Priests, Women, and Families Part 14

CHAPTER III.

CONFESSION.--THE CONFESSOR AND THE HUSBAND.--HOW THEY DETACH THE WIFE.--THE DIRECTOR.--DIRECTORS a.s.sOCIATED TOGETHER.--ECCLESIASTICAL POLICY.

When I reflect on all that is contained in the words _confession_ and _direction_, those simple words, that immense power, the most complete in the world, and endeavour to a.n.a.lyse their whole meaning, I tremble with fear. I seem to be descending endless spiral stairs into the depths of a dark mine. Just now I felt contempt for the priest; now I fear him.

But we must not be afraid; we must look him in the face. Let us candidly put down in set terms the language of the confessor.

"_G.o.d hears you_, hears you through me; through me G.o.d will answer you." Such is the first word; such is the literal copy. The authority is accepted as infinite and absolute, without any bargaining as to measure.

"But you tremble, you dare not tell this terrible G.o.d your weakness and childishness; well! _tell them to your father_; a father has a right to know the secrets of his child. He is an indulgent father, who wants to know them only to absolve them. He is a sinner like yourself: has he then a right to be severe? Come, then, my child, come and tell me--what you have not dared to whisper in your mother's ear; tell it me; who will ever know?"

Then is it, amid sobs and sighs, from the choking heaving breast that the fatal word rises to the lips: it escapes, and she hides her head.

Oh! he who heard that has gained an immense advantage, and will keep it. Would to G.o.d that he did not abuse it! It was heard, remember, not by the wood and the dark oak of the confessional, but by ears of flesh and blood.

And this man now knows of this woman, what the husband has not known in all the long effusion of his heart by day and night, what even her own mother does not know, who thinks she knows her entirely, having had her so many times a naked infant upon her knees.

This man knows, and will know--don't be afraid of his forgetting it.

If the confession is in good hands, so much the better, for it is for ever. And she, she knows full well she has a master of her intimate thoughts. Never will she pa.s.s by that man without casting down her eyes.

The day when this mystery was imparted, he was very near her, she felt it. On a higher seat, he seemed to have an irresistible ascendency over her. A magnetic influence has vanquished her, for she wished not to speak, and she spoke in spite of herself. She felt herself fascinated, like the bird by the serpent.

So far, however, there is no art on the side of the priest. The force of circ.u.mstances has done everything, that of religious inst.i.tution, and that of nature. As a priest, he received her at his knees, and listened to her. Then, master of her secret, of her thoughts, the thoughts of a woman, he became man again, without, perhaps, either wis.h.i.+ng or knowing it, and laid upon her, weakened and disarmed, the heavy hand of man.

And her family now? her husband? Who will dare to a.s.sert that his position is the same as before?

Every reflecting mind knows full well that thought is the most personal part of the person. The master of a person's thoughts is he to whom the person belongs. The priest has the soul fast, as soon as he has received the dangerous pledge of the first secrets, and he will hold it faster and faster. The two husbands now take shares, for now there are two--one has the soul, the other the body.

Take notice that in this sharing, one of the two really has the whole; the other, if he gets anything, gets it by favour. Thought by its nature is prevailing and absorbing; the master of her thought, in the natural progress of his sway, will ever go on reducing the part that seemed to remain in the possession of the other. The husband may think himself well off, if a widower with respect to the soul, he still preserves the involuntary, inert, and lifeless possession.

How humiliating, to obtain nothing of what was your own, but by authorisation and indulgence;[1] to be seen, and followed into your most private intimacy, by an invisible witness, who governs you and gives you your allowance; to meet in the street a man who knows better than yourself your most secret weaknesses, who bows cringingly, turns and laughs. It is nothing to be powerful, if one is not powerful alone--alone! G.o.d does not allow shares.

It is with this reasoning that the priest is sure to comfort himself in his persevering efforts to sever this woman from her family, to weaken her kindred ties, and, particularly, to undermine the rival authority--I mean, the husband's. The husband is a heavy enc.u.mbrance to the priest. But if this husband suffers at being so well known, spied, and seen, when he is alone, he who sees all suffers still more.

She comes now every moment to tell innocently of things that transport him beyond himself. Often would he stop her, and would willingly say, "Mercy, madam, this is too much!" And though these details make him suffer the torment of the d.a.m.ned, he wants still more, and requires her to enter further and further into these avowals, both humiliating for her, and cruel for him, and to give him the detail of the saddest circ.u.mstances.

The Confessor of a young woman may boldly be termed the jealous secret enemy of the husband. If there be one exception to this rule (and I am willing to believe there may be), he is a hero, a saint, a martyr, a man more than man.

