Part 37 (2/2)
”Brother Simeon would be humble enough and simple enough to renew again such splendid jokes,” thought Durtal, ”but better still than the good Franciscan, he recalls the memory of that astonis.h.i.+ng Saint Joseph of Cupertino, of whom the oblate spoke yesterday.”
He, who called himself brother a.s.s, was a charming and poor creature, so modest, and so ignorant, that he was turned away wherever he went. He pa.s.sed through life, with open mouth, thrusting himself eagerly against all the cloisters that repulsed him. He wandered about unable to perform even the lowest tasks. He was, to use a popular expression, a regular b.u.t.ter-fingers, and broke whatever he touched. They ordered him to go and fetch water, and he wandered without understanding, absorbed in G.o.d, and at the end, when no one thought about it any more, brought some after a month.
A monastery of Capucins which had received him, got rid of him. He went his way, vaguely, out of his...o...b..t among the towns, stumbled into another convent where he employed himself in taking care of the animals, whom he adored, and he rose into a perpetual ecstasy, revealing himself as the most singular of wonder workers, putting the demons to flight, and healing the sick. He was at once idiotic and sublime; in the hagiography he stands alone, and seems to figure there to furnish a proof that the soul is identified with Eternal Wisdom, rather by ignorance than by science.
”He also loves animals,” said Durtal to himself, as he looked at old Simeon; ”and he too puts to flight the Evil One, and works cures by his sanct.i.ty.
”In a time when all men are exclusively haunted by the thoughts of luxury and lucre, the soul appears extraordinary when divested of its bark, as the candid and naked soul of this good monk. He is eighty years old and more, and he has led from his youth up the restricted life of the Trappists; he probably does not know in what time he lives, nor what lat.i.tudes he inhabits, whether he is in America or in France, for he has never read a newspaper, and outside rumours do not reach him.
”He does not even know the taste of flesh meat or wine; he has no notion of money, of which he does not suspect the value nor the appearance; he does not imagine how a woman is made; and save for the breeding of his pigs, he perhaps cannot even guess the meaning and the consequences of the sin of the flesh.
”He lives alone ringed round by silence, and buried in the shade; he meditates on the mortifications of the Fathers in the Desert, which are read to him as he eats, and the frenzy of their fasts makes him ashamed of his miserable repast, and he accuses himself that he is so well to do.
”Ah! this Father Simeon is innocent; he knows nothing that we know, and knows that of which all others are ignorant; his education has been taken in hand by the Lord Himself, who teaches him truths which we cannot comprehend, models his soul after heaven, infuses Himself into him, possesses him, and deifies him in the union of Blessedness.
”This puts us somewhat at a distance from hypocrites and devout persons; as far indeed as modern Catholicism is from Mysticism, for certainly that religion is as grovelling on the ground as Mysticism is high!
”And that is true. Instead of directing all our forces to that unknown end, of taking our soul to fas.h.i.+on it in that form of a dove which the Middle Ages gave to the pyxes; instead of making it the shrine where the Host reposes in the very image of the Holy Spirit, the Catholic confines himself to trying to conceal his conscience, to deceive his Judge by the fear of a salutary h.e.l.l; he acts not by choice, but by fear: he with the aid of his clergy, and the help of his imbecile literature, and his feeble press, has made of religion a mere fetis.h.i.+sm, a ridiculous wors.h.i.+p composed of statuettes and alms boxes; candles and chromo-lithographs; he has materialized the ideal of Love, in inventing an entirely physical devotion to the Sacred Heart.
”What baseness of conception!” continued Durtal, who had come out of the chapel, and was strolling along the bank of the great pond. He looked at the reeds, which bent like an harvest still green, under a puff of wind; then he half saw as he leant forward, an old boat, which bore almost effaced on its blueish hull the name ”Alleluia.” This bark disappeared under the tufts of leaves round which were twined the bells of the convolvulus, a symbolic flower, since it widens out like a chalice, and has the dead white of a wafer.
The scent of the water, at once enticing and bitter, intoxicated him.
”Ah!” he thought, ”happiness certainly consists in being restricted to a place closely locked, a prison very confined, or a chapel always open,”
and he caught himself up: ”Ah! there is Brother Anacletus;” the lay brother was coming towards him, bending under a hamper.
He pa.s.sed before Durtal, smiling at him with his eyes: and while he went his way, Durtal thought, ”This man is a true friend of mine; when I was suffering so much before my confession, he expressed all to me in a look. To-day when he believes me serener, and more joyous, he is content, and shows it to me by a smile; and I shall never speak to him, I shall never thank him, I shall never even know who he is, I shall perhaps never even see him again.
”In leaving this place, I shall keep a friend, for whom I too feel affection; yet neither of us has even exchanged a gesture with the other.
”After all,” he thought, ”does not this absolute reserve make our friends.h.i.+p more perfect? it is stamped in the eternal distance, it remains mysterious and incomplete, and more certain.”
While thinking over these reflections, Durtal went towards the chapel, where the Office called him, and thence to the refectory.
He was surprised to find the table laid only for one. ”What has happened to M. Bruno? Yet I may as well wait a while,” and to kill time, he occupied himself by reading a printed card, hung upon the wall.
It was a sort of advertis.e.m.e.nt which began thus:
”ETERNITY.
”Fellow sinners, you will die. Be ye always ready.
”Watch then, pray without ceasing, never forget the Four Last Things which you see here traced
”Death, the gate of Eternity, Judgment, which decides Eternity, h.e.l.l, the abode of unhappy Eternity, Paradise, the abode of blessed Eternity.”
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