by George Moore
The year and the season that Madelon came to fetch thee are well in my mind. Was it not then that we were all going to Argenteuil to see Paula’s baby, now a growing girl employed in the laundry, who is thinking of entering the religious life. That scandal was not forgotten when another fell upon us. Sister Agnes left us for a gleeman, so it is said by her enemies, but none knows with whom she fled. Sister Angela left us last month in the belief that the beauty of her hair would convert Saladin to Christianity. The beauty of her hair! Héloïse repeated. That Saladin’s redemption should come through the gold of her hair was the story she told me, the Prioress answered, and when I reasoned with her she said that she had seen Saladin in a dream, his dark straight hair like ebony and his body pale as gold as he lay asleep in a tent. And leaning over to hear his dream Angela heard from him that the East was longing for union with the West, and that the gold of the morning and the gold of the evening should undo the knot. But what knot? Héloïse asked. The Sepulchre, I understood her to mean, the possession of which has caused war to arise between the East and the West. My hair, she said, is the golden West and his body is the golden East, and the mingling of the two will cause all the trouble of the West and the East to end. On these words she raised her veil, and the hair she had let grow fell about her. I reasoned with her and told her of the great distance, and she said the children had gone, and if they could, she could. But on her way thither it would seem that she met a gleeman returned from the Holy Land; and now I am being reproached for having admitted gleemen and their shows into this convent. Thou hast it all in mind, Héloïse?
I have indeed, dear Mother. And the next scandal, mine own, is beginning: a Benedictine nun is about to leave her convent for a monk. We are not all-powerful in our own lives, Mother, as you know well. Only God is that and he wills it all, a terrible God in this world and crueller in the next, so it is said. When the thunder muttered and crashed yesterday, I said: the earth is afraid of God in her very entrails, and when I saw the lightning shiver I said: the skies tremble with fear of God. The Scriptures tell us that we must fear God — and who does not? — Death himself slinking into the tomb silent from fear of God. She had thrown herself by the Prioress, and, rising from her knees, she said: all we know of God is injustice; and the Pope finds it easier to yield to Abbé Suger than to resist him.
Women come and go from convents, the Prioress answered, and babies are born; but worse than the sins of the flesh are the sins against faith, and a great charge of witchcraft is directed against us and has proved our undoing more than Paula’s baby. Sister Angela is now selling charms and potions and casting horoscopes in the fairs. Worst of all, two of our schoolchildren have begun to wrangle and bear witness one against the other till it seems beyond our wits to separate truth from lies. Some truth there must be in their sayings, for both are agreed on certain facts. That Stephen was unwise in allowing them into his house there can be no doubt. The first to go thither was Adèle, and her adventures, whether false or true, excited Lucille to stay longer in the confessional than she need stay, and to go to the priest’s house by night. Her story is that he took her to the garden of a herbalist, a trader in spells and charms and amulets, whither peasants assemble for the worship of Satan, who is wheeled in, in effigy, horns and hooves and tail, all and sundry falling down before him. We asked Lucille why people should pray to Satan, and she answered that she had put that question to the folk, and got for answer: we have prayed to God long enough to redeem us from the tyranny of the nobles; we are perishing of hunger, of disease, and if God will not help us perhaps the devil may. When questioned further, Lucille said that the devils who accompanied Satan seemed like nuns disguised as devils, the thought behind being that our nuns here escape by night to these Pagan festivals to worship Satan, and to commit in his honour and to obtain his aid, all sins natural and unnatural in the shrubberies and arbours with whomsoever lays hands upon them. So it is Lucille, that blue-eyed, flaxenhaired child, who tells these things? said Héloïse. Who has not only seen, but who has participated in this worship, in her imagination or in reality, that is what we do not know, the Prioress answered. Mayhap she only heard of devil-worship, picked up wandering stories; stories are going about of men and women who have lost their memory of all things and collect in groups about village fires, and assemble in the woods for strange rites brought back from Palestine, which is stranger still; unbelievable it is that returned Crusaders should have brought this evil into the country. Saladin’s magicians are charged with it. We live in strange times. In strange times indeed, Héloïse answered, when a convent chaplain brings children to pagan festivals. For why does he bring them? the Prioress continued; for that Saladin’s magicians ordained that the defilement of the consecrated Host is essential to procure Satan’s help. And how is the Host defiled? Héloïse asked; does Satan participate? Satan is a priest, the Prioress answered, so it is said, and the perversion is so great that the Host — I cannot bear to repeat the child’s words, and if she has seen nothing of what she tells us, then indeed she is possessed of Satan. Is their sin pardonable in the eyes of God, Héloïse said, if they believe that Satan can help them, or should I say more pardonable than if an unbeliever committed the sin? Whereat the nuns fell to thinking.
CHAP. XXXIX.
