When, at sixteen, Desirée became a young woman, she retained all her

wonted health; and rapidly developed, with round, free-swaying bust,

broad hips like those of an antique statue, the full growth indeed of

a vigorous animal. One might have thought that she had sprung from the

rich soil of her poultry-yard, that she absorbed the sap with her sturdy

legs, which were as firm as young trees. And nought disturbed her

amidst all this plenitude. She found continuous satisfaction in being

surrounded by birds and animals which ever increased and multiplied,

their fruitfulness filling her with delight. Nothing could have been

healthier. She innocently feasted on the odour and warmth of life,

knowing no depraved curiosity, but retaining all the tranquillity of a

beautiful animal, simply happy at seeing her little world thus multiply,

feeling as if she thereby became a mother, the common natural mother of

one and all.

Since she had been living at Les Artaud, she had spent her days in

complete beatitude. At last she was satisfying the dream of her life,

the only desire which had worried her amidst her weak-minded puerility.

She had a poultry-yard, a nook all to herself, where she could breed

animals to her heart’s content. And she almost lived there, building

rabbit-hutches with her own hands, digging out a pond for the ducks,

knocking in nails, fetching straw, allowing no one to assist her. All

that La Teuse had to do was to wash her afterwards. The poultry-yard was

situated behind the cemetery; and Desirée often had to jump the wall,

and run hither and thither among the graves after some fowl whom

curiosity had led astray. Right at the end was a shed giving

accommodation to the fowls and the rabbits; to the right was a little

stable for the goat. Moreover, all the animals lived together; the

rabbits ran about with the fowls, the nanny-goat would take a footbath

in the midst of the ducks; the geese, the turkeys, the guinea-fowls,

and the pigeons all fraternised in the company of three cats. Whenever

Desirée appeared at the wooden fence which prevented her charges from

making their way into the church, a deafening uproar greeted her.

‘Eh! can’t you hear them?’ she said to her brother, as they reached the

dining-room door.

But, when she had admitted him and closed the gate behind them, she was

assailed so violently that she almost disappeared. The ducks and the

geese, opening and shutting their beaks, tugged at her skirts; the

greedy hens sprang up and pecked her hands; the rabbits squatted on her

feet and then bounded up to her knees; whilst the three cats leapt upon

her shoulders, and the goat bleated in its stable at being unable to

reach her.

‘Leave me alone, do! all you creatures!’ she cried with a hearty

sonorous laugh, feeling tickled by all the feathers, claws, and beaks

and paws rubbing against her.

However, she did not attempt to free herself. As she often said, she

would have let herself be devoured; it seemed so sweet to feel all this

life cling to her and encompass her with the warmth of eider-down. At

last only one cat persisted in remaining on her back.

‘It’s Moumou,’ she said. ‘His paws are like velvet.’ Then, calling her

brother’s attention to the yard, she proudly added: ‘See, how clean it

is!’

The yard had indeed been swept out, washed, and raked over. But the

disturbed water and the forked-up litter exhaled so fetid and powerful

an odour that Abbé Mouret half choked. The dung was heaped against the

graveyard wall in a huge smoking mound.

‘What a pile, eh?’ continued Desirée, leading her brother into the

pungent vapour, ‘I put it all there myself, nobody helped me. Go on, it

isn’t dirty. It cleans. Look at my arms.’

As she spoke she held out her arms, which she had merely dipped into

a pail of water--regal arms they were, superbly rounded, blooming like

full white roses amidst the manure.

‘Yes, yes,’ gently said the priest, ‘you have worked hard. It’s very

nice now.’

Then he turned towards the wicket, but she stopped him.

‘Do wait a bit. You shall see them all. You have no idea--’ And so

saying, she dragged him to the rabbit house under the shed.

‘There are young ones in all the hutches,’ she said, clapping her hands

in glee.

Then at great length she proceeded to explain to him all about the

litters. He had to crouch down and come close to the wire netting,

whilst she gave him minute details. The mother does, with big restless

ears, eyed him askance, panting and motionless with fear. Then, in

one hutch, he saw a hairy cavity wherein crawled a living heap, an

indistinct dusky mass heaving like a single body. Close by some young

ones, with enormous heads, ventured to the edge of the hole. A little

farther were yet stronger ones, who looked like young rats, ferreting

and leaping about with their raised rumps showing their white scuts.

Others, white ones with pale ruby eyes, and black ones with jet eyes,

galloped round their hutches with playful grace. Now a scare would make

them bolt off swiftly, revealing at every leap their slender reddened

paws. Next they would squat down all in a heap, so closely packed that

their heads could no longer be seen.

‘It is you they are frightened at,’ Desirée kept on saying. ‘They know

me well.’

She called them and drew some bread-crust from her pocket. The little

rabbits then became more confident, and, with puckered noses, kept

sidling up, and rearing against the netting one by one. She kept them

like that for a minute to show her brother the rosy down upon their

bellies, and then gave her crust to the boldest one. Upon this the whole

of them flocked up, sliding forward and squeezing one another, but never

quarreling. At one moment three little ones were all nibbling the same

piece of crust, but others darted away, turning to the wall so as to

eat in peace, while their mothers in the rear remained snuffing

distrustfully and refused the crusts.

‘Oh! the greedy little things!’ exclaimed Desirée. ‘They would eat like

that till to-morrow morning! At night, even, you can bear them crunching

the leaves they have overlooked in the day-time.’

The priest had risen as if to depart, but she never wearied of smiling

on her dear little ones.

‘You see the big one there, that’s all white, with black ears--Well! he

dotes on poppies. He is very clever at picking them out from the other

weeds. The other day he got the colic. So I took him and kept him warm

in my pocket. Since then he has been quite frisky.’

She poked her fingers through the wire netting and stroked the rabbits’

backs.

‘Wouldn’t you say it was satin?’ she continued. ‘They are dressed like

princes. And ain’t they coquettish! Look, there’s one who is always

cleaning himself. He wears the fur off his paws.... If only you knew how

funny they are! I say nothing, but I see all their little games. That

grey one looking at us, for instance, used to hate a little doe, which

I had to put somewhere else. There were terrible scenes between them.

It would take too long to tell you all, but the last time he gave her

a drubbing, when I came up in a rage, what do you think I saw? Why that

rascal huddled up at the back there as if he was just at his last gasp.

He wanted to make me believe that it was he who had to complain of her.’

Then Desirée paused to apostrophise the rabbit. ‘Yes, you may listen to

me; you’re a rogue!’ And turning towards her brother, ‘He understands

all I say,’ she added softly, with a wink.

But Abbé Mouret could stand it no longer. He was perturbed by the heat

that emanated from the litters, the life that crawled under the hair

plucked from the does’ bellies, exhaling powerful emanations. On the

other hand, Desirée, as if slowly intoxicated, was growing brighter and

pinker.

‘But there’s nothing to take you away!’ she cried; ‘you always seem

anxious to go off. You must see my little chicks! They were born last

night.’

She took some rice and threw a handful before her. The hen gravely drew

near, clucking to the little band of chickens that followed her chirping

and scampering as if in bewilderment. When they were fairly in the

middle of the scattered rice the hen eagerly pecked at it, and threw

down the grains she cracked, while her little ones hastily began to

feed. All the charm of infancy was theirs. Half-naked as it were, with

round heads, eyes sparkling like steel needles, beaks so queerly set,

and down so quaintly ruffled up, they looked like penny toys. Desirée

laughed with enjoyment at sight of them.

‘What little loves they are!’ she stammered.

She took up two of them, one in each hand, and smothered them with eager

kisses. And then the priest had to inspect them all over, while she

coolly said to him:

‘It isn’t easy to tell the cocks. But I never make a mistake. This one

is a hen, and this one is a hen too.’

Then she set them on the ground again. Other hens were now coming up

to eat the rice. A large ruddy cock with flaming plumage followed them,

lifting his large feet with majestic caution.

‘Alexander is getting splendid,’ said the Abbé, to please his sister.

Alexander was the cock’s name. He looked up at the young girl with his

fiery eye, his head turned round, his tail outspread, and then installed

himself close by her skirts.

‘He is very fond of me,’ she said. ‘Only I can touch him. He is a good

bird. There are fourteen hens, and never do I find a bad egg in the

nests. Do I, Alexander?’

She stooped; the bird did not fly from her caress. A rush of blood

seemed to set his comb aflame; flapping his wings, and stretching out

his neck, he burst into a long crow which rang out like a blast from a

brazen throat. Four times did he repeat his crow while all the cocks of

Les Artaud answered in the distance. Desirée was greatly amused by her

brother’s startled looks.

‘He deafens one, eh?’ she said. ‘He has a splendid voice. But he’s

not vicious, I assure you, though the hens are--You remember the

big speckled one, that used to lay yellow eggs? Well, the day before

yesterday she hurt her foot. When the others saw the blood they went

quite mad. They all followed her, pecking at her and drinking her blood,

so that by the evening they had eaten up her foot. I found her with her

head behind a stone, like an idiot, saying nothing, and letting herself

be devoured.’

The remembrance of the fowls’ voracity made her laugh. She calmly

related other cruelties of theirs: young chickens devoured, of which she

had only found the necks and wings, and a litter of kittens eaten up in

the stable in a few hours.

‘You might give them a human being,’ she continued, ‘they’d finish him.

And aren’t they tough livers! They get on with a broken limb even. They

may have wounds, big holes in their bodies, and still they’ll gobble

their victuals. That’s what I like them for; their flesh grows again

in two days; they are always as warm as if they had a store of sunshine

under their feathers. When I want to give them a treat, I cut them up

some raw meat. And worms too! Wait, you’ll see how they love them.’

She ran to the dungheap, and unhesitatingly picked up a worm she found

there. The fowls darted at her hands; but to amuse herself with the

sight of their greediness she held the worm high above them. At last

she opened her fingers, and forthwith the fowls hustled one another and

pounced upon the worm. One of them fled with it in her beak, pursued

by the others; it was thus taken, snatched away, and retaken many times

until one hen, with a mighty gulp, swallowed it altogether. At that

they all stopped short with heads thrown back, and eyes on the alert for

another worm. Desirée called them by their names, and talked pettingly

to them; while Abbé Mouret retreated a few steps from this display of

voracious life.

‘No, I am not at all comfortable,’ he said to his sister, when she tried

to make him feel the weight of a fowl she was fattening. ‘It always

makes me uneasy to touch live animals.’

He tried to smile, but Desirée taxed him with cowardice.

‘Ah well, what about my ducks, and geese, and turkeys?’ said she. ‘What

would you do if you had all those to look after? Ducks are dirty, if you

like. Do you hear them shaking their bills in the water? And when they

dive, you can only see their tails sticking straight up like ninepins.

Geese and turkeys, too, are not easy to manage. Isn’t it fun to see them

walking along with their long necks, some quite white and others quite

black? They look like ladies and gentlemen. And I wouldn’t advise you

to trust your finger to them. They would swallow it at a gulp. But my

fingers, they only kiss--see!’

Her words were cut short by a joyous bleat from the goat, which had at

last forced the door of the stable open. Two bounds and the animal was

close to her, bending its forelegs, and affectionately rubbing its horns

against her. To the priest, with its pointed beard and obliquely set

eyes, it seemed to wear a diabolical grin. But Desirée caught it round

the neck, kissed its head, played and ran with it, and talked about how

she liked to drink its milk. She often did so, she said, when she was

thirsty in the stable.

‘See, it has plenty of milk,’ she added, pointing to the animal’s udder.

The priest lowered his eyes. He could remember having once seen in

the cloister of Saint-Saturnin at Plassans a horrible stone gargoyle,

representing a goat and a monk; and ever since he had always looked on

goats as dissolute creatures of hell. His sister had only been allowed

to get one after weeks of begging. For his part, whenever he came to

the yard, he shunned all contact with the animal’s long silky coat, and

carefully guarded his cassock from the touch of its horns.

‘All right, I’ll let you go now,’ said Desirée, becoming aware of his

growing discomfort. ‘But you must just let me show you something else

first. Promise not to scold me, won’t you? I have not said anything to

you about it, because you wouldn’t have allowed it.... But if you only

knew how pleased I am!’

As she spoke she put on an entreating expression, clasped her hands, and

laid her head upon her brother’s shoulder.

‘Another piece of folly, no doubt,’ he murmured, unable to refrain from

smiling.

‘You won’t mind, will you?’ she continued, her eyes glistening with

delight. ‘You won’t be angry?--He is so pretty!’

Thereupon she ran to open the low door under the shed, and forthwith a

little pig bounded into the middle of the yard.

‘Oh! isn’t he a cherub?’ she exclaimed with a look of profound rapture

as she saw him leap out.

