The Grip of Desire - Hector France
THE GRIP OF DESIRE
THE STORY OF A PARISH-PRIEST
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF HECTOR FRANCE
[Illustration: Debut d'une serie de documents en couleur.]
Love is a familiar; love is a devil; there is
no evil angel but love. Yet was Samson so
tempted, and he had an excellent strength;
yet was Solomon so seduced, and he had a
very good wit.
_Love's Labour Lost_.
With an engraved portrait of the Author
Other Works in English
By
HECTOR FRANCE
Mansour's Chastisement, the Loves and
Intrigues of an Arab Don Juan, done into English
by ALFRED ALLINSON, and embellished with Seven
fine Engravings by THEVENIN, after Drawings by
BAZEILHAC.
Musk, Hashish and Blood, with Twenty-One
Engravings by PAUL AVRIL. (In the Press.)
The Attack on the Brothels, A Realistic
Account of the Civilizing of "Barbarians". With
Illustrations. (In Hand.)
The Daughter of the Christ; The most
original and philosophic work of the last twenty
years. This work will be sumptuously illustrated
by leading French Artists. (In Preparation.)
[Illustration: Fin d'une serie de documents en couleur.]
[Illustration: the author.]
[Illustration]
TO THE READER
The truth, the bitter truth.
DANTON.
Oh, sons and brothers, oh, poets
When the thing exists, speak the word.
V. HUGO.
I do not assert that all the personages in this story are models of virtue.
To some of them has been given a part which severe morality reproves. But I
am a realist and not an idealist, and for that I beg the reader a thousand
pardons. I have tried to paint what I saw and not that of which I dreamed.
If my figures are not chaste, the fault is not mine, but of those who
passed before me and whose features I sketched as my pen ran on.
You are warned therefore, Madam, that when you open this book, you will not
find a "Treatise on Morality". Here are only the simple and pastoral loves
of a poor and obscure village priest. An idyll in the shade of the
parsonage limes and under the motionless eye of the weather-cock on the
belfry.
If then you come across any word which offends your chaste ears, any
picture which distresses your modest eye, blame only your own curiosity.
HECTOR FRANCE.
LIST OF CHAPTERS.
Unto the pure all things are pure:
but unto them that are Defiled and
Unbelieving is nothing pure: but even
their mind and conscience is Defiled.
They profess that they know God;
but in Works they Deny Him, being
Abominable and Disobedient, and unto
every good work Reprobate.
ST. PAUL.
LIST OF CHAPTERS.
I. The Cure
II. The Confessional
III. The Parsonage
IV. Expectation
V. The Meeting
VI. The Look
VII. The Salute
VIII. The Fever
IX. During Vespers
X. In Parenthesis
XI. The Flesh
XII. The Temptation
XIII. The Resolution
XIV. The Captain
XV. Memories
XVI. The Epaulet
XVII. The Voltairian
XVIII. The Visit
XIX. Hard Words
XX. Kicks
XXI. The Past
XXII. The Servant
XXIII. The Letter
XXIV. The First Meeting
XXV. Love
XXVI. Of Young Girls in General
XXVII. Of Suzanne in Particular
XXVIII. The Shadow.
XXIX. Other Meetings
XXX. Seraphic Love
XXXI. The Virgin
XXXII. The Death's-Head
XXXIII. Frenzy
XXXIV. The Prohibition
XXXV. The Shelter
XXXVI. The Hot Wine
XXXVII. Tete-a-Tete
XXXVIII. The Kiss
XXXIX. The Devil in Petticoats
XL. Little Confessions
XLI. Moral Reflections
XLII. Memory Looking Back
XLIII. Espionage
XLIV. The Garret Window
XLV. Treacherous Manoeuvre
XLVI. The Letter
XLVII. Good News
XLVIII. Reconcilliation
XLIX. Confidences
L. Mammosa Virgo
LI. Chamber Morality
LII. The Posset
LIII. The Leg
LIV. Mater Saeva Cupidunum
LV. In the Foot-Path
LVI. Double Remorse
LVII. The Explosion
LVIII. Provocation
LIX. Acts and Words
LX. Talks
LXI. Le Pere Hyacinthe
LXII. The Happy Cure
LXIII. The Miracles
LXIV. The Two Augurs
LXV. Table-Talk
LXVI. Good Counsel
LXVII. In A Glass
LXVIII. The Rose Chamber
LXIX. The Gust of Wind
LXX. The Ambuscade
LXXI. The Breach
LXXII. The Assault
LXXIII. Audaces Fortuna Juvat
LXXIV. Before Mass
LXXV. During Mass
LXXVI. Awakening
LXXVII. Consolations
LXXVIII. False Alarms
LXXIX. In the _Diligence_
LXXX. An Old Acquaintance
LXXXI. A Little Confession
LXXXII. The Church-Woman
LXXXIII. Conventicle
LXXXIV. At the Palace
LXXXV. Little Pastimes
LXXXVI. Serious Talk
LXXXVII. The Seminary
LXXXVIII. The Fair One
LXXXIX. Love Again
XC. Le Cygne de la Croix
XCI. The Calves
XCII. The Scapular
XCIII. From the Dark to the Fair
XCIV. The Change
XCV. The Cure of St. Marie
XCVI. Finis Coronet Opus
[Illustration]
I.
