Recited soon after dawn, Prime was the figure of childhood; Tierce of

youth; Sext the full vigour of age; None the approaches of old age,

while Vespers were an allegory of decrepitude. They belonged, moreover,

to the Nocturns, and were sung about six o'clock in the evening, at that

hour when, at the time of the Equinoxes, the sun sets in the red cinder

of the clouds. As for Compline, it resounds when night, the symbol of

death, has come.

This canonical Office was a marvellous rosary of psalms; every bead of

each of these hours bore reference to the different phases of human

existence, followed, little by little, the periods of the day, the

decline of destiny, to end in the most perfect of offices, in Compline,

that provisional absolution of a death, itself represented by sleep.

And if, from these texts so wisely selected, these Sequences so solemnly

sealed, Durtal passed to the sacerdotal robe of their sounds, to those

neumatic chants, that divine psalmody all uniform, all simple, which is

plain chant, he had to admit, that except in Benedictine cloisters, an

organ accompaniment was everywhere added, that plain chant had been put

forcibly in modern tonality, and it disappeared under vegetations which

stifled it, became everywhere discoloured, amorphous and

incomprehensible.

One only of its executioners, Niedermayer, showed himself at least

pitiful. He tried a system more ingenious and more honest. He reversed

the terms of torture. Instead of wishing to make plain chant supple and

to thrust it into the mould of modern harmony, he constrained that

harmony to bend itself to the austere tonality of plain chant. He thus

preserved its character, but how far more natural would it have been to

leave it solitary and not obliged it to tow an useless companion and

awkward following?

Here at least at La Trappe it lived and spread in all security, without

treason on the part of the monks. There was always sameness of sound, it

was always chanted without accompaniment in unison.

He was able to satisfy himself about this truth once more after supper,

that evening, when at the end of Compline the father sacristan lighted

all the candles on the altar.

At that moment, in the silence of the Trappists on their knees, their

head in their hands, or their cheek resting on the sleeve of their great

cowl, three lay brothers entered, two carrying torches, and another

preceding them with a censer, and behind them a few paces, came the

prior with his hands joined.

Durtal looked at the changed costume of the three brothers. They had no

longer their robes of serge, made of bits and scraps, stained mud

colour, but robes of violet-brown, like plums on which was spread the

white twilling of a new surplice.

While Father Maximin, vested in a copy of milky white, woven with a

cross in orange yellow, placed the Host in the monstrance, the thurifer

put down the censer, on the coals of which melted tears of real incense.

Contrary to what takes place in Paris, where the censer, swung before

the altar, sounds against its chains, and is like the clear tinkling of

a horse which, as he lifts his head, shakes his curb and bit, the censer

at La Trappe remained immovable before the altar, and smoked by itself

behind the officiants.

And everyone chanted the imploring and melancholy antiphon "Parce

Domine," then the "Tantum Ergo," that magnificent song, which could be

almost acted, so clear in their changes are the sentiments which succeed

each other in their rhymed sequence.

In the first stanza it seems indeed to shake the head gently, to put

forward the chin, so to speak, so as to affirm the insufficiency of the

senses to explain the dogma of the real presence, the finished avatar of

the Bread. It is then admiring and reflective; then that melody so

attentive, so respectful, does not wait to affirm the weakness of the

reason, and the power of faith, but in the second stanza it goes

forward, adores the glory of the three Persons, exults with joy, only

recovers itself at the end, where the music adds a new sense to the text

of Saint Thomas, in avowing in a long and mournful Amen the unworthiness

of those present to receive the Benediction of the Flesh placed upon

that cross which the monstrance is about to trace in the air.

And slowly, while unrolling its coil of smoke, the censer spread, as it

were, a blue gauze before the altar, while the Blessed Sacrament was

lifted like a golden moon, amid the stars of the tapers, sparkling in

the growing darkness of that fog, the bells of the abbey sounded with

musical and sweet strokes. And all the monks bowed low with their eyes

closed, then recovered themselves and entoned the "Laudate" to the old

melody which is also sung at Notre Dame des Victoires at the Benediction

in the evening.

Then one by one, having genuflected before the altar, they went out,

while Durtal and the oblate returned to the guest-house, where Father

Etienne was waiting for them.

He said to Durtal: "I would not go to bed without knowing how you have

borne the day;" and as Durtal thanked him, assuring him that this Sunday

had been very peaceful, Father Etienne smiled and revealed in a word,

that under their reserved attitude all at La Trappe were more interested

in their guest than he had himself believed.

"The reverend Father abbot and the Father prior will be glad when I give

them this answer," said the monk, who wished Durtal good-night, pressing

his hand.

CHAPTER VII.

At seven o'clock, just as he was preparing to eat his bread, Durtal

encountered Father Etienne.

"Father," he said, "to-morrow is Tuesday; the time of my retreat has

expired, and I am going; how should I order a carriage for Saint

Landry?"

The monk smiled. "When the postman brings the letters I can charge him

with the commission, but let us see; are you in a great hurry to leave

us?"

"No, but I would not trespass...."

"Listen, since you are so well broken in to the life at La Trappe, stay

here two days more. The Father procurator must go to settle a dispute at

Saint Landry. He will take you to the station in our carriage. So you

will avoid some expense, and the journey hence to the railroad will seem

to you less long, since there will be two of you."

Durtal accepted, and as it rained, he went up to his room. "It is

strange," he said, as he sat down, "how impossible one finds it in a

cloister to read a book; one wants nothing, one thinks of God by

Himself, and not by the volumes which speak about Him."

Mechanically he had taken up from a heap of books one in octavo, which

he had found on his table the day he took possession of his cell; it

bore the title "Manresa," or the "Spiritual Exercises" of Ignatius of

Loyola.

He had already run through the work at Paris, and the pages which he

turned over afresh did not change the harsh, almost hostile, opinion

which he had retained of this book.

The fact is that these exercises leave no initiative to the soul; they

consider it as a soft paste good to run into a mould; they show it no

horizon, no sky. Instead of trying to stretch it, and make it greater,

they make it smaller deliberately; they put it back into the cases of

their wafer box, nourish it only on faded trifles, on dry nothings.

This Japanese culture of deformed toes which remain dwarf; this Chinese

deformation of children planted in pots, horrified Durtal, who closed

the volume.

He opened another, the "Introduction to the Devout Life," by Saint

Francis de Sales.

Certainly he found no need to read it again, in spite of its

affectations, and its good nature, at first charming, but which ends by

making you sick, by making the soul sticky with sweets with liqueurs in

them, and lollypops; in a word, that work so much praised by Catholics

was a julep scented with bergamot and ambergris. It was like a fine

handkerchief shaken in a church in which a musty smell of incense

remained.

But the man himself, the Bishop Saint Francis de Sales, was suggestive;

with his name was called up the whole mystical history of the

seventeenth century.

And Durtal recalled the memories he had kept of the religious life of

that time. There were then in the Church two currents:

That of the high Mysticism, as it was called, originating from Saint

Teresa and Saint John of the Cross; and this current was concentrated on

Marie Guyon.

And another that of so-called temperate Mysticism, of which the adepts

were Saint Francis de Sales and his friend the celebrated Baroness de

Chantal.

It was naturally this second current which triumphed. Jesus, putting

Himself within the reach of drawing-rooms, descending to the level of

women of the world, a moderate and proper Jesus, only dealing with the

soul of His creature just enough to give it one attraction the more,

this elegant Jesus became all the fashion; but Madame Guyon, whose

source was above all Saint Teresa, who taught the mystical theory of

love, and familiar intercourse with heaven, raised the opposition of the

whole clergy who abominated Mysticism without understanding it; she

exasperated the terrible Bossuet, who accused her of the fashionable

heresy, Molinism and Quietism. She refuted, unhappy as she was, this

trouble without much difficulty, but he persecuted her for it none the

less; he was furious against her, and had her imprisoned at Vincennes;

revealed himself obstinate, surly, and atrocious.

Fenelon, who tried to conciliate these two tendencies in preparing a

small Mysticism neither too hot nor too cold, a little less lukewarm

than that of Saint Francis de Sales, and above all things much less

ardent than that of Saint Teresa, ended in his turn by displeasing the

cormorant of Meaux, and though he abandoned and denied Madame de Guyon,

whose friend he had been for long years, he was persecuted and tracked

down by Bossuet, condemned at Rome, and sent in exile to Cambrai.

And here Durtal could not but smile, for he remembered the desolate

complaints of his partisans weeping for this disgrace, representing thus

as a martyr this archbishop whose punishment consisted in quitting his

post as courtier at Versailles to go at last and administer his diocese,

in which he appeared till then to have never resided.

This mitred Job, who remained in his misfortune Archbishop and Duke of

Cambrai, Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, and rich, so unhappy because

he was obliged to visit his flock, well shows the state of the

episcopate under the redundant reign of the great king. It was a

priesthood of financiers and valets.

Only there was at any rate a certain attraction, there was talent in

every case; while now bishops are not for the most part less intriguing

nor less servile, but they have no longer either talent or manners.

Caught in part, in the fishpond of bad priests, they show themselves

ready for everything, and turn out to be souls of old usurers, low

jobbers, beggars, when you press them.

"It is sad to say it, but so it is," concluded Durtal. "As for Madame

Guyon," he went on, "she was neither an original writer nor a saint; she

was only an unwelcome substitute for the true mystics; she was presuming

and certainly lacked that humility which magnified Saint Teresa and

Saint Clare; but after all she burst into a flame, she was overcome by

Jesus; above all, she was not a pious courtier, a bigot softened by a

court like the Maintenon.

"After all, what a time for religion it was? All its saints have

something formal and restricted, wordy and cold, which turns me away

from them. Saint Francis de Sales, Saint Vincent de Paul, Saint Chantal

... No, I prefer Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Bernard, Saint Angela

... The Mysticism of the seventeenth century is all the fashion with its

emphatic and mean churches, its pompous and icy painting, its solemn

poetry, its gloomy prose.

"But look," he said, "my cell is still neither swept nor set in order,

and I am afraid that in lingering here I may give some trouble to Father

Etienne. It rains, however, too hard to allow of my walking in the wood;

the simplest thing is to go and read the Little Office of Our Lady in

the chapel."

He went down there; it was at this hour almost empty; the monks were at

work in the fields or in the factory; two fathers only, on their knees

before the altar of Our Lady, were praying so absorbedly that they did

not even hear the opening of the door.

And Durtal, who had placed himself near them opposite the porch which

gave upon the high altar, saw them reflected in the sheet of glass,

placed before the shrine of the Blessed Guerric. This sheet had indeed

the effect of a mirror, and the white fathers were in the depths of it,

lived in prayers under the table, in the very heart of the altar.

And he also appeared there in a corner, reflected, at the back of the

shrine, near the sacred remains of the monk.

At one moment he lifted his head, and saw that the round window in the

apse, behind the altar, reproduced on its glass ornamented with grey and

blue, the marks engraved on the reverse of the medal of Saint Benedict,

the first letters of its imperative formulas, the initials of its

distiches.

It might have been called an immense clear medal, sifting a pale light,

straining it through prayers, not allowing them to penetrate to the

altar till sanctified and blessed by the Patriarch.

And while he was dreaming, the clock struck; the two Trappists regained

their stalls, while the others entered.

Waiting thus in the chapel, the hour of Sext had struck. The abbot

advanced. Durtal saw him again for the first time since their

conversation; he seemed less ill, less pale; he marched majestically in

his great white cowl, at the hood of which hung a violet acorn, and the

fathers bowed, kissing their sleeve before him; he reached his place,

which was designated by a wooden cross standing before a stall, and all

enfolded themselves with a great sign of the cross, bowed to the altar,

and the feeble imploring voice of the old Trappist rose: "Deus in

adjutorium meum intende."

And the Office continued, in the monotonous and charming pitch of the

doxology, interrupted by profound reverences, large movements of the arm

lifting the sleeve of the cowl as it fell to the ground, to allow the

hand freedom to turn the pages.

When Sext was over Durtal went to rejoin the oblate.

They found on the table of the refectory a little omelette, leeks cooked

in a sauce of flour and oil, haricots and cheese.

"It is astonishing," said Durtal, "how in regard to mystics, the world

errs on preconceived ideas, on the old string. Phrenologists declare

that mystics have pointed skulls; now here that their form is more

visible than elsewhere, because they are all hairless and shaven, there

are no more heads like eggs than anywhere else. I looked this morning at

the shape of their heads, no two are alike. Some are oval and depressed,

others like a pear and straight, some have lumps on them, and some have

none; and it is just the same with faces; when they are not transfigured

by prayer they are ordinary. If they did not wear the habit of their

order, no one could recognize in these Trappists predestined beings

living out of modern society, in the full Middle Ages, in absolute

dependence on a God. If they have souls which are not like those of

other people, they have, after all, faces and bodies like those of the

first comer."

"All is within," said the oblate. "Why should elect souls be enclosed in

fleshly prisons different to others?"

This conversation, which continued on different points of Trappist life,

ended by turning on death in a monastery, and M. Bruno revealed some

details.

"When death is near," he said, "the Father abbot traces on the ground a

cross in blessed ashes covered with straw, and the dying man is placed

on it wrapped in serge cloth.

"The brothers recite near him the prayers of the dying, and at the

moment of his death the response 'Subvenite Sancti Dei' is chanted in

choir. The Father abbot incenses the body, which is washed while the

monks sing the Office of the Dead in another room.

"Then his regular habit is put on the dead monk, and he is borne in

procession to the church, where he lies on a stretcher with his face

uncovered, until the hour destined for the funeral.

"Then on the way to the cemetery the community intones no longer the

chant of the dead, the psalms of grief, and the sequences of regret, but

rather 'In exitu Israel de Ægypto,' which is the psalm of deliverance,

the free song of joy.

"And the Trappist is buried without a coffin, in his robe of stuff, his

head covered with his hood.

"Lastly, during thirty days, his place remains empty in the refectory,

his portion is served as usual, but the brother porter distributes it to

the poor.

"Ah! the happiness to die thus," said the oblate, as he ended, "for if

one dies after having honestly fulfilled one's task in the order, one is

assured of eternal happiness, according to the promises made by our Lord

to Saint Benedict and to Saint Bernard!"

"The rain is over," said Durtal; "I should like to visit to-day that

little chapel at the end of the park of which you spoke to me the other

day. Which is the shortest way to reach it?"

M. Bruno told him the way, and Durtal went off, rolling a cigarette, to

gain the great pond, thence he struck a path to the left and mounted a

lane of trees.

He slipped on the wet ground, and got on with difficulty. At last,

however, he gained a clump of chestnuts, which he skirted. Behind these

rose a dwarf tower topped by a very small dome, pierced by a door. To

the left and right of this door, on sockets where ornaments of the

Romanesque epoch still were seen under the velvety crust of moss, two

stone angels were still standing.

They belonged, evidently, to the Burgundian school, with their big round

heads, their hair puffed and divided into waves, their fat faces with

turned-up noses, their solid draperies with hard folds. They also came

from the ruins of the old cloister, but the interior of the chapel was

unfortunately thoroughly modern; it was so small that the feet of him

who knelt at the altar almost touched the wall at the entrance.

In a niche veiled by white gauze a Virgin smiled with extended hands.

She had blue plaster eyes and apple-shaped cheeks. She was wearisome in

her insignificance, but her sanctuary retained the warmth of places

always shut up. The walls, hung with red calico, were dusted, the floor

was swept, and the holy water basins full; superb tea roses flourished

in pots between the candelabra. Durtal then understood why he had so

often seen M. Bruno walking in this direction with flowers in his hand;

he was going to pray in this place, which he loved no doubt because it

was isolated in the profound solitude of this Trappist monastery.

"Excellent man!" cried Durtal, thinking over the affectionate services,

the fraternal care the oblate had had for him; and he added, "He is a

happy man too, for he is self-contained, and lives so placidly here.

"And, indeed," he went on, "where is the good of striving, if not

against oneself? to agitate oneself for money, for glory, to conduct

oneself so as to keep others down, and gain adulation from them, how

vain a task!

"Only the Church, in decking the temporary altars of the liturgical

year, in forcing the seasons to follow step by step the life of Christ,

has known how to trace for us a plan of necessary occupations, of useful

ends. She has given us the means of walking always side by side with

Jesus, to live day by day with the Gospels; for Christians she has made

time the messenger of sorrows and the herald of joys; she has entrusted

to the year the part of servant of the New Testament, the zealous

emissary of worship."

And Durtal reflected on the cycle of the liturgy which begins on the

first day of the religious year, with Advent, then turns with an

insensible movement on itself till it returns again to its

starting-point, to the time when the Church prepares by penitence and

prayer to celebrate Christmas.

And turning over his prayer-book, seeing the extraordinary circle of

offices, he thought of that prodigious jewel, that crown of King

Recceswinthe preserved in the Museum of Cluny.

The liturgical year was, like it, studded with crystals and jewels by

its admirable canticles and its fervent hymns set in the very gold of

Benedictions and Vespers.

It seemed that the Church had substituted for that crown of thorns with

which the Jews had surrounded the temples of the Saviour, the truly

royal crown of the Proper of the Seasons, the only one which was

chiselled in a metal precious enough, with art pure enough to dare to

place itself on the brow of a God.

And the grand Lapidary had begun his work by incrusting, in this diadem

of offices, the hymn of Saint Ambrose, and the invocation taken from the

Old Testament, the "Rorate Coeli," that melodious chant of expectation

and regret, that obscure gem violet-coloured; the lustre declares itself

then, when after each of its stanzas rises the solemn prayer of the

patriarchs, calling for the longed-for presence of Christ.

And the four Sundays of Advent disappeared with the turned pages of the

prayer-book; the night of the Nativity was come. After the "Jesu

Redemptor" of Vespers, the old Portuguese chant, the "Adeste Fideles,"

arose at Benediction from every lip. It was a sequence of a truly

charming simplicity, an old carving wherein defiled the shepherds and

the kings to a popular air appropriate to great marches, apt to charm,

to aid by the somewhat military rhythm of its steps, the long lines of

the faithful quitting their cottages to go to the distant churches in

the towns.

And imperceptibly, like the year in an invisible rotation, the circle

turned, and stopped at the Feast of the Holy Innocents, where there

flourished out, like a flower from a slaughter-house, on a shoot culled

from a soil irrigated by the blood of lambs, this sequence, red, and

smelling of roses, the "Salvate Flores Martyrum" of Prudentius; the

crown moved again, and the hymn of the Epiphany, the "Crudelis Herodes"

of Sedudius, appeared in its turn.

Now the Sundays grew heavy, the violet Sundays when the "Gloria in

Excelsis" is no more heard, when the "Audi Benigne" of Saint Ambrose is

chanted, and the "Miserere," that cinder-coloured psalm, which is

perhaps the most perfect masterpiece which the Church has ever drawn

from her store-houses of plain chants.

It was Lent, when the amethysts fade in the moist grey of onyxes, in the

embrowned white of quartz, and the magnificent invocation, "Attende

Domine," rose beneath the arches. Sprung like the "Rorate Coeli" from

the sequences of the Old Testament, this humble and contrite chant,

enumerating the deserved punishments of sins, became, if not more

sorrowful, at all events more grave and more pressing when it

confirmed, when it resumed in the initial stanza of its burthen, the

avowal of shame already confessed.

And suddenly on this crown there burst out after the expiring fires of

Lent, the flaming ruby of the Passion. On the upturned yellow of the sky

a red cross was raised, while majestic shouts and despairing cries

proclaimed the blood-stained fruit of the tree; and the "Vexilla Regis"

was again repeated the following Sunday at the Feast of Palms, which

joined to that Sequence of Fortunatus the green hymn which it

accompanied with a silky noise of palms, the "Gloria laus et honor" of

Theodulph.

