En Route

On Sunday morning, on his way to the Rue Monsieur, Durtal chewed the cud of his reflections on the Monasteries. "It is certain," he thought, "that in the accumulated filth of ages, they alone have remained clean, are truly in relation with heaven, and serve as interpreters between it and earth. But we must thoroughly understand and specify that we are speaking only of the cloistered orders, which have remained, as far as possible, poor...."

And thinking of the communities of women, he murmured as he hastened his steps: "Here is a surprising fact, which proves once more, the incomparable genius with which the Church is endowed; she has been able to bring into common life women who do not assassinate each other, and obey without recalcitrancy the orders of another woman—wonderful!

"Well, here I am"—and Durtal, who knew he was late, hastened into the court of the Benedictine nunnery, took the steps of the little church four at a time, and pushed the door open. He paused in hesitation on the threshold, dazzled by the blaze of the lighted chapel. Lamps were lit everywhere, and overhead the altar flamed with a forest of tapers against which stood out as on a gold ground, the ruddy face of a bishop all in white.

Durtal glided among the crowd, elbowing his way till he saw the Abbé Gévresin beckoning to him. He joined him, and sat down on the chair the priest had kept for him, and examined the abbot of Grande Trappe, surrounded by priests in chasubles, and choir boys some in red and others in blue, followed by a Trappist with shaven crown, surrounded by a fringe of hair, holding a wooden cross, on the reverse of which was carved the small figure of a monk.

Clad in a white cowl, with long sleeves and a gold button on his hood, his abbot's cross on his breast, his head covered with an old French mitre of low form, Dom Etienne, with his broad shoulders, his greyish beard, his ruddy colour, had a look of an old Burgundian, tanned by the sun while working at his vines; he seemed, moreover, a good sort of man, uneasy under his mitre, oppressed by his honours.

A sharp perfume which burnt the nose as a spice burns the tongue, the perfume of myrrh, floated in the air, the crowds surged; behind the grating from which the curtain was withdrawn, the nuns standing sang the hymn of Saint Ambrose, "Jesu corona virginum," while the bells of the abbey rang a peal; in the short aisle leading from the porch to the choir, a bending line of women on either side, a cross-bearer and torch-bearers entered, and behind them appeared the novice dressed as a bride.

She was dark, slight, and very short, and came forward shyly with downcast eyes, between her mother and sister. At first sight Durtal thought her insignificant, scarcely pretty, a mere nobody; and he looked instinctively for the other party, put out in his sense of fitness, by the absence of a man in the marriage procession.

Striving against her agitation the postulant walked up the nave into the choir, and knelt on the left before a large taper, her mother and sister on either side as bridesmaids.

Dom Etienne genuflected to the altar, mounted the steps, and sat down in a red velvet arm-chair, placed on the highest step.

Then one of the priests conducted the girl, who knelt alone, before the monk.

Dom Etienne was motionless as a figure of Buddha; with the same gesture, he lifted one finger, and said gently to the novice,—

"What is it you ask?"

She spoke so low as scarcely to be heard.

"Father, feeling in myself an ardent desire to sacrifice myself to God, as a victim in union with our Lord Jesus Christ, immolated on our altars, and to spend my life in perpetual adoration of His divine Sacrament, under the observance of the rule of our glorious Father Saint Benedict, I humbly ask of you the grace of the holy habit."

"I will give it you willingly if you believe you can conform your life to that of a victim devoted to the Holy Sacrament."

And she answered in a firmer tone,

"I trust so, leaning on the infinite goodness of my Saviour Jesus Christ."

"God give you perseverance, my daughter," said the prelate; he rose, turned to the altar, genuflected, and with uncovered head began the chant "Veni Creator," taken up by the voices of the nuns behind the light screen of iron.

Then he replaced his mitre, and prayed, while the chanted psalms rose under the arches. The novice, who in the meantime had been reconducted to her place at the prie-Dieu, rose, genuflected to the altar, and then knelt between her two bridesmaids before the abbot of La Trappe, who had reseated himself.

Her two companions lifted the veil of the bride, took off her wreath of orange flowers, unrolled the coils of her hair, while a priest spread a napkin on the knees of the prelate, and the deacon presented a pair of long scissors on a salver.

Then before the gesture of this monk, making himself ready, like an executioner, to shear the condemned person, whose hour of expiation was at hand, the terrible beauty of innocence becoming like crime, in substitution for sins of which she was ignorant, which she could not even understand, was evident to the public who had come to the chapel out of curiosity, and in consternation at the superhuman denial of justice, it trembled when the bishop seized the entire handful of her hair, and drew it towards him over her brow.

Then there was as it were a flash of steel in a dark shower.

In the death-like silence of the church the grinding of the scissors was heard in the mass of hair which fell under the blades, and then all was silent. Dom Etienne opened his hand, and the rain fell on his knees in long black threads.

There was a sigh of relief when the priests and bridesmaids led away the bride, looking strange in her train, with her head discrowned and her neck bare.

The procession returned almost immediately. There was no longer a bride in a white skirt, but a nun in a black robe.

She bowed before the Trappist, and again knelt between her mother and sister.

Then, while the abbot prayed the Lord to bless his handmaid, the master of the ceremonies and the deacon took, from a credence near the altar, a basket, wherein under loose rose leaves were folded a girdle of untanned leather, emblem of the end of that luxury which the Fathers of the Church placed in the region of the reins, a scapular, symbol of a life crucified to the world, a veil, which signifies the solitude of the life hidden in God, and the prelate explained the sense of these emblems to the novice, then taking the lighted taper from the candlestick before her, he gave it to her, declaring in one phrase the meaning of his action: "Accipe, charissima soror, lumen Christi."

