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«Through my forefathers on the paternal side, I belong to the military Vendée. My great-grandfather, Nicolas Bazin, manager of the estate of the Count of Colbert at the castle of Maulévrier, departed with Stofflet, the gamekeeper of the same castle, and fought as a lieutenant in the Great War of 1793-1800. I have his portrait, a very fine painting in pastel, displaying a firm head with bright eyes.» (Vincent, p. 14) Born in 1853 at Angers, René Bazin was always proud of the sacred bonds that united him to the military Vendée, the sacred Vendée, as he called it. In the home of his father, faith was strong and keen, a true Catholic royalist faith which the child, consecrated at his birth to Notre-Dame-sous-terre, welcomed with an open soul. Toward the end of his studies, he noted: «Lord, bless my intelligence, let all within me be noble and pure… And if You have given me the least talent, let me use it in Your service.» (ibid., p. 21) His professors had remarked his gift for writing, and he was chosen on 4 July 1871 to welcome, in French verse, the new bishop of Angers as he made his pastoral visit to the little seminary of Mongazon. Mgr Freppel entered into the life of René Bazin and would never leave it, in line with the advice he gives us, today more than ever: «Place this great man among your glories, among your illustrious prelates, place him very close to your great war leaders whom he resembled in more than one trait. You should never forget him.» (ibid.) As a Law student at Paris he attended early morning Mass and received Communion almost every day, in the company of Ferdinand Hervé, his future brother-in-law. After which, «we returned with heart so content, with soul so light, that we skipped down the streets.» (Vincent, p. 27) He would confide in 1890: «I recognise that, without faith, without the practice of the sacraments and especially the Holy Eucharist, I would not have had this sum of happiness and peace, for which I bless God. The little that I am worth had no other source.» (Paul Baugas, Funeral eulogy of René Bazin, 20 May 1933, p. 21) From being a liberal and a Bonapartist, Ferdinand Hervé became, thanks to Marie Bazin, his spouse and René's sister, a legitimist and ultramontanist. Already a member of the professorial body of the Catholic University which the bishop of Angers had just founded, Ferdinand Hervé-Bazin recommended René Bazin to Mgr Freppel for the Faculty of Law which opened in autumn 1875. But the young Bachelor of Law had first to obtain a doctorate. This is why he first registered as a candidate for the doctorate at this new Catholic faculty. Having earned his doctorate of Law in 1878, he took possession of his professorship. For more than forty years, he taught Law at his University with the pride of a Christian who has understood the importance of the work undertaken: «Make no mistake about it; the ideas spreading through the masses, enticing them, saving them or destroying them, did not originate in the same places where they take effect. They are the daughters of the higher sciences. They can be encountered at the cabaret, but that is simply where they have fallen… The true conflict today, and indeed at all times, is waged in the spheres of higher education… Anarchism, before making the bourgeois tremble in the form of a bomb, had already made several of them smile in the form of an elegant sophism… The victory between the Christian idea and materialism is decided around a University chair… And you have seen that our Catholic Universities, where truth is patiently studied, re-established, spread by book and by oral teaching, has first claim on everyone's assistance and gratitude; you understood that they must not perish and that you would accomplish a great feat by keeping them alive.» (Vincent, p. 30-31) Married in his turn in 1876, René Bazin formed with his young spouse the model of those Christian families about which he would write: «Wherever I see a happy household, there is a self-forgetful woman.» (ÉTAPES DE MA VIE, Calmann-Lévy, 1936, p. 82) We can imagine Madame René Bazin replying to him by quoting another novel and saying that their fruitful and holy union would not have been possible «if my husband did not pray with me, did not receive my God, did not draw his inspiration for the least of his actions from this faith that is truly myself!» (LA BARRIÈRE)
This zeal for souls would never leave him. As a member of the Administration Council of the Municipal Orphanage in Angers, he explained to the little orphans whom he visited one day in 1910: «If I take care of you, it is because you have souls and because the soul of a little girl, even the poorest, even the unhappiest, the most abandoned, is a beautiful and precious thing. And the little girls, astonished, afterwards said to their directress: “Did you hear that? He spoke to us about our souls!”» (Vincent, p. 193) He contributed for a time to the legitimist newspaper of Angers, l’Étoile, which ceased to be published after the death of the Count of Chambord. It was replaced by l’Anjou. In the very first issue, on 1 September 1883, STÉPHANETTE appeared as a serial story. The author, René Bazin, composed it from the stories he had heard in his legitimist childhood. This little story was steeped in the great heroic poetry of the wars of the Vendée.
