I waited a good long time,--all the longer because the hours go so
slow in company with dead folks. At last midnight struck in the
church steeple and I saw the head of a man rising beyond the low wall
of the cemetery quite near the gate. Another quarter of an hour
dragged along without my seeing or hearing anything but that man,
who, getting tired of waiting, began to whistle a Bourbonnais tune,
whereby I knew it was Joseph, who no doubt betrayed the hopes of his
enemies by seeming so cool in presence of the dead.
At last, another man, who was stuck close to the wall inside the
gate, and whom I hadn't seen on account of the big box-trees which
hid him, popped his head quickly over the wall as if to take Joseph
by surprise; but the latter did not stir, and said, laughing: "Well,
Père Carnat, you are rather late; I came near going to sleep while
waiting. Will you open the gate, or must I enter that
'nettle-field,' by the breach?"
"No," said Carnat, "the curate would not like it; we mustn't openly
offend the church people. I will go to you."
He climbed over the wall and told Joseph he must let his head and
arms be covered with a very thick canvas sack, and then walk wherever
he was led.
"Very good," said Joseph in a contemptuous tone. "Go on."
I watched them from over the wall, and saw them enter the little path
to the English gate; then I made a short cut to the place where I had
left my comrades and found only four of them; the youngest had
slipped off without a word, and I was rather afraid the others would
do the same, for they found the time long and told me they had heard
very queer noises, which seemed to come from under the earth.
Presently Joseph came along, with his head covered and led by Carnat.
The pair got close upon us, but turned from the path about twenty
feet off. Carnat made Joseph clamber down to the edge of the moat,
and we thought he meant to drown him. At once we were on our legs to
stop such treachery, but in a minute more we saw they were both
walking in the water, which was shallow at that place, until they
reached a low archway in the wall of the castle which was partly in
the water of the moat. They passed through it, and this explained to
me what had become of the others whom I had hunted for.
It was necessary to do as they did; which didn't seem to me very
difficult, but my comrades were hard to persuade. They had heard
that the vaults of the castle ran nine miles out into the country, as
far as Deols, and that persons who did not know their windings had
been lost in them. I was forced to declare that I knew them very
well, though I had never set foot there in my life, and had no idea
whether they were common wine-cellars or a subterraneous town, as my
friends declared.
I walked first, without seeing where I set my feet, feeling the
walls, which inclosed a narrow passage where one's head very nearly
touched the roof. We advanced in this way for a short time, when a
hullaballoo sounded beneath us like forty thunder-claps rolling round
the devil's cave. It was so strange and alarming that I stopped
short to try and find out what it meant; then I went quickly forward,
not to let myself get chilled with the idea of some devil's caper,
telling my companions to follow me. But the noise was so loud they
did not hear me and I, thinking they were at my heels, went on and
on, till, hearing nothing more, I turned to speak to them and got no
answer. Not wishing to call aloud, I went back four or five steps;
it was all dark. I stretched out my hands, and called cautiously;
good-bye to my valiant contingent,--they had deserted me!
I thought I must be pretty near the entrance and could surely catch
up with them within or without. I returned through the arch by which
we had entered, and searched carefully along the little path beside
the cemetery; but no! my comrades had disappeared just like the
bagpipers; it seemed as if the earth had opened and swallowed them up.
I had a moment of horrid worry, thinking I must either give up the
whole thing or return to those devilish caverns and take myself all
alone into the traps and terrors they were preparing for Joseph. But
I asked myself whether, even if the matter concerned only him, I
could quietly leave him in danger. My soul answered no, and then I
asked my heart if love for Thérence wasn't quite as real a thing as
one's duty to one's neighbor, and the answer I received sent me back
through the dark and slimy archway and along the subterranean
passages--I won't say as gayly, but at any rate as quickly as if I
were going to my own wedding.
