FORTNIGHT had elapsed since the angel's apparition2 in the flat. For the first time Gilberte arrived before Maurice at the rendezvous3. Maurice was gloomy, Gilberte sulky. So far as they were concerned Nature had resumed her drab monotony. They eyed each other languidly, and kept glancing towards the angle between the wardrobe with the mirror and the window, where recently the pale shade of Arcade4 had taken shape, and where now the blue cretonne of the hangings was the only thing visible. Without giving him a name (it was unnecessary) Madame des Aubels asked:
"You have not seen him since?"
Slowly, sadly, Maurice turned his head from right to left, and from left to right.[132]
"You look as if you missed him," continued Madame des Aubels. "But come, confess that he gave you a terrible fright, and that you were shocked at his unconventionally."
"Certainly he was unconventional," said Maurice without any resentment5.
"Tell me, Maurice, is it nothing to you now to be with me alone?... You need an angel to inspire you. That is sad, for a young man like you!"
Maurice appeared not to hear, and asked gravely:
"Gilberte, do you feel that your guardian angel is watching over you?"
"I, not at all. I have never thought of him, and yet I am not without religion. In the first place, people who have none are like animals. And then one cannot go straight without religion. It is impossible."
"Exactly, that's just it," said Maurice, his eyes on the violet stripes of his flowerless pyjamas6; "when one has one's guardian angel one does not even think about him, and when one has lost him one feels very lonely."
"So you miss this...."
"Well, the fact is...."
"Oh, yes, yes, you miss him. Well, my dear, the loss of such a guardian angel as that is no great matter. No, no! he is not worth much, that Arcade of yours. On that famous day, while you were out getting him some clothes, he was ever so long[133] fastening my dress, and I certainly felt his hand.... Well, at any rate, don't trust him."
Maurice dreamily lit a cigarette. They spoke7 of the six days' bicycle race at the winter velodrome, and of the aviation show at the motor exhibition at Brussels, without experiencing the slightest amusement. Then they tried love-making as a sort of convenient pastime, and succeeded in becoming moderately absorbed in it; but at the very moment when she might have been expected to play a part more in accordance with a mutual8 sentiment, she exclaimed with a sudden start:
"Good Heavens! Maurice, how stupid of you to tell me that my guardian angel can see me. You cannot imagine how uncomfortable the idea makes me."
Maurice, somewhat taken aback, recalled, a little roughly, his mistress's wandering thoughts.
She declared that her principles forbade her to think of playing a round game with angels.
Maurice was longing9 to see Arcade again and had no other thought. He reproached himself for suffering him to depart without discovering where he was going, and he cudgelled his brains night and day thinking how to find him again.
On the bare chance, he put a notice in the personal column of one of the big papers, running thus:
"Arcade. Come back to your Maurice."
Day after day went by, and Arcade did not return.[134]
One morning, at seven o'clock, Maurice went to St. Sulpice to hear Abbé Patouille say Mass, then, as the priest was leaving the sacristy, he went up to him and asked to be heard for a moment.
They descended10 the steps of the church together and in the bright morning light walked round the fountain of the Quatre évêques. In spite of his troubled conscience and the difficulty of presenting so extraordinary a case with any degree of credibility, Maurice related how the angel Arcade had appeared to him and had announced his unhappy resolve to separate from him and to stir up a new revolt of the spirits of glory. And young d'Esparvieu asked the worthy11 ecclesiastic12 how to find his celestial13 guardian again, since he could not bear his absence, and how to lead his angel back to the Christian14 faith. Abbé Patouille replied in a tone of affectionate sorrow that his dear child had been dreaming, that he took a morbid15 hallucination for reality, and that it was not permissible16 to believe that good angels may revolt.
"People have a notion," he added, "that they can lead a life of dissipation and disorder17 with impunity18. They are wrong. The abuse of pleasure corrupts19 the intelligence and impairs20 the understanding. The devil takes possession of the sinner's senses, penetrating21 even to his soul. He has deceived you, Maurice, by a clumsy artifice22."
Maurice objected that he was not in any way a[135] victim of hallucinations, that he had not been dreaming, that he had seen his guardian angel with his eyes and heard him with his ears.