The little pig was indeed charming, quite pink, his snout washed clean

by the greasy slops placed before him, though incessant routing in his

trough had left a ring of dirt about his eyes. He trotted about, hustled

the fowls, rushing to gobble up whatever was thrown them, and upsetting

the little yard with his sudden turns and twists. His ears flapped over

his eyes, his snout went snorting over the ground, and with his slender

feet he resembled a toy animal on wheels. From behind, his tail looked

like a bit of string that served to hang him up by.

‘I won’t have this beast here!’ exclaimed the priest, terribly put out.

‘Oh, Serge, dear old Serge,’ begged Desirée again, ‘don’t be so unkind.

See, what a harmless little thing he is! I’ll wash him, I’ll keep him

very clean. La Teuse went and had him given her for me. We can’t send

him back now. See, he is looking at you; he wants to smell you. Don’t be

afraid, he won’t eat you.’

But she broke off, seized with irresistible laughter. The little pig had

blundered in a dazed fashion between the goat’s legs, and tripped her

up. And he was now madly careering round, squeaking, rolling, scaring

all the denizens of the poultry-yard. To quiet him Desirée had to get

him an earthen pan full of dish-water. In this he wallowed up to his

ears, splashing and grunting, while quick quivers of delight coursed

over his rosy skin. And now his uncurled tail hung limply down.

The stirring of this foul water put a crowning touch to Abbé Mouret’s

disgust. Ever since he had been there, he had choked more and more; his

hands and chest and face were afire, and he felt quite giddy. The odour

of the fowls and rabbits, the goat, and the pig, all mingled in one

pestilential stench. The atmosphere, laden with the ferments of life,

was too heavy for his maiden shoulders. And it seemed to him that

Desirée had grown taller, expanding at the hips, waving huge arms,

sweeping the ground with her skirts, and stirring up all that powerful

odour which overpowered him. He had only just time to open the wicket.

His feet clung to the stone flags still dank with manure, in such wise

that it seemed as if he were held there by some clasp of the soil.

And suddenly, despite himself, there came back to him a memory of

the Paradou, with its huge trees, its black shadows, its penetrating

perfumes.

‘There, you are quite red now,’ Desirée said to him as she joined him

outside the wicket. ‘Aren’t you pleased to have seen everything? Do you

hear the noise they are making?’

On seeing her depart, the birds and animals had thrown themselves

against the trellis work emitting piteous cries. The little pig,

especially, gave vent to prolonged whines that suggested the sharpening

of a saw. Desirée, however, curtsied to them and kissed her finger-tips

to them, laughing at seeing them all huddled together there, like so

many lovers of hers. Then, hugging her brother, as she accompanied him

to the garden, she whispered into his ear with a blush: ‘I should so

like a cow.’

He looked at her, with a ready gesture of disapproval.

‘No, no, not now,’ she hurriedly went on. ‘We’ll talk about it again

later on---- But there would be room in the stable. A lovely white cow

with red spots. You’d soon see what nice milk we should have. A goat

becomes too little in the end. And when the cow has a calf!’

At the mere thought of this she skipped and clapped her hands with glee;

and to the priest she seemed to have brought the poultry-yard away with

her in her skirts. So he left her at the end of the garden, sitting in

the sunlight on the ground before a hive, whence the bees buzzed like

golden berries round her neck, along her bare arms and in her hair,

without thought of stinging her.

XII

Brother Archangias dined at the parsonage every Thursday. As a rule he

came early so as to talk over parish matters. It was he who, for the

last three months, had kept the Abbé informed of all the affairs of the

valley. That Thursday, while waiting till La Teuse should call them,

they strolled about in front of the church. The priest, on relating his

interview with Bambousse, was surprised to find that the Brother thought

the peasant’s reply quite natural.

‘The man’s right,’ said the Ignorantin.* ‘You don’t give away chattels

like that. Rosalie is no great bargain, but it’s always hard to see your

own daughter throw herself away on a pauper.’

* A popular name in France for a Christian Brother.--ED.

‘Still,’ rejoined Abbé Mouret, ‘a marriage is the only way of stopping

the scandal.’

The Brother shrugged his big shoulders and laughed aggravatingly.

‘Do you think you’ll cure the neighbourhood with that marriage?’ he

exclaimed. ‘Before another two years Catherine will be following her

sister’s example. They all go the same way, and as they end by marrying,

they snap their fingers at every one. These Artauds flourish in it all,

as on a congenial dungheap. There is only one possible remedy, as I

have told you before: wring all the girls’ necks if you don’t want the

country to be poisoned. No husbands, Monsieur le Curé, but a good thick

stick!’

Then calming down a bit, he added: ‘Let every one do with their own as

they think best.’

He went on to speak about fixing the hours for the catechism classes;

but Abbé Mouret replied in an absent-minded way, his eyes dwelling on

the village at his feet in the setting sun. The peasants were wending

their way homewards, silently and slowly, with the dragging steps of

wearied oxen returning to their sheds. Before the tumble-down houses

stood women calling to one another, carrying on bawling conversations

from door to door, while bands of children filled the roadway with the

riot of their big clumsy shoes, grovelling and rolling and pushing

each other about. A bestial odour ascended from that heap of tottering

houses, and the priest once more fancied himself in Desirée’s

poultry-yard, where life ever increased and multiplied. Here, too, was

the same incessant travail, which so disturbed him. Since morning his

mind had been running on that episode of Rosalie and Fortune, and now

his thoughts returned to it, to the foul features of existence, the

incessant, fated task of Nature, which sowed men broadcast like grains

of wheat. The Artauds were a herd penned in between four ranges of

hills, increasing, multiplying, spreading more and more thickly over the

land with each successive generation.

‘See,’ cried Brother Archangias, interrupting his discourse to point

to a tall girl who was letting her sweetheart snatch a kiss, ‘there is

another hussy over there!’

He shook his long black arms at the couple and made them flee. In the

distance, over the crimson fields and the peeling rocks, the sun was

dying in one last flare. Night gradually came on. The warm fragrance

of the lavender became cooler on the wings of the light evening breeze

which now arose. From time to time a deep sigh fell on the ear as if

that fearful land, consumed by ardent passions, had at length grown

calm under the soft grey rain of twilight. Abbé Mouret, hat in hand,

delighted with the coolness, once more felt quietude descend upon him.

‘Monsieur le Curé! Brother Archangias!’ cried La Teuse. ‘Come quick! The

soup is on the table.’

It was cabbage soup, and its odoriferous steam filled the parsonage

dining-room. The Brother seated himself and fell to, slowly emptying the

huge plate that La Teuse had put down before him. He was a big eater,

and clucked his tongue as each mouthful descended audibly into his

stomach. Keeping his eyes on his spoon, he did not speak a word.

‘Isn’t my soup good, then, Monsieur le Curé?’ the old servant asked the

priest. ‘You are only fiddling with your plate.’

‘I am not a bit hungry, my good Teuse,’ Serge replied, smiling.

‘Well! how can one wonder at it when you go on as you do! But you would

have been hungry, if you hadn’t lunched at past two o’clock.’

Brother Archangias, tilting into his spoon the last few drops of soup

remaining in his plate, said gravely: ‘You should be regular in your

meals, Monsieur le Curé.’

At this moment Desirée, who also had finished her soup, sedately and in

silence, rose and followed La Teuse to the kitchen. The Brother, then

left alone with Abbé Mouret, cut himself some long strips of bread,

which he ate while waiting for the next dish.

‘So you made a long round to-day?’ he asked the priest. But before

the other could reply a noise of footsteps, exclamations, and ringing

laughter, arose at the end of the passage, in the direction of the yard.

A short altercation apparently took place. A flute-like voice which

disturbed the Abbé rose in vexed and hurried accents, which finally died

away in a burst of glee.

‘What can it be?’ said Serge, rising from his chair.

But Desirée bounded in again, carrying something hidden in her

gathered-up skirt. And she burst out excitedly: ‘Isn’t she queer? She

wouldn’t come in at all. I caught hold of her dress; but she is awfully

strong; she soon got away from me.’

‘Whom on earth is she talking about?’ asked La Teuse, running in from

the kitchen with a dish of potatoes, across which lay a piece of bacon.

The girl sat down, and with the greatest caution drew from her skirt a

blackbird’s nest in which three wee fledglings were slumbering. She

laid it on her plate. The moment the little birds felt the light, they

stretched out their feeble necks and opened their crimson beaks to ask

for food. Desirée clapped her hands, enchanted, seized with strange

emotion at the sight of these hitherto unknown creatures.

‘It’s that Paradou girl!’ exclaimed the Abbé suddenly, remembering

everything.

La Teuse had gone to the window. ‘So it is,’ she said. ‘I might have

known that grasshopper’s voice---- Oh! the gipsy! Look, she’s stopped

there to spy on us.’

Abbé Mouret drew near. He, too, thought that he could see Albine’s

orange-coloured skirt behind a juniper bush. But Brother Archangias, in

a towering passion, raised himself on tiptoe behind him, and, stretching

out his fist and wagging his churlish head, thundered forth: ‘May the

devil take you, you brigand’s daughter! I will drag you right round the

church by your hair if ever I catch you coming and casting your evil

spells here!’

A peal of laughter, fresh as the breath of night, rang out from the

path, followed by light hasty footsteps and the swish of a dress

rustling through the grass like an adder. Abbé Mouret, standing at

the window, saw something golden glide through the pine trees like a

moonbeam. The breeze, wafted in from the open country, was now laden

with that penetrating perfume of verdure, that scent of wildflowers,

which Albine had scattered from her bare arms, unfettered bosom, and

streaming tresses at the Paradou.

‘An accursed soul! a child of perdition!’ growled Brother Archangias,

as he reseated himself at the dinner table. He fell greedily upon his

bacon, and swallowed his potatoes whole instead of bread. La Teuse,

however, could not persuade Desirée to finish her dinner. That big baby

was lost in ecstasy over the nestlings, asking questions, wanting to

know what food they ate, if they laid eggs, and how the cockbirds could

be known.

The old servant, however, was troubled by a suspicion, and taking her

stand on her sound leg, she looked the young curé in the face.

‘So you know the Paradou people?’ she said.

Thereupon he simply told the truth, relating the visit he had paid to

old Jeanbernat. La Teuse exchanged scandalised glances with Brother

Archangias. At first she answered nothing, but went round and round the

table, limping frantically and stamping hard enough with her heels to

split the flooring.

‘You might have spoken to me of those people these three months past,’

said the priest at last. ‘I should have known at any rate what sort of

people I was going to call upon.’

La Teuse stopped short as if her legs had just broken.

‘Don’t tell falsehoods, Monsieur le Curé,’ she stuttered, ‘don’t tell

them; you will only make your sin still worse. How dare you say I

haven’t spoken to you of the Philosopher, that heathen who is the

scandal of the whole neighbourhood? The truth is, you never listen to me

when I talk. It all goes in at one ear and out at the other. Ah, if you

did listen to me, you’d spare yourself a good deal of trouble!’

‘I, too, have spoken to you about those abominations,’ affirmed the

Brother.

Abbé Mouret lightly shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well, I didn’t remember

it,’ he said. It was only when I found myself at the Paradou that I

fancied I recollected certain tales. Besides, I should have gone to that

unhappy man all the same as I thought him in danger of death.’

Brother Archangias, his mouth full, struck the table violently with his

knife, and roared: ‘Jeanbernat is a dog; he ought to die like a dog.’

Then seeing the priest about to protest he cut him short: ‘No, no, for

him there is no God, no penitence, no mercy. It would be better to throw

the host to the pigs than carry it to that scoundrel.’

Then he helped himself to more potatoes, and with his elbows on the

table, his chin in his plate, began chewing furiously. La Teuse, her

lips pinched, quite white with anger, contented herself with saying

dryly: ‘Let it be, his reverence will have his own way. He has secrets

from us now.’

Silence reigned. For a moment one only heard the working of Brother

Archangias’s jaws, and the extraordinary rumbling of his gullet.

Desirée, with her bare arms round the nest in her plate, smiled to the

little ones, talking to them slowly and softly in a chirruping of her

own which they seemed to understand.

‘People say what they have done when they have nothing to hide,’

suddenly cried La Teuse.

And then silence reigned again. What exasperated the old servant was the

mystery the priest seemed to make about his visit to the Paradou. She

deemed herself a woman who had been shamefully deceived. Her curiosity

smarted. She again walked round the table, not looking at the Abbé, not

addressing anybody, but comforting herself with soliloquy.

‘That’s it; that’s why we have lunch so late! We go gadding about till

two o’clock in the afternoon. We go into such disreputable houses that

we don’t even dare to tell what we’ve done. And then we tell lies, we

deceive everybody.’

‘But nobody,’ gently interrupted Abbé Mouret, who was forcing himself to

eat a little more, so as to prevent La Teuse from getting crosser than

ever, ‘nobody asked me if I had been to the Paradou. I have not had to

tell any lies.’

La Teuse, however, went on as if she had never heard him.

