CADIERE IN THE CONVENT: 1730.
The Abbess of the Ollioules Convent was young for an abbess, being
only thirty-eight years old. She was not wanting in mind. She was
lively, swift alike in love and in hatred, hurried away by her heart
and her senses also, endowed with very little of the tact and the
moderation needed for the governing of such a body.
This nunnery drew its livelihood from two sources. On the one side,
there came to it from Toulon two or three nuns of consular families,
who brought good dowers with them, and therefore did what they
pleased. They lived with the Observantine monks who had the ghostly
direction of the convent. On the other hand, these monks, whose order
had spread to Marseilles and many other places, picked up some little
boarders and novices who paid for their keep: a contact full of danger
and unpleasantness for the children, as one may see by the Aubany
affair.
There was no real confinement, nor much internal order. In the
scorching summer nights of that African climate, peculiarly oppressive
and wearying in the airless passes of Ollioules, nuns and novices
went to and fro with the greatest freedom. The very same things were
going on at Ollioules in 1730 which we saw in 1630 at Loudun. The bulk
of nuns, well-nigh a dozen out of the fifteen who made up the house,
being rather forsaken by the monks, who preferred ladies of loftier
position, were poor creatures, sick at heart, and disinherited, with
nothing to console them but tattling, child's play, and other
school-girls' tricks.
The abbess was afraid that Cadière would soon see through all this.
She made some demur about taking her in. Anon, with some abruptness,
she entirely changed her cue. In a charming letter, all the more
flattering as sent so unexpectedly from such a lady to so young a
girl, she expressed a hope of her leaving the ghostly guidance of
Father Girard. The girl was not, of course, to be transferred to her
Observantines, who were far from capable of the charge. The abbess had
formed the bold, enlivening idea of taking her into her own hands and
becoming her sole director.
She was very vain. Deeming herself more agreeable than an old Jesuit
confessor, she reckoned on making this prodigy her own, on conquering
her without trouble. She would have worked the young saint for the
benefit of her house.
She paid her the marked compliment of receiving her on the threshold,
at the street-door. She kissed her, caught her up, led her into the
abbess's own fine room, and bade her share it with herself. She was
charmed with her modesty, with her invalid grace, with a certain
strangeness at once mysterious and melting. In that short journey the
girl had suffered a great deal. The abbess wanted to lay her down in
her own bed, saying she loved her so that she would have them sleep
together like sisters in one bed.
For her purpose this was probably more than was needful. It would have
been quite enough to have the saint under her own roof. She would now
have too much the look of a little favourite. The lady, however, was
surprised at the young girl's hesitation, which doubtless sprang from
her modesty or her humility; in part, perhaps, from a comparison of
her own ill-health with the young health and blooming beauty of the
other. But the abbess tenderly urged her request.
Under the influence of a fondling so close and so continual, she
deemed that Girard would be forgotten. With all abbesses it had become
the ruling fancy, the pet ambition, to confess their own nuns,
according to the practice allowed by St. Theresa. By this pleasant
scheme of hers the same result would come out of itself, the young
woman telling her confessors only of small things, but keeping the
depths of her heart for one particular person. Caressed continually by
one curious woman, at eventide, in the night, when her head was on the
pillow, she would have let out many a secret, whether her own or
another's.
From this living entanglement she could not free herself at the
first. She slept with the abbess. The latter thought she held her fast
by a twofold tie, by the opposite means employed on the saint and on
the woman; that is, on the nervous, sensitive, and, through her
weakness, perhaps sensual girl. Her story, her sayings, whatever fell
from her lips, were all written down. From other sources she picked up
the meanest details of her physical life, and forwarded the report
thereof to Toulon. She would have made her an idol, a pretty little
pet doll. On a slope so slippery the work of allurement doubtless
moved apace. But the girl had scruples and a kind of fear. She made
one great effort, of which her weak health would have made her seem
incapable. She humbly asked leave to quit that dove's-nest, that couch
too soft and delicate, to go and live in common with the novices or
the boarders.
Great was the abbess's surprise; great her mortification. She fancied
herself scorned. She took a spite against the thankless girl, and
never forgave her.
