J.-K. Huysmans

Rising, somewhat earlier than his wont, Durtal went down to the chapel. The office of Matins was over, but some lay brothers, amongst whom was Brother Simeon, were praying on their knees on the ground.

The sight of this holy swine-herd threw Durtal into a long train of thought. He tried in vain to penetrate into the sanctuary of that soul, hidden like an invisible chapel behind the dunghill rampart of a body; he did not even succeed in representing to himself the docile and clinging soul of this man, who had attained the highest state to which the human creature can reach here below.

"What a power of prayer he has," thought he, as he looked at the old man.

He remembered the details of his interview the evening before. "It is true," he thought, "that in this monk I find something of the charm of that brother Juniper, whose surprising simplicity has come down through the ages."

And he brought to mind the adventures of that Franciscan whom his companions left one day by himself in the convent, telling him to prepare dinner against their return.

Juniper reflected, "What an amount of time is spent in preparing food! The brothers who take turns in that work have not even time to pray"—and desiring to lighten the work of those who should succeed him in the kitchen, he determined to cook such plentiful dishes that the community might dine on them for a fortnight.

He lighted all the stoves, procured, we are not told how, enormous boilers, filled them with water, threw into them, pell-mell, eggs with their shells, chickens with their feathers, vegetables he had neglected to trim, and before a fire which would roast an ox, he exerted himself to pile up and stir the ridiculous jumble of his stock-pots.

When the brothers came home, and sat down in the refectory, he ran, his face browned and his hands burnt, and joyously served up his stew. The superior asked him if he were not mad, while he remained stupefied that no one gobbled up this astonishing mess. He declared in all humility that he thought he was doing a service to his brethren, and only when he observed that so much food would be wasted, did he weep hot tears, and declare himself a wretch; he cried that he was good for nothing but to spoil the property of Almighty God, while the monks smiled, admiring this debauch of charity, and the excess of Juniper's simplicity.

"Brother Simeon would be humble enough and simple enough to renew again such splendid jokes," thought Durtal, "but better still than the good Franciscan, he recalls the memory of that astonishing Saint Joseph of Cupertino, of whom the oblate spoke yesterday."

He, who called himself brother Ass, was a charming and poor creature, so modest, and so ignorant, that he was turned away wherever he went. He passed through life, with open mouth, thrusting himself eagerly against all the cloisters that repulsed him. He wandered about unable to perform even the lowest tasks. He was, to use a popular expression, a regular butter-fingers, and broke whatever he touched. They ordered him to go and fetch water, and he wandered without understanding, absorbed in God, and at the end, when no one thought about it any more, brought some after a month.

A monastery of Capucins which had received him, got rid of him. He went his way, vaguely, out of his orbit among the towns, stumbled into another convent where he employed himself in taking care of the animals, whom he adored, and he rose into a perpetual ecstasy, revealing himself as the most singular of wonder workers, putting the demons to flight, and healing the sick. He was at once idiotic and sublime; in the hagiography he stands alone, and seems to figure there to furnish a proof that the soul is identified with Eternal Wisdom, rather by ignorance than by science.

"He also loves animals," said Durtal to himself, as he looked at old Simeon; "and he too puts to flight the Evil One, and works cures by his sanctity.

"In a time when all men are exclusively haunted by the thoughts of luxury and lucre, the soul appears extraordinary when divested of its bark, as the candid and naked soul of this good monk. He is eighty years old and more, and he has led from his youth up the restricted life of the Trappists; he probably does not know in what time he lives, nor what latitudes he inhabits, whether he is in America or in France, for he has never read a newspaper, and outside rumours do not reach him.

"He does not even know the taste of flesh meat or wine; he has no notion of money, of which he does not suspect the value nor the appearance; he does not imagine how a woman is made; and save for the breeding of his pigs, he perhaps cannot even guess the meaning and the consequences of the sin of the flesh.

"He lives alone ringed round by silence, and buried in the shade; he meditates on the mortifications of the Fathers in the Desert, which are read to him as he eats, and the frenzy of their fasts makes him ashamed of his miserable repast, and he accuses himself that he is so well to do.