In 1884, “MY AUNT GIRON” marked René Bazin’s entry into notoriety. The Calmann-Lévy publishing house, the Journal des Débats and the Revue des Deux Mondes offered to publish it, assuring him of the widest distribution. But at Angers, certain people were scandalised that a professor of a Catholic University had ended up collaborating with the adversaries of his faith or fraternising with notorious literary evildoers. René Bazin understood and decided to submit the controversy to his bishop, Mgr Freppel. «I can still see him, Bazin would himself relate, seated in front of his desk, half turned towards me, looking at a bundle of open letters, but which he was not reading; he remained immobile and mute for one or two minutes which seemed long to me. Then the judge, having made his resolution, raised his head, looked me straight in the eye without smiling but in a friendly manner, and said to me: «“My dear Mr René Bazin, I have every confidence in you. I know that you will write nothing which offends the faith and which could be unworthy of a Catholic University professor. Therefore write in the Journal des Débats, write in the Revue des Deux Mondes.” «He paused for a brief moment. Then in a vigorous voice which was one of command, he added: “If anyone finds fault with this, send him to me.”» (Vincent, p. 58) René Bazin would never betray the trust that Mgr Freppel had placed in him. “Catholic without epithet”, he reveals himself as such in both his books and in his life. «Believe firmly and show oneself to be Christian in the smallest acts of life. In this lies all honour, all truth, all happiness and man’s peace. This is my total conviction», he wrote in 1890 (ÉTAPES DE MA VIE, p. 29), and it would never change. «A Catholic novelist?» he asked himself in 1924, and he replied: «There are not two men, there is but one, a Catholic with a talent for writing and whose work is necessarily marked by his Catholicism, as is his life, as is his thought. Nothing escapes from his faith: a great love possesses the whole man.» (ibid., p. 186) His work breathes Christianity; it establishes us in a world redeemed by Jesus Christ. His characters «feel Catholic». One of them reveals the true depths of his heart: «We live in order to earn our death with our whole life.» That is why university critics began to describe as «naive» these novels whose characters «displayed a smug optimism», or a heroism which ran counter to the naturalism that was in vogue, such as that of Zola or of George Sand: «Today, noted Bazin in 1887 in ÉTAPES DE MA VIE, the collection of his intimate notes, only novels about bodies are written. There the study of souls merely involves a vulgar analysis of successive sensations. The higher part of ourselves is completely set aside, ignored, denied by means of silence.» However, DE TOUTE SON ÂME [With All Her Soul], published in 1897, was definitively going to place him among the great novelists. He confronted the workers’ question, approaching the social problem as a Catholic. Henriette Madiot, the daughter of a worker seduced by her boss, with an anarchist for brother, a violent, hateful boy who was leading a poor little working girl into debauchery, had at every step encountered wretchedness, moral ugliness and vice since her childhood. Seized with an immense pity for those who suffer, she wanted to assist them “with all her soul”. But would she listen to the worthy fisherman of the Loire who loves her and asks her to marry him? Or will she give preference to the cries of the poor and the sick who call to her with their imploring eyes and gestures and, deep within herself, to the voice inviting her to forget herself, to love them in Jesus Christ? For a long time she thought, for a long time she prayed, she listened to the advice of the old priest who directed her. “God took her heart for His poor.” With all her soul, she goes towards the sacrifice, she will be a daughter of charity, serving and giving herself «to those who have fallen so low that even hope itself is lacking». The priest exhorts her to enlarge her soul, to love them all, to pardon them. He promises: «“You will thrill with joy for the happiness that is not yours. You will feel the sweetness of the tears that have pity. You will experience how beautiful life is when it is not focused on oneself. Do not fear evil. Go into its midst. Ah! my child, only those who have picked up the reverse side of evil and turned it in their hands have any knowledge of it. What a beautiful opportunity it offers for devotion, for sacrifice, for repentance, for restoration, for efforts capable of redeeming everything!” «Listening to him, Henriette felt that the path he was describing was truly hers, that she loved those who suffer on the earth with a love of engagement and of marriage, made for long duration, capable of bearing shame, disdain and ingratitude. She smiled at the wretchedness of the entire world, like a mother who advances to pick up a child in tears. «Returning home, she wrote in her grey notebook this one line: “With all my soul!”» The first object of her self-denial was this unfortunate Marie who lacked the strength to resist temptation and who was dying of tuberculosis, abandoned, but repentant and forgiven. Before she entered the convent, Henriette went to the Hospital where Marie Schwartz was waiting for nothing more than her visit to die in peace. During this final conversation, Henriette briefly told her that she was going to become a nun. «She