IN PARIS
Once more,—is it for the last time? I get out at the Northern Station. I do not ask now, "What have I to do here?" as I feel at home in the chief city of Europe. Gradually a resolve has been ripening in me, not quite clear I confess, to take refuge in the Benedictine cloister at Solesmes.
But first I go and visit my old haunts with their painful, and yet such pleasant, memories,—the garden of the Luxembourg, the Hotel Orfila, the churchyard of Mont Parnasse, and the Jardin des Plantes. In the Rue Censier I remain standing a moment in order to cast a stolen look into the garden of my hotel on the Rue de la Clef. Great is my emotion at the sight of the pavilion containing the room where I escaped death in that terrible night when I unconsciously wrestled with it. My feelings may be imagined as I turned my steps to the Jardin des Plantes and perceived the traces of the waterspout which devastated my favourite walk before the bears' and bisons' houses. On my return, in the street Saint Jacques I discover a spiritualist bookshop and buy Allan Kardec's Book of Spirits, hitherto unknown to me. I read it, and find it is Swedenborg and Blavatsky over again; and as I find my own "case" treated of everywhere, I cannot conceal from myself that I am a spiritualist. I, a spiritualist! Could I have believed I should end as one when I laughed at my former chief in the royal library at Stockholm because he was an adherent of spiritualism! One knows not into what harbour one will finally run.
While I continue my studies in Allan Kardec, I notice a gradual reappearance of the symptoms which disquieted me before. The noises over my head recommenced, I am again attacked by compression of the chest, and feel afraid of everything. I do not, however, succumb, and continue to read the spiritualistic magazines while I keep a careful watch over my thoughts and acts. Then, after quite plain warnings, I am woken up one night exactly at two o'clock by a heart attack.
I understand the hint. It is forbidden to penetrate into the secrets of the Powers, I throw away the forbidden books, and peace immediately returns—a sufficient proof for me that I have followed the Higher Will. On the following Sunday I am present at vespers in Nôtre Dame. Deeply impressed by the ceremony, although I do not understand a word of it, I burst into tears, and leave the cathedral with the conviction that here, in the Mother Church, is the harbour of salvation. But no! It was not so! For the next day I read in La Presse that the Abbot of the Solesmes Convent has just been deposed for immorality.
"Am I, then, always to be the plaything and sport of the invisible Powers?" I exclaimed, struck by so well-aimed a blow. Then I was silent, and suppressed unseemly criticism, determined to await the end.
The next book which accidentally falls into my hands allows me to catch a glimpse of the purposes of my Guide. It is Haubert's Temptation of St. Anthony. "All those who are tormented by longing for God I have devoured," says the Sphinx. This book makes me ill, and I am alarmed when I recognise in it the thoughts which I have expressed in my mystery-play mentioned above—regarding the admission of evil into the kingdom of the good God. After reading it, I threw it away like a temptation of the Devil, who is the author of it. "Anthony makes the sign of the cross, and resumes his prayers." So the book ends, and I follow his example.
After that, and at the propitious moment, I come across Huysmans' En route. Why did not this confession of an occultist fall into my hands before? Because it was necessary that two analogous destinies should be developed on parallel lines, so that one might be strengthened by the other. It is the history of an over-curious man, who challenges the Sphinx and is devoured by her, that his soul may be delivered at the foot of the Cross. Well, as far as I am concerned, a Catholic may go to the Trappists and confess to the priest; for my part, however, it is enough that my sin be publicly acknowledged in writing. Besides, the eight weeks which I have spent in Paris writing the present book may well be the equivalent and more of entering a convent, because I have lived a thorough hermit's life. A little room, not larger than a monk's cell, with a barred window high up under the ceiling, has been my dwelling. Through the bars of the window, which looks into a deep courtyard, I can see a fragment of the sky and a grey wall overgrown with ivy which climbs upward to the light. My loneliness, which I find terrible in itself, is still more oppressive in the restaurant among a noisy crowd of people twice a-day. Add to this the cold—a perpetual draught through the room which has given me violent neuralgia,—pecuniary anxieties with no means of relieving them, the daily increasing bill, and it may be imagined what the total effect is!
