This church symbolism, this psychology of the cathedral, this study of
the soul of the sanctuary, so entirely overlooked since mediæval times
by those professors of monumental physiology called archæologists and
architects, so much interested Durtal that he was able by its help to
forget for some hours the turmoil and struggles of his soul; but the
moment he ceased to ponder on the inner sense of things seen, he was as
bad as ever.
The sort of requisition he had laid before the Abbé Gévresin, to put an
end to his tossing and decide for him one way or the other, was
distracting while it terrified him.
The cloister! He must reflect a long time before making up his mind to
imprison himself. And the _pros_ and _cons_ tormented him in endless
alternation.
"Here I am just where I was before I set out for La Trappe!" said he to
himself, "and the decision to be taken is even more serious; for Notre
Dame de l'Atre was but a temporary refuge. I knew when I went there that
I should not stay; it was a painful time to be endured, but it was only
a short time; whereas at this moment I have to come to a determination
from which there is no turning back, to go to a place where, if I once
shut myself in, I must stay till I die. It is imprisonment for life,
with no mitigation of the penalty, no pardon and release; and the Abbé
talks as if it were the simplest thing!
"What am I to do? Renounce all freedom, be nothing but a machine, a
chattel, in the hands of a man I do not know--God knows I am willing!
But there are other and more pressing questions from my point of view;
in the first place, this matter of literature--to write no more, to give
up what has been the occupation and aim of my life; that would be
painful; still, it is a sacrifice I could make. But to write and then
see my language stripped and washed in pump-water, all the colour taken
out by another man, who may be a learned man or a saint, but have no
more idea of art than St. John of the Cross! That is too hard. That
one's ideas should be picked over and weeded, from the theological point
of view, I quite understand, nothing could be more just; but one's
style! And in a monastery, so far as I can learn, nothing is printed
till the Prior has read it; and he has the right to revise everything,
alter it--suppress it if he chooses. It would evidently be better not to
write at all, but this again is not a matter of choice, since under the
rule of obedience each one must submit to orders, and treat of any
subject in any way the Abbot commands.
"And unless the master were very exceptional, what a stone of stumbling!
"And then, besides this, which is to me the most important question of
all, there are others worth considering. From the little I have been
told by my two priests, the blessed silence of the Cistercians is not
the rule with the black-frocked Orders. Now, however perfect these
cenobites may be, they remain none the less men; or, to express it
otherwise, sympathy and antipathy live in constant and compulsory
friction; with very restricted subjects of discussion, living in
complete ignorance of all that is going on outside, conversation must
degenerate into chatter; at last the only interest of life centres in
trivialities, in petty questions which in such an atmosphere assume the
importance of events.
"A man becomes an old maid, and how infinitely wearisome must this talk
be, unvaried by the unforeseen.
"Finally, there is the question of health. In the convent nothing but
stews and salads! A disordered stomach before long, broken sleep,
crushing fatigue in an ill-treated frame--ah, all that is neither
attractive nor amusing! Who knows whether, after a few months of this
mental and physical rule, I should not have sunk into bottomless
dejection, whether the sloth of those monastic gaols would not have
crushed me and left me absolutely incapable of thought or action?"
And he concluded:--
"It is madness to think of a cloistered life; I should do better to
remain at Chartres."
But hardly had he made up his mind not to move, when the reverse of the
medal forced itself upon him.
A convent! Why, it was the only logical existence, the only right life!
All these fears he suggested to himself were imaginary. In the first
place, as to his health. Had he forgotten La Trappe, where the food was
far more innutritious and the rule far stricter? Why be alarmed
beforehand?
And, on the other hand, could he fail to perceive the need for
conversation, the wisdom of speech, relieving the solitude of the
cloister just when weariness might supervene? It was a remedy against
constant introspection, and exercise taken with others secured health to
the soul and gave tone to the body; and as for saying that these
monastic dialogues would be trivial, were the conversations he might
hear in any other society more edifying? In short, was not the company
of the Brethren far superior to that of men of any profession,
condition, or sort, whom he would be obliged to meet in the world
outside?
And what, after all, were these trifles, these minor details in the
splendid completeness of the cloister? What were these petty
matters--mere nothings--in the scale as against peace, the cheerfulness
of the soul in the joy of the services and the fulfilment of the task of
praise? Would not the tide of worship cleanse everything, and wash away
the small defects of men, like straws in a stream? Was it not the case
of the mote and the beam, with the parts reversed--imperfections
discerned in others, when he was so far their inferior?
"Constantly, at the end of every argument, I find my own lack of
humility," said he to himself. "What efforts are needed to remove the
mire of my sins! In a convent perhaps I might rub the rust off," and he
dreamed of a purer life, a soul soaked in prayer, expanding in communion
with Christ, who might perhaps, without too much soiling Himself, come
down to dwell in him. "It is the only life desirable," cried he. "It is
settled!"
But then, like a douche of cold water, a reflection overwhelmed him. It
would in any case be the life in common, school-life, which would begin
again for him; it would be the garrison-rule of a convent!
This floored him. Then he tried to fight against it, and lost patience.
"Come, come!" he growled, "a man does not shut himself up in an abbey to
take his ease there; a convent is not a pious Sainte-Périne; he retires
there, I suppose, to expiate his sins and prepare for death. What, then,
is the use of expatiating on the kind of punishments to be endured? A
determination to accept them is all, to endure them and be strong!"
Did he, then, sincerely long for suffering and penance? He dared not
answer himself. In the depth of his soul a hesitating "Yes" rose up,
smothered at once by the clamour of cowardice and fear. Why then go?
He was only bewildering himself, and when the worst of this turmoil was
over he thought of a respite, or of some half-measure, some mild
mortification quite endurable, some repentance so slight as to be none
at all.
"I am an idiot," he concluded; "I am fighting with the air; I am
puzzling myself with words, about habits of which I have no knowledge.
The first thing to be done is to visit some Benedictine monastery--nay,
several--to compare them, and to see for myself what the life is that is
led there. Then the matter as to the oblates must be cleared up; if the
Abbé Plomb is well informed, their fate depends on the caprice of the
Abbot, who can tighten or loosen the halter according to his more or
less domineering character. But is that quite certain? There were always
oblates throughout the Middle Ages; consequently they are controlled by
the secular law!
"And all this is so human, so vile! For it is not a matter of disputing
texts and more or less accommodating clauses. It is a case of subjection
without reserve, of leaping boldly into the water; of giving oneself up
entirely to God. Any other view of the cloister is to regard it as a
citizen's home, and that is absurd. My apprehensions, my antagonism, my
compromises, are disgraceful!
"Yes; but where can I find the necessary strength to brush myself clean
from this dust of the soul?"
And at last, when he felt himself bruised by these alternating desires
and fears, he took refuge with Notre Dame de Sous-Terre.
The crypt was closed in the afternoon, but he found his way in by a
small door in the sacristy inside the cathedral, and descended into
utter darkness.
