XII
Brother Archangias dined at the parsonage every Thursday. As a rule he came early so as to talk over parish matters. It was he who, for the last three months, had kept the Abbé informed of all the affairs of the valley. That Thursday, while waiting till La Teuse should call them, they strolled about in front of the church. The priest, on relating his interview with Bambousse, was surprised to find that the Brother thought the peasant’s reply quite natural.
‘The man’s right,’ said the Ignorantin.* ‘You don’t give away chattels like that. Rosalie is no great bargain, but it’s always hard to see your own daughter throw herself away on a pauper.’
‘Still,’ rejoined Abbé Mouret, ‘a marriage is the only way of stopping the scandal.’
The Brother shrugged his big shoulders and laughed aggravatingly. ‘Do you think you’ll cure the neighbourhood with that marriage?’ he exclaimed. ‘Before another two years Catherine will be following her sister’s example. They all go the same way, and as they end by marrying, they snap their fingers at every one. These Artauds flourish in it all, as on a congenial dungheap. There is only one possible remedy, as I have told you before: wring all the girls’ necks if you don’t want the country to be poisoned. No husbands, Monsieur le Curé, but a good thick stick!’
Then calming down a bit, he added: ‘Let every one do with their own as they think best.’
He went on to speak about fixing the hours for the catechism classes; but Abbé Mouret replied in an absent-minded way, his eyes dwelling on the village at his feet in the setting sun. The peasants were wending their way homewards, silently and slowly, with the dragging steps of wearied oxen returning to their sheds. Before the tumble-down houses stood women calling to one another, carrying on bawling conversations from door to door, while bands of children filled the roadway with the riot of their big clumsy shoes, grovelling and rolling and pushing each other about. A bestial odour ascended from that heap of tottering houses, and the priest once more fancied himself in Desirée’s poultry-yard, where life ever increased and multiplied. Here, too, was the same incessant travail, which so disturbed him. Since morning his mind had been running on that episode of Rosalie and Fortune, and now his thoughts returned to it, to the foul features of existence, the incessant, fated task of Nature, which sowed men broadcast like grains of wheat. The Artauds were a herd penned in between four ranges of hills, increasing, multiplying, spreading more and more thickly over the land with each successive generation.
‘See,’ cried Brother Archangias, interrupting his discourse to point to a tall girl who was letting her sweetheart snatch a kiss, ‘there is another hussy over there!’
He shook his long black arms at the couple and made them flee. In the distance, over the crimson fields and the peeling rocks, the sun was dying in one last flare. Night gradually came on. The warm fragrance of the lavender became cooler on the wings of the light evening breeze which now arose. From time to time a deep sigh fell on the ear as if that fearful land, consumed by ardent passions, had at length grown calm under the soft grey rain of twilight. Abbé Mouret, hat in hand, delighted with the coolness, once more felt quietude descend upon him.
‘Monsieur le Curé! Brother Archangias!’ cried La Teuse. ‘Come quick! The soup is on the table.’
It was cabbage soup, and its odoriferous steam filled the parsonage dining-room. The Brother seated himself and fell to, slowly emptying the huge plate that La Teuse had put down before him. He was a big eater, and clucked his tongue as each mouthful descended audibly into his stomach. Keeping his eyes on his spoon, he did not speak a word.
‘Isn’t my soup good, then, Monsieur le Curé?’ the old servant asked the priest. ‘You are only fiddling with your plate.’
‘I am not a bit hungry, my good Teuse,’ Serge replied, smiling.
‘Well! how can one wonder at it when you go on as you do! But you would have been hungry, if you hadn’t lunched at past two o’clock.’
Brother Archangias, tilting into his spoon the last few drops of soup remaining in his plate, said gravely: ‘You should be regular in your meals, Monsieur le Curé.’
At this moment Desirée, who also had finished her soup, sedately and in silence, rose and followed La Teuse to the kitchen. The Brother, then left alone with Abbé Mouret, cut himself some long strips of bread, which he ate while waiting for the next dish.
‘So you made a long round to-day?’ he asked the priest. But before the other could reply a noise of footsteps, exclamations, and ringing laughter, arose at the end of the passage, in the direction of the yard. A short altercation apparently took place. A flute-like voice which disturbed the Abbé rose in vexed and hurried accents, which finally died away in a burst of glee.
‘What can it be?’ said Serge, rising from his chair.
But Desirée bounded in again, carrying something hidden in her gathered-up skirt. And she burst out excitedly: ‘Isn’t she queer? She wouldn’t come in at all. I caught hold of her dress; but she is awfully strong; she soon got away from me.’
‘Whom on earth is she talking about?’ asked La Teuse, running in from the kitchen with a dish of potatoes, across which lay a piece of bacon.
The girl sat down, and with the greatest caution drew from her skirt a blackbird’s nest in which three wee fledglings were slumbering. She laid it on her plate. The moment the little birds felt the light, they stretched out their feeble necks and opened their crimson beaks to ask for food. Desirée clapped her hands, enchanted, seized with strange emotion at the sight of these hitherto unknown creatures.
‘It’s that Paradou girl!’ exclaimed the Abbé suddenly, remembering everything.
La Teuse had gone to the window. ‘So it is,’ she said. ‘I might have known that grasshopper’s voice—— Oh! the gipsy! Look, she’s stopped there to spy on us.’
Abbé Mouret drew near. He, too, thought that he could see Albine’s orange-coloured skirt behind a juniper bush. But Brother Archangias, in a towering passion, raised himself on tiptoe behind him, and, stretching out his fist and wagging his churlish head, thundered forth: ‘May the devil take you, you brigand’s daughter! I will drag you right round the church by your hair if ever I catch you coming and casting your evil spells here!’