Then the fires of precious stones grew grey and died. To the glowing

coals of gems succeeded the dead cinders of obsidians, black stones

scarcely swelling, without a gleam above the tarnished gold of their

mountings; one entered no Holy Week, everywhere the "Pange Lingua" and

the "Stabat Mater" wailed under the arches, and then came the "Tenebræ,"

the lamentations, and the psalms, whose knell shook the flame of the

brown waxen tapers, and after each halt, at the end of each of the

psalms, one of the tapers expired, and its column of blue smoke

evaporated still under the lighted circumference of the arches, while

the choir recommenced the interrupted series of complaints.

And the crown turned once more; the beads of this musical rosary still

ran on, and all changed. Jesus had risen, and songs of joy issued from

the organs. The "Victimæ Paschali Laudes" exulted before the gospel of

the masses, and at the Benediction the "O Filii et Filiæ," created

indeed to be intoned by the wild jubilations of crowds, ran and sported

in the joyous hurricane of the organs, which uprooted the pillars and

unroofed the naves.

And the feasts rung in with bells followed at longer intervals. At

Ascension the heavy and clear crystals of Saint Ambrose filled with

their luminous water the tiny basin of the catkins; the fire of rubies

and garnets lighted up again with the crimson hymn and scarlet sequence

of Pentecost the "Veni Creator" and "Veni Spiritus." The Feast of the

Trinity passed, signalized by the stanzas of Gregory the Great; and for

the Feast of the Blessed Sacrament, the liturgy could exhibit the most

marvellous jewel case of its dower, the Office of Saint Thomas, the

"Pange Lingua," the "Adore Te," the "Sacris Solemniis," the "Verbum

Supernum," and above all the "Lauda Sion," that pure masterpiece of

Latin poetry and scholasticism, that hymn so precise, so lucid in its

abstraction, so firm in its rhymed words, round which is rolled the

melody perhaps the most enthusiastic, the most supple in plain chant.

The circle displaced itself again, showing on its different faces the

twenty-three to twenty-eight Sundays which defile after Pentecost, the

green weeks of the time of Pilgrimage, and stopped at the last feast, at

the Sunday after the Octave of All Saints, at the Dedication of Churches

which the "Coelestis Urbs" incensed, old stanzas of which the ruins were

badly consolidated by the architects of Urban VIII., old jewels, on

which the troubled water slept and was reanimated only in rare lights.

The juncture of the religious crown, of the liturgical year, was then

made at the masses, in which the gospel of the last Sunday after

Pentecost, the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, repeats, as well as

the Gospel according to Saint Luke, recited on the first Sunday in

Advent, the terrible predictions of Christ on the desolation of the

time, on the end of the world.

"This is not all," Durtal continued, who was interested in this run

through his prayer-book. "In this crown of the Proper of the Seasons are

inserted, like smaller stones, the sequences of the Proper of Saints

which fill the empty places, and finish the round of the circle.

"First the pearls and gems of the Blessed Virgin, the limpid jewels, the

blue sapphires and rose rubies of her antiphons; then the aquamarine, so

lucid and pure, of the 'Ave Maris Stella,' the topaz, pale as tears, of

the 'O Quot nudis Lacrymarum' on the Feast of the Seven Dolours, the

hyacinth, colour of dried blood, of the 'Stabat;' then were told the

feasts of the Angels and the Saints, the hymns dedicated to the Apostles

and the Evangelists, to the Martyrs, whether solitary or in couples,

both out of and during the Paschal season, to the Confessors, Pontiffs,

and non-Pontiffs, to Virgins, to Holy Women, all Feasts differentiated

by special Sequences, by special Proses of which some are very simple,

like those stanzas made in honour of the Nativity of Saint John the

Baptist, by Paul the Deacon.

"There still remains All Saints, with the 'Placare Christe,' and the

three blows on the alarm bell, the knell in triplets of the 'Dies Iræ,'

which resounds on the day set apart for the Commemoration of the Dead.

"What an immense fund of poetry, what an incomparable estate of art the

Church possesses!" he cried, closing his book; and many memories rose

for him at this excursion into his prayer-book.

On how many evenings had the sadness of life been dissipated in

listening to these proses chanted in the churches!

He thought over again of the suppliant voice of Advent, and recalled one

evening, when he had wandered under a fine rain along the quays. He had

been driven from home by ignoble visions, and at the same time had been

harassed by the increasing disgust of his vices. He had ended by being

brought up against his will at St. Gervais.

In the chapel of the Virgin, some poor women were prostrate. He had

knelt, tired and dazed, his soul so ill at ease, that he slumbered

without power to wake himself. Some men and boys of the choir were

installed in the chapel, with two or three priests; they had lighted

candles, and the voice, light and sustained, of a child, had in the dark

of the church chanted the long antiphons of the "Rorate."

In the state of overwhelming sadness in which he was stagnant, Durtal

felt himself open and bleeding to the bottom of his soul; then a voice

older and less trembling, which understood the words it said, narrated

ingenuously, almost without confusion, to the Just One, "Peccavimus et

facti sumus tanquam immundus nos."

And Durtal took up these words, and spelt them over in terror, thinking,

"Ah! yes, we have sinned and become like the leprous, O Lord!" And the

chant continued, and in His turn, the Most High borrowed that same

innocent organ of childhood, to declare to man His pity, and to confirm

to him the pardon assured by the coming of the Son.

And the evening had ended by the Benediction in plain chant, in the

midst of the silence and prostration of unhappy women.

Durtal remembered how he left the church refreshed, freed from his

hauntings, and he had gone away in the drizzling rain, surprised that

the way was so short, humming the "Rorate," of which the air had taken

possession of him, ending by seeing in it the personal touch of a kindly

unknown.

And there were other evenings ... the Octave of the Feast of All Souls

at St. Sulpice and at St. Thomas Aquinas, where, after the Vespers of

the Dead, they brought out again the old Sequence which has disappeared

from the Roman Breviary, the "Lanquentilus in Purgatorio."

This church was the only one in Paris which had retained these pages of

the Gallican hymnal, and had them sung by two basses without a choir;

but these singers, so poor as a rule, no doubt were fond of this air,

for if they did not sing it with art, at least they put a little soul

into its delivery.

And this invocation to the Madonna, in which she was adjured to save the

souls in Purgatory, was as sorrowful as the souls themselves, and so

melancholy, so languid, that the surroundings were forgotten, the

ugliness of that sanctuary of which the choir was a theatre scene,

surrounded by closed dressing-rooms and garnished with lustres, one

might think oneself for a few moments far from Paris, far from that

population of devout women and servant girls, which attend that place in

the evening.

"Ah! the Church," he said to himself, as he descended the path which led

to the great pond, "what a mother of art is she!" and suddenly the noise

of a body falling into the water interrupted his reflections.

He looked behind the hedge of reeds and saw nothing but great circles

running on the water, and all at once in one of these rings a small

dog-like head appeared holding a fish in its mouth; the beast raised

itself a little out of the water, showed a thin body covered with fur,

and gazed on Durtal quietly with its little black eyes.

Then in a flash it passed the distance which separated it from the bank,

and disappeared under the grasses.

"It is the otter," he said to himself, remembering the discussion at

table between the stranger priest and the oblate.

And he went to gain the other pond, when he encountered Father Etienne.

He told him his adventure.

"Impossible!" cried the monk, "no one has ever seen the otter; you must

have mistaken it for a water rat, or some other animal, for that beast,

for which we have watched for years, is invisible."

Durtal gave him a description of it.

"It is certainly the otter," admitted the guest-master, surprised.

It was evident that this otter lived in the pond in a legendary state.

In monotonous lives, in days like those in a cloister, it took the

proportions of a fabulous subject, of an event whereof the mystery would

occupy intervals seized between prayers and offices.

"We must point out to M. Bruno the exact spot where you remarked it, for

he will begin to hunt it again," said Father Etienne after a silence.

"But how can it trouble you in eating your fish, since you do not angle

for them?"

"I beg your pardon; we fish for them to send them to the Archbishop,"

answered the monk, who went on: "Still, it is very strange that you saw

the beast!"

"When I leave this," thought Durtal, "they will certainly speak of me as

the gentleman who saw the otter."

While talking, they had arrived at the cross pond.

"Look," said the father, pointing out the swan, who rose in a fury, beat

his wings, and hissed.

"What is the matter with him?"

"The matter is that the white hue of my habit infuriates him."

"Ah! and why?"

"I do not know; perhaps he wants to be the only one who is white here;

he spares the lay brothers, while as for a father ... wait, you will

see."

And the guest-master walked quietly towards the swan.

"Come," he said to the angry creature, who splashed him with water; and

he held out his hand which the swan snapped.

"See," said the monk, showing the mark of a red pinch printed on the

flesh.

And he smiled, holding his hand, and quitted Durtal, who asked himself

whether, in acting thus, the Trappist were not wishing to inflict on

himself some corporal punishment to atone for some distraction the

evening before; some peccadillo.

"That stroke of the beak must have pinched him horribly, for the tears

came into his eyes. How could he expose himself with joy to such a

bite?"

And he remembered that one day at the office of None, one of the young

monks made a mistake in the tone of an antiphon; at the moment that the

office ended, he knelt before the altar, then he lay his whole length on

the tiles on his face, his mouth pressed on the ground, till the stroke

of the prior's bell gave him the order to get up.

This was a voluntary punishment for a negligence committed, a

forgetfulness. Who knows whether Father Etienne did not in his turn

punish himself for a thought he deemed to border on sin, in getting

himself thus pinched?

He consulted the oblate on the point in the evening, but M. Bruno

contented himself with a smile, without answering.

And when Durtal spoke to him of his speedy departure for Paris, the old

man shook his head.

"Considering," he said, "the fear and the discomfort that Communion

caused you, you would act wisely if you approach the Holy Table

immediately on your return."

And seeing that Durtal did not reply, but hung his head,

"Believe a man who has known these trials; if you do not force yourself

while you are still under the warm impression of La Trappe, you will

float between desire and regret without advancing; you will be ingenious

in discovering excuses for not making your confession; you will try to

think it impossible to find in Paris an abbé who understands you. Now

allow me to assure you nothing is more false. If you desire an expert

and easy confidant, go to the Jesuits; if you wish above all a

zealous-souled priest, go to St. Sulpice.

