Once more,--is it for the last time? I get out at the Northern Station.
I do not ask now, "What have I to do here?" as I feel at home in the
chief city of Europe. Gradually a resolve has been ripening in me, not
quite clear I confess, to take refuge in the Benedictine cloister at
Solesmes.
But first I go and visit my old haunts with their painful, and yet such
pleasant, memories,--the garden of the Luxembourg, the Hotel Orfila,
the churchyard of Mont Parnasse, and the Jardin des Plantes. In the Rue
Censier I remain standing a moment in order to cast a stolen look into
the garden of my hotel on the Rue de la Clef. Great is my emotion at
the sight of the pavilion containing the room where I escaped death in
that terrible night when I unconsciously wrestled with it. My feelings
may be imagined as I turned my steps to the Jardin des Plantes and
perceived the traces of the waterspout which devastated my favourite
walk before the bears' and bisons' houses. On my return, in the
street Saint Jacques I discover a spiritualist bookshop and buy Allan
Kardec's _Book of Spirits_, hitherto unknown to me. I read it, and
find it is Swedenborg and Blavatsky over again; and as I find my own
"case" treated of everywhere, I cannot conceal from myself that I am a
spiritualist. I, a spiritualist! Could I have believed I should end as
one when I laughed at my former chief in the royal library at Stockholm
because he was an adherent of spiritualism! One knows not into what
harbour one will finally run.
While I continue my studies in Allan Kardec, I notice a gradual
reappearance of the symptoms which disquieted me before. The noises
over my head recommenced, I am again attacked by compression of the
chest, and feel afraid of everything. I do not, however, succumb, and
continue to read the spiritualistic magazines while I keep a careful
watch over my thoughts and acts. Then, after quite plain warnings, I am
woken up one night exactly at two o'clock by a heart attack.
I understand the hint. It is forbidden to penetrate into the secrets
of the Powers, I throw away the forbidden books, and peace immediately
returns--a sufficient proof for me that I have followed the Higher
Will. On the following Sunday I am present at vespers in Nôtre Dame.
Deeply impressed by the ceremony, although I do not understand a word
of it, I burst into tears, and leave the cathedral with the conviction
that here, in the Mother Church, is the harbour of salvation. But no!
It was not so! For the next day I read in _La Presse_ that the Abbot of
the Solesmes Convent has just been deposed for immorality.
"Am I, then, always to be the plaything and sport of the invisible
Powers?" I exclaimed, struck by so well-aimed a blow. Then I was
silent, and suppressed unseemly criticism, determined to await the end.
The next book which accidentally falls into my hands allows me to catch
a glimpse of the purposes of my Guide. It is Haubert's _Temptation
of St. Anthony_. "All those who are tormented by longing for God I
have devoured," says the Sphinx. This book makes me ill, and I am
alarmed when I recognise in it the thoughts which I have expressed in
my mystery-play mentioned above--regarding the admission of evil into
the kingdom of the good God. After reading it, I threw it away like a
temptation of the Devil, who is the author of it. "Anthony makes the
sign of the cross, and resumes his prayers." So the book ends, and I
follow his example.
After that, and at the propitious moment, I come across Huysmans' _En
route_. Why did not this confession of an occultist fall into my hands
before? Because it was necessary that two analogous destinies should
be developed on parallel lines, so that one might be strengthened by
the other. It is the history of an over-curious man, who challenges
the Sphinx and is devoured by her, that his soul may be delivered at
the foot of the Cross. Well, as far as I am concerned, a Catholic may
go to the Trappists and confess to the priest; for my part, however,
it is enough that my sin be publicly acknowledged in writing. Besides,
the eight weeks which I have spent in Paris writing the present book
may well be the equivalent and more of entering a convent, because I
have lived a thorough hermit's life. A little room, not larger than
a monk's cell, with a barred window high up under the ceiling, has
been my dwelling. Through the bars of the window, which looks into
a deep courtyard, I can see a fragment of the sky and a grey wall
overgrown with ivy which climbs upward to the light. My loneliness,
which I find terrible in itself, is still more oppressive in the
restaurant among a noisy crowd of people twice a-day. Add to this the
cold--a perpetual draught through the room which has given me violent
neuralgia,--pecuniary anxieties with no means of relieving them, the
daily increasing bill, and it may be imagined what the total effect is!
