The Human Comedy (42 page)

He walked down the steep street that led to the church and stopped only when the rumbling of the organ no longer reached his ears. Able to think only of his love, whose volcanic eruption was burning his heart, the French general only knew that the Te Deum was over when the Spanish congregation came pouring out of the church. Feeling that his conduct or his attitude might have seemed ridiculous, he went back to take his place at the head of the cortege, telling the
alcalde
and the governor of the town that a sudden indisposition had obliged him to take the air. Then, in order to prolong his stay on the island, he thought to exploit this pretext tossed off at first so carelessly, and pleading that his indisposition had grown worse, he declined to preside at the banquet offered by the island’s authorities to the French officers. He took to his bed and sent a message to the major general that temporary illness forced him to leave the colonel in command of the troops. Such a commonplace but credible ruse freed him from all responsibilities during the time necessary to carry out his plans. As a man who was in essence Catholic and monarchist, the general informed himself of the schedule of services and affected the greatest attachment to religious practices, a piety that surprised no one in Spain.

The very next day, during his soldiers’ departure, the general went to the convent to hear vespers. He found the church deserted by the inhabitants who, despite their piety, had gone to the port to see the troops set sail. The Frenchman, happy to find himself alone in the church, took care to let the echoing arches ring out with the clanking of his spurs. He walked there noisily, he coughed, he spoke out loud to himself to inform the nuns, and especially the musician, that if the French troops had departed, one Frenchman remained. Was this singular notice heard and understood? The general thought so. At the Magnificat, the organ seemed to answer him through its airborne vibrations. The soul of the nun flew toward him on the wings of music and was transported in the movement of its sounds. The music burst forth in all its power and filled the church with warmth. This song of joy, consecrated by the sublime liturgy of Latin Christianity expressing the exaltation of the soul in the presence of the living God, became the utterance of a heart nearly frightened by its happiness in the presence of a mortal love. This love still endured and had come to trouble her from beyond the tomb, where these women buried themselves in order to be reborn as brides of Christ.

The organ is surely the grandest, the most daring, the most magnificent of all the instruments created by human genius. It is a whole orchestra, and a skillful hand can play it to express everything. Is it not in some sense a pedestal on which the soul pauses before launching into space while in its flight attempting to trace a thousand pictures, to paint life, to traverse the infinite that separates heaven and earth? The more a poet listens to its vast harmonies, the more he realizes that only the hundred voices of this earthly choir can conquer the distances between men kneeling at prayer and the God hidden in the dazzling rays of the sanctuary. Only the organ is an intermediary strong enough to bear humanity’s prayers to heaven in their omnipotent modes, in their diverse melancholy, with the shades of their meditative ecstasy, with the impetuous burst of their repentance and the thousand imaginings of every belief. Yes, beneath these long arches, the melodies imagined by the genius of the sacred find unexpected grandeurs, which they nurture and strengthen. In the dim light, the deep silence, the chanting that alternates with the thunder of the organ weaves a veil for God, and through it his luminous attributes shine forth.

This wealth of sacred things seemed to be tossed like a drop of incense upon the frail altar of love that sits opposite the eternal throne of a jealous and vengeful God. Indeed, the joy of the nun did not have the quality of grandeur and gravity that ought to harmonize with the solemnities of the Magnificat. She enriched it with graceful developments whose different rhythms spoke of a human gladness. In its brilliant trills a soprano might try to express her love, and her songs fluttered like a bird near its nest. Then at moments she leaped back into the past, now to frolic, now to weep. Her changing mode had something disordered about it, like the agitation of the happy woman at her lover’s return. At last, after the shifting flights of delirium and the marvelous effects of this imagined recognition, the speaking soul turned back on itself. Shifting from a major to a minor key, the musician was able to inform her listener of her present lot. Now she told him of her long melancholy, her lingering moral malady. How each day she deadened the senses, each night erased some thought, gradually reducing her heart to ashes. After several soft undulations, her music shaded into a color of profound sadness, and soon the echoes of sorrow spilled forth in torrents. Then all at once the high notes rang out in a concert of angelic voices, as if to announce to the lost but not forgotten lover that the reunion of their two souls would take place only in heaven—a touching hope! Then the Amen. No more joy or tears in the melodies, no melancholy or regrets. The Amen was a return to God; this last chord was deep, terrifyingly solemn. The musician deployed all the nun’s black flowing crepe, and after the final thundering of the bass pipes, which made the listeners tremble to the roots of their hair, she seemed to plunge back into the tomb from which she had momentarily risen. When the vibrations slowly died away, it seemed that the church, luminous until this moment, once again entered a profound darkness.