A peal of laughter, fresh as the breath of night, rang out from the path, followed by light hasty footsteps and the swish of a dress rustling through the grass like an adder. Abbé Mouret, standing at the window, saw something golden glide through the pine trees like a moonbeam. The breeze, wafted in from the open country, was now laden with that penetrating perfume of verdure, that scent of wildflowers, which Albine had scattered from her bare arms, unfettered bosom, and streaming tresses at the Paradou.
‘An accursed soul! a child of perdition!’ growled Brother Archangias, as he reseated himself at the dinner table. He fell greedily upon his bacon, and swallowed his potatoes whole instead of bread. La Teuse, however, could not persuade Desirée to finish her dinner. That big baby was lost in ecstasy over the nestlings, asking questions, wanting to know what food they ate, if they laid eggs, and how the cockbirds could be known.
The old servant, however, was troubled by a suspicion, and taking her stand on her sound leg, she looked the young curé in the face.
‘So you know the Paradou people?’ she said.
Thereupon he simply told the truth, relating the visit he had paid to old Jeanbernat. La Teuse exchanged scandalised glances with Brother Archangias. At first she answered nothing, but went round and round the table, limping frantically and stamping hard enough with her heels to split the flooring.
‘You might have spoken to me of those people these three months past,’ said the priest at last. ‘I should have known at any rate what sort of people I was going to call upon.’
La Teuse stopped short as if her legs had just broken.
‘Don’t tell falsehoods, Monsieur le Curé,’ she stuttered, ‘don’t tell them; you will only make your sin still worse. How dare you say I haven’t spoken to you of the Philosopher, that heathen who is the scandal of the whole neighbourhood? The truth is, you never listen to me when I talk. It all goes in at one ear and out at the other. Ah, if you did listen to me, you’d spare yourself a good deal of trouble!’
‘I, too, have spoken to you about those abominations,’ affirmed the Brother.
Abbé Mouret lightly shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well, I didn’t remember it,’ he said. It was only when I found myself at the Paradou that I fancied I recollected certain tales. Besides, I should have gone to that unhappy man all the same as I thought him in danger of death.’
Brother Archangias, his mouth full, struck the table violently with his knife, and roared: ‘Jeanbernat is a dog; he ought to die like a dog.’ Then seeing the priest about to protest he cut him short: ‘No, no, for him there is no God, no penitence, no mercy. It would be better to throw the host to the pigs than carry it to that scoundrel.’
Then he helped himself to more potatoes, and with his elbows on the table, his chin in his plate, began chewing furiously. La Teuse, her lips pinched, quite white with anger, contented herself with saying dryly: ‘Let it be, his reverence will have his own way. He has secrets from us now.’
Silence reigned. For a moment one only heard the working of Brother Archangias’s jaws, and the extraordinary rumbling of his gullet. Desirée, with her bare arms round the nest in her plate, smiled to the little ones, talking to them slowly and softly in a chirruping of her own which they seemed to understand.
‘People say what they have done when they have nothing to hide,’ suddenly cried La Teuse.
And then silence reigned again. What exasperated the old servant was the mystery the priest seemed to make about his visit to the Paradou. She deemed herself a woman who had been shamefully deceived. Her curiosity smarted. She again walked round the table, not looking at the Abbé, not addressing anybody, but comforting herself with soliloquy.
‘That’s it; that’s why we have lunch so late! We go gadding about till two o’clock in the afternoon. We go into such disreputable houses that we don’t even dare to tell what we’ve done. And then we tell lies, we deceive everybody.’
‘But nobody,’ gently interrupted Abbé Mouret, who was forcing himself to eat a little more, so as to prevent La Teuse from getting crosser than ever, ‘nobody asked me if I had been to the Paradou. I have not had to tell any lies.’
La Teuse, however, went on as if she had never heard him.
‘Yes, we go ruining our cassock in the dust, we come home rigged up like a thief. And if some kind person takes an interest in us, and questions us for our own good, we push her about and treat her like a good-for-nothing woman, whom we can’t trust. We hide things like a slyboots, we’d rather die than breathe a word; we’re not even considerate enough to enliven our home by relating what we’ve seen.’
She turned to the priest, and looked him full in the face.
‘Yes, you take that to yourself. You are a close one, you’re a bad man!’
Thereupon she fell to crying and the Abbé had to soothe her.
‘Monsieur Caffin used to tell me everything,’ she moaned out.
However, she soon grew calmer. Brother Archangias was finishing a big piece of cheese, apparently quite unruffled by the scene. In his opinion Abbé Mouret really needed being kept straight, and La Teuse was right in making him feel the reins. Having drunk a last glassful of the weak wine, the Brother threw himself back in his chair to digest his meal.
‘Well now,’ finally asked the old servant, ‘what did you see at the Paradou? Tell us, at any rate.’
Abbé Mouret smiled and related in a few words how strangely Jeanbernat had received him. La Teuse, after overwhelming him with questions, broke out into indignant exclamations, while Brother Archangias clenched his fists and brandished them aloft.
‘May Heaven crush him!’ said he, ‘and burn both him and his witch!’
In his turn the Abbé then endeavoured to elicit some fresh particulars about the people at the Paradou, and listened intently to the Brother’s monstrous narrative.
