Part 8

Before me, at a distance of twenty steps, stands my companion turned towards me. Round his beardless face of dazzling whiteness spreads a luminous ring in the shape of an ellipse with the Unknown in the centre. After he has given me a sign to follow him, he goes further. The crown of rays accompanies him, so that the gloomy, cold, and squalid garden is lit up as he goes. Moreover the trees, the bushes, the plants grow green and blossom just as far as the rays of his halo reach, but fade again when he has passed. I recognise the great flowering canes with leaves like elephant's ears hanging over the statuary group of Adam and his family, also the bed of Salvia fulgens, the fire-red sage, the peach tree, the roses, the banana plants, the aloes,--all my old acquaintances, each in his own place. The only strange thing is that the seasons of the year seem to be mingled together, so that the spring and autumn flowers are blooming simultaneously.

But what surprises me more than anything is that nothing of all this seems strange to me; it all appears quite natural and inevitable. So as I walk along the bee-garden, a swarm of bees buzzes about the plants and settles on the flowers, but in such an exactly defined circle that the insects disappear as soon as they fly into the shadow. The illuminated part of a sage-plant is covered with leaves and blossoms, while the part in shadow is withered and blighted with hoar frost.

Under the chestnut trees there is a fascinatingly beautiful sight, as, under the foliage, an empty dove's nest is suddenly taken possession of by a cooing pair of doves.

At last we have reached the Fleurus Gate, and my guide signs to me to remain standing. Within a second he is at the other end of the garden, at the Gay-Lussac Gate, at a distance which appears to me immense, although it is only about a quarter of a mile. In spite of the distance I can see the Unknown surrounded by his oval halo. Without speaking a word or moving a muscle of his mouth he bids me approach. I seem to divine his purpose as I traverse the long avenue, the racecourse well known to me for years bounded at the end by the cross of the Pantheon, which stands in blood-red relief against the dark sky.

The Way of the Cross and, perhaps, the fourteen Stations, if I am not mistaken. Before I begin it, I make a sign that I wish to speak, question, and receive explanation. My guide answers with an inclination of the head that he is ready to hear what I have to say. At the same moment the Unknown changes his position without the slightest perceptible movement or rustle. The only thing I notice is, that as he approaches me the air is filled with a perfume as of balsam, which makes my heart and lungs swell, and gives me courage to dare the contest.

I commence my questioning--

"Thou art he who has followed me for two years. What would'st thou of me?"

Without opening his mouth the Unknown answered me with a kind of smile full of super-human kindness, forbearance, and urbanity,--

"Why dost thou ask me since thou knowest the answer thyself?"

And, as if within me, I hear thy voice sound again, "I wish to raise thee to a higher life, to lift thee out of the mire."

"Born as I am out of mire, created for baseness, feeding on decay, how shall I be freed from earthly grossness except by death? Take my life then! Thou wilt not? It must be the infliction of punishment which is to educate me? But let me assure thee that humiliations make me proud; being denied the little enjoyments of life produces desire for them; fasting occasions gluttony, which is not my besetting sin; chastity whets the edge of lust; enforced loneliness produces love of the world and its unwholesome delights; poverty gives birth to greed; and the evil companionship to which I am relegated instils contempt of humanity into me, and produces unawares the suspicion that justice is maladministered. Yes, at certain moments it seems to me as though Providence was not kept sufficiently informed by its satraps to whom it has intrusted the rule over mankind; that its prefects and sub-prefects allow themselves to be guilty of malversations, falsifications, baseless denunciations. Thus it has happened to me, that I have been punished where others have sinned; suits have been brought against me, in which I was not only innocent, but actually the defender of right and the accuser of crime. All the same the punishment has lighted on me while the guilty triumphed.

"Allow me a plain question: Have women been admitted to a share in the rule? For the present method of government seems so irritable, so petty, so unjust, yes,--unjust. Is it not the case that every time when I have brought a righteous and lawful case against a woman, she, however unworthy she may have been, has been acquitted, and I have been condemned?

"Thou wilt not answer? And then thou demandest from me that I should love criminals, soul-murderers who poison the mind and falsify truth, and perjurers! No, a thousand times no! 'O Eternal! should I not hate them that hate thee? Should I not abhor them that rise up against thee. I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them mine enemies.' So speaks the Psalmist, and I add, 'I hate the wicked as I hate myself'; and my prayer is this, 'Punish, O Lord, those who persecute me with lies and malice as Thou hast punished me when I was false and malicious! Have I now blasphemed the Eternal, the Father of Jesus Christ, the God of the Old and New Testament? Of old time He listened to the reproaches of mortals, and permitted the accused to defend themselves. Listen to the way in which Moses defended himself before the Lord when the Israelites were tired of the manna, "Wherefore hast Thou afflicted Thy servant? and wherefore have I not found favour in Thy sight, that Thou layest the burden of all this people upon me? Have I conceived all this people? have I begotten them, that Thou shouldest say unto me, Carry them in thy bosom, as a nursing father beareth the sucking child, unto the land which Thou swearest unto their fathers? Whence should I have flesh to give unto all this people? for they weep unto me, saying Give us flesh, that we may eat. I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me."'

