The lay brothers, initially intimidated by his august birth, became familiar on finding him cordial and devoid of arrogance. He became cheerful.
“I divined correctly. Manual labor is the most recreative employment in the world. At least one sees the result; it’s tangible. When I’ve peeled three hundred carrots there are three hundred, incontestably; when my soup is cooked, it’s eaten; that’s my work, and there would be a lack if it were not done. Is there a philosopher on earth who could say as much?”
In order to accompany the work, he counted in his head the quantities to do, the quantities done and their mathematical proportion, and he ticked off the unities as they went past. Then, when a need for reverie happened to overtake him, he opened a fruit or a root, a lettuce or a cabbage, abruptly, and quickly looked inside, to see something new that no one before him had ever seen, with the result that he gave a modest satisfaction to the slightly egotistical taste that the makers of the human species profess for virginity.
He had other amusements; the best consisted of following in the sky the ascent of the sketched church, and he was enthusiastic in noting day by day the quotidian progress of the labor.
“Bravo! Well done! Hurrah! Oho! And how they sing, those fecund fellows! I’ll wager that they think themselves unhappy because their work is hard, and yet they sing in spite of themselves, so much does joy impose itself on their hearts.”
He watched the arms swelling and the stones settling.
“Wasn’t I naïve on the day when I took it into my head to feel sorry for those worthy fellows? They’re toiling? Who doesn’t toil? Now, if I’m not mistaken, the will of a laborer only ever conquers two joys, that of effort and that of the result; we all know the first, but only manual workers know the second fully. Hurrah for the effort that is realized!”
And he laughed
“When I compare the worker who moves stones to my poor father, who moves armies, one making houses and the other ruins, who has the better role, and the more amusing? One is more at ease in clothes that have holes than those that have pearls, and the true misery of the humble is not being warm or cold but being unaware of the sum of happiness that their lot comprises. If one told them, they wouldn’t believe it.”
In spite of his resignation, he continued to envy the masons, who made more use of their energy than he did; in order to procure for himself the pleasure that he believed them to have, he started seeking out the rudest chores in the convent, deeming that his joy would be in proportion to his effort. He drew water from the wells, he sawed up logs, cleaved the wood, and loaded baskets of vegetables on to his back. Sweat ran down his forehead and his laughter swallowed the salty droplets, the taste of which pleased him like an ordeal.
“Harden muscles! Broaden, shoulders! Let the will of my head tame the cowardice of my beast! I enjoy living when you creak with lassitude. To work, arms! Even if our work brought no other profit, I would still have that of being obliged to you for the effort. Obey! By the victory that it gives us over ourselves, for lack of that of overcoming obstacles, effort carries its own reward!
His joy was great n the day when he was admitted to the honor of kneading the bread; curved over the wooden mortar he plunged his arms into the dough and moaned with a joyful heart; his ideas aided him to push, and he worked like a madman while philosophizing in stammered speech punctuated with groans.
“Dom Ambrosius, my defunct tutor, sometimes reproached me for quibbling like a heretic, aah! I wouldn’t want to offend you, Lord, but how is it that in your Holy Scriptures, in the first pages, I encounter a verse in which your anger says the humans: ‘You shall earn your bread by the sweat of your brow,’ aah? That you said that, I don’t presume to doubt, but that you proffered such a sentence as a condemnation, and not as a favor, that’s what I can scarcely conceive, aah! Certainly, bread is good, but sweat is no less useful, nor less good, aah! And if one of them procures us the strength of our bodies, the other maintains the health of our souls; bread is nourishment for the flesh, but action is the hygiene of the entire being, aah! Nothing is ennobling for humans except effort, and in condemning us to effort you obliged us to ennoble ourselves, aah!”
He interrupted himself in order to draw breath.