"Ah! this Father Simeon is innocent; he knows nothing that we know, and knows that of which all others are ignorant; his education has been taken in hand by the Lord Himself, who teaches him truths which we cannot comprehend, models his soul after heaven, infuses Himself into him, possesses him, and deifies him in the union of Blessedness.

"This puts us somewhat at a distance from hypocrites and devout persons; as far indeed as modern Catholicism is from Mysticism, for certainly that religion is as grovelling on the ground as Mysticism is high!

"And that is true. Instead of directing all our forces to that unknown end, of taking our soul to fashion it in that form of a dove which the Middle Ages gave to the pyxes; instead of making it the shrine where the Host reposes in the very image of the Holy Spirit, the Catholic confines himself to trying to conceal his conscience, to deceive his Judge by the fear of a salutary hell; he acts not by choice, but by fear: he with the aid of his clergy, and the help of his imbecile literature, and his feeble press, has made of religion a mere fetishism, a ridiculous worship composed of statuettes and alms boxes; candles and chromo-lithographs; he has materialized the ideal of Love, in inventing an entirely physical devotion to the Sacred Heart.

"What baseness of conception!" continued Durtal, who had come out of the chapel, and was strolling along the bank of the great pond. He looked at the reeds, which bent like an harvest still green, under a puff of wind; then he half saw as he leant forward, an old boat, which bore almost effaced on its blueish hull the name "Alleluia." This bark disappeared under the tufts of leaves round which were twined the bells of the convolvulus, a symbolic flower, since it widens out like a chalice, and has the dead white of a wafer.

The scent of the water, at once enticing and bitter, intoxicated him. "Ah!" he thought, "happiness certainly consists in being restricted to a place closely locked, a prison very confined, or a chapel always open," and he caught himself up: "Ah! there is Brother Anacletus;" the lay brother was coming towards him, bending under a hamper.

He passed before Durtal, smiling at him with his eyes: and while he went his way, Durtal thought, "This man is a true friend of mine; when I was suffering so much before my confession, he expressed all to me in a look. To-day when he believes me serener, and more joyous, he is content, and shows it to me by a smile; and I shall never speak to him, I shall never thank him, I shall never even know who he is, I shall perhaps never even see him again.

"In leaving this place, I shall keep a friend, for whom I too feel affection; yet neither of us has even exchanged a gesture with the other.

"After all," he thought, "does not this absolute reserve make our friendship more perfect? it is stamped in the eternal distance, it remains mysterious and incomplete, and more certain."

While thinking over these reflections, Durtal went towards the chapel, where the Office called him, and thence to the refectory.

He was surprised to find the table laid only for one. "What has happened to M. Bruno? Yet I may as well wait a while," and to kill time, he occupied himself by reading a printed card, hung upon the wall.

It was a sort of advertisement which began thus:

"Eternity.

"Fellow sinners, you will die. Be ye always ready.

"Watch then, pray without ceasing, never forget the Four Last Things which you see here traced

"Death, the gate of Eternity,
Judgment, which decides Eternity,
Hell, the abode of unhappy Eternity,
Paradise, the abode of blessed Eternity."

Father Etienne interrupted Durtal, telling him that M. Bruno had gone to Saint Landry to make some purchases, and would only return at bed-time at eight o'clock. "Dine then without waiting, and make haste, or all your dishes will be cold."

"And how is the father abbot?"

"Better, he keeps his room still, but he hopes to be able to come down a while, the day after to-morrow, and assist at least at some of the offices."

And the monk bowed and disappeared.

Durtal seated himself at table, ate some bean broth, swallowed a soft-boiled egg and a spoonful of warm beans, then once outside, he passed along the chapel, entered it, and knelt before the altar of the Virgin; but at once the spirit of blasphemy filled him; he wished, whatever it cost him, to insult the Virgin; it seemed to him that he would experience a sharp joy, an acute pleasure in soiling her; but he restrained himself, he wrinkled his face not to allow the coal-heaver's abuse, which was on his lips, to escape.

