“My darlings,” said the comtesse, “you might go to bed.”
The three children, two girls and a boy, rose and kissed their
grandmother. Then they said good-night to M. le Cure, who had dined at
the chateau, as was his custom every Thursday.
The Abbe Mauduit lifted two of the children on his knees, passing his
long arms clad in black round their necks, and kissing them tenderly on
the forehead as he drew their heads toward him as a father might.
Then he set them down on the ground, and the little beings went off, the
boy ahead, and the girls following.
“You are fond of children, M. le Cure,” said the comtesse.
“Very fond, madame.”
The old woman raised her bright eyes toward the priest.
“And--has your solitude never weighed too heavily on you?”
“Yes, sometimes.”
He became silent, hesitated, and then added: “But I was never made for
ordinary life.”
“What do you know about it?”
“Oh! I know very well. I was made to be a priest; I followed my
vocation.”
The comtesse kept staring at him:
“Come now, M. le Cure, tell me this--tell me how it was you resolved
to renounce forever all that makes the rest of us love life--all that
consoles and sustains us? What is it that drove you, impelled you,
to separate yourself from the great natural path of marriage and the
family? You are neither an enthusiast nor a fanatic, neither a gloomy
person nor a sad person. Was it some incident, some sorrow, that led you
to take life vows?”
The Abbe Mauduit rose and approached the fire, then, holding toward the
flame his big shoes, such as country priests generally wear, he seemed
still hesitating as to what reply he should make.
He was a tall old man with white hair, and for the last twenty years had
been pastor of the parish of Saint-Antoine-du-Rocher. The peasants said
of him: “There's a good man for you!” And indeed he was a good man,
benevolent, friendly to all, gentle, and, to crown all, generous. Like
Saint Martin, he would have cut his cloak in two. He laughed readily,
and wept also, on slight provocation, just like a woman--which
prejudiced him more or less in the hard minds of the country folk.
The old Comtesse de Saville, living in retirement in her chateau of
Rocher, in order to bring up her grandchildren, after the successive
deaths of her son and her daughter-in-law, was very much attached to her
cure, and used to say of him: “What a heart he has!”
He came every Thursday to spend the evening with the comtesse, and they
were close friends, with the frank and honest friendship of old people.
She persisted:
“Look here, M. le Cure! it is your turn now to make a confession!”
He repeated: “I was not made for ordinary life. I saw it fortunately
in time, and I have had many proofs since that I made no mistake on the
point:
“My parents, who were mercers in Verdiers, and were quite well to do,
had great ambitions for me. They sent me to a boarding school while I
was very young. No one knows what a boy may suffer at school through
the mere fact of separation, of isolation. This monotonous life without
affection is good for some, and detestable for others. Young people are
often more sensitive than one supposes, and by shutting them up thus too
soon, far from those they love, we may develop to an exaggerated
extent a sensitiveness which is overwrought and may become sickly and
dangerous.
“I scarcely ever played; I had no companions; I passed my hours in
homesickness; I spent the whole night weeping in my bed. I sought to
bring before my mind recollections of home, trifling memories of little
things, little events. I thought incessantly of all I had left behind
there. I became almost imperceptibly an over-sensitive youth to whom the
slightest annoyances were terrible griefs.
“In this way I remained taciturn, self-absorbed, without expansion,
without confidants. This mental excitement was going on secretly and
surely. The nerves of children are quickly affected, and one should
see to it that they live a tranquil life until they are almost fully
developed. But who ever reflects that, for certain boys, an unjust
imposition may be as great a pang as the death of a friend in later
years? Who can explain why certain young temperaments are liable to
terrible emotions for the slightest cause, and may eventually become
morbid and incurable?
“This was my case. This faculty of regret developed in me to such an
extent that my existence became a martyrdom.
“I did not speak about it; I said nothing about it; but gradually I
became so sensitive that my soul resembled an open wound. Everything
that affected me gave me painful twitchings, frightful shocks, and
consequently impaired my health. Happy are the men whom nature has
buttressed with indifference and armed with stoicism.
“I reached my sixteenth year. An excessive timidity had arisen from this
abnormal sensitiveness. Feeling myself unprotected from all the attacks
of chance or fate, I feared every contact, every approach, every
current. I lived as though I were threatened by an unknown and always
expected misfortune. I did not venture either to speak or do anything
in public. I had, indeed, the feeling that life, is a battle, a dreadful
conflict in which one receives terrible blows, grievous, mortal wounds.
In place of cherishing, like all men, a cheerful anticipation of the
morrow, I had only a confused fear of it, and felt in my own mind
a desire to conceal myself to avoid that combat in which I would be
vanquished and slain.
“As soon as my studies were finished, they gave me six months' time to
choose a career. A very simple occurrence showed me clearly, all of
a sudden, the diseased condition of my mind, made me understand the
danger, and determined me to flee from it.