Having reached the crypt in front of the altar, he round once more the
doubtful but soothing odour of that vault, smoked by burning tapers, and
went forward in the soft, warm atmosphere of frankincense and a cellar.
It was even darker than in the early morning, for the lamps were out;
floating wicks only, shining through what looked like very thin
orange-peel, threw gleams of tarnished gold on the sooty walls.
As he turned, with his back to the altar, he could see the low aisle in
retreating perspective, and at the end, as in a tunnel, the light of
day--unluckily, for it allowed him to discern certain hideous paintings
of scenes commemorating the ecclesiastical glories of Chartres: the
visit paid to the cathedral by Mary de' Medici and Henri IV.; Louis
XIII. and his mother; Monsieur Olier offering to the Virgin the keys of
the Seminary of Saint Sulpice with a dress of gold brocade; Louis XIV.
at the feet of Notre Dame de Sous-Terre; by the grace of heaven, the
remaining frescoes seemed extinct; at any rate, they lay in shadow.
What was really blissful was to be alone with the Virgin, who looked
down, her dark face gleaming dimly in the gloom when a wick happened to
flicker with short flashes of brighter light.
Durtal, kneeling before Her, determined to address Her, to say to Her,--
"I am afraid of the future and of its cloudy sky, and I am afraid of
myself, for I am wasting in depression and bewilderment. Thou hast
hitherto led me by the hand. Do not desert me; finish Thy work. I know
that it is folly thus to take care for the future, for Thy Son has said,
'Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof.' Still, that depends on
temperament. What is easy to some is so hard for others. Mine is a
restless spirit, always astir, always on the alert. Do what I will, it
wanders, feeling its way about the world, and gets lost! Bring it home,
keep it near Thee in a leash, kind Mother, and after so much weariness,
grant me to find rest!
"Oh! to be no longer thus torn in sunder, to be of one mind! Oh! to have
a soul so quenched that it should know no sorrows, no joys, but those of
the liturgy, that it might only be claimed, day by day, by Jesus or by
Thee, and follow Your lives as they are unfolded in the annual cycle of
the Church services! To rejoice at the Nativity, to laugh on Palm
Sunday, to weep in Holy Week, and be indifferent to all else, to cease
to hold oneself as of any account, to care not at all for one's
individual self! What a dream! How easy it then would be to take refuge
in a cloister!
"But is this possible to any but a saint? What a stripping of the soul
it presupposes; what an emptying out of every profane idea, of every
earthly image; what a taming of the subjugated imagination, never
venturing forth but on one track, instead of wandering haphazard as mine
does!
"And yet how foolish is every other care--for all that does not tend to
Heaven is vain on earth. Aye, but as soon as I try to put these thoughts
into, practice, my jade of a soul plunges and rears; do what I will, it
only bucks and makes no advance.
"Alas! Blessed Virgin, I do not seek to excuse myself and my sins. And
still I dare confess to Thee that it is discouraging, heart-breaking, to
understand nothing and see nothing! Is this Chartres where I am
vegetating a waiting-place, a halting-place between two monasteries, a
bridge leading from Notre Dame de l'Atre to Solesmes or some other
Abbey? Or is it, on the contrary, the final stage where it is Thy will
that I should remain fixed? But then my life has no further meaning! It
is purposeless, built and overthrown with the shifting of sands. To what
end, if this be the case, are these monastic yearnings, these calls to
another life, this all but conviction that I have stopped at a station,
and am not yet at the place whither I am to travel?
"If only it might be now, as on other occasions when I have felt Thee
near me, when in response to my questions Thou hast answered me, if only
it might be here as at La Trappe, much as I suffered there! But no. I
hear Thee not--Thou dost not heed me."
Durtal was silent. Then he went on,--
"I am wrong to address Thee thus," he said. "Thou dost not carry us in
Thine arms unless we be unable to walk; Thou hast care and caresses for
the poor soul born anew by conversion; but when it can stand it is set
down on the ground, and Thou lookest on while it makes trial of its
strength.
"This is meet and right; but it does alter the fact that the memory of
those celestial alleviations, those first, lost joys is crushing to the
soul.
"O Holy Virgin, Holy Virgin, have pity on the rickety souls that
struggle on so painfully when they are no longer upheld by Thee! Have
pity on the bruised souls to whom every effort is painful; on the souls
whom nothing can console, to whom everything is affliction! Take pity on
the homeless, outcast souls, the wandering souls, unable to settle and
dwell with their kind, the tender, budding souls! Take pity on all souls
such as mine! Have pity on me!"
And before quitting the Mother he would often visit Her in those depths
where, since the Middle Ages, the faithful no longer seek her; he would
light an end of taper, and, turning aside from the nave of the crypt,
follow the curved line of the wall along the entrance passage as far as
the sacristy of this underground church, where in the ponderous
stone-work was a door strengthened with iron-work.
Through and down a little flight of steps, he reached a cellar which was
the ancient martyrium where, of old, in time of war the ciborium was
concealed. An altar stood in the middle of this well, dedicated in the
name of Saint Lubin. In the crypt the distant hum of the bells, the
sounds of life in the cathedral above, could still be heard; here,
nothing! It was like being in the tomb. Unfortunately, some squalid,
square columns whitened with lime-wash, built on the altar to give
support to Bridan's group in the choir above, spoilt the barbaric
simplicity of this _oubliette_, forgotten, lost in the night of ages,
and underground.
He went up again comforted nevertheless, accusing himself of
ingratitude, and asking himself how he could dream of leaving Chartres
and going away from the Virgin, with whom he could thus so easily
converse in solitude whenever he would.
On other days, when it was fine, he would take for the object of his
walk a convent whose existence had been revealed to him by Madame
Bavoil. One afternoon he had met her in the square, and she had said to
him,--
"I am going to see the little Jesus of Prague at the Carmelite convent
here. Will you come with me, our friend?"
Durtal had no liking for these petty pilgrimages made by good women; but
the idea of going to the Carmelite chapel, which was unknown to him,
tempted him to accompany her, and she led the way to the Rue des
Jubelines, behind the railway line and beyond the station. They had to
cross a bridge that groaned under the weight of rolling trains, and
turned to the right down a path winding between the embankment on one
side, and on the other thatched huts, and old sheds, and other houses
less poverty-stricken, indeed, but closed and impenetrable after
daybreak. Madame Bavoil led him to where this alley ended under the arch
of another bridge. Overhead was a siding, with its signals round and
square, red and yellow, and posts with cast-iron ladders; and there
always in the same place an engine was being fired, or, with shrill
whistling, was moving out backwards.
Madame Bavoil stopped at a door under a round arch in an immense wall,
which not far off ran against the embankment, forming an impassable
angle; it was built of millstone grit of the colour of burnt almonds,
like that used for the Paris reservoirs; here dwelt the nuns of Saint
Theresa.