And he detested these abominations; he revolted against them, strove against them with horror; and the impulse became so irresistible, that in order to keep silence he was obliged to bite his lips till they bled.

"This is somewhat strong," he said, "to hear grumbling in oneself, the contrary of what one is thinking;" but he had need to call to his help all his will, he felt that he should yield, and spit out all these impurities; wherefore he fled, thinking, that should he find no means of resistance, it were better to vomit this filth in the court rather than in the church.

And so soon as he quitted the chapel this madness of blasphemy ceased; he walked along the pond astonished by the strange violence of the attack.

Little by little there came to him the unexplained intuition of a danger that menaced him. As a beast that scents a hidden enemy, he looked with precaution within himself, and ended by seeing a black point on the horizon of his soul, and suddenly, before he had time to reconnoitre, and take account of the danger he saw arising, this point extended, and covered him with its shadow; there was no more light in him.

He had that minute of unrest which precedes the storm, and in the anxious silence of his being, arguments fell like drops of rain.

The painful effects of the Sacrament justified themselves, had he not proceeded in such a way that his communion could not but be unfaithful? Evidently; instead of collecting and straining himself, he had passed an afternoon of revolt and anger; the very evening before he had unworthily judged an ecclesiastic whose only wrong was that he took pleasure in the vanity of easy jokes. Had he confessed this injustice, and these revolts? Not the least in the world; and after the communion still less; had he, as he should have done, shut himself up alone with his Guest? He had abandoned Him, without thinking more of Him; had quitted his innermost cell, had taken a walk in the wood, had not even been present at the Offices.

"But come, come, this blame is foolish. I communicated, just as I was, on the formal order of the confessor; as for the walk, I did not ask for it nor wish for it. M. Bruno, in agreement with the abbot of La Trappe, decided it would do me good; I have then nothing to reproach myself with; I am blameless.

"This does not prove that you would not have done better to spend the day in prayer, in the church.

"But," he cried, "with such a system one could not move, one could not eat, nor sleep, for one should never leave the church. There must be time for everything, or the devil take it all!

"No doubt, but a more diligent soul would have refused that excursion, just because it was pleasant; would have avoided it, out of mortification, in a spirit of penance."

"Evidently, but" ... these scruples tortured him; "the fact is," he said, "I might have employed my afternoon more wholesomely than that;" to believe that he had spent it ill was but a step, and he made it. He pelted himself for an hour, sweating with agony, heaping on himself imaginary sins, and entering so far on that road that he ended by suddenly realizing his position and understanding he was out of the right track.

The story of the rosary returned to his memory, and then he blamed himself for allowing himself to be again driven into a corner by the demon. He began to breathe again, to regain his footing, when other attacks equally formidable presented themselves.

It was no longer an insinuation of arguments which ran drop by drop, but a furious rain, which threw itself like an avalanche on his soul. The storm, of which the wave of scruples was only the prelude, burst in its fulness; and in the panic of the first moment, in the violence of the tempest, the enemy unmasked his batteries, and struck him to the heart.

He had got no good from that communion, but he was also too young at it. Ah! indeed, was he to believe that because a priest uttered five Latin words over a bit of unleavened bread, that bread was transubstantiated into the flesh of Christ? That a child should accept such nonsense, might be possible, but that a man past forty should listen to such formidable shams, was excessive; almost disquieting.

And these insinuations lashed him like hail showers: how could bread made of wheat before, have only the appearance of wheat afterwards; what is flesh that is neither seen nor felt; what is a body, which has such ubiquity as to be at the same time on the altars of divers countries; what is that power which is annihilated when the Host is not made of pure wheat?

And this became a regular deluge which overwhelmed him, and yet like an impenetrable pile, that Faith he had acquired without ever having known how, remained immovable, disappeared under torrents of interrogation, but never stirred.

