‘Your observation surprises me,’ the dean said in a curt tone. ‘I sense a touch of resentment in it, a touch of bitterness … My child,’ he went on in a gentler voice, ‘I fear your academic successes may have warped your judgement somewhat. The seminary is not the world. Life in the seminary is not life. I imagine it would not take much to make you an intellectual, in other words, a rebel, a systematic scorner of those social categories that are not founded on the spirit. God save us from reformers!’
‘Father, many saints were reformers.’
‘Then God save us from saints, too! Don’t protest, it’s only a joke, but listen to me. You know perfectly well that the Church only raises to its altars, most often a long time after their death, a very small number of exceptionally just people, whose teachings and heroic examples, subjected to strict investigation, constitute the common treasure of the faithful – although mark you, this treasure is not to be drawn on in an uncontrolled way. It follows from this, with all due respect, that these admirable men are like those wines that are precious but slow to develop, that cost the vineyard owner such effort and care but only regale the palate of his great-nephews … I’m joking, of course. All the same, you will observe that God seems to take care not to multiply among us, the secular clergy, among His regular troops, dare I say, saints performing wonders and miracles, spiritual adventurers who sometimes strike fear into the hierarchy. Isn’t the curé of Ars an exception? Aren’t there far more zealous, irreproachable clerics, devoting their strength to the crushing burdens of their ministry, than there are canonized saints? And yet who would dare claim that the practice of heroic virtues is the privilege of monks, let alone mere lay people?
‘Do you understand now how it is, whatever reservations one might have on the somewhat disrespectful and paradoxical nature of such a joke, that I could say: God save us from saints? All too often they have been a trial for the Church before becoming her glory. And I’m not talking about those failed, incomplete saints who swarm around the real ones, who are their small change in a way, and, like the large sums, serve much less than they clutter! What pastor, what bishop would wish to command such troops? They may have the spirit of obedience, but what of it? Whatever they do, their words, their attitude, their silence even, have always risked being a shock to the mediocre, the weak, the lukewarm. Oh, I know, you’re going to say that the Lord is sick of the lukewarm. But who are they exactly? We do not know. Are we sure that we can define such people as well as He does? Not at all. On the other hand, the Church has necessities – yes, let us say the word, she has financial necessities. These needs exist, you must admit that as well as I do – so there’s no point being ashamed of it. The Church has a body and a soul: the needs of her body must be provided for. A sensible man is not ashamed of eating. So let us see things as they are. We were speaking earlier about tradesmen. From whom does the State draw most of its revenue? Isn’t it precisely from that lower middle class, hungry for profit, as harsh to the poor as it is to itself, and fanatical about saving? Modern society is its work.
‘Of course, nobody is asking you to compromise your principles. I’m not aware of any catechism in any diocese changing anything in the fourth commandment. But can we put our noses in account books? These hard-working people may submit to our teaching when it comes, for example, to the distractions of the flesh – which their worldly wisdom sees as dissolute and wasteful, although their revulsion is seldom more than a fear of risk or expense – but what they call business is to them a private domain in which work sanctifies everything, because they make a religion of work. Every man for himself, that’s their rule. And it doesn’t depend on us: it will take a long time, centuries perhaps, to enlighten such minds and destroy the prejudice that trade is a kind of war demanding the same privileges and the same tolerance as real war. A soldier on the battlefield doesn’t consider himself a murderer. In the same way, the trader who makes a usurious profit from his work doesn’t see himself as a thief, because he thinks he’s incapable of taking ten sous from someone else’s pocket. What can we do, my dear boy, men are men! If any of these merchants took it into their heads to follow to the letter the theological prescriptions regarding legitimate gain, they would certainly end up bankrupt.
