Fear has a living and visible reality, like a gray and steaming fog, like a coiling miasma, like a cloud blotting out the light. It lay over the huddled village, over the vineyards and the dun hills, over the river, pitted and scarred by the cataracts of rain. The very aspect of the heavens, filled with boiling gray and black clouds, the mist which twisted over the fields and meadows, the pools of water which formed in the cobbled streets, the glistening roofs and walls of the low houses, the wind which bent the tall poplars and turned them white as driven ghosts, all seemed of the substance of fear, its very emanation. Everything seemed to shudder, to cower, to writhe, in the storm of fear. Occasionally a serpent of pale and livid lightning leapt over the hills, parted the tempestuous skies, followed by a dull hoarse roaring like the distant tumult of giants.
Not a soul stirred in the streets. Not a faint yellow light glimmered behind the shuttered windows. The small gardens were torn and flattened, petals rising like battered butterflies on the wind, leaves whirling down from the trees. The cross on the church caught wild and brilliant reflection from the lightning, so that it flashed balefully. The river was rising; its heavy and uneasy voice could be heard in the intervals of the wind and the thunder. The desolation was complete. Fear, and its follower, the storm, ruled over the earth.
It was slightly past dawn. For days, now, the villagers had lived in terror. Cooled of their unreasoning, their monstrous madness, they knew that the ferocious law of France would soon beset them. They had killed a great noble, a magnate; they had destroyed his château, the evidence of his power. They had assaulted the power, the law, of France. Punishment would soon be upon them in the shape of the gallows. The priest they had expected to uphold, to exonerate them, was dead. No argument would be allowed, no justification. The walls of France had heard their blows and their imprecations. It would be enough that they had lifted their hands against established power. Now, for the first time, they realized the enormous force arrayed against them. They, the canaille, the disinherited, the helpless, the nameless, had dared to assail authority and privilege. They would die for it.
They huddled together in their fright. Some of the most desperate talked of presenting a formidable front to the coming avengers, but even the most sanguine smiled drearily at this. Some wished to flee with their wives and children. But, where? So long had they been free to think as men, to plan as men, that they evolved all manner of wild plans, with desperate strength. Now, they realized that they had no strength. With the death of their defender, their protector, they were open once again to the savagery of established power.
They still felt no remorse, no sorrow, no grief, for Paul de Vitry. They dared not feel these things. They knew if once they did, they would completely disintegrate. So, they invented among themselves a sustaining thought: he was part of the power which now menaced them, which would destroy them. So, they hated him still. In such fashion does the craven and devious human mind defend itself.
Few slept in these awful days. They waited, and listened, for the avengers. But the storm had been furious that morning. So it was that they did not hear the pounding and rumble of scores of horsemen riding into the village. They did not see or hear the forty young and resolute nobles with their grim countenances, wrapped in their cloaks against the rain, and their two hundred anonymous followers, with coarser faces and more ferocious eyes. These two hundred and forty men drifted like violent hushed shadows into the village, armed, spurred and dripping. The forty crowded into the tavern and the house of Crequy. The two hundred huddled under the eaves of outbuildings, or under the lashing shelter of straining trees.
Crequy had been expecting them. On the pommel of Arsène’s horse the young Roselle had ridden. She rushed into her uncle’s arms, sobbing. He kissed her, put her from him, and commanded her to go to Cecile Grandjean, who was still in a grave condition. Then the bald and sinister giant turned to Arsène and saluted him respectfully, but with a malignant grin. “You have come, Monsieur,” he said.
A great red fire blazed on the hearth. There was another fire in the kitchen. The young nobles crowded about these fires, shaking their wet cloaks pettishly and vigorously, so that the fire hissed at the touch of the flying drops of water. The firelight rose and fell on their young hard faces, on their quick eager eyes, on their white teeth. They talked briefly, questioning Crequy with remote condescension. They filled the tavern and the house with orderly violence and harsh purpose. As they warmed their hands, the firelight caught the flash of jewels on narrow fingers, the glare of an alert eyeball, the dull gleam of the hilts of swords, the shine of wet and streaming hair on young shoulders.
