The Grip of Desire Part 31

--I held out my cheek to him without resistance, but it was my mouth which received the kiss. It was followed by a thousand others. One is not of iron, Monsieur le Cure, and that was how ... I ... lost my innocence.

--What, Veronica, you fell so easily! They say that it is only the first step which is painful, but it seems hardly to have been painful to you.

--Oh, Monsieur le Cure, we women are full of faults, and we deserve only eternal d.a.m.nation.

--I do not say that, Veronica. Certainly in this circ.u.mstance all the fault lies on your seducer, but I should have preferred more struggle on your part.

--You men are very good with your struggle. To hear you, we never make enough resistance. Would one not say that the poor women are made of another paste than you, and that they ought to be harder?

--No, but it is necessary to know how to govern one's pa.s.sions. That is the n.o.ble, the lofty, the meritorious thing. Resist temptation, everything lies in that.

[PLATE III: THE LEG. "Oh, the lovely little la.s.s, how pretty she is like this..."]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

--Everything lies in that, I know it well; but what would you? I had lost my head entirely like Monsieur Braqueminet. And I did not know what he wanted, or what he was going to do. I only understood when it was too late.

--Ah, Veronica, you singular woman, you have made me quite beside myself with your stories.

--It was you who wished it.

--The Abbe Fortin! the Abbe Braqueminet! G.o.d of heaven! and who besides?

--The Abbe Marcel!

--Yes, it is true, I also ... I have been on the point of transgressing.

Ah! temptation is sometimes very strong, Veronica, my good Veronica; the n.o.ble thing is to resist.

The greatest saints have succ.u.mbed. St. Origen was obliged to employ a grand means, you know what, my daughter?

--Monsieur Fortin has told me. But you must not act like that saint; that would be a pity, it would be better to succ.u.mb, dear Monsieur Marcel. How I like your name, Marcel, Marcel, it is so soft to the mouth.

--To resist temptation like Jesus on the mountain....

--There was but one Jesus.

--Like St. Antony in the desert....

--That is rubbish; in the desert no one could tempt him.

--Leave the room, Veronica; since you have talked to me, I understand the fault of your former masters; leave the room.

--Are you afraid of me then? Angels of heaven, a woman like me. Is it possible? Ah, I should have been very proud of it.

--Proud to make me sin?

--Sin! Sin! Monsieur le Cure: why do we call that a sin?

She came nearer to him. He wished to rise from his chair, but his hand went astray, he never knew how, on his servant's waist.

Oh vow of chast.i.ty, sentiments of modesty, manly dignity and priestly virtue, where were you, where were you?

LIV.

MATER SAEVA CUPIDINUM.

"Well, you have found it, this ephemeral happiness."

BABILLOT (_La Mascarade humaine_).

Sadness succeeds to joy, deception to illusion, the awakening to the dream, the head-ache to the debauch.

When the crime is perpetrated, remorse, the avenging lash of virtue, comes and scourges the conscience. "Come, up, vile thing! thou hast slept over long."

And it exposes to the wretch the emptiness of pleasures, purchased at the price of honour.

The dawn found the Cure of Althausen groaning secretly to himself on his couch.

He had made himself guilty of an abominable wickedness, he had just committed an inexcusable crime, he had succ.u.mbed cowardly, ignominiously; he had betrayed his faith, abjured his priestly oaths, forgotten his duties, prost.i.tuted his dignity on the withered breast of an old corrupted maid-servant.

Suzanne, the adorable young girl, who in the first place had insensibly and involuntarily drawn him on the road of perjury, for whom he would have sacrificed honour, reputation, the universe and his G.o.d, he had abjured her also in the arms of this drab.

And that was the wound which consumed his heart the most.

For as soon as we have yielded to the infernal temptation, the lying prism vanishes, the halo disappears, and there only remains vice in all its hideousness and repulsive nudity. It is then that we hear a threatening voice mutter secretly in the depths of our being.

Happy is he who, already slipping on the fatal descent, listens to that voice: "Stop, stop; there is still time, raise thyself up."

But most frequently we remain deaf to that importunate cry. And, weary of crying in vain, conscience is silent. It no more casts its solemn serious note into the intoxicating music of facile love.

And the wretch, devoured by insatiable desire, pursues his coa.r.s.e and looks not back. He goes on, he ever goes on, leaving right and left, like the trees on the way-side, his vigour and his youth which he scatters behind him. He set forth young, robust and strong, and he arrives at the halting-place, worn-out, soiled and blemished. There is the ditch, and he tumbles headlong into it. He falls into the common grave of cowardice and infamy. The lowest depths receive him and restore him not again.

Seek no more, for there is no more; the worms which consume him to his gums have already consumed his brain, and his heart is but gangrened. Disturb not this corpse, it is only putrefaction.

The poet has said:

"Evil to him who has permitted lewdness Beneath his breast its foremost nail to delve!

The pure man's heart is like a goblet deep: Whe the first water poured therin is foul, The sea itself could not wash out the spot, So deep the chasm where the stain doth lie."

Marcel had not reached that point, but he felt that he was on a rapid descent, and made these tardy reflections to himself:

"Shall I ever be able to see the light of day? Shall I ever dare to raise my eyes after this filthy crime? Oh Heaven, Heaven, overwhelm me. Avenging thunderbolt of omnipotent G.o.d, reduce me to ashes, restore me again to the nothingness, from which I ought never to have come forth."

But Heaven did not overwhelm him that day, nor was there the slightest rumbling of thunder. Nature continued her work peacefully, just as if no minister of G.o.d had sinned. The sun, a glorious sun of Spring, came and danced on his window, and he heard as usual the happy cries of the pillaging sparrows as they fluttered in his garden.