The somewhat dolefully calm frame of mind in which Durtal had been
living since settling at Chartres came to a sudden end. One day _ennui_
made him its prey, the black possession which would allow him neither to
work, nor to read, nor to pray; so overwhelming that he knew not whither
to turn nor what to do.
After spending dark and futile days in lounging round his library,
taking down a volume and shutting it up again, opening another of which
he failed to master a single page, he tried to escape from the weariness
of the hours by taking walks, and he determined finally to study the
town of Chartres.
He found a number of blind alleys and break-neck steeps, such as the
road down the knoll of St. Nicolas, which tumbles from the top of the
town to the bottom in a precipitous flight of steps; and then the
Boulevard des Filles-Dieu, so lonely with its walks planted with trees,
was worthy of his notice. Starting from the Place Drouaise, he came to a
little bridge where the waters meet of the two branches of the Eure; to
the right, above the eddying current and the buildings on the shore, he
could see the pile of the old town shouldering up the cathedral; to the
left, all along the quay, and looking out on the tall poplars that
fanned the water-mills, were saw-mills and timber-yards, the washing
places where laundresses knelt on straw in troughs, and the water foamed
before them in widening inky circles splashed into white bubbles by the
dip of a bird's wing.
This arm of the river diverted into the moat of the old ramparts,
encircled Chartres, bordered on one side by the trees of the alleys, and
on the other by cottages with terraced gardens down to the level of the
stream, the two banks joined by foot-bridges of planks or cast iron
arches.
Near where the Porte Guillaume uplifted its crenelated towers like
raised pies, there were houses that looked as if they had been gutted,
displaying, as in the vanished _cagnards_ or vaults of the Hotel Dieu at
Paris, cellars open on the level of the water, paved basements in whose
depths of prison twilight stone steps could be seen; and on going out
through the Porte Guillaume across a little humpbacked bridge, under the
archway still showing the groove in which the portcullis had worked
which was let down of yore to defend this side of the town, he came upon
yet another arm of the river washing the feet of more houses, playing at
hide and seek in the courts, musing between walls; and at once he was
haunted by the recollection of another river just like this, with its
decoction of walnut hulls frothed with bubbles; and to contribute to the
suggestion, the more clearly to evoke a vision of the dismal Bièvre, the
rank, acrid, pungent smell of tan, steeped, as it were, in vinegar, came
up in fumes from this broth of medlar juice brought down by the Eure.
The Bièvre, a prisoner now in the sewers of Paris, seemed to have
escaped from its dungeon and to have taken refuge at Chartres that it
might live in the light of day; winding by the Rues de la Foulerie, de
la Tannerie, du Massacre, the quarters invaded by the leather-dressers,
the skinners and tan-peat makers.
But the Parisian environment, so pathetic in its aspect of silent
suffering, was absent from this town; these streets suggested merely a
declining hamlet, a poverty-stricken village. He felt something lacking
in this second Bièvre, the fascination of exhaustion, the grace of the
woman of Paris faded and smirched by misery; it lacked the charm
compounded of pity and regret, of a fallen creature.
Such as they were, however, these streets, traced with a sort of
descending twist round the hill on which the cathedral stood exalted,
were the only curious by-ways of Chartres worth wandering through.
Here Durtal often succeeded in getting out of himself, in dreaming over
the distressful weariness of these streams, and in ceasing to meditate
on his own qualms, till he presently was tired of constant excursions in
the same quarter of the town, and then he tramped through it in every
direction, trying to find an interest in the sight of time-worn
spots--the grace of Queen Berthe's tower, of Claude Huvé's house and
other buildings that have survived the shock of ages; but the enthusiasm
he threw into the study of these relics, spoilt by the foregone
eulogiums of the guides, could not last, and he then fell back on the
churches.