And then the pangs of conscience! Formerly when I regarded myself as responsible, it was only the remembrance of committed follies that pained me. Now it is the evil itself, my sinful acts, which constitute my scourge. To crown all, my past life appears to me merely as a network of crime, a skein composed of godlessness, wickednesses, blunders, brutalities in word and act Whole scenes out of my past unrolled before my gaze. I see myself in this and that situation, and always a preposterous one. I am astonished that anyone has ever been able to love me. I accuse myself of every possible crime; there is not a meanness, not a disagreeable act, which is not marked in black chalk on a white slate. I am filled with terror at myself, and would like to die.
There are moments when shame sends the blood to my cheeks and to my ear-tips. Selfishness, ingratitude, malice, envy, pride—all the deadly sins weave their ghostly dance before my awakened conscience.
While my mind thus tortures itself, my health deteriorates, my strength decreases, and, together with the emaciation of the body, the soul begins to have a presentiment of her deliverance, from the mire.
At present I read Töpffer's Le Presbytere and Dickens's Christmas Tales, and they impart to me an indescribable inward calm and joy. I return to the ideals of the best period of my youth, and recover the treasures which I had squandered in the game of life. Faith returns, and with it, trust in the natural goodness of men; faith in innocence, unselfishness, virtue.
Virtue! This word has disappeared from modern use; it has been declared null and void and thoroughly false.
Just now I see in the papers that my drama, Herr Bengt's Wife, has been acted in Copenhagen. In this play love and virtue triumph just as in the Secret of Gilde. The drama has not pleased the public any more than when it was first acted in 1882. Why? Because this fuss about virtue is considered idle talk.
I have again read Maupassant's Horla. That is the finale out of Don Juan over again. Some one steals unseen into the bedroom in the middle of the night. He drinks water and milk, and finishes by sucking the blood of the wretched Don Juan, who, hunted to death, is forced to lay hands on himself.
That is a real experience. I recognise myself in it, and 1 confess that my senses are disturbed; but some one has a hand in it.
My health constantly gets worse, for there are cracks in the wall so that smoke penetrates into my room. To-day when I walked in the street the pavement moved under my feet like the deck of a ship swaying up and down. Only with considerable difficulty can I make the ascent to the Garden of the Luxembourg. My appetite grows continually less, and I only eat in order to still the pangs of hunger.
An occurrence which has often happened since my arrival in Paris has caused me to make various reflections. Inside my coat, on the left side, exactly over the heart, there is heard a regular ticking; it reminds me of the ticking noise in walls produced by the insect called, in Sweden, "the carpenter" and also the "death-watch," believed to presage somebody's death. I thought at first it was my watch, but found it was not so, as the ticking continued after I had laid the watch aside. It is not the buckle of my suspenders, nor the lining of my vest. I accept the explanation of the death-watch, as it suits me best.
A few nights ago I had a dream which again aroused my longing to be able to die, by holding out the hope of a better existence, where there is no danger of a relapse into the misery of life. Having gone too far on a projecting ledge bounded by a steep precipice hid in darkness, I fell head foremost in an abyss. But strangely enough I fell upwards instead of downwards. I was closely surrounded by a dazzling halo of light, and I saw——. What I saw gave me two simultaneous ideas, "I am dead, and I am delivered." A feeling of the greatest happiness overcame me, together with the consciousness that the other life was now over. Light, purity, freedom, filled my spirit, and as I cried, "God!" I obtained the certainty that I had won forgiveness, that hell was behind me, and that heaven was open. Since that night I feel still more homeless than before in this world, and like a tired, weary child, I long to be able to "go home" to rest my heavy head on a mother's bosom, to sleep on the lap of a mother, the pure spouse of an infinite God, who calls Himself my Father, and whom I dare not approach.
But this wish is connected with another—to see the Alps, and more especially the Dent du Midi in the Canton Valais. I love this mountain more than the other Alps, without being able to say why. Perhaps it is the remembrance of my residence on the Lake of Geneva, where I wrote Real Utopias, and of the scenery there which reminded me of heaven. There I have spent the most beautiful hours of my life, there have I loved,—loved wife, children, humankind, the universe, God. "I lift up my hands to God's mountain and house."
Paris, October 1897.