En Route Part 19

"We will leave him behind, then. Now let us see. Saint Catherine of Genoa? Her discussions between the soul, the body, and self-love are unmeaning and confused, and when in her 'Dialogues,' she treats of the operations of the interior life, she is greatly below Saint Teresa and Saint Angela. On the other hand her Treatise on Purgatory is clear. It declares that she alone has penetrated into the s.p.a.ces of unknown sorrows, and that she has disentangled and taken hold of the joys; she has in fact succeeded in reconciling two contraries which seemed eternally repugnant; the suffering of the soul in its purification from sin, and the joy of the same soul, which at the very moment it is enduring frightful torment experiences immense happiness, for little by little it draws near to G.o.d, and feels His rays attract it more and more, and His love inundate it with such excess, that it would seem the Saviour desires nought but only it.

"Saint Catherine sets forth also that Jesus forbids heaven to none, that it is the soul herself who, deeming herself unworthy to attain it, flings herself by her own motion into Purgatory there to cleanse herself, for she has only one end, to re-establish herself in her primitive purity, only one desire, to attain her last end, by destroying herself, annihilating herself, losing herself in G.o.d.

"This is a conclusive study," murmured Durtal, "but not that which would lead to La Trappe. We must try again."

He touched other volumes in the book-cases.

"Here, for instance, is one which obviously I should use," he went on, as he took down the "Seraphic Theology" of Saint Bonaventure, "for he condenses the means of self-examination, of meditation for communion, of thoughts on death, then in these 'Selections' is a treatise on the Contempt of the World, whose terse phrases are admirable; it is the true essence of the Holy Spirit, a jelly of unction firm set--we will put that on one side.

"I shall hardly find a better help to remedy the probable weariness of solitude," murmured Durtal, turning over new ranks of volumes. He looked at the t.i.tles. "The Life of the Blessed Virgin," by M. Olier.

He hesitated, saying to himself, "Under a style which is like water with scarcely the chill off, there are some interesting observations, some tasteful comments. M. Olier has in a way traversed the mysterious territory of hidden designs, and has there discovered the unimaginable truths which the Lord is sometimes pleased to reveal to His saints. He has made himself the liege-man of Our Lady, and living near her has made himself also the herald of her attributes, the legate of her graces. His Life of Mary is certainly the only one which seems really inspired and is possible to read. Where the abbess of Agreda wanders, he alone remains vigorous and clear. He shows us the Virgin existing from all eternity in G.o.d, conceiving without ceasing to be immaculate, like the crystal which receives and reflects the rays of the sun, yet loses nothing of its l.u.s.tre, and indeed s.h.i.+nes with greater brightness, bringing forth without pain, but suffering at the death of her Son the pangs she would have borne at His birth. Then he gives us learned dissertations on Her whom he calls the Treasure-house of all good, the Mediatrix of love and impetration. Yes, but to converse with Her nothing is so good as the 'Officium parvum beatae Virginis,' and that," concluded Durtal, "I will put in my bag with my Prayer-book; we will not disturb M. Olier's volume."

"My stock begins to give out," he continued. "Angela of Foligno?

Certainly she is a brasier at which one may warm one's soul. I will take her with me. What more--Tauler's Sermons? I am tempted to do so, for never has any treated better than this monk the most abstruse subjects with a more perfectly lucid mind. By aid of familiar images, humble a.n.a.logies, he has rendered accessible the highest speculations of Mysticism. He is homely and deep, then he borrows a little from quietism, and, perhaps, it will be no bad thing to absorb, down there, a few drops of that mixture. Yet on the whole, no; I have rather need of nerve tonics. As to Suso, he is a remedy far inferior to Saint Bonaventure, or Saint Angela. I put aside also Saint Bridget of Sweden, for in her conversations with heaven she seems aided by a G.o.d morose and tired, who reveals to her nothing unexpected, nothing new.

"There is also Saint Magdalen of Pazzi, that voluble Carmelite whose work is a series of apostrophes. An exclamatory person, clever at a.n.a.logies, expert in coincidences, a saint infatuated with metaphors and hyperboles. She talks directly with G.o.d the Father, and stammers out in ecstasy explanations of the mysteries revealed to her by the Ancient of days. Her books contain one sovereign page on the Circ.u.mcision, another magnificent one, entirely made up of ant.i.theses, on the Holy Spirit, others, very strange, on the deification of the human soul, on its union with heaven, and on the part a.s.signed in this operation to the wounds of the Word.