While I was feeling my way forward I found, on my right, an opening
to another passage, which I had not found before because I then felt
to my left; and I thought to myself that my comrades in going out had
probably found it and turned that way. I followed the passage, for
there was no sign that the other way would bring me any nearer to the
bagpipers. I did not find my comrades, but as for the bagpipers, I
had not taken twenty steps before I heard their din much nearer than
it sounded the first time; and presently a quivering kind of light
let me see that I was entering a large round cave which had three or
four exits, black as the jaws of hell.
I was surprised to see so clearly in a vault where there wasn't any
light, but I presently noticed that gleams were coming from below
through the ground I trod upon. I noticed that this ground seemed to
swell up in the middle, and fearing it was not solid, I kept close to
the wall, and getting near to a crevice, I lay down with my eye close
to it and saw very plainly what was going on in another cavern just
below the one I was in. It was, as I afterwards learned, a former
dungeon, adjoining an oubliette or black hole, the mouth of which
could still be seen thirty years ago in the upper hall of the castle.
I thought as much when I saw the remains of human bones at the lower
end of the cave, which the bagpipers had set up in rows to terrify
the candidate, with pine torches inside their skulls. Joseph was
there all alone, his eyes unbound, his arms crossed, just as cool as
I was not, listened contemptuously to the uproar of eighteen
bagpipes, which all brayed together, prolonging a single note into a
roar. This crazy music came from an adjoining cave where the
bagpipers were hidden, and where, as they doubtless knew, a curious
echo multiplied the sound. I, who knew nothing about it then,
fancied at first that all the bagpipes of Berry, Auvergne, and the
Bourbonnais were collected together in that cave.
When they had had enough of growling with their instruments, they
began to squeal and squall themselves, and the walls echoed them,
till you would have fancied they were a great troop of furious
animals of all kinds. But Joseph, who was really an unusual kind of
man among our peasantry,--indeed, I hardly ever knew his
like,--merely shrugged his shoulders and yawned, as if tired with
such fool's play. His courage passed into me, and I began to think
of laughing at the farce, when a little noise at my back made me turn
my head. There I saw, at the entrance of the passage by which I had
come, a figure which froze my senses.
It was that of a lord of the olden time, carrying a lance and wearing
an iron breastplate and leathern garments of a style no longer seen.
But the most awful part of him was his face, which was actually like
a death's head.
I partly recovered myself, thinking it was only a disguise some of
the enemy had put on to frighten Joseph; but on reflection I saw the
danger was really mine, because, finding me on the watch, he would
surely do me some damage. However, though he saw me as plain as I
could see him, he did not stir, but remained stock-still like a
ghost, half in shadow, and half in the light that came up from below;
and as this light flickered according as it was moved about, there
were moments when, not seeing him, I thought he was a notion of my
own brain,--until suddenly he would reappear, all but his legs, which
remained in darkness behind a sort of step or barrier, which made me
fancy he was as it were floating on a cloud.
I don't know how long I was tortured with this vision, which made me
forget to watch Joseph, and scared me lest I was going mad in trying
to do more than it was in me to perform. I recollected that I had
seen in the hall of the castle an old picture which they said was the
portrait of a wicked warrior whom a lord of the castle in the olden
time, who was the warrior's brother, had flung into the dungeon. The
garments of leather and iron which I saw before me on that skeleton
figure, were certainly like those in the picture, and the notion came
into my head that here was a ghost in pain, watching the desecration
of his sepulchre, and waiting to show his displeasure in some way or
other.
What made this idea the more probable was that the ghost said nothing
to me, and evidently took no notice of my presence,--apparently aware
that I had no evil intentions against his poor carcass.
At last a noise different from all others attracted my eyes away from
him. I looked back into the cave below me, where stood Joseph, and
something near him very ugly and very strange.
