Down There (Là-Bas)

by Joris-karl Huysmans

  "They are no worse than the people who deny God and Creation," said Carhaix. "God is immanent in His creatures. He is their Life principle, the source of movement, the foundation of existence, says Saint Paul. He has His personal existence, being the 'I AM,' as Moses says.

  "The Holy Ghost, through Christ in glory, will be immanent in all beings. He will be the principle which transforms and regenerates them, but there is no need for him to be incarnate. The Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father through the Son. He is sent to act, not to materialize himself. It is downright madness to maintain the contrary, thus falling into the heresies of the Gnostics and the Fratricelli, into the errors of Dulcin de Novare and his wife Marguerite, into the filth of abbé Beccarelli, and the abominations of Segarelli of Parma, who, on pretext of becoming a child the better to symbolize the simple, naïf love of the Paraclete, had himself diapered and slept on the breast of a nurse."

  "But," said Durtal, "you haven't made yourself quite clear to me. If I understand you, the Holy Ghost will act by an infusion into us. He will transmute us, renovate our souls by a sort of 'passive purgation'-to drop into the theological vernacular."

  "Yes, he will purify us soul and body."

  "How will he purify our bodies?"

  "The action of the Paraclete," the astrologer struck in, "will extend to the principle of generation. The divine life will sanctify the organs which henceforth can procreate only elect creatures, exempt from original sin, creatures whom it will not be necessary to test in the fires of humiliation, as the Holy Bible says. This was the doctrine of the prophet Vintras, that extraordinary unlettered man who wrote such impressive and ardent pages. The doctrine has been continued and amplified, since Vintras's death, by his successor, Dr. Johannès."

  "Then there is to be Paradise on earth," said Des Hermies.

  "Yes, the kingdom of liberty, goodness, and love."

  "You've got me all mixed up," said Durtal. "Now you announce the arrival of the Holy Ghost, now the glorious advent of Christ. Are these kingdoms identical or is one to follow the other?"

  "There is a distinction," answered Gévingey, "between the coming of the Paraclete and the victorious return of Christ. They occur in the order named. First a society must be recreated, embraced by the third Hypostasis, by Love, in order that Jesus may descend, as He has promised, from the clouds and reign over the people formed in His image."

  "What rôle is the Pope to play?"

  "Ah, that is one of the most curious points of the Johannite doctrine. Time, since the first appearance of the Messiah, is divided, as you know, into two periods, the period of the Victim, of the expiant Saviour, the period in which we now are, and the other, that which we await, the period of Christ bathed in the spittle of mockery but radiant with the superadorable splendour of His person. Well, there is a different pope for each of these eras. The Scriptures announce these two sovereign pontificates-and so do my horoscopes, for that matter.

  "It is an axiom of theology that the spirit of Peter lives in his successors. It will live in them, more or less hidden, until the longed-for expansion of the Holy Ghost. Then John, who has been held in reserve, as the Gospel says, will begin his ministry of love and will live in the souls of the new popes."

  "I don't understand the utility of a pope when Jesus is to be visible," said Des Hermies.

  "To tell the truth, there is no use in having one, and the papacy is to exist only during the epoch reserved for the effluence of the divine Paraclete. The day on which, in a shower of meteors, Jesus appears, the pontificate of Rome ceases."

  "Without going more deeply into questions which we could discuss the rest of our lives," said Durtal, "I marvel at the placidity of the Utopian who imagines that man is perfectible. There is no denying that the human creature is born selfish, abusive, vile. Just look around you and see. Society cynical and ferocious, the humble heckled and pillaged by the rich traffickers in necessities. Everywhere the triumph of the mediocre and unscrupulous, everywhere the apotheosis of crooked politics and finance. And you think you can make any progress against a stream like that? No, man has never changed. His soul was corrupt in the days of Genesis and is not less rotten at present. Only the form of his sins varies. Progress is the hypocrisy which refines the vices."

  "All the more reason," Carhaix rejoined, "why society-if it is as you have described it-should fall to pieces. I, too, think it is putrefied, its bones ulcerated, its flesh dropping off. It can neither be poulticed nor cured, it must be interred and a new one born. And who but God can accomplish such a miracle?"

