way all traced out? I must continue my career, and let myself go with the
current of life. Is it then so hard? Why delude myself with phantoms? I
will try to slay the muttering passions, to drive away the fits of ambition
which rise to my brain; and perhaps by dint of subduing all that is
rebellious in me, I shall come to follow piously the line marked out by my
superiors. I will watch patiently amidst my flock, by the corner of my
fire, among the Fathers and my weariness.
"Weariness, that cold demon with the gloomy eye, but I will remain chaste
... and after a life filled with little nothingnesses and little works I
shall pass away in peace in the bosom of the Lord. And there is my life.
Nothing else to choose. No turning aside to the right or to the left. I
must remain a martyr, a martyr to my duty, or an apostate, and infamous
renegade. The triumph or the shame!"
And, as he just uttered these words with bitterness, a soft voice answered
like an echo:
--The shame?
The Curé started and raised his head. His lamp was out, and the dying
embers on the hearth cast only a feeble light into the room.
He distinguished, however, a few steps from him the outline of a woman's
form.
--Who is there? he cried with a sort of terror.
The shadowy outline stood forth more clearly.
He recognized his servant.
--Why the shame? she said.
XXII.
THE SERVANT.
"I have already said that dame
Jacinthe although little superannuated,
had still kept her bloom. It is true that
she spared nothing to preserve it:
besides taking a clyster every day, she
swallowed some excellent jelly during
the day and on going to bed."
LE SAGE (_Gil-Blas_).
She looked at him fixedly with burning, feverish eyes.
She was a lusty lass, already arrived at the age of discretion, as Le Sage
says, that is to say, she had passed her fortieth year, the canonical
period for the servants of Curés, but was fair and fresh still, in spite of
some wrinkles and her hair growing gray. She possessed that modest and
appetizing plumpness, somewhat rare among mature virgins, the sign of a
quiet conscience, a good digestion and feelings satisfied.
What pious souls call holiness exuded from every pore: cast-down eyes,
chaste deportment, gentle movements. She did not walk, she glided over the
ground as if she already felt the wings of seraphim hanging on her
shoulders; she did not speak, she murmured unctuous words with a soft, low,
mysterious voice like a prayer. When she said: "Would Monsieur le Curé he
pleased to come to breakfast? Perhaps Monsieur le Curé could eat a boiled
egg?" or "Ah! the sermon which Monsieur le Curé has been pleased to give
has gone to my heart!" it was in the same tone as she would say: "_Lamb of
God which takest away the sins of the world_...." and one was tempted to
answer: _Kyrie eleison_.
And she wiped her moist eyelid, and cast on her master her veiled, long,
silent look.
She said so well: "my duty," "I wish to do my duty," that one felt filled
with admiration for this holy maid.
Oh! divine modesty, perfume of woman, sweet enchantment which gently
penetrates the heart of man, ready always to unfold.
Besides, what hearts had unfolded for her! what ravages had been caused by
her austere deportment and her substantial charms. More than one buxom
village lad had made warm proposals with honourable intentions, and the
gallant corporal of gendarmes had tried on several occasions to enter upon
this delicate subject with her.
But she had willed to remain a maid and virtuous, and vowed herself body
and soul to the service of the Church, to the glory of God, and the fortune
of her pastor.
She approached the hearth with slow steps, blew on the embers, relighted
the lamp, and placing it so as to throw the light on her master's face, she
said to him anxiously:
--You are in pain, are you not?
--You were there then? said the Curé dissatisfied.
--Yes, she answered him with the affectionate tone of a mother, I was
there, pardon me; I was going to bed, and I heard you talking aloud, there
was no light; I feared you were ill, and I ventured to come in.
--And you have heard?
--I have heard that you were not happy, that is all.
--No one is happy in this world, Veronica.
--Yes, we are so only in the other, I know that. And yet happiness is so
easy.
The Curé put his head between his hands without replying.
The servant went on:
--Can it be that I, your servant, a poor ignorant village girl, should say
that to you, Monsieur le Curé?
--What, Veronica?
--But what matters our condition on earth? We are in a state of transition.
Holy Mary, she too, was a poor servant and now she is far above a queen.
--Without doubt, said the Curé.
--We must then despise nobody. Under the most humble appearance, God often
conceals his most faithful servants.
--Most certainly. But what are you driving at?