Madame Bavoil, as being used to convent ways, pushed open the door which
stood ajar, and Durtal saw before him a paved walk between strips of
river pebbles, dividing a garden stocked with fruit-trees and geraniums.
Two yews, clipped into spheres, with a cross on the top of each, gave
this priestly close a graveyard flavour.
The path led upwards, cut into steps. When they reached the top Durtal
saw a building of brick and plaster pierced with windows guarded by iron
bars, and a grey door with a wicket bearing these words painted in
white, "O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who put our trust in
Thee."
He looked about him, surprised at seeing nobody, hearing nothing; but
Madame Bavoil beckoned to him, made her way round the house, and led the
way into a sort of vestibule along which clambered a vine wrapped in
swathing, and she turned into a little chapel, where she knelt down on
the flagstones.
Durtal, amazed, seemed to breathe the melancholy that weighed on this
naked sanctuary.
He was in a building of the end of the eighteenth century; in the
middle, raised on eight steps, stood an altar of wax-polished wood in
the shape of a tomb; above it was a shrine covered with a curtain of
white brocade and surmounted by a picture of the Annunciation, a washy
painting mounted in a gilt frame. To the right and left were two
medallions in relief, on one side Saint Joseph and on the other Saint
Theresa, and above the picture, close to the ceiling, were the arms of
the Carmelites, also in relief: a shield with a cross and stars beneath
a marquis's coronet, from which an arm emerges wielding a sword. This
was held up by fat little angels, the swollen infants of the sculptors
of that period, and floating in the air was a scroll bearing the motto
of the order: "_Zelo, zelatus sum, pro Domino Deo Exercituum_."
Finally, to the right of the altar, the iron grating of the nunnery was
seen in an arch in the wall; and on the steps of the altar, inside the
railing for the communicants, an annoying statue was emerging from under
a gilt canopy--the Infant Christ holding a globe in one hand, and
raising the other as if to command attention; a statue of painted
plaster as of some precocious mountebank, with homage offered in this
deserted chapel, of two pots of hydrangea and a floating wick in a
crimson glass.
"How cold and dismal is such _rococo_!" thought Durtal. He knelt down on
a chair, and by degrees his impressions underwent a change. This holy
place, saturated with prayer, seemed to let its ice melt and grow balmy.
It was as though visions percolated through the gate of the cloister and
shed warm puffs of air in the place. A sense of warmth of soul stole
over him, of being at home in this solitude.
The only astonishing thing was to hear, in such remote seclusion, the
whistling of trains and the rumbling of engines.
Durtal went out before Madame Bavoil had finished the rosary. Standing
in the doorway, he saw, just opposite, the cathedral in profile, but
with only one spire, the old belfry being hidden by the new. Under a
cloudy sky it stood massively solid, green and grey, with its roof of
oxidized copper, and the pumice-stone hue of the tower.
"It is stupendous!" said Durtal to himself, recalling the various
aspects it could assume according to the season and the hour, as the
colour of its complexion varied. "The whole effect under a clear sky is
silvery grey, and if the sun lights it up it turns pale golden yellow;
seen from near, its skin is like a nibbled biscuit, a siliceous
limestone eaten into holes; at other times, when the sun is setting, it
turns crimson and appears like some vast and exquisite shrine, all rose
colour and green; and in the twilight it is blue, and seems to
evaporate into violet.
"And those porches!" he went on. "That of the royal front is the least
variable; it remains of a cinnamon-brown half-way up, of a dull
pumice-grey as it rises; that on the south side, more eaten into by
lichens, is wearing green, while the arches on the north, with their
stones like concrete full of shells, suggest to the fancy a sea-grotto
left high and dry."
"Well, our friend, are you dreaming?" said Madame Bavoil, tapping him on
the shoulder.
"This Carmelite convent you see is a very austere house," said she, "and
as you may suppose, grace abounds;" and when Durtal murmured,--
"What a contrast between this dead spot and the railway that runs past
it, always in a stir!" she exclaimed,--
"Do you suppose that anywhere else you will find, side by side, such an
image of the contemplative life and the active life?"
"And what must the nuns think as they hear these continual departures
for the outer world? Those who have grown old in the convent would, of
course, despise these calls, these invitations to live; the quietude of
their spirits must increase as they find themselves protected for ever
from the perils which the noisy rush of the trains must bring before
them every hour of the day and night; they will feel more drawn to pray,
for those whom the chances of life carry away to Paris, or bring back to
the country, outcasts from the city. But the postulants--the novices? In
the hours of desertion, of doubt as to their vocation, which must come
over them, is it not appalling to think of the constantly revived
memories of home, of friends, of all that they have left to shut
themselves up for ever in a convent?
"As each asks herself whether she can endure watching and fasting, must
it not be a permanent temptation to rebel against being buried alive in
a tomb?
"And I cannot help thinking of the appearance as of a reservoir that the
style of building gives to this Carmel. The image is precise, for the
convent is indeed a reservoir into which God dips to draw forth the good
works of love and tears, and restore the balance of the scales in which
the sins of the world are so heavy!"
Madame Bavoil smiled.
"A very old Carmelite nun," said she, "who had gone into this House
before railways were invented, died here hardly three months ago. She
had never been outside the walls, and never saw an engine or a railway
carriage. Under what form could she picture to herself the trains she
heard thundering and shrieking?"
"As some diabolical invention, no doubt, since these conveyances carry
us to the wicked but delightful sins of towns," replied Durtal, smiling.
"But it is a curious case, nevertheless."
He was silent; then, changing the subject, he said,--
"And do you still hold communion with Heaven, Madame Bavoil?"
"No," she answered, sadly. "I no longer have any converse or any
visions. I am deaf and blind. God is silent to me."
She shook her head, and, after a pause, she added, speaking to
herself,--
"Such a little thing is enough to displease Him. If He detects a trace
of vanity in the soul on which He shines, He departs. And as the Father
tells me, the mere fact of having spoken of the special graces
vouchsafed to me by Jesus, proves that I am not humble. In short, His
will be done!--And you, our friend, do you still think of taking shelter
in a cloister?"
"I--my spirit still craves a truce; my soul is but shifting ballast."
"Because, no doubt, you are not honest in your dealings. You behave as
if you meant to strike a bargain with Him; that is not the way to set to
work."
"What would you do in my place?"
"I should be generous; I should say to Him, 'Here I am, do with me as
Thou wilt. I give myself unconditionally to Thee. I ask but one thing:
Help me to love Thee.'"
"And do you suppose that I have not blamed myself for my cowardice of
heart?"
They walked on in silence. When they reached the cathedral, Madame
Bavoil proposed that they should pay a visit to Notre Dame du Pilier.
They seated themselves in the gloom of the side aisle of the choir,
where the dark-toned windows were still further obscured by a poorly
executed wooden niche, in which the Virgin, as dark as her namesake in
the crypt, Notre Dame de Sous-Terre, stood on a pillar, hung round with
bunches of metal hearts and little lamps on coronas, from the roof.
