AT THE CURÉ Ponosse’s door there arrived in due course the Baroness Alphonsine de Courtebiche. She emerged from a creaking and groaning limousine, perched high on its wheels like a phaeton. It dated from 1911, and resembled a ducal coach unearthed from some outhouse and given a new lease of life by the addition of a queer outlandish engine. In other hands than those of its aged chauffeur this unblushing and graceless old vehicle would have been ludicrous. But the broken-winded superannuated old bus proved, not only by the armorial bearings it displayed on its doors, but by the mere fact of its carrying a consignment of the Courtebiche family, that the possession of the most up-to-date specimens of the motorcar is a matter which may be left to those who have made fortunes by selling soap. Nothing can be ridiculous in the case of a family which can produce an unbroken genealogical tree dating back to the year 960 and adorned in several places by illegitimate children born of the flattering fancy taken by the monarch of the period to certain women of this august lineage.
The Baroness, then, stepped briskly from her car with her daughter, Estelle de Saint-Choul, and her son-in-law, Oscar de Saint-Choul, on either side of her, and knocked loudly at the door of the presbytery, greatly put out at having to come and visit this “insignificant little village priest, Ponosse.” This did not imply that she disowned Ponosse’s spiritual authority. Ever since she had lived in retirement, the Baroness had looked to the Curé of Clochemerle for all her ordinary spiritual needs, no longer caring to make a journey to Lyons each time she wanted her transgressions canceled, in order to visit a subtle Jesuit, Father Latargelle, who had been her spiritual adviser over a long period at a time when her life contained many passionate episodes. “Poor old Ponosse,” she would say, “is quite good enough for a dowager with her regular humdrum life. It flatters the dirty old fellow to hear a Baroness’ confession.” We may now record the following words spoken in the course of a confidential chat with a country neighbor, the Marquise d’Aubenas-Theizé.
“I need hardly tell you, my dear, that I should not have confided in this country bumpkin when I had interesting confessions to make. But now there are nothing but an old woman’s peccadilloes, and a flick of a feather brush is all that is needed for them. No more delicious sins for you and me, my dear. Virtue has become, for us, a matter of necessity.”
The reader will gather from the foregoing the kind of attitude adopted by the Baroness Courtebiche towards the Curé Ponosse. She looked upon him, in fact, as one of her servants. He looked after her soul, just as her manicurist attended to her hands and her masseuse to her body. In her opinion the ills, bodily and spiritual, of a great lady with a thousand years of noble ancestry behind her were still objects to be held in great respect by members of the rascally common herd; she considered she did them great honor by showing no embarrassment in disclosing them. However, when she required the curé’s services she sent her chauffeur to fetch him in the car and bring him to the château: (“I don’t want to catch any peasant’s fleas in that confessional of yours.”)
He heard her confession in a small private chapel at the château which was reserved for this purpose. She chose days on which she had no guests, and this allowed her to ask him to stay to dinner, a meal which was served with as little ceremony as possible to prevent his feeling shy.
Never before had the Baroness appeared at the presbytery unless her visit were known in advance. This new departure of hers put her in an ill humor. Scarcely had the knocker fallen, with an echo which resounded through an immense and chilly corridor, when she turned to her son-in-law and remarked:
“Oscar, my friend, you will be firm with Ponosse!”
“Most certainly, Baroness,” replied the puny Saint-Choul, who was the feeblest of men and terrified by his mother-in-law’s excessive firmness.
“I hope that Ponosse isn’t off somewhere drinking with all those vinegrowers. If so, he will have to be fetched in double-quick time. It’s unheard of that he should not have come to ask for our advice after what has happened.”
So saying, she drummed on the door, striking it with her rings, while she tapped her foot impatiently on the ground.
“I shall get the Archbishop to give him a dressing-down!” she added.
Let us now leave this noble lady to wait for old Honorine to come and open the door, and give the reader a pen portrait of no less a personage than the Baroness Alphonsine de Courtebiche. The subject is by no means an uninteresting one.