He revolted, and said to himself: "This only proves that the sacramental darkness of the Eucharist cannot be sounded. Moreover, if it were intelligible, it would not be divine. If the God whom we serve could be comprehended by reason, He could not be worth the trouble of serving, said Tauler; and the 'Imitation' declares plainly also at the end of the IVth book that if the works of God were such as man's intelligence could easily grasp, they would cease to be marvellous, and could not be qualified as ineffable."

And a mocking voice replied,

"That is what you call answering, avowing that there is nothing to answer."

"In fact," said Durtal, who reflected, "I have been present at spiritualistic experiences, where no trickery was possible. It was quite evident that there was no fluid from the spectators, no suggestion of persons surrounding the table who dictated the responses; then in giving its raps, the table expressed itself suddenly in English, though no one spoke that language, then a few minutes later, addressing itself to me, who was at a distance from it, and consequently was not touching it, it told me this time in French, facts which I had forgotten, and I alone could know. I am then certainly obliged to suppose an element of the supernatural, using a table in guise of an interpreter, to accept if not the evocation of the dead, but at least the proved existence of ghosts.

"Then it is not more impossible, more surprising that Christ should substitute Himself for a piece of bread, than that a ghost should hide and brag in the foot of a table. These phenomena equally put our senses to rout; but if one of them be undeniable, and spiritualistic manifestation certainly is so, what motives can we invoke to deny the other, which is moreover attested by thousands of saints?

"After all," he went on with a smile, "we have already demonstration by the absurd, but this may be called demonstration by the abject, for if the Eucharistic mystery is sublime, it is not the same with spiritualism, which is after all only the latrine of the supernatural!"

"If this were the only enigma," began the voice again, "but all the Catholic doctrines are on the same model; examine religion from its birth, and see if it do not always issue by an absurd dogma.

"Here is a God, infinitely perfect, infinitely good, a God who is not ignorant of past, present, or future. He knew then that Eve would sin; therefore of two things, one; either He is not good, in that He submitted her to that proof knowing that she had not power to stand it; or again, He was not certain of her defeat; in that case He is not omniscient, He is not perfect."

Durtal gave no answer to this dilemma; which is in fact difficult to resolve.

"Yet," he thought, "we may at once exclude one of these two propositions, the latter; for it is childish to concern ourselves about the future, when we have to do with God; we judge Him by our miserable understanding, and there is for Him neither present nor past, nor future; He sees them all at the same moment in light uncreate. For Him distance has no figure, and space is nought. It is consequently impossible to doubt that the Serpent will conquer. This amputated dilemma is then out of order."

"Be it so, but the other alternative remains; what do you make of His goodness?"

"His goodness?" And Durtal had need to repeat again the arguments drawn from free will, and the promised coming of the Saviour; and he was obliged to admit that these answers were weak.

And the voice became more pressing,

"Then you admit original sin?"

"I am obliged to admit it, because it exists. What are heredity and atavism, save, under another name, the terrible sin of the beginning?"

"And does it appear to you just that innocent generations should make amends now and always for the sin of the first man?"

And as Durtal did not reply, the voice insinuated gently,

"This law is so iniquitous that it seems as if the Creator were ashamed of it, and that in order to punish Himself for His ferocity, and not to make Himself for ever execrated by His creature, He wished to suffer on the Cross, and expiate His crime in the person of His own Son."

"But," cried Durtal, exasperated, "God could not commit a crime and punish Himself: were that so, Jesus would be the Redeemer of His Father, and not ours; it is madness!"

Little by little he recovered his balance; he recited slowly the Apostles' Creed, while the objections which demolished it, pressed one after the other within him.

"There is one fact certain," he said to himself, for in all this tumult, he was perfectly lucid, "that for the moment we are two persons in one. I can follow my reasonings, and I hear on the other side, the sophisms my double breathes in me. This duality has never appeared so clear to me."

And the attack grew feebler, on this reflection; it might have been believed that the enemy now discovered was beating a retreat.

But nothing of the kind; after a short truce, the assault began again on another point.

