Antonin Durtal

“ I ought to know what I want before I allow myself to trouble him. If I go only to complain, he will answer I am wrong not to be a communicant, and I have nothing to answer. No: the better plan is to meet him as by chance, on the quays, where no doubt he sometimes looks over the book-stalls, or at Tocane's, for then I can talk to him more intimately, at least less officially, about my vacillations and regrets."
So Durtal searched the quays, and never once met the abbé. ”

“ It is true that in the sight of a world which gives its whole mind to legalized larceny this woman's disinterestedness might be enough to prove her insanity; but Durtal, in contradiction to received ideas, did not think that a contempt for money was necessarily allied with madness, and the more he thought of it the more was he convinced that she was a saint, and not a strait-laced saint, but indulgent and cheerful. ”

“ But come," he said eagerly, "I must conduct you on a tour of inspection about my little domain. I have read your books and I know a man like you can't help falling in love with my bells. But we must go higher if we are really to see them."
And he bounded up a staircase, while Des Hermies pushed Durtal along in front of him in a way that made retreat impossible.
As he was once more groping along the winding stairs, Durtal asked, "Why didn't you tell me your friend Carhaix—for of course that's who he is—was a bell-ringer?" ”

“ It was regularly striped with waving lines of ebony, its paws were encircled by black bracelets and its eyes lengthened by two great zigzags of ink.
"In spite of your kill-joy character and your single track mind you testy, old bachelor, you are a very nice cat," said Durtal, in an insinuating, wheedling tone. "Then too, for many years now, I have told you what one tells no man. You are the drain pipe of my soul, you inattentive and indulgent confessor. Never shocked, you vaguely approve the mental misdeeds which I confess to you. ”

“ One dare not advance nor retreat; rather cast oneself on the ground, with bowed head, and wait the end of what we know not, and be assured that the menaces we ignore, and those at which we guess, are removed. Durtal was at this point; he could not return on his steps, for the way he had quitted horrified him. He would rather have died than return to Paris, there to begin again his carnal experiences, to live again his hours of libertinage and lassitude; but if he could not again retrace his road, neither could he advance, for the road ended in a blind alley. ”

“ No woman he had ever met at an evening party would address such declarations to him. And that common friend. "But I have no friends, except Des Hermies. I'd better try and find out whom he has been seeing recently. But as a physician he meets scores of people! And then, how can I explain to him? Tell him the story? He will burst into a roar and disillusion me before I have got halfway through the narrative."
And Durtal became irritated, for within him a really incomprehensible phenomenon was taking place. He was burning for this unknown woman. He was positively obsessed by her. ”

“ Why, am I not a peasant? I have lived in the country all my life, and a kitchen garden is just my business! Besides, if I were in difficulties, would not my Friends Above come to advise me?"
"You are a wonderful woman, Madame Bavoil," said Durtal, somewhat disconcerted in spite of himself by the answers of a cook who so calmly asserted that she was on intimate terms with the divine Beyond. ”

“ Sharply, clearly, in a minute, Durtal took stock of the frightful disorder into which he had thrown the monastery.
"Ah! and outside it, all is the same to me, and nothing matters to me," he cried. And he groaned, knowing that he should never more succeed in interesting himself in all that makes the joy of men. The uselessness of caring about any other thing than Mysticism and the liturgy, of thinking about aught else save God, implanted itself in him so firmly that he asked himself what would become of him at Paris with such ideas. ”

“ And when his departure was decided on, it became the Abbé's turn to circumvent Durtal and persuade him to leave Paris and come to settle near him at Chartres.
Although he was deeply grieved at this move, which he had done his utmost to hinder, Durtal was refractory, and refused to bury himself in a country town.
"But why, our friend," said Madame Bavoil, "I wonder why you are so obstinately bent on remaining here; you live in perfect solitude at home with your books. You can do the same if you come with us." ”

“ He, with the innocent gaze, the pure eyes of a girl at her first Communion, has the sometimes bitter mouth of an old man; she is proud of feature and humble of heart; they both, though by different outward signs and acts, achieve the same result, an identical semblance of paternal indulgence and mature goodness."
And Durtal had gone again and again to see them. His reception was always the same; Madame Bavoil greeted him with the invariable formula: "Here is our friend," while the priest's eyes smiled as he grasped his hand. ”

“ He was like a creature reverted, a relic of a bygone age, and he was supremely contemptuous of the miserable fin de siècle church showmen who to draw fashionable audiences did not fear to offer the attraction of cavatinas and waltzes rendered on the cathedral organ by manufacturers of profane music, by ballet mongers and comic opera-wrights.
"Poor Carhaix!" said Durtal, as he blew out the candle. "Another who loves this epoch about as well as Des Hermies and I do. But he has the tutelage of his bells, and certainly among his wards he has his favourite. He is not to be pitied. ”

“ He scrutinized the chapel as he went in, looking round for M. Bruno who, had he been by his side, might have kept off his scruples, but the oblate could not be found. Durtal sat down, disabled, dreaming of the sign he had asked for the evening before, endeavouring to throw off the recollection, thinking of it all the same.
He wished to examine himself and collect himself, and he was praying Heaven to forgive him his mental vacillations when M. Bruno came in, and went to kneel before the statue of the Virgin. ”

“ It need not be said," continued the abbé after a pause, "that woman is stronger and braver than man; no male ascetic could live and lead such a life, especially in the enervating atmosphere of Paris."
"What perhaps astounds me still more," said Durtal, "is the kind of obedience exacted of them. How can a creature endowed with free will annihilate herself to such an extent?" ”