--At this, Monsieur le Curé; that we must be good and indulgent to
everybody: that the great sometimes have need of the little, and that when
we are able to render a service to our neighbour we must do it without
hesitation.
--It is Jesus who commands it, Veronica. But explain yourself, I pray.
--Well! yes, I will speak, she replied, for I am pained to see you thus,
and the more so as it is certainly allowed me to tell you so, me who am
destined, please God, to live with you. I have only known you since you
were our Curé, but you have been so good to me that I love you like ... a
sister. I was all alone here, like a poor forsaken creature, after the
death of my old master, the Abbé Fortin--may God keep his soul,--and you
consented to keep me when taking the parsonage. It is good of you, for you
might have brought with you your former servant, or again some niece, as
many do.
--I have no niece, Veronica.
--A niece, or a sister, or a relation. After all you have kept me, although
you could have found a better than myself. Oh, very easily, I know ... and
I thank you from the bottom of my heart, yes, from the bottom of my heart.
But could you have found one more devoted, more discreet? I believe not; as
much, perhaps; but more, I believe not. Ah! I tell you here, Monsieur le
Curé, you can do everything you want, nobody shall ever know anything of
it.
The Curé looked at his servant with amazement.
--What do you mean by that, Veronica? he asked in a stern voice.
--Oh! nothing, I mean nothing. I mean that you can have entire confidence
in your poor servant.
--I thank you, Veronica, but I don't know what you mean.
--I explain myself badly doubtless, Monsieur le Curé. Ah! pardon me, I was
forgetting ... here, there is a letter which I have just found and which
has been slipped under the door at night.
He looked at the address. It was an elegant and bold hand, the hand of a
woman.
XXIII.
THE LETTER
"The beauty then, to end this war,
Offers but a single way which we can hardly guess."
R. IMBERT (_Nouvelles_).
A sweet perfume was exhaled from it.
He opened it with a trembling hand.
That strange intuition of the heart which is named presentiment, told him
that it came from Suzanne.
Pale with emotion he read:
"MONSIEUR L'ABBÉ,
"I do not wish the day to pass without coming to ask your pardon for my
father's conduct towards you, and assure you that he does not think a
single one of his wicked words.
"Do not keep, I pray, an evil memory of me, and believe that I should he
grieved if a single doubt were to remain in your mind as to the sympathy
and respect which you inspire in
"Suzanne Durand.
"P.S. I have much need of your counsels."
Marcel, full of a delicious trouble, read and re-read this letter. He did
not take careful note of his sensations, but he felt an ineffable joy
overflow his heart, and at the same time a vague anxiety.
His servant's voice recalled Him to himself.
--Doubtless it is a sick person who asks for religious aid, she said.
Was there a slight irony in that question?
The priest thought he saw it. He called out sharply:
--You are still there, Veronica? Who has called you? I don't want you any
longer.
--Pardon me, Monsieuur le Curé, she answered humbly and softly, I was
waiting.... I thought that perhaps you were going out _to visit this sick
person_ and that then I could be useful to you in some way.
--You cannot be useful to me in any way, Veronica, But truly you astonish
me. What have you then to say to me? Come, explain yourself at once.
--No, Monsieur le Curé, there is midnight striking. It is time to repose, I
wish you good-night, sir.
--Good-night, Veronica.
"What a strange woman," said Marcel to himself, "what can she want with me.
One would say that she had a secret to confide to me and that she does not
dare.... Could she have any suspicion? No, it is impossible. How could she
know what I want to hide from myself. She has caught two or three words
perhaps; but what could she understand, and what have I let drop to
compromise me? She has evidently heard others, for she was here before me,
and these old walls have been witnesses, I am sure, of many groanings of
the soul.... Let us be cautious, nevertheless, and repress within ourselves
the thoughts which would come forth. A wise precept. It was a precept of my
master of rhetoric. Yes, let us be cautious; in spite of this woman's
appearance of devotion, who would trust to such marks of affection? The
servant's enemy is his master; and I clearly see that independently of my
dignity, I must not make the least false step; what torments I should
reserve to myself for the future.
"And this letter of Suzanne, the adorable and lovely Suzanne! What an
emotion suddenly seized me at the sight of that unknown handwriting, which
I had a presentiment was here. Oh! what a strange mystery is man's heart.
