THE QUEEN PEDAUQUE (Part 2)

CHAPTER XVII

Outside Mademoiselle Catherine’s House—We are invited in by M. d’Anquetil—The Supper—The Visit of the Owner and the horrible Consequences.

That evening my tutor and I happened to be in the Rue du Bac, and as it was rather warm M. Jerome Coignard said to me:

“Jacques Tournebroche, my son, would it be agreeable to you to turn to the left, into the Rue de Grenelle, in quest of a tavern—that’s to say, to some place where we could get a pot of wine for two sous? I am rather short of cash, my boy, and strongly suppose you to be no better off. M. d’Asterac, who possibly can make gold, does not give any to his secretaries and servants, as we well know, to our cost, you and I. He leaves us in a lamentable state. I have never a penny in my pocket, and it will become necessary to remedy that evil by industry and artifice. It is a fine thing to bear poverty with an even mind, like Epictetus of glorious memory. But it is an exercise I am tired of and which has become tedious by habit. I feel it is high time for a change of virtue, and to insinuate myself into the possession of wealth without being possessed by it, which certainly is the noblest state to be reached by the soul of a philosopher. I shall feel myself obliged, very soon, to earn profits of some kind to show that my sagacity has not failed me during my prosperity. I am in search of the means to reach such an issue; my mind is occupied by it, Tournebroche.”

And as my dear tutor spoke with a noble distinction of that matter, we came near the pretty dwelling wherein M. de la Gueritude had lodged Mademoiselle Catherine. “You’ll recognise it, she had said to me, by the roses on the balcony.” There was not light enough to see the roses, but I fancied I could smell them. Advancing a few yards I saw her at the window watering flowers. She recognised me, laughed, and threw me kisses with her chubby little hand. Upon that a hand passing through the open window slapped her cheek. In her surprise she let the water jug slip out of her hand, it fell down into the street, at a hair’s breadth from my tutor’s head. The slapped beauty disappeared from the window, and the ear-boxer appeared; he leaned out and shouted:

“Thank God, sir, you are not the Capuchin. I cannot stand seeing my mistress throw kisses to that stinking beast, who continually prowls under this window. For once I have not to blush at her choice. You look quite an honest man, and I believe I have seen you before. Do me the honour to come up. Within a supper is prepared. You’ll do me a real favour to partake of it, as well as the abbé, who has just had a pot of water thrown over his head, and shakes himself like a wetted dog. After supper we’ll have a game of cards, and at daybreak we’ll go hence to cut one another’s throats. But that will be purely and simply an act of civility and only to do you honour, sir, for, in truth, that girl is not worth the thrust of a sword. She is a hussy. I’ll never see her any more.”

I recognised in the speaker, the Monsieur d’Anquetil whom I had seen a short time ago excite his followers so vehemently to spike Friar Ange. Now he spoke with courtesy and treated me as a gentleman. I understood all the favour he conferred on me by his consent to cut my throat. Nor was my dear tutor less sensible of so much urbanity, and after having shaken himself he said to me:

“Jacques Tournebroche, my son, we cannot say nay to such a gracious invitation.”

Already two lackeys had come down bearing torches. They led us to a room where a collation had been prepared on a table lit up by wax candles burning in two silver candelabra. M. d’Anquetil invited us to be seated, and my good master tied his napkin round his throat. He already had a thrush on his fork when heart-rending sobs were to be heard.

“Don’t take any notice of yonder noise,” said M. d’Anquetil, “it’s only Catherine, whom I have locked in that room.”

“Ah! sir; you must forgive her,” said my kind-hearted tutor, looking sadly on the gold-brown toasted little bird on his fork. “The pleasantest meat tastes bitter when seasoned with tears and moans. Could you have the heart to let a woman cry? Reprieve this one, I beg of you! Is she then so blamable for having thrown a kiss to my young pupil, who was her neighbour and companion in the days of their common mediocrity, at a time when this pretty girl’s charms were only famous under the vine arbour of the Little Bacchus? It was but an innocent action, as much so as a human, and particularly a woman’s, action can ever be innocent, and altogether free of the original stain. Allow me also to say, sir, that jealousy is a Gothic sentiment, a sad reminder of barbaric customs, which has no business to survive in a delicate, well-born soul.”

“Monsieur l’Abbé,” inquired M. d’Anquetil, “on what grounds do you presume me to be jealous? I am not! But I cannot stand a woman mocking me.”

“We are playthings of the winds,” said my tutor, and sighed. “Everything laughs at us, the sky, the stars, rain and shadow, zephyr and light and woman. Let Catherine sup with us. She is pretty and will enliven our table. Whatever she may have done, that kiss and the rest, do not render her the less pleasant to look at. The infidelities of women do not spoil their beauty. Nature, pleased to adorn them, is indifferent to their faults; follow her, and forgive Catherine.”

I seconded my tutor’s entreaties, and M. d’Anquetil consented to free the prisoner. He went to the door of the room from whence the cries came, unlocked it, and called Catherine, whose only reply was to redouble her wailing.

“Gentlemen,” her lover said to us, “there she is lying flat on her belly, her head plunged in the pillows, and at every sob raising her rump ridiculously. Look at that. It is for such we take so much trouble and commit so many absurdities! Catherine, come to supper.”

But Catherine did not move, and continued to cry. He pulled her by the arm, by the waist. She resisted. He became more pressing, and said caressingly:

“Come, darling, get up.”

But she was stubborn, would not change place, and stuck there, holding to pillows and mattress.

At last her lover lost patience, swore, and shouted rudely:

“Get up, slut!”

At once she got up, and, smiling amid her tears, took his arm and came with him to the dining-room, looking the very picture of a happy victim.

She sat down between M. d’Anquetil and me, her head inclined on the shoulder of her lover the while her foot felt for mine under the table.

“Gentlemen,” said our host, “forgive my vivacity, an impulse I cannot regret, because it gives me the honour to entertain you at this place. To say the truth, I cannot endure all the whims of this pretty girl, and I have been very suspicious since I surprised her with her Capuchin.”

“My dear friend,” Catherine said, pressing at the sama time her foot on mine, “your jealousy goes astray. You should know that my only liking is for M. Jacques.”

“She jests,” said M. d’Anquetil.

“Do not doubt of it,” said I. “It is quite evident that she loves you, and you alone.”

“Without flattering myself,” he replied, “I have somehow attracted her attachment. But she is coquettish and fickle.”

“Give me something to drink,” said the abbe.

M. d’Anquetil passed him the demijohn and exclaimed:

“By gad! abbé, you who belong to the Church, you’ll tell us why women love Capuchins.”

M. Coignard wiped his lips and said:

“The reason is that Capuchins love humbly, and never refuse anything. Another reason is that neither reflection nor courtesy weakens their natural instincts. Sir, yours is a generous wine.”

“You do me too much honour,” replied M. d’Anquetil. “It is M. de la Guéritude’s. I have taken his mistress. I may as well take his bottles.”

“Nothing is more equitable,” said my tutor. “I see, with pleasure, that you rise above prejudices.”

“Do not praise me, abbe, more than I deserve. My birth renders easy to me what may be difficult for the vulgar. A commoner is compelled to have some restraint in all his doings. He is tied down to rigid probity; but a gentleman enjoys the honour of fighting for his king and his pleasure, and does not need to encumber himself with foolish trifles. I have seen active service under M. de Villars, and in the War of Succession, and have also run the risk of being killed without any reason in the battle of Parma. The least you can do is to leave me free to lick my servants, to balk my creditors, and take, if it please me, the wives of my friends—likewise their mistresses.”

“You speak nobly,” said my good master, “and you are careful to maintain the prerogatives of the nobility.”

“I have not,” replied M. d’Anquetil, “those scruples which intimidate the crowd of ordinary men, and which I consider good only to stop the timorous and restrain the wretched.”

“Well spoken!” said my tutor.

“I do not believe in virtue,” replied the other.

“You’re right,” said my master again. “With his quite peculiar shape, the human animal could not be virtuous without being somewhat deformed. Look, for an example, on this pretty girl supping with us; on her beautiful bosom, her marvellously rounded form, and the rest. In what part of her enchanting body could she lodge a grain of virtue? There is no room for it; everything is so firm, so juicy, solid, and plump! Virtue, like the raven, nests in ruins. Her dwellings are the cavities and wrinkles of the human body. I myself, sir, who, since my childhood, have meditated over the austere principles of religion and philosophy, could not insinuate into myself a minimum of virtue otherwise than by means of constitutional flaws produced by sufferings and age. And ever more I absorbed less virtue than pride. In doing so I got into the habit of addressing to the Divine Creator of this world the following prayer: ‘My Lord, preserve me from virtue if it is to lead me from godliness.’ Ah! godliness; this it is possible and necessary to attain. That is our decent ending. May we reach it some day! In the meantime, give me something to drink.”

“I’ll confess,” said M. d’Anquetil, “that I do not believe in a God.”

“Now, for once, sir, I must blame you,” said the abbé “One must believe in God, and all the truths of our holy religion.”

M. d’Anquetil protested.

“You make game of us, abbé, and take us to be worse ninnies than we really are. As I have said, I do not believe either in God or devil, and I never go to Mass—the king’s Mass alone excepted. The sermons of the priests are stories for old women, bearable, perhaps, in such times as when my grandmother saw the Abbé de Choisy, dressed as a woman, distribute the holy bread at the Church of Saint Jacques du Haut Pas. In those times there may have been religion; today there is none, thank God!”

“By all the Saints and all the devils, don’t speak like that, my friend,” exclaimed Catherine. “As sure as that pie stands on this table God exists! And if you want a proof of it, let me say, that when, last year, on a certain day, I was in direful distress and penury, I went, on the advice of Friar Ange, to burn a wax candle in the Church of the Capuchins, and on the following I met M. de la Guéritude at the promenade, who gave me this house, with all the furniture it contains, the cellar full of wine, some of which we enjoy tonight, and sufficient money to live honestly.”

“Fie! fie!” said M. d’Anquetil, “the idiot makes God Almighty interfere in dirty affairs. This shocks and wounds one’s feelings, even if one is an atheist.”

“My dear sir,” said my good tutor, “it is a great deal better to compromise God in dirty business, as does that simple-minded girl, than, as you do, to chase Him out of the world He has created. If He has not expressly sent that burly contractor to Catherine, His creature, He at least suffered her to meet him. We are ignorant of His ways, and what this simpleton says contains more truth, maybe mixed and alloyed with blasphemy, than all the vain words a reprobate draws out of the emptiness of his heart. Nothing is more despicable than the libertinism of mind that the youth of our days make a show of. Your words make me shiver. Am I to reply to them by proofs out of the Holy Scriptures and the writings of the fathers? Shall I make you hear God speaking to the patriarchs and to the prophets: Si locutus est Abraham et semini ejus in saecula? Shall I spread out before you the traditions of the Church? Invoke against you the authority of both Testaments? Blind you with Christ’s miracles, and His words as miraculous as His deeds? No! I will not arm myself with those holy weapons. I fear too much to pollute them in such a fight, which is not at all solemn. In her prudence the Church warns us not to risk turning edification into a scandal. Therefore I will not speak, sir, of that wherewith I have been fed on the steps of sanctuaries. But, without violating the chaste modesty of my soul, and without exposing to profanation the sacred mysteries, I’ll show you God overawing human reason, I’ll show you it by the philosophy of pagans, and by the tittle-tattle of ungodly persons. Yes, sir, I’ll make you avow that you recognise Him, against your own free will. Much as you want to pretend He does not exist you cannot but agree that, if a certain order prevails in this world, such order is divine—flows out of the spring and fountain of all order.”

“I agree,” replied M. d’Anquetil, reclining in his armchair and fondling his finely shaped calves.

“Therefore, take care,” said my good tutor. “When you say that God does not exist what else are you doing but linking thought, directing reason, and manifesting in your innermost soul, the principle of all thought, and all reason, which is God? Is it possible only to attempt to establish that He is not, without illuminating, by the most paltry reasoning, which still is reasoning, some remains of the harmony He has established in the universe?”

“Abbé,” replied M. d’Anquetil, “you are a humorous sophist. It is well known in our days that this world is the work of chance, and it is superfluous to speak of a providence, since natural philosophers have discovered, by means of their telescopes, that winged frogs are living on the moon.”

“Well, sir,” replied my good master, “I am in no way angry that winged frogs are living on the moon; such kind of marsh-birds are very worthy inhabitants of a world which has not been sanctified by the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. True, we only know the minor part of the universe, and it is quite possible, as M. d’Asterac says—who is a bit of a fool—that this earth is no more than a spot of mud in the infinity of worlds. Maybe the astronomer Copernicus was not altogether dreaming when he taught that, mathematically, the earth is not the centre of creation. I have also read that an Italian of the name of Galileo, who died miserably, shared Copernicus’ opinion, and in our days we see little M. de Fontenelle entertaining the same ideas. But all this is but a vain imagination, fit only to unhinge weak minds. What does it matter if the physical world is larger or smaller, of one shape or another? It is quite sufficient that it can be duly considered only by intelligence and reason for God to be manifest therein.

“If a wise man’s meditations could be of some use to you, sir, I will inform you how such proof of God’s existence, better than the proof of St. Anselm, and quite independent of that resulting from Revelation, appeared to me suddenly in unclouded limpidity. It was at Séez, five and twenty years ago when I was the bishop’s librarian. The gallery windows opened on a courtyard where, every morning, I saw a kitchen wench clean the saucepans. She was young, tall, sturdy. A slight down, shadowlike, over her lips lent irritating and proud gracefulness to her countenance. Her entangled hair, meagre bosom, and long, naked arms were worthy of an Adonis or a Diana. She was of a boyish beauty. I loved her for it, loved her strong, red hands. All in all that girl evoked in me a longing as rude and brutal as herself. You know how imperious such longings are. I made her understand by sign and word. Without the slightest hesitation she quickly let me know that my longings were not stronger than hers, and appointed the very next night for a meeting, to take place in the loft, where she slept on the hay, by gracious permission of the bishop, whose saucepans she cleaned. Impatiently I waited for the night. When at last her shadow covered the earth I climbed, by means of a ladder, to the loft, where the girl expected me. My first thought was to embrace her, my second to admire the links which brought me into her arms. For, sir, a young ecclesiastic—a kitchen wench—a ladder—a bundle of hay. What a train! What regulation! What a concourse of pre-established harmonies! What a concatenation of cause and effect! What a proof of God’s existence! I was strangely struck by it, and mightily glad I am to be able to add this profane demonstration to the reasons furnished by theology, which are, however, amply sufficient.”

“Abbé,” said Catherine, “the only weak point in your story is that the girl had a meagre bosom. A woman without breasts is like a bed without pillows. But don’t you know, d’Anquetil, what we might do?”

“Yes,” said he, “play a game of ombre, which is played by three.”

“If you will,” she said. “But, dear, have the pipes brought in. Nothing is pleasanter than to smoke a pipe of tobacco when drinking wine.”

A lackey brought the cards and pipes, which we lit. Soon the room was full of dense smoke, wherein our host and the Abbé Coignard played gravely at piquet.

Luck followed my dear tutor up to the moment when M. d’Anquetil, fancying he saw him for the third time score fifty-five when he had only made forty points, called him a Greek, a villainous trickster, a Knight of Transylvania, and threw a bottle at his head, which broke on the table, flooding it with wine.

“Well, sir,” said the abbé, “you’ll have to take the trouble to open another bottle: we are thirsty.”

“With pleasure,” replied M. d’Anquetil. “But, abbé, know that a gentleman does not mark points he has not made, and does not cheat at cards except at the king’s card-table, round which all sorts of people are assembled, to whom one owes nothing. On any other table it is a vile action. Abbé, say, do you want to be looked on as an adventurer?”

“It is remarkable,” said my good tutor, “that you blame at cards or dice a practice so much commended in the art of war, politics and trade; in each of these people glorify themselves by correcting the injuries of fortune. It is not that I do not pique myself on honesty when playing at cards. Thank God, I always play straight, and you must have been dreaming, sir, when you fancied I had marked points I did not make. Had it been otherwise, I would appeal to the example given by the blessed Bishop of Geneva, who did not scruple to cheat at cards. But I cannot defend myself against the reflection that at play men are much more sensitive than in serious business, and that they employ the whole of their probity at the backgammon board, where it incommodes them but indifferently, whereas they put it entirely in the background in a battle or a treaty of peace, where it would be troublesome. Polyænus, sir, has written, in the Greek language a book on Stratagems, wherein is shown to what excess deceit is pushed by the great leaders.”

“Abbé,” said M. d’Anquetil, “I have not read your Polyænus, and do not think I ever shall read him. But like every true gentleman, I have been to the wars. I have served the king for eighteen months. It is the noblest of all professions. I’ll tell you exactly what war is. I may tell the secret of it, as nobody is present to listen but yourself, some bottles, yonder gentleman whom I intend to kill very shortly, and that girl, who begins to undress herself.”

“Yes,” said Catherine, “I undress, and will keep only my chemise on, because I feel too hot.”

“Well then,” M. d’Anquetil continued, “whatever may be printed of it in the gazettes, war consists, above all things, of stealing the pigs and chickens of peasants. Soldiers in the fields have no other occupation.”

“You are right,” said M. Coignard, “and in days of yore it was the saying in Gaul that the soldier’s best friend was Madame Marauding. But I beg of you not to kill my pupil, Jacques Tournebroche.”

“Ouf!” exclaimed Catherine, arranging the lace of her chemise on her bosom. “Now I feel easier.”

“Abbé,” replied M. d’Anquetil, “honour compels me to do it.”

But my kind-hearted tutor went on:

“Sir, Jacques Tournebroche is very useful to me for the translation, I have undertaken, of Zosimus the Panopolitan. I would give you many thanks not to fight him before the finishing touch has been given to that grand work.”

“To the deuce with your Zosimus,” said M. d’Anquetil. “To the deuce with him! Do you hear, abbé! I’ll send him to the deuce, as a king would do with his first mistress.”

And he sang:

“Pour dresser un jeune courrier

Et l’affermir sur l’étrier

Il lui fallait une routière

Laire lan laire.”

“What’s that Zosimus?”

“Zosimus, sir, Zosimus of Panopolis, was a learned Greek, who flourished at Alexandria in the third century of the Christian era, and wrote treatises on the spagyric art.”

“Do you fancy it matters to me? Why do you translate it?

“Battons le fer quand il est chaud

Dit-elle, en faisant sonner haut

Le nom de sultan première

Laire lan laire.”

“Sir,” said my dear tutor, “I quite agree with you; there is no practical utility in it, and by it the course of the world will not be changed in the slightest. But making clearer by annotations and comments this treatise, which that Greek compiled for his sister Theosebia—”

Catherine interrupted him by singing in a high-pitched voice:

“Je veux en dépit des jaloux

Qu’on fasse duc mon epoux

Lasse de le voir secretairev

Laire lan laire.”

And my tutor continued:

“—I contribute to the treasure of knowledge gathered by erudite men, and bring forward one stone of my own for a monument to true history, which is a better one than the chronicles of war and treaties; for, sir, the nobility of man—”

Catherine continued to sing:

“Je sais bien qu’on murmurera

Que Paris nous chansonnera

Mais tant pis pour le sot vulgaire

Laire lan laire.”

And my dear tutor went on:

“—is thought. And concerning that, it is not indifferent to know what idea the Egyptians had formed of the nature of metals and the qualities of the primitive substance.”

The Abbé Jerôme Coignard, having come to the end of his discourse, emptied a big glass of wine, while Catherine sang:

“Par l’épée ou par le fourreau

Devenir due est toujours beau

Il n’importe le maniére

Laire lan laire.”

“Abbé,” said M. d’Anquetil, “you do not drink, and in spite of such abstinence you lose your reason. In Italy, during the War of Succession, I was under the orders of a brigadier who translated Polybius. But he was an idiot. Why translate Zosimus?”

“If you want my true reason,” replied the abbé, “because I find some sensuality in it.”

“That’s something like!” protested M. d’Anquetil. “But in what can M. Tournebroche, who at this moment is caressing my mistress, assist you?”

“With the knowledge of Greek I have given him.”

M. d’Anquetil turned round to me and said:

“What, sir, you know Greek! You are not then a gentleman?”

“No, sir,” I replied, “I am not. My father is the banner-bearer of the Guild of Parisian Cooks.”

“Well, under such conditions it is impossible for me to kill you. Kindly accept my excuses. But, abbé, you don’t drink. You imposed upon me. I believed you to be a real good tippler, and wished you to become my chaplain as soon as I could set up my own establishment.”

However, M. Coignard did drink all that the bottle contained, and Catherine, inclining to me, whispered in my ear:

“Jacques, I feel that I shall never love anyone but you.”

These words, spoken by a really fine woman clad in no other wrapper than a chemise, troubled me to the extreme. Catherine ended by fuddling me entirely, by making me drink out of her own glass, an action passing unobserved in the confusion of a supper which had overheated the heads of us all.

M. d’Anquetil knocked off the neck of a bottle on the corner of the table and filled our bumpers; from this moment on, I cannot give a reliable account of what was said and done around me. One incident I remember: Catherine treacherously emptying her glass into her lover’s neck, between the nape and the collar of his coat; and M. d’Anquetil retorting by pouring the contents of two or three bottles over the girl. Wearing nothing beyond her chemise, it changed Catherine into a kind of mythological figure of a humid species like nymphs and naiads. She cried herself into a rage and twisted in convulsions.

At that very moment, in the silence of the night, we heard knocks at the house door. We became suddenly motionless and dumb, like people bewitched.

The knocks soon redoubled in strength and frequency. M. d’Anquetil was the first to break the silence by questioning himself aloud, swearing horribly the while, who the deuce the pesterers could be. My good tutor, to whom the most ordinary circumstances often inspired admirable maxims, rose and said with unction and gravity:

“What does it matter whose hand knocks so violently at closed doors for a vulgar, perhaps ridiculous, reason? Do not let us seek to know, and consider them as knocking on the door of our hardened and corrupted souls. At each knock let us say to ourselves: This one is to give us notice to amend and think on the salvation we neglect in the turmoil of our pleasures, that other one is to remind us of eternity. In that way we shall draw the utmost profit out of an incident which, after all, is as paltry as it is frivolous.”

“You’re humorous, abbé,” said M. d’Anquetil; “to judge by the sturdiness of their knocks, they’ll burst the door open.”

