Reason, protesting against the glorification of the absurd and the
deposition of common-sense. Ah! reason, it was through her that he had
suffered, through her alone that he was happy. As he had told Doctor
Chassaigne, his one consuming longing was to satisfy reason ever more and
more, although it might cost him happiness to do so. It was reason, he
now well understood it, whose continual revolt at the Grotto, at the
Basilica, throughout entire Lourdes, had prevented him from believing.
Unlike his old friend--that stricken old man, who was afflicted with such
dolorous senility, who had fallen into second childhood since the
shipwreck of his affections,--he had been unable to kill reason and
humiliate and annihilate himself. Reason remained his sovereign mistress,
and she it was who buoyed him up even amidst the obscurities and failures
of science. Whenever he met with a thing which he could not understand,
it was she who whispered to him, "There is certainly a natural
explanation which escapes me." He repeated that there could be no healthy
ideal outside the march towards the discovery of the unknown, the slow
victory of reason amidst all the wretchedness of body and mind. In the
clashing of the twofold heredity which he had derived from his father,
all brain, and his mother, all faith, he, a priest, found it possible to
ravage his life in order that he might keep his vows. He had acquired
strength enough to master his flesh, but he felt that his paternal
heredity had now definitely gained the upper hand, for henceforth the
sacrifice of his reason had become an impossibility; this he would not
renounce and would not master. No, no, even human suffering, the hallowed
suffering of the poor, ought not to prove an obstacle, enjoining the
necessity of ignorance and folly. Reason before all; in her alone lay
salvation. If at Lourdes, whilst bathed in tears, softened by the sight
of so much affliction, he had said that it was sufficient to weep and
love, he had made a dangerous mistake. Pity was but a convenient
expedient. One must live, one must act; reason must combat suffering,
unless it be desired that the latter should last forever.
However, as the train rolled on and the landscape flew by, a church once
more appeared, this time on the fringe of heaven, some votive chapel
perched upon a hill and surmounted by a lofty statue of the Virgin. And
once more all the pilgrims made the sign of the cross, and once more
Pierre's reverie strayed, a fresh stream of reflections bringing his
anguish back to him. What was this imperious need of the things beyond,
which tortured suffering humanity? Whence came it? Why should equality
and justice be desired when they did not seem to exist in impassive
nature? Man had set them in the unknown spheres of the Mysterious, in the
supernatural realms of religious paradises, and there contented his
ardent thirst for them. That unquenchable thirst for happiness had ever
consumed, and would consume him always. If the Fathers of the Grotto
drove such a glorious trade, it was simply because they made motley out
of what was divine. That thirst for the Divine, which nothing had
quenched through the long, long ages, seemed to have returned with
increased violence at the close of our century of science. Lourdes was a
resounding and undeniable proof that man could never live without the
dream of a Sovereign Divinity, re-establishing equality and re-creating
happiness by dint of miracles. When man has reached the depths of life's
misfortunes, he returns to the divine illusion, and the origin of all
religions lies there. Man, weak and bare, lacks the strength to live
through his terrestrial misery without the everlasting lie of a paradise.
To-day, thought Pierre, the experiment had been made; it seemed that
science alone could not suffice, and that one would be obliged to leave a
door open on the Mysterious.
All at once in the depths of his deeply absorbed mind the words rang out,
A new religion! The door which must be left open on the Mysterious was
indeed a new religion. To subject mankind to brutal amputation, lop off
its dream, and forcibly deprive it of the Marvellous, which it needed to
live as much as it needed bread, would possibly kill it. Would it ever
have the philosophical courage to take life as it is, and live it for its
own sake, without any idea of future rewards and penalties? It certainly
seemed that centuries must elapse before the advent of a society wise
enough to lead a life of rectitude without the moral control of some
cultus and the consolation of superhuman equality and justice. Yes, a new
religion! The call burst forth, resounded within Pierre's brain like the
call of the nations, the eager, despairing desire of the modern soul. The
consolation and hope which Catholicism had brought the world seemed
exhausted after eighteen hundred years full of so many tears, so much
blood, so much vain and barbarous agitation. It was an illusion
departing, and it was at least necessary that the illusion should be
changed. If mankind had long ago darted for refuge into the Christian
paradise, it was because that paradise then opened before it like a fresh
hope. But now a new religion, a new hope, a new paradise, yes, that was
what the world thirsted for, in the discomfort in which it was
struggling. And Father Fourcade, for his part, fully felt such to be the
case; he had not meant to imply anything else when he had given rein to
his anxiety, entreating that the people of the great towns, the dense
mass of the humble which forms the nation, might be brought to Lourdes.
One hundred thousand, two hundred thousand pilgrims at Lourdes each year,
that was, after all, but a grain of sand. It was the people, the whole
people, that was required. But the people has forever deserted the
churches, it no longer puts any soul in the Blessed Virgins which it
manufactures, and nothing nowadays could restore its lost faith. A
Catholic democracy--yes, history would then begin afresh; only were it
possible to create a new Christian people, would not the advent of a new
Saviour, the mighty breath of a new Messiah, have been needed for such a
task?
However, the words still sounded, still rang out in Pierre's mind with
the growing clamour of pealing bells. A new religion; a new religion.
Doubtless it must be a religion nearer to life, giving a larger place to
the things of the world, and taking the acquired truths into due account.
