Durtal had begged his housekeeper, Madame Mesurat, to serve his coffee
in his study. He thus hoped to escape having her constantly standing in
front of him, as she did all through his meal, asking him if his
mutton-cutlet were good.
And though that meat had a taste of flannel, Durtal had nodded a sketchy
affirmative, knowing full well that if he ventured on the least comment
he would have to endure an incoherent harangue on all the butchers in
the town.
As soon as this woman, at once servile, despotic, and obsequious, had
placed his cup on the table, he buried his nose in a book, and by his
repellent attitude compelled her to fly.
He knew the book he was turning over almost by heart, for he had often
read it between the hours of service at the cathedral. It was so
entirely sympathetic to him, with its artless faith and ingenuous
enthusiasm, that it was to him like the familiar speech of the Church
itself.
The little volume contained the prayers composed in the fourteenth
century by Gaston Phoebus, Comte de Foix. Durtal had it in two editions,
one printed in the original form of his authentic words and antiquated
spelling, by the Abbé de Madaune; the other modernized, but with great
skill and taste, by Monsieur de la Brière.
Durtal, as he turned the pages, came on such lamentable and humble
prayers as these: "Thou who hast shapened me in my mother's womb, let me
not perish.... Lord, I confess my poverty.... My conscience gnaws me and
shows me the secrets of my heart. Avarice constrains me, concupiscence
befouls me, gluttony disgraces me, anger torments me, inconstancy
crushes me, indolence oppresses me, hypocrisy beguiles me.... and these,
Lord, are the companions with whom I have spent my youth, these are the
friends I have known, these are the masters I have served." And further
on he exclaims, "Sin have I heaped upon sin, and the sins which I could
not commit in very deed yet have I committed by evil desire."
Durtal closed the volume, regretting that it should be so entirely
unknown to Catholics. They were all busy chewing the cud of the old hay
left at the heading or end of the "Christian's Day" or "The Eucologia,"
or meditating on the pompous prayers elaborated in the ponderous
phraseology of the seventeenth century, in which there is no accent of
sincerity to be found--nothing, not an appeal that comes from the heart,
not even a pious cry!
How far were these rhapsodies all cast in the same mould from this
penitent and simple language, from this easy and candid communion of the
soul with God?
Then Durtal dipped again here and there, and read:--
"My God and my Mercy, I am ashamed to pray to Thee for very shame of my
evil conscience; give a fountain of tears to my eyes, and my hands
largess of alms and charity; give me a seemly faith, and hope, and
abiding charity. Lord, Thou holdest no man in horror save the fool that
denies Thee. Oh, my God, the Giver of My Redemption and Receiver of my
soul, I have sinned and Thou hast suffered me!"
Then, turning over a few more pages, he came at the end of the volume to
a few passages collected by Monsieur de la Brière, among them these
reflections on the Eucharist culled from a manuscript of the fifteenth
century:--
"Not every man can assimilate this meat; some there be who eat it not,
but swallow it down in haste. It should be chewed as much as possible
with the teeth of the understanding, to the end that the sweet of its
savour be pressed out of it, and may come forth from it. Ye have heard
it said that in nature, that which is most crushed is most nourishing;
now the crushing of the teeth is our deep and keen meditation on the
Sacrament itself."
Then, after having elucidated the individual use of each tooth, the
author adds, in speaking of the fifteenth, "the Sacrament on the altar
is not merely as meat to fill and refill us; but, which is more, to make
us divine."
"Lord!" murmured Durtal, laying down the book. "O Lord! If we allowed
ourselves nowadays to use such materialistic comparisons and make use of
such homely terms in speaking of Thy supremely adorable Body, what a
clamour would arise from the 'respectable' among the worshippers and the
blessed legion of the good women who have comfortable praying-chairs and
reserved places near the altar--like front seats in a theatre--in the
House where all are equal."
And Durtal pondered over these reflections which assailed him every time
he happened to take up a clerical journal or one of the Manuals
introduced by some prelate's note of approval, like a clean bill of
health.
He could never get over his amazement at the incredible ignorance, the
instinctive aversion for art, the type of ideas, the terror of words,
peculiar to Catholics. Why was this? For after all there was no reason
why believers should be more ignorant and stupid than any other folks.
Indeed, the contrary ought to be the truth.
Whence did this inferiority proceed? And Durtal could answer himself. It
was due to the system of education, to the training in intellectual
timidity, to the lessons in fear, given in a cellar, far from a vital
atmosphere and the light of day. It really seemed as if there were some
intention of emasculating souls by nourishing them on dried-up
fragments, literary white-meat; some set purpose of destroying all
independence and initiative in the disciples by levelling them, crushing
them all under the same roller, and restricting the sphere of thought by
maintaining a deliberate ignorance of art and literature.
And all merely to avert the temptation of forbidden fruit, of which the
idea was suggested under the pretext of inspiring dread of it. By this
method curiosity with regard to the veiled unknown tormented their young
brains and excited their senses, for it was always in the background,
and in a form all the more dangerous because it had the effect of a more
or less transparent gauze. The imagination could not fail to exasperate
itself by cogitating its desire to know and its fear of knowing, and it
was ready to fly off at the least word.
Under these circumstances the most anodyne book was a source of danger
from the simple fact that love was alluded to, and woman depicted as an
attractive creature; and this was enough to account for all--for the
inherent ignorance of Catholics, since it was proclaimed as the
preventive cure for temptations--for the instinctive horror of art,
since to these craven souls every written and studied work was in its
nature a vehicle of sin and an incitement to fall.
Would it not really be far more sensible and judicious to open the
windows, to air the rooms, to treat these souls as manly beings, to
teach them not to be so much afraid of their own flesh, to inculcate the
firmness and courage needed for resistance? For really it is rather like
a dog which barks at your heels and snaps at your legs if you are afraid
of him, but who beats a retreat if you turn on him boldly and drive him
off.
The fact remains that these schemes of education have resulted, on the
one hand, in the triumph of the flesh in the greater number of men who
have been thus brought up and then thrown into a worldly life, and on
the other, in a wide diffusion of folly and fear, an abandonment of the
possessions of the intellect and the capitulation of the Catholic army
surrendering without a blow to the inroads of profane literature, which
takes possession of territory that it has not even had the trouble of
conquering.
This really was madness! The Church had created art, had cherished it
for centuries; and now by the effeteness of her sons she was cast into a
corner. All the great movements of our day, one after the
other--romanticism, naturalism--had been effected independently of her,
or even against her will.
If a book were not restricted to the simplest tales, or pleasing fiction
ending in virtue rewarded and vice punished, that was enough; the
propriety of beadledom was at once ready to bray.
As soon as the most modern form of art, the most malleable and the
broadest--the Novel--touched on scenes of real life, depicted passion,
became a psychological study, an effort of analysis, the army of bigots
fell back all along the line. The Catholic force, which might have been
thought better prepared than any others to contest the ground which
theology had long since explored, retired in good order, satisfied to
cover its retreat by firing from a safe distance, with its old-fashioned
match-lock blunderbusses, on works it had neither inspired nor written.
