And now, in the consciousness of his worth, he embarked at the invitation of the prioress upon a rambling and profound country discourse. He talked at length about age and infirmity, the increasing burden of his years, the size of the garden and the many tasks he had to perform, such as last night, for instance, when he had had to go out and straw the melons under the moon because of the danger of frost; and at length he came to the point, which was that he had a brother (the prioress started), not a young man (the prioress looked reassured) who, if permitted, would come to live with him and assist him, an excellent gardener who would serve the community better than he could himself; failing this, if his brother could hot be accepted, feeling himself to be no longer equal to his task he would be compelled with the utmost regret to leave them. Finally, his brother had a granddaughter whom he wished to bring with him, a little girl who might be brought up under God by the community and who one day – who could tell? – might become a member of it.
When he had finished speaking the prioress ceased telling her beads and said:
‘Would it be possible for you to obtain a stout iron crowbar by this evening?’
‘For what purpose?’
‘For use as a lever.’
‘Yes, Reverend Mother,’ said Fauchelevent.
Without saying any more the prioress rose and went into the next room, which was the chapter-hall, where the chantry mothers were doubtless assembled. Fauchelevent was left alone.
III
Mère Innocente
A quarter of an hour elapsed. The prioress returned and resumed her seat. Both speakers seemed preoccupied. We report as exactly as we can the conversation that ensued.
‘Père Fauvent?’
‘Reverend Mother?’
‘You are familiar with the chapel?’
‘I have a small recess where I hear Mass and the Offices.’
‘And you have been in the choir in connection with your work?’
‘Two or three times.’
‘I want a stone to be lifted.’
‘A heavy one?’
‘The flagstone beside the altar.’
‘The stone which closes the vault?’
‘Yes.’
‘That is a job for two men.’
‘Mère Ascension, who is as strong as a man, will help you.’
‘A woman is not the same as a man.’
‘She’s the only one. We all do what we can. Because Dom Mabillon has given us four hundred and seven epistles of St Bernard, and Merlonus Horstius only three hundred and sixty-seven, I do not for that reason despise Merlonus Horstius.’
‘Nor I, Reverend Mother.’
‘The merit lies in doing our best. A cloister is not a workshop.’
‘Nor is a woman a man. My brother’s very strong.’
‘Besides, you will have your crowbar.’
‘That is the only kind of key for that kind of door.’
‘There’s a ring in the stone.’
‘I’ll slip the bar through it.’
‘And it is set on a pivot.’
‘Very well, Reverend Mother, I’ll open the vault.’
‘The four chantry mothers will be present.’
‘And when the vault has been opened?’
‘It will have to be closed again.’
‘Will that be all?’
‘No.’
‘Tell me what else you want, Most Reverend Mother.’
‘Fauvent, we trust you.’
‘I am here to do your bidding.’
‘And to keep silence.’
‘Yes.’
‘When the vault has been opened –’
‘I’m to close it again.’
‘But first there is something else … ’
‘Yes, Reverend Mother?’
‘Something must be lowered into it.’
There was a moment of silence broken by the prioress after a slight pursing of her lower lip which seemed to denote hesitation.
‘You know, do you not, Père Fauvent, that one of the mothers died this morning?’
‘No.’
‘You didn’t hear the bell?’
‘One hears nothing at the end of the garden.’
‘Truly?’
‘It’s all I can do to hear my own bell.’
‘She died at daybreak.’
‘And then, the wind wasn’t blowing my way.’
‘It was Mère Crucifixion, of most blessed memory.’
The prioress was again silent while her lips moved as though in prayer. She went on:
‘Three years ago Madame de Béthune, a Jansenist, was converted to orthodoxy, simply from having seen Mère Crucifixion at her devotions.’
‘Ah, now I can hear the death-bell, Reverend Mother.’
‘She has been taken into the mortuary chamber adjoining the chapel.’
