内河航程 英文版 An Inland Voyage
罗伯特.路易斯.史蒂文森 Robert Louis Stevenson
DOWN THE OISE: CHURCH INTERIORS
We made our first stage below Compiegne to Pont Sainte Maxence. Iwas abroad a little after six the next morning. The air wasbiting, and smelt of frost. In an open place a score of womenwrangled together over the day's market; and the noise of theirnegotiation sounded thin and querulous like that of sparrows on awinter's morning. The rare passengers blew into their hands, andshuffled in their wooden shoes to set the blood agog. The streetswere full of icy shadow, although the chimneys were smokingoverhead in golden sunshine. If you wake early enough at thisseason of the year, you may get up in December to break your fastin June.
I found my way to the church; for there is always something to seeabout a church, whether living worshippers or dead men's tombs; youfind there the deadliest earnest, and the hollowest deceit; andeven where it is not a piece of history, it will be certain to leakout some contemporary gossip. It was scarcely so cold in thechurch as it was without, but it looked colder. The white nave waspositively arctic to the eye; and the tawdriness of a continentalaltar looked more forlorn than usual in the solitude and the bleakair. Two priests sat in the chancel, reading and waitingpenitents; and out in the nave, one very old woman was engaged inher devotions. It was a wonder how she was able to pass her beadswhen healthy young people were breathing in their palms andslapping their chest; but though this concerned me, I was yet moredispirited by the nature of her exercises. She went from chair tochair, from altar to altar, circumnavigating the church. To eachshrine she dedicated an equal number of beads and an equal lengthof time. Like a prudent capitalist with a somewhat cynical view ofthe commercial prospect, she desired to place her supplications ina great variety of heavenly securities. She would risk nothing onthe credit of any single intercessor. Out of the whole company ofsaints and angels, not one but was to suppose himself her championelect against the Great Assize! I could only think of it as adull, transparent jugglery, based upon unconscious unbelief.
She was as dead an old woman as ever I saw; no more than bone andparchment, curiously put together. Her eyes, with which sheinterrogated mine, were vacant of sense. It depends on what youcall seeing, whether you might not call her blind. Perhaps she hadknown love: perhaps borne children, suckled them and given thempet names. But now that was all gone by, and had left her neitherhappier nor wiser; and the best she could do with her mornings wasto come up here into the cold church and juggle for a slice ofheaven. It was not without a gulp that I escaped into the streetsand the keen morning air. Morning? why, how tired of it she wouldbe before night! and if she did not sleep, how then? It isfortunate that not many of us are brought up publicly to justifyour lives at the bar of threescore years and ten; fortunate thatsuch a number are knocked opportunely on the head in what they callthe flower of their years, and go away to suffer for their folliesin private somewhere else. Otherwise, between sick children anddiscontented old folk, we might be put out of all conceit of life.
I had need of all my cerebral hygiene during that day's paddle:the old devotee stuck in my throat sorely. But I was soon in theseventh heaven of stupidity; and knew nothing but that somebody waspaddling a canoe, while I was counting his strokes and forgettingthe hundreds. I used sometimes to be afraid I should remember thehundreds; which would have made a toil of a pleasure; but theterror was chimerical, they went out of my mind by enchantment, andI knew no more than the man in the moon about my only occupation.
At Creil, where we stopped to lunch, we left the canoes in anotherfloating lavatory, which, as it was high noon, was packed withwasherwomen, red-handed and loud-voiced; and they and their broadjokes are about all I remember of the place. I could look up myhistory-books, if you were very anxious, and tell you a date ortwo; for it figured rather largely in the English wars. But Iprefer to mention a girls' boarding-school, which had an interestfor us because it was a girls' boarding-school, and because weimagined we had rather an interest for it. At least--there werethe girls about the garden; and here were we on the river; andthere was more than one handkerchief waved as we went by. Itcaused quite a stir in my heart; and yet how we should have weariedand despised each other, these girls and I, if we had beenintroduced at a croquet-party! But this is a fashion I love: tokiss the hand or wave a handkerchief to people I shall never seeagain, to play with possibility, and knock in a peg for fancy tohang upon. It gives the traveller a jog, reminds him that he isnot a traveller everywhere, and that his journey is no more than asiesta by the way on the real march of life.
