The Brotherhood of Consolation
One evening Monsieur Mongenod came himself, and Godefroid noticed that he showed to Monsieur Alain a certain filial familiarity added to the profound respect which he testified to the three other lodgers of Madame de la Chanterie.
On that evening the banker merely put a few matter-of-fact questions to Godefroid: “Was he comfortable? Did he intend to stay?” etc., – at the same time advising him to persevere in his plan.
“I need only one thing to make me contented,” said Godefroid.
“What is that?” asked the banker.
“An occupation.”
“An occupation!” remarked the Abbe de Veze. “Then you have changed your mind? I thought you came to our cloister for rest.”
“Rest, without the prayers that enlivened monasteries, without the meditation which peopled the Thebaids, becomes a disease,” said Monsieur Joseph, sententiously.
“Learn book-keeping,” said Monsieur Mongenod, with a smile; “you might become in a few months very useful to my friends here.”
“Oh! with pleasure,” cried Godefroid.
The next day was Sunday; Madame de la Chanterie requested him to give her his arm to high mass.
“It is,” she said, “the only coercion I shall put upon you. Several times during the past week I have wished to speak to you of religion, but it did not seem to me that the time had come. You would find plenty of occupation if you shared our beliefs, for then you would share our labors as well.”
During mass Godefroid noticed the fervor of Messieurs Nicolas, Joseph, and Alain; and as during the last few days he had also noticed their superiority and intelligence, and the vast extent of their knowledge; he concluded, when he saw how they humbled themselves, that the Catholic religion had secrets which had hitherto escaped him.
“After all,” he said to himself, “it is the religion of Bossuet, Pascal, Racine, Saint-Louis, Louis XIV., Raffaelle, Michel-Angelo, Ximenes, Bayard, du Guesclin; and how could I, weakling that I am, compare myself to those intellects, those statesmen, those poets, those heroes?”
If there were not some real instruction in these minor details it would be imprudent to dwell upon them in these days; but they are indispensable to the interests of this history, in which the present public will be none too ready to believe, and which presents at the outset a fact that is almost ridiculous, – namely, the empire which a woman of sixty obtained over a young man disappointed with the world.
“You did not pray at all,” said Madame de la Chanterie to Godefroid as they left the portal of Notre-Dame; “not for any one, – not even for the soul of your mother.”
Godefroid colored and said nothing.
“Will you do me the favor,” continued Madame de la Chanterie, “to go to your room and not come into the salon for an hour? You can meditate, if you love me, on the first chapter in the third book of the ‘Imitation’ – the one entitled: ‘Of inward communing.’”
Godefroid bowed stiffly and went to his room.
“The devil take them!” he exclaimed to himself, giving way to downright anger. “What do they want with me here? What is all this traffic they are carrying on? Pooh! all women, even pious ones, are up to the same tricks. If Madame” (giving her the name by which her lodgers spoke of her) “wants me out of the way it is probably because they are plotting something against me.”
With that thought in his mind he tried to look from his window into that of the salon; but the situation of the rooms did not allow it. He went down one flight, and then returned, – reflecting that according to the rigid principles of the house he should be dismissed if discovered spying. To lose the respect of those five persons seemed to him as serious as public dishonor.
He waited three quarters of an hour; then he resolved to surprise Madame de la Chanterie and come upon her suddenly before she expected him. He invented a lie to excuse himself, saying that his watch was wrong; for which purpose he set it on twenty minutes. Then he went downstairs, making no noise, reached the door of the salon, and opened it abruptly.
He saw a man, still young, but already celebrated, a poet, whom he had frequently met in society, Victor de Vernisset, on his knees before Madame de la Chanterie and kissing the hem of her dress. If the sky had fallen, and shivered to atoms like glass, as the ancients thought it was, Godefroid could not have been more astonished. Shocking thoughts came into his mind, and then a reaction more terrible still when, before the sarcasm he was about to utter had left his lips, he saw Monsieur Alain in a corner of the room counting out bank-notes.
In an instant Vernisset was on his feet, and the worthy Alain looked thunderstruck. Madame de la Chanterie, on her part, gave Godefroid a look which petrified him; for the twofold expression on the face of the visitor had not escaped him.
