Saint-Sulpice

“ Sulpice, and it is easy to believe that one is living in the seventeenth century. Time and its ravages have effaced many differences. St. Sulpice now embodies in itself many things which were once far removed from one another, and those who wish to get the best idea attainable in the present day, of what Port-Royal, the original Sorbonne, and the institutions of the ancient French clergy generally were like, must enter its portals. ”

“ And Sulpice felt, at each step that he took, a more profound emotion. Along this russet-tinted wood, stood out here and there the bright trunks of birch-trees, and far above it, the pale blue sky; the abyss of heaven, strewn with milky clouds and throughout the course of this pathway arose like a Cybelean incense, a healthful and fresh odor that filled the lungs and infused a desire to live.
To live! and, thought Sulpice, but a moment ago this lovely, slender girl spoke of dying. ”

“ With large, brilliant, black eyes lighting up a thin, fair face, a full beard, a high forehead with a deep furrow between the eyebrows, giving to his usually wandering, keen and restless glance a somewhat contemplative expression, Sulpice was a decidedly attractive man. He was not a handsome or a charming fellow, but a good-natured, agreeable, refined man, a fine conversationalist, persuasive, enthusiastic and alert; learned without being pedantic, a man who could inspire in a young girl a perfect passion. Adrienne joyfully married him, as he had sought her from love. ”

“ In those days Sulpice made no plans for his future, where he would go, what he would do, or what would become of him; but he felt within himself unbounded hope, a hope as limitless and bright as the azure sky above him, the inspiration of devotion, love and poetry. He asked himself whether he should be a missionary or a representative of the people. It seemed to him that his heart was large enough to contain a world, and as he grew up he began to ask himself the terrible question: "Will a woman ever love me?" ”

“ Side by side they walked, Vaudrey earnestly watching Marianne, while she gazed about her and pointed out to him the gray, winter-worn rocks, the smooth ivy, and on the horizon some hinds browsing, in the far distance, as in a desert, the bare grass as yellow as ripe wheat, around a pond, in a gloomy landscape, russet horizons against a pale sky, presenting a forlorn, mysterious and fleeting aspect.
"One would think one's self at the end of the world," said Sulpice, with lowered voice and troubled heart. ”

“ And in this yes, there was a world of tenderness, excitement and burning promises for Sulpice.
Then he drew her to him:
"Yes, yes, yes, yes!" he repeated in burning tones, as he thrust his head between her shoulders that emerged from her embroidered chemise, and her neck perfumed and satiny, that he covered with eager kisses.
Yes! And he would have uttered this yes before every one like a bravado. Yes! ”

“ Sulpice, even in his youthful days, had never felt so intoxicating a sensation as that which he enjoyed to-day. It was a complete abandonment of himself, a forgetfulness of everything in the presence of his absolute intoxication. All the realities of life that were ready to take possession of him on leaving this place melted before this dream: the possession of that woman. He forgot the assembly, the foyer, that human crowd that he ruled from the height of the tribune, and Adrienne, who was seated yonder at the window, awaiting him. ”

“ Sulpice has, however, in our time turned out a theologian like M. Carrière, whose vast labours are in many respects remarkable for their depth; men of erudition like M. Gosselin and M. Faillon, whose conscientious researches are of great value, and philologists like M. Garnier, and especially M. Le Hir, the only eminent masters in the field of ecclesiastical critique whom the Catholic school in France has turned out.
But it is not to results such as these that the teachers of St. Sulpice attach the highest value. St. Sulpice is, above all, a school of virtue. ”

“ Sulpice has had but one representative in this path so thickly sown with unexpected incidents and--it may perhaps be added--with dangers; but he is unquestionably the most remarkable member of the French clergy in the present day. I am speaking of M. Le Hir, whom I knew very intimately, as will presently be seen. In order to understand what follows, the reader must be very deeply versed in the workings of the human mind, and above all in matters of faith. ”