I, a priest, with a nature said to be energetic and strong. I trembled and
was affected like a child, because it has pleased a little school-girl to
write me a couple of lines in order to excuse her father's rudeness. What
is more natural than such conduct? Is it not the act of a well-bred girl?
And yet already my foolish brain is beating the country and travelling into
the land of fancies ... of abominable fancies.
"She asks me for counsel; doubtless I will give it her. Is it not my duty
and business as priest? but where, but when can I see her?..."
And he went very thoughtfully to bed, with his head full of dreams.
XXIV.
THE FIRST MEETING.
"Ah! let him, my child,
Ah! let him proceed.
When I was a Curate
I did much the same."
ANONYMOUS (_Le chant du Curé_).
The first person he saw the next day at morning Mass was Suzanne Durand.
She had not yet come to these low Masses, which are affected usually by the
devout, because the church is then more empty, and they feel themselves
more alone with God or with the priest; therefore the Curé was deeply
affected by this pious eagerness.
It is doubtful whether, on that day, his prayers reached the throne of the
Eternal, for he brought but little fervour to the holy sacrifice.
A good woman who had given twenty sous to buy a place in the firmament for
her defunct spouse, was quite scandalized to remark that the Curé was
eating in a heedless manner the wafer which, for nearly 2000 years, serves
as a lodging for Christ.
His words rose with the incense to the arches of the old church, but his
soul remained below, fluttering round that fair young girl, as if to
envelop her with embraces.
When he had dismissed the faithful with the sacramental words _Ite missa
est_, he felt a momentary confusion and he felt his knees tremble. He was
afraid of himself, for he saw the Captain's daughter rise from her seat and
slowly make her way to the confessional.
What! It was perfectly true then, she had asked for his counsel, and while
he, the priest, was hesitating and seeking where he could converse with her
without exposing himself to the brutal invective of the father or the
senseless scandals of the village, this simple girl had found, without any
aid from him, the safest spot, the sanctuary of which he had inwardly
dreamed.
He was then about to listen all alone to the divine accents of that
charming mouth; to see her kneeling before him, her face wreathed with a
modest blush,--before him who had wished to kiss her foot-prints.
Oh, God supreme! who could depict his transports, his emotion, the thrill
which ran through all his frame. She, she so near to him, so near that her
sweet breath caresses his face like a breeze come from heaven.
He felt wild with joy. But she also is affected, she also trembles, and
beneath her palpitating breast, he seems to hear the beatings of her heart.
What passed? What avowal did this maiden of ardent feeling make to this
hot-passioned man? There is one of those mysteries which remain for ever
buried between priest and woman, between penitent and confessor. What they
said to one another no one knows, but from that confessional into which he
entered pensive, wavering, it is true, but still contending, he went out
with his face radiant, and his heart intoxicated with love.
XXV.
LOVE.
"All loves around us: all around is heard,
Hard by the warbler's quivering kiss,
That voiceless song of flowers, which the lark,
by love distracted, to his mate translates."
EMILE DARIO (_Sonnets_).
He returned to the parsonage with a light step, hearing the birds singing
in the lime-trees the same joyous song which his own heart was singing. He
breakfasted with a good appetite, smiled at his servant, and gave pleasant
answers to her questions.
It seemed to him that a new world was opening. New ideas sprang up in him,
and he discovered sensations till then unknown.
He felt better; life smiled upon him, and all the things of life.
The past had altogether vanished; the present was radiant, the future was
laden with rosy dreams.
That same morning he had risen as usual, with no settled wish, aimless and
hopeless. Till then, he had acted like a machine, hardly knowing whither he
went, following his road by chance, walking onwards in the line which had
been traced out for him, with no relish, full of weariness and sadness.
What was he expecting then? Nothing. He was clinging to the fragments of
his beliefs, he remained hanging there, not daring to stir, to think, or to
turn, for fear of rolling to the bottom of some unknown abyss. But suddenly
everything is changed, everything is transformed, everything takes another
aspect. The whole world is illumined. Religion, dogma, mysteries, altar,
priest, what is all that? God even. He thinks no more of him.
A woman's look has obliterated all.
A woman's voice has murmured in his ear and he perceives that he is young,
that he is strong, that he has a heart, and that all cries to him at once:
Love! Love!
Oh! what a wonderful thing love is! What frenzy, what delirium, what
madness! Sublime madness, ravishing delirium, delicious frenzy.
