Part 42 (1/2)
And when he had received absolution, Durtal went down to the church to await the hour of ma.s.s.
And when the moment for communion came, he followed M. Bruno behind the lay brothers. All were kneeling on the pavement, and one after the other rose to exchange the kiss of peace, and reach the altar.
Though he repeated to himself the counsels of Father Maximin, though he exhorted himself to dismiss all his unrest, Durtal could not help thinking as he saw these monks approach the Table, ”The Lord will find a change when I advance in my turn; after having descended into the sanctuaries, He will be reduced to visit hovel.” And sincerely, humbly, he was sorry for Him.
And as the first time that he approached this peace-giving mystery, he experienced a sensation of stifling, as if his heart were too large when he returned to his place. As soon as the ma.s.s was over, he quitted the chapel and escaped into the park.
Then gently, without sensible effects, the Sacrament worked; Christ opened, little by little, his closed house and gave it air, light entered into Durtal in a flood. From the windows of his senses which had looked till then into he knew not what cesspool, into what enclosure, dank, and steeped in shadow; he now looked suddenly, through a burst of light, on a vista which lost itself in heaven.
His vision of nature was modified; the surroundings were transformed; the fog of sadness which visited them vanished; the sudden clearness of his soul was repeated in its surroundings.
He had the sensation of expansion, the almost childlike joy of a sick man who takes his first outing, of the convalescent, who having long crawled in a chamber, sets foot without; all grew young again. These alleys, this wood, through which he had wandered so much, which he began to know in all their windings, and in every corner, began to appear to him in a new aspect. A restrained joy, a repressed gladness emanated from this site, which appeared to him, instead of extending as formerly, to draw near and gather round the crucifix, to turn, as it were, with attention towards the liquid cross.
The trees rustled trembling, in a whisper of prayers, inclining towards the Christ, who no longer twisted His painful arms in the mirror of the pool, but He constrained these waters, and displayed them before Him, blessing them.
They were themselves different; the dark fluid was covered with monastic visions, in white robes, which the reflections of clouds left there in pa.s.sing, and the swan scattered them, in a splash of sunlight, making as he swam great oily circles round him.
One might have said that these waves were gilt by the oil of the catechumens, and the sacred Chrism, which the Church exorcises on the Sat.u.r.day of Holy Week, and above them heaven half-opened its tabernacle of clouds, out of which came a clear sun like a monstrance of molten gold in a Blessed Sacrament of flames.
It was a Benediction of nature, a genuflection of trees and flowers, singing in the wind, incensing with their perfume the sacred Bread which shone on high, in the flaming custody of the planet.
Durtal looked on in transport. He desired to cry aloud his enthusiasm and his Faith to the landscape; he felt a joy in living. The horror of existence counted for nothing when there were such moments, as no earthly happiness can give. G.o.d alone had the power of thus filling a soul, of making it overflow, and rush in floods of joy; and He alone could also fill the basin of sorrows, as no event in this world could do. Durtal had just tried it; his spiritual sufferings and joys attained under the divine imprint an acuteness, which people most humanly happy or unhappy cannot even suspect.
This idea brought him back to the terrible distresses of the evening before. He endeavoured to sum up what he had been able to observe of himself in this Trappist monastery.
First, the clear distinction between body and soul; then the action of the demon, insinuating and obstinate, almost visible, while the heavenly action remained, on the contrary, dull and veiled, appeared only at certain moments, and seemed at others to vanish for ever.
And all this, when felt and understood, had an appearance simple in itself, but scarcely explaining itself. The body appearing to throw itself forward to the rescue of the soul, and no doubt borrowing from it its will, to help it when it fainted, was unintelligible. How a body could itself react obscurely, and yet show, all at once, so strong a decision that it pressed its companion into a vice, and prevented its flight--
”It is as mysterious as the rest,” thought Durtal, and as in a dream he continued,
”The secret action of Jesus in His Sacrament is not less strange. If I may judge by what has happened to me; a first communion exasperates the action of the devil, while a second represses it.
”Ah, and how I put myself in line with all my calculations! In taking shelter here I thought myself pretty sure of my soul, and that my body would trouble me; whereas just the contrary has been the case.
”My stomach has grown vigorous and shown itself fit to support an effort of which I should never have thought it capable, and my soul has been below everything, vacillating and dry, so fragile, so feeble!
”But we will let all that alone.”
He walked about, lifted from earth by a confused joy. He grew vaporized in a sort of intoxication, in a vague etherization, in which arose, without his even thinking of formulating words, acts of thanksgiving; it was an effort of thanks of his soul, of his body, of his whole being, to that G.o.d whom he felt living in him, and diffused in that kneeling landscape which also seemed to expand in mute hymns of grat.i.tude.
The hour which struck by the clock in the portico reminded him it was breakfast time. He went to the guest-house, cut himself a slice of bread and b.u.t.ter with some cheese, drank half a gla.s.s of wine, and was about to go out again when he reflected that the horary of the offices was changed.
”They must be different from those of the week,” he thought; and he went up into his cell to consult his placards.
He found only one, that of the rule of the monks themselves, which contained the regulations for the Sunday practices for the cloister; and he read:
EXERCISES OF THE COMMUNITY FOR ALL ORDINARY SUNDAYS.
MORNING.
1. Rise. Little Office. Prayer till 1.30.
2. Grand Canonical Office chanted.
5.30. Prime, Morning Ma.s.s, 6 o'clock.
6.45. Chapter Instructions. Great Silence.