VIIITHE CHOICE OF THE GRACES
What man, tell me, what man, were he suddenly delivered from disgust with himself, from terror of the world, from the sadness of an age that is without pity, from remorse for a thing he has done, from the fear of things he has to do, what man, suffering from one of these evils, or from several of them or from all at once, would not experience an immense relief, would not feel a certain absolution for the errors of the universe, a certain alleviation of his own in the contemplation of this little osier-bed which I descry this evening, at the turning of a lane?
What is there so profound, so divine in that scene?
Nothing, nothing, no doubt. Everything, perhaps. For who would venture to maintain that there is anything in the world that might not be a sign for my heart and yet be nothing more? I was following a stone wall, an indecipherablewall at present, without significance, without compassion, an enemy. It shut in my view and my thoughts, it was covered with cold mosses and all the dampness of winter. And then, all at once, the wall ended and there was a little valley crowned with these osiers. Yes, I mean crowned, for it seemed as if all its desires had been granted, all its aspirations satisfied, all its prayers fulfilled.
Thousands of crimson branches rose in a chorus toward heaven, like clusters of some smooth, straight, up-springing coral. All the branches rose together, with one brotherly impulse, like the desires of a world freed from ambitions and vowed to the one, the noblest ambition of all. But why seek for words, why strive to paint it? Surely it was not the flaming sap of the young shoots any more than the little rivulets smoking like censers at their feet,—it was neither of these things that promised relief and deliverance. It was the entire world that manifested itself in this, its smallest fragment, just as the most secretive man will betray himself by the trembling of his little finger or the flutter of an eyelash.
I was once saved by the tarpaulin of a humble delivery wagon. That tarpaulin certainly knew nomore about it than did the men who owned it, or had the use of it here below. There are, in every object, qualities we are ignorant of and that are precisely those through which this object fulfils its most beautiful rôle in the universe, those to which it inclines as if toward some miraculous purpose, which are indeed its vocation and its true destiny.
I remember it was a morning in February, one of those hopeless mornings which we feel do not deserve the evening and will hardly attain it. I do not know what I had done to myself or to my men to have so completely lost all courage and purpose; but that morning I was certainly the most destitute of beings and the least worthy of an act of grace.
Yet for all that, grace was shown me, for that marvelous tarpaulin appeared. It was of heavy canvas, yellow and green. Its color, its folds, its whole appearance, the form it concealed, in fact I know not what element in it, showed me that I still could live, that my faults were forgiven me, that nothing about me was irremediable.
I am willing to pass for a man who is eager for forgiveness, a man who is satisfied with little. We wish to set our own value on everything, as if the things of the spirit meant the same thing as money, as if they did not depend upon quite another spirit than that of the accountants and geometricians.
I met a priest,—it was since the war began,—withwhom I often talked about penance and contrition. I asked him one day what price he would ask for the remission of the heaviest burden on one’s conscience. He answered without hesitation: “Three paters and three aves.” This man was corrupted by the customs of the world and its authorities. He filled me with a sort of desire to insult him, and I confess I gave him some rude shocks. Since then I have reflected. I have not become reconciled to the memory of that priest, but I believe that grace touches us in a most unforeseen way; it shines out suddenly, without any reason, like the radiant blue in a sky where one has not expected it. It manifests itself without regard to the efforts we make to deserve it, and the occasions it selects are not in proportion to our distress. But how sovereign it is, how much the most desirable of all blessings!
Remember, remember! you were walking through the streets, a prey to some irremediable pain. Your poverty seemed unlimited, for it could not be palliated by more money, an improvement in your health or the renewal of a broken friendship. And yet, nevertheless, you suddenly breathed in the wind an imperceptible odor, familiar, charged with memories, you suddenly encountered in the color of a house, or in the look of an unknown face, some mysterious sign, and you felt that your wealth had been given backto you, that it flowed through you once more as the saving blood returns to the heart of the dying man.
I was walking one day along the banks of the Aisne, the prey of an illimitable mental torture which, just because there was no reason for it, seemed incurable. The image of a bridge in the water suddenly gave me back my confidence in myself and my accustomed joyousness. It was only a reflection; but never believe those who tell you that these things are nothing but reflections.
When a man who is cruelly wounded in his body or his spirit preserves a cheerful faith and never ceases to be the master of his misfortune, I say that he has grace.
When a true man is able, for an hour, to contemplate without uneasiness his own thoughts and actions, I say that he is touched with grace, and I hope that hour may last a day and that day an entire life.