And as a fact the knocker resounded like thunder.

“They are robbers,” exclaimed the soaked girl. “Jesus! We shall be massacred; it is our chastisement for having sent away the little friar. Many times I have told you. M. d’Anquetil, that misfortune comes to houses from which a Capuchin has been driven.’

“Hear the stupid!” replied M. d’Anquetil. “That damned monk makes her believe any imbecility he chooses to dish her up. Thieves would be more polite, or at least more discreet. I rather think it is the watch.”

“The watch! Worse and worse,” said Catherine.

“Bah!” M. d’Anquetil exclaimed, “we’ll lick them.”

My dear tutor took the precaution to put one bottle in one of his pockets, and as an equipoise another bottle in the other pocket. The house shook all over from the furious knocks. M. d’Anquetil, whose military qualities were aroused by the knocker’s onslaught, after reconnoitring, exclaimed:

“Ah! Ah! Ah! Do you know who knocks? It is M. de la Gueritude with his full-bottomed periwig and two big flunkeys carrying lighted torches.”

“That’s not possible,” said Catherine, “at this very moment he is in bed with his old woman.”

“Then it is his ghost,” said M. d’Anquetil. “And the ghost also wears his periwig, which is so ridiculous that any self-respecting spectre would refuse to copy it.”

“Do you speak the truth, and not jeer at me?” asked Catherine. “Is it really M. de la Guéritude?”

“It’s himself, Catherine, if I may believe my own eyes.”

“Then I am lost!” exclaimed the poor girl. “Women are indeed unhappy! They are never left in peace. What will become of me? Would you not hide, gentlemen, in some of the cupboards?”

“That could be done,” said M. Jerome Coignard, “as far as we are concerned, but how are we to hide all those empty bottles, mostly smashed, or at least broken necked; the remains of that demijohn M. d’Anquetil threw at me; that tablecloth; those plates, candelabra and mademoiselle’s chemise, which in its soaked state is nothing but a transparent veil encircling her beauty?”

“It is true,” said Catherine, “yonder idiot has drenched my chemise, and I am catching cold. But listen. Perhaps M. d’Anquetil could hide in the top room, and I would make the abbé my uncle and Jacques my brother.”

“No good at all,” said M. d’Anquetil. “I’ll go myself and kindly ask M. de la Gueritude to have supper with us.”

We urged him, all of us—my tutor, Catherine and I—to keep quiet; we entreated him, hung on his neck. It was useless. He got hold of a candelabra and descended the stairs. Trembling we followed him. He unlocked the door. M. de la Guéritude was there, exactly as M. d’Anquetil had described him, with his periwig, between two flunkeys bearing torches. M. d’Anquetil saluted with the utmost correctness and said:

“Accord us the favour to come in, sir. You’ll find some persons as amiable as singular. Tournebroche, to whom Mam’selle Catherine throws kisses from the window, and a priest who believes in God.”

Wherewith he bowed respectfully.

M. de la Gueritude was of the dry sort, very tall, and little inclined to the enjoyment of a joke. That of M. d’Anquetil provoked him strongly, and his anger rose when he saw my good tutor, one bottle in hand and two peeping out of his pockets, and by the look of Catherine with her wet chemise sticking to her body.

“Young man,” he said in an icy fit of passion to M. d’Anquetil, “I have the honour to know your father, of whom I will inquire, not later than tomorrow, the name of the town to which the king shall send you to meditate over the shame of your behaviour and impertinence. That worthy nobleman, to whom I have lent some money I do not reclaim, can refuse me nothing. And our well-beloved Prince, who is in precisely the same position as your father, has always a kindness for me. Consider it a matter done. I have settled, thank God, others more difficult. Now as to that lady yonder, of whom neither repentance nor improvement can be expected. I’ll say tomorrow before noon, two words to the Lieutenant of Police, whom I know to be well disposed, to send her to the spittel. I have nothing else to say to you. This house is my property, I have paid for it and I intend to enter when I like.” Then, turning to his flunkeys, and pointing out my tutor and myself with his walking stick, he said:

“Throw these two drunkards out.”

M. Jérome Coignard was commonly of an exemplary forbearance, and he used to say that he owed his gentleness to the vicissitudes of life; chance having treated him as the sea treats the pebbles—that is, polishing them by means of the rolling of flood and ebb. He could easily stand insults, as much by Christian spirit as by philosophy. But what helped him best thereto was his deep-rooted contempt of mankind, not excepting himself. However, for once he lost all measure and forgot all prudence.

“Hold your tongue, vile publican,” he shouted and brandished a bottle like a crowbar. “If yonder rascals dare to approach me I’ll smash their heads, to teach them respect for my cloth, which proves in an ample way my sacred calling.”

In the faint glimmer of the torches, shiny from sweat, his eyes starting out of their sockets, his coat unbuttoned, and his big belly half out of his breeches, he looked a fellow not easy to be got rid of. The lackeys hesitated.

“Out with him, out with him,” shouted M. de la Guéritude; “out with this bag of wine! Can’t you see that all you have to do is to push him in the gutter, where he’ll remain till the scavengers throw him into the dustcart? I would throw him out myself were I not afraid to pollute my clothes.”

My good tutor flew into a passion, and shouted in a voice worthy to sound in a church:

“You odious money-monger, infamous partisan, barbarous evildoer, you pretend this house to be yours? So that everyone may know it belongs to you, inscribe on the door the gospel word Aceldema, which in our language means Bloodmoney. And then we’ll let the master enter his dwelling. Thief, robber, murderer, write with the piece of charcoal I throw in your face, write with your own filthy hand, on the floor, your title deed. Bloodmoney of the widow and orphans, bloodmoney of the just. Aceldema. If not, out with you, man of quantities! We’ll remain.”

M. de la Gueritude had never in his life heard anything of this sort, and thought he had to deal with a madman, as one might easily suppose, and, more for defence than attack, he raised his big stick. My good tutor, out of his senses, threw a bottle at the head of the contractor, who fell headlong on the floor, howling, “He has killed me!” And as he was swimming in red wine he really looked as though murdered. Both the flunkeys wanted to throw themselves on the murderer, and one of them, a burly fellow, tried to grasp him, when M. Coignard gave the fellow such a butt that he rolled in the stream beside the financier.

Unluckily he rose quickly, and, arming himself with a still burning torch, jumped into the passage, where bad luck awaited him. My good master was no longer there; he had taken to his heels. But M. d’Anquetil was still there with Catherine, and he it was who received the burning torch on his forehead, an outrage he could not stand. He drew his sword, and drove it to the hilt in the unlucky knave’s stomach, teaching him, at his own expense, how fatal it may be to attack a gentleman. Now M. Coignard had not got twenty yards away from the house when the other lackey, a tall fellow, with the limbs of a daddy-longlegs, ran after him, shouting for the guard.

“Stop him! Stop him!” The footman ran faster than the abbé, and we could see him, at the corner of the Rue Saint Guillaume, extending his arms to catch M. Coignard by the collar of his gown. But my dear tutor, who had more than one trick, veering abruptly, got behind the fellow, tripped him up, and sent him on to a stone post, where he got his head broken. It was done before M. d’Anquetil and I, running to the abbé’s assistance, could reach him. We could not leave M. Coignard in this pressing danger.

“Abbe,” said M. d’Anquetil, “give me your hand. You’re a gallant man.”

“I really cannot help thinking,” my good master replied, “that I have been somewhat murderously inclined; but I am not cruel enough to be proud of it. I am quite satisfied so long as I am not reproached too vehemently. Such violence does not lie in my habits, and as you can see, sir, I am better fitted to lecture from the chair of a college on belles-lettres than I am to fight with lackeys at the corner of a street.”

“Oh!” replied M. d’Anquetil, “that’s not the worst of the whole business. I fully believe you have knocked the Farmer-general on the head.”

“Is it true?” questioned the abbé.

“As true as that I have perforated with my sword yonder scoundrel’s tripes.”

“Under such circumstances we ought to ask pardon of God, to whom alone we are responsible for the blood shed by us, and secondly to hasten to the nearest fountain, there to wash ourselves, because I perceive that my nose is bleeding.”

“Right you are, abbé,” said M. d’Anquetil; “for the blackguard now dying in the gutter has cut my forehead. What an impertinence!”

“Forgive him,” said the abbé, “as you wish to be forgiven yourself.”

At the place where the Rue de Bac loses itself in the fields, we fortunately found along the wall of a hospital a little bronze Triton, shooting a spirt of water into a stone tub. We stopped to wash and drink, for our throats were dry.

“What have we done,” said my master, “and how could I have lost my temper, usually so peaceable? True men must not be judged by their deeds, which depend on circumstances, but rather, on the example of God our Father, by their secret thoughts and their deepest intentions.”

“And Catherine,” I asked, “what has become of her through this horrible adventure?”

“I left her,” was M. d’Anquetil’s answer, “breathing into the mouth of her financier, to revive him. But she had better save her breath. I know La Gueritude. He is pitiless. He’ll send her to the spittel, perhaps to America. I am sorry for her. She was a fine girl. I did not love her, but she was mad after me. And, an extraordinary state of things, I am now without a mistress.”

“Don’t bother,” said my good tutor. “You’ll soon find another, not different, or hardly differing in essentials, from her. What you look for in a woman, as it appears to me, is common to all females.”

“It is clear,” said M. d’Anquetil, “that we are in danger: I of being sent to the Bastille, you, abbé, together with your pupil, Tournebroche, who certainly has not killed anybody, of being hanged.”

“That’s but too true,” said my good master. “We have to look out for safety. Perhaps it will be necessary to leave Paris, where, no doubt, we shall be wanted; and even to fly to Holland. Alas! I foresee that there I shall write lampoons for ballet girls with that same hand which has been employed to annotate right amply the alchemistic treatises of Zosimus the Panopolitan.”

“Listen to me, abbé,” said M. d’Anquetil, “I have a friend who will hide us at his country seat for any length of time. He lives within four miles of Lyons, in a country horrid and wild, where nothing is to be seen but poplars, grass and woods. There we must go. There we’ll wait till the storm is over. We’ll pass the time hunting and shooting. But we must at once find a post-chaise or, better still, a travelling coach.”

“I know where to get that,” said the abbé. “At the Red Horse hotel, at the Circus of the Bergères, you can have good horses, as well as all sorts of vehicles. I made the acquaintance of the landlord at the time I was secretary to Madame de Saint Ernest. He liked to oblige people of quality. I am not quite sure if he is still alive, but he ought to have a son like himself. Have you money?”

“I have with me a rather large sum,” replied M. d’Anquetil, “and I am glad of it, as I cannot dream of going home, where the constables will not fail to be on the lookout to arrest and conduct me to the Chatelet. I forgot my servants, whom I left in Catherine’s house, and I do not know what has become of them. I thrashed them, and never paid their wages, and withal I am not sure of their fidelity. In whom can you have confidence? Let’s be off at once for the Circus of the Bergères.”

“Sir,” said the abbé, “I’ll make you a proposal, hoping it may be agreeable to you. We are living, Tournebroche and I, in an alchemistic and ramshackle castle at the Cross of the Sablons, where we can easily stay for a dozen hours without being seen by anyone. There we will take you and wait quietly till our carriage is ready. The advantage is that the Sablons is very near the Circus of the Bergères.”

M. d’Anquetil had nothing against the abbé’s proposal, and so we resolved in front of the Triton, who blew the water out of his fat cheeks, to go first to the Cross of the Sablons, and to hire, later on, at the Red Horse hotel, a travelling coach for our journey to Lyons.

“I want to inform you, gentlemen,” said my dear tutor, “that of the three bottles I took care to carry with me, one was broken on the head of M. de la Guéritude, another one was smashed in my pocket during my flight. They are both regretted. The third, against all hope, has been preserved. Here it is!”

Pulling it out of his pocket, he placed it on the edge of the fountain.

“That’s well,” sail M, d’Anquetil. “You have some wine, I have dice and cards in my pocket. We can play.”

“It is true,” said my good master, “that is a pleasant pastime. A pack of cards is a book of adventure, of the kind called romances. It is so far superior to other books of a similar kind that it can be made and read at the same time, and that it is not necessary to have brains to make it, nor knowledge of reading to read it. It is a marvellous work, also, in that it offers a regular and new sense every time its pages are shuffled. It is a contrivance never to be too much admired, because out of mathematical principles it extracts thousands on thousands of curious combinations, and so many singular affinities that it is believed, contrary to all truth, that in it are discoverable the secrets of hearts, the mystery of destinies and the arcanum of the future. What I have said is particularly applicable to the tarot of the Bohemians, which is the finest of all games, piquet not excepted. The invention of cards must be ascribed to the ancients, and as far as I am concerned—I have, to speak candidly, no kind of documentary evidence for my assertion—I believe them to be of Chaldean origin. But in their present appearance the piquet cards cannot be traced further back than to King Charles VII., if what is said in a learned essay, that I remember to have read at Séez, is true, that the queen of hearts is an emblematical likeness of the beautiful Agnes Sorel, and that the queen of spades is, under the name of Pallas, no other than that Jeanne Dulys, better known as Joan of Arc, who by her bravery re-established the business of the French monarchy and was afterwards boiled to death by the English, in a cauldron, shown for two farthings at Rouen, where I have seen it in passing through that city. Certain historians pretend that she was burnt alive at the stake. It is to be read in the works of Nicole Gilles and in Pasquier that St Catherine and St Margaret appeared to her. Certainly it was not God who sent these saints to her, because there is no person of any learning and solid piety who does not know that Margaret and Catherine were invented by Byzantine monks, whose abundant and barbarous imaginations have altogether muddled up the martyrology. It is a ridiculous impiety to pretend that God made two saints who never existed appear to Jeanne Dulys. However, the ancient chroniclers were not afraid to publish it. Why have they not said that God sent to the Maid of Orleans the fair Yseult, Mélusine, Berthe the Bigfooted, and all the other heroines of the romances of chivalry the existence of whom is not more fabulous that that of the two virgins, Catherine and Margaret? M. de Valois, in the last century, rose with full reason against these clumsy fables, as much opposed to religion as error is to truth. It is desirable that an ecclesiastic learned in history undertook to show the distinction between real saints and saints such as Margaret, Luce or Lucie, Eustache, and perhaps Saint George, about whom I have my doubts.

“If on a future day I should be able to retire to some beautiful abbey, possessing a rich library, I will devote to this task the remainder of a life, half worn out in frightful tempests and frequent shipwrecks. I am longing for a harbour of refuge, and I have the desire and the taste for a chaste repose suitable to my age and profession.”

While M. Coignard was holding this memorable discourse, M. d’Anquetil, without listening to the abbé’s words, was seated on the edge of the fountain, shuffling the cards and swearing like a trooper, because it was too dark to play a game of piquet.

“You are right,” said my good master; “it is a bad light, and I am somewhat displeased over it, less because I cannot play cards than because I have a desire to read a few pages of the ‘Consolations’ of Boethius, of which I always carry a small edition, so as to have it handy when something unfortunate overcomes me, as has been the case this day. It is a cruel disgrace, sir, for a man of my calling to be a homicide, and liable at any moment to be locked up in one of the ecclesiastical prisons. I feel that a single page of that admirable book would strengthen my heart, crushed by the very idea of the officer.”

Having spoken, he let himself gently slide over the edge of the basin, so deep that the best part of his body went into the water. But not taking the slightest notice, and hardly feeling it, he took the Boethius out of his pocket—it was really there—and putting his spectacles on, wherein one glass only remained, and that one cracked in three places, he looked in the little book for the page most appropriate for his present situation. He doubtless would have found it, and extracted from it new strength, if the rotten state of his barnacles, the tears that came into his eyes, and the feeble light which came from the sky, had permitted him to search for it. Very soon he had to confess that he was unable to see a wink, and became angry with the moon, who showed her pointed sickle on the edge of a cloud. He reproached her and heaped bitter invectives on her. He shouted:

“Luminary obscene, mischievous and libidinous, you never tire of illuminating men’s wickedness, and you deny a ray of your light to him who searches for virtuous maxims!”

“The more so, abbé, as this bitch of a moon gives just light enough to find our way along the streets, and not sufficient to play a game of piquet. Let’s go at once to the castle you spoke of, where I have to slip in without being seen.”

That was good advice, and after we had drunk the wine to the last drop we took the road, all three of us, to the Cross of the Sablons. I walked with M. d’Anquetil. My good tutor, hindered by the water his breeches had soaked in, followed us, crying, moaning and disgusted.

CHAPTER XVIII

Our Return—We smuggle M. d’Anquetil in—M. d’Asterac on Jealousy—M. Jérome Coignard in Trouble—What happened while I was in the Laboratory—Jahel persuaded to elope.

The morning light already pricked our jaded eyes when we reached the green door to the park. We had not to use the knocker, as some time ago the porter had given us the keys of his domain. It was agreed that my good tutor, with d’Anquetil, should cautiously advance in the shadow of the lane, and that I should remain behind on the lookout for the faithful Criton, and the kitchen boys who might perhaps see us coming along. This arrangement, which was nothing but reasonable, was to turn out rather badly for me. My two companions had gone up without being discovered, and reached my room, where we had decided to hide M. d’Anquetil until the moment of escape in the post-chaise, but as I was climbing the second flight of steps I met M. d’Asterac, in a red damask gown, carrying a silver candlestick. He put, as he habitually did, his hand on my shoulder.

“Hello! my son,” he said, “are you not very happy, having broken off all intercourse with women, and by that escaped all dangers of bad company? With the august maidens of the air you need not be in fear of quarrels, scuffles, injurious and violent rows which usually occur with creatures following a loose life. In your solitude, which delights the fairies, you enjoy a delicious peace.”

I thought at first that he mocked me. But I soon found out that nothing was further from his thoughts.

“I am pleased to have met you, my son,” he continued, “and will thank you to come with me to my studio for a moment.”

I followed him. He unlocked, with a key nearly an ell long, that confounded room where I had seen the glare of infernal fires. When we were inside the laboratory he asked me to kindly make up the smouldering fire. I threw some short logs into the furnace, where I don’t know what was steaming, exhaling a suffocating odour. While he was occupied with his black cookery, cupellating and matrassing, I remained seated on a settle, and, against my will, closed my eyes. He made me reopen them to admire a green earthenware vessel, with a glass top, which he had in his hand.

“You ought to know, my son,” he said, “that this subliming pot is called aludel. It contains a liquid to be looked at with the greatest attention, as it is nothing less than the mercury of the philosophers. Do not suppose that it is to keep its present dark colour for ever. Soon it will change to white and in that state will change all metals into silver. Hereafter, by my art and industry, it will turn red, and acquire the virtue of transmuting silver into gold. It certainly would be of advantage to you that, shut in this laboratory, you should not leave it before these sublime operations have fully taken place, a process which cannot require more than two or three months. But as to ask you to do so would perhaps be imposing too hard a restriction on your youth, be satisfied, for this time, to observe the preludes of the work, while putting, if you please, as much wood on the fire as possible.”

Having said that he returned to his phials and retorts, and I could not help thinking of the sad position wherein ill-luck and imprudence had placed me.

“Alas!” I said to myself, and threw logs into the fire, “at this very moment the constables are searching for my good tutor and myself; perhaps we shall have to go to prison, certainly we have to leave this castle. I have in default of money, at least board and an honourable position. I shall never again dare to stand before M. d’Asterac, who believes me to have passed the night in the silent voluptuousness of magic, which perhaps would have been better for me. Alas! I’ll never more see Mosaide’s niece, Mademoiselle Jahel, who at night-time woke me in my room in such a charming way. No doubt she will forget me. Perhaps she’ll love someone else, and bestow on him the same caresses as she gave to me.” The idea of such an infidelity became unbearable. But as the world goes, one has to be ready for anything.

“My son,” M. d’Asterac began to say again, “you do not sufficiently feed the athanor. I see that you are still not fully convinced of the excellency of fire, which is capable of ripening this mercury and transforming it into the wonderful fruit I expect to gather very soon. More wood! The fire, my son, is the superior element; I have told you enough, and now I’ll show you an example. On a very cold day last winter, visiting Mosaide in his lodge, I found him sitting, his feet on a warming pan. I observed that the subtle particles of fire escaping from the pan had power enough to inflate and lift up the folds of his gown, wherefrom I inferred, that had the fire been hotter, it would have raised Mosaide himself into the air, of which he is certainly worthy, and that, if it should be possible to close into some kind of a vessel a very large quantity of such fire particles, it would be possible to sail on the clouds as easily as we sail on the sea, and to visit the Salamanders in their aerial abodes, a problem I shall keep in mind. I do not despair of constructing such a fireship. But let us go back to our work of putting wood on the fire.”

He kept me for some time in the glow of the laboratory whence I wanted to escape as quickly as possible, to join Jahel, whom I was anxious to inform of my misfortune. At last he left me, and I thought myself free, a hope shortly to be disappointed by his return.

“It is rather mild this morning,” he said, “but the sky is somewhat cloudy. Would it please you to go for a walk in the park with me before returning to the translation of Zosimus the Panopolitan, which will be a great honour to you and your tutor if you finish it as you have begun?”

With much regret I followed him into the park, where he said to me:

“I am not sorry, my son, to be alone with you, to warn you, as it is high time to do, against a great danger by which you may be threatened one day; I reproach myself not to have thought of warning you before, as what I shall communicate to you is of the utmost consequence.”

And speaking in this way, he led me through the grand avenue which leads down to the marshes of the Seine, whence Rueil is to be seen and Mont Valerien with its calvary. It was his usual walk. The alley was practicable in spite of some dead trees which had fallen across it.

“It is important for you to know to what you expose yourself by betraying your Salamander. I do not want to interrogate you as to what intercourse you have had with that superhuman person I have been fortunate enough to make you acquainted with. I dare say you feel somewhat reluctant to discuss it. Possibly you deserve praise for that. If the Salamanders have not, in what concerns the discretion of their lovers, the same ideas that court ladies and tradeswomen have, it is not less true that it is the special quality of beautiful amours to be unutterable, and that it would profane a grand sentiment to spread it abroad.

“But your Salamander (of which I could easily find the name if I had any idle curiosity) has perhaps omitted to give you information about one of the most violent passions—jealousy; this character is common to them. Know well, my son, Salamanders are not to be betrayed without punishment awaiting you. Their vengeance on the perjurer is of the cruelest. The divine Paracelsus gives one example, which will suffice to inspire in you a salutary fear.