‘Yes, that little she-devil came and sat down in the school. It’s a long time ago now, she might then have been about ten. Of course, I let her come; I thought her uncle was sending her to prepare for her first communion. But for two months she utterly revolutionised the whole class. She made herself worshipped, the minx! She knew all sorts of games, and invented all sorts of finery with leaves and shreds of rags. And how quick and clever she was, too, like all those children of hell! She was the top one at catechism. But one fine morning the old man burst in just in the middle of our lessons. He was going to smash everything, and shouted that the priests had taken his child from him. We had to get the rural policeman to turn him out. As to the little one, she bolted. I could see her through the window, in a field opposite, laughing at her uncle’s frenzy. She had been coming to school for the last two months without his even suspecting it. He had regularly scoured the country after her.’
‘She’s never taken her first communion,’ exclaimed La Teuse below her breath with a slight shudder.
‘No, never,’ rejoined Brother Archangias. ‘She must be sixteen now. She’s growing up like a brute beast. I have seen her running on all fours in a thicket near La Palud.’
‘On all fours,’ muttered the servant, turning towards the window with superstitious anxiety.
Abbé Mouret attempted to express some doubt, but the Brother burst out: ‘Yes, on all fours! And she jumped like a wild cat. If I had only had a gun I could have put a bullet in her. We kill creatures that are far more pleasing to God than she is. Besides, every one knows she comes caterwauling every night round Les Artaud. She howls like a beast. If ever a man should fall into her clutches, she wouldn’t leave him a scrap of skin on his bones, I know.’
The Brother’s hatred of womankind was boiling over. He banged the table with his fist, and poured forth all his wonted abuse.
‘The devil’s in them. They reek of the devil! And that’s what bewitches fools.’
The priest nodded approvingly. Brother Archangias’s outrageous violence and La Teuse’s loquacious tyranny were like castigation with thongs, which it often rejoiced him to find lashing his shoulders. He took a pious delight in sinking into abasement beneath their coarse speech. He seemed to see the peace of heaven behind contempt of the world and degradation of his whole being. It was delicious to inflict mortification upon his body, to drag his susceptible nature through a gutter.
‘There is nought but filth,’ he muttered as he folded up his napkin.
La Teuse began to clear the table and wished to remove the plate on which Desirée had laid the blackbird’s nest. You are not going to bed here, I suppose, mademoiselle,’ she said. ‘Do leave those nasty things.’
Desirée, however, defended her plate. She covered the nest with her bare arms, no longer gay, but cross at being disturbed.
‘I hope those birds are not going to be kept,’ exclaimed Brother Archangias. ‘It would bring bad luck. You must wring their necks.’
And he already stretched out his big hands; but the girl rose and stepped back quivering, hugging the nest to her bosom. She stared fixedly at the Brother, her lips curling upwards, like those of a wolf about to bite.
‘Don’t touch the little things,’ she stammered. ‘You are ugly.’
With such singular contempt did she emphasise that last word that Abbé Mouret started as if the Brother’s ugliness had just struck him for the first time. The latter contented himself with growling. He had always felt a covert hatred for Desirée, whose lusty physical development offended him. When she had left the room, still walking backwards, and never taking her eyes from him, he shrugged his shoulders and muttered between his teeth some coarse abuse which no one heard.
‘She had better go to bed,’ said La Teuse. ‘She would only bore us by-and-by in church.’
‘Has any one come yet?’ asked Abbé Mouret.
‘Oh, the girls have been outside a long time with armfuls of boughs. I am just going to light the lamps. We can begin whenever you like.’
A few seconds later she could be heard swearing in the sacristy because the matches were damp. Brother Archangias, who remained alone with the priest, sourly inquired: ‘For the month of Mary, eh?’
‘Yes,’ replied Abbé Mouret. ‘The last few days the girls about here were hard at work and couldn’t come as usual to decorate the Lady Chapel. So the ceremony was postponed till to-night.’
‘A nice custom,’ muttered the Brother. ‘When I see them all putting up their boughs I feel inclined to knock them down and make them confess their misdeeds before touching the altar. It’s a shame to allow women to rustle their dresses so near the holy relics.’
The Abbé made an apologetic gesture. He had only been at Les Artaud a little while, he must follow the customs.
‘Whenever you like, Monsieur le Curé, we’re ready!’ now called out La Teuse.
But Brother Archangias detained him a minute. ‘I am off,’ he said. ‘Religion isn’t a prostitute that it should be decorated with flowers and laces.’
He walked slowly to the door. Then once more he stopped, and lifting one of his hairy fingers added: ‘Beware of your devotion to the Virgin.’
XIII
On entering the church Abbé Mouret found nine or ten big girls awaiting him with boughs of ivy, laurel, and rosemary. Few garden flowers grew on the rocks of Les Artaud, so the custom was to decorate the Lady altar with a greenery which might last throughout the month of May. Thereto La Teuse would add a few wallflowers whose stems were thrust into old decanters.
‘Will you let me do it, Monsieur le Curé?’ she asked. ‘You are not used to it—— Come, stand there in front of the altar. You can tell me if the decorations please you.’
He consented, and it was she who really directed the arrangements. Having climbed upon a pair of steps she bullied the girls as they came up to her in turn with their leafy contributions.
‘Not so fast, now! You must give me time to fix the boughs. We can’t have all these bundles coming down on his reverence’s head—— Come on, Babet, it’s your turn. What’s the good of staring at me like that with your big eyes? Fine rosemary yours is, my word! as yellow as a thistle. You next, La Rousse. Ah, well, that is splendid laurel! You got that out of your field at Croix-Verte, I know.’
The big girls laid their branches on the altar, which they kissed; and there they lingered for a while, handing up the greenery to La Teuse. The sly look of devotion they had assumed on stepping on to the altar steps was quickly set aside, and soon they were laughing, digging each other with their knees, swaying their hips against the altar’s edge, and thrusting their bosoms against the tabernacle itself. Over them the tall Virgin in gilded plaster bent her tinted face, and smiled with her rosy lips upon the naked Jesus she bore upon her left arm.
