Sauntering
.
Saunterer, (from saint terre,)
a pilgrim to holy lands or places.—Thoreau.
Would that I were, if not like the king of Ava—lord of the twenty-four umbrellas—at least the owner of one, was my thought. I was in Paris, that paradise of many good Americans who are not defunct. Three thousand and odd miles from home, in the streets of a strange city, with an imperfect knowledge of any foreign tongue, not daring to say parapluie to the most obsequious shopman, and the rain was pouring down like a douche.
I had no devotion to St. Swithin—not a particle. I respected him in a vague way as a successor of the apostles, whose name is in the calendar; but I was always inclined to mention him with a smile on account of his hydropathic propensities. I am a perfect Oriental as far as a warm bath is concerned, but I never could endure the gentlest shower-bath, and the thought of St. Swithin, in his wet grave under a waterspout, always made me shudder. This peculiar sensitiveness always made me suspicious of the lightest summer cloudlet, and led me to make for years a series of minute observations on the weather, till I became deeply versed in mackerel clouds, mare's tails, and such sinister prognostics. I used to imagine myself so sensitive to the dryness and moisture of the atmosphere, and to its density and rarity, that I was quite above barometers. I was a barometer to myself. A foreknowledge of the weather was my strong point, or one of my strong points, when at home in the new world. There I had a full view of the heavens that bend over us all, down to the very horizon on every side. The rarity of the American atmosphere, its lofty heavens, with its luminous spheres, are full of skyey influences, which tell not only upon the very plants, if we observe them, but upon ourselves, if we heed the silent lesson. I always knew what those clouds meant, gathering over the far-off north-wood hills at the west, and I felt the very mist as it began to rise around Mount Agamenticus, in the east, like sacrificial clouds around that altar of the renowned St. Aspinquid. I seldom made a false prediction, and was consequently approached with considerable deference by provident neighbors, especially before a storm. But somehow, I lost this prestige as soon as my foot was off my native heath. Here, in a compact city, with the tall houses and narrow streets shutting the great blue eye of heaven till it became a mere line, like a cat's eye at mid-day, I felt myself utterly at the mercy of nature; I gave myself humbly up to St. Swithin, to whom of old I was rather defiant. A haughty spirit goes before a fall. Humiliations are good for the soul. I think I must consider mine a case of special providence; for there is nothing more soothing to mortified vanity or spiritual pride, or even in dire calamity, than the conviction that ours is an instance of special providence.
On one of those doubtful days in October, when the air is murky and a light mist from the Seine pervades every part of the city, but which were not always, as I had found, indicative of rain, I sallied forth from the Hotel Meurice to wander around the French capital with no special object in view. I discarded my guide-book, tired of being the victim of square and compass. To be told to admire, whether an object appealed to my peculiar tastes or not, was quite opposed to my notions of American independence, and sure to rouse a certain spirit of contradiction in me—a bad trait, I fear, but a fault acknowledged is half cured; so I make a clean breast of it to test the truth of the old saying. I turned, therefore, a blind eye to all the palaces, and gardens, and fountains, and went around feasting my eyes on the forbidden vanities of the world which my god-parents had renounced for me at baptism, but which were glittering delightfully in the booths of this Vanity Fair; not that I cared much for them, to tell the truth, but from a sheer feeling of perversity. There must be some powerful charm in them, or they would not be put down in every religious chart as quicksands to be avoided. Perhaps I was in danger of being stranded among them, and it was, after all, a case of special providence, when, as I was pursuing my way, or rather any way in my ignorance of the city, and moralizing on these things, or demoralizing, of a sudden it began to pour. For an old weather-wise like me to be thus caught, was very humiliating; and in my consternation, I found myself enjoying one of the high and mighty prerogatives of the king of Ava, as aforesaid. Que faire? I should have said, being in France. Looking around, I saw the open door of a church, in which I gladly took refuge. In benighted, "popish" lands, mother church often affords a place of bodily refuge, as well as moral. It was the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, to which I had wandered back, and which from this time became my favorite church in spite of the bad repute of the bells. Passing from the gay streets into these cool shades is like passing for a moment, as it were, from time into eternity. All light and frivolous thoughts—all vanity and littleness die away with the noise of the world, at the very entrance. The mind is elevated. We partake of the grandeur of the edifice, and, for a few moments at least, our nature is ennobled. Only great and lofty ideas should wander beneath such arches. Only souls full of noble and magnificent ideas could have designed them. There are truly sermons in these stones, of which one never grows weary—sermons in the grand old vitraux, rich with saintly forms, and in the gloom, inspiring sweet and solemn reverie.