"You will find there honest and intelligent ecclesiastics, excellent

hearts. In Paris, where the clergy of the parishes are so mixed, they

are at the top of the basket of the priesthood, and, as may be imagined,

they form a community, live in cells, do not dine out; and as the

Sulpician rule forbids them to aspire to honours, or places, they do not

run the chance of becoming bad priests by ambition. Do you know them?"

"No; but to resolve that question, which in fact constantly troubles me,

I count on a priest whom I often see, on the very man who, in fact, sent

me into this Trappist monastery.

"And that," he went on, "makes me remember," and he rose to go to

Compline, "that I have as yet forgotten to write to him. It is true that

now it is too late, I should arrive at his house almost as soon as my

letter. It is strange, but by force of walking in one's own, by force of

living to oneself, the days run by, and there is no time to do anything

here!"

CHAPTER VIII.

He had hoped for his last day at La Trappe a morning of quiet, when his

mind might lounge, a mixture of spiritual siesta and of working, charmed

by a round of offices, and not at all that the idea persistent and

obstinate that he must quit the monastery next day, would spoil all the

pleasures he had promised himself.

Now that he had no longer to cleanse himself, and pass under the

winnowing of confession, to present himself for the Communion in the

morning, he remained irresolute, not knowing any longer how to occupy

his time, terrified by the recommencement of that life of the world

which would upset all the barriers of forgetfulness, and would get at

him at once above all the broken defences of the cloister.

Like a captured animal, he began to rub against the bars of his cage,

made the tour of the enclosure, filling his sight with those places

where he had tasted hours so kindly and so cruel.

He felt in himself a shaking of the ground, a disturbance of soul, an

absolute discouragement before the prospect of re-entering into his

habitual existence, of mixing himself anew with the coming and going of

men, and he experienced at the same time a great fatigue of brain.

He dragged himself along the walks in a state of complete discomfort, in

one of those attacks of religious spleen which determine, while they

last during years, the "tædium vitæ" of the cloisters. He had a horror

of any life but this, and the soul overwrought by prayers was failing in

a body insufficiently rested and ill-nourished; it had no further

desire, asked only to be let alone, to sleep, to fall into one of those

states of torpor in which everything becomes indifferent, in which one

ends by losing consciousness gently, by being stifled without

suffering.

He might well, to re-act on him as a consolation, promise himself to

assist in Paris at the offices of the Benedictine nuns, that he would

keep himself on the outskirts of society, to himself; and he was at once

obliged to answer that these subterfuges are impossible, that the very

movement of the town is against all decoys, that isolation in a chamber

is in no degree like the solitude of a cell, that masses celebrated in a

chapel open to the public cannot be likened to the private Offices of

the Trappists.

Then what is the good of trying to misunderstand? It is with the soul as

with the body, which is better on the sea shore, or in the mountains,

than shut up in a town. There is a better spiritual air even at Paris,

in certain religious quarters of the left bank, than in the districts

situated on the other bank, more lively in certain churches, more pure,

for example, at Notre Dame des Victoires than in churches such as La

Trinité and the Madeleine.

But the monastery was, as it were, the true shore and high plateau of

the soul. There the atmosphere was balsamic, strength returned, lost

appetite for God was there recovered, there was health succeeding

weakness, a regimen, fortified and sustained, instead of languor and the

restricted exercises of the towns.

The conviction that no trickery was possible to him at Paris brought him

to the ground. He wandered from cell to chapel, from chapel to woods,

awaiting the dinner hour with impatience, in order to be able to speak

to someone, for in his disorder a new need arose. For more than a week

he had spent the whole afternoon without opening his lips; he did not

suffer from it, was even satisfied with his silence, but since he was

pressed by this idea of departure he could not keep silence any longer,

thought aloud in the walks to assuage the sensations of his swelling

heart, that stifled him.

M. Bruno was too sagacious not to guess the uneasiness of his companion,

who became by turns taciturn and over talkative during the meal. He

made, however, as though he saw nothing, but after he had said grace he

disappeared, and Durtal, who was strolling near the great pond, was

surprised to see him coming in his direction with Father Etienne.

They greeted him, and the Trappist with a smile proposed to him, if he

had made no other plan, to pass his time in visiting the convent, and

especially the library, which the Father prior would be delighted to

show him.

"If convenient to me! I shall be delighted!" cried Durtal.

All three returned towards the abbey; the monk lifted the latch of a

little door fashioned in a wall near the church, and Durtal entered a

minute cemetery, planted with wooden crosses on grass graves.

There was no inscription, no flower in this enclosure which they

traversed; the monk pushed another door, which opened on a long corridor

smelling of rats. At the end of this gallery, Durtal recognized the

staircase he had ascended one morning for his confession in the prior's

room. They left it on their right, turned into another gallery, and the

guest-master led them into an immense hall, pierced by high windows,

decorated with eighteenth century pier-glasses, and _grisailles_; it was

furnished only with benches and stalls, above which was a single chair

sculptured and painted with abbatial arms, which marked the place of Dom

Anselm.

"Oh! this chapter-house has nothing monastic," said Father Etienne,

designating the profane pictures on the walls; "we have kept just as it

was the drawing-room of this old chateau, but I beg you to believe that

this decoration hardly pleases us."

"And what takes place in this hall?"

"Well, we meet here after mass; the chapter opens by reading the

martyrology, followed by the concluding prayers of Prime. Then we read a

passage from the rule, and the Father abbot comments on it. Lastly, we

practise the exercise of humility, that is to say, that whoever among us

has committed any fault against the rule, prostrates himself, and avows

it before his brethren."

They went thence to the refectory. This room had also a high ceiling,

but was smaller, and garnished with tables in form of a horse-shoe. A

kind of large cruets, each containing two half-bottles of wine and

water, separated by a water bottle, and before them, instead of glasses,

cups of brown earthenware, with two handles, were placed at equal

distances. The monk explained that these sham cruets with three branches

indicated the place of two covers, each monk having a right to his half

bottle of drink, and partaking with his neighbour the water in the

bottle.

"This pulpit," said Father Etienne, pointing out a large wooden box

fixed against the wall, "is destined for the reader of the week, the

father who reads during the meal."

"How long does the meal last?"

"Just half an hour."

"Yes; and the cookery which we eat is delicate in comparison with that

which is served to the monks," said the oblate.

"I should lie if I were to affirm that we make good cheer," answered the

guest-master. "Do you know that the hardest thing to bear, in the

earlier time especially, is the want of seasoning in our dishes. Pepper

and spices are forbidden by our rule, and as no salt-cellar has place on

our table, we swallow our food just as it is, and it is for the most

part scarcely salted.

"On certain days in summer, when one sweats in big drops, this becomes

almost impossible, the gorge rises. Yet one must begin upon this warm

paste, and at least swallow a sufficient quantity not to give out before

the next day; we look at each other discouraged, unable to get any

further; there is not another word to define our dinner in the month of

August, it is a punishment."

"And all, the Father abbot, the prior, the fathers, the brethren, have

the same food?"

"All. Now come and see the dormitory."

They ascended to the first floor. An immense corridor, furnished like a

stable with wooden boxes, extended before them, closed at each end by a

door.

"This is our lodging," said the monk, as he stopped before one of these

cases. Cards were placed on them, affixing the name of each monk, and

the first bore a ticket with this inscription: "The Father Abbot."

Durtal felt the bed against one of the two walls.

It was as rough as a carding comb, and as biting as a file. It was

composed of a simple quilted paillasse extended on a plank; no sheets,

but a prison coverlet of grey wool, a sack of straw instead of pillows.

"God! it is very hard," said Durtal, and the monk laughed.

"Our habits soften the roughness of this straw mattress," he said; "for

our rule does not allow us to undress, we may only take off our shoes,

therefore we sleep entirely clad, our head wrapped in our hood."

"And it must be cold in this corridor swept by all the winds," added

Durtal.

"No doubt the winter is rough here, but it is not that season which

alarms us; we live pretty well, even without fire in time of frost, but

the summer--! If you knew what it is to wake in habits still steeped in

sweat, not dried since the evening before, it is terrible!

"Then, though because of the great heat we have often hardly slept, we

must before dawn jump out of bed, and begin at once the great night

office, the Vigils, which last at least two hours. Even after twenty

years of Trappist life, one cannot but suffer at that getting up; in

chapel you fight against sleep which crushes you, you sleep while you

hear a verse chanted, you strive to keep awake, in order to be able to

chant another, and fall asleep again.

"One ought to be able to turn the key on thought, and one is incapable

of it.

"Truly, I assure you that even beyond the corporal fatigue which

explains that state in the morning, there is then an aggression of the

demon, an incessant temptation to make us recite the office badly."

"And you all undergo this strife?"

"All; and this does not hinder," concluded the monk, whose face was

radiant, "this does not hinder us from being very happy here.

"Because all these trials are nothing beside the deep and intimate joys

which our good God gives us. Ah! He is a generous Master; he pays us a

hundred-fold for our poor sorrows."

As they spoke, they had passed through the corridor and had arrived at

its other end.

The monk opened the door, and Durtal was astounded to find himself in a

vestibule just opposite his own cell.

"I did not think," he said, "that I was living so near you."

"This house is a regular labyrinth--but M. Bruno will take you to the

library where the Father prior is waiting for you; for I must go to my

business. We shall meet presently," he said, with a smile.

The library was situated on the other side of the staircase by which

Durtal reached his chamber. It was large, furnished with shelves from

top to bottom, occupied in the middle by a sort of counter table on

which also were spread rows of books.

Father Maximin said to Durtal,

"We are not very rich, but at any rate we possess tools for work fairly

complete on theology and the monography of the cloisters."

"You have superb volumes," cried Durtal, who looked at magnificent

folios in splendid bindings with armorial bearings.

"Wait; here are the works of Saint Bernard in a fine edition," and the

monk presented to Durtal enormous volumes, printed in heavy letters on

crackling paper.

"When I think that I promised myself to make acquaintance with Saint

Bernard in this very abbey which he founded, and here I am on the eve of

my departure, and have read nothing!"

