XXVIMY FIRST COMMUNION
IT is impossible to imagine to-day the importance of a railway journey in the time of my childhood. All Chauny talked of it when I started; all Chauny questioned me concerning it on my return. When I went out with grandfather, people stopped me in the street to ask me if a railway journey was very frightful.
Truth to tell, the horrible whistles, the deafening threatening noise of the locomotives, the tunnels (oh, those tunnels!), the frightful black smoke that made one look like a coal-man in a few hours, had filled me with apprehension, and everything connected with it seemed to me like something coming straight from hell.
“It splits your ears, it blinds you if you put your nose out of the window, it shakes you so that you tremble, it is ugly and makes you ugly,” I replied to everyone who questioned me.
At school I had a great success. All the big girls asked me about it, to satisfy their own curiosity and that of their families. All the little girlswished to know the entire history of the railway journey, and all about the sea and the ships.
My large basket of shells was emptied in a few days. The numberless presents I had brought disappeared quickly. A week after my return I had nothing left. “Those,” I said, speaking of my shells, “were not bought. I picked them up myself by the sea, the real sea!”
These words produced an immense sensation. At recreations I held forth, surrounded by numerous listeners with eager eyes and open mouths. Questions came from all sides. They never tired of hearing my stories told over and over again. The history of the woman beheaded in the tunnel made them all tremble.
“Why did she look out of the window?” asked the big girls. “One should take great care in travelling, for there is always great risk. One has only to read about it to know it.”
The little girls asked especially whether the beheaded woman had children and whether they were with her. When I answered, “yes,” there was a general panic, and the whole brood scattered, with frightened “ohs!”
If a schoolgirl of to-day had passed the winter at the North Pole, and should relate to her schoolmates that she had seen a mother crushed to deathby an iceberg before her children’s eyes, she would not produce a greater sensation than I did with my story of the railway and the unfortunate woman in the tunnel. They were beginning to build the railway from Paris to Saint-Quentin, which was to pass through Chauny, and everyone was wildly excited over the matter. I had, with great art, planned a course of entertainment to be given at home. Every evening, after dinner, I related to my grandparents, to Blondeau, and to my friend Charles—who would not have missed it for anything in the world—the history of one of my days of travel—never more and never less than one; and the number of my stories just covered the number of days of the journey.
I had missed a whole month of the catechism class, but the vicar was indulgent. He was, himself, much interested in my excursion, and asked me, like everyone else, to give him my impressions about the railroad and the sea.
My reflections pleased him, and he spoke of them to the dean, who also questioned me. I told him that the railroad was an abominable, whistling invention—it seemed like hell, with its fire and its diabolical blackness.
This journey gave me a decided pre-eminence. On account of it, I was considered at Chauny superiorto the other young girls of my age. As the time for first communion approached, the dean interested himself especially in me. He selected me to pronounce the baptismal vows, and to head one of the files of communicants to the Holy Table. The Bishop of Soissons came that year, as he did every two years, to administer confirmation, and I was selected to make him the complimentary speech of welcome at the parsonage.
I was the youngest and the tallest of the communicants. My grandparents, Blondeau, and my friend Charles, when the history of my journey was finished, busied themselves exclusively about my first communion. Grandmother had ordered the finest muslin for my gown and veil. They said white was very becoming to me, and that I should be the prettiest girl of all. My friend Charles taught me how to say my baptismal vows and my complimentary speech to the Bishop, in a manner rather more theatrical than pious.
I had then as an intimate friend a strange girl of my own age, as small as I was tall, witty, sharp-tongued, and mischievous, whose influence over me was anything but good. Whenever she saw me enthusiastic or admiring anything, she did her best to spoil what I admired. Her name was Maribert.[C]We had been friends for four years, but we had had very serious quarrels and reconciliations, which interested the whole school.
Maribert was to make her first communion at the same time as myself. She was a boarder at the school and was very strictly watched because she criticised the catechism in a way which shocked the least devout. She often argued with the vicar, contending with him in discussing the articles of faith he was explaining to us.
“You will be cast out of the church if you do not submit,” the vicar said to her one day. “You have a renegade’s mind.”
And she dared to reply:
“I am a philosopher, I am strong-minded!”
I went to board at school during the month preceding my first communion, the dean, finding I was not preparing myself well for the ceremony at my grandparents’, induced them to let me absent myself from home until the great day. Maribert had succeeded in having me for neighbour in the dormitory, and she kept by me at recreations. During class hours, by the means of little notes, which she would slip into my hands, she tried to influence my mind to unbelief. She endeavoured to prove to me that the dean was in no wise evangelical; that the vicar, who instructed us, preferred a good dinnerto a good mass; that the Mlles. André, our mistresses, were much more interested in not losing their pupils than in teaching and improving them.