Crequy brought forth the best wine, hams, breads and poultry which he had been hoarding for this day. He lumbered among his guests. They stood about the fires and ate with hearty but preoccupied abandon. Now one or two of the more volatile laughed a little. The scene was full of vivacious movement, all in umber, brown, black and scarlet, the glistening of bold eyes. Crequy looked at them with venomous and contented satisfaction. He was filled with excitement.
Arsène stood a little apart, his face still haggard and sunken, heavy with the apathy of grief, but somber with coming vengeance. He drank wine, but did not eat. Finally, he approached Crequy, said a few words. Crequy nodded. From a hidden place he brought forth coils of rope, went to the door. Arsène waited, and listened. Finally, from a place near the tavern came a dull and ominous hammering. Arsène felt the blow on his heart, and he breathed with difficulty.
Then he had the strangest and most terrible sensation. He felt that Paul de Vitry was suddenly present in that crowded and steaming assemblage, that he was gazing upon them gravely, with a pale countenance and despairing eyes. So vivid was that sensation, that Arsène turned away, and cried vehemently in his heart to that silent and watching ghost: “No! Go away! This is not for you, Paul! No, I shall not listen to you!”
His breath came in painful gasps. He drank deeply of the cup he held in his hands. “Go away!” he cried again, and now with enraged despair.
The rain suddenly halted. But the skies grew darker. The wind was silenced. Now the distant groaning of the river could be clearly heard. Crequy re-entered the room, rubbing his enormous hands. He was a massive figure of evil, the firelight glittering on his naked skull.
Arsène glanced at the narrow wooden stairway near at hand, and Crequy inclined his head. They moved away from the talking and drinking young nobles, and climbed upwards in the dusty darkness. They entered a small bedroom under the eaves, where the dim wailing and whistling of wind and the sharp cracking of crows could be heard. A candle glimmered on the table, striping the walls with broken shadows. Young Roselle, her curls disordered and wet, was seated on a stool beside the trundle bed. Her cheeks were running with crystal drops. Two elderly nuns, black robed and veiled, with pale calm faces and steadfast eyes and long pale hands, were bending over the bed ministering to the girl who lay there, sunken in profound unconsciousness. They looked up as Arsène and Crequy entered, but did not speak or move. Basins of water were at hand, and fresh dressings.
“Monsieur,” said Crequy, “these are Sister Eloise and Sister Michele, good nuns of the abbey, sent to nurse Mademoiselle by the old abbess, who was much devoted to Monsieur le Comte. They have done what they could. Sister Eloise is much learned in the arts of medicine.”
“The rest is in the hands of God, Monsieur,” said Sister Eloise, with a sigh.
Arsène glanced about the poor bare room, which was like a cell under the eaves. He approached the bed with a sinking heart. He stood in gloomy black silence and gazed down at the young girl who lay there, motionless in her white shift. Her light brown hair, tinged with gold, was braided, and lay on the coarse pillows in a supple frame about her thin pale face, drawn with suffering. Her golden lashes swept her hollow cheeks; her white lips were parted and the breath hardly drifted between them. But even in her painful sleep, there was a nobility about that young chin and mouth and closed eyes, an aloof and reticent withdrawal, a coldness on the smooth wide brow, which even the hovering shadow of death could not dim.
A thick and pulsating agony sprang up in Arsène’s heart, and an overwhelming passion. But his expression was closed and dark, for all his internal upheaval. Here, wounded and crushed, almost done to death, was all that he loved, all that he had ever truly desired. A bursting fire flashed before his eyes. He gripped the bedpost in one wet hand, and that hand crawled and clenched like a murderous thing. Now, in the candlelight, his teeth glistened between his pale lips.
Cecile murmured, drew a deep and shivering breath, and half turned her head. Then, on the top of that small and shining head Arsène saw the wound, still oozing through its fresh dressings. A muffled and terrible sound escaped him. The nuns, Roselle and Crequy looked at him with compassion.
He knelt down beside the bed, and lifted the cool slack hands of the girl. Their delicate fineness was scarred with toil. He turned up the lifeless palms and pressed his lips to them, at first feebly and slowly, and then with wild grief and torment. He held them against his cheeks, in a numb desire to warm them with his own warmth. He kissed the thin veined wrists, the white soft arms about them. He abandoned himself to his fear and his love. He touched the smooth brow with his fingers, and then his mouth. He laid his cheek against hers. His shaking lips approached her ear, and he cried aloud: “Cecile!”
