CHAPTER II.
A PICTURE WHICH MIGHT BE ZURBARAN BUT IS ONLY BY GOYA.
María de Roch was very early at church next morning. For some time past she had accustomed herself to rise early and perform her religious duties so as to return home by nine o’clock, by which plan she avoided meeting the crowd of worshippers who selected the more convenient hours of the day. On this particular day, being Sunday, she was even earlier than usual and came out of church having fulfilled the duties that most flattered her soul; then, as usual, she spent the chief part of the morning in religious reading. But she did not seek mental nourishment in the rich stores of the older mystical literature of Spain—writings purified in the crucible of the loftiest spiritual faith and which are a real feast for the faithful soul, warming it with a divine flame and edifying it with transcendental poetry and morality. María fed her piety, sad to say, on the worst of contemporary religious literature, the outcome, in many cases, of ecclesiastical jobbery—in style a borrowed medley and in substance not really religious at all, but materialistic in its tendencies—which, with newspapers and prayer-books, forms the staple of the booksellers’ trade. Many of these effusions are translated from the French and bear a “made to sell” stamp which is little short of profane. Their covers do not lack the elegance and finish characteristic of good modern workmanship; within lie prose and verse. But what prose! What verse! There are certain ideas which demand simplicity of expression; it is their natural garb, without which they cease to exist; there are others which require dignity and grandeur, and which, lacking these, degenerate into affectation and rhodomontade. María could not appreciate these subtleties; her favourite works were full of “celestial smiles” and “seraphic fires,” of “virgin souls” and “airs from Heaven.” This sensual terminology appealed to her more directly than any other language; her narrow intelligence would not have understood any other or would have despised it, for her imagination was particularly susceptible to the suggestions of her senses. María admired the character of Santa Teresa because she had been taught to do so, but she could not understand her sublime metaphysics. Seraphic fervour was to her a flow of words or it was nothing. She did not exhaust her brain by trying to conceive of the subtler forms of devotion, nor was she capable of sublime abstractions. Her nature, with its plain common-sense, was coarse, and led her to seek religious fervour by other means. For instance, God’s mercy to his creatures was to her a fact beyond dispute, but it only came home to her personally as associated with some relic; the infinite perfection of the Creator, though she believed in it implicitly, was real to her apprehension only through the æsthetic medium of an image. The Virgin Mary, the ideal which of all others most interpenetrates the heart of a woman, did not fail to appeal to hers; but yet in order to feel her influence in full force, to be wrought to enthusiasm or moved to tears, she would steep—or shall I say dilute? her emotions in water from Lourdes.
Enough has been said to show that María’s religion was that of the lower orders—meaning by low, incapable of thought and feeling, and leading that mechanical existence of eating, digesting and sleeping, which is the crassest and purest materialism. Vulgarity is not a class distinction; it is an element, a component, a chemical constituent of social geology; if a map could be constructed to show its distribution it would appear as a black stain—a foul deposit—in every stratum of humanity. And thus, just as a few elect spirits represent the aristocracy of mind, María was the representative of vulgar credulity. In other times and under other conditions, without ceasing to profess piety or to pray six hours a day, she would have told fortunes by the cards, have worked witchcraft by means of relics and rosaries, and have mixed up her religious exercises with the tricks and arts of a gipsy.