THE CURE.
"I will sing thy praises on the harp, oh
Lord. But, my soul, whence cometh thy
sadness, and wherefore art thou troubled."
(The _Introito_ of the Mass).
The Cure of Althausen was reputed to be chaste. Was he so really? To tell
the truth, I never believed him so; at thirty men are not chaste; they may
try to be so; they rarely succeed. However that might be, he was a singular
man.
He had a profound reverence for common sense, and it was said that he
taught a strange doctrine to his flock; for example, that a day of work was
more pleasing to God than a day of prayer; that the temples were for those
who labour not, and that a good action was well worth a mass.
He maintained too that we purchase nothing with money in the other world,
and that the coins, so appreciated among ourselves, have no currency beyond
the grave, and a hundred other oddities of this kind, which in the good old
times would have brought him to the stake. The Bishop had severely
reprimanded him for all these heresies; but he seemed to pay no attention
to it. Every Sunday, from the height of his pulpit, he continued to brave
shamelessly the thunders of his Bishop and the thunders of heaven.
I went one day to hear him. His voice was sweet, persuasive, with a clear
and harmonious tone. He said simply: "Love one another. That is the true
religion of Christ. Love one another! everything is there: religion,
philosophy and morality. Charity, properly understood, that which comes
from the heart, is more pleasing to God than all the prayers. There are
people who in order to pray neglect their home duties, their duties as wife
and as mother. To them, I say of a truth, God remains deaf. He wills,
before aught else, that you should fulfil your duties to your own. Every
prayer which causes another to suffer is an impiety." Such was pretty near
the essence of his sermons: they were short and simple. No great sonorous
words, no pompous digressions, no Latin quotations which no one would have
understood, no declamations on Our Lady of Lourdes or of La Salotte, on the
miracle of Roses or the Immaculate Conception.
Thus he placed himself on a level with the simple souls who heard him,
addressed himself only to their good sense and to their heart, and did not
waste their time. He thought that after having worked hard throughout the
week, it was well to spend the Sunday in rest and not in fresh fatigue.
But that which struck me most in him was his intelligent and expressive
countenance, and I was astonished that a man hall-marked with such
originality, should consent to vegetate, obscure and future-less, in the
care of a poor village.
They said he was chaste. In truth that must be a task more arduous for him
than for any other, for he bore on his face the impress of ardent passions.
A disciple of Lavater would doubtless have sought for and found the secret
of hidden dramas in the fine pale face. From his looks, now full of
feverish ardour, now laden with sweet caresses, like the limpid eyes of a
bride, the desires of the flesh in rebellion against deadly duty, seemed to
burst forth with bold prolific thoughts.
One saw at times that his thoughts escaped in moments of forgetfulness from
the clerical fetter.
Wild, wandering and licentious, they plunged with delight into the ocean of
reverie. They left far behind them on the misty shore our conventions, our
prejudices and our follies, and all those toils of spider-web which beset
and catch and destroy so well the silly crowd, and which we call social
rules, opinion and propriety.
Then the priest was gone; the man alone remained, the man of thirty, robust
and full of life and yearning for all the joys of life. And beneath his
gold-embroidered chasuble, near that altar laden with lustres and with
flowers, amidst the floods of light and the floods of perfume, in that
atmosphere saturated with the intoxicating waves of incense and the breath
of maidens; surrounded by all those women, by all these girls on their
knees before him or hanging on his lips; before all these modest or burning
looks fixed upon his gaze, a strange sensation rose to his brain; the
perspiration stood upon his forehead, he blushed and grew pale by turns; a
shiver ran through his frame, and trying to subdue the ardour of his gaze,
he turned towards the crowd of young girls, and said to them in a trembling
voice:
--_Dominus vobiscum_.
