Volume II Part 64 (2/2)
”Tell me what you would like for to-morrow,” said he, ”for I can only coh Secretary has told me to inform you that he will send you some suitable books, but those you wish for are forbidden”
”Thank hi me by myself”
”I will do so, but youthus”
”I don't jest at all, for I think truly that it is le with the scoundrels who are doubtless here”
”What, sir! scoundrels? Not at all, not at all They are only respectable people here, who, for reasons known to their excellencies alone, have to be sequestered from society You have been put by yourself as an additional punishment, and you want me to thank the secretary on that account?”
”I was not aware of that”
The fool was right, and I soon found it out I discovered that a man iloos his food once a day, where he cannot walk upright, he is the most wretched of men He would like to be in hell, if he believes in it, for the sake of the coot to desire the coue, or of a bear The loneliness behind the prison bars is terrible, but it must be learnt by experience to be understood, and such an experience I would not wish even to my enemies To a man of letters in my situation, paper and ink would take away nine-tenths of the torture, but the wretches who persecutedaoler had gone, I set ht, and sat down to dinner, but I could only s a few spoonfuls of soup Having fasted for nearly forty-eight hours, it was not surprising that I felt ill I passed the day quietly enough seated onood enough to proht, kept awake by the hideous noisechi in my room This double vexation was not uess what I a to speak of-nah holiday over me These small insects drank ave me spasmodic convulsions and poisoned aoler's name) came to my cell and had uards gave me water ith to wash arret, but Lawrence told avequite sure of repressing the wrath hich they ht inspire me, and which the spy would have infallibly reported to hisme my fodder and two cut lemons he went away
As soon as I was alone I ate my soup in a hurry, so as to take it hot, and then I drew as near as I could to the light with one of the books, and was delighted to find that I could see to read I looked at the title, and read, ”The Mystical City of Sister Mary of Jesus, of Agrada”
I had never heard of it The other book was by a Jesuit named Caravita
This fellow, a hypocrite like the rest of them, had invented a new cult of the ”Adoration of the Sacred Heart of our Lord Jesus Christ” This, according to the author, was the part of our Divine Redeemer, which above all others should be adored a curious idea of a besotted ignorae, for to s, stomach; or any other of the inwards The ”Mystical City” rather interested me
I read in it the wild conceptions of a Spanish nun, devout to superstition, norance and bigotry of her confessors All these grotesque, nified with the nain, she had received instructions from God Himself to write the life of His divine mother; the necessary information was furnished her by the Holy Ghost
This life of Mary began, not with the day of her birth, but with her immaculate conception in the worada was the head of a Franciscan convent founded by herself in her own house After telling in detail all the deeds of her divine heroine whilst in her e of three she swept and cleansed the house with the assistance of nine hundred servants, all of ere angels whom God had placed at her disposal, under the command of Michael, who came and went between God and herself to conduct their mutual correspondence
What strikes the judicious reader of the book is the evident belief of theis due to her invention; everything is told in good faith and with full belief The work contains the dreams of a visionary, ithout vanity but inebriated with the idea of God, thinks to reveal only the inspirations of the Divine Spirit
The book was published with the permission of the very holy and very horrible Inquisition I could not recover fro up in ion, it inclined erous results; for example, a more susceptible reader than myself, or one more inclined to believe in the reat a visionary as the poor nun herself
The need of doing so made me spend a week over this masterpiece of madness, the product of a hyper-exalted brain I took care to say nothing to the gaoler about this fine work, but I began to feel the effects of reading it As soon as I went off to sleep I experienced the disease which Sister Mary of Agrada had communicated to my mind weakened by melancholy, want of proper nourishment and exercise, bad air, and the horrible uncertainty of h when I recalled the moments If I had possessed the necessary ht possibly have produced in my cell a still ht by Cavalli
This sethow mistaken is the opinion which makes human intellect an absolute force; it is merely relative, and he who studies himself carefully will find only weakness I perceived that though men rarely become mad, still such an event is ithin the bounds of possibility, for our reasoning faculties are like powder, which, though it catches fire easily, will never catch fire at all without a spark
The book of the Spanish nun has all the properties necessary to make a man crack-brained; but for the poison to take effect he must be isolated, put under the Leads, and deprived of all other e from Pampeluna to Madrid, my coachman, Andrea Capello, stopped for us to dine in a town of Old Castille So dismal and dreary a place did I find it that I asked its narada!
”Here, then,” I said to myself, ”did that saintly lunatic produce that masterpiece which but for M Cavalli I should never have known”
An old priest, who had the highest possible opinion of an to ask him about this truthful historian of the mother of Christ, shewed me the very place where she had written it, and assured me that the father, mother, sister, and in short all the kindred of the blessed biographer, had been great saints in their generation He told me, and spoke truly, that the Spaniards had solicited her canonization at Rome, with that of the venerable Palafox This ”Mystical City,” perhaps, gave Father Malagrida the idea of writing the life of St Anne, written, also, at the dictation of the Holy Ghost, but the poor devil of a Jesuit had to suffer martyrdom for it--an additional reason for his canonization, if the horrible society ever coain, and attains the universal pohich is its secret aiht or nine days I found ot it