"THE IMITATION."
As we have already said, M.Hardy occupied a pavilion in the "Retreat"
annexed to the house in the Rue de Vaugirard, inhabited by a goodly number of the reverend fathers of the Company of Jesus.Nothing could be calmer and more silent than this dwelling.Every one spoke in whispers, and the servants themselves had something oily in their words, something sanctified in their very walk.
Like all that is subject to the chilling and destructive influences of these men, this mournfully quiet house was entirely wanting in life and animation.The boarders passed an existence of wearisome and icy monotony, only broken by the use of certain devotional exercises; and thus, in accordance with the selfish calculation of the reverend fathers, the mind, deprived of all nourishment and all external support, soon began to droop and pine away in solitude.The heart seemed to beat more slowly, the soul was benumbed, the character weakened; at last, all freewill, all power of discrimination, was extinguished, and the boarders, submitting to the same process of self-annihilation as the novices of the Company, became, like them, mere "corpses" in the hands of the brotherhood.
The object of these manoeuvres was clear and simple.They secured the means of obtaining all kinds of donations, the constant aim of the skillful policy and merciless cupidity of these priests.By the aid of enormous sums, of which they thus become the possessors or the trustees, they follow out and obtain the success of their projects, even though murder, incendiarism, revolt, and all the horrors of civil war, excited by and through them, should drench in blood the lands over which they seek to extend their dark dominion.
Such, then, was the asylum of peace and innocence in which Francois Hardy had taken refuge.He occupied the ground-floor of a summer-house, which opened upon a portion of the garden.His apartments had been judiciously chosen, for we know with what profound and diabolical craft the reverend fathers avail themselves of material influences, to make a deep impression upon the minds they are moulding to their purpose.Imagine a prospect bounded by a high wall, of a blackish gray, half-covered with ivy, the plant peculiar to ruins.A dark avenue of old yew-trees, so fit to shade the grave with their sepulchral verdure, extended from this wall to a little semicircle, in front of the apartment generally occupied by M.Hardy.Two or three mounds of earth, bordered with box, symmetrically cut, completed the charms of this garden, which in every respect resembled a cemetery.
It was about two o'clock in the afternoon.Though the April sun shone brightly, its rays, intercepted by the high wall of which we have spoken, could not penetrate into that portion of the garden, obscure, damp, and cold as a cavern, which communicated with M.Hardy's apartment.The room was furnished with a perfect sense of the comfortable.A soft carpet covered the floor; thick curtains of dark green baize, the same color as the walls, sheltered an excellent bed, and hung in folds about the glass-
door, which opened on the garden.Some pieces of mahogany furniture, plain, but very clean and bright, stood round the room.Above the secretary, placed just in front of the bed, was a large ivory crucifix, upon a black velvet ground.The chimney-piece was adorned with a clock, in an ebony case, with ivory ornaments representing all sorts of gloomy emblems, such as hour-glasses, scythes, death's-heads, etc.Now imagine this scene in twilight, with its solitary and mournful silence, only broken at the hour of prayer by the lugubrious sound of the bells of the neighboring chapel, and you will recognize the infernal skill, with which these dangerous priests know how to turn to account every external object, when they wish to influence the mind of those they are anxious to gain over.
And this was not all.After appealing to the senses, it was necessary to address themselves to the intellect--and this was the method adopted by the reverend fathers.A single book--but one--was left, as if by chance, within reach.This book was Thomas a Kempis' "Imitation." But as it might happen that M.Hardy would not have the courage or the desire to read this book, thoughts and reflections borrowed from its merciless pages, and written in very large characters, were suspended in black frames close to the bed, or at other parts within sight, so that, involuntarily, in the sad leisure of his inactive dejection, the dweller's eyes were almost necessarily attracted by them.To that fatal circle of despairing thoughts they confined the already weakened mind of this unfortunate man, so long a prey to the most acute sorrow.What he read mechanically, every instant of the day and night, whenever the blessed sleep fled from his eyes inflamed with tears, was not enough merely to plunge the soul of the victim into incurable despair, but also to reduce him to the corpse-like obedience required by the Society of Jesus.In that awful book may be found a thousand terrors to operate on weak minds, a thousand slavish maxims to chain and degrade the pusillanimous soul.