‘Yes, we go ruining our cassock in the dust, we come home rigged up like

a thief. And if some kind person takes an interest in us, and

questions us for our own good, we push her about and treat her like

a good-for-nothing woman, whom we can’t trust. We hide things like

a slyboots, we’d rather die than breathe a word; we’re not even

considerate enough to enliven our home by relating what we’ve seen.’

She turned to the priest, and looked him full in the face.

‘Yes, you take that to yourself. You are a close one, you’re a bad man!’

Thereupon she fell to crying and the Abbé had to soothe her.

‘Monsieur Caffin used to tell me everything,’ she moaned out.

However, she soon grew calmer. Brother Archangias was finishing a big

piece of cheese, apparently quite unruffled by the scene. In his opinion

Abbé Mouret really needed being kept straight, and La Teuse was right

in making him feel the reins. Having drunk a last glassful of the weak

wine, the Brother threw himself back in his chair to digest his meal.

‘Well now,’ finally asked the old servant, ‘what did you see at the

Paradou? Tell us, at any rate.’

Abbé Mouret smiled and related in a few words how strangely Jeanbernat

had received him. La Teuse, after overwhelming him with questions, broke

out into indignant exclamations, while Brother Archangias clenched his

fists and brandished them aloft.

‘May Heaven crush him!’ said he, ‘and burn both him and his witch!’

In his turn the Abbé then endeavoured to elicit some fresh particulars

about the people at the Paradou, and listened intently to the Brother’s

monstrous narrative.

‘Yes, that little she-devil came and sat down in the school. It’s a long

time ago now, she might then have been about ten. Of course, I let

her come; I thought her uncle was sending her to prepare for her first

communion. But for two months she utterly revolutionised the whole

class. She made herself worshipped, the minx! She knew all sorts of

games, and invented all sorts of finery with leaves and shreds of rags.

And how quick and clever she was, too, like all those children of hell!

She was the top one at catechism. But one fine morning the old man burst

in just in the middle of our lessons. He was going to smash everything,

and shouted that the priests had taken his child from him. We had to get

the rural policeman to turn him out. As to the little one, she bolted.

I could see her through the window, in a field opposite, laughing at her

uncle’s frenzy. She had been coming to school for the last two months

without his even suspecting it. He had regularly scoured the country

after her.’

‘She’s never taken her first communion,’ exclaimed La Teuse below her

breath with a slight shudder.

‘No, never,’ rejoined Brother Archangias. ‘She must be sixteen now.

She’s growing up like a brute beast. I have seen her running on all

fours in a thicket near La Palud.’

‘On all fours,’ muttered the servant, turning towards the window with

superstitious anxiety.

Abbé Mouret attempted to express some doubt, but the Brother burst out:

‘Yes, on all fours! And she jumped like a wild cat. If I had only had

a gun I could have put a bullet in her. We kill creatures that are far

more pleasing to God than she is. Besides, every one knows she comes

caterwauling every night round Les Artaud. She howls like a beast. If

ever a man should fall into her clutches, she wouldn’t leave him a scrap

of skin on his bones, I know.’

The Brother’s hatred of womankind was boiling over. He banged the table

with his fist, and poured forth all his wonted abuse.

‘The devil’s in them. They reek of the devil! And that’s what bewitches

fools.’

The priest nodded approvingly. Brother Archangias’s outrageous violence

and La Teuse’s loquacious tyranny were like castigation with thongs,

which it often rejoiced him to find lashing his shoulders. He took a

pious delight in sinking into abasement beneath their coarse speech.

He seemed to see the peace of heaven behind contempt of the world

and degradation of his whole being. It was delicious to inflict

mortification upon his body, to drag his susceptible nature through a

gutter.

‘There is nought but filth,’ he muttered as he folded up his napkin.

La Teuse began to clear the table and wished to remove the plate on

which Desirée had laid the blackbird’s nest. You are not going to bed

here, I suppose, mademoiselle,’ she said. ‘Do leave those nasty things.’

Desirée, however, defended her plate. She covered the nest with her bare

arms, no longer gay, but cross at being disturbed.

‘I hope those birds are not going to be kept,’ exclaimed Brother

Archangias. ‘It would bring bad luck. You must wring their necks.’

And he already stretched out his big hands; but the girl rose and

stepped back quivering, hugging the nest to her bosom. She stared

fixedly at the Brother, her lips curling upwards, like those of a wolf

about to bite.

‘Don’t touch the little things,’ she stammered. ‘You are ugly.’

With such singular contempt did she emphasise that last word that Abbé

Mouret started as if the Brother’s ugliness had just struck him for the

first time. The latter contented himself with growling. He had always

felt a covert hatred for Desirée, whose lusty physical development

offended him. When she had left the room, still walking backwards, and

never taking her eyes from him, he shrugged his shoulders and muttered

between his teeth some coarse abuse which no one heard.

‘She had better go to bed,’ said La Teuse. ‘She would only bore us

by-and-by in church.’

‘Has any one come yet?’ asked Abbé Mouret.

‘Oh, the girls have been outside a long time with armfuls of boughs. I

am just going to light the lamps. We can begin whenever you like.’

A few seconds later she could be heard swearing in the sacristy because

the matches were damp. Brother Archangias, who remained alone with the

priest, sourly inquired: ‘For the month of Mary, eh?’

‘Yes,’ replied Abbé Mouret. ‘The last few days the girls about here were

hard at work and couldn’t come as usual to decorate the Lady Chapel. So

the ceremony was postponed till to-night.’

‘A nice custom,’ muttered the Brother. ‘When I see them all putting up

their boughs I feel inclined to knock them down and make them confess

their misdeeds before touching the altar. It’s a shame to allow women to

rustle their dresses so near the holy relics.’

The Abbé made an apologetic gesture. He had only been at Les Artaud a

little while, he must follow the customs.

‘Whenever you like, Monsieur le Curé, we’re ready!’ now called out La

Teuse.

But Brother Archangias detained him a minute. ‘I am off,’ he said.

‘Religion isn’t a prostitute that it should be decorated with flowers

and laces.’

He walked slowly to the door. Then once more he stopped, and lifting one

of his hairy fingers added: ‘Beware of your devotion to the Virgin.’

XIII

On entering the church Abbé Mouret found nine or ten big girls awaiting

him with boughs of ivy, laurel, and rosemary. Few garden flowers grew

on the rocks of Les Artaud, so the custom was to decorate the Lady altar

with a greenery which might last throughout the month of May. Thereto

La Teuse would add a few wallflowers whose stems were thrust into old

decanters.

‘Will you let me do it, Monsieur le Curé?’ she asked. ‘You are not used

to it---- Come, stand there in front of the altar. You can tell me if

the decorations please you.’

He consented, and it was she who really directed the arrangements.

Having climbed upon a pair of steps she bullied the girls as they came

up to her in turn with their leafy contributions.

‘Not so fast, now! You must give me time to fix the boughs. We can’t

have all these bundles coming down on his reverence’s head---- Come on,

Babet, it’s your turn. What’s the good of staring at me like that with

your big eyes? Fine rosemary yours is, my word! as yellow as a thistle.

You next, La Rousse. Ah, well, that is splendid laurel! You got that out

of your field at Croix-Verte, I know.’

The big girls laid their branches on the altar, which they kissed; and

there they lingered for a while, handing up the greenery to La Teuse.

The sly look of devotion they had assumed on stepping on to the altar

steps was quickly set aside, and soon they were laughing, digging each

other with their knees, swaying their hips against the altar’s edge, and

thrusting their bosoms against the tabernacle itself. Over them the tall

Virgin in gilded plaster bent her tinted face, and smiled with her rosy

lips upon the naked Jesus she bore upon her left arm.

‘That’s it, Lisa!’ cried La Teuse; ‘why don’t you sit on the altar while

you’re about it? Just pull your petticoats straight, will you? Aren’t

you ashamed of behaving like that?--If any one of you lolls about I’ll

lay her boughs across her face.--Can’t you hand me the things quietly?’

Then turning round, she asked:

‘Do you like it, sir? Do you think it will do?’

She had converted the space behind the Virgin’s statue into a verdant

niche, whence leafy sprays projected on either side, forming a bower,

and drooping over in front like palm leaves. The priest expressed his

approval, but ventured to remark: ‘I think there ought to be a cluster

of more delicate foliage up above.’

‘No doubt,’ grumbled La Teuse. ‘But they only bring me laurel and

rosemary--I should like to know who has brought an olive branch. Not

one, you bet! They are afraid of losing a single olive, the heathens!’

At this, however, Catherine came up laden with an enormous olive bough

which completely hid her.

‘Oh, you’ve got some, you minx!’ continued the old servant.

‘Of course,’ one of the other girls exclaimed, ‘she stole it. I saw

Vincent breaking it off while she kept a look-out.’

But Catherine flew into a rage and swore it was not true. She turned,

and thrusting her auburn head through the greenery, which she still

tightly held, she started lying with marvellous assurance, inventing

quite a long story to prove that the olive bough was really hers.

‘Besides,’ she added, ‘all the trees belong to the Blessed Virgin.’

Abbé Mouret was about to intervene, but La Teuse sharply inquired if

they wanted to make game of her and keep her arms up there all night.

At last she proceeded to fasten the olive bough firmly, while Catherine,

holding on to the steps behind her, mimicked the clumsy manner in which

she turned her huge person about with the help of her sound leg. Even

the priest could not forbear to smile.

‘There,’ said La Teuse, as she came down and stood beside him to get

a good view of her work, ‘there’s the top done. Now we will put some

clumps between the candlesticks, unless you would prefer a garland all

along the altar shelf.’

The priest decided in favour of some big clumps.

‘Very good; come on, then,’ continued the old servant, once more

clambering up the steps. ‘We can’t go to bed here. Just kiss the altar,

will you, Miette? Do you fancy you are in your stable? Monsieur le Curé,

do just see what they are up to over there! I can hear them laughing

like lunatics.’

On raising one of the two lamps the dark end of the church was lit up

and three of the girls were discovered romping about under the gallery;

one of them had stumbled and pitched head foremost into the holy water

stoup, which mishap had so tickled the others that they were rolling on

the ground to laugh at their ease. They all came back, however, looking

at the priest sheepishly, with lowered eyelids, but with their hands

swinging against their hips as if a scolding rather pleased them than

otherwise.

However, the measure of La Teuse’s wrath was filled when she suddenly

perceived Rosalie coming up to the altar like the others with a bundle

of boughs in her arms.

‘Get down, will you?’ she cried to her. ‘You are a cool one, and no

mistake, my lass!--Hurry up, off you go with your bundle.’

‘What for, I’d like to know?’ said Rosalie boldly. ‘You can’t say I have

stolen it.’

The other girls drew closer, feigning innocence and exchanging sparkling

glances.

‘Clear out,’ repeated La Teuse, ‘you have no business here, do you

hear?’

Then, quite losing her scanty patience, she gave vent to a very coarse

epithet, which provoked a titter of delight among the peasant girls.

‘Well, what next?’ said Rosalie. ‘Mind your own business. Is it any

concern of yours?’

Then she burst into a fit of sobbing and threw down her boughs, but let

the Abbé lead her aside and give her a severe lecture. He had already

tried to silence La Teuse; for he was beginning to feel uneasy amidst

the big shameless hussies who filled the church with their armfuls of

foliage. They were pushing right up to the altar step, enclosing him

with a belt of woodland, wafting in his face a rank perfume of aromatic

shoots.

‘Let us make haste, be quick!’ he exclaimed, clapping his hands lightly.

‘Goodness knows I would rather be in my bed,’ grumbled La Teuse. ‘It’s

not so easy as you think to fasten all these bits of stuff.’

Finally, however, she succeeded in setting some lofty plumes of foliage

between the candlesticks. Next she folded the steps, which were laid

behind the high altar by Catherine. And then she only had to arrange

two clumps of greenery at the sides of the altar table. The last boughs

sufficed for this, and indeed there were some left which the girls

strewed over the sanctuary floor up to the wooden rails. The Lady altar

now looked like a grove, a shrubbery with a verdant lawn before it.

At present La Teuse was willing to make way for Abbé Mouret, who

ascended the altar steps, and, again lightly clapping his hands,

exclaimed: ‘Young ladies, to-morrow we will continue the devotions of

the month of Mary. Those who may be unable to come ought at least to say

their Rosary at home.’

He knelt, and the peasant girls, with a mighty rustle of skirts, sank

down and settled themselves on their heels. They followed his prayer

with a confused muttering, through which burst here and there a giggle.

One of them, on being pinched from behind, burst into a scream, which

she attempted to stifle with a sudden fit of coughing; and this so

diverted the others that for a moment after the Amen they remained

writhing with merriment, their noses close to the stone flags.

La Teuse dismissed them; while the priest, after crossing himself,

remained absorbed before the altar, no longer hearing what went on

behind him.

