CHAPTER X.

"I shall make myself a prisoner in two days," sighed Durtal; "it is time

to think about packing. What books shall I take to help me to live down

there?"

He searched his library, and turned over the mystical books, which had,

by degrees, replaced profane works on the shelves.

"I will not talk of Saint Teresa," he thought; "neither she, nor Saint

John of the Cross, would be indulgent enough to me in solitude; I have

need of more pardon and consolation."

"Saint Denys the Areopagite, or the apocryphal book known under that

name? He is the first of the Mystics, and perhaps has gone the furthest

in his theological definitions. He lives in the rarefied air of the

mountain tops, above the gulfs, on the threshold of the other world

which he sees in part by flashes of grace, and he remains lucid,

undazzled in the blaze of light around him.

"It seems that in his 'Celestial Hierarchies,' in which he brings out in

procession the armies of heaven, and shows the meaning of angelic

attributes and symbols, he has already passed the limits assigned to

man, and yet in his 'Divine Names' he ventures even a step further, and

then he raises himself into the super-essence of metaphysics at once

calm and stern.

"He over-heats the human word to give it greater force, but when after

all his efforts he endeavours to define the Indescribable, to

distinguish those never to be confounded Persons of the Trinity who in

their plurality never lose their unity, words fail on his lips, and his

tongue is paralyzed under his pen; then tranquilly and without any

astonishment he makes himself again a child, comes down from those

heights among us, and in order to try and explain to us what he

understands, he has recourse to comparisons with domestic life; and that

he may explain the Trinity in Unity he notices how, if many torches be

lighted in one hall, lights, though distinct, mingle in one, and are in

fact no more than one.

"Saint Denys," thought Durtal, "is one of the boldest explorers of the

eternal regions, but he would be dry reading at La Trappe."

"Ruysbröck?" he thought--"perhaps, and yet I hardly am sure--I might put

him in my bag as well as for a cordial the little collection distilled

by Hello; as for the Spiritual Marriages, so well translated by

Maeterlinck, they are disconnected and obscure, they stifle me, this

Ruysbröck oppresses me less. This hermit is singular, all the same, for

he does not enter into us, but rather goes round about us; he

endeavours, like Saint Denys, to arrive at God, rather in heaven than in

the soul, but in wishing to take such a flight, he strains his wings,

and stammers incomprehensibly when he comes down.

"We will leave him behind, then. Now let us see. Saint Catherine of

Genoa? Her discussions between the soul, the body, and self-love are

unmeaning and confused, and when in her 'Dialogues,' she treats of the

operations of the interior life, she is greatly below Saint Teresa and

Saint Angela. On the other hand her Treatise on Purgatory is clear. It

declares that she alone has penetrated into the spaces of unknown

sorrows, and that she has disentangled and taken hold of the joys; she

has in fact succeeded in reconciling two contraries which seemed

eternally repugnant; the suffering of the soul in its purification from

sin, and the joy of the same soul, which at the very moment it is

enduring frightful torment experiences immense happiness, for little by

little it draws near to God, and feels His rays attract it more and

more, and His love inundate it with such excess, that it would seem the

Saviour desires nought but only it.

"Saint Catherine sets forth also that Jesus forbids heaven to none, that

it is the soul herself who, deeming herself unworthy to attain it,

flings herself by her own motion into Purgatory there to cleanse

herself, for she has only one end, to re-establish herself in her

primitive purity, only one desire, to attain her last end, by

destroying herself, annihilating herself, losing herself in God.

"This is a conclusive study," murmured Durtal, "but not that which would

lead to La Trappe. We must try again."

He touched other volumes in the book-cases.

"Here, for instance, is one which obviously I should use," he went on,

as he took down the "Seraphic Theology" of Saint Bonaventure, "for he

condenses the means of self-examination, of meditation for communion, of

thoughts on death, then in these 'Selections' is a treatise on the

Contempt of the World, whose terse phrases are admirable; it is the true

essence of the Holy Spirit, a jelly of unction firm set--we will put

that on one side.

"I shall hardly find a better help to remedy the probable weariness of

solitude," murmured Durtal, turning over new ranks of volumes. He looked

at the titles. "The Life of the Blessed Virgin," by M. Olier.

He hesitated, saying to himself, "Under a style which is like water with

scarcely the chill off, there are some interesting observations, some

tasteful comments. M. Olier has in a way traversed the mysterious

territory of hidden designs, and has there discovered the unimaginable

truths which the Lord is sometimes pleased to reveal to His saints. He

has made himself the liege-man of Our Lady, and living near her has made

himself also the herald of her attributes, the legate of her graces. His

Life of Mary is certainly the only one which seems really inspired and

is possible to read. Where the abbess of Agreda wanders, he alone

remains vigorous and clear. He shows us the Virgin existing from all

eternity in God, conceiving without ceasing to be immaculate, like the

crystal which receives and reflects the rays of the sun, yet loses

nothing of its lustre, and indeed shines with greater brightness,

bringing forth without pain, but suffering at the death of her Son the

pangs she would have borne at His birth. Then he gives us learned

dissertations on Her whom he calls the Treasure-house of all good, the

Mediatrix of love and impetration. Yes, but to converse with Her nothing

is so good as the 'Officium parvum beatæ Virginis,' and that," concluded

Durtal, "I will put in my bag with my Prayer-book; we will not disturb

M. Olier's volume."

"My stock begins to give out," he continued. "Angela of Foligno?

Certainly she is a brasier at which one may warm one's soul. I will take

her with me. What more--Tauler's Sermons? I am tempted to do so, for

never has any treated better than this monk the most abstruse subjects

with a more perfectly lucid mind. By aid of familiar images, humble

analogies, he has rendered accessible the highest speculations of

Mysticism. He is homely and deep, then he borrows a little from

quietism, and, perhaps, it will be no bad thing to absorb, down there, a

few drops of that mixture. Yet on the whole, no; I have rather need of

nerve tonics. As to Suso, he is a remedy far inferior to Saint

Bonaventure, or Saint Angela. I put aside also Saint Bridget of Sweden,

for in her conversations with heaven she seems aided by a God morose and

tired, who reveals to her nothing unexpected, nothing new.

"There is also Saint Magdalen of Pazzi, that voluble Carmelite whose

work is a series of apostrophes. An exclamatory person, clever at

analogies, expert in coincidences, a saint infatuated with metaphors and

hyperboles. She talks directly with God the Father, and stammers out in

ecstasy explanations of the mysteries revealed to her by the Ancient of

days. Her books contain one sovereign page on the Circumcision, another

magnificent one, entirely made up of antitheses, on the Holy Spirit,

others, very strange, on the deification of the human soul, on its union

with heaven, and on the part assigned in this operation to the wounds of

the Word.

"These are inhabited nests; the eagle which is the symbol of Faith

resides in the eyrie of the left foot; in the hole of the right foot

resides the melancholy sweetness of the turtle-doves; in the wound of

the left hand the dove ensconces herself, the symbol of surrender, and

in the cavity of the right hand reposes the pelican, the emblem of love.

"These birds leave their nests and come to seek the soul that they may

lead it to the nuptial chamber of the wound which bleeds in the side of

Christ.

"Was it not also that Carmelite nun who, ravished by the power of grace,

despised so greatly the certitude acquired by the way of the senses, as

to say to the Lord: 'If I saw Thee with mine eyes, I should have Faith

no more, because Faith ceases where evidence comes in'?

"All things considered," he said; "Magdalen of Pazzi, with her dialogues

and contemplations, opens eloquent horizons, but the soul, snared in the

bird-lime of its sins, cannot follow her. No; this saint cannot reassure

me in the cloister.

"Ah!" he went on, shaking the dust from a volume in a grey cover; "ah!

it is true I have The Precious Blood, of Father Faber." And he began to

dream as he turned over its pages where he stood.

He remembered the impression, till now forgotten, produced on him when

he read it. The work of this Oratorian was at least strange. The pages

boiled over, ran forth tumultuously, carrying with them grandiose

visions, such as Hugo conceived, developing historical perspectives such

as Michelet loved to paint. In this volume was seen advancing the solemn

procession of the Precious Blood, starting from the confines of

humanity, from the origin of the ages, and it broke the bounds of the

worlds, overwhelmed the nations, submerged history.

Father Faber was less a mystic, properly so-called, than a visionary and

a poet; in spite of the abuse of rhetoric transferred from the pulpit to

a book, he tore up souls by roots, carried them away on the rush of the

stream, but when one regained footing, and sought to remember what had

been heard and seen, one could recall nothing; on reflection one

recognized that the theme of the work was very thin, too slender to have

been executed by so noisy an orchestra, and there remained of that

reading something distracting and feverish which made you uneasy, and

made you think that this kind of book had only very distant relation to

the heavenly fulness of the great mystics.

"No, not that," thought Durtal. "Now what have we selected? I keep the

little collection of Ruysbröck, the Life of Angela of Foligno, and Saint

Bonaventure, and the best of all for my state of soul," he said,

striking his forehead. He went back to his book-case, and seized a

little book, which lay alone in a corner.

He sat down, and turned it over, saying, "Here is the tonic, the

stimulant in weakness, the strychnine for failure of Faith, the goad

which drives you in tears to the feet of Christ, the 'Dolorous Passion'

of Sister Emmerich."

She was no chemist of the spiritual being, like Saint Teresa; she had

nothing to do with our interior life; in her book she forgot herself,

and left us on one side, for she saw only Jesus crucified, and wished

only to show the stages of His agony, and to leave marked on her pages,

as on the veil of Veronica, the imprint of the Holy Face.

Though she was of our time, for Catherine Emmerich died in 1824, this

great work dates from the Middle Ages. It is a picture which seems to

belong to the early schools of Franconia and Swabia. This woman was the

sister of the Zeitbloms and the Grünewalds, she had their clear visions,

their vivid colouring, their wild scent; but she seemed to bring back

also, by her care for exact detail, by her precise indication of places,

the old Flemish Masters, Roger Van der Weyden and Bouts; she united in

herself two currents, springing one from Germany, the other from

Flanders, and this painting brushed in with blood, and varnished with

tears, was transposed by her into a prose style which has no relation to

any known literature, of which we can only find by analogy the ancestry

in the panels of the fifteenth century.

