Oh! that midnight mass! He had had the unfortunate idea of going to it
at Christmas. He went to St. Severin, and found a young ladies' day
school installed there, instead of the choir, who, with sharp voices
like needles, knitted the worn-out skeins of the canticles. He had fled
to St. Sulpice, and plunged into a crowd which walked and talked as if
in the open air; had heard there choral-society marches, tea-garden
waltzes, firework tunes, and had come away in a rage.
It had seemed to him superfluous to try St. Germain-des-Près, for he
held that church in horror. Besides the weariness inspired by its heavy,
ill-restored shell, and the miserable paintings with which Flandrin
loaded it, the clergy there were specially, almost alarmingly, ugly, and
the choir was truly infamous. They were like a set of bad cooks, boys
who spat vinegar, and elderly choir-men, who cooked in the furnace of
their throats a sort of vocal broth, a thin gruel of sound.
Nor did he think of taking refuge in St. Thomas Aquinas, where he
dreaded the barking and the choruses; there was indeed St. Clotilde,
where the psalmody, at least, is upright, and has not, like that of St.
Thomas, lost all shame. He went there, but again encountered dance music
and profane tunes, a worldly orgie.
At last he went to bed in a rage, saying to himself, "In Paris, at any
rate, a singular baptism of music is reserved for the New-Born."
Next day, when he woke, he felt he had no courage to face the churches;
the sacrileges of last night would, he thought, continue; and as the
weather was almost fine, he went out, wandered in the Luxembourg, gained
the square of the Observatoire, and the Boulevard de Port Royal, and
mechanically made his way along the interminable Rue de la Santé.
He knew that street of old, and had taken melancholy walks in it,
attracted by its poor houses, like those of a provincial town; then it
was fit for a dreamer, for it was bounded on the right by the Prison de
la Santé and Sainte Anne's madhouse, and on the left by convents. Light
and air circulated in the street, but, behind it, all was black; it was
a kind of prison corridor, with cells on either side, where some were
condemned to temporary sentences, and others, of their own free will,
suffered lasting sorrows.
"I can imagine," thought Durtal, "how it would have been painted by an
Early Flemish master; the long street paved by patient pencils, the
stories open from top to bottom, and the cupboards the same; and on one
side massive cells with iron bedsteads, a stoneware jug; little
peepholes in the doors secured by strong bolts, inside, scoundrels and
thieves, gnashing their teeth, turning round and round, their hair on
end, howling like caged animals; on the other side little rooms,
furnished with a pallet-bed, a stoneware jug, a crucifix, these also
closed by doors iron-banded, and within nuns or monks, kneeling on the
flags, their faces clean cut against the light of a halo, their eyes
lifted to heaven, their hands joined, raised from the ground in ecstasy,
a pot of lilies at their side."
Then at the back of the canvas, between these two rows of houses, rises
a great avenue, at the end of which in a dappled sky sits God the Father
with Christ on His right, choirs of Seraphim playing on guitar and viol;
God the Father immovable under his lofty tiara, His breast covered by
His long beard, holds scales which balance exactly, the holy captives
expiating precisely by their penances and prayers the blasphemies of the
rascals and the insane.
"It must be admitted," thought Durtal, "that this street is very
peculiar, that there is probably none like it in Paris, for it unites in
its course virtues and vices, which in other quarters, in spite of the
efforts of the Church, trend apart as far as possible from each other."
Thus thinking he had come as far as St. Anne's, where the street grows
lighter and the houses are lower, with only one or two stories, then,
gradually, there is greater space between them, and they are only
joined to each other by blank ends of walls.
"At any rate," thought Durtal, "if this street has no distinction, it is
very private; here at least one need not admire the impertinent
decoration of those modern shops which expose in their windows as
precious commodities, chosen piles of firewood, and in glass sweetmeat
jars, coal drops and coke lollipops."
And here is an odd lane, and he looked at an alley which led down a
sharp decline into a main street, where was to be seen the tricolor flag
in zinc on a washhouse; he read the name: Rue de l'Ebre.
