by George Sand
- How do you know, father? said Sténio. Everything that is contrary to the laws of nature is perhaps abominable before the Lord. Some have dared to say it in this century of philosophical examination and I am one of them. But I will spare these commonplaces, against which you are in beware, expecting that I would have a bad taste for using it.
I will confine myself to asking you a question; here it is: if tomorrow, at daybreak after falling asleep in tears and prayer, you would wake up in the arms of a woman, brought to your bedside by the mischief of the spirits of darkness; after surprise, fright, struggle, victory, exorcism, whatever you would experience and do (I have no doubt), tell me, would you say mass a moment later and
touch the body of Christ without the slightest terror?
- With the grace of God, answered Magnus, perhaps my hands would have remained pure enough to touch the host holy. However, I would not want to dare without having previously purified by penance.
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- Very well, father, you can see that you are less purified than me; because I could now sleep all a night next to the most beautiful woman in the world without experiencing something else for her than disgust and aversion. In truth, you may have your time to fast and pray; you do not have nothing done, since the flesh can still terrify the spirit and that the old man can still cloud the conscience of the new man. You have successfully digged your stomach, irritating your brain, disturbing the combination harmonious of your organs; but you have not reduced like me your body has a passive role; you are not come to the point of undergoing the test I'm talking about and going immediately communicate without confession; you do not have resulting in slow physical suicide, that is to say an action that your religion condemns as a crime awful, and you're in the grip of bad desires, like in the first days of your penance, God did not do you well seconded, father! "
The monk rose, and, straightening himself from the full height of his tall, sagging, he looked up at the sky again; then, putting both hands on his forehead in awful anxiety, he yelled :
"Would it be true, O my God? Would you have refused me help and forgiveness? Would you have left me in the spirit of wrong ? Would you have withdrawn from me, without wanting to listen
my sobs, my pleading cries? Would i have suffered in vain and would all this life of fighting and torture be lost?
No ! he cried again with enthusiasm, raising his long, slender arms out of his sleeves, I won't believe it not ; I will not be discouraged by the impious words of this child of the century. I will go to the end; I will perform my sacrifice and, if the Church lied, if the prophets were inspired by the spirit of darkness, if the divine word has been diverted from its true meaning, if my zeal was further than your requirement, at least you will take into account my obstinate desire, of the fierce will that separated me from the earth to make me conquer the sky; you will read this passion in the bottom of my heart burning who devoured me for you, my God, and who speaks so loud in a soul devoured by other terrible passions. You ... me Page 258
forgive you for lack of light and wisdom, you do not will weigh only my sacrifices and my intentions and, if I have worn this cross until my death, you will give me my share in the leniency of your eternal rest!
- Is rest in the system of the universe? said Sténio. Do you hope to be big enough to deserve God create for you alone a new universe? Do you believe that there have idle angels and inert virtues in heaven? Savez-you that all the powers are active and that unless to be God, you will never come to immutable existence and infinite? Yes, God will bless you, Magnus, and the saints will sing your praises up there on golden harps. But when you have brought, virgin and intact, at the feet of master, the elite soul he entrusted to you here below; when you say to him, “Lord, you gave me strength; I got it preserved, here it is, I give it back to you; give me peace
eternal for reward ", God will answer this soul prostrate: "That's good, my daughter, enter my glory and take place in my sparkling knuckles. You will accomplish henceforth noble works, you will drive the chariot of the moon in the plains of ether, you will roll lightning in the clouds, you will chain the rivers, you will ride the storm, you will make it leap beneath you like a whinny on the run, you order from the stars; divine substance, you will be in elements, you will have commerce with the souls of men, you will carry out missions between me and your former brothers sublime, you will fill the earth and the heavens, you will see my face and you will converse with me. "This is beautiful, Magnus, and poetry finds its account in these sublime aberrations. But when he that would be so, I would not want it. I'm not tall enough to be ambitious, not strong enough to want a role, either here, be up there. It suits your gigantic pride to sigh after the glories of another life; I would not not even from a high throne over all the nations of the earth. Yes I doubted divine goodness to the point of hoping for something other than the nothingness for which I am made, I would ask him to be the grass of the fields, which the foot treads and which does not redden, the marble, which the chisel shapes and which does not bleed, the tree, which the wind tires and does not feel it. I would ask her the most inert, the most obscure, the easiest of existence and I Page 259
would still be too demanding if he condemned me to live again in the gelatinous substance of a mollusk. That is why I'm not working to deserve the sky; I don't want it, I want it fear joys, concerts, ecstasies, triumphs. I fear all that I can conceive of the idea; How? 'Or' What would i want anything more than to end it all? Well ! I
am happier than you, father; I am going without worry and fearless to the eternal night while you approach, distraught, trembling, to the supreme court where the lease of your sufferings and tiredness will be renewed for eternity. I'm not jealous, I admire your destiny, but I prefer mine. "
Magnus, scared of the things he heard and not feeling not the strength to answer it, leaned towards Trenmor and, with his two hands squeezing the hand of a wise man hard, his eyes, full of anxiety, seemed to ask him for the support of his strength.
"Do not be troubled, my brother," replied Trenmor, and that the sufferings of this wounded soul do not alter the trust of yours. Do not get tired of working and the temptation of nothingness dulls like a lying caress.
You'd have more trouble becoming incredulous than keeping the treasure of faith. Do not listen to him, because he is lying to himself and fears the things he says, far from desiring them. And you, Sténio, you work in vain to extinguish in you the sacred torch of intelligence. His flame is rekindled more vivid and more beautiful with each of your efforts to stifle it. You yearn for heaven despite you and your poet's soul cannot hunt the painful memory of his homeland. When God, calling her back from exile, the aura purified of his defilements and healed of his evils, she will bow down with love and thank him for having let her eternal light shine for her. She will look behind her fade away like a cloud this scary dream and dark of human life and will be surprised to have crossed these darkness without thinking of God, without hoping for revival. "Where was do you then, oh my God? she will say, and what have I become in that fast whirlwind that dragged me on for a moment? "But God will console her and maybe subject her to other tests, because
she will ask them again with authority. Happy and proud to have Page 260
regained the will, she will want to make use of it, she will feel that activity is the element of the forts; she will be surprised to have abdicated his crown of stars; she will ask for her role among the Celestial Dominations and will resume it brilliantly; because god is good and may not send the harsh trials of despair that its elected officials have, to make their employment more precious then of power. Go, the most divine faculty of the soul, desire, is only asleep in you, Sténio. Let your body take over some vigor, give your blood a few days of rest and you will feel this holy ardor of the heart awaken, this infinite aspiration of intelligence that make a man a man and that he is worthy to command things below, to the elements up there.
- A man is a man, said Sténio, as long as he can rule
his horse and resist his mistress. What more beautiful use of force do you see that heaven has departed from as puny creature that we? If the man is susceptible to certain moral greatness, it consists in believing nothing, in not nothing to fear. Whoever kneels at all hours before the wrath of an avenging God is only a servile slave who fears the punishments of another life. Whoever makes a idol of I don't know what chimera of will, before which all his appetites go out, all his whims break, no that a coward who fears being dragged by his fantasies and find suffering in his pleasures. The strong man is afraid neither God, nor men, nor himself. He accepts all consequences of his inclinations, good or bad. Contempt of the vulgar, the mistrust of the fools, the blame of the rigorists, the fatigue, misery have no more control over his soul than
fever and debts. Wine exalts it and does not intoxicate it, women enjoy it and don't rule it, glory it heel tickles sometimes, but he treats her like other prostitutes and kicks her out after hugging her and possessed because he despises everything that others fear or revere; he can cross the flame without leaving his wings like a blind moth without falling to ashes in front the torch of reason. Ephemeral and puny like him, he let him take away all the breezes, lure them all the flowers, rejoice with all the lights. But disbelief preserve everything, the wind of fickleness carries it away and saves it, Page 261
today vain meteors, lying illusions of the night, tomorrow of the bright sun, sad informer of all miseries, of all human ugliness. The strong man only takes no security for his future and does not back down from any of the dangers of the present. He knows that all his hopes are recorded in a book, the wind of which turns leaflets, that all wisdom projects are written on the sand and that there is only virtue, wisdom, in the world that a force is to wait for the flow and to remain firm while that it floods you is to swim when it trains you to fold his arms and to die recklessly when he you submerged. The strong man, in my opinion, is therefore also the man wise, because it simplifies the system of its joys. He tightens them; he strips them of their entourage of errors, vanities, prejudice. His enjoyment is all positive, all real, all personal; it is his naive and beautiful divinity, cynical and chaste.
