There are indeed some great men who write
twistedly simply because they cannot help it, but _their_ honesty is
proved by the mass they turn out. What do you turn out, you higglers
and sticklers? Perhaps a bad triolet every six months, and a book of
criticism on something thoroughly threadbare once in five years. If I
had my way -
LECTOR. I am sorry to have provoked all this.
AUCTOR. Not at all! Not at all! I trust I have made myself clear.
Well, as I was saying, they cook worse at Undervelier than any place I
was ever in, with the possible exception of Omaha, Neb. However, I
forgave them, because they were such good people, and after a short
and bitter night I went out in the morning before the sun rose and
took the Moutier road.
The valley in which I was now engaged - the phrase seems familiar - was
more or less like an H. That is, there were two high parallel ranges
bounding it, but across the middle a low ridge of perhaps a thousand
feet. The road slowly climbed this ridge through pastures where cows
with deep-toned bells were rising from the dew on the grass, and where
one or two little cottages and a village already sent up smoke. All
the way up I was thinking of the surfeit of religion I had had the
night before, and also of how I had started that morning without bread
or coffee, which was a folly.
When I got to the top of the ridge there was a young man chopping wood
outside a house, and I asked him in French how far it was to Moutier.
He answered in German, and I startled him by a loud cry, such as
sailors give when they see land, for at last I had struck the boundary
of the languages, and was with pure foreigners for the first time in
my life. I also asked him for coffee, and as he refused it I took him
to be a heretic and went down the road making up verses against all
such, and singing them loudly through the forest that now arched over
me and grew deeper as I descended.
And my first verse was -
Heretics all, whoever you be,
In Tarbes or Nimes, or over the sea,
You never shall have good words from me.
_Caritas non conturbat me._
If you ask me why I put a Latin line at the end, it was because I had
to show that it was a song connected with the Universal Fountain and
with European culture, and with all that Heresy combats. I sang it to
a lively hymn-tune that I had invented for the occasion.
I then thought what a fine fellow I was, and how pleasant were my
friends when I agreed with them. I made up this second verse, which I
sang even more loudly than the first; and the forest grew deeper,
sending back echoes -
But Catholic men that live upon wine
Are deep in the water, and frank, and fine;
Wherever I travel I find it so,
_Benedicamus Domino._
There is no doubt, however, that if one is really doing a catholic
work, and expressing one's attitude to the world, charity, pity, and a
great sense of fear should possess one, or, at least, appear. So I
made up this third verse and sang it to suit -
On childing women that are forlorn,
And men that sweat in nothing but scorn:
That is on all that ever were born,
_Miserere Domine._
Then, as everything ends in death, and as that is just what Heretics
least like to be reminded of, I ended thus -
To my poor self on my deathbed,
And all my dear companions dead,
Because of the love that I bore them,
_Dona Eis Requiem._
I say 'I ended.' But I did not really end there, for I also wrote in
the spirit of the rest a verse of Mea Culpa and Confession of Sin, but
I shall not print it here.
So my song over and the woods now left behind, I passed up a dusty
piece of road into Moutier, a detestable town, all whitewashed and
orderly, down under the hills.
I was tired, for the sun was now long risen and somewhat warm, and I
had walked ten miles, and that over a high ridge; and I had written a
canticle and sung it - - and all that without a sup or a bite. I
therefore took bread, coffee, and soup in Moutier, and then going a
little way out of the town I crossed a stream off the road, climbed a
knoll, and, lying under a tree, I slept.
I awoke and took the road.
The road after Moutier was not a thing for lyrics; it stirred me in no
way. It was bare in the sunlight, had fields on either side; and in
the fields stood houses. In the houses were articulately-speaking
mortal men.
There is a school of Poets (I cannot read them myself) who treat of
common things, and their admirers tell us that these men raise the
things of everyday life to the plane of the supernatural. Note that
phrase, for it is a shaft of light through a cloud revealing their
disgusting minds.
Everyday life! As _La Croix_ said in a famous leading article: _'La
Presse?'_ POOH!' I know that everyday life. It goes with sandals and
pictures of lean ugly people all just like one another in browny
photographs on the wall, and these pictures are called, one 'The House
of Life', or another, 'The Place Beautiful', or yet again a third,
'The Lamp of the Valley', and when you complain and shift about
uneasily before these pictures, the scrub-minded and dusty-souled
owners of them tell you that of course in photographs you lose the
marvellous colour of the original.
