“Tel est mon paradis.... Mon paradis est tout ce qu’il y a de plus simple.”
Side by side with Péguy’s spiritual gospel, or rather entwined with it, goes his practical and patriotic gospel. Since for him the whole of life was crammed with spiritual significance, he saw in the patriotic passion a sacrament of heavenly love, and in earthly cities symbols of the City of God. Hence nationalism was to him, as to Dostoevsky, essentially religious, and Joan of Arc—
“Une humble enfant perdue en deux amours,
L’amour de son pays parmi l’amour de Dieu”—
was the perfect saint, fusing the two halves of human experience in one whole. These two aspects of love he could not separate, for they seemed to him equally the flowers of a completed life. Even God, he thought, would find it difficult to decide between them.
“Dans une belle vie, il n’est que de beaux jours,
Dans une belle vie il fait toujours beau temps.
Dieu la déroule toute et regarde longtemps
Quel amour est plus cher entre tous les amours.
Ainsi Dieu ne sait pas, ainsi le divin Maître