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The Paris Sketch Book

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[Now the wonderful part of the story begins.]

"I know not how much time I passed in this way. As I came to
myself I felt an agreeable coolness. It seemed as if some
harmonious air was playing round about me, stirring gently in my
hair, and drying the drops of perspiration on my brow. It seemed
to approach, and then again to withdraw, breathing now softly and
sweetly in the distance, and now returning, as if to give me
strength and courage to rise.

"I would not, however, do so as yet; for I felt myself, as I lay,
under the influence of a pleasure quite new to me; and listened, in
a kind of peaceful aberration, to the gentle murmurs of the summer
wind, as it breathed on me through the closed window-blinds above
me. Then I fancied I heard a voice that spoke to me from the end
of the sacristy: it whispered so low that I could not catch the
words. I remained motionless, and gave it my whole attention. At
last I heard, distinctly, the following sentence:--'Spirit of
Truth, raise up these victims of ignorance and imposture.' 'Father
Hegesippus,' said I, in a weak voice, 'is that you who are
returning to me?' But no one answered. I lifted myself on my
hands and knees, I listened again, but I heard nothing. I got up
completely, and looked about me: I had fallen so near to the only
door in this little room, that none, after the departure of the
confessor, could have entered it without passing over me; besides,
the door was shut, and only opened from the inside by a strong lock
of the ancient shape. I touched it, and assured myself that it was
closed. I was seized with terror, and, for some moments, did not
dare to move. Leaning against the door, I looked round, and
endeavored to see into the gloom in which the angles of the room
were enveloped. A pale light, which came from an upper window,
half closed, was seen to be trembling in the midst of the
apartment. The wind beat the shutter to and fro, and enlarged or
diminished the space through which the light issued. The objects
which were in this half light--the praying-desk, surmounted by its
skull--a few books lying on the benches--a surplice hanging against
the wall--seemed to move with the shadow of the foliage that the
air agitated behind the window. When I thought I was alone, I felt
ashamed of my former timidity; I made the sign of the cross, and
was about to move forward in order to open the shutter altogether,
but a deep sigh came from the praying-desk, and kept me nailed to
my place. And yet I saw the desk distinctly enough to be sure that
no person was near it. Then I had an idea which gave me courage.
Some person, I thought, is behind the shutter, and has been saying
his prayers outside without thinking of me. But who would be so
bold as to express such wishes and utter such a prayer as I had
just heard?

"Curiosity, the only passion and amusement permitted in a cloister,
now entirely possessed me, and I advanced towards the window. But
I had not made a step when a black shadow, as it seemed to me,
detaching itself from the praying-desk, traversed the room,
directing itself towards the window, and passed swiftly by me. The
movement was so rapid that I had not time to avoid what seemed a
body advancing towards me, and my fright was so great that I
thought I should faint a second time. But I felt nothing, and, as
if the shadow had passed through me, I saw it suddenly disappear to
my left.

"I rushed to the window, I pushed back the blind with precipitation,
and looked round the sacristy: I was there, entirely alone. I
looked into the garden--it was deserted, and the mid-day wind was
wandering among the flowers. I took courage, I examined all the
corners of the room; I looked behind the praying-desk, which was
very large, and I shook all the sacerdotal vestments which were
hanging on the walls, everything was in its natural condition, and
could give me no explanation of what had just occurred. The sight
of all the blood I had lost led me to fancy that my brain had,
probably, been weakened by the haemorrhage, and that I had been a
prey to some delusion. I retired to my cell, and remained shut up
there until the next day."

I don't know whether the reader has been as much struck with the
above mysterious scene as the writer has; but the fancy of it
strikes me as very fine; and the natural SUPERNATURALNESS is kept
up in the best style. The shutter swaying to and fro, the fitful
LIGHT APPEARING over the furniture of the room, and giving it an
air of strange motion--the awful shadow which passed through the
body of the timid young novice--are surely very finely painted. "I
rushed to the shutter, and flung it back: there was no one in the
sacristy. I looked into the garden; it was deserted, and the mid-
day wind was roaming among the flowers." The dreariness is
wonderfully described: only the poor pale boy looking eagerly out
from the window of the sacristy, and the hot mid-day wind walking
in the solitary garden. How skilfully is each of these little
strokes dashed in, and how well do all together combine to make a
picture! But we must have a little more about Spiridion's
wonderful visitant.


