And not for the first time in his life Ferdinand had been compelled to retreat, with his small, round bottom tucked in under his jacket and his face scarlet. What particularly infuriated him was that he should be slinking off like a guilty man, and feeling like one, when all he had done was to stigmatise an abomination. He had uttered his protest in the rightful indignation of an honest and an upright man who knows well what he stands for: yet somehow Honore, with the warmth of infamy still in his palm, had left him momentarily wondering whether it might not be his own mind that harboured the promptings of hell. Fortunately he could turn for reassurance to the whole repertoire of decorous behaviour. It was an accepted fact, and no one could deny it, that for a father to embrace his daughter cupping her breast in his hand was utterly impermissible, was revolting. Recounting the incident to his wife he said: “All that business of frankness and saying things straight out, you can see now what it really amounts to. He thinks he can do anything he likes because he does it openly.” Helene suggested mildly that perhaps he was seeing evil where none existed; and nothing was more calculated to enrage Ferdinand than this.
“So now you’re sticking up for him? And that disgusting child who enjoys being pawed about, I suppose you’re on her side too?”
“I’m only trying to understand.”
“That’s what I meant,” said Ferdinand with an angry titter. “It seems there are two wavs of understanding!” And he recalled the searing shame, still alive in his bosom after twenty-five years, of having been caught peeping under his mother’s petticoat. It seemed that there were people, fathers of families, who could fondle their daughters’ breasts, and brothers and sisters who could examine each other’s body, without finding harm in it, without blushing at discovery — in a word, without sinning. And there were others who suffered the torments of the damned merely for having been caught out in a moment of natural curiosity!
On so many occasions did Ferdinand come into conflict with what he termed his brother’s brazenness: so often was he set down, so often was his righteous wrath turned back upon him and his purity made to seem rotten in the light of day, that he began eventually to wonder whether indeed the sins he assailed had no existence except in his owrn imagination. He began even to wonder if he were possessed, and at such moments even his most irreproachable impulses afflicted him with an anguish of misgiving. He dearly longed to be able to deliver himself of these anxieties, to spread them out for inspection in the darkness of the confessional, but his political activities made it impossible for him to do so anywhere in his own district. He was well known in all the villages, where he had been seen at the side of Valtier, whose candidacy for the Chamber of Deputies he had supported. He dared not openly associate with the priests concerning whom he had helped to spread, and even inspired, the most tendentious rumours and the grossest calumnies. Driving about the countryside in his gig, or crossing the Cathedral Close in Saint-Marge-lon, he would gaze in an ecstasy of longing at church doors which seemed to him to open upon a heavenly abyss of forgetfulness. In his desperation he found pretexts for going farther afield, even if it meant spending the night away from home. Like the gay dogs who take the train to visit remote places of ill-fame, thus keeping their reputations unsullied, he travelled long distances to enter a confessional. But these excursions brought him no relief. The confessors turned a listless ear to this sinner who seemed to have nothing worse than good intentions with which to reproach himself. “My child, your sins are not grave. Provided you do not let your faith be undermined, you will always be happy in the Church.”
Ferdinand came away from his confessions more down-
cast and disquieted than ever. The Church offered no haven, neither could his sins be classified among those which are mortal or those which are veniaclass="underline" they were not even sins of intention, but sins without depth or substance, mere appearances conjured out of the obscene recesses of his imagination. After attending early Communion, as he wandered about the streets of some strange town while waiting for the train to take him home, he would find himself envying the profligates coming out of the one-night hotels, the whole squalid world which he pictured in his self-torment, of bloated profiteers in vice and pimps and whores. These at least bore the burden of sins which would impress the priests. It seemed to him that were he to partake in even one of their crimes, his apprehension might be transformed into solid, tangible remorse and his link with God restored. He even went so far as to tell himself that deliverance awaited him in those streets set apart where the voices of women assailed the ears of the passer-by with warm and heavy promises. So he entered them undesiring, his throat dry with shame; and passed along them unseeing, with long strides that grew longer when the women spoke to him. It was useless. In the end, being forced to conclude that he was too pure to dare, he gave up these outings altogether. In any case, they cost money.
But the cure of Claquebue scented in Ferdinand a hint of the odour of sanctity. Divining something of that inner tension, the secret heaving of foetid scruples, the writhing recoil from all the mvstery of sex, he felt that such a man must raise the tone of a parish by merelv living in it. Professed Radical and anti-Clerical though Ferdinand was, he would have liked to have him in Claquebue. Sometimes he even dreamed, and it made his mouth water, of hearing his confession. He would never answer with words of tepid indulgence, like the priests in the towns, who were not true saviours of souls. He could hear himself exclaiming, ‘ But this is terrible!. .” in a voice of horror calculated to draw into the confessional all the darkest shadows at the Church’s command. He saw the abashed sinner, burdened with dismal fears, going about the village spreading among his parishioners that holy mistrust of the flesh which is the first step to Paradise. Upon souls such as Ferdinand’s the true work of salvation might be accomplished, and almost without effort. He was very different from the weak reeds who came punctually before the supper hour to confess, “Father, I have deceived my husband with Leon Coren-pot,” and then tranquilly departed, having been instructed to say an Ave, a Pater and a Confteor. He was a real Catholic.
Ferdinand knew nothing of this approval. More and more did he come to feel himself abandoned and at the mercy of all the fiends of hell. In penance for his wholly platonic perversities, he sought to achieve complete chastity. He was in any case harrowed by fear whenever he exercised his conjugal rights, or else so overwhelmed by remorse when it was over that he could not sleep. Increasingly mistrustful, and fearful of everything which might serve as a pretext for his obscene imaginings, he developed a mania for persecuting and spying on his own family. His sons were subjected to a rigorous supervision, especially Antoine, whose laziness laid him particularly open to suspicion. “Idleness is the father of all the vices,” said Ferdinand, knowing precisely what he meant. Frederic, being industrious, was viewed more leniently; but there was a scene of high tragedy when his father discovered a work of sex-education among his schoolbooks. It looked no different from the other books, being enclosed like the rest in a blue paper cover, but Ferdinand had a wonderful nose for scandal. Opening it at random he came upon a diagram of the section of a testicle, greatly enlarged. He plunged, trembling with fury, into the dining-room, where the family was at supper, and thrust the testicle under the nose of the guilty party.
“On your knees, abominable boy! Monster! Is there nothing you respect, not even your parents?”
When his wife asked in consternation what was the matter, he cried: