by George Sand
Shelter us from your vigilant kindness and your consoling pity.
God made you indulgent and gentle among all the Virtues, between all the Powers of heaven; because he intended you to rescue, console men, to be collected in a soilless vase the tears that are shed at the foot of Christ and present them atonement before your eternal justice, O Most Holy! "
And the children answered from the top of the nave:
“Hope in the Lord, O you who work in the
tears because the guardian angel spreads his big golden wings between the man's weakness and the Lord's wrath. Praise God . "
Then the monks continued:
"O the youngest and purest of angels, you are the one God created the last, because he created you after man and put you in Heaven to be his companion and friend. But the woman came and was more powerful than you over the mind of man.
The angel of anger descended on them to punish; you, you follow in exile and you took care of the children that Eve gave birth to, O Most Holy! "
The children answered again:
"Thank on your knees, all of you who love God, thank the guardian angel, because of his powerful wing, he goes up and descends incessantly from earth to heaven, from heaven to earth, to carry prayers from below, to bring back from above the benefits. Praise God. "
The male voice of a young brother recited this verse:
"You are the one who warms with warm breath in the morning plants numbed by cold; it's you. who cover your virgin robe the harvests of man threatened with hail; it is you who with a protective hand support the hut of the fisherman shaken by the winds of the sea; it is you who awakens sleeping mothers and, calling them in a soft voice, at Page 247
middle of the night dreams warn them to breastfeed newborn children; it is you who keep the modesty of the virgins and put the orange branch, invisible talisman, at their bedside who turns away bad thoughts and unclean dreams; it is you who sit in the midday sun, in the furrow where sleeps the reaper's child, and who divert from their path the snake and scorpion ready to crawl on its cradle; it is you who open the missal sheets when we search in the sacred text a remedy for our ills; you are us then meet the verse which suits our misery and which put before our eyes the holy lines that repel the temptation. "
"Invoke the guardian angel," said the childish voices, because he is the most powerful among the angels of the Lord. The Lord, when he sent him to earth, promised him that every once he would come up to him, he would grant him the grace of a sinner. Praise God. "
"Let us call upon the guardian angel," resumed a more trembling voice.
that the others and that Sténio believed not to hear for the first time ; let us ask him to erase from our hearts the memory of past things. Pray him to spread a pancake mourning, an impenetrable veil over the seductions of a world fallacious, on the attractions of lying idols. Let us pray to ignite in us the fire of holy desires and to quench the ardor burning guilty desires. May he give to the forehead of our madonnas a more severe aspect; at the marble of their feet a more sensitive cold, so that by looking at these august features, by kissing those spotless feet we have no thought unclean or fatal illusion. Pray also, when it appears in our dreams, not to take the delicate features, the look tender, flowing dress and long hair of a woman. "
The monk abruptly stopped; a long silence,
perhaps produced by astonishment and confusion, succeeded in the choir to this unfinished verse. Finally, children's voices finished this hymn by repeating:
"Call upon the guardian angel, praise God. "
Meanwhile, Sténio saw a monk, still young, go out alone from the chapel and sink in with agitation under the Page 248
cloister arches. He seemed to recognize in the process of this man, as in the sound of voices which had struck him, the Irish priest he had seen mad, Magnus.
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4
The burials
When the chapter had paraded slowly before Sténio and that the last monk's robe had disappeared behind the arches of the covered playground, Trenmor joined his friend and, sitting down beside he tried to read in his features the impression he received external objects. But, the moment of elation that had inspired to Sténio a romantic fantasy having faded, it had fallen back into his usual state of apathy and coldness. he then remembered the incidents which had brought him to this place, and said indifferently:
"So you told me last night that these religious were from the Camaldolese order?
- Yes, replied Trenmor, she is one of the richest, most peaceful and less severe Church communities Roman. The beauty of their home, the extent of the land they have and the freedom they enjoy allows them to engage in science and the arts; we count among them large number of excellent musicians and scholars
astronomers. Some are poets and painters, others are so addicted to chemistry and physics that they seem, in the eyes of the vulgar, to perpetuate the old traditions of the alchemist monks and astrologers. Finally, if the noble and sacred poetry, if enlightened and powerful faith, if study patient and conscientious took refuge somewhere on the earth is in this convent. Are you not struck by the magnificence well understood that unfolds in the exterior of this dwelling, austere knowledge and patriarchal naivety who presided over the cultivation of these gardens, the composition of these aviaries? Do you not see here the realization of all legitimate desires, the satisfaction of all honest needs, of all the noble ambitions, of all the innocent fantasies? For me, it seems to me that a restless soul must be Page 250
calm down as you approach this sanctuary and that a tired brain must rest and rejuvenate within these peaceful habits and wise. What do you think, Sténio?
- I think, answered Sténio, that the insatiable desire of the soul survives all these satisfactions; I think the tireless man's anxiety makes all his efforts to
be content with the possible. "
Trenmor, seeing that the time had not come for dominate and put to sleep this bitter and restive reason, took him away lunch in the prior's room. Then he offered to come with him to see the cemetery.