--_Et cum spiritu tuo_, answered the choir of maidens. Oh, how willingly
instead of the name of God would he have cast to them his heart.
II.
THE CONFESSIONAL.
"In the course of the holy missions to
which I have consecrated a great portion
of my life, I have often come across
upright souls, disposed to make great
progress in perfection, if they had found
a skilful director."
THE REV. FATHER J.B. SCAROMELLI
(_The Spiritual Guide_).
However, almost in spite of myself, I was interested in this young priest,
and although disposed to believe that he was a knave like the rest, I was
sensible of something in him so upright and so loyal that I was, from the
very first, prejudiced in his favour.
And besides, these flashes of fiery passion which at times betrayed him,
could they serve as an accusation against him? Could one take offence at
his not having completely stifled at thirty years the fierce passions of
youth and his violent desires? Was it not a proof on the contrary of his
victorious struggles and of his energy?
And even though he should succumb before the imperious needs of potent
nature, which would be the more culpable, he or the women who surrounded
him, enveloped him with their gaze, encompassed him with their seductions;
he or the husbands and fathers who seemed tacitly to say to him: "You are
young, ardent, fall of passion and vigour, there is my daughter, there is
my wife, I hand them to you, receive their confessions, dive into their
looks, read in their soul, listen month to month to their most secret
confidences, but beware of touching their lips."
Fools! And when the priest succumbs and their shame is noised abroad, they
make a great uproar and complain to all the echoes, instead of bowing their
head and humbly saying: _mea culpa_.
What? silly fool, you cast the modesty of your young wife and the virginity
of your daughter as food for that envious celibate, you leave them alone in
the mysterious tete-a-tete of the confessional, with no obstacle between
his burning lust and the object of that lost, between those mouths which
speak so low![1]
What will stop them? Duty? Virtue? His duty to himself? Laughable
obstacles. Fragile plank on which you place your honour.
Her own virtue? Trust not to it overmuch, for he will know how to lead her
to the will of his appetite. He will form her in such a way that she will
pass by all the roads by which he will wish to guide her. It is a gate
which he will contrive sooner or later to force, however it may be bolted,
however it may be guarded by those sleepy gaolers which we call Principles.
The Confessional! Marvellous invention of greedy curiosity, satanic work of
some hoary sinner! Hallowed goad of concupiscence, blessed antechamber
which leads to the alcove, mysterious retreat where the priest sits between
husband and wife, listens to their private talk and stands by, panting at
all their excesses. Refuge more secret than the best padded boudoir.
Formidable entrenchment sacred to all! What jealous lover would dare to
lift that curtain of serge behind which are murmured so many secret
confidences?
It is there that the artless virgin utters her first confessions; there,
that the plighted maid reveals the beatings of her heart; there, that the
blushing bride unveils the secrets of the nuptial couch.
He, the man of God, he listens ... he collects all their voluptuous
nothings and out of them creates worlds. Do you see him give ear? His face
has kept its sanctimonious expression, but the fire gleams forth beneath
his drooping eye-lid. He is leaning near, as near as possible to those
stammering lips.... The penitent is silent. What! already? everything said
already? Oh! that is not enough. She has passed too quickly over certain
faults the remembrance of which covers her forehead with a blush. He is not
satisfied. He wishes to know further. He reproves gently, "Why hesitate?
God is full of pity; but in order that the pardon may be complete, the
confession must be complete," and anew he questions, he presses ... his
temples throb, his blood boils, his hands burn, the demon of the flesh
completely embraces him.
Come, incautious girl, speak, explain, give details, and by the confession
of your pleasant faults, plunge into ecstasy the ruttish confessor.
[Footnote 1: In the confessionals of the Church of St. Gudule at Brussels
and in those of the majority of Belgian churches an opening may be seen
contrived in the screen, through which it is easy for mouths to meet.]
III.
THE PARSONAGE.
"The pretty parsonage encircled with verdure,
With its white pigeons cooing on the roof,
Assumes to the sun a saucy air of sanctity
And permits a smell of cooking to go forth."
CAMILLE DELTHIL (_Les Rustiques_).
The parsonage is seated on the summit of the hill and overlooks a part of
the village and of the plain. The traveller perceives from far its white
outline in the midst of a nest of verdure, and feels delighted at the view.
