LVI.
DOUBLE REMORSE.
"Ah, how much better are the love-tales which we spelt in our eyes with our hearts."
CAMILLE LEMONNIER (Croquis d'automne).
His Mass said, Marcel did not want to return to the parsonage. He made his way slowly to the wood, absorbed by a world of thoughts. All was quite changed since the day before, and what a revolution had been wrought in his soul in one day.
The day before there was still time to stop, there was time to cast far away temptations and impure desires, to avoid the infernal snares and ambushes, to take refuge, according to the Apostle's advice, in the bosom of God; now it was too late, it was no longer in his power; he found himself hemmed in within the circle of abominations, and he did not see how he could get forth.
A double remorse tormented him, and wrung his conscience with fierce fingers.
On the one hand, there was his servant, become his accomplice and his mistress, an odious thing; his servant defiling his couch, hitherto immaculate; his couch of a virtuous priest.
Then, on the other, there was the fair pale face of Suzanne, full of reproaches, surprised and sad. Why had he not stopped? What fury had urged him forward, cold and scornful, when he burned to hear once again the sound of that voice which stirred his heart!
And the memory of that meeting, at the very moment of the consummation of his infamy, was the blow of the lash which laid bare the open wound of his remorse. He did not curse his crime more than the inopportuneness and the awkwardness of that crime.
What! be had given himself up to a despicable old woman, he had slaked the thirst of that ghoul with his generous blood, he had abandoned to that hell-hag the promises of his young body and his virgin soul, while a young girl whose like he had never seen but in fairy tales and dreams, came to him and seemed to say to him: "You may love me."
And he had repulsed her in order to give himself up to the former: that horrible creature, that hypocrite, that sorceress.
And now that his judgment was calm, he could not understand how he had allowed himself to be carried away by such clumsy manoeuvres, that he had fallen in so cowardly a way, and for such an object.
If, at least, it had been in the arms of the lovely school-girl! If his virtue had melted under the kisses of her charming lips! But no, none of all that: none of those unparalleled joys, of those ineffable delights, of those divine and sweet pleasures.
Unclean touches, a withered body, an impure mouth. Lewdness instead of love.
And his servant's caresses recurred to him and froze him like the infernal spectres of a hideous nightmare.
He saw again her face, lighted up by amorous fever, her fiery lecherous look, fastening on him with all the wild fury of her forty-five years, with the cynicism of the sham saint who has thrown away her mask, and who, after long fasting, continence and privation, finds at length the means of glutting herself, and wallows more than any other in the sewer of obscenities and Saturnalia.
He saw her again like the old courtesan of Horace,
….Mulier nigris dignissima barris
soliciting horribly her too avaricious caresses, and employing all the arsenal of her filthy seduction to excite him.
Meanwhile the hours were passing away. The spirit travels in vain into the land of phantoms; nature performs her modest functions without caring for the wanderings of the spirit.
He felt by the pangs of his stomach that he had as yet only breakfasted on the body of Christ, a meagre repast after a night consecrated to Venus. In short, he was hungry, and he decided to return to the parsonage.