‘I know it’
‘No man other than yourself is allowed in that room, or should be allowed in it. Do not forget that. It would be a fine thing if a man were to enter the mortuary chamber!’
‘More often!’
‘What!’
‘More often.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said, more often.’
‘More often than what?’
‘I didn’t say more often than anything, Reverend Mother. I just said, more often.’
‘I don’t understand. Why did you say it?’
‘I was just agreeing with you, Reverend Mother.’
‘But I didn’t say, more often.’
‘I know you didn’t. I said it for you.’
At this moment the clock struck nine.
‘At this hour of nine and at every hour praised and adored be the Holy Sacrament,’ murmured the prioress.
‘Amen,’ said Fauchelevent.
The striking of the hour was fortunate. It put an end to the subject of ‘more often’, a tangle from which the prioress and he might never have extricated themselves. He mopped his forehead.
The prioress murmured a few more words, presumably of a devotional kind, and then resumed.
‘During her lifetime Mère Crucifixion made conversions. Now that she is dead she will perform miracles.’
‘She will perform miracles,’ repeated Fauchelevent, falling into line and hoping not to get out of step.
‘Our community has been greatly blessed in Mère Crucifixion. No doubt it is not given to everyone to die, like Cardinal de Bérulle, speaking the words of the Holy Mass. She did not attain to this happiness, but she died a most precious death. She was conscious to the last. She talked to us and to the angels. She laid upon us her last injunctions. If you possessed a little more faith, Père Fauvent, and had been there in her cell, she would have healed your leg by laying her hand on it. She was smiling. We felt that she was being resurrected in God. Paradise was present at her death.’
‘Amen,’ said Fauchelevent, thinking that this was the conclusion of a prayer. He waited in silence while the prioress told several of her beads.
‘The wishes of the dead, Père Fauvent, must be respected. It is a matter in which I have consulted a number of ecclesiastics, pious men whose lives are given to the work of the Church, and who reap a rich harvest.’
‘You know, Reverend Mother, you can hear the death-bell much better here than in the garden.’
‘Besides, this is something more than a dead woman. She was a saint.’
‘Like yourself, Reverend Mother.’
‘For twenty years she slept in her coffin, having received the express permission of our Holy Father, Pope Pius VII.’
‘The one who crowned the Emp— that is to say, Bonaparte.’
It was a surprising slip on the part of a man as astute as Fauchelevent, but fortunately the prioress, absorbed in her own thoughts, did not hear it. She went on:
‘St Diodore, the Archbishop of Cappadocia, desired to have the single word, Acarus, which means an earthworm, inscribed on his tomb, and this was done. Is that not true?’
&
nbsp; ‘Yes, Reverend Mother.’
‘The blessed Mezzocane, Abbot of Aquila, desired to be buried under a gallows. This was done.’
‘True.’
‘St Terence, the Bishop of Ostia, at the mouth of the Tiber, desired that his tombstone should be engraved with the symbol denoting a parricide, in the hope that passers-by would spit on it. This was done. The wishes of the dead must be respected.’
‘So be it.’
‘The body of Bernard Guidonis, who was born in France near Roche-Abeille, was taken on his instructions, and in defiance of the King of Castille, to the Dominican church at Limoges, although Bernard Guidonis had been Bishop of Tuy, in Spain. Can this be denied? It is attested by Plantavit de la Fosse.’
‘Then it must be true, Reverend Mother.’
More beads of the rosary were told.
‘Père Fauvent, Mère Crucifixion will be buried in the coffin in which she slept for twenty years.’
‘Quite right.’
‘It will be a continuance of her sleep.’
‘So that’s the coffin I’m to nail up?’
‘Yes.’
‘And we won’t bother about the one they bring in?’
‘Exactly. The four chantry-mothers will help you.’
‘To nail the coffin? But I don’t need them.’
‘No. To lower it.’
‘To lower it? Where?’
‘Into the vault.’
