All Évreux was out of doors, as Thomas Lindet, travel-soiled and
weary, entered the city. The double avenue of chestnuts before the
church and seminary of S. Taurin was thronged with people, and a
large triumphal arch spanned the road just beyond the square, the
sides adorned with pilasters of gilt paper and banks of flowers,
and the summit crowned with a banner emblazoned with the lilies of
France. In the tympanum of the arch was a niche lined with crimson
cloth destined to contain a statue of S. Louis, lent for the occasion
by the superior of the seminary. The raising of the pious king to
his destined position was an operation which engaged all eyes, and
provided conversation for all tongues.
It is wonderful how much noise and commotion attends the execution of
a very simple performance in France. Every spectator is by the fact
of his presence constituted an adviser, and those engaged on the work
which attracts observation harangue and expostulate and protest at
the top of their voices.
Those whose task it was to translate S. Louis from the ground to his
elevated pedestal, proceeded with their duty in a somewhat clumsy and
unworkmanlike manner. A pulley had been erected at the apex of the
gable above the arch, and a cord ran over it into the midst of the
crowd which pulled promiscuously and with varying force at the rope.
The other end of the rope was attached to the neck of the monarch,
and as he was raised he dangled in the centre of the archway, much
more like a felon undergoing the extreme penalty of the law, than a
canonized saint. In the meanwhile, two vociferous men in blue blouses
and trowsers, half way up two ladders, were supposed to steady the
king, but on account of the jerky manner in which the crowd hauled at
the rope, they were unable to achieve their object, and they vented
their displeasure in oaths. All at once there was a crash. The head
had separated from the body--the statue was in plaster; and first
down fell the trunk and then the crowned head. The catastrophe caused
a sudden silence to fall on the multitude, but it was soon broken by
execrations and invocations of ‘mille diables.’ Then a general rush
was made to inspect the remains of the decapitated king.
‘There was absolutely no piece of wood or wire to keep head and trunk
together!’ exclaimed one of the workmen, elevating the fragment of
head. ‘Of course it broke off. Who ever heard of a plaster cast
without a nucleus of solid wood or iron in the middle!’
‘Out of the way! make room,’ shouted a coachman, cracking his whip;
and the crowd started aside to allow a handsome lumbering coach to
roll by, and pass under the triumphal arch. Two heads were protruded
from the windows, to see what caused the commotion and throng; and
Lindet, happening to look in that direction, saw the faces of Foulon
and Berthier.
‘Why are all these preparations being made?’ asked Lindet of a
shopman near him.
‘Ah!’ exclaimed the man; ‘don’t you know that Monsieur the Prince is
coming?’
Lindet pushed up the street, passed the Palais de Justice, a
handsome, massive Italian building, and walked straight to the
bishop’s palace. Having reached Évreux, he would do his business and
leave it.
The gate to the palace was decorated with evergreens and banners, the
arms above the archway had been re-gilt and re-coloured; S. Sebastian
was very pink, exuded very red blood from his wounds, and the lion of
monseigneur ramped in a refulgent new coat of gold leaf.
The wooden doors were wide open, displaying the interior of the
quadrangle; a long strip of crimson carpet conducted from the gate
over the pavement to the principal entrance to the house; footmen in
episcopal purple liveries, their hair powdered, skipped hither and
thither.
Lindet walked straight into the court, and asked to see the bishop.
‘You must wait in the office, yonder,’ said the servant he addressed,
with impatience.
‘Please to tell the bishop that I desire to see him.’
‘You’re mighty imperious. Perhaps he may not want to see you.’
‘Never mind. Tell him that Thomas Lindet, curé of Bernay, has walked
to Évreux on purpose to see him, and see him he must.’
‘Well, well, sit down in the office.’
Lindet entered the little room, and waited. He waited an hour, and no
bishop came; he rang a bell, but it was not answered; then he stepped
out into the court, and catching a servant by the arm, insisted on
his message being conveyed to monseigneur.
‘This is a mighty inconvenient time,’ said the man; ‘don’t you know
that the Prince is expected?’
‘But not here.’
‘Yes, here; he stays at the palace.’
Lindet stepped back in astonishment.
‘What does the priest want?’ asked the butler, who was passing at
that moment.
‘I have come here desiring to speak with monseigneur. I have come
from Bernay on purpose.’
‘Get along with you,’ said the butler; ‘what do you mean by intruding
at this time? Don’t you know that his lordship only sees the parsons
on fixed days and hours? Get out of the court at once, you are in the
way here.’
‘I shall not go,’ said the curé, indignantly; ‘I shall not move from
this spot till my message has been taken to the bishop. He may be
just as indisposed to receive me to-morrow as to-day.’
