VI

The next day was Sunday.  As the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross fell on a high mass day, Abbe Mouret desired to celebrate the festival with especial solemnity.  He was now full of extraordinary devotion for the Cross, and had replaced the image of the Immaculate Conception in his bedroom by a large crucifix of black wood, before which he spent long hours in worship.  To exalt the Cross, to plant it before him, above all else, in a halo of glory, as the one object of his life, gave him the strength he needed to suffer and to struggle.  He sometimes dreamed of hanging there himself, in Jesus’s place, his head crowned with thorns, nails driven through his hands and feet, and his side rent by spears.  What a coward he must be to complain of an imaginary wound, when God bled there from His whole body, and yet preserved on His lips the blessed smile of the Redemption!  And however unworthy it might be, he offered up his wound as a sacrifice, ended by falling into ecstasy, and believing that blood did really stream from his brow and side and limbs.  Those were hours of relief, for he fancied that all the impurity within him flowed forth from his wounds.  And he then usually drew himself up with the heroism of a martyr, and longed to be called upon to suffer the most frightful tortures, in order that he might bear them without a quiver of the flesh.

At early dawn that day he knelt before the crucifix, and grace came upon him abundantly as dew.  He made no effort, he simply fell upon his knees, to receive it in his heart, to be permeated with it to the marrow of his bones in sweetest and most refreshing fulness.  On the previous day he had prayed for grace in agony, and it had not come.  At times it long remained deaf to his entreaties, and then, when he simply clasped his hands, in quite childlike fashion, it flowed down to succour him.  It came upon him that morning like a benediction, bringing perfect serenity, absolute trusting faith.  He forgot his anguish of the previous days, and surrendered himself wholly to the triumphant joy of the Cross.  He seemed to be cased in such impenetrable armour that the world’s most deadly blows would glide off from it harmlessly.  When he came down from his bedroom, he stepped along with an air of serenity and victory.  La Teuse was astonished, and went to find Desiree, that he might kiss her; and both of them clapped their hands, and said that they had not seen him looking so well for the last six months.

But it was in the church, at high mass, that the priest felt that he had really recovered divine grace.  It was a long time since he had approached the altar with such loving emotion; and he had to make a great effort to restrain himself from weeping whilst he remained with his lips pressed to the altar-cloth.  It was a solemn high mass.  The local rural guard, an uncle of Rosalie, chanted in a deep bass voice which rumbled through the low nave like a hoarse organ.