‘Come, now, clear out,’ muttered the old woman. ‘You’re a pack of

good-for-nothings, who can’t even respect God. It’s shameful, it’s

unheard of, for girls to roll about on the floor in church like beasts

in a meadow---- What are you doing there, La Rousse? If I see you

pinching any one, you’ll have to deal with me! Oh, yes, you may put out

your tongue at me; I’ll tell his reverence about it. Out you get; out

you get, you minxes!’

She drove them slowly towards the door, while running and bobbling round

them frantically. And she had succeeded, as she thought, in getting

every one of them outside, when she caught sight of Catherine and

Vincent calmly installed in the confessional, where they were eating

something with an air of great enjoyment. She drove them away; and as

she popped her head outside the church, before closing the door, she

espied Rosalie throwing her arm over the shoulder of Fortune, who had

been waiting for her. The pair of them vanished in the darkness amid a

faint sound of kisses.

‘To think that such creatures dare to come to our Lady’s altar!’ La

Teuse stuttered as she shot the bolts. ‘The others are no better, I am

sure. If they came to-night with their boughs, it was only for a bit of

fun and to get kissed by the lads on going off! Not one of them will

put herself out of the way to-morrow; his reverence will have to say

his _Aves_ by himself---- We shall only see the jades who have got

assignations.’

Thus soliloquising, she thrust the chairs back into their places, and

looked round to see if anything suspicious was lying about before

going off to bed. In the confessional she picked up a handful of

apple-parings, which she threw behind the high altar. And she also found

a bit of ribbon torn from some cap, and a lock of black hair, which she

made up into a small parcel, with the view of opening an inquiry into

the matter. With these exceptions the church seemed to her tidy. There

was oil enough for the night in the bracket-lamp of the sanctuary,

and as to the flags of the choir, they could do without washing till

Saturday.

‘It’s nearly ten o’clock, Monsieur le Curé,’ she said, drawing near the

priest, who was still on his knees. ‘You might as well come up now.’

He made no answer, but only bowed his head.

‘All right, I know what that means,’ continued La Teuse. ‘In

another hour he will still be on the stones there, giving himself a

stomach-ache. I’m off, as I shall only bore him. All the same, I can’t

see much sense in it, eating one’s lunch when others are at dinner,

and going to bed when the fowls get up!---- I worry you, don’t I, your

reverence? Good-night. You’re not at all reasonable!’

She made ready to go, but suddenly came back to put out one of the two

lamps, muttering the while that such late prayers spelt ruination in

oil. Then, at last, she did go off, after passing her sleeve brushwise

over the cloth of the high altar, which seemed to her grey with dust.

Abbé Mouret, his eyes uplifted, his arms tightly clasped against his

breast, then remained alone.

XIV

With only one lamp burning amid the verdure on the altar of the Virgin,

huge floating shadows filled the church at either end. From the pulpit a

sheet of gloom projected to the rafters of the ceiling. The confessional

looked quite black under the gallery, showing strange outlines

suggestive of a ruined sentry-box. All the light, softened and tinted as

it were by the green foliage, rested slumberingly upon the tall gilded

Virgin, who seemed to descend with queenly mien, borne upon the cloud

round which gambolled the winged cherubim. At sight of that round lamp

gleaming amid the boughs one might have thought the pallid moon

was rising on the verge of a wood, casting its light upon a regal

apparition, a princess of heaven, crowned and clothed with gold, who

with her nude and Divine Infant had come to stroll in the mysterious

woodland avenues. Between the leaves, along the lofty plumes of

greenery, within the large ogival arbour, and even along the branches

strewing the flagstones, star-like beams glided drowsily, like the milky

rain of light that filters through the bushes on moonlit nights. Vague

sounds and creakings came from the dusky ends of the church; the

large clock on the left of the chancel throbbed slowly, with the heavy

breathing of a machine asleep. And the radiant vision, the Mother with

slender bands of chestnut hair, as if reassured by the nocturnal quiet

of the nave, came lower and lower, scarce bending the blades of grass in

the clearings beneath the gentle flight of her cloudy chariot.

Abbé Mouret gazed at her. This was the hour when he most loved the

church. He forgot the woeful figure on the cross, the Victim bedaubed

with carmine and ochre, who gasped out His life behind him, in the

chapel of the Dead. His thoughts were no longer distracted by the garish

light from the windows, by the gayness of morning coming in with the

sun, by the irruption of outdoor life--the sparrows and the boughs

invading the nave through the shattered panes. At that hour of night

Nature was dead; shadows hung the whitewashed walls with crape; a chill

fell upon his shoulders like a salutary penance-shirt. He could now

wholly surrender himself to the supremest love, without fear of any

flickering ray of light, any caressing breeze or scent, any buzzing of

an insect’s wing disturbing him amidst the delight of loving. Never

had his morning mass afforded him the superhuman joys of his nightly

prayers.

With quivering lips Abbé Mouret now gazed at the tall Virgin. He

could see her coming towards him from the depths of her green bower in

ever-increasing splendour. No longer did a flood of moonlight seem to

float across the tree-tops. She seemed to him clothed with the sun; she

advanced majestically, glorious, colossal, and so all-powerful that he

was tempted at times to cast himself face downwards to shun the flaming

splendour of that gate opening into heaven. Then, amidst the adoration

of his whole being, which stayed his words upon his lips, he remembered

Brother Archangias’s final rebuke, as he might have remembered words

of blasphemy. The Brother often reproved him for his devotion to the

Virgin, which he declared was veritable robbery of devotion due to

God. In the Brother’s opinion it enervated the soul, put religion

into petticoats, created and fostered a state of sentimentalism quite

unworthy of the strong. He bore the Virgin a grudge for her womanhood,

her beauty, her maternity; he was ever on his guard against her,

possessed by a covert fear of feeling tempted by her gracious mien, of

succumbing to her seductive sweetness. ‘She will lead you far!’ he had

cried one day to the young priest, for in her he saw the commencement

of human passion. From contemplating her one might glide to delight in

lovely chestnut hair, in large bright eyes, and the mystery of garments

falling from neck to toes. His was the blunt rebellion of a saint who

roughly parted the Mother from the Son, asking as He did: ‘Woman, what

have we in common, thou and I?’

But Abbé Mouret thrust away such thoughts, prostrated himself,

endeavoured to forget the Brother’s harsh attacks. His rapture in the

immaculate purity of Mary alone raised him from the depths of lowliness

in which he sought to bury himself. Whenever, alone before the tall

golden Virgin, he so deceived himself as to imagine that he could see

her bending down for him to kiss her braided locks, he once more became

very young, very good, very strong, very just, full of tenderness.

Abbé Mouret’s devotion to the Virgin dated from his early youth. Already

when he was quite a child, somewhat shy and fond of shrinking into

corners, he took pleasure in the thought that a lovely lady was watching

over him: that two blue eyes, so sweet, ever followed him with their

smile. When he felt at night a breath of air glide across his hair, he

would often say that the Virgin had come to kiss him. He had grown up

beneath this womanly caress, in an atmosphere full of the rustle of

divine robes. From the age of seven he had satisfied the cravings of his

affection by expending all the pence he received as pocket money in the

purchase of pious picture-cards, which he jealously concealed that he

alone might feast on them. But never was he tempted by the pictures of

Jesus and the Lamb, of Christ on the Cross, of God the Father, with a

mighty beard, stooping over a bank of clouds; his preference was always

for the winning portraits of Mary, with her tiny smiling mouth and

delicate outstretched hands. By degrees he had made quite a collection

of them all--of Mary between a lily and a distaff, Mary carrying her

child as if she were his elder sister, Mary crowned with roses, and

Mary crowned with stars. For him they formed a family of lovely young

maidens, alike in their attractiveness, in the grace, kindliness, and

sweetness of their countenances, so youthful beneath their veils, that

although they bore the name of ‘Mother of God,’ he had felt no awe of

them as he had often felt for grown-up persons.

They seemed to him of his own age, little girls such as he wished to

meet with, little girls of heaven such as the little boys who die when

seven years old have for eternal playmates in some nook of Paradise. But

even at this early age he was self-contained; and full of the exquisite

bashfulness of adolescence he grew up without betraying the secret of

his religious love. Mary grew up with him, being invariably a year or

two older than himself, as should always be the case with one’s chiefest

friend. When he was eighteen, she was twenty; she no longer kissed his

forehead at night time, but stood a little further from him with folded

arms, chastely smiling, ravishingly sweet. And he--he only named her now

in a whisper, feeling as if he would faint each time the well-loved name

passed his lips in prayer. No more did he dream of childish games within

the garden of heaven, but of continual contemplation before that white

figure, whose perfect purity he feared to sully with his breath. Even

from his own mother did he conceal the fervour of his love for Mary.

Then, a few years later, at the seminary, his beautiful affection for

her, seemingly so just, so natural, was disturbed by inward qualms.

Was the cult of Mary necessary for salvation? Was he not robbing God

by giving Mary a part, the greater part, of his love, his thoughts, his

heart, his entire being? Perplexing questions were these, provoking an

inward struggle which increased his passion, riveted his bonds. For he

dived into all the subtleties of his affection, found unknown joys

in discussing the lawfulness of his feelings. The books treating of

devotion to the Virgin brought him excuses, joyful raptures, a wealth of

arguments which he repeated with prayerful fervour. From them he learned

how, in Mary, to be the slave of Jesus. He went to Jesus through Mary.

He cited all kinds of proofs, he discriminated, he drew inferences.

Mary, whom Jesus had obeyed on earth, should be obeyed by all mankind;

Mary still retained her maternal power in heaven, where she was the

great dispenser of God’s treasures, the only one who could beseech Him,

the only one who allotted the heavenly thrones; and thus Mary, a mere

creature before God, but raised up to Him, became the human link between

heaven and earth, the intermediary of every grace, of every mercy; and

his conclusion always was that she should be loved above all else in God

himself. Another time he was attracted by more complicated theological

curiosities: the marriage of the celestial spouse, the Holy Ghost

sealing the Vase of Election, making of the Virgin Mary an everlasting

miracle, offering her inviolable purity to the devotion of mankind. She

was the Virgin overcoming all heresies, the irreconcilable foe of Satan,

the new Eve of whom it had been foretold that she should crush the

Serpent’s head, the august Gate of Grace, by which the Saviour had

already entered once and through which He would come again at the Last

Day--a vague prophecy, allotting a yet larger future role to Mary, which

threw Serge into a dreamy imagining of some immense expansion of divine

love.

This entry of woman into the jealous, cruel heaven depicted by the

Old Testament, this figure of whiteness set at the feet of the awesome

Trinity, appeared to him the very grace itself of religion, the one

consolation for all the dread inspired by things of faith, the one

refuge when he found himself lost amidst the mysteries of dogma. And

when he had thus proved to himself, point by point, that she was the way

to Jesus--easy, short, perfect, and certain--he surrendered himself anew

to her, wholly and without remorse: he strove to be her true devotee,

dead to self and steeped in submission.

It was an hour of divine voluptuousness! The books treating of devotion

to the Virgin burned his hands. They spoke to him in a language of love,

warm, fragrant as incense. Mary no longer seemed a young maiden veiled

in white, standing with crossed arms, a foot or two away from his

pillow. She came surrounded by splendour, even as John saw her, clothed

with the sun, crowned with twelve stars, and having the moon beneath her

feet. She perfumed him with her fragrance, inflamed him with longing for

heaven, ravished him even with the ardent glow of the planets flaming on

her brow. He threw himself before her and called himself her slave. No

word could have been sweeter than that word of slave, which he repeated,

which he relished yet more and more as it trembled on his stammering

tongue, whilst casting himself at her feet--to become her thing, her

mite, the dust lightly scattered by the waving of her azure robe. With

David he exclaimed: ‘Mary is made for me,’ and with the Evangelist

he added: ‘I have taken her for my all.’ He called her his ‘beloved

mistress,’ for words failed him, and he fell into the prattle of child

or lover, his breath breaking with intensity of passion. She was the

Blessed among women, the Queen of Heaven glorified by the nine Choirs

of Angels, the Mother of Predilection, the Treasure of the Lord. All the

vivid imagery of her cult unrolled itself before him comparing to her an

earthly paradise of virgin soil, with beds of flowering virtues, green

meadows of hope, impregnable towers of strength, and smiling dwellings

of confidence. Again she was a fountain sealed by the Holy Ghost, a

shrine and dwelling-place of the Holy Trinity, the Throne of God, the

City of God, the Altar of God, the Temple of God, and the World of God.

And he walked in that garden, in its shade, its sunlight, beneath its

enchanting greenery; he sighed after the water of that Fountain; he

dwelt within Mary’s beauteous precincts--resting, hiding, heedlessly

straying there, drinking in the milk of infinite love that fell drop by

drop from her virginal bosom.

Every morning, on rising at the seminary, he greeted Mary with a hundred

bows, his face turned towards the strip of sky visible from his window.

