Part 6 (2/2)

That morning the chapel, cold and dark, sparkled, lighted by groves of candles; and the odour of incense, not adulterated as in other churches by spices and gums, filled it with a dull smoke; it was crammed with people. Crouched in a corner, Durtal had turned round, and like his neighbours looked at the backs of the thurifers and priests, who were going towards the entrance. The door opened suddenly, and he saw, in a burst of daylight, a red vision of the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris, pa.s.sing up the nave, turning from side to side a horse-like head, in front of it a big spectacled nose, bending his tall form all on one side, blessing the congregation with a long twisted hand, like a crab's claw.

He and his suite ascended the altar steps, and knelt at a prie-Dieu, then they took off his tippet, and vested him in a silk chasuble with a white cross embroidered in silver, and the ma.s.s began. Shortly before the communion, the black veil was gently withdrawn; behind the high grating, and in a blueish light like that of the moon, Durtal faintly saw white phantoms gliding and stars twinking in the air, and close to the grating a woman's form, kneeling motionless on the ground, she too holding a star at the end of a taper. The woman did not move but the star shook; then when the moment of communion was at hand, the woman rose, then disappeared, and her head, as if decapitated, filled the square of the wicket opened in the arch.

Then as he leant forward he saw, for a second, a dead face, with closed lids, white, eyeless, like ancient marble statues. And all pa.s.sed away, as the Cardinal bent above the grating, with the ciborium in his hand.

All was so rapid that he asked himself if he were not dreaming; the ma.s.s was over. Behind the iron grating resounded mournful psalms, slow chants drawn out, weeping, always on the same notes, wandering lights and white forms pa.s.sed in the azure fluid of the incense. Monseigneur Richard was sitting, mitre on head, interrogating the postulant who had returned to her place, and was kneeling before him behind the grating.

He spoke in a low voice, and could not be heard. The whole congregation bent to listen to the novice as she p.r.o.nounced her vows, but only a long murmur was heard. Durtal remembered that he had elbowed his way, and got near the choir, where, through the crossed bars of the grating, he saw the woman clad in white, prostrate on her face, in a square of flowers, while the whole convent filed past, bending over her, intoning the psalms for the dead, and sprinkling her with holy water, like a corpse.

”It is admirable,” he cried, moved in the street by the memory of the scene, and he thought of what a life was that of these women! To lie on an hair mattress without pillow or sheets, to fast seven months out of the twelve, except on Sundays and feasts; always to eat, standing, vegetables and abstinence fare; to have no fire in winter, to chant for hours on ice-cold tiles, to scourge the body, to become so humble as, however tenderly nurtured, to wash up dishes with joy, and attend to the meanest tasks, to pray from morning to midnight even to fainting, to pray there till death. They must indeed pity us, and set themselves to expiate the imbecility of a world which treats them as hysterical fools, for it cannot even understand the joy in suffering of souls like these.

”We cannot be proud of ourselves, in thinking of the Carmelites, or even of those humble Franciscan Tertiaries, who are after all more vulgar. It is true they do not belong to a contemplative order, but all the same their rules are very strict, their existence is so hard that they too can atone by their prayers and good works for the crimes of the city they protect.”

He grew enthusiastic in thinking of the convents. Ah! to be earthed up among them, sheltered from the herd, not to know what books appear, what newspapers are printed, never to know what goes on outside one's cell, among men--to complete the beneficent silence of this cloistered life, nouris.h.i.+ng ourselves with good actions, refres.h.i.+ng ourselves with plain song, saturating ourselves with the inexhaustible joys of the liturgies.

Then, who knows? By force of good will, and by ardent prayer, to succeed in coming to Him, in entertaining Him, feeling Him near us, perhaps almost satisfied with His creature. And he called up before him the joys of those abbeys in which Jesus abode. He remembered that astonis.h.i.+ng convent of Unterlinden, near Colmar, where in the thirteenth century not only one or two nuns, but the whole convent, rose distractedly before Christ with cries of joy, nuns were lifted above the ground, others heard the songs of seraphim, and their emaciated bodies secreted balm; others became transparent or were crowned with stars; all these phenomena of the contemplative life were visible in that cloister, a high school of Mysticism.

Thus wrapped in thought, he found himself at his own door, without remembering the road he had taken, and as soon as he was in his room, his whole soul dilated and burst forth. He desired to thank, to call for mercy, to appeal to someone, he knew not whom, to complain of he knew not what. All at once the need of pouring himself forth, of going out of himself, took shape, and he fell on his knees saying to Our Lady,

”Have pity on me, and hear me; I would rather anything than continue this shaken existence, these idle stages without an aim. Pardon me, Holy Virgin, unclean as I am, for I have no courage for the battle. Ah, wouldest thou grant my prayer! I know well that I am over bold in daring to ask, since I am not even resolved to turn out my soul, to empty it like a bucket of filth, to strike it on the bottom, that the lees may trickle out and the scales fall off, but ... but ... thou knowest I am so weak, so little sure of myself, that in truth I shrink.

”Oh, all the same I would desire to flee away, a thousand miles from Paris, I know not where, into a cloister. My G.o.d! yet this is very madness that I speak, for I could not stay two days in a convent; nor indeed would they take me in.”

Then he thought,--

”Though this once I am less dry, less unclean than is my wont, I can find nothing to say to Our Lady but insanities and follies, when it would be so simple to ask her pardon, to beg her to have pity on my desolate life, to aid me to resist the demands of my vices, not to pay as I do the royalties on my nerves, the tax on my senses.

”All the same,” he said, rising, ”enough of this, I will at least do what little I can; without more delay I will go to the abbe to-morrow. I will explain the struggle of my soul, and we will see what happens afterwards.”

CHAPTER V.

He was really comforted when the servant said that Monsieur l'Abbe was at home. He entered a little drawing-room, and waited till the priest, whom he heard speaking to someone in the next chamber, was alone.

He looked at the little room, and marked that nothing was changed since his last visit. It was still furnished with a velvet sofa, of which the red, once crimson, had become the faded rose colour of raspberry jam on bread. There were also two tall arm-chairs on either side of the chimney, which was ornamented by an Empire clock, and some china vases filled with sand, in which were stuck some dry stalks of reed. In a corner against the wall, under an old wooden crucifix, was a prie-dieu, marked by the knees, an oval table in the centre, some sacred engravings on the walls; and that was all.

”It is like an hotel, or an old maid's lodging,” thought Durtal. The commonness of the furniture, the curtains in faded damask, the panels hung with a paper covered with bouquets of poppies and field-flowers in false colours, were like lodgings by the month, but certain details, above all the scrupulous cleanliness of the room, the worked cus.h.i.+ons on the sofa, the gra.s.s mats under the chairs, an hortensia like a painted cauliflower placed in a flower-pot covered with lace, looked on the other hand like the futile and icy room of a devout woman.

”Nothing was wanting but a cage of canaries, photographs in plush frames, sh.e.l.l-work and crochet mats.”

Durtal had got so far in his reflections when the abbe came in with extended hand, gently finding fault with his long absence.

Durtal made what excuses he could, unusual occupations, long weariness.

”And our Blessed Lidwine, how do you get on with her?”

”Ah, I have not even begun her life; I am not in a state of mind which allows me to engage in it.”

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