The Church party, centuries behind the time, and having made no attempt
to follow the evolution of style in the course of ages, now turned to
the rustic who can scarcely read; it did not understand more than half
of the words used by modern writers, and had become, it must be said, a
camp of the illiterate. Incapable of distinguishing the good from the
bad, it included in one condemnation the filth of pornography and real
works of art; in short, it ended by emitting such folly and talking such
preposterous nonsense, that it fell into utter discredit and ceased to
count at all.
And it would have been so easy for it to work on a little way, to try to
keep up with the times, and to understand, to convince itself whether in
any given work the author was writing up the Flesh, glorifying it,
praising it, and nothing more, or whether, on the contrary, he depicted
it merely to buffet it--hating it. And, again, it would have done well
to convince itself that there is a chaste as well as a prurient nude,
and that it should not cry shame on every picture in which the nude is
shown. Above all, it ought to have recognized that vices may well be
depicted and studied with a view to exciting disgust of them and showing
their horrors.
For, after all, this was the great theory of the Middle Ages, the
theological method in sculpture, the literary dogma of the monks of that
time; and this is the meaning and purpose of certain groups which even
now shock the propriety of our methodistical purists. These unseemly
subjects and images of indecency are very numerous at Saint Benoît on
the Loire, in the cathedral of Reims, at le Mans, in the crypt at
Bourges, everywhere in our churches; for in those where they do not
occur, it is because the prudery which was most rife in the most immoral
times, broke them by stoning them in the name of a morality very unlike
that which was inculcated by the mediæval saints.
These subjects have for many years been the delight of Freethinkers and
the despair of Catholics; those see in them a scathing satire on the
manners of the monks and bishops, these lament that such turpitude
should ever have fouled the walls of the Temple. And yet it would have
been so easy to explain the purpose of these scenes; far from seeking to
apologize for the tolerance of the Church that allowed them, her honesty
and breadth should have been held up to admiration. By acting thus, the
Church manifested her determination to inure her sons by showing them
the ridiculous side of the temptations which assail them. It was, so to
speak, an object lesson or demonstration, and at the same time a bidding
to self-examination before venturing into the sanctuary which was thus
prefaced by a catalogue of sins as a reminder to confession.
This was part of her plan of education, for she aimed at moulding manly
souls and not crippled creatures such as are turned out by the spiritual
orthopedists of our day; she dragged out vice and lashed it wherever it
lurked, and did not hesitate to preach the equality of men before God,
insisting that bishops and monks should, when guilty, be placed in the
pillory of its doorways; nay, she gibbeted them more willingly than
others, to set an example.
These scenes were practically a comment of the Sixth (Seventh)
Commandment, a sculptured paraphrase of the Catechism; the Church's
accusation and teaching plainly expressed so as to be understood of all
men.
And Our Mother did not restrict herself to one mode only of expressing
Her warnings and reproofs; to reiterate them she borrowed the language
of other arts. Literature and the pulpit were inevitably the
interpreters that she employed to vituperate the sins of the people.
And they were not a whit more prudish or less audacious than sculpture.
We have only to open the books of the Church to convince ourselves of
the violent language in which she was wont to lash the sins of the
flesh. Beginning with the Scriptures, the Bible itself--which no one
dares read now but in mawkish French versions--what priest, for
instance, would venture to recommend to the nerveless spirit of his
flock the study of the sixteenth chapter of Ezekiel or of the Song of
Songs, that Epithalamium of Jesus and the Soul--down to the Fathers and
the Doctors?
How our modern Pharisees would reprove the uncompromising language of
Saint Gregory the Great when he exclaims, "Speak the truth! A scandal is
better than a lie;" or Saint Epiphanius' plain speaking in discussing
the Gnostics and describing in detail the abominations of that sect,
quietly adding in the face of the congregation, "Why should I shrink
from speaking of the things you do not fear to do? By speaking thus, I
hope to fill you with horror of the turpitude you commit."
Or what would they think of Saint Bernard expatiating in his third
meditation on horrible physiological details to demonstrate the baseness
of our carnal ambition and the foulness of our pleasures? Or of Saint
Hildegarde, who placidly discusses the various factors of such
pleasures, Saint Vincent Ferrier freely dealing in his sermons with the
sins of Onan and of Sodom, using the simplest language, and comparing
confession to a purgative, and asserting that the priest, like a doctor,
should examine the excreta of the soul and prescribe for it?
What reprobation would be poured on the splendid passage by Odo of Cluny
quoted by Rémy de Gourmont in his "Latin Mystique," the passage where
that terrible monk analyzes the attractions of woman, turns them over,
eviscerates them, and flings them aside like a drawn rabbit on a
butcher's stall; and again on Clement of Alexandria, who sums the whole
matter up in two sentences:--
"I am not ashamed to name the parts of the body wherein the foetus is
formed and nourished; and why indeed should I be, since God was not
ashamed to create them?"
None of the great writers of the Church were prudish. This mock-modesty
which has so long stultified us dates actually from the ages of impiety,
the period of paganism, the return on threadbare classicism which was
known as the Renaissance; and see how it has developed since! Its
hot-bed and nursery ground lay in the lewd and gorgeous years of the
so-called _Grand-siècle_; the virus of Jansenism, the old Protestant
taint mingled with the blood of Catholics, and pollutes it still.
"It is very true! And pretty results have come of this infection of
decency!" Durtal burst out laughing as he thought of the cathedral at
Chartres.
"Here," said he to himself, "we reach the climax; pious imbecility can
go no further. Among the subjects in sculpture in the ambulatory of the
choir there is a group representing the Circumcision, Saint Joseph
holding the Infant while the Virgin has a napkin ready and the High
Priest is preparing to operate. And there has been a priest so modest, a
divine so decorous as to regard this scene as licentious and to paste a
piece of paper over the Child's nakedness!
"The indecency of God, the obscenity of a new-born Babe is too much!
"Bah!" said he. "The time has slipped away in all this meditation, and
the Abbé will be waiting."
He ran quickly downstairs and hurried across to the cathedral, where the
Abbé Plomb was pacing to and fro in front of the northern porch,
reciting his Breviary.
"The side where sinners and demons are figured is especially that of the
Virgin, who saves those and crushes these," said the Abbé. "The northern
porch of a church is usually the most lively of all; here, however, the
Satanic incidents are on the southern side, because they form part of
the Last Judgment represented over the south door. Otherwise Chartres,
unlike her sister cathedrals, would have no scenes of that kind."
"Then the rule in the thirteenth century was to place the Virgin in the
northern portion?"
"Yes. To the men of that time the north meant the gloom of winter, the
dejection of darkness, the misery of cold; the ice-bound chant of the
winds was to them the very blast of evil; to the north was the home of
the devil, the hell of nature, as the south was its Eden."
"But that is absurd!" cried Durtal, "the greatest blunder ever
introduced into the symbolism of the elements. The medieval sages were
mistaken, for snow is pure and cold is chastity. It is the sun, on the
contrary, that is the active agent in developing the germs of
rottenness, the ferment of vice!
