THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 THE 
 WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 FROM THE FRENCH OF 
 PIERRE DE COULEVAIN 
 
 Author of " On the Branch," " The Heart of Life," 
 "The Unknown Isle," etc. 
 
 BY 
 ALYS HALLARD 
 
 NEW YORK 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 
 1914
 
 1914 
 
 By DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
 
 College 
 
 Library 
 
 TO AMERICA 
 
 COUNTRY OF NEW THOUGHTS 
 PIERRE DK COULEVAIN
 
 PREFACE 
 
 The Wonderful Romance! It certainly is not mine. 
 It is not even one of those that the human brain pro- 
 duces. It is the romance which the divine Powers are 
 elaborating in the depths of the Infinite. It is that 
 romance which we are all living, from morning to night 
 and from night to morning; the one in which we are the 
 heroes and the martyrs. It is the romance of this Earth 
 of ours. 
 
 My latest volume was only just finished, when the 
 literary cells of my brain set to work once more. They 
 took up, for the fourth time, a novel planned out after 
 the birth of Eve Triumphant. The individuals, manu- 
 factured with features and impressions stored up in my 
 brain in the most mysterious way, appeared once more 
 upon the screen. There was a woman's face, a beauti- 
 ful, young face of which I had once caught a glimpse, 
 with a ray of sunshine falling on it. Then there was 
 the face of a man of the world, one of the last scions of 
 an old race, a man of some 45 years of age. He was 
 dark, his hair was just turning grey, the pupils of his 
 eyes were very light, he was clean shaven and his mouth 
 had an ironical, bad expression, the expression of a con- 
 queror who knows all the bitterness of victory. There 
 was the face, too, of a working-man, with the savage ex- 
 pression of Holbein's Christ and then the face of a girl 
 of sorrows.
 
 ii PREFACE 
 
 All these outlines became so vivid and life-like that it 
 seemed as though they must actually take form. I 
 found harmonious names for them. I made them act 
 scenes which either amused me or moved me to pity. 
 This creative work, which is God's work, gave me in- 
 tense pleasure and, for several months, I simply revelled 
 in it. I then began to feel disgusted with all these 
 imaginary stories which only depicted the struggle of 
 love. 
 
 I had commenced reading the Wonderful Romance 
 whilst searching for The Heart of Life, and this had 
 roused in me a curiosity which wanted to be satisfied. 
 It had given me an absolute need of truth and of reality. 
 Reality is a fruit which Humanity has not yet succeeded 
 in opening. Its shell is hard, its pulp bitter, but each 
 of its vermillion seeds contains a mystery, a surprise, a 
 germ, a divine spark. I have caught a glimpse of the 
 beautiful shade of its paradises, of the rays of hope which 
 light up its purgatories and of the gleams of dawn which 
 brighten its hells. Its depths and its mysteries attract 
 me irresistibly. The splendour of its brilliant light 
 chased away my poor little ideal figures. They will 
 appear again some day, I have no doubt. They will 
 never die, for they are Thought. I shall take them 
 away with me to the Beyond and Xature will perhaps do 
 something with them. 
 
 Now that my vision has become more objective, I 
 want to have one last look at Life. There is something 
 both pathetic and droll in the idea of a human creature 
 coming out of himself and lifting himself up from earth, 
 as it were, in order to contemplate the divine work,
 
 PREFACE iii 
 
 thus becoming a spectator of the piece in which he is 
 playing a very small part ! 
 
 I have been blamed for having put my own person- 
 ality too frequently on the scene. I have done this un- 
 consciously hitherto, but I shall now do it consciously, 
 whenever it seems necessary and, what is still more, I 
 shall not make any excuses for this, as my illustrious 
 predecessors have done. In the first place, a sense of 
 dignity would prevent me, and then my horror of all 
 that is false and conventional. It was a poor sort of 
 psychologist who said that : " No man is great in the 
 eyes of his valet." It seems to me, on the contrary, that 
 no man is great, except to his valet. The valet of a 
 Pope or of a King thinks himself very superior to his 
 colleagues who only have ordinary mortals for masters, 
 and he will put on grand airs for the simplest services 
 that he has to render to His Holiness, or to His Majesty. 
 I have not seen this myself, of course, but I am sure 
 of it, on account of the curious aberration which causes 
 illusion. It is possible, then, to be great in the eyes 
 of one's valet, but to be great in one's own eyes is more 
 difficult, and to the thinker it is impossible. Writers 
 and men of science know all the efforts and gropings 
 that their master-pieces represent. The very saints 
 must have known the seamy side of their own sanctity, 
 and every individual is more or less conscious, at certain 
 moments, of his own inferiority. I have had my share 
 of vanity. I can never have any more, though, now, 
 and God alone knows how much I regret this ! Thanks 
 to my age, I now find myself on the boundary line of 
 two worlds. My impressions on leaving the one world
 
 iv PREFACE 
 
 and my intuitions with regard to the Beyond may, 
 thanks to their absolute sincerity, have some scientific 
 value. I shall therefore give them without any scruple. 
 Wrongly or rightly, I firmly believe that I have been 
 gradually prepared from a long time back, for the read- 
 ing of the Wonderful Romance. I even believe that I 
 was created solely for this, and, if it be a privilege, I 
 have certainly paid dearly for it. 
 
 Up to the present, I have only hovered round the 
 great questions of life. This time I intend to attack 
 them frankly. I do not pretend to be able to solve one 
 single question, but I feel that I can examine many in 
 all justice, and with an open mind, and that is some- 
 thing. 
 
 Only those readers who have been brought into the 
 same current of thought will understand me. It will 
 only be a small number, I fancy, but that does not 
 matter. Evolution will make majorities of certain 
 minorities, and there are majorities that are destined 
 to become minorities. Such majorities do not count. 
 
 And so I am compelled to go on a fresh cruise to the 
 Heart of Life. How long will it last? Perhaps one 
 year, perhaps two years. Where will it take me and 
 how shall I be helped? I am curious to know all this. 
 I wonder whether my motor contains sufficient spirit for 
 a fresh flight. I do not know and I shall not trouble 
 about that. If the flight should be necessary, I shall 
 accomplish it, as 1 am no longer -working for myself. 
 
 When Dr. Charcot set out for the South Pole, he 
 called his boat The Why Not? I shall call my little 
 barque The Why. My icebergs will be formidable ac-
 
 PREFACE v 
 
 cumulations of childish beliefs, prejudices and wrong 
 ideas. I shall not attempt to destroy them, as they, 
 too, are things of beauty, but I shall endeavour to make 
 a passage for myself right through them, a passage 
 which will take me to the open sea. At present they 
 block the way to this. I am setting out with scanty 
 provisions, but not without a compass. Let those who 
 care for me come with me! If, during this cruise in 
 search of the truth, I am not able to interest them, to 
 touch their hearts, to bring to their eyes pleasant tears, 
 to provoke their gaiety, and tickle their sense of hu- 
 mour, if I do not succeed in turning their thoughts and 
 their adoration towards the Author of the divine manu- 
 script, they have only to leave me. It is quite simple!
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE
 
 THE 
 WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Sache done cette triste et rassurante chose 
 Que nul, Coq du matin ou Rtssignol du toir, 
 N'a tout a fait 10 chant qu'il rdverait d'avoir. 
 
 EDMOND ROSTAND. 
 
 LAUSANNE. 
 
 SOME twenty years ago, when driving through a little 
 English town one Sunday, I saw a crowd of people 
 gathered round a kind of easel, on which was placed a 
 sheet of cardboard with a charcoal drawing of a huge 
 eye. Underneath was written : " Thy eye must be 
 born again." One of those dissenting ministers, who 
 look like big, half-starved birds, was explaining the 
 words of the Evangel. Thanks to his voice, there was 
 a church-like silence in the street, which was disturbed 
 for a few seconds by the wheels of my carriage. To a 
 foreigner, the scene was both curious and comic. On 
 arriving at the house of my friends, I did not fail to 
 tell them about it, and I joked them in a pitiless way, 
 and very tactlessly, on their religious excentricities. 
 At present, I am rather inclined to believe that this naif 
 drawing was placed there for me too. It photographed 
 itself on my mind and it has, perhaps, been doing an
 
 occult work there which has helped in the preparation 
 of this volume. Yes, our eye must be born again and, 
 after being subjective, it must become objective. This 
 new birth, for which philosophy and science are work- 
 ing unawares, marks the moment when humanity leaves 
 its childhood behind it. The miracle, illustrated by the 
 huge charcoal eye, has been accomplished, as far as I 
 am concerned. During three quarters of my exist- 
 ence, I was both blind and deaf, like the majority of 
 human beings, but I was never dumb. I looked without 
 seeing, and I heard without understanding. I was 
 born without what is known as faith. The legend of 
 the Garden of Eden, which was told to me, as it is to 
 all the fresh comers in this world, was only one more 
 fairy-story to add to those with which my brain was 
 already crammed. I vouch for the truth of this first 
 impression of mine. Later on, the catechism roused 
 the most curious and sincere incredulity in me. It was 
 the dogma of hell that made me distrustful. I refused 
 to believe that God, who told men to forgive times with- 
 out number, could, Himself, doom them to eternal suffer- 
 ing. That seemed to me most unlikely. The fact that 
 humanity had been kept waiting so long, four thousand 
 years, for its redemption, caused my common sense and 
 my instinct of justice to rebel. 
 
 '* You must be mistaken, all of you," I began to say ; 
 " things were never arranged like that." This remark, 
 which I was constantly repeating, was the despair of 
 my very religious mother. I kept repeating it, with 
 sincere conviction, but also in wicked delight, because 
 I saw that it took effect. I regret my childish perver-
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 3 
 
 sity now and am ashamed of it. At the age of twelve, 
 between two mad games of rounders, I used to wonder 
 how things had really come about? I wanted to find 
 out from a spirit of pure wilfulness, hoping to confound 
 the " grown-ups " with my arguments, as I had a secret 
 aversion for the " grown-ups." I did not really, at 
 heart, care about the truth or the justice of things, and 
 yet I have been in search of them all my life, probably 
 in obedience to that force which I call " the other one." 
 I have been in search of them and it is they who 
 have found me, conquered me and made of me their 
 servant. When I first came into contact with suffer- 
 ing, with moral ugliness, all the " Whys and Where- 
 fores " that have ever come to the lips of humanity 
 came to mine and nothing answered me, or at any 
 rate, I could not hear or understand anything. I was 
 holding the Wonderful Romance upside down; it was 
 turned towards me on the subjective side, and I could 
 not make it out. I saw Life in myself alone, accord- 
 ing to my own state of mind and even of body. I 
 thought it very fine, and even splendid, when I was 
 happy, but abominable when everything was not going 
 according to my wishes. If I were disappointed, I con- 
 sidered that all humanity was vile and unworthy. My 
 unyieldingness and my intolerance, towards those who 
 did not think as I did, were simply ridiculous. I saw 
 Life as it appears through legends, old women's tales, 
 dogmas, prejudices and conventionalities. My vision 
 was bounded on the north, south, east and west by my 
 own infinitesimal personality and it did not allow me to 
 be just either towards Providence, or towards my fel-
 
 4 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 low-creatures. Giordano Bruno, the philosopher of 
 Nola, said : " Religion is the shadow of truth, but it 
 is not contrary to truth." That was a wonderful in- 
 luition of his. This shadow of truth, which had re- 
 mained with me, troubled me. God, made man (made 
 man, in reality, by Christianism), had never inspired 
 me with love or with awe, but my soul had retained the 
 hereditary impress of that symbolical conception which 
 has made so many atheists. This did not prevent me 
 from seeing and feeling the Eternal God, the living God, 
 the God whom Leonardo da Vinci called " nostro primo 
 motore" our first motive power. Nature seemed to me 
 to be outside of myself, it seemed to me even to be some- 
 thing hostile. I was like a poor bee, shut up under a 
 glass shade, which rushes towards the blue sky, buzzing 
 in despair, and hurts itself against the transparent wall. 
 The day came when I found the way out, toward the 
 Infinite, opened for me. In every conversion, there is 
 always a never-to-be-forgotten moment, the one when 
 the points are changed and Providence puts us on to 
 a new line. The points were changed for me and I am 
 going to tell how this happened. The story is rather 
 long, perhaps, but this accumulation of incidents will 
 show the profoundness of the Divine work and will give 
 an example of the thousands and thousands of episodes 
 which go to compose the Wonderful Romance. 
 
 Some fifteen or sixteen years ago, when staying at 
 
 Cannes, I made the acquaintance of Baroness d'O , 
 
 the widow of a Russian who had held an important post 
 under government. She was about thirty years of age, 
 with that original, Slavonic kind of ugliness, which is
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 5 
 
 often more fascinating than beauty. She was extremely 
 slender and supple, and was very distinguished looking in 
 her long black dresses, trimmed with crape. From the 
 very first, her little green-blue eyes sought mine, and 
 before very long she spoke to me. She had a little suite 
 of rooms on the ground-floor and her drawing-room 
 opened on to a flower-garden. She invited me to call on 
 her and I went. She gave me tea, such as I have never 
 tasted before or since. It was of the kind which is 
 rarely to be procured outside China. A mandarin had 
 given it to her husband. It was the colour of amber 
 and had the scent of orchids. Its action on the brain 
 was as exhilarating as champagne. When the Baroness 
 saw that I appreciated it like a true connoisseur, she 
 frequently invited me to tea with her. We had some 
 very pleasant chats around the hospitable samovar and 
 before long my hostess became confidential. 
 
 Madame d'O belonged to an aristocratic, but 
 
 poor, family. She had married a husband much older 
 than herself. He was really quite old, but he had in- 
 spired her with very deep affection and she worshipped 
 his memory. She was delicate and seemed to have very 
 little vitality. She would spend a great part of her 
 day on her sofa, reading, dreaming and smoking ciga- 
 rettes. All things appealing to the heart or mind in- 
 terested her and she was also an excellent musician. 
 Her widow's pension allowed her the luxury of a car- 
 riage and she invited her friends, in turn, to drive with 
 her. 
 
 After I had known her for some little time, I began 
 to notice that she was getting very nervous and that
 
 6 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 something seemed to be on her mind. One afternoon 
 I was driving with her and, just as we were going along 
 between two hedges in full blossom, she suddenly said: 
 
 " Do you know whom I am expecting this evening? " 
 
 " Not at all," I answered, smiling at the question. 
 
 ** An adopted daughter," she said. 
 
 " Oh, you are not going to be foolish enough to take 
 charge of a child? " I exclaimed, impulsively. 
 
 " It is almost an obligation, but I think I shall like 
 
 this obligation," said Madame d'O . " About 
 
 eighteen months before my husband's death," she con- 
 tinued, " he was sent to China. I went with him and, 
 as we were returning home again, there was a terrible 
 storm and we were almost shipwrecked. My husband 
 fell and broke his leg. The ship's doctor treated him 
 very skilfully, and was most devoted. He was well re- 
 munerated, of course, but we discovered that this Dr. 
 Linsky was the son of a poor Siberian priest, that he 
 was separated from his wife and had two little girls. 
 My husband wanted to adopt one of these children and 
 we talked it over several times. He died before we had 
 taken any steps in the matter. It remained for me to 
 carry out his wishes. I wrote to Dr. Linsky, but only 
 obtained his consent with great difficulty. He is to 
 bring me the child this very evening." 
 
 " I can quite understand your anxiety then," I said, 
 " for it is cither happiness or misery that is on its way 
 to you." 
 
 " Yes, either happiness or misery coming by express 
 from the heart of Siberia. The father and daughter 
 have been on their way for the last week. They are
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 7 
 
 travelling third class, so that I expect to see them arrive 
 half dead, poor things ! " 
 
 For the next three days the Baroness did not appear 
 in the dining-room. On the fourth day she came up to 
 call on me and I could see, from her radiant face, that 
 she had not been disappointed. The child had made 
 an excellent impression on her. 
 
 " She is ten years old," she said. " I should have 
 preferred her being younger. I had seen the photo- 
 graphs of both children and asked to have the younger 
 one, but the father had not remembered this and he has 
 brought me the elder one. I took her on my lap and 
 told her that I was going to be her mother and she 
 replied, quite clearly : * You cannot be my mother, 
 as I have one. You could be my aunt or my friend, 
 if you like.' She spoke as though she were conferring 
 a favour on me." 
 
 " Her reply must have given you a good opinion of 
 her character," I said, by way of consolation. 
 
 " Yes, but I had longed to be a mother, and now I 
 must resign myself to being an aunt," said my visitor, 
 with a sad smile. " This is one more disappointment 
 in my life. I have left off counting them." 
 
 The following day I made the acquaintance of little 
 Djenia. She was very tall for her age, straight and 
 well built. I saw before me a vigorous human plant, 
 a plant that had grown in the open air and in a North- 
 ern climate. Her light yellow hair was cut short and 
 this made her look like a boy. Her complexion was 
 like glistening snow and the expression of her light 
 blue eyes was intelligent and grave. Her dilating nos-
 
 8 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 trils seemed to want plenty of air and space. Her 
 mouth indicated kindliness and decision. I was struck 
 by her perfect ease. She gave the impression of hav- 
 ing taken complete possession of this world, although 
 she had only been in it ten years. It certainly was 
 not an insignificant creature that had just come into 
 the life of the Baroness. 
 
 Dr. Linsky was introduced to me and he looked to 
 me like a veritable Cossack. His regular and somewhat 
 heavy features were animated by grey-blue eyes, which 
 were both dreamy and gentle. He was very tall and 
 seemed to fill the little drawing-room. He spoke French 
 with a certain difficulty and timidity. After a few 
 minutes it appeared to me as though something were 
 taking place in the ambient atmosphere. It seemed to 
 me that I felt the presence of the great Invisible. I 
 began to observe Djenia's father and my hostess. I 
 saw nothing to justify the magnetic impression I had 
 just had, but I said to myself that it was quite possible 
 that this strength and this weakness should be irresist- 
 ibly attracted to each other, without either of the two 
 individuals being aware of it. However that may have 
 been, Dr. Linsky left Cannes the following day. 
 
 The Baroness and I were both amazed at the way in 
 which Djenia accepted her change of surroundings. 
 From the time she was six years old she had been living 
 in a very poor home, a house built of wood, which must 
 have been very little different from the houses of the 
 peasants. She had now come to all the comfort and 
 luxury of a first-class hotel, and yet she did not show
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 9 
 
 the slightest surprise. She asked for things from the 
 servants and allowed them to wait on her, as though 
 she had always been accustomed to being waited on. 
 She handled her knife and fork and behaved at table as 
 though she had been educated, from her earliest infancy, 
 in an English nursery. A still more curious thing was 
 the fact that the blue sky of Cannes, and all the flowers 
 of a Riviera winter, neither excited her surprise nor 
 her enthusiasm. .When we talked to her about such 
 things, she would answer in a pleasant, obliging way: 
 " Yes, it is very beautiful, very beautiful indeed," but 
 there was a far-away look in her eyes, as though she 
 saw other things too, the snowy plain, the sombre forest 
 and, perhaps, the isba of the poor priest, her grand- 
 father. She owned that she missed the snow and the 
 howling of the wolves and, during her play-time, she 
 would go and slide on the marble floor of the hall in the 
 hotel. She told her " aunt," with innocent pride, that 
 she could climb the very highest trees, and she even 
 offered to go out and give her a proof of her skill in 
 
 that way. Madame d'O objected to this and told 
 
 her jokingly that she must not climb like that, or people 
 would think that little Russian girls were a species of 
 the monkey tribe. 
 
 I made her a present of a doll. She had never dreamt 
 of such a beautiful one and, for a second, she was per- 
 fectly speechless with surprise. She then held out her 
 hands suddenly, grasped mine and gripped it in such a 
 strong, expressive way that I was astonished. A child 
 does not usually manifest its feelings in that way. The
 
 10 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 hand-shake is the gesture of grown-up people and there 
 are so few people who know how to shake hands. A few 
 days later, I found Djenia playing with an old wooden 
 doll that looked like an idol belonging to savages. The 
 doll's bed was a basket full of rags of all colours. 
 The child was slightly embarrassed when she saw me 
 and then, turning to the Baroness, she said: "Please 
 tell your friend that I like her beautiful doll very much 
 indeed, but that I cannot give this one up, because she 
 is Russian and she came with me from Russia." A 
 week's journey, third-class, I thought to myself, was 
 certainly not to be forgotten. I was deeply touched 
 by the child's loyalty. Only the old soul of the Sla- 
 vonic race, composed of so many different souls, is 
 capable of such deep feeling from its earliest days. 
 
 Madame d'O at once began to educate her little 
 
 savage. She gave her lessons in French and music and 
 this took her out of herself, so that the lessons were 
 most salutary. As time went on she was more and more 
 delighted with the intelligence and the character of her 
 adopted niece. At the end of a fortnight, Djenia, ac- 
 companied by her maid, could go out shopping and ask 
 for things herself in French. Two months later, I was 
 able to converse with her. I often wondered whether 
 the fine maternal instinct would continue in the case of 
 
 the Baroness d'O . Adoptions of this kind often 
 
 take place in Russia, but it frequently happens that 
 such parents weary of their adopted child, or the re- 
 sponsibility becomes onerous. The child is then de- 
 serted, and the consequences are cruel. The figure of 
 Dr. Linsky, whom I had seen in the background of this
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 11 
 
 little picture, somewhat reassured me with regard to 
 Djenia's future fate. 
 
 For about six months after leaving Cannes, Mme. 
 
 d'O and I kept up a correspondence. It then 
 
 ceased and I must confess that in this, and similar ex- 
 periences, the fault was mine. 
 
 Two years passed by and, one afternoon, a visiting 
 card was brought to me with the name of Madame 
 Linsky printed on it. In pencil some one had written, 
 Baroness d'O . 
 
 " Married and done for ! " I said to myself, rather 
 vulgarly. 
 
 It can very well be imagined with what pleasure and 
 curiosity I received my unexpected visitor ! She had 
 changed so much that I should have hesitated before 
 acknowledging her, if I had met her in the street. She 
 was no longer the interesting widow garbed in sweeping 
 dresses trimmed with crape, but a very simple looking 
 woman, wearing a tailor costume and a toque. The 
 toque had not come from a first-class milliner, but un- 
 derneath it was a face which indicated health and 
 happiness. 
 
 " You see, I have changed my name," she said, blush- 
 ing slightly. 
 
 " I expected you would," I answered, smiling. 
 
 " You expected I should ! But when you were at 
 Cannes, I never thought of this change." 
 
 " Quite possible," I said ; " but Nature was thinking 
 of it for you." 
 
 " Had you really guessed it? " asked Madame Linsky, 
 her small eyes big with surprise.
 
 13 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 "Yes and I hope you are happy?" 
 
 " Oh, so happy ! " she replied. " I am no longer ill 
 at all, would you believe it ? " 
 
 " Why, of course," I said, rather tantalisingly. 
 " And what about Dje'nia? " 
 
 " Djenia is a good girl and very satisfactory. I 
 have succeeded in getting the other sister, too, so that 
 they have the same advantages as each other." 
 
 Seated there by my table where, a year later, I was 
 to weave a romance, Madame Linsky told me hers, a 
 romance written by the gods. She told me all the 
 obstacles she had had to surmount. Her family had 
 objected to her marriage and Dr. Linsky 's wife had 
 refused to have a divorce. Then, too, there had been 
 the terrible question of money. 
 
 " It is thanks to the forethought of my husband that 
 things have come all right," said Madame Linsky. 
 " The night before he died he had made one of his 
 friends promise to try to make everything easy for me, 
 in case I should ever care for a poor man, so that I 
 might have my share of happiness." 
 
 " Ah, I recognise Russian sentimentality there ! " I 
 exclaimed. 
 
 " Yes, and a very noble kind of sentimentality, too. 
 My husband had always felt a certain remorse at having 
 married so young a wife. His friend did not fail me. 
 By marrying again, I lost my widow's pension, and 
 this, of course, made everything impossible. This 
 friend obtained permission for the half of my pension 
 to be granted to me. I could, therefore, follow my 
 inclination. The Government is sending Monsieur Lin-
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 13 
 
 sky on a three years' research mission to France, Eng- 
 land, and Germany. We are now living in a furnished 
 flat in the Boulevard St. Michel. The surroundings 
 are poor, but not vulgar." 
 
 Madame Linsky invited me to tea with her. " It will 
 not be the mandarin's tea," she said ; " there is none 
 left, but it will not be undrinkable." 
 
 On the day appointed I went to the Boulevard St. 
 Michel. I was very curious to see the home of this 
 Russian grande dame, in the very heart of the Latin 
 Quarter. The house in which she was living was situ- 
 ated between two court-yards which looked fairly clean. 
 The wooden staircase was uncarpeted, the balustrade 
 was of iron, the walls white, and the window more or 
 less dusty. The entrance was not precisely attractive. 
 On reaching the second floor I rang the bell. A tall 
 man, wearing a military coat, opened the door. In the 
 semi-obscurity I thought, at first, that it was a man- 
 servant, but fortunately I recognised Dr. Linsky. He 
 showed me into the adjoining room, and his wife came 
 forward with outstretched hands to welcome me. 
 There were a few seconds of inevitable embarrassment, 
 which the little girls helped to overcome. Djenia had 
 grown very much, and was as straight as a young pine- 
 tree. I looked at her face and saw that she was happy. 
 Her eyes had an expression of gravity, like those of 
 children who have witnessed sad things. Her younger 
 sister was more refined looking and prettier, but she 
 had less individuality. Both of them were very simply 
 dressed, but there was a certain elegance about them. 
 They were wearing very short dresses of dark blue
 
 14 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 serge, with Russian blouses, black stockings and sandal 
 slippers. A huge bow of black ribbon tied their plait 
 of fair hair, and this bow revealed a maternal co- 
 quettishness which I was glad to see. Djenia prepared 
 tea and served us with an ease and surcness rarely seen 
 in a child of twelve. No, it certainly was not the 
 mandarin's tea and there was no beautiful scenery as 
 there had been at Cannes. The little Boulevard St. 
 Michel drawing-room had two windows looking on to 
 a court-yard. The embroidered white muslin curtains, 
 the furniture covered with red velvet, and the wall paper 
 were all particularly ugly, but there was an Oriental 
 rug on the floor, there were embroidered stuffs and Rus- 
 sian weapons on the walls, artistic knick-knacks in all 
 the corners, shelves laden with books, signs of intel- 
 lectual work about and then, too, there were flowers. 
 
 The dining-room door was open, the samovar was 
 singing on the table and a rich tea service gave a luxuri- 
 ous note to the commonplace poverty. All these things 
 made the little flat seem cheerful and the rays of love 
 gave a pleasant warmth to the whole atmosphere. 
 Whilst the doctor was sipping his glass of tea, with its 
 slices of lemon, I examined him. There was an element 
 that was irremediably rustic about him, but he gave 
 the impression of being a good sort of force. I could 
 imagine him directing an ambulance, staunching wounds 
 and patclung up quantities of soldiers, but I could not 
 fancy him caring for little aches and pains. Intellec- 
 tually, he was superior to his wife, but by birth and 
 education he had remained inferior. Unless I am mis- 
 taken, he is quite aware of this. To him, his wife will
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 15 
 
 always be Baroness d'O . When he heard her tell- 
 ing me enthusiastically how much she enjoyed her new 
 life, dining at the little Latin Quarter restaurants, going 
 to the small theatres, mounting on the top of trams, he 
 smiled at her, as though thanking her for showing that 
 she was so happy. 
 
 When I rose to take leave of her, after staying a 
 long time, Madame Linsky said to me, in the most natu- 
 ral way and with a perfectly convinced tone : " You 
 see what a difference there is between the old days and 
 the present! When you first knew me, I was so poor, 
 and now, I am so rich ! " She looked round at her 
 wealth her husband and her' two adopted daughters. 
 I wondered whether this were mere literature, as women 
 of Slavonic race are apt to indulge in literature quite 
 unconsciously. It seemed to me, though, that this was 
 real honeymoon sentiment. 
 
 A fortnight later I left Paris, and from that day to 
 this I have never had any news of the little family. 
 This is another instance of my own negligence. I some- 
 times wonder whether Madame Linsky, after thirteen 
 years of married life, still considers herself rich. How- 
 ever that may be, she was, without knowing it, the 
 instrument of my conversion and of my progress. As 
 I was going slowly downstairs after this visit, the cause 
 of the transformation I had just seen came suddenly 
 to my mind. I stopped short on one of the stairs, 
 struck by that word cause! A storm in the China Sea 
 and a broken leg ! If it had not been for that accident, 
 Djenia and her sister would never have left their native 
 country. They would simply have vegetated there,
 
 16 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 without any culture, and would probably have married 
 some poor priest, like their own grandfather. A storm 
 of wind in that far-off country was to affect two little 
 unknown girls, who were living quiet lives in an out-of- 
 the-way part of Siberia, and the effects of that storm 
 would go on multiplying and continuing during several 
 generations. I saw all this very vividly and was struck 
 by it. Were we not free agents, I asked myself. Over 
 and over again I asked myself this question and, when 
 once I was in the carriage, driving back to my hotel, I 
 began going back to the causes of things, thinking, with 
 all my powers of thought, along the lines that had sud- 
 denly been opened out to me. The points had been 
 turned for me. 
 
 I have not even yet discovered how things have been 
 arranged, but I know that they are determined and 
 ordered from their very beginnings by the divine powers 
 which are the radio-activity of the Eternal God. I no 
 longer see man, but the Terrestrian ; our cities and our 
 homes are to me merely the habitations of the Terres- 
 trians, our planet is the work-field and the battle-field 
 of higher beings, of the army of Heaven, of those forces 
 that we call Providence and Nature. The life that I 
 had lived with indifference, anger and indignation, 
 seemed to unfold before me like a marvellous flower ; like 
 a passion-flower, it is true, with the instruments of 
 crucifixion marked on its petals, but with the perfume, 
 and the germ of immortality buried in its chalice. The 
 turning-point will arrive for others, for all of us, just 
 as it did for me. Humanity will see Life, and through
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 17 
 
 Life only will it learn to know, to adore and to worship 
 its " first motive power." 
 
 Whilst I was writing this little romance about 
 Madame Linsky, which had had such an influence on 
 my thoughts, a parcel was brought to me from Princess 
 
 C , a charming Russian woman with whom I had 
 
 played bridge a great deal. I was very much struck 
 by the arrival of this little souvenir from Russia, just 
 at the very moment when I was writing of the Russian 
 soul. The parcel contained two little Easter offerings. 
 The one was a porcelain dish representing three eggs and 
 two cakes, one of which was surmounted by the sym- 
 bolical rose and the other by the paschal lamb. The 
 other object was suitable for a child. It was a little 
 box, on the lid of which was a table of white wood, an 
 earthenware jug and a red bowl. By the table was a 
 Russian peasant woman, wearing a black and red 
 checked skirt, a pink spotted apron and shoes made of 
 the bark of a tree. A yellow silk handkerchief was tied 
 under her chin. She had fair hair, a pinky white com- 
 plexion and blue eyes. This peasant woman was strik- 
 ingly like little Djenia. It might have been her mother, 
 and Djenia would certainly have grown up looking like 
 this, if it had not been for the fateful storm. 
 
 The coincidence of this little present coming, just as 
 I was writing on this Russian subject, would have 
 amused me formerly. At present such a thing touches 
 me, for I think it was intended by the gods, for whom 
 I am working. I believe it to be one of those encourage- 
 ments which they give to their collaborators during any
 
 18 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 extra efforts on the up-hill way. They know that I am 
 going up-hill and that I shall have to climb much higher 
 and with great difficulty. Was this coincidence any 
 more extraordinary than the fact of the repercussion 
 of that storm in the China Sea reaching me, a poor atom 
 of the Infinite, and making me write this long chapter 
 eighteen years later? 
 
 Prompted by this idea, I began to go back to the 
 causes of such events as had made, and as go on making, 
 our history. I began to think of the causes which had 
 brought about certain marriages and certain accidental 
 deaths, of the causes of those tragical little events which 
 some of the daily papers give in three lines, but which 
 frequently contain, between those lines, whole volumes 
 of human grief and suffering. 
 
 All these various incidents were due, I felt, not to 
 chance and not to a blind fatality, but to a living, deter- 
 mining, individual thought, to a will-power coming from 
 the Beyond, from the Great Beyond. The admirable 
 weaving and the combining of circumstances revealed to 
 me the work of a supreme Master, the work that poor 
 romance writers endeavour, with more or less success, 
 to copy, but always with less success rather than 
 more. 
 
 To minds to which such things appeal, the searching 
 for these causes is intensely interesting and astounding. 
 One goes back, frequently, to a certain point and there, 
 quite unexpectedly, one loses the thread. Then, sud- 
 denly, some little incident, or perhaps just a word, puts
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 19 
 
 the thread back into our hand. There is always a cer- 
 tain point beyond which our vision cannot penetrate, 
 and when we come to this we are as furious and disap- 
 pointed as a dog after losing its scent. On going back 
 to the causes of things, one has a sensation of alarm at 
 first, and one draws back as though at the edge of a 
 precipice. If one has the courage to advance once 
 more and to look down, one soon sees a little speck of 
 light and the light becomes more clear and more bril- 
 liant, so that one is no longer afraid. 
 
 Oh, those first causes of our success, of our defeat, 
 or of our vices ! How far back they date and what in- 
 significant things they appeared at the time a glance, 
 a word, a gesture, the insignificance of the proverbial 
 orange peel. 
 
 I had always been very much surprised at a certain 
 marriage, which had united two individuals who ap- 
 peared to be absolutely unsuited to each other. They 
 were of different race, of different religion and of dif- 
 ferent mentality. The other day I discovered that one 
 of the ancestors of the husband had been instrumental 
 in the conquest and civilisation of his wife's native 
 country. It is in this way that the gods weave our des- 
 tinies, and they select their agents without any consid- 
 eration for our private affairs or for our feelings. It 
 is the mother who, by her very love, prepares the un- 
 happiness of her children. The father, thanks to his 
 over-severity, drives his son to commit suicide. A 
 brother plays at horses with his little sister, puts a 
 slip knot round her throat and drives her round and 
 round the table. He shouts to her and she gallops.
 
 20 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 He pulls his rein and she falls down, strangled uninten- 
 tionally by her own brother. A man introduces to his 
 dearest friend the individual who, later on, is the cause 
 of this friend's dishonour. A wife urges her beloved 
 husband to take a certain train, in which he meets with 
 his death. A man tells his chauffeur that he is in a 
 hurry. The chauffeur endeavours to pass before the 
 approaching train. He passes, but one of the wheels 
 of the automobile is caught. The stronger force 
 crushes the lesser one and the man, young and full of 
 life, who, a few moments before, pronounced his own 
 death warrant, is nothing but a lifeless form, covered 
 with blood. His soul has been called away with rough 
 brutality. It is the climax of divine irony that the 
 creature frequently has to prepare his own ruin, his own 
 destruction. And how assiduously he works to prepare 
 this! For his worst enemy, or for his dearest friend, 
 he could not do more. 
 
 It does not need much reflection to realise that these 
 terrifying combinations are intentional, that they are 
 elaborated by another will than ours. The refinement 
 of cruelty of which they would be a proof make this 
 very cruelty impossible. They are probably arranged 
 in order to intensify and vary Life, and this intensity 
 and variety are probably necessary for our progress. 
 If Providence remorselessly, but probably not without 
 pitying us, sends us along difficult and abominable paths, 
 it is because Providence knows where such paths lead 
 and is, perhaps, obliged to send us by them. Logically, 
 with open-eyed faith, we can have all confidence. 
 
 Before my " renaissance " I happened to meet, at a
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 21 
 
 certain watering place, a woman whose nerves were in 
 a pitiful state. She told me the reason of this. Her 
 mother, when in the country with her two younger 
 daughters, had commissioned this married sister to have 
 the bedrooms of the two girls repapered, as a surprise 
 
 before their return to town. Madame X chose a 
 
 beautiful silver-grey paper, which was very expensive. 
 It appeared that it was saturated with arsenic. It 
 killed the two girls within six months and their father 
 died of grief. Madame X could not forgive her- 
 self for having been the instrument of this horrible 
 drama. When she told me the story, with all its heart- 
 rending details, I declared, impulsively, that it was 
 " infamous." At present, I should say to her: " Your 
 mother, the manufacturer who composed this murder- 
 ous formula, the salesman who showed you the roll of 
 paper and recommended it, and you, who chose it, were 
 all carrying out one of the plans of Providence. If 
 this plan had not had the ultimate good of those whom 
 it struck down, it would be monstrous and could not 
 logically have been carried out." This idea, I fancy, 
 
 would have consoled Madame X better than all the 
 
 commonplace things which are uttered by humanity 
 when certain trials confront us. 
 
 When searching for the causes of things, one soon 
 learns to distinguish the grouping of individuals. This 
 grouping is very curious to study. It has its mathe- 
 matics, its geometry, its chemistry. We exclaim, in 
 the most childish way, on meeting this or that person : 
 " How small the world is ! " It is not the world which 
 is small, but the little circle in which we are evolving.
 
 22 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 I have already said this, but there are some truths which 
 we cannot repeat often enough. 
 
 It amused me to mark, by certain signs and lines, the 
 appearance and reappearance, in my orbit, of the per- 
 sons who had more or less affected it. Some of them 
 returned at long, but regular, intervals ; others at very 
 irregular intervals ; some have only crossed it like thun- 
 derbolts, causing the most disagreeable disturbances. 
 
 On going back to the causes of things, I have had 
 glimpses of the absoluteness of our solidarity, not only 
 with our fellow-creatures, but with the three kingdoms 
 of Nature. The play of affinities, sympathies and an- 
 tipathies, resulting from this solidarity, revealed to me 
 something of the extent of our radiation. 
 
 When my vision became objective, I naturally saw 
 things from a determinist's point of view and I began 
 to read history once more. It had always bored me 
 hitherto, as a book does which we do not understand. 
 From the moment when I comprehended that it was the 
 work of the gods, I was intensely interested and I began 
 to search for their soul and for their plan. I began 
 to look for the mechanism of Life. I saw nations born 
 from a small group of individuals, I saw them gradually 
 getting organised, describing curves with double 
 branches, attaining to the very height of power and 
 glory and then descending again, but all of them in 
 different ways. Some of them slipped downwards and 
 were scarcely conscious that they were slipping. 
 Others came down by leaps and bounds. I saw their 
 evolution and then their annihilation, but this never 
 took place until they had transmitted what was ncces-
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 23 
 
 i 
 
 sary for the continuity of progress. I saw this geo- 
 metrical figure in races, families and individuals, and I 
 understood that it belonged to the plan of the Universe, 
 and that if the Terrestrian lived it, he had certainly 
 not planned it. Before very long I began to feel the 
 existence of the psychical currents which make a spir- 
 itual atmosphere for us, of those currents which are 
 more in number, and greater in strength, than those of 
 the Ocean, currents which penetrate into our cells, 
 bringing with them, in waves, the essence of Life, ideas, 
 images, orders, which put us into communication with 
 each other, with the whole Universe perhaps. And, on 
 feeling myself so entirely in divine hands, I experienced 
 the most delightful sensation of relief, and I longed to 
 be able to communicate this to all my fellow-beings. A 
 year after my " renaissance," the pen was put between 
 my fingers, and I wrote a novel, in which I introduced 
 creatures who were living out their destiny, but not 
 making it. Very, very few people noticed the change 
 of conception, but, for me, the whole interest of the 
 book lay in this. I was destined to learn from this that 
 the reader does not see with the author, unless he is 
 almost in unison with him. And in the twentieth cen- 
 tury, the majority of men, those who cannot think, be- 
 lieve that they are free! They are satisfied with look- 
 ing at events, without going back to the causes. This 
 is the reason of their constant illusion, an illusion which 
 was no doubt intended. It was necessary, but it is most 
 pathetic in its child-like presumption. These people 
 are affected by all the elements, by the sun, the rain, 
 by the shadow of a cloud. Their movements are con-
 
 24 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 nected with the movements of millions of individuals 
 that they do not see, that they do not know, and yet 
 they consider themselves free! They live, threatened 
 as they are by the forces overhead and by the forces 
 under their feet, and still they believe that they are 
 free! Religious people bend their backs under the ills 
 which they have to bear; others put their backs up in 
 disdain or utter blasphemies. Some remain entirely in- 
 different, but they all persist in believing themselves 
 free ! In spite of this, they repeat, like so many phono- 
 graphs, the words : " Man moves and God leads him." 
 This conciliates their reason and their pride. They 
 admit that they are led. It would be more difficult not 
 to see this than to see it, but they like to persuade them- 
 selves that their movements are free. They do not real- 
 ise that these are caused by other movements, just as 
 one wave is the result of another wave and that 
 if their movements as atoms were free, they would de- 
 termine the action of God. Is it possible to conceive 
 of the Eternal God being directed by His own crea- 
 tures? 
 
 Last week a writer, after analysing the genesis and 
 development of certain political events, concluded his 
 article with the words : " Is it possible that we are 
 not free? " This was the very phrase I had pronounced 
 as I stood on the stairs at Madame Linsky's. The acute 
 anguish which I now heard in it made me start and then 
 I exclaimed, joyfully: "At last!" 
 
 Ah, no, we are not free, and very fortunately for us ! 
 The earth and its sun are not free. The stars and the 
 worlds are not free, neither are the Powers which gov-
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 25 
 
 ern them. The Eternal God, even, must be the slave 
 of His own plan. 
 
 In their very heart I fancy that men must always 
 have felt, more or less, that they were obeying unalter- 
 able laws. I fancy they have only been pretending, 
 after the manner of children in their games, to believe 
 in their own free will. For long centuries they have 
 been hovering round the truth, and the very light from 
 it has blinded them. By means of the quantities of 
 discoveries that have been made, Providence has been 
 preparing them to receive it, and the hour is now ap- 
 proaching when they will know that they are doing His 
 work and not their own, and, with this certainty, what- 
 ever may be their task, they will do it joyfully and 
 proudly. 
 
 In the eighteenth century, La Bruyere wrote this 
 amusing phrase : " Everything has been said, as there 
 have been men seven thousand years, and thinking men." 
 Ah, no, everything had not been said. Among other 
 things, the discovery had still to be made that the Earth 
 and the Terrestrian were not created by a touch of the 
 Divine wand, as the sacred poets fancied, but that they 
 had been slowly and very laboriously developed, thanks 
 to the action of innumerable forces. And everything 
 has not been said even yet. We know scarcely anything 
 of the mathematics, the geometry and the chemistry of 
 our physical life, and next to nothing of the electricity 
 which we have captured and which we handle like waste- 
 ful children. We know nothing of the psychical life; 
 we do not even know the real name, nor the true func- 
 tion of what we call evil. And when we do know all
 
 26 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 this, we shall still know comparatively nothing. All 
 will not have been said, and all will never be said, either 
 in this world or in the others, for it is the Eternal God 
 who speaks. 
 
 Solomon, in spite of all his wisdom, wrote : " There 
 is nothing new under the sun." And man, who has seen 
 so much that was new, goes on repeating the childish 
 phrase, because it is a pretty one and it sounds well, 
 like all that is hollow. The great proverb-writer found 
 nothing new and, with a harem like his, that is slightly 
 discouraging for other men. 
 
 Nothing new under the sun! Has there not been 
 something new continually, on our planet, from the very 
 second when, all nebulous, it emerged from the depths 
 of the Infinite, when the Spirit of God was brooding 
 over the waters? Will there be nothing new in its last 
 pulsation? Will its extinction be nothing new under 
 the sun? And you were a wise man, oh, Solomon!
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 LAUSANNE. 
 
 I HAVE already said that books never come into our 
 hands by chance, that they are " voices in space," the 
 agents of the gods. Something fresh is constantly hap- 
 pening to make me more and more convinced of this. 
 
 Some three years ago, an open copy of The Illustrated 
 London News on the table of the hotel reading-room 
 attracted my attention. I took it up, thinking that 
 the picture I saw represented a chrysanthemum exhibi- 
 tion. The picture made me start, for what I had taken 
 to be chrysanthemums were a multitude of human 
 heads. My mistake was not due to bad eyesight, as 
 my sight is excellent, but to the close grouping of a 
 crowd of Terrestrians, listening to a socialist Member 
 of Parliament on Tower Hill. Half the crowd of men 
 were facing and the other half had their backs turned 
 to the photographer. They were all wearing caps, and 
 these caps made their heads look round, like so many 
 huge chrysanthemums. Whenever it happens that our 
 apparent insignificance is thus brought to my notice, 
 I feel a certain humiliation and anguish, and a kind of 
 ridiculous dread lest we should ever be crushed out, as 
 we so thoughtlessly or cruelly crush the ants with our 
 feet. I went upstairs to my room in no enviable frame 
 of mind. 
 
 Whilst resting, I picked up an American review, TJie 
 
 27
 
 28 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 Century Magazine* quite mechanically, as I thought. 
 On turning over its pages, I was surprised to find an 
 article entitled " Sense and Sensibility," by Helen Kel- 
 ler. I have an immense admiration for this woman and 
 I feel that I owe her a great deal. She had been deaf 
 and blind from the age of nineteen months. In spite 
 of this affliction, she had passed all the higher examina- 
 tions, had learnt Greek, Latin, French and German, 
 and had become a writer. I had read the story of her 
 life, told by herself. In this article, " Sense and Sensi- 
 bility," she told not only what she saw, felt and guessed, 
 but how all this came about, for, as she herself said, she 
 " only had three doors to her house." This article is 
 a document which is quite unique. It reveals a pro- 
 digious effort of the human soul and, on that account, 
 it certainly ought to have its place in this reading of 
 life, on which I am engaged. 
 
 Helen Keller is an American from Alabama, one of 
 the Southern States. The magazine gives several por- 
 traits of her. She is of medium height, looks about 
 thirty-five years of age and is dressed with elegant sim- 
 plicity. Her thick hair is drawn to the back of her 
 head and coiled low in her neck, showing a little of her 
 ears, her poor ears that have no resonance. Her eye- 
 lids are lowered over the sightless pupils. The shape 
 of the forehead, the curve of the eyebrow and the 
 determined nose all testify to intelligence and strong 
 will ; the cheeks, the rounded chin and the full lips give 
 an impression of affection and kindness. The reflection 
 of an inward smile lights up the lower part of the face. 
 One of the portraits depicts her standing up, just in
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 29 
 
 front of her verandah, all gay with flowers. She is 
 holding the bridle of her horse, King, and is evidently 
 talking to him. Another portrait shows her at the foot 
 of a tree, with her fingers on the bark, listening to the 
 language of the sap. The tree is talking to her and 
 her whole body is listening and can understand. In 
 another portrait, she is seated on the window-sill. Her 
 left arm is thrown round a splendid little three-year-old 
 child, " the little boy next door." The light has caught 
 all the warmth of her caress, all the maternal feeling in 
 this blind, deaf woman, and it is infinitely pathetic. 
 
 Helen Keller was six years old, when an admirable 
 governess was providentially sent to her, a woman who 
 had been blind herself and had been trained in the Per- 
 kins' Institution. She undertook to draw the poor 
 child out of the darkness and silence in which she found 
 her. She placed little Helen's fingers on her own lips, 
 lips which spoke; she made her touch the various ob- 
 jects, spelt the names of these objects on the palm of 
 her hand, and, in this way, put her into touch with a 
 world which had hitherto been invisible and intangible 
 to her. Helen Keller describes this wonderful initia- 
 tion : 
 
 " Before my teacher came to me, I did not know that 
 I am. I lived in a world that was a no-world. ... I 
 did not know that I knew aught, or that I lived or 
 acted or desired. I had neither will nor intellect. I 
 was carried along to objects and acts by a certain blind, 
 natural impetus. I had a mind which caused me to 
 feel anger, satisfaction, desire. ... I also recall tac- 
 tually the fact that never in the start of the body, or a
 
 30 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 heart-beat, did I feel that 1 loved or cared for anything. 
 ... I remember, also through touch, that I had a 
 power of association. After repeatedly smelling rain 
 and feeling the discomfort of wetness I acted like those 
 about me: I ran to shut the window. When I wanted 
 anything I liked, ice-cream, for instance, of which I 
 was very fond, I had a delicious taste on my tongue 
 (which, by the way, I never have now), and in my hand 
 I felt the turning of the freezer. I made the sign, and 
 my mother knew I wanted ice-cream. I thought and 
 desired in my fingers. ... I was not conscious of any 
 change or process going on in my brain when my 
 teacher began to instruct me. I merely felt keen de- 
 light in obtaining more easily what I wanted by means 
 of the finger motions she taught me. . . . When I 
 learnt the meaning of * I ' and of ' me ' and found that 
 I was something, I began to think. . . . Thought made 
 me conscious of love, joy and all the emotions . . . and 
 the blind impetus, which had before driven me hither 
 and thither at the dictates of my sensations, vanished 
 forever. I cannot represent more clearly than any one 
 else the gradual and subtle changes from first impres- 
 sions to abstract ideas. But I knew that my physical 
 ideas, that is, ideas derived from material objects, ap- 
 pear to me first in ideas similar to those of touch. In- 
 stantaneously they pass into intellectual meanings. 
 Afterwards the meaning finds expression in what is 
 called * inner speech.' When I was a child, my inner 
 speech was inner spelling. Although I am even now 
 frequently caught spelling to myself on my fingers, yet 
 I talk to myself, too, with my lips, and it is true that
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 31 
 
 when I first learned to speak, my mind discarded the 
 finger symbols and began to articulate. However, when 
 I try to recall what some one has said to me, I am con- 
 scious of a hand spelling into mine. . . . Nature 
 the world that I could touch was folded and filled 
 within me. ... I came later to look for an image of 
 my emotions and sensations in others. I had to learn 
 the outward signs of inward feelings. The start of 
 fear, the suppressed, controlled tensity of pain, the 
 beat of happy muscles in others, had to be perceived 
 and compared with my own experience before I could 
 trace them back to the intangible soul of another. . . ." 
 
 This admirably described initiation work takes place, 
 undoubtedly, with all creatures, but they are not aware 
 of it. The immense effort that it cost the little blind, 
 deaf child made her conscious of it, and it was impos- 
 sible for her to forget it. 
 
 In order that Helen Keller might know that she was, 
 in order that she might be able to think and to love, 
 she had to be put into communication with the currents 
 of universal life, with her fellow-beings. Is not this the 
 proof of our close solidarity? 
 
 The writer of the article, " Sense and Sensibility," 
 affirms that for a blind, deaf child, night is " kindly." 
 The child inherits something of the mind of its ances- 
 tors who had seen, and he is affected by the light that 
 he has never seen, by the sounds that he has never 
 heard. She adds : " Every atom of my body is a 
 vibroscope. . . . Sometimes it seems as if the very sub- 
 stance of my flesh were so many eyes looking out at 
 will upon a world new created every day. ... I admit
 
 32 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 that there are innumerable marvels in the visible uni- 
 verse unguessed by me. . . . There are myriad sen- 
 sations perceived by me of which you do not dream. 
 . . . Footsteps, I discover, very tactually according to 
 the age, the sex and the manner of the walker. . . . 
 I know when one kneels, kicks, sits down, or gets up. 
 Thus I follow, to some extent, the actions of people 
 about me and the changes of their postures. . . . There 
 are tactual vibrations which do not belong to skin 
 touch. They penetrate the skin, the nerves, the bones, 
 like pain, heat, and cold. The beat of a drum smites 
 me through from the chest to the shoulder-blades. . . . 
 If vibration and motion combine in my touch for any 
 length of time, the earth seems to run away while I stand 
 still. . . . The loftier and grander vibrations which 
 appeal to my emotions are varied and abundant. I 
 listen with awe to the roll of the thunder and the muf- 
 fled avalanche of sound when the sea flings itself upon 
 the shore. ... I should say that organ-music fills to 
 an ecstasy the act of feeling. ... I enjoy the music of 
 the piano most when I touch the instrument. ... I 
 nm able to follow the dominant spirit and mood of the 
 music . . . but I have never succeeded in distinguishing 
 one composition from another. ... I am exceedingly 
 sensitive to the harshness of noises like grinding, scrap- 
 ing, and the hoarse creak of rusty locks. . . . One 
 day, in the dining-room of a hotel, a tactual dissonance 
 arrested my attention. I found that two waiters were 
 walking back and forth, but not with the same gait. A 
 band was playing and I could feel the music waves 
 along the floor. One of the waiters walked in time to
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 33 
 
 the band, graceful and light, while the other disregarded 
 the music and rushed from table to table. . . . By 
 placing my hand on a person's lips and throat, I gain 
 an idea of many specific vibrations. . . . The utter- 
 ances of animals, though wordless, are eloquent to me 
 . . the cat's purr, its mew . . . the dog's bow-wow 
 of warning, or of joyous welcome, the snort of a horse. 
 . . . With my own hand I have felt all these sounds. 
 . . . The silence of the country is always most welcome 
 after the din of the town. . . . The thousand voices of 
 the earth have truly found their way to me, the silky 
 swish of leaves, the buzz of insects. . . . Heat-waves 
 and sound-waves play upon my face in infinite variety 
 and combination. . . . The rain of winter is raw, with- 
 out odour and dismal. The rain of spring is brisk, 
 fragrant, charged with life-giving warmth. . . . Be- 
 tween my experience and the experiences of others there 
 is no gulf of mute space which I cannot bridge. For I 
 have endlessly varied, instructive contacts with all the 
 world, with Life, with the atmosphere whose radiant 
 activity enfolds us all." 
 
 I wish that I could give all these sensations of a 
 creature who is blind and deaf. Some of them are mar- 
 vellously subtle. When Helen Keller speaks of the 
 sense of touch, and of that of smell, she tells us that 
 she values the sense of touch more highly than eye- 
 sight. She goes so far as to say that if a good fairy 
 were to offer her her eyesight in place of her sense of 
 touch, she should refuse the exchange. 
 
 " The world that I see with my fingers," she says, 
 " is alive, ruddy and satisfying. . . . Through the
 
 84 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 sense of touch I know the faces of friends, the illimit- 
 able variety of straight and curved lines, all surfaces, 
 the exuberance of the soil, the delicate shapes of flowers, 
 the noble forms of trees. . . . By placing my hand on 
 a person's lips and throat, I gain an idea of many spe- 
 cific vibrations, and interpret them. . . . Touch can- 
 not bridge distance, but thought leaps the chasm. I 
 have felt the rondure of the infant's tender form. I 
 can apply this principle to the landscape, and to the 
 far-off hill." Quoting from a friend's letter on the 
 subject of a piece of sculpture she says: "Its more 
 exquisite beauties could not be discovered by the sight, 
 but only by the touch of the hand passed over it." She 
 goes on to say: 
 
 " Touch brings the blind many sweet certainties 
 which our more fortunate fellows miss, because their 
 sense of touch is uncultivated. When they look at 
 things, they put their hands in their pockets. No 
 doubt that is one reason why their knowledge is often 
 so vague, inaccurate and useless." 
 
 The following passage from her article reveals to us 
 something with regard to the power of the sense of 
 smell : " In my experience smell is most important, 
 and I find that there is high authority for the nobility 
 of the sense which we have neglected and disparaged. 
 ... I doubt if there is any sensation arising from 
 sight more delightful than the odours which filter 
 through sun-warmed, wind-tossed branches, or the tide 
 of scents which swells, subsides, rises again, wave on 
 wave, filling the wide world with invisible sweetness. 
 ... I never smell daisies without living over again the
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 35 
 
 ecstatic mornings that my teacher and I spent wander- 
 ing in the fields, while I learned new words and the 
 names of things. . . . The sense of smell has told me 
 of a coming storm hours before there was any sign of it 
 visible. ... I know by smell the kind of house we enter. 
 I have recognised an old-fashioned country house be- 
 cause it has several layers of odours, left by a succes- 
 sion of families. ... In the evening quiet, there are 
 fewer vibrations than in the daytime, and then I rely 
 more largely upon smell. . . . Smell gives me more 
 idea than touch or taste of the manner in which sight 
 and hearing probably discharge their functions. 
 Touch seems to reside in the object touched, because 
 there is a contact of surfaces and odour seems to reside 
 not in the object smelt, but in th-e organ. Since I smell 
 a tree at a distance, it is comprehensible to me that a 
 person sees it without touching it. ... From exhala- 
 tions I learn much about people. ... I can distinguish 
 the carpenter from the iron-worker, the artist from the 
 mason or the chemist. When a person passes quickly 
 from one place to another, I get a scent impression of 
 where he has been in the kitchen, the garden or the 
 sick-room. / gain pleasurable ideas of freshness and 
 good taste from the odours of soap, toilette isvater, 
 clean garments . . . the dear odours of those I love are 
 so definite, so unmistakable, that nothing can quite ob- 
 literate them. Once, long ago, in a crowded railway 
 station, a lady kissed me as she hurried by. . . . The 
 years are many since she kissed me. Yet her odour is 
 fresh in my memory. . . . All infants have the same 
 scent. ... It is not until the age of six or seven that
 
 36 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 children begin to have perceptible, individual odours. 
 . . . The air is equally charged with the odours of life 
 and of destruction. . . . Out of doors I am well aware, 
 by smell and touch, of the ground we tread and the 
 places we pass. Sometimes, when there is no wind, the 
 odours are so grouped that I know the character of the 
 country. ... I was once without the sense of smell 
 and taste for several days . . . and a loneliness crept 
 over me as vast as the air whose myriad odours I 
 missed. When I recovered the lost sense, my heart 
 bounded with gladness. . . ." 
 
 I should like to have given every phrase of this arti- 
 cle, " Sense and Sensibility," for every phrase contains 
 a revelation about ourselves, and Helen Keller's opti- 
 mism is most touching and sincere. Ironical people 
 will, no doubt, attribute this to the fact that she can 
 neither see nor hear. My belief is that her optimism 
 is due to the fact that she sees and hears more thor- 
 oughly than we do. She takes real pride in showing 
 us what she gets from Life and from the Universe with 
 " only three doors to her house." 
 
 Further on we read: "Blindness has no limiting 
 effect upon my mental vision. My intellectual horizon 
 is infinitely wide. ... A person deprived of one or 
 more senses is not, as many seem to think, turned out 
 into a trackless wilderness without landmark or guide. 
 The blind man carries with him into his dark environ- 
 ment all the faculties essential to the apprehension of 
 the visible world. . . . The infinite wonders of the uni- 
 verse are revealed to us as we are capable of receiving 
 them. The keenness of our vision depends not on how
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 37 
 
 much we can see, but on how much we can feel. . . . 
 Nature sings her most exquisite songs to those who 
 love her. ... I have walked in the fields at early morn- 
 ing. I have felt a rose-bush laden with dew and fra- 
 grance. I have known the sweet, shy ways of little 
 children. ... I observe, I think, I feel, I imagine. 
 . . . The bond between humanity and me is worth keep- 
 ing, even if the ideas on which I base it prove errone- 
 ous." 
 
 As a proof of the mental vision of those who are de- 
 prived of sight, Helen Keller quotes the sonnet of Mr. 
 Clarence Hawkes, who has been blind from childhood : 
 
 THE MOUNTAIN TO THE PINE 
 
 Thou tall, majestic monarch of the wood, 
 
 That standest where no wild vines dare to creep, 
 
 Men call thee old, and say that thou hast stood 
 A century upon my rugged steep; 
 
 Yet unto me thy life is but a day, 
 
 When I recall the things that I have seen, 
 
 The forest monarchs that have passed away 
 Upon the spot where first I saw thy green; 
 
 For I am older than the age of man, 
 
 Or all the living things that crawl or creep, 
 Or birds of air, or creatures of the deep; 
 
 I was the first dim outline of God's plan: 
 Only the waters of the restless sea 
 And the infinite stars in heaven are old to me. 
 
 If a blind man could really write that the mountain 
 was the -first dim outline of God's plan and that, to him,
 
 38 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 the only things that are old are the waters of the rest- 
 less sea and the infinite stars in heaven, we must believe 
 in psychical vision and, for my part, I do believe in it. 
 A curious thing is that Helen Keller notices our blind- 
 ness. It makes her indignant and she speaks of it 
 ironically. " I have walked," she says, " with people 
 whose eyes are full of light, but who see nothing in sea 
 or sky, nothing in city streets, nothing in books. . . . 
 It were better far to sail forever in the night of blind- 
 ness, with sense and feeling and mind, than to be thus 
 content with the mere act of seeing. . . . The only 
 lightless dark is the night of darkness and ignorance 
 and insensibility. . . . It is more difficult to teach 
 ignorance to think than to teach an intelligent blind 
 man to see the grandeur of Niagara." 
 
 From beginning to end of this human document, one 
 feels that the soul from which it emanates is in very 
 close communion with Nature, with the Universe, with 
 the Eternal God. It gives out a certain psychical 
 warmth, which leaves no doubt about its sincerity. 
 Helen Keller is a poet and we might, therefore, distrust 
 her imagination, if it were not that her highly cultured 
 mind must have acquired respect for Truth and the 
 power of discerning it. She analyses the impressions 
 that come to her from the outside world, with great 
 method and science. She gives us her impressions as 
 to what the Invisible is, and she endeavours to find out 
 how these impressions come to her. The faculties that 
 she discovers within herself surprise and amaze her, and 
 she is very proud of them. 
 
 This power of a blind, deaf creature revealed to me
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 39 
 
 the power that we possess, we, who hear and see. It 
 revealed to me, at the same time, our incapacity, in not 
 knowing how to use that power. Our sensory faculty 
 is in five divisions, whilst that of Helen Keller is in 
 three divisions. It is therefore possible that our organs 
 will never acquire the acuteness of hers. By training, 
 by concentration and by thought, we could develop this 
 considerably. We do not yet know how to see, how to 
 hear, nor how to feel. Our bodies are " vibroscopes," 
 like Helen Keller's, but we do not understand what 
 their vibrations say. We go on repeating, " I vibrate 
 ... he vibrates ... we vibrate . . . ," because we 
 like the words, but for us these are only words. We 
 only look at things with our eyes and, as this blind seer 
 says, our vision is " vague and superficial." She judges 
 thus, even after reading our greatest poets, and her 
 intuition has not deceived her. The instinct of every 
 creature, of the very child, is to make use of its sense 
 of touch for coming into contact with things. Parents 
 and educators, thanks to a contra-instinct, prevent this. 
 This prohibition has caused torrents of childish tears. 
 In the Museums, and everywhere where there is any- 
 thing to see, a notice is put up to the effect that we 
 " must not touch." And so, we put our hands in our 
 pockets. The question is, Why do the gods create in- 
 stincts and contra-instincts ? Is it for the sake of 
 exasperating and tormenting us? Formerly I used to 
 think so. Is it not rather so that our instinct may be 
 held in curb until it has become intelligent? The touch 
 of ignorant fingers would destroy the beautiful accumu- 
 lators of the things that are to be preserved. The fin-
 
 40 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 gers must be educated, they must be taught respect, 
 taught, too, to see and to hear. Will they ever under- 
 stand the language of the trees, the work of the sap? 
 Why not? 
 
 Following Helen Keller's suggestion, I held the palms 
 of my hands out to the rays of the sun. I had a de- 
 lightful sensation of their vital warmth, which is unlike 
 anything else. I felt, it mounting in waves through my 
 veins and arteries. I realised their action on the vege- 
 table kingdom. I understood how the things in this 
 kingdom might die through this very force. I under- 
 stood the thirst of the desert, the cracked earth, the 
 weariness of plants towards the evening time of a fine 
 day. From henceforth I shall appreciate the clouds 
 which give them a little repose. 
 
 What the writer of " Sense and Sensibility " reveals 
 to us about human odour may open a whole field of 
 study and speculation to physiologists and psycholo- 
 gists. Are these impressions of hers about a cultivated 
 sense of smell real or are they only an effect of her 
 imagination? I do not think so. We have, each one 
 of us, a special atmosphere. This atmosphere, which 
 our radiations are constantly creating and renewing, 
 isolates or groups us, it provokes sympathies or antipa- 
 thies, affinities or enmities and it has a radiation, the 
 extent of which we cannot conceive. 
 
 The dog, for instance, feels this human atmosphere. 
 It attracts him irresistibly, he loves it and he cannot be 
 happy outside it. When scientific men have learnt to 
 register and analyse it, it will probably reveal to them 
 a chemistry that will astound them. I fancy that kind-
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 41 
 
 hearted, ordinary sort of people must have a sweet 
 odour and that intelligent, healthy, good people must 
 have an aromatic odour. As to the idealists, they must 
 have an extraordinarily complex chemistry. Their 
 odour must be a mixture of lilies, tube-roses, musk, 
 amber and benzoin. 
 
 However that may be, I should be more afraid of the 
 judgment of Helen Keller's fingers and of her olfactory 
 nerve than of the eyes of those who see. I can very 
 well understand the grief she felt the day when she lost 
 her sense of smell, " one of her guides," and also her 
 " jump of joy " when it came back again to her, as I 
 have experienced the same thing. An attack of influ- 
 enza once took away my sense of smell, quite suddenly, 
 and I was without it for two years. I felt the most 
 ridiculous humiliation. It seemed to me that something 
 of me was already dead. Out of stupid vanity, I would 
 not own to it to my friends, and they continued send- 
 ing me sweet-smelling flowers, little thinking that they 
 were adding to my grief. In spite of their beauty of 
 form and colour, those flowers were simply odious to me. 
 One day in a fit of anger unbecoming to my age I 
 threw a magnificent bunch of fresh irises away. I regret 
 it to this day, for it was so stupid and bad of me. I 
 had to go through two Springs in this way, sniffing, 
 in despair, for the scent from the green young leaves 
 of hedges in flower and from the blossom on the acacia- 
 trees. I continued smelling all the flowers and crush- 
 ing any aromatic herbs in my hand. It was all to no 
 purpose as there was no scent for me and this privation 
 was most cruel. One day, as I was writing, a whiff of
 
 42 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 perfume from a bunch of pinky white carnations on 
 my table came to me. I turned red with emotion and 
 my hands trembled as I lifted the flowers to my nos- 
 trils. It was no illusion, I could smell them faintly, but, 
 at any rate, my sense of smell was not dead. It only 
 came back to me very gradually. I could not catch the 
 full scent of certain flowers and that of red roses was 
 quite disagreeable to me at first. Remembering what it 
 really should be, I realised what notes were lacking in 
 its chromatic scale. At present, I am thankful to say, 
 nothing escapes me. I get the sweet smell of the yel- 
 low primrose just as well as the subtle perfume of the 
 lily. I can even distinguish certain shades of perfume 
 which I never used to notice. It is not that my sense 
 of smell is really keener, but that I know how to use it, 
 and I am so afraid of losing it again that I am con- 
 stantly exercising it. This little experience shows that 
 we do not know the force and the resources of our 
 motive power. 
 
 We exercise our muscles, but we do not take care of 
 the machinery which puts us into communication with 
 Nature and with our fellow-creatures. Each one of 
 our senses ought to be specially cared for, so that, if 
 necessary, it could help or take the place of another 
 one. At the age when, as simple folk say, people " are 
 only fit to be buried," I increased my sensorial force by 
 training my thought- power. I increased it to such a 
 degree that I could afford to pity young people. We 
 need another great Initiator who would place our fin- 
 gers on the lips of the goddess Isis ... of Nature,
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 43 
 
 and teach us to read them just as Miss Sullivan taught 
 the little blind, deaf girl to read human lips. But 
 after all, is not this what our men of science are doing? 
 Are they not spelling for us, in our hands, the secrets 
 which the gods have spelt to them in theirs? These 
 secrets are necessary for our progress. And how many 
 they have revealed to us during the last few years! 
 They have enabled us to leave our planet and to move 
 about in the air. They have worked with us in manu- 
 facturing those wings of which men have so often 
 dreamed whilst working, and even whilst sleeping. One 
 of these days they will put us into communication with 
 the Beyond. Everywhere people are searching for this, 
 and nowhere more seriously than in America, the coun- 
 try in which we imagine every one entirely occupied 
 with trying to turn all things into dollars. In the 
 great Universities, the psychical question is the question 
 of the day. The soul, auto-suggestion, suggestion, 
 telepathy, and all the phenomena which we believed to 
 be supernatural are now being studied scientifically. 
 An attempt is being made to develop mental forces by 
 means of concentration in order that these may be used 
 for the cure of diseases. Reviews and newspapers are 
 full of facts which would have made our grandmothers 
 shudder. There is, at present, an extensive metar 
 physlcal literature which has become thoroughly seri- 
 ous. After seeing how a human soul, imprisoned as it 
 was in darkness and silence, could obtain a light which 
 is more powerful than our daylight, and a much more 
 complete psychical and mental vision than ours, I have
 
 44 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 no doubt whatever that we shall succeed in getting out 
 of our darkness and in being able to see the Invisible 
 and to touch the Intangible. 
 
 Was it not providential that this human document 
 on ** Sense and Sensibility," which came to me from 
 America, should arrive just as I was setting out on my 
 last cruise in search of the Heart of Life? It has re- 
 vealed to me much that was unknown to me, as regards 
 the power of the Terrestrian, this poor Terrestrian, 
 who, when seen in a crowd, with a cap on his head, 
 looks like a big chrysanthemum ! This revelation was 
 necessary to me and some one knew that it was neces- 
 sary. This time it was the blind woman spelling on 
 the hand of the woman who sees and the woman who 
 sees humbly thanks the blind woman.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 IT is not only books that are sent to us, but people too. 
 Last week I had come to a stop in my book and a 
 visitor was sent to me, thanks to whom I was able to 
 decide on my next chapter. She came to me with an 
 introduction from an acquaintance I met at the hotel, 
 who has just undergone a serious operation at the 
 Catholic clinique of Bois-Cerf. 
 
 Every time that a fresh person comes to me with an 
 introduction in this way, I growl, like an old tired-out 
 dog. When the introduction is from a person who is 
 ill, and particularly from one who has undergone an 
 operation, I give in, not so much from natural kindli- 
 ness as out of pity and admiration for any one who has 
 had the courage to face the surgeon's knife. I there- 
 fore received my visitor as pleasantly as I could. 
 Whilst she was making her excuses for coming to see 
 me in this way, and giving me news of her friend, I 
 examined her with curiosity. I felt drawn towards her 
 at once. She was tall, her figure was still elegant and 
 she was wearing the mourning of an English widow, a 
 nun's veil falling to her waist and a Marie Stuart border 
 of white crepe in her little bonnet. Her thick hair was 
 turning grey, and her delightfully ugly, and rather 
 bull-dog face, was lighted up by magnificent dark eyes 
 and by dazzlingly white teeth in perfect condition. She 
 
 gave me an impression of intelligence, of strong will 
 
 45
 
 46 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 and of passion that had been lived. As I expected she 
 went straight to the point immediately. 
 
 " It is not out of curiosity that I wanted to see you," 
 she said, rather nervously. " I really needed to come 
 and talk to you." 
 
 " Well then, let us begin at once," I said, all the 
 more graciously as I foresaw that I was about to have 
 a confession. 
 
 " Your books delight me and, at the same time, they 
 exasperate me," she began. " They delight me, because 
 I find a quantity of my own ideas and feelings in 
 them." 
 
 She saw the smile which I could not repress. 
 
 "Very human, is it not?" she asked. 
 
 I nodded my head and she continued. 
 
 " Their optimism exasperates me though," said 
 
 Madame B . " Probably this is because I do not 
 
 share it," she added, with a shade of irony in her voice. 
 " Optimism in a young woman is natural, but I was 
 told that you were a woman of a certain age 
 
 " That is very polite," I said, laughing ; " my age is 
 only too certain. You see for yourself that I am old 
 and, nevertheless, my optimism is quite sincere." 
 
 " You have been very happy then." 
 
 " Happy? All I can say is that the supreme Fabri- 
 cator, in tracing out my destiny, like that of so many 
 others, seems to have endeavoured to go against all my 
 hereditary instincts, all my tastes and all my ambitions. 
 Ah, how they have suffered and protested, all these in- 
 stincts, these tastes, these ambitions ! At present, I am 
 obliged to recognise that this hard treatment was neces-
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 47 
 
 sary for the intellectual development which has made my 
 old age endurable." 
 
 " You might say enviable." 
 
 " Oh, no, endurable. That is a great deal for old 
 age. If I had been consulted, I should have preferred 
 being happy when I was young. This would have been 
 unwise, perhaps. Then, too, you must not imagine 
 that I live in an ivory tower, or that, like so many 
 optimists, I am resigned to the sufferings of other peo- 
 ple. I am so conscious of animal and human suffering 
 that I feel it myself magnetically. A Frenchman, who 
 writes as Paul Wenz, made me shudder to my very 
 marrow by describing the horrors of two years of 
 drought in the Australian bush, where he was stationed. 
 I cannot even write the details; they are like a night- 
 mare. It is very difficult to me to forgive the misery 
 inflicted on certain good creatures which are quite de- 
 fenceless. It is more difficult still to understand why 
 so many others, who would have developed magnificently 
 with just a few rays of sunshine, have been planted on 
 the shady side of life and have withered away and died. 
 I should be tempted to cry out continually against the 
 injustice of things, if I did not know that we always 
 exaggerate the effect of these ills." 
 