  "If we admit," said Des Hermies, "that the infamousness of the times is transitory, it is self-evident that only the intervention of a God can wash it away; for neither socialism nor any other chimera of the ignorant and hate-filled workers will modify human nature and reform the peoples. These tasks are above human forces."

  "And the time awaited by Johannès is at hand," Gévingey proclaimed. "Here are some of the manifest proofs. Raymond Lully asserted that the end of the old world would be announced by the diffusion of the doctrines of Antichrist. He defined these doctrines. They are materialism and the monstrous revival of magic. This prediction applies to our age, I think. On the other hand, the good tidings was to be realized, according to Our Lord, as reported by Saint Matthew, 'When ye shall see the abomination of desolation… stand in the holy place.' And isn't it standing in the holy place now? Look at our timorous, skeptical Pope, lukewarm and politic, our episcopate of simonists and cowards, our flabby, indulgent clergy. See how they are ravaged by Satanism, then tell me if the Church can fall any lower."

  "The promises are explicit and cannot fail," and with his elbows on the table, his chin in his hands, and his eyes to heaven, the bell-ringer murmured, "Our father-thy kingdom come!"

  "It's getting late," said Des Hermies, "time we were going."

  While they were putting on their coats, Carhaix questioned Durtal. "What do you hope for if you have no faith in the coming of Christ?"

  "I hope for nothing at all."

  "I pity you. Really, you believe in no future amelioration?"

  "I believe, alas, that a dotard Heaven maunders over an exhausted Earth."

  The bell-ringer raised his hands and sadly shook his head.

  When they had left Gévingey, Des Hermies, after walking in silence for some time, said, "You are not astonished that all the events spoken of tonight happened at Lyons." And as Durtal looked at him inquiringly, he continued, "You see I am well acquainted with Lyons. People's brains there are as foggy as the streets when the morning mists roll up from the Rhone. That city looks magnificent to travellers who like the long avenues, wide boulevards, green grass, and penitentiary architecture of modern cities. But Lyons is also the refuge of mysticism, the haven of preternatural ideas and doubtful creeds. That's where Vintras died, the one in whom, it seems, the soul of the prophet Elijah was incarnate. That's where Naundorff found his last partisans. That is where enchantment is rampant, because in the suburb of La Guillotière you can have a person bewitched for a louis. Add that it is likewise, in spite of its swarms of radicals and anarchists, an opulent market for a dour Protestant Catholicism; a Jansenist factory, richly productive of bourgeois bigotry.

  " Lyons is celebrated for delicatessen, silk, and churches. At the top of every hill-and there's a hill every block-is a chapel or a convent, and Notre Dame de Fourvière dominates them all. From a distance this pile looks like an eighteenth century dresser turned upside down, but the interior, which is in process of completion, is amazing. You ought to go and take a look at it some day. You will see the most extraordinary jumble of Assyrian, Roman, Gothic, and God knows what, jacked together by Bossan, the only architect for a century who has known how to create a cathedral interior. The nave glitters with inlays and marble, with bronze and gold. Statues of angels diversify the rows of columns and break up, with impressive grace, the known harmonies of line. It's Asiatic and barbarous, and reminds one of the architecture shown in Gustave
Moreau's Hérodiade.

  "And there is an endless stream of pilgrims. They strike bargains with Our Lady. They pray for an extension of markets, new outlets for sausages and silks. They consult her on ways and means of getting rid of spoiled vegetables and pushing off their shoddy. In the centre of the city, in the church of Saint Boniface, I found a placard requesting the faithful, out of respect for the holy place, not to give alms. It was not seemly, you see, that the commercial orisons be disturbed by the ridiculous plaints of the indigent."

  "Well," said Durtal, "it's a strange thing, but democracy is the most implacable of the enemies of the poor. The Revolution, which, you would think, ought to have protected them, proved for them the most cruel of régimes. I will show you some day a decree of the Year II, pronouncing penalties not only for those who begged but for those who gave."