Then Dom Etienne took the sprinkler which a priest handed him with an inclination, and as in the general absolution of the dead, he sprinkled the girl with holy water in the form of a cross, then he sat down and spoke gently and quietly without using a single gesture.

He spoke to the postulant alone, praising the august and humble life of the cloister. "Look not back," he said, "have no regrets, for by my voice Jesus repeats to you the promise once made to the Magdalen, 'yours is the better part, which shall not be taken away from you.' Say also to yourself, my daughter, that, henceforward, taken away from the eternal trifling of labours in vain, you will accomplish a useful work upon earth, you will practise charity in its highest form, you will make expiation for others, you will pray for those who never pray, you will aid, so far as your strength permits, to make amends for the hate the world bears to the Saviour.

"Suffer and you will be happy; love your spouse, and you will see how tender He is to His elect. Believe me, His love is such that He will not even wait till you are purified by death to recompense you for your miserable mortifications, your poor sufferings. Even before your hour is come, He will heap His graces upon you, and you will beg Him to let you die, so greatly will the excess of these joys exceed your strength."

Little by little the old monk grew warm, and returned to the words of Christ to the Magdalen, showing how in reference to her Jesus set forward the excellence of the contemplative over the other Orders, and gave brief advice, dwelling on the necessity of humility and poverty, which are, as Saint Clare says, the two great walls of cloistered life. Then he blessed the novice, who kissed his hand, and when she had returned to her place, he prayed to the Lord, lifting his eyes to heaven, that He would accept this nun, who offered herself as a victim for the sins of the world. Then, standing, he intoned the "Te Deum."

Every one rose, and preceded by the cross and torch bearers, the procession passed out of the church, and was massed in the court.

Then Durtal might have believed himself carried back far from Paris, into the heart of the Middle Ages.

The court, surrounded by buildings, was closed opposite the entrance-gate by a high wall, in the midst of which was a folding-door; on each side six thin pines rocked to and fro, and chanting was heard behind the wall.

The postulant, in front, alone, near the closed door, held her torch, with her head bent. The abbot of La Trappe, leaning on his crosier, waited, unmoving, a few paces from her.

Durtal examined their faces, the girl, so commonplace in her bridal costume, had become charming, her body was now full of a timid grace, the lines, somewhat too marked under her worldly dress, were softened, under her religious shroud her outline was only a simple sketch, it was as though the years had rolled back, and as though there was a return to the forms only prophesied in childhood.

Durtal drew near to examine her better, he tried to look at her face, but under the chill bandage of her head-dress, she remained mute, and as if absent from life, with her eyes closed, and as though she lived only in the smile of her happy lips.

Seen nearer, the monk who had seemed so stout and ruddy in the chapel, seemed also changed, his frame remained robust, and his complexion bright, but his eyes of a light blue, like chalk water, water without reflections or waves, eyes wonderfully pure, changed the common expression of his features, and took away from him that look of a vine-dresser which he had at a distance.

"It is clear," thought Durtal, "that the soul is everything in these people, and their faces are modelled by it. There is a holy clearness in their eyes, and their lips, in those only apertures through which the soul comes to look out of the body, and almost shows itself."

The chants behind the wall suddenly ceased, the girl made a step forward, and knocked with her closed fingers at the door, and then with a failing voice she sang,—

"Aperite mihi portas justitiae: Ingressa in eas, confitebor Domino."

The door opened. Another large court, paved with pebbles was seen, bounded at the end by a building, and all the community, in a sort of semicircle, with black books in their hands, cried,—

"Haec porta Domini: Justi intrabunt in eam."

The novice made another step to the sill and answered in her far-away voice,—

"Ingrediar in locum tabernaculi admirabilis: usque ad domum Dei."

And the choir of nuns, unmoving, answered,—

"Haec est domus Domini firmiter aedificata: Bene fundata est supra firmam petram."

Durtal hastily looked at those faces which could only be seen for a few minutes and on the occasion of such a ceremony. It was a row of dead bodies standing in black shrouds. All were bloodless, with white cheeks, lilac eyelids and grey lips, the voices of all were exhausted and fined down by prayer, and most of them, even the young, were bent. "Their poor bodies are worn with austere fatigue," thought Durtal.

But his reflections were cut short, the bride, now kneeling on the threshold, turned to Dom Etienne and chanted in a low voice,—

"Haec requies mea in saeculum saeculi: Hic habitabo quoniam elegi eam."

The monk laid aside his mitre and crosier and said,—

"Confirma hoc Deus, quod operatus es in nobis."

And the postulant murmured,—

"A templo sacro tuo quod est in Jerusalem."

Then before re-covering his head and resuming his crosier, the prelate prayed God Almighty to pour the dew of His blessing on His handmaid; then directing the girl towards a nun who left the group of sisters and advanced to the threshold, he said to her,—

"Into your hands, Madame, we commit this new bride of the Lord, sustain her in the holy resolution she has so solemnly taken upon her, in asking to sacrifice herself to God as a victim, and to dedicate her life in honour of our Lord Jesus Christ, sacrificed on our altars. Lead her in the way of the divine Commandments, in the practice of the counsels of the Holy Gospel, and in the observance of the monastic rule. Prepare her for the eternal union to which the heavenly Spouse invites her, and from this blessed increase of the flock committed to your charge draw a new motive for maternal care. The peace of the Lord rest upon you."

This was all: the nuns one by one turned and disappeared behind the wall, while the girl followed them like a poor dog, who with drooping head accompanies at a distance a new master.

The folding doors closed.

Durtal remained stupefied, looking at the outline of the white bishop, the backs of the priests who were mounting the steps to give Benediction in the church, while behind them came in tears, their faces in their handkerchiefs, the mother and sister of the novice.

"Well?" said the abbé, passing his arm through Durtal's.

