There is no more horrible state of mind than that in which we are forced by conviction to listen on, wishing every word to be false, and knowing every word to be true. Such was mine, but I tried to palliate it by saying, “It was never my ambition to be a saint; but is the lot of all, then, so deplorable?”
The monk, who appeared to rejoice in this opportunity to discharge the concentrated malignity of sixty years of suffering and hypocrisy, collected his dying voice to answer. He seemed as if he never could inflict enough, for what had been inflicted on himself. “Those who possess strong sensibility, without the religious character, are of all others the most unhappy, but their miseries are soonest terminated. They are harassed by trivial constraints, stupefied by monotonous devotion, exasperated by dull insolence and bloated superiority. They struggle, they resist. Penance and punishment are applied. Their own violence justifies increased violence of treatment; and, at all events, it would be applied without this justification, for there is nothing that delights the pride of power, more than a victorious strife with the pride of intellect. The remainder is easily to be conceived by you, who have witnessed it. You saw the unfortunate youth who interfered about Paolo. He was lashed to madness. Tortured first to frenzy, then to stupefaction—he died! I was the secret, unsuspected adviser of the whole proceeding.”
“Monster!” I exclaimed, for truth had made us equal now, and even precluded the language that humanity would dictate when uttered to a dying man.
“But why?”—said he, with that calmness which had once attracted, and now revolted me, but which had at all times undisputed possession of his physiognomy;—“his sufferings were shorter, do you blame me for diminishing their duration?”—There was something cold, ironical, and jeering, even in the suavity of this man, that gave a certain force to his simplest observations. It seemed as if he had reserved the truth all his life, to utter it at his dying hour. “Such is the fate of those who possess strong sensibility; those who have less languish away in an imperceptible decline. They spend their time in watching a few flowers, in tending birds. They are punctual in their religious exercises, they receive neither blame or praise—they melt away in torpor and ennui. They wish for death, as the preparation it might put the convent to might produce a short excitement, but they are disappointed, for their state forbids excitement, and they die as they have lived—unexcited, unawakened. The tapers are lit, they do not see them—the unction is applied, they do not feel it—prayers are uttered, they cannot partake in them;—in fact, the whole drama is acted, but the principal performer is absent—is gone. Others indulge themselves in perpetual reverie. They walk alone in the cloister—in the garden. They feed themselves with the poison of delicious, innutritive illusion. They dream that an earthquake will shake the walls to atoms, that a volcano will burst forth in the centre of the garden. They imagine a revolution of government—an attack of banditti—anything, however improbable. Then they take refuge in the possibility of a fire (if a fire bursts out in a convent, the doors are thrown open, and ‘Sauve qui peut,’ is the word). At this thought they conceive the most ardent hope—they could rush out—they could precipitate themselves into the streets, into the country—in fact, they would fly anywhere to escape. Then these hopes fail—they begin to get nervous, morbid, restless. If they have interest, they are indulged with remission from their duties, and they remain in their cells, relaxed—torpid—idiotical; if they have not interest, they are forced to the punctual performance of their duties, and then idiotism comes on much sooner, as diseased horses, employed in a mill, become blind sooner than those who are suffered to wear out existence in ordinary labour. Some of them take refuge in religion, as they call it. They call for relief on the Superior, but what can the Superior do? He is but human too, and perhaps feels the despair that is devouring the wretches who supplicate him to deliver them from it. Then they prostrate themselves before the images of the saints—they invoke, they sometimes revile them. They call for their intercession, deplore its inefficacy, and fly to some other, whose merits they imagine are higher in the sight of God. They supplicate for an interest in the intercession of Christ and the Virgin, as their last resort. That resort fails them too—the Virgin herself is inexorable, though they wear out her pedestal with their knees, and her feet with their