And, above all, it must be a religion which was not an appetite for
death--Bernadette living solely in order that she might die, Doctor
Chassaigne aspiring to the tomb as to the only happiness--for all that
spiritualistic abandonment was so much continuous disorganisation of the
will to live. At bottom of it was hatred to life, disgust with and
cessation of action. Every religion, it is true, is but a promise of
immortality, an embellishment of the spheres beyond, an enchanted garden
to be entered on the morrow of death. Could a new religion ever place
such a garden of eternal happiness on earth? Where was the formula, the
dogma, that would satisfy the hopes of the mankind of to-day? What belief
should be sown to blossom forth in a harvest of strength and peace? How
could one fecundate the universal doubt so that it should give birth to a
new faith? and what sort of illusion, what divine falsehood of any kind
could be made to germinate in the contemporary world, ravaged as it had
been upon all sides, broken up by a century of science?
At that moment, without any apparent transition, Pierre saw the face of
his brother Guillaume arise in the troublous depths of his mind. Still,
he was not surprised; some secret link must have brought that vision
there. Ah! how fond they had been of one another long ago, and what a
good brother that elder brother, so upright and gentle, had been!
Henceforth, also, the rupture was complete; Pierre no longer saw
Guillaume, since the latter had cloistered himself in his chemical
studies, living like a savage in a little suburban house, with a mistress
and two big dogs. Then Pierre's reverie again diverged, and he thought of
that trial in which Guillaume had been mentioned, like one suspected of
having compromising friendships amongst the most violent revolutionaries.
It was related, too, that the young man had, after long researches,
discovered the formula of a terrible explosive, one pound of which would
suffice to blow up a cathedral. And Pierre then thought of those
Anarchists who wished to renew and save the world by destroying it. They
were but dreamers, horrible dreamers; yet dreamers in the same way as
those innocent pilgrims whom he had seen kneeling at the Grotto in an
enraptured flock. If the Anarchists, if the extreme Socialists, demanded
with violence the equality of wealth, the sharing of all the enjoyments
of the world, the pilgrims on their side demanded with tears equality of
health and an equitable sharing of moral and physical peace. The latter
relied on miracles, the former appealed to brute force. At bottom,
however, it was but the same exasperated dream of fraternity and justice,
the eternal desire for happiness--neither poor nor sick left, but bliss
for one and all. And, in fact, had not the primitive Christians been
terrible revolutionaries for the pagan world, which they threatened, and
did, indeed, destroy? They who were persecuted, whom the others sought to
exterminate, are to-day inoffensive, because they have become the Past.
The frightful Future is ever the man who dreams of a future society; even
as to-day it is the madman so wildly bent on social renovation that he
harbours the great black dream of purifying everything by the flame of
conflagrations. This seemed monstrous to Pierre. Yet, who could tell?
Therein, perchance, lay the rejuvenated world of to-morrow.
Astray, full of doubts, he nevertheless, in his horror of violence, made
common cause with old society now reduced to defend itself, unable though
he was to say whence would come the new Messiah of Gentleness, in whose
hands he would have liked to place poor ailing mankind. A new religion,
yes, a new religion. But it is not easy to invent one, and he knew not to
what conclusion to come between the ancient faith, which was dead, and
the young faith of to-morrow, as yet unborn. For his part, in his
desolation, he was only sure of keeping his vow, like an unbelieving
priest watching over the belief of others, chastely and honestly
discharging his duties, with the proud sadness that he had been unable to
renounce his reason as he had renounced his flesh. And for the rest, he
would wait.
However, the train rolled on between large parks, and the engine gave a
prolonged whistle, a joyful flourish, which drew Pierre from his
reflections. The others were stirring, displaying emotion around him. The
train had just left Juvisy, and Paris was at last near at hand, within a
short half-hour's journey. One and all were getting their things
together: the Sabathiers were remaking their little parcels, Elise
Rouquet was giving a last glance at her mirror. For a moment Madame de
Jonquiere again became anxious concerning La Grivotte, and decided that
as the girl was in such a pitiful condition she would have her taken
straight to a hospital on arriving; whilst Marie endeavoured to rouse
Madame Vincent from the torpor in which she seemed determined to remain.
M. de Guersaint, who had been indulging in a little siesta, also had to
be awakened. And at last, when Sister Hyacinthe had clapped her hands,
the whole carriage intonated the "Te Deum," the hymn of praise and
thanksgiving. "/Te Deum, laudamus, te Dominum confitemur/." The voices
rose amidst a last burst of fervour. All those glowing souls returned
thanks to God for the beautiful journey, the marvellous favours that He
had already bestowed on them, and would bestow on them yet again.
At last came the fortifications. The two o'clock sun was slowly
descending the vast, pure heavens, so serenely warm. Distant smoke, a
ruddy smoke, was rising in light clouds above the immensity of Paris like
the scattered, flying breath of that toiling colossus. It was Paris in
her forge, Paris with her passions, her battles, her ever-growling
thunder, her ardent life ever engendering the life of to-morrow. And the
white train, the woeful train of every misery and every dolour, was
returning into it all at full speed, sounding in higher and higher
strains the piercing flourishes of its whistle-calls. The five hundred
pilgrims, the three hundred patients, were about to disappear in the vast
city, fall again upon the hard pavement of life after the prodigious
dream in which they had just indulged, until the day should come when
their need of the consolation of a fresh dream would irresistibly impel
them to start once more on the everlasting pilgrimage to mystery and
forgetfulness.
Ah! unhappy mankind, poor ailing humanity, hungering for illusion, and in
the weariness of this waning century distracted and sore from having too
greedily acquired science; it fancies itself abandoned by the physicians
of both the mind and the body, and, in great danger of succumbing to
incurable disease, retraces its steps and asks the miracle of its cure of
the mystical Lourdes of a past forever dead! Yonder, however, Bernadette,
the new Messiah of suffering, so touching in her human reality,
constitutes the terrible lesson, the sacrifice cut off from the world,
the victim condemned to abandonment, solitude, and death, smitten with
the penalty of being neither woman, nor wife, nor mother, because she
beheld the Blessed Virgin.
THE END