"Well, this scene is to my mind the most touching alibi of death that it is possible to see, this living woman, who buries herself in the most frightful of tombs—for in it the flesh continues to suffer—is wonderful.

"I remember that you have yourself told me of the pressure of this observance, and I shivered in thinking of perpetual Adoration, in those winter nights, when a child like this is awakened out of her first sleep, and cast into the darkness of a chapel where unless she faints from weakness or terror, she must pray alone, through the freezing hours on her knees on the pavement.

"What passes in that conversation with the unknown, that interview with the Shadow? Does she succeed in escaping from self, and in leaving the earth, in gaining, on the threshold of Eternity, the inconceivable Spouse, or does the soul, powerless to spring on high, remain riveted to the soil?

"We figure her to ourselves, her face bent forward, her hands joined, making appeal to herself, concentrating herself, in order to pour herself forth the better, and we imagine her thus sickly, with no strength left, trying to set her soul on fire in a shivering frame. But who can tell if on certain nights she attains to it?

"Ah! those poor lamps of exhausted oil, of flames almost dead, which tremble in the obscurity of the sanctuary, what will God make of them?

"Then there was the family present at the taking the habit, and if the daughter filled me with enthusiasm I could not restrain myself from pitying the mother. Think if the daughter died, the mother would embrace her, would perhaps speak to her, or if she did not recognize her, it would at least not be with her own good will; but in this case it is not the body, but the very soul of her child that dies before her eyes. Of her own accord her child knows her no longer, it is the contemptuous end of an affection. You will admit that for a mother this is very hard."

"Yes, but this so-called ingratitude, gained at the price of God knows what struggles, is it not, even apart from the divine vocation, the most equitable repartition of human love? Think that this elect creature becomes the scapegoat of sins committed, and like a lamentable daughter of Danaus she will unceasingly pour the offering of her mortifications and prayers, of her vigils and fastings, into the bottomless vessel of offences and crimes. Ah! if you knew what it was to repair the sins of the world. In regard to this I remember that one day the abbess of the Benedictines in the Rue Tournefort said to me: 'Since our tears are not holy enough, nor our souls pure enough, God makes trial of us in our bodies.' Here are long illnesses which cannot be cured, illnesses which doctors fail to understand, and we make thus much expiation for others.

"But if you will think over the ceremony which is just ended, you need not be affected beyond measure or compare it to the well-known ceremonies of a funeral; the postulant whom you saw has not yet pronounced her final vows, she can if she choose leave the convent, and return to her own home. At present she is in regard to her mother, a child in a foreign country, a child at school, but she is not a dead child.

"You may say what you please, but there is a tragedy in that door which closed upon her."

"Therefore in the Benedictine convent in the Rue Tournefort, the scene takes place in the interior of the convent, and the family is not present, the mother is spared, but mitigated thus, the ceremony is but a mere form, almost a foolish rule in the seclusion wherein the Faith is hidden."

"Those nuns are also Benedictines of the perpetual Adoration, are they not?"

"Yes, do you know their convent?"

And as Durtal shook his head, the abbé continued,—

"It is older, but less interesting than that in the Rue Monsieur, the chapel is mean, full of plaster statuettes, cotton flowers, bunches of grapes and ears of corn in gold paper, but the old building of the nunnery is curious. It contains, what shall I call it? a school dining-room, and a retreatant's drawing-room, and so gives at once the impression of old age and childhood."

"I know that class of convents," said Durtal. "I used often to see one, when I used to visit an old aunt at Versailles. It always used to impress me as a Maison Vauquer, brought to devotional uses, it had the air at once of a table d'hôte in the Rue de la Clef and the sacristy of a country church."

"Just so," and the abbé went on with a smile,—

"I had many interviews with the abbess in the Rue Tournefort; you guess at rather than see her, for you are separated from her by a screen of black wood, behind which is stretched a black curtain which she draws aside."

"I can see it," thought Durtal, who, remembering the Benedictine custom, saw in a second a little face confused in neutral tinted light, and lower, at the top of her habit, the gleam of a medal of the Blessed Sacrament in red enamelled in white.

He laughed and said to the abbé,—

"I laugh, because having had some business to transact with my nun aunt of whom I was speaking, only visible like your abbess through a trellis, I found out how to read her thoughts a little."

"Ah! how was that?"

"In this way. Since I could not see her face, which was hidden behind the lattice of her cage, and disappeared behind her veil, and if she should answer me, having nothing to guide me but the inflexions of her voice, always circumspect and always calm, I ended by trusting only to her great glasses, round, with buff frames, which almost all nuns wear. Well, all the repressed vivacity of this woman burst out there; suddenly in a corner of her glasses, there was a glimmer, and I then understood that her eye had lighted up, and gave the lie to the indifference of her voice, the determined quietness of her tone."

The abbé in his turn began to laugh.

"Do you know the Superior of the Benedictines, in the Rue Monsieur?" said Durtal.

"I have spoken with her once or twice; there the parlour is monastic, there is not the provincial and middle-class side of the Rue Tournefort, it is composed of a sombre room, of which all the breadth at the end is taken up by an iron grating, and behind the grating are again wooden bars, and a shutter painted black. You are quite in the dark, and the abbess, scarcely in the light, appears to you like a phantom."

"The abbess is, I suppose, the nun, elderly, fragile and very short, to whom Dom Etienne committed the novice?"

"Yes. She is a remarkable shepherdess of souls, and what is more, a very well educated woman of most distinguished manners."

"Oh," thought Durtal: "I can imagine that these abbesses are charming, but also terrible women. Saint Teresa was goodness itself, but when she speaks in her 'Way of Perfection' of nuns who band themselves together to discuss the will of their mother, she shows herself inexorable, for she declares that perpetual imprisonment should be inflicted on them as soon as possible and without flinching, and in fact she is right, for every disorderly sister infects the flock, and gives the rot to souls."