“ That depends on the women—and on men," she added, showing her white teeth while smiling graciously.
She dropped her spoon in the saucer and handed the sherbet to a servant. With an involuntary movement—or perhaps, after all, it was a shrewdly calculated one—she almost grazed Sulpice's cheek and lips when she extended her round and firm arm, and Sulpice, who was somewhat bewildered, was severely tempted, like some collegian, to kiss it in passage. ”

“ The soirée at Sabine Marsy's had caused Vaudrey to feel something like the enervation that follows intoxication. The next morning he awoke with his head heavy, after a night of feverish sleep, interrupted by sudden starts, wherein he saw that pretty, fair girl standing before him devouring sherbet and smiling gayly.
Every morning since he had been at the ministry, Sulpice had experienced a joyous sensation at finding himself again on his feet and rejoicing in life. ”

“ Sulpice is supposed to be very rich, the amount of the immense revenues never being made public. They were the feudal lords of the Island of Montreal in the earlier chapters of its history. Through their zealous efforts and the generosity of their parishioners was opened in the year eighteen hundred and twenty-nine the grand church adjoining, that of Notre Dame, built on the site of the original parish church. ”

“ The love of order and devotion to duty were the guiding principles of their lives. M. Garnier was a learned Orientalist, and better versed than any living Frenchman in the Biblical exegesis as taught by the Catholics a century ago. The modesty which characterised St. Sulpice deterred him from publishing any of his works, and the outcome of his studies was an immense manuscript representing a complete course of Holy Writ, in accordance with the relatively moderate views which prevailed among the Catholics and Protestants at the close of the eighteenth century. ”

“ Glorious as it was to be all-powerful, it was better to be loved. Everything whirled about within his brain, he thought he still heard Denis Ramel talking to him, and in a twinkling, Marianne's smiling face appeared, and with a kiss she interrupted the old journalist's sallies, and Sulpice saw her, too, as it were half-fainting, through the window of her fiacre, like a pastel half-hidden beneath the glass. ”

“ Sulpice, his first appearance in the world wherein he was destined to live and move, was hailed with peculiar triumph and satisfaction. The fame of his skill in argument, his subtlety in wrangling, had got beyond the walls of the Séminaire, long before he himself had left it for the independence of the Sorbonne. The conférences219 which took place weekly in the old hall of the Séminaire had brought out his powers of persuasion, and his great quickness of imagination, which displayed itself admirably in pointed epigram and brilliant repartee. ”

“ Bah! he consoled himself with the thought that the human race is thus constructed: everything is in success, he gets most who offers most. Why then trouble about it?
His eyes followed the movement of his glass and one after another he saw Madame Marsy, Jouvenet, Madame Gerson, so many living and exceedingly taunting recollections, when suddenly Sulpice trembled, shaken by a keener and almost angry feeling as his glance was directed to a box against the dark-red of which two faces were boldly outlined: those of Rosas and Marianne. ”

“ To be loved! What a dream! One day he put this question to one of his comrades at college, Guy de Lissac, the son of a country gentleman in the neighborhood, who answered:
"Booby! every one is loved some day or other, and there are some who are loved even too much!"
Sulpice had received a patriarchal and half-puritanical training, but softened materially by his mother's almost excessive care, it had left, as it were, a kind of poetic perfume that clung about him and never left him. ”

“ Marianne sought to spare Sulpice the importunities of her uncle. She wished to keep the minister's entire influence for herself.
She had nothing to fear, moreover. Sulpice was hers as fully as she believed. Like so many others who have lived without living, Sulpice did not know woman, and Marianne was ten times a woman, woman-child, woman-lover, woman-courtesan, woman-girl, and every day and every night she appeared to her lover renewed and surprising, freshly created for passion and pleasure. ”

“ Germain was becoming the quarter of the nobles, it was rebuilt in a style of ugly magnificence, befitting the maker of Versailles and Marly.
St. Sulpice, a vast bare barn, is chiefly interesting, indeed, as a gigantic specimen of the coldly classical type of church built under Louis XIV, when Gothic was despised, and even the Renaissance richness of St. Eustache and St. Étienne was decried as barbaric. It is a painful monument of declining taste. The exterior is chilly. The façade, whose sole recommendation nowadays is its size and its massiveness, is a triumph of its kind ”

