The Grip of Desire Part 36

EMILE LECLERCQ (_Une fille du peuple_).

She had shown Marcel the portrait of her beloved Rose. "Yes, she is very pretty," he had replied, "but I prefer dark girls ..." Suzanne blushed. He opened his breviary and drew out a card.

--Are you going to show me a dark girl? she said.

He handed it to her without answering.

It was the photograph of a man of about forty, with strongly-marked and characteristic features. The eyes, prominent and slightly veiled, were surrounded with a dark ring, a token of struggle, fatigue and deception. A profile out of a picture of Holbein in every-day dress.

--It is a priest, she cried.

--It is a priest, indeed, answered Marcel. We are recognized in any costume. We cannot conceal our ident.i.ty. Do you know who that is?

--Is it not that monk who has made such a noise? That Dominican who has married, and broken with the Church?

--Yes, Mademoiselle.

The young girl regarded it with curiosity.

--It must have been a violent pa.s.sion to come to that, she said.

--No, it was an idea well resolved upon and matured. No transport of youth carried him away. See, he is no longer young, and the companion he has chosen is very nearly his own age, and he had for her only a tender and holy feeling.

--Why then this uproar and scandal?

--In order to protest aloud against a rule which he did not approve. In our days there are so many cowardly and degenerate characters, that we cannot too greatly admire those who have the courage to proclaim their opinion in the presence of the mob, especially when those opinions shock the brutalized mob; for my part I admire this man; but what I admire still more is the woman who has dared to put her hand in his, and brave the derision of the vulgar, and the calumnies of hypocrites.

--But his vows?

--What is a vow when it is a question of the duty which your conscience dictates? I heard him say one day: "If, after reaching middle age, I have decided after long reflection to choose a companion, it is not in response to the cry of the senses, but in order to sanctify my life." He has taken back the word which he had given, as we all do, at an age when we are ignorant of the import, and the consequence of that word. Be a.s.sured that his conscience does not reproach him, for you can see on this fine countenance that his conscience is at rest. Besides, is it the case that G.o.d enjoins celibacy? The celibacy of priests dates only from the year 1010: Christ never speaks about it.

--And so he has broken with all his past, his relations, his world; he has ruined what you men call his future. He must begin his life again.

--And he begins it again in accordance with his inclinations, his needs and his heart: It is never too late to change the road when we discover that we have taken the wrong way. It takes longer time, there is more hards.h.i.+p, but what matters it, provided we attain happiness, the end which we all have in view. Ah, Mademoiselle, how many, like he, would wish to begin their life again, if they found a courageous soul who was willing to accompany them?

The future, do you say? But the future, the present, the past, the whole life lies in the sweet union of hearts. To devote oneself, to renounce everything, to give up everything, even one's illusions, one's beliefs, one's dreams for the loved object, is not a sacrifice: it is the sweetest of joys and the n.o.blest of duties.

He stopped, fearing that he had gone too far, and did not dare to look at Suzanne.

She answered coldly. "Ah, Monsieur le Cure, you approve of that! I did not think you would have approved of Pere Hyacinth; truly, I am astonished."

_Monsieur le Cure_! It was the first time Suzanne had called him _Monsieur le Cure_. That name wounded him like an affront. He remembered what he was, and what he must not cease to be in the eyes of the young girl: the Cure!

nothing but the Cure.

And he was sick at heart for several days.

But one fine morning, on coming out from Ma.s.s, his countenance lit up, he uttered a cry of joy and fell into the arms of Abbe Ridoux.

LXII.

THE HAPPY CURe

"Such was Socrates said to have been, because the outside beholders, and those estimating him by his external appearance, would not have given the slice of an onion, so plain was he in his person, and ridiculous in his bearing ...

simple in habits, poor in fortune, unfortunate with women, unfit for all the offices of the republic, always laughing, always drinking with one or another, always sporting, always concealing his divine wisdom."

RABELAIS (_Gargantua_).

