THE ASCETIC.
Leon was not long in discovering that Luis Gonzaga was out of his
element in his father’s house. The lean, angular figure, wrapped
in a black gown with a cord round the slender waist,--bare-headed,
feeble and drooping, with eyes always fixed on the ground, with a
dull, clammy skin and weak swaying neck that could hardly support
the head above it, with broad, yellow, transparent hands like
little faggots of thin sticks, too weak for anything but to be
folded in prayer--wandered like an ominous shadow through the
drawing-rooms hung with gaudy papers or tawdry tapestry. It was a
dark and dismal stain on the gilded furniture, and the oriental and
Japanese decorations, in which the queer figures, like those of a
grotesque dream, seemed to harmonise, though remotely, with that
of the emaciated student. He was always to be seen wandering and
restless, like an imprisoned bird that seeks some escape; and when he
cast an eye on the objects that environed him it was to select the
most uncomfortable seat in the most obscure corner, where he might
pursue his meditations. Now and again the servants, when dusting
or tidying a room, would come upon the black and silent form, and
pause in their bustle with a mechanical gesture of reverence, while
Luis would fly to seek some fresh refuge in this desert of worldly
adornment, of profane pictures, of damask and chintz, of satin and
rosewood. The hapless, dying anchorite, as he fled from one corner to
another, hunted by his own fevered mysticism, would stumble against
a piano, a Chinese screen, a stand supporting a bowl of gold-fish,
a pillowy sofa covered up with brown holland, or a nude bronze
Venus.--He could not understand this covering up of furniture and
uncovering of statues.
The servants did not trouble themselves about him, perhaps because
he never spoke to them and never asked for anything out of pure
humility; he could endure hunger and thirst for an incredible
length of time, and knew no vexations, for his spirit, greedy
of mortification, accepted them as a boon. A little lad with a
jacket all covered with buttons, a merry mischievous face and a
closely-cropped head, nimble of foot and with rough warty hands, was
the only person who ever did anything for him, and that against the
young man’s will. But he would ask him a few questions:
“What is your name?”
“Felipe Centeno.”
“Where do you come from?”
“From Socartes.”
But not much more; the young anchorite kept his eyes down; the
page left him to himself. The other servants all looked sour and
disobliging, like men doing penance willy-nilly, and condemned to
poverty and abstinence in the midst of luxury and splendour.
The marquesa and María sat for hours with the invalid, trying to
cheer him with trivial chat.
“I do not fear death,” he would say with perfect truth, “on the
contrary, I long for it with all my soul, as a captive longs for
liberty. You do not understand, for you cling to the world--you do
not live that inner life, you have not broken, as I have, with every
tie of earth.”
His mother listened with a sigh to these seraphic aspirations, which
filled her with grief and admiration as she reflected how far she was
from such heights of piety. Seclusion and the intense heat had made
the poor lady melancholy and despondent.
One evening when Leon was going home he said to María:
“It is nothing but a feeling of dignity, or rather a dread of ‘what
people will say,’ that has kept your mother from following the others
in their miserable desertion. What a hideous world we live in! But
since all the rest have fled we will stay. Your brother is very
ill--he may outlive the summer, but on the other hand he may flicker
out of life when we least expect it.”
The following day the physician declared that the Tellería’s
house, which was in a densely-built quarter, very sunless and
ill-ventilated, was quite an unfit residence for an invalid; and
it was agreed that he should be removed to Leon’s house, which
was in the outskirts of the city, exposed to fresh breezes and
peacefully retired from all noise and bustle. The sick man made no
difficulties--he never did--and was taken to his sister’s home. He
was settled on the ground floor to avoid the fatigue of stairs with a
bed-room next to Leon’s study; and the study itself, a large, sunny,
cheerful room, to sit in. But none of these advantages seemed to
strike his attention; to him a palace and the gloomiest dungeon were
alike.
The first day he suffered much from the move and the pain was so
constant and so prolonged that his mother and sister were much
alarmed; he, in the intervals of the paroxysms, was calm and smiling:
“Why,” he said, “are you uneasy? Why do you shed tears? I am neither
alarmed nor sad, but the more I suffer the more I rejoice. I assure
you that, seeing death so near at hand, I am full of contentment;
though perhaps it may be that the hope of soon finding myself free
from this corrupt and earthly body has given rise to some vanity in
my soul, or to some other feeling displeasing in the sight of the
Lord. I can only pray that if indeed I am too proud to be dying, God
will chasten me and condemn me to live yet a little longer.”