"I love the gloom; I love the white-robed throng;
I love the flood of most religious song
That tosses all its choric waves afar
To seek and search each quaint-carved crevice there.
The music surges to each singing star,
And bears the soul to heaven's own upper air,
Sweet crushed to happy tears; but chiefly where
Peace, dove-like, broods above clasped hands of prayer."
The Catholic is no longer in a foreign land when he enters a church. The altar, the cross, the Madonna, above all, the tabernacle, with it twinkling lamp of olive oil, are his old familiar friends, and all there, and his heart is at home. He feels a bond of universal brotherhood with all these worshippers before the altar. And then the dear old Latin service! I never thoroughly realized at home the advantage of a universal language in which the whole church could lift up her voice, as with one accord, throughout the world. That language—one of those which were consecrated above the head of the dying Saviour—is associated with all the holiest and tenderest memories of a Catholic. He cannot remember when he first heard it from the lips of holy mother church. It is one of his mother tongues. Each word has a new significance in this foreign land, and the whole service a new meaning. I have heard people exclaim at the rapidity of the opening service of mass, not knowing its significance. Every act and word in our sublime ritual has its meaning to him that enters into its spirit. Dr. Newman says, in his own beautiful way:
"I declare nothing is so consoling, so piercing, so thrilling, so overcoming, as the mass, said as it is among us. I could attend masses for ever and not be tired. It is not a mere form of words; it is a great action, the greatest action there can be on earth. It is not the invocation, merely, but, if I dare use the word, the evocation, of the Eternal. He becomes present on the altar in flesh and blood, before whom angels bow and devils tremble. This is that awful event which is the end and is the interpretation of every part of the solemnity. Words are necessary, not as means, but as ends. They are not mere addresses to the throne of grace; they are instruments of what is far higher, of consecration, of sacrifice. They hurry on as if impatient to fulfil their mission. Quickly they go; the whole is quick, for they are all parts of one integral action. Quickly they go, for they are awful words of sacrifice; they are a work too great to delay upon, as when it was said in the beginning, 'What thou doest, do quickly.' Quickly they pass, for the Lord Jesus goes with them, as he passed along the lake in the days of his flesh, quickly calling first one and then another. Quickly they pass, because, as the lightning which shineth from one part of the heaven unto the other so is the coming of the Son of Man. Quickly they pass, for they are as the words of Moses, when the Lord came down in a cloud, calling on the name of the Lord as he passed by, 'The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth.'
"And as Moses on the mountain, so do we too 'make haste and bow our heads to the earth and adore.' So we all around, each in his place, look out for the great advent, 'waiting for the moving of the water.' Each in his place, with his own heart, with his own wants, with his own thoughts, with his own intention, with his own prayers, separate but concordant, watching what is going on, watching its progress, uniting in its consummation; not painfully and hopelessly following a hard form of prayer from beginning to end, but, like a concert of musical instruments, each different, but concurring in a sweet harmony, we take our part with God's priest, supporting him, yet guided by him."
The words being, then, only used as means, as instruments of consecration, it is not at all necessary for the people to follow the words of the priest; but, entering into the spirit and meaning of each part of the sacrifice, abandon themselves each one to his own devotions. While the church is exceedingly particular about the exact following of the liturgy by the clergy, it allows the greatest latitude to the devotions of laymen. All the sects that have a form of prayer, or extempore prayers, afford far less liberty to those who join therein than the church. Their service is nothing to you unless you join in its forms, which leave no liberty of soul. Whereas at mass, while some use a prayer-book with a variety of beautiful and touching devotions in harmony with the service going on at the altar, others simply say the rosary, and others again use no form whatever, but, following the celebrant in spirit, abandon their hearts in holy meditation and mental prayer according to the inspiration of the moment. Thus our holy services never become a mere form. They are always new, new and varied as our daily wants, as our fresh conceptions of what worship is due Almighty God, and of the nature of the holy oblation in which we are participating.
The church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois was once the frequent recipient of royal munificence, being for a long time the royal parish, and it was the most sumptuously adorned in Paris. Sculptors and painters vied in filling it with the choicest works of art. It was not much injured at the revolution, but narrowly escaped destruction in 1831. The anniversary of the death of the Duc de Berri was to be commemorated by services for the repose of his soul; but a mob surrounded the church, and destroyed everything in it. It was afterward closed till 1838, when it was reopened for public worship.
