A divorce

Contents

CHAFTEB PXQB

I. An Inextricable Difficulty .... 3

II. A Steffathbb 40

CHAPTER I IAN inextkicabm: difpictjlty

When Madame Albert Darras had turned out of the rue de Vaugirard to go into the rue Servandoni, the sight of the narrow, gloomy street of old houses, although so close to the rue du Luxembourg where she lived, only served to increase her fears. She had been there hundreds of times before, without ever having noticed the dreary aspect of this comer of Paris, which suddenly struck her in her present state of mind. She stopped a moment to look at the dilapidated, crowded frontages collapsing on their foundations, the deserted pavement without pedestrians, almost without shops, the high grey waU of Saint Sulpice at the end, and over this dismal silence, the oppression of a cold March sky, black and dense. Though on the point of taking a momentous step, which threatened to upset her innermost existence, the poor harassed woman again felt her resolution weaken, a resolution which had been well pondered and cherished for many days, with countless struggles! A final expression of conflict passed over her face, still

4 A DrVOECE

pretty after forty years, with its wellTpreserved, refined features, an unimpaired delicacy of complexion, and an indefinable agitation which betrayed a keenly acute sensibility. In spite of her absorbing anxiety she did not look her age. The slender figure, the elastic step, the graceful poise of the head, harmonised with the idea of youth which the silver threads mingling with the gold of her hair, and the dark rings under her eyes, half dead with exhaustion, hardly belied. Though sleepless nights had encircled her large eyes with a scarcely perceptible shade, their soft brUliancy, which added a further charm to her blonde beauty, had not been dulled. The elegance, unobstrusive and yet emphasised, of her dress, testified to her consciousness and understanding of her beauty. She had obviously wished for an artistically harmonious effect of quiet and warm shades. A bunch of Parma violets relieved her otter-skin toque, and her coat of the same fur was worn over a violet cloth skirt. Certain costumes, in Paris, by their minute finish and faultless cut, class a woman as certainly as a uniform and galloons denote the rank of an officer. Everything to do with Gabrielle Darras, from the bracelets which glittered on her wrists just outside her muff, to the dainty shoes appearing beneath the long pleated skirt, betokened a woman of the French upper middle class, a satisfied and unobtrusive class, in which, notwithstanding the encroachment of foreign ideas, the traditional taste of our country is perpetuated. Alas! if the slightly

AN nOLXTBIOABLE DIFFIOUIiTT 5

studied character of the costume revealed in the woman who had conceived it, a desire to please and to keep her rank, only too natural — as the continuation of this story will show — in an anomalous position, both coquetry and vanity belonged already to the past, with the years of happiness which alone had kept fresh the flower of youth in the dawning autumn of her age. The present was the anxiety which brought her to a standstill on the pavement of the old street, the final hesitation before a visit which might destroy her peace of mind for ever, the distress of a moral agony in an acute stage, which resolves itself suddenly in a violent determination. With a half-defined gesture of indignant impatience, Madame Darras, as if to spur on her weakening energy, said softly to herself:

"Nothing will have changed to-morrow, nothing, nothing, nothing. . . . What is the use of waiting?"

With a step, firm once more, she went on, her head up, looking at the numbers one after the other; till she came to the house she was seeking, the dilapidated appearance of which made her shudder again. The building, facing north and ominously damp, dated from a period when the street, in which the gravedigger of Saint Sidpice had long lived, was called the rue des Possoyeurs. Nothing had changed for a hundred years in this house, built at two separate periods, one part under the Directory, the other under the Empire, on the b A DIVOECE

