En Route Part 11

This too was a place of burial, but no longer, as though opposite a tomb at the bottom of a dark cavern, but rather a cemetery where birds sang in the sun among the branches, you might have thought yourself in the country, twenty miles from Paris.

The decoration of this bright chapel tried, however, to be gloomy; it was like those wine shops whose walls are made to look like those of caves, with false stones painted in the imitation plaster. Only the height of the nave manifested the childishness of the imposture, and declared the vulgarity of the deception.

At the end was an altar above a smooth waxed floor, and on either side of it a grating with a black veil. According to the rule of Saint Francis, all the ornaments, the crucifix, the candlesticks, the tabernacle, were of wood, no object was to be seen in metal, no flower, the only luxury in the chapel consisted of two modern stained windows, one of which represented Saint Francis, the other Saint Clare.

Durtal thought the sanctuary airy and delightful, but he only stayed there a few minutes, for there was not here, as at the Carmelites, an absolute solitude, a sombre peace; here there were always two or three Poor Clares trotting about the chapel, who looked at him while they were arranging the chairs, and seemed surprised at his presence.

They were annoying to him, and he feared he was the same to them, so much so that he went away; but this short stay was enough to efface, or at least to lessen the funereal impression of the neighbouring convent.

Durtal returned home, at once much appeased and much disquieted--much appeased in regard to his temptations, much disquieted about what he should do next.

He felt rising in him, and increasing ever more and more, the desire to have done with these strifes and fears, but he grew pale when he thought of reversing his life, once for all.

But if he still had hesitation and fear, he had no longer the firm intention of resisting; he now accepted in principle the idea of a change of existence, only he tried to r.e.t.a.r.d the day, and put off the hour; he tried to gain time.

Then like people who grow angry at having to wait, on other days he wished to put off the inevitable moment no longer, and cried within himself that this must end; anything rather than remain as he was.

Then as this desire did not seem heard, he grew discouraged, would no longer think of anything, regretted the time past, and deplored that he felt himself carried along by such a current.

And when he was rather more cheerful, he tried again to examine himself.

"In fact I do not at all know how I stand," he thought; "this flux and reflux of different wishes alarms me, but how have I come to this point, and what is the matter with me?" What he felt, since he became more lucid, was so intangible, so indefinite, and yet so continuous that he was obliged to give up understanding it. Indeed every time he tried to examine his soul, a curtain of mist arose, and hid from him the unseen and silent approach of he knew not what. The only impression which he carried with him as he rose, was that it was less that he advanced towards the unknown, but that this unknown invaded him, penetrated him, and little by little took possession of him.

When he spoke to the abbe of this state, at once cowardly and resigned, imploring and fearful, the priest only smiled.

"Busy yourself in prayer, and bow down your back," he said one day.

"But I am tired of bending my back, and of trampling always on the same spot," cried Durtal. "I have had enough of feeling myself taken by the shoulders and led I know not where, it is really time that in one way or another this situation came to an end."

"Plainly." And standing up, and looking him in the face, the abbe said, impressively,

"This advance towards G.o.d which you find so obscure and so slow is, on the contrary, so luminous and so rapid that it astonishes me, only as you yourself do not move, you do not take account of the swiftness with which you are borne along.

"Before long you will be ripe, and then without need to shake the tree you will fall off of yourself. The question we have now to answer is into what receptacle we must put you, when at last you fall away from your life."

CHAPTER VII.

"But ... but ..." thought Durtal, "we must at any rate come to an understanding; the abbe wearies me with his quiet a.s.sumptions, his receptacle in which he must place me. He does not, I suppose, think of making me a seminarist or a monk; the seminary, at my age, is devoid of interest, and as to the convent, it is attractive from the mystical point of view, and even enticing from the artistic standpoint, but I have not the physical apt.i.tudes, still less the spiritual predispositions to shut myself up for ever in a cloister; but putting that aside, what does he mean?

"On the other hand he has insisted on lending me the works of Saint John of the Cross, and has made me read them; he has then an aim, for he is not a man to feel his way as he walks, he knows what he wishes and where he is going; does he imagine that I am intended for the perfect life, and does he intend to put me on my guard by this course of reading against the disillusions which, according to him, beginners experience?