It has some poetical associations as well as historical; for here M. de Lamartine is said to have hung up the long locks that Graziella had shorn from her beautiful head, and sent to be suspended in one of the churches of his belle France. And perhaps this was the one to which he referred in the following words:
"When the last hour of the day has sounded from thy lofty towers, when the last beam has faded away from the dome, when the sigh of the distant organ dies away with the light, and the nave is deserted by all but the Levite attentive to the lamps of the holy place, then I come to glide under thy obscure arches, and to seek, while nature sleeps, Him who never slumbers! The air which the soul breathes in thy aisles is full of mystery and peace. Let love and anxious cares seek shade and solitude under the green shelter of groves to soothe their secret wounds. O darkness of the sanctuary! the eye of religion prefers thee to the wood which the breeze disturbs. Nothing disturbs thy foliage. Thy still shade is the image of eternal peace."
I loved to think the poet found here the source of the inspirations which are embodied in his Harmonies Religieuses which are the delight of every tender and religious soul.
There is in one of the transepts a beautiful font of pure white marble, executed by M. Jouffroy from a model by Madame de Lamartine and presented by her to this church. The basin is surmounted by three expressive figures, Faith, Hope, and Charity, supporting a cross.
This church with its perfumed air, its subdued light, and its quiet recesses incentive to piety, so charmed me by its contrast with the gay world without, and revived all the fervor of early religious impressions, that I did not leave it till I had resolved to commence each remaining day of my stay at Paris, by going to a different church till I had visited them all, like Horace Walpole. And should I even visit them like him as a mere amateur of art, I could not fail to receive some inspiration that would leave me better for the rest of the day. The hours thus passed in the churches seemed to consecrate the day, and left a perfume in my heart that nothing in the world could wholly dissipate. They became the happiest and most profitable of my life, both morally and intellectually.
"For thou dost soothe the heart, thou Church of Rome,
By thy unwearied watch, and varied round
Of service, in thy Saviour's holy home.
I cannot walk the city's sultry streets,
But the wide porch invites to still retreats,
Where passion's thirst is calmed, and care's unthankful gloom."
"There, on a foreign shore,
The homesick solitary finds a friend:
Thoughts, prisoned long for lack of speech, outpour
Their tears, and doubts in resignation end."
One morning I went to St. Merri's, where St. Edmund, Archbishop of Canterbury, when a young student at Paris, used to go to assist at the midnight office. A friend had given me his practical little book entitled The Mirror of the Church, and I took it with me to read in a place he had loved. In reading it I was struck by what he says of the Lord's Prayer, the great prayer of the middle ages, and the prominence he would have us give it in our devotions. He says:
"The Pater Noster surpasses all other prayers in excellence, dignity, and utility. It was made by God himself; hence the injury done to Jesus Christ the Son of God when curious or rhymed prayers are preferred to that composed by him who knows the will of the Father, and better than we what prayer is most acceptable to him, and what we most need. How many deceive themselves in multiplying the forms of prayer! They think they are devout, but they are only carnal in their affections, for every carnally-minded person naturally delights in the vain curiosity of words. Be then prudent and discreet in this respect. I know you will bring forward St. Augustin, St. Gregory, and other saints to oppose me, who prayed according to the affections of their hearts. I am certainly far from blaming them. I only blame the practice of those who, from a spirit of pride or curiosity abandon the prayer made by the Lord himself for those which the saints have composed. Our Lord himself says, And when you are praying, speak not much as the heathen do, for they think they are heard for their much speaking. You therefore shall pray in this manner, Our Father, etc."
We Catholics are often accused of elevating the creature above the Creator, and reproached for saying ten Hail Marys to one Our Father in the beautiful devotion of the Rosary, as if we had no other. This extract from St. Edmund does not support the accusation, and he was a prelate of the dark ages—the thirteenth century. But then he was an Englishman, and we all know the Anglo-Saxon race did not fall in Adam, and only a little way in Peter!
In justice to St. Edmund I will add that he was so devout to Our Lady that, early in life, he consecrated himself to her, and wore, in memory of this consecration, a ring with Ave Maria upon it. He related this on his death-bed, that his example might be followed by others, and was buried with the ring on his finger.
There is an interesting chapel in St. Merri's Church, dedicated to St. Mary of Egypt, which is beautifully frescoed by Chasserian, depicting the touching old legend, with its deep moral significance, of
"That Egyptian penitent whose tears
Fretted the rock, and moistened round her cave
The thirsty desert."
The poet tells of a miraculous drop which fell in Egypt on St. John's day, and was supposed to have the effect of stopping the plague. Such a drop fell on the soul of this renowned penitent.
"There's a drop, says the Peri, that down from the moon
Falls through the withering airs of June
Upon Egypt's land, of so healing a power,
So balmy a virtue, that even in the hour
That drop descends, contagion dies,
And health reanimates earth and skies!
Oh! is it not thus, thou man of sin,
The precious tears of repentance fall.
