It was now the beginning of October, and Nature was growing dull and
sad. Monsieur Bonnet, perceiving in Veronique from the moment of her
arrival at Montegnac the existence of an inward wound, thought it wisest
to wait for the voluntary and complete confidence of a woman who would
sooner or later become his penitent.
One evening Madame Graslin looked at the rector with eyes almost
glazed with that fatal indecision often observable in persons who
are cherishing the thought of death. From that moment Monsieur Bonnet
hesitated no longer; he set before him the duty of arresting the
progress of this cruel moral malady.
At first there was a brief struggle of empty words between the priest
and Veronique, in which they both sought to veil their real thoughts.
In spite of the cold, Veronique was sitting on the granite bench holding
Francis on her knee. Madame Sauviat was standing at the corner of the
terrace, purposely so placed as to hide the cemetery. Aline was waiting
to take the child away.
“I had supposed, madame,” said the rector, who was now paying his
seventh visit, “that you were only melancholy; but I see,” sinking
his voice to a whisper, “that your soul is in despair. That feeling is
neither Christian nor Catholic.”
“But,” she replied, looking to heaven with piercing eyes and letting a
bitter smile flicker on her lips, “what other feeling does the Church
leave to a lost soul unless it be despair?”
As he heard these words the rector realized the vast extent of the
ravages in her soul.
“Ah!” he said, “you are making this terrace your hell, when it ought to
be your Calvary from which to rise to heaven.”
“I have no pride left to place me on such a pedestal,” she answered, in
a tone which revealed the self-contempt that lay within her.
Here the priest, by one of those inspirations which are both natural and
frequent in noble souls, the man of God lifted the child in his arms
and kissed its forehead, saying, in a fatherly voice, “Poor little one!”
Then he gave it himself to the nurse, who carried it away.
Madame Sauviat looked at her daughter, and saw the efficacy of the
rector’s words; for Veronique’s eyes, long dry, were moist with tears.
The old woman made a sign to the priest and disappeared.
“Let us walk,” said the rector to Veronique leading her along the
terrace to the other end, from which Les Tascherons could be seen. “You
belong to me; I must render account to God for your sick soul.”
“Give me time to recover from my depression,” she said to him.
“Your depression comes from injurious meditation,” he replied, quickly.
“Yes,” she said, with the simplicity of a grief which has reached the
point of making no attempt at concealment.
“I see plainly that you have fallen into the gulf of apathy,” he cried.
“If there is a degree of physical suffering at which all sense of
modesty expires, there is also a degree of moral suffering in which all
vigor of soul is lost; I know that.”
She was surprised to hear that subtle observation and to find such
tender pity from this village rector; but, as we have seen already, the
exquisite delicacy which no passion had ever touched gave him the true
maternal spirit for his flock. This _mens devinior_, this apostolic
tenderness, places the priest above all other men and makes him, in a
sense, divine. Madame Graslin had not as yet had enough experience of
Monsieur Bonnet to know this beauty hidden in his soul like a spring,
from which flowed grace and purity and true life.
“Ah! monsieur,” she cried, giving herself wholly up to him by a gesture,
a look, such as the dying give.
“I understand you,” he said. “What is to be done? What will you become?”
They walked in silence the whole length of the balustrade, facing toward
the plain. The solemn moment seemed propitious to the bearer of good
tidings, the gospel messenger, and he took it.
“Suppose yourself now in the presence of God,” he said, in a low voice,
mysteriously; “what would you say to Him?”
Madame Graslin stopped as though struck by a thunderbolt; she shuddered;
then she said simply, in tones that brought tears to the rector’s
eyes:--
“I should say, as Jesus Christ said: ‘Father, why hast thou forsaken
me?’”
“Ah! Magdalen, that is the saying I expected of you,” cried Monsieur
Bonnet, who could not help admiring her. “You see you are forced to
appeal to God’s justice; you invoke it! Listen to me, madame. Religion
is, by anticipation, divine justice. The Church claims for herself the
right to judge the actions of the soul. Human justice is a feeble image
of divine justice; it is but a pale imitation of it applied to the needs
of society.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You are not the judge of your own case, you are dependent upon God,”
said the priest; “you have neither the right to condemn yourself nor
the right to absolve yourself. God, my child, is a great reverser of
judgments.”
“Ah!” she exclaimed.
“He _sees_ the origin of things, where we see only the things
themselves.”
Veronique stopped again, struck by these ideas, that were new to her.
“To you,” said the brave priest, “to you whose soul is a great one, I
owe other words than those I ought to give to my humble parishioners.