“Is it not better to be content with oneself, Lord, after completing a task than to be content with oneself without doing anything? Isn’t deserving better than enjoying? And even if one attaches a high price to enjoyment, can one deny that it’s more delectable when one has earned it thoroughly? Aren’t desiring, willing and hoping, tending toward the goal and dreaming about it, profiting from it in advance, better than not knowing what to do when one has reached it? Isn’t savoring the illusion, caressing the chimera, intoxicating oneself in such a manner that the imagination dresses the future with charms that the reality will soon disappoint? By expelling us from the earthly paradise, you opened up the interior paradise to us; why didn’t you say so, instead of telling humans that the duty of energy is their punishment?”
He worked harder when his idea was in contradiction to another.
“The fabulous Eden in which idleness and profusion reigned, and that inevitable nausea that satiety gives, aah! was the Devil’s garden and not the Lord’s, for Satan is the proprietor where humans have nothing to do, aah! He invents passions for us to employ our strength, and occupy our leisure, and then we bite the apples that he offers us, aah! But the Archangel came to liberate us by throwing us out of the garden, aah!”
A fly that took advantage of his occupation to tickle his left nostril constrained him to interrupt himself.
“The more I think about that legend of the earthly paradise, the more I sense that the text isn’t written for us; doubtless that apology for idleness was drafted by and for the Orientals, who like sleeping in the shade during the hot hours of the day: appropriate to Asia. But a man of the North, or simply a man, would not have invented that blasphemy!”
In fact, he took greater pleasure every day in his métier as a monastic scullion, and he devoted himself to it, content with everything, singing, laughing, working as much as he could, thinking just enough to collect himself for a few minutes, perfectly happy and devoid of any desire.
“I’ve found the world’s haven; I’m installed within it for life.”
Such an absence of ambitions and appetites disconcerted the powers charged with realizing all the wishes of the fellow. That a favor so exceptional had fallen precisely on the only man who imagined that he had to need of anything was truly a pity! The Devil could not find his due therein. So he therefore stimulated one of those well-intentioned passers-by who rarely fail to come along and spoil life, under the pretext of doing us a service.
VIII. Dieudonat realizes that he is endowed with a virtue that will prevent him from having any
Among the lay brothers who carried out the inferior labor of the convent, Brother Onesime was undoubtedly the dullest and the most boorish. He swept the cloister, the courtyard and the corridors, because any other task would have seemed too arduous to be entrusted to his intelligence. By reason of that simplicity the fellow was the butt of the jokes of the stupid, who called him Zime, as if to withdrawn something further from the little that remained to him of heaven and the human. As was reasonable, Dieudonat had found a charm in the excessive candor of the simpleton, and the latter venerated him; they took pleasure in one another’s company, and when their work was done, they laughed wholeheartedly together.
One day, Onesime, who, among other defects, had a few rotten teeth, began to suffer from a molar and to writhe on the kitchen floor. The event seemed to be of scant importance; nevertheless, because of that small incident, fate was about to change for entire provinces. Hundreds of thousands of people were having breakfast tranquilly in the distance, with no suspicion that they were entering into a fearful phase of their existence because of an imperceptible black spot that had just been revealed in the second molar of a monastery servant!
The lay brothers watche
d their Zime rolling around on the floor or hitting himself in the jaw with his fist, and they laughed with the good humor that welcomes so gladly the suffering of people that one is accustomed to find ridiculous. When he was no longer amusing them they left him, and his only friend approached him in order to offer him gargles and simples. He caressed him gently with affectionate words; but the patient merely screamed. He howled like that for an hour, mingling his cries with bizarre words, always the same: “It’s forbidden…if it weren’t forbidden…why is it forbidden?”
He seemed to be struggling against an obsession or a temptation, and turning longing gazes toward his protector.
Finally, at the end of his tether, he murmured: “If you wished...”
“What?”
“Dieudonat, if you wished...”
“What, cousin?”
“To cure me...”
“But, my poor Zime, I’d like nothing better, if it depended on me; I’ve tried everything; I don’t know what more I can do.”
“A word, just say a word!”
“I’ve said so many of them that I’m ashamed of always talking without doing anything.”
