Sister Hyacinthe gave the signal, and they recited the third chaplet,
the five glorious mysteries, the Resurrection of Our Lord, the
Ascension of Our Lord, the Mission of the Holy Ghost, the Assumption of
the Most Blessed Virgin, the Crowning of the Most Blessed Virgin. And
afterwards they sang the canticle of Bernadette, that long, long chant,
composed of six times ten couplets, to which the ever recurring Angelic
Salutation serves as a refrain—a prolonged lullaby slowly besetting one
until it ends by penetrating one’s entire being, transporting one into
ecstatic sleep, in delicious expectancy of a miracle.
II
PIERRE AND MARIE
THE green landscapes of Poitou were now defiling before them, and Abbe
Pierre Froment, gazing out of the window, watched the trees fly away
till, little by little, he ceased to distinguish them. A steeple
appeared and then vanished, and all the pilgrims crossed themselves.
They would not reach Poitiers until twelve-thirty-five, and the train
was still rolling on amid the growing weariness of that oppressive,
stormy day. Falling into a deep reverie, the young priest no longer
heard the words of the canticle, which sounded in his ears merely like
a slow, wavy lullaby.
Forgetfulness of the present had come upon him, an awakening of the
past filled his whole being. He was reascending the stream of memory,
reascending it to its source. He again beheld the house at Neuilly,
where he had been born and where he still lived, that home of peace and
toil, with its garden planted with a few fine trees, and parted by a
quickset hedge and palisade from the garden of the neighbouring house,
which was similar to his own. He was again three, perhaps four, years
old, and round a table, shaded by the big horse-chestnut tree he once
more beheld his father, his mother, and his elder brother at
/dejeuner/. To his father, Michel Froment, he could give no distinct
lineaments; he pictured him but faintly, vaguely, renowned as an
illustrious chemist, bearing the title of Member of the Institute, and
leading a cloistered life in the laboratory which he had installed in
that secluded, deserted suburb. However he could plainly see his first
brother Guillaume, then fourteen years of age, whom some holiday had
brought from college that morning, and then and even more vividly his
mother, so gentle and so quiet, with eyes so full of active kindliness.
Later on he learnt what anguish had racked that religious soul, that
believing woman who, from esteem and gratitude, had resignedly accepted
marriage with an unbeliever, her senior by fifteen years, to whom her
relatives were indebted for great services. He, Pierre, the tardy
offspring of this union, born when his father was already near his
fiftieth year, had only known his mother as a respectful, conquered
woman in the presence of her husband, whom she had learnt to love
passionately, with the frightful torment of knowing, however, that he
was doomed to perdition. And, all at once, another memory flashed upon
the young priest, the terrible memory of the day when his father had
died, killed in his laboratory by an accident, the explosion of a
retort. He, Pierre, had then been five years old, and he remembered the
slightest incidents—his mother’s cry when she had found the shattered
body among the remnants of the chemical appliances, then her terror,
her sobs, her prayers at the idea that God had slain the unbeliever,
damned him for evermore. Not daring to burn his books and papers, she
had contented herself with locking up the laboratory, which henceforth
nobody entered. And from that moment, haunted by a vision of hell, she
had had but one idea, to possess herself of her second son, who was
still so young, to give him a strictly religious training, and through
him to ransom her husband—secure his forgiveness from God. Guillaume,
her elder boy, had already ceased to belong to her, having grown up at
college, where he had been won over by the ideas of the century; but
she resolved that the other, the younger one, should not leave the
house, but should have a priest as tutor; and her secret dream, her
consuming hope, was that she might some day see him a priest himself,
saying his first mass and solacing souls whom the thought of eternity
tortured.
Then between green, leafy boughs, flecked with sunlight, another figure
rose vividly before Pierre’s eyes. He suddenly beheld Marie de
Guersaint as he had seen her one morning through a gap in the hedge
dividing the two gardens. M. de Guersaint, who belonged to the petty
Norman
/noblesse/, was a combination of architect and inventor; and he was at
that time busy with a scheme of model dwellings for the poor, to which
churches and schools were to be attached; an affair of considerable
magnitude, planned none too well, however, and in which, with his
customary impetuosity, the lack of foresight of an imperfect artist, he
was risking the three hundred thousand francs that he possessed. A
similarity of religious faith had drawn Madame de Guersaint and Madame
Froment together; but the former was altogether a superior woman,
perspicuous and rigid, with an iron hand which alone prevented her
household from gliding to a catastrophe; and she was bringing up her
two daughters, Blanche and Marie, in principles of narrow piety, the
elder one already being as grave as herself, whilst the younger, albeit
very devout, was still fond of play, with an intensity of life within
her which found vent in gay peals of sonorous laughter. From their
early childhood Pierre and Marie played together, the hedge was ever
being crossed, the two families constantly mingled. And on that clear
sunshiny morning, when he pictured her parting the leafy branches she
was already ten years old. He, who was sixteen, was to enter the
seminary on the following Tuesday. Never had she seemed to him so
pretty. Her hair, of a pure golden hue, was so long that when it was
let down it sufficed to clothe her. Well did he remember her face as it
had been, with round cheeks, blue eyes, red mouth, and skin of
dazzling, snowy whiteness. She was indeed as gay and brilliant as the
sun itself, a transplendency. Yet there were tears at the corners of
her eyes, for she was aware of his coming departure. They sat down
together at the far end of the garden, in the shadow cast by the hedge.