The church at Creil was a nondescript place in the inside, splashedwith gaudy lights from the windows, and picked out with medallionsof the Dolorous Way. But there was one oddity, in the way of an exvoto, which pleased me hugely: a faithful model of a canal boat,swung from the vault, with a written aspiration that God shouldconduct the Saint Nicolas of Creil to a good haven. The thing wasneatly executed, and would have made the delight of a party of boyson the waterside. But what tickled me was the gravity of the perilto be conjured. You might hang up the model of a sea-going ship,and welcome: one that is to plough a furrow round the world, andvisit the tropic or the frosty poles, runs dangers that are wellworth a candle and a mass. But the Saint Nicolas of Creil, whichwas to be tugged for some ten years by patient draught-horses, in aweedy canal, with the poplars chattering overhead, and the skipperwhistling at the tiller; which was to do all its errands in greeninland places, and never get out of sight of a village belfry inall its cruising; why, you would have thought if anything could bedone without the intervention of Providence, it would be that! Butperhaps the skipper was a humorist: or perhaps a prophet,reminding people of the seriousness of life by this preposteroustoken.
At Creil, as at Noyon, Saint Joseph seemed a favourite saint on thescore of punctuality. Day and hour can be specified; and gratefulpeople do not fail to specify them on a votive tablet, when prayershave been punctually and neatly answered. Whenever time is aconsideration, Saint Joseph is the proper intermediary. I took asort of pleasure in observing the vogue he had in France, for thegood man plays a very small part in my religion at home. Yet Icould not help fearing that, where the Saint is so much commandedfor exactitude, he will be expected to be very grateful for histablet.
This is foolishness to us Protestants; and not of great importanceanyway. Whether people's gratitude for the good gifts that come tothem be wisely conceived or dutifully expressed, is a secondarymatter, after all, so long as they feel gratitude. The trueignorance is when a man does not know that he has received a goodgift, or begins to imagine that he has got it for himself. Theself-made man is the funniest windbag after all! There is a markeddifference between decreeing light in chaos, and lighting the gasin a metropolitan back-parlour with a box of patent matches; and dowhat we will, there is always something made to our hand, if itwere only our fingers.
But there was something worse than foolishness placarded in CreilChurch. The Association of the Living Rosary (of which I had neverpreviously heard) is responsible for that. This Association wasfounded, according to the printed advertisement, by a brief of PopeGregory Sixteenth, on the 17th of January 1832: according to acoloured bas-relief, it seems to have been founded, sometime other,by the Virgin giving one rosary to Saint Dominic, and the InfantSaviour giving another to Saint Catharine of Siena. Pope Gregoryis not so imposing, but he is nearer hand. I could not distinctlymake out whether the Association was entirely devotional, or had aneye to good works; at least it is highly organised: the names offourteen matrons and misses were filled in for each week of themonth as associates, with one other, generally a married woman, atthe top for zelatrice: the leader of the band. Indulgences,plenary and partial, follow on the performance of the duties of theAssociation. 'The partial indulgences are attached to therecitation of the rosary.' On 'the recitation of the requireddizaine,' a partial indulgence promptly follows. When people servethe kingdom of heaven with a pass-book in their hands, I shouldalways be afraid lest they should carry the same commercial spiritinto their dealings with their fellow-men, which would make a sadand sordid business of this life.
There is one more article, however, of happier import. 'All theseindulgences,' it appeared, 'are applicable to souls in purgatory.'For God's sake, ye ladies of Creil, apply them all to the souls inpurgatory without delay! Burns would take no hire for his lastsongs, preferring to serve his country out of unmixed love.Suppose you were to imitate the exciseman, mesdames, and even ifthe souls in purgatory were not greatly bettered, some souls inCreil upon the Oise would find themselves none the worse eitherhere or hereafter.
ladies of Creil, having recited my rosary of toleration, Ilook for my indulgence on the spot. andI knew no more than the man in the moon about my only occupation. allowances for me!Like the ladies of Creil, having recited my rosary .
I cannot help wondering, as I transcribe these notes, whether aProtestant born and bred is in a fit state to understand thesesigns, and do them what justice they deserve; and I cannot helpanswering that he is not. They cannot look so merely ugly and meanto the faithful as they do to me. I see that as clearly as aproposition in Euclid. For these believers are neither weak norwicked. They can put up their tablet commanding Saint Joseph forhis despatch, as if he were still a village carpenter; they can'recite the required dizaine,' and metaphorically pocket theindulgence, as if they had done a job for Heaven; and then they cango out and look down unabashed upon this wonderful river flowingby, and up without confusion at the pin-point stars, which arethemselves great worlds full of flowing rivers greater than theOise. I see it as plainly, I say, as a proposition in Euclid, thatmy Protestant mind has missed the point, and that there goes withthese deformities some higher and more religious spirit than Idream.
I wonder if other people would make the same allowances for me!Like the ladies of Creil, having recited my rosary of toleration, Ilook for my indulgence on the spot.