Although the cathedral crushed everything near it, Saint-Pierre, the
ancient Abbey church of a Benedictine monastery, now used as barracks,
deserved a lingering visit for the sake of its splendid windows, the
dwelling-place of Abbots and Bishops who look down with stern eyes,
holding up their croziers. And these windows, damaged by time, were very
singular. Upright, in each lancet-shaped setting of white glass, rose a
sword-blade bereft of its point; and in these square-tipped blades Saint
Benedict and Saint Maur stood lost in thought, with Apostles and Popes,
Prelates and Saints, standing out in robes of flame against the luminous
whiteness of the borders.
Certainly Chartres could show the finest glass windows in the world; and
each century had left its noblest stamp on its sanctuaries: the twelfth,
thirteenth, and even the fifteenth, on the cathedral; the fourteenth on
Saint Pierre; and a few examples--unfortunately broken up and used in a
medley mosaic--of painted glass of the sixteenth century in Saint
Aignan, another church where the vaulted roof had been washed of the
colour of gingerbread speckled with anise-seed, by painters of our own
day.
Durtal got through a few afternoons in these churches; then the charm of
this prolonged study was at an end, and gloom took possession of him,
even worse than before.
The Abbé Plomb, to divert his mind, took him for walks in the country,
but La Beauce was so flat, so monotonous, that any variety of landscape
was impossible to find. Then the Abbé took him through other parts of
the town. Some of the buildings claimed their attention, as, for
instance, the House of Detention, in the Rue-Sainte-Thérèse near the
Palais de Justice. The edifices themselves were not, indeed, very
impressive, but the history of their origin made them available as the
fulcrum for old dreams. There was something in the prison walls, in
their height and austerity, in their look of order and precision, which
made the cloister wall of a Carmel look small. They had, in fact, of
old, sheltered a Sisterhood of that Order, and a few steps further on,
in a blind alley, was the entrance to the ancient convent of the
Jacobins, the Mother-House of the great Sisterhood of Chartres: the
Nursing Sisters of Saint Paul.
The Abbé Plomb took him to visit this house, and he retained a cheerful
impression of the walk in the fresh air on the old ramparts. The Sisters
had kept up the sentry's walk, which followed a long and narrow avenue
with a statue of the Virgin at each end, one representing the Immaculate
Conception, the other the Virgin Mother. And this walk, strewn with
river-pebbles and edged with flowers, shut in on one side by the Abbey
and the novices' schools, on the left overlooked a precipice down to the
Butte des Charbonniers, and below that again, the Rue de la Couronne;
while beyond lay the grass lawns of the Clos Saint Jean, the line of the
railroad, labourers' hovels, and convent buildings.
"There you see," said the Abbé, "behind the embankment of the Western
Railway stands the Convent of the Sisters of Our Lady and of the
Carmelites; here, nearer to the town on this side of the line, are the
Little Sisters of the Poor."
And indeed the place swarmed with convents: Sisters of the Visitation,
Sisters of Providence, Sisters of Good Comfort, Ladies of the Sacred
Heart, all lived in hives close round Chartres. Prayer hummed up on
every side, rising as the fragrant breath of souls above a city where,
by way of divine service, nothing was chanted but the price-current of
grain and the higher and lower cost of horses in the fairs which, on
certain days, brought all the copers of La Perche together in the
_cafés_ on the Place.
Besides this walk on the old ramparts, the Convent of the Sisters of
Saint Paul was attractive by reason of its quiet and cleanliness. Down
silent passages the backs of the good women might be seen crossed by the
triangular fold of linen, and the click could be heard of their heavy
black rosaries on links of copper, as they rattled on their skirts
against the hanging bunch of keys. Their chapel was redolent of Louis
XIV., at once childish and pompous, too much bedizened with gold, and
the floor too shiny with wax; but there was an interesting detail: at
the entrance large panes of glass had been substituted for the walls, so
that in winter the sick, sitting in a warm room, could look through the
glass partition and follow the services and hear the plain song of
Solesmes which the Sisters had the good taste to use.
This visit revived Durtal's spirit; but he inevitably compared the
peaceful hours told out in that retreat with others, and his disgust was
increased for this town, and its inhabitants, and its avenues, and its
boasted Place des Epars, aping a little Versailles, with its surrounding
blatant mansions, and its ridiculous statue of Marceau in the middle.
