CHAPTER III.
CONFESSION.—THE CONFESSOR AND THE HUSBAND.—HOW THEY DETACH THE WIFE.—THE DIRECTOR.—DIRECTORS ASSOCIATED TOGETHER.—ECCLESIASTICAL POLICY.
When I reflect on all that is contained in the words confession and direction, those simple words, that immense power, the most complete in the world, and endeavour to analyse their whole meaning, I tremble with fear. I seem to be descending endless spiral stairs into the depths of a dark mine. Just now I felt contempt for the priest; now I fear him.
But we must not be afraid; we must look him in the face. Let us candidly put down in set terms the language of the confessor.
"God hears you, hears you through me; through me God will answer you." Such is the first word; such is the literal copy. The authority is accepted as infinite and absolute, without any bargaining as to measure.
"But you tremble, you dare not tell this terrible God your weakness and childishness; well! tell them to your father; a father has a right to know the secrets of his child. He is an indulgent father, who wants to know them only to absolve them. He is a sinner like yourself: has he then a right to be severe? Come, then, my child, come and tell me—what you have not dared to whisper in your mother's ear; tell it me; who will ever know?"
Then is it, amid sobs and sighs, from the choking heaving breast that the fatal word rises to the lips: it escapes, and she hides her head. Oh! he who heard that has gained an immense advantage, and will keep it. Would to God that he did not abuse it! It was heard, remember, not by the wood and the dark oak of the confessional, but by ears of flesh and blood.
And this man now knows of this woman, what the husband has not known in all the long effusion of his heart by day and night, what even her own mother does not know, who thinks she knows her entirely, having had her so many times a naked infant upon her knees.
This man knows, and will know—don't be afraid of his forgetting it. If the confession is in good hands, so much the better, for it is for ever. And she, she knows full well she has a master of her intimate thoughts. Never will she pass by that man without casting down her eyes.
The day when this mystery was imparted, he was very near her, she felt it. On a higher seat, he seemed to have an irresistible ascendency over her. A magnetic influence has vanquished her, for she wished not to speak, and she spoke in spite of herself. She felt herself fascinated, like the bird by the serpent.
So far, however, there is no art on the side of the priest. The force of circumstances has done everything, that of religious institution, and that of nature. As a priest, he received her at his knees, and listened to her. Then, master of her secret, of her thoughts, the thoughts of a woman, he became man again, without, perhaps, either wishing or knowing it, and laid upon her, weakened and disarmed, the heavy hand of man.
And her family now? her husband? Who will dare to assert that his position is the same as before?
Every reflecting mind knows full well that thought is the most personal part of the person. The master of a person's thoughts is he to whom the person belongs. The priest has the soul fast, as soon as he has received the dangerous pledge of the first secrets, and he will hold it faster and faster. The two husbands now take shares, for now there are two—one has the soul, the other the body.
Take notice that in this sharing, one of the two really has the whole; the other, if he gets anything, gets it by favour. Thought by its nature is prevailing and absorbing; the master of her thought, in the natural progress of his sway, will ever go on reducing the part that seemed to remain in the possession of the other. The husband may think himself well off, if a widower with respect to the soul, he still preserves the involuntary, inert, and lifeless possession.
How humiliating, to obtain nothing of what was your own, but by authorisation and indulgence;[[1]] to be seen, and followed into your most private intimacy, by an invisible witness, who governs you and gives you your allowance; to meet in the street a man who knows better than yourself your most secret weaknesses, who bows cringingly, turns and laughs. It is nothing to be powerful, if one is not powerful alone—alone! God does not allow shares.
It is with this reasoning that the priest is sure to comfort himself in his persevering efforts to sever this woman from her family, to weaken her kindred ties, and, particularly, to undermine the rival authority—I mean, the husband's. The husband is a heavy encumbrance to the priest. But if this husband suffers at being so well known, spied, and seen, when he is alone, he who sees all suffers still more. She comes now every moment to tell innocently of things that transport him beyond himself. Often would he stop her, and would willingly say, "Mercy, madam, this is too much!" And though these details make him suffer the torment of the damned, he wants still more, and requires her to enter further and further into these avowals, both humiliating for her, and cruel for him, and to give him the detail of the saddest circumstances.
The Confessor of a young woman may boldly be termed the jealous secret enemy of the husband. If there be one exception to this rule (and I am willing to believe there may be), he is a hero, a saint, a martyr, a man more than man.