"Are you very sure that you have not suggested and shown the blow to yourself? By having wished, you have ended by begetting belief, and by implanting in yourself a fixed idea, disguised under the name of grace, round which everything now clings. You complain that you did not experience sensible joys after your communion; this simply proves that you were not careful enough, or that, tired by the excess of the evening before, your imagination showed itself unready to play the infatuating fairy story you expected from yourself after the mass.

"Moreover, you ought to know that in these questions all depends on the more or less feverish activity of the brain and the senses; see what takes place in the case of women, who deceive themselves more easily than men; for that again declares the difference of conformations, the variety between the sexes; Christ gives Himself carnally under the appearances of bread; that is mystical marriage, the divine union consummated by the way of the lips; He is indeed the spouse of women, while we men, without willing it, by the very lodestone of our nature, are more attracted by the Virgin. But she does not give herself, like her Son, to us; she does not reside in the Sacrament; possession is in her case impossible; she is our Mother, but she is not our Spouse, as he is the Spouse of virgins.

"We conceive, therefore, that women are more violently duped, that they adore better, and imagine more easily the more they are petted. Moreover, M. Bruno said to you yesterday, 'Woman is more passive, less rebellious to the action of Heaven ...'

"Well, what has that to do with me; what does that prove? that the more we love the better we are loved: but if that axiom is false, from the earthly point of view, it is certainly exact from the divine point of view; which would be monstrous, and would come to this, that the Lord would not treat the soul of a Poor Clare better than mine."

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

"Then you believe in an eternal hell? You suppose a God more cruel than yourself, a God 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; hell 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 chastisements and prolong the joys.

"But, in fact," he said to himself, "Saint Catherine of Genoa has elucidated the question. She explains very well that God sends a ray of mercy, a current of pity into hell, that no damned 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, God 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 hell, and a very large purgatory; may imagine that hell 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 chastisement 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 assume it. All consider the soul is a sort of air balloon, which cannot mount and attain its last end in space 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 God 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 hell, why not conceive that divine justice hesitates in the majority of cases to pronounce 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 God?"

"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 passed before his double returned to the charge.

He entered once more on that halting dilemma which had so recently assailed the goodness of the Creator in regard to the sins of man. "Purgatory is then exorbitant, for after all," said he, "God 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. "God has left to every man his liberty; no one is tempted beyond his power. If in certain cases, he allows the seduction to overpass 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 God; 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 accumulated 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 assertions 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 assured 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 God made the world I would not be that God, 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. God 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 harassed 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 glasses, for nibbling bread and butter 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, assailed 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 God, my God! 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 lust; now was silence and death.

Complete darkness was within him.

He sought his soul by groping for it, and found it inert, without consciousness, almost icy. He had a body living and healthy; all his intelligence, all his reason, and his other powers, his other faculties, were benumbed little by little, and stopped. In his being there was manifested an effect at once analogous and contrary to that which curara produces on the organism, when it circulates in the network of the blood; the members are paralyzed, no pain is experienced, but cold rises, the soul ends by being sequestered alive in a corpse; in this case it was the living body that detained a dead soul.

Harassed by fear, he disengaged himself with a supreme effort, he would make a visit to himself, see where he was, and like a sailor who descends into the hold in a ship that has sprung a leak, he had to step backwards, for the gangway was cut, the steps opened upon an abyss.

In spite of the terror which rushed upon him, he hung fascinated over the hole, and by fixing the black point he distinguished appearances; in a light as of eclipse in rarefied air, he perceived at the basis of himself the panorama of his soul, a desert twilight on the horizons that approached the night, and under this doubtful light there seemed something like bare fields, a marsh heaped with rubbish and cinders; the place of the sins torn up by the confessor remained visible, but besides the dry darnel of dead vices which grew still, nothing budded.

He saw himself exhausted; he knew that he had no further force to extirpate the last roots, and he fancied that he had again to sow the seed of virtues, to till this arid soil, manure this dead ground. He felt himself incapable of all work, and had at the same time the conviction that God rejected him, that God would aid him no more. This certainty tore him to pieces. It could not be expressed, for nothing could translate the anxiety, the anguish of a state through which he must have passed who could understand it. The terror of a child who has never left its mother's petticoats, and who is deserted, without warning, in the open country in a fog, could only give a vestige of an idea of it, and again by reason of his age the child after having felt desolate would end by growing calmer, by distracting himself from his grief, no longer seeing the danger which surrounds him, while in this state is danger, clinging and absolute, the immovable thought of abandonment, obstinate fear, which nothing diminishes, nothing appeases.

