Priests, Women, and Families Part 16

There are, fortunately, other judges. The law sleeps, but it still lives.[7] Some courageous magistrates have been willing to do their duty.[8] No doubt they will be permitted. The nights of the guilty have been troubled; they know that every violence which is committed there, every blow given in defiance of the law, is an accusation against them before heaven and earth. _Exsurge, Domine, et judica causam tuam!_

[1] I have already spoken of Sister Mary Lemonnier, persecuted for knowing too well how to write and draw flowers, &c.--"My confessor,"

says she, "forbade me to gather flowers and to draw. Unfortunately, walking in the garden with the nuns, there were on the edge of the gra.s.s two wild poppies, which, without any intention, I lopped between my fingers in pa.s.sing. One of the sisters saw me, and ran to inform the superior nun who was walking in front, and who immediately came towards me, made me open my hand, and, seeing the poppies, told me that I had done for myself. And the confessor having come the same evening, she accused me before him of disobedience in having gathered flowers.

It was in vain I told him that it was unintentionally done, and that they were only wild poppies; I could not obtain permission to confess myself."--_Note of Sister Marie Lemonnier_, in Mr. Tilliard's Memoire.

The newspapers and the reviews in March, 1845, give extracts from it.

[2] It is often from an instinctive tyranny that the superiors delight in breaking the ties of kindred. "The curate of my parish exhorted me to write to my father, who had just lost my mother. I let Advent go by (during which time nuns are not permitted to write letters), and the latter days of the month which are pa.s.sed in retirement in the inst.i.tution to prepare us for the renewing of our vows, which takes place on new-year's day. But after the holy term I hastened to fulfil my duty towards the best of fathers by addressing to him both my prayers and good wishes, and endeavouring to offer him some consolation in the afflictions and trials with which it had pleased G.o.d to visit him. I went to the cell of the superior nun to beg her to read over my letter, fix the convent seal to it, and send it off; but she was not there. I therefore put it in my cell upon the table, and went to prayers; during which time our reverend mother the superior, who knew that I had written, because she had sent one of the nuns to see what I was about, beckoned to one of the sisters and bid her go and take my letter. She did so every time I wrote, seven times running, so that my father died five months afterwards without ever obtaining a letter from me, which he had so much desired, and had even asked me for on his death-bed, by the curate of his parish."--_Note of Sister Lemonnier_ in Mr. Tilliard's Memoire. See also the _National_, March, 1845.

[3] The preliminary confession of the nuns to the superior, easily acceded to in the first fit of enthusiasm, soon becomes an intolerable vexation. Even in Madame de Chantal's time, it was much complained of.

See her letters, and Fichet, 256; also Ribadeneira, Life of St. Theresa.

[4] Sister Marie Lemonnier was shut up with mad girls: here she found a Carmelite nun, who had been there nine years. The third volume of the _Wandering Jew_ contains the real history of Mademoiselle B. All this happened very lately, not in a mad-house, but in a convent. Since I have this opportunity of saying a word to our admirable novelist, let him permit me to ask him why he thought proper to idealise the Jesuits to this extent? who does not know that certain dignitaries of their order have become immortal by ridicule? It is difficult to believe stupid writers to be strong minds, or profound machinators. I look in vain for a Rodin, and find only Loriquets.

[5] All these people buy and sell, and become brokers. Prelates speculate in lands and buildings, the Lazarists turn agents for military recruits, &c. The latter, the successors of St. Vincent de Paul, the directors of our Sisters of Charity, have been so blessed by G.o.d for their charity, that they have now a capital of twenty millions.

Their present chief, Mr. Etienne, then a procurer of the order, was lately the Lazarist agent in a distillery company. The very important law-suit they have at the present moment will decide whether a society engaged by a general, its absolute chief, is freed from every engagement by a change of generals.

[6] Did not this horrible art calculate well on the influence of the body? this art that does not awaken man's energy by pain, but enervates it by diet and the misery of dungeons! (See Mabillon's Treatise on Monastic Prisons.) The revelations of the prisoners of Spielberg have enlightened us upon this head.