Thus talking they had reached the end of the Rue de Sèvres, and the abbé stopped to rest.

"Ah," he said, as if speaking to himself, "had I not had all my life heavy expenses, first a brother, then nephews to maintain, I should many years ago have become a member of Saint Benedict's family. I have always had an attraction towards that grand Order, which is, in fact, the intellectual Order of the Church. Therefore, when I was stronger and younger, I always went for my retreats to one of their monasteries, sometimes to the black monks of Solesmes, or of Ligugé, who have preserved the wise traditions of Saint Maurus, sometimes to the Cistercians, or the white monks of La Trappe."

"True," said Durtal, "La Trappe is one of the great branches of the tree of Saint Benedict, but how is it that its ordinances do not differ from those which the Patriarch left?"

"That is to say that the Trappists interpret the rule of Saint Benedict, which is very broad and supple, less in its spirit than in its letter, while the Benedictines do the contrary.

"In fact, La Trappe is an offshoot of Citeaux, and is much more the daughter of Saint Bernard, who was during forty years the very sap of that branch, than the descendant of Saint Benedict."

"But, so far as I remember, the Trappists are themselves divided, and do not live under a uniform discipline."

"They do so now, since a pontifical brief dated March 17th, 1893, sanctioned the decisions of the general Chapter of the Trappists assembled in Rome, and ordered the fusion into one sole order, and under the direction of a sole superior, of the three observances of the Trappists, who were in fact ruled by discordant constitutions."

And seeing that Durtal was listening attentively, the abbé continued,—

"Among these three observances, one only, that of the Cistercian Trappists, to which belonged the abbey of which I was a guest, followed in their integrity the rules of the twelfth century, and led the monastic life of Saint Bernard's day. This alone recognized the rule of Saint Benedict, taken in its strictest application, and completed by the Charte de Charité, and the use and customs of Citeaux; the two others had adopted the same rule, but revised and modified in the seventeenth century by the Abbé de Rancé, and again one of them, the Belgian congregation, had changed the statutes imposed by that abbot.

"At the present day, as I have just said, all the Trappists form only one and the same institute under the name, Order of Reformed Cistercians of the Blessed Virgin Mary of La Trappe, and all resume the rules of Citeaux, and live again the life of the cenobites of the Middle Ages."

"But if you have visited these ascetics," said Durtal, "you must know Dom Etienne?"

"No, I have never stayed at La Grande Trappe, I prefer the poor and small monasteries where one is mixed up with the monks, to those imposing convents where they isolate you in a guest-house, and in a word keep you separate.

"There is one in which I make my retreats, Notre Dame de l'Atre, a small Trappist monastery a few leagues from Paris, which is quite the most seductive of shelters. Besides that the Lord really abides there, for it has true saints among its children, it is delightful also with its ponds, its immemorial trees, its distant solitude, far in the woods."

"Yes, but," observed Durtal, "the life there must be unbending, for La Trappe is the most rigid order which has been imposed on men."

For his only answer the abbé let go Durtal's arm, and took both his hands.

"Do you know," he said, looking him in the face, "it is there you must go for your conversion?"

"Are you serious, Monsieur l'Abbé?"

And as the priest pressed his hands more strongly Durtal cried,—

"Ah, no indeed, first I have not the stoutness of soul, and if that be possible I have still less the bodily health needed for such a course, I should fall ill on my arrival, and then ... and then...."

"And then, what? I am not proposing to you to shut you up for ever in a cloister."

"So I suppose," said Durtal, in a somewhat piqued tone.

"But just to remain a week, just the necessary time for a cure. Now a week is soon over, then do you think that if you make such a resolution God will not sustain you?"

"That is all very fine, but ..."

"Let us speak on the health question, then;" and the abbé smiled a smile of pity that was a little contemptuous.

"I can promise you at once that as a retreatant, you will not be bound to lead the life of a Trappist in its austerest sense. You need not get up at two in the morning for Matins, but at three, or even at four o'clock, according to the day."

And smiling at the face Durtal made, the abbé went on,—

"As to your food it will be better than that of the monks; naturally you will have no fish nor meat, but you may certainly have an egg for dinner, if vegetables are not enough for you."

"And the vegetables, I suppose, are cooked with salt and water, and no seasoning?"

"No, they are dressed with salt and water only on fasting days; at other times you will have them cooked in milk and water, or in oil."

"Many thanks," said Durtal.

"But all that is excellent for your health," continued the priest, "you complain of pains in the stomach, sick headaches, diarrhœa, well, this diet, in the country, in the air, will cure you better than all the drugs you take.

"Now let us leave, if you like, your body out of the question, for in such a case, it is God's part to act against your weakness. I tell you, you will not be ill at La Trappe, that were absurd; it would be to send the penitent sinner away, and Jesus would not then be the Christ; but let us talk of your soul. Have the courage to take its measure, to look it well in the face. Do you see that?" said the abbé after a silence.

Durtal did not answer.

"Admit," said the priest, "that you are horrified at it."

They took a few steps in the street, and the abbé continued,—

"You declare that you are sustained by the crowds of Notre Dame des Victoires and the emanations of St. Severin. What will it be then, in the humble chapel, when you will be on the ground huddled together with the saints? I guarantee you in the name of the Lord an assistance such as you have never had;" and he went on with a laugh, "I may add that the Church will take pleasure in receiving you, she will bring out her ornaments which she has now left off: the authentic liturgies of the Middle Ages, true plain chant, without solos or organs."

"Listen, your propositions astound me," said Durtal with an effort. "No: I assure you I am not at all disposed to imprison myself in such a place. I know well that at Paris I shall never come to any good. I swear to you that I am not proud of my life, nor satisfied with my soul, but from thence ... to ... where I cannot tell; I want at least a mitigated asylum, a quiet convent. There must be, on those conditions, somewhere, hospitals for souls."

