Either because he was convinced or, as is more probable, because it seemed to him difficult to refute a man as convinced as the Chevalier Lenoir, the doctor said nothing.
The doctor’s silence left the field free for other commentators; Father Moulle eagerly entered the fray.
“All of that confirms me in my system of thinking,” he said.
“And what is your system of thinking?” asked the doctor, delighted to be able to resume his polemic against less hardy jousters than Monsieur Ledru and the Chevalier Lenoir.
“We live between two invisible worlds, one of them inhabited by the spirits of hell, the other by the spirits of heaven; at the time of our birth, two genii – one good, the other evil – come and take up their places at our sides, accompany us all our lives long, the one inspiring us to do good and the other evil; at the hour of our death the winner has us in his power. Thus our bodies become either the prey of a demon or the dwelling of an angel; in the case of poor Solange, the good genius had triumphed, and it was he who was bidding you farewell, Ledru, through the mute lips of the young martyr; in the case of the brigand sentenced by the Scottish judge, it was the demon who had been victorious in the field, and it was he who came successively to the judge in the shape of a cat, the uniform of a bailiff and the appearance of a skeleton; finally, in the last case, it was the angel of the monarchy who took vengeance on the sacrilegious man for the terrible profanation of the tombs and who, like Christ manifesting himself to the humble, showed the future restoration of the monarchy to a poor watchman of the tombs with as much pomp as if the fantastical ceremony had been performed before the eyes of all the future dignitaries of the court of Louis XVIII.”
“But in the end, Father Moulle,” said the doctor, “all systems are based on a certain conviction.”
“Of course.”
“But this conviction needs to rest on facts if it is to be real.”
“And mine does rest on facts.”
“On facts that were related to you by someone in whom you have full confidence?”
“On facts that happened to me myself.”
“Ah, Father Moulle – let’s hear those facts.”
“Gladly…”
I was born in that part of the inheritance of the ancient kings that is today called the département of the Aisne, and that used to be called the Île-de-France; my father and my mother lived in a small village situated in the middle of the Forest of Villers-Cotterêts called Fleury. Before my birth, my parents had already had five children, three boys and two girls, who had all died. As a result, when my mother found herself pregnant with me, she vowed that I would wear white until the age of seven, and my father promised a pilgrimage to Notre-Dame-de-Liesse.*
These two vows are not rare in the provinces, and they were directly related, since white is the colour of the Virgin, and Notre-Dame-de-Liesse is none other than the Virgin Mary.
Unfortunately, my father died during my mother’s pregnancy, but my mother, who was a pious woman, resolved nonetheless to perform the double vow in all its rigour; as soon as I was born, I was dressed in white from top to toe, and as soon as she was up and about again my mother undertook the holy pilgrimage on foot, as had been promised.
Notre-Dame-de-Liesse, luckily, was only fifteen or sixteen leagues distant from the village of Fleury; my mother had to make only three stops before reaching her destination.
There she performed her devotions, and received from the priest’s hands a silver medal, which she hung round my neck.
Thanks to this double vow, I was exempt from all the accidents of youth, and when I had attained the age of reason, either as a result of the religious education I had received, or through the influence of the medal, I felt myself drawn to the Church. After my studies in the seminary at Soissons, I was ordained priest in 1780, and was sent as a curate to Étampes.
As chance would have it, of the four churches in Étampes, I was attached to the one under the patronage of Our Lady.
This church is one of the marvellous monuments which the Romanesque period bequeathed to the Middle Ages. Founded by Robert the Strong,* it was completed only in the twelfth century; it still has admirable stained-glass windows which, when it was newly built, must have harmonized wonderfully with the painting and gilding that decorated its columns and crowned its capitals. While still a child, I had really loved the marvellous efflorescence of granite that faith raised up from the ground, between the tenth and sixteenth centuries, to cover the soil of France, that eldest daughter of Rome, with a forest of churches – only to come to halt when faith died in people’s hearts, killed off by the poison of Luther and Calvin.
As a child, I had played in the ruins of Saint-Jean de Soissons; my eyes had gazed their fill on the fantastic designs of all those mouldings, which look like petrified flowers, so that, when I saw Notre-Dame d’Étampes, I was happy that chance, or rather Providence, had given to me such a dwelling, like a beautiful nest for a swallow or a fine vessel for a halcyon.
