En Route Part 5

There ended all he knew about him. "He is evidently a very good priest,"

repeated Durtal; "his physiognomy declares it, and his mouth and eyes contradict each other; his eyes certainly declare his entire goodness, his lips, somewhat thick, purple and always moist, have on them an affectionate but somewhat sad smile, and to this his blue eyes give the lie--blue, childlike eyes which laugh out astonished under white eyebrows in a rather red face, touched on the cheeks like a ripe apricot, with little points of blood.

"In any case," said Durtal, waking from his meditations, "I am very wrong not to continue the relations into which I have entered with him.

"Yes, but then nothing is so difficult as to become really intimate with a priest; first by the very education he receives at the seminary the ecclesiastic thinks himself obliged to disperse his affections and not concentrate himself on particular friends.h.i.+ps; then, like a doctor, he is a man hara.s.sed with business, who is never to be found. You can catch them now and then between two confessions or two sick calls. Nor even then are you quite certain that the eager welcome of the priest rings true, for he is just the same to all who come to him, and indeed, since I do not call on the Abbe Gevresin for his help or advice, I am afraid of being in his way, and of taking up his time, hence I am acting with discretion in not going to see him.

"Yet I am sorry; suppose I write, or go to him one morning, but what have I to say to him? I ought to know what I want before I allow myself to trouble him. If I go only to complain, he will answer I am wrong not to be a communicant, and I have nothing to answer. No: the better plan is to meet him as by chance, on the quays, where no doubt he sometimes looks over the book-stalls, or at Tocane's, for then I can talk to him more intimately, at least less officially, about my vacillations and regrets."

So Durtal searched the quays, and never once met the abbe. He went to the bookseller's, and pretended to look over his stock, but as soon as he p.r.o.nounced the name Gevresin, Tocane exclaimed, "I have heard nothing of him, he has not been here for the last two months."

"I will not turn back, but just disturb him in his own house," said Durtal, "but he will wonder why I came back after so long an absence.

Besides the awkwardness I feel in calling on people whom I have neglected, I am also troubled by thinking the abbe may suspect some interested object in my visit. That is not convenient; if I had but a good pretext; there is certainly that life of Lidwine which interests him, I might consult him on various points. Yes, but which? I have not concerned myself with that saint for a long time, and must read over again the meagre old books on her biography. After all, it will be simpler and better to be frank, and say, 'This is why I have come; I want to ask advice, which I have not determined to follow, but I have so much need of speaking, of giving the reins to my soul, that I beg you to be so kind as to lose an hour for my sake.'

"He will do it certainly and willingly.

"Then that is agreed on; suppose I go to-morrow?" But he checked himself at once. "There was nothing pressing; there was plenty of time; better take time and think; ah, yes, here is Christmas close upon us, I cannot decently trouble a priest who has his penitents to confess, for there are many communicants on that day. Let him get his hard work over, and then we will see."

He was at first pleased at having invented that excuse, then he had to admit in his heart that, after all, there was not much in it, for there was nothing to show that this priest, who was not attached to a parish, was busy in hearing confessions.

It was hardly probable, but he tried to convince himself that it might be so after all, and his hesitation began again. Angry at last with the discussion, he adopted a middle course. For greater certainty, he would not call on the abbe till after Christmas, but he would not be later than a given time; he took an almanack, and swore to keep his promise--three days after that feast.

CHAPTER IV.

Oh! that midnight ma.s.s! He had had the unfortunate idea of going to it at Christmas. He went to St. Severin, and found a young ladies' day school installed there, instead of the choir, who, with sharp voices like needles, knitted the worn-out skeins of the canticles. He had fled to St. Sulpice, and plunged into a crowd which walked and talked as if in the open air; had heard there choral-society marches, tea-garden waltzes, firework tunes, and had come away in a rage.

It had seemed to him superfluous to try St. Germain-des-Pres, for he held that church in horror. Besides the weariness inspired by its heavy, ill-restored sh.e.l.l, and the miserable paintings with which Flandrin loaded it, the clergy there were specially, almost alarmingly, ugly, and the choir was truly infamous. They were like a set of bad cooks, boys who spat vinegar, and elderly choir-men, who cooked in the furnace of their throats a sort of vocal broth, a thin gruel of sound.

Nor did he think of taking refuge in St. Thomas Aquinas, where he dreaded the barking and the choruses; there was indeed St. Clotilde, where the psalmody, at least, is upright, and has not, like that of St.

