“Yes, I know the lives of the saints who have come to this region. Many saints have come here—come expressly, you understand, or attracted by an interior necessity. Evidently, they came for the same reason as us.”
There must have been a visible stupidity on my face because, having scrutinized me with his gaze, he shrugged his shoulders, like someone who has made a mistake.
“Saint Eleutherius, yes…a curious individual. Was he a veritable saint? That seems dubious to me. In these distant times, people were prompt to attribute the title of saint to people who had only accomplished acts external to sanctity. Was he a veritable saint? I’ll tell you his story. You can judge for yourself.”
Monsieur Spéluque made me a sign to follow him into his garden. A eucalyptus provided shade there. He designated a wicker armchair to me. He sat down on a block of ruddy stone.
“This seat is a trifle hard, but these stones are a vestige of the ancient aqueduct built by the Romans to aliment Fréjus. I thus have an imperfect contact, but a contact, with the men of old who possessed strength and wisdom in equal doses, and the remoteness of whose times I regret.”
“Eleutherius was a monk at the abbey of Lérins.
“You know how honorable that abbey, founded by Saint Honoratus, was. In any case, when one thinks about it, the cause of everything that followed, the cause of our presence here—mine, at any rate—was the foundation of the Abbey of Lérins by Saint Honoratus.9 The manner in which events are connected, reproducing the episodes of the same eternal struggle between good and evil, is a great and marvelous mystery.
“Before Eleutherius it’s necessary to talk about Saint Honoratus and snakes. Snakes had pullulated on the two isles of Lérins. They were the masters there when Saint Honoratus chose one of the islands as a place of retreat. He had previously lived in a grotto situated on the side of Cap Roux, not far from the place where you live. But the renown of his sanctity was so great that all sorts of ascetics came to install themselves around him. In order to recover solitude he went to Lérins, the abode of snakes.
“He exterminated all the reptiles on the island with his crosier, engaging in a struggle that is not yet concluded. He was victorious, temporarily, and when the island was purged of snakes and Saint Honoratus was able to devote himself to prayer, uniquely lulled by the sound of the waves, all the ascetics and all the monks that had followed in his tracks threw themselves into boats and settled on the island, which was soon resounding with hymns and actions of grace.
“Then Saint Honoratus resigned himself. ‘Perhaps one can attain God while only being a good organizer of a monastery,’ he said to himself. And he founded the abbey, toward which all the literate monks of his epoch flooded. For there is in those islands a source of spiritual radiation. The abbey became its receptacle, and in a natural fashion, the most precious manuscripts of the epoch flowed there and formed, in the course of the centuries that followed, an incomparable library. Lighthouses were placed on the shores to guide ships, but that library was a beacon that illuminated a vast region of the earth.
“Here commences the story of Eleutherius, about five centuries after the death of Honoratus.10
THE STORY OF ELEUTHERIUS
“Eleutherius, as I told you, was a simple monk of Lérins, of ordinary origin. He left for the crusade with the Seigneur d’Antibes, and it was on his return that he decided to devote himself to God. He doubtless went to Lérins rather than elsewhere because of the library. Eleutherius was literate.
“The abbey of Lérins then had as its abbot a saintly man named Porcarius.11 That saintly man was a visionary. He saw numerous and clear images of the past and the future. However, those of the future were less numerous and less clear. Thus, in those distant times, the ascetic life led by certain men gave them revelations and gifts of prophecy that are rare n our day.
“Now Abbot Porcarius was informed by a particularly precise vision that on the tenth day after the vision the pagan Saracens would disembark on Lérins, pillage the abbey, burn the library and exterminate the monks and the saintly abbot. Thus warned, Porcarius could have fled, or asked for help from the Seigneur d’Antibes. That appears logical to our modern intelligence, but he did not judge the matter thus, doubtless because of the character of his vision. He was not warned of a misfortune in order to avoid it, but he saw what the future had to be in accordance with the order of destiny.