Fauchelevent started.
‘The vault under the altar? But –’
‘You will have a crowbar –’
‘Yes, but –’
‘The wishes of the dead must be respected. This was Mère Crucifixion’s last wish, that her remains should not be consigned to profane ground, but that she should rest in death where she had prayed in life, under the altar in our chapel. She desired this of us – that is to say, she commanded it.’
‘But it’s forbidden.’
‘Forbidden by man but sanctioned by God.’
‘But what if it became known?’
‘We trust you.’
‘Me, I’m like a stone in the wall, but –’
‘I have consulted with the Mothers of the Chapter, who are now assembled, and we have decided that Mère Crucifixion shall be buried according to her express desire. Think, Père Fauvent, of the miracles that may result from this! Think of the glory to our community under God! Miracles come from tombs.’
‘But, Reverend Mother, if an agent from the Commission of Health –’
‘St Benedict II defied Constantin Pogonat over a matter of burial.’
‘– or the Commissioner of Police –’
‘Chonodemaire, one of the seven German kings who joined the Gauls in the reign of Constantine, expressly acknowledged the right of members of religious orders to be buried in a place of religion, that is to say, under the altar –’
‘– or an inspector from the Prefecture –’
‘The world counts for nothing in the face of religion. Martin, the eleventh general of the Carthusians, gave his order this device: Stat Crux dum volvitur orbis – The Cross will remain while the world revolves.’
‘Amen,’ said Fauchelevent, happy to have his doubts set at rest, as they always were by the sound of Latin.
Any audience will suffice a person who has been too long silent. The orator Gymnastoras, being released from prison with his head stuffed with arguments and syllogisms, stopped at the first tree he came to and harangued it, doing his utmost to convert it to his views. Thus the prioress, normally confined within the barriers of silence and having words heaped up within her, rose to her feet and poured forth a torrent that was like the opening of a sluice-gate.
‘I have Benedict at my right hand and Bernard at my left. Who was Bernard? He was the first Abbot of Clairvaux, and Fontaines in Burgundy is blessed inasmuch as it was his birthplace. His father was called Técelin and his mother was Alethea. He began at Cîteaux and ended at Clairvaux. He was ordained abbot by the Bishop of Châlon-sur-Saône, Guillaume de Champeaux. He instructed seven hundred novices and founded one hundred and sixty monasteries. He defeated Abelard at the Council of Rheims in 1140, and Pierre de Bruys and Henry his disciple, and a flock of black sheep known as the Apostolics. He confounded Arnaud de Bresce, pulverized the monk Raoul, slayer of Jews, dominated the Council of Rheims in 1148, and caused Gilbert de la Porée, Bishop of Poitiers, and Éon de l’Étoile to be condemned. He reconciled the differences of princes, enlightened King Louis the Young, counselled Pope Eugene III, ruled the Temple, preached the Crusade, and during his life performed two hundred and fifty miracles, as many as thirty-nine in a single day. Who was Benedict? He was the patriarch of Monte Cassino, the second founder of a monastic order, the Basil of the west. His order has produced forty popes, two hundred cardinals, fifty patriarchs, sixteen hundred archbishops, four thousand six hundred bishops, four emperors, twelve empresses, forty-six kings, forty-one queens, three thousand six hundred canonized saints, and it has endured for fourteen hundred years. Bernard on one side, and sanitation on the other; Benedict and the Inspector of Roadways! The State, the roads, the undertaker’s parlour, regulations and administration – what have we to do with those things? No onlooker cares for the way we are treated. We have not even the right to consign our dust to the Lord. Your sanitation is a revolutionary invention. God is made subordinate to the Commissioner of Police – that is our present century! Silence, Fauvent!’
