"My girl," he said, "I did not come here to bewail your sins, but to share your love." But when the host had left him alone with Mary he ceased feigning; removing his hat, he said with tears: "My daughter Mary, do you not recognize me? Am I not Abraham who stands in the place of your father?" He touched her hand, and exhorted her all night to penitence and repentance. Fearing above all things to render her desperate, he repeated unceasingly : "My daughter, God alone is without sin." Mary had a naturally sweet soul. She consented to return with him. She wished to take her clothes and jewels. But Abraham made her understand that it would be more correct to abandon them. He took her on his horse, and brought her back to the cells, where they resumed their former existence. This time, however, the holy man took care that Mary could only communicate with the outer world by passing through his room, by reason of which, and the grace of God, he preserved his lamb. The discreet Tillemont not only records these facts in his history, but also establishes the exact chronology. Mary sinned with the false monk, and entered the inn at Edessa, in A.D. 358. She was brought back to her cell in A.D. 360, and made a holy end, after a life full of merit, in A.D. 370. These are the exact dates. The Greeks celebrate the 29th October as the feast day of St. Mary the Recluse. In the Roman Martyrology this feast is dated the 16th March. With the object of demonstrating the final triumph of Chastity, the White Rose of Gandersheim wrote a comedy on the subject, full of artlessness and audacity, barbarism and subtlety, which could only be performed by the Saxon nuns of the time of Otho the Great, or the marionettes of the Rue Vivienne. CHARLES BAUDELAIRE AUDELAIRE has been recently treated with really excessive harshness, by a critic whose authority is great, because it is founded upon mental integrity. In the author of Fleurs du Mal, M. Brunetière saw nothing but an extravagant madman. He stated as much with his customary frankness. On that day he unwittingly offended the Muses, for Baudelaire is a poet. He had, I admit, obvious tricks ; in his bad moments he grimaced like an old monkey. He affected a sort of dandyism in his person, which nowadays seems ridiculous. He took pleasure in displeasing, and prided himself on appearing odious. That is a pity, and the legends created by friends and admirers abound in bad taste. "Have you ever tasted little children's brains? " he one day asked a simple-minded official. "Try them; they are like green walnuts, and very good." On another occasion, in the dining-room of a restaurant much frequented by people from the provinces, he began a story with the following words, speaking in a loud voice: "After having murdered my poor father . . ." While admitting, what is probable, that these stories may not actually be true, they are in his style, they smack of Baudelaire, and I can imagine nothing more irritating. All this must be admitted, but we must also admit that Baudelaire was a poet. I will add that he was a very Christian poet. His reputation has been charged with many offences. New immoralities and a curious depravity have been found in his poems. That is to flatter him and his period. So far as vice is concerned, there had been nothing left to discover since the age of the cave-dwellers, and the human animal, without a great deal of imagination, had imagined everything. After close examination, Baudelaire is not the poet of vice, but of sin, a very different thing. His morality differs little from that of the theologians. His very best verses appear to be inspired by the old prose of the Church, and the hymns of the breviary. He was like the old monks in one thing: The shapes beheld in his dreams had a terrible fascination for him. Like a monk, he cried every morning: Cedant tenebræ lumini Et nox diurno sideri Ut culpa quam nox intulit He is profoundly impressed by the impurity of the flesh, and I would go so far as to say that the doctrine of original sin has found its ultimate expression in the Fleurs du Mal. Baudelaire contemplates the troubles of the senses with the minute severity of a casuist and the gravity of a doctor. These things are, for him, of importance; they are sins, and there is something monstrous in any sin, however small. The most miserable creatures encountered by night in the darkness of a disreputable side-street are clothed for him in a tragic grandeur; they are possessed of seven demons, and the whole mystical heaven watches the sinner whose soul is in danger. He tells himself that the vilest kisses will reverberate through all Eternity, and into the encounter of an hour he pours eighteen centuries of devilry. I am not wrong, therefore, in saying that he is a Christian. But one must add that Baudelaire, like M. Barbey d'Aurévilly, is a very bad Christian. He loves sin, and delightedly enjoys the voluptuousness of falling. He knows that he is damning himself, and in that he pays a homage to divine wisdom, which will be accounted to him for righteousness, but he has the vertigo of damnation, and no taste for women, beyond that sufficient surely to lose his soul. He is never a lover, and he would not even be a debauchee if debauchery were not superlatively impious. He is much less attached to the form than to the spirit, which he regards as diabolical. He would leave women completely alone, were it not that he hopes thereby to offend God, and make the angels weep. Such ideas are doubtless perverse enough, and I see that they distinguished Baudelaire from those old monks who sincerely dreaded the phantoms of the night. Pride was what had thus depraved Baudelaire. In his arrogance he wished that everything he did, even his most trivial impurities, should be important; he was glad that they were sins, because they would attract the attention of heaven and hell. Fundamentally, he was never more than half a believer. His temperament alone was wholly Christian. His heart and intellect remained empty. It is said that one day a friend, a naval officer, showed him a ju-ju which he had brought |