"Is not this plain speaking on the part of a mortal? Is it quite befitting, this speech of an angry servant? Yet consider, the Lord does not smite the bold speaker with a thunderbolt, but lightens his load by choosing seventy leaders to share the burden of the people with Moses. The way in which the Eternal grants the prayer of the people when they clamour for flesh to eat, is only slightly contemptuous, like that of a kindly father when he grants the wishes of his unreasonable children. 'Therefore the Lord will give you flesh and ye shall eat. Ye shall not eat one day, nor two days, nor five days, neither ten days nor twenty days, but even a whole month, until it come out at your nostrils, and it be loathsome to you.'
"That is a God after my ideal, the same God to whom Job cries, 'Oh that one might plead with God as a man pleadeth with his friend.' But without waiting for this, the sufferer takes the liberty of demanding explanations from the Lord regarding the evil treatment to which he is exposed. 'I will say to God, "Condemn me not; show me wherefore Thou goest against me in judgment. Doth it please Thee to oppress me, to overthrow the work of Thine own hands, and to further the devices of the wicked?"' These are reproaches and imputations which the good God accepts without anger, and which He answers without using thunderbolts. Where is He, the Heavenly Father, who can smite at the follies of His children and pardon after He has punished them? Where does He hide Himself, the Master of the house who kept it in good order, and watched the overseers in order to prevent injustice?"
During my disconnected speech the Unknown regarded me with the same indulgent smile, without betraying impatience. But when I had finished, he disappeared. I found myself breathing a stifling atmosphere of carbonic oxide, and standing alone on the gloomy, dirty, autumnal-looking Rue Medici. While I went down the Boulevard Saint Michel I felt vexed with myself, that I had neglected the opportunity of speaking out everything. I had still many shafts in my quiver, if only the Unknown had waited to answer, or to direct an accusation against me.
But as soon as the crowd again presses round me in the glaring light of the gas lamps, and all the exposed wares in the shops remind me of the trivialities of life, the scene in the garden appears like a miracle, and I hasten in alarm to my lodging, where meditation plunges me into an abyss of doubt and anxiety. There is a ferment going on in the world, and men are waiting for something new, of which a glimmering has already appeared. France is preparing for a return to the Middle Ages,—the period of faith and of dogma, to which it has been led over the downfall of an empire, and of a miniature Augustus, just as at the time of the decay of the power of Rome and the invasion of the barbarians. One has seen Paris—Rome in flames, and the Goths crowning themselves in the capitol, Versailles. The great heathen Taine and Renan have gone down to perdition, and taken their scepticism with them, but Joan of Arc has again woken to life. The Christians are persecuted, their processions dispersed by gens d'armes; saturnalias are held on carnival days, and shameful orgies take place in the open streets under the protection of the police, and with the aid of money grants from the Government, which to satisfy the discontented offers shows, with or without gladiatorial encounters. "Panem et Circenses" (Dear)—bread and games. All is readily bought with money, honour, conscience, fatherland, love, administration of justice,—truly the infallible and regular symptoms of decay in a community, whence Virtue, both in name and reality, has been banished for thirty years. Yet for all that we are in the Middle Ages. Young men assume monkish cowls, wear the tonsure and dream of convent life. They compose legends and perform miracle-plays, paint Madonnas and carve images of Christ, drawing their inspiration from the magician,[2] who has bewitched them with Tristan and Isolde, Parzival and the Holy Grail. Crusades against Jews and Turks begin afresh; the Anti-Semites and Philhellenes see to that. Magic and alchemy have already been re-established, and they only wait for the first proved case of witchcraft in order to erect a funeral pile to burn witches on. Middle Ages indeed! Witness the pilgrimages to Lourdes, Tilli-sur-Seine, Rue Jean Goujon. Heaven also gives the sleepy world signs to be ready. The Lord speaks through water-spouts, cyclones, floods, and thunder-storms.
Mediæval also is the leprosy which has just appeared again, and against which the doctors of Paris and Berlin have combined.
But they were beautiful, the Middle Ages, when men knew how to enjoy and to suffer, when strength and love and beauty in colour, in line, and harmony were revealed for the last time, before they were drowned and sabred by the renaissance of heathenism which is called Protestantism.
The evening has come, and I burn with desire to renew my meeting with the Unknown, well prepared, as I now am, to confess all and to defend myself before I am condemned. After I have taken my melancholy meal alone I go up the Via Dolorosa, the Rue Bonaparte. This street has never appeared to me so monstrous as this evening; the shop windows yawn like abysses in which Christ is portrayed in many forms —half-martyred, half-triumphant. I go on and on, while the sweat runs in great drops down my face, and the soles of my boots burn my feet, yet I do not seem to advance a step. Am I the Wandering Jew who refused the Redeemer a drink of water? and am I, now that I wish to follow and imitate Him, unable to approach Him?
Finally, and without myself knowing how, I find myself before the Fleurus Gate, and in the next moment within the garden, which lies there, dark, damp, and still. Immediately a gust of wind sets the skeletons of the trees in motion, and the Unknown takes up his position quicker as he approaches in his summer-like garment of light. With the same smile as before he invites me to speak.
And I speak, "What demandest thou of me, and wherefore plaguest thou me with thy Christ? A few days ago in some mysterious manner thou placedst the Imitation of Christ in my hand, and I read it as in my youth when I learned to despise the world. How can I have the right to despise the creation of the Eternal and the beautiful earth? And whither has thy wisdom led me? To neglect my affairs, till I have become a burden for my fellow-men, and ended as a beggar. This book, which forbids friendship, which lays worldly intercourse under a ban, which demands solitude and renunciation, is written for a monk, and I have not the right to be a monk and expose myself to the danger of letting my children die of want. See whither the love for a lonely life has led me. On the one hand thou enjoinest the life of a hermit, and as soon as I withdraw myself from the world I am attacked by the evil spirits of madness, my affairs fall into confusion, and in my isolation I do not possess a single friend from whom I can ask help. On the other hand, as soon as I seek out men, I meet the worst kind, who annoy me with their arrogance, and that in proportion to my humility. For I am humble, and treat all as my equals, till they trample me under their feet, when I behave like a worm which raises its head but cannot bite.