Fauchelevent had fidgeted in discomfort under this tirade. The prioress continued:
‘The monasteries’ right of sepulchre is not in doubt, only fanatics and misguided persons deny it. We live in times of terrible confusion. The world is ignorant of things that it should know and knows things that are better unknown. Men are gross and impious. There are people who do not distinguish between the great St Bernard and St Bernard of the Catholic Poor, a worthy cleric who lived in the thirteenth century. Some carry blasphemy to the point of likening the scaffold of Louis XVI to the Cross of Jesus Christ. But Louis XVI was only a king. We must be watchful for God! There are no longer right-minded and wrong-minded men. The name of Voltaire is known, but not the name of César de Bus: yet César de Bus is blessed and Voltaire is accursed. The late archbishop, Cardinal de Périgord, did not even know that Charles de Condren succeeded Bérulle, that François Bourgoin succeeded Condren, Jean-François Senault succeeded Bourgoin and was himself succeeded by the father of St Marthe, all generals of the Oratory. The name of Père Coton is remembered, not because he was one of the three founders of that Order but because he was the subject of an obscene allusion by the Huguenot king, Henri IV. St François de Sales endeared himself to worldly people by cheating at cards. And so they attack religion. Why? Because there have been bad priests, because Sagittaire, the Bishop of Gap, was the brother of Salone, Bishop of Embrun, and both were worshippers of Mammon. What does that matter? Does it alter the fact that Martin de Tours was a saint who gave half his cloak to a poor man? The saints are persecuted, eyes are closed to truth, darkness is the daily wear. The most savage beasts are those that are blind. No one thinks seriously of Hell. Oh, the wickedness of the people! “In the name of the King” means, in these days, “In the name of the Revolution!” No man knows where his duty lies, to the living or to the dead. To die in sanctity is forbidden, burial is a civic matter. That is an outrage! St Léon II wrote two letters, one to Pierre Notaire and the other to the King of the Visigoths, disputing and rejecting the authority of the Exarch and the supremacy of the Emperor in this matter of the burial of the dead, and in the same matter Gautier, Bishop of Châlons, defied Otto, the Duke of Burgundy. The magistrature sustained them. In the old days the Chapter had a voice even in worldly affairs. The Abbé de Cîteaux, general of the Cistercian Order, was a hereditary member of the Parliament of Burgundy. We have always disposed of our dead as we saw fit. Is not the body of St Benedict himself in France, in the Abbaye de Fleury, called Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire, although he died in Italy, at Monte Cassin
o, in the year 543? All that is incontestable. I abhor schismatics and abominate heretics, but I will detest still more anyone who denies these things. We have only to read the works of Arnoul Wion, Gabriel Bucelin, Trithemus, Maurolicus, and Dom Luc d’Achery.’
The prioress sighed and then turned to Fauchelevent.
‘Père Fauvent, is it agreed?’
‘It is agreed, Reverend Mother.’
‘We may rely upon you?’
‘I shall obey. I am at the service of the convent.’
‘That is well. You will close the coffin and the sisters will carry it into the chapel. The Office for the Dead will be held. Then they will return to the cloister, and between eleven and midnight you will come with your crowbar. Everything will take place in the greatest secrecy. Only the four chantry-mothers will be in the chapel, with Mère Ascension and yourself.’
‘And the sister who is making atonement?’
‘She will not turn her head.’
‘But she’ll hear.’
‘She will not listen. Besides, what is known in the convent is not known to the world outside.’
There was a further pause. The prioress said:
‘You will not wear your bell. There is no need for the sister making atonement to know that you are there.’
‘If you please, Reverend Mother –’
‘Yes?’
‘Has the doctor been?’
‘He will come at four o’clock. The bell has been rung to summon him. But you do not hear the bells?’
‘I only listen for my own.’
‘That is well.’
‘I shall need a crowbar at least six feet long, Reverend Mother.’
‘Where will you get one?’
‘That will not be difficult in a place where there are so many iron bars. I have plenty at the bottom of the garden.’
‘You are to come three-quarters of an hour before midnight. Don’t forget.’
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