He was really comforted when the servant said that Monsieur l'Abbé was
at home. He entered a little drawing-room, and waited till the priest,
whom he heard speaking to someone in the next chamber, was alone.
He looked at the little room, and marked that nothing was changed since
his last visit. It was still furnished with a velvet sofa, of which the
red, once crimson, had become the faded rose colour of raspberry jam on
bread. There were also two tall arm-chairs on either side of the
chimney, which was ornamented by an Empire clock, and some china vases
filled with sand, in which were stuck some dry stalks of reed. In a
corner against the wall, under an old wooden crucifix, was a prie-dieu,
marked by the knees, an oval table in the centre, some sacred engravings
on the walls; and that was all.
"It is like an hotel, or an old maid's lodging," thought Durtal. The
commonness of the furniture, the curtains in faded damask, the panels
hung with a paper covered with bouquets of poppies and field-flowers in
false colours, were like lodgings by the month, but certain details,
above all the scrupulous cleanliness of the room, the worked cushions on
the sofa, the grass mats under the chairs, an hortensia like a painted
cauliflower placed in a flower-pot covered with lace, looked on the
other hand like the futile and icy room of a devout woman.
"Nothing was wanting but a cage of canaries, photographs in plush
frames, shell-work and crochet mats."
Durtal had got so far in his reflections when the abbé came in with
extended hand, gently finding fault with his long absence.
Durtal made what excuses he could, unusual occupations, long weariness.
"And our Blessed Lidwine, how do you get on with her?"
"Ah, I have not even begun her life; I am not in a state of mind which
allows me to engage in it."
Durtal's accent of discouragement surprised the priest.
"Come, what is the matter? Can I be of any use to you?"
"I do not know, Monsieur l'Abbé. I am almost ashamed to talk to you
about such troubles," and suddenly he burst out, telling his sorrows in
any chance words, declaring the unreality of his conversion, his
struggles with the flesh, his human respect, his neglect of religious
practices, his aversion from the rites demanded of him, in fact from all
yokes.
The abbé listened without moving, his chin on his hand.
"You are more than forty," he said, when Durtal was silent; "you have
passed the age when without any impulse from thought, the awakening of
the flesh excites temptations, you are now in that period when indecent
thoughts first present themselves to the imagination, before the senses
are agitated. We have then to fight less against your sleeping body than
your mind, which stimulates and vexes it. On the other hand, you have
arrears and prizes of affection to put out, you have no wife or children
to receive them, so that your affections being driven back by celibacy,
you will end by taking them there where at first they should have been
placed; you try to appease your soul's hunger in chapels, and as you
hesitate, as you have not the courage to come to a decision, to break
once for all with your vices, you have arrived at this strange
compromise; to reserve your tender feeling for the church and the
manifestations of that feeling for women. That, if I do not mistake, is
your correct balance-sheet. But, good heavens, you have not too much to
complain of, for do you not see that the important thing is to care for
woman only with your bodily senses? When Heaven has given you grace to
be no longer taken captive by thought, all may be arranged with a little
effort of will."
"This is an indulgent priest," thought Durtal.
"But," continued the abbé, "you cannot always sit between two stools,
the moment will come when you must stick to the one, and push the other
away."
And looking at Durtal, who looked down without answering,--
"Do you pray? I do not ask if you say your morning prayers, for not all
those, who end by entering on the divine way, after wandering for years
where chance might take them, call on the Lord so soon as they awake.
At break of day the soul thinks itself well, thinks itself firmer, and
at once takes occasion of this fleeting energy to forget God. It is with
the soul as with the body when it is sick. When night comes our
sensations are stronger, pain which was quieted awakes, the fever which
slept blazes up again, filth revives and wounds bleed anew, and then it
thinks of the divine Miracle-worker, it thinks of Christ. Do you pray in
the evening?"
"Sometimes--and yet it is very difficult; the afternoon is tolerable,
but you say truly when the daylight goes, evils spring up. A whole
cavalcade of obscene ideas then pass through my brain; how can any one
be recollected at such moments?"
"If you do not feel able to resist in the street or at home, why do you
not take refuge in the churches?"