And then the limpness of the place, hardly awake by sunrise and asleep
again by dusk!
Once only did Durtal see it really awake, and that was on the day when
Monseigneur Le Tilloy des Mofflaines was enthroned as Bishop.
Then suddenly the city was galvanized; projects were made, the various
bodies corporate sat in committee, and men came forth who had lived
within doors for years.
Scaffold poles were brought out from the masons' yards; blue and yellow
flags were hoisted on them, and these masts were linked together by
garlands of ivy-leaves sewn one over the other with white cotton.
Then Chartres was exhausted, and paused for breath.
Durtal, startled by these unexpected preparations and such an assumption
of life, had gone out to meet the Bishop, as far as to the Rue Saint
Michel. There, on the open square, a gymnastic apparatus had been
erected, the swing bars and rings having been removed, and the poles
garnished with pine branches and gilt paper rosettes, and surmounted by
a trophy of tricolour flags arranged in a fan behind a painted cardboard
shield. This was an arch of triumph, and under this the Brethren of the
Christian Schools were to escort the canopy.
The procession, which had gone forth to fetch the Bishop from the
Hospice of Saint Brice, where, in obedience to time-honoured custom, he
had slept the night before entering his See, had made its way thither
under a fine rain of chanted canticles, broken by heavier showers of
brass sounding a pious flourish of trumpets. Slowly, with measured
steps, the train wound along between two hedges of people crowded on the
sidewalks, and all the way the windows, hung with drapery, displayed
bunches of faces and leaning bodies, cut across the middle by the
balcony bar.
At the head of the procession, behind the gaudy uniforms of the
ponderous beadles, came the girls of the Congregational Schools, dressed
in crude blue with white veils, in two ranks, filling up the roadway;
then followed delegates of nuns from every Order that has a House in the
diocese; Sisters of the Visitation from Dreux, Ladies of the Sacred
Heart from Châteaudun, Sisters of the Immaculate Conception from Nogent
le Rotrou, the uncloistered Sisters of the Cloistered Orders of
Chartres, Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul and Poor Clares, whose dresses
of blueish grey and peat-brown contrasted with the black robes of the
others.
What was most odd was the various shapes of their coifs. Some had soft
flapping blinkers, others wore them goffered and stiffened with starch;
these hid their face at the bottom of a deep white tunnel; others, on
the contrary, showed their countenance set in an oval frame of pleated
cambric, prolonged behind into conical wings of starched linen lustrous
from heavy irons. As he looked over this expanse of caps, Durtal was
reminded of the Paris landscape of roofs, in shapes resembling the
funnels worn by these nuns and the cocked hats of the beadles.
Then, behind these long files of sober-coloured garments, the scarlet
vestments of the choirs came like the blare of trumpets. The little ones
marched with downcast eyes, their arms crossed under their red capes
edged with ermine, and behind them, a little in advance of the next
group, walked two white cowls, that of a Brother of Picpus, and that of
a Trappist who represented the Trappist Sisterhood of La Cour Peytral,
to which he was chaplain.
Finally the Seminarists came on in a black crowd; those of the Great
Seminary of Chartres and of the Little Seminary of Saint Chéron
preceding the priests, and behind them, under a purple velvet canopy
embroidered in gold with wheat ears and grapes, and decorated at each
corner with bunches of snow-white feathers, with his mitre on his head
and holding his crozier, came Monseigneur Le Tilloy des Mofflaines.
As he passed, in the act of blessing the street, many an unknown Lazarus
rose up, the forgotten dead come back to life; His Reverence seemed to
multiply the Miracles of the Lord. Effete old men, huddled in their
chairs in the doorways or at the windows, revived for a second, and
found strength enough to cross themselves. Persons who had been
supposed dead for years managed almost to smile. The vacant eyes of old,
old children gazed at the violet cross outlined in the air by the
Prelate's gloved hand. Chartres, that city of the dead, had changed to a
vast nursery; in the extravagance of its joy the town was in its second
childhood.
But as soon as the Bishop was past the scene changed. Durtal was
startled, and he tittered.