It was located on the slope of the mountain; on the one hand approached the convent by a gallery in twisted columns; the other side was bounded by a bare and sandy ravine, at the bottom of which a small funnel-shaped lake slept in dreary rest. There was no way possible to get down on its edges because
the mobility of the inclined sands that surrounded it and the total absence of a support point. No rock had found way to stop on this fast slope, no tree had was able to dig its roots into this friable soil. Waiting for the avalanches which had dug it came to fill it, this precipice nourished, within its motionless waves, a rich vegetation. Gigantic lotuses, water polypiers gentle, twenty fathoms long brought their broad leaves and their varied flowers on the surface of this water that never crossed never the oar of the fisherman. On their intertwined stems, under the shelter of their multiplied cradles, the vipers with the robe emerald, salamanders with yellow and sweet eyes slept, gaping in the sun, sure they weren't tormented by human nets and traps. The surface of the lake was so dense and so green that it could have been taken from above for a meadow. Reed forests reflected their slender stems and their velvet plumes, which the wind bent like a harvest of the plains. Sténio, charmed by the wild aspect of this ravine, wanted to go down there and set foot on this treacherous network foliage.
"Stop, my son," said a monk who accompanied them, the hood lowered over the face; this lake, covered with flowers, is Page 251
the image of the pleasures of the world. He is surrounded by seductions, but it conceals bottomless abysses.
- And what do you know, father? said Sténio smiling; have you probed this abyss? did you walk on the waves stormy with passions?
- When Peter tried to follow Jesus on the airwaves of Génézareth, replied the Camaldule, he felt, at the end of a few steps, that he lacked faith and that he was too
hazarded by wanting, like the son of man, to walk on the storm. He cried out, "Lord, we are p
erishing! " And the Lord, drawing him to him, saved him.
- Pierre was a bad friend and a cowardly disciple, resumed Sténio; was it not he who denied his master for fear of share his fate? Those who are afraid of danger and who avoid it withdraw look like Peter; they are neither men nor Christians. "
The Camaldule bowed his head and said nothing.
Trenmor, urging Sténio to turn around, made him admire the appearance of the cemetery. Monstrous yew trees, whose hand man had never attempted to direct growth,
covered the graves with such a dark curtain barely distinguished, in broad daylight, the marble from the figures lying on the coffins of the monks' dismal pallor kneeling among the graves. A terrible silence hung over this asylum of the dead. The wind could not penetrate the thickness mysterious trees; the sun was not shining a single Ray ; light and life seemed to have stopped at gates of this chaos and, if we tried to cross it, it was for enter the cloister or stop at the edge of this ravine quieter and more sorry still.
"At the right time, said Sténio while sitting down on a tomb, this cemetery suits me better than the paneled interior and fragrant from the convent. I love everything in its place: luxury and softness among courtesans, austerity, mortification among religious. But tell me, father, why you you persist in hiding your face from me. I know the Page 252
sound of your voice we have seen each other before best.
- Better! said Magnus, slowly dropping his hood and pressing his already bald forehead on his hand parched, in an attitude of melancholy doubt.
- Yes, better for you and for me, answered Sténio; because, at that time, the roses of youth flourished on my face and although you look lost and the pulse feverish the last time I met you on the mountain, your beard was black, father, and your hair thick.
- You therefore attach a great price to this vain and fatal youth of the body, to this devouring energy of the blood, which color the face and who burns the skull? said the sorrowful monk.
- And what is more precious? left the young man; what other real wealth do we have the possession once in our life?
"It is the age of danger and suffering," said the priest.
Happy are those who have crossed it without perishing! "
Sténio stopped its glance for a moment on the pallid face and dug from Magnus, then turning to Trenmor with a mixture of sadness and irony:
"Why did you bring me here? he said to him. Why did you put this living specter and these graves before me green? Is it to prove to me that death is more happy and more fruitful than life? Is it to give me a taste of the sweetness of nothingness? Do you think you have well chose your place and your subject? You don't know that I have more want to die than live, apparently? As for this man, you may not know that I met him on the Monte-Rosa one day when he was mad? What courage do you want that I take out of the sight of these tombs, where I would already like being asleep ? What confidence do you hope to give me in the word of this priest whom I saw led astray by the passions?
- I wanted to show you, O Sténio, answered the sage, that the
life can be as calm as death and man can to regain his lost reason, to submit it to his all-will Page 253
powerful. I wanted to show you what are the strengths, the immense resources that God has placed in us and the goods that are within our reach. You see that we can, without disorder, without fatigue and without excess, enjoy the greatest on the earth: poetry, science and the arts. If you stop here a instant, you will see that, in the bosom of this retreat, the natures the most powerful and the most chosen came to rest and soak up while waiting for the mysterious destinies of the other life. You will see that they found healing there slowly but certain of their poisoned wounds, the vast extension and magnificent of their most precious faculties.
- You will see above all, added the Camaldule, that God is merciful and his love is immense, his pity tireless, his all-powerful grace. You will cry at the foot holy altars and these pious tears will be a balm for the sores of your heart. Day by day you will feel the effects beneficial of this beneficent captivity. Your wishes fiery will break under the yoke; noble wills will take over; the joys of resignation and recognition will erase in you until the memory of delusional mistakes and cursed fury of youth.
