En Route  (English, Paperback, Huysmans Joris Karl)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Before his conversion he had said like all unbelievers : " If I believed that Jesus Christ is God, and that eternal life is not a decoy, I would not hesitate to change all my habits, to follow as far as possible the rules of religion, and, in any case, to live chaste." And he was surprised that people he knew, who were in these conditions, did not maintain an attitude higher than his own. He who had so long indulgently forgiven himself became singularly intolerant, so soon as he had to do with a Catholic. He now understood the injustice of his judgments, and confessed that between faith and practice was a gulf difficult to overpass. He did not like to discuss this question with himself, but it returned and took possession of him all the same, and he was obliged to admit the meanness of his arguments, the despicable reasons for his resistance. He was still honest enough to say : " I am no longer a child ; if I have Faith, if I admit Catholicism, I cannot conceive it as lukewarm and unfixed, warmed up again and again in the saucepan of a false zeal. I will have no compromise or truce, no alternations of debauch and communions, no stages of licentiousness and piety, no, all or nothing ; to change from top to bottom, or not change at all." Then he drew back in alarm, endeavoured to escape the part he was about to take, endeavoured to exculpate himself, cavilling for hours, invoking the most wretched motives for remaining as he was, and not budging a jot. " What am I to do ? If I do not obey orders, which I feel with increasing force, I am preparing for myself a life of uneasiness and remorse, for I know well I ought not to remain for ever on the threshold, but to penetrate into the sanctuary and stay there. And if I make up my mind— no indeed—for then...