She stirred uneasily at his broken voice and appeal. Her head turned slowly in his direction, as if even in her unconsciousness she knew he was there. A dim smile fluttered on her lips. She sighed.
He could not restrain himself. He wept. But they were the iron tears of rage and hatred. He rose and looked at the nuns. “They who have done this shall die,” he said.
Sister Eloise regarded him with white sorrow. “Monsieur, you are not God.”
But Arsène gazed down again at the young girl, and his face was an evil thing to see. There was a raucous sound in the room, and it was his breathing.
“God in His mercy can still save this poor child,” said Sister Eloise. “But He may punish you, Monsieur, if you allocate His powers to yourself.”
But Arsène saw nothing but Cecile. The smile still lingered in a fugitive light on her dwindled face. He bent and kissed her lips, and they quivered feebly under his. Then he turned away. He stared before him, with a fixed look, and his nostrils were so dilated that the red membrane was visible in his dark pallor.
He descended the staircase, with Crequy at his heels. “Take comfort, Monsieur, she is no worse,” growled Crequy. “The bleeding has almost stopped. She has swallowed wine today. Yesterday, she could take not even water. The nuns have been good.”
But Arsène said nothing. If his hatred or his lust for vengeance had ever slackened, they were stronger now.
The gray and coiling heavens still darted with lightning in a frightful dim silence, broken only by the constant threatening mutter of the river. No rain fell; even the trees were hushed. The young nobles were resuming their cloaks. Now their faces were hard again, and secret.
Arsène swung on his dripping cloak. They followed him outside.
A strange crowd awaited him. While the young nobles had been drinking and eating, orders had been given by Crequy to the two hundred followers. They had, at the point of sword and pistol, gathered up the villagers, who had been cringing in the dark depths of their cottages. They had anticipated some beastlike resistance, and had been surprised at the despairing docility of their prisoners. Now they had herded them before the tavern, which commanded a view of the whole length of the village street.
A wan and spectral light, glimmering, evanescent and uncertain, lay over the earth, which crouched in its drenched silence away from the heavens. Only in those heavens was any movement, and that was darting, writhing, glittering with serpentine lightning. The baleful flashes lit up the thronged faces huddled together. Their bodies were lost; only those pale ovals were visible in the flashing light.
Arsène stood among his companions, looking down upon the faces of the villagers, whom Paul had loved. He could hardly recognize them. Only a little while ago, those faces had been filled with simple pleasure, simple and ingenuous happiness, simple affection and contentment. Now, as he looked at them, in the shifting darkness and vivid light, he saw how natural human emotions can change the false aspect of benevolence and peace and simplicity into primordial visages. He gazed at them steadfastly, with a slow rising burn in his heart, and saw them for what they were in truth: dull, sullen, wary, defiant, sly, terrified, blank and hating, and a fierce pang rose from that burning into a frightful flame.
“Liberty, enlightenment and mercy!” Paul had said, with his pure exalted virtue bright on his ingenuous and gentle face. And so, he had bestowed these upon his people. How they must have secretly writhed under them! How, under their apparent affection, they must have hated him for declaring that they were men! In the consuming rage and hatred that mounted in Arsène, so that the dark and spectral scene shifted before him in a bloody mist, he forgot everything except that Paul de Vitry had been a fool.
For he saw in these crowded countenances before him all the mean viciousness of mankind, all its cupidity, lust and eager cruelty, all its bestiality and hatred, all its uncleanness and treachery and degradation, all its ingratitude, savagery and contempt for kindness and gentleness, all its virulency and violence, all its debased evil. And as he saw, he was filled with a passionate loathing, a kind of horror and repulsion, a wild denial that he belonged to this unspeakable species, and a wilder shame at the confession that he did so belong. No man, he thought, dare say: I am apart from these! He shared the common heritage. He belonged among these hideous creatures that must set God vomiting among His clean and fiery stars.
And then he was seized with a pure vast hatred for his kind, hatred which is necessary to create the great soldier, the great statesman, the great tyrant, the great priest and the great criminal. And, as he so hated, he felt an enormous liberation in himself. Acknowledging his oneness with these other men, he was yet freed from them. Their malignant littleness became in him a malignant immensity.
By these beasts, by these unformed and degraded horrors, by these dogs and swine, the Comte de Vitry had been done to death. Paul de Vitry, so ingenuous, so kind, so tender and merciful, so full of sweetness and gentleness and peace and justice, had been mercilesly trampled by this cattle, this herd of hogs. Their ravening fangs had torn away the life of their benefactor. They had destroyed the only hand in France lifted to succor them. They had silenced the only voice that had cried out against their suffering. For this, then, he had deserved death. For this, he, the aristocrat, the lord, the man of letters and tenderness, had been befouled by the touch of their stinking corruption.
As these ghastly thoughts raced like lines of fire through Arsène’s mind, the villagers, watching him frenziedly, were transfixed by the glittering ferocity of his eye. Involuntarily, each man and woman shrank back, defiance and cunning lost in a voiceless terror. For they saw in that eye a full understanding of them. They wet their lips; their hearts pounded. They glanced about them in hunted despair. But they were surrounded by drawn swords and smiling inhuman faces. Then, for the first time, one of them discerned the hasty gibbet set up before the door of the tavern. A wooden beam had been nailed at a sharp angle against the trunk of a tree. From it dangled a rope swinging in the heavy gusts of wind.
The one who first perceived this set up a great animal cry, and pointed with a shaking finger. Others saw, took up the cry. But their captors were silent. Behind Arsène stood Crequy, grinning, flexing his hands in eager and monstrous anticipation. The crowd swayed, pushed, heaved and milled against each other, each desperate eye fixed in nightmare horror upon the gibbet.
Arsène watched this upheaval of bestial terror with virulency. He waited until it had subsided a little. He heard the sobbing of women, the groaning and whimpering of men. Then he advanced a pace, and, in the thundrous gloom, he said clearly and quietly:
“Dogs, I have come to do justice to you.”
A sick and portentous silence fell. Arsène looked at his companions. They were regarding the villagers with the aristocrat’s loathing, disgust and contempt. They had known Paul de Vitry, and had loved and followed him. But they had not come to avenge his tragic death. They had come out of the aristocrat’s rage at the rebellion of the canaille against the power of the privileged and the noble. Arsène, pondering this, felt as if a fist had been struck hard against his chest. He had come to avenge Paul. These had come to destroy a rebellion which threatened themselves. They did not know this, themselves, but the evidence was there on their narrow fine faces and hooded eyes.
It does not matter why they have come, thought Arsène. It is enough for me that they have come. But for the first time he felt a peculiar illness, a trembling of his flesh.
He spoke again, his voice hollow and echoing in the windless gloom and silence:
“Your lord was gracious and just. He was kind and benevolent. He freed you, shared what he had with you. He liberated you, and administered mercifully to you. In return, you murdered him. You have struck against France, in striking against the Comte de Vitry.”
He paused, and from his doublet he withdrew a roll of paper. “I have here a warrant for your deaths. You shall die ignobly and speedily. Thus, then, all like you will beware forever of lifting a hand against the majesty and authority of France.”
There was a silence. Then, from the depths of the trembling and pallid throng, a man cried out: “It was the priest!”
The others stirred thankfully, hopefully, murmuring. But Arsène smiled grimly.
“The Comte de Vitry liberated you many years ago. This priest was among you for a few short weeks. Yet, how easily you were seduced! Had not the wicked desire been strong among you, this thing would not have happened. You are to die. I regret,” he added ironically, “that there is no priest at hand to shrive you.”
They gazed up at him with abysmal despair. But they saw only the iron sword of France standing against them, the iron power of the magnates and the oppressors. The women sobbed and clasped their hands; the men groaned. Some of the women cried out: “What shall become of our children?”
As he looked at them, Arsène saw no remorse, no bitterness, no sorrow, but only the frenzied fear of the hunted. His hatred grew more uncontrolled. He looked at the faintly smiling faces of his companions. Their followers, ringed about the villagers, moved impatiently.
“One out of every ten men and women shall die for the murder of the Comte de Vitry, his steward, Grandjean and the cruel assault upon Cecile, the steward’s granddaughter. However, it is fitting that you deliver up your leaders first. Name them.”
Hoping despairingly that in some way they might be saved, the craven villagers searched each face eagerly. Then frantic hands seized a young man, who, of all of them, had retained a black composure. But he shook off their hands contemptuously. He thrust those about him aside. He walked towards Arsène with a quick firm step, holding his head high. Arsène, in spite of himself, felt some surprise, for this young man, in his white shirt and woolen britches, his brown muscular body and strong swinging arms, had dignity and pride. His square and belligerent face, burned deep brown by the sun, his active black eyes, filled with passion and fierceness, and his heavy stern mouth betrayed no fear, no cowardice. He had a presence, commanding and strong.
He paused below Arsène, and spoke quietly, his uplifted eyes glistening in the wan light: “I am Jean Dumont, Monsieur. The priest persuaded me, who have some influence among these wretches, that Monsieur le Comte de Vitry had evil designs upon us, that his merciful measures were merely designed to delay the liberating doctrines proposed by his Majesty, the King. I have discerned there was another, and more evil plot, Monsieur, and that plot was against Monsieur le Comte, and ourselves. I am guilty of my part in arousing these contemptible wretches. I have perceived that they are not worthy of any liberation, however small. Nevertheless, I seek no mercy for myself. I am guilty. I deserve to die.”
He spoke with such pride, such somber sadness, such weary contempt, that Arsène was taken aback. He looked down into those unswerving black eyes, that coarse but intelligent face, strong with health and youth. He saw the dark disillusion in that grim and quiet expression. Then he turned away, with an uplifted hand.
Crequy seized Jean Dumont by the arm, but the young peasant shook off his hand with a look of blazing outrage. He walked calmly beneath the gibbet, and waited. Crequy tied the rope about his neck. The crowd watched, holding their breath. Then Crequy took hold of the rope, after spitting on his hands. Jean Dumont turned slowly, and he looked upon those thronged pale faces, contorted with animal fear. He suddenly closed his eyes, as though sickened and revolted.
Crequy tugged on the rope. Jean Dumont was jerked swiftly into the air. His convulsively sprawling figure jerked against the gray and shifting skies in a contorted black silhouette. With horror, the people saw the convulsions slowly begin to diminish. Everywhere was utter silence. In this hushed cemetery of human passions there was only that feebly declining movement of the hanged man, the man, who, in his small and turbulent way, had hoped to succor them, and who, at the last, had ended by despising them.
Crequy lowered the rope. The body fell in a contorted heap upon the ground. Crequy lifted it, flung it aside.
Now there were wild frantic cries in the center of the mob, and struggles; Several eager men dragged forward two others, crying aloud, incoherently. One was Guy La Farge, the former overseer, and the other, Pietre Dubonnet, the former steward.
Arsène looked down upon the first struggling man, whose mouth was open on a long delirious scream. He saw the emaciated leanness of La Farge, the attenuated grayness of his countenance. He looked upon the other, Dubonnet, that small rotund and formerly ruddy man, whose face was now like streaming tallow. The two men struggled and bent their knees, dragging their feet like animals led to the slaughter, striking out feebly and desperately, their last human instincts lost in the welter of primitive terror. Somewhere, in the press, a woman was shrieking with a prolonged and insane howl.
“These are your leaders?” asked Arsène.
The mob nodded eagerly, shouting, raising upclenched fists, pressing closer in their shameful treachery to Arsène, hoping to obtain favor in him for their delivering up of those who had led them. Dubonnet, having, in his mad strength, momentarily shaken off the hands of his captors, fell on his knees before Arsène, and lifted his hands.
“Monsieur,” he groaned, “my good lord and master, have mercy on me! There is no priest here to shrive me. I am a good Catholic—I cannot go to my death unconfessed. I am a man with a wife. I am a poor man.”
His voice dwindled and died in his stricken throat. He whimpered, made disordered gestures with his hands. His eyes, the glittering eyes of a terrified animal, implored the inexorable Arsène. The shrieking of the woman in the background became an unbearable sound.
“Why did you lead your people against their lord?” asked Arsène.