 " Are you sure of that ? " 
 
 " Yes, for, considering circumstances, I ought to have 
 suffered much more than I have done. The state of 
 grace given us is one of our greatest blessings. It 
 is one of the forces of Nature. It creates a force, 
 thanks to which adverse forces are attenuated or even 
 annihilated. Then too, this is given to us all."
 
 48 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 " Yes, there is no denying that ! " 
 
 " Then," I continued, " the whole of Life is not just 
 in the dramas of our own existence. We must come 
 out of ourselves, look at Life objectively, in its various 
 energies, in its infinite transformations and in its evo- 
 lutions. We must admire it in the gradual transfor- 
 mation of minerals and of metals, in the fecundation of 
 flowers, in the creation of the animal and of man, in 
 the weaving of their destinies. There is, in all this, a 
 revelation of beauty, of wisdom, of subtle art and of 
 forethought which reassures us and compels our admira- 
 tion. One of the days this summer, I had a beautiful 
 bunch of roses on my table. I noticed that many of 
 the leaves were cut out in the most surprisingly distinct 
 way. It seemed as though the semi-circular cutting- 
 out must have been done with the smallest scissors. I 
 guessed that this was the work of an insect and I won- 
 dered what insect? For the thousandth time, I blamed 
 my ignorance. It was just as though some one had 
 heard my silent question, for, the following week, I re- 
 ceived an American magazine. I learnt from this pub- 
 lication that the insect whose work had puzzled me was 
 a wild bee named Megachile, which makes its nest in 
 the hollow of trees and this nest is composed of rose 
 leaves. Nothing less than this ! It cuts them out with 
 its mandibles and then, with its head, feet and abdomen, 
 it makes them into a kind of tube with cells. In each 
 cell of this royal little cradle, it places an egg and then 
 the food of the larva which is to come to life. This 
 food is a tiny ball of ' bee's bread,' made of pollen and 
 honey kneaded together. The nest sometimes contains
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 49 
 
 as many as thirty cells and requires more than a thou- 
 sand flower petals. Is not that adorable? " 
 
 " It certainly is," agreed Madame R with her 
 
 eyes slightly misty. 
 
 " And when the Megachile has given all the life that 
 is enclosed within its ovaries, it dies." 
 
 " Oh, that is just the cruelty of Nature." 
 
 " Yes, but then it has had love, maternity and the 
 glory of continuing its species. Is not that a great 
 deal for a bee? " 
 
 " It would be a great deal for a woman," answered 
 my visitor. 
 
 " It dies and something of itself will live again with 
 the rose-leaves that it has collected. The thought that 
 created all that must be of feminine essence and I am 
 sure that a subtle joy must have been given to the wild 
 bee in the work imposed upon it. When we see mar- 
 vels of this kind, we must be convinced that those who 
 elaborate them are neither evil nor cruel." 
 
 " And do you include human nature in your admira- 
 tion? " asked Madame R in a harsh tone of voice. 
 
 " What do you call human nature ? " 
 
 This simple question seemed to disconcert my visitor. 
 
 " Unkindness, ingratitude, selfishness." 
 
 " And also kindness, abnegation, altruism," I added. 
 
 " Yes, but in much smaller quantities." 
 
 " In much larger quantities, I assure you," I re- 
 plied. " Besides, faults and qualities, vices and virtues 
 are all psychical forces." 
 
 " Psychical forces, our faults and our qualities ? " 
 
 " Certainly. Have you never seen them? "
 
 50 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 " Oh, we sec them without seeing them and, if we do 
 not see them, we feel them." 
 
 "That is just it," I answered, smiling. "These 
 forces are in Nature, they form part of the Universal 
 Soul. They are incarnated in all creatures, in the in- 
 sect which has only two cells, as well as in the man who 
 has millions. They are the cards with which the game 
 of life is played. There are some which are big trump 
 cards, there are others which make us win or lose the 
 game. They are all necessary, though." 
 
 " Necessary? All of them? " 
 
 " In order to be convinced of this we have only to 
 consider the immense and phenomenal action of vanity. 
 This infinitely small thing, the manifestations and 
 schemes of which appear so ridiculous to us sometimes, 
 is one of the most important agents in the world. It 
 urges on all the energies. It is to be found every- 
 where, and in everything, in religion, in politics, in love. 
 It helps to create charitable societies, to build temples 
 and superb monuments. It is useful and it does not 
 ask for much payment in return, as it is satisfied with 
 words and honours, even with posthumous honours, and 
 it accepts all false coin. The * Wheel of Things ' 
 would turn too slowly, if it were not for vanity, 
 snobbism and ambition. Then too, egoism, which con- 
 centrates, leaves room for generosity, which scatters 
 abroad. The cruelty of one person excites the pity 
 of every one. Envy is the necessary stimulant for 
 many people. Hypocrisy obliges the inferior being to 
 behave in a way which does him good. Impiety, lying 
 and injustice bring about fine reaction sometimes. I
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 51 
 
 imagine these psychical forces as so many differently 
 coloured waves. It seems to me that love, friendship 
 and humanitarianism must be remarkably brilliant." 
 
 "And what about ingratitude?" asked Madame 
 R - in so harsh a tone that, for the second time, I 
 was struck by it. 
 
 " Ingratitude has always been called black and not 
 without reason, as black absorbs light and gives none 
 back. Avarice and selfishness always seem grey to me, 
 and jealousy and hatred of a greenish hue. Joking 
 apart, though, if we are to understand the role of these 
 various factors, we must watch their work patiently 
 for a very long time. But you see the difficulty is that 
 we dare not look evil in the face. Some people con- 
 sider it their duty to ignore it, and others delight in 
 playing with it. We ought to approach it with re- 
 spect." 
 
 "Approach evil with respect!" exclaimed Madame 
 
 " Yes, because it is a primordial force and we ought 
 to work for its evolution, so that it may be transformed 
 into good. I fancy that this is our unique raison 
 d'etre and it includes all the other reasons. I tried for 
 a long time to see evil and good, to find a scientific for- 
 mula for them and, finally, I hit upon one that satis- 
 fies me." 
 
 " Ah, do tell me what it is," begged my visitor. 
 
 " Well, my idea is that good is a reactive agent which 
 shows up the presence of evil, and that evil is a reactive 
 agent which shows up the presence of good." 
 
 Madame R - repeated my words slowly.
 
 52 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 " But," she began, and then, her face suddenly light- 
 ing up, she added : " I understand ; I understand per- 
 fectly well what you mean. It is moral chemistry." 
 
 " Neither more nor less," I replied. " Man is a 
 marvel: I have more and more admiration and respect 
 for him every day of my life." 
 
 *' Oh, Madame, how do you look at him in order to 
 arrive at this?" 
 
 "I look at him objectively. I grant you that this 
 collaborator with Providence is not much to look at. 
 Even the best looking one is not very beautiful. There 
 is nothing very noble about the most worthy specimen 
 and the very best one is not really good, but such as he 
 is, he represents the divine work of millions of years. 
 He has been created cell by cell, segment by segment; 
 he is the synthesis of the three kingdoms of Nature. 
 He bears within him the past, the present and the fu- 
 ture. He bears within him, too, the secret of immor- 
 tality. He has all the smallness of the atom and all 
 the greatness of a future god. Certain savants are 
 straining all their faculties in a desperate effort to 
 guess what the inhabitant of Mars can be, and they do 
 not even try to find out what the inhabitant of this 
 Earth is." 
 
 " Yes," agreed my visitor, smiling. " One of my 
 cousins spends his time speculating on what our neigh- 
 bours in the sky are, and he knows so little about his 
 fellow-creatures that a mere child could dupe him." 
 
 "He probably disdains the study of mankind, be- 
 cause it seems too easy for him. In reality, there is 
 no study more difficult, and more impossible even, for
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 53 
 
 man is an individuality forming a part of millions of 
 individuals. In olden times it was believed that the 
 intellect was to be found within the liver, that the soul 
 dwelt within the heart, the mind in the loins, the affec- 
 tive emotions in the intestines and the conscient part 
 of us in the very blood. This was the Jewish belief. 
 Not until last century did the physiologists discover 
 that the brain is the seat of all our faculties." 
 
 " Do you mean to say that men have taken so long to 
 discover that they think with their brains? Oh, that 
 really is remarkable," exclaimed Madame R . 
 
 " Their sensations deceived them. The right time 
 for that discovery had not arrived, and every discovery 
 serves to start a fresh chapter in the epopee of the 
 Earth. Then too, man, having been created last will, 
 perhaps, be the last to be known." 
 
 " That is very probable." 
 
 " He has been studied metaphysically before being 
 studied physiologically, so that he has remained a some- 
 thing abstract even to scientific minds. As he is so 
 little known, he has been slandered from every pulpit, 
 and from every public platform. Sincerely or insin- 
 cerely, people have endeavoured to make him believe 
 that he was born in sin, that he is a well of iniquity, 
 evil in the very depths of his soul. This is not true 
 and never has been true. Then, too, if we are to be 
 just, we must judge him merely as a Terrestrian." 
 
 " Man a Terrestrian ? " she repeated in perplexity. 
 
 " Is he anything else? " I asked. 
 
 " No you can call him that " 
 
 " It is not that I merely call him that. The inhabi-
 
 54 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 tant of the Earth is an Earth-dweller. We must look 
 at man in this objective way, if we are to understand 
 his role here below. If we are to understand that he 
 is part of the Universe, we must realise that he is an 
 accumulator." 
 
 " An accumulator, man an accumulator ! " exclaimed 
 my visitor in a scared way that amused me immensely. 
 
 "And a radiator," I continued, speaking slowly, in 
 order to enjoy the effect of my words. " He is a re- 
 ceiver too, a resonator, a transformer and a trans- 
 mitter. He is all that." 
 
 "Are you joking? " asked my visitor, her dark eyes 
 wide open in surprise. 
 
 " Not at all. You understand the meaning of all 
 those terms, do you not ? " 
 
 " Yes, the various discoveries of recent years have 
 made them all more or less familiar." 
 
 " And all these discoveries had to be made, so that we 
 might learn to know the true functions of man. He is 
 a fighting animal, creation's Dreadnought. A work- 
 man accustomed to machinery, or to electricity, would 
 be able to understand him better than the greatest 
 physiologists of olden times." 
 
 " I am afraid I do not quite grasp your meaning," 
 
 said Madame R , knitting her eyebrows in her effort 
 
 to understand. 
 
 " You do not grasp my meaning? " I repeated. " Is 
 not the body, with its bones, nerves, muscles and blood, 
 an accumulator of physical forces, of those forces, the 
 exteriorisation of which you can see in a battery, in all 
 work, and in every material struggle? "
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 55 
 
 " There is some truth in that," admitted Madame 
 
 R- 
 
 " There is a great deal of truth in it," I said. " Is 
 not the brain, with its millions of cells, planted like 
 flowers in that fertile and mysterious grey matter, an 
 accumulator of the psychical forces which we call 
 thoughts, ideas and sentiments? Is it not an accumu- 
 lator of innumerable impressions, pictures and memo- 
 ries?" 
 
 " Why, yes." 
 
 "And when, in one form or another, it gives these 
 forces back to Life, does it not become a radiator? " 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 "And is not man a receiver of the ambient radi- 
 ations? These are by no means agreeable always. 
 Certain political personages seem to me like St. Se- 
 bastian. Certain society women must be regular pin- 
 cushions. Do you understand what I mean? " 
 
 " Yes, I understand quite well." 
 
 " The Terrestrian," I continued, " is a resonator, a 
 sort of table of harmony, which receives and gives out 
 the infinite vibrations of the visible and invisible worlds. 
 Besides this, he is a transformer and a wonderful trans- 
 former. With the various aliments he makes blood, 
 nerves, muscles, bones, tissues, flesh, caloric, electricity 
 and what not? By means of his will-power and his 
 thoughts he does deeds. To sum up briefly, he trans- 
 forms material substance into immaterial force, and 
 physical force into psychical force." 
 
 " It is impossible to deny that." 
 
 " He is also a transmitter of life, death, health, dis-
 
 56 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 ease, joy and sorrow. He is a vehicle of ideas, of mes- 
 sages, of orders, of a million things of which we have 
 not jet a suspicion." 
 
 " I see," said Madame R , who had gradually 
 
 begun to comprehend. 
 
 " Poor Terrestrian ! " I continued. ** He is moved 
 about by formidable currents. Awake or asleep, he is 
 constantly being worked upon by invisible agents. His 
 movements are combined with those of beings of whose 
 very existence he is, perhaps, not aware. He is carry- 
 ing about within himself the germs of his own destruc- 
 tion, hidden enemies which compel him to keep up a 
 constant warfare. In his brain, the phenomenon of 
 mirages is constantly taking place. This auto-mirage 
 may be wealth, honours, or a religious, artistic, or scien- 
 tific ideal. In order to attain what he thinks he sees, 
 he walks day and night, he springs over obstacles, 
 overturns or crushes all that opposes him, and then, 
 when he actually grasps it, he says : * Was this all ? ' 
 And yet, in pursuing his chimera, which was his des- 
 tiny, he was helping in the divine work, which is his 
 work too. When one realises all this, one must feel 
 profound admiration for man, no matter on which step 
 of the ladder he is placed, and also a tenderness and 
 pity which will lead us on to the true humanitarianism." 
 
 " But," objected my visitor, " man appears to you 
 like a machine." 
 
 '* Yes," I replied, " like an automobile, every molecule 
 and every organ of which contains soul and gives out 
 soul. He is like a machine animated by the Spirit of 
 God, by * the Spirit that moved upon the waters.'
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 57 
 
 I have realised that the human head is a motor, the 
 power of which can be increased or lessened, the ma- 
 chinery improved or damaged, a motor on which in- 
 numerable forces are at work. I frequently say to 
 myself : ' This one is only a poor little five horse-power ' 
 or ' That one is a forty horse-power.' When I hap- 
 pen to come across one that is a hundred horse-power, 
 I hover round it mentally, with an admiration that does 
 me good. I must own, though, that I do not often 
 meet with one of these on my path." 
 
 " Without fishing for compliments, what should you 
 think I represent ? " asked Madame R . 
 
 " A fifteen horse-power which might become a twen- 
 ty-five." 
 
 " I am glad to hear that. I have an auto of that 
 force and it gets over a great deal of ground." 
 
 " The first time that human heads appeared to me 
 like so many living motors, I was at the theatre, and 
 the idea of these heads, bald or covered with hair, as 
 motors, made me shake with laughter. On thinking 
 this over, I began to realise what was really taking place 
 under these craniums and I was deeply touched." 
 
 " Then you look at people and things within them- 
 selves, as though you are looking in a mirror." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " And that is what you mean by looking at them 
 objectively? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "I know the meaning of the word objective, but I 
 had never understood just what it signified, or how to 
 apply it."
 
 68 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 " Well, you would find that this objective observa- 
 tion, at your age, might become an exhaustless source 
 of interest. You should train your mind to this kind 
 of observation." 
 
 " So that I may become a twenty-five horse-power? " 
 
 " So that you may see more and see with greater 
 clearness, and so that you may learn to reflect. There 
 are so few people who have any idea of the real pleas- 
 ure that this kind of working of the mind gives. So- 
 called orthodox people do not think, because they be- 
 lieve they have no right to do so, and free-thinkers 
 take advantage of their freedom for not thinking at all." 
 
 " That is quite true," said Madame R , laughing. 
 
 " There are so many discoveries now-a-days," I con- 
 tinued, " of forces of which we had no idea, that people 
 will soon be obliged to reflect, and they will then realise 
 the fact that free-will is an impossible idea." 
 
 "Free-will! Ah, that is just what I wanted to dis- 
 cuss with you. My husband was a thinker and he did 
 not believe in it, but there were so many tilings in whicH 
 he no longer believed that I could not trust to him. I 
 was wrong, perhaps. Hereditary beliefs, that date so 
 far back, become a sort of habit of mind with us." 
 
 " Yes, nineteen persons out of twenty confuse the 
 divine will with the old fatalism and say, in the most 
 inapt way, that if they are not free they have only to 
 fold their arms and let things take their course. It is 
 just because we are not free that we cannot fold our 
 arms. We have every one of us been created for the 
 sake of doing something, and that something is neces- 
 sary for the harmony, not only of this world of ours,
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 59 
 
 but for the harmony of the whole Universe. Fatalism 
 cannot exist in Nature. We all of us die killed, in one 
 way or another, but you may be quite sure that no 
 death is the result of chance. You have only to re- 
 flect that the present always prepares the future. As 
 we do not know what the future is to be, how could we 
 prepare it? " 
 
 " Ah," said my visitor, " if you only knew how much 
 I need to believe that things are determined beforehand." 
 
 " You can very well believe it. Let us take just one 
 proof among a million. You know the influence that 
 temperature has upon people, upon their health, their 
 actions and even upon their thoughts. Well, try to 
 make the barometer or the thermometer go up or down. 
 These two little instruments register forces, in face of 
 which the whole human race is powerless. That ought 
 to suffice for proving to us the inanity of the idea of 
 free-will." 
 
 " What could a magistrate reply though, if a crimi- 
 nal pleaded that he had committed theft, or even mur- 
 der, but that he was not free, as he had not made 
 himself?" 
 
 " The magistrate could only reply that he, too, was 
 not free to pardon the offence. The man had broken 
 the higher laws which govern all society, and the magis- 
 trate is appointed to see that those laws are respected. 
 Those whom we call criminals are probably the unsound 
 in mind or body, the degenerates, or inferior creatures, 
 of whom Providence makes use for certain of its 
 works." 
 
 " And where is Divine justice to be found then? "
 
 60 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 " In the state of grace which enables the unfortunates 
 of this world to bear their sorrows, in the forces which 
 enter into them, in the evolution and the reincarnations 
 which await them like us." 
 
 " Ah, you believe in reincarnation ? " 
 
 " Yes, I do, certainly." 
 
 " I, too." 
 
 " In our times, now that we have a little light, the 
 attitude of those who are with condemned prisoners is 
 quite different from what it formerly was. The priest 
 kisses them and the lawyer and the warder shake hands 
 with them. They grasp the very hand that has killed 
 some one. All that is good in them comes out. This 
 is like a gleam of the approaching dawn of reincar- 
 nation." 
 
 " Yes, and when we have some great sorrow, which 
 seems to us undeserved, we look for the justice of God 
 and can only find it within ourselves. As for me, I 
 am not a free-thinker, but a free believer. There is a 
 distinct shade between the two." 
 
 " There is a whole colour even," I said. 
 
 " Sometimes I wonder whether I am not an old hypo- 
 crite. I have not what is known as faith, as that is 
 blind. There are many things which my mind can no 
 longer accept, but, all the same, on account of my 
 position as lady of the manor, I am obliged to act as 
 though I did accept everything. I go to Church and 
 am a member of the Church." 
 
 " And quite right, too," I said. " People of humble 
 class, and very many others as well, only see God inside 
 the Church. If you did not go to the services, they
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 61 
 
 would imagine that you did not believe in Him, and you 
 would be encouraging their indifference and, perhaps, 
 causing them to begin to doubt. We can go to any 
 kind of divine worship without the slightest hypocrisy, 
 as it is always a homage to God." 
 
 " I am glad that you think that," said Madame 
 
 R with a sigh of relief. " I am not a very fervent 
 
 Church member. Although I admire the liturgy, I 
 avoid High Mass on account of the sermon. Our 
 priest is one of the best men in the world, but, accord- 
 ing to him, only the Church and her dogmas exist. 
 He says nothing to our peasants of what he ought to 
 say, nothing that will help to make them more generous- 
 minded and more honest, nothing that will help to make 
 their lives more worthy, and that irritates me. One 
 Sunday, I happened to ask my cook whether there had 
 been a good sermon. She had just come back from 
 High Mass. 
 
 " * Oh, nothing very special, 5 she answered. ' The 
 priest explained to us about the equality of the three 
 persons of the Holy Trinity. It seems to me,' she 
 added, ' that all that concerns God more than it does 
 us.' " 
 
 " Ah, the common sense of people of that class ! " I 
 exclaimed. 
 
 " Yes, indeed. And then, by way of commentary, 
 my worthy Veronica continued : ' It would be better 
 to teach parents, children and husbands their duty, it 
 seems to me.' She was quite right." 
 
 " Have you ever spoken to your priest on the sub- 
 ject of reincarnation? "
 
 62 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 " Oh, no. I often invite him to my house and I 
 should not like to spoil his pleasure." 
 
 " This belief has always existed in the soul of the 
 world. We have heard more about it in recent years 
 and it has taken a more scientific form. Besides, it is 
 not contrary to any religion." 
 
 " Whilst the belief in non-free-will is absolute hetero- 
 doxy." 
 
 ** I am not so sure of that. Jesus, for instance, 
 knew that he was doing the will of his Father and not 
 his own will." 
 
 A strange expression came over my visitor's face. 
 
 " If we were really not free, forgiveness would be 
 more easy. We might even love our enemies," she 
 said, as though speaking to herself. Then, suddenly 
 remembering me, she asked abruptly : " Have you 
 ever been deceived by some one very dear to you ? " 
 
 " No, never," I answered. 
 
 " Ah, then you do not know what grief is." 
 
 " Oh, yes, indeed I do. There is a fine collection of 
 miseries in this world and I can answer for it that I 
 have had my share of them." 
 
 " Well, then, I will tell you my story," said Madame 
 
 R , clenching the little handkerchief nervously that 
 
 she was holding. " When I was twenty-five I married 
 a man with whom I was passionately in love, a man 
 whom I still love and who was devoted to me up to the 
 very last. We should have been too happy, if we had 
 only had children. My husband was a widower when I 
 married him, and he had a little son, of six years old, 
 who was his living image. That alone would have made
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 63 
 
 me love the child, even if I had not had a strong ma- 
 ternal instinct." 
 
 Madame R was silent for a minute. She then 
 
 continued brusquely, in an aggressive tone that was 
 almost comic : " Can you tell me why Nature gives 
 the maternal instinct to women who have no children? 
 Then, too, why are children sent to women who only 
 kill them?" 
 
 " Because struggle is necessary in order that Life 
 may be engendered, and also for its very alimentation." 
 
 A little mocking smile came to my visitor's face. 
 
 " I wonder what Providence gives you in return for 
 the way you take up the cudgels in its defence? " she 
 said. 
 
 " A feeling of great satisfaction," I replied. " It is 
 much more agreeable to plead for Providence than for 
 the devil. Our tasks on earth are not all painful ones. 
 Yours, for instance, must have given you a great deal 
 of joy." 
 
 " Yes, by way of preparation for a great sorrow," 
 
 answered Madame R bitterly. " You shall judge 
 
 for yourself. I brought up my husband's son just as 
 though he had been my own. There was no merit in 
 this, as all I did for the boy seemed to me as though it 
 were done for the father. When I rocked him to sleep 
 in my arms, it used to seem to me as though it were 
 my husband as a child once more." 
 
 My visitor stopped again, and then said with a little 
 embarrassment : " I am telling you everything, you 
 see, but it is so that you may understand my indigna- 
 tion and my grief."
 
 64. THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 " Yes, and I admire the subtleness of that sentiment 
 which allowed you to revive the childhood and youth of 
 the man you loved. I admire all this as a novelist and 
 as a psychologist. You must have experienced to the 
 full the delights of love. You must now accept the 
 other side of it." 
 
 " No, I do not accept it," replied Madame R 
 
 with sorrowful hardness, " for I have had to pay too 
 dearly for it. I devoted myself, body and soul, to that 
 child. He had inherited dangerous germs from his 
 mother. Thanks to all my care and to the precautions 
 I took, he developed a good constitution. The doctor 
 acknowledged this. I began to study again, in order 
 to help him in his studies, and I coached him regularly 
 with his home lessons. Heaven only knows all the pa- 
 tience and all the little ruses it needed in order to urge 
 him on. He passed his examinations brilliantly, and 
 had me to thank for it." 
 
 " But he must have been very fond of you," I 
 said. 
 
 " I thought he was. My friends envied me and I 
 used to repeat over and over again, with the greatest 
 pride, that stupid untrue saying: * As we sow, so do 
 we reap.' As long as he needed me I was his ' beloved 
 mother.' There was * no other mother in the world 
 like me.' He had a whole stock of pretty phrases for 
 me. And then he married." 
 
 " Ah," I said, smiling. 
 
 "Yes, ah!" repeated Madame R . "He took 
 
 me out to a certain dinner-party, one evening that my 
 husband happened to be away. He met a very young
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 65 
 
 widow and fell in love with her at first sight. Six 
 months later he married her. She was very fair, with 
 a beautiful complexion and good colouring, one of 
 those women who can do what they like with even the 
 strongest of men. During the first year of his mar- 
 riage, my step-son used to run in every morning for a 
 few minutes, to see us. He seemed to like coming to 
 the old home. Then, under various pretexts, he came 
 less often, and when he visited us at our country house, 
 his stay was shorter every time. His father was rather 
 hurt at this and I tried to invent excuses for his son. 
 All the same it did hurt my husband's feelings and I 
 have never forgiven that. The birth of the first child 
 was a real joy to me, and at present I consider that joy 
 idiotic. I felt myself a grandmother to the very 
 depths of my being. When I went to choose the little 
 garments for the layette, I was in the seventh heaven. 
 It was like being in love again. My maternal instinct 
 had got the better of me once more." 
 " Yes," I said, " and at a critical age." 
 
 Madame R looked at me and then, colouring 
 
 slightly, she said meekly : " Possibly." 
 " And very naturally," I added. 
 " Naturally, oh, no ! However that may be," she 
 continued, " the child was a fine boy, but I was not able 
 to see much of him. His mother managed to keep me 
 at a distance from his cradle." 
 
 " Were you not on good terms with her? " 
 " I cannot exactly say that. We were both of us 
 too well educated to quarrel, but I could always feel 
 her between my step-son and me."
 
 66 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 " And she, very likely, felt you between her husband 
 and herself." 
 
 " My conscience is perfectly clear. I have not a 
 single word or deed, injurious to her, with which to 
 reproach myself." 
 
 " I can quite believe that, but all the same you have 
 too much individuality to be able to play the part of 
 the mother-in-law who does not count. She was prob- 
 ably jealous of your influence over the man you had 
 brought up." 
 
 "Yes, that was just it, of course; and so, in the 
 most perfidious way, she managed to bring about a defi- 
 nite rupture. My dear husband died suddenly, four 
 years ago," she continued, in a broken voice. " His 
 son, with no respect for my grief, which he knew would 
 be intense, and for my feelings, although he knew me 
 to be strictly honourable, had the seals affixed in my 
 home on the advice of his wife's brother. I was left 
 with six pounds of ready money and was obliged to 
 borrow from a friend. He went to law about his 
 father's will, as I had full control of all my husband's 
 property. My son-in-law had come into his mother's 
 fortune on attaining his majority, so that he was in a 
 very good position. I won three law-suits and, after 
 this, on meeting him one day, with his wife under the 
 arcades of the Rue de Rivoli, he passed by without 
 taking any notice of me. I felt my heart leap within 
 me, and I almost staggered as I walked along. I neither 
 saw nor heard anything for the next few minutes. Just 
 think what it meant ! I had been cut dead by the man 
 whom I had cared for from childhood, whom I had
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 67 
 
 nursed through illnesses, at whose bedside I had passed 
 night after night ! " 
 
 " Alas," I said, " your step-son is evidently a weak 
 man and weak people are the worst kind of good ones." 
 
 " Yes, his mother was a mere doll and he has in- 
 herited her character " 
 
 Madame R stopped short for a minute, and then 
 
 continued : " Ah, now I am running down a poor, dead 
 woman. That is abominable! You see what the re- 
 membrance of all this does for me. If I could believe 
 absolutely in determinism, things would seem quite dif- 
 ferent. I was never created for hatred and it upsets 
 me, as it is an element foreign to my nature." 
 
 " Have you not tried some form of diversion? " 
 
 ** One of our modern diversions you mean, I sup- 
 pose? " said my companion, with a little shrug that was 
 very French. " The Red Cross Society, dispensary 
 work, settlements? Yes, but I saw so many things 
 there that were disappointing, that I dropped all that. 
 There are plenty of charitable societies in our country, 
 but they come to an end just as easily as they are 
 started. There is no cohesion." 
 
 " You must remember," I said, " that, for centuries, 
 public charity has been in the hands of the Church. 
 Lay people want to take it up now, and to utilise all 
 the new forces in their turn. They do not know how 
 to go about it, though, as it needs a long apprentice- 
 ship. They will succeed finally, and perhaps a real, 
 intelligent, well-thought-out humanitarianism will be the 
 result of their effort." 
 
 " Well, I went back to Brittany to * cultivate my
 
 68 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 garden.' My husband had instilled into me his love of 
 Nature, of Mother Earth. He managed to make a 
 good farmer's wife out of the ignorant, frivolous Pa- 
 risian that I was formerly. With the help of the 
 steward whom he had taught, I manage our Louvic 
 estate fairly well. I continue the plantation of trees, 
 which he began years ago for his grandchildren. It 
 seems to me all the time as though I were working with 
 him. I am also sowing more seed of ingratitude and 
 future sorrow. Like one of your heroines, I am bring- 
 ing up a little family of twelve orphans: six boys and 
 six girls. I am helped in this by three excellent women, 
 who have the true maternal instinct and no children of 
 their own. The little home is well provided for and 
 will continue." 
 
 A sudden inspiration came to me. 
 
 " You are just the person I wanted to meet," I ex- 
 claimed. 
 
 " Really ! " said Madame R , with unfeigned 
 
 pleasure. 
 
 " Have you noticed that I speak a great deal about 
 children and animals, in my books?" 
 
 " Have I noticed it? Why, that is just what at- 
 tracted me ! " 
 
 " Well, then, I will now confess that for a very, very 
 long time I never noticed children. I am ashamed to 
 say it, but children bored me. Of late years my 
 thoughts have turned towards them in the most curious 
 way and, with ever increasing indignation, I have no- 
 ticed how little parents and those who educate children 
 understand them. Thanks to this lack of comprehen-
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 69 
 
 sion the poor little ones are martyrs every day of their 
 lives." 
 
 " Do you not think that you rather exaggerate 
 things?" 
 
 " No, mothers do not seem to know instinctively what 
 their little ones want. They do not recognise the cry 
 of hunger, or the cry of suffering, still less do they rec- 
 ognise the cry by means of which Nature is preparing 
 the child's lungs. Mothers neither know how to dress 
 nor how to feed their children." 
 
 " Ah, there I agree. In Brittany, infantile mor- 
 tality is largely due to ignorance. Women will tell 
 you that their baby is only six months old and that it 
 can take the same food as its father and mother. They 
 consider that as a proof of great prowess. It certain}^ 
 is, but only the very strong children survive the test.'' fe( | 
 
 "Last summer, in the hotel where I was 
 remember seeing a tall, beautiful woman hugging ,, 
 year-old child frantically. The poor little tiring 
 out, struggled out of her arms and made off^ jjJ. 
 child will grow up heartless,' she said to me. oiff 
 not bear to be fondled.' *I should think , 
 always fondle him like that,' I replied. 
 has the most delicate flesh and 
 You simply bruise him with all your strength}* 
 exclaimed the mother, the colour coming in^o 0| 
 as she gazed at me in amazement, ' 
 that.' This lack of comprehension^' c^ntinu^,] 'Ms 
 to be seen with regard to everything,.,p|hy^^caJ.jLn4 { niQr,aL 
 health, character, natural gifts, ; $ 
 child is caressed one minute
 
 70 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 is dragged away suddenly from his games, or roused out 
 of his sleep. He is taken out for a walk when he needs 
 rest and put to bed when he wants to go out. The 
 other day I met a child walking along half asleep. I 
 came very near stopping the mother and giving her 
 my opinion." 
 
 " How do you think it comes about that Providence 
 gives to animals an instinctive knowledge of what is 
 necessary for its young and withholds this knowledge 
 from mankind?" asked Madame R . 
 
 " Probably because mankind has to learn to know the 
 child, in order to learn to know himself." 
 
 " Perhaps that is it." 
 
 " Habit blinds a mother and prevents her from see- 
 ing her children. I have only known one who could 
 observe them objectively and judge them fairly. She 
 delighted in their conversations and in the droll ideas 
 that came to them. Unfortunately, the father had 
 stuck fast in the ruts of bygone centuries, so that he 
 spoilt all the good that she tried to do. I suppose that, 
 among animals, the parents always agree." 
 
 " Let us hope so, indeed ! " exclaimed Madame R 
 with comic fervour. 
 
 " Have you seen many children with really joyful 
 faces ? " I asked. 
 
 Madame R thought for a moment and then said, 
 
 ruefully : " No, I do not think I have." 
 
 " I have seen a great many with such a pathetic ex- 
 pression that the tears have come to my eyes and that 
 I have been haunted for days. Without any sentimen- 
 tal exaggeration, it is my belief that the child and the
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 71 
 
 horse are the two creatures in this world which are the 
 least understood. If I have been clear enough in ex- 
 plaining to you my ideas of the workings of our motive 
 power, you will readily understand that the cells of the 
 child are influenced by all the vibrations of those of the 
 grown-up persons with whom it lives. I am only sur- 
 prised that there are not more cases of brain fever. 
 Imagine the delights of a child who is blessed with a 
 nervous mother or an irritable father." 
 
 " I can imagine them only too well," said Madame 
 R , smiling. 
 
 " And still more abominable is the fact that badly 
 paid teachers are given to the child, teachers who are 
 like living gramophones. They are ill-fed and badly 
 dressed and they have no prestige at all. Harassed by 
 other work, which they are obliged to 1 do in order to 
 provide for the needs of their families, they have neither 
 time to think nor to rest, and their poor pupils are 
 affected by their worries and their moods. The nation 
 which is civilised enough to know what the child really 
 is, will pay its teachers, not in a republican way, but 
 royally. Their salary ought to be higher than that 
 of deputies or even of senators. That would be jus- 
 tice. Men and women teachers ought to wear the 
 insignia of magistrates. This would increase their 
 prestige and prestige is necessary. The French love 
 their children, but they do not care for the child. I 
 have already written this and I am writing it again, 
 as there are some truths which should be cried aloud 
 at all the cross-roads. Just think of it, two hundred 
 thousand little ones, on an average, are given over to
 
 72 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 the tender mercy of public charity, and two-thirds die 
 before they are adults." 
 
 " Horrors ! " exclaimed Madame R . 
 
 " Yes, indeed," I continued. " They are poor human 
 specimens, I know, but they have all the more need of 
 being cared for physically and morally. Ridiculous 
 prices are paid to the foster-parents and the poor little 
 ones suffer from their earliest days. Then, some two 
 hundred francs a month are given, I believe, to women- 
 inspectors, who mean well, but who are quite ignorant 
 and who are constantly being duped." 
 
 " This inspection ought to be done gratuitously," 
 
 said Madame R , " by charitable women of the 
 
 higher or middle class. There are plenty of women who 
 would give their services, if they were asked. The fact 
 is, though, that in all this public charity, those who ad- 
 minister it are really the very ones who are receiving 
 it." 
 
 " If we cared for the child," I continued, " we should 
 not allow all these poor little ones to be handicapped 
 by the name of charity children. We ought to call 
 them * wards of the State.' Does not the State mean 
 the people at present? In order to lessen the number 
 of secret births and increase the birth statistics, mar- 
 riage ought to be facilitated as it is in England and 
 America. Without any publication of banns, or for- 
 malities whatever, every ministerial official should be 
 empowered to unite an engaged couple, accompanied by 
 two witnesses and producing their birth certificates, by 
 way of proving that they have attained the age which 
 the law demands."
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 73 
 
 " Would not that be a great slight on paternal and 
 maternal authority? " 
 
 " No, the greater number of young people will al- 
 ways respect that. Of course, I know that a large num- 
 ber of young couples would pay dearly for their rash- 
 ness, but the product of their rash love would have a 
 name and the protection of the law." 
 
 Madame R smiled. 
 
 " Ah, you are a novel-writer," she said, " and you 
 would like to create some fresh situations." 
 
 " No, I should like to think that there would be less 
 deserted children and more French men and women. It 
 would be a way to make French people lose that fear 
 for the future which no other nation has to such a de- 
 gree. It is just this fear which is one of the great 
 causes of the depopulation which humiliates us. When 
 I see how little we understand the education of the 
 child, I dare not regret the depopulation though." 
 
 " Oh ! " said my visitor, with a whole world of re- 
 proach in her tone. 
 
 " No ; for the child, which might be such a magnifi- 
 cent medium for conciliation and emulation, is the vic- 
 tim of our religious and political dissensions. In the 
 voluntary schools, for instance, there is a religious pa- 
 ternity and maternity, which is both good and necessary 
 for certain natures. Parents who are in any way de- 
 pendent on the government dare not send their children 
 to these schools. Such tyranny is revolting and unin- 
 telligent. We have neither Christianity nor patriotism. 
 The result of all this is, that when our future citizens 
 leave school, instead of playing together, they look at
 
 74 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 each other like snarling bulldogs and exchange uncom- 
 plimentary epithets, treating each other respectively as 
 * godless heathen ' or as ' priest-ridden bigots.' And 
 this is the way in which fraternity is implanted in the 
 hearts and minds of our new-comers in this world. 
 This hostility will gradually increase and will create 
 the division which weakens. And whilst the sheep-dogs 
 are fighting with each other, the wolves have a good 
 time." 
 
 " Do you not think it would be a good thing if 
 women had a voice in public affairs ? " 
 
 " They are not yet prepared for it. If they had 
 presented themselves to Parliament with a Mothers' pro- 
 gramme, Parliament would have opened its doors to 
 them, but they are incapable of drawing such a pro- 
 gramme up. And believe me, it is the Latin mother 
 who, with her ignorance, her unintelligent love and her 
 passionate selfishness, weakens the race." 
 
 " But if we are not free, it must be that Providence 
 wills that the child should suffer and be misunderstood, 
 that parents should be blind, that the natality of our 
 country should decrease. Do you suppose that the end 
 of our race is written * on the wall '? " 
 
 " I hope that it is only our evolution that is written 
 there. It is the will of the gods that we should live, 
 and that will has created the struggle, but the struggle 
 is gradually becoming more intelligent. For some years 
 now, people have been thinking about the child, and they 
 are now beginning to have a certain curiosity about all 
 that concerns it. I am told that a naturalist, who is 
 now studying snails, has about fifteen hundred. lie is
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 75 
 
 anxious to discover whether they are blind. That is 
 all very well and very useful, perhaps, but I should like 
 the child to be studied zoologically. And that is what 
 I wish you would do." 
 
 " What a fine idea ! " exclaimed my visitor, clasping 
 her well-gloved hands in her excitement, whilst a flash 
 of joy beautified her face. " Do you think I am capa- 
 ble though? " she asked doubtfully. 
 
 " I am sure you are. You have been prepared for 
 it. You have twelve subjects, boys and girls. That 
 is quite enough for one person. Take notes of their 
 sex, age, and, as far as you can, of their atavism. 
 Observe the shape of the forehead of each of them, the 
 colour of the eyes, the quality of the hair, for the 
 human fleece reveals a great deal. Then, too, notice 
 the form of the ears or receivers, the shape of the nails. 
 Everything is of importance in Nature and nothing is 
 left to chance. Read these little ones like so many 
 divine manuscripts. Observe all their movements, 
 whether reflex or conscious, and try to discern them. 
 Watch them sleep, work, play, eat, and pray. I shall 
 be very much surprised if you do not find, in this study, 
 an enormous amount of interest and of keen pleasure." 
 
 "And what am I to do with these notes?" 
 
 " Give them to me, so that I may make use of them, 
 and then I will send them on to London, to the princi- 
 pal of an institute where women educators are being 
 prepared and where the child is being studied. This 
 principal is a large-hearted and extremely intelligent 
 woman. I will introduce you to each other and I am 
 sure you will both fall in love at first sight."
 
 76 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 " There is an institute in Paris where nurses are 
 being trained." 
 
 " A French mother would never want a person in her 
 house who knew more than she did," I said, laughing. 
 " I once asked a young wife why she did not have an 
 English nurse for her little girl? * Oh, no,' she ex- 
 claimed, * I would never have one of those princesses in 
 my house ! ' I only wish that the government organised 
 courses of lessons on the child in every district, rich 
 and poor alike. I envy you," I added, " because you 
 still have time to study children." 
 
 " I should never have thought of such a thing," said 
 Madame R , putting her hand on mine and press- 
 ing it warmly. " You have opened out a fine path for 
 me." 
 
 " You had to come to me for me to point it out to you, 
 and I am very proud of that fact," I said. " That is 
 a very good illustration for you of Providential work. 
 You will not be long before you will be ready to ac- 
 knowledge that the ingratitude of your son has served 
 to help on your own progress." 
 
 " If I admit that it has served to help me to rise 
 morally it certainly lowers him, does it not? How do 
 you account for that? " 
 
 " We know nothing about the reactions which may 
 take place in his mind. Thanks to these, he may realise 
 all that he owes to you." 
 
 " May God grant that ! " 
 
 " When I think of you, you will seem much greater 
 to me among your little orphans than if I saw you 
 merely spoiling your grandchildren."
 
 77 
 
 " That may be, but, all the same, I have no near 
 relatives and, as I am alone in the world, it seemed to 
 me that I had a right to expect my share of family 
 happiness. Do not let us say any more about that, 
 though. If I go on pitying myself, it would seem un- 
 grateful to Providence and to you. I want to ask you 
 one thing, though. Will you promise to come and see 
 me at Louvic and stay with me a little time? " 
 
 " With pleasure," I answered ; " if I am spared." 
 
 " Thank you for the promise. You must see my 
 human specimens and tell me whether my zoological 
 studies are satisfactory." 
 
 My visitor glanced at my little exercise books lying 
 on the table. " I am ashamed of having interrupted 
 your work," she began. 
 
 " On the contrary, you have helped me," I replied, 
 smiling. 
 
 " I have helped you? " 
 
 " Yes, you were sent to me, for you began to speak 
 about a subject that I was thinking over. You came 
 to me in a furious state of mind. Your pessimism 
 brought my optimism to the surface and helped me to 
 develop it. If you will allow me, I should like to make 
 use of this conversation, quite anonymous!}*, of course." 
 
 " Do so, by all means," assented my visitor. 
 
 "You see, I am not a Montaigne and it would be 
 very difficult for me to write an essay giving the gist 
 of all this. Then, too, in my opinion essays are not 
 sufficiently living. It is my good fortune to have a 
 friend who is quite sincere, whose judgment I con- 
 sider sure. I read what I write to her and I feel, mag-
 
 78 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 netically, whether she thinks it good or bad. When I 
 come to the dialogues, she leans forward, with an in- 
 stinctive movement of approval, which seems to be inter- 
 preted to me by the very feather in her hat. I conclude 
 that I am better in dialogue and I wanted to be better 
 in this chapter." 
 
 My visitor laughed heartily, showing all her beauti- 
 ful teeth. 
 
 " What a curious author you are," she said ; " you 
 are not at all afraid of showing your literary strings." 
 
 " No, for the most interesting thing in a book is the 
 way in which it is made." 
 
 " Well, that certainly is objectivism, if I am not very 
 much mistaken. I am going to train myself to look at 
 things in this way, if only in order to discover the 
 
 beauty of ugliness,'* said Madame R , as she rose 
 
 to take leave. 
 
 '* You will then have discovered a very great thing," 
 I said. I held out my hand to her and she raised it to 
 her lips. 
 
 " Remember, I have your promise," she said, still 
 holding my hand. " You are coming to Louvic. You 
 have sown the seed; you must come and see it sprout- 
 ing." 
 
 I nodded without speaking. A kind of superstitious 
 fear prevents me now from making any plans or giving 
 a verbal promise.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE objective vision of people and things has revealed, 
 and continues to reveal to me, the incommensurable 
 greatness of our atom lives. It has torn me away from 
 habit, which made me deaf and blind. Every instant 
 I see the wonderful mechanism, the real beauty of cer- 
 tain familiar acts, the grandeur and mystery of which 
 frequently amaze and startle me. It seems to me as 
 though I see them for the first time. I constantly have 
 the sensation of something quite fresh and new to me. 
 This is a sensation for which those who are biases 
 would pay a great price, and I would not give it up to 
 them for millions of money. At the post-office of the 
 Rue des Capucines, I once saw a work-girl receive a let- 
 ter at the poste restante department. She looked about 
 twenty years of age and was a pretty girl with rough, 
 fair hair. She was wearing a black dress, which was 
 covered with white threads. She did not open in an ele- 
 gant way the envelope that was handed to her. Her 
 eager fingers tore it open and her eyes literally drank 
 in the contents. Her anaemic face flushed pink, her 
 eyelids trembled, her nostrils quivered, a smile hovered 
 over her lips and, when she looked up, her face was so 
 fresh and radiant that she might have just absorbed 
 some magic cordial. I was so struck by the transfor- 
 mation that it positively thrilled me. Those little black 
 letters, which looked as though they had been traced 
 
 by the meanderings of some insect, contained an invisible 
 
 79
 
 80 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 force which, like a ray of sunshine, had penetrated the 
 flesh and bones of this human face, and had caused 
 transfiguring joy, the signs of which I had just seen. 
 The phenomenon had, up to then, seemed quite com- 
 monplace, but, in reality, there was a great mystery 
 lying underneath it ! It was I who was commonplace ! 
 Those little black characters, buried in the depths of 
 the girl's pocket, together with a coarse pocket-hand- 
 kerchief, a half-worn-out thimble, a flat purse, would 
 emit a divine fluid" which would touch certain cells of 
 her brain, making her indifferent to the scolding of 
 her mistress and to all the worries of the workroom, 
 drawing her out of her gangue of poverty and trans- 
 porting her into a heavenly zone. And then, the day 
 would perhaps come when these same little black letters 
 would lose their magic and become less precious than 
 the coarse handkerchief, the half-worn-out thimble and 
 the flat purse, and there would be nothing but black- 
 ness in the heart and the pocket of the poor work-girl. 
 
 For the first time in my life, I had realised all the 
 strangeness and wonder of this transmission of thought, 
 love, feelings and impressions, by handwriting, and I 
 admired it all most sincerely. 
 
 On returning to my hotel by the Rue d'Antin, I saw 
 a little boy seated on the step of his father's shop. He 
 had a slate on his knees and, with his tongue against 
 his cheek, after the manner of his far back ancestor, 
 perhaps, he was giving all his attention to forming let- 
 ters, such as those of which I had just witnessed the 
 power, and these letters, which transmit not only love, 
 but life, now seemed to me as sacred as those of a divine
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 81 
 
 rite. This is what I call becoming conscious of things. 
 
 All this led my thoughts in the direction of that 
 phenomenon which we call literature. We produce 
 literature and do not know by what mechanism. It 
 comes from us and escapes our senses in just the same 
 way as the perfume would escape from the flower if that 
 could see. Nothing seems to me more mysterious, and, 
 by dint of thinking it out, I have arrived at a concep- 
 tion which is, perhaps, absurd, but I will give it. Many 
 persons have to blunder along before one really finds 
 the truth. 
 
 Like us, the Earth has a body and soul so closely 
 united that it is impossible to know where the one ends 
 and the other begins. Its body is an agglomeration of 
 numberless molecules and cellules, animated by that ab- 
 solutely unknown force, which we call vital force, and 
 which is undoubtedly the radio-activity of the Eternal 
 God. These molecules and these cellules incarnate a 
 portion of the physical and psychical forces of the 
 Universe. Under Divine action they have gathered to- 
 gether, separated, been transformed, and they have 
 evolved and progressed. They have become oceans, 
 mountains, rivers, plains, deserts ; they have manufac- 
 tured the habitation of man and man himself. And 
 these molecules and these cellules are constantly making 
 the Invisible and the Intangible. They are elaborating 
 the soul of the Earth, that is, the psychical world, which 
 our eye does not penetrate, but which is the real world, 
 in which everything happens, everything takes place, in 
 which spiritual forces, ideas, sentiments, passions, vices 
 and virtues are fighting a fierce battle ; a world into
 
 82 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 which the gods arc constantly flinging fresh elements 
 and for which man is working with all his cellules. 
 
 Oh, those cellules of our motor ! I cannot study their 
 strange design without blinking and shuddering a lit- 
 tle. It is so ugly and yet so fascinating: a ground- 
 work of dark seeds, arranged concentrically ; a clear 
 egg-shaped space and, in the centre, a black speck, the 
 nucleus ! These nucleoli, I am told, contain the most 
 vital part of our being: energy, heredity, terrible and 
 consoling heredity, the secret of our destiny. Planted 
 by the million, in the divine clay, in the fertile grey 
 matter, they act on the network of our nerves, on the 
 flow of our blood and on our organs, and they are inde- 
 fatigable workers. They have been weaving the Won- 
 derful Romance for millions of years. They create the 
 most prodigious things, all the dreams of mankind and, 
 among those dreams, that powerful factor, literature. 
 
 When the Terrestrian became aware of God, he ad- 
 dressed supplications, prayers and hymns to Him, and 
 he also commenced that astonishing dialogue with God, 
 in which, thanks to auto-suggestion, he asked the ques- 
 tions and gave the answers himself. It was in this way 
 that sacred literature was born. After this, the Ter- 
 restrian began to sing of his combats and of his love ; 
 he made legends out of his childish dreams. His facul- 
 ties gradually developed and he tried to copy life, to 
 create dramas and fictitious idylls. This was the be- 
 ginning of romantic literature. Later on, the mys- 
 teries of Nature attracted his attention and made him 
 think, observe and wonder and, as a result of all this, 
 philosophical literature made its appearance.
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 83 
 
 Literature, like music, is entirely psychical, much 
 more so than painting and sculpture. Its invisible 
 waves are held firm by writing, either in the manu- 
 script or in the book. The eye sets them free again at 
 will, and, coming as they have from the human brain, 
 they return thither to work on it, influence it and make 
 it produce other waves. This is a fine instance of Di- 
 vine economy. These psychic waves contain superior 
 and inferior elements. They carry along with them 
 true and false ideas, elevated and low thoughts, noble 
 and unworthy sentiments, pictures of great beauty and 
 of vile ugliness. They carry along with them words 
 which console, words which encourage, words which 
 cause despair, words which vivify and words which kill. 
 They bring the dead back into the midst of the living 
 and keep their words and their souls for us. These 
 psychic waves, by means of millions of instantaneous 
 photographs, taken by the eye and the mind of the 
 writer, transmit to us the most distant landscapes, give 
 us the sensation of a beauty that we cannot see for 
 ourselves. They enlarge our inner vision, renew and 
 develop the soul of those who are chained down by some 
 compulsory task. They snatch us away from our pre- 
 occupations, from our cares, take us out of ourselves, 
 transport us to the earthly Beyond, just as though far- 
 seeing Nature wanted to give us what the English de- 
 scribe as " a change." There are waves of poetry and 
 waves of prose. The former are of a more rare es- 
 sence ; they have rhythm and cadence, they are able to 
 lift certain souls higher; the others reach farther and 
 have more universality. All the various waves of litera-
 
 84, THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 ture have gone on increasing in volume and in depth. 
 Every race has enriched them. At present, they must 
 form an enormous current, a sort of psychical Gulf 
 Stream. They mingle and intermingle, but they never 
 lose their own special characteristics. Like every dif- 
 ferent soul, they keep their own individuality. It is 
 impossible to confuse Northern literature with that of 
 the South, or that of the East with that of the West, 
 the Dantesque waves with the Shakespearian ones. I 
 imagine all these waves as glistening with colours and 
 with extraordinary shades. Those of our present epoch 
 of transition are most likely grey. Ah, yes, they must 
 indeed be grey. The subjective ideal has been lived 
 and lived over and over again. It can supply nothing 
 more to poor writers. It is like a burnt out ampoule. 
 Humanity has had enough of it, but still clings to it, 
 by pure atavism, and also out of fear. It dare not let 
 go of the hand which holds it a prisoner, but which has 
 led it along for centuries. Some great crisis will ac- 
 celerate its evolution. The discoveries of Science, which 
 poets and novelists seem to disdain, just as theologians 
 do, will turn its soul towards Nature, where the sources 
 of true poetry, the secret of our origin and the hopes 
 of our last days, are to be found. 
 
 One day, at the Place de la Comedie Francaise, I was 
 a witness of the psychical action of romantic literature, 
 and it was quite a revelation to me. The first time I 
 knocked against Alfred de Musset's statue, for it is 
 placed in such a way that one does knock against it, it 
 gave me a shock and, on looking at it, I was furious. 
 It seemed to me so ridiculous and it was placed in such
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 85 
 
 an unsuitable spot. " Posterity always does things in 
 this way," I said to myself. " Thanks to its childish 
 curiosity, it turns our great men out into the street. 
 It had already done this for Alfred de Musset when it 
 published his correspondence with George Sand." 
 With these thoughts in my mind, I continued on my way, 
 raging inwardly. 
 
 One morning, last Spring, I was again near this 
 statue. I had never examined it thoroughly, as there 
 was something about it that shocked me and made me 
 feel ill at ease. Statues generally represent mere atti- 
 tudes of the body, but this one reveals a state of mind, 
 and a state of minol exposed in a public square seemed 
 to me a profanation. I felt rather more courageous on 
 the day in question, and I began to examine this figure 
 that stands out in full relief. I saw a man with tired 
 limbs, whose face expresses a grief that is morbid, that 
 has neither manliness nor nobility about it one of 
 those griefs which one would want to hide and which 
 ought to be hidden. And to this being, whose springs 
 of life are evidently broken, a woman, with a theatrical 
 gesture, is pointing to the door of the Comedie Fran- 
 aise. This does not appear to console him in the 
 least. The comic side of the conception drove my emo- 
 tion away and made me smile. My eyes then fell on 
 the lines from La Nuit de Mat, engraved on the socle 
 of the statue and I felt rather ashamed of my irrever- 
 ence: 
 
 " Rien ne nous rend si grands qu'une grande douleur . . . 
 Les plus desesperes sont ies chants les plus beaux, 
 Et j'en sais d'immortels qui sont de purs sanglots."
 
 86 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 I imagined and envied the special voluptuousness that 
 the poet must have felt when he traced those lines, and 
 more particularly the last one : 
 
 " Et j'en sais d'immortcls qui sont de purs sanglots." 
 
 It is literature, of course, but how it reverberates in 
 the ear and in the soul ! 
 
 This statue, which takes up so much room, attracts 
 the attention of the passers-by, and they all seem to be 
 surprised when they look at it. Some of the people 
 stand still and read the poetry. I was curious to see 
 the various effects it would produce and I walked round 
 it, as though studying it myself. A workman, wearing 
 a white blouse, with a flabby cigarette in the corner of 
 his mouth, and a gay, chaffing expression on his face, 
 read out the celebrated lines to his companion. " Stuff 
 and nonsense!" he observed, shrugging his shoulders, 
 when he had finished. Two worthy women, coming out 
 of the Louvre shops, with cardboard boxes and parcels 
 in their hands, stopped and read the lines, but they did 
 not appear to understand them at all. Quite a young 
 man came next. He was of Southern type and looked 
 as though he had not had enough to eat, but his face 
 was interesting. With his hands buried in his pockets, 
 he read the poet's words slowly, and then looked up at 
 him, with an expression that seemed to ask whether he 
 really believed that? He whistled as he moved away 
 and, in the whistle, which was intended to be sceptical, 
 I fancied that I distinguished a quiver of emotion. 
 After him, came a woman of about fifty years of age. 
 She was poorly dressed and looked faded and colour-
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 87 
 
 less, but there was a certain refinement about her face 
 and her whole person. She looked like one of those 
 women who are doomed to carry heavy burdens bur- 
 dens that are too heavy for them. She read the beauti- 
 ful message in her turn and I saw a wonderful thing. 
 Her face lighted up, her whole body drew itself up as 
 though it had received a magnetic touch. She pressed 
 the parcel she was carrying more closely against her, 
 with a quick, nervous movement, and her ardent, misty 
 eyes thanked the author of La Nuit de Mai. She then 
 went on her way, with head erect and a firm step. 
 
 I had just caught the effect of the psychic waves of 
 literature. I was moved to the very depths of my soul 
 and I turned away myself murmuring : " Oh, God, I 
 did not know it was so great." 
 
 It was certainly not impossible chance which had 
 brought that woman there, but Providential Will. At 
 that cross-roads, where streams of hard workers pass 
 by every day, the miracle I had just witnessed takes 
 place, perhaps, daily for some creature. I no longer 
 think that the poet's statue is badly placed. I fancy 
 that, on its footpath there, it is doing a fine piece of 
 occult work in the way of consolation. This must be 
 for Alfred de Musset a greater reward than entering 
 the Comedie Francaise. I hope so, at any rate.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 ONE would like to only have things of this kind to tell 
 with regard to literature. If it can vivify, it can, alas, 
 also kill. It has a great many crimes to answer for, 
 and some of them are very great crimes. Was it not 
 thanks to having read of the love of Guinevere and 
 Lancelot, that Francesca de Rimini and her brother- 
 in-law, Paul Malatestrf, declared their mutual affection 
 and were killed by Lanciotto, the husband? Dante 
 meets the beautiful loving woman in the " City of 
 Tears," and, with a marvellous intuition of Life, he 
 makes her say : " When we read how the much de- 
 sired, laughing lips were kissed by the lover, he, who 
 will never more be separated from me (Paul Malatesta), 
 kissed my lips. As far as we were concerned, the real 
 culprits were the book and he who wrote it. That day 
 we did not read what had gone before." Dante was 
 right, and the book, in this case, was an agent of per- 
 dition. 
 
 Quite recently a young man I knew, who was rich and 
 gifted, killed himself, as a result of having read too 
 much of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Thanks to their 
 suggestion, Life seemed to him to be merely a snare and 
 a trap. One evening, after playing the death of Tris- 
 tram and Iseult, that death, which is like a song of 
 triumph, he overturned the cup which was full to the 
 brim of wonderful wine. That is what literature has 
 
 the power of doing. 
 
 88
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 89 
 
 About two years ago, a Roumanian woman came to 
 call on me, and begged so hard that I would see her that 
 I was obliged to consent. She was about fifty years of 
 age, with clear-cut features. Her large, dark, sad- 
 looking eyes and nervous nose gave a tragic expression 
 to her face. She was elegantly dressed, but her hat was 
 rather awry, her dress wrongly hooked and her jacket 
 hanging loose. All this gave the idea of some mental 
 worry. She apologised for her intrusion and then, in 
 an abrupt, rather hard voice, she said : 
 
 " I have a son who is dying of consumption. He has 
 read your books and has several times expressed a wish 
 to see you and to talk to you. I would give a finger of 
 my hand to satisfy any of his wishes, for we Roumanians 
 are true mothers. When I heard that you were here, 
 in Lausanne, I came at once to ask if you would con- 
 sent to pay us a visit. Am I asking too much? " 
 
 " No, I will come willingly," I answered. 
 
 Madame X thanked me and, in order that I 
 
 should understand the situation, she gave me various 
 details with regard to her life. 
 
 " My husband behaved abominably," she said. " He 
 was unfaithful to me under my very roof. I went 
 straight away, taking my little boy, just as a cat carries 
 its kitten off between its teeth. I watched over him 
 jealously, and never even let him know of the existence 
 of evil." 
 
 " That was a mistake," I said. 
 
 " Yes, it was a mistake," my visitor owned. " Like 
 all young men, he wanted to complete his studies, as an 
 engineer, in Paris. Paris is the terror of mothers in
 
 90 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 our country. Our young men leave home, simple- 
 minded and straightforward. They come back to us 
 corrupted, and good for nothing else but deceiving 
 women." 
 
 " Because they only frequent bad society in Paris," 
 I said, by way of excuse. 
 
 " That may be, but the fact remains. Hoping to 
 keep my boy out of the dangers that I suspected, I 
 went with him to Paris. I made our home very com- 
 fortable and pleasant, so that he might receive his 
 friends there, and I congratulated myself on my wisdom. 
 For the first two years, I had no anxiety about him 
 and then, suddenly, everything changed. A wretched 
 woman, a married woman, robbed me of my only treas- 
 ure. She dragged him off to that Dance of Death 
 which, in your country, you call ' la fete.' It is a fine 
 fete! In a very short time, neither his mother, nor his 
 own country, existed for him. He forgot all his 
 dreams and ambitions, everything but this woman. Ah, 
 if you only knew how many sleepless nights I passed 
 at the window of our flat, in the Rue Pierre Charron, 
 watching for him until daylight appeared. Very often 
 daylight came without bringing him back to me. This 
 went on for ten months and you will see what ten 
 months did for the finest looking young man it was 
 possible to find." 
 
 The poor mother's voice gave way and her lips were 
 contorted with anguish. 
 
 " Oh, but with all the care you will lavish on him, 
 and with the vivifying air of this country, you will be 
 able to restore him to health," I said.
 
 91 
 
 " Alas, I can only prolong his life a little and make 
 it rather more endurable. That daughter of Satan 
 must have poisoned him, for there has never been con- 
 sumption either in my family or in that of my hus- 
 band." 
 
 " Does he know what a state he is in? " I asked. 
 
 " Oh, he must know it, at times, but he does not own 
 it to me. We are both pretending to be quite hopeful. 
 When tears are very near and I am afraid of them be- 
 traying me, I look up at the ceiling quickly. I have 
 discovered this mechanical method of driving them back. 
 I did not want my boy to have all the horrors of the 
 sanatorium. I have rented a house that is well shel- 
 tered, up on the heights. It is surrounded with fir- 
 trees and there is a wonderful view. My boy's foster- 
 brother has just taken his degree as a doctor and he is 
 
 with us, helping me to nurse my son." Madame X 
 
 was silent for a few seconds and then, clenching her 
 hands together violently, she continued: 
 
 " I ought to have brought him here earlier. When 
 I meet the students here in Lausanne, radiant with 
 health, I am horribly jealous, and I feel the most terri- 
 ble remorse." 
 
 " Do not be remorseful," I said ; " remember you have 
 only done as God willed." 
 
 A flash of anger lighted up the eyes of the Rou- 
 manian woman. 
 
 " Then God is cruel ! " she said resentfully. 
 
 " No, that is impossible ! " I exclaimed, with all the 
 force of my sincere conviction. " Cruelty is only pos- 
 sible with inferior beings."
 
 92 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 " Come to my home, and you will see for yourself," 
 
 said Madame X bitterly. " * The Firs ' is some 
 
 distance away though," she continued ; " half an hour 
 by train and then an up-hill walk of ten minutes. Are 
 you not afraid ? " 
 
 " Not in the least," I answered. " I can climb very 
 well. Tell your son that I will pay him a visit to- 
 morrow." 
 
 The following day I went to " The Firs." The house 
 was in an ideal spot and" its huge Swiss roof gave it a 
 home-like look. It had a fir-wood as its background 
 and, for horizon, the Lake and the Alps. When I saw 
 Madame X 's son, I felt a pang at my heart. He 
 was undoubtedly dying and dying at the age of 
 twenty-six. He was handsome, with the Latin type of 
 features; his nose was slightly arched and his eyes 
 luminous and velvety, like those of an Oriental. His 
 complexion had not the transparency of the consump- 
 tive patient : it was like wax and perfectly livid in 
 places. His thick hair seemed to be glued down by 
 cold perspiration. I saw before me a human creature 
 that Nature was destroying, with all the rapidity of 
 the very end. On seeing me, the poor boy blushed, as 
 much as his pale face could blush, and his eyelids 
 quivered. The blush, the quivering eyelids and the 
 eyes avoiding mine, betrayed instinctive shame, that 
 physical shame that I have more than once surprised 
 in men when they feel themselves disabled. 
 
 He bowed very low on taking my hand, but did not 
 kiss it, and thanked me, timidly, for coming to see him.
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 93 
 
 I endeavoured to put him at his ease and succeeded in 
 this. A less timid look gradually came into his eyes, 
 and I saw in them the light of his very soul. In a 
 few minutes, we were old friends. Whilst talking to 
 him, my eyes took in the beautiful surroundings in the 
 midst of which this intensely painful scene was being 
 enacted. The ground floor of the house had high ceil- 
 ings and a verandah, with glass only at the two sides. 
 This verandah was like a huge room opening long- 
 ways on to a landscape which was a perfect dream. 
 There was a sofa, the invalid's reading chair, a col- 
 lection of books and mountain plants. I also noticed 
 
 Madame X 's work-basket and a chess-board with 
 
 the chess-men set ready for a fight. In front of the 
 verandah was a living carpet of simple flowers, all 
 growing in luxurious profusion. To the right and 
 left of the avenue of trees, meadows stretched away 
 all along the side of the slope. In one of these mead- 
 ows, a cow was grazing and six black and white goats. 
 The air came to us pure and vivifying and the sun 
 bathed us in its rays. I was surprised to think that all 
 these beneficent forces should not win the day over 
 the homicidal forces, the odious work of which I could 
 see for myself. 
 
 Towards four o'clock, the young doctor, M. Adamo- 
 vitch, arrived. There was more of the Slavonic than 
 the Latin race about him, and his expression was both 
 bright and serene. The way he shook hands expressed 
 the grief that he felt. He whistled for the goats at 
 once, and they came bounding up and climbed the stone
 
 94 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 steps of the verandah. The cook milked one of them 
 and the invalid gave them a few handfuls of salt in 
 exchange for his cup of foamy milk. 
 
 " Do you see their little silver bells ? " he said, smil- 
 ing. '* The cow wears them as well, and each one 
 gives a note of the scale, so that when they all shake 
 their bells, we have the funniest little airs." 
 
 The tea-table was brought and the singing of the 
 samovar enlivened us. Our conversation became gen- 
 eral, and I soon saw the treatment M. Adamovitch was 
 trying with his foster-brother. He interested him in 
 all the questions of the day and kept him in touch 
 with all that went on, just as one tries to keep the 
 head of a drowning man above water. He did not 
 want his patient to feel outside things, as it were. All 
 that he said gave proof of an amazing knowledge of 
 human nature, and it was very evident to me that he 
 was doing his utmost to encourage the young man 
 to be hopeful. He would make fun of him now and 
 then, in a most charming way, whilst his beautiful dark, 
 dog-like eyes beamed on him with affection. I noticed, 
 though, that the invalid kept drawing out of the gen- 
 eral conversation. He watched me with a curious ex- 
 pression, and his eyes, when they met mine, had a 
 questioning look in them. I felt the appeal of his 
 mind magnetically, and I answered with a smile that 
 meant we would have a quiet talk together. 
 
 An hour later, laden with flowers, I was on my way 
 to the station, accompanied by M. Adamovitch. 
 
 "You see how things are?" he asked, in a voice, 
 hoarse with deep feeling.
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 95 
 
 " Is there no hope ? " 
 
 " None. Directly we think we have gained ground, 
 it is always the vile bacilli who have gained it instead 
 of us. And to think that there are idiots drivelling 
 out their lives, and shapeless creatures in good health, 
 whilst this one, well built and richly gifted, must die. 
 Nature certainly makes strange selections ! " 
 
 " Perhaps the selection is being made for another 
 world," I suggested. 
 
 A smile played over the young doctor's face. 
 
 " Perhaps," he said. " At any rate it proves the 
 existence of laws that we do not know. We know 
 nothing, nothing at all," he added, emphasising his 
 words in a sorrowful way. 
 
 I had promised to go to " The Firs " again and, 
 of course, I went again. On my second visit I found 
 the young man better. 
 
 He was wearing a dark red, silk coat with Oriental 
 embroidery, and a shirt of cream surah. A dark fur 
 was thrown over his shoulders and this set off his hand- 
 some face and showed up, alas, the ravages of the 
 work of destruction that was going on. 
 
 After a short time, Madame X went out into 
 
 the garden, under the pretext of gathering some flow- 
 ers for me. 
 
 " You know that we Roumanians are Latin, do you 
 not?" asked the invalid, directly we were alone. "I 
 mean that we are authentic Romans." 
 
 " Yes, you are the descendants of the colony that 
 Trajan established round one of the bends of the 
 Danube. I knew this in a vague way and then, thanks
 
 96 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 to one of those mysterious combinations with which 
 our lives are made up, I have for the last two years 
 been brought into contact with a number of Roumani- 
 ans. They have literally invaded my orbit," 
 
 " And even my mother joined in pursuing you." 
 
 " And I am very grateful to her for it," I remarked. 
 
 " And I am, too, I can assure you," said the young 
 man fervently. 
 
 " I was not long in recognising in you Roumanians 
 the Latin soul, mingled, though, with certain Slavonic 
 characteristics. This mixture was revealed to me very 
 clearly by Le Rhapsode de la Dambcnita, a collection 
 of ballads and folk-songs which Helene Vacaresco has 
 given us." 
 
 An expression of keen pleasure lighted up my young 
 host's face. 
 
 "You liked them, I hope?" 
 
 " Liked them? I have never read anything so beau- 
 tiful. Last Autumn, one of your compatriots, who 
 was quite a stranger to me, left a volume and a letter 
 for me, at my hotel. In the letter she asked me, in 
 an almost commanding way, to read the volume, so 
 that I might learn to know the Roumanian soul. The 
 calmness of the proceeding annoyed me and my first 
 impulse was to return the book to its sender, but my 
 first impulses are always the wrong ones. The fol- 
 lowing morning, when I woke, which is always the mo- 
 ment when I am at my best, I opened the volume, 
 simply by way of having a clear conscience. My eyes 
 fell on the following lines :
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 97 
 
 " Le mai's s'est penche vers la terre, 
 
 " La plaine, sa mere, 1'a senti, 
 
 " La plaine s'en est effrayee, 
 
 " Pourquoi te penches-tu sans que le vent souffle? 
 
 " Mai's, mon enfant fier ! 
 
 The soul which these words revealed appealed to me 
 immediately. I went on reading and my admiration 
 increased as I read. I was positively startled by the 
 simple way in which these folk-song writers make 
 Mother Earth talk in their ballads. They make the 
 stars talk, the elements; the living and the dead, and 
 they make them say such wonderful things, things 
 which give, to an incredible degree, the sensation of 
 our union with all Nature, the sensation of a very 
 near Beyond, where all those who have been called 
 back from Earth are now living. And that is Slavonic, 
 is it not?" 
 
 " It is indeed." 
 
 " Helene Vacaresco tells us that girls improvise and 
 sing these ballads whilst weaving. Is that really pos- 
 sible? " 
 
 " Certainly. And the girl who forgets the words, 
 or is not inspired to improvise the next lines, throws 
 her spindle to one of the others, and the ballad con- 
 tinues, or is entirely transformed, thanks to evocations 
 which bear no relation to the first part of the story." 
 
 " Well, that certainly goes to prove, in the most strik- 
 ing manner, the existence of those currents of higher 
 life which frequently pass through simple minds: caus- 
 ing them to give utterance to words of which they have
 
 98 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 felt the infinite sweetness, the hope and the consolation, 
 but of which they do not understand the real meaning. 
 And these currents of inspiration frequently give ex- 
 traordinary intuitions. Take, for instance, the song 
 of the Cobzar, who says: 
 
 Aime-moi, parce que j'ai bcsoin de ton amour pour mes 
 
 chansons, 
 
 Va-t-en, parce que j F ai besoin de pleurer pour mes chansons, 
 Meurs, parce que j'ai besoin de chanter la mort pour mes 
 
 chansons, 
 Car je suis le Cobzar.* 
 
 How should that Roumanian peasant know that the 
 love, the tears and the grief of the poet must serve in 
 the weaving of his work, the work that belongs to Uni- 
 versal Life? " 
 
 " Yes, indeed, it does really seem miraculous. Did 
 you read The Song of the Faithless Ont? " 
 
 " Yes, it is one of the finest things I know on the 
 subject of love and, from a psychical point of view, 
 there is a depth of feeling in it that is marvellous." 
 
 " I am like our peasants ; I feel the charm of our 
 songs, but I have never comprehended them." 
 
 " You will comprehend them later on." 
 
 "Later on?" repeated the invalid with an attempt 
 at a smile. 
 
 " Yes, later on," I said, as though not understanding 
 him, " and you must read them with your mind, for they 
 
 * Love me, for I need thy love for my songs. 
 Leave me, I need to weep for my songs, 
 Die, for I need to sing of Death in my songs, 
 For I am the Cobrar.
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 99 
 
 contain revelations which make them almost sacred 
 poems. Are not those words of a dead mother a revela- 
 tion ? 
 
 Je lui ai demande aussi : " Petite mere 
 
 Que disent les morts en songeant aux vivants ? " 
 
 Et elle m'a repondu : " Ils ont pitie." * 
 
 That must be true." 
 
 "You think so?" 
 
 " I do think so." 
 
 " So much the better," said the doomed young man 
 in an ironical tone, the suffering in which I felt. 
 
 " I assure you," I continued, " that I am most grate- 
 ful to Helene Vacaresco for having translated these 
 Folk-songs for us. Just a few weeks after reading them, 
 I received some post-cards that would have served ad- 
 mirably for illustrating them. They came to me from 
 Bucharest, from a person unknown to me. One of these 
 cards represented two girls with very Latin, or I might 
 say Roman, faces. They were of the peasant class and 
 they were chattering together near a well. They looked 
 as though they were waiting there for ' the one who was 
 to come.' They were wearing the embroidered chemise 
 and sash which are their pride, as the work of their own 
 fingers. All their feminine vanity seems to be concen- 
 trated in this handiwork of theirs. Another card rep-* 
 resented the cobzar near the fountain, singing for the 
 benefit of those who came to fetch water for their house- 
 hold. You see, I was destined to know something about 
 
 *I said to her too: "Mother dear, 
 What do the dead say when they think of the living? " 
 She answered me : " They pity them."
 
