The Grip of Desire Part 22

--Speak then.

--Well no, I will say no more. You will guess it perhaps. But meanwhile....

--Meanwhile....

--It is quite understood between us that you will never see that little hussy again.

--What hussy?

--That little hussy, who was here just now.

--Oh, Veronica! Veronica!

--It is for your interests, Monsieur le Cure, in short ... the proprieties.

--My dignity is as dear to me as it is to you, my daughter, be answered sharply.

--Good-night, Monsieur le Cure; take counsel with your pillow.

XLI.

MORAL REFLECTIONS.

"Ah, poor grandmamma, what grand-dam's tales You used to sing to me in praise of virtue; Everywhere have I asked: 'What is this stranger?'

They laughed at me and said, 'Whence hast thou come?'"

G. MELOTTE (_Les Temps nouveaux_).

The Cure of Althausen had no need of reflection to understand the kind of shameful bargain which his servant had allowed him to catch a glimpse of.

The l.u.s.tful look of the woman had spoken too clearly, and when he had taken her hand, he had felt it burn and tremble in his.

Then certain circ.u.mstances, certain facts to which he had not attended at first, came back to his memory.

Two or three times, Veronica, on frivolous pretexts had entered his bedroom at night; and each time, he remembered well, she was in somewhat indecent undress, which contrasted strangely with her ordinarily severe appearance.

He recalled to himself all the stories of Cures' servants who shared their masters' bed. Stories told in a whisper at certain _general repasts_, when the priests of the district met together at the senior's house to observe the feast of some saint or other--the great Saint Priapus perhaps--and where lively talk and sprightly stories ran merrily round the table.

And what he had taken for jokes in bad taste, and refused to believe till now, he began to understand.

For he could no longer doubt that he had set his servant's pa.s.sions aflame, and he must either expose himself to her venomous tongue and incur the shame and scandal, or else appease the erotic rage of this kitchen Messalina.

He tried to drive away this horrible thought, to believe that he had been mistaken, to persuade himself that he was the dope of erroneous appearances; he wished to convince himself that he had been the victim of errors engendered by his own depravity, that he judged according to his secret sentiments; his efforts were vain; the woman's feverish eyes, her restless solicitude, her jealous rage, her incessant watching, the evidence in short was there which contradicted all his hopes to the contrary.

And then, the latest confessions regarding his predecessors: "All have acted like you, all," possessed his mind. Like him! What had they done?

They also had attempted then to seduce young girls, and perhaps had consummated their infernal design. What? respectable priests, ministers of the Gospel, pastors of G.o.d's flock! Was it possible? But was not he a respectable priest and respected by all, a minister of G.o.d, a leader of the holy flock, a pastor of men, and yet....

How then? where is virtue?

"Virtue," answered that voice which we have within ourselves, that voice odious to hypocrites and deceivers, which the Church calls the Devil's voice, and which is the voice of reason. Virtue? Of which do you speak, fool? Without counting the _three theological_, there are fifty thousand kinds of virtues. It is like happiness, inst.i.tutions, reputations, religions, morals, principles: Truth on this side the mount, error on that.

There are as many kinds of virtues as there are different peoples. History swarms with virtuous people who have been so in their own way. Socrates was virtuous, and yet what strange familiarities he allowed himself with the young Alcibiades. The virtuous Brutus virtuously a.s.sa.s.sinated his father.

The virtuous Elizabeth of Hungary had herself whipped by her confessor, the virtuous Conrad, and the virtuous Janicot doted on virtuous little boys; and finally Monseigneur is virtuous, but his old lady friends look down and smile when he talks of virtue.

See this priest of austere countenance and whitened hair. He too, during long years, has believed in that virtue which forms his torment. Candid and trustful, he felt the fervency of religion fill his heart from his youth.

He had faith, he was filled with the spirit of charity and love. He said like the apostle: _Ubi charitas et amor, Deus ibi est_. And he believed that G.o.d was with him, and that alone with G.o.d he was peacefully pursuing his road. But he had counted without that troublesome guest who comes and places himself as a third between the creature and the Creator, and who, more powerful than the G.o.d of legend, quickly banishes him, for he is the principle of life and the other is the principle of death; it is the fruitful love and the other is the wasting barren love; it is present and active, while the other is inert, dumb and in the clouds of your sickly brain.

"It is in vain that in his successive halts from parish to parish, he has resisted the thousand seductions which surround the priest, from the timid gaze of the simple school-girl, smitten with a holy love for the young curate, to the veiled smile of the languishing woman. In vain will he attempt, like Fenelon formerly, to put the warmth of his heart and the incitements of the flesh upon the wrong scent by carrying on a platonic love with some chosen souls; what is the result in the end of his efforts and his struggles? Now he is old; ought he not to be appeased? No, weighty and imperious matter has regained the upper hand. He loves no longer, he is not able to love any longer, but the fury urges him on. He seduces his cook, or dishonours his niece."

And yet those most courageous natures exist, for they have resisted to the end. We blame them, we are wrong. Who would have been capable of such efforts and sacrifices? Who would sustain during ten, fifteen, twenty years, similar straggles between the imperious requirements of nature and the miserable duties of convention? They, therefore, who see their hair fall before their virtue are very rare.

The crowd of priests strike themselves against the obstacles of the road from the first steps, they tear their catechumen's robe with the white thorns of May, and when they have arrived at the end of their career, they have stopped many a time under some mysterious thicket, unknown by the vulgar, relishing the forbidden fruit.

Let us leave them in peace. It is not I who will disturb their sweet tete-a-tete.

XLII.

MEMORY LOOKING BACK.

"Man can do nothing against Destiny.

We go, time flies, and that which must arrive, arrives."

LeON CLADEL (_L'Homme de la Croix-aux-Baufs_).

Marcel was one of those energetic natures who believe that struggle is one of the conditions of life. He had valiantly accepted the task which was inc.u.mbent upon him.

But there are hours of discouragement and exhaustion, in which the boldest and the strongest succ.u.mb, and he had reached one of those hours.

And then, it is so difficult to struggle without ceasing, especially when we catch no glimpse of calmer days. Weariness quickly comes and we sink down on the road.

Then a friendly hand should be stretched towards us, should lift us up and say to us "Courage." But Marcel could not lean on any friendly hand.

He had no one to whom he could confide his struggles, his vexations, and the apprehension of his coming weaknesses.

Although his life as priest had been spotless up to then, his brethren held aloof from him, for there was a bad mark against him at the Bishop's Palace. It had been attached at the commencement of his career. He was one of those catechumens on whom from the very first the most brilliant hopes are founded. Knowledge, intelligence, respectful obedience, appearance of piety, sympathetic face, everything was present in him.

The Bishop, a frivolous old man, a great lover of little girls, who combined the sinecure of his bishopric with that of almoner to a second-hand empress, whose name will remain celebrated in the annals of devout gallantry or of gallant devotion, the Bishop, a worthy pastor for such a sheep, pa.s.sed the greater portion of his time in the intrigues of petticoats and sacristies, and left to the young secretary the care of matters spiritual.

It was he who, like Gil-Blas, composed the mandates and sometimes the sermons of Monseigneur.