My happiest times were those that I spent in the church. I don’t mean to imply that it was a purely religious feeling that kept me there: no, it was a feeling of well-being, comparable to that of the bird that has been confined in a pneumatic machine where the air is being pumped out to create a vacuum, but is then released, and restored to space and liberty. My own space was that which extended from the porch to the apse; my liberty was that of dreaming, two hours at a time, kneeling on a tomb or leaning against a pillar. What did I dream of? Certainly not of any theological quibbles – no, it was rather of that eternal struggle between good and evil that has torn man apart since the day he first sinned; it was of those lovely white-winged angels and those hideous red-faced demons who, every time a ray of sunlight shone in, sparkled on the stained-glass windows, the former resplendent in the blaze of heaven, the latter glowing fierily in the flames of hell. All in all, Notre-Dame was my home; there I could live, think and pray. The little presbytery they had given me was merely my pied-à-terre, where I ate and slept, nothing more.
And often I would leave my beloved Notre-Dame only at midnight or at one in the morning.
This was common knowledge. When I wasn’t in the presbytery, I was in Notre-Dame. They would come and fetch me – they knew they’d find me there.
Of the noises of the world, very few reached me, wrapped as I was in this sanctuary of religion and, especially, of poetry.
However, among these noises there was one which was of concern to everyone, great and small, clergy and laity. The area around Étampes was being laid waste by the exploits of a successor or rather a rival of Cartouche and Poulailler,* who seemed perfectly well qualified to follow in the footsteps of his predecessors when it came to sheer boldness.
This bandit, who would attack anything, but especially the churches, was called L’Artifaille.
Something which made me pay a more particular attention to the exploits of this brigand was the fact that his wife, who lived in the lower town in Étampes, was one of my most assiduous penitents. She was a noble and worthy woman, for whom the criminal way of life into which her husband had fallen was an occasion for remorse and who, feeling that she was responsible before God as his wife, spent her life in prayers and confessions, hoping, by her deeds of holiness, to mitigate her husband’s impiety.
As for him, as I’ve just told you, he was a bandit who feared neither God nor devil, claiming as he did that society was badly organized, and that he had been sent to earth to improve it – and that, thanks to him, a balance between people’s different fortunes would be re-established: he was merely the precursor of a sect that would one day appear, and would preach what he himself practised, namely the common ownership of property.
Twenty times he had been captured and put in prison, but almost always, on the second or third night, the prison had been found empty; since no one could explain these escapes, they said he had found the magical herb that can cut through iron.
So this man was surrounded by a certain aura of mystery.
As for me, I only ever thought of him, I must admit, when his poor wife came to me to confess his errors and ask for my advice.
On these occasions, as you will understand, I advised her to use all her influence over her husband to bring him back to the straight and narrow. But the poor woman’s influence was really weak. So she had to fall back on resorting to prayer, that eternal channel of grace opened up between us and the Lord.
The Easter festivities of 1783 were approaching. It was the night between Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. I had, on the Thursday, heard a great number of confessions, and at around eight o’clock in the evening had found myself feeling so tired that I had dropped off to sleep in the confessional.
The sacristan had seen me asleep; but, aware as he was of my habits, and knowing that I had a key to the church door with me, he had not even thought of waking me; my behaviour on this particular evening was the same as it had been a hundred times before.
So I was asleep when in the middle of my sleep I heard, as it were, the echo of two simultaneous noises. One was the vibration of the bronze striker chiming midnight; the other was the pad of a footstep on the flagstone.
I opened my eyes, and was just about to step out of the confessional when, in the beam of moonlight shed through one of the stained-glass windows, I thought I saw a man moving along.
As this man was walking with care, looking around at every step he took, I realized it was neither one of my assistants nor the beadle, nor the cantor, nor any of the ordinary denizens of the church, but some intruder who was up to no good.
The nocturnal visitor made his way towards the choir. Once there, he stopped, and after a moment I heard the clink of iron on flint. I saw a spark flash up; a piece of touchwood caught fire and a flare moved towards a candle set on the altar, on whose tip it placed its wandering light.
By the light of this candle, I was then able to see a man of middling height, wearing two pistols and a dagger at his belt, with an expression that was mocking rather than fierce; darting an enquiring glance all round the circumference illuminated by the candle, he seemed to be completely reassured by his examination.
Thereupon, he drew from his pocket not a bundle of keys, but a bundle of those instruments designed to replace them, known as skeleton keys or rossignols, no doubt after that famous Rossignol* who boasted he had the key to all codes. With the help of one of these instruments, he opened the tabernacle, taking out first of all the holy ciborium, a magnificent vessel in old silver, chiselled in the reign of Henri II, then a massive monstrance, which had been given to the town by Queen Marie-Antoinette, and finally two silver gilt cruets.
