The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 49, November, 1861. VariousЧитать онлайн книгу.
Not far beyond it waited a terrible trial, perhaps as great a sorrow as the whole life was to bring. Aurore's diligence in her studies was marred by the secret intention, long cherished, of escaping to her mother, and adopting with her her former profession of dress-maker. Having one day answered reproof with a petulant assertion of her desire to rejoin her mother at all hazards, the grandmother determined to put an end to such projects by a severe measure. Aurore was banished from her presence during a certain number of days. Neither friend nor servant spoke to her. She describes naturally enough this lonely, uncomforted condition, in which, more than ever, she meditated upon the wished-for return to her mother, and the beginning with her of a new life of industry and privation. Summoned at last to her grandmother's bedside, and kneeling to ask for reconciliation, she is forced to stay there, and to listen to the most cruel and literal account of her mother's life, its early errors, and their inevitable consequences.
"All that she narrated was true in point of fact, and attested by circumstances whose detail admitted of no doubt. But this terrible history might have been unveiled to me without injury to my respect and love for my mother, and, thus told, it would have been much more probable and more true. It would have sufficed to tell all the causes of her misfortunes,—loneliness and poverty from the age of fourteen years, the corruption of the rich, who are there to lie in wait for hunger and to blight the flower of innocence, the pitiless rigorism of opinion, which allows no return and accepts no expiation. They should also have told me how my mother had redeemed the past, how faithfully she had loved my father, how, since his death, she had lived humble, sad, and retired. Finally, my poor grandmother let fall the fatal word. My mother was a lost woman, and I a blind child rushing towards a precipice."
The horror of this disclosure did not work the miracle anticipated. Aurore submitted indeed outwardly, but a spell of hardness and hopelessness was drawn around her young heart, which neither tears nor tenderness could break. The blow struck at the very roots of life and hope in her. Self-respect was wounded in its core. If the mother who bore her was vile, then she was vile also. All object in life seemed gone. She tried to live from day to day without interest, without hope. From her dark thoughts she found refuge only in extravagant gayety, which brought physical weariness, but no repose of mind. She, who had been on the whole a docile, manageable child, became so riotous, unreasonable, and insupportable, that the only alternative of utter waste of character seemed to be the discipline and seclusion of the convent. She was accordingly taken to Paris, and received as a pensionnaire in the Convent des Anglaises, which had been, in the Revolution, her grandmother's prison. To Aurore it was rather a place of refuge than a place of detention. The chords of life had been cruelly jarred in her bosom, and the discords in her character thence resulting agonized her more than they displeased others. As for the extraordinary communication which had led to this disorder of mind, we do not hesitate, under the circumstances, to pronounce it an act of gratuitous cruelty. Of all pangs that can assail a human heart, none transcends that of learning the worthlessness of those we love; and to lay this burden, which has crushed and crazed the strongest natures, upon the tender heart of a child, was little less than murderous. Nor can the motive assigned justify an act so cruel; since modern morality increasingly teaches that the means must justify themselves, as well as the end. In spite of these odious revelations, the child felt that her love for her mother was undiminished, and a pitying comprehension of the natural differences between the two nearest to her on earth slowly arose in her mind, allowing her to do justice to the intentions of both.
Aurore wandered at first about the convent with only a vague feeling of loneliness. The young girls, French and English, who composed its classes, surveyed her in the beginning with distrust. Soon the youngest and wildest set, called Diables, accorded her affiliation, and in their company she managed to increase tolerably the anxieties and troubles of the under-mistresses.
She was early initiated into the great secret, the traditionary legend of the convent. This pointed at the existence, in some subterranean dungeon, of a wretched prisoner, or perhaps of several, cut off from liberty and light; and to deliver the victim became the object of a hundred wild expeditions, by day and by night, through the uninhabited rooms and extensive vaults of the ancient edifice. The little ladies hoarded with care their candle-ends,—they tumbled up and down ruinous staircases, listened for groans and complaints, tried to undermine walls and partitions, fortunately with little success. The victim was never found, but her story was bequeathed from class to class, and her deliverance was always the object and excuse of the Diables.
After much time wasted in these pursuits, attended by a mediocre progress in the ordinary course of study and what the French call leçons d'agrément, and we accomplishments, a critical moment came for Aurore. She was weary of frolic and mischief,—she had tormented the nuns to her heart's content. She knew not what new comedy to invent. She thought of putting ink in the holy water,—it had been done already; of hanging the parrot of the under-mistress,—but they had given her so many frights, there would be nothing new in that. She saw, one evening, the door of the little chapel open;—its quiet, its exquisite cleanliness and simplicity attracted her. She had followed thither to mock at the awkward motions of a little hunch-backed sister at her devotions,—but once within she forgot this object. A veiled nun was kneeling in her stall at prayer,—a single lamp feebly illuminated the white walls,—a star looked in at her through the dim window. The nun slowly rose and departed. Aurore was left alone. A calm, such as she had never known, took possession of her,—a sudden light seemed to envelop her,—she heard the mystical sentence vouchsafed to Saint Augustin: "Toile, lege!" Turning to see who whispered it, she found herself alone.
"I cherished no vain illusion. I did not believe in a miraculous voice. I understood perfectly the sort of hallucination into which I had fallen. I was neither elated nor frightened at it. Only, I felt that Faith was taking possession of me, as I had wished, through the heart. I was so grateful, in such delight, that a torrent of tears inundated my face. 'Yes, yes, the veil is torn!' I said, 'I see the light of heaven! I will go! But, before all, let me render thanks. To whom? how? What is thy name?' said I to the unknown God who called me to him. 'How shall I pray to thee? What language worthy of thee and capable of expressing its love can my soul speak to thee? I know not; but thou readest my heart,—thou seest that I love thee!'"
From this moment, Aurore gave herself up to the passion of devotion, which, in natures like hers, is often the first to unclose. There are all sorts of religious experiences,—some poor and shallow, some rich and deep, with every variety of shade between. But wherever Love is capable of being heroic, Religion will also find room to work its larger miracles. Aurore's devotion was not likely to be a frigid recognition of doctrine, nor to consist in the minute care of an infinitesimal soul, whose salvation could be of small avail to any save its possessor. Her religion could only be a sympathetic and contagious flame, running from soul to soul, as beacon-fires catch at night and illuminate a whole tract of country. From this time she became patient, thorough, and laborious in all the duties of her age and place. A closer sympathy now drew her to the nuns, with several of whom she formed happy and intimate relations. The convent life became for the time her ideal of existence, and she formed the plan, so common among young girls educated in this manner, of taking the veil herself, when such a step should become possible. This hidden purpose she carried with her, when, at the age of sixteen, she quitted the convent with bitter regret, fearing the strange world, fearing a conventional marriage, and looking back to the pleasant restraints of tutelage, whose thorn hedges are always in blossom when we view them from the dusty ways and traffic of real, responsible life.
Aurore exchanged her convent for a life of equal retirement; for her grandmother, fearing lest the pietistic influences to which she had been subjected should awake too dominant a chord in the passionate nature of her pupil, brought her to Nohant at once, where, for a few days, she realized the delight of a greater freedom from rule and surveillance. It was pleasant for once, she says, to sleep into la grasse matinée, to wear a bright gingham instead of her dress of purple serge, and to comb her hair without being reminded that it was indecent for a young girl to uncover her temples. The projects of marriage which had alarmed her were abandoned for the present, and she was left to enjoy, unmolested, the pleasure of finding again the friends and playmates of her youth. It soon appeared, however, that the convent education had left many a lacune, and the grandmother felt that the result of the three years' claustration