remains of some convent garden, by one of the cheap contractors who abounded in those days. Owing to the universal confusion caused by war, they had only poor apprentices, without technical education, at their service. Such buildings, therefore, as the restoration of modern Paris has spared, are examples of bungled masonry and ignorant architecture. The house in its entirety was composed of a main-building, two storeys high, joined by wings at the corners to a sort of frontal building, evidently built first, and decorated with a pretentious row of busts copied from the antique: an Antinous, an Apollo, a Diana. Iron crosses were fixed all over the cracked plaster of the walls, which no longer held together without the help of clamps. Built as it was, it formed a little world of its own whose members had their outlet by separate staircases leading to a paved court, in the centre of which the porter had laid out a fantastic little garden. Shrubs, planted in tubs, put forth a scanty foliage in the sunless atmosphere. There were metal cisterns, old petroleum tins, preserve boxes, filled with soil. Out of these climbing plants were to grow and twine themselves round a trellis of wood and wire, erected in the form of a little bower. The ingenious fellow was engaged in developing this rustic contrivance still further, when Madame Darras, after having knocked on the window-panes of the porter's lodge in vain, pushed open the wicket gate which separated the entrance hall from the court-yard. At the sound of the

AN DTEXTKICABLE DIFFIOULTY 7

bell, the amateur gardener looked round, without however troubling to stop working, and in answer to his visitor's question preferred in a half -muffled voice: — ^Is the Abbe Euvrard at home? ... he replied almost rudely: "I can't say. . . . You had better go up and see. The staircase on the left, second floor, first door on the right. He is a very learned man, so they say, and wise men always live in the clouds. . . ."

The roughness of his speech only showed that he served a house of poor and over-numerous tenants and received very few gratuities. Madame Darras blushed as if she had had a personal affront. Although this visit of hers to the old priest, held in so little esteem by the porter, was not in any way compromising, still she had come unknown to her household, and above all, unknown to her husband. In her remorse at her clandestine action, it seemed to her that the insolent look of the under-bred man interpreted her presence there in an insulting way. Hurrying along, her head bowed, she went through the door he pointed out to her, and up the wooden, uncarpeted staircase, with its dirty and uneven steps. Had she been capable of reflecting at that moment, she would have been struck by the contrast between the miserable lodging in which the man she sought had taken refuge, and the place where she had been to ask for him some days before. In future we will give the Keverend Father Euvrard the title to which he has the right as an Oratorian. He appeared under this titie in the Annual of the Institute, as an independent member of the Academy of Science, before the promulgation of the abominable measures of 1903 against the religious orders. His address then was No. 4, rue des Celestins, all that remains of the magnificent Hotel Fieubet, built by Mansart, and occupied by the Oratorians as the College Massillon. It is indeed discreditable in the last degree to a government and a country, that an illustrious mathematician, approaching old age, should be compelled to leave his community and quiet study, to take refuge in a wretched lodging, and live parsimoniously on his pension and occasional uncertain and ill-paid work. But even if Madame Darras had been able to realise the true meaning for the priest of this little drama, the upset of his harmless ways, the necessity of providing for the wants of material existence, above all the separation from his brethren, such a trial might have appeared morally insignificant to her, compared to the tragedy of family life which she herself was about to precipitate, and of which this visit to the rue Servandoni formed but an episode. As yet the tragedy was latent, but already the terr9r of future conflicts acted so strongly on her nerves that when she had reached the second storey and rung the bell of the door on the right, as the porter had directed, she was obliged to lean for support on the banisters. Steps were heard approaching. They echoed physically in her heart. It was the priest who stopped short, after opening the door, disconcerted for a moment, at the sight

AN INEXTEIOABLE DIITICULTT 9

of his unexpected visitor. The ring at the door had found him at work at the blackboard. He still held a piece of white chalk in his hand. His shabby cassock and unshaven chin, his uncut reddish hair, which even at sixty showed little grey, betokened the negligence of the scholar for whom the outer world and their personal appearance hardly exist. He would have looked almost comical with his short, narrow-chested figure and rosy, florid face, had it not been for the noble cast of his lined and furrowed brow: — ^a brow such as Lavater would have called that of a "searcher after truth," — and the extraordinary beauty of his blue eyes, which still sparkled with the freshness and transparency of youth. His frankly astonished expression at that moment, was the half-waking bewilderment of a mathematician who has been transported a hundred miles from the present, on the powerful wings of some chimerical problem. As Madame Darras did not speak, too much surprised for a moment by the totally different appearance of the celebrated Oratorian from anything she had imagined, he broke the silence.