A whole "Court of Miracles" seemed to follow in the Prelate's train,
strutting but tottering; a procession of old wrecks, dressed out in such
garments as are sold from the dead-house, staggered along holding each
other's arms, propped one against another. Every reach-me-down that had
been hanging these twenty years flapped about their limbs, hindering
their progress. Trousers with baggy ankles or with gaiter tops,
balloon-shaped or close-fitting, made of loose-woven stuff or so shrunk
that they would not meet the boot, displaying feet where the elastic
sides wriggled like living vermin, and ankles covered with vermicelli
dipped in ink; then the most impossibly threadbare and discoloured
coats, made, as it seemed, of old billiard cloths, of tarpaulin worn to
the canvas, of cast-off awnings; overcoats of cast iron, the surface
worn off the back-seam and sleeves--glaucous waistcoats, sprigged with
flowers and furnished with buttons of dry brawn-parings; and all this
was as nothing; what was prodigious, beyond the bounds of belief,
fabulous, positively insane, was the collection of hats that crowned
these costumes.
The specimens of extinct headgear, lost in the night of ages, that were
collected here! The veterans wore muff-boxes and gas-pipes; some had
tall white hats, for all the world like toilet-pails turned upside
down, or huge spigots with a hole for the head; others had donned felt
hats like sponges, shaggy, long-haired Bolivars, melons on flat brims
just like a tart on a dish; others, again, had crush-hats, which swayed
and played the accordion on their own account, their ribs showing
through the stuff.
The craziness of the gibus hats beats description. Some were very tall,
the shaft crowned with a platform larger than the head, like the shako
of an Imperial Lancer; others very low, ending in an inverted cone--the
mouth of a blunderbuss or a Polish schapska.
And under this Sanhedrim of drunken hats were the mopping, wrinkled
faces of very old men, with whiskers like white rabbits' paws, and
bristles like tooth-brushes in their nostrils.
Durtal shook with inextinguishable laughter at this carnival of
antiquities; but his mirth was soon over; he saw two Little Sisters of
the Poor who were in charge of this school of fossils, and he
understood. These poor creatures were dressed in clothes that had been
begged, the rummage of wardrobes, for which the owners had no further
use. Then the queerness of their outfit was pathetic; the Little Sisters
must have been at infinite trouble to utilize these leavings of charity;
and the old children, recking little of fashion, plumed themselves with
pride at being so fine.
Durtal followed to the cathedral. When he reached the little square, the
procession, caught by a gale of wind, was struggling and clinging to the
banners, which bellied like the sails of a ship, carrying on the men who
clutched the poles. At last, more or less easily, all the people were
swallowed up in the basilica. The _Te Deum_ was pouring out in a torrent
from the organ. At this moment it really seemed as though, under the
impulsion of this glorious hymn, the church, springing heavenward in a
rapturous flight, were rising higher and higher; the echo resounded down
the ages, repeating the hymn of triumph which had so often been sung
under that roof; and for once the music was in harmony with the
building, and spoke the language which the cathedral had learnt in its
infancy.
Durtal was exultant. It seemed to him that Our Lady smiled down from
those glowing windows, that She was touched by these accents, created by
the saints she had loved, to embody for ever, in a definite melody, and
in unique words, the scattered praise of the faithful, the unformulated
rejoicing of the multitude.
Suddenly his exalted mood was sobered. The _Te Deum_ was ended; a roll
of drums and a clarion flourish rang out from the transept. And while
the brass band of Chartres cannonaded the old walls with the balista of
mere noise, he fled to breathe away from the crowd, which, however, did
not nearly fill the church; and then, after the ceremony, he went to see
the parade of representatives of the various institutions in the town,
who came to pay their respects to the new Bishop in his palace.
There he could laugh and not be ashamed. The forecourt was packed full
of priests. All the superiors of the different Archdeaconries--Chartres,
Châteaudun, Nogent le Rotrou, and Dreux--had left there, within the
great gate, their following of parish priests and curés, who were pacing
round and round the green circus of a grass plot.