* * * * *
From the others Cadière met with a very pleasant welcome. The mistress
of the novices, Madame de Lescot, a nun from Paris, refined and good,
was a worthier woman than the abbess. She seemed to understand the
other--to see in her a poor prey of fate, a young heart full of God,
but cruelly branded by some eccentric spell which seemed like to hurry
her onward to disgrace, to some unhappy end. She busied herself
entirely with looking after the girl, saving her from her own
rashness, interpreting her to others, excusing those things which
might in her be least excusable.
Saving the two or three noble ladies who lived with the monks and had
small relish for the higher mysticism, they were all fond of her, and
took her for an angel from heaven. Their tender feelings having little
else to engage them, became concentred in her and her alone. They
found her not only pious and wonderfully devout, but a good child
withal, kind-hearted, winning, and entertaining. They were no longer
listless and sick at heart. She engaged and edified them with her
dreams, with stories true, or rather, perhaps, unfeigned, mingled ever
with touches of purest tenderness. She would say, "At night I go
everywhere, even to America. Everywhere I leave letters bidding people
repent. To-night I shall go and seek you out, even when you have
locked yourselves in. We will all go together into the Sacred Heart."
The miracle was wrought. Each of them at midnight, so she said,
received the delightful visit. They all fancied they felt Cadière
embracing them, and making them enter the heart of Jesus. They were
very frightened and very happy. Tenderest, most credulous of all, was
Sister Raimbaud, a woman of Marseilles, who tasted this happiness
fifteen times in three months, or nearly once in every six days.
It was purely the effect of imagination. The proof is, that Cadière
visited all of them at one same moment. The abbess meanwhile was
hurt, being roused at the first to jealousy by the thought that she
only had been left out, and afterwards feeling assured that, lost as
the girl might be in her own dreams, she would get through so many
intimate friends but too clear an inkling into the scandals of the
house.
These were scarcely hidden from her at all. But as nothing came to
Cadière save by the way of spiritual insight, she fancied they had
been told her in a revelation. Here her kindliness shone out. She felt
a large compassion for the God who was thus outraged. And once again
she imagined herself bound to atone for the rest, to save the sinners
from the punishment they deserved, by draining herself the worst
cruelties which the rage of devils would have power to wreak.
All this burst upon her on the 25th June, the Feast of St. John. She
was spending the evening with the sisters in the novices' rooms. With
a loud cry she fell backward in contortions, and lost all
consciousness.
When she came to, the novices surrounded her, waiting eager to hear
what she was going to say. But the governess, Madame Lescot, guessed
what she would say, felt that she was about to ruin herself. So she
lifted her up, and led her straight to her room, where she found
herself quite flayed, and her linen covered with blood.
Why did Girard fail her amidst these struggles inward and from
without? She could not make him out. She had much need of support, and
yet he never came, except for one moment at rare intervals, to the
parlour.
She wrote to him on the 28th June, by her brothers; for though she
could read, she was scarcely able to write. She called to him in the
most stirring, the most urgent tones, and he answers by putting her
off. He has to preach at Hyères, he has a sore throat, and so on.
Wonderful to tell, it is the abbess herself who brings him thither. No
doubt she was uneasy at Cadière's discovering so much of the inner
life of the convent. Making sure that the girl would talk of it to
Girard, she wished to forestal her. In a very flattering and tender
note of the 3rd July, she besought the Jesuit to come and see herself
first, for she longed, between themselves, to be his pupil, his
disciple, as humble Nicodemus had been of Christ. "Under your
guidance, by the blessing of that holy freedom which my post ensures
me, I should move forward swiftly and noiselessly in the path of
virtue. The state of our young candidate here will serve me as a fair
and useful pretext."
A startling, ill-considered step, betraying some unsoundness in the
lady's mind. Having failed to supplant Girard with Cadière, she now
essayed to supplant Cadière with Girard. Abruptly, without the least
preface, she stepped forward. She made her decision, like a great
lady, who was still agreeable and quite sure of being taken at her
word, who would go so far as even to talk of the _freedom_ she
enjoyed!
In taking so false a step she started from a true belief that Girard
had ceased to care much for Cadière. But she might have guessed that
he had other things to perplex him in Toulon. He was disturbed by an
affair no longer turning upon a young girl, but on a lady of ripe age,
easy circumstances, and good standing; on his wisest penitent, Mdlle.