THE SOUND OF wrangling voices reached her in the passage, and when she entered the community-room, in which were all the choir sisters, Mother Ysabeau said: you have come, Héloïse, from the Prioress, who believes everything these wicked children, Adèle and Lucille, are telling against each other and our chaplain, Stephen? A group formed quickly round Héloïse and Mother Ysabeau, and the wrangle increased in noise, everybody anxious to speak but not to listen, till one of Lucille’s detractors gained the ear of the community with news of Lucille’s withdrawal of the statement that Stephen had taken her to the village to worship Satan. Lucille’s defenders denied quickly that the child had ever said she had worshipped Satan, only that she had been taken to the village at night by Stephen. Of that there could be no doubt, and proof did not lack that prayers were offered to Satan in a herbalist’s garden.
What did not seem clear was why Stephen should have taken Lucille and not Adèle; and the wrangle continued, the disputants saying the same thing again and again, till everybody was wearied of the rigmarole and waited for some new fact.
And the debate slumbered until Sister Mechtilde returned to the community-room. She was at once surrounded. Which of the children has confessed? was the question put to her, and an enumeration of punishments that might be applied in order to procure a confession was passed from mouth to mouth, each nun demanding severer tortures. But, said Sister Mechtilde, however we may punish the children, and frighten them with tales of the rack and thumb-screws, we shall not get the truth from them, for they do not know it themselves. At these words the community-room became instantly silent. All crowded to hear. That is my belief, continued Sister Mechtilde. The children have been playing at ghosts, frightening each other, walking about in white sheets with faces whitened or blackened out of human resemblance; they were joined by some of the novices; Sister Marcella and Sister Ursula led them up and down the passages, and after frightening others, dreams began to awaken them out of their sleep; from telling each other their dreams and the stories that have come into the convent of the doings in the village, a tale of a nightly visitor arose. For a long time the children did not know who this visitor was, but suddenly he became Stephen, and the children began to tell of how they had found Stephen in their beds and waked up too late. So you think, Sister, said Héloïse, that the stories Adèle and Lucille are telling against each other and against the convent are all illusions, and that no ghost seeks the children in their beds? It may have been, Sister Mechtilde answered, that it was the novices who played the prank of visiting the children in their beds. Else we must believe that Stephen bribed our portress Agatha or climbed into the dormitory by a rope ladder. It seemed as if their chaplain, Stephen, was acquitted of a
ll evil doings by the nuns themselves. For of Agatha’s integrity they were sure; the rope ladder and their chaplain climbing up by it into the dormitory at midnight, when the owls were hooting, did not seem to unriddle the story in which they were all caught, nuns, children and chaplain, one which would leave the nuns homeless and might conduct poor Stephen to the stake.
The burning of Stephen was a sad thought, but some nuns had fallen to thinking of what was going to become of them, of the days that lay ahead, when they would have to face angry relatives, who would look upon them as extra mouths to feed; others, who were to be scattered through different convents, were thinking of the unpleasantness of life among hostile nuns and under rules that they had never promised to obey. The convent lot seemed irretrievable indeed. It was Sister Josiane who broke the sad pause that had fallen upon the community-room: those of us, she said, for whom our persecutors will find convents are fortunate, and those who have fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters, and even cousins, who will give them a welcome, however short and scanty, are fortunate. But some of us are alone in the world, and some there are who, for one reason or another, will find small mercy from the Church. Sister Paula’s incontinence will be urged against her, and though the same blame cannot be cast upon me, my knowledge and admiration of the works of that great man, John Scotus Erigena, will be remembered. We are in truth a most unfortunate community. Her words struck terror, and the silence that succeeded her words became in a few moments a piercing that none could endure. Before she could speak again a babble of nuns began, and then little groups of three or four nuns formed; sometimes a single nun walked across the room, in the hope of catching the ear of a casual auditor, and every one of these nuns was hot with anger against Suger and the monks of Saint-Denis. The gleemaiden was not enough for Adam; he despised her, a nun was heard saying, and then a little nun said: I heard Angela say something like that once — that man’s love of woman was something the world lived upon, a necessity, but a woman’s love of woman was more detached — purer; and understanding her a little, I said: yet if I were in great trouble it would seem to me more natural to go to a man for help. Whereat she looked at me gravely; it is not so with me, she said; I would go to a woman. She said she would let me into the secret, but she has gone away to live with a gleeman, a returned Crusader, and I shall never know it. The door opened; and it was Sister Agatha come to say that Abbé Suger was in the library and wished to speak with Sister Héloïse. To speak to me? Héloïse asked, and she looked towards Mother Hilda and Mother Ysabeau. Yes, Sister Héloïse, Sister Agatha replied; he wishes to speak with you. We have seen him, Mother Hilda answered, many times within the last few weeks, but were not able to get better terms from him than promises to find us convents. But shall I see him? Héloïse asked. It may be on some privy matter he wishes to speak to you, Mother Ysabeau answered. But I do not know him, said Héloïse, and she left the community-room expecting to come upon the great Abbot lost in admiration of their library, looking up and down the shelves. But he was pacing the room like a wolf in a cage, and she recoiled inwardly from the thick-set man who came to greet her enveloped in a brown-yellow robe tied by a rope around his middle. His tonsured head offended her, so like a religious brag did it seem, and her aversion for his bony yellow forehead, finely cut aquiline nose, and watchful eyes, was so instinctive that she withdrew her hand from his fat grasp, betraying, or almost, her aversion. Her hatred was that of a Benedictine nun for a man who had come to rob her convent and disperse the sisters through different convents, leaving the residue to shift for themselves, but deeper than her hatred was her dread of him, for she was sensible of his power even before he began to speak, and after the first words she knew that to withstand him she must summon all her courage to her aid.
