We heard this mass sung in a Benedictine monastery, under a stained-glass window like frosted leaves fallen in the dew of dawn, amid the glory of white crucified with gold. Grace coursed from the blessed host when the monstrance was lifted above the wimples of the nuns, and we were blinded by the inexhaustible waves of the sacred blood of the Redemption.
We heard it sung, too, in the sepulchre of the Carmelites, amid the gloom further darkened by all the mournfulness of the grille and the veil – for there is no joy at all for those trapped in the flesh – and we fell to our knees, bruised by stupor and affliction, ready to beg forgiveness from these expiatresses of our pleasures, dying in perpetual agony. It seemed to us that to kiss one of those bare feet would be an act of indulgence and absolution.
“The obligatory exultation of the Benedictine,” Hyacinthe said to me, “is perhaps more frightful still. It requires of them a sumptuousness of the heart which is truly disconcerting. …”
“Yes,” I replied, “but the ideal of being glorious is less contradictory to human instincts. It is only a paradisal development of the universal tendency to open out and to enjoy. However, what you say is almost true: the joy of a nun contemplating the Resurrection is as far beyond the mediocrity of womanhood as the sacred sorrow of she who weaves in the perpetual night her own shroud and the shroud of Christ … Consider also how far away they are, these individuals who live among us and yet are strangers to the march of our lives. If we were more of our own time, Hyacinthe – you, plucked like an ancient flower from a Flanders tapestry, and I, who have abolished all contact between my soul and vulgar humanity – if we were truly of our time, the mere existence of a few hundred of these disdainful virgins would be an insult to our incontrovertible modernity. And in order not to be angered by these inoffensive fools who do not draw from life a single drop of alcohol or poison – for in our understanding they would seem like infants without experience, equally inapt in the joys of the bed, the table and the stage – and in order to leave no lingering doubt as to the advantages we enjoy as civilized citizens, we would force ourselves to laugh.”
At that point I took out of a box a large sheet of Dutch paper, where the hand of some primary schoolteacher had condescended to write for me a few precious lines – in which, I dare say, the soul of regenerated France is manifest:
Chamber of Deputies
Parliamentary Debates
Session of 9th December 1890
Official Account
M. B. “The Carmelites, a contemplative order (laughter to the left) …”
Hyacinthe was affrighted by the prospect of living under such a stupid dominion. We believed for an instant that the time predicted by Flaubert was upon us.
“But what does it matter?” I said, replacing the document in its box. “We are not responsible for these imbecilic claims; we suffer them and pass judgment upon them. As the bog engulfs and devours these brethren of ours we watch them descend – and when the tops of their heads sink beneath the surface of the mire, we shall place heavy stones there, lest the interior of the earth might vomit them forth again in disgust. Ah! I wish I had the courage to work for the debasement of my contemporaries. What good work it would be to defile their daughters: to insinuate something obscene into the infantile hands which caress each paternal beard and cheek; to poison them, even at the risk of perishing ourselves; to do as those Spanish monks did who drank death in order that they might persuade the French rabble which had violated their monastery to do likewise!”
Hyacinthe calmed me by means of those secret ways which she shared with all creatures of love – and we slept.
I dreamt that in order to spare her the foulness of the present I had consigned her to the closure of Carmel. In the evening, at the hour of the office, I went into the night-chapel to listen to the voice of darkness – and in the chorus of the veiled voices of mourning, I distinguished the voice of my dear lover, dead and forever Hyacinthe.
Never did I have a more beautiful dream.