Moonlight

(Guy de Maupassant)

Abbe Marignan

• a tall priest
• full of zeal, his soul always exalted but just
• all his beliefs were fixed; they never wavered
• he sincerely believed that he understood his God
• he entered into His plans, wishes and intentions
• always asks the question “Now, why has God done that?”
• everything in nature seemed to him created with absolute and admirable logic
• the “why & “because” always balanced-out

But he
• is indifferent with women
• woman for him is precisely that child 12x unclean of whom poets most speaks
• woman was the tempest who had ensnared the first man and still continues her work
• a weak creature, dangerous and curiously disturbing
• and even more than her devilish body, he hated her loving soul

He had a niece. She was pretty light-headed and impish. He found out she has a boyfriend and they see each other during the night.

So one evening, he wanted to see for himself if it was true.

When he opened the door to go out, he was greeted by the splendor moonlight. And endowed as he was by an exalted spirit, he was immediately distracted, moved by the glorious and serene beauty of the pale night.

In his little garden, all bathed in soft light, he began to breath deeply. He stopped to contemplate the fields all flooded with tender light immersed in the delicate and languid charm that calm nights have. He wanted to stay there to contemplate and admire God in His handiwork.

He asked again the questions he sometimes posed. “Why had God done this?”

Since the night is intended for sleep, for unconsciousness, for repose, for oblivion -- why make it more poetic than the sun and seems intended by its very delicacy to illumine things too fragile and mysterious for daylight, “Why this thrill in the heart, this stirring of the soul, this languor of the flesh?”

“Why these display of delights whose men never see, since they are asleep in their beds?”

“For whom was this intended, this sublime spectacle, this flood of poetry, poured from the sky over the earth?”

And he found no answer…

Then on the edge of the fields, under the vault of trees, drenched with glowing mist…two shadows appeared walking side by side. They seemed the pair as single being; the being for whom this calm and silent night was intended.

He felt as if he were looking at a biblical scene, like the love of Ruth and Boaz.

And he said to himself, “Perhaps God has made such nights to veil the lovers of men with ideal beauty…Must not God permit love since he lavished upon it such visible splendor?”
And he fled, almost ashamed, as if he entered a temple where he had no right to be…