Moreover, she was quite illiterate, had never read a book, nor seen a

painting; she told quite plainly what she saw in her ecstasies.

The pictures of the Passion unfolded themselves before her while she was

bed-ridden, crushed by suffering, bleeding from the wounds of her

stigmata; she mourned and wept, brought to nothingness by love and pity,

before the torments of Christ.

According to her words, which a scribe took down, Calvary rose, and the

whole rascaldom of the soldiers rushed at the Saviour and spat on Him;

frightful episodes took place where Jesus, chained to a pillar, twisting

like a worm, under the lashes of the scourgers, then falling, looking

with His failing eyes, at the fallen women who held Him by the hand, and

turned away in disgust from His lacerated body, from His face covered

with threads of blood as with a red net.

Then slowly, patiently, only stopping to sob, and cry for mercy, she

described the soldiers tearing away the stuff which had stuck to the

wounds, the Virgin weeping; her face livid and her lips blue, she

related the agony of His bearing His Cross, how He fell on His knees,

grew weaker and more worn when death came.

It was a frightful spectacle, told in its every particular, forming a

sublime and frightful whole. The Redeemer was extended on a cross laid

on the ground, one of the executioners placed a knee against His side,

while another spread His fingers abroad, and a third hammered in a

flat-headed nail as broad as a crown, and so long that the point came

out behind the wood. And when the right hand was riveted the torturers

saw that the left would not reach to the place they intended to pierce,

therefore they attached a rope to the arm, pulled it with all their

force, dislocated the shoulder, and the cries of the Saviour were heard

above the blows of the hammer, His breast was seen heaving, while His

body was anguished and furrowed by terrible shuddering.

The same scene was repeated to fix His feet. They also did not reach the

place which the executioners had marked. The body had to be tied and the

arms bound so as not to tear the hands from the wood, and then it was

necessary to hang on the legs so as to lengthen them as far as the

bracket on which they were to rest; all at once the entire body yielded,

the ribs moved under the skin; the shock was so fearful, that the

executioners believed that the bones would start, and burst the flesh,

wherefore they made haste to rest the left foot on the right, but their

difficulties began again, the feet turned over, and it was necessary to

bore them with an auger to fasten them.

This continued till Jesus died, when Sister Emmerich fainted from

terror, her stigmata bled afresh, and her wounded head rained blood.

In this book the whole pack of Jewish hounds was seen in full cry, the

imprecations and shouts of the crowd were heard, the Virgin was shown

trembling with fever, the Magdalen, beyond herself, was terrible by her

cries, and towering above this lamentable group, Christ appeared, pale

and swollen, His legs entangled in His robe, when He mounted to Golgotha

clenching His broken nails on the cross as it slipped from His grasp.

This extraordinary visionary, Catherine Emmerich, also described the

surroundings of these scenes, the landscapes of Judæa, which she had

never visited, but have since been recognized as exact; without knowing

it, without willing it, this illiterate woman became an unique and

powerful artist.

"Wonderful visionary, wonderful painter," cried Durtal, "and also

wonderful saint," he added, running over the life of this nun, placed as

a preface to the book.

She was born in 1774, in the diocese of Münster, the child of poor

peasants. From her infancy she had conversations with the Virgin, and

possessed the gift which also was given to Saint Sibylline of Pavia, Ida

of Louvain, and more recently to Louise Lateau, of discerning, when she

looked at, or touched them, objects which had been blessed from those

which had not. She entered, as a novice, the Augustinian convent at

Dulmen, made her profession when she was twenty-nine; her health failed

and incessant pain tortured her, which she increased, for, like Blessed

Lidwine, she obtained from Heaven permission to suffer for others, and

succour the sick by taking their maladies. In 1811, under the government

of Jerome Bonaparte, King of Westphalia, the convent was suppressed and

the nuns dispersed. Infirm and penniless, she was carried to a room in

an inn where she had to bear every sort of curiosity and insult. Christ

added to her martyrdom in giving her the stigmata for which she asked;

she could neither rise, nor walk, nor sit, could take no food but the

juice of a cherry, but she was transported by long ecstasies. In these

she visited Palestine, following the Saviour step by step, dictated with

groans this fond book, then said with her death-rattle, "Let me die in

shame with Jesus on the Cross," and died overwhelmed with joy, thanking

Heaven for the life of suffering she had endured.

"Ah, yes; I will take the 'Dolorous Passion!'" cried Durtal to himself.

"Take the Gospels also," said the abbé, who came in meanwhile; "they are

the heavenly phials from which you will draw the oil you need to dress

your wounds."

"It will be equally useful, and truly in accordance with the atmosphere

of La Trappe, to be able to read in the abbey itself the works of Saint

Bernard, but they consist of unmanageable folios, and the abridgments

and extracts in volumes of a more convenient form are so ill-chosen,

that I have never had the courage to buy them."

"They have Saint Bernard at La Trappe, and will lend you the volumes if

you ask them; but where are you from the spiritual point of view? How

are you getting on?"

"I am melancholy, badly prepared and resigned. I cannot tell if

weariness has come from my turning always on the same round, like a

circus horse, but at this moment I am not suffering. I am persuaded that

this change of place is necessary, and that it would be useless to

hesitate. All the same," he said, after a silence, "it is very odd that

I am going to imprison myself in a monastery, and in truth, in spite of

myself, that astonishes me."

"I will admit," said the abbé, laughing, "that when I first met you at

Tocane's, I never thought I was pointed out to direct you to a

monastery; ah, you see I must evidently belong to that category of

people whom I may call mere bridges, involuntary brokers of souls who

are imposed on you for a certain end which you do not suspect, and of

which even themselves are ignorant."

"Rather, if any one were a mere bridge in this matter," answered Durtal,

"it was Tocane, for it was he who brought us together, and we kick him

away as soon as he has finished his unconscious task; it was evidently

designed that we should know each other."

"That is true," said the abbé, with a smile; "now I do not suppose I

shall see you again before you start, for I go to-morrow to Mâcon, where

I shall stay five days, time to see my nephews and to sign some law

papers: at any rate keep up your courage, and do not forget to send me

news of yourself. Write to me without much delay, that I may find your

letter when I return to Paris."

And as Durtal thanked him for his constant kindness, he took his hand

and held it in his own.

"Say nothing about that," he said; "you have only to thank Him, whose

fatherly impatience has broken the obstinate slumber of your Faith; you

owe thanks to God only.

"Thank Him in getting rid of your nature as soon as possible, and

leaving the house of your conscience empty for Him. The more you die to

yourself the better will He live in you. Prayer is the most powerful

ascetic means by which you can renounce yourself, empty yourself and

render yourself humble in this matter; pray therefore without ceasing at

La Trappe. Implore our Lady especially, for like myrrh which consumes

the proud flesh of wounds, she heals the ulcers of the soul; I on my

side will pray for you as best I can; you can thus in your weakness

lean, so as not to fall, on that firm and protecting pillar of prayer of

which Saint Teresa speaks. Once again, a safe journey to you; we shall

meet soon again, my son, good-bye."

Durtal remained much disturbed. "It is most tiresome," he thought, "that

this priest is leaving Paris before me, for indeed if I have need of

spiritual help or counsel, to whom shall I go? It is clearly written

that I must end as I have begun, alone, but ... but ... solitude under

these conditions is alarming. I am no spoilt child, whatever the abbé

may say."

Next morning Durtal awoke ill; furious neuralgia bored his temples like

a gimlet; he tried to stop it with antipyrine, but this medicine in a

large dose put his stomach out of order without abating the strokes of

the machine which penetrated his skull. He wandered about his rooms,

changing from one seat to another, coiling himself up in an arm-chair,

getting up to lie down again, jumping from his bed in fits of sickness,

upsetting his furniture from time to time.

He could assign no precise cause for this attack; he had slept his fill,

and had not exceeded in any way the night before.

He thought, with his head in his hands, "There are still two days

counting to-day before I leave Paris, and very fit I am for it! I shall

not be in a state to travel by train, and if I travel, the food at La

Trappe will finish me."

He had a minute's comfort from the idea that through no fault of his own

he might perhaps avoid his painful duty, and remain at home; but the

reaction was immediate; he understood that if he did not go, he was

lost; the vacillation of his soul had become chronic, the crisis of

disgust of self, the acute regret of an effort consented to with pain,

and suddenly missed, the certainty that it would only be postponed for a

time, that he would have to pass again through alternations of revolt

and terror, and begin again to fight with himself for conviction.

"Admitting that I am not in a state to travel, I have always the

resource of making my confession to the abbé when he returns, and of

communicating in Paris," he thought, but he shook his head, saying to

himself once more that he felt and knew that was not his duty. "But

then," he said to God: "since Thou dost implant this idea in me so

violently that I cannot even discuss it, in spite of its entire common

sense--for after all it is not necessary to immure myself in a Trappist

monastery in order to reconcile myself to Thee--then let me go!"

And he spoke to God quietly.

"My soul is an evil place, sordid and infamous; till now it has loved

only perverse ways; it has exacted from my wretched body the tithe of

illicit pleasures and unholy joys, it is worth little, it is worth

nothing, and yet down there near Thee, if Thou wilt succour me, I think

that I shall subdue it, but if my body be sick, I cannot force it to

obey me; this is worse than all, I am disarmed if Thou do not come to my

aid.

"Take count of this, O Lord; I know by experience that when I am

ill-fed, I have neuralgia; humanly, logically speaking, I am certain to

be horribly ill at Notre Dame de l'Atre; nevertheless, if I can get

about at all, the day after to-morrow, I will go all the same.

"In default of love, this is the sole proof I can give that I truly

desire Thee, that truly I hope and believe in Thee, but then, O Lord,

aid me."

He added sadly, "Ah! indeed I am no Lidwine or Catherine Emmerich, who

when Thou didst strike them cried out, More, more!--Thou dost scarce

touch me, and I protest; but what wouldest Thou? Thou dost know better

than I; physical suffering breaks me down, drives me to despair."

