Monsigneur knew that there were only two kinds of men who could not be easily shaken in a profound conviction: a fool and a wise man. The fool had no wit to combat argument, and no reason with which to reflect upon it. The wise man was usually too egotistic to admit any logic in an argument which challenged the final result of his own previous and exhaustive researches.
As he was such a sagacious and astute and subtle man, his conclusions about Crequy and François Grandjean would have been startling to any one less brilliant. For he had concluded that Grandjean was a fool, and Crequy a wise man. He had attempted, on numerous occasions, to seduce both, but all his artfulness was in vain. Grandjean, like so many dignified men of integrity and honor, unfortunately silenced the priest immediately, when he suspected that the latter was coming to him with implied contempt of the Comte de Vitry. The old man had been indignant. Had he been wise, he would have listened, and so perhaps might have helped to avert a terrible tragedy. So, like all men of rigid integrity, he demonstrated his immense folly, his lack of foresight, and subtlety. Had he been wise enough to have in his character a touch of dishonor and deviousness, he would have written to the Comte in warning. But, in his folly, he forebore to do this.
Crequy, the wise man, was not approached by the priest again after that one interview in the tavern. For, after long meditation, de Pacilli had come to the shrewd conclusion that here was no man who hated the Comte, but a man who loved him, and wished to protect him. Therefore, he warned the leaders of the growing disaffection not to speak of the Comte in the tavern, and to urge those who had begun to listen to them to refrain, also. But he did not explain why.
Thus it was that Crequy, the wise man, and Grandjean, the fool, were almost completely unaware qf the vicious fury which was growing among the peasants. But towards the last, Crequy, with his peasant’s sensitiveness to other peasants, began to sniff an evil stench in the winds that blew from field and vineyard. He began to investigate, with great caution. But he found nothing. Nevertheless, his suspicions grew, and now they embraced the priest.
He decided to speak to the Comte when the latter returned to the château. “But,” he exclaimed in ferocious despair to his niece, Roselle, “that saintly imbecile will not listen to me! He will remember that I have often urged upon him the foulness of this cattle, and will laugh gently in my face.”
As the Comte and his mistress arrived late at night, the village was unaware that they had come. But, after they had dined, Madame duPres had called a servant to her, and sent him with a missive to de Pacilli. The priest, then, rising from the table where he had been writing, wrapped himself in his cloak and sped in shadowy darkness from door to door. He knew that men’s wits and men’s consciences are at the lowest ebb at midnight, especially if they had been summarily aroused from bed.
He returned to his house. It was no part of his plan that he be on hand to witness the results of his seduction. That part was done. He had finished the fifth of his voluminous books; the final pages were before him. The others were already in the hands of his superiors in Paris. He began to gather up his few belongings, to place them in a portmanteau. His work was complete. Now his agile and profound mind, dismissing Chantilly, went on to other matters.
Once or twice, as he glanced through his narrow windows, he saw the furtive and distant flare of torches, the hoarse humming of the awakening village. He shrugged. He was not interested. But all at once, an animal prescience caused his spine to prickle. He crept out of his house, and made his way through back alleys to his little church. The doors were always open. But that prescience warned him again. He shot the bolts, slipped like a black shadow in the moonlight, which fell through the high pointed windows, to the altar.
He stood before the altar, and gazed at its flickering, eternal red light. He did not light a candle. He stared at the altar, his face pale and masklike in the spectral moonlight. What did he think, as he meditated there before the crucifix? None could know. But momentarily the mask became more inscrutable, more marblelike in texture and expression.
After a long time, he went behind the altar, and examined a small thick door set in the wall. He opened that door with the rusty key which was in the lock and peered down into the thick and stygian darkness. A flight of stone steps led down into an unused crypt. The priest heard the trickle of water from far below, and smelled the dank and fetid odor of all underground and hidden places. The stench came up like a miasma, poisonous and stifling. He covered his nose hastily with his fine linen kerchief, and closed the door. Nevertheless, he did not lock it. Moreover, with satisfaction, he examined the door. It was of heavy wood, reinforced with iron, and set closely in its aperture. He sat down near it, his hands motionless on his knees, and stared imperviously, and like a stone image, at the crucifix. No one could have seen him in that pattern of black and silver which laced and fretted the little church. He was one with the blackness; his pale marble face was one with the moonlight.
