But this continual entreaty of
every second was beyond computation. It seemed as if the faithful were
determined to weary the ears of the Divinity, determined to extort
favours and forgiveness by the very multitude, the vast multitude of
their prayers. The priests said that it was necessary to offer to God the
acts of expiation which the sins of France required, and that when the
number of these acts of expiation should be large enough, God would smite
France no more. What a harsh belief in the necessity of chastisement!
What a ferocious idea born of the gloomiest pessimism! How evil life must
be if it were indeed necessary that such imploring cries, such cries of
physical and moral wretchedness, should ever and ever ascend to Heaven!
In the midst of all his sadness, Pierre felt deep compassion penetrate
his heart. He was upset by the thought that mankind should be so
wretched, reduced to such a state of woe, so bare, so weak, so utterly
forsaken, that it renounced its own reason to place the one sole
possibility of happiness in the hallucinatory intoxication of dreams.
Tears once more filled his eyes; he wept for himself and for others, for
all the poor tortured beings who feel a need of stupefying and numbing
their pains in order to escape from the realities of the world. He again
seemed to hear the swarming, kneeling crowd of the Grotto, raising the
glowing entreaty of its prayer to Heaven, the multitude of twenty and
thirty thousand souls from whose midst ascended such a fervour of desire
that you seemed to see it smoking in the sunlight like incense.
Pages:
546
547
548
549
550
551
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563
564
565
566
567
568
569
570