Part 8 (1/2)
”For you should desire them, and it should come from you rather than from Him; be sure that sooner or later you will thirst for Penance, hunger for the Eucharist. Well, when unable to restrain yourself longer, you ask for pardon and entreat to be allowed to approach the Holy Table, we shall see, we will ask Him what way He will choose to take, in order to save you.”
”But there are not, I presume, several ways of confessing and communicating?”
”Certainly not, that is just what I meant to say ... but ...”
And the priest hesitated, at a loss for words.
”It is quite certain,” he began again, ”that art has been the princ.i.p.al means which the Saviour has used to make you absorb the Faith. He has taken you on your weak side--or strong side, if you like that better. He has infused into your nature the chief mystical works; he has persuaded and converted you, less by the way of reason than the way of the senses; and indeed those are the special conditions you have to take into account.
”On the other hand your soul is not humble and simple, you are a sort of 'sensitive,' whom the least imprudence, the least stupidity of a confessor would at once repel.
”Therefore that you may not be at the mercy of a troublesome impression, certain precautions must be taken. In the state of weakness and feebleness in which you are, a disagreeable face, an unlucky word, antipathetic surroundings, a mere nothing would be enough to rout you--is it not so?”
”Alas!” sighed Durtal, ”I am obliged to answer that you are right; but, Monsieur l'Abbe, I do not think I shall have to fear such disillusions if when the moment you predict has come you will allow me to make my confession to you.”
The priest was silent for a while; then said,
”No doubt, since I have met you, I may probably be useful to you, but I have an idea that my part will be confined to pointing out the road to you; I shall be a connecting link, and nothing more, you will end as you have begun, without help, alone.” The abbe remained in thought, then shook his head, and went on: ”Let us leave the subject, however, for we cannot antic.i.p.ate the designs of G.o.d; to sum up, try to stifle in prayer your attacks of the flesh, it is a less matter not to be overcome at the moment, than to direct all your efforts not to be so.”
Then the priest added gently to rouse the spirits of Durtal, whom he saw to be depressed,
”If you fall do not despair, and throw the handle after the hatchet. Say to yourself, that, after all l.u.s.t is not the most unpardonable of faults, that it is one of two sins for which the human being pays cash, and which are consequently expiated in part at least before death. Say to yourself that wantonness and avarice refuse all credit and will not wait; and in fact, whoever unlawfully commits a fleshly act is almost always punished in his lifetime. For some there are b.a.s.t.a.r.ds to provide for, sickly wives, low connections, broken careers, abominable deceptions on the part of those they have loved. On whichever side we turn when women are concerned we have to suffer, for she is the most powerful instrument of sorrow which G.o.d has given to man.
”It is the same with the pa.s.sion for gain. Every being who allows himself to be overcome by that hateful sin, pays for it as a rule before his death. Look at the Panama business. Cooks, housekeepers, small proprietors who till then had lived in peace, seeking no inordinate gains, no illicit profit, threw themselves like madmen into that business. They had one only thought, to gain money; the chastis.e.m.e.nt of their cupidity was, as you know, sudden.”
”Yes,” said Durtal, laughing, ”the de Lesseps were the agents of providence, when they stole the savings of fools, who had moreover got them probably by thieving.”
”In a word,” said the abbe, ”I repeat my last advice: do not be at all discouraged if you sink. Do not despise yourself too much; have the courage to enter a church afterwards; for the devil catches you by cowardice, the false shame, the false humility he suggests, nourish, maintain, solidify your wantonness in some measure.
”Well! no good-bye; come and see me soon again.”
Durtal found himself in the street a little confused. ”It is evident,”
he murmured, as he stalked along, ”that the Abbe Gevresin is a clever spiritual watchmaker. He has dexterously taken to pieces the movement of my pa.s.sions, and made the hours of idleness and weariness strike, but, after all, his advice comes only to this: stew in your own juice and wait.
”Indeed he is right; if I had come to the point I should not have gone to him to chatter, but really to confess. What is strange is that he does not at all seem to think he will have to put me through the wash-tub; and to whom does he mean me to go--to the first comer who will wind about me his spool of commonplaces, and stroke me with his big hands without seeing clearly?
”Well, well ... what is the time?” He looked at his watch. ”Six o'clock, and I do not care to go home. What shall I do till dinner?”
He was near St. Sulpice. He went in and sat down, to clear his thoughts a little, taking a place in the Chapel of Our Lady, which at that hour was almost empty.
He felt no wish to pray, and rested there, looking at the great arch of marble and gold, like a scene in a theatre, where the Virgin, the only figure in the light, advances towards the faithful, as from a decorated grotto, on plaster clouds.
Meanwhile two Little Sisters of the Poor came and knelt not far from him, and meditated, their heads between their hands.
He thought as he looked at them,--
”Those souls are to be envied who can thus be abstracted in prayer. How do they manage it? For, in fact, it is not easy, if one thinks of the sorrows of the world, to praise the vaunted mercy of G.o.d. It is all very fine to believe that He exists, to be certain that He is good; in fact, we do not know Him--we are ignorant of Him. He is, and, in fact, He can only be, immanent, permanent, and inaccessible. He is we know not what, and at most we know what He is not. Try to imagine Him, and the senses fail, for He is above, about, and in each one of us. He is three and He is one; He is each and He is all; He is without beginning, and He will be without end; He is above all and for ever incomprehensible. If we try to picture Him to ourselves and give Him a human wrappage, we come back to the simple conception of the early times, we represent Him under the features of an ancestor. Some old Italian model, some old Father Tourgeneff, with a long beard, and we cannot but smile, so childish is the likeness of G.o.d the Father.
”He is, in fact, so absolutely above the imagination and the senses, that He comes only nominally into prayer, and the impulses of humanity ascend especially to the Son, Who only can be addressed, because He became man, and is to us somewhat of an elder brother, because, having wept in human form, we think He will hear us more readily, and be more compa.s.sionate to our sorrows.