"They forget that the third Psalm of Compline speaks of the hot hour of
noon as the most harassing and dangerous of all; they must have
overlooked the horrors of sweat and unwholesome heat, the risks of
relaxed nerves, of loosened dresses, all the abominations of leaden
clouds and hard blue skies!
"There are diabolical effluvia in the storm, and in weather when the air
stirs like the vapours from a furnace, rousing evil instincts and
bringing about us the raging swarm of evil angels."
"But remember the passages in which Isaiah and Jeremiah speak of Lucifer
as dwelling in the blast of the north wind; and recollect that the great
cathedrals did not originate in the south but in the middle and north of
France; consequently, after having adopted this symbolism of seasons and
weather, the pious architects dreamed of the horror of men buried in
snow, and longing for a gleam of sunshine and a bright day. Naturally
they thought of the east as the region of the original Paradise, and of
those lands as milder and less inclement than their own."
"That does not hinder the fact that this theory was controverted by Our
Lord Himself."
"Where do you find that?" asked the Abbé Plomb.
"On Calvary; Jesus died" turning His back to the south, which had
crucified Him, and extending His arms on the Cross to bless and embrace
the north. He seemed to be withdrawing His favours from the east, 'to
bestow them on the west. Hence, if any region is accurst and inhabited
by Satan, it is the south and not the north."
"You abominate the south and its races, that is evident," said the Abbé,
laughing.
"I do not love them. Their scenery, vulgarized by crude daylight, their
dusty trees standing out against a sky of washerwoman's blue, have no
charm for me; as to the natives, hairy and noisy, with a blue bar under
their nostrils if they shave, I flee from them!"
"Here, in short, we are face to face with a fact which no discussions
can alter. This side of the church is dedicated to the Virgin. Shall we
now examine it, first as a whole, and then in detail?
"This portal, brought forward like an open porch, a sort of verandah in
front of the doors, is an allegory of the Saviour showing the way into
the heavenly Jerusalem. It was begun in the year 1215 under Philip
Augustus, and finished by about 1275, under Philip the Bold; thus it was
nearly sixty years in building, the greater part of the thirteenth
century. It is divided into three parts, corresponding to the three
doors behind it; there are more than seven hundred statues grouped here,
large and small, representing, for the most part, personages from the
Old Testament.
"It forms, in fact, three deep bays or gulfs.
"The central portal, before which we are standing, and which leads to
the middle door, has for its subject the Glorification of the Virgin.
"The left-hand bay contains the life and virtues of the Virgin.
"The right-hand bay is devoted to images of Mary Herself.
"According to another interpretation, put forward by Canon Davin, this
porch, which was built at the time when Saint Dominic instituted the
Rosary, is a reproduction in images of its mysteries."
"On that theory, the left-hand arch, containing the scenes of the
Annunciation, the Visitation, and the Nativity, answers to the Joyful
Mysteries; the central bay, containing the Assumption and Coronation of
the Virgin, to the Glorious Mysteries; and that to the right, where we
find a presentment of Job, precursor of the Crucifixion under the
ancient law, to the Sorrowful Mysteries."
"There is a third interpretation," said Durtal, "but it is ridiculous.
That of Didron, who regards this front as the first page of the Book of
Chartres. He opens it at this porch, and asserts that the sculptors
began to render the Encyclopedia of Vincent de Beauvais by representing
the creation of the world. But if so, where are those wonderful
representations of Genesis hidden?"
"There," said the Abbé, pointing to a row of statuettes lost in a hollow
moulding at the very edge of the porch.
"But to ascribe so much importance to tiny figures which, after all, are
there merely to fill up, as stop-gaps--it is preposterous!" cried
Durtal.
"No doubt. But now let us examine the work.
"You will observe in the first place that, in opposition to the ritual
observed in most of the great churches of the time--those of Amiens,
Reims, and Paris, to name but three--it is not the Virgin who stands on
the pillar between the two halves of the door, but Her Mother, Saint
Anne; and inside, in the windows, we find the same thing: Saint Anne, as
a negress, her head bound in a blue kerchief, holds Mary in her arms, as
brown as a half-caste."
"Why is this?"
"No doubt because the Emperor Beaudouin, after the sack of
Constantinople, bestowed that Saint's head on this cathedral.
"The ten colossal statues placed on each side of Her in the niches of
the porch are familiar to you, for they attend Our Lady in every
sanctuary of the thirteenth century--in Paris, at Amiens, at Rouen,
Reims, Bourges, and Sens. The five to the left are a series figurative
of the Son; the five on the right symbolize Our Lord Himself. They
stand in chronological order: the prototypes of the Messiah, or the
Prophets who foretold His birth, death, resurrection, and everlasting
priesthood.
"To the left, Melchizedec, Abraham, Moses, Samuel, and David; to the
right, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Simeon, Saint John the Baptist, and Saint
Peter."
"But why," remarked Durtal, "is the son of Jonas in the midst of the Old
Testament? His place is not there, but in the Gospels."
"Yes, but you will observe that Saint Peter here stands next to Saint
John the Baptist; the two statues are side by side and touch each other.
Then do you not perceive the meaning of this juxtaposition? One was the
Precursor and the other the Successor of Christ; the first anticipated
Him, the second carried out His mission. It was quite natural to place
them together, and that the Chief of the Apostles should figure as the
conclusion to the premisses set forth by the other statues of this
portal.
"Finally, in addition to this series of patriarchs and prophets, you may
see there, in the hollow between the pilasters, a pair of statues, one
on each side of the door: Elijah the Tishbite, and Elisha his disciple.
"The first prefigures the Saviour's Ascension by his being carried up
alive to Heaven in a chariot of fire; the second typifies Jesus saving
and preserving mankind in the person of the Shunammite's son.
"Argument is vain," murmured Durtal, who was meditative. "The Messianic
prophecies are irresistible. All the logic of the Rabbins, the
Protestants, the Freethinkers, all the ingenuity of the Germans, have
failed to find a crack or to undermine the old rock of the Church. There
is such a body of evidence, such certainty, such demonstration of the
truth, such an indestructible foundation, that a man must be stricken
with spiritual blindness to dare deny it."
"Yes: and to the end that there should be no mistake, no possibility of
alleging that the inspired Scriptures were written subsequent to the
arrival of the Messiah they prophesy, to prove that they were neither
invented nor added to after the event, it was God's pleasure that they
should be translated into Greek in the Septuagint version and known to
the whole world more than two hundred and fifty years before the birth
of Christ."
"To imagine the impossible--supposing the Gospels were to be
annihilated, they could, I suppose, be restored, and a brief history
written of the Saviour's life as they relate it merely by studying the
Messianic announcements in the books of the Prophets?"
"No doubt; for, after all, and it cannot be too often repeated, the Old
Testament is the story before the event of the Son of Man and the
founding of His Church; as Saint Augustine bears witness, 'the whole
history of the Jewish people was a perpetual prophecy of the expected
King.'