‘That’s it, Lisa!’ cried La Teuse; ‘why don’t you sit on the altar while you’re about it? Just pull your petticoats straight, will you? Aren’t you ashamed of behaving like that?—If any one of you lolls about I’ll lay her boughs across her face.—Can’t you hand me the things quietly?’
Then turning round, she asked:
‘Do you like it, sir? Do you think it will do?’
She had converted the space behind the Virgin’s statue into a verdant niche, whence leafy sprays projected on either side, forming a bower, and drooping over in front like palm leaves. The priest expressed his approval, but ventured to remark: ‘I think there ought to be a cluster of more delicate foliage up above.’
‘No doubt,’ grumbled La Teuse. ‘But they only bring me laurel and rosemary—I should like to know who has brought an olive branch. Not one, you bet! They are afraid of losing a single olive, the heathens!’
At this, however, Catherine came up laden with an enormous olive bough which completely hid her.
‘Oh, you’ve got some, you minx!’ continued the old servant.
‘Of course,’ one of the other girls exclaimed, ‘she stole it. I saw Vincent breaking it off while she kept a look-out.’
But Catherine flew into a rage and swore it was not true. She turned, and thrusting her auburn head through the greenery, which she still tightly held, she started lying with marvellous assurance, inventing quite a long story to prove that the olive bough was really hers.
‘Besides,’ she added, ‘all the trees belong to the Blessed Virgin.’
Abbé Mouret was about to intervene, but La Teuse sharply inquired if they wanted to make game of her and keep her arms up there all night. At last she proceeded to fasten the olive bough firmly, while Catherine, holding on to the steps behind her, mimicked the clumsy manner in which she turned her huge person about with the help of her sound leg. Even the priest could not forbear to smile.
‘There,’ said La Teuse, as she came down and stood beside him to get a good view of her work, ‘there’s the top done. Now we will put some clumps between the candlesticks, unless you would prefer a garland all along the altar shelf.’
The priest decided in favour of some big clumps.
‘Very good; come on, then,’ continued the old servant, once more clambering up the steps. ‘We can’t go to bed here. Just kiss the altar, will you, Miette? Do you fancy you are in your stable? Monsieur le Curé, do just see what they are up to over there! I can hear them laughing like lunatics.’
On raising one of the two lamps the dark end of the church was lit up and three of the girls were discovered romping about under the gallery; one of them had stumbled and pitched head foremost into the holy water stoup, which mishap had so tickled the others that they were rolling on the ground to laugh at their ease. They all came back, however, looking at the priest sheepishly, with lowered eyelids, but with their hands swinging against their hips as if a scolding rather pleased them than otherwise.
However, the measure of La Teuse’s wrath was filled when she suddenly perceived Rosalie coming up to the altar like the others with a bundle of boughs in her arms.
‘Get down, will you?’ she cried to her. ‘You are a cool one, and no mistake, my lass!—Hurry up, off you go with your bundle.’
‘What for, I’d like to know?’ said Rosalie boldly. ‘You can’t say I have stolen it.’
The other girls drew closer, feigning innocence and exchanging sparkling glances.
‘Clear out,’ repeated La Teuse, ‘you have no business here, do you hear?’
Then, quite losing her scanty patience, she gave vent to a very coarse epithet, which provoked a titter of delight among the peasant girls.
‘Well, what next?’ said Rosalie. ‘Mind your own business. Is it any concern of yours?’
Then she burst into a fit of sobbing and threw down her boughs, but let the Abbé lead her aside and give her a severe lecture. He had already tried to silence La Teuse; for he was beginning to feel uneasy amidst the big shameless hussies who filled the church with their armfuls of foliage. They were pushing right up to the altar step, enclosing him with a belt of woodland, wafting in his face a rank perfume of aromatic shoots.
‘Let us make haste, be quick!’ he exclaimed, clapping his hands lightly.
‘Goodness knows I would rather be in my bed,’ grumbled La Teuse. ‘It’s not so easy as you think to fasten all these bits of stuff.’
Finally, however, she succeeded in setting some lofty plumes of foliage between the candlesticks. Next she folded the steps, which were laid behind the high altar by Catherine. And then she only had to arrange two clumps of greenery at the sides of the altar table. The last boughs sufficed for this, and indeed there were some left which the girls strewed over the sanctuary floor up to the wooden rails. The Lady altar now looked like a grove, a shrubbery with a verdant lawn before it.
At present La Teuse was willing to make way for Abbé Mouret, who ascended the altar steps, and, again lightly clapping his hands, exclaimed: ‘Young ladies, to-morrow we will continue the devotions of the month of Mary. Those who may be unable to come ought at least to say their Rosary at home.’
He knelt, and the peasant girls, with a mighty rustle of skirts, sank down and settled themselves on their heels. They followed his prayer with a confused muttering, through which burst here and there a giggle. One of them, on being pinched from behind, burst into a scream, which she attempted to stifle with a sudden fit of coughing; and this so diverted the others that for a moment after the Amen they remained writhing with merriment, their noses close to the stone flags.
La Teuse dismissed them; while the priest, after crossing himself, remained absorbed before the altar, no longer hearing what went on behind him.
‘Come, now, clear out,’ muttered the old woman. ‘You’re a pack of good-for-nothings, who can’t even respect God. It’s shameful, it’s unheard of, for girls to roll about on the floor in church like beasts in a meadow—— What are you doing there, La Rousse? If I see you pinching any one, you’ll have to deal with me! Oh, yes, you may put out your tongue at me; I’ll tell his reverence about it. Out you get; out you get, you minxes!’