Until she was past the age of fifty, the Baroness still showed traces of her earlier beauty, to which her own conception of her mission on earth added a lofty prestige. Entirely disregarding the Revolution, as though it were not an historical fact, she treated the population of the valleys above which her castle held so commanding a position as if they were in a state of serfdom, living on a feudal estate restored to her family. For she considered this a legitimate restoration of a social order, a desirable consummation in that it put the remainder of the population into that position of inferiority which was so unquestionably theirs.
The Baroness was a beautiful and vigorous woman, whose height was not less than five feet seven inches. Between the ages of twenty and forty-seven she had been a truly magnificent creature, with splendidly rich outlines and skin of a very attractive texture, eyes which were mirrors of love, a mouth that gave promise of headlong flights of passion, hips whose suppleness of movement was irresistible. One could not but admire in those sinuous movements the suggestion they contained of mastery, even of ostentation, which in any other woman would have savored of the fishwife, but which in her, thanks to her inheritance of grace and charm, was invariably in good style, with all the ease and freedom conferred by noble birth, enriched and heightened by an alluring pertness. Well set-up over thighs worthy of a wrestler, her pelvis, a right royal feature, had been by no means the least of her attractions at a period when the canons of feminine beauty were based on classical opulence. As for her torso, at the time when corsets were worn it was adorned by a lovely bosom, held high and enclosed in an open corsage, a basket filled with twin fruits of rare perfection.
But this alluring form was that of a woman of good breeding and, as such, beyond the reach of vulgar familiarities—a subtle distinction of which every man was immediately conscious; it left the boldest among them almost trembling, in the face of this imperious lady who with shameless impudence would gather from her wooers’ glances how readily they would respond to the exactions of her amorous nature. Such was the Baroness in earlier life, a tireless Amazon for a period of twenty-seven years, devoted almost exclusively to love.
Let us now give some particulars of the principal events in the life of this exalted lady. At the age of twenty Alphonsine d’Eychaudailles d’Azin, sprung from a very ancient family of the Grenoble district (claiming descent from the Marguerite de Sassenage who was the mistress of Louis the Eleventh and bore him a daughter)—a family unhappily in great financial straits—married the Baron Guy de Courtebiche, eighteen years older than herself and already somewhat past his prime. His wealth, however, was still considerable, despite the fact that since his majority he had done nothing but lead a gay life. Guy de Courtebiche (Bibiche to his greatest friends) maintained an idle and costly existence in Paris, where he maintained at great expense a certain Laura Tolleda, a famous demimondaine, who had scoffed at him times without number (but that was a peculiar taste of his), and led him along the road to ruin with a stinging contempt. On seeing the lovely Alphonsine, Courtebiche found her even more imposing than his Laura; she had the additional advantage of being presentable everywhere. The impression she gave of a masterful nature attracted him irresistibly, prone as he was (though he himself was unconscious of this) to a kind of moral masochism which had always made him the slave of women who humiliated him. Alphonsine was urgently persuaded by her family not to let this opportunity of a brilliant match escape her. The advice was superfluous; her greedy nature impelled her to snatch at this prospect of independence. Furthermore, though on the eve of physical collapse, Guy de Courtebiche, with the glamour of Paris still upon him, had great prestige in the eyes of a girl living in the country.
The Baron had interests in the Lyonnais. The young couple owned an apartment in Paris, another in Lyons, and the château at Clochemerle. Both in Paris and Lyons the beautiful Alphonsine created a sensation. A duel was fought on her behalf, which made a great stir and put the finishing touch to the reputation she already enjoyed.
Guy de Courtebiche, bald, shaky on his legs, and with a yellow complexion arising from premature organic disease, destined to send him to an early grave, had soon ceased to be an acceptable husband. Alphonsine continued to live under the same roof with him after their children were born, for the sake of his title and his wealth, and also to look after him, since her own natural strength gave her a protective spirit. She began looking around for compensations in quarters where neither vanity nor pride of rank entered into consideration. Her only difficulty in this matter was a multiplicity of alternatives, a difficulty so great that selection became a matter of much anxious thought. Her numerous escapades, quite openly pursued, were carried out with an unblushing impertinence that silenced the tongues of slander; for her very lack of hypocrisy deprived them of material on which to work.