saw joy rise up again in this face of sorrow; she felt herself enveloped in the final flame of love, admiration and infinite desire which radiated from this ardent soul. – Ah! How happy you are! said Marie. She closed her eyelids. What visions passed through her mind? Undoubtedly she was thinking for one last time of days past, of lost opportunities, of faults redeemed through suffering. She remained immobile for a long while, recollected in her reverie. When she came round, Henriette was kneeling close to the bed. She looked at her with her dull eyes which no longer had the strength to be tender, and which simply said: «Why do you stay? What are you waiting for? I am weary. We have said everything to one another.» She did not understand. But Henriette remained kneeling, her eyes looking into the eyes of her wretched and dying sister. Then Marie understood what she was asking for. A mysterious grandeur appeared on her features. Slowly, she pulled her right arm out of the bed; she leaned forward: and she who had been pardoned blessed her who was pure, and traced on the virgin’s forehead the sign of the redeeming Cross.» In writing this novel, René Bazin fulfilled the desire that Saint Veronica’s gestures had awakened in his soul: «And I too would like to wipe and wash the outraged face of Christ, in a book as pure as the veil of the holy woman, held up like her in faith and compassion. Perhaps then – for this would be the sovereign reward – the features of Christ will appear on these pages destined to avenge them from men’s contempt.» (ÉTAPES, p. 52) He succeeds through his art in «considering men as simply souls en route to their eternal destiny.» He had but one ambition: to touch hearts, to open them to greater charity, to greater hope, to a greater courage for living. «I never write a single line without thinking of the souls of those who will read me», he affirmed, desiring to «show distracted or deceived minds that, amidst the immense and resonant evil, good has its place, almost always secret and victorious; that it redeems the world, and that, since the time of Christ, this nobility often lives on in humble people, and, for those able to understand, transfigures them.» (ibid., p. 83) Thus, René Bazin’s intention is to expose «whatever contradicts the rules of observation and sincerity, i.e. procedures which consist in depicting man’s instincts alone, in suppressing souls, in explaining the moral world through causes unequal to their effects, in walling up all the windows which man, however overwhelmed by misery, work, illness and the influence of his environment, continues and always will continue to open to Heaven. For there will always be these kinds of windows, through which prayer will ascend and hope descend… I find [in the naturalist tendency] a predisposition to disparagement bordering on pride, a harsh manner of speaking about poverty, a brutality of manner in the portraiture of poor people, always represented as impulsive beings, slaves of instinct, of heredity and passion, a tendency to consider the worker as a machine who drinks and wages revolutions – all of which is derived from a fundamental contempt for the human race, or at the very least from a most definite lack of understanding.» (QUESTIONS LITTÉRAIRES ET SOCIALES, p. 85-86) With a truly evangelical spirit, René Bazin loves and makes us love those who are little, ordinary people, those who work in poverty. He perceives behind the action of the hand that holds plough and tool, behind the humble efforts of humble lives, the soul which enlarges and enhances all. And one of the charms of his novels is that he makes us follow the drama of souls written on faces, in the expressions of the eyes, the relief of the forehead, or in the gestures of his characters, in every habitus of the physical person. He was born both an observer and a story-teller. Like any good artisan executing a masterpiece, he meticulously prepared his novels. For weeks and months, he lived in the theatre of the adventures he was going to relate, immersing himself in the life he wished to depict and accumulating documentary data in his notebooks. With land and labour as the field of action, events unfold quite naturally, following the normal development of the characters. There are few adventures, for the entire drama takes place in their souls. René Bazin does not give moral lessons, but he puts his Catholic faith into his books, as he noted in one of his diaries, «because it is a truth and a beauty and a remedy for everything.» (Vincent, p. 187) He sets out the facts, he depicts reality which is a mixture of good and evil, he affirms the battle between the conscience and the passions. The tenor of his novels is such that it is events themselves that are the judge. The writer, he explained in ÉTAPES DE MA VIE, «must depict evil without making it enticing, he may expose error provided that through signs, strong or weak, of which he is the master, one may surmise or one may know that he is expounding an idea, but an idea that remains marked with a character that vitiates it. «A dangerous art, of an almost infinite power.» He desires that when the reader closes the book, he should more keenly feel the danger, personal or social, of the fault or the error described in its pages, more clearly understand the grandeur and the necessity of the moral law. Analysing the novels of Bazin, Jean Calvet observes «that religion is the basis of all the great social realities that safeguard States, the family, the country and order; that religion is the support of charity and of justice fraternally united, without which and without the union of which social peace is unstable; that religion makes virtue germinate and vivifies it; and that, in the final analysis, it would be impossible without religion to rebuild a France that deserves to live and to be loved.» (THE CATHOLIC RENEWAL IN CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE, p. 134)