Like a sailing-vessel that stretches through the air its slender, vibrant cables, probes the sky with its strong and supple masts, offers to the wind, at ever-varying angles, the white resistance of its sails and marvelously dominates all the forces of the air while seeming to obey them, the man who possesses grace enjoys a communion that is profound, perfect, exquisite,not only with whatever in the world is perceptible to us, but above all with what is unknown.
That man weighs much in the baskets of the winnower. That man does not see only within the limits of his own flesh. He fills in his own self almost the whole universe, participates gloriously in the infinite.
I know that it often happens that the beautiful ship sees its sails sinking in distress and no longer feels its ropes trembling in the wind. The time comes when it stops painfully in the stupor and indifference of noon.
The time comes when the rich man suddenly finds himself on Job’s dung-heap. The time comes when, without reason, grace deserts the heart.
Wait expectantly, with sails spread like an ear, with rigging firm, and perhaps, where others less trustful would find themselves abandoned, you will perceive a certain relenting breeze.
You must never lose contact with the universe if you wish to live in the state of grace.
Welcome your own true thought, whatever may be the hour at which it visits you. If it chooses to rouse you in the middle of the night, rise to do it honor and look at it with clear eyes.
There are some who have just missed an hour ofgreatness because they preferred to slumber under the warm eiderdown. The spirit called them in a low voice, in the darkness of the cold room; they did not rise and they will never know what they might have become. They will try to console themselves by thinking they have dreamed; will they ever console themselves?
There are some who, suddenly, through the mist of tobacco smoke, have seen their souls, like some long-awaited supernatural being, watching them.
At the moment they were playing cards or reading their paper; they thought: “Wait, I’ll join you in a moment.” The game ended, or the paper thrown aside, the visitor had departed.
They rushed forth in pursuit, their hearts convulsed with shame and anguish. Alas! the deep melancholy glance will perhaps never shine upon them again. Perhaps they will never again come face to face with themselves.
In the midst of pleasure, when you are enjoying the company of a woman or the conversation of bold, intelligent men, if you chance to hear the voice of solitude singing like a siren at your feet, leave everything to flee with her.
When Epictetus said: “Our good and evil exist only in our own will,” he misstated the problem.That is one way of solving it, but more often it is a way of assuming that it has been solved, an expedient for passing it over.
I am not happy today; I am not pleased with myself, I am not pleased with anyone; I feel quite certain that everything I undertake will be a failure, above all, above all, I do not want to undertake anything; I view all things with an unprofitable eye, an irritable and apparently dried-up soul. I am driven to suffer myself and make others suffer. Oh! I am without grace! I know it and I am far from admiring myself. Secretly I long to feel grace at last descending on my head and shoulders like a mantle of soft sunshine, like the honeyed perfume that falls from the lime-trees.
What does that old man want? Why does he repeat with a sort of obstinacy: “It depends upon you to make a good use of every event”?
No doubt it depends upon me!
But what are we to do when nothing can be blamed upon events? And what when, indeed, there are no events.
Is it true that it depends upon me to be myself at such times also? Answer me, great, silent trees! Answer me, fir-tree, weighted down with sleet and dreaming—Heine has told me—of the palm consumed with burning heat in the tropics.
“Drive out,” replies the philosopher, “drive outyour desires and your fears and you will never again suffer tyranny.”
True; but I have only one fear: not to be the best man I may; only one desire, not to give in to myself.
The sage shrugs his shoulders and then says in a gentle voice: “Bear and forbear.” And he is not thinking only of the storms that come from without.
He says this because he well knows that in order to be happy one must be visited by grace.
All the stoics have drawn up rules of virtue. Not one has suggested the means that will give us the strength to apply them. For the wish is not enough. The gift is necessary, that secret impulse which is grace itself.
Praise be to thee, divine world, that hast delivered me from anger by revealing to me in time that trembling blossom of the convolvulus!
Praise be to thee, divine world, that, at the very limit of my fatigue, in the midst of my perils, hast chosen mysterious ways to light me with an inner smile!
Millions of unhappy men who are suffering at this moment on the fields of distracted Europe are aware that at the blackest moment of distress a strange consolation can penetrate them; it is as if the fingersclutching one’s heart suddenly relaxed their grip. There are some who call this God. Many others give no name to the miracle, but long for it on their knees all the same.
