CHAPTER XIX
ON PARLOUR CHRISTIANITY
Parlour Christianity is divided into two classes: the first, pretentious and grotesque, and the second, respectable, because its members have at least an exterior, a language and manners that are not in too ridiculous a contrast with their specialty.
These mundane apostles can also be divided into two sorts,—the young Christian who dances, and one who does not. This classification will be sufficient to enable one to recognise them at a glance.
The first, the dancing Christians, are more or less plump and rosy, curled, frizzled, cravated, stiffened, starched, and perfumed. They are the beaux, the cavaliers, the lions of parlour Christianity, of tea-table Catholicism; they eat, drink, talk, laugh, sing, shout, dance, waltz, galop, dance the cotillon and mazurka, and make love (when they get a chance) as enthusiastically as the most austere Lutheran or the most hardened sinner. Some of them, remembering that David danced before the ark, have even gone so far as to study the cachucha, no doubt with a view of rendering Christian homage to that adorable dance, which is so popular in Spain, the most Catholic of countries. Some of them, however, more strict than these, before consenting to rival the most agile of the "Majos," have demanded that cachucha shall be rebaptised "the inquisition." The question is now under consideration.
However this may be, when we see these young apostles in kid gloves and high pompadours arrive, all panting, from a galop, and abandon themselves to a delirious waltz, devouring their partners with their eyes; when we see them afterwards trying to forget or remembering their charming partners in the exciting intimacy of the Pierettes of the Bal Musard, we can hardly believe that they are very much more Christian than Abd-el-Kadir.
But thanks to certain indiscreet revelations on the topography of divine religions, to certain compromising confessions as to the duration of eternal punishment, and more than all, by their triumphant fatuity, we divine, we almost can see the supernumerary angel under the terrestrial veil of these young Christians.
The only thing I can reproach them with is that they do not take more pains to conceal the fact of their intimacy with Jehovah, their hand-in-glove acquaintance with a kind Providence, that they have lots of influential friends up there, and that the seraphim are their most humble servants.
But, while waiting orders to return to the King of kings, who, in a moment of generosity, kindly loaned us these plump cherubs to lighten our sorrows, these young Christian dancers practise our profane joys faithfully, without, however, neglecting their sacred pleasures. In fact, the young Christian dancer should possess his chronicle of church and sacristy, as an habitué of the Opéra keeps his record of all that goes on behind the scenes. The dancing Christian should know all the fashionable preachers, their manners, their habits, anecdotes of their private life; should be able to tell how the Abbé —— does not write his own sermons; how Abbé —— has ousted the Abbé ——; how Abbé —— is very graceful or very awkward when he preaches; how rudely one of the vicars of St. Thomas of Aquinas squabbled with his curé; how some pious soul discovered, on the hat of a lady who is no longer young, but youthful looking and well preserved, several yards of splendid old lace that she herself had offered to the jovial curé of S——, to make an altar cloth for his church. The dancing Christian should, in a word, know which are the best places in church to see and hear the preacher; he must never lose the first hearing of a sermon or a conference, and must always be on hand afterwards, to report as to its success or failure, exactly as though it were a new opera that was under discussion.
Thanks to this perpetual haunting of the pulpit and the sacristy, and to the vigour of his calves, the young Christian dancer, who is recognised as such, enjoys all the privileges that are attached to his eccentric position.
Always a Christian, everywhere a Christian, at a ball, at the theatre, at the table, in the country, in town, standing, sitting down, in bed, dreaming or awake, he is intolerant, inquisitorial, indignant; he assigns you at once your place, either in heaven or hell; he fulminates fearful anathemas on the new Gomorrah while he drinks his punch, or cries "Babylon! Babylon!" as he sups like an ogre. Finally, with a terrible cry of desolation, he announces the near and threatening probability of the last judgment, and then goes off to dance the cotillon.
After which, worn out, overcome by the fatigues of the sermon and the ball, he goes to bed, and is very soon oppressed by a frightful nightmare. He dreams he is a father confessor, and that his last partner, with whom he discussed the honest modesty of Joseph fleeing from Potiphar's wife, comes to confess to him that she committed all sorts of ravishing sins with a Jansenist, two Calvinists, eleven deists, and she does not know how many atheists.
Far from the dancing Christians who flourish under the brilliant chandeliers, blooms the young Christian who does not dance. If the former are the Cavaliers of this parlour religion, the latter are its Puritans,—grave, pale, austere, thin, dismal, negligent, more bashful than St. Joseph, it would give them real pleasure to cover themselves with ashes, but they go about dragging here and there their melancholy and their religiously pure and transparent lives. Taking no interest in our profane joys, which they witness but do not associate in, they are entirely taken up by their divine aspirations, their celestial visions; they are tolerant, kind, and full of pity for human error; these are the tender Fénélons of this mundane church, while the dancing Christians are the merciless Bossuets, for the dancing Christian is implacable, unapproachable, impossible. As soon as there is any question of human weakness, not in himself, but in another, there is no compromise, no mean term, it is the devil and hell, the devil with his horns and tail; it is perfectly clear, there is no escape.
The Christian who does not dance is extremely fond of purgatory. Extremes disgust his pious soul. He is scrupulous and charitable, he would hesitate a long, long time, he would need the proof of many dreadful iniquities, before he could bring himself to say positively, "Alas, my poor, dear brother, it appears to me that, unless you amend your ways, you will one of these days be claimed by the great devil of hell."
The dancing Christian, on the contrary, sends you off there at once and for ever, for the smallest little sin, with frightful assurance.
As for the future of the human race, the Christian who does not dance seems still to have some hopes that the world will be saved in spite of the crimes and errors of mankind. He presumes, though he will not assert it positively, that at the last judgment, there may be a general amnesty which will remit the sins of the damned. The Christian who does not dance seems to count on the inexhaustible mercy of God, who is as kind as he is powerful, he says, and one might think that he was very well informed as to celestial politics; but the dancing Christian, who comes to take part in the conversation while eating an ice, overturns with a single word all these pleasant and comforting thoughts. Then he holds forth only threats and menaces. There is no more hope,—nothing but the smell of sulphur and bitumen which give you a foretaste of a future of eternal flames, eternal pitchforks, and everlasting gridirons. There is nothing left for poor human beings but to weep with despair and to moan over their fatal destiny, and so, while awaiting the terrible predictions of the young Christian dancer, they give themselves up to an endless galop, or an orgy in the two worlds of society, worthy of Belshazzar's feast.