The general had been caught up and swiftly transported by the flight of this powerful spirit, following it into the regions it had just traveled. He fully understood the images unleashed by this burning symphony, and for him the chords flew far away. For him, as for the sister, this poem was the future, the present, and the past. Music—even theater music—for tender and poetic souls, for suffering and wounded hearts, is surely a text they may develop at the whim of memories. If a musician has the heart of a poet, certainly it takes poetry and love to hear and understand great musical works. Religion, love, and music are the threefold expression of a single fact, the need for expansion that stirs every noble soul. And these three poetries ascend to God, who untangles all earthly emotions. This holy human Trinity must be part of the infinite grandeurs of God, whom we can only imagine surrounded by the fires of love, the golden rays of music, light, and harmony. Is He not the beginning and the end of our works?

The Frenchman understood that in this desert, on this rock surrounded by the sea, the nun had seized upon music as an expression of all the passion that still consumed her. Had she made her love an homage to God or was it the triumph of love over God? Questions difficult to answer. But surely the general could not doubt that in this dead heart of the world he had found a passion still burning as fiercely as his own. Vespers done, he returned to the alcalde, with whom he was lodged. At first he was still prey to a thousand pleasures that a long-postponed satisfaction, painfully sought, lavished on him, and he could see nothing beyond it. He was still loved. Solitude had increased the love in her heart, just as his love had grown stronger as he breached the successive obstacles this woman had set between them. This flowering of the soul reached its natural end. Then came the desire to see this woman again, to contend with God for her, to carry her away—a daring scheme that pleased this audacious man. After the meal, he went to bed to avoid questions, to be alone, and to think clearly, and he lay plunged in the deepest meditations until daybreak. He rose only to go to Mass. He went to the church and sat near the grille, his forehead touching the curtain, and he would have torn it open, but he was not alone: His host had accompanied him out of politeness, and the least imprudence might compromise the future of his passion, spoiling all his hopes.

The organ was heard, but it was not played by the same musician. For the general, it was all colorless and cold. Had his mistress been devastated by the same emotions that had nearly felled a strong man’s heart? Had she so fully shared and understood a loyal and desired love that she now lay dying in her small cell? While a thousand thoughts of this kind baffled the Frenchman’s mind, the voice of the woman he adored rang out nearby and he recognized its clear timbre. This voice, slightly altered by a trembling that modest timidity gave to young girls, cut through the chant like a prima donna’s through the harmony of a finale. It shone like gold or silver thread in a dark frieze.

Surely it was she! Ever the Parisienne, she had not shed her coquetry when she left behind the adornments of the social world for the headband and stiff muslin of the Carmelites. After signaling her love the evening before through praises addressed to the Lord, now she seemed to say to her lover: “Yes, it is me, I am here, I still love you, but I am sheltered from love. You will hear me, my soul will enfold you, and I will remain beneath the brown shroud of this choir, from which no one can tear me away. You will not see me again.”

“It really is her!” said the general to himself, raising his head, for at first he had been leaning on his hands, unable to bear the crushing emotion that surged like a whirlwind in his heart when that familiar voice vibrated under the arches, accompanied by the murmur of the waves. The storm was outside and calm prevailed inside the sanctuary. Still, that rich voice continued to deploy all its tender ways: It fell like a balm on the lover’s burning heart, it blossomed in the air, which a man would want to breathe more deeply, filled with the exaltations of a soul’s love expressed in the words of the prayer. The alcalde came to join his guest and, finding him dissolved in tears at the elevation chanted by the nun, led him back to his house. Surprised to encounter such devotion in a French military man, the magistrate invited the confessor of the convent to dine and informed the general, who took the greatest pleasure in this news. During supper the confessor was the object of the Frenchman’s attentions, and his not entirely disinterested respect confirmed the Spaniards in their high regard for his piety. He solemnly inquired about the number of nuns, asked for details on the convent’s endowments and its treasures as if he wished to engage the good old priest on subjects that most concerned him. He informed himself on the way of life these holy women led. Were they allowed to go out of the convent or to be seen?

