L'ordination
The Ordination
Julien Benda
He led her to the threshold of the hotel, respecting the desire he felt she had to prepare their souls, by a few days of waiting, for their complete union. He loved this desire and the respect he had for it, for he loved the elegance of love more than love itself.
The next day they walked side by side in the mountains, steeped in the kiss they did not recall, drinking their deep communion in their most frivolous agreements, happy to feel themselves promised to love, happy and not joyous.
They were going down the slope that leads back to the garden. They sat down halfway. She remained long in thought. Then she said:
--- I am afraid, Felix… I am afraid of not pleasing you. You are from a brilliant world. Your mother, your sisters, are elegant women. Those who loved you were women like them… I am a very small bourgeoise.
He said:
--- I hate that world, and my heart is not of it. I have seen there nothing but lies --- lies about talent, lies about beauty, lies about love… I have known truth only for a month, Madeleine, since I have known you. I love the modest dress that signifies this truth to me.
Thus his will believed it conquered his habits, and he came, fervent, to the religion of the humble.
That day she told him her life. She told him her sad childhood: her cold and haughty mother; her jealous elder sister; her father, who alone loved her, whom she lost early. She told of her marriage to an older man, pretentious and disappointed, wounded by all happiness, who bore her a grudge for her youth… Then a first stillborn child… Then little Pierre, her slow wound through this child, who was all like his father. And the hostility of her husband’s family… She told of her mute, desolate, immobile life.
She raised her eyes:
--- Ah! she said, taking him in her arms, you are the only one in the world who will have wept for me.
He made her speak on. He was discovering the charm of compassion.
All was sleeping. Trembling, she waited behind her door… He came… She fell back into his arms. He pressed to his heart those slender young forms, less moved by their grace than by their surrender…
He let his gaze wander about the room… He loved those modest effects neatly folded on a chair, that little boarding-school watch hung above the bed.
Gently, hiding her from herself beneath a veil of kisses, he led her toward the back of the room… Gently, hiding her from herself beneath a veil of kisses, he was undoing the dressing gown she wore. He spared her the least humiliation, the least consciousness…
[This translation covers the opening sections of Benda’s novella “The Ordination.” The source OCR is heavily damaged throughout, with only fragments of the text legible. The story follows Felix and Madeleine through their love affair, examining themes of class, desire, and the ordination of feeling. The full text continues at great length. See the original on Archive.org for the complete text.]