“ At the ministry, during the familiar conversations at table with Adrienne and even during the hurly-burly attendant on private receptions and morning interviews, he sometimes remained silent, lost in thought, his mind wandering and, in reality, with Marianne.
Adrienne, at such times, with a sweet smile which made Sulpice shudder with remorse, would beseech him to work less, to take some recreation, and not allow himself to be so absorbed in politics.
"You are extremely pale, I assure you. You look worn out. You work too hard." ”

“ Sulpice owes its origin to one whose name has not attained any great celebrity, for celebrity rarely seeks out those who make a point of avoiding notoriety, and whose predominant characteristic is modesty. Jean-Jacques Olier, member of a family which supplied the state with many trusty servitors, was the contemporary of, and a fellow-worker with, Vincent de Paul, Berulle, Adrien de Bourdoise, Pere Eudes, and Charles de Gondren, founders of congregations for the reform of ecclesiastical education, who played a prominent part in the preparatory reforms of the seventeenth century. ”

“ She suddenly straightened herself under this anxiety, reassured, moreover, and spurred on as she was by the Dujarrier herself, who said as she shrugged her shoulders:
"When a woman like you has a man like Vaudrey,—a minister,—she has her nest lined."
Sulpice was not the man long to resist so refined a Parisienne as Marianne. In him, the repressed ardors, the poetic ideas of a man of twenty, had become the appetites of a man of forty. This provincial, hungry for Parisianism,—very young in feelings and soul,—felt, as soon as he found himself in Marianne's company, mad with desire for a new life. ”

“ It was founded by a group of devoted men sprung from the upper-middle class; and chief among them was M. Olier, a man justly celebrated for his saintly life. He was appointed in 1642 to the parish of St. Sulpice when it was noted as the most depraved quarter of Paris. He labored unremittingly and very successfully to reform this unpromising flock, and the young priests who were associated with him in his task constituted the nucleus of the seminary and community of St. Sulpice. ”

“ In this unhappy creature the holy Bishop Nicolas recognized his niece Mirande.
“What do you there, my daughter?” he cried. “Why are you naked, and wherefore do you walk on your hands and knees? Have you no shame?”
“No, uncle, I am not ashamed,” sweetly replied Mirande. “I should, on the contrary, be ashamed of any other gesture, or method of progression. If one wishes to please God, it is thus that one should behave. The holy Brother Sulpice taught me to conduct myself thus, in order to resemble the beasts, who are nearer to God than is Man, in that they have not sinned. ”

“ Sulpice, in Baltimore, went to reside at Emmettsburg, and laid the foundation of Mount St. Mary's College, which was afterward destined to be the means of so much usefulness to the Catholic Church in America. From this point, now surrounded by so many hallowed associations in the minds of American Catholics, by the sound religious education imparted to so many young men from various parts of the United States, 'by the many fervent and holy priests, trained under his direction,' and by the prudent care with which he cherished the rising institute of the Sisters of Charity at St. ”

“ The funeral car was immense and was crowded with wreaths. As with bowed head he accompanied the funeral procession of his colleague, almost his friend,—but, bah! friendship of committees and sub-committees!—Sulpice was sufficiently an artist to be somewhat impressed with the contrast afforded by the display of official pomp crowning the rather obscure life of the Nantes advocate. He had ever obtrusively before him, as if haunted by the spectre of the Poor Man before Don Juan, the lean face of Garnier and the white moustache of Ramel. ”

“ Sulpice had often heard the greenroom of the ballet spoken about, and he was at once completely disillusioned. The glaring, brutal light ruthlessly exposed the worn and faded hangings; and the pretty girls in their full, short, gauzy petticoats, with their bare arms, smiling and twisting about, their satin-shod feet resting upon gray velvet footstools, seemed to him, as they occupied the slanting floor, to move in a cloud of dust, and to be robbed of all naturalness and freshness. ”