He went to sleep at last to kill the day in bed; slumbering to wake

again suddenly from frightful nightmares.

The next day his head seemed empty and his heart feeble, but his

neuralgia was less violent. He rose, saying to himself that he must eat,

though he was not hungry, for fear his pain should return. He went out

and wandered in the Luxembourg, saying to himself that he must arrange

his time, that after breakfast he would visit St. Severin, then he would

go home and pack, and afterwards finish the day at Notre Dame des

Victoires.

The walk did him good, his head was lighter, and his heart free. He went

into a restaurant, where because of the early hour nothing was ready; he

spent the time before a newspaper, on a bench. How often he had held

papers thus without reading them, how many evenings he had waited in

cafés with his nose in an article, thinking of other matters, at those

times especially when he was striving with his vices; when Florence

appeared to him, still keeping the clear smile of a little girl on her

way to school, her eyes cast down, her hands in the pockets of her

apron.

Suddenly the child changed into a ghoul who whirled round him wildly,

and made him silently understand the horror of his desires....

All that was now far distant; almost in one day the charm was broken,

without any real strife or true effort, without inward struggles; he had

abstained from seeing her, and now when she roused his memory again she

was no more in fact than a recollection odious and sweet.

"After all," thought Durtal, as he cut up his beefsteak, "I wonder what

she thinks of me; she must certainly suppose me dead or lost; happily I

have never met her, and she does not know my address.

"Well," he went on, "there is no use in stirring the mud, it will be

time to cleanse it when I am at La Trappe," and he shuddered, for the

idea of the confessor again took root in him, and he was obliged to tell

himself for the twentieth time that the expected never happens, and to

declare that he should find some good fellow of a monk who would listen

to him; then he was afraid again, putting things at their worst, and

fancying himself turned out, like a mangy dog.

He finished his breakfast, and went to St. Severin; there the crisis

declared itself, the overcharged soul gave way, struck down by a

congestion of sadness.

He lay on a chair in such a state of depression that he could think no

more, he remained inert without the power of suffering, till little by

little the soul, recovered from its torpor, came to itself in a flood of

tears.

These tears gave him solace; he wept over his lot, thought himself so

unhappy, so worthy of pity, that he hoped still more for help, yet he

dare not address himself to Christ, whom he thought less accessible, but

he spoke in low tones to the Virgin, murmuring that prayer in which

Saint Bernard reminds the Mother of Christ that never in human memory

was it heard that she abandoned any of those who sought her aid.

He left St. Severin, consoled and more resolved, and, when once at home,

was taken up with preparations for departure. Afraid that he would find

nothing he wanted down there, he determined to stuff his portmanteau

full; he crammed into the corners sugar, packets of chocolate, that he

might try to deceive if needful the anguish of a fasting stomach, took

towels thinking there would be few at La Trappe, prepared a stock of

tobacco and matches; then besides books, paper, pencils, ink, packets of

antipyrine, a phial of laudanum, which he wrapped in handkerchiefs and

wedged into his slippers.

When he had strapped his portmanteau, he said to himself, looking at the

clock: "To-morrow at this time I shall be jolting in a cab, and my

seclusion will be near at hand; never mind, I shall do well, in

anticipation of bodily ailment, to ask for the confessor as soon as I

get there, and suppose that turns out badly, I shall have time to make

arrangements and take the train back at once.

"All the same this will not prevent my having a wretched moment this

evening when I enter Notre Dame des Victoires," but his anxieties and

emotions vanished when the hour of Benediction came. He was seized by

the giddy infection of the church, and he wrapped, steeped, and lost

himself in the prayer which arose from all those souls, in the chant

which went up from every mouth, and when the monstrance was brought

forward to make its sign in the air, he felt a vast peace descend upon

him.

At evening as he undressed he sighed: "To-morrow I shall lie down in a

cell, amazing when I think of it! I should have considered anyone mad,

who, a few years ago, had prophesied that I should take refuge in a

Trappist monastery; yet now I am going there of my own accord, and yet

no, I am going driven by an unknown power, I am going as a whipped cur.

"After all, what a symptom of the time it is! Society must indeed be

unclean, if God has no longer the right to be hard, and is reduced to

pick up what He finds, and to content Himself with gathering to Himself

people like me!"

SECOND PART.

CHAPTER I.

Durtal awoke, gay and brisk, astonished at not hearing himself groan,

when the moment had come in which he should set off for La Trappe; he

was wonderfully reassured. He tried to recollect himself, and to pray,

but he felt his thoughts more scattered and wandering than usual; he

remained indifferent and unmoved. Surprised at this result, he tried to

examine himself, and touched the void; he was slack that morning, in one

of those sudden dispositions in which a man becomes a child again,

incapable of attention, in which the wrong side of things disappears,

and everything distracts.

He dressed hastily, got into a cab, was too early at the station; and

there experienced a perfectly childish attack of vanity. Looking at the

people who hurried through the waiting rooms, thronged the ticket

offices, or resignedly followed their luggage, he was not far from

admiring himself. "If these travellers who think only of their pleasures

or their business, knew where I am going," he thought.

Then he reproached himself for the stupidity of these reflections, and

as soon as he was settled in his compartment, in which he chanced to be

alone, he lighted a cigarette, saying to himself, "Let us profit at

least by the time there is still for smoking," and he began to wander,

to dream about the position of the monastery, and rove about the

neighbourhood of La Trappe.

He remembered that a review had recently estimated the number of nuns

and monks in France at two hundred thousand.

"Two hundred thousand persons, who, in such an epoch, have understood

the wickedness of the struggle for life, the filth of sexual relations,

the horror of lyings-in, those are they who save the honour of the

country," he thought.

Then, passing at a bound from cloistered souls to the treatises he had

put in his portmanteau, he went on: "It is, all the same, curious how

completely the temperament of French art rebels against Mysticism!

"All exalted writers are foreigners. Saint Denys the Areopagite was a

Greek; Eckhart, Tauler, Suso, Sister Emmerich, were Germans; Ruysbröck

came from Flanders; Saint Teresa, Saint John of the Cross, Saint Marie

d'Agreda, were Spaniards; Father Faber was English; Saint Bonaventure,

Angela of Foligno, Magdalen of Pazzi, Catherine of Genoa, Jacopo de

Voragine, were Italians....

"Ah!" he said, struck by the last name he had cited, "I ought to have

brought his Golden Legend in my bag; how was it I did not remember it,

for that book is, in fact, the very crowning work of the Middle Ages,

the stimulant for hours rendered languid by the prolonged uneasiness of

fasting, the simple aid of pious vigils? For the most incredulous souls

of our time, the Golden Legend at least still seems like one of those

pure parchments, on which simple illuminators painted the faces of

saints with gum water, or white of egg on golden backgrounds. Jacopo de

Voragine is the Jehan Fouquet, the André Beaunevue, of literary

miniature, of mystic prose!

"It is quite absurd to have forgotten that book, for it would have made

me pass precious days, like those of old, in La Trappe.

"Yes, it is strange," he thought, returning on his thoughts, and coming

back to his first idea; "France can count religious authors, more or

less celebrated, but very few mystical writers, properly so-called, and

it is just the same also in painting. The true Early Masters are

Flemish, German or Italian, none are French, for our Burgundian School

descended from the Flemish.

"No, it cannot be denied, the genius of our race cannot easily follow

and explain how God acts when He works in the central depths of the

soul, which is the ovary of thought, the very source of conception; it

is refractory at explaining, by the expressive power of words, the crash

or the silence of grace; bursting forth in the domain which is wasted by

sin, it is inapt at extracting from that secret world, works of

psychology like those of Saint Teresa and Saint John of the Cross, works

of art, like those of Voragine or Sister Emmerich.

"Besides that our field is scarcely arable, and our soil harsh, where

shall we now find the labourer who sows and harrows it, who prepares not

even a mystical harvest, but even any spiritual fruit, capable of

assuaging the hunger of the few who stray and are lost, and fall from

inanition in the icy desert of our time?

"He who should be the cultivator of that land, the farmer of souls, the

priest, has not strength to clear the ground.

"The seminary has made him arbitrary and puerile, life outside has made

him lukewarm. Therefore it seems that God has withdrawn Himself from

him, and the proof of this is that He has taken away all ability from

the priesthood. There are no priests now who have talent, either in the

pulpit or in books; the laity have inherited that grace which was so

common in the Church of the Middle Ages. Another example proves it still

more, priests make so few conversions. In these days the being who

pleases Heaven does without them, the Saviour Himself strikes him down,

handles him, works directly on him.

"The ignorance of the clergy, their want of education, their

unintelligence of their surroundings, their dislike for Mysticism, their

incomprehension of art, have taken away all their influence on the

aristocracy of souls. Their only action is now on the childish brains of

bigots and pretenders; and this is no doubt providential; it is better

so, for if the priest became the master, if he succeeded in raising and

vivifying the wearisome tribe he manages, it would be like a waterspout

of clerical stupidity beating down on a country, would be the end of all

literature and all art in France.

"To save the Church there remains the monk, whom the priest detests, for

the life of the cloister is a constant reproach to his own existence,"

continued Durtal; "always supposing that my illusions are not again

destroyed when I see a monastery ... but no, I am lucky; I have

discovered in Paris one of those few abbés who is neither indifferent

nor a pedant; why should I not, in an abbey, come into contact with

authentic monks?"

He lighted a cigarette, and looked at the landscape from the carriage

window; the train was passing through fields in front of which the

telegraph wires danced in puffs of steam; the landscape was flat and

uninteresting. Durtal fell back sulkily in his corner.

"The arrival at the convent disturbs me," he murmured; "since there are

no useless words to proffer, I shall confine myself to giving his letter

to the Father Guestmaster; ah! and then all will arrange itself."