As this was all that the tabernacle contained, he carefully closed it, and knelt down to open the base of the altar, which acted as a reliquary.
The base of the altar contained a figure of Our Lady in wax, wearing a crown of gold and diamonds, and covered with a robe embroidered all over with precious stones.
Within five minutes, the reliquary, whose walls of glass the thief could easily have broken, had been opened, like the tabernacle, with the help of a skeleton key, and he was just getting ready to add the robe and the crown to the monstrance, the altar cruets and the holy ciborium, when, not wishing to allow such a theft to be committed, I came out of the confessional and went up to the altar.
The noise I made opening the door made the thief turn round. He leant forward in my direction and tried to pierce the darkness of the distant corners of the church with his gaze, but the confessional was outside the range of his light, so that he only really saw me when I came within the circle illuminated by the tremulous flame of his candle.
On seeing it was a man, the thief leant against the altar, drew a pistol from his belt and aimed it at me.
But he was soon able to see, from my long black robe, that I was just a mere inoffensive priest, whose only safeguard was his faith, and whose only weapon was his word.
Despite the threat of the pistol aimed at me, I advanced to the altar steps. I felt that, if he did take a shot at me, either the pistol would misfire or the ball would miss its target; I had placed my hand on my medal and felt myself completely protected by the holy love of Our Lady.
This tranquillity on the part of a poor priest seemed to touch the bandit.
“What do you want?” he asked me, making every effort to ensure his voice sounded firm.
“Are you L’Artifaille?” I asked him.
“Good Lord!” he replied. “And who else would ever dare to break into a church all alone, as I do?”
“Poor hardened sinner, puffing yourself up with pride at your crime!” said I. “Do you not realize that if you continue to play this game, you will lose not only your body, but also your soul?”
“Pah!” he said. “As for my body, I’ve already saved it so many times that I have every hope of saving it again, and as for my soul—”
“Well? As for your soul?”
“That’s my wife’s business; she’s holy enough for two, and she will save my soul at the same time as her own.”
“You’re right, your wife is a holy woman, my friend, and she would be sure to die of sorrow if she learnt that you’d perpetrated the crime you were just carrying out.”
“Aha! So you think that my poor wife will die of sorrow?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“So I’m going to be a widower then!” continued the brigand bursting into laughter and reaching out for the sacred vessels.
But I went up the three steps of the altar and seized his hand.
“No,” I said, “because you’re not going to commit this sacrilege.”
“And who’s going to stop me?”
“I am.”
“By force?”
“No, by persuasion. God did not send his ministers to earth so that they would use force, which is a human thing, but persuasion, which is a heavenly virtue. My friend, I am acting not for the church, which will be able to procure replacement vessels, but for you, who will not be able to redeem your sin; my friend, you will not commit this sacrilege.”
“Huh! So you think this is the first time I’ve done so, my good fellow?”
“No, I know it’s the tenth, the twentieth, perhaps the thirtieth – but what of that? Up until now your eyes have been closed; this evening they will be opened – that’s all. Have you never head of a man called Paul who looked after the cloaks of those who were stoning St Stephen? Well, that man’s eyes were covered by scales, but as he said himself, one day the scales fell from his eyes; he could see, and became St Paul. Yes, St Paul!… The great, the illustrious St Paul!”
“So tell me, vicar, wasn’t St Paul executed?”
“Yes.”
“So whatever was the use of him seeing?”
“Its use was that it convinced him that sometimes salvation is found in agony. Nowadays, St Paul’s name is venerated throughout the earth, and enjoys eternal beatitude in heaven.”
“How old was St Paul when he started to see?”
“Thirty-five.”
“Too late for me: I’m forty.”
“There is always time to repent. On the cross, Jesus said to the wicked thief: ‘One word of prayer, and I will save you.’”
“Pah! So I see you want your silver?” said the bandit, gazing at me.
“No, I want your soul – I want to save it.”
“My soul! You’re having me on – as if you cared!”
“Do you want me to prove that it really is your soul I want?” I said to him.
“Yes, prove it to me – it’ll give me the greatest pleasure.”
“What value do you put on the theft you’re going to commit tonight?”
“Oh, well now…” said the brigand, looking over the altar cruets, the chalice, the monstrance and the Virgin’s robe with satisfaction, “a thousand écus.”
“A thousand écus?”
“I know full well it’s worth double the amount, but I’ll have to lose a good two thirds on the deal – those devilish Jews are such thieves!”
“Come to my home.”
“Your home?”
“Yes, my home, the presbytery. I have a sum of a thousand francs, I’ll make you a part payment.”
“And the other two thousand?”
“The other two thousand? Well, I promise you, priest’s honour, that I’ll go back to my home village – my mother has some property. I’ll sell off three or four acres of land to provide the other two thousand francs, and I’ll give you the money.”
“Oh yes – just so you can fix up a meeting place and then make me fall into some trap!”
“You don’t really believe what you’re saying,” I told him, holding out my hand to him.
“All right, I don’t believe it,” he said sombrely. “But is your mother wealthy, then?”
“My mother is poor.”
“So she’ll be ruined?”
“When I tell her it is at the price of her ruin that I have saved a soul, she will bless me. In any case, if she has nothing left, she’ll come and live with me, and I’ll still have enough for two.”
“I accept,” he said. “Let’s go to your home.”
“Very well, but one moment.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Put back the things you took out of the tabernacle, and lock it – it will bring you happiness.”
The bandit knitted his brows, like a man into whom faith is flooding in spite of himself; he set the sacred vessels back in the tabernacle and locked it with the greatest care.
“Come on,” he said.
“First make the sign of the cross,” I told him.
He tried to utter a mocking laugh, but the laughter died in his throat.
Then he made the sign of the cross.
“Now follow me,” I told him.
We went out through the little door; in less than five minutes, we were at my home.
Throughout the journey, despite its being a short one, the bandit seemed really anxious, looking all round him and clearly afraid that I was going to lead him into an ambush.
Once we reached my place, he stood at the door.
“Well, what about those thousand francs?” he asked.
“Wait,” I replied.
I lit a candle from my dying fire; I opened a cupboard and drew out a bag.
“Here it all is,” I said.
And I gave him the bag.
“And what about the other two thousand? When will I get them?”
“I need to ask you for six weeks.”
“Very well, I’ll give you six weeks.”
“Who shall I give the money to?”
The bandit thought it over for a minute.
“To my wife,” he said.
“Very well!”
“But she won’t know where they come from or how I got them, will she?”
“She won’t know, and nor will anyone else. And you in turn will never again attempt anything against Notre-Dame d’Étampes or any other church under the patronage of the Virgin Mary – agreed?”
“Never!”
“On your word of honour?”
“L’Artifaille gives his word!”
“Go, my brother, and sin no more.”
I bowed and waved my hand to indicate that he was free to go.
He seemed to hesitate for a moment; then, cautiously opening the door, he vanished.
I fell to my knees and prayed for this man.
I had not finished my prayer before I heard a knock at the door.
“Come in,” I said without turning round.
Someone did come in but, seeing me at prayer, stopped and waited behind me.
When I had finished my prayer, I turned round and I saw L’Artifaille standing motionless and erect in front of the door, holding his bag under his arm.
“Here,” he said. “I’ve brought your thousand francs back.”
“My thousand francs?”
“Yes, and we’re quits for the other two thousand.”
“And meanwhile the promise you made me still stands?”
“Yes, for Heaven’s sake!”
“So you repent?”
“I don’t know if I repent, yes or no… I just don’t want your money, that’s all.”
And he placed the bag on the edge of the sideboard.
Then, once he’d put down the bag, he paused as if he had some request to make; but this request, I sensed, was one he found difficult to utter. He was looking at me quizzically.
“What would you like?” I asked him. “Speak up, my friend. What you have just done is good; do not hesitate to do something better.”
“Do you have a great devotion to Our Lady?” he asked me.
“Very great.”
“And you think that, through her intercession, a man, however guilty he may be, can be saved at the hour of death? Very well, in return for your three thousand francs – as I’ve said, we’re quits over that – give me some relic, some rosary, something holy that I can kiss at the hour of my death.”
I undid the medal and the golden chain that my mother had hung from my neck on the day I was born – and that had never left me since then – and I gave them to the brigand.
The brigand placed his lips on the medal and fled.
A year went by without me hearing anything about L’Artifaille; doubtless he had left Étampes to practise his trade elsewhere.
At this juncture, I received a letter from my colleague, the curate of Fleury. My dear mother was gravely ill and wanted me to be with her. I was granted leave and I set off.