So were they in the first moments, but ridding her voice of all resentment, she said: will you sit down, Abbé Suger? He thanked her, and while finding a seat for himself and drawing it forward to within pleasant speaking distance, he talked to her about the long walk from Paris — two leagues at least, along dusty roads, a remark that compelled her to ask him if he drank wine or water. Water, he said, and while waiting for the water he began to tell her that he had asked to see her rather than the Prioress, Mother Ysabeau, or Mother Hilda, for he had talked to them during the week unprofitably. To talk profitably, he said, one must start from certain facts accepted by both parties as a basis for discussion. And not being able to persuade them to accept our expulsion as unavoidable, Héloïse answered, you — I would have you accept it as irrevocable, Suger interrupted, for his Holiness, the Pope, and the King have ordered it. But all discussion between me and the mothers declined into a wrangle; I could not persuade them to start from certain facts, and it was to avoid another profitless wrangle that I sent for you, Sister Héloïse, for the sake of your intelligence, which is known to everybody.
Héloïse’s face darkened, and his voice assuming a stricter tone he began to tell her that his Holiness, Honorius II., and Louis VII. of France, and himself (if he might include himself), and the monks of Saint-Denis, whose Abbot he was, wished to make this expulsion from the convent of Argenteuil as little harsh as might be; and it is for yourselves, he added, to make the expulsion harsh or gentle. You think expulsions can ever be gentle, Abbé Suger? Héloïse said, ruing the words, for they did not seem to give her any advantage over their cruel enemy. She even thought that she descried a smile through his hairy lips, for in his reply there was a certain irony: he had no wish for an argument regarding the exact meaning of the word expulsion, his object being to avoid recriminations. The convent is going to be closed, he said, and the question comes if this can be done without causing a scandal. You would avoid scandal then? Héloïse asked. Of course we would like to avoid scandal, the monk answered, and shall avoid it in a great measure if we may reckon on your help, Sister; you are powerful in the convent and will be able to persuade the sisters not to butt, like silly sheep, against the rocks but to scale the rocks —— Like goats, Héloïse interjected. If the discussion be conducted on a basis of admitted fact, he said, that, come what may, the convent is going to be closed, much may be done to soften, to alleviate the lot of the sisters; also to avoid recriminations and a raking up of old scandals.
Abbé Suger waited for Héloïse to vent herself, but she sat saying nothing, and, dismayed somewhat by her silence, he continued: I was sorry not to have seen you when you were at Saint-Denis. Forgive me for recalling to your memory the loss of your son, who I would like to think will be returned to you, for it would be sad indeed if all the children engaged in this pilgrimage, inspired to do so by the words of Our Lord Jesus Christ — out of the mouths of babes and sucklings cometh forth wisdom — should never return to their parents. But you do not think, Abbé Suger, that these children will ever reach Constantinople? I hope indeed they will, and Jerusalem too, and that many will return, else we should not have yielded to their importunities. I am without news of your son, but if he be with the procession that started from Saint-Denis some three weeks ago, it may be that a quick messenger might overtake the procession; and one child more or less would not matter to the pilgrimage, which is sufficiently numerous. You would bribe me by promises to get back my son? We should avoid, Sister Héloïse, such words as bribe, for the use of them will make it hard for us to come to an agreement; and moreover the word bribe has no meaning at all in the proposal that I am making to you. I cannot promise to get back your son for you, I can only promise to help. There is no bribe in a promise, I am asking you to save your sisters much unnecessary hardships by your counsel — By not trying to withstand you? Héloïse interrupted. By not trying to resist the closing of the convent, he answered; for if you resist and create scandal we are powerless to help you. The orders of the King and the Pope must be obeyed. If we are thrown out of this convent, Héloïse said, we shall have to beg at the doors of the churches in our Benedictine robes. That is the scandal, Sister Héloïse, we wish to avoid, he replied. You would have our la
nds, she said, and would have us come to terms, and I am asked to make them pleasant and agreeable. And you will not? Abbé Suger said, rising. Am I to understand that my appeal is vain? If the Pope dispossesses us of our lands and our convent he might at least absolve us from our vows, Héloïse replied; is not that so, Abbé Suger? The sisters of Argenteuil, he answered, do not ask to be absolved from their vows. Sister Angela — I thought, Abbé Suger, we were to avoid wrangles and recriminations. I have not reproached the monastery of Saint-Denis with the sins committed in it in the days of the late Abbot; and you might have observed the same reticence regarding any sins that may have been committed in my convent.