‘Is it desirable to reduce to destitution hard-working citizens who have raised themselves with such difficulty, who are our best support in a materialistic society, who pay their share in the expenses of worship and also give us priests, since the recruitment of priests from our villages has almost dried up? Big industry exists now in name only, having been swallowed up by the banks, the aristocracy is dying, the proletariat is getting away from us, and you want to suggest to the middle classes that they immediately and with great ceremony solve a problem of conscience whose solution requires a lot of time and thought and tact. Wasn’t slavery a greater offence to the law of God? And yet the apostles … At your age, it’s normal to see things in black and white terms. Beware of that failing. Forget abstractions, consider human beings. Take, for example, the Pamyre family, it could serve as a model, an illustration of the theory I have just presented. The grandfather was a simple stonemason, notoriously anticlerical, socialist even. Our venerable colleague from Bazancourt remembers seeing him sitting down in his doorway whenever a procession passed by. He first bought a rather disreputable little business selling wines and spirits. Two years later, his son, educated in the local school, married into a good family, the Delannoys, who had a nephew who was a priest, over towards Brogelonne. The daughter was an enterprising girl who opened a grocery. The old man, naturally, took care of it: you’d see him driving his cart on the roads from one year’s end to the other. He was the one who paid for his grandchildren to be sent to the diocesan boarding school in Montreuil. He found it gratifying to see them make friends with the nobility, and anyway he hadn’t been a socialist for a long time, his employees were scared to death of him. At the age of twenty-two, Louis Pamyre has just married the daughter of the notary Delivaulle, His Excellency’s business advisor, Arsène is in charge of the shop, Charles is studying medicine in Lille, and the youngest, Adolphe, is at the seminary in Arras. Of course, everyone knows that while these people may work hard, they’re tough businessmen and have bled the canton dry. What of it? They may rob us, but they respect us. That creates between them and us a kind of social solidarity, which you may deplore or not, but which exists, and everything that exists must be used for good.’
He stopped, a little red in the face. I still find it difficult to follow a conversation like this, because whenever I don’t feel a secret affinity with my interlocutor that allows me to eagerly anticipate his thoughts my attention wanders easily and I let myself, as my old teachers used to say, ‘lag behind’ … There are words that are, as the saying goes, ‘hard to swallow’. These particular words were forming a block in my chest, a block of ice that only prayer, I felt, was still capable of melting.
‘I suppose I’ve spoken a little roughly,’ the dean of Blangermont resumed, ‘but it’s for your good. When you’ve lived a lot, you’ll understand. But you must live.’
‘You must live, that’s terrible!’ I replied without thinking. ‘Don’t you think so?’
I was expecting an outburst, for I had regained the voice I have when I’m in a bad mood, a voice I know well – ‘your father’s voice’, mother used to say … The other day I heard a tramp say to the gendarme who’d asked him for his papers, ‘Papers? Where am I supposed to get papers from? I’m the son of the unknown soldier!’ His voice was rather similar.
The dean simply looked at me closely for a long time. ‘I suspect you of being a poet. Fortunately, with your two subsidiary parishes, you have no shortage of work. Work will sort everything out.’
Last night my courage failed me. I would have liked to give a conclusion to this conversation. But what’s the point? Obviously, I have to take the dean’s character into account, the visible pleasure he takes in contradicting me, in humiliating me. In the old days, he became well
known for his zeal against young democratically inclined priests, and he doubtless thinks I’m one of them. A quite forgivable illusion, when it comes down to it. It’s true that thanks to the extreme modesty of my background, my wretched abandoned childhood, the increasing discrepancy I feel between such a neglected, even coarse upbringing and a certain sensitivity that allows me to guess at many things, I belong to a category of naturally undisciplined men of whom my superiors are right to be suspicious. What would I have become if … My feelings towards what is called society remain quite confused. Even though I am the son of poor people – or perhaps because of that, who knows? – I only really understand the superiority of breeding, of blood. If I admitted that, people would make fun of me. It seems to me, for example, that I would gladly have served a true master – a prince, a king. You can place both your hands in another man’s hands and swear to him the loyalty of a vassal, but the idea would never occur to anyone to perform that ceremony at the feet of a millionaire, just because he’s a millionaire – that would be stupid. The notion of wealth and the notion of power cannot yet be merged, the former is still abstract. I know it would be easy enough to reply that more than one lord of the manor owed his fiefdom to the moneybags of a usurer father, but in the long run, whether or not it had been acquired at the point of a sword, it was at the point of a sword that he had to defend it as he would have defended his own life, because the man and the fiefdom were one, to the extent of bearing the same name … Isn’t it by this mysterious sign that things are recognized? And in our sacred texts the king is barely distinguished from the judge. Of course, a millionaire, thanks to his coffers, has more human lives at his disposal than anyone, but his power is like an idol, it has neither eyes nor ears. He may kill, that’s all, without even knowing what he is killing. This privilege may also be that of the demons.