"Is not this plain speaking on the part of a mortal? Is it quite befitting, this speech of an angry servant? Yet consider, the Lord does not smite the bold speaker with a thunderbolt, but lightens his load by choosing seventy leaders to share the burden of the people with Moses. The way in which the Eternal grants the prayer of the people when they clamour for flesh to eat, is only slightly contemptuous, like that of a kindly father when he grants the wishes of his unreasonable children. 'Therefore the Lord will give you flesh and ye shall eat. Ye shall not eat one day, nor two days, nor five days, neither ten days nor twenty days, but even a whole month, until it come out at your nostrils, and it be loathsome to you.'

"That is a God after my ideal, the same God to whom Job cries, 'Oh that one might plead with God as a man pleadeth with his friend.' But without waiting for this, the sufferer takes the liberty of demanding explanations from the Lord regarding the evil treatment to which he is exposed. 'I will say to God, "Condemn me not; show me wherefore Thou goest against me in judgment. Doth it please Thee to oppress me, to overthrow the work of Thine own hands, and to further the devices of the wicked?"' These are reproaches and imputations which the good God accepts without anger, and which He answers without using thunderbolts. Where is He, the Heavenly Father, who can smite at the follies of His children and pardon after He has punished them? Where does He hide Himself, the Master of the house who kept it in good order, and watched the overseers in order to prevent injustice?"

During my disconnected speech the Unknown regarded me with the same indulgent smile, without betraying impatience. But when I had finished, he disappeared. I found myself breathing a stifling atmosphere of carbonic oxide, and standing alone on the gloomy, dirty, autumnal-looking Rue Medici. While I went down the Boulevard Saint Michel I felt vexed with myself, that I had neglected the opportunity of speaking out everything. I had still many shafts in my quiver, if only the Unknown had waited to answer, or to direct an accusation against me.

But as soon as the crowd again presses round me in the glaring light of the gas lamps, and all the exposed wares in the shops remind me of the trivialities of life, the scene in the garden appears like a miracle, and I hasten in alarm to my lodging, where meditation plunges me into an abyss of doubt and anxiety. There is a ferment going on in the world, and men are waiting for something new, of which a glimmering has already appeared. France is preparing for a return to the Middle Ages,--the period of faith and of dogma, to which it has been led over the downfall of an empire, and of a miniature Augustus, just as at the time of the decay of the power of Rome and the invasion of the barbarians. One has seen Paris--Rome in flames, and the Goths crowning themselves in the capitol, Versailles. The great heathen Taine and Renan have gone down to perdition, and taken their scepticism with them, but Joan of Arc has again woken to life. The Christians are persecuted, their processions dispersed by gens d'armes; saturnalias are held on carnival days, and shameful orgies take place in the open streets under the protection of the police, and with the aid of money grants from the Government, which to satisfy the discontented offers shows, with or without gladiatorial encounters. "Panem et Circenses" (Dear)--bread and games. All is readily bought with money, honour, conscience, fatherland, love, administration of justice,--truly the infallible and regular symptoms of decay in a community, whence Virtue, both in name and reality, has been banished for thirty years. Yet for all that we are in the Middle Ages. Young men assume monkish cowls, wear the tonsure and dream of convent life. They compose legends and perform miracle-plays, paint Madonnas and carve images of Christ, drawing their inspiration from the magician,[2] who has bewitched them with Tristan and Isolde, Parzival and the Holy Grail. Crusades against Jews and Turks begin afresh; the Anti-Semites and Philhellenes see to that. Magic and alchemy have already been re-established, and they only wait for the first proved case of witchcraft in order to erect a funeral pile to burn witches on. Middle Ages indeed! Witness the pilgrimages to Lourdes, Tilli-sur-Seine, Rue Jean Goujon. Heaven also gives the sleepy world signs to be ready. The Lord speaks through water-spouts, cyclones, floods, and thunder-storms.

Mediæval also is the leprosy which has just appeared again, and against which the doctors of Paris and Berlin have combined.