"But they are closed when one has most need of them; the clergy put
Jesus to bed at nightfall."
"I know it, but if most churches are closed, there are a few which
remain partly open very late. Ah, St. Sulpice is among the number, and
there is one which remains open every evening, and where those who visit
it are always sure of prayers and Benediction: Notre Dame des Victoires,
I think you know it."
"Yes, Monsieur l'Abbé. It is ugly enough to cause tears, it is
pretentious, it is in bad taste, and the singers churn up a margarine of
rancid tones. I do not go there then as I go to St. Severin and St.
Sulpice, to admire there the art of the old 'Praisers of God,' to
listen, even if they are incorrectly given, to the broad, familiar
melodies of plain chant. Notre Dame des Victoires is worthless from the
æsthetic point of view, and yet I go there from time to time, because
alone in Paris it has the irresistible attraction of true piety, it
alone preserves intact the lost soul of the Time. At whatever hour one
goes there people are praying there, prostrate in absolute silence; it
is full as soon as it is open, and full at its closing, there is a
constant coming and going of pilgrims from all parts of Paris, arriving
from the depths of the provinces, and it seems that each one, by the
prayers that he brings, adds fuel to the immense brazier of Faith whose
flames break out again under the smoky arches like the thousands of
tapers which constantly burn, and are renewed from morning till evening,
before Our Lady.
"Well, I who seek the most deserted corners and the darkest places in
the chapels, I who hate mobs, mix almost willingly with those I find
there; because there everyone is isolated, no one is concerned with his
neighbour, you do not see the human bodies which throng you, but you
feel the breath of souls around. However refractory, however damp you
may be, you end by taking fire at this contact, and are astonished to
find yourself all at once less vile; it seems to me that the prayers
which elsewhere when they leave my lips fall back to the ground
exhausted and chilled, spring upwards in that place, are borne on by
others, grow warm and soar and live.
"At St. Severin I have indeed experienced the sensation of a help
spreading from the pillars and running through the arches, but, as I
think, the aid is less strong. Perhaps since the Middle Ages that church
makes use of, but cannot renew the celestial effluvia with which it is
charged; while at Notre Dame the help which springs up from the very
pavement is for ever vivified by the uninterrupted presence of an ardent
crowd. In the one it is the impregnate stone, the church itself which
brings consolation, in the other it is above all things the fervour of
the crowds which fill it.
"And then I have the strange impression that the Virgin, attracted and
retained by so great faith, only spends a little while in other
churches, goes there as a visitor, but has made her home, and really
resides in Notre Dame."
The abbé smiled.
"Come, I see that you know and love it; and yet the church is not on our
left bank, beyond which, you said to me one day, there is no sanctuary
worth having."
"Yes, and I am surprised at it, especially as it is placed in a
thoroughly commercial quarter, two paces from the Exchange, whose
ignoble shouts can be heard in it."
"It was itself an Exchange," said the abbé.
"In what way?"
"After having been baptized by the monks, and having served as a chapel
for the discalced Augustinians, it was horribly desecrated in the
Revolution, and the Exchange was set up within its walls."
"I was not aware of that detail," said Durtal.
"But," continued the abbé, "it was with it, as with those holy women,
who, if we believe their biographers, recovered by a life of prayer the
virginity they had formerly lost. Our Lady washed it from its violation,
and though it is comparatively modern, it is at the present day
saturated with emanations, infused by effluences of angels, penetrated
with divine drugs, it is for sick souls what certain thermal springs are
for the body. People keep their season there, make their novenas, and
obtain their cure.
"Now to come back to our point; I tell you you will do wisely, if on
your bad evenings you will attend Benediction in that church. I shall be
surprised if you do not come out cleansed and at peace."
"If he have only that to offer me, it is little enough," thought Durtal.
And after a disappointed silence he rejoined,
"But, Monsieur l'Abbé, even were I to visit that sanctuary, and follow
the offices in other churches, when temptations assail me, even were I
to confess and draw near the Sacraments, how would that advantage me? I
should meet as I came out the woman whose very sight inflames my senses,
and it would be with me as after my leaving St. Severin all unnerved;
the very feeling of tenderness which I had in the chapel would destroy
me, and I should fall back into sin."