Thomas, lost all shame. He went there, but again encountered dance music and profane tunes, a worldly orgie.

At last he went to bed in a rage, saying to himself, "In Paris, at any rate, a singular baptism of music is reserved for the New-Born."

Next day, when he woke, he felt he had no courage to face the churches; the sacrileges of last night would, he thought, continue; and as the weather was almost fine, he went out, wandered in the Luxembourg, gained the square of the Observatoire, and the Boulevard de Port Royal, and mechanically made his way along the interminable Rue de la Sante.

He knew that street of old, and had taken melancholy walks in it, attracted by its poor houses, like those of a provincial town; then it was fit for a dreamer, for it was bounded on the right by the Prison de la Sante and Sainte Anne's madhouse, and on the left by convents. Light and air circulated in the street, but, behind it, all was black; it was a kind of prison corridor, with cells on either side, where some were condemned to temporary sentences, and others, of their own free will, suffered lasting sorrows.

"I can imagine," thought Durtal, "how it would have been painted by an Early Flemish master; the long street paved by patient pencils, the stories open from top to bottom, and the cupboards the same; and on one side ma.s.sive cells with iron bedsteads, a stoneware jug; little peepholes in the doors secured by strong bolts, inside, scoundrels and thieves, gnas.h.i.+ng their teeth, turning round and round, their hair on end, howling like caged animals; on the other side little rooms, furnished with a pallet-bed, a stoneware jug, a crucifix, these also closed by doors iron-banded, and within nuns or monks, kneeling on the flags, their faces clean cut against the light of a halo, their eyes lifted to heaven, their hands joined, raised from the ground in ecstasy, a pot of lilies at their side."

Then at the back of the canvas, between these two rows of houses, rises a great avenue, at the end of which in a dappled sky sits G.o.d the Father with Christ on His right, choirs of Seraphim playing on guitar and viol; G.o.d the Father immovable under his lofty tiara, His breast covered by His long beard, holds scales which balance exactly, the holy captives expiating precisely by their penances and prayers the blasphemies of the rascals and the insane.

"It must be admitted," thought Durtal, "that this street is very peculiar, that there is probably none like it in Paris, for it unites in its course virtues and vices, which in other quarters, in spite of the efforts of the Church, trend apart as far as possible from each other."

Thus thinking he had come as far as St. Anne's, where the street grows lighter and the houses are lower, with only one or two stories, then, gradually, there is greater s.p.a.ce between them, and they are only joined to each other by blank ends of walls.

"At any rate," thought Durtal, "if this street has no distinction, it is very private; here at least one need not admire the impertinent decoration of those modern shops which expose in their windows as precious commodities, chosen piles of firewood, and in gla.s.s sweetmeat jars, coal drops and c.o.ke lollipops."

And here is an odd lane, and he looked at an alley which led down a sharp decline into a main street, where was to be seen the tricolor flag in zinc on a washhouse; he read the name: Rue de l'Ebre.

He entered it, it was but a few yards long; the whole of one side was occupied by a wall, behind which were half seen some stunted buildings, surmounted by a bell. An entrance-gate with a square wicket was placed in the wall, which was raised higher as it sloped downwards, and at the end was pierced by round windows, and rose into a little building, surmounted by a clock-tower so low that its point did not even reach the height of the two-storied house opposite.

On the other side three hovels sloped down, closely packed together; zinc pipes ran everywhere, growing like vines, ramifying like the stalks of a hollow vine along the walls, windows gaped on rusty leaden hinges.

Dim courts of wretched hovels could be seen; in one was a shed where some cows were reposing; in two others were coach-houses for wheel-chairs, and a rack behind the bars of which appeared the capsuled necks of bottles.

"But this must be a church," thought Durtal, looking at the little clock tower, and the three or four round bays, which seemed cut out in emery paper to look like the black rough mortar of the wall; "where is the entrance?"

He found it on turning out of the alley into the Rue de la Glaciere. A tiny porch gave access to the building.

He opened the door, and entered a large room, a sort of closed shed, painted yellow, with a flat ceiling, with small iron beams coloured grey, picked out with blue, and ornamented with gas-jets like a wine shop. At the end was a marble altar, six lighted tapers, and gilt ornaments, candelabra full of tapers, and under the tabernacle, a very small monstrance, which sparkled in the light of the tapers.

