Part 31 (2/2)

Durtal was in a hurry for his dinner to be over. He had eaten his egg and was painfully swallowing a warm potato soup made with hot oil, which from its appearance might have been mistaken for vaseline; but he now cared little about his food.

He said to himself, ”It is dreadful to carry away an irritating and painful recollection of a first communion--and I know it will haunt me for ever. I know well enough that from a theological point of view it does not matter whether I am dealing with a priest or a Trappist; both are but interpreters between G.o.d and me, but yet, I feel very well that it is not at all the same thing. For once at least I need a guarantee of certain holiness, and how can I have it with an ecclesiastic who hawks about jokes like a bagman?” He stopped, remembering that the Abbe Gevresin, fearing this mistrust, had specially sent him to a Trappist monastery. ”What a run of ill-luck!” he said to himself.

He did not even hear the conversation which was going on beside him between the curate and the oblate.

He struggled with himself all alone, as he chewed, with his nose in his plate.

”I do not wish to communicate to-morrow,” he went on, and he was shocked. He was cowardly, and becoming foolish at the last. Would not the Saviour give Himself to him all the same?

He rose from the table, stirred by a dull anguish, and he wandered in the park and went down the paths as chance led him.

Another idea was now growing in him, an idea that Heaven was inflicting a trial upon him. ”I want humility,” he repeated. ”Well, it is to punish me that I am refused the joy of being sanctified by a monk. Christ has forgiven me, that is much. Why should He do more by taking note of my preferences and granting my wishes?”

This thought appeased him for a few minutes, and reproaching himself for rebelling, he accused himself of being unjust towards a priest who, after all, might be a saint.

”Ah, enough of that,” he said; ”I must accept the fact, and try for once to be a little humble! but I have to recite my rosary.” He seated himself on the gra.s.s and began.

He had not reached the second bead, when misunderstanding again pursued him. He began again on the Pater and Ave, and went on thinking no more of the sense of his prayers, reflecting: ”What ill-luck that the one monk who says ma.s.s every day should be away, so that I have to go through such a disappointment to-morrow!”

He was silent and had a moment of calm, when suddenly a new element of trouble burst upon him.

He looked at the rosary, of which he had told ten beads.

”Let me see, the prior told me to recite ten every day--ten beads or ten rosaries?”

”Beads,” he said, and almost at the same moment answered, ”Rosaries.”

He remained perplexed.

”But that is idiotic, he could not have told me to go through the rosary ten times a day; that would amount to something like five hundred prayers on end; no one could do such a task without losing his wits.

There is no doubt, it is clear he meant ten beads!

”But no! for if a confessor gives a penance, it must be admitted that he would proportion it to the greatness of the sins. And as I have such repugnance for these drops of devotion taken in globules, it is natural that he should gorge me with a large dose of the rosary!

”Still ... still ... it cannot be! I should not have even time for it all in Paris; it is absurd!”

And the idea that he was deceiving himself came intermittently charging back.

”Still, there must be no haggling; in ecclesiastical language 'ten'

means ten beads; no doubt ... but I remember very well that after he p.r.o.nounced the word rosary, the father expressed himself thus: 'you will say ten,' that means ten rosaries, for otherwise he would have specified ten ... of a rosary.”

And so he thrust and parried with himself--”The father had no need to put the dots on all the i's, if he were using an ordinary phrase, known to everyone. This cavilling about the value of a word is ridiculous.”

He tried to get rid of this torment by appealing to his reason; and suddenly there came out some argument which unsettled him.

He found out that it was through cowardice, idleness, desire for contradiction and the necessity of rebelling, that he did not wish to wind his ten reels. ”Of the two interpretations I have chosen the one which would relieve me of all effort and trouble, it is really too easy!--that alone proves that I deceive myself when I try to persuade myself that the prior only ordered me to pick out ten beads!”

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