“There was in the German town of Staufen a spagyric philosopher who had, like yourself, connection with a Salamander. He was depraved enough to deceive her with a woman, certainly pretty, but not more beautiful than a woman can be. One evening, having supper with his new mistress in company with some friends, they saw a thigh of marvellous beauty shining over their heads. The Salamander exposed it to impress on them all, that she did not deserve the wrong inflicted by her lover; after that the outraged celestial struck down the unfaithful lover with apoplexy. The vulgar, who are made to be deceived, believed his to be a natural death; the initiated knew by whose hand he was slain. I owed you this advice, my son, and this example.”

They were less useful to me than M. d’Asterac thought. Listening to them I mused on other subjects of alarm. Without doubt my face must have betrayed the state of anxiety I was in; because the great cabalist, having looked at me, asked me if I was not afraid that an engagement, guarded by conditions so severe, would be troublesome to my youth.

“I am able to reassure you,” he added. “The jealousy of a Salamander is awakened only by rivalry with women, and to speak truly it is more resentment, indignation, disgust, than real jealousy. The souls of the Salamanders are too noble, their intelligence too subtle, to envy one another, and to give way to a sentiment pertaining to the barbarity wherein humanity is still half plunged. On the contrary they delight to share with their playmates the joys they taste beside a sage, and are pleased to bring to their lovers the most beautiful of their sisters. Very soon you’ll experience that, as a fact, they push politeness to the point I mentioned, and not a year, nay not six months, will pass before your room will be the trysting place of five or six daughters of the light, who will untie before you their sparkling girdles. Do not be afraid, my son, to answer their caresses. Your own fairy love will not take umbrage. How could she be offended, wise as she is? And on your side, do not get irritated if your Salamander leaves you for a moment to visit another philosopher. Consider that the proud jealousy men bring into the union of the sexes is but a savage sentiment, founded on the most ridiculous of illusions. It rests on the idea that a woman belongs to you because she has given herself to you, which is nothing but a play on words.”

While making this speech, M. d’Asterac had turned into the lane of the mandrakes, where we could see Mosaide’s cottage, half hidden by foliage, when suddenly an appalling voice burst upon us and made my heart beat faster—hoarse sounds, accompanied by a sharp gnashing, and on getting nearer the sounds seemed to be modulated, and each phrase ended in a sort of very feeble melody, which could not be listened to without shuddering.

Advancing a few paces we could, by listening closely, understand the sense of the strange words. The voice said:

“Hear the malediction with which Elisha cursed the insolent and mirthful children. Listen to the anathema Barak flung on Meros.

“I curse thee in the name of Archithuriel, who is also called the lord of battles, and holds the flaming sword. I doom thee to perdition in the name of Sardaliphonos, who presents to his master the flowers and garlands of merit offered by the children of Israel.

“Be cursed, hound! Anathema, swine!”

Looking from whence the voice came, we could see Mosaide on the threshold of his house, standing erect, his arms raised, his hands in the form of fangs, with nails crooked, appearing inflamed by the fiery light of the sun. His head was covered with his dirty tiara, and he was enveloped in his gorgeous gown, showing when flying open his meagre bow-legs in ragged breeches. He looked like some begging magician, immortal, and very old. His eyes glared, and he said:

“Be cursed in the name of all globes, be cursed in the name of all wheels, be cursed in the name of the mysterious beasts Ezekiel saw.”

Out he stretched his long arms, ending in claws, and continued:

“In the name of the globes, in the name of the wheels, in the name of the mysterious beasts, descend among those who are no more.”

We advanced a few paces between the half-grown trees to see the object over which Mosaide extended his arms and his anger, and discovered, to our great surprise, M. Jérome Coignard, hanging by a lapel of his gown on an evergreen thorn bush. The night’s disorder was visible all over his body; his collar and his shoes torn, his stockings smeared with mud, his shirt open, all reminded me of our common misadventures, and, worse than all, the swelling of his nose spoilt entirely the noble and smiling expression which never left his features.

I ran up to him and unhooked him so luckily off the thorns that only a small piece of his breeches stuck to them. Mosaide, having had his say, re-entered the cottage. As he wore only slippers I could observe that his legs fitted right into the middle of his feet, so that the heel stuck out behind pretty nearly as much as the forefoot in front, a singular deformation, rendering his walking uncouth, which otherwise would have been noble and full of dignity.

“Jacques Tournebroche! my dear boy,” said my tutor, with a sigh, “that Jew must be Isaac Laquedem in person, so to blaspheme in all languages. He vowed me to a death near and violent with an enormous abundance of metaphors, and he called me a pig in fourteen distinct languages, if I counted them correctly. I could believe him to be the Antichrist, and he does not want some of the signs by which that enemy of God is to be recognised. Under any circumstances he is a dirty Jew, and never has the wheel as a brand of infamy been exposed on the vestments of a worse or more rabid miscreant. As for himself, he not only deserves the wheel formerly attached to the garments of Jews, but also that other wheel on which scoundrels have their bones broken.”

And my good master, mightily angry in his turn, shook his fist in the direction where Mosaide had disappeared, and accused him of crucifying children and devouring the flesh of new-born babes.

M. d’Asterac went up to him and touched his breast with the ruby he used to wear on his finger.

“It is useful,” said the great cabalist, “to know the peculiar qualities of precious stones. Rubies soothe resentments, and you’ll soon see the Abbé Coignard regain his natural suavity.”

My dear tutor smiled already, less by virtue of the stone than by the influence of a philosophy which raised this admirable man above all human passions, for I feel it my duty to say, at the very moment my narrative becomes clouded and sad, that M. Jérome Coignard has given me examples of wisdom under circumstances in which it is but rarely met with.

We inquired the cause of the quarrel, but easily understood by the vagueness of his embarrassed replies that he did not intend to satisfy our curiosity. I surmised at once that Jahel was mixed up with it in some way, when I heard with the gnashing of Mosaide’s voice the grating of locks and bolts, and later on the noise, in the lodge, of a violent dispute between uncle and niece. When we tried again to bring my tutor to some explanation, he said:

“Hate for Christians is deeply rooted in every Jew’s heart, and yonder Mosaide is an execrable example of it. I fancy I discovered in his horrible yelpings some parts of the imprecations the Amsterdam synagogue vomited in the last century on a little Dutch Jew called Baruch or Benedict, but better known under the name of Spinoza, for having framed a philosophy which has been perfectly refuted, as soon as it was brought to public knowledge, by excellent theologians. But this old Mordecai has added to it, so it seems to me, many and much more horrible imprecations, and I confess to having somewhat resented them. For a moment I thought of escaping by flight this torrent of abuse, when to my dismay I found myself entangled in yonder thorn, and sticking to it by different parts of my clothes and skin so fast that I really expected to have to leave the one or the other behind me. I should still be there, in smarting agony, if Tournebroche, my dear pupil, had not freed me.”

“The thorns count for nothing,” said M. d’Asterac, “but I’m afraid, Monsieur l’Abbé, that you have trodden on a mandrake.”

“Mandrakes,” replied the abbé, “are certainly the least of my cares.”

“You’re wrong,” said M. d’Asterac. “It suffices to tread on a mandrake to become involved in a love crime, and perish by it miserably.”

“Ah! sir,” my dear tutor replied, “here are all sorts of dangers, and I become aware that it was necessary to be closely shut in between the eloquent walls of the ‘Asteracian,’ which is the queen of libraries. For having left it for a moment only, I get the beasts of Ezekiel thrown at my head, not to speak of anything else.”

“Would you kindly give me news of Zosimus the Panopolitan?” inquired M. d’Asterac.

“He goes on,” replied my master; “goes on nicely, though slowly at the moment.”

“Do not forget, abbé,” said the cabalist, “that possession of the greatest secrets is attached to the knowledge of those ancient texts.”

“I think of it, sir, with solicitude,” said the abbé.

M. d’Asterac, after this assurance, left us standing at the statue of the faun, who continued to play the flute without taking any notice of his head, fallen into the grass. He disappeared rapidly between the trees, looking for Salamanders.

My tutor linked his arm in mine with the air of one who can at last speak freely.

“Jacques Tournebroche, my son, I must not conceal from you that this very morning, in the attics of the castle, a rather peculiar chance meeting has taken place, while you were kept in the room of yonder mad fire-blower. I plainly heard him ask you to assist him for a moment in his cooking, which is a great deal less savoury and Christian than that of Master Leonard your father. Alas! when shall I be lucky enough to see again the cookshop of the Queen Pédauque and the bookshop of M. Blaizot, with the sign of Saint Catherine, where I enjoyed myself so heartily thumbing the books newly arrived from The Hague and Amsterdam!”

“Alas!” I exclaimed, the tears coming into my eyes, “when shall I return to it again? When shall I return to the Rue St Jacques again, where I was born, and see my dear parents, who’ll feel burning shame when they hear of our misfortunes? But do be so good, my dear tutor, as to explain that strange encounter you said you had this very morning, and also the events of the day.”

M. Jérome Coignard willingly consented to give me all the enlightenment I wished for. He did it in the following words:

“Know then, my dear boy, that I reached the upper storey of the castle without hindrance in company with M. d’Anquetil, whom I like well enough, although rude and uncultured. His mind is possessed neither of fine knowledge nor deep curiosity. But youth’s vivacity sparkleth pleasantly with him, and the ardour of his blood results in amusing sallies. He knows the world as well as he knows women, because he is above them, and without any kind of philosophy. It’s a great frankness on his part to call himself an atheist. His ungodliness is without malice, and will disappear with the exuberance of his sensuality. In his soul God has no other enemies than horses, cards and women. In the mind of a real libertine, like M. Bayle for example, truth has to meet more formidable and malicious adversaries. But, my dear boy, I give you a character sketch instead of the plain narrative you wish to have of me.

“I’ll satisfy you. Let’s see. Having arrived at the top storey of the castle in company with M. d’Anquetil, I made the young gentleman enter your room, and wished him, in accordance with the promise we made him at the Triton fountain, to use the room as his own. He did so willingly, undressed, and, keeping nothing on but his boots, went into your bed, the curtains of which he closed so as not to be incommoded by the bright morning light, and was not long before he was sound asleep.

“As to myself, my dear boy, having reached my room, tired as I was, I did not want to go to rest before I had looked up in my Boethius one or two sentences appropriate to my state of mind. I could not find the very one fit for it. It must not be forgotten that this great thinker had not had occasion to meditate on the disgrace of having broken the head of a Farmer-general with a bottle out of his own cellar. But I was able to pick up here and there, in his admirable treatise, some maxims applicable to present conjunctures. Having done so, I drew the night-cap over my eyes, recommended my soul to God, and quietly went to sleep. After what seemed to me, without being able to measure it, a very short space of time—be mindful, my son, that our actions are the only measure for time, which, if I may say so, is suspended for us by sleep—I felt my arm pulled, and heard a voice shouting in my ear: ‘Eh! Abbé! Eh! Abbé, wake up!’ Half dozing as I was, I believed it was a constable wanting to conduct me to the officer, and I deliberated with myself the easiest way in which I could break his head, and rapidly came to the conclusion that the candlestick would be the handiest weapon. It is unhappily, too true, my dear boy, that having once stepped aside from the road of kindness and equity, where the wise man walks with a firm and prudent step, one becomes compelled to sustain violence by violence and cruelty by cruelty, thereby proving that a first fault leads invariably to other faults—evil always follows evil done. One has to be reminded of this if one wants to fully understand the lives of the Roman emperors, of whom M. Crevier has given such an exact account. Those princes were not born more evilly disposed than other men. Caius, surnamed Caligula, was wanting neither in natural spirit nor in judgment, and was quite capable of friendship. Nero had an inborn liking for virtue, and his temperament disposed him towards all that is grand and sublime. Both of them were led by a first fault on the nefarious, villainous road whereon they walked to their miserable end. Their history is cleverly treated in M. Crevier’s book. I knew that remarkable writer when he was a teacher of literature and history at the College of Beauvais, as I might be teaching today, had my life not been crossed by a thousand impediments, and if the natural easiness of my spirit had not drawn me into the manifold snares laid in my way. M. Crevier, my boy, led a pure life; his morals were severe, and I have myself heard him say that a woman who had broken her conjugal vows was capable of the crimes of murder and incendiarism. I repeat this saying of his, to impress you with the saintly austerity of that model priest.

“But, once more, I digress, and I must hasten to return to my narrative. Well, as I have said, I thought a constable had come to arrest me, and I could see myself in one of the archbishop’s dungeons, when I opened my eyes and recognised the features and voice of M. d’Anquetil. ‘Abbé,’ said that young gentleman to me, ‘I have just had a singular adventure in Tournebroche’s room. During my sleep a woman entered my room, glided into my bed, and awoke me with a shower of caresses, tender epithets, sweet murmurings, and passionate kisses. I pushed the curtains back to see the features of my good luck. She was dark and had ardent eyes, one of the finest women I have ever held in my arms. But all at once she screamed and jumped out, violently angry, but not quick enough to prevent me catching her in the passage and pressing her closely in my arms. She began by striking me and scratching my face. After having lacerated it sufficiently to satisfy her outraged womanly honour, we began to explain ourselves. She was well pleased to learn that I am a gentleman, and none of the poorest, and sooner than I might have expected I ceased to be odious to her, and she began to be tender with me, when a scullion appeared in the passage; his appearance put her to flight at once.

“’I am quite aware,’ said M. d’Anquetil, ‘that that admirable girl had come for another than myself; she must have entered the wrong room, and the surprise frightened her. I did my best to reassure her, and should doubtless have won her amity had not that sot of a scullion come between us.’

“I confirmed him in that supposition. We put our heads together to get an idea of the man for whom that beautiful woman had ventured on such an early morning visit, and were easily agreed that it could be no other but that old fool d’Asterac—you know, Tournebroche, I suspected him before—who awaits her intimacy in an adjoining room, if not, and without your knowledge, in your own. Are you not of the same opinion?”

“Nothing is more credible,” I replied.

“No doubt it is so. That sorcerer amuses himself when he talks to us of his Salamanders. The truth is, he caresses that amazingly pretty girl. He’s an impostor.”

I asked my tutor to favour me with the continuance of his narrative. He willingly complied and said:

“Well, my dear boy, I’ll briefly report the remainder of M. d’Anquetil’s discourse. I know very well that it’s rather commonplace, almost vulgar, to lay much stress on trifling circumstances. It is, on the contrary, some sort of duty to express them in the fewest possible words, to condense them carefully and reserve the tempting abundance of word-flow to moral instruction and exhortation, which may be hurled as the avalanches are hurled from the mountains. On this principle I shall have mentioned enough of M. d’Anquetil’s sayings when I have told you that he impressed on me that yonder young girl’s beauty, charms, and accomplishments are quite extraordinary. In the end he inquired of me if I knew her name and position. And I replied to him that, from his description of her, I was pretty sure that she was Rabbi Mosaide’s niece Jahel, whom by a lucky accident I had embraced one night on that very same staircase, with this difference only, that my luck occurred between the first and second flights of steps. ‘I hope and trust,’ said M. d’Anquetil, ‘that there may be other differences too, for, as far as I am concerned, I embraced her very closely. I am also sorry that, as you say, she is a Jewess, as, without believing in God, I feel that I should have liked better for her to be a Christian. But can anyone be sure of his own family? Who knows if she has not been kidnapped as a child? Jews and gypsies steal children daily. And we do not, as a rule, remember sufficiently that the Holy Virgin was born a Jewess. But let her be Jewess or not, she pleases me; I want her and shall have her!’ Such were that reckless youngster’s words. But allow me, my boy, to sit down on yonder moss-covered stone; last night’s work, my fights, my flight, too, have nearly broken my legs.”

He sat down, took his snuff-box out of his pocket, and looked quite disconsolate when he found it void of tobacco.

I took a seat at his side, agitated, crestfallen. Coignard’s discourse caused me acute pain. I cursed Fate for having given my place to a brute at the very moment when my beloved mistress had come to bring me her most passionate tenderness, expecting to find me in my bed, the while I had to throw logs of wood on the fire in the alchemist’s furnace. The but too probable inconstancy of Jahel tore my heart to pieces, and I could have wished that my dear tutor had been more discreet with my rival. So I took the liberty to reproach him mildly for his disclosure of Jahel’s name.

“Sir,” I said, “was it not somewhat imprudent to furnish such indications to a gentleman so luxurious and violent as M. d’Anquetil?”

M. Coignard seemed not to hear what I said, and continued his speech:

“My snuff-box has unfortunately opened itself in my pocket during the fight at Catherine’s house, and the tobacco it contained, mixed with the wine of the broken bottle, has formed a quite disgusting paste. I do not dare ask Criton to grind down a few leaves for me; the hard and cold features of that servant and judge inspire me with awe. I suffer from the want of snuff, as my nose is irksome in consequence of the shock I had last night, and I am quite disconcerted by my failure to satisfy the never-tiring wants of that nose of mine. I shall have to bear the misfortune quietly, till M. d’Anquetil may, perhaps, let me have a few grains out of his box. Now to return to that young gentleman, he said expressly to me: ‘I love that girl. Know, abbé, that I am resolved to take her with us in the post-chaise should I be compelled to stay here a week, a month, six months or longer; I will not go away without her.’ I represented all the dangers to him, which might occur through any delay in our departure. He said he did not care a rap for those dangers, less so as they were smaller for him than for us. ‘You, abbé, you and Tournebroche are both in danger of being hanged; my risk is the Bastille only, where I can get cards and girls, and whence my family could, and would, soon deliver me, as my father would interest some duchess or some ballet dancer in my doom, and my mother, devotee as she has become, could and would still get the assistance of one or other of the royal princes. It is irrevocably fixed; I take Jahel with me or I remain here. You and Tournebroche are at liberty to hire a post-chaise of your own.’

“The cruel boy knows but too well that we have not the means to do it. I tried to make him change his mind. I became pressing, unctuous, parental. It was no use, and I wasted on him an eloquence which, employed in the pulpit of a parish church, would have brought me a full reward in honour and coin. Alas! my dear boy, it seems to be written that none of my actions will ever produce any kind of savoury fruit, and for me ought to have been written the following words from Ecclesiastes:—’Quid habet am plius homo de universe labore suo, quo laborat sub sole?’ Far from bringing him to reason, my discourses strengthened the young nobleman’s obstinacy, and I cannot deny that he actually counted on me for the success of his desires, and pressed me to go to Jahel and induce her to fly with him, promising her the gift of a trousseau of Dutch linen, of plate, jewels and a handsome annuity.”

“Oh, sir!” I exclaimed, “this M. d’Anquetil is very insolent. What do you think will be Jahel’s reply to his propositions when she knows of them?”

“My boy, she knows by now, and I think she will accept them.”

“If such is the case,” I said, “then Mosaide must be warned.”

“That he is already,” replied my tutor. “You have just assisted at the outbreak of his rage.”

“What, sir?” said I, with much warmth, “you have informed yonder Jew of the disgrace awaiting his family! That’s nice of you! Allow me to embrace you. But, if so, Mosaide’s wrath threatened M. d’Anquetil, and not yourself?”

The abbé replied with an air of nobility and honesty, with a natural indulgence for human weaknesses, an obliging sweetness, and the imprudent kindness of an easy heart—by all of which men are often induced to do inconsiderate things and expose themselves to the severity of the futile judgments of mankind:

“I will not keep it a secret from you, my dear Tournebroche, that, giving way to the pressing solicitations of that young gentleman, I obligingly promised to go on his errand to Jahel and to neglect nothing to induce her to elope with him.”

“Alas!” I exclaimed, “you did, sir. I cannot fully tell how deeply your action wounds and affects me.”

“Tournebroche,” replied he sternly, “you speak like a Pharisee. One of the fathers, as amiable as he was austere, has said: ‘Turn your eyes on yourself and take care not to judge the doings of others. Judging others is an idle labour; usually one is erring, often sinning, by so doing, but by examining and judging oneself your labour will always be fruit-bearing.’ It is written, ‘Thou shalt not be afraid of the judgment of men,’ and the Apostle Paul said that he did not trouble himself about being judged by men. If I refer to some of the finest texts in morals it is to enlighten you, Tournebroche, to make you return to the humble and sweet modesty which suits you, and not to defend my innocence, when the multitude of my iniquities weighs on me and bears me down. It is difficult not to glide into sin, and proper not to fall into despondency at every step one takes on this earth, whereon everything participates, at one and the same time, in the original curse, and the redemption effected by the blood of the Son of God. I do not want to colour my faults, and I freely confess that the embassy I undertook at the request of M. d’Anquetil is an outcome of Eve’s downfall, and it was, to say it bluntly, one of the numberless consequences, on the wrong side, of the humble and painful sentiment which I now feel, and is drawn out of the desire and hope of my eternal welfare. You have to represent to yourself mankind balancing between damnation and redemption to understand me truly when I say that at the present hour I am sitting on the good end of the seesaw after having been this very morning on the wrong end. I freely avow that in passing through the mandrake lane, from whence Mosaide’s cottage is to be seen, I hid behind an ivy-thorn bush, waiting for Jahel to appear at her window. Very soon she came. I showed myself, and beckoned her to come down. She came as soon as she was able to escape her uncle’s vigilance. I gave her a brief report of the events of the night, of which she had not known. I informed her of M. d’Anquetil’s impetuous plans, and represented to her how important it was for her own interest, and for my and your safety, to make our escape sure by coming with us. I made the young nobleman’s promises glitter before her eyes and said to her: ‘If you consent to go with him tonight you’ll have a solid annuity, inscribed at the Hotel de Ville, and an outfit richer than any ballet dancer or Abbess of Panthémont may get, and a cupboard full of the finest silver.’ ‘He thinks me to be one of those creatures,” she said; ‘he is an impudent fellow.’ ‘He loves you,’ I replied; ‘you could not expect to be venerated?’ ‘I must have an olio pot,’ she said, ‘an olio pot, and the heaviest one. Did he mention the olio pot? Go, Monsieur Abbé, and tell him.’ ‘What shall I tell him?’ ‘That I am an honest girl.’ ‘And what else?’ ‘That he is very audacious!’ ‘Is that all, Jahel? Think on our safety!’ ‘Tell him that I shall not depart before he has given me his legally worded written promise for everything.’ ‘He’ll do it, consider it as done. ‘Oh, monsieur, I will not consent to anything if he does not consent to have lessons given me by M. Couperin; I want to study music.

“We had just reached this item of our negotiations when, unhappily, Mosaide surprised us, and without having overheard our conversation got the scent of its meaning.

“He called me at once a suborner, and heaped outrageous insults on me. Jahel went and hid herself in her own room, and I remained alone exposed to the fury of that God-killer, in the state you found me, and out of which you helped me, you dear boy! As a fact, I may say that the business had been concluded, the elopement assented to, our flight assured. The wheels and Ezekiel’s beasts are of no value against a heavy silver olio pot. I am only afraid that yonder old Mordecai has imprisoned his niece too securely.”

“I must avow,” I replied, without disguising my satisfaction, “that I heard a loud noise of keys and bolts at the very moment I freed you from the midst of the thorns. But is it really true, that Jahel agreed so quickly to your propositions, which have not been quite decorous, and which, for certain, you did not make with an easy heart? I am abashed; and, say, my good master, did she not speak of me, not mention my name, with a sigh or otherwise?”

“No, my boy, she did not pronounce your name, at least not in an audible way. Neither did I hear her mention the name of M. d’Asterac her lover, which ought to have been nearer to her feelings than yours. But do not be surprised by her forgetting the alchemist. It is not sufficient to possess a woman to impress on her soul a profound and durable mark. Souls are almost impenetrable, a fact showing the cruel emptiness of love. The wise man ought to say to himself, I am nothing in the nothingness which that creature is. To hope that you could leave a remembrance in a woman’s heart is equivalent to trying to impress a seal on running water. And therefore let us never nurse the wish to establish ourselves in what is fleeting and let us attach ourselves to that which never dies.”

“After all,” I said, “Jahel is locked and bolted up, and one may rely on the vigilance of her guardian.”

“My son, this very evening she has to join us at the Red Horse. Twilight is favourable to evasions, abductions, stealthy movements and underhand actions. We have to trust to the cunning of that girl. As to you, be sure to attend at the Circus of the Bergères in the dusk. You know M. d’Anquetil is not patient, and it quite the man to start without you.”

When he gave me this counsel, the luncheon bell sounded.

“Have you by chance,” he said to me, “a needle and thread? My garments are torn at more than one place, and I should like to repair them as much as possible before going to luncheon. Especially my breeches do not leave me without some apprehension. They are so much torn that, should I not promptly mend them, I run the risk of losing them altogether.”

CHAPTER XIX

Our last Dinner at M. d’Asterac’s Table—Conversation of M. Jerome Coignard and M. d’Asterac—A Message from Home—Catherine in the Spittel—We are wanted for Murder—Our Flight—Jahel causes me much Misery—Account of the Journey—The Abbe Coignard on Towns—Jahel’s Midnight Visit—We are followed—The Accident—M. Jerome Coignard is stabbed.

I took my accustomed place that day at the dining-table of the cabalist, oppressed by the idea that I sat down at it for the last time. Jahel’s treachery had saddened my soul. Alas! thought I, my most fervent wish had been to fly with her, a wish which looked like being granted, and was now fulfilled in a very cruel manner. Again and again I admired my beloved tutor’s wisdom who, on a day when I desired too vivaciously the success of some affair, answered with the following citation: “Et tributt eis petitionem eorum.” My sorrows and anxieties spoilt my appetite, and I partook sparingly of the dishes served. However, my dear tutor had preserved the unalterable gracefulness of his soul.

He abounded in amiable discourse, and one might have said that he was one of those sages which Telemachus shows us conversing in the shades of the Elysian Fields, and not a man pursued as a murderer and reduced to a roving and miserable life. M. d’Asterac, believing that I had passed the night at the cookshop, kindly inquired after my parents, and, as he could not abstract himself for a single moment from his visions, said:

“When I speak of that cook as being your father it is quite understood that I express myself in a worldly sense, and not according to nature. Nothing proves, my son, that you have not been begot by a Sylph. It is the very thing I prefer to believe, in so far as your spirit, still delicate, shall grow in strength and beauty.”

“Oh, sir! don’t speak like that,” replied my tutor, and smiled. “You oblige him to hide his spirit so as not to damage his mother’s good name. But if you knew her better you could not but think with me that she never had any intercourse with a Sylph; she is a good Christian who has never accomplished the work of the flesh with any other man than her husband, and who carries her virtue written distinctly on her features, very different from the mistress of that other cookshop, Madame Quonion, about whom they talked so much in Paris, as well as in the provinces, in the days of my youth. Have you never heard of her, sir? Her lover was M. Mariette, who later on became secretary to M. d’Angervilliers. He was a stout man, who left a jewel every time he visited his beloved; one day a Cross of Lorraine or a Holy Ghost; another day a watch or a chatelaine, or perhaps a handkerchief, a fan, a box. For her sake he rifled the jewellers and seamstresses of the fair of St Germain. He gave her so much that, finding his shop decorated like a shrine, the master-cook became suspicious that all that wealth could not have been honestly acquired. He watched her, and very soon surprised her with her lover. It must be said that the husband was but a jealous fellow. He flew into a temper, and gained nothing by it, but very much the reverse. For the amorous couple, plagued by his wrangling, swore to get rid of him. M. Mariette had no little influence. He got a lettre de cachet in the name of that unhappy Quonion. On a certain day the perfidious woman said to her husband:

“Take me, I beg of you, on Sunday next out to dinner somewhere in the country. I promise myself uncommon pleasure from such an excursion.”

She became caressing and pressing, and the husband, flattered, agreed to all her demands. On the Sunday, he got with her into a paltry hackney coach to go to Porcherons. But they had hardly got to Roule when a posse of constables placed in readiness by Marietta arrested him, and took him to Bicetre, from whence he was sent to the Mississippi, where he still remains. Someone composed a song which finished thus:

‘Un mari sage et commode

N’ouvre les yeux qu’a demi

Il vaut mieux etre a la mode,

Que de voir Mississippi.’

And such is, doubtless, the most solid lesson to be derived from the example given by Quonion the cook.

“As to the story itself, it only needs to be narrated by a Petronius or by an Apuleius to equal the best Milesian fables. The moderns are inferior to the ancients in epic poetry and tragedy. But if we do not surpass the Greeks and Latins in story-telling it is net the fault of the ladies of Paris, who never cease enriching the material for tales by their ingenious and graceful inventions. You certainly know, sir, the stories of Boccaccio. I am sure that had that Florentine lived in our days in France he would make of Quonion’s misfortune one of his pleasantest tales. As far as I am myself concerned I have been reminded of it at this table for the sole purpose, and by the effect of contrast, to make the virtue of Madame Leonard Tournebroche shine. She is the honour of cookshops, of which Madame Quonion is the disgrace. Madame Tournebroche, I dare affirm it, has never abandoned those ordinary commonplace virtues the practice of which is recommended in marriage, which is the only contemptible one of the seven sacraments.”

“I do not deny it,” said M. d’Asterac. “But Mistress Tournebroche would be still more estimable if she should have had intercourse with a Sylph, as Semiramis had and Olympias and the mother of that grand pope Sylvester II.”

“Ah, sir,” said the Abbé Coignard, “you are always talking to us of Sylphs and Salamanders. Now, in simple good faith, have you ever seen any of them?”

“As clearly as I see you this very moment,” replied M. d’Asterac, “and certainly closer, at least as far as Salamanders are concerned.”

“That is not sufficient, my dear sir, to make me believe in their existence, which is against the teachings of the Church. For one may be seduced by illusions. The eyes, and all our senses, are messengers of error and couriers of lies. They delude us more than they teach us, and bring us but uncertain and fugitive images. Truth escapes them, because truth is eternal, and invisible like eternity.”

“Ah!” said M. d’Asterac, “I did not know you were so philosophical, nor of so subtle a mind.”

“That’s true,” replied my good master. “There are days on which my soul is heavier, and with preference attached to bed and table. But last night I broke a bottle on the head of an extortioner, and my mind is very much exalted over it. I feel myself capable of dissipating the phantoms which are haunting you, and to blow off all that mist. For after all, sir, these Sylphs are but vapours of your brain.”

M. d’Asterac stopped him with a kind gesture and said:

“I beg your pardon, abbé; do you believe in demons?”

“Without difficulty I can reply,” said my good master, “that I believe of demons all that is reported of them in the Scriptures, and that I reject as error and superstition all and every belief in spells, charms and exorcism. Saint Augustine teaches that when the Scriptures exhort us to resist the demons, it requires us to resist our passions and intemperate appetites. Nothing is more detestable than the deviltries wherewith the Capuchins frighten old women.”

“I see,” said M. d’Asterac, “you do your best to think as an honest man. You hate as much as I do myself the coarse superstitions of the monks. But, after all, you do believe in demons, and I have not had much trouble to make you avow it. Know, then, that they are no other than Sylphs and Salamanders, ignorance and fear have disfigured them in timid imaginations. But, as a fact, they are beautiful and virtuous. I will not lead you in the ways of the Salamanders, as I am not quite sure of the purity of your morals; but I can see no impediment, abbé, to a frequentation of the Sylphs, who inhabit the fields of air, and voluntarily approach man in a spirit of friendliness and affection, so that they have been rightly named helping genii. Far from driving us to perdition, as the theologians believe, who change them into devils, they protect and safeguard their terrestrial friends. I could make you acquainted with numberless examples of the help they give. But to be short I’ll repeat to you one single case which was told to me by Madame la Maréchale de Grancey herself. She was middle-aged, and a widow for several years, when, one night, in her bed, she received the visit of a Sylph, who said to her: ‘Madame, have a search made in the wardrobe of your deceased husband. In the pocket of a pair of his breeches a letter will be found, which, if it became known, would ruin M. des Roches, my good friend and yours. Find that letter and burn it.’

“The maréchale promised not to neglect this recommendation and inquired after news of the defunct maréchal from the Sylph, who, however, disappeared without giving any reply. On waking she summoned her women, and bade them look if some of the late maréchal’s garments remained in his wardrobe. The attendants reported that nothing was left, and that the lackeys had sold them all to old clothes dealers. Madame de Grancey insisted on her women trying to find at least one pair of breeches.

“Having searched in every corner they finally discovered a very old-fashioned pair of black satin, embroidered with carnations, and handed them to their mistress, who found a letter in one of the pockets, which contained more than would have been needed to incarcerate M. des Roches in one of the state prisons. She burned the letter at once, and so that gentleman was saved by his good friends the Sylph and the maréchale.

“Are such, I ask you, abbé, the manners of demons? But let me give you another startling hit on the matter, which will impress you more, and will I am sure go to the heart of a learned man such as yourself. It is doubtless known to you that the Academy of Dijon is rich in wits. One of them, whose name cannot be unknown to you, living in the last century, prepared with great labour an edition of Pindar. One night, worrying over five verses the sense of which he could not disentangle, so much was the text corrupt, he dozed off, quite despairing, at cockcrow. During his sleep, a Sylph, who wished him well, transported his spirit to Stockholm into the palace of Queen Christina, conducted him to the library, and took from one of the shelves a manuscript of Pindar’s showing him the difficult passage. The five verses were there, as well as two or three annotations which rendered them perfectly intelligible.

“In the violence of his contentment, our savant woke up, struck a light, and pencilled down the verses as they appeared to him in his sleep. After that he went to sleep again profoundly. On the following morning, thinking over his night’s adventure, he at once resolved to try to get a confirmation. M. Descartes happened at that very time to be in Sweden, reading to the queen on philosophy. Our Pindarist knew him, but was on still closer terms with M. Chanut, the Swedish ambassador in France. He wrote requesting him to forward a letter to M. Descartes, in which he asked him to be informed if there really was in the queen’s library at Stockholm a manuscript of Pindar containing the version he mentioned. M. Descartes, an extremely courteous man, replied to the academician of Dijon that, as a fact, her Majesty possessed a manuscript of Pindar, and that he had himself read there the verses, with the various readings contained in the letter.”

M. d’Asterac, who had been peeling an apple during his narration, looked at M. Coignard to enjoy the success of his discourse.

My dear tutor smiled and said:

“Ah, sir! I clearly see that I flattered myself with an idle hope, and that one cannot make you give up your vain imaginations. I confess with a good grace that you have shown us an ingenious Sylph, and that I actually wish for such an obliging secretary. His assistance would be particularly useful to me on two or three passages in Zosimus the Panopolitan which are very obscure. Could you not be so good as to give me the means to evoke, if necessary, some Sylph librarian as expert as that of Dijon?”

M. d’Asterac replied gravely:

“That’s a secret, abbé, that I will willingly unveil to you. But be warned that you would be a lost man should you communicate it to a profane person.”

“Don’t be uneasy,” said the abbé. “I have a strong desire to know so fine a secret, but I will not conceal from you that I do not expect any effect from it, as I do not believe in Sylphs. Instruct me, if you please.”

“You request me?” replied the cabalist. “Well, then, know that whenever you want the assistance of a Sylph, you have but to pronounce the simple word Agla, and the sons of the air will at once come to you. But understand, M. Abbé, that the word must be spoken by the heart as well as by the lips, and that faith alone gives it its virtue. Without faith it is nothing but a useless murmur. Pronounce it as I do at this moment, putting in it neither soul nor wish, it has, even in my own mouth, but a very slight power, and at the utmost some of the children of light, if they have heard it, glide into this room, the light shadows of light. I’ve divined rather than seen them on yonder curtain, and they have vanished when hardly visible. Neither you nor your pupil has suspected their presence. But had I pronounced that magic word with real fervour you would have seen them appear in all their splendour. They are of a charming beauty. Now, sir, I have entrusted you with a grand and useful secret. Let me say again, do not divulge it imprudently. And do not sneer at the example of the Abbé de Villars, who, for having revealed their secrets, was murdered by the Sylphs, on the road to Lyons.”

“On the Lyons road?” said my good tutor. “How strange!”

M. d’Asterac left us suddenly.

“I will now for the last time,” said the abbé, “visit that noble library where I have enjoyed such austere pleasures and which I shall never see again. Do not fail, Tournebroche, to be at nightfall at the Bergères Circus.”

I promised to be there; it was my intention to lock myself in my room for the purpose of writing to M. d’Asterac, and my dear parents, asking them to kindly excuse me for not taking personal leave of them, as I had to fly after an adventure wherein I was more unlucky than guilty.

When I reached the door of my room, I heard heavy snoring from within. Peeping in I saw M. d’Anquetil in my bed, sleeping, his sword at the bedside, playing cards strewn all over the quilt. For a moment I felt tempted to run him through with his own sword, but the temptation did not last, and I left him sleeping. Notwithstanding my grief I could not help laughing when I thought that Jahel, being locked and bolted in by Mosaide, could not rejoin him.

So I went to my tutor’s room, to write my letters, where I disturbed five or six rats, who had begun to make a meal off his Boethius, which had remained on the night table. I wrote to my mother and to M. d’Asterac, and I composed the most touching epistle to Jahel. My tears fell on this when I read it over for a second time. “Perhaps,” I said to myself, “the faithless girl will cry too, and her tears will mix with mine.”

Then, overwhelmed as I was by fatigue and sorrow, I threw myself on my tutor’s bed, and soon went off into a kind of semi-sleep, troubled by dreams, erotic and sinister. I was awakened by the taciturn Criton, who had entered the room and presented to me, on a silver salver, a sort of curling paper, whereon a few badly written words were scribbled in pencil. Someone expected me at once outside the castle. The note was signed “Friar Ange, unworthy Capuchin.” I went as quickly as I could, and found the little friar seated on the bank of a ditch in a state of pitiable dejection. Wanting strength to get up, he looked at me with his big dog’s eyes, nearly human and full of tears; his sighs moved his beard and chest. In a tone which really pained me he said:

“Alas! Monsieur Jacques, the hour of trial has come to Babylon, as it is said in the prophets. At the request of M. de la Guéritude, the Lieutenant of Police had Mam’selle Catherine taken by the constables to the spittel, from whence she’ll be sent to America by the next convoy. I was informed of it by Jeannette the hurdy-gurdy player, who saw Catherine brought in a cart to the spittel, as she left it herself after having been cured of an evil ailment by the surgeon’s art—at least I hope so, please God! And Catherine is to be transported, and no reprieve to be expected.”

And Friar Ange at this point in his discourse groaned and shed tears abundantly. After doing my best to console him I asked if he had nothing else to tell me.

“Alas! M. Jacques,” he replied. “I have intimated the essential, and the remainder floats in my head like the Spirit of God on the waters, without comparison if you please. The matter is dark altogether. Catherine’s misfortune has taken away my senses. It needed the necessity of giving you important news to bring me to the threshold of this cursed house, where you live in company with all sorts of devils, and it was with dismay, and after having recited the prayer of Saint Francis, that I ventured to knock at the door for the purpose of handing to a lackey the note I wrote to you. I do not know if you have been able to read it, as I have but little practice in forming letters, and the paper was not of the best to write on, but you see it is the honour of our holy order not to give way to the vanities of our century! Ah! Catherine at the spittel! Catherine in America! Is it not enough to break the hardest heart? Jeannette herself wept abundantly, and did so in spite of her jealousy of Catherine, who prevails over her in youth and beauty just as Saint Francis surpasses in holiness all the other blessed ones. Ah, M. Jacques! Catherine in America! Such are the strange ways of Providence. Alas! our holy religion is true, and King David was right in saying that we are like the grass of the field—is not Catherine at the spittel? The stones on which I am sitting are happier man I, notwithstanding that I wear the signs of a Christian and a monk. Catherine at the spittel!”

He sobbed again. I waited till the torrent of his sorrow had passed away, and then asked him if he had any news of my parents.

“M. Jacques,” he replied, “’tis they who have sent me to you, bearer of a pressing message. I must tell you that they are not very happy, through the fault of Master Léonard, your father, who passes in drinking and gambling all the days God has given him. And savoury fumes of roasting geese and fowls do not now arise to the signboard of Queen Pédauque swinging sadly in the damp wind which rusts it. Where are the times when the smell of your father’s cookshop perfumed the Rue Saint Jacques, from the Little Bacchus to the Three Maids? Since yonder sorcerer visited it, everything wastes away, beasts and men, in consequence of the spell he has thrown on it. And vengeance divine is manifest there since that fat Abbé Coignard made his entry, and I was cast out. It was the beginning of the evil, inaugurated by M. Coignard, who prides himself on the depths of his knowledge, and the distinction of his manners. Pride is the spring of all evil. Your pious mother was very wrong, M. Jacques, not to have been satisfied with such teaching as I charitably gave you, and which would have made you fit to superintend the cooking, to manage the larding, and to carry the banner of the guild after the demise, the funeral service and the obsequies of your worthy father, which cannot be very far off, as all life is transitory and he drinks to excess.”

It may be easily understood how sorely I was afflicted by this news. My tears and those of Friar Ange mixed freely together. However, I inquired after my mother.

Friar Ange replied:

“God, who afflicted Rachel in Rama, has sent to your mother, Monsieur Jacques, sundry tribulations for her good, and to chastise Master Léonard for the sin he committed by maliciously expelling, in my humble person, our Lord Jesus Christ from his cookshop. He has transferred most of the purchasers of poultry and pies to the daughter of Madame Quonion, who turns the spit at the other end of the Rue Saint Jacques. Your mother sees with sorrow that the other house is blessed at the cost of her own, and that her shop is now deserted to such a degree that, figuratively speaking, moss covers its threshold. She is sustained in her trials, firstly, by her devotion to Saint Francis; secondly, by the consideration of the progress of your worldly position, which enables you to wear a sword like a man of condition.

“But this second consolation has been much shaken by the constables calling this very morning at the cookshop to take you into custody, and carry you to the Bicetre Prison, to break stones for a year or two. It was Catherine who denounced you to M. de la Guéritude, but you must not blame her for it; she did her duty as a Christian by confessing the truth. She accused you and the Abbé Coignard of being M. d’Anquetil’s accomplices, and gave a faithful account of all the murder and bloodshed perpetrated in the course of that terrible night. Alas! her truthfulness was of no use; she was carried to the spittel. It’s downright horrible to think of it.”

At this point of his story, the little friar covered his face with his hands and sobbed and cried anew.

Night had come, and I was afraid to fail in my appointment. Pulling the little friar out of the ditch, I put him on his feet, and wished him to keep me company on my walk along the Saint Germain road to the Circus of the Bergères. He obeyed me willingly. Sadly walking by my side, he asked my assistance in disentangling the mixed-up threads of his thoughts. I put him back to where the constables came to search for me at the cookshop.

“As they could not find you,” he continued, “they wanted to take your father. Master Léonard pretended he did not know where you were hidden. Your mother said the same, and took her sacred oath on it. May God forgive her, Monsieur Jacques, as evidently she perjured herself. The constables began to get cross. Your father reasoned well with them, and took them to have a drink with him, after which they parted quite friendly. Meanwhile your mother went after me to the Three Maids, where I was soliciting alms according to the holy rules of my order. She sent me to you to warn you that immediate flight is your only safety, as the Lieutenant of Police would soon discover your retreat.”

Listening to this sad news, I walked with a quicker step, and we passed the bridge of Neuilly.

On the rather steep hill leading to the circus, the elms of which soon became visible, the little friar said with a dying voice:

“Your mother particularly asked me to warn you of the danger you are in, and handed to me a little bag she had secreted under her dress. I cannot find it,” he added, after having felt all over his body. “How do you expect me to find anything after losing Catherine? She was devoted to Saint Francis, and lavish of alms, and now they have treated her like a harlot, and will shave her head; it’s heartbreaking to think that she will look like a milliner’s doll, and be shipped in that state to America, where she runs the risk of dying by fever and being eaten by cannibal savages.”

When he ended this discourse with a sigh we had reached the circus. To the left, the inn of the Red Horse showed its roof over a double row of elms, its dormer windows with their pulleys, while under the foliage the gateway was to be seen wide open.

I slackened my walk, and the little friar sat down on the roots of a tree.

“Friar Ange,” I said to him, “you mentioned a satchel my dear mother handed you for me.”

“Quite right; she wished me so to do,” replied the little Capuchin, “and I have put it somewhere so safely that I cannot remember where, and you ought to know, Monsieur Jacques, that I could not have lost it for any other reason but from too much carefulness.”

I rather sharply said that I did not believe he had lost the satchel, and should he not find it at once I would search for it myself.

He understood and, sighing deeply, brought out from under his frock a little bag made of coloured calico, and handed it to me. It contained a crown piece and a medal with the effigy of the Black Virgin of Chartres, which I kissed fervently, shedding tears of tenderness and repentance. The little friar took out of his large pockets a parcel of coloured prints and prayers, badly illuminated, made a rapid selection, and gave me two or three of them, those he considered the most useful to pilgrims, travellers, and all wandering people, saying:

“They are blessed and of good effect against danger of death and sickness. You have only to recite the text printed on them, or to lay them on the skin of your body, I give them to you, M. Jacques, for the love of God. Do not forget to give me an alms. Keep in mind that I beg in the name of Saint Francis. He’ll protect you, without fail, if you assist the most unworthy of his sons, and that is precisely myself.”

Listening to his speech, I saw in the doubtful twilight a post-chaise and four come out of the gateway of the Red Horse inn, heard the whips cracking and the horses pawing the ground when the driver stopped on the highroad, close to the tree on the roots of which Friar Ange was sitting. It was not an ordinary post-chaise, but a very large, clumsy vehicle, having room to seat four, and a small coupe in front. I looked at it for a minute or two, when up the hill came M. d’Anquetil, with Jahel, carrying several parcels under her cloak and wearing a mob-cap. M. Coignard followed them, loaded with five or six books wrapped up in an old thesis. When they reached the carriage the post boys lowered the carriage steps, and my beautiful mistress, raising her skirt like a balloon, ascended into the carriage, pushed from behind by M. d’Anquetil.

I ran towards them and shouted:

“Stop, Jahel! Stop, sir!”

But the seducer only pushed the perfidious girl the more, and her charming rounded figure quickly disappeared. Preparing himself to climb after her, one foot on the steps, he looked at me with surprise.

“Oh! Monsieur Tournebroche! You would then take from me all my mistresses! Jahel after Catherine. Do you do it for a wager?”

But I did not hear what he said, and continued to call Jahel, the while Friar Ange, having risen from his seat under the elm-tree, came up to the carriage door, and offered to M. d’Anquetil pictures of Saint Roch, a prayer to be recited during the shoeing of a horse, another against fever, and asked him for charity with a mournful voice.

I should have stopped there the whole of the night, calling Jahel, if my good tutor had not got hold of me and pushed me inside the large compartment of the carriage, which he entered after me.

“Let them have the coupé by themselves,” he said to me, “and let us travel in the large compartment. I have been looking for you, Tournebroche, and, not to withhold anything from you, had quite made up my mind to depart without you when, happily, I discovered you in company with the Capuchin under yonder elm-tree. We could not delay any longer, as M. de la Guéritude has given sharp orders to look everywhere for us. He has a long arm, having lent money to the king.”

The carriage was moving on, but Friar Ange clung to the door, with hand outstretched, begging pitifully.

I sank into the cushions.

“Alas, sir,” I exclaimed, “did you not tell me that Jahel was locked in threefold?”

“My son,” replied my good master, “not too much confidence may be placed in women, who always play their tricks on the jealous and their locks. If the door is closed, they jump out of the window. You have no idea, my dear Tournebroche, of the cunning of women. The ancients have reported admirable examples of it, and many a one you’ll find in Apuleius, where they are sprinkled like salt in the ‘Metamorphoses.’ But the best example is given in an Arabian tale recently brought to Europe by M. Galand, and which I will tell you.

“Schariar, Sultan of Tartary, and his brother, Schahzenan, walked one day on the seashore, when they saw rise suddenly above the waves a black column, moving towards the shore. They recognised it as a genie of the most ferocious kind, in the form of an immensely tall giant, carrying on his head a glass case locked with four iron locks. Both were seized with dismay, so much so that they hid themselves in the fork of a tree standing near. The genie however came on shore, and brought the glass case to the tree where the two princes were hiding. Then he lay down and soon went to sleep. His outstretched legs reached the sea, and his breathing shook earth and heaven. During his terrifying repose the cover of the glass case rose by itself, and out of it came a woman with a majestic body and of the most perfect beauty. She raised her head—”

Here I interrupted his narrative, which I had hardly-listened to, and exclaimed:

“Ah! sir, what do you think Jahel and M. d’Anquetil are saying at this moment, all by themselves in the coupé?’

“I don’t know,” replied my dear tutor: “it’s their business, not ours. But let me finish the Arabian tale, which is full of sense. You’ve interrupted me inconsiderately, Tournebroche, at the very moment when the damsel, looking up, discovered the two princes in the tree. She made them a sign to come down; but desirous as they were to respond to the appeal of a person of so much beauty, they were afraid to approach so terrible a giant. Seeing that they hesitated she said to them in an undertone: ‘Come down at once, or I wake up the genie.’ Her resolute and resolved countenance made them understand that it was not a vain threat, and that the safest, as also the most pleasant, thing to do was to go down without delay, which they did as quietly as possible, so as not to wake the giant. The lady, taking their hands, led them somewhat farther away under the trees, and gave them to understand very clearly that she was ready at once to give herself to both. Gracefully they accepted the beauty’s offer, and as they were men of courage, fear did not spoil their enjoyment. Having obtained from both what she had wished for, and seeing that each of the two princes wore a ring, she asked them for their rings. Returning to the glass case where she lived, she took out of it a chaplet of rings, and showed it to the princes.

“Do you know what is the meaning of this chaplet of rings? They are those of all the men for whom I have had the same kindness as for you. Their number, all told, is ninety-eight. I keep them as souvenirs, for that same reason, and to complete the century I have asked for yours. And now today I have had a full hundred lovers, in spite of the vigilance and care of yonder giant, who never leaves me. He may lock me in the glass case as much as he likes, and hide me in the depths of the sea. I deceive him as often as I please.”

“That ingenious apologue,” added my good tutor, “shows you that the women of the Orient, who are shut up and cloistered, are as cunning as their sisters of the Occident, who are free of their movements. Whenever a woman wants something there is no husband, lover, father, uncle, or tutor able to prevent her carrying out her will. And therefore, my dear boy, you ought not to be surprised that to deceive that old Mordecai was but child’s play for Jahel, whose perverse spirit is made up of all the cuteness of our she-geldings and the perfidy of the Orient. I guess her to be as ardent in sensual pleasure, as greedy after gold and silver; altogether a worthy descendant of the race of Aholah and Aholibah.

“She is of an acid and mordant beauty, and I do not deny that somehow she excites me, although age, sublime meditations, and the miseries of an agitated life have sufficiently mortified in me the lust of the flesh. You’re suffering over the success of M. d’Anquetil’s adventure with her, wherefore I reckon that you feel much more than I do the sharp tooth of desire, and that jealousy is tearing you. And that’s the reason you blame an action, irregular certainly, contrary to vulgar propriety, but withal indifferent in character, or at least not adding much to the universal evil. Inwardly you condemn me for having had a part in it, and you fancy you defend the principle of chaste living when you do nothing except from the prompting of your passions. Such is the way, my dear boy, that we colour for the use of our own eyes our worst instincts. Human morals have no other origin. Confess, however, that it would have been a pity to leave such a fine girl for a single day longer with that old lunatic. Acknowledge that M. d’Anquetil, young and handsome, is a better mate for such a delicious creature, and resign yourself to accept what cannot be altered. Such wisdom is difficult to practise; but it would have been more difficult still, had your own mistress been taken from you. In such a case you’d feel the iron teeth torture your flesh, filling your soul with images odious and precise. This consideration, my boy, ought to ease your present sufferings. Besides, life is full of labour and pain. It is this which evokes in us the just hope of an eternal beatitude.”

Thus spoke my good tutor, while the elms of the king’s highway passed quickly before our eyes. I did not let him know that he irritated my griefs in trying to soothe them, and that he, without being aware of it, had laid his finger on my wound.

Our first stoppage was at Juvisy, where we arrived in the rain early in the morning. Entering the post inn I found Jahel in the corner of the fireplace, where five or six fowls were roasting on a spit. She was warming her feet, and showed part of a silken stocking, which was a great trouble to me, because it brought her leg to my mind. I seemed to see all the beauty of her satin skin, the down, and all other striking circumstances. M. d’Anquetil was leaning on the back of the chair whereon she was sitting, holding her cheeks with his hands. He called her his soul and his life, asked her if she was hungry, and on her saying yes, he went out to give the necessary orders.

Remaining alone with the unfaithful one I looked in her eyes, which reflected the flames of the fire.

“Ah! Jahel,” I exclaimed, “I am very unhappy; you have betrayed me, and you no longer love me.”

“Who says that I do not love you any more?” she asked, and looked at me with her velvety eyes of flame.

“Alas! mademoiselle, your conduct shows it sufficiently.”

“But, Jacques, could you envy the trousseau of Dutch linen and the godroon plate that the gentleman is to present me with! I only ask for your forbearance till he has fulfilled his promises, and after that you’ll see that I am still to you as I was at the Croix-des-Sablons.”

“And in the meantime, Jahel? Alas! he will enjoy your favours.”

“I feel,” she replied, “that that will be a trifle, and that nothing will efface the strength of the feeling you have inspired me with. Do not torment yourself with such mere nothings; they are only of value by your idea of them.”

“Oh!” I exclaimed, “my idea of them is horrible, and I am really afraid that I shall not be able to survive your treachery.”

She looked at me with a somewhat mocking sympathy, and said with a smile:

“Believe me, my friend, neither of us will die of it. Think, Jacques, that I am in want of plate and linen. Be prudent, do not show the feelings that agitate you, and I promise to reward you for your discretion, later on.”

This hope softened somewhat my poignant grief. The innkeeper’s wife laid on the table the lavender-scented cloth, the pewter plates, goblets and pitchers. I was very hungry, and when M. d’Anquetil, in company with the abbé, re-entered the dining-hall, inviting us to eat a morsel with him, I willingly sat down between Jahel and my dear old tutor. We were afraid of being followed, so after having put away three omelets and a couple of spring chickens we resumed our journey. We resolved, seeing the danger of pursuit, to pass every halting place without stopping as far as Sens, where we decided to stay the night.

My imagination went horribly to that night at Sens, thinking that there Jahel’s treachery would be completed. And so much was I troubled by those but too legitimate apprehensions that I listened with but half an ear to the discourse of my good master, to whom every trifling incident of our journey suggested the most admirable reflections.

My jealous fears were not groundless. We alighted at the best inn at Sens, that paltry hostelry of The Armed Man. Supper hardly over, M. d’Anquetil took Jahel with him to his room, which was next to mine. You may believe that I could not enjoy a wink of sleep. Jumping out of bed at daybreak, I left my chamber of torture. I seated myself under the waggoner’s porch, where the postboys drank white wine and played the deuce with the servants. I remained there two or three hours contemplating my misery. The horses were already harnessed when Jahel appeared under the porch, shivering all over, under her black cloak. I could not bear the sight of her, and turned my moistened eyes away. She came to me, sat close to me on the stone, and told me sweetly not to be disconsolate, as what I thought monstrous was but a trifle; that one has to be reasonable; that I was too much a man of spirit to want a woman for myself alone; that if one wished for that one had to take a housekeeper without brains or beauty, and even then it was a big risk to run.

“And now, Jacques,” she added somewhat hurriedly, “I must leave you, and quickly; I can hear the steps of M. d’Anquetil descending the stairs.”

She pressed a hasty kiss on my burning lips, giving and prolonging it with the violent voluptuousness of fear, as the spurred boots of her sweetheart made the wooden steps of the stairs creak, and the intriguer was in fear of losing her Dutch linen trousseau and her godroon silver pot.

The postboy lowered the steps of the coupé, but M. d’Anquetil asked Jahel if it would not be more pleasant to travel all four together in the large compartment, and I recognised that that was the first effect of his intimacy with Jahel, and that the full satisfaction of his desires had left it less agreeable to be alone with her. My good old tutor had taken care to provide himself with five or six bottles of white wine from the cellar of The Armed Man, which he laid under the cushions, and which we drank to overcome the monotony of the journey.

At midday we arrived at Joigny, a neat and pretty town. Foreseeing that my ready money would be all used before we could arrive at the end of our journey, and finding the idea intolerable of letting M. d’Anquetil pay my part in the travelling expenses unless I was compelled to do so by the most unavoidable necessity, I resolved to sell a ring and a medallion, gifts from my mother, and went about the town in quest of a jeweller ready to buy them. I discovered one in the square opposite the church, who sold crosses and chains in a shop under the sign of The Good Faith. What was my astonishment to find in this very shop, before the counter, my good master, showing to the jeweller five or six little diamonds, and asking the shopman what price he would offer for those stones. I recognised them immediately as those which M. d’Asterac had shown us.

The jeweller examined the stones, and looking at the abbé from under his spectacles said:

“Sir, these stones would be of great value if they were genuine. But they are not, and no touchstone is needed to find that out. These are nothing but glass beads, good only for children to play with, or to be used in the crown of a village Holy Virgin, where they would have a charming effect.”

Having listened to that reply, M. Coignard picked up his diamonds and turned his back on the jeweller. In so doing he became aware of my presence, and looked rather confused over it. I brought my business to an end promptly, and meeting my dear old tutor at the shop door I mildly reproached him with the wrong he had done to himself, as well as to his companions, by taking these stones, which for his greater guilt might have been real.

“My son,” he replied, “God, to keep me innocent of crime, willed these stones to be false and a mere sham. I avow to you that I did wrong to take them. You seem sorry about it; it’s a leaf of my life’s book I should like to tear out, like some others not so neat and immaculate as they ought to be. I understand deeply all that is reprehensible in my conduct. But no man has a right to be entirely cast down when he is faulty, and just now, and in this special case, I think I ought to say of myself, in the words of an illustrious learned man: ‘Consider your great frailty, of which you make but too often a show; and withal it is for your salvation that such things should rise up in the road of your life. Not everything is lost for you if oftentimes you find yourself afflicted and rudely tempted; and if you succumb to temptation you’re a man, not a god; you’re flesh and blood, not an angel. How could you expect to remain always in a state of virtue when the angels in heaven and the first man in Eden could not remain faithful to virtue?’ Such are, my dear Tournebroche, the only conversations adapted to the present state of my soul. But, after this unhappy occurrence, which I do not wish to dwell on longer, is it not time to return to the inn, there to drink, in company with the postboys, who are simpleminded and of easy intercourse, one or more bottles of country wine?”

I quite agreed, and we soon reached the hostelry, where we found M. d’Anquetil, who, returning like ourselves from the town, had brought some playing cards. He played a game of piquet with my tutor, and when we resumed our journey they continued to play in the carriage. That rage for play which occupied my rival gave me occasion for an undisturbed conversation with Jahel, who liked very much to chat with me, since she was left to herself. Her talk had a kind of bitter sweetness for me. Reproaching her for her perfidy and unfaithfulness, I gave vent to my grief in feeble or violent complaints.

“Alas! Jahel!” I said, “the memory and the image of your tenderness, which made but lately my dearest delight, have become a cruel torture to me when I think that today you belong to another person, whereas formerly you were mine.”

She replied:

“A woman does not behave equally to all men.”

And when I prolonged my lamentations and reproaches to excess she said:

“I am quite aware that I have caused you some pain. But that is no reason for you to plague me a hundred times a day with your useless moans.”

M. d’Anquetil when he lost was in a bad temper and molested Jahel, while she, anything but patient, threatened to write to her Uncle Mosaïde to come and fetch her back. These quarrels were at first rather pleasant to me, and gave me no small hopes; but after a repeated renewal of them I became rather anxious, as they were always followed by impetuous reconciliations, which exploded suddenly into kisses and lascivious whisperings. M. d’Anquetil could hardly bear my presence. He had on the other hand a vivid tenderness for my good tutor, which he well deserved for his always joyful humour and the incomparable elegance of his mind. They played and drank together with a daily growing sympathy. Knee to knee, so as to steady the table whereon they played cards they laughed, bantered, chaffed each other, and if occasionally they became angry, and threw the cards in one another’s face, and swore at each other with such oaths as would have made the boxers of Port Saint Nicolas or the bargemen of the Mail blush, M. d’Anquetil swore by God Almighty, the Holy Virgin and all the saints, that in all his life he had never met with a worse thief than the Abbé Coignard. Notwithstanding it remained clearly evident that he liked my good tutor; and it was a real pleasure, as soon as one of these quarrels had terminated, to listen to his laughter as he said:

“Abbé, you’ll be my almoner and play piquet with me. You’ll also have to hunt with us. In the remotest corner of the Perche we will look out for a horse strong enough to carry your weight, and you’ll get hunting clothes like the ones I saw worn by the Bishop of Uzès. It is, besides, high time you had a new suit of clothes; your breeches, abbé, hardly keep on your behind.”

Jahel also inclined towards the irresistible charm with which my dear tutor influenced all mankind. She made up her mind to repair, if possible, all the disorders of his dress. First she tore up one of her gowns and used the pieces to patch up the coat and breeches of my venerable friend; she also made him a present of a laced handkerchief to use as a band. My good tutor accepted these little presents with a dignity full of graciousness. More than once I had occasion to observe that he was a gallant when talking to women. He took a lively interest in them without ever showing the slightest indiscretion. He praised them with the science of a connoisseur, giving them counsels out of his long experience, diffusing over them the unlimited indulgence of a heart always ready to forgive any kind of human weakness, and withal, never omitted any occasion to make them understand the great and useful truths.

We arrived on the fourth day of our journey at Montbard, and alighted on a hill, from which we could overlook the whole town, which appeared in a small space as if it had been painted on canvas by a clever limner anxious to reproduce every detail.

“Look,” my dear old tutor said, “on these steeples, towers, roofs, which rise up out of the green. It is a town, and without actually searching for its history and name, it is well to contemplate it as the worthiest subject of meditation we may encounter on the surface of the world. As a fact any town furnishes material for speculations of the spirit. The postboys tell us that yonder is Montbard, a place utterly unknown to me. Nevertheless I am not afraid to affirm, by analogy, that the people living therein resemble ourselves, are egotistic cowards, perfidious gluttons, dissolute. Otherwise they could not be human beings and descendants of Adam, at once miserable and venerable, and in whom all our instincts, down to the most ignoble, have their august origin. The only possible doubtful matter with yonder people, is to know if they are more inclined to food or to procreation. But a doubt is hardly permissible; a philosopher will soundly opine that hunger is for these unhappy ones a more pressing necessity than love. In the greenness of my youth I believed that the human animal is before all things inclined to sexual intercourse. But that was a wanton error, as it is quite clear that human beings are more interested in conserving their own life than in giving life to others. Hunger is the axis of humanity; but after all, as it seems to be useless to discuss the matter any further, I’ll say, with your permission, that the life of mortals has two poles—hunger and love. And here it is that one has to open ears and soul! These hideous creatures who are born only to devour or to embrace furiously, one the other, live together under the sway of laws which precisely interdict their satisfying that double and fundamental concupiscence. These ingenious animals, having become citizens, voluntarily impose on themselves all sorts of privations; they respect the property of their neighbours, which is prodigious, if you take their avaricious nature into consideration; they observe the rules of modesty, which is an enormous hypocrisy, but generally consists in but seldom speaking of that of which they think without ceasing. Then, let’s be true and honest, gentlemen, when we look on a woman, we do not attach our thoughts to the beauties of her soul or the pleasantness of her spirit; when we approach her we have in view principally her natural form. And the amiable creatures know it so well that they have their dresses made by the fashionable dressmakers and take good care not only not to veil their charms, but to exaggerate them by all sorts of artifices. And Mademoiselle Jahel, who certainly is not a savage, would be distressed if, on her, art had gained the advantage over nature to such a degree as to prevent the fulness of her bosom and the roundness of her thighs being seen. And so it is that, since Adam’s fall, we see mankind hungry and incontinent. Why do they, when assembled in towns, impose on themselves privations of all kinds, and submit to a rule of life contrary to their own corrupted nature? It is said that they find it advantageous, and that they feel that their individual security depends on such restriction. But that would be to suppose them to have too much reasoning power, and, what’s more, a false reasoning, because it is absurd to save one’s life at the expense of all that makes it reasonable and valuable. It is further said that fear keeps them obedient, and it is true that prison, gallows and wheels are excellent assurers of submission to existing laws. But it is also certain that prejudice conspires with the laws, and it is not easy to see how compulsion could have been universally established. Laws are said to be the necessary conformity of things; but we have become aware that that conformity is contradictory to nature, and far from being necessary. Therefore, gentlemen, I’ll look for the source and origin of the laws not in man, but outside man, and I should think that, being strangers to mankind, they derive from God, who not only formed with His own mysterious hands earth and water, plants and animals, but the people also, and human society. I’m inclined to believe that the laws come direct from Him, from His first decalogue, and that they are inhuman because they are divine. It must be well understood that I here consider the codes in their principles and in their essence, without taking note of their ridiculous diversities and their pitiable complications. The details of customs and prescriptions, the written as well as the oral, are man’s work, and to be despised. But do not let us be afraid to recognise that the town is a divine institution. As a result, every government ought to be theocratic. One priest, famous for the part he took in the declaration of 1682, M. Bossuet, was not in error, when he wanted to form the rules of polity after the maxims of the Scriptures; and if he has pitiably failed in this endeavour, you have to accuse the weakness of his genius alone, which was too narrowly attached to examples taken from the books of Judges and Kings, without seeing that God, when He works on this world, proportions Himself to time and space, and knows the difference between Frenchmen and Israelites. The city established under His true and sole legitimate authority will not be the town of Joshua, Saul and David; it will rather be the town of the gospels, the town of the poor, where working-man and prostitute will not be humiliated by the Pharisee. Oh, sirs, how excellent it would be to extract from the Scriptures a polity more beautiful and more saintly than that which was extracted therefrom by that rocky and sterile M. Bossuet! What a city, more harmonious than that erected by the sounds of the lyre of Orpheus, could be built on the maxims of Jesus Christ, on the day when His priests, no more sold to emperors and kings, manifest themselves as the true princes of the people!”

While, standing round my good master, we listened to his discourse, we were, without noticing it, surrounded by a troop of beggars, who, limping, shivering, spitting, frightening the sparrows, shook their swellings and deformities, spreading evil smells and suffocating us with their blessings. They struggled passionately for some small silver pieces M. d’Anquetil threw among them, fell to the ground, and rolled in the dust.