"What do you know about it?" and the priest suddenly rose, and took long
strides through the room.
"You have no right to speak thus, for the virtue of the Sacrament is
formal, the man who has communicated is no longer alone. He is armed
against others and defended against himself," and crossing his arms
before Durtal he exclaimed,--
"To lose one's soul for the pleasure of momentary gratification! what
madness. And since the time of your conversion, does not that disgust
you?"
"Yes, I am disgusted with myself, but only after my swinish desires are
satisfied. If only I could gain true repentance."
"Rest assured," said the abbé, who sat down again, "you will find it."
And, seeing that Durtal shook his head,
"Remember what Saint Teresa said: 'One trouble of those who are
beginning is, that they cannot recognize whether they have true
repentance for their faults; but they have it, and the proof is their
sincere resolution to serve God.' Think of that sentence, for it applies
to you; that repugnance to your sins which wearies you is witness to
your regret, and you have a desire to serve the Lord, since you are in
fact struggling to go to Him."
There was a moment of silence.
"Well, then, Monsieur l'Abbé, what is your advice?"
"I advise you to pray in your own house, in church, everywhere, as much
as you can. I do not prescribe any religious remedy, I simply invite you
to profit by some precepts of pious hygiene, afterwards we will see."
Durtal remained undecided, discontented, like those sick persons who
find fault with doctors, who, to satisfy them, prescribe only colourless
drugs.
The priest laughed.
"Confess," he said, looking him in the face, "confess that you are
saying to yourself, 'It was not worth while to put myself out, for I am
no further advanced, this good fellow, the priest, practises expectant
medicine; instead of cutting short my crises with energetic remedies, he
palters, advises me to go to bed early, not to catch cold--'"
"Oh, Monsieur l'Abbé," protested Durtal.
"Yet I do not wish to treat you like a child, or talk to you like a
woman; now attend to me!
"The way in which your conversion has worked leaves me in no doubt
whatever. There has been what Mysticism calls the divine touch,
only--note this--God has dispensed with human intervention, even with
the interference of a priest, to bring you back into the road you have
left for more than twenty years.
"Now we cannot reasonably suppose that the Lord has acted lightly, and
that He will now leave His work unaccomplished. He will carry it through
if you put no obstacle in His way.
"In fact you are at this moment like a block in His hands; what will He
do with it? I do not know, but since He has kept to Himself the conduct
of your soul, let Him act; be patient, He will explain His action; trust
in Him, He will help you; be content to protest with the Psalmist: 'Doce
me facere voluntatem tuam, quia Deus meus es tu.'
"I tell you again I believe in the preventive virtue, the formal power
of the Sacraments. I quite understand the system of Père Milleriot, who
obliged those persons to communicate whom he thought would afterwards
fall again into sin. For their only penance he obliged them to
communicate again and again, and he ended by purifying them with the
Sacred Species, taken in large doses. It is a doctrine at once realistic
and exalted.
"But reassure yourself," continued the abbé, looking at Durtal, who
seemed wearied, "I do not intend to experiment on you in this way; on
the contrary, my advice is that in the state of ignorance in which we
are of God's will, you abstain from the Sacraments.
"For you should desire them, and it should come from you rather than
from Him; be sure that sooner or later you will thirst for Penance,
hunger for the Eucharist. Well, when unable to restrain yourself longer,
you ask for pardon and entreat to be allowed to approach the Holy Table,
we shall see, we will ask Him what way He will choose to take, in order
to save you."
"But there are not, I presume, several ways of confessing and
communicating?"
"Certainly not, that is just what I meant to say ... but ..."
And the priest hesitated, at a loss for words.
"It is quite certain," he began again, "that art has been the principal
means which the Saviour has used to make you absorb the Faith. He has
taken you on your weak side--or strong side, if you like that better. He
has infused into your nature the chief mystical works; he has persuaded
and converted you, less by the way of reason than the way of the senses;
and indeed those are the special conditions you have to take into
account.
"On the other hand your soul is not humble and simple, you are a sort of
'sensitive,' whom the least imprudence, the least stupidity of a
confessor would at once repel.
