The Cathedral | Page 7

their intellect, is
incarnate in the only material form that they can conceive of. She
assumes the simple aspect these poor creatures love, accepting the blue
and white robes, the crown and wreaths of roses, the trinkets and
garlands and frippery of a first Communion, the ugliest garb.
"There is not indeed a single case where the shepherd maids who saw
Her described Her otherwise than as a 'beautiful lady' with the features
of the Virgin of a village altar, a Madonna of the Saint-Sulpice shops, a
street-corner Queen.
"These two rules are more or less universal," said Durtal to himself.
"As to the Son, it would seem that He never now will reveal Himself in
human form to the masses. Since His appearance to the Blessed Mary
Margaret, whom He employed as a mouthpiece to address the people,
He has been silent. He keeps in the background, giving precedence to
His Mother.
"He, it is true, reserves for Himself a dwelling in the secret places, the
hidden regions, the strongholds of the soul, as Saint Theresa calls them;
but His presence is unseen and His words spoken within us, and
generally not apprehended by means of the senses."
Durtal ceased speaking, confessing to himself how inane were these
reflections, how powerless the human reason to investigate the
inconceivable purposes of the Almighty; and again his thoughts turned
to that journey to Dauphiné which haunted his memory.
"Ah! but the chain of the High Alps and the peaks of La Salette," said
he to himself; "that huge white hotel, that church coloured with dirty
yellow lime-wash, vaguely Byzantine and vaguely Romanesque in its
architecture, and that little cell with the plaster Christ nailed to a flat
black wooden Cross--that tiny Sanctuary plainly white-washed, and so

small that one could step across it in any direction--they were pregnant
with her presence, all the same!"
"Surely She revisited that spot, in spite of Her apparent desertion, to
comfort all comers; She seemed so close at hand, so attentive and so
grieving, in the evening as one sat alone by the light of a candle, that
the soul seemed to burst open like a pod shedding the fruit of sin, the
seeds of evil deeds; and repentance, that had been so tardily evolved,
and sometimes so indefinite, became so suddenly despotic and
unmistakable that the penitent dropped on his knees by the bed, and
buried his head sobbing in the sheets. Ah, those were evenings of
mortal dulness and yet sweetly sad! The soul was rent, its very fibres
laid bare, but was not the Virgin at hand, so pitiful, so motherly, that
after, the worst was over She took the bleeding soul in her arms and
rocked it to sleep like a sick child.
"Then, during the day, the church afforded a refuge from the frenzy of
giddiness that came over one; the eye, bewildered by the precipices on
every side, distracted by the sight of the clouds that suddenly gathered
below and steamed off in white fleece from the sides of the rocks,
found rest under the shelter of those walls.
"And finally, to make up for the horrors of the scene and of the statues,
to mitigate the grotesqueness of the inn-servants, who had beards like
sappers and clothes like little boys--the caps, and holland blouses with
belts, and shiny black breeches, like cast iron, of the children at the
Saint Nicolas school in Paris--extraordinary characters, souls of divine
simplicity expanded there."
And Durtal recollected the admirable scene he had watched there one
morning.
He was sitting on the little plateau, in the icy shade of the church,
gazing before him at the graveyard and the motionless swell of
mountain tops. Far away, in the very sky, a string of beads moved on,
one by one, on the ribbon of path that edged the precipice. And by
degrees these specks, at first merely dark, assumed the bright hues of
dresses, assumed the form of coloured bells surmounted by white

knobs, and at last took shape as a line of peasant women wearing white
caps.
And still in single file they came down the square.
After crossing themselves as they passed the cemetery, they went each
to drink a cup of water at the spring and then turned round; and Durtal,
who was watching them, saw this:
At their head walked an old woman of at least a hundred, very tall and
still upright, her head covered by a sort of hood from which her stiff,
wavy hair escaped in tangled grey locks like iron wire. Her face was
shrivelled like the peel of an onion, and so thin that, looking at her in
profile, daylight could be seen through her skin.
She knelt down at the foot of the first statue, and