Since all religion is a fiction (I thought), let us make a story which may be a religion, or a religion which may be a story. I don’t believe in my stories, but they give me just as much happiness as though I did.[[337]] Besides, should I chance to believe in them from time to time, nobody will know it, nobody will dispel my illusion by proving to me that I am dreaming.
The form and the name of her new divinity came to her in a dream. He was to be called ‘Corambé’. His attributes must be given in her own words:—
He was pure and charitable as Jesus, radiant and beautiful as Gabriel; but it was needful to add a little of the grace of the nymphs and of the poetry of Orpheus. Accordingly he had a less austere form than the God of the Christian, and a more spiritual feeling than those of Homer. And then I was obliged to complete him by investing him on occasion with the guise of a woman, for that which I had up to this time loved the best, and understood the best, was a woman—my mother. And so it was often under the semblance of a woman that he appeared to me. In short, he had no sex, and assumed all sorts of aspects.... Corambé should have all the attributes of physical and moral beauty, the gift of eloquence, the omnipotent charm of the arts—above all, the magic of musical improvisation. I wished to love him as a friend, as a sister, while revering him as a God. I would not be afraid of him, and to this end I desired that he should have some of our errors and weaknesses. I sought that one which could be reconciled with his perfection, and I found it in an excess of indulgence and kindness.
The religious idea took an historical form, and Aurore proceeded to develop the several phases of Corambé’s mundane existence in a series of sacred books or songs. She supposed that she must have composed not less than a thousand of such songs without ever being tempted to write down a line of them. In each of these the deity Corambé, who had become human on touching the earth, was brought into a fresh group of persons. These were all good people; for although there existed wicked ones, one did not see them, but only knew of them by the effects of their malice and madness. Corambé always appears, like Jesus—and one may add, like Buddha—as the beneficent one, spending himself, and suffering persecutions and martyrdom, in the cause of humanity.
This occupation of the imagination developed ‘a kind of gentle hallucination’. Aurore soon learned to betake herself to her hero-divinity for comfort and delight. Even when her peasant companions chattered around her she was able to lose herself in her world of religious romance.
The idea of sacred books was followed by that of a temple and a ritual. For this purpose she chose a little wood in her grandmother’s garden, a perfect thicket of young trees and undergrowth, into which nobody ever penetrated, and which, during the season of leaves, was proof against any spying eye. Here, in a tiny, natural chamber of green, carpeted with a magnificent moss, she proceeded to erect an altar against a tree stem, decking it with shells and other ornaments and crowning it with a wreath of flowers suspended from a branch above. The little priestess, having made her temple, sat down on the moss to consider the question of sacrifices.
To kill animals, or even insects, in order to please him, appeared to me barbarous and unworthy of his ideal kindliness. I persuaded myself to do just the opposite—that is, to restore life and liberty on his altar to all the creatures that I could procure.
Her offering included butterflies, lizards, little green frogs, and birds. These she would put into a box, lay it on the altar, and then open it, ‘after having invoked the good genius of liberty and protection’.
In these mimic rites, hardly removed from genuine childish play, the doubt-agitated girl found repose: ‘I had then delicious reveries, and while seeking the marvellous, which had for me so great an attraction, I began to find the vague idea and the pure feeling of a religion according to my heart’.
But the sweet sanctuary did not long remain inviolate. One day her boy playmate came to look for her, and tracked her to her secret grove. He was awe-struck at the sight, and exclaimed: ‘Ah, miss, the pretty little altar of the Fête-Dieu!’ He was for embellishing it still further, but she felt the charm was destroyed.