"You do not know his works?"

"Yes; scattered fragments of his sermons and of his letters. I have run

through some _selectæ mediocres_ of his works, but that is all."

"He is our chief master here; but he is not the only one of our

ancestors in Saint Benedict whom the convent possesses," said the monk

with a certain pride. "See," and he pointed out on the shelves some

heavy folios, "here: 'Saint Gregory the Great,' 'Venerable Bede,' 'Saint

Peter Damian,' 'Saint Anselm.' ... And your friends are there," he said,

following Durtal with a glance as he read the titles of the volumes,

"'Saint Teresa,' 'Saint John of the Cross,' 'Saint Magdalen of Pazzi,'

'Saint Angela,' 'Tauler,' ... and she who like Sister Emmerich dictated

her conversations with Jesus during her ecstasy." And the prior took

from the range of books in octavo, "The Dialogues of Saint Catherine of

Siena."

"That Dominican nun is terrible for the priests of her time," the monk

went on. "She insists on their misdeeds, reproaches them roundly with

selling the Holy Spirit, with practising sortilege, and with using the

Sacrament to compose evil charms."

"And there are besides the disorderly vices of which she accuses them

in the series concerning the sin of the flesh," added the oblate.

"Certainly, she does not mince her words, but she had the right to take

up that tone, and menace in the name of the Lord, for she was truly

inspired by Him. Her doctrine was drawn from divine sources. 'Doctrina

ejus infusa non acquisita,' says the Church in the bull of her

canonization. Her Dialogues are admirable; the pages in which God

exposes the holy frauds which He sometimes uses to recall men to good,

the passages in which she treats of the monastic life, of that barque

which possesses three ropes: chastity, obedience, and poverty, and which

faces the tempest under the conduct of the Holy Spirit, are delightful.

She reveals herself in her work the pupil of the well-beloved disciple

and of Saint Thomas Aquinas. One might believe that one heard the Angel

of the School paraphrasing the last of the Evangelists."

"Yes," said the oblate, striking in, "if Saint Catherine of Siena does

not give herself to the high speculations of Mysticism; if she does not

analyze like Saint Teresa the mysteries of divine love, nor trace the

itinerary of souls destined to the perfect life, she reflects directly

at least the conversations of Heaven. She calls, she loves! You have

read, sir, her treatises on Discretion and Prayer?"

"No. I have read Saint Catherine of Genoa, but the books of Saint

Catherine of Siena have never fallen into my hands."

"And what do you think of this collection?"

Durtal looked at the title, and made a face.

"I see that Suso hardly delights you."

"I should tell a lie if I assured you that the dissertations of this

Dominican pleased me. First, however illuminated the man may be, he does

not attract me. Without speaking of the frenzy of his penances, what

scrupulousness of devotion and narrowness of piety was his! Think that

he could not decide on drinking till he had first, as a preliminary,

divided his beverage into five parts. He thought thus to honour the five

wounds of the Saviour, and, moreover, he swallowed his last mouthful in

two gulps to call up before himself the water and the blood which flowed

from the side of the Word.

"No! these sort of things would never enter into my head; I would never

admit that such practices would glorify Christ.

"And remark well that this love of pounding things small, this passion

for small blessings, is found in all his work. His God is so difficult

to content, so scrupulous, so meddling, that no one would ever get to

heaven if they believed what he said. This God of his is the

fault-finder of eternity, the miser of paradise.

"On the whole, Suso expands himself in impetuous discourses on trifles;

then what with his insipid allegories, his morose 'Colloquy on the Nine

Rocks' knocks me down."

"You will, however, admit that his study on the Union of the Soul is

substantial, and that the 'Office of the Eternal Wisdom' which he

composed is worth reading?"

"I cannot say, Father, I do not now remember that Office; but I

recollect tolerably well the treatise on 'Union with God,' it seems to

me more interesting than the rest, but you will admit that it is very

short ... and then Saint Teresa has also elucidated that question of

human renunciation and divine fruition; and, hang it then...!"

"Come," said the oblate, with a smile, "I give up the attempt to make

you a fervent reader of the good Suso."

"For us," said Father Maximin, "if we had a little time to work, this

ought to be the leaven of our meditations, the subject of our reading;"

and he took down a folio which contained the works of Saint Hildegarde,

abbess of the Convent of Rupertsberg.

"She, you see, is the great prophetess of the New Testament. Never,

since the visions of Saint John at Patmos, has the Holy Spirit

communicated to an earthly being with such fulness and light. In her

'Heptachronon' she predicts Protestantism and the captivity of the

Vatican; in her 'Scivias, or Knowledge of the Ways of the Lord,' which

was edited, according to her recital, by a monk of the Convent of Saint

Désibode, she interprets the symbols of the Scriptures, and even the

nature of the elements. She also wrote a diligent commentary on our

rules and enthusiastic pages on sacred music, on literature, on art,

which she defines admirably; a reminiscence, half-effaced, of a

primitive condition from which we have fallen since Eden. Unfortunately,

to understand her, it is necessary to give oneself to minute researches

and patient studies. Her apocalyptic style has something retractile,

which retreats and shuts itself up all the more when one will open it."

"I am well aware that I am losing my little Latin," said M. Bruno. "What

a pity there is not a translation of her works, with glosses to help."

"They are untranslatable," said the father, who went on,

"Saint Hildegarde is, with Saint Bernard, one of the purest glories of

the family of Saint Benedict. How predestinate was that virgin, who was

inundated with interior light at the age of three, and died at

eighty-two, having lived all her life in the cloister!"

"And add that she was as a permanent state, prophetical!" cried the

oblate. "She is like no other woman saint; all in her is astonishing,

even the way in which God addresses her, for He forgets that she is a

woman, and calls her 'man.'

"And she," added the prior, "employs, when she wishes to designate

herself, the singular expression, 'the paltry form.' But here is another

writer who is dear to us," and he showed Durtal the two volumes of Saint

Gertrude. "She is again one of our great nuns, an abbess truly

Benedictine, in the exact sense of the word, for she caused the Holy

Scriptures to be explained to her nuns, wished that the piety of her

daughters should be based on science, that this faith should be

sustained by liturgical food, if I may say so."

"I know nothing of her but her 'Exercises,'" observed Durtal, "and they

have left with me the memory of echoed words, of things said again from

the sacred books. So far as one may judge from simple extracts, she does

not appear to have original expression, and to be far below Saint Teresa

or Saint Angela."

"No doubt," answered the monk. "But she comes near Saint Angela by the

gift of familiarity when she converses with Christ, and also by the

loving vehemence of what she says; only all this is transformed on

leaving its proper source; she thinks liturgically; and this is so true,

that the least of her reflections at once presents itself to her clothed

in the language of the Gospels and the Psalms.

"Her 'Revelations,' her 'Insinuations,' her 'Herald of Divine Love,' are

marvellous from this point of view; and then her prayer to the Blessed

Virgin is exquisite which opens with this phrase: 'Hail, O white lily

of the Trinity, resplendent, and always at rest....'

"As a continuation of her works, the Benedictine Fathers of Solesmes

have edited also the 'Revelations' of Saint Mechtilde, her book on

'Special Grace,' and her 'Light of the Divinity'; they are there on that

shelf...."

"Let me show you," said in his turn M. Bruno, "guides wisely marked out

for the soul which escapes from itself, and will attempt to climb the

eternal mountains," and he handed to Durtal the "Lucerna Mystica" of

Lopez Ezquerra, the quartos of Scaramelli, the volumes of Schram, the

"Christian Asceticism" of Ribet, the "Principles of Mystic Theology" of

Father Seraphin.

"And do you know this?" continued the oblate; the volume he offered was

called "On Prayer," was anonymous, and bore at the bottom of its first

page "Solesmes, printed at the Abbey of Saint Cecilia," and above the

printed date, 1886, Durtal made out the word written in ink,

"Confidential."

"I have never seen this little book, which seems moreover to have never

been brought into the market. Who is the author?"

"The most extraordinary nun of our time, the abbess of the Benedictine

nuns at Solesmes. I regret only that you are going so soon, for I should

have been happy to let you read it.

"As far as the document is concerned, it is of a most extraordinary

science, and it contains admirable quotations from Saint Hildegarde and

Cassien: as far as Mysticism is concerned, Mother Saint Cecilia

evidently only reproduces the works of her predecessors, and she tells

us nothing very new. Nevertheless, I remember a passage which seems to

me more special, more personal. Wait...."

And the oblate turned over a few pages. "Here it is:

"'The spiritualized soul does not appear exposed to temptation properly

so-called, but by a divine permission it is called upon to conflict with

the Demon, spirit against spirit.... The contact with the Demon is then

perceived on the surface of the soul, under the form of a burn at once

spiritual and sensible.... If the soul hold good in its union with God,

if it be strong, the pain, however sharp, is bearable; but if the soul

commit any slight imperfection, even inwardly, the Demon makes just so

much way, and carries his horrible burning more forward, until by

generous acts the soul can repulse him further."

"This touch of Satan, which produces an almost material effect on the

most intangible parts of our being, is, you will admit, at least

curious," concluded the oblate, as he closed the volume.

"Mother Saint Cecilia is a remarkable strategist of the soul," said the

prior, "but ... but ... this work, which she edited for the daughters of

her abbey, contains, I think, some rash propositions which have not been

read without displeasure at Rome."

"To have done with our poor treasures," he continued, "we have only on

this side," and he pointed out a portion of the book-cases which covered

the room, "long-winded works, the 'Cistercian Menology,' 'Migné's

Patrology,' dictionaries of the lives of the saints, manuals of sacred

interpretation, canon law, Christian apology, Biblical exegesis, the

complete works of Saint Thomas, tools of work which we rarely employ,

for as you know we are a branch of the Benedictine trunk vowed to a life

of bodily labour and penance; we are men of sorrow for God, above all

things. Here is M. Bruno, who uses these books; so do I at times, for I

have special charge of spiritual matters in this monastery," added the

monk with a smile.

Durtal looked at him; he handled the volumes with caressing hands,

brooded over them with the blue lustre of his eye, laughed with the joy

of a child as he turned their pages.