Gravier. Her forty years failed to protect her. He would have no
self-governed sheep in his fold. One day, to her surprise and
mortification, she found herself pregnant, and loud was her wail
thereat.
Taken up with this new adventure, Girard looked but coldly on the
abbess's unforeseen advances. He mistrusted them as a trap laid for
him by the Observantines. He resolved to be cautious, saw the abbess,
who was already embarrassed by her rash step, and then saw Cadière,
but only in the chapel where he confessed her.
The latter was hurt by his want of warmth. In truth his conduct showed
strange inconsistencies. He unsettled her with his light, agreeable
letters, full of little sportive threats which might have been called
lover-like. And yet he never deigned to see her save in public.
In a note written the same evening she revenged herself in a very
delicate way. She said that when he granted her absolution, she felt
wonderfully dissevered both from herself and from _every other
creature_.
It was just what Girard would have wanted. His plots had fallen into a
sad tangle, and Cadière was in the way. Her letter enchanted him: far
from being annoyed with her, he enjoined her to keep dissevered. At
the same time, he hinted at the need he had for caution. He had
received a letter, he said, warning him sharply of her faults.
However, as he would set off on the 6th July for Marseilles, he would
see her on the road.
She awaited him, but no Girard came. Her agitation was very great. It
brought on a sharp fit of her old bodily distemper. She spoke of it to
her dear Sister Raimbaud, who would not leave her, who slept with her,
against the rules. This was on the night of the 6th July, when the
heat in that close oven of Ollioules was most oppressive and
condensed. At four or five o'clock, seeing her writhe in sharp
suffering, the other "thought she had the colic, and went to fetch
some fire from the kitchen." While she was gone, Cadière tried by one
last effort to bring Girard to her side forthwith. Whether with her
nails she had re-opened the wounds in her head, or whether she had
stuck upon it the sharp iron crown, she somehow made herself all
bloody. The pain transfigured her, until her eyes sparkled again.
This lasted not less than two hours. The nuns flocked to see her in
this state, and gazed admiringly. They would even have brought their
Observantines thither, had Cadière not prevented them.
The abbess would have taken good care to tell Girard nothing, lest he
should see her in a plight so touching, so very pitiful. But good
Madame Lescot comforted the girl by sending the news to the father. He
came, but like a true juggler, instead of going up to her room at
once, had himself an ecstatic fit in the chapel, staying there a whole
hour on his knees, prostrate before the Holy Sacrament. Going at
length upstairs, he found Cadière surrounded by all the nuns. They
tell him how for a moment she looked as if she was at mass, how she
seemed to open her lips to receive the Host. "Who should know that
better than myself?" said the knave. "An angel had told me. I repeated
the mass, and gave her the sacrament from Toulon." They were so upset
by the miracle, that one of them was two days ill. Girard then
addressed Cadière with unseemly gaiety: "So, so, little glutton! would
you rob me of half my share?"
They withdraw respectfully, leaving these two alone. Behold him face
to face with his bleeding victim, so pale, so weak, but agitated all
the more! Anyone would have been greatly moved. The avowal expressed
by her blood, her wounds, rather than spoken words, was likely to
reach his heart. It was a humbling sight; but who would not have
pitied her? This innocent girl could for one moment yield to nature!
In her short unhappy life, a stranger as she was to the charms of
sense, the poor young saint could still show one hour of weakness! All
he had hitherto enjoyed of her without her knowledge, became mere
nought. With her soul, her will, he would now be master of everything.
In her deposition Cadière briefly and bashfully said that she lost all
knowledge of what happened next. In a confession made to one of her
friends she uttered no complaints, but let her understand the truth.
And what did Girard do in return for so charmingly bold a flight of
that impatient heart? He scolded her. He was only chilled by a warmth
which would have set any other heart on fire. His tyrannous soul
wanted nothing but the dead, the merest plaything of his will. And
this girl, by the boldness of her first move, had forced him to come.
The scholar had drawn the master along. The peevish pedant treated the
matter as he would have treated a rebellion at school. His lewd
severities, his coolly selfish pursuit of a cruel pleasure, blighted
the unhappy girl, who now had nothing left her but remorse.