 100 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 your country, as books never come into our hands by 
 chance." 
 
 To my great surprise, my words brought a slight 
 flush to the invalid's face and he gave a short, discordant 
 laugh. 
 
 " Do you know what I am dying of? " he asked. 
 
 " In the first place, I do not think you are in a dying 
 state," I answered in a light tone. 
 
 " Oh, yes, you do," he insisted, " and so do I. Well, 
 I am dying of the effects of a book." 
 
 " Of a book? " I exclaimed. 
 
 " Yes. Up to the age of twenty-three, I had lived 
 a regular life, thanks to the way my mother had brought 
 me up, and also thanks to the affection I had for a young 
 cousin of mine. One day, whilst I was finishing my 
 studies in Paris, one of my Roumanian friends invited 
 me to dinner at a restaurant. He was to bring his 
 mistress with him, a strumpet whom he had taken up 
 and of whom he was very proud. I was to call for him 
 at half past seven. I arrived punctually, but he had 
 not come in. His man-servant showed me into his study. 
 I lighted a cigarette and then, seeing an open book 
 on the divan, I picked it up and began to read the page 
 at which it was open. It was one of those vile books 
 that might have been written by the apes for apes. 
 My first impression was one of instinctive disgust and 
 I threw the book down on a table near. You under- 
 stand, I flung it away as though it were an infectious 
 thing and a little while after," added the young man, 
 flushing again, " I picked it up again. I opened it, 
 and a certain phrase, on one of the pages, went to my
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 101 
 
 head like the most intoxicating wine. You do not mind 
 hearing all, do you? " he asked. 
 
 " No, for I shall understand all then." 
 
 He repeated the phrase to me and I saw, with horror, 
 that it still affected him. 
 
 " It was that phrase, which made my blood flame just 
 as punch does, that was the cause of everything. When 
 my friend returned, the die had already been cast, as 
 far as I was concerned. Our dinner was not particu- 
 larly gay. Just as we were finishing, the door of the 
 private room my friend had engaged at the restaurant 
 opened, and a befeathered head appeared. That head 
 affected me like an electric shock. 
 
 " ' Can I come in ? ' asked the girl. 
 
 " * You can,' replied my host. 
 
 " She came in and told us that she had been dining 
 with a South American, but that she had left him, as he 
 was too stupid and did not even understand drinking 
 wine. If I had been myself that night, I should have 
 felt nothing but disgust for this woman, for I was young 
 enough to have dreams of fair-haired girls with stain- 
 less reputations. She was tall and very thin. With 
 her black hair and red lips, her face made me think of 
 hell, whilst her big, long-shaped eyes were like a scrap 
 of heaven. All that sounds like a phrase taken from 
 a novel," said the young man with a little smile, " but 
 it was just the impression that this vivid black, red and 
 blue gave me. It seemed to me that the heroine of the 
 novel I had been reading was there in person, and she 
 could very well have pronounced the wild words that 
 had struck me so forcibly. We finished our evening at
 
 102 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 the theatre and she went with us. She saw what a 
 simple-minded innocent I was. She tried to astound me 
 and she certainly succeeded." The young man wiped 
 his moist forehead as he spoke. " She succeeded so 
 well," he continued, " that she made a perfect fool and 
 idiot of me. She was ill, consumptive to her very mar- 
 row, but the little provision of life that remained to 
 her was flaming with desire and passion. She led me 
 on to all kinds of excesses. She tortured me fright- 
 fully, but I think she really loved me a little. She died 
 a year ago and I am the only one whose forgiveness she 
 asked. She is dead and you see me now A fit of 
 coughing punctuated his last words and made them 
 tragic. 
 
 " That woman," he continued, as soon as he could 
 speak again, " was not only a harlot but a veritable 
 glu, and I am like the poor fellow of Richepin's song. 
 Like him, I have killed my mother, torn her heart 
 out" 
 
 " No, no, do not exaggerate things," I said. " It 
 is only in very rare cases that mothers do not suffer 
 in this way through their sons. Your mother is very 
 happy now that she has won you back, and I am quite 
 sure that she is revelling in a kind of maternal voluptu- 
 ousness whilst she is working to restore you to health." 
 
 " Perhaps so, but I can see now all the harm that I 
 have done her by my mad folly. I have ruined her 
 health and destroyed her beauty. Her hair has turned 
 white and there are rings round her eyes that tell of 
 suffering. My remorse is terrible and I keep wonder- 
 ing how I could have acted as I did. How could I ? "
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 103 
 
 repeated the young man, clenching the arms of his couch 
 with his hands. 
 
 " You have simply lived the life that was your des- 
 tiny," I said. 
 
 "Ah, yes, yes, that is it, is it not? I feel a certain 
 relief, in remembering that I was not accountable for 
 the various circumstances that made a crimin'al of me. 
 I was caught in a snare. I should never have seen the 
 book that led to my damnation if my friend had not 
 bought it, and if he had not been kept at his. club play- 
 ing bridge. Then, too, the book was open at the right 
 place," continued the young man, with bitter irony. 
 " Should you call that providential? " 
 
 " Certainly," I said. 
 
 " Oh ! " he exclaimed, horrified at this idea. 
 
 " By Providence, I mean all the divine powers which 
 govern us. Providence does not only arrange our af- 
 fairs for us ; its mission is, very frequently, to upset 
 everything. It is just as apt to break the rung of the 
 ladder under our feet, as to join together the one that 
 is broken, and it has its reasons for breaking or for 
 mending each rung." 
 
 " I certainly do not believe in human liberty, for, as 
 soon as one begins to study the physical laws of Na- 
 ture, it is impossible to believe in this ; but, according 
 to your theory, the ills with which we are beset, and we 
 certainly are beset by them," he added bitterly, " are 
 punishments." 
 
 " No, because those who are good, the very best 
 even, and the poor innocent animals, have their share of 
 the ills."
 
 104 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 " And the biggest share, too, very frequently - 
 
 " Besides which," I put in, " we are so closely bound 
 together, the great and little of the Universe, the poor 
 and the rich, that the guilty could never be punished 
 without the innocent suffering." 
 
 " You are right. If, for instance, my illness and 
 my death were my punishment, it is a punishment which 
 will be felt more cruelly by my mother and my friend." 
 
 " And then, we are not punished, but merely worked 
 upon. And that is quite sufficient." 
 
 " Yes, it certainly is quite sufficient." 
 
 " The other day," I continued, " in St. John's Gos- 
 pel, I came across the most consoling revelation. It 
 was, perhaps, so that I should give it to you. When 
 Jesus was confronted with the man who had been born 
 blind, one of his disciples asked him : * Master, who 
 did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born 
 blind?' Jesus answered, * Neither hath this man 
 sinned, nor his parents ; but that the works of God 
 should be made manifest in him.* " 
 
 " Ah ! It does one good to hear that ! " said the 
 young man with a sigh of relief. 
 
 " Jesus believed in his own mission. He knew that 
 he was to die by crucifixion, in order to carry out a 
 plan of Providence. It is that which makes his Pas- 
 sion so tragical. In the Garden of Gethsemane, he 
 said : * My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto 
 death.' And then he added : * O my Father, if it be 
 possible, let this cup pass from me.' And it was not 
 possible. We can see that, for it contained the ele- 
 ments of the colossal work of religious evolution which
 
 105 
 
 was to be carried on. And, in the same way, the cup 
 of bitterness is ever presented to the lips of all human- 
 ity and humanity has repeated the prayer of Jesus, and 
 always in vain. This cup must be absorbed, because 
 there are, no doubt, germs of progress and of future 
 happiness in it." 
 
 " Ah, Madame, what an optimist you are ! " said the 
 young man with a faint smile. " I guessed that you 
 were when I read your books and that was why I so 
 much wanted to have a talk with you. Tell me, was 
 it thanks to religion or science that you came to be- 
 lieve in the future? " 
 
 " Neither thanks to the one nor to the other. I have 
 neither enough religious faith nor enough knowledge. 
 It is thanks to mere common sense that I believe as I 
 do. Common sense frequently leads us to conclusions 
 that are more exact than those arrived at by science. 
 Common sense showed me that if we began with our 
 birth and finished with our death, we should have no 
 meaning whatever, and beings or things without meaning 
 could not exist." 
 
 " You are right there." 
 
 " Can you conceive of a single particle of a whole 
 that is immortal being annihilated? " 
 
 " No, it is inadmissible." 
 
 " Well, then, the essence of Life, which is the radio- 
 activity of God, must confer immortality on the mole- 
 cule that it creates. It gives movement to this, and 
 movement means progress, evolutions and infinite trans- 
 formations." 
 
 " Certainly."
 
 106 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 " At my age, you see, one has a long past behind 
 one, a very short present and the future is beyond the 
 wall of doom which bars the way for all of us. During 
 these last years, I have tried, by means of thought, to 
 get up a little higher, to make myself a pair of intel- 
 lectual stilts, in order to be able to see over on to the 
 other side of the wall. My stilts, alas, were not high 
 enough. I was only able to see gleams of light, but 
 these gleams of light permitted me to conceive of some- 
 thing very consoling and very beautiful." 
 
 " Something consoling and beautiful," repeated the 
 young man, leaning forward eagerly. " Oh, tell me, 
 tell me what it is," he continued, with an intonation 
 which revealed his ardent desire to have more hope. 
 
 I looked at his emaciated face, a his eyes shining 
 with mortal feverishness and I hesitated. Would my 
 conception of this world and the other one reconcile 
 this poor doomed creature to his fate? It was an ex- 
 periment which tempted me. 
 
 " You will not make fun of my dreams ? " I asked, 
 by way of gaining time. 
 
 "Make fun? God forbid!" 
 
 " Well, then, I believe in the existence of numberless 
 hierarchies, of higher beings, of those beings whom 
 theologians call Angels, Archangels, Powers, Domina- 
 tions. The Bible, in certain of the Psalms, speaks of 
 them as gods and we call them Nature and Providence. 
 I do not see them inactive, in ecstatic dreams, nor yet 
 spending all their time in singing the praises of the 
 Eternal God. I see them serving, struggling, fighting 
 for and with God. They appear to me as the chiefs
 
 107 
 
 of His celestial armies, His initiated ones, His trans- 
 mitters, His agents, the makers of the worlds which are 
 scattered through the Universe like grains of sand. I 
 see them capturing the nebulae, in which the Supreme 
 Creator has enclosed all the physical and psychical ener- 
 gies. I see them developing these germs in thousands 
 of different forms, and leading them on towards more 
 and more perfect conditions. Their first creations, for 
 instance, were monstrous. The ancestor of man was 
 not the fine Adam of the legend. He had a flattened 
 cranium, and under this cranium a wretched little, 
 primitive motor, just as our first automobiles had: his 
 jaws were made for crunching bones and tearing flesh, 
 his arms were huge and capable of mortal hugs. By 
 means of one deluge after another, the gods evidently 
 wanted to get rid of these crude specimens, just as the 
 child wipes from his slate the drawings which do not 
 satisfy him. The progress of these gods has marked 
 our progress ; when they had learnt something, they 
 taught us. Our progress has been obtained by means 
 of continual struggle, by desperate efforts on their 
 part as well as on ours. With us, and by means of us, 
 they have experienced the j oy of victory and the bitter- 
 ness of defeat. Just imagine all that has taken place 
 from the time when, by striking together two pieces of 
 different woods, the first spark of fire was obtained and 
 the time when, by the contact of two different metals, 
 the first spark of electricity was obtained. Is it not 
 marvellous to think that we are now able to read, from 
 the stone, the history of the earliest days of human- 
 ity?"
 
 108 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 " It is miraculous even." 
 
 ** What divine pleasures these Powers must feel in 
 playing the great game of Life, in creating races, na- 
 tions, empires!" 
 
 " Yes, and in preparing their decadence ! " 
 
 " Of course, because they know that on falling to 
 pieces, things produce fresh radiations." 
 
 " Ah, your optimism is of a robust kind," said the 
 young man, smiling. " And are there any goddesses 
 for your gods of this Earth ? " he added rather mock- 
 ingly. 
 
 " Certainly, the feminine element must exist through- 
 out the Universe. It is quite easy to recognise this 
 element in certain creations." 
 
 " And what form do you think these Higher Beings 
 have.? " 
 
 " Only a poet who is a great genius could imagine 
 that," I answered. " I think they have a body, though, 
 as the body is the servant of the soul." 
 
 " More often the master of the soul," murmured the 
 young man, looking down. 
 
 " With men, yes," I agreed ; " but the gods, prob- 
 ably, know how to hold it in hand. Then, too, accord- 
 ing to the Gospel, they have glorious bodies. I do not 
 know exactly what that means, but it gives the idea of 
 physical and psychical beauty. The Holy Book is full 
 of these unexpected gems of expression. They prob- 
 ably undergo that transformation which we call death, 
 just as we do. I imagine too, that there must be a 
 flora and fauna peculiar to their regions ; and cities, 
 temples and palaces, of which ours are only feeble re-
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 109 
 
 productions. Shall I tell you, too, how I imagine these 
 gods occupied? " 
 
 " Yes, by all means." 
 
 *' Well, I always see them in front of tables of har- 
 mony, divine claviers. I see them directing their strug- 
 gle and ours, by means of psychical currents, sending 
 waves of thought, of ideas, sentiments and inspirations 
 over our planet. It is the remembrance of a simple 
 professor of a little Umbrian town, whom I used to 
 know, which created this picture for me. His name was 
 Dini and I always enjoy thinking of him, as he was a 
 seeker after truth. People said he was crazy, but so 
 many wise men have been taken for mad ones, and so 
 many fools have been taken for wise men. This Dini 
 maintained that every creature gave out a musical 
 phrase and that every event did too. He had put all 
 that he knew into music and had written many pam- 
 phlets exposing his theories. I often wondered whether 
 there were not a great, intuitive truth in his philosophy. 
 I am now going to confess to you a private impression 
 of mine which seems to me curious.. I have the most 
 profound and, if I dared I would say, loving adoration 
 for the God whom I cannot conceive. I feel His 
 existence within me. As regards Providence, I feel 
 nothing of this adoration." 
 
 " Perhaps it is because you have a certain conception 
 of Providence." 
 
 " Perhaps that is it," I assented, somewhat surprised 
 at the subtlety of the reason suggested. " I have never 
 been on good terms with Providence. When I have felt 
 the bit and the stirrup, I have always reared. At pres-
 
 110 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 ent even, although I know that Providence is not free, 
 when the newspapers are full of calamities, I never fail 
 to reproach Providence vehemently." 
 
 " Do you mean to say that you think all events, po- 
 litical and others, are the work of the gods? " 
 
 " Certainly I do, and if you read your newspaper 
 with this idea in your mind, you will see how interesting 
 it will all seem. It is all divine copy. That sounds 
 odd, does it not, but is the epopee of the Earth any- 
 thing else? " 
 
 " Does not your conception make mere puppets of 
 us?" 
 
 " Not puppets, but soldiers, disciples, initiated ones 
 and initiators, creatures who learn to put things to- 
 gether in a perfect way, just as in that game of * puz- 
 zles ' which is so much in- favour at present. The 
 engineer learns the art of combining forces, the archi- 
 tect the art of building, of guiding the work of many 
 hands ; geometricians and mathematicians study the 
 science of figures and of numbers. Chemists study the 
 play of molecules, their composition and decomposition. 
 Doctors study the structure of the human body and are 
 employed in mending it and sometimes in curing it. 
 Kings and statesmen are learning the art of leading the 
 masses and of maintaining order amongst them. The 
 novelist does something which is still more extraordi- 
 nary and more significant. He creates fictitious beings, 
 veritable marionettes, the elements of which he finds in 
 the lobes of his brain. He elaborates happy or un- 
 happy destinies for them, makes them talk and act, and 
 makes them so living that their words and deeds affect
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 111 
 
 beings of flesh and blood, animated beings. Does it 
 not seem to you, from the instances I have given, that 
 we are all learning our business as future gods ? " 
 
 " Yes, it does seem like it." 
 
 " We, in our turn, shall be makers of worlds. Have 
 you not noticed that man's favourite plaything is the 
 ball, a little globe? I see in that a symbol and a 
 promise." 
 
 " Oh ! " protested the invalid, smiling. 
 
 " Yes, indeed," I persisted. " We shall learn to 
 know the divine work more thoroughly, we shall know 
 the enjoyment of handling the infinitely great things, 
 such as love, hatred, ambition, patriotism and heroism 
 and the infinitely small things too, which are just as 
 formidable ; vanity for instance, snobbishness and so 
 many, many other things." 
 
 Whilst giving my conception of our Hereafter, I had 
 watched the effect of my words on the invalid's face 
 and, to my intense satisfaction, I saw that his expres- 
 sion became more gentle and that his face lighted up 
 with hope. 
 
 " Ah, you will reconcile me with Death," he said, 
 with a smile suggestive of youthfulness. 
 
 " Death is in Life and Life is in Death," I continued. 
 " They are only transformations." 
 
 "You believe in reincarnations then?" 
 
 " Certainly I do." 
 
 " Ah, so much the better," said the young man, with 
 <a sigh of relief. " Adamovitch and I have often dis- 
 cussed this probability, and, after each of our discus- 
 sions, this has seemed to be more clear, more compati-
 
 112 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 ble with divine justice. We have never been able to 
 convince my mother, though. She is afraid of losing 
 her son more completely," he added, with an expression 
 in his eyes which seemed to ask me for a contradiction. 
 
 " One might say that * women have reasons of which 
 reason is ignorant,' " I said. '* The bonds which unite 
 us and which group us together may change without 
 being broken. In a great love, or a great friendship, 
 there is, perhaps, an infinite number of sentiments. It 
 cannot be created all at once. If reincarnation did not 
 exist, man, for the simple reason of having dreamed of 
 it, would be better than God and that is not possible. 
 Do you know what I think? Nature, which is the su- 
 preme poet, only created Death for the sake of sur- 
 rounding our successive transformations with sacred 
 mystery." 
 
 " Are you not inventing all this for my sake? " asked 
 the young man, clasping his pale hands together. 
 
 " No, I assure you I am not. For a long time this 
 idea has haunted my mind. You must agree that it 
 would not have been easy for us to change our bodies 
 here on earth. When the gods have taken away any 
 Terrestrian, they have always wrapped themselves in 
 clouds. I do not believe in the astral promenades of 
 the theosophical dream or of that of the spiritists. 
 Transmissions must take place without any break in 
 the continuity. I am afraid the novelist ignores the 
 philosopher here," I added, smiling. " Do you think 
 my dreamr quite impossible?" 
 
 " It seems to me that it is only too beautiful, and 
 how far off our apotheosis is ! "
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 113 
 
 " That does not matter, for time does not exist in 
 eternity and we are already in eternity. The Earth 
 was in it from the very day that it was conceived by 
 the Eternal God." 
 
 " In eternity ! " The young man's eyes reflected his 
 thoughts. " It is quite possible," he continued, speak- 
 ing very slowly, " that we are in eternity." 
 
 " It is even quite sure ? " I put in. " We have 
 existed, no doubt, for millions of years. How many 
 atavisms and how many generations must have been 
 needed for Caesar to be a legislator, an orator, a war- 
 rior and a writer; for Michael Angelo to be a painter, 
 a sculptor and a poet, and for Leonardo da Vinci to 
 be a painter, a geometrician and a mathematician ! " 
 
 " I wonder whether the day will come when we shall 
 be conscious of these stages ? " suggested the inva- 
 lid. 
 
 " Oh, yes, when we are fit for the consciousness, when 
 we can look at this long ladder of progression without 
 turning dizzy. The plant, the animal and man are all 
 gradually developing. The soul of the plant, which at 
 present has only veins and sap, will have cerebral 
 cellules, nerves and blood; the soul of the animal will 
 have eyes that will be able to see heaven; the soul of 
 man will have a glorious body. This conception is very 
 childish, perhaps, and even barbarous, but it must come 
 somewhere near the truth, as it would explain the 
 inequality of conditions and destinies, an inequality 
 which exists among the animals, just as it does among 
 us, and it would satisfy, to a certain extent, our sense 
 of justice."
 
 114 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 The young man nodded his approval and I con- 
 tinued : 
 
 " All creatures are elaborating their own individual 
 soul and a higher life. People say that when the gods 
 created the moth-worm, they wanted to reveal this 
 future to us ; but we cannot yet understand their reve- 
 lations. In Rome, when any one dies, the common peo- 
 ple say : ' Si sfarfallata.' * He has pierced through 
 his cocoon.' ' 
 
 " What a pretty idea ! " 
 
 "Yes, is it not? The day when Pius IX died, I 
 heard a good woman say to another : * 'E dunque si 
 sfarfallato il Papa?' * And so the Pope has pierced 
 his cocoon ! ' It was sublime as regards intuition, but 
 it was a droll idea, that of a Pope becoming a moth or 
 a butterfly. And yet, it must be like that, we are all 
 making wings for ourselves 
 
 " Ah, if I could only share your faith and confi- 
 dence ! " exclaimed the young man, clasping his hands 
 together in a gesture of prayer. 
 
 " All that will come if you will only think about Life 
 a little." 
 
 " Think about Life ! That is just what I do all the 
 time and the more I think about it, the less I under- 
 stand it." 
 
 " What are you reading now? " 
 
 "Travels." 
 
 " That is all very well, but there is something bet- 
 ter. Will you promise to read a book that I recom- 
 mend?" 
 
 " Yes, I will certainly read it."
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 115 
 
 " Well then, get a copy of Les Souvenirs Entomolo- 
 glques d'Henri Fabre. He is considered the greatest 
 naturalist in the world. He is nearly eighty and, for 
 half a century, he has been studying insects. The ob- 
 servations that he has given to science are treasures 
 that no money could buy, and he is poorer than a work- 
 man. France, I am sorry to say, does not know how 
 to reward its servitors, nor how to help its searchers 
 after truth. It is only generous in monuments and 
 statues. England and America would have lavished 
 honours and money on a man like Henri Fabre, and he 
 would have been able to procure the various instruments 
 that he needed for his studies. With the most primi- 
 tive of tools, though, with his own poor eyes, he has 
 revealed to us something of the profoundness of Life. 
 If you read Les Souvenirs Entomologiques, you will be- 
 lieve in our past and in our future. I will bring you 
 Les Beaux Dimanches by Dr. Bourget. It is a book 
 that is both simple and clever, and it will have the 
 same effect on you as a purifying bath." 
 
 " I will read both books. The state of grace of which 
 you have frequently spoken has never been given to me, 
 but I am convinced that your visit is a providential one." 
 
 " Yes, certainly, and for me, too, it has been provi- 
 dential. By explaining to you my convictions, I have 
 made things more clear to my own mind. Without 
 suspecting it, I was doing double work! Is not that 
 wonderful? " 
 
 My companion nodded slowly. 
 
 " And it is more wonderful still as regards the in- 
 sects," I added, smiling.
 
 116 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 Just at this moment, Madame X returned from 
 
 the garden with a whole sheaf of early chrysanthemums. 
 She gazed eagerly at her son's face and, on seeing him 
 serene and happy, she thanked me with eyes shining 
 with unshed tears. When I came away, the young 
 man clasped my hand with an expression of touching 
 gratitude. I raised it impulsively to his lips and their 
 contact, so cold already, made me shiver through and 
 through, but a beautiful look of gratitude came into 
 his eyes. 
 
 Before very long I went again to " The Firs," as I 
 wanted to judge of the effect of the books I had pre- 
 scribed. I met Dr. Adamovitch in the tram, and he 
 told me at once that my inspiration had been a happy 
 one in advising his patient to read Leg Souvenirs Ento- 
 mologiques. 
 
 " They have taken him out of himself," he added. 
 " He thinks of nothing but insects at present, and he 
 is delighted at the thought of talking things over with 
 you." 
 
 The invalid saw me from the verandah and waved the 
 volume he was holding, in quite a youthful way. He 
 came forward to meet me and his whole body, and the 
 expression of his face, seemed to be animated by fresh 
 thoughts. 
 
 " Ah," he said, after shaking hands, " without you I 
 should have known nothing of the real profoundness of 
 Life." 
 
 " You might say without Henri Fabre." 
 
 " Yes, and I cannot tell you what admiration I now
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 117 
 
 have for him. As soon as I am able to travel, I shall 
 go and pay my respects to him." 
 
 His mother's eyelids quivered on hearing this plan, 
 which she knew could never be carried out. As we took 
 our seats at the tea-table, she said to me, with one of 
 her heroic smiles : 
 
 " You know, we dare not kill an insect now. I little 
 thought, any more than Andros did, that they were 
 such wonders ! " 
 
 " Natural History is the divine book, par excellence," 
 I replied. " It contains the true Revelation and so 
 few people read it. It ought to be within reach of 
 every child. It would be a source of amusement and 
 interest. It would teach children to see, to observe the 
 flight of the bird, the work of insects, the life of plants. 
 It would teach the child, above everything else, that 
 there are other things in the world beside himself, the 
 future man, and it would help him to know God by 
 something visible and tangible. God would not seem 
 so far away, but just as He is, quite, quite near to us ! " 
 
 " And yet," put in Monsieur Adamovitch, " the ma- 
 jority of men of science have no kind of religion. How 
 do you account for that? " 
 
 " In a very simple way. What they discover in the 
 Heavens, in the depths of the Ocean and of the Earth, 
 makes them believe in the absolute falseness of these 
 metaphysical dreams which are our religions. They 
 disdain them and they are wrong in this, for these won- 
 derful dreams, which are so touching, although very 
 far from the truth, are full of intuitions and divine
 
 118 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 inspirations. There are symbols within them which 
 might explain many things. Men of science are only 
 doing the work of artisans. They are seeking, classi- 
 fying, translating divine manuscripts, without under- 
 standing the revelation that is within them. Thinkers 
 and poets will be born though, some day, who will un- 
 veil for us the true sense of things and who will show 
 us the real soul." 
 
 " Ah, if they would only come ! " exclaimed the doc- 
 tor. "We need the truth, for we are saturated with 
 fables and lies ! " 
 
 " They will come," I continued. " A few days ago, 
 I read a little poem called The Grasshopper, which de- 
 lighted me. It seemed like the first fruit of the evolu- 
 tion which has commenced. It was the birth of the 
 grasshopper which inspired the poem. It shows the 
 work of Nature and the most beautiful hope emanates 
 from this work. I am only sorry to have forgotten the 
 author's name." 
 
 " It appears that in the schools now, in France, it is 
 
 forbidden to speak of God," said Madame X . 
 
 " Do you not think that this is a sign of decadence? " 
 
 " Of evolution only, I hope. I think it is not un- 
 wise that the teaching of religious doctrine should be 
 left to clergymen or priests, but I think it is gro- 
 tesquely stupid, and even criminal, that teachers should 
 not turn the thoughts, love and admiration of the child 
 towards the Being from whom we all emanate and whose 
 works they are explaining from morning to night. 
 They obliterate the religious sentiment in the new- 
 comers, and this sentiment, if rightly understood, might
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 119 
 
 do much towards elevating their minds and their hearts. 
 The force of which they deprive their pupils might 
 take them upwards, and they certainly have not the 
 right to do this. One day in Paris, I was passing by 
 the Madeleine with a friend who has no religious faith 
 whatever. A first communion service had just been 
 held, and the communicants were leaving the church. 
 4 Do you know,' said my friend, stopping short, ' I 
 cannot forgive my father for having deprived me of 
 the emotion that those ridiculous boys, with white 
 badges on their arms, have j ust felt. My father wished 
 me to be free to choose my own religion, and I did not 
 choose any at all 1 ' For my part, I should like to see" 
 the name of God in gold letters on all our public build- 
 ings, and His name evoked in all our public assemblies 
 and fetes. He alone can give dignity to our acts and 
 some prestige to our poor habitations which are so 
 near the ground." 
 
 " The greatest nations are the most religious ones," 
 put in Monsieur Adamovitch. " Look at England, for 
 instance." 
 
 " The English have religious sentiment," I said. 
 " It can be felt in their poetry which is so elevated, and 
 in their hymns, which are so touching, and so manly. 
 The French have only religion itself, but they have 
 much more than foreigners think, and much more than 
 they themselves think they have. Most of them, 
 though, cannot separate God from the Church and its 
 doctrines and practices. The anti-clericals consider 
 God as essentially ecclesiastical and anti-republican 
 even. It is for that reason that they reject Him. If
 
 120 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 there were some thinkers, and some courageous think- 
 ers among the teaching staff, they would write at the 
 bottom of the photographic slides which reveal the won- 
 ders of Nature: * The Author, God!' They would 
 capture, as the Church does, and better still than the 
 Church, that immense force and this laicised God would 
 have the most fervent adorers." 
 
 " But perhaps the Church would not approve," said 
 the invalid, smiling. 
 
 " That is very likely. The hostility that foreigners 
 take for impiety is only a question of politics. The 
 Catholic Church is essentially Roman. In its early days 
 it had dreamed of being a Christian Republic, it had 
 even taken the name of Republic, which was so dear 
 to the Roman people. It became a theocracy though, 
 and the Republic remained laical. The Church domi- 
 nated Emperors and Kings, but it has always beaten 
 a retreat when confronted by that intangible force, 
 the public, res publica. The two rival powers are 
 enemies ; they have the same unyieldingness, the same 
 tyranny, the same ambition, that of universalness. 
 The Catholic Church little thinks how republican it 
 really is, just as the Republic little thinks how much 
 of the Roman Church it has about it. Between these 
 two powers, the struggle has been both childish and 
 barbarous. The Republican government has taken 
 away from the French the sacred privilege of liberty 
 of conscience, a privilege which is respected in all 
 civilised States. France does not deserve this insult. 
 Nature has not yet given us cither the priest, the 
 healer or the republican. As for the priest, we have
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 121 
 
 only ecclesiastics ; instead of the healer, we have pro- 
 fessors and doctors ; and instead of the Republican we 
 have men of different parties. When these three great 
 human unities are once created, we shall all be happier. 
 In the meantime, politics are one of the cruel agents of 
 the struggle in which we have to participate, the strug- 
 gle which begins very low down in the scale of beings, 
 as you have seen when reading Souvenirs Entomolo-~ 
 giques." 
 
 " Yes," said the young man with a bright look on 
 his face, " and man's struggle now seems to me merely 
 the extension and development of the struggle of the 
 insect. The latter is born with the tools of the working 
 mason, carpenter or moulder; it is provided with 
 weapons of attack and defence. Man is obliged to 
 make these for himself." 
 
 " Fortunately for us," I exclaimed. " We are not 
 very beautiful, but just imagine what we should be 
 like if we were ornamented with all these implements : 
 the mason with his trowel, the warrior with his darts 
 and his lances." 
 
 " And the writer with his pen," added the young 
 man, gaily. 
 
 We all laughed at the picture suggested to our minds. 
 
 " What patience an entomologist must require to be 
 able to explain, as Henri Fabre does, all that the run- 
 ning backwards and forwards of a beetle means. When 
 I was reading his book, I wondered whether invisible 
 eyes were not gazing into our human cities and study- 
 ing our lives in the same way." 
 
 " I had the same idea."
 
 122 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 " What is very clear, thanks to the observations of 
 your naturalist of Languedoc," put in the Doctor, " is 
 the forethought of Nature for the preservation of the 
 species. These hatching rooms, all varnished, aired and 
 quite hygienic, which the insect prepares for a wretched 
 little larva! It is amazing! And then to think that 
 man does not know how to do the same thing for his 
 progeny, and that thousands of children die, thanks to 
 the ignorance of their parents. It is perfectly stupe- 
 fying, for, if a mere larva is valuable in the universe, 
 ought we not to be a thousand times more valuable 
 still?" 
 
 " We are, you may be sure of that. The Terrestrian 
 has to learn everything; it is in that very fact that his 
 superiority lies." 
 
 " Andros read us the part about the love affairs of 
 
 the scorpions," said Madame X . " We found it 
 
 most entertaining and touching. It is a pity that they 
 end in such a tragic way. The scorpion wife eats her 
 husband. Just think of it ! " 
 
 " Well, he had become useless. The gods discovered 
 this original method of getting rid of him." 
 
 " And then, too, Mother, the scorpion wife eats the 
 body of her husband, but not his soul, and, according 
 to Pierre de Coulevain, the soul will continue progress- 
 ing," said the young man, with gentle irony. 
 
 " No, not according to Pierre de Coulevain, but 
 according to the laws of the Universe. Are you 
 not beginning to believe in our past and in our 
 future?" 
 
 " I am."
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 123 
 
 " Well then, you are on the right path. Do not 
 leave it." 
 
 " There is no danger of that." 
 
 All through the Autumn, I wended my way to " The 
 Firs " when the weather was fine. Each time I went, 
 my affectionate interest increased, and I always re- 
 turned from my visit with keener sorrow. I felt a 
 kind of selfish joy in the idea that this poor doomed 
 creature was not my son, that he had not been for nine 
 months next my heart and for twenty-six years within 
 my heart. He would not read anything now but Natu- 
 ral History. I found him always soaring, as it were, 
 above this earth, thanks to his investigations into the 
 depths of vegetable and animal life. We talked about 
 plants, bees and ants, and he said over and over again : 
 " If I had not been ill, I should never have known about 
 all this ! " Gradually weaned away from all organised 
 activity, he no longer saw Death confronting him. 
 
 Madame X did not know how to thank me 
 
 enough. She sent me flowers and fruit, Roumanian 
 preserves and preserved citron which she made herself. 
 When I left Switzerland in January, the invalid was 
 in one of those extraordinary stages of his illness when 
 recovery seems possible. Two months later, he died 
 suddenly, when drinking a glass of champagne. His 
 young cousin, who had been his first love, was with 
 him. Divine mercy was shown to him in this ending. 
 His poor mother who, as she told me herself, had " car- 
 ried him off like a cat carries its young between its 
 teeth," took him back to Roumania in a coffin. She 
 only survived him a few months.
 
 184 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 And the author who had been the unconscious agent 
 of all this woe is an excellent man, with a brilliant, but 
 vulgar, mind. He had probably written the homicidal 
 sentence with a cigarette between his lips and his shoul- 
 ders shaking with a little satisfied laugh, thinking the 
 passage very strong. Yes, with just a few words, he 
 had killed two human creatures. It was, in truth, very 
 strong !
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THERE is room for everything in the marvellous human 
 motor on which Nature has been at work for millions 
 of centuries and on which it is still at work. There is 
 room for our unconscious dreams when asleep, and for 
 the conscious dreams of our waking hours. There is 
 room for the artistic dream, for the dream of love and 
 for the great metaphysical dream. 
 
 If we could, I will not say think, but reflect just a 
 very little, the phenomenon alone which constitutes the 
 romance and the romance-writer would reveal to us the 
 profoundness of our collaboration in the divine work 
 and our true role of predetermined beings. 
 
 It would seem as though reality produced enough 
 love, grief, illusions, evil and good, and certainly enough 
 adultery. It appears that there is not enough though, 
 and that we must have all this artificially, as well. The 
 novelist is employed to collect pictures, gestures, and 
 a thousand different grimaces, impressions and sensa- 
 tions, just as the bee collects honey, and man is not 
 more free than the bee to choose the fertilising matter, 
 for it must produce Life. This increase of psychical 
 substance creates, within the lobes of the novelist's 
 brain, films, like those of the cinematographic appa- 
 ratus and, by means of these films, a whole fictitious 
 world is elaborated, the waves of which mingle with 
 those of the real world and increase their activity to a 
 
 considerable degree. In the poem or the romance, man 
 
 125
 
 126 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 imitates, more or less well, the work of the gods. Like 
 them he multiplies circumstances, incidents, coinci- 
 dences, he makes knots in the chain of Life, which he 
 draws up tightly in an artistic way and loosens again 
 in just as artistic a manner. This copy is part of 
 Nature and is submitted, like Nature itself, to laws of 
 harmony. The writer cannot put down on paper 
 pele-mt'le, the words, sentences, and even the inspira- 
 tions, that crowd together at the back of his forehead. 
 In order to obey the instinct of perfection which he has 
 within him, he is compelled to give a beautiful form to 
 all these. Victor Hugo was once asked whether it was 
 easy to write beautiful verse. He replied: "It is 
 either very easy or impossible." Dante found it easy, 
 probably, to write the Divine Comedyi in stanzas of 
 three lines, because that rhythm had been assigned to 
 him. The hundred songs in triplets, the technique of 
 which is admirable, seem to come out of some mar- 
 vellous phonographic cylinder. The cylinder certainly 
 was marvellous, but I expect that he, too, did not write 
 without erasures. What a miracle those erasures rep- 
 resent ! They mean that the cellules of our brains cor- 
 rect themselves. If they were not living and thinking 
 cellules, could they possibly do this? Those of poor 
 Guy de Maupassant, when he himself was dying and 
 out of his mind, continued to seek for perfection, strik- 
 ing out a word here and there and putting another one 
 in its place. I do not know anything more touching 
 than the corrections in those last lines that he wrote. 
 They made my warm tears flow. I do not think any 
 writer could look at them with dry eyes.
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 127 
 
 The romances of the real world are always stronger 
 than those of the ideal world, but they make less im- 
 pression on us. They seem farther away from us, lost, 
 as it were, in the universal movement. Poets and novel- 
 ists, with their films, circumscribe action and give an 
 immediate denouement, which more or less satisfies our 
 sense of justice. They place a drop of life, a picture 
 of love, for instance, under a magnifying glass and 
 bring it so near to us that we can follow the play of it 
 and feel all its various emotions. More or less endowed 
 with that power of suggestion of which we know so lit- 
 tle, they succeed in making us live for ourselves their 
 dreams. I have often wished that it could be given 
 to me to see, grouped together and made flesh, all the 
 personages of fables, legends, novels and of the meta- 
 physical dream, of all the dreams which have sprung 
 from the human brain. Most of them are, undoubtedly, 
 mere puppets, out of proportion and ill-balanced, but 
 there are also figures which the art of our great masters 
 has made living and even immortal. Humanity has 
 adopted these, and erne generation has transmitted them 
 to the next one. Cinderella and Prince Charming, 
 dreamed of by some Egyptian nurse, are as old as the 
 Pyramids. 
 
 In order to accomplish this miracle, to develop their 
 plans, poets and novelists have nothing but words. 
 Hamlet said disdainfully : " Words, words ! " and they 
 are, nevertheless, most formidable. When I realise their 
 power, I feel a veritable awe, and the more I write, the 
 more cautiously do I handle them. Words are a loaded 
 weapon; each one contains a fragment of the soul of
 
 128 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 ihe world* Science will not contradict me there. With 
 words, one can penetrate minds, affect the senses, enter 
 into communion with one's fellow-creatures, with the 
 Bejond even. With words, one can make love, cause 
 hatred, do good or evil, move masses of individuals, 
 lead them on to death, to victory or to defeat and in- 
 crease or lessen the strength of arms and hearts. 
 There are words which are immortal, words which are 
 endearing, which are delightful to write, as a sort of 
 subtle voluptuousness seems to emanate from them. 
 Then there are words which bite like acid and which 
 burn and gnaw like radium. Words to the fabulator 
 are what the chisel is to the sculptor, the brush to the 
 painter. It was with words that Homer preserved the 
 pagan dream for us and with word that he immortalised 
 Troy. It was with words that Dante caught the soul 
 of the Middle Ages and that he transmitted to us his 
 most poetical figures, such as that of the Pia Tolomei. 
 In a few lines, he succeeded in giving us the impression 
 of a faithless wife, relegated by her husband to the 
 Castle of Maremmes and killed slowly by the deadly air 
 of the surrounding plain. When one passes, in the 
 train, through the low-lying district which skirts the 
 T3'rrhenian Sea, the gentle phantom draws us to the 
 window and we gaze and gaze and feel its presence sub- 
 jectively, thanks to having read the words: 
 
 " Remember me, I am la Pia 
 Sienne gave me birth, Maremme killed me. 
 Does he know it, he who, in wedding me, put on my finger 
 his gemmed ring."
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 129 
 
 With words, Shakespeare created, by means of his 
 Romeo and Juliet, an atmosphere of love to which mul- 
 titudes of beings have vibrated and do still vibrate. 
 With words, by his Lady Macbeth, he created an atmos- 
 phere of terror, the suggestion of which acts on us 
 always, and this seems to me miraculous. 
 
 From my earliest childhood, the dictionary interested 
 me. Did I know then, that in a far, far distant future, 
 I should need so many of its nouns, its adjectives and 
 its verbs? It is quite possible that I did know it, for 
 all is possible in the great mystery which we ourselves 
 are. 
 
 Up to the present, the dreams of novelists have only 
 been stories of love and war, stories that have lulled 
 humanity in its childhood and given it hours of rest and 
 f orgetfulness. A blessing then on the story-tellers ! 
 Now that humanity has reached the adult age, nurses' 
 stories no longer suffice. Humanity is blase and sick 
 to death of the various' emotions provoked by the con- 
 jugation of the verb to love. Formerly, it asked for 
 love and always for love; at present, it asks for ideas 
 and always for ideas, as aliments for its thought. It 
 has become aware of the mystery in the midst of which 
 it lives, and it is disturbed by this, anxious and curious 
 about it. It wants to be charmed and interested by 
 truth now, and no longer by fables. If it be true that 
 the demand creates the function, then story-tellers will 
 become novelists. The novelist will have to acquire an 
 infinite amount of knowledge. He will walk hand in 
 hand with science and will enter into the struggle for
 
 130 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 progress and right. This evolution of the story into 
 the novel commenced farther back than we imagine. 
 Zola was one of its precursors and it would seem as 
 though he stopped it again. Nature frequently has 
 these instances of falling back. Zola was not under- 
 stood, or rather he was wrongly understood, which is 
 worse. He had neither the genius which purifies, the 
 spirituality which elevates, nor the intuition of the 
 sovereign end and object. His novels are painful, in- 
 tense with reality. Some of them are nauseating. 
 Pot-Bouille affected my sense of smell to such a degree 
 that I was obliged to throw it away. Its pictures of 
 low life caused people with the slightest refinement abso- 
 lute disgust; but among the majority of readers, and 
 particularly among younger ones, they roused the 
 animality in their nature. The rousing of this animal- 
 ity has the instantaneous effect of disarming the indi- 
 vidual, and of making the reaction of good difficult or 
 impossible. In this alone, Zola's books were immoral. 
 If humanity held its head up higher than its lower 
 parts, the sight of all ugliness would make it love beauty 
 still more. Humanity has not yet reached that stage. 
 The last page of Nona, for instance, is a warning of 
 the highest importance. Nana, that product of alco- 
 holism, poisoned by her own vice and the vice of others, 
 Nana is dying in a modern caravansary, whilst the 
 young generation she has corrupted and prepared for 
 defeat, files by, under her windows shouting: "To 
 Berlin ! To Berlin ! " and it marches to Sedan ! In my 
 opinion, that is the strongest and most tragic lesson 
 that any moralist has ever conceived. I should like that
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 131 
 
 page to be pinned up in the bedroom of every student. 
 The hour of Justice will strike some day for Zola. 
 
 After the novel of the deep abysses, we have had the 
 novel of the high summits. We owe this to Camille 
 Flammarion. Camille Flammarion! Novelists do not 
 recognise him as one of them and astronomers still less 
 than the novelists. What is he then? He is just him- 
 self a poet who has science, and a savant who has 
 poetry, at his command. 
 
 At present, great doctors diagnose and prescribe 
 without sounding their patients, without feeling their 
 pulses and without knowing the colour of their tongues. 
 In the same way, certain astronomers, in order to study 
 the stars, turn their backs on them. By means of lines, 
 figures and numbers, written on paper, they can tell 
 their positions, their dimensions and follow their course 
 through the infinite. We have telegraphy without 
 wires, speech without the man, we shall soon have the 
 science of medicine without doctors, and astronomy 
 without astronomers. As for Camille Flammarion, he 
 has been contemplating the celestial field, in which we 
 are evolving, for a long time, and he has the boldness 1 
 to imagine that, since our little planet is inhabited, all 
 habitable worlds are inhabited also, and that these lumi- 
 nous spheres, like our own, are merely the houses of 
 the Eternal God, the different homes of the beings who 
 mount the symbolic ladder, our future homes no doubt. 
 This was not science, but intuition, that kind of in- 
 tuition which made the sacred poet say in one of his 
 psalms : " He made of the winds his messengers and 
 of the fiery flames his servants." And to these living
 
 132 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 notes of the concert of the Universe, Flammarion lis- 
 tened with his imagination, as a Terrestrian, alert, but 
 his imagination played him false. His dreams are like 
 those of mediums. They are a disconcerting medley 
 of scientific truth, of elevated idealism and of coarse 
 sensuality. He took liberties with Urania, the memory 
 of which amused me when I found myself in the pres- 
 ence of that Muse at Rome, for her statue has an ex- 
 pression of serenity which is truly celestial. The as- 
 tronomer-poet attempted a flight which is impossible 
 at present, and he fell to earth somewhat disastrously, 
 but his effort has not been in vain. He drew some 
 very noble minds away from materialism. Men are the 
 only creatures on our earth which can look at the sky, 
 and for the great majority of them the sky is only a 
 barometer and a thermometer at present. 
 
 A barometer and a thermometer, this plan of the 
 Universe all strewn with living stars ! One feels a cer- 
 tain shame in having to own this. Flammarion, by 
 popularising astronomy, has put us in touch with the 
 visible Beyond. He has taught us to look there, not 
 only for forecasts of good and bad weather, but for 
 consolation and hope. He has done more for us, per- 
 haps, than the savants have, with their parallels, their 
 angles and their figures. The hour of Justice will 
 strike for him too. 
 
 The evolution of romantic literature is going on, in 
 the same way, in England. Great novelists are coura- 
 geously facing philosophical questions. One of them, 
 Wells, is the most colossal and fantastical genius of 
 our epoch; an apocalyptical genius, such as only the
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 133 
 
 Anglo-Saxon race and the country of the Bible could 
 produce. His novels give a terrifying impression of 
 chaos, of a chaos over which the Spirit of God has not 
 yet moved. From his ark, beaten by the waves, he 
 sends out the dove, but it comes back always, as it dis- 
 covers no summit on which to rest. This does not mat- 
 ter, as, by showing us the play of the forces of Life, he 
 gives us an idea of its value, and that is a great deal. 
 In my opinion, Zola, Flammarion and Wells have had 
 the conception of what the modern novel should be and 
 I only hope that their example may be followed. 
 
 Poets and novelists excite less enthusiasm than mu- 
 sicians, but more admiration and curiosity, as they 
 create more emotions. Women are given to imagining 
 that they must feel more intensely and do things in a 
 more remarkable way than ordinary mortals. That 
 may be, but there is always something artificial about 
 their feelings and doings they are rarely unpub- 
 lished, they either have served or will serve for copy. 
 As for the fabulators, everything is a subject for copy 
 for them, their own love affairs and their own sorrows 
 included. Thanks to the duality which takes place in 
 their mind, they can watch themselves living, loving 
 and suffering, and they feel a special kind of voluptu- 
 ousness in relating all this. In saying this, I am be- 
 traying the secret of the brotherhood, but truth seems 
 to me more wonderful than illusion. Poets and novel- 
 ists are rarely the men of their books ; their books are 
 merely their dreams. When they come out of their 
 dreams, they are quite astonished to find on paper a 
 whole crowd of beautiful things, and sometimes of very
 
 134 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 ugly things, which seem to them quite foreign to their 
 own nature. The *' Self," that poor little embryo of 
 individuality which we all possess, experiences the re- 
 actions of a scholar set free. The author, who has 
 made his personages keep up a brilliant dialogue, be- 
 comes so taciturn that he appears stupid ; the one who 
 has been very serious and given to moralising enjoys 
 being frivolous ; the one who has spoken with warmth 
 of humanitarianism, of fraternity, acts like a regular 
 egoist. All this is always a disillusion for the ad- 
 mirers of the writer, and frequently for the writer him- 
 self. It sometimes happens that, by auto-suggestion, 
 the dream acts on the dreamer and makes him better 
 or worse than he was. The two that I call " the Other 
 One " and " Self " act upon each other mutually. 
 When there is complete harmony between them, their 
 work gets the full and right note of perfect harmony 
 and that is very fine. 
 
 Last year I read a novel by a foreign author, in 
 which there were some wonderful pages of great depth 
 and intuition. There were also some pages that were 
 filthy, worthy of a gutter-cat in the spring time ; homi- 
 cidal pages like those which killed Andros X , and 
 
 I was astonished at this lack of harmony. A few days 
 later, an English lady told me triumphantly that this 
 author was to dine that evening, with her and her daugh- 
 ter, at our hotel. I chose my seat at table, so that I 
 might observe this man. His personal appearance gave 
 me a shock. He was small and puny, with very little 
 hair on his head, his face was narrow and pallid, his 
 eyes shone and he had a suspicion of moustache. His
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 135 
 
 general appearance, set off by a large forehead, gave 
 me the impression of a something cloven, and viciously 
 refined. When he talked with his hostess, his expres- 
 sion was not in the least animated, but when he spoke to 
 the daughter, who was young and pretty, his face 
 lighted up. For a few moments, I turned him over and 
 over again in my mind. He was disconcerting, as all 
 hybrid beings are, and then, all at once, I said to myself : 
 " Why, he is a faun, a literary faun ! " And then, re- 
 calling the magnificent waves of his poetry, I added: 
 "A faun of genius." I understood then the strange- 
 ness of his work and of his character. The women on 
 whom his magnetism acts must be neurasthenic she- 
 fauns. 
 
 I ought to be able to pierce the mystery of which 
 my own brain is the theatre. I cannot do this though. 
 In order to keep certain secrets, Nature imitates the 
 cuttle-fish. She flings around these secrets a dense 
 cloud, and, just when we think we have seized them, they 
 escape. Life is an eternal game of hide and seek. 
 
 Are poets and novelists the favourites of the gods, 
 as the Ancients used to maintain ? I should say, rather, 
 that they are their martyrs. Usually, if they are 
 richly gifted, they are poorly enough endowed with this 
 world's goods. They have to dream in order to live, 
 and to live in order to dream. They have to be spurred 
 on by the need of daily bread, or by ambition for glory, 
 as there is an innate laziness within them, a sort of 
 hypnotic laziness, which prevents them from taking up 
 the pen. These dreamers are worked upon, until they 
 are almost torn to pieces, by the forces of reality and
 
 136 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 the forces of the ideal to which they belong. It is 
 quite in vain that they isolate themselves and that they 
 close their door to every one, the realities of life always 
 reach them. It may be in the form of anxiety about 
 money matters, or the remembrance of unjust criticism; 
 it may be that the calls of love, friendship or amuse- 
 ments, like so many invisible arrows, cross their dream 
 and very frequently break its charm, or its thread. 
 Nothing is more painful than this. When the realities 
 have won them over, the ideal claims them again. 
 Their heroes and their heroines pursue them as far as 
 the very privacy of their life and, promising them glory 
 and wealth, bring them back, whether they will or not, 
 to the unreal world. All this creates constant strug- 
 gle which is infinitely painful. Only those who wear 
 the medals know what is on the other side of them. 
 This is fortunate, as the other side of these medals 
 would cause the envious too much pleasure. The other 
 side of success is more often than not hard for poets 
 and novelists. When they are once free of material 
 anxiety, there is the anxiety about their renown and 
 renown is a young person whose maintenance costs a 
 great deal. If she is not well fed, instead of putting 
 the trumpet in her mouth and playing a sublime air, 
 she turns it upside down. The writer who has become 
 famous has to give himself away in a thousand different 
 manners. He must give autographs, effigies, pleasant 
 little speeches, and he has the sensation, all the time, of 
 being cut up into slices and into pieces. He belongs 
 to the chroniclers, to the journalists, to the biographers, 
 like any ordinary criminal. Because he has committed
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 137 
 
 a few volumes^, the public considers that it has the right 
 to know all about his past, his character and his tastes. 
 When he no longer has life for defending himself against 
 this childish curiosity, his secret drawers are broken 
 open and his private correspondence is found. His 
 weaknesses and his failings are published pitilessly. 
 His friends, and even his family, are sometimes the ac- 
 complices of this profanation. Respect for the dead 
 is not yet known in our civilised society. Men take 
 off their hats before the body which has become inert, 
 and the gesture is beautiful, but the soul, which is still 
 living, is, offended unscrupulously. Lecturers, for in- 
 stance, instead of directing the attention of their lis- 
 teners to the work of the author who is no longer there, 
 to the effort it represents and to the mystery that it con- 
 tains, dwell chiefly on the psychology of love and he who 
 makes the dead talk has it all his own way. I heard 
 one of these men examine for more than an hour, trying 
 all kinds of effects himself with his eyes, moustache and 
 hands, the question as to whether a certain author had 
 loved a woman platonically or otherwise. The idea 
 of this living man, young and very much in the flesh, 
 seated there before a table with his glass of water in 
 front of him, calling up to judgment a great man who 
 was dead, not to thank him for what he had done for 
 humanity, but to drag out of him the poor little se- 
 cret which he had so gallantly kept to himself! It 
 was grotesque enough to make one laugh and cry. I 
 regretted that there was no law to punish the violation 
 of a man's life, as there is to punish the violation of 
 his tomb.
 
 138 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 And these celebrities, like millionaires, are very 
 rarely loved for themselves. They are sought out, not 
 on account of their genius, or their personal qualities, 
 but on account of the prestige they have won, because 
 intimacy with them gives a sort of reflected light 
 that light which snobs of all kinds seek. And the day 
 when they have let some weakness be seen in the arena, 
 their prestige will diminish and very soon they will only 
 see the shoulders of their admirers. 
 
 Poets and novelists are, nevertheless, said to be the 
 favourites of the gods! It is not so, though, for the 
 higher gifts they have received create in them hopeless 
 weaknesses. They have nerves, but no muscles, nerves 
 which are always kept at high tension by thought, thus 
 making them ridiculously sensitive to physical and moral 
 suffering. A pin-prick is to them what a dagger- 
 thrust would be to ordinary creatures. Like all sub- 
 jectives, and they are subjective in the highest degree, 
 they have great vanity. They always require homage 
 and they must feed, with their own substance, the fire 
 on which the public will throw grains of incense. 
 Many of them lose their heads with success. They are 
 not content with praise, but must have adulation and 
 flattery. This adulterated wine intoxicates them, so 
 that their dreams become incoherent and very often 
 their genius is killed. Generally speaking, poets and 
 novelists know nothing either of life or of men, and still 
 less of women, who, in hope of becoming the heroines of 
 books, frequently pose to them. They commenced 
 writing very young, before they could read, that is, be- 
 fore they were able to observe, and they continue study-
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 139 
 
 ing psychology shut up in their own room, by the light 
 of any intuitions which may come to them. When they 
 rouse up from their dreams, they are more or less daz- 
 zled, they cannot see things as they are and they are 
 deceived and taken in like children. Providence, who 
 knows how defenceless her authors are, frequently places 
 near them some devoted woman to encourage and pro- 
 tect them. There is less of this solicitude shown 
 towards women novelists though. Providence leaves 
 them to get through their difficulties alone. This is 
 very flattering, but rather hard. When they are young 
 and pretty, they can easily find masculine hands to 
 push the brambles back along their path. They have 
 to pay for such services in kind and this costs 
 them a great deal. 
 
 To sum up briefly, the makers of the knots, the 
 makers of the ideal world, are very ordinary beings who 
 do extraordinary work ; and this means considerable 
 effort. The only ones to be pitied, though, are those 
 who cannot make this effort, those who are born with 
 the ambition for taking long flights and have only re- 
 ceived pinions. They start oh, they always start 
 but they cannot mount. After hovering round a little, 
 they are obliged to touch earth again, and it sometimes 
 happens that they are killed in touching earth. Their 
 dreams are not understood and are so imperfect that 
 they cannot get into the current of literature, conse- 
 quently they never come to anything. The dreams 
 cause these dreamers to be disgusted with the realities of 
 life and unfit them for material struggle, so that they 
 are the vanquished ones. The conquerors of to-day
 
 140 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 were, perhaps, the vanquished ones of yore, and in the 
 vanquished ones of to-day, we must salute the conquer- 
 ors of the future. In the meantime, though, they suffer 
 cruelly. I can quite imagine this, for I once experi- 
 enced the sensation of being blackballed. The Editor 
 of a review, who, it appears, was rather short-sighted 
 that day, refused one of my novels. On seeing the 
 manuscript come back to the table on which it had been 
 written, I felt a special kind of suffering which I had 
 not hitherto experienced, a suffering which did not 
 weigh on my lieart, but only on my brain and which 
 seemed, figuratively speaking, to paralyse my arms and 
 legs. It was atrocious! In spite of the very evident 
 revenge I have had, the thought of it still annoys me 
 and I fancy that I am giving way to paltry spite in 
 telling about it. 
 
 Some of my unknown correspondents, I have felt to 
 be poets or novelists. They were not the happy ones, 
 but poor, anxious, tortured souls. More than a year 
 ago, I received a letter from a woman in one of the Eng- 
 lish colonies. The impression which it gave me will 
 never be obliterated. After apologising for her indis- 
 cretion and saying all kinds of pleasant things in 
 French, which she did not write easily, she continued in 
 her own language : " I am writing to you from a far- 
 off, blazingly hot station of the United Provinces of 
 India. My husband and I often drive to a little 
 charred station, simply to watch the trains pass by. 
 Last week, we went there to see a friend who was pass- 
 ing through. He had grown thin, and his face was 
 bronzed and tired looking. He got out of his compart-
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 141 
 
 ment and we clasped hands in silence. e I have brought 
 you some joy,' he said, giving me a yellow-covered 
 book. It was your book," my letter went on. " A 
 few short minutes and then he got into his compartment 
 again. The train, which was to carry him away, glided 
 along the rails, slowly at first, then faster and still 
 more fast, until it finally disappeared. The meeting 
 had taken place. When will it take place again? 
 These meetings of friends are events in our lives, they 
 are the pools of water in the desert ! " 
 
 How much there was in these few lines ! They com- 
 municated to me the homesickness of this exiled couple, 
 transplanted from a land of verdure to the confines of 
 an Indian desert. I saw them driving along against a 
 background of burnt-up desolation, and returning to 
 their bungalow in gloomy silence. I felt that their 
 thirst had not been quenched by the drop of water they 
 had drunk, and every time that their picture came on to 
 my screen, I felt a pang of sympathy at my heart. 
 My correspondent must possess the magnetism of the 
 writer to have produced so durable an effect. I was 
 tempted to tell her this, but, out of prudence, I re- 
 frained. It often happens that Nature puts certain 
 germs of art into a human brain quite intentionally. 
 When the sap mounts, thanks either to love or grief, 
 these germs may produce a few beautiful pages of 
 poetry or of prose, but these are just will-o'-the-wisps. 
 Authors to whom they write tell them that they are 
 born poets or novelists, thus creating wrong vocations 
 which lead to intellectual disasters. 
 
 This same incomprehensible Nature had behaved to
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 me in a strange way, which I no longer dare call cruel, 
 but which was cruel nevertheless. It had given me a 
 fairly complete set of literary cellules, and I was not 
 allowed to use them. Consequently, during three quar- 
 ters of my existence, they were sterile. At present, I 
 realise that, although they were sterile, they were not 
 inactive. They were always catching impressions and 
 pictures, amassing an enormous amount of material and, 
 at the appointed time, they produced what they were 
 intended to produce. They made my childhood strange 
 and odd, my growing up difficult and my girlhood pain- 
 ful. They inspired me with unlimited ambition, and 
 with a need of beauty, luxury and comfort which I could 
 not satisfy. They affected my character and my des- 
 tiny. They might have played some bad tricks on me 
 if other forces, perfect physical balance, a gaiety that 
 was always triumphant anc^ a sense of humour, had not 
 held them in check. They made things uncomfortable, 
 but amusing; thanks to them I never knew what it was 
 to be bored and they always kept me company. They 
 were able to make me cerebrally romantic, but not sen- 
 timentally romantic, and it is to this that I owe my 
 salvation. They were responsible, I fancy, for some- 
 thing very foolish, of which I was ashamed for a long 
 time and which I can explain to myself now. 
 
 In the first half of last century, a pleiad of poets, 
 the neurasthenic poets of those days, had introduced 
 a sort of morbid melancholy into literature. Our 
 mothers had drunk of this literature to their soul's 
 content, and they transmitted it to us. Millevoye's 
 Fcuillfs Mortet had brought consumption into vogue as
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 143 
 
 an illness. We were ashametl of our fresh complexions 
 and of our robust health ; we drank vinegar in order to 
 be pale and we were in love with death, instead of being 
 in love with life. Towards my fifteenth year (at that 
 critical age girls are capable of anything), I began to 
 cough, with the hope of dying of consumption. The 
 idea of dying of consumption seemed interesting and 
 beautiful to me. I am quite sure I should not have 
 been fascinated by the idea of dying of tuberculosis. 
 What a power there is in words! Without troubling 
 about the anxiety I was causing my mother, I con- 
 tinued this cruel game for some time. One day when 
 I was kneeling at the confessional, and about to ask 
 for absolution, I coughed as I was in the habit of 
 doing, but a sudden fit of laughter interrupted my 
 cough. The absurdity of the comedy I was playing 
 had just struck me. I laughed and blushed for myself, 
 with one of those deep blushes, the sensation of which 
 one does not forget easily. While I was about it, I 
 ought to have confessed my long lie, but I had not the 
 courage to do this, and I regret it to this day. How- 
 ever that may be, I was thoroughly cured of the folly 
 which had been engendered by the Shelleyism and the 
 Byronism I had absorbed. 
 
 I still have a psychological document of my early 
 girlhood. It reflects the mentality of the epoch and it 
 shows, too, that, from our earliest days, we have within 
 us the germ of our respective vocations. This docu- 
 ment is an exercise book containing my compositions 
 at the age of fifteen. It seems to me miraculous that I 
 should still have it. It has escaped several disasters
 
 H4 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 and my mania for throwing away all that is in my way. 
 It has been taken from the bottom of one trunk and put 
 into another one times without number, without get- 
 ting lost. It was, no doubt, intended to serve in some 
 way. Tilings, like men, are indestructible until they 
 have given to Life what they were intended to give, 
 even- if this be only an impression. This little school- 
 girl's exercise-book, the ancestor of the little exercise 
 books I have always used, as a writer, is quite yellow 
 with age, just as I am myself. We have turned yel- 
 low together. The golden sand which dried the ink is 
 still adhering to it. The characters are microscopic, 
 but very firmly written. They look so ancient and 
 comic with their curly letters. At first sight, they seem 
 to have no relation at all to my big, modern hand-writ- 
 ing. On examining them carefully, though, one recog- 
 nises that they are produced by the same hand. In 
 this little book there are the following sketches: The 
 Story of a Cat told by Itself, A Story (I had 
 probably not been able to find a title for this one), A 
 Schoolgirl's Day, and The Story of a Violet. The con- 
 struction of these inventions is very good, the charac- 
 ters are not badly drawn, the dialogue is lively and 
 natural, so that dialogue is evidently my strong point. 
 My sentences are short, although there are too many 
 adjectives in them. In those days, adjectives reigned 
 supreme. Some of these are no longer in favour to- 
 day, but they are used frequently in my stories. " In- 
 describable " is one of these and the word " suave," 
 which we used to think delightful to write. Nowadays 
 we are apt to put " exquisite " and " adorable " for
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 145 
 
 everything. I am studying, with the greatest curi- 
 osity, the figures and scenes which must have been 
 formed behind my childish forehead. They belong es- 
 sentially to their epoch. I come across the most aston- 
 ishing phrases, such, for instance, as : " Obedience is 
 only sweet when the heart commands it." " Happy is 
 he who has his tomb in the same place as his cradle." 
 Where could I have found all that I wonder? Then, 
 too, I marry one of my heroines and I say of her: 
 " She has the radiant brightness of love on her face." 
 Where can I have come across love? She marries a 
 naval officer. In our dreams, naval officers occupied 
 a large place in those days. At present they are out 
 of date, but they can be quite easy in their minds, as 
 they will come into favour again. This officer, M. d'El- 
 bene, goes back to sea after being married two months. 
 He remains absent five years and, on returning home, 
 he finds there the three little children God has sent him, 
 by way of making up to him for his exile. I am only 
 surprised that I did not put half a dozen while I was 
 about it. This is how I wrote history at the age of 
 fifteen. On reading this epilogue of mine again, I 
 laughed, but my eyes were full of tears. I saw, with a 
 certain pleasure, that, through all this heap of rubbish 
 and commonplace, the modern spirit made its way here 
 and there. I found, too, a surprising knowledge of the 
 human heart. I might have been an old inhabitant of 
 this world. Here and there, these imaginative writings 
 disgust me. They reveal a good, loving, pious soul, 
 which had nothing in common with the undisciplined, 
 critical, brusque little girl that I was. Was I then
 
 146 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 deliberately playing the hypocrite? No, I was quite 
 incapable of that at all ages of my life. What does it 
 mean then? It simply means that my individuality 
 was not yet developed and I was affected by the sub- 
 jective, sentimental soul of the epoch, by its childish 
 and conventional ideal. In A Schoolgirl'* Day, I recog- 
 nise my true self. I was quite natural in this, daring 
 and gay, and I exclaim : " Life is so beautiful, I 
 should like to live a long, long time." The Story of a 
 Cat stupefied me and I have not yet recovered from my 
 amazement. This story, from one end to the other, 
 was to be my own story. Did the subconscious part of 
 me know this? It is quite possible. After rereading 
 these pages, written in my girlhood, I was both touched 
 and furious and I exclaimed aloud: "Little goose, in- 
 stead of talking of love and marriage, why did you not 
 watch the insects, the birds and the flowers ! " Alas, 
 the little goose had to be forty years older before she 
 learnt to watch and to see the insects, the birds and the 
 flowers. Her eye had to be born again. 
 
 I had often wondered how it was that I did not begin 
 to write at an earlier age, when everything seemed to 
 point to that for me. This poor little exercise-book, 
 showing me a sample of my early mentality, explained 
 this to me. It was to serve for this end. It has served, 
 so that I can now burn it. Before putting the pen be- 
 tween my fingers, Nature was obliged to prepare my 
 brain to receive the ideas it was to transmit. If I had 
 written with my subjective mind of former days, I 
 should have spoken of Life with as much knowledge as 
 I spoke of marriage at the age of fifteen. The children
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 147 
 
 of my early life would have been born old, and I should 
 be ashamed of them at present. The children of my 
 old age were born young and I am rather proud of 
 them, of the last one more particularly, because it is 
 the youngest and the most modern of all of them, be- 
 cause, with this last one, I plunged into the future, into 
 the future that I shall not see. On leaving Paris, I 
 left the manuscript with my publishers and I corrected 
 my proofs here. When the galley-proofs arrived, I 
 pressed them to me with an emotion that was rather 
 ridiculous. If only the type-setters could have seen 
 me! I felt that I was certainly the mother of this 
 thing. The mother yes but who was the father? 
 I should like to know that! Ruminating a book had 
 never caused me as much anguish, nor yet as much 
 pleasure. Every minute, as I saw some fresh aspect 
 of Lake Leman, I would exclaim : " I could not de- 
 scribe all your beauty ! " One evening, in the hall of 
 the hotel, whilst a very good orchestra was playing, a 
 certain chapter of my book took shape again in my 
 mind; I noticed that the waves of my phrases mingled 
 with the waves of the music, and that they seemed to 
 carry each other along. It was a fresh sensation and 
 a delightful one. I only hope that I may experience 
 it again with this volume. This volume! I wonder 
 whether I shall be allowed to finish it? At times I 
 doubt and think that it will finish me. With the fine 
 unconsciousness of an ignorant creature, I had under- 
 taken the reading of the Wonderful Romance. I little 
 guessed the difficulties with which I should meet. This 
 kind of book requires quite another method of work.
 
 148 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 It is no longer the dream which constrains me, but 
 reality, and this is formidable and implacable beyond 
 everything I could have imagined. It obliges me to 
 think over my subjects a long time before I touch on 
 them ; it will not put up with pretty nothings, untruths 
 that are so easy to write. It plunges me from one 
 mystery to another mystery, and I discover, in the 
 most trivial things, a depth which is alarming for a 
 simple novel writer. I feel tempted over and over again 
 to give up this reading of Life, but I know that it would 
 be impossible for me to return to my stories. What- 
 ever may come of it, the cellules which caused my early 
 life to be sombre are brightening my old age. I tell 
 this, because in this little fact there is hope for every 
 one.
 
 WAS the egg created first or the hen? Was it the 
 novel that produced romance or romance which gave 
 birth to the novel? These are two questions quite as 
 important as the " To be or not to be " of Hamlet, and 
 no one has yet been able to answer them in an irrefut- 
 able way. I shall not succeed any better than other 
 people, but, as I have just said, I leave one mystery 
 and fall into another one all the time, and it is now 
 this one with which my thoughts are occupied. 
 
 It seems to me that it must be the egg which gave 
 birth to the fowl, as Nature is both a layer and a 
 brooder. It hatches germs and is, above all things, a 
 transformer, delighting in making infinitely great things 
 out of infinitely small ones.. We ourselves are a living 
 proof of this. In the same way I think it is romance 
 that engendered the novel, because this is the exaltation 
 of Life, an exaltation produced by that creative fac- 
 ulty which we call imagination. 
 
 Reality never seems strong enough to us and so we 
 add what is fictitious to it, quite unconsciously. It 
 would be interesting to see what a piece of news, told 
 in a little village, would become by the time it had gone 
 the whole round of the village. It would be most in- 
 teresting to trace what each person had added to it. 
 The narration of a crime, of a catastrophe, or of a 
 cataclysm causes us, in spite of ourselves, a secret delec- 
 tation. This is not because we enjoy it, but quite the 
 
 149
 
 150 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 contrary, as it excites our horror, or our pity, but it 
 brings the tears to our eyes. When an emotion of any 
 kind accelerates the course of our blood, increases the 
 activity of our cellules, it is then and then only that we 
 feel Life, and we love to feel it, that Divine Force, even 
 if it is to crush us. 
 
 The romantic element is in Nature; it is one of the 
 most active agents of good and evil. It takes on not 
 only character, but race. Oriental romance docs not 
 resemble Western romance nor Anglo-Saxon romance 
 that of the Latin race. Only twenty years buck 
 romanticism was very feeble in America, but at pres- 
 ent it has made its way there. Sensational abductions, 
 misalliances, divorces and dramas of all kinds are on 
 the increase there, to such a degree that our Old World 
 seems quite virtuous in comparison. 
 
 Like poets, romantic people have their waking dreams 
 and, instead of writing them down, they endeavour to 
 live them. It is more agreeable for them, but infinitely 
 more dangerous and more particularly for others. 
 There are intellectually romantic individuals, senti- 
 mentally romantic and mystically romantic. The intel- 
 lectually romantic ones have dreams of social or artistic 
 grandeur. Such dreams make conquerors, ambitious 
 men or women, artists and criminals of them. Such 
 dreams made Ca>sar, Nero, Napoleon, Michael Angelo, 
 Shakespeare. The sentimentally romantic individuals 
 have dreams of affection, of noble devotion, of faithful 
 friendship, of transcendental love and of humanitarian- 
 ism. These dreams make passionate lovers, philanthro- 
 pists and an infinite number of sacrificed and crucified
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 151 
 
 men and women. The romantic mystics have dreams of 
 the Beyond, of heavenly blessedness. Such dreams have 
 made martyrs, men and women like St. Francis, St. Vin- 
 cent de Paul and St. Theresa. 
 
 In private life, there are more romantic individuals 
 among men than among women. That is easily ex- 
 plained. Man has more imagination than woman, his 
 imagination is active, a creator of pictures, whilst that 
 of the woman is passive and only a reflector. Both 
 physiologically and psychologically, man needs illu- 
 sions. It is this which makes faithfulness difficult to 
 him and, in many cases, impossible. Within the senti- 
 mentally romantic individual there is a depth of deli- 
 cacy and of modesty which he conceals with care, but 
 which, constantly hurt, causes him much suffering. 
 Any lack of harmony irritates him, he is enchanted by 
 a mere nothing, and just as easily disenchanted. A 
 man of this kind confessed to me that the admiration 
 he had felt for a certain pretty woman vanished when 
 he discovered her taste for high game. A young friend 
 of mine told me that, during the first months of her 
 married life, she used to go backwards and forwards 
 from her husband's room to her own with bare shoul- 
 ders. One day, tapping them affectionately, her hus- 
 band said to her : " If you want me to like seeing those 
 pretty shoulders always, do not show me them too 
 much." The young wife was intelligent and I have 
 reason to believe that she profited by the lesson. 
 