Their hands mingled, and their hearts were very heavy. They had,
however, never exchanged any vows amid their pastimes, for their
innocence was absolute. But now, on the eve of separation, their mutual
tenderness rose to their lips, and they spoke without knowing, swore
that they would ever think of one another, and find one another again,
some day, even as one meets in heaven to be very, very happy. Then,
without understanding how it happened, they clasped each other tightly,
to the point of suffocation, and kissed each other’s face, weeping, the
while, hot tears. And it was that delightful memory which Pierre had
ever carried with him, which he felt alive within him still, after so
many years, and after so many painful renunciations.
Just then a more violent shock roused him from his reverie. He turned
his eyes upon the carriage and vaguely espied the suffering beings it
contained—Madame Maze motionless, overwhelmed with grief; little Rose
gently moaning in her mother’s lap; La Grivotte, whom a hoarse cough
was choking. For a moment Sister Hyacinthe’s gay face shone out amidst
the whiteness of her coif and wimple, dominating all the others. The
painful journey was continuing, with a ray of divine hope still and
ever shining yonder. Then everything slowly vanished from Pierre’s eyes
as a fresh wave of memory brought the past back from afar; and nothing
of the present remained save the lulling hymn, the indistinct voices of
dreamland, emerging from the invisible.
Henceforth he was at the seminary. The classrooms, the recreation
ground with its trees, rose up clearly before him. But all at once he
only beheld, as in a mirror, the youthful face which had then been his,
and he contemplated it and scrutinised it, as though it had been the
face of a stranger. Tall and slender, he had an elongated visage, with
an unusually developed forehead, lofty and straight like a tower;
whilst his jaws tapered, ending in a small refined chin. He seemed, in
fact, to be all brains; his mouth, rather large, alone retained an
expression of tenderness. Indeed, when his usually serious face
relaxed, his mouth and eyes acquired an exceedingly soft expression,
betokening an unsatisfied, hungry desire to love, devote oneself, and
live. But immediately afterwards, the look of intellectual passion
would come back again, that intellectuality which had ever consumed him
with an anxiety to understand and know. And it was with surprise that
he now recalled those years of seminary life. How was it that he had so
long been able to accept the rude discipline of blind faith, of
obedient belief in everything without the slightest examination? It had
been required of him that he should absolutely surrender his reasoning
faculties, and he had striven to do so, had succeeded indeed in
stifling his torturing need of truth. Doubtless he had been softened,
weakened by his mother’s tears, had been possessed by the sole desire
to afford her the great happiness she dreamt of. Yet now he remembered
certain quiverings of revolt; he found in the depths of his mind the
memory of nights which he had spent in weeping without knowing why,
nights peopled with vague images, nights through which galloped the
free, virile life of the world, when Marie’s face incessantly returned
to him, such as he had seen it one morning, dazzling and bathed in
tears, while she embraced him with her whole soul. And that alone now
remained; his years of religious study with their monotonous lessons,
their ever similar exercises and ceremonies, had flown away into the
same haze, into a vague half-light, full of mortal silence.
Then, just as the train had passed though a station at full speed, with
the sudden uproar of its rush there arose within him a succession of
confused visions. He had noticed a large deserted enclosure, and
fancied that he could see himself within it at twenty years of age. His
reverie was wandering. An indisposition of rather long duration had,
however, at one time interrupted his studies, and led to his being sent
into the country. He had remained for a long time without seeing Marie;
during his vacations spent at Neuilly he had twice failed to meet her,
for she was almost always travelling. He knew that she was very ill, in
consequence of a fall from a horse when she was thirteen, a critical
moment in a girl’s life; and her despairing mother, perplexed by the
contradictory advice of medical men, was taking her each year to a
different watering-place. Then he learnt the startling news of the
sudden tragical death of that mother, who was so severe and yet so
useful to her kin. She had been carried off in five days by
inflammation of the lungs, which she had contracted one evening whilst
she was out walking at La Bourboule, through having taken off her
mantle to place it round the shoulders of Marie, who had been conveyed
thither for treatment. It had been necessary that the father should at
once start off to fetch his daughter, who was mad with grief, and the
corpse of his wife, who had been so suddenly torn from him. And
unhappily, after losing her, the affairs of the family went from bad to
worse in the hands of this architect, who, without counting, flung his
fortune into the yawning gulf of his unsuccessful enterprises. Marie no
longer stirred from her couch; only Blanche remained to manage the
household, and she had matters of her own to attend to, being busy with
the last examinations which she had to pass, the diplomas which she was
obstinately intent on securing, foreseeing as she did that she would
someday have to earn her bread.