The big-wigs of the town, not at all less ridiculous than the pensioners
of the Little Sisters of the Poor, crowded in, driving the ecclesiastics
into the garden walks. Teratology seemed to have emptied out its
specimen bottles; it was a seething swarm of human larvæ, of strange
heads--bullet-shaped, egg-shaped, faces as seen through a bottle or in a
distorting mirror, or escaped from one of Redon's grotesque albums; a
perfect museum of monsters on the move. The stagnation of monotonous
toil, handed down for generations from father to son in a city of the
dead, was stamped on every face, and the Sunday-best festivity of the
day added a touch of the absurd to hereditary ugliness.
Every black coat in Chartres had come out to take the air. Some dated
from the days of the Directory, swallowed up the wearer's neck, climbed
up high behind the nape, muffled the ears and padded the shoulders;
others had shrunk by lying in the drawer, and their sleeves, much too
short, cut the wearer round the armholes so that he dared not move.
A miasma of benzine and camphor exhaled from these groups. The clothes,
only that morning taken out of pickle to be aired by the good wife, were
pestilential. The stove-pipe hats were to match. Left to themselves on
wardrobe shelves, they had surely grown taller; they towered immense,
displaying on their mill-board column a thin covering of hairs.
This assembly of worthies admired and congratulated each other; clasped
hands encased in white gloves--gloves scoured with paraffin, cleaned
with indiarubber or breadcrumb. Presently a retiring wave cleared a
space in the crowd of priests and laymen, who shrank back hat in hand to
make way for an old hearse of a landau, drawn by a consumptive horse and
driven by a sort of Moudjik, a coachman with a puffy face behind a
thicket of hair sprouting on his cheeks and his mouth, in his ears and
nose. This vehicle came to an anchor before the front steps, and out of
it stepped a fat man, blown out like a bladder and buttoned up in an
uniform with silver lace; after him came a thinner personage in a coat
with facings of dark and light blue, and everybody bowed to the Préfet
attended by one of his three Councillors.
They had lifted their plumed cocked hats, distributed a dole of
hand-shaking, and vanished into the vestibule when the army made its
appearance, represented by a Colonel of Cuirassiers, some officers of
the Artillery and the Commissariat, a few subalterns of Infantry, and
one gendarme.
This was all.
Within an hour of this reception the exhausted town was asleep again,
not having energy enough even to remove the poles; Lazarus had gone back
to his sepulchre, the resuscitated antiquities had relapsed into death;
the streets were empty; reaction had ensued; Chartres would be exhausted
for months by this outbreak.
"What a sty it is! What a hole!" cried Durtal to himself.
On certain days, tired of spending his afternoons shut up with his books
or of attending service in the cathedral, hearing the canons languidly
playing rackets from side to side of the choir with the Psalms, of which
they tossed the verses to and fro in a mumbling tone, he would go down
after dinner and smoke cigarettes in the little Place. At Chartres,
eight o'clock in the evening was as three in the morning in any other
town; every light was out, every house closed.
The priesthood, eager for bed, had shut up shop. No prayers to the
Virgin, no Benediction, nothing in this cathedral! At such an hour,
kneeling in the dark, you feel as if the Mother were more immediately
present, nearer, more intimately your own; but these moments of
confidence, when it is easier to tell Her all your trivial woes, were
unknown at Notre Dame. No one was worn out by midnight prayer in that
church!
But though he could not go in, Durtal could prowl round and about it.
And then, scarcely seen by the light of the poverty-stricken lamps
standing here and there on the square, the cathedral assumed strange
aspects. The portals yawned as caverns full of blackness, and the outer
shape of the body of the building, from the towers to the apse, with
its abutments and buttresses merely guessed at in the dark, stood up
like a cliff worn away by invisible waves. It might have been a
mountain, its summit jagged by storms, eaten into deep caverns at the
foot by a vanished ocean; and on going nearer he could in the gloom
imagine ill-defined paths steeply running up the cliff, or winding on
shelves at the edge of a rock; and, occasionally, midway on one of these
dark paths, some white statue of a Bishop would start forth under a
moonbeam, like a ghost haunting the ruins, and blessing all comers with
uplifted fingers of stone.
