I.
Upon a hill, at the end of a road, are the remains of the abbey of
Saint-Savin. The old church was, they say, built by Charlemagne; the
stones, eaten and burned, are crumbling, the disjointed flags are
incrusted with moss; from the garden the eye takes in the valley, brown
in the evening light; the winding Gave already lifts into the air its
trail of pale smoke.
It was sweet here to be a monk; it is in such places that the
_Imitation_ should be read; in such places was it written. For a
sensitive and noble nature, a convent was then the sole refuge; all
around wounded and repelled it.
Around what a horrible world! Brigand lords who plunder travellers and
butcher each other; artisans and soldiers who stuff themselves with meat
{316}and yoke themselves together like brutes; peasants whose huts they
burn, whose wives they violate, who out of despair and hunger slip away
to tumult.
[Illustration: 342]
No remembrance of good, nor hope of better. How sweet it is to renounce
action, company, speech, to hide one’s self, forget outside things, and
to listen, in security and solitude, to the divine voices that, like
collected springs, murmur peacefully in the depths of the heart!
How easy is it here to forget the world! Neither books, nor news, nor
science; no one travels and no one thinks. This valley is the whole
universe; from time to time a peasant passes, or a man-at-arms. A moment
more and he is gone; the mind has retained no more trace of him than
the empty road. Every morning the eyes find again the great woods asleep
upon {317}the mountain’s brow, and the layers of clouds stretched out
on the edge of the sky. The rocks light up, the summit of the forests
trembles beneath the rising breeze, the shadow changes at the foot of
the oaks, and the mind takes on the calm and the monotony of these slow
sights by which it is nourished. Meanwhile the responses of the monks
drone confusedly in the chapel; then their measured tread resounds
in the high corridors. Each day the same hours bring back the same
impressions and the same images. The soul empties itself of worldly
ideas, and the heavenly dream, which begins to flow within, little by
little heaps up the silent wave that is going to fill it.
Far from it are science and treatises on doctrine. They drain the stream
instead of swelling it. Will so many words augment peace and inward
tenderness? “The kingdom of God consisteth not in word, but in power.”
The heart must be moved, tears must flow, the arms must open toward an
unseen place, and the sudden trouble will not be the work of the lips,
but the touch of the hand divine. This hand it is which doth “lift up
the humble mind;” this it is which teaches “without noise of words,
without confusion of opinions, without ambition of honor, without the
scuffling of arguments.” A light penetrates, and all at once the eyes
see as it were a new heaven and a new earth. {318}
[Illustration: 344]
The men of the age perceive in its events only the events themselves;
the solitary discovers behind the veil of things created the presence
and the will of God. He it is who by the sun warms the earth, and by the
rain refreshes it. He it is who sustains the mountains and envelops
them at the setting of the sun in the repose of night. The heart feels
everywhere, around and inside of things, an immense goodness, like a
vague ocean of light which penetrates and animates the world; to this
goodness it intrusts and abandons itself, like a child that drops asleep
at evening on its mother’s knees. A hundred times a day divine things
become palpable to it. The light streams through the morning mist,
chaste as the brow of the virgin; the {319} stars shine like celestial
eyes, and yonder when the sun goes down the clouds kneel at the brink of
heaven, like a blazing choir of seraphim.
[Illustration: 346]
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{321}The heathen were indeed blind in their thoughts upon the grandeur
of nature. What is our earth, but a narrow pass between two eternal
worlds! Down there, beneath our feet, are the damned and their pains;
they howl in their caverns and the earth trembles; without the sign of
God, these walls would to-morrow be swallowed up in their abyss; they
often come out thence by the bare precipices; the passers-by hear
their shouts of laughter in the cascades; behind those gnarled beeches,
glimpses have been caught of their grimacing countenances, their eyes
of flame, and more than one herdsman, wandering at night towards their
haunt, has been found in the morning with hair on end and twisted neck.
But up there, in the azure, above the crystal, are the angels; many a
time has the vault opened, and, in a long trail of light, the saints
have appeared more radiant than molten silver, suddenly visible, then
all at once vanished. A monk saw them; the last abbot was informed by
them, in a vision, of the spring which healed his diseases. Another,
long time ago, hunting wild beasts one day, saw a great stag stop before
him with eyes filled with tears; when he had looked, he saw upon its
antlers the cross of Jesus Christ, fell on his knees, and, on his
{322}return to the convent, lived for thirty years doing penance in his
cell, without any desire to leave it. Another, a very young man, who
had gone into a forest of pines, heard far off a nightingale which sang
marvellously; he drew near in astonishment, and it seemed to him that
everything was transfigured; the brooks flowed as it were a long stream
of tears, and again seemed full of pearls; the violet fringes of the
firs shone magnificently, like a stole, upon their funereal trunks.
