The Grip of Desire Part 23

This confidence did not fail to arouse secret storms in the episcopal guest-chamber.

A Grand-Vicar, jealous of the influence which the young Abbe was a.s.suming over his master's mind, had resolved upon his dismissal and fall.

With a church-man's tortuous diplomacy, he pried into the young man's heart, as yet fresh and inexperienced.

He insinuated himself into the most hidden recesses of his conscience, seized, so to say, in their flight the timid fleeting transports of his thought, of his vigorous imagination, and soon discovered with secret satisfaction that he was straying from the ancient path of orthodoxy.

Marcel, indeed, belonged to that younger generation of the clergy which believes that everything which alienates the Church from new ideas, brings it nearer to its ruin. And the day when the foolish Pius IX presumed to proclaim and define, to the great joy of free-thinkers and the enemies of Catholicism, the ridiculous dogma of the Immaculate Conception in the presence of two hundred dumb complaisant prelates, on that day he experienced profound grief. According to his ideas this was the severest blow which had been inflicted on the foundations of the Church for centuries.

He had studied theology deeply, but he had not confined himself to the letter; he believed he saw something beyond.

--The letter killeth, he said, the spirit giveth life.

--The spirit giveth life when it is wholesome and pure, the Grand-Vicar answered him with a smile, but is it healthy in a young man who believes himself to be wiser than his elders?

Marcel then without mistrust and urged by questions, developed his theories. He believed in the absolute equality of men before G.o.d, in the trans.m.u.tation of souls: and the resurrection of the flesh seemed to him the utmost absurdity. He quite thought that there were future rewards and penalties, but he had too much faith in the goodness of G.o.d to suppose that the expiation could be eternal. He allied himself in that to the Universalists, who were, he said, the most reasonable sect of American Protestantism.

--Reasonable! reasonable! repeated the Grand-Vicar scoffingly; in truth, my poor friend, you make me doubt your reason. Can there be anything reasonable in the turpitude of heresy?

Then he hurried to find the Bishop:

--I have emptied our young man's bag, he said to him. Do you know, Monseigneur, what there was at the bottom?

--Oh, oh. Has he been inclined to debauchery? He is so young.

--Would to heaven it were only that, Monseigneur. But it is a hundred times worse.

--What do you tell me? Must I fear then for all my little sheep? We must look after him then.

--I repeat, Monseigneur, that that would be nothing.... It is the abomination of abomination, a whole world of turpitude, heresies in embryo.

--Heresies! Oh, oh! That is serious.

--Heresies which would make the cursed shades of John Huss, Wickliffe, Luther and Calvin himself tremble, if they appeared again.

--What do you say?

--I tell you, Monseigneur, that you have warmed a viper in your bosom.

--Ah, well, I will drive out this wicked viper.

The Bishop, who kept two nieces in the episcopal seraglio, would willingly have pardoned his secretary if he had been accused of immorality, but he could not carry his condescension so far as heresy. He wanted, however, to a.s.sure himself personally, and as Marcel was incapable of lying, he quickly recognized the sad reality.

The young Abbe was severely punished. He was compelled to make an apology, to retract his horrible ideas, to stifle the germ of these infant monstrosities; then he was condemned to spend six months in one of those ecclesiastical prisons called _houses of retreat_, where the guilty priest is exposed to every torment and every vexation.

He was definitely marked and cla.s.sed as a dangerous individual.

His enemy, the Grand-Vicar, pursued him with his indefatigable hatred, so far that from disgrace to disgrace he had reached the cure of Althausen.

XLIII.

ESPIONAGE.

"A sunbeam had traversed his heart; it had just disappeared."

ERNEST DAUDET (_Les Duperies de l'Amour_).

Since the fatal evening when the secret of his new-born love had been discovered by his servant, Marcel had observed the woman on his steps, watching his slightest proceedings, scrutinizing his most innocent gestures.

He encountered everywhere her keen inquisitive look.

He wished at first to meet it with the greatest circ.u.mspection and the most absolute reserve. He avoided all conversation which he thought might lead him into the way of fresh confidences, and he affected an icy coldness.

But he was soon obliged to renounce this means.

The woman, irritated, suddenly became sullen and angry, and made the Cure pay dear for the reserve which he imposed on himself. The dinner was burnt, the soup tasted only of warm water, his bed was hard, his socks were full of holes, his shoes badly cleaned, finally, he was several times awakened with a start by terrible noises during the night.

He attempted a few remonstrances. Veronica replied with sharpness and threatened to leave him.

--You can look for another maid, she said to him; as for me, I have had enough of it.

--Oh! you old hussy, he thought; I would soon pack you off to the devil, if I were not afraid of your cursed tongue.

Then, for the sake of peace he changed his tactics. He was affable and smiling and spoke to her gently; and the servant's manners changed directly.

She also became like she had been before, attentive and submissive.

Several days pa.s.sed thus in a continual constraint and hidden anger; at the same time, a restlessness consumed him, which he used all his power to conceal.

He had not seen Suzanne again, either at the morning Ma.s.ses, or in her usual walks. He looked forward to Sunday; but at High Ma.s.s her place remained empty; he reckoned on Vespers: Vespers, and then Compline pa.s.sed without her. In vain he searched the nave and the galleries, his sorrowing gaze did not find Suzanne, and he chanted the _Laudate pueri dominum_ with the voice of the _De profundis_.

Where was she? He had no other thought. Her father had prevented her from coming to church, without any doubt; but why had he not seen her as before upon the roads, which they both liked? He made a thousand conjectures, and with his thoughts completely absorbed in Suzanne, he forgot aught else. He saw no longer those attractive members of his congregation, who admired him in secret as they accompanied him with their fresh voices, and were astonished at the mysterious trouble which agitated their sweet pastor; he forgot even the odious spy who watched him in some corner of the church, and whom he would meet again at his house.

Ashamed of himself, he recalled with a blush the hand he had kissed in a moment of frenzy, which must have let Suzanne suspect what was the plague which consumed his heart, and he would have sacrificed ten years of his life to become again what he was in the eyes of this young girl, hardly a month ago; only a stranger.

Unaccustomed to the world, he did not yet know women well enough to be aware that they are full of indulgence for follies committed for their sake, and more ready to excuse an insult than to pardon indifference. Under these circ.u.mstances vanity takes the place of courage, and gives to the commonest girl the instincts of a patrician. There is no ill-made woman but wishes to see the world at her feet.

And the espionage which laid so heavy on him, became every day more irritating and more insupportable.

In vain he fled from the house, and walked on straight before him; far, very far, as far as possible, he felt his servant's gaze following him, and weighing upon him with all the burden of her furious and clear-sighted jealousy.

He felt that lynx eye pierce the walls and watch him everywhere, even when he had put between himself and the parsonage, the streets, the gardens, the width of the village and the depth of the woods.

She received him on his return with a smile on her lips, but her eager eye searched him from head to foot, studied his looks, his gestures, the folds of his ca.s.sock and even the dust on his shoes; as though she wished to strip him and bare his heart in order to feast upon his secret conflicts.