And at night in like fashion he bade her farewell with his eyes fixed

upon the stars. Often, when he thus gazed out on fine bright nights,

when Venus gleamed golden and dreamy through the warm atmosphere, he

forgot himself, and then, like a soft song, would fall from his lips the

_Ave maris Stella_, that tender hymn which set before his eyes a distant

azure land, and a tranquil sea, scarce wrinkled by a caressing quiver,

and illuminated by a smiling star, a very sun in size. He recited, too,

the _Salve Regina_, the _Regina Coeli_, the _O gloriosa Domina_, all the

prayers and all the canticles. He would read the Office of the Virgin,

the holy books written in her honour, the little Psalter of St.

Bonaventura, with such devout tenderness, that he could not turn the

leaves for tears. He fasted and mortified himself, that he might offer

up to her his bruised and wounded flesh. Ever since the age of ten he

had worn her livery--the holy scapular, the twofold image of Mary sewn

on squares of cloth, whose warmth upon his chest and back thrilled him

with delight. Later on, he also took to wearing the little chain in

token of his loving slavery. But his greatest act of love was ever the

Angelic Salutation, the _Ave Maria_, his heart’s perfect prayer. ‘Hail,

Mary----’ and he saw her advancing towards him, full of grace, blessed

amongst women; and he cast his heart at her feet for her to tread on it

in sweetness. He multiplied and repeated that salutation in a hundred

different ways, ever seeking some more efficacious one. He would say

twelve _Aves_ to commemorate the crown of twelve stars that encircled

Mary’s brow; he would say fourteen in remembrance of her fourteen joys;

at another time he would recite seven decades of them in honour of the

years she lived on earth. For hours the beads of his Rosary would

glide between his fingers. Then, again, on certain days of mystical

assignation he would launch into the endless muttering of the Rosary.

When, alone in his cell, with time to give to his love, he knelt upon

the floor, the whole of Mary’s garden with its lofty flowers of chastity

blossomed around him. Between his fingers glided the Rosary’s wreath of

_Aves_, intersected by _Paters_, like a garland of white roses mingled

with the lilies of the Annunciation, the blood-hued flowers of Calvary,

and the stars of the Coronation. He would slowly tread those fragrant

paths, pausing at each of the fifteen dizains of _Aves_, and dwelling on

its corresponding mystery; he was beside himself with joy, or grief, or

triumph, according as the mystery belonged to one or other of the three

series--the joyful, the sorrowful, or the glorious. What an incomparable

legend it was, the history of Mary, a complete human life, with all its

smiles and tears and triumph, which he lived over again from end to end

in a single moment! And first he entered into joy with the five glad

Mysteries, steeped in the serene calm of dawn. First the Archangel’s

salutation, the fertilising ray gliding down from heaven, fraught with

the spotless union’s adorable ecstasy; then the visit to Elizabeth on a

bright hope-laden morn, when the fruit of Mary’s womb for the first time

stirred and thrilled her with the shock at which mothers blench; then

the birth in a stable at Bethlehem, and the long string of shepherds

coming to pay homage to her Divine Maternity; then the new-born babe

carried into the Temple on the arms of his mother who smiled, still

weary, but already happy at offering her child to God’s justice, to

Simeon’s embrace, to the desires of the world; and lastly, Jesus at a

later age revealing Himself before the doctors, in whose midst He is

found by His anxious mother, now proud and comforted.

But, after that tender radiant dawn, it seemed to Serge as if the sky

were suddenly overcast. His feet now trod on brambles, the beads of the

Rosary pricked his fingers; he cowered beneath the horror of the five

Sorrowful Mysteries: Mary, agonising in her Son in the garden of Olives,

suffering with Him from the scourging, feeling on her own brow the

wounds made by the crown of thorns, bearing the fearful weight of His

Cross, and dying at his feet on Calvary. Those inevitable sufferings,

that harrowing martyrdom of the queen he worshipped, and for whom

he would have shed his blood like Jesus, roused in him a feeling of

shuddering repulsion which ten years’ practice of the same prayers and

the same devotions had failed to weaken. But as the beads flowed on,

light suddenly burst upon the darkness of the Crucifixion, and the

resplendent glory of the five last Mysteries shone forth in all the

brightness of a cloudless sun. Mary was transfigured, and sang the

hallelujah of the Resurrection, the victory over Death and the eternity

of life. With outstretched hands, and dazed with admiration, she beheld

the triumph of her Son ascending into heaven on golden clouds, fringed

with purple. She gathered the Apostles round her, and, as on the day

of her conception, participated in the glow of the Spirit of Love,

descending now in tongues of fire. She, too, was carried up to heaven

by a flight of angels, borne aloft on their white wings like a spotless

ark, and tenderly set down amid the splendour of the heavenly thrones;

and there, in her supreme glory, amidst a splendour so dazzling that

the light of the sun was quenched, God crowned her with the stars of the

firmament. Impassioned love has but one word. In reciting a hundred and

fifty _Aves_ Serge had not once repeated himself. The monotonous murmur,

the ever recurring words, akin to the ‘I love you’ of lovers, assumed

each time a deeper and deeper meaning; and he lingered over it all,

expressed everything with the aid of the one solitary Latin sentence,

and learned to know Mary through and through, until, as the last bead of

his Rosary slipped from his hand, his heart grew faint with the thought

of parting from her.

Many a night had the young man spent in this way. Daybreak had found

him still murmuring his prayers. It was the moon, he would say to cheat

himself, that was making the stars wane. His superiors had to reprove

him for those vigils, which left him languid and pale as if he had been

losing blood. On the wall of his cell had long hung a coloured engraving

of the Sacred Heart of Mary, an engraving which showed the Virgin

smiling placidly, throwing open her bodice, and revealing a crimson

fissure, wherein glowed her heart, pierced with a sword, and crowned

with white roses. That sword tormented him beyond measure, brought him

an intolerable horror of suffering in woman, the very thought of which

scattered his pious submissiveness to the winds. He erased the weapon,

and left only the crowned and flaming heart which seemed to be half torn

from that exquisite flesh, as if tendered as an offering to himself. And

it was then he felt beloved: Mary was giving him her heart, her living

heart, even as it throbbed in her bosom, dripping with her rosy blood.

In all this there was no longer the imagery of devout passion, but a

material entity, a prodigy of affection which impelled him, when he was

praying before the engraving, to open out his hands in order that he

might reverently receive the heart that leaped from that immaculate

bosom. He could see it, hear it beat; he was loved, that heart was

beating for himself! His whole being quickened with rapture; he would

fain have kissed that heart, have melted in it, have lain beside it

within the depths of that open breast. Mary’s love for him was an active

one; she desired him to be near her, to be wholly hers in the eternity

to come; her love was efficacious, too, she was ever solicitous for him,

watching over him everywhere, guarding him from the slightest breach of

his fidelity. She loved him tenderly, more than the whole of womankind

together, with a love as azure, as deep, as boundless as the sky itself.

Where could he ever find so delightful a mistress? What earthly caress

could be compared to the air in which he moved, the breath of Mary? What

mundane union or enjoyment could be weighed against that everlasting

flower of desire which grew unceasingly, and yet was never over-blown?

At this thought the _Magnificat_ would exhale from his mouth, like a

cloud of incense. He sang the joyful song of Mary, her thrill of joy at

the approach of her Divine Spouse. He glorified the Lord who overthrew

the mighty from their thrones, and who sent Mary to him, poor destitute

child that he was, dying of love on the cold tiled floor of his cell.

And when he had given all up to Mary--his body, his soul, his earthly

goods, and spiritual chattels--when he stood before her stripped, bare,

with all his prayers exhausted, there welled from his burning lips

the Virgin’s litanies, with their reiterated, persistent, impassioned

appeals for heavenly succour. He fancied himself climbing a flight of

pious yearnings, which he ascended step by step at each bound of his

heart. First he called her ‘Holy.’ Next he called her ‘Mother,’ most

pure, most chaste, amiable, and admirable. And with fresh ardour he six

times proclaimed her maidenhood; his lips cooled and freshened each time

that he pronounced that name of ‘Virgin,’ which he coupled with power,

goodness, and fidelity. And as his heart drew him higher up the ladder

of light, a strange voice from his veins spoke within him, bursting into

dazzling flowers of speech. He yearned to melt away in fragrance, to be

spread around in light, to expire in a sigh of music. As he named her

‘Mirror of Justice,’ ‘Seat of Wisdom,’ and ‘Source of Joy,’ he could

behold himself pale with ecstasy in that mirror, kneeling on the warmth

of the divine seat, quaffing intoxication in mighty draughts from the

holy Source.

Again he would transform her, throwing off all restraint in his frantic

love, so as to attain to a yet closer union with her. She became a

‘Vessel of Honour,’ chosen of God, a ‘Bosom of Election,’ wherein he

desired to pour his being, and slumber for ever.* She was the ‘Mystical

Rose’--a great flower which bloomed in Paradise, with petals formed of

the angels clustering round their queen, a flower so fresh, so fragrant,

that he could inhale its perfume from the depths of his unworthiness

with a joyful dilation of his sides which stretched them to bursting.

She became changed into a ‘House of Gold,’ a ‘Tower of David,’ and a

‘Tower of Ivory,’ of inestimable richness, of a whiteness that swans

might envy, and of lofty, massive, rounded form, which he would

fain have encircled with his outstretched arms as with a girdle of

submissiveness. She stood on the distant skyline as the ‘Gate of

Heaven,’ a glimpse of which he caught behind her shoulders when a puff

of wind threw back the folds of her veil. She rose in splendour from

behind the mountain in the waning hour of night, like the ‘Morning Star’

to help all travellers astray, like the very dawn of Love. And when he

had ascended to this height--scant of breath, yet still unsatiated--he

could only further glorify her with the title of ‘Queen,’ with which he

nine times hailed her, as with nine parting salutations from the censer

of his soul. His canticle died joyfully away in those last ejaculations

of triumph: ‘Queen of virgins, Queen of all saints. Queen conceived

without sin!’ She, ever before him, shone in splendour; and he, on

the topmost step, only reached by Mary’s intimates, remained there yet

another moment, swooning amidst the subtle atmosphere around him; still

too far away to kiss the edge of her azure robe, already feeling that

he was about to fall, but ever possessed by a desire to ascend again and

again, and seek that superhuman felicity.

* Curiously enough I find no trace of ‘Bosom of Election’ in the

Litany of the Blessed Virgin as printed in English Catholic

works.--ED.

How many times had not the Litany of the Virgin, recited in common in

the seminary chapel, left the young man with broken limbs and void head,

as if from some great fall! And since his departure from the seminary,

Abbé Mouret had grown to love the Virgin still more. He gave to her that

impassioned cult which to Brother Archangias savoured of heresy. In his

opinion it was she who would save the Church by some matchless prodigy

whose near appearance would entrance the world. She was the only miracle

of our impious age--the blue-robed lady that showed herself to little

shepherdesses, the whiteness that gleamed at night between two clouds,

her veil trailing over the low thatched roofs of peasant homes. When

Brother Archangias coarsely asked him if he had ever espied her, he

simply smiled and tightened his lips as if to keep his secret. Truth to

say, he saw her every night. She no longer seemed a playful sister or a

lovely pious maiden; she wore a bridal robe, with white flowers in

her hair; and from beneath her drooping eyelids fell moist glances of

hopeful promise that set his cheeks aglow. He could feel that she was

coming, that she was promising to delay no longer; that she said to him,

‘Here I am, receive me!’ Thrice a day when the _Angelus_ rang out--at

break of dawn, in the fulness of midday, and at the gentle fall of

twilight--he bared his head and said an _Ave_ with a glance around him

as if to ascertain whether the bell were not at last announcing Mary’s

coming. He was five-and-twenty. He awaited her.

During the month of May the young priest’s expectation was fraught with

joyful hope. To La Teuse’s grumblings he no longer paid the slightest

attention. If he remained so late praying in the church, it was because

he entertained the mad idea that the great golden Virgin would at last

come down from her pedestal. And yet he stood in awe of that Virgin, so

like a princess in her mien. He did not love all the Virgins alike, and

this one inspired him with supreme respect. She was, indeed, the

Mother of God, she showed the fertile development of form, the majestic

countenance, the strong arms of the Divine Spouse bearing Jesus. He

pictured her thus, standing in the midst of the heavenly court, the

train of her royal mantle trailing among the stars; so far above him,

and of such exceeding might, that he would be shattered into dust should

she deign to cast her eyes upon him. She was the Virgin of his days of

weakness, the austere Virgin who restored his inward peace by an awesome

glimpse of Paradise.

That night Abbé Mouret remained for over an hour on his knees in the

empty church. With folded hands and eyes fixed on the golden Virgin

rising planet-like amid the verdure, he sought the drowsiness of

ecstasy, the appeasement of the strange discomfort he had felt that day.