"You will see, apart from personages prefiguring the Redeemer which you
may find in every page of the Bible: Isaac, Joseph, Moses, David, Jonah,
to name five taken at random; apart, too, from the animals and objects
that symbolized Him under the Old Laws, as, for instance, the Paschal
Lamb, the Manna, the Brazen Serpent, and others, we can, if you please,
simply by quoting the Prophets, trace the broad outlines of Emmanuel's
life and epitomize the Gospels in a few words. Listen!"
The Abbé paused for thought, his hand over his eyes.
"That he should be born of a Virgin is foretold by Isaiah, Jeremiah, and
Ezekiel--that this Advent should be preceded by a special messenger,
Saint John, is noted by Malachi, whom Isaiah confirms, adding for
greater certainty that he should be as 'the voice of one crying in the
Wilderness.'
"The place of His birth, Bethlehem, is mentioned by Micah; the adoration
of the Magi, offering gold, myrrh and frankincense, is announced by
Isaiah and the Psalm ascribed to Solomon.
"His youth and His calling are clearly suggested by Ezekiel, who speaks
of Him as seeking the lost sheep, and by Isaiah, who tells beforehand of
the miracles He would perform on the blind and the deaf and dumb, and
who finally declares that He will be 'a stone of stumbling' to the Jews.
"But it is when they speak of His Passion and Death that the prophecies
become mathematically exact, incredibly precise. The offering of palm
branches, the betrayal by Judas, and the price of thirty pieces of
silver appear in Zechariah; and Isaiah takes up the parable to describe
the rejection and opprobrium of Calvary: 'He was wounded for our
transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities.... The Lord hath laid
on Him the iniquity of us all.... He was despised and rejected of men; a
man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.... He was brought as a lamb
to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb.'
"David expatiates on the dreadful scene: 'He was a worm and no man, a
very scorn of men and the outcast of the people.'
"Details are multiplied. The wounds in His hands are spoken of by
Zechariah; David enumerates the circumstances of the Passion, word for
word: the pierced hands, the division of His raiment, casting lots for
the robe. The hooting of the Jews, bidding Him to save Himself if He be
the Son of God, is mentioned in chapter ii. of the Book of Wisdom, and
again by David; the gall and the vinegar offered Him on the Cross and
the very words of Jesus giving up the ghost are to be found in the
Psalms.
"Nor is this the last of the prophecies to be found in the Old
Testament.
"Its prophetic mission is carried out to the end. The establishment of
the Church in the place of the Synagogue is foretold by Ezekiel, Isaiah,
Joel, and Micah; and the Mass, the Eucharistic Sacrament, is plainly
adumbrated by Malachi, who declared that for the offerings of the Old
Law offered only in the Temple at Jerusalem shall be substituted 'a pure
offering to be offered in every place and by all nations'--by priests
chosen from among all people, Isaiah adds, and David says after the
order of Melchizedec.
"Pascal very truly remarks that 'the fulfilment of the prophecies is a
perpetual miracle, and that no other proof is needed to show the divine
origin of the Christian Religion.'"
Durtal had gone closer to the statues, standing by Saint Anne, and was
looking at one on the left wearing a pointed cap, a sort of papal tiara
with a crown round the edge, robed in an alb girt round the middle with
knotted cord, and a large cope with a fringe; the features were grave,
almost anxious, and the eye fixed with an absorbed gaze into the
distance. This figure held a censer in one hand, and in the other a
chalice covered with a paten on which there was a loaf; and this image
of Melchizedec, the King of Salem, threw Durtal into a deep reverie.
He was, in fact, one of the most mysterious types of the Holy
Scriptures--this monarch mentioned in Genesis as the Priest of the Most
High God. He consummates the sacrifice of bread and wine, blesses Abram,
receives tithes from him, and then vanishes into the darkness of
history. And suddenly his name is found in a psalm of David's, who
declares that the Messiah is a priest for ever after the order of
Melchizedec, and again he is lost without leaving a trace.
Then quite unexpectedly he reappears in the New Testament, and what
Saint Paul says of him in the Epistle to the Hebrews makes him more
enigmatical than ever. The apostle speaks of him as "without father,
without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days nor
end of life, but made like unto the Son of God, abiding a priest
continually." Saint Paul is explicit to show how great a person he
was--and the dim light he casts on this figure goes out.
"You must confess that this King of Salem is a puzzle. What do the
commentators think of him?" asked Durtal.
"They say but little. Only Saint Jerome observes that when Saint Paul
speaks of him as without parents, without descent, without beginning,
and without end, he does not mean to convey that Melchizedec came down
from Heaven or was created _ab initio_ like the first man, by the
Ancient of Days. The phrase simply means that he is introduced into the
history of Abraham without our knowing whence he came, who he was, when
he was born, or at what time he died.
"In fact, the inscrutable part played by this prototype of Jesus in the
canonical Scriptures has led to the most grotesque legends and heresies.
"Some have asserted that he was Shem, the son of Noah; others have
thought that he was Ham. Simon Logothetes considers him an Egyptian;
Suidas believes him to have belonged to the accursed race of Canaanites,
and that this is why the Bible says nothing of his ancestry.
"The gnostics revered him as an Eon superior to Jesus; and in the third
century Theodore le Changeur also asserted that he was not a man, but a
virtue transcending Christ, because Christ's priesthood was but a copy
of Melchizedec's.
"According to another sect, he was neither more nor less than the
Paraclete. But come, in the absence of early Scriptures what do the
seers say? Does Sister Emmerich speak of him?"
"She tells us nothing precise," replied Durtal. "To her he was a sort of
priestly angel charged with the preparation for the great Act of
Redemption."
"That is very much the view held by Origen and Didymus, who also
ascribed to him the angelic nature."
"Thus she perceives him long before the advent of Abram in various
desert spots of Palestine; he unlocks the springs of Jordan, and in
another passage of the life of Christ she adds that it was he who taught
the Hebrews the culture of wheat and of the vine. In fact, she throws no
light on this insoluble enigma."
"From the artist's point of view," Durtal went on, "Melchizedec is one
of the best statues in this porch. But what a strange face is that of
his neighbour Abraham, seen only three-quarters full, with hair like
rolled grass, a beard like a river god, and a long nose straight from
the forehead, coming down between the eyes without a bridge, like the
proboscis of a tapir, with cheeks that seem swollen with cold, and a
look--how shall I describe it?--of a conjuror who has made away with his
son's head."
"In point of fact, he is listening to the commands of the angel, whom he
cannot see; observe, below on the pedestal the ram caught in the
thicket, and the symbolism is evident.
"This is the Father sacrificing his Son, and Isaac is the very image of
the Son--Isaac bearing the wood to fire the altar, as Jesus bore the
Cross; then the ram becomes figurative of the Saviour, and the bush in
which he is caught by the horns is symbolical of the Crown of Thorns.
"To do full justice to this subject and to the teaching by figures that
it contains, we ought also to have had the Patriarch's two wives carved
on the supporting pillar or plinth, and his other son Ishmael. For, as
you know, these two women are emblems, Hagar of the Old Dispensation,
and Sarah of the New; the former disappears to make way for the second,
the Old Law being merely the preparation for the New; and the two sons
born of these two mothers are by analogy the children of the Books, and
thus Ishmael represents the Israelites, and Isaac the Christians.