“It’s painful to look on these people,” said Jahel with a sigh.

“’That pity,” said M. Coignard, “suits you like a jewel, Mademoiselle Jahel; your sighs ornament your bosom heaving under them like a breath each of us would like to respire from your lips. But allow me to say that such tenderness, which is not less touching from being an interested one, troubles you inwardly by a comparison of yonder miserable beings with yourself, and by the instinctive idea that your young body touches, so to say, this hideous, ulcerated and mutilated flesh, as in truth it is bound and attached to them in as far as members of Our Lord Jesus Christ. In consequence you cannot look on such corruption of a human body without seeing it at the same time as a possibility of your own body. And these wretches have shown themselves to you like prophets, announcing that sickness and death are the lot of the family of Adam in this world. For this very reason you sighed, mademoiselle.

“As a fact, there is not the slightest reason to believe yonder ulcerated and verminous beggars less happy than kings and queens. It must not be said that they are poorer, if, as it appears, that farthing picked up by that crippled woman, and which she presses on her heart in frantic joy, seems to her more precious than a pearl collar is to the mistress of a prince-bishop of Cologne and Salzburg. To really understand our spiritual and true interests we should rather envy the life of that cripple who crawls towards us on his hands than that of the King of France or the Emperor of Germany, Being equal before God, they perhaps have peace in their hearts, which the other has not, and the invaluable treasure of innocence. But hold up your petticoats, mademoiselle, for fear that you introduce the vermin with which I see they are covered.”

Such was my good tutor’s speech, and we all listened willingly.

At the distance of three leagues from Montbard, one of the harnesses broke, and, the postboys having failed to bring rope with them, we were detained on the road, as the place of the accident was far from any human dwelling. My good master and M. d’Anquetil whiled away the time by playing and sympathetic quarrels, of which they had made a habit. While the young nobleman was surprised to see his opponent turn up the king oftener than seemed possible by the laws of chance, Jahel, full of emotion, asked me in a whisper if I could not see behind us a carriage in one of the turnings of the road. Looking back to the place she indicated, I could actually see a kind of Gothic vehicle of a ridiculous and strange form.

“Yonder carriage,” said Jahel, “stopped at the same moment as ours. That means that we are followed. I am curious to discover the features of the people travelling in that vehicle. I feel very uneasy about it. Does not one of the travellers wear a very narrow and high headgear? The carriage very much resembles the one in which my uncle brought me, when a child, to Paris after he had killed the Portuguese. It remained, I believe, in one of the coach-houses at the Castle of Sablons. It really seems to be the same, of horrible memory, because I remember my uncle in it, fuming with rage. You cannot conceive, Jacques, how violent his hate is. I myself had to bear his rage the day I came away. He locked me in my room and vomited the most horrible curses on the Abbé Coignard. I shiver when I think what his rage must have been when he found my room empty and the sheets still attached to the window by which I left to fly with you.”

“You ought to say with M. d’Anquetil.”

“How punctilious you are! Did we not depart together? Yonder carriage torments me, it is so much like my uncle’s.”

“Be sure, Jahel, that it’s the carriage of some honest Burgundian, who goes about his business and does not think of us.”

“You don’t know,” said Jahel. “I’m afraid.”

“You cannot fear, however, that your uncle could run after you in his state of decrepitude. He does not occupy himself with anything but cabala and Hebraic dreams.”

“You don’t know him,” she replied, and sighed. “He is occupied with naught but myself. He loves me as much as he hates the rest of the universe. He loves me in a manner—

“In a manner?”

“—In all the manners—in short he loves me.”

“Jahel, I shudder to hear you. Good heavens: that Mosaide loves you without that disinterestedness which is so admirable in an old man, and so well suited for an uncle? Tell me all, Jahel-all!”

“Oh! you can tell it better than I, Jacques.”

“I remain stupid. At his age, is it possible?”

“My dear friend, your skin is white, and your soul also. Everything astonishes you. That candour is your most striking charm. You’re deceived by anyone who wants to deceive you. They make you believe that Mosaide is a hundred and thirty years old; but he is hardly older than sixty. They told you that for years he lived in the Great Pyramid, but as a fact he has been a banker at Lisbon. And it depended only on me to pass in your eyes as a Salamander.”

“What, Jahel, do you tell me the truth? Your uncle—”

“Yes, and that is the secret of his jealousy. He believes the Abbé Coignard to be his rival. He disliked him instinctively, at first sight. But it is a great deal worse since he overheard a few words of the conversation I had with that good abbé in the thorn bush, and I’m sure he hates him now as the cause of my flight and my elopement. For, after all, I’ve been abducted, my friend; a fact that ought to enhance my worth in your eyes. I was certainly very ungrateful to leave so good an uncle. But I could not endure any longer the slavery he kept me in. And I also had an ardent wish to become rich, and it is very natural, is it not, to wish for all the good things when one is young and pretty? We have but one life, and that is short enough. No one has taught me all the fine lies about the immortality of the soul.”

“Alas! Jahel,” I exclaimed, in an ardour of love, provoked by her own coolness. “Alas! I did not want anything else with you at the Chateau des Sablons. What was wanting for your happiness?”

She made me a sign to show that M. d’Anquetil was observing us. The harness had been repaired and our carriage rolled on again along the road bordered on both sides by vineyards.

We stopped at Nuits to sup and to sleep. My dear tutor drank half-a-dozen bottles of Burgundy, which warmed up his eloquence marvellously. M. d’Anquetil kept him company, glass in hand, but to hold his own in conversation also was a thing of which this nobleman was not quite capable.

The meat was good, the beds were bad. M. Coignard slept in the lower chamber, under the stairs, in the same feather bed with the host and his wife, and all three thought they would be suffocated. M. d’Anquetil with Jahel took the upstairs room, where the bacon and the onions were suspended on hooks driven into the ceiling. I myself climbed by means of a ladder to a loft and stretched out on a bundle of straw. Being awakened by the moonlight, a ray of which fell into my eyes, I suddenly saw Jahel in her night-cap coming through the trap door. At a cry that I gave she put her finger to her lips.

“Hush!” she said to me, “Maurice is as drunk as a stevedore and a marquis. He sleeps the sleep of Noah.”

“Who is Maurice?” I inquired, rubbing my eyes.

“It’s Anquetil. Who did you think it was?”

“Nobody, but I did not know that his name was Maurice.”

“It’s not long that I knew it myself, but never mind.”

“You are right, Jahel, it’s of no importance.”

She was in her chemise, and the moonlight fell like drops of milk on her naked shoulders. She slipped down at my side, called me by the sweetest of names and by the most horrid of coarse names, in whispers sounding out of her lips like heavenly murmurs. And then she became dumb, and kissed me with the kisses she alone was able to give, and in comparison with which the caresses of any other woman were but an insipidity.

The constraint and the silence enhanced the furious tension of my nerves. Surprise, the joy of revenge, and, perhaps, a somewhat perverse jealousy inflamed my desires. The elastic firmness of her flesh and the supple violence of the movements wherewith she enveloped me demanded, promised, and deserved the most ardent caresses. We became aware, during that wonderful night, of voluptuousness the abyss of which borders on suffering.

When I came down to the innyard in the morning I met M. d’Anquetil, who, now that I had deceived him, appeared to me less odious than formerly. On his part he felt better inclined to me than he had yet done since we started on our travels. He talked familiarly to me, with sympathy and confidence; his only reproach was that I did not show to Jahel all the regard and attention she deserved, and did not give her the care an honest man ought to bestow on every woman.

“She complains,” he said, “of your want of civility. Take care, my dear Tournebroche; I should be sorry for a difference to arise between her and yourself. She’s a pretty girl, and loves me immensely.”

The carriage had rolled on for more than an hour when Jahel put her head out of the coach window and said to me:

“The other carriage has reappeared. I should like to discover the features of the two men who occupy it, but I cannot.”

I replied that at such a distance, and in the morning mist, it would be impossible to discern them.

“But,” she exclaimed, “those are not faces.”

“What else do you want them to be?” I questioned, and burst out laughing.

Now, in her turn, she inquired of me what silly idea had sprung into my brain to laugh so stupidly and said:

“They are not faces, they are masks. Yonder two men follow us and are masked.”

I informed M. d’Anquetil that seemingly an ugly carriage followed us. But he asked me to let him alone.

“If all the hundred thousand devils were on our track,” he exclaimed, “I should not care a rap for it as I have enough to do to look after that obese old abbé who plays his tricks with the cards in the most artful way, and who robs me of my money. I almost suspect, Tournebroche, you call my attention to yonder coach for the purpose of aiding and abetting that old sharper. Cannot a carriage be on the same road as ours without causing you anxiety?”

Jahel whispered to me:

“I predict, Jacques, that yonder carriage brings trouble for us. I have a presentiment of it, and my presentiments have never failed to come true.”

“Do you want to make me believe that you have the gift of prophecy?”

Gravely, she replied:

“Yes; I have.”

“What, you are a prophetess!” I cried, smiling. “Here is something strange!”

“You sneer and you doubt because you have never seen a prophetess so near at hand. How did you wish them to look?”

“I thought that they must be virgins.”

“That’s not necessary,” she replied, with assurance.

The threatening carriage had disappeared at a turning of the road. But Jahel’s uneasiness had, without his acknowledging it, impressed M. d’Anquetil, who ordered the postboys to hurry their horses, promising them extra good tips. And by an excess of care he passed to each of them a bottle of the wine that the abbé had placed in reserve in the bottom of the carriage.

The postillions made their horses feel the stimulus that the wine gave to them.

“You can calm yourself, Jahel,” said he; “at the speed we are going that antique coach, drawn by the horses of the Apocalypse, will never catch us.”

“We run like cats on hot bricks,” said the abbé.

“If only it would last!” said Jahel.

We saw the vineyards on our right disappear rapidly. On the left the River Saône ran slowly. Like a hurricane we passed the bridge of Tournus. The town itself rose on the other side of the river on a hill crowned by the walls of an abbey, proud as a fortress.

“That,” said the abbé, “is one of the numberless Benedictine abbeys which are strewn like so many gems on the robe of ecclesiastical Gaul. If it had pleased God that my destiny should match my character I should have lived an obscure life, gay and sweet, in one of these abodes. There is no other religious order I hold in such high esteem, for their doctrines as well as for their morals, as the Benedictines. They have admirable libraries. Happy he who wears their habit and follows their holy rules! It may be from the inconvenience I feel at this moment in being shaken to pieces in this carriage, which no doubt will very soon be upset by sinking into one of the many holes of this confounded road, or it may perhaps be the effect of age, which is the time for retreat and grave thinking; whatever be the cause I wish more ardently than ever to seat myself at a table in one of those venerable galleries, where books plenty and choice are assembled in quiet and silence. I prefer their entertainment to that of men, and my dearest wish is to wait, in the work of the spirit, for the hour in which it will please God to call me from this earth. I shall write history, and by preference that of the Romans at the decline of the Republic, because it is full of great actions and examples. I’ll divide my zeal between Cicero, Saint John Chrysostom and Boethius and my modest and fruitful life would resemble the garden of the old man of Tarentum.

“I have experienced different manners of living, and I think the best is to give oneself to study, to look on peacefully at the vicissitudes of men, and to prolong, by the spectacle of centuries and empires, the brevity of our days. But order and continuity are needed. And that’s the very thing that has always been wanting in my existence. If, as I hope, I am able to disentangle myself from the bad position I’m in just now, I’ll do my best to find an honourable and safe asylum in some learned abbey where bonnes lettres are held in honour and respect. I can see myself there already, enjoying the illustrious peace of science. Could I obtain the good offices of the Sylph assistants of whom that old fool d’Asterac speaks, and who appear, it is said, when they are invoked by the cabalistic name of AGLA—”

At the very moment my dear tutor spoke these words a violent shock brought down a rain of glass on our heads, in such confusion that I felt myself blinded, as well as suffocated under Jahel’s petticoats, while the abbe complained in a smothered voice that M. d’Anquetil’s sword had broken the remainder of his teeth, and over my head Jahel screamed fit to tear to pieces all the air of the Burgundian valleys. M. d’Anquetil, in rough, barrack-room style, promised to get the postboys hanged. When at last I was able to rise, he had already jumped out through a broken window. We followed him, my dear tutor and I, by the same exit, and then all three of us pulled Jahel out of the overturned vehicle. No harm had been done to her, and her first thought was to adjust her head-dress.

“Thank God!” said my tutor, “I have not suffered any other damage than the loss of a tooth, and that was neither whole nor white. Time had already effected its decay.” M. d’Anquetil, legs astride and arms akimbo, examined the carriage.

“The rascals,” he said, “have put it in a nice state. If the horses are got up they will break it all to pieces. Abbé, that carriage is no good for anything else but to play spillikins with.”

The horses had fallen topsy-turvy, one on the other, and were kicking furiously. In a heap of croups and legs and steaming bellies, one of the postboys was buried, his boots in the air. The other was spitting blood in the ditch, where he had been thrown. M. d’Anquetil shouted to them:

“Idiots! I really don’t know why I do not spit you on my sword.”

“Sir,” said Abbé Coignard, “would it not be better to get that poor fellow out of the midst of these horses wherein he is entangled?”

We all went to work with a will, and when the horses were freed and raised we were able to discover the extent of the damage done. One of the springs was broken, one of the wheels also, and one of the horses lame.

“Fetch a smith,” ordered M. d’Anquetil.

“There is no smith in the neighbourhood,” was the postboy’s reply.

“A mechanic of some kind.”

“There is none.”

“A saddler.”

“There is no saddler.”

We looked round. To the west the vineyards extended to the horizon their long peaceful lines. On the hill smoke came out of a chimney near a steeple. On the other side, the Saone, veiled by a light mist, lost itself slowly in the calm running of her flowing waters. The shadows of the poplars elongated themselves on the banks. The shrill cry of a bird pierced the deep silence.

“Where are we?” asked M. d’Anquetil.

“At two full leagues from Tournus,” replied the postillion, spitting blood, “and at least four leagues from Mâcon.”

And, extending his arm towards the smoking chimney:

“Up there, that village ought to be Vallars, but it’s not up to much.”

“Blast you!” roared M. d’Anquetil.

While the horses struggled we went near the carriage, which was lying sadly on its side.

The little postboy who had been taken out from the midst of the horses said:

“As to the spring, that could be mended by a strong piece of wood. It will only make the carriage shake you more. But there is the broken wheel! And, worst of all, my hat is under it, smashed to pieces.”

“Damn your hat!” said M. d’Anquetil.

“Your lordship may not be aware that it was quite new,” was the postboy’s meek reply.

“And the window glasses are broken!” sighed Jahel, seated on a portmanteau, at the side of the road.

“If it were but the glasses,” said M. Coignard, “a remedy could soon be found by lowering the blinds, but the bottles cannot be in the same state as the windows. I must look to it as soon as the coach can be raised. I am also in fear for my Boethius, which I had placed under the cushions with some other good books.”

“It does not matter,” said M. d’Anquetil. “I have the cards in my waistcoat pocket. But shall we not get any supper?”

“I had thought of it,” said the abbé. “It is not in vain that God has given to the use of men the animals who crowd the earth, the sky and the water. I am an excellent angler; the care necessary to allure the fish particularly suits my meditative mind, and the River Orne has seen me managing my line while meditating on the eternal verities. Do not trouble over your supper. If Mademoiselle Jahel will be good enough to give me one of the pins which keep her garments together I’ll soon make a hook of it, to enable me to fish in yonder river, and I flatter myself I shall return before nightfall laden with two or three carp, that we will grill over a brushwood fire.”

“I am quite aware,” said Jahel, “that we are reduced to somewhat of a savage state. But I could not give you a pin, abbé, without your giving me something in exchange for it; otherwise our friendship would be jeopardised. And that I do not want in any case.”

“Then I will make an advantageous exchange, mademoiselle: I’ll pay for your pin with a kiss.”

And, taking the pin out of Jahel’s hand, he kissed her on both cheeks with inconceivable courtesy, gracefulness and decency.

After having lost plenty of time, a reasonable step was at last taken. The big postillion, who no longer spat blood, was sent to Tournus on one of the horses to bring back with him a blacksmith; the other boy was ordered to light a fire, as the air became fresh, and a sharp wind was rising.

We discovered on the road, a hundred paces from the place of our breakdown, a cliff of soft stone, the foot of which was quarried in several places. We resolved to wait in one of those caves, warming ourselves until the return of the boy sent to Tournus. The second boy tied the three remaining horses to the trunk of a tree, near our cavern. The abbé, who had made a fishing rod with the branch of a willow-tree, some string, a cork and a pin, went a-fishing as much for his philosophical and meditative inclination as for the sake of bringing us back fish. M. d Anquetil, remaining with Jahel and me in the grotto, proposed a game of l’ombre, which is played by three, and which he said, being a Spanish game, was the very one for persons as adventurous as ourselves. And true it is that, in that quarry, in a deserted road, our little company would not have been unworthy to figure in some of the adventures of Don Quixote in which menials take such a strong interest. And so we played l’ombre. I committed a great many errors, and my impetuous partner got cross, when the noble and laughing face of my good tutor became visible at the light of our fire. He untied his handkerchief, and took out of it some four or five small fish, which he opened with his knife, decorated with the image of the late king, dressed as a Roman emperor, standing on a triumphal column; and cleaned them with dexterity, as if he had never lived anywhere else than in the midst of the fishwomen at the market. He excelled as much in trifles as in matters of the greatest importance. Arranging the fish on the embers, he said:

“I will tell you, in all confidence, that following the river in search of a favourable place for fishing, I perceived the apocalyptic coach which frightens Mademoiselle Jahel. It stopped somewhat behind our carriage. You ought to have seen it pass by while I was fishing, and mademoiselle’s soul ought to have been comforted by it.”

“We have not seen it,” replied Jahel.

“Then it may have moved on only after the night had become dark. But at least you heard it rumbling?”

“We have not,” said Jahel.

“It is then that this night is blind as well as deaf. It is not to be supposed that yonder coach, which had not a wheel broken, not a horse lamed, would have remained standing still on the road. What for?”

“Yes, what for?” said Jahel.

“Our supper,” said my good tutor, “reminds me of the simplicity of the repasts described in the Bible, where the pious traveller divided with an angel, on the bank of the river, the fishes of the Tigris. But we are in want of bread, salt and wine. I’ll try to take out of our coach the provisions put there, and look if by a fortunate chance some bottles have remained intact. There are occasions when glass remains whole but steel is broken. Tournebroche, my son, give me your steel; and you, mademoiselle, do not fail to turn the grilling fish. I’ll be back in a moment.”

He left. His somewhat heavy tread sounded in a de crescendo, and soon we could hear him no more.

“This very night,” said M. d’Anquetil, “reminds me of the night before the battle of Parma. You may be aware that I have served under Villars and been in the War of Succession. I was with the scouts. We could not see anything. That’s one of the best ruses of war. Men are sent out to reconnoitre the enemy who return without having reconnoitred anything. But reports are drawn up, after the battle, and then it is that the tacticians are triumphant. Thus, at nine o’clock at night, I was sent out scouting with twelve men—”

And he gave us a narrative of the War of Succession and of his amours in Italy; his story had lasted for well-nigh a quarter of an hour when he exclaimed:

“That rascal of an abbé does not come back. I bet he drinks all the wine which remained in the coach.”

Thinking that my dear tutor might possibly be embarrassed, I rose and went to help him. It was a moonless night, and if the sky was resplendent in the light of thousands of stars, the earth was clad in a darkness which my eyes, dazzled by the light of the flames, could not pierce.

Having walked about fifty steps on the black road. I heard a terrible cry, which did not sound as if coming from a human breast, a cry altogether unlike all cries I had heard before, a horrible cry. I ran in the direction from whence came this clamour of fatal distress. But fear and darkness checked my steps. Arrived at last at the place where our coach lay on the road, shapeless and enlarged by the night, I found my dear tutor seated on the side of the ditch, bent double. Trembling I asked him:

“What’s the matter? Why did you shout?”

“Yes; why did I shout?” he said, in a new and altered voice. “I did not know I had cried out. Tournebroche, did you not see a man? He struck me in the dark, very fiercely; he gave me a blow with his fist.”

“Come,” I said to him, “get up, my dear master.”

Having risen he fell back heavily on the ground.

I tried to raise him, and my hands became moist when I touched his breast.

“You’re bleeding!”

“Bleeding? I’m a dead man. He has killed me. I thought that it was but a blow with the fist. But it’s a wound, and I feel that I shall never recover from it.”

“Who struck you, my dear tutor?”

“It was the Jew. I did not see him, but I know it was he. How can I know that it was the Jew, when I did not see him? Yes; how is it? What strange things! It’s not to be believed, is it, Tournebroche? I have the taste of death in my mouth, which cannot be defined. It was to be, my God! But why rather here than somewhere else? That’s the mystery! ‘Adjutorium nostrum in nomine Domini—Domine exaudi orationem meam—’”

For a short time he prayed in a low voice, then:

“Tournebroche, my son,” he said to me, “take the two bottles I found in the coach and have placed here beside me. I can do no more. Tournebroche, where do you think the wound is? It’s in the back I suffer most, and it seems to me that life runs out by the legs. My spirits are going.”

Murmuring these words he fainted softly in my arms. I tried to carry him, but I had only strength enough to lay him lengthwise on the ground. Opening his shirt, I discovered the wound; it was in the breast; very small, and bleeding little. I tore my wristbands to pieces and laid them on the wound; I called out, shouted for help. Soon I thought I heard help coming from the side of Tournus, and I recognised M. d’Asterac. Unexpected as the meeting was, I did not actually feel surprised; too deeply was I the prey of the immense sorrow I felt holding in my arms, dying, that best of all masters.

“What’s the matter, my son?” asked the alchemist.

“Help me, sir,” I replied, “the Abbé Coignard is dying. Mosaide has killed him.”

“It is true,” said M. d’Asterac, “that Mosaide has come here in an old chariot in pursuit of his niece, and that I have accompanied him to exhort you, my son, to return to your employment with me. Since yesterday we came near your coach, which we saw break down just now in a rut. At that very moment Mosaide alighted from the carriage, and it may be that he wanted to take a walk, or perhaps he made himself invisible, as he can do. I have not seen him again. It is possible that he has already found his niece to curse her; such is the intention. But he has not killed M. Coignard. It is the Elves, my son, who have killed your master, to punish him for the disclosure of their secrets. Nothing is surer than that.”