With LA TERRE QUI MEURT, 1899, he became one of the leading French novelists. This «peasant novel» has a profound connection with the previous «worker novel». So many of these miserable workers would have lived free and assured of essentials if they had remained faithful to the land. But the marshlands of the Vendée, which the children are leaving one after the other, are dying, and poverty follows this desertion. To a well-constructed plot with a double theme, René Bazin adds the presentation, living and true, of the French peasants of the Vendée. With LES OBERLÉ, published in 1901, he achieved his largest print run. The novel took as its theme a burning topic of the day, presenting an Alsatian family tragically divided against itself. He wished to make a study of Alsace, a land conquered by foreigners, but in which the soul of France continued to live, whilst awaiting a resurrection. In order to gather detailed documentation, the novelist made three journeys to Alsace, and took lodgings in the house where Mgr Freppel was born at Obernai. Bazin’s renown even reached Father de Foucauld, an Alsatian by birth. Wishing to make known his Colonial Union, the latter wrote to the Abbé Huvelin in 1907: «We are not fulfilling our duty to the peoples we colonise... For months, I have been hoping for a good book in an attractive style... which would indicate the path to be followed and encourage one to take it by appealing to the emotions [...]. Only one name comes to mind: the author of LES OBERLÉ, Mr Bazin. See...» (Correspondance Père de Foucauld - Abbé Huvelin, p. 274-276) The success of LES OBERLÉ removed the last resistance that had, until then, blocked René Bazin’s candidacy to the French Academy because of his too plainly affirmed Catholic convictions. Elected in 1903, he considered that this honour really belonged not to him but to Catholic higher education. In his reception speech, on 28 April 1904, he had no hesitation in proclaiming as «manifestly erroneous» certain affirmations of his predecessor, the liberal republican Ernest Legouvé. He personally suffered from the persecutions and exile inflicted on the Congregations, since two of his own eight children had entered religion. In 1905, he recounted this drama, portraying in L’ISOLÉE the effects of the villainous laws that shattered the life of poor nuns driven out of their convents. Deprived of the protection of her environment, unable to withstand isolation, Pascale Mouvant, after having lived so happily in her monastery, fell into an abyss of suffering and shame from having been wrenched out of it. Following the Law of Separation of Church and State («vehemently» condemned by Pope Saint Pius X), Brunetière, Georges Goyau and a few other Catholic academicians, who were called the green cardinals, remonstrated to the Holy See about the religious associations condemned by the Pope. Asked to add his name to those of his friends, René Bazin refused point-blank, considering and declaring that it was not for the simple faithful, however highly placed they might be, to intervene from purely human considerations in matters of doctrine and spiritual government. Throughout his life, Bazin venerated PIUS X, whom he called this Pope of the most kindly genius, and of whom he wrote a biography. We will find in LE BLÉ QUI LÈVE (1907) an echo of the obligation that Saint Pius X imposed on the French clergy to reject such associations, to accept poverty and to hope for spiritual blessings from it. The drama of the young parish priest from Glux in the Morvan region «where living souls clustered around the living God», begins on «the bleak Sunday» of Quasimodo, in a parish in Nièvre where the church is deserted: «It was the rural Sunday, a day of weariness when prayer has disappeared. «The priest was saying Mass, and he felt inexpressible suffering as he imagined the solitude behind him, around him, everywhere: the solitude of the church void of the faithful; the solitude of souls void of God’s grace. And this was just a small section of France!» All the Abbé Roubiaux can do is to go and take a collection from the villagers for the church, to make up for the indemnities of the now abolished Concordat. But in this poor and unbelieving parish of Nièvre, he dreads godless reactions and cannot steel himself to take the action ordered by his bishop. He meets Michel of Meximieu. The young lord of the manor is not much to look at, he is not built for the Army as was his father, the marquis general of Meximieu, but he passionately loves his land and wants to revive it. He is aware of the factitious hatred directed against him under the pressure of all the anticlerical and syndicalist intrigues of the freemasons who exploit every misery. But he hopes to change things and to do good for his people, who do not realise that they have been robbed of the truth. He therefore exhorts the poor priest to go and collect alms, and thus make himself known to the people. The sacrifice accepted with difficulty bears fruit. In