Angéline de Montbrun, page 11
Then and there, he wrote out a receipt for the amount of the debt, signed it, and gave it to M. L—, making him promise to keep the secret. M. L— told me all this after I made out my will in his presence.
‘In the condition you are in,’ he said, ‘this can no longer humiliate you.’ And he is right.
Dear mademoiselle, since I have learned all this, I have thought often about it. I am deeply grateful to your father for his interest in me, for the perfect courtesy with which he always treated me, and now, near death, I learn that I owe him quiet, independence, and the joy to be able to give often.
Would that I were able to do something for you, his daughter! I am told that you have shown great courage, but I can imagine what agonizing regrets, what deadly sadness you hide under your calmness, and how many times I wept over you!
Oh, if I could make you see that what passes is as nothing when one is facing death! You would soon be comforted.
My hour is come, yours will come, and soon, ‘because the hours may seem long, the years are always short.’
Then you will understand the goal of life, and you will see what designs of mercy are hidden under the mysterious harshness of Providence.
Now I see that my life could have been a life of blessings. Would that I had endured my sorrows better! At this hour when everything is escaping, how rich I would be!
I have lived without friendship, without love. Even my father could not conceal the aversion I aroused in him. But if, accepting all the rejections, all the humiliations, with a humble and peaceful heart, I had placed them at the feet of Jesus Christ, with what confidence I would today say as did our Divine Lord, the day before His death: ‘I have accomplished the work that thou hast given me to do. And now do thou, Father, glorify me with thyself.’
Alas, I suffered badly ! But ‘as much as heaven is above us, so much has it consolidated its mercy upon us.’ I like to meditate upon these beautiful words as I look at the sky. Yes, I have hope. Don’t be frightened, Our Lord told me when He came into my soul, do not fear. Ask me for forgiveness for not having known how to suffer for love of me, who have loved you to death on the cross. Oh, why did I not love Him? He, He would not have disdained my love.
My dear child, I would very much have liked to see you before dying. But I was told that a trip of a few leagues was beyond your strength — that it was better to spare you painful emotions — and I did not dare send word for you to come.
Still, it seems to me that this visit would not have been without use to you. Better than anyone I believe I understand what you are suffering.
Poor child, so direly tested, these words from the Imitation could have been written for you: ‘Jesus Christ wants to possess your heart alone, and reign there as a king on his throne.’
An author I like says that we can exaggerate many things, but that we will never be able ‘to exaggerate the love of Jesus Christ.’ Meditate upon that sweet and deep truth. Think of the incomparable Friend. ‘Make room for Him in your heart,’ and He will be what neither father nor husband ever was.
And now, my benefactor’s dear daughter, adieu. Adieu, and courage. To suffer passes, but if you accept the divine will, to have suffered will never pass.
Yours eternally.
Véronique Desileux
June 12
My God, give eternal happiness to the one who has suffered so much. Forgive her if sometimes she weakened under the weight of her terrible cross.
I read her letter often. That voice which is no longer of this world makes me cry. Poor woman! Her memory does not leave me. The thought of what she suffered makes me forget my own grief.
Last night I had a dream that has left me with a strange impression.
I seemed to be in a cemetery. The grass was growing freely among the crosses, many of which were falling in ruins. I was walking aimlessly, thinking of the poor dead, when a new grave attracted my attention.
As I was bending down to look at it, the earth, freshly turned over, became suddenly transparent as pure crystal, and I saw Véronique Desileux at the bottom. She seemed in deep meditation; under the sheet that covered them, her hands could be seen joined in eternal prayer.
I was looking at her, invincibly attracted by the calm of the grave, by the quiet of death, and I was questioning her, I was asking her if she regretted having suffered, having ever inspired only pity.
June 18
M. L— came to tell me that I am Mlle Desileux’s heir. I did not want to see him, but he so insisted that I agreed.
Fortunately, this businessman is also a tactful man. None of those attentions which wound one’s feelings, none of that compassion that hurts. Only, on leaving me he said, ‘You have suffered much, and one can see that. Yet, you still look like your father.’
Those words touched me. O dear likeness which was my mother’s pride and his joy.
M. L— spoke to me at length of my father’s actions towards poor Mlle Desileux, and told me about many of his traits which prove both a disinterested attitude and a delicacy which are rather rare. ‘You can be sure,’ he said, ‘that there are many things we will never know.’
Yes, he obeyed fully the divine law of charity. With what care he fulfilled that duty!
I was only a child and already he was using me as a messenger for his alms. As a reward or as encouragement he would suggest some unfortunate person whose suffering I could assuage, and my worst punishment was to be prevented from giving. But he forgave quickly. And the sweetness of those moments when I would cry, in his arms, for having displeased him!
June 22
I have been at des Aulnets since yesterday. Upon arriving, I went to visit Mlle Desileux’s grave, where already the grass is growing. The house had been closed since the funeral. Her old servant opened the door for me, and what impression I received from the funereal silence that permeates the place!
I hardly dared move through those darkened rooms where a few rays of light could barely penetrate through cracks in the closed shutters.