But they were beautiful, the Middle Ages, when men knew how to enjoy and to suffer, when strength and love and beauty in colour, in line, and harmony were revealed for the last time, before they were drowned and sabred by the renaissance of heathenism which is called Protestantism.

* * * * *

The evening has come, and I burn with desire to renew my meeting with the Unknown, well prepared, as I now am, to confess all and to defend myself before I am condemned. After I have taken my melancholy meal alone I go up the Via Dolorosa, the Rue Bonaparte. This street has never appeared to me so monstrous as this evening; the shop windows yawn like abysses in which Christ is portrayed in many forms --half-martyred, half-triumphant. I go on and on, while the sweat runs in great drops down my face, and the soles of my boots burn my feet, yet I do not seem to advance a step. Am I the Wandering Jew who refused the Redeemer a drink of water? and am I, now that I wish to follow and imitate Him, unable to approach Him?

Finally, and without myself knowing how, I find myself before the Fleurus Gate, and in the next moment within the garden, which lies there, dark, damp, and still. Immediately a gust of wind sets the skeletons of the trees in motion, and the Unknown takes up his position quicker as he approaches in his summer-like garment of light. With the same smile as before he invites me to speak.

And I speak, "What demandest thou of me, and wherefore plaguest thou me with thy Christ? A few days ago in some mysterious manner thou placedst the _Imitation of Christ_ in my hand, and I read it as in my youth when I learned to despise the world. How can I have the right to despise the creation of the Eternal and the beautiful earth? And whither has thy wisdom led me? To neglect my affairs, till I have become a burden for my fellow-men, and ended as a beggar. This book, which forbids friendship, which lays worldly intercourse under a ban, which demands solitude and renunciation, is written for a monk, and I have not the right to be a monk and expose myself to the danger of letting my children die of want. See whither the love for a lonely life has led me. On the one hand thou enjoinest the life of a hermit, and as soon as I withdraw myself from the world I am attacked by the evil spirits of madness, my affairs fall into confusion, and in my isolation I do not possess a single friend from whom I can ask help. On the other hand, as soon as I seek out men, I meet the worst kind, who annoy me with their arrogance, and that in proportion to my humility. For I am humble, and treat all as my equals, till they trample me under their feet, when I behave like a worm which raises its head but cannot bite.

"What then demandest thou of me? Is it to make me a martyr at all costs, whether I do thy will or disregard it? Wilt thou make me a prophet? That is too great an honour for me, and I lack the vocation to be one. Besides I cannot take up that attitude, for all prophets which I have known have been finally unmasked as half-charlatans, half-lunatics, and their prophecies have always failed.

"Moreover, if thou pressest upon me this vocation, I must be favoured with electing grace, so that I become free from all destructive passions which are degrading for a preacher; I must have adequate support for my life instead of being, as I am, besmirched with poverty, which makes one's character deteriorate and ties one's hands. It is certainly true, and I grant it, that contempt of the world has led me to despise myself and to neglect my calling through undervaluing honour. I confess that I have been a sorry guardian of my own person, but that is because of the superiority of my better self which despised the unclean sheath in which thou hast immured my immortal soul. From my earliest years I have loved purity and virtue--verily I have. Yet my life has dragged itself dong in filth and wickedness, so that I often suppose my sins to be punishments inflicted upon me, with the object of arousing in me a permanent disgust of life. Why hast thou condemned me to ingratitude, which I hate more than any other sin? Thou hast entangled me, who am naturally grateful, in snares, in order to compel me to feel obligation to the first benefactor who came in my way. So I have become involved in dependence and slavery, since benefactors demand as compensation control over the thoughts, wishes, inclinations, and devotion,--in a word, the whole soul, of those whom they benefit. Always I have been compelled to withdraw myself, laden with debt and ungrateful, in order to preserve my individuality and manly worth; I have been forced to tear asunder the bonds which threatened to strangle my immortal soul. And that, too, with the spiritual torment and pangs of conscience of a thief who goes his way with some one else's property.

