En Route

by J.-K. Huysmans

The liturgical year was, like it, studded with crystals and jewels by its admirable canticles and its fervent hymns set in the very gold of Benedictions and Vespers.

It seemed that the Church had substituted for that crown of thorns with which the Jews had surrounded the temples of the Saviour, the truly royal crown of the Proper of the Seasons, the only one which was chiselled in a metal precious enough, with art pure enough to dare to place itself on the brow of a God.

And the grand Lapidary had begun his work by incrusting, in this diadem of offices, the hymn of Saint Ambrose, and the invocation taken from the Old Testament, the "Rorate Cœli," that melodious chant of expectation and regret, that obscure gem violet-coloured; the lustre declares itself then, when after each of its stanzas rises the solemn prayer of the patriarchs, calling for the longed-for presence of Christ.

And the four Sundays of Advent disappeared with the turned pages of the prayer-book; the night of the Nativity was come. After the "Jesu Redemptor" of Vespers, the old Portuguese chant, the "Adeste Fideles," arose at Benediction from every lip. It was a sequence of a truly charming simplicity, an old carving wherein defiled the shepherds and the kings to a popular air appropriate to great marches, apt to charm, to aid by the somewhat military rhythm of its steps, the long lines of the faithful quitting their cottages to go to the distant churches in the towns.

And imperceptibly, like the year in an invisible rotation, the circle turned, and stopped at the Feast of the Holy Innocents, where there flourished out, like a flower from a slaughter-house, on a shoot culled from a soil irrigated by the blood of lambs, this sequence, red, and smelling of roses, the "Salvate Flores Martyrum" of Prudentius; the crown moved again, and the hymn of the Epiphany, the "Crudelis Herodes" of Sedudius, appeared in its turn.

Now the Sundays grew heavy, the violet Sundays when the "Gloria in Excelsis" is no more heard, when the "Audi Benigne" of Saint Ambrose is chanted, and the "Miserere," that cinder-coloured psalm, which is perhaps the most perfect masterpiece which the Church has ever drawn from her store-houses of plain chants.

It was Lent, when the amethysts fade in the moist grey of onyxes, in the embrowned white of quartz, and the magnificent invocation, "Attende Domine," rose beneath the arches. Sprung like the "Rorate Cœli" from the sequences of the Old Testament, this humble and contrite chant, enumerating the deserved punishments of sins, became, if not more sorrowful, at all events more grave and more pressing when it confirmed, when it resumed in the initial stanza of its burthen, the avowal of shame already confessed.

And suddenly on this crown there burst out after the expiring fires of Lent, the flaming ruby of the Passion. On the upturned yellow of the sky a red cross was raised, while majestic shouts and despairing cries proclaimed the blood-stained fruit of the tree; and the "Vexilla Regis" was again repeated the following Sunday at the Feast of Palms, which joined to that Sequence of Fortunatus the green hymn which it accompanied with a silky noise of palms, the "Gloria laus et honor" of Theodulph.

Then the fires of precious stones grew grey and died. To the glowing coals of gems succeeded the dead cinders of obsidians, black stones scarcely swelling, without a gleam above the tarnished gold of their mountings; one entered no Holy Week, everywhere the "Pange Lingua" and the "Stabat Mater" wailed under the arches, and then came the "Tenebræ," the lamentations, and the psalms, whose knell shook the flame of the brown waxen tapers, and after each halt, at the end of each of the psalms, one of the tapers expired, and its column of blue smoke evaporated still under the lighted circumference of the arches, while the choir recommenced the interrupted series of complaints.

And the crown turned once more; the beads of this musical rosary still ran on, and all changed. Jesus had risen, and songs of joy issued from the organs. The "Victimæ Paschali Laudes" exulted before the gospel of the masses, and at the Benediction the "O Filii et Filiæ," created indeed to be intoned by the wild jubilations of crowds, ran and sported in the joyous hurricane of the organs, which uprooted the pillars and unroofed the naves.