Monsieur Ridoux was a very good fellow, but he was not handsome. A big nose, a big belly, blinking eyes, an enormous mouth, hair on end, the arm of a chimpanzee, and the legs of a Greenlander. At first sight, he gave me the impression of a monkey with young.

But what is a man's outward form? The vessel, more or less regular, filled with a baneful or beneficent liquid, and you all know that the shape of the flagon has no influence on the quality of the wine.

The outward form is the wrapper of the goods: very often that wrapper is brilliant and gilded, of satin or watered silk, and the goods are adulterated and spoiled. At other times the wrapper is rough and coa.r.s.e, but it enfolds precious commodities.

The stamp of genius is usually found only on countenances with fantastic features. Have you ever seen on the fair insipid faces of our _young swells_ the imprint of a powerful and fertile intelligence?

The body nearly always is adorned at the expense of the mind.

Of all the deformities of nature, the hunchbacks are intellectual in proportion as the handsome men are not.

Enquire of the army its opinion on its pre-eminently _fine man_, the drum-major.

Vincent Voiture, who had, as he confessed himself, the silly face of a dreaming sheep, used to say that nature usually likes to place the most precious souls in ill-favoured, puny bodies, as jewellers set the richest diamonds in a small quant.i.ty of gold.

Accordingly, the pitiful wrapper of the Abbe Ridoux covered an excellent soul. With his ugly face and his old stained ca.s.sock, he reminded me of those dirty bottles, coated with spider-webs and dust, which we place daintily on the table on days of rejoicing, and which lord it majestically among the glittering decanters, soon to be despised, when their dusty sides appear.

Thus Monsieur Ridoux lorded it amongst his curates, younger, handsomer, fresher, more tasty than himself, and eclipsed them by all the brilliancy of his good-sense, his tact, and his experience.

He had certainly his little failings!... Who can say that he is exempt from them? But his mind was sound. A good companion, besides, and of a cheerful disposition. "We have reached a period," he used to say, "when the priest must lay aside the stern front and the anathema. There is already much to obtain pardon for in the colour of his robe. Let us be cheerful, let us be insinuating, let us be compa.s.sionate to human weaknesses. Let us sin, if need be, with discretion and propriety; but, in heaven's name, let us not terrify. Let us promise paradise to all. There are always plenty enough whose life is a h.e.l.l."

In that he was not of Veuillot's opinion, that rigid saint, who wished to see all the world d.a.m.ned for the love of G.o.d.

Therefore, on seeing this cheerful countenance, this openness of manner, this freedom of speech, this unrestrained good-nature, even those who had been warned, could not help saying: "Well indeed! this Cure has a pleasant phiz!"

Slanderous tongues, Voltairians--who is sheltered from the stings of that race of vipers?--slanderous tongues affirmed that beneath this Rabelaisian exterior, he was profoundly vicious, artful, and hypocritical. Marcel, who had been brought up by him, and was acquainted with the most secret details of his inmost life, has always a.s.sured me that he was nothing of the kind, and that his uncle Ridoux, endowed with the ugliness of Socrates, had also his wisdom.

Nevertheless, I would not dare to a.s.sert that he did not like to pinch the young girls' chins, especially of those who had made their first communion and were near to the marriageable age; a familiarity which, thanks to his gray hairs, and the development of his abdomen, he thought was permitted him, but which, however, is not always without danger.

Cazotte, a wise man, used to say to his daughters: "When you are alone with young people, distrust yourselves; but if you find yourselves with old men, distrust them, and avoid allowing them to take hold of your chin."

Cazotte was right, for old men begin with that. I would not dare either to a.s.sert that the charms of his cook were safe from his indiscreet curiosity, for it is there too that old men finish; and we must swear not at all.

Everybody knows the wise man's precept: "When in doubt, abstain."

At the period of which I am speaking to you, he reigned in a good parish, well frequented by devout ladies, both young and middle-aged, where from the height of his pulpit he laid down his laws to his kneeling people, without hindrance or control.

He was happy, as all wise men ought to be. Happy to be in the world, satisfied to be a Cure. "It is the first of professions," he often used to say, and there is not one of them which can be compared to it.