The man’s whimpering lips gibbered. He rubbed his hands against them. His voice, when it came, was a squeak:
“Monsieur, it was the priest. I am a good Catholic. He put it into my mind that Monsieur le Comte was part of a Huguenot plot to destroy the Church—”
Arsène turned away. Crequy seized the wretch. Arsène did not look on the final struggle. He heard the blind screaming of the plunging man, a scream which was abruptly broken off after the quick screech of the rope on the gibbet. Now even the distant woman was silent, as all but Arsène watched the death of Dubonnet.
A sulphurous stench pervaded the air, and from the earth rose a fetid odor as of decay and corruption. Arsène looked about him. The drumming of the thunder had become a close howl. Deep within himself, Arsène heard that howl, and a numb paralysis, voluptuous in its weakness, encased him. A kind of frightful and broken-hearted joy, vicious in its whirling intensity, caused him to laugh aloud with a savage sound. Now a horrible and fateful quiet seemed to fall on every one. It was a pantomime acted by deaf mutes moving in a nightmare.
Then Arsène fixed his eyes starkly upon the second figure of La Farge writhing against the sky. Crequy, the huge giant, stood at the flapping feet of his last victim, looking upwards, grinning. A nebulous quality floated about him, so that he seemed formed of dark fog and mist, through which an eternal malignance glowed. The villagers and their executioners stood motionless. The quickening lightning flashed over pale and bloodless faces, over staring empty eyes, over open imbecile mouths and blowing hair. Once an especially fierce blaze revealed the gutted broken walls of the château on its hill.
Arsène felt that he could bear no more. He looked away from the gibbet. He saw the gray and misty village street beyond the crowd and the tavern. What he saw made him blink incredulously. A small horse was approaching, with exhausted bent head and limping hoof. And on that horse was seated a quiet figure in a cloak and a broad low hat. The vision moved in a heavy and melancholy preoccupation.
No one else saw for some moments. The figure dismounted. It came forward, seeming to float in a gray dream. It was the Abbé Lovelle.
No, said Arsène, to himself. His companions turned idly and stared at the priest. Now the villagers perceived his approach. Great broken cries broke from them. A convulsion rushed among them, like stagnant waters agitated by the dropping of an enormous stone. Over their tortured faces, torn and wild, a vivid light of joy flashed and rippled. They struggled to reach their priest through the circle of their guards, but were hurled back by violent blows. But they persisted, not feeling these blows, extending their arms to him, moaning, sobbing, groaning with joy, bubbling appeals for mercy rising in shrieks to their lips. Many fell on their knees, stretching forth stark and trembling hands, kissing the air frantically. Their eyes glowed with a phosphorescent glare.
The priest stood for a moment and looked at all these things, at the gibbet, at the newly hanged man jerking in his agony against the sky, at Arsène and his companions, at the wolfish faces of the executioners. He did not move. He was a small black image, bent and tragic, with a quiet face. He put his hands to his eyes, after a long time. Then his hands fell away. His old and withered cheeks were running with tears.
Then without a word, and, very slowly, he approached Arsène, looking up at him with a long and steadfast gaze. Arsène watched him come, in utter silence.
The abbé halted before Arsène. Now silence fell once more, and there was no movement but the last dying jerks of the last hanged man, grotesque and awkward against the sky. There was only one far sound: the snarling growl of Crequy, hungry and deep.
The lightning illumined the abbé’s face. It was stern and still, and waiting. Arsène tried to speak; then, impotently, he lifted his arm and pointed to the ruins of the château. The abbé, following that gesture, looked aside and upwards. He started so violently that his shabby black garments fluttered as though a wind had struck them.
“Yes,” said Arsène, very softly, “these sheep of yours did that, Monsieur le Curé. They murdered their savior and their protector. They did their friend to death, as a just payment for his mercy and his justice. And to this end, to this gibbet, they were led by your dear brother in Christ, the priest de Pacilli.”
Very slowly, the priest returned his gaze to Arsène, and then to the peasants. He uttered no cry, made no gesture. But he gazed at those haggard and distraught men and women, and his face expressed his broken sorrow, his grief, his bewilderment and agony. His lips trembled. He bent his head. He seemed as if praying.
