Contempt

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  In our alley, the kerosene lamp had been replaced on Friday nights by Argand lamps which went out only when the olive oil in them was used up. Those little dancing lights, whimsically throwing vividly outlined shadows, contributed greatly to the solemn mystery of the Sabbath. We continued using Argand lamps for some time after we moved to the new Passage. Then electricity triumphed and brought a ridiculous innovation into our home; it was at once the target of my wisecracks. Before the first star appeared, my mother, the high priestess of the lights, switched on at five o’clock the electric bulb in the dining-room and then lit the Roman night lamp in the kitchen. The problem of the night lamp had already been solved by her mother and her grandmother, and my mother knew instinctively the level of oil with extraordinary exactness. The little wick crackled angrily and died a few minutes after the meal. But electricity, too new a gift from civilization, puzzled all the people in our building. How was it possible to prevent the bulb from burning all night and yet avoid committing a sin? Ritual forbade the touching of fire throughout the Sabbath, from Friday evening to Saturday evening. Was turning a little switch the same as handling fire? The rabbis vehemently asserted that it was; some progressive souls claimed it wasn’t, but deferred to Rabbinical wisdom. I found the problem void of interest and the discussions absurd. Ostensibly, I shrugged my shoulders and sneered at these controversies which disturbed the tribe; but I had to exhibit my indifference passionately. The more they reflected on the problem, the more I emphasized my scorn and pretended not to understand their sacred difficulties. Finally, their combined wits allowed them to come up with an ingenious solution. There was one shop, a grocery store, in our building, and Boubaker, the grocer’s clerk, a young Negro from the South, slept in the store during the night. It was unanimously agreed to offer Boubaker the job of turning the Sabbath lights off. He accepted, for a small fee and a dish of couscous, to make a round of all the flats toward the end of the solemn feast. So everything was saved, modern comfort and the respect due to religion.

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  * these ghouls \ * Charlotte Peloux, you belong to another age/ The speaker was the moribund, mummified, but indestructible Baron de Berthellemy. * Charlotte Peloux, in you I salute the only light woman who ever had the courage to bring up her son as the son of a tart! You belong to another age! You never read, you never travel, you make a point of knowing your neighbour’s business, and you abandon your child to the tender mercies of the servants. How perfect! How absolutely About!* ... Or, better still, how like a novel by Gustav Droz. ... And to think that you’ve never heard of either! ...’ * Edmond About (Roman d*un brave hommey etc.) and Gustav Droz {Mon~ sieur, Madame et Bell, etc.), light popular novelists of the last half of the nineteenth century, some of whose hooks appeared in English translation, Papat Mamma and Baby, illustrated by Morin 1887. Cheri had enjoyed the full freedom of a profligate upbringing. When barely able to lisp, he was quick to pick up all the backstairs gossip. He shared in the clandestine suppers of the kitchen. His ablutions varied between milky immersions in his mother’s orrisroot baths and scanty cat-licks with the corner of a towel. He suffered from indigestion after a surfeit of sweets, or from pangs of hunger when no one remembered to give him his supper. He was wretchedly bored at every Battle of Flowers, where Charlotte Peloux would exhibit him — half-naked and catching cold — sitting on drenched roses; but it so happened, when he was twelve, that he had a glorious adventure in an illicit gambling-den, when an American woman allowed him to play with a fistful of louis d’or, and called him 4 a little masterpiece At about the same time, Madame Peloux imposed a tutor on her son - an Abb£, whom she packed off at the end of ten months ‘because,’ she confessed, ‘whenever I caught sight of that black robe trailing along the passages, it made me think I was housing a female relation: and God knows there are few things more depressing than having a poor relation to stay!’ At the age of fourteen, Cheri had a taste of school. He didn’t believe in it. He broke prison and ran aTrwy. Madame Peloux not only found the energy to incarcerate him a second time, but also, when faced with her son’s tears and insults, took to her heels with hands over her ears screaming, ‘I can’t bear the sight of it! I can’t bear the sight of it!’ So sincere were her cries that she actually fled from Paris, in the company of a man who was young but far from scrupulous. Two years later she came back, alone. It was the last time she succumbed to an amorous impulse.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  Competitive industry and commerce are based on selfishness as the dominant instinct and duty, just as Christianity is based on love. It will outbuy and outsell its neighbor if it can. It tires to take his trade and grasp all visible sources of income in its own hand. The rule of trade, to buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest, simply means that a man must give as little to the other man and get as much from him as possible. This rule makes even honest competitive trade—to say nothing of the immense volume of more or less dishonest and rapacious trade—antagonistic to Christian principles. The law of Christ, wherever it finds expression, reverses the law of trade. It bids us demand little for ourselves and give much service. A mother does not try to make as rich a living as possible, and to give a minimum of service to her children. It would be a sorry teacher who would lie awake thinking how he could corner the market in education and give his students as small a chunk of information as possible from the pedagogic ice-wagon. The relation between a minister and a church is Christian only when the church pays him as well as it can afford to do, and he gives as whole-hearted and complete service as he can get out of himself. There are some professions and some social relations which are in the main dominated by the Christian conceptions of solidarity and service, and they are the only ones that arouse our enthusiasm or win our love. Industry and commerce are not in that class. Commerce has moved away from the golden age of competition, when business men were like Ishmaels, with every man’s hand against every other man. Large social groups are now working on the principle of coöperation in great corporations. That develops loyalty and human good-will within the coöperative group. But only within it. Every trust still has a lot of outsiders whom it has to fight and tame into submission. The wonderful mechanism of a great department store is not directed merely to mutual service, but also to the undoing of its competitors. A board of directors may feel a sense of coherence,—modified by a fear of treachery,—but when they turn toward their employees and toward the public, the sense of solidarity ends. It is probably fair to say that the great business world is not appreciably influenced in its daily struggles by the consciousness that it exists to serve mankind. A minister, a doctor, a teacher, an artist, a soldier, or a public official may forget it often and may turn traitor to the principle altogether; but if he is good for anything, he will always feel the constraint of the higher principle upon him. In these callings it is comparatively easy for a man to realize the joy and strength of that principle, if he is only willing.