It was no less shocking a fact, that the blood poured out for his sake
had no other effect than to tempt him to make the most of it for his
own purposes. In this, perhaps his last, interview he sought to make
so far sure of the poor thing's discretion, that, however forsaken by
him, she herself might still believe in him. He asked if he was to be
less favoured than the nuns who had seen the miracle. She let herself
bleed before him. The water with which he washed away the blood he
drank himself,[113] and made her drink also, and by this hateful
communion, he thought to bind fast her soul.
[113] This communion of blood prevailed among the Northern
_Reiters_. See my _Origines_.
This lasted two or three hours, and it was now near noon. The abbess
was scandalized. She resolved to go with the dinner herself, and make
them open the door. Girard took some tea: it being Friday, he
pretended to be fasting; though he had doubtless armed himself well at
Toulon. Cadière asked for coffee. The lay sister who managed the
kitchen was surprised at this on such a day. But without that
strengthening draught she would have fainted away. It set her up a
little, and she kept hold of Girard still. He stayed with her, no
longer indeed locked in, till four o'clock, seeking to efface the
gloomy impression caused by his conduct in the morning. By dint of
lying about friendship and fatherhood, he somewhat reassured the
susceptible creature, and calmed her troubled spirits. She showed him
the way out, and, walking after him, took, childlike, two or three
skips for joy. He said, drily, "Little fool!"
* * * * *
She paid heavily for her weakness. At nine of that same night she had
a dreadful vision, and was heard crying out, "O God! keep off from me!
get back!" On the morning of the 8th, at mass she did not stay for the
communion, deeming herself, no doubt, unworthy, but made her escape
to her own room. Thereon arose much scandal. Yet so greatly was she
beloved, that one of the nuns ran after her, and, telling a
compassionate falsehood, swore she had beheld Jesus giving her the
sacrament with His own hand.
Madame Lescot delicately and cleverly wrote a legend out of the mystic
ejaculations, the holy sighs, the devout tears, and whatever else
burst forth from this shattered heart. Strange to say, these women
tenderly conspired to shield a woman. Nothing tells more than this in
behalf of poor Cadière and her delightful gifts. Already in one
month's time she had become the child of all. They defended her in
everything she did. Innocent though she might be, they saw in her only
the victim of the Devil's attacks. One kind sturdy woman of the
people, Matherone, daughter of the Ollioules locksmith, and porteress
herself to the convent, on seeing some of Girard's indecent liberties,
said, in spite of them, "No matter: she is a saint." And when he once
talked of taking her from the convent, she cried out, "Take away our
Mademoiselle Cadière! I will have an iron door made to keep her from
going."
Alarmed at the state of things, and at the use to which it might be
turned by the abbess and her monks, Cadière's brethren who came to her
every day, took courage to be beforehand; and in a formal letter
written in her name to Girard, reminded him of the revelation given
to her on the 25th June regarding the morals of the Observantines. It
was time, they said, "to carry out God's purposes in this matter,"
namely, of course, to demand an inquiry, to accuse the accusers.
Their excess of boldness was very rash. Cadière, now all but dying,
had no such thoughts in her head. Her women-friends imagined that he
who had caused the disturbance would, perhaps, bring back the calm.
They besought Girard to come and confess her. A dreadful scene took
place. At the confessional she uttered cries and wailings audible
thirty paces off. The curious among them found some amusement
listening to her, and were not disappointed. Girard was inflicting
chastisement. Again and again he said, "Be calm, mademoiselle!" In
vain did he try to absolve her. She would not be absolved. On the
12th, she had so sharp a pang below her heart, that she felt as though
her sides were bursting. On the 14th, she seemed fast dying, and her
mother was sent for. She received the viaticum; and on the morrow made
a public confession, "the most touching, the most expressive that had
ever been heard. We were drowned in tears." On the 20th, she was in a
state of heart-rending agony. After that she had a sudden and saving
change for the better, marked by a very soothing vision. She beheld
the sinful Magdalen pardoned, caught up into glory, filling in heaven
the place which Lucifer had lost.