"You must have mistaken the door, Madame," said he simply.

" No," said she, " you are M. Euvrard, the Eeverend Father Euvrard?" and without allowing him time to answer, otherwise than by a sign, " My Father," she urged, " I implore yon to receive me. I come to you without any introduction, because I have so often heard people sound the praises of your noble character, and of your large heart; and just now I have much need of sympathy."

Thus speaking, she advanced into the narrow passage. The priest, almost mechanically, yielded to the suggestion of this movement. He led the unknown woman into the poor room which served him as a library. His face could not, however, conceal the vexation which he felt, and which was not caused merely by the interruption of his meditations. This woman's dress, her beauty, her troubled air, and her importunity, gave him the impression that he had before him a woman of the world, caught iu some adventure of passion. To a book-worm, who had lived in his study, and who had scarcely ever performed his functions as a priest, since he had taken orders after leaving the Polytechnic School, the prospect of playing the part of adviser in an affair so far removed from the matters which usually occupied his thoughts, already disconcerted him. However, as he was a priest, and a good priest, this lack of sympathy made him feel ashamed. In clearing away the papers from his only arm-chair his impatience disclosed itself, and he justified it as best he could, throwing the blame of his impolite vexation upon the disorderly state of his room. His removal dated two weeks back, and he had not yet arranged his books, which had been laid in heaps, between bundles of notes and of portfolios, upon the deal shelves lining the walls of his study.

AN INEXTEIOABLE DrFPIOULTY 11

A second-hand carpet covered part of the rough, cheerless floor; four rush-bottomed chairs, a corner desk, and a prie-Dieu completed the furniture of what was but a cell. The room was lighted by two windows, to which the scholar had nailed, with his own hands and all awry, a pair of curtains, bought ready-made and too short. There was no fire, and the marble chimney-piece supported, near a spirit lamp, a saucepan, an earthen filter, and the remains of a breakfast — ^two boiled eggs and a cup of coffee. The host of this mean lodging prepared his own meals with much indifference, as one migh| gather from the blackboard placed upon an easel between flie windows, and covered with the cabalistic scrawls which constituted his intellectual retreat from the world. He pointed these out by a gesture as he offered the chair to the lady, and he said: "I blush, Madame, to receive you in such an untidy den. Since you know my name you will know also that I am an outlaw. It seems that I have brought danger to the state by tracing these formulas in a house where other Fathers study history, archaeology, and Hebrew. Let us hope that the poor state is safe now."

He laughed at this mild sarcasm, his only retaliation against his persecutors. Then his own words having led him back by a natural association to his first idea, "Amongst these Fathers several used to give counsel, and still do so. Perhaps it would be better if I were to give you the address of one of these? If you need practical advice, a mathematician is but little qualified to give it you. Our science "

"It is precisely your reputation for learning," interrupted Madame Darras, "which influenced me in undertaking this visit.

" As I told you, I have often heard of you, in the first place from my husband. He is an old pupil of the Polytechnic School, like yourself it seems, though certainly he is not suspected of any partiality towards the cloth. Because of this I shall ask you not to mention my name. He and his friends hold your works in great estimation. And then, you had the son of one of my friends as a pupil at Juilly. From my husband I heard of your great learning; I became acquainted through my friend with your great kindness, and when I sought a priest to whom I could speak in a momentous hour of my life, your name came to my mind for these two reasons. My situation is so exceptional that I shrink from consulting an ordinary ecclesiastic with his narrow mind. There are so many who seem to make it their sole ideal to estrange souls still further from God."

