Rising at dawn, the Père Longuemare, after sweeping out the room,
departed to say his Mass in a chapel in the Rue d'Enfer served by a
nonjuring priest. There were in Paris thousands of similar retreats,
where the refractory clergy gathered together clandestinely little
troops of the faithful. The police of the Sections, vigilant and
suspicious as they were, kept their eyes shut to these hidden folds,
from fear of the exasperated flock and moved by some lingering
veneration for holy things. The Barnabite made his farewells to his host
who had great difficulty in persuading him to come back to dine, and
only succeeded in the end by promising that the cheer would be neither
plentiful nor delicate.
Brotteaux, when left to himself, kindled a little earthenware stove;
then, while he busied himself with preparations for the Monk's and the
Epicurean's meal, he read in his Lucretius and meditated on the
conditions of human beings.
As a sage and a philosopher, he was not surprised that these wretched
creatures, silly playthings of the forces of nature, found themselves
more often than not in absurd and painful situations; but he was weak
and illogical enough to believe that the Revolutionaries were more
wicked and more foolish than other men, thereby falling into the error
of the metaphysician. At the same time he was no Pessimist and did not
hold that life was altogether bad. He admired Nature in several of her
departments, especially the celestial mechanism and physical love, and
accommodated himself to the labours of life, pending the arrival of the
day, which could not be far off, when he would have nothing more either
to fear or to desire.
He coloured some dancing-dolls with painstaking care and made a Zerline
that was very like Rose Thévenin. He liked the girl and his Epicureanism
highly approved of the arrangement of the atoms of which she was
composed.
These tasks occupied him till the Barnabite's return.
"Father," he announced, as he opened the door to admit him, "I told you,
you remember, that our fare would be meagre. We have nothing but
chestnuts. The more reason, therefore, they should be well seasoned."
"Chestnuts!" cried Père Longuemare, smiling, "there is no more delicious
dish. My father, sir, was a poor gentleman of the Limousin, whose whole
estate consisted of a pigeon-cote in ruins, an orchard run wild and a
clump of chestnut-trees. He fed himself, his wife and his twelve
children on big green chestnuts, and we were all strong and sturdy. I
was the youngest and the most turbulent; my father used to declare, by
way of jesting, he would have to send me to America to be a
filibuster.... Ah! sir, how fragrant your chestnut soup smells! It takes
me back to the table where my mother sat smiling, surrounded by her
troop of little ones."
The repast ended, Brotteaux set out for Joly's, the toy-merchant in the
Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, who took the dancing-dolls Caillou had
refused, and ordered--not another gross of them like the latter, but a
round twenty-four dozen to begin with.
On reaching the erstwhile Rue Royale and turning into the Place de la
Révolution, Brotteaux caught sight of a steel triangle glittering
between two wooden uprights; it was the guillotine. An immense crowd of
light-hearted spectators pressed round the scaffold, waiting the arrival
of the loaded carts. Women were hawking Nanterre cakes on a tray hung in
front of them and crying their wares; sellers of cooling drinks were
tinkling their little bells; at the foot of the Statue of Liberty an old
man had a peep-show in a small booth surmounted by a swing on which a
monkey played its antics. Underneath the scaffold some dogs were licking
yesterday's blood, Brotteaux turned back towards the Rue Honoré.
Regaining his garret, where the Barnabite was reading his breviary, he
carefully wiped the table and arranged his colour-box on it alongside
the materials and tools of his trade.
"Father," he said, "if you do not deem the occupation unworthy of the
sacred character with which you are invested, I will ask you to help me
make my marionettes. A worthy tradesman, Joly by name, has this very
morning given me a pretty heavy order. Whilst I am painting these
figures already put together, you will do me a great service by cutting
out heads, arms, legs, and bodies from the patterns here. Better you
could not find; they are after Watteau and Boucher."
"I agree with you, sir," replied Longuemare, "that Watteau and Boucher
were well fitted to create such-like baubles; it had been more to their
glory if they had confined themselves to innocent figures like these. I
should be delighted to help you, but I fear I may not be clever enough
for that."
The Père Longuemare was right to distrust his own skill; after sundry
unsuccessful attempts, the fact was patent that his genius did not lie
in the direction of cutting out pretty shapes in thin cardboard with the
point of a penknife. But when, at his suggestion, Brotteaux gave him
some string and a bodkin, he showed himself very apt in endowing with
motion the little creatures he had failed to make and teaching them to
dance. He had a happy knack, by way of trying them afterwards, of making
them each execute three or four steps of a gavotte, and when they
rewarded his pains, a smile would flicker on his stern lips.
One time when he was pulling the string of a Scaramouch to a dance tune:
"Sir," he observed, "this little travesty reminds me of a quaint story.