"These are inhabited nests; the eagle which is the symbol of Faith resides in the eyrie of the left foot; in the hole of the right foot resides the melancholy sweetness of the turtle-doves; in the wound of the left hand the dove ensconces herself, the symbol of surrender, and in the cavity of the right hand reposes the pelican, the emblem of love.

"These birds leave their nests and come to seek the soul that they may lead it to the nuptial chamber of the wound which bleeds in the side of Christ.

"Was it not also that Carmelite nun who, ravished by the power of grace, despised so greatly the cert.i.tude acquired by the way of the senses, as to say to the Lord: 'If I saw Thee with mine eyes, I should have Faith no more, because Faith ceases where evidence comes in'?

"All things considered," he said; "Magdalen of Pazzi, with her dialogues and contemplations, opens eloquent horizons, but the soul, snared in the bird-lime of its sins, cannot follow her. No; this saint cannot rea.s.sure me in the cloister.

"Ah!" he went on, shaking the dust from a volume in a grey cover; "ah!

it is true I have The Precious Blood, of Father Faber." And he began to dream as he turned over its pages where he stood.

He remembered the impression, till now forgotten, produced on him when he read it. The work of this Oratorian was at least strange. The pages boiled over, ran forth tumultuously, carrying with them grandiose visions, such as Hugo conceived, developing historical perspectives such as Michelet loved to paint. In this volume was seen advancing the solemn procession of the Precious Blood, starting from the confines of humanity, from the origin of the ages, and it broke the bounds of the worlds, overwhelmed the nations, submerged history.

Father Faber was less a mystic, properly so-called, than a visionary and a poet; in spite of the abuse of rhetoric transferred from the pulpit to a book, he tore up souls by roots, carried them away on the rush of the stream, but when one regained footing, and sought to remember what had been heard and seen, one could recall nothing; on reflection one recognized that the theme of the work was very thin, too slender to have been executed by so noisy an orchestra, and there remained of that reading something distracting and feverish which made you uneasy, and made you think that this kind of book had only very distant relation to the heavenly fulness of the great mystics.

"No, not that," thought Durtal. "Now what have we selected? I keep the little collection of Ruysbrock, the Life of Angela of Foligno, and Saint Bonaventure, and the best of all for my state of soul," he said, striking his forehead. He went back to his book-case, and seized a little book, which lay alone in a corner.

He sat down, and turned it over, saying, "Here is the tonic, the stimulant in weakness, the strychnine for failure of Faith, the goad which drives you in tears to the feet of Christ, the 'Dolorous Pa.s.sion'

of Sister Emmerich."

She was no chemist of the spiritual being, like Saint Teresa; she had nothing to do with our interior life; in her book she forgot herself, and left us on one side, for she saw only Jesus crucified, and wished only to show the stages of His agony, and to leave marked on her pages, as on the veil of Veronica, the imprint of the Holy Face.

Though she was of our time, for Catherine Emmerich died in 1824, this great work dates from the Middle Ages. It is a picture which seems to belong to the early schools of Franconia and Swabia. This woman was the sister of the Zeitbloms and the Grunewalds, she had their clear visions, their vivid colouring, their wild scent; but she seemed to bring back also, by her care for exact detail, by her precise indication of places, the old Flemish Masters, Roger Van der Weyden and Bouts; she united in herself two currents, springing one from Germany, the other from Flanders, and this painting brushed in with blood, and varnished with tears, was transposed by her into a prose style which has no relation to any known literature, of which we can only find by a.n.a.logy the ancestry in the panels of the fifteenth century.

Moreover, she was quite illiterate, had never read a book, nor seen a painting; she told quite plainly what she saw in her ecstasies.

The pictures of the Pa.s.sion unfolded themselves before her while she was bed-ridden, crushed by suffering, bleeding from the wounds of her stigmata; she mourned and wept, brought to nothingness by love and pity, before the torments of Christ.