These wanderings in the precincts of the cathedral, which by daylight
was so light and slender, and in the dark seemed so ponderous and
threatening, were ill-adapted to cure Durtal of his melancholy.
This illusion of rocks riven by the lightning, of caverns deserted by
the waves, plunged him into fresh reveries, and at last threw him back
on himself, ending, after many divagations of mind, in the contemplation
of the ruin within him. Then once more he sounded his soul, and tried to
reduce his thoughts to some sort of order.
"I am simply bored to death," said he to himself, "and why?" And by dint
of analyzing his condition he came to this conclusion: "My state of
boredom is not simple but two-fold; or, if it is indeed all of a piece,
it may be divided into two very distinct phases: I am bored by myself,
independently of place, of home, of books; and I am also bored by
provincial life--the special form of boredom inherent in Chartres.
"Bored by myself--ah, yes, most heartily! How tired I am of watching
myself, of trying to detect the secret of my disgust and
contentiousness. When I contemplate my life I could sum it up thus: the
past has been horrible; the present seems to me feeble and desolate; the
future--is appalling."
He paused, and then went on,--
"During my first days here I was happy in the dream suggested by this
cathedral. I believed it would re-act on my life, that it would people
the solitude I felt within me, that it would, in a word, be a help to me
in this provincial atmosphere. But I beguiled myself. In fact, it still
weighs on me, it still holds me wrapped in the mild gloom of its crypt;
but I can now reason about it, I can scrutinize its details, I try to
talk to it of art, and in these inquiries I have lost the unreasoning
sense of its environment, the silent fascination of the whole.
"I am less conscious now of its soul than of its body. I tried to study
archæology, that contemptible anatomy of building, and I have fallen
humanly in love with its beauty; the spiritual aspect has vanished, to
leave nothing behind but the earthly part. Alas! I was determined to
see, and I have wrecked trust; it is the eternal allegory of Psyche over
again!
"And besides--besides--is not the weariness that is crushing me to some
extent the fault of the Abbé Gévresin? By compelling me to much
repetition he has exhausted in me the soothing and, at the same time,
subversive virtue of the Sacrament; and the most evident result of this
treatment is that my soul has collapsed and has no spirit to
reinvigorate it.
"No, no," he went on presently. "Here I am working back on my perennial
presumption, my incessant round of cares; and once more I am unjust to
the Abbé. But it is certainly no fault of his if frequent Communion
makes me cold. I look for sensations; but the very first thing should be
to convince myself that such cravings are contemptible, and next, to
understand clearly that it is precisely because Communion is so frigid
that it is the more meritorious and virtuous, yes, that is very easy to
say; but where is the Catholic who prefers such coldness to a glow? The
saints may, no doubt; but even they suffer under it! It is so natural to
entreat God for a little joy, to look forward to an Union consummated by
a loving word, a sign--a mere nothing that may show that He is present.
"Say what they may, we cannot help being pained by a dead absorption of
that living bread! And it is very hard to admit that Our Lord is wise
when He keeps us in ignorance of the ills from which it preserves us and
the progress it enables us to make, since, but for that, we might be
defenceless against the attacks of self-conceit and the assaults of
vanity--helpless against ourselves.
"In short, whatever the reason, I am no better off at Chartres than in
Paris," was his conclusion. And when these reflections beset him,
especially on Sundays, he regretted having accompanied the Abbé Gévresin
into the country.
In Paris, in old days, he at any rate got through the hours at the
services. He could attend Mass in the morning at the Benedictine chapel
or at Saint Séverin, and go to Saint Sulpice for vespers or compline.
Here there was nothing; and yet where were there more promising
conditions for the performance of Gregorian music than at Chartres?
Setting aside a few antiquated basses who could only bark, and whom it
would be necessary to dismiss, there was a whole sheaf of rich young
voices, a school of nearly a hundred boys who could have rolled out in
clear, sweet tones the broad melodies of the old plain-song.