All at once, from amidst this mass of confused, half-forgotten
incidents, Pierre was conscious of the rise of a vivid vision.
Ill-health, he remembered, had again compelled him to take a holiday.
He had just completed his twenty-fourth year, he was greatly
behindhand, having so far only secured the four minor orders; but on
his return a sub-deaconship would be conferred on him, and an
inviolable vow would bind him for evermore. And the Guersaints’ little
garden at Neuilly, whither he had formerly so often gone to play, again
distinctly appeared before him. Marie’s couch had been rolled under the
tall trees at the far end of the garden near the hedge, they were alone
together in the sad peacefulness of an autumnal afternoon, and he saw
Marie, clad in deep mourning for her mother and reclining there with
legs inert; whilst he, also clad in black, in a cassock already, sat
near her on an iron garden chair. For five years she had been
suffering. She was now eighteen, paler and thinner than formerly, but
still adorable with her regal golden hair, which illness respected. He
believed from what he had heard that she was destined to remain infirm,
condemned never to become a woman, stricken even in her sex. The
doctors, who failed to agree respecting her case, had abandoned her.
Doubtless it was she who told him these things that dreary afternoon,
whilst the yellow withered leaves rained upon them. However, he could
not remember the words that they had spoken; her pale smile, her young
face, still so charming though already dimmed by regretfulness for
life, alone remained present with him. But he realised that she had
evoked the far-off day of their parting, on that same spot, behind the
hedge flecked with sunlight; and all that was already as though
dead—their tears, their embrace, their promise to find one another some
day with a certainty of happiness. For although they had found one
another again, what availed it, since she was but a corpse, and he was
about to bid farewell to the life of the world? As the doctors
condemned her, as she would never be woman, nor wife, nor mother, he,
on his side, might well renounce manhood, and annihilate himself,
dedicate himself to God, to whom his mother gave him. And he still felt
within him the soft bitterness of that last interview: Marie smiling
painfully at memory of their childish play and prattle, and speaking to
him of the happiness which he would assuredly find in the service of
God; so penetrated indeed with emotion at this thought, that she had
made him promise that he would let her hear him say his first mass.
But the train was passing the station of Sainte-Maure, and just then a
sudden uproar momentarily brought Pierre’s attention back to the
carriage and its occupants. He fancied that there had been some fresh
seizure or swooning, but the suffering faces that he beheld were still
the same, ever contracted by the same expression of anxious waiting for
the divine succour which was so slow in coming. M. Sabathier was vainly
striving to get his legs into a comfortable position, whilst Brother
Isidore raised a feeble continuous moan like a dying child, and Madame
Vetu, a prey to terrible agony, devoured by her disease, sat
motionless, and kept her lips tightly closed, her face distorted,
haggard, and almost black. The noise which Pierre had heard had been
occasioned by Madame de Jonquiere, who whilst cleansing a basin had
dropped the large zinc water-can. And, despite their torment, this had
made the patients laugh, like the simple souls they were, rendered
puerile by suffering. However, Sister Hyacinthe, who rightly called
them her children, children whom she governed with a word, at once set
them saying the chaplet again, pending the Angelus, which would only be
said at Chatellerault, in accordance with the predetermined programme.
And thereupon the “Aves” followed one after the other, spreading into a
confused murmuring and mumbling amidst the rattling of the coupling
irons and noisy growling of the wheels.
Pierre had meantime relapsed into his reverie, and beheld himself as he
had been at six-and-twenty, when ordained a priest. Tardy scruples had
come to him a few days before his ordination, a semi-consciousness that
he was binding himself without having clearly questioned his heart and
mind. But he had avoided doing so, living in the dizzy bewilderment of
his decision, fancying that he had lopped off all human ties and
feelings with a voluntary hatchet-stroke. His flesh had surely died
with his childhood’s innocent romance, that white-skinned girl with
golden hair, whom now he never beheld otherwise than stretched upon her
couch of suffering, her flesh as lifeless as his own. And he had
afterwards made the sacrifice of his mind, which he then fancied even
an easier one, hoping as he did that determination would suffice to
prevent him from thinking. Besides, it was too late, he could not
recoil at the last moment, and if when he pronounced the last solemn
vow he felt a secret terror, an indeterminate but immense regret
agitating him, he forgot everything, saving a divine reward for his
efforts on the day when he afforded his mother the great and
long-expected joy of hearing him say his first mass.