“Monsieur is one of us,” she said to the young poet, with a sign towards Godefroid.
“Then you are a happy man, my dear fellow,” said Vernisset; “you are saved! But, madame,” he added, turning to Madame de la Chanterie, “if all Paris had seen me, I should rejoice in it. Nothing can ever mark my gratitude to you. I am yours forever; I belong to you utterly. Command me as you will and I obey. I owe you my life, and it is yours.”
“Well, well, young man!” said the kind Alain, “then be wise, be virtuous, – only, work; but do not attack religion in your books. Moreover, remember that you owe a debt.”
And he handed him an envelope thick with the bank-notes he had counted out. The tears were in Victor de Vernisset’s eyes; he kissed Madame de la Chanterie’s hand respectfully, and went away, after shaking hands with Monsieur Alain and Godefroid.
“You have not obeyed madame,” said the goodman Alain solemnly, with a sad expression on his face that Godefroid had never before seen there; “and that is a great wrong; if it happens again we must part. This may seem hard to you after we had begun to give you our confidence.”
“My dear Alain,” said Madame de la Chanterie, “have the kindness for my sake to say no more about this piece of thoughtlessness. We ought not to ask too much a new arrival, who has been spared great misfortunes and knows nothing of religion; and who, moreover, has only an excessive curiosity about our vocation, and does not yet believe in us.”
“Forgive me, madame,” said Godefroid; “I do desire, from this time forth, to be worthy of you. I will submit to any trial you think necessary before initiating me into the secrets of your work; and if the Abbe de Veze will undertake to instruct me I will listen to him, soul and mind.”
These words made Madame de la Chanterie so happy that a faint color stole upon her cheeks. She took Godefroid’s hand and pressed it, then she said, with strange emotion, “It is well.”
That evening, after dinner, visitors came in: a vicar-general of the diocese of Paris, two canons, two former mayors of Paris, and one of the ladies who distributed the charities of Notre-Dame. No cards were played; but the conversation was gay, without being vapid.
A visit which surprised Godefroid greatly was that of the Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne, one of the highest personages in aristocratic society, whose salon was inaccessible to the bourgeoisie and to parvenus. The presence of this great lady in Madame de la Chanterie’s salon was sufficiently surprising; but the manner in which the two women met and treated each other seemed to Godefroid inexplicable; for it showed the closest intimacy and a constant intercourse which gave Madame de la Chanterie an added value in his eyes. Madame de Cinq-Cygne was gracious and affectionate in manner to the four friends of her friend, and showed the utmost respect to Monsieur Nicolas.
We may see here how social vanities still governed Godefroid; for up to this visit of Madame de Cinq-Cygne he was still undecided; but he now resolved to give himself up, with or without conviction, to whatever Madame de la Chanterie and her friends might exact of him, in order to get affiliated with their order and initiated into their secrets, assuring himself that in that way he should find a career.
The next day he went to a book-keeper whom Madame de la Chanterie recommended, and arranged with him the hours at which they should work together. His whole time was now employed. The Abbe de Veze instructed him in the mornings; he was two hours a day with the book-keeper; and he spent the rest of his time between breakfast and dinner in doing imaginary commercial accounts which his master required him to write at home.
Some time passed thus, during which Godefroid felt the charm of a life in which each hour has its own employment. The recurrence of a settled work at settled moments, regularity of action, is the secret of many a happy life; and it proves how deeply the founders of religious orders had meditated on the nature of man. Godefroid, who had made up his mind to listen to the Abbe de Veze, began to have serious thoughts of a future life, and to find how little he knew of the real gravity of religious questions.
Moreover, from day to day Madame de la Chanterie, with whom he always remained for an hour after the second breakfast, allowed him to discover the treasures that were in her; he knew then that he never could have imagined a loving-kindness so broad and so complete. A woman of Madame de la Chanterie’s apparent age no longer has the pettiness of younger women. She is a friend who offers you all feminine refinements, who displays the graces, the choice attractions which nature inspires in a woman for man; she gives them, and no longer sells them. Such a woman is either detestable or perfect; for her gifts are either not of the flesh or they are worthless. Madame de la Chanterie was perfect. She seemed never to have had a youth; her glance never told of a past. Godefroid’s curiosity was far from being appeased by a closer and more intimate knowledge of this sublime nature; the discoveries of each succeeding day only redoubled his desire to learn the anterior life of a woman whom he now thought a saint. Had she ever loved? Had she been a wife, – a mother? Nothing about her was characteristic of an old maid; she displayed all the graces of a well-born woman; and an observer would perceive in her robust health, in the extraordinary phenomena of her physical preservation, a divine life, and a species of ignorance of the earthly existence.