 Sentimental, romantic people are subjective creatures, 
 and they rarely see things as they are. Blinded by the 
 ideal that they have unconsciously elaborated, they dis-
 
 152 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 dain reality, which avenges itself cruelly sometimes. 
 They are the worst statesmen possible. They bring 
 their literature, unconsciously, into their politics, and 
 this is more dangerous than to bring it into their love 
 affairs. Into parliamentary debates, they bring a sort 
 of nervous uncvenness, a ridiculous sentimentality, a 
 persistent illogicalness which produces nothing but in- 
 coherence. In France, we have too many such ro- 
 mnntic individuals in power. 
 
 Romantic wives are not precisely the joy and tran- 
 quillity of their husbands. They are the women of 
 eternal desire. They always want from love and friend- 
 ship more than these can give, and they give to love and 
 friendship more than these want. This makes them 
 irritating and uncomfortable. Duality is, with them, 
 quite distinct, just as it is with poets and novelists. 
 This duality allows them to watch themselves live. 
 They see themselves walking, doing things, they hear 
 themselves talking, they endeavour to be poetical, they 
 pose, not only for others, but for themselves too. They 
 keep feeding their own sorrows with a kind of voluptu- 
 ousness and, when Time has carried these away, they do 
 their utmost to make people think that they still exist. 
 There is never crape enough for their mourning! 
 Those who have only imagination love with open eyes: 
 they have wine, but they never experience the intoxi- 
 cation of wine, they are great illusionists. They judge 
 their husbands or their lovers calmly and they usually 
 think them faulty. Such women are dangerous. Still 
 more dangerous is the romantic woman who has a great 
 deal of temperament and plenty of nerves, but who is
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 153 
 
 not balanced by some great moral force, such as the 
 sentiment of honour or of religion. Her brain, like 
 that of the novelist, is the theatre of a strange phan- 
 tasmagoria. It manufactures, not films of art, but 
 films of love. Figures appear and disappear upon its 
 screen. It frequently happens that, under the con- 
 scious or unconscious action of her thought, one of 
 these figures becomes very clearly defined, takes form 
 literally and, from that moment, her husband has a 
 rival. The rival is sure to be fair if the husband be 
 dark; gentle if the husband be rough, bold and refined 
 if the other be timid and vulgar. The rival has none 
 of the ridiculous attitudes of the human being, he 
 walks, as it were, on the clouds. This figure, which she 
 unconsciously creates and completes herself, becomes 
 her ideal. She has no longer a soul except for this 
 puppet, and her eyes are seeking for it everywhere. 
 She establishes this figure in some mysterious abode 
 which she furnishes, decorates and perfumes in a more 
 or less aesthetic way. And she always sees him there, 
 holding out his arms to her in desperation, always in 
 wild desperation. She sees herself going to him in 
 spite of all obstacles; she sees herself getting out of a 
 carriage at the corner of some street, putting on an 
 indifferent air and then, half suffocated by the beat- 
 ing of her heart, passing through the big gateway of 
 the house and arriving at the threshold of the Para- 
 dise, the keys of which are kept by Love and not by 
 St. Peter. She seems like a heroine of romance to 
 herself. Thanks to her imagination, she manages to 
 feel all these emotions. She feasts on them and, if she
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 should, some day, meet with a being who bears the 
 slightest resemblance, if only thanks to the nose or 
 moustache, to the ideal she has imagined, she will re- 
 spond to his call and will live out her dream or will 
 perhaps die of it. If I am not mistaken, this is how 
 Nature makes faithless creatures. 
 
 A few weeks ago, probably for the chapter that I 
 was about to write, a young woman was sent to me. 
 She came to see me under the pretext of thanking me 
 for the good that certain of my books had done her, 
 but, in reality, for the simple pleasure of telling me 
 the adventure of which she was the heroine, and also 
 from a wish to appear interesting to a novelist. She 
 is a Parisian society woman, as thin and elegant as a 
 greyhound. Her features were drawn, her fair hair was 
 of a warm shade and her blue eyes shone with feverish- 
 ness. Her story was somewhat commonplace. At 
 Salso Maggiore, an Italian watering-place that has come 
 into favour quite recently, she had met a certain Aus- 
 trian baron. She had been madly fascinated by his 
 grand manners and by his fine, romantic sentiments. 
 For the sake of this stranger, she had left her home 
 and her family, and had entirely broken with her past. 
 The romance had lasted three years. By way of epi- 
 logue, there had been the rupture and desertion, the 
 inevitable desertion. For the baron, it all meant a 
 pleasant remembrance of a love adventure with a pretty 
 Parisian woman ; for the pretty Parisian woman, it 
 had meant divorce, dishonour, uprooting and, finally, 
 being stranded in a hotel ; it had meant two deep, in- 
 effaceable wrinkles around a mouth that was still young.
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 155 
 
 While the poor woman was telling me all this, I studied 
 her closely. I quickly recognised the romantic element 
 in her, and my curiosity made me want to know in what 
 way it had worked on her. 
 
 " Were you not happy with your husband ? " I asked. 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 " Yes, and no. He was a good sort, but one of those 
 men who say to you : ' I love you, I am faithful to 
 you, what more can you want? ' You can imagine 
 how impossible it would be to make him understand 
 * the more ' that I needed." 
 
 "You never had any children, I suppose?" 
 
 " No fortunately. I like to persuade myself that 
 if I had had any, I should have been stronger against 
 temptation. But I am flattering myself, perhaps. 
 Everything was so oppressive : my husband, my mother- 
 in-law, our house. As to the house, I had altered the 
 looks of it entirely." 
 
 Those words were a revelation to me. 
 
 " I suppose you used to frequent the antiquarians ? " 
 
 " Yes, I went curiosity hunting, simply because it 
 was the thing to. do, at first, but very soon my taste 
 was formed and it began to develop. I became pas- 
 sionately fond of Italian furniture." 
 
 " Ah, I see," I exclaimed, delighted with my own 
 intuition. " You handled old stuffs and beautiful em- 
 broideries, stroked exquisitely carved wood, admired 
 gilded side-tables with graceful lines and hunted up old 
 portraits, and all these things acted on you in an 
 occult way; you were hypnotised and fascinated by 
 them. They made you feel disgusted with your mod-
 
 156 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 ern and, perhaps, bourgeois home, and I feel sure that 
 they made you dream some extravagant dream." 
 
 My visitor gazed at me, her eyes dilated with sur- 
 prise. 
 
 " Yes, that is quite possible," she said at last slowly. 
 " I did dream of living in some old Italian palace. And 
 after all, I have lived my dream, for I spent my love 
 moon in Venice, in an ideal setting. The ceiling of my 
 bedroom was painted by Tiepolo and it was so beautiful 
 that I feasted on it with my eyes." 
 
 " Well, you see where your old curiosities took you ; 
 they led you straight along by the hand." 
 
 My visitor gave a little discordant laugh. 
 
 " I did not know they could be so dangerous," she 
 said. " I shall like them better than ever now," she 
 added, in pure bravado. 
 
 It is not enough to recognise that " everything con- 
 curs." We must try to find out how, and that is al- 
 ways wonderful. I once happened to ask a delightful 
 young man, of about thirty years of age, why he had 
 not married. 
 
 " Because I am afraid," he replied. " You see, I 
 should be honest enough to put all my hopes of happi- 
 ness into my marriage and I dare not draw, lest a bad 
 card should fall to my lot. I had a very narrow es- 
 cape once. Some friends, with whom I was staying 
 in the country, introduced me to a family in their neigh- 
 bourhood. There was the most absolutely charming 
 daughter of about eighteen. After riding together 
 and playing tennis, I was soon in love with her. I 
 felt sure that I should be accepted and I began, in a
 
 157 
 
 very discreet way, to let her see how matters were. 
 One Sunday as we were walking back to the house to- 
 gether, from the park, I ventured, not without great 
 emotion, to tell her something of the feeling I had for 
 her. I can see her now. She was wearing a skirt of 
 white woollen material and a white transparent blouse, 
 through which I could see pretty little ribbons. Her 
 hair was tied low in her neck with a large bow, mak- 
 ing her look rather like a school-girl. She seemed to 
 like listening to me and I noticed that her little ear 
 and her cheek turned pink. Just when I thought I had 
 touched her, she stopped short and, looking at me with 
 astonishment on her face, she remarked : * Is that a 
 declaration? ' 
 
 " No," I exclaimed, " not really ! " laughing, in spite 
 of myself, as I thought of the effect the girl's words 
 must have produced on the young man. 
 
 " Yes, really ! " 
 
 " And what did you answer? " 
 
 " That that was all a gentleman had the right to say 
 to a young girl. She just replied ' Oh! ' in a strained 
 tone, and we continued our walk. I was too completely 
 taken aback to say any more on the subject. I under- 
 stood that she was a romantic girl and, as I do not 
 feel that I am of the stuff of which heroes are made, 
 I gradually drew back. Do you not think I acted 
 wisely? " 
 
 I looked at him. He was handsome, but built for 
 an active, prosaic life and with him the young wife 
 would probably have kept saying, all the time : " Is 
 that all!"
 
 158 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 " Yes, you acted wisely," I answered with convic- 
 tion. 
 
 " And you can understand that after a wet blanket 
 like that, reaction is not an easy thing and marriage 
 alarms me." 
 
 " Yes, I understand perfectly well." 
 
 It is quite certain that, among romantic women, there 
 are a great many Emma Bovarys. If imaginative 
 young bourgeois women could write and so get rid of 
 the steam they get up, we should have a few more novels 
 and a few less faithless wives. Art would lose by this, 
 but morals would surely gain by it. 
 
 The nervous romantic woman is usually a loving wife, 
 a passionately fond mother, or rather a brooder. She 
 would give her life for her family and yet she makes 
 her family thoroughly unhappy. She has a bad way 
 of loving. If her husband does not always answer her 
 as the shepherd did the shepherdess, she thinks that she 
 is neglected and betrayed. If he is kept out late, she 
 gets anxious in the most ridiculous way. For her chil- 
 dren, she does not accept the struggle of life, because 
 they are her children. She suffers more than they do 
 and she will not face the eventuality of long separa- 
 tions. She cuts her little ones' wings in the most stupid 
 way, in order to keep them a longer time with her. 
 A character of this kind creates a disturbed atmosphere 
 in which no one could be happy. I used to attribute 
 all this to an excess of feeling, but I now see that women 
 of this kind are simply agitated creatures, all out of 
 tune, who do not love with their intelligence and their 
 heart, but with their nerves, nerves over which they
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 159 
 
 have no control. They are very much to be pitied and 
 those who live with them are still more to be pitied. 
 Only a doctor, who is a real neuro-physiologist, could 
 put them in tune again. 
 
 The romantic element in a superior, well-balanced 
 woman is a force. She makes use of it in order to 
 extract from reality, no matter how poor that may be, 
 all the beauty and poetry that it contains. She can 
 create the most harmonious setting for herself out of 
 nothing. She is charming in love, in friendship and 
 in social intercourse. When she loves her husband, she 
 will frequently attribute to him gifts that he does not 
 possess ; she makes a pedestal for him and, if repeated 
 shocks should crack it, she will cement it heroically, so 
 that it lasts as long as she does herself. I have known 
 women who, thanks to their faith and their constant 
 suggestion, have made of their husbands men of worth, 
 if they could not make men of genius of them. 
 
 Within the last twenty years, the gods have been 
 creating, in America, a curious variation of the ro- 
 mantic woman, the intellectually romantic woman. She 
 has been admirably studied and photographed in a novel 
 entitled Together, by Herrick. She is the woman who 
 sins, not like Mary Magdalene, and not like the French- 
 woman, the Italian woman or even the Englishwoman, 
 from a need of the poetry of love, but in order to sat- 
 isfy the aspirations of the superior soul she has dis- 
 covered within herself which guides her towards an- 
 other soul equally superior. I am quite sure that what 
 we read in this book was lived in this spirit. All this 
 is the result of the higher studies to which feminine
 
 160 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 brains, that are insufficiently prepared for such studies, 
 have been submitted. The brains will be prepared for 
 the studies, but, in the meantime, may God preserve 
 every husband from the intellectually romantic wife? 
 It makes me smile to think that if any one but an 
 American had written Together, his effigy would have 
 been burnt in America. 
 
 The romantic element is very strong in the people 
 themselves of every nation. It is frequently the cause 
 of the most sublime actions and still more frequently 
 of criminal deeds. I had the good fortune to meet with 
 it once in its natural state, free from all pose, in a very 
 humble woman, and never has it appeared to me so 
 miraculous. 
 
 In the corridor of a hotel, at which I was staying 
 for the first time, I often met one of the persons em- 
 ployed there, the sempstress. She was a woman of 
 about fifty, a typical Frenchwoman of Southern 
 France, holding her head up like a true Arlesian and 
 walking with the light step of a nun. The expression 
 of her very beautiful, dark eyes, which were much 
 younger than her age, aroused my curiosity. I recog- 
 nise very quickly, now, eyes that have a history, and 
 those certainly had one. The woman had an extremely 
 timid look when her eyes met mine, but a ray seemed 
 to come from them and I had the impression that it 
 gave me something, a something which pleased me. It 
 was probably on that account that I spoke to her. 
 However that may be, I asked her whether she could 
 find me a work-girl who would come to me, once or twice 
 a week, to put a few necessary stitches into my clothes
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 161 
 
 and to keep my wardrobe and drawers tidy. Blushing 
 deeply and in a nervous voice, she told me that she 
 would gladly do all this herself, and the matter was 
 at once settled. From the very first, I recognised in 
 her a refined nature. She came in the evenings, after 
 her day's work, and on Sunday afternoons when the 
 weather was bad. When I happened to be there, she 
 moved about very quietly and I could feel a sort of 
 affectionate respectfulness in her attentions. If I 
 were lying down on my sofa, she would arrange the 
 cushions under my head, pull up the rug when it was 
 slipping off and generally look after my comfort in a 
 way which made me think how pleasant it would be to 
 be always waited on like this. Very often even, she 
 would put flowers on my dressing-table. Urged on by 
 the real interest I felt in her, I tried to find out some- 
 thing about her life. She told me that she was from 
 Provence, that her brother and two sisters were em- 
 ployed in hotels and that, for the last five years, all 
 the linen of this hotel had been in her charge. Her 
 natural reserve, the pride and sensitiveness which I 
 knew she had, held my curiosity in check. I could feel, 
 nevertheless, that she had some confidence or some con- 
 fession to make to me. I even felt sure that she had 
 only offered her services to me on that account. Sev- 
 eral times, I surprised a mute appeal, or a distressed 
 look, in her eyes. I saw her lips move as though she 
 were going to ask a question, and then she was silent. 
 It was very evident that I had not found the right 
 words for unlocking her soul. 
 
 One Sunday afternoon, as I was sitting at my writ-
 
 162 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 ing-table, looking through some notes, she was dili- 
 gently arranging one of my blouses. Without being 
 aware of it, she attracted my attention. I could see 
 her three-quarter profile and she made the most har- 
 monious figure in her simplicity. It was a pleasure to 
 look at her. Her dark hair was still thick. She wore 
 it twisted low in her neck and this showed up the oval 
 of her face. She was wearing a well-cut, grey dress 
 of woollen material and her linen collar and cuffs and 
 white apron were perfectly clean. Thanks to her long 
 eyelashes, her eyes, even when she was looking down, 
 were beautiful and warm looking. The years that had 
 passed over her, and the daily struggle, had traced deep 
 lines around her nose and mouth, but, curiously enough, 
 they had respected her forehead. This was as smooth 
 as though she were only twenty years of age. I have 
 noticed this peculiarity among men who are thinkers. 
 And strangely enough, too, she did not look like an old 
 maid, but like a married woman. 
 
 "Suzanne, how is it that you are not married?" I 
 suddenly asked, prompted probably by the impression 
 I had just had. 
 
 I had thrown my bait, in the hope of obtaining one 
 of those simple stories which are my delight, and I 
 obtained something far, far better. My sudden ques- 
 tion stopped the workwoman's needle short. 
 
 " I have often been asked that," she answered. " I 
 do not know why." 
 
 " Because you must certainly have been very at- 
 tractive." 
 
 '* You are very kind to say so. Yes, I could have
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 163 
 
 married like other girls, but you see, my mother was 
 a widow with four children. I was the eldest and had 
 to help her, for she could never have done everything 
 herself, although she was a hard worker. She went out 
 as charwoman and, every morning at daybreak, winter 
 and summer, she sold hot coffee to working men. She 
 had her little stall in the recess of a big gateway to a 
 house. She had been allowed to install her little stove 
 there. When she was at the oven, I had to mind the 
 mill. I was not even able to serve apprenticeship to a 
 sempstress, as I wanted to." 
 
 " You went to school, though, I suppose? " 
 " No, but I had lessons such as are not given in 
 schools. One of the flats, on the first floor of the house 
 in which we lived, was inhabited by an old lady who 
 lived quite alone. My mother kept her flat in order 
 and I did her errands. Every one called her Madame 
 Louis, but she must have had another name that we 
 never knew. She was a very little woman, and yet, I 
 do not know why, she never looked small. She had 
 very white hair and clearly-cut features and she looked 
 like an old portrait that was alive. Everything was 
 very beautiful in her little flat. I have seen rooms in 
 the houses of rich people, but not one that seemed to 
 me furnished as well as hers. Her furniture was very 
 old, though. She had a great many books, and pictures 
 like those in picture galleries. They represented gen- 
 tlemen in uniform and ladies in low-necked dresses and 
 she put flowers in front of these portraits. I fancied 
 she had come to our poor district, not only because she 
 had a small income, but because she wanted to do good,
 
 164 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 and that she certainly did, to such a degree that people 
 called her * Our Lady of Help.' It was she who taught 
 me to read, write and reckon and all that I know of 
 geography and history. I studied with her an hour 
 in the morning and an hour in the afternoon. She 
 gave me lessons to learn by heart, and I learnt them 
 whilst working with my fingers. She often used to in- 
 vite me to take my basket of mending and sit with her 
 in the evenings. Those evenings were fete-days for me. 
 She used to read poetry and fables to me and tell me 
 about the lives of great men. Dear Madame Louis ! 
 I owe her as much as I owe to my mother who brought 
 me into the world. She died of pneumonia after three 
 days' illness. I was sixteen years old and I nursed 
 her and closed her eyes. That has always been my con- 
 solation. Every one in the neighbourhood went to her 
 funeral. Some gentleman we had never seen came and 
 took away her pretty furniture, which was all as soft 
 to touch as satin. She left me three hundred francs, 
 which she had probably economised out of her income. 
 She left me, too, all of her books that I could under- 
 stand. For a long time after her death, I had such a 
 pang at my heart every time I passed her door that 
 I had no breath left for climbing up to our fifth floor. 
 My mother used to be quite jealous. * You could not 
 feel more grief if I had died,' she said, and this was 
 quite true." 
 
 " Do you not think that it was the society of Madame 
 Louis that spoilt you and prevented your marrying a 
 man of your own station? " I asked, smiling. 
 
 " Perhaps so and then, too, we are proud in our
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 165 
 
 family and my mother would never have endured being 
 kept by her son-in-law, so I had to stay with her. No, 
 I could not marry, but I have been very happy, all the 
 same," added the woman, in a voice that suddenly be- 
 came lower, thanks to her emotion. " I imagined that 
 I was married." 
 
 " Really 1 " I said, with the sensation of the fisher- 
 man when he feels the line vibrating in his hand. 
 
 Suzanne glanced at my face anxiously. 
 
 " You will make fun of me," she said. 
 
 " No, indeed," I replied quickly. *' I love day- 
 dreams. Tell me about yours, just as though I were 
 your confessor." 
 
 This put the poor woman at her ease and, with her 
 beautiful eyes fixed on me and her hands still, she con- 
 tinued, with a faint blush on her face : 
 
 " I fancied I was the wife of a fine fellow, tall, strong, 
 with fair hair, blue eyes, a beautiful colour in his cheeks 
 and a drooping moustache. I named him Louis." 
 
 " In remembrance of your friend, no doubt? " 
 
 Suzanne nodded and continued, in a lower voice: 
 
 " I used to picture myself with him in a little home 
 of two very light, airy rooms looking on to an old 
 garden. There were red geraniums in our window and 
 birds singing madly. The furniture, the kitchen things 
 and the floor all shone oh, how I made them shine ! 
 Louis was a mechanician and in the evening, when he 
 came home, he did not bring with him the odour of 
 the public-house, like other men, but the odour of his 
 work-shop, a good odour of iron and of fresh air. 
 After dinner, he would read the newspaper to me while I
 
 166 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 was sewing, and he had a voice like music. In the 
 spring, he brought me violets and he said such beautiful 
 things to me. Oh, he was very much in love with 
 me" 
 
 " Did you never see any other faces than that of 
 Louis? " I asked, prompted by my pitiless curiosity. 
 
 ** Oh, never ; that would have been impossible," an- 
 swered my penitent, with an accent that made me 
 ashamed of my question. I was careful not to tell her 
 that there are people who are faithless even in their 
 dreams. 
 
 " And did you not imagine, too, that you had chil- 
 dren?" 
 
 The emotion and the blush caused by my question 
 revealed to me how profound the dream had been. 
 
 " Yes a little girl, fair like her father and with 
 his blue eyes. We used to take her out on Sundays, 
 and in summer we filled her carriage with flowers, so 
 that even her head could not be seen. It was so pretty, 
 all that." 
 
 " Suzanne, you are a poet," I exclaimed, charmed 
 with this little picture. 
 
 " You are laughing at me " 
 
 " Not at all." 
 
 " My life would have been very dull, if it had not 
 been for these fancies." 
 
 " And when did they come to you? " 
 
 " As soon as I was alone, but particularly in church." 
 
 " In church ! " I repeated, struck by this revelation. 
 
 " Yes, I used to go in often on that account, towards 
 the end of the day, at twilight. It was wrong, perhaps,
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 167 
 
 but there was such a noise at home. If I looked as 
 though I were thinking of anything, they all used to 
 say: ' Suzanne is up in the moon.' I was really in 
 Paradise," added the dreamer, in a broken voice. 
 
 " And what about your Louis ? Did he get older 
 with you, or has he remained young? " 
 
 " Oh, all that is over. It is as though I had had a 
 dream and that I am now awake again. I remember 
 it, but I cannot go back into it." 
 
 " How old are you? " 
 
 " Fifty-five." 
 
 " Your dream was one of the flowers of youth and 
 the season has gone by for you. It is merely that," 
 I said. 
 
 " I should never have thought of speaking of all this 
 to any one on earth. People would have said I was 
 crazy and, with us, people have not much faith in those 
 who are not like every one else." 
 
 She glanced at me with that expression of anguish 
 which had struck me previously. 
 
 " I should like to know quite frankly whether you 
 think that I was mad? " 
 
 " Mad ! " I exclaimed. " Certainly not. What put 
 that idea in your head? " 
 
 " Well, my sisters and my friends never had imagi- 
 nations like that." 
 
 " Because they are not gifted to the same degree 
 as you, but every one has more or less imagination. 
 Do not children imagine things? They have little din- 
 ners, and leaves from the trees are their plates and 
 dishes, pebbles are their cakes and they suck them with
 
 168 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 conviction and even imagine that they have the taste 
 of sugar." 
 
 " Yes, that is true." 
 
 " One day, a young English boy of fourteen told me 
 about the boar hunt in which he had taken part. He 
 had given his first proofs of valour, for it was he who 
 had struck the fatal blow when the animal was run 
 to earth. Whilst he was telling me all this, he held 
 his foot in his hand and his blue eyes had a fixed look, 
 as though he had a vision of what he was telling me. 
 I knew it was all imaginary, but I had not the courage 
 to tell him that I knew this. At present, he is the most 
 honest of men. You see he was not mad at all. And 
 what about novelists who are imagining all the time. 
 I hope they are not mad?" I said, smiling. 
 
 " No, oh, no," said my companion with polite em- 
 phasis ; " but what is it that causes all that ? " 
 
 " What causes all that ? Ah, my good Suzanne, we 
 do not know anything about that yet. At the back 
 of our foreheads, and underneath our craniums, we must 
 have a crowd of organs with which we think, reason, 
 love and imagine, that is we group together the pic- 
 tures, just as you did in your youthful dream. We 
 can quite well group them together, but we cannot give 
 life to them. Only God can create what He imagines. 
 All that we see, the sun, the stars, the plants, the flow- 
 ers, the animals and men are all His imaginations." 
 
 '* The sun, stars, flowers, birds all the imagina- 
 tions of God?" repeated the poor woman. Her face 
 suddenly lighted up and she exclaimed : " Yes, yes ;
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 169 
 
 oh, I understand. I loved Him well before, but 
 now!" 
 
 She could not finish her sentence and I saw her clasp 
 her hands together, instinctively, in adoration. 
 
 " It is very curious," she said, " at church one never 
 thinks of all that. We pray and pray and we do, not 
 know exactly to whom we are praying." 
 
 " That does not matter ; it is better to pray wrongly 
 than not to pray at all." 
 
 " I felt sure that, as you write books, you could 
 explain things to me. Oh, what a weight you have 
 lifted from my mind. The idea that I had been mad 
 haunted me and made me feel ashamed." 
 
 " Shall I tell you what you are, Suzanne ? " I said, 
 smiling. " You are a woman who should have been a 
 novelist and I am sure that you will go on imagining 
 always." 
 
 The colour came quickly into my penitent's face. 
 
 " Yes, but it is not the same thing now. I only im- 
 agine that I have a little house in the country." 
 
 " And can you see it ? " 
 
 "Yes, just as I see you, Madame. The wistaria is 
 up to the very roof and, at the back, there are old 
 trees and a deep well in which the moon can be seen. 
 In the front garden there are quantities of flowers." 
 
 " Well, that dream may be realised," I said. " There 
 is more likelihood of having a little house in the coun- 
 try than of having a perfect husband like your Louis." 
 
 " Not much more likelihood for me," said the woman, 
 with a sad smile, continuing her work.
 
 170 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 That day, when she left, she kissed my hand. It was 
 I, really, who ought to have thanked her, for she had 
 given me the rare enjoyment of coming face to face 
 with one of the most beautiful miracles of Nature. 
 How very beautiful it was, her dream of conjugal love. 
 Out of delicacy, I had not dared question my penitent 
 more closely, but how much I had guessed and ad- 
 mired ! This brunette, of Latin race, had, thanks prob- 
 ably to some latent memory due to atavism, created 
 for herself a husband with fair hair, blue eyes and a 
 drooping moustache, a true Gaul. Solitary, although 
 in the midst of her family, thanks to her innate refine- 
 ment and to her contact with Madame Louis, she had 
 only been able to love the creature of her imagination 
 and she had loved him like a being of flesh and bone. 
 She had felt herself clasped in his strong arms, her 
 lips had been coloured by his rough kisses and, thanks 
 to auto-suggestion, she had put into his mouth, the 
 " beautiful words " which had been invented by her 
 own brain. He had made her his wife. In the dark 
 chapel to which she had gone, at the end of the day, 
 the doors of her earthly Paradise, two rooms with win- 
 dows gay with flowers had been opened for her and, 
 whilst there, she had forgotten all the ugly realities of 
 her life. It was in church that she could always im- 
 agine better. I was not at all surprised at that. The 
 Catholic sanctuary, with its atmosphere saturated with 
 soul, its profound silence, its cleverly arranged ob- 
 scurity, lends itself to dreams as much as to prayer, 
 for the two phenomena are of the same essence. This 
 youthful dream which had upheld Suzanne has, perhaps,
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 171 
 
 prepared her for a higher destiny. I told her that she 
 ought to have been a novelist ; I fancy it is more likely 
 that she is a future novelist. 
 
 The creative faculty of the dream, like all the psy- 
 chical forces that we incarnate, has two currents and 
 produces what we call, as we do not know any better, 
 good and evil. The artist who would symbolise Life 
 should make a statue with two faces ; the one, gri- 
 macing and sorrowful; the other one, beautiful, serene, 
 radiant. There are dreams which purify and dreams 
 which degrade. In the darkness of the lower depths 
 there are dreams of sunshine, and on the heights, in 
 full sunshine, there are dark dreams ! Millions of crea- 
 tures, prisoners of poverty, disease, and so many, many 
 others, too, could never endure the realities of Life if 
 it were not for the magic of the dream. But, whether 
 this be a gift of anger or of love, it must help forward 
 our progress. 
 
 This faculty which makes us lead a double life is not, 
 I am sure, the privilege of mankind alone. Animals 
 dream in their sleep, there is no doubt about that. We 
 have all of us seen the dog dreaming and heard his 
 stifled bark. We have seen his legs move, as though 
 he were about to run, his nose sniff, his lips move, either 
 as though he were about to bite, or as though he were 
 laughing. When the dog is awake, he must have his 
 dreams too. Dogs cannot, as we can, group the vari- 
 ous pictures together, but they see, as we do, the pic- 
 tures their brains have received: their dreams are only 
 recollections. The huge, wild beasts, shut up in their 
 cages in the zoological gardens, dream. No one who
 
 172 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 has watched and observed them could doubt this. WitH 
 their heads stretched forward on their forelegs they 
 see again, thanks to the films that have been formed 
 under their skulls, the jungle with its living prey, the 
 watering-places where they used to quench their thirst 
 and, for a few moments, they forget their captivity. 
 
 In the kennels, the dogs see again all the fine hunts 
 they have had, and even those of their ancestors. The 
 picture of their absent master soothes them and makes 
 the time of waiting seem less long. The horse, in its 
 bad-smelling stall, sees the green pastures of its early 
 life. The cat, in its dignified immobility, with its tail 
 curled round its paws, and the ever-changing pupils 
 of its eyes, gives us, more than any other animal, the 
 certainty of the phenomenon. It undoubtedly dreams 
 the sanguinary and loving dream of the feline race and 
 it is just as well not to interrupt that dream, even by 
 a caress, for when the cat rouses from it and stretches, 
 all its claws are visible and reveal to us something of 
 the nature of its dream. 
 
 It would require years of rumination for studying 
 the dreams of man and of animals and I have only 
 hours now at my disposal. Others will undertake this 
 work, no doubt, and I envy them, for they will have 
 glimpses of the light itself and I have only seen the 
 shadow of that light.
 
 CHAPTER Yin 
 
 ROMANTIC literature leads me on, necessarily, to love, 
 which is its leit motiv, its battle horse. It nourishes 
 love with its dreams, and it propagates it and makes it 
 greater by means of words and pictures, for, if I am 
 not mistaken, this is the chief function of romantic 
 literature. 
 
 Love ! I cannot help laughing at the idea of an old 
 woman, like me, being brought face to face with love, 
 for the purpose of studying, analysing and judging it. 
 This seems to me both pathetic and comic. When we 
 are young, we feel love, but it dazzles us so much that 
 we cannot see it. At present, when the time of " the 
 great serenity " is here, and I am outside of love's cur- 
 rent for ever, I see it objectively. It appears to me so 
 miraculous, so divinely conceived, that I would not ex- 
 change my present vision for the dreams of yore * 
 and this is very fortunate for me I 
 
 No other people have had so scientific an intuition 
 of love as the Greeks. All the discoveries we have made, 
 and all those that we shall make, will reveal the eternal 
 truth of it. The allegory with which it inspired the 
 Greeks has been an inexhaustible source of wonderful 
 creations for poets and artists. The modern mind can 
 still draw from it. This truly divine allegory repre- 
 sents love as a child incarnating a giant force the 
 attractive force which unites beings and things, in or- 
 der to make them produce new elements. Eros is the 
 
 173
 
 174 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 little child whom we never think of mistrusting, whom 
 we welcome with a smile. He throws his soft, supple 
 arms around his victim and his embrace is that of an 
 implacable master, a master with all the tyranny, 
 egoism and inconstancy of a child. The very at- 
 tributes: the quiver, the arrows, the torch, the band- 
 age for the eyes, are symbols of living things. Like 
 Eros, we are children, but our cerebral cellules in- 
 carnate creative force. Their radiations are the arrows 
 which call love into being, or which kill it. Those 
 radiations are the torch which kindles the passions 
 and they produce mirages that are blinding. 
 
 Love is still an abstract thing to us. With more 
 or less genius and more or less talent, the various poets, 
 novelists, musicians and painters have exploited it. 
 The word I employ is vulgar, but exact. These manu- 
 facturers of the ideal have even created artificial waves 
 of it, and humanity has drunk of them and has, in 
 some cases, been intoxicated by them. We might well 
 think that everything that there is to say about Eros, 
 comparatively speaking, has already been said, but, as 
 a matter of fact, nothing has yet been said. I do not 
 pretend to be able to pierce through the mystery of 
 the nature of Eros, but the discoveries of these last 
 years enable me to imagine more thoroughly and, at 
 the risk of disgusting realists and being jeered at by 
 our savants, I am going to tell what I have imagined. 
 If there should be a few gleams of truth in what I am 
 about to write, they will be due to pure intuition, as 
 I am only a poor ignorant woman. 
 
 Where docs this force come from which sometimes
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 175 
 
 steals into us treacherously, and sometimes bursts forth 
 without any warning, the force which flings us into the 
 arms of another creature, which unites us or reunites 
 us to that creature for a few seconds of eternity? 
 Where does this light come from which lights up our 
 spring, our summer, our autumn even, and the memory 
 of which suffices for warming the winter of our life? 
 Where does this force come from, which takes us up 
 to the very summits and hurls us down into the abysses ? 
 Like the vital fluid, like the soul of the Universe, it 
 comes from the Eternal God, from " our first motor." 
 It is one of the radiations from this. The photographic 
 plate can now catch the distant star. The day will 
 come when an apparatus, sensibilised to an extreme de- 
 gree, will register the divine wave and, in the mean- 
 time, we can, at any rate, comprehend its action. It 
 penetrates the atom, the vegetal, the animal, man. Like 
 the sun, it sets in motion the living germs that have 
 been put into certain cerebral cellules and, out of crea- 
 tures, it makes creators, for love is a sentiment that has 
 a sex, that even has two sexes. I felt inclined to write : 
 Love is a sex that has a sentiment, but I was afraid of 
 letting myself be tempted by the pleasure of saying 
 something more piquant. I called Eros to the bar and 
 confessed and questioned him relentlessly. After which, 
 I came to the conclusion that, generally speaking, with 
 men it is the sex that has a sentiment, and that with 
 women, it is the sentiment that has a sex. The ques- 
 tion is not one of superiority, but of temperament. 
 This accounts for the eternal difference between mas- 
 culine and feminine love. When Nature has found the
 
 176 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 way to synchronise them, they will be in perfect har- 
 mony. In the meantime, they frequently produce cruel 
 discords. This definition must be a true one, as it ex- 
 plains the deeds and misdeeds of love, its nnimality and 
 its ideality, its baseness and its elevation, its instinctive 
 and profound jealousy, its inconstancy, its fidelity, its 
 cowardice and its bravery. It explains its contrasts 
 which have always astonished us, contrasts which have 
 made philosophers speculate, and which have fed the 
 imagination of novelists. 
 
 Have there ever been any examples of purely spirit- 
 ual love, such as that of which Plato, the great idealist, 
 dreamed? There has been metaphysical love such as 
 the Christian Catholic soul tried to produce. Have 
 there ever been examples of sexless love? I do not think 
 so at all. In order to be convinced of this, we have 
 only to read the adorable romance of St. Francis de 
 Sales and St. Chantal again. It is a romance of saints. 
 We see how Eros dissembled, how he disguised himself! 
 It was all in vain, though, that he tried to hide under 
 the violet robe, and under the nun's dress, he betrayed 
 himself constantly, and the marvellous thing is that 
 now, after three centuries, he can be felt in those let- 
 ters from the prelate. He comes out of them living, 
 fresh, young and passionate, just as though he had only 
 been imprisoned there yesterday. How fine Life is ! 
 Although the Bishop of Geneva and Madame dc Chan- 
 tal had risen to a great height, they did not succeed 
 in leaving the terrestrial atmosphere, and their love 
 had a sex like that of the ordinary mortal, but with 
 this difference, that they were its absolute masters and
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 177 
 
 not its slaves. This alone was very fine for poor Ter- 
 restrians. Listen, for instance to this: 
 
 He. " My very dear mother, all mine, moy-mesne. 
 . . . Good morning, my only one, my very dear, in- 
 comparably dear, daughter." 
 
 She. " Your dear soul, my very dear father, my 
 only one " 
 
 In order to have such expressions as these, the com- 
 plete fusion of their beings must have taken place in an 
 occult way. .We know nothing yet of the workings 
 of Nature. In their letters, there is no doubt a great 
 deal of literature. St. Francis de Sales was above all 
 in love with the woman, or rather with the feminine soul. 
 I have tried, in vain, to imagine what the meetings of 
 these lovers, of so rare a kind, must have been like, 
 lovers who exchanged such tender sentiments by letter. 
 Must they not have felt intense emotion when they were 
 actually in the presence of each other? Must they not 
 have felt a certain embarrassment, too? But the 
 Bishop, with his thumb, could make the sign of the cross 
 on the forehead of " his unique daughter," the mother 
 superior could kiss the episcopal ring of the father, 
 " dearly well beloved," and, by means of these mystical 
 gestures, they would have called down God between 
 them. They probably talked of their common work: 
 " The Visitation," and in this way they could escape 
 from themselves. The elaboration of this work must 
 have been, I feel sure, a powerful derivative. They 
 gave it the tell-tale arms of a heart crowned with thorns 
 and pierced by two arrows. These arms speak clearly 
 enough. The two arrows were, you may be sure, those
 
 178 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 of Eros. I feel sure that the profane god had never 
 before been put to such a test. 
 
 The publication of the letters of St. Francis de 
 Sales, is, I consider, a profanation, but they reveal 
 unsuspected possibilities in human nature, and they 
 have helped me to understand human nature better. 
 
 The phenomenon of the union of two beings, by love, 
 is the most miraculous of all those that we are called 
 upon to live. How do we love? How do we cease 
 to love? Those are the two questions! The sap 
 mounts in the human creature, and, at a certain epoch, 
 which is determined by more or less rapid growth, the 
 living cells, which incarnate the attractive force, be- 
 gin their work. Their vibrations create, in the brain, 
 a whole phantasmagoria of pictures, dreams and de- 
 sires. By means of glances, smiles, words, droll little 
 grimaces, they go, like the antennae, in search of the 
 brother or sister cellules which are to make their des- 
 tiny happy or accursed. There is nothing in this 
 world which appears to me more tragic than this un- 
 conscious pursuit. They frequently search a long 
 time for their sister or brother cellules, some of them 
 never find these and therefore remain sterile, but this 
 is exceptional. For the majority, the miracle takes 
 place, and it always takes place in a different manner. 
 Sometimes it happens that those who are destined for 
 each other meet in the midst of the densest crowds, 
 through the closest network of radiations which are 
 quite foreign to them. They make an impression on 
 each other: the cellules of the man receive or catch the 
 picture of the woman : the cellules of the woman receive
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 179 
 
 or catch the picture of the man and they are then 
 invisibly united. 
 
 The phenomenon enters its second phase. Love is 
 born. This hybrid sentiment has unique and very 
 strange properties. It creates a sort of halo round 
 its captives, which isolates them. They see themselves 
 alone, like Adam and Eve, and they can no longer live 
 outside this halo without suffering. It clothes them, 
 and all which belongs to them, with a special fluid which 
 transfigures them reciprocally, which accelerates the 
 beating of their hearts, exalts their senses and their 
 higher faculties, diffuses through their veins a para- 
 disaical joy and, at certain moments, gives them an 
 intoxication during which neither time nor space exists 
 for them. Like the juice of poppy capsules, and of the 
 grape, love, which is the juice of the human cellules, 
 produces intoxication, an intoxication of Life, of the 
 Beyond, that of Happiness itself. This intoxication 
 does not last. If it did, it would stupefy or kill us. 
 Many of those who have known it, endeavour to find 
 it again by means of fresh communications, and it is 
 just this which causes unfaithfulness. It is given to 
 the most humble of creatures and to the greatest alike, 
 and God be praised for this! Men and women of the 
 people obtain it without many words. Arm in arm, 
 they hold each other's hand. One comes across them 
 like this seated on the benches of the public squares and 
 parks. They see nothing of what is going on around 
 them, as they are evidently elsewhere. I said, one day, 
 to a country girl : " You and your sweetheart are 
 very silent lovers ! "
 
 180 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 " Oh, we arc too happy to be able to talk ! " she re- 
 plied, blushing. 
 
 Last Sunday, the chambermaid who waits on me in 
 my hotel had been out for the day. When she came 
 to my room in the evening, her face, which is very pretty, 
 was so bright, beaming, as it were, with an inner joy, 
 that I had the instantaneous impression of love. 
 When I think that microscopic cellules can, under the 
 action of invisible forces, produce paradisaical joys, 
 or infernal tortures like jealousy, I am perfectly baf- 
 fled, as I feel astounded and rather terrified. 
 
 During this communion which unites two creatures, 
 physical exchanges take place, the profundity of which 
 we little imagine, and these exchanges are necessary to 
 Life. When this union has given to Life what it was 
 destined to give, love either ceases or is transformed. 
 This is the third phase of the phenomenon. And in 
 this phase, what hidden heart-rendings there are, what 
 desperate efforts to prolong happiness. Sometimes it 
 is the picture of the woman that fades away the first, 
 and the man then becomes indifferent to her. He 
 neither sees her nor feels her any longer. Sometimes 
 it is the picture of the man which disappears, and the 
 woman regains her independence regretfully. In both 
 instances it is a case of a burnt-out ampoule, a dead 
 cellule. The man, or the woman, who continues loving, 
 without any return being possible, drinks one of the 
 bitterest cups that has ever been prepared for our 
 poor humanity. 
 
 However wonderful love may be, it is not the noblest 
 of our sentiments. It brings out the alloy which is
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 181 
 
 in our composition: our vanity, our egoism. We con- 
 stantly hear people say that " without love the world 
 would come to an end." I fancy that with only love, 
 it would come to an end still more rapidly, not perhaps 
 thanks to the lack of combatants, but through sheer 
 wantonness, and its end then would be still more shame- 
 ful. 
 
 To the majority of society men and women, love is 
 scarcely more than a kind of sport. In the higher 
 classes the Don Juans are the cabotins of Love. In 
 the lower classes they are the hooligans of it. This 
 type of love, which incarnates the dreams of puberty, 
 which certain poets have idealised, is, in reality, one 
 of the most contemptible and vulgar that exists. As 
 to the passionate lovers, they are the romantically sen- 
 timental ones, whose temperament makes victims of 
 them rather than heroes and heroines. We can for- 
 give them much, because they have loved much. 
 
 Love, this master of the Universe, this divine master, 
 has a whole crowd of grotesque features which show 
 up the humour of Nature. One of these is the game 
 which we now call flirtation and, in animals, the pursuit. 
 It is most curious to study. The flirtation of adoles- 
 cence, which is unconscious and instinctive, might teach 
 the psychological doctor a great deal. Youthful flirta- 
 tion is skilful and artistic, the woman is graceful at it, 
 and the man ridiculous. The flirtation of men and 
 women in their maturity is pitiful and the flirtation of 
 old age odious. Just as there are, in the firmament, 
 stars that are dying and stars that are extinct, so in 
 our motor there are cellules that are dying and those
 
 182 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 that are extinct. Those of youth and of sensual love, 
 for instance, die normally towards the close of the sum- 
 mer of our life. With some individuals, they survive 
 until the very middle of winter, and they only produce 
 then repugnant anomalies, such as old men and women 
 passionately in love. 
 
 Among the wrong ideas that circulate, that are re- 
 peated, thanks to the influence of suggestion, and that 
 pervert people's judgment, there is one that I specially 
 wish to denounce. 
 
 People are in the habit of saying that marriage is 
 the tomb of love. The man, for it must have been a 
 man, who first spread abroad this calumny, knew very 
 little about love, and about human nature. 
 
 Marriage is, really, the touchstone of love. If this 
 cannot stand the test of the intimacy of marriage, it 
 is not of good alloy. When it has undergone the pro- 
 cess of transformation, and come through this test tri- 
 umphantly, it becomes conjugal love, and this is not 
 only stronger than death, but stronger than old age. 
 This is the love that cannot be killed by any disillu- 
 sions, by physical and moral disrobing, by the horrors 
 of disease, the repetition of the same gestures over and 
 over again, nor even by deadly habit and custom, nor 
 yet by time and wrinkles. It is the golden liquor which 
 remains in the champagne glass when the fermentation 
 froth has subsided, it is the very soul of the wine. If 
 one takes the trouble to stir it with tender words, with 
 timely little attentions, with intelligent coquetry, it will 
 always give those lovely, many-coloured bubbles which 
 excite and delight the palate. Conjugal love, like
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 183 
 
 friendship and all the other sentiments, must be culti- 
 vated. It is a beautiful plant which, only too often, 
 the husband and wife let die, thanks to their ignorance 
 about what it requires, their ignorance about Natural 
 History. Sometimes they give this plant too much 
 sunshine and sometimes too much shade. The sap has 
 difficulty in mounting, the leaves lose the brilliancy of 
 vigour and the poor corollas wither away without hav- 
 ing given all the perfume they contained. People say 
 then that it has been killed by marriage. No, it has 
 been killed by the married couple. 
 
 I remember very well the impressions of a romantic 
 man who, in spite of every one and everything, married 
 a girl, with whom he had fallen in love. During the 
 honeymoon, she contracted typhoid fever in a little 
 Italian town. He had to nurse her himself, and so 
 he saw her in all the physical humiliation which this 
 terrible disease inflicts on its victims. After telling 
 me all the incidents of this first conjugal trial, he added: 
 " How little we know ourselves ! I should have thought 
 that I should have been disenchanted forever by such 
 a thing and, on the contrary, I did not even feel the 
 slightest disgust. I felt that Louise was not only a 
 woman, but my wife, part of myself." 
 
 When I was a girl, I thought, and even said, that it 
 would be absolutely impossible to continue loving a hus- 
 band who snored. One afternoon, my little dog, Sa'i'da, 
 that I adored, was asleep at my feet and snoring most 
 happily. I looked at him and listened with intense 
 pleasure and, finally, knelt down beside him and said: 
 " What a good sleep you are having, my darling ! " and
 
 184 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 then I added, foolishly : " And how well you snore ! " 
 An old friend of mine who happened to be there, and 
 who had often heard my childish remark, began to 
 laugh. 
 
 " You see," she said, looking at me over her spec- 
 tacles, " when one is in love with one's husband, one 
 thinks that he snores well too. Do you understand 
 now?" 
 
 Yes, I understood. 
 
 "Conjugal love is very great then!" I said, amazed 
 and inwardly delighted. On the objective screen, I can 
 see myself now, sitting on my heels and making this 
 pleasant discovery. And I can see myself at present, 
 towards the end of my life, not sitting on my heels, 
 alas, but at my writing-table, repeating for the bene- 
 fit of my readers: " Conjugal love is very great!" 
 The contrast between these two films amuses me, but 
 makes me a little sad, too. 
 
 I know a fine pair of lovers. The man is ninety years 
 old and the woman eighty-five. One day, urged on by 
 my relentless curiosity, I asked this wife, who has had 
 an exceptionally happy life, whether she would like to 
 be young again ? " Yes," she said promptly, " for one 
 thing only, so that I might marry my husband again." 
 
 I shook hands with Monsieur B . " Your wife has 
 
 just paid you the very finest compliment you have ever 
 had," I remarked. He looked at me in a bewildered 
 way, for he is deaf and had not heard the fine compli- 
 ment. I repeated it to him and his face lighted up. 
 The old couple exchanged a look and a smile which made
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 185 
 
 them young again for a few seconds. At the bottom 
 of their glass, in which so little of the liquor remained, 
 I saw the beautiful bubbles appear once more, with all 
 the changing colours of the divine fluid. 
 
 A love marriage may become a marriage of reason 
 and a marriage of reason may become a love marriage. 
 This miracle takes place more often than we imagine. 
 Marriage is the mingling of two lives, according to the 
 beautiful, old expression. When the woman is no 
 longer a woman to any one else, she still is to her trav- 
 elling-companion, and will be to her last hour. 
 
 Outside marriage, Eros is a delightful child, but 
 fickle, cruel and egoistic. In marriage, he is a man. 
 He has the right of lighting the fire of the family hearth, 
 that altar on which the Greeks and Romans always 
 kept the fire burning. The head of the family alone 
 had the privilege of adding fresh fuel to it and it could 
 only be extinguished with the family itself. The so- 
 called free-thinkers believe, or pretend to believe, that 
 the marriage ceremony adds nothing to human happi- 
 ness. They are mistaken, for it adds to it the conse- 
 cration which gives it grandeur and dignity. That 
 ceremony, by which two persons take the community 
 as witnesses of their union and ask for the blessing of 
 God and the protection of the law, makes of them and 
 their offspring active members of that same community. 
 Those who, for reasons which are always pitiful, dis- 
 pense with all this, remain isolated, on the margin of 
 life, as it were. The man, more than the woman, al- 
 ways feels a certain shame. It is easy, too, to prove
 
 186 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 that there are more dramas, sorrows and crimes as the 
 result of free love than of consecrated unions. This is 
 not a chastisement, but a mere consequence. 
 
 The desire for other people's property is a primordial 
 instinct, one of the principal instruments of the strug- 
 gle which keeps up Life and gives shades to it, both on 
 our own planet and, probably, on many others too. 
 On my balcony, every day, I see certain sparrows which 
 are more perverse, I might say more human, than the 
 others. There is a table for them lavishly supplied 
 with food, but they only covet the crumb that a brother 
 is eating. I see such sparrows dart on that crumb, 
 snatch it away in the most daring and pretty way pos- 
 sible, and finish it with evident enjoyment, as though 
 theft made it more savoury. The instinct which makes 
 a man desire his neighbour's wife is of the same kind. 
 The ancestor was the victim of this instinct just as the 
 husband of to-day is. The cave and the hut were dis- 
 honoured by adultery just as the house and the palace 
 frequently are now-a-days. In the far-back times, 
 there were, doubtless, daring and courageous love- 
 thieves who carried Eve away with a high hand, who 
 kept her, fed her, clothed her nakedness, made neck- 
 laces with which to adorn her, and gave her a couch 
 of fleeces or of leaves. There were others who were 
 weaker, less manly, and who stole into Adam's nest, 
 whilst he was away hunting, and contented themselves 
 with seducing his companion. The primitive struggle 
 between males for the possession of a woman must have 
 been ferocious, but it certainly had some grandeur 
 about it ; in our times it is paltry and, more often than
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 187 
 
 not, grotesque. From my point of view, in the theft 
 of love, it is the thief and not the one who is robbed 
 who appears ridiculous. This impression, which is ab- 
 solutely sincere, is not on account of the moral sense, 
 but of my sense of humour, which is always tickled by 
 any disproportion. The deceived husband inspires me 
 with pity, the lover either makes me laugh or he dis- 
 gusts me, as he descends to the rank of the parasite. 
 He is the man who hides under the conjugal bed, who 
 comes out of some dark corner, haggard looking, livid 
 with fright, adorned perhaps with spiders' webs, the 
 man who may be turned out of doors in his pyjamas. 
 He certainly makes me laugh. He may be the man 
 too, who drinks out of another man's glass and knows 
 it or the one who is in love with a woman whom an- 
 other man is feeding, dressing and protecting. A man 
 of this kind disgusts me. All this is ridiculous. I have 
 also noticed that at the commencement of a liaison, 
 the man always has a glorious air. After a little time, 
 he does not hold his head quite so high, sometimes he 
 goes about with a bowed head even, and his very mous- 
 tache betrays his state of mind, which is by no means 
 an enviable one. He gradually loses his self-assurance 
 and his easy-going air, for he is no longer a master, 
 but a slave. Dramatic authors and novelists do not 
 see in this way, as they still have the ancestor's sub- 
 jective judgment. When once they begin to look at 
 life under the objective angle, that angle which shows 
 up all things as they are, the lover will appear to them 
 as the truly comic person in the adultery drama. He 
 will be a new target for their flashes of wit, and they
 
 188 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 will then become professors of morality. A finer and 
 more beneficent evolution could not be imagined than 
 that. 
 
 With the old Romans, the wife's misconduct did not 
 stain the husband's honour, and that was only just. 
 One may steal a man's wife, but one cannot steal his 
 probity, his loyalty, all which goes to make what we 
 call honour. The parasite may walk over his back 
 and even over his head, without diminishing his genius 
 or his intellectual power. The greatest of men have 
 been deceived by the most insignificant. Ca?sar and 
 Napoleon were, but that did not lower them. 
 
 The husband only seems ridiculous to me when, in- 
 stead of treating the lover to kicks and blows, like 
 a common thief, he challenges him to a duel and thus 
 gives him the opportunity of raising himself and of 
 showing off his courage. The woman would soon cease 
 to care for a man who had just been ignominiously 
 knocked down, but she adores the one who fights for 
 her sake. Weapons, too, ought to be reserved for 
 nobler quarrels. If only the law compelled the lover 
 to keep and maintain the woman he has stolen, love- 
 crimes would be less frequent, but it is men who make 
 the laws, and the gods who inspire them have constant 
 need of elements for the struggle that we must live out. 
 
 No phenomenon of our existence shows up better 
 than love and marriage the inanity and childishness of 
 the belief in free-will, and the impossibility of it. 
 There is no need to be very learned in philosophy to 
 understand that the force which unites creatures could 
 only be in the hands of their Creator. It is always the
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 189 
 
 Providence of God, Nature with a capital N which, 
 by the right or the left hand, " gives this man to this 
 woman and this woman to this man." It is Providence 
 or Nature who separates them, who elaborates cruel 
 dramas, delightful idylls, worthy or unworthy love af- 
 fairs, happy marriages and woeful marriages. In the 
 handling of this force which makes our fate for us, it 
 reveals its combative spirit, the terrifying subtlety of 
 its imagination, its humour, its severity and its mercy. 
 It piles up obstacles between those to whom it has given 
 irresistible affinities, it unites beings who are totally 
 unlike each other, it yokes them together like dachs- 
 hunds. One wants to go to the right, the other to 
 the left; the one is quick and the other slow; the one 
 scents things and the other is quite indifferent to every- 
 thing. It is only after very many skirmishes, after a 
 whole crowd of mutual concessions, that they manage 
 to walk along side by side. If they cannot manage 
 this, the stronger of the two slips his or her head out 
 of the collar and escapes. This means divorce and un- 
 happiness. And what a variety of themes the Divine 
 Novelist gives us ! We see certain heroes and heroines 
 absolutely intoxicated with love. They consider each 
 other perfect in beauty and goodness. As soon as the 
 intoxication is over, they do not recognise each other; 
 he is no longer He and she is no longer She. Destiny 
 has played its game out, a man of worth has chosen a 
 companion who is unworthy of him, and a superior 
 woman has married an imbecile. What is still more 
 disconcerting is that when Providence has arranged a 
 fine human happiness, it destroys it again. The Will
 
 190 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 which mingles lives in this way knows the physical and 
 psychical chemistry of them, every amalgam can only 
 be for one purpose, our progress and our happiness. 
 
 Many years ago I had an opportunity of seeing how 
 Nature sometimes gives " this man to this woman and 
 this woman to this man." Although I never thought 
 then of studying the proceeding as a philosopher, it 
 made an impression on me that I never forgot. My 
 thoughts have often gone back to it and so revived it 
 in my memory, probably for the sake of this chapter 
 for which it was intended to help, as everything does 
 help. 
 
 The incident took place at the house of a friend, in 
 a town, the name of which I will not mention. After 
 a small dinner-party, we were all in the drawing-room 
 sitting round one of those wood fires, the gaiety of 
 which those who come after us will never know. We 
 were looking forward to the arrival of the after dinner 
 guests, as we knew they would bring us the latest po- 
 litical and social news. Presently they began to arrive 
 and, among others, a young lieutenant who was not 
 one of the usual guests of the house. Our hostess made 
 him very welcome. I heard him giving her news of his 
 family and telling her how delighted he was at having 
 been sent to the garrison he preferred. He was about 
 twenty-six or twenty-eight, tall, slight, with plenty of 
 muscle. He looked like a soldier and a gentleman. 
 He had dark hair and a face with regular, strong fea- 
 tures, of the aquiline type, softened by blue eyes with 
 large pupils full of light and youth. Just as I was 
 saying to myself that he must be, or that he would be,
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 191 
 
 in the future, loved passionately, a woman, who was a 
 perfect vision of beauty, appeared in the doorway, 
 framed, as it were, by the curtains. She stood still for 
 a few seconds, probably to be admired. My retina had 
 time to photograph her, so that she appears quite living 
 to me now. I can see her quite well, in her princess 
 robe of ivory satin. I can see her emeralds, her per- 
 fect shoulders, her beautiful features and her magnifi- 
 cent dark eyes. On her arrival, there was one of those 
 eager movements in the drawing-room which are always 
 accorded to the favourites of the hour. 
 
 " Pauline, all alone ! " exclaimed the mistress of the 
 house, advancing to meet her guest. 
 
 " Yes, all alone," answered Madame V . " I 
 
 ought never to come through your street on my way to 
 the Opera, for, whenever I see the light in your windows, 
 I am bound to come up. I cannot possibly help it. 
 They are giving that blessed Prophet. Charles did not 
 want to miss the overture, as he has a mania for over- 
 tures, so I asked him to drop me here. He will send 
 the carriage back for me." 
 
 No, she ought not to have driven along that street, 
 poor woman, for on that night, this street was to take 
 her a long, long way! After talking to her for a 
 few minutes, my friend, on turning her head, saw the 
 young officer still standing up. She beckoned to him 
 
 and introduced him to Madame V in a few friendly 
 
 words. He bowed and kissed the ungloved hand she 
 held out to him. I have no idea what philter Nature 
 slipped into that kiss, but its effect was striking. I 
 saw the young man turn pale and the woman blush, the
 
 192 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 blue eyes gaze into the dark eyes, the dark eyes en- 
 deavour to shield themselves by lowering their lids and 
 then, as though subjugated, surrender themselves to 
 the blue eyes. It was a veritable short circuit. I had 
 a sudden intuition that the two beings before me had 
 just taken possession of each other. The idea made 
 me smile stupidly. I was incapable then of under- 
 standing the real beauty of the phenomenon. 
 
 During the rest of the evening, the attitude of 
 
 Madame V and of Count B confirmed the 
 
 correctness of my intuition. I saw them stroll into the 
 conservatory, leading out of the drawing-room, and 
 talk to each other instead of joining in the general 
 conversation. It was as though they were already 
 wrapped round by the divine fluid and consequently 
 indifferent to what people thought and said of them. 
 The young wife forgot all about the Opera, the Prophet 
 and her husband. She did not leave until about half- 
 past eleven and the young lieutenant accompanied her 
 to her carriage. This extraordinary conduct surprised 
 even the older society people who were thefe. They 
 felt that there was a scandal in the air, and they were 
 not mistaken. It was not long before there was a 
 
 scandal and a famous one. Madame V belonged 
 
 to a very Puritanical set. She had passed through 
 the fire of various ardent admirations without being 
 scorched. She was the mother of a girl of fifteen, so 
 that she ought to have been safe. When it was evi- 
 dent that she was in love with a mere lieutenant, a man 
 much younger than she was, and in love to such a 
 degree that she braved public opinion and seemed likely
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 193 
 
 to bring dishonour on her own family, the stupefac- 
 tion became general. Conversation, everywhere, turned 
 on her imprudence anH the daring things she did. She 
 was, nevertheless, treated with a certain indulgence, as 
 she was really a good sort and then, too, she appeared 
 so unconscious of her delinquencies and so frankly 
 happy. This love affair was like the last flame of her 
 youth. It gave a brilliancy, a warmth and a magnetism 
 to her beauty which disarmed morality itself. Apropos 
 of this, I was witness to what must certainly be a psy- 
 chological rarity. Her husband's family, instead of 
 joining in the chorus of those who blamed her, instead 
 of disowning her, gathered round her, trying to cover 
 her with all its respectability, saving her thus from 
 going further astray and perhaps even from leaving 
 home. I fancy that she had something to do with the 
 
 departure of Count B . He was promoted and, as 
 
 soon as he was a captain, he was sent to another garri- 
 son. As to the husband, he was not like the husband 
 on the stage, as he was quite aware of his wife's faith- 
 lessness, but religious faith made a super-man of him. 
 It appears he was more afflicted at the thought of his 
 wife losing her soul than at the thought of his dis- 
 honour. And in order to redeem this soul that was so 
 dear to him, he prayed unceasingly and devoted himself 
 to good works. This beautiful thing became known 
 and soon gave rise to all kinds of stupid jeering. One 
 day, I heard it being discussed by a few men of the 
 world. One of them, who was an old sinner himself, 
 suddenly said : " Well, all I can say is that any savage 
 could do what either you or I would surely do in a
 
 194 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 similar case, but to act in the way Charles is acting, 
 one must be devilishly superior." The silence that fol- 
 lowed this remark proved to me that it had struck 
 home. 
 
 Fresh scandals had made people almost forget this 
 
 one, when it was announced that Madame V was 
 
 about to become a mother once more. This was a little 
 too much. Society was seriously indignant and, as a 
 proof of its own virtue, blamed this event unanimously. 
 The unfortunate husband's family continued its heroic 
 conduct and when the child, a fine boy, was born, it was 
 welcomed like the most legitimate of offspring. Out- 
 siders examined the poor baby's face eagerly, in order 
 to discover the secret of its origin. Its blue eyes did 
 not fail to call forth smiles and jokes of the worst taste 
 possible. 
 
 After her confinement, Madame V had phlebitis. 
 
 She had to lie down for some weeks and a clot of blood 
 then proved fatal. Romantic people were quite sure 
 that she had simply died of grief. A halo was soon 
 formed round the beautiful dead woman, and her funeral 
 was that of a victim of love and not of a guilty wife. 
 
 When I saw the little " intruder " again, he was 
 ten years old, and his eyes certainly were blue, implac- 
 ably blue, and they were so like Count B J s eyes that 
 they gave me a shock. I understood immediately the 
 atrocious grief that this living proof of his wife's trea- 
 son must cause M. V . The faithlessness of a wife 
 
 had never seemed to me so criminal before. When once 
 I had become convinced that we do not make our des- 
 tinies, I understood that Madame V - had merely
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 195 
 
 lived out one of the plans of Providence. I often saw 
 her again in my mind, just as she was that evening 
 when she arrived in my friend's drawing-room, beau- 
 tiful, happy and unconscious, oh, so unconscious of 
 what awaited her. I saw her smiling, as she held out 
 her hand for the kiss which contained her warrant of 
 dishonour and death, and I went on my way asking my- 
 self "Why? Why all this?" 
 
 Was it the reply to this question that came to me 
 eighteen years later? Thanks to what we wrongly call 
 chance, I had occasion to go back to that town where 
 the tragic episode had taken place. I had scarcely ar- 
 rived when I heard people talking of Captain V . 
 
 A dangerous expedition to the heart of Asia had made 
 of him the hero of the day. The scandal which had at- 
 tended his birth was forgotten, for so many similar 
 waves had swept over that one. His mother's husband 
 had been dead a long time. His elder sister, who had 
 been like a mother to him, was enjoying his triumph in 
 perfect ignorance. The young explorer was to tell the 
 story of his expedition as a public lecture. My desire 
 to see and to hear the blue-eyed " intruder " can readily 
 be imagined. The lecture was a society event and, in 
 order to get a seat, I had to take steps which went 
 against the grain. This did not deter me and I suc- 
 ceeded in obtaining a seat. My novelist's heart beat 
 as fast as the heart of a woman in love when I saw a 
 distinguished, martial figure appear on the platform, a 
 figure which was the living reproduction of the hand- 
 some lieutenant I had admired one evening, thirty years 
 previously. The aquiline line of the nose, the blue
 
 196 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 eyes with large pupils, the bold turn of the moustache, 
 nothing was wanting and, on this manly face, I fancied 
 I could see the mother's pretty, fleeting smile. The 
 thin face, tanned with the sun, and slightly yellow, the 
 precocious wrinkles and the few hairs that had turned 
 prematurely white told of the suffering that had been 
 endured, of the effort that had been given. The result 
 of the effort was shown to us by photographs and the 
 cinematograph. On the screen we saw landscapes that 
 were both beautiful and desolate-looking, and then, low 
 on the ground, carved stonework, pieces of columns, 
 steps and all the ruins of a forgotten city. I looked 
 from the picture to the lecturer and I understood, or 
 I believed that I understood. In order to create this 
 agent of force, Providence had undoubtedly needed cer- 
 tain physical and intellectual qualities. It had only 
 been able to obtain these by mingling the lives of the 
 
 young .lieutenant and Madame V . It had done 
 
 this and it had a right to do it. It seemed to me that 
 I had the " because " to my " why." I felt a little pride 
 when I said to myself that I alone, in this big assembly, 
 knew Nature's secret. 
 
 Did I alone know it? Just at that moment, my eyes 
 fell on an officer of high rank, a general, who was at 
 the very end of the row in which I was sitting. I had 
 an inward start and was sure that I was not alone in 
 knowing Nature's secret, for Nature's collaborator was 
 there. His hair and moustache had turned grey, his 
 complexion was yellow, his eyelids wrinkled and there 
 were dark circles round his eyes, but, with his aquiline 
 profile, his upright figure and his racial slendcrncss, he
 
 197 
 
 still gave a fine impression of vigour. I did not hear 
 another word of the lecture. This man heard it, 
 though. I would have paid a high price for some appa- 
 ratus capable of registering the radiations of his 
 cerebral cellules. What a magnificent scale of senti- 
 ments and emotions it would have transmitted for me, a 
 scale in which there would have been paternal affection, 
 pride, grief, and regret. I could only catch the reflex 
 action of all those beautiful sentiments. I saw the 
 delicate nostrils dilate, the moustache quiver, the white 
 gloved hands, resting on the hilt of the sword, relax 
 their hold and then clench the hilt more firmly. Was 
 he living over again the love of his early manhood? 
 Could he see the woman again whose life he had taken? 
 I hoped so. How little he guessed that, just a few steps 
 away from him, there was an eye-witness of that first 
 meeting, of that love at first sight, the result of which 
 had been the birth of his son. With the last word of 
 the lecture, the General rose. I thought he was going 
 at once to the platform, like many others, to shake 
 
 hands with the lecturer, Captain V , but he stole 
 
 away by a side door. I knocked against my neigh- 
 bours in my great haste to follow him. I saw him hail 
 a carriage, fling himself down and throw back his head 
 as though to take a long breath. He had no doubt 
 been afraid of betraying himself; he had been afraid, 
 too, lest the resemblance between himself and the lec- 
 turer should strike one of his own contemporaries and 
 recall to his mind the famous adventure. 
 
 Life had just explained Life to me. It would always 
 explain it, I fancy, if only we knew how to think, and
 
 198 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 if we could only watch it long enough. Law-breaking 
 love affairs, and whirlwinds of passion bring to Life a 
 huge contribution of grief and sorrow, and Life has 
 need of all this probably. Did not Jesus know this 
 when he uttered the strange words : " Woe unto the 
 world because of offences! for it must needs be that 
 offences come.** 
 
 Like the heroines of the Greek theatre, we are only 
 great because we live out our destinies, and because 
 these destinies are part of the divine plan. Phedre, 
 obeying her own instincts, would have been a vicious 
 and vulgar woman, but Phedre, as Destiny's holocaust, 
 excites our pity and admiration. She is invested with 
 the tragic beauty which has inspired masterpieces. 
 
 The Providence of God is not blind, but far-seeing; 
 it cannot have any other end in view than our final 
 good, as we are not doomed to death, but doomed to 
 progress. The day will come when man will no longer 
 see Eros as a child ; man will then be aware of his true 
 role, of his divinity. From that day forth he will no 
 longer dare to drag love through the gutter or to de- 
 base it by pornography. He will, on the contrary, bring 
 the purest incense to its altar. However far off that 
 day may be, it will come eventually, for Eros and man 
 must evolve and must grow.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 AFTER Love Religion ! I have now arrived with my 
 poor little barque, " The Why," at the most danger- 
 ous cape of my cruise, that of Religion. It ought to 
 be the Cape of Good Hope, but it is still the Cape of 
 Tempests. I did my utmost to avoid it, partly from 
 intellectual laziness and partly out of self-distrust. 
 " The Other One " brought me pitilessly back to it, 
 and there is no way of resisting " The Other One." 
 
 The psychical force which attracts man towards 
 God, the divine magnetism, is one of the greatest forces 
 of the Universe. It acts on the human soul like other 
 forces act on the Ocean and on the Earth itself; it 
 rouses the soul, it stirs it to its very depths and it has 
 created that spiritual dream, Religion. This dream 
 has gone on developing and has been transformed with 
 the ages. It has been as varied as the different races, 
 as the different individuals. It has been affected by 
 climate, by surroundings, by the conditions of existence. 
 It has been coarse and naif, cruel and gentle, beneficent 
 and harmful. It has been, above all things, an instru- 
 ment of struggle, of progress and of civilisation. The 
 Terrestrian was to be not only a manufacturer of 
 stories, but a manufacturer of gods. In some of his 
 cerebral cellules, strange figures took shape, some of 
 them hideous, grimacing, of every kind of ugliness, and 
 
 then of every kind of beauty. He has reproduced these 
 
 199
 
 200 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 figures in clay, in wood, in brass, in gold and in silver. 
 He has lent them his own feelings, his virtues, his vices ; 
 he has given them his soul. And, thanks to an incom- 
 prehensible auto-suggestion, they became living for him, 
 they became his masters, his gods. And in front of 
 these gods, which had come from his own brain and been 
 made by his own hands, he worshipped and implored. 
 He imagined that they were endowed with supernatural 
 power. In order to be in favour with them, he offered 
 them the best of his possessions, he built altars, chapels 
 and temples of all styles to them. Thanks to this 
 miraculous illusion, when our tiny planet passes in 
 front of the beautiful constellations of its spring, sum- 
 mer, autumn and winter, it presents to them church and 
 cathedral spires, cupolas and domes of pagodas and of 
 mosques. And these spires and cupolas, invisible in 
 space, are nevertheless the antenna?, which, like those 
 of wireless telegraphy, put it in communication with 
 the Beyond, with the very soul of the Universe. 
 
 The people of the nation say : " All religions are 
 good," and they are right. They frequently are right, 
 for the soul of the people was sown with elementary 
 truths. Yes, all religions are good, and all of them 
 have been and are necessary. They ennoble, and they 
 even confer nobility on man, as they give him a special 
 dignity, for they create two wonderful forces within 
 him : faith and hope. All religions, even the very 
 crudest, contain a spark of revelation. Each one is a 
 beam from the same fascicle of light. In this one, just 
 as in the Roman fasces, there is always a hatchet, as 
 we are still barbarous children. Some da}*, perhaps,
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 201 
 
 love will be found there, and, on that day, we shall 
 know more than we now do about Life. 
 
 In the various communities of the Terrestrians, there 
 have been some beings on whom the divine force has 
 acted in a special way. They have had metaphysical 
 dreams, just as the novelist has romantic dreams. 
 From the substance of these dreams, they have drawn 
 doctrines and laws and then, endowed with a mysteri- 
 ous power, they have subordinated millions of creatures. 
 Every religion is the metaphysical dream of a nation. 
 Among the great spiritual dreams of the Earth, was 
 the Egyptian one which created Osiris, the God unique, 
 beautiful, just and perfect, a dream in which we have 
 a glimpse of the ladder of progression and of eternal 
 life. 
 
 Then there was Zoroaster's dream, and a very pro- 
 found one it was. The religious legislator of Persia 
 attributed all the events of this world to the struggle 
 of two primordial principles of Good and Evil, and, at 
 the end of the centuries, he promised the victory of 
 Good. He saw, in purifying fire, the symbol of divinity. 
 His religion is still professed in India by the Parsees, 
 who have preserved its elevated morality. A Hindu 
 lady translated its catechism for me, and it is the purest 
 Christianism. 
 
 There is the pantheistic dream of Brahma and that 
 of Buddha, the reformer, who recognises as God " the 
 great All in All." This is a dream which is clouded 
 over and disfigured by endless superstitions. Its be- 
 wildering profoundness conceals, perhaps, the secret 
 of our future.
 
 203 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 There have been the fantastical, exaggerated dreams 
 of the Phoenicians and of the Assyrians. Then there 
 was the great philosophical dream of the Greeks, which 
 the Romans were to make their own, amplifying it and 
 taking away from it its characteristic mark. This was 
 the fine dream, the immortal light from which still 
 shines for us, whilst its waves were destined to mingle 
 with those of Christianism. 
 
 There was the monotheistic dream of Moses, inspired 
 by Egyptian mythology, which contained the germ of a 
 strange and foreign flower, of the Christianism that we 
 are still living at present. 
 
 There was the dream of Jesus of Nazareth, whose 
 mystic Word, of elevated spirituality and of pure moral- 
 ity, embodied itself on the banks of the Tiber, and gave 
 to the Western world an all powerful religion and 
 Church. 
 
 Then finally, there was the dream of Mahomet, in- 
 spired by Judaism and Christianism. This was both 
 gentle and humane at its origin, but it developed into 
 the dream of an ambitious and cruel conqueror. 
 