Paul de Vitry, mentally and physically exhausted, retired early. Madame did not, as usual, annoy him with her perpetual poutings and importunities. He was weary of her, and she knew this. He avoided her as much as possible on all occasions. But he was too kind-hearted to dismiss her, with a stipend, as other men did. He had the cowardice of the gentle-souled: he could not endure wounding any creature, however foolish, tedious or repellent. He consoled himself with the hope that she might weary of him in turn, and abandon him. So far, the hope had not been justified. She clung to him with stubborn tenacity. But he knew that in that tenacity there was no real affection, and only avarice and resentment. However, he hoped that she might eventually tire of his gentle remoteness and indifference, and seek warmer pastures. In that event, he intended to dower her handsomely. In the meantime, she was to him an old woman of the sea, clinging stubbornly to his weary back and weighing him down.
He said good night to her with his accustomed thoughtfulness and gentleness, and urged her to retire early in order to recover from their tiresome journey. But for some reason, she seemed reluctant to leave him. Her beautiful face was unusually pale; her manner uneasy and restless. She invented excuses to keep him with her. At last, worn down by his own chronic sadness and weariness, he tore himself away with more curtness than ordinary.
He lay in his bed a long time, gazing blindly before him, his eyes fixed unseeingly on the shadows of silver moonlight which spangled the molded ceiling. He followed, mechanically, the movements of the draperies at his windows, stirring in the soft and scented night wind. He listened, without real awareness, to the clamor of crickets in the damp grass outside those windows. Once a nightingale sang with piercing and bitter sweetness to the moon, and Paul’s heart contracted on a spasm of poignant anguish. But there was no other sound in the moonlight darkness.
The moon wheeled eastward. The trees began to rustle uneasily. Now Paul, through his window, saw the sudden brilliant flashing of the cross on the steeple of the church, as it caught the moon’s argent rays. The wind became heavier with the odors of earth, grass, flower and tree. Yet, strangely, the profound silence seemed to increase.
Tears suddenly rose to Paul’s tired eyes, and he closed them, sighing. The weight on his heart became too terrible for endurance. His whole being was engulfed in tides of suffering, despair, weariness and nameless grief. Existence had become for him a dry and windless desert, in which he wandered, parched and lost and full of exhaustion. All hope had gone from him; all his innocent joy in living had forever departed. He had lost faith in his fellows, that faith conceived in his own ingenuousness and purity of spirit, and like others of his kind, there was no consolation for him, no cynical philosophy, no shrug of fatalistic and humorous acceptance. Out of that lost faith, in many men, came hatred. But there was no seed of hatred in his heart. He could feel only sorrow and complete deathly despair. To him, all men had become treacherous beasts, prowling lustfully.
He had lost love. He had loved the young Cecile Grandjean with a passion unknown to most men. Others might say to themselves: “This is but an obscure peasant wench, and there are thousands more of her pattern.” But to one so innocent, so single-hearted, so ingenuous as Paul de Vitry, there was no other woman. He had never heard of the aphorism that all women are the same in the dark. The lusts of the flesh had never been overly strong in him. The thin strata in him, which was almost womanish in its character, was capable only of devotion and eternal fidelity.
He was filled with the impulse to flee, blindly. But where could he flee? There was no refuge, no quiet and shadowless spot for him.
Overcome at last by his exhaustion of mind and body, he fell into a brief and uneasy slumber. Once he stirred, restlessly, and opened his eyes. Had he heard a scream? But that was only a nightmare. He turned in his bed and tried to sleep again.
Then all at once, he heard a faint roaring. The wind. He opened his eyes again. Now all his senses came fearfully awake. The roaring had increased. And above it was a prolonged screaming. There were several thunderous crashes. Now the moonlight was gone. Long streamers of red light devoured the ceiling of the chamber, and he smelled the sudden choking stench of smoke. He heard shouts and running in the corridor, the shrieking of oaths.
He sprang out of bed, fully aroused, pulling on his dressing gown over his nightshirt. He ran to the door, and wrenched it open. The corridor was empty now. The arches were full of red light and drifting smoke. Now the lower floor of the château was filled to bursting with teeming and twisting men and women, brandishing their fists, their sweating faces black and red in the flames that licked the frescoed walls, like faces out of hell. Out of their mouths poured screams and imprecations and mad howls. Many, in their excess of maddened rage, were hurling articles of delicate furniture and porcelain against the walls, smashing them, crushing the fragments under their feet. Others were tearing the draperies from the windows. Dozens of others, attempting to rush up the narrow stairway, had been caught in the crush, and they struggled and fought each other, and howled.
