CHAPTER XVI
A VISIT TO THE ABBAYE OF PORT-ROYAL
Madeleine’s bitter self-reproaches for her own weakness were of no avail. She had to acknowledge once and for all that she had not the force to stand out against another personality and tell them in cold blood things they would not like. She could hedge and be lukewarm—as when Jacques wished to be formally affianced—but once she had got into a false position she could not, if the feelings of others were involved, extricate herself in a strong, straightforward way. Would God be angry that she had not set up the Bethel she had promised? No, because it was the true God she was worshipping now, not merely the projection of her own barbarous superstitions.
At any rate, to be on the safe side, she would go and visit Mère Agnès Arnauld at the Abbaye de Port-Royal (a thing she should have done long ago) for that would certainly please Him. So she wrote asking if she might come, and got back a cordial note, fixing Wednesday afternoon for the interview.
In spite of her exalted mood, she did not look forward to the meeting: ‘I hate having my soul probed,’ she told herself in angry anticipation. She could not have explained what hidden motive it was that forced her on Wednesday to make up her face with Talc, scent herself heavily with Ambre, and deck herself out in all her most worldly finery.
As it was a long walk to the Abbaye of Port-Royal—one had to traverse the whole of the Faubourg Saint-Jacques—Madame Troqueville insisted on Jacques accompanying her, and waiting for her, during the interview, at the abbaye gates.
They set out at about half-past two. Jacques seemed much tickled by the whole proceeding, and said that he longed for the cap of invisibility that, unseen, he might assist at the interview.
‘You’ll be a novice ere many months have passed!’ he said, with a mischievous twinkle, ‘what will you wager that you won’t?’
‘All in this world and the next,’ Madeleine answered passionately.
‘As you will, time will show,’ and he nodded his head mysteriously.
‘Jacques, do not be so fantastical. Why, in the name of madness, should I turn novice just because I visited a nun? Jacques, do you hear me? I bid you to retract your words!’
‘And if I were to retract them, what would it boot you? They would still be true. You’ll turn nun and never clap eyes again on old Dame Scudéry!’ and he shrieked with glee. Madeleine paled under her rouge.
‘So you would frustrate my hopes, and stick a curse on me?’ she said in a voice trembling with fury. ‘I’ll have none of your escort, let my mother rail as she will, I’ll not be seen with one of your make; what are you but my father’s bawd? Seek him out and get you to your low revellings, I’ll on my way alone!’ and carrying her head very high, she strutted on by herself.
‘Why, Chop, you have studied rhetoric in the Halles, the choiceness of your language would send old Scudéry gibbering back to her native Parnassus!’ he called after her mockingly, then, suddenly conscience-stricken, he ran up to her and said, trying to take her hand: ‘Why, Chop, ’tis foolishness to let raillery work on you so strangely! All said and done, what power have my light words to act upon your future? I am no prophet. But as you give such credence to my words why then I’ll say with solemn emphasis that you will never be a novice, for no nuns would be so foolish as to let a whirlwind take the veil. No, you’ll be cloistered all your days with Mademoiselle de Scudéry, and with no other living soul will you hold converse. Why, there’s a pleasant, frigid, prophecy for you, are you content?’
Madeleine relented sufficiently to smile at him and let him take her hand, but she remained firm in her resolve to forgo his further escort, so with a shrug he left her, and went off on his own pursuits.
As Madeleine passed through the Porte Saint-Jacques, she seemed to leave behind her all the noisy operations of man and to enter the quiet domain of God and nature. On either side of her were orchards and monasteries in which, leisurely, slowly, souls and fruit were ripening. Over the fields of hay the passing wind left its pale foot-prints. Peace had returned to her soul.
Soon she was ringing the bell of the Abbaye of Port-Royal—that alembic of grace, for ever at its silent work of distilling from the warm passions of human souls, the icy draught of holiness—that mysterious depository of the victims of the Heavenly Rape.
She was shown into a waiting-room, bare and scrupulously clean. On the wall hung crayon sketches by Moustier of the various benefactors of the House. Madeleine gazed respectfully at this gallery of blonde ladies, simpering above their plump décolletage. They were inscribed with such distinguished names as Madame la Princesse de Guémené; Elizabeth de Choiseul-Praslin; Dame Anne Harault de Chéverni; Louise-Marie de Gonzagues de Clèves, Queen of Poland, who, the inscription said, had been a pupil of the House, and whom Madeleine knew to be an eminent Précieuse.