Joseph stood boldly in front of an abominable creature, dressed in
the skin of a dog, with horns sticking out of his tangled hair, and a
red face, and claws and tail; the which beast was jumping about and
making faces like one possessed of the devil. It was vile to see,
and yet I wasn't the dupe of it very long, for though the creature
tried to disguise his voice I thought I recognized that of
Doré-Fratin, the bagpiper of Pouligny, one of the strongest and most
quarrelsome men in our neighborhood.
"You may sneer as you please," he was saying to Joseph, "at me and at
hell, but I am the king of all musicians, and you shall not play your
instrument without my permission unless you sell me your soul."
Joseph answered, "What can such a fool of a devil as you do with the
soul of a musician? You have no use for it."
"Mind what you say," returned the other. "Don't you know that down
here you must either give yourself to the devil or prove that you are
stronger than he?"
"Yes, yes, I know the proverb," said Joseph: "'Kill the devil or the
devil will kill you.'"
As he spoke, I saw Huriel and his father come from a dark opening
into the vault and go up to the devil as if to speak to him; but they
were pulled back by the other bagpipers who now showed themselves,
and Carnat the elder addressed Joseph.
"You have proved," he said, "that you don't fear witchcraft, and we
will let you go free if you will now conform to the usual custom,
which is to fight the devil, in proof that you, a Christian man,
refuse to submit to him."
"If the devil wants to be well thrashed," replied Joseph, "let me go
at him at once, and we'll see if his skin is any tougher than mine.
What weapons?"
"None but your fists," replied Carnat.
"It is fair play, I hope," said the Head-Woodsman.
Joseph took no time to inquire; his temper was up. Enraged by the
tricks that were played on him, he sprang on the devil, tore off his
horns and head-dress, and caught him so resolutely round the body
that he brought him to earth and fell on top of him.
But he instantly got up, and I fancied he gave a cry of surprise and
pain; but the bagpipers all began to play, except Huriel and his
father, who stood watching the encounter with an expression of doubt
and uneasiness.
Joseph, meantime, was tumbling the devil about and seeming to get the
better of him; but his rage seemed to me unnatural, and I feared he
might put himself in the wrong through too much violence. The
bagpipers seemed to help him, for instead of rescuing their comrade,
who was knocked down three times, they marched round and round the
fight, piping loudly, and beating with their feet to excite him.
Suddenly the Head-Woodsman separated the combatants by levelling a
blow with his stick on the devil's paws, and threatening to strike
harder the second time if he was not listened to. Huriel ran to his
father's side, raising his stick also, while all the others stopped
walking round and round and piping; and a moment's silence and
stillness fell on all.
Then I saw that Joseph, overcome with pain, was wiping his torn hands
and his face, which was covered with blood, and that he would have
fainted if Huriel had not caught him in his arms, while Doré-Fratin
merely threw aside his trappings, panting with heat, and wiping the
sweat from his forehead with a grin.
"What does this mean?" cried Carnat, coming up to the Plead-Woodsman
with a threatening air, "Are you a traitor to the guild? By what
right do you interfere with the tests?"
"I interfere at my own risk and to your shame," replied the
Head-Woodsman. "I am not a traitor, and you are evil-doers, both
treacherous and cruel. I suspected that you were tricking us to lead
this young man here and wound him, perhaps dangerously. You hate him
because you know that every one will prefer him to you, and that
wherever he is heard no one will listen to your music. You have not
dared to refuse him admission to the guild, because the whole country
would blame you for such a crying injustice; but you are trying to
frighten him from playing in the parishes you have taken possession
of, and you have put him through hard and dangerous tests which none
of you could have borne as long as he."
"I don't know what you mean," said the old dean, Pailloux de
Verneuil; "and the blame you cast upon us here, in presence of a
candidate, is unheard-of insolence. We don't know how you practise
initiation in your part of the country, but here we are following our
customs and shall not allow you to interfere."
"I shall interfere," said Huriel, who was sopping Joseph's blood with
his handkerchief, and had brought him back to consciousness, as he
held him on his knee. "I neither can nor will tell of your conduct
away from here, because I belong to the brotherhood, but at least I
will tell you to your faces that you are brutes. In our country we
fight with the devil in jest, taking care to do no one any harm.