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  * I'm going to revive the hot springs at Passy! Les Thermes dc PassyJ Yes, that means nothing to you, of course. The springs are there under the Rue Raynouard, only a few yards away. They’re dormant; all they need is to be revived. Very active waters. If we go the right way about it, it will mean the ruination of Uriage, the collapse of Mont Dore, perhaps - but that would be too wonderful! Already I’ve made certain of the co-operation of twenty-seven Swiss doctors. Edmee and I have been getting to work on the Paris Municipal Council. ... And that’s exactly why I’ve come -1 missed your wife by five minutes. ... What’s wrong with you? You’re not listening to me. ...' He persisted in trying to relight his damp cigarette. He gave it up, threw the stub out upon the balcony, where large drops of rain were rebounding like grasshoppers; then he gravely looked his mother up and down. ‘I am listening to you,’ he said. ‘Even before you speak I know what you're going to say. I know all about this business of yours. It goes by the varying names of company promotion, wheezes, cornmissions, founders’ shares, American blankets, bully-beef, etcetera. ... You don’t suppose I’ve been deaf or blind for the last year, do you? You are nasty, wicked women, that’s all there is to it. I bear you no ill will.’ He stopped talking and sat down, by force of habit rubbing his fingers almost viciously over the little twin scars beneath his right breast. He looked out at the green, rain-battered garden, and on his relaxed features weariness battled with youth - weariness, hollowing his cheeks and darkening his eye-sockets, youth perfectly preserved in the ravishing curve and full ripeness of his lips, the downiness of his nostrils, and the raven-black abundance of his hair. * Very well, then,’ said Charlotte Peloux at length. ‘That’s a nice thing to hear, I must say. The devil turned preacher! I seem to have given birth to a Censor of Public Morals.’ He showed no intention of breaking the silence, or of making any movement whatever. ‘And by what high standards do you presume to judge this poor corrupt world? By your own honesty, I don’t doubt!’ Buckled into a leather jerkin, like a yeoman of old, she was at the top of her form and ready for the fray. But Cheri appeared to be through with all fighting, now and for ever. ‘By my honesty? ... Perhaps. Had I been hunting for the right word, I should never have hit upon that. You yourself said it. Honesty will pass.’

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  The Christians simply retained this common belief of the second century, but by a process which has often been repeated in the history of religion this many-hued world of spirits was suddenly all dyed in uniform black. They were parts of that Satanic kingdom which opposes God and his kingdom. They were not figments of the imagination, but real and terrible seducing spirits who had for ages enthralled the world and persuaded men to offer them gifts and sacrifices. Whatever was good in pre-Christian civilization, or whatever was similar in heathen ritual to Christian rites or institutions, was a counterfeit devised in advance by the demons in order to thwart Christianity which threatened to rob them of their power. It is necessary to read the early Church Fathers and apologists to realize how fundamental this belief was in their theology and in their interpretation of history and contemporary life. A theology like ours, with no demons in it, would have seemed to Justin Martyr or Cyprian to knock the bottom out of the Christian faith. But if heathen religion was the service of demons, all heathen life was under their control, for all heathen life was woven through with religious acts and ceremonies. Every official act of State, every military ceremony, every public or private festivity, was connected with sacrifices, libations, or prayers. No Christian could take part in them without defiling himself with the deadly sin of idolatry. The only course open to Christians was to diminish their points of contact with heathen society and constitute a little social world within the world. Such a mingling in the common life as an effort at social reconstruction would involve, was quite out of the question. The best social service which the Church could render to the heathen world was to counteract and break the power of the demons. The limitations of primitive Christianity and their perpetuation The causes already enumerated were on the whole confined to early Christianity. The State was hostile, and any moral campaign against social wrongs was impossible. The Lord was coming to usher in the new era, and any human effort for a slow amelioration was needless. The heathen world was so corrupt, so hostile, and so penetrated by demon powers, that any hope of changing its evil life was paralyzed by the very magnitude of the task involved. Thus in spite of the powerful social impetus residing in primitive Christianity such a process of conscious moral reconstruction of society as we conceive to-day was both theoretically and practically out of the question in the first three centuries. Moreover, these early Christians were subject to the same limitations of human nature to which we all are prone. They, too, were creatures of custom. Before slavery was abolished in our country, there were millions of genuine Christians, honestly willing to see and do the right in other matters, to whom it seemed a preposterous proposition that slavery is incompatible with Christianity.