He entered it, it was but a few yards long; the whole of one side was
occupied by a wall, behind which were half seen some stunted buildings,
surmounted by a bell. An entrance-gate with a square wicket was placed
in the wall, which was raised higher as it sloped downwards, and at the
end was pierced by round windows, and rose into a little building,
surmounted by a clock-tower so low that its point did not even reach the
height of the two-storied house opposite.
On the other side three hovels sloped down, closely packed together;
zinc pipes ran everywhere, growing like vines, ramifying like the stalks
of a hollow vine along the walls, windows gaped on rusty leaden hinges.
Dim courts of wretched hovels could be seen; in one was a shed where
some cows were reposing; in two others were coach-houses for
wheel-chairs, and a rack behind the bars of which appeared the capsuled
necks of bottles.
"But this must be a church," thought Durtal, looking at the little clock
tower, and the three or four round bays, which seemed cut out in emery
paper to look like the black rough mortar of the wall; "where is the
entrance?"
He found it on turning out of the alley into the Rue de la Glacière. A
tiny porch gave access to the building.
He opened the door, and entered a large room, a sort of closed shed,
painted yellow, with a flat ceiling, with small iron beams coloured
grey, picked out with blue, and ornamented with gas-jets like a wine
shop. At the end was a marble altar, six lighted tapers, and gilt
ornaments, candelabra full of tapers, and under the tabernacle, a very
small monstrance, which sparkled in the light of the tapers.
It was almost dark, the panes of the windows having been crudely daubed
with bands of indigo and yellowish green; it was freezing, the stove was
not alight, and the church, paved like a kitchen floor, had no matting
or carpet.
Durtal wrapped himself up as best he could and sat down. His eyes
gradually grew accustomed to the obscurity of the room, and what he saw
was strange; in front of the choir on rows of chairs were seated human
forms, drowned in floods of white muslin. No one stirred.
Suddenly there entered by a side door a nun equally wrapped from head to
foot in a large veil. She passed along the altar, stopped in the middle,
threw herself on the ground, kissed the floor, and by a sudden effort,
without helping herself by her arms, stood upright, advanced silently
into the church, and brushed by Durtal, who saw under the muslin a
magnificent robe of creamy white, an ivory cross at her neck, at her
girdle a white cord and beads.
She went to the entrance-door, and there ascended a little staircase
into a gallery which commanded the church.
He asked himself what could be this Order so sumptuously arrayed, in
this miserable chapel, in such a district?
Little by little the room filled, choir-boys in red with capes trimmed
with rabbit's skin lighted the candelabra, went out, and ushered in a
priest, vested in a grand cope, with large flowers, a priest tall and
young, who sat down, and in a sonorous tone chanted the first antiphon
of vespers.
Suddenly Durtal turned round. In the gallery an harmonium accompanied
the responses of voices never to be forgotten. It was not a woman's
voice, but one having in it something of a child's voice, sweetened,
purified, sharpened, and something of a man's, but less harsh, finer and
more sustained, an unsexed voice, filtered through litanies, bolted by
prayers, passed through the sieves of adoration and tears.
The priest, still sitting, chanted the first verse of the unchanging
psalm, "Dixit Dominus Domino meo."
And Durtal saw in the air, in the gallery, tall white statues, holding
black books in their hands, chanting slowly with eyes raised to heaven.
A lamp cast its light on one of these figures, which for a second leant
forward a little, and he saw under the lifted veil a face attentive and
sorrowful, and very pale.
The verses of the vesper psalms were now sung alternately, by the nuns
above and by the congregation below. The chapel was almost full; a
school of girls in white veils filled one side; little girls of the
middle-class, poorly dressed brats who played with their dolls occupied
the other. There were a few poor women in _sabots_, and no men.
The atmosphere became extraordinary. The warmth of the souls thawed the
ice of the room; here were not the vespers of the rich, such as were
celebrated on Sundays at St. Sulpice, but the vespers of the poor,
domestic vespers, in the plain chant of the country side, followed by
the faithful with mighty fervour in silent and singular devotion.
