ULTIMATE PEACE
"Muchas vezes, Senor mio, considero que
si con algo se puede sustentar el virvir sin
vos, es en la soledad, porque descansa el
alma con su descanso."
Sainte Theresa,
_Exclamations of the Soul to its God_.
"I was mistaken," Hubert reflected, upon awaking. "This letter is full
of interest, but I do not understand this need of railing at me in six
small pages. And then to repeat at each line: 'If you had known, if you
had been able!' Has she climbed on the stilts of her happiness! Yes,
she is happy because a male has thrown himself at her and has nailed
her on the cross. Ah! it will be necessary to rise, to carry it, to
bend under the burden. Ah! it will bear you down and your lover will
mount upwards and stamp his foot on you, for this retaliation is due
you.
"Oh! I am not thirsty for vengeance and I do not desire to quench my
thirst in the blood which will flow from your severed veins: I do not
even wish to see you and I shut you out from my imagination.
"Only.... Ah! the wretch! She does not seem to suspect that I loved
her! Everything, under the shelter of passional metaphysics, amounted
to a question of adroit and decisive shrewdness. Yes, love is joiner's
work.
"And I go into the great absence, but with no mental reservations. I
shall not conjure the superficial magics of Claudius Mamertinus; I have
perfected them, but I shall use neither those nor my own. The great
absence, as one speaks of the great desert, without water and without
love! But the Egyptian woman lived there forty years with four tiny
loaves of bread which she had bought at Jerusalem; she nibbled at them,
when she was very hungry. I, too, shall gnaw at my memories, but not to
excess, and without straining for grievous corporeal images. I wish to
meditate in peace. Mark you, Sixtine, this is because of my greatness
of soul, for I could have carried you off on my shoulders and thrown
you into my cavern, where the bones of hyenas, dead of hunger, can
be seen. You see that it is not cheerful. So I spare you this exile.
Nevertheless, 'you should know what corporeal vision is and you will
refrain, when you think of your absent friend, from thinking him really
absent. You think of him, and he appears before you corporeally, since
you are thinking of his body (and how think of him otherwise, since the
body is the sign of his existence and humanity?) And he will rise up
before you, and likewise, across all obstacles, you will go into his
presence, and he will see you.' And the author of _De Statu Animae_ (he
also wrote the _Pange, lingua_: he was not a fool), after reflecting,
adds: 'Vision is the true function of the intelligent'; and 'the image
of things is their true reality.'
"No, I shall, indeed, content myself with little loaves of bread; you
will not suffer from my familiarities. In his 'Monitories,' Thomas
Aquinas says that too great familiarity begets scorn at the same time
that it turns one aside from contemplation and fixes the mind on
external things.
"He gives the example of Saint Dominic who, having too affectionate
friends at Toulouse, went to live at Carcassonne.
"Well, I do not wish to scorn you under the vain pretext that you have
fulfilled your womanly calling, and I wish to meditate in peace, for
there remains nothing else for me to do. So, I leave you to your loves
and I go to the great desert. Adieu."
Hubert, in turning over his theological books, was already capturing a
little of the peace he desired. As long as Sixtine had remained, he had
forgotten them for readings more in accord with his perturbations and
desires. While putting the two tomes back in their place, he paused in
front of this shelf of his library, spelling out the faded letters of
gold, surprised at not always being able to guess them correctly. His
Origen tempted him: he promised himself to commence the long deferred
study of it. Under his fingers, the volume opened on the "Commentary
on the Song of Songs," irony of Virgilian fortunes. "His left hand is
under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me." But Origen, who
remarks that there is everything in this movement of the right hand,
"_omnia sunt_," warns against stopping at sensual interpretations. "It
is just as well, I am not in the mood for it."
He closed the book and returned to his chair. He re-read the fourth
chapter of "The Adorer," congratulating himself on having resolved the
supreme fate of Guido according to necessary consequences:
"At least my dream will be logical, as she desires. If life eludes me,
transcendency belongs to me. I have paid very dearly for it, I have
paid for it with the price of all terrestrial joys. The fruits I bite
into are bubbles that soon vanish, but the bubbles which issue from my
lips take flight, soar and endure: refracted through them, my ideas,
like sun-beams become prismatic, and, with them plays the eternal wind
which levels the world.
"In losing you, Sixtine, I have found myself again. But I confess,
Madame, that it is not a compensation worth considering. Although you
judged me an egoist and although I admit this charge, I bear myself
no love. A little hate, rather, when I surmount indifference, for I
feel that I am only a bad instrument in the hands of an unknown and
transcendental Master,--a Master who laughs so apropos when I abuse my
soul.... Destined to what labor? Ah! _he_ knows!...
"Tell me, Master! Think of the invincible disgust with which my
brothers and sisters fill me! Consider that I need distractions!... O
Lord of the gloomy blue meadows where Chimerae browse among the stars,
tell me my secret and I shall be capable of true devotion.... Already
I love the grace of your saints, for they were alone, deliciously
alone:... Often, O Lord, I consider that if anything could sustain life
without thee, it is solitude, for there the soul rests in its peace...."
* * * * * *
Transcriber's note:
The original book contained unpaired double quotation marks. It
was not clear where the missing quotation marks belonged, so no
attempt was made to add them.