En Route Part 38

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 a.s.sist 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 subst.i.tute 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 G.o.d, infinitely perfect, infinitely good, a G.o.d 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 G.o.d; 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 s.p.a.ce 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, "G.o.d 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 a.s.sault 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 ma.s.s.

"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 s.e.xes; 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 pa.s.sive, 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."