It was almost dark, the panes of the windows having been crudely daubed with bands of indigo and yellowish green; it was freezing, the stove was not alight, and the church, paved like a kitchen floor, had no matting or carpet.

Durtal wrapped himself up as best he could and sat down. His eyes gradually grew accustomed to the obscurity of the room, and what he saw was strange; in front of the choir on rows of chairs were seated human forms, drowned in floods of white muslin. No one stirred.

Suddenly there entered by a side door a nun equally wrapped from head to foot in a large veil. She pa.s.sed along the altar, stopped in the middle, threw herself on the ground, kissed the floor, and by a sudden effort, without helping herself by her arms, stood upright, advanced silently into the church, and brushed by Durtal, who saw under the muslin a magnificent robe of creamy white, an ivory cross at her neck, at her girdle a white cord and beads.

She went to the entrance-door, and there ascended a little staircase into a gallery which commanded the church.

He asked himself what could be this Order so sumptuously arrayed, in this miserable chapel, in such a district?

Little by little the room filled, choir-boys in red with capes trimmed with rabbit's skin lighted the candelabra, went out, and ushered in a priest, vested in a grand cope, with large flowers, a priest tall and young, who sat down, and in a sonorous tone chanted the first antiphon of vespers.

Suddenly Durtal turned round. In the gallery an harmonium accompanied the responses of voices never to be forgotten. It was not a woman's voice, but one having in it something of a child's voice, sweetened, purified, sharpened, and something of a man's, but less harsh, finer and more sustained, an uns.e.xed voice, filtered through litanies, bolted by prayers, pa.s.sed through the sieves of adoration and tears.

The priest, still sitting, chanted the first verse of the unchanging psalm, "Dixit Dominus Domino meo."

And Durtal saw in the air, in the gallery, tall white statues, holding black books in their hands, chanting slowly with eyes raised to heaven.

A lamp cast its light on one of these figures, which for a second leant forward a little, and he saw under the lifted veil a face attentive and sorrowful, and very pale.

The verses of the vesper psalms were now sung alternately, by the nuns above and by the congregation below. The chapel was almost full; a school of girls in white veils filled one side; little girls of the middle-cla.s.s, poorly dressed brats who played with their dolls occupied the other. There were a few poor women in _sabots_, and no men.

The atmosphere became extraordinary. The warmth of the souls thawed the ice of the room; here were not the vespers of the rich, such as were celebrated on Sundays at St. Sulpice, but the vespers of the poor, domestic vespers, in the plain chant of the country side, followed by the faithful with mighty fervour in silent and singular devotion.

Durtal could fancy himself transported beyond the city, to the depths of some village cloister; he felt himself softened, his soul rocked by the monotonous amplitude of these chants, only recognizing the end of the psalms by the return of the doxology, the "Gloria Patri et Filio," which separated them from each other.

He had a real impulse, a dim need of praying to the Unknowable, penetrated to the very marrow by this environment of aspiration, it seemed to him that he thawed a little, and took a far-off part in the united tenderness of these bright spirits. He sought for a prayer, and recalled what St. Paphnutius taught Thais, when he cried, "Thou art not worthy to name the name of G.o.d, thou wilt pray only thus: 'Qui plasmasti me miserere mei;' Thou who hast formed me have mercy on me." He stammered out the humble phrase, prayed not out of love or of contrition, but out of disgust with himself, unable to let himself go, regretting that he could not love. Then he thought of saying the Lord's Prayer, but stopped at the notion that this is the hardest of all prayers to p.r.o.nounce, when the phrases are weighed in the balance. For in it we declare to G.o.d that we forgive our neighbours' trespa.s.ses. Now how many who use these words forgive others? How many Catholics do not lie when they tell the All-knowing that they hate no one?

He was roused from these reflections by sudden silence; vespers were over. Then the organ played again, and all the voices of the nuns joined, those in the choir below and in the gallery above, singing the old carol "Unto us a child is born."

He listened, moved by the simplicity of the strain, and suddenly, in a minute, brutally, without understanding why, infamous thoughts filled his mind.

He resisted in disgust, wished to repulse the a.s.sault of these shameful feelings, and they were persistent. He seemed to see before him a woman whose perverse ways had long maddened him.

All at once this hallucination ceased; his eye was mechanically attracted towards the priest, who was looking at him, while speaking in a low voice to a beadle.