Durtal could fancy himself transported beyond the city, to the depths of
some village cloister; he felt himself softened, his soul rocked by the
monotonous amplitude of these chants, only recognizing the end of the
psalms by the return of the doxology, the "Gloria Patri et Filio," which
separated them from each other.
He had a real impulse, a dim need of praying to the Unknowable,
penetrated to the very marrow by this environment of aspiration, it
seemed to him that he thawed a little, and took a far-off part in the
united tenderness of these bright spirits. He sought for a prayer, and
recalled what St. Paphnutius taught Thais, when he cried, "Thou art not
worthy to name the name of God, thou wilt pray only thus: 'Qui plasmasti
me miserere mei;' Thou who hast formed me have mercy on me." He
stammered out the humble phrase, prayed not out of love or of
contrition, but out of disgust with himself, unable to let himself go,
regretting that he could not love. Then he thought of saying the Lord's
Prayer, but stopped at the notion that this is the hardest of all
prayers to pronounce, when the phrases are weighed in the balance. For
in it we declare to God that we forgive our neighbours' trespasses. Now
how many who use these words forgive others? How many Catholics do not
lie when they tell the All-knowing that they hate no one?
He was roused from these reflections by sudden silence; vespers were
over. Then the organ played again, and all the voices of the nuns
joined, those in the choir below and in the gallery above, singing the
old carol "Unto us a child is born."
He listened, moved by the simplicity of the strain, and suddenly, in a
minute, brutally, without understanding why, infamous thoughts filled
his mind.
He resisted in disgust, wished to repulse the assault of these shameful
feelings, and they were persistent. He seemed to see before him a woman
whose perverse ways had long maddened him.
All at once this hallucination ceased; his eye was mechanically
attracted towards the priest, who was looking at him, while speaking in
a low voice to a beadle.
He lost his head, imagining that the priest guessed his thoughts and was
turning him out, but this notion was so foolish, that he shrugged his
shoulders, and more sensibly thought that men were not admitted to this
convent of women, and that the abbé who had seen him was sending the
beadle to beg him to leave.
The beadle came straight to him; Durtal was ready to take his hat, when
in persuasive and gentle tones that functionary said that the procession
was about to begin, that it was the custom for the gentlemen to follow
the Blessed Sacrament, and that although he was the only man there, the
abbé thought he would not refuse to follow the procession about to
start.
Overwhelmed by this request, Durtal made a vague gesture, in which the
beadle seemed to see assent.
"No," he thought as soon as he was left alone; "I will not meddle with
the ceremony; first I know nothing about it, and I should spoil it all,
and again I will not make a fool of myself." He prepared to slip away
quietly, but he had no time to carry out his intention; the usher
brought him a lighted candle and asked him to accompany him. He put the
best face he could on the matter, and while thinking that he was
blushing all over, he followed the beadle to the altar.
There the beadle stopped him and bid him not to move. The whole
congregation was now standing, the girls' school divided into two files,
preceded by a woman carrying a banner. Durtal came in front of the first
rank of nuns.
Their veils lowered before the profane, even in church, were raised
before the Blessed Sacrament, before God. Durtal was able to look at
these sisters for a moment; at first his disillusion was complete. He
had supposed them pale and grave like the nun he had seen in the
gallery, and almost all of them were red, freckled, crossing their poor
hands swelled and wounded by chilblains. Their faces were puffy and all
seemed at the beginning or end of a cold; they were evidently country
girls, and the novices, known by their grey robes under the white veil,
were still more common looking; they had certainly been accustomed to
farm labour, and yet on seeing them all turned to the altar, the poverty
of their faces, the ugliness of their hands blue with cold, their broken
nails, injured in the wash, disappeared; their eyes, modest and humble
under their long lashes, changed their coarse features into pious
simplicity. Lost in prayer, they did not even see his curious looks, and
did not even suspect a man was there examining them.
