There was a look of profound disgust on his noble face as he uttered these words of brutal simplicity. It was plain that the thought of matters concerning the flesh provoked in him that peculiar repugnance found in priests who have had to struggle hard against a natural inclination for love. His disgust soon made way for a deep melancholy, and he continued his remarks.
'It is not this woman who causes me alarm in René's case. According to what you tell me, she would have left him when once her whim was gratified. In his present state she will not give him a thought. It is the moral condition of the poor lad, as shown by this affair, which troubles me. Here is a young man of twenty-five, brought up as he has been, knowing how indispensable he is to the best of sisters, possessing that divine and incomparable gift called talent—a gift which, if properly directed, can produce such great things—and possessing it, too, at a tragic moment in the history of our country; here is one, I say, who knows that to-morrow his country may be lost for ever in another hurricane, that its safety is entrusted to every one of us—to you and me and each of these passers-by—and yet all this does not outweight the grief of being deceived by a wretched woman! But,' he continued, as if his remarks applied to Claude as much as to the wounded man he had just quitted, 'what is it you hope to find in that troubled sea of sensuality into which you plunge on a pretext of love, except sin with its endless misery? You speak of complication. Human life is very simple. It is all comprised in God's Ten Commandments. Find me a case, a single one, which is not provided for there. Has a blindness fallen upon the men of this generation that a lad, whom I knew to be pure, has sunk so low in so short a time, and only through breathing the vapours of the age? Ah, sir,' he added in the accents of a father deceived in his son, 'I was so proud of him! I expected so much of him!'
'You talk as if he were dead,' said Claude, feeling both moved and irritated by the Abbé's words. On the one hand, he pitied him for his evident distress; but, on the other hand, he could not bear to hear the priest enunciate such ideas, although they were also his own in his fits of remorse. Like many modern sceptics, he was incessantly sighing for a simpler faith, and yet his taste for intellectual or sentimental complexities was incessantly leading him to look upon any and every faith he examined as a mutilation. There suddenly came over him an irresistible desire to contradict the Abbé Taconet and to defend the very youth whose fate he had himself so bewailed on reaching the Rue Coëtlogon that afternoon.
'Do you think,' he said, 'that René will not be all the stronger for this trial—more able to exercise and to develop that talent in which you at least believe, Monsieur l'Abbé? If we writers could evolve our ideas as easily as a mathematician solves his problems on the black-board, and enunciate them, coolly and calmly, in well-chosen and precise terms—why, every one would set up as an author instead of turning engineer or lawyer. They would only require patience, method, and leisure. But writing is a different thing altogether.' He was getting more excited as he went on. 'To begin with, one must live, and, to know life, in every one of its peculiar phases, become acquainted with every possible sensation. We must experiment upon ourselves. What Claude Bernard used to do with his dogs, what Pasteur does with his rabbits, we must do with our heart, inoculating it with every form of virus that attacks humanity. We must have felt, if only for an hour, each of the thousand emotions of which our fellow-man is capable, and all in order that some obscure reader in ten, a hundred, or two hundred years' time may stop at some phrase in one of our books and, recognising the disease from which he is suffering, say, 'This is true.' It is indeed a terrible game, and we run a terrible risk in playing it. Greater even than that incurred by doctors, for they run no risk of cutting themselves with the dissecting knife nor of being struck down when visiting a cholera hospital. It was nearly all over with poor René, but when he next writes of love, jealousy, or woman's treachery, his words will be tinged with blood—the red blood that has coursed through his veins—and not with ink borrowed from another's pen. And it will make a fine page, too, one that will swell the literary treasures of that France you accuse us of forgetting. We serve our country in our own fashion. That fashion may not be yours, but it has its greatness. Do you know what a martyrdom of suffering has to be endured before an Adolphe or a Manon can be dragged from the soul?'
'Beati pauperes spirtu,' replied the priest. 'I remember having heard something of the kind in the Ecole Normale thirty years ago as I walked in the courtyard with some of my comrades who have since distinguished themselves. They possessed fewer metaphors, but greater powers of abstraction than you have, and they called it the antinomy of art and morality. Words are but words, and facts remain facts. Since you talk of science, what would you think of a physician who, under pretence of studying an infectious disease, gave it to himself and so to all the town? Do you ever think of the terrible responsibility that rests upon those great writers whom you envy for having been able to give the world their own wretched experiences? I have not read the two novels you mention, but I well remember Goethe's "Werther" and de Musset's "Rolla." Don't you think that the pistol-shot René fired at himself was somewhat influenced by these two apologies of suicide? Do you know that it is awful to think that both Goethe and de Musset are dead, but that their work can still place a weapon in the hand of a heart-broken lad? The sufferings of the soul should be laid bare only to be relieved, and a cold, pitiless interest in human woe inspires me with horror whenever I meet with it. Believe me,' he added, pointing to the crucifix that adorned the gateway of the Couvent des Carmes, 'no one can say more than He has said about sufferings and passions, and you will find a remedy nowhere else.'
Irritated by the priest's air of conviction, Claude replied, 'You brought René up in His name, and you yourself admit that your hopes have been deceived.'
'The ways of God are inscrutable,' replied the Abbé, with a look of mute reproach that made Claude blush. In attacking René's uncle in a painful spot, simply because the argument was going against him, he had yielded to an evil impulse of which he was now ashamed. The two men passed the corner of the Rue de Vaugirard and the Rue Cassette in silence, and reached the door of the Ecole Saint-André just as a class of boys was entering. There were about forty of them—lads of about fifteen or sixteen years old, all looking very well and happy. As they passed the Directeur they saluted him so deferentially and with such evident heartiness that this act alone would have shown what rare influence their excellent instructor possessed. Claude, however, also knew from experience how conscientiously the Abbé discharged his duty; he knew that each of these boys was followed daily, almost hourly, by the serene but vigilant eyes of the worthy priest.
A sudden rush of feeling prompted him to seize the latter by the hand and to exclaim, 'You are an upright man, Monsieur l'Abbé, and that is the best and finest talent one can have!'
'He will save René,' he said, as he saw the good Christian's robe disappear across the threshold that he had himself so often crossed in less happy days. His thoughts became singularly serious and sad, and as his steps wandered almost mechanically towards his rooms in the Rue de Varenne, where he had not put in an appearance for several days, he allowed his mind to dwell upon the ideas awakened by the conversation and the life of the priest. The feeling of physical beatitude experienced two hours ago on Colette's balcony had fled. All the wretchedness of the undignified life he had been leading for the past two years came home to him, and looked still more wretched when compared with the hidden glory of the perfect life of duty he had been privileged to behold.
His disgust grew stronger when he found himself in his own rooms, recalling, as they did, the memories of so many hours of shame and pain. A score of visions rose up before him illustrating the drama in which he had played a part—René reading the manuscript of the 'Sigisbée,' the first performance at the Comédie Française, the soirée at Madame Komof's, Suzanne's appearance in her red gown, and Colette in his rooms on the day after the soirée; then René telling him of his visit to Madame Moraines, his own departure for Venice, his return, the scenes to which it had led, and the two parallel passions that had sprung up in his heart and René's, ending with the attempted suicide of the one and the abasement of the other. 'The Abbé is right,' he thought; 'all this is filth.' He went on with his soliloquy. 'Yes, the Abbé will save René; he will compel him to go for a tour of six months or a year as soon as he is better, and he will come back rid of this horrible nightmare. He is young—a heart of twenty-five is such a vigorous and hardy plant. Who knows? He may perhaps be moved by Rosalie's love and marry her. Anyhow, he will triumph. He has suffered, but he has not debased himself. But I?'