the whole village, only six families dismiss him, and all the others contributed! relates the good priest, touched and full of hope, to Michel of Meximieu. «All these indifferent people, faced with the prospect of apostatising, refused to do so.» – «Do you want to give something to help priests to live, myself and the others, or do you want to abandon religion?» he asked them, and they responded with a personal act of faith. Moreover, «I have made myself known, now I am really their priest, we are less afraid of each other, they and I... Ah! Monsieur Michel, if you had heard them! What a variety of acts of faith! What naivety! What frequent poverty! But what a mysterious heart reveals itself in all this!» The novel ends on a note of hope and in an atmosphere of renewal. It passes like a breath of resurrection. Three men worked towards this renaissance by their sacrifices and beneficial union, far removed from all class warfare, an illustration of the social doctrine of Saint Pius X: the priest, the young aristocrat who, knowing he was condemned by a heart disease, offered his life for the parish, and the peasant worker, Gilbert Cloquet. They worked together towards this reciprocity of services. In 1911, DAVIDÉE BIROT was published, with the subtitle A LAYWOMAN. Davidée came from an irreligious environment and she was a teacher in a public school; the teachers’ training college taught her the “right” doctrine! and her directress taught her practical philosophy: «One must forgo conjugal love, love the job for itself, put one’s heart between two pieces of blotting paper so that it dries right out, always say yes to the administration and so arrive at a nice little retirement without overstretching oneself.» But Davidée has a demanding soul that wants to understand duty, suffering and death; she wants to raise souls up. So, little by little, she ascends and encounters the full Christian light. The book relates this ascension, right up to the final scene where, sensing her heart melting out of love, she abandons herself into the hands of the Crucified One whose image was before her: «For a moment, she looked for where she should place her kiss, put her lips to the wounded Heart and said: “Help me!”» Although Prime Minister Barthou never forgave René Bazin for the all too true story of this soul who frees herself from state sectarianism, opens her mind and then devotes herself to the truth, public school teachers drew from this book the courage to assert their Catholic faith and openly practice it, forming an association under the name of the Davidées.
In 1903, he wrote this resolution in his notebook: «To carry within oneself Jesus Christ in the world... Never to deny, even through silence, the Master who was so good.» He had the opportunity to put this into practice when, in 1913, he had to pronounce at the French Academy, before the President of the Republic and some of the State’s top representatives, official guardians of its secularity, the traditional speech on the value of virtue. In the peroration, he put the following question: On what is all this heroism based, from what or from whom does it draw its inspiration? «These elite souls indicate the kind of education a country needs. The source from which they have drawn is one of life, of grandeur, of true inner peace, a peace of mind and heart, infinitely superior to any other. These souls are different and yet they are one. Whether they like it or not, whether they know it or not, they have all ceased to belong to the ancient world, they have breathed in the atmosphere of this sanctified country, they have felt the influence of the baptism of France. In each of them, I see the image, either clear or blurred but always recognisable, of the Master who brings charity to the earth, the image of the Friend of the poor, of the Comforter of the suffering, of Him who spent His life doing good, Him whom I have the joy to call, along with millions of living souls and billions of the dead, Our Lord Jesus Christ.» (Vincent, p. 189) The thunderous applause and soon afterwards the cheers that broke out totally astonished the officials! The Academy seems to have offered him the perfect setting for putting into practice this resolution of August 1893: «One must make the sacrifice one’s preferences, but not that of one’s convictions.» (ÉTAPES, p. 37) It was once again under the Cupola that the fidelity of Mgr Freppel’s disciple would be manifested, when, in 1922, in accordance with the rules of the Academy, it fell to him to deliver a eulogy of Renan whose centenary was fast approaching. He immediately announced his intention to treat with just severity the man who had treated history – and what a history! – in the manner of a novelist. Bazin had not forgotten the lesson of Mgr Freppel who had written: «We are right to call Mr Renan’s book complete fiction, without scientific value.» (Brother Pascal, Mgr Freppel, vol. I, p. 203) The permanent secretary saw this as an affront to the traditions and replied: «Renan must be praised to the hilt, without restriction.» Bazin did not share this point of view: «I can well understand why one must be courteous and even indulgent, but there are other even stricter considerations which are due to God, to religious truth and to those who try to live according to the faith.» (Vincent, p. 186) «As for Renan, he concludes, either I will not speak of him or I will say what truth demands.» Barrès was asked to make the speech instead!