It was in 1746, when I was completing my noviciate under the care of the
Père Magitot, a man well on in years, of deep learning and austere
morals. At that period, you perhaps remember, dancing figures, intended
in the first instance to amuse children, exercised over women and even
over men, both young and old, an extraordinary fascination; they were
all the rage in Paris. The fashionable shops were crammed with them;
they were to be found in the houses of people of quality, and it was
nothing out of the way to see a grave and reverend senior dancing his
doll in the streets and public gardens. The Père Magitot's age,
character, and sacred profession did not avail to guard him against
infection. Every time he saw anyone busy jumping his cardboard mannikin,
his fingers itched with impatience to be at the same game,--an
impatience that soon grew well nigh intolerable. One day when he was
paying a visit of importance on a matter involving the interests of the
whole Order to Monsieur Chauvel, advocate in the courts of the
Parlement, noticing one of these dancers hanging from the chimney-piece,
he felt a terrible temptation to pull its string, which he only resisted
at the cost of a tremendous effort. But this frivolous ambition pursued
him everywhere and left him no peace. In his studies, in his
meditations, in his prayers, at church, at chapter, in the confessional
and in the pulpit, he was possessed by it. After some days of dreadful
agony of mind, he laid bare his extraordinary case to the General of the
Order, who happened fortunately to be in Paris at the moment. He was an
eminent ecclesiastic of Milan, a Doctor and Prince of the Church. His
counsel to the Père Magitot was to satisfy a craving, innocent in its
inception, importunate in its consequences and inordinate in its excess,
which threatened to super induce the gravest disorders in the soul which
was afflicted with it. On the advice, or more strictly by the order of
the General, the Père Magitot returned to Monsieur Chauvel's house,
where the advocate received him, as on the first occasion, in his
cabinet. There, finding the dancing figure still fastened in the same
place, he ran excitedly to the chimney-piece and begged his host to do
him a favour,--to let him pull the string. The lawyer gave him his
permission very readily, and informed him in confidence that sometimes
he set Scaramouch (that was the doll's name) dancing while he was
studying his briefs, and that, only the night before, he had modulated
on Scaramouch's movements the peroration of his speech in defence of a
woman falsely accused of poisoning her husband. The Père Magitot seized
the string with trembling fingers and saw Scaramouch throw his limbs
wildly about under his manipulation like one possessed of devils in the
agonies of exorcism."
"Your tale does not surprise me, father," Brotteaux told him, "We see
such cases of obsession; but it is not always cardboard figures that
occasion it."
The Père Longuemare, who was religious by profession, never talked about
religion, while Brotteaux was for ever harping on the subject. He was
conscious of a bond of sympathy between himself and the Barnabite, and
took a delight in embarrassing and disturbing his peace of mind with
objections against divers articles of the Christian faith.
Once when they were working together making Zerlines and Scaramouches:
"When I consider," remarked Brotteaux, "the events which have brought us
to the point at which we stand, I am in doubt as to which party, in the
general madness, has been the most insane; sometimes, I am greatly
tempted to believe it was that of the Court."
"Sir," answered the Monk, "all men lose their wits like Nebuchadnezzar,
when God forsakes them; but no man in our days ever plunged so deep in
ignorance and error as the Abbé Fauchet, no man was so fatal as he to
the kingdom. God must needs have been sorely exasperated against France
to send her Monsieur l'Abbé Fauchet!"
"I imagine we have seen other evil-doers besides poor, unhappy Fauchet."
"The Abbé Gregoire too, was full of malice."
"And Brissot, and Danton, and Marat, and a hundred others, what of them,
Father?"
"Sir, they are laics; the laity could never incur the same
responsibilities as the clergy. They do not work evil from so high a
standpoint, and their crimes are not of universal bearing."
"And your God, Father, what say you of His behaviour in the present
Revolution?"
"I do not understand you, sir."
"Epicurus said: Either God wishes to hinder evil and cannot, or He can
and does not wish to, or He cannot nor does he wish to, or He does wish
to and can. If He wishes to and cannot, He is impotent; if He can and
does not wish to, He is perverse; if He cannot nor does He wish to, He
is impotent and perverse; if He does wish to and can, why does He not,
tell me that, Father!"--and Brotteaux cast a look of triumph at his
interlocutor.
"Sir," retorted the Monk, "there is nothing more contemptible than these
difficulties you raise. When I look into the reasoning of infidels, I
seem to see ants piling up a few blades of grass as a dam against the
torrent that sweeps down from the mountains. With your leave, I had
rather not argue with you; I should have too many excellent reasons and
too few wits to apply them. Besides, you will find your refutation in
the Abbé Guénée and twenty other apologists. I will only say that what
you quote from Epicurus is foolishness; because God is arraigned in it
as if he was a man, with a man's moral code. Well! sir, the sceptics,
from Celsus down to Bayle and Voltaire, have cajoled fools with
such-like paradoxes."