First and last mystery of nature, first and last voice of the universe.
It is thou, oh God, who givest life to all, who dost animate all, who art
the principle of all. Thou art Alpha and Omega; thou art the potent arm
which has caused the worlds to rise, which has re-united the scattered
forces of matter, which has made order out of chaos.
And there are found men, creatures, works of love like everything which
moves, breathes, buds, shoots forth, there are found creatures who have
dared to say: Love is evil.
They have sworn to renounce love. They have spat in thy face, fruitful,
creative Divinity, they have denied thee on their impure altars.
But it is their God who is evil, as Proudhon said, that senseless and
ludicrous God who delights in grotesque saturnalia, in ridiculous prayers,
in shameful mummeries, in vows contrary to nature.
Marcel felt himself transformed.
A new feeling was born in him and plunged him into ineffable delight.
Nevertheless, as I have said, he experienced a vague fear; he had had a
glimpse of the unknown, and he was one of those delicate and timid souls
with their thoughts in some way turned upon themselves, which are terrified
at the unknown.
Seized with a restless apprehension and with a mysterious trouble, he felt
the hour coming which was about to change his life.
XXVI.
OF YOUNG GIRLS IN GENERAL.
"You tell me, Madame, that this description
is neither in the taste of Ovid
nor that of Quinault. I agree, my
dear, but I am not in a humour to
say soft things."
VOLTAIRE (_Dict. Phil._).
The great fault, in my opinion, both of the writer and of the poet, is to
idealize woman too much, and especially the young girl.
On the stage just as in the novel, the heroines are placed on a sort of
pedestal where they receive haughtily the incense and homage of poor
mankind.
They are perfect beings, of superior essence, gifted with all the beauties
and all the virtues, whose white robes of innocence never receive, amidst
all the impurities, of our social state, the slightest splash.
Why then raise thus upon a pedestal of Parian marble these statues of clay?
Why place reverentially beneath a tabernacle of gold these pasteboard
divinities?
Good Heavens! women are women, that is to say: the females of man, nothing
more. They are above all what men make them, and as we are generally
vicious and spoilt, since from the most tender age we take care to defile
ourselves in the street, in the workshop or on the school-benches; as the
atmosphere we breathe is corrupt, we have no claim to believe that our
wives, our sisters and our daughters can remain unspotted by our touch, and
that this same atmosphere which they breathe, will purify itself in passing
through their chaste nostrils.
If then the woman is not worse than we, as some assert, assuredly she is no
better.
And how could they be better, who are our pupils, and when the share we
have given them in society is so slight and so strangely ordered that, if
they cannot by means of supreme efforts expand and grow in it morally and
intellectually, every latitude is allowed them on the other hand to corrupt
themselves in it beyond measure, and to fall lower than the man into the
lowest depths.
"Fools!" said Machiavelli, "you sow hemlock and pretend you see ears of
corn growing ripe."
Why then idealize and make a divinity of this creature, when we know that
the education she ordinarily receives, takes away from her, little by
little, all which remains attractive, divine and ideal!
Certainly a chaste and simple young girl, fair and fresh as a spring
morning, sweet as the perfume of the violet, and whose mind and body alike
are as pure as the petals of a half-opened lily, is the most heavenly and
the most adorable thing in the world.
But, outside the pages of your novel, how many of them have you met in the
world?
I have often heard the modest virtues of the middle classes extolled, and
it is from such surroundings that the novelist of to-day most frequently
draws his feminine ideal. It is among the middle classes indeed that all
the qualifications seem to unite at first. It is the intermediate
condition, the most happy of all, as the excellent Monsieur Daru said in
1820, since it is only disinherited of the highest favours of fortune, and
the social and intellectual advantages of it are accessible to a reasonable
ambition.
But they evidently benefit very little by their advantages, for I, and you
also, have always found them coquettish, ignorant, frivolous and vain,
bringing up their children very badly, but in revenge, generally deceiving
their husbands very well.
"In middle-class households, bickering; among fashionable people, adultery.
In fashionable middle-class households, either one or the other and
sometimes both."[1]
And how could it be otherwise?
The daughters of devout and consequently narrow-minded and ignorant
mothers, of sceptical and libertine fathers, they spend five or six years
at school, where they consummate the loss of what may have escaped the
baneful example of their family.