She drove them slowly towards the door, while running and bobbling round them frantically. And she had succeeded, as she thought, in getting every one of them outside, when she caught sight of Catherine and Vincent calmly installed in the confessional, where they were eating something with an air of great enjoyment. She drove them away; and as she popped her head outside the church, before closing the door, she espied Rosalie throwing her arm over the shoulder of Fortune, who had been waiting for her. The pair of them vanished in the darkness amid a faint sound of kisses.
‘To think that such creatures dare to come to our Lady’s altar!’ La Teuse stuttered as she shot the bolts. ‘The others are no better, I am sure. If they came to-night with their boughs, it was only for a bit of fun and to get kissed by the lads on going off! Not one of them will put herself out of the way to-morrow; his reverence will have to say his Aves by himself—— We shall only see the jades who have got assignations.’
Thus soliloquising, she thrust the chairs back into their places, and looked round to see if anything suspicious was lying about before going off to bed. In the confessional she picked up a handful of apple-parings, which she threw behind the high altar. And she also found a bit of ribbon torn from some cap, and a lock of black hair, which she made up into a small parcel, with the view of opening an inquiry into the matter. With these exceptions the church seemed to her tidy. There was oil enough for the night in the bracket-lamp of the sanctuary, and as to the flags of the choir, they could do without washing till Saturday.
‘It’s nearly ten o’clock, Monsieur le Curé,’ she said, drawing near the priest, who was still on his knees. ‘You might as well come up now.’
He made no answer, but only bowed his head.
‘All right, I know what that means,’ continued La Teuse. ‘In another hour he will still be on the stones there, giving himself a stomach-ache. I’m off, as I shall only bore him. All the same, I can’t see much sense in it, eating one’s lunch when others are at dinner, and going to bed when the fowls get up!—— I worry you, don’t I, your reverence? Good-night. You’re not at all reasonable!’
She made ready to go, but suddenly came back to put out one of the two lamps, muttering the while that such late prayers spelt ruination in oil. Then, at last, she did go off, after passing her sleeve brushwise over the cloth of the high altar, which seemed to her grey with dust. Abbé Mouret, his eyes uplifted, his arms tightly clasped against his breast, then remained alone.
XIV
With only one lamp burning amid the verdure on the altar of the Virgin, huge floating shadows filled the church at either end. From the pulpit a sheet of gloom projected to the rafters of the ceiling. The confessional looked quite black under the gallery, showing strange outlines suggestive of a ruined sentry-box. All the light, softened and tinted as it were by the green foliage, rested slumberingly upon the tall gilded Virgin, who seemed to descend with queenly mien, borne upon the cloud round which gambolled the winged cherubim. At sight of that round lamp gleaming amid the boughs one might have thought the pallid moon was rising on the verge of a wood, casting its light upon a regal apparition, a princess of heaven, crowned and clothed with gold, who with her nude and Divine Infant had come to stroll in the mysterious woodland avenues. Between the leaves, along the lofty plumes of greenery, within the large ogival arbour, and even along the branches strewing the flagstones, star-like beams glided drowsily, like the milky rain of light that filters through the bushes on moonlit nights. Vague sounds and creakings came from the dusky ends of the church; the large clock on the left of the chancel throbbed slowly, with the heavy breathing of a machine asleep. And the radiant vision, the Mother with slender bands of chestnut hair, as if reassured by the nocturnal quiet of the nave, came lower and lower, scarce bending the blades of grass in the clearings beneath the gentle flight of her cloudy chariot.
Abbé Mouret gazed at her. This was the hour when he most loved the church. He forgot the woeful figure on the cross, the Victim bedaubed with carmine and ochre, who gasped out His life behind him, in the chapel of the Dead. His thoughts were no longer distracted by the garish light from the windows, by the gayness of morning coming in with the sun, by the irruption of outdoor life—the sparrows and the boughs invading the nave through the shattered panes. At that hour of night Nature was dead; shadows hung the whitewashed walls with crape; a chill fell upon his shoulders like a salutary penance-shirt. He could now wholly surrender himself to the supremest love, without fear of any flickering ray of light, any caressing breeze or scent, any buzzing of an insect’s wing disturbing him amidst the delight of loving. Never had his morning mass afforded him the superhuman joys of his nightly prayers.
With quivering lips Abbé Mouret now gazed at the tall Virgin. He could see her coming towards him from the depths of her green bower in ever-increasing splendour. No longer did a flood of moonlight seem to float across the tree-tops. She seemed to him clothed with the sun; she advanced majestically, glorious, colossal, and so all-powerful that he was tempted at times to cast himself face downwards to shun the flaming splendour of that gate opening into heaven. Then, amidst the adoration of his whole being, which stayed his words upon his lips, he remembered Brother Archangias’s final rebuke, as he might have remembered words of blasphemy. The Brother often reproved him for his devotion to the Virgin, which he declared was veritable robbery of devotion due to God. In the Brother’s opinion it enervated the soul, put religion into petticoats, created and fostered a state of sentimentalism quite unworthy of the strong. He bore the Virgin a grudge for her womanhood, her beauty, her maternity; he was ever on his guard against her, possessed by a covert fear of feeling tempted by her gracious mien, of succumbing to her seductive sweetness. ‘She will lead you far!’ he had cried one day to the young priest, for in her he saw the commencement of human passion. From contemplating her one might glide to delight in lovely chestnut hair, in large bright eyes, and the mystery of garments falling from neck to toes. His was the blunt rebellion of a saint who roughly parted the Mother from the Son, asking as He did: ‘Woman, what have we in common, thou and I?’