Here you choose the strongest among you and furnish him with hidden
weapons, with which he endeavors to put out the eyes and stab the
veins of your victims. See! this young man is exhausted, and in the
rage which your wickedness excited in him, he would have let you kill
him if we had not stopped the fight. And then what would you have
done? You would have flung his body into that vault, where so many
other unfortunates have perished, whose bones ought to rise and
condemn you for being as cruel as your former lords."
These words reminded me of the apparition I had forgotten, and I
turned round to see if it was still there. I could not see it, and
then I bethought me of finding my way to the lower cave, where, as I
began to think, I might be useful to my friends. I found the
stairway at once and went down to the entrance of the vault, not
trying to conceal myself, for such disputing and confusion were going
on that no one paid any attention to me.
The Head-Woodsman had picked up the devil's skin-coat and showed that
it was covered with spikes like a comb for currying oxen; and also
the mittens which the sham devil wore on his hands, in which strong
nails were fastened with the points outside. The bagpipers were
furious. "Here's a pretty fuss about a few scratches," cried Carnat.
"Isn't it in the order of things that a devil should have claws? And
this young fool, who attacked him so imprudently, why didn't he know
how far he could play at that game without getting his snout scraped?
Come, come, don't pity him so much; it's a mere nothing; and since he
has had enough of it, let him confess he can't play at our games, and
is not fit to belong to our guild in any way."
"I shall belong to it!" cried Joseph, wrenching himself from Huriel's
arms and showing as he did so his torn shirt and bleeding breast. "I
shall belong to it in spite of you! I insist that the fight shall go
on, and one of us be left in this cavern."
"I forbid it!" said the Head-Woodsman, "and I insist that this young
man shall be proclaimed victor, or I swear to bring into this place a
company of bagpipers who shall teach you how to behave, and who will
see justice done."
"You?" said Doré-Fratin, drawing a sort of boar-knife from his belt.
"You can do so if you choose, but you shall carry with you some marks
on your body, so that people may believe your reports."
The Head-Woodsman and Huriel put themselves in an attitude of
defence. Joseph flung himself upon Fratin to get away his knife, and
I made one bound in amongst them. But before any of us could strike
a blow the figure that startled me so in the upper cavern appeared at
the opening of the lower one, stretched forth his lance, and slowly
advanced in a way to strike terror to the minds of the evil-doers.
Then, as they all paused, dumbfounded with fear and amazement, a
piteous voice was heard from the depths of the dungeon, reciting the
prayers for the dead.
This routed the whole brotherhood. One of the pipers cried out: "The
dead! the dead are rising!" and they all fled, pell-mell, yelling and
pushing through the various openings except that to the dungeon,
where stood another figure wrapped in a winding-sheet, chanting the
most dismal sing-song that anybody ever heard. A minute later all
our enemies had disappeared, and the warrior flinging off his helmet
and mask, we beheld the jovial face of Benoît, while the monk,
getting out of his winding sheet, was holding his sides in
convulsions of laughter.
"May God forgive me for masquerading," he said. "I did it with the
best intentions; those rascals deserve a good lesson, if it is only
to teach them not to laugh at the devil, of whom they are really more
afraid than those whom they threaten with him."
"For my part, I felt quite certain," said Benoît, "that our comedy
would put an end to theirs." Then, noticing Joseph's wounds, he grew
very uneasy, and showed such feeling for him that all this, together
with the succor he had brought in so timely a manner, proved to my
mind his regard for his step-son, and his good heart, which I had
hitherto doubted.
While we examined Joseph and convinced ourselves he was not very
seriously hurt, the monk told us how the butler at the castle had
once said to him that he allowed the bagpipers and other societies to
hold their secret meetings in the cellars of the castle. Those in
which we found ourselves were too far from the inhabited parts of the
castle to disturb the lady mistress of Saint-Chartier, and, indeed,
if it had, she would only have laughed, not imagining that any
mischief could come of it. But Benoît, who suspected some evil
intent, had got the same butler to give him a key to the cellars, and
a disguise; and that was how it was that he got these in time to
avert all danger.