At the beginning of the war of 1914, he had hoped, but in vain, for a public act of faith on the part of our political leaders, to ask God for mercy. For him, as for Father de Foucauld, «the hour of the Crusades had come», and he prayed to Joan of Arc more than ever, convinced as he was of France’s apostolic and missionary vocation, and of her resurrection to come. Having seen his two sons and one of his sons-in-law leave for the battlefront, unable to do anything better, he placed his pen in the service of the country and submitted a number of articles to l’Écho de Paris. «We parents are also making our contribution to the war. Our children are taking part in the conflict... When I wake up in the middle of the night, in my thoughts I spontaneously search for them in the dark, along with their companions in arms. Where are they? Sleeping, wrapped in their coats, lying on mounds?... I also worry at sunrise. I look out onto the mist, the sun, the rain...» (Vincent, p. 193) After the war, he kept hoping for a resurrection of Catholic France, through the intercession of all her saints: «France will emerge from these confused days after the war, and from this poverty. She will be radiant for all to see. In Argentina, even in England, they celebrate Joan [of Arc]. Do you think this is the end of God’s graces? Is it not rather their continuation and their new promise.» (ÉTAPES, p. 146) That was the lesson he endeavoured to teach the pupils at his college in Mongazon, on prize-giving day in July 1924 : «It is no small grace to be educated and instructed at a school where religion, common sense and Latin hold the first three places... For your instruction in the faith, you have access to the two means of persuasion: doctrine and example; you are shown the right path, and you have only to follow it [...]. «You will rapidly become convinced, if you are not so already, that the greatest war in the world is the one that takes place for or against souls, for their good or their ruin, and that there can be no real truce in this war, because the powers waging it never sleep. All of you will fight to prevent French souls from being diminished. There is no greater charity than this, and once again it is here, in this excellent and dear college, that you will have learned it.» As one of the foremost Catholic personalities in the literary world, René Bazin seemed altogether suited to reveal to the world the saintly figure of FATHER DE FOUCAULD. Shortly before his seventieth year, he went to the Sahara in search of the traces, words, gestures, and spirit of Charles de Foucauld. «The life of Father de Foucauld, writes Jean Calvet, in The Catholic Renewal in Contemporary Literature, is the most dramatic of Bazin’s books, for no novelist could have imagined a hero of the stature of this French officer who became a hermit in the Sahara and an apostle to the Tuaregs; it is filled with a spirituality rich in heroic features; and it is not a piece of fiction, it is history. I like to see it as the final answer – and a delightful one at that – to critics who criticise René Bazin for having embellished the image he left us of men and for having surpassed reality and true life to depict tender and generous souls.» (p. 135-136) Today, when so many biographers betray our venerated Father, we can be thankful to him for having presented to us his true portrait, providing an account of his assassination without concealing his martyrdom (Cf. Resurrection no 19). Ill and sensing his death approaching, he undertook to write MAGNIFICAT, which was published in 1931. It was his crowning work. His biographer, Mgr Vincent, wrote: «By a kind consideration of Providence, René Bazin had the happiness, in the evening of a long life without decline, to be able to bring to its term this great book, the most powerful, the most brilliantly composed, the truest ever to issue from his pen; a peasant novel, technically as perfect as LA TERRE QUI MEURT, but with a flame of spirituality, a radiance of grace and the supernatural, which confer on it, amongst his other novels, the presence that we attribute to POLYEUCTE in the work of Corneille.» (p.196) Well, well! What a comparison! After having published about sixty works, novels, memoirs of journeys, biographies and a great number of articles, he still managed to write one last book: A MONASTERY OF SAINT PETER FOURIER. LES OISEAUX. It was there that one of his daughters and one of his grand-daughters had chosen to give themselves to God. He now simply awaited the hour of death, with a confidence that can be seen in these words: «I have confessed Christ as my Lord for ever...» «I will believe in Him until the day I see Him.» On 25 March 1932, continuing his conversation with God, he noted in his diary: «I would like to live in a country where there are no longer any enemies of Jesus Christ. The voiceless word answered me: “You are going there”.» (ÉTAPES, p. 219) The last sentence in the last notebook is: «In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum...» He received Extreme Unction in a state of full lucidity, then he quietly said: «I accept all that God wills.» He asked for his Crucifix be placed in front of him, at the foot of his bed and, looking at it, he whispered from time to time: «Jesus! My Jesus Christ!» On 19 July, 1932, he peacefully commended his soul to God. On his tombstone are engraved the words that he himself had prepared: «I BELIEVE WITH ALL MY MIND, WITH ALL MY HEART, THE ENTIRE CATHOLIC TRUTH.»