"As I entered into the garden, I stepped a little on one side, to
make way for a person whom I saw before me. He was a young man of
surprising beauty, and attired in a foreign costume. Although
dressed in the large black robe which the superiors of our order
wear, he had, underneath, a short jacket of fine cloth, fastened
round the waist by a leathern belt, and a buckle of silver, after
the manner of the old German students. Like them, he wore, instead
of the sandals of our monks, short tight boots; and over the collar
of his shirt, which fell on his shoulders, and was as white as
snow, hung, in rich golden curls, the most beautiful hair I ever
saw. He was tall, and his elegant posture seemed to reveal to me
that he was in the habit of commanding. With much respect, and yet
uncertain, I half saluted him. He did not return my salute; but he
smiled on me with so benevolent an air, and at the same time, his
eyes severe and blue, looked towards me with an expression of such
compassionate tenderness, that his features have never since then
passed away from my recollection. I stopped, hoping he would speak
to me, and persuading myself, from the majesty of his aspect, that
he had the power to protect me; but the monk, who was walking
behind me, and who did not seem to remark him in the least, forced
him brutally to step aside from the walk, and pushed me so rudely
as almost to cause me to fall. Not wishing to engage in a quarrel
with this coarse monk, I moved away; but, after having taken a few
steps in the garden, I looked back, and saw the unknown still
gazing on me with looks of the tenderest solicitude. The sun shone
full upon him, and made his hair look radiant. He sighed, and
lifted his fine eyes to heaven, as if to invoke its justice in my
favor, and to call it to bear witness to my misery; he turned
slowly towards the sanctuary, entered into the quire, and was lost,
presently, in the shade. I longed to return, spite of the monk, to
follow this noble stranger, and to tell him my afflictions; but who
was he, that I imagined he would listen to them, and cause them to
cease? I felt, even while his softness drew me towards him, that
he still inspired me with a kind of fear; for I saw in his
physiognomy as much austerity as sweetness."


Who was he?--we shall see that. He was somebody very mysterious
indeed; but our author has taken care, after the manner of her sex,
to make a very pretty fellow of him, and to dress him in the most
becoming costumes possible.


The individual in tight boots and a rolling collar, with the
copious golden locks, and the solemn blue eyes, who had just gazed
on Spiridion, and inspired him with such a feeling of tender awe,
is a much more important personage than the reader might suppose at
first sight. This beautiful, mysterious, dandy ghost, whose
costume, with a true woman's coquetry, Madame Dudevant has so
rejoiced to describe--is her religious type, a mystical
representation of Faith struggling up towards Truth, through
superstition, doubt, fear, reason,--in tight inexpressibles, with
"a belt such as is worn by the old German students." You will
pardon me for treating such an awful person as this somewhat
lightly; but there is always, I think, such a dash of the
ridiculous in the French sublime, that the critic should try and do
justice to both, or he may fail in giving a fair account of either.
This character of Hebronius, the type of Mrs. Sand's convictions--
if convictions they may be called--or, at least, the allegory under
which her doubts are represented, is, in parts, very finely drawn;
contains many passages of truth, very deep and touching, by the
side of others so entirely absurd and unreasonable, that the
reader's feelings are continually swaying between admiration and
something very like contempt--always in a kind of wonder at the
strange mixture before him. But let us hear Madame Sand:--