“ A lamentable perfume went up like incense to Our Lady from a very sheaf of woes.
Few men came to this hidden meeting-place of trouble; still fewer young people, for these have not yet suffered enough; there were only a few old men, and a few sick who dragged themselves along by the backs of the chairs, and a little hunchback, whom Durtal saw coming there every evening, an outcast who could only be loved by Her who does not even see the body. ”

“ And Durtal thought of the absolution which he would perhaps obtain, and he reopened his prayer-book and numbered his faults; and, slowly, as on the day before, he tapped, in his innermost being, a fountain of tears.
"I must control myself," he said, trembling at the idea that he would suffocate again and be unable to speak; and he resolved to begin his confession at the other end, first going over the minor sins, keeping the great ones for the end so as to finish with the avowal of his carnal misdeeds: "if I succumb then I can explain myself in two words. My God! ”

“ Durtal could fancy himself transported beyond the city, to the depths of some village cloister; he felt himself softened, his soul rocked by the monotonous amplitude of these chants, only recognizing the end of the psalms by the return of the doxology, the "Gloria Patri et Filio," which separated them from each other.
He had a real impulse, a dim need of praying to the Unknowable, penetrated to the very marrow by this environment of aspiration, it seemed to him that he thawed a little, and took a far-off part in the united tenderness of these bright spirits. ”

“ Next morning Durtal woke later than usual. Before he opened his eyes there was a sudden flash of light in his brain, and troops of demon worshippers, like the societies of which Des Hermies had spoken, went defiling past him, dancing a saraband. "A swarm of lady acrobats hanging head downward from trapezes and praying with joined feet!" he said, yawning. He looked at the window. The panes were flowered with crystal fleurs de lys and frost ferns. Then he quickly drew his arms back under the covers and snuggled up luxuriously. ”

“ The office of Matins was over, but some lay brothers, amongst whom was Brother Simeon, were praying on their knees on the ground.
The sight of this holy swine-herd threw Durtal into a long train of thought. He tried in vain to penetrate into the sanctuary of that soul, hidden like an invisible chapel behind the dunghill rampart of a body; he did not even succeed in representing to himself the docile and clinging soul of this man, who had attained the highest state to which the human creature can reach here below.
"What a power of prayer he has," thought he, as he looked at the old man. ”

“ Ah! if I had been another man, I might, by praying better, have aided you more."
The door opened and Father Etienne declared,
"You have not a minute to lose, if you do not wish to miss the train."
Thus hurried, Durtal had only time to press the hand of his friend, who accompanied him to the court. He found waiting a sort of open wagon driven by a Trappist, who, below a bald head, and cheeks streaked with rose threads, had a great black beard.
Durtal pressed the hands of the guest-master and the oblate for the last time, when the Father abbot came in his turn to wish him a safe journey ”

“ Ah! He is a generous Master; he pays us a hundred-fold for our poor sorrows."
As they spoke, they had passed through the corridor and had arrived at its other end.
The monk opened the door, and Durtal was astounded to find himself in a vestibule just opposite his own cell.
"I did not think," he said, "that I was living so near you."
"This house is a regular labyrinth—but M. Bruno will take you to the library where the Father prior is waiting for you; for I must go to my business. We shall meet presently," he said, with a smile. ”

“ A little man advanced, hiding his features, and greeted her in an affected, sing-song voice. She passed, saluting him, and Durtal brushed a fly-blown face, the eyes liquid, gummy, the cheeks plastered with cosmetics, the lips painted. ”

“ Durtal turned over in his bed and tried to lose consciousness. Everything was in confusion in his brain, and at last he fell into disturbed slumbers mingled with hideous nightmares, in which he saw Madame Mesurat standing in the place of the queen on a pedestal in the porch; and Durtal fumed at her ugliness, raging against the Canons, to whom he vainly appealed to remove his housekeeper and replace the queen. ”

“ Yes, but to converse with Her nothing is so good as the 'Officium parvum beatæ Virginis,' and that," concluded Durtal, "I will put in my bag with my Prayer-book; we will not disturb M. Olier's volume."
"My stock begins to give out," he continued. "Angela of Foligno? Certainly she is a brasier at which one may warm one's soul. I will take her with me. What more—Tauler's Sermons? I am tempted to do so, for never has any treated better than this monk the most abstruse subjects with a more perfectly lucid mind. ”

“ 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 ”

“ He served the priest with an almost timid respect and a suppressed joy which was touching to see.
Others, kneeling on the flagstones, prayed with concentrated attention or read their mass. Durtal noticed the old man of eighty, immovable with outstretched face and closed eyes; and the youth whose look of pity had helped him near the pond, was following the office in his prayer-book with attentive meditation. He looked about twenty years old, tall and strong ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then came a series of instructions which he had already seen on the printed horary.
Durtal skipped several paragraphs, and read again:—
"Visitors are requested not to write anything on the doors, not to strike matches on the wall, and not to spill water on the floor.
"They are not allowed to visit each other's rooms or to speak to one another.
"Smoking is not allowed in the house."
"Nor indeed outside," thought Durtal. "But I want a cigarette badly;" and he went down. ”

“ Clothed in rent and soiled episcopal habits, he gave communion with round pieces of shoe leather for hosts, saying, 'This is my body.' And he gave these disgusting wafers to the faithful to eat after they had kissed his left hand and his breech. I hope that you will not be obliged to render such base homage to your canon."
Durtal laughed. "No, I don't think he requires a pretend like that. But look here, aren't you of the decided opinion that the creatures who so piously, infamously, follow these offices are a bit mad?"
"Mad? Why? The cult of the Demon is no more insane than that of God. ”