Books: The Scourge of Sanctity

THE LAMB (156 pp.)—Francois Maurlac—Farrar, Straus & Cudahy ($3).

As a brooding Roman Catholic novelist, François Mauriac (Woman of the Pharisees, Therèse) has cared for his soul—and for the souls of his fellow literati—as assiduously as Voltaire advised Frenchmen to tend their gardens. The trouble with Mauriac’s theologico-literary gardeningis that he cultivates the weeds of sin rather more successfully than the buds of virtue. In his tormented view of the world, good wins none but moral victories.

The lamb of The Lamb is 22-year-old Xavier Dartigelongue, a would-be seminary student. Like Dostoevsky’s “idiot” Prince Myshkin, Xavier is a fool in Christ, a saint somehow leading himself to destruction. Xavier feels himself spiritually handcuffed to any human soul in need. On the train ride to the seminary, the handcuffs click when haughty Jean de Mirbel enters Xavier’s compartment and reveals that he means to desert his wife.

Taunting Xavier and his faith, Mirbel agrees to go back to his wife if Xavier will forget about his seminary obligations and come with him. The dark, wind-blown mansion to which Xavier is taken is a spiritual isolation ward rife with viciousness. There is an ugly, snot-nosed, unwanted boy of nine. There is a vapid secretary-governess who purrs around Xavier like a cat on a hot tiled roof. There is the self-centered stepmother-in-law, a grande dame sans merci.

The gift Xavier brings them—selfless love—they cannot understand. His kindliness to them merely starts Mirbel’s wife primping before her mirror and stalking him along the country lanes. As for the demoniacal Mirbel, Xavier’s love only puts murder in his heart. Poor, anguished Xavier finally breaks when the local cure smugly assures him that “Christianity is true just insofar as every myth is true.” Biking blindly homeward, Xavier either throws himself before Mirbel’s car, or is run down in cold blood.

Either way, Mauriac’s point is as somber, remorseless and debatable as his novel, i.e., that the saints have only one reward at the hands of the world, and even of its professing Christians: to be killed by the poor sinning things they love.