“Ah! sir,” I exclaimed, “what does it matter, if it was the Jew or the Elves who killed him; we must assist him.”

“On the contrary, my son,” replied M. d’Asterac, “it is of the greatest importance. For should he have been stricken by a human hand it would be easy for me to cure him by magic operation; but having provoked the Elves he could never escape their infallible vengeance.”

As he spoke, M. d’Anquetil and Jahel, having heard my shouts, approached, with the postboy, who carried a lantern.

“What,” said Jahel, “is M. Coignard unwell?”

And kneeling close to my good tutor, she raised his head and made him inhale the smell of her salts.

“Mademoiselle,” I said to her, “you’re the cause of his death, which is the vengeance for your abduction. Mosaide has killed him.”

From my dying master she lifted up her face pale with horror and shining with tears.

“And you too,” she said, “believe that it’s easy to be a pretty girl without causing mischief?”

“Alas!” I replied, “what you say is but too true. But we have lost the best of men.”

At this moment Abbé Coignard sighed deeply, opened his eyes, called for his book of Boethius, and fainted again into unconsciousness.

The postboy thought it would be best to carry the wounded man to the village of Vallars, which was only half-a-league distant.

“I’ll go,” he said, “to fetch the steadiest of the horses which remain. We’ll tie the poor fellow securely on it, and lead it slowly ahead. I think him very ill. He looks exactly like the courier who was murdered at Saint Michel on the same road, at four stages from here, near Senecy, where my sweetheart lives. That poor devil moved his eyelids and turned up the whites of his eyes like a bad woman, saving your presence, gentlemen. And your abbé did the same when mam’selle tickled his nose with her bottle. It’s a bad sign with a wounded man; girls don’t die of it when they turn their eyes up in that fashion. Your lordships know it well. And there is some distance, thank God! between the little death and the great. But it’s the same turning up of the eyes... Remain, gentlemen, I’ll go and fetch the horse.”

“This rustic is amusing,” said M. d’Anquetil, “with his turned-up eyes and his bad women. I’ve seen in Italy soldiers who died on the battlefield with a fixed look and eyes starting out of their head. There are no rules for dying of a wound, actually not even in the military service, where exactitude is pushed to the extreme. But will you, Tournebroche, in default of a better qualified person, present me to yonder gentleman in black, who wears diamond studs, and whom I reckon to be M. d’Asterac?”

“Ah! sir,” I replied, “consider the presentation to be made. I have no other feelings but to assist my dear tutor.”

“Be it so!” said M. d’Anquetil.

And approaching M. d’Asterac:

“Sir, I have taken your mistress away: I’m ready to answer for my deed.”

“Sir,” replied M. d’Asterac. “Grace be to heaven! I have no connection with any woman, and do not understand what you mean.”

At this very moment the postboy returned with a horse. My dear tutor had slightly recovered. We lifted him up, all four of us, and put him with the greatest difficulty on the horse, where we tied him as securely as possible. And we went off. I held him on one side, M. d’Anquetil on the other. The postboy led the horse and carried the lantern. M. d’Asterac had returned to his carriage. All went well as long as we kept on the highroad; but when it became necessary to climb the small lanes of the vineyards, my dear master, slipping at every movement of the horse, lost the rest of his little strength, and fainted away again. We thought it best to take him off the horse and carry him in our arms. The postboy held him under the arms and I by the legs. The ascent was very rough, and I expected to fall at least four times with my living cross, on the stones of the path. At last the hill became easier. We entered a small lane bordered by bushes, and soon discovered on our left the first roofs of Vallars. We laid our burden softly on the turf, and for a moment took breath. Lifting up the abbe again, we carried him into the village.

A pink light appeared eastwards on the horizon. The morning star, in the pale sky, shone as white and peaceful as the moon, the light crescent of which paled away in the west The birds began to chirp; my master sighed heavily.

Jahel ran before us, knocking at the doors, in quest of a bed and a surgeon. Carrying baskets and panniers the vine-growers went grape-gathering. One of them said to Jahel that Gaulard on the market place lodges man and beast.

“As to the surgeon, Coquebert, you’ll see him yonder under the shaving plate which serves as his trade sign. He leaves his house to go to his vineyard.”

He was a very polite little man. He told us that he had a bed free in his house, as a short time ago his daughter had got married.

By his order, his wife, a stout dame wearing a white cap covered by a felt hat, put sheets on the bed in the lower chamber. She helped us to undress the Abbe Coignard and to put him to bed. And then she went out to fetch the vicar.

In the meanwhile M. Coquebert examined the wound

“You see,” I said, “it’s small, and bleeds but little.”

“That’s not good at all,” he replied, “and I do not like it, my dear young gentleman. I like a large wound which bleeds freely.”

“I see,” said M. d’Anquetil, “that for a leech and a village squirt your test is not a bad one. Nothing is worse than those little but deep wounds which look a mere nothing. Tell me of a nice cut across the face. It’s pleasant to look on, and heals in no time. But know, my good sir, that this wounded man is my chaplain, and plays piquet with me. Are you the man to put him on his legs again, notwithstanding your looks, which are rather those of a vet?”

“At your service,” replied the barber-surgeon, bowing profoundly. “But I also set broken bones and treat wounds. I’ll examine this one.”

“Make haste, sir,” I said.

“Patience!” he replied. “First of all the wound must be washed, and I must wait till the water gets warm.”

My good tutor, a little restored, said slowly, but with a fairly strong voice:

“Lamp in hand, he’ll visit the corners of Jerusalem, and what is hidden in darkness will be brought to light.”

“What do you mean, dear master?”

“Don’t, my son,” he replied; “I’m entertaining the sentiments fit for my state.”

“The water is hot,” the barber said to me. “Hold the basin close to the bed. I’ll wash the wound.”

And while he pressed on my tutor’s breast a sponge soaked in hot water, the vicar entered the room with Madame Coquebert. He had a basket and a pair of vine shears in his hand.

“Here is then the poor man,” said he. “I was going to my vineyard, but that of Jesus Christ has to be attended to first; my son,” he said as he approached the stricken abbé, “offer your wound to our Lord. Perhaps it’s not so serious as it’s thought to be. And for the rest, we must obey God’s will.”

Turning to the barber, he asked:

“Is it very urgent, M. Coquebert, or could I go to my vineyard? The white ones can wait; it’s not bad if they do get a little overripe, and a little rain would only produce more and better wine. But the red must be gathered at once.”

“You speak the truth, Monsieur le Cure,” M. Coquebert replied. “I’ve in my vineyard some grapes which cover themselves with a certain moisture, and which escape the sun only to perish by the rain.”

“Alas!” said the vicar, “humidity and drought are the two enemies of the vine-grower.”

“Nothing is truer,” said the barber, “but I’ll inspect the wound.”

Having said so he pushed one of his fingers into the wound.

“Ah! Torturer!” exclaimed the patient.

“Remember,” said the vicar, “that our Lord forgave His torturers.”

“They were not barbarous,” said the abbe.

“That’s a wicked word,” said the vicar.

“You must not torment a dying man for his jokes,” said my good master. “But I suffer horribly; that man assassinates me and I die twofold. The first time was by the hands of a Jew.”

“What does he mean?” asked the vicar.

“It is best, reverend sir,” said the barber, “not to trouble yourself about it. You must never want to hear the talk of a patient. They are only dreams.”

“Coquebert,” said the vicar, “you don’t speak well. Patients’ confessions must be listened to, and some Christians who never in all their lives said a good word may, at the end, pronounce words which open Paradise to them.”

“I spoke temporally only,” said the barber.

“Monsieur le Cure,” I said, “the Abbe Coignard, my good master, does not wander in his mind, and it is but too true that he has been murdered by a Jew of the name of Mosaide.”

“In that case,” replied the vicar, “he has to see a special favour of God, who willed that he perishes by the hand of a nephew of those who crucified His Son. The behaviour of Providence is always admirable. M. Coquebert, can I go to my vineyard?”

“You can, sir,” replied the barber. “The wound is not a good one, but yet not of the kind by which one dies at once. It’s one of those wounds which play with the wounded like a cat with a mouse, and with such play time may be gained.”

“That’s well,” said the vicar. “Let’s thank God, my son, that He lets you live, but life is precarious and transitory. One must always be ready to quit it.”

My good tutor replied earnestly:

“To be on the earth without being of it, to possess without being in possession, for the fashion of this world passes away.”

Picking up his shears and his basket, the vicar said:

“Better than by your cloak and shoes, which I see on yonder cupboard, I recognise by your speech that you belong to the Church and lead a holy life. Have you been ordained?”

“He is a priest,” I said, “a doctor of divinity and a professor of eloquence.”

“Of which diocese?” queried the vicar.

“Of Seez in Normandy, a suffragan of Rouen.”

“An important ecclesiastical province,” said the vicar, “but less important by antiquity and fame than the diocese of Reims, of which I am a priest.”

And he went away. M. Jerome Coignard passed the day easily. Jahel wanted to remain the night with him. At about eleven o’clock I left the house of M. Coquebert and went in search of a bed at the inn of M. Gaulard. I found M. d’Asterac in the market place. His shadow in the moonlight covered nearly all the surface. He laid his hands on my shoulder as he was wont to do, and said with his customary gravity:

“It’s time for me to assure you, my son, that I have accompanied Mosa’ide for nothing else than this. I see you cruelly tormented by the goblins. Those little spirits of the earth have attacked you, deceiving you with all sorts of phantasmagoria, seducing you by a thousand lies, and finally forcing you to fly from my house.”

“Alas! sir,” I replied, “it’s quite true that I left your house in apparent ingratitude, for which I beg your pardon. But I have been persecuted by the constables, and not by goblins. And my dear tutor has been murdered. That’s not a phantasmagoria.”

“Do not doubt,” the great man answered, “that the unhappy abbe has been mortally wounded by the Sylphs, whose secrets he has revealed. He has stolen from a sideboard some stones, which were the work of the Sylphs, and which they left unfinished, and still very different from diamonds in brilliancy as well as in purity.

“It was that avidity, and the indiscreet pronouncing of the name of Agla, which has angered them. You must know, my son, that it is impossible for philosophers to arrest the vengeance of this irascible people.

“I have heard from a supernatural voice, and also from Criton’s reports, of the sacrilegious larceny M. Coignard committed by which he flattered himself to find out the art by which Salamanders, Sylphs, and Gnomes ripen the morning dew and insensibly change it into crystals and diamonds.”

“Alas! sir, I assure you he thought of no such thing, and that it was that horrible Mosa’ide who stabbed him with a stiletto on the road.”

My words very much displeased M. d’Asterac, who urged me in the most pressing manner never to repeat them again.

“Mosaide,” he further said, “is a good enough cabalist to reach his enemies without going to the trouble of running after them. Know, my son, that, had he wanted to kill M. Coignard, he could have done it easily from his own room by a magic operation. I see that you’re still ignorant of the first elements of the science. The truth is that this learned man, informed by the faithful Criton of the flight of his niece, hired post-horses to rejoin her and eventually carry her back to his house, which he certainly would have done, had he discovered in the mind of that unhappy girl the slightest idea of regret and repentance. But, finding her corrupted by debauchery, he preferred to excommunicate and curse her by the globes, the wheels and the beasts of Ezekiel. That is precisely what he has done under my eyes in the calashr where he lives alone, so as not to partake of the bed and table of Christians.”

I kept mute, astonished by such dreams, but this extraordinary man talked to me with an eloquence which troubled me deeply.

“Why,” he said, “do you not let yourself be enlightened by the counsels of philosophers? What kind of wisdom do you oppose to mine? Consider that yours is less in quantity without differing in essence. To you as well as to me nature appears as an infinity of figures, which have to be recognised and classified, and which form a sequence of hieroglyphics. You can easily distinguish some of those signs to which you attach a sense, but you are too much inclined to be content with the vulgar and the literal, and you do not search enough for the ideal and the symbolic. And withal the world is comprehensible only as a symbol, and all you see in the universe is naught but an illuminated writing, which vulgar men spell without understanding it. Be afraid, my son, to imitate the universal bray in the style of the learned ones who congregate in the academies. Rather receive of me the key of all knowledge.”

For a moment he stopped speaking, and then continued in a more familiar tone:

“You are persecuted, my son, by enemies less terrible than Sylphs. And your Salamander will not have any difficulty in freeing you from the goblins as soon as you request her to do so. I repeat that I came here with Mosa’ide for no other purpose than to give you this good advice, and to press you to return to me and continue your work. I quite understand that you want to assist your unhappy master till the end. You have full license to do it. But afterwards do not fail to return to my house. Adieu! I’ll return this very night to Paris with that great Mosaide whom you have accused so unjustly.”

I promised him all he wanted, and crawled into my miserable bed, where I fell asleep, weighed down as I was by fatigue and suffering.

CHAPTER XX

Illness of M. Jerome Coignard

The next morning, at daybreak, I returned to the surgeon’s house, and there found Jahel at the bedside of my dear tutor, sitting upright on a straw chair, with her head wrapped up in her black cape, attentive, grave and docile, like a sister of charity. M. Coignard, very red, dozed.

“The night was not a good one,” she said to me in a whisper. “He has talked, he sang, he called me Sister Germaine, and has made proposals to me. I am not offended, but it is a proof that his mind wanders.”

“Alas!” I exclaimed, “if you had not betrayed me, Jahel, to ramble about the country in company with a gallant, my dear master would not lie in bed stabbed in his breast.”

“It is the misery of our friend,” she replied, “that causes me bitter regrets. As for the rest, it is not worth while to think of it, and I cannot understand, Jacques, how you can occupy your mind with it just now.”

“I think of it always.”

“For my part, I hardly think of it. You are the cause of three-fourths of your own unhappiness.”

“What do you mean by that, Jahel?”

“I mean, my friend, that I have given the cloth, but that you do the embroidery, and that your imagination enriches far too much the plain reality. I give you my oath that the present hour I cannot remember the quarter of what causes you grief, and you meditate over it so obstinately that your rival is more present to your mind than I am myself. Do not think of it any more, and let me give the abbe a cooling drink, for he wakes up.”

At this very moment M. Coquebert approached the bedside, his instrument-case in hand, dressed the wound anew, and said aloud that the wound was on the best way to heal up. But taking me aside he said:

“I can assure you, sir, that the good abbe will not die from the wound he has received, but to tell the truth I am afraid it will be difficult for him to escape from a pleurisy caused by his wound. He is at present the prey of a heavy fever. But here comes the vicar.”

My good master recognised him without any difficulty, and inquired after his health.

“Better than the grapes,” replied the vicar. “They are all spoiled by fleurebers and vermin, against which the clergy of Dijon organised this year a fine procession with cross and banners. Next year a still finer one will have to be arranged, and more candles burnt. It also will be necessary for the official to excommunicate anew the flies which destroy the grapes.”

“Vicar,” said my good master, “it is said that you seduce the girls in your vineyards. Fie! it is not right at your age. In my youth, like you I had a weakness for the creatures. But time has altered me very much, and quite lately I let a nun pass without saying anything to her. You do otherwise with the damsels and the bottles, vicar. But you do worse by not celebrating the masses you have been paid for, and by trafficking the goods and chattels of the Church. You are a bigamist and a simoniac.”

Hearing this discourse the vicar was painfully surprised; his mouth remained open, and his cheeks dropped wistfully on both sides of his big face. And at last, with eyes on the ground, he sighed:

“What an unworthy attack on the character of my profession! What talk for a man so near the tribunal of God! Oh, Monsieur l’Abbé, is it for you to speak in that way, you who have lived a holy life and studied in so many books?”

My dear master raised himself on his elbows. The fever gave him, unhappily, that jovial mien of his that we had always liked so much.

“It is true,” he said, “that I have studied the ancient authors. But I have read much less than the second vicar of the Bishop of Séez, for, as he had the look and the mind of an ass, he was able to read two pages at the same time, one with each eye. What do you say to that, you villain of a vicar, you old seducer, who runs after the chicks by moonlight? Vicar, your lady friend is built like a witch. She has hairs on her chin, she’s the barber-surgeon’s wife. He is fully a cuckold, and well he deserves it, that homunculus, whose whole medical science consists in the art of blood-letting and giving a clyster.”

“God Almighty! What does he say?” exclaimed Madame Coquebert, “for sure he has the devil in him.”

“I have heard the talk of many delirious patients,” said M. Coquebert, “but not one has said such wicked things.”

“I am discovering,” said the vicar, “that we’ll have more trouble than we expected to conduct this unhappy man to a peaceful end. There is a biting humour in his nature and impurities I did not find out at first. His speech is malicious, and unfit for a priest and a patient.”

“It’s the effect of the fever,” said the barber-surgeon. “But,” continued the vicar, “that fever, if it’s not stopped, will bring him to hell. He has gravely offended against what is due to a priest. But still, I’ll come back tomorrow and exhort him, for I owe him, by the example of our Lord, unlimited compassion. But I have my doubts about it. Unhappily there is a break in my winepress, and all the labourers are in the vineyard. Coquebert, do not fail to give word to the carpenter, and to call me to your patient if he should suddenly get worse. These are many troubles, Coquebert!”

The following day was such a good one for M. Coignard that we hoped he would remain with us. He drank meat broth, and was able to rise in his bed. He talked to each of us with his accustomed grace and sweetness. M. d’Anquetil, who dwelt at Gaulard’s, came to see him, end rather indiscreetly asked him to play piquet Smiling, my good master promised to do so next week. But in the evening the fever returned. With pale eyes swiming in unspeakable terror, and shivering and chattering teeth, he shouted:

“There he is, the old fornicator. He is the son of Judas Iscariot begot on a female devil, taking the form of a goat. But hanged he will be on his father’s fig-tree, and his intestines will gush out to earth. Arrest him. ...He kills me! I feel cold!”

But a moment later he threw the blanket off and complained of the heat.

“I’m very thirsty,” he said. “Give me some wine! And let it be cool! Madame Coquebert, hasten to cool it in the fountain: the day will be a burning one.”

It was night-time, he confounded the hours in his head.

“Be quick,” he also said to Madame Coquebert, “but do not be as simple as the bell-ringer of the Cathedral of Seez, who, going to lift out of the fountain some bottles he had put there to cool, saw his own shadow in ihe water and shouted: ‘Hello, gentleman; come and help me. There are on the other side some Antipodeans, who’ll drink our wine if we don’t take good care.’”

“He is jovial,” said Madame Coquebert. “But just now he talked of me in a manner quite indecent Should I have deceived Coquebert I certainly would not have done it with the vicar, out of regard for his profession and his age.”

This very moment the vicar entered the room and asked:

“Well, abbe, what are your dispositions now? What is there new?”

“Thank God,” answered M. Coignard, “there is nothing new in my soul, for, as said Saint Chrysostom, beware of new things. Don’t walk in untrodden ways, one wanders without end when one commences to wander. I have had that sad experience, and lost myself for having followed untrodden roads. I have listened to my own counsels, and they have conducted me to the abyss. Vicar, I am a poor sinner, the number of my iniquities oppresses me.”

“These are fine words,” said the vicar. “’Tis God Himself who dictates them to you. I recognise His inimitable style. Do you want to advance somewhat the salvation of your soul?”

“Willingly,” said M. Coignard. “My impurities rise against me. I see big ones and small. I see red ones and black. I see infinitesimals which ride on dogs and pigs, and I see others which are fat and naked, with breasts like leather bottles, bellies in great folds, and thighs of enormous size.”

“Is it possible,” said the vicar, “that you can see as distinctly as that? But if your faults are such as you say, it would be better not to describe them and to be content to detest them in your own mind.”

“Would you, then, vicar,” replied the abbe, “that my sins were all made like an Adonis? Don’t let us speak of it any more. And you, barber, give me a drink. Do you know M. de la Musardiere?”

“Not that I know of,” said M. Coquebert.

“Then know,” replied my dear master, “that he was very taken with the ladies.”

“That’s the way,” interrupted the vicar, “by which the devil takes his advantage over men. But what subject do you follow, my son?”

“You’ll soon know,” said my good master. “M. de la Musardiere gave an appointment to a virgin in a stable. She went, and he let her go away just as she entered it. Do you know why?”

“I do not,” said the vicar, “but let us leave it.”

“Not at all,” continued M. Coignard. “You ought to know that he took good care to have no intercourse with her as he was afraid of begetting a horse, on which account he would have been subject to criminal prosecution.”

“Ah!” said the barber, “he ought rather to have been afraid to engender an ass.”

“Doubtless,” said the vicar. “But such talk does not advance us on the road to heaven. It would be useful to retake the good way. But a little while ago you spoke so edifyingly!”

Instead of giving reply, my good master began to sing, with rather a strong voice:

“Pour mettre en gout le roi Louison

On a pris quinze mirlitons

Landerinette

Qui tous le balai ont roll

Landeriri.”

“If you want to sing, my son,” said the vicar, “you’d better sing a fine Burgundian Christmas carol. You’d rejoice your soul by it and sanctify it.”

“With pleasure,” replied my dear tutor. “There are some by Guy Barozai which, I think, in their apparent rusticity, to be finer than diamonds and more precious than gold. This one, for example:

‘Lor qu’au lai saison qu’ai jaule

Au monde Jesu-chri vin

L’ane et le beu l’echaufin

De le leu sofle dans l’etaule.

Que d’ane et de beu je sai

Dans ce royaume de Gaule,

Que d’ane et de beu je sai

Qui n’en a rien pas tan fai.’”

The surgeon, his wife and the vicar sang together:

“Que d’ane et de beu je sai

Dans ce royaume de Gaule,

Que d’ane et de beu je sai

Qui n’en a rien pas tan fai.”

And my good master replied in a weaker voice:

“Mais le pu beo de l’histoire

Ce fut que l’ane et le beu

Ainsin passire to deu

La nuit sans manger ni boire

Que d’ane et de beu je sai

Couver de pane et de moire

Que d’ane et de beu je sai

Que n’en a rien pas tan fai!”

Then he let his head fall on the pillow and sang no more.