He felt, in fact, a perfect calm, and was astonished at not finding in

himself any disgust or fear, at being almost in high spirits: "Well, my

good priest was right in declaring that I was creating monsters in

advance;" and he thought of the Abbé Gévresin, was surprised that long

as he had visited him, he knew nothing whatever of his antecedents, that

he was no more intimate with him than on the very first day; "In fact,

it only rested with me to question him discreetly, but the idea never

entered my head: it is true that our intercourse has been strictly

limited to matters of religion and art; this perpetual reserve does not

create very thrilling friendships, but it institutes a sort of Jansenism

of the affections which is not without charm.

"In any case that ecclesiastic is a holy man; he has not even that

manner at once caressing and reserved of other priests. Apart from

certain gestures, his habit of rolling his arms in his cincture, of

wrapping his hands in his sleeves, of liking to walk backwards when in

conversation; apart from his innocent mania of interlarding his phrases

with Latin, he does not recall either the attitude or the unfashionable

speech of his brethren. He loves mysticism and plain song; he is

exceptional, and therefore he must have been also carefully chosen for

me in heaven.

"Ah well! we must be getting near," he sighed, looking at his watch, "I

am beginning to feel hungry; come, that is all right, we shall be at

Saint Landry in a quarter of an hour."

He strummed on the windows of the carriage, saw the fields and woods fly

past, smoked a cigarette or two, took his bag from the rack, at last

arrived at the station and got out.

Close to the tiny station he recognized the inn of which the abbé had

told him. He found a good woman in the kitchen who said, "All right,

sir, sit down, they will put the horse to while you breakfast."

He fed himself on uneatable things, they brought him a calf's head

forgotten in a tub, some cutlets that were high, vegetables blackened

with gravy from the stove.

In his present mood he was amused at this infamous meal, fell back upon

a thin wine which rasped his throat, and resignedly drank coffee which

left a sediment of peat at the bottom of the cup.

Then he climbed into a jolting car driven by a young man, and the horse

went off at a smart pace through the village and into the country.

On the way he asked the driver for some information about La Trappe, but

the peasant knew nothing. "I often go there," he said, "but never enter,

the carriage stays at the gate, so you see I can tell you nothing."

They went for an hour rapidly through the lanes, and the peasant saluted

a roadmaker with his whip, and said to Durtal,

"They say that the eminets eat their bellies."

And as Durtal asked what he meant,

"They are idle dogs, they lie all the summer on their bellies in the

shade."

And he said no more.

Durtal thought of nothing; he digested and smoked, dizzy with the

rumbling of the carriage.

At the end of another hour they came into the heart of the forest.

"Are we near?"

"Oh, not yet!"

"Can we see La Trappe from a distance?"

"Oh no, you must have your nose just over it to see it, it is quite in a

bottom, at the end of a lane, like that," said the peasant, pointing to

a grassy lane into which they turned.

"There is a fellow coming from the place," he said, pointing out a

vagabond, who was crossing the copse at a great pace.

And he explained to Durtal that every beggar had a right to food and

even to lodging at La Trappe; they gave them the ordinary fare of the

community in a room close to the brother porter's lodge, but did not let

them into the convent.

When Durtal asked him the opinion which the villagers round about had of

the monks, the peasant was evidently afraid of compromising himself, for

he answered,

"Some say nothing about them."

Durtal began to be rather weary, when suddenly as they turned out of a

lane, he saw an immense building below him.

"There is La Trappe!" said the peasant, gathering his reins for the

descent.

From the height where he was, Durtal looked over the roofs, and saw a

large garden, with thickets, and in front of them a formidable crucifix.

Then the vision disappeared, the carriage again went through the wood,

descending by zig-zag roads where the foliage intercepted the view.

They came at last, by long circuits, to an open place, at the end of

which rose a wall with a large gate in the middle. The carriage stopped.

"You have only to ring," said the peasant, showing Durtal an iron chain

along the wall; and he added,

"Shall I come for you again to-morrow?"

"No."

"Then you remain here?" and the peasant looked at him with astonishment,

turned about, and drove up the hill.

Durtal remained as one crushed, his portmanteau at his feet, before the

door; his heart beat violently; all his assurance, all his enthusiasm,

had vanished, and he stammered: "What will happen to me within?"

And with a swift feeling of dread, there passed before him the terrible

life of the Trappists; the body ill-nourished, exhausted from want of

sleep, prostrate for hours on the pavement; the soul trembling, squeezed

like a sponge in the hand, drilled, examined, ransacked even to its

smallest folds; and at the end of its failure of an existence, thrown

like a wreck against this rude rock, into the silence of a prison, and

the dreadful stillness of the tomb!

"My God, my God, have pity upon me!" said he, as he wiped his brow.

Mechanically he looked around, as if he expected some help; the roads

were deserted and the woods were empty; no sound was heard in the

country, or in the monastery.

"At any rate I must make up my mind to ring;" and, his limbs sinking

under him, he pulled the chain.

The sound of the bell, hard, rusty, grumbling, sounded on the other side

of the wall.

"Get up and don't be a fool," he said to himself, as he heard the

clatter of a pair of sabots behind the door.

This opened, and a very old monk, clad in the brown cloth of the

Capuchins, looked at him inquiringly.

"I come to make a retreat, and I wish to see Father Etienne."

The monk bowed, took up the portmanteau, and made a sign to Durtal to

follow him. He went with bent head and short steps across an orchard.

They reached a grating, passed on the right of the vast building a sort

of dilapidated chateau, flanked by two wings advancing on a court.

The brother entered the wing close to the grating. Durtal followed him

along a corridor into which several grey doors opened; on one of these

he read the word "Auditorium." The Trappist stopped before it, lifted

the wooden latch, ushered Durtal into the room, and after some minutes

he heard repeated calls on the bell.

Durtal sat down and looked at this gloomy chamber, for the window was

half closed by shutters. There was little furniture; the most important

a dining-table with an old cover; in the corner, a "prie-Dieu" above

which was nailed a figure of Saint Antony of Padua rocking the infant

Jesus in his arms; a large crucifix on the other wall, and here and

there were placed two high-backed chairs and four ordinary chairs.

Durtal took from his pocket-book the letter of introduction to the

father. "What sort of reception will he give me?" he asked himself; "he

at any rate can speak; well, we shall soon see," he said, as he heard

steps.

A monk in white with a black scapular whose two ends fell, one on his

shoulders, the other on his breast, appeared; he was young and smiling.

He read the letter, then he took Durtal's hand, and led him in silent

astonishment across the court to the other wing of the building, opened

a door, dipped his finger in a holy-water stoup, and offered it to him.

They were in a chapel. The monk invited Durtal by a sign to kneel on a

step before the altar, and he prayed in a low voice; he then rose,

returned slowly to the threshold, offered Durtal holy water again, still

without opening his lips, and leading him by the hand they went the way

they came to the Auditorium.

There, he inquired after the health of the Abbé Gévresin, seized the

portmanteau, and mounted an immense staircase falling into ruin. At the

top of this staircase, which had only one story, there extended a vast

landing bounded at each of its extremities by a door.

Father Etienne entered that on the right, crossed a broad vestibule, and

led Durtal into a room, which a ticket printed in large letters placed

under the invocation of St. Benedict, and said, "I am sorry, sir, to be

only able to put at your disposal this room, which is not very

comfortable."

"But it will do very well," said Durtal, "and the view is charming," he

continued, approaching the window.

"At least you will be in good air," said the monk, opening the casement.

Below stretched the orchard through which Durtal had passed under the

conduct of the brother porter. An enclosure full of apple trees stunted

and clipped, silvered by lichens, and gilt by moss; then beyond the

monastery, and above the walls, rose fields of clover intersected by a

great white road, extending to the horizon, which was notched by the

foliage of trees.

"You will see, sir," Father Etienne went on, "if you need anything in

this cell, and tell me quite simply, will you not? for otherwise we

should heap up regret for both of us, for you who have only to ask for

what might be useful to you, for me who should only discover it later

and be sorry for my forgetfulness."

Durtal looked at him reassured by this frank greeting; he was a young

priest, about thirty years old. His face bright, and finely cut, was

streaked with red fibres on the cheeks; this monk wore a beard, and

round his shaven head was a crown of brown hair. He spoke somewhat

rapidly, and smiled, with his hands pushed into the large leathern belt

round his waist. "I will come back directly, for I have some important

work to finish," he said; "try to make yourself at home as much as

possible, and if you have time glance over the rule which you have to

follow in this monastery--it is written on one of these cards on the

table; we will talk about it after you have mastered it, if you like."

And he left Durtal alone.

He soon made an inventory of the room; it was very high and extremely

narrow like a gun-barrel, the door was at one end, the window at the

other.

At the bottom, in a corner, near the casement, was a little iron bed,

and a small round table in chestnut wood. At the foot of the bed which

stood along the wall was a prie-Dieu in faded rep, upon which was a

crucifix, and a branch of dried fir below it; on the same side was a

table of white wood covered with a towel, on which were placed an ewer,

a basin, and a glass. On the opposite wall was a wardrobe, and by the

fireplace, on the mantelpiece of which a crucifix was placed, was a

table opposite the bed near the window; three straw chairs completed the

furniture of this room. "I shall never have water enough to wash in,"

thought Durtal, gauging the miniature jug, which held about a pint;

"since Father Etienne shows himself so obliging, I must ask him for a

larger ration." He unpacked his portmanteau, undressed, put on flannel

instead of his starched shirt, arranged his toilet things on the

washing-stand, folded his linen in the wardrobe; then sat down, looked

around the cell, and thought it sufficiently comfortable, and above all

very clean. He then went towards the table on which were laid a ream of

ruled paper, an inkstand, and some pens; he was grateful for this

attention of the monk, who knew no doubt by the Abbé Gévresin's letter

that his business was writing, opened two volumes bound in leather and

shut them again. The one was "The Introduction to the Devout Life," by

Saint Francis de Sales, the other was "Manresa," or "The Spiritual

Exercises" of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, and he arranged his own books on

the table.

Then he took up, just as it came, one of the cards spread on the table

and read:--

"Exercises of the Community for ordinary days--from Easter to the

Invention of the Cross in September.

Rise. 2.

Prime and Mass. 5.15.

