Jean-Jacques Durtal

“ 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?" ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He recognized, by the unctuousness of his delivery, and his oily accent, a well-fed priest who poured on his audience, according to his wont, his best known commonplaces.
"Why are they so devoid of eloquence?" thought Durtal. "I have had the curiosity to listen to many of them, and they are much the same. They only vary in the tones of their voice. According to their temperament, some are bruised down in vinegar, others steeped in oil. There is no such thing as a clever combination." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Durtal looked on in transport. He desired to cry aloud his enthusiasm and his Faith to the landscape; he felt a joy in living. The horror of existence counted for nothing when there were such moments, as no earthly happiness can give. God alone had the power of thus filling a soul, of making it overflow, and rush in floods of joy; and He alone could also fill the basin of sorrows, as no event in this world could do. Durtal had just tried it; his spiritual sufferings and joys attained under the divine imprint an acuteness, which people most humanly happy or unhappy cannot even suspect. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The oblate bowed his head and did not reply.
"Do you know," exclaimed Durtal, who in the face of this silence did not persist and changed the conversation, "do you know that I envy you living here?"
"It is certain that I do not deserve this favour, for, on the whole, the cloister is less an expiation than a reward; it is the only place where, far from the world and near heaven, the only place where a man may give himself up to this mystic life which only develops in solitude and silence." ”

“ 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 ”

“ While Chantelouve was speaking, Durtal was watching him. He was small and rotund, with a bay window which his arms would not have gone around. He had rubicund cheeks, long hair very much pomaded, trailing in the back and drawn up in crescents along his temples. He had pink cotton in his ears. He was smooth shaven and looked like a pious but convivial notary. But his quick, calculating eye belied his jovial and sugary mien. One divined in his look the cool, unscrupulous man of affairs, capable, for all his honeyed ways, of doing one a bad turn. ”

“ 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! ”

“ There were times when Durtal could not doubt that his friend was an author, for Des Hermies spoke understandingly of tricks of the trade which one learns only after long experience, and his literary judgment was not that of a layman. When, one day, Durtal reproached him for concealing his productions, he replied with a certain melancholy, "No, I caught myself in time to choke down a base instinct, the desire of resaying what has been said. I could have plagiarized Flaubert as well as, if not better than, the poll parrots who are doing it, but I decided not to. ”

“ We have watched for days with Father Etienne, but it has never shown itself."
The abbé explained various traps which might be set with advantage. Durtal thought of the otter-hunt which Balzac tells so pleasantly at the beginning of his "Paysans," when the dinner came to an end.
The curate said grace, and said to M. Bruno, "Suppose we take a turn; the fresh air will do instead of the coffee, which they forget to give us."
Durtal returned to his cell. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then, too, Durtal was attracted to the Church by its intimate and ecstatic art, the splendour of its legends, and the radiant naïveté of the histories of its saints.
He did not believe, and yet he admitted the supernatural. Right here on earth how could any of us deny that we are hemmed in by mystery, in our homes, in the street,—everywhere when we came to think of it? It was really the part of shallowness to ignore those extrahuman relations and account for the unforeseen by attributing to fate the more than inexplicable. Did not a chance encounter often decide the entire life of a man? ”

“ Now it was Father Ravignan, I believe, who proved that the wiliest thing the Devil can do is to get people to deny his existence."
"Oh, God!" murmured Durtal forlornly, "what whirlwinds of ordure I see on the horizon!"
"No," said Carhaix, "don't say that. On earth all is dead and decomposed. But in heaven! Ah, I admit that the Paraclete is keeping us waiting. But the texts announcing his coming are inspired. The future is certain. There will be light," and with bowed head he prayed fervently.
Des Hermies rose and paced the room. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”