“God, for hidden reasons, wanted all the monks of the abbey to be exterminated and the library to be burned. It was necessary to submit to it. That submission had to be the only solution to adopt for whoever was not a rebel, for Porcarius assembled the monks, who numbered five hundred—five hundred and five, says the monastic historian in his rigorous exactitude—and he made them party to his vision without attenuating its horrible character, and they were all of the same opinion as him. They were all determined to obey God and await death—all except one. And that unique exception was Eleutherius.
“Eleutherius declared himself a partisan of collective flight, but he was not heeded. A few adolescents and overly handsome young monks, who might have been spared and sent to Africa to suffer treatments more terrible than death, of which it is better not to think, were sent away. A few precious relics were confided to them, which must not be allowed to fall into the hands of infidels, and they waited.
“Eleutherius did not leave. He was a weak soul. He dared not brave the reprobation of the five hundred and five monks avid for martyrdom. Who knows? Perhaps he had doubts about the reality of the vision.
“Nine days went by. On the morning of the ninth day, an angel appeared to Porcarius and warned him that one a few hours separated him from death.”
At this point, I could not retain a cry of admiration, and I interrupted Monsieur Spéluque’s story.
“How close the relationship was between that abbot and the invisible world!”
“It’s true,” said Monsieur Spéluque, in a melancholy fashion. “Certain barriers that separate us from the world beyond did not exist in those fortunate times. It was a little later that human materialism attained its maximum. And it still at its maximum! Perhaps it is even aggravating.”
But he set aside that redoubtable thought and went on: “That evening, at sunset, the monk charged with watching the sea blew the trumpet. He had perceived sails of Saracen form on the horizon.
“Then Eleutherius could not hold back. He drew with him a certain Columbus, who admired him—for he must have had visible qualities of seduction—and by favor of the night he quit the monastery.
“The two monks went to hide in a grotto in the cliff, which was partly invaded by water at high tide. There, Eleutherius confessed to his companion the secret reason, of which he was scarcely conscious himself, for which he was so attached to life. In the Orient, he had seen a woman of such striking beauty that he could not reconcile himself to dying without having seen her again. It was a platonic amour, which did not entail any desire for possession, since he had renounced the world on entering Lérins, but he retained the hope of rediscovering the sweet exaltation that he had known once.
“Everything happened in conformity with the vision that Abbot Porcarius had had. The Saracens disembarked in large numbers, invaded the island, and entered the abbey easily, for they were led by a Christian traitor, Grimaldi, a perverse younger son of the great family of the kings of Monaco. All the monks, Porcarius the first of them, were put to death. Many were tortured in an atrocious manner whose usage has fortunately been lost. That was with the objective of making them confess the location of the abbey’s treasure. The ingenuous monks indicated the library, and the tortures were redoubled. The Saracens burned the ancient manuscripts of Lérins, without knowing that they were burning the treasure for which they were searching so avidly.
“In their grotto, Eleutherius and Columbus could only see a portion of blue sky. They knew what was happening, however, for in that portion of sky they saw the souls of five hundred and five monks passing, abruptly extrac
ted from their bodies—which leads us to suppose that both of them, in spite of their attachment to life, had acquired, either by personal effort or by means of the practices of meditation in usage at the time, a great clairvoyance of the spiritual world. Fortunate times, when visionaries were so widespread!
“In the evening, Eleutherius and Columbus slipped into the rocks. The church, the monastery and its dependencies illuminated the island and the sea as they burned. They saw the last Saracens embark, and recognized with horror the traitor Grimaldi, carrying a solid gold cross on his shoulder.
“A great despair took possession of the souls of the two monks, and also the regret of not having been part of the joyful troop of their companions, gaining all together the mysterious regions beyond death. For both of them, they subsequently reported, had remarked, in spite of the distance, an expression of intense delight on the faces of the airborne souls that were drawing away. Perhaps the profane memory of the woman glimpsed in the Orient gave Eleutherius the courage to jump into a forgotten boat and confide himself, with Columbus, to the sea.