But Abbé Mouret thrust away such thoughts, prostrated himself, endeavoured to forget the Brother’s harsh attacks. His rapture in the immaculate purity of Mary alone raised him from the depths of lowliness in which he sought to bury himself. Whenever, alone before the tall golden Virgin, he so deceived himself as to imagine that he could see her bending down for him to kiss her braided locks, he once more became very young, very good, very strong, very just, full of tenderness.
Abbé Mouret’s devotion to the Virgin dated from his early youth. Already when he was quite a child, somewhat shy and fond of shrinking into corners, he took pleasure in the thought that a lovely lady was watching over him: that two blue eyes, so sweet, ever followed him with their smile. When he felt at night a breath of air glide across his hair, he would often say that the Virgin had come to kiss him. He had grown up beneath this womanly caress, in an atmosphere full of the rustle of divine robes. From the age of seven he had satisfied the cravings of his affection by expending all the pence he received as pocket money in the purchase of pious picture-cards, which he jealously concealed that he alone might feast on them. But never was he tempted by the pictures of Jesus and the Lamb, of Christ on the Cross, of God the Father, with a mighty beard, stooping over a bank of clouds; his preference was always for the winning portraits of Mary, with her tiny smiling mouth and delicate outstretched hands. By degrees he had made quite a collection of them all—of Mary between a lily and a distaff, Mary carrying her child as if she were his elder sister, Mary crowned with roses, and Mary crowned with stars. For him they formed a family of lovely young maidens, alike in their attractiveness, in the grace, kindliness, and sweetness of their countenances, so youthful beneath their veils, that although they bore the name of ‘Mother of God,’ he had felt no awe of them as he had often felt for grown-up persons.
They seemed to him of his own age, little girls such as he wished to meet with, little girls of heaven such as the little boys who die when seven years old have for eternal playmates in some nook of Paradise. But even at this early age he was self-contained; and full of the exquisite bashfulness of adolescence he grew up without betraying the secret of his religious love. Mary grew up with him, being invariably a year or two older than himself, as should always be the case with one’s chiefest friend. When he was eighteen, she was twenty; she no longer kissed his forehead at night time, but stood a little further from him with folded arms, chastely smiling, ravishingly sweet. And he—he only named her now in a whisper, feeling as if he would faint each time the well-loved name passed his lips in prayer. No more did he dream of childish games within the garden of heaven, but of continual contemplation before that white figure, whose perfect purity he feared to sully with his breath. Even from his own mother did he conceal the fervour of his love for Mary.
Then, a few years later, at the seminary, his beautiful affection for her, seemingly so just, so natural, was disturbed by inward qualms. Was the cult of Mary necessary for salvation? Was he not robbing God by giving Mary a part, the greater part, of his love, his thoughts, his heart, his entire being? Perplexing questions were these, provoking an inward struggle which increased his passion, riveted his bonds. For he dived into all the subtleties of his affection, found unknown joys in discussing the lawfulness of his feelings. The books treating of devotion to the Virgin brought him excuses, joyful raptures, a wealth of arguments which he repeated with prayerful fervour. From them he learned how, in Mary, to be the slave of Jesus. He went to Jesus through Mary. He cited all kinds of proofs, he discriminated, he drew inferences. Mary, whom Jesus had obeyed on earth, should be obeyed by all mankind; Mary still retained her maternal power in heaven, where she was the great dispenser of God’s treasures, the only one who could beseech Him, the only one who allotted the heavenly thrones; and thus Mary, a mere creature before God, but raised up to Him, became the human link between heaven and earth, the intermediary of every grace, of every mercy; and his conclusion always was that she should be loved above all else in God himself. Another time he was attracted by more complicated theological curiosities: the marriage of the celestial spouse, the Holy Ghost sealing the Vase of Election, making of the Virgin Mary an everlasting miracle, offering her inviolable purity to the devotion of mankind. She was the Virgin overcoming all heresies, the irreconcilable foe of Satan, the new Eve of whom it had been foretold that she should crush the Serpent’s head, the august Gate of Grace, by which the Saviour had already entered once and through which He would come again at the Last Day—a vague prophecy, allotting a yet larger future role to Mary, which threw Serge into a dreamy imagining of some immense expansion of divine love.
This entry of woman into the jealous, cruel heaven depicted by the Old Testament, this figure of whiteness set at the feet of the awesome Trinity, appeared to him the very grace itself of religion, the one consolation for all the dread inspired by things of faith, the one refuge when he found himself lost amidst the mysteries of dogma. And when he had thus proved to himself, point by point, that she was the way to Jesus—easy, short, perfect, and certain—he surrendered himself anew to her, wholly and without remorse: he strove to be her true devotee, dead to self and steeped in submission.
