The Dream (Oxford World's Classics), page 7
Hubertine found an aid in the book issued by the Child Welfare Services. Every three months when the tax official came to sign it, Angélique remained plunged in gloom until evening. A sharp pain ran through her breast if she chanced to glimpse the book as she fetched a bobbin of gold thread from the sideboard. On a day when she seethed with angry spite, and nothing could calm her, she was rummaging wildly through things at the back the drawer when the sight of the book appeared to stun her. Heaving great sobs, she threw herself at the Huberts’ feet, humbling herself before them, stammering that they had been wrong to take her in, and that she was not fit to eat their bread. From that day on, the mere thought of the book was often enough to keep her anger in check.
In this way Angélique reached the age of 12, the age of first communion. The atmosphere of calm that enfolded the little house slumbering in the shadow of the cathedral, fragrant with incense and set quivering by hymns, aided the slow improvement of this wild shoot, uprooted from goodness knows where and replanted in the mystical soil of the narrow garden. Then, too, there was the ordered life they led, working every day, isolated from the outside world, with no sound from the sleepy neighbourhood ever reaching them. But the gentle spirit of the place was shaped above all by the great love the Huberts shared, which seemed to have been deepened by an incurable remorse. For his part, Hubert spent his days trying to efface from his wife’s memory the injury he had done her by marrying her against her mother’s will. After the death of their child, he had felt very clearly that she blamed him for this punishment, and he had striven to obtain forgiveness. This had long since been granted; she loved him deeply. At times though he doubted it, and these doubts made him wretched. In order to be certain that the dead woman, her stubborn mother, had indeed relented as she lay there in the ground, he would have liked to have another child. This child of mercy was their sole desire, and he lived at his wife’s feet, worshipping her with a conjugal passion that was both ardent and chaste, as though in a state of unending betrothal. Though he did not dare kiss her hair in front of their apprentice, he still entered their bedroom, after twenty years of marriage, troubled by the strong emotions a young groom feels on his wedding night. Their bedroom was styled simply, painted in white and grey, with wallpaper patterned in blue posies, and walnut furniture upholstered in cretonne. No sound ever came from it, but affection emanated from there, warming the whole house. Angélique was surrounded by love, and grew up very passionate and pure.
A book completed the undertaking. As she rummaged about one morning, turning everything on a dusty shelf in the workshop upside down, she discovered among the discarded embroidery tools a very old copy of The Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine.* This French translation, bearing a date of 1549, must have been bought many years before by some master vestment-maker intending to consult the pictures which were full of very useful information about the saints. For a long time she was interested in little apart from the pictures, old woodcut engravings fashioned with simple faith, which enchanted her. As soon as she was allowed to go off and play, she took the quarto volume, bound in yellow calfskin, and started leafing slowly through it; first came the half-title, in red and black, with the bookseller’s address, ‘At Paris, in the Rue Neufve Nostre Dame, at the sygne of Saynte Johan Baptest’; and then the title, flanked by medallion images of the four apostles, and framed below by the adoration of the three magi and above by the triumph of Jesus Christ trampling on the bones of the dead. And then the pictures followed on, ornamented letters, and large and middle-sized woodcuts in the running text, across page after page: the Annunciation, an enormous angel showering a frail little Mary with rays of light; the Massacre of the Innocents, cruel Herod in the middle of a pile of small corpses; the crib, with Jesus between the Virgin and St Joseph, who is holding a candle; St John the Almoner giving to the poor;* St Matthias smashing an idol;* St Nicholas in bishop’s garb with children in a tub* to his right; and all the female saints, Agnes, her neck pierced by a sword, Christina, her breasts torn by pincers, Genevieve, with her lambs following her, Juliana receiving a flogging,* Anastasia being burnt alive,* Mary of Egypt doing penance in the desert,* Mary Magdalene carrying the bowl of perfume.* More and yet more of them streamed by, each inspiring greater terror and pity; it was like one of those tales, at once appalling and enchanting, that make your heart ache and moisten your eyes with tears.
Little by little, Angélique became curious to know exactly what the engravings represented. The two crowded columns of text, which remained as black as at their first printing on the yellowed paper, frightened her with their barbaric Gothic letters. However, she grew accustomed to them, and learnt to decipher the characters and understand the abbreviations and contractions, and became adept at guessing the meanings of expressions and archaic words. And at last she was able to read them fluently, and rejoiced as though she had resolved some mystery, and was filled with triumph whenever she overcame some new difficulty. As she toiled away, a dazzling world emerged out of the darkness and she entered into celestial splendour. The few classics she owned, cold, dry tomes, ceased to exist for her. It was the Legend alone that fired her passion, and she would remain hunched over it, her brow resting on her hands, so entirely absorbed that ordinary life faded far away, and she was oblivious to time passing. And all this while, out of the depths of the unknown, she beheld the great dream blossoming.