You, whose mind and spirit are so cultivated, you can rise to the sense
divine of the Catholic religion, expressed by images and words to the
poor and childlike. Listen to me attentively, for what I am about to say
concerns you; no matter how extensive is the point of view at which I
place myself for a moment, the case is yours. _Law_, invented to
protect society, is based on equality. Society, which is nothing but an
assemblage of acts, is based on inequality. There is therefore lack
of harmony between act and law. Ought society to march on favored or
repressed by law? In other words, ought law to be in opposition to the
interior social movement for the maintenance of society, or should it
be based on that movement in order to guide it? All legislators have
contented themselves with analyzing acts, indicating those that seemed
to them blamable or criminal, and attaching punishments to such or
rewards to others. That is human law; it has neither the means to
prevent sin, nor the means to prevent the return to sinfulness of those
it punishes. Philanthropy is a sublime error; it tortures the body
uselessly, it produces no balm to heal the soul. Philanthropy gives
birth to projects, emits ideas, confides the execution of them to man,
to silence, to labor, to rules, to things mute and powerless. Religion
is above these imperfections, for it extends man’s life beyond this
world. Regarding us all as degraded from our high estate, religion has
opened to us an inexhaustible treasure of indulgence. We are all more or
less advanced toward our complete regeneration; no one is sinless; the
Church expects wrong-doing, even crime. Where society sees a criminal
to be expelled from its bosom, the Church sees a soul to save. More, far
more than that! Inspired by God, whom she studies and contemplates,
the Church admits the inequalities of strength, she allows for the
disproportion of burdens. If she finds us unequal in heart, in body,
in mind, in aptitude, and value, she makes us all equal by repentance.
Hence equality is no longer a vain word, for we can be, we are, all
equal through feeling. From the formless fetichism of savages to
the graceful inventions of Greece, or the profound and metaphysical
doctrines of Egypt and India, whether taught in cheerful or in
terrifying worship, there is a conviction in the soul of man--that
of his fall, that of his sin--from which comes everywhere the idea of
sacrifice and redemption. The death of the Redeemer of the human race is
an image of what we have to do for ourselves,--redeem our faults, redeem
our errors, redeem our crimes! All is redeemable; Catholicism itself is
in that word; hence its adorable sacraments, which help the triumph
of grace and sustain the sinner. To weep, to moan like Magdalen in the
desert, is but the beginning; the end is Action. Monasteries wept and
prayed; they prayed and civilized; they were the active agents of our
divine religion. They built, planted, cultivated Europe; all the while
saving the treasures of learning, knowledge, human justice, politics,
and art. We shall ever recognize in Europe the places where those
radiant centres once were. Nearly all our modern towns are the children
of monasteries. If you believe that God will judge you, the Church tells
you by my voice that sin can be redeemed by works of repentance. The
mighty hand of God weighs both the evil done and the value of benefits
accomplished. Be yourself like those monasteries; work here the same
miracles. Your prayers must be labors. From your labors must come the
good of those above whom you are placed by fortune, by superiority of
mind; even this natural position of your dwelling is the image of your
social situation.”
As he said the last words, the priest and Madame Graslin turned to walk
back toward the plains, and the rector pointed both to the village at
the foot of the hill, and to the chateau commanding the whole landscape.
It was then half-past four o’clock; a glow of yellow sunlight enveloped
the balustrade and the gardens, illuminated the chateau, sparkled on the
gilded railings of the roof, lighted the long plain cut in two by the
high-road,--a sad, gray ribbon, not bordered there by the fringe of
trees which waved above it elsewhere on either side.
When Veronique and Monsieur Bonnet had passed the main body of the
chateau, they could see--beyond the courtyard, the stables, and the
offices--the great forest of Montegnac, along which the yellow glow was
gliding like a soft caress. Though this last gleam of the setting sun
touched the tree-tops only, it enabled the eye to see distinctly the
caprices of that marvellous tapestry which nature makes of a forest in
autumn. The oaks were a mass of Florentine bronze, the walnuts and the
chestnuts displayed their blue-green tones, the early trees were putting
on their golden foliage, and all these varied colors were shaded with
the gray of barren spots. The trunks of trees already stripped of
leafage showed their light-gray colonnades; the russet, tawny, grayish
colors, artistically blended by the pale reflections of an October sun,
harmonized with the vast uncultivated plain, green as stagnant water.
A thought came into the rector’s mind as he looked at this fine
spectacle, mute in other ways,--for not a tree rustled, not a bird
chirped, death was on the plain, silence in the forest; here and there a
little smoke from the village chimneys, that was all. The chateau
seemed as gloomy as its mistress. By some strange law all things about a
dwelling imitate the one who rules there; the owner’s spirit hovers over
it. Madame Graslin--her mind grasped by the rector’s words, her soul
struck by conviction, her heart affected in its tenderest emotions by
the angelic quality of that pure voice--stopped short. The rector raised
his arm and pointed to the forest. Veronique looked there.