The rays ran along the leaves, empurpled and azured as if by cathedral
windows; flowers of gold and velvet opened their bleeding hearts in the
midst of the rocks. He approached the bird, which he could not see
among the branches, but which sang like the finest organ, with notes so
piercing and so tender, that his heart was at once torn and melted. He
saw nothing more of what was about him, and it seemed to him that his
soul detached itself from his breast, and went away to the bird, and
mingled itself with the voice which rose ever vibrating more and more
in a song of ecstasy and anguish, as if it had been the inner voice of
Christ to his Father when he was dying on the cross. When he returned
towards the convent, he was astonished to find that the walls, which
were quite new, had become brown as through age, that the little lindens
in the garden were now great trees, that no face among the {323}monks
was familiar to him, and that no one remembered to have seen him.
Finally an infirm old monk called to mind that in former times they had
talked to him of a novice who had gone, a hundred years before, into the
pine forest, but who had not come back, so that no one had ever known
what had happened to him. Thus transported and forgotten will those live
who shall hear the inner voices. God envelops us, and we have only to
abandon ourselves to him in order to feel him.
For he does not hold communion through outside things only; he is within
us, and our thoughts are his words. He who retires within himself, who
listens no more to the news of this world, who effaces from his mind
its reasonings and imaginations, and who holds himself in expectancy, in
silence and solitude, sees little by little a thought rise in him which
is not his own, which comes and goes without his will, and, whatever he
may will, which fills and enchants him, like those words, heard in a
dream, which make tranquil the soul with their mysterious song. The soul
listens and no longer perceives the flight of the hours; all its powers
are arrested, and its movements are nothing but the impressions which
come to it from above. Christ speaks, it answers; it asks, and he
teaches; it is afflicted, and he consoles. “My son, now will I teach
thee the way of peace and true liberty. {324}O Lord, I beseech thee, do
as thou sayest, for this is delightful for me to hear. _Be desirous, my
son, to do the will of another rather than thine own, choose always to
have less rather than more. Seek always the lowest place, and to be
inferior to every one. Wish always, and pray, that the will of God
may be wholly fulfilled in thee. Behold such a man entereth within
the borders of peace and rest._ O Lord, this short discourse of thine
containeth within itself much perfection. It is little to be spoken,
but full of meaning, and abundant in fruit.” How languid is everything
alongside of this divine company! How all which departs from it is
unsightly! “When Jesus is present, all is well, and nothing seems
difficult: but when Jesus is absent everything is hard. When Jesus
speaks not inwardly to us, all other comfort is nothing worth; but if
Jesus speak but one word, we feel great consolation. How dry and hard
art thou without Jesus! How foolish and vain, if thou desire anything
out of Jesus! Is not this a greater loss than if thou shouldest lose the
whole world? He that findeth Jesus, findeth a good treasure, yea, a Good
above all good. And he that loseth Jesus, loseth much indeed, yea, more
than the whole world! Most poor is he who liveth without Jesus; and he
most rich who is well with Jesus. It is matter of great skill to know
how to hold converse with Jesus; and to know how to keep Jesus, a
{325}point of great wisdom. Be thou humble and peaceable, and Jesus will
be with thee. Be devout and quiet, and Jesus will stay with thee..Thou
mayest soon drive away Jesus and lose his favor if thou wilt turn aside
to outward things. And if thou shouldest drive him from thee, and lose
him, unto whom wilt thou flee, and whom wilt thou seek for thy friend?
Without a friend thou canst not well live; and if Jesus be not above all
a friend to thee, thou shalt be sad and desolate.”--“Behold! My God,
and all things.” What can I wish more, and what happier thing can I
long for? “My God, and all things.” To him that understandeth, enough is
said; and to repeat it often is delightful to him that loveth.
Some died of this love, lost in ecstasies or drowned in a divine
languor. These are the great poets of the middle ages.
[Illustration: 351]
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[Illustration: 352]