Work after the Chapter.

End of work and leisure time. 9.

Sext. 11.

Angelus and Dinner. 11.30.

Siesta after Dinner.

End of Siesta. 1.30.

None and work, five minutes after waking.

End of work and leisure. 4.30.

Vespers followed by prayer. 5.15.

Supper and leisure. 6.

Compline. 7.25.

Retire to rest. 8."

He turned the card, and on the other side was a new horary, entitled:--

"Winter Exercises, from the Invention of the Cross in September to

Easter."

The hour of rising was the same, but bed-time was an hour earlier;

dinner was changed from 11.30 to 2; siesta and supper at 6 o'clock were

suppressed; the canonical hours were the same, except vespers and

compline, which were changed from 5.15 and 7.25 to 4.30 and 6.15.

"It is not pleasant to drag oneself from bed in the middle of the

night," sighed Durtal, "but I am inclined to think that the Retreatants

are not subject to this rule of wakefulness," and he took up another

card. "This must be the one intended for me," he said, reading the head

of the card:--

Rules of Retreat from Easter to the Invention of the Cross in September.

Let us look at these rules rather more closely.

He examined the two tables, brought together, one for the morning, and

one for the evening.

MORNING.

4. Rise at the Angelus bell.

4.30. Prayer and Meditation.

5.15. Prime and Mass.

6-7. Examination of Conscience.

7. Breakfast.

7.30. Way of the Cross.

8. Sext and None.

8.30. Second Meditation.

9. Spiritual Reading.

11. Adoration and Examination. Tierce.

11.30. Angelus. Dinner. Recreation.

12.15. Siesta. Absolute Silence.

EVENING.

1.30. End of Siesta. Rosary.

2. Vespers and Compline.

3. Third Meditation.

3.15. Spiritual Reading.

4.15. Matins and Lauds.

5.15. Reflections. Choir Vespers.

5.30. Examination and Prayer.

6. Supper and Recreation.

7. Litanies. Absolute Silence.

7.15. Assist at Compline.

7.30. Salve Regina. Angelus.

7.45. Private Examination. Retire to rest.

"This at any rate is more practical--four o'clock in the morning is an

almost possible hour, but I do not understand it, the canonical hours on

this tablet do not agree with those of the monks, and then why these

double Vespers and Compline? Lastly, these little points in which you

are invited to meditate so many minutes, to read so many more, scarcely

suit me. My mind is scarcely malleable enough to run in those

channels--it is true that after all I am free to do as I please, for no

one can verify what tricks I may play, can know, for instance, if I

meditate....

"Ah, here is again a regulation at the back," he went on, as he turned

the card, "the regulation for September, I need not trouble myself about

it, it differs, moreover, little from the other; but here is a

postscript which concerns both horaries."

NOTE.

1. Those who are not bound to say the Breviary will say the Little

Office of the Blessed Virgin.

2. The Retreatants are requested to make their Confessions at an

early date, in order to have their mind more free for meditation.

3. After each meditation an analogous chapter of the Imitation must

be read.

4. The best time for confessions and the Way of the Cross is from

6-9 in the morning, 2-5 in the afternoon, and in summer from 9 in

the morning till 5 in the afternoon.

5. To read the table of notices.

6. It is well to be punctual at meals to keep no one waiting.

7. The Father Guestmaster alone is charged with providing for the

wants of guests.

8. Guests may ask for books for the retreat, if they have none

themselves.

Confession! He saw this word only in the whole series of rules. He must

at once have recourse to it. He felt a cold shiver down his back; and

knew that he must speak to Father Etienne about it as soon as he

returned.

He had not long to wrestle with himself, for the monk entered almost at

once and said,

"Have you noticed anything you need, and the presence of which may be

useful to you?"

"No, Father; yet if you could let me have a little more water."

"Nothing is easier; I will send you up a large pitcher every morning."

"Thank you ... see, I have been studying the rules."

"I will at once put you at ease," said the monk. "You are compelled to

nothing but the strictest punctuality. You must follow the canonical

offices to the letter. As to the exercises marked on the card, they are

not of obligation; they may be useful, as they are laid down, for people

who are very young and devoid of all initiative, but, as I think at

least, they somewhat hamper others, and as a general rule we do not

trouble the retreatants here, we let solitude act on them; it belongs to

yourself to discriminate and distinguish the best mode of occupying your

time holily. Therefore I will not impose on you any of the reading laid

down on this card, and only take leave to get you to say the Little

Office of the Blessed Virgin. Have you it?"

"Here it is," said Durtal, holding out a bound book.

"Your volume is charming," said Father Etienne, as he turned over the

pages exquisitely printed in red and black. He paused at one of them,

and read aloud the third lesson of Matins.

"Is it not fine?" he cried. A sudden joy sprang up in his face; his eyes

grew bright, his hands trembled on the cover. "Yes," he said, closing

it, "read this office, here especially, for you know our true patroness,

the true Abbot of the Trappists, is the Blessed Virgin!"

After a silence he continued: "I have fixed a week as the duration of

your retreat, in the letter I sent to the Abbé Gévresin, but I need not

say that if you are not too weary here, you can stay as long as seems

good to you."

"I hope to be able to prolong my stay among you, but this must depend

upon the way in which my body stands the struggle; my stomach is

somewhat weak, and I am not without some fear; I shall, therefore, be

much obliged to you if you will let me see the confessor as soon as

possible."

"Good; you shall see him to-morrow. I will tell you the time this

evening, after compline. As for the food, if you think it insufficient,

I will see that you have an extra egg, but there ceases the discretion I

can exercise, for the rule is precise, no fish, no flesh--vegetables,

and I am bound to admit they are not first rate.

"But you shall judge, and, indeed, as it is just upon supper-time, I

will show you the room where you will dine in company with M. Bruno."

And as they descended the staircase, the monk went on: "M. Bruno is a

person who has renounced the world, and, without having taken the vows,

lives enclosed. He is what our rule calls an oblate, he is a holy and

learned man, whom you will certainly like; you can talk with him during

the meal."

"Ah!" said Durtal, "and before and after I must keep silence?"

"Yes, unless you have anything to ask, in which case I shall be always

at your service, ready to answer you. As for that question of silence,

as for those of the hours of rising and going to bed, and the offices,

the rule allows no modification, it must be observed to the letter."

"Good," said Durtal, a little taken aback by the decided tone of the

Father, "but I saw on my card a note directing me to consult a table of

regulations, and I have not that table."

"It hangs on the wall of the staircase, near your room; you can read it

when your head is rested to-morrow. Will you go in?" he said, opening a

door in the lower corridor, just opposite that of the auditorium.

Durtal bowed to an old gentleman who came to meet him; the monk

introduced them and vanished.

The dishes were on the table, two poached eggs, a bowl of rice, another

of French beans, and a pot of honey.

M. Bruno said grace, and proceeded to help Durtal.

He gave him an egg.

"This is a poor supper for a Parisian," he said, with a smile.

"Ah, as long as there is an egg and wine it is bearable. I was afraid, I

confess, that my only drink would be cold water."

They talked as friends.

The man was pleasant, and distinguished, with ascetic features, but with

a bright smile, lighting up a grave face, yellow and wrinkled.

He lent himself with perfect good grace to Durtal's inquiries, and told

him, that after a tempestuous life, he felt that Grace had touched him,

and he had retired from the world to expiate by years of austerities and

silence his own sins and those of others.

"And you have never grown tired of being here?"

"Never, during the five years that I have spent in this cloister, time,

cut up as it is at La Trappe, seems short."

"You are present at all the exercises of the Community?"

"Yes; I only replace manual labour by meditation in my cell; my position

as oblate, however, dispenses me, if I so wish, from getting up at two

o'clock to follow the night office, but it is a great joy to me to

recite the magnificent Benedictine Psalter before daybreak--but you are

listening to me, and eat nothing. Let me give you a little more rice."

"No, thank you, but I will take, if you will allow me, a spoonful of

honey.

"The food is not bad," he said, "but I do not quite understand the same

strange and identical taste in all the dishes; it smells, how shall I

express it? like burnt fat or suet."

"That is the warm oil with which the vegetables are dressed, you will

soon grow accustomed to it, in a couple of days you will cease to notice

it."

"But in what consists, precisely, the part of an oblate?"

"His life is less austere, and more contemplative than that of a monk;

he may travel if he will, and though he is not bound by vows, he shares

in all the spiritual advantages of the order.

"In old times the rule admitted those whom it styled 'familiars.'

"Those were oblates who received the tonsure, wore a distinct costume,

and pronounced the three greater vows; they led in fact a mitigated

life, half layman, half monk. This rule, which still exists among the

true Benedictines, has disappeared among the Trappists since the year

1293, the date at which it was suppressed by the Chapter General.

"At the present time, in the Cistercian abbeys are only the fathers, the

lay brothers, the oblates, when there are any, and the peasants employed

in field labour."

"The lay brothers, I suppose, are those whose heads are completely

shaven, and who are clothed in a brown habit, like the monk who opened

the door to me?"

"Yes; they do not sing office, and have only manual tasks."

"By the way, the rule for retreat which I read in my room does not seem

clear. As far as I recall it, it doubles certain offices, places Matins

at four in the afternoon, and Vespers at two; in any case the horary is

not the same as that of the Trappists; how am I to understand and

reconcile them?"

"You have only to take into consideration the exercises set out on your

card; Father Etienne must, I think, have said so; that mould was only

made for people who cannot occupy and guide themselves. That explains to

you how, to prevent them from becoming idle, the priests' breviary has

been in some degree taken to pieces, and their time has been

distributed in small slices, so that, for instance, they may be obliged

to recite the psalms for Matins at hours when there is no psalm."

Dinner was over; M. Bruno said grace, and said to Durtal,

"You have twenty minutes free from now to Compline; you can make

acquaintance with the garden and woods." He bowed politely and went out.

"I can smoke a cigarette," thought Durtal, when he was alone. He took

his hat and left the room. Night was coming on. He passed through the

great court, skirted a small building surmounted by a long

chimney-stack, discovered by the smell that it was a chocolate factory,

and entered an avenue of trees.