"What a difference between this monk who evidently adores his books, and

the prior with his imperious profile and silent lips who heard his

confession the second day;" then thinking of all these Trappists, the

severity of their countenances, the joy of their eyes, Durtal said to

himself that these Cistercians were not at all as the world believed,

solemn and funereal people, but that, quite the contrary, they were the

gayest of men.

"Now," said Father Maximin, "the reverend Father abbot has charged me

with a commission; knowing that you will leave us to-morrow, he is

anxious, now that he is better, to pass at least some minutes with you.

He will be free this evening: will it trouble you to join him after

Compline?"

"Not at all; I shall be glad to talk with Dom Anselm."

"That is understood, then."

They went downstairs. Durtal thanked the prior, who re-entered the

enclosure of the corridors, and the oblate, who went up to his cell. He

trifled about, and in spite of the torment of his departure, which

haunted him, reached the evening without too much trouble.

The "Salve Regina," which he heard perhaps for the last time thus sung

by male voices; that airy chapel built of sound, and evaporating with

the close of the antiphon, in the smoke of the tapers, stirred him to

the bottom of his soul; the Trappist monastery showed itself truly

charming this evening. After the office, they said the Rosary, not as at

Paris, where they recite a Pater, ten Aves, and a Gloria, and so over

again; here they said in Latin a Pater, an Ave, a Gloria, and began

again till in that manner they had finished several decades.

This rosary was said on their knees, half by the prior, half by all the

monks. It went at so rapid a pace that it was scarcely possible to

distinguish the words, but as soon as it was ended, at a signal there

was a great silence, and each one prayed with his head in his hands.

And Durtal took notice of the ingenious system of conventual prayers:

after the prayers purely vocal like these, came mental prayer, personal

petitions, stimulated and set a-going by the very machine of

paternosters.

"Nothing is left to chance in religion; every exercise which seems at

first useless has a reason for its being," he said to himself, as he

went out into the court. "And the fact is, that the rosary, which seems

to be only a humming-top of sounds, fulfils an end. It reposes the soul

wearied with the supplications which it has recited, applying itself to

them, thinking of them; it hinders it from babbling and reciting to God

always the same petitions, the same complaints; it allows it to take

breath, to take rest, in prayers in which it can dispense with

reflection, and, in fact, the rosary occupies in prayer, those hours of

fatigue in which one would not pray.... Ah! here is the Father abbot."

The Trappist expressed to him his regret at visiting him only thus for a

few moments; then after he had answered Durtal, who inquired after the

state of his health, which he hoped was at last re-established, he

proposed to him to walk in the garden, and begged him not to

inconvenience himself by not smoking cigarettes if he had a mind to do

so.

And the conversation turned on Paris. Dom Anselm asked for some

information, and ended by saying with a smile, "I see by scraps of

newspapers which come to me, that society just now is infected with

socialism. Everyone wishes to solve the famous social question. How does

that get on?"

"How does that get on? Why, not at all! Unless you can change the souls

of workmen and masters, and make them disinterested and charitable

between to-day and to-morrow, in what can you expect these systems to

end?"

"Well," said the monk, enwrapping the monastery with a gesture, "the

question is solved here.

"As wages do not exist, all sources of conflicts are suppressed.

"As every task is according to aptitudes and powers, the fathers who are

not strong-shouldered and big-armed fold the packages of chocolate, or

make out the bills, and those who are robust dig the ground.

"I add that the equality in our cloisters is such that the prior and the

abbot have no advantage over the other monks. At table the portions, and

in the dormitory the paillasses, are identical. The sole profits of the

abbot consist on the whole in the inevitable cares arising from the

moral conduct and the temporal administration of an abbey. There is

therefore no reason why the workmen of a convent should go on strike,"

concluded the abbot with a smile.

"Yes, but you are minimists, you suppress the family and woman, you live

on nothing, and expect the only real recompense for your labours after

death. How can you make the people in the towns understand that?"

"The social system may thus be summed up, as I think: the masters wish

to profit by the workmen, who in their turn desire to be paid as much as

possible for as little work as possible. Well, then, there is no way out

of that."

"Exactly, and there is the sad part of it, for socialism in fact arises

from kindly ideas, just ideas, and will always run up against egotism

and gain, against the inevitable breakers of the sins of man.

"And your little chocolate factory gives you at least some income?"

"Yes; that saves us."

The abbot was silent for a second; then he went on,

"You know, sir, how a convent is founded. I take for example our Order.

A domain and the lands about it are offered the Order on condition that

it peoples them. The Order takes a handful of its monks, and settles

them as a swarm on the soil given to it. There its task stops. The grain

must spring up of itself, or to put it differently, the Trappists,

severed from their mother-house, must gain their livelihood, and suffice

for themselves.

"So when we took possession of these buildings we were so poor, that

from bread to shoes everything was lacking; but we had no anxiety for

the future, for there is no example in monastic history that Providence

has not succoured abbeys who trusted in it. Little by little we drew our

food from the estate, and we learnt useful trades; now we make our

habits and our shoes; we reap our wheat and make our bread; our material

existence is therefore assured, but the taxes crush us; therefore we

have founded this factory, of which the report becomes better from year

to year.

"In a year or two the building which shelters us, and for want of money

we have been unable to repair, will tumble down, but if God then allows

generous souls to come to our aid, perhaps we shall be in a condition to

build a monastery, which is the wish of all of us; for indeed this hovel

with its rooms in confusion, and its rotunda-chapel, is painful to us."

The abbot was silent again, then after a pause he said in a low voice,

speaking to himself,

"It cannot be denied, a convent which has not the look of a cloister is

an obstacle to vocations; the postulant has need--and this is quite

natural--to mould himself in surroundings which please him, to encourage

himself in a church which wraps him round, in a somewhat sombre chapel;

and to obtain that result you want the Romanesque or Gothic style."

"Ah, yes, indeed. And have you many novices?"

"We have especially many subjects who desire to feel the life of

Trappists, but the greater part do not succeed in supporting our way of

life. Beside even the question of knowing whether the vocation of the

beginners is imaginary or real, we are from the physical point of view

clearly fixed after a fortnight's trial."

"Eating vegetables only must crush the most robust constitutions; I do

not even understand how, leading an active life, you can bear it."

"The truth is that bodies obey where souls are resolute. Our ancestors

endured the life of the Trappists very well. We want souls at the

present day. I remember that when I made my probation in a Cistercian

cloister I had no health, and yet had it been necessary I would have

eaten stones!

"Moreover, the rule will soon be softened," pursued the abbot; "but in

any case there is a country which, if there should be scarcity, assures

us a good number of recruits, Holland."

And seeing Durtal's look of astonishment, the father said,

"Yes, in that Protestant country mystic vegetation is flourishing.

Catholicism is all the more fervent that it is, if not persecuted, at

least despised, drowned in the mass of Calvinists. Perhaps this belongs

also to the nature of the soil, to its solitary plains, its silent

canals, to the very taste of the Dutch for a regular and peaceable life;

but in that little knot of Catholics the Cistercian vocation is always

very common."

Durtal looked at the Trappist as he walked majestic and quiet, his head

buried in his hood, his hands passed under his cincture.

From time to time his eyes grew bright inside his hood, and the amethyst

which he wore on his finger sparkled in brief flames.

No sound was heard; at this hour the monastery was asleep. Durtal and

the abbot were walking on the banks of the great pond, where the water

was alive, it alone wakeful in the slumber of the woods, for the moon,

which shone in a cloudless sky, sowed a myriad of goldfish, and this

luminous spawn, fallen from the planet, mounted, descended, sparkled in

a thousand little points of fire, of which the wind as it blew increased

the brightness.

The abbot spoke no longer, and Durtal, who was thinking, intoxicated by

the sweetness of the night, groaned suddenly. He had just considered

that at this same hour the next day he would be at Paris, and seeing the

monastery, whose pale front appeared at the end of a walk as at the end

of a dark tunnel, he cried, thinking of all the monks who inhabited it,

"Ah! they are happy!"

And the abbot answered, "Too happy."

Then gently, in a low voice,

"Yes, it is true we enter here to do penance, to mortify ourselves, and

we have hardly begun to suffer when God consoles us. He is so good that

He Himself wishes to deceive Himself about our merits. If at certain

moments He allows the Demon to persecute us, He gives us in exchange so

much happiness that there is no proportion preserved between the

recompense and the sorrow. Sometimes when I think of it, I ask myself

how there still subsists that equilibrium that nuns and monks are

charged to maintain, since neither of us suffer enough to neutralize the

repeated sins of towns?"

The abbot stopped, and then went on pensively,

"The world does not even conceive that the austerity of the abbeys can

profit it. The doctrine of mystical compensation escapes it entirely. It

cannot represent to itself that the substitution of the innocent for the

guilty is necessary when to suffer merited punishment is concerned. Nor

does it explain to itself any more that in wishing to suffer for others,

monks turn aside the wrath of heaven, and establish a solidarity in the

good which is a counter-weight against the federation of evil. God

knows, moreover, with what cataclysms the unconscious world would be

menaced, if in consequence of a sudden disappearance of all the

cloisters, the equilibrium which saves it were broken."

"The case has already presented itself," said Durtal, who while

listening to the Trappist thought of the Abbé Gévresin, and remembered

how that priest had expressed himself on the same subject in nearly

similar terms. "The Revolution, in fact, suppressed all convents with

one stroke of a pen, but I think that the history of that time when so

many hucksters were busy is still to be written. Instead of searching

for documents on the acts, and even on the persons of the Jacobins, the

archives of the religious orders which existed at that time should be

ransacked.

"In working thus at the side of the Revolution, in sounding its

neighbourhood, its foundations will be exhumed. Its causes will be

brought to the surface, and it will certainly be discovered that in

proportion to the suppression of convents, monstrous excesses had birth.

Who knows if the demoniacal madness of Carrier or Marat do not accord

with the death of an abbey whose sanctity preserved France for years."

"To be just," answered the abbot, "it is right to say that the

Revolution destroyed ruins only. The rule of _in commendam_ ended by

giving the monasteries over to Satan. It was they, alas! that by the

relaxation of their morals, inclined the balance, and drew down the

lightning on the land.