This was the sight that burst upon Paul’s incredulous and smarting eyes as he approached the head of the stairway. He stood, frozen, and gazed down upon the writhing, red-faced mob reeling and struggling in the smoke. When they saw him, a famished and demoniacal roar burst from their throats.
“There is the pig, the oppressor, the murderer, the liar and the heretic!” shrieked the women. They stretched up their hands to him, curved like claws, as if to seize and rend him.
Paul stood, unmoving, gazing down. His mind was reeling. He saw those familiar faces, now transformed into the faces of devils. He fell against the wall, gasping. The scene below swam before his vision: the flame-streaked walls, the billowing smoke, the scarlet faces, the clenched and flourishing fists. Heat choked him. The noise deafened him. It was a nightmare! It was a horror! He was dreaming! He heard the shouts and the howls, the snarling sounds from bursting and savage throats. He could not believe. His mind refused to accept this.
Some one brushed his elbow. He shook his dazed head and saw that Madame duPres stood at his elbow, her black hair streaming wildly over her shoulders. She was clad only in her long white silken shift, which glistened in the red and streaming light. Through its diaphanous substance her white and shapely flesh gleamed like marble through mist.
Distraught, beside herself with terror, she did not see Paul, or, if seeing him, she was hardly aware of him. She stood on the top step of the staircase and extended her arms imploring to the mob below, who, upon her appearance, momentarily halted, lifting their contorted and transformed faces up to her.
“No!” she screamed, incoherently. “It was not to be so! It was not promised me like this! Where is the priest? Where is Père de Pacilli! Why is he not here?”
She moved down a step or two, then, as the mob roared in regained fury and madness, she shrank back, precipitately sprang up the steps to Paul’s side. Her face was ghastly; her eyes glittered as she rolled them from side to side. She pressed her hands to her bosom.
“Where is the priest!” she shrieked. “Cattle, step aside, I must descend, escape! I was to be given time, you fiends! It was not to be so! Were you not told? It was I who assisted in this; it is I who am your friend, the friend of the priest! Let me descend, in the name of God, lest I perish!”
She extended her hands to them. Her black hair flew about her. Her white and twisted face glimmered in the red light. Paul fell back from her, pressing himself against the wall. He stared at her, as at a horrible apparition.
Now from the mob below came a prolonged howl of hideous laughter. The mouths of the women opened, like black and gaping caverns.
“It is the harlot!” they shrieked. “It is the mistress of the heretic! Kill the whore! Tear her to shreds!”
Foul epithets assaulted her. She shrank back, whimpering, covering her ears with her shaking hands. Her eyes rolled about, feverishly, desperately, seeking escape. At length they fell on Paul. Her hands dropped to her sides. The whimpering became a moan in her throat. “Save me!” she groaned, and groped her way to him with her hands extended.
He looked at her, and shuddered. Then he looked again at the faces he had loved, at the men and women he had succored, at the people to whom he had devoted himself in love and tenderness and mercy. Who could know his thoughts as he gazed down at them in such unmoving silence?
The woman clutched him, her hands gripping him feverishly, seizing his shoulders, his arms, his lifeless cold hands. He did not see or feel her. He only stood there and looked down the staircase. And now, there was no horror, no fear, no dread on his face. There was only a stony sadness, a long profound meditation.
Something in his aspect halted the plunging and maddened throng. They looked up at him, and fell silent. And in that silence the flames crackled and roared, leaping at the windows, stealing more hungrily along the walls, nibbling at the pillars.
Lord and peasants gazed at each other in that red and flickering light. The men, lowering, scratched themselves uneasily. The women snarled deeply in their throats. A restless and fetid stench rose from them, mingling with the acrid smoke. The men looked at the motionless and silent man above them. They saw his pale and glistening face. They saw his eyes.
It was those eyes, striking down into their mean and animal souls, which completely maddened them. Horror, remorse, frenzy and agony seized them, inspired them with sadistic murder. They knew only one thing: they must strike down that man. They must destroy those quiet eyes. They must stamp into obliteration that still face. They must do these things, for their own sakes. If they did not, that face, and those eyes, would haunt them forever, into the very depths of hell.
Maddened, terrified, they struggled again to ascend that staircase. Many shut their eyes. The women sobbed and groaned; the men cursed and panted. Now the clutching hands were less than two feet away. Paul could see the scarlet light glinting on staring and insane eyeballs.