  "And yet democracy is the panacea which is going to cure every ill," said Des Hermies, laughing. And he pointed to enormous posters everywhere in which General Boulanger peremptorily demanded that the people of Paris vote for him in the coming election.

  Durtal shrugged his shoulders. "Quite true. The people are very sick. Carhaix and Gévingey are perhaps right in maintaining that no human agency is powerful enough to effect a cure."

  CHAPTER XXI

  Durtal had resolved not to answer Mme. Chantelouve's letters. Every day, since their rupture, she had sent him an inflamed missive, but, as he soon noticed, her Mænad cries were subsiding into plaints and reproaches. She now accused him of ingratitude, and repented having listened to him and having permitted him to participate in sacrileges for which she would have to answer before the heavenly tribunal. She pleaded to see him once more. Then she was silent for a while week. Finally, tired, no doubt, of writing unanswered letters, she admitted, in a last epistle, that all was over.

  After agreeing with him that their temperaments were incompatible, she ended:

  "Thanks for the trig little love, ruled like music-paper, that you gave me. My heart cannot be so straitly measured, it requires more latitude-"

  "Her heart!" he laughed, then he continued to read:

  "I understand that it is not your earthly mission to satisfy my heart but you might at least have conceded me a frank comradeship which would have permitted me to leave my sex at home and to come and spend an evening with you now and then. This, seemingly, so simple, you have rendered impossible. Farewell forever. I have only to renew my pact with Solitude, to which I have tried to be unfaithful-"

  "With solitude! and that complaisant and paternal cuckold, her husband! Well, he is the one most to be pitied now. Thanks to me, he had evenings of quiet. I restored his wife, pliant and satisfied. He profited by my fatigues, that sacristan. Ah, when I think of it, his sly, hypocritical eyes, when he looked at me, told me a great deal.

  "Well, the little romance is over. It's a good thing to have your heart on strike. In my brain I still have a house of ill fame, which sometimes catches fire, but the hired myrmidons will stamp out the blaze in a hurry.

  "When I was young and ardent the women laughed at me. Now that I am old and stale I laugh at them. That's more in my character, old fellow," he said to the cat, which, with ears pricked up, was listening to the soliloquy. "Truly, Gilles de Rais is a great deal more interesting than Mme. Chantelouve. Unfortunately, my relations with him are also drawing to a close. Only a few more pages and the book is done. Oh, Lord! Here comes Rateau to knock my house to pieces."

  Sure enough, the concierge entered, made an excuse for being late, took off his vest, and cast a look of defiance at the furniture. Then he hurled himself at the bed, grappled with the mattress, got a half-Nelson on it, and balancing himself, turning half around, hurled it onto the springs.

  Durtal, followed by his cat, went into the other room, but suddenly Rateau ceased wrestling and came and stood before Durtal.

  "Monsieur, do you know what has happened?" he blubbered.

  "Why, no."

  "My wife has left me."

  "Left you! but she must be over sixty."

  Rateau raised his eyes to heaven.

  "And she ran off with another man?"

  Rateau, disconsolate, let the feather duster fall from his listless hand.

  "The devil! Then, in spite of her age, your wife had needs which you were unable to satisfy?"

  The concierge shook his head and finally succeeded in saying, "It was the other way around."

  "Oh," said Durtal, considering the old caricature, shrivelled by bad air and "three-six," "but if she is tired of that sort of thing, why did she run off with a man?"

  Rateau made a grimace of pitying contempt, "Oh, he's impotent. Good for nothing-"

  "Ah!"

  "It's my job I'm sore about. The landlord won't keep a concierge that hasn't a wife."

  "Dear Lord," thought Durtal, "how hast thou answered my prayers!-Come on, let's go over to your place," he said to Des Hermies, who, finding Rateau's key in the door, had walked in.

  "Righto! since your housecleaning isn't done yet, descend like a god from your clouds of dust, and come on over to the house."

  On the way Durtal recounted his concierge's conjugal misadventure.

  "Oh!" said Des Hermies, "many a woman would be happy to wreathe with laurel the occiput of so combustible a sexagenarian.-Look at that! Isn't it revolting?" pointing to the walls covered with posters.