- You want some with the youth, my brother, said Sténio; you yet are only a few years older than me. This morning you added a song to the guardian angel verse which was not in the liturgy and which betrayed more than youth in your imagination that there is now in my whole being. "
The priest turns pale; then he put his yellow callused hand on the
pale and bluish hand of Sténio.
"My child," he said to him, "so you have been unhappy too, since you are so cruel?
- The suffering we suffered, said Trenmor severely and sad, should make them compassionate and kind. It is the fact of weak souls to corrupt themselves in adversity; strong souls purify themselves there.
- And don't I know it well? said Sténio, moved at last and stripping all its irony to take the arm with one hand Page 254
of the priest and with the other hand the arm of Trenmor. Don't i know that I am a soul without grandeur and without energy, a nature crippled and miserable? Would i be where i am if i was Trenmor or Magnus? But unfortunately ! he added, leaving falling down their arms and sitting down again, with a movement of dark anger, on the tombstone, why try on
me in vain efforts? Why give me advice which I can not profit and examples that are above my strengths ? What pleasure do you find spreading your riches to me, show me how powerful you are, what
efforts are you able? Strong men, men
heroic! election vessels; saints who came out of a galley slayer and a priest; you, convict, who assumed on your head all the punishments of social life; you, monk, who have summed up in a few years of your inner life all the tortures of the soul; you two who suffered everything what men can suffer, satiety and deprivation, one broken by blows, the other by fasting; here you are yet standing and my forehead raised to the sky, while I crawl like the prodigal in the midst of animals filthy, that is, gross appetites and vices
unclean! Well ! let me die in my mire and don't do not come to torment my agony by the spectacle of your glorious ascent to the heavens. This is how friends of Job came to praise their prosperity to the victim lying on the manure. Leave me, leave me! Keep your treasures well, lest your pride spends them. That wisdom and humility watch over your conquests. Protect yourself of the childish desire to show them to those who have nothing; because in his anger, the poor hateful and jealous might spit on these riches and tarnish them. Trenmor, your glory may not be as real, as vibrant as you imagine. My reason bitter could perhaps find a trivial explanation to the triumph of the will over damp passions, over desires erased or sated. Magnus, beware, your faith is not maybe not so firm that I can't shake it with a mocking look or daring doubt. Victory
won by the spirit over the temptations of the flesh is perhaps not be so complete that I can't make you blush and turn pale again by pronouncing a woman's name! ... Go, go and pray; Page 255
light the incense in front of the altar of the Virgin and bow your head on the pavement of your churches. Go and compose treaties on the mortification and resignation but let me enjoy the last few days left. God who did not like me you, favored by a superior organization, have not carried only by common realities, by vulgar pleasures; I want to use it to the end. Didn't I, too, make a not immense in the way of reason, since we we are even ? Seeing that I couldn't reach in heaven, did I not set out to walk on earth, without mood and without disdain? Have i not accepted life as it is
was it for me? And when I felt within me a restless and rebellious ardor, vague and fanciful ambitions, unrealizable desires, did I not do everything to extinguish them and tame them? I took another means than you, my brothers, that is all. I calmed down with the abuse, while you are healed by hair and abstinence. It was also necessary great souls than yours, these violent means, these austere atonements; the us
e of human things would not have enough to break your brazen characters, to exhaust your strength supernatural. But all these things were the size of Sténio. He gave himself up to it without blushing, he satisfied himself with it without
ingratitude and, now, if his body was found too weak for his appetites, if phthisis took possession of this puny child pleasure is that God had not intended to count from long days on earth is that he was not fit to do nor a soldier, neither a priest, nor a player, nor a scientist, nor a poet. There is has plants reserved for dying immediately after flowering, men whom God does not condemn to a long exile among the other men. See, father, you are bald like
me, your hands are parched, your chest shrunk, your weak knees, short breathing; here is your beard which gray and you are not thirty years old. Your agony may be be a little slower than mine; maybe survive me you a whole year. Well ! haven't we all succeeded two to overcome our passions, to cool our senses? Here we are come out of the crucible, purified and reduced, isn't it, father? I am more diminished than you still; is that the test was stronger and safer is that I am reaching the goal is that I have finished defeating the enemy. Maybe you would have as well Page 256
taking the same means as me; they were the most short ; but no matter what, you will still get to the suffering and death. Let us join hands, we are brothers. You were great, I was miserable; you were a vigorous nature, me, poor nature; but the graves which will soon open up for us will inherit no less, both, a little dust. "
Magnus, which during the words of Sténio was troubled several times and had looked up to the sky with a expression of dread and distress, took an instant calmer and more confident attitude.
"Young man," he said, "we will not end with this puny envelope and our soul will not be given to pasture to the tomb worms. Do you think God keeps an account equal between us? Will there not be on the day of judgment the greater mercies for him who mortified his flesh and prayed in tears, harsher justice for him who will have bent the knee in front of the idols and drunk at the sources poisoned with sin?