[7] The affairs at Avignon, Sens, Poictiers, though the guilty parties have been but slightly punished, permit us to hope that the law will at length awake. We read in one of the newspapers of Caen: "A report was current yesterday at the _palais_, that the _procureur-general_ was going to evoke not only the affair of the sequestration of Sister Marie, but also that of Sister Ste-Placide, about whose removal the _avocat-general_, Sorbier, wrote to the under-prefect of Bayeux, on the 13th of August last. Lastly, that of Madmlle. H----, of Rouen, whom the attorney-general (_procureur du roi_), of Rouen, was obliged to remove from the establishment of Bon-Sauveur."--_National_ (newspaper), March 10, 1845.

[8] The inspection of convents ought to be shared between the judiciary and munic.i.p.al magistracy, and the administrations of charity. The bar is too much occupied to be able to undertake it alone. If these houses are necessary as asylums for poor women, who earn too little in a solitary life, at least let them be free asylums like the _beguinages_ of Flanders; but not under the same direction. When a woman has ended the task of the wife, she begins that of the mother or grandmother.

CHAPTER VI.

ABSORPTION OF THE WILL.--GOVERNMENT OF ACTS, THOUGHTS, AND WILLS.--a.s.sIMILATION.--TRANSHUMANATION.--TO BECOME THE G.o.d OF ANOTHER.--PRIDE.--PRIDE AND DESIRE.

If we believe politicians, happiness consists in reigning. They sincerely think so, since they accept in exchange for happiness so much trouble and so many annoyances; a martyrdom often that perhaps the saints would have shrunk from.

But the reign must be real. Are we quite sure that it is really to reign, to make ordinances that are not executed, to enact with great effort, and as a supreme victory, one law more, which is doomed to sleep in the bulletin of laws at the side of thirty thousand of the same kin?

It is of no use to prescribe acts, if we are not first masters of the mind; in order to govern the bodily world, we must reign in the intellectual world. This is the opinion of the thinking man, the profound writer; and he believes he reigns. He is, indeed, a king; at least for the next age. If he is really original, he outsteps his century, and is postponed till another time. But he will reign to-morrow, and the day after, and so on for ages, and ever more absolute. To-day he will be alone; every success costs a friend, but he acquires others; and I am willing to believe both ardent and numerous; those he loses were, no doubt, worth less, but they were those he loved; and he will never see the others. Work, then, disinterested man, work on; you will have for your reward a little noise and smoke. Is not that a sufficient reward for you? King of ages yet unborn, you will live and die empty-handed. On the sh.o.r.e of that sea of unknown ages, you, a child, have picked up a sh.e.l.l, which you hold to your ear, to try to catch a faint sound, in which you fancy you hear your own name.

Look on the other hand at that man, that _Priest_, who at the very time he is telling us his kingdom is above, has adroitly secured for himself the reality of the earth beneath. He lets you go, as you please, in search of unknown worlds; but he himself seizes on the present one; your own world, poor dreamer! that which you loved, the nest where you hoped to come back and be cherished. Accuse no one but yourself, it is your own fault. With your eyes turned towards the dawn you forgot yourself, whilst you were peeping to catch a glimpse of the first ray of the future. You turn round when it is rather too late; another possesses the cherished casket in which you had left your heart.

The sovereignty of ideas is not that of the will. We can only get possession of the will by the will itself: not general and vague, but an especial and personal will, which attaches itself perseveringly to, and really commands, the person, because it makes it in its own image.

Really to reign, is to reign over a soul. What are all the thrones in comparison to this kingly sway? What is dominion over an unknown crowd? The really ambitious have been too shrewd to make a mistake!

They have not exhausted their efforts in the extension of a vague and weak power, which loses by being extended; they have aimed rather at its solidity, intensity, and immutable possession.

The end thus settled, the priest has a great advantage which no one else possesses. His business is with a soul _which gives itself up of its own accord_. The great obstacle for other powers is, that they do not well know the person acted upon; they see only the outside, but the priest looks within.