The sky was so obscure that he could scarcely see the group of trees he

entered, and not seeing anyone he rolled his cigarettes, and smoked them

slowly, with enjoyment, consulting his watch from time to time by his

cigar lights.

He was astonished at the silence of the monastery; not a sound, however

hushed, however distant, save now and then a gentle rustle of boughs; he

went to the side whence the noise came, and saw a piece of water, on

which a swan was sailing, which came towards him.

He saw its white plumage oscillate against the darkness which it

displaced with a splash, when a bell sounded with slow strokes; "Ah,"

said he, looking again at his watch, "that is the hour of Compline."

He went to the chapel, which was still empty; and he took occasion of

the solitude to examine it at his ease.

It was in the form of a truncated cross, a cross without a foot, rounded

at the summit, holding out two square arms, with a door at either end.

The upper part of the cross, below a cupola painted blue, formed a

little circular apse, round which was a circle of stalls placed back

against the wall; in the middle rose a great altar of white marble,

surmounted by wooden chandeliers, flanked on the left and right by

candelabra also of wood, placed on marble shafts.

The lower part of the altar was hollow, and closed in front by a glass,

behind which appeared a shrine in Gothic style, which reflected in its

copper gilt mirror the light of the lamps.

The apse opened into a large porch, with three steps in front, on the

arms of the cross, which were prolonged into a kind of vestibule serving

at once as nave and side aisles to this stumpy church.

The hollowed arms, at their extremities near the doors, held two very

small chapels set back in niches painted blue, like the cupola,

containing above two stone altars without ornament, two mediocre

statues, one of Saint Joseph, the other of Christ.

Lastly, a fourth altar, dedicated to the Virgin, was situated in this

vestibule opposite the steps leading to the apse, opposite therefore to

the high altar. It was relieved against a window whose lights

represented Saint Bernard in white on one hand, and Saint Benedict in

black on the other, and it appeared to recede into the church, because

of the two ranges of seats which stood on the left and right before the

two other little chapels, leaving only room necessary to pass along the

vestibule, or to go in a straight line from this altar of the Virgin in

the apse, to the high altar.

"This sanctuary is alarmingly ugly," said Durtal, who had sat down on a

bench in front of the statue of Saint Joseph. "To judge by the few

subjects carved along the walls, this edifice dates from the time of

Louis XVI., an abominable date for a church."

He was disturbed in these thoughts by the sound of bells, and at the

same time all the doors were opened; one situated in the apse itself, on

the left of the altar, gave passage to about half a score monks, wrapped

in great white cowls, who spread out into the choir, and occupied the

stalls on either side.

Then, by the two doors of the vestibule, came a crowd of brown monks,

who knelt at the benches on the two sides of Our Lady's altar.

Durtal had some of them near him; but they bowed their heads, and joined

their hands, he dared not observe them; moreover, the vestibule had

become almost dark, the light was concentrated in the choir, where the

lamps were kindled.

He could make out the faces of the white monks in their stalls in the

part of the apse he could see, and among them he recognized Father

Etienne on his knees near a short monk; but another at the end of the

stalls near the porch, almost opposite the altar, and in full light,

attracted him.

He was tall and strong, and looked like an Arab in his white burnous.

Durtal could only see him in profile, and he distinguished a long grey

beard, a shaven skull, surrounded by the monastic crown, a high

forehead, and a nose like an eagle's beak. He had a grand appearance,

with his imperious features, and his fine figure as it swayed under the

cowl.

"That is probably the abbot of La Trappe," thought Durtal, and he felt

certain when this monk struck a little bell hidden under the desk before

him, and directed the office.

All the monks bowed to the altar; the abbot recited the opening prayers,

then there was a pause, and, from the other side of the apse, which

Durtal could not see, rose the frail voice of an old man, a voice which

had returned to the clear tones of childhood, but was just a little

cracked, growing higher as it declaimed the antiphon,

"Deus in adjutorium meum intende."

And the other side of the choir, that on which were Father Etienne and

the abbot, answered, scanning the syllables very slowly, with voices of

bass pitch,--

"Domine ad adjuvandum me festina."

And all bowed their heads over the folios placed before them, and took

up the words,--

"Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto."

And they lifted their heads while the other part of the Fathers

pronounced the response, "Sicut erat in principio, etc."

The office began.

It was not chanted but declaimed, now rapid and now slow. The side of

the choir which Durtal saw made all the vowels sharp and short letters;

the other, on the contrary, altered them all into long letters and

seemed to cap all the Os with a circumflex accent. It might be said that

one side had the pronunciation of the South, the other that of the

North; thus chanted, the office became strange, and ended by rocking

like an incantation, and soothing the soul which fell asleep in the

rolling of the verses, interrupted by the recurrent doxology like a

refrain after the last verse of each of the psalms.

"Ah well, I cannot understand it," thought Durtal, who had his Compline

at his fingers' ends, "they are not singing the Roman office at all."

The fact is that one of the psalms was wanting. He caught indeed, at one

moment, the hymn of Saint Ambrose, the "Te lucis ante terminum," sung to

a simple and rugged tune of the old plain chant, and yet the last stanza

was not the same; but he lost himself afresh, and waited for the "Short

Lessons" and the "Nunc Dimittis" which never came.

"Yet Compline does not vary like Vespers," he thought, "I must ask

Father Etienne the meaning of this to-morrow."

Then his reflections were disturbed by a young white monk, who passed

him, genuflected to the altar, and lighted two tapers.

Suddenly all rose, and with a great shout, the "Salve Regina" shook the

arches.

Durtal was affected as he listened to this admirable chant, which had

nothing in common with that which is bellowed at Paris in the churches.

This was at once flexible and ardent, sustained by such suppliant

adoration, that it seemed to concentrate in itself alone, the immemorial

hope of humanity, and its eternal lamentation.

Chanted without accompaniment, unsustained by the organ, by voices

indifferent to themselves and blending in one only, masculine and deep,

it rose with quiet boldness, sprang up with irresistible flight towards

Our Lady, then made, as it were, a return upon itself, and its

confidence was lessened; it advanced more tremblingly, but so different,

so humble, that it felt itself forgiven, and dared then in passionate

appeals to demand the undeserved pleasures of heaven.

It was the absolute triumph of the neumes, those repetitions of notes on

the same syllable, the same word, which the Church invented to paint the

excess of that interior joy or sorrow which words cannot render; it was

a rush, a going forth of the soul, escaping in the passionate voices,

breathed forth by the bodies of the monks as they stood and trembled.

Durtal followed in his prayer-book this work with so short a text, so

long a chant; and as he listened to, and read it with recollection, this

magnificent prayer seemed to decompose as a whole, and to represent

three different states of the soul, to exhibit the triple phase of

humanity, during its youth, its maturity, and its decline; it was, in a

word, an essential summary of prayer for all ages.

First, there was the canticle of exultation, the joyous welcome of a

being yet little, stammering forth respectful caresses, petting with

gentle words, and fondness of a child who seeks to coax his mother--this

is the "Salve Regina, Mater misericordiæ, vita, dulcedo et spes nostra,

salve." Then the soul so candid, so simply happy, has grown, and knowing

the wilful failings of thought, the repeated loss through sin, joins her

hands, and asks, sobbing, for help. She adores no longer with a smile,

but with tears; it is "Ad te clamamus, exsules filii Hevae; ad te

suspiramus, gementes et flentes in hac lachrymarum valle." At last old

age comes; the soul lies, tormented by the memory of counsels neglected,

by regret for lost graces; and having become weaker, and more full of

fears, is alarmed before her deliverance, before the destruction of that

prison of the flesh which she feels at hand, and then she thinks of the

eternal death of those whom the Judge condemns. On her knees she

implores the Advocatress of earth, the Consultrix of heaven; it is the

"Eia ergo Advocata nostra; illos tuos misericordes oculos ad nos

converte; et Jesum, benedictum fructum ventris tui, nobis post hoc

exilium ostende."

And to that essence of prayer composed by Peter of Compostella or

Hermann Contract, Saint Bernard, in an excess of hyperdulia, added the

three invocations at the end, "O clemens, O pia, O dulcis Virgo Maria,"

sealing the inimitable prose with a triple seal, by those three cries of

love which recall the hymn to the affectionate adoration of its

beginning.

"This is unprecedented," thought Durtal, as the Trappists chanted these

sweet and eager appeals; the neumes were prolonged on the Os, which

passed through all the colours of the soul, through the whole register

of sound; and these interjections summed up again, in the series of

notes which clothed them, the inventory of the human soul, which now

recapitulated the whole body of the hymn.

And suddenly at the word "Maria," at the glorious cry of that name, the

chant fell, the tapers were extinguished, the monks fell on their knees,

a silence like death came upon the chapel. The bells rang slowly, and

the Angelus unfolded under the arches the separated petals of its clear

sounds.

All, now prostrate, their faces buried in their hands, were praying, and

this lasted long; then the sound of the little hand-bell was heard,

everyone rose, genuflected to the altar, and in silent file the monks

disappeared through the door in the apse.

"Ah! the true creator of plain music, the unknown author who cast into

the brain of man the seed of plain chant, was the Holy Ghost," said

Durtal, sick and dazzled, with tears in his eyes.

M. Bruno, whom he had not noticed in the chapel, came and joined him.

They crossed the court without speaking, and when they had entered the

guest-house, M. Bruno lighted two candles, gave one to Durtal, and said

gravely, "I wish you a good night, sir."

Durtal went up the staircase behind him. They bowed again on the

landing, and Durtal entered his cell.

The wind blew under the door, and the room, scarcely lighted by the low

flame of the candle, seemed to him gloomy, the high ceiling vanished in

shadow, and rained down darkness.

Durtal sat down by his bed, discouraged.

And yet he was thrust forward by one of those impulses it is impossible

to translate into words, in which it seems that the heart swells almost

to bursting, and before his inability to get away and fly from self,

Durtal ended by becoming a child again, by weeping without definite

cause, simply from the need of relieving himself by tears.

