"But the next moment he drew back terrified, attempting to fly before the decision which it was his duty to make, exhausting himself in efforts to excuse himself, with arguments that lasted for hours, invoking the most miserable reasons for remaining as he was. ""What shall I do? If I obey the command which becomes more and more imperious in me, I am prepar ing myself a life of remorse and revolts: for I know very well that I ought not to pause for ever on the threshold, but enter into the sanctuary and remain there. And if I decide-ah no, how can I?-for then I should have to bind myself to a mass of observances, submit to a succession of exercises, go to Mass on Sunday, fast on Friday, live like a bigot, look like a fool." These reflections are embittered by his recollections of people who follow these rules des gens assidus dans les églises; the pécores pieuses, whom he holds in contempt; and the priests, mediocre and lukewarm, who form the common stock of the servants of the Church. "I see myself telling all this to the priests!" he cried. "They will tell me that it is not my business to occupy myself with questions of mysticism, and in exchange they will present me with a little religion, une religionette, fit for a sick woman: they will endeavour to mix themselves up in my life, to press me concerning my soul, and insinuate their tastes; they will try to convince me that Art is danger; a they will force imbecile books upon me; they will feed me with their veal - broth of piety. And I know myself: at the end of two interviews I will revolt, and return to my for mer fare." While he is thus painfully engaged in discovering what he must do to reach the higher life, Durtal-who had completed in the earlier part of his history the life of a certain Maréchal des Rais, a monster of iniquity, who illustrat ed the fifteenth century and was an adept in the black mysteries of the worshippers of the Devil-now turns to the opposite extreme, and determines to devote himself to the elucidation of the life and writings of the Blessed Lidwine, a Dutch saint and mystic of still earlier date. In searching for information on this subject he encounters in a bookseller's shop the Abbé Gévresin, with whom he has many walks and talks upon the subject of this saint and others, and finally on the whole mystic world of the cloister, and on the Reparation to which many converts dedicate themselves "that law of the substitution, that marvel of absolute Charity, that superhuman victory of Mysticism." It is to this priest that Durtal addresses himself when his troubles prove too great to be borne, and in whom he finds the most gentle and tolerant of guides. At one bitter moment, when the penitent is almost overwhelmed by fierce temptations, chiefly of the wellknown ancient kind which drove to frenzy the fathers in the desert, -the dancing nudités and carnal fascinations which not only the French mind, but the Catholic Church in general, reckons as the great and continually repeated ordeal through which the saints have to pass, the Abbé, when everything else fails, delivers Durtal by transmitting his case to some of the communities of the Reparation, who suffer, do penance, and pray for him, till he is for the time delivered from these terrible obsessions. Finally, the Abbé sends his penitent to a monastery of La Trappe, whither the Parisian, with all his hesitations and revolts of intelligence, goes unwillingly and with much alarm, lest the stern régime should crush his agitated mind and body altogether. The picture of the monastery thus placed before us from within is very curious. It is divided into a small band of fathers, in the white robes of their Cistercian order, men of culture and intelligence as well as of the most absorbed devotion, and a larger body of frères converses, who do the hard work of the farm and household, silent figures filling the body of the chapel in kneeling lines, half distinguishable in its dimness, through the dark hours of the night from two o'clock in the morning, when these heroic worshippers begin their day of prayer and toil. Nevertheless, though the lay brothers are without privilege or enlightenment, it is among them that the highest examples of devotion, and the most touching pity, are found by the stranger. His first night in his cell is a terrible one, defiled and tortured by the images most foreign to such a house of purity and prayer. Waking from his troubled sleep before the hour (four o'clock) which is granted to the unaccustomed penitents, he makes his way to the chapel in the middle of the wintry night: "It was quite dark; high up in the wall a round window (œil-de-bœuf) broke through the darkness like a red moon. "He made a step in advance, then crossed himself and drew back, for his foot had struck a human body. He looked down at his feet; he was entering upon a battlefield. Human forms lay on the floor in the attitude of combatants swept down by artillery, some lying flat, knees, some with their hands on the ground as if struck in the back, others with their fingers crossed on the breast, holding their head in their hands, or stretching out their arms; but from this group of sufferers there arose no groan, no cry. some on their "Durtal gazed stupefied at this massacre of monks. Al ray of light now fell from a lamp which the sacristan had placed in the choir, and, traversing the building, lighted up a monk on his knees before the altar dedicated to the Virgin. "He was an old man above eighty, immovable as a statue, his eyes fixed, leaning forward in such a rapture of adoration as eclipsed all the pictured saints of the Old Masters, who near