Except the gay and cheery goodman Alain, all these persons had suffered; but Monsieur Nicolas himself seemed to give the palm of martyrdom to Madame de la Chanterie. Nevertheless, the memory of her sorrows was so restrained by religious resignation, by her secret avocations, that she seemed to have been always happy.
“You are the life of your friends,” Godefroid said to her one day; “you are the tie that unites them, – the house-mother, as it were, of some great work; and, as we are all mortal, I ask myself sometimes what your association would become without you.”
“That is what frightens the others; but Providence, to whom we owe our new book-keeper,” she said, smiling, “will provide. Besides, I am on the look-out.”
“Will your new book-keeper soon be allowed to work at your business?” asked Godefroid.
“That depends on himself,” she answered, smiling. “He must be sincerely religious, truly pious, without the least self-interest, not concerned about the riches of our house, able to rise above all petty social considerations on the two wings which God has given us.”
“What are they?”
“Singleness of mind and purity,” replied Madame de la Chanterie. “Your ignorance shows that you have neglected the reading of our book.” she added, laughing at the innocent trick she had played to know if Godefroid had read the “Imitation of Jesus Christ.” “And, lastly,” she went on, “fill your soul with Saint Paul’s epistle upon Charity. When that is done,” she added, with a sublime look, “it will not be you who belong to us, we shall belong to you, and you will be able to count up greater riches than the sovereigns of this world possess; you will enjoy as we enjoy; yes, let me tell you (if you remember the ‘Arabian Nights’) that the treasures of Aladdin are nothing to those we possess. And so for the last year we have not sufficed for our affairs, and we needed, as you see, a book-keeper.”
While speaking, she studied Godefroid’s face; he, on his part, did not know how to take this extraordinary confidence. But as the scene in the counting-room at Mongenod’s came often to his mind, he hovered between doubt and belief.
“Ah, you will be very happy!” she said.
Godefroid was so consumed with curiosity that from this moment he determined to break through the reserve of one of the four friends and question him. Now, the one to whom he felt the most drawn, and who seemed naturally to excite the sympathies of all classes, was the kind, gay, simple Monsieur Alain. By what strange path could Providence have led a being so guileless into this monastery without a lock, where recluses of both sexes lived beneath a rule in the midst of Paris, in absolute freedom, as though they were guarded by the sternest of superiors? What drama, what event, had made him leave his own road in life, and take this path among the sorrows of the great city?
Godefroid resolved to ask.
VII. MONSIEUR ALAIN TELLS HIS SECRETS
One evening Godefroid determined to pay a visit to his neighbor on the floor above him, with the intention of satisfying a curiosity more excited by the apparent impossibility of a catastrophe in such an existence than it would have been under the expectation of discovering some terrible episode in the life of a corsair.
At the words “Come in!” given in answer to two raps struck discreetly on the door, Godefroid turned the key which was in the lock and found Monsieur Alain sitting by the fire reading, before he went to bed, his accustomed chapter in the “Imitation of Jesus Christ,” by the light of two wax-candles, each protected by a moveable green shade, such as whist-players use.
The goodman wore trousers a pied and his gray camlet dressing-gown. His feet were at a level with the fire, resting on a cushion done in worsted-work, as were his slippers, by Madame de la Chanterie. The fine head of the old man, without other covering than its crown of white hair, almost like that of a monk, stood out in clear relief against the brown background of an enormous armchair.
Monsieur Alain gently laid his book, which was much worn at the corners, on a little table with twisted legs, and signed to the young man to take another chair, removing as he did so a pair of spectacles which were hanging on the end of his nose.
“Are you ill, that you have left your room at this hour?” he asked.