But these are things of the past, though there are still malignant souls in the world and gipsy arts and wiles, differing, it is true from those of the middle ages. María’s aim and end was to belong to every religious society, charitable or otherwise. She was, more especially, what in the jargon of cant is known as a “Josephina,” affiliated, that is to say, to a society named after St. Joseph, whose principal object is to send up prayers for the Pope. It includes a large number of highly respectable persons of whom no ridicule is intended. María was a member of various other associations and sisterhoods; nearly all of them have their periodical reports and tracts, intended to consolidate their existence and to supply a form of light literature which is sometimes extraordinarily droll to the outsider. María accepted it all as unctuous and edifying and would spend hours in reading the stories—would that we could reproduce a few of them!—and addresses; and above all the section which may be called “Mystico-pathological:” the list, that is to say, of the cures effected every month by the wafers and ointments dipped in the famous “Perolito” of Seville—miracles even greater than those wrought by Holloway and other quacks. María had always by her a store of these medicaments for the benefit of her friends and relations, being absolutely convinced of their efficacy on those who employed them in faith. The “Perolito” could never be a paying concern in any country where common-sense and an efficient police were known. Though María constantly aimed at treading in the footsteps of her brother Luis she was free from his extravagant ecstasy, and her ideas and practice were unlike his in many particulars. Her unhealthy pietism was the outcome of a narrow intellect, and kept alive by her senses and the refractory pride of her nature. Her ideas and feelings were absolutely foreign to those of her husband, and we have seen what the character of her affection for him was—the only affection of which she was capable—and in her hours of penitential solitude how she had struggled to eradicate even that! What violence she had done to her imagination in trying to see as evil, what was good, as corrupt, what was worthy, as repulsive, what was noble and attractive! She firmly believed that so long as she allowed her mind to dwell on the image of her husband she was no true saint. Was she right or wrong? None can tell but God who, in his omniscience, saw the aspect that image wore.
“If only he were not an atheist!” was her constant thought; and the response was an implacable determination never to have anything in common with such a man. In thought she referred to that brother whose shade would visit her in the lonely watches of the night and it had been his wish—his will—that she and the atheist should live separated; he had pronounced her free from her matrimonial bondage and released her from the burden of earthly duty, that she might henceforth belong solely to God. And now and again she would start from sleep in an agony of distress, her forehead damp with sweat, and trembling in every limb. “And if he loves some other woman!” she would mutter to herself.
Her ideas had taken this turn. She could even bear to think that her husband might die without loving her, but that he should live and love some one else—that he should give to another that which ought to be hers.—That was her real grief and constant mortification; and when her reflections reached this point her whole being leaped into revolt with an impulse which was the very passion of egotism.
During the period when Leon was gradually becoming estranged from her María took a delight in humiliating him; it was a pleasure to see him come in every evening, ready to receive the lash. Nay, sometimes, from the force of habit and from the sincere regard which he had inspired in her, she was really glad at his coming but she took care to conceal both the gladness and the affection. Merciful Heaven! It would never do to let it be said that she hailed and welcomed the “Atheist.” Secretly she took an interest in everything that concerned him, gave orders for his comfort, and if he were ailing, made him take advice and remedies, only taking care not to give him water from the Grotto at Lourdes or wafer from Seville as these are specific only for those who believe in them.
When they talked to each other it cost her a constant effort to keep herself from gazing with pleasure and sympathy on her husband’s attractive face, and when she was alone, she repented of her weakness, calling herself reprobate and sensual and imploring her brother in Heaven to aid her by the virtue of certain sacred relics.—“But if only he were not an atheist!” And she would weep at the thought.
When Leon left her once for all, María who had clenched the matter by declaring that God forbid her to love him, felt utterly crushed; her hearth was vacant and desolate. She was terrified too—of what? She herself knew not. During one whole night she could not command her mind to a single thought of devotion. She was stunned, but at the same time her brain ached with a swarm of evil visions like the trampling of horses snorting as they charge. She needed much reading and all the counsel and warnings of her spiritual directors before she could fairly bury the fair corpse of her departed happiness; much prayer, much penance, much labour of her fancy to see what she knew to be good and beautiful as evil and hideous. But she was not the first to undertake this odious task of purifying her soul by the instrumentality of the imagination—heaping foulness over the grave of all the joys of love and graces of life; hermits and ascetics had done it before her, and filled up the measure by personal castigation. María laboured in the obscurity of her tortured brain to see the happy days of her honeymoon in the darkest and foulest colours and so threw a lurid light on the sweetest hours of her married life.—It was a frightful revulsion and anarchy of soul.