La tapisserie de Notre Dame
The Tapestry of Our Lady
Charles Péguy
AND FOR THE MONTH OF MAY, TENTH CAHIER OF THE FOURTEENTH SERIES
CAHIERS DE LA QUINZAINE, periodical appearing every other Sunday, PARIS, 8, rue de la Sorbonne, ground floor.
Presentation of Paris to Our Lady
Star of the sea, here is the heavy ship Where we row all naked under your commands; Here is our distress and our disarmaments; Here is the Louvre quay, and the lock, and the weir.
Here is our gear and here is our chief. He is a lad from among us who whistles now and then. He has no equal when it comes to governing. He has a hard head and a somewhat brusque gesture.
Queen who rise above all the oceans, You will think of us when we are out at sea. Today is the day to load our cargo. Here is the enormous crane and the long bellowings.
If it had to be loaded with our poor virtues, This vessel would set out toward your august threshold More hollow than the hazelnut after the squirrel Has let it fall again from its pointed claws.
No bales would enter through the gaping hatches, And we would arrive in the Sargasso Sea Dragging this useless and grotesque carcass And the English would say: They put nothing in it.
But we shall know how to fill it and we swear it to you. It shall be the finest in this illustrious port. The cargo will go up to the gunwale. And when it is full we shall crown it.
We shall not load in it our poor maize, But gold and wheat that we shall carry away. And it will hold the sea: for we shall load it With the weight of our sins paid for by your son.
Paris Vessel of Cargo
Vessel of cargo on the two banks of the Seine, Vessel of purple and gold, of myrrh and cinnamon, Vessel of wheat, of rye, and of justness of soul, Of humility, of pride, and of simple vervain;
Our fathers have laden you with such long suffering, For a thousand and a thousand years you have come to the wave, That no cargo is so heavy at the oar, And that no vessel has so full a belly.
But we shall bring a regret so severe, And so nourished with honor, and so hollowed with flame, That the chief will take it for a sack of prayer, And have it hoisted up beneath the oriflamme.
Ship rigged out under Septimius Severus, Double vessel of cargo at the feet of Our Lady.
Paris Double Galley
From the Point du Jour to the biblical cedars, Double galley seated along the great bazaar, And the great ministry, and the somber alcazar, Among the private mournings and the public virtues;
Under the eighty kings and the three Republics, And under Napoleon, Alexander, and Caesar, Our fathers have tried the hundredfold chance, Faithfully bent over your oblique oars.
And we, taking their place on the same oaken bench; We shall row with our backs, our necks, our souls, Bent, broken, bruised, bleeding beneath our chains;
And we shall hold out, riveted to our oar, Convicts sons of convicts on the two banks of the Seine, Galley slaves lying at the feet of Our Lady.
Paris Vessel of War
Vessel of the line along the colonnades, Once a warship with a hundredfold portholes, Today a heavy factory, enormous strongbox Shut upon the secret of muffled cannonades.
Our fathers danced for you warm serenades, They adorned you with the blood of the noblest death, When on the forecastle, toward the one and the other side, Bounded the flock of the grave carronades.
But we shall bring to your giant destinies A heart so serious and so burned with flame, A heart so curious of all the oceans, Soldiers sons of soldiers under the same oriflamme, That they will make us valets of your gaping cannons, Green monsters crouching at the feet of Our Lady.
Presentation of the Beauce to Our Lady of Chartres
Star of the sea, here is the heavy tablecloth And the deep swell and the ocean of wheat And the moving foam and our filled granaries, Here is your gaze upon this immense cope.
And here is your voice upon this heavy plain And our absent friends and our depopulated hearts, Here along our sides our disjointed fists And our weariness and our strength entire.
Star of the morning, inaccessible queen, Here we are marching toward your illustrious court, And here is the plateau of our poor love, And here is the ocean of our immense sorrow.
A sob wanders and runs beyond the horizon. Barely a few roofs make like an archipelago. From the old steeple falls a sort of call. The thick church seems like a low house.
So we sail toward your cathedral. From far to far a rosary of haystacks emerges, Round as towers, opulent and alone Like a row of castles on the flagship.
Two thousand years of labor have made of this earth A reservoir without end for the ages to come. A thousand years of your grace have made of these labors A resting place without end for the solitary soul.
You see us marching on this straight road, All dusty, all muddy, the rain between our teeth. On this wide fan open to every wind, The national road is our narrow gate.
We go before us, our hands along our pockets, Without any apparatus, without fuss, without speeches, At an ever-equal pace, without haste or recourse, From the nearest fields toward the next nearest fields.
You see us marching, we are the foot soldiers. We never advance more than a step at a time. But twenty centuries of people and twenty centuries of kings, And all their retinue and all their rabble
And their plumed hats with their valetaille Have learned what it is to be familiar, And how one can march, feet in one’s shoes, Toward a last square on the evening of a battle.
We were born for you on the edge of this plateau, In the curve of our blonde Loire, And this river of sand and this river of glory Is there only to kiss your august mantle.
We were born on the edge of this vast plateau, In ancient Orleans, severe and serious, And the Loire flowing and often silty Is there only to wash the feet of this hill.
We were born on the edge of your flat Beauce And we have known from our youngest years The gate of the farm and the hard peasants And the enclosure in the village and the spade and the grave.
We were born on the edge of your Beauce so flat And we have known from our first regrets What desperate secrets can be concealed By a sun that descends in a scarlet sky
And that sets at the level of an inevitable ground, Hard as a justice, level as a bar, Just as a law, enclosed as a pond, Open as a fine pedestal and flat as a table.
A man from among us, from the fertile soil, Has made spring forth here with a single uplifting, And from a single source and a single bearing, Toward your assumption the spire unique in the world.
Tower of David, here is your spire of the Beauce. It is the hardest ear of grain that ever rose Toward a sky of clemency and serenity, And the finest jewel within your crown.
A man from among us made spring forth here, From the ground level to the foot of the cross, Higher than all the saints, higher than all the kings, The irreproachable spire that cannot fail.
It is the sheaf and the wheat that shall not perish, That shall not wilt in the September sun, That shall not freeze in the rigors of December, It is your servant and it is your witness.
It is the stem and the wheat that shall not rot, That shall not wither in the heats of summer, That shall not mold in a spoiled winter, That shall not stiffen in the common death.
It is the stone without stain and the stone without fault, The highest prayer that was ever borne, The straightest reason that was ever cast, And toward a sky without edge the highest line.
She who shall not die on the day of any deaths, The pledge and portrait of our uprootings, The image and the trace of our straightenings, The wool and the spindle of the most modest fates.
We arrive toward you from the distant Parisis, We have for three days left our shop behind, And archaeology with semantics, And the thin Sorbonne and its poor little ones.
Others will come toward you from the distant Beauvaisis. We have for three days left our commerce, And the giant rumor and the colossal city. Others will come toward you from the distant Cambresis.
We arrive toward you from Paris the capital. It is there that we have our government, And our time lost in lantern-swinging, And our liberty, deceiving and total.
We arrive toward you from the other Notre Dame, From the one that rises at the heart of the city, In her royal robe and in her majesty, In her magnificence and her justness of soul.
As you command an ocean of grain, There you command an ocean of heads, And the harvest of mournings and the harvest of feasts Lies down each evening before your parvis.
We arrive toward you from the noble Hurepoix. It is a beginning of Beauce for our use, Farms and fields cut in your image, But cut more often by curtains of woods,
And cut more often by hollow valleys For the Yvette and the Bievre and their tributaries, And their learned detours and their disengagements, And by the fine chateaux and the long alleys.
Others will come toward you from the noble Vermandois, And from the rolling hills of birch and willow. Others will come toward you from palaces and prisons, And from the land of Picardy and the green Vendomois.
But it is always France, whether small or greater, The country of fine wheat and of framings, The country of the grape and of streamings, The country of broom, of heather, of moorland.
We arrive toward you from the distant Palaiseau And the outskirts of Orsay by Gometz-le-Chatel, Otherwise known as Saint-Clair; it is not a castle; It is a village on the edge of a road that runs aslant.
We emerged, climbing from that hillside, Onto the level of the plain and onto Gometz-la-Ville Above Saint-Clair; it is not a city; It is a village on the edge of a road on a plateau.
We went down the hill of Limours. We met three or four gendarmes. They watched us, not without some alarm, Consulting the signposts at the corners of crossroads.
We were able to sleep in the calm town of Dourdan. It is a big wealthy market town that smells of the provinces. Proudly we walked along, regarded like a prince, The moats of the chateau cut like a redan.
In the friendly, hospitable, and fraternal house They put us to bed in the boy’s bed. Twenty years of memories were our cupbearer. The bread was cut for us by a maternal hand.
All our youth was there, solemn. The Benedicite was said for us. Four centuries of honor and fidelity Made of the bed sheets an eternal couch.
We pretended to be a merry pilgrim And even a bon vivant who loves travel, And to have traveled through a hundred and thirty-one bailiwicks, And to be accustomed to being on the road.
The lamplight dazzled the tablecloth. They showed us around the kitchen garden. It looked out onto the trellis and a fine orchard. Such was the first lodging and the stage head.
The garden was enclosed in a bend of the Orge. To the right it looked out onto a wooded wall Surmounted by branches and a light arch. Opposite a blacksmith, and the anvil, and the forge.
We rose this morning before dawn. We parted after the fine farewells. The weather looked promising. They told us so much the better. They gave us a taste of some beef in daube.
Since it is understood that the good pilgrim Is the one who drinks heartily and holds his place at table, And that he has no need to play the accountant, And that it is quite enough to rise early.
The day was underway and the sun was climbing When we passed Sainte-Mesme and the other towns. We were already advancing like two good apostles. And the left and the right was what counted.
We climbed back up by the Gue de Longroy. It is done now with our procrastinations, And with the iniquity of unevenness: Here is the just plain and the secret dread
Of finding ourselves all alone, and here is the wagon And the wheel and the oxen and the yoke and the barn, The equal dust and the equitable mud And the equal distress and the equal disarray.
Here we have reached the high terrace Where nothing any longer hides man from God, Where no disguise of time or place Can save us, Lord, from your pursuit.
Here is the immense sheaf and the immense bundle, And the grain beneath the millstone and our crushings, And the thin swath and our renunciations, And the immense horizon that the gaze embraces.
And our unworthiness, this immutable mass, And our base fear at such a moment, And the just terror and the secret torment Of finding ourselves all alone before your face.
But here it is you, queen of majesty. How could we have let ourselves be deceived, And walk before you without perceiving you? We shall always be this bewildered people.
This country is flatter than the flattest table. Barely a hollow in the ground, barely a gentle fold. It is the judge’s table and the fait accompli, And the verdict without appeal and the inescapable order.
But you appear, mysterious queen. That point over there in the billowing Of harvests and woods and in the floating Of the extreme horizon is not a holm oak,
Nor the known profile of an interchangeable tree. Already more distant, and lower, and higher, Firm as a hope upon the last ridge, On the last hilltop the inimitable spire.
From here to you, O queen, there is nothing left but the road. This one looks upon us; we have done plenty of others. You have your glory and we have ours. We have begun it; we shall eat it all.
We know what it is for a stretch to be added To the stretch already done, and what a kilometer Demands of the calf, and what one must put in. We shall pass this evening through the bridge and the vault.
We march in the wind, cut by the automobiles. This is the country that cannot be captured in photos, The bare and grave road going from end to end.
We were wise to set off at daybreak. We shall sleep this evening a stone’s throw from your home, In that old inn where for forty sous We shall sleep quite near your illustrious tower.
We shall be so exhausted that we shall look, Sitting on a chair by the window, In a crushing of body and of all being, With beaten eyes, almost with round eyes,
And eyebrows raised right into our foreheads, At the angle once found by a single man in the world, And the single ascending, deep ascent, And we shall be worn out and we shall contemplate.
Here is the axis and the line and the giant flower. Here is the hard slope and the contentment. Here is the exactness and the consent. And the stern tear, O queen of sorrow.
Here is nakedness; the rest is clothing. Here is the clothing; all the rest is ornament. Here is purity; all the rest is defilement. Here is poverty; the rest is adornment.
Here is the only strength and the rest is weakness. Here is the only edge and the rest is burr. And the only nobility and the rest is filth. And the only grandeur and the rest is baseness.
Here is the only faith that is not perjured. Here is the only impulse that can rise a little. Here is the only moment worth counting. Here is the only purpose that is completed and endures.
Here is the monument; all the rest is lining. And here is our love and our understanding. And our bearing of the head and our appeasement. And the nothing of lace and the exact molding.
Here is the fine oath; the rest is forfeiture. Here is the sole reward of our uprootings, The wages paid for our retrenchments. Here is the truth; the rest is imposture.
Here is the firmament; the rest is procedure. And toward the tribunal here is the adjustment. And toward paradise here is the fulfillment. And the leaf of stone and the exact nervure.
We shall remain nailed to the straw chair. And we shall not hear and we shall not see The tumult of voices, the tumult of footsteps, And in the room below the innocent feasting.
Nor the carters come for market day. Nor the feigned anger and the burst of oaths. For we shall contemplate and we shall meditate, With a single embrace, on the sinless spire.
We come to pray for this poor boy Who died like a fool in the course of this year, Almost in the week and toward the day When your son was born in the straw and the bran.
Virgin, he was not the worst of the flock. He had only one flaw in his young armor. But death, which tracks us and follows our trace, Passed through that hole he had made in his skin.
He was born among us in our Gatinais. He was starting the road where we descend. He was gaining every day all that we lose. And yet it was he whom you destined for yourself,
O death who were conquered in a first tomb. He had set his steps in our same footprints. But the single failure of a single fear Let death pass through by a new way.
Here he is now within your regency. You are queen and mother and will know how to show it. He was a pure being. You will have him return Into your patronage and your indulgence.
O queen who read in the secret of the heart, You know what it is, life or death, And you know as well in what secret of fate The cunning of the tracker is sewn and unsewn.
Mother, here he is then; he was our race, And twenty years after us our redoubling. Queen, receive him into your amendment. Where death has passed, grace will surely pass.
We, we shall return by this same road. It will be again the land without hiding place, The castle without a corner and without an oubliette, And this ground better engraved than a perfect parchment.
And nunc et in hora, we pray for us Who are greater fools than this poor lad, And doubtless less pure and less in your hand, And less well directed toward your sacred knees.
When we have played our last characters, When we have set down the cape and the cloak, When we have thrown down the mask and the knife, Be pleased to recall our long pilgrimages.
When we return to this cold earth, As was prescribed for the first Adam, Queen of Saint-Cheron, Saint-Arnould, and Dourdan, Be pleased to recall this solitary road.
When we have been placed in a narrow grave, When the absolution and the Mass have been said over us, Be pleased to recall, queen of the promise, The long journeying we make in the Beauce.
When we have shed this sack and this rope, When we have trembled our last tremblings, When we have rattled our last rattlings, Be pleased to recall your mercy.
We ask nothing, refuge of the sinner, But the last place in your Purgatory, To weep long over our tragic story, And contemplate from afar your youthful splendor.
Prayer of Residence
O QUEEN, here then, after the long road, Before setting out again by this same path, The only shelter open in the hollow of your hand, And the secret garden where the soul opens wholly.
Here is the heavy pillar and the rising vault; And forgetting for yesterday, and forgetting for tomorrow; And the futility of all human reckoning; Worse than sin, wisdom put to rout.
Here is the place in the world where all becomes easy, The regret, the departure, even the event, And the temporary farewell and the turning away, The only corner of the earth where all becomes docile.
And even this old heart that was playing the rebel; And this old head and its reasonings; And these two stiffened arms in their enlistments; And this young girl who was being too much the belle.
Here is the place in the world where all is recognized, And this old head and the source of tears; And these two stiffened arms in the craft of arms; The only corner of the earth where all is contained.
Here is the place in the world where all has returned After so many departures, after so many arrivals. Here is the place in the world where all is poor and bare After so many hazards, after so many labors.
Here is the place in the world where all returns and grows still, And the silence and the shadow and the fleshly absence, And the beginning of eternal presence, The only refuge where the soul is all that it was.
Here is the place in the world where temptation Turns back upon itself and reverses itself. For what tempts here is submission; And blindness in the immense universe.
And laying down is here what tempts, And what comes of itself is abdication, And what comes on its own and what presents itself Is here only greatness and presentation.
It is revolt here that becomes impossible, And what presents itself is resignation. And it is self-effacement that becomes invincible, And all is only greeting and salutation.
What everywhere else is an accession Is here only a total and muffled abasement. What everywhere else is a piling up Is here only lowliness and depression.
What everywhere else is an oppression Is here only the effect of a noble crushing. What everywhere else is an eagerness Is here only inheritance and succession.
What everywhere else is a harsh war Is here only the peace of a long forsaking. What everywhere else is a collapse Is here the very law and the common norm.
What everywhere else is a fierce battle And on the outstretched neck the butcher’s knife, What everywhere else is the graft and the pruning Is here only the flower and the fruit of the peach tree.
What everywhere else is the hard climb Is here only descent and fulfillment. What everywhere else is the sea in storm Is here only calm and establishment.
What everywhere else is a harsh law Is here only a fine fold under your commands, And in the freedom of our amendments A fidelity more tender than faith.
What everywhere else is an obsession Is here under your laws only a place restored. What everywhere else is a soul sold Is here only prayer and intercession.
What everywhere else is a weariness Is here only keys on a humble platter. What everywhere else is vicissitude Is here only a vine level with the hillside.
What everywhere else is long habit Sitting by the fire, fists beneath the chin, What everywhere else is a solitude Is here only a living and firm shoot.
What everywhere else is decrepitude Sitting by the fire, fists on the knees, Is here only tenderness and solicitude And two maternal arms that turn toward us.
We have washed ourselves of such bitterness, Star of the sea and of the salty reefs, We have washed ourselves of so base a scum, Star of the boat and of the supple nets.
We have rinsed our unhappy heads Of such a jumble of filth and reasoning. Here we are now, O queen of prophets, Clearer than the water of the well of the Old Testament.
We have steered such modest arks, Veil of the only vessel that shall not perish, We have consulted such poor compasses, Ark of the only salvation, queen of the patriarchs.
We have consummated such distant voyages, We have no more taste for foreign countries. Queen of confessors, of virgins, and of angels, Here we are returned to our first villages.
They have told us so much, O queen of the apostles, We have no more taste for speechifying. We have no more altars but those that are yours, We know nothing more but a simple prayer.
We have weathered such vast shipwrecks, We have no more taste for transshipment. Here we are returned, in the decline of our ages, Star of the only North, within your vessel.
What everywhere else is dispersal Is here only the effect of a fine gathering. What everywhere else is a dismemberment Is here only cortege and procession.
What everywhere else is an uprooting Is here only the flower of the young season. What everywhere else is an entrenchment Is here only a sun at the edge of the horizon.
What everywhere else is hard plowing Is here only harvest and relinquishment. What everywhere else is the decline of an age Is here only a candid and dear aging.
What everywhere else stands on the defensive Is here only gladness and dismantlement; And the forgetting of injury and the forgetting of offense Is here only idleness and banishment.
What everywhere else is a bond Is here only a faithful and noble attachment; What everywhere else is an encirclement Is here only a passerby within your house.
What everywhere else would be a tour de force Is here only simplicity and relaxation; What everywhere else is the rough bark Is here only the sap and the tears of the vine shoot.
What everywhere else is a long wear Is here only reinforcement and regrowth; What everywhere else is upheaval Is here only the day of good fortune.
What everywhere else is a stiffening Is here only a supple and candid fountain; What everywhere else is an illustrious pain Is here only a deep and pure welling forth.
What everywhere else quarrels and grasps Is here only a fine river at the borders of its source. O queen, and it is here that every soul surrenders Like a young warrior fallen back in his course.
What everywhere else is the road climbed, O queen who reign in your illustrious court, Star of the morning, queen of the last day, What everywhere else is the table spread,
What everywhere else is the road followed Is here only a peaceful and firm detachment, And in a calm temple and far from a flat torment The waiting for a death more living than life.