"Peter Hebronius," says our author, "was not originally so named.
His real name was Samuel. He was a Jew, and born in a little
village in the neighborhood of Innsprück. His family, which
possessed a considerable fortune, left him, in his early youth,
completely free to his own pursuits. From infancy he had shown
that these were serious. He loved to be alone and passed his days,
and sometimes his nights, wandering among the mountains and valleys
in the neighborhood of his birthplace. He would often sit by the
brink of torrents, listening to the voice of their waters, and
endeavoring to penetrate the meaning which Nature had hidden in
those sounds. As he advanced in years, his inquiries became more
curious and more grave. It was necessary that he should receive a
solid education, and his parents sent him to study in the German
universities. Luther had been dead only a century, and his words
and his memory still lived in the enthusiasm of his disciples.
The new faith was strengthening the conquests it had made; the
Reformers were as ardent as in the first days, but their ardor was
more enlightened and more measured. Proselytism was still carried
on with zeal, and new converts were made every day. In listening
to the morality and to the dogmas which Lutheranism had taken from
Catholicism, Samuel was filled with admiration. His bold and
sincere spirit instantly compared the doctrines which were now
submitted to him, with those in the belief of which he had been
bred; and, enlightened by the comparison, was not slow to
acknowledge the inferiority of Judaism. He said to himself, that a
religion made for a single people, to the exclusion of all others,--
which only offered a barbarous justice for rule of conduct,--which
neither rendered the present intelligible nor satisfactory, and
left the future uncertain,--could not be that of noble souls and
lofty intellects; and that he could not be the God of truth who had
dictated, in the midst of thunder, his vacillating will, and had
called to the performance of his narrow wishes the slaves of a
vulgar terror. Always conversant with himself, Samuel, who had
spoken what he thought, now performed what he had spoken; and, a
year after his arrival in Germany, solemnly abjured Judaism, and
entered into the bosom of the Reformed Church. As he did not wish
to do things by halves, and desired as much as was in him to put
off the old man and lead a new life, he changed his name of Samuel
to that of Peter. Some time passed, during which he strengthened
and instructed himself in his new religion. Very soon he arrived
at the point of searching for objections to refute, and adversaries
to overthrow. Bold and enterprising, he went at once to the
strongest, and Bossuet was the first Catholic author that he set
himself to read. He commenced with a kind of disdain; believing
that the faith which he had just embraced contained the pure truth.
He despised all the attacks which could be made against it, and
laughed already at the irresistible arguments which he was to find
in the works of the Eagle of Meaux. But his mistrust and irony
soon gave place to wonder first, and then to admiration: he thought
that the cause pleaded by such an advocate must, at least, be
respectable; and, by a natural transition, came to think that great
geniuses would only devote themselves to that which was great. He
then studied Catholicism with the same ardor and impartiality which
he had bestowed on Lutheranism. He went into France to gain
instruction from the professors of the Mother Church, as he had
from the Doctors of the reformed creed in Germany. He saw Arnauld
Fénélon, that second Gregory of Nazianzen, and Bossuet himself.
Guided by these masters, whose virtues made him appreciate their
talents the more, he rapidly penetrated to the depth of the
mysteries of the Catholic doctrine and morality. He found, in this
religion, all that had for him constituted the grandeur and beauty
of Protestantism,--the dogmas of the Unity and Eternity of God,
which the two religions had borrowed from Judaism; and, what seemed
the natural consequence of the last doctrine--a doctrine, however,
to which the Jews had not arrived--the doctrine of the immortality
of the soul; free will in this life; in the next, recompense for
the good, and punishment for the evil. He found, more pure,
perhaps, and more elevated in Catholicism than in Protestantism,
that sublime morality which preaches equality to man, fraternity,
love, charity, renouncement of self, devotion to your neighbor;
Catholicism, in a word, seemed to possess that vast formula, and
that vigorous unity, which Lutheranism wanted. The latter had,
indeed, in its favor, the liberty of inquiry, which is also a want
of the human mind; and had proclaimed the authority of individual
reason: but it had so lost that which is the necessary basis and
vital condition of all revealed religion--the principle of
infallibility; because nothing can live except in virtue of the
laws that presided at its birth; and, in consequence, one
revelation cannot be continued and confirmed without another. Now,
infallibility is nothing but revelation continued by God, or the
Word, in the person of his vicars.


"At last, after much reflection, Hebronius acknowledged himself
entirely and sincerely convinced, and received baptism from the
hands of Bossuet. He added the name of Spiridion to that of Peter,
to signify that he had been twice enlightened by the Spirit.
Resolved thenceforward to consecrate his life to the worship of the
new God who had called him to Him, and to the study of His
doctrines, he passed into Italy, and, with the aid of a large
fortune, which one of his uncles, a Catholic like himself, had left
to him, he built this convent where we now are."