But he failed to find the semi-somnolence of prayer with the delightful

ease he knew so well. However glorious and pure Mary might reveal

herself, her motherhood, the maturity of her charms, and the bare infant

she bore upon her arm, disquieted him. It seemed as if in heaven itself

there were a repetition of the exuberant life, through which he had been

moving since the morning. Like the vines of the stony slopes, like the

trees of the Paradou, like the human troop of Artauds, Mary suggested

the blossoming, the begetting of life. Prayer came but slowly to his

lips; fancies made his mind wander. He perceived things he had never

seen before--the gentle wave of her chestnut hair, the rounded swell of

her rosy throat. She had to assume a sterner air and overwhelm him with

the splendour of her sovereign power to bring him back to the unfinished

sentences of his broken prayer. At last the sight of her golden crown,

her golden mantle, all the golden sheen which made of her a mighty

princess, reduced him once more to slavish submission, and his prayer

again flowed evenly, and his mind became wrapped in worship.

In this ecstatic trance, half asleep, half awake, he remained till

eleven o’clock, heedless of his aching knees, fancying himself suspended

in mid air, rocked to and fro like a child, and yielding to restful

slumber, though conscious of some unknown weight that oppressed his

heart. Meanwhile the church around him filled with shadows, the lamp

grew dim, and the lofty sprays of leafage darkened the tall Virgin’s

varnished face.

When the clock, about to strike, gave out a rending whine, a shudder

passed through Abbé Mouret. He had not hitherto felt the chill of the

church upon his shoulders, but now he was shivering from head to foot.

As he crossed himself a memory swiftly flashed through the stupor of his

wakening--the chattering of his teeth recalled to him the nights he had

spent on the floor of his cell before the Sacred Heart of Mary, when his

whole frame would quiver with fever. He rose up painfully, displeased

with himself. As a rule, he would leave the altar untroubled in his

flesh and with Mary’s sweet breath still fresh upon his brow. That

night, however, as he took the lamp to go up to his room he felt as if

his throbbing temples were bursting. His prayer had not profited him;

after a transient alleviation he still experienced the burning glow

which had been rising in his heart and brain since morning. When he

reached the sacristy door, he turned and mechanically raised the lamp

to take a last look at the tall Virgin. But she was now shrouded in the

deep shadows falling from the rafters, buried in the foliage around her

whence only the golden cross upon her crown emerged.

XV

Abbé Mouret’s bedroom, which occupied a corner of the vicarage, was a

spacious one, having two large square windows; one of which opened above

Desirée’s farmyard, whilst the other overlooked the village, the valley

beyond, the belt of hills, the whole landscape. The yellow-curtained

bed, the walnut chest of drawers, and the three straw-bottomed chairs

seemed lost below that lofty ceiling with whitewashed joists. A faint

tartness, the somewhat musty odour of old country houses, ascended from

the tiled and ruddled floor that glistened like a mirror. On the chest

of drawers a tall statuette of the Immaculate Conception rose greyly

between some porcelain vases which La Teuse had filled with white lilac.

Abbé Mouret set his lamp on the edge of the chest of drawers before the

Virgin. He felt so unwell that he determined to light the vine-stem fire

which was laid in readiness. He stood there, tongs in hand, watching

the kindling wood, his face illuminated by the flame. The house beneath

slumbered in unbroken stillness. The silence filled his ears with a hum,

which grew into a sound of whispering voices. Slowly and irresistibly

these voices mastered him and increased the feeling of anxiety which

had almost choked him several times that day. What could be the cause of

such mental anguish? What could be the strange trouble which had slowly

grown within him and had now become so unbearable? He had not fallen

into sin. It seemed as if but yesterday he had left the seminary with

all his ardent faith, and so fortified against the world that he moved

among men beholding God alone. And, suddenly, he fancied himself in his

cell at five o’clock in the morning, the hour for rising. The deacon

on duty passed his door, striking it with his stick, and repeating the

regulation summons--

‘_Benedicamus Domino_!’

‘_Deo gratias_!’ he answered half asleep, with his eyes still swollen

with slumber.

And he jumped out upon his strip of carpet, washed himself, made his

bed, swept his room, and refilled his little pitcher. He enjoyed this

petty domestic work while the morning air sent a thrilling shiver

throughout his frame. He could hear the sparrows in the plane-trees

of the court-yard, rising at the same time as himself with a deafening

noise of wings and notes--their way of saying their prayers, thought he.

Then he went down to the meditation room, and stayed there on his knees

for half an hour after prayers, to con that reflection of St. Ignatius:

‘What profit be it to a man to gain the whole world if he lose his

soul?’ A subject, this, fertile in good resolutions, which impelled him

to renounce all earthly goods, and dwell on that fond dream of a desert

life, beneath the solitary wealth and luxury of a vast blue sky. When

ten minutes had passed, his bruised knees became so painful that his

whole being slowly swooned into ecstasy, in which he pictured himself as

a mighty conqueror, the master of an immense empire, flinging down his

crown, breaking his sceptre, trampling under foot unheard-of wealth,

chests of gold, floods of jewels, and rich stuffs embroidered with

precious stones, before going to bury himself in some Thebais, clothed

in rough drugget that rasped his back. Mass, however, snatched him from

these heated fancies, upon which he looked back as upon some beautiful

reality which might have been his lot in ancient times; and then, his

communion made, he chanted the psalm for the day unconscious of any

other voice than his own, which rang out with crystal purity, flying

upward till it reached the very ear of the Lord.

When he returned to his room he ascended the stairs step by step, as

advised by St. Bonaventura and St. Thomas Aquinas. His gait was slow,

his mien grave; he kept his head bowed as he walked along, finding

ineffable delight in complying with the most trifling regulations. Next

came breakfast. It was pleasant in the refectory to see the hunks of

bread and the glasses of white wine, set out in rows. He had a good

appetite, and was of a joyous mood. He would say, for instance, that

the wine was truly Christian--a daring allusion to the water which the

bursar was taxed with putting in the bottles. Still his gravity at once

returned to him on going in to lectures. He took notes on his knees,

while the professor, resting his hands on the edge of his desk, talked

away in familiar Latin, interspersed with an occasional word in French,

when he was at fault for a better. A discussion would then follow in

which the students argued in a strange jargon, with never a smile upon

their faces. Then, at ten o’clock, there came twenty minutes’ reading

of Holy Writ. He fetched the Sacred Book, a volume richly bound and

gilt-edged. Having kissed it with especial reverence, he read it out

bare-headed, bowing every time he came upon the name of Jesus, Mary, or

Joseph. And with the arrival of the second meditation he was ready to

endure for love of God another and even longer spell of kneeling

than the first. He avoided resting on his heels for a second even.

He delighted in that examination of conscience which lasted for

three-quarters of an hour. He racked his memory for sins, and at times

even fancied himself damned for forgetting to kiss the pictures on his

scapular the night before, or for having gone to sleep upon his left

side--abominable faults which he would have willingly redeemed by

wearing out his knees till night; and yet happy faults, in that they

kept him busy, for without them he would have no occupation for his

unspotted heart, steeped in a life of purity.

He would return to the refectory, as if relieved of some great crime.

The seminarists on duty, wearing blue linen aprons, and having their

cassock sleeves tucked up, brought in the vermicelli soup, the boiled

beef cut into little squares, and the helps of roast mutton and French

beans. Then followed a terrific rattling of jaws, a gluttonous silence,

a desperate plying of forks, only broken by envious greedy glances at

the horseshoe table, where the heads of the seminary ate more delicate

meats and drank ruddier wines. And all the while above the hubbub some

strong-lunged peasant’s son, with a thick voice and utter disregard for

punctuation, would hem and haw over the perusal of some letters from

missionaries, some episcopal pastoral, or some article from a religious

paper. To this he listened as he ate. Those polemical fragments, those

narratives of distant travels, surprised, nay, even frightened him, with

their revelations of bustling, boundless fields of action, of which

he had never dreamt, beyond the seminary walls. Eating was still in

progress when the wooden clapper announced the recreation hour. The

recreation-ground was a sandy yard, in which stood eight plane-trees,

which in summer cast cool shadows around. On the south side rose a wall,

seventeen feet high, and bristling with broken glass, above which all

that one saw of Plassans was the steeple of St. Mark, rising like a

stony needle against the blue sky. To and fro he slowly paced the court

with a row of fellow-students; and each time he faced the wall he eyed

that spire which to him represented the whole town, the whole

earth spread beneath the scudding clouds. Noisy groups waxed hot in

disputation round the plane-trees; friends would pair off in the

corners under the spying glance of some director concealed behind his

window-blind. Tennis and skittle matches would be quickly organised to

the great discomfort of quiet loto players who lounged on the ground

before their cardboard squares, which some bowl or ball would suddenly

smother with sand. But when the bell sounded the noise ceased, a flight

of sparrows rose from the plane-trees, and the breathless students

betook themselves to their lesson in plain-chant with folded arms and

hanging heads. And thus Serge’s day closed in peacefulness; he returned

to his work; then, at four o’clock, he partook of his afternoon snack,

and renewed his everlasting walk in sight of St. Mark’s spire. Supper

was marked by the same rattling of jaws and the same droning perusal as

the midday meal. And when it was over Serge repaired to the chapel to

attend prayers, and finally betook himself to bed at a quarter past

eight, after first sprinkling his pallet with holy water to ward off all

evil dreams.

How many delightful days like these had he not spent in that ancient

convent of old Plassans, where abode the aroma of centuries of piety!

For five years had the days followed one another, flowing on with the

unvarying murmur of limpid water. In this present hour he recalled a

thousand little incidents which moved him. He remembered going with his

mother to purchase his first outfit, his two cassocks, his two waist

sashes, his half-dozen bands, his eight pairs of socks, his surplice,

and his three-cornered hat. And how his heart had beaten that mild

October evening when the seminary door had first closed behind him!

He had gone thither at twenty, after his school years, seized with a

yearning to believe and love. The very next day he had forgotten all,

as if he had fallen into a long sleep in that big silent house. He once

more saw the narrow cell in which he had lived through his two years as

student of philosophy--a little hutch with only a bed, a table, and a

chair, divided from the other cells by badly fitted partitions, in a

vast hall containing about fifty similar little dens. And he again

saw the cell he had dwelt in three years longer while in the theology

class--a larger one, with an armchair, a dressing-table, and a

bookcase--a happy room full of the dreams which his faith had evoked.

Down those endless passages, up those stairs of stone, in all sorts of

nooks, sudden inspirations, unexpected aid had come to him. From the

lofty ceilings fell the voices of guardian angels. There was not a

flagstone in the halls, not an ashlar of the walls, not a bough of the

plane-trees, but it spoke to him of the delights of his contemplative

life, his lispings of tenderness, his gradual initiation, the favours

vouchsafed him in return for self-bestowal, all that happiness of divine

first love.

On such and such a day, on awaking, he had beheld a bright flood of

light which had steeped him in joy. On such and such an evening as he

closed the door of his cell he had felt warm hands clasping his neck

so lovingly that he had lost consciousness, and had afterwards found

himself on the floor weeping and choked by sobs. Again, at other

times, especially in the little archway leading to the chapel, he had

surrendered himself to supple arms which raised him from the ground. All

heaven had then been concerned in him, had moved round him, and imparted

to his slightest actions a peculiar sense, an astonishing perfume, which

seemed to cling faintly to his clothes, to his very skin. And again,

he remembered the Thursday walks. They started at two o’clock for some

verdant nook about three miles from Plassans. Often they sought a meadow

on the banks of the Viorne, where the gnarled willows steeped their

leaves in the stream. But he saw nothing--neither the big yellow flowers

in the meadow, nor the swallows sipping as they flew by, with wings

lightly touching the surface of the little river. Till six o’clock,

seated in groups beneath the willows, his comrades and himself recited

the Office of the Virgin in common, or read in pairs the ‘Little Hours,’

the book of prayers recommended to young seminarists, but not enjoined

on them.

Abbé Mouret smiled as he stirred the burning embers of his vine-stock

fire. In all that past he only found great purity and perfect obedience.

He had been a lily whose sweet scent had charmed his masters. He could

not recall a single bad action. He had never taken advantage of the

absolute freedom of those walks, when the two prefects in charge would

go off to have a chat with a parish priest in the neighbourhood, or to

have a smoke behind a hedge, or to drink beer with a friend. Never had

he hidden a novel under his mattress, nor a bottle of _anisette_ in

a cupboard. For a long time, even, he had had no suspicion of the

sinfulness around him--of the wings of chicken and the cakes smuggled

into the seminary in Lent, of the guilty letters brought in by servers,

of the abominable conversations carried on in whispers in certain

corners of the courtyard. He had wept hot tears when he first perceived

that few among his fellows loved God for His own sake. There were

peasants’ sons there who had taken orders simply through their terror

of conscription, sluggards who dreamed of a career of idleness, and

ambitious youths already agitated by a vision of the staff and the

mitre. And when he found the world’s wickedness reappearing at the

altar’s very foot, he had withdrawn still further into himself, giving

himself still more to God, to console Him for being forsaken.