Durtal envied the admirable wisdom of these poor girls who alone
understood it was mad to wish to live. He thought: "Ignorance leads to
the same result as knowledge. Among the Carmelites are rich and pretty
women who have lived in the world and left it, wholly convinced of the
vainness of its joys; and these nuns, who evidently know nothing, have
had an intuition of that vacuity which it has needed years of experience
for the others to gain. By different ways they have arrived at the same
meeting-place. Then what clearness of thought is revealed by their
entrance into an Order! for if indeed they had not been gathered by
Christ, what would have become of these unhappy girls? Married to
drunkards and hammered by beatings; or perhaps maids in taverns,
ill-treated by their masters, brutalized by the other servants, destined
to the scorn of the streets and the dangers of ill-usage. And without
knowing anything they have avoided it all, have remained innocent, far
from these perils, and far from this defilement, under an obedience
which is not ignoble, disposed by their very way of life to experience,
should they be worthy, the most powerful joys which the soul of a human
creature can feel. They remain, perhaps, beasts of burthen, but at any
rate God's beasts of burthen."
He had got so far in his reflections when the beadle beckoned to him.
The priest, who had descended from the altar, held the little
monstrance; the girls' procession was moving before him. Durtal passed
in front of the line of nuns who did not take part in the ceremony, and
torch in hand he followed the beadle, who carried behind the priest an
open white silk parasol.
Then the harmonium in the gallery filled the church with its drawling
tones, like an enlarged accordion, and the nuns standing beside it
intoned the old chant, rhythmical as a march, the "Adeste Fideles,"
while below the novices and the faithful repeated after each stanza the
sweet chorus of invitation, "Venite adoremus."
The procession went several times round the chapel, above the heads
bowed in the smoke from the censers, which the choir boys swung, turning
at each pause to face the priest.
"Well, after all, I have not come so badly out of it," said Durtal to
himself, when they had returned to the altar. He thought his part was
finished, but, this time without asking his permission, the beadle asked
him to kneel at the communion rail in front of the altar.
He was ill at ease and annoyed, at knowing that the whole school and the
whole convent was behind him, nor was he accustomed to kneel; it seemed
as if wedges were thrust into his limbs, as if he were subjected to the
tortures of the Middle Ages. Embarrassed by his taper, which was
guttering, and threatened to cover him with spots, he shifted his
position quietly, trying to make himself more comfortable by slipping
the skirts of his great coat between his knees and the steps; but in
moving he only increased the evil, his flesh was folded back between the
bones, and his skin was chafed and burning. He sweated at last with the
pain, and feared to distract the fervour of the community by falling;
while the ceremony went on for ever, the nuns sang in the gallery, but
he listened no more and deplored the length of the service.
At last the moment of Benediction approached.
Then in spite of himself, seeing himself there, so near to God, Durtal
forgot his sufferings, and bowed his head, ashamed to be so placed, like
a captain at the head of his company, in the first rank of this maiden
troop; and when in a great silence, the bell tinkled, and the priest
turning, lightly cut the air in the form of a cross, and, with the
Blessed Sacrament, blessed the congregation kneeling at his feet, Durtal
remained, his body bent, his eyes closed, seeking to hide himself, to
make himself small, and not be seen there in front amid that pious
crowd.
The psalm "Laudate Dominum, omnes gentes," rang out when the beadle came
to take his taper. Durtal could hardly resist a cry, when he had to
stand up; his benumbed knees cracked, and their joints would hardly
work.
Yet he regained his place somehow; let the crowd pass, and approaching
the beadle, asked him the name of the convent, and the order to which
the nuns belonged.
"They are the Franciscan missionaries of Mary," answered the man, "but
the chapel is not theirs as you seem to think; it is a chapel of ease
for the parish of St. Marcel de la Maison Blanche: it is only joined by
a corridor to the house those sisters occupy behind us there in the Rue
de l'Ebre. They join in the offices, in fact, just as you and I may do,
and they keep a school for the children of the district."
"It is a touching little chapel," thought Durtal, when he was alone. "It
is well matched with the neighbourhood it shelters, with the gloomy
brook of the tanners, which runs through the yards below the Rue de la
Glacière. It gives me the effect of being to Notre Dame de Paris what
its neighbour the Bièvre is to the Seine. It is the streamlet of the
church, the pious pavement, the miserable suburb of worship.