"The Terror was only a consequence of their impiety. God, whom nothing

longer withheld, let things take their course."

"Yes; but how can you now prove the necessity of compensations to a

world which wanders out of the way in continued accesses of gain; how

persuade it that it is an urgent need, as a preventive against new

crises, to shelter towns behind the sacred bulwarks of cloisters?

"After the siege of 1870, Paris was wisely sheltered behind an immense

net of impregnable forts; but is it not also indispensable to surround

it with a cincture of prayers, to buttress its neighbourhood with

conventual houses, to build everywhere in its suburbs convents of Poor

Clares, Carmelites, Benedictine nuns of the Blessed Sacrament,

monasteries which will be in some degree powerful citadels, destined to

arrest the forward march of the armies of evil?

"Certainly the towns have great need of being guaranteed against

infernal invasions by a sanitary defence of Orders.... But come, sir, I

must not deprive you of necessary rest, I will join you to-morrow,

before you quit our solitude. I have now but to say that you have only

friends here, and that you will be always welcome. I hope that on your

side you will keep no unfavourable memory of our poor hospitality, and

that you will prove it in coming to see us again."

As they talked they had come in front of the guest-house.

The father pressed Durtal's hands, and slowly ascended the stairs,

sweeping with his robe the silver dust of the steps, as he mounted, all

white, in a ray of the moon.

CHAPTER IX.

Durtal wished immediately after Mass to visit for the last time that

wood through which he had walked, in turn so languidly and so rapidly.

He went at first to the old lime alley, whose pale emanations were

verily for his spirit what an infusion of their leaves is for the body,

a sort of very weak panacea, a kindly and soothing sedative.

Then he sat down in their shade on a stone bench. As he leant forward a

little he could see through the moving spaces in the branches, the

solemn front of the abbey, and opposite it, separated by the kitchen

garden, the gigantic cross standing before that liquid plan of a church

which the pond simulated.

He rose, and approached the watery cross, of which the sky turned the

marble water blue, and he contemplated the great crucifix in white

marble, which towered above the whole monastery, and seemed to rise

opposite to it as a permanent reminder of the vows of suffering which he

had accepted, and reserved to himself to change at length into joys.

"The fact is," said Durtal, who thought over again the contradictory

declarations of the monks, confessing that they led at once the most

attractive and the most atrocious life; "the fact is that the good God

deceives them. They attain here below Paradise, while they seek hell

there. I have myself tasted how strange is existence in this cloister,

for I have been here, almost at the same time, very unhappy and very

happy; and now I feel well the mirage which is already beginning: before

two days are over the remembrance of the sorrows which then were, if I

recall them with care, greatly above the joys, will have disappeared,

and I shall only recall those interior emotions in the chapel, those

delicious stolen moments in the morning in the pathways of the park.

"I shall regret the open-air prison of this convent. It is curious I

find myself attached to it by obscure bonds; when I am in my cell, there

return to me all kinds of memories, like those of an ancient race. I

find myself at once at home again, in a place I had never seen; I

recognize from the first moment a very special life, of which

nevertheless I know nothing. It seems to me that something which

interests me, which is indeed personal to me, passed here before I was

born. Truly, if I believed in metempsychosis I might imagine I had been

a monk in anterior existences; a bad monk then," he said, smiling at his

reflections, "since I should have been obliged to be reincarnate and to

return to a cloister to expiate my sins."

While thus talking with himself, he had passed across a long alley which

led to the end of the enclosure, and, cutting across the road, and

through the thickets, he strayed into the wood of the great pond.

It was not in motion, as on certain days when the wind made hollows in

it, and swelled it, made it flow and return on itself as soon as it

touched its banks. It remained immovable, and was only stirred by the

reflections of the moving clouds and of the trees. At moments a leaf

fallen from the neighbouring poplars swam on the image of a cloud, at

others bubbles of air came from the bottom and burst on the surface in

the reflected blue of heaven.

Durtal looked for the otter, but it did not show itself; he saw only the

swallows which skimmed the water with their wing, the dragon-flies which

sparkled like jewels, flashing like the blue flames of sulphur.

If he had suffered near the cross-pond, before the sheet of water of the

other pond he could only call up the memory of healing hours, which he

had passed lying on a bed of moss, or a couch of dry reeds, and he

looked at it tenderly, trying to fix and carry it away in his memory to

re-live again in Paris, shutting his eyes on the bank.

He pursued his walk, and stopped in an alley of chestnuts along the

walls above the monastery; thence he went into the court in front of the

cloister, the outbuildings, the stables, the woodsheds, even the

pig-styes. He tried to see Brother Simeon, but he was probably engaged

in the stables, for he did not appear. The buildings were silent, the

pigs were shut up; only some lean cats prowled about in silence,

scarcely looking when they met each other, going each on its own side,

no doubt seeking some nourishing game which would console them for the

eternal meals of vegetable soup served them at the monastery.

Time was getting on; he prayed for the last time in the chapel, and went

to his cell to get his portmanteau ready.

While putting his things in order he thought of the inutility of

decorated rooms. He had spent all his money at Paris in buying ornaments

and books, for till now he had detested bare walls.

But now, considering the blank walls of this room, he admitted to

himself that he had done better between these four white-washed walls

than in his room at Paris, hung with stuffs.

Suddenly he recognized that La Trappe had weaned him from his

preferences, had in a few days completely upset him. "The power of such

an environment!" he said to himself, a little alarmed at feeling how he

was transformed. And he thought in buckling his portmanteau, "I must

however, go and find Father Etienne, for I must settle my account; I

cannot be altogether a debtor to these good people."

He went along the corridors, and ended by meeting the father in the

court.

He was a little confused how to open the question; at the first words

the guest-master smiled.

"The rule of Saint Benedict is formal," he said; "we must receive our

guests as we receive our Lord Jesus Himself, that is to tell you that we

cannot exchange our poor care for money."

And when Durtal insisted, embarrassed,

"If it does not suit you to have partaken of our meagre pittance without

paying, do as you please; only the sum which you may give will be

distributed in coins of ten or twenty sous, to the poor who come each

morning, often from a great distance, to knock at our monastery gate."

Durtal bowed and handed the money, which he had ready in his pocket, to

the father, but he inquired if he might not have a word with Father

Maximin before his departure.

"Certainly; moreover, Father prior would not have let you go without

shaking hands with you. I will go and make certain if he be free. Wait

for me in the refectory." And the monk disappeared, and came back a few

minutes afterwards, preceded by the prior.

"Ah, well," said he, "then you are going to plunge again into the

hurly-burly?"

"Oh! without any pleasure, Father."

"I understand that. It is so good, is it not, no longer to hear anything

and to be silent. However, take courage; we will pray for you."

And as Durtal thanked both of them for their kind attentions,

"It is a pleasure to receive a retreatant such as you," cried Father

Etienne, "nothing repulses you, and you are so exact that you are about

before the hour: you rendered my task of overseer easy. If all were as

little exacting and as pliable."

And he admitted that he had given lodging to priests sent by their

bishops as a penance, ecclesiastics of ill-repute whose complaints about

food, lodging, the need of rising early in the morning, never ceased.

"If, again," said the prior, "one could hope to recall them to good, to

send them back healed to their parishes; but no, they go away still more

rebellious than before, the Devil does not let them alone."

During this conversation a lay brother brought in some dishes covered

with plates and placed them on the table.

"We have changed the hour of your dinner, because of the train," said

Father Etienne.

"Good appetite, adieu, and may the Lord bless you," said the prior.

He raised his hand, and enwrapped Durtal, with a great sign of the

cross, who knelt surprised at the sudden emotion in the monk's tone. But

Father Maximin recovered himself at once, and he bowed to him as M.

Bruno entered.

The meal was silent; the oblate was visibly distressed at the departure

of the companion whom he loved, and Durtal looked with a swelling heart

at the old man, who had so charitably come out of his solitude to give

him aid.

"Will you not come some day to see me in Paris?" he said.

"No. I have quitted life without any mind to return to it. I am dead to

the world. I do not wish to see Paris again. I have no wish to live

again.

"But if God lend me still a few years of existence I hope to see you

here again, for it is not in vain that one has crossed the threshold of

mystic asceticism, to verify by one's own experience the reality of the

requirements which our Lord brings about. Now, as God does not proceed

by chance, He will certainly finish His work by sifting you as wheat. I

venture to recommend you to try not to give way, and attempt to die in

some measure to yourself, in order not to run counter to His plans."

"I know well," said Durtal, "that all is displaced in me, that I am no

longer the same, but what frightens me is that I am now sure that the

works of the Teresan school are exact ... then, then ... if one must

pass-through the cylinders of the rolling mill which Saint John of the

Cross describes...."

The noise of a carriage in the court interrupted him. M. Bruno went to

the window and looked out.

"Your luggage is down."

"Yes."

They looked at each other.

"Listen! I would wish indeed to say to you...."

"No, no, do not thank me," cried the oblate. "See, I have never so

thoroughly understood the misery of my being. Ah! if I had been another

man, I might, by praying better, have aided you more."

The door opened and Father Etienne declared,

"You have not a minute to lose, if you do not wish to miss the train."

Thus hurried, Durtal had only time to press the hand of his friend, who

accompanied him to the court. He found waiting a sort of open wagon

driven by a Trappist, who, below a bald head, and cheeks streaked with

rose threads, had a great black beard.

Durtal pressed the hands of the guest-master and the oblate for the last

time, when the Father abbot came in his turn to wish him a safe journey;

and at the end of the court Durtal perceived two eyes fixed on him,

those of Brother Anacletus, who, at a distance, said adieu by a slight

bow, but without other gesture.

Even this poor man, whose eloquent look told of a truly touching

affection, had a saint's pity for the stranger whom he had seen so

tumultuous and so sad in the desolate solitude of the wood!

Certainly the stiffness of the rule forbade all show of feeling to these

monks, but Durtal felt thoroughly that for him they had gone to the

limit of concessions allowed, and his affliction was great as he cast

them in parting a last expression of thanks.