The whole business of the confessor is to insulate this woman, and he does it conscientiously. It is the duty of him who leads her in the way of salvation to disengage her gradually from all earthly ties. It requires time, patience, and skill. The question is not how these strong ties may suddenly be broken; but to discover well, first of all, of what threads each tie is composed, and to disentangle, and gnaw them away thread by thread.
And all this may easily be done by him who, awakening new scruples every day, fills a timid soul with uneasiness, about the lawfulness of her most holy affections. If any one of them be innocent, it is, after all, an earthly attachment, a robbery against God: God wants all. No more relationship or friendship; nothing must remain. "A brother?" No, he is still a man. "But at least my sister? my mother?" "No, you must leave all—leave them intentionally, and from your soul; you shall always see them, my child; nothing will appear changed; only, close your heart." A moral solitude is thus established around. Friends go away, offended at her freezing politeness. "People are cool in this house." But why this strange reception? They cannot guess; she does not always know why herself. The thing is commanded; is it not enough? Obedience consists in obeying without reason.
"People are cold here:" this is all that can be said. The husband finds the house larger and more empty. His wife is become quite changed: though present, her mind is absent; she acts as if unconscious of acting; she speaks, but not like herself. Everything is changed in their intimate habits, always for a good reason: "To-day is a fast day"—and to-morrow? "Is a holy-day." The husband respects this austerity; he would consider it very wrong to trouble this exalted devotion; he is sadly resigned: "This becomes embarrassing," says he: "I had not foreseen it; my wife is turning saint."[[2]]
In this sad house there are fewer friends, yet there is a new one, and a very assiduous one: the habitual confessor is now the director;[[3]] a great and important change.
As her confessor he received her at church, at regular hours; but as director he visits her at his own hour, sees her at her house, and occasionally at his own.
As confessor he was generally passive, listening much, and speaking little; if he prescribed, it was in a few words; but as director he is all activity; he not only prescribes acts, but what is more important, by intimate conversation he influences her thoughts.
To the confessor she tells her sins; she owes him nothing more; but to the director everything must be told: she must speak of herself and her relations, her business and her interests. When she entrusts to that man her highest interest, that of eternal salvation, how can she help confiding to him her little temporal concerns, the marriage of her children, and the WILL she intends to make? &c., &c.
The confessor is bound to secrecy, he is silent (or ought to be). The director, however, is not so tied down. He may reveal what he knows, especially to a priest, or to another director. Let us suppose about twenty priests assembled in a house (or not quite so many, out of respect for the law against meetings), who may be, some of them the confessors, and others directors of the same persons: as directors they may mutually exchange their information, put upon a table a thousand or two thousand consciences in common, combine their relations, like so many chessmen, regulate beforehand all the movements and interests, and allot to one another the different parts they have to play to bring the whole to their purpose.
The Jesuits alone formerly worked thus in concert; but it is not the fault of the leaders of the clergy, in these days, if the whole of this body, with trembling obedience, do not play at this villanous game. By their all communicating together, their secret revelations might produce a vast mysterious science, which would arm ecclesiastical policy with a power a hundred times stronger than that of the state can possibly be.
Whatever might be wanting in the confession of the master, would easily be supplied by that of his servants and valets. The association of the Blandines of Lyons, imitated in Brittany, Paris, and elsewhere, would alone be sufficient to throw a light upon the whole household of every family. It is in vain they are known, they are nevertheless employed; for they are gentle and docile, serve their masters very well, and know how to see and listen.
Happy the father of a family who has so virtuous a wife, and such gentle, humble, honest, pious servants. What the ancient sighed for, namely, to live in a glass dwelling, where he might be seen by every one, this happy man enjoys without even the expression of a wish. Not a syllable of his is lost. He may speak lower and lower, but a fine ear has caught every word. If he writes down his secret thoughts, not wishing to utter them, they are read:—by whom? No one knows. What he dreams upon his pillow, the next morning, to his great astonishment, he hears in the street.
[[1]] St. François de Sales, the best of them all, takes compassion on the poor husband. He removes certain scruples of the wife, &c. Even this kindness is singularly humiliating. (See ed. 1833, vol. viii. pp. 254, 312, 347, 348.) Marriage, though one of the sacraments, appears here as a suppliant on its knees before the direction, seems to ask pardon, and suffer penance.
[[2]] For the insulated state of a father of a family in Catholic countries, see M. BOUVET'S Du Catholicisme, p. 175. (ed. 1840). An English gentleman, whose wife goes to Confession, said to me one day, "I am a lodger in my own house—I come to my meals."—ED.
[[3]] The name is rare in our days, but the thing is common; he who confesses for a length of time becomes director. Several persons have, at the same time, a confessor, an extraordinary confessor, and a director.