"How poor and yet how exquisite are those nuns' voices, which seem
non-sexual and mellow! God knows how I hate the voice of a woman in the
holy place, for it still remains unclean. I think woman always brings
with her the lasting miasma of her indispositions and she turns the
psalms sour. Then, all the same, vanity and concupiscence rise from the
worldly voice, and its cries of adoration accompanied by the organ are
only cries of carnal desire, its very pleadings in the most sombre
liturgical hymns are only addressed to God from the lips outward, for at
bottom a woman only mourns the mediocre ideal of earthly pleasure to
which she cannot attain. Thus I thoroughly understand that the Church
has rejected woman from her offices, and that the musical robe of her
sequences may not be contaminated she employs the voices of the boy and
the man.
"Yet in convents of women, that is changed; it is certain that prayer,
communion, abstinence and vows purify the body and the soul, as well as
the vocal odour which proceeds from them. The emanations from them give
to the voices of the nuns, however crude, however ill-trained they may
be, their chaste inflexions, their simple caresses of pure love, they
recall to it the ingenuous sounds of childhood.
"In certain orders, they seem even to prune it of the greater part of
its branches, and concentrate the threads of sap which remain in a few
twigs;" and he thought of a Carmelite convent to which he had gone from
time to time, remembered their failing, almost expiring voices, where
the little health that remained to them was concentrated in three notes,
voices which had lost the musical colours of life, the tints of open
air, keeping only in the cloister those of the costumes they seemed to
reflect, white and brown, chaste and sombre tones.
Ah! those Carmelites, he thought of them now, as he descended the Rue de
la Glacière, and he called up the memory of a profession, the thought of
which took entire possession of him every time he meditated on convents.
He saw again in memory a morning in the little chapel in the Avenue de
Saxe, a chapel, Spanish Gothic in style, with narrow windows glazed with
panes so dark that the light which remained in their colours did not
pass through them.
At the end rose the high altar in shade, raised on six steps; on the
left a large iron grating in an arch was covered with a black curtain,
and on the same side, but almost at the base of the altar, a little arch
traced on the plain wall, like a lancet window, with an aperture in the
middle, a sort of square, a frame, without a panel, empty.
That morning the chapel, cold and dark, sparkled, lighted by groves of
candles; and the odour of incense, not adulterated as in other churches
by spices and gums, filled it with a dull smoke; it was crammed with
people. Crouched in a corner, Durtal had turned round, and like his
neighbours looked at the backs of the thurifers and priests, who were
going towards the entrance. The door opened suddenly, and he saw, in a
burst of daylight, a red vision of the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris,
passing up the nave, turning from side to side a horse-like head, in
front of it a big spectacled nose, bending his tall form all on one
side, blessing the congregation with a long twisted hand, like a crab's
claw.
He and his suite ascended the altar steps, and knelt at a prie-Dieu,
then they took off his tippet, and vested him in a silk chasuble with a
white cross embroidered in silver, and the mass began. Shortly before
the communion, the black veil was gently withdrawn; behind the high
grating, and in a blueish light like that of the moon, Durtal faintly
saw white phantoms gliding and stars twinking in the air, and close to
the grating a woman's form, kneeling motionless on the ground, she too
holding a star at the end of a taper. The woman did not move but the
star shook; then when the moment of communion was at hand, the woman
rose, then disappeared, and her head, as if decapitated, filled the
square of the wicket opened in the arch.
Then as he leant forward he saw, for a second, a dead face, with closed
lids, white, eyeless, like ancient marble statues. And all passed away,
as the Cardinal bent above the grating, with the ciborium in his hand.
All was so rapid that he asked himself if he were not dreaming; the mass
was over. Behind the iron grating resounded mournful psalms, slow chants
drawn out, weeping, always on the same notes, wandering lights and white
forms passed in the azure fluid of the incense. Monseigneur Richard was
sitting, mitre on head, interrogating the postulant who had returned to
her place, and was kneeling before him behind the grating.