Some day would another drawing be added to the collection? A drawing wherein would be portrayed a plain, swarthy woman in classic drapery, whose lyre was supported by a young fair virgin gazing up at her, and underneath these words:—
Madeleine de Scudéry and Madeleine Troqueville, twin-stars of talent, piety, and love, who, in their declining years retreated to this House that they might sanctify the great love one bore the other, by the contemplation of the love of Jesus.
Madeleine’s eyes filled with tears. Then a lay-sister came in and said she would conduct her to the parloir.
It was a great bare room, its only ornament a crucifix, and behind the grille there sat a motionless figure—the Mother Superior, Mère Agnès Arnauld. Her face, slightly tanned and covered with clear, fine wrinkles, seemed somehow to have been carved out of a very hard substance, and this, together with the austere setting of her white veil, gave her the look of one of the Holy Women in a picture by Mantegna. Her hazel eyes were clear and liquid and child-like.
When Madeleine reached the grille, she smiled charmingly, and said in a beautiful, caressing voice: ‘Dear little sister, I have desired to see you this long time.’
Madeleine mumbled some inaudible reply. She tried to grasp the mystical fact that that face, these hands, that torso behind the grille had been built up tissue by tissue by the daily bread of the Eucharist into the actual flesh of God Himself. It seemed almost incredible!
Why was the woman staring at her so fixedly? She half expected her to break the silence with some reference to Mademoiselle de Scudéry, so certain was she that to these clear eyes her inmost thoughts lay naked to view.
At last, the beautiful voice began again: ‘It would seem you have now taken up your abode in Paris. Do you like the city?’
‘Exceeding well,’ Madeleine murmured.
‘Exceeding well—yes—exceeding well,’ Mère Agnès repeated after her, with a vague smile.
Suddenly Madeleine realised that the intensity of her gaze was due to absent-mindedness, and that she stared at things without seeing them. All the same, she felt that if this pregnant silence were to continue much longer she would scream; she gave a nervous little giggle and began to fiddle with her hands.
‘And what is your manner of passing the time? Have you visited any of the new buildings?’
The woman was evidently at a loss for something to say, why, in the name of madness, didn’t she play her part and make inquiries about the state of her disciple’s soul? Madeleine began to feel quite offended.
‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘I have seen the Palais Mazarin and I have visited the Hôtel de Rambouillet.’
‘Ah, yes, the Hôtel de Rambouillet. My cousins report it to be a very noble fabric. Some day when the family is in the country you may be able to see the apartments, which are adorned, I am told, in a most rare and costly manner.’
So she took it for granted that Madeleine had only seen the outside! It was annoying, but it was no use enlightening her, because, even if she listened, she would not be in the least impressed.
There was another pause, then Mère Agnès turned on her a quick, kind glance, and said:—
‘Talk to me of yourself!’
‘What manner of things shall I tell you?’ Madeleine asked nervously.
‘What of theology? Do you still fret yourself over seeming incongruities?’ she asked with a little twinkle.
‘No,’ Madeleine answered with a blush, ‘most of my doubts have been resolved.’
‘’Tis well, dear child, for abstracted speculation is but an oppilation to the free motion of the spirit. ’Tis but a faulty instrument, the intellect, even for the observing of the works of God, how little apt is it then, for the apprehension of God Himself? But the spirit is the sea of glass, wherein is imaged in lucid colours and untrembling outlines the Golden City where dwells the Lamb. Grace will be given to you, my child, to gaze into that sea where all is clear.’
She spoke in a soft, level, soothing voice. Her words were a confirmation of what Madeleine had tried to express to Jacques the other day in the garden of the Place Maubert, but suddenly—she could not have said why—she found herself echoing with much heat those very theories of his that had seemed so absurd to her then.
‘But how comes it that God is good? He commands us to forgive, while He Himself has need of unceasing propitiation and the blood of His Son to forgive the Fall of Adam. And verily ’tis a cruel, barbarous, and most unworthy motion to “visit the sins of the fathers upon the children”; a man must put on something of a devil before he can act thus. He would seem to demand perfection in us while He Himself is moved by every passion,’ and she looked at Mère Agnès half frightened, half defiant.
