The Grip of Desire Part 37

"I am a village Cure, Where I live most modestly; I'm no important person, But I'm happy and content No, I do not envy aught, For my wants they are but small.

How I love to pa.s.s my days Within the house of G.o.d!"

But if he had complained, it would have been very hard, and everybody in the diocese, from Monseigneur the Bishop to his s.e.xton, would have risen with indignation and called him, "Ungrateful wretch." For Ridoux was favoured above all his colleagues; above all his colleagues Divine Providence bad overwhelmed him with its favours. He possessed in his parish, in his very church, at his door, beneath his eyes, beneath his hand, a real blessing from Heaven, a grace of G.o.d, a Pactolus always rolling down a mine of Peru, a secret of an alchemist, the veritable philosopher's stone caught sight of by Nicolas Flamel, and vainly sought for till the time of Cagliostro, a marvel which made him at once honoured and envied, which made his name celebrated, which gave him a preponderant voice in the Chapter and a place in the episcopal Council, which swelled his heart with pride and his money-bag with crowns; he had in the choir of his church behind the mother altar, in a splendid gla.s.s-case, laid on a bed of blue velvet ... an old yellow skeleton! The relics of a saint.

But there are saints and saints; those which do miracles, and those which do them not, those which work and those which rest.

Monsieur Ridoux's saint worked.

LXIII.

THE MIRACLES.

"Miracles have served for the foundation, and will serve for the continuation of the Church until Antichrist, until the end."

(_Pensees de PASCAL_).

The miserable herd of free-thinkers, people who have no faith, those who are still plunged in the rut of unbelief, are ignorant perhaps that all the saints have done miracles, that they have all begun in that way, that that is the condition _sine qua non_, for entrance into the blessed confraternity.

No money, no Swiss; no miracles, no saint. It is in vain that during all your life you shall have been a model of candour and virtue; it is in vain that you shall edify the universe by your piety and your good works, that you shall have resisted like St. Antony the temptations of the flesh, that you shall have covered yourself with hair-cloth like St. Theresa, with venom like St. Veuillot, with filth like St. Alacoque or with lice like St.

Labre: it is in vain that you shall have been beaten with rods like St.

Roche, been scourged by your Confessor like St. Elizabeth, that finally you shall have sinned only six instead of seven times a day; if at your death you should not succeed in performing some fine miracle, you will never be admitted into the Calendar.

The Pope causes your shade to appear before his sacred tribunal, and according as the number of the dead whom you have raised to life is judged sufficient or not, as the touch of your tibia or coccyx has cured the itch or scrofula or not, you are admitted or excluded.

It is a difficult profession to be a saint, and is not for anyone who wishes it.

Therefore, the candidates who die in the odour of sanct.i.ty hasten to accomplish their regular total of prodigies, in order that our father the Pope may be pleased to a.s.sign them a place in the highest heaven.

They have hardly closed their eyes before they begin to _operate_. Allured by the hope of being crowned with a glorious halo, they display infinite zeal, and we have seen them, from their tooth-stumps to their prepuce, effecting the most marvellous miracles.

That of Jesus Christ--I speak of the prepuce--is preserved thus in several churches; all of which contend for the honour of possessing the veritable one. It is not yet exactly known which is the best; but all without distinction work wonders, and at certain seasons of the year, are kissed by pious young women.[1]

But this n.o.ble zeal of the saints lasts but for a time, and this is a proof of the imperfection of human kind, that our faults and whims follow us even beyond the tomb.

The saints, themselves, fall into all the little meannesses so common with the most ordinary sinners. Like candidates who solicit the votes of the mob in order to gain power, and make the most brilliant promises which they hasten to forget as soon as they have climbed the stairs, so the candidates for canonization perform marvels at first, but once admitted into the seventh heaven, they appear to trouble themselves no more concerning lowly mortals.

Or perhaps miraculous properties are like all other faculties, as they grow old they become worn-out, and an _elect_ who has stoutly brought the dead to life when he was only an aspirant for honours, is now only capable of curing the ringworm.

