第44章

"You see a likeness between our occupations and those of the caliphs of the 'Arabian Nights;' and you are thinking about the satisfaction you will have in playing the part of the good genii in the tales of benevolence you are inventing.Ah, my dear boy! that shame-faced laugh of yours proves to me that we were quite right in that conjecture.How do you expect to conceal any feeling from persons whose business it is to divine the most hidden motion of souls, the tricks of poverty, the calculations of indigence,--honest spies, the police of the good God;old judges, whose code contains nothing but absolutions; doctors of suffering, whose only remedy is oftentimes the wise application of money? But, you see, my child, we don't wish to quarrel with the motives which bring us a neophyte, provided he will really stay and become a brother of the order.We shall judge you by your work.There are two kinds of curiosity,--that of good and that of evil; just at this moment you have that of good.If you should work in our vineyard, the juice of our grapes will make you perpetually thirsty for the divine fruit.The initiation is, as in that of all natural knowledge, easy in appearance, difficult in reality.Benevolence is like poesy;nothing is easier than to catch the appearance of it.But here, as in Parnassus, nothing contents us but perfection.To become one to us, you must acquire a great knowledge of life.And what a life,--good God! Parisian life, which defies the sagacity of the minister of police and all his agents! We have to circumvent the perpetual conspiracy of Evil, master it in all its forms, while it changes so often as to seem infinite.Charity in Paris must know as much as vice, just as a policeman must know all the tricks of thieves.We must each be frank and each distrustful; we must have quick perception and a sure and rapid judgment.And then, my child, we are old and getting older; but we are so content with the results we have now obtained, that we do not want to die without leaving successors in the work.If you persist in your desire, you will be our first pupil, and all the dearer to us on that account.There is no risk for us, because God brought you to us.Yours is a good nature soured; since you have been here the evil leaven has weakened.The divine nature of Madame has acted upon yours.Yesterday we took counsel together; and inasmuch as I have your confidence, my good brothers resolved to give me to you as guardian and teacher.Does that please you?""Ah! my kind Monsieur Alain, your eloquence awakens--""No, my child, it is not I who speak well; it is things that are eloquent.We can be sure of being great, even sublime, in obeying God, in imitating Jesus Christ,--imitating him, I mean, as much as men are able to do so, aided by faith.""This moment, then, decides my life!" cried Godefroid."I feel within me the fervor of a neophyte; I wish to spend my life in doing good.""That is the secret of remaining in God," replied Alain."Have you studied our motto,--/Transire benefaciendo/? /Transire/ means to go beyond this world, leaving benefits on our way.""Yes, I have understood it; I have put the motto of the order before my bed.""That is well; it is a trifling action, but it counts for much in my eyes.And now I have your first affair, your first duel with misery, prepared for you; I'll put your foot in the stirrup.We are about to part.Yes, I myself am detached from the convent, to live for a time in the crater of a volcano.I am to be a clerk in a great manufactory, where the workmen are infected with communistic doctrines, and dream of social destruction, the abolishment of masters,--not knowing that that would be the death of industry, of commerce, of manufactures.Ishall stay there goodness knows how long,--perhaps a year,--keeping the books and paying the wages.This will give me an entrance into a hundred or a hundred and twenty homes of working-men, misled, no doubt, by poverty, even before the pamphlets of the day misled them.

But you and I can see each other on Sundays and fete-days.We shall be in the same quarter; and if you come to the church of Saint-Jacques du Haut-Pas, you will find me there any day at half-past seven, when Ihear mass.If you meet me elsewhere don't recognize me, unless you see me rub my hands like a man who is pleased at something.That is one of our signs.We have a language of signs, like the deaf and dumb; you'll soon find out the absolute necessity of it."Godefroid made a gesture which the goodman Alain interpreted; for he laughed, and immediately went on to say:--"Now for your affair.We do not practise either the benevolence or the philanthropy that you know about, which are really divided into several branches, all taken advantage of by sharpers in charity as a business.We practise charity as our great and sublime Saint Paul defines it; for, my dear lad, we think that charity, and charity alone, which is Love, can heal the wounds of Paris.In our eyes, misery, of whatever kind, poverty, suffering, misfortune, grief, evil, no matter how produced, or in what social class they show themselves, have equal rights.Whatever his opinions or beliefs, an unhappy man is, before all else, an unhappy man; and we ought not to attempt to turn his face to our holy mother Church until we have saved him from despair or hunger.Moreover, we ought to convert him to goodness more by example and by gentleness than by any other means; and we believe that God will specially help us in this.All constraint is bad.Of the manifold Parisian miseries, the most difficult to discover, and the bitterest, is that of worthy persons of the middle classes who have fallen into poverty; for they make concealment a point of honor.Those sorrows, my dear Godefroid, are to us the object of special solicitude.Such persons usually have intelligence and good hearts.

They return to us, sometimes with usury, the sums that we lend them.