Then, very softly, he said, looking up at Arsène: “Seven nights ago, I had a dream. It was a most frightful dream. I dreamt that my people were in danger, that some holocaust was upon them because of a nameless guilt. A voice urged me to leave my dear niece, to arise and return to this place. In the morning, I left at dawn.”
The peasants stared at him in heavy silence, as if fascinated. And then their own faces, which had been filled only with terror and cunning, changed, became torn and contorted. One by one, they began to weep, to sob, and the sound of their grief rose upwards like an arching wave, clamorous with anguish and despair. They cowered; they covered their faces with their hands. Their lamentations, now low and hoarse, struck on the hearts of even the hardest with unbearable force. All fear for themselves had gone from them. They mourned simply and movingly, with sorrow.
Then, slowly, one by one, they fell on their knees, kneeling with bent heads, still weeping. A peasant nearest the priest spoke hoarsely, lifting up his hands with humble abandon:
“Father, we do not know why we did this thing. We have killed our lord, our friend. Do not ask us why. We do not know.”
The priest listened. Then he held up his hands over them, lifted his face to the stormy heavens and prayed in silence. His tears rolled over his face.
Arsène, watching as if in a dream, felt a tug on his arm. Young de la Royale whispered to him with painful impatience: “Let us be done with them, and this tattered priest.”
Arsène stared at him unseeingly, then turned again to the Abbé Lovelle. The abbé was regarding him, still weeping. He said: “Monsieur, where is your authority to execute these helpless people?”
Arsène gave him the order in silence. By the light of the rapid lightning, the abbé read it. He handed it back. His small old face was paler than ever.
He said, and his voice was quiet: “There was a man who died on a cross. He said: ‘Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.’”
His words fell in the dark silence like a distant echo. He clasped his hands, and looked only at Arsène.
When Arsène spoke his voice was a muffled croak: “Do you think I rejoice in this, Monsieur le Curé? Ten years ago, there was a similar murder of the lord of certain estates. He was cruel and depraved. Nevertheless, the law demanded that every peasant be put to death for this murder. If I do not avenge the Comte de Vitry, the law of France will do so.”
The priest, after a long last look at him, turned his gaze to the heap of hanged men and women, to the corpses who had been butchered by sword and dagger and thrown aside. He shuddered, as if struck.
Arsène spoke again: “You may shrive them, Father, but the vengeance must take place. Do you think the law will be more merciful than I?”
The abbé lifted his hand, and pointed slowly at Arsène. “Monsieur, you have in your possession full authority to do as you desire. If you wish to murder these poor wretches, authority is given to you. If you wish to spare them, the authority grants this also.”
His words, trembling, but full of strength and stern accusation, filled the air. The peasants’ sobs and groans had subsided to a low lamentation, without words or prayers.
Arsène’s face tightened, became grim and darker. “Monsieur le Curé,” he said, “I do not wish to spare them.” He added: “They killed my friend.”
The abbé’s countenance quickened, became alive and passionate. He clasped his hands together. “Monsieur, they killed their friend, and mine, and yours! But ask yourself in your heart, if he would have wished you to do this thing!”
Arsène did not answer. The abbé lifted his eyes and cried out: “The soul of that good man stands in denunciation before you, Monsieur! He would have forgiven these poor people! He would have understood them. You are not worthy to be his friend, Monsieur. You dare not call him ‘friend’.”
Arsène’s companions, wrapped shivering in their cloaks, smiled faintly. They looked down upon this weary old man with the tears upon his face, his voice ringing in the somber and hollow air. Their faces expressed their impatience and disgust. But Arsène did not see their smiles.
The abbé, seeing Arsène’s dark silence, approached nearer. He seized a fold of his dripping cloak. He fell on his knees. His seamed face was bright with his grief and despair and pleading.
“You have done enough, Monsieur. Will these murders bring back our poor and devoted friend, who was filled only with mercy and compassion? See how they weep! They are not afraid, not terrified. They wish for death, in extenuation for their blind and ignorant crime. If you execute them, one and all will go humbly to his death, understanding that it is a just punishment. Can further murder do more, increase their anguish and their sorrow and regret? You will take vengeance on men already punished, already prostrated and undone. Is that not enough? More violence will destroy only your own soul. It cannot inflict greater punishment on these poor people.”