He puts her naked and tramples on vain vain ornaments which stole from him; but, more faithful and more sincere than the hypocrites doctors of his temple, at all hours of his
life, he bends his knee in front of her in defiance of vain anathemas of a stupid world. He is a martyr of his faith. He lives and suffers for her. He dies for her and by her, denying or braving that other absurd and wicked God you worship. The man who draws his sword to fight the storm is unholy and reckless but he is braver and greater than the God that stirs lightning. I would dare; and you, Magnus, you would not dare. Trenmor who hears us, Trenmor who is, don't make no mistake, father, more a philosopher than a Christian, more stoic than religious and who values strength more than faith, persistence more than repentance, Trenmor, in a word, who can and who should value himself more than you, my father, can be judge between us and see which of us has best defended and retained the highest of its faculties, energy.
- I will not be judge between you, said Trenmor, the sky you has different qualities, but each of you received a nice part. Magnus was gifted with greater persistence in ideas ; and if you want to ignore yours, Sténio, to seriously contemplate the beautiful spectacle of a will victorious, you will be amazed at the sight of this monk who was godless, in love and mad, and who is here now Page 262
calm, fervent and subject to the regularity of habits Monastic. Where did he take the strength to resist so long these appalling struggles and getting back up after being cursed and broken? Is the same man you heard denying God at the bedside of dying Lélia? Is it the same as you have you seen running astray on the mountain? It's a man new and yet it’s the same stormy, fiery soul, same fiery, terrible senses, always new and always virgins; the same desire, always intense, but never satisfied;
getting lost in spite of himself in pursuit of human things, but always returning to God by the reaction of an inconceivable vigor and a center of sublime hope. O my father!
still it would be true that we do not have the same cult and we invoke God in different rites, you
in my eyes are no less holy three times, three times tall ! Because you fought, you got up from under the foot of your enemy and you are still fighting, valiant, tireless, wounded with wounds, exhausted from sweat and of blood, but decided to die with weapons in hand. continue, in the name of Jesus, in the name of Socrates. The martyrs of all religions, the heroes of all time are watching you and, from the top from the heavens, applaud your efforts. But you, Sténio, child who was born with a star on your forehead, you whose beauty was design the shape of the angels, you, whose voice was more melodious as the voices of the night sighing on the harps Scottish women, whose genius promised the world youth new, all of love and poetry, because the singers and poets are prophets sent to men to revive
their nervous nerves, to refresh their burning foreheads; you, Sténio, who, in your young years, walked dressed in grace and of purity like a spotless dress and a halo luminous, I cannot be afraid of your destinies; I can not not despair of your future. Like Magnus, you suffer the great ordeal, the terrible agony reserved for the powerful; but from this life you will rise from it like him. You struggle again and, bleeding from the torture, you ignore the hand that wipes you; but soon we will see you, obscured star, shine whiter and more beautiful in the sky.
- And what will it take to do that, Trenmor? asked Sténio.
