Part 34 (2/2)

Durtal had finished his breakfast. He rose, fearing to trouble the father by his questions.

One word of the monk, however, was troubling his brain, that relating to the prior as a doctor; and before going out he spoke of this again to Father Etienne.

”No--the Reverend Father Maximin is not a doctor, but he understands simples very well, and he has a small pharmacy which is enough as long as no one is seriously ill.”

”And in that case?”

”In that case the pract.i.tioner can be called in from one of the nearest towns, but no one is ever so ill as that; or else the end is approaching and the doctor's visit would be useless....”

”So on the whole the prior looks after soul and body at La Trappe.”

The monk signified a.s.sent.

Durtal went out. He hoped to get rid of his suffocation by a long walk.

He took a road which he had not been along before, and came out on a glade where stood the ruins of an ancient convent, some bits of wall, truncated columns and capitals in the Roman style; unhappily these remains were in a deplorable condition, rough, covered with moss and riddled with holes like pumice stones.

He went on and came to the end of a long walk, at the top of which was a pond five or six times as large as the small one in the form of a cross, which he frequented.

The walk was planted with old oaks on each side, and in the middle, near a wooden bench, stood a cast-iron statue of the Virgin.

He groaned as he looked at it. The crime of the church followed him once more; even in this little chapel so full of divine compa.s.sion, all the statues came from the religious bazaars of Paris or Lyons.

He took his position below, near the pond whose banks were bordered by reeds surrounded by tufts of osiers; and he amused himself by examining the colours of these shrubs, with their smooth green leaves and stalks of citron yellow, or blood red, noticing the curling water which began to foam with a gust of wind. And the martins skimmed it, touching it with the tips of their wings from which drops of water fell like pearls of quicksilver. And the birds rose whirling above and giving out their cries of weet, weet, weet, while the dragon-flies shone brightly in the air which they slashed with blue flames.

”Peaceful refuge!” thought Durtal; ”I ought to have come to rest here before.” He sat down on a bed of moss and interested himself in the noiseless and active life of the waters. Now the splash and flash of the turn of a leaping carp; now great spiders skating on the surface, making little circles and driving one against another, stopping, going back and making new rounds; then, near him on the ground, Durtal noticed jumping, green gra.s.shoppers with vermilion bellies, or, scaling the oaks, colonies of queer insects on whose backs a devil's head was painted in red lead on a black ground.

And above all that, if he raised his eyes, there was the silent upturned sea of heaven, a blue sea crested with surging white clouds like waves; and at the same time this firmament moved in the water where it billowed under a blueish gray gla.s.s.

Durtal felt himself expand as he smoked cigarettes; the melancholy which had oppressed him since the dawn began to melt away, and joy crept into him as he felt his soul was washed in the pool of the Sacraments and dried in the air of a cloister. And he was at once happy and uneasy; happy, for the meeting he had had with the father guest-master, had removed all the doubts he had entertained as to the supernatural side to the sudden change of a priest for a monk to communicate him; happy, also, to know that not only had Christ not repulsed him in spite of all the disorders of his life, but that He was encouraging him and giving him pledges, ratifying the signs of His favours by perceptible acts. And nevertheless he was uneasy, for he knew himself to be barren, and felt that it was necessary for him to be grateful for this goodness by a struggle with himself and an entirely new existence differing completely from that he had hitherto led.

”Well, we shall see!” and he went off to the office of s.e.xt almost calmed, and thence to dinner, where he found M. Bruno.

”We will go for a walk to-day,” said the oblate, rubbing his hands.

Durtal looked at him with astonishment.

”Yes, indeed, I thought that after a communion a little air outside the walls would do you good, and I proposed to the Reverend Father Abbot to free you from the rule for to-day, if the offer is not disagreeable to you.”

”I gladly accept, and thank you sincerely for your kind attention,” said Durtal.

They dined off a soup made with oil in which a stick of cabbage and some peas were swimming; it was not bad; but the bread made at La Trappe reminded him, when stale, of the bread in the siege of Paris, and made the soup turn sour.

Then they tasted an egg with sorrel and some rice steeped in milk.

”If it suits you,” said the oblate, ”we will begin by paying a visit to Dom Anselm, who has expressed a wish to know you.”

And M. Bruno led Durtal through a labyrinth of pa.s.sages and staircases to a small cell where the abbot was. He was dressed like the fathers in a white robe and a black scapular; only at the end of a violet cord he bore on his breast an abbot's cross of ivory, in the centre of which, under a round gla.s.s, some relics were inserted.

<script>