There was again a time of rest, and the attack turned and rushed on a new place.

"Then you believe in an eternal h.e.l.l? You suppose a G.o.d more cruel than yourself, a G.o.d who has created people, without their having been consulted, without their having asked to be born; and after having suffered during their existence, they will be again punished without mercy after their death; but consider, if you were to see your worst enemy in torture, you would be taken by pity, and would ask pardon for him. You would pardon, and the Almighty be implacable; you will admit this is to have a singular idea of Him."

Durtal was silent; h.e.l.l going on infinitely became in fact wearisome.

The reply that it is legitimate, that punishment should be infinite, because rewards are so, was not decisive, since indeed it were the property of perfect goodness, to abridge the chastis.e.m.e.nts and prolong the joys.

"But, in fact," he said to himself, "Saint Catherine of Genoa has elucidated the question. She explains very well that G.o.d sends a ray of mercy, a current of pity into h.e.l.l, that no d.a.m.ned soul suffers as much as it deserves to suffer; that if expiation ought not to cease, it may be modified, and weakened, and become at length less rigorous, less intense.

"She remarks also, that at the moment of its separation from the body, the soul becomes obstinate or yields; if it remain hardened and shows no contrition for its faults, its guilt cannot be remitted, since, after death, free will subsists no more; the will which we possess at the moment of quitting the world remains invariable.

"If, on the contrary, it does not persist in those impenitent sentiments, a part of the repression will no doubt be removed; and consequently is not devoted to a continual gehenna, as that which deliberately, while there is yet time, will not return to amendment, refuses in fact to lay aside its sins.

"Let us add that according to the saint, G.o.d does not even make the soul empty to be never polluted by sin, for it goes there of itself; it is led there by the very nature of its sins, it flings itself in as into its own good; is, if one may say so, naturally engulfed there.

"In fact we may imagine to ourselves a very small h.e.l.l, and a very large purgatory; may imagine that h.e.l.l is scantily peopled, is only reserved for cases of rare wickedness, that in reality the crowd of disincarnate souls presses into Purgatory and there endures punishments proportioned to the misdeeds it has willed here below. These ideas have nothing which cannot be sustained, and they have the advantage of being in accord with the ideas of mercy and justice."

"Exactly," replied the voice in railing tones. "Man then will do well to constrain himself; he may steal, rob, kill his father, and violate his daughter; the price is the same; provided he repent at the last minute, he is saved!"

"But no, contrition takes away the eternity of punishment only, and not punishment itself; everyone must be punished or rewarded according to his works. He who will be soiled by a parricide or an incest will bear a chastis.e.m.e.nt different in pain and length to him who has not committed them; equality in expiatory suffering, in reparative pain, does not exist.

"Moreover this idea of a purgative life after death is so natural, so certain, that all religions a.s.sume it. All consider the soul is a sort of air balloon, which cannot mount and attain its last end in s.p.a.ce except by throwing away its ballast. In the religions of the East, the soul is re-incarnistic; in order to purify itself it rubs itself against a new body, like a blade in sandstone troughs, to brighten it. For us Catholics it undergoes no terrestrial avatar, but it lightens and scours itself, clears itself in the Purgatory, where G.o.d transforms it, draws it out, extracts it little by little from the dross of its sins, till it can raise itself and lose itself in Him.

"To have done with this irritating question of a perpetual h.e.l.l, why not conceive that divine justice hesitates in the majority of cases to p.r.o.nounce inexorable decrees? Humanity is for the most part composed of unconscious rascals and fools, who do not take any count of the reach of their faults. These are saved by their complete want of comprehension.

As for others who rot, knowing what they do, they are evidently more blameworthy, but society which hates superior beings takes on itself their punishment, humiliates and persecutes them; and it is therefore allowed us to hope that our Lord will pity these poor souls so miserably pelted during their stay upon earth by a horde of fools."

"Then there is every advantage in being imbecile, since one is spared both on earth and in heaven?"

"Ah! certainly, and yet ... and yet.... What is the good of discussion, since we cannot frame for ourselves the least idea of the infinite justice of a G.o.d?"

"Moreover, this is enough, these debates overwhelm me." He tried to distract his thoughts from these subjects, and would feign to break the obsession, betake himself to Paris; but five minutes had not pa.s.sed before his double returned to the charge.

He entered once more on that halting dilemma which had so recently a.s.sailed the goodness of the Creator in regard to the sins of man.

"Purgatory is then exorbitant, for after all," said he, "G.o.d knew that man would yield to temptations; then why allow them, and above all why condemn them? Is that goodness, is that justice?"

"But it is a sophism," cried Durtal, growing angry. "G.o.d has left to every man his liberty; no one is tempted beyond his power. If in certain cases, he allows the seduction to overpa.s.s our means of resistance, it is to recall us to humility, to bring us back to Him by remorse, for other causes which we know not, which it is not His business to show us.

Then probably those transgressions are appreciated in a different way to those which we have practised with our full accord."

"The liberty of man! it is a pretty thing. Yes, let us speak of it, and atavism, and our surroundings and diseases of the brain, and of the marrow. Is a man driven by the impulses of sickness, overwhelmed by troubles of the generative organs, responsible for his acts?"

"But what can be said if under these conditions these acts are imputed to him on high. It is after all idiotic always to compare divine justice to man's tribunals; for it is exactly the contrary; human judgments are often so infamous that they attest the existence of another equity.