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  Jesus on the other hand held that the Sabbath was made to serve man, not to break him; that a man should fast only when fasting was the fit outward expression of his inward state of mind; and that no outward contact with tabooed things would make any difference in the moral status of a man, for that is determined only by the good or evil thoughts and impulses which proceed from his own soul. In his indifference to the law of clean and unclean food he not only brushed aside the traditions of the elders, but contradicted the sacred Law itself. These religious duties were supposed to serve God. Jesus was indifferent to them when they did not serve men, and hostile to them when they harmed men. He ridiculed the models of piety who were so punctilious about ritual observances and so indifferent to wrong moral relations. They faithfully gave a tithe of everything to religion, down to the mint, anise, and cummin in their garden-beds, but such little things as justice and mercy and good faith, the qualities on which human society rests and which constitute the real burden of the Law, they quite overlooked. When he saw a Pharisee straining the milk lest haply he should swallow a drowned gnat and so transgress the Law in eating a strangled beast, he saw there a type of what these religious men were doing all the time straining out gnats and swallowing camels. They wiped the outside of the platter, but within it was “filled with extortion and excess”; their food was acquired by injustice and consumed in luxury. Thus religion, which ought to be the source of morality, drugged and blinded the moral judgment, so that the very teachers of religion locked the door of the kingdom of God in men’s faces. They even nullified the fundamental obligation of the child to the parent by teaching that if a man gave money to the temple, and thus supported the ritual worship of God, he was free from the duty of supporting his parents. Thus religion had become a parasite on the body of morality and was draining it instead of feeding it. This revolutionary attitude to inherited religion, which so jarred the earnest and painstaking representatives of traditional piety, is explained by Christ’s conception of the kingdom of God. They thought it was a Jewish affair and would rest on careful religious observances. He thought it was a human affair and would rest on right human relations. He would tolerate nothing that hallowed wrong, not even religion. He had no patience with religious thought which hampered the attainment of a right social life. To them the written Law inherited from the past was the supreme thing; to Jesus the better human life to be established in the future was the supreme thing.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  The world with its glamour and entanglements is a kind of larger physical integument, enchaining the soul in material and temporal interests; the less of it, the better for the soul. The spirit that desires emancipation must not only avoid excess and wrongful pleasure, but cut down all satisfaction of the natural desires to a minimum. The perfect life would be the contradiction of nature. The sexual instinct is the most insistent, powerful, and intimate form in which the soul encounters the power of the material life and the attractiveness of the world. Therefore ascetic religion turned against sexual desire as its chief enemy. Its fight against sexual evils is one of the Church’s chief titles to honor. It was a fight against tremendous odds of hereditary abnormal passions, vicious customs and opinions, and the deposit of centuries of sensuality in literature, art, and religion. The Church branded all sexual intercourse outside of marriage as mortal sin, in man as well as in woman, and so protected the happiness of the family and the most important right of woman. It stood against concubinage and the divorce evil of the ancient world. Its influence on legislation in the Roman Empire was stronger in this domain of life than in any other. But this insistence on personal purity lost much of its social value by its disparagement of the sexual life in general. Marriage, too, was regarded by many of the early church teachers as a lower moral condition, a relation necessarily involving physical defilement, a compromise with the fallen life of humanity, a concession to the weakness of the flesh. It was not a relation good in itself, but simply a preventive of licentiousness needed by the weak. Blessed were those who did not need it. Since the second century the Church honored voluntary virginity in man and woman. For a long time it frowned on a second marriage as a blemish on Christian character. Men who were already in the bonds of marriage might become priests, but none who was already in holy orders should descend to marry. Of its higher churchmen it early began to demand a life of abstinence, even if they were married. Finally celibacy was demanded of all priests in the Western Church. But the moral demands imposed on the clergy as a law were imposed on all men as an ideal, especially after monasticism captured the heart of the Church from the fourth century onward. Not only the young remained unmarried, but many left their families to join the “angelic choirs” of the ascetic. Women handed their children over to churches or monasteries and dedicated themselves to holiness. That enthusiastic propagandist of monkery, St. Jerome, said, “Though your mother with hair unbound and garments torn point to the breasts that nourished you, and though your father lie on the threshold, tread over him with dry eyes and take the flag of Christ, that is, become a monk.