Six weeks or two months of care, attention and prayers restored health to my mother. We separated – I was filled with joy and she was in good health – and I came back to Étampes.
I arrived one Friday evening; the whole town was in uproar. The notorious thief, L’Artifaille, had been captured near Orléans, and put on trial before the presidial court of justice in that town which, after passing sentence, had sent him to Étampes to be hanged, since it was the canton of Étampes which had been the main scene of his misdemeanours.
The execution had taken place that very morning.
This is what I learnt in the street, but on entering the presbytery I learnt something entirely different: a woman from the lower town had come the previous morning (just when L’Artifaille had arrived in Étampes to be put to death), and had been asking ten times over whether I was back yet.
This persistence was not at all surprising. I had written to tell them I would be home soon, and I was expected from one minute to the next.
The only person I knew in the lower town was the poor woman who was about to be widowed. I resolved to go to her house before I had even shaken the dust off my feet.
There was no great distance between the presbytery and the lower town. Admittedly, it was striking ten in the evening, but I reflected that, since her desire to see me was so strong, the poor woman would not be put out by my visit.
So I went down into the suburb and had someone point out her house for me. As everyone knew her to be a saint, nobody imputed her husband’s crime to her, and no one tried to make her feel ashamed for the shame he had incurred.
I reached the door. The shutter was open, and, through the window pane, I could see the poor woman at the foot of the bed, kneeling in prayer.
I knocked on the door.
She stood up and rushed to open the door for me.
“Ah, Father!” she exclaimed. “I guessed it was you! When I heard the knock, I realized it was you. Alas, alas, you’ve come too late! My husband died without confession.”
“So did he die with evil thoughts in his head?”
“No, quite the opposite – I’m sure he was a Christian in the depths of his heart, but he had declared that he didn’t want any other priest than you, he would confess only to you, and, if he didn’t confess to you, he would confess to nobody other than Our Lady.”
“He told you that?”
“Yes, and as he did so, he kept kissing a medal of the Virgin hanging from his neck on a golden chain, insisting above all else that nobody take that medal off him, and saying that, so long as he managed to be buried with this medal on, the evil spirit would have no power over his body.”
“Is that all he said?”
“No. When he left me to walk to the scaffold, he also told me that you’d be arriving this evening, that you’d come to see me as soon as you arrived – that’s why I was waiting for you.”
“He told you that?” I asked in astonishment.
“Yes, and then he also gave me one last request.”
“For me?”
“For you. He said that, whatever time you arrived, I should ask you… My God! I don’t dare to ask you such a thing, it would be such a nuisance for you!…”
“Speak up, my good woman, speak up!”
“Well, he said I should ask you to go to the Justice* and there, under his body, to say five Paters and five Aves for the benefit of his soul. He told me you wouldn’t refuse me that, Father.”
“He was quite right, I’ll go and do it.”
“Oh, how kind you are!”
She seized my hands and wanted to kiss them.
I freed myself.
“Come now, my good woman,” I said, “be strong!”
“God is making me strong, Father. I have no complaints.”
“He didn’t make any other request?”
“No.”
“Good! If all that is needed for his soul to find rest is for this wish to be granted, then his soul will find rest.”
I went out.
It was about half-past ten. It was one of the last days in April, and there was still a chill wind. However, the sky was beautiful, especially for a painter, since the moon was rolling through a sea of dark waves that gave the horizon a certain grandeur.
I walked round the old town walls and reached the gate of the Paris road. After eleven in the evening, this was the only gate in Étampes which stayed open.
The destination of my excursion was an esplanade which, now as then, overlooks the whole town. But these days there is no trace of the gibbet that used to rise over this esplanade, apart from three fragments of the masonry which kept in place the three stakes bound together by two beams of wood, all of which formed the gallows.
To reach this esplanade, situated on the left of the road as you go from Étampes to Paris and on the right when you come from Paris to Étampes, you had to pass the foot of the Guinette Tower, an outwork that resembles a sentinel placed alone in the plain to guard the town.*
This tower, which you must know, Chevalier Lenoir, and which Louis XI once tried unsuccessfully to blow up, was gutted by the explosion and looks as if it is gazing at the gibbet, of which it can see only the extremity, with the black socket of a great empty eye.
In daytime it is the haunt of crows; at night-time it is the palace of screech owls and tawny owls.
Amid their cries and hoots, I made my way to the esplanade – a narrow path, difficult and uneven, hollowed out of the rock and ploughing right through the undergrowth.