Mad woman that I am! I came to strengthen myself by thinking on death, and I catch myself constantly thinking of Maurice, of what he will feel when he returns to Valriant — because he will return. I will leave him my house.
What will the seals everywhere, the empty and dark rooms, the deep silence say to him? Will he be able to cross the threshold of that house, which he called ‘his paradise,’ without being troubled? Will not memories, sad and tender, rise everywhere before him? Will not the voice of the past make itself heard in that mournful silence?
O my God! I am falling into my weakness again. What matters it to me that he weeps for me! Will nothing pull me away from this fatal love? What! neither separation, nor time, nor religion, nor death! —
Woe is me! however much I tell myself that I no longer exist for him, I love him, as only the unfortunate ones can love.
June 24
From my window I can see the cemetery and readily spot the place where Véronique Desileux is at rest. Her servant tells me that she used to spend hours here. As with all those doomed to isolation, she loved the sight of nature, and perhaps also that of the cemetery.
Among the dead who sleep there, is there one who suffered more than she!
Will we ever know what melancholy, what pain accumulates in the soul of the unhappy ones who are condemned to be always and everywhere ridiculed? What are the obvious misfortunes compared to those lives full of rebuffs, humiliations, wounded sensibilities? And hers was a passionate soul! Oh my God!
How sorry I am that I did not come to see her! My presence might have made her last days easier. We would have talked of my father. The unhappy woman loved him, and nothing in the feelings of the happy ones of the world can make one guess how much.
Whenever those poor, wounded, scorned hearts dare love, they worship. She never recovered from the news of his death, and I cannot think without crying of the fatal despondency in which she remained from then on.
Last night, the servant told me many things as she turned her spinning-wheel in the kitchen attic. Sometimes she would stop abruptly and look furtively towards her mistress’ room — this gave me the shivers. It seemed to me that I would see her appear again.
What mystery death is! how this terrible disappearance is difficult to grasp! After my father’s death, whenever someone said to Mlle Desileux that in time I would be consoled, she would say covering her face: ‘Never, never!’
It is impossible to say how much sympathy she had for me. The very night she died she was bemoaning my grief, and said to the person who was with her: ‘Tell her that she still has God.’
O my friend, pray for me that I understand these words!
What is life? ‘However brilliant the play may be, the last act is always bloody. Dirt is finally dropped over your head, and that is it forever.’
June 26
From my visit at des Aulnets I brought back Tout pour Jésus, a book beloved by Mlle Desileux; and, my God, with what emotion I read the following page which in the margin had the date of my father’s death!
‘Look upon this soul which has just heard its judgment: hardly has Jesus finished speaking, the sound of his sweet voice has not yet died down, and those who weep have not yet closed the eyes of the body from which life has escaped: yet judgment is passed, all is consummated; it was short but merciful. What am I saying? merciful: the word does not say what it really was. Let imagination find the right word. Some day, please God, we ourselves will have that sweet experience. That soul must be very strong not to sink under the weight of feelings that invade it; it needs God’s support not to be annihilated. Its life is passed; how short it was! its death has come; how sweet its agony of a moment! how the trials seem weakness, the sorrows misery, the afflictions childishness. And now it has obtained a happiness that will never end. Jesus has spoken, doubt is no longer possible. What is that happiness? The eye has not seen it, the ear has not heard it. It sees God, eternity spreads itself before it in its infinity. Darkness has passed away, weakness has disappeared, there is no longer time, which formerly made her despair. No more ignorance; it sees God, its intelligence feels itself flooded by unspeakable delights, it has drawn new strength which the imagination cannot conceive; it gorges itself on this vision, in the presence of which all the science of the world is only darkness and ignorance. Its will swims in a river of love; just as a sponge fills itself with the waters of the sea, it fills itself with light, beauty, happiness, rapture, immortality, God. These are only vain words, lighter than feathers, weaker than water; they cannot really even hint at the shadow of the happiness of that soul.
And we are still here! o boredom! o sadness!’
ANGÉLINE DE MONTBRUN TO MINA DARVILLE
You have not forgotten our trip to des Aulnets, nor the poor, misshapen Mlle Desileux. She is no longer, and after her death I was given a letter from her that will not be without its use.
Mina, how that unlucky person loved us, my father and me! and how she suffered!
It is over, now the earth has been trampled over her poor body, and as for me, there is Véronique Desileux among these dear shades that one drags behind oneself as one advances through life.
I received both your letters; many things touched me deeply. You know how much he pitied you in his last hour, and willingly I would say as he did: ‘Poor little Mina!’
Your brother has sent me a lock of your hair. Thank him for me, and convince him not to write to me again. What is the use!
Dear sister, I cannot look without emotion at those beautiful brown curls which you used to set so well. Who could have told us that some day that superb hair would fall under the monastic scissors? that a whimple of white linen would frame your pretty face?
My dear worldling of yesteryears, how I would like to see you under your black veil.
So, now you are consecrated to God, obliged to love Our Lord with the love of a virgin and wife.