When she found herself a widow with wealth at her disposal, the Baroness decided that she preferred a life of independence to a form of subjection which was not congenial to her. She lived in dashing style, and her expenditure constantly increased with her advancing years. This made grave inroads on her fortune, which she administered with an imperial unconcern and a contempt for middle-class economy which inevitably endangered an inheritance. About halfway through the war she found herself faced with serious financial difficulties and some distressing entanglements of a sentimental nature, which were indications that her reign was over. She placed herself in the hands of her notary as though he had been her surgeon. But there was worse to come. At the age of forty-nine Alphonsine confronted herself ruthlessly before her mirror. As a result of this she obtained some general instructions with which, in that spirit of determination she brought to bear on everything, she immediately undertook to conform. The first and most important was to allow the natural grayness of her hair to appear without further concealment. “I have had my full share of enjoyment,” she said to herself. “I have nothing to regret. It now remains for me to grow old decently and not allow myself to be a toy for unscrupulous young scamps.”
She gave up her apartment in Paris, reduced her staff to a minimum, and dismissed in motherly fashion a few youths who, attracted by her reputation, had come to her to obtain one of those certificates of manhood which she had so long and so generously handed out to others of their age. Living at Clochemerle for a great part of the year, and spending most of the winter at Lyons, she decided to turn to God. This she did in no servile spirit, thinking of God as a being of her own world, who had not made her an Eychaudailles d’Azin (and a beautiful and high-spirited woman into the bargain) if she were not intended to lead the life of a great lady, with all the benefits and privileges due to a woman of refinement and high birth. This conviction was so firmly established in her mind that, even at the period of her triumphs, she had never entirely given up religious observances. Her spiritual welfare was in the keeping of an ingenious interpreter of the Scriptures, Father Latargelle, who was well acquainted with certain tyrannical needs which God has implanted in us mortals. This Jesuit, whose smile combined subtlety with a touch of skepticism, believed in a certain doctrine of utility which he placed at the service of the Church. “Better a sinner who professes faith,” so he thought, “than one who does not. And if that sinner is a person of influence, better still. Allegiance in high places is a source of the Church’s strength.”
Anxious to steer a middle course, the Baroness successfully avoided the snare of bigotry. As president of the Children of Mary at Clochemerle, she kept a watchful eye over the affairs of the parish and gave advice to Ponosse. At Lyons she organized relief committees and work centers for poor unemployed women and might often be seen at the Archbishop’s palace. Never forgetting that she was once the beautiful Alphonsine, one of the most fêted women of her generation, she maintained an attitude of unquestionable authority and, as a relic of her adventurous past, displayed a fine lack of decorum in her speech. This in no wise shocked the dignitaries of the Church, for they must have been at close quarters with much that is base and vile to have attained to their exalted office, but it sometimes filled the artless Ponosse with rustic bewilderment. The Baroness was still full of energy, and displayed with brisk unconcern a rather excessive plumpness due to the relaxation of certain disciplines involved in the preservation of beauty. But for some years past she had complained of increasing deafness. This little infirmity redoubled her lofty aristocratic manner of speech; and since her forty-fifth year a certain virile quality had appeared in the tones of her voice. All this only served to emphasize the blunt abruptness of her character.
The elder of Alphonsine’s two children, Tristan de Courtebiche, having been at various staff headquarters throughout the war, was now attached to an embassy in Central Europe. A young man of fine presence, he was his mother’s pride. “With the face I have given him,” she would say, “he will always get on. The heiresses had better look out for themselves.” On the other hand, at the time when the Baroness went into retirement, she saw no signs of any forthcoming engagement for her daughter Estelle, who was then twenty-six. She was much vexed about it, but under no illusion as to the cause.
“I should like to know,” she confided to the Marquise d’Aubenas-Theizé, “who would care to take on that great flabby apathetic creature!”
However, she admitted her own guilt in this setback.