I cannot say that I was afraid. The man who believes in God and places his trust in him should not be afraid of anything. But I was… susceptible to the atmosphere.
The only thing you could hear in the whole world was the monotonous click-clack of the mill in the lower town, the cry of the owls and the wind whistling through the undergrowth.
The moon went in behind a black cloud, whose edges it embroidered with a whitish fringe. Then it disappeared.
My heart was beating. It seemed to me that I was going to see not what I had come to see, but something unexpected. I carried on walking uphill.
Once I’d reached a certain point in my ascent, I started to be able to make out the upper extremity of the gibbet, composed of those three pillars and those two crosspieces of oak I mentioned just now.
It is from these crosspieces of oak that hang the iron crosses to which the men being executed are tied.
I could see, like a shifting shadow, the body of L’Artifaille, that wretched man, swinging to and fro in the wind.
Suddenly I came to a halt; I could now see all of the gibbet from its top to its base. I could also make out a shapeless mass that looked like a four-legged animal, prowling around.
I stayed where I was and crouched behind a rock. The animal was bigger than a dog and more massive than a wolf.
Suddenly it rose on its hind feet, and I realized that this animal was none other than the one Plato calls a featherless biped – in other words, a man.
What could a man have come here for, at this time, under a gibbet, unless he had come with a pious heart to pray – or an impious heart to perpetrate some sacrilege?
In any event, I resolved to lie low and wait.
Just then, the moon emerged from the cloud that had hidden it for a moment, and shone brightly down on the gibbet. I looked up.
I could distinctly see the man, and even make out all his movements.
This man picked up a ladder lying on the ground, then raised it against one of the stakes, the one closest to the body of the hanged man.
Then he climbed up the ladder.
Then he formed with the hanged man a strange group, in which the living man and the dead seemed to mingle in an embrace.
Suddenly a terrible cry resounded. I saw the two bodies flailing about; I heard a strangulated cry for help, soon muffled; then one of the two bodies fell back from the gibbet, while the other remained hanging on its rope, waving its arms and legs.
It was impossible for me to guess at what was happening beneath that vile mechanism, but one way or another, whether it was the work of man or of the Devil, something extraordinary had just occurred, something which cried out for help, something which required assistance.
I rushed forward.
On seeing me, the hanging man seemed to become twice as frenzied, while beneath him the body that had fallen back from the gibbet lay motionless.
I first ran up to the living man. I quickly climbed up the few steps of the ladder and cut the rope with my knife; the hanged man fell to the ground, and I jumped down off the ladder.
The hanged man was writhing in terrible convulsions, while the other corpse continued to lie motionless.
I realized that the slip knot was still tightly gripping the poor devil’s throat. I lay over him to undo it, and with the greatest difficulty I managed to untie the slip knot that had been strangling him.
During this operation, I was forced to look into the man’s face, and recognized, to my astonishment, the hangman.
His eyes were popping out of their sockets, his face had turned a shade of blue, his jawbone was almost out of its joint and a panting that more closely resembled a death rattle than a breath emerged from his chest.
Meanwhile the air entered his lungs little by little and, with the air, life returned to him.
I had propped him up against a boulder; after a while he appeared to be coming round; he coughed, and as he coughed he turned his neck round and at last looked me in the eye.
His astonishment was no less great than mine had been.
“Oh! Father! Is it you?”
“Yes, it’s me.”
“And what are you doing here?” he asked me.
“I might ask you the same thing.”
He seemed to gather his wits. He again stared round him, but this time his eyes came to rest on the corpse.
“Ah,” he said, trying to struggle to his feet, “let’s go, Father! In Heaven’s name, let’s go!”
“You go if you want, my friend; as for me, I have a duty to fulfil.”
“Here?”
“Here.”
“What duty?”
“This wretched man, who was hanged by you today, wished that I should come and say five Paters and five Aves at the foot of the gibbet for the salvation of his soul.”
“For the salvation of his soul? Oh, Father! You’ll have a hard job saving that one – he’s the Devil incarnate.”
“What? The Devil incarnate?”
“Of course – didn’t you see what he just did to me?”
“What he did to you?… So what did he do to you?”
“He hanged me, damn it!”
“He hanged you? But I was under the impression that it was the other way around, and that it was you who had done him that dismal favour!”
“You’re dead right! And I thought I’d hanged him good and proper. It seems I was wrong! But in that case, why didn’t he take advantage of the moment when I was swinging in my turn to run away?”