"I could only send you to the Jesuits, who make a specialty of retreats for men: but knowing you as I think I know you, I feel sure you would not stay there two days. You would find yourself among amiable and very clever priests, but they would overwhelm you with sermons, would wish to interfere with your life, mix themselves up with your art, they would examine your thoughts with a magnifying glass, and then you would be under treatment with good young people, whose unintelligent piety would horrify you, and you would flee in exasperation.

"At La Trappe it is the contrary. You would certainly be the sole retreatant there, and no one will have the least idea of troubling himself about you; you will be free, you can if you choose leave the monastery just as you entered it, without having confessed or approached the Sacraments, your will will be respected there, and no monk will attempt to sound it without your authority. To you only it will appertain to decide whether you will be converted or no.

"And you will like me to be frank to the last, will you not? You are, as indeed I have already said to you, a sensitive and distrustful man; well, the priest as you see him in Paris, even the religious not cloistered, seem to you, how shall I express it? second rate souls, not to go further...."

Durtal protested vaguely, with a gesture.

"Let me go on. An afterthought will come to you in regard to the ecclesiastic to whom will fall the task of cleansing you, you will be quite certain that he is not a saint; this is not very theological, for were he even the worst of priests his absolution would have just the same value, if you merit it, but indeed here is a question of sentiment which I respect, you will think of him in a word: he lives as I do, he is not more self-denying than I am, nothing shows that his conscience is very superior to mine, and thence to losing all confidence, and throwing up the whole thing there is but a step. At La Trappe, I will defy you to reason in this way, and not to become humble. When you see men, who after having abandoned everything to serve God, lead a life of privations and penance such as no government would dare to inflict on its convicts, you will indeed be obliged to admit that you are no great thing by their side."

Durtal was silent. After the astonishment he had felt at the suggestion of such an issue, he became dully irritated against this friend, who hitherto so discreet, had suddenly rushed upon his soul and opened it by force. There came out the disgusting vision of an existence stripped, used up, reduced to a state of dust, a condition of rags. And Durtal shrank from himself, convinced that the abbé was right, that he must at any rate stanch the discharge of his senses, and expiate their inappeasable desires, their abominable covetousness, their rotten tastes, and he was seized with a terror irrational and intense. He had the giddy fear of the cloister, a terror which attracted him to the abyss over which Gévresin made him lean.

Enervated by the ceremony of taking the habit, stunned by the blow with which the priest had assailed him as they left the church, he now felt an anguish almost physical, in which everything ended in confusion. He did not know to what reflections he should give himself, and only saw, swimming on this whirlpool of troubled ideas, one clear thought, that the moment had come so dreaded by him in which he must make a resolution.

The abbé looked at him, saw that he was really suffering, and was full of pity for a soul so unable to support a struggle.

He took Durtal's arm, and said gently,—

"My son, believe me that the day you go yourself to the house of God, the day you knock at its door, it will open wide, and the angels will draw aside to let you pass. The Gospel cannot lie, and it declares that there is more joy over one sinner that repents than over ninety and nine just persons who need no repentance. You will be much better welcomed than you expect, and be sufficiently my friend to think that the old priest you leave here will not remain inactive, and that he and the convents he can influence will pray their best for you."

"I will see," said Durtal, really moved by the affectionate tone of the priest, "I will see. I cannot decide thus, unexpectedly; I will think. Ah! it is not simple."

"Above all things pray," said the priest, who had reached his door. "I have on my side sought the Lord much that He would enlighten me, and I declare to you that the solution of La Trappe is the only one He has given me. Ask Him humbly, in your turn, and you will be guided. I shall soon see you again, shall I not?"

He pressed Durtal's hand, who, left alone, recovered himself at last. Then he recalled the strategic smiles, the ambiguous phrases, the dreamy silences of the Abbé Gévresin, he understood the kindness of his counsels, the patience of his plans; and a little put out at having been, without knowing it, led so wisely, he exclaimed in spite of himself, "This, then, was the design the priest was ripening, with his air of not concerning himself with it at all."

He experienced that painful awakening of a sick man whom a doctor deceives for months, who learns some fine morning that he is to be taken at once to an hospital to undergo an urgent surgical operation. "But that is not the way things should be done," cried Durtal, "people should be prepared, little by little, accustomed by words of warning, to the idea that they are to be cut up on a table, they are not struck down thus unexpectedly!

"Yes, but what does that matter? since I know very well, in the depths of my soul, that this priest is right; I must leave Paris if I wish to amend; but all the same, the treatment he inflicts is hard indeed to follow; I know not what to do."

And from this moment his days were haunted by Trappists. He turned over the thought of his departure, and examined it on all sides, chewed the cud of for and against, and ended by saying to himself, "That he would take stock of his reflections and open an account, and this with a debit and credit side, that he might know himself the better.

"The debit is terrible. To gather up his life, and cast it into the stove of a cloister; and again, he ought to know if his body were in a state to bear such a remedy; mine is frail and soft, accustomed to rise late; it becomes weak if not nourished by flesh meat, and is subject to neuralgia at any change of the hour of meals. I should never be able to hold out down there with vegetables cooked in warm oil or in milk; first I detest oily cookery, and I hate milk still more, which I cannot digest.

"Then I think I see myself on my knees, on the floor for hours, I who suffered so much at La Glacière in remaining in that posture, on a step, for scarce a quarter of an hour.

"Again, I am so accustomed to cigarettes that it is absolutely impossible to give them up, and it is pretty certain they will not let me smoke in a monastery.

"No, indeed, from the bodily point of view, this plan is madness; in my state of health there is no doctor who would not dissuade me from undertaking such a risk.

"If I place myself in a spiritual point of view I must then again recognize that it is terrible to enter La Trappe.