"I am at your service, Madame," replied the Oratorian. "It is unnecessary for you to tell me your name; I prefer not to know it." The enigmatical last phrase used by this singular visitor had confirmed his suspicions. Persuaded that he was going to receive the confession of a repentant sinner, the priest in the mathematician began to be awakened. The profound

AN INEXTRICABLE DIFFIOULTY 13

saying of the apostle: Omnibus omnia f actus svim, will be always the emblem of a heart truly sacerdotal.

Madame Darras saw an expression of grave attention replace upon his suddenly transformed face the rather droll confusion which had disconcerted her. Those blue eyes, veiled just before in a cloud of distraction, fixed themselves upon her with singular directness and the accents of the priest assumed an authority, at once indulgent and imperious like that of the doctor at the bedside, as he added, " I repeat to you, however, that I am less qualified than one of those ecclesiastics whom you have miscalled ordinary, and who have had more experience in such matters than I have. But, since you have asked for my feeble light, what is it you wish? "

" It is, my Father," — and in this woman's voice there thrilled the touching sincerity of one who prepares herself to lay bare an internal wound which she has for a long time hidden from the world, — "it is that I have been tormented for weeks, for months, by a desire to become reconciled to God, by a desire which has now become so acute as to be insufferable. I was very devout when I was young. Afterwards I ceased to be so. I had doubts. It seemed to me that I could no longer believe, and for twelve years I. have left off religious exercises. I say that it seemed to me, because I have never failed to recognise the beneficent influence of religion. The proof of this is that, having a daughter, I wished her to be baptised. This was not accomplished without a struggle. The child has grown; she is eleven years of age. She is going to take her first Communion."

Madame Darras stopped as if, having now come to a part of her story involving her more intimate thoughts and feelings, she could no longer find appropriate words. This embarrassment, the indirect and hesitating character of her opening statement, and, further, the coincidence between the time at which her child had been bom, and the date when the mother had withdrawn herself from the sacraments of the Church, all these indications harmonised only too well with the hypothesis already formed in the mind of M. Buvrard. This woman was married. She had said so herself. She had committed a sin. Her child was not by her husband. Her allusion to priests who alienate souls still further from God had been inspired no doubt by her having encountered an over-severe confessor. M. Euvrard thought the best course would be to make the painful confession more easy for her. " Your child will owe to you the salvation of her soul," he said, "and to have saved a soul blots out many sins, especially when these faults may have had, if not as an excuse, at least as an explanation, some overpowering impulse. Take courage, Madame."

As he spoke a blush came to the cheeks of the unknown lady. The poor Oratorian felt himself blush too. The flash of pride kindled in the glance of his visitor revealed to him his mistake concerning the

AN INEXTRICABLE DIFFICULTY 15

nature of her appeal. No. This was no repentant heroine of a vulgar story of adultery, and he listened to her as she continued to reveal her confidences in a voice now rendered firm by her resentment against his suspicion.

"KTo, my Father, no; I have nothing with which to reproach myself .of the kind you think. I am a virtuous woman. If I have ceased to practise my religious exercises, I have nothing for which to blush in the motive. I have committed no sin. I have always been loyal. I had no remorse in being out of the Church. I was at peace with my conscience. I have told you I had lost faith. That faith slumbered. It has been awakened by the contemplation of my daughter's faith. It is this which brings me here. How this work has been accomplished I do not know myself. There has been a train of very ordinary events. When Jeaime had to go to her catechism class, I accompanied her to that little imderground chapel of Saint Sulpice, at the end of your street, where I went too when I was her age. All my former emotions revived as I shared her feelings. I saw her fervent as I had once been, her spirit open itself to religious ideas as mine had opened, the love of God take possession of her as of me in former times. Was it my childhood which lived again in my heart? Was it something else? I repeat to you I do not know. I began to go to Mass again on account of Jeanne, and as a matter of form, I began to pray again, impelled to do