‘Ay! he won’t see any of you fellows till the latter end of next
week. So now be off!’
‘What is the matter?’ asked a voice from an upper window. ‘Chopin,
who is that?’
The butler and the priest looked up. At an open window stood
Monseigneur de Narbonne-Lara, in a bran-new violet cassock and
tippet, his gold pectoral cross rubbed up, his stock very stiff, and
his dark hair brushed and frizzled. ‘What is all this disturbance
about, Chopin, ay?’
‘Monseigneur!’ replied the butler, bowing to the apparition, ‘here is
a curé from Bernay, who persists that he must see your lordship.’
‘Tell him, Chopin, that I am engaged, and that this is not the proper
day.’
‘Monseigneur,’ began the butler, again bowing; but Lindet interrupted
him with--
‘I want to speak for one moment to your lordship.’
‘Who are you?’
‘I am Thomas Lindet, curé of S. Cross.’
‘Oh! indeed. Friday week, at 2 P.M.,’ said the bishop, shutting the
window and turning away.
Lindet remained looking after him. The bishop stood a moment near the
window, with his back towards the light, meditating; then he turned
again, opened the casement, and called--
‘Chopin, you may give him a glass of cider, and then send him off.’
‘Yes, monseigneur.’
He slammed the window, and walked away.
Lindet had much trouble in finding an inn which had a spare bed to
let. The Grand Cerf was full and overflowing; the Cheval Blanc,
nearly opposite, seemed to be bursting out at the windows, for they
were full of heads protruded to a perilous distance, gazing up the
Paris road; the Golden Ball at last offered an attic bed, which
Lindet was glad to secure. This little inn stood in the Belfry
Square, a market-place, named after an elegant tower containing
a clock and curfew bell, in the purest Gothic of the fourteenth
century, surmounted by a spire of delicate lead tracing, in the same
style as that on the central tower of the Cathedral, but smaller
considerably. The square was tolerably free from people, as monsieur
was not expected to pass through it, and the comparative quiet was
acceptable to the weary priest. After having taken some refreshment,
and rested himself for an hour on his bed, his restless, excited
spirit drove him forth into the street.
The bells of the Cathedral and S. Taurin were clanging and jingling,
flags fluttered from every tower and spire, musketry rattled, men
shouted, a band played the Descent of Mars, as Lindet issued from
a narrow street upon the square before the Cathedral and saw that
it was crowded, that a current was flowing in the midst of that
concourse, and that the current bore flags and banners, and followed
the music. The priest, mounting upon a kerbstone, saw that the
civic procession was conducting the Prince to the episcopal palace.
He saw the town gilds pass, then the confraternities or clubs, in
their short loose cassocks, knee-breeches, and caps, with sashes
tied across their breasts, emblazoned with their insignia. Three
principal confraternities appeared--that of Évreux, preceded by a
banner figured with S. Sebastian, that of S. Michael, and that of
S. Louis. A band of Swiss soldiers in red uniform followed, and
in the midst of these guards rolled the gaily-painted carriage of
Louis-Stanislas-Xavier, son of France. Lindet saw a portly young man,
of good-humoured but stolid appearance, bowing acknowledgment of
the acclamations which greeted him. That was the Prince. Lindet saw
nothing of the reception at the gate, presided over by the ramping
lion and the wounded saint; he could hear a pompous voice reading,
and he knew that monseigneur was delivering an address from the
Clergy to the Royal Duke, but what was said, how many titles were
rehearsed, how much flattery was lavished, how many expressions of
devotion and respect were employed--all this was lost in the buzz of
the crowd.
What was he to do? He could not wait for more than a week, as
required by the bishop. The journey had cost him more than he could
well afford, and the expense of the inn at Évreux would far exceed
what his purse contained, if he deducted the twenty-five livres
due to the bishop. He had determined not to give the money to the
_officiel_, but to the prelate himself, and to explain to him the
reason of his having broken the requirements of the Church.
Entering the Cathedral, he seated himself in the aisle, where he
could be alone and in quiet, to form a plan for seeing the bishop
and coming to an explanation with him; but he could not hit upon any
to his mind. He walked round the church, admiring its height, and
the splendour of its glass. In the Lady Chapel he stood, and his lip
curled with a smile as he observed, in one of the north windows, a
bishop vested in cope and mitre, holding the pastoral staff in one
hand, whilst with the other he threw open the cope to grasp a sword
girded at his side, and exposed a suit of knightly armour, in which
he was entirely enveloped.