"Monsieur l'Abbé," he insisted, "a lady who happened to be with me at the time,—I need not mention her name,—also saw and heard him. And, moreover, she felt the angel's fingers straying ... well, anyhow, she felt them.... Believe me, Monsieur l'Abbé, nothing could be more real, more positively23 certain than this apparition. The angel was fair, young, very handsome. His clear skin seemed, in the shadow, as if bathed in milky24 light. He spoke in a pure, sweet voice."
"That, alone, my child," the Abbé interrupted quickly, "proves you were dreaming. According to all the demonologies, bad angels have a hoarse25 voice, which grates like a rusty26 lock, and even if they did contrive27 to give a certain look of beauty to their faces, they cannot succeed in imitating the pure voice of the good spirits. This fact, attested28 by numerous witnesses, is established beyond all doubt."
"But, Monsieur l'Abbé, I saw him. I saw him sit down, stark29 naked, in an arm-chair on a pair of black stockings. What else do you want me to tell you?"
The Abbé Patouille appeared in no way disturbed by this announcement.
"I say once more, my son," he replied, "that[136] these unhappy illusions, these dreams of a deeply troubled soul, are to be ascribed to the deplorable state of your conscience. I believe, moreover, that I can detect the particular circumstance that has caused your unstable30 mind thus to come to grief. During the winter in company with Monsieur Sariette and your Uncle Gaétan, you came, in an evil frame of mind, to see the Chapel31 of the Holy Angels in this church, then undergoing repair. As I observed on that occasion, it is impossible to keep artists too closely to the rules of Christian art; they cannot be too strongly enjoined32 to respect Holy Writ33 and its authorized34 interpreters. Monsieur Eugène Delacroix did not suffer his fiery35 genius to be controlled by tradition. He brooked36 no guidance and, here, in this chapel he has painted pictures which in common parlance37 we call lurid38, compositions of a violent, terrible nature which, far from inspiring the soul with peace, quietude, and calm, plunge39 it into a state of agitation40. In them the angels are depicted41 with wrathful countenances42, their features are sombre and uncouth43. One might take them to be Lucifer and his companions meditating44 their revolt. Well, my son, it was these pictures, acting45 upon a mind already weakened and undermined by every kind of dissipation, that have filled it with the trouble to which it is at present a prey46."
But Maurice would have none of it.[137]
"Oh, no! Monsieur l'Abbé," he cried, "it is not Eugène Delacroix's pictures that have been troubling me. I didn't so much as look at them. I am completely indifferent to that kind of art."
"Well, then, my son, believe me: there is no truth, no reality, in any of the story you have just related to me. Your guardian angel has certainly not appeared to you."
"But, Abbé," replied Maurice, who had the most absolute confidence in the evidence of the senses, "I saw him tying up a woman's shoe-laces and putting on the trousers of a suicide."
And stamping his feet on the asphalt, Maurice called as witnesses to the truth of his words the sky, the earth, all nature, the towers of St. Sulpice, the walls of the great seminary, the Fountain of the Quatre évêques, the public lavatory47, the cabmen's shelter, the taxis and motor 'buses' shelter, the trees, the passers-by, the dogs, the sparrows, the flower-seller and her flowers.
The Abbé made haste to end the interview.
"All this is error, falsehood, and illusion, my child," said he. "You are a Christian: think as a Christian,—a Christian does not allow himself to be seduced48 by empty shadows. Faith protects him against the seduction of the marvellous, he leaves credulity to freethinkers. There are credulous49 people for you—freethinkers! There is no humbug50 they will not swallow. But the Christian carries a[138] weapon which dissipates diabolical51 illusions,—the sign of the Cross. Reassure52 yourself, Maurice,—you have not lost your guardian angel. He still watches over you. It lies with you not to make this task too difficult nor too painful for him. Good-bye, Maurice. The weather is going to change, for I feel a burning in my big toe."
And Abbé Patouille went off with his breviary under his arm, hobbling along with a dignity that seemed to foretell53 a mitre.
That very day, Arcade and Zita were leaning over the parapet of La Butte, gazing down on the mist and smoke that lay floating over the vast city.
