"My soul is an evil place, sordid and infamous; till now it has loved only perverse ways; it has exacted from my wretched body the t.i.the of illicit pleasures and unholy joys, it is worth little, it is worth nothing, and yet down there near Thee, if Thou wilt succour me, I think that I shall subdue it, but if my body be sick, I cannot force it to obey me; this is worse than all, I am disarmed if Thou do not come to my aid.

"Take count of this, O Lord; I know by experience that when I am ill-fed, I have neuralgia; humanly, logically speaking, I am certain to be horribly ill at Notre Dame de l'Atre; nevertheless, if I can get about at all, the day after to-morrow, I will go all the same.

"In default of love, this is the sole proof I can give that I truly desire Thee, that truly I hope and believe in Thee, but then, O Lord, aid me."

He added sadly, "Ah! indeed I am no Lidwine or Catherine Emmerich, who when Thou didst strike them cried out, More, more!--Thou dost scarce touch me, and I protest; but what wouldest Thou? Thou dost know better than I; physical suffering breaks me down, drives me to despair."

He went to sleep at last to kill the day in bed; slumbering to wake again suddenly from frightful nightmares.

The next day his head seemed empty and his heart feeble, but his neuralgia was less violent. He rose, saying to himself that he must eat, though he was not hungry, for fear his pain should return. He went out and wandered in the Luxembourg, saying to himself that he must arrange his time, that after breakfast he would visit St. Severin, then he would go home and pack, and afterwards finish the day at Notre Dame des Victoires.

The walk did him good, his head was lighter, and his heart free. He went into a restaurant, where because of the early hour nothing was ready; he spent the time before a newspaper, on a bench. How often he had held papers thus without reading them, how many evenings he had waited in cafes with his nose in an article, thinking of other matters, at those times especially when he was striving with his vices; when Florence appeared to him, still keeping the clear smile of a little girl on her way to school, her eyes cast down, her hands in the pockets of her ap.r.o.n.

Suddenly the child changed into a ghoul who whirled round him wildly, and made him silently understand the horror of his desires....

All that was now far distant; almost in one day the charm was broken, without any real strife or true effort, without inward struggles; he had abstained from seeing her, and now when she roused his memory again she was no more in fact than a recollection odious and sweet.

"After all," thought Durtal, as he cut up his beefsteak, "I wonder what she thinks of me; she must certainly suppose me dead or lost; happily I have never met her, and she does not know my address.

"Well," he went on, "there is no use in stirring the mud, it will be time to cleanse it when I am at La Trappe," and he shuddered, for the idea of the confessor again took root in him, and he was obliged to tell himself for the twentieth time that the expected never happens, and to declare that he should find some good fellow of a monk who would listen to him; then he was afraid again, putting things at their worst, and fancying himself turned out, like a mangy dog.

He finished his breakfast, and went to St. Severin; there the crisis declared itself, the overcharged soul gave way, struck down by a congestion of sadness.

He lay on a chair in such a state of depression that he could think no more, he remained inert without the power of suffering, till little by little the soul, recovered from its torpor, came to itself in a flood of tears.

These tears gave him solace; he wept over his lot, thought himself so unhappy, so worthy of pity, that he hoped still more for help, yet he dare not address himself to Christ, whom he thought less accessible, but he spoke in low tones to the Virgin, murmuring that prayer in which Saint Bernard reminds the Mother of Christ that never in human memory was it heard that she abandoned any of those who sought her aid.

He left St. Severin, consoled and more resolved, and, when once at home, was taken up with preparations for departure. Afraid that he would find nothing he wanted down there, he determined to stuff his portmanteau full; he crammed into the corners sugar, packets of chocolate, that he might try to deceive if needful the anguish of a fasting stomach, took towels thinking there would be few at La Trappe, prepared a stock of tobacco and matches; then besides books, paper, pencils, ink, packets of antipyrine, a phial of laudanum, which he wrapped in handkerchiefs and wedged into his slippers.

When he had strapped his portmanteau, he said to himself, looking at the clock: "To-morrow at this time I shall be jolting in a cab, and my seclusion will be near at hand; never mind, I shall do well, in antic.i.p.ation of bodily ailment, to ask for the confessor as soon as I get there, and suppose that turns out badly, I shall have time to make arrangements and take the train back at once.

