

E-text prepared by Camille François, Suzanne Shell, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)



EN ROUTE

by

J. K. HUYSMANS

Translated by W. Fleming







EN ROUTE.

CHAPTER I.


During the first week in November, the week within the Octave of All
Souls, Durtal entered St. Sulpice, at eight o'clock in the evening. He
often chose to turn into that church, because there was a trained choir,
and because he could there examine himself at peace, apart from the
crowd. The ugliness of the nave, with its heavy vaulting, vanished at
night, the aisles were often empty, it was ill-lighted by a few
lamps--it was possible for a man to chide his soul in secret, as if at
home.

Durtal sat down behind the high altar, on the left, in the aisle along
the Rue de St. Sulpice; the lamps of the choir organ were lighted. Far
off, in the almost empty nave, an ecclesiastic was preaching. He
recognized, by the unctuousness of his delivery, and his oily accent, a
well-fed priest who poured on his audience, according to his wont, his
best known commonplaces.

"Why are they so devoid of eloquence?" thought Durtal. "I have had the
curiosity to listen to many of them, and they are much the same. They
only vary in the tones of their voice. According to their temperament,
some are bruised down in vinegar, others steeped in oil. There is no
such thing as a clever combination." And he called to mind orators
petted like tenors, Monsabre, Didon, those Coquelins of the Church, and
lower yet than those products of the Catholic training school, that
bellicose booby the Abbe d'Hulst.

"Afterwards," he continued, "come the mediocrities, each puffed by the
handful of devotees who listen to them. If those cooks of the soul had
any skill, if they served their clients with delicate meats, theological
essences, gravies of prayer, concentrated sauces of ideas, they would
vegetate misunderstood by their flocks. So, on the whole, it is all for
the best. The low-water mark of the clergy must conform to the level of
the faithful, and indeed Providence has provided carefully for this."

A stamping of shoes, then the movement of chairs grinding on the flags
interrupted him. The sermon was over.

Then a great stillness was broken by a prelude from the organ, which
dropped to a low tone, a mere accompaniment to the voices.

A slow and mournful chant arose, the "De Profundis." The blended voices
sounded under the arches, intermingling with the somewhat raw sounds of
the harmonicas, like the sharp tones of breaking glass.

Resting on the low accompaniment of the organ, aided by basses so hollow
that they seemed to have descended into themselves, as it were
underground, they sprang out, chanting the verse "De profundis ad te
clamavi, Do--" and then stopped in fatigue, letting the last syllables
"mine" fall like a heavy tear; then these voices of children, near
breaking, took up the second verse of the psalm, "Domine exaudi vocem
meam," and the second half of the last word again remained in suspense,
but instead of separating, and falling to the ground, there to be
crushed out like a drop, it seemed to gather itself together with a
supreme effort, and fling to heaven the anguished cry of the
disincarnate soul, cast naked, and in tears before God.

And after a pause, the organ, aided by two double-basses, bellowed out,
carrying all the voices in its torrent--baritones, tenors, basses, not
now serving only as sheaths to the sharp blades of the urchin voices,
but openly with full throated sound--yet the dash of the little soprani
pierced them through all at once like a crystal arrow.

Then a fresh pause, and in the silence of the church, the verses mourned
out anew, thrown up by the organ, as by a spring board. As he listened
with attention endeavouring to resolve the sounds, closing his eyes,
Durtal saw them at first almost horizontal, then rising little by
little, then raising themselves upright, then quivering in tears, before
their final breaking.

Suddenly at the end of the psalm, when the response of the antiphon
came--"Et lux perpetua luceat eis"--the children's voices broke into a
sad, silken cry,