I went over to the corpse and lifted it; it was stiff and cold.
“Because,” I said, “he’s dead.”
“Dead!” repeated the hangman. “Dead! Devil take it – that’s even worse. Come on, Father, let’s get out of here this minute!”
And he rose to his feet.
“No, by Heaven,” he said then, “actually, I’d rather stay put! He’d only have to get up and come running after me. At least you’re a holy man and you’ll defend me.”
“My friend,” I said to the hangman, gazing at him fixedly, “there’s something behind all this. You were asking me just now what I’d come here to do at such an hour. Now it’s my turn to ask you: what had you come here to do?”
“Ah well, good Lord, Father, I’ll have to tell you one way or another, in the confessional or outside it! Well, I’ll tell you outside it… But wait a minute…”
He took a step backwards.
“What?”
“He didn’t move over there?”
“No, rest assured, the wretched man is quite dead.”
“Oh, quite dead… quite dead… never mind! I’m still going to tell you why I came, and if I die, he’ll just say the opposite, that’s all.”
“Go on.”
“I have to tell you that this miscreant didn’t want to hear any mention of confession. He just kept saying every so often, ‘Has Father Moulle come yet?’ He was told, ‘No, not yet.’ He’d heave a sigh; they offered him a priest, and he replied, ‘No! Father Moulle… no one else.’”
“Yes, that I know.”
“At the foot of the Guinette Tower he stopped. ‘Please go and see if Father Moulle hasn’t come yet.’ ‘No,’ I told him. And we set off again.
“At the foot of the ladder, he stopped again. ‘Isn’t Father Moulle here?’ he asked. ‘No, I keep telling you!’ There’s nothing more irritating than a man who keeps asking you the same question. ‘Let’s get on with it!’ he said.
“I passed the rope round his neck. I placed his feet against the ladder and said, ‘Up you go.’ He went up without needing to be asked twice; but when he had gone two thirds of the way up the ladder, he said:
“‘Wait a minute while I make sure Father Moulle hasn’t arrived.’
“‘Go ahead and look,’ said I. ‘There’s no law against it.’
“Then he looked one last time into the crowd, but when he didn’t see you, he sighed. I thought he was ready and waiting and that I just needed to give him the shove, but he saw my movement.
“‘Wait,’ he said.
“‘Now what?’
“‘I’d like to kiss a medal of Our Lady on my neck.’
“‘Good idea! You’ve just got time,’ I said. ‘Kiss away!’
“And I placed the medal against his lips.
“‘And what else?’ I asked.
“‘I want to be buried with this medal.’
“‘Hmmm…’ said I. ‘I was under the impression that all the hanged man’s effects belonged to the hangman.’
“‘That’s not my problem. I want to be buried with my medal.’
“‘I want! I want! You’re a bold one!’
“‘Well, I do want it!’
“I’d run out of patience; he was all ready – he had the rope round his neck and the other end of the rope was already hooked up.
“‘Go to the Devil!’ I said to him. And I launched him into space.
“‘Our Lady, have pi—’
“Well, that was all he managed to say: the rope strangled both the man and his sentence. At the same time, you know how it’s done – I grasped the rope, leapt onto his shoulders and, with a hi and a ho, that was the end of that. He had no cause for complaint, and I can assure you he didn’t suffer.”
“But none of this explains why you came here tonight.”
“Ah, well, that’s just the thing that’s the most difficult to explain.”
“Well, let me tell you, then: you came to take his medal off him.”
“Oh, all right then. The Devil tempted me. I said to myself, I said, ‘You want this and you want that – it’s all very well for you to say so, but when night comes, we’ll see.’ I’d left my ladder nearby; I knew where to find it. I’d been for a walk; I came back by the longest route and then, when I couldn’t hear anything, I went up to the gibbet, I set my ladder up, I climbed up it, I pulled the hanged man towards me, I unhooked the chain round his neck and—”
“And what?”
“Good Lord, believe me if you want to: just as the medal left his neck, the hanged man seized me, took his own head out of the slip knot, placed my head where his had been and, for God’s sake, gave me the shove, just as I’d given it to him. There you have it.”
“Impossible! You must be mistaken.”
“Did you find me hanged, yes or no?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I can promise you I didn’t hang myself. That’s all I can tell you.”
I thought it over for a moment.
“And what about the medal?” I asked “Where is it?”