“You haven’t said the right one. Say it, if you pity me.”
“I do pity you.”
“Say it, then. Aloud, quickly, while there’s no one here, say it! ‘I wish him to be cured.’ Say that, and I’ll be cured.”
“What folly has got into you? Only Our Lord and the saints can accomplish miracles.”
“Say it, quickly!”
“Your childishness is causing me chagrin.”
“He won’t say it! He doesn’t love me! He wants me to suffer! But I can’t, any more… Speak, then!”
“I wish you were cured.”
Immediately, Onesime stopped writhing on the floor, raised his head and looked at the walls, as if to seek a message there regarding himself; then he stood up with a sprightly bound, his face cheerful, and he started dancing in the middle of the kitchen. The other contemplated him with amazement.”
“How good it is no longer to be in pain!”
“You’re no longer in pain?”
“None at all! You see how easy it was? But don’t tell anyone, I implore you; the Prior will throw me in the dungeon.”
“How can you believe that a word from me…?”
“Oh, my good friend, my savior, it’s true, then, that you don’t know?”
“What?”
“What we’re forbidden to tell you.”
“I don’t know and I don’t understand.”
“Listen! You’ve soothed me, and I’m not an ingrate...I’ll do you a favor too. But don’t betray me, at least. Come closer, so I can whisper in your ear. There’s a fatality over you, since birth. All your wishes are granted.”
“What a story!”
“No one’s unaware of it except you. It’s even said that your father locked you up in a convent because of it. All your wishes, you understand? All of them! You’ve just made one, and here I am, on my feet. Cured forever, you know. If you don’t believe me, try something else. Order that...that…that... I can’t think of anything myself, when I try.”
“You’re rambling, my poor Zime.”
“Try!”
“Certainly not. I won’t try.”
Dieudonat went back to work, tranquilly. He refused to suppose, even for a minute, that he could really be invested with a superhuman power, and the mere hypothesis of an arrogance of that ludicrous extent seemed to him to be as culpable as it was grotesque, offensive to God as much as to reason.
“Humans have a singular liking for superstition, and one might think that, the more naïve they are, the greater need they have for mystery; the supernatural attracts them much more than the natural; those who have little understanding of things delight in thinking that no one can understand them, and it’s a species of revenge that Heaven accords them when it opens up regions of dream to them that are forbidden to strong minds.”
While talking to himself in that fashion, he found some little brown slugs in a very pale cabbage, and concluded: “Happy are the poor in spirit; skepticism is a luxury for the exclusive usage of the rich, rich in intelligence, who ought to hide that luxury, and above all, to refrain from giving it as alms to the poor.”
At that moment, he found that he had no water to rinse his cabbage. He stood up, picked up an empty bucket, and, by way of a joke, he exclaimed, jovially: “I wish this bucket were full of clean water.”
At the same instant, the bucket became heavy at the end of his left arm. He felt the weight, looked at his hand, saw the miracle, and, in his amazement, dropped the bucket full of liquid. The bucket rolled on the tiles, but the water did not run out.
“You see,” said Onesime. “The bucket stays full. Your wishes are irrevocable. I told you.”
The Prince had gone as pale as his cabbage. He contemplated fearfully the vertical and tranquil disk of water, with refused to spread out over the floor. This time he understood the truth.
“My God, my God, with what terrible favor have you heaped me? My impotence, which I knew, is overcharged with a power, which I don’t know!”
Onesime was baffled by that sadness.
“You’re desolate? Why? On the contrary, you should rejoice, and thank the Lord. Haven’t you noticed, then, how your coppers shine as soon as you’ve scrubbed them, how the rust vanishes from the pots, how the chimney stops smoking, as soon as you wish it?”
“As soon…yes, you’re right. ‘As soon…’ And that signifies: ‘Too quickly!’ For here I am, among all creatures, deprived of the ardor for hope that we call Desire, the ardor for work that we call Effort. Innocent friend! Understand, then, that I am henceforth poorer than the poor, infinitely deprived, since I will no longer desire anything, having the possibility of everything.”