Though foul the fiery plagues within,
One heavenly drop hath dispelled them all!"
St. Mary of Egypt is one of a long line of penitents who, after the example of Magdalen, have given proofs of their repentance in proportion to their sins and to the depth of their sorrow, and thus rendered the very scars on their souls so many rays of light.
Le Brun painted one whose frailties are "linked to fame" as Magdalen, and at her own request. The universal interest felt in her story, and the sympathy it always excites, induced me to visit a place that cannot be disconnected from her memory—the chapel of the Carmelites in the Rue d'Enfer, where she took the veil. I refer to Madame de la Vallière, whom Madame de Sevigné calls "la petite violette qui se cachait sous l'herbe."
A priest was just commencing mass when I entered the chapel. I knelt down by the tomb of the Cardinal de Bérulle, who used to come here to pray in the chapel of St. Magdalen, having a great devotion to that saint. It was difficult to resist the distractions that were inevitable in such a spot, but in which I would not indulge till the holy sacrifice was over. The choir of nuns was separated from the chancel by a grating which was closely curtained. There is always a certain charm in everything that savors of mystery. Whatever is hidden excites our curiosity and interest. That forbidding grate, that curtain of appalling blackness, were tantalizing. They concealed a world in which we had no part. Behind them were hearts which had aims and aspirations and holy ambitions, perhaps, we know not of. They led a life which is almost inexplicable to the world—hidden indeed in God. The chapel was so still, save the murmur of the officiating priest, that you might have supposed no one else there. But after the Agnus Dei, came out from that mysterious recess a murmur from unseen lips like a voice from another world. It was that of the nuns all saying the Confiteor together before going to holy communion. That murmur of mea culpâ, mea culpâ, seemed like the voice of penitence from La Sainte Beaume, or the voice of past times repeating the accents of the repentant La Vallière. There she lived and prayed and did penance for thirty-six years, longer than Magdalen in her cave, "son coeur ne respirant que du côté du ciel," thus displaying a remarkable strength of volition, and therefore of character; for "What is character but a perfectly formed will?" says Novalis. Before that altar she used to come two hours before the rest of the community to pray, and in cold weather she, that had been brought up in luxury, was often found senseless on the pavement of the choir when the rest of the nuns came to the chapel.
We read that the tears of Eve falling into the water brought forth pearls, and we cannot doubt that the tears through which our penitent viewed her past life helped obtain for her the pearl of great price. One instance of her austerity is well known. One Good-Friday, meditating in the refectory, during the meagre repast of the day, on the vinegar and gall given to the dying Saviour when he was athirst, she recalled the pleasures of her past life and particularly of the time when, returning with the court from the chase, being thirsty, she drank with pleasure of some delicious beverage which was brought her. This immortification, so in contrast with the vinegar and gall of the Saviour, filled her with lively sentiments of repentance and humiliation, and she resolved never to drink again. For three weeks she did not taste even a drop of water, and for three years she only drank half a glass day. This severe penance, which was unsuspected, brought on a fit of illness and caused violent spasms in the stomach, which reduced her to a state of great feebleness. Besides that, she suffered greatly from rheumatism, but she never ceased to share in the labors in the community. She died in 1710, aged nearly sixty-six years, having passed thirty-six years in the convent. Her life here was one long Miserere which was surely heard in heaven. Her soul had to pass through the deep waters; but she took fast hold of that "last plank after shipwreck"—repentance. Everything went to feed the stream of her sorrow. Every new grace gave her a new conception of the guilt of sin and awoke new regrets for lost glory. So she shut herself up in the garden of myrrh. She sheltered herself in the creux du rocher from the waves of memory that swept over her soul. In that dark night of her soul she looked tremblingly out over the wide sea of her sorrows with a heart like the double-faced Janus, looking into the past and toward the future, memory and hope struggling in her heart. Over that dark sea rose the moonlight of Mary's face—our Lady of Mount Carmel—a narrow crescent at first, but growing larger and brighter every day. And the great luminous starry saints with their different degrees of glory studded the heavens that opened to her view. And so the morning came when the voice of Jesus spoke: Many sins are forgiven her because she hath loved much.
There is an accent of sincerity, with no savor of cant, in the well-known reply of Soeur Louise de la Misericorde when asked if she was happy in the convent: "I am not happy, but I am satisfied." How few in the world can even say with sincerity that they are satisfied. Dr. Johnson said, "No one is happy," but satisfaction is certainly reasonable happiness. Carlyle says, "There is in man a higher than love of happiness. He can do without happiness, and instead thereof find blessedness." That happiness alone is real which does not depend on contingencies. It is reasonably satisfied with the present, and has a constantly increasing hope in the future. Such was the happiness Madame de la Vallière found among the pale-eyed votaries of the cloister, a satisfaction of the soul which became perfect happiness when death came to her after so many years of dying.