The voice no longer speaks from the burning bush. Sometimes it is the sound of last year’s leaves still rustling in the branches of an oak. Sometimes there is no sound; only the speaking glance of a veronica in ecstasy among the April fields.
I am quite willing to bear, but I do not wish to forbear. I do not wish not to meet grace halfway, not to seek for it in the night flooded with frosty perfumes, in the tossing forest where two interlocked branches groan through the long hours, on the plateau haunted with thistles that labor with feverish piety to perpetuate their innumerable lineage.
I ask only to be allowed to interrogate the earth like those who seek minerals and water-courses, and to experience every morning the green ascent of the spring-time over the rocky slopes.
I do not know by what path joy will come; I ask only to be permitted, none the less, to go to meet it, for truly I cannot sit here by this mile-post at the cross-roads, and placidly await it.
One joy has come to me during the war, one that is undoubtedly the greatest joy of my life: that of having a child. My reason did not revolt at it, itdid not dare to tell me that it was foolhardy to desire a child at a time when the human world was left without defense against confusion, disorder and crime. Yes, I rejoiced to have a man-child born to me now when the future of men seems to be corrupted for long years to come. I even hailed the child as a savior. You see, the paths of joy are as unknown to us as those of grace.
I shall not forbear, therefore, and when I feel my heart bleeding from an unjust wound I shall go with respectful steps and recover myself in the world of solitude. I shall not ask in the name of justice, I shall not insist, I shall not importune; I shall wait until it manifests itself and sets me free, I shall wait until at last it bestows upon me the grace which, like a fine sap, like mother’s milk, it always contains.
Solitude! I can still conquer it among a hundred thousand chattering companions; I know how to sing to myself little songs that surround me with the silence of the steppes.
I will go back again to the ravine where, the whole summer long, a blackbird I know of whistles that same liquid song that grows purer and more perfect from week to week. Ten notes are his whole career and his reason for being. Perhaps on a day that music will be just what my soul needs to recover its flight, like a stranded bark which a lazy wave has just set floating.
I will go back to the spots where I have been happy, and I do not think this will be very imprudent; for, like the perfume a woman leaves in her garments, like a drop of wine in the bottom of a glass, a little happiness often remains attached to things.
I shall go out again behind the hamlet, where I know that every morning a couple of turtle-doves mingle a plaint that secretly cuts the silence, hollows it with a melodious tunnel.
And I shall stretch myself out there, my face to the sky, like a well-exposed vine that longs to ripen some fine fruit.
I am saying what I shall do, with the sole purpose, with the deep desire, that you will all do the same, and that you will each turn to your favorite star; and all this with the earnest desire that you will not be content to remain sheep marked, without redemption, for the knife.
It requires little at times. The soul is not more exacting than the body. I have seen exhausted soldiers whom a single swallow of brandy raised up again to the heights of courage. I have seen seriously wounded men brought back to life when their bodies were turned a little in order to facilitate the uncertain flow of the blood.
The soul is no less fragile, no less sensitive. If the western view keeps you sad, turn lightly to thesouth. We do not know what the divine world holds in store.
Happy are those who are able to pray. It is thus that Christians solicit grace.
It is easy to fall on one’s knees; but to be able to pray one must already possess that grace which one implores. It is so great a gift, the gift of prayer, that it is almost indelicate to desire anything else from it.
To drink is a small matter. To be thirsty is everything.
Why do the Christians, who counsel us to pray in order to obtain grace, never tell us what we must do in order to be able to pray? It is not for nothing, nevertheless, that they arrange the play of light and shade through their stained-glass windows, the odor of stones and incense, the silence of the vaults and the propitiatory sights of the organ, all those harmonious snares set for the wandering prayer.
As for me, I shall take a staff and go out seeking the solitude of the world. If this world is a city street at dawn,—that will do! A misty dock, its outline broken by rails and masts,—that will do! A sunken road, lighted by the flowering broom,—that will do! The court of a barrack, the muddy enclosureof a prison-camp, oh! pitiful as it may seem to me, may it still seem good!
If I can walk, straight before me or far and wide, I can pray. If I can see a scrap of the sky, I can pray. And with all nature offered to my soul, I can pray, I can pray in spite of everything and as if without willing it. I must see that osier-bed, or the radiant awning of that wagon, or the image of the bridge in the water. I must hear the moaning of those interlaced branches; then I am able to feel myself bathed in grace.
Grace! It is indeed the fleeting consciousness man has of his divinity.
And now, now especially, and more than ever, we say to ourselves, man must have faith in his divinity!