“Now, as to myself,” she said, “they should send me away; they know very well that I change all the ideas I wish to change; that I am a disturber; that I shall not make my first communion seriously; that I will prevent others—you, first of all—from making it with the necessary unction and devotion; and yet they keep me here—me, the black sheep of the flock!”
I was badly influenced by Maribert, and they would have done better to have me with grandmother, who, although at this time too occupied with the things of this world to give me great spiritual help, would have done all she could to increase my faith.
The morning of the day of my first communion I was sad, discontented, I did not feel as I should have felt, and I envied the happiness of those who, having had the strength to resist Maribert’s diabolical influence, wore on their faces an expression of beatitude. As we were leaving for the church, Maribert slipped a piece of chocolate into my hand, saying, with her shining, demoniacal eyes looking at me: “Eat it!”
And, at the same time, I heard her crunching the half of the piece she had given to me.
I threw the chocolate in her face. Ah, no! that was too much! I, too, wanted to be strong-minded, but I did not wish to commit a sacrilege, to lie, to receive communion after having eaten.
I suddenly realised my friend’s evil-doing, and I struggled instantly to wrench out from my mind the ideas she had implanted in it; they were not numerous, however, for we possessed but few tastes in common. However, a great sadness took possession of me; had I not broken with a confidante, a friend of four years’ standing? (Years are so long in childhood!)
Maribert, alas! had made me lose enthusiasm for prayer, and that enthusiasm alone, on such a day as this, could have consoled me for the heartache I suffered. I was overcome to such a degree that my tears fell without my knowing it.
“You are sillier than the silliest,” Maribert said to me. “I will never speak to you again as long as I live.”
“You are more wicked than the wickedest,” I replied, “and I shall reproach myself as long as I exist for having loved one so accursed as you.”
The hour came for leaving for the church. Our mothers were waiting for us in the drawing-room.My mother and my grandmother were there. I threw myself in their arms and kissed them fervently. They were much edified in seeing my pallor and my red eyes. My grandmother wore a white woollen gown, a black bonnet, and a black silk scarf trimmed with fringe. I thought her very well dressed. My mother looked very handsome, although her toilette was extremely simple. She wore a large Leghorn straw bonnet, tied with black velvet ribbons, a puce-coloured silk gown with a train, and on her shoulders a scarf beautifully embroidered by herself, fastened with turquoise pins. I could not cease from admiring her.
“How beautiful mamma is,” I said in a low tone to grandmother. “Just look at her.”
“Yes,” grandmother replied aloud, “and it would be well if she would take pleasure in her beauty, if she would be grateful to God for it; but, alas! I am sure she imagines people look at her maliciously.”
My mother shrugged her shoulders.
“Juliette,” added grandmother, “this is a happy day for you, my little girl; may it govern your whole life; may you understand its religious significance. I shall pray to God with my whole soul that it may be so.”
We left the school, I at the head of the procession, my schoolmates following me one by one. We formed a file and walked through the streets to the church. The organ ushered us in with a peal of gladness. My heart beat so hard it hurt me. But by degrees a great calmness came over me. I abjured evil; I banished Maribert from my heart. I saw her farther down in the file, her face made ugly by a wicked smile. I looked at her coldly and proudly, and I raised my eyes to Heaven to prove to her that I was no longer under the influence of her wicked teaching. I felt as it was proper I should feel in the holy place and in view of the ceremony in which I was to take part.
I recited my baptismal vows simply, in a loud voice, feeling sincerely what I said. I thought of grandmother, who was listening to me and to whom I would that very night confess all that I had hidden from her about Maribert. I made my communion in peace, I returned to grandmother’s house happy in being at home again, freed from Maribert, whom I felt I would never miss again when absent from her.
The next day I was to recite my complimentary speech to the bishop at the parsonage. Grandfather had said that Monseigneur de Garsignies had been a former cavalry officer, and grandmotherhad added that he had had a very adventurous, romantic life. My grandparents’ remarks about him at table took away all my fear of him.
I repeated my address, smiling and looking at him unembarrassed. He smiled, too, and kissed me.
At the church, during the ceremony of confirmation, when I kissed the paten and Monseigneur approached his fingers to my face, Maribert’s influence suddenly took possession of me again, and I said, without being conscious of the words I pronounced, words which froze with horror my schoolmates, kneeling near me, and which made Maribert laugh:
“Lightly, Monseigneur, I beg of you!”
He tapped my cheek harder than he tapped those of my schoolmates. Why did I say it? I do not know, but I felt that I had resisted a diabolical desire to say something worse. The sacred gesture suddenly seemed to me like a slap in my face. Maribert was kneeling at a short distance from me. Was it her wicked spirit which had inspired me with this act of revolt?
The dean called me to the sacristy after the confirmation, and scolded me in a severe but fatherly manner, and gave me a penance to perform.
A few years afterwards, at an evening party given at Soissons, where I had arrived as a young bride, Monseigneur de Garsignies, as I entered the room and bowed to him, exclaimed:
“The little girl whom I confirmed!”