Part 48 (1/2)

”No. I have read Saint Catherine of Genoa, but the books of Saint Catherine of Siena have never fallen into my hands.”

”And what do you think of this collection?”

Durtal looked at the t.i.tle, and made a face.

”I see that Suso hardly delights you.”

”I should tell a lie if I a.s.sured you that the dissertations of this Dominican pleased me. First, however illuminated the man may be, he does not attract me. Without speaking of the frenzy of his penances, what scrupulousness of devotion and narrowness of piety was his! Think that he could not decide on drinking till he had first, as a preliminary, divided his beverage into five parts. He thought thus to honour the five wounds of the Saviour, and, moreover, he swallowed his last mouthful in two gulps to call up before himself the water and the blood which flowed from the side of the Word.

”No! these sort of things would never enter into my head; I would never admit that such practices would glorify Christ.

”And remark well that this love of pounding things small, this pa.s.sion for small blessings, is found in all his work. His G.o.d is so difficult to content, so scrupulous, so meddling, that no one would ever get to heaven if they believed what he said. This G.o.d of his is the fault-finder of eternity, the miser of paradise.

”On the whole, Suso expands himself in impetuous discourses on trifles; then what with his insipid allegories, his morose 'Colloquy on the Nine Rocks' knocks me down.”

”You will, however, admit that his study on the Union of the Soul is substantial, and that the 'Office of the Eternal Wisdom' which he composed is worth reading?”

”I cannot say, Father, I do not now remember that Office; but I recollect tolerably well the treatise on 'Union with G.o.d,' it seems to me more interesting than the rest, but you will admit that it is very short ... and then Saint Teresa has also elucidated that question of human renunciation and divine fruition; and, hang it then...!”

”Come,” said the oblate, with a smile, ”I give up the attempt to make you a fervent reader of the good Suso.”

”For us,” said Father Maximin, ”if we had a little time to work, this ought to be the leaven of our meditations, the subject of our reading;”

and he took down a folio which contained the works of Saint Hildegarde, abbess of the Convent of Rupertsberg.

”She, you see, is the great prophetess of the New Testament. Never, since the visions of Saint John at Patmos, has the Holy Spirit communicated to an earthly being with such fulness and light. In her 'Heptachronon' she predicts Protestantism and the captivity of the Vatican; in her 'Scivias, or Knowledge of the Ways of the Lord,' which was edited, according to her recital, by a monk of the Convent of Saint Desibode, she interprets the symbols of the Scriptures, and even the nature of the elements. She also wrote a diligent commentary on our rules and enthusiastic pages on sacred music, on literature, on art, which she defines admirably; a reminiscence, half-effaced, of a primitive condition from which we have fallen since Eden. Unfortunately, to understand her, it is necessary to give oneself to minute researches and patient studies. Her apocalyptic style has something retractile, which retreats and shuts itself up all the more when one will open it.”

”I am well aware that I am losing my little Latin,” said M. Bruno. ”What a pity there is not a translation of her works, with glosses to help.”

”They are untranslatable,” said the father, who went on,

”Saint Hildegarde is, with Saint Bernard, one of the purest glories of the family of Saint Benedict. How predestinate was that virgin, who was inundated with interior light at the age of three, and died at eighty-two, having lived all her life in the cloister!”

”And add that she was as a permanent state, prophetical!” cried the oblate. ”She is like no other woman saint; all in her is astonis.h.i.+ng, even the way in which G.o.d addresses her, for He forgets that she is a woman, and calls her 'man.'

”And she,” added the prior, ”employs, when she wishes to designate herself, the singular expression, 'the paltry form.' But here is another writer who is dear to us,” and he showed Durtal the two volumes of Saint Gertrude. ”She is again one of our great nuns, an abbess truly Benedictine, in the exact sense of the word, for she caused the Holy Scriptures to be explained to her nuns, wished that the piety of her daughters should be based on science, that this faith should be sustained by liturgical food, if I may say so.”

”I know nothing of her but her 'Exercises,'” observed Durtal, ”and they have left with me the memory of echoed words, of things said again from the sacred books. So far as one may judge from simple extracts, she does not appear to have original expression, and to be far below Saint Teresa or Saint Angela.”

”No doubt,” answered the monk. ”But she comes near Saint Angela by the gift of familiarity when she converses with Christ, and also by the loving vehemence of what she says; only all this is transformed on leaving its proper source; she thinks liturgically; and this is so true, that the least of her reflections at once presents itself to her clothed in the language of the Gospels and the Psalms.

”Her 'Revelations,' her 'Insinuations,' her 'Herald of Divine Love,' are marvellous from this point of view; and then her prayer to the Blessed Virgin is exquisite which opens with this phrase: 'Hail, O white lily of the Trinity, resplendent, and always at rest....'

”As a continuation of her works, the Benedictine Fathers of Solesmes have edited also the 'Revelations' of Saint Mechtilde, her book on 'Special Grace,' and her 'Light of the Divinity'; they are there on that shelf....”

”Let me show you,” said in his turn M. Bruno, ”guides wisely marked out for the soul which escapes from itself, and will attempt to climb the eternal mountains,” and he handed to Durtal the ”Lucerna Mystica” of Lopez Ezquerra, the quartos of Scaramelli, the volumes of Schram, the ”Christian Asceticism” of Ribet, the ”Principles of Mystic Theology” of Father Seraphin.

”And do you know this?” continued the oblate; the volume he offered was called ”On Prayer,” was anonymous, and bore at the bottom of its first page ”Solesmes, printed at the Abbey of Saint Cecilia,” and above the printed date, 1886, Durtal made out the word written in ink, ”Confidential.”

”I have never seen this little book, which seems moreover to have never been brought into the market. Who is the author?”