"I am afraid indeed that my dryness of soul, my want of love will remain, and then what would become of me in such surroundings? then it is equally probable, that in that solitude and absolute silence, I should be wearied to death, and if it be so, what a miserable existence is it to stalk about a cell and count the hours. No, for that one needs to be firmly fixed on God, to be dwelt in wholly by Him.

"Moreover, there are two formidable questions which I have never properly weighed, because it has been painful to think of them, but now that they come before me, and stop the road, I must face them, the questions of Confession and Holy Communion.

"Confession? Yes, I will consent to it, I am so tired of myself, so disgusted with my wretched existence that this expiation appears to me as deserved, even necessary. I desire to humble myself, I would ask pardon with all my heart, but again this penance must be assigned me under possible conditions. At La Trappe, if I believe the abbé, no one will trouble himself about me, in other words no one will encourage me, and aid me to submit to this sorrowful extraction of my shames. I shall be somewhat like a sick man operated on in hospital, far from his friends and relatives.

"Confession," he went on, "is an admirable discovery, for it is the most sensitive touchstone of souls, the most intolerable act which the Church has ever imposed on the vanity of men.

"Is this strange? We speak easily of our lapses, of our grosser actions, even, indeed, to a priest in conversation, that does not seem to lead to any consequences, and perhaps a little bragging enters into our admission of easy sins, but to tell the same thing on one's knees, accusing oneself, after prayer, is different, that which was only rather amusing becomes a very painful humiliation, for the soul is not the dupe of this false seeming, it knows so well in its inner tribunal that all is changed, it feels so well the terrible power of the Sacrament, that he who but now smiled, now trembles at the very thought.

"Now, were I to find myself face to face with an old monk who emerges from an eternity of silence to listen to me, a monk who will not aid me, perhaps cannot even understand me, this will be terrible. I shall never get to the end of my troubles if he does not hold out a staff to me, if he lets me stifle and gives no air to my soul, nor brings me help.

"The Eucharist also seems terrible. To dare to come forward, to offer Him as a tabernacle the sewer of self scarce purified by repentance, a sewer drained by absolution, but still hardly dry, is monstrous. I am quite without such courage as to offer Christ this last insult, and so there is no good in fleeing to a monastery.

"No; the more I think of it, the more I am obliged to conclude that I should be mad if I ventured into a Trappist house.

"Now for the Credit side. The only proper work of my life would be to make a parcel of my life, and take it to a cloister to disinfect it, and if that cost me nothing, where is the merit?

"Nothing shows me, on the other hand, that my body, however weakened, cannot support the regimen of La Trappe. Without believing or pretending to believe with the Abbé Gévresin that that kind of food will be even helpful to me, I ought to count on Divine consolations, to admit the principle that, if I am sent there, it is not that I may take at once to my bed, or be obliged to leave again as soon as I arrive—at least, unless that is the chastisement prepared me, the expiation demanded, and again no, for that would be to ascribe to God pitiless tricks, and would be absurd!

"As to the cookery, it matters little that it is uncivilized, if my stomach can digest it; to have bad food, and get up in the middle of the night is nothing, provided the body can stand it, and no doubt I shall find some means of smoking cigarettes by stealth in the woods.

"After all, a week is soon over, and I am not even obliged, if I feel poorly, to remain a week.

"From the spiritual point of view, I must again count on the mercy of God, believe that it will not abandon me, will dress my wounds, and change the very foundation of my soul. I know well that these arguments do not rest on any earthly certainty, but yet if I have proofs that Providence has already taken part in my affairs, I have no reason to suppose that these arguments are weaker than the purely physical motives which served to support my other thesis. Now I must recall that conversion, so outside my will; I must take account of a fact which should encourage me, the weakness of the temptations which I now experience.

"It is difficult to have been more rapidly and more completely heard. Whether I owe this grace to my own prayers or to those of the convents which have shielded me without knowing me, it is the case that for some time past my brain has been silent and my flesh calm. That monster Florence appears to me still at certain times, but she does not approach me, she remains in the shade, and the end of the Lord's Prayer, the 'ne nos inducas in tentationem,' puts her to flight.

"That is an unaccustomed fact, and yet a precise one. Why should I doubt, then, that I shall be better upheld at La Trappe than I am in Paris itself?

"There remain confession and communion.

"Confession? It will be what the Lord chooses it should be. He will choose the monk for me; I shall only be able to make use of him; and then the more disagreeable it is, the better worth it will be; and if I suffer much, I shall think myself less unworthy to communicate.

"That is," he went on, "the most painful point! Communicate! But let us consider, it is certain that I shall be base in proposing to Christ that He should descend like a scavenger into my ditch; but if I wait till it is empty, I shall never be in a state to receive Him, for my bulkheads are not closed, and sins would filter through the fissures.

"All this well considered, the abbé spoke truth when he answered me one day: 'But I too am not worthy to approach Him; thank God, I have not those sewers of which you speak, but in the morning, when I go to say my mass, and think of all the dust of the evening, do you not think that I am ashamed? It is always necessary, you see, to go back to the Gospels, and say to yourself that He came for the weak and the sick, the publicans and lepers; and, in fact, you must convince yourself that the Eucharist is a lookout post, a help, that it is given, as it is written in the ordinary of the Mass "ad tutamentum mentis et corporis et ad medelam percipiendam." It is, if I may say so, a spiritual medicine; you go to the Saviour just as you go to a doctor, you take your soul to Him to care for it, and He does so!'