 And in all these dreams, which are the chief branches 
 of that unique tree, Religion, there has been the incar- 
 nation of divinity. Man has always felt " God with 
 him." This conception existed in the mind of the an- 
 cestor with the low, receding forehead, and it exists in 
 the mind of the Christian with his high, straight fore- 
 head. This gives matter for meditation to the thinker. 
 
 When I felt the direction in which the current wns 
 urging on my barque, I began to read Mythology, the 
 Bible and the New Testament once more. I read them
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 203 
 
 all straight through, as they ought to be read, in order 
 to be understood. They gave me the impression of a 
 rich embroidery woven in green, purple and silver. 
 Nature will add gold to it later on. What I read made 
 all the phases of the metaphysical dream of humanity 
 pass before my objective mind. It seemed to me that 
 I saw the soul of the Terrestrian crawling for a long 
 time on the ground, then getting up and falling again, 
 rising once more and arriving at Monotheism, which is 
 a synthesis, then practising, with Christianism, soaring 
 and hovering, the only kind of flight which can give a 
 perfect balance. It is far from having attained this 
 balance as yet. These successive efforts touched me 
 very deeply and, when I realised that all mythologies, 
 with their fables, all religions, with their dogmas, and 
 all sects, with % their beliefs, had come from certain 
 cerebral cellules of our motor, worked on by divine 
 force, my amazement was boundless. I had commenced 
 this reading without any enthusiasm, as I still remem- 
 bered that boredom and disgust which lessons that are 
 not understood always give us in our childhood and 
 youth. My mind had, no doubt, been prepared now to 
 receive these lessons, as before long I was captivated 
 by them. I felt that I was in the very midst of the liv- 
 ing work of the Wonderful Romance. I went on from 
 admiration to admiration, from discovery to discovery. 
 It seemed as though I were drinking a generous wine, 
 a famous Burgundy, and all other books seemed to me 
 as tasteless as water. 
 
 As a school-girl I had never had the Catechism prize, 
 but always the one for Mythology. My mother told
 
 204 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 me the legends of Christianisra and my father those 
 of Paganism, and the respective wonders in each created 
 the most disconcerting confusion in my brain. I knew 
 the names of all the personages of Olympus. Those 
 gods who came down to earth, in fiery chariots, and who 
 took, at will, any form they chose, fascinated me and 
 seemed to me like the true gods. More than once, I 
 have put a few coppers into the hand of some old beg- 
 gar woman, thinking that she might, perhaps, be a 
 goddess incognito. 
 
 I had a special affection for Zeus, because he had 
 been persecuted when he was a little child. I could see 
 him being carried off by his mother to an isle of flowers, 
 and being nourished by a white goat with golden horns. 
 I envied him his nurse and still more the fine warriors 
 who guarded his cradle, clanging their shields to pre- 
 vent his cries reaching the ears of old Chronos who 
 wanted to kill him. The child Zeus, threatened by 
 Chronos, and the child Jesus, threatened by Herod, were 
 mixed up in my imagination, and my worship went from 
 one to the other, without the least scruple. 
 
 It is thanks to these indelible childish impressions, 
 which all " concur " in our destiny, that I have always 
 had the Iliad and the Odyssey with me. I have often 
 read them through again at intervals of a few years. 
 As my understanding increased, I discovered fresh beau- 
 ties, which were so many revelations, in them. When- 
 ever I opened them again, they always took possession 
 of me in a curious way, making me lay aside any other 
 book. This time, the last, undoubtedly, that I shall 
 ever read them, I have thoroughly understood that won-
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 205 
 
 derful Bible of the Greeks, and it seems to me to be 
 one of the great things of this world. I went so far 
 as to conceive that I was living again the vision of a 
 brain dead three thousand years ago, the brain which 
 had perhaps possessed the greatest number of ideal- 
 weaving cellules. What a relish this gave to my read- 
 ing! The novelist who feels the need of a lesson on 
 humanity should go back to this immortal book, in 
 which Homer puts on the scene, with the naturalness 
 of a realist, all the gods and all the goddesses of Olym- 
 pus, all the princes and all the peoples of Greece. The 
 poet is so thoroughly conscious of the difficulty of his 
 task and of his human ignorance, that, in a touching 
 prayer, he asks the Muses and the goddesses for in- 
 spiration. 
 
 Whatever learned men may tell us, Homer, who had 
 been adopted by a schoolmaster, must have been able to 
 write. When Nature closed his eyes, in order to ren- 
 der his inner vision more intense, he must have dictated 
 his songs to some scribe, and so transmitted the beau- 
 tiful films which his recollections and his imagination 
 created behind his forehead. He was not only a poet, 
 but a great artist, a painter, a sculptor, and an admira- 
 ble colourist. He clothes the gods and goddesses with 
 light. His favourite heroes are tall, broad-shouldered 
 men with beautiful bodies, and, above all, with long, 
 fair hair and, when he speaks of some of his dead, he 
 tells us of their dazzlingly white breasts. He clothes 
 his warriors in superb tunics and puts helmets, with 
 plumes and tufts of feathers, on their heads. He gives 
 them shields of precious metal, shoulder belts richly
 
 206 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 embroidered and fastened with silver hooks, and man- 
 tles of purple tints. Compare all that with the uni- 
 forms of our modern warriors ; their scanty plumes look 
 as though they had been intended for children. The 
 chiefs of the Trojans and of the Greeks had superb 
 war-chariots and swift horses " with golden manes." 
 Their couches are made with " soft skins, with cover- 
 ings of brilliant colours and with the finest linen." 
 Who would have thought of them having sheets? Two 
 chiefs, after plunging in the sea, get into " baths of 
 polished brass, in order to refresh themselves." We are 
 struck with admiration on reading the description of 
 Juno's chariot and of Vulcan's armour. The sugges- 
 tion of this genius is such that one hears " the bellow- 
 ing doors of Olympus " open, to make way for the 
 celestial messenger, Mercury, " shod with his beautiful 
 winged heels," and for Minerva, bearing " the un- 
 changeable ^Egis from which float a hundred golden 
 fringes woven artistically, each one of which is worth a 
 hecatomb." One has, to an incomparable degree, the im- 
 pression of invisible, but living, forces directing the su- 
 perb hand to hand combats of the Greeks and Trojans. 
 One hears with sorrow, " the Earth resound for a long 
 time under the armour of the fallen foe." And I, the 
 most vegetarian of carnivorous beings, I felt, to my 
 horror, my nostrils dilating with the odour of the 
 Homeric feasts, at which " the succulent flesh, sprinkled 
 with the wine of libations, roasted on a spit of five rows, 
 in front of the fire made of leafless branches." 
 
 There is an astonishing knowledge of humanity and 
 of life running through the Iliad. In no other poem
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 207 
 
 is there as much blood shed and in no other poem are 
 there so many tears wept. It must be that tears were 
 not considered a sign of weakness. In the Odyssey, 
 there is weeping in every page! Homer was as fond 
 of moral beauty as of physical beauty, and he adorns 
 his heroes with it lavishly. He sings of friendship more 
 than he does of love and he is divinely chaste. Helen's 
 adventure is treated in an extraordinarily refined way. 
 He represents her as " covered with veils of dazzling 
 whiteness." He gives her a " robe as odoriferous as 
 nectar." Paris is not her lover, but her husband. She 
 has her nuptial room in the palace of Priam, whom she 
 calls " dear father." The poet makes of Paris, " with 
 the delicate neck," a weak somewhat uncertain being. 
 "He hides, even among the Trojans," in order "to 
 escape Fate." Menelaus, " with the strong loins," is 
 always valorous like a true hero. It is he who carries 
 off the body of Patroclus from the Trojans. Helen 
 has all the remorse of the good woman. We feel this 
 when she says : " Would to Heaven that I had chosen 
 the most cruel death, when I left my nuptial bed, my 
 brothers, my only daughter and all the kind friends of 
 my youth." Later on, when Paris returns to her con- 
 quered by Menelaus, her wounded vanity and her re- 
 grets inspire her with the most scathing reproaches: 
 " You have come out of the combat like this ! " she ex- 
 claims, " why did you not rather perish there, killed by 
 the hand of the valiant warrior with whom my destiny 
 was united ! " She was reconquered by her first hus- 
 band long before the fall of Troy. 
 
 On reading over again this exquisite romance, the
 
 208 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 psychology of which is so true, I remembered going to 
 a performance of La Belle Hclene at one of our Parisian 
 theatres, some years ago. I overheard an Englishman, 
 of about forty years of age, say to his friend : " Only 
 the French would be capable of writing that parody. 
 It is a profanation ! " When he saw Mcnelaus unfold 
 his handkerchief, marked as it was with the armorial 
 bearings of deceived husbands, I saw his neck get very 
 red and I heard him say to his friend : " I cannot stand 
 this nasty thing any longer. I am going He got 
 up at once and boldly left the theatre. I pitied him 
 for not being able to laugh at the delightful nonsense, 
 but I ought to have pitied myself ! 
 
 In the Iliad and the Odyssey, Homer has transmitted 
 the Hellenic dream to us, a dream of the " Great Initi- 
 ated Ones," full of clever symbols, of wonderful reve- 
 lations, the outcome of which has been a whole meta- 
 physical world. After studying it more closely, I have 
 discovered, to my great stupefaction, that it is not, and 
 never was, polytheistical. 
 
 Zeus was seated on one of the highest summits of 
 Olympus. He was a god, but he was not God, for 
 above him was Destiny, against whose trill he could do 
 nothing and to ichose laics he was submitted. Greek 
 thought then had had a glimpse of a supreme God 
 the God that it does not describe. Like us, it had felt 
 the attractive force of this God through numberless 
 hierarchies, and, like us, it was monothcistical. Its con- 
 ception of Zeus = Jupiter, of Apollo, Athene = Mi- 
 nerva, of Venus = Gcnctrix, suffices for revealing to
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 209 
 
 us the long distance which the human mind has already 
 travelled. 
 
 Zeus is the generator of the physical and moral 
 forces, of all that is good and of all that is evil. The 
 progress of humanity is the work of Zeus. He comes 
 down incognito among men, in order to civilise them, to 
 teach them kindness, charity, the laws of hospitality. 
 He allows even beggars to ask all this in his name, and 
 it is never refused to them then. He delegates a share 
 of his authority to kings, thus establishing the divine 
 right. He then institutes faith in the given word, 
 reveals the duties of justice, and causes remorse to be 
 born in the conscience. Is not all this the role of our 
 Providence? 
 
 Apollo, too, is an admirable creation. He is the 
 son of Jupiter and he is the Light, and, because he is 
 the Light, he can give Life and Death. Because he is 
 the Light, he can purify and save souls. Because he 
 is the Light, he creates poets, musicians and artists. 
 Because he is the Light, he is sovereign beauty, vigour 
 and grace! Is there not an astounding scientific reve- 
 lation in this ideal? 
 
 Athene = Minerva, the virgin goddess whom Phidias 
 carved in gold, in ivory and in brass, who inspired the 
 beauty of the Parthenon, is the daughter of Jupiter, 
 one of his emanations. She springs from his brain, 
 like a flash of lightning, provided with the lance for 
 attack and the shield for defence. And this flash is 
 Thought, Intelligence and Wisdom. She is armed for 
 war and for peace. In war, she fights like an ardent
 
 210 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 Amazon ; whilst in peace she is once more the civilising 
 woman, she protects and develops industry, teaches the 
 artisans secrets and guides the shuttle of the weaver. 
 As she is Wisdom, she is always young, strong and 
 serene ; and as she is Wisdom, she carries victory in her 
 hand. She appears to be more interested in human 
 beings than any other goddess was. Homer shows her 
 " pulling the long hair of Achilles," to remind him to 
 be prudent when quarrelling with Agamemnon. In 
 the Odyssey, she performs a very pretty miracle. " She 
 keeps the sun back in the waves of the sea for the sake 
 of Ulysses and Penelope, as she wants to prolong their 
 night of love." Does not this idea reveal an elevated 
 philosophy ? 
 
 And that adorable Venus = Genetrix the mother ! 
 In marble and with beautiful lines, the creator of the 
 Venus of Milo has shown her in all her nobility. She 
 has ample loins and divinely harmonious proportions, 
 and with her the sanctuary of maternity is veiled. Her 
 proud, tender face was reflected, no doubt, in the shield 
 that protected her. As she is the mother, she is also 
 Venus ~ Victrix, victorious Venus. She personifies the 
 triumph of love. Is not that Truth symbolised? 
 
 The great mass of people could not mount all at 
 once straight to the Infinite and, therefore, needed 
 divinities who were not so far away from them. The 
 poet, with his fertile imagination, wove legends around 
 his gods, he invented genealogies for them and gave 
 them families. Their love affairs and their wonderful 
 adventures would appear grotesque, if they were not 
 so many allegories. He gave them a body and made
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 them seem living and familiar. He could not explain 
 the sudden leaps of good and bad fortune in his own 
 destiny and so he attributes these to the caprices of the 
 Higher Powers, and endeavours to render these Higher 
 Powers favourable by means of sacrifices. When man 
 cannot get to the supreme God, he makes the supreme 
 God come down to him. This phenomenon has been 
 reproduced in all religions, in Christianism even. In 
 this childish, and at the same time grandiose, Western 
 dream, men lived the struggle of the gods, and the gods 
 lived the struggle of men; divinity and humanity were 
 mingled together like the water and the wine in the 
 chalice of the Catholic priest. And thanks to this, 
 waves and waves of adoration, of faith and of hope 
 have been created. It has raised up temples with pure 
 lines, the very fragments of which are as precious as 
 so many parchments of nobility. It has infused into 
 a whole nation a vigour and a force which gave it the 
 finest victories. It produced, in this way, that wis- 
 dom which we call philosophy. It created schools for 
 the culture of the soul, such as that of the Stoics, in 
 which men trained themselves to virtue, austerity and 
 contempt of pain and suffering. In the thirteenth cen- 
 tury, it was still so living that Dante, for his songs, 
 invokes " good Apollo, the gods, the goddesses and the 
 Muses," just as Homer had done more than two thou- 
 sand years before. This dream has produced accumu- 
 lators of beauty, harmony, art and thought which still 
 supply us with superior energies. There are doctors 
 who prescribe for certain of their neurasthenic pa- 
 tients a reading of Epictetus and of Marcus Aurelius,
 
 212 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 as a spiritual remedy. The Hellenic dream did still 
 more than this, for it prepared the way for Christian- 
 ism, its own future enemy. This is a striking revela- 
 tion of that work of Providence which creates in me 
 perpetual admiration. 
 
 When one leaves Mythology and turns to the Bible, 
 one has, like Dante at the beginning of his journey, the 
 impression of ** a dark, thickly wooded, rough forest 
 which gives one constant terror," " la sclva oscura sel- 
 vaggia aspra e forte che nel pensier rinuova." I knew 
 the Bible, that is, the Old Testament, like most people 
 of Latin race, chiefly by its more celebrated verses. I 
 read it for the first time when I was in England and 
 I soon fell under its Oriental charm. I felt its psy- 
 chical power to such a degree as to be susceptible to 
 the special fluid which seems to emanate from its pages 
 in touching them. Notwithstanding this, I did not 
 understand its philosophy or its real force. Its con- 
 ception of the Eternal God seemed to me strangely 
 childish and shocked, more than it edified, me. At 
 present, thanks to my objective vision and to my thor- 
 oughly determinist views, the Judaic dream appears to 
 me immense and as rigid as a cast. It was a necessary 
 dream. Its effects and its consequences prove this 
 amply. It produced a grand symphony and for a 
 long time we shall go on living out the vibrations of 
 this. 
 
 Moses had been taught in Egypt and it was from 
 there that he had his belief in one God only; it was 
 from there that he had the symbolical legend of the 
 fall of man and all the persons of the drama of Eden.
 
 He left the doctrine of the Trinity alone and also that 
 of the immortality of the soul, which Christianism was 
 to find again later on. In spite of the burning bush, 
 the thunder and the lightning of Sinai, the religious 
 and social laws of the Decalogue contained in the five 
 books of Moses, in that of Joshua and even in that of 
 Judges, Jehovah does not appear as the God of the 
 Universe. He is the God of Israel, who, so that the 
 Hebrews should not leave Egypt with empty hands, 
 said : " Every woman shall borrow of her neighbour 
 and of her that sojourneth in her house, jewels of silver 
 and jewels of gold, and raiment: and ye shall put them 
 upon your sons, and upon your daughters ; and ye shall 
 spoil the Egyptians." 
 
 He was the God of a shepherd people. He knew the 
 number of their cattle, he thought of their flocks. He 
 was the God of a people of tribes. He fights first with 
 one and then with another, just as the gods of Olympus 
 fought now with the Greeks and now with the Trojans. 
 He presides over the distribution of the plunder of war, 
 always reserving the largest share for the family of 
 Aaron, the brother of Moses. He is the God who 
 caused the sun to " stand still in the midst of heaven 
 upon Gibeon and the moon in the valley of Ajalon," in 
 order to permit Joshua to avenge himself upon his ene- 
 mies. He is the God who, at the taking of Jericho, 
 ordered that all should be burnt except the silver and 
 gold and the vessels of brass and iron, which were to 
 be reserved for the treasury of the Eternal, and this 
 meant for the Levites. He is above all the God of the 
 law of retaliation, for He said : " An eye for an eye,
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 a tooth for a tooth, wound for wound, stripe for 
 stripe." 
 
 As the nation is gradually formed, so the conception 
 of Jehovah becomes more and more elevated. He is 
 the " All-Powerful, the King of Kings." He is no 
 longer the God of one people, but the God of all hu- 
 manity, and humanity, personified by Job, addresses 
 him direct, exposes his ills to him, the injustice of things 
 and asks his sorrowful questions. He asks in anger: 
 " I have sinned ; what shall I do unto thee, O thou pre- 
 server of men? Why dost thou not pardon my trans- 
 gression and take away mine iniquity?" Exasperated 
 by his misery, he curses the day he was born and goes 
 so far as to say: " My soul is iceary of my life." 
 People tell him of the almightiness of God, of the im- 
 possibility of fathoming His plans. They promise him 
 that he will forget his sufferings, but he disdains these 
 futile consolations and declares that God must not be 
 defended by lies. He seems to be awaiting a promise 
 and even asking for it, the promise of the Resurrection, 
 of immortality, but the promise does not come, it was 
 not to come then, and the great man, in his affliction, 
 cries out in his bitterness : " So man lieth down and 
 riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not 
 awake, nor be raised out of their sleep." I know noth- 
 ing more tragic than the silence with which this re- 
 proach is received. The book of Job is of incomparable 
 beauty. It seems as though all the past, present and 
 future waves of human suffering had passed through 
 the soul of the sacred poet. 
 
 In the Psalms, the inspiration is warmer and more
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 215 
 
 consoling. Jehovah appears there as the God of the 
 Universe, of Nature, the God " clothed in light," 
 who created the face of the earth and who renews it. 
 Humanity still complains, but it has approached nearer 
 to its Creator, it knows Him better and, with David, 
 words of love, faith and hope come from its heart, as 
 in that adorable canticle : " The Lord is my Shep- 
 herd, I shall not want." 
 
 With Solomon and in the Books of Ecclesiastes and 
 the Prophets, the Judaic dream reaches its highest 
 point. It takes on a philosophical breadth which could 
 not have been foreseen in the early days. Jehovah now 
 appears as the God of supreme Wisdom. He instructs 
 man and he sends magnificent and symbolical visions to 
 His initiated ones, and puts into their mouths words 
 of great force. His prophets announce to men more 
 kindness, justice, love and charity. The psychical cur- 
 rents bring to them the picture of Him who is to come, 
 the films of the drama of the Passion and, strangely 
 enough, they seem to suffer with Christ, in their soul 
 and in their flesh. Science will explain this fine mys- 
 tery to us some day, and perhaps very soon. In the 
 poem of the Old Testament, we can follow the upward 
 movement of the human mind through all the obscurity 
 of its childhood, and this upward movement is infinitely 
 touching and wonderful. The poets who composed it 
 were thoroughly and divinely inspired. They gave men 
 the immense consolation of being able to complain of 
 God to God Himself and of seeking in His replies 
 the hope which they needed. It is this which makes the 
 Bible the book of militant humanity; and this is the
 
 216 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 secret of its occult and beneficent power. Then, too, 
 as usual, the romantic dream mingles with the spiritual 
 dream. The first part of the Bible is strewn with 
 legends, with stories, animated by heroes and heroines. 
 The Song of Songs flings into it words which are like 
 the sparkle of diamonds and rubies. One must be en- 
 dowed with the imagination peculiar to the theologian 
 if one is to see in this the symbol of Christ's love for the 
 Church. In the treasure-trove of Oriental poetry, 
 there are numbers of Songs of Songs, and they are 
 sung on the thresholds of the tents, on the outskirt of 
 the desert. These waves of metaphysical beauty, which 
 run through the sanguinary and voluptuous history of 
 the Israelites, purify it like an electric current and 
 tower above it so much that they make us forget its 
 crimes. 
 
 With curious pleasure I saw the green thread of 
 Mythology appear again in the purple of the Old 
 Testament. I saw a number of its allegorical figures, 
 such, for instance, as the serpent, from which, according 
 to Hindu symbolism, the terrestrial globe springs. I 
 saw the thunder and lightning of Zeus, the Prince 
 Satan who comes from Persia and whom we see con- 
 versing familiarly with Jehovah. Then there were the 
 Titans, and the passage which brings them on to the 
 scene caused me a veritable thrill. In the sixth chap- 
 ter of Genesis, we read : " And it came to pass when 
 men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and 
 daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God 
 saw the daughters of men that they were fair and they 
 took them wives of all which they chose." Further on :
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 217 
 
 " There were giants in the earth in those days : and also 
 after that, when the sons of God came in unto the 
 daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the 
 same became mighty men which were of old, men of re- 
 nown." Was it not from this that Christ was called 
 Son of God? What an awe-inspiring profoundness that 
 gives to our history ! 
 
 Modernists may dip into the philosophy of the Old 
 Testament and they will find plenty of material for 
 them. They will find thoughts such as this : " Who 
 is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowl- 
 edge ? " The following is a promise which will gladden 
 the hearts of the pacificators, it ought to be inscribed on 
 the pediment of the Palace of The Hague : " And they 
 shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their 
 spears into pruning-hooks : nation shall not lift up 
 sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any 
 more." 
 
 And what magnificent expressions one finds too ! 
 Job says : " All the while the spirit of God is in my 
 nostrils." I found again, in the Old Testament, a 
 quantity of those sayings which came from lips that 
 living coals had touched, sayings which are imprinted 
 on the human soul and that generations have trans- 
 mitted to each other, phrases that I learnt from my 
 mother and that I repeat in my turn: " For He 
 maketh sore and bindeth up." " He that hath pity 
 upon the poor lendeth to the Lord." And on realising 
 that, among so many helpful words, there is no plain 
 and clear promise which gives us the hope of immor- 
 tality, one is disconcerted and one truly feels " in a
 
 218 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 dark, rough, wild forest." Did Moses fear that such a 
 belief might intoxicate the voluptuous imagination of 
 the Hebrews and inspire them to create another Olym- 
 pus? That is quite possible. It is God who chooses 
 the spiritual nourishment of mankind. In Judaism, 
 punishments and rewards are restricted to temporal 
 life. God closed the doors of the terrestrial Paradise 
 to Adam and Eve, but He did not close the doors of the 
 celestial Paradise, and in Genesis there is not, and could 
 not be, any question of the Redemption, as that would 
 have implied a future life. It is by spiritualising the 
 Messiah that the Apostles and the theologians have 
 linked the New Testament to the Old Testament. In 
 the romantic dream, this would be considered a happy 
 thought ; in the metaphysical dream, it is called a reve- 
 lation. Is this trickery? No, it simply means that the 
 human mind was growing, that is all. The belief in the 
 Redemption was to be the corner-stone of the Christian 
 edifice, the principal agent of the evolution which was 
 to blend the Oriental soul with the Occidental soul. 
 
 On reading the last lines of the Biblical poem, one 
 sees " the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in 
 his wings," and one sees, as did the Florentine poet : 
 " the summit of the dark valley already clothed with 
 the rays of the planet which guides us faithfully along 
 every path." These rays were those of the Christian- 
 ism which had sprung up.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 CHRISTIANISM ! Its ethics already existed with the 
 Egyptians. The examination which the Soul that ap- 
 peared before Osiris had to undergo is a proof of this. 
 In order to be absolved and admitted to see the Divine 
 Majesty face to face, it had to prove that it had " re- 
 spected the gods, showed equity to all free men, kind- 
 ness to slaves and charity to the poor and weak. If it 
 could not prove this, it was condemned, submitted to 
 tortures and mercifully allowed to be lost in the Neant." 
 When Persia, thanks to Zoroaster, held the record 
 for wisdom, it celebrated the fete of equality every 
 year. The King mingled with the crowd and talked 
 with the more useful of his subjects. Agriculturists 
 and artisans sat at his table and at that of his satraps. 
 He would say to them : " Thanks to your labour, we 
 have our food and, thanks to us, you have tranquillity 
 and ease. We are necessary to each other ; let us, there- 
 fore, live at peace like brothers." This did not pre- 
 vent the big brothers from oppressing the little broth- 
 ers, but the ideal was there. It has, perhaps, always 
 existed in the soul of this earth. From time to time, it 
 has been incarnated in an individual who has exterior- 
 ised it in more or less eloquent words. It has then been 
 stifled again by hostile forces ; by cupidity, egoism, or 
 ambition, and men continued and still continue to kill 
 each other, but each one of these incarnations has given 
 
 us more warmth and more light. On some far-off day, 
 
 219
 
 220 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 no doubt, the ideal will triumph, and its triumph will 
 mean fraternity, the divine fraternity that we do not 
 yet know. 
 
 This was the dream of Christ, but how much greater 
 still! There is a spirituality mingled with that, a 
 spirituality drawn from profound sources which was to 
 open the human soul a little more. This dream is con- 
 tained, in its entirety, in the four Gospels. When, 
 after the waves of ardent, tumultuous, closely con- 
 densed thoughts of the Old Testament, we come to those 
 of the New Testament, we have the impression of sailing 
 along on a peaceful stream and it seems good to us, it 
 seems infinitely better. 
 
 For the first time, I have read the Christian poem 
 through. Its Oriental charm and its mysticism have 
 penetrated me through and through. For the first 
 time I have seen Christ. 
 
 Christ! We have no physical picture of him, but 
 we have given him beautiful, regular features ; blue eyes, 
 rather long, fair hair, parted over his forehead and 
 thrown back behind his ears. His beard, too, is fair 
 and he is tall. He has a grave, austere expression, 
 softened by the kindness of his lips. We have clothed 
 him in a seamless robe and, thanks to suggestion, it is 
 like this that he is engraved in millions of human brains. 
 He was the God who lived among us. He had to come, 
 in order to put into activity fresh psychical forces, in 
 order to bring us nearer to the Beyond. He put into 
 the soul of the Earth fresh forces, consolations and 
 moral life-buoys. He inspired the folly of the cross, 
 exalted love, heroic sacrifices. In his name, men have
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 221 
 
 loved and hated, saved and killed, pardoned and perse- 
 cuted, healed and tortured. The nineteen-hundred- 
 years-old Christ is always young. His divine mag- 
 netism acts still. He is one of those who can never 
 perish. I knew all that and yet I had never been able 
 to share the love and adoration which he has always 
 aroused. There was even within me a latent hostility 
 against him, which I would not have owned even to my 
 own shadow, and of which I was somewhat ashamed. 
 The reason of this was not entirely my own fault. The 
 figure of Christ is not presented to us fairly. It is cut 
 into pieces for us, and not one of these pieces gives us 
 his real personality. His doctrine is presented to us in 
 verses and in texts. It is rendered obscure, thanks to 
 ignorance, a lack of comprehension and the commen- 
 taries of the Epistles. We neither feel his humanity 
 nor his divinity. He seems to hover between heaven 
 and earth. In spite of this, and perhaps because of it, 
 he touched souls that were religiously sensibilised and 
 he conquered the crowd by the dramatic side of his 
 story, but he left people like me, cold and indifferent. 
 
 In the course of the reading of the Gospels, which I 
 have just completed, he appeared to me freed from all 
 theological embellishments, freed from dogma and 
 fables. I felt him invested with an irresistible author- 
 ity. I discovered in him a breadth of thought that I 
 had never suspected, a generous philosophy, an infinite 
 goodness and indulgence. He has conquered me intel- 
 lectually, and fascinated me by his mysticism as a vision- 
 ary. I now have for him a profound admiration and 
 that tender pity which the victims of sacrifices inspire.
 
 222 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 He was certainly one of the Great Initiators, the great- 
 est of them all, undoubtedly. He was, above all, what 
 he delighted in calling himself : " The Son of Man." 
 It seems to me that I understand how this dream came 
 about which was to renew the Western soul. 
 
 Circumcision and monotheism had put a barrier be- 
 tween the Jews and the other nations which isolated 
 them completely. The Jews were the most exclusive of 
 all nations. They believed themselves to be the favour- 
 ites of God. Their mind was concentrated on the 
 Scriptures which promised them a Liberator and an 
 empire more powerful than that of the Assyrians. The 
 Scriptures were their literature, their poetry, their 
 spiritual food. They loved metaphysical discussions, 
 just as the Greeks loved philosophical discussions. 
 Liberty of opinion, which was allowed to them all, had 
 resulted in the foundation of a quantity of sects. The 
 Temple and the synagogues were not only places for 
 prayer, but schools and fields of ardent polemic. 
 Thanks to the Essenians and the Pharisees, whom 
 Greek thought had reached, the doctrine of the immor- 
 tality of the soul had penetrated among them, and this 
 alimented their controversies. It was in the synagogue, 
 no doubt, and in the Scriptures that the child Jesus 
 had learnt to read. His mind was, probably, saturated 
 with the Scriptures. St. Luke tells us that, when he 
 was twelve years old, his parents took him to Jerusalem 
 for the feast of the Passover and that he remained in 
 the Temple. They found him there three days later, 
 arguing with the doctors. In reply to the reproaches 
 of his parents, he said : " Wist ye not that I must be
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 223 
 
 about my Father's business? " It would seem as though 
 he were already conscious of his mission. The occult 
 work of Providence had commenced in his brain ; and 
 this work was to continue for the next twenty-one 
 years. Job's complaints, which are those of all hu- 
 manity, had found an echo within him. The scape- 
 goat, laden with the sins of Israel and sent to die in the 
 desert, suggested to him, perhaps, the heroic desire to 
 take upon himself the sins of the world and to offer 
 himself as a sacrifice, in order to turn away punishment 
 and suffering from it. Either through revelation or 
 auto-suggestion, he identified himself with that Mes- 
 siah who was to " heal broken hearts." Was he not 
 the last scion of that royal house of David, from which 
 it was written that the Messiah was to come? Whilst 
 working with his hands, whilst walking alone in the 
 country round about Galilee, a new doctrine: the Ser- 
 mon on the Mount, the unique prayer to the Father in 
 heaven, was being elaborated behind his forehead. And 
 then, getting more and more exalted, he began to dream 
 of a spiritual perfection such as had never yet been at- 
 tained. I fancy he must have read, over and over 
 again, the prophecies about the Messiah, and, intoxi- 
 cated with the idea of his own sacrifice, he must have 
 repeated, with all the voluptuousness of the mystic: 
 " The Son of Man must needs suffer much." 
 
 When the necessary elaboration was complete, he en- 
 tered into the active part of his mission. He was 
 baptised in the Jordan by John the Baptist, a new 
 prophet who had declared himself to be the forerunner 
 of " him who was to come." One day, in the syna-
 
 224 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 gogue of Nazareth, having stood up to read, the book 
 of the prophet Isaiah was passed to him. He opened it 
 and found the place where it is written: "The Spirit 
 of the Lord is upon me; because the Lord hath 
 anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor," etc. 
 After closing the book and returning it to the minister, 
 he sat down and declared that he was the one who had 
 been sent. This scene is, I think, one of the most real 
 and impressive of any in the New Testament. It 
 taught me that Jesus knew how to read 1 
 
 During the three years that followed, in the Temple, 
 under Solomon's Porch, in the synagogues, on the banks 
 of the Jordan and of the Sea of Galilee and on the sur- 
 rounding hills, he preached what we call " Christian- 
 ism." He exposed in warm, sweet, loving words, the 
 dream of his childhood and youth, that dream which 
 was to affect millions of creatures. He represented 
 God, no longer as an implacable Judge, no longer as 
 the God of a chosen people, but as the God of all hu- 
 manity, as a good and merciful Father, with whom he 
 was in constant communion. In the name of God he 
 promised immortality, a kingdom in heaven, where the 
 hungry of this world should be satisfied, where the 
 afflicted should be consoled and the humble exalted. 
 And what was still more unheard of, he proclaimed as 
 blessed those who suffered and those to whom little had 
 been given, as they were to have a double share of 
 glory. He endeavoured to make this fatherly God 
 known, whom he wanted to give to the Terrestrians. 
 By means of ingenious and very Oriental similes, he 
 brought this kingdom nearer and made it, as it were,
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 225 
 
 tangible. He spoke of fraternity as no one had hith- 
 erto spoken. He repeated constantly the words: 
 " Love one another." He knew well that earthly hap- 
 piness lay in that. He demanded of mankind an effort 
 that had not hitherto been given, and that has not even 
 yet been given, that of returning good for evil ; instead 
 of dealing blow for blow he wanted men to love their 
 enemies. He preached renunciation of the good things 
 of the world; he declared that, in order to serve God, 
 a man must be ready to leave father, mother, family 
 and country. And, plunging into the very depths of 
 the human soul, he affirmed that the mere desire to 
 commit adultery, theft or murder, constituted the 
 crime. He created, in this way, the sin of thought. 
 This does not seem much, but it is immense. 
 
 And Jesus was seen practising these extraordinary 
 things. He believed that he had the power of remitting 
 sin and he used this power freely, with a joy that we 
 can \vell imagine. He spoke more of reward than of 
 punishment. He only threatened with eternal fire those 
 who refused to feed and clothe the poor. He went him- 
 self to the outcasts, to those who did not dare come to 
 him, his gentlest words were for the sinners and more 
 especially for sinful women. He pitied the crowd 
 which followed him, he felt for every one's hunger and 
 fatigue and he made all the people sit down and then 
 fed them. He certainly was " the Son of Man." 
 Yes, he had pity on them, but his pity was not extended 
 to animals. He had the Oriental's indifference with re- 
 gard to animals, and I have always been sorry for this 
 and also surprised. It is true that his laws of kind-
 
 226 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 ness to men have been so little understood and so little 
 respected, that laws of kindness to inferior creatures 
 would not have been respected at all. The hour of 
 justice had not yet come for animals, this is the only 
 possible explanation, 
 
 I have heard mothers say timidly that Jesus was 
 hard towards his own family. He lived on another 
 plane, and mystics scarcely feel the ties of flesh and 
 blood. He loved his disciples more than his family. 
 They were, as he called them, " his dear children," 
 those who were to continue his teaching. 
 
 Unlike the Jews, who made no proselytes, fearing, 
 no doubt, to be too numerous when it came to sharing 
 the empire that had been promised them, Jesus said to 
 his apostles : " Teach all nations." He did not ex- 
 clude the heathen, or the Gentiles, from the kingdom of 
 heaven. He wanted his church to be universal, like the 
 prayer he gave us. What profound philosophy there 
 is in all this I 
 
 It is difficult for us, with our ears so accustomed to 
 this doctrine that we no longer listen to it, to conceive 
 the effect it produced in the synagogues. It must have 
 rent the veil of the Temple. For those who offered 
 sacrifices, for the doctors of the Old Law, it constituted 
 blasphemy and heresy. It seems to me that I see Jesus 
 arguing with them, punctuating his arguments with 
 his forefinger and middle finger, with the grave, impres- 
 sive gesture of the Oriental. I can see his hearers 
 drawing the skirts of their garments around them in 
 anger, as they questioned and endeavoured to confound 
 him. I can see a whole crowd of dark, threatening eyes
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 227 
 
 and then the blue eyes of the Messiah. I can see beards 
 quivering with indignation. 
 
 Jesus knew quite well the danger to which he was 
 exposing himself, but he continued his preaching all 
 the same. He had governed the wind on the Sea of 
 Gennesareth, but he could not govern the hatred which 
 was rumbling all around him, as he was to die from that 
 hatred. As the hour of the supreme sacrifice ap- 
 proached, one feels his sadness increasing. He speaks 
 frequently of his end which is near, and he gives more 
 and more instructions to his apostles. He retires more 
 frequently to the depths of the woods to pray and to 
 commune with his heavenly Father. We can imagine 
 how he must have regretted leaving his little flock and 
 not seeing his Church established. At any rate, he 
 knew what the prophets had not known that we must 
 die, in order to be born again. He was dying for the 
 sake of his ideal, which was the welfare of humanity. 
 If he could have seen what was to be the outcome of his 
 dream, he would have been crucified twice over. Let us 
 hope that this was hidden from him. In the last act 
 of the drama, all that is human in him protests, all that 
 is divine is resigned. He feels the bitterness of treach- 
 ery, the grief of seeing himself disowned, the horrors 
 of death. He was thoroughly " the Son of Man," and 
 God be praised for that. 
 
 In the eyes of the doctors of the Old Law, Jesus was 
 a modernist ; that is, he represented the future. The 
 future always has the forces of the past against it. 
 Those who bear it along may die, but it triumphs al- 
 ways until, in its turn, it has become the past, the
 
 228 
 
 vanquished immortal. One cannot help a humoristic 
 smile on thinking that if, four centuries later, Christ 
 had reappeared in Rome and had preached his doc- 
 trine there, he would have been treated still more cruelly 
 by his own Church than he was by the Synagogue of 
 Jerusalem. Such is the movement of Life! 
 
 I must own that I read this poem of the Gospel as 
 literature, as a romance writer would read it. I revelled 
 in it, as I still can revel in anything that is very beau- 
 tiful. I enjoyed it more, and I understood it better, 
 perhaps, than those who read it as a matter of duty, 
 or from religious habit. The apparitions of Christ 
 after death give the impression of spiritualistic phe- 
 nomena. In the whole of the last part, there is a sort 
 of luminous atmosphere. 
 
 When one knows the Orient, the Gospel seems to 
 have been lived only yesterday. The contradictions 
 that one finds in it are somewhat disenchanting, but 
 they prove that the apostles had not concerted together 
 to write their respective accounts. St. Matthew, St. 
 Mark and St. Luke, for instance, say that the women 
 who followed Jesus of Galilee, Mary Magdalene and 
 Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of 
 Zebedee's children " stood afar off." They do not 
 mention the presence of the Virgin at all. St. John, 
 alone, brings her to the foot of the cross and makes 
 Jesus say, pointing to the disciple whom he loved: 
 " Woman, behold thy son." This, I feel sure, was 
 added by the theologians and it rings false. In the 
 Orient, women would not have been present at the
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 229 
 
 crucifixion, they would have looked on " afar off." I 
 can picture to myself their group. 
 
 I have my doubts, too, as to whether Jesus ever said, 
 in one of his parables, that the grain of mustard seed 
 waxed a great tree so that the birds of the air could 
 make their nest in it. The birds of the air making 
 their nest in the branches of a vegetable! Oh, St. 
 Matthew! Oh, St. Luke! 
 
 In the gentleness of the New Testament, one does 
 not feel any dogma. There is only an affectionate 
 exhortation to well doing, which is the secret of happi- 
 ness. From time to time, though, a hard, discordant 
 note bursts forth, like those famous words : " Thou 
 art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; 
 and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And 
 I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven," 
 etc. This is again a theologian's invention. We can- 
 not imagine Christ saying it. These words were 
 charged, in truth, for they have caused the death of 
 millions of creatures. They were one of the greatest 
 motive powers of the Christian evolution, one of the 
 most painful that has been lived. We might very well 
 repeat here with Pilate : " What I have written, I 
 have written," and, in my opinion, this had to be 
 written. 
 
 When I came to the end of the last of the Gospels, 
 of the Gospel which begins like one of Plato's mono- 
 logues and which ends with the Hebrew word, " Amen," 
 with a long flight of my thought I went over all that 
 had been the outcome of this little volume, which I was
 
 230 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 holding half open under my left thumb, and I realised 
 what a formidable accumulator of spiritual forces it 
 was. I felt that kind of awe, as I gazed at it, which 
 the great mysteries of Nature make us feel. 
 
 The brilliant, white form which came from the tomb 
 of Jesus was his doctrine, the true Christianism. It 
 was then, alas, only an apparition. To the " Quo 
 vadis, Domine?" which St. Peter asked the Master at 
 Rome, on the Appian Way, he might have replied: 
 " I go to Rome to be crucified by my apostles and their 
 successors." Legend knows it but History tells it 
 and proves it. 
 
 The prophet of Jordan was to be born again on the 
 banks of the Tiber. It was there, in the capital of the 
 civilised world, that Paganism, Judaism and Chris- 
 tianism were to be brought into harmony. It was there 
 that the one God was to meet the gods of Egypt, of 
 India, of Persia, of Greece and even of Rome, in order 
 to absorb them and to transform them. It was in 
 Rome only that, out of the dream of Jesus, the Catho- 
 lic Church could have been established. 
 
 I am told that actors, artists and a cinematographic 
 apparatus have been sent to Palestine with the idea of 
 reconstituting and reproducing the immortal drama. 
 We shall then be able to live over again the waves of 
 emotion lived nearly two thousand years ago. It ap- 
 pears that this is necessary for us. These modern 
 miracles fill me with admiration and cause me childish 
 regret.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE Roman Catholic Church? I feel my little barque, 
 " The Why," terribly tossed about just here by waves 
 from the depths. I am now facing the highest and 
 most dangerous point of my cruise. Shall I succeed 
 in doubling this point without being shipwrecked in 
 injustice? That would certainly be the most humiliat- 
 ing of all shipwrecks. 
 
 The Catholic Church ! How many are there, among 
 its two hundred and fifty million adepts, who realise 
 what it has been and what it really is? Its friends 
 only know of its combats and its triumphs, its enemies 
 know only its errors and crimes. We can merely put 
 an expurgated history of it into the hands of the young. 
 This leaves children with a recollection of something 
 so tiresome that they never feel inclined to read it later 
 in extenso, and that fact is a safeguard. 
 
 One day, when visiting a friend who lived in a pro- 
 vincial town, the conversation turned on politics. My 
 friend's husband, who was very reactionary, reproached 
 a member of Parliament with the misdeeds of the Re- 
 public. 
 
 " What can we do? " replied the other; " the Repub- 
 lic must do as the Church has done, make amends and 
 improve." 
 
 " As far as I know," put in our hostess drily, " the 
 Church has never needed to make amends nor to im- 
 
 prove." 
 
 231
 
 232 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 " Yes, but then you do not know, that is just the 
 
 mischief," said M. X , smiling. " Its policy has 
 
 been more dishonest than ours and some of its Popes 
 have been acknowledged criminals." 
 
 My poor friend's face turned purple with anger. 
 
 " That is mere slander ! " she exclaimed. " I shall 
 never believe it, never ! " she added, poking her crochet- 
 needle energetically into her ball of wool. Faith born 
 of ignorance is the most invincible of any. 
 
 In one of the strongest of our modern comedies : Busi- 
 ness is Business, by Octave Mirbeau, a well-to-do bour- 
 geois, who is a regular miscreant, says to a poor aristo- 
 crat, who is a believer: " You do not even know what 
 that Church of yours is ! " He knew, though, thanks 
 to his intuition, this handler of money and of men and, 
 in his exclamation, we can hear both admiration and 
 envy. 
 
 The Roman Catholic Church! The Great Prosti- 
 tute! The Red Woman! These are the epithets that 
 its fanatical enemies have showered upon it, but all 
 that is mere literature. These are ridiculous insults 
 which simply bear witness to an absolute lack of phi- 
 losophy and to coarse ignorance. It really is, I fancy, 
 just simply the Great Misunderstood One. Thanks to 
 the subjective vision, I held out against it for a long 
 time. A sentiment that I cannot understand urged me 
 on always to search for its misdeeds rather than for 
 its good deeds, and when I discovered them, I felt the 
 most perverse pleasure. Its policy, its ethics, its 
 tyranny, made all that was best within me rebel, and 
 this best within me made me unjust. At present, when
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 233 
 
 I can consider it in an objective and not an isolated 
 way, its work appears to me colossal and, at the same 
 time, so inevitable, that men all disappear from it and 
 I only see God there as the supreme motive power. The 
 struggles, the victories, the defeats of the Church have 
 been those of humanity. It has been the plaything of 
 Life. It has had to suffer all the ironies of Life, its 
 reverses have been particularly hard and, at present, 
 I feel the tenderest pity for it. It is the continuation 
 of Roman History! How many French men and women 
 are there who know this? It was taken along to the 
 throne of the Csesars, because, from there alone, it 
 could " renew the face " of the Western world. The 
 establishment of Christianism in pagan Rome has been 
 considered as a miracle. Miracles are always prepared 
 a long time ahead by Providence. When an unexpected, 
 extraordinary event takes place, or some cure that was 
 considered hopeless, we may be sure that invisible forces 
 have been working for all this, unknown to us. Pagan- 
 ism, which was about to die, was waiting for Christian- 
 ism, as it needed this for its evolution. The Judaic 
 Church, which was established in Jerusalem directly 
 after the death of Christ, also needed Paganism, in 
 order to be transformed and to accomplish the fabulous 
 task which had been assigned to it. As a Spanish 
 proverb says : " God writes straight on crooked lines." 
 Rome was the holy city of the Western world. The 
 boundary of the ancient city had been traced according 
 to Latin or Etruscan rites. It had taken the gods of 
 Greece and its theologians had made a multitude of 
 other gods, too, for it. It had divined all the forces
 
 234 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 of Life, those which take man along from his cradle 
 to his tomb, those which give birth to sorrow, joy and 
 love, those which produce the fruits and flowers of the 
 soil and even clothing. And these were not mere 
 metaphysical abstractions and symbols, but living pow- 
 ers which had a personality and names, powers which 
 it adored and to which it prayed unceasingly. The 
 number of these was so great that only the priests could 
 catalogue them. With its legislative mind, Rome had, 
 as it were, made Olympus form a regiment and created 
 a religious law with dogmas and worship. This law 
 was an integral part of the State, it could not be 
 changed without a special decree from the Senate. It 
 regulated the intercourse of man with the divinities; 
 it regulated all rites and forms of prayer with a minute- 
 ness that seems ridiculous. Titus Livius, alluding to 
 this, says : " These are small things, but it was by 
 not disdaining these small things, that our fathers made 
 Rome so great." And, as a matter of fact, these small 
 tilings maintained unity there, that immense force 
 which the Catholic Church was to obtain, later on, so 
 dearly. Religion had its pontiffs, priests, sacred juris- 
 consults, but they could never become independent, as 
 they were deprived of initiative and of executive power. 
 This seems to have been arranged in order to lessen 
 the resistance opposed to the establishment of Chris- 
 tianism. 
 
 No nation has had so much religion and so little 
 religious sentiment as the Romans. All the various acts 
 of their life, birth, the wearing of the toga, marriage, 
 anniversaries, were religious acts and solemnised as
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 235 
 
 such. They had endless processions, fetes for all cir- 
 cumstances, for the seed-time and harvest and for the 
 dead. They offered up prayers for the welfare of a 
 beloved child, for the victorious return of a friend, for 
 the healing of their sick. The walls of their temples 
 were covered with their ex-votos, as those of Christian 
 Churches were to be, later on. The poor Terrestrian 
 has always had the same faith, because he has always 
 had the same sorrows. 
 
 The Romans consulted the gods about everything. 
 They believed, as the whole of the Ancient World did, 
 that they could correspond with their gods by means 
 of magic, an infinite number of signs, the arrangement 
 of the intestines of victims, sacrifices which the priests 
 interpreted in return for retributions. Official religion 
 had given to the Romans an official soul, and to this 
 soul form was everything. In the end they believed 
 that the divinities, like themselves, were most particu- 
 lar with regard to the exactitude of a rite or of a ges- 
 ture. They treated their gods on an equal footing. 
 They endeavoured to buy their favours and, when they 
 gave a good price, they expected a great deal in re- 
 turn. According to them : " Piety gave the right to 
 fortune." 
 
 This State religion underwent all the political vicissi- 
 tudes. It was weakened by the Republic, but Augustus 
 re-established it. If we are to believe the inscriptions, 
 every emperor re-established something. The century 
 of Augustus was called " the devout century." All 
 literature was religious. Horace, Tibullus and Ovid 
 sang of the gods. There was a splendid flame of Pagan
 
 236 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 faith. It was the last flash from the lamp that was to 
 die away. From the very first days of the world, hu- 
 manity had knocked at the doors of the Beyond, but 
 under Augustus there was a rush for these doors. Gods 
 and demons spoke to men in their dreams, or, at least, 
 they believed this, and what we believe becomes real. 
 People believed in hell, in the resurrection of the dead, 
 and the imagination conceived all kinds of wonders. 
 The supernatural appeared natural. This phenomenon 
 has happened at the eve of all evolutions and the evo- 
 lution was then quite near. The human soul lacked 
 spirituality. It was a splendid temple, but it was bare 
 and empty and Providence was about to fill it. For 
 this, the myrrh of the Orient was to be mixed with the 
 wine of the Occident, and this mixture took place in a 
 wonderful way. 
 
 In order to comprehend the work of the Roman Cath- 
 olic Church, and indeed all divine and human work, and 
 to consider it with any justice, we must never lose sight 
 of that absolute truth that struggle is the generating 
 element of Life, and that without struggle Life could 
 neither exist nor be renewed. The cross -with unequal 
 arms, icith lines that go in opposite ways, is the reveal- 
 ing symbol of this. 
 
 Like all great things, the Roman Catholic Church 
 began in a very humble way, and those who were there 
 at this beginning would have been incapable of imag- 
 ining the parabola that it was called upon to describe. 
 
 The dream of Jesus had created, in Jerusalem, a sort 
 of Judaic Church, the fifteen first Bishops of which 
 were circumcised and baptised. This proves how hesi-
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 237 
 
 tating their belief was. In obedience to the Master 
 who had said : " Go and teach all nations," a few 
 of the apostles had set out to take the Gospel of charity 
 to the great cities of the Orient. St. Peter and St. 
 John went to Rome. They arrived there, as Jesus had 
 ordered : " with neither gold nor silver." The humble 
 pilgrims received the hospitality of St. Pudens who had 
 two daughters, Praxede and Pudentienne. These were, 
 I believe, their first converts. With their souls still 
 aglow from their communion with Christ, they told the 
 humble people whom they gathered round them, the 
 story of the drama of Eden, of the Incarnation of the 
 God-Saviour, of his life and of his death. They re- 
 vealed to them the existence of a heavenly kingdom, 
 where all was j oy, delight and love ; of a hell, where 
 all was suffering, pain and hatred. Of these two king- 
 doms they said that they held the keys, and they prom- 
 ised the entrance to those who would consent to the 
 ceremony of baptism, which was to wash away all sins. 
 They had enough to offer for making proselytes and 
 they made them, beginning with those whom Christ him- 
 self would have called: the disinherited, the slaves, the 
 black sheep. A sect was thus formed, the members of 
 which led each other on to adopt the difficult practices 
 of the Gospel. They had all things in common, their 
 poverty and their worldly goods, they sat at the same 
 table and, as a foretaste of Paradise, the hungry were 
 fed, the naked clothed and the afflicted consoled. The 
 great Roman lady called the poor woman " Sister " ; 
 the patrician treated the humble workman as a brother, 
 and the kind of voluptuous pleasure which these fresh
 
 238 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 sentiments gave them can easily be imagined. These 
 early Christians surrounded themselves with mystery 
 and erected their altars in subterranean passages out- 
 side the gates of Rome. They broke bread and drank 
 wine according to a very old rite, a Persian rite, I be- 
 lieve, which Jesus had reinstituted. To this rite, they 
 added the belief in transubstantiation, a belief which 
 was to produce wonderful psychical effects. The sect, 
 thanks to its very perfection, would have died out, if 
 persecutions had not brought it to the front and made 
 it play its part, which it certainly did admirably. 
 After this, theologians took it in hand and gave it the 
 movement common to all religions : the spiral moi'ement, 
 by means of which religions gradually get farther and 
 farther away from their starting-point. I do not like 
 theologians. They are religious politicians, " those 
 who make God's plans less clear to us, thanks to their 
 discourses without understanding." They defended the 
 sect with lies more often than with truths. They have 
 increased, rather than lessened, the sorrows of the world. 
 They have been agents of our struggle : they have served 
 and they are still serving. We must resign ourselves 
 in face of this undeniable fact, and endeavour not to 
 bear them too much ill-will. They were necessary, in 
 order to put that fresh force, spirituality, into action. 
 Like all forces, newly set free, it went to extremes. The 
 body which had, very rightly, been loved and cared for, 
 the body which is the cradle of the soul, was now only 
 looked upon as an instrument of perdition. It was 
 starved, it was not allowed the most legitimate satis- 
 factions not even cleanliness ! The disciples of Jesus
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 239 
 
 did not wash their hands before sitting down to table, 
 and the Scribes and Pharisees reproached them for this 
 omission. This little characteristic feature, which is 
 recorded in the Gospel, had its influence on the entire 
 discipline of the primitive Church. This world of ours 
 was no longer anything to the early Christians. They 
 lived in the Beyond, in a Beyond that they had created. 
 The effort was so great that it produced a kind of 
 spiritual hysteria. They knew all the voluptuousness 
 of sorrow and they even went in search of it. In the 
 amphitheatre, they died as though death were a heav- 
 enly joy. They had visions, fits of ecstasy, they 
 prophesied, they believed that they saw demons and 
 they drove these demons away. Their imagination, 
 thanks to sermons, was heated to the degree of white 
 heat and was exalted by pagan supernaturalism. It 
 began to make legends and saints, just as the Romans 
 had made divinities, and, wonderfully enough, out of 
 the depths of the Christian dream, as out of the Buddhist 
 and Pagan dreams, came the Virgin Mary. In the 
 Gospel, if I am not mistaken, she only appears three 
 times. We have only her dialogue with the angel, her 
 song, the Magnificat, which is, undoubtedly, the work of 
 some theologian-poet, and then the words uttered by 
 her at the marriage of Cana, by means of which she 
 persuaded Jesus to advance the hour of his mission 
 by performing a miracle. With this material, Chris- 
 tian humanity made a metaphysical personage of ex- 
 treme grandeur. In its childish logic, it attributed to 
 her an immense power over the God for whose Incar- 
 nation she had served, and it built its hopes on her.
 
 240 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 It erected temples for her, it put her on its altars and 
 proclaimed her immaculate and sorrowful. In the 
 cellules of thousands of artists, this ideal picture took 
 form and produced immortal master-pieces. The Vir- 
 gin Mother! There is certainly a symbol here, and it 
 is in Nature. What does this symbol hide? This 
 truth, perhaps, that man proceeds from God and not 
 from man. I cannot see anything else in it, but it 
 is true that I do not see very deep down. Let phi- 
 losophers search, for this problem is well worth while. 
 The Church of the first centuries had its romantic 
 followers. They began to live, not according to the 
 precepts of the Gospel, but according to their own 
 dream, a morbid dream which depressed them. Thus, 
 like Buddhism, Christianism had its stoics ; its fakirs 
 who discovered how to make themselves refractory to 
 suffering; its cynics who disdained, not only cleanli- 
 ness, but decency, who went as far as to browse the 
 grass of the fields, in order to perform an act of hu- 
 mility. There were actually browsing monks. This 
 Asiatic folly spread and made monks of men. When 
 it reached the feminine brain, it produced monkesscs. 
 It peopled the most awful solitudes with anchorites and 
 cenobites. It flung into the sands of Libya, and among 
 the rocks of Thebaid, colonies who built veritable hives 
 there, hives which were the rough beginnings of future 
 monasteries. It was there that living in community 
 was inaugurated, and it was there, under the pure and 
 ardent sky of Egypt, that men prayed day and night. 
 The rustic trumpet or cornet, summoning to spiritual 
 exercises, must, more than once, have silenced the wild
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 beasts and greatly impressed the spirit of the desert. 
 These repulsive, wild monks, when taken to Rome by 
 their primate, had the most unexpected success. By 
 their violent and picturesque preaching, they exercised 
 a sort of magnetism on the crowd and this resulted 
 in numerous conversions. Patricians and magistrates 
 transformed their palaces into monasteries. The dream 
 became more and more extravagant and went as far as 
 claiming divinity. St. Paula, who was converted by 
 St. Jerome, was called " the mother-in-law of God," 
 because she had given to Him one of her daughters as 
 a mystic spouse ! 
 
 This development of the inner life, this florescence 
 of fresh mysticism, constituted one of those phenomena, 
 ordained, perhaps, in order to reveal to us the depth 
 of our being. The human soul made a desperate effort 
 to free itself from its body. It did not succeed, but it 
 was a very wild and very fine effort. We cannot regret 
 that the effort was made. When a famous chef lights 
 his fires for the first time anywhere, he first prepares 
 what is called his stock, which means his gravies, jellies, 
 condensed things of all kinds with which he can, after- 
 wards, make very good things. Well then, without any 
 irreverence, it seems to me that Providence acted in the 
 same way. In order to sustain the Church, Providence 
 prepared a foundation of spiritual forces which, during 
 nineteen hundred years, have enabled it to brave the 
 terrible eddies behind its rudder, and so arrive safe and 
 sound to cast anchor at its haven. 
 
 The Christian sect replaced bloody sacrifices by 
 sacrifices of money. This was, perhaps, quite as bar-
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 barous, but less repugnant in appearance. Its priests 
 soon learnt how to make use of St. Peter's keys. In 
 order to obtain the remission of their sins, many of 
 their new converts despoiled themselves of their wealth. 
 The Church soon possessed farms, houses and even 
 shops, later on it was to have a treasury and States of 
 its own. " The Word was made flesh," and it soon had 
 all the longings and ambitions of the flesh. There is 
 nothing astonishing in that. 
 
 All the great religions, and even the small ones, have 
 handled sin-money. They have lived on it and they still 
 live on it. They are also charged with the task of 
 transmuting it into good. If evil were not to serve 
 for good, it would not exist. The most beautiful monu- 
 ments erected to the gods and to God are expiatory 
 monuments. The Catholic Church has transmuted its 
 sin-money in a more magnificent way than any other 
 Church has done. It has transmuted it into works of 
 art, which are the joy and the education of our eyes; 
 into works of relief which have helped humanity to live 
 and to die. St. Paul, the philosopher-apostle, appears 
 to have grasped the idea of this admirable and humor- 
 istic economy of Nature when he says : " The law 
 entered that the offence might abound. But where sin 
 abounded, grace did much more abound." This takes 
 away from sin its character of offence to God and gives 
 the impression of balance being re-established and 
 this is, undoubtedly, the truth of things. 
 
 The Roman Catholic Church has been a democratic 
 dream, a theocratic dream and a monarchical dream. 
 Its dreams have all been realised, but only for a short
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 243 
 
 time. The ending of each dream has left the Church 
 humiliated and weakened. Its fine, democratic frater- 
 nity was conquered by human egoism; its ambition was 
 the spiritual domination over all souls, and so it lost 
 forever the Greek Church, England and Germany, 
 the nations that it had made. The temporal king- 
 dom it had built up was taken away from it, even the 
 territory that kings, such as Pepin, had given, " for 
 the remission of their sins and the salvation of their 
 soul." It was saved three times by its enemies, by 
 Paganism, by the Renaissance and by the Reformation. 
 Was I not right in saying that it has played Life's 
 game, but not its own? 
 
 Religions do not come from the human brain ready 
 made. They are formed slowly under divine inspira- 
 tion. Christian theologians drew from the doctrine of 
 Christ certain fixed dogmas. Those of the Trinity and 
 of the Incarnation were particularly difficult to elab- 
 orate. Finally they established the dogma that the 
 Son proceeded from the Father, and that the Holy 
 Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son. After 
 stormy discussions, they decided that Mary could be 
 a virgin and a mother, " just as light may pass through 
 crystal without breaking it." The fact that Terres- 
 trians, creatures who, from the height of a few yards, 
 look as though they are part of the ground of their 
 planet, should dare to make God come down to them, 
 in order to conciliate His immensity with their small- 
 ness, seemed grotesque to me formerly and roused my 
 indignation, just as a blasphemy would have done. At 
 present, I see in this a proof of our possibilities ; I see
 
 344 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 in it a great hope. And, always with a view to the 
 eternal struggle, as soon as a dogma was proclaimed, 
 an adverse dogma appeared, creating a rival community, 
 the members of which were heretics and, as such, were 
 condemned, persecuted and tortured by the mother- 
 community. Taking the times into consideration, this 
 cruelty was necessary by way of maintaining unity. 
 A lack of unity would have produced still more evil. 
 That is what we must say to ourselves. Before be- 
 coming a heretic himself, Nestorius wrote to the Em- 
 peror Theodosius : " Caesar, give me the earth purged 
 of heretics and I will give you the kingdom of heaven." 
 This man, with his heart full of hatred, imagined that 
 he could dispose of the kingdom of Heaven ! Each one 
 of our dogmas has produced waves and waves of suffer- 
 ing, just as it has produced waves and waves of conso- 
 lation! All this is the play of Life! 
 
 The theologians then proceeded to manufacture 
 canonical laws, bulls of indulgence, bulls of excommuni- 
 cation, a whole arsenal of spiritual weapons which were 
 to serve in ruling the nations and in holding kings in 
 check. The kingdom of heaven, of which Jesus had 
 dreamed amidst the dreary scenery of Palestine, was 
 transformed on the Pagan banks of the Tiber. It now 
 became an Eden of gold and precious stones, where 
 man's table was always set and supplied with delicious 
 things. At the same time, by means of the eloquent 
 voices of its preaching Fathers, the Church flung into 
 the human mind fearful visions and all the terror of a 
 fire which burned always and never consumed. It 
 kept its hold on man, thanks to his innate need of hap-
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 245 
 
 piness and his dread, which is also innate, of suffering. 
 Man could not escape, for humanity always has the 
 beliefs that are necessary for it. 
 
 It is high time that we had courage enough to look 
 boldly at the play of Life, this play of which we are 
 the victims, the martyrs and sometimes the heroes. We 
 must have philosophy enough not to be scandalised by 
 it and to understand that, whatever it may be, it is 
 directed by God. All the good and evil that the Church 
 has accomplished has been by means of St. Peter's keys, 
 which give access to Paradise and to hell. They have 
 been the keystone of the Church. It is very natural, 
 although it is a pretty irony, that these keys should 
 figure on its escutcheon. These symbolical, imaginary 
 and invisible things, the power of which no one has yet 
 been able to compute, served to convert the barbarians 
 of Northern Europe, to bring them into the plan of 
 civilisation, to make nations of them; they served to 
 create France, Germany, Spain and England. They 
 procured for the Church, money, which is as much the 
 nerve of religion as it is of war. They brought Con- 
 stantine within its pale. The gift of the Basilica, of 
 the Palace of St. John of Lateran, of St. Peter's Church 
 and of the modest dwelling which was eventually to be 
 the nucleus of the Vatican, was to obtain for the Em- 
 peror the remission of his sins, including the murder 
 of his son, his father-in-law and numerous massacres. 
 These two mother-cells were the transmutation of sin- 
 money. 
 
 Thanks to the magic of these keys, the successor of 
 St. Peter, at the beginning of the fourth century, drove
 
 246 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 through the streets of Jupiter's city, dressed superbly 
 and seated in a triumphal chariot, and the people all 
 bowed before him as he passed. The Church of Rome 
 had a most rigid hierarchy, a liturgy, a particular mel- 
 ody of its own, magnificent ceremonies, a college of 
 priests and of bishops, legions of monks, a regular 
 clergy and a secular clergy (two Siamese brothers who 
 were enemies and whom it was impossible to separate 
 without killing the two bodies). It had prophets who 
 were its augurs, and saints who were its tutelary gods. 
 The early Christians had forbidden images, fearing 
 that these might lead the people back to idolatry. 
 They were now allowed, in order to exalt people's de- 
 votion and concentrate their thoughts. Some images 
 were produced that were not made by the hand of man. 
 One of these was the imprint of Christ's face, said to 
 have been left on St. Veronica's handkerchief, thanks 
 to the sweat and blood of his agony. This still exists 
 and is exhibited, in Rome, on Good Friday, for public 
 veneration. The Greeks, obeying the will of their peas- 
 ant Emperor, Leo, the Isaurian, had also put away 
 images of all kinds. They, too, were obliged to restore 
 them, as their Asiatic soul, more than any other, needed 
 icons. And thus it was that Christians burnt incense 
 before symbols, just as their Pagan ancestors had done 
 before their idols. Nothing dies and everything is 
 renewed. Thanks to a superb lack of logic, it was now 
 believed that the human body, that body which had 
 been so' despised, retained something of the psychical 
 power of the saints, the gift of miracles, for instance, 
 and its remains were considered sacred. I fancy this
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 247 
 
 must have been the idea of some monk. One of my 
 friends who had bought a thirteenth-century reliquary, 
 found a bone in it made of plaster. " I would wager 
 anything," he said, crushing a particle of it between 
 his finger and thumb, " that this has healed people, for 
 it is always faith that heals." 
 
 And all this was willed by the gods. The poor Ter- 
 restrian has not only to live his own ideal, but to fix 
 it in stone, on wood, or on canvas, in order to transmit 
 it to future generations and so produce the accumula- 
 tors which are to communicate to them sparks of the 
 higher life. And this is, in my opinion, one of the 
 most wonderful things of our romance. Like all the 
 great religions, Roman Catholic Christianism was to 
 possess a treasury of art. It inspired legions of artists 
 and gave us master-pieces of psychical beauty. We 
 must be grateful to it for this. 
 
 Without being aware of it, the Church of Rome was 
 penetrated, from its earliest hours, by the Pagan and 
 Imperial atmosphere of the City of the Caesars, by its 
 legislative, constructive and dominating genius. It ab- 
 sorbed forces which were to lead it on to victory and 
 to defeat. After a patient, and somewhat cruel strug- 
 gle, it conquered supremacy over all the other Churches, 
 even over the Greek Church, which had incontestable 
 superiority as regards knowledge. The conversion of 
 Constantine was its triumph. At the end of the fourth 
 century, the Senate of the Eastern and Western Em- 
 pire was convoked by Theodosius the Great and called 
 upon to vote for Jupiter or for Christ. After all that 
 I have just written, this seems to me most fantastical.
 
 248 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 The prophet of Nazareth won the day over the master 
 of Olympus. This was, perhaps, because he was the 
 Emperor's candidate and snobbism has always existed. 
 Christianism was thereupon declared to be the State 
 religion. The wealth of the College of Pagan Pontiffs 
 passed over to the new religion and, many centuries 
 later, the wealth of this very religion was to be con- 
 fiscated for the benefit of the State, which had no longer 
 any religion at all. These constant reversions always 
 excite my admiration as a novelist. 
 
 St. Peter's barque, when it had once become a 
 Dreadnought, finally left the tranquil waters of the 
 Sea of Galilee, and was launched upon the vast waters 
 of the world and of politics. The Romans, left by the 
 Greek Emperors to struggle with barbarians and fac- 
 tions, deserted the Capital for the little Christian 
 Basilica, where they found religious spectacles and ma- 
 terial and spiritual help. They grouped themselves 
 around the Bishop, who had taken the name of Pope. 
 They elected him themselves and he won for himself a 
 kind of political authority. The clergy presented two 
 or three candidates to them for election, and they then 
 chose their Father, or at least they believed that they 
 chose him. It was a piece of supreme cleverness to give 
 to the people the right of voting, or rather the illu- 
 sion of having that right. The people, eternal children 
 as they are, never had, and have not even now, anything 
 but this illusion. Later on, the Holy Spirit was to 
 transmit its will through the College of Cardinals. 
 
 Just as Rome had had good and bad Emperors, so 
 it was to have good and bad Popes, because under the
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 249 
 
 tiara, just as under the Imperial circlet, there were 
 virtues and vices. It had Gregory I, who, for a whole 
 week, abstained from administering the sacraments, be- 
 cause a beggar had died in the street of hunger. It 
 had John XII, the son of a courtesan, who was noth- 
 ing but a drunken, brutal soldier, and all these Popes 
 had their part in the play of Life. 
 
 Christianism, which had entered Rome like a lamb, 
 became a roarin'g lion there, and its roarings " renewed 
 the face " of the Western World and made the Middle 
 Ages. 
 
 The Middle Ages were a monk's dream, the lewd pic- 
 tures of which are still to be seen on the doorways of 
 our old cathedrals. This dream was peopled with de- 
 mons, with grimacing faces, like those of the gargoyles. 
 It was the dream of a prisoner who had never felt the 
 warmth of a ray of sunshine, never breathed the per- 
 fume of a flower, never listened to the song of a bird, 
 never seen God in His works. The Middle Ages had 
 a horror of Nature, just as night has a horror of the 
 day. The Middle Ages even looked upon Nature as 
 a heretic. In the name of Christ, the Middle Ages tor- 
 tured millions of human creatures, cut off precious 
 limbs, tore out the tongue with which thought is uttered, 
 blinded the seeing pupils of the eyes. 
 
 The Middle Ages brought about the great sanguinary 
 schism which was to divide Christianism into the Church 
 of the East and the Church of the West. The Greek 
 Church, having taken upon itself to declare that the 
 Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father alone, the Latin 
 Church, in order to affirm its superiority, decreed, at
 
 250 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 the Council of Nice, the addition of the word 
 Fttioque, and of the Son. Filioque ! Here we have an- 
 other word, just a little word, that was loaded, and 
 with cannon-balls! It brought about ecclesiastical 
 war, the crudest war of any. It engendered odious 
 crimes, provoked an interchange of anathemas between 
 Rome and Constantinople, which armed Christians 
 against each other, inundated the porches and altars 
 of the churches with human blood and sowed the germs 
 of a hatred which still exists. When one first begins 
 to think of all this, one is at a loss to comprehend it. 
 All the questions imaginable crowd to our lips and 
 then, if we only reflect a little, the divine work answers 
 us triumphantly. From this little word, Filioque 
 (which ought to be written in red letters in our creed), 
 and from the struggle which it brought about, came the 
 Byzantine mentality and soul, and Byzantine art. It 
 gave to Life more than it ever cost Life. 
 
 The Middle Ages, in spite of their chivalry, their 
 courts of love, their poetry, their viols and lutes, de- 
 spised and detested woman and disfigured her beauty. 
 They even doubted whether she had been created in the 
 image of God. " Mulier non est facta ad imaginem 
 Dei." In the fantastical history that is taught to the 
 young, in the Perseverance Catechism classes, it is said 
 that Paganism lowered woman. I cannot forgive 
 Christianism for slandering its predecessor so fre- 
 quently. It is great enough itself to have no need 
 of stooping to such petty baseness. Paganism, on the 
 contrary, raised woman more than any other religion 
 has done. It placed her on its Olympus, it gave her an
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 251 
 
 active part in the government of this world, it built 
 altars to her, and Antiquity had its great women just 
 as it had its great men. The list of them is certainly 
 not as long, but the very fact that there could be some 
 on the list, proves that woman was not held in low es- 
 teem. Out of religious sentiment and out of fear of 
 Minerva, who must have been a feminist, no one would 
 have dared to speak disparagingly of woman. The 
 wives and mothers of the Iliad are adorable. Homer 
 speaks of them with tender reverence. Rome had her 
 vestals and her matrons and they counted for something, 
 both in religious worship and in society. The Chris- 
 tianism of the Middle Ages was cruel towards woman. 
 It spoke of her as " the sex," it considered her as the 
 necessary sin, it made of her religion's instrument, the 
 husband's thing. We have only to read what the Fa- 
 thers of the Church say of her in order to judge of her 
 condition. She is the eternal subject of the coarsest 
 jests, she provokes the uncouth laugh of the prelate, the 
 monk and the man of the people. " Good or bad," it 
 is said, " she must be ruled with the stick." It is said, 
 too, that she has more fleas than man and that she is 
 accustomed to killing lice with her nails. Pope Pius 
 II, in the midst of the Renaissance, calls her " a rav- 
 ager of youth." Antiquity never spoke in so ugly a 
 way of woman. 
 
 The very Christian Middle Ages invented sins and 
 peopled the air with demons. They lived on hell and 
 through hell. Their art, about which certain people 
 go into ecstasies, was cold and unnatural. The two 
 principal things " simplicity and light " were unknown
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 to the Middle Ages. They drove away the sun. In 
 the dwellings of man, openings gave place to loop-holes. 
 War became more perfidious and hatred more lasting 
 and more treacherous. Bells and churches called peo- 
 ple to arms as well as to prayer. Organisations for 
 help and relief were to serve religion ; humanitarianism 
 was unknown. By means of feudalism and dogma, the 
 free man was fastened down materially and morally to 
 the soil. A more painful and more refined slavery was 
 created than the slavery of old, and with all this dark- 
 ness, the Middle Ages made light. That is the mar- 
 vellous thing ! They taught us to read and write : they 
 created schools and universities. They produced a 
 Charlemagne, a Francis of Assisi, a Giotto, a Dante, 
 a Boccaccio. They made the epopee of the Crusades, 
 which were to bring back to the Western world secrets 
 of art, industry and beauty and to open the roads to 
 commerce and to explorers. They gave us chivalry 
 and poetry. They bore along with them the Renais- 
 sance and, because of this, we must forgive them all the 
 rest. I wish that all my readers could see the subtlety 
 and grandeur of the Providential work and admire it 
 with me. 
 