SO at first by a feeling of regret. I gave myself up to that feeling for the past which makes us love to revisit the places where we lived when we were young, to meet again kindred who have been lost to sight for many years, to see our old friends. A time came when I realised that this past was once more the present. I became conscious of God. I became conscious of my soul. Yes, there is a God, and He listens to us. We have a soul which comes from Him, which lives in Him. These two obvious facts impressed themselves upon me, ever more clearly, ever more powerfully, in no other way than by supervising my daughter at her prayers; every morning and every evening I listened to her saying the words ' Our Father ' and saw clearly into the depths of her being. I saw there absolute faith in the goodness of this heavenly father. I said to myself, I was forced to say to myself, if this heart, so pure, so tender, so sincere, is deceived in that confidence, nothing in this world can have meaning, sense, or import. Is it possible? Life would be a horrible nightmare if transports like those of that child towards her Creator were only an illusion. The mother in me yielded itself to that idea. But, oh, this point has not been reached without struggles! The arguments which I had heard urged against religion arose again, but none of them were of any avail against the voice of the good God. Why attempt to argue when one feels, when a reality is there before you, actual as yourself, as the air which you breathe, as the

AN" INEXTRICABLE DIFFICULTY 17

objects which you touch? I believed again. I no longer strove against a feeling so much the stronger because it brought me into closer intimacy with my child and with all the emotions of her growing piety. The more I partook of these emotions, the more I loved my child, and also the more I believed in God. You cannot imagine what ardour of love the prospect of her first Communion stirs in her; how her tenderness and her intelligence are exalted and illumined by that prospect; what miracles of perfection I witness daily in that young heart. It is God whom I see directing her and, through her, directing me also. But it is not to tell you in detail this transformation in my thoughts that I am here, my Father. I have said enough to enable you to understand through what experiences I have passed, and how I have attained to this desire which includes all the rest: Jeanne goes to her first Communion in three weeks; I wish to go to Communion with her."

" You have not only saved your daughter's soul," replied the priest; "you have saved your own, Madame. Do not let your long estrangement from God trouble you. You called Him the good God and you were right. He asks only an opportunity to pardon you. Our Lord is always with us. You are right in believing that He directs you. He it is who has guided you hour by hour to the present time; be sure of that. You wish to go to Communion. How simple! I am ready to receive your confession whenever you desire; here — at once."

The worthy man spoke in a tone softened by regret for his first mistake. Her story awakened in him a very singular feeling. If he had the failings 'to which the abstract mind is subject, he had also its advantages, amongst others that power of mystic absorption which so often accompanies mathematical genius, as in the case of Pascal, Leibnitz, Newton, or, in our own day, Cauchy, Puiseux, and Hermitte. An effort was needed when he expected the narration of a love story, but his interest was at once excited to the highest point by this avowal, marked though it was by little intellectual grasp or logical cohesion. He saw in it, as did Jeanne's mother, the mysterious communion of God and a soul. Still, one of the elements of the problem seemed to require explanation. When she regained her faith why had she not gone immediately to the sacraments? Why this delay? Why this difficulty in returning? Her vigorous insistence on her virtue put aside all suspicion of a guilty secret. M. Euvrard had no idea that he, as a priest and in virtue of his sacred office, was the immovable barrier which she foresaw between her and the Church, and the next minute he was listening with wonder mingled with dismay as she repeated one of his last phrases.

" No, Father, it is not so simple. It is necessary that you should know more, and that I should tell you who I am and why you see me so agitated. I am married; I have already told you that. I ought to add that this is

AN INEXTKIOABLE DIFFICULTY 19

my second marriage and that my first husband is still living."

"Then," asked the priest after a silence, "you are divorced and remarried? "

" Yes," said she.

" And your daughter? "

" My daughter is born of my second marriage."

"You are divorced and remarried," repeated M. Euvrard, and, as if speaking to himself, " Poor woman! I understand everything."

Then turning to her: " 'No. It is not easy. You cannot go to Communion, living in such a way. I must not even receive your confession. I could not give you absolution."