But in this ill-starred cathedral an inept precentor gave out, by way of
liturgical canticles, a perfect menagerie of outlandish tunes, which,
let loose on Sunday, seemed to scamper like marmosets up the pillars and
under the roof. And the artless voices of the choir-boys were drilled to
these musical monkey-tricks. At Chartres it was impossible to attend
High Mass in the cathedral with any decent devotion.
The other services were not much better; indeed, Durtal was reduced to
attending vespers at Notre Dame de la Brèche, in the lower town, a
chapel where the priest, a friend of the Abbé Plomb, had introduced the
use of Solesmes, and patiently trained a little choir composed of
faithful working-men and pious boys.
The voices, especially the trebles, were not first-rate; but the priest,
being a skilled musician, had contrived to train and soften them, and
had, in fact, succeeded in getting the Benedictine art accepted in his
church.
Unfortunately it was so ugly, so painfully adorned with images, that
only by shutting his eyes could Durtal endure to remain in Notre Dame de
la Brèche.
In the midst of this surge of reflections on his soul, on Paris, on the
Eucharist, on music, on Chartres, Durtal was at last quite bewildered,
not knowing where he was. Now and then, however, he recovered some
tranquillity, and then he was astonished at himself, he could not
understand himself.
"Why regret Paris--why, indeed?" he would ask himself. "Was the life I
led there unlike that I lead here? Were not the churches there--Notre
Dame de Paris, to name but one--just as much to be execrated for
sacrilegious _bravuras_ as Notre Dame de Chartres? On the other hand, I
never went out there to lounge in the tiresome streets; I saw nobody but
the Abbé Gévresin and Madame Bavoil, and I see them still, and oftener,
in this town. I have even gained a friend by the move, a learned and
agreeable companion, in the Abbé Plomb. So why?"
And then one morning, unexpectedly, every thing was plain to him. He saw
quite clearly that he was on the wrong track, and without even seeking
for it he found the right one.
To discover the unknown source of his flaccid longing for he knew not
what, and his inexplicable dissatisfaction, he had only to look back a
little way and pause at La Trappe. He saw now everything had begun
there. Having reached that culminating point of his retrospect, he
could, as it were, stand on a height and command a view of the declining
years since he had left the monastery; and now, gazing at that
descending panorama of his life, he discerned this:--
That from the time of his return to Paris a craving for the cloister had
been incessantly permeating his being; he had unremittingly cherished
the dream of retiring from the world, of living peacefully as a recluse
near to God.
He had, to be sure, only thought of it definitely in the form of
impossible longings and regrets, for he knew full well that neither was
his body strong enough nor his soul staunch enough for him to bury
himself as a Trappist. Still, once started from that spring-board, his
imagination flew off at a tangent, overleaped every obstacle, floated in
discursive reveries where he saw himself as a Friar in some easy-going
convent under the rule of a merciful Order, devoted to liturgies and
adoring art.
He could but shrug his shoulders, indeed, when he came back to himself,
and smile at these dreams of the future which he indulged in hours of
vacuous idleness; but this self-contempt of a man who catches himself in
the very act of flagrant nonsense was nevertheless succeeded by the hope
of not losing all the advantages of an honest delusion; and he could
remount on a chimera which he thought less wild, as leading to a _via
media_, a compromise, fancying that by moderating his ideal he should
find it more attainable.
He assured himself that, in default of a really conventual life, he
might perhaps achieve an illusory imitation of it by avoiding the
turmoil of Paris and burying himself in a hole. And he now saw that he
had completely cheated himself when, on discussing the question as to
whether he should leave Paris and go to settle at Chartres, he had
believed that he was yielding to the Abbé Gévresin's arguments and
Madame Bavoil's urgency.
Certainly, without admitting it, without accounting for it, he had
really acted on the prompting of this cherished dream. Would not
Chartres be a sort of monastic haven, of open cloister, where he could
enjoy his liberty and not have to give up his comforts? Would it not, at
any rate, for lack of an unattainable hermitage, be a sop thrown to his
desires; and supposing he could succeed in reducing his too exorbitant
demands, give him the final repose and peace for which he had yearned
ever since his return from La Trappe?