“I have been far too fond of men, my dear. You have only to look at poor Estelle to see that. The only success I’ve ever had was with boys!”
It was true that Estelle was merely a caricature of her mother when she was at the height of her beauty. From her mother she inherited her powerful build. But her flesh, over this robust frame, lacked firmness, and was not harmoniously distributed. In this large body of hers there was too much lymph and too little life. The Baroness, in spite of her superabundant vitality, which reminded one of an impetuous horsewoman, had not been lacking in womanliness. Estelle, on the contrary, was frankly masculine. The beautiful voluptuous lower lip of the Eychaudailles d’Azin family in Estelle’s case was undisguisedly thick and coarse. The young woman’s disagreeable expression added no attractions to the insipidity of her flabby anæmic appearance. However, the sight of this somewhat mountainous maiden aroused the feeble ardor of the weakly Oscar to an unaccustomed violence. In the Baroness’ daughter this puny young aristocrat sought instinctively something which he himself lacked, the pounds and inches which he needed to make him worthy of the name he bore. The extreme poverty of the rival suitors secured his own acceptance, in spite of the fact that Saint-Choul, almost an albino, displayed behind his monocle, the wearing of which involved many frowning grimaces, the pink and febrile eye of an uneasy rooster. As a match it lacked brilliance, but it offered certain advantages and it saved the family’s face. Oscar de Saint-Choul possessed a manor house near Clochemerle of honorable dimensions though in bad repair, and of land which allowed him to live as a man of property if he avoided all extravagance. The Baroness had no illusions about her son-in-law.
“He is an incompetent person,” she would say of him. “They might make him a Deputy in their Republic.”
She busied herself to bring this about.
At last, a pitter-pat of cautious footsteps in down-at-heel slippers was heard. Honorine half opened the door, as though it were a drawbridge about to be raised. She disliked people coming to the house to monopolize her curé, and had a reputation of being disagreeable to visitors. But with Alphonsine de Courtebiche it was quite a different story. The arrival of the Archbishop himself could not have produced a greater effect.
“Is it really Madame la Baronne?” she said. “Well, I can’t hardly believe it!”
“Is Ponosse here?” the Baroness asked, in a tone of voice in which she might have said “My servant.”
“Oh! yes, he’s here all right, Madame la Baronne. Please come in. I’ll go and fetch him. He’s out in the garden under the trees, taking a bit of fresh air.”
She showed the Baroness, Estelle, and her husband into a dark and musty little room into which the daylight never penetrated. The curé’s home smelled of tobacco, wine, and stale food; it had all the odors of an old bachelor’s establishment.
“Heavens!” exclaimed the Baroness when the servant had left the room, “This ecclesiastical virtue has an unpleasant smell!”
At that moment, with a scarlet face which betrayed the workings of an imperfect digestion, the curé entered, torn between feelings of uneasiness and an overanxiety to please.
“Madame la Baronne,” he said, “this is a great honor. . . .”
But the Baroness was in no mood for vapid compliments.
“None of your holy unction, please, Ponosse! Just sit down and answer me. Am I, or am I not, president of the Children of Mary?”
“Most certainly you are, Madame la Baronne.”
“Am I the parish’s principal benefactress?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“Tell me, Ponosse, am I the Baroness Alphonsine de Courtebiche, née d’Eychaudailles d’Azin?”
“You are, Madame la Baronne!” Ponosse answered in terror.
“Are you disposed, my good friend, to recognize the rights of birth, or are you in league with revolutionaries? Are you by chance one of those priests who frequent public houses and set out to give religion certain tendencies? . . . Explain to him, Oscar. I never could understand your political gibberish.”
“Doubtless, Baroness, you have been hearing accounts of this new tub-thumping revolutionary form of Christianity which tickles the ears of the masses. This is what the Baroness is referring to, my dear Ponosse. She wants to put down this interference with religion by socialist or extremist doctrines, which give it an anarchical tendency, a deplorable tendency, a revolutionary blasphemous tendency, which, in defiance of our ancient French traditions, of which we here are the . . . er . . . the hereditary, the . . . er . . . sanctified representatives, the anointed representatives, my dear Ponosse—that is correct, is it not, Baroness?—is leading us headlong. . . .”