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  The silent youth, called to bear witness, did not open his mouth. The black pupils of his eyes moved up and down against the whites, like frantic insects. Lea watched him, rooted to the spot. ‘Madame Charlotte told us all about the wedding ceremony,’ bleated Madame Aldonza. ‘ The young Madame Peloux was a dream in her wreath of orange blossom!* ‘A madonna! A madonna!* Madame Peloux corrected at the top of her voice, with a burst of religious fervour. ‘ Never, never, has anyone looked so divine. My son was in heaven! In heaven, I tell you! ... What a pair they made, what a pair! ’ ‘You hear that, my passion? Orange blossom!* Lili murmured. ‘And tell me, Charlotte, what about our mother-in-law, MarieLaure?* Madame Peloux’s pitiless eyes sparkled: ‘Oh, her! Out of place, absolutely out of place. In tight-fitting black, like an eel wriggling out of the water - you could see everything, breasts, stomach — everything!* ‘By Jove!’ muttered the Baroness de la Berche with military gusto. ‘And that look of contempt she has for everybody, that look of having a dose of cyanide up her sleeve and half a pint of chloroform inside her handbag! As I said, out of place — that exactly describes her. She behaved as if she could only spare us five minutes of her precious time — she’d hardly brushed the kiss off her lips, before she said, “ Au revoir, Edmee, au revoir, Fred,” and off she flew.’ Old Lili was breathing hard, sitting on the edge of her chair, her little grandmotherly mouth, with its puckered corners, hanging half open. ‘And who gave the usual advice?’ she threw out. ‘ What advice? ’ ‘The little talk — oh, my passion, hold my hand while I say it! — instruction for the young bride. Who gave her that?’ Charlotte Peloux took offence and stared at her. ‘Things may well have been done in that way when you were young, but the practice has fallen into disuse.’ The sprightly old girl plumped her fists on her thighs: ‘Disuse? Disuse or not, how would you know anything about it, my poor Charlotte? There’s so little marrying in your family!’ ‘Ha-ha-ha!’ the two toadies imprudently guffawed. But a single glance from Madame Peloux made them tremble. ‘Peace, peace, my little angels! You’re each enjoying your paradise on earth, so what more do you want?’ The Baroness stretched out a strong arm, like a policeman keeping order, between the purple faces of Lili and Madame Peloux. But Charlotte scented battle like a warhorse. ‘If you’re looking for trouble, Lili, you don’t have to look further than me! Because of your age, I must treat you with respect, and if it weren’t for that.’

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  The Church Fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries condemned private property with such vigor that they have often been classed as communists. But they took this ground, not because they saw how valuable for the moral life a fair diffusion of property would be, but because they feared the seductive charm of property. They never proposed a communistic production of more wealth, but only called on men to share what wealth they had. If all had obeyed them, the productive capital of society would have been turned in for consumption, and society would have eaten its own head off. The zeal for giving evoked by ascetic self-discipline was greatly reenforced by the desire to gain merit. Asceticism and the idea of religious merit are very closely connected. If the Christian who enjoys his family and property can be saved and get to heaven, the man who, for the love of God, strips himself of family and property surely must have something more than mere salvation. He would have a surplus with God, with which he could either pay up the debts contracted through former sins or which he could turn over to the general treasure of merit on which the weak and sinful could bank. It was one of the most important contributions of Paul to spiritual religion that he denied utterly that man could earn merit with God, but threw him naked and humble on the mercy of God. When the capitalistic impulse tries to accumulate a cash balance in heaven and do business with the Lord on a debit and credit basis, commercialism poisons religion. The desire to discipline the soul and the desire to win merit united in making men give large amounts in charity, but they also vitiated the social effectiveness of the giving. The social effect was subsidiary. The giving was the main thing, not the help. Almsgiving was the best means of penitence, the most effective bath of the soul next to baptism—a means of holiness even stronger than prayer or fasting. The poor, through whom this virtue was acquired, were “the treasure of the Church,” part of its equipment, a kind of gymnastic apparatus on which the givers increased their moral muscle. Hence begging was ennobled. It became a profession with its own class spirit. The mendicant orders almost glorified it. Since the effect produced by the alms was a secondary matter, men preferred to turn their alms over to the Church to be used at its discretion; their part was done with the giving. There were many organizations to elicit gifts, but no systematic organization of charity for the purpose of abolishing pauperism. Of course a great deal of good was done. Human kindliness and good sense were never wholly paralyzed. The touch of brotherly love was warm in spite of all calculations of merit to be earned.

• From White Oleander (1999)

  I could do it. I knew how to trade on my tragic past, skillfully revealing my scars, my foster kid status, I’d perfected the art with Joan Peeler. People took me up, made me their project, their pet. They cast themselves as my champions, and I let them. I hadn’t come this far to be left at some river bottom among the wrecked cars. To be my mother’s daughter again. I played with the idea like a child with a blanket, running it between my fingers. To be lost in the tide of her music again. It was an idea more seductive than any man. Was it really too late for childhood, to crawl back into the crucible, to dissolve into the fire, to rise without memory? The phoenix must burn... How would I dare? It had taken me this long to be free of her shadow, to breathe on my own, even if in this singed-hair space-heater Europe. I lay in Paul’s arms, thinking how we’d gone up to Denmark last summer to find Klaus Anders. We located him in Copenhagen. He was living in a shabby flat with his children, it smelled of turpentine and stale milk. His wife was off working. It was three in the afternoon when we came calling, he had on a blue seersucker bathrobe covered with paint. There were two kids under five, my half sister and brother from his third or fourth marriage, on the couch watching TV. The girl had strawberry jam in her hair, the baby needed changing, and I saw the chain of disaster could move laterally as well as up and down. He’d been painting, a biomorphic abstraction that looked like an old shoe with hair. He offered us Carlsbergs and asked about my mother. I drank and let Paul do most of the talking. My father. His handsome forehead, his Danish nose, just like mine. His voice lilting with its accent, humorous even when expressing regret. A man who never took anything seriously, least of all himself. He was pleased I was an artist, unsurprised my mother was in prison, sorry we’d never met. He wanted to make up for lost time, offered to let us stay, we could sleep on the couch, I could help out with the kids. He was sixty-one years old, and so ordinary. I had felt like my mother, sitting in his living room, judging him and his sticky children and the TV that never turned off. The old futon-couch, scarred teak coffee table with rings. Canvases on the walls, encrustations like brain coral and colon cancer. We ate cheese and bread, the large jar of strawberry jam. I gave him the address of the comic book store, said I’d be in touch. It was the first time I’d ever wanted to move on, be the first person out of the room.

