“Have they found it here?” he asked himself.
He went out to buy the handsomest copy he could find of the “Imitation
of Jesus Christ” thinking that Madame de la Chanterie would wish to read
her chapter that night. When he reached the street he stood a moment
near the door, uncertain which way to take and debating in what
direction he was likely to find a bookseller. As he stood there he heard
the heavy sound of the massive porte-cochere closing.
Two men were leaving the hotel de la Chanterie. If the reader has fully
understood the character of this old house he will know that it was
one of the ancient mansions of the olden time. Manon, herself, when she
called Godefroid that morning, had asked him, smiling, how he had slept
in the hotel de la Chanterie.
Godefroid followed the two men without the slightest intention of
watching them; they took him for an accidental passer, and spoke in
tones which enabled him to hear distinctly in those lonely streets.
The two men passed along the rue Massillon beside the church and crossed
the open space in front of it.
“Well, you see, old man, it is easy enough to catch their sous. Say what
they want you to say, that’s all.”
“But we owe money.”
“To whom?”
“To that lady--”
“I’d like to see that old body try to get it; I’d--”
“You’d pay her.”
“Well, you’re right, for if I paid her I’d get more another time.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to do as they advise, and build up a good
business?”
“Pooh!”
“But she said she would get some one to lend us the money.”
“Then we should have to give up the life of--”
“Well, I’d rather; I’m sick of it; it isn’t being a man at all to be
drunk half one’s time.”
“Yes, but you know the abbe turned his back on old Marin the other day;
he refused him everything.”
“Because old Marin tried to swindle, and nobody can succeed in that but
millionnaires.”
Just then the two men, whose dress seemed to show that they were foremen
in some workshop, turned abruptly round towards the place Maubert by
the bridge of the Hotel-Dieu. Godefroid stepped aside to let them pass.
Seeing him so close behind them they looked rather anxiously at each
other, and their faces expressed a regret for having spoken.
Godefroid was the more interested by this conversation because it
reminded him of the scene between the Abbe de Veze and the workman the
day of his first visit.
Thinking over this circumstance, he went as far as a bookseller’s in the
rue Saint-Jacques, whence he returned with a very handsome copy of the
finest edition published in France of the “Imitation of Jesus Christ.”
Walking slowly back, in order that he might arrive exactly at the dinner
hour, he recalled his own sensations during this morning and he was
conscious of a new impulse in his soul. He was seized by a sudden and
deep curiosity, but his curiosity paled before an inexplicable desire.
He was drawn to Madame de la Chanterie; he felt the keenest desire
to attach himself to her, to devote himself to her, to please her, to
deserve her praise: in short, he felt the first emotions of platonic
love; he saw glimpses of the untold grandeur of that soul, and he longed
to know it in its entirety. He grew impatient to enter the inner lives
of these pure Catholics. In that small company of faithful souls, the
majesty of practical religion was so thoroughly blended with all that
is most majestic in a French woman that Godefroid resolved to leave no
stone unturned to make himself accepted as a true member of the little
body. These feelings would have been unnaturally sudden in a busy
Parisian eagerly occupied with life, but Godefroid was, as we have seen,
in the position of a drowning man who catches at every floating branch
thinking it a solid stay, and his soul, ploughed and furrowed with
trial, was ready to receive all seed.
He found the four friends in the salon, and he presented the book to
Madame de la Chanterie, saying:
“I did not like to deprive you of it to-night.”
“God grant,” she said, smiling, as she looked at the magnificent volume,
“that this may be your last excess of elegance.”
Looking at the clothes of the four men present and observing how in
every particular they were reduced to mere utility and neatness, and
seeing, too, how rigorously the same principle was applied to all the
details of the house, Godefroid understood the value of the reproach so
courteously made to him.
“Madame,” he said, “the persons whom you obliged this morning are
scoundrels; I overheard, without intending it, what they said to each
other when they left the house; it was full of the basest ingratitude.”
“They were the two locksmiths of the rue Mouffetard,” said Madame de la
Chanterie to Monsieur Nicolas; “that is your affair.”
“The fish gets away more than once before it is caught,” said Monsieur
Alain, laughing.
The perfect indifference of Madame de la Chanterie on hearing of the
immediate ingratitude of persons to whom she had, no doubt, given money,
surprised Godefroid, who became thoughtful.
The dinner was enlivened by Monsieur Alain and Monsieur Joseph; but
Monsieur Nicolas remained quiet, sad, and cold; he bore on his features
the ineffaceable imprint of some bitter grief, some eternal sorrow.
Madame de la Chanterie paid equal attentions to all. Godefroid felt
himself observed by these persons, whose prudence equalled their piety;
his vanity led him to imitate their reserve, and he measured his words.
This first day was much more interesting than those which succeeded it.
Godefroid, who found himself set aside from all the serious conferences,
was obliged, during several hours in mornings and evenings when he was
left wholly to himself, to have recourse to the “Imitation of Jesus
Christ;” and he ended by studying that book as a man studies a book when
he has but one, or is a prisoner. A book is then like a woman with whom
we live in solitude; we must either hate or adore that woman, and, in
like manner, we must either enter into the soul of the author or not
read ten lines of his book.
Now, it is impossible not to be impressed by the “Imitation of Jesus
Christ,” which is to dogma what action is to thought. Catholicism
vibrates in it, pulses, breathes, and lives, body to body, with
human life. The book is a sure friend. It speaks to all passions, all
difficulties, even worldly ones; it solves all problems; it is more
eloquent than any preacher, for its voice is your own, it is the voice
within your soul, you hear it with your spirit. It is, in short, the
Gospel translated, adapted to all ages, the summit and crest of
all human situations. It is extraordinary that the Church has never
canonized John Gersen, for the Divine Spirit evidently inspired his pen.
For Godefroid, the hotel de la Chanterie now held a woman and a book;
day by day he loved the woman more; he discovered flowers buried beneath
the snows of winter in her heart; he had glimpses of the joys of a
sacred friendship which religion permits, on which the angels smile;
a friendship which here united these five persons and against which no
evil could prevail.
This is a sentiment higher than all others; a love of soul to soul,
resembling those rarest flowers born on the highest peaks of earth; a
love of which a few examples are offered to humanity from age to age,
by which lovers are sometimes bound together in one being, and which
explains those faithful attachments which are otherwise inexplicable
by the laws of the world. It is a bond without disappointment,
without misunderstanding, without vanity, without strife, without even
contradictions; so completely are the moral natures blended into one.
This sentiment, vast, infinite, born of Catholic charity, Godefroid
foresaw with all its joys. At times he could not believe the spectacle
before his eyes, and he sought for reasons to explain the sublime
friendship of these five persons, wondering in his heart to find true
Catholics, true Christians of the early Church, in the Paris of 1836.