‘Ah!’ said Lindet to himself, ‘when these panes were pictured it was
as now, the shepherd’s garb invested the wolf. And what marvel! If
the Church may not appoint her own pastors, how can she be properly
shepherded? “Qui præfuturus est omnibus ab omnibus eligatur,” said S.
Leo.’
The priest lingered on till late in the church. He was weary, and the
Cathedral was more attractive than the little bedroom at the ‘Golden
Ball.’ He took a chair in the chapel of S. Vincent, and was soon
asleep.
It was afternoon when the prince arrived, and the afternoon rapidly
waned into evening dusk, and the dusk changed to dark.
At nine, the Cathedral doors were locked, after a sacristan had made
a hasty perambulation of the church to see that it was empty. Lindet
did not hear his call, as he walked down the aisles crying ‘All out!’
and the verger did not observe the slumbering priest in the side
chapel. Thus it happened that the curé was locked up in the church.
It was night when he awoke; slowly his consciousness returned, and
with it the recollection of where he was. He was much refreshed. The
walk of many miles every day in hot sun had worn him out, and this
quiet nap in the cool minster had revived him.
The moon glittered through the windows, and carpeted the aisle
floors.
He rose from his chair, and leaving the chapel, bent his knee for a
moment before the High Altar, where the lamp hung as a crimson star,
and tried the north transept door which opened into the square. It
was locked. He then sought the west doors, but found them also fast.
Returning down the south nave aisle, he saw lights from without
reflected through the windows on the groined roof, and strains of
instrumental music were wafted in.
Near the south transept he found a small door: it was the bishop’s
private entrance. Lindet pushed it, and the door yielded. He found
himself in a small cloister leading to the palace. The lights were
brighter, and the music louder. They issued from the palace garden,
of which the priest obtained a full view.
The garden occupied the whole south side of the Cathedral, and was
well laid out in swath and flowers. A beautiful avenue of limes
extended the whole length of the garden, above the broad moat which
separated the palace precincts on the south from the city. This moat
has been turned into a kitchen-garden in our own day, but in that of
which we are writing it was full of water. The avenue, therefore,
formed a terrace above a broad belt of water, not stagnant, as in
many moats, but kept fresh by a stream flowing through it.
The modern traveller visiting Évreux, should on no account fail to
walk on the city side of this old moat, for from it he will obtain
the most striking view of the magnificent Cathedral and the ancient
picturesque palace, rising above the lime-trees. A couple of lines
of young trees have been planted, and the half-street turned into a
boulevard; but in 1788, this side of the moat was bare of trees, and
a row of tall houses faced the water, with only a paved road between,
and a dwarf wall pierced at intervals with openings to steps that
descended to the moat, where all day long women soaped and beat dirty
clothes, with much diligence, and more noise.
Lindet found the garden brilliantly illuminated. Lamps were affixed
to the old walls of the Cathedral, and traced some of its most
prominent features with lines of coloured fire. The statues which, in
imitation of Versailles, the bishop had set up in his flower-garden,
held lanterns. A pond of gold-fish, in the centre of the sward,
surrounded a vase, in which burned strontian and spirits of wine,
casting a red glare into the water, and producing a wild contrast to
the calm white moonlight that lay in flakes upon the gravelled walks.
The avenue was, however, the centre of light. In it tables were laid,
brilliant with candelabra supporting wax candles, and with coloured
lanthorns slung between the trees, and lamps attached to every trunk.
At intervals also were suspended brass rings, sustaining twenty
candles. Wreaths of artificial flowers, banners, mirrors, statues
holding lights, transparencies, occupied every conceivable spot and
space, and transformed the quiet old lime avenue into a fairy-land
palace.
The tables were laden with exquisite viands in silver, and glittered
with metal and glass.
The higher end of the tables was towards the west, and a daïs,
crimson carpeted, raised a step above the soil, supported the board
at which sat the prince, the bishop, and all the most illustrious of
the guests.
On the opposite side of the moat, a crowd of hungry women and
children strained their eyes to see the nobles and high clergy eat
and drink, which was only next best to themselves eating.
‘So we are going to have the States-general, after all,’ said the
Duke de la Rochefoucauld, a noble-looking man, with a frank, open
countenance, full of light and dignity.
‘Yes,’ answered the prince; ‘His Majesty cannot withdraw his summons.’
‘You speak as if he wished to do so,’ said M. de la Rochefoucauld.
‘I am not privy to his wishes,’ answered Louis Stanislas with a
smile on his heavy face; ‘let us not talk of politics, they are dull
and dispiriting subjects.’ Then, turning to the bishop, he said:
‘Monseigneur, I think you could hardly choose a more delightful
retreat than this of yours. To my taste, it is charming. You are
really well off to have such a capital palace and such delightful
gardens. If I were you, nothing would induce me to change them.
