The Story of André Cornélis

When a child, I went to confession. How often have I wished that I were still the lad who came at five o'clock into the chapel of our school, the cold empty chapel, with its white-washed walls, its benches on which our places were numbered, its harmonium, its Holy Family, its blue ceiling dotted with stars. We were taken to this chapel in tens. When it came to my turn to kneel in one of the two spaces on either side of the central seat of the priest, my heart would beat violently, and a feeling of oppression would come upon me, produced by the gloom and silence, and the murmur of the confessor's voice as he questioned the boy on the opposite side, to whom I was to succeed. These sensations, and the shame inspired by sins which I was to confess, made me start with dread when the sound of the sliding panel announced that the moment had come, and I could distinguish the priest's profile, and note the keenness of his glance. What a moment of pain to endure, and then what a sense of relief! What a feeling of liberty, alleviation, pardon—nay, effacement of wrong-doing; what conviction that a spotless page was now offered to me, and it was mine to fill it with good deeds. I am too far removed now from the faith of my early years to imagine that there was a phenomenon in all this. Whence then came the sense of deliverance that renewed the youth of my soul? It came from the fact that I had told my sins, that I had thrown over the burden of conscience that oppresses us all. Confession was the lancet-stroke that empties the abscess. Alas! I have now no confessional at which to kneel, no prayer to murmur, no God in whom to hope! Nevertheless, I must get rid of these intolerable recollections. The tragedy of my life presses too heavily upon my memory, and I have no friend to speak to, no echo to take up my plaint. There are things which cannot be uttered, since they ought not to find a hearer; and so I have resolved, in order to cheat my pain, to make my confession here, to myself alone, on this white paper, as I might make it to a priest. I will write down all the details of my terrible history as each comes to my remembrance, and when this confession is finished, I shall see whether I am to be rid of the anguish also. Ah! if it could even be diminished! If it were but lessened, so that I might have my share of youth and life! I have suffered so much, and yet I love life, in spite of my sufferings. A full glass of the black drug, the laudanum that I always keep at hand for nights when I cannot sleep, and the slow torture of my remorse would cease at once. But I cannot, I will not. The instinctive animal desire to live on stirs me more strongly than all the moral reasons which urge me to make an end. Live then, poor wretch, since Nature bids you tremble at the thought of death. Nature? And besides, I do not want to go down there—no, not yet—into that dark world where it may be we should meet. No, no, not that terror, not that! See now, I had promised myself that I would be self-possessed, and I am already losing control over my thoughts; but I will resume it.