I wonder if there was no perfume left in the dried rose leaves in her heart causing it to faint ofttimes by the way. A person of so much sensibility must have had a wonderful capacity for suffering. That her memory was ever alive to the past is evident from the unrelenting austerity of her life, from her well-known reply when informed of the death of her son, and from her requesting Le Brun to paint her as Magdalen.
Remembering so many proofs of her conversion, we, too, say, Neither do I condemn thee. No stone will I cast on thy grave; no reproach on thy memory: for repentance effaced every earthly stain, and thou art now sharing the joy there is in heaven over one sinner that repenteth. Tears of penitent love mingled with those of virgin innocence at the foot of the cross. Let them still mingle there; we will not regard them with distrust or disdain. We too have need to cry:
"Drop, drop, slow tears
I And bathe those beauteous feet.
Which brought from heaven
The news and Prince of peace.
Cease not, wet eyes,
For mercy to entreat:
To cry for vengeance
Sin doth never cease.
In your deep floods
Drown all my faults and fears:
Nor let his eye
See sin but through my tears."
Every one who looks deeply into his own heart finds a motive of charity for the faults of others. A monk of Cluny hung up in his cell the picture of a famous debauchee under which he placed his own name. The surprised abbot asked the reason. It was to remind him what grace alone prevented him from becoming. We are all miracles of grace. It may be restraining or transforming. We are not the less in need of it than those who have apparently sunk to lower depths.
All these things passed through my mind while lingering in the chapel of the Carmelites. In that chapel had resounded the grand tones of the great Bossuet at the profession of Madame de la Vallière, with his usual refrain—the emptiness of all earthly things. "Away, earthly honors!" he said on that occasion, "all your splendor but ill conceals our weaknesses and our faults; conceals them from ourselves, but reveals them to others."—"There are two kinds of love," he added, "one is the love of ourselves, which leads to the contempt of God—that is the old life, the life of the world. The other is the love of God, which leads to the contempt of ourselves, and is the new life of Christianity, which, carried to perfection, constitutes the religious life. The soul, detached from the body by mortification, freed from the captivity of the senses, sees itself as it is—the source of all evil. It therefore turns then against itself. Having fallen through an ill use of liberty, it would be restrained on every side, by frightful grates, a profound solitude, an impenetrable cloister, perfect obedience, a rule for every action, a motive for every step, and a hundred observant eyes. Thus hemmed in on all sides, the soul can only fly heavenward. Elle ne peut plus respirer que du côté du ciel"—a beautiful expression, recalling the lines from an old manuscript poem in the Bibliothèque Royal:
"Li cuers doit estre
Semblans à l'encensoir
Tous clos envers la terre
Et overs vers le ciel."
The heart should be like a censer, closed toward earth and open toward heaven; and such is the heart of the real spouse of Christ.
When Bossuet had finished his discourse and the black veil was placed upon the head of La Vallière, the whole audience wept aloud. The Duchess de la Vallière was now Louise de la Miséricorde, vowed to the rigorous life of the Carmelites, to fasts and vigils, to sackcloth and ashes.
Philosophers say no motion is ever lost, and that every act is photographed somewhere in the universe. Think of swelling the choral song that will go on vibrating in the air for ever; of sighs of penitence that go on sighing through space for ever in the ears of a merciful God; of attitudes of adoring praise and love, which are somewhere imaged, to be revealed at the last day as a page in the great book that will decide our eternal fate. How much better to be thus perpetuated than idle words, vain songs, and all the graces of fashion only intended to please the eye of a fellow-mortal.
After all, there is something in such a life that appeals to the instincts of our nature. Even those who condemn it cannot but admire. At least, they find it poetical. Who does not feel an increased sentiment of respect for Dr. Johnson as he stands with bared head, in the rain, where his father's book-stall was, in the market place at Uttoxeter, to expiate an act of early disobedience to his father? "The picture of Samuel Johnson," says Carlyle, "standing bare-headed in the market-place is one of the grandest and saddest we can paint. The memory of old Michael Johnson rising from the far distance, sad, beckoning in the moonlight of memory. Repentance! repentance! he proclaims as with passionate sobs—but only to the ear of heaven, if heaven will give him audience."
"O heavy laden soul! kneel down and hear
Thy penance in calm fear;
With thine own lips to sentence all thy sin;
Then, by the judge within
Absolved, in thankful sacrifice to part
For ever with thy sullen heart!"