"Next to Abraham, the father of believers, stands Moses, as a symbol of
Christ; for the deliverance of Israel is an image of the Redemption of
Man snatched by the Saviour from the devil, just as the passage of the
Red Sea is an image of Baptism. He holds the Table of the Law and the
staff round which the Brazen Serpent is twined. Then comes Samuel, in
many ways typical of Christ, the founder of the Royal Priesthood and of
Pontifical Kingship; and last of all, David holding the Lamb and Crown
of Calvary.
"I need hardly remind you that this Prophet-King, more than any other
personage, prefigured the sorrows of the Messiah, and that he too, to
make the resemblance more perfect, had his Judas in the person of
Achitophel, who, like the later traitor, hanged himself."
"You must admit," said Durtal, "that these statues, before which the
historians of this cathedral go into ecstasies, declaring in chorus they
are the highest achievement of thirteenth-century sculpture, are far
inferior to those of the twelfth century that adorn the great north
porch. How evident is the lowering of the divine standard! Their action
is freer, no doubt, and the play of drapery is broader. The rhubarb-stem
plaits of the robes are fuller, and have some movement, but where is the
grace as of a sculptured soul that we see in the royal porch? All these
statues, with their massive heads, are thick-set and mute, devoid of
communicative life. This is pious work--fine work, if you will--but
devoid of the 'beyond'; here is art indeed, but it has ceased to be
mysticism.
"Look at St. Anne with her gloomy expression, either cross or
suffering--how far she is from the so-called Radegonde and Berthe!
"With the exception of two, St. John and St. Joseph over there in the
innermost part of the arch, these are familiar figures. They also occur
at Reims and at Amiens. And do you remember the Simeon, the Virgin, and
the St. Anne at Reims? The Virgin so guilelessly charming, so
exquisitely chaste, holding out the Infant to Simeon, who stands mild
and devout in his solemn garb as High Priest. St. Anne--a head of the
same type as St. Joseph's, and as those of two angels on the same
frontal, standing by St. Nicasius, with his head cut off at the
brows--St. Anne with a smiling, arch expression and yet elderly--a sharp
little chin, large eyes, a thin, long, pointed nose, the look of a
youthful dueña, kindly but knowing.
"But, indeed, those image-makers excelled in creating these singular,
indefinable countenances. Do you recall Our Lady of Paris, later, I
believe, by a century? She is scarcely pretty, but so expressive, with
the smile of happiness parting such melancholy lips. Seen from one side
She is smiling at Jesus, watchful, almost sportive; it would seem as
though she were waiting for the Child to say some merry word before
laughing out; She is a girl-mother, not yet accustomed to her Child's
caress. Seen from another angle, this smile, apparently in the bud, has
vanished. The mouth is puckered in sorrow, and promises tears.
"Perhaps when he succeeded in stamping on the face of Our Lady two such
opposite expressions of peace and of fear, the sculptor intended to
suggest at once the joy of the Nativity and the anticipated anguish of
Calvary. Thus he has portrayed in one and the same image, the Mother of
Sorrows and the Mother of Joy--has, without knowing it, embodied the
prototypes of the Virgin of La Salette and the Virgin of Lourdes.
"And yet all this is inferior to the living and dignified art, so full
of individuality and mystery, that we see in the royal porch of
Chartres!"
"I will not contradict you," said the Abbé Plomb. "Now that we have
studied the series of types placed on St. Anne's left hand, let us
consider the prophetic series on her right.
"First we see Isaiah; the pedestal on which he stands represents Jesse
sleeping. The familiar stem, rooted in him, passes between the prophet's
feet, and the branches of the Virgin's ancestry according to the flesh
and the spirit, as they rise, fill the four courses of moulding in the
central arch. By his side is Jeremiah, who, meditating on the Passion of
Christ, wrote this lamentable passage which is read in the fifth lesson
of the second Nocturn on Easter Eve: 'All ye that pass by, behold and
see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow.' Next Simeon holding the
Infant whose Birth he had foreseen, at the same time with the sorrows of
the Virgin and the anguish of Golgotha; Saint John the Baptist, and
finally Saint Peter, whose dress is an interesting study since it is
copied from that of the thirteenth-century Popes.
"With what care is every detail wrought! Admire the treatment of the
sandals, the gloves, the broidered amice, the alb, the maniple, the
dalmatic, the pallium marked with six crosses, the triple crown, the
conical tiara of brocaded silk, the pontifical breastplate, everything
is chiselled, pierced, and patterned as if by a goldsmith."
"Very true. But how superior altogether is the Saint John to his fellows
on this front. What mastery we discern in that hollow, emaciated face,
as expressive as the others are dull. He is apart from the conventional
and hackneyed type. He stands upright, savage but mild, with his beard
in curling prongs, his lean frame, his raiment of camel-skin; we can
hear him speaking as he points to the Lamb carrying the hastate cross
surrounded by a nimbus, pressing it to his bosom with both hands. That
statue is sublime, and it is most certainly not by the same hand that
carved the Abraham, nor even his immediate neighbour, Samuel. This
prophet appears to be offering to David, who cares not, a lamb he is
feeling, head downwards. He is a butcher pricing his goods, weighing the
meat, inviting you to feel it, and hesitating to sell till he gets the
best price. How different from the Saint John!"
"The tympanum of the door will have no charm for us," the Abbé went on.
"The death of the Virgin, Her assumption and coronation are more curious
to read of in the Golden Legend than to study in those has-reliefs which
are but an epitome.
"We will proceed to the left-hand doorway.
"It is much mutilated, in a lamentable state of ruin. Most of the large
statues have disappeared. There were once, it would seem, as on the
royal porch of Notre Dame at Paris and the southern porch at Reims, the
figures of the Synagogue and the Church; also Leah and Rachel, typifying
the active and the contemplative life, of which we shall decipher the
details recorded in the archivolt.
"Of the large figures that remain, three are regarded as masterpieces:
the Virgin, Saint Elizabeth, and Daniel.
"That is saying a great deal," cried Durtal. "They are stupid-looking
and the drapery is cold; the arrangement of their robes recalls the
Greek peplum; they have a prophetic savour of the Renaissance."
"I will not contradict you; but what is really attractive is the scheme
of ideas expressed by the figures in the hollow mouldings of the arch
of this portal, based on an equilateral triangle. As to the tympanum,
which displays the Nativity, the calling of the Shepherds of Bethlehem,
the dream and adoration of the Kings, it is marred and worn by time; nor
is it in a style of art that can move us deeply.
"Study the mouldings of the arch with the four rows of images that adorn
them. First the inner one, with its ten torch-bearing angels; the
second, illustrating the parable of the wise and foolish virgins; the
third, representing the _Psychomachia_, or struggle between the Virtues
and the Vices; the fourth, a row of twelve queens embodying the twelve
fruits of the Spirit; and linger over the enchanting series of statues
in the moulding at the very edge of the archway of the porch,
representing the occupations of the active and the contemplative life.