It was an hour of divine voluptuousness! The books treating of devotion to the Virgin burned his hands. They spoke to him in a language of love, warm, fragrant as incense. Mary no longer seemed a young maiden veiled in white, standing with crossed arms, a foot or two away from his pillow. She came surrounded by splendour, even as John saw her, clothed with the sun, crowned with twelve stars, and having the moon beneath her feet. She perfumed him with her fragrance, inflamed him with longing for heaven, ravished him even with the ardent glow of the planets flaming on her brow. He threw himself before her and called himself her slave. No word could have been sweeter than that word of slave, which he repeated, which he relished yet more and more as it trembled on his stammering tongue, whilst casting himself at her feet—to become her thing, her mite, the dust lightly scattered by the waving of her azure robe. With David he exclaimed: ‘Mary is made for me,’ and with the Evangelist he added: ‘I have taken her for my all.’ He called her his ‘beloved mistress,’ for words failed him, and he fell into the prattle of child or lover, his breath breaking with intensity of passion. She was the Blessed among women, the Queen of Heaven glorified by the nine Choirs of Angels, the Mother of Predilection, the Treasure of the Lord. All the vivid imagery of her cult unrolled itself before him comparing to her an earthly paradise of virgin soil, with beds of flowering virtues, green meadows of hope, impregnable towers of strength, and smiling dwellings of confidence. Again she was a fountain sealed by the Holy Ghost, a shrine and dwelling-place of the Holy Trinity, the Throne of God, the City of God, the Altar of God, the Temple of God, and the World of God. And he walked in that garden, in its shade, its sunlight, beneath its enchanting greenery; he sighed after the water of that Fountain; he dwelt within Mary’s beauteous precincts—resting, hiding, heedlessly straying there, drinking in the milk of infinite love that fell drop by drop from her virginal bosom.
Every morning, on rising at the seminary, he greeted Mary with a hundred bows, his face turned towards the strip of sky visible from his window. And at night in like fashion he bade her farewell with his eyes fixed upon the stars. Often, when he thus gazed out on fine bright nights, when Venus gleamed golden and dreamy through the warm atmosphere, he forgot himself, and then, like a soft song, would fall from his lips the Ave maris Stella, that tender hymn which set before his eyes a distant azure land, and a tranquil sea, scarce wrinkled by a caressing quiver, and illuminated by a smiling star, a very sun in size. He recited, too, the Salve Regina, the Regina Coeli, the O gloriosa Domina, all the prayers and all the canticles. He would read the Office of the Virgin, the holy books written in her honour, the little Psalter of St. Bonaventura, with such devout tenderness, that he could not turn the leaves for tears. He fasted and mortified himself, that he might offer up to her his bruised and wounded flesh. Ever since the age of ten he had worn her livery—the holy scapular, the twofold image of Mary sewn on squares of cloth, whose warmth upon his chest and back thrilled him with delight. Later on, he also took to wearing the little chain in token of his loving slavery. But his greatest act of love was ever the Angelic Salutation, the Ave Maria, his heart’s perfect prayer. ‘Hail, Mary——’ and he saw her advancing towards him, full of grace, blessed amongst women; and he cast his heart at her feet for her to tread on it in sweetness. He multiplied and repeated that salutation in a hundred different ways, ever seeking some more efficacious one. He would say twelve Aves to commemorate the crown of twelve stars that encircled Mary’s brow; he would say fourteen in remembrance of her fourteen joys; at another time he would recite seven decades of them in honour of the years she lived on earth. For hours the beads of his Rosary would glide between his fingers. Then, again, on certain days of mystical assignation he would launch into the endless muttering of the Rosary.
When, alone in his cell, with time to give to his love, he knelt upon the floor, the whole of Mary’s garden with its lofty flowers of chastity blossomed around him. Between his fingers glided the Rosary’s wreath of Aves, intersected by Paters, like a garland of white roses mingled with the lilies of the Annunciation, the blood-hued flowers of Calvary, and the stars of the Coronation. He would slowly tread those fragrant paths, pausing at each of the fifteen dizains of Aves, and dwelling on its corresponding mystery; he was beside himself with joy, or grief, or triumph, according as the mystery belonged to one or other of the three series—the joyful, the sorrowful, or the glorious. What an incomparable legend it was, the history of Mary, a complete human life, with all its smiles and tears and triumph, which he lived over again from end to end in a single moment! And first he entered into joy with the five glad Mysteries, steeped in the serene calm of dawn. First the Archangel’s salutation, the fertilising ray gliding down from heaven, fraught with the spotless union’s adorable ecstasy; then the visit to Elizabeth on a bright hope-laden morn, when the fruit of Mary’s womb for the first time stirred and thrilled her with the shock at which mothers blench; then the birth in a stable at Bethlehem, and the long string of shepherds coming to pay homage to her Divine Maternity; then the new-born babe carried into the Temple on the arms of his mother who smiled, still weary, but already happy at offering her child to God’s justice, to Simeon’s embrace, to the desires of the world; and lastly, Jesus at a later age revealing Himself before the doctors, in whose midst He is found by His anxious mother, now proud and comforted.
But, after that tender radiant dawn, it seemed to Serge as if the sky were suddenly overcast. His feet now trod on brambles, the beads of the Rosary pricked his fingers; he cowered beneath the horror of the five Sorrowful Mysteries: Mary, agonising in her Son in the garden of Olives, suffering with Him from the scourging, feeling on her own brow the wounds made by the crown of thorns, bearing the fearful weight of His Cross, and dying at his feet on Calvary. Those inevitable sufferings, that harrowing martyrdom of the queen he worshipped, and for whom he would have shed his blood like Jesus, roused in him a feeling of shuddering repulsion which ten years’ practice of the same prayers and the same devotions had failed to weaken. But as the beads flowed on, light suddenly burst upon the darkness of the Crucifixion, and the resplendent glory of the five last Mysteries shone forth in all the brightness of a cloudless sun. Mary was transfigured, and sang the hallelujah of the Resurrection, the victory over Death and the eternity of life. With outstretched hands, and dazed with admiration, she beheld the triumph of her Son ascending into heaven on golden clouds, fringed with purple. She gathered the Apostles round her, and, as on the day of her conception, participated in the glow of the Spirit of Love, descending now in tongues of fire. She, too, was carried up to heaven by a flight of angels, borne aloft on their white wings like a spotless ark, and tenderly set down amid the splendour of the heavenly thrones; and there, in her supreme glory, amidst a splendour so dazzling that the light of the sun was quenched, God crowned her with the stars of the firmament. Impassioned love has but one word. In reciting a hundred and fifty Aves Serge had not once repeated himself. The monotonous murmur, the ever recurring words, akin to the ‘I love you’ of lovers, assumed each time a deeper and deeper meaning; and he lingered over it all, expressed everything with the aid of the one solitary Latin sentence, and learned to know Mary through and through, until, as the last bead of his Rosary slipped from his hand, his heart grew faint with the thought of parting from her.
