Part 27 (2/2)

He joked M. Bruno, whom he seemed to have known some time, on the sin of gluttony which must so often be committed at La Trappe, then tasted, pretending a chuckle of delight, the scentless bouquet of the poor wine he poured out, and lastly, when he divided with a spoon the omelette which was the main dish of their dinner, he pretended to cut up a fowl, and to be delighted with the fine appearance of the flesh; saying to Durtal, ”This is a barley-fed fowl, may I offer you a wing?”

This kind of pleasantry exasperated Durtal, who had no wish to laugh that day; he therefore was satisfied to make a vague bow, wis.h.i.+ng to himself that the end of dinner was at hand.

The conversation continued between the priest and M. Bruno.

After it had spread over various commonplaces, it took a more definite form, in regard to an invisible otter which plundered the abbey ponds.

”But, no doubt,” said the curate, ”you have found its lair?”

”Never; it is easy to see in the lain gra.s.s the paths it traverses to get to the water, but we always lose its traces at the same spot. We have watched for days with Father Etienne, but it has never shown itself.”

The abbe explained various traps which might be set with advantage.

Durtal thought of the otter-hunt which Balzac tells so pleasantly at the beginning of his ”Paysans,” when the dinner came to an end.

The curate said grace, and said to M. Bruno, ”Suppose we take a turn; the fresh air will do instead of the coffee, which they forget to give us.”

Durtal returned to his cell.

He felt himself emptied, injured, cheated, reduced to a state of fibre, a state of pulp. His body, crushed by the nightmares of the night, enervated by the scene of the morning, needed entire rest, and if his soul had not still that infatuation which had broken it in tears at the monk's feet, it was sad and restless, and it also asked for silence, repose, and sleep.

”Let us see,” said Durtal, ”I must not give way, let me bestir myself.”

He read the Penitential Psalms and the Litanies of the Saints; then he hesitated between two volumes of Saint Bonaventure and Saint Angela.

He decided on the Blessed Angela. She had sinned and had been converted, and she seemed less far from him, more intelligible, more helpful than the Seraphic Doctor, than a Saint who had always remained pure, sheltered from falls. For she too had been a carnal sinner; she too had reached the Saviour from afar.

A married woman, she lived in adultery and shame; lovers succeeded one another, and when she had exhausted them she threw them aside like husks. Suddenly grace rose in her and made her soul break forth; she went to confession, not daring to avow the more awful of her sins, and she communicated, thus grafting sacrilege upon her other faults.

She lived, day and night tortured by remorse, and finally prayed to Saint Francis of a.s.sisi to help her; and the next night the saint appeared to her. ”My sister,” he said, ”if you had called on me sooner, I should have granted your prayer before this.” The next day she went to church, heard a priest preaching, understood she must address herself to him, and laid all before him in a full confession.

Then began the trials of an appalling life of purification. In blow after blow she lost her mother, her husband, her children; she went through such violent temptations to impurity that she was obliged to seize on lighted coals and cauterize the plague of her senses with fire.

During two years the demon sifted her. She parted her goods among the poor, a.s.sumed the habit of the Third Order of Saint Francis, gathered in the sick and infirm, and begged for them in the streets.

One day a feeling of sickness came over her before a leper whose sores were stinking. To punish herself she drank the water in which she had washed the sores; she was overcome with nausea; and punished herself yet more by forcing herself to swallow a scab which had not gone down with the water and remained dry in her throat.

For years she dressed ulcers and meditated on the Pa.s.sion of Christ.

Then her novitiate of sorrows drew to a close and a radiant day of visions dawned on her. Jesus treated her as a spoilt child, called her, ”My sweetest, my well-beloved daughter;” He dispensed her from the necessity of eating, and nourished her only with the Sacred Species; He called her, drew her, absorbed her in uncreated light, and by antic.i.p.ating her inheritance, enabled her to understand, in life, the joys of heaven.

And she was so simple and timid that she feared in spite of all, for the memory of her sins alarmed her. She could not believe herself forgiven, and said to Christ; ”Ah, if I could but put myself in an iron collar and drag myself to the market-place to proclaim my shame.”

And He consoled her: ”Be easy, My daughter, My sufferings have atoned for your sins;” and as she reproached herself for having lived in opulence and having delighted in clothes and jewels, He addressed her, smiling: ”To buy you riches, I have wanted for everything; you required a great number of clothes, and I had but one garment of which the soldiers stripped Me, for which they drew lots; My nakedness was the expiation of your vanity in ornaments.”

And all her conversations with Christ were in this tone. He pa.s.sed His time in comforting this humble creature whom His benefits overwhelmed; and this has made her the most loving of the saints! her work is a succession of spiritual outpourings and caresses; her book is such a living hearth that beside it the volumes of other mystics seem but dull coal.

”Ah,” said Durtal to himself, in turning over these pages, ”it was indeed the Christ of Saint Francis, the G.o.d of mercy who spoke to this Franciscan!” and he went on: ”that ought to give me courage, for Angela of Foligno was as great a sinner as I am, but all her sins were remitted! Yes, but then what a soul she had, while mine is good for nothing; instead of loving, I reason; nevertheless it is right to remember that the conditions of the Blessed Angela were more favourable than mine. Living in the thirteenth century she had a shorter journey to make to approach G.o.d, for since the Middle Ages, each century takes us further from Him! she lived in a time full of miracles, which overflowed with Saints. For me, I live in Paris in an age when miracles are rare and Saints scarcely abound. And once away from here, what a vista is before me of falling away, of soaking myself in a stew of infamy, in a bath of the sins of great cities.”

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