According to her words, which a scribe took down, Calvary rose, and the whole rascaldom of the soldiers rushed at the Saviour and spat on Him; frightful episodes took place where Jesus, chained to a pillar, twisting like a worm, under the lashes of the scourgers, then falling, looking with His failing eyes, at the fallen women who held Him by the hand, and turned away in disgust from His lacerated body, from His face covered with threads of blood as with a red net.

Then slowly, patiently, only stopping to sob, and cry for mercy, she described the soldiers tearing away the stuff which had stuck to the wounds, the Virgin weeping; her face livid and her lips blue, she related the agony of His bearing His Cross, how He fell on His knees, grew weaker and more worn when death came.

It was a frightful spectacle, told in its every particular, forming a sublime and frightful whole. The Redeemer was extended on a cross laid on the ground, one of the executioners placed a knee against His side, while another spread His fingers abroad, and a third hammered in a flat-headed nail as broad as a crown, and so long that the point came out behind the wood. And when the right hand was riveted the torturers saw that the left would not reach to the place they intended to pierce, therefore they attached a rope to the arm, pulled it with all their force, dislocated the shoulder, and the cries of the Saviour were heard above the blows of the hammer, His breast was seen heaving, while His body was anguished and furrowed by terrible shuddering.

The same scene was repeated to fix His feet. They also did not reach the place which the executioners had marked. The body had to be tied and the arms bound so as not to tear the hands from the wood, and then it was necessary to hang on the legs so as to lengthen them as far as the bracket on which they were to rest; all at once the entire body yielded, the ribs moved under the skin; the shock was so fearful, that the executioners believed that the bones would start, and burst the flesh, wherefore they made haste to rest the left foot on the right, but their difficulties began again, the feet turned over, and it was necessary to bore them with an auger to fasten them.

This continued till Jesus died, when Sister Emmerich fainted from terror, her stigmata bled afresh, and her wounded head rained blood.

In this book the whole pack of Jewish hounds was seen in full cry, the imprecations and shouts of the crowd were heard, the Virgin was shown trembling with fever, the Magdalen, beyond herself, was terrible by her cries, and towering above this lamentable group, Christ appeared, pale and swollen, His legs entangled in His robe, when He mounted to Golgotha clenching His broken nails on the cross as it slipped from His grasp.

This extraordinary visionary, Catherine Emmerich, also described the surroundings of these scenes, the landscapes of Judaea, which she had never visited, but have since been recognized as exact; without knowing it, without willing it, this illiterate woman became an unique and powerful artist.

"Wonderful visionary, wonderful painter," cried Durtal, "and also wonderful saint," he added, running over the life of this nun, placed as a preface to the book.

She was born in 1774, in the diocese of Munster, the child of poor peasants. From her infancy she had conversations with the Virgin, and possessed the gift which also was given to Saint Sibylline of Pavia, Ida of Louvain, and more recently to Louise Lateau, of discerning, when she looked at, or touched them, objects which had been blessed from those which had not. She entered, as a novice, the Augustinian convent at Dulmen, made her profession when she was twenty-nine; her health failed and incessant pain tortured her, which she increased, for, like Blessed Lidwine, she obtained from Heaven permission to suffer for others, and succour the sick by taking their maladies. In 1811, under the government of Jerome Bonaparte, King of Westphalia, the convent was suppressed and the nuns dispersed. Infirm and penniless, she was carried to a room in an inn where she had to bear every sort of curiosity and insult. Christ added to her martyrdom in giving her the stigmata for which she asked; she could neither rise, nor walk, nor sit, could take no food but the juice of a cherry, but she was transported by long ecstasies. In these she visited Palestine, following the Saviour step by step, dictated with groans this fond book, then said with her death-rattle, "Let me die in shame with Jesus on the Cross," and died overwhelmed with joy, thanking Heaven for the life of suffering she had endured.

"Ah, yes; I will take the 'Dolorous Pa.s.sion!'" cried Durtal to himself.

"Take the Gospels also," said the abbe, who came in meanwhile; "they are the heavenly phials from which you will draw the oil you need to dress your wounds."

"It will be equally useful, and truly in accordance with the atmosphere of La Trappe, to be able to read in the abbey itself the works of Saint Bernard, but they consist of unmanageable folios, and the abridgments and extracts in volumes of a more convenient form are so ill-chosen, that I have never had the courage to buy them."