"The active life, on the left, is imagined in accordance with the
picture of the virtuous woman in the last chapter of Proverbs. She is
seen washing wool in a bowl, carding it, stripping the flax, beating it,
spinning it on a distaff, and winding it into hanks.
"On the right is seen the contemplative life; a woman praying, holding a
closed book, opening it, reading it; she shuts it to meditate on it,
teaches others, and falls into an ecstasy.
"Finally, in the outermost hollow of the moulding of the arch, the
nearest to us and the most visible, there are fourteen statues of
queens, leaning on shields with coats-of-arms, and formerly holding
banners. The meaning of these statuettes has been much discussed,
especially of the second figure on the left, which is named '_Libertas_'
the word being carved in the stone. Didron believed them to represent
the domestic and social virtues; but the question has been finally and
definitively settled by the most erudite and clearsighted symbolist of
our day, Madame Félicie d'Ayzac, who, in a very edifying pamphlet
published in 1843 on these statues and on the animals of the Tetramorph,
has proved to demonstration that these fourteen queens are none else
than the fourteen heavenly Beatitudes as enumerated by Saint Anselm:
Beauty, Liberty, Honour, Joy, Pleasure, Agility, Strength, Concord,
Friendship, Length of Days, Power, Health, Safety, and Wisdom.
"Is not this porch, as a whole, so closely set with imagery, one of the
most ingenious and interesting doorways known, from the points of view
of theology and of mysticism alike?"
"And no less from the point of view of art. You are perfectly right;
these toiling and meditative women are so delicate and so loving, that
we can but regret that they should be hidden in the shadow of a cavern.
What artists must those have been who worked thus for the glory of God
and for their own satisfaction, creating marvels while knowing that no
man would see them!"
"And they had not even the vanity to sign them; they were always
anonymous."
"Ah! they were men of a different mould from us. Prouder souls, and
humbler."
"And holier," added the Abbé. "Shall we now inquire into the iconography
of the right-hand portal? It has suffered less, and may be explained in
a few words.
"This sculptured vault is, as you know, dedicated to types of Mary; but
we might more accurately say that it is devoted to prototypes of Christ,
for in this doorway, as in the other two, indeed, the image-makers of
the thirteenth century have made it their task to identity the Son with
the Mother."
"In fact, most of the personages we have already studied relate more
especially to Christ. What, then, are those in the Old Testament, which
are more essentially proper to the daughter of Joachim, and transferred
in images of stone to be deciphered here?"
"The allegories of the Virgin in the Scriptures are numberless. Whole
books, as the Song of Songs and the Book of Wisdom, allude in every
verse to Her beauty and wisdom. As to the non-human emblems that may be
applied to Her, you know them well: Noah's Ark, in which the Redeemer
dwells; the Dove, the Rainbow, as a sign of alliance between the Lord
and the earth; the burning bush whence came out the name of God; the
cloud of fire guiding Israel in the desert; the Rod of Aaron which alone
blossomed of those of the twelve tribes taken by Moses; the Ark of the
Covenant; Gideon's fleece; and a whole series, if possible, more
obviously representative; David's tower; Solomon's throne; the garden
enclosed and the fountain sealed of the Canticle; the dial of Ahaz;
Elijah's saving cloud; Ezekiel's doorway--and I mention none but those
of which the interpretation has received the seal and sanction of the
Fathers and Doctors of the Church.
"As to the living beings that prefigured Her on earth, instances abound;
the greater part of the famous women of the Old Testament are but
anticipatory images of Her graces. Sarah, to whom an angel foretells the
birth of a son who is himself a type of the Son; Miriam, the sister of
Moses, who, by saving her brother from the river, freed the Jews;
Jephthah's daughter; Deborah, the prophetess; Jael, who, like the
Virgin, was called Blessed among women; Hannah, the mother of Samuel,
whose song of praise seems like a forecast of the _Magnificat_;
Jehosheba preserving Joash from the fury of Athaliah, as the Virgin
afterwards saved Jesus from the wrath of Herod; Ruth personifying both
the contemplative and the active life; Rebecca, Rachel, Abigail,
Solomon's mother, the mother of the Maccabees, who witnessed the death
of her sons; and again those whose names are inscribed under these
arches; Judith and Esther, the first representative of courageous
chastity, and the second of mercy and justice."
"However, to avoid confusion, we will follow the statues in order as
they stand in this porch, three on each side.
"On the left Balaam, the Queen of Sheba and Solomon.
"On the right, Jesus the son of Sirach, Judith or Esther, and Joseph."
"Balaam is this statue of a worthy peasant, smug and friendly, smiling
in his beard, a stick in his hand and a hat like a pie-dish; and the
Queen of Sheba, the woman who bends forward a little, looking as if she
were cross-questioning and arguing over some deed she condemned. But
what have these two persons to do with the life of the Virgin?"
"Balaam is a type of the Messiah. It was he who prophesied that a star
should come out of Jacob and a sceptre rise out of Israel. As to the
Queen of Sheba, according to the teaching of the Fathers, she is an
image of the Church; Solomon's spouse, as the Church is the spouse of
Christ."
"Well, well," muttered Durtal to himself. "The thirteenth century could
not give a fitting presentment of that queen, whom we picture to
ourselves as dressed with foolish magnificence, rocking on a camel
across the desert at the head of a caravan under the blazing sky across
the furnace of sand. Her charms have appealed to writers, and not the
smallest of them; Flaubert for one--this Queen Balkis, Mékida or
Nicaule. But in the '_Tentation de Saint Antoine_' she has failed to
assume any form but that of a puerile and flimsy creature, a skipping
and lisping puppet. In fact, no one but Gustave Moreau, the painter of
Salome, could represent the woman, a virgin and a courtesan, a casuist
and a coquette. He only could give life, under the flowered panoply of
dress and the blazing gorget of jewels, to the crowned foreign face,
with its smile as of an artless sphinx, come from so far to ask enigmas.
Such a woman is too complicated for the spirit and the ingenuous art of
the Middle Ages.
"Indeed, the sculptured image is neither mysterious nor suggestive. She
is hardly pretty, and stands in the obsequious attitude of an advocate.
Solomon looks like a jovial good fellow. The two effigies on the other
side of the door might perhaps invite attention if they were not so
completely crushed by the third. Again a question. By what right does
the author of that admirable book 'Ecclesiastes' find a place in these
ranks of honour?"
"Jesus the son of Sirach prefigures the Messiah as a Prophet and a
Doctor. As to the figure next to him, it may equally well be Judith or
Esther: her identity is doubtful; there is nothing that can help us to
determine it.
"At any rate, as I told you but now, each is a harbinger of the Virgin.
As to Joseph persecuted and sold, a slave raised almost to the throne,
the merciful protector of his people, he is the prototype of Christ."
Durtal paused to gaze up at the beardless face, with curling hair cut
close round. The youth wore a tunic under a surcoat embroidered round
the neck, and he stood motionless, a sceptre in his hand. He might be a
very young monk, humble, simple, and so far advanced in the mystic road
that he was unconscious of it. This statue was undoubtedly a portrait,
and it seemed certain that some refined and innocent novice had served
as a model to the artist. It was the work of a chastened and happy soul
superior to the crowd. "This one, even more than the St. John, is a
perfect dream," said Durtal to the Abbé, who assented with a nod, and
went on,--
"The sculptures over the arches are practically invisible, for you must
dislocate your neck to see them. Nor is the art they display exciting.
