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247 pages

English

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Architecture lovers and Francophiles, rejoice. French writer Joris-Karl Huysmans' novel set at the famed cathedral at Chartres contains such detailed descriptions of the site's layout and construction that early tourists sometimes used it as a guidebook. The book is the third in a series of works that follow the religious conversion and spiritual life of Durtal, the protagonist that Huysmans modeled on himself.

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Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 janvier 2011
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781775450603
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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THE CATHEDRAL
* * *
J. K. HUYSMANS
Translated by
CLARA BELL

*

The Cathedral First published in 1898 ISBN 978-1-775450-60-3 © 2011 The Floating Press
While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike.
Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
*
Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Chapter VIII Chapter IX Chapter X Chapter XI Chapter XII Chapter XIII Chapter XIV Chapter XV Chapter XVI Endnotes
Chapter I
*
At Chartres, as you turn out of the little market-place, which is sweptin all weathers by the surly wind from the flats, a mild air as of acellar, made heavy by a soft, almost smothered scent of oil, puffs inyour face on entering the solemn gloom of the sheltering forest.
Durtal knew it well, and the delightful moment when he could takebreath, still half-stunned by the sudden change from a stinging northwind to a velvety airy caress. At five every morning he left his rooms,and to reach the covert of that strange forest he had to cross thesquare; the same figures were always to be seen at the turnings from thesame streets; nuns with bowed heads, leaning forward, the borders oftheir caps blown back and flapping like wings, the wind whirling intheir skirts, which they could hardly hold down; and shrunken women, ingarments they hugged round them, struggling forward with bent shoulderslashed by the gusts.
Never at that hour had he seen anybody walking boldly upright, withoutstraining her neck and bowing her head; and these scattered womengathered by degrees into two long lines, one of them turning to theleft, to vanish under a lighted porch opening to a lower level than thesquare; the other going straight on, to be swallowed up in the darknessby an invisible wall.
Closing the procession came a few belated priests, hurrying on, with onehand gathering up the gown that ballooned behind them, and with theother clutching their hats, or snatching at the breviary that wasslipping from under one arm, their faces hidden on their breast, toplough through the wind with the back of their neck; with red ears, eyesblinded with tears, clinging desperately, when it rained, to umbrellasthat swayed above them, threatening to lift them from the ground anddragging them in every direction.
The passage had been more than usually stormy this morning; the squallsthat tear across the district of La Beauce, where nothing can checkthem, had been bellowing for hours; there had been rain, and the puddlessplashed under foot. It was difficult to see, and Durtal had begun tothink that he should never succeed in getting past the dim mass of thewall that shut in the square, by pushing open the door behind which laythat weird forest, redolent of the night-lamp and the tomb, andprotected from the gale.
He sighed with satisfaction, and followed the wide path that led throughthe gloom. Though he knew his way, he walked cautiously in this alley,bordered by enormous trunks, their crowns lost in shadow. He could havefancied himself in a hothouse roofed with black glass, for there wereflagstones under foot, and no sky could be seen, no breeze could stiroverhead. The few stars whose glimmer twinkled from afar belonged to ourfirmament; they quivered almost on the ground, and were, in fact,earth-born.
In this obscurity nothing was to be heard but the fall of quiet feet,nothing to be seen but silent shades visible against the twilight likeshapes of deeper darkness.
Durtal presently turned into another wide walk crossing that he hadleft. There he found a bench backed by the trunk of a tree, and on thishe leaned, waiting till the Mother should awake, and the sweet interviewinterrupted yesterday by the close of the day should begin again.
He thought of the Virgin, whose watchful care had so often preserved himfrom unexpected risk, easy slips, or greater falls. Was not She thebottomless Well of goodness, the Bestower of the gifts of good Patience,the Opener of dry and obdurate hearts? Was She not, above all, theliving and thrice Blessed Mother?