“I don’t know! Look around on the ground – it can’t be far away. When I felt myself being hanged, I let go of it.”
I got up and looked round at my feet. A ray of moonlight shone on the earth as if to guide my quest.
I picked it up. I went over to the body of poor L’Artifaille and tied the medal back round his neck.
Just as the medal touched his chest, something like a shudder passed through his entire body, and a shrill, almost painful cry emerged from his chest.
The hangman leapt backwards.
My spirit had just been illuminated by that cry. I remembered what the Scriptures say about exorcisms, and the cry that demons utter on leaving the body of those they have possessed.
The hangman was trembling like a leaf.
“Come over here, my friend,” I told him, “and don’t be afraid.”
He approached hesitantly.
“What do you want from me?” he said.
“There’s a corpse here that needs to be put back in its place.”
“Never! Do you want him to go and hang me again?”
“There’s no danger, my friend – I’ll answer for everything.”
“But Father, leave off – please!”
“Come on,” I said to him.
He took another step.
“Hmmm,” he said. “I don’t trust him.”
“And you’re wrong, my friend. So long as the body has its medal, you have nothing to fear.”
“Why?”
“Because the demon will have no power over him. This medal was protecting him, and you took it off him; at that very same moment the evil genius which had inclined him to wickedness, and had been kept at bay by his good angel, came back into the corpse – and you yourself saw what this evil genius got up to.”
“And the cry we just heard?”
“That was the cry he uttered when he sensed that his prey was escaping him.”
“Well,” said the hangman, “that might well be true.”
“It is.”
“So I’ll go and put him back on his hook.”
“Yes, put him back: justice must pursue its course; the sentence must be carried out.”
The poor devil was still hesitating.
“Don’t be afraid,” I said. “I will answer for everything.”
“Never mind that,” said the hangman. “Just don’t let me out of your sight, and if I utter the slightest cry, come to my help.”
“Don’t worry.”
He went up to the corpse, lifted it gently by its shoulders and pulled it towards the ladder, talking to it the whole time.
“Don’t be frightened, L’Artifaille,” he told him. “I haven’t come to take your medal away. You can still see us, can’t you, Father?”
“I can, my friend, don’t worry.”
“I haven’t come to take your medal off you,” continued the hangman in his most conciliatory tone. “No, don’t worry: since that’s what you wanted, you’ll be buried with it. It’s true, Father – he isn’t moving.”
“You see!”
“You’ll be buried with it; meanwhile I’m just putting you back in your place, at the wish of the priest, since, as far as I’m concerned, you know!…”
“Yes, yes.” I said, unable to repress a smile. “But hurry up!”
“There, it’s done,” he said, letting go of the body that he had just reattached to the hook, and jumping down straight away.
And the body swayed in the air, motionless and inanimate.
I knelt down and I began to recite the prayers that L’Artifaille had asked me to say.
“Father,” said the hangman, kneeling down next to me, “would you mind saying the prayers loud enough and slowly enough for me to repeat them?”
“What, you poor soul – you mean you’ve forgotten them?”
“I don’t think I ever knew them.”
I said the five Paters and the five Aves, which the hangman conscientiously repeated after me.
When the prayer was finished, I got up.
“L’Artifaille,” I said quietly to the dead man, “I have done what I could for the salvation of your soul – it is up to Our Blessed Lady to do the rest.”
“Amen!” said my companion.
At that moment a ray of moonlight illuminated the corpse like a cascade of silver. Midnight chimed from Notre-Dame.
“Come on,” I said to the hangman, “there’s nothing more for us to do here.”
“Father,” said the poor devil, “would you be kind enough to grant me one last favour?”
“What’s that?”
“See me home. I won’t have any rest until I feel my door is shut and bolted between me and matey over there.”
“Come on, my friend.”
We left the esplanade, though my companion, every ten paces, turned round to see if the hanged man was still in his place.
Nothing stirred.
We went back into town. I saw my man home. I waited until he had lit the lamps in his house, then he closed the door on me, bade me farewell and thanked me through the door. I returned home, perfectly calm in mind and body.
The next day, on awakening, I was told that the thief’s wife was waiting for me in my dining room.
Her face was calm and almost joyful.
“Father,” she said, “I’ve come to thank you: my husband appeared to me yesterday just as midnight was chiming from Notre-Dame, and he told me, ‘Tomorrow morning, you will go and see Father Moulle, and you will tell him that, thanks to him and Our Lady, I am saved.’”