"Is it possible," said Arcade, "for the mind to conceive all the pain and suffering that lie pent within a great city? It is my belief that if a man succeeded in realising it, the weight of it would crush him to the earth."
"And yet," answered Zita, "every living being in that place of torment54 is enamoured of life. It is a great enigma55!
"Unhappy, ill-fated, while they live, the idea of ceasing to be is, nevertheless, a horror to them. They look not for solace56 in annihilation, it does not even bring them the promise of rest. In their madness they even look upon nothingness with terror: they have peopled it with phantoms57. Look you at these pediments, these towers and domes58 and spires59 that pierce the mist and rear on high[139] their glittering crosses. Men bow in adoration60 before the demiurge who has given them a life that is worse than death, and a death that is worse than life."
Zita was for a long time lost in thought. At length she broke silence, saying:
"There is something, Arcade, that I must confess to you. It was no desire for a purer justice or wiser laws that hurried Ithuriel earthward. Ambition, a taste for intrigue61, the love of wealth and honour, all these things made Heaven, with its calm, unbearable62 to me, and I longed to mingle63 with the restless race of men. I came, and by an art unknown to nearly all the angels, I learned how to fashion myself a body which, since I could change it as the fancy seized me, to whatsoever64 age and sex I would, has permitted me to experience the most diverse and amazing of human destinies. A hundred times I took a position of renown65 among the leaders of the day, the lords of wealth and princes of nations. I will not reveal to you, Arcade, the famous names I bore; know only that I was pre-eminent in learning, in the fine arts, in power, wealth, and beauty, among all the nations of the world. At last, it was but a few years since, as I was journeying in France, under the outward semblance66 of a distinguished67 foreigner, I chanced to be roaming at evening through the forest of Montmorency, when I heard a flute68 unfolding all the sorrows of[140] Heaven. The purity and sadness of its notes rent my very soul. Never before had I hearkened to aught so lovely. My eyes were wet with tears, my bosom69 full of sobs70, as I drew near and beheld71, on the skirts of a glade72, an old man like to a faun, blowing on a rustic73 pipe. It was Nectaire. I cast myself at his feet, imprinted74 kisses on his hands and on his lips divine, and fled away....
"From that day forth75, conscious of the littleness of human achievements, weary of the tumult76 and the vanity of earthly things, ashamed of my vast and profitless endeavours, and deciding to seek out a loftier aim for my ambition, I looked upwards77 towards my skiey home and vowed78 I would return to it as a Deliverer. I rid myself of titles, name, wealth, friends, the horde79 of sycophants80 and flatterers and, as Zita the obscure, set to work in indigence81 and solitude82, to bring freedom into Heaven."
"And I," said Arcade, "I too have heard the flute of Nectaire. But who is this old gardener who can thus woo from a rude wooden pipe notes that are so moving and so beautiful?"
"You will soon know," answered Zita.
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1
guardian
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| n.监护人；守卫者，保护者 | |
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apparition
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| n.幽灵，神奇的现象 | |
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rendezvous
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| n.约会，约会地点，汇合点；vi.汇合，集合；vt.使汇合，使在汇合地点相遇 | |
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arcade
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| n.拱廊；(一侧或两侧有商店的)通道 | |
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resentment
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| n.怨愤，忿恨 | |
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pyjamas
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| n.（宽大的）睡衣裤 | |
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7
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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8
mutual
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| adj.相互的，彼此的；共同的，共有的 | |
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longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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ecclesiastic
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| n.教士，基督教会；adj.神职者的，牧师的，教会的 | |
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celestial
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| adj.天体的；天上的 | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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15
morbid
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| adj.病的；致病的；病态的；可怕的 | |
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permissible
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| adj.可允许的，许可的 | |
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disorder
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| n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调 | |
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impunity
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| n.(惩罚、损失、伤害等的)免除 | |
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corrupts
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| （使）败坏( corrupt的第三人称单数 )； （使）腐化； 引起（计算机文件等的）错误； 破坏 | |
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impairs
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| v.损害，削弱( impair的第三人称单数 ) | |
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penetrating
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| adj.（声音）响亮的，尖锐的adj.（气味）刺激的adj.（思想）敏锐的，有洞察力的 | |
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22
artifice
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| n.妙计，高明的手段；狡诈，诡计 | |
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positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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milky
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| adj.牛奶的，多奶的；乳白色的 | |
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hoarse
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| adj.嘶哑的，沙哑的 | |
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rusty
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| adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的 | |
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contrive
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| vt.谋划，策划；设法做到；设计，想出 | |
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attested
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| adj.经检验证明无病的，经检验证明无菌的v.证明( attest的过去式和过去分词 )；证实；声称…属实；使宣誓 | |
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29
stark
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| adj.荒凉的；严酷的；完全的；adv.完全地 | |
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unstable
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| adj.不稳定的，易变的 | |
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chapel
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| n.小教堂，殡仪馆 | |