Girard, however, could only ensure her discretion by corrupting her
yet further, by choking her remorse. Sometimes he would come to the
parlour and greet her with bold embraces. But oftener he sent his
faithful followers, Guiol and others, who sought to initiate her into
their own disgraceful secrets, while seeming to sympathise tenderly
with the sufferings of their outspoken friend. Girard not only winked
at this, but himself spoke freely to Cadière of such matters as the
pregnancy of Mdlle. Gravier. He wanted her to ask him to Ollioules, to
calm his irritation, to persuade him that such a circumstance might be
a delusion of the Devil's causing, which could perchance be dispelled.
These impure teachings made no way with Cadière. They were sure to
anger her brethren, to whom they were not unknown. The letters they
wrote in her name are very curious. Enraged at heart and sorely
wounded, accounting Girard a villain, but obliged to make their sister
speak of him with respectful tenderness, they still, by snatches, let
their wrath become visible.
As for Girard's letters, they are pieces of laboured writing,
manifestly meant for the trial which might take place. Let us talk of
the only one which he did not get into his hands to tamper with. It is
dated the 22nd July. It is at once sour and sweet, agreeable,
trifling, the letter of a careless man. The meaning of it is thus:--
"The bishop reached Toulon this morning, and will go to see
Cadière.... They will settle together what to do and say. If the Grand
Vicar and Father Sabatier wish to see her, and ask to see her wounds,
she will tell them that she has been forbidden to do or say aught.
"I am hungering to see you again, to see the whole of you. You know
that I only demand _my right_. It is so long since I have seen more
than half of you (he means to say, at the parlour grating). Shall I
tire you? Well, do you not also tire me?" And so on.
A strange letter in every way. He distrusts alike the bishop and the
Jesuit, his own colleague, old Sabatier. It is at bottom the letter of
a restless culprit. He knows that in her hands she holds his letters,
his papers, the means, in short, of ruining him. The two young men
write back in their sister's name a spirited answer--the only one that
has a truthful sound. They answer him line for line, without insult,
but with a roughness often ironical, and betraying the wrath pent-up
within them. The sister promises to obey him, to say nothing either to
the bishop or the Jesuit. She congratulates him on having "boldness
enough to exhort others to suffer." She takes up and returns him his
shocking gallantry, but in a shocking way; and here we trace a man's
hand, the hand of those two giddy heads.
Two days after, they went and told her to decide on leaving the
convent forthwith. Girard was dismayed. He thought his papers would
disappear with her. The greatness of his terror took away his senses.
He had the weakness to go and weep at the Ollioules parlour, to fall
on his knees before her, and ask her if she had the heart to leave
him. Touched by his words, the poor girl said "No," went forward, and
let him embrace her. And yet this Judas wanted only to deceive her, to
gain a few days' time for securing help from a higher quarter.
On the 29th there is an utter change. Cadière stays at Ollioules, begs
him to excuse her, vows submission. It is but too clear that he has
set some mighty influences at work; that from the 29th threats come
in, perhaps from Aix, and presently from Paris. The Jesuit bigwigs
have been writing, and their courtly patrons from Versailles.
In such a struggle, what were the brethren to do? No doubt they took
counsel with their chiefs, who would certainly warn them against
setting too hard on Girard as a _libertine confessor_; for thereby
offence would be given to all the clergy, who deemed confession their
dearest prize. It was needful, on the contrary; to sever him from the
priests by proving the strangeness of his teaching, by bringing him
forward as a _Quietist_. With that one word they might lead him a long
way. In 1698, a vicar in the neighbourhood of Dijon had been burnt for
Quietism. They conceived the idea of drawing up a memoir, dictated
apparently by their sister, to whom the plan was really unknown, in
which the high and splendid Quietism of Girard should be affirmed,
and therefore in effect denounced. This memoir recounted the visions
she had seen in Lent. In it the name of Girard was already in heaven.
She saw it joined with her own in the Book of Life.
They durst not take this memoir to the bishop. But they got their
friend, little Camerle, his youthful chaplain, to steal it from them.
The bishop read it, and circulated some copies about the town. On the
21st August, Girard being at the palace, the bishop laughingly said to
him, "Well, father, so your name is in the Book of Life!"
