JEAN-AUX-CHOUX TAKES HIS WAGES
No sooner had Jean-aux-Choux departed from the terrible house in the
Street of the Money at Perpignan, in which he had found the three
inquisitors seated, than Mariana, with a sigh of relief, drew from his
breast a document on cream-coloured vellum.
Before reading it he looked at the other two, and especially at Frey
Tullio the Neapolitan.
"We are all good Spaniards," he was about to begin. But remembering in
time the birthplace of the junior inquisitor, he altered his sentence
into, "We are all good subjects of King Philip?"
Surintendant Teruel and Frey Tullio bowed their heads. They wondered
what was coming, and Tullio was growing not a little sleepy. Even
inquisitors must sleep. A pulley-wheel creaked overhead uneasily. Down
in the Place of Pain the familiars were trying the ropes for the morrow.
There was one that had not acted satisfactorily in the case of that
Valencian Jew in the afternoon. They had been ordered to mend it. King
Philip did not approve of paying for new ropes too often. Besides, the
old were better. They did not stretch so much. Blood and tears had
dropped upon them.
So ever and anon the pulley creaked complainingly between two
rafters, in the pauses of the Jesuit's soft voice, as he read
the Pope's condemnation of King Henry III. of France (called of
Valois)--excommunicated, outcasted, delivered to Satan that he might
learn not to offend--for the sin of alliance with the heretic, for the
sin of schism and witchcraft--"ordered to be read from the chair of our
cathedral-church of Meaux, and of all others occupied by faithful
bishops----"
The face of the peasant-ecclesiastic Teruel lighted with a fierce joy as
he listened.
"We shall yet be able to send the Valois before our tribunals. The Holy
Office shall be set up in France. At last the Edicts of Trent shall be
obeyed. What glory! What joy--to judge a King of France, and send him to
the stake as a heretic, a schismatic, a hater of Holy Church----"
"Softly--softly, Brother Teruel," said Mariana, smiling fixedly. "France
is not our happy Spain. The people there are not accustomed to fires in
the market-places and the smell of burned sacrifice--to the sight of
their parents and children being fagoted for the glory of God. See what
happened in England a few years ago, when our Philip's wife Mary, Queen
of that country, tried to introduce a little--oh, such a very little--of
her husband's methods."
"Here we have no difficulty," said Teruel, from his peasant-bigot's
point of view. "It is God's good method with the world to extirpate the
heretic!"
But the Jesuit answered him truly.
"Make no mistake," he said, tapping the Papal Bull with a plump
forefinger, "you succeed here in Spain, my country and yours, because
the Spaniard, ninety-nine out of a hundred, is wishful that you should
succeed. Our good John Spaniard hates Jews--he despises heretics. To him
they are a foolish remnant. They prosper abominably; they are patient,
unwarlike, easily plundered. Yet they take it upon themselves to offend
the eye by their unnecessary industry. A striped blanket in the shade, a
little wine, a little gossip--and in these later times, since blessed
Ferdinand, a good rollicking _auto de fe_ once a week. These suffice him
when the King does not call our Spaniard to war. They are the very
'bread-and-bull-fights' for which he cried when he was yet a Roman and a
citizen. But in France and in England--even in Italy we must act
otherwise. We attain our end just the same, but without noise. Only one
man somewhere, with a clear brain and an arm that will not fail, drives
a knife--or, when all backs are turned, inverts the bottom of a poison
phial. He gains the martyr's crown, skips Purgatory with a bound, and
finds himself in Paradise!"
The little grey Neapolitan blinked owlishly at Mariana. He was growing
sleepy, and with all his soul he wished this too-wise man would be
silent. But being applied to, he thought it was safer to agree.
"Certainly--certainly," he said, "it is the same in Italy."
"In Italy--not quite, my friend," said Mariana; "your needs are scarcely
the same. With you, cup-and-dagger are as common as--fleas, and as
little thought of. You have means (literally) to your hand! But here we
have to manufacture them, put spirit into them, send them out on their
mission as only we of the Gesu can do."
The Jesuit of Toledo paused a little in his argument, turning his eyes
from one to the other.
"As to this little matter," he said, again tapping the Papal Bull with
his finger-nail, "I have a man who will execute His Holiness's will--in
your national manner, my good Tullio. Only first, he would have a
mandate from the Holy Office, a sort of safe-conduct for his soul--the
promise of absolution for breaking his vow against the shedding of
blood. He is, I must tell you, a little Dominican of Sens, presently
misbehaving himself in the mother-college of St. Jacques at Paris. But
he is good material for all that, properly handled."