He did recollect, however, that he had crossed his legs one day in

class, and that, when the professor reproved him for it, his face had

become fiery red, as if he had committed some abominable action. He

was one of the best students, never arguing, but learning his texts by

heart. He established the existence and eternity of God by proofs drawn

from Holy Writ, the opinions of the fathers of the Church, the universal

consensus of all mankind. This kind of reasoning filled him with an

unshakeable certainty. During his first year of philosophy, he had

worked at his logic so earnestly that his professor had checked him,

remarking that the most learned were not the holiest. In his second

year, therefore, he had carried out his study of metaphysics as a

regulation task, constituting but a small fraction of his daily duties.

He felt a growing contempt for science; he wished to remain ignorant, in

order to preserve the humility of his faith. Later on, he only followed

the course of Rohrbacher’s ‘Ecclesiastical History’ from submission;

he ventured as far as Gousset’s arguments, and Bouvier’s ‘Theological

Course,’ without daring to take up Bellarmin, Liguori, Suarez, or St.

Thomas Aquinas. Holy Writ alone impassioned him. Therein he found all

desirable knowledge, a tale of infinite love which should be sufficient

instruction for all men of good-will. He simply adopted the dicta of his

teachers, casting on them the care of inquiry, needing nought of such

rubbish to know how to love, and accusing books of stealing away the

time which should be devoted to prayer. He even succeeded in forgetting

his years of college life. He no longer knew anything, but was

simplicity itself, a child brought back to the lispings of his

catechism.

Such was the manner in which he had ascended step by step to the

priesthood. And here his recollections thronged more quickly on him,

softer, still warm with heavenly joy. Each year he had drawn nearer

to God. His vacations had been spent in holy fashion at an uncle’s, in

confessions every day and communions twice a week. He would lay fasts

upon himself, hide rock-salt inside his trunk, and kneel on it with

bared knees for hours together. At recreation time he remained in

chapel, or went up to the room of one of the directors, who told him

pious and extraordinary stories. Then, as the fast of the Holy Trinity

drew nigh, he was rewarded beyond all measure, overwhelmed by

the stirring emotion which pervades all seminaries on the eve of

ordinations. This was the great festival of all, when the sky opened to

allow the elect to rise another step nearer unto God. For a fortnight

in advance he imposed a bread and water diet on himself. He closed

his window blinds so that he might not see the daylight at all, and

he prostrated himself in the gloom to implore Jesus to accept his

sacrifice. During the last four days he suffered torturing pangs,

terrible scruples, which would force him from his bed in the middle

of the night to knock at the door of some strange priest giving the

Retreat--some barefooted Carmelite, or often a converted Protestant

respecting whom some wonderful story was current. To him he would

make at great length a general confession of his whole life in a voice

choking with sobs. Absolution alone quieted him, refreshed him, as if he

had enjoyed a bath of grace.

On the morning of the great day he felt wholly white; and so vividly was

he conscious of his whiteness that he seemed to himself to shed light

around him. The seminary bell rang out in clear notes, while all the

scents of June--the perfume of blossoming stocks, of mignonette and of

heliotropes--came over the lofty courtyard wall. In the chapel relatives

were waiting in their best attire, so deeply moved that the women sobbed

behind their veils. Next came the procession--the deacons about to

receive their priesthood in golden chasubles, the sub-deacons in

dalmatics, those in minor orders and the tonsured with their surplices

floating on their shoulders and their black birettas in their hands. The

organ rolled diffusing the flutelike notes of a canticle of joy. At the

altar, the bishop officiated, staff in hand, assisted by two canons. All

the Chapter were there, the priests of all the parishes thronged thick

amid a dazzling wealth of apparel, a flaring of gold beneath a broad

ray of sunlight falling from a window in the nave. The epistle over, the

ordination began.

At this very hour Abbé Mouret could remember the chill of the scissors

when he was marked with the tonsure at the beginning of his first year

of theology. It had made him shudder slightly. But the tonsure had then

been very small, hardly larger than a penny. Later, with each fresh

order conferred on him, it had grown and grown until it crowned him with

a white spot as large as a big Host. The organ’s hum grew softer, and

the censers swung with a silvery tinkling of their slender chains,

releasing a cloudlet of white smoke, which unrolled in lacelike folds.

He could see himself, a tonsured youth in a surplice, led to the altar

by the master of ceremonies; there he knelt and bowed his head down low,

while the bishop with golden scissors snipped off three locks--one over

his forehead, and the other two near his ears. Yet another twelvemonth,

and he could again see himself in the chapel amid the incense, receiving

the four minor orders. Led by an archdeacon, he went to the main

doorway, closed the door with a bang, and opened it again, to show that

to him was entrusted the care of churches; next he rang a small bell

with his right hand, in token that it was his duty to call the faithful

to the divine offices; then he returned to the altar, where fresh

privileges were conferred upon him by the bishop--those of singing the

lessons, of blessing the bread, of catechising children, of exorcising

evil spirits, of serving the deacons, of lighting and extinguishing the

candles of the altars.

Next came back the memory of the ensuing ordination, more solemn and

more dread, amid the same organ strains which sounded now like God’s own

thunder: this time he wore a sub-deacon’s dalmatic upon his shoulders,

he bound himself for ever by the vow of chastity, he trembled in every

pore, despite his faith, at the terrible _Accedite_ from the bishop,

which put to flight two of his companions, blanching by his side. His

new duties were to serve the priest at the altar, to prepare the cruets,

sing the epistle, wipe the chalice, and carry the cross in processions.

And, at last, he passed once more, and for the last time, into the

chapel, in the radiance of a June sun: but this time he walked at the

very head of the procession, with alb girdled about his waist, with

stole crossed over his breast, and chasuble falling from his neck. All

but fainting from emotion, he could perceive the pallid face of the

bishop giving him the priesthood, the fulness of the ministry, by

the threefold laying of his hands. And after taking the oath of

ecclesiastical obedience, he felt himself uplifted from the stone flags,

when the prelate in a full voice repeated the Latin words: ‘_Accipe

Spiritum Sanctum.... Quorum remiseris peccata, remittuntur eis, et

quorum retinueris, retenta sunt_.’--‘Receive the Holy Ghost.... Whose

sins thou dost forgive they are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost

retain, they are retained.’

XVI

This evocation of the deep joys of his youth had given Abbé Mouret a

touch of feverishness. He no longer felt the cold. He put down the tongs

and walked towards the bedstead as if about to go to bed, but turned

back and pressed his forehead to a window-pane, looking out into the

night with sightless eyes. Could he be ill? Why did he feel such

languor in all his limbs, why did his blood burn in every vein? On two

occasions, while at the seminary, he had experienced similar attacks--a

sort of physical discomfort which made him most unhappy; one day,

indeed, he had gone to bed in raving delirium. Then he bethought himself

of a young girl possessed by evil spirits, whom Brother Archangias

asserted he had cured with a simple sign of the cross, one day when she

fell down before him. This reminded him of the spiritual exorcisms which

one of his teachers had formerly recommended to him: prayer, a general

confession, frequent communion, the choosing of a wise confessor

who should have great authority on his mind. And then, without any

transition, with a suddenness which astonished himself, he saw in

the depths of his memory the round face of one of his old friends, a

peasant, who had been a choir boy at eight years old, and whose expenses

at the seminary were defrayed by a lady who watched over him. He was

always laughing, he rejoiced beforehand at the anticipated emoluments of

his career; twelve hundred francs of stipend, a vicarage at the end of a

garden, presents, invitations to dinners, little profits from weddings,

and baptismal and burial fees. That young fellow must indeed be happy in

his parish.

The feeling of melancholy regret evoked by this recollection surprised

Abbé Mouret extremely. Was he not happy, too? Until that day he had

regretted nothing, wished for nothing, envied nothing. Even as he

searched himself at that very moment he failed to find any cause for

bitterness. He believed himself the same as in the early days of his

deaconship, when the obligatory perusal of his breviary at certain

stated hours had filled his days with continuous prayer. No doubts had

tormented him; he had prostrated himself before the mysteries he could

not understand; he had sacrificed his reason, which he despised, with

the greatest ease. When he left the seminary, he had rejoiced at finding

himself a stranger among his fellowmen, no longer walking like them,

carrying his head differently, possessed of the gestures, words, and

opinions of a being apart. He had felt emasculated, nearer to the

angels, cleansed of sexuality. It had almost made him proud to belong

no longer to his species, to have been brought up for God and carefully

purged of all human grossness by a jealously watchful training. Again,

it had seemed to him as if for years he had been dwelling in holy

oil, prepared with all due rites, which had steeped his flesh in

beatification. His limbs, his brain, had lost material substance to

gain in soulfulness, impregnated with a subtle vapour which, at times,

intoxicated him and dizzied him as if the earth had suddenly failed

beneath his feet. He displayed the fears, the unwittingness, the open

candour of a cloistered maiden. He sometimes remarked with a smile that

he was prolonging his childhood, under the impression that he was still

quite little, retaining the same sensations, the same ideas, the same

opinions as in the past. At six years old, for instance, he had known as

much of God as he knew at twenty-five; in prayer the inflexions of

his voice were still the same, and he yet took a childish pleasure in

folding his hands quite correctly. The world too seemed to him the same

as he had seen in former days when his mother led him by the hand.

He had been born a priest, and a priest he had grown up. Whenever he

displayed before La Teuse some particularly gross ignorance of life, she

would stare him in the face, astounded, and remark with a strange smile

that ‘he was Mademoiselle Desirée’s brother all over.’

In all his existence he could only recall one shock of shame. It

had happened during his last six months at the seminary, between his

deaconship and priesthood. He had been ordered to read the work of Abbé

Craisson, the superior of the great seminary at Valence: ‘_De rebus

Veneris ad usum confessariorum_.’ And he had risen from this book

terrified and choking with sobs. That learned casuistry, dealing so

fully with the abominations of mankind, descending to the most monstrous

examples of vice, violated, as it were, all his virginity of body

and mind. He felt himself for ever befouled. Yet every time he heard

confessions he inevitably recurred to that catechism of shame. And

though the obscurities of dogma, the duties of his ministry, and the

death of all free will within him left him calm and happy at being

nought but the child of God, he retained, in spite of himself, a carnal

taint of the horrors he must needs stir up; he was conscious of an

ineffaceable stain, deep down somewhere in his being, which might some

day grow larger and cover him with mud.

The moon was rising behind the Garrigue hills. Abbé Mouret, still more

and more feverish, opened the window and leaned out upon his elbows,

that he might feel upon his face the coolness of the night. He could no

longer remember at what time exactly this illness had come upon him.

He recollected, however, that in the morning, while saying mass, he had

been quite calm and restful. It must have been later, perhaps during

his long walk in the sun, or while he shivered under the trees of the

Paradou, or while stifling in Desirée’s poultry-yard. And then he lived

through the day again.

Before him stretched the vast plain, more direful still beneath the

pallid light of the oblique moonbeams. The olive and almond trees showed

like grey spots amid the chaos of rocks spreading to the sombre row of

hills on the horizon. There were big splotches of gloom, bumpy ridges,

blood-hued earthy pools in which red stars seemed to contemplate one

another, patches of chalky light, suggestive of women’s garments cast

off and disclosing shadowy forms which slumbered in the hollow folds

of ground. At night that glowing landscape weltered there strangely,

passionately, slumbering with uncovered bosom, and outspread twisted

limbs, whilst heaving mighty sighs, and exhaling the strong aroma of

a sweating sleeper. It was as if some mighty Cybele had fallen there

beneath the moon, intoxicated with the embraces of the sun. Far away,

Abbé Mouret’s eyes followed the path to Les Olivettes, a narrow pale

ribbon stretching along like a wavy stay-lace. He could hear Brother

Archangias whipping the truant schoolgirls, and spitting in the faces

of their elder sisters. He could see Rosalie slyly laughing in her hands

while old Bambousse hurled clods of earth after her and smote her on

her hips. Then, too, he thought, he had still been well, his neck barely

heated by the lovely morning sunshine. He had felt but a quivering

behind him, that confused hum of life, which he had faintly heard since

morning when the sun, in the midst of his mass, had entered the church

by the shattered windows. Never, then, had the country disturbed him,

as it did at this hour of night, with its giant bosom, its yielding

shadows, its gleams of ambery skin, its lavish goddess-like nudity,

scarce hidden by the silvery gauze of moonlight.

