Part 12 (2/2)

”What perhaps astounds me still more,” said Durtal, ”is the kind of obedience exacted of them. How can a creature endowed with free will annihilate herself to such an extent?”

”Oh,” said the abbe, ”the obedience is the same in all the great Orders, absolute, without reserve; its formula is well summed up by Saint Augustine. Listen to this sentence which I remember to have read in a commentary on his rule:

”'We must enter into the feelings of a beast of burthen, and allow ourselves to be led like a horse or a mule, which have no understanding; or rather, that obedience may be still more perfect, since these animals kick against the spur, we must be in the hands of a superior like a block, or the stock of a tree, which has neither life, nor movement, nor action, nor will, nor judgment.' Is that clear?”

”It is most frightful! I quite admit,” said Durtal, ”that in exchange for such abnegation, the nuns must be powerfully aided from on high, but are there not some moments of falling away, some cases of despair, some instants in which they pine for a natural life in the open air, in which they lament that death in life which they have made for themselves; are there not days in which their senses wake and cry aloud?”

”No doubt; in the cloistered life the age of twenty-nine is terrible to pa.s.s, then a pa.s.sionate crisis arises; if a woman doubles that cape, and she almost always does so, she is safe.

”But carnal emotions are not, to speak correctly, the most troublesome a.s.sault they have to undergo. The real punishment they endure in those hours of sorrow is the ardent, wild regret for that maternity of which they are ignorant; the desolate womb of woman revolts, and full of G.o.d though she be, her heart is breaking. The child Jesus whom they have loved so well then appears so far off and so inaccessible, and His very sight would hardly satisfy them, for they have dreamed of holding Him in their arms, of swathing and rocking Him, of giving Him suck, in one word, of being mothers.

”Other nuns undergo no precise attack, no a.s.sault to which a name can be given, but without any definite reason they languish and die suddenly, like a taper, blown out. The torpor of the cloister kills them.”

”But indeed, Monsieur l'abbe, these details are far from encouraging.”

The priest shrugged his shoulders. ”It is the poor reverse of a splendid stuff,” he said, ”wonderful recompenses are granted, even in this world, to souls in convents.”

”Nor do I suppose that if a nun fall, stricken in the flesh, she is abandoned. What does the Mother abbess in such a case?”

”She acts according to the bodily temperament and state of the soul of the sick person. Note that she has been able to follow her during the years of her probation, that she has necessarily gained an influence over her; at such times therefore she will watch her daughter very closely, endeavour to turn the course of her ideas, breaking her by hard work, and by occupying her mind; she must not leave her alone, must diminish her prayers, if need be, restrict her hours of office, lessen her fasts, give her, if the case demands it, better food. In other cases, on the contrary, she will have recourse to more frequent communions, lessen her food or cause her to be blooded, mix cooling meats with her diet, and above all things she and all the community must pray for her.

”An old Benedictine abbess, whom I knew at Saint-Omer, an incomparable guide of souls, limited before all things the length of confessions. The moment she saw the least symptoms arise she gave two minutes, watch in hand, to the penitent, and when the time was up she sent her back from the confessional, to mix with her companions.”

”Why so?”

”Because in convents, even for souls which are well, confession is a most dangerous relaxation, it is as it were too long and too warm a bath. In it nuns go to excess, open their hearts uselessly, dwell upon their troubles, accentuate them, and revel in them; they come out more weakened and more ill than before. Two minutes ought indeed to be enough for a nun in which to tell her little sins.

”Yet ... yet ... I must admit it, the confessor is a danger for a convent, not that I suspect his honour, that is not at all what I mean, but as he is generally chosen from among the bishop's favourites, there are many chances that he may be a man who knows nothing, and quite ignorant of how to deal with such souls, ends by unsettling them while he consoles them. Again, if demoniac attacks, so common in nunneries, occur, the poor man can only gape, gives all sorts of confused counsel, and hinders the energy of the abbess, who in such matters knows far better than he.”

”And,” said Durtal, who chose his words carefully, ”tell me, I suppose that tales like those which Diderot gives in his foolish volume 'La Religieuse' are incorrect?”

”Unless a community is rotted by a superior given over to Satanism, which, thank G.o.d, is rare, the filthy stories told by that writer are false, and there is moreover a good reason why it should be so, for there is a sin which is the very antidote of the other, the sin of zeal.”

”What?”

”Yes: the sin of zeal which causes the denunciation of our neighbour, gives scope to jealousy, creates spying to satisfy hate, that is the real sin of the cloister. Well, I a.s.sure you that if two sisters became quite shameless they would be denounced at once.”

”But I thought, Monsieur l'Abbe, that tale-bearing was allowed by the rules of most orders?”

”It is, but perhaps there is a temptation to carry it somewhat to excess, especially in convents of women; for you can imagine that if nunneries contain pure mystics, real saints, they have in them also some nuns less advanced in the way of perfection, and who even still retain some faults....”

”Come, since we are in the chapter of minute details, dare I ask if cleanliness is not just a little neglected by these good women?”

”I cannot say; all that I know is, that in the Benedictine abbeys I have known, each nun was free to act as seemed good to her; in certain Augustinian const.i.tutions, the case was provided for in contrary fas.h.i.+on, it was forbidden to wash the body, except once a month. On the other hand, amongst the Carmelites cleanliness is exacted. Saint Teresa hated dirt, and loved white linen, her daughters have even, I think, a right to have a flask of Eau de Cologne in their cells. You see this depends on the order, and probably also, when the rule does not expressly mention it, on the ideas which the superior may have on the subject. I will add that this question must not be looked at only from the worldly point of view, for corporal dirt is for certain souls an additional suffering and mortification which they impose on themselves, as Benedict Labre.”

”He who picked up vermin which left him, and put them piously in his sleeve. I prefer mortifications of another kind.”

”There are harder ones, believe me, and I think they would suit you better. Would you like to imitate Suso, who, to subdue his pa.s.sions, bore on his naked shoulders, for eighteen years, an enormous cross set with nails, whose points pierced his flesh? More than that, he imprisoned his hands in leather gloves which also bristled with nails, lest he should be tempted to dress his wounds. Saint Rose of Lima treated herself no better, she bound a chain so tightly round her body that it penetrated the skin, and hid itself under the bleeding pad of flesh, she wore also a horsehair girdle set with pins, and lay on shards of gla.s.s; but all these trials are nothing in comparison of those inflicted on herself by a Capuchin nun, the venerable Mother Pasidee of Siena.

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