“Señor,” said the venerable ecclesiastic, “the rule is strict. Women cannot enter a convent of the order of Saint Bruno without permission from Our Holy Father. The same strict rule is followed here. It is impossible for a man to enter a convent of Barefoot Carmelites unless he is a priest and attached by the archbishop to the service of the House. None of the sisters leaves the convent. However, the great saint Mother Teresa often left her cell.
The visitor
or the mother superior alone can allow a nun, with the authorization of the archbishop, to see outsiders, especially in the case of illness. Now, we are one of the principal houses of the order, and consequently we have a mother superior at the convent. Among other foreigners, we have a Frenchwoman, Sister Theresa, who directs the music in the chapel.”

“Ah!” answered the general, feigning surprise. “She must have been pleased by the military triumph of the House of Bourbon.”

“I told them the reason for the Mass—they are all a little curious.”

“But Sister Theresa may have interests in France, perhaps she would like to know something about it, to ask for news?”

“I do not think so; she would have sought me out for such knowledge.”

“As a compatriot, I would be very curious to see her . . . if this were possible, if the mother superior would consent, if—”

“At the grille, and even in the presence of the reverend mother, an interview would be impossible for anyone whatsoever. But strict as the mother is, as a favor to a liberator of the Catholic throne and our holy religion, the rule might be relaxed,” said the confessor, blinking. “I will speak to her.”

“How old is Sister Theresa?” asked the lover, who dared not question the priest about the nun’s beauty.

“She has no age,” answered the good man, with a simplicity that made the general shiver.

The next day, before siesta, the confessor came to inform the Frenchman that Sister Theresa and the mother consented to receive him before vespers at the grille of the parlor. After siesta, which the general spent pacing back and forth along the harbor in the heat of midday, the priest returned to find him and led him into the convent by way of a gallery that bordered a cemetery. Several fountains, many green trees, and the rows of arches provided a coolness in harmony with the silence of the place. At the end of this long gallery, the priest led his companion into a room divided into two parts by a grille covered with a brown curtain. In the more or less public half of the space, where the confessor left the general, a wooden bench ran along the wall and several chairs, also of wood, were set near the grille. The ceiling consisted of exposed beams made of live oak without any decoration. Daylight came through two windows situated in the nuns’ portion of the room, although this weak light, poorly reflected by dark wood, scarcely lit the large black Christ, the portrait of Saint Teresa, and a painting of the Virgin that hung on the gray walls of the parlor. The general’s feelings, in spite of their violence, took on a melancholy tinge. He grew calm in this domestic calm. Something of the grandeur of the tomb took possession of him beneath these cool boards. Wasn’t this the eternal silence of the tomb, its deep peace, its sense of the infinite? In addition, the cloister’s quiet and fixed thought, thought that slips into the air, into the dim light, into everything although it is written nowhere, looms still larger in the imagination. That great phrase “Peace in the Lord” enters here into the soul of the least religious as a living force.

The monk’s life is scarcely conceivable; man in a monastery seems weak: He is born to act, to accomplish a life of work, which he renounces in his cell. But what virile vigor and touching weakness in a convent of women! A man can be pushed by a thousand feelings to bury himself in monastic life, he throws himself into it as he would jump off a cliff. But a woman comes here led only by one feeling: not to denature herself but to marry God. You may ask the monks: Why did you not struggle? But isn’t a woman’s withdrawal from the world always a sublime struggle? In short, the general found this mute visiting room and this convent lost in the sea full of himself. Love seldom reaches solemnity, yet surely love still faithful in the bosom of God was something solemn and something more than a man had the right to hope for in the nineteenth century, given the prevailing customs. The infinite grandeurs of this situation were able to act on the general’s mind, and he was indeed beyond any thought of politics, honors, Spain, Parisian society, and was able to rise to the heights of this glorious conclusion. Besides, what could be more truly tragic? How much feeling united the two lovers in the middle of the sea on a granite ledge, yet they were separated by an idea, by an unbridgeable barrier! Observe the man say to himself, “Will I triumph over God in her heart?” A slight rustling sound made him tremble, and the brown curtain was drawn back.