Nothing more simple than this peaceful house. A single story above the
ground-floor, with four windows from which the panes shine cheerfully in
the first rays of the sun, and upon the red-tiled roof two attics with
pointed gable. The door, which one reaches by a broad stone stair, is
framed by two vines, their vigorous branches stretching up to the side of
the windows, yielding to the hand, when September is come, their velvety,
ruby bunches. Behind the house, a little garden surrounded by a hedge of
green, at once an orchard, flower and kitchen garden.
In front, two hundred paces away, the old church with its stained walls on
which the ivy clings, and its pointed belfry. The distance between is
partly filled by several rows of lime-trees, which, seen from a distance,
give to the parsonage the calm and cheerful look of those peaceful retreats
where we sometimes dream of burying our existence. "Is not this the
harbour!" says the tempest-beaten way-farer. "Oh! how happy must be the
dweller in this calm abode!"
He might enter; he was welcome. The door was open to all, and this house,
like that of the wise man, seemed to be of glass.
And all the women, young or old, knew hour by hour how their Cure spent his
time, and in spite of all the perseverance which, according to principle,
they had applied to discover some mystery in his life or the knot of a
secret intrigue, they acknowledged unanimously that no one could give less
hold for scandal than he.
Every day, when he had said mass, pruned his trees, watered his flowers,
visited some poor or sick person, he shut himself up with his books and
lived with them till the evening, until his servant came and said to him,
"It is time for supper." Then he rose, ate his supper in silence, after
putting aside the portion for the poor, and then returned to his books.
That was all his life.
On Sunday, if the weather was fine, he took his breviary, and walked with
slow steps along the high-road.
The children would stop their games and run forward to meet him in order to
receive a caress from him, while the young girls whispered together and
seemed to avoid him. The bolder ones met his gaze with a blush: perhaps
they too would have liked, just as the little children, to receive a caress
from the handsome Cure of Althausen. But he passed on without ever
stopping, answering their timid salutations with an almost frigid gravity.
He acted wisely. He was full of distrust of himself, and kept himself in
prudent reserve in face of the enemy. For he knew full well that the enemy
was there, in these sweet woman's eyes and those smiles which wished him
welcome.
Then the pagan intoxications of the Catholic rites were no more surrounding
him to over-excite him and betray the trouble of his heart and the straying
of his thoughts, and if he felt affected before the smiles of these
marriageable girls, he armed himself with force sufficient to thrust back
carefully to his inmost being his boldness and his desires.
It was no more the ardent passionate man who disclosed himself sometimes in
rapid moments of forgetfulness, it was the priest austere and calm, the
functionary salaried by the State to teach the religion of the State.
IV.
EXPECTATION.
"And the days and the hours glided on,
and withdrawn within itself, affected
by sorrows and joys unknown, the soul
stretched its mysterious wing over a
new life soon to dawn."
LAMENNAIS (_Une voix de prison_).
One of his greatest pleasures was to plunge into the woods which surround
the village. He sought silence and solitude there, and when he heard the
steps of a keeper or of some pedestrian, or even the happy voices of young
couples calling one another, he concealed himself behind the masses of
foliage, and hid himself with a kind of shame like a criminal. He wished to
be alone, completely alone, so as to dream at his ease. Then he stretched
himself in the sun on the warm grass, opened his breviary, the discreet
confidant of all wandering thoughts, the screen for the priest's looks and
thoughts, and listened to the insects' hum.
He followed the goings and comings of an ant or the capricious flight of a
bumble-bee; then with his eyes lost in space, immersed in the profundity
of nature, he dreamed....
One could have seen by his smile that he was wandering in spirit in the
laughing and limit-less garden of hope, pausing here and there on rosy
illusions and fair chimeras like a butterfly on flowers.
They were delicious hours which he passed thus, full of forgetfulness and
indolence. He enjoyed the present moment, the present, poor, humble and
obscure, but which held neither disquietude nor care.
Sometimes regrets for a past of which no one was aware came and knocked at
the door of his dreams, but he drove them for away, saying like Werther:
"The past is past."
The hand of time revolved without his giving heed, and often night
surprised him in his fantastic reveries. The good country-folk bad been
sorely puzzled by these solitary walks in the depths of the woods.
They talked at first of some scandalous intrigue, and the Cure had no
difficulty in discovering that he was followed and watched by rigid
parishioners, anxious about his morality and his virtue. More than once
through the foliage he believed he saw vigilant sentinels who watched him
carefully.
Lost labour! Never did those who tried with such unwearied perseverance to
detect his secret amours, have the pleasure of beholding _that mistress_
whom they would have been so happy to cover with shame and scorn.