One dare not advance nor retreat; rather cast oneself on the ground, with bowed head, and wait the end of what we know not, and be assured that the menaces we ignore, and those at which we guess, are removed. Durtal was at this point; he could not return on his steps, for the way he had quitted horrified him. He would rather have died than return to Paris, there to begin again his carnal experiences, to live again his hours of libertinage and lassitude; but if he could not again retrace his road, neither could he advance, for the road ended in a blind alley. If earth repulsed him, heaven at the same time was closed for him.

He was lying, half on his side, in the darkness, in the shade, he knew not where.

And this state was aggravated by an absolute failure to understand the causes which brought him there, was exaggerated by the memory of graces before received.

Durtal remembered the sweetness of the beginning, the caress of the divine touches, the steady progress without obstacles, the encounter with a solitary priest, his being sent to La Trappe, the very ease with which he bent to the monastic life, the absolution which had such truly sensible effects, the rapid and clear answer that he might communicate without fear.

And suddenly, without his will, he had in fact failed. He who had till then held him by the hand, refused to guide him, cast him off into the darkness without a word.

"All is over," he thought; "I am condemned to float here below, like a waif which no one wants; no shore is henceforward accessible, for if the world refuses me, I disgust God. Ah! Lord, remember the garden of Gethsemani, the tragic defection of the Father whom Thou didst implore in unspeakable pangs." In the silence which received his cry he gave way, and yet he desired to react against this desolation, endeavoured to escape from his despair; he prayed, and had again that very precise sensation that his petitions did not carry, were not even heard. He called her who superintends allegiance, the Mediatrix of pardon, to his aid, and he was persuaded that the Virgin heard him no longer.

He was silent and discouraged, while the shade grew still more dense, and complete darkness covered him. He did not then suffer any longer in the true sense of the word, but it was worse, for this was annihilation in the void, the giddiness of a man who is bent over a gulf; and the scraps of reasoning which he could gather and knit together in this breaking up, ended by branching out into scruples.

He sought for any sins which since his communion might justify such a trial, and he could not find them. He even tried to magnify his small faults, enlarge his want of patience; he wished to convince himself that he had taken a certain pleasure in finding the image of Florence in his cell, and he tortured himself so violently that he reanimated the soul, which had half fainted, by these moxas, and placed it again, without wishing it, in that acute state of scruples, in which it was when the crisis declared itself.

And in these brawling reflections he did not lose the sad faculty of analysis. He said to himself while gauging himself at a glance: "I am like the litter in a circus, trodden down by all the sorrows which go and come to play their parts. Doubts about Faith, which seemed to stretch into every sense, turned in fact in the same circle. And now scruples, from which I thought myself freed, reappear and course through me."

How should he explain this? Was he who inflicted this torture on him the Spirit of Malice, or God?

That he had been bruised by the Evil One was certain, the very nature of his attacks showed his handiwork, but how could this abandonment of God be explained, for in fact, the Demon could not prevent the Saviour from assisting him, and he was quite obliged to conclude that if he were martyrized by the one, the Other took no interest in him, let him be, and retired from him completely?

This certainty deduced from precise observations, this reasoned assurance, finished him. He cried out from the anguish of it, looking at the pond by which he was walking, wishing he might fall in, thinking that death by drowning were preferable to such a life.

Then he trembled before the water which attracted him, and carried away his sorrows to the charm of the woods. He tried to wear himself out by long walking, but he wearied himself without effect, and he ended by sinking down worn and broken at the refectory table.

He looked at his plate, with no courage to eat, no desire to drink; he breathed hard, and, exhausted as he was, could not keep in one place. He rose and wandered in the court till Compline, and there in the chapel, where at least he hoped to find some solace, was the crowning point of all; the mine went off; the soul, sapped since the morning, exploded.

