The following day, while the soldiers were embarking, the general went
up to the convent to be present at vespers. He found the church deserted
by the townspeople, who in spite of their natural devotion were
attracted to the port by the embarkation of the troops. The Frenchman,
glad to find himself alone in the church, took pains to make the clink
of his spurs resound through the vaulted roof; he walked noisily, and
coughed, and spoke aloud to himself, hoping to inform the nuns, but
especially the Sister at the organ, that if the French soldiers were
departing, one at least remained behind. Was this singular method of
communication heard and understood? The general believed it was. In the
Magnificat the organ seemed to give an answer which came to him in the
vibrations of the air. The soul of the nun floated towards him on the
wings of the notes she touched, quivering with the movements of the
sound. The music burst forth with power; it glorified the church. This
hymn of joy, consecrated by the sublime liturgy of Roman Christianity to
the uplifting of the soul in presence of the splendors of the
ever-living God, became the utterance of a heart terrified at its own
happiness in presence of the splendors of a perishable love, which still
lived, and came to move it once more beyond the tomb where this woman
had buried herself, to rise again the bride of Christ.
The organ is beyond all question the finest, the most daring, the most
magnificent of the instruments created by human genius. It is an
orchestra in itself, from which a practiced hand may demand all things;
for it expresses all things. Is it not, as it were, a coign of vantage,
where the soul may poise itself ere it springs into space, bearing, as
it flies, the listening mind through a thousand scenes of life towards
the infinite which parts earth from heaven? The longer a poet listens to
its gigantic harmonies, the more fully will he comprehend that between
kneeling humanity and the God hidden by the dazzling rays of the Holy of
Holies, the hundred voices of terrestrial choirs can alone bridge the
vast distance and interpret to Heaven the prayers of men in all the
omnipotence of their desires, in the diversities of their woe, with the
tints of their meditations and their ecstasies, with the impetuous
spring of their repentance, and the thousand imaginations of their
manifold beliefs. Yes! beneath these soaring vaults the harmonies born
of the genius of sacred things find a yet unheard-of grandeur, which
adorns and strengthens them. Here the dim light, the deep silence, the
voices alternating with the solemn tones of the organ, seem like a veil
through which the luminous attributes of God himself pierce and radiate.
Yet all these sacred riches now seem flung like a grain of incense on
the frail altar of an earthly love, in presence of the eternal throne of
a jealous and avenging Deity. The joy of the nun had not the gravity
which properly belongs to the solemnity of the Magnificat. She gave to
the music rich and graceful modulations, whose rhythms breathed of human
gayety; her measures ran into the brilliant cadences of a great singer
striving to express her love, and the notes rose buoyantly like the
carol of a bird by the side of its mate. At moments she darted back into
the past, as if to sport there or to weep there for an instant. Her
changing moods had something discomposed about them, like the agitations
of a happy woman rejoicing at the return of her lover. Then, as these
supple strains of passionate emotion ceased, the soul that spoke
returned upon itself; the musician passed from the major to the minor
key, and told her hearer the story of her present. She revealed to him
her long melancholy, the slow malady of her moral being,--every day a
feeling crushed, every night a thought subdued, hour by hour a heart
burning down to ashes. After soft modulations the music took on slowly,
tint by tint, the hue of deepest sadness. Soon it poured forth in
echoing torrents the well-springs of grief, till suddenly the higher
notes struck clear like the voice of angels, as if to tell to her lost
love--lost, but not forgotten--that the reunion of their souls must be
in heaven, and only there: hope most precious! Then came the Amen. In
that no joy, no tears, nor sadness, nor regrets, but a return to God.
The last chord that sounded was grave, solemn, terrible. The musician
revealed the nun in the garb of her vocation; and as the thunder of the
basses rolled away, causing the hearer to shudder through his whole
being, she seemed to sink into the tomb from which for a brief moment
she had risen. As the echoes slowly ceased to vibrate along the vaulted
roofs, the church, made luminous by the music, fell suddenly into
profound obscurity.
The general, carried away by the course of this powerful genius, had
followed her, step by step, along her way. He comprehended in their full
meaning the pictures that gleamed through that burning symphony; for him
those chords told all. For him, as for the Sister, this poem of sound
was the future, the past, the present. Music, even the music of an
opera, is it not to tender and poetic souls, to wounded and suffering
hearts, a text which they interpret as their memories need? If the heart
of a poet must be given to a musician, must not poetry and love be
listeners ere the great musical works of art are understood? Religion,
love, and music: are they not the triple expression of one fact, the
need of expansion, the need of touching with their own infinite the
infinite beyond them, which is in the fibre of all noble souls? These
three forms of poesy end in God, who alone can unwind the knot of
earthly emotion. Thus this holy human trinity joins itself to the
holiness of God, of whom we make to ourselves no conception unless we
surround him by the fires of love and the golden cymbals of music and
light and harmony.
The French general divined that on this desert rock, surrounded by the
surging seas, the nun had cherished music to free her soul of the excess
of passion that consumed it. Did she offer her love as a homage to God?
