II
I was once saved by the tarpaulin of a humble delivery wagon. That tarpaulin certainly knew no more about it than did the men who owned it, or had the use of it here below. There are, in every object, qualities we are ignorant of and that are precisely those through which this object fulfils its most beautiful rôle in the universe, those to which it inclines as if toward some miraculous purpose, which are indeed its vocation and its true destiny.
I remember it was a morning in February, one of those hopeless mornings which we feel do not deserve the evening and will hardly attain it. I do not know what I had done to myself or to my men to have so completely lost all courage and purpose; but that morning I was certainly the most destitute of beings and the least worthy of an act of grace.
Yet for all that, grace was shown me, for that marvelous tarpaulin appeared. It was of heavy canvas, yellow and green. Its color, its folds, its whole appearance, the form it concealed, in fact I know not what element in it, showed me that I still could live, that my faults were forgiven me, that nothing about me was irremediable.
I am willing to pass for a man who is eager for forgiveness, a man who is satisfied with little. We wish to set our own value on everything, as if the things of the spirit meant the same thing as money, as if they did not depend upon quite another spirit than that of the accountants and geometricians.
I met a priest,—it was since the war began,—with whom I often talked about penance and contrition. I asked him one day what price he would ask for the remission of the heaviest burden on one’s conscience. He answered without hesitation: “Three paters and three aves.” This man was corrupted by the customs of the world and its authorities. He filled me with a sort of desire to insult him, and I confess I gave him some rude shocks. Since then I have reflected. I have not become reconciled to the memory of that priest, but I believe that grace touches us in a most unforeseen way; it shines out suddenly, without any reason, like the radiant blue in a sky where one has not expected it. It manifests itself without regard to the efforts we make to deserve it, and the occasions it selects are not in proportion to our distress. But how sovereign it is, how much the most desirable of all blessings!
Remember, remember! you were walking through the streets, a prey to some irremediable pain. Your poverty seemed unlimited, for it could not be palliated by more money, an improvement in your health or the renewal of a broken friendship. And yet, nevertheless, you suddenly breathed in the wind an imperceptible odor, familiar, charged with memories, you suddenly encountered in the color of a house, or in the look of an unknown face, some mysterious sign, and you felt that your wealth had been given back to you, that it flowed through you once more as the saving blood returns to the heart of the dying man.
I was walking one day along the banks of the Aisne, the prey of an illimitable mental torture which, just because there was no reason for it, seemed incurable. The image of a bridge in the water suddenly gave me back my confidence in myself and my accustomed joyousness. It was only a reflection; but never believe those who tell you that these things are nothing but reflections.