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  ‘It’s quite easy to say that it won’t have any effect on you.’ He was walking to and fro, clad in nothing but his short white silk pants. All the time he was testing the elasticity of his instep and calf muscles, and kept rubbing his hand over the twin brown scars under his right breast, as if to preserve their fading hue. Lean, with less flesh on his body than he had had at twenty, at the same time in better shape and training, he liked to parade up and down in front of his wife as a rival rather than a lover. He knew himself to be the more perfect specimen and, as a connoisseur, could condescend to admire in her the slim hips, the small breasts, and the graceful, almost imperceptible lines which Edmee knew so well how to clothe in tubular frocks and slinky tunics. ‘Are you fading away, then?9 he would sometimes ask her, just for the fun of annoying her. He would watch her whole body writhe in anger, and note its sudden and unsuspected vigour. This reply of his wife’s was distasteful to him. He wanted her to look well-bred, and to be silent, if not unresponsive, in his arms. He came to a halt, puckered his brow, and looked her up and down. ‘Pretty manners, I must say. Do you learn them from your Physician-in-charge? The war, Madame!9 She shrugged her bare shoulder. ‘What a child you are, my poor Fred! It9s lucky we9re by ourselves. To go on at me like that just because of a little joke ... which was really a compliment. And for you to try and teach me manners, you ... you! And after seven years of marriage!9 ‘Where do you get the seven years from?9 He sat down, naked as he was, as though for a prolonged discussion, his legs wide apart with all the ostentation of an athlete. ‘Well ... really ... nineteen-thirteen ... nineteen-nineteen ...9 ‘Excuse me! it’s clear that we don9t reckon by the same calendar. Now, I count from ...9 Edmee arched a knee, taking the weight of her body on the other leg, a confession of her weariness; but Cheri interrupted her with: ‘ Where9s all this talk leading us? Come on, let’s go to bed. YouVe got your ballet-class at nine to-morrow, haven’t you?9 ‘Oh! Fred!9 Edmee crushed a rose from a black vase and threw away its petals. Cheri fanned the flames of anger still smouldering in her eyes, now moist with tears, by saying: ‘ That’s the name I give that job-lot of wounded, when I’m not thinking.5 Without looking at him, she murmured through trembling lips: ‘You brute ... you brute ... you loathsome monster!5 He laughed, quite untouched.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  " You mean to say, then," said Nomerfide, " that a fine diamond, worth two hundred crowns, is a bad thing } I assure you, if it had fallen into my hands, neither his wife nor his relations would ever have set eyes on it- Nothing is more one's own than a thing that is given. The captain was dead, no one knew anything of the mat- ter, and she might well have abstained from making the poor old woman cry." "Good faith, you are right," said Hircan, "for there is many a woman who, to show that she is better than others, does acts contrary to her nature. In fact, do we not all know that nothing is more covetous than a woman 1 Yet vanity often prevails with them over avarice, and makes them do things in which their hearts have no share. In my opinion, the lady who set so little store by the diamond did not deserve it." " Gently, gently," said Oisille ; " I think I know her, and I pray you not to condemn her unheard." " I do not condemn her, madam," replied Hircan ; " but if the gentleman was so gallant a man as he has been represented to have been, it was a glorious thing for her to have a lover of such merit, and to wear his ring. But perhaps some one less worthy to be loved held her so fast by the finger that the ring could not be placed on it." able. De Malleville being styled Parisien by the poet, whereas the captain was a Norman. He was a married man, too, which a Knight of Malta could not be. Secmdday.] QUEEN OF NAVARRE. 133 " Truly," said Ennasuite, " she might fairly keep it, since no one knew anything about it." ** What ! " exclaimed Geburon, "is everything allow- able for those who love, provided nobody knows of it?" " I have never," said Saffredent, " seen anything pun- ished as a crime except imprudence ; in fact, no mur- derer, robber, or adulterer, is ever punished by justice, or blamed amongst men, provided they are as cunning as they are wicked. But wickedness often blinds them so that they become witless. Thus it may be truly said that it is only fools who are punished, and not the vicious." "You may say what you will," said Oisille, "but it is for God to judge the heart of the lady. For my part, I see nothing in her conduct but what is comely and vir- tuous ; and to put an end to this dispute, I beg you, Parlamente, to call on some one to follow you." " I have great pleasure in calling on Simontault," replied Parlamente, " and I am mistaken if, after these two sad novels, he will not give us one which will not make us weep."