Many a night had the young man spent in this way. Daybreak had found him still murmuring his prayers. It was the moon, he would say to cheat himself, that was making the stars wane. His superiors had to reprove him for those vigils, which left him languid and pale as if he had been losing blood. On the wall of his cell had long hung a coloured engraving of the Sacred Heart of Mary, an engraving which showed the Virgin smiling placidly, throwing open her bodice, and revealing a crimson fissure, wherein glowed her heart, pierced with a sword, and crowned with white roses. That sword tormented him beyond measure, brought him an intolerable horror of suffering in woman, the very thought of which scattered his pious submissiveness to the winds. He erased the weapon, and left only the crowned and flaming heart which seemed to be half torn from that exquisite flesh, as if tendered as an offering to himself. And it was then he felt beloved: Mary was giving him her heart, her living heart, even as it throbbed in her bosom, dripping with her rosy blood.
In all this there was no longer the imagery of devout passion, but a material entity, a prodigy of affection which impelled him, when he was praying before the engraving, to open out his hands in order that he might reverently receive the heart that leaped from that immaculate bosom. He could see it, hear it beat; he was loved, that heart was beating for himself! His whole being quickened with rapture; he would fain have kissed that heart, have melted in it, have lain beside it within the depths of that open breast. Mary’s love for him was an active one; she desired him to be near her, to be wholly hers in the eternity to come; her love was efficacious, too, she was ever solicitous for him, watching over him everywhere, guarding him from the slightest breach of his fidelity. She loved him tenderly, more than the whole of womankind together, with a love as azure, as deep, as boundless as the sky itself. Where could he ever find so delightful a mistress? What earthly caress could be compared to the air in which he moved, the breath of Mary? What mundane union or enjoyment could be weighed against that everlasting flower of desire which grew unceasingly, and yet was never over-blown? At this thought the Magnificat would exhale from his mouth, like a cloud of incense. He sang the joyful song of Mary, her thrill of joy at the approach of her Divine Spouse. He glorified the Lord who overthrew the mighty from their thrones, and who sent Mary to him, poor destitute child that he was, dying of love on the cold tiled floor of his cell.
And when he had given all up to Mary—his body, his soul, his earthly goods, and spiritual chattels—when he stood before her stripped, bare, with all his prayers exhausted, there welled from his burning lips the Virgin’s litanies, with their reiterated, persistent, impassioned appeals for heavenly succour. He fancied himself climbing a flight of pious yearnings, which he ascended step by step at each bound of his heart. First he called her ‘Holy.’ Next he called her ‘Mother,’ most pure, most chaste, amiable, and admirable. And with fresh ardour he six times proclaimed her maidenhood; his lips cooled and freshened each time that he pronounced that name of ‘Virgin,’ which he coupled with power, goodness, and fidelity. And as his heart drew him higher up the ladder of light, a strange voice from his veins spoke within him, bursting into dazzling flowers of speech. He yearned to melt away in fragrance, to be spread around in light, to expire in a sigh of music. As he named her ‘Mirror of Justice,’ ‘Seat of Wisdom,’ and ‘Source of Joy,’ he could behold himself pale with ecstasy in that mirror, kneeling on the warmth of the divine seat, quaffing intoxication in mighty draughts from the holy Source.
Again he would transform her, throwing off all restraint in his frantic love, so as to attain to a yet closer union with her. She became a ‘Vessel of Honour,’ chosen of God, a ‘Bosom of Election,’ wherein he desired to pour his being, and slumber for ever.* She was the ‘Mystical Rose’—a great flower which bloomed in Paradise, with petals formed of the angels clustering round their queen, a flower so fresh, so fragrant, that he could inhale its perfume from the depths of his unworthiness with a joyful dilation of his sides which stretched them to bursting. She became changed into a ‘House of Gold,’ a ‘Tower of David,’ and a ‘Tower of Ivory,’ of inestimable richness, of a whiteness that swans might envy, and of lofty, massive, rounded form, which he would fain have encircled with his outstretched arms as with a girdle of submissiveness. She stood on the distant skyline as the ‘Gate of Heaven,’ a glimpse of which he caught behind her shoulders when a puff of wind threw back the folds of her veil. She rose in splendour from behind the mountain in the waning hour of night, like the ‘Morning Star’ to help all travellers astray, like the very dawn of Love. And when he had ascended to this height—scant of breath, yet still unsatiated—he could only further glorify her with the title of ‘Queen,’ with which he nine times hailed her, as with nine parting salutations from the censer of his soul. His canticle died joyfully away in those last ejaculations of triumph: ‘Queen of virgins, Queen of all saints. Queen conceived without sin!’ She, ever before him, shone in splendour; and he, on the topmost step, only reached by Mary’s intimates, remained there yet another moment, swooning amidst the subtle atmosphere around him; still too far away to kiss the edge of her azure robe, already feeling that he was about to fall, but ever possessed by a desire to ascend again and again, and seek that superhuman felicity.