"Well," said the Head-Woodsman, addressing him, "thank you for your
assistance; but I rather regret you came, for those fellows are
capable of declaring that I asked you to do so and consequently that
I betrayed the secrets of the guild. If you will take my advice we
had better get away noiselessly, at once, and leave them to think you
were really ghosts."
"All the more," added Benoît, "that their wrath may deprive me of
their custom, which is no slight matter. I hope they did not
recognize Tiennet--but how the devil was it that Tiennet got here in
the nick of time?"
"Didn't you bring him?" asked Huriel.
"That he didn't," said I. "I came on my own account, because of the
stories they tell of your deviltries. I was curious to see them; but
I swear to you those fellows were too scared and the sight of their
eyes was too wide of the mark ever to have recognized me."
We were about to leave when the sound of angry voices and an uproar
like that of a fight was heard.
"Dear, dear!" cried the monk, "what's that now? I think they are
coming back and we have not yet done with them. Quick, let's get
back into our disguises!"
"No," said Benoît, listening, "I know what it is. I met, as I came
along through the castle cellars, four or five young fellows, one of
whom is known to me; and that is Leonard, your Bourbonnais
wood-chopper, Père Bastien. These lads were there from curiosity no
doubt; but they had got bewildered in the caverns, and I lent them my
lantern, telling them to wait for me. The bagpipers must have met
them and they are giving chase."
"It is more likely that they are being chased themselves if there are
not more than five of them," said Huriel. "Let us go and see."
We were just starting when the noise and the footsteps approached,
and Carnat, Doré-Fratin, and eight others returned to the cave,
having, in fact, exchanged a few blows with our comrades, and finding
that they had to do with real flesh and blood instead of spectres,
were ashamed of their cowardice and so came back again. They
reproached the Huriels for having betrayed them and driven them into
an ambush. The Head-Woodsman defended himself, and the monk tried to
secure peace by taking it all upon himself, telling the bagpipers to
repent of their sins. But they felt themselves in good force, for
others kept coming back to their support; and when they found their
numbers nearly complete they raised their voices to a roar, and went
from reproaches to threats and from threats to blows. Seeing there
was no way to avoid an encounter, all the more because they had drunk
a good deal of brandy while the tests were going on and were more or
less intoxicated, we put ourselves in an attitude of defence,
pressing one against the other, and showing front to the enemy on all
sides, like oxen when a troop of wolves attack them at pasture. The
monk, having already lost his morality and his Latin, now lost his
patience also, and seizing the pipe of an instrument which had got
broken in the scrimmage, he laid about him as hard as a man well
could, in defence of his own skin.
Unluckily, Joseph was weakened by the loss of blood, and Huriel, who
bore upon his heart the recollection of Malzac's death, was more
fearful of giving blows than of receiving them. Anxious to protect
his father, who sprang into the fray like an old lion, he put himself
in great danger. Benoît fought very well for a man who was just out
of an illness; but the truth is we were only six against fifteen or
sixteen, and as the blood rose anger came, and I saw our enemies
opening their knives. I had only time to fling myself before the
Head-Woodsman, who, still unwilling to draw his blade, was the object
of their bitterest anger. I received a wound in the arm, which I
hardly felt at the moment, but which hindered my fighting on, and I
thought the day was lost, when, by great good luck, my four comrades
decided to come and see what the noise was about. The reinforcement
was sufficient, and together we put to flight, for the second time
and the last, our exhausted enemies, taken in the rear and ignorant
how many were upon them.
I saw that victory was ours and that none of my friends were much
hurt; then, suddenly perceiving that I had got more than I wanted, I
fell like a log and neither knew nor felt another thing.