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enjoined
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| v.命令( enjoin的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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writ
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| n.命令状，书面命令 | |
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authorized
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| a.委任的，许可的 | |
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fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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brooked
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| 容忍，忍受（brook的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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parlance
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| n.说法；语调 | |
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lurid
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| adj.可怕的；血红的；苍白的 | |
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plunge
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| v.跳入，(使)投入，(使)陷入；猛冲 | |
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40
agitation
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| n.搅动；搅拌；鼓动，煽动 | |
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depicted
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| 描绘，描画( depict的过去式和过去分词 )； 描述 | |
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countenances
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| n.面容( countenance的名词复数 )；表情；镇静；道义支持 | |
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43
uncouth
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| adj.无教养的，粗鲁的 | |
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meditating
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| a.沉思的，冥想的 | |
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acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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46
prey
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| n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨 | |
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47
lavatory
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| n.盥洗室，厕所 | |
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48
seduced
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| 诱奸( seduce的过去式和过去分词 )； 勾引； 诱使堕落； 使入迷 | |
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49
credulous
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| adj.轻信的，易信的 | |
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50
humbug
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| n.花招，谎话，欺骗 | |
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51
diabolical
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| adj.恶魔似的，凶暴的 | |
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52
reassure
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| v.使放心，使消除疑虑 | |
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53
foretell
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| v.预言，预告，预示 | |
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54
torment
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| n.折磨；令人痛苦的东西(人)；vt.折磨；纠缠 | |
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55
enigma
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| n.谜，谜一样的人或事 | |
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56
solace
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| n.安慰；v.使快乐；vt.安慰(物)，缓和 | |
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57
phantoms
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| n.鬼怪，幽灵( phantom的名词复数 ) | |
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58
domes
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| n.圆屋顶( dome的名词复数 )；像圆屋顶一样的东西；圆顶体育场 | |
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59
spires
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| n.（教堂的） 塔尖，尖顶( spire的名词复数 ) | |
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60
adoration
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| n.爱慕，崇拜 | |
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61
intrigue
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| vt.激起兴趣，迷住；vi.耍阴谋；n.阴谋，密谋 | |
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62
unbearable
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| adj.不能容忍的；忍受不住的 | |
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63
mingle
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| vt.使混合，使相混；vi.混合起来；相交往 | |
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64
whatsoever
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| adv.（用于否定句中以加强语气）任何；pron.无论什么 | |
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65
renown
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| n.声誉，名望 | |
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semblance
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| n.外貌，外表 | |
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67
distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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68
flute
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| n.长笛；v.吹笛 | |
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69
bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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70
sobs
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| 啜泣（声），呜咽（声）( sob的名词复数 ) | |
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71
beheld
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| v.看，注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
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72
glade
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| n.林间空地，一片表面有草的沼泽低地 | |
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rustic
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| adj.乡村的，有乡村特色的；n.乡下人，乡巴佬 | |
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74
imprinted
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| v.盖印（imprint的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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75
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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76
tumult
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| n.喧哗；激动，混乱；吵闹 | |
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77
upwards
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| adv.向上，在更高处...以上 | |
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78
vowed
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| 起誓，发誓（vow的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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horde
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| n.群众，一大群 | |
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sycophants
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| n.谄媚者，拍马屁者( sycophant的名词复数 ) | |
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indigence
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| n.贫穷 | |
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82
solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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