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- You will have to rest only, replied Trenmor, because the nature is good to those who look like you. We will have to leave your nerves time to calm down, to your brain, the leisure of receive new impressions. Extinguish your desires by tiredness can be a good thing; but excite his desires extinct, greedy them like exhausted horses, impose suffering instead of accepting it, looking beyond of its strengths more intense joys, sharper pleasures than reality allows, stir in an hour the
feelings of a lifetime, it's the way to lose the past and the future; one, by contempt for his timid pleasures, the other, by the impossibility of surpassing the present. You are not now unwilling to receive further advice; but in all the time, I flatter myself, my son, that you are ready to me give proof of affection.
- Always, said Sténio, shaking hands.
- Well ! said Trenmor, promise me, swear to me stay here until i come back. If after thirty days I don't did not come back, you will be released from your oath.
They got up and returned to the convent. The next day, Trenmor left, after obtaining, not without difficulty, the floor of Sténio.
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5
Don Juan
Sténio took one evening the arm of Magnus and led it to the edge of the lake. He loved this uncultivated place, these big leaning cedars on the precipice, these silver sands by the moon and this water motionless, where the stars were reflected calm as in a other ether. He liked the tender and melancholy whistling of
snakes, the low rustle of water in the rushes and the silent flight of tomb-friendly bats. Among the tombs, at the edge of the ravine, at the bottom of the lake without shores, his soul sought a thought of hope, a smile of destiny. How his forehead was calm and his mouth mute Magnus believed for a long time that God had mercy on him and that he had opened the treasure of
divine hopes. But suddenly ; Sténio, breaking the silence and stopping him under the pure and white ray of the moon, him said, penetrating him with his cynical gaze:
"Monk, tell me about your love for Lélia and how, after making you atheist and renegade, she made you become crazy ?
- My God ! cried the pale Camaldule, wildly, make this chalice move away from me.
- I will leave you alone, Magnus, resumed Sténio, if you want finally naively tell me the truth. Yes, if you answer my question without false shame and without hypocrisy, I swear my irony will no longer come to mess up your thoughts.
- Speak then, cruel child,
replied the monk and, if I can to do without sin, I will answer you frankly.
- The frankness can never be a sin, says Sténio, pride and pretense are crimes before God.
Speak ! tell me if your macerations, your retirement, your prayers, your will tell me if all your efforts have really floored and Page 265
repel the enemy from your rest. If you swear to me, in the name of Christ, that it is, I will believe it.
- Your question is very hard, my son! what satisfaction can your vanity wait for my answer?
- My vanity shattered like a straw, Magnus; this
It is not she who suggests this fiery curiosity to me. It is that I finally need certainty, hope at least. If your faith saved you, if in the days of doubt and anguish you have obtained, through tears and prayer, this confidence which you are ennobled and sanctified, I will have to bow down and that I pray; then, perhaps, God will also save me.
- Pray, my son, hope ... replied the monk, the kingdom heaven…
- Shut up, interrupted Sténio with violence; this frock gives you all the same language, as it gives you the same approach; do you really want to be useful to me? Swear!
"I swear to answer you," said the trembling monk.
- By Christ? said Sténio.
"By Christ," said Magnus, "since it is your salvation.
- Well ! tell me, is it grace that saved you or well is it your own strength? Did faith put on you diamond armor or did your caution warn you entrenched behind these protective walls? Is it because you are wise and that you felt weak that you are come to flee here from the woman's burning gaze? Or is it because having finished fighting, having broken the pride of Satan, you have come to rest and sleep in peace under the vaults of this cloister, as under the peristyle of the heavens, in waiting for death to open the doors of glory eternal?
"I am a weak man," replied Magnus; I do not have defeated the demon; without grace, I wouldn't have even had the force to flee danger; without grace, I still feel so miserable that I would undoubtedly still face the peril where I almost broke me.