He sank down at the prie-Dieu, expecting he knew not what, which never

came; then before the crucifix which stretched its arms above him, he

began to speak to Him, and to say to Him in low tones:

"Father, I have driven the swine from my being, but they have trampled

on me, and covered me with mire, and the very stye is in ruins. Have

pity on me, for I return from a distant land. Have mercy, O Lord, on the

swine-herd without a house. I have entered into Thy house; do not send

me away, be to me a kindly host, wash me."

"Ah," he said suddenly, "that reminds me that I have not seen Father

Etienne, who was to tell me the hour at which the confessor would

receive me to-morrow; he has no doubt forgotten to ask him; so much the

better. At any rate it will put it off for a day; my soul is so cramped

that I have indeed need of rest."

He undressed, sighing: "I must be up at half-past three to be in the

chapel at four: I have no time to lose if I wish to sleep. If only I

have no neuralgia to-morrow, and can wake before dawn!"

CHAPTER II.

He passed a most terrible night; it was so special, so dreadful, that he

did not remember, in the whole of his existence, to have endured such

anguish, undergone the like fears.

It was an uninterrupted succession of sudden wakings and of nightmares.

And these nightmares overpassed the limits of abomination that the most

dangerous madness dreams. They developed themselves in the realm of

lust; and they were so special, so new to him, that when he woke Durtal

remained trembling, almost crying out.

It was not at all that involuntary and well known act, that vision which

ceases just at the moment when the sleeper clasps an amorous form; it

was as and more complete than in nature, long and accomplished,

accompanied by all the preludes, all the details, all the sensations,

and the orgasm took place with a singularly painful acuteness, an

incredible spasm.

A strange fact, which seemed to point the difference between this state,

and the unconscious uncleanness of night, was, beyond certain episodes

and caresses which could only follow each other in reality, but were

united at the same moment in the dream, the sensation clear and precise

of a being, of a fluid form disappearing, with the sharp sound of a

percussion cap, or the crack of a whip close by, on waking. This being

was felt near him so distinctly, that the sheet, disarranged by the wind

of the flight, was still in motion, and he looked at the empty place in

terror.

"Ah," thought Durtal, when he had lighted his candle, "this carries me

back to the time when I used to visit Madame Chantelouve, and reminds

me of the stories of the Succubus."

He remained sitting up in bed, astonished, and looked with real

uneasiness round the cell steeped in shadow. He looked at his watch, it

was only eleven o'clock at night. "God," he said, "if the nights are

always like this in monasteries!"

He had recourse to bathing with cold water in order to recover himself,

opened his window to change the air, and lay down again, thoroughly

chilled.

He hesitated to blow out his candle, uneasy at the darkness which seemed

to him inhabited, full of ambushes and threats. He decided at last to

extinguish it, and repeated the stanza he had already heard sung that

evening in chapel:

Procul recedant somnia

Et noctium phantasmata,

Hostemque nostrum comprime,

Ne polluantur corpora.

He ended by falling asleep and dreamt again of impurity, but he came to

himself in time to break the charm, experiencing again the impression of

a shadow evaporating before he could seize it in the sheets. He looked

at his watch; it was two o'clock.

"If this goes on, I shall be broken down to-morrow," he thought, but he

succeeded somehow or other in dozing, and waking every ten minutes to

wait for three o'clock.

"If I fall asleep again, I shall not be able to wake at the moment I

wish," he thought, "suppose I get up."

He sprang out of bed, dressed, prayed, reduced his thoughts to order.

Real excesses would have exhausted him less than these sham freaks, but

what seemed to him especially odious was the want of satisfaction left

by the completed rape of these ghosts. Compared with their greedy

tricks, the caresses of a woman only diffused a temperate pleasure, and

ended in a feeble shock, but with this Succuba one remained in a fury at

having clasped only the void, at having been the dupe of a lie, the

plaything of an appearance, of which one could not remember the form or

the features. It necessarily brought with it the desire of the flesh,

the wish to clasp a real body, and Durtal began to think of Florence;

she at least quenched his desires, and did not leave him thus, panting

and feverish, in quest of he knew not what, in an atmosphere where he

was surrounded, spied upon by an unknown whom he could not discern, by a

phantom he could not escape.

Then Durtal shook himself, and would repulse the assault of these

memories. "At any rate I will go and breathe the fresh air, and smoke a

cigarette; we will see afterwards."

He descended the staircase, whose walls seemed not to keep their place,

and danced in the light of his candle, threaded the corridors, blew out

his light, placed the candlestick near the auditorium, and rushed out.

It was pitch dark; at the height of the first story a round window in

the wall of the chapel cut a hole through the darkness like a red moon.

Durtal took a few whiffs of a cigarette, and then made his way to the

chapel. He turned the latch of the door gently; the vestibule into which

he entered was dark, but the apse, though it was empty, was lighted by

numerous lamps.

He made a step, crossed himself, and fell back, for he had stumbled over

a body; and he looked down at his feet.

He had come upon a battle-field.

On the ground human forms were lying, in the attitudes of combatants

mowed down by grape shot, some flat on their faces, others on their

knees, some leaning their hands on the ground as if stricken from

behind, others extended with their fingers clenched on their breast,

others again holding their heads or stretching out their arms.

And from this group in their agony rose no groan, no complaint.

Durtal was stupefied as he looked at this massacre of monks, and

suddenly stopped with open mouth. A shaft of light fell from a lamp

which the Father Sacristan had just placed in the apse, and crossing the

porch, it showed a monk on his knees before the altar dedicated to the

Virgin.

He was an old man of more than four-score years; motionless as a statue,

his eyes fixed, leaning forward in such an access of adoration, that the

faces in ecstasy in the Early Masters seemed, compared with his, forced

and cold.

Yet his features were vulgar, his shaven skull, without a crown, tanned

by many suns and rains, was brick-coloured, his eye was dim, covered

with a film by age, his face was wrinkled, shrivelled, stained like an

old log, hidden in a thicket of white hair, while his somewhat snub nose

made the general effect of the face singularly common.

But there went out, not from his eyes, nor his mouth, but from

everywhere and nowhere, a kind of angelic look which was diffused over

his head, and enveloped all his poor body, bowed in its heap of rags.

In this old man the soul did not even give herself the trouble to reform

and ennoble his features, she contented herself in annihilating them

with her rays; it was, as it were, the nimbus of the old saints not now

remaining round the head, but extending over all the features, pale and

almost invisible, bathing his whole being.

He saw nothing and heard nothing; monks dragged themselves on their

knees, came to warm themselves, and to take shelter near him, and he

never moved, dumb and deaf, so rigid that you might have believed him

dead, had not his lower lip stirred now and then, lifting in this

movement his long beard.

The dawn whitened the windows, and as the darkness was gradually

dissipated, the other brethren were visible in turn to Durtal; all these

men, wounded by divine love, prayed ardently, flashed out beyond

themselves noiselessly before the altar. Some were quite young, on their

knees, with their bodies upright; others, their eyeballs in ecstasy,

were leaning back, and seated on their heels; others again were making

the way of the cross, and were often placed each opposite another face

to face, and they looked without seeing, as with the eyes of the blind.

And among these lay brethren, some fathers buried in their great white

cowls lay prostrate and kissed the ground.

"Oh to pray, pray like these monks!" cried Durtal within himself.

He felt his unhappy soul grow slack within him; in this atmosphere of

sanctity he unbent himself, and sank down on the pavement, humbly asking

pardon from Christ, for having soiled by his presence the purity of this

place.

He prayed long, unsealing himself for the first time, recognizing his

unworthiness and vileness so that he could not imagine how, in spite of

His mercy, the Lord could tolerate him in the little circle of His

elect; he examined himself, saw clearly, and avowed that he was inferior

to the least of these lay brothers who perhaps could not even spell out

a book, understood that the culture of the mind was naught and the

culture of the soul was all, and little by little, without perceiving

it, thinking only of stammering forth acts of gratitude, he disappeared

from the chapel, his soul borne up by the souls of others, away, away

from the world, far from his charnel-house, far from his body.

In this chapel, the impulse had come at last, the going forth from self,

till now refused, was at last permitted; he no longer strove with self

as in the time when he escaped with so great difficulty from his

prison-house, as at St. Severin or Notre Dame des Victoires.

Then he again realized this chapel, where his animal part had alone

remained, and he looked round him with astonishment; the greater part of

the brethren had gone, one father remained prostrate before Our Lady's

altar; he quitted it in his turn, and went back to the apse, as the

other fathers entered it.

Durtal looked at them; they were of all sizes and all kinds; one fat and

bald, with a long black beard and spectacles, some little fair and puffy

men, some very old, bristling with skin like a wild boar, others very

young, with a vague air of German dreaminess, with their eyes under

their glasses; and almost all except the very young had this feature in

common: a large belly, and cheeks with little red streaks.

Suddenly through the open door in the apse itself appeared the tall monk

who had conducted the office the evening before. He threw back on his

chasuble the woollen hood which covered his head, and assisted by two

white monks went up to the high altar to say mass.

And it was not one of those masses served as so many are cooked in

Paris, but a mass slow, meditated, and profound, a mass where the priest

takes long to consecrate, overwhelmed before the altar, and when he

elevated the Host no little bell tinkled, but the bells of the monastery

spread abroad their slow peal, brief dull strokes, almost plaintive,

while the Trappists disappeared; crouched on all-fours, their heads

hidden below their desks.

When the mass ended it was nearly six o'clock. Durtal took the same way

as the evening before, passed before the little chocolate factory, and

saw through the windows the fathers wrapping up the tablets in lead

paper, and in another room a tiny steam engine which a lay brother was

directing.

He reached the walk where he had smoked the cigarettes in the shade. So

gloomy at night, it was now charming with its two rows of aged limes

which rustled gently while the wind wafted to him their enervating

scent.

Seated on a bench, he could see at a glance the whole front of the

abbey.

Before it was a long kitchen garden, with here and there some rose trees

spread over the blueish basins and large balls of cabbages, and the old

house, built in the monumental style of the seventeenth century,

extended, solemn and immense, with eighteen windows in a row, and a

pediment, in the span of which was placed a mighty clock.