But, as I have said, it was a zealous candidate that the Abbe Ridoux had in his church. His bones had been there for fifty years, and as the longed-for time for his canonization had not yet arrived, and he had as yet only the rank of _blessed_, his zeal had not grown cold.

Each saint, we all know, has his medical speciality, like Ricord, for instance, or Dr. Ollivier.

Suppose you are suffering from ophthalmia, and instead of consulting a physician, you pray to G.o.d, in hopes that G.o.d will cure you.

You are wrong, that does not concern G.o.d. It is the business of St. Claire, who has the princ.i.p.al management of the sight of the faithful.

You are paralyzed, and you commend yourself to your patron saint. "You must not address yourself to me, that one answers. Go to the other office. See St. Marcel (or _Marchel_), to make the impotent walk is entrusted to him."

And so one after another:

St. Cloud cures the boils; St. Cornet, the deaf; St. Denis, anemia; St.

Marcou, diseases in the neck; St. Eutropus, the dropsy; St. Aignan, the ringworm, and it is generally admitted that we ought to pray on All Saints Day to be preserved from a cough.[2]

And observe how the good people of France are always the most enlightened and intelligent people in the universe!

The speciality of Monsieur Ridoux's candidate was broken legs, girls in complaints of childhood, and fluxes of the womb. That was what he healed, but he must not be asked for anything else; besides fluxes of the womb, sprains, and girls in complaints of childhood, he did not attend to anything.

That is conceivable; one cannot do everything.

It is quite unnecessary to state that he did not give all his consultations free, and that he did not work for fame alone. No one was constrained to pay, it is true; but it would have been a very unhandsome thing not to make a preliminary contribution to Monsieur le Cure's poor-box.

Little presents have always maintained friends.h.i.+p, and there is nothing like sterling silver to predispose the benevolence of the saints and the love of heaven in our favour.

While on the contrary:

A poorly furnished niche affronts the saint: The G.o.d deserts, and when we enter, shows His anger from the door of his poor shrine.

He no longer worked every-day, but on fete-days.

All the cripples came from twenty leagues round, and there were miracles then for crutches.

As in the time of Paris the deacon, when Cardinal de Noailles kept a register of the wonders of St. Medard's Cemetery, a churchwarden of the place, a.s.sisted by two secretaries and the corporal of Gendarmes, religiously inscribed the miraculous cures of the saint on a magnificent volume.

_Credible_ witnesses attested these prodigies and, if necessary, gave details to the incredulous.

If all were not cured, they had the hope of being so, which was a consolation.

"And then," whispered Monsieur Ridoux in the ear of sceptics, "if the touching of these blessed bones produces no benefit, you are sure it will do no harm, and you cannot say the same of your doctor's drugs."

[Footnote 1: The Holy Prepuce is at Rome in the Church of St. John Lateran; it is also at St. James of Compostelia in Spain; at Anvers; in the Abbey of St. Corneille at Compiegne; at Our Lady of the Dove, in the diocese of Chartres, in the Cathedral of Puy-en-Velay; and in several other places (Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique).

The Able X...., author of _Maudit_ also places the holy fragment in the church of Chanoux (Vienne) and a.s.serts that a Bishop of Chalone in the 18th century threw a pattern of it into the river.]

[Footnote 2: Ainsi parchait a Sinay un caphar, qui Sainct Antoine mettoit le feu es jambes; Sainct Eutrope faisait les hydropiques; Sainct Gildas les fols; Sainct Genou les gouttes. Mais je le punis en tel exemple, quoi qu'il m'appelast heretique, que depuis ce temps caphar quiconque n'est ause entrer en mes terres.

Et m'esbahi si vostre roi les laisse perscher par son royaulme tels scandales. Car plus sont a punir que ceulx qui par art magique ou sultre engin auraient mis la peste par le pays. La peste ne tue que le corps, mais tels imposteurs empoisennent les ames. (Rabelais).]

LXIV.

THE TWO AUGURS.