“It’s very convenient, however.”
“I’ve spent eight years learning that Effort is the unique nobility of human beings, and in a minute, I’ve learned that effort is forbidden to me. What remains to me, then?”
“You have…you have…you can do what you want, of course!”
“The good and the evil.”
“You’ve done good for me!”
“Are you sure that you won’t pay dearly for it?”
“Pay?” said Onesime. “I don’t have a sou.”
So saying, he burst out laughing, but this time, his gaiety was painful to the young sage, who felt a shiver run down his back, and looked at his humble comrade for a long time, as if he had a presentiment that the fellow would soon pay with his life for the relief of a minute.
He said: “Your designs are impenetrable, O Lord. May your will be done.”
He made the sign of the cross, sat down on a stool, picked up another cabbage, sliced it in two, and strove not to think about it any longer.
But the good times of inner peace were over.
From that day onward the Prince was haunted by an obsessive concern: never to formulate a wish, in order to leave himself some latitude for the energy of effort, without which life is not living.
He no longer dared to desire, he no longer permitted himself to want, in the fear of seeing the wish granted before the gesture. As soon as he sensed the embryo of a desire born in his soul, he immobilized it in the depths of his being. Like a young giant afraid of his strength, and even of his shadow, he only walked with the apprehension of brushing people or things, even mentally; and because the action of his excessive power seemed more perilous for him than other people, he began to dissociate himself, separating his mind from his body, distancing the will that motivates from the beast that effectuates.
In vain he persisted obstinately in hard tasks; brutal effort is joyless when the mind is no longer cooperating with it; work lost all its charm, and Dieudonat lost his gaiety. He became an automatic force, and already he sensed the moment approaching when he would no longer seem to be anything but a corpse that continues to move.
IX. Unfortunate consequen
ces of a good deed
At about that time, Duke Hardouin fell gravely ill; the physicians declared that his life was in danger, perhaps in order to have the honor of returning it to him, and the country was alarmed. The idea of seeing the scepter in the hands of the terrible Ludovic frightened the population, and the egotisms in peril remembered the legitimate heir imprisoned in a cloister. As long as it was only a matter of him, they had borne his misfortune patiently, but now that it was a matter of themselves, the captivity of a innocent man appeared intolerable. It became all the more so because the author of such an injustice was about to die. Deputations departed for Fortunada, from which they were determined to bring Dieudonat back.
Their journey was futile. The Prior remembered only too well the example of Dom Ambrosius, hanged from the crenellations of the manor. He watched over his prisoner, preserving him from any communication with the century, and locked him in his cell every evening. He welcomed the deputies with tenderness, caressed them, praised their zeal and that of the Prince he guarded, whom he loved like a son. However, what could he do? He had formal orders and deplored his impotence. He offered, with his regrets, a collation and meager souvenirs, medals and medallions, tin baubles and ampoules to ward off maladies; then, mildly, he sent the worthy folk away, who saluted him—after which, he rubbed his hands, convinced of having eluded a difficult situation.
But human cleverness cannot prevent the advent of evil when the logic of events has rendered it necessary. Is it not for that reason that certain men, made a little more than others in the image of God, are admitted to the sad privilege of foreseeing things that are still distant and prophesying them? Is it not also for the same reason that the Orientals, firmly decided to accept logic rather than to study it, resign themselves to everything, saying: “It is written!”
Nothing, therefore, prevented the heir presumptive from learning the news that people tried to hide from him, and learning it in the simplest fashion. To begin with, he heard the convent bells ringing at an unusual hour; then, in the frisson of the breeze that stirred the flowers and bushes in the garden, he perceived the tiny voice of distant bells, and was able to conclude that the entire country was ringing toward God; then the monks intoned the psalms for the dying, for an illustrious individual whom they did not name. By way of the peasants who brought the tithe and the questing brothers who return to the monastery with their satchels and stories of the world, Onesime was informed, and charitably, he informed his comrade.
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