by the sacred text, he
forgot everything, and the Superior, old Father Richard, who watched him
with his little bright cunning eyes, and the unmoved professors, and his
watchful fellow-students, jeering and scoffing at first, then at last
astonished and jealous. "There is the stuff of an orator in him," the
Professor of Sacred Eloquence had said, "we must push this lad forward."
"He is full of talent and virtue," the Superior had replied, "he will get
on. He is our chosen vessel." And the same day he had dined at the master's
table, and they had spoken of him to Monseigneur. He had in fact been
pushed forward ... and with his talents, his learning, his virtues and his
eloquence, he had come to teaching the catechism to the little peasants of
Althausen!
Althausen! That was the blow of the hammer which recalled him to reality.
He found himself again the poor village Curé, and he began to laugh.