“For reasons of a divine order, a tempest blew up and agitated the sea furiously for many days. Eleutherius and Columbus awaited death lying in the boat, but the waves died down one morning and a dazzling sun appeared. The two monks raised their heads and saw that the currents had deposited their boat on a luminous shore dominated by a city with beautiful houses. In the weakness caused by hunger and thirst, they thought that they had died without perceiving it and that it was a matter of some celestial city, where they were going to find Porcarius as well as other familiar saints.
“But Columbus, a son of fisher folk, recognized Fréjus, his natal city, its beach and its harbor, where he had met his father’s boat, laden with fish, every evening in his childhood. Then the bells rang and there was a quality in the sounds emitted by the bronze that could not be forgotten.
“The story of the destruction of the abbey of Lérins had flown from mouth to mouth and all Christian hearts had been rent by it. The inhabitants of Fréjus gave a triumphal welcome to the last survivors of the martyrs of Lérins.
“Now, the Bishop of Fréjus had recently died. In those ancient times bishops were still appointed by meetings of pious notables and eminent ecclesiastics. The seat of Fréjus was vacant and risked remaining so, the notables and the ecclesiastics not being able to reach agreement in the course of meetings, the last of which had been scandalous because of the violence of the candidates.
“Eleutherius had charmed all the inhabitants of Fréjus by his noble attitude, his eloquence and the story of his supraterrestrial vision of the passage of souls from one world to the other. When someone proposed proclaiming him Bishop of Fréjus, the agreement was immediate. Even the monks of the monastery of Roquebrune accepted it. They formed a little community of pure and ascetic men, which was hostile to the ostentation of the century and the relaxation of mores. They had promised to come armed on the day of the meeting in order to prevent the election of the rich Abbot of Montrieux, who was rumored to have bought votes. ‘The sea has deposited a saint on the shore in order that he should be Bishop,’ was the popular word that ran from Marseille to Nice.
“The bishop’s palace was a magnificent Roman dwelling that overlooked the sea. There were large cool rooms, painted mosaics, and an open gallery overlooking the harbor, each marble column of which was made of the statue of a saint. Images of the ancient gods had been replaced by pious individuals. Artistic bishops had always demanded works of great beauty. Now, those works were rare. A few pagan figures remained here and there, even including an Aphrodite with two doves on her shoulder and a hibiscus branch in her hand.
“The first day when Eleutherius gazed at the sea from the gallery of the bishop’s palace, he saw a large ship in the distance with strange flags, which was heading for the harbor. The Comte de Provence had sent an ambassador to Fréjus and many seigneurs had come with great pomp. They had been alerted to the arrival of the King of Cyprus, the Seigneur de Lusignan, who had just shown his château in Poitou to his wife Melusine.
“Eleutherius, wearing his Episcopal miter for the first time, went to bless the sovereign on his arrival. In the wife of the King of Cyprus he recognized the woman whose beauty had transported him with enthusiasm somewhere in the Orient, among men with a bronze tint and sabers curved like lunar crescents.
“He went back to the bishop’s palace prey to a great disturbance and reverted to an earlier self. He realized that he was possessed by pride. He, the simple monk of Lérins, had become a powerful bishop. Immense wealth was at his disposal. He consorted with kings. Who could tell? Perhaps the Aphrodite with the hibiscus branch was awakening dormant passions within him.
“He took off his Episcopal garments. He put on his old monk’s habit and he only kept the crosier, from which he removed the gilt and the precious stones, and which became a simple staff again. He waited for the night to be profound and for Fréjus to fall asleep. Then he left the palace, slipped into the rocks along the shore, for the city gates were closed, and he reached open country.