God is a kindly figure, and then there are all the saints. They are born predestined, voices herald them, and their mothers have dazzling dreams. They are all strong, beautiful and triumphant. They are wreathed in light and their faces are radiant. Dominic has a star on his brow.* They can read the minds of men and repeat aloud the thoughts of others. They have the gift of prophecy and their predictions always come true. Their number is infinite: there are bishops and monks, virgins and prostitutes, beggars and lords of royal blood, naked hermits living off roots, old men dwelling in caves with does. They all share the same story: they grow up in the love of Christ, believe in him, refuse to sacrifice to false gods, are tortured and die in glory. Emperors grow weary of persecuting them. Hung upon a cross, Andrew* preaches to twenty thousand people over the course of two days. Mass conversions take place, and forty thousand men are baptized all at once. And if crowds do not convert after witnessing miracles, they flee in terror. Saints are accused of practising magic, they are given riddles which they unravel, and are pitted against learned men who are struck dumb. When they are brought into temples to be sacrificed, idols are overturned by a breath of air and shatter. A virgin ties her girdle around the neck of a Venus, which crumbles to dust. The ground trembles and the temple of Diana collapses, struck by a thunderbolt; people rise up in revolt, civil wars break out. And it is common then for torturers to ask to be baptized, and for kings to kneel at the feet of ragged saints, who have taken a vow of poverty. Sabina flees her father’s house.* Paula abandons her five children* and abstains from bathing. They are purified by self-denial and fasting. They abjure wheat and oil. Germanus sprinkles his meals with ashes.* Bernard is unable to distinguish between different foods, and only recognizes the taste of pure water.* Agathon keeps a stone in his mouth for three years.* Augustine despairs of his sins,* such as taking enjoyment in watching a dog run. They disdain health and prosperity, and rejoice in the privations that kill the body. And so they dwell triumphantly in gardens where there are stars instead of flowers and the leaves of trees burst into song. They slay dragons, raise tempests and calm them; they hover in ecstasies two cubits* above the ground. Widows provide for their needs while they are alive, and are told in dreams to go and bury them when they die. Extraordinary events befall them, marvellous adventures, as thrilling as any of the old romances. And when their graves are opened after hundreds of years, sweet odours waft forth.
Facing the saints, there are devils, innumerable devils. ‘They flee about us as flyes and fyl the ayer withoute nombre. This ayer is as full of devylles and of wycked spirytes as the sonne bemes ben full of small motes, whiche is small dust or poudre.’* And the battle wages eternally. The saints are always victorious, but they must repeat each victory over and again. The more devils driven away, the more return. Six thousand six hundred and sixty-six of them are counted in the body of a single woman, who is rid of them by Fortunatus.* They wriggle about, and speak and cry out in the voices of the possessed, whose flanks they set wildly aquiver. They get in through noses, ears and mouths, and exit howling after terrible struggles lasting days. At every bend in the road there flounders a man possessed, and a passing saint joins battle. Basil wrestles to save a young man, * After lying down in a graveyard, Macarius spends a whole night defending himself against an onslaught.* At the bedsides of the dead, the angels have no choice but to rain blows on the demons if they wish to take possession of the departing souls. On other occasions, it is a battle of minds and wits. Jokes are played, each tries to outsmart the other; the apostle Peter and Simon the Magician vie to outdo one another with their miracles.* Satan is always on the prowl, adopting any form he likes, disguising himself as a woman, or even taking on the appearance of a saint. But, as soon as he is defeated, his true ugliness appears: ‘A blacke catte, whiche was more than a grete dogge, and had grete eyen and flambygne, her tongue longe, brode, and blody, and longe unto the navell. She had the tayle croked and reysed up on hygh, and shewed the after ende, out of whiche yssued a terryble stenche.’* He is all they think about, the great object of their hate. They fear him and they mock him. He is not even treated fairly. However terrible his cauldrons may seem, he remains the eternal dupe. All the pacts he makes are broken, by trickery or violence. Frail women knock him to the ground, Margaret crushes his head beneath her foot,* Juliana staves in his flanks with blows from an iron chain. And the sum of all this is that serenity prevails, along with scorn for evil, since it is impotent, and a conviction in the efficacy of good, since virtue rules supreme. All one has to do is cross oneself, and the devil is powerless: he lets out a howl and vanishes. When a virgin makes the sign of the cross, all the regions of hell cave in.