And nothing of all this had been realized. The unsettled feeling he had
experienced in Paris had pursued him to Chartres. He was, as it were, on
the march, or perched on a bough; he could not feel at home, but as a
man lingering on in furnished rooms, whence he must presently depart.
In short, he had deluded himself when he had fancied that a man might
make a cell of a solitary room in silent surroundings; the religious
jog-trot in a provincial atmosphere had no resemblance to the life of a
monastery. There was no illusion or suggestion of the convent.
This check, when he recognized it, added to the ardour or his regrets;
and the distress which in Paris had lurked latent and ill-defined,
developed at Chartres clear and unmistakable.
Then began an unremitting struggle with himself.
The Abbé Gévresin, whom he consulted, would only smile and treat him as
in a novices' school or a seminary a youthful postulant is treated who
confesses to deep melancholy and persistent weariness. His malady is not
taken seriously; he is told that all his companions suffer the same
temptations, the same qualms; he is sent away comforted, while his
superiors seem to be laughing at him.
But at the end of a little time this method no longer succeeded. Then
the Abbé was firm with Durtal, and one day, when his penitent was
bemoaning himself, he replied,--
"It is an attack you must get over," and then he added lightly after a
silence, "And it will not be the last or the worst."
At this Durtal turned restive; the Abbé, however, drove him to bay,
wanting to make him confess how senseless his struggles were.
"The idea of the cloister haunts you," said he. "Well, then, what is
there to hinder you? Why do you not retire to a Trappist convent?"
"You know very well that I am not strong enough to endure the rule."
"Then become an oblate; go to join Monsieur Bruno at Notre Dame de
l'Atre."
"No, indeed, not that, at any rate. To be an oblate at La Trappe is the
same thing as remaining at Chartres! It is a mere half-measure. Monsieur
Bruno will always remain a boarder; he will never be a monk. He gets all
the disadvantages of the cloister, and none of the benefits."
"But there are other monasteries besides those of La Trappe," replied
the Abbé. "Be a Benedictine Father or oblate, a black Friar. Their rule
seems to be mild; you will live in a world of learned men and writers;
what more would you have?"
"I do not say--but--"
"But what?"
"I know nothing of them--"
"Nothing can be easier than to get to know them. The Abbé Plomb is a
welcome friend at Solesmes. He can give all the introductions you can
wish to that convent."
"Good; that is worth thinking about. I will consult the Abbé," said
Durtal, rising to take leave of the old priest.
"The Black Dog is troubling you, our friend," observed Madame Bavoil,
who had overheard the two men's conversation from the next room, the
door between being open; and she came in, her breviary in her hand.
"Ah, ha!" she went on, looking at him over her spectacles, "do you
suppose that by moving your soul from place to place you can change it?
Your trouble is neither in the air nor outside you, but within you. On
my word, to hear you talk, one might fancy that by travelling from one
spot to another every discord could be avoided, that a man could escape
from himself! Nothing can be more false. Ask the Father--"
And when Durtal, smiling awkwardly, was gone, Madame Bavoil questioned
her master.
"What is really the matter with him?"
"He is being broken by the ordeal of dryness," replied the priest. "He
is enduring a painful but not dangerous operation. So long as he
preserves a love of prayer, and neglects none of his religious
exercises, all will be well. That is the touchstone which enables us to
discern whether such an attack is sent from Heaven."
"But, Father, he must at any rate be comforted."
"I can do nothing but pray for him."
"Another question: our friend is possessed by the notion of a monastic
life; perhaps you ought to send him to a convent."
The Abbé gave an evasive shrug.
"Dryness of spirit and the dreams to which it gives rise are not the
sign of a vocation," said he. "I might even say that they have a greater
chance of thriving than of diminishing in the cloister. From that point
of view conventual life might be bad for him. Still, that is not the
only question to be considered--there is something else--and besides,
who knows?" He was silent, and presently added: "Much may be possible.
Give me my hat, Madame Bavoil. I will go and talk over Durtal with the
Abbé Plomb."