ELEUTHERIUS AND THE CROW
“Eleutherius walked all night through the dense forests of ash trees that extended along the coast. He reached the rocks of Cap Roux. He climbed the steep slopes and, when the sun appeared, he fell exhausted, in Baume, the same place where Saint Honoratus had once lived, which was still quite similar to what it was when saints came to seek shelter there.
“He lived there in prayer and mortification, drinking from a spring that ran between the stones, only quitting the shelter of the grotto to go in search of the wild fruits necessary to his nourishment. Assuredly, he must have been content with very little.
“One day, when he had just woken up with the rising sun, he heard pious hymns in the distance. He leaned over from the height of a ridge and saw, here and there, the tonsured heads of monks in brown robes; one of them was lighting a little fire, another planting a cross. They had picked up his trail.
“His flight had increased his reputation for sanctity. All the monks who had a taste for the eremitic life, and thought of elevating themselves in the hierarchy of beings by mortifying themselves, had come to install themselves near him, a little lower down on the slopes of Cap Roux, in order to mark, by a spatial distance, the distance that separated them from such a great saint.
“Note this well. The same thing had happened to Saint Honorat in the same place, a few centuries earlier. Events have a tendency to be reproduced in a near-identical fashion, if they have been thought forcefully by those who have produced them. That law explains many things.
“Eleutherius judged himself severely. He did not sense any sanctity in his soul tormented by passions. He was not worthy of the respect of those well-intentioned ascetics. He waited for night. He descended silently among the sleeping hermits and plunged into the thickest part of the forest.
“He lived for years without anyone knowing the place of his retreat. Legend fixes him, perhaps arbitrarily, in the vicinity of the place where you tell me that you have rented a small house. The same legend reports that he lived in a commerce so narrow with the wild animals of the forest that he ended up understanding their language and even talking to them. He responded to the howling of wolves and the hooting of owls, and he cawed with the crows.
“He acquired a strange power over animals. A peasant’s donkey made a long journey to find him. Flocks of birds perched in the trees surrounding his hut and took up residence there. At night, if he woke up, he saw the gleam of amicable eyes in all directions, mingled with innumerable glow-worms. His power extended over insects. But it was the attachment of a crow that remained popular in the stories that speak of him, and which have been transmitted through the centuries. That crow loved him to the point that he always had it on his shoulder, and spoke to it as to a confidant.
“Those birds can be placed n the first rank of animal creatures from the viewpoint of intelligence and even wisdom. You know that Dupont de Ne
mours, who studied them for several years, has composed a dictionary—not very thick, however—of the words they employ.12 The amity of a crow must be inestimable for a hermit.
“Eleutherius grew old in the forest. When he had attained an advanced age, he became convinced that his human mission was to rebuild the ruins of the abbey of Lérins. He departed one day with his familiar crow. He went to Saint Honorat’s island, where snakes had begun to pullulate again. He exterminated them with his crosier, aided by the crow, which threw itself upon the smaller ones. For a native hatred has always existed between the species of crows and that of snakes.
The news of that return spread rapidly. Monks came running from all directions. A monastery was built, as well as a fortress, to defend it against the incursions of pirates.
“Eleutherius, heaped with honors and burdened by years, regretted his solitude. In spite of the universal affirmation that he was a great saint, he often wept for himself, claiming that he was the dwelling of a great sinner. It was in the secrecy of his soul that the battle was delivered between purity and impurity, and no one can know anything about it. He departed, with his crow on his shoulder, for the hut in the forest where his animal friends were. While walking, he held the crook of his crosier inwards, to symbolize the fact that his spiritual effort would henceforth be directed inside himself.”
Monsieur Spéluque paused. Then, as he saw that I was still attentive, he resumed:
“That’s all. His legend says no more. No one knows whether he or the crow died first. No relic of Saint Eleutherius remains anywhere.”
The afternoon was reaching its end, and it was time for me to withdraw. I got up.
“It’s one of those stories of saints, of which there are so many,” said Monsieur Spéluque, by way of conclusion.
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