(I sometimes tell myself that Satan, who tries to take possession of God’s thought, not only hates it without understanding it, but misunderstands it completely. He unwittingly swims against the current of life rather than with it and exhausts himself in absurd, terrifying attempts to reverse the whole work of Creation.)
* * *
The governess came to see me this morning in the sacristy. We talked for a long time about Mademoiselle Chantal. The girl is apparently becoming increasingly bitter, her presence at the chateau has become impossible, and she really ought to be sent to a boarding school. The countess doesn’t yet appear to have decided to take such a step. I understood that I was expected to intervene with her. I’m due to have dinner at the chateau next week.
Obviously Mademoiselle Louise isn’t telling me the whole truth. Several times she looked me straight in the eyes with an embarrassing insistence, her lips trembling. I walked her back to the little gate of the graveyard. When we got there she stopped and in a rapid, staccato voice, as if unburdening herself of a humiliating admission – the kind of voice you hear in the confessional – apologized for turning to me in such a risky and delicate situation. ‘Chantal is a strange, passionate character. I don’t think she’s depraved. Young people her age almost always have boundless imagination. In fact, I’ve hesitated a great deal before warning you against a child I love and feel sorry for, even though she is quite capable of doing something reckless. As you’re new in this parish, it could be pointless, even risky, for you to yield, if the need arose, to your generosity and charity and in this way seem to provoke confidences that … The count wouldn’t stand for it,’ she added, in a tone I didn’t like.
Of course, there are no grounds for my thinking she is being biased or unfair, and when I said goodbye to her, as coldly as I could, without holding out my hand to her, she had tears in her eyes, real tears. Besides, I don’t particularly like Mademoiselle Chantal’s manner either: her features have the same fixity, the same hardness I find, alas, in the faces of many young peasant girls whose secrets are not yet known to me, may never be known to me, because they don’t reveal much even on their deathbeds. The young men are very different! I don’t really believe in sacrilegious confessions at such a moment, because the dying girls I am speaking about manifested a sincere contrition for their sins. But it was only once they had got beyond that dark passage that their poor dear faces regained the serenity of childhood (even though they were so close to it!), something trusting and filled with wonder, a pure smile … The demon of lust is a silent demon.
All the same, I can’t help finding Mademoiselle Louise’s approach a little suspicious. It is clear that I lack the experience or authority to get involved in such a delicate family affair, and it would have been wiser to keep me out of it. But since they have seen fit to involve me, why forbid me to judge for myself? ‘The count wouldn’t stand for it …’ She needn’t have said that.