Frames of tapers on each side shot up little tongues of flame, and
prostrate women were praying, their faces hidden in their hands or
upturned to the dark countenance, on which the light did not fall.
It struck Durtal that the woes repressed in the morning hours were
poured out in the twilight; the faithful did not now come for Her alone,
but for themselves; each one brought a load of sorrows and opened it
before Her. What anguish of soul was poured out on the stones by these
women, leaning prostrate against the railing that protected the pillar
which each kissed as she rose.
And the swarthy image, carved in the early part of the sixteenth
century, had listened, Her face invisible, to the same sighs, the same
complaints, from succeeding generations, had heard the same cries,
echoing down the ages, for ever lamenting the bitterness of life, for
ever expressing the desire, all the same, for length of days!
Durtal looked at Madame Bavoil. She was praying with closed eyes,
kneeling on the stones and sitting on her heels, her arms hanging, her
hands clasped. How happy was she to be able thus to abstract herself.
And he tried to force himself to say a prayer, quite a short one, in the
hope that he might succeed in getting to the end without letting his
mind wander. He began "_Sub tuum_"--"Under Thy protection do we take
refuge; Holy Mother of God, despise not us." What it was really
indispensable that he should obtain from the Father Superior was
permission to take his books with him into the monastery, and to have at
least a few pious toys in his cell. Ah--but how could he explain that
any profane literature was necessary in a convent, that, from an
artist's point of view, it was requisite to refresh one's memory of the
prose of Hugo, of Baudelaire, of Flaubert--"I am at sea again!" said
Durtal suddenly to himself.
He tried to brush away these distractions, and went on: "Despise not the
prayers we put up to Thee in our needs--" And he was off again at a
gallop in his dreams--"Even supposing that no difficulty were made about
this request, the question would still remain as to submitting
manuscripts for revision, obtaining the _imprimatur_; and how would that
be arranged?"
Madame Bavoil interrupted his wanderings by rising from her knees.
Recalled to himself, he hastily finished his prayer--"but deliver us
from all perils, glorious and blessed Virgin; Amen." And he parted from
the housekeeper on the steps of the church, going home much vexed by his
dissipation of mind.
He there found a note from the Editor of the _Review_, which had
published his paper on the Fra Angelico in the Louvre, asking him for
another article.
This diversion made him glad; he thought that this task might perhaps
preserve him from vain thoughts of his discomfiture at Chartres and his
fancy for the cloister.
"What can I send to the _Review_?" said he to himself. "Since what they
chiefly ask for is criticism of religious art, I might write some short
study of the early German painters. I have ample notes, made on the spot
in the galleries there; let us see!"
He turned them over, lingering to read a note-book containing his
impressions of travel. A summing up of his remarks on the School of
Cologne arrested his attention.
At every page he gave vent to his surprise in more and more vehement
exclamations, at the false ideas and absurd theories put forward for so
many years with regard to these pictures.
Every writer, without exception, had expatiated, each more
enthusiastically than the last, on the pure and religious art of these
early painters, speaking of them as seraphic artists who had depicted
superhuman beauty, white and sylph-like Virgins all soul, standing out
like celestial visions, against backgrounds of gold.
Durtal, prejudiced by the unanimity of this universal praise, expected
to find almost impalpably fair angels, Flemish Madonnas, etherealized in
some sort, having shed their husk of flesh, rapturous Memlings with eyes
full of heaven, and bodies that had almost ceased to be--and he
remembered his dismay on entering the galleries of the Cologne Museum.
In point of fact his disenchantment had begun as soon as he stepped out
of the train. Carried in the course of a night from Paris to that city,
he had made his way through narrow streets where every basement window
exhaled the fragrance of _sauerkraut_, and he had reached the cathedral
square, beautified by Farina's shop-signs, where in front of the famous
Dom he had been obliged to confess that this façade, this exterior, was
a huge piece of patchwork--a delusion. Every part of it was furbished
up, and the church sheltered no sculpture under its portals; it was
symmetrical, built by peg and line; its rigid forms, its hard outlines
were an offence.
The interior was better, in spite of the vulgar blaze, the cheap
fireworks, of ignoble modern glass. And there, in a chapel near the
choir, might be seen, for a consideration, the most famous picture of
the German school, the _Dombild_, by Stephan Lochner, a triptych
representing the Adoration of the Magi on the centre panel, with St.
Ursula on the left hand shutter and St. Gereon on the right.
Durtal's consternation had risen to the highest pitch. The work was thus
arranged. Against a gold background, a Virgin, crowned, red-haired,
bullet-headed, dressed in blue, held on her knees an Infant blessing the
Kings, two kneeling on each side of the throne. One, an old fellow with
a short beard like a retired officer, and hair curled like shavings over
his ears, was sumptuously arrayed in crimson velvet brocaded with gold,
his hands clasped; the other, a dandy with long hair and a large beard,
dressed in green shot with gold and trimmed with fur, held up a golden
cup. And behind each, other figures were standing, flourishing their
swords and standards, in cavalier attitudes, and posing for the public,
thinking much more of the visitors than of the Virgin.
This, then, was the type of Madonna, of the supersensual and sublimated
Virgins of Cologne! This one was puffy, redundant, chubby; she had the
neck of a heifer, and flesh like cream, or hasty pudding, that quivers
when it is touched. Jesus, whose expression was the only interesting
feature of the picture, a certain manly gravity that was shown without
any disfigurement of the character of childhood, was also round and
well-fed, and the scene took place on a lawn strewn with
flowers--primroses, violets, and strawberries painted in fine stipple
with the touch of a miniaturist.
You might call this picture what you pleased, the execution, smooth and
wavy, and cold in spite of the brilliant colours, was a finished piece
of work, brilliant, dexterous--but not religious; it betrayed a
decadence; the work was laboured, complicated, pretty, but it was in no
sense that of an early master.
This common, squat Virgin, fat and pudgy, was simply a good German girl,
well-dressed and squarely seated, but she could never have been the
ecstatic Mother of God! Then these kneeling and standing men were not in
prayer; there was no devotion in this picture; the personages were all
thinking of something else, folding their hands and looking round at the
painter who was depicting them. As to the wings, it were better to say
nothing about them. What was to be thought of the Saint Ursula with a
prominent forehead like a cupping-glass and a burly stomach, surrounded
by other creatures as shapeless as herself, their squab noses poking out
of the bladders of lard that did duty for their faces?
And Durtal found the same impression of insensibility to mysticism in
the picture gallery. There he could study Stephan Lochner's precursor,
Master Wilhelm--the first early German painter whose name is known--and
in this again he found the look of elaborate chubbiness as in the
Dombild. Wilhelm's Virgin was indeed less vulgar than the Virgin of the
cathedral; but in feeling she was equally insipid, over-finished, and
even more simperingly pretty. She was the triumph of delicate pertness,
and had the look of a stage chamber-maid with her hair crimped over her
forehead. And the child, twisted into an unnatural attitude, while he
caressed his Mother's chin, turned his face round to be the better seen.
