“I wish to be so.”
“But why?”
“I am not obliged to announce my reasons.”
“True, but you may confide them to me.”
“I have nothing to confide.”
“I know that—I would not for the world intrude on your confidence; reserve that for friends more honoured.”
It struck me as rather odd, that he should, in the same breath, ask for my confidence—declare that he was conscious I had nothing to entrust to him—and, lastly, request a reserve of my confidence for some more favoured friend.
I was silent, however, till he said, “But, my brother, you are devoured with ennui.” I was silent still. “Would to God I could find the means to dissipate it.”
I said, looking on him calmly, “Are those means to be found within the walls of a convent?”
“Yes, my dear brother—yes, certainly—the debate in which the convent is now engaged about the proper hour for matins, which the Superior wants to have restored to the original hour.”
“What is the difference?”
“Full five minutes.”
“I confess the importance of the question.”
“Oh! if you once begin to feel it, there will be no end of your happiness in a convent. There is something every moment to inquire, to be anxious about, and to contend for. Interest yourself, my dear brother, in these questions, and you will not have a moment’s ennui to complain of.”
At these words I fixed my eyes on him. I said calmly, but I believe emphatically, “I have, then, only to excite in my own mind, spleen, malignity, curiosity, every passion that your retreat should have afforded me protection against, to render that retreat supportable. Pardon me, if I cannot, like you, beg of God permission to take his enemy into compact against the corruption which I promote, while I presume to pray against it.”
He was silent, lifted up his hands, and crossed himself; and I said to myself, “God forgive your hypocrisy,” as he went into another walk, and repeated to his companions, “He is mad, irrecoverably mad.”
“But how, then?” said several voices. There was a stifled whisper. I saw several heads bent together. I did not know what they were meditating, nor did I care. I was walking alone—it was a delicious moonlight evening. I saw the moonbeams through the trees, but the trees all looked to me like walls. Their trunks were as adamant, and the interlaced branches seemed to twine themselves into folds that said, “Beyond us there is no passing.” I sat down by the side of a fountain—there was a tall poplar over it—I remember their situation well. An elderly priest (who, I did not see, was detached by the party) sat down beside me. He began some commonplace observations on the transiency of human existence. I shook my head, and he understood, by a kind of tact not uncommon among Jesuits, that it would not do. He shifted the subject, remarked on the beauty of the foliage, and the limpid purity of the fountain. I assented. He added, “Oh that life were pure as that stream!”
I sighed, “Oh that life were verdant and fertile to me as that tree!”
“But, my son, may not fountains be dried up, and trees be withered?”
“Yes, my father—yes—the fountain of my life has been dried up, and the green branch of my life has been blasted forever.” As I uttered these words, I could not suppress some tears.
The father seized on what he called the moment when God was breathing on my soul. Our conversation was very long, and I listened to him with a kind of reluctant and stubborn attention, because I had involuntarily been compelled to observe, that he was the only person in the whole community who had never harassed me by the slightest importunity either before my profession or after; and when the worst things were said of me, never seemed to attend; and when the worst things were predicted of me, shook his head and said nothing. His character was unimpeached, and his religious performances as exemplary and punctual as my own. With all this I felt no confidence in him, or in any human being; but I listened to him with patience, and my patience must have had no trivial trial, for, at the end of an hour (I did not perceive that our conference was permitted quite beyond the usual hour of retirement), he continued repeating, “My dear son, you will become reconciled to the conventual life.”
“My father, never, never—unless this fountain is dried up, and this tree withered, by tomorrow.”
“My son, God has often performed greater miracles for the salvation of a soul.”
We parted, and I retired to my cell. I know not how he and the others were employed, but, before matins, there was such a tumult in the convent, that one would have thought Madrid was on fire. Boarders, novices, and monks, ran about from cell to cell, up and down the staircase, through all the corridors, unrestrained and unquestioned—all order was at an end. No bell was rung, no commands for restoring tranquillity issued; the voice of authority seemed to have made peace forever with the shouts of uproar. From my window I saw them running through the garden in every direction, embracing each other, ejaculating, praying, and counting their beads with hands tremulous, and eyes uplifted in ecstasy. The hilarity of a convent has something in it uncouth, unnatural, and even alarming. I suspected some mischief immediately, but I said to myself, “The worst is over, they cannot make me