He could still see the poor woman in the little church of Neuilly,
which she herself had selected, the church where the funeral service
for his father had been celebrated; he saw her on that cold November
morning, kneeling almost alone in the dark little chapel, her hands
hiding her face as she continued weeping whilst he raised the Host. It
was there that she had tasted her last happiness, for she led a sad and
lonely life, no longer seeing her elder son, who had gone away, swayed
by other ideas than her own, bent on breaking off all family
intercourse since his brother intended to enter the Church. It was said
that Guillaume, a chemist of great talent, like his father, but at the
same time a Bohemian, addicted to revolutionary dreams, was living in a
little house in the suburbs, where he devoted himself to the dangerous
study of explosive substances; and folks added that he was living with
a woman who had come no one knew whence. This it was which had severed
the last tie between himself and his mother, all piety and propriety.
For three years Pierre had not once seen Guillaume, whom in his
childhood he had worshipped as a kind, merry, and fatherly big brother.
But there came an awful pang to his heart—he once more beheld his
mother lying dead. This again was a thunderbolt, an illness of scarce
three days’ duration, a sudden passing away, as in the case of Madame
de Guersaint. One evening, after a wild hunt for the doctor, he had
found her motionless and quite white. She had died during his absence;
and his lips had ever retained the icy thrill of the last kiss that he
had given her. Of everything else—the vigil, the preparations, the
funeral—he remembered nothing. All that had become lost in the black
night of his stupor and grief, grief so extreme that he had almost died
of it—seized with shivering on his return from the cemetery, struck
down by a fever which during three weeks had kept him delirious,
hovering between life and death. His brother had come and nursed him
and had then attended to pecuniary matters, dividing the little
inheritance, leaving him the house and a modest income and taking his
own share in money. And as soon as Guillaume had found him out of
danger he had gone off again, once more vanishing into the unknown. But
then through what a long convalescence he, Pierre, had passed, buried
as it were in that deserted house. He had done nothing to detain
Guillaume, for he realised that there was an abyss between them. At
first the solitude had brought him suffering, but afterwards it had
grown very pleasant, whether in the deep silence of the rooms which the
rare noises of the street did not disturb, or under the screening,
shady foliage of the little garden, where he could spend whole days
without seeing a soul. His favourite place of refuge, however, was the
old laboratory, his father’s cabinet, which his mother for twenty years
had kept carefully locked up, as though to immure within it all the
incredulity and damnation of the past. And despite the gentleness, the
respectful submissiveness which she had shown in former times, she
would perhaps have some day ended by destroying all her husband’s books
and papers, had not death so suddenly surprised her. Pierre, however,
had once more had the windows opened, the writing-table and the
bookcase dusted; and, installed in the large leather arm-chair, he now
spent delicious hours there, regenerated as it were by his illness,
brought back to his youthful days again, deriving a wondrous
intellectual delight from the perusal of the books which he came upon.
The only person whom he remembered having received during those two
months of slow recovery was Doctor Chassaigne, an old friend of his
father, a medical man of real merit, who, with the one ambition of
curing disease, modestly confined himself to the /role/ of the
practitioner. It was in vain that the doctor had sought to save Madame
Froment, but he flattered himself that he had extricated the young
priest from grievous danger; and he came to see him from time to time,
to chat with him and cheer him, talking with him of his father, the
great chemist, of whom he recounted many a charming anecdote, many a
particular, still glowing with the flame of ardent friendship. Little
by little, amidst the weak languor of convalescence, the son had thus
beheld an embodiment of charming simplicity, affection, and good nature
rising up before him. It was his father such as he had really been, not
the man of stern science whom he had pictured whilst listening to his
mother. Certainly she had never taught him aught but respect for that
dear memory; but had not her husband been the unbeliever, the man who
denied, and made the angels weep, the artisan of impiety who sought to
change the world that God had made? And so he had long remained a
gloomy vision, a spectre of damnation prowling about the house, whereas
now he became the house’s very light, clear and gay, a worker consumed
by a longing for truth, who had never desired anything but the love and
happiness of all. For his part, Doctor Chassaigne, a Pyrenean by birth,
born in a far-off secluded village where folks still believed in
sorceresses, inclined rather towards religion, although he had not set
his foot inside a church during the forty years he had been living in
Paris. However, his conviction was absolute: if there were a heaven
somewhere, Michel Froment was assuredly there, and not merely there,
but seated upon a throne on the Divinity’s right hand.