In short, this Virgin was neither human nor divine; she had not even the
too realistic touch of Lochner, and could, no more than the other, have
been the chosen Mother of God.
It is indeed strange that these very early painters should have begun
where painting as an art ends, in mere finish and smoothness; men who
from the first put sugar in their new wine and betray their lack of
energy, of enthusiasm, of simplicity, while no faith projects itself
from their work. They are the very converse of every other school; for
everywhere else, in Italy, Flanders, Holland, Burgundy, pictures began
by being clumsy and unfinished, barbarous and hard, but at least ardent
and pious!
As he studied the other pictures in this collection, the mass of
anonymous work, the paintings ascribed to the Master of the Lyversberg
Passion, and the Master of the Saint Bartholomew, Durtal came to the
conclusion that the School of Cologne had known nothing of mysticism
till it had felt the influence of the Flemish painters. It had needed a
Van Eyck, and the yet more exquisite Roger van der Weyden, to breathe
the air of Heaven into these craftsmen. They thus had changed their
manner, had imitated the ascetic innocence of the Flemings, had
assimilated their tender piety and simplicity, and, in their turn, had
sung the glory of the Mother and mourned over the sufferings of the Son
in ingenuous hymns.
"This school may be thus summed up," said Durtal. "It is the triumph of
padding and puffing, the apotheosis of fatness and sheen, and this has
nothing to do with Christian art in the true sense of the word.
"If we want to understand the whole personal character of German
religious painting, we must study other schools than this, the only one
ever spoken of, and always with praise. We must turn to the less
familiar schools of Franconia and Swabia; there we find the very
opposite. As art it is savage and rough, but it lives--it weeps, nay it
cries aloud, but it prays. We must look at the works of these unkempt
geniuses, such as Grünewald, whose Christs, rebellious and wrathful,
grind their teeth; or Zeitblom, whose 'Veronica's veil,' in the Berlin
Museum, is unpleasant, no doubt; the angels have black leather crosses
on their breasts, and the Saviour's head is terrible, horrible; still
there is such energy in the work, such decision, such crudity, that the
very sincerity of its ugliness is impressive.
"Certainly," Durtal went on, "even setting apart such daring painters as
Grünewald, I prefer many an unknown artist whose work is strange rather
than beautiful, but at any rate mystical, to the honey and lard of
Cologne; for instance, an anonymous painter who is to be found in the
Grand Duke's collection at Gotha, as the author of one of those curious
Mass-scenes which in the Middle Ages were called the 'Mass of Saint
Gregory,' wherefore, we know not."
Durtal turned over his note-book and read through the description he had
recorded of this work, which he remembered as an instance of a sort of
pious brutality.
The picture was set out on a gold background. A little above the altar,
but scarcely higher, a wooden sarcophagus, a sort of square bath, was
seen, with a board over it from end to end. On this plank-bridge sat the
Christ, His legs hidden in this tomb, holding a cross. His face was
haggard and hollow, He was crowned with green thorns, and His emaciated
body was spotted all over by the ends of the scourges as if the wounds
were flea-bites. Over Him, in the air, floated the instruments of the
Passion: the nails, the sponge, a hammer and a spear; to the left, on a
very small scale, were the busts of Jesus and of Judas, near a pedestal
on which lay three rows of pieces of silver.
In front of this altar, adoring this truly hideous Saviour painted in
accordance with the prophetic descriptions of Isaiah and David, were
Pope Gregory on his knees, his hands clasped, a grave Cardinal, whose
hands were hidden under his robe, and a rough-looking Bishop, standing,
in a dark green cloak embroidered with gold; he held a cross.
It was enigmatical and it was sinister, but those austere and commanding
faces were alive. There was a stamp of faith, indomitable and resolute,
in those countenances. It was harsh to the palate, the roughest wine of
mysticism; but at least it was not the mawkish syrup of the early
Cologne painters.
"Ah! that mystical breath by which the soul of the artist becomes
incorporate in the colour on a canvas, in the lines of carved stone, in
written words, and speaks to the souls of those who can understand! How
few have had it!" thought Durtal, closing his notes of travel. In
Germany it may be seen in the very bunglers among painters; in Italy,
setting aside Angelico, whose works reveal his saintly spirit and are
the coloured image of his secret soul, and his pupil, Benozzo Gozzoli,
the last of the Mediæval painters; if we also except his precursors:
Cimabue, the survivors of the rigid Byzantines, Giotto--who thawed those
fixed and puzzling figures, Orcagna, Simone di Martino, Taddeo
Gaddi--all the very early painters--how much dexterous trickery do we
find among the great painters, mimicking the religious note, and
producing a deceptive imitation by sheer sham.
"The Italians of the Renaissance, above all others, excelled in this
spurious piety, and those are comparatively rare who, like Botticelli,
were honest enough to confess that their Virgins were Venuses and their
Venuses Virgins.
"The Berlin gallery, where he is to be seen in some exquisite and
triumphant examples, shows this very plainly; we see the two versions of
the type side by side.
"First we have a wonderful Venus, nude, with pure gold hair brought
round her body by one hand, standing out in her white flesh against a
black background, gazing with limpid grey eyes, liquid with the colour
of stagnant water, and edged with lids like a young rabbit's--pink lids;
she must have wept much, and her disconsolate look, her drooping
attitude, suggest some far-away thought of the unsatisfied weariness of
the senses and the intolerable unrest of horrible desires that nothing
can satisfy.
"And not far away is a Virgin, very like her--indeed her very self, with
her sensitive, slightly upturned nose, her lips like a folded
clover-leaf, her brackish eyes, her pink lids, her golden hair, her
greenish complexion, her strongly-moulded frame and large hands. The
countenance is the same, fretful and weary; it is evident that the same
model sat for both. They are both purely pagan. For the Venus, well and
good! But the Virgin!
"It may be added that in this picture a row of torch-bearing angels
makes the result, if possible, even less Christian, for these delightful
creatures, with their ambiguous smiles and supple grace, have all the
dangerous attraction of wicked angels. They are Ganymedes, borrowed from
mythology, not from the Bible.
"How far we are from God with this paganism of Botticelli's!" said
Durtal to himself. "What a difference between this painter and that
Roger van der Weyden whose Nativity is the glory of one of the adjoining
rooms in that magnificent Old Museum of Berlin!"
Ay, that Nativity!--He had only to turn to his notes to see it plainly
before him.
Painted as a triptych, on the right wing was an old man in front of some
wondering bystanders, burning incense to the Virgin, who is visible
through an open window above a landscape in distant perspective with
avenues undulating to the horizon; while a woman, her head dressed in a
muffler that is almost a turban, touches the old man's shoulder with one
hand and raises the other with an indescribable gesture of surprise and
joy, her face expressive of ecstasy. On the left wing kneel the three
Kings, their hands uplifted, their eyes raised to Heaven, contemplating
an Infant beaming from the heart of a star; nothing can be more
beautiful than these three transfigured faces; and these are praying
with all their heart, never troubling themselves about us.