And the door of the monastery closed; that door at which he had trembled

in arriving, and at which he now looked with tears in his eyes.

"We must get on fast," said the procurator, "for we are late," and the

horse went at a great speed along the lanes.

Durtal recognized his companion, as having seen him in the chapel,

singing in the choir during the Office.

He had an air at once good-natured and firm, and his little grey eye

smiled as it glanced behind his branched spectacles.

"Well," said he, "how have you borne our regimen?"

"I have had every chance; I came herewith my stomach out of order, my

body ill, and the simple Trappist meals have cured me."

And when Durtal narrated briefly the stages of soul he had undergone,

the monk murmured,

"That is nothing in regard to demoniacal attacks; we have had here true

cases of possession."

"And Brother Simeon discovered them!"

"Ah! you know that...." And he replied quite simply to Durtal, who spoke

to him of his admiration for the poor lay brothers,

"You are right, sir; if you could talk with these peasants and

illiterate men, you would be surprised at the often profound answers

which these people give you; then they alone at the monastery are really

courageous; we, the Fathers, when we think ourselves too weak, accept

willingly the authorized addition of an egg; they never; they pray more,

and it must be admitted that our Lord listens to them, since they get

well again, and indeed are never ill."

And to a question of Durtal who asked him in what consisted the

functions of procurator, the monk answered,

"They consist in keeping the accounts, in being the commercial agent, in

travelling, in managing, alas! everything which does not concern the

life of the cloister; but we are so few in number at Notre Dame de

l'Atre, that we become necessarily Jacks-of-all-trades. For instance,

Father Etienne is cellarer of the Abbey and guest-master, he is also

sacristan and bell-ringer. I too, am first cantor and professor of plain

song."

And while the carriage rolled along, shaken by the ruts, the procurator

declared to Durtal, who told him how much the offices chanted at the

monastery had delighted him,

"It is not with us that you ought to hear them; our choirs are too

restricted, too weak to be able to raise the giant mass of those chants.

You ought to go to the black monks of Solesmes or Ligugé if you wish to

find the Gregorian melodies executed as they were in the Middle Ages. By

the way, do you know in Paris, the Benedictine nuns in the Rue

Monsieur?"

"Yes; but do you not think they coo a little?"

"I cannot say; all the same their collection of tunes is authentic, but

at the little seminary at Versailles, you have better still, since they

chant there exactly as at Solesmes; note this well, moreover, at Paris,

when the churches decline to repudiate liturgical music, they use for

the most part the false notation printed and spread in abundance in all

the dioceses in France by the house of Pustet of Ratisbon."

"But the errors and frauds with which those editions abound are well

known."

"The legend on which its partisans rely is incorrect. To assert, as they

do, that this version is no other than that of Palestrina who was

charged by Pope Paul V. to revive the musical liturgy of the Church, is

an argument destitute of truth and void of force, for everyone knows

that when Palestrina died, he had hardly begun the correction of the

Gradual.

"I will add that even if that musician had finished his work, that would

not prove that his interpretation ought to be preferred to that which

has been recently constituted after patient researches by the Abbey of

Solesmes, for the Benedictine texts are based on the copy preserved at

the monastery of St. Gall of the antiphonary of Saint Gregory, which

represents the most ancient and the most certain monument which the

Church preserves of the true plain chant.

"This manuscript, of which photographic facsimiles exist, is the code of

Gregorian melodies, and it ought to be, if I may use the expression, the

neumatic Bible of choirs.

"The disciples of Saint Benedict are then absolutely right when they

declare that their version alone is faithful, alone correct."

"How then comes it that so many churches get their music from Ratisbon?"

"Alas, how comes it that Pustet has so long acquired the monopoly of

liturgical books, and ... but no, better hold one's peace ... take this

only for certain, that the German volumes are the absolute negation of

the Gregorian tradition, the most complete heresy of plain chant."

"By the way, what time is it? We must make haste," said the procurator,

looking at the watch which Durtal held up to him. "Come up, my beauty,"

and he whipped up the mare.

"You drive with spirit," cried Durtal.

"It is true; I forgot to say to you, that over and above my other

functions, I also have, if need be, that of coachman."

Durtal thought all the same that these people were extraordinary who

lived an interior life in God. As soon as they consented to redescend on

earth they revealed themselves as the most sagacious and the boldest of

business men. An abbot founded a factory with the few pence he succeeded

in gathering; he discerned the employment which suited each of his

monks, and with them he improvised artisans, writing clerks, transformed

a professor of plain chant into an agent, plunged into the tumult of

purchases and sales, and little by little the house which scarcely was

raised above the soil, grew, put forth shoots, and ended by nourishing

with its fruit the abbey which had planted it.

Transported into another environment these people would have as easily

created great manufactories and started banks. And it was the same with

the women. When one thinks of the practical qualities of a man of

business, and the coolness of an old diplomatist which a mother abbess

ought to possess in order to rule her community, one is obliged to admit

that the only women, truly intelligent, truly remarkable are, outside of

drawing-rooms, outside of the world, at the head of cloisters.

And as he expressed his wonder aloud, that monks were so expert at

setting up business.

"It must be so," sighed the father, "but if you believe that we do not

regret the time necessarily spent in digging the ground! then our spirit

at least was free, then we could sanctify ourselves in silence which to

a monk is as necessary as bread, for it is thanks to it, that he stifles

vanity as it rises, that he represses disobedience as it murmurs, that

he turns all his aspirations, all his thoughts towards God, and becomes

at last attentive to His presence.

"Instead of that ... but here we are at the station; do not trouble

yourself about your portmanteau, but go and take your ticket, for I hear

the whistle of the train."

And in fact Durtal had only time to shake hands with the father, who put

his luggage into the carriage.

There, when he was alone, seated, looking at the monk as he departed, he

felt his heart swell, ready to break.

And in the clatter of the rails the train started.

Sharply, clearly, in a minute, Durtal took stock of the frightful

disorder into which he had thrown the monastery.

"Ah! and outside it, all is the same to me, and nothing matters to me,"

he cried. And he groaned, knowing that he should never more succeed in

interesting himself in all that makes the joy of men. The uselessness of

caring about any other thing than Mysticism and the liturgy, of thinking

about aught else save God, implanted itself in him so firmly that he

asked himself what would become of him at Paris with such ideas.

He saw himself submitting to the confusion of controversies, the

cowardice of conventionality, the vanity of declarations, the inanity of

proofs. He saw himself bruised and thrust aside by the reflections of

everybody, obliged henceforward to advance or retire, dispute or hold

his tongue?

In any case peace was for ever lost. How in fact was he to rally and

recover when he was obliged to dwell in a place of passage, in a soul

open to all winds, visited by a crowd of public thoughts?

His contempt for relations, his disgust for acquaintances grew on him.

"No, everything rather than mix myself again with society," he declared

to himself, and then he was silent in despair, for he was not ignorant

that he could not, apart from the monastic zone, live in isolation.

After a short time would come weariness and a void, therefore why had

he reserved nothing for himself, why had he trusted all to the cloister?

He had not even known how to arrange the pleasure of entering into

himself, he had discovered how to lose the amusement of bric-à-brac, how

to extirpate that last satisfaction in the white nakedness of a cell! he

no longer held to anything, but lay dismantled, saying, "I have

renounced almost all the happiness which might fall to me, and what am I

going to put in its place?"

And terrified, he perceived the disquiet of a conscience ready to

torment itself, the permanent reproaches of an acquired lukewarmness,

the apprehensions of doubts against Faith, fear of furious clamours of

the senses stirred by chance meetings.

And he repeated to himself that the most difficult thing would not be to

master the emotions of his flesh, but indeed to live Christianly, to

confess, to communicate at Paris, in a church. He never could get so far

as that, and he imagined discussions with the Abbé Gévresin, his gaining

time, his refusal, foreseeing that their friendship would come to an end

in these disputes.

Then where should he fly? At the very recollection of the Trappist

monastery the theatrical representations of St. Sulpice made him jump.

St. Severin seemed to him distracted and worn. How could he live among

stupid people like the devout, how listen without gnashing his teeth to

the affected chants of the choirs? How, lastly, could he seek again in

the chapel of the Benedictine nuns, and even at Notre Dame des

Victoires, that dull heat radiating from the souls of the monks, and

thawing little by little the ice of his poor being?

And then it was not even that. What was truly crushing, truly dreadful,

was to think that doubtless he would never again feel that admirable joy

which lifts you from the ground, carries you, you know not where, nor

how, above sense.

Ah, those paths at the monastery wandered in at daybreak, those paths

where one day after a communion, God had dilated his soul in such a

fashion that it seemed no longer his own, so much had Christ plunged him

in the sea of His divine infinity, swallowed him in the heavenly

firmament of His person.

How renew that state of grace without communion and outside a cloister?

"No; it is all over," he concluded.

And he was seized with such an access of sadness, such an outburst of

despair, that he thought of getting out at the first station, and

returning to the monastery; and he had to shrug his shoulders, for his

character was not patient enough nor his will firm enough, nor his body

strong enough to support the terrible trials of a noviciate. Moreover,

the prospect of having no cell to himself, of sleeping dressed

higgledy-piggledy in a dormitory, alarmed him.

But what then? And sadly he took stock of himself.

"Ah!" he thought, "I have lived twenty years in ten days in that

convent, and I leave it, my brain relaxed, my heart in rags; I am done

for, for ever. Paris and Notre Dame de l'Atre have rejected me each in

their turn like a waif, and here I am condemned to live apart, for I am

still too much a man of letters to become a monk, and yet I am already

too much a monk to remain among men of letters."

He leapt up and was silent, dazzled by jets of electric light which

flooded him as the train stopped.

He had returned to Paris.

"If they," he said, thinking of those writers whom it would no doubt be

difficult not to see again, "if they knew how inferior they are to the

lowest of the lay brothers! if they could imagine how the divine

intoxication of a Trappist swine-herd interests me more than all their

conversations and all their books! Ah! Lord, that I might live, live in

the shadow of the prayers of humble Brother Simeon!"