En Route Part 25

It was an uninterrupted succession of sudden wakings and of nightmares.

And these nightmares overpa.s.sed the limits of abomination that the most dangerous madness dreams. They developed themselves in the realm of l.u.s.t; and they were so special, so new to him, that when he woke Durtal remained trembling, almost crying out.

It was not at all that involuntary and well known act, that vision which ceases just at the moment when the sleeper clasps an amorous form; it was as and more complete than in nature, long and accomplished, accompanied by all the preludes, all the details, all the sensations, and the o.r.g.a.s.m took place with a singularly painful acuteness, an incredible spasm.

A strange fact, which seemed to point the difference between this state, and the unconscious uncleanness of night, was, beyond certain episodes and caresses which could only follow each other in reality, but were united at the same moment in the dream, the sensation clear and precise of a being, of a fluid form disappearing, with the sharp sound of a percussion cap, or the crack of a whip close by, on waking. This being was felt near him so distinctly, that the sheet, disarranged by the wind of the flight, was still in motion, and he looked at the empty place in terror.

"Ah," thought Durtal, when he had lighted his candle, "this carries me back to the time when I used to visit Madame Chantelouve, and reminds me of the stories of the Succubus."

He remained sitting up in bed, astonished, and looked with real uneasiness round the cell steeped in shadow. He looked at his watch, it was only eleven o'clock at night. "G.o.d," he said, "if the nights are always like this in monasteries!"

He had recourse to bathing with cold water in order to recover himself, opened his window to change the air, and lay down again, thoroughly chilled.

He hesitated to blow out his candle, uneasy at the darkness which seemed to him inhabited, full of ambushes and threats. He decided at last to extinguish it, and repeated the stanza he had already heard sung that evening in chapel:

Procul recedant somnia Et noctium phantasmata, Hostemque nostrum comprime, Ne polluantur corpora.

He ended by falling asleep and dreamt again of impurity, but he came to himself in time to break the charm, experiencing again the impression of a shadow evaporating before he could seize it in the sheets. He looked at his watch; it was two o'clock.

"If this goes on, I shall be broken down to-morrow," he thought, but he succeeded somehow or other in dozing, and waking every ten minutes to wait for three o'clock.

"If I fall asleep again, I shall not be able to wake at the moment I wish," he thought, "suppose I get up."

He sprang out of bed, dressed, prayed, reduced his thoughts to order.

Real excesses would have exhausted him less than these sham freaks, but what seemed to him especially odious was the want of satisfaction left by the completed rape of these ghosts. Compared with their greedy tricks, the caresses of a woman only diffused a temperate pleasure, and ended in a feeble shock, but with this Succuba one remained in a fury at having clasped only the void, at having been the dupe of a lie, the plaything of an appearance, of which one could not remember the form or the features. It necessarily brought with it the desire of the flesh, the wish to clasp a real body, and Durtal began to think of Florence; she at least quenched his desires, and did not leave him thus, panting and feverish, in quest of he knew not what, in an atmosphere where he was surrounded, spied upon by an unknown whom he could not discern, by a phantom he could not escape.

Then Durtal shook himself, and would repulse the a.s.sault of these memories. "At any rate I will go and breathe the fresh air, and smoke a cigarette; we will see afterwards."

He descended the staircase, whose walls seemed not to keep their place, and danced in the light of his candle, threaded the corridors, blew out his light, placed the candlestick near the auditorium, and rushed out.

It was pitch dark; at the height of the first story a round window in the wall of the chapel cut a hole through the darkness like a red moon.

Durtal took a few whiffs of a cigarette, and then made his way to the chapel. He turned the latch of the door gently; the vestibule into which he entered was dark, but the apse, though it was empty, was lighted by numerous lamps.

He made a step, crossed himself, and fell back, for he had stumbled over a body; and he looked down at his feet.

He had come upon a battle-field.

On the ground human forms were lying, in the att.i.tudes of combatants mowed down by grape shot, some flat on their faces, others on their knees, some leaning their hands on the ground as if stricken from behind, others extended with their fingers clenched on their breast, others again holding their heads or stretching out their arms.

And from this group in their agony rose no groan, no complaint.

Durtal was stupefied as he looked at this ma.s.sacre of monks, and suddenly stopped with open mouth. A shaft of light fell from a lamp which the Father Sacristan had just placed in the apse, and crossing the porch, it showed a monk on his knees before the altar dedicated to the Virgin.

He was an old man of more than four-score years; motionless as a statue, his eyes fixed, leaning forward in such an access of adoration, that the faces in ecstasy in the Early Masters seemed, compared with his, forced and cold.

Yet his features were vulgar, his shaven skull, without a crown, tanned by many suns and rains, was brick-coloured, his eye was dim, covered with a film by age, his face was wrinkled, shrivelled, stained like an old log, hidden in a thicket of white hair, while his somewhat snub nose made the general effect of the face singularly common.

But there went out, not from his eyes, nor his mouth, but from everywhere and nowhere, a kind of angelic look which was diffused over his head, and enveloped all his poor body, bowed in its heap of rags.

In this old man the soul did not even give herself the trouble to reform and enn.o.ble his features, she contented herself in annihilating them with her rays; it was, as it were, the nimbus of the old saints not now remaining round the head, but extending over all the features, pale and almost invisible, bathing his whole being.

He saw nothing and heard nothing; monks dragged themselves on their knees, came to warm themselves, and to take shelter near him, and he never moved, dumb and deaf, so rigid that you might have believed him dead, had not his lower lip stirred now and then, lifting in this movement his long beard.