On his knees, desolate, he tried again to invoke help, and nothing came; he choked, immured in so deep a trench, under a vault so thick, that every appeal was stifled, and no sound vibrated. Without courage, he wept with his head in his hands, and while he complained to God that He had brought him thither to punish him in a Trappist monastery, ignoble visions assailed him.

Fluids passed before his face, and peopled the space with priapisms. He did not see them with the eyes of his body, which were in no degree hallucinated, but perceived them outside him, and felt them within him; in a word, the touch was external, and the vision internal.

He tried to gaze on the statue of Saint Joseph, before which he kept himself, and to see nothing but it, but his eyes seemed to revolve, to see only within, and were filled with indecencies. It was a medley of apparitions with undecided outlines, and confused colours, which gained precision only in those parts coveted by the secular infamy of man. And this changed again. The human forms vanished. There remained only, in invisible landscapes of flesh, marshes reddened by the fires of what sunset it was impossible to say, marshes shuddering under the divided shelter of the grasses. Then the sensual spot grew smaller still, but remained, and this time did not move; it was the growth of an unclean flood, the spreading of the daisy of darkness, the unfolding of the lotos of the caverns, hidden at the bottom of the valley.

And there, burning gasps excited Durtal, enwrapped him, stifled him with furious gasps which drank his mouth.

He looked in spite of himself, unable to withdraw himself from the outrages imposed by these violations, but the body was still and remained calm, while the soul revolted with a groan; the temptation was then of no effect; but if the tricks only succeeded in suggesting to him disgust and horror, they made him suffer beyond measure, while they delayed; all the days of his shameful existence came to the surface, all these enticements to greedy desires crucified him. Joined to the sum of sorrows accumulated since the dawn, the overcharge of these sorrows overwhelmed him, and a cold sweat bathed him from head to foot.

He was in agony, and suddenly, as though he had come to overlook his ministers, and to see if his orders were carried out, the executioner himself entered on the scene. Durtal did not see him, but felt him, and it was indescribable. Since he had the impression of a real demoniac presence, his whole soul trembled and desired to fly, like a terrified bird that clings to the window-panes.

And it fell back exhausted; then unlikely as it may appear, the parts of his life were inverted, the body was upright, and held its own, commanding the terrified soul, repressed this panic in a furious tension.

Durtal perceived very plainly and clearly for the first time the distinction, the separation of the soul from the body, and for the first time also, he was conscious of the phenomenon of a body, which had so tortured its companion by its needs and wants, to forget all its hatred in the common danger, and hinder her who resisted it, the habit of sinking.

He saw that in a flash, and suddenly all vanished. It seemed that the Demon had taken himself off, the wall of darkness which encompassed Durtal opened, and light issued from all parts; with an immense impulse the "Salve Regina," springing up from the choir, swept aside the phantoms, and put the goblins to flight.

The elevated cordial of this chant restored him. He took courage, and began again to hope that this frightful desertion might cease; he prayed, and his petitions found vent; he understood that they were at last heard.

The Office was at an end; he gained the guest-house, and when he appeared so worn out and pale before Father Etienne and the oblate, they cried: "What is the matter with you?"

He sank on a chair, and endeavoured to describe to them the terrible Calvary he had climbed. "This has lasted," he said, "for more than nine hours; I wonder that I have not gone mad;" and he added, "Yet I never could have believed that the soul could suffer so much."

The face of the father was illuminated. He pressed Durtal's hands and said,

"Rejoice, my brother, you have been treated here like a monk."

"How is that?" said Durtal, surprised.

"Yes, this agony, for there is no other word to define the horror of the state, is one of the most serious trials which God inflicts on us; it is one of the operations of the purgative life. Be happy, for it is a great grace which Jesus does to you."

"And this proves that your conversion is good," affirmed the oblate.

"God! But it was not He at any rate who insinuated doubts about the Faith, who caused to be born in me that madness of scruples, who raised in me that spirit of blasphemy, who caressed my face with disgusting apparitions."