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  The Doctor, with his white linen belly and his red-gold hair, had taken no more than three steps across the ward, before the hovering non-commissioned angel glided to earth again, to minister as a humble seraph, rosy with faith and zeal. Cheri thereupon turned to Filipesco, who was distributing American cigarettes, shouted * Are you coming? ’ in contemptuous tones, and bore him away; but not before he had bidden farewell to his wife, to Doctor Arnaud, to nurses male and female, with the haughty affability of an official visitor. He crossed the rough gravel of the little courtyard, got into his car, and allowed himself no more than a dozen words’ soliloquy: “It’s the regular thing. The correct move for the Physician-inCharge.” Never again did he cross the threshold of the Hospital, and thereafter Edmee invited him on State occasions only, out of official courtesy, much as one might, at a dinner-party, politely offer the snipe to a vegetarian guest. He was now given over to reflection, and a prey to idleness. Before the war his idleness had been so light and varied, with the resonant ring of a flawless empty glass. During the war, too, he had endured periods of inertia under military discipline, inertia modified by cold, mud, risk, patrols, and even, on occasion, a little fighting. Conditioned to indolence by his upbringing and the life of a sensual young man, he had watched, himself untouched, the fresh young vulnerable companions all round him pine away in silence, solitude, and frustration. He had witnessed the ravages inflicted on intelligent people by the lack of newspapers as if they were being deprived of a daily drug. Whereas he had relapsed into contemplative silence — like a cat in a garden at night — content with a short letter, a postcard, or a cunningly packed parcel, other men, so-called superior men, had appeared to him to be showing every symptom of ruinous mental starvation. Thus he had learned to take pride in bolstering up his patience, and had brooded over two or three ideas, over two or three persistent memories, as highly coloured as a child’s, and over his inability to imagine his own death. Time and again, throughout the war, on coming out of a long dreamless sleep or a fitful bout of spasmodically interrupted rest, he would awake to find himself somewhere outside the present time and, his more recent past sloughed off, restored to the days of his boyhood — restored to Lea. Later, Edmee would suddenly rise up from the past, distinct and clear in every detail, and this evocation of her form, no less than its almost immediate disappearance, had always put Cheri in good spirits. That gives me two of them,” he reckoned.

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  At every meal-time he felt optimistic for a moment about his marriage. This feeling was as regular as a recurrent fever. As he sat down facing Desmond at their bachelor table, the ghost of Edmee would appear, and plunge him into silent thoughts of his young wife’s inconceivable deference. “Really, that young thing’s too sweet! Did you ever see such a dream of a wife? Never a word, never a complaint l I’ll treat her to one of those bracelets when I get back. ... Upbringing, that’s what does it! Give me Marie-Laure every time for bringing up a daughter!” But one day in the grill-room at the Morris, abject terror was written on his face when he caught sight of a green dress with a chinchilla collar just like one of Edmee’s dresses. Desmond found life wonderful and was getting a little fat. He reserved his arrogance for moments when Cheri — encouraged by him to pay a visit to some ‘prodigious English girl, riddled with vice,’ or to some ‘Indian potentate in his opium palace’ — refused point-blank or else consented with unconcealed scorn. Desmond had long since despaired of understanding Cheri’s ways; but Cheri was paying — and better than during the best of their bachelor days together. They ran across the blonde La Loupiote a second time, when they visited a friend of hers, a woman who boasted such an ordinary name that nobody ever remembered it; * What’s-her-name ... you know perfectly well ... that pal of La Loupiote’s.’ The Pal smoked opium, and gave it to others. The instant you came into her modest, ground-floor flat, you smelt escaping gas and stale drugs. She won the hearts of her guests by a tearful cordiality and by a constant incitement to self-pity - both objectionable traits. She treated Desmond, when he paid her a visit, as ‘a great big desperately lonesome boy,’ ... and Ch£ri as ‘a beauty who has got everything and it only makes him more miserable.’ Ch6ri never touched the pipe; he looked at the small box of cocaine with the repugnance of a cat about to be dosed, and spent most of the night with his back against the cushioned dado, sitting up on a straw mat between Desmond, who went to sleep, and the Pal, who never stopped smoking. For most of the night he breathed in the fumes that satisfy all hunger and thirst, but his self-control and distrust persisted. He appeared to be perfectly happy, except that he stared now and then, with pained and questioning intensity, at the Pal’s withered throat — a skinny, far too red throat, round which shimmered a string of false pearls.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  Such, ladies, were the precious viands with which this good shepherd fed the Lord's flock. So shameless was he, that after the commission of his sin, he had the impudence to speak of it in the pulpit, where nothing should be uttered but what is edifying to one's neigh- bour, and tends, in the first place, to the glory of God. " That was what you may call a master-monk," said Saffredent. " I should be at a loss to choose between him and Friar Angebaut, at whose door were laid all the facetious things that were said in good com- pany," " I see no matter for laughter in all this," said Oisille, " nor is the circumstance of the time to the monk's ad' vantage," " You omit to say, madam," observed Nomerfide, "that at that time, although the thing happened not very long ago, your honest villagers, nay, most of the people even of the good towns, who think themselves cleverer than the others, had more regard for such 112 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE \Noz'el i\. preachers than for those wh(^ preached to them the holy Gospel purely and simply." " Be that as it may," said Hircan, " he was not far wrong in asking for hams in exchange for chitterlings, for there is a great deal more eating in them. If any devout dame had understood the thing amphibologically, as I believe the monk intended, neither he nor his breth- ren would have been badly off, any more than the young wench who had her bag full." " What effrontery ! " exclaimed Oisille, " to pervert the sense of the text according to his caprice, thinking he had to do with people as brutalised as himself, and impudently endeavouring to corrupt silly women, in order to teach them to eat raw meat at night." "Ay," said Simontault, "but then he had before him those young tripesellers of Amboise, in whose tub he would fain have washed his . Shall I say what } No, you understand me. He would gladly have given them a taste of it, not roasted, but all stirring and frisk- ing to give them the more pleasure." " Gently, gently, Seigneur Simontault," said Parla- mente; "you forget yourself. Where is your usual modesty, of which you can make such good use at need." " True, madam, but the foul-mouthed monk made me equivocate. To return to our first proceedings, I beg that Nomerfide, who is the cause of my error, will give her voice to some one who will make us forget our common fault." " Since you will have it that I am a sharer in the fault," said Nomerfide, " I will choose one who will set all right again ; and that is Dagoucin, who is so well be- haved that he would rather die than say anything im- proper." Second day.\ QUEEN OF NA VARRE. 1 1^