What an upright life! Born a true Catholic royalist, the great-grandson of Lieutenant de Stofflet would remain so until his death. This lovable man, not in the least worldly and possessed of an evangelical meekness, had none of the characteristics of a liberal, whom he defined thus: «inclined to error and smiling on the enemy» (ÉTAPES, p. 154), nor of a moderate of whom he said: «In everyday language, a moderate is the name of a man who professes but a few errors, and flatters himself on this.» (ibid., p. 195) To capture his portrait, his son-in-law, Tony Catta, recalled «his gracious mind, his talent as a storyteller, his extraordinary youth of soul, and also a soundness of judgement which he had drawn from authors he loved, Joseph de Maistre, Louis Veuillot, and privately his brother-in-law Hervé Bazin. He used to quote Mgr Freppel’s sayings; he never forgot that he had been a contributor to l’Anjou.» (Mgr Bazin, Souvenirs, unpublished) René Bazin fully displayed this soundness of judgement, expressed with all the clarity of truth, in his introduction to STUDIES ON THE REVOLUTION by Father de Clorivière. In his presentation of the life and the work of the holy Jesuit, «the model of the just man in times of revolution» (PIERRE DE CLORIVIÈRE, CONTEMPORARY AND JUDGE OF THE REVOLUTION, Paris J. de Gigord, 1926, p. 34; cf. also our study in CCR no 323, Oct. 1999, p. 26-32), René Bazin gives us a veritable treatise on the Counter-Revolution, affirming straightaway that «the only useful men in revolutions are those who concede nothing to it: all the others merely serve its interests» (ibid., p. 3). He continues: Father de Clorivière «is, as I have said, one of those rare people whom the Revolution did not deceive for a single moment, and one of those even rarer people who realised that it could not be outwitted: it must be combated and overthrown. Wiles serve no useful purpose. «He had seen, as did Joseph de Maistre, and he openly stated that it was satanic; he pointed out its proximate causes: dissoluteness of mind, dissoluteness of morals, complicity of the timorous, half-measures and imprudent attempts to conciliate weak minds, for Revolution gets people to concede their principles, but never renounces any of its own: at most it simply suspends their execution.» (ibid., p. 38-39) René Bazin understood that «the Revolution was not over, alas, but it stands condemned. Its hatred serves as its principle. It is the enemy of God and therefore the principal enemy of France. Those who condone it fulfil a function that would horrify them, were their passions capable of reflection: they are assistant executioners.» This was the lesson, more relevant than ever in that year of 1926, which he wished to draw from the study of Father de Clorivière. Moreover, the latter, surpassing his contemporaries, wrote «perhaps more dependably for those of us who have suffered from the Revolution for one and a quarter centuries, and who still do not know the true nature, power and congenital deformity of this enemy of the human species. It does not at first show its true colours. This blood-thirsty monster, when it enters upon the stage, puts on a mask and uses words with a double meaning, which make the whole crowd applaud, from the pit to the “gallery”.» (p. 40) This «friend of God», this holy Jesuit, after having «denounced the falsehood, malice and harmfulness of the Declaration of Human Rights», would apply himself to commenting on the APOCALYPSE, seeing therein «the prophetic history of the Church». «After the bloody trial he had been through, Clorivière saw another trial, “even more terrible, when Christians, becoming unfaithful, will not content themselves with renouncing a few points of the Catholic religion, but will attack them all as a whole […]. «The Sovereign Pontiffs will not restrict themselves to lively exhortations addressed with feeling to those unbelievers who outwardly still appear to belong to the Church, but they will anathematise them. This is because the Church will have suffered for too long in her gangrened members. She will want to preserve the rest of her children from a contagion made all the more dangerous by their exposure to being deceived by the outward appearances of the one same religion, and she will feel the necessity of casting out those who remain obstinate in their errors.” «Is it possible, when reading these lines today, not to think of the encyclical Pascendi, condemning, one century later, those who are “not declared enemies, but enemies hidden in the very heart of the Church”? When, in these same pages, Clorivière defines “the spiritual death that in those times the demons will strive to bring upon men”, and which “consists in depriving them, insofar as possible, of every chance of regaining the supernatural life, through the general renunciation of all revealed truths”, is he not defining that regime of ignorance and total religious separation which we call secularism?» (p. 58) Continuing to meditate on the example and teachings of Father de Clorivière, René Bazin, who had known Mgr Freppel and admired and venerated Saint Pius X, wrote: «The great fighters are men of hope. It was incumbent upon him who had foreseen and witnessed the evil to point out the remedy. This he did […]. France’s chastisement will not last for ever. She who was guilty can be pardoned, saved and restored to peace. It will need the co-operation of the civil and ecclesiastical powers. Society will not emerge from disorder unless God returns to souls, to morals, to laws. He must be invoked publicly, as He has been publicly denied.» (p. 60-61) Bazin’s faith was the basis of his hope, just as it directed his political reflection. Of course, he knew