They were obliged to renounce it, for his mistress then was that admirable
fairy, invisible and dumb to the common herd, who displays her beauties to
the gaze of a chosen race alone, as she murmurs her divine and chaste
sonnets in their ear.
It was nature all radiant, which caressed his brow with the breeze, which
sang by his ear with the mysterious harmony of the woods, which gladdened
his sight with the flower of the fields, the verdant meadow, the golden
harvest. His loves were the hollow path which is lost in the mountain, the
old willow which leans over the edge of the pool, the sparrow which
chatters among the leaves, the splendours of the starry sky, the magic
mirages of the evening.
They were all the melodies which poets have made to vibrate on the strings
of lyres, and in those moments of delicious ecstasy he forgot the
vexations, the littlenesses and the miseries of the world, and if anyone
had asked him what was the aim of his life, he would have replied like
Anaxagoras:
"To love Nature, and to contemplate the sky."
But among his uncouth surroundings, who would have been capable of
understanding these sweet pleasures and that over-excitement of soul and
brain, by means of which he sought to benumb his senses and to change the
current of his heart, that heart which like the body has its imperious
needs.
He had reached that fatal epoch when man experiences an insatiable hunger
for love, and for want of a woman will nourish some monstrous fantasy, or
even, like the prisoner of Saintine, become enamoured of a flower.
V.
THE MEETING.
"Skilled physicians have remarked
that an emanation of infinitely projectile
forces continually takes place from the
eyes of impassioned persons, of lovers
or of lascivious women, which communicates
insensibly to those who listen to or behold
them, the same agitation by which they are
affected."
RESTIF DE LA BRETONNE (_Le Paysan perverte_).
One afternoon, while returning to the village, the Cure chanced to meet a
young girl who was unknown to him. She was but poorly dressed, and her
shoes were white with dust; but youth and gaiety shone forth beneath the
glow of her cheeks, her blue eye sparkled under the dark arch of her
eyebrows, and the voluptuous opulence of her shape made one forget the
poverty of her dress. From her straw hat with its faded ribbons escaped
heavy tresses which shone like gold.
Bending over his breviary, the Cure passed, casting a sidelong look, one of
those priestly looks which see without being seen; but the stranger
compelled him to raise his head. She had stood still and was fixing on him
smiling a bright and confident look.
On seeing this, the Cure stood still also.
Certainly, in the white flock of his congregation he counted just as lovely
creatures every Sunday, he encountered just as provoking smiles.
Nevertheless, he was troubled; he felt a secret flame course through his
veins; a kind of charm emanated front this girl. He remembered reading that
magnetic currents flow forth from certain women which inflame the senses,
and he took a step backwards; but the charm operated in spite of himself,
his eyes remained fixed on the seductive outlines of the figure of the
unknown. She enquired of him politely the way to the _Mairie_. In pointing
it out to her the Cure perhaps displayed more earnestness than was
necessary, he even took a few steps with her as far as the entrance to the
village, then he returned home, thinking of this pretty girl.
During supper his servant told him that some mountebanks had arrived in the
village, and that they were going to give a performance the same evening in
the market-place. In fact a drum was heard beating the call, and the hoarse
voice of the clown announcing "a grand acrobatic spectacle, accompanied
with dances and followed by a pantomime."
Involuntarily the Cure's thought turned to the stranger; he went upstairs
into his study and behind his half-closed shutters he could take part in
the spectacle.
As he expected, the pretty girl was there, and seen from this distance in
the night, half-lighted by a few smoky lamps, with her little bodice of
velvet, her gauze skirt spangled with gold, her flesh-coloured tights, she
was really charming. At that moment she was dancing, with wonderful
lightness and grace, some lascivious fandango, while she accompanied
herself with the castanets.
She was smiling at the crowd, delighting in the effect which she knew how
to produce with her sparkling eye and her white teeth and her rosy lips,
and the Cure was intoxicated by that smile. Then he cast his eyes over the
rough crowd, and ha was grieved at so much cost for such an audience:
_Margaritas ante porcos_, he murmured, _Margaritas ante porcos_.
In order to admire her better, he had taken a field-glass and lost none of
her gestures.
Her bosom was boldly bared, and he feasted his eyes upon the sweet furrow
of her breasts, he followed the delicious outline of her leg, and found his
heart melting before the undulating movements of her graceful bust and her
sturdy hips.
He abruptly left the window, took up a book at random and tried to read.