He was overcome, fancied himself lost, wrote to Cadière in terms of
bitter reproach. Once more with tears he asked for his papers. Cadière
in great surprise vowed that her memoir had never gone out of her
brother's hands. But when she found out her mistake, her despair was
unbounded. The sharpest pangs of body and soul beset her. Once she
thought herself on the point of death. She became like one mad. "I
long so much to suffer. Twice I caught up the rod of penance, and
wielded it so savagely as to draw a great deal of blood." In the midst
of this dreadful outbreak, which proved at once the weakness of her
head and the boundless tenderness of her conscience, Guiol finished
her by describing Girard as nearly dead. This raised her compassion to
the highest pitch.
She was going to give up the papers. And yet it was but too clear
that these were her only safeguard and support, the only proofs of her
innocence, and the tricks of which she had been made the victim. To
give them up was to risk a change of characters, to risk the
imputation of having herself seduced a saint, the chance, in short, of
seeing all the blame transferred to her own side.
But, if she must either be ruined herself or else ruin Girard, she
would far sooner accept the former result. A demon, Guiol of course,
tempted her in this very way, with the wondrous sublimity of such a
sacrifice. God, she wrote, asked of her a bloody offering. She could
tell her of saints who, being accused, did not justify, but rather
accused themselves, and died like lambs. This example Cadière
followed. When Girard was accused before her, she defended him,
saying, "He is right, and I told a falsehood."
She might have yielded up the letters of Girard only; but in so great
an outflowing of heart she would have no haggling, and so gave him
even copies of her own.
Thus at the same time he held these drafts written by the Jacobin, and
the copies made and sent him by the other brother. Thenceforth he had
nothing to fear: no further check could be given him. He might make
away with them or put them back again; might destroy, blot out, and
falsify at pleasure. He was perfectly free to carry on his forger's
work, and he worked away to some purpose. Out of twenty-four letters,
sixteen remain; and these still read like elaborately forged
afterthoughts.
With everything in his own hands, Girard could laugh at his foes. It
was now their turn to be afraid. The bishop, a man of the upper world,
was too well acquainted with Versailles and the name won by the
Jesuits not to treat them with proper tenderness. He even thought it
safest to make Girard some small amends for his unkind reproach about
The Book of Life; and so he graciously informed him that he would like
to stand godfather to the child of one of his kinsmen.
The Bishops of Toulon had always been high lords. The list of them
shows all the first names of Provence, and some famous names from
Italy. From 1712 to 1737, under the Regency and Fleury, the bishop was
one of the La Tours of Pin. He was very rich, having also the Abbeys
of Aniane and St. William of the Desert, in Languedoc. He behaved
well, it was said, during the plague of 1721. However, he stayed but
seldom at Toulon, lived quite as a man of the world, never said mass,
and passed for something more than a lady's man.
In July he went to Toulon, and though Girard would have turned him
aside from Ollioules and Cadière, he was curious to see her
nevertheless. He saw her in one of her best moments. She took his
fancy, seemed to him a pretty little saint; and so far did he believe
in her enlightenment from above, as to speak to her thoughtlessly of
all his affairs, his interests, his future doings, consulting her as
he would have consulted a teller of fortunes.
In spite, however, of the brethren's prayers he hesitated to take her
away from Ollioules and from Girard. A means was found of resolving
him. A report was spread about Toulon, that the girl had shown a
desire to flee into the wilderness, as her model saint, Theresa, had
essayed to do at twelve years old. Girard, they said, had put this
fancy into her head, that he might one day carry her off beyond the
diocese whose pride she was, and box-up his treasure in some far
convent, where the Jesuits, enjoying the whole monopoly, might turn to
the most account her visions, her miracles, her winsome ways as a
young saint of the people. The bishop felt much hurt. He instructed
the abbess to give Mdlle. Cadière up to no one save her mother, who
was certain to come very shortly and take her away from the convent to
a country-house belonging to the family.
In order not to offend Girard, they got Cadière to write and say that,
if such a change incommoded him, he could find a colleague and give
her a second confessor. He saw their meaning, and preferred disarming
jealousy by abandoning Cadière. He gave her up on the 15th September,
in a note most carefully worded and piteously humble, by which he
strove to leave her friendly and tender towards himself. "If I have
sometimes done wrong as concerning you, you will never at least forget
how wishful I have been to help you.... I am, and ever will be, all
yours in the Secret Heart of Jesus."
