He was an old soldier, who had seen
service and risen to the rank of commandant; and he retained some of the
brisk decisive manners of the camp. On the other hand, as soon as his
resignation was accepted, he had come to Our Lady of the Snows as a
boarder, and, after a brief experience of its ways, had decided to remain
as a novice. Already the new life was beginning to modify his
appearance; already he had acquired somewhat of the quiet and smiling air
of the brethren; and he was as yet neither an officer nor a Trappist, but
partook of the character of each. And certainly here was a man in an
interesting nick of life. Out of the noise of cannon and trumpets, he
was in the act of passing into this still country bordering on the grave,
where men sleep nightly in their grave-clothes, and, like phantoms,
communicate by signs.
At supper we talked politics. I make it my business, when I am in
France, to preach political good-will and moderation, and to dwell on the
example of Poland, much as some alarmists in England dwell on the example
of Carthage. The priest and the commandant assured me of their sympathy
with all I said, and made a heavy sighing over the bitterness of
contemporary feeling.
'Why, you cannot say anything to a man with which he does not absolutely
agree,' said I, 'but he flies up at you in a temper.'
They both declared that such a state of things was antichristian.
While we were thus agreeing, what should my tongue stumble upon but a
word in praise of Gambetta's moderation. The old soldier's countenance
was instantly suffused with blood; with the palms of his hands he beat
the table like a naughty child.
'Comment, monsieur?' he shouted. 'Comment? Gambetta moderate? Will you
dare to justify these words?'
But the priest had not forgotten the tenor of our talk. And suddenly, in
the height of his fury, the old soldier found a warning look directed on
his face; the absurdity of his behaviour was brought home to him in a
flash; and the storm came to an abrupt end, without another word.
It was only in the morning, over our coffee (Friday, September 27th),
that this couple found out I was a heretic. I suppose I had misled them
by some admiring expressions as to the monastic life around us; and it
was only by a point-blank question that the truth came out. I had been
tolerantly used both by simple Father Apollinaris and astute Father
Michael; and the good Irish deacon, when he heard of my religious
weakness, had only patted me upon the shoulder and said, 'You must be a
Catholic and come to heaven.' But I was now among a different sect of
orthodox. These two men were bitter and upright and narrow, like the
worst of Scotsmen, and indeed, upon my heart, I fancy they were worse.
The priest snorted aloud like a battle-horse.
'Et vous pretendez mourir dans cette espece de croyance?' he demanded;
and there is no type used by mortal printers large enough to qualify his
accent.
I humbly indicated that I had no design of changing.
But he could not away with such a monstrous attitude. 'No, no,' he
cried; 'you must change. You have come here, God has led you here, and
you must embrace the opportunity.'
I made a slip in policy; I appealed to the family affections, though I
was speaking to a priest and a soldier, two classes of men
circumstantially divorced from the kind and homely ties of life.
'Your father and mother?' cried the priest. 'Very well; you will convert
them in their turn when you go home.'
I think I see my father's face! I would rather tackle the Gaetulian lion
in his den than embark on such an enterprise against the family
theologian.
But now the hunt was up; priest and soldier were in full cry for my
conversion; and the Work of the Propagation of the Faith, for which the
people of Cheylard subscribed forty-eight francs ten centimes during
1877, was being gallantly pursued against myself. It was an odd but most
effective proselytising. They never sought to convince me in argument,
where I might have attempted some defence; but took it for granted that I
was both ashamed and terrified at my position, and urged me solely on the
point of time. Now, they said, when God had led me to Our Lady of the
Snows, now was the appointed hour.
'Do not be withheld by false shame,' observed the priest, for my
encouragement.
For one who feels very similarly to all sects of religion, and who has
never been able, even for a moment, to weigh seriously the merit of this
or that creed on the eternal side of things, however much he may see to
praise or blame upon the secular and temporal side, the situation thus
created was both unfair and painful. I committed my second fault in
tact, and tried to plead that it was all the same thing in the end, and
we were all drawing near by different sides to the same kind and
undiscriminating Friend and Father. That, as it seems to lay spirits,
would be the only gospel worthy of the name. But different men think
differently; and this revolutionary aspiration brought down the priest
with all the terrors of the law. He launched into harrowing details of
hell. The damned, he said - on the authority of a little book which he
had read not a week before, and which, to add conviction to conviction,
he had fully intended to bring along with him in his pocket - were to
occupy the same attitude through all eternity in the midst of dismal
tortures.