A friend of mine, who has just come from Italy, says that he has
there left Messrs. Sp--r, P--l, and W. Dr--d, who were the lights
of the great church in Newman Street, who were themselves apostles,
and declared and believed that every word of nonsense which fell
from their lips was a direct spiritual intervention. These
gentlemen have become Puseyites already, and are, my friend states,
in the high way to Catholicism. Madame Sand herself was a Catholic
some time since: having been converted to that faith along with M.
N--, of the Academy of Music; Mr. L--, the pianoforte player; and
one or two other chosen individuals, by the famous Abbé de la M--.
Abbé de la M-- (so told me in the Diligence, a priest, who read his
breviary and gossiped alternately very curiously and pleasantly) is
himself an âme perdue: the man spoke of his brother clergyman with
actual horror; and it certainly appears that the Abbé's works of
conversion have not prospered; for Madame Sand, having brought her
hero (and herself, as we may presume) to the point of Catholicism,
proceeds directly to dispose of that as she has done of Judaism and
Protestantism, and will not leave, of the whole fabric of
Christianity, a single stone standing.

I think the fate of our English Newman Street apostles, and of M.
de la M--, the mad priest, and his congregation of mad converts,
should be a warning to such of us as are inclined to dabble in
religious speculations; for, in them, as in all others, our flighty
brains soon lose themselves, and we find our reason speedily lying
prostrated at the mercy of our passions; and I think that Madame
Sand's novel of Spiridion may do a vast deal of good, and bears a
good moral with it; though not such an one, perhaps, as our fair
philosopher intended. For anything he learned, Samuel-Peter-
Spiridion-Hebronius might have remained a Jew from the beginning to
the end. Wherefore be in such a hurry to set up new faiths?
Wherefore, Madame Sand, try and be so preternaturally wise?
Wherefore be so eager to jump out of one religion, for the purpose
of jumping into another? See what good this philosophical
friskiness has done you, and on what sort of ground you are come at
last. You are so wonderfully sagacious, that you flounder in mud
at every step; so amazingly clear-sighted, that your eyes cannot
see an inch before you, having put out, with that extinguishing
genius of yours, every one of the lights that are sufficient for
the conduct of common men. And for what? Let our friend Spiridion
speak for himself. After setting up his convent, and filling it
with monks, who entertain an immense respect for his wealth and
genius, Father Hebronius, unanimously elected prior, gives himself
up to further studies, and leaves his monks to themselves.
Industrious and sober as they were, originally, they grow quickly
intemperate and idle; and Hebronius, who does not appear among his
flock until he has freed himself of the Catholic religion, as he
has of the Jewish and the Protestant, sees, with dismay, the evil
condition of his disciples, and regrets, too late, the precipitancy
by which he renounced, then and for ever, Christianity. "But, as
he had no new religion to adopt in its place, and as, grown more
prudent and calm, he did not wish to accuse himself unnecessarily,
once more, of inconstancy and apostasy, he still maintained all the
exterior forms of the worship which inwardly he had abjured. But
it was not enough for him to have quitted error, it was necessary
to discover truth. But Hebronius had well looked round to discover
it; he could not find anything that resembled it. Then commenced
for him a series of sufferings, unknown and terrible. Placed face
to face with doubt, this sincere and religious spirit was
frightened at its own solitude; and as it had no other desire nor
aim on earth than truth, and nothing else here below interested it,
he lived absorbed in his own sad contemplations, looked ceaselessly
into the vague that surrounded him like an ocean without bounds,
and seeing the horizon retreat and retreat as ever he wished to
near it. Lost in this immense uncertainty, he felt as if attacked
by vertigo, and his thoughts whirled within his brain. Then,
fatigued with his vain toils and hopeless endeavors, he would sink
down depressed, unmanned, life-wearied, only living in the sensation
of that silent grief which he felt and could not comprehend."