The bishop, however, was not reassured. He fancied that the three
Jesuits, Girard, Sabatier, and Grignet, wanted to beguile him, and
some day, with some order from Paris, rob him of his little woman. On
the 17th September, he decided once for all to send his carriage, a
light fashionable _phaeton_, as it was called, and have her taken off
at once to her mother's country-house.
By way of soothing and shielding her, of putting her in good trim, he
looked out for a confessor, and applied first to a Carmelite who had
confessed her before Girard came. But he, being an old man, declined.
Some others also probably hung back. The bishop had to take a
stranger, but three months come from the County (Avignon), one Father
Nicholas, prior of the Barefooted Carmelites. He was a man of forty,
endowed with brains and boldness, very firm and even stubborn. He
showed himself worthy of such a trust by rejecting it. It was not the
Jesuits he feared, but the girl herself. He foreboded no good
therefrom, thought that the angel might be an angel of darkness, and
feared that the Evil One under the shape of a gentle girl would deal
his blows with all the more baleful effect.
But he could not see her without feeling somewhat reassured. She
seemed so very simple, so pleased at length to have a safe, steady
person, on whom she might lean. The continual wavering in which she
had been kept by Girard, had caused her the greatest suffering. On the
first day she spoke more than she had done for a month past, told him
of her life, her sufferings, her devotions, and her visions. Night
itself, a hot night in mid-September, did not stop her. In her room
everything was open, the windows, and the three doors. She went on
even to daybreak, while her brethren lay near her asleep. On the
morrow she resumed her tale under the vine-bower. The Carmelite was
amazed, and asked himself if the Devil could ever be so earnest in
praise of God.
Her innocence was clear. She seemed a nice obedient girl, gentle as a
lamb, frolicsome as a puppy. She wanted to play at bowls, a common
game in those country-places, nor did he for his part refuse to join
her.
If there was a spirit in her, it could not at any rate be called the
spirit of lying. On looking at her closely for a long time, you could
not doubt that her wounds now and then did really bleed. He took care
to make no such immodest scrutiny of them as Girard had done,
contenting himself with a look at the wound upon her foot. Of her
trances he saw quite enough. On a sudden, a burning heat would diffuse
itself everywhere from her heart. Losing her consciousness, she went
into convulsions and talked wildly.
The Carmelite clearly perceived that in her were two persons, the
young woman and the Demon. The former was honest, nay, very fresh of
heart; ignorant, for all that had been done to her; little able to
understand the very things that had brought her into such sore
trouble. When, before confession, she spoke of Girard's kisses, the
Carmelite roughly said, "But those are very great sins."
"O God!" she answered, weeping, "I am lost indeed, for he has done
much more than that to me!"
The bishop came to see. For him the country-house was only the length
of a walk. She answered his questions artlessly, told him at least how
things began. The bishop was angry, mortified, very wroth. No doubt he
guessed the remainder. There was nought to keep him from raising a
great outcry against Girard. Not caring for the danger of a struggle
with the Jesuits, he entered thoroughly into the Carmelite's views,
allowed that she was bewitched, and added that _Girard himself was the
wizard_. He wanted to lay him that very moment under a solemn ban, to
bring him to disgrace and ruin. Cadière prayed for him who had done
her so much wrong; vengeance she would not have. Falling on her knees
before the bishop, she implored him to spare Girard, to speak no more
of things so sorrowful. With touching humility, she said, "It is
enough for me to be enlightened at last, to know that I was living in
sin." Her Jacobin brother took her part, foreseeing the perils of such
a war, and doubtful whether the bishop would stand fast.
Her attacks of disorder were now fewer. The season had changed. The
burning summer was over. Nature at length showed mercy. It was the
pleasant month of October. The bishop had the keen delight of feeling
that she had been saved by him. No longer under Girard's influence in
the stifling air of Ollioules, but well cared-for by her family, by
the brave and honest monk, protected, too, by the bishop, who never
grudged his visits, and who shielded her with his steady countenance,
the young girl became altogether calm.