Still, these two divisions are but accessory to the central subject
which they complement, and which is thus arranged:
In the middle, in front of a sort of ruined palace or columnar cow-shed
without a roof, the Virgin kneels in prayer before the Babe; to the
right the donor, the Chevalier Bladelin, is seen, also kneeling, and on
the left Saint Joseph, holding a lighted taper, gazes down on Jesus.
There are besides six little angels, three below at the door of the
stable and three above in the air. This is the whole scene.
It is noteworthy that the goldsmith's work, the mingled splendour of
Oriental hangings, the brocades hemmed with fur and strewn with gems of
which Van Eyck and Memling made such free use to array their figures of
the Virgin and the donors, are not to be seen in this panel. The
textures are rich and heavy, but have none of the gorgeous colouring of
the silks of Bruges or the carpets of Persia. Roger van der Weyden seems
intentionally to have reduced the whole setting of the scene to its
simplest expression, and yet, while using an unaffectedly sober key of
colour, he has produced a masterpiece of pure and lucid harmony.
Mary, with no diadem, no jewelled band, not a bracelet or a gem, her
head simply crowned by a few golden rays, is seen in a white dress,
closed to the throat, and a blue cloak of which the ample folds lie on
the ground; the sleeves of her under dress, fastened at the wrists, are
of a rich blue violet, more nearly black than red.
Her face is indescribable; of superhuman loveliness, with long red-gold
hair; the brow high, the nose straight, the lips full, the chin small;
but words are of no avail; what cannot be described is the expression of
candour and sadness, the tide of love that rises to those downcast eyes
as she looks down on the tiny, helpless Babe, round whose head there is
a rosy nimbus starred with gold.
Never was there a more unearthly and yet more living Virgin. Neither Van
Eyck, with his rather vulgar and never beautiful heads, nor
Memling--more tender and refined, no doubt, but limited to his ideal of
a woman with a round forehead and a face shaped like a kite, wide above
and pointed below--ever achieved the elegance of form or the purity of a
woman made divine by love, a being who, even apart from her surroundings
and bereft of the attributes by which she is recognizable, could be none
other than the Mother of God.
By her side the Chevalier Bladelin, dressed all in black, with his
equine type of face, his shaven cheeks, his dignity, at once priestly
and princely, is lost in contemplation, far away from the world; he is
praying in good earnest. And Saint Joseph, opposite to him, represented
as a bald old man, with a short beard, and wearing a red cloak, comes
forward as if amazed at his happiness, and scarce daring to believe that
the moment has come when he may adore the Messiah born at last; he
smiles, deferentially, mildly stepping with the almost clumsy care of an
old man who would fain be serviceable but fears to intrude.
To make the whole thing more than perfect, above the figure of Pierre
Bladelin extends a wondrous landscape, cut across by the High Street of
Middelburg, the town founded by this nobleman, a street bordered by
castellated houses with battlements and church towers, and vanishing in
a country scene lighted up by a clear sky, a blue spring day; above
Saint Joseph a meadow and woods, sheep and shepherds, and three
exquisite angels in robes, one of pinkish yellow, one of purple like a
campanula, and one of greenish citron hue; three really ethereal beings,
having no relationship with the pertly innocent pages invented by the
Renaissance.
If we sum up the whole impression produced by this work, we are led to
the conclusion that mystical art, still dwelling on earth, and not
restricted to scenes in Heaven, as Angelico had chosen to limit it in
his "Coronation of the Virgin," has produced in Roger van der Weyden's
triptych the purest effluence of prayer to be found in painting. Never
has the Nativity been so gloriously set forth, nor, it may be said, more
artlessly and simply expressed. The masterpiece of the Christmas
festival is at Berlin, just as the masterpiece of the Deposition is at
Antwerp, in the agonized and magnificent work of Quentin Matsys.
"The early Flemish painters were the greatest that ever lived!" said
Durtal to himself, "and this Roger Van der Weyden, or Roger de la
Pasture as he is sometimes called, crushed between the fame of van Eyck
and of Memling--as Gherard David was later, and Hugo van der Goes,
Justus of Ghent, and Dierck Bouts--was in my opinion superior to them
all.
"And after them what a falling away! Theatrical Crucifixions, the fleshy
coarseness of Rubens which Vandyck tried to mitigate by making it
leaner. We must leap into Holland to find the mystic accent once more,
and it reveals itself in the soul of a Judaizing Protestant, under an
aspect so mysterious and eccentric that at first sight we hesitate,
feeling ourselves, as it were, to make sure that we are not mistaken in
regarding this as religious art.
"Nor need we go to Amsterdam to verify the truth of this impression. It
is enough to go to see the 'Disciples at Emmaus,' in the Louvre."
Durtal, started on this theme, fell into a reverie over Rembrandt's
strange conception of Christian æsthetics. It is evident that in his
mode of depicting Gospel scenes this painter still exhales a breath of
the Old Testament; his church, even if he had meant to paint it as it
was in his day, would still be a synagogue, so strong is the odour of
the Jew in all his work; he is possessed by the imagery, the prophecies,
all the solemn and barbarous side of the East. And this we can
understand when we know that he was the companion of Rabbis, whose
portraits he has left us, and the friend of Manasseh ben Israel, one of
the most learned men of his age. On the other hand, we may admit that
this Protestant Dutchman engrafted on this stock of cabalistic learning
and Mosaic ceremonial an attentive and assiduous study of the Old
Testament, for he possessed a Bible, which was sold by auction with his
furniture to pay his debts.
This would be enough to justify his choice of subjects and the
composition of his pictures; but the riddle remains unsolved of the
results achieved by an artist whom we cannot conceive of, after all, as
praying before he would paint: like Angelico and Roger van der Weyden.
Be this as it may, he, with the eye of a visionary, with his serious but
fervid art, his genius for concentration, for getting a spot of the
essence of sunlight into the heart of darkness, has accomplished great
results; and in his Biblical scenes has spoken a language which no one
before him had even attempted to lisp.
Is not this picture of the Pilgrims to Emmaus a typical instance of
this? Pull the work to pieces; it ought to seem dull, monotonous,
voiceless. As a composition it is utterly common: we see a sort of
cellar of stone-work, a table facing us, behind which sits Jesus, His
feet bare, His lips colourless, His complexion muddy, His raiment of a
pinkish grey; He is breaking the bread, while, to His right, an apostle,
clutching his napkin, looks at Him, fancies he recognizes Him, and on
the left another disciple, quite sure that he knows Him, clasps his
hands--and this one utters a cry of joy that we can hear! A fourth
figure, with an intelligent profile, sees nothing, but, attentive to his
duties, waits on the guests.
It is a meal of humble folk in a prison; the colours are limited to a
key of sad greys and browns, excepting in the case of the man who twists
his napkin, whose sleeves are thick with a vermilion like red
sealing-wax, while the others might be painted with dust and pitch.
