In the course of a few
moments, they pass from being the favourites of Heaven to becoming its
outcasts. They doubt the truth of their raptures,--the truth of their
vocation. They doubt every thing--the sincerity of their prayers, even
the efficacy of the Saviour’s atonement, and the intercession of the
blessed Virgin. They plunge from paradise to hell. They howl, they
scream, they blaspheme. From the bottom of the infernal gulph in which
they imagine themselves plunged, they bellow imprecations against their
Creator--they denounce themselves as damned from all eternity for their
sins, while their only sin is their inability to support preternatural
excitement. The paroxysm ceases, they become the elect of God again in
their own imaginations. And to those who interrogate them with regard to
their late despair, they answer, That Satan was permitted to buffet
them--that they were under the hidings of God’s face, &c. All saints,
from Mahomet down to Francis Xavier, were only a compound of insanity,
pride, and self-imposition;--the latter would have been of less
consequence, but that men always revenge their imposition on themselves,
by imposing to the utmost on others.”

“There is no more horrible state of mind than that in which we are
_forced by conviction to listen on, wishing every word to be false, and
knowing every word to be true_. Such was mine, but I tried to palliate
it by saying, “It was never my ambition to be a saint; but is the lot of
all, then, so deplorable?” The monk, who appeared to rejoice in this
opportunity to discharge the concentrated malignity of sixty years of
suffering and hypocrisy, collected his dying voice to answer. He seemed
as if he never could inflict enough, for what had been inflicted on
himself. “Those who possess strong sensibility, without the religious
character, are of all others the most unhappy, but their miseries are
soonest terminated. They are harassed by trivial constraints, stupified
by monotonous devotion, exasperated by dull insolence and bloated
superiority. They struggle, they resist. Penance and punishment are
applied. Their own violence justifies increased violence of treatment;
and, at all events, it would be applied without this justification, for
there is nothing that delights the pride of power, more than a
victorious strife with the pride of intellect. The remainder is easily
to be conceived by you, who have witnessed it. You saw the unfortunate
youth who interfered about Paolo. He was lashed to madness. Tortured
first to phrenzy, then to stupefaction,--he died! I was the secret,
unsuspected adviser of the whole proceeding.” “Monster!” I exclaimed,
for truth had made us equal _now_, and even precluded the language that
humanity would dictate when uttered to a dying man.--“But why?”--said
he, with that calmness which had once attracted, and now revolted me,
but which had at all times undisputed possession of his
physiognomy;--“his sufferings were shorter, do you blame me for
diminishing their duration?”--There was something cold, ironical, and
jeering, even in the suavity of this man, that gave a certain force to
his simplest observations. It seemed as if he had reserved the truth all
his life, to utter it at his dying hour. “Such is the fate of those who
possess strong sensibility; those who have less languish away in an
imperceptible decline. They spend their time in watching a few flowers,
in tending birds. They are punctual in their religious exercises, they
receive neither blame or praise,--they melt away in torpor and ennui. They wish for death, as the preparation it might put the convent to
might produce a short excitement, but they are disappointed, for their
state forbids excitement, and they die as they have lived,--unexcited,
unawakened. The tapers are lit, they do not see them,--the unction is
applied, they do not feel it,--prayers are uttered, they cannot partake
in them;--in fact, the whole drama is acted, but the principal performer
is absent,--is gone. Others indulge themselves in perpetual reverie. They walk alone in the cloister,--in the garden. They feed themselves
with the poison of delicious, innutritive illusion. They dream that an
earthquake will shake the walls to atoms, that a volcano will burst
forth in the centre of the garden. They imagine a revolution of
government,--an attack of banditti,--any thing, however improbable. Then
they take refuge in the possibility of a fire, (if a fire bursts out in
a convent, the doors are thrown open, and “Sauve qui peut,” is the
word). At this thought they conceive the most ardent hope,--they could
rush out,--they could precipitate themselves into the streets, into the
country,--in fact, they would fly any where to escape. Then these hopes
fail,--they begin to get nervous, morbid, restless. If they have
interest, they are indulged with remission from their duties, and they
remain in their cells, relaxed,--torpid,--idiotical; if they have not
interest, they are forced to the punctual performance of their duties,
and then idiotism comes on much sooner, as diseased horses, employed in
a mill, become blind sooner than those who are suffered to wear out
existence in ordinary labour. Some of them take refuge in religion, as
they call it. They call for relief on the Superior, but what can the
Superior do? He is but human too, and perhaps feels the despair that is
devouring the wretches who supplicate him to deliver them from it. Then
they prostrate themselves before the images of the saints,--they invoke,
they sometimes revile them. They call for their intercession, deplore
its inefficacy, and fly to some other, whose merits they imagine are
higher in the sight of God. They supplicate for an interest in the
intercession of Christ and the Virgin, as their last resort. That resort
fails them too,--the Virgin herself is inexorable, though they wear out
her pedestal with their knees, and her feet with their kisses. Then they
go about the galleries at night, they rouse the sleepers, they knock at
every door,--they cry, “Brother Saint Jerome, pray for me,--Brother
Saint Augustine, pray for me.” Then the placard is seen fastened to the
rails of the altar, “Dear brothers, pray for the wandering soul of a
monk.” The next day the placard bears this inscription, “The prayers of
the community are implored for a monk who is in despair.” Then they find
human intercession as unavailing as divine, to procure them a remission
of the sufferings which, while _their profession_ continues to inflict
on them, no power can reverse or mitigate.