The whole business of the confessor is to insulate this woman, and he does it conscientiously. It is the duty of him who leads her in the way of salvation to disengage her gradually from all earthly ties. It requires time, patience, and skill. The question is not how these strong ties may suddenly be broken; but to discover well, first of all, of what threads each tie is composed, and to disentangle, and gnaw them away thread by thread.

And all this may easily be done by him who, awakening new scruples every day, fills a timid soul with uneasiness, about the lawfulness of her most holy affections. If any one of them be innocent, it is, after all, an earthly attachment, a robbery against G.o.d: G.o.d wants all. No more relations.h.i.+p or friends.h.i.+p; nothing must remain. "A brother?"

No, he is still a man. "But at least my sister? my mother?" "No, you must leave all--leave them intentionally, and from your soul; you shall always see them, my child; nothing will appear changed; only, close your heart." A moral solitude is thus established around. Friends go away, offended at her freezing politeness. "People are cool in this house." But why this strange reception? They cannot guess; she does not always know why herself. The thing is commanded; is it not enough?

Obedience consists in obeying without reason.

"People are cold here:" this is all that can be said. The husband finds the house larger and more empty. His wife is become quite changed: though present, her mind is absent; she acts as if unconscious of acting; she speaks, but not like herself. Everything is changed in their intimate habits, always for a good reason: "To-day is a fast day"--and to-morrow? "Is a holy-day." The husband respects this austerity; he would consider it very wrong to trouble this exalted devotion; he is sadly resigned: "This becomes embarra.s.sing," says he: "I had not foreseen it; my wife is turning saint."[2]

In this sad house there are fewer friends, yet there is a new one, and a very a.s.siduous one: the habitual confessor is now the director;[3] a great and important change.

As her confessor he received her at church, at regular hours; but as director he visits her at his own hour, sees her at her house, and occasionally at his own.

As confessor he was generally pa.s.sive, listening much, and speaking little; if he prescribed, it was in a few words; but as director he is all activity; he not only prescribes acts, but what is more important, by intimate conversation he influences her thoughts.

To the confessor she tells her sins; she owes him nothing more; but to the director everything must be told: she must speak of herself and her relations, her business and her interests. When she entrusts to that man her highest interest, that of eternal salvation, how can she help confiding to him her little temporal concerns, the marriage of her children, and the WILL she intends to make? &c., &c.

The confessor is bound to secrecy, he is silent (or ought to be). The director, however, is not so tied down. He may reveal what he knows, especially to a priest, or to another director. Let us suppose about twenty priests a.s.sembled in a house (or not quite so many, out of respect for the law against meetings), who may be, some of them the confessors, and others directors of the same persons: as directors they may mutually exchange their information, put upon a table a thousand or two thousand consciences in common, combine their relations, like so many chessmen, regulate beforehand all the movements and interests, and allot to one another the different parts they have to play to bring the whole to their purpose.

The Jesuits alone formerly worked thus in concert; but it is not the fault of the leaders of the clergy, in these days, if the whole of this body, with trembling obedience, do not play at this villanous game. By their all communicating together, their secret revelations might produce a vast mysterious science, which would arm ecclesiastical policy with a power a hundred times stronger than that of the state can possibly be.

Whatever might be wanting in the confession of the master, would easily be supplied by that of his servants and valets. The a.s.sociation of the Blandines of Lyons, imitated in Brittany, Paris, and elsewhere, would alone be sufficient to throw a light upon the whole household of every family. It is in vain they are known, they are nevertheless employed; for they are gentle and docile, serve their masters very well, and know how to see and listen.

Happy the father of a family who has so virtuous a wife, and such gentle, humble, honest, pious servants. What the ancient sighed for, namely, to live in a gla.s.s dwelling, where he might be seen by every one, this happy man enjoys without even the expression of a wish. Not a syllable of his is lost. He may speak lower and lower, but a fine ear has caught every word. If he writes down his secret thoughts, not wis.h.i.+ng to utter them, they are read:--by whom? No one knows. What he dreams upon his pillow, the next morning, to his great astonishment, he hears in the street.

[1] St. Francois de Sales, the best of them all, takes compa.s.sion on the poor husband. He removes certain scruples of the wife, &c. Even this kindness is singularly humiliating. (See ed. 1833, vol. viii. pp.

254, 312, 347, 348.) Marriage, though one of the sacraments, appears here as a suppliant on its knees before the _direction_, seems to ask pardon, and suffer penance.