  It was a veritable debauch of placards. Everywhere on lurid coloured paper in box car letters were the names of Boulanger and Jacques.

  "Thank God, this will be over tomorrow."

  "There is one resource left," said Des Hermies. "To escape the horrors of present day life never raise your eyes. Look down at the sidewalk always, preserving the attitude of timid modesty. When you look only at the pavement you see the reflections of the sky signs in all sorts of fantastic shapes; alchemic symbols, talismanic characters, bizarre pantacles with suns, hammers, and anchors, and you can imagine yourself right in the midst of the Middle Ages."

  "Yes, but to keep from seeing the disenchanting crowd you would have to wear a long-vizored cap like a jockey and blinkers like a horse."

  Des Hermies sighed. "Come in," he said, opening the door. They went in and sitting down in easy chairs they lighted their cigarettes.

  "I haven't got over that conversation we had with Gévingey the other night at Carhaix's," said Durtal. "Strange man, that Dr. Johannès. I can't keep from thinking about him. Look here, do you sincerely believe in his miraculous cures?"

  "I am obliged to. I didn't tell you all about him, for a physician can't lightly make these dangerous admissions. But you may as well know that this priest heals hopeless cases.

  "I got acquainted with him when he was still a member of the Parisian clergy. It came about by one of those miracles of his which I don't pretend to understand.

  "My mother's maid had a granddaughter who was paralyzed in her arms and legs and suffered death and destruction in her chest and howled when you touched her there. She had been in this condition two years. It had come on in one night, how produced nobody knows. She was sent away from the Lyons hospitals as incurable. She came to Paris, underwent treatment at La Salpêtrière, and was discharged when nobody could find out what was the matter with her nor what medication would give her any relief. One day she spoke to me of this abbé Johannès, who, she said, had cured persons in as bad shape as she. I did not believe a word, but hearing that the priest refused to take any money for his services I did not dissuade her from visiting him, and out of curiosity I went along.

  "They placed her in a chair. The ecclesiastic, little, active, energetic, took her hand and applied to it, one after the other, three precious stones. Then he said coolly, 'Mademoiselle, you are the victim of consanguineal sorcery.'

  "I could hardly keep from laughing.

  "'Remember,' he said,'two years back, for that is when your paralytic stroke came on. You must have had a quarrel with a kinsman or kinswoman?'

  "It was true. Poor Marie
had been unjustly accused of the theft of a watch which was an heirloom belonging to an aunt of hers. The aunt had sworn vengeance.

  "'Your aunt lives in Lyons?'

  "She nodded.

  "'Nothing astonishing about that,' continued the priest. 'In Lyons, among the lower orders, there are witch doctors who know a little about the witchcraft practised in the country. But be reassured. These people are not powerful. They know little more than the A B C's of the art. Then, mademoiselle, you wish to be cured?'

  "And after she replied that she did, he said gently, 'That is all. You may go.'

  "He did not touch her, did not prescribe any remedy. I came away persuaded that he was a mountebank. But when, three days later, the girl was able to raise her arms, and all her pain had left her, and when, at the end of a week, she could walk, I had to yield in face of the evidence. I went back to see him, had occasion to do him a service; and thus our relations began."

  "But what are his methods?"

  "He opens, like the curate of Ars, with prayer. Then he evokes the militant archangels, then he breaks the magic circles and chases-'classes,' as he says-the spirits of Evil. I know very well that this is confounding. Whenever I speak of this man's potency to my confrères they smile with a superior air or serve up to me the specious arguments which they have fabricated to explain the cures wrought by Christ and the Virgin. The method they have imagined consists in striking the patient's imagination, suggesting to him the will to be cured, persuading him that he is well, hypnotizing him in a waking state-so to speak. This done-say they-the twisted legs straighten, the sores disappear, the consumption-torn lungs are patched up, the cancers become benign pimples, and the blind eyes see. This procedure they attribute to miracle workers to explain away the supernatural-why don't they use the method themselves if it is so simple?"