"Therefore that you may not be at the mercy of a troublesome impression,
certain precautions must be taken. In the state of weakness and
feebleness in which you are, a disagreeable face, an unlucky word,
antipathetic surroundings, a mere nothing would be enough to rout
you--is it not so?"
"Alas!" sighed Durtal, "I am obliged to answer that you are right; but,
Monsieur l'Abbé, I do not think I shall have to fear such disillusions
if when the moment you predict has come you will allow me to make my
confession to you."
The priest was silent for a while; then said,
"No doubt, since I have met you, I may probably be useful to you, but I
have an idea that my part will be confined to pointing out the road to
you; I shall be a connecting link, and nothing more, you will end as you
have begun, without help, alone." The abbé remained in thought, then
shook his head, and went on: "Let us leave the subject, however, for we
cannot anticipate the designs of God; to sum up, try to stifle in prayer
your attacks of the flesh, it is a less matter not to be overcome at the
moment, than to direct all your efforts not to be so."
Then the priest added gently to rouse the spirits of Durtal, whom he saw
to be depressed,
"If you fall do not despair, and throw the handle after the hatchet. Say
to yourself, that, after all Lust is not the most unpardonable of
faults, that it is one of two sins for which the human being pays cash,
and which are consequently expiated in part at least before death. Say
to yourself that wantonness and avarice refuse all credit and will not
wait; and in fact, whoever unlawfully commits a fleshly act is almost
always punished in his lifetime. For some there are bastards to provide
for, sickly wives, low connections, broken careers, abominable
deceptions on the part of those they have loved. On whichever side we
turn when women are concerned we have to suffer, for she is the most
powerful instrument of sorrow which God has given to man.
"It is the same with the passion for gain. Every being who allows
himself to be overcome by that hateful sin, pays for it as a rule before
his death. Look at the Panama business. Cooks, housekeepers, small
proprietors who till then had lived in peace, seeking no inordinate
gains, no illicit profit, threw themselves like madmen into that
business. They had one only thought, to gain money; the chastisement of
their cupidity was, as you know, sudden."
"Yes," said Durtal, laughing, "the de Lesseps were the agents of
providence, when they stole the savings of fools, who had moreover got
them probably by thieving."
"In a word," said the abbé, "I repeat my last advice: do not be at all
discouraged if you sink. Do not despise yourself too much; have the
courage to enter a church afterwards; for the devil catches you by
cowardice, the false shame, the false humility he suggests, nourish,
maintain, solidify your wantonness in some measure.
"Well! no good-bye; come and see me soon again."
Durtal found himself in the street a little confused. "It is evident,"
he murmured, as he stalked along, "that the Abbé Gévresin is a clever
spiritual watchmaker. He has dexterously taken to pieces the movement of
my passions, and made the hours of idleness and weariness strike, but,
after all, his advice comes only to this: stew in your own juice and
wait.
"Indeed he is right; if I had come to the point I should not have gone
to him to chatter, but really to confess. What is strange is that he
does not at all seem to think he will have to put me through the
wash-tub; and to whom does he mean me to go--to the first comer who will
wind about me his spool of commonplaces, and stroke me with his big
hands without seeing clearly?
"Well, well ... what is the time?" He looked at his watch. "Six o'clock,
and I do not care to go home. What shall I do till dinner?"
He was near St. Sulpice. He went in and sat down, to clear his thoughts
a little, taking a place in the Chapel of Our Lady, which at that hour
was almost empty.
He felt no wish to pray, and rested there, looking at the great arch of
marble and gold, like a scene in a theatre, where the Virgin, the only
figure in the light, advances towards the faithful, as from a decorated
grotto, on plaster clouds.
Meanwhile two Little Sisters of the Poor came and knelt not far from
him, and meditated, their heads between their hands.
