Diaboliques: Six Tales of Decadence by Jules Barbey D'Aurevilly

Author:Jules Barbey D'Aurevilly [D'Aurevilly, Jules Barbey]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: French Literature, Erotic, Classics, Short Stories, Decadence
ISBN: 9780816696895
Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press
Published: 1874-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

At a Dinner of Atheists

This is worthy of godless men.

—Allen

Night was just falling in the streets of ***.1 But inside the church belonging to that small, picturesque town in the west of France, night had fully come already. Night almost always falls first in the churches. It comes there more quickly because of the effects of the dark, stained-glass windows, when there are windows, and because of the many crisscrossing pillars, so often likened to a forest of trees, and because of the shadows cast by the arches. But the doors are not yet closed, though night has fallen inside, anticipating the definitive nightfall outside. Generally they remain open until the Angelus has rung—and sometimes much later than that, on the eve of a major feast day in a pious town, for example, when great numbers of people want to confess before the next day. At no other hour of the day are provincial churches more frequented than this twilight time, the hour when the day’s labor has ended, when the light begins to die, and when the Christian soul begins to prepare itself for the night—the night that so resembles death, and during which death could well come. This is the hour when one realizes anew that the Christian religion is the child of the catacombs, and that it still keeps something of the melancholy of its cradle. This is the time, in fact, when those who still believe in prayer like to come and kneel, elbows propped on the pew ahead of them, their faces hidden in their hands, in these mysterious nights, these empty naves that respond somehow to the deepest of human needs—for if we others, we worldly ones, we creatures of passion, find a solitary, secret meeting with a beloved woman more exciting at such an hour, why shouldn’t it be the same way for the religious souls with their God, when the tabernacles are dark and they can speak to Him, lips against His ear, in the shadows?

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