What is said against perpetual vows revolts me. Shame to the heart which, once it loves, can anticipate that it will cease to love.
My friend, I sleep very little, and when I hear the clock striking four o’clock, memories of you come back to me. My fond thought follows you down the long corridors of the convent of the Ursulines.
I have attended the prayers of the nuns. I liked to see them motionless in their stalls, with all heads, young and old, lowered at the thought of eternity. Eternity, that shoreless sea, that bottomless abyss where we will all be engulfed!
If I could only get that thought thoroughly into my mind! But I don’t know what great weight ties me to the earth. Where are the wings of my childhood candour? Then I would feel myself lifted high by love. My soul, like a captive bird, sought always to rise. Oh! the great charm of those childish dreams of God, of the other life.
I loved my father with a burning affection, and yet I would have left him for my heavenly father. Mina, it was still then the total grace of my baptism. Now, the Christian woman, blinded by her faults, no longer understands what a child’s innocence understood. Mina, I have seen near at hand the abyss of despair. Neither God nor my father is pleased with me, and that thought adds still more to my sadness.
In your cheerful chapel of the Ursulines, I liked particularly the Saints’ alcove, where I prayed better than anywhere else. During my stay as a boarder, I would light a candle every day so that the Holy Virgin would bring my father back safe and sound, and now I would like to have a light burning night and day at the feet of Our Lady of Great Power so that she might bring me to him.
I am delighted that you are sacristan. You are so good at making bouquets. What beautiful baskets of flowers I would send you if you were not so far away.
My dear Mina, be blessed for the tender memorial you give to my father. Since your position allows you to enter the church, I beg you don’t spend a day without kneeling on the slab that covers him. That tomb, so narrow, so cold, so dark — I have it before my eyes all the time. You say that in heaven he is nearer to me than ever before.
Mina, heaven is very high, very far, and I am a poor creature. You cannot imagine to what extent I miss him, and the need, the irresistible need that I have to feel pressed to his heart.
Time can do nothing for me. As Eugénie de Guérin said, great sorrows go on deepening as the sea. And did she know it as I do! She could not love her brother as I loved my father. She was not entirely dependent on him. And then nothing had prepared me for my misfortune. He had all the vigour, buoyancy, charm of youth. His life was so active, calm, sound, and his health perfect. Without that fatal accident! It may be ‘the perfidy of pain,’ but I always come back to that.
My friend, you know that I don’t complain readily, but your friendship is so faithful, your sympathy so tender, that with you my heart opens up in spite of myself. My health is improving. Who knows how long I will live. Beg in my name for peace, that supreme good of dead hearts.
July 1
Pourquoi dans mon esprit revenez-vous sans cesse!
O jours de mon enfance et de mon allégresse?
Qui donc toujours vous rouvre en nos cœurs presque éteints.
O lumineuse fleur des souvenirs lointains?
[Why do you ceaselessly return to my mind, o days of my childhood and of my gladness? Who unfolds you always in our nearly-extinguished hearts, o shining flower of our distant memories?]
Among my father’s papers I found many of my school workbooks which he kept; and how that brought me back to those blessed days when I worked under his eyes, surrounded, filled by his warm affection. What cares would he not take to make studying pleasant. He wanted me to grow up happy, gay, in the freedom of the country, among the greenery and the flowers, and for that he did not hesitate to sacrifice his own likes and habits.
The sight of those workbooks touched me deeply. I wept for a long time. O the blessing of tears! Sometimes that divine spring dries up completely. Then I remain immersed in my mournful sadness. In vain then do I seek my good feelings, my courageous resolutions. Pain, that virile friend, elevates and strengthens, but sadness ruins the soul. How can one shelter oneself from this consuming listlessness?
I hardly live in the present, and in order not to look at the future, which appears to me as a mournful and desolate solitude, I think of the past that is altogether gone. So the shipwrecked who has only space before him turns around and in his mortal distress questions the sea where no wreckage floats.
Yes, everything has disappeared. O my God, leave me the bitter pleasure of tears!
July 3
I should not read Méditations. That soft and tender voice has too many echoes in my heart. I get drunk on that dangerous melancholy, on those passionate regrets. Foolish woman! I pray for peace and I seek trouble. I am like a wounded person who would have a bitter pleasure in aggravating his wounds, in seeing blood flow from them.
Where will this painful restiveness lead me? I feebly try to get hold of myself by enjoying the charming sights of the country, but
Le soleil des vivants n’échauffe plus les morts.
[The sun of the living no longer warms the dead.]
July 6
Forgetting! is it a good thing? Can I desire it?
Forgetting that one has carried within oneself the shining whiteness of baptism, and the divine beauty of perfect innocence.
Forgetting the unbearable shame of the first sin, the salutary bitterness of the first remorse.
Forgetting the harsh and strengthening savour of renunciation, the deep joys, the spiritual terrors of faith.
Forgetting the yearnings for the infinite, the blessed sweetness of tears, the delightful dreams of the virginal soul, the first look upon the future, that enchanted remoteness illumined by love.