Mère Agnès, with knitted brows, remained silent for a moment. Then she said hesitatingly and as if thinking aloud:—
‘The ways of God to man are, in truth, a great mystery. But I think we are too apt to forget the unity of the Trinity. Our Lord was made man partly to this end, that His Incarnation might be the instrument of our learning to know the Father through the Son, that the divine mercy and love, hitherto revealed but in speculative generals, might be turned into particulars proportioned to our finite understandings. Thus, if such mysteries as the Creation, the Preservation, nay, even the Redemption, be too abstracted, too speculative to be apprehended by our affections, then let us ponder the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes, the tender words to the woman of Samaria, the command to “suffer the little children to come unto Him,” for they are types of the other abstracted mercies, and teach us to acknowledge that God is of that nature, which knows no conjunctions but those of justice and mercy. Yes, my child, all your doubts find their resolution in the life of Jesus. I mind me when I was a girl, in the garden of the Palais, the arborist du roy—as he was called—grew certain rare flowers from the Orient to serve as patterns to the Queen and her ladies for their embroidery. But when it was determined to build the Place Dauphine the garden had to go, and with it these strange blossoms. But the Queen commanded the arborist to make her a book of coloured plates wherein should be preserved the form and colour of the Orient flowers. And this was done, so patterns were not wanting after all to the Queen and her ladies for their broidery. Thus, for a time ‘our eyes did see, and our ears did hear, and our hands did handle’ our divine Pattern and then He ascended into Heaven, but, in His great mercy He has left a book wherein in clear, enduring pigments are limned the pictures of His life, that we too might be furnished with patterns for our broidery. Read the Gospels, dear child, read them diligently, and, above all, hearken to them when they are read in the presence of the Host, for at such times the operation of their virtue is most sure.’
She paused, and then, as if following up some hidden line of thought, continued:—
‘Sometimes it has seemed to me that even sin couches mercy. Grace has been instrumental to great sins blossoming into great virtues, and——’
‘Thus, one might say, “Blessed are the proud, for they shall become meek; blessed are the concupiscent, for they shall become pure of heart,”’ eagerly interposed Madeleine, her eyes bright with pleasure over the paradox.
‘Perhaps,’ said Mère Agnès, smiling a little. ‘I am glad you are so well acquainted with the Sermon on the Mount. As I have said, there is no instrument apter to the acquiring of grace than a diligent reading of the Gospels; the late Bishop of Geneva was wont to insist on this with my sister and myself. But bear in mind the consent and union of design between the holy Life on earth and the divine existence in Eternity, if one is pricked out with love and justice, so also is the other. We should endeavour to read the Gospels with the apocalyptic eye of Saint John, for it was the peculiar virtue of this Evangelist that in the narration of particulars he never permitted the immersion of generals. The action of his Gospel is set in Eternity. I have ever held that Spanish Catholicism and the teaching of the Jesuit Fathers are wont to deal too narrowly with particulars, whereas our own great teachers—I speak in all veneration and humility—Doctor Jansen, nay, even our excellent and beloved Saint Cyran, in that their souls were like to huge Cherubim, stationary before the Throne of God, were apt to ignore the straitness of most mortal minds, and to demand that their disciples should reach with one leap of contemplation the very heart of eternity instead of leading them there by the gentle route of Jesus’ diurnal acts on earth.’
She paused. Madeleine’s cheeks were flushed, and her eyes bright. She had completely yielded to the charm of Mère Agnès’s personality and to the hypnotic sway of the rich, recondite phraseology which the Arnaulds proudly called ‘la langue de notre maison.’
‘By what sign can we recognise true grace?’ she asked, after some moments of silence.
‘I think its mark is an appetite of fire for the refection of spiritual things. Thus, if an angel appeared to you, bearing in one hand a cornucopia of earthly blessings, and in the other, holiness—not, mind, certain salvation, but just holiness—and bade you make your choice, without one moment of hesitation you would choose holiness. Which would you choose?’ and she looked at Madeleine gently and rather whimsically.
‘I would choose the cornucopia,’ said Madeleine in a low voice.
There was a pause, and then with a very tender light in her eyes, Mère Agnès said: ‘I wish you could become acquainted with one of our young sisters—Sœur Jacqueline de Sainte-Euphémie Pascal—but she is at Port-Royal des Champs. She was born with every grace of the understanding, and affections most sensible to earthly joys and vanities, but in her sacrifice she has been as unflinching as Abraham. Hers is a rare spirit.’
Madeleine felt a sudden wave of jealousy pass over her for this paragon.
‘What is her age?’ she asked resentfully.
‘Sœur Jacqueline de Sainte-Euphémie? She must be in her twenty-eighth year, I should say. Courage, you have yet many years in which to overtake her,’ and she looked at Madeleine with considerable amusement. With the intuitive insight, which from time to time flashed across her habitual abstractedness, she had divined the motive of Madeleine’s question.
‘When she was twelve years old,’ she went on, ‘she was smitten by the smallpox, which shore her of all her comeliness. On her recovery she wrote some little verses wherein she thanked God that He had spared her life and taken her beauty. Could you have done that? Alas, when I was young I came exceeding short of it in grace. I mind me, when I was some ten years old, being deeply incensed against God, in that He had not made me “Madame de France”! My soul was a veritable well of vanity and amour-propre.’