These are the literal facts; but they are not the truth, for everything
is transfigured. The head of Christ is luminous merely by the way He
looks up; a pale radiance fills the room. This Jesus, ugly as He is,
with lips like death, asserts Himself by a gesture, a look of ineffable
beauty, as the murdered Son of a God!
We stand dumfounded, not even trying to understand; for this work,
stamped with transcendent naturalism, is beyond and apart from painting;
no one can copy or reproduce it.
"After Rembrandt," Durtal went on, "there is an irremediable decay of
religious feeling in painting. The seventeenth century has not left a
single picture in which there is a genuine stamp of manly devotion;
excepting, indeed, in Spain at the time when Saint Theresa and Saint
John of the Cross flourished there; then the mystical realism of its
painters produced some fiercely fervid works;" and Durtal recalled a
picture by Zurbaran he had seen and admired in the Gallery at Lyons,
Saint Francis of Assisi standing upright in a habit of grey serge, the
cowl over his head, his hands hidden in his sleeves.
The face looked as if it had been moulded or chiselled out of cinders;
the mouth was open, livid, below ecstatic eyes as white as if they had
been blinded. It was a wonder how this corpse, of which nothing was left
but the bones, could hold itself up; and terror came over the beholder
as he thought of the excessive maceration and overwhelming penances that
must have exhausted that frame and seamed that face.
This painting was the evident outcome of the relentless and terrible
mysticism of Saint John of the Cross, the art of the rack, the _delirium
tremens_ of divine intoxication here on earth; aye, but what a passion
of adoration, what a voice of love stifled by anguish found utterance in
this canvas.
As to the eighteenth century, it was not worth a thought; that century
was the age of the belly and the bath-room; as soon as art tried to
touch the Church it only made a washing-basin into a holy-water stoup.
In our own time, again, there is nothing to note.
Overbeck, Ingres, Flandrin--all sorry jades harnessed willy-nilly to
religious tasks by commissions from the pious. In the church of Saint
Sulpice Delacroix extinguishes all the feeble art that surrounds him,
but his sense of Catholic art is null.
In truth, faith is now dormant, and without that no mystical work is
possible!
At the present moment Signol is dead, but Olivier Merson is left;
vacuity all along the line. We need not take into account the got-up
absurdities and paintings to puzzle Rosicrucian simpletons; nor, again,
the feeble imagery of the wealthy idlers or the worthy youths who fancy
that if they paint a woman larger than life, that makes her mystical.
Silence would befit the subject, only that, unluckily, a well-meaning
publisher was struck by the idea of mobilizing the clerical forces to
hail James Tissot as an evangelical painter. His Life of Christ is one
of the least religious works conceivable, for, in fact, it might be
regarded as a hesitating paraphrase of the Life of Jesus as narrated by
that cheerful apostate and terrible jester, Renan.
The firm of Mame has completed this artist's treason by the issue of
these melancholy chromo-lithographs. Under the pretext of realism, of
information acquired on the spot, of authenticated costumes--all
extremely doubtful, since we should be forced to conclude that nothing
has changed in Palestine in the course of nineteen centuries--Monsieur
Tissot has given us the basest masquerade that anyone has yet dared
present as an illustration of the Scriptures. Look at that disreputable
trull, a street slut tired of shouting "This way to the boats!" till she
falls fainting. This is the _Magnificat_, the Blessed Virgin. That
epileptic boy with outstretched arms is Jesus in the Temple. Look at the
Baptism, the Pharisee and the Publican, the Massacre of the Innocents,
the Saint Peter walking on the Sea, the Magdalen at the feet of Jesus,
the ridiculous _Consummatum est_--look at them all: these prints are
matchless for platitude, effeteness, poverty of spirit. They might have
been designed by the first-comer, and are painted with muck, wine-sauce,
mud!
Certainly the hapless Catholics have no luck when once they try to
meddle with what they do not understand; their incurable lack of
artistic sense is once more displayed in this attempt over which the
whole world of art and letters is laughing in their sleeve.
"Then is there nothing, absolutely nothing, to the credit side for the
Church?" exclaimed Durtal. "And yet some attempts at ascetic art have
been made in this century. A few years since, the Benedictine House at
Beuron, in Bavaria, tried to revive ecclesiastical art"; and Durtal
remembered having looked through some reproductions of mural frescoes
painted by these monks in a tower at Monte Cassino.
These frescoes had gone back to the types of Assyria and Egypt, with
their crowned gods, their sphynx-headed angels having fan-shaped wings
behind their heads, their old men with plaited beards playing on
stringed instruments; and then the Friars of Beuron had given up this
hieratic style, in which, it must be owned, they succeeded but ill, and
in certain later works--especially in a volume of the Way of the Cross,
published at Freiburg in Breisgau--they had adopted a strange medley of
other styles.
The Roman soldiers who figured in those pages were huge firemen, a
bequest from the schools of Guérin and David; and then, unexpectedly, in
certain plates where the Magdalen and the Holy women appeared, a younger
spirit seemed to prevail among the commonplace groups--Greek female
types derived from the Renaissance, pretty and elegant, evidently
imported from the works of the pre-Raphaelites, and strongly recalling
Walter Crane's illustrations.
Thus the ideal at Beuron had developed into an alloy of the French art
of the First Empire and contemporary English work.
Some of these compositions were all but laughable, that of the Ninth
Station, to mention one: Christ lying at full length on His face, and
being pulled up by a rope tied to His bound hands; it looked as if He
were learning to swim. Still, but for feeble and vulgar incidents,
clumsy and obvious details, what strange scenes suddenly rose before his
mind, distinct from the mass: Veronica on her knees before Jesus, was
really distracted with grief, really fine; the borrowed or copied
figures of the other persons represented disappeared; even in the least
original of these compositions the coarse, unsatisfactory utterances of
these monks spoke an almost eloquent language; and this because intense
faith and fervour lurked in the work. A breath had passed over those
faces, and they were alive; the emotion, the voice of prayer, was felt
in the silence of this conventional crowd. This Way of the Cross was
matchless from this point of view: Monastic piety had introduced an
unexpected element, giving evidence of the mysterious power it has at
its command, infusing a personal emotion, a peculiar aroma, into a work
which, without it, would never indeed have existed. These Benedictines
had suggested the sensation of kneeling worship and the very fragrance
of the Gospel, as artists of wider scope had failed in doing.
Their attempt, however, had begotten no following, and at this day the
school is almost dead, producing nothing but feeble prints for old women
designed by the lay-brothers.
How, indeed, could it have been anything but still-born? The idea of
doing for the West what Manuel Pauselinos did for the East, of
eliminating study from nature, imposing an uniform ritual of colour and
line, of compelling every artistic temperament to squeeze itself into
the same mould, shows an absolute misapprehension of art in the mind of
the man who attempted it. The system was bound to end in ankylosis, in
the paralysis of painting, and this, in fact, was the result.