For seven weeks or so she seemed quite well-behaved. The bishop's
happiness was so great that he wanted the Carmelite, with Cadière's
help, to look after Girard's other penitents, and bring them also back
to their senses. They should go to the country-house; how unwillingly,
and with how ill a grace we can easily guess. In truth, it was
strangely ill-judged to bring those women before the bishop's ward, a
girl so young still, and but just delivered from her own ecstatic
ravings.
The state of things became ridiculous and sorely embittered. Two
parties faced each other, Girard's women and those of the bishop. On
the side of the latter were a German lady and her daughter, dear
friends of Cadière's. On the other side were the rebels, headed by the
Guiol. With her the bishop treated, in hopes of getting her to enter
into relations with the Carmelite, and bring her friends over to him.
He sent her his own clerk, and then a solicitor, an old lover of
Guiol's. All this failing of any effect, the bishop came to his last
resource, determined to summon them all to his palace. Here they
mostly denied those trances and mystic marks of which they had made
such boast. One of them, Guiol, of course, astonished him yet more by
her shamelessly treacherous offer to prove to him, on the spot, that
they had no marks whatever about their bodies. They had deemed him
wanton enough to fall into such a snare. But he kept clear of it very
well, declining the offer with thanks to those who, at the cost of
their own modesty, would have had him copy Girard, and provoke the
laughter of all the town.
The bishop was not lucky. On the one hand, these bold wenches made fun
of him. On the other, his success with Cadière was now being undone.
She had hardly entered her own narrow lane in gloomy Toulon, when she
began to fall off. She was just in those dangerous and baleful centres
where her illness began, on the very field of the battle waged by the
two hostile parties. The Jesuits, whose rearguard everyone saw in the
Court, had on their side the crafty, the prudent, the knowing. The
Carmelite had none but the bishop with him, was not even backed by his
own brethren, nor yet by the clergy. He had one weapon, however, in
reserve. On the 8th November, he got out of Cadière a written power to
reveal her confession in case of need.
It was a daring, dauntless step, which made Girard shudder. He was
not very brave, and would have been undone had his cause not been that
of the Jesuits also. He cowered down in the depths of their college.
But his colleague Sabatier, an old, sanguine, passionate fellow, went
straight to the bishop's palace. He entered into the prelate's
presence, like another Popilius, bearing peace or war in his gown. He
pushed him to the wall, made him understand that a suit with the
Jesuits would lead to his own undoing; that he would remain for ever
Bishop of Toulon; would never rise to an archbishopric. Yet further,
with the freedom of an apostle strong at Versailles, he assured him
that if this affair exposed the morals of a Jesuit, it would shed no
less light on the morals of a bishop. In a letter, clearly planned by
Girard, it was pretended that the Jesuits held themselves ready in the
background, to hurl dreadful recriminations against the prelate,
declaring his way of life not only unepiscopal, but _abominable_
withal. The sly, faithless Girard and the hot-headed Sabatier, swollen
with rage and spitefulness, would have pressed the calumnious charge.
They would not have failed to say that all this matter was about a
girl; that if Girard had taken care of her when ill, the bishop had
gotten her when she was well. What a commotion would be caused by such
a scandal in the well-regulated life of the great worldly lord! It
were too laughable a piece of chivalry to make war in revenge for the
maidenhood of a weak little fool, to embroil oneself for her sake with
all honest people! The Cardinal of Bonzi died indeed of grief at
Toulouse, but that was on account of a fair lady, the Marchioness of
Ganges. The bishop, on his part, risked his ruin, risked the chance of
being overwhelmed with shame and ridicule, for the child of a
retail-dealer in the Rue de l'Hôpital!
Sabatier's threatenings made all the greater impression, because the
bishop himself clung less firmly to Cadière. He did not thank her for
falling ill again; for giving the lie to his former success; for doing
him a wrong by her relapse. He bore her a grudge for having failed to
cure her. He said to himself that Sabatier was in the right; that he
had better come to a compromise. The change was sudden--a kind of
warning from above. All at once, like Paul on the way to Damascus, he
beheld the light, and became a convert to the Jesuits.
Sabatier would not let him go. He put paper before him, and made him
write and sign a decree forbidding the Carmelite, his agent with
Cadière, and another forbidding her brother, the Jacobin.