He pronounced these last words with none of the timidity of the scholar disturbed in his studies. There was no longer in his voice the pity of an old man touched by a sad confession. The priest pronounced in the name of his faith a sentence founded upon an immutable law and from which there was no appeal. The anxious face of Madame Darras became still more contracted on hearing his sentence, though she betrayed no surprise. She showed only deeper despondency as she replied, " I knew your answer beforehand. Father; I have heard it already, as you guessed, I dare say, from what I told you. I have spoken to another priest, and he stopped me at once just as you did. I know too the condition you are going to impose upon me; to leave my husband. Let me repeat to you what I said to the other priest. Thirteen years ago I was twenty-nine years of age. I was the most unhappy of women. The man to whom my family married me, and from whom I was obliged to separate, had applied to have our separation converted into a divorce and had succeeded. He married again. I was left alone in the world with a son nine years old, of whom the Courts had given me the guardianship. How was I to bring him up? How overcome all the difficulties with which a divorced woman is beset even when she has right on her side? It was then that another man, whom I had known at home, but only slightly, of whom I had quite lost sight after my marriage, came back into ^ay life. I found he had loved me as a young girl, but had never told his love. He was poor then, and I was rich. He never married because of me. He struggled to win me when I was free, and to forget me when I was no longer free. After the divorce he reappeared. He was prosperous now, occupied a brilliant position, and was thus able to marry whom he pleased. Faithful to his first love he asked me to marry him. I accepted this devotion and since that day his tenderness has never failed. He has been the best of husbands, to my son the best of fathers, and were it the price of my eternal salvation I would never leave him, never."

"I cannot quite understand then why you come to ine," replied M. Euvrard, "nor, to use your own expression, what sympathy you need. You know enough

Alf IKEXTRICABLB DIFFIOULTT 21

about the laws of the Church to be aware that your second marriage counts for nothing in her eyes and never could. By acting as you have done you have broken the laws of the Church. You persist in this infraction, and at the same time you speak of resuming a life of religion, and of participating again in the sacraments of the Church! The contradiction is so obvious that you have noticed it yourself. You wish to be both inside the Church and outside. To such a problem there is no solution."

" There is one," interrupted Madame Darras. Her earnestness showed how much importance she attached to this part of their interview. The colour returned to her cheeks. Her eyes flashed, and she repeated, " Yes, there is one solution, but it could only be accepted by a priest who was broad-minded, very broad-minded. That is why I came to submit my case to you. My second marriage does not count in the eyes of the Church. You tell me so and I know it. You add that it never can count. That is true so long as the first marriage exists. But if the first were broken? The Church does not recognise divorce. Good. But it recognises the annulment of a marriage. Thirteen years ago, when I entertained the idea of this second marriage, I thought of applying to Eome, but I did not. My future husband disliked the idea, and I thought little of religious belief at the time. Is it too late now? Since the Church compels me to submit to her laws she ought surely to give me the means of doing so. The reasons I should have urged then, I will urge now. They have not lost their force. I told you my parents married me. If they did not use force in the material sense of that word, it is not the less true that they overruled my will. I was not a free agent, in any case I certainly did not know to whom I was being married. Had I known, I would have died rather than consent to such a detestable union. It was no mere case of incompatibility of temper. I put up with all his faults — ^he was the father of my son. Nor was it ordinary infidelity — he deceived me and I forgave him. But I could neither bear nor forgive a vice which is the most abject and the most degrading in the eyes of people of our class. He drank, and drunkenness made him a madman. During five years, I suffered for the sake of my son horrible scenes in which threats and actual brutality were not the most disgusting features. It was only when my life and that of my child were in danger that I found the courage to leave him. He had struck me with such violence that I took weeks to recover, and he was going to strike him, him! I ask you, Father, did I consent to marry a madman, and a wicked madman? Is there not in what I have told you sufficient cause for the breaking of a marriage in which both I and my parents were deceived? My Father, if I pledge myself to demand that annulment which I cannot fail to obtain; if I promise you that I will do everything to persuade my second husband to support me in this application, if