‘I retired, and when the bell rung for vespers, I presented myself among the rest at the door of the church. I was surprised to find it shut, and they all assembled. When the bell ceased, the Superior appeared, the door was opened, and the monks hurried in. I was following, when the Superior repelled me, exclaiming, ‘You wretch, you! Remain where you are.’ I obeyed; and the whole community entered the church, while I remained at the door. This species of excommunication produced its full effect of terror on me. As the monks slowly came out, and cast on me looks of silent horror, I thought myself the most abject being on earth; I could have hid myself under the pavement till the event of my appeal was over.
‘The next morning, when I went to matins, the same scene was renewed, with the horrible addition of audible reproaches, and almost imprecations, denounced against me, as they entered and returned. I knelt at the door. I did not answer a word. I returned not ‘railing for railing,’7 and lifted up my heart with a trembling hope, that this offering might be as acceptable to God as the sonorous chaunt of the choir, which I still felt it was miserable to be excluded from joining.
‘In the course of the day, every sluice of monastic malignity and vengeance was thrown open. I appeared at the door of the refectory. I did not dare to enter. Alas! Sir, how are monks employed in the hour of refection? It is an hour, when, while they swallow their meal, they banquet on the little scandal of the convent. They ask, ‘Who was late at prayers? Who is to undergo penance?’ This serves them for conversation; and the details of their miserable life supply no other subject for that mixture of exhaustless malignity and curiosity, which are the inseparable twins of monastic birth. As I stood at the door of the refectory, a lay-brother, to whom the Superior nodded, bid me retire. I went to my cell, waited for several hours, and just when the bell for vespers had rung, was supplied with food, which famine itself would have shrunk from. I tried to swallow it, but could not, and hurried away, as the bell tolled, to attend vespers; for I wished to have no cause of complaint against my neglect of duties. I hastened down. The door was again shut; service began; and again I was compelled to retire without partaking of it. The next day I was excluded from matins; the same degrading scene was acted over when I appeared at the door of the refectory. Food was sent to my cell, that a dog would have rejected; and the door was shut when I attempted to enter the church. A thousand circumstances of persecution, too contemptible, too minute, either for recollection or repetition, but infinitely harassing to the sufferer, were heaped on me every day. Imagine, Sir, a community of upwards of sixty persons, all sworn to each other to make the life of one individual insupportable; joined in a common resolution to insult, harass, torment and persecute him; and then imagine how that individual can support such a life. I began to dread the preservation of my reason – of my existence, which, miserable as it was, still fed on the hope of my appeal. I will sketch one day of my life for you. Ex uno disce omnes.8 I went down to matins, and knelt at the door; I did not dare to enter. When I retired to my cell, I found the crucifix taken away. I was about to go to the Superior’s apartment to complain of this outrage; in the passage I happened to meet a monk and two boarders. They all shrunk close to the walls; they drew in their garments, as if trembling to encounter the pollution of my touch. I said mildly, ‘There is no danger; the passage is wide enough.’ The monk replied, ‘Apage Satana.9 My children,’ addressing the boarders, ‘repeat with me, apage Satana; avoid the approach of that demon, who insults the habit he desecrates.’ They did so; and to render the exorcism complete, they spit in my face as they passed. I wiped it off, and thought how little of the spirit of Jesus was to be found in the house of his nominal brethren. I proceeded to the apartment of the Superior, and knocked timidly at the door. I heard the words, ‘Enter in peace;’ and I prayed that it might be in peace. As I opened the door, I saw several monks assembled with the Superior. The latter uttered an exclamation of horror when he saw me, and threw his robe over his eyes; the monks understood the signal; the door was closed, and I was excluded. That day I waited several hours in my cell before any food was brought me. There is no state of feeling that exempts us from the wants of nature. I had no food for many days requisite for the claims of adolescence, which were then rapidly manifesting themselves in my tall, but attenuated frame. I descended to the kitchen to ask for my share of food. The cook crossed himself as I appeared at the door; for even at the door of the kitchen I faultered at the threshold. He had been taught to consider me as a demon incarnate, and shuddered, while he asked, ‘What do you want?’ – ‘Food,’ I replied; ‘food; – that is all.’ – Well, you shall have it – but come no further – there is food.’ And he flung me the offal of the kitchen on the earth; and I was so hungry, that I devoured it eagerly. The next day I was not so lucky; the cook had learned the secret of the convent, (that of tormenting those whom they no longer have hopes of commanding), and mixed the fragments he threw to me, with ashes, hair and dust. I could hardly pick out a morsel that, famished as I was, was eatable. They allowed me no water in my cell; I was not permitted to partake of it at refection; and, in the agonies of thirst, aggravated by my constant solicitude of mind, I was compelled to kneel at the brink of the well, (as I had no vessel to drink out of), and take up the water in my hand, or lap it like a dog. If I descended to the garden for a moment, they took the advantage of my absence to enter my cell, and remove or destroy every article of furniture. I have told you that they took away my crucifix. I had still continued to kneel and repeat my prayers before the table on which it stood. That was taken away, – table, chair, missal, rosary, every thing, disappeared gradually; and my cell presented nothing but four bare walls, with a bed, on which they had rendered it impossible for me to taste repose. Perhaps they dreaded I might, however, and they hit on an expedient, which, if it had succeeded, might have deprived me of reason as well as repose.
