The Diary of a Country Priest by Georges Bernanos

Author:Georges Bernanos [Bernanos, Georges]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-01-14T15:49:46+00:00

VI

First thing this morning I went round to the Châ­teau. M. le Comte sent word that he much regretted he couldn’t see me, and that Canon la Motte-Beuvron would be at the presbytery round about two o’clock to discuss arrangements for the funeral. What can be happening?

The two nuns thought I looked so poorly that they were determined to ask the butler to bring a glass of port for me, which I was very glad of. This butler—a nephew of old Clovis, who is usually a very civil lad and anxious to please-was quite stiff when I spoke kindly to him. (Of course, servants in these great houses always dislike familiarity, usually of a rather tactless kind, from people of my sort.) But he was waiting at table last night, and may have overheard something. What?

Only half an hour in which to have lunch, change my cassock (it is beginning to rain again) and tidy up the house a little. It’s been in an awful mess for the last few days, and I don’t want to shock the canon who seems already so set against me. So I suppose I could find something better to do than sit here writing all this. Yet more than ever I need this diary. It is only during these snatched moments that I am aware of some effort to see clearly into myself. Nowadays thought comes so slowly, my memory is very bad-I mean for recent happening, not others!-rny imagination so sluggish, that I must tire myself out with work in order to shake off some vague, uneasy, daydream which, alas, prayer alone cannot always dispel. As soon as I stop, I feel myself sinking into a corna which blurs into misty, pathless land­scapes, in which I cornpletely lose rny bearings, the per­spective of the last few days. If I keep to it strictly, morning and evening, rny diary breaks up this wilderness, and sometimes I slip the last few pages into rny pocket, to read them again on rny long dull tramps from one end of the parish to another, when I am tempted to give way to this strange mesmerism.

Does this mean rny diary is taking up too much of rny life? I cannot tell. Only .God can tell.

The canon has just left. Not at all the kind of priest I was expecting. Why wouldn’t he be more honest and straight-forward with me? No doubt he wanted to, but these men of the world are so reined-in and anxious to avoid showing their feelings.

We began by making arrangements for the funeral, which M. le Comte wants properly clone, but not ex­travagantly, according to the wishes often expressed by his wife. Then we both sat in silence for some time, and I began to feel very uneasy. The canon gazed up at the ceiling, mechanically opening and shutting his heavy gold watch.

‘I ought to tell you,’ he observed at last, ‘that rny nephew, Orner’ (M. le Cornte’s name is Orner, which I didn’t know) ‘wishes to see you privately this evening.

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