"I stand before the unknown," pursued Durtal, "I complain that I am arid, and have wandered from the right way, but who will declare to me that, if I determine to communicate, I shall remain in the same mind; for indeed, if I have Faith, I ought to believe in the occult work of Christ in the Sacrament. Lastly, I am afraid of being wearied by solitude; I am not much amused here as it is, but at La Trappe I shall no longer have those vacillations at every minute, those constant fears; I shall at least have the advantage of having my time to myself; and then ... and then ... how well I know solitude. Have I not lived apart since the deaths of des Hermies and Carhaix? Indeed, whom do I see? A few publishers, a few literary men, and my relations with these people are not interesting. As to silence, it is a blessing. I shall not hear any foolish sayings at La Trappe; I shall not listen to pitiable homilies and poor sermons; but I ought to rejoice on being at last isolated, far from Paris, far from men."

He was silent, and made, as it were, a return in upon himself; and said to himself, in a melancholy manner: "These strifes are useless, these reflections vain. I need not try to take account of my soul, to make out the debit and credit; I know, without knowing how, that I must go; I am thrust out of myself by an impulse which rises from the very depths of my being, to which I am quite certain I have to yield."

At that moment Durtal had decided, but ten minutes afterwards the attempt at resolution vanished. He felt his cowardice gain on him once more, he chewed once more the cud of arguments against his moving; came to the conclusion that his reasons for remaining in Paris were palpable, human, certain, while the others were intangible, extra-natural, and consequently subject to illusions, perhaps false.

And he invented for himself the fear of not obtaining the thing he feared, said to himself that La Trappe would not receive him, or certainly that it would refuse him communion; and then he suggested to himself a middle term: to confess at Paris and communicate at La Trappe.

But then there passed in him an incomprehensible fact: his whole soul revolted at this idea, and the formal order not to deceive himself was truly breathed into him, and he said to himself: "No, the bitter draught must be drained to the last drop, it is all or nothing; if I confess to the abbé it will be in disobedience to absolute and secret directions; I should be capable of not going afterwards to Notre Dame de l'Atre.

"What shall I do?" And he accused himself of distrust, called to his aid once more the memory of benefits received, how scales had fallen from his eyes, his insensible progress towards Faith, his encounter with that singular priest, perhaps the only one who could understand him, and treat him in a way so benign and so elastic; but he tried in vain to reassure himself, then he called up the dream of the monastic life, the sovereign beauty of the cloister; he imagined the joy of renunciation, the peace of exalted prayers, the interior intoxication of the spirit, the delight of not being at home any longer in his own body. Some words of the abbé about La Trappe served as a spring-board for his dreams, and he perceived an old abbey, grey and warm, immense avenues of trees, clouds flying confusedly amid the song of waters, silent strolls in the woods at nightfall; he called up the solemn liturgies of Saint Benedict's time; he saw the white pith of monastic chants rise under the scarcely pruned bark of sound. He succeeded in his decision, and cried: "You have dreamed for years of the cloisters, now rejoice that you will know them at last," and he wished to go at once and live there; then suddenly he fell down into reality, and said to himself: "It is easy to wish to live in a monastery, to tell God that you would desire to take shelter therein, when life in Paris weighs you down, but when it comes to the real point of emigration, it is quite another matter."

He turned over these thoughts everywhere, in the street, at home, in the chapels. He hurried like a shuttle from one church to another, hoping to solace his fears by changing his place, but they persisted, and rendered every place intolerable.

Then in the sacred places came always that dryness of soul, the broken spring of impulse, a sudden silence within, when he desired consolation in speaking to Him. His best moments, his pauses in the hurly-burly, were a few minutes of absolute torpor, which rested like snow on the soul and he heard nothing.

But this drowsiness of thought lasted but a while, the whirlwind blew once more, and the prayers which were wont to appease it refused to leave his lips, he tried religious music, the despairing sequences of the psalms, pictures of the Crucifixion by the Early Masters, to excite him, but his prayers ran on and became confused on his lips, were divested of all sense, mere words, empty shells.

At Notre Dame des Victoires, where he dragged himself that he might thaw a little under the warmth of his neighbours' prayers, he did in fact feel less chilly, and seemed to break up a little, fell drop by drop into sorrows which he could not formulate, and were all summed up in the cry of a sick child, in which he said to Our Lady, in low tones: "My soul is sorrowful."

Thence he returned to St. Severin, sat down under those arches browned by the rust of prayers, and, haunted by his fixed idea, he pleaded for himself extenuating circumstances, exaggerated the austerities of La Trappe, tried almost to exasperate his fear to excuse his weakness in a vague appeal to Our Lady.

"But I must go and see the Abbé Gévresin," he murmured, but his courage still failed him to pronounce the "Yes" which the priest would surely require from him. He ended by discovering a reason for his visit, without thinking himself obliged to promise just yet.

"After all," he thought, "I have no precise information about this monastery; I do not even know whether it may not be necessary to take a long and expensive journey to get there; the abbé indeed declares that it is not far from Paris, but it is impossible to decide on this simple declaration; it will be useful also to know the habits of these cenobites before going to stay with them."

The abbé smiled when Durtal mentioned these objections.

"The journey is short," he said. "You start from the Gare du Nord at eight o'clock in the morning for Saint Landry, where you arrive at a quarter to twelve; you lunch at an inn close to the station, and while you are drinking your coffee they get you a carriage, and after a drive of four hours you arrive at Notre Dame de l'Atre for dinner. There is no difficulty there.

"Then the cost is moderate. As far as I remember the railway fare is about fifteen francs, add two or three francs for lunch, and six or seven for the carriage ..."

And as Durtal was silent, the abbé went on: "Well?"

"Ah yes, yes ... if you knew ... I am in a pitiable state, I will and will not, I know well that I ought to take refuge there, but in spite of myself, I wish to gain time and put off the hour of departure."

And he continued: "My soul is out of gear, when I would pray, my senses go all astray, I cannot recollect myself, and if I succeed in pulling myself together, five minutes do not pass but I am all astray again; no, I have neither fervour nor true contrition, I do not love God enough, if it must be said.