The young priest lowered his eyes, and gazed upon the village of Les

Artaud. It had sunk into the heavy slumber of weariness, the soundness

of peasants’ sleep. Not a light: the battered hovels showed like

dusky mounds intersected by the white stripes of cross lanes which the

moonbeams swept. Even the dogs were surely snoring on the thresholds of

the closed doors. Had the Artauds poisoned the air of the parsonage with

some abominable plague? Behind him gathered and swept the gust whose

approach filled him with so much anguish. Now he could detect a sound

like the tramping of a flock, a whiff of dusty air, which reached him

laden with the emanations of beasts. Again came back his thoughts of a

handful of men beginning the centuries over again, springing up between

those naked rocks like thistles sown by the winds. In his childhood

nothing had amazed and frightened him more than those myriads of insects

which gushed forth when he raised certain damp stones. The Artauds

disturbed him even in their slumber; he could recognise their breath

in the air he inhaled. He would have liked to have had the rocks alone

below his window. The hamlet was not dead enough; the thatched roofs

bulged like bosoms; through the gaping cracks in the doors came low

faint sounds which spoke of all the swarming life within. Nausea came

upon him. Yet he had often faced it all without feeling any other need

than that of refreshing himself in prayer.

His brow perspiring, he proceeded to open the other window, as if to

seek cooler air. Below him, to his left, lay the graveyard with the

Solitaire erect like a bar, unstirred by the faintest breeze. From the

empty field arose an odour like that of a newly mown meadow. The

grey wall of the church, that wall full of lizards and planted with

wall-flowers, gleamed coldly in the moonlight, and the panes of one of

the windows glistened like plates of steel. The sleeping church could

now have no other life within it than the extra-human life of the

Divinity embodied in the Host enclosed in the tabernacle. He thought of

the bracket lamp’s yellow glow peeping out of the gloom, and was tempted

to go down once more to try to ease his ailing head amid those deep

shadows. But a strange feeling of terror held him back; he suddenly

fancied, while his eyes were fixed upon the moonlit panes, that he saw

the church illumined by a furnace-like glare, the blaze of a festival

of hell, in which whirled the Month of May, the plants, the animals,

and the girls of Les Artaud, who wildly encircled trees with their

bare arms. Then, as he leaned over, he saw beneath him Desirée’s

poultry-yard, black and steaming. He could not clearly distinguish the

rabbit-hutches, the fowls’ roosting-places, or the ducks’ house. The

place was all one big mass heaped up in stench, still exhaling in its

sleep a pestiferous odour. From under the stable-door came the acrid

smell of the nanny-goat; while the little pig, stretched upon his back,

snorted near an empty porringer. And suddenly with his brazen throat

Alexander, the big yellow cock, raised a crow, which awoke in the

distance impassioned calls from all the cocks of the village.

Then all at once Abbé Mouret remembered: The fever had struck him in

Desirée’s farmyard, while he was looking at the hens still warm from

laying, the rabbit-does plucking the down from under them. And now the

feeling that some one was breathing on his neck became so distinct that

he turned at last to see who was behind him. And then he recalled Albine

bounding out of the Paradou, and the door slamming upon the vision of an

enchanted garden; he recalled the girl racing alongside the interminable

wall, following the gig at a run, and throwing birch leaves to the

breeze as kisses; he recalled her, again, in the twilight, laughing at

the oaths of Brother Archangias, her skirts skimming over the path like

a cloudlet of dust bowled along by the evening breeze. She was sixteen;

how strange she looked, with her rather elongated face! she savoured

of the open air, of the grass, of mother earth. And so accurate was his

recollection of her that he could once more see a scratch upon one of

her supple wrists, a rosy scar on her white skin. Why did she laugh like

that when she looked at him with her blue eyes? He was engulfed in her

laugh as in a sonorous wave which resounded and pressed close to him on

every side; he inhaled it, he felt it vibrate within him. Yes, all his

evil came from that laugh of hers which he had quaffed.

Standing in the middle of the room, with both windows open, he remained

shivering, seized with a fright which made him hide his face in his

hands. So this was the ending of the whole day; this evocation of a fair

girl, with a somewhat long face and eyes of blue. And the whole day

came in through the open windows. In the distance--the glow of those red

lands, the ardent passion of the big rocks, of the olive-trees springing

up amid the stones, of the vines twisting their arms by the roadside.

Nearer--the steam of human sweat borne in upon the air from Les Artaud,

the musty odour of the cemetery, the fragrance of incense from the

church, tainted by the scent of greasy-haired wenches. And there

was also the steaming muck-heap, the fumes of the poultry-yard, the

oppressing ferment of animal germs. And all these vapours poured in at

once, in one asphyxiating gust, so offensive, so violent, as to choke

him. He tried to close his senses, to subdue and annihilate them. But

Albine reappeared before him like a tall flower that had sprung and

grown beautiful in that soil. She was the natural blossom of that

corruption, delicate in the sunshine, her white shoulders expanding in

youthfulness, her whole being so fraught with the gladness of life, that

she leaped from her stem and darted upon his mouth, scenting him with

her long ripple of laughter.

A cry burst from the priest. He had felt a burning touch upon his lips.

A stream as of fire coursed through his veins. And then, in search

of refuge, he threw himself on his knees before the statuette of the

Immaculate Conception, exclaiming, with folded hands:

‘Holy Virgin of Virgins, pray for me!’

XVII

The Immaculate Conception, set on the walnut chest of drawers, was

smiling softly, with her slender lips, marked by a dash of carmine. Her

form was small and wholly white. Her long white veil, falling from head

to foot, had but an imperceptible thread of gold around its edge. Her

gown, draped in long straight folds over a sexless figure, was fastened

around her flexible neck. Not a single lock of her chestnut hair peeped

forth. Her countenance was rosy, with clear eyes upturned to heaven: her

hands were clasped--rosy, childlike hands, whose finger-tips appeared

beneath the folds of her veil, above the azure scarf which seemed to

girdle her waist with two streaming ends of the firmament. Of all her

womanly charms not one was bared, except her feet, adorable feet which

trod the mystical eglantine. And from those nude feet sprang golden

roses, like the natural efflorescence of her twofold purity of flesh.

‘Virgin most faithful, pray for me,’ the priest despairingly pleaded.

This Virgin had never distressed him. She was not a mother yet; she

did not offer Jesus to him, her figure did not yet present the rounded

outlines of maternity. She was not the Queen of Heaven descending,

crowned with gold and clothed in gold like a princess of the earth,

borne in triumph by a flight of cherubim. She had never assumed an

awesome mien; had never spoken to him with the austere severity of an

all-powerful mistress, the very sight of whom must bow all foreheads

to the dust. He could dare to look on her and love her, without fear of

being moved by the gentle wave of her chestnut hair; her bare feet alone

excited his affection, those feet of love which blossomed like a garden

of chastity in too miraculous a manner for him to seek to cover them

with kisses. She scented his room with lily-like fragrance. She was

indeed the silver lily planted in a golden vase, she was precious,

eternal, impeccable purity. Within the white veil, so closely drawn

round her, there could be nothing human--only a virgin flame, burning

with ever even glow. At night when he went to bed, in the morning

when he woke, he could see her there, still and ever wearing that same

ecstatic smile.

‘Mother most pure, Mother most chaste, Mother ever-virgin, pray for me!’

he stammered in his fear, pressing close to the Virgin’s feet, as if he

could hear Albine’s sonorous footfalls behind him. ‘You are my refuge,

the source of my joy, the seat of my wisdom, the tower of ivory in

which I have shut up my purity. I place myself in your spotless hands, I

beseech you to take me, to cover me with a corner of your veil, to

hide me beneath your innocence, behind the hallowed rampart of your

garment--so that no fleshly breath may reach me. I need you, I die

without you, I shall feel for ever parted from you, if you do not bear

me away in your helpful arms, far hence into the glowing whiteness

wherein you dwell. O Mary, conceived without sin, annihilate me in the

depths of the immaculate snow that falls from your every limb. You are

the miracle of eternal chastity. Your race has sprung from a very beam

of grace, like some wondrous tree unsown by any germ. Your son, Jesus,

was born of the breath of God; you yourself were born without defilement

of your mother’s womb, and I would believe that this virginity goes back

thus from age to age in endless unwittingness of flesh. Oh! to live, to

grow up outside the pale of the senses! Oh! to perpetuate life solely by

the contact of a celestial kiss!’

This despairing appeal, this cry of purified longing, calmed the young

priest’s fears. The Virgin--wholly white, with eyes turned heavenward,

appeared to smile more tenderly with her thin red lips. And in a

softened voice he went on:

‘I should like to be a child once more. I should like to be always a

child, walking in the shadow of your gown. When I was quite little, I

clasped my hands when I uttered the name of Mary. My cradle was

white, my body was white, my every thought was white. I could see you

distinctly, I could hear you calling me, I went towards you in the light

of a smile over scattered rose-petals. And nought else did I feel or

think, I lived but just enough to be a flower at your feet. No one

should grow up. You would have around you none but fair young heads, a

crowd of children who would love you with pure hands, unsullied lips,

tender limbs, stainless as if fresh from a bath of milk. To kiss a

child’s cheek is to kiss its soul. A child alone can say your name

without befouling it. In later years our lips grow tainted and reek of

our passions. Even I, who love you so much, and have given myself to

you, I dare not at all times call on you, for I would not let you

come in contact with the impurities of my manhood. I have prayed and

chastised my flesh, I have slept in your keeping, and lived in chastity;

and yet I weep to see that I am not yet dead enough to this world to

be your betrothed. O Mary! adorable Virgin, why can I not be only five

years old--why could I not remain the child who pressed his lips to your

pictures? I would take you to my heart, I would lay you by my side, I

would clasp and kiss you like a friend--like a girl of my own age. Your

close hanging garments, your childish veil, your blue scarf--all that

youthfulness which makes you like an elder sister would be mine. I would

not try to kiss your locks, for hair is a naked thing which should

not be seen; but I would kiss your bare feet, one after the other, for

nights and nights together, until my lips should have shred the petals

of those golden roses, those mystical roses of our veins.’

He stopped, waiting for the Virgin to look down upon him and touch

his forehead with the edges of her veil. But she remained enwrapped

in muslin to her neck and finger-nails and ankles, so slim, so

etherealised, that she already seemed to be above earth, to be wholly

heaven’s own.

‘Well, then,’ he went on more wildly still, ‘grant that I become a child

again, O kindly Virgin! Virgin most powerful. Grant that I may be only

five years old. Rid me of my senses, rid me of my manhood. Let a miracle

sweep away all the man that has grown up within me. You reign in heaven,

nothing is easier to you than to change me, to rid me of all my strength

so that evermore I may be unable to raise my little finger without your

leave. I wish never more to feel either nerve, or muscle, or the beating

of my heart. I long to be simply a thing--a white stone at your feet,

on which you will leave but a perfume; a stone that will not move from

where you cast it, but will remain earless and eyeless, content to lie

beneath your heel, unable to think of foulness! Oh! then what bliss

for me! I shall reach without an effort and at a bound my dream of

perfection. I shall at last proclaim myself your true priest. I shall

become what all my studies, my prayers, my five years of initiation

have been unable to make me. Yes, I reject life; I say that the death of

mankind is better than abomination. Everything is stained; everywhere is

love tainted. Earth is steeped in impurity, whose slightest drops yield

growths of shame. But that I may be perfect, O Queen of angels, hearken

to my prayer, and grant it! Make me one of those angels that have only

two great wings behind their cheeks; I shall then no longer have a body,

no longer have any limbs; I will fly to you if you call me. I shall be

but a mouth to sing your praises, a pair of spotless wings to cradle

you in your journeys through the heavens. O death! death! Virgin, most

venerable, grant me the death of all! I will love you for the death of

my body, the death of all that lives and multiplies. I will consummate

with you the sole marriage that my heart desires. I will ascend, ever

higher and higher, till I have reached the brasier in which you shine

in splendour. There one beholds a mighty planet, an immense white rose,

whose every petal glows like a moon, a silver throne whence you beam

with such a blaze of innocence that heaven itself is all illumined by

the gleam of your veil alone. All that is white, the early dawns, the

snow on inaccessible peaks, the lilies barely opening, the water of

hidden, unknown springs, the milky sap of the plants untouched by

the sun, the smiles of maidens, the souls of children dead in their

cradles--all rains upon your white feet. And I will rise to your mouth

like a subtle flame; I will enter into you by your parted lips, and

the bridal will be fulfilled, while the archangels are thrilled by our

joyfulness. Oh, to be maiden, to love in maidenhood, to preserve

amid the sweetest kisses one’s maiden whiteness! To possess all love,

stretched on the wings of swans, in a sky of purity, in the arms of

a mistress of light, whose caresses are but raptures of the soul! Oh,

there lies the perfection, the super-human dream, the yearning which

shatters my very bones, the joy which bears me up to heaven! O Mary,

Vessel of Election, rid me of all that is human in me, so that you may

fearlessly surrender to me the treasure of your maidenhood!’

And then Abbé Mouret, felled by fever, his teeth chattering, swooned

away on the floor.