He hardly ever spoke to Leon, for whenever his brother-in-law went to
enquire how he was, or to sit with him for a while, he always found
him engaged in his endless devotions which he would never shorten or
postpone even on his worst days. They brought him everything that was
choicest and most nourishing to eat, but he always picked out the
worst pieces.
“Not that,” he would say, “I like it too well.”
When they begged him to take this or that remedy he always refused.
“But if you would rather not take it,” his sister would say with
subtle logic, “mortify yourself by taking it,” and he would smile and
give way.
He received visits from various priests, principally Frenchmen, with
fringes of hair and three-cornered cocked hats, highly-bred, worldly,
soft-tongued, and they discussed the affairs of the Seminary. There
was a veneer of polish in their conversation with an affected tone
peculiar to certain circles. More rarely there came grave Spanish
priests, who, when they are really good men, are the most priestly
priests in Christendom, true ministers of God, pious, affable without
affectation and full of sound and healthy wisdom. Luis Gonzaga liked
their company, but he preferred solitude; still, in conversation
he displayed his keen judgment--not devoid of flavour and wit, his
perfect piety which none could fail to appreciate, and his gift of
grave, subtle and impassioned eloquence. He went every morning in the
carriage, carefully wrapped and watched, to church, and came back
towards evening; on his return, he meditated for a time on his knees,
and would take no food but when his emaciated frame was fainting
for lack of it, and even in the midst of his scanty meal he would
often be seized with such acute spasms that it seemed as though his
last hour had come. He would allow no one to help him to dress and
undress, nor to sleep in his room; María pointed out to her husband
that sometimes the bed was undisturbed and he must have lain on the
floor. The padded sofas and chairs, which the march of industry has
placed within the reach of the most modest household, knew not the
weight of his bones; he commonly sat on a cane stool without a back
and remained there for hours, rigid, weary and bathed in sweat.
When he could no longer hold himself up, he would push the stool to
the wall and lean his aching shoulders against that, with his head
thrown back, his eyes closed, and his hands clasped--he looked like a
criminal about to be throttled.
He never spoke of his absent brothers or his father; the person to
whom he showed most attachment, and some confidence was María; Leon
he never even looked at.
He was often tormented by religious scruples and would sometimes
speak of them. If by chance his mind wandered for a quarter of an
hour from the contemplation of death he was deeply distressed and
blamed himself severely. His ambition was to imitate exactly, or
as nearly as possible, the famous and saintly child whose name he
bore--that angelic spirit that fled from earth, burnt out by mystical
fervours, at the age of twenty-three, and which during its brief
existence here was a voluntary martyr to every form of mortification,
repressing every natural impulse, and cherishing the inner life
of the spirit, by relentlessly cutting off and plucking out every
thought and feeling that was foreign to the aim of self-purification
and a passionate yearning for salvation.
Like his Jesuit model, Luis Tellería suffered frightfully from
headaches. Acute neuralgia, which had frequently attacked him at
the Seminary of Puyóo, tormented him no less at Madrid, scorching
his brain and upsetting his whole frame; his head felt like a
mould filled with molten lead. But through all these periods of
intense suffering, his soul, thrown back on itself, revelled in the
martyrdom and accepted physical torture with a defiant rapture which
bordered on pride, and a sort of delirious luxury. He never uttered
a complaint; nay, when his brain seemed turned to fiery serpents he
could force his lips to smile. When Saint Luis Gonzaga suffered thus,
his Superior advised him not to think so much and he would have less
pain. His friends gave his namesake the same advice; but the young
man, rejoiced at the implied comparison, answered:
“You wish me to think less that I may have less headache, but it
would hurt me far more to try not to think.”
His physician ordered him a variety of soothing and other medicines.
He took them as he was desired when his mother besought him with
prayers and sobs; but the medicine he preferred was a scourge of
leather with iron spikes which he always carried twisted through his
girdle. His sister often stole on tiptoe to his door at night, and
found him on his knees in front of the crucifix which he had placed
at the foot of his bed.
The Seminary of Puyóo could boast of many saintly men and many wise
ones, some clever and some worldly, but all agreed to sing the
praises of Luis--of his virtues and of that holy hatred of himself
which, notwithstanding all that is preached in its honour, would
seem to be a somewhat archaic form of piety. Nevertheless, the very
tendency of modern devotion to come to a compromise with good living
and easy sleeping, makes the resolute abstinence and voluntary
martyrdom of the marquis’ son, all the more praiseworthy. His fame
was great throughout the catholic world and talked of even in Rome.