Madame duPres had fallen to his feet. She was clutching his knees, pressing her head against his body. He looked down upon her. Then he stooped, swept her up into his arms and fled down the corridor. He reached his chamber. He dropped the woman, who fell in a heap on the floor. He locked the chamber door. Now, feverishly, he seized a chest, a cabinet, and thrust them in front of the door. He ran to the window. But there was no escape there, either. The grounds of the château glowed with torchlight.
The distant cross on the steeple glittered tranquilly in the moonlight. The dark trees nearby were rosy with fire. Then, on the fringe of the teeming and running men, Paul saw a face. It was the face of Crequy.
Paul was standing on the balcony, his figure outlined clearly against the white walls. He was bathed in flame. He looked at Crequy, standing motionless in the background, staring up at him. The eyes of the men met.
Crequy did not move. Gigantic, stolid, awkward and fat as always, the tavern-keeper stood motionless. But across the heads of the surging and shouting men, their eyes spoke to each other. One of Crequy’s hands rose, fell again to his side. But for a long moment they communed with each in the midst of that fire and death and violence.
Suddenly, Crequy was no longer there. Paul gazed over his estates. He saw a distant fire. A faint groan escaped him. He knew that that fire came from the home of François Grandjean.
He returned to the chamber. Madame duPres had lifted herself to her hands and knees. Her hair streamed over her. She raised her face to Paul. And now these two stared at each other in silence.
Then, inch by inch, the woman crept on her knees to Paul. She dropped her head on his feet. “Forgive me,” she whispered.
He looked down upon her. And then, in the depths of his ingenuous and noble heart a human impulse stirred. His foot moved instinctively. But, in its very motion, savage and unrestrained towards that bent head and defenseless body, he arrested it. The woman had felt that lifted foot, that motion. She shrank for an instant, gathering her endurance together. Then she felt the impulse wane. She lifted her head; tears were streaming down her face. She rose to her knees, clasping her hands as though praying.
“I have betrayed you, Monsieur,” she whispered. “Kick me, strike me, kill me; it will not be too much.”
He gazed down at her in silence. Then he asked, quietly: “Why did you do this, Antoinette?”
“It was the priest,” she moaned.
Paul passed his hand over his face. When he dropped it, his expression had not changed. “It was so easy?” he said to himself. “So very easy? After all these years, it was so easy for a black priest to undo all that I have done?”
She clutched him about the knees, straining her body against him, weeping terribly. “So easy, Monsieur! It was nothing to do it!”
Wonder dawned like a frozen light in his staring eyes. His lips moved, but no sound came from them. He turned his head from side to side, in a motion of strangulation. Then he sighed, over and over. He looked down at the woman, and pity passed like a bright light over his face.
He lifted her to her feet. He held her to him. She wound her arms about his neck, her tears running down his shoulder, wetting his shirt. But he looked beyond her, sighing heavily. The sound pierced her to her vain, hard heart.
Now the mob had roared into the corridor, full of blood lust, screaming and howling. They assaulted the door of the chamber. It trembled and shook under their blows. The vilest epithets and threats could be heard, coming muffled through the wood. Paul looked at the door. It would not be long before it would go down before that furious assault, and then the ferocious mob would pour into this room, to do unspeakable things.
Paul gently lifted Madame duPres’ head from his shoulder. He took her wet face in his hands, and looked down into it penetratingly.
“In a moment they will break in, Antoinette. Shall they find us alive?”
She groaned; she shuddered. Then, she was silent. She looked back at him, and into those beautiful shallow eyes, streaming with tears, came a still and desperate light, but a light of supreme courage.
He put her aside, very gently. She did not move; she watched him as he went quietly to the table and lifted his sword. She saw its flash as he unsheathed it. Then, he picked up his pistol. He returned to her.
“There is only one bullet in this weapon, Antoinette. It must be for me. Have you courage? It will be a pang of but a moment.”
His voice was almost drowned out in the deafening roar that came from the corridor. The door was squealing on its hinges. In a moment it would burst open.
Paul lifted the sword, and pressed its point against the woman’s half naked breast. A drop of blood sprang up about that point. He looked into her eyes. She had not winced. But now she smiled, and half extended her hands to him, whispering one last request.
He leaned towards her slowly, his sword pressing forward. As it plunged into her heart, their lips met.
The door burst from its hinges. But as it did so, there was one loud report in the room.
When the sun rose in a scarlet dawn, it looked down upon the château de Vitry. It was completely gutted. Here and there a chimney, a fragment of smoke-stained white wall, gaped emptily at the sky, wisps of curling gray smoke still rising from them.