It was roofed with slate, and surmounted by a ring of small bells, and

was reached by a flight of several steps. It reached a height of at

least five stories, though it had in reality only a ground and a first

floor, but to judge by the unexpected height of the windows, the rooms

had to accommodate their ceilings to the vast altitude of the church; on

the whole the building was striking and cold, more apt, since it had

been converted into a convent, to shelter the disciples of Jansen, than

the sons of Saint Bernard.

The weather was warm that morning; the sun was filtered through the

moving sieve of foliage, and the daylight, thus screened, was changed to

rose colour as it touched the white. Durtal, who was about to read his

prayer-book, saw the pages growing red, and by the law of complementary

colours all the letters printed in black ink grew green.

He was amused by these details, and with his back to the warmth, he

brightened up in this aromatic breeze, rested in this bath of sunshine

from his fatigues of the night, when at the end of the walk he saw some

of the brothers. They walked in silence, some carrying under their arms

great round loaves, others holding milk cans, or baskets full of hay and

eggs; they passed before him, and bowed respectfully.

All had a joyous and serious aspect. "Ah, good fellows," he thought,

"for they helped me this morning, it is to them I owe it that I could

keep silence no longer, and was able to pray, to have at last known the

joy of supplication which at Paris was only a snare for me! to them, and

above all to Our Lady de l'Atre, who had pity on my poor soul."

He sprang from his bench in an access of joy, went into the lateral

walks, reached the piece of water he had partially seen the evening

before; in front of it rose the huge cross he had seen at a distance

from the carriage, in the wood, before he reached La Trappe.

It was placed opposite the monastery itself, and turned its back upon

the pond; it bore an eighteenth-century Christ, of natural size, in

white marble; the pond also took the form of a cross such as is shown on

the greater part of the plans of churches.

This brown and liquid cross was spotted by duckweed, which the swan

displaced as he swam.

He came towards Durtal, with extended beak, expecting, no doubt, a piece

of bread.

Not a sound arose in this deserted spot, save the rustle of dry leaves

which Durtal brushed as he walked. The clock struck seven.

He remembered that breakfast would be ready, and he walked quickly to

the abbey. Father Etienne was waiting for him, shook hands, asked if he

had slept well, then said:

"What would you like? I can only offer you milk and honey; I will send

to-day to the nearest village and try to get you a little cheese, but

you will have only a poor meal this morning."

Durtal proposed to exchange the milk for wine, declaring that he should

then do very well, and said, "In any case I should do ill to complain,

for you are fasting."

The monk smiled. "Just now," he said, "we are doing penance, on account

of certain feasts of our order." And he explained that he only took food

once a day, at two o'clock in the afternoon, after Nones.

"And you have not even wine and eggs to keep up your strength!"

Father Etienne smiled again. "One gets accustomed to it," he said. "What

is this rule in comparison with that adopted by Saint Bernard and his

companions, when they went to till the valley of Clairvaux? Their meal

consisted of oak leaves, salted, cooked in muddy water."

And after a silence the Father continued: "No doubt the Trappist rule is

hard, but it is mild if we carry our thoughts back to the rule of Saint

Pacomius in the East. Only think; whoever wished to join that order had

to remain ten days and nights at the door of the convent, and had to

endure spitting and insults; if he still desired to enter, he fulfilled

a three years' novitiate, inhabited a hut where he could not stand up,

nor lie at full length, ate only olives and cabbage, prayed twelve times

in the morning, twelve times in the afternoon, twelve times in the

night; the silence was perpetual, and his mortifications never ceased.

To prepare himself for this novitiate, and to learn to subdue his

appetite, Saint Macarius thought of the plan of soaking his bread in a

vessel with a very narrow neck, and only fed on the crumbs which he

could take out with his fingers. When he was admitted into the

monastery, he contented himself with gnawing leaves of raw cabbage on

Sunday. Ah! they could stand more than we. We, alas! have no longer

souls nor bodies stout enough to bear such fasts; but do not let that

stop your meal; make as good an one as you can. Ah, by the way," said

the monk, "be in the auditorium at ten precisely, where the Father Prior

will hear your confession."

And he left the room.

If Durtal had received a blow on his head with a mallet, he could not

have been more overwhelmed. All the scaffolding of his joys, so rapidly

run up, fell. This strange fact had occurred, in the impulse of joy he

had felt since daybreak he had wholly forgotten that he had to confess.

He had a moment of aberration. "But I am forgiven," he thought; "the

proof is that state of happiness, such as I have never known, that truly

wonderful expansion of soul which I experienced in the chapel and in the

wood."

The idea that nothing had begun, that all was still to do, terrified

him; he had not the courage to swallow his bread, he drank a little

wine, and rushed out of doors in a wind of panic.

He went, wildly, with great strides. Confession! The prior? Who was the

prior? He sought in vain among the fathers whose faces he remembered the

one who would hear him.

"My God!" he said, all at once, "but I do not even know how a confession

is made."

He sought a deserted corner, where he could recollect himself a little.

He was striding along without even knowing how he came there, along a

walnut-tree walk with a wall on one side. There were some enormous

trees, he hid himself behind the trunk of one of them, and sitting on

the moss, turned over the leaves of his prayer-book, and read: "On

arriving at the confessional, place yourself on your knees, make the

sign of the cross, and ask the priest for his blessing, saying, 'Bless

me, Father, for I have sinned;' then recite the Confiteor as far as _mea

culpa_ ... and ..."

He stopped, and without any need of probing it his life sprang out in

jets of filth.

He shrank from it, there was so much, of every kind, that he was

overwhelmed with despair.

Then by an effort of his will he pulled himself together, endeavoured to

control and bank up these torrents, to separate them so as to understand

them, but one affluent rolled back all the others, ended by overwhelming

them, and became the river itself.

And this sin appeared at first ape-like and sly, at school where

everyone tempted and corrupted others; then there was all his greedy

youth, dragged through tap-rooms, rolled in swine troughs, wallowing in

the sinks of prostitution, and then an ignoble manhood. To his regular

tasks had succeeded toll paid to his senses, and shameful memories

assailed him in a crowd; he recalled to mind how he had sought after

monstrous iniquities, his pursuit of artifices aggravating the malice of

the act, and the accomplices and agents of his sins passed in file

before him.

Among all, at one time, there was a certain Mme. Chantelouve, a

demoniacal adulteress who had drawn him headlong into frightful

excesses, who had linked him to nameless crimes, sins against holy

things, to sacrileges.

"How can I tell all this to the monk?" thought Durtal, terrified by the

remembrance; "how can I even express myself, so as to make him

understand without defilement?"

Tears rushed from his eyes. "My God, my God!" he sighed, "this is indeed

too much."

And in her turn Florence appeared with her little street-arab smile, and

her childish haunches. "I can never tell the confessor all that was

brewed in the perfumed shade of her vices," cried Durtal. "I can by no

means make him face these torrents of pus.

"Yet they say this has to be done;" and he bowed under the weight of the

foulness of this girl.

"How shameful to have been riveted to her, how disgusting to have

satisfied the abominable demands of her desires!"

Behind this sewer extended others. He had traversed all the districts of

sin which the prayer-book patiently enumerated. He had never confessed

since his first communion, and with the piling up of years had come

successive deposits of sins. He grew pale at the thought that he was

about to detail to another man all his dirt, to acknowledge his most

secret thoughts, to say to him what one dares not repeat to one's own

self, lest one should despise oneself too much.

He sweated with anguish, then nausea at his being, remorse for his life

solaced him, and he gave himself up; regret for having lived so long in

this cesspool was a very crucifixion to him; he wept long, doubting

pardon, not even daring to ask it, so vile did he feel himself.

At last he sprang up; the hour of expiation must be at hand, in fact his

watch pointed to a quarter to ten. His agony as he thus wrought with

himself had lasted more than two hours.

He hurriedly reached the main path which led to the monastery. He walked

with his head down, forcing back his tears.

He slackened his pace somewhat as he drew near the little pond; he

lifted his eyes in supplication to the cross, and as he lowered them he

met a look so moved, so compassionate, so gentle, that he stopped, and

the look disappeared with the bow of a lay brother, who passed on his

way.

"He read my thoughts," said Durtal to himself. "Oh, this charitable monk

has good reason to pity me, for indeed I suffer. Ah, Lord, that I might

be like that humble brother!" he cried, remembering that he had seen

that very morning the young tall lad, praying in the chapel with such

fervour that he seemed to rise from the ground, before Our Lady.

He arrived at the auditorium in a frightful state, and sank on a chair;

then, like a hunted animal that thinks itself discovered, he sprang up,

and, disturbed by his fears, moved by a wind of disorder, he thought of

flight, that he would pack his bag, and make for the train.

He mastered himself, undecided and trembling, his ear on the watch, his

heart beating with great strokes, and he heard the sound of distant

steps. "My God," he said, waiting for the steps that drew near, "what

manner of monk is coming?"

The steps were silent, and the door opened. Durtal in his alarm dared

not look at the confessor, in whom he recognized the tall Trappist, with

the imperious profile, whom he believed to be the abbot of the

monastery.

His breath was taken away, and he drew back without saying a word.

Surprised at this silence, the prior said,--

"You have asked to make your confession, sir?"

And at a sign from Durtal, he pointed out the prie-Dieu placed against

the wall, and himself knelt down, turning his back.

Durtal braced himself, fell down at the prie-Dieu, and then completely

lost his head. He had vaguely prepared how to enter on the matter, noted

the points of his statement, classified his sins in some degree, and now

remembered nothing.

The monk rose, sat down on a straw chair, leant towards the penitent,

his hand behind his ear to hear the better.

He waited.

Durtal wished rather to die than speak; he succeeded, however, in

mastering himself, and bridling his shame; he opened his lips, but no

word came; he remained overwhelmed, his head in his hands, repressing

the tears he felt ready to fall.

The monk did not move.

At last he made a desperate effort, stammered the beginning of the

Confiteor, and said,