Rather than the proofs of a theodicy, the magistrature proves G.o.d; for without Him, how can be satisfied that instinct of justice so innate in each of us, that even the humblest beast possesses it?"

"Yet," replied the voice, "all this does not hinder the change of character according as the stomach does its work ill or well; slander, anger, envy are acc.u.mulated bile, or faulty digestion; good temper, joy, come from a free circulation of blood, the expansion of the body at will; mystics are anemo-nervous people; your ecstatics are hysterical patients badly-fed, madhouses are full of them; they depend on science when visions begin."

All at once Durtal recovered himself, the material arguments were but little disquieting, for none could remain standing: all confounded the function and the organ, the lodger and the lodging, the clock and the hour. Their a.s.sertions rested on no base. To liken the happy lucidity and unequalled genius of a Saint Teresa to the extravagances of nymphomaniacs and other mad women were so obtuse, so clumsy, that it could only raise a smile!

The mystery would remain complete; no doctor has been able to discover or could discover the psyche in those round or fusiform cells, in the white matter or grey substance of the brain. They would recognize more or less justly the organs which the soul uses to pull the strings of the puppet, which it is condemned to move, but itself remains invisible; it has gone, when after death they force open the rooms of its habitation.

"No; these newsmongers have no effect on me," Durtal a.s.sured himself.

"But does this one do any better? Do you believe in the utility of life, in the necessity of this endless chain, this towage of sufferings, to be prolonged for the most part after death? True goodness would have consisted in inventing nothing, creating nothing, in leaving all as it was, in nothingness, in peace."

The attack turned round on itself, and after apparent variations, returned always to the same starting point.

Durtal lowered his head, for this argument dismasted him; all the replies which could be imagined were remarkably weak, and the least feeble, that which consists in denying to ourselves the right to judge because we only see the details of the divine plan, because we can possess no general view of it cannot avail against that terrible phrase of Schopenhauer: "If G.o.d made the world I would not be that G.o.d, for the misery of the world would break my heart!"

"There is no haggling in the matter," he said to himself. "I can quite understand that sorrow is the true disinfectant of souls, yet I am obliged to ask myself why the Creator has not invented a less atrocious way of purifying us?

"Ah! when I think of the sufferings shut up in madhouses, and hospital wards, I am revolted, and inclined to doubt everything.

"If, again, grief were an antiseptic for future misdeeds or a detersive for past faults, one might again understand, but now it falls indifferently on the bad and on the good; it is blind. The best proof is the Virgin who was without spot, and who had not like her Son to expiate for us. She consequently ought not to be punished; yet she too underwent at the foot of Calvary the punishment exacted by this horrible law.

"Good; but then," replied Durtal, after a silence of reflection, "if the innocent Virgin has given us an example, by what right do we who are culpable dare to complain?

"No; we must therefore resolve to dwell in darkness, to live surrounded by enigmas. Money, love, nothing is clear; chance if it exist is as mysterious as Providence, and indeed still more so; it is inexplicable.

G.o.d is at least an origin of the unknown, a key.

"An origin which is itself another secret, a key which opens nothing!

"Ah! it is irritating," he said to himself, "to be thus hara.s.sed in every sense. Enough of it; besides these are questions which a theologian is alone able to discuss; I am unarmed, the game is not equal; I will not answer any more."

And he could not but hear a vague laughter which arose in him.

He quitted the garden, and directed his steps towards the chapel, but the fear of being seized again by the madness of blasphemy turned him away from it. Knowing not whither to go, he regained his cell, saying to himself, that he ought not to wrangle thus; yes, but how could he help hearing the cavils which rose he knew not whence? He almost shouted aloud: "Be silent, let the other speak!"

When he was in his chamber he desired to pray, and fell on his knees at his bedside.

This was abominable; for memories of Florence recurred to him. He rose, but the old aberrations returned.

He thought of that creature, her strange tastes, her mania for biting his ears, for drinking toilet scents in little gla.s.ses, for nibbling bread and b.u.t.ter with caviare, and dates. She was so wild, and so strange; a fool no doubt, but obscure.

"And if she were in this room, before you, what would you do?"

He stammered to himself: "I would try not to yield."

"You lie; admit then that you would send your conversion, the monastery, all, to the devil."

He grew pale at the thought; the possibility of his cowardice was a punishment. To have communicated, when one was no more certain of the future, no more certain of oneself, was almost a sacrilege, he thought.

And he became angry. Up till now he had kept right, but the vision of Florence subdued him. He threw himself, in desperation, on a chair, no longer knowing what would become of him, gathering what of courage remained to him to descend to the church, where the Office was beginning.

He dragged himself there, and held himself down, a.s.sailed by filthy temptations, disgusted with himself, feeling his will yielding, wounded in every part.

And when he was in the court he remained overwhelmed, asking himself where he could take shelter. Every place had become hostile to him; in his cell were carnal memories, outside were temptations against Faith, "or rather," he cried, "I carry these with me always. My G.o.d, my G.o.d! I was yesterday so tranquil."

He strolled by chance into an alley, when a new phenomenon arose.

He had had, up to this hour, in the sky within him, a rain of scruples, a tempest of doubts, a thunderstroke of l.u.s.t; now was silence and death.