But he could not away with such a monstrous attitude. 'No, no,' he
cried; 'you must change. You have come here, God has led you here, and
you must embrace the opportunity.'
I made a slip in policy; I appealed to the family affections, though I
was speaking to a priest and a soldier, two classes of men
circumstantially divorced from the kind and homely ties of life.
'Your father and mother?' cried the priest. 'Very well; you will convert
them in their turn when you go home.'
I think I see my father's face! I would rather tackle the Gaetulian lion
in his den than embark on such an enterprise against the family
theologian.
But now the hunt was up; priest and soldier were in full cry for my
conversion; and the Work of the Propagation of the Faith, for which the
people of Cheylard subscribed forty-eight francs ten centimes during
1877, was being gallantly pursued against myself. It was an odd but most
effective proselytising. They never sought to convince me in argument,
where I might have attempted some defence; but took it for granted that I
was both ashamed and terrified at my position, and urged me solely on the
point of time. Now, they said, when God had led me to Our Lady of the
Snows, now was the appointed hour.
'Do not be withheld by false shame,' observed the priest, for my
encouragement.
For one who feels very similarly to all sects of religion, and who has
never been able, even for a moment, to weigh seriously the merit of this
or that creed on the eternal side of things, however much he may see to
praise or blame upon the secular and temporal side, the situation thus
created was both unfair and painful. I committed my second fault in
tact, and tried to plead that it was all the same thing in the end, and
we were all drawing near by different sides to the same kind and
undiscriminating Friend and Father. That, as it seems to lay spirits,
would be the only gospel worthy of the name. But different men think
differently; and this revolutionary aspiration brought down the priest
with all the terrors of the law. He launched into harrowing details of
hell. The damned, he said--on the authority of a little book which he
had read not a week before, and which, to add conviction to conviction,
he had fully intended to bring along with him in his pocket--were to
occupy the same attitude through all eternity in the midst of dismal
tortures. And as he thus expatiated, he grew in nobility of aspect with
his enthusiasm.
As a result the pair concluded that I should seek out the Prior, since
the Abbot was from home, and lay my case immediately before him.
'C'est mon conseil comme ancien militaire,' observed the commandant; 'et
celui de monsieur comme pretre.'
'Oui,' added the cure, sententiously nodding; 'comme ancien militaire--et
comme pretre.'
At this moment, whilst I was somewhat embarrassed how to answer, in came
one of the monks, a little brown fellow, as lively as a grig, and with an
Italian accent, who threw himself at once into the contention, but in a
milder and more persuasive vein, as befitted one of these pleasant
brethren. Look at him, he said. The rule was very hard; he would have
dearly liked to stay in his own country, Italy--it was well known how
beautiful it was, the beautiful Italy; but then there were no Trappists
in Italy; and he had a soul to save; and here he was.
I am afraid I must be at bottom, what a cheerful Indian critic has dubbed
me, 'a faddling hedonist,' for this description of the brother's motives
gave me somewhat of a shock. I should have preferred to think he had
chosen the life for its own sake, and not for ulterior purposes; and this
shows how profoundly I was out of sympathy with these good Trappists,
even when I was doing my best to sympathise. But to the cure the
argument seemed decisive.
'Hear that!' he cried. 'And I have seen a marquis here, a marquis, a
marquis'--he repeated the holy word three times over--'and other persons
high in society; and generals. And here, at your side, is this
gentleman, who has been so many years in armies--decorated, an old
warrior. And here he is, ready to dedicate himself to God.'
I was by this time so thoroughly embarrassed that I pled cold feet, and
made my escape from the apartment. It was a furious windy morning, with
a sky much cleared, and long and potent intervals of sunshine; and I
wandered until dinner in the wild country towards the east, sorely
staggered and beaten upon by the gale, but rewarded with some striking
views.
At dinner the Work of the Propagation of the Faith was recommenced, and
on this occasion still more distastefully to me. The priest asked me
many questions as to the contemptible faith of my fathers, and received
my replies with a kind of ecclesiastical titter.
'Your sect,' he said once; 'for I think you will admit it would be doing
it too much honour to call it a religion.'
'As you please, monsieur,' said I. 'La parole est a vous.'
At length I grew annoyed beyond endurance; and although he was on his own
ground and, what is more to the purpose, an old man, and so holding a
claim upon my toleration, I could not avoid a protest against this
uncivil usage. He was sadly discountenanced.
'I assure you,' he said, 'I have no inclination to laugh in my heart. I
have no other feeling but interest in your soul.'
And there ended my conversion. Honest man! he was no dangerous deceiver;
but a country parson, full of zeal and faith. Long may he tread Gevaudan
with his kilted skirts--a man strong to walk and strong to comfort his
parishioners in death! I daresay he would beat bravely through a
snowstorm where his duty called him; and it is not always the most
faithful believer who makes the cunningest apostle.