"As a matter of fact, by choosing the royal road of the Cross I have entangled myself in the thorny thicket of theology, so that doubts more terrible than ever have taken possession of me, and whispered plainly in my ear that all unhappiness, all injustice, and the whole work of redemption is only an enormous temptation which one must manfully resist. Often I believe that Swedenborg, with his terrifying hells, is only a fire and water-ordeal which must be undergone. And although I owe a debt of gratitude, which I cannot pay to this prophet, who has saved me from madness, I feel rise again and again in my heart a burning desire to overthrow him, to defy him as an evil spirit who always plots to ensnare my soul in order to enslave me, after he has driven me to despair and suicide. Yes, he has insinuated himself between me and my God, whose place he has wished to take. It is he who tyrannises over me with terrors of the night and threatens me with madness. Though possibly he has only fulfilled his task in drawing me back to the Lord and making me submit to the Eternal. It may be that his hells are only a scarecrow; I take them as such, but believe no more in them, for I cannot believe in them without slandering the good God who demands that we should forgive, because He can Himself forgive. If the unhappiness and trouble I meet with are not punishments, then they are initial tests. I am inclined to explain them in this way, and it is likely that Christ is the Example, because He has suffered much, although I do not understand what end such great sufferings serve, except to throw into relief future blessedness. I have said what I had to say. Give me now an answer."

But the Unknown, who had listened with wonderful patience, answered only with a gesture of gentle irony, and vanished.

When I found myself back in the street, I was, as usual, angry at having forgotten the best arguments, which always turn up when it is too late. A whole long speech presents itself to me now, while my heart swells and my courage rises again. The awe-inspiring and sympathetic Unknown has, at any rate, heard me without crushing me. He has also waited to hear my grounds of complaint, and he will now consider the injustice to which I have been a sacrifice. Perhaps I have succeeded in convincing him, as he stood there and did not answer me.

The old idea that I am Job comes into my mind, I have really lost my property; they have taken my movable goods and books, means of existence, wife, and children. Hunted from one land to another, I am condemned to a lonely life in the desert. Is it I who have written these lamentations, or is it Job: "My neighbours have forsaken me, and my friends have forgotten me. My wife makes herself strange to me, and my prayers reach not the sons of my mother. Little children also despise me. He has made me a by-word among the people, and I have become their music. I find only slanderers, and my eye wakes the whole night while they persecute my soul. My skin breaks and is dissolved. When I say, 'My bed shall comfort me, my couch shall ease my complaint,' then thou scarest me with dreams, and terrifiest me through visions." This fits me exactly; the cracks in the skin, the dreams and the visions. But there is an over-plus on my side. I have endured the extremest sufferings, as circumstances brought about by invisible powers which hemmed me in, in order to compel me to leave unfulfilled the simplest duty of a man,--to support his children. Job retired from the game with his honour unaffected; for me all was lost, even honour, and yet I overcame the temptation to suicide; I possessed the courage to live without honour.

* * * * *

For three months I seek in vain to come into personal connection with the Swedenborg Society in Paris. For a whole week I go every morning past the Pantheon to reach the Rue Thouin, where the chapel and the library of the Swedish prophet are situated. Finally I find some one who says that the librarian only receives strangers in the afternoon, just the time when I wish to be alone with my thoughts, and am too tired to walk. However, time after time I make the attempt to reach the Rue Thouin. The first time I felt uncomfortably depressed as I wont out, and at the end of the bridge of Saint Michel this feeling amounted to a positive fear, which compelled me to return home. A second time it is Sunday, and they are going to have service in the Swedenborgian chapel. I arrive an hour too soon, and do not feel strong enough to wait an hour in the street. The third time I find the pavement taken up in the Rue Thouin, and workman blocking the way with their planks and tools. Then I conclude that Swedenborg is not destined to be my leader on the right path, and under this impression I retrace my steps. But when I get home, it occurs to me that I have allowed myself to be deceived by Swedenborgs invisible enemies, and that I must fight them.

My last attempt I make in a carriage. This time the street is barricaded, as it expressly to frustrate my purpose. I get out of the carriage and clamber over the obstructions, but when I reach the door of the Swedenborgian chapel I find the pavement and steps have been taken away. In spite of all I manage to reach the door, pull the bell, and am told by a stranger that the librarian is ill.

With a kind of feeling of relief I turn my back on the gloomy, shabby little chapel with its dark window panes soiled with rain and dust. This edifice, built in the severe barbaric depressing Methodist style, had always repelled me. Its want of beauty reminded me of the Protestantism of the north, and it cost my pride a struggle to bring myself to seek to enter it. I did it as a pious duty towards Swedenborg, nothing more.

As I turned round with a light heart, I saw on the pavement a tin-coated piece of iron, in the shape of a clover-leaf, and superstitiously picked it up. Simultaneously a recollection sprang to life in my mind. The year before, on the 2nd November in the terrible year 1896, as I was walking one morning in Klam in Austria, the sun disappeared behind a wall of cloud shaped like an arch, with clover-shaped outlines surrounded by blue and white rays. This cloud and my tinned iron-plate resembled each other as closely as two drops of water. My diary, in which I made a sketch of the former, can verify this fact.

What does that signify? The Trinity, that is clear. And further?--