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| the services with their
hats on, as they had done in the desert so as not to attract the suspicion
of people who would see them from afar. They lifted their broad-brimmed
felt hats only during the Lord's Prayer.
By 1944, however, the population had shrunk and the number of worshipers even more - not more than twenty-five people on regular Sundays and about sixty on special feast days. The empty church had a lively echo, which forced me to speak slowly in order to be understood. Most of my male parishioners met every Sunday morning in the café next-door to the church, while the women attended the service. When I asked why they would not darken the church door, they replied with feeling, "We are not regular church-goers. But if any one dared to touch our religion, we would certainly take our guns and defend it." Being true Southerners, the parishioners of Lasalle expected me to preach with pathos, with huge gestures, and with words appealing to their emotions: a large order for an intellectual seminarian, and one half-baked at that. One of my predecessors had been a certain Pastor Cahous, whose sermons had been in exactly that vein. Some of the older women even remembered with pride having been confirmed by him. A traditional story tells of the woman who came out of one of his services with tears streaming down her cheeks, and mumbling, "What a magnificent sermon he preached, Mr. Cahous, what a magnificent sermon!" Upon which a neighbor, not having been able to attend church that morning, asked her, "What did he preach about, Mr. Cahous?" "I don't know what he preached about, Mr. Cahous, but what a magnificent sermon! What a magnificent sermon!" My homilies did not make the grade. Coming back several years later to inaugurate a monument to the Résistance in Lasalle, my former parishioners had only one comment, "You really have become much more of an orator, Monsieur Séguy." Not only was I alone, but
I occasionally had to fill in for some of my colleagues: The
funeral of an elderly farmer was perhaps one of the most colorful I ever
attended. It had taken me four hours by bicycle to reach the remote
farm on a mountain top with a magnificent view on all sides. The
funeral having been scheduled for one o'clock, I arrived just in time for
the luncheon which the widow and her children had prepared for the guests.
At that time of restriction, amounting almost to famine in the towns, the
buffet was a wonder of gastronomic delicacies, such as smoked ham, blood
sausages (boudins), white bread, roast beef, and cheeses of all
kinds. I indulged in the food, being hungry from the climb.
The farmers and the family, however, indulged even more in red wine which
flowed freely into large, never-empty glasses. When the hour of the
funeral arrived, I was the only man able to walk straight. Some of
the women and I left everybody at the table and took the deceased to the
place on the property where his grave had been dug. It had to wait
for the men to sober up in order to close the tomb after I had departed. |