“Dear Monsieur Alain,” said Godefroid, frankly, “I am tortured with a curiosity which one word from you will make very harmless or very indiscreet; and that explains clearly enough the spirit in which I shall ask my question.”
“Oh! oh! and what is your question?” said the good soul, looking at the young man with an eye that was half mischievous.
“What was it that brought you here to lead the life that you live here? For, surely, to accept the doctrines of such total renunciation of all personal interests, a man must have been disgusted with the world, or else have injured others.”
“Eh! my dear lad,” replied the old man, letting a smile flicker on his large lips, which gave to his rosy mouth the kindliest expression that the genius of a painter ever imagined, “can we not be moved to the deepest pity by the spectacle of human wretchedness which Paris holds within her walls? Did Saint Vincent de Paul need the spur of remorse or wounded vanity to make him devote himself to outcast children?”
“You close my mouth, for if ever a soul resembled that of the Christian hero, it is yours,” said Godefroid.
In spite of the hardness which age had given to the wrinkled yellow skin of his face, the old man blushed, for he seemed to have provoked that comparison; though any one who knew his modesty would have been certain he never dreamed of it. Godefroid was aware by this time that Madame de la Chanterie’s inmates had no taste for that sort of incense. Nevertheless, the extreme simplicity of the good old soul was more disturbed by this idea than a young girl would have been by an improper thought.
“Though I am very far indeed from Saint Vincent de Paul morally,” said Monsieur Alain, “I think I do resemble him physically.”
Godefroid was about to speak, but was stopped by a gesture of the old man, whose nose, it must be owned, had the tuberous appearance of that of the Saint, and whose face, a good deal like that of an old vine-dresser, was an exact duplicate of the broad, common face of the founder of Foundling hospitals.
“As for me, you are right enough,” he went on; “my vocation for our work was brought about by repentance, as the result of a – folly.”
“A folly, – you!” Godefroid exclaimed softly, the word entirely putting out of his head what he meant to say.
“Ah! dear me, what I am going to tell you will seem, I dare say, a trifle to you, – a mere bit of nonsense; but before the tribunal of conscience it was another thing. If you persist in wishing to share our work after hearing what I shall tell you, you will understand that the power of a sentiment is according to the nature of souls, and that a matter which would not in the least trouble a strong mind may very well torment the conscience of a weak Christian.”
After a preface of this kind, the curiosity of the disciple of course knew no bounds. What could be the crime of the worthy soul whom Madame de la Chanterie called her paschal lamb? The thought crossed Godefroid’s mind that a book might be written on it, called “The Sins of a Sheep.” Sheep are sometimes quite ferocious towards grass and flowers. One of the tenderest republicans of those days was heard to assert that the best of human beings was cruel to something. But the kindly Alain! – he, who like my uncle Toby, wouldn’t crush a gnat till it had stung him twenty times, – that sweet soul to have been tortured by repentance!
This reflection in Godefroid’s mind filled the pause made by the old man after saying, “Now listen to me!” – a pause he filled himself by pushing his cushion under Godefroid’s feet to share it with him.
“I was then about thirty years of age,” he said. “It was the year ‘98, if I remember right, – a period when young men were forced to have the experience of men of sixty. One morning, a little before my breakfast hour, which was nine o’clock, my old housekeeper ushered in one of the few friends remaining to me after the Revolution. My first word was to ask him to breakfast. My friend – his name was Mongenod, a fellow about twenty-eight years of age – accepted, but he did so in an awkward manner. I had not seen him since 1793!”
“Mongenod!” cried Godefroid; “why, that is – ”
“If you want to know the end before the beginning, how am I to tell you my history?” said the old man, smiling.
Godefroid made a sign which promised absolute silence.