“There is good in this Christian,” said the vicar, “much good, and a while ago he really edified me with his beautiful sentences. But I am not without a certain apprehension, as everything depends on the end, and nobody knows what’s hidden at the bottom of the basket God in His kindness wills that one single moment brings us salvation, but this moment must be the last one, so that everything depends on a single minute, in comparison with which the whole life does not count. That’s what makes me tremble for the patient, over whom angels and devils are furiously quarrelling. But one must never despair of divine mercy.”

CHAPTER XXI

Death of M. Jérôme Coignard

Two days passed in cruel alternations. After that my good master became extremely weak.

“There is no more hope,” M. Coquebert told me. “Look how his head lies on the pillow, how thin his nose is.”

As a fact, my good master’s nose, formerly big and red, was nothing now but a bent blade, livid like lead.

“Tournebroche, my son,” he said to me in a voice still full and strong but of a sound quite strange to me, “I feel that I have but a short time to live. Go and fetch that good priest, that he may listen to my confession.”

The vicar was in his vineyard. There I went.

“The vintage is finished,” he said, “and more abundant than I had hoped for; now let’s go and help that poor fellow.”

I conducted him to my master’s bedside and we left him alone with the dying.

An hour later he came out again and said:

“I can assure you that M. Jérôme Coignard dies in admirable sentiments of piety and humility. At his request, and in consideration of his fervour, I’ll give him the viaticum. During the time necessary for putting on my holy garments, you, Madame Coquebert, will do me the favour to send to the vestry the boy who serves me at mass every morning and make the room ready for the reception of God.”

Madame Coquebert swept the room, put a white coverlet on the bed, placed a little table at the bedside, and covered it with a cloth; she put two candlesticks on the table and lit the candles, and an earthenware bowl wherein a sprig of box swam in the holy water.

Soon we heard the tinkling of the little bell, saw the cross coming in, carried by a child, and the priest clad in white carrying the holy vessels. Jahel, M. d’Anquetil, Madame Coquebert and I fell on our knees.

“Pax huic domui,” said the priest.

“Et omnibus habiantibus in en,” replied the servitor.

Then the vicar took holy water and sprayed it over the patient and the bed.

A moment longer he meditated and then he said with much solemnity:

“My son, have you no declaration to make?”

“Yes, sir,” said M. Abbe Coignard, with a firm voice, “I forgive my murderer.”

Then the priest gave him the holy wafer:

“Ecce Agnus Dei, qui tollit peccata mundi.”

My good master replied with a sigh:

“May I speak to my Lord, I who am naught but dust and ashes? How can I dare to come unto you, I who do not feel any good in me to give me courage? How can I introduce you into me, after having so often wounded your eyes full of kindness?”

And the Abbe Coignard received the holy viaticum in profound silence, interrupted by our sobs and by the great noise Madame Coquebert made blowing her nose.

After having received, my good master made me a sign to come near him, and said with a feeble but distinct voice:

“Jacques Tournebroche, my son, reject, along with the example I gave you, the maxims which I may have proposed to you during my period of lifelong folly. Be in fear of women and of books for the softness and pride accords the little ones a clearer intelligence than the wise one takes in them. Be humble of heart and spirit. God can give them. ‘Tis He who gives all science. My boy, do not listen to those who, like me, subtilise on the good and the evil. Do not be taken in by the beauty and acuteness of their discourses, for the kingdom of God does not consist of words but of virtue.”

He remained quiet, exhausted. I took his hand, lying on the sheet, and covered it with kisses and tears. I told him that he was our master, our friend, our father, and that I could not live without him.

And for long hours I remained waiting at the foot of his bed.

He passed so peaceful a night that I conceived a quite desperate hope. In this state he remained part of the following day. But towards the evening he became agitated and pronounced words so indistinctly that they remained a secret between God and himself.

At midnight he fell into a kind of swoon, and nothing could be heard but the slight scratching of his finger nails on the sheet. He no longer knew me.

About two o’clock the death rattle began. The hoarse and rapid breathing which came from his breast was loud enough to be heard far away in the village street, and my ears were so full of it that I fancied I heard it long after that unhappy day. At daybreak he made a sign with his hand which we could not understand, and sighed long and deeply. It was his last. His features took in death a majesty worthy of the genius that had animated him, and the loss of which will never be repaired.

CHAPTER XXII

Funeral and Epitaph

The Vicar of Vallars prepared a worthy funeral for M. Jerome Coignard. He chanted the death mass and gave the benediction.

My good master was carried to the graveyard close by the church; and M. d’Anquetil offered supper at Gaulard’s to all the people who had assisted at the funeral. They drank new wine and sang Burgundian songs.

Afterwards I went with M. d’Anquetil to the vicar to thank him for his good offices.

“Ah!” he said, “that priest has given us a grand consolation by his edifying end. I have seldom seen a Christian die in such admirable sentiments, and I think it fit to fix his memory by a suitable inscription on his tombstone. Both of you, gentlemen, are learned enough to do that successfully, and I engage myself to have the epitaph of the defunct engraved on a large white stone, in the manner and style wherein you compose it. But remember, in making the stone speak, to make it proclaim nothing but the praise of God.”

I begged of him to believe that I should apply all my zeal to this work, and M. d’Anquetil promised to give the matter a gallant and graceful turn.

“I will,” he said, “try to write French verse in the style of M. Chapelle.”

“That’s right!” said the vicar. “But are you not curious to look at my winepress? The wine will be good this year, and I have made enough for my own and my servants’ use. Alas! save for the fleurebers we should have had far more.”

After supper M. d’Anquetil called for ink, and began the composition of his French verses. But he soon became impatient and threw up in the air the pen, ink and paper.

“Tournebroche,” he said, “I’ve made two verses only, and I am not quite sure that they are good. They run as follows:

‘Ci-dessus git monsieur Coignard

II faut bien mourir tot ou tard.’”

I replied that the best of it was, that he had noi written a third one.

And I passed the night composing the following epitaph in Latin:

D. O. M.

HIC JACET

IN SPE BEATAE AETERNITATIS

DOMINUS HIERONYMUS COIGNARD

PRESBYTER

QUONDAM IN BELLOVACENSI COLLEGIO

ELOQUENTILE MAGISTER ELOQUENTISSIMU

SAGIENSIS EPISCOPI BIBLIOTHECARIUS SOLERTISSIMUS

ZOZIMI PANOPOLITANI INGENIOSISSIMUS

TRANSLATOR

OPERE TAMEN IMMATURATA MORTE INTERCEPTO

PERIIT ENIM CUM LUGDUNUM PETERET

JUDEA MANU NEFANDISSIMA

ID EST A NEPOTE CHRISTI CARNIFICUM

IN VIA TRUCIDATUS

ANNO AET. LII

COMITATE FUIT OPTIMA DOCTISSIMO CONVITU

INGENIO SUBLIMI

FACETIIS JUCUNDUS SENTENTTIS PLENUS

DONORUM DEI LAUDATOR

TIDE DEVOTISSIMA PER MULTAS TEMPESTATlS

CONSTANTER MUNITTJS

HUMILITATE SANCTISSIMA ORNATUS

SALUTI SUAE MAGIS INTENTUS

QUAM VANO ET FALLACI HOMINUM JUDICIO

SIC HONORIBUS MUNDANIS

NUNQUAM QUIESITIS

SIBI GLORIAM SEMPITERNAM

MERUIT

Which may be translated:

HERE SLEEPS

In the hope of a happy eternity

THE REVEREND JEROME COIGNARD

Priest

Formerly a very eloquent professor of eloquence

At the college of Beauvais

Very zealous librarian to the Bishop of Seez

Author of a fine translation of Zosimus the Panopolitan

Which he unhappily left unfinished

When overtaken by his premature death

He was stabbed on the road to Lyons

In the 52nd year of his age

By the very villainous hand of a Jew

And thus perished the victim of a descendant of the murderer

Of Jesus Christ

He was an agreeable companion

Of a learned conversation

Of an elevated genius

Abounding in cheerful speech and in good maxims

And praising God in his works

He preserved amid the storms of life an unshakable faith

In his truly Christian humility

More attentive to the salvation of his soul

Than to the vain and erroneous opinions of men

It was by living without honour in this world

That he walked towards eternal glory

CHAPTER XXIII

Farewell to Jahel-Dispersal of the Party

Three days after the demise of my good master, M. d’Anquetil decided to continue his journey. The carriage had been repaired. He gave the postboys the order to be ready on the following morning. His company had never been agreeable to me; in the state of sorrow I was in, it became odious. I could not bear the idea of following him and Jahel. I resolved to look for employment at Tournus or at Macon, and to remain hidden till the storm had calmed down sufficiently to enable me to return to Paris, where I was sure to be received with outstretched arms by my dear parents. I imparted my intention to M. d’Anquetil, and excused myself for not accompanying him any farther. He tried to retain me with a gracefulness I was not prepared for, but soon willingly gave me leave to go where I wished. With Jahel the matter was more difficult, but, being naturally reasonable, she accepted the reasons I had for leaving her.

On the night before my departure, while M. d’Anquetil drank and played cards with the barber-surgeon, Jahel and I went to the market place to get a breath of air. It was embalmed by the scent of herbs and full of the song of crickets.

“What a night!” I said to Jahel. “The year cannot produce another like it, and perhaps all my life long I shall never see one so sweet.”

The flower-decked village graveyard extended before our eyes its motionless turf, and the moonlight whitened the scattered graves on the dark grass. The same thought came to both of us to say a last farewell to our friend. The place where he was put to eternal rest was marked by a tear-sprinkled cross planted deep in the mellow earth. The stone whereon the epitaph was to be engraved had not yet been placed. We seated ourselves very close to the grave on the grass, and there, by an insensible but natural inclination, we fell into one another’s arms without fearing to offend by our kisses the memory of a friend whom deep wisdom had rendered indulgent to human weakness.

Suddenly, Jahel whispered in my ear, where her mouth was already placed:

“I see M. d’Anquetil, who, from the top of the wall, looks eagerly towards us.”

“Can he see us in this shadow?” I asked.

“He certainly sees my white petticoat,” she said; “it’s enough, I think, to tempt him to look for more.”

I first thought to draw my sword, and was quite decided to defend two existences, which were at this moment still very much mixed. Jahel’s calm surprised me, neither her movements nor her voice showed any fear.

“Go,” she said to me, “fly, and don’t fear for me. It’s a surprise I have rather wished for. He began to get tired of me, and this encounter is quite efficacious to reanimate his desires and season his love. Go and leave the alone. The first moment will be hard, for he is of a very violent disposition. He’ll strike me, but after, t shall be still dearer to him. Farewell!”

“Alas!” I exclaimed, “did you take me then, Jahel, for Nothing but to sharpen the desires of my rival?”

“I wonder that you also want to quarrel with me. Go, I say!”

“What! leave you like this?”

“It’s necessary. Farewell! He must not meet you here, I want to make him jealous, but in a delicate manner. I Farewell! Farewell.”

I had hardly gone a few steps between the labyrinth of tombstones when M. d’Anquetil, having come forward to enable him to recognise his mistress, began to shout and to curse loud enough to awaken the village dead. I was anxious to tear Jahel away from his rage; I thought he would kill her. I glided between the tombstones to her assistance. But after a few minutes, observing them very closely, I saw M. d’Anquetil pulling her out of the cemetery and leading her towards Gaulard’s inn with a remainder of fury she was easily capable of calming, alone and without help.

I returned to my room after they had entered theirs I could not sleep the whole of the night, and looking out at daybreak, through an opening in the window curtains I saw them crossing the courtyard apparently the best of friends.

Jahel’s departure augmented my sorrow. I stretched myself full length on my stomach on the floor of my room, and with my face in my hands cried until the evening.

CHAPTER XXIV

I am pardoned and return to Paris—Again at the Queen Pedauque—I go as Assistant to M. Blaizot—Burning of the Castle of Sablons—Death of Mosaide and of M. d’Asterac.

From now onwards my life loses the interest which events had lent it, and my destiny, having again become in conformity with my character, offers nothing but ordinary occurrences. If I should prolong my memoirs my narrative would very soon become tiresome. I’ll bring it to a close with but few words. The Vicar of Vallars gave me a letter of introduction to a wine merchant at Macon, with whom I was employed for a couple of months, after which my father wrote to me that he had arranged my affair and that I was free to return to Paris.

I took coach immediately and travelled with some recruits. My heart beat violently when I again saw the Rue Saint Jacques, the clock of Saint Benoit le Betourne, the signboard of the Three Virgins and the Saint Catherine of M. Blaizot.

My mother cried when she saw me; I also cried, and we embraced and cried together again.

My father came in haste from the Little Bacchus and said with a moving dignity:

“Jacquot, my son, I cannot and will not deny that I Was very angry when I saw the constables enter the Queen Pedauque in search of you, or, in default of you, arresting me. They would not listen to any sort of remonstrance, alleging that I could easily explain myself after being taken to jail. They looked for you on a complaint of M. de la Gueritude. I conceived a most horrible idea of your disorders. But having been informed by letter that it was a question only of some peccadillo I had no other thought but to see you again. Many a time I consulted the landlord of the Little Bacchus on the means to hush up your affair. He always replied: ‘Master Leonard, go to the judge with a big bag full of crown pieces and he will give you back your lad as white as snow.’ But crown pieces are scarce with us, and there is neither hen nor goose nor duck who lays golden eggs in my house. At present I hardly get sufficient by my poultry to pay the expenses of the roasting. By good luck, your saintly and worthy mother had the good idea of going to the mother of M. d’Anquetil whom we knew to be busy in favour of her son, who was sought after at the same time as you were, and for the identical affair. I am quite aware, my Jacquot, that you played the man about town in company with a nobleman, and my head is too well placed not to feel the honour which it reflects on our whole family. Mother dressed as if she intended to go to mass; and Madame d’Anquetil received her with kindness. Thy mother, Jacquot, is a holy woman, but she has not the best of society manners, and at first she talked without aim or reason. She said: ‘Madame, at our age, besides God Almighty nothing remains to us but our children.’ That was not the right thing to say to that great lady who still has her gallants.”

“Hold your tongue, Leonard,” exclaimed my mother. “The behaviour of Madame d’Anquetil is unknown to you, and it appears that I spoke to her in the right way, because she said to me: ‘Don’t be troubled, Madame Menetrier; I will employ my influence in favour of your son; be sure of my zeal.’ And you know, Leonard, that we received before the expiration of two months the assurance that our Jacquot could return unmolested to Paris.”

We supped with a good appetite. My father asked me if was my intention to re-enter the service of M. d’Asterac. I replied that after the lamented death of my kind master I did not wish to encounter that cruel Mosaide in the house of a nobleman who paid his servants with fine speeches and nothing else. My father very kindly invited me to turn the spit as in former days.

“Latterly, Jacquot,” he said, “I gave the place to Friar Ange, but he did not do as well as Miraut or yourself. Don’t you want to take your old place at the corner of the fireside?”

My mother, plain and simple as she was, did not want common-sense and said:

“M. Blaizot, the bookseller of the Image of Saint Catherine, is in want of an assistant. This employment, Jacquot, ought to suit you like a glove. Thy dispositions are sweet, thy manners are good, and that’s what’s wanted to sell Bibles.”

I went at once to M. Blaizot, who took me into his service.

My misfortunes had made me wise. I did not feel discouraged by the humbleness of my employment, and I fulfilled my duties with exactitude, handling the duster and broom to the satisfaction of my employer.

One of my duties was to pay a visit to M. d’Asterac. I went to the great alchemist on the last Sunday of November, after the midday dinner. It’s a long way from the Rue Saint Jacques to the Croix-des-Sablons, and the almanac does not lie when it announces that in November the days are short. “When I arrived at the Roule it was quite dark, and a black haze covered the deserted road. And sorrowful were my thoughts in the darkness.

“Alas,” I said to myself, “it will soon be a full year since I first walked on this road, in the snow, in company with my dear master, who now rests in a small village in Burgundy encircled by vineyards. He sleeps in the hope of eternal life. And it is but right to have the same hope as a man as wise as he. God preserve me from ever doubting of the immortality of the soul! But, one must confess to oneself, all that is connected with a future existence and another world is of those verities in which one believes without being moved and which have neither taste nor savour of any kind, so that one swallows them without perceiving it. As for me I find no consolation in the idea of meeting again the Abbe Coignard in Paradise. Surely I could not recognise him, and his speeches would not contain the agreeableness which he derived from circumstances.”

Occupied with these reflections, I saw before me a fierce light covering one-half of the sky; the fog was reddened by it, and the light palpitated in the centre. A heavy smoke mixed with the vapours of the air. I at once became afraid that the fire had broken out at the d’Asterac castle. I quickened my steps, and very soon ascertained that my fears were but too well founded. I discovered the calvary of the Sablons, an opaque black on a background of flame, and I saw nearly all the windows of the castle flaring as for a sinister feast. The little green door was broken in. Shadows gesticulated in the park and murmured the horror they felt. They were the inhabitants of the borough of Neuilly, who had come for curiosity’s sake and to bring help. Some threw water from a fire engine on the burning edifice, making a fiery rain of sparks arise. A thick volume of smoke rose over the castle. A shower of sparks and of cinders fell round me, and I soon became aware that my garments and my hands were blackened. With much mortification I thought that all that burning dust in the air was the end of so many fine books and precious manuscripts, which were the joy of my dear master, the remains, perhaps, of Zosimus the Panopolitan, on which we had worked together during the noblest hours of my life.

I had seen the Abbe Jerome Coignard die. Now, it was his soul, his sparkling and sweet soul, which I fancied reduced to ashes together with the queen of libraries. The wind strengthened the fire and the flames roared like voracious beasts.

Questioning a man of Neuilly still blacker than myself, and wearing only his vest, I asked him if M. d’Asterac and his people had been saved.

“Nobody,” he said, “has left the castle except an old Jew, who was seen running laden with packages in the direction of the swamps. He lived in the keeper’s cottage on the river, and was hated for his origin and for the crimes of which he was suspected. Children pursued him. And in running away he fell into the Seine. He was fished out when dead, pressing on his heart a cup and six golden plates. You can see him on the river bank in his yellow gown. With his eyes open he is horrible.”

“Ah!” I replied, “his end is due to his crimes. But his death does not give me back the best of masters whom he slew. Tell me again; has nobody seen M. d’Asterac?”

At the very moment when I put the question I heard near me one of the moving shadows cry out:

“Thereof is falling in!”

And now I recognised with unspeakable horror the great black form of M. d’Asterac running along the gutters. The alchemist shouted with a sounding voice:

“I rise on wings of flame up to the seat of life divine!”

So he said, and suddenly the roof fell in with a tremendous crash, and the flames as high as mountains enveloped the friend of the Salamanders.

CHAPTER XXV

I become a Bookseller—I have many learned and witty Customers but none to equal the Abbe Jerome Coignard, D. D., M. A.

There is no love will stand separation. The memory of Jahel, smarting at first, was smoothed down little by little, and nothing remained but a vague irritation, of which she was no longer the only object.

M. Blaizot aged quickly. He retired to Montrouge, to his cottage in the fields, and sold me his shop against a life annuity. Having become in his place the sworn bookseller of the Image of Saint Catherine, I took with me my father and mother, whose cookshop flourished no more. I liked my humble shop and took care to trim it up. I nailed on the doors some old Venetian maps and some theses ornamented with allegorical engravings, which made a decoration old and odd no doubt, but pleasant to friends of good learning. My knowledge, taking care to hide it cleverly, was not detrimental to my trade. It would have been worse had I been a publisher like Marc-Michel Rey, and obliged like him to gain my living at the expense of the stupidity of the public.

I keep in stock, as they say, the classical authors, and that is a merchandise in demand in that learned Rue Saint Jacques of which it would please me one day to write an account of its antiquities and celebrities. The first Parisian printer established his venerable presses there. The Cramoisys, whom Guy Patin calls the kings of the Rue Saint Jacques, published there the works of our historians. Before the erection of the College of France, the king’s readers, Pierre Danes, Francois Votable, Ramus, gave their lectures there in a shed which echoed with the quarrels between the street porters and the washerwomen. And how can we forget Jean de Meung, who composed in one of the little houses of this street the Roman de la Rose? [Footnote: Jacques Tournebroche did not know that Francois Villon also dwelt in the Rue Saint Jacques, at the Cloister Saint Benoit, in a house called the Porte Verte. The pupil of M. Jerome Coignard would no doubt have had great pleasure in recalling the memory of that ancient poet, who, like himself, had known various sorts of people.]

I have the whole house at my disposal: it is very old, and dates at least from the time of the Goths, as may be seen by the wooden joists crossed on the narrow front and by the mossy tiles. It has but one window on each floor. The one on the first floor is all the year round garnished with flowers, strings are attached, and all sorts of climbers run up them in springtime. My good old mother takes care of this.

It is the window of her room. She can be seen from the street, reading her prayers in a book printed in big letters over the image of Saint Catherine. Age, devotion and maternal pride have given her a grand air, and to see her wax-coloured face under her high white cap one could take his oath on her being a wealthy citizen’s wife.

My father, in getting old, also acquired some dignity. As he likes exercise and fresh air I employ him to carry books about town. First I employed Friar Ange, but he begged of my customers, made them kiss relics, stole their wine, caressed their servant girls, and left one-half of my books in the gutters. I soon gave him the sack. But my good mother, whom he makes believe that he is possessed of secrets for gaining heaven, gives him soup and wine. He is not a bad man, and in the end I became somewhat attached to him.

Several learned men and some wits frequent my shop And it is a great advantage to my trade to be in daily contact with men of merit. Among those who often come to look at new books and converse familiarly among themselves there are historians as learned as Tillemont, sacred orators the equals of Bossuet and Bourdaloue in eloquence, comic and tragic poets, theologians who unite purity of morals with solidity of doctrine, the esteemed authors of “Spanish” novels, geometers and philosophers capable, like M. Descartes, of measuring and weighing the universe. I admire them, I enjoy the least of their words. But not one, to my thinking, is equal in genius to my dear master, whom I had the misfortune to lose on the road to Lyons; not one reminds me of that incomparable elegance of thought, that sweet sublimity, that astonishing wealth of a soul always expanding and flowering, like the urns of rivers represented in marble in gardens; not one gives me that never-failing spring of science and of morals, wherein I had the happiness to quench the thirst of my youth, none give me more than a shadow of that grace, that wisdom, that strength of thought which shone in M. Jérôme Coignard. I hold him to be the most amiable spirit who has ever flourished on the earth.