And then the pangs of conscience! Formerly when I regarded myself as
responsible, it was only the remembrance of committed follies that
pained me. Now it is the evil itself, my sinful acts, which constitute
my scourge. To crown all, my past life appears to me merely as a
network of crime, a skein composed of godlessness, wickednesses,
blunders, brutalities in word and act Whole scenes out of my past
unrolled before my gaze. I see myself in this and that situation, and
always a preposterous one. I am astonished that anyone has ever been
able to love me. I accuse myself of every possible crime; there is not
a meanness, not a disagreeable act, which is not marked in black chalk
on a white slate. I am filled with terror at myself, and would like to
die.
There are moments when shame sends the blood to my cheeks and to my
ear-tips. Selfishness, ingratitude, malice, envy, pride--all the
deadly sins weave their ghostly dance before my awakened conscience.
While my mind thus tortures itself, my health deteriorates, my strength
decreases, and, together with the emaciation of the body, the soul
begins to have a presentiment of her deliverance, from the mire.
At present I read Töpffer's Le Presbytere and Dickens's _Christmas
Tales_, and they impart to me an indescribable inward calm and joy. I
return to the ideals of the best period of my youth, and recover the
treasures which I had squandered in the game of life. Faith returns,
and with it, trust in the natural goodness of men; faith in innocence,
unselfishness, virtue.
Virtue! This word has disappeared from modern use; it has been declared
null and void and thoroughly false.
Just now I see in the papers that my drama, _Herr Bengt's Wife_, has
been acted in _Copenhagen_. In this play love and virtue triumph just
as in the _Secret of Gilde_. The drama has not pleased the public any
more than when it was first acted in 1882. Why? Because this fuss about
virtue is considered idle talk.
I have again read Maupassant's _Horla_. That is the finale out of _Don
Juan_ over again. Some one steals unseen into the bedroom in the
middle of the night. He drinks water and milk, and finishes by sucking
the blood of the wretched Don Juan, who, hunted to death, is forced to
lay hands on himself.
That is a real experience. I recognise myself in it, and 1 confess that
my senses are disturbed; but some one has a hand in it.
* * * * *
My health constantly gets worse, for there are cracks in the wall so
that smoke penetrates into my room. To-day when I walked in the street
the pavement moved under my feet like the deck of a ship swaying up and
down. Only with considerable difficulty can I make the ascent to the
Garden of the Luxembourg. My appetite grows continually less, and I
only eat in order to still the pangs of hunger.
An occurrence which has often happened since my arrival in Paris has
caused me to make various reflections. Inside my coat, on the left
side, exactly over the heart, there is heard a regular ticking; it
reminds me of the ticking noise in walls produced by the insect called,
in Sweden, "the carpenter" and also the "death-watch," believed to
presage somebody's death. I thought at first it was my watch, but found
it was not so, as the ticking continued after I had laid the watch
aside. It is not the buckle of my suspenders, nor the lining of my
vest. I accept the explanation of the death-watch, as it suits me best.
A few nights ago I had a dream which again aroused my longing to be
able to die, by holding out the hope of a better existence, where there
is no danger of a relapse into the misery of life. Having gone too far
on a projecting ledge bounded by a steep precipice hid in darkness, I
fell head foremost in an abyss. But strangely enough I fell upwards
instead of downwards. I was closely surrounded by a dazzling halo of
light, and I saw----. What I saw gave me two simultaneous ideas, "I am
dead, and I am delivered." A feeling of the greatest happiness overcame
me, together with the consciousness that the other life was now over.
Light, purity, freedom, filled my spirit, and as I cried, "God!" I
obtained the certainty that I had won forgiveness, that hell was behind
me, and that heaven was open. Since that night I feel still more
homeless than before in this world, and like a tired, weary child, I
long to be able to "go home" to rest my heavy head on a mother's bosom,
to sleep on the lap of a mother, the pure spouse of an infinite God,
who calls Himself my Father, and whom I dare not approach.
But this wish is connected with another--to see the Alps, and more
especially the Dent du Midi in the Canton Valais. I love this mountain
more than the other Alps, without being able to say why. Perhaps it is
the remembrance of my residence on the Lake of Geneva, where I wrote
_Real Utopias_, and of the scenery there which reminded me of heaven.
There I have spent the most beautiful hours of my life, there have I
loved,--loved wife, children, humankind, the universe, God. "I lift up
my hands to God's mountain and house."
Paris, _October_ 1897.