Received another letter from my friend yesterday, a short one. He asks me to postpone my journey to Lille by a few days, as he himself has to go to Paris on business. This is how he ends: ‘You must already have realized by now that I have, as they say, given up the cassock. My heart, though, hasn’t changed. It has merely opened itself up to a more human and consequently more generous conception of life. I am earning my living: great words, and a great thing. Earning one’s living! The habit, adopted from the seminary, of receiving from our superiors our daily bread or a plateful of beans as if they were alms makes us schoolboys, children, for as long as we live. I was, as no doubt you still are, absolutely ignorant of my social value. I could barely have put myself forward for the humblest task. Now, although my bad health does not allow me to take all the necessary steps, I have received many very flattering offers, and when the moment comes I will merely have to choose between half a dozen extremely lucrative positions. Even by the time you come to see me, I may have the pleasure and pride to welcome you to a comfortable home, our lodgings being thus far extremely modest …’
I know how childish all this is, and that I should simply shrug, but I can’t. There is a certain stupidity, a certain tone of stupidity, in which I immediately recognize, with a terrible sense of humiliation, the pride of a priest, but a pride stripped entirely of its spiritual character and turned to stupidity, turned the way a sauce turns. How helpless we are faced with men and life! What absurd childishness!
And yet my old friend was considered one of the best pupils at the seminary, the most gifted. He was not even lacking in a precocious and somewhat ironic experience of people, and he judged some of our teachers with a fair amount of lucidity. Why is he now trying to impress me with a kind of weak bravado which doesn’t, I should think, fool even him? Like so many others, he will end up in some office where his ill nature, his pathological sensitivity, will make his colleagues wary of him, and however hard he tries to hide his past from them, I doubt he will have many friends.
We pay a high price, a very high price, for the superhuman dignity of our vocation. It is always such a small step from the sublime to the ridiculous! And the world, usually so indulgent of ridiculous people, instinctively hates it when it is us. Female stupidity is already quite irritating, clerical stupidity is even more so than female stupidity, of which it indeed sometimes seems the mysterious offshoot. The estrangement of so many poor people from the priest, their profound antipathy towards him, cannot perhaps only be explained, as they would like to have us believe, by a more or less conscious rebellion of human appetites against the Law and those who embody it … What’s the point of denying it? To feel a sense of revulsion against ugliness, it is not necessary to have a very clear idea of what is beautiful. A mediocre priest is ugly.
I don’t mean a bad priest. Or rather, a bad priest is a mediocre priest. The truly bad priest is a monster. Monstrousness goes beyond anything we can imagine. Who can know God’s intentions for a monster? What is he there for? What is the metaphysical significance of such an extraordinary misfortune? However hard I try, I cannot believe, for example, that Judas belongs to the world – the world for which Jesus mysteriously refused to pray – Judas is not of that world …
I am sure that my unhappy friend does not deserve to be described as a bad priest. I even assume that he is sincerely devoted to his companion, for in the old days he was sentimental. A mediocre priest, alas, almost always is! Might vice be less of a risk for us than a kind of blandness? There is such a thing as softening of the brain. The softening of the heart is worse.
* * *
Coming back this morning across the fields from my subsidiary parish, I spotted the count taking his dogs foraging alongside the Linières wood. He waved to me from a distance but didn’t seem very keen to speak to me. I think he’s somehow found out about what Mademoiselle Louise has done. I must act with a great deal of reserve and caution.
Yesterday, confessions. From three to five, the children. I began with the boys, naturally.
How Our Lord loves these young ones! In my place, anyone other than a priest would doze off at their monotonous droning, which all too often resembles the mere recitation of phrases taken from the Examination of Conscience and endlessly repeated … If he wanted to get a better idea and asked questions at random to satisfy his simple curiosity, I think he would find it hard not to feel revulsion. Their animal nature seems so close to the surface! And yet …
What do we know of sin? Geologists tell us that the soil we think is so firm and stable is really just a thin film above an ocean of liquid fire and is always trembling like the skin that forms on milk about to boil … What thickness is sin? How deep would we have to dig to find the blue abyss? …
* * *
I am seriously ill. I was suddenly certain of it yesterday, it was like an illumination. The days when I ignored this tenacious pain that occasionally appears to yield but never completely relaxes its grip seemed all at once to recede, to recede into an almost vertiginous past, recede as far as my childhood … It’s been just six months since I felt the first ravages of this sickness, and yet I can barely remember the times when I ate and drank like everyone else, which is a bad sign.
Diary of a Country Priest Page 7