At about the same time with these Religious an unknown artist, living in
the country, and never exhibiting in Paris, was painting pictures for
churches and convents, working for the glory of God and refusing all
remuneration from priests or monks. Durtal knew his pictures, and they
had suggested much the same reflections as those aroused by the
Benedictine paintings of Beuron.
At first sight Paul Borel's work is neither cheerful nor attractive; the
phrases he used might often have made a partisan of the modern smile;
and besides, to judge his work fairly it is indispensable to get rid of
part of it, to refuse to see anything but that which has evaded the
too-familiar formulas of commonplace unction; and then what a spirit of
manly fervency, of ardent piety, filled and upheld it.
His most important paintings are buried in the chapel of the Dominican
school at Oullins, in a remote corner of the suburbs of Lyons. Among the
ten subjects that decorate the nave, we find Moses Striking the Rock,
the Disciples at Emmaus, the Healing of One Possessed, of One Born
Blind, and of Tobit; but in spite of the calm energy shown in these
frescoes, they are disappointing by reason of their general heaviness
and of the sleepy and unwonted effect of colour. Not till we reach the
choir, beyond the communion railing, do we find works of a quite
different kind of art, above some magnificent figures of saints of the
Order of Friars Preacher, amazing in the power of prayer, the essence of
saintliness that they diffuse.
There, too, Durtal had found two large compositions: one of the Virgin
bestowing the Rosary on Saint Dominic, and the other of Saint Thomas
Aquinas kneeling before an altar on which stands a Crucifix radiating
light. Never since the Middle Ages had monks been so understood and so
painted; never had a more impetuous fount of soul been revealed under so
stern a casing of features. Borel was the painter of the Monastic
Saints; his art, by nature rather torpid, soared up with them as soon as
he tried to paint them.
At Versailles, again, even better perhaps than in the chapel of the
Oullins seminary, the sincere and deeply religious work of Borel might
be studied. At the entrance to the chapel of the Augustine Sisters in
that town, of which Borel had painted the nave and the choir, there
stood a figure of an Abbess of the fourteenth century, Saint Clare of
Montefalcone, in the black robes of an Augustinian Nun, against the
stone walls of her cell, an open book on one side of the figure and a
brass lamp on the other, somewhat behind her on a table.
In that face, bent over the Crucifix she was pressing to her lips, in
that countenance, at once sweet and hungering, in the movement of the
arms closely folded over her bosom, raised to her face, and themselves
forming a cross, he had seen the complete absorption of a bride, the
rapt, ecstatic joy of the purest love, and at the same time something of
the anxious affection of a mother cherishing the Christ she kissed, and
seemed to shelter in her bosom like a suffering child.
And this was all set forth without any theatrical attitude or forced
gestures, with perfect simplicity. This Saint Clare has no ravings, no
outcries, like Saint Magdalen of Pazzi; she does not soar with the
flight of divine intoxication. The mystic possession manifests itself in
a mute rapture; her transports are controlled, and her inebriety is
grave; she does not diffuse herself, but opens her soul, and Jesus, as
He enters in, stamps her with His likeness, impresses her with the image
of the Crucifix she holds, and of which the impress was found graven on
her heart when it was examined after her death.
This was the most remarkable religious painting of our time, and it was
achieved with no borrowing from the Early painters, no trickery of
awkward attitudes supported by iron bars, no affectations, no artifice.
And what a devout Catholic, what an emotionally pious artist must the
man be who could produce such a work!
After him the rest was silence. Among the religious youth of to-day no
one is to be found equal to the presentment of Church subjects. "Only
one," said Durtal, thinking it over, "gave any hope of such powers, for
he stands apart from the rest, and, at any rate, has talent."
He rose and went to turn over his portfolios, picking out the
lithographs by Charles Dulac.
This artist had begun with a series of landscapes, idealizing nature, at
first with a timid hand--extravagantly large pools, and trees with
leaves that looked like wild wigs tossed by the wind; then he had
produced a rendering in black and white of a Canticle of the Sun, or of
Creation, and had poured out in nine plates, printed in different states
of tone, that effluence of mystical feeling which in his first set was
still latent and undecided.
The rather hackneyed dictum that "a landscape is a state of mind," was
strictly appropriate to this work; the artist had stamped his faith on
these views, studied, no doubt, from nature, but seen, it was evident,
not by the eyes alone, but by a captivated spirit singing in the open
air Daniel's hymn and David's psalm, as interpreted by Saint Francis,
and repeating after them the thought that all the Elements shall sing to
the glory of Him who created them.
Among these plates two were genuinely inspiring: that with the title,
_Stella Matutina_, and the other with the words, _Spiritus Sancte Deus_;
but another, the broadest, the most decisive, and the simplest of them
all, bearing the title _Sol Justitiæ_, seemed best of all to set forth
the individual sympathies of the artist.
It was thus composed: A light, remote, translucent distance was lost in
infinitude--a peninsula, a desert waste of waters with ribs of shore,
tongues of land planted with trees repeated in the mirror of the lake;
on the horizon the sun, half set, cast its beams reflected by the sheet
of waters; that was all, but amazing placidity and calm, a sense of
fulness was shed over all. The idea of justice, to which that of mercy
answers as its inevitable echo, was symbolized in the serene solemnity
of this expanse lighted up by the glow of a kindly season and mild
atmosphere.
Durtal drew back to get a more complete view of the work as a whole.
"There is no denying it," said he; "this artist has the instinct, the
subtle sense of aerial space, of expanse; he understands the soul of
calm waters flowing under a vast sky! And then, this print diffuses
emanations as from a Catholic, which steal into us, slowly soak into our
heart.
"And by this time," said he, closing the portfolio, "I am far enough
away from the original matter, and none the nearer to any article I can
write for the _Review_. A paper on the primitive German painters would,
indeed, be quite in its line; yes, but what an undertaking! I should
have to work up my notes, and after dealing with Meister Wilhelm,
Stephan Lochner, and Zeitblom, to speak of Bernhardt Strigel, an almost
unknown painter, of Albert Dürer, Holbein, Martin Schongauer, Hans
Balding, Burgkmayer, and I know not how many more. I should have to
account for whatever may have survived of orthodoxy in Germany after the
Reformation; to mention, at any rate, from the Lutheran point of view,
that extraordinary painter, Cranach, whose Adams are bearded Apollos of
the complexion of a Red Indian, and his Eves slender, chubby-faced
courtesans, with bullet heads, little shrimps' eyes, lips moulded out of
red pomatum, breasts like apples close under the neck, long, slim legs,
elegantly formed, with the calf high up, and large, flat feet with thick
ankles.
"Such a treatise would carry me too far. It is amusing to dream over,
but not to write. I should do better to seek a less panoramic, a
compacter subject. But what?--Well, I will see later," he concluded,
getting up, for Madame Mesurat jovially announced that dinner was ready.