En Route. J.-K. Huysmans
not concerned myself with that saint for a long time, and must read over again the meagre old books on her biography. After all, it will be simpler and better to be frank, and say, 'This is why I have come; I want to ask advice, which I have not determined to follow, but I have so much need of speaking, of giving the reins to my soul, that I beg you to be so kind as to lose an hour for my sake.'
"He will do it certainly and willingly.
"Then that is agreed on; suppose I go to-morrow?" But he checked himself at once. "There was nothing pressing; there was plenty of time; better take time and think; ah, yes, here is Christmas close upon us, I cannot decently trouble a priest who has his penitents to confess, for there are many communicants on that day. Let him get his hard work over, and then we will see."
He was at first pleased at having invented that excuse, then he had to admit in his heart that, after all, there was not much in it, for there was nothing to show that this priest, who was not attached to a parish, was busy in hearing confessions.
It was hardly probable, but he tried to convince himself that it might be so after all, and his hesitation began again. Angry at last with the discussion, he adopted a middle course. For greater certainty, he would not call on the abbé till after Christmas, but he would not be later than a given time; he took an almanack, and swore to keep his promise—three days after that feast.
CHAPTER IV.
Oh! that midnight mass! He had had the unfortunate idea of going to it at Christmas. He went to St. Severin, and found a young ladies' day school installed there, instead of the choir, who, with sharp voices like needles, knitted the worn-out skeins of the canticles. He had fled to St. Sulpice, and plunged into a crowd which walked and talked as if in the open air; had heard there choral-society marches, tea-garden waltzes, firework tunes, and had come away in a rage.
It had seemed to him superfluous to try St. Germain-des-Près, for he held that church in horror. Besides the weariness inspired by its heavy, ill-restored shell, and the miserable paintings with which Flandrin loaded it, the clergy there were specially, almost alarmingly, ugly, and the choir was truly infamous. They were like a set of bad cooks, boys who spat vinegar, and elderly choir-men, who cooked in the furnace of their throats a sort of vocal broth, a thin gruel of sound.
Nor did he think of taking refuge in St. Thomas Aquinas, where he dreaded the barking and the choruses; there was indeed St. Clotilde, where the psalmody, at least, is upright, and has not, like that of St. Thomas, lost all shame. He went there, but again encountered dance music and profane tunes, a worldly orgie.
At last he went to bed in a rage, saying to himself, "In Paris, at any rate, a singular baptism of music is reserved for the New-Born."
Next day, when he woke, he felt he had no courage to face the churches; the sacrileges of last night would, he thought, continue; and as the weather was almost fine, he went out, wandered in the Luxembourg, gained the square of the Observatoire, and the Boulevard de Port Royal, and mechanically made his way along the interminable Rue de la Santé.
He knew that street of old, and had taken melancholy walks in it, attracted by its poor houses, like those of a provincial town; then it was fit for a dreamer, for it was bounded on the right by the Prison de la Santé and Sainte Anne's madhouse, and on the left by convents. Light and air circulated in the street, but, behind it, all was black; it was a kind of prison corridor, with cells on either side, where some were condemned to temporary sentences, and others, of their own free will, suffered lasting sorrows.
"I can imagine," thought Durtal, "how it would have been painted by an Early Flemish master; the long street paved by patient pencils, the stories open from top to bottom, and the cupboards the same; and on one side massive cells with iron bedsteads, a stoneware jug; little peepholes in the doors secured by strong bolts, inside, scoundrels and thieves, gnashing their teeth, turning round and round, their hair on end, howling like caged animals; on the other side little rooms, furnished with a pallet-bed, a stoneware jug, a crucifix, these also closed by doors iron-banded, and within nuns or monks, kneeling on the flags, their faces clean cut against the light of a halo, their eyes lifted to heaven, their hands joined, raised from the ground in ecstasy, a pot of lilies at their side."
Then at the back of the canvas, between these two rows of houses, rises a great avenue, at the end of which in a dappled sky sits God the Father with Christ on His right, choirs of Seraphim playing on guitar and viol; God the Father immovable under his lofty tiara, His breast covered by His long beard, holds scales which balance exactly, the holy captives expiating precisely by their penances and prayers the blasphemies of the rascals and the insane.
"It must be admitted," thought Durtal, "that this street is very peculiar, that there is probably none like it in Paris, for it unites in its course virtues and vices, which in other quarters, in spite of the efforts of the Church, trend apart as far as possible from each other."
Thus thinking he had come as far as St. Anne's, where the street grows lighter and the houses are lower, with only one or two stories, then, gradually, there is greater space between them, and they are only joined to each other by blank ends of walls.
"At any rate," thought Durtal, "if this street has no distinction, it is very private; here at least one need not admire the impertinent decoration of those modern shops which expose in their windows as precious commodities, chosen piles of firewood, and in glass sweetmeat jars, coal drops and coke lollipops."
And here is an odd lane, and he looked at an alley which led down a sharp decline into a main street, where was to be seen the tricolor flag in zinc on a washhouse; he read the name: Rue de l'Ebre.
He entered it, it was but a few yards long; the whole of one side was occupied by a wall, behind which were half seen some stunted buildings, surmounted by a bell. An entrance-gate with a square wicket was placed in the wall, which was raised higher as it sloped downwards, and at the end was pierced by round windows, and rose into a little building, surmounted by a clock-tower so low that its point did not even reach the height of the two-storied house opposite.
On the other side three hovels sloped down, closely packed together; zinc pipes ran everywhere, growing like vines, ramifying like the stalks of a hollow vine along the walls, windows gaped on rusty leaden hinges. Dim courts of wretched hovels could be seen; in one was a shed where some cows were reposing; in two others were coach-houses for wheel-chairs, and a rack behind the bars of which appeared the capsuled necks of bottles.
"But this must be a church," thought Durtal, looking at the little clock tower, and the three or four round bays, which seemed cut out in emery paper to look like the black rough mortar of the wall; "where is the entrance?"
He found it on turning out of the alley into the Rue de la Glacière. A tiny porch gave access to the building.
He opened the door, and entered a large room, a sort of closed shed, painted yellow, with a flat ceiling, with small iron beams coloured grey, picked out with blue, and ornamented with gas-jets like a wine shop. At the end was a marble altar, six lighted tapers, and gilt ornaments, candelabra full of tapers, and under the tabernacle, a very small monstrance, which sparkled in the light of the tapers.
It was almost dark, the panes of the windows having been crudely daubed with bands of indigo and yellowish green; it was freezing, the stove was not alight, and the church, paved like a kitchen floor, had no matting or carpet.
Durtal wrapped himself up as best he could and sat down. His eyes gradually grew accustomed to the obscurity of the room, and what he saw was strange; in front of the choir on rows of chairs were seated human forms, drowned in floods of white muslin. No one stirred.
Suddenly there entered by a side door a nun equally wrapped from head to foot in a large veil. She passed along the altar, stopped in the middle, threw herself on the ground, kissed the floor, and by a sudden effort, without helping herself by her arms, stood upright, advanced silently into the church, and brushed by Durtal, who saw under the muslin