Bending for ever over the squalid bed of the soul, she washed the sores,dressed the wounds, strengthened the fainting weakness of converts.Through all the ages She was the eternal supplicant, eternallyentreated; at once merciful and thankful; merciful to the woes Shealleviated, and thankful to them too. She was indeed our debtor for oursins, since, but for the wickedness of man, Jesus would never have beenborn under the corrupt semblance of our image, and She would not havebeen the immaculate Mother of God. Thus our woe was the first cause ofHer joy; and this supremest good resulting from the very excess of Evil,this touching though superfluous bond, linking us to Her, was indeed themost bewildering of mysteries; for Her gratitude would seem unneeded,since Her inexhaustible mercy was enough to attach Her to us for ever.
Thenceforth, in Her immense humility, She had at various timescondescended to the masses; She had appeared in the most remote spots,sometimes seeming to rise from the earth, sometimes floating over theabyss, descending on solitary mountain peaks, bringing multitudes to Herfeet, and working cures; then, as if weary of wandering to be adored,She wished—so it had seemed—to fix the worship in one place, and haddeserted Her ancient haunts in favour of Lourdes.
That town was the second stage of Her progress through France in thenineteenth century. Her first visit was to La Salette.
This was years ago. On the 19th of September, 1846, the Virgin hadappeared to two children on a hill; it was a Saturday, the day dedicatedto Her, which, that year, was a fast day by reason of the Ember week. Byanother coincidence, this Saturday was the eve of the Festival of OurLady of Seven Dolours, and the first vespers were being chanted whenMary appeared as from a shell of glory just above the ground.
And she appeared as Our Lady of Tears in that desert landscape ofstubborn rocks and dismal hills. Weeping bitterly, She had utteredreproofs and threats; and a spring, which never in the memory of man hadflowed excepting at the melting of the snows, had never since been driedup.
The fame of this event spread far and wide; frantic thousands scrambledup fearful paths to a spot so high that trees could not grow there.Caravans of the sick and dying were conveyed, God knows how, acrossravines to drink the water; and maimed limbs recovered, and tumoursmelted away to the chanting of canticles.
Then, by degrees, after the sordid debates of a contemptible lawsuit,the reputation of La Salette dwindled to nothing; pilgrims were few,miracles were less often proclaimed. The Virgin, it would seem, wasgone; She had ceased to care for this spring of piety and thesemountains.
At the present day few persons climb to La Salette but the natives ofDauphiné, tourists wandering through the Alps, or invalids following thecure at the neighbouring mineral springs of La Mothe. Conversions andspiritual graces still abound there, but bodily healing there is next tonone.
"In fact," said Durtal to himself, "the vision at La Salette becamefamous without its ever being known exactly why. It may be supposed tohave grown up as follows: the report, confined at first to the villageof Corps at the foot of the mountain, spread first throughout thedepartment, was taken up by the adjacent provinces, filtered over allFrance, overflowed the frontier, trickled through Europe, and at lastcrossed the seas to land in the New World which, in its turn, felt thethrob, and also came to this wilderness to hail the Virgin.
"And the circumstances attending these pilgrimages were such as mighthave daunted the determination of the most persevering. To reach thelittle inn, perched on high near the church, the lazy rumbling of slowtrains must be endured for hours, and constant changes at stations; daysmust be spent in the diligence, and nights in breeding-places of fleasat country inns; and after flaying your back on the carding-combs ofimpossible beds, you must rise at daybreak to start on a giddy climb, onfoot or riding a mule, up zig-zag bridle-paths above precipices; and atlast, when you are there, there are no fir trees, no beeches, nopastures, no torrents; nothing—nothing but total solitude, and silenceunbroken even by the cry of a bird, for at that height no bird is to befound.
"What a scene!" thought Durtal, calling up the memories of a journey hehad made with the Abbé Gévresin and his housekeeper, since leaving LaTrappe. He remembered the horrors of a spot he had passed between SaintGeorges de Commiers and La Mure, and his alarm in the carriage as thetrain slowly travelled across the abyss. Beneath was darkness increasingin spirals down to the vasty deeps; above, as far as the eye couldreach, piles of mountains invaded the sky.
The train toiled up, snorting and turning round and round like a top;then, going into a tunnel, was swallowed by the earth; it seemed to bepushing the light of day away in front, till it suddenly came out into aclearing full of sunshine; presently, as if it were retracing its road,it rushed into another burrow, and emerged with the strident yell of asteam whistle and deafening clatter of wheels, to fly up the windingribbon of road cut in the living rock.
Suddenly the peaks parted, a wide opening brought the train out intobroad daylight; the scene lay clear before them, terrible on all sides.
"Le Drac!" exclaimed the Abbé Gévresin, pointing to a sort of liquidserpent at the bottom of the precipice, writhing and tossing betweenro