In the battle between the saints and Satan, many appalling torments are inflicted. Torturers smear martyrs with honey and leave them to the flies. They are made to walk barefoot over broken glass and glowing embers, and are dropped into ditches containing reptiles. They are lashed with lead-tipped whips, and are nailed alive into coffins, which are thrown into the sea. They are hung up by the hair and set on fire; their wounds are doused with quicklime, boiling pitch, or molten lead. They are made to sit in chairs of white-hot bronze; glowing helmets are thrust on their heads. Their flanks are burned with torches, their thighs broken on anvils, their eyes torn out, their tongues cut off, their fingers broken one by one. But their suffering does not matter; the saints remain disdainful, and accept further agonies impatiently, euphorically. A miraculous power protects them at all times, and they drive their torturers to exhaustion. John drinks poison and is none the worse for it.* Bristling with arrows, Sebastian* smiles. On other occasions, arrows hang suspended in mid-air to the martyr’s right or left, or turn around and put out the eyes of the archer who had loosed them. They drink molten lead as though it were iced water. Lions lie down and lick their hands like lambs. St Lawrence finds his gridiron* pleasantly cool, and calls out: ‘Thou cursed wretche, thou hast rosted the one syde, turne that other and ete, for it hath rosted ynough.’* Cecilia is set in a boiling bath ‘whiche her semed was a place colde and well attempered, and she felte not one drope of swette’.* Christina is impervious to all forms of torture: her father has her beaten by twelve men who grow too weary to continue; another torturer takes over, ties her to a wheel, and lights a fire beneath her, and the fire spreads, incinerating fifteen hundred people. He throws her into the sea with a stone tied around her neck, but angels bear her up. Jesus comes and baptizes her himself, and then entrusts her to St Michael,* who brings her back to land. And, at the last, another torturer locks her in a room with vipers, which coil around her neck in a gentle caress, and so he leaves her in an oven for five days, but she just sings, and feels not the slightest discomfort. Vincent, who is subjected to even greater torments, remains untouched by pain: his limbs are broken, his ribs are raked with iron combs until his entrails spill out, he is stabbed all over with long needles, he is thrown onto a brazier whose coals are doused by the blood pouring from his wounds, he is returned to prison and his feet nailed to a post. Dismembered, burnt, his stomach gaping open, he remains alive; and his torments are transformed into the sweetness of flowers, the dungeon fills with dazzling light, and angels accompany him in song, all on a carpet of roses.* ‘The swete sowne of the songe, and the swetenes and odour of the floures was smelled out of the pryson. And whan the kepers had seen this that they sawe within, they were converted and turned to the fayth. And whan Dacian herde this he was wood and sayd: What shall we do to hym more, we ben overcomen.’* This is the common cry of the tormentors; and the account always finishes with their conversion or their death. Their hands are struck by paralysis. They perish violently: they choke on fish bones, they are crushed by lightning bolts, their chariots splinter beneath them. The dungeons containing the saints fill with radiance and Mary and the apostles slip effortlessly through the walls. Help is always at hand and apparitions descend from an opening in the heavens, where God appears, holding a gem-encrusted crown. And so death is a thing of joy, which they defy, and parents are elated when one of their own succumbs. On Mount Ararat, ten thousand men expire on their crosses. Near Cologne, the eleven thousand virgins are slaughtered by the Huns. In the circuses, bones crack between the teeth of wild beasts. At the age of 3, Quiricus, who is endowed by the Holy Spirit with the ability to talk like a grown man, suffers martyrdom.* Children at the breast hurl insults at torturers. Disdain and loathing for the flesh, that tawdry human covering, sharpen their pain with exquisite celestial pleasure. It matters little whether the flesh is torn, crushed, or burnt; they welcome torment, endlessly: the flesh can never be violated enough. They all call out for a blade of iron, for a sword-thrust through the throat, which is the only thing that can kill them. Tied to the stake, with a wild, jeering mob all around her, Eulalia inhales the flames* so that she may die more quickly. God grants her wish, and a white dove flies out of her mouth and ascends to heaven.