him would have seemed cold and pale. "Yet the head was common and unrefined: close shaven, without even the circle of hair round the tonsure, weatherbeaten by sun and rain, to the colour of brick: the eye veiled by the mist of age: the face wrinkled, furrowed like an old tree, half-buried in an underground of white hairs: the nose broad, completing the insignificance of the features. Yet there issued forth-not from the eyes, not from the lips, yet everywhere, and from no special part-a sort of angelic sentiment which diffused itself upon that head, which enveloped all the lowly form. The soul in this case did not even give itself the trouble of reforming and ennobling the physiognomy, but contented itself with annihilating the outward part as with a radiance of heaven: it was as if the nimbus of the ancient saints, dwelling no longer round the head, but extending over every line, bathed his whole being in a pale, almost invisible glory." This old man turns out to be the swineherd of the house, at the same time the only one among them who, when an instance of Satanic possession (not reckoned extraordinary at La Trappe) occurred, was able to cast out the demon. Durtal, coming suddenly into this atmosphere of prayer from the horrors of his troubled night, falls upon the floor amid all these rapt and noiseless worshippers, and for the first time feels himself capable of opening his heart to God. The other lay brother who glides through this extraordinary scene, silent, not a word in his mouth, Later, he perceives again in this much by his friendship with the chapel comes and goes like a spirit in the very skilful, very tender picture. Durtal has strayed out into the woods, still rent and torn with his temptations, and unable to raise his thoughts from the earth. "He strayed slowly along till he came to the little pond, and then pausing, raised supplicating eyes to the cross. When he withdrew his gaze he suddenly met a look so full of emotion, so full of pity and sweetness, that he stopped short, and the look disappeared with the silent salutation of the lay brother who passed him by. ""He has read my soul,' said Durtal to himself, 'and oh, how much reason has the charitable monk to pity me!' He remembered to have remarked in the morning this tall youth praying in the chapel with great fervour." assails him. There are a number of them, one more resourceful than the other, ministering to the mind diseased, with the certainty of surgeons performing operations in which they have all the force of experience as well as knowledge. They are all somewhat too great and good for human nature's daily food, of which, by the way, they have so little that it scarcely counts. Durtal too has very little, but yet noble fare beside that of the professed a greasy little mess of vegetables cooked à l'huile, being their only provisions, and these at certain seasons only once a-day; while Durtal has an egg, a little cheese, a little wine. He is offered milk for his breakfast, but very injudiciously prefers wine, which shows he has not profited man "the young whose look of pity had strengthened him. He was about twenty, robust and tall, his face a little worn, but at once masculine and tender, with emaciated features, and a fair beard which descended on his breast." The eyes of this gentle young brother console the penitent, his look of pity and interest seem to shine upon us from the dark background. When Durtal is taking his leave at the end of his retreat, departing as unwillingly as he came, he sees at the bottom of the court "two eyes gazing at him, the eyes of Brother Anoclet, which bade him from afar, with out a gesture, adieu." We confess that this suggestion of humble and natural liking, full of human feeling, touches us more than the suave and gentlemanly monks, always ready with an answer to every difficulty, never startled by the struggles which convulse their penitent, sure of conquering in one way or other the devil who doctor who appears in the first part of his life. However, the more than frugal menu and the terrible spiritual sufferings to which he has been subjected at La Trappe notwithstanding, he leaves the monastery almost in despair, feeling that there alone can he be sure of maintaining the devotion without which his soul will lose again all the elevation, the peace, the occasional impulses of joy which he had attained to in that abode of prayer. This is a sufficiently discouraging end to all the struggles of the soul, since if every penitent were to bury himself in a cloister, that would be a sad interruption of all the traditions of Christianity. However, the existence of this book is more remarkable than its conclusions. Here is a lengthy and close - printed volume in the well-known form of French romance, in which the sole theme, never dropped for a moment, is, in the terms of an older generation, the saving of a soul: and we avow that the saving of Durtal's soul has held our interest as strongly as any breathless narrative of adventure or story of love. It is a sign of the times which we do not know how to interpret, or whether to consider it accidental, depending merely upon the genius or popularity of the writer who sets it before us. But M. Huysmans is not, so far as we know, more popular or more remarkable than many others, while his book is, so far as we are aware, unique. We know no English writer who would dare to produce a corresponding work. There used to be, forty or fifty years ago, pious biographies which were, perhaps, as completely occupied with the process of religion in the soul; but, as they were authentic lives, they were naturally reticent, and