He spoke in a low voice, and could not be heard. The whole congregation
bent to listen to the novice as she pronounced her vows, but only a long
murmur was heard. Durtal remembered that he had elbowed his way, and got
near the choir, where, through the crossed bars of the grating, he saw
the woman clad in white, prostrate on her face, in a square of flowers,
while the whole convent filed past, bending over her, intoning the
psalms for the dead, and sprinkling her with holy water, like a corpse.
"It is admirable," he cried, moved in the street by the memory of the
scene, and he thought of what a life was that of these women! To lie on
an hair mattress without pillow or sheets, to fast seven months out of
the twelve, except on Sundays and feasts; always to eat, standing,
vegetables and abstinence fare; to have no fire in winter, to chant for
hours on ice-cold tiles, to scourge the body, to become so humble as,
however tenderly nurtured, to wash up dishes with joy, and attend to the
meanest tasks, to pray from morning to midnight even to fainting, to
pray there till death. They must indeed pity us, and set themselves to
expiate the imbecility of a world which treats them as hysterical fools,
for it cannot even understand the joy in suffering of souls like these.
"We cannot be proud of ourselves, in thinking of the Carmelites, or even
of those humble Franciscan Tertiaries, who are after all more vulgar. It
is true they do not belong to a contemplative order, but all the same
their rules are very strict, their existence is so hard that they too
can atone by their prayers and good works for the crimes of the city
they protect."
He grew enthusiastic in thinking of the convents. Ah! to be earthed up
among them, sheltered from the herd, not to know what books appear, what
newspapers are printed, never to know what goes on outside one's cell,
among men--to complete the beneficent silence of this cloistered life,
nourishing ourselves with good actions, refreshing ourselves with plain
song, saturating ourselves with the inexhaustible joys of the liturgies.
Then, who knows? By force of good will, and by ardent prayer, to succeed
in coming to Him, in entertaining Him, feeling Him near us, perhaps
almost satisfied with His creature. And he called up before him the joys
of those abbeys in which Jesus abode. He remembered that astonishing
convent of Unterlinden, near Colmar, where in the thirteenth century not
only one or two nuns, but the whole convent, rose distractedly before
Christ with cries of joy, nuns were lifted above the ground, others
heard the songs of seraphim, and their emaciated bodies secreted balm;
others became transparent or were crowned with stars; all these
phenomena of the contemplative life were visible in that cloister, a
high school of Mysticism.
Thus wrapped in thought, he found himself at his own door, without
remembering the road he had taken, and as soon as he was in his room,
his whole soul dilated and burst forth. He desired to thank, to call
for mercy, to appeal to someone, he knew not whom, to complain of he
knew not what. All at once the need of pouring himself forth, of going
out of himself, took shape, and he fell on his knees saying to Our Lady,
"Have pity on me, and hear me; I would rather anything than continue
this shaken existence, these idle stages without an aim. Pardon me, Holy
Virgin, unclean as I am, for I have no courage for the battle. Ah,
wouldest thou grant my prayer! I know well that I am over bold in daring
to ask, since I am not even resolved to turn out my soul, to empty it
like a bucket of filth, to strike it on the bottom, that the lees may
trickle out and the scales fall off, but ... but ... thou knowest I am
so weak, so little sure of myself, that in truth I shrink.
"Oh, all the same I would desire to flee away, a thousand miles from
Paris, I know not where, into a cloister. My God! yet this is very
madness that I speak, for I could not stay two days in a convent; nor
indeed would they take me in."
Then he thought,--
"Though this once I am less dry, less unclean than is my wont, I can
find nothing to say to Our Lady but insanities and follies, when it
would be so simple to ask her pardon, to beg her to have pity on my
desolate life, to aid me to resist the demands of my vices, not to pay
as I do the royalties on my nerves, the tax on my senses.
"All the same," he said, rising, "enough of this, I will at least do
what little I can; without more delay I will go to the abbé to-morrow. I
will explain the struggle of my soul, and we will see what happens
afterwards."