His scent seems to fail him there. I have a very horror of bigotry, and pious polish, but though I admire, I do not feel at all drawn towards the phenomena of Mysticism. No, I am interested in seeing them in others, I like to see it all from my window, but will not go downstairs, I have no pretension to become a saint, all that I desire is to attain the intermediate state, between goody-goodiness and sanct.i.ty. This is a frightfully low ideal, perhaps, but in practice it is the only one I am capable of attaining, and yet!

"Then these questions have to be faced! If I am mistaken and am obeying false impulses, I am, as I advance, on the verge of madness. How, except by a special grace, am I to know whether I am in the right way, or walking in the dark towards the abyss? Here, for instance, are those conversations between G.o.d and the soul so common in the mystical life; how can one be sure that this interior voice, these distinct words not heard with bodily ears, but perceived by the soul in a clearer fas.h.i.+on than if they came by the channels of sense, are true, how be sure that they emanate from G.o.d, not from our imagination or from the devil himself?

"I know, indeed, that Saint Teresa treats this matter at length in her 'Castles of the Soul,' and that she points out the signs by which we can recognize the origin of the words, but her proofs do not seem to me always as easy to discern as she thinks.

"'If these expressions come from G.o.d,' she says, 'they are always accompanied by an effect, and bring with them an authority which nothing can resist; thus a soul is in affliction, and the Lord simply suggests the words "trouble not thyself," and at once the whirlwind pa.s.ses, and joy revives. In the second place, these words leave an indissoluble peace of mind, they engrave themselves on the memory, and often cannot be effaced.'

"'In the other case,' she continues, 'if these words proceed from imagination or from the demon, none of these effects are produced, a kind of uneasiness, anguish and doubt torments you, moreover the expressions evaporate in part, and fatigue the soul which endeavours in vain to recall them in their entirety.'

"In spite of these tokens, we are, in fact, standing on s.h.i.+fting ground in which we may sink at every step, but in his turn Saint John of the Cross intervenes, and tells you not to move. What then is to be done?

"'No one,' he says, 'ought to aspire to these supernatural communications and rest there, for two motives; first, humility, the perfect abnegation of refusing to believe in them; the second, that in acting thus, we deliver ourselves from the labour necessary to a.s.sure ourselves whether these vocal visions are true or false, and so we are dispensed from an examination which has no other profit for the soul than loss of time and anxiety.'

"Good--but if these words are really p.r.o.nounced by G.o.d, we rebel against His will if we remain deaf to them. And then, as Saint Teresa declares, it is not in our power not to listen to them, and the soul can only think of what it hears when Jesus speaks to it. Moreover, all the discussions on this subject are uncertain, for one does not enter of one's own will into the strait way, as the Church calls it, we are led, and even thrown into it often against the will, and resistance is impossible, phenomena occur, and nothing in the world has power to check them; witness Saint Teresa, who, resist as she would by humility, fell into ecstasy under the divine breath, and was raised from the ground.

"No, these superhuman conditions alarm me, and I do not hold to knowing them by experience. As to Saint John of the Cross, the abbe is not wrong in calling him unique, but though he sounds the lowest strata of the soul, and reaches where human auger has never penetrated, he wearies me all the same in my admiration, for his work is full of nightmares which repel me; I am not certain that his h.e.l.l is correct, and some of his a.s.sertions do not convince me. What he calls the 'night obscure' is incomprehensible; 'The sufferings of that darkness surpa.s.s what is possible,' he cries on each page. Here I lose foothold. I can imagine, though I have not experienced them, the moral and terrible pangs, of the deaths of friends and relations, love betrayed, hopes which failed, spiritual sorrows of all kinds, but such a martyrdom as he proclaims as superior to all others, is beyond me, for it is outside our human interests, beyond our affections; he moves in an inaccessible sphere, in an unknown world very far off.

"I am certainly afraid that this terrible saint, a true man of the south, abuses metaphor, and is full of Spanish affectation.

"Moreover I am astonished at the abbe on another point. He, who is so gentle, shows a certain leaning to the dry bread of Mysticism; the effusions of Ruysbrock, of Saint Angela, of Saint Catherine of Genoa, touch him less than the arguments of saints who are hard reasoners; yet by the side of these he has advised me to read Marie d'Agreda, whom he ought not to fancy, for she has none of those qualities which are admired in the works of Saint Teresa and Saint John of the Cross.

"Ah! he may flatter himself that he has inflicted on me a complete disillusion, by lending me her 'Cite Mystique.'

