Page:Hoffmann's Strange Stories - Hoffman - 1855.djvu/171

 clothed in their black robes, contrasted singularly with the Greek ornaments of the pillars and ceiling, where the decorator's had figured little flying angels, surrounded by garlands of flowers and baskets of fruit. When master Aloysius presented himself to me, I excused the indiscretion of my visit on account of the intimacy of my friend, whose name the Rev. father gladly welcomed. This Jesuit was an elegant talker, a priest without austere manners, and who must have seen wordly life more than once through the window of his convent. He conducted me into his cell, a coquettishly furnished room, which would not have been discreditable to one of our modern elegants, and as he guessed my surprise at the sight of these little elegances of agreeable existence, the taste for which had been able to slip into a place destined for the accomplishment of such grave duties, he hastened to take up the conversation.

"Sir," said he with a polished smile, "we have, as you see, banished from our houses the shadowy poetry of the Gothic style. The Gothic applied to a religious edifice, saddens the soul with mysterious terrors, instead of raising it to hope; God, who has made nature so beautiful and rich to the eye of man, wishes us to come to him by paths of love, instead of bowing himself under the arid vaults of these forests of stone and iron which represent the cathedrals of the north.

If the true country of man is in heaven, and God has strewn the sky with marvels of his power, why should it not be permitted us to enjoy, whilst passing along, the flowers which spring here and there in the paths of our valley of exile? As for the rest, do not imagine that this apparent richness of our houses can make us deserve an accusation of luxury and prodigality. Marble, in this country, would be enormously expensive; thus we have known how to content ourselves with clothing in stucco our humble stone walls, and it is the brush of the painter which often creates those varied marblings with which ignorant Puritanism becomes offended."