En Route

by J.-K. Huysmans

Durtal remembered the sweetness of the beginning, the caress of the divine touches, the steady progress without obstacles, the encounter with a solitary priest, his being sent to La Trappe, the very ease with which he bent to the monastic life, the absolution which had such truly sensible effects, the rapid and clear answer that he might communicate without fear.

And suddenly, without his will, he had in fact failed. He who had till then held him by the hand, refused to guide him, cast him off into the darkness without a word.

"All is over," he thought; "I am condemned to float here below, like a waif which no one wants; no shore is henceforward accessible, for if the world refuses me, I disgust God. Ah! Lord, remember the garden of Gethsemani, the tragic defection of the Father whom Thou didst implore in unspeakable pangs." In the silence which received his cry he gave way, and yet he desired to react against this desolation, endeavoured to escape from his despair; he prayed, and had again that very precise sensation that his petitions did not carry, were not even heard. He called her who superintends allegiance, the Mediatrix of pardon, to his aid, and he was persuaded that the Virgin heard him no longer.

He was silent and discouraged, while the shade grew still more dense, and complete darkness covered him. He did not then suffer any longer in the true sense of the word, but it was worse, for this was annihilation in the void, the giddiness of a man who is bent over a gulf; and the scraps of reasoning which he could gather and knit together in this breaking up, ended by branching out into scruples.

He sought for any sins which since his communion might justify such a trial, and he could not find them. He even tried to magnify his small faults, enlarge his want of patience; he wished to convince himself that he had taken a certain pleasure in finding the image of Florence in his cell, and he tortured himself so violently that he reanimated the soul, which had half fainted, by these moxas, and placed it again, without wishing it, in that acute state of scruples, in which it was when the crisis declared itself.

And in these brawling reflections he did not lose the sad faculty of analysis. He said to himself while gauging himself at a glance: "I am like the litter in a circus, trodden down by all the sorrows which go and come to play their parts. Doubts about Faith, which seemed to stretch into every sense, turned in fact in the same circle. And now scruples, from which I thought myself freed, reappear and course through me."

How should he explain this? Was he who inflicted this torture on him the Spirit of Malice, or God?

That he had been bruised by the Evil One was certain, the very nature of his attacks showed his handiwork, but how could this abandonment of God be explained, for in fact, the Demon could not prevent the Saviour from assisting him, and he was quite obliged to conclude that if he were martyrized by the one, the Other took no interest in him, let him be, and retired from him completely?

This certainty deduced from precise observations, this reasoned assurance, finished him. He cried out from the anguish of it, looking at the pond by which he was walking, wishing he might fall in, thinking that death by drowning were preferable to such a life.

Then he trembled before the water which attracted him, and carried away his sorrows to the charm of the woods. He tried to wear himself out by long walking, but he wearied himself without effect, and he ended by sinking down worn and broken at the refectory table.