Three Dates · III

I too made my way toward that spot with the intention of peering through the double grilles that separated it from the church. I don’t know, it seemed to me that I would recognize on sight the woman whose hand I had seen for only an instant; and opening my eyes immeasurably and dilating my pupils, as if wishing to lend them greater strength and clarity, I fixed them on the back of the choir. A futile effort: through the crossed irons, very little or nothing could be seen. Like black and white phantoms moving amid the gloom, against which the scarce glow of a few lighted candles fought in vain; a prolonged row of tall, pointed stalls, crowned by canopies, beneath which could be guessed, veiled by the darkness, the confused shapes of the nuns, dressed in long flowing habits; a crucifix illuminated by four candles, standing out against the shadowy background of the scene, like those points of light that in Rembrandt’s canvases make the shadows more palpable; this was all I could distinguish from the place I occupied.

The priests, covered in their copes embroidered with gold, preceded by acolytes bearing a silver cross and two tapers, and followed by others waving censers perfuming the air, passing through the midst of the faithful, who kissed their hands and the hems of their vestments, reached at last the choir grille.

Up until that moment I could not distinguish, among the other confused shadows, which one belonged to the maiden about to consecrate herself to the Lord.

Have you never seen in those final moments of twilight rise from the waters of a river, from the expanse of a swamp, from the waves of the sea or the deep abyss of a mountain, a wisp of mist that floats slowly in the void, and alternately looks now like a woman who moves and walks and lets her gown fly as she walks, now like a white veil pinned to the hair of some invisible sylph, now like a phantom rising in the air covering its yellow bones with a shroud, upon which one fancied one could see its angular shapes drawn? Well, an hallucination of that very sort I experienced when I watched that white, tall, and extraordinarily light figure advance toward the grille, as if detaching herself from the shadowy background of the choir.

Her face could not be seen. She came to place herself directly before the candles that illuminated the crucifix; and their glow, forming like a nimbus of light around her head, made her stand out against the darkness by bathing her in a doubtful shadow.

A profound silence reigned; all eyes were fixed upon her, and the final part of the ceremony began.

The abbess, murmuring some unintelligible words, words which in turn the priests repeated in a muffled and deep voice, snatched from her temples the crown of flowers that encircled them and cast it far from her... Poor flowers! They were the last that woman would ever wear, sister to the flowers like all women.

Then she stripped her of her veil, and her blonde hair tumbled like a cascade of gold over her back and shoulders, which it could cover for only an instant, because immediately there began to be perceived amidst the profound silence reigning among the faithful, a metallic and sharp scraping sound that set the nerves on edge, and the magnificent hair detached itself from the forehead it shaded, and rolled down her bosom and fell to the ground thereafter those curls that the perfumed air must have kissed so many times...

The abbess murmured the unintelligible words once more; the priests repeated them, and all was silence again in the church. Only from time to time were heard in the distance like long and fearful moans. It was the wind whistling as it crashed against the angles of the battlements and the turrets, and shivering as it passed the colored panes of the pointed arches.

She stood motionless, motionless and pale as a stone virgin snatched from the niche of a Gothic cloister.

And they stripped her of the jewels that covered her arms and throat, and undressed her, finally, of her bridal attire, that attire which seemed made so that a lover might tear its clasps with a hand trembling with emotion and affection...

The mystic groom awaited the bride. Where? Beyond death; opening no doubt the slab of the sepulchre and calling her to cross it, as the timid bride crosses the threshold of the sanctuary of nuptial loves, for she fell to the ground collapsed like a corpse. The nuns threw handfuls of flowers upon her body as if it were earth, intoning a most mournful psalmody; a murmur arose from among the multitude, and the priests with their deep, hollow voices began the office of the dead, accompanied by those instruments that seem to weep, heightening the profound dread inspired of itself by the terrible words they pronounce.

De profundis clamavi ad te! chanted the nuns from the back of the choir with plaintive and sorrowful voices.

Dies iræ, dies illa! answered the priests in a thundering and deep echo, and meanwhile the bells tolled slowly ringing for the dead, and from stroke to stroke the bronze could be heard vibrating with a strange and lugubrious hum.

I was moved; no, not moved, terrified. I believed I was witnessing something supernatural, feeling as though something essential to my life were being torn from me, and that a void was forming around me; I thought I had just lost someone, like a father, a mother, or a beloved woman, and I felt that immense desolation left by death wherever it passes, a nameless desolation that cannot be painted, and that only those who have felt it can conceive...

I was still nailed to that spot with my eyes crazed, trembling and beside myself, when the new nun rose from the floor. The abbess clothed her in the habit, the nuns took lighted candles in their hands, and forming two long rows, led her as in a procession toward the back of the choir.

There, amid the shadows, I saw a ray of light shine; it was the cloister door that had opened. Upon setting foot on its threshold, the nun turned for the very last time toward the altar. The glare of all the lights illuminated her suddenly, and I was able to see her face. Upon looking at it, I had to stifle a cry. I knew that woman; I had never seen her, but I knew her from having contemplated her in dreams; she was one of those beings the soul divines or perhaps remembers from another, better world, of which upon descending to this one, some do not entirely lose the memory.

I took two steps forward; I wanted to call her, I wanted to shout, I don’t know, a sort of vertigo seized me, but at that instant the cloister door closed... forever. The small bells stirred, the priests raised a Hosanna! clouds of incense rose into the air, the organ unleashed a torrent of thundering harmony through a hundred metal mouths, and the tower bells began to peal, revolving with a terrifying fury.

That mad and noisy joy made my hair stand on end. I turned my eyes around looking for the parents, for the family, orphans of that woman. I found no one.

“Perhaps she was alone in the world,” I said; and I could not restrain a tear.

“May God grant you in the cloister the happiness He has not given you in the world!” exclaimed at the same time an old woman who was at my side, sobbing and moaning, clinging to the grille.

“Do you know her?” I asked her.

“Poor little thing! Yes, I knew her. And I’ve seen her born and she was raised in my arms.”

“And why does she take the veil?”

“Because she found herself alone in the world. Her father and mother died on the very same day of cholera, a little over a year ago. Seeing her orphan and helpless, the señor dean gave her the dowry so she could profess; and now you see... what was she to do?”

“And who was she?”

“Daughter of the Count of C...’s administrator, whom I served until his death.”

“Where did she live?”

When I heard the name of the street, I could not restrain an exclamation of surprise.

A thread of light, that thread of light which extends as fast as thought and shines in the darkness and confusion of the mind, and brings together the most distant points; relating them to one another in a marvelous way, tied my vague memories together, and I understood everything or believed I understood it.

This date which has no name, I did not write it down anywhere... I misspoke; I carry it written in a place where no one else but I can read it, and from where it will never be erased.

Sometimes when recalling these events, today even as I record them here, I have asked myself:

“Someday in that mysterious twilight hour, when the sigh of the spring breeze, warm and laden with scents, penetrates even to the depths of the most secluded retreats, bearing thither like a gust of memories from the world, alone, lost in the gloom of a Gothic cloister, her hand on her cheek, her elbow resting on the sill of a pointed arch, will some woman have heaved a sigh when the memory of these dates crossed her imagination?”

Who knows!

Oh! And if she has sighed, where will that sigh be?