His trembling hands wound themselves feverishly in Arsène’s cloak. He tried to step back. But the priest’s despairing grip only tightened. He embraced Arsène’s knees. He wept. His face, passionate and wild with his pleading, was a moving thing to see.
Arsène spoke brokenly: “How can I spare them? I wish them to die. I cannot command myself to wish anything else. They deserve death.” And then a madness took hold of him, and he cried out: “All mankind deserves death! I wish that I might inflict it on all the world!”
The priest’s arms tightened about Arsène’s knees. He looked up at him, streaming with tears. But his face was sorrowful and fixed as he gazed earnestly at the young man.
“To speak so is to speak against Almighty God, who made these poor creatures. Monsieur, reflect on the dark and nameless beginning of mankind. Reflect on its former oneness with the beasts of the forest and the wild plains. Reflect how it first looked dimly on the light and began its slow and tortuous ascent from the abyss. A thousand times has the beast’s torn foot slipped, and a thousand times has he returned to the pit from which he came. But always, he climbs again, impelled by only God knows what strange, terrible and immortal urge—Monsieur, we must remember that urge, even in our most distraught and hating moments. Who knows but that the day will come when that eternal and holy stirring which lies even in the barest soul will not burst into universal light? For the sake of that hope, we must have pity, we must have mercy, we must have prayer and hope and faith. We must have the long patience of God.”
And now it seemed to Arsène that the old man was no longer pleading for the lives of the miserable peasants, but for his, Arsène’s, own soul. His urging, his passion, his tears and his solemnity was for the spiritual saving of this young man alone. A thousand thousand lives might be lost, and it would be nothing. But to this old priest the loss of a single soul was greater than the destruction of a whole universe.
“I implore you to reflect, Monsieur! I implore you, in the name of God, in the name of the Comte de Vitry, who loved you, in the name of your soul, to spare these poor creatures!”
A spasm convulsed him. His strength failed. He fell at Arsène’s feet, and laid his head helplessly and humbly on those muddied boots. His gray hairs covered them. His hands embraced them, with all the iron and convulsive grasp of a dying man. Then, moaning, he kissed those boots, crying over and over: “Spare them. In the name of God—in the name of God.”
Arsène could not endure it. He tried to raise the old man, but the priest clung to him with superhuman strength, as if he felt that in imprisoning Arsène in his arms he could stay the executioner. Arsène gasped. He could hardly breathe. He looked about him with swimming eyes. He looked at his friends. Their eyes fell uneasily away from him, and they seemed to recoil. He looked at Crequy.
The giant was regarding him with a strange and lowering look. But now there was no evil in it, only confusion and a coarse pity. He looked at the peasants. They were no longer sobbing and groaning. They knelt in silence, their heads bent on their breasts.
An iron band tightened about Arsène’s heart. He lifted his hands; they fell impotently to his side. He looked down at the groveling priest who still embraced him so desperately. The wind, returning with increased ferocity, struck every figure, lifted every garment like a misshapen and batlike wing. The thunder rolled closer. Now everything was lit continually in lightning.
Something seemed to open wide in Arsène, to bleed and throb and ache with an intolerable anguish. He gently disengaged the priest’s arms. Those arms fell away, like the arms of the dead. He lifted the priest to his feet and held him against his breast. The gray head dropped on his shoulder, as if the old man had expired.
“I spare them, Father,” he said. “Let them go in peace.”
Now the rain came in gray and battering cataracts, sweeping over the kneeling peasants. The wind caused the last hanged man to dance grotesquely from his rope. Arsène lifted the priest in his arms and carried him into the tavern.
In his will, Paul de Vitry had left to his friend Arsène the whole of his fortunes and his estates, to do with them as he wished.
Before he left Chantilly, Arsène appointed Crequy and the priest as administrators of the estates.
“On the one hand will be sweetness and mercy, on the other hand will be suspicious justice and sternness,” he said, out of his new and aching wisdom. “This will be good.” He added: “Men must earn and understand liberty. If it is given to them before they understand, it will be despised.”
He had sent to Paris for a carriage. In this, he carried away Cecile Grandjean, with the young Roselle.