‘So is mine!’ cried Madeleine, with eager pride.
Again Mère Agnès looked much amused.
‘My child, ’tis a strange cause for pride! And bear in mind, I am the last creature to take as your pattern. No one more grievously than I did ever fall away from the Grace of Baptism. Since when, notwithstanding all the privileges and opportunities of religion afforded by a cloistered life and the conversation of the greatest divines of our day, I have not weaned myself from the habit of sinning. But one thing I have attained by the instrument of Grace, and that is a “hunger and thirst after righteousness” that springs from the very depths of my soul. I tell you this, that you may be of good courage, for, believe me, my soul was of an exceeding froward and inductile complexion.’
‘Did you always love Our Lord with a direct and particular love?’ Madeleine asked.
‘I cannot call to mind the time when I did not. Do you love Him thus?’
‘No.’
‘Well, so senseless and ungrateful is our natural state that even love for Christ, which would seem as natural and spontaneous a motion of our being as is a child’s love of its mother, is absent from our hearts, before the operation of Grace. But, come, you are a Madeleine, are you not? A Madeleine who cannot love! The Church has ordained that all Christians should bear the name of a saint whom they should imitate in his or her particular virtue. And the virtue particular to Saint Madeleine was that she “loved much.” Forget not your great patron saint in your devotions and she will intercede for you. And in truth when I was young, I was wont to struggle against my love for Him and tried to flee from Him with an eagerness as great as that with which I do now pursue Him. And I think, dear child, ’twill fall out thus with you.’
Madeleine was deeply moved. Mère Agnès’s words, like the tales of a traveller, had stirred in her soul a wanderlust. It felt the lure of the Narrow Way, and was longing to set off on its pilgrimage. For the moment, she did not shrink from “the love of invisible things,” but would actually have welcomed the ghostly, ravishing arms.
‘Oh, tell me, tell me, what I can do to be holy?’ she cried imploringly.
‘You can do nothing, my child, but “watch and pray.” It lies not in us to be holy. Except our soul be watered by Grace, it is as barren as the desert, but be of good cheer, for some day the “desert shall blossom like the rose.” “Watch and pray” and desire, for sin is but the flagging of the desire for holiness. Grace will change your present fluctuating motions towards holiness into an adamant of desire that neither the tools of earth can break nor the chemistry of Hell resolve. Pray without ceasing for Grace, dear child, and I will pray for you too. And if, after a searching examination of your soul, you are sensible of being in the state necessary to the acceptance of the Blessed Sacrament, a mysterious help will be given you of which I cannot speak. Have courage, all things are possible to Grace.’
With tears in her eyes, Madeleine thanked her and bade her good-bye.
As she walked down the rue Saint-Jacques, the tall, delicately wrought gates of the Colleges were slowly clanging behind the little unwilling votaries of Philosophy and Grammar, but the other inhabitants of the neighbourhood were just beginning to enjoy themselves, and all was noise and colour. Old Latin songs, sung perhaps by Abelard and Thomas Aquinas, mingled with the latest ditty of the Pont-Neuf. Here, a half-tipsy theologian was expounding to a harlot the Jesuits’ theory of ‘Probabilism,’ there a tiny page was wrestling with a brawny quean from the Halles aux vins. Bells were pealing from a score of churches; in a dozen different keys viols and lutes and guitars were playing sarabands; hawkers were crying their wares, valets were swearing; and there were scarlet cloaks and green jerkins and yellow hose. And all the time that quiet artist, the evening light of Paris, was softening the colours, flattening the architecture, and giving to the whole scene an aspect remote, classical, unreal.
Down the motley street marched Madeleine with unseeing eyes, a passionate prayer for grace walling up in her heart.
Then she thought of Mère Agnès herself. Her rôle of a wise teacher, exhorting young disciples from suave spiritual heights, seemed to her a particularly pleasant one. Though genuinely humble, she was very grown-up. How delightful to be able to smile in a tender amused way at the confessions of youth, and to call one “dear child” in a deep, soft voice, without being ridiculous!
Ere she had reached the Porte Saint-Jacques she was murmuring over some of Mère Agnès’s words, but it was not Mère Agnès who was saying them, but she herself to Madame de Rambouillet’s granddaughter when grown up. A tender smile hovered on her lips, her eyes alternately twinkled and filled with tears: ‘Courage, dear child, I have experienced it all, I know, I know!’