Five minutes later the crowd of seigneurs was seated in the grand
dining-hall, the chaplain in the midst of them. The château, illuminated
from top to bottom, echoed with songs, cries, laughter, uproar, and the
venerable Dom Balaguère planted his fork in the wing of a wood-hen,
drowning the remorse of his sin under floods of wine of the Pope and the
sweet juices of the meats.
So much did he eat and drink, that the poor holy man died in the night
of a terrible attack of sickness, without having even time to repent.
Then near the morning he arrived in heaven with all the savor of the
feast still about him and I leave you to imagine how he was received:
"Retire from my sight, evil Christian!" said the Sovereign Judge, "thy
fault is dark enough to efface a whole life of virtue. Ah, thou hast
robbed me of a Mass to-night. Thou shalt pay me back three hundred in
its place, and thou shalt not enter into Paradise unless thou shalt have
celebrated in thy proper chapel these three hundred Christmas Masses in
the presence of all those who have sinned by thy fault and with thee."
This, then, is the true legend of Dom Balaguère as they tell it in the
land of olives. To-day the château of Trinquelague is no more, but the
chapel still stands erect on the summit of Mont Ventoux, in a grove of
green oaks. The wind beats its disjointed portal; the grass creeps
across its threshold; the birds have built in the angles of the altar
and in the embrasures of the high windows, whence the colored panes have
long ago vanished. But it appears that every year at Christmas, a
supernatural light runs about these ruins, and that, in going to Mass or
feast, the peasants see the chapel illuminated by invisible candles
which burn brightly even through the wind and snow.
You may laugh if you will, but a vine-dresser of the neighborhood named
Garrigue, without doubt a descendant of Garrigou, has assured me that
one Christmas night, finding himself a little so-so-ish, he became lost
on the mountain beside Trinquelague, and behold what he saw! At eleven
o'clock, nothing. All was silent, dark, lifeless. Suddenly, toward
midnight, a chime sounded up above from a clock, an old, old chime
which seemed six leagues away. Pretty soon, on the ascending road,
Garrigue saw lights trembling in the uncertain shadows. Under the porch
of the chapel somebody walked, somebody whispered:
"Good-evening, Master Arnoton."
"Good-evening, good-evening, my children."
When the whole company was entered, my vine-dresser, who was exceedingly
brave, approached stealthily, and peeping through the broken door saw a
strange spectacle. All those who had passed him were ranged about the
choir, in the ruined nave, as if the ancient benches still existed.
Beautiful dames in brocade with coifs of lace; seigneurs bedizzened from
top to toe; peasants in flowered jackets like those of our
grandfathers,--everything with an ancient air, faded, dusty, worn-out.
Now and then the night-birds, habitual dwellers in the chapel, awakened
by all these lights, winged about the candles, whose flames mounted
straight and vague as if they burnt behind gauze. And what amused
Garrigue most was a certain personage with great steel spectacles, who
shook at each instant his high black peruke, on which one of the birds
had alighted and entangled itself, silently beating its wings.
At the farthest end, a little old man of boyish size, on his knees in
the midst of the choir, pulled desperately at the chimeless and silent
bell; while a priest attired in ancient gold, went and came before the
altar reciting orisons of which one heard not a single word. Surely,
that was Dom Balaguère in the act of saying his third low Mass.
_A Love-Passage from a Wandering Cossack._
"Dressed in his everlasting blue frock, he sat near the fire
playing cards."
_Turgenieff._