 After fourteen centuries of Christianism, humanity 
 was more barbarous than in its early days. The Pope, 
 on reaching the throne of the Caesars, became " The 
 Prince " of Machiavelli's dream, the one " who made 
 religion serve politics." In the very Christian penin- 
 sula, abominations were committed everywhere. Sforza 
 " buries his victims alive, has them cured, dressed, their 
 faces painted and has a gallery of them." A certain
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 253 
 
 Count Anguillara " violates his own children " and then 
 founds a hospital in Rome for the poor. Baccio de 
 Montone " beats the heads of nineteen monks on the 
 anvil, because they were not of his opinion." 
 
 This was the dead failure of Christianism. It was 
 to be saved by its old enemy Paganism. Our lives 
 and the history of this world are woven of these pro- 
 found ironies and, although we are the victims of them, 
 we must be able to admire them. I can still remember 
 the curious relief I felt, as a girl, when our professor 
 of history told us that he had finished with the Middle 
 Ages. " Ah, I feel better ! " I remarked, with a great 
 sigh of relief. As no one had asked for information 
 about my health, all eyes were turned towards me, and 
 laughs, that could not be stifled, greeted my unexpected 
 outburst, whilst I, in great confusion, lowered my head 
 over my note-book. At present, I have just the same 
 pleasure in seeing the god of light appear again on the 
 horizon, in seeing Apollo chase away the darkness of the 
 Middle Ages. 
 
 It would have seemed only natural for Olympus, Jupi- 
 ter, and Greek thought to have been swept away by the 
 whirlwind of the centuries. Statues and divinities were 
 lying buried under layers of ruins. Old manuscripts 
 had been washed by the monks, so that the pages should 
 be clean. They were then left in the hands of the 
 ignorant, which was much worse than leaving them to 
 rats. And in spite of all this, Antiquity was not dead ; 
 fragments of its soul had been incarnated in a multi- 
 tude of brains and were transmitted to successive gen- 
 erations, so that at the hour willed by the Providence
 
 254 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 of God, it entered once more into activity and produced 
 the phenomenon of humanism. In Tuscany, a group 
 of individuals existed who had been specially impressed. 
 In the course of their conversation, probably, they 
 brought back into the current of Life great Thinker* 
 who had been forgotten. Words arc living agents. 
 Some of them have wings, others crawl like worms. 
 What were the words whose mission it was to resurrect 
 Homer, Plato, Pythagoras and to bring them into 
 vogue? This I do not know, but certain it is that peo- 
 ple began to read these authors, to explain them and to 
 get passionately devoted to them. They now roused 
 an enthusiasm which they had never before inspired, 
 and a new meaning was discovered in their works. And, 
 in Florence, a centre of light was created, the radia- 
 tions from which were to transform Rome and even 
 the Church. This, too, is one of the miracles of the 
 " Wonderful Romance " ! 
 
 The man of the fifteenth century, a condensed product 
 of the Middle Ages, no longer adored the gods of 
 Olympus, but he revelled in the force, the grandeur and 
 the beauty of which they are the conception and, just 
 as though some occult tie still existed between the past 
 and the present, they became dear and familiar to him 
 once more. Thanks to his contact with them, he began 
 to take Life in a broader way and he gave it in a 
 broader way, too, in all his creations. His reading 
 caused a multitude of ideas to germinate in his brain ; 
 he felt the need of communicating these ideas and so 
 academies were formed everywhere. People met to- 
 gether to talk and to argue, as in former days, and
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 255 
 
 they talked eagerly, just as dumb people might if 
 speech were given to them once more. It is always 
 those whom we call the dead who educate the living. 
 It was they who now taught the Romans their history, 
 who helped them to make the acquaintance of the men 
 of former days. They vibrated, as their fathers had 
 done before them, at Cicero's words, at the incomparable 
 rhythm of his periods. They enjoyed the humoristic 
 wit of Horace, they listened eagerly to the adventures 
 of ^Eneas, their ancestor, as related by Virgil. This 
 Renaissance transformed ignorant rustics into learned 
 men, art collectors, and art patrons. It taught them 
 how to spend amassed wealth in a noble way. In Italy, 
 magnificent palaces took the place of the old fortified 
 dwellings, and, for the adornment of these palaces, thou- 
 sands of hands wove rich hangings, manufactured fur- 
 niture inlaid with ivory, and chased gold and silver. 
 Masters of genius produced the marvels of sculpture 
 and painting which are the joy of certain eyes. 
 
 The Renaissance did not forget woman. It took 
 her into its current and brought her on to the same 
 plane as man. It snatched her away from the kitchen, 
 from the shut up room, where she was spinning or 
 embroidering with her servants. It took off the hideous 
 head-gear which hid her hair, the guimpes which flat- 
 tened her bosom, " it clothed her in soft, fine linen, in 
 silk and velvet, which cost two thousand francs the 
 arm." Ippolita Sforza wore a dress which was valued 
 at a quarter of a million. It gave her " boxes full of 
 pearls and of wonderful jewels." Instead of the distaff, 
 it put into her hand " a viol of sandal-wood," it made
 
 256 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 " golden needles for her embroidery." It taught her 
 all the games of the epoch, it taught her to sing and 
 to ride gracefully. During her long bondage, her long 
 silence, her chrysalis-like dream, woman had been mak- 
 ing for herself wings, and when, in the warm, Pagan 
 light, she unfolded them, they were wonderful indeed. 
 Without any apparent effort, she became the soul of 
 the new society. Brought into contact with the mascu- 
 line mind, she, too, became enthusiastic with regard to 
 Greek and Latin, so that the fifteenth century had, 
 what the twentieth century has not, women humanists, 
 philosophers and poets stateswomen and great women. 
 The portraits of the Renaissance women tell a pathetic 
 story to those who can read them. Their eyes have all 
 the sadness of a sorrowful past, they are mistrustful, 
 the soul looks out of them sideways, they have as yet 
 no smile. Leonardo da Vinci must have made hun- 
 dreds of sketches before he found the one that he put 
 on the lips of the Joconda, and this smile seems to say : 
 " I now know my own strength and your weakness." 
 That is, in my opinion, its meaning. 
 
 The Renaissance was to do for Rome what it had 
 done for woman. It was to take from it the headgear 
 with which the Middle Ages had disfigured it, and to 
 transform it anew. St. Peter had brought along with 
 him, from Palestine, the words which were to drive out 
 Paganism ; fourteen centuries later, a few Florentines, 
 in search of something to do, brought humanism there, 
 and this was to bring back Paganism. It was all the 
 more easy for it to reach the Church, as it had always 
 been cropping out there. Paganism was in its Basilicas,
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 257 
 
 the architecture of which recalls both the temple and 
 the Prastorium ; it was to be found in its religious cere- 
 monies, in its superstitions. It came to life again, in 
 order to snatch the Church from the barbarity which 
 it could no longer dominate and by which it was being 
 dominated itself. And then, Paganism led the Church 
 along, in a perfidious way, to the very edge of another 
 abyss. This was a double revenge and always thanks 
 to the play of Life. The Popes became enthusiastic 
 humanists, they had secretaries who spoke and wrote 
 beautiful Latin. They began to make collections of 
 manuscripts and of stone engravings, never suspecting 
 the dangerous fascination of all this. With a very 
 human inconsequence, they set up again the statues of 
 the gods which had been the horror of the Middle Ages. 
 The Popes of the Renaissance are all interesting. They 
 show us the most astonishing mixtures of vices and vir- 
 tues, which make of them princes, tyrants, humanists, 
 patrons of art, skilful diplomatists uncles and, if 
 we are either surprised or scandalised at all this, it must 
 be that we know nothing of the whirl and eddy of all 
 history, that we have no conception of Life, and no 
 philosophy whatever. 
 
 Ever since Charlemagne, France had held suprem- 
 acy in all that concerned Latin learning Pius II took 
 this supremacy from France and implanted in Rome 
 the invention of printing. He read Virgil's eclogues 
 with more fervour than his breviary, and they inspired 
 him with an admiration for Nature. In his native town 
 of Pienza, he built himself a rustic palace with pilasters, 
 facing that Mount Amiata, that extinct volcano, the sad-
 
 258 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 ness of which he had loved in his childhood. In Rome, 
 he gave his audiences on the lawn of one of his country 
 villas. All this is like a gleam of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury. 
 
 Paganism intoxicated the pilots of the Christian 
 barque with antique beauty and with wild ambitions. 
 The Church only thought now of establishing its po- 
 litical pre-eminence firmly, as it had established its 
 dogmatic pre-eminence. It had an army, artillery, 
 mercenaries, condottieri who wore hats of the same 
 shapes as those of the cardinals. It had its spies, too, 
 and it had the Inquisition an invention of the monks. 
 
 The Pontifical Court must needs be equal to any of 
 the other Italian Courts, with regard to luxury. This 
 was necessary in order to maintain its prestige in the 
 eyes of the humble, as well as in the eyes of the great. 
 The vicars of Jesus Christ were now clothed in the 
 richest stuffs, " they had jewels like women, tiaras, 
 mitres, croziers of fabulous price; rings, crosses, chap- 
 lets set with the most precious gems." They were 
 childishly inconsequent. Paul II, the handsome Vene- 
 tian, " II formoso," gave the red robe to the Cardinals 
 and the gualdrape, of the same colour, to their horses. 
 The altars were resplendent with the glitter of the gold 
 and silversmith's work, the vestries were arranged for 
 storing treasures and, what is well worth noting, the 
 Christian religion, like the Pagan religion of former 
 times, was no longer anything but a pompous worship. 
 
 The Popes of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries 
 had a brilliant court, flatterers, parasites, but they were 
 isolated and surrounded by enemies. A very natural
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 259 
 
 instinct prompted them to seek the protection of their 
 own families. When they had nephews or sons, which 
 was often the case in those times, they cut clothes for 
 them out of St. Peter's robe, out of his sacred and holy 
 patrimony, a precedent that Italy might have invoked. 
 These Uncle-Popes raised their families to the nobility, 
 thus giving themselves princes and dukes for relatives, 
 which was a very ingenious way of raising themselves 
 to the nobility. They created a new aristocracy in 
 this way which, foreign though it was to Rome, estab- 
 lished itself there and eclipsed the aboriginal nobility, 
 the Colonnas, the Orsinis, the Caetaris, etc. Thanks 
 to these Popes, we have the fine palaces of the Renais- 
 sance and their wonderful collections. Every one 
 should see the portrait of Innocent X, by Velasquez, in 
 the Dorian Gallery of Rome. In my opinion, it is the 
 finest portrait that has ever been painted. The face 
 is ugly and vulgar, it is the face of a miser, of a money- 
 lender even, but in those eyes of metallic blue, eyes in 
 which the soul is so living that it holds you there for 
 a long time, there is a poignant sadness, the sadness of 
 disillusion, the knowledge of the ingratitude of his own 
 family. It is, perhaps, the first time that such grief 
 has been caught and rendered so perfectly. At certain 
 moments, all the Uncle-Popes must have had that ex- 
 pression in their eyes. Peace be with the Uncle-Popes ! 
 In order to keep up the pontifical magnificence of 
 the epoch, money was necessary, and very much money. 
 This had to be procured, and so money was made out 
 of everything. Impositions were levied, prebends were 
 sold and money was even made out of St. Peter's throne,
 
 260 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 which Innocent VIII bought. Absolution was sold and 
 so much was paid for adultery, so much for homicide 
 and so much for parricide. " The Curia," it appeared, 
 " was the receptacle of avarice, of lust and of hypoc- 
 risy." The celebrated humanist, Lorenzo Valla, said: 
 " There is no longer any religion, there is no longer 
 any fear of God and, what is horrible to relate is that, 
 the godless ones give the Pope's example as an excuse 
 for all their crimes." 
 
 The Church, like the Empire before it, was on its 
 way to the abyss. Pope Alexander VI, who cnme of 
 a family of Spanish adventurers, had three illegitimate 
 children. The Borgo, where he dwelt with them, had 
 become such a place of abominations that it seemed as 
 though the soul of Nero had once more taken posses- 
 sion of it. And nevertheless this Pope, who was as 
 corrupt as the worst of the Emperors, governed all the 
 Christian world. He was powerful enough to be able 
 to give to Spain and Portugal, " de motu proprio," 
 " discovered and undiscovered lands." 
 
 The Church, at enormous cost, built the temple which 
 was to incarnate its dream of Universal domination, 
 and this temple was destined to take such domination 
 away from the Church forever. Was I not right in 
 saying that it, like us, is the plaything of Life? For 
 this temple, which was to draw to it all Christianity, 
 the Popes asked for beauty of every kind. Thanks to 
 sin-money, they were able to call architects, sculptors, 
 painters, mosaicists, goldsmiths and gilders to Rome. 
 Multitudes of brains began to work and marvellous 
 things were created. The foundations of the Basilica
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 261 
 
 were soon visible, the walls rose and, finally, the dome 
 of Bramanta and Michael Angelo stood out like a 
 labarum against the sky of the Holy City. The Ren- 
 aissance put its seal on the splendid Basilica. We are 
 reminded of Jupiter's loves, by the bronze castings of 
 the principal door, representing Europa on the bull, 
 Ganymede carried away by the eagle, and Leda with 
 the swan. At the very entrance to the Christian sanc- 
 tuary, it is Paganism which welcomes us. Had it not 
 this right? To those who can read symbols, this one 
 is a revelation. 
 
 And quite close to this new St. Peter's, the fortress 
 Palace, built by Nicholas V gradually became more rich 
 and more ornate; rooms and niches were prepared in 
 which to place the Olympian gods, that were taken out 
 of the dust and brought thither at great cost. The 
 gods from Olympus in the dwelling of the Vicar of 
 Jesus Christ! Is that not fine? When I discovered 
 the bust of my beloved Zeus there, that figure so ex- 
 pressive of strength and kindliness, I felt a curious joy, 
 and I smiled mischievously. At present, as a novelist, 
 I admire all this. 
 
 Such magnificence cost enormous sums of money and 
 the inconsequent Church was indiscreet enough to make 
 use of St. Peter's keys. It put Paradise as the prime 
 to win, and, as sins and crimes had never been so numer- 
 ous, indulgences sold well they were sold too well and 
 too openly. 
 
 Humanism, science and art had improved the human 
 mind, so that it was now ripe for examining things 
 freely. The individual now came out of the mass.
 
 262 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 Luther, Calvin and Zwingli, who were, perhaps, quite 
 sincerely indignant at this traffic in divine forgiveness, 
 brought about that religious revolution which has been 
 called the Reformation and which, in its turn, was to 
 engender Protestantism. Protestantism was, and still 
 is, the intellectual and moral counterpoise destined to 
 maintain equilibrium in the Western soul. The Roman 
 Catholic Church, therefore, lost the most cultivated na- 
 tions of Europe. There was to be not only a Chris- 
 tianism, but a Lutheran Christianism and a Calvinistic 
 Christianism and each of these was to engender other 
 varieties. And there was to be a Protestant soul, a 
 Protestant mentality and a Protestant art. And there 
 were also to be religious wars, brothers who were to be 
 enemies. The human struggle was to be intensified and 
 on our planet there was to be more suffering, more 
 bloodshed, there were to be more tears. There was to 
 be more Life, too, and of a superior essence. There 
 was a reason for all this, since all this took place. 
 
 The shock of this revolution roused the Catholic 
 Church from the state into which it had fallen. It 
 saw the precipice at last and drew back. Hurling 
 anathemas at Germany, Geneva and England, it be- 
 gan to amend its ways, to discipline itself, to pull it- 
 self together. It was saved by the very Reformation 
 which had hoped to annihilate it. Is not this cruelly 
 fine? Providence, which needed it for long centuries 
 yet, sent it the man who was to aid it in its struggles 
 against heresy and heretics. One morning, in the 
 Chapel of Notre-Dame of Montmartre, in Paris, Igna- 
 tius Loyola, a romantic, delicate student, made a vow,
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 263 
 
 together with five of his companions, to go to the Holy 
 Land and convert the Mussulmans. It was thanks to 
 this vow, inspired perhaps by the atavic cellules of some 
 ancestor who had been a Crusader, that a militant or- 
 der, that of the Jesuits sprang up, an order which was 
 to serve the Papacy in a masterful manner. Its founder 
 was born about the same time as Luther and Calvin. 
 Luther was born in 1483, Loyola in 1491 and Calvin 
 in 1509. These three fateful dates show that the gods 
 not only create the struggle, but that they direct it. 
 In the sixteenth century, this struggle became intense. 
 Paul III, like a skilful general, gave to the Church 
 the unity which it lacked. He called together the fa- 
 mous (Ecumenic Council of Trent. This Council, with- 
 out taking into account the discoveries of science, the 
 inevitable law of progress, stopped human thought, like 
 a clock, at the date of 1545. It decreed the celibacy 
 of priests, it reorganised the discipline of the Church 
 and its hierarchy, and gave absolute authority to the 
 Popes. It made use of the spiritual forces that the 
 Church had neglec^d. In the Middle Ages, the con- 
 fessional did not ey*lst, only the deadly sins were, as a 
 rule, confessed. The Church now formally inaugurated 
 the confessional boxes; it encouraged the human soul, 
 absolved, comforted and guided it, not always heaven- 
 wards, but more often towards the political end it had 
 itself in view. By means of this brilliantly thought out 
 institution, the Church was able to penetrate into the 
 family, into conjugal privacy, and to hold in subjection 
 the consciences of its followers. By means of the In- 
 quisition and the Papal Index, it cut the wings of
 
 264 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 Thought. When an individual rose above the masses, 
 it brought him down to that level, the low-water mark 
 of which it regulated, or else it did away with him. 
 The humanists, the learned men and the artists, all 
 those creatures of light, had made of Rome a free, open 
 city, where one was glad to live and to let live. The 
 Church closed it again for many centuries, surrounded 
 it with a sacerdotal wall, the most Chinese of all walls, 
 at the foot of which, waves and waves of ideas dashed 
 and then broke. Theocratic tyranny paralysed all will, 
 destroyed valuable energy and caused the movement of 
 civilisation to be much more slow. The Popes were 
 now kings! Among these King-Popes, were some who 
 were ferociously cruel to the heretic brothers. Pius 
 IV and Pius V were among these Popes. There were 
 others who were very remarkable, such, for instance, as 
 Sixtus Quintus, the shepherd who had never been able 
 to lead his flock of four-footed sheep, but whom Provi- 
 dence transformed into an admirable shepherd of men. 
 There were King-Popes who were n f My unselfish. Clem- 
 ent IX took spiritual and mate/al help to the sick 
 in the hospitals, and had twelve p*or people every day 
 at his own table. When the famous Palarina, the bell 
 of the Capitol which announced the death of the sov- 
 ereign Pontiffs, tolled for him, it made all hearts sor- 
 rowful. This was rare, for the Romans never loved 
 their Popes. 
 
 For centuries the Church continued its dream of 
 temporal sovereignty, using all the means that its policy 
 approved and that Christianism disapproved. It de- 
 fended the peninsula against the barbarians, against
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 265 
 
 Germany, against France, against Spain, against Eng- 
 land. All this time it thought it was working for itself, 
 and it was working for the Italians, who did not yet 
 exist as a nation. The Catholic Church was to keep 
 Rome for Rome. Is not that fine? 
 
 At present, the Popes only possess the Borgo, a space 
 of land between Mont Mario and the Janicula which, 
 curiously enough, was never a part of Rome. In olden 
 times it was " the field of the oracles." When Leo IV 
 surrounded it with walls, in the fourth century, he little 
 thought that he was preparing a citadel for a far-off 
 successor but the gods knew. The Pope is no longer 
 king, and he has never been so much respected and so 
 worthy of respect. He has never been so great, for his 
 kingdom is no longer of this world. 
 
 The Roman Catholic Church is now living the down- 
 ward branch of its parabola, and it will, no doubt, live 
 it for a long time yet. If I am not mistaken, it is at the 
 same phase as Paganism after the Augustan century. 
 Animals, prepared for the altars, did not find many cus- 
 tomers. Sin-money, if not sin, was getting rare. In 
 the upper classes, people believed very little in the im- 
 mortality of the soul, or in hell, and the source of artis- 
 tic inspiration from Olympus, was dried up forever. 
 
 At present, Catholic priests complain that their per- 
 quisites, and this means the money for masses, are 
 greatly on the decrease. There are fewer and fewer 
 men in the churches, and when they do go they look 
 like little boys fulfilling some necessary duty. They 
 no longer have the frank and manly attitude which 
 comes from sincere conviction. In their attitude, in
 
 266 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 the way they hold their heads, in their Tcry shoulders, 
 an absence of sincere conviction is evident. Religion 
 is handed over to women and children and, what is still 
 more grave, beauty has deserted it. Its art consists 
 of Epinal pictures and images. Does this mean death? 
 No, forms of worship and sects may die, but great re- 
 ligions evolve. This is what Catholicism will do. 
 
 Terrestrians, the mass of them, at any rate, like the 
 symbolical Buddha, with lowered eyes, have not yet 
 looked at anything but their navel. They have evi- 
 dently found that interesting, since it has sufficed for 
 them for so many centuries, but they are now endeav- 
 ouring to escape from its primitive fascination. Their 
 subjective conception of the God-Man is still childish. 
 They are looking for him in the Beyond of their dreams, 
 of their poor dreams. Their vision and their compre- 
 hension are, no doubt, too feeble for them to be able to 
 read that Bible of Nature into which he poured out for 
 them, in streams, the hope of immortality, that Bible in 
 which each of his thoughts, in the form of a creation, 
 reaches them liznng through numberless hierarchies. 
 The priests of Science have been occupied for a long 
 time, though, in inventing instruments with which men 
 can decipher the divine manuscripts and learn at last 
 to know the God of the Universe. 
 
 I possess a tiny microscope, in which I have seen won- 
 ders that have brought delicious tears to my eyes. One 
 day, I showed a drop of water to the chambermaid of 
 my hotel. When she saw it inhabited and swarming, 
 she was seized with admiration mingled with awe. She 
 asked my permission to fetch her husband to see it, and
 
 267 
 
 he was much more moved by it than she had been. His 
 big fingers trembled with emotion. " That gives a won- 
 derful idea of God," he said. " If we only knew things, 
 we should not go about cursing and swearing, but we 
 don't know, and we are brought up like animals." He 
 was quite right, " we do not know things." In our 
 churches there might very well be an altar to the 
 " Unknown God," as there was at Athens. It is this 
 God who will reveal religious evolution to us, and it 
 was only to take place through Roman Catholic Chris- 
 tianism. Curiously enough, this idea came to me one 
 Sunday, about three years ago in Milan Cathedral, 
 during High Mass. At the altar, which is very high, 
 a priest, in rich, sacerdotal vestments, dominated the 
 kneeling believers. A ray of sunshine, which poured 
 in through one of the stained glass windows of the 
 choir, dyed, with hyacinth shades, the bluish convo- 
 lutions of the incense. Above this cloud, so wonder- 
 fully coloured with rainbow tints, I saw the officiating 
 priest raise the golden vessel, in which, under the ap- 
 pearance of bread and wine, humanity and divinity 
 mingled. With the most perfect harmony, the organ 
 accompanied the words of the oblation. For the first 
 time, and I am not proud of this confession, I was con- 
 scious of the symbolical grandeur of the Mass, which, 
 from my very childhood, had always bored me intensely. 
 From the altar, my eyes travelled to the assembled 
 crowd. The people were all kneeling pele-mele, on 
 chairs, or on the marble floor, the woman of the people 
 side by side with the wealthy citizen, and the beggar- 
 woman by the side of the great lady, in an equality,
 
 268 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 which had not been arranged, but was absolutely natu- 
 ral. I realised then that the Roman Catholic Church 
 is the only place on earth in which one could have that 
 sensation of fraternal equality. I said to myself that, 
 after all, Christ had never left Peter's barque, and that 
 it was there that the evolution of all Christianism was 
 evidently to take place. I had already started on my 
 cruise round Life, but I did not know then that the 
 psychical currents would ever urge my barque on 
 towards this reef of religion and yet, " li per li," as 
 the Italians say, my cerebral cellules had commenced, 
 instantaneously, to weave a dream of religious evolu- 
 tion. And this dream continued. I left it hundreds of 
 times and then I took it up again, just as one might do 
 with a piece of embroidery and now it is to serve. Is 
 not all this wonderful? 
 
 I have imagined the coming of that Pope, who will 
 also be a Reformer, that Pope whom all Catholic Chris- 
 tian thinkers are awaiting like another Messiah, the 
 Pope who will say courageously and honestly : " Yes, 
 the Roman Catholic Church has a number of black pages 
 in its history, a number of sanguinary pages, of shame- 
 ful pages, but it also has some luminous and glorious 
 ones. And these pages, all of which contain germs of 
 progress and of the future, were written by the Provi- 
 dence of God. Men have lived them and have made 
 them live. Yes, the Church has burnt living bodies, 
 invented tortures by the side of which the crucifixion 
 was a gentle one, it has tortured heretics whilst singing 
 psalms. It dominated barbarity by means of a still 
 greater barbarity. The epoch required this homo>
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 269 
 
 opathic treatment and you have no right to judge it 
 with your present-day mentality. The Church has 
 caused much suffering, but it has given still more conso- 
 lation and joy. It has helped the outcasts, lent its 
 ear to their complaints in the confessional, softened the 
 anger of the humble against the great, with the hope of 
 future compensations. It has also maintained social 
 equilibrium. It has enriched the human soul with fresh 
 sentiments, it has created an ideal of psychical beauty, 
 of purity which still charms and touches you. Into 
 this gulf of twenty centuries, which represents Chris- 
 tianism, it has flung poetry, numberless master-pieces 
 and the elements of your philosophy and modernism. 
 The Roman Catholic Church has given you beliefs, 
 which you now reject, because you have grown up, 
 but they liaiue helped you to grow up. These dogmas 
 were not untruths, but symbols and images which hid 
 the truth that was too dazzling for your eyes as chil- 
 dren. Your adult age asks for this truth at present, 
 and the Church will teach it to you." And this Pope 
 will feel that the Church cannot allow itself to be left 
 behind by Science in the knowledge of Divine work. 
 Instead of breviaries, he will put into the hands of his 
 priests and monks, telescopes, microscopes, the instru- 
 ments and all the apparatus necessary for the study 
 of physics and chemistry, so that they may read the 
 book of revelation. 
 
 I can imagine, and I envy the emotion of those priests 
 and of those monks who will see God, for they will see 
 Him, in the depths of the heavens and of the ocean, in 
 the infinitely great and in the infinitely small. And
 
 270 
 
 these priests and these monks, instead of continuing to 
 repeat theological mysteries in their pulpits, and imag- 
 inary miracles about which even the most pious of their 
 listeners no longer care to hear, will speak of the mys- 
 teries and miracles of Nature, of the sprouting of corn, 
 of the fecundation of flowers and of fermentation. 
 They will unroll that magnificent ladder of progression, 
 which all creatures are mounting, and which shows us 
 God as the Conqueror of Death. And Religion then, 
 born of fear, will become love. And these monks and 
 these priests will learn to know man, no longer from the 
 note-books of the seminarist which only contain his 
 dregs, but from Nature, which will reveal to them his 
 true essence. They will then present love and marriage 
 as the sacred rites of Life, and will place them so high 
 that they will make pornography appear a blasphemy. 
 And these priests and these monks will preach moral 
 and physical cleanliness, heroism, patriotism, the small 
 and great virtues. They will preach not only charity, 
 but a broad and profound humanitarianism, which is 
 to be extended to all beings, to the animal as to a lesser 
 brother. And under their inspiration, magnificent tem- 
 ples will be built to the Master of the Universe. Their 
 altars and their tabernacles will be made of the most 
 precious materials. They will be decorated with the 
 humblest and the rarest of plants, with master-pieces of 
 Nature and of Art. The most delicate incense and the 
 purest wax will be burnt there. The most beautiful 
 hymns which have ever been composed to the glory of 
 God will be sung there in chorus. There will be an- 
 cient hymns, Hebraic hymns and the Christian hymns
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 271 
 
 and canticles. And men will come there in numbers, 
 as to a centre of Science and Light. Terrestrians, no 
 matter to what creed they belong, will be able to go 
 there to worship and to pray, for it will no longer be 
 the Church that excludes, but the open temple of the 
 living God. The collection plate, which the priest will 
 raise with a beautiful gesture of offering to God, will 
 have upon it the widow's mite and the millionaire's 
 cheque, and this will no longer be sin-money but money 
 given out of love. And from the citadel of the Vati- 
 can, from " the field of the oracles," waves of inspira- 
 tion will go forth, waves that will have been drawn from 
 the living sources of Nature, and they will give us a 
 superb artistic revival and fresh master-pieces. . . . 
 
 This is my dream and I am surprised myself at hav- 
 ing dreamed it. Will it ever be realised? I am old 
 enough to be a prophetess and, in the soul of this Earth, 
 there are millions of dreams which want to be written. 
 
 In the meantime, the evolution of Christianism has 
 certainly commenced. It commenced a long time ago. 
 In the barbarous ages, religion and politics were one 
 thing. That was necessary for the government of child 
 nations. Providence has separated them. The oper- 
 ation was a painful one for the Roman Catholic Church, 
 but, now that it is free of its gangue it will shine with 
 a purer brilliancy, it will rise, it will become more 
 spiritualised. That will mean progress for it and for 
 us.
 
 272 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 Is the Cape of Tempests doubled? My barque, 
 " The Why," still vibrates with the effort it has just 
 made and, unless I am mistaken, the pilot has earned 
 a draught of champagne.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THESE are, in our lives as Terrestrians, marvellous 
 phenomena of which we know, as yet, little else than 
 the name, phenomena which we must learn to under- 
 stand more thoroughly. They are well worth the trou- 
 ble, I can vouch for that. These phenomena are: the 
 metaphysical dream, faith, hope, divine love and prayer. 
 I now find myself in the very midst of the theologal 
 virtues. Nothing less than that ! I should have been 
 greatly surprised if any one had ever told me that 
 the day would come when these would interest me more 
 than the virtues of love. 
 
 On seeing me touch upon such a subject, many of 
 my readers will leave me. When I was young, I should 
 have done the same in their place. Some of them will 
 leave me, remembering how bored they were in their 
 childhood by these virtues, which were not understood 
 even by those who taught them. Others will leave me 
 because, in their opinion, the Roman Catholic Church 
 alone has the right to teach and explain everything 
 concerning God. Well, it does not matter! Those 
 who have courage enough to come with me on my up- 
 ward way will, perhaps, not regret this, as I am going 
 to show them that the theologal virtues are metaphys- 
 ical phenomena which are quite natural, and that they 
 are produced by certain cellules of our motor like all 
 our faculties. 
 
 There is such a thing as the superhuman, but there 
 
 273
 
 274 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 is nothing supernatural, and there could not be any- 
 thing supernatural. Everything is in Nature, the Be- 
 yond, the psychical world, God Himself. The Church 
 has always tried to separate God from Nature. Fancy 
 separating the Creator from His creation, from His 
 work, from the forces that He engenders and governs! 
 The idea of it seems foolish. Was not the Church in- 
 spired when it invented the supernatural? It certainly 
 was, for this idea was necessary for child nations. The 
 Catholic Church can only be justified to history, hu- 
 manity and Life, thanks to determinism, which denies 
 the personal influence of man over determination, which 
 affirms that the Church, and all Churches, have been 
 urged on, and are still being urged on, like the most 
 humble amongst us, by irresistible motives. The Roman 
 Catholic Church does not know itself, or else it de- 
 ceives us very cleverly, for it has always been deter- 
 minist. It is very easy to see this if we study its work. 
 It even has a little word, in its theologal vocabulary, 
 which is rarely to be met with and which reveals a 
 great deal. It is the word premotion. It means: "the 
 action of God determining the will of the creature to 
 act." Dossuet was as much a determinist as Diderot 
 must have been when he said : *' The ball which killed 
 Turcnne had been founded in all eternity." That was 
 determinist literature. The Church, too, was, and still 
 is, an unconscious modernist. By inspiration, or, as it 
 says, by revelation, which is really the same thing, it 
 knew a quantity of Nature's metaphysical secrets be- 
 fore Science did. By sifting what there was in man, 
 the Church discovered the existence of theologal forces
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 275 
 
 which it put into action, used, abused, dominated in its 
 own interests and, it is only fair to add, in the interests 
 of humanity. If we want justice ourselves, we must 
 be just to others. 
 
 Pius X himself, by doing away with many of the 
 fetes which interrupted work, by ridding the Church 
 of the great display necessary in former days, and by 
 democratising it, was, without knowing it, preparing 
 modernism. This was only as far as discipline was 
 concerned, of course. The rest was to come later on, 
 in its own good time. 
 
 Religious romanticism created the metaphysical 
 dream and the mystical dream. This dream peopled 
 Paradise and hell with personages as fictitious as those 
 of literature, but, in spite of this, these personages have 
 an existence. Their deeds, which are for the most part 
 imaginary, are helpful to Life. And this seems to me 
 to be the miracle of miracles. 
 
 It may seem that I use the word dream very fre- 
 quently and carelessly. I like the word, certainly, not 
 only for its sound, but on account of the immense thing 
 it represents. It is the work of certain cellules which 
 manufacture the ideal for which we are to live or die, 
 and I feel this work more and more distinctly. 
 
 Protestantism tempers, and frequently kills, spiritual 
 romanticism. The great religions, such as Buddhism, 
 Roman Catholic Christianism, and Islamism exalt this, 
 on the contrary, by means of their mysteries, their 
 ceremonies, their ventures into the Beyond. We find 
 this in the lives of the saints written by the monks of 
 the first centuries. Their productions betray an ardent,
 
 276 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 childish, perverse imagination, or rather an imagina- 
 tion perverted by the subjectivity of the man living 
 on himself and not troubling about the truth of things. 
 The Primitives in literature are much less chaste than 
 the Primitives in painting. Providence used this ele- 
 ment for making its priests, and its holy men and 
 women who were needed for charitable work, for pene- 
 trating into the masses, for social economy, for group- 
 ing together beings who, alone, would have been use- 
 less. And Providence took back from these individuals 
 all that it had given them: country, home, family, in- 
 dividuality and liberty. It clothed them in a special, 
 strange way, so that they might be better separated 
 from their fellow-beings. It marked them with an inef- 
 faceable seal. It made use of their ambitions, of their 
 desire for wealth, for the benefit of the Order in which 
 it had enrolled them. It obliged them to live poor in 
 the midst of wealth. It killed more or less rapidly, and 
 never without suffering, the instincts which might have 
 been hostile to its plan. It stopped the development 
 of their intellect, or circumscribed its activity. In 
 short, it made them renew their very soul. It bound 
 them over by vows, by a few simple words of immense 
 import and, like us, they were held firmly by the In- 
 visible. It is possible to escape from a stone prison, 
 we cannot escape from the Invisible. Providence some- 
 times carved out for them a superhuman task. It sent 
 them on a mission to savages, to cannibals. It was as 
 though it found an artist's pleasure in putting the 
 highest psychical forces in presence of the most primi- 
 tive psychical forces. It sent them out, physically
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 277 
 
 healthy, to tend lepers, to die for them and through 
 them. It sent them out to its convict prisons, to its 
 earthly hells, to take there the hope of a better life. 
 And it is with wonderful art that the gods always ar- 
 range these strange destinies. The currents which they 
 govern will put, for instance, into a girl's brain, into 
 cellules that have been gradually prepared for this, the 
 leit motiv of a spiritual dream, those words put pur- 
 posely, perhaps, into the mouth of Christ : " He that 
 loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy 
 of me." And the beautiful, rich, beloved girl loves this 
 jealous Master. His image, like a cinematographic 
 vision, is formed at the back of her forehead, it pene- 
 trates her and draws her along irresistibly. She turns 
 away from mankind and looks above. She sees herself 
 clothed in sackcloth, wearing the veil or the nun's bon- 
 net, with a halo of sanctity around her head. The halo 
 is the secret ambition of those who are interested in 
 metaphysics. The girl likes to picture herself in this 
 way, for vanity enters into everything and works to- 
 gether with everything. The social position of a 
 saintly woman is not to be despised. If the elected one 
 should have the maternal instinct, her heart will open to 
 children, to the sick, to the weak. If she be a con- 
 queror, she will be ambitious for distant missions, for 
 dangerous out-posts ; and if she be a grande amour euse, 
 she will love the cloister and will delight in renunciations. 
 Pier prayers will become passionate colloquies, not with 
 God, as there are liberties one cannot take with Him, 
 but with Christ, with some personage of the Beyond 
 Her wild dream takes her to the doors of a convent.
 
 278 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 She knocks, the door opens and closes behind her. Her 
 force, or her weakness, is then poured forth into a com- 
 munity, together with other forces and other weak- 
 nesses. Some of these women may continue striving 
 after an ideal that they will never reach, and they are 
 then happy with a happiness which is not of this world. 
 This is the exception, and the very rare exception. 
 Others touch earth more or less rapidly and, in some 
 cases, this touching earth is so disastrous that the vic- 
 tims die of it. As a rule, though, the regular, disci- 
 plined life in common, with its thousands of childish 
 preoccupations, and the desire to be approved by the 
 director, or confessor, who is the shepherd of the flock, 
 creates a kind of state of grace. Providence chooses its 
 religious auxiliaries in the humblest, as well as in the 
 highest classes and, in the weaving of their destinies, it 
 proves itself an incomparable novelist. Every church, 
 even the most humble one, every monastery) every abbey 
 is an incarnated dream, a human dream, dreamed on the 
 heights and ought, consequently, to inspire the philoso- 
 pher, the poet and the artist with tender respect. 
 
 Some years ago, I do not remember how many, as I 
 no longer count the years, I visited the Convent of the 
 Carmelites, at Tours, which had just been evacuated. 
 The big, hard, cold nest was empty. All the open 
 doors, as though with the same angry gesture, seemed 
 to be saying: " Look and see for yourselves where and 
 how we lived ! " I went f orward respectfully, with 
 muffled tread, towards the bare cells. There, within 
 that narrow space, delicate women, the majority of them 
 refined women, had shut themselves up, in order to for-
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 279 
 
 get the world and to win heaven. There they had slept, 
 prayed, and loved a mystical spouse. Was this not 
 beautiful, or was it folly? It was, perhaps, beautiful 
 and at the same time folly. When I visited the chapel, 
 I pictured them there, at the night service, chanting in 
 their dreamy voices and, in their sleepiness, letting the 
 heavy, black breviaries fall sometimes. And as I walked 
 on through the cloisters, innumerable " Whys and 
 Wherefores " came to my lips. In an inner court- 
 yard, there were a few shrubs, around which a tangle of 
 impoverished verdure was growing. This was, prob- 
 ably, all that these Carmelites had known of Nature. 
 On leaving, I turned round for a last look. There was 
 a softened, strange light of many shades of grey, a 
 veritable purgatory light, which seemed specially fitting 
 for departed souls, or for the great black and white 
 birds which had just been driven away from their con- 
 vent. From a purely artistic point of view I regretted 
 the expulsion. When I was once more out in the sunny 
 street, in the vibrating air, I drew a long breath of re- 
 lief. Formerly I should have apostrophised St. The- 
 resa roundly, but I knew that she and her sisters had 
 done nothing but live out what had been written for 
 them. She said herself : " These houses of the Order, 
 which are the houses of God," and further on : "I con- 
 sider their affairs as God's affairs ! " 
 
 Why did Providence shut up so many human beings 
 in cloisters? Why was a seal put upon their lips? 
 Was it not, perhaps, because these extremely impres- 
 sionable creatures needed a superhuman ideal? Was it 
 not that if they had been free to come and go in the
 
 280 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 world, they would have been very unhappy, or they 
 would have fomented grave disorder there? Convents 
 are also, perhaps, safety valves. Since there have been 
 fewer convents, the number of neurasthenic persons has 
 considerably increased and " Homes of Rest " are being 
 founded everywhere. Our first idea was that the dis- 
 banding of the religious congregations had been cruelly 
 ordained, for it is always Providence who puts the 
 pick-axe into the hands of builders, destroyers and re- 
 constructors, but the wind of the evolution which has 
 swept over them will prolong their existence. In the 
 struggle which all this brought about, the useless ones 
 and the weak ones will die out, but the others will have 
 an increase of life. This is the eternal law. If some 
 of the great religious Orders which were expelled are 
 necessary to the humanity of France, they will be 
 brought back to their houses. There will be more wis- 
 dom in future, on their side and on the side of their 
 adversaries, and this will mark considerable progress. 
 There was a great amount of needless sentimentality 
 on the subject of the eviction of the religious orders. 
 If I know anything of human nature, those who were 
 evicted enjoyed their persecution. Judge for your- 
 selves ! Persecution in a country of extreme civilisa- 
 tion, and in the midst of the twentieth century, is by 
 no means a commonplace thing! Under the monk's 
 cassock and the nun's dress, hearts must have beaten 
 with holy anger, and fits of holy anger must seem good ! 
 Some of the priests and nuns will have prayed in a 
 Christian way for their persecutors and will have felt 
 their halos becoming more luminous. That, too, could
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 281 
 
 not have been disagreeable. And then what proofs of 
 esteem, of affection and of gratitude they must have re- 
 ceived! After all, the gods put plenty of honey into 
 the cup of bitterness they were offering, and I do not 
 blame them for it. 
 
 When I was about sixteen, I was visiting some rela- 
 tives who lived in a town near which was a celebrated 
 community of Trappists. The Brother who was en- 
 trusted with the commercial transactions in the town, 
 brought butter, eggs, vegetables and fruit, every week, 
 to the house at which I was staying. He liked talking 
 and was delighted to take a cup of black coffee with 
 us. He was a man of about forty, tall, with beautiful 
 eyes, as brown as his garments, a nose like Don Quix- 
 ote's and a large mouth, ever ready for smiles and 
 gaiety. Under his monk's garb, he appeared to be a 
 gentleman. It was very evident that he was not accus- 
 tomed, like the Brother who accompanied him, to carry 
 baskets. In a brusque, awkward manner, he would put 
 the handle on his arm and then, as though it incon- 
 venienced him, pass it on to the other arm, and, very 
 soon afterwards, change arms again. This was irre- 
 sistibly droll and it amused me immensely. One day, I 
 was daring enough to ask him how he had come to be a 
 Trappist? My question, put in this way, seemed less 
 indiscreet. He looked down for a moment, as though 
 deliberating whether to satisfy my curiosity and then, 
 looking up again, he said with a smile : " You see, 
 Mademoiselle, I belong to a large family, every member 
 of which is over head and ears in the business or the 
 pleasures of this world. I read one day that it was
 
 282 
 
 necessary for one to sacrifice himself for all, and so I 
 left the regiment of cuirassiers, in which I was a lieu- 
 tenant, and I came to the Trappe to pray and work. 
 Six months ago, when the Emperor paid us a visit, I 
 asked to be allowed to serve at table just to see whether 
 he would recognise me. He looked at me several times, 
 as one does when one cannot think of the name of a 
 person who seems familiar and then, all at once, mine 
 came back to him and his surprise was very amusing. 
 He then talked to me in the kindest way possible. He 
 asked whether I did not find the rules rather hard. I 
 told him that military discipline had prepared me and 
 that I considered myself still a soldier, but in another 
 Order. I must confess that it was a great pleasure to 
 
 see him again, and also General F who was with 
 
 him, but I felt no regret for my former life. Last 
 week," continued the monk, his face lighting up, " one 
 of our Fathers died. We took it in turns, in groups, 
 to stay with him day and night, so that he should have 
 us with him to the end of his pilgrimage. He asked us 
 all to forgive him and said, * Good-bye, until we meet 
 again,' with an accent of absolute conviction. I was 
 with him at the very last. His window was open and 
 the singing of the birds accompanied the prayers for 
 the dying. He had scarcely passed away when a huge 
 ray of the setting sun came and made a shroud of light 
 for him. This was very beautiful. An end like that 
 is not paid for too dearly by a life of renunciation. I 
 thought of you, Mademoiselle," added the worthy 
 Brother, " and I said to myself that if you had been a 
 witness of this, you might have been tempted to turn
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 283 
 
 Trappist too." " I, a Trappist ! " I exclaimed and, 
 in my insolent youthfulness, I greeted the idea with a 
 burst of laughter. This Don Quixotic monk was senti- 
 mental and romantic, one of those men whom women 
 only understand when they do not belong to them. On 
 thinking of him, I have sometimes said to myself that 
 the Trappe had been his earthly salvation as well as 
 his heavenly one. And a few words, flung by the gods 
 into microscopic cellules, had sufficed for transforming 
 a cuirassier into a Trappist. Is not that miraculous 
 enough ? 
 
 One day, in Paris, I happened to be crossing the 
 Place des Victoires at noon. It was just the time when 
 those employed in the banks, the workrooms and shops 
 in the neighbourhood were leaving for their midday 
 meal, and the square was filled with joyous uproar. 
 From a side street two monks, whom I took to be Fran- 
 ciscans, emerged. It was just at the swarming-time of 
 the congregations. The two monks were young and, 
 with their crown of fair hair and their pink and white 
 complexions, they looked like Alsatians. Their sack- 
 cloth garments, their bare feet in sandals and they 
 themselves gave one the impression of remarkable clean- 
 liness. They were each carrying a small bag, the real 
 evangelical bag, which no doubt contained their entire 
 worldly possessions. On finding themselves in the midst 
 of this noisy crowd of workers jusi let loose, they looked 
 round in rather a scared way. Their confusion in- 
 creased when a band of young men and girls gathered 
 round them, and pretended to bar their path. In a 
 gentle, firm manner, but not without turning very red,
 
 284 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 they endeavoured to make a way for themselves, but, 
 out of pure mischief, the would-be jokers gathered more 
 closely round them. A workman, in a blue blouse, who 
 had been watching the little scene, called out to them 
 roughly : " Will you stop it, you lot of idiots, and 
 leave the Brothers in peace. The street belongs to them 
 as much as it does to you. What if they are monks? 
 That's what they chose to be. It takes all sorts to 
 make a world. If all the men were to have families, 
 there mightn't be enough to put in the children's 
 mouths." These words of rough common sense took 
 effect better than any sermon. The chain broke at once 
 and the two Franciscans went on their way, but not 
 without a glance of gratitude to their defender. 
 
 " It takes all sorts to make a world." And it was 
 a man of the people who had discovered that ! It was 
 he who had had the intuition of this fundamental truth. 
 I fancy that if we were capable of thoroughly investi- 
 gating it, it would suffice for explaining Life to us. 
 
 Monks and nuns were necessary, it appears. With 
 the exception of sectarians of narrow mentality, we all 
 like to come across these living mysteries amongst us. 
 We are not sorry to have tcomen of the temple around 
 our beds of suffering and misery. As they are free 
 from all earthly cares, they have serene faces. Their 
 thoughts soar above the humiliating horrors of sickness 
 and their soul is modulated by prayer. The sanctuary 
 has made their step light and, thanks to their contact 
 with the various objects of religious worship, they have 
 an exquisitely light touch and a kind of spiritual nmg- 
 netisin. These izomcn of the temple arc a great luxury
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 285 
 
 even, that the gods have prepared for our evil hours. 
 One day, at Florence, I was surprised to see that my 
 host, who was Swiss, and a great Calvinist, was being 
 nursed by " a blue sister." " Ah, you see," he said, 
 " for binding up a gouty man's leg, there is no one 
 like a Catholic Sister. I know all about that ! If only 
 they had a little more science they would be divine 
 nurses." And the man was quite right in this. 
 
 A preacher once said that " Philosophy is incapable 
 of producing a Sister of Charity." Yes, but at the 
 same time, it can tell us how and why Providence made 
 them. And that is certainly something.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THIS metaphysical dream, which has produced heroes, 
 martyrs, creatures with all kinds of hallucinations, mad 
 people, wise people and invalids, which, after all, has 
 been extremely useful to Life, is nourished and fed by 
 hope, faith, love and prayer. Faith and hope are cer- 
 tainly the most superhuman and divine of our faculties, 
 for faculties they decidedly are. " Faith," according 
 to St. Paul, " is the substance of things hoped for, the 
 evidence of things not seen." This definition, which he 
 gives in one of the Epistles to the Hebrews, is abso- 
 lutely philosophical and scientific. No modernist could 
 have spoken better. There certainly are, in our motor, 
 two twin cellules, those which engender hope and faith. 
 Hope is always weaving pictures of happiness, promises 
 of love, glory, fortune and of Paradise, whilst faith has 
 the inward ^is%on. It has never been blind as it is said 
 to be. It believes in a good which does not exist, which 
 will, perhaps, never exist, and it gives us the joy of this 
 good. 
 
 The creation of these two cellules, or of these two 
 groups of cellules, would suffice for proving to us that 
 God has pity on humanity and that He is alive to its 
 sorrows. " A means of maintaining equilibrium," the 
 sceptics will say. That may be, but does not equi- 
 librium mean health, peace and happiness? "A de- 
 coy ! " the pessimists will add. " We have all of us, 
 
 more or less, believed in friendship, love, fidelity, and we 
 
 286
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 287 
 
 have all of us been deceived. We have all of us, more 
 or less, believed in victory, and we have all been more 
 or less vanquished ! " 
 
 Yes, but we have all of us believed. Faith has stimu- 
 lated our best cellules, those of will, courage, enthusi- 
 asm and we have created, in this way, reserves of forces 
 which we have found in the days of our trials. Faith 
 produces a sort of spiritual warmth which has a re- 
 markable influence on the physique. The sick person 
 who has faith in his doctor will get well much more 
 readily and more quickly. His presence, and even his 
 voice, will relieve the invalid in the strangest way; but 
 faith, like love, does not come at command, it is a mys- 
 tery of fluids and of affinities. 
 
 Religious faith is still more wonderful, for, as St. 
 Paul says, " it is the evidence of things not seen." He 
 means, of course, not seen with the eyes of the flesh. 
 The priests of all religions, without exception, have 
 demonstrated that which they have not seen, but with 
 which they have been inspired and, by means of sugges- 
 tion, they have communicated to the mass of humanity 
 a reflected faith. They have inculcated belief in the 
 existence of God, in future life, in punishments, in re- 
 wards, in the dogmas that they have elaborated, and 
 humanity has believed blindly. They have given it the 
 Beyond, they have opened the doors of this Beyond and, 
 in all confidence, humanity has rushed towards it behind 
 them, and has placed all its ambitions and its hopes of 
 happiness on that Beyond. 
 
 Theplogal forces have produced mysticism. Mysti- 
 cism ! Oh, heavens, into what a wasps' nest I am fall-
 
 288 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 ing! I began to think of St. Catherine of Sienna and 
 of St. Theresa, of those women, who, by the very in- 
 tensity of their desire, materialised Christ. The word 
 materialised is the right one, although it is a term used 
 in spiritism. As I thought of these women, I saw be- 
 fore me an abyss so deep that I decided to pass on my 
 way, professedly out of respect for the great mysteries 
 of Nature. " The Other One " was not duped by my 
 pretty phrase, but brought me back to the very edge 
 of this abyss and, whether I would or not, I had to go 
 down into it. At present I do not regret this at all. 
 
 Mysticism is the belief or the philosophy which ad- 
 mits the existence of secret communications between 
 man and God. The Pagans were great -mystics ; they 
 felt quite as much, if not more than Christians, the 
 action of the Divinity on all beings, and even on all 
 things. They believed that this action could only work 
 by means of Incarnation. This seemed to them an abso- 
 lutely natural phenomenon. And, after all, is not God 
 incarnated in everything? This conviction was per- 
 petuated in Roman Catholic Christianism. All the 
 waves of human thoughts which, during centuries, had 
 been attracted by the Infinite, produced Plato, the 
 thinker who ascended the greatest number of the Olym- 
 pian summits, whose philosophy is the highest expres- 
 sion of the metaphysical ideal. This ideal is the syn- 
 thesis of Paganism. The tree had now given its fruit. 
 It was destined not to die, for death does not exist, 
 but to be transformed into Christianism. Plato was an 
 intellectual mystic and an essentially Western mystic. 
 Christ, who was to spiritualise the Western soul, was
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 289 
 
 an Oriental and, thanks to his Orientalism, his religion, 
 like all the great religions, had its " secret garden." 
 In this garden, Jesus sowed simple, wholesome flowers, 
 of vivifying fragrance ; flowers of love, of kindness and 
 of forgiveness. Then came the Asiatic monks, from 
 the barbarous East, who despised these humble plants, 
 the virtues of which had made the first Christians. 
 They did not understand how to tend these plants and 
 so allowed them to degenerate or to perish. They then 
 scattered amongst them the seed of strange, complex 
 plants of poisonous aspect, plants which intoxicated 
 men by their violent scents and which were cruel to the 
 fingers that plucked them. These monks made of Ca- 
 tholicism a two-headed eagle. There is the Catholicism 
 which I shall call classic and secular, and then the 
 romantic and regular Catholicism. 
 
 The classic and secular Catholicism is the one that 
 we all know more or less. It prescribes obedience to the 
 commandments of God and of the Church, an absolute 
 belief in the dogmas of this religion, and the practice 
 of its worship. It is simple, rigid, almost mathematical 
 in character. It puts a little ideal into a whole multi- 
 tude of commonplace, terribly sordid lives. It colours 
 these lives by means of the poetry of its symbols and of 
 its ceremonies. It gives traditions and an ecclesiastical 
 family to those who have not either, and that is enor- 
 mous ! It teaches thousands of creatures to feel their 
 soul and their conscience, it develops in them the inner 
 life. This Catholicism is that of the great majority. 
 
 Romantic and regular Catholicism transports the in- 
 dividual into a more elevated metaphysical zone. This
 
 290 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 is, fortunately, the Catholicism of the few, for its 
 ecstasies would unhinge too many minds. In this zone, 
 prayer becomes the orison, that is the fusion, the direct 
 colloquy with the Divinity, and this is only obtained 
 after more or less long practice. Confession, that act 
 which answers to a need of our nature and which, in 
 itself, is wholesome and beneficent, becomes a spiritual 
 communion, with a director whose duty it is to initiate 
 the penitent into the phenomena of mysticism, to guide 
 him along the paths which lead to the " secret garden," 
 to the zone of visions, of ecstasies, of miracles ! There 
 are three of these paths, it appears, each of which leads 
 to the other two: the purgatorial path, the illuminative 
 path and the unitive path. In the purgatorial path, 
 one tries, by means of frequent fasting, and voluntary 
 mortifications, to get into a state supposed to be super- 
 natural, but which, in reality, is only too natural. 
 After this, one enters the illuminative path and feels 
 one's self penetrated and guided by a celestial light. 
 Finally, one reaches the unitive path, where one has the 
 sensation of the loving union of the Creator with His 
 creature. This must certainly be an extraordinary sen- 
 sation, even if only created by the imagination. Mil- 
 lions of simple, pious Catholics know nothing of the 
 existence of this mysticism, and if they were to know 
 of it, they would consider it dangerous and immoral. 
 There are, though, among the extremely romantic 
 Catholics, a certain number who are affiliated with the 
 Dominicans and with the Franciscans, who follow as 
 closely as possible their religious practices, imitate 
 their austerities, wear hair-cloth under their fashion-
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 291 
 
 able clothes, discipline themselves and have a confessor 
 and a director. To what degree of initiation do they 
 arrive? This I do not know, but their poor little flights 
 must be very grotesque, and yet they must feel immense 
 satisfaction as far as their vanity is concerned, for, in 
 Parisian slang, " they think they are in it." 
 
 I have been into this " secret garden." I did not, 
 of course, go by the usual paths, as they are barred to 
 outsiders, but I took the path of thought. I hovered 
 for rather a long time over its enclosure, I saw some of 
 the great mystics and I endeavoured to surprise the 
 truth. I wonder whether I succeeded? Future dis- 
 coveries will decide this. 
 
 For the last two months, I have had several books on 
 my sofa, where I always read. These books are: The 
 Life of St. Francis of Assisi and of St. Claire, " I 
 Fioretti di Santo Francesco," The Life of St. Dominic, 
 The Life of St. Catherine of Sienna and The Life of 
 St. Theresa. I plunged into this high flight literature 
 unwillingly, thinking that " The Other One " certainly 
 makes me do strange things. In a very little time, I 
 began to feel unexpected pleasure and, as I read on, I 
 was perfectly delighted. 
 
 In these Lives of Saints, published in the orthodox 
 precincts of St. Sulpice, I felt, with private jubilation, 
 the unconscious modernism of Catholic thought. Oh, 
 it is moving along, slowly perhaps, like that tortoise, 
 which so humoristically represents the Church at the 
 feet of Christ, in the chancel of St. Paul-beyond-the- 
 Walls at Rome. Like the tortoise, though, it does 
 move. These lives of the saints, in a charming edition
 
 292 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 with a blue cover, are much better written than such 
 books were formerly. One feels in them a care for 
 truth, and our twentieth-century mentality is also re- 
 spected. At the same time, they are rigidly orthodox, 
 although they do attribute to legend and tradition the 
 miracles that are too barbarous, such for instance as 
 the gift of the rosary to St. Dominic by the Virgin, 
 and the Resurrection of Napoleon Orsini, the nephew 
 of Cardinal de Fossanova. The Life of St. Catherine 
 of Sienna, by the Comtesse de Flavigny, published some 
 thirty years ago, was absolutely fantastical and im- 
 probable, and well calculated for making the thinker 
 distrustful. Out of loyalty to the Catholic Church, 
 I refused to lend it to a Protestant friend who asked 
 me for it. Those who are interested in all the mani- 
 festations of Life will find these mystical novels, which 
 take place in the Beyond, a thousand times more capti- 
 vating than our profane novels. 
 
 I envied the gods, more particularly, the weaving of 
 the romance of St. Francis of Assisi. This seems to me 
 a beautiful metaphysical love story. 
 
 The son of the merchant Bernardone, known as 
 Brother Francis, preached the Lent sermons of 1212 
 in St. George's Church at Assisi. He was small, thin 
 and plain-looking, but his eyes were full of spiritual 
 light and his voice was warm. Instead of repeating 
 over and over again the dogmas and praises of the 
 Church, he spoke of the life of Nature and translated 
 this into images which his poetical genius coloured. 
 Among his listeners, was the soul that was destined for 
 him, that was to live his dream with him and collaborate
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 293 
 
 in his work of reaction; a soul that had been, perhaps, 
 known and loved in a former existence, that of Claire 
 Scefi, a noble, beautiful, wealthy girl, who seemed to 
 have been created uniquely for a society life. By 
 means of what fluids and of what forces did Providence 
 unite, or reunite, these two beings? We cannot know 
 this, but it must have been a marvellous piece of work. 
 The words of Brother Francis enlightened and pene- 
 trated the girl's mind. He became her spiritual di- 
 rector and I fancy that this accounted for the " grand- 
 eur, virginity, gentleness, perfect union with Jesus, with 
 the Lady Poverty." 
 
 He transmitted to her his ideal, fascinated her for 
 Christ's sake and led her on to a mystical engagement 
 with Christ. Listen to this : " One evening, towards 
 midnight, she left her father's palace, accompanied by 
 a few of her friends, and hastened to the Chapel of the 
 Portioncule, where, three years previously, Francis had 
 celebrated his own union with ' Poverty,' the widow of 
 Christ! The Franciscan Brothers, who were awaiting 
 her, advanced to meet her, chanting as they came, and 
 led her to the altar. * My daughter, what do you 
 want ? ' asked the saint. ' God,' answered the bride- 
 elect, * the god of the manger and of Calvary.' And 
 then, on her knees, with bare feet, she laid down all that 
 she had of any value, silk garments and jewels, which 
 the Brothers were to distribute among the poor. 
 Francis took up the scissors and cut off the girl's fair 
 hair; he put on her a robe of ash-grey colour, girdled 
 with a cord, covered her head with a coarse veil and put 
 sandals on her feet." Claire then pronounced the three
 
 294 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 vows which put an insurmountable barrier between her- 
 self and the world, the evil and the good. Was it not 
 the engagement of Claire and Francis that was cele- 
 brated in the Chapel of the Portioncule, rather than 
 that of the girl and Christ? I think so, and I hope so. 
 Under the inspiration of him who had become her 
 master, more than any man has ever been the master 
 of any woman, Claire founded the mendicant order of 
 the " Poor Ladies." Francis established her in the 
 poetical hermitage of St. Damien, not far from his own 
 convent, and insisted on strict seclusion for her. This 
 foundation, which they had organised together, must 
 have necessitated long and frequent conversations which, 
 I do not doubt, were a source of superhuman, but not 
 supernatural, happiness to them both. All through 
 this wonderful romance, lived on the metaphysical plane, 
 there are adorable scenes, scenes that are supremely 
 touching and dramatic. Earthly love, set in spiritual- 
 ity as in rubies, shines there with all the brilliancy of 
 the diamond. Listen to this : " Claire had a great de- 
 sire to eat with St. Francis." How divinely human this 
 desire was ! " He refused her this favour for a long 
 time and he only granted it at the entreaty of his fel- 
 low monks." " As you think it should be thus," says 
 St. Francis, " I agree with you, but, so that her pleas- 
 ure may be greater, I should like the meal to take place 
 here, at St. Mary-of-the-Angels. Claire has been shut 
 up at St. Damien for so long a time, that she will cer- 
 tainly rejoice and be strengthened on seeing St. Mary's 
 again, for it was here that we cut off her hair and that 
 she became the bride of Jesus Christ. Therefore, in
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 295 
 
 the name of God, it is here that we will eat together." 
 And they ate together, for the first and last time. 
 St. Francis had the repast prepared on the bare ground. 
 " As soon as the first dish was served, the saint began 
 to speak of God, in so marvellous a way that they felt 
 themselves lost in Him." Was it in Him, or in each 
 other that they felt lost? That was their secret, or 
 rather the secret of Providence. What pleasure I 
 should have had in imagining and analysing the joy of 
 the poor recluse on feeling herself out in the open air, 
 and on seeing once more the Umbrian country ; and her 
 emotion on finding herself once more in the chapel where 
 she had taken her vows, and on visiting the convent 
 where her master lived ! 
 
 During the last years of his life, St. Francis had cut 
 off all outward communication between St. Damien and 
 the Portioncule. Perhaps this was because he did not 
 feel his love to be as spiritual. He said, one day, to 
 those who were praising him in an extravagant way: 
 " Do not praise me too much, for I am still capable of 
 having sons and daughters." 
 
 When Claire knew that Francis was mortally ill, she 
 sent him word that she wanted to see him. He refused 
 to let her come, but he promised her that she should 
 see him again. He did not, perhaps, wish her to be- 
 hold him in all the ugliness of dissolution, but in the 
 beauty of death and that, too, was very human. He 
 did receive the woman, though, whom he had liked next 
 best to St. Claire, a Roman lady, Jacoba de Septem- 
 soliis, whom he had surnamed his " Brother Jacqueline." 
 " On hearing of the illness of the saint, she had has-
 
 296 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 tened to him." No woman was allowed to enter the 
 Portioncule, but an exception was made for the mas- 
 ter's comrade. She brought with her the robe she had 
 been weaving for him, the robe which was to serve for 
 his mortuary garment. Thanks to a childishness which 
 was curious enough, he wished to have a patch sewn on 
 to it, as he did not think it looked poor enough. He 
 was not ashamed of his disease before his friend, 
 " Brother Jacqueline," who had the privilege of tend- 
 ing him during the last week of his life and of keeping 
 vigil over his mortal remains. What would not the 
 poor Abbess of St. Damien have given for this privi- 
 lege ! " In order to keep the promise that Francis had 
 made, the funeral procession went towards the town, 
 taking the road that passed by St. Damien. The body 
 was carried into the Church and placed so near the 
 grated window of the Sisters, that they could see their 
 spiritual Father for the last time. And the Brothers 
 took away the grating, through which the servants of 
 God were accustomed to receive the Sacred Host, and 
 they took the venerable body up from the stretcher and 
 held it on their arms, in front of the window, as long 
 as Madame Claire and the other Sisters wished, for 
 their comfort and consolation." 
 
 WTiat waves of sentiment and of spirituality must 
 have been the outcome of these great scenes so admir- 
 ably conceived ! I have given them, because they are 
 a revelation with regard to the mystic soul of which we 
 know so little. In taking them from the history of 
 St. Francis and St. Claire, the inveterate romance 
 writer that I am has felt, in imagination, the joy and
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 297 
 
 the grief that were lived some seven centuries ago, and 
 that was delicious. These are the miracles of God ! 
 
 If it had not been for my great desire to be just, I 
 should not have read the life of St. Dominic again. I 
 had heard it read in the convent refectory, in what I 
 call the fabulous days of my youth, and I had con- 
 ceived a lively antipathy for him. I do not know 
 whether, in a previous existence, I had belonged to the 
 Albigenses, but the Dominican garb has always made 
 a disagreeable impression on me. Two years ago, in 
 Rome, I lunched with a Father from Aventine, a man 
 of great culture, not a modernist, but modern and abso- 
 lutely charming. He was a typical monk of the kind 
 that civilisation has made, and yet I felt the strangest 
 and most ridiculous embarrassment all the time I was 
 with him. 
 
 After reading this life of St. Dominic again, my 
 feeling towards this saint of the Inquisition has not 
 changed, but I understand him better. Determinism 
 makes me pity those who are doomed to cause suffering 
 more than those who are doomed to suffer. " The life 
 of every man," says the Swedish writer, Joergensen, 
 " is merely the fruit of his own will." That is abso- 
 lutely true, but, as the cellules which contain that will 
 are given to him by God, those particular cellules and 
 not any others, it is always and only the will of God 
 that he carries out. 
 
 The great mystics of the East and of the West, 
 the mystics who have had visions, the true mystics and 
 the false ones, have all, whatever the priests may say, 
 been suffering from that mysterious disease which we
 
 298 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 call neurosis. The phenomena of this disease are so 
 strange that, in barbarous times, they were considered 
 supernatural. In the hospitals, stigmata, the odour of 
 sanctity and the bleeding hands are well known. At the 
 Salpetriere Hospital of Paris, apparent death, due to 
 catalepsy can be seen, with stiffened limbs and knotted 
 nerves. Then too, one sees fits of ecstasy and trances, 
 when the poor human faces, with their rapturous ex- 
 pressions, seem to have a halo around them. Dos- 
 toiewski, the writer, was epileptic, and he declared that 
 just before his attacks he used to have the most ecstatic 
 joy. The Middle Ages were the great epoch for reli- 
 gious neurasthenia, and that is easily accounted for. 
 The psychical currents, bearing along with them ideas 
 and images, were neither as numerous nor as rapid in 
 those days as they are at present. Mentalities were not 
 well ventilated. For long centuries, Christian thought 
 had been fed solely on the stories of the Old and New 
 Testaments, on dogmas, legends, wonders and, above 
 all, on the drama of the Passion. People almost fainted 
 in front of the most lamentable Christs, and these could 
 never be sufficiently agonising. With morbid compas- 
 sion, people counted his bones and his wounds. They 
 had not tears enough for the woes of the Virgin Mary ; 
 and all this without realising that they were living 
 again, not the crucifixion of Christ, but the eternal 
 crucifixion of humanity. All grain heaped up spoils, 
 and this became tainted and the result was sick per- 
 sons mystics. In some of their cerebral cellules, 
 over-saturated with religion, thanks to a kind of 
 spiritual mirage, all the sacred personages appeared to
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 299 
 
 them. By means of that duality which idealists and 
 writers possess, they believed that they conversed with 
 them. Priests and monks, instead of trying to cure 
 them, kept up their illusionism, by means of their own 
 dreams, by pictures of Paradise and hell, by fabulous 
 wonders, by miracles performed, impossible to say how. 
 It was thus that the Church, either out of ignorance 
 or intentionally, I hope out of ignorance, created the 
 mysticism which has been of such service to it. 
 
 In the case of neurasthenic people who were not pious, 
 but rather incredulous, the visions were anything but 
 religious ones, and it is the same at present. When 
 they were flung on the ground, as though by invisible 
 hands and when, foaming at the mouth, they writhed 
 in horrible convulsions, when they uttered blasphemies 
 and filthy words, they were supposed to be possessed 
 by demons and, willingly or unwillingly, they had to 
 submit to exorcism. There were bands of exorcists al- 
 ways ready among the clergy, and there was plenty of 
 work for them. Doctors ought to have attended the 
 poor unfortunates instead of these exorcists. 
 
 I, too, from ignorance (for who has not sinned out 
 of ignorance) I refused to believe in the visions and 
 raptures of the saints. At present, I believe most of 
 them to have been true and perfectly natural. I fancy 
 that phenomena of this kind take place in the frontal 
 lobes, where the metaphysical and all the other dreams 
 take place. When these cellules are set going by the 
 nerves, that is by conductors which are either at too 
 great a tension, or that are too slack, or perhaps even 
 knotted, they may produce all kinds of aberrations.
 
 300 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 Are there not, in our brains, alvearies which distil the 
 intoxication of love. And it is so certainly our motor 
 which is the theatre of all this, that neither Christ, 
 the Virgin, the Saints, nor yet any of the spirits 
 evoked by mediums, have ever said anything to reveal 
 beings existing on a higher plane than ours, or any 
 other person than the one who made them talk. St. 
 Dominic often slept in one of the churches. It would 
 not, therefore, be surprising if, when at the foot of 
 one of the altars of the Virgin, a film should have been 
 formed behind his forehead representing her with the 
 child Jesus offering her the chaplet with the fifteen 
 ten beads, a film which led to the institution of the 
 Rosary. 
 
 A French writer, I believe it was Stendhal, had a 
 fancy to spend the night in St. Peter's of Rome. He 
 hid in a confessional box and so got shut in the Church. 
 In the morning, he was found in a swoon. His nerves 
 and his imagination had not been able to bear the si- 
 lence and mystery of the immense Basilica. A re- 
 ligious, neurasthenic person would probably have been 
 carried away to Paradise or to hell. 
 
 And these psychical phenomena always reflect the 
 mentality of the epoch. Thinkers may ruminate over 
 the fact that, in all the visions of the Middle Ages, 
 there is blood. Fortunately it was always the blood 
 of Jesus, otherwise these visions would have made crim- 
 inals instead of saints. In those barbarous days, 
 women, during the time of their gestation, must fre- 
 quently have seen the streets running with the blood 
 of fratricidal struggles, and this sight must have made
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 301 
 
 its impression on the fruit of their womb. It was no 
 doubt this which tinged with red the soul of the thir- 
 teenth century mystics, and which made that soul so 
 cruel to others and to itself. St. Dominic administered 
 discipline to himself and had himself beaten with triple 
 chains of iron, and we may be sure that he experienced 
 a morbid j oy on feeling his flesh torn in this way. This 
 makes me think that there is reason in accusing him of 
 having been the inventor of the Inquisition, the pred- 
 ecessor of the famous terrorist, Torquemada. He was 
 a Spanish monk, and under the Spaniard you will find 
 the African fanatic. One feels this on reading the 
 following lines : " Some heretics having been convicted, 
 in Toulouse, were handed over to the secular tribunal, 
 because they refused to return to the faith. Dominic 
 looked at one of them, with a heart initiated into the 
 secrets of God, and said to the officers of the court: 
 ' Keep this one apart and do not burn him.' Then, 
 turning towards the heretic with great gentleness," 
 (Oh, that gentleness so near to the stake!) "he said: 
 ' I know, my son, that you will need a long time, but 
 that you will become good and holy.' " This is rather 
 like a cannibal scene, when the chief of the tribe says 
 to the executors : " Keep this one for to-morrow, he 
 will be better." The unfortunate man was kept 
 twenty years. That was very kind, in truth. He was 
 converted finally and not burnt. 
 
 Vocations which have made great mystics have al- 
 ways declared themselves after an illness. This was 
 the case with St. Francis of Assisi. Unless reason be 
 only a vain word, it is impossible to believe the man
 
 302 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 quite sane in his mind who, in the episcopal palace of 
 Assisi, " in the presence of a large assembly, when 
 called upon to return to his father what belonged to 
 him, disappeared into an adjoining room and came back, 
 presently, completely naked, except for a waistband 
 of fur round his loins, carrying under his arm all his 
 clothes, which he deposited, together with a little pile 
 of gold, at his father's feet." Later on, he orders 
 Ruffin, one of his friars, belonging to one of the best 
 families of Assisi, to go, quite naked, from the Por- 
 tioncule to the town and to preach, quite naked, in 
 the Cathedral. He gives a similar order to Brother 
 Ange. He, too, was to go, quite naked, to the town 
 and to announce that the Master would arrive the fol- 
 lowing day and intended to preach. Twice, during his 
 last illness, he asked to be placed, quite naked, on the 
 naked earth. This is very much like the fancy of a 
 neurasthenic person. 
 