Why, look at the Archbishop of Rouen---- By the way, how is the
archbishop?’ he turned to the duke, whose kinsman the prelate was. ‘I
heard he had been seriously unwell.’
The Duke de la Rochefoucauld assured ‘monsieur’ that the cardinal was
much better; in fact, almost well.
‘That is right,’ said the prince. Then again addressing his host, he
continued: ‘No, I assure you, nothing in the world would induce me,
were I you, my Lord Bishop, to desert this see for another.’
‘I am hardly likely to have the chance put in my way,’ said the
bishop.
‘And then,’ pursued Louis, ‘who, having once built his nest in
charming Normandy, would fly to other climes? You are a brave Norman
by birth, I believe, monseigneur?’ Louis had an unfortunate nack of
getting upon awkward subjects. This arose from no desire of causing
annoyance, but from sheer obtuseness. He resembled his brother the
King in being utterly dull, with neither wit nor vice to relieve the
monotony of a thoroughly prosaic character.
‘No, your grace,’ answered the bishop, slightly reddening, ‘I belong
to a Navarre family. The family castle of Lara is in Spain. The name
Lara is territorial, and was adopted on the family receiving the
Spanish estates and Castle----’
‘Excuse me,’ said the prince, interrupting him; ‘but I think, my dear
Lord, we have a ghost before us.’
The bishop looked up from his plate, on which his eyes had rested
whilst narrating the family history, and saw immediately opposite
him, standing below the daïs, in ragged cassock, with the buttons
worn through their cloth covers, with dusty shoes, and with a pale,
eager face quivering with feeling, Thomas Lindet, curé of S. Cross at
Bernay.
The bishop was too much astonished to speak. He stared at the priest,
as though he would stare him down. The guests looked round almost as
much surprised as the prince or the bishop, so utterly incongruous
was the apparition with the place. The look, full of pain, stern and
passionate, contrasted terribly with the faces of the banqueters,
creased with laughter. The pale complexion, speaking too plainly of
want and hunger--why did that look upon them as they sat at tables
groaning under viands and wines of the most costly description? The
dress, so ragged and dusty, was quite out of place amongst silks and
velvets. The bishop waved his hand with dignity, and his episcopal
ring glittered in the lights as he did so. But Lindet did not move.
Then, addressing his butler over the back of his chair, the prelate
said: ‘Chopin, tell the fellow to go quietly. If he is hungry, take
him into the servants’ hall and give him some supper.’
Lindet put his hand into his bosom, and drew forth a little moleskin
purse,--a little rude purse, made by one of the acolytes of Bernay
out of the skins of the small creatures he had snared, and given as
a mark of affection to his priest. He emptied the contents of this
purse into his shaking palm, and with agitated fingers, he counted
twenty-five livres, put the rest--it was very little--back into the
mole-skin bag; and then, holding the money, he mounted the daïs.
‘Go down, sir, go down!’ said the indignant prelate; and several
footmen rushed to the priest to remove him.
‘Leave me alone,’ said Lindet, thrusting the servants off; ‘I have
business to transact with my diocesan.’
‘What do you want?’ asked the bishop, his red face turning purple
with wrath and insulted pride; ‘get you gone, and see me at proper
times and in proper places!’
‘Monseigneur,’ answered Lindet in a clear voice, ‘I have walked
through dust and heat from Bernay to speak to you, and I am told I
cannot see you for a whole week.’
‘Go, go!’ said the bishop; ‘I do not wish to have an unpleasant
scene, and to order you to be dragged from my table. Go quietly. I
will see you to-morrow.’
‘No,’ Lindet answered; ‘you would not receive me privately this
afternoon, now you shall receive me publicly, whether the time
suits or not. You have fined me, unheard, for not having lit my
sanctuary-lamp. I had neither oil nor money; therefore I must pay
you a heavy fine. There is the money--’ he leaned across the table,
and placed it in the bishop’s plate. ‘Count it,--twenty-five livres;
and next time your lordship gives a feast, spend what you have wrung
from me in buying--’ he ran his eye along the table, and it lit on a
pie,--‘goose-liver pasties for your distinguished guests.’ It was a
random shot, a bow drawn at a venture, but it went in at the joints
of the mail, and smote to the heart.
Lindet turned from the table and walked away.
The guests sprang to their feet with a cry of dismay. Monseigneur de
Narbonne-Lara had fallen out of his chair in an apoplectic fit.