"All the same this will not prevent my having a wretched moment this evening when I enter Notre Dame des Victoires," but his anxieties and emotions vanished when the hour of Benediction came. He was seized by the giddy infection of the church, and he wrapped, steeped, and lost himself in the prayer which arose from all those souls, in the chant which went up from every mouth, and when the monstrance was brought forward to make its sign in the air, he felt a vast peace descend upon him.

At evening as he undressed he sighed: "To-morrow I shall lie down in a cell, amazing when I think of it! I should have considered anyone mad, who, a few years ago, had prophesied that I should take refuge in a Trappist monastery; yet now I am going there of my own accord, and yet no, I am going driven by an unknown power, I am going as a whipped cur.

"After all, what a symptom of the time it is! Society must indeed be unclean, if G.o.d has no longer the right to be hard, and is reduced to pick up what He finds, and to content Himself with gathering to Himself people like me!"

SECOND PART.

CHAPTER I.

Durtal awoke, gay and brisk, astonished at not hearing himself groan, when the moment had come in which he should set off for La Trappe; he was wonderfully rea.s.sured. He tried to recollect himself, and to pray, but he felt his thoughts more scattered and wandering than usual; he remained indifferent and unmoved. Surprised at this result, he tried to examine himself, and touched the void; he was slack that morning, in one of those sudden dispositions in which a man becomes a child again, incapable of attention, in which the wrong side of things disappears, and everything distracts.

He dressed hastily, got into a cab, was too early at the station; and there experienced a perfectly childish attack of vanity. Looking at the people who hurried through the waiting rooms, thronged the ticket offices, or resignedly followed their luggage, he was not far from admiring himself. "If these travellers who think only of their pleasures or their business, knew where I am going," he thought.

Then he reproached himself for the stupidity of these reflections, and as soon as he was settled in his compartment, in which he chanced to be alone, he lighted a cigarette, saying to himself, "Let us profit at least by the time there is still for smoking," and he began to wander, to dream about the position of the monastery, and rove about the neighbourhood of La Trappe.

He remembered that a review had recently estimated the number of nuns and monks in France at two hundred thousand.

"Two hundred thousand persons, who, in such an epoch, have understood the wickedness of the struggle for life, the filth of s.e.xual relations, the horror of lyings-in, those are they who save the honour of the country," he thought.

Then, pa.s.sing at a bound from cloistered souls to the treatises he had put in his portmanteau, he went on: "It is, all the same, curious how completely the temperament of French art rebels against Mysticism!

"All exalted writers are foreigners. Saint Denys the Areopagite was a Greek; Eckhart, Tauler, Suso, Sister Emmerich, were Germans; Ruysbrock came from Flanders; Saint Teresa, Saint John of the Cross, Saint Marie d'Agreda, were Spaniards; Father Faber was English; Saint Bonaventure, Angela of Foligno, Magdalen of Pazzi, Catherine of Genoa, Jacopo de Voragine, were Italians....

"Ah!" he said, struck by the last name he had cited, "I ought to have brought his Golden Legend in my bag; how was it I did not remember it, for that book is, in fact, the very crowning work of the Middle Ages, the stimulant for hours rendered languid by the prolonged uneasiness of fasting, the simple aid of pious vigils? For the most incredulous souls of our time, the Golden Legend at least still seems like one of those pure parchments, on which simple illuminators painted the faces of saints with gum water, or white of egg on golden backgrounds. Jacopo de Voragine is the Jehan Fouquet, the Andre Beaunevue, of literary miniature, of mystic prose!

"It is quite absurd to have forgotten that book, for it would have made me pa.s.s precious days, like those of old, in La Trappe.

"Yes, it is strange," he thought, returning on his thoughts, and coming back to his first idea; "France can count religious authors, more or less celebrated, but very few mystical writers, properly so-called, and it is just the same also in painting. The true Early Masters are Flemish, German or Italian, none are French, for our Burgundian School descended from the Flemish.