"And, indeed, during the last two days, a frightful certainty has grown up in me; I am sure that, in spite of my good intentions, if I found myself in the presence of a certain person, whose sight troubles me, I should send religion to the devil, I should return eagerly to my vomit; I only hold on because I am not tempted, I am no better than when I was sinning. You will admit that I am in a wretched state to enter a Trappist monastery."

"Your reasons are at least weak," answered the abbé. "You say first that your prayers are distracted, that you are unable to concentrate your attention; but in fact you are just like everybody else. Even Saint Teresa declares that often she was unable to recite the Credo without distraction, it is a weakness in which we must just take our portion humbly: above all things it is necessary not to lay too much stress on these evils, for the fear of seeing them return ensures their assiduity; you are distracted in prayer by the very fear of distraction, and by regret for it; go forth more boldly, look at things more widely, pray as best you can, and do not trouble yourself.

"Again, you declare that if you meet a certain person whose attraction is a trouble to you, you will succumb. How do you know that? why should you take care about seductions which God does not yet inflict upon you, and which He will perhaps spare you? Why doubt His mercy? Why not believe, on the contrary, that if He judge the temptation useful, He will aid you enough to prevent your sinking under it?

"In any case you ought not, by anticipation, to fear disgust at your weakness; the Imitation declares 'There is nothing more foolish and vain, than to afflict ourselves about future things which may perhaps never happen.' No, it is enough to occupy ourselves with the present, for 'Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof,'—'sufficit diei malitia sua.'

"Finally you say you do not love God; again I answer, what do you know about it? You have this love by the very token that you desire to have it, and that you regret you have it not; you love our Lord by the very fact that you desire to love Him."

"That is special pleading," murmured Durtal. "But indeed," he went on, "suppose at La Trappe, the monk revolted at the long outrage of my sins, refused me absolution, and forbade me to communicate."

The abbé burst out laughing.

"You are mad! What is your notion of Christ?"

"Not of Christ, but of His intermediary the human being who replaces Him."

"You can only chance upon a man pointed out beforehand from above to judge you; moreover, at Notre Dame de l'Atre you have every chance of kneeling at the feet of a saint, therefore God will inspire him, will be present, you have nothing to fear.

"As to the Communion, the prospect of being rejected terrifies you, but is not that one proof the more that, contrary to your opinion, God does not leave you insensible?"

"Yes, but the idea of communicating alarms me none the less."

"I say to you again: if Jesus were indifferent to you, it would be just the same to you, to consume or not to consume the sacred species."

"All that does not convince me," sighed Durtal. "I do not know where I am; I am afraid of a confessor, of others, of myself; it is foolish, but it is stronger than I. I cannot gain the upper hand."

"You are afraid of the water; imitate Gribouille, throw yourself in boldly; look, suppose I write to La Trappe this very day to say you are coming; when?"

"Oh!" cried Durtal, "wait a while."

"To get an answer, we need two days each way; will you go there five days hence?"

And, as Durtal was astounded and silent,

"Is that settled?"

Then, at that moment, Durtal had a strange experience, as often at St. Severin, a sort of caressing touch and gentle push; he felt a will insinuate itself into his own, and he drew back disquieted at seeing he had a double self, to find he was no longer alone in the depth of his being; then he was inexplicably reassured, and gave himself up, and as soon as he had said "Yes" he felt immensely relieved; then passing from one extreme to the other, he was troubled at the idea that his departure could not take place at once, and was sorry that he had still to pass five days in Paris.

The abbé laughed. "But the Trappists must have notice, it is a simple formality, for with a word from me, you will be received at once, but wait at least until I have sent this word; I will post it this evening, so have no anxiety, and sleep in peace."

Durtal in his turn laughed at his own impatience. "You must think me very ridiculous," he said.

The priest shrugged his shoulders. "Come, you asked me about my little monastery; I must try to satisfy you. It is very small, if compared with the grande Trappe at Soligny, or the establishments at Sept Fonds, Meilleray or Aiguebelle, for there are only about ten choir fathers, and about thirty lay brothers or 'conversi.' There are also a certain number of peasants who work with them, and help them to till their land, and make their chocolate."

"They make chocolate!"

"That surprises you. How do you think they live? Ah! I warn you, you are not going into a sumptuous monastery."

"I like it so. But in regard to the stories of La Trappe, I suppose the monks do not greet each other with 'Brother, we must die,' and that they do not dig their graves every morning?"

"All that is false. They take no trouble about their graves, and they salute each other silently, since they are forbidden to speak."

"Then what am I to do if I need anything?"

"The abbot, the confessor, and the guest-master have the right of conversing with the guests, you will have to do with them alone; the others will bow when you meet them, but if you speak to them they will not answer."

"It is well to know that. What is their dress?"

"Before the foundation of Citeaux, the Benedictines wore, or so it is supposed, the black habit of Saint Benedict; the Benedictines properly so-called wear it still, but at Citeaux the colour was changed, and the Trappists, who are a twig of this branch, have adopted the white robe of Saint Bernard."

"Pray pardon all these questions, which must seem childish, but since I am about to visit these monks, I ought to be in some measure acquainted with the customs of their order."

"I am wholly at your disposition," replied the abbé.

Durtal asked him about the situation of the abbey itself, and he replied,

"The present monastery dates from the eighteenth century, but you will see in the gardens the ruins of the old cloister, which was built in the time of Saint Bernard. In the Middle Ages there was a succession of Blessed in this convent; it is a truly sanctified land, fit for meditation and regret.

"The abbey is situated at the bottom of a valley, according to the orders of Saint Bernard; for you know that if Saint Benedict loved the hills, Saint Bernard sought the low and moist plains wherein to found his convents. An old Latin line has preserved the different tastes of these two saints: