Abbe Jules by Octave Mirbeau

Author:Octave Mirbeau
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781907650532
Publisher: Dedalus
Published: 2013-01-29T05:00:00+00:00

Two months later, Jules was nominated parish priest of Randonnai.

He arrived one very gloomy Saturday morning, just in time to bury the village notary. The funeral was magnificent and of the highest class. This cheered the new priest up considerably as he sprinkled holy water around the tomb and thought to himself:

“This is a good start. Let’s hope it goes on like this.” The church looked a miserable affair to him, sad and gloomy with a low, cramped ceiling and huge pillars supporting arches of a vulgar design.

“A real cave!” he thought. “The good Lord must get really fed up in there.” Then he examined the priests who had come from neighbouring parishes to be present at the ceremony and they examined him too with furtive glances slipped slyly from behind their Psalters. He thought as he suppressed a grimace, showering the deceased with incense and prayers:

“So that’s what I have to live with. That is going to be fun. Where have I seen all those nasty faces before?” He noticed one man, his hair glossy with pommade, whose plump and very pink face seemed particularly familiar:

“Good God!” he recalled. “I do believe … It’s the rabbit from the seminary.”

In the cemetery, while he intoned Latin verses, he spotted a sheaf of straw near the trench. Breaking off suddenly, he turned to a fat cantor standing behind him, a fellow with the drunkard’s pimply complexion and who stank of wine:

“What is that?”

The cantor replied hoarsely:

“It’s straw, Father.”

“I can see it’s straw … but what is it doing there?”

“In effect it’s for the sake of the relatives … We put it in the coffin and it stops the noise of the earth falling onto the lid …”

“Take that straw away!” ordered the priest. “I do not want that straw here.”

“But all the families like it, Father. It’s the custom.”

“Well the custom will change. Take that straw away, I told you. And as for you, I would be grateful if from now on you would not get drunk until after the service.”

And he started his Latin verses again, without paying any attention to the whispering and murmuring amid the crowd.

The following day, at the first mass, he climbed into the pulpit and spoke to his parishioners as follows:

“My brothers, when I arrived here yesterday, I noticed with sorrow that you have some deplorable habits which I beg you, order you if necessary, to give up, for I warn you that I will not tolerate them. What was the meaning of that straw spread on the coffins? Death is a noble mystery which I would like you to respect above all other mysteries. Is it respectful to surround it with the shameful bedding such as you give your animals? I was told that it was out of regard for the living, to spare them the sound of the clods of earth falling onto the bare planks of the coffin. Cowardly hearts that know not even how to weep and reject the suffering that is God’s gift! Well, I request that a greater regard is accorded to the dead.

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