"No, it cannot be denied, the genius of our race cannot easily follow and explain how G.o.d acts when He works in the central depths of the soul, which is the ovary of thought, the very source of conception; it is refractory at explaining, by the expressive power of words, the crash or the silence of grace; bursting forth in the domain which is wasted by sin, it is inapt at extracting from that secret world, works of psychology like those of Saint Teresa and Saint John of the Cross, works of art, like those of Voragine or Sister Emmerich.

"Besides that our field is scarcely arable, and our soil harsh, where shall we now find the labourer who sows and harrows it, who prepares not even a mystical harvest, but even any spiritual fruit, capable of a.s.suaging the hunger of the few who stray and are lost, and fall from inanition in the icy desert of our time?

"He who should be the cultivator of that land, the farmer of souls, the priest, has not strength to clear the ground.

"The seminary has made him arbitrary and puerile, life outside has made him lukewarm. Therefore it seems that G.o.d has withdrawn Himself from him, and the proof of this is that He has taken away all ability from the priesthood. There are no priests now who have talent, either in the pulpit or in books; the laity have inherited that grace which was so common in the Church of the Middle Ages. Another example proves it still more, priests make so few conversions. In these days the being who pleases Heaven does without them, the Saviour Himself strikes him down, handles him, works directly on him.

"The ignorance of the clergy, their want of education, their unintelligence of their surroundings, their dislike for Mysticism, their incomprehension of art, have taken away all their influence on the aristocracy of souls. Their only action is now on the childish brains of bigots and pretenders; and this is no doubt providential; it is better so, for if the priest became the master, if he succeeded in raising and vivifying the wearisome tribe he manages, it would be like a waterspout of clerical stupidity beating down on a country, would be the end of all literature and all art in France.

"To save the Church there remains the monk, whom the priest detests, for the life of the cloister is a constant reproach to his own existence,"

continued Durtal; "always supposing that my illusions are not again destroyed when I see a monastery ... but no, I am lucky; I have discovered in Paris one of those few abbes who is neither indifferent nor a pedant; why should I not, in an abbey, come into contact with authentic monks?"

He lighted a cigarette, and looked at the landscape from the carriage window; the train was pa.s.sing through fields in front of which the telegraph wires danced in puffs of steam; the landscape was flat and uninteresting. Durtal fell back sulkily in his corner.

"The arrival at the convent disturbs me," he murmured; "since there are no useless words to proffer, I shall confine myself to giving his letter to the Father Guestmaster; ah! and then all will arrange itself."

He felt, in fact, a perfect calm, and was astonished at not finding in himself any disgust or fear, at being almost in high spirits: "Well, my good priest was right in declaring that I was creating monsters in advance;" and he thought of the Abbe Gevresin, was surprised that long as he had visited him, he knew nothing whatever of his antecedents, that he was no more intimate with him than on the very first day; "In fact, it only rested with me to question him discreetly, but the idea never entered my head: it is true that our intercourse has been strictly limited to matters of religion and art; this perpetual reserve does not create very thrilling friendships, but it inst.i.tutes a sort of Jansenism of the affections which is not without charm.

"In any case that ecclesiastic is a holy man; he has not even that manner at once caressing and reserved of other priests. Apart from certain gestures, his habit of rolling his arms in his cincture, of wrapping his hands in his sleeves, of liking to walk backwards when in conversation; apart from his innocent mania of interlarding his phrases with Latin, he does not recall either the att.i.tude or the unfashionable speech of his brethren. He loves mysticism and plain song; he is exceptional, and therefore he must have been also carefully chosen for me in heaven.

"Ah well! we must be getting near," he sighed, looking at his watch, "I am beginning to feel hungry; come, that is all right, we shall be at Saint Landry in a quarter of an hour."

He strummed on the windows of the carriage, saw the fields and woods fly past, smoked a cigarette or two, took his bag from the rack, at last arrived at the station and got out.

Close to the tiny station he recognized the inn of which the abbe had told him. He found a good woman in the kitchen who said, "All right, sir, sit down, they will put the horse to while you breakfast."

He fed himself on uneatable things, they brought him a calf's head forgotten in a tub, some cutlets that were high, vegetables blackened with gravy from the stove.

In his present mood he was amused at this infamous meal, fell back upon a thin wine which rasped his throat, and resignedly drank coffee which left a sediment of peat at the bottom of the cup.