After some more conversation with me on this subject, in which I deplored my want of judgment, he concluded with these words: "It is a common thing for people to complain of their defective memory, and even of the malice and worthlessness of their will, but nobody ever deplores his poverty of spirit, i.e., of judgment. In spite of the Beatitude, everyone rejects such a thought as a doing an injustice to themselves. Well, courage! advancing years will bring you plenty of judgment: it is one of the fruits of experience and old age.
"But as for memory, its failure is one of the undoubted defects of old people. That is why I have little hope of the improvement of my own; but provided I have enough to remember God that is all I want.[1] I remembered, O Lord, Thy judgments of old: and I was comforted."
[Footnote 1: Psalm cxviii. 52.]
A PRIEST SHOULD NOT AIM AT IMITATING IN HIS SERMONS ANY PARTICULAR PREACHER.
I esteemed him so highly, and not without reason, that all his ways delighted me. Among others, I thought that I should like to imitate his style of preaching. Can it be said that I chose a bad model or was wanting in taste?
Do not, however, imagine for a moment that I have ever aimed at reproducing his lofty and deep thoughts and teaching, the eloquent sweetness of his language, the marvellous power which swayed the hearts of his audience. No, I have always felt that to be beyond my powers, and I have only tried to mould my action, gestures, and intonation after the pattern set by him. Now, as it happened, that owing to his constitution and temperament his speech was always slow and deliberate, not to say prosy, and my own quite the opposite, I became so strangely changed that my dear people at Belley (where the above incident occurred) almost failed to recognise me. They thought a changeling had been foisted upon them in the place of their own Bishop, whose vehement action and passionate words they dearly loved, even though sometimes they had found his discourses hard to follow. In fact, I had ceased to be myself; I was now nothing more than a wretched copy with nothing in it really recalling the original.
Our Blessed Father heard of this, and being eager to apply a remedy chose his opportunity, and one day, when we were talking about sermons, quietly remarked that he was told I had taken it into my head to imitate the Bishop of Geneva in my preaching. I replied that it was so, and asked if I had chosen a bad model, and if he did not preach better than I did.
"Ah," he replied, "this is a chance for attacking his reputation! But, no, he does not preach so badly, only the worst of it is that they tell me you imitate him so badly that his style is not recognisable: that you have spoiled the Bishop of Belley yet have not at all succeeded in reproducing the Bishop of Geneva. You had better, like the artist who was forced to put the name of his subject under every portrait he painted, give out that you are only copying me." "Well, be it so," I replied, "in good time you will see that little by little from being a pupil I have become a master, and in the end my copies will be taken for originals."
"Jesting apart," he continued, "you are spoiling yourself, ruining your preaching, and pulling down a splendid building to re-fashion it into one which sins against the rules of nature and art. You must remember, too, that if at your age, like a piece of cloth, you have taken a wrong fold, it will not be easy to smooth it out."
"Ah! if manners could be changed, what would I not give for such as yours? I do what I can to stir myself up, I do not spare the spur, but the more I urge myself on, the less I advance. I have difficulty in getting my words out, and still more in pronouncing them. I am heavier than a block, I can neither excite my own emotions, nor those of others. You have more fire in the tip of your fingers than I have in my whole body. Where you fly like a bird, I crawl like a tortoise. And now they tell me that you, who are naturally so rapid, so lively, so powerful in your preaching, are weighing your words, counting your periods, drooping your wings, dragging yourself on, and making your audience as tired as yourself. Is this the beautiful Noemi of bygone days? the city of perfect loveliness, the joy of the whole earth?"