The dawn whitened the windows, and as the darkness was gradually dissipated, the other brethren were visible in turn to Durtal; all these men, wounded by divine love, prayed ardently, flashed out beyond themselves noiselessly before the altar. Some were quite young, on their knees, with their bodies upright; others, their eyeb.a.l.l.s in ecstasy, were leaning back, and seated on their heels; others again were making the way of the cross, and were often placed each opposite another face to face, and they looked without seeing, as with the eyes of the blind.

And among these lay brethren, some fathers buried in their great white cowls lay prostrate and kissed the ground.

"Oh to pray, pray like these monks!" cried Durtal within himself.

He felt his unhappy soul grow slack within him; in this atmosphere of sanct.i.ty he unbent himself, and sank down on the pavement, humbly asking pardon from Christ, for having soiled by his presence the purity of this place.

He prayed long, unsealing himself for the first time, recognizing his unworthiness and vileness so that he could not imagine how, in spite of His mercy, the Lord could tolerate him in the little circle of His elect; he examined himself, saw clearly, and avowed that he was inferior to the least of these lay brothers who perhaps could not even spell out a book, understood that the culture of the mind was naught and the culture of the soul was all, and little by little, without perceiving it, thinking only of stammering forth acts of grat.i.tude, he disappeared from the chapel, his soul borne up by the souls of others, away, away from the world, far from his charnel-house, far from his body.

In this chapel, the impulse had come at last, the going forth from self, till now refused, was at last permitted; he no longer strove with self as in the time when he escaped with so great difficulty from his prison-house, as at St. Severin or Notre Dame des Victoires.

Then he again realized this chapel, where his animal part had alone remained, and he looked round him with astonishment; the greater part of the brethren had gone, one father remained prostrate before Our Lady's altar; he quitted it in his turn, and went back to the apse, as the other fathers entered it.

Durtal looked at them; they were of all sizes and all kinds; one fat and bald, with a long black beard and spectacles, some little fair and puffy men, some very old, bristling with skin like a wild boar, others very young, with a vague air of German dreaminess, with their eyes under their gla.s.ses; and almost all except the very young had this feature in common: a large belly, and cheeks with little red streaks.

Suddenly through the open door in the apse itself appeared the tall monk who had conducted the office the evening before. He threw back on his chasuble the woollen hood which covered his head, and a.s.sisted by two white monks went up to the high altar to say ma.s.s.

And it was not one of those ma.s.ses served as so many are cooked in Paris, but a ma.s.s slow, meditated, and profound, a ma.s.s where the priest takes long to consecrate, overwhelmed before the altar, and when he elevated the Host no little bell tinkled, but the bells of the monastery spread abroad their slow peal, brief dull strokes, almost plaintive, while the Trappists disappeared; crouched on all-fours, their heads hidden below their desks.

When the ma.s.s ended it was nearly six o'clock. Durtal took the same way as the evening before, pa.s.sed before the little chocolate factory, and saw through the windows the fathers wrapping up the tablets in lead paper, and in another room a tiny steam engine which a lay brother was directing.

He reached the walk where he had smoked the cigarettes in the shade. So gloomy at night, it was now charming with its two rows of aged limes which rustled gently while the wind wafted to him their enervating scent.

Seated on a bench, he could see at a glance the whole front of the abbey.

Before it was a long kitchen garden, with here and there some rose trees spread over the blueish basins and large b.a.l.l.s of cabbages, and the old house, built in the monumental style of the seventeenth century, extended, solemn and immense, with eighteen windows in a row, and a pediment, in the span of which was placed a mighty clock.

It was roofed with slate, and surmounted by a ring of small bells, and was reached by a flight of several steps. It reached a height of at least five stories, though it had in reality only a ground and a first floor, but to judge by the unexpected height of the windows, the rooms had to accommodate their ceilings to the vast alt.i.tude of the church; on the whole the building was striking and cold, more apt, since it had been converted into a convent, to shelter the disciples of Jansen, than the sons of Saint Bernard.

The weather was warm that morning; the sun was filtered through the moving sieve of foliage, and the daylight, thus screened, was changed to rose colour as it touched the white. Durtal, who was about to read his prayer-book, saw the pages growing red, and by the law of complementary colours all the letters printed in black ink grew green.

He was amused by these details, and with his back to the warmth, he brightened up in this aromatic breeze, rested in this bath of sunshine from his fatigues of the night, when at the end of the walk he saw some of the brothers. They walked in silence, some carrying under their arms great round loaves, others holding milk cans, or baskets full of hay and eggs; they pa.s.sed before him, and bowed respectfully.

All had a joyous and serious aspect. "Ah, good fellows," he thought, "for they helped me this morning, it is to them I owe it that I could keep silence no longer, and was able to pray, to have at last known the joy of supplication which at Paris was only a snare for me! to them, and above all to Our Lady de l'Atre, who had pity on my poor soul."

He sprang from his bench in an access of joy, went into the lateral walks, reached the piece of water he had partially seen the evening before; in front of it rose the huge cross he had seen at a distance from the carriage, in the wood, before he reached La Trappe.

It was placed opposite the monastery itself, and turned its back upon the pond; it bore an eighteenth-century Christ, of natural size, in white marble; the pond also took the form of a cross such as is shown on the greater part of the plans of churches.

This brown and liquid cross was spotted by duckweed, which the swan displaced as he swam.

He came towards Durtal, with extended beak, expecting, no doubt, a piece of bread.