Five minutes later the assembled lords, and the chaplain among them,
had taken their seats in the great hall. The castle, brilliantly
illumined, echoed with songs and laughter; and the venerable Dom
Balaguère drove his fork resolutely into a capon's wing, drowning the
remorse for his sin in the savory juice of meats and the soothing
draughts of old wine. He ate and drank so heartily, the dear good
man, that he died of a spasm that very night, without even having had
time to repent. By morning he reached heaven, where the thrills of
the past night's ecstasies lingered still in the air, and I leave you
to imagine how he was received.
"Get thee gone, thou wretched Christian!" said Saint Peter; "thy sin
is great enough to wipe out the virtues of a lifetime! Ah, so thou
wouldst swindle us out of a Mass! Very well, then, three hundred
Masses shalt thou say, nor shalt thou enter into Paradise until
three hundred Christmas Masses have been celebrated in thine own
chapel, and in the presence of all those who sinned with thee and
through thee."
And this is the true legend of Dom Balaguère, as it is told in the
land of the olive-tree. The castle of Trinquelague has long ceased
to exist; but the chapel stands erect on the crest of Mount Ventoux,
in a clump of evergreen oaks. The wind sways its unhinged door; the
grass grows over the threshold; there are nests in the angles of the
altar, and on the sills of the high ogive windows, whose jewelled
panes have long since disappeared. Still, it seems that every year
at Christmas supernatural, mysterious lights hover among the ruins;
and on their way to midnight Mass and the Christmas supper, the
peasants see this spectre of a chapel lighted by invisible tapers,
which burn in the open air, even in the wind and under the snow. You
may laugh if you will, but a wine-dresser of the district, named
Garrigue, a descendant of Garrigou, no doubt, has often told me that
on one particular Christmas night, being somewhat in liquor, he
had lost his way on the mountain somewhere near Trinquelague, and
this is what he saw: until eleven o'clock nothing. Everything was
silent and dark. Suddenly at midnight the chimes rang out from the
old steeple,--strange, uncanny chimes, that seemed to be ringing a
thousand miles away. Soon lights began to tremble along the road, and
vague shadows moved about. Under the portal of the chapel there were
sounds of footsteps and muffled voices:--
"Good-night, Master Arnoton!"
"Good-night, good-night, my children!"
When they had all gone in, my wine-dresser, who was a courageous
fellow, crawled up to the door and there beheld a most marvellous
spectacle. All these good shadows sat around the choir in the ruined
nave just as though the benches were still there. There were fine
ladies in brocades and lace head-dresses, lords gayly bedizened,
peasants in flowered coats like those our grandfathers wore, all of
them dusty, faded, weary. Every now and then, some night-bird, an
habitual lodger in the chapel, awakened by all these lights, began to
flutter about the tapers, whose flames rose erect and vague as though
they were burning behind a strip of gauze. Garrigue was particularly
amused at a gentleman with great steel spectacles, who constantly
shook his huge black wig, upon which perched one of these birds with
entangled claws and beating wings.
A little old man with a childlike figure knelt in the centre of the
choir and frantically shook a tiny bell which had lost its voice,
while a priest clad in old-gold vestments moved hither and thither
before the altar repeating orisons of which not a syllable could be
heard.
Who could this have been but Dom Balaguère, saying his third Low Mass?
[Illustration]