 For the last thirty years, whenever people of the 
 lower class see any one doing things, the strangeness 
 of which amazes them, they no longer say that the 
 person is mad but, with a shrug of the shoulders and 
 a note of pity in the voice, they say that this person is 
 HI. This explanation is more correct and the son of 
 Pierre Bernardone was " ill." 
 
 St. Dominic and St. Francis were enthusiastic about 
 poverty. The latter, who was romantic and also a 
 poet, had the most passionate and childish worship of 
 poverty. How many times I have regretted that clean- 
 liness, divine cleanliness was not the object of his wor- 
 ship for, as the English say : " Cleanliness is next to
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE SOS 
 
 godliness." This would have been so much more whole- 
 some, morally and physically! Dirt, though, was to 
 serve also. 
 
 About the middle of the thirteenth century, there was 
 a curious need of suffering, of poverty and of humilia- 
 tion in mystic souls. This was, perhaps, intended to 
 serve as a counterpoise to the excessive need of enjoy- 
 ment, wealth and display which had developed among 
 the upper clergy. And, incredible though it may seem, 
 the creation of the mendicant Orders, feminine and mas- 
 culine, was inspired by the same irresistible reasons as 
 the heresy of the Albigenses, of the Catharists and of 
 the Vaudois. These reasons were the laxity of all 
 moral discipline in the Catholic Church. These two 
 reactions, similar and diverse, struggled ferociously 
 with each other. 
 
 The monks, and the poor women they had seques- 
 tered, renounced the transmission of life, in the hope of 
 acquiring imperishable riches. The heretics would not 
 lend themselves to this transmission out of hatred to 
 Life, which they believed to be the devil's work, since 
 they saw it corrupted by those who ought to have puri- 
 fied it. This, too, was an ideal of sick people. 
 
 Instead of amending its own ways, the Church exer- 
 cised, over these unfortunate heretics, a more cruel 
 repression than any of the persecutions for which it 
 thought it had earned a crown. The death in the 
 amphitheatre, ordered by the Pagans, was more prompt 
 and more merciful than the death by torture in the 
 dungeons of the Inquisition, invented by Christians 
 for Christians. The institution of the mendicant Or-
 
 804 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 ders was the drag which was put on the Church for 
 a short time, for the sake of stopping it on its march 
 towards the abyss, but it started on again soon and 
 God be thanked for it, as this march was to lead on 
 to the Renaissance and to the Reformation, its salva- 
 tion and ours too. Catholics who do not think do not 
 look at things in this way, but philosophy does, and 
 philosophy is always In agreement -with Providence. 
 
 St. Catherine of Sienna, born in the middle of all 
 the horrors of civil war, and whose mother was subject 
 to cataleptic fits, was certainly in worse health than 
 any of the other mystics, whose lives I have just been 
 reading. She was above all a grande amoureuse. At 
 the age of seveji, she imagined that Christ had dictated 
 the following prayer to her: "Oh, most blessed and 
 most holy Virgin, who, first among all women, conse- 
 crated your virginity to God, and by His grace be- 
 came the mother of His son, I beseech you very humbly 
 not to look at my misdeeds and at my nothingness. I 
 am a poor creature, but I beg you to do me the great 
 favour of giving me, as a husband, your very dear 
 child Jesus Christ, for I love him and desire him with 
 all my heart. I promise you, and promise him too, 
 that I will never have another husband and thnt I will 
 keep my virginity for him ! " This is so childish that 
 one hns not even the courage to laugh at it, but one 
 wonders what atavisms could have produced such pre- 
 cocity? After such a prayer, it is not surprising that, 
 at the age of twenty-one, Catherine saw the ceremony 
 of her mystic marriage. " In the presence of St. John 
 the Evangelist, of the prophet David, who drew from
 
 305 
 
 the harp strains of infinite sweetness (so that there was 
 even music) Mary, the Mother, took her right hand 
 and gave it to her son. * I, thy Creator and thy 
 Saviour,' said Christ, putting on the girl's finger a 
 ring that was as strong as the diamond, as pure as the 
 wave and as dazzling as flame, * I wed thee in the faith ; 
 I will protect thy faith from all violation and, armed 
 with this force, thou shalt conquer the world until the 
 day when, in Paradise, thou shalt celebrate with me, 
 thy eternal marriage.' ' This was, in truth, the most 
 morganatic of all marriages. Was this story of the 
 apparition an untruth? Not at all. It was merely a 
 phenomenon produced by the imagination. The un- 
 fortunate, or the blessed, St. Catherine had entered the 
 " secret garden." She had undoubtedly climbed up 
 the purgatorial road, passed along the illuminative 
 road and the unitive road of initiation. This alarming 
 spiritual gymnastic exercise, the play of theologal 
 forces set in movement by intense desire, might quite 
 well have created within her the film of the mystical 
 marriage. She had no doubt believed it to be real, 
 and she had felt the ring, which was only visible to her- 
 self, on her finger, " the ring strong as the diamond, as 
 pure as the wave and as dazzling as flame." She saw 
 it disappear, no doubt, when she was tempted to dis- 
 obey or sin. 
 
 In no other saint's visions was there as much blood 
 as in those of St. Catherine, and this, as I have said, 
 was a reflection of the epoch. It was the blood of 
 Jesus Christ, of course, that she saw flowing and she 
 seems to have taken a morbid delight in this. Listen
 
 306 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 to this : " One morning at St. Dominic, she approached 
 the Holy Table. Her face, all bathed in tears, was 
 beaming with joy. Accustomed as the Dominican, who 
 was officiating, was to see her in a state of ecstasy, he 
 was surprised. Later on, he questioned her as to the 
 cause of such happiness. * Have you never seen a 
 mother show the breast to her child, let it cry for it 
 and then give it the food it wanted?' she replied. 
 * That is just as the Lord was doing with me. After 
 letting my lips nearly touch his side, he moved away, 
 smiling at my tears, and finally he gave me my fill of 
 his blood, making me long to leave all and follow 
 him.' ' Is it possible, after reading the Gospel, to be- 
 lieve in the reality of such a vision? Is Christ, who 
 was so simple and so dignified, recognisable in this cruel 
 spouse? Catherine says, too, that she had the sensa- 
 tion of the taste of Christ's blood. This sensation was 
 neither more nor less than hysteria. She fed her nuns 
 with bread soaked in this blood and it vivified them. 
 On her death-bed she wanted bloody sweats. In the 
 thirteenth century, people saw in all this supernatural 
 phenomena. In the twentieth century we can only see 
 pathological phenomena in it all. The gods needed 
 these sick people and most of them did remarkable work 
 in the world. St. Catherine of Sienna, the daughter of 
 an uneducated dyer, brought the Western schism to 
 an end, led the Pope back to Rome, made peace between 
 several hostile Republics and took rank herself among 
 the great women of Italy. Her halo of sanctity served 
 as well as an army. These are the things which rouse 
 my admiration, more than any in the world.
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 307 
 
 St. Theresa came two centuries later, in the very 
 midst of the Renaissance. Very many leaves of the 
 human mind had been turned, and monastic influence 
 was on the wane. She was to be a reformer. It is so 
 true that our cellules contain the germs of our destinies 
 that " her great amusement as a child was to build 
 little monasteries." She played at being a nun just 
 as future society women play at being grand ladies. 
 She had one of the strongest feminine individualities 
 that has ever existed. She was a woman of good fam- 
 ily, a poetess, a writer, a thinker, a philosopher, a 
 psychologist, and neither physical suffering nor mys- 
 ticism could destroy or absorb her magnificent gifts. 
 
 She was always a thorough woman and very glad 
 to be admired. She said to Brother Jean de la Misere, 
 when he had just finished her portrait: "May God 
 forgive you, Brother Jean, for having made me so 
 ugly." She loved cleanliness and I expect that she 
 had to exercise much ingenuity in order to combine 
 cleanliness and poverty. 
 
 At the age of twenty she had experienced the martyr- 
 dom of neurasthenia, which she describes as follows : 
 " My tongue was in shreds, for I had bitten it so 
 much; I felt as though my whole body were out of 
 joint, my head was confused and my nerves so con- 
 tracted that it seemed to me I was all drawn up into a 
 ball." 
 
 With just the same sincerity, she speaks of the 
 phenomena which took place in her soul, and she did 
 what no other mystic has done, she analysed these 
 phenomena with an audacity and an independence which
 
 308 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 make these accounts veritable revelations. Psychical 
 science would do well to utilise such documents, as they 
 are more true than anything that has been written. It 
 was unwise of her to laugh at the suspicions of the In- 
 quisition, for it might have snapped her up merely for 
 having said that " in the inner world there are certain 
 natural movements which are as impossible to stop as 
 those of Heaven." She confesses that it was only with 
 great difficulty that the orison had been possible to 
 her, and the paths of the initiation had been most try- 
 ing, but she adds that she had been " rewarded by a 
 magnificent salary." She says that she " never saw 
 anything through the eyes of the body." She distin- 
 guishes between intellectual visions and imaginary vi- 
 sions. She owns that there are imaginary visions. Ah, 
 what a brave saint she was 1 And as imagination is 
 in our motor, the visions must be there too. In the 
 intellectual visions, she felt that our Lord was there 
 " by a knowledge clearer than the sun." She then 
 goes on to say : " Imaginary visions are of a less ele- 
 vated order, but, in certain respects, they are more 
 profitable, as they are more in harmony with our na- 
 ture." Is not that an admirable piece of psychology ! 
 In the same way she declares rapture to be superior 
 to ecstasy. " One cannot resist it ; " she says, " an- 
 ticipating every thought and all inner preparation, it 
 swoops down upon you with such sudden impetuosity 
 that you feel the heavenly cloud, or the divine eagle 
 seizing you and carrying you away. . . ." 
 
 She had visions of hell too. This was, no doubt, 
 when her poor nerves were strained by the superhuman
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 309 
 
 effort of the orison. She owns that she endured phys- 
 ical torture ; and she adds " but that torture was noth- 
 ing compared to the agony of soul. This was a grip, 
 an anguish, a complete break-down, so intense that it 
 seems to me in vain to attempt to depict it at all." 
 Some of our neurasthenics of the twentieth century 
 have experienced this sadness " so bitter and so hope- 
 less," that they have been driven by it to suicide. 
 
 The " unitive " path was to lead the Carmelite nun 
 of Avila to the mystic marriage, as it had led Catherine 
 of Sienna, but, and this is a. detail to note, each of 
 these marriages reflects the character of the woman ; 
 that of St. Catherine, the grande amoureuse, and that 
 of St. Theresa, the intellectual, woman. The marriage 
 of the latter took place in the following way : " Christ 
 appeared to her in an imaginary vision, and, giving 
 her his hand, he said : * Behold this nail ; it is a sign 
 that from this moment, thou art my spouse; my hon- 
 our will be thine and thy honour mine ! ' : And those, 
 it seems to me, are the words of the earthly marriage, 
 and particularly of the English marriage. The honour 
 of the Christ-God in the hands of a creature ! 
 
 St. Theresa conversed constantly with the personages 
 of her dream. She even received messages from Christ 
 'for her confessors. Did she really hear voices? I be- 
 lieve she did. A great number of men among Pagans, 
 Hebrews and Christians have heard voices and, as " all 
 things concur," these voices have all concurred towards 
 something and, frequently, towards something immense ! 
 The voice which stopped St. Paul, on the road to Da- 
 mascus, gave to the Church an intellect without which
 
 310 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 it could not have been organised. Voices have " con- 
 curred " in the erection of temples, churches, expiatory 
 monuments ; they have put victory on to many scales. 
 The voices heard by Joan of Arc gave France back to 
 its own country. The voices heard by Bernadette 
 Soubirous caused the Lourdes sanctuary to be created. 
 The question is where did all these voices come from? 
 Did they come from the Beyond? No, they certainly 
 did not. Where did they come from then? For a 
 whole week I had this note of interrogation grappling 
 with my thoughts and it was distinctly uncomfortable 
 for me. Then, one morning, in the midst of the not 
 very spiritual delight of my early breakfast, which I 
 was taking at my table near the window, in order to 
 enjoy the beauty of an Autumn dawn, I had an inward 
 start. 
 
 " Why, our cellules speak ! " I exclaimed aloud. For 
 the first time, I had just conceived this magnificent 
 miracle of Nature! They speak, and, touched by the 
 psychical currents which govern them, just as the flower 
 is touched by the sun, they say what they have to say 
 and nothing else. In certain motors that are all 
 out of order, they chatter wildly and send people mad 
 or neurasthenic. In a state of extreme concentration, 
 they can be heard so distinctly that people believe they 
 are foreign to them. A few days ago, a young com- 
 poser told me that, the evening before, as he was writ- 
 ing something for the piano, he heard the voice of the 
 violin accompanying it so distinctly that it disturbed 
 him, and he was obliged to interrupt his work in order 
 to break the spell. Was it this fact which, by nn occult
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 311 
 
 association, led me to what I believe to be the truth? 
 This I cannot tell. Scientifically, my idea is, perhaps, 
 not worth a single maravedi,* but I would not part with 
 it for a hundred thousand francs. Let others find a 
 better explanation ! 
 
 St. Theresa was not only devoted to contemplation, 
 she became a reformer and a founder. Towards the 
 age of forty-six and that age will have some mean- 
 ing for a medical man she was freed from those ter- 
 rible attacks which had made of her physically a suffer- 
 ing captive and, during a curious apostleship, she 
 experienced the joy of action. 
 
 No one, as far as I know, has yet attempted to live 
 according to the spirit of the Gospel. Very many peo- 
 ple, among others the early Christians and the mendi- 
 cant Orders, have tried to put the letter into practice. 
 That letter, which is pure Oriental literature, killed the 
 spirit of their work. St. Dominic and St. Francis of 
 Assisi, for instance, by trying to put into practice 
 evangelical poverty, created the desire for wealth in 
 their communities. This was the natural reaction. 
 Beside this, they instituted feminine branches of their 
 Orders. And, as a climax of imprudence, they estab- 
 lished, side by side with every convent of monks, a con- 
 vent of rigidly cloistered nuns. The monks had to beg 
 for these nuns and provide for all their temporal and 
 spiritual needs. These two innocent saints, with a 
 childish ignorance of real human nature, opened up the 
 way finely for his lordship, Satan, whom they spent 
 their days in fighting. And in this way, they sowed 
 
 * A very small copper coin formerly used in Spain.
 
 312 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 germs of dissolution which increased the scandal caused 
 by the Church. During the lifetime of their founders 
 even, the mendicant Orders were entirely transformed 
 and, towards the close of the thirteenth century, the 
 question of reform was being agitated. In the sixteenth 
 century, the barefooted Carmelite monks were wearing 
 shoes and their garments were of fine cloth. They were 
 to be met on all the roads of Spain, no longer on foot, 
 with their wallets on their backs, but in splendid com- 
 panies, mounted on richly harnessed mules and followed 
 by carts carrying their provisions and all the rest 
 to match. It was at this juncture that St. Theresa be- 
 came a reformer and a founder. " All things concur," 
 even the real or imaginary visions of the mystics. The 
 visions that St. Theresa had of hell inspired her with 
 such terror of the torments she saw reserved for sinners, 
 that she was possessed with the most passionate zeal 
 for their conversion. The reform of the Carmelite 
 Order seemed to be the first thing necessary, and she 
 gave herself up to this, body and soul. She began with 
 the feminine branch of the Order, by way of giving an 
 example, I suppose, to the masculine branch. This was 
 wise and intelligent. With a few nuns, she founded a 
 new convent where the rigid observances of the early 
 days were practised. With the idea of consoling her 
 Saviour, the romantic woman wanted to bring fresh 
 Mary Magdalenes to his feet and she found them. 
 The gods, for economic reasons no doubt, needed to 
 have a certain number of women taken away from social 
 activity. St. Theresa was, therefore, able to realise the 
 dream of her childhood, for she founded twenty-seven
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 313 
 
 monasteries. Each foundation must have been a little 
 adventure which gave infinite satisfaction to her mind. 
 
 Encouraged by her success, and with the approval of 
 the head of the Order, she now undertook the reform of 
 the masculine branch ; she " reformed her confessors 
 and her directors." In our twentieth century, it has 
 not yet occurred to the feminists to reform themselves 
 first and then to reform the men. St. Theresa un- 
 derstood more about psychology than they do. Her 
 struggle for the re-establishment of the rules which 
 ordered long fasting, a hard life, coarse clothing and 
 bare feet, was both epic and comic, one of Providence's 
 humoristic traits. The Carmelite nun displayed a 
 knowledge of the human soul, a philosophy and a charm 
 which place her in an unequalled position among women 
 and, in spite of the number of her adversaries, among 
 the bare-footed monks, she won the victory. This re- 
 form gave St. Theresa a joy which, I am sure, was 
 intense, for it was that of spiritual maternity. The 
 Fathers and the Brothers, whose souls she had saved, 
 became her sons, her beloved sons, and she experienced 
 the joys of maternity in its most elevated aspects. I 
 am glad of this for her sake. 
 
 I discovered an undeniable proof, during this reform, 
 of what I believe to be the truth. The Carmelite nun 
 of Avila, who was a great psychologist, feared ag- 
 glomerations of those who were to devote themselves to 
 contemplation, more particularly if they were women. 
 She even wrote to her brother : " We must not have 
 more than thirteen in any of our houses." The fol- 
 lowing is her own account of one of her visions : " In
 
 314 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 the midst of the most profound and solemn calm, I 
 heard these words from Our Lord: * You must tell the 
 barefooted Carmelite Fathers from me that, in spite of 
 the large number of monasteries, there must be few 
 monks in each.' ' It was then, certainly, the voice of 
 her own cellules that she heard, and not the voice of 
 Christ. 
 
 Our neuro-pathologists ought to read the life and 
 letters of St. Theresa. They would find valuable reve- 
 lations there for science, and more truthful ones than 
 in the confessions of their patients. 
 
 In our motor, which we know so little as yet, there 
 are not only cellules which speak, but also cellules which 
 write. The communications which the spiritists re- 
 ceive, come from the frontal lobes and their inter- 
 mediaries, and not from another world. I guarantee 
 the truth of the following episode. Some years ago, 
 a charming young friend of mine, who lived at Tou- 
 louse, was told that she had the eyes of a medium and 
 that she ought to be able to -write. Very much flattered 
 by this, she took a pencil and a sheet of paper (as it 
 was before the invention of alphabets and planchettes), 
 and concentrated her thoughts, according to the in- 
 structions she had received. For three days, she felt 
 nothing except a few nervous movements. Finally, the 
 pencil began to move, tracing first the strokes of the 
 letter m and single words without any meaning. Soon 
 complete phrases came and, in strange handwriting, in 
 endless diagonal lines, it gave pages of prose signed 
 
 " Ariel." Madame X was a Huguenot. She read 
 
 her Bible every day and it is quite possible that she had
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 315 
 
 been impressed by the name of the idol of the Moabites 
 who, it appears, was a " bad angel." I read a few of 
 her pages and I did not find a single thought which re- 
 vealed another world than ours. They were most com- 
 monplace attempts. 
 
 " Ariel " was not long before he exercised an irre- 
 sistible influence over my young friend. She thought 
 of him as a living personage, and if she had been a 
 mystic, she would, no doubt, have seen him. She wrote 
 that she felt perfectly happy and so light, so very light . 
 When one of the things he announced came to pass, she 
 was in great exultation and she forgot his wrong pre- 
 dictions. He certainly must have been a " bad angel," 
 for he played an abominable trick on her. Her hus- 
 band had to go to Paris on business, and she remained 
 at Toulouse. One evening, after dinner, she took up 
 the magic pencil and the spirit at once told her that 
 " George had been in bed for forty-eight hours with 40 
 of fever, that he thought he had gastritis, but that it 
 was a dangerous typhoid fever." She rang the bell 
 for the time-table, had some clothes put into a valise 
 and was able to catch the last train. She adored her 
 husband and, all night long, she had to endure that par- 
 ticularly cruel kind of torture of the soul which wants 
 to fly to some one and feels itself a captive. The fol- 
 lowing day she reached Paris and, more dead than alive, 
 she arrived in the court-yard of the Grand Hotel. 
 With trembling fingers she paid for her carriage and 
 then, turning round, found herself face to face with 
 George, who was beaming with health. Uttering a cry, 
 she flung her arms round his neck, embraced him fran-
 
 316 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 tically and then burst into sobs, in the presence of all 
 the on-lookers, who, at that hour of the da}', are numer- 
 ous. The little scene, related graphically by her hus- 
 band, made me laugh heartily. He told me that he 
 had had the impression of being suddenly wrapped 
 round by a cyclone. The explanation which followed 
 was somewhat humiliating for the young wife, but her 
 joy at having been mistaken was so great that she put 
 up good-humouredly with all the teasing she had to 
 endure. In spite of this lesson and her promise to her 
 husband to give up " Ariel," it was not long before she 
 took up the magic pencil once more, under the pretext 
 of wanting to know why he had deceived her. He re- 
 plied that it was to test her, and this idea was evidently 
 her own. After this test, the suggestion became so 
 powerful that the poor woman was alarmed. She went 
 to Paris to consult a great scientist, Dr. Gruby, who 
 was never appreciated as he ought to have been. She 
 told him that she was possessed by a demon and she 
 begged him to try to find her a Catholic priest who 
 would exorcise it. Dr. Gruby smiled and took down, 
 from a shelf of his bookcase, a certain pamphlet which 
 had recently been published. " Read that," he said, 
 " it is a study on auto-suggestion. You will see that 
 you are not possessed. You have set free a hitherto 
 unknown force, that is all. It is you yourself who must 
 exorcise yourself. If I ordered you to stop writing, 
 you could not do it, but you must shorten this fantas- 
 tical correspondence five minutes every day ! " And the 
 doctor, who was a psychologist, in one of his extremely 
 detailed prescriptions, told his patient how she was to
 
 317 
 
 employ every hour of her day. She had so thoroughly 
 felt the danger she was running that she now obeyed 
 religiously and she recovered, but the recovery took her 
 three months. 
 
 It seems to me that this phenomenon belongs to the 
 same family as the one that I have just been studying. 
 And now let us look at the wonderfulness of it. 
 " Ariel," that little idol of the Moabites, a very old 
 tribe of Palestine, was a fictitious creation whom the 
 Hebrews had called the " bad angel." It had come 
 from some human cellules, and it now appeared once 
 more in those of a woman of the twentieth century and 
 " served " for making her take a cruel j ourney from 
 Toulouse to Paris. 
 
 My promenade in the " secret garden " of the Roman 
 Catholic Church has rid my mind of a crowd of preju- 
 dices, due to my ignorance concerning its mysteries. 
 It has revealed to me a crowd of phenomena about which 
 I am glad to know, because they are a part of Life. 
 
 I have been told that if a chalk ring be drawn round 
 a fowl, it becomes so hypnotised by this that it will not 
 go outside the ring, even to eat or drink. It seems to 
 me as though the gods keep those who spend their time 
 in contemplation within a metaphysical ring, formed 
 by the mysteries of religion, and that these people live 
 and die within this circle without knowing anything else 
 of Life and its wonders. Within this circle, mystics 
 elaborate for themselves a more ethereal and more subtle 
 soul than ours. The concentration to which they are 
 doomed produces -films, visions which they believe belong 
 to the Beyond, and which belong to the Here below, and
 
 318 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 very much to the Here below. They are always think- 
 ing of their soul, it is their one care in this world. 
 Sin is its mania, and it would seem as though it consoled 
 itself for not being able to transgress by creating for 
 itself the illusion of sin. I know orthodox people who 
 have not taken religious vows who do the same thing. 
 St. Catherine of Sienna had a little detachment of con- 
 fessors who used to accompany her on her travels. We 
 see from the following lines the character of her sins. 
 " One day, she said to the Father of the Dominicans, 
 ' Ah, how I have offended the Creator. Whilst He, in 
 His goodness, was letting me see St. Dominic, I looked 
 away to see my brother cross the Church ! ' The 
 monk, who was probably more sound-minded than his 
 penitent, endeavoured to appease her conscience, but 
 she answered : " If you could only see with what se- 
 verity the Master whom God has given me, the apostle 
 St. Paul, blames me, you would not be so indulgent for 
 my gin. Let me tell you that if I had died without con- 
 fessing, the happiness of seeing God would not have 
 been granted to me immediately." According to my 
 idea, she deserved to have never seen Him for under- 
 standing Him so little. Sin was her mania! 
 
 The soul of mystics and of saints generally lacks true 
 grandeur. It is very narrow, childish and selfish. 
 Their faith is so absolute that they transport all that 
 they covet to the Beyond. They want honours, wealth, 
 unperishablc things and the first place, always the first 
 place. That is a sort of celestial prize cup and, in 
 order to win it, they show very earthly avidity. St. 
 Francis even, the gentle mystic of Assisi, who sat down
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 319 
 
 and ate on the bare ground, longed for a throne. This 
 desire was perhaps created by fatigue. Christ had 
 promised it to him! Giotto gives it to him in one of 
 his frescoes, and I could not help laughing on seeing 
 that it is represented by an arm-chair. 
 
 Some heretics said to St. Dominic : " What should 
 you do if we were to take possession of you? " He re- 
 plied : " I should ask you not to put me to death at 
 one blow, but to tear my limbs off one at a time, in order 
 to lengthen out my martyrdom. I should like to be 
 nothing but a trunk without limbs, to have my eyes 
 torn out, to roll in my own blood (for there is always 
 blood) in order to win a more beautiful martyr's 
 crown." 
 
 Mystics neither had perfect love for God, nor for 
 humanity. As for God, they loved Him as the dis- 
 penser of heavenly rewards. With regard to human- 
 ity, as they were placed themselves on another plane, 
 they were never in communion with it. The charity 
 they exercised was only a means of increasing their own 
 merits. St. Francis of Assisi did not kiss the leper's 
 wounds out of fraternal love, but in order to increase 
 his credit account in the Ledger. That, at any rate, 
 is my impression. The humility of the mystics is a 
 false and unintelligent humility. It is false, because 
 voluntary humiliation and poverty are a glorification. 
 It is unintelligent, because, however low down a man 
 may be in the Universe, he is the earthly masterpiece of 
 the sovereign manufacturer, and it cannot be pleasing 
 to the latter to hear man depreciating himself. God 
 is not an Oriental potentate, who needs the abasement of
 
 320 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 his servitor, in order to feel his own greatness. When 
 I was a little girl and, for some reason or another, ex- 
 claimed : " How stupid I am ! " my mother corrected 
 me, telling me that it was a lack of respect towards my 
 Creator to say such a thing, and she was perfectly right. 
 At bottom, in reality, all that is mere literature. 
 
 The mystic soul has now lived out its days of child- 
 hood and malady. It will evolve like us and with us, it 
 will learn to know God, Life, humanity, and to love 
 them in a more perfect way. Hitherto, it has only 
 scratched at the door of the Beyond, it will learn to 
 knock there in a dignified manner. That door will, per- 
 haps, open to the mystic soul, and it will then have the 
 glory of bringing back the password to Science. 
 
 In the flight that I have just made, whilst hovering 
 over the Mystical Garden of the Catholic Church, I was 
 able to surprise the true secret of the attraction that it 
 has had, and that it still has, for numbers of individuals. 
 
 There are, in that garden, just as in Eden, God, the 
 demon-serpent, Adam and Eve, all the personages of 
 the symbolical drama. The primordial struggle takes 
 place again there and, circumscribed within the meta- 
 physical plane, it must be an impassioned struggle. 
 Sly Nature has brought the feminine soul and the mas- 
 culine soul there together and, up above, just as down 
 below, they act on each other. This action, in the 
 mystical regions, produces a love and a friendship which 
 are more intense and more faithful than ours, and also 
 spiritual fraternity and flirtation which must have in- 
 tense charm. The idea of spiritual flirtation will hor- 
 rify certain persons, but I cannot take back the word,
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 321 
 
 as the thing exists among the mystics, just as it does 
 among simple mortals. It is the flower, the fruit of 
 which we eat, and I am not sure that it has not more 
 perfume than the fruit. When St. Theresa was a young 
 Carmelite nun, she converted one of her confessors, a 
 man of good family, but not of strict morality. She 
 thought she could prepare him for the love of God, 
 by means of the love that she had awakened in him. 
 Was not this a skilful method? And with that fine 
 frankness, which is my admiration, she says : " If we 
 had not had the thought of God very present, we should 
 have been in danger of offending Him seriously ! " In 
 physical flirtation, then, it is, perhaps, the devil who is 
 present. 
 
 In the " secret garden," it is by means of the con- 
 fessional that there is communion between souls, and 
 this communion is the great attraction of the cloister 
 and of the religious life. Without it, these would not 
 have been able to subsist, as the organism would not 
 have been complete. Nowhere else has human com- 
 munion been more fervent and more profound. Women 
 who would have believed it to be a deadly sin to take 
 off their veil in the presence of a man, even of their 
 own family, bare their souls entirely to the thought of 
 a confessor. They tell him all the phenomena of which 
 that soul is the theatre, they speak to him of the joys 
 and sufferings of the orison, of their struggles with that 
 private enemy whom they call " the demon," an enemy 
 which, in reality, is their own body rebelling against 
 the bad treatment inflicted upon it. Beside all this, 
 directors and penitents tell each other of " God's fa-
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 vours," that is, of their visions, their raptures, their 
 ecstasies. They start together for great flights. If 
 they should touch earth somewhere, far away from the 
 eyes of the crowd, we must not be surprised or scan- 
 dalised. What is more grave is the fact that they must 
 frequently have exaggerated and disfigured " God's fa- 
 vours." They must have created false miracles, in 
 order to astonish and interest each other. That wish, 
 common to us all, to interest our fellow-beings, must be 
 still more strong in the case of these creatures who are 
 deprived of all earthly affection and set so strangely 
 apart from the rest of the world. 
 
 At the bottom of mysticism, we find many dregs, as 
 we do in all human cups, but on the top of these dregs 
 there is a very pure liqueur. The divine transmuter 
 has drawn wonderful forces from religious neurosis, just 
 in the same way as the precious pearls have been ob- 
 tained, thanks to the oyster's disease. We cannot help 
 our admiration and our adoration in the face of such 
 marvels. 
 
 The " secret garden " of the Roman Catholic Church 
 has given us good and bad fruit. It has furnished Art, 
 Science and Life with the accumulators they needed. 
 Who would want to destroy the Basilica of Assisi, the 
 outcome of the mystic dream of St. Francis? Every 
 intelligent Protestant, every Protestant thinker and 
 artist must envy Catholicism its mysteries and its mira- 
 cles, barbarous though they may seem to him, for they 
 are its title deeds of antiquity, its letters patent of 
 nobility.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 AFTER having doubled the Cape of Religion and of 
 Mysticism, I expected to find the open sea, and here I 
 am now facing another reef, that of Miracles. I can 
 feel my barque, " The Why," once more tossed by the 
 waves caused by this reef. 
 
 What is a miracle? The dictionary defines it as " an 
 act of the Divine Power contrary to the laws of Nature 
 an extraordinary thing ! " Is an act contrary to 
 the laws of Nature, such as the stopping of the course 
 of the stars, or the resurrection of a dead person, pos- 
 sible ? These phenomena seem to have never taken 
 place, except in the imagination of the sacred poets : the 
 laws of Nature being the laws of the Eternal God, every 
 phenomenon which contradicts these is only a spiritual 
 mirage. Men only believed in them, thanks to sugges- 
 tion, and because they needed to believe in them. 
 
 With the laws which we do not yet know thoroughly, 
 we can do great wonders. We move about uncon- 
 sciously, as the fish do in water, in the midst of physical 
 and psychical currents which would annihilate us if we 
 were not immortal. That is, in my opinion, the scien- 
 tific proof of our indestructibility. 
 
 Among these currents is that of Suggestion. From 
 very earliest times, the Terrestrian has had to submit 
 to this force, the most formidable one in the Universe, 
 whose projector is the Eternal God Destiny. We 
 
 are only just beginning to be aware of it. It produces, 
 
 323
 
 324 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 in the soul of the world, waves, tempests, and cyclones, 
 like those of the Ocean. Without even knowing it, we 
 are its receivers and distributors and we exercise it 
 constantly on each other. Wireless telegraphy will 
 help us a little to understand the way in which Nature 
 proceeds. The most insignificant can act on the great- 
 est, and the greatest on the most insignificant. This is 
 the most startling proof of our fraternity. The do- 
 mestic who brings you your early breakfast may utter 
 a few words which will affect your entire day. The 
 daily letters of a society woman, or of a business man, 
 contain words which will make them act in such and 
 such a way, by touching certain cellules of their motor. 
 And we are all of us suggestionised by thousands of 
 things which are to " concur " with regard to our des- 
 tinies, by the spirit of the dead as well as by that of the 
 living. And no single suggestion comes to us by chance, 
 for chance could not exist. Every suggestion is a re- 
 action and a radiation. We may not only be sugges- 
 tionised by others, but we may suggestionise ourselves. 
 In auto-suggestion, the action is not exteriorised, per- 
 haps because the guiding nerve is relaxed ; it acts on 
 itself with the cellules of the imagination and the door 
 is then open to all the phobias, to neurasthenia and to 
 its painful extravagancies. The senses even may be in- 
 fluenced by a kind of reflex suggestion. I once hap- 
 pened to sprinkle an orange with salt, instead of sugar. 
 The taste was so disagreeable to me that, for the next 
 three days, my palate was so affected by it that each 
 time I took sugar I fancied it was salt. 
 
 The power of suggestion is very strong with those
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 325 
 
 who are called upon to govern the masses, to group to- 
 gether individuals and to lead them on to some special 
 work. 
 
 Doctors are now trying to canalise suggestion and 
 use it for the cure of nervous diseases. By means of 
 certain methods which are known to them, they produce 
 hypnotic sleep. This is a great deal certainly, as, dur- 
 ing this repose, the human motor, with Nature's help, 
 has some chance of repairing itself. These doctors be- 
 lieve, too, that with concentration, and the application 
 of their sound thought, they will be able to restore the 
 right note to diseased cellules. Can they really do this ? 
 We must put a note of interrogation there. The 
 science of the future will be able to reply triumphantly 
 to this question, perhaps. In the meantime, we are 
 passing through the period of attempts. What makes 
 me a little doubtful is the number of patients being 
 treated. To draw this forceful fluid, suggestion, from 
 one's brain in a continued stream, seems to me difficult, 
 if not impossible. Then, if a miracle is to be worked, 
 there must be two to work it. They can only obtain 
 any result over individuals whose fluids are not refrac- 
 tory to theirs. This seems to me the best proof that 
 there is something in it all. 
 
 The hypnotising doctor is a sort of lay-confessor 
 and, like his colleague, the Catholic priest, he is often 
 mistaken. A number of women of the romantic type, in 
 order to win and keep his interest, make him believe 
 that they are influenced by his fluid. Others imagine 
 that he does them good and he believes that he is curing 
 them. This is a phenomenon of mutual auto-sugges-
 
 326 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 tion. Will there ever be healers who, thanks to a 
 strong, constant, intelligent suggestion, will be able to 
 act on the conducting wires of cerebral cellules and 
 correct the defects of the human motor, just as those 
 of the aeroplane motor are corrected ? Such men would 
 certainly be super-men. In order to become a super- 
 man, one must first be a man. Let us then be grateful 
 to those who are trying to make themselves masters of 
 this wonderful force, Suggestion. 
 
 Suggestion and auto-suggestion are the principal 
 agents of all the metaphysical miracles, even of that 
 of the stigmata, the only one that it has been given to 
 us to verify. I have been reading over again, in the 
 life of St. Francis, what is called " the great miracle." 
 On the heights of Mount Alverne, one morning in the 
 early dawn, he saw, coming down towards him, a seraph 
 with six shining wings, and upon him was the picture of 
 a crucified man. After staying there some time, the 
 wonderful apparition disappeared, leaving on the body 
 of St. Francis the miraculous traces of the sufferings 
 of Christ, making him look like a living man crucified: 
 " The heads of the naUs were in the palms of his hands 
 and in the upper part of his feet, whilst the points came 
 out on the other side of the hands and feet. Between 
 the flesh and the points of the nails there was room for 
 a finger, just as there is through a ring. And in the 
 game way, on the saint's right side, there was the mark 
 of a lance thrust, like a wound. The blood frequently 
 spurted from this, damping the robe of St. Francis." 
 
 The phenomenon has never been described in so de- 
 tailed a manner before. These painful and visible signs
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 327 
 
 could not have been an illusion for St. Francis and a lie 
 for us. What did it all mean then? For several days 
 this prodigious fact stopped me in my work. I felt that 
 it was true and I could not account for it. One after- 
 noon, as I was turning over the pages of another Life 
 of this Saint, I came to a reproduction of a picture by 
 Gentile da Fabriano, representing the fantastical scene 
 of Mount Alverne just as I had read it. The winged 
 seraph was there ; his body was bare and from his right 
 side, from his hands and his feet were the rays which 
 were to stigmatise Saint Francis who was kneeling be- 
 fore him. This engraving fascinated me and, all at 
 once, it seemed to be clear to me. Rays of light! 
 Formerly, this symbol had always seemed most naif 
 and childish, but at present it appeared to me as a reve- 
 lation, a wonderful intuition of the truth. I uttered 
 an exclamation of joy and I began to pace up and 
 down my room, saying aloud : " I have the key to the 
 miracle ! " Could not thought be transmitted by means 
 of luminous rays? Science has taught us that there 
 are rays which burn and consume flesh. Could not an 
 ardent thought, a thought which had become madness, 
 nurtured as it had been for long years by the same 
 image, that of the wounds of Christ, for instance, could 
 it not photograph these wounds, imprint them upon 
 flesh that had been worked upon by nerves and ultra- 
 sensibilised, like that of St. Francis? I believe this 
 could be, I believe this firmly. My idea may appear 
 absurd now, but it may be proved true to-morrow, and 
 I give it now to await that to-morrow which I shall 
 not see.
 
 328 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 The larger part of humanity has not only believed 
 in miracles, but it has invented all kinds of miracles, 
 and this proves that it needed them. The walls of 
 Pagan temples, with all their ex-votos, acknowledged 
 the favours received from heaven. Those walls were 
 aflame with faith and gratitude just as our votive 
 chapels now are. The gods which Christians pro- 
 claimed false ones performed miracles just as the true 
 God does. I have never heard how the Church explains 
 that, but perhaps it has never been asked for an ex- 
 planation. This brings me face to face with the burn- 
 ing question: Can we really obtain from God special 
 favours by means of prayers, gifts and sacrifices? The 
 answer yes or no must be given to this question. It 
 seems to me, or at least I hope, that my readers are 
 grown up enough to be able to bear and to understand 
 the " no " which is written so quickly and has been so 
 long thought over. Every single thing is of some con- 
 sequence in the Universe. The appearance and the 
 disappearance of a flower and of the tiniest insect pro- 
 duce infinite vibrations. The man who asks to be re- 
 stored to health, or who asks that some one dear to 
 him may be restored to health, has no idea of what the 
 consequences would be. As a matter of fact man can 
 never know -what he is asking. If the restoration to 
 health which he implores be written in the Divine manu- 
 script, he will obtain it ; not because he has asked for 
 it, but because it is necessary to Life. If it be death 
 that Life wants, death will come. We are the Divine 
 work, and this is, for us Terrestrians, the honour which 
 surpasses all honours. We must be in harmony with it.
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 329 
 
 Does this mean that human prayer is all useless and in 
 vain? Nothing is useless and nothing is in vain. It 
 has another end than the one we see, and that end, we 
 may be sure, is our progress and our future welfare. 
 The proof of this is that all the great religions of the 
 East and of the West have had, and still have, their 
 miraculous sanctuaries, where the crowd of afflicted 
 ones come to implore God. Although these prayers may 
 not be disinterested ones, they bring the creature for an 
 instant to the Divinity and, brief though the contact 
 may be, the creature comes away better and purified. 
 In former times, when the spark was more precious than 
 gold, and could only be obtained with great difficulty, 
 there were public altar-fires and people went there to 
 fetch a light, just as they went to the fountains for 
 water. It is my belief that the miraculous sanctuaries 
 are the altar-fires which serve to keep up our faith, 
 hope and love, those admirable forces which help us, 
 poor human beings as we are, to accomplish miracles, 
 for it is man always who goes to the mountain. 
 
 There are three sanctuaries where thinkers may study 
 miracles : Lourdes, Valle di Pompeii, at the foot of 
 Vesuvius, and Naples Cathedral, on the first Saturday 
 of May, on the nineteenth of September and on the six- 
 teenth of December. 
 
 Lourdes ! Formerly it was Salette which cured peo- 
 ple. Pilgrimages are still made there, but out of po- 
 liteness, as it were, for it has been eclipsed by Lourdes, 
 which is now the great miraculous sanctuary of France. 
 The Virgin's favours have moved to another place, as 
 everything does move to another place, even the axis
 
 330 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 of our planet. The Fau scenery, with its mountain 
 torrents, is more beautiful than that of the little village 
 of Isere. It is more easy of access and it is within the 
 fashionable zone of the Pyrenees. That does not seem 
 to be of much importance, but it means a great deal. 
 " Everything concurs," the secular things with the spir- 
 itual ones, and the spiritual things with the secular ones. 
 
 The creation of this sanctuary came about in the 
 most poetical and beautiful way, by means of appari- 
 tions of the Virgin. I have just been reading the ac- 
 count of it again, in the Histoire critique by Georges 
 Bertrin, an account in which one feels not only the faith 
 of the writer, but the most absolute good faith; two 
 things which one docs not often find together. His ac- 
 count, which is well substantiated and very orthodox, 
 nevertheless justifies the ideas which I have given in 
 my preceding pages. This is not the first time that 
 my modernism has come to the same kind of conclusion 
 and this always gives me a delightful sensation of tri- 
 umph. 
 
 I have now before me an excellent portrait of Berna- 
 dette Soubirous, the unconscious creator of Lourdes. 
 She looks about sixteen or eighteen and her eyes are 
 the kind of eyes which see visions. If they only used 
 to see things as I see them, I should be very much sur- 
 prised, for they are bathed in light of a special kind, 
 psychical light, perhaps. She was a delicate, puny 
 girl and just when she was at a critical age, she hap- 
 pened to be out-doors one day, at noon, near a grotto 
 which was covered with wild rose trees, in the Mas- 
 sabiellc rocks above the Pau waterfalls. She saw a
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 331 
 
 beautiful young woman standing at the entrance to this 
 grotto. Bernadette immediately thought it was the 
 Virgin and, kneeling down instinctively, she drew her 
 chaplet from her pocket and began to tell her beads. 
 The description she gave of this unknown person, of 
 whom she caught a glimpse " in a golden cloud," must 
 have been a film produced in her frontal lobes by some 
 lithograph. " She was wearing a white dress," we read, 
 " tied in at the waist by a blue ribbon, the ends of which 
 fell on her dress, nearly to her feet. On her head was 
 a white veil, under which her hair could scarcely be 
 seen. She wore this veil turned back and it fell over 
 her shoulders down to below her waist. Her bare feet 
 were partially covered by the folds of her dress and on 
 each foot was a gold coloured rose. On her right arm 
 was a chaplet of white beads, the gold chain of which 
 shone like the golden rose on her feet." 
 
 This literary description must have been translated 
 and arranged by some one of the craft, as Bernadette 
 was a backward child. At the age of fourteen she could 
 neither read nor write. She goes on to say : " The 
 Lady let me pray by myself; she told the beads of her 
 chaplet, but she did not speak. It was only at the end 
 of each tenth prayer that she joined with me in saying 
 ' Glory be to the Father, to the Son and to the Holy 
 Ghost.' " 
 
 If I am not mistaken, this is a little arrangement by 
 some theologian. Theologians are the spiritual en- 
 gineers of religion. Their mission is to watch over the 
 logic of dogmas, so that there may be the necessary 
 cohesion. In reality, Bernadette must have said that
 
 332 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 " the Lady was telling her beads,'* because she herself 
 knew scarcely any other prayers. She was not suffi- 
 ciently developed to have understood that Mary could 
 not decently have saluted herself and repeated the 
 " Hail Mary ! " in her own honour. In St. Dominic's 
 vision, it is the child Jesus who offers him the rosary, 
 but there are pictures which are more naift and in 
 these, the Virgin offers it herself. 
 
 I once heard a catechist asking a little girl of eleven 
 years old one of those stupid questions which are usual : 
 " What was the Virgin doing when the Angel of the 
 Annunciation appeared to her? " The child, who was 
 nevertheless intelligent, answered promptly : " She was 
 kneeling in front of her crucifix praying." None of the 
 other children of the little flock budged on hearing 
 this enormity, and never saw the silliness of it until the 
 priest pointed it out to them. 
 
 Bernadette saw eighteen of these apparitions and all 
 this threw her into fits of ecstasy and transfigured her, 
 making her look wonderfully beautiful. One dny, " the 
 Lady " gave her this message : " Tell the priests to 
 build a chapel here." Metaphysical people have fre- 
 quently created centres of prayer in this way. This is 
 not to be regretted, as it is in this way that we have a 
 number of buildings which are valuable artistic accumu- 
 lators. In another of these trances, the girl heard a 
 voice saying: "Go and drink and wash yourself in 
 that fountain." There was neither fountain nor water 
 there; but, obeying the instructions of the Virgin, she 
 scratched the earth away *n a certain place nnd water 
 came. It was not clear, and was even muddy at first,
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 333 
 
 but it gradually became clear and it increased so much 
 in volume that it became the spring which now feeds 
 " the nine pools for sick people." If the Lourdes sanc- 
 tuary was necessary, why should Bernadette not have 
 been inspired to look for and to find the miraculous 
 water, just as the poet, the artist or the inventor is 
 inspired to discover sources of psychical emotion, of 
 beauty or of fresh energies? It seems to me the most 
 natural thing in the world and all phenomena are of 
 the same order. 
 
 As I have said, visions always reflect something of 
 the epoch in which they take place. The following epi- 
 sode is another proof of this. Three years previously, 
 Pius IX had proclaimed that the Virgin Mary was born 
 immaculate, free from original sin. No dogma, per- 
 haps, had ever met with such resistance or given rise to 
 so much controversy. It was discussed everywhere. 
 Many priests, and very good Catholics too, considered 
 that this was going very far in the metaphysical do- 
 main. Europe, and more especially France, had had 
 this on the brain and the echo of it all was still in the 
 air. Bernadette belonged to a pious family and she 
 had heard the question treated in the pulpit and at her 
 catechism lessons. The big words " Immaculate Con- 
 ception," which she could not understand, must have 
 given her the impression of a mystery. In the duality 
 produced by her ecstasies, she heard those words and 
 she gave them to " the Lady," as she did not know any 
 finer ones to give. It would be interesting to study, 
 philosophically, the way in w 1 'ch Lourdes acquired its 
 celebrity, the way in which it was launched. It is not
 
 334 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 enough that a spring of water was discovered there. 
 We ought to know how the extraordinary properties 
 of this water were revealed and we ought to have the 
 history of the first miracle. However all that may 
 have come about, this Pyrenees sanctuary has a long 
 list of cures to its credit, and most of them I believe to 
 have been authentic ones. 
 
 For a cure to be a miracle, the Faculty of Medicine 
 must have declared that the patient could not recover, 
 and, after going to Lourdes condemned to death, this 
 same person must have been completely cured, leaving 
 his crutches in the grotto and his bandages in the pool. 
 
 What doctor has not had the disagreeable surprise 
 of seeing some of his verdicts modified by the gods? 
 Which of them can boast of thoroughly understanding 
 all the mysteries of our spine and of our brain? 
 
 I neither believe in spontaneous generation, nor in 
 the instantaneity of things. These things do not exist 
 on our very inferior planet; do they exist elsewhere? 
 I do not know, of course. When a chemist, in the 
 depths of his transmutations, sees some new gas appear, 
 it is because this existed in his generative ampoules. I 
 have just been reading the account of several instan- 
 taneous cures which took place at Lourdes. They 
 sound very real, but what is instantaneous to us is not 
 so for Nature. It has at its disposition invisible forces, 
 unknown to us as yet, which go on quietly rcsoldering 
 bones, repairing tissues, setting free marrow that has 
 been compressed by some vertebra, and so preparing 
 what we childishly call " the miracle," a miracle which 
 needed certain psychical agents of Lourdes in order
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 335 
 
 to be accomplished. Believers attribute instantaneous 
 cures not to the superhuman, as they ought, but to the 
 supernatural, to the immediate intervention of God. 
 Those who set aside the supernatural are scientifically 
 right, as this would be exceeding the power of Nature 
 and that could not be. As to the intervention of God, 
 this is as natural as the intervention of solar rays. 
 Those Terrestrians who deny it are infirm, deaf and 
 born blind. We ought to endeavour to cure them by 
 means of logical and common sense arguments. 
 
 The people and priests believe in the supernatural, 
 because they know nothing at all about the natural. 
 The priests know nothing yet about the planet, animals 
 or man. They therefore speak of God as a blind man 
 would speak of light. They have no idea of the play of 
 our nervous armature, of the existence of the fluids, 
 the currents and the energies which act on us. When 
 medical men suggested that those on whom miracles -had 
 been wrought might have been neuropathic, or beings 
 sensibilised to an extreme degree, they protested vehe- 
 mently, just as if the curing of neuropathic patients 
 were not the most difficult of miracles ! It is an almost 
 inconceivable thing that they are still incapable of real- 
 ising the physical and moral effect which the Lourdes 
 pilgrimage may have on invalids. These invalids be- 
 long, as a rule, to the class of provincial people in 
 humble circumstances. For months, and perhaps years, 
 they had been shut up with the microbes, bacilli and 
 bacteria of their respective diseases, within a narrow, 
 badly ventilated space, and sometimes with no sunshine 
 at all. One fine day, the currents of destiny brought
 
 336 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 into these hells on earth the name of Lourdes ! Lourdes 
 meant to these people health and miracles ! Hope acted 
 so powerfully on the poor doomed creatures that they 
 had the courage to start on the necessary journey. 
 All of them have spoken of the joy they felt in breath- 
 ing fresh air, in seeing, even from the train, in the 
 midst of their suffering, fields and fresh scenery. For 
 the first time, they came out of themselves, as it were, 
 they forgot their own ills in their sympathy with the 
 ills of others, and they must have felt a certain conso- 
 lation in realising that they were not the only suffering 
 creatures in the world. In these trains which contain 
 so much pain, so much physical ugliness, I am sure there 
 must be waves and waves of wonderful sentiments, of 
 heroism, devotion, faith and love. These psychical 
 forces must have a beneficent action on all these afflicted 
 ones. And then, too, the very fact of being pilgrims 
 makes them each feel that they are some one for the 
 first time, perhaps, in their lives. At Lourdes, they 
 find arms to carry them, gentle hands to dress their 
 wounds, and kind, consoling words. The men and 
 women who are to tend them see in each sick person the 
 possibility of a miracle and treat them*, at once as elect. 
 Then come the immersions in the pool. The shock must 
 be such for the whole organism that it may cause cer- 
 tain contractions, and even paralysis, to disappear. 
 There are also the spiritual emotions of the various re- 
 ligious ceremonies. These, in themselves, are so touch- 
 ing that the eyes of simple spectators are npt to fill with 
 tears. And all these things " work together " towards 
 cures. If radiations exist in our motor powerful
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 337 
 
 enough for producing instantaneity, we may be sure 
 that these radiations are natural. In the Middle Ages, 
 the gramophone, the voice without the man, and the 
 cinematograph would have been considered the devil's 
 work, and the inventors would have been condemned to 
 torture and to death. Our grandmothers even would 
 have considered such things supernatural. What is still 
 to us a miracle, an impossible thing, will be for our de- 
 scendants, two generations later, as natural as wireless 
 telegraphy. 
 
 These pilgrimages must do good to people, even when 
 they are not cured. Among Christians, a Lourdes pil- 
 grim has as much prestige as the pilgrim of Mecca 
 among the Mussulmans, and this religious feeling prob- 
 ably puts into activity germs of progress which will 
 bear flower and fruit in future life. 
 
 A few days ago, I saw one of my young Protestant 
 friends who had just returned from Lourdes. He had 
 been very deeply impressed by that special atmosphere 
 created by the concentrated faith of an important pil- 
 grimage and by the words repeated in chorus by hun- 
 dreds of voices : " Heal our dear suffering ones ! " 
 The French words : " Guerissez nos chers malades," 
 sounded to him like " Guerissez nos chairs malades." 
 His artistic mind had been struck by the psychical 
 beauty of the ceremony and he had been greatly aston- 
 ished to see people of a certain class bow down and kiss 
 the ground. I can quite understand that they should, 
 as it is an Oriental gesture. With a shade of regret, 
 after describing all this to me, he said : " Protestant- 
 ism will never work miracles." " No," I answered,
 
 338 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 " the Roman Catholic Church would tell you that, as 
 this gift was bestowed upon it by Christ, it has remained 
 with it alone." That is merely religious literature, 
 though. The miracle came from the East, from the 
 very heart of the sanctuaries of India, and the Refor- 
 mation, born later on and essentially Western and intel- 
 lectual, rejected it. The Reformation was, as I have 
 said, the stabiliser of the human mind. Its religion is 
 simple and strong, much stronger than ours, but it has 
 no imagination, no symbols, and it does not produce 
 enough spiritual warmth to engender the " miracle." 
 The walls of its temple are, I believe, the only ones 
 without ex-votos. That does not matter in the least, 
 as millions of its adherents live very well without all 
 this. It would be terrible if we had Catholic miracles 
 and Protestant miracles. May God preserve us from 
 that! 
 
 What touched my young friend more than anything 
 else at Lourdes was the work of the stretcher-bearers. 
 These men do not choose their invalids. They go to 
 the hotels and hospitals and ask simply if there is any 
 one for the waters. And the individual they carry 
 away, with such evident kindliness and with a sort of 
 respect, is frequently a mere human wreck. My friend 
 was very much surprised to meet, in the restaurant of 
 one of the Biarritz hotels, one of these gentleman 
 stretcher-bearers, wearing a flower in his button-hole, 
 his hat tilted on the back of his head and accompanied 
 by a demi-mondaine. This was a trifle disconcerting 
 to my Calvinistic friend, who was not accustomed to 
 these sudden moral leaps, so frequent with Catholics.
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 339 
 
 The romantic element in the episode appealed to him, 
 though, and won his admiration. I explained to him 
 that the young man was probably some spoiled child of 
 his mother, who had been educated by the Jesuits and 
 was at Lourdes taking a conscience cure, and, accord- 
 ing to my way of thinking, an act of true humanity 
 may redeem a multitude of transgressions. 
 
 Thanks to a sort of prescience, perhaps, I have al- 
 ways been curious to know the impressions produced on 
 people by Lourdes. I have questioned numbers of per- 
 sons of different nationality, religion and social stand- 
 ing. 1 This impression was generally a good one during 
 the pilgrimage season, but, during the dead season, the 
 impression was distinctly unfavourable. The stage is 
 then empty, there is nothing left but the beautiful 
 natural scenery of the background, whilst all the tricks 
 and ropes of the commercial exploitation are visible. 
 On the signs of certain shops, the owner's name is given 
 with the addition: "uncle (or cousin) of Bernadette 
 Soubirous." I have heard very ardent Catholics re- 
 joicing that the Church does not insist on the belief 
 in Lourdes. The " White Fathers," I feel sure, have 
 instituted excellent charitable works with the " miracle 
 money," but they use a great deal of it to embellish the 
 Pyrenees sanctuary, in a very modern manner, for the 
 sake of attracting tourists. These embellishments are 
 always sanctified by means of a cross, or a symbol of 
 some kind, and so the face is saved. But do not let us 
 cavil about all this. Lourdes has cured people and it 
 will probably continue to cure people for a long time 
 yet. Since it exists, it is necessary to Life. If I
 
 340 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 should learn, to-morrow, that it was all a colossal fraud, 
 I should not be at all scandalised, but should begin at 
 once to study the miracle of illusiomsm. 
 
 The miraculous sanctuary of Valle di Pompeii! 
 There was no Bernadette Soubirous there, and there 
 were no apparitions ! A mere lawyer was the inter- 
 mediary and this is certainly rather extraordinary. I 
 heard about this religious centre in a rather curious 
 way. I had been to Pompeii a quarter of a century ago 
 and, one fine day, I was led back there. I found it as 
 changed as a dead city could be. It was entirely 
 cleared and better kept than Naples, the living city. 
 The cleanness of its streets, the restoration of certain 
 of its houses made the catastrophe seem more recent 
 and more touching. On reaching the ancient amphi- 
 theatre, I stood on a part of the wall, in order to take 
 a look down and endeavour to discover something of 
 the soul of the ill-fated valley. My eyes were now older, 
 but they could see things better, and I uttered an ex- 
 clamation of surprise on perceiving, against the horizon, 
 a dome which appeared to me immense and which was 
 ablaze with gold in the sunshine. 
 
 "What is that?" I asked my cicerone. "I do not 
 remember ever having seen a church there." 
 
 " It used not to exist," I was told. " It is the sanc- 
 tuary of the Virgin of the Rosary. Five millions were 
 spent on it, and its treasury of jewels and valuable ob- 
 jects is estimated at four millions." 
 
 " I should never have thought there was enough faith 
 in Italy for that," I remarked. 
 
 "Oh, we are not silly enough (tanto minchioni) to
 
 341 
 
 spend so much on miracles," answered my guide, with 
 that Neapolitan smile which is so expressive of sly 
 philosophy. " The money has come from France, Bel- 
 gium, Austria and South America." 
 
 " And who founded this sanctuary ? " I asked. 
 
 " A lawyer.'* 
 
 " A lawyer ! " I repeated, in amazement. 
 
 " Yes, Signora, a certain Bartolo Longo. It is he 
 who founded everything and contrived everything, to- 
 gether with the Madonna." 
 
 I could not help smiling at the thought of this lawyer 
 contriving with the Madonna. One has to go to Naples 
 to hear such an expression and it is well worth the 
 j ourney. 
 
 " Thirty years ago," continued my guide, " the val- 
 ley of Pompeii was almost deserted. It was only in- 
 habited by peasants who were half wild and who had to 
 protect themselves from brigands and wizards. At 
 present it has four thousand inhabitants, a railway sta- 
 tion, a police station, an observatory for keeping watch 
 on that," continued my guide, pointing to Vesuvius. 
 " It has an orphanage, too, and an Institution for the 
 children of prisoners." 
 
 " For the children of prisoners ! " I exclaimed. 
 " What a beautiful idea ! " 
 
 " Yes, very beautiful . . . assai bella." 
 
 " Your Virgin of the Holy Rosary must have per- 
 formed many miracles ? " 
 
 " Yes, they say she has. She cured people who could 
 obtain nothing from Lourdes. No one knows why (non 
 si sa perche) ! There is one miracle, though, that she
 
 342 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 has not been able to perform, and that is to make the 
 priests and monks agree. They quarrel about the 
 money that is given and the lawyer, too, wants his share 
 for the Orphanage. Folks are all living like cats and 
 dogs in the country round. Some of them are for the 
 priests, others for the monks and others again for Bur- 
 tolo Longo." 
 
 " And whose side do you take ? " I asked. 
 
 "The lawyer's. Folks chatter (ciarlono) but things 
 speak for themselves. The things of Valle di Pompeii 
 show what he has done. If he has worked for himself, 
 he has worked for a great many families as well. All 
 the intriguers (facondieri) cannot say as much for them- 
 selves." 
 
 This conversation made me want to know more. I 
 felt that there was some romance hidden here. This 
 extraordinary lawyer interested me, because he had 
 thought of the children of the prisoners, and there are 
 so many prisoners in Naples. I made enquiries on all 
 sides, but met with either sullen hostility, or with abso- 
 lute indifference. The idea of the miracles prevented 
 all unbelievers from putting their trust in Bartolo 
 Longo's good faith, whilst the attention that was paid 
 to the material side spoilt everything for the believers. 
 At that time in my life I was not interested in sanctu- 
 aries and I had no idea that I ever should be interested 
 in them. I came away without visiting Valle di Pom- 
 peii, but the guide's conversation did its little occult 
 work. When I was back in Rome, I met a woman of 
 the best Neapolitan society at a reception given by the 
 sculptor Ezechiel. I talked to her about Valle di Pom-
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 343 
 
 peii and my curiosity concerning it. She made things 
 clear to me at once and, for my further edification, sent 
 me the history of the sanctuary written by its founder. 
 
 This history is a valuable document for the thinker 
 who is interested in the weaving of this world's events. 
 It is scrupulously truthful and of such childish naivete 
 that it lets us see the play of Life in all this, and even 
 the wires by which everything is worked. With the 
 most unconscious determinism, Bartolo Longo believed 
 himself to be led, and absolutely inspired, by a divine 
 .power which I should call Providence, the gods, Nature, 
 God, and which he believed to be " The Virgin of the 
 Rosary." This personage of the metaphysical dream 
 was no doubt in harmony with his mentality. He had 
 to believe in her, as he was to found an important work, 
 and he was a weak man. 
 
 Italian lawyers are, as a rule, curious specimens and 
 are unlike those of any other country, but Bartolo 
 Longo's originality was of a rare and supreme kind, 
 for he was a mystic, and belonged to the Tertian Order 
 of St. Dominic. He was a religious neurasthenic and 
 monomaniac who believed himself in danger of damna- 
 tion. He had married Countess Eusco and, thanks to 
 a kind of snobbism, he always speaks of her as " The 
 Countess." She owned a house and some land at Valle 
 di Pompeii. He used to go there from time to time, and 
 this desolate spot, near the ruins of the Roman Ter- 
 rienniere, seemed very little calculated to cure his 
 melancholy. It was there, nevertheless, that he was to 
 find his " Damascus road." That, it appears to me, 
 was the first of those extraordinary acts which Nature
 
 344 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 was to work in him, and by means of him, and which he 
 called by the name of " miracle." 
 
 One day, when strolling along in a wood named Ar- 
 paja, believed to be still inhabited by the Harpies, he 
 was seized with one of those fits of religious despair 
 when he believed himself to be the victim chosen by 
 Satan. The following is his account, told in his own 
 words : " Suddenly," he says, " I stopped short. I 
 felt suffocated and thought my heart must burst. In 
 the midst of my distress, I heard a voice murmur in my 
 ear words which I had read myself and which a dead 
 friend of mine had often repeated to me : * If thou art 
 seeking thy salvation, propagate the Rosary. The 
 promise of Mary is that " whosoever shall propagate 
 the Rosary shall be saved ! " These words were like 
 a flash of lightning which cleared away the gloom for 
 me. I looked up, stretched out my hands towards 
 heaven and cried out, addressing the Virgin : * If it 
 be true that thou hast promised St. Dominic that whoso- 
 ever shall propagate the Rosary shall be saved, then I 
 shall be saved, for I will not leave this Pompeii district 
 before instituting the Rosary here.' A distant bell 
 rang out the midday Angelus. I bowed down and re- 
 peated the prayer which thousands of faithful hearts 
 were then offering to Mary." 
 
 Oh, Nature, divine force, what things you have put, 
 in germ, into this little incident! After six centuries, 
 St. Dominic's dream was to serve, in order to create a 
 fresh centre of spiritual life in the valley of Vesuvius, 
 opposite that Mount Gauro, where legend places the 
 apparition of the Archangel St. Michael. We see,
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 345 
 
 therefore, that nothing is lost, neither thoughts nor 
 even dreams. They remain in the soul of the Earth, 
 in order to produce other thoughts other dreams. 
 
 Bartolo Longo believed that he had found the way 
 to escape damnation and he did not intend to let this 
 opportunity slip. " Whosoever shall propagate the 
 Rosary shall be saved." These words were the life- 
 buoy which Providence threw out to prevent him from 
 foundering in madness. He seized it, clung to it and, 
 for the next thirty years, it kept him afloat and en- 
 abled him to accomplish truly extraordinary things. I 
 do not know whether his story is translated, but I should 
 like all my readers who think to be able to read it. 
 
 To institute the Rosary in the homes of uneducated 
 peasants, who scarcely knew the " Hail Mary " even, 
 who neither had a crucifix, religious pictures nor sym- 
 bols in their wretched dwellings, was not an easy thing. 
 Bartolo Longo began by distributing medals and chap- 
 lets. These were accepted rather for the sake of their 
 metal mounts than for their spiritual value. He then 
 went from cottage to cottage repeating : " Whoso- 
 ever shall propagate the Rosary is saved." The prom- 
 ise of salvation on such cheap terms did not fail to 
 make an impression on some minds. The Valle di Pom- 
 peii Church was, all that time, a kind of dirty shed, all 
 cracked and likely to fall into ruins. He put up, in 
 this church, a little lithograph of the Virgin of the 
 Rosary, which he had had over his own bed. The peo- 
 ple he gathered round it, for the reciting of the chaplet, 
 were, I expect, chiefly old women and children. That 
 did not matter, the little nucleus was formed. He then
 
 346 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 remembered that these peasants, barbarous as they still 
 were, had an innate tenderness for their dead. They 
 did not like having their friends buried without being 
 accompanied to the grave by a religious procession, as 
 in the neighbouring villages. The lawyer, thereupon, 
 had the brilliant idea of establishing a religious asso- 
 ciation, the members of which should render this homage 
 to any of their fellow members who died. This little 
 association was really the first layer of stones of the 
 Valle di Pompeii temple. The little picture of the Ma- 
 donna was replaced by one which cost as much as three 
 francs. It represented the Virgin giving the chaplet 
 to St. Rosa and the child Jesus to St. Dominic. It 
 appears that these three metaphysical persons were 
 hideous. This picture, which was to be exhibited for 
 the veneration of the faithful, arrived the evening be- 
 fore a festival which had been announced by loud trum- 
 pet blasts. It arrived by the messenger cart and on 
 the top of some manure which the man happened to be 
 transporting that day. Oh, Providence, what an ador- 
 able romancer you are! 
 
 In this valley, which had hitherto been so forsaken 
 and where all gaiety was unknown, there were from 
 henceforth fetes, fireworks and music. Then came mis- 
 sionaries and, in the religious world, there was some- 
 thing quite new : " The Virgin of the Rosary Society." 
 A church was needed in connection with the Society 
 and a subscription was opened. The amount of this 
 subscription was a halfpenny a month. Bartolo 
 Longo's wife, " the Countess," also belonged to the 
 Tertian Order of St. Dominic. She was full of en-
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 347 
 
 thusiasm for her husband's dream, and all the more so 
 as she had been born at Valle di Pompeii and had in- 
 herited land there from her family. She soon inter- 
 ested Neapolitan society in the idea, and pious gifts 
 began to flow in. Then came the consecration and, 
 after this, the Virgin of the Rosary performed her first 
 miracle. The following is the miracle in all its naivete: 
 A young girl of Naples, Clorinda Lucarelli, at the 
 critical age of twelve, was troubled with epileptic fits. 
 She was an orphan and was being brought up by an 
 aunt who adored her. The most celebrated doctors had 
 declared her to be incurable, as they always do patients 
 of this kind. The Lourdes image, at San Nicola di 
 Tolentino, had been deaf to all prayers. On the 3rd 
 of February, the poor child writhed in convulsions from 
 morning to night and then from night to morning 
 again. She was quite unconscious and it seemed prob- 
 able that she would not recover. " The Countess " paid 
 a visit to Madame Lucarelli that day, and spoke to her 
 of the subject which interested her beyond anything else, 
 the Pompeii work. Madame Lucarelli immediately felt 
 a ray of hope within her, and this was the first phase 
 of the phenomenon. She promised, spontaneously, 
 that, if the Virgin of the Rosary cured her niece, she 
 herself would set off to beg for the new church. This 
 was the second phase. On the 13th of February, the 
 day when the restored image of the holy Rosary was 
 exhibited on the altar, Clorinda was cured. This was 
 the third phase and the image was proclaimed to be 
 miraculous. It is only the first miracle which costs 
 anything and, suggestion doing its work, others fol-
 
 348 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 lowed. The subscription of one halfpenny a month 
 was swallowed up in the stream of offerings which now 
 came in, and it was not a modest church, but a veritable 
 temple which rose from the earth. The various archi- 
 tectural difficulties are quite epic and also the suc- 
 cessive restoration of the miraculous image and the 
 transformation of St. Rosa into St. Catherine of Sienna. 
 Bartolo Longo is not in the least afraid of disenchant- 
 ing his readers. He tells all this with an artlessness 
 which is both comic and most refreshing. 
 
 It seems as though some of the personages of the 
 metaphysical dream are destined to be more renowned 
 than others. The Madonna of Pompeii very soon began 
 to draw pilgrims and her sanctuary acquired wealth in 
 the most extraordinary way. The founder of all this 
 describes the splendour of the miraculous image with 
 childish pride. The sanctuary had become a casket of 
 precious stones. Without any offence to the worthy 
 lawyer, it seems to me that all this was in the worst 
 taste, as Catholic symbols always are in Naples. I 
 cannot forgive myself for not having seen the pearl 
 which adorns the right ear of the Immaculate Virgin, 
 and the sandal of her left foot, which was set with gems. 
 This feminine taste for jewellery which the Virgin was 
 supposed to have is very curious. 
 
 The work to which Bartolo Longo devoted thirty 
 years developed in a way that was beyond all his con- 
 ceptions. In an address to those whom he calls his 
 " sisters and brothers," he says, not without some bit- 
 terness, that, the Pope, having asked him to cede the 
 temple of Valle di Pompeii to the Holy See, he has done
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 349 
 
 this as a blindly obedient Christian, thus renouncing all 
 rights over the sanctuary which he had hitherto pos- 
 sessed, thanks to the " apostolic briefs of Louis XIII." 
 Further on, he tells us how the miracle money had been 
 employed. " Without any fixed income," he says, 
 " without any grant either from the municipality or the 
 ministry, we spend from ten to fifteen thousand francs 
 a week, we help more than four hundred families, we 
 give work to hundreds of artisans and others, we pro- 
 vide for a hundred and thirty-five orphans and a hun- 
 dred sons of prisoners. On Saturdays, not one half- 
 penny remains in our cash-box, and the following Sat- 
 urday money is there again to pay for everything. 
 Does not this show that Providence exists ? " Certainly 
 it does. Providence is since we are. 
 
 Bartolo Longo, like millions of individuals, had never 
 observed the play of Life, the play which consists in 
 drawing the greatest from the smallest at the cost of 
 continual effort and struggle. When he saw what had 
 come out of his poor, empty hands, he gives us, in all 
 good faith, his work as an irrefutable proof of the 
 supernatural. It is, on the contrary, naturalissima, 
 in perfect harmony with the laws that we know, but, 
 like all the works of Terrestrians, it was not his work 
 but that of the gods and that again is natural. 
 
 I regret immensely that I did not pay a visit to the 
 Western sanctuary and to its founder. At all events, 
 a very beautiful flm of it has remained in my brain, the 
 one taken from the amphitheatre of the Terrienniere 
 in ruins, that of the valley bounded on the north by 
 Vesuvius, on the south by Mount Gauro, a valley of
 
 350 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 infinite sadness, bathed in the light of Dante's dreams. 
 In the horizon, a dome emerges, a new dazzling looking 
 dome which throws out a beam of fresh life. When I 
 see this film again, at the back of my forehead, or when 
 I see material and spiritual force face to face, it seems 
 to me that I hear a dialogue between the implacable 
 volcano and the little sanctuary. 
 
 " I can destroy you, some day," says the volcano. 
 
 " You can change my face, but you cannot destroy 
 me," answers the little sanctuary, " as I am a fragment 
 of Him who created you. When you have devastated 
 me, my stones will speak, like those of Pompeii, my 
 elder sister, and we shall always be the dead who live." 
 
 In all sanctuaries, those of the East and those of the 
 West, a whole crowd of reprehensible and unworthy acts 
 take place. For instance, the Turks are obliged to 
 prevent Christians from killing each other around 
 Christ's tomb. We must neither be surprised nor scan- 
 dalised at this. It is the fermentation taking place 
 there, just as it does in the vats at the time of the 
 vintage, and Life will always come out of this more 
 purified. 
 
 There is a metaphysical circle, as it were, around 
 Vesuvius, and this is most curious. On Mount Gauro, 
 there was the apparition of St. Michael ; at Valle di 
 Pompeii there were the miracles wrought by the Virgin 
 of the Rosary ; at Naples itself, we have the liquefaction 
 of St. Janvier's blood. Was all this faith engendered 
 by fear? That is quite possible. 
 
 St. Janvier was one of Diocletian's martyrs. Years 
 later, under Constantine, his body was brought back to
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 351 
 
 Naples. His blood, it appeared, was still living and it 
 liquefied. God alone knows how this miracle was 
 brought about by the makers of legends, but it was 
 taken as a visible sign of the protection accorded by 
 the Saint to the city which was so dangerously situated. 
 Like Vesuvius, it remains in activity and is, I believe, 
 the only Christian miracle which still takes place. In 
 the twentieth century it meets with the same credulity 
 as it did in the sixth! Fear is a great generator of 
 faith. 
 