“That’ll do, Oscar! I take it that you have understood, Ponosse?”
The curé of Clochemerle was utterly overwhelmed by the disturbance and commotion arising from that ill-fated day. He was fit for journeying only along smooth, easy paths, where the Evil One had set no ambush. With several repetitions of the sign of the Dominus vobiscum, he replied, stammering in his nervousness:
“Well, Madame la Baronne . . . I lead a life of purity, I have none of the arrogance of ungodliness. I am a humble priest, only anxious to do his best. I cannot understand why you lay such grave charges at my door.”
“What, Ponosse, then you don’t understand? What was that alarm bell that frightened the whole valley the other day? What was that scandal in your church? Must I hear all these things from strangers? Your first duty, Monsieur le Curé, was to refer the matter to the Lady of the Manor of Clochemerle. The château and the presbytery should work together—didn’t you know that? Your apathy, Monsieur Ponosse, is simply playing into the hands of the peasant landowners. If I had not taken the trouble to come here myself, I might have known nothing about it. Why did you not come?”
“Madame la Baronne, I have nothing but an old bicycle. I can’t go uphill at my age. It hurts my legs—and I am short of breath.”
“You had merely to borrow one of these motorcycles which will get up any hill. I am sorry to have to tell you that you are a half-hearted defender of your faith, my poor Ponosse. And now what do you propose to do?”
“Indeed I have been considering the matter, Madame la Baronne. I have been praying to God for guidance. There are so many scandals—”
The Curé Ponosse sighed deeply, and took the plunge.
“Madame la Baronne, there is more to tell you. You know young Rose Bivaque, one of our Children of Mary, who is just eighteen?”
“Isn’t she that blushing little silly—plump, my goodness—who sings less out of tune than the other little simpletons in the sisterhood?”
The Curé Ponosse, by a show of consternation, let it be understood that he would be lacking in Christian charity if he assented to such a description.
“Very well, then,” the Baroness went on, “what has the child been doing? She looks as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.”
The curé of Clochemerle was quite overcome.
“I—I can hardly tell you, Madame la Baronne. I fear we must face a conception which will not be . . . er . . . immaculate, alas!”
“Do you mean that she is pregnant? Then say so. Say, someone has given her a child. Somebody did the same to me, and I’m still alive. (Estelle, sit up straight!) Yes, somebody did so to your respectable mother. There’s nothing nasty about it.”
“It is not so much what happened, Madame la Baronne, as the absence of the sacrament which grieves me.”
“That is true. I’d quite forgotten! Well, my dear Ponosse, they’re a nice lot, your Children of Mary! I can’t think what you teach them in your little gatherings. . . .”
“Oh, Madame la Baronne!” exclaimed the Curé of Clochemerle, whose distress and fear had now reached their crowning point.
The task of giving this information to the president of the Children of Mary had filled him with dread. He feared her reproaches, or, worse still, that she might resign. But the Baroness asked:
“And who was the bright lad who showed such clumsiness? Is it known?”
“You mean, Madame la Baronne, the . . . er—”
“Yes, Ponosse, yes. Don’t look so bashful.”
“It was Claudius Brodequin, Madame la Baronne.”
“What is he doing, this boy?”
“He is doing his military service. He was here on leave in April.”
“He will have to marry Rose. Or else he must go to prison, to penal servitude. I shall see that his colonel knows about it. Does this young soldier think he can treat the Children of Mary as though they were women in a conquered country? By the way, Ponosse, you must send Rose to see me. She will have to be looked after, to see that she doesn’t do anything foolish. Send her along tomorrow. To the château.”
It was decreed that on this anniversary of Saint Roch’s Day—so often celebrated with the quiet ceremony which accorded with the easygoing temperament of the inhabitants of Clochemerle, and the natural kindliness to be found in a district where fine grape harvests were the order of the day—it was decreed that on that day, ill-fated beyond all others, Providence should withdraw its aid from its servant, the Curé Ponosse, and confront him with one of those sudden ordeals which he so heartily loathed. The Curé Ponosse was not one of those tiresome zealots who go about everywhere sowing the seeds of provocation and the fratricidal germs of sectarianism. Such exploits do more harm than good. He relied rather on the virtues of conciliation and sympathy than on the havoc wrought by the sword and the stake.