Only the subjects are interesting. Besides a row of angels bearing stars
and torches, they represent the achievements of Gideon; the story of
Samson, who, when a prisoner, rose in the night, and carrying away the
gates of Gaza, escaped from the town, as Christ broke the gates of
death, and escaped alive from His sepulchre; the history of Tobit, as a
divine paragon of mercy and patience; and finally, in the corner we find
a replica of the grand porch, the signs of the zodiac, and a calendar in
sculptured stone.
"The tympanum, as you see, is divided into two portions.
"In the upper part we see the Judgment of Solomon, as figuring the Sun
of Justice, Christ Himself.
"In the lower half Job lies stretched on his dunghill, and the Messiah,
of whom he is a prototype, comes, supported by two angels, to give him a
palm-branch.
"To complete the elucidation of the symbolism of these doorways, it now
only remains to glance at the three arches of the porch that precedes
them. Here we see chiefly the benefactors of the cathedral and the
saints of the See; also, mingled with these, certain prophets for whom
there was not room in the arches of the doors. This vestibule is, so to
speak, a postscript, a supplement added to the work.
"Here, where we stand in the right-hand arch are Saint Potentien, the
first apostle of Chartres, and Saint Modesta, the daughter of Quirinus,
the Governor of the city, who killed her because she would not deny
Christ. Here you see Ferdinand of Castille. He presented certain windows
distinguished by his arms, _gules, three castles or_, side by side with
the azure shield and fleur-de-lys of France, in the principal window of
this front. Next to him that shrewd and severe face is probably that of
Baruch, the judge, and here, barefoot and burthened with a penitent's
satchel, you see Saint Louis, who loaded the cathedral with gifts and
inaugurated its use.
"Under the porch of the middle door are two vacant pedestals, on which
formerly stood the effigies of Philip Augustus and Richard Coeur de
Lion, two of the most liberal donors to the church. On the other plinths
stand the Comte and Comtesse de Boulogne, a buxom dame with masculine
features, wearing a biretta; a prophet who is nameless, but no doubt
Ezekiel, for he is missing from the series in this porch; Louis VIII.,
Saint Louis' father; and, finally, that king's sister Isabella, who
founded the Abbey of Longchamps under the rule of Saint Clare. She is
dressed as a nun, and next her in the shadow is a personage of the Old
Dispensation carrying a censer, like Melchizedec. Remark, too, the firm
and solemn mien of that priest, Zacharias, the father of John the
Baptist, whose canticle '_Benedictus_' foretells the blessings of
Christ.
"Thus ends our review of this wonderful text-book of the Old Testament
types, and the historical memorial of those benefactors whose gifts
endowed the church with this sculptured imagery of the Ancient Word."
Durtal lighted a cigarette, and they walked up and down in front of the
palace railing.
"Setting aside the question of art," said Durtal, "in this long array of
Christ's ancestors there is one--David--who really confounds me, for he
is the most complex of all; at once so august and so small! he is quite
puzzling!"
"Why?"
"Well, only think of the life of the man who was by turns shepherd,
warrior, and outlaw chief, an omnipotent king and a fugitive without
either hearth or home; who was a wonderful poet and an exact prophet and
seer! And is not the monarch's character even more enigmatical than his
career?
"He was mild and indulgent, devoid of rancour and hatred, and yet he was
ferocious. Remember the punishments he inflicted on the Ammonites; his
vengeance was appalling. He had them sawn asunder, cut them with harrows
of iron, and made them pass through the brick-kiln.
"He was loyal, wholly devoted to the Lord, and just; but he committed
the crime of adultery, and ordered the death of the husband he had
betrayed. What contradictions!"
"To understand David," said the Abbé Plomb, "you must not think of him
apart from his surroundings, nor take him out of the age in which he
lived, otherwise you measure him by the ideas of our own time, and that
is absurd. In the Asiatic conception of royalty, adultery was almost
permitted to a being whom his subjects regarded as superior to the
common run of humanity; besides, women were then as a species of cattle
belonging almost absolutely to him as the despot and supreme master. It
was but the exercise of his regal power, as has been plainly shown by
Monsieur Dieulafoy in his study of that king. And, on the other hand, if
he is accused of tortures and bloodshed, why, the whole of the Old
Testament is full of them! Jehovah Himself pours out blood like water,
and exterminates men as if they were flies. It is well not to forget
that the world then still lived under the Law of Fear. So it is not very
surprising that, with a view to terrifying his enemies, whose manners
and customs were not indeed any milder than his own, he should have
tortured the inhabitants of Rabbah and baked the Ammonites.
"But in contrast to these acts of violence and the sins which he
expiated, see how generous he was to Saul, and admire the magnanimity
and charity of the man whom the followers of Renan would have us regard
as a bandit chief and outlaw. Remember, too, that he taught the world,
as yet ignorant, the virtues which at a later time Christ was to
preach--humility in its most touching form, and repentance in its
bitterest shape. When the prophet Nathan reproved him for the murder of
Uriah, he confessed his sin with tears, fell on his face before God,
bravely accepted the most terrible punishment: incest and murder in his
family, the rebellion and death of his son, treason, misery, and a
desperate flight in the woods; and with what urgency he implores for
pardon in the '_Miserere_,' with what love and contrition he cries to
the God he had offended!
"He was a man whose vices were small and few if compared with those of
the kings of his time--of admirable and exceptional virtues if compared
with those of sovereigns of any time of every age. Why, then, fail to
understand that God should have chosen him as a precursor? Besides,
Jesus came to ransom sinners, He took upon Himself the sins of the whole
world. Was it not natural, then, that He should take to prefigure Him, a
man who, like others, had sinned?"
"Yes; that is true, no doubt."
And that evening, when he was away from the Abbé Plomb, from whom he
parted on the church steps, as Durtal stretched himself on his bed, he
recapitulated in his memory this theory of the Old Testament personages
and the sculpture in the porch.
"To epitomize this north front," said he to himself, "it must be
regarded as an abridged history of the Redemption prepared so long
beforehand, a table of sacred history, a compendium of the Mosaic Law,
and at the same time foreshadowing the Christian law.
"The vocation of the Jewish nation is set forth in these three doorways,
their whole mission from Abraham to Moses; from Moses to the Babylonian
Captivity; from the Captivity till the death of Christ, comprehending
three phases of its history: the making of Israel, its independent
existence, its life among the Gentiles.
"And how slowly, with what difficulty, was this fusion of tribes
achieved! With what waste and what ejection of dross! What massacres
were needed to discipline those rapacious wanderers, to quell the greed
and licentiousness of the race!"
And in a succession of bewildering images he beheld the irruption into
Judæa of the headlong and indignant prophets, hurling imprecations
against the crimes of the kings and the atrocities of that unstable race
perpetually tempted by the voluptuous worships of Asia, always rebelling
and complaining, and ready to break the iron bit with which Moses had
subdued them.