 One day, I was present at this great mystery in the 
 Naples Cathedral. I felt the atmosphere charged with 
 a special kind of electricity and I was terrified at the 
 expression of the crowd. The people's eyes seemed to 
 be starting out of their sockets, their faces w r ere stream- 
 ing with perspiration and tears. Some of the faces 
 were very beautiful, others hideous. Their lips seemed 
 ready for prayer or for blasphemy. There is no doubt 
 that if the hope of this crowd had been deceived, St. 
 Janvier and his priests would have had a bad moment. 
 When the people have finally left their childhood behind 
 them, when they can look their enemies and truth in 
 the face, in a philosophical way, the shrine will give up 
 its secret, and we shall know the name of that compo- 
 sition which becomes liquefied, not by means of prayers, 
 but by the heat of the ambient air and by the gesture 
 of the benediction repeated, as it is, over and over again. 
 In the meantime, blessed be he who invented this won- 
 der, since it was to serve in comforting thousands of 
 human creatures. The real miracle is the miracle it- 
 self the more false it is the more true is it that this
 
 352 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 one, like all the others, has helped forward and is help- 
 ing forward Life. 
 
 And on the screen of my mind an old memory comes 
 back, something which made a great impression on me, 
 an impression that has never been effaced. Many years 
 ago, in Italy, I used to visit a girl of humble class, 
 whom I had known when she was very beautiful, healthy 
 and extremely coquettish. She was now suffering from 
 a horrible complaint, the marrow of her bones was dis- 
 eased. With ever increasing sorrow and stupid, unjust 
 anger, I watched, without understanding it, Nature's 
 work of destruction on this poor girl. It was slower 
 and more cruel than I can possibly describe. One 
 afternoon, I found her mother, and an aunt who was 
 helping to nurse her, with their eyes swollen with weep- 
 ing. They told me that the last sacrament had just 
 been administered. I had a pang at my heart when I 
 saw the chest of drawers covered with a little white 
 cloth, on which had been placed two bright candlesticks 
 containing some wretched little wax tapers and a cruci- 
 fix. The room was full of that faint, warm odour, a 
 mystic odour, which the priest brings with him and 
 leaves with the dying. Assunta, or what remained of 
 her, was dozing. She was a mere skeleton, but a beau- 
 tiful skeleton. Her magnificent hair had been cut off, 
 as every day her head was covered with vermin. Her 
 short hair, of a reddish brown colour, looked like a halo 
 round her thin face. An invisible hand had hollowed 
 the temples and brow, chiselled the nostrils, made the 
 ears and lips thinner and taken from them their colour, 
 but this same hand had, like a true Artist, respected the
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 353 
 
 beautiful, classical lines of the features. She looked 
 like an angel such as the Primitives loved to paint. 
 The room was very large and hygienically bare. There 
 were two windows opening on to an old garden, from 
 which came the twittering of spring-time and air that 
 was laden with sap and with the scent of the acacia 
 trees. I had managed to seat myself without disturb- 
 ing the invalid. Presently she opened her eyes and, to 
 my great surprise, I saw that she was smiling. After 
 thanking me prettily for the oranges which it was my 
 delight to take her, as she enjoyed them up to the very 
 last, she said: 
 
 " Sa signora do you know that I have made a 
 vow to the Madonna to-day ? " 
 
 " Really ? " I answered. 
 
 " Yes, I see that I must die, but when they are put- 
 ting me in the ground, supposing that she brought me 
 to life again! She could do this, could she not? " 
 
 I was so much taken aback, that I could find no words, 
 and so I only nodded. 
 
 " Well, I have promised her that, if she will perform 
 this miracle, I will wear black all the rest of my life 
 and that I will never dance again, never again ! " 
 
 The poor girl uttered these words as though she were 
 making an immense sacrifice. 
 
 I understood then why the priests let people believe 
 in miracles and I, myself, found some lying words with 
 which to encourage this faith that seemed to me sacred. 
 
 Assunta died the following morning " like a light that 
 was blown out," said her mother to me. 
 
 " It was God that blew on her," I added.
 
 354 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 " No, Signora it is the devil who takes children 
 from their poor mothers. God takes them away from 
 him though and puts them in His Paradise and so 
 punishes the devil." 
 
 According to the girl's wish, it was her fiance who 
 placed her in her coffin. With his voice full of tears, 
 he told me that " her bones sounded like dry wood," and 
 then he murmured very tenderly, " blessed bones." In 
 Italy, love sometimes makes a poet out of a man of the 
 people. 
 
 It is the faith in miracles which creates hope stronger 
 than death, and which had put into the dying girl's 
 eyes that ray of joy which I shall never forget and 
 which I can see now. Do not let us despise it for it 
 serves to create the " state of grace " for the humble 
 of this world. 
 
 Our descendants will laugh at the ignorance of our 
 childhood, but their adult age has been borne along by 
 our childhood and their path prepared by it. I hope 
 that their thinkers may recognise that. The old be- 
 liefs begin to tickle the humour of the present gener- 
 ation. I have just come across two Christmas cards 
 which are irresistibly droll and very characteristic. 
 They did not come from frivolous, disrespectful France, 
 but from the country of the Bible. They were from 
 England and from America and, I must own, that this 
 rather surprised me. On one of the cards is a huge 
 apple that has been bitten. The teeth marks of Adam 
 and Eve are visible. Underneath is written : " The 
 cause of it all." I laughed heartily as I looked at it 
 and then I said aloud: "Heaven be thanked for that
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 355 
 
 bite, as our hope is the result of it." The other card 
 is more amusing still. It is a very fine lithograph, rep- 
 resenting neither more nor less than the earthly Para- 
 dise. In the background, between the peaks of the 
 mountains, there is a warm sun just turning red. Be- 
 low the sun is a background of mysterious and distant 
 mist. In the foreground are flowers with long stalks 
 and two tall palm-trees, between which a rope is 
 stretched. On this rope, fastened with big thorns, two 
 pathetic, different sized vine-leaves are hanging. We 
 learn from the words below the picture that it is " The 
 first washing day." It is extremely comic and not in 
 the least coarse. I put this characteristic lithograph 
 up on the wall over my dressing-table. On looking at 
 it, I always feel a certain amusement, mingled with a 
 little melancholy, as it already gives such an impres- 
 sion of the past 1 ...
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 I HAVE not yet finished with psychical phenomena, at 
 least with those which are known to us. There remains 
 the most astonishing of them all prayer. Ah, how 
 I should like to be able to skip this subject, but if I 
 did so, it would keep coming back to my mind until the 
 end of my volume and would disturb my thoughts in a 
 wicked way. The most uncomfortable of things is a 
 dissatisfied conscience. 
 
 Communication between the Creator and the creature 
 is no illusion. It must have been set up with our first 
 breath; it has never been cut off and it never will be. 
 At a given moment it produced prayer. Prayer is the 
 outcome of the fear which inspires it. One day, the 
 ancestor with low, receding forehead, and oh, how low 
 it still was, felt, in the midst of some cataclysm, that 
 sudden, mysterious emotion which we call fear. He 
 thought he saw masters and enemies in each of the forces 
 of Nature, in the torrent which carried away great 
 pieces of his sloping banks, in the ocean, which ad- 
 vanced in a threatening way and then withdrew again, 
 in the voices of the forest, in the thunder which split 
 the giant trees, and in the bolide which fell from heaven. 
 And how could he have thought that forces which had 
 movement and life were not animated? He bent his 
 knee before them, in order to make himself appear 
 smaller, and to excite in them the pity which he had, 
 
 perhaps, felt for some captive. Hoping to appease 
 
 356
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 357 
 
 their anger, he offered them the best of his plunder, 
 after his hunting and fishing expeditions, or human 
 victims. That first offering was, no doubt, the first 
 prayer. 
 
 And days and years passed over the Terrestrian. 
 There came a time when his more developed soul ex- 
 perienced spiritual grief. This may have been due to 
 the loss of a being dear to him and, at the same time, 
 he was suddenly aware of the Higher Presence. He 
 raised his eyes heavenwards, because, I suppose, the loud 
 voice of the thunder seemed to come from there; the 
 cloud was there which brought with it the destructive 
 hail and the sun, too, shone there. And to that heaven 
 where, later on, he was to place his gods, in that direc- 
 tion towards which so many eyes were to be turned, he 
 uttered his cry of distress. Man had come out of him- 
 self ; his mind, instead of crawling, had soared above his 
 cavern or hut. His prayer had, perhaps, been nothing 
 but a beating of wings. That is of little matter; the 
 wings were there and spiritual aviation was discovered. 
 Under the action of metaphysical force his prayer in- 
 creased and became more noble, its waves developed into 
 sacred poetry and sacred music. These waves now form 
 a wide river, full of impurities as yet, but which will 
 gradually get purified as it approaches the Ocean of 
 Life into which it is to pour itself. Is this really the 
 way in which the gods worked in the Wonderful Ro- 
 mance? I hope so, for their own sake and for mine. 
 However that may be, the child-Terrestrian, judging 
 the Divinity by himself, continued offering bloody sacri- 
 fices with his prayers, in the hope of winning favour.
 
 358 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 In the days of human sacrifices, I fancy it was some 
 cannibal theologian who started the idea that the will 
 of the gods could be known by the arrangement of the 
 internal organs of the victims. When the priests had 
 read the intestines, the lungs, the liver and the heart 
 were burnt on the altar, but the flesh was distributed 
 to those present, sold for the benefit of the temples, and 
 given over to the priests who sold it. These bloody 
 sacrifices made the altars seem like the benches of a 
 butcher's shop and the Pontiffs like butchers. The 
 cake of pure flour, which was offered to certain gods, 
 was the precursor of the consecrated bread of Christian 
 communities. This came in its own good time, as all 
 things do, and it was the sin-money and the miracle- 
 money which supplied the funds for the new worship. 
 
 The gifts offered up, in self-interest, by the Terres- 
 trian to the Master of the Universe, had always ap- 
 peared to me grotesque. One day, though, I happened 
 to witness a little scene between two young lads which 
 made me see the sacrifices in another light, a light which 
 I now believe to be the true one. The bigger boy had a 
 wretched looking pocket-knife which the smaller boy 
 evidently coveted. He thought, no doubt, that it would 
 be a fine thing to own a knife which shut up. 
 
 " Give it me," he said, " and you shall have all that 
 I have in my pockets." 
 
 ** Let's see what's in your pockets," replied the other 
 one. 
 
 The child spread out all his possessions, somewhat 
 reluctantly, on a low wall. They consisted of a ball of 
 string, three marbles and a few playing cards. By a
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 359 
 
 rapid association of ideas, I saw, in this little scene, 
 the gesture of man face to face with God. The candour 
 and the poverty which it revealed seemed to me so pa- 
 thetic and so touching that my eyes were misty with 
 tears. The owner of the knife refused the exchange. 
 I was tempted to buy a knife for the disappointed little 
 fellow, but refrained from doing so lest he should hurt 
 himself with it. Providence often acts like this with 
 us perhaps. 
 
 The Roman Catholic Catechism gives an admirable 
 definition of prayer. It tells us that it is " an elevation 
 of our soul towards God." And this is the phenomenon. 
 It is this invisible force which snatches man away from 
 his cares and material preoccupations and transports 
 him to the metaphysical plane of the earth, in order 
 to give him a moment's repose, oblivion and change. 
 The repetition, even though it may be mechanical, of 
 words that are not understood is beneficent and refresh- 
 ing. This force acts on man in various degrees and in 
 a thousand different ways, by means of religion, words, 
 pictures, symbols, grief, or by a desire for some good. 
 Alone, the Terrestrian could never make the start, and 
 even now his flights are only very insignificant ones. 
 They never go beyond the zone where the personages of 
 his spiritual dream are. He very rarely reaches the 
 highest peak of Olympus. There are thousands of 
 creatures who never kneel, who frequent no church and 
 who do not pray, creatures who are frequently very 
 superior, as regards intellect and morality. Do they 
 just miss this attractive, metaphysical force? No, but 
 they are destined for more active service than that of
 
 360 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 prayer, and prayer is not necessary to them. From 
 time to time, nevertheless, in the midst of their occu- 
 pations, from across the gulf which seems to separate 
 them from all religious ideal, their thoughts are at- 
 tracted by the Beyond, by God, and they wonder what 
 He is, what He is like and where He is. They come 
 into contact with Him in this way. They feel that He 
 exists and that is enough. Atheism must be an illusion 
 and the atheist an impossibility. He would be an indi- 
 vidual upon whom none of the forces of Nature would 
 act and who could not have been created. That people 
 should not believe' in the God made by man, I can under- 
 stand and I do not believe in such a God myself, but 
 that people should not believe in the God who made 
 man seems to me an aberration. 
 
 The housemaid on my floor of the hotel is German. 
 She comes from Posen, I believe. She has a mind which 
 is naturally objective and this gives her the most aston- 
 ishing philosophical intuition. " I do not talk to people 
 who say there is no God," she remarked to me, the other 
 day, " nor to those who think their own religion is the 
 only one that is good, as they are too stupid for me." 
 
 " Olga," I said, laughing, " you are the first philo- 
 sophical maid I have had." 
 
 "What is philosophy?" she asked. "I have heard 
 that word several times and I do not know what it 
 means." 
 
 " Wisdom," I replied. 
 
 ** Ah," she said simply, continuing her dusting ener- 
 getically. 
 
 The people of the working-class, with their admirable
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 361 
 
 common-sense, say that " those who work are praying," 
 and they are once more right, for all work, even that of 
 the most humble and abject kind, means communion with 
 the author of Life. 
 
 One day, I felt curious to see the faces of religious 
 people, when they were praying together. The Church 
 of St. Roch of Paris was an excellent post of observa- 
 tion for me. The sight was so interesting and so full 
 of revelations, that I have since been to a number of 
 churches of different faiths for the same purpose. 
 
 The effect of all these rows of faces, so alike and yet 
 so different, was ugly and almost comic. One must 
 have seen a great many faces of white people together 
 to realise how many different shades they may be: dull 
 white, pinky white, grey white, yellowish and greenish 
 white. Their expressions of piety were still more 
 varied. Some of these expressions were veritable 
 grimaces of the most apparent falseness, and others were 
 beautiful and pathetic. Some were looking down and 
 others looking upwards. There were lips that were 
 moving mechanically, whilst the eyes would be glancing 
 here and there, taking in impressions which did not seem 
 to be religious ones. Some of the hands held books, 
 others told beads, and others were clasped as though 
 in supplication. The young men present seemed to be 
 looking on at some spectacle, the older men alone were 
 praying with a certain dignity. And all this was sup- 
 posed to be an elevation of the soul towards God ! Ah, 
 no, I did not have that sensation for an instant. I had 
 a very clear impression of a halt in life's rush, of an 
 enforced rest which would teach children to keep still.
 
 862 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 As a matter of fact, all tongues were bridled for a 
 moment nnd a damper put on to all turbulent brain 
 cells. The solemn waves from the organ, coming and 
 going over the heads of the congregation like a bene- 
 diction, the voice of the priest, the words of the rite 
 created an atmosphere which was infinitely soothing. 
 The idea then came to my mind that, just as there are 
 military exercises for training man for the struggle, for 
 heroism and for patriotism, so there are religious exer- 
 cises for training him in concentration, spiritual life and 
 the love of God. The church service is only a prepara- 
 tion for prayer. It is not prayer itself. In Protestant 
 churches, the religious exercise is performed in a more 
 simple and severe way. The expression of people's 
 faces there is uniform and conventional. The Mussul- 
 man's prayer is strangely touching in its manliness. 
 At certain moments it seems to draw down, into the 
 Mosque, the Presence of God. True prayer is a com- 
 munion. It could not be only individual. I may add 
 that I have seen the phenomenon, that I have seen it as 
 far as human eyes can see the Invisible. This was 
 three years ago, in Italy, when visiting the Cathedral 
 of Spello, a small town in religious Umbria. I was just 
 passing by one of the dimly, but artistically, lighted 
 chapels, when two magnificent dark eyes riveted on a 
 picture of the Virgin brought me to a standstill. They 
 were the eyes of a man of about fifty years of age. 
 His hair was turning grey and his face was emaciated, 
 either by illness or grief. He was some little distance 
 from the altar, with one knee only on the praying-chair 
 and the other leg seemed to be stiff. His lips moved
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 363 
 
 slowly, like lips which know what they are saying. I 
 wondered for whom he was praying so ardently. The 
 impassibility of the Madonna caused me the most child- 
 ish irritation. It seemed to me that she ought to have 
 been touched by this earnestness. I felt the sensation 
 of prayer to such a degree that, in order not to inter- 
 rupt the waves of it, I passed along, with muffled tread, 
 at the back of the unknown man. If I had then been 
 writing my chapters on mysticism, I should have fancied 
 that it was a case of auto-suggestion, but I had not 
 even thought of these chapters then. I asked the sacris- 
 tan who this pious individual was. ** Un gran buon 
 signore, ma assai infelice " (a good man of old family, 
 but very unhappy), he replied. There are things that 
 even a novelist's curiosity has to respect, so I did not 
 insist. Compared with that living prayer, the frescoes 
 of Pinturicchio, the Renaissance tabernacle, seemed dead 
 things to me and I do not remember them at all. 
 
 In my opinion, the most beautiful forms of prayer 
 we have are the Lord's Prayer, the Canticle of the Sun, 
 the Laude of St. Francis of Assisi and certain English 
 hymns. 
 
 Christ taught us a very simple and dignified prayer, 
 an immortal prayer, the one which gives the name of 
 Father to the supreme Creator, thus uniting all Ter- 
 restrians fraternally without distinction of race, class 
 or creed. We have not yet understood it, and I believe 
 that it contains the whole mission of the prophet of 
 Nazareth. 
 
 Out of the magnificent wave of the " Our Father " 
 came " The Canticle of the Sun." This is still Christ's
 
 364 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 dream, but strangely enlarged, as it takes in the whole 
 of creation. Mankind thanks God " for his brother, 
 the sun, for his sisters, the moon and the stars, for his 
 brother, the wind, for the air and the clouds, for the 
 clear sky, for his sister, the water, for his brother, the 
 fire, and for his sister, material death." And this re- 
 lationship, so profoundly real, with all beings and with 
 all things, makes man greater, ennobles him and bears 
 him along towards the Infinite. This adorable canticle, 
 which, according to the Church, is too pantheistic, ought 
 to be sung in chorus in all the temples of the earth and 
 repeated every day by every thinking soul. It would 
 be understood by the most primitive and the most culti- 
 vated mind alike. Universality is the great divine seal. 
 
 The " Laus Deo," which St. Francis wrote, after re- 
 ceiving the stigmatisation, is a hymn of pure adoration. 
 It begins as follows : " Thou art holy, Lord God, thou 
 art God above all gods, Thou art the sole author of 
 miraculous works." This is, I believe, the only prayer 
 in which man does not ask for anything! 
 
 English hymns are written for the musses. They are 
 very manly and very human. They link their hope to 
 that of the sacred poets, as in " The Lord is my Shep- 
 herd," and that hope always works powerfully. 
 
 Our prayers are the prayers of children and of beg- 
 gars. We know nothing of the prayer of love. I shall 
 scandalise many pious people, and many orthodox peo- 
 ple, by affirming that all of us, just as we arc, know 
 nothing yet of the prayer of love. Mystics have an 
 imaginary love for God, a kind of neurotic love. Ordi- 
 nary mortals have a sort of forced love that is due
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 365 
 
 to suggestion. People dare deny the existence of God 
 and they dare not say that they do not love Him. We 
 have endeavoured to conceive what God is like before 
 endeavouring to know Him and, in spite of the immense 
 effort this has cost us, our conception is such a paltry 
 one that it has only produced a wrong and fallacious 
 sentiment. Why has Providence willed all this? By 
 way of exercising our faculties, no doubt, and in order 
 to give more splendour to the truth, as this is the real 
 reason of error. I cannot find any other possible ex- 
 planation. 
 
 God, whom we always see in the Beyond, does not 
 seem real to us. We neither feel His presence nor His 
 action. We cry out in our despair at the incontestable 
 suffering there is to endure, but we do not notice how 
 much God does to soften this for us. We are eloquent 
 in our admiration pf some work of art, and we do not 
 say it is due to Him, that inspiration penetrated the 
 soul of the artist just as the sun penetrates the bark 
 and the thick pulp of the fruit. With the same thought- 
 lessness as the sparrows that I feed, we eat, for instance, 
 the orange without noticing the genius by which its per- 
 fume and its taste have been preserved for us. Who 
 has even thought, when peeling a banana, of admiring 
 the warm weaving of its covering? How many persons, 
 when squeezing a grape between their lips, say to them- 
 selves that this nectar of force and of weakness 
 comes from a piece of ugly twisted wood? One day, 
 in Normandy, when sitting outdoors on a bench at a 
 farm there, I drank a bowl of cream. When I came to 
 the last drop, I said aloud : " Ah, God, how well you
 
 366 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 Jiave made that. Thank you! It is your master- 
 piece." A young friend who was with me laughed out- 
 right. 
 
 " I never before heard grace at meals said in that 
 way," she exclaimed. 
 
 " I say mine in that way now always," I replied. " I 
 fancy it must be agreeable to some one and that it is 
 better than a long prayer. It is more easy to admire a 
 star than * our daily bread.' " 
 
 As I rose, I happened to see a herd of cows grazing 
 in a meadow near. 
 
 " There, you see," I continued, " the miracle of the 
 cream is taking place over yonder. Man needs * green 
 meat ' and, as he is not organised for grazing, Nature 
 has created a living apparatus for cutting the grass, 
 macerating and re-macerating it and transforming it 
 into white milk, creamy and sweet." 
 
 " But the process makes the little calves into my fos- 
 ter-brothers," said my companion, smiling. 
 
 " Exactly, and the cows into our foster-mothers ! 
 The Hindus who put them among their sacred animals 
 were profound thinkers." 
 
 " It really is wonderful," said the girl, with her eyes 
 fixed on the good animal foster-mothers ; " but after 
 all," she continued, " miracles are no effort to God." 
 
 " No effort? " I repeated. " By considering God as 
 a kind of magician, we lessen His greatness. Each 
 creation, the blade of grass, like the star, represents an 
 immensity of thought, of calculation and of effort. 
 Have not the Earth and the Terrestrian been worked 
 on now for millions of } r ears? "
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 367 
 
 " That is so, but is it not a terrible thing that we 
 have to forget what we have been taught and to make a 
 fresh mentality for ourselves ? " 
 
 " Do not forget anything," I said quickly, " for your 
 impressions, like the darkness, are to serve for making 
 you want light and then go in search of it." 
 
 This conversation came back to my mind as, the last 
 few days, I have heard a great deal of conversation 
 about re-education. Our psychological doctors have 
 brought this word into vogue. Some of them are for 
 the re-education of thought by the suggestion of simple 
 reason, and others by hypnotic suggestion. They are 
 all of them right and this is just the reason why they 
 will never agree. This re-education is necessary for 
 people who are quite well physically, just as it is neces- 
 sary for invalids, for the sake of teaching them to look 
 at Life. It has already commenced and is going on 
 slowly, but surely, and among the people of humble 
 rank. The day will come when religion, after it has 
 evolved, together with science will create the wave of 
 admiration and this alone will be able to produce the 
 prayer of love. And this will truly be the elevation of 
 the earthly soul towards the God of the Universe, and 
 the phenomenon will then be complete.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THERE is certainly some one working with me, or, what 
 is more probable, some one with whom I am working. 
 After having studied Western Christianism, my mind 
 next took up the social questions which it had, as it 
 were, prepared. I was already feeling all the anguish 
 and terror of a difficult chapter, when I was invited to 
 luncheon at a hotel on the shore of the Lake, at which 
 I had stayed many years ago. Whilst talking to my 
 friend, I recalled the former table d'hote, with its ele- 
 gant guests, and some of the faces which had made an 
 impression on me. Suddenly, I had an inward start, 
 for just near to me were two of those faces, that of 
 Count C- , a Milanese, and that of an American girl, 
 Miss W . Seated between them were two fine-look- 
 ing little boys. Then, on that wonderful film, with 
 which we are all provided, a scene which I should have 
 thought obliterated, appeared once again. 
 
 One evening, seventeen years previously, as I was 
 exchanging a few remarks with an acquaintance, just 
 near the door of this same dining-room, I overheard a 
 tall, dark young man say to the head waiter: "For 
 Heaven's sake, Vittorio, do not put me by uncongenial 
 people." This request from one Italian to another was 
 the most natural thing in the world, and I heard Vit- 
 torio reply promptly : '* Monsieur le Comte need not 
 fear that." I noticed the keen, shrewd expression in 
 the waiter's eyes as he glanced round the table, at which 
 
 there were very few vacant places. His face then 
 
 368
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 369 
 
 lighted up, as though by some intuition. " Will Mon- 
 sieur come here ? " he said, and he showed his com- 
 patriot to a seat to the right of two American women, 
 a mother and daughter. The latter had a charming 
 face, hair and eyes of golden brown, a clear complexion 
 and a pretty, fresh-looking mouth. The Italian's face 
 expressed satisfaction. Vittorio evidently understood 
 him, for his neighbours were not uncongenial. My seat 
 
 was opposite Count C and I noticed that he passed 
 
 the menu, the salt and the fruit to the two American 
 women. On leaving the table after dinner, he bowed to 
 them with that mixture of courtesy and intentional hu- 
 mility in which the Italian excels. The following day, 
 at luncheon, conversation began between the Italian and 
 his neighbours. It continued at dinner and, the day 
 following, it was renewed on the verandah. Then the 
 American women flew away. I say flew, as American 
 women always seem to me like foreign birds perching 
 
 here and there. Count C went away in his turn. 
 
 The following year, in the month of May, I saw the 
 
 announcement of his marriage with Miss W in the 
 
 New York Herald. I had seen the prologue of it, and 
 a friend had told me the chapters that had followed. 
 At Rome, the young man had found his table neighbour 
 again. He obtained a formal introduction to her, 
 danced and flirted with her and, in spite of the keen 
 opposition of the mother, he managed to marry both 
 the girl and the handsome fortune which came to her 
 from her father. The epilogue which I now had before 
 me was embellished by these two scions, who appeared 
 to be most happy.
 
 370 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 As I recalled all this, I saw distinctly, just as though 
 it were on a luminous screen, the waiter taking the young 
 Milanese towards the girl who was to become his wife, the 
 girl who was therefore destined for him. And this ges- 
 ture of the head-waiter's, when he pointed to the vacant 
 seat, had helped to bring about a marriage, to graft a 
 human race, to give back to an old impoverished family 
 its social rank and existence. Its action will go on being 
 perpetuated, perhaps, through several generations. 
 Was not Vittorio, the humble waiter, the collaborator of 
 Providence in all this? He little guessed this himself, 
 but Providence knew and we may be sure that its collabo- 
 rators, all its collaborators, even those whom we con- 
 sider as criminals, and even those who are chosen from 
 a lower kingdom, must be precious and dear to Provi- 
 dence. This is not only because they are doing the 
 work assigned to them, but because they are Provi- 
 dence's own creation. This stereotyped gesture of the 
 waiter's used to get on my nerves, but at present my 
 objective eye watches it with curiosity and interest. If 
 it serves, sometimes, in bringing about some fine happi- 
 ness, it also serves, by putting certain individuals into 
 touch with each other, in bringing about some fine 
 misery. Its mission in life is none the less remarkable 
 
 on this account. Count C came back to this hotel, 
 
 perhaps, out of a sort of gratitude, but I would wager 
 that he has never given a thought to the man who was 
 the agent of his fortune. Only an Italian would have 
 been capable of understanding what would be con- 
 genial or uncongenial to another Italian, and Vittorio 
 had been necessary for bringing together the Milanese
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 371 
 
 and the American girl. This fact certainly reveals 
 providential, or I might say individual, thought, and 
 such delicate, profound thought too. The humble, the 
 most humble of all, are continually working out the 
 destinies of the great ; and the great are working out, 
 in the same way, the destinies of the humble. This is 
 the true equality, the only equality possible, as it satis- 
 fies all human dignity. It makes colleagues of us all, 
 limbs of the same body ; workmen not of man, but of 
 God. 
 
 For a long time, a very long time, those who were 
 employed at the hotel and who waited on me were to 
 me so many black coats or white caps; a Francis re- 
 placed a John, a Louisa replaced a Mary and it seemed 
 to me that it was always the same man or woman. 
 Then, by some characteristic action, one or another of 
 these individuals attracted my notice. To my mind, 
 which had become objective, to my eye, which had been 
 born again, they now began to appear as Life's servitors, 
 as interesting specimens of the terrestrial soul. I dis- 
 covered in them qualities that came straight from Na- 
 ture, qualities which were neither due to education nor 
 to conventionality. The whole class then won my sym- 
 pathy and even my affection. In our touring epoch, 
 this class has become an important factor and it de- 
 serves to be better known. 
 
 Those who are employed in hotels are superior to 
 servants in private houses. They must have had a good 
 elementary education. In their off-time, between 
 luncheon and dinner, the foreign servants study French, 
 write exercises and read the newspapers of their owa
 
 372 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 country. Many of the German and Italian hotel 
 servants are musical, and the Germans and Italians arf 
 generally the best of the staff. It frequently happens 
 that, from their sixth storey, we get strains from the 
 violin, the mandoline or the guitar. The waiters need 
 to be intelligent, to have a good memory, to be psy- 
 chologists and to have a quick eye. All this is required 
 of them and some of them are extraordinarily well quali- 
 fied for their work. Certain waiters look in vain, for 
 they never see when a knife, fork or glass is wanting. 
 It is astounding that there are so many Terrestrians 
 who, although they have a good pair of eyes, can never 
 see. Waiters who serve meals in the private rooms need 
 the skill of clowns for carrying the trays, laden with 
 glass and china, to the different floors of the hotel. 
 They often run with them, out of vanity. I can dis- 
 tinguish now, at once, those who will some day wear 
 the black neck-tie of the head-waiter, or a manager's 
 coat, and those who are doomed forever to the white 
 neck-tie. 
 
 There are very few officials in important posts who 
 would be capable of acting as the hall porter of a large 
 hotel. This individual has to watch over the general 
 security of the house. He must have a good memory 
 for names and faces, receive the letters and parcels 
 which arrive from all parts of the world, keep an ac- 
 count of money that is advanced, settle all difficulties 
 between cabmen, chauffeurs and their customers, help 
 travellers to get about, know by heart the railway time- 
 tables and be almost a living Baedeker. No one could 
 imagine all the information that is expected from this
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 373 
 
 unfortunate man. I am only surprised that people 
 never ask him the way to Paradise. 
 
 The little grooms who are now, together with bakers' 
 boys, the chief spectators of all street scenes in Paris, 
 have a strangely demoralising sort of life in hotels. It 
 is surprising that more of them do not turn out badly. 
 Instead of exercising their faculties and their fingers 
 as apprentices to some trade, they are planted in the 
 hall of the hotel, employed in opening and closing doors 
 and in going errands to the four quarters of the city. 
 The " tip " becomes their sole object in life, and they 
 have no other ambition than to see their purses swelling 
 with pieces of silver money. When I look at them, 
 fastened as it were to their stools, with their feet 
 dangling, an inert expression on their young faces, or 
 else absorbed in reading some wretched newspaper, and 
 under the direct suggestion of thefts, crimes and sui- 
 cides, I feel a kind of distress. It seems to me that 
 they are not being protected as they ought to be. They 
 never hear, for instance, a word of anything elevated in 
 tone. No one helps to put them on the right road, or 
 brings them back to it if they go astray. Their only 
 home is a bed-room on the sixth floor, and on that ter- 
 rible sixth floor they have the worst possible examples 
 before them. If they are to come out morally and 
 physically intact from the furnace into which they are 
 flung, they must certainly be refractory to evil. They 
 are all equal to emergencies and intelligent, most of 
 them are very good-hearted boys. At Christmas time, 
 they are to be seen in the post-offices sending off post- 
 office orders to a grandfather, a grandmother, or even
 
 374 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 to their foster-mother. A beam of honest pride lights 
 up their boyish faces when they are doing this. Rich 
 children receive and poor children give. Are the latter 
 not greater than the former? 
 
 In Paris, the chamber-maids and valets in the hotels 
 are nearly always French. They are frequently mar- 
 ried and very fine couples they often are. I have fre- 
 quently noticed the way in which the wife tries to 
 lighten her husband's work, and I have been deeply 
 touched by this. Their children are brought up by 
 their old parents in their native village. They have 
 to sacrifice the joy of being with these children and 
 they are paying money for them all the time. They 
 adore them all the more, probably, for that very reason. 
 
 The soul of the different nations to which all these 
 hotel servants belong can be felt in their service. That 
 of the Northern German and of the Swiss is rough and 
 surly but kindly ; that of the Southern German is more 
 gentle and refined. The soul of the Italian is very com- 
 plex, passionate, shrewd and instinctively courteous ; 
 that of the Austrian pleasant and gay; that of the 
 Scandinavian timid, proud and very sentimental ; that 
 of the English apparently cold, somewhat distant, but 
 correct and dignified. That of the French gives me a 
 sensation of clearness, quick intelligence and frankness. 
 
 Some of those employed in the hotels belong to good 
 families. Among the Austrians and Scandinavians 
 there are some very fine-looking, strapping young men. 
 They are very clean, well and carefully dressed and 
 would pass for the scions of Grand Dukes or Archdukes. 
 
 Foreigners only see, of course, the best side of these
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 375 
 
 Terrestrians of various nationalities, but under the 
 surface of this best side there is a constant bubbling up 
 of jealousy, envy and a crowd of ugly instincts. The 
 manager has to be very firm, skilful and just, if he is 
 to obtain peace among them and the discipline neces- 
 sary for the comfort of his guests. When people of the 
 humbler class are not in service, they are very fraternal 
 and they help each other and come to each other's relief 
 with admirable generosity. Directly they find them- 
 selves together under a master, they become enemies. 
 There is nothing surprising in this, for one must be 
 fairly high up in the psychological scale to be able to 
 bear the brunt of rivalry well. 
 
 Those employed in hotels are generally badly lodged. 
 They have to sleep in very small rooms, just under the 
 roof, rooms that are extremely warm in summer and 
 extremely cold in winter. 
 
 Now-a-days, inspectors come round from time to 
 time. They must simply content themselves with see- 
 ing that there is insufficient air and space, for it does 
 not seem to me that any difference is made after their 
 visits. The employes are frequently ill-fed. In Ger- 
 many, they have the right of bringing an action against 
 the avaricious employer, but they lose their situations 
 afterwards and they cannot all afford this. It is sim- 
 ply slavery still, and the slavery of the free man is the 
 hardest kind of any. 
 
 I was glad to see the introduction of the law for a 
 day of rest every week. It is a tiresome law for the 
 hotel proprietors, and a disagreeable one for those stay- 
 ing in the hotels, as it means strange servants once a
 
 376 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 week. For a few among those employed, this day of 
 rest gives them an opportunity of spending their money 
 foolishly and of ruining their health, but for the ma- 
 jority it is an excellent thing. They all feel the need 
 of this rest, for they get up late on this day, which is 
 a luxury their predecessors never knew. The Swiss and 
 Germans generally go for long country walks, they treat 
 themselves to the cinematograph, go to the picture 
 galleries or to hear some music. Their cerebral cellules 
 receive thousands of fresh impressions, and this, no 
 doubt, advances their progress. It seems as though the 
 gods want to accelerate everything at present. The 
 French married servants go to see their children, their 
 parents or their friends. Those who have a room some- 
 where like going to spend the day there together. The 
 coffee they make and the meals that they cook there 
 seem delicious to them and they feel a special kind of 
 joy in being at home. The following day they return 
 to the hotel, looking rested and more ready to put forth 
 their energy in their daily work. When humanity 
 knows its own body and soul better and the play of the 
 repercussions it undergoes, it will make the best use of 
 the forces of each one for the benefit of all, and it is 
 only then that we shall have learnt how to love one 
 another. To love is nothing, but to know how to love 
 is everything! 
 
 Those employed in hotels give us a fine example of 
 what the right sort of mutuality can do. They have 
 founded a Society which gives them all help and pro- 
 tection. It procures situations for its members, allows 
 them an indemnity of three francs a day in case of
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 377 
 
 illness, during the first three months, and one franc 
 fifty during the following three months. It also gives 
 them a pension of two hundred and fifty francs a year, 
 later on. It pays the funeral expenses of its members 
 and helps the widows and orphans. Formerly when a 
 hotel waiter died, he was buried in a pauper's grave and 
 his relatives could never find any trace of him. At 
 present, the family is informed, a temporary allotment 
 is bought in the cemetery, his grave is marked round 
 and a wreath is laid on it. All this is done with sub- 
 scriptions of two francs fifty a month, the profits of 
 an annual ball and the interest of the capital which the 
 Society possesses, for, thanks to its good organisation, 
 gifts and legacies, it is now rich. It has prospered like 
 this, chiefly because it is due to private initiative. The 
 day when it has the unfortunate idea of getting itself 
 recognised by the State, and it is sure to have this 
 idea, the interest of its capital will increase, but its 
 capital will decrease. 
 
 The hotel staff is very badly paid and the tip is its 
 real profit. Many travellers, more particularly the 
 wealthy ones, protest against this indirect taxation. 
 They are right, in the sense that service is supposed 
 to be included in the hotel prices. They are wrong, 
 inasmuch as the hundreds of little special attentions 
 which they get are well worth, not a pourboire but a 
 gratification. The pourboire is humiliating, as it is 
 in a way obligatory, but a gratification is a free thing, 
 and it honours the person who gives it and the one who 
 receives it. There are a quantity of words which, like 
 this one, ought to be changed in our times. A wealthy
 
 378 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 American business man said to me one day : " I con- 
 sider that the money I spend in pourboires is the money 
 that brings me back the most." His practical mind had 
 discovered that. There is an innate pride among the 
 humbler classes which makes them want to recognise 
 what one does for them. They are never behindhand 
 with us, and what they give us back is always more 
 than we gave them. I have often noticed the special 
 care with which porters handle the trunks and bags of 
 those who have treated them justly. Generally, and 
 this is not a very agreeable thing to have to own, women 
 are not as generous as men. Foreign women, for in- 
 stance, who are visiting Paris, buy more than they had 
 intended to buy. When they have used their letter of 
 credit up and are going away, they will economise on 
 the tips. I knew a Sicilian woman of good social posi- 
 tion. She was not wealthy and, on arriving at the 
 hotel, she used to put aside the money she should need 
 for the servants, so that her purchases should not oblige 
 her to restrict her generosity. That was a true senti- 
 ment of justice. Money alone is not sufficient for win- 
 ning the esteem and respect of the humble. They feel, 
 by intuition, which persons are interested in them and 
 they are grateful for this interest. Unfortunately, I 
 cannot distribute gratifications to those who wait on 
 me, as though I were a millionaire, and yet I have al- 
 ways been waited on as though I were a millionaire. 
 
 In a hotel where I stayed for a long time, one of the 
 porters was a veritable human masterpiece, a comic 
 masterpiece. He was a natural clown. He had a shock 
 of hair, jerky movements and the bewildered expression
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 379 
 
 of that amusing type of individual. He had the same 
 way of rushing at things, but with the difference that 
 he did not only appear to be at work, for the work he 
 was doing seemed to slip through his powerful hands 
 ready done. Besides all this, he was a born humorist. 
 As a matter of fact, he had a fortune in his roughly 
 built figure. His fellow servants saw what his true 
 vocation was and they all called him " Chocolat," after 
 that negro clown of the Nouveau Cirque, who was the 
 joy of Parisian children. He had been brought up, 
 after the death of his father and mother, by a Beauce 
 farmer. He had first had charge of the turkeys and 
 then of the sheep. The bewilderment of this herdsman, 
 on arriving in a first-class Parisian hotel, can be imag- 
 ined. He was at once a living target for all the would- 
 be jokers, but his quick, droll replies and his heavy fists 
 soon won for him a certain resp'ect, and Gustave-Choc- 
 olat became an important person on the hotel staff. 
 
 One morning, on my way downstairs, I heard the 
 hotel proprietor blaming him severely for work that had 
 been badly done. Holding his duster in his hand, he 
 watched her move away when she had finished speaking. 
 He then turned to a chamber-maid, who happened to be 
 there, and, pointing to their mistress with a movement 
 of his chin, he remarked slily : " What is the matter 
 with her? If she isn't satisfied, let her leave! I'm all 
 right here, and I'm going to stop ! " He thereupon 
 began to polish the balustrade. His utter buffoonery 
 made me laugh till the tears came. A few days later, 
 from the bathroom, I heard him talking as he was sweep- 
 ing the landing energetically. " Rich people ! I'm
 
 380 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 sorry for them ! " he remarked ; " they are always in bed. 
 I have to swallow their microbes and they are the ones 
 to be ill ! " With a little culture, he would, perhaps, 
 have been a great humorist. I used to like getting him 
 to talk. Behind his headstrong forehead, all barred 
 as it was with those wrinkles of childhood caused by 
 early suffering, I discovered the most unexpected 
 capabilities and, among others, a special gift for un- 
 derstanding everything mechanical. Whilst minding 
 his sheep he had studied the working of an old watch, 
 his sole inheritance, and he had succeeded in understand- 
 ing it. He used to say, proudly : " If a watch does 
 not go, I know what is the matter with it, and, if only 
 I had the necessary tools, I could soon mend it ! " His 
 love of clock-work had been fatal to some of the hotel 
 clocks and to the alarums of his fellow-servants. I also 
 discovered that he had an innate love of " patriotic " 
 novels. He bought as many as he could and he used 
 to devour them when on night duty. He told me that, 
 on account of his short stature, he had not been ac- 
 cepted for military service. 
 
 " Why should they care a straw about my height? " 
 he added, polishing up my window furiously. " There 
 are plenty of chicken-hearted chaps of six foot. I could 
 give a jacketing to any one." He then tossed his head 
 in his clown-like way and remarked : ** They'll per- 
 haps be glad to get me some day ! " 
 
 Our poor Chocolat confided in me, and several times 
 I could see the grudge he bore those who blamed him 
 unjustly. 
 
 " They're stupid, the bosses! " he remarked. " They
 
 381 
 
 take all the use out of your arms and legs with their 
 jawing. A few pleasant words give you courage. 
 They are oats that don't cost much ! " 
 
 Our concierge knew how interested I was in this man 
 and one day he told me that, on opening the big gates, 
 that morning, Chocolat had seen a poor, half-dressed 
 individual stamping his feet to get warm under the 
 arcades. He promptly gave him a few coppers and 
 told him to wait. He then rushed up to his room on 
 the sixth floor, brought down a flannel shirt and insisted 
 on the other putting it on there and then. I could 
 quite well imagine the rough way in which he had given 
 his orders. I was very much touched and, with my 
 damnable curiosity, I wanted to know what had been in 
 Chocolat's mind at the time and what sentiments he 
 had obeyed. After luncheon, I went up to my room 
 rather earlier than was my custom and found him 
 kneeling, in front of the grate, polishing the fender. 
 I congratulated him on his kindly deed of that morn- 
 ing. He turned very red and shrugged his left shoul- 
 der, as though in excuse. 
 
 " Yes," he said, " but folks have no right to upset 
 you by showing their hide like that in January, espe- 
 cially when there are shops near like the one by us ! " 
 
 The shop by us was that of a noted shirt-maker! 
 Oh, Chocolat, what humour and humour of the best 
 kind! He then continued in a surly tone, and with a 
 curious expression of bitterness: 
 
 " I'd got three flannel shirts and that chap hadn't 
 one! Is that just and is it common sense? There's 
 folks that say we are all brothers, but they don't think
 
 382 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 so at all. All that's the flummery of priests, members 
 of Parliament and socialists, so that they shall get a 
 leg up. When they've climbed on to the wall, though, 
 they don't know you any longer, they're not even cous- 
 ins then. It's only simpletons that get taken in by 
 them. They don't catch this bird with that chaff. 
 Brothers ! Oh, yes ! " continued Gustave, with his 
 amusing jerk of the head, " if I went and told the good 
 lady here that I was her brother and that she was my 
 sister, wouldn't she swing me round ! " 
 
 I promptly imagined the scene that such a declara- 
 tion would cause, and I had the greatest difficulty to 
 maintain my gravity. " All the same our fraternity 
 is very real," I observed, " for we are all the creatures 
 of the same Creator, the children of God. Those who 
 reflect at all, or who are very good, feel this perfectly 
 well. Did you not tell me that the sight of this poor 
 vagabond, without a shirt to his back, upset you this 
 morning? " 
 
 " Yes, it did, it made my teeth chatter." 
 
 " You see, if you had not been brothers, of the same 
 flesh, his nakedness would not have troubled you." 
 
 " P'r'aps not." 
 
 " You could not eat your dinner side by side with a 
 fellow-creature whom you knew to be starving, could 
 you?" 
 
 " Oh, no, but there are plenty of folks that the world 
 leaves to die of starvation." 
 
 " It does not know of their poverty, no doubt, for 
 mutual aid is not well organised." 
 
 "If all men are brothers, why do they eat each
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 383 
 
 other's noses off, why do they rob and kill each other? " 
 
 " Because they were created, for the sake of the 
 struggle, all of them different from each other. Some 
 of them are intelligent, others stupid ; some of them are 
 good, others bad; some are born to command, others 
 to obey; and all this makes enemies of brothers." 
 
 " And is that just? " 
 
 " I think it is, because ' it requires all sorts of people 
 to make the world,' as the saying is. Then, too, we 
 are all necessary, the most humble as well as the great- 
 est." 
 
 " Even those that are good for nothing? " asked 
 Gustave, looking me full in the face, with a mocking, 
 aggressive expression in his eyes. 
 
 " But, my good fellow, there is not a single creature 
 who does nothing. The infirm and even those who are 
 really ill are all doing something. In order to get some 
 one else to act, we have to do something ourselves. One 
 movement brings about another movement. A mech- 
 anician like you must understand that." 
 
 " Yes, I understand, but all the same there must be 
 something wrong somewhere, for there's too much 
 wretched poverty and Madame does not know p'r'aps " 
 
 " I know, oh, yes, I know," I interrupted quickly. 
 " There are too many things that are wrong in the 
 world, but, with God's help, they are gradually being 
 set right. He is at work, Himself, in bringing about 
 our perfection. In the meantime, you can console your- 
 self with the thought that suffering and death will come 
 to all of us. And I am not sure that the humbler class 
 does not get the better part or, at any rate, the easier
 
 $84 
 
 part in this life. The workman has only the worry of 
 earning the daily bread. His master has the respon- 
 sibility of meeting all his engagements, and if he cannot 
 do this, he is dishonoured. You hear nothing of the 
 sufferings of the rich, and they are sometimes so great 
 that money is of no use. There are more suicides among 
 rich people than among the poor. Emperors, Kings, 
 Presidents, and those at the head of things generally, 
 have longer and more arduous days than you do. Those 
 to whom you listen never tell you all this, as they want 
 to turn your head in the wrong direction. In the night 
 refuges, the slumberers snore, and in many soft beds, 
 slumber never comes. You have seen many American 
 millionaires in this hotel. Do they seem to you much 
 happier than you are yourself?" 
 
 " Lord, no ! They don't seem to be having much of 
 a spree. I've noticed that." 
 
 " They have troubles and maladies that you will 
 never know. Ah, you may be sure that God's scales 
 are equally balanced. . . ." 
 
 " Some of my chums say that there is no God. I ask 
 them whether it's men that made the sun, the moon and 
 the stars? No, that was God, it's as clear as day- 
 light." 
 
 " Yes, God is the great clock-maker. We cannot un- 
 derstand the movement of our Earth ; it is combined with 
 the movements of millions of stars and they all have 
 to keep time together." 
 
 " Yes, that's quite possible," assented our " Choc- 
 olat," in a knowing way. " Does Madame believe that 
 there will be another world, as the priests tell us ? "
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 385 
 
 " Certainly I do and you will be a great mechanician 
 there, perhaps," I answered. 
 
 "With plenty of tools?" 
 
 " With all the tools you need." 
 
 " That would be proper ! I was afraid that we should 
 just twirl our thumbs when we were once in Paradise." 
 
 " Oh, no, we shall go on working, as we must always 
 be learning something." 
 
 " Oh, well, that will suit me," observed the good fel- 
 low, getting up. 
 
 " And in the meantime, your polishing has made my 
 room look more cheerful," I remarked ; " my fender 
 shines like gold." 
 
 " Yes, it looks very well," agreed Chocolat, giving 
 it a final rub with his white apron. 
 
 Although this conversation took place more than ten 
 years ago, I have been able to write it down exactly. 
 It had remained in my memory, as it was very char- 
 acteristic and was to serve, when I needed it. 
 
 Strangely enough, Chocolat's first love-affair was a 
 farce, and I cannot resist telling about it. On arriv- 
 ing from his native Beauce, which, according to him, 
 was the most beautiful province of France, he had some 
 very dirty habits of primitive coarseness. It was not 
 long, though, before he began to feel the influence of his 
 more civilised surroundings. Cleanliness must have been 
 quite a revelation to him, I am sure. In a very short 
 time, he looked like another man. When his rough work 
 was done, he would wash and I expect he curry-combed 
 himself very energetically. He would then comb his thick, 
 stubbly hair, change his clothes and put on clean linen.
 
 386 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 Feeling considerably improved in appearance after this 
 free use of soap and water, he would then stand on 
 the doorstep, stroking and twirling his budding mous- 
 tache and taking in a quantity of instantaneous photo- 
 graphs with his little, keen eyes. He was not long in 
 discovering one of the prettiest housemaids in the neigh- 
 bourhood. Unfortunately for himself, he expressed his 
 admiration aloud, and this gave his fellow-servants the 
 idea of playing a good joke on him. One of them told 
 him that the girl had noticed him and that she liked his 
 looks. He took this seriously, as he was extremely 
 vain, and he now began to strut about finely. He re- 
 ceived letters, written in very friendly terms, and very 
 soon the most loving epistles signed Louise. She told 
 her admirer that he must neither speak to her, nor look 
 at her, when she was walking under the arcades, as it 
 would not do for her to be compromised by him. These 
 wretched practical jokers carried out their plan so well 
 that the poor fellow was soon wildly in love. He paid 
 more and more attention to his toilette, bought startling 
 neckties and used scented soap. When he was joked 
 about all this, he would reply, with his comic wink and 
 a conceited smile : " Young men will be young men ! " 
 Finally, the pseudo-Louise appointed a meeting, under 
 the arches of the Madeleine Church, between twelve and 
 one in the afternoon. At the appointed time, which was 
 his luncheon hour, he was there, looking very spick and 
 span, awaiting his beloved. Alas, she never came. I 
 expect he was cruelly disappointed. That evening, his 
 tormentors sent him a note to comfort him, in which 
 another meeting was arranged. This comedy was kept
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 387 
 
 up for a fortnight. And the victim lost his appetite 
 completely. Finally, some one told the maid in ques- 
 tion of the liberty that was being taken with her name. 
 She was indignant, but at the same time flattered by 
 the sentiment she had inspired. She at once wrote to 
 her admirer, in order to undeceive him. Chocolat told 
 me about the abominable trick that had been played on 
 him and gave me this letter to read. I copied it and 
 kept it as a document of human kindness and delicacy. 
 It ran thus : 
 
 " MONSIEUR GUSTAVE, 
 
 " I have never sent you a letter of any kind. A 
 trick has been played upon you, but I have had 
 nothing to do with it. I am going to be married 
 to a young man near my own home, so that my 
 heart is no longer free. If this were not so, I 
 should have liked you as you are so upright and 
 straightforward. There is nothing left but to 
 despise those who tried to make fun of you in such 
 a stupid way. They are imbeciles and good-for- 
 nothings. 
 
 " LOUISE." 
 
 "Madame has read it?" said Monsieur Gustave, 
 when I returned him the letter. " If she had been free, 
 she would have liked me and she says that those who 
 imagined this take-in are imbeciles and good-for-noth- 
 ings. . . . Imbeciles," he repeated, in delight, tapping 
 the sheet of paper with the back of his hand ; " that's 
 written there."
 
 388 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 I admired the feminine intuition of this humble girl. 
 She had found the words that were needed for healing 
 the wounded love and self-respect of her adorer and, 
 at the same time, she had given him a weapon for her 
 own revenge. Without this letter, Chocolat would 
 probably have used his fists on his tormentors and, as 
 it was, he contented himself with showing the letter to 
 every one of them. 
 
 During the summer season, Gustave gave notice and 
 left the hotel, " in order to go and see the world," as 
 he said himself. On my return for the winter, he was 
 no longer there and I was very sorry. I never saw him 
 again but, on Shrove Tuesday of two consecutive years 
 we had a most persistent horn player under the arcades 
 of the Rue de Castiglione. It was no other than our 
 ex-porter giving us this serenade. How and where 
 could he have learned to play the hunting-horn? This 
 fresh talent would have made of him an accomplished 
 clown. 
 
 And so I had to go to Vevey in search of this chap- 
 ter! Such as it is, it has given me great pleasure to 
 write it and it seems to me that I have paid a debt. 
 
 When we first begin to think of it, we are surprised 
 that Christianism should not have developed the senti- 
 ment of human fraternity more than it has done, but 
 when we look at its work more closely, we see that this 
 has never been real for Christians. It is of no use 
 protesting, as this is quite true. It preached human 
 fraternity after the manner of Balaam's ass. It dis- 
 dained Nature, it ignored everything in the divine book,
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 389 
 
 in which fraternity is written in living letters. Christ 
 had seen it in his long meditations and, by the words 
 " Our Father," he wanted to reveal it to the world, but 
 the world was not ready to hear it. For the apostles 
 and their successors, it was only an ideal, a mystical 
 dream, and we ought to be grateful to them for having 
 dreamed and lived it until it could be better understood. 
 
 Charity of old, both with Pagans and Christians, 
 exalted those who gave it, but humiliated and dishon- 
 oured those who received it. It was an instrument of 
 power, of tyranny even, a means of arriving, of winning 
 terrestrial and celestial honours. The sentiment of our 
 fraternity will not come from Christian pulpits, but 
 from Science, from the chemical laboratories, from 
 Natural History, from Philosophy. It will be one of 
 the fruits of the evolution which has commenced. And 
 then, when we have become aware of our near relation- 
 ship, the mutuality which will protect the workman from 
 need, which will confer true liberty on him, the arbitrage 
 which is to help him, will be organised to every one's 
 satisfaction. The uprooted, the vanquished ones of 
 Life will then be able to accept the help of the com- 
 munity without any shame, and those individuals who 
 are really good, and really humane, will spare the feet 
 that walk for them and the hands that serve them. 
 
 In order to rise, the aeroplane has to run along the 
 ground for yards and yards. For millions of years, 
 humanity has been running along level with the earth, 
 in order to rise and to start in the direction of justice 
 and of love. Fraternity alone can help it to get there.
 
 390 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 We arc always told to " Look above." I would say, 
 " Look down below, deeper and ever deeper down, for 
 the secrets of God, like all precious things, must be 
 buried very deep down."
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE Autumn sunsets on this part of Leman, which is 
 known as the Large Lake, have a special beauty of their 
 own. Yesterday's sunset made an impression on me 
 which I hope will not be effaced for a long time. 
 Against a remarkably clear sky, the outlines of the 
 peaked or rounded summits of the Alps were very dis- 
 tinct. The chain, with its marquetry of snow, was of 
 such a pure blue that it looked like solidified azure. 
 And over this whiteness and over this azure, the light 
 of the setting sun threw its rays with an art that was 
 truly divine. It then created a golden background, 
 upon which Venus appeared with its diamond-like bril- 
 liancy. A few minutes later Mars was visible in the 
 east, as red as a ruby. Between these two living jewels, 
 the faint crescent of a new moon stood out against the 
 sky. The three stars remained alone in the twilight 
 silence. " The honeymoon of Venus and Mars," I said 
 to myself irreverently. A second glance gave me a 
 kind of religious emotion. I can never look long at the 
 starry firmament. Its unfathomable immensity and its 
 mystery make a thrill of awe run down my back, atom 
 as I am. A few minutes later, I took my place at my 
 writing-table again and my eyes, still filled with the 
 grandeur of the world above, fell on the little globe 
 which was on my table. The Earth ! It seems incredi- 
 ble, but for the first time in my life, it occurred to me 
 
 that not only was it a planet like those that were shin- 
 
 391
 
 392 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 ing in front of me, but that its route was traced be- 
 tween these two, that it appeared every evening, like 
 them, above some horizon, and that every evening it put 
 a golden nail in the firmament. I had learnt this fact 
 and it seems to me that I had always known it, but I 
 had never really conceived this before. To conceive a 
 thing means that something fresh is formed within us 
 and, according to the thing conceived, the sensation is 
 exquisite or painful. I saw the Terrestrians, feet 
 against feet, kept in equilibrium thus on the surface of 
 a solid globe which keeps turning round on itself, in the 
 fluid, transparent ether, at the rate of 1600 an hour. 
 I saw myself in the cage where I do not sing, alas, but 
 where I think, and I saw myself with all my little exer- 
 cise books rolling among the stars. This amusing 
 vision seemed to me grandly comic. Then I turned my 
 little globe slowly round. Was this then how man 
 imagined the planet to be on which he had grown? A 
 sphere, just a little flat towards the poles, swelling out 
 at its equator, on which longitudinal and horizontal 
 lines are traced, imaginary lines which serve us as 
 land marks. The pale green background indicates the 
 liquid part, the Ocean. The solid part, or the Earth, 
 is cut up strangely and very irregularly, ending in 
 points at unequal distances. It then begins again form- 
 ing veritable strings of islands. This solid part is di- 
 vided into numberless pieces, outlined with red, yellow, 
 mauve and green. Each of these pieces bears the name 
 of the nation to whom it belongs. An infinite number 
 of lines seems to bind these various countries together. 
 Some of these lines indicate the net-work of railroads
 
 393 
 
 and others the various routes of the boats, and still 
 others those of the cables which transmit invisible human 
 thought. Then the arrows, scattered in every direc- 
 tion, mark the currents of the atmosphere and of the 
 Ocean. 
 
 And this is how, after millions of years of existence, 
 and of perpetual efforts, mankind has come to know and 
 to see his place of habitation. He has made out the 
 lines of the mountain chains, of the flow of rivers and 
 the outlines that the sea has formed. This is very much 
 and it is nothing. It is much, because, in the im- 
 mensity of his domain, he can no longer get lost. It 
 is nothing, because he only knows the surface or the 
 body, as it were, of the Earth. He knows nothing of 
 its soul, of that soul which aliments his own, and with 
 which he is ever collaborating. He knows almost noth- 
 ing of the immaterial forces which he is obeying, of the 
 psychical zones in the midst of which he is moving, of 
 the currents transmitted to him by the orders of the 
 gods, of the fluid ideas, pictures, sentiments, which unite 
 him to other beings and which make his destiny. Oh, 
 how much there is that the Terrestrian does not yet 
 know! 
 
 With a finger that seemed to see, I once more turned 
 my little globe round. It appeared to me all at once 
 like a chess-board with many coloured squares. And 
 is our planet not that? Yes, it is in truth a chess- 
 board, on which the gods are playing the eternal game 
 of Life. They are playing this game with man, and 
 for man, on the chess-board which they made very 
 slowly, which they have altered during long centuries
 
 394 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 and which they will alter again up to the last ; a chess- 
 board on which every square contains a world of won- 
 ders, and of which every square is a battle-field. I 
 know too little history to be able to follow the terrifying 
 game closely, but I know enough to enable me to grasp 
 what the aim and object of it all is, and this aim and 
 object is nothing but the evolution and progress of man- 
 kind. We must have the courage to write that this 
 evolution commenced, and has continued, by means of 
 robbery and murder. Was it for the sake of a handful 
 of lentils, an apple, or a woman that the far-off an- 
 cestor was guilty of fratricide? That matters little. 
 He killed his brother and that gesture of doing away 
 with the weaker one has been repeated through the 
 ages, with the implacability of a primordial and neces- 
 sary law. It goes on repeating itself. In our twenti- 
 eth century, people still rob each other, but in a more 
 artistic way. People are always massacring each 
 other in some part of the globe, but in a more scientific 
 manner than formerly. The result is the same, though. 
 Thanks to the inspiration of the gods, we have manu- 
 factured the most wonderful engines of warfare. One 
 of these days, they will want to see how these things 
 work and we know what that means. If we are not to 
 be staggered by this terrifying reality, we must be able 
 to listen to what Nature cries out to us with all her 
 voices. She tells us that she is a great transformer 
 and that her work is Life's work. In that immortal 
 struggle to which humanity seems to be doomed, mate- 
 rial forces only serve psychical forces. In reality, the 
 real combat is between passions, sentiments and ideas ;
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 395 
 
 between those formidable Invisibles lodged in certain 
 cellules of our brain, for which other cellules have to 
 furnish the weapons of attack and defence. From the 
 flint hatchet to the elegant and well-tempered sword of 
 the Fronde and to the Lebel gun; from the wretched 
 little boat to the Dreadnought, there is a ladder which 
 will serve for the history of our mentality. And on 
 this terrestrial chess-board, the gods have moved 
 pawns, knights, kings, queens, castles and bishops about 
 and have pushed them backwards and forwards in a 
 thousand strange and incomprehensible ways. Each of 
 these moves has produced frightful hecatombs and 
 waves and waves of human and animal suffering. Each 
 of these moves has caused the destruction of the Ter- 
 restrians' dwellings, temples and edifices, built at the 
 cost of enormous labour. Each of these moves, too, 
 has caused the dispersion of treasures which had taken 
 ages to collect. Whilst war and disease raged on cer- 
 tain of the squares, new life was born and developed 
 on others. The gods put light here and shade there 
 and then they made shade of light and light of shade. 
 In far-off times, India, China, Persia and Asia shone 
 with a brilliancy that has never been surpassed. 
 Egypt, Greece, Carthage, Rome have all been beacons 
 in their turn. It was, although they did not know it, 
 in order to win for themselves this divine light that the 
 nations were all moving onwards. I fancy I see the 
 endless files of warriors, accompanied by women, chil- 
 dren, slaves and flocks, crossing the mountain chains, the 
 rivers, marshes, deserts, with just what belonged to 
 them, and with none of the material forces to help them!
 
 396 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 that we have in our times. When I think of the weak 
 who must have fallen on the way, of the conquered who 
 have been killed, mutilated or taken into captivity, my 
 heart swells with pity and with anger. Are the Powers 
 who govern us cruel then? No. They are, no doubt, 
 obeying higher and inevitable laws themselves, and their 
 progress means ours too. And this progress is im- 
 mense, in spite of what those people say who have eyes 
 which do not see. In the first centuries of our era, the 
 ancestors of the Germans of to-day, were handsome bar- 
 barians who dyed their bodies blue. There were canni- 
 bals in Scotland, whilst in the forests of France, human 
 blood flowed in sacrifice on the stone altars. At pres- 
 ent, Europe and America possess the light. Will it 
 return to the East? It is quite possible, for there are 
 glimmers of dawn there. 
 
 All these thoughts had made my little globe seem 
 very living to me, in the most curious way, and I turned 
 it gently round. Poor Earth ! We do not love it as 
 we should, as we only know vaguely the history of its 
 titanic epopee. When will some one come who will 
 know how to read it objectively, as a " Divine manu- 
 script," and who will be able to explain it to us clearly 
 and simply, so that both the humble and the great may 
 be interested in it? There is no science so little under- 
 stood and so stupidly taught as history our history. 
 We compel brains of ten years old, milky brains, as it 
 were, to absorb the past grandeur of Egypt, of a coun- 
 try which they cannot imagine and cannot even place. 
 We compel them to remember the barbarous names of 
 its kings and dynasties, at an age when they cannot
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 397 
 
 even understand what a dynasty is. Geography is 
 taught to them from a flat map, and they do not even 
 see the real shape of our planet. In France, the chil- 
 dren of the elementary schools begin their history with 
 the third Republic. There was nothing before this, it 
 appears, and there can be nothing after it. At the 
 Nanterre school examinations, last summer, some little 
 girls of fourteen were questioned on the history of uni- 
 versal suffrage ! The miracle is that, out of twelve, two 
 knew something about it. They were the daughters 
 of Republicans evidently. And people are surprised 
 at our depopulation. We are taught history when we 
 are unable to understand it, and when we could under- 
 stand, we do not open our books again, thanks to our 
 former dislike of it. Our ignorance prevents us from 
 judging either the past or the present in a sound man- 
 ner. We content ourselves with knowing the names of 
 the great victors and of the celebrated vanquished ones, 
 but we do not even see that their victories and their 
 defeats still affect us. If my globe now tells me some- 
 thing immense and wonderful, it is thanks to some read- 
 ing I have done, reading which has had its influence on 
 this volume, and which, in spite of my will, was to guide 
 my barque, " The Why," once more towards Rome. 
 " All roads lead to Rome " is the saying, and all far- 
 reaching thought leads there too. 
 
 Among the phenomena which go to make up our 
 existences, there is one which always astonishes me. 
 For months and years, we may look at a name, an ob- 
 ject or a person without really seeing them. There 
 then comes a moment when we are struck by this name,
 
 398 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 this object or this person. They enter into our life 
 and play a more or less important part there. This is 
 no hap-hazard, no fatality, but a Providential contact. 
 There is a certain Hotel Gibbon in Lausanne, named 
 thus in memory of the great English writer who was 
 one of the guests of the old city. I saw this name 
 nearly every day and, to me, it meant nothing but the 
 hotel sign. One afternoon, it suddenly occurred to me 
 that Gibbon was the author of " The History of the 
 Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," and that re- 
 minded me of a characteristic feature of an epoch that 
 had been lived. In 1869, soon after arriving in Rome, 
 I had asked for this work at a bookshop on the Corso. 
 I was told by the bookseller, in a loud voice, for the 
 edification of all present, I suppose, that it was on the 
 Index of Prohibited Books, and that he had no copies 
 of it. Whilst I was looking at the titles of books on 
 the shelves, one of the salesmen came up to me and 
 told me he had just discovered a copy of the work for 
 which I had asked and that, as I was a foreigner, he 
 could let me have it. He then asked me so exorbitant 
 a price for it that I did not buy it. In those days a 
 sin was expensive in Rome, at present it costs nothing. 
 I had thought no more either of Gibbon or his history 
 and now, after so many years, I had a wish to read it, 
 a spontaneous wish that was like an inspiration. 
 
 I read this history and it took me a whole year. It 
 is written in a simple, pleasant style and is full of light. 
 I have already confessed my frivolity. It is such that 
 I cannot continue reading a dry, serious writer, who 
 has neither warmth nor colour, even though he could
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 399 
 
 tell me the secrets I am curious to know. I did not 
 skip one of the three thousand pages which are the 
 synthesis of fifteen centuries. This synthesis is so clear 
 that it shows up, all the time, Providential work, with- 
 out ever entangling the various threads of the weaving. 
 And I admired, as a novelist, the linking together of the 
 various circumstances, the art with which everything is 
 made to concur, the apparent insignificance of the 
 causes, the immensity of the effects and the intentional 
 ironies. But, as I read this drama, lived by us in mind 
 and body, this drama which has engendered so much 
 suffering, I was frequently rebellious and the exclama- 
 tions to which I gave vent were not precisely in admir- 
 ation of the gods. From time to time I thought I was 
 coming to the death of things and then I felt other 
 organisms coming to life. When I read about the king- 
 dom of England, for instance, and then about the king- 
 dom of France, and the other European kingdoms, I 
 found myself face to face with evolution, with the phe- 
 nomenon of eternal life, and my confidence and hope 
 came back to me. 
 
 On reading the " History of the Decline and Fall of 
 the Roman Empire " I wondered, in bewilderment, to 
 what Gibbon owed the honour of having his work on the 
 Index of Prohibited Books? It was, perhaps, thanks 
 to the crime of having told the truth, the truth which 
 is not pleasant to know. His philosophy, as a scholar 
 and a gentleman, seems to hover above all questions of 
 party and of religion. When he has to tell something 
 which is not favourable to Christianism or to the Church, 
 he does this with evident regret and he gives us his
 
 400 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 proofs from the doctors of the same Church, and never 
 from its enemies. Some people consider this very 
 adroit. I think it was straightforward. I fancy that 
 those who condemned his work canonically were alarmed 
 at the three thousand pages and did not read it through 
 or they were incapable of understanding it. 
 
 After Gibbon, I always used to read my New York 
 Herald from Paris. When, in the political and social 
 notes of twentieth century Rome, I saw accounts of a 
 Parliamentary meeting, or of dinners and balls, at the 
 Grand Hotel and at the Excelsior, in which names re- 
 appeared that were still shining out in my mind, as those 
 of the feudal barons, names such as Colonna, Orsini or 
 Caetani, I experienced the sensation of taking a re- 
 freshing bath on coming out of a furnace. And the 
 childish, frivolous wish came wickedly into my mind 
 that I might see modern Romans moving about among 
 the great scenes which my reading had made so real 
 that they seemed to be incredibly near to me. Three 
 years previously, I had gone back to Italy after a quar- 
 ter of a century's absence. My voyage had caused me 
 a whole series of disappointments, for which I should 
 formerly have held Rome, Florence and Venice responsi- 
 ble, but which were merely subjective disappointments. 
 Men whom I had known there at the age of twenty-five 
 were now fifty, and when I saw them with their hair 
 turning grey, it gave me a stab. The whole of the 
 time I was there, I felt my own age and the sensation 
 was abominable, yes, absolutely abominable. I felt that 
 Italy had become too strong an accumulator for me; 
 just as I feel that Paris is too rapid.
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 401 
 
 The beauty contained in the Museums attracted " the 
 Other One " irresistibly. I was consequently obliged 
 to mount an endless number of stairs when " I myself " 
 was protesting all the time. It was humiliating to be 
 obliged to ask the care-takers for permission to keep 
 my sunshade as I walked through the rooms, and it was 
 only the sight of certain masterpieces that calmed me 
 again. One day in Rome, I was talking to one of my 
 friends, near her window, when my eyes fell on a mask 
 on a house opposite. Its powerful expression struck 
 me and interrupted what I was saying. I apologised 
 and added with some annoyance : " It is most tire- 
 some that one can never talk in peace here. One is 
 always interrupted by something extraordinary ! " 
 This was not a mere whim. I really felt as though I 
 were being pursued by beauty and it gave me a sort of 
 tired anger. 
 
 I had, as I believed, bidden a last farewell to Italy 
 and, without my being aware of it, the book I had 
 written, the reading of Gibbon, and every chapter of 
 " The Wonderful Romance " was taking me unavoid- 
 ably back there. Once more the gods are saying to me : 
 " Start off, start off, poor Terrestrian with the tired 
 feet ! " Do they know how much it costs me only to 
 draw out the staples of my tent, to leave my light, 
 cheerful room and that table of harmony, Lake Leman, 
 to leave the sparrows, the wrens and the tomtits which 
 make of my balcony an open aviary? Do they know 
 it ? I fancy they do, for their will comes to me through 
 some very dear American friends who beg me to spend 
 Christmas with them in Rome. They write the word
 
 402 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 " Come " in enormous letters. That written word has 
 made a curious impression on me. I will go, yes, I will 
 go, come what may ! It is perhaps foolish. I am three 
 years older ; that means something like nine campaigns, 
 for at my age each year counts triple. Is it not rather 
 late in the day to make another pilgrimage to the 
 Eternal City? I feel how thin the thread of my life 
 now is. It seems to me, at times, as though I hear 
 the jeering of Destiny's sinister handmaiden, for she 
 it is who will cut the thread, oh, the horrible crea- 
 ture! She no doubt considers that she has been very 
 kind in delaying so long a time, but it is hard to leave 
 Life now when I see it so immense, beautiful with an 
 immortal beauty! Courage will come to me. If it be 
 at Rome that I am to succumb, there is one of the most 
 beautiful cemeteries in the world at the foot of the 
 Aventine, the foreigners' cemetery, the one of which 
 Shelley said : " It makes one in love with death." The 
 light, softened by the tall cypress trees, is extraordi- 
 nary; it seems to have been created for happy disem- 
 bodied souls, and those who are at rest there seem to 
 belong to the same world, to be happy together. Am 
 I destined to sleep in such peace? Chi lo sal 
 
 Well, I am going to prepare for my departure, as 
 though it were to be the final journey. I shall finish 
 off here all that I have read through of the " Won- 
 derful Romance," so that it may not be wasted. I 
 should like to be able to take it on to Rome. If this 
 should not be allowed me, I shall not have said all that I 
 wanted to say, but I shall have said all that I was to 
 say. Others who know more and are more capable will
 
 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 403 
 
 continue this reading. I shall have had the glory of 
 having commenced it. That is enough for me. The 
 volume will be a small one in the book-shop; if to some 
 of my readers it should appear great, that, too, is 
 enough for me. 
 
 PlEERE DE COULEVAIN.
 
 404 THE WONDERFUL ROMANCE 
 
 LAUSANNE, Hotel Beausejour. 
 
 She did not go to Rome. She " fell from the 
 Branch " a few steps away from the spot where Edward 
 Gibbon finished " The Decline and Fall of the Roman 
 Empire," his share of " The Wonderful Romance." 
 Her express wish was to remain unknown. As she re- 
 peated frequently ', her work alone belongs to criticism 
 and to curiosity. 
 
 THE END
 
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