Prayer, an electrical force, thus snatches our nature upwards. This involuntary union of so many wills, all equally humbled to earth, all equally lifted to heaven, contains, no doubt, the secret of the magical influences exerted by the chanting of the priests and the music of the organ, the perfume and pomp of the altar, the voice of the crowd and its meditations in silence.
Hence we need not be surprised when we see, in the middle ages, that so many love affairs had their beginnings in church, after long hours of ecstasy—passions which often had no saintly ending and for which the woman, as she always must, ended by doing penance. Religious emotion had certainly, at that time, some affinity with love; it was either the element or the end of it. Love was still a second religion; it still had its fine frenzies, its artless superstitions, its sublime emotion in harmony with those of Christianity.
The manners of the time also help to explain the alliance between religion and love. In the first place, society never mingled but in front of the altar. Lords and vassals, men and women, were nowhere equal but in church. There alone could lovers meet and exchange their vows. Then Church Festivals were the only spectacles; a woman's soul was more deeply stirred within the walls of a cathedral than it now is at a ball or an opera. And does not every strong emotion bring a woman round to love? Thus, by dint of forming part of life, and identifying itself with every act, religion had become the moving principle of virtue and vice alike. Religion was mixed up with science, with politics, with eloquence, with crime; on the throne or in the skin of the poor and suffering; it was all-pervading.
These semi-learned reflections will perhaps certify to the truth of this Étude, though some of its details may scandalize the improved propriety of our age—a little too strait-laced perhaps, as we all know.
At the instant when the priests ceased their chanting, the last notes of the organ mingling with the throbbing Amen sent out from the deep-chested choir-men, while a faint murmur still lingered under the remoter vaults and the devout assembly awaited the prelate's benedictory words, a citizen, in a hurry to get home, or fearing to lose his purse in the crowd going out, gently stole away, at the risk of being regarded as a bad Catholic. A gentleman, who had lurked till now close to one of the enormous pillars of the choir, where he was shrouded in the shadow, hastened to take the place left vacant by the worthy burgess. As soon as he reached it, he hid his face in the feathers that adorned his tall gray cap, and knelt down on a chair in a contrite attitude that might have deceived an inquisitor.
His neighbors, having stared curiously at the youth, appeared to recognize him and turned to their devotions once more with a significant shrug, by which they all expressed the same idea—a sarcastic mocking thought, an unspoken scandal. Two old women nodded their heads and exchanged glances which seemed to read the future.
The chair taken by the young man was close to a chapel built in between two pillars, and closed by an iron railing. At that time the Chapter was wont to let out at a high figure the use of the side chapels situated outside the ambulatory, to certain lordly families, who thus had a right to occupy them exclusively, with their people, during divine service. This form of simony is practised even now. A lady had her chapel in church, as in our day she has a box at the opera. The lessees of these privileged nooks were, however, expected to decorate and keep up the altars in them. Thus each one made it a point of honor to make his chapel as sumptuous as possible, a form of vanity very acceptable to the Church.
In this chapel, close to the railing, knelt a young lady, on a handsome square of red velvet with gold tassels, close to the spot but just now occupied by the worthy citizen. A silver-gilt lamp, hanging from the roof of the chapel in front of a magnificent altar, shed a dim light on the Book of Hours that the lady held. This book shook violently in her hand as the young gentleman came towards her.
"Amen!" and to this response, chanted in a sweet voice with terrible agitation, happily drowned in the general noise, she added in a low tone: "You will ruin me!"
The words were spoken with an innocence to which any man of delicate feeling could not fail to submit; it went piercingly to the heart; but the stranger, carried away no doubt by a tumult of passion that stifled his conscience, remained in his seat, and slightly raised his head to look hastily into the chapel.