It is a pity that this hapless Spiridion, so eager in his passage
from one creed to another, and so loud in his profession of the
truth, wherever he fancied that he had found it, had not waited a
little, before he avowed himself either Catholic or Protestant, and
implicated others in errors and follies which might, at least, have
been confined to his own bosom, and there have lain comparatively
harmless. In what a pretty state, for instance, will Messrs. Dr--d
and P--l have left their Newman Street congregation, who are still
plunged in their old superstitions, from which their spiritual
pastors and masters have been set free! In what a state, too, do
Mrs. Sand and her brother and sister philosophers, Templars, Saint
Simonians, Fourierites, Lerouxites, or whatever the sect may be,
leave the unfortunate people who have listened to their doctrines,
and who have not the opportunity, or the fiery versatility of
belief, which carries their teachers from one creed to another,
leaving only exploded lies and useless recantations behind them! I
wish the state would make a law that one individual should not be
allowed to preach more than one doctrine in his life, or, at any
rate, should be soundly corrected for every change of creed. How
many charlatans would have been silenced,--how much conceit would
have been kept within bounds,--how many fools, who are dazzled by
fine sentences, and made drunk by declamation, would have remained,
quiet and sober, in that quiet and sober way of faith which their
fathers held before them. However, the reader will be glad to
learn that, after all his doubts and sorrows, Spiridion does
discover the truth (THE truth, what a wise Spiridion!) and some
discretion with it; for, having found among his monks, who are
dissolute, superstitious--and all hate him--one only being,
Fulgentius, who is loving, candid, and pious, he says to him, "If
you were like myself, if the first want of your nature were, like
mine, to know, I would, without hesitation, lay bare to you my
entire thoughts. I would make you drink the cup of truth, which I
myself have filled with so many tears, at the risk of intoxicating
you with the draught. But it is not so, alas! you are made to love
rather than to know, and your heart is stronger than your
intellect. You are attached to Catholicism,--I believe so, at
least,--by bonds of sentiment which you could not break without
pain, and which, if you were to break, the truth which I could lay
bare to you in return would not repay you for what you had
sacrificed. Instead of exalting, it would crush you, very likely.
It is a food too strong for ordinary men, and which, when it does
not revivify, smothers. I will not, then, reveal to you this
doctrine, which is the triumph of my life, and the consolation of
my last days; because it might, perhaps, be for you only a cause of
mourning and despair. . . . . Of all the works which my long
studies have produced, there is one alone which I have not given to
the flames; for it alone is complete. In that you will find me
entire, and there LIES THE TRUTH. And, as the sage has said you
must not bury your treasures in a well, I will not confide mine to
the brutal stupidity of these monks. But as this volume should
only pass into hands worthy to touch it, and be laid open for eyes
that are capable of comprehending its mysteries, I shall exact from
the reader one condition, which, at the same time, shall be a
proof: I shall carry it with me to the tomb, in order that he who
one day shall read it, may have courage enough to brave the vain
terrors of the grave, in searching for it amid the dust of my
sepulchre. As soon as I am dead, therefore, place this writing on
my breast. . . . . Ah! when the time comes for reading it, I think
my withered heart will spring up again, as the frozen grass at the
return of the sun, and that, from the midst of its infinite
transformations, my spirit will enter into immediate communication
with thine!"


Does not the reader long to be at this precious manuscript, which
contains THE TRUTH; and ought he not to be very much obliged to
Mrs. Sand, for being so good as to print it for him? We leave all
the story aside: how Fulgentius had not the spirit to read the
manuscript, but left the secret to Alexis; how Alexis, a stern old
philosophical unbelieving monk as ever was, tried in vain to lift
up the gravestone, but was taken with fever, and obliged to forego
the discovery; and how, finally, Angel, his disciple, a youth
amiable and innocent as his name, was the destined person who
brought the long-buried treasure to light. Trembling and
delighted, the pair read this tremendous MANUSCRIPT OF SPIRIDION.

Will it be believed, that of all the dull, vague, windy documents
that mortal ever set eyes on, this is the dullest? If this be
absolute truth, à quoi bon search for it, since we have long, long
had the jewel in our possession, or since, at least, it has been
held up as such by every sham philosopher who has had a mind to
pass off his wares on the public? Hear Spiridion:--

"How much have I wept, how much have I suffered, how much have I
prayed, how much have I labored, before I understood the cause and
the aim of my passage on this earth! After many incertitudes,
after much remorse, after many scruples, I HAVE COMPREHENDED THAT I
WAS A MARTYR!--But why my martyrdom? said I; what crimne did I
commit before I was born, thus to be condemned to labor and
groaning, from the hour when I first saw the day up to that when I
am about to enter into the night of the tomb?

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