Angélique was filled with wonder as she read. The litany of horrors, the triumph of joy—she thrilled to all this, so far was it out of the ordinary. But she was fond too of other, gentler aspects of the Legend—the animals, for instance, a whole ark’s worth, which inhabit it. She was fascinated by the crows and eagles whose task it was to feed the hermits. And how many marvellous stories there were about lions! The helpful lion that digs a grave for Mary of Egypt; the flaming lion that guards the door to the houses of ill repute where the proconsuls bring the virgins; and Jerome’s lion, which is given an ass to look after and, after it is stolen, goes off and fetches it back.* And then there is the wolf that is struck by remorse and returns a stolen pig. Bernard excommunicates flies,* which fall out of the air, dead. Remi* and Blaise feed birds at their table, bless them and restore them to health.* Francis, ‘full of ryght grete simplycite lyke a dove’, preaches to them, and exhorts them to love God.* ‘There was also on a tyme a byrde upon a fygge tree besyde his cell, whiche sange oft full swetely, and saynt Fraunceys put forth his hande and called that byrde. And anone the byrde obeyed and came upon his hande. And he sayd to her: Synge my syster and prayse thy Lord. And than anone she songe, and departed not tyll she had lycence.’* This passage was an endless source of fascination to Angélique, who had the idea she might try summoning swallows herself, and was curious to see if they would come. And then there were the stories she couldn’t reread without laughing herself silly. Christopher, the gentle giant who carried Jesus,* brought tears of hilarity to her eyes. She choked with mirth over the story of the governor’s misadventures with Anastasia’s three chambermaids—he goes into the kitchen to find them, and kisses the pots and pans, thinking he is kissing the women. ‘He was so foule horryble and blacke that whan he yssued out his meyny that awayted his comynge supposed that he had ben out of his wytte. And they bette hym well, and after fledde fro hym for fere, and lefte hym there alone.’* She laughed deliriously whenever the devil received a beating, especially when Juliana, who was tempted by him in her cell, gave him such an extraordinary flogging with her chains. ‘Whan the provost commanded to brynge forthe Iulyane before hym, she came out drawyng after her the devyll. And the devyll cryed and sayd: My lady Iulyane, I pray you, doo no harme unto me. And so she drewe hym thurgh the market and afterward caste hym in to the foulest pytt.’* As she worked on her embroidery, she recounted these legends to the Huberts, which were far more interesting than any fairy tale. She had read them so many times that she knew them by heart. There was the legend of the Seven Sleepers, who fled from persecution, were walled up in a cave, and slept for three hundred and seventy-seven years and, when they finally awoke, caused much amazement to the emperor Theodosius.* And then there was the legend of St Clement, with its unending series of astonishing and heart-rending adventures involving an entire family, a father, mother, and three sons, driven apart by great misfortunes, but finally reunited thanks to the most wonderful miracles.* Her tears flowed, she dreamt about the legends at night, and she lived entirely in this tragic and triumphant world of marvels, a supernatural realm where every virtue is rewarded with unbounded happiness.
When Angélique made her first communion, she felt as though she were hovering above the ground just like the saints. She was a young Christian of the early Church and placed herself in God’s hands, having learnt in the book that she could not be saved without grace. The Huberts worshipped simply: Mass on Sundays and communion on the great feast days. They did so with the quiet faith of the meek and, in small part, out of a sense of tradition and for the benefit of their clientele, with all the vestment-makers’ sons following their fathers’ habit of taking Easter communion. Hubert sometimes left off tightening an embroidery frame to listen as the child read the legends aloud, and trembled just like her, his hair ruffling slightly in a breath of air from the invisible realms. He shared her passion and wept when he saw her in her white dress. That day passed as in a dream and both returned from the church weary and dazed. The ever-sensible Hubertine, who was critical of excess even where good things were concerned, felt obliged to reproach them that evening. From then on, she had to battle against Angélique’s zeal and, in particular, the passion for charity that had seized her. Francis had taken poverty as his mistress, Julian the Almoner* called the poor his lords, Gervasius and Protasius* washed the feet of the wretched, and Martin shared his cloak with them * Following Lucy’s example, the child wished to sell up everything and give away the proceeds.* At first she disposed of the little things she owned, and then began to ransack the house. It reached the point where she was giving things away lavishly and indiscriminately to the undeserving. One evening, two days after her first communion, when she was reprimanded for throwing some clothes out of her window to a drunk woman, she relapsed into her old vicious ways, flying into a terrible frenzy. And then, overcome by shame, and unwell, she kept to her bed for three days.