that the vices of the Republic are elemental and inherent in this form of government (ibid., p. 157) and he considered democracy to be an unnatural regime: «Under the pretext of democracy, we have been presented with the regime of an anonymous society, a regime which badly governs a disoriented nation, troubled in its traditions and its faith. It requires passions to be in a constant state of turmoil; it requires, for the good of this country, that half the people should be led to struggle against the government, and that a people made to be governed should periodically chase out or try to chase out their deceivers. What an unnatural state!» (ÉTAPES, p. 134). But even more profoundly, he remarked that, «in France, the Republic is not a government, it is a heresy» (ibid., p. 190). The politicians who invented secularism «have gone beyond the malice of the most infamous heretics. For heresies are ordinarily only partial, denying but one part of the Credo, or interpreting it incorrectly. But this heresy is total; it consists in completely separating children from any knowledge of God and of the revealed religion, in learning everything, even what is useless, even what is laughable, even what is improbable, everything except what is essential.» He has a horror «of those who imposed an ignorance of God on France; of all those who hide the source of truth, of purity and of durable valour, of all those in power who seek to steal paradise from little children» (ibid., p. 198). He denounced again in 1929 «the falsification of French history» as «an old trick, something that still continues. It seeks to detach children and the ignorant from everything that was beneficial and noble in the past: the Catholic religion, a sense of tradition, honour, pride, the family, work. It paved the way for and maintains this cruel and disastrous secularism.» (ibid., p. 207) Words which could have been uttered by Mgr Freppel or Saint Pius X: «Inequality is inscribed in the nature of things, it is proof of God’s power. Nothing is equal to anything else. Many of these inequalities cannot be changed. «Gentle humility makes us accept with joy the inferiorities of condition. And this is the first remedy that God has given for enforced inequality. «The second is charity. It commands the great to be the servants of the little. It blunts the point of inequality, without destroying the principle. It produces peace between unequal brothers.» (p. 204) «It is not necessary to be equal in order to be fraternal. In families there is no equality. And yet what love!»
A reflection written in 1913 perfectly summarises his entire conviction: «I am monarchist by family tradition and by the sad experience I have had of forty-three years of the Republic. I believe that the monarchical regime is the best adapted to our character, and undoubtedly the best per se. But it is obvious that we are far from a return to the monarchy, and that one cannot reasonably foresee any event that might re-establish the Bourbons-Orléans on the throne. The question of “the form of government” may exist in the minds of an elite, but there is certainly no question of it for the mass of the country. «God has permitted that, politically, we should be in the thickest darkness. On the other hand, the duty to come to the defence of religion, to recover religious souls, to strengthen doctrine around us, to prepare worker-apostles and peasant-apostles through our works, is an unquestionable duty, the most important of all, one which no Christian can refuse. «Well implemented, without undue concern for politics, it seems almost certain to me that this beautiful mission will not be without political influence. Perhaps our political destinies will always be different from those which we dream about. However, it seems likely to me that a Christian France may soon be monarchist. She will recall her roots. She will come under the attraction of her whole History.» Saint Pius X spoke in exactly the same way, when he said to Émile Flourens, a former minister of the Republic: «Believe me, I know your Frenchmen. They are naturally Catholic and monarchist. Sooner or later they will become so again.» «I think, therefore, continues René Bazin, that it is good that there be men to recall to our contemporaries the idea and the principles of a restorationist government. They are fighting for a cause which I believe to be just, which does not have on its side a divine promise, but which, humanly speaking, seems preferable to other political causes. On the other hand, those who are trying to bring France back to religious faith and to “restore everything in Christ”, are working with divine certainty. I have chosen this second cause and it seems to me that, without having purposely sought to do so and without involving myself in political action, I probably serve the first. My motto might be: “LET US MAKE FRANCE CHRISTIAN, GOD WILL MAKE HER ROYAL IF HE PLEASES.”» (ÉTAPES., p. 98-99) |
From that time,
the young couple became the soul of that little society whom the
foundation of the Catholic faculties had brought together at Angers,
and in a word: the tie of this sheaf. His dear students formed his
spiritual family. He continued his courses, receiving them at his
home one day each week. He met them again, another day, at the meeting
of the Saint Louis Conference, founded by his brother-in-law Ferdinand Hervé-Bazin to mould in these young men of 18 to 20 years of age
«the Christian man». With an apostle’s soul, he took some of them to
the closed retreat which he made every year. Later on, he would also recruit the
farmers and labourers of the Saint Barthelemy parish, of which
for twenty-eight years he was the municipal councillor.