Part 9 (2/2)

”The fact is,” murmured Durtal ... ”but to return to Saint Teresa....”

”She too,” interrupted the abbe, ”has treated of this 'Night obscure'

which terrifies you; but she only speaks of it in a few lines. She calls it the soul's agony--a sadness so bitter that she strove in vain to depict it.”

”No doubt, but I prefer her to Saint John of the Cross, for she is not so discouraging as that inflexible saint. Admit that he belongs too much to the land of those large Christs who bleed in caverns.”

”Of what nationality then was Saint Teresa?”

”Yes, I know she was a Spaniard, but so complex, so strange, that race seems obliterated in her, less clearly defined.

”It is clear she was an admirable psychologist, but also how strange is in her the mixture of an ardent mystic and a cool woman of business.

For, in fact, she has a double nature; she is a contemplative outside the world, and at the same time a statesman, a female Colbert of the cloister. In fact, never was woman so consummate a skilled artisan and so powerful an organizer. When we consider that, in spite of incredible difficulties, she founded thirty-two nunneries, that she put them all under obedience to a rule which is a model of wisdom, a rule which foresees and rectifies the most ignored mistakes of the heart, it is astonis.h.i.+ng to hear her treated by strong-minded people as an hysterical madwoman.”

”One of the distinctive marks of the mystics,” answered the abbe, with a smile, ”is just their absolute balance, their entire common sense.”

These conversations cheered Durtal; they planted on him seeds of reflection which sprang up when he was alone; they encouraged him to trust to the advice of this priest, and follow his counsels. He found himself all the better for this conduct, in that his visits to the churches, his prayers and readings occupied his objectless life, and he was no longer wearied.

”I have at least gained peaceable evenings and quiet nights,” he said to himself.

He knew the soothing help of a pious evening.

He visited St. Sulpice at those times when, under the dull gleam of the lamps, the pillars opened out and threw long panels of darkness on the ground. The chapels which remained open were in shade, and in the nave before the high altar a single cl.u.s.ter of lamps, above in the darkness, shone out like a luminous bunch of red roses.

In the stillness no sounds were heard but the dull thud of a door, the creaking of a chair, the short paces of a woman, the hurried stride of a man.

Durtal was almost isolated in the obscure chapel which he had chosen; he kept himself there so far from all, so far from the city whose full pulse was beating only two paces from him. He knelt down and remained still, he prepared to speak, and had nothing to say, felt himself carried away by an impulse, but no words came. He ended by falling into a vague languor, experiencing that indolent ease, that dim sense of comfort, which the body feels in a medicated bath.

He fell a-dreaming of the lot of the women who were round about him here and there, in chairs. Ah! those poor little black shawls, those miserable pleated caps, those wretched tippets, those doleful seed rosaries they fingered in the shade.

Some in mourning, sobbed still inconsolable; others, overwhelmed, bent their backs and hung their heads on one side; others prayed, their shoulders shaking, their head in their hands.

The task of the day was over; those wearied of their life came to ask for mercy. Everywhere misfortune was kneeling, for the rich, the healthy, the happy hardly pray; all around in the church were women, widowed or old, without love, women deserted, women whose home was a torture, praying that existence might become more merciful, that the dissoluteness of their husbands might cease, the vices of their sons amend, the health of those they loved grow stronger.

A lamentable perfume went up like incense to Our Lady from a very sheaf of woes.

Few men came to this hidden meeting-place of trouble; still fewer young people, for these have not yet suffered enough; there were only a few old men, and a few sick who dragged themselves along by the backs of the chairs, and a little hunchback, whom Durtal saw coming there every evening, an outcast who could only be loved by Her who does not even see the body.

A burning pity seized on Durtal at the sight of those unhappy ones who came to beg from Heaven a little of the love refused them by men; and he who could not pray on his own account ended by joining himself to their pleadings, and praying for them.

So indifferent in the afternoon, the churches were truly persuasive, truly sweet, in the evening; they seemed to bestir themselves at nightfall, and to compa.s.sionate in their solitude the sufferings of those sick creatures whose complaints they heard.

And their first ma.s.s in the morning, the ma.s.s of working women and servant maids was no less touching; there were there no bigots nor curious persons, but poor women who came to seek in communion strength to live their hours of onerous tasks and servile needs. They knew as they left the church that they were the living custodians of a G.o.d, of Him who was ever while on earth the Poor Man, who took pleasure only in souls who had scarce where to lay their head; they knew themselves His chosen, and did not doubt that when He entrusted to them under the form of bread the memorial of His suffering, He demanded of them in exchange that they should live in sorrow and humility. And what harm then could do to them the cares of a day spent in the salutary shame of base occupations?

”I now understand,” thought Durtal, ”why the abbe made such a point of my seeing the churches early or late; those are, in fact, the only times in which the soul expands.”

But he was too idle to be often present at early ma.s.s; he was content to take his relaxation after dinner in the chapels. He came out with a feeling of peace, even if he had prayed badly or not prayed at all. On other evenings, on the contrary, he felt tired of solitude, tired of silence, tired of darkness, and then he abandoned St. Sulpice and went to Notre Dame des Victoires.

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