Whether he be clever, or only of an ordinary stamp, still, by the sole virtue of hopes and fears, by that magic key which opens the world to come, the priest opens also the heart, and that heart wishes to lay itself open; all its fear is lest it should conceal anything. It does not see itself entirely; but whenever it is at a loss, the priest sees his way clearly, and penetrates into it, by the simple method of obtaining revelations from servants, friends, and relatives, and comparing them together. With all this enlightening he forms a ma.s.s of light, which, concentrated upon the object, renders it so thoroughly luminous, that he knows not only its present existence, but its future state, deciphering, from the very first day, in its instinct and sentiment, what will be its thoughts on the morrow. He, therefore, truly knows this heart, both by sight and foresight. This rare science would remain inexplicable without a word in explanation. If it knows its subject to this degree, it is because it is its own work. The director creates the directed; the latter is his work, and becomes in time one and the same man. How is it possible the former should not know the ideas and wishes which he himself has inspired, and which are his own? A transfusion takes place between the two in this incessant action, in which the inferior, receiving everything from the other, goes on gradually losing his personality. Growing weaker and more idle every day, he thinks himself happy in no longer having a will of his own, and is glad to see that troublesome will, which has caused too many sufferings, die away and be lost. Even so a wounded man sees his blood, his life-blood flowing away, and feels himself the easier.

But who is to make good within you, and fill up the void left by this draining away of moral personality, by which you escape from yourself?--In two letters--_he_.

_He_, the patient, cunning man, who, day by day, taking from you a little of yourself, and subst.i.tuting a little of himself, has gently subtilised the one, and put the other in its place. The soft and weak nature of women, almost as yielding as that of children, is well adapted for this transfusion. The same woman seeing ever the same man, takes without knowing it, his turn of mind, his accent, his language, nay more, something of his gait and physiognomy. She speaks as he does, and walks in the same manner as he. In only seeing her pa.s.s by, a person of any penetration would see that _she is he_.

But this outward similarity is but a weak sign of the profound change within. What has been transformed is the intimate, most intimate part.

A great mystery has been effected, that which Dante calls _transhumanation_; when a human person, melting away without knowing it, has a.s.sumed (substance for substance) another humanity; when the superior replacing the inferior, the agent the patient, no longer needs to direct him, but becomes his being. _He_ is, the other is not; unless we consider him as an accident, a quality of this being, a pure phenomenon, an empty shadow, a nothing.

Why did we just now speak of influence, dominion, and royalty? This is a much higher thing than royalty--this is divinity. It is to be the G.o.d of another.

If there be in this world an occasion on which we may become mad, it is this. The thought of the man who has reached this point, in whatever humility he may cloak himself, is that of the pagan: "Deus factus sum!"

I was a man, I am G.o.d!

More than G.o.d. He will say to his creature, "G.o.d had created you so, and I have made you another person; so that being no longer His, but mine, you are myself, my inferior self, who are only to be distinguished from myself by your adoring me."

Dependent creature, how could you have helped yielding?--G.o.d yields to my word when I make Him descend to the altar. Christ becomes humble and docile, and comes down at my hour, at my sign, to take the place of the bread that is no more.[1]

We are no longer surprised at the furious pride of the priest, who, in his royalty of Rome, has often carried it to greater extremes than all the follies of the emperors, making him despise not only men and things, but his own oath, and the word which he gave as infallible.

Every priest being able to make G.o.d, can just as well make odd even, or things done things undone, things said things unsaid. The angel is afraid of so much power, and stands back respectfully before this man to see him pa.s.s.[2]

Go, boast to me now of your privations and mortifications! I am indeed much touched by them!--Do you think, then, that through that plain robe and meagre body, ay, in that pale heart I do not see the deep, exquisite and maddening enjoyment of pride, which composes the very being of a priest? What he carries within his robe, and broods over so jealously, is a treasure of terrific pride. His hands tremble with it: a bright ray of delight gleams in his downcast eyes.