[2] For the _insulated state_ of a father of a family in Catholic countries, see M. BOUVET'S _Du Catholicisme_, p. 175. (ed. 1840). An English gentleman, whose wife goes to Confession, said to me one day, "I am a lodger in my own house--I come to my meals."--ED.

[3] The name is rare in our days, but the thing is common; he who confesses for a length of time becomes director. Several persons have, at the same time, a confessor, an extraordinary confessor, and a director.

CHAPTER IV.

HABIT.--ITS POWER.--ITS INSENSIBLE BEGINNING.--ITS PROGRESS.--SECOND NATURE.--OFTEN FATAL.--A MAN MAKING THE MOST OF THE POWER OF HABIT.--CAN WE GET CLEAR OF IT?

If spiritual dominion be really of the spirit, if the empire over thought be obtained by thought itself, by a superiority of character and mind, we must give way; we have only to be resigned. Our family may protest, but it will be in vain.

But, for the most part, this is not the case. The influence we speak of by no means supposes, as an essential condition, the brilliant gifts of the mind. They are doubtless of service to him who has them, though, if we have them in a superior degree, they may possibly do him harm. A brilliant superiority, which ever seems a pretension to govern, puts the minds of others on their guard, warns the less prudent, and places an obstacle on the very threshold; which here is everything. People of mediocrity do not alarm us, they gain an entrance more easily. The weaker they are the less they are suspected; therefore are they the stronger in one sense. Iron clashes against the rock, is blunted, and loses its edge and point. But who would distrust water? Weak, colourless, insipid as it is, if, however, it always continues to fall in the same place, it will in time hollow out the flinty rock.

Stand at this window every day, at a certain hour in the afternoon.

You will see a pale man pa.s.s down the street, with his eyes cast on the ground, and always following the same line of pavement next the houses.

Where he set his foot yesterday, there he does to-day, and there he will to-morrow; he would wear out the pavement, if it was never renewed. And by this same street he goes to the same house, ascends to the same story, and in the same cabinet speaks to the same person. He speaks of the same things, and his manner seems the same. The person who listens to him sees no difference between yesterday and to-day:--gentle uniformity, as serene as an infant's sleep, whose breathing raises its chest at equal intervals with the same soft sound.

You think that nothing changes in this monotonous equality; that all these days are the same. You are mistaken; you have _perceived_ nothing, yet every day there is a change, slight, it is true, and imperceptible, which the person, himself changed by little and little, does not remark.

It is like a dream in a bark. What distance have you come, whilst you were dreaming? Who can tell? Thus you go on, without seeming to move--still, and yet rapidly. Once out of the river, or ca.n.a.l, you soon find yourself at sea; the uniform immensity in which you now are will inform you still less of the distance you go. Time and place are equally uncertain; no sure point to occupy attention; and attention itself is gone. The reverie is profound, and becomes more and more so:--an ocean of dreams upon the smooth ocean of waters.

A pleasant state, in which everything becomes insensible, even gentleness itself. Is it death, or is it life? To distinguish, we require attention, and we should awake from our dream.--No, let it go on, whatever it may be that carries me along with it, whether it lead me to life or death.

Alas! 'tis habit! that gently sloping formidable abyss, into which we slide so easily! we may say everything that is bad of it, and, also, everything that is good, and it will be always true.

Let us be frank: if the action that we did in the first instance knowingly and voluntarily, was never done but with will and attention, if it never became habitual and easy, we should act but little and slowly, and our life would pa.s.s away in endeavours and efforts. If, for instance, every time we stepped forward we had to reflect upon our direction, and how to keep our balance, we should not walk much better than the child who is trying to go alone. But walking soon becomes a habit, an action that is performed without any need of invoking the constant and intermediate operation of the will. It is the same with many other acts which, still less voluntary, become at last mechanical, automatical, foreign, as I may say, to our personality. As we advance in life a considerable portion of our activity escapes our notice, removes from the sphere of liberty to enter that of habit, and becomes as it were fated; the remainder, relieved in that respect, and so far absolved from attention and effort, finds itself, by a process of compensation, more free to act elsewhere.

This is useful, but it is also dangerous. The fatal part increases within us, without our interference, and grows in the darkness of our inward nature. What formerly struck our attention, now pa.s.ses unperceived. What was at first difficult, in time grows easy, too easy: at last we can no longer say even that it is easy, for it takes place of its own accord, independently of our will; we suffer, if we do not do it. These acts being those, of all others, that cost the least trouble, are incessantly renewed. We must, at last, confess that a second nature is the result, which, formed at the expense of the former, becomes, in a great measure, its subst.i.tute. We forget the difficulties of our early beginnings, and fancy we have always been so.