"They have Saint Bernard at La Trappe, and will lend you the volumes if you ask them; but where are you from the spiritual point of view? How are you getting on?"

"I am melancholy, badly prepared and resigned. I cannot tell if weariness has come from my turning always on the same round, like a circus horse, but at this moment I am not suffering. I am persuaded that this change of place is necessary, and that it would be useless to hesitate. All the same," he said, after a silence, "it is very odd that I am going to imprison myself in a monastery, and in truth, in spite of myself, that astonishes me."

"I will admit," said the abbe, laughing, "that when I first met you at Tocane's, I never thought I was pointed out to direct you to a monastery; ah, you see I must evidently belong to that category of people whom I may call mere bridges, involuntary brokers of souls who are imposed on you for a certain end which you do not suspect, and of which even themselves are ignorant."

"Rather, if any one were a mere bridge in this matter," answered Durtal, "it was Tocane, for it was he who brought us together, and we kick him away as soon as he has finished his unconscious task; it was evidently designed that we should know each other."

"That is true," said the abbe, with a smile; "now I do not suppose I shall see you again before you start, for I go to-morrow to Macon, where I shall stay five days, time to see my nephews and to sign some law papers: at any rate keep up your courage, and do not forget to send me news of yourself. Write to me without much delay, that I may find your letter when I return to Paris."

And as Durtal thanked him for his constant kindness, he took his hand and held it in his own.

"Say nothing about that," he said; "you have only to thank Him, whose fatherly impatience has broken the obstinate slumber of your Faith; you owe thanks to G.o.d only.

"Thank Him in getting rid of your nature as soon as possible, and leaving the house of your conscience empty for Him. The more you die to yourself the better will He live in you. Prayer is the most powerful ascetic means by which you can renounce yourself, empty yourself and render yourself humble in this matter; pray therefore without ceasing at La Trappe. Implore our Lady especially, for like myrrh which consumes the proud flesh of wounds, she heals the ulcers of the soul; I on my side will pray for you as best I can; you can thus in your weakness lean, so as not to fall, on that firm and protecting pillar of prayer of which Saint Teresa speaks. Once again, a safe journey to you; we shall meet soon again, my son, good-bye."

Durtal remained much disturbed. "It is most tiresome," he thought, "that this priest is leaving Paris before me, for indeed if I have need of spiritual help or counsel, to whom shall I go? It is clearly written that I must end as I have begun, alone, but ... but ... solitude under these conditions is alarming. I am no spoilt child, whatever the abbe may say."

Next morning Durtal awoke ill; furious neuralgia bored his temples like a gimlet; he tried to stop it with antipyrine, but this medicine in a large dose put his stomach out of order without abating the strokes of the machine which penetrated his skull. He wandered about his rooms, changing from one seat to another, coiling himself up in an arm-chair, getting up to lie down again, jumping from his bed in fits of sickness, upsetting his furniture from time to time.

He could a.s.sign no precise cause for this attack; he had slept his fill, and had not exceeded in any way the night before.

He thought, with his head in his hands, "There are still two days counting to-day before I leave Paris, and very fit I am for it! I shall not be in a state to travel by train, and if I travel, the food at La Trappe will finish me."

He had a minute's comfort from the idea that through no fault of his own he might perhaps avoid his painful duty, and remain at home; but the reaction was immediate; he understood that if he did not go, he was lost; the vacillation of his soul had become chronic, the crisis of disgust of self, the acute regret of an effort consented to with pain, and suddenly missed, the certainty that it would only be postponed for a time, that he would have to pa.s.s again through alternations of revolt and terror, and begin again to fight with himself for conviction.

"Admitting that I am not in a state to travel, I have always the resource of making my confession to the abbe when he returns, and of communicating in Paris," he thought, but he shook his head, saying to himself once more that he felt and knew that was not his duty. "But then," he said to G.o.d: "since Thou dost implant this idea in me so violently that I cannot even discuss it, in spite of its entire common sense--for after all it is not necessary to immure myself in a Trappist monastery in order to reconcile myself to Thee--then let me go!"

And he spoke to G.o.d quietly.