kept the secrets of their heroes or heroines. Nothing in English that we know of since Bunyan has been so open as this. And even in Bunyan there are bursts of story which soften the strain. Perhaps a severe critic would say that the perverse mind might pick out a certain thread of evil suggestion even from the records of Durtal's temptations: but this certainly would not tell with any worthy reader, while the unworthy would find the thread much too slender to support their interest. directed him to say (but that was a false debate created by Satan himself to confuse the sinner's soul), are all very strange to us. To do him justice, however, Durtal is more confused than edified by the chapelet: and the occasional bursts of personal address to God and the Redeemer which come from his lips are very unconventional, full of that simplicity of appeal from one intelligent being (be it said with reverence) to another infinitely above him, which all the organisations of prayer tend to suppress, but which on the whole seem to indicate the most close rapprochement possible between God and man. On the whole, the book is very remarkable and well worthy of consideration. We hope it may be received at least as an indication that French writers are beginning to discern that there are things in heaven and earth more interesting as well as more important than the records of illicit and filthy amours. use the French word in preference, not to sully the divine name of love with any such suggestions. Durtal's possession, in the midst of the new life struggling in his heart, by the hideous recollections and images of vice which he abhors yet cannot banish from his imagination, conveys a shuddering idea of the weight which a licentious man binds upon his own shoulders, and some conception of the condition of those in whom the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched. We M. Anatole France1 may almost be said to abuse the franchise of this new impulse (if there is anything so general as a new impulse) in his last work. It is true that his previous books have contained 1 L'Orme du Mail. Par Anatole France, de l'Académie Française. Calman Levy, éditeur. much more thought and speculation than romance or story; but even Les Opinions de M. Jerome Coignard have a strong thread of character which keeps up an interest less severe than that of philosophy and discussion of general questions. L'Orme du Mail is, as it calls itself, a chapter of Histoire Contemporaine, but it is one in which every suggestion of human interest is confined to the contrast of character in the talk of the notables of a small town,-from the skilful and suave Cardinal Archbishop to the bookseller in whose shop several of these worthies find a place of meeting, besides that of the bench under the great elm in the Mall, or public promenade, which gives the book its title. Not a female figure-except for a page or two, those inevitable to a dinner - party crosses the busy street or airy terrace upon which ces Messieurs discuss their different interests: which perhaps is a not unnatural reaction against the reign of women, generally improper, in previous French fiction; or perhaps the reaction is specially strong in M. Anatole France himself after his late profound descent into the boiling mud of the 'Lys Rouge.' In the little town of Three Stars, which we are not sufficiently acquainted with French towns to identify, though there are many exactly like it, there is a kind of intrigue going on between two priests, both of the Seminary, - the Abbé Lantaigne, who is at its head, and an Abbé Giutral, who is one of the professors, each striving to secure the appointment of bishop to a neighbouring see; but this is the sole thread of story, and it is a feeble one, breaking off fantastically at the end without any attempt to satisfy our natural curiosity as to which won in the struggle. The fat and unctuous skill of the Cardinal Archbishop in foiling all attempts on the part of one of the candidates to secure an opinion from him, is very amusingly told; and each of the interlocutors, though some are dragged in by the head and shoulders to contribute their (often) quite irrelevant contributions to the talk, is as distinct to the reader as if he himself had been in the habit of meeting them day by day in le coin des bouquins, the corner of Paillot's bookshop in which he keeps a collection of old books, among which a treasure is sometimes discovered by the keen eyes of M. de Terremondre, the squire of the district, so to speak, who is a great collector and antiquary. The other habitual frequenters of this spot are M. Bergeret, a professor at the college, a sad but philosophical scholar, and the doctor, always full of stories of his patients, which give a momentary digression to the talk, as when he announces the birth which he has just accomplished of a baby with the mark of a strawberry on its breast, when they all immediately discuss the true origin of birth-marks. To show the twists and turns of this conversation, an old gentleman passing is brought in, on another occasion, to save him from the pressure of a crowd outside, and immediately, à propos des bottes, tells a story of his old experiences as an advocate, nobody listening to him the while, so far as the reader can perceive. Nothing more like the ordinary course of conversation, with its careless interruptions and quite fantastic succession of ideas, could well be. The post under the Orme du Mail is the special meeting-place of the Abbé Lantaigne and Bergeret, whose conversation is better regulated but not so amusing. Here, however, is the professor's opinion |