“Verdiers is a little town surrounded with plains and woods. In the
central street stands my parents' house. I now passed my days far from
this dwelling which I had so much regretted, so much desired. Dreams had
reawakened in me, and I walked alone in the fields in order to let them
escape and fly away. My father and mother, quite occupied with business,
and anxious about my future, talked to me only about their profits
or about my possible plans. They were fond of me after the manner of
hardheaded, practical people; they had more reason than heart in their
affection for me. I lived imprisoned in my thoughts, and vibrating with
my eternal sensitiveness.
“Now, one evening, after a long walk, as I was making my way home with
great strides so as not to be late, I saw a dog trotting toward me. He
was a species of red spaniel, very lean, with long curly ears.
“When he was ten paces away from me he stopped. I did the same. Then he
began wagging his tail, and came over to me with short steps and nervous
movements of his whole body, bending down on his paws as if appealing to
me, and softly shaking his head. I spoke to him. He then began to crawl
along in such a sad, humble, suppliant manner that I felt the tears
coming into my eyes. I approached him; he ran away, then he came back
again; and I bent down on one knee trying to coax him to approach me,
with soft words. At last, he was within reach of my hands, and I gently
and very carefully stroked him.
“He gained courage, gradually rose and, placing his paws on my
shoulders, began to lick my face. He followed me to the house.
“This was really the first being I had passionately loved, because
he returned my affection. My attachment to this animal was certainly
exaggerated and ridiculous. It seemed to me in a confused sort of way
that we were two brothers, lost on this earth, and therefore isolated
and without defense, one as well as the other. He never again quitted my
side. He slept at the foot of my bed, ate at the table in spite of the
objections of my parents, and followed me in my solitary walks.
“I often stopped at the side of a ditch, and sat down in the grass. Sam
immediately rushed up, lay down at my feet, and lifted up my hand with
his muzzle that I might caress him.
“One day toward the end of June, as we were on the road from
Saint-Pierre de Chavrol, I saw the diligence from Pavereau coming along.
Its four horses were going at a gallop, with its yellow body, and its
imperial with the black leather hood. The coachman cracked his whip;
a cloud of dust rose up under the wheels of the heavy vehicle, then
floated behind, just as a cloud would do.
“Suddenly, as the vehicle came close to me, Sam, perhaps frightened by
the noise and wishing to join me, jumped in front of it. A horse's
hoof knocked him down. I saw him roll over, turn round, fall back again
beneath the horses' feet, then the coach gave two jolts, and behind it
I saw something quivering in the dust on the road. He was nearly cut in
two; all his intestines were hanging out and blood was spurting from the
wound. He tried to get up, to walk, but he could only move his two front
paws, and scratch the ground with them, as if to make a hole. The two
others were already dead. And he howled dreadfully, mad with pain.
“He died in a few minutes. I cannot describe how much I felt and
suffered. I was confined to my room for a month.
“One night, my father, enraged at seeing me so affected by such a
trifling occurrence, exclaimed:
“'How will it be when you have real griefs--if you lose your wife or
children?'
“His words haunted me and I began to see my condition clearly. I
understood why all the small miseries of each day assumed in my eyes the
importance of a catastrophe; I saw that I was organized in such a
way that I suffered dreadfully from everything, that every painful
impression was multiplied by my diseased sensibility, and an atrocious
fear of life took possession of me. I was without passions, without
ambitions; I resolved to sacrifice possible joys in order to avoid sure
sorrows. Existence is short, but I made up my mind to spend it in
the service of others, in relieving their troubles and enjoying their
happiness. Having no direct experience of either one or the other, I
should only experience a milder form of emotion.
“And if you only knew how, in spite of this, misery tortures me, ravages
me! But what would formerly have been an intolerable affliction has
become commiseration, pity.
“These sorrows which cross my path at every moment, I could not endure
if they affected me directly. I could not have seen one of my children
die without dying myself. And I have, in spite of everything, preserved
such a mysterious, overwhelming fear of events that the sight of the
postman entering my house makes a shiver pass every day through my
veins, and yet I have nothing to be afraid of now.”
The Abbe Mauduit ceased speaking. He stared into the fire in the huge
grate, as if he saw there mysterious things, all the unknown of the
existence he might have passed had he been more fearless in the face of
suffering.
He added, then, in a subdued tone:
“I was right. I was not made for this world.”
The comtesse said nothing at first; but at length, after a long silence,
she remarked:
“For my part, if I had not my grandchildren, I believe I would not have
the courage to live.”
And the cure rose up without saying another word.
As the servants were asleep in the kitchen, she accompanied him herself
to the door, which looked out on the garden, and she saw his tall
shadow, lit up by the reflection of the lamp, disappearing through the
gloom of night.
Then she came back and sat down before the fire, and pondered over many
things we never think of when we are young.