“Do you not think it has a vague resemblance to social life?” he said.
“To each its destiny. How many inequalities in that mass of trees! Those
placed the highest lack earth and moisture; they die first.”
“Some there are whom the shears of the woman gathering fagots cut short
in their prime,” she said bitterly.
“Do not fall back into those thoughts,” said the rector sternly, though
with indulgence still. “The misfortune of this forest is that it has
never been cut. Do you see the phenomenon these masses present?”
Veronique, to whose mind the singularities of the forest nature
suggested little, looked obediently at the forest and then let her eyes
drop gently back upon the rector.
“You do not notice,” he said, perceiving from that look her total
ignorance, “the lines where the trees of all species still hold their
greenness?”
“Ah! true,” she said. “I see them now. Why is it?”
“In that,” replied the rector, “lies the future of Montegnac, and
your own fortune, an immense fortune, as I once explained to Monsieur
Graslin. You see the furrows of those three dells, the mountain streams
of which flow into the torrent of the Gabou. That torrent separates the
forest of Montegnac from the district which on this side adjoins ours.
In September and October it goes dry, but in November it is full of
water, the volume of which would be greatly increased by a partial
clearing of the forest, so as to send all the lesser streams to join
it. As it is, its waters do no good; but if one or two dams were made
between the two hills on either side of it, as they have done at Riquet,
and at Saint-Ferreol--where they have made immense reservoirs to feed
the Languedoc canal--this barren plain could be fertilized by judicious
irrigation through trenches and culverts managed by watergates; sending
the water when needed over these lands, and diverting it at other
times to our little river. You could plant fine poplars along these
water-courses and raise the finest cattle on such pasturage as you
would then obtain. What is grass, but sun and water? There is quite soil
enough on the plains to hold the roots; the streams will furnish dew and
moisture; the poplars will hold and feed upon the mists, returning their
elements to the herbage; these are the secrets of the fine vegetation of
valleys. If you undertook this work you would soon see life and joy and
movement where silence now reigns, where the eye is saddened by barren
fruitlessness. Would not that be a noble prayer to God? Such work would
be a better occupation of your leisure than the indulgence of melancholy
thoughts.”
Veronique pressed the rector’s hand, answering with four brief words,
but they were grand ones:--
“It shall be done.”
“You conceive the possibility of this great work,” he went on; “but you
cannot execute it. Neither you nor I have the necessary knowledge to
accomplish an idea which might have come to all, but the execution of
which presents immense difficulties; for simple as it may seem, the
matter requires the most accurate science with all its resources. Seek,
therefore, at once for the proper human instruments who will enable you
within the next dozen years to get an income of six or seven thousand
louis out of the six thousand acres you irrigate and fertilize. Such an
enterprise will make Montegnac at some future day the most prosperous
district in the department. The forest, as yet, yields you no return,
but sooner or later commerce will come here in search of its fine
woods--those treasures amassed by time; the only ones the production of
which cannot be hastened or improved upon by man. The State may some day
provide a way of transport from this forest, for many of the trees would
make fine masts for the navy; but it will wait until the increasing
population of Montegnac makes a demand upon its protection; for the
State is like fortune, it comes only to the rich. This estate, well
managed, will become, in the course of time, one of the finest in
France; it will be the pride of your grandson, who may then find the
chateau paltry, comparing it with its revenues.”
“Here,” said Veronique, “is a future for my life.”
“A beneficent work such as that will redeem wrongdoing,” said the
rector.
Seeing that she understood him, he attempted to strike another blow on
this woman’s intellect, judging rightly that in her the intellect
led the heart, whereas in other women the heart is their road to
intelligence.
“Do you know,” he said after a pause, “the error in which you are
living?”
She looked at him timidly.
“Your repentance is as yet only a sense of defeat endured,--which
is horrible, for it is nothing else than the despair of Satan; such,
perhaps, was the repentance of mankind before the coming of Jesus
Christ. But our repentance, the repentance of Christians, is the horror
of a soul struck down on an evil path, to whom, by this very shock,
God has revealed Himself. You are like the pagan Orestes; make yourself
another Paul.”
“Your words have changed me utterly,” she cried. “Now--oh! now I want to
live.”
“The spirit conquers,” thought the modest rector, as he joyfully took
his leave. He had cast nourishment before a soul hunted into secret
despair by giving to its repentance the form of a good and noble action.