He thought as he looked at them,--
"Those souls are to be envied who can thus be abstracted in prayer. How
do they manage it? For, in fact, it is not easy, if one thinks of the
sorrows of the world, to praise the vaunted mercy of God. It is all very
fine to believe that He exists, to be certain that He is good; in fact,
we do not know Him--we are ignorant of Him. He is, and, in fact, He can
only be, immanent, permanent, and inaccessible. He is we know not what,
and at most we know what He is not. Try to imagine Him, and the senses
fail, for He is above, about, and in each one of us. He is three and He
is one; He is each and He is all; He is without beginning, and He will
be without end; He is above all and for ever incomprehensible. If we try
to picture Him to ourselves and give Him a human wrappage, we come back
to the simple conception of the early times, we represent Him under the
features of an ancestor. Some old Italian model, some old Father
Tourgéneff, with a long beard, and we cannot but smile, so childish is
the likeness of God the Father.
"He is, in fact, so absolutely above the imagination and the senses,
that He comes only nominally into prayer, and the impulses of humanity
ascend especially to the Son, Who only can be addressed, because He
became man, and is to us somewhat of an elder brother, because, having
wept in human form, we think He will hear us more readily, and be more
compassionate to our sorrows.
"As to the third Person, He is even more disconcerting than the first.
He is especially the unknowable. How can we imagine this God formless
and bodiless, this Substance equal to the two others, who, as it were,
breathe Him forth? We think of Him as a brightness, a fluid, a breath;
we cannot even lend to Him as to the Father the face of a man, since on
the two occasions that He took to Himself a body, He showed Himself
under the likenesses of a dove and of tongues of fire, and these two
different aspects do not help to a suggestion of the new appearance He
might assume.
"Certainly the Trinity is terrible, and makes the brain reel. Ruysbröck
has moreover said admirably, 'Let those who would know and study what
God is, know that it is forbidden; they will go mad.'
"So," he continued, looking at the two Little Sisters, who were now
telling their beads, "these good women are right not to try to
understand, and to confine themselves to praying with all their heart to
the Mother and the Son.
"Moreover, in all the lives of the saints which they have read, they
have made certain that Jesus and Mary always appeared to the elect to
console and strengthen them.
"In fact, how stupid I am. To pray to the Son is to pray to the two
others, for in praying to one among them I pray at the same time to the
three, since the three make but one. And the Substances are, however,
special, because if the divine Essence is one and simple, it is so in
the threefold distinction of the Persons; but, again, what is the use of
fathoming the Impenetrable?
"Yet," he continued, remembering the interview he had just had with the
priest, "how will all this end? If the abbé be right, I no longer
belong to myself; I am about to enter the unknown, which frightens me.
If only the sound of my vices consents to be silent, but I feel that
they rise furiously within me. Ah, that Florence"--and he thought of a
woman to whose vagaries he was riveted--"continues to walk about in my
brain. I see her behind the lowered curtain of my eyes, and when I think
of her I am a terrible coward."
He endeavoured once more to put her away, but his will was overcome at
the sight of her.
He hated, despised, and even cursed her, but the madness of his
illusions excited him; he left her disgusted with her and with himself;
he swore he would never see her again, but did not keep his resolve.
He saw her now in vision extend her hand to him.
He recoiled, struggling to free himself; but his dream continued
mingling her with the form of one of the sisters whose gentle profile he
saw.
Suddenly he started, returned to the real world, and saw that he was at
St. Sulpice, in the chapel. "It is disgusting that I should come here to
soil the church with my horrible dreams; I had better go."
He went out in confusion, thinking, "Perhaps if I visit Florence once
again, I may perhaps put an end to this haunting sense of her presence,
seeing and knowing the reality."
And he was obliged to answer himself that he was becoming idiotic, for
he knew by experience that past desire grows in proportion as it is
nourished. "No, the abbé was right; I have to become and to remain
penitent. But how? Pray? How can I pray, when evil imaginations pursue
me even in church? Evil dreams followed me to La Glacière; here they
appear again, and smite me to the ground. How can I defend myself? for
indeed it is frightful to be thus alone, to know nothing and have no
proof, to feel the prayers which one tears out of oneself fall into the
silence and the void without a gesture to answer, without a word of
encouragement, without a sign. I do not even know if He be there, and if
He listens. The abbé tells me to wait an indication, an order from on
high; but, alas! they come to me from below."