"No, but He allows it. It is frightful, I know it," said the guest-master. "God conceals Himself, and however you may call on Him, He does not answer you. You think yourself deserted, yet He is very near you; and while He effaces Himself, Satan advances. He twists you about, places a microscope over your faults, his malice gnaws your brain like a dull file, and when to all this are joined, to try you to the utmost, impure visions...."

The Trappist stopped; then, speaking to himself, he said, slowly,

"It would be nothing to be in presence of a real temptation, of a true woman in flesh and bone, but these appearances on which imagination works, are horrible!"

"And I used to think there was peace in the cloister!"

"No, we are here on this earth to strive, and it is just in the cloister that the Lowest works; there, souls escape him, and he will at all price conquer them. No place on earth is more haunted by him than a cell, no one is more harassed than a monk."

"A story which is told in the Lives of the Fathers in the Desert, is typical from this point of view. One demon only was charged to watch a town; and he went to sleep while two or three hundred demons who had orders to guard a monastery had no rest, but behaved themselves, here is the place for the phrase, like very devils.

"And indeed, the mission to increase the sin of the towns is a sinecure, for Satan holds them, though they are not aware of it; all then he has to do is to torment them so as to take from them trust in God, since all obey him without his taking the least trouble about it.

"And so he keeps his legions to besiege convents where resistance is determined. And indeed, you see the way in which he conducts the attack."

"Ah!" exclaimed Durtal, "it is not he who makes you suffer the most; for what is worse than scruples, worse than temptations against purity, or against the Faith, is the supposed abandonment of Heaven; no, nothing can describe that."

"That is what mystical theology calls 'the Night Obscure,'" answered M. Bruno.

And Durtal exclaimed,

"Ah! now I am with you; I remember.... That is why Saint John of the Cross declares that it is impossible to describe the sorrows of that night, and why he exaggerates nothing when he says, that one is then plunged alive into hell.

"And I doubted the veracity of his books, I accused him of excess; rather he minimized. Only one must have felt this oneself to believe it."

"And you have seen nothing," the oblate replied quietly; "you have passed through the first portion of that night, through the night of the senses; it is terrible enough, as I know by experience, but it is nothing in comparison with the Night of the Spirit which sometimes succeeds it. That is the exact image of the sufferings which our Lord endured in the Garden of Olives, when, sweating blood, He cried at the end of His force, 'Lord, let this chalice pass from me.'

"This is so terrible ..." and M. Bruno was silent and grew pale. "Whoever has undergone that martyrdom," he said, after a pause, "knows beforehand what awaits the damned in another life."

"But," said the monk, "the hour of bed-time has struck. There exists but one remedy for all these evils, the Holy Eucharist; to-morrow, Sunday, the community approaches the Sacrament; you must join us."

"But I cannot communicate in the state in which I am...."

"Well, then, be up to-night, at three o'clock. I will come for you to your cell, and will take you to Father Maximin, who confesses us at that time."

And without waiting for his answer, the guest-master pressed his hand and went.

"He is right," said the oblate; "it is the true remedy."

And when he had regained his room, Durtal thought,

"I now understand why the AbbÉ GÉvresin made such a point of lending me Saint John of the Cross; he knew that I should enter into the 'Night Obscure'; he did not dare warn me clearly, for fear of alarming me, and yet he would put me on my guard against despair, and aid me by the remembrance here of that reading. Only how could he think that in such a shipwreck I should remember anything!

"All this makes me think that I have omitted to write to him, and that to-morrow I must keep my promise by sending him a letter."

And he thought again of Saint John of the Cross, that extraordinary Carmelite who described so placidly that terrible phase of the mystic genesis.

He took count of the lucidity, the power of spirit of this saint, explaining the most obscure vicissitude of the soul and the least known, catching and following the operations of God, who dealt with that soul, pressed it in His hands, squeezed it like a sponge, then let it suck up again, fill itself out with sorrows, then wrung it again; making it drip tears of blood to cleanse it.