Quaking with fear as he faced the Baroness, with terror-stricken fervor, the Curé Ponosse silently addressed incoherent entreaties to Heaven. They were somewhat as follows: “Spare me, O Lord, shield me from those disasters which Thou dost reserve for those whom Thou lovest best. If it pleaseth Thee some day to give me a seat at Thy right hand, I am willing that it should be the humblest place, and I shall stay in it in all humility. O Lord, I am only the poor Curé Ponosse, who cannot understand vengeance. I preach Thy reign of justice as best I can to the good vinegrowers of Clochemerle, whilst day by day I drink the wines of Beaujolais which restore my feeble strength. Bonum vinum laetificat. . . . O Lord, I am rheumatic, my digestion is poor, and Thou knowest well all the bodily infirmities that it hath pleased Thee to send me. I have no longer the fiery spirit, the power of resistance, of a young priest. O Lord, please pacify Madame la Baronne de Courtebiche!”
But it was destined to be an altogether exceptional day. For the second time, at the peaceful hour of the siesta, a violent knocking was heard at his presbytery. Next there came the sound of Honorine’s dragging footsteps as she went to admit the visitor, and the corridor was filled with a confused noise of voices raised to their highest pitch, a most unusual occurrence in a dwelling in which the whispers of repentance and contrition were the general rule. At the door of the sitting room there suddenly appeared the profile of Tafardel, in a state of great excitement, holding in his hand sheets of paper on which he had just dashed down a string of acrimonious sentences constituting a preliminary outburst of his Republican indignation.
The schoolmaster was still wearing his famous panama, which he had kept on his head as an indication of his firm resolve never to surrender to the forces of fanaticism and ignorance. However, on seeing the Baroness he removed it. Indeed, he was so taken by surprise at her presence that had he obeyed the impulse of the moment he would have fled there and then—if such flight would have been a matter that concerned himself alone. But a retreat on his part would have been equivalent to the defeat of a great party of which he was the faithful representative. It was not a mere clash between individuals, but a battle royal between opposing principles. Tafardel was merely an outward expression of the Revolution and its charter of emancipation. The man of barricades and of liberty unfettered had come to challenge, on his own territory, a man of the Inquisition, a product of a period of mean and servile resignation in company with hypocritical persecution. Entirely disregarding the rest of the company, and without even greeting them, the schoolmaster charged down on the Curé Ponosse, with words of blazing anger:
“Qui vis pacem para bellum, Monsieur Ponosse! I will not employ the odious methods of your sect of Loyola, I will not deal with you as though you were a traitor. I come to you as a worthy foe, with a sword in one hand and an olive branch in the other. The time has come to say good-by to imposture and deceit. The time has come to muzzle all the myrmidons of your Church, and to prefer peace to war! But, if it is war you want, you shall have it. I am fully armed. Then make your choice. It lies between peace and war, between liberty of conscience and—reprisals. Choose, Monsieur Ponosse. And beware of your choice!”
Caught between the devil and the deep sea, the Curé Ponosse knew not which way to turn. He strove to pacify Tafardel:
“My dear schoolmaster, I have never hindered you in what you teach. I cannot understand what you have against me. I have never attacked a living soul. . . .”
But already Tafardel, with forefinger raised to give it emphasis, was quoting a maxim of profound human significance, which he completed in his own way:
“Trahit sua quemque voluptas . . . et pissare legitimum! Doubtless, Monsieur, in order to place your domination on a firmer footing you would prefer to see, as in the centuries of oppression, a constantly increasing number of disgusting puddles due to the urgency of certain overwhelming needs? The time for that is past, Monsieur Ponosse. The spread of enlightenment, the march of progress, is irresistible. From now onwards the people will relieve themselves in structures designed for that object. Take that for granted. The slate will not cease to be moistened, nor the channels to serve their purpose, Monsieur!”