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  She gazed at the limp, worn-out, almost empty-looking body. “That’s Cheri,” she said to herself; “yes, that’s Cheri all right ... That’s how small a thing he is!” She shrugged a shoulder and added: “That’s what he’s reduced to, this wonderful Ch6ri of theirs ..doing her best to induce contempt for the man lying thus supine. She called up memories of rapturous nights, of languid early mornings bathed in sunlight and pleasure, and, as a result — since he had progressively grown to disdain her — she saw fit to pay but coldly vindictive homage to this body so sumptuously laid out under the pall of flowered silk and the refreshing wing of the curtains. She put one hand on the small, pointed breast set low on her slender body, and squeezed it like a pulpy fruit, as if calling this most tempting allurement of her young body to witness the injustice of his desertion. “ What Cheri himself needs is doubtless something else. What he needs is ...” But vain were her attempts to put her scorn into words. Even a woman loses the desire and the ability to despise a man who suffers in silence and alone. All of a sudden, Edmee felt satiated with the spectacle: the shadows thrown by the curtains, the pallor of the sleeper, and the white bed helped to invest it with the romantic colouring of death and the nether world. She jumped to her feet, strong and ready to face this world, but determined to avoid any emotional attack upon the traitor lying on the disordered bed, the absentee seeking refuge in sleep, silent, ailing, and repulsive. She was neither irritated nor unhappy. Her heart would beat more feverishly in her breast, the blood mount more quickly to her pearl-pale cheeks, only at the thought of the healthy red-haired man whom she called ‘dear master’ or * chief’ in tones of serious playfulness. Amaud’s thick gentle hands; his laugh; the points of light that sunshine or the lamp in the operating theatre caused to twinkle on his red moustache; his very coat — the white surgery coat he wore and even took off in the hospital, just like an intimate garment that never passes beyond the bedroom door. ... Edmee sprang up as though for a dance. “That, oh yes, that’s my life!” She gave a toss of the head that sent her hair flying out like a horse’s mane, and went into the bathroom without turning round. Unimaginative in style, and in its very ordinary proportions, the dining-room made no pretence to luxury except in the panels of yellow stuff starred with purple and green. The grey and white stucco of the surrounding walls deflected too much light on the guests, deprived already of all shade by the merciless glare of the top lighting.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. He calls them offspring of vipers, because the nature of vipers is such that the young burst the womb of their dam, and so come forth; and in like manner the Jews condemned their fathers, finding fault with their deeds. He says, How shall ye escape the damnation of hell? By building the tombs of the saints? But the first step of piety is to love holiness, the next, to love the saints; for it is not reasonable in him to honour the righteous, who despises righteousness. The saints cannot be friends to those to whom God is an enemy. Shall ye be saved by a mere name, because ye seem to be among God’s people! Forasmuch as an open enemy is better than a false friend, so is he more hateful to God, who calls himself the servant of God, and does the commands of the Devil. Indeed, before God he who has resolved to kill a worm is a murderer before the deed is done, for it is the will that is rewarded for good, or punished for evil. Deeds are evidence of the will. God then does not require deeds on His own account that He may know how to judge, but for the sake of other men, that they may perceive that God is righteous. And God affords the opportunity of sin to the wicked, not to make them sin, but to manifest the sinner; and also to the good He gives opportunity to shew the purpose of their will. In this way then He gave the Scribes and Pharisees opportunity of shewing their purposes, Behold, I send unto you Prophets, and wise men, and Scribes. HILARY. That is, the Apostles, who, as foretelling things to come, are Prophets; as having knowledge of Christ, are wise men; as understanding the Law, are Scribes. JEROME. Or, as the Apostle writes to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 12.) that there are various gifts among Christ’s disciples; some Prophets, who foretel things to come; some wise men, who know when they ought to speak; others Scribes taught in the Law; of whom Stephen was stoned, Paul killed, Peter crucified, and the disciples of the Apostles beaten, in the Acts; and they persecuted them from city to city, driving them out of Judæa, that they might go to the Gentiles.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  St. Aignan being in England, and finding himself condemned to death in France, so managed by his ser- vices to gain the goodwill of several great lords, and set his wife's relations to work to such purpose, that the King of England entreated the King of France to par- don him and to restore him to his possessions and his honours. The king having been informed of the atrocity of this affair, sent the details of the process to the King of England, and begged him to consider if the crime was one which could be pardoned ; adding, that through- out his realm none but the Duke of Alengon alone had the privilege of granting grace in his duchy. The King of England did not yield to these representations, but so urgently solicited St. Aignan's pardon that at last he obtained it. On his return home, to fill up the measure of his wickedness, the proctor made acquaintance with a sor- cerer named Gallery, hoping to be put by him in a way to escape payment of the fifteen hundred crowns due by him to his victim's father. To this end, he and his wife went in disguise to Paris; but the wife, seeing how he often shut himself up for a long time with Gallery without saying a word to her, watched them one morn- ing, and saw Gallery set before her husband five wooden images, three of which had their hands hanging down, and two had them raised. " We must have waxen images made like them," said Gallery to St. Aignan ; " those which shall have their arms hanging down will be for the persons we shall cause to die ; and those with raised arras will be for the persons whose goodwill we seek." ,0 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE [Novell "Very well," said the proctor. "This one, then .shall be for the king, by whom I would be favoured, and this one for Monsieur Brinon, Chancellor of Alen ^on. " The images," said Gallery, " must be put under the altar, where they will hear mass, with certain words which I will teach you at the proper time."