"From the renown of this Spanish woman, I expected the breath of prophecy, wide outlooks, extraordinary visions. Not at all; her book is simply strange and pompous, wearisome and cold. Then the phraseology of her book is intolerable. All the expressions which swarm in those ponderous volumes, 'my divine princess,' 'my great queen,' when she addresses Our Lady, who in her turn speaks to her as 'my dearest,' just as Christ calls her 'my spouse,' 'my well-beloved,' and speaks of her continually as 'the object of my pleasure and delight,' the way in which she speaks of the angels as 'the courtiers of the great King,' set my nerves on edge and weary me.

"They smell of perriwigs and ruffles, bows and dances like Versailles, a sort of court mysticism in which Christ pontificates, attired in the costume of Louis XIV.

"Moreover Marie d'Agreda enters into most extravagant details. She tells us of the milk of Our Lady which cannot grow sour, of female complaints from which she was exempt, she explains the mystery of the conception by three drops of blood which fell from the heart into the womb of Mary, and which the Holy Ghost used to form the child; lastly, she declares that Saint Michael and Saint Gabriel played the part of midwives, and stood living, under human forms, at the lying-in of the Virgin.

"This is too strong. I know well that the abbe would say that we need not concern ourselves with these singularities and these errors, but that the 'Cite Mystique' is to be read in relation to the inner life of the Blessed Virgin. Yes, but then the book of M. Ollier, which treats of the same subject, seems to me curious and trustworthy in quite a different way."

Was the priest forcing the note, playing a part? Durtal asked himself this, when he saw how determined he was not to avoid the same questions during a certain time. He tried now and then, in order to see how the matter was, to turn the conversation, but the abbe smiled, and brought it back to the point he wished.

When he thought that he had saturated Durtal with mystical works, he spoke of them less, and seemed to attach himself mainly to the religious Orders, and especially to that of Saint Benedict. He very cleverly induced Durtal to become interested in this inst.i.tution, and to ask him about it, and when once he had entered on this ground, he did not depart from it.

It began one day when Durtal was talking with him about plain chant.

"You have reason to like it," said the abbe, "for even independently of the liturgy and of art, this chant, if I may believe Saint Justin, appeases the desires and concupiscences of the flesh, 'affectiones et concupiscentias carnis sedat,' but let me a.s.sure you, you only know it by hearsay, there is no longer any true plain chant in the churches, these are like the products of therapeutics, only more or less audacious adulterations presented to you.

"None of the chants which are to some extent respected by choirs, the 'Tantum ergo,' for example, are now exact. It is given almost faithfully till the verse 'Praestet fides,' and then it runs off the rails, taking no account of the shades, which are, however, quite perceptible, that the Gregorian melody introduces when the text declares the impotence of reason and the powerful aid of Faith; these adulterations are still more apparent, if you listen to the 'Salve Regina' after Compline. This is abridged more than half, is enervated, blanched, half its pauses are taken away, it is reduced to a mere stump of ign.o.ble music, if you had even heard this magnificent chant among the Trappists, you would weep with disgust at hearing it bawled in the churches at Paris.

"But besides the textual alteration of the melody as we now have it, the way in which the plain chant is bellowed is everywhere absurd. One of the first conditions for rendering it well, is that the voices should go together, that they should all chant in the same time syllable for syllable and note for note, in one word it must be in unison.

"Now, you can verify it yourself, the Gregorian melody is not thus treated; every voice takes its own part, and is isolated. Next, plain music allows no accompaniment, it must be chanted alone, without organ, it bears at most that the instrument should give the intonation and accompany it very softly, just enough if need be to sustain the pitch taken by the voices; it is not so that you will hear it given in the churches."

"Yes, I know it well," said Durtal. "When I hear it at St. Sulpice, St.

Severin, or Notre Dame des Victoires, I am aware that it is sophisticated, but you must admit that it is even then superb. I do not defend the tricks, the addition of fiorituri, the falseness of the musical pauses, the felonious accompaniment, the concert-room tone inflicted on you at Saint Sulpice, but what can I do? in default of the original I must be content with a more or less worthless copy, and I repeat, even executed in that fas.h.i.+on the music is so admirable that I am enchanted by it."

"But," said the abbe quietly, "nothing obliges you to listen to the false plain chant, when you can hear the true, for saving your presence, there exists, even in Paris, a chapel where it is intact, and given according to the rules of which I have spoken."

"Indeed, and where is that?"

"At the Benedictine nuns of the Blessed Sacrament in the Rue Monsieur."

"And can anyone enter the convent and be present at the offices?"