Part 48 (2/2)

”The most extraordinary nun of our time, the abbess of the Benedictine nuns at Solesmes. I regret only that you are going so soon, for I should have been happy to let you read it.

”As far as the doc.u.ment is concerned, it is of a most extraordinary science, and it contains admirable quotations from Saint Hildegarde and Ca.s.sien: as far as Mysticism is concerned, Mother Saint Cecilia evidently only reproduces the works of her predecessors, and she tells us nothing very new. Nevertheless, I remember a pa.s.sage which seems to me more special, more personal. Wait....”

And the oblate turned over a few pages. ”Here it is:

”'The spiritualized soul does not appear exposed to temptation properly so-called, but by a divine permission it is called upon to conflict with the Demon, spirit against spirit.... The contact with the Demon is then perceived on the surface of the soul, under the form of a burn at once spiritual and sensible.... If the soul hold good in its union with G.o.d, if it be strong, the pain, however sharp, is bearable; but if the soul commit any slight imperfection, even inwardly, the Demon makes just so much way, and carries his horrible burning more forward, until by generous acts the soul can repulse him further.”

”This touch of Satan, which produces an almost material effect on the most intangible parts of our being, is, you will admit, at least curious,” concluded the oblate, as he closed the volume.

”Mother Saint Cecilia is a remarkable strategist of the soul,” said the prior, ”but ... but ... this work, which she edited for the daughters of her abbey, contains, I think, some rash propositions which have not been read without displeasure at Rome.”

”To have done with our poor treasures,” he continued, ”we have only on this side,” and he pointed out a portion of the book-cases which covered the room, ”long-winded works, the 'Cistercian Menology,' 'Migne's Patrology,' dictionaries of the lives of the saints, manuals of sacred interpretation, canon law, Christian apology, Biblical exegesis, the complete works of Saint Thomas, tools of work which we rarely employ, for as you know we are a branch of the Benedictine trunk vowed to a life of bodily labour and penance; we are men of sorrow for G.o.d, above all things. Here is M. Bruno, who uses these books; so do I at times, for I have special charge of spiritual matters in this monastery,” added the monk with a smile.

Durtal looked at him; he handled the volumes with caressing hands, brooded over them with the blue l.u.s.tre of his eye, laughed with the joy of a child as he turned their pages.

”What a difference between this monk who evidently adores his books, and the prior with his imperious profile and silent lips who heard his confession the second day;” then thinking of all these Trappists, the severity of their countenances, the joy of their eyes, Durtal said to himself that these Cistercians were not at all as the world believed, solemn and funereal people, but that, quite the contrary, they were the gayest of men.

”Now,” said Father Maximin, ”the reverend Father abbot has charged me with a commission; knowing that you will leave us to-morrow, he is anxious, now that he is better, to pa.s.s at least some minutes with you.

He will be free this evening: will it trouble you to join him after Compline?”

”Not at all; I shall be glad to talk with Dom Anselm.”

”That is understood, then.”

They went downstairs. Durtal thanked the prior, who re-entered the enclosure of the corridors, and the oblate, who went up to his cell. He trifled about, and in spite of the torment of his departure, which haunted him, reached the evening without too much trouble.

The ”Salve Regina,” which he heard perhaps for the last time thus sung by male voices; that airy chapel built of sound, and evaporating with the close of the antiphon, in the smoke of the tapers, stirred him to the bottom of his soul; the Trappist monastery showed itself truly charming this evening. After the office, they said the Rosary, not as at Paris, where they recite a Pater, ten Aves, and a Gloria, and so over again; here they said in Latin a Pater, an Ave, a Gloria, and began again till in that manner they had finished several decades.

This rosary was said on their knees, half by the prior, half by all the monks. It went at so rapid a pace that it was scarcely possible to distinguish the words, but as soon as it was ended, at a signal there was a great silence, and each one prayed with his head in his hands.

And Durtal took notice of the ingenious system of conventual prayers: after the prayers purely vocal like these, came mental prayer, personal pet.i.tions, stimulated and set a-going by the very machine of paternosters.

”Nothing is left to chance in religion; every exercise which seems at first useless has a reason for its being,” he said to himself, as he went out into the court. ”And the fact is, that the rosary, which seems to be only a humming-top of sounds, fulfils an end. It reposes the soul wearied with the supplications which it has recited, applying itself to them, thinking of them; it hinders it from babbling and reciting to G.o.d always the same pet.i.tions, the same complaints; it allows it to take breath, to take rest, in prayers in which it can dispense with reflection, and, in fact, the rosary occupies in prayer, those hours of fatigue in which one would not pray.... Ah! here is the Father abbot.”

The Trappist expressed to him his regret at visiting him only thus for a few moments; then after he had answered Durtal, who inquired after the state of his health, which he hoped was at last re-established, he proposed to him to walk in the garden, and begged him not to inconvenience himself by not smoking cigarettes if he had a mind to do so.

And the conversation turned on Paris. Dom Anselm asked for some information, and ended by saying with a smile, ”I see by sc.r.a.ps of newspapers which come to me, that society just now is infected with socialism. Everyone wishes to solve the famous social question. How does that get on?”

”How does that get on? Why, not at all! Unless you can change the souls of workmen and masters, and make them disinterested and charitable between to-day and to-morrow, in what can you expect these systems to end?”

”Well,” said the monk, enwrapping the monastery with a gesture, ”the question is solved here.

”As wages do not exist, all sources of conflicts are suppressed.

”As every task is according to apt.i.tudes and powers, the fathers who are not strong-shouldered and big-armed fold the packages of chocolate, or make out the bills, and those who are robust dig the ground.

”I add that the equality in our cloisters is such that the prior and the abbot have no advantage over the other monks. At table the portions, and in the dormitory the pailla.s.ses, are identical. The sole profits of the abbot consist on the whole in the inevitable cares arising from the moral conduct and the temporal administration of an abbey. There is therefore no reason why the workmen of a convent should go on strike,”

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