He lived habitually in tranquil silence, and in spite of his sincere
affection for his parents, he had fought out many a desperate battle
with himself to keep his mind from ever dwelling on the thought of
them, so that nothing should alienate his mind from the constant
presence of God which was the sole aim and end of his hopes and
sufferings. His talents were as conspicuous as his saintliness; he
had made rapid progress in his studies and was so versatile and
keen-witted that he had early mastered philosophy and theology,
and could argue so closely that the most practised debaters were
astonished. But this became a great anxiety to his conscience, for
all these praises jarred on his humility; so, for fear they should
make him vain, he affected stupidity; to be treated as the lowest and
least in his college was his greatest desire, and it was only by the
peremptory command of the Superior that he consented to display his
talents, but then his convincing logic and persuasive eloquence drew
tears from the most strong-hearted. He always obeyed his Superior,
was exact in his observance of rules and regulations, and achieved
such perfect command of his senses that at length he seemed to have
lost them; his closed ears and eyes always fixed on the ground, paid
no heed to anything that went on. He passed other people without even
seeing them; now and then he would take a walk with his companions,
but he observed nothing. He had registered a vow never to look on the
face of a woman excepting his mother or his sister, and he kept it
with the utmost strictness. By such a system he must surely keep his
spirit pure--almost as pure, as that of the babe unborn!
When his doctors pronounced his illness incurable, he declared
himself infinitely happy, nay, he rejoiced so fervently in the idea
of suffering much and dying in torments, that he made a crime even
of that joy, and asked his spiritual director whether he had not in
fact sinned in glorying in the certainty of approaching death, and if
it were not a snare of vanity. When his conscience was set at rest
on this delicate point, he watched the progress of the disease and
aggravated it in secret by his austerities, and by never following
the advice of his doctors. The decision of the Superior to send him
home when death seemed certainly near, had at first greatly grieved
him; but then a plan formed itself in his mind that reconciled him to
being removed to Madrid, and to an imprisonment in the splendid rooms
which to him were like a reflection or embodiment of his own disease,
no less horrible, diabolical and revolting.
Thus, in direct contravention of all natural law and instinct, he
encouraged his disease as we cherish a precious plant; he fed the
monster that preyed upon him, triumphing in the wasting and decay of
his miserable flesh, which he regarded solely as a burden.
“The world,” he would say, “is a foul and narrow alley in which
mankind revels and struggles as in a wild delirium. We are all
condemned to pass through it, disguised in the loathsome mask of our
body. How happy are they who are soon at the end, and who may then
cast aside the mask, and appear as they are before God!”
This was the angelic spirit, the enthusiastic and ecstatic soul,
full of faith and contempt for the world, that was worthy to give
our age what, indeed, it still lacks--a Saint, if the nineteenth
century did not seem inclined, on the contrary, to break the die
that coins saints. To be sure Luis did not work miracles; but who
can tell whether he may not have had the power, and have concealed
it in obedience to his pious habit of chastening his vanity? Some
indeed said that all this piety was nothing more than a well-acted
part; but this, in fact, was without foundation; those were nearer
the truth who said that sanctity, like chivalry, has it Quixotes.
Luis was pious in good faith; if he deceived any one it was himself,
and he certainly was magnanimous and heroic. Not one of the young
novices who at that time tried to imitate Saint Luis Gonzaga--and
there was a perfect mania for it among the aspirants to the
priesthood--could compare with Tellería in the closeness of the copy.
Still, no one can imitate the inimitable, and of what avail is an
exact reproduction of certain acts and words when all that is most
essential is overlooked or ignored?
My readers may perhaps say that this figure is an anachronism, a
reminiscence of the middle ages. But it is not; it is a sketch of our
own day; at the same time, to see it you must know where to look for
it, and that is not in a fashionable promenade. They do exist, these
seraphic youths, and are the glory of our Church. The nineteenth
century--the richest and most encyclopedic of the centuries--has
produced them as it has produced every type. Ours is a monstrous
synthesis of all the ages, and who can foresee how far it will go
before it has ceased shuffling and mingling its own inventions and
marvels with the relics and curiosities of the distant past?