And prominent in this group of declaiming judges, towering above the
masses, he saw Samuel, the man of contradictions, going whither the Lord
drove him, achieving work which he was destined to overthrow, creating
the monarchy which he reprobated, consecrating a fanatic king--a sort of
madman, who passes across behind the transparent sheet of history with
frantic and threatening gestures; and then Samuel has to overwhelm this
extraordinary Saul under the burthen of his curses, to anoint David
king--David, whom another prophet is to accuse of his crimes. And these
inspired men succeed each other, continuing from year to year their task
of guardians of the public soul, watching over the consciences of judges
and kings, expectant of the Divine word, and ready to proclaim it over
the head of the crowd; announcing disasters, ending often as martyrs,
prominent from beginning to end of the sacred annals till they disappear
in John beheaded by an Herodias!
Then came Elijah, cursing the worship of Baal, contending with the
dreadful Jezebel; Elijah founding the first society of monks, the only
man of the Old Testament history except Enoch who did not die; and
Elisha, his disciple; the greater prophets Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah,
and Daniel, and the groups of minor prophets announcing the advent of
the Son, rising up in commination or lamentation, threatening or
comforting the people.
The whole history of Israel flowed along in a torrent of curses, rivers
of blood, oceans of tears!
This dismal procession at last oppressed Durtal. With closed eyes he
suddenly beheld a patriarch who stood before him, and he recognized with
awe that this was Moses, an old man with a beard like a cataract, hair
sweeping his shoulders, a master workman whose powerful hands had
kneaded those rough Hebrews and coagulated their medley hordes. He was
indeed father and lawgiver to this people.
Facing the scene on Calvary there rose before him the scene on Sinai,
the close and the opening of the great chronicle of the nation that was
dispersed by its own crime, enclosing the whole purpose of its existence
in the space between those two hills.
A terrific spectacle! Moses alone on the smoking height, while
lightnings rend the clouds and the mountain trembles at the sound of the
invisible trumpet. Below, the awe-stricken people fly; and Moses,
unmoved amid the roar of thunder and the repeated fires of lightning,
listens to Him who Is, and who dictates the terms of His protection of
Israel; and then Moses, with shining face, descends from the Mount,
which, according to St. John Damascene, is the type of the Virgin's
Womb, as the smoke that rises from it is that of the desires and flames
of the Holy Spirit.
Suddenly this picture vanished; the Patriarch remained, and by his side
appeared the first High Priest of the worship of Jehovah, whom the
sculptors had omitted to represent on the exterior of the porch, but
whose image the glass-workers have portrayed in a window of the same
front; Aaron, the great Pontiff, anointed by Moses.
And this ceremony, during which Moses conferred the order of priesthood
on the person and the descendants of his elder brother, arose before
Durtal's fancy as a terrific scene. The details he had formerly read of
this ordination, the ceremonies lasting seven days, recurred to his
mind. After ablution and the anointing with oil, the holocaust of
victims began. Flesh sputtered on the walls, mingling the black stench
of burnt fat with the blue vapour of incense; the Patriarch anointed the
right ear and thumb and foot of Aaron and his sons with blood; then,
taking up the flesh of the sacrifice, he placed them in the hands of the
new-made priests, who rocked first on one foot and then on the other,
thus waving the offerings above the altar.
Then all bowed their heads under a shower of oil mingled with blood with
which the Consecrator inundated them. They looked like slaughterers from
the shambles and lamp trimmers, all sprinkled as they were with clots of
red mire, on which glistened yellow eyes.
And then, as in the swift change of magic-lantern slides, this savage
scene, this worn-out symbol of a splendid and subtle liturgy, stammered
out in a hoarse voice, disappeared, giving way to the solemn array of
Levites and priests marching in procession under the guidance of Aaron,
resplendent in his turban with the crown of gold above it, in his purple
robe, on its hem the open pomegranates of scarlet and blue, with
tinkling bells of gold; and he wore the linen ephod, girt with a girdle,
blue and purple and scarlet, and kept in its place by shoulder-pieces
fastened with onyx stones, his breastplate in a blaze, flashing sparks
that lighted up as he moved in the twelve gems of the breastplate.
Again the scene changed. He beheld an amazing palace; under the shade of
its domes of giddy height, tropical trees and flowers were planted by
tepid pools; monkeys sported there, hanging in bunches to the boughs,
while long-drawn, insinuating melodies were scraped on stringed
instruments, and the rattle of tambourines made the eyed plumes quiver
in the peacocks' outspread tails.
In this strange hot-bed, filled with clumps of flowers and of women,
this immense harem where his seven hundred princesses and his three
hundred concubines disported themselves, Solomon watched the whirl of
dances, gazed at the living hedge of women, seen against the background
of gold-plated walls, their bodies clothed only in the transparent veil
of vapour rising from resins burning on tripods.
He appeared as a typical Eastern monarch, a sort of Khalif or Sultan, or
fairy-tale Rajah--the prodigious king at once polygamous, unbridled,
insatiable by luxury, and learned, artistic, peace-loving, the wisest
among men. In advance of the ideas of his time, he was the great builder
in Israel, and the commerce of the country was of his making. He left
such a reputation for wisdom and justice that he came at last to be
regarded as an enchanter and wizard. Even Josephus tells us that he
wrote a book of Magic, of incantations for laying evil spirits; in the
Middle Ages he was said to have owned a magic ring, charms, forms of
evocation, secrets for exorcism; and in all these legends the image of
the king becomes confused.
And he would remain to this day a figure out of the Thousand and One
Nights, were it not that in the decline of his glory we see him as a
grandiose image of the mournfulness of life, the vanity of joy, the
nothingness of man.
His old age was melancholy. Exhausted and governed by women, he denied
God and sacrificed to idols. We discern in him wide gaps, vast clearings
in the soul. Weary of everything, sick of enjoyment, and drunken with
sin, he wrote some admirable reflections and anticipated the blackest
pessimism of our day, summing up the misery of him who endures the
condemnation of living, in phrases that are its final expression. What
distress is that of the Preacher: All the days of man are sorrow, and
his travail grief; better is the day of death than the day of birth; all
is vanity and vexation of spirit.
After his death, too, the old king remains a mystery. Had he expiated
his apostacy and his fall? Was he, like his fathers, received into
Abraham's bosom? And the greatest writers of the Church have not agreed
about it.
According to St. Irenæus, St. Hilary, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St.
Ambrose, and St. Jerome, his penance was accomplished, and he is saved.
According to Tertullian, St. Cyprian, St. Augustine, and St. Gregory the
Great, he did not repent to amendment, and so he is damned.
Durtal turned over in his bed and tried to lose consciousness.
Everything was in confusion in his brain, and at last he fell into
disturbed slumbers mingled with hideous nightmares, in which he saw
Madame Mesurat standing in the place of the queen on a pedestal in the
porch; and Durtal fumed at her ugliness, raging against the Canons, to
whom he vainly appealed to remove his housekeeper and replace the queen.