“When Mongenod sat down,” continued Monsieur Alain, “I noticed that his shoes were worn out. His stockings had been washed so often that it was difficult to say if they were silk or not. His breeches, of apricot-colored cassimere, were so old that the color had disappeared in spots; and the buckles, instead of being of steel, seemed to me to be made of common iron. His white, flowered waistcoat, now yellow from long wearing, also his shirt, the frill of which was frayed, betrayed a horrible yet decent poverty. A mere glance at his coat was enough to convince me that my friend had fallen into dire distress. That coat was nut-brown in color, threadbare at the seams, carefully brushed, though the collar was greasy from pomade or powder, and had the white metal buttons now copper-colored. The whole was so shabby that I tried not to look at it. The hat – an opera hat of a kind we then carried under the arm, and not on the head – had seen many governments. Nevertheless, my poor friend must have spent a few sous at the barber’s, for he was neatly shaved; and his hair, gathered behind his head with a comb and powdered carefully, smelt of pomade. I saw two chains hanging down on his breeches, – two rusty steel chains, – but no appearance of a watch in his pocket. I tell you all these details, as they come to me,” said Monsieur Alain; “I seldom think of this matter now; but when I do, all the particulars come vividly before me.”
He paused a moment and then resumed: —
“It was winter, and Mongenod evidently had no cloak; for I noticed that several lumps of snow, which must have dropped from the roofs as he walked along, were sticking to the collar of his coat. When he took off his rabbit-skin gloves, and I saw his right hand, I noticed the signs of labor, and toilsome labor, too. Now his father, the advocate of the Grand Council, had left him some property, – about five or six thousand francs a year. I saw at once that he had come to me to borrow money. I had, in a secret hiding-place, two hundred louis d’or, – an enormous hoard at that time; for they were worth I couldn’t now tell you how many hundred thousand francs in assignats. Mongenod and I had studied at the same collage, – that of Grassins, – and we had met again in the same law-office, – that of Bordin, – a truly honest man. When you have spent your boyhood and played your youthful pranks with the same comrade, the sympathy between you and him has something sacred about it; his voice, his glance, stir certain chords in your heart which only vibrate under the memories that he brings back. Even if you have had cause of complaint against such a comrade, the rights of the friendship between you can never be effaced. But there had never been the slightest jar between us two. At the death of his father, in 1787, Mongenod was left richer than I. Though I had never borrowed money from him, I owed him pleasures which my father’s economy denied me. Without my generous comrade I should never had seen the first representation of the ‘Marriage of Figaro.’ Mongenod was what was called in those days a charming cavalier; he was very gallant. Sometimes I blamed him for his facile way of making intimacies and his too great amiability. His purse opened freely; he lived in a free-handed way; he would serve a man as second having only seen him twice. Good God! how you send me back to the days and the ways of my youth!” said the worthy man, with his cheery smile.
“Are you sorry?” said Godefroid.
“Oh, no! and you can judge by the minuteness with which I am telling you all this how great a place this event has held in my life.
“Mongenod, endowed with an excellent heart and fine courage, a trifle Voltairean, was inclined to play the nobleman,” went on Monsieur Alain. “His education at Grassins, where there were many young nobles, and his various gallantries, had given him the polished manners and ways of people of condition, who were then called aristocrats. You can therefore imagine how great was my surprise to see such symptoms of poverty in the young and elegant Mongenod of 1787 when my eyes left his face and rested on his garments. But as, at that unhappy period of our history, some persons assumed a shabby exterior for safety, and as he might have had some other and sufficient reasons for disguising himself, I awaited an explanation, although I opened the way to it. ‘What a plight you are in, my dear Mongenod!’ I said, accepting the pinch of snuff he offered me from a copper and zinc snuff-box. ‘Sad indeed!’ he answered; ‘I have but one friend left, and that is you. I have done all I could to avoid appealing to you; but I must ask you for a hundred louis. The sum is large, I know,’ he went on, seeing my surprise; ‘but if you gave me fifty I should be unable ever to return them; whereas with one hundred I can seek my fortune in better ways, – despair will inspire me to find them.’ ‘Then you have nothing?’ I exclaimed. ‘I have,’ he said, brushing away a tear, ‘five sous left of my last piece of money. To come here to you I have had my boots blacked and my face shaved. I possess what I have on my back. But,’ he added, with a gesture, ‘I owe my landlady a thousand francs in assignats, and the man I buy cold victuals from refused me credit yesterday. I am absolutely without resources.’ ‘What do you think of doing?’ ‘Enlisting as a soldier if you cannot help me.’ ‘You! a soldier, Mongenod?’ ‘I will get myself killed, or I will be General Mongenod.’ ‘Well,’ I said, much moved, ‘eat your breakfast in peace; I have a hundred louis.’