Teruel spoke with the natural caution of the peasant.
"But," said he, "we will be held responsible if aught goes amiss; our
duty here is difficult enough! The King----"
"The King I will take in my own hand," said Mariana. "I warrant you his
fullest protection, and approval. You shall have great favour--perhaps
even be moved to Seville or Granada, or some other place where Jews,
Moriscos, and heretics are frequent and rich. Write me the paper and
seal it with the seal official!"
So with his Papal Bull and an order from the chiefs of the Holy Office,
assembled in council at the nearest accessible point, Mariana withdrew
to his bed, and none in all the Street of the Money slept sounder than
he that night, though when he opened the window to let in a breath of
the cool, moist air off the Tet, the prayers of the prisoners could be
heard coming up in moaning gusts from the dungeons beneath.
* * * * *
The machinery set in motion by the Jesuit Mariana revolved statedly,
wheel within his wheel. The "young Dominican of Sens," delivering
himself to a strange but not unusual mixture of fanaticism and debauch,
misspent his days with the rabble of Paris, his evenings in listening to
the fair speeches and yet fairer promises of Madame de Montpensier, the
Duke of Guise's sister, while all night mysterious voices whispered in
the darkness of his cell that he was the chosen of God, the approved,
and that if he, Jacques Clement, would only kill the King, angels would
immediately waft his body, safe and unseen, to the quiet of his convent.
Had he not heard the Bull of the Pope read by the Father Superior? Had
the Holy Office not promised him immunity, nay, even canonisation--had
not Madame de Montpensier----? But enough, Jacques Clement, riotous monk
of Sens, sat him down and made his dagger like a needle for sharpness,
like a mirror for polish. This he did when he should have been reading
his breviary in the monastery of the Dominicans in the Rue
Saint-Jacques.
* * * * *
So it came to pass that on the evening of the third day of August, 1589,
Jean-aux-Choux, still wearing his great shepherd's cloak, though all
Perpignan city panted in the fervent heat, and the cool water of the Tet
reeked against the sun-heated banks, stood again at the door of that
gloomy house in the Street of the Money.
Above, the three men waited as before. But this time there was no
hesitation about admittance, not even a question asked. The three men
who had done a great thing far away, without lifting one of their little
fingers, now waited, tense with anxiety--not for themselves, for no one
of them cared for his own safety, but to know that they had won the game
for their Church and cause.
To them Jean-aux-Choux opened his mouth.
"He is dead!" he announced, solemnly--"Henry of Valois is dead! The
siege of Paris is raised. Epernon and the great lords have refused to
serve a Huguenot king. They have gone home----"
"And the Bearnais--the Bearnais?" interrupted Mariana hoarsely, "what of
him?"
"I saw him ride sadly away--the White Scarves only following!"
Then for once, at the crowning moment of his life, Mariana, the smiling
Jesuit, leaned face-forward on the table. His strength had gone from
him.
"Enough," he said, "I have done the Society's will. But so great success
even I had not hoped for!"
And he rocked himself to and fro in that terrible crisis of nervous
emotion which comes only to the most self-restrained, while Teruel, the
Surintendant of the Holy Inquisition, and Frey Tullio his second, were
prodigal of their cares, lavishing restoratives, of which (in virtue of
their office) they had great store in the Street of the Money.
None minded Jean-aux-Choux, or even thanked him. But he, seeing a
parchment with a familiar name written upon it, the ink scarcely dry,
and as a paper-weight the seal of the Holy Office ready to append to it,
coolly pocketed both seal and mandate.
It was a warrant to the familiars of the Holy Office in the city of
Perpignan to seize the body of one Claire Agnew, a known and warrantable
heretic, presently residing at the house of La Massane near Collioure,
and to bring her within the prisons of the aforesaid Inquisition in the
Street of the Money, in the city above mentioned, within ten days at
most from that date--upon peril of their several lives, and of the lives
of all that should defend, aid, assist, or shelter the said Claire
Agnew, heretic, daughter of Francois of that name, plotter, spy, and
Calvinist.
Followed the signs and signatures of the two inquisitors in charge--to
wit, Teruel and Tullio. The name of Mariana did not anywhere appear.
"Ten days," muttered Jean-aux-Choux, when he had read it over; "that
gives us time. And there"--he heaved the seal of the Holy Office into
the Tet--"they will have to get one made. That will be another length to
our tether!"