They have taken from their mother foolish vanity, ridiculous prejudices,
the art of lying; from their father scepticism and an elastic conscience;
perhaps they will preserve their virtue and modesty? The pernicious
contacts of the school soon carry them away.
They still have a blush on their face, a down-cast eye, a timid bearing.
But their affected timidity is the token of their knowledge of _good and
evil_; like Eve, if they have not yet tasted of the forbidden fruit, they
burn to taste it, for their thought is sullied, their imagination is
vagrant and at the bottom of their soul there is a germ of corruption.
They leave the boarding-school _virgins_, but chaste, never.
Let us then represent the world as it la, women such as they are, and not
such as they ought to be; let us call things by their names, and when there
is moral deformity somewhere, let us show that deformity.
When we make wonders of the heroines of a novel, possessing the charms of
the _three Graces_ and the virtues of the seven sages of Greece, who when
they fall, fall in spite of themselves, impelled by a fatal concurrence of
circumstances, but with so much candour and innocence, that we cannot do
otherwise than pardon their fall and even fail to comprehend that they have
fallen, we are completely amazed when we descend from this imaginary world
to enter the world of reality.
The idealization of woman has therefore, besides other faults, that of
causing as to take a dislike to our ordinary companions. How, indeed, after
being present at the devotion of Sophonisba, at the suicide of the chaste
Lucretia, at the display of the virtues of Mademoiselle Agnes, and at that
of the form of Venus at the bath, can we contemplate with ravished eye the
wife no less plain than lawful, who is sitting with sullen air at our
fire-side, who has no other care than that of her person, no other moral
capital than a round enough sum of prejudices and follies, and whose
charms, finally, resemble more those of a Hottentot Venus than those of
Venus Aphrodite.
The picture of virtues is an excellent thing, but still it is necessary
that these virtues should exist. We must not enunciate an idea simply
because it is moral, but because it is true. _Amicus Plato, sed magis amica
veritas_.
That is why I shall not depict the little person, whom I am going to make
better known to you, as a model of virtue. She is an inquisitive girl, she
is vehement, she has been brought up in an atmosphere where depravity is
more generally inhaled than holiness. I should then be badly advised in
presenting you with an angel of candour and wisdom.
An angel! She is at that age indeed, at which foolish men call women
angels.
"Before they are wed, they are angels so gentle,
But quickly they change to vulgarian scolds,
She-demons who truly make hell of their homes."
[Footnote 1: H. Taine (Notes sur Paris).]
XXVII.
OF SUZANNE IN PARTICULAR.
"An exalted, romantic imagination of
vivid dreams, peopled with sumptuous
hotels, with smart equipages, fêtes,
balls, rubies, gold and azure. This is
what I have most surely gathered at
this school and is called: a brilliant
education."
V. SARDOU (_Maison Neuve_).
But she was a ravishing demon, this child, and more than one saint might
have damned himself for her black eyes, those deep limpid eyes which let
one read to her soul. And there one paused perfectly fascinated, for this
fresh resplendent soul displayed in large characters the radiant word,
Love.
Have you never read this word in a maiden's two eyes? Seek in your memory
and seek the fairest, and you will have the delightful portrait of Suzanne.
I am unable to say, however, that she was a perfect girl. What girl is
perfect here below? She had left school, and it would have been a miracle
if she were, and we know that away from Lourdes, God works no more
miracles.
She had even many faults: those of her age doubled by those which education
gives to girls. Many a time, when opening the holy Bible, the only book
capable of cheering me in the hours of sadness, I have come across these
words of Ezekiel,
"They are proud, full of appetites, abounding in idleness."
It is of the daughters of Sodom that the holy prophet is complaining! What
would he say to-day to _the young ladies_ of our modern Sodoms?
But if the little Suzanne had all the darling faults of forward flowers
forced in the warm soil of our enervating education, and our decayed
civilization, she was better than many plainer ones, and I do not think
that the sum total of her errors could weigh heavy on her conscience.
Perhaps she was culpable in thought; but if the imagination was sick, the
heart was good and sound. She had not sinned, but she said to herself, that
sinning would be sweet!
Well! there is no great crime there. Does not every woman love instinctive
pleasure? Among them there are few stoics. They who are so, are so by
compulsion, and so they cannot make a virtue of it. Suzanne loved pleasure
then, and she loved it the more because she only knew it by hear-say.