Oh! with what fervour he hates everything that is an obstacle to him, everything that prevents his infinity from being indeed infinite! How does he desire with all his infinite heart to annihilate it! Oh! how diabolical it is to hate in G.o.d!

A great suffering is connected with this great enjoyment of being the G.o.d of another soul: all that is wanting to complete this divinity causes horrible pangs. You cannot be surprised if this man pursues with an insatiable ardour the absorption of a soul which he hopes to a.s.similate. You may easily understand the real and profound cause of this strange avidity, which wants to see and know everything, both the trivial and the important, the princ.i.p.al and the accessory, the essential and the indifferent, and which, not satisfied with enveloping it outwardly, tries to reach the bottom, and probing lower and lower in the very depth, would attain the essence. Suppose even this to be reached, still it will cry out for--more! Alas! it may ever acquire more, and again more; but something will ever remain beyond. Who can measure a soul? It preserves in its recesses, unknown to itself (and to you also), both s.p.a.ce and depth. That soul which seemed to you already acquired, and which you thought in your entire possession, hides behind it, perhaps, a world of liberty which you can never reach.

This is humiliating, gloomy, nay, almost despair. Horrible suffering!

not to have all, is, for a G.o.d, to have nothing.

Then, even then, in their very pride, an ironical voice is heard, scoffing at their pride; it is the voice of desire, which it had silenced till now: "Poor G.o.d," says she, "you are no G.o.d; it is your own fault; I told you so before. Come, leave off your school-divinity, and your _distinguo_ of the corporeal and spiritual natures. To possess, is to have all. He alone has possession who can both use and abuse. For the soul to be really thine, one thing is still wanting--the body."

[1] "Origen thinks that the priest must be a little G.o.d, to do an act that is beyond the power of angels." Father Fichet (a Jesuit), "Life of Madame de Chantal." p. 615. If you require a more serious Jesuit than Fichet, here is Bourdaloue: "Though the priest be in this sacrifice only the subst.i.tute of Jesus Christ, it is nevertheless certain, that Jesus Christ _submits to him_, that He _becomes his subject_, and renders him, every day upon our altars, _the most prompt and exact obedience_. If faith did not teach us these truths, could we think that a man could ever attain to such an elevation, and be invested with a character that enables him, if I may say so, to _command_ his sovereign Lord, and make Him descend from heaven?"

[2] One of the new priests, under the orders of St. Francois de Sales often saw his guardian angel. Having arrived at the church-door, he stopped. They asked him the reason: he answered ingenuously, that "he was accustomed to see his guardian angel walk before him, and that this prince of heaven _had then stopped and stood aside, out of respect for his character, giving him the precedence_."--Maupas du Tour, Life of St. Francois de Sales, p. 199.

CHAPTER VII.

DESIRE.--ABSORPTION AND a.s.sIMILATION CONTINUED.--TERRORS OF THE OTHER WORLD.--THE PHYSICIAN AND THE PATIENT.--ALTERNATIVES.--POSTPONEMENTS.--THE EFFECTS OF FEAR IN LOVE.--TO BE ALL-POWERFUL AND ABSTAIN.--STRUGGLES BETWEEN THE SPIRIT AND THE FLESH.--MORAL DEATH MORE POTENT THAN PHYSICAL LIFE.--IT CANNOT REVIVE.

Let us a pause a moment at the brink of the abyss that we have just had a glimpse of, and before we descend into it, let us know well where we are.

The unlimited dominion, of which we spoke just now, could never be sufficiently explained by the power of habit, strengthened by all the arts of seduction and captation; it would be especially impossible to understand how so many inferior men succeed in obtaining their ends.

We must repeat here what we have said elsewhere: _If this power of death has so much hold upon the soul, the reason is, that it generally attacks it in its dying state_; when weakened by worldly pa.s.sions, and crus.h.i.+ng it more and more by the ebb and flow of religious pa.s.sions, it finds at last that it has neither strength, nor nerve, nor anything that can offer resistance.