‘I awoke one night, and saw my cell in flames; I started up in horror, but shrunk back on perceiving myself surrounded by demons, who, clothed in fire, were breathing forth clouds of it around me. Desperate with horror, I rushed against the wall, and found what I touched was cold. My recollection returned, and I comprehended, that these were hideous figures scrawled in phosphorus, to terrify me. I then returned to my bed, and as the day-light approached, observed these figures gradually decline. In the morning, I took a desperate resolution of forcing my way to the Superior, and speaking to him. I felt my reason might be destroyed amid the horrors they were surrounding me with.
‘It was noon before I could work myself up to execute this resolution. I knocked at his cell, and when the door was opened, he exhibited the same horror as at my former intrusion, but I was not to be repelled. ‘My father, I require you to hear me, nor will I quit this spot till you do so.’ – ‘Speak.’ – ‘They famish me, – I am not allowed food to support nature.’ – ‘Do you deserve it?’ – ‘Whether I do or not, neither the laws of God or man have yet condemned me to die of hunger; and if you do, you commit murder.’ – ‘Have you any thing else to complain of?’ –‘Every thing; I am not allowed to enter the church, – I am forbid to pray, – they have stripped my cell of crucifix, rosary and the vessel for holy water. It is impossible for me to perform my devotions even alone.’ – ‘Your devotions!’ – ‘My father, though I am not a monk, may I not still be a Christian?’ – ‘In renouncing your vows, you have abjured your claim to either character.’ – ‘But I am still a human being, and as such – But I appeal not to your humanity, I call on your authority for protection. Last night, my cell was covered with representations of fiends. I awoke in the midst of flames and spectres.’ – ‘So you will at the last day!’ – ‘My punishment will then be enough, it need not commence already.’ – ‘These are the phantoms of your conscience.’ –‘My father, if you will deign to examine my cell, you will find the traces of phosphorus on the walls.’ – ‘I examine your cell? I enter it?’ – ‘Am I then to expect no redress? Interpose your authority for the sake of the ho
use over which you preside. Remember that, when my appeal becomes public, all these circumstances will become so too, and you are to judge what degree of credit they will attach to the community.’ ‘Retire!’ I did so, and found my application attended to, at least with regard to food, but my cell remained in the same dismantled state, and I continued under the same desolating interdiction from all communion, religious or social. I assure you, with truth, that so horrible was this amputation from life to me, that I have walked hours in the cloister and the passages, to place myself in the way of the monks, who, I knew, as they passed, would bestow on me some malediction or reproachful epithet. Even this was better than the withering silence which surrounded me. I began almost to receive it as a customary salutation, and always returned it with a benediction. In a fortnight my appeal was to be decided on; this was a circumstance I was kept in ignorance of, but the Superior had received a notification of it, and this precipitated his resolution to deprive me of the benefit of its eventual success, by one of the most horrible schemes that ever entered the human (I retract the expression) the monastic heart. I received an indistinct intimation of it the very night after my application to the Superior; but had I been apprised, from the first, of the whole extent and bearings of their purpose, what resources could I have employed against it?
‘That evening I had gone into the garden; my heart felt unusually oppressed. Its thick troubled beatings, seemed like the vibrations of a time-piece, as it measures our approach to some hour of sorrow.
‘It was twilight; the garden was empty; and kneeling on the ground, in the open air, (the only oratory they had left me), I attempted to pray. The attempt was in vain; – I ceased to articulate sounds that had no meaning; – and, overcome by a heaviness of mind and body inexpressible, I fell on the ground, and remained extended on my face, torpid, but not senseless. Two figures passed, without perceiving me; they were in earnest conversation. One of them said, ‘More vigorous measures must be adopted. You are to blame to delay them so long. You will be answerable for the disgrace of the whole community, if you persist in this foolish lenity.’ – ‘But his resolution remains unbroken,’ said the Superior, (for it was he). – ‘It will not be proof against the measure I have proposed.’ – ‘He is in your hands then; but remember I will not be accountable for –’ They were by this time out of hearing. I was less terrified than you will believe, by what I had heard. Those who have suffered much, are always ready to exclaim, with the unfortunate Agag, ‘Surely the bitterness of death is past.’10 They know not, that that is the very moment when the sword is unsheathed to hew them in pieces. That night, I had not been long asleep, when I was awoke by a singular noise in my cell: I started up, and listened. I thought I heard some one hurry away barefooted. I knew I had no lock to my door, and could not prevent the intrusion of any one into my cell who pleased to visit it; but still I believed the discipline of the convent too strict to allow of this. I composed myself again, but was hardly asleep, when I was again awoke by something that touched me. I started up again; a soft voice near me said in whispers, ‘Compose yourself; I am your friend.’ – ‘My friend? Have I one? – but why visit me at this hour?’ – ‘It is the only hour at which I am permitted to visit you.’ – ‘But who are you, then?’ – ‘One whom these walls can never exclude. One to whom, if you devote yourself, you may expect services beyond the power of man.’ – There was something frightful in these words. I cried out, ‘Is it the enemy of souls that is tempting me?’ As I uttered these words, a monk rushed in from the passage, (where he had been evidently waiting, for his dress was on). He exclaimed, ‘What is the matter? You have alarmed me by your cries, – you pronounced the name of the infernal spirit, – what have you seen? what is it you fear?’ I recovered myself, and said, ‘I have seen or heard nothing extraordinary. I have had frightful dreams, that is all. Ah! Brother St Joseph, no wonder, after passing such days, my nights should be disturbed.’
Melmoth the Wanderer Page 23