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  But the Church alone was the teacher of true doctrine. She alone preserved the deposit of faith received by apostolic tradition and had the promise of Christ that she would be kept in the truth. The sacraments alone could mediate salvation, and the Church and her priesthood by apostolic succession and ordination alone had the power to administer the sacraments, to pronounce the magic words that would change the bread and wine into the mysterious vehicle of the body and blood of Christ, and to absolve from guilt and save from hell. Thus the Church was the great channel of salvation; apart from the Church there was no salvation. If a man wanted to be saved,—and men wanted it intensely,—he must remain in contact with the Church, obedient to her teaching and spiritual direction. Perhaps the most distinctive characteristic of Christianity down to our own time has been its churchliness. Christian ethics became churchly ethics. An action was good or bad mainly because the Church said so. It was good always if it served the Church, for the cause of the Church was the cause of God. There was no higher exercise of piety than to build churches or endow monasteries. Avarice was refusal to enrich the Church. Charity to the Church covered a multitude of sins. If a king served the cause of the Church, he was a blessed man, though he might betray the cause of his people in doing so. Gregory of Tours freely narrates the shameful life of the Frankish kings, but he naïvely calls them men of God on whom the divine blessing rested, because they were zealous for the catholic cause and confessed the blessed trinity. Clovis prospered because he was a supporter of the Orthodox Church. Alaric sought the same ambitious ends, but lost his kingdom, his people and eternal life, because he was an Arian heretic. The mediæval clergy were often notoriously immoral, but the people were kept in awe of them because they were the representatives of the Church, and through them alone could the sacraments and the absolution of the Church be obtained. They might not have the spirit of Christ, but they had the ordination of the Church. Churchly correctness took precedence of Christlike goodness. If sin profited the Church, even sin might be holy. The amount of distortion of facts, falsification of history, and forging of documents practised in order to advance the cause of the Church is quite incredible. The sale of indulgences, which finally unfettered the popular protest of the Reformation movement, was merely a glaring instance of prostituting the spiritual welfare of the people to the financial enrichment of the church organization. Christian morality finds its highest dignity and its constant corrective in making the kingdom of God the supreme aim to which all minor aims must contribute and from which they gain their moral quality.

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  She picked up her picture paper again, but did not read it. “ These Pelouxs — mother and son alike!” she thought dreamily. “They’ve only to sit themselves down at a good meal or in the heart of the countryside and - snap! - the mother whisks off her stays and the son his waistcoat. They behave like publicans out on a holiday, the pair of them.” She cast a vindictive eye on one of the publicans in question,. and saw that he had fallen asleep, his eyelashes spread against his pallid cheeks, his mouth closed. His upper lip, lit from below,^ reflected two silver pinpoints of light at the trwin curves of its delicious Cupid’s bow, and Lda was forced to admit that he looked far more like a sleeping god than a licensed victualler. Without moving from her chair, she gently plucked the lighted cigarette from between Cheri’s fingers and put it in the ash-tray. The hand of the sleeper relaxed and the tapering fingers, tipped with cruel nails, drooped like wilting flowers: a hand not strictly feminine, yet a trifle prettier than one could have wished; a hand she had kissed* a hundred times—not in slavish devotion — but kissed for the pleasure of it, for its scent. From behind her paper, she glanced at Madame Peloux. Was she asleep too? Lea always liked to remain awake while mother and son dozed, allowing her a quiet hour’s self-communing in the dappled sunlight of a broiling afternoon. But Madame Peloux was not asleep. She was sitting bolt upright in her wickerwork chair, like a Buddha staring into space, and sipping her fine-champagne with the absorption of an alcoholic baby. r “Why doesn’t she go to sleep?” Lea wondered. “It’s Sunday. She’s lunched well. She’s expecting her sponging old cronies to drop in for her five o’clock tea. By rights she ought to be having a snooze. If she’s not snoozing, it’s because she’s up to some devilment or other.” They had known each other for twenty-five years. Theirs was the hostile intimacy of light women, enriched and then cast aside by one man, ruined by another: the tetchy affection of rivals stalking one another’s first wrinkle or white hair. Theirs was the friendship of two practical women of the world, both adepts at the money game; but one of them a miser, and the other a sybarite. These bonds count. Rather late in their day, a stronger bond had come to link them more closely: Cheri. Lea could remember Cheri as a little boy — a marvel of beauty with long curls. When quite small he was known as Fred, and had not yet been nicknamed Cheri. Sometimes forgotten and sometimes adored, Chdri grew up among wan housemaids and tall sardonic men-servants. Although his birth had mysteriou_1~r brought wealth to the house, no ‘Fraulein’, no ‘Miss’ was ever to be seen at Ch&ri’s side; and his mother had preserved him to the accompaniment of piercing shrieks, from