This extraordinary speech was more than the Baroness’ patience could endure. From its very beginning she had trained on him the terrible, searching fire of her lorgnette. Suddenly, with an insolence nothing less than superb, and in that tone of voice which had already crushed many a brave spirit, she asked:
“Who is that abominable little whippersnapper?”
Had the presence of a scorpion suddenly been revealed to him, the schoolmaster could not have been more violently startled. Trembling with rage so that his spectacles shook in a manner that boded ill, and though he knew the Baroness by sight—as did everyone at Clochemerle—he cried out:
“Who is it that dares to insult a member of the teaching body?”
As an admonitory outburst this was ridiculously feeble and quite insufficient to upset a fighting Amazon like the Baroness. Realizing who it was she had to deal with, the Baroness replied, with a composure that was in itself an insult:
“The humblest of my footmen, Mr. Schoolmaster, is better acquainted than yourself with the subject of politeness. No servant of mine would dare to express himself with such grossness in the presence of the Baroness Courtebiche.”
These words acted on Tafardel as an inspiration of the great Jacobin tradition. He retorted:
“Oh, so you are the ‘noble’ Courtebiche? Citizeness, I don’t care a damn for your insinuations. There was a time when the guillotine would have made short work of them.”
“Indeed! Well, I consider all your high-flown nonsense the ravings of a lunatic. There was a time when people of my rank had clodhoppers like yourself strung up without further ado, having taken care that they should previously have been flogged in the public market place. A good system of education for ill-bred serfs!”
The meeting was turning out very badly. Hemmed in between two opposing forces which cared nothing for the Christian neutrality of his home, the poor Curé Ponosse did not know whom to listen to. Trickling over his body, cramped in its new cassock, he felt the sweat of anguish. He had good reasons for taking care not to offend the nobility as represented by the Baroness, the most generous donor in the parish. Equally he had good reasons for humoring the Republic in the person of Tafardel, secretary to a town council which was the legal owner of the presbytery and fixed its rent. It appeared at this moment as though disaster had come, when a personage who had hitherto kept completely in the background displayed an ability to take a situation in hand no less striking than it was opportune, directing the discussion with a firmness of which no one could have believed him capable.
Ever since Tafardel’s arrival, Oscar de Saint-Choul had been positively trembling with delight. This unappreciated nobleman cultivated a genuine talent for the construction of an endless succession of solemn grammatical periods, so crammed with relative clauses that unhappy victims of this dialectic found their thoughts wandering helplessly in the maze of Saint-Choulian arguments, where they ended by becoming completely lost. Unhappily, constantly snubbed as he was by a mother-in-law who used the methods of the horsewhip in her dealings with humanity, and condemned to silence by a sullen wife, Oscar de Saint-Choul rarely had an opportunity of displaying his prowess. It worried him considerably.
He had realized, almost as soon as Tafardel opened his mouth, that Fate had sent him a doughty antagonist, a man whose eloquence was worthy of his own, one with whom it would be a real pleasure to hold a prolonged debate. Accordingly, with an abundance of saliva which in his case invariably preceded the verbal flow, he remained on the lookout for the slightest break in the thrust and parry of repartee in order to fall headlong on this tenacious disputant and corner him to the best advantage. Silence fell at last, after the Baroness’ final retort. Saint-Choul immediately took two steps forward.
“Excuse me, I have a few words to say. I am Oscar de Saint-Choul, Monsieur. And your name, Monsieur?”
“Ernest Tafardel. But I acknowledge no saint, Citizen Choul.”
“That is perfectly understood, my dear De Tafardel.”
The reader will hardly believe it; but this little prefix, enunciated by a man who bore it by right of inheritance, was balm to the schoolmaster’s soul. It even gave him a feeling in Saint-Choul’s favor; and this enabled the latter to make a brilliant start.
“I am venturing to intervene, my dear De Tafardel, because it appears to me that, at the stage we have reached in our discussion of two doctrines equally deserving of respect, each of which has its region of the sublime, its—how shall I put it?—its zone of human fallibility—it appears to me, I say, that the need of an impartial mediator is making itself felt. In greeting you, I bow to a great-hearted public servant, a magnificent example of that noble pleiad of teachers who undertake the delicate task of molding the younger generation. I salute you as an incarnation of all that is best in the spirit of the elementary school, with all its basic, its fundamental, its granitic character—yes, granitic—for it is that indestructible rock which is the support, the prop, the very foundation of our dear country, our beloved nation, which has been revived and restored by great waves of democratic feeling, which I for one can by no means unreservedly endorse, but whose contribution to the general welfare I am no less ready to admit, seeing that for a century past they have been, as it were, magnificent illustrations in the great history of the character and genius of France. It is for these reasons that without hesitation I proclaim you all, Republican schoolmasters and freethinkers alike, a hereditary corporation. Nothing that is hereditary can leave us unmoved. And in virtue of this, my dear friend, you are one of us, an aristocrat in the realm of thought. Give me your hand. Let us make a covenant that shall be above all parties, with one sole desire in our hearts, to contribute to our mutual betterment.”
On the point of yielding to this amiable person, Tafardel, feeling uneasy in his mind, had to make a fresh declaration of his convictions.
“I am a disciple of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Mirabeau, and Robespierre. And I beg to remind you of the fact, Citizen!”
Oscar de Saint-Choul, who had stepped forward, received point-blank a strong whiff of Tafardel’s breath. He realized that the schoolmaster’s eloquence was a formidable business, and that to face him in any enclosed place was a thing to be avoided.
“Every sincere opinion is its own justification,” he said. “But let us take some fresh air. We shall feel freer out of doors. Baroness, I will join you again presently.”
“But I had something to tell Monsieur Ponosse,” the schoolmaster objected.
“My dear friend,” Saint-Choul replied, drawing him away, “I quite understand. But you shall give me your message for him. I will convey it to him faithfully.”
Shortly afterwards the Baroness found them by the church, engaged in animated conversation and obviously delighted with each other. Oscar de Saint-Choul was holding forth with great vigor, and emphasizing the flow of his rhetorical periods by swinging his eyeglass at the end of its string with a firm assurance that his mother-in-law would never have recognized. She was irritated by that pedantic manner of his; she would never admit that this young man was a less perfect imbecile than she had believed him to be. Having once classified people, intellectually or socially, the matter became definitely settled for all time.
“Oscar, my friend,” she said to him scornfully, “leave this person and come with me. We are going back.”
She had not even a glance for the unfortunate Tafardel who, nevertheless, was prepared to salute her. For the schoolmaster had allowed himself to fall a victim to Saint-Choul’s aristocratic manner, accompanied as it was by flattering remarks, such as: “Good heavens, my dear friend, why, you and I represent the element of culture—the select few, no less—in this illiterate country. Let us be friends! And I hope that you will be kind enough one of these days to come to the house. You will find there will be no ceremony; you will be treated as an intimate friend, and we will exchange a few ideas. Meetings between two men of culture and distinction are a pleasure for both. In saying that I am thinking no less of you than of myself.” But the Baroness’ humiliating arrogance had stirred up a revival of all the schoolmaster’s turbulent feelings, now reinforced by rancor and vexation at the thought that these people had nearly made a fool of him. He had been considering the possibility, while Saint-Choul was talking to him, of modifying his article in the Vintners’ Gazette, and toning down some of the expressions he had used. Tone them down! No, he would on the contrary make them stronger, and insert some biting reference to that Courtebiche woman, that incorrigible, boorish “noble”!
“They’ll have something to think about,” he said to himself with a sneering chuckle, “when the paper comes out!”
And thus it was that this meeting, which might have led to reconciliation and peace, merely served to stir up a virulence of feeling that was destined to have sensational results.
The Baroness had, in the meantime, informed the Curé Ponosse that it was her intention to take the affairs of the parish in hand, stressing the fact that at the slightest sign of disturbance she would go to see the Archbishop. The Curé of Clochemerle was in despair.