Did the love triumph over the vows she had made to Him? Questions
difficult to answer. But, beyond all doubt, the lover had found in a
heart dead to the world a love as passionate as that which burned
within his own.
When vespers ended he returned to the house of the alcalde, where he was
quartered. Giving himself over, a willing prey, to the delights of a
success long expected, laboriously sought, his mind at first could dwell
on nothing else,--he was still loved. Solitude had nourished the love of
that heart, just as his own had thriven on the barriers, successively
surmounted, which this woman had placed between herself and him. This
ecstasy of the spirit had its natural duration; then came the desire to
see this woman, to withdraw her from God, to win her back to himself,--a
bold project, welcome to a bold man. After the evening repast, he
retired to his room to escape questions and think in peace, and remained
plunged in deep meditation throughout the night. He rose early and went
to Mass. He placed himself close to the latticed screen, his brow
touching the brown curtain. He longed to rend it away; but he was not
alone, his host had accompanied him, and the least imprudence might
compromise the future of his love and ruin his new-found hopes. The
organ was played, but not by the same hand; the musician of the last two
days was absent from its key-board. All was chill and pale to the
general. Was his mistress worn out by the emotions which had wellnigh
broken down his own vigorous heart? Had she so truly shared and
comprehended his faithful and eager love that she now lay exhausted and
dying in her cell? At the moment when such thoughts as these rose in the
general's mind, he heard beside him the voice beloved; he knew the clear
ring of its tones. The voice, slightly changed by a tremor which gave it
the timid grace and modesty of a young girl, detached itself from the
volume of song, like the voice of a prima donna in the harmonies of her
final notes. It gave to the ear an impression like the effect to the eye
of a fillet of silver or gold threading a dark frieze. It was indeed
she! Still Parisian, she had not lost her gracious charm, though she had
forsaken the coronet and adornments of the world for the frontlet and
serge of a Carmelite. Having revealed her love the night before in the
praises addressed to the Lord of all, she seemed now to say to her
lover:--"Yes, it is I: I am here. I love forever; yet I am aloof from
love. Thou shalt hear me; my soul shall enfold thee; but I must stay
beneath the brown shroud of this choir, from which no power can tear me.
Thou canst not see me."
"It is she!" whispered the general to himself, as he raised his head and
withdrew his hands from his face; for he had not been able to bear erect
the storm of feeling that shook his heart as the voice vibrated through
the arches and blended with the murmur of the waves. A storm raged
without, yet peace was within the sanctuary. The rich voice still
caressed the ear, and fell like balm upon the parched heart of the
lover; it flowered in the air about him, from which he breathed the
emanations of her spirit exhaling her love through the aspirations of
its prayer.
The alcalde came to rejoin his guest, and found him bathed in tears at
the elevation of the Host which was chanted by the nun. Surprised to
find such devotion in a French officer, he invited the confessor of the
convent to join them at supper, and informed the general, to whom no
news had ever given such pleasure, of what he had done. During the
supper the general made the confessor the object of much attention, and
thus confirmed the Spaniards in the high opinion they had formed of his
piety. He inquired with grave interest the number of the nuns, and asked
details about the revenues of the convent and its wealth, with the air
of a man who politely wished to choose topics which occupied the mind of
the good old priest. Then he inquired about the life led by the sisters.
Could they go out? Could they see friends?
"Senhor," said the venorable priest, "the rule is severe. If the
permission of our Holy Father must be obtained before a woman can enter
a house of Saint Bruno [the Chartreux] the like rule exists here. It is
impossible for any man to enter a convent of the Bare-footed Carmelites,
unless he is a priest delegated by the archbishop for duty in the House.
No nun can go out. It is true, however, that the Great Saint, Mother
Theresa, did frequently leave her cell. A Mother-superior can alone,
under authority of the archbishop, permit a nun to see her friends,
especially in case of illness. As this convent is one of the chief
Houses of the Order, it has a Mother-superior residing in it. We have
several foreigners,--among them a Frenchwoman, Sister Theresa, the one
who directs the music in the chapel."
"Ah!" said the general, feigning surprise: "she must have been gratified
by the triumph of the House of Bourbon?"
"I told them the object of the Mass; they are always rather curious."
"Perhaps Sister Theresa has some interests in France; she might be glad
to receive some news, or ask some questions?"
"I think not; or she would have spoken to me."
"As a compatriot," said the general, "I should be curious to see--that
is, if it were possible, if the superior would consent, if--"
"At the grating, even in the presence of the reverend Mother, an
interview would be absolutely impossible for any ordinary man, no matter
who he was; but in favor of a liberator of a Catholic throne and our
holy religion, possibly, in spite of the rigid rule of our Mother
Theresa, the rule might be relaxed," said the confessor. "I will speak
about it."
"How old is Sister Theresa?" asked the lover, who dared not question the
priest about the beauty of the nun.
"She is no longer of any age," said the good old man, with a simplicity
which made the general shudder.