"See, Father," protested Brotteaux, "to what lengths your faith makes
you go. Not satisfied with finding all truth in your Theology, you
likewise refuse to discover any in the works of so many noble intellects
who thought differently from yourselves."
"You are entirely mistaken, sir," replied Longuemare. "On the contrary,
I believe that nothing could ever be altogether false in a man's
thoughts. The atheists stand on the lowest rung of the ladder of
knowledge; but even there, gleams of sense are to be found and flashes
of truth, and even when darkness is thick about him, a man may lift up
his eyes to God, and He will put understanding in his heart; was it not
so with Lucifer?"
"Well, sir," said Brotteaux, "I cannot match your generosity and I am
bound to tell you I cannot find in all the works of the Theologians one
atom of good sense."
At the same time he would repudiate any desire to attack religion, which
he deemed indispensable for the nations; he could only wish it had for
its ministers philosophers instead of controversialists. He deplored the
fact that the Jacobins were for replacing it by a newer and more
pestilent religion, the cult of liberty, equality, the republic, the
fatherland. He had observed this, that it is in the vigour of their
youth religions are the fiercest and most cruel, and grow milder as they
grow older. He was anxious, therefore, to see Catholicism preserved; it
had devoured many victims in the times of its vigour, but nowadays,
burdened by the weight of years and with enfeebled appetite, it was
content with roasting four or five heretics in a hundred years.
"As a matter of fact," he concluded, "I have always got on very well
with your God-eaters and Christ-worshippers. I kept a chaplain at Les
Ilettes, where Mass was said every Sunday and all my guests attended.
The philosophers were the most devout while the opera girls showed the
most fervour. I was prosperous then and had crowds of friends."
"Friends," exclaimed the Père Longuemare, "friends! Ah! sir, do you
really think they loved you, all these philosophers and all these
courtesans, who have degraded your soul in such wise that God himself
would find it hard to know it for one of the temples built by Him for
His glory?"
* * * * *
The Père Longuemare lived for a week longer at the publican's without
being interfered with. As far as possible he observed the discipline of
his House and every night at the canonical hours would rise from his
palliasse to kneel on the bare boards and recite the offices. Though
both were reduced to a diet of wretched scraps, he duly observed fasts
and abstinence. A smiling but pitiful spectator of these austerities,
Brotteaux one day asked him:
"Do you really believe that God finds any satisfaction in seeing you
endure cold and hunger as you do?"
"God himself," was the Monk's answer, "has given us the example of
suffering."
On the ninth day since the Barnabite had come to share the
philosopher's garret, the latter sallied forth at twilight to
deliver his dancing-dolls to Joly, the toy-merchant of the Rue
Neuve-des-Petits-Champs. He was on his way back overjoyed at having sold
them all, when, as he was crossing the erstwhile Place du Carrousel, a
girl in a blue satin pelisse trimmed with ermine, running by with a
limping gait, threw herself into his arms and held him fast in the way
suppliants have had since the world began.
She was trembling and her heart was beating so fast and loud it could be
plainly heard. Wondering to see one of her common sort look so pathetic,
Brotteaux, a veteran amateur of the stage, thought how Mademoiselle
Raucourt, if she could have seen her, might have learnt something from
her bearing.
She spoke in breathless tones, lowering her voice to a whisper for fear
of being overheard by the passers-by:
"Take me with you, _citoyen_, and hide me, for the love of pity!... They
are in my room in the Rue Fromenteau. While they were coming upstairs, I
ran for refuge into Flora's room,--she is my next-door neighbour,--and
leapt out of the window into the street, that is how I sprained my
ankle.... They are coming; they want to put me in prison and kill me....
Last week they killed Virginie."
Brotteaux understood, of course, that the child was speaking of the
delegates of the Revolutionary Committee of the Section or else the
Commissaries of the Committee of General Security. At that time the
Commune had as _procureur_ a man of virtue, the _citoyen_ Chaumette who
regarded the ladies of pleasure as the direct foes of the Republic and
harassed them unmercifully in his efforts to regenerate the Nation's
morals. To tell the truth, the young ladies of the Palais-Égalité were
no great patriots. They regretted the old state of things and did not
always conceal the fact. Several had been guillotined already as
conspirators, and their tragic fate had excited no little emulation
among their fellows.
The _citoyen_ Brotteaux asked the suppliant what offence she had been
guilty of to bring down on herself a warrant of arrest.
She swore she had no notion, that she had done nothing anyone could
blame her for.
"Well then, my girl," Brotteaux told her, "you are not suspect; you have
nothing to fear. Be off with you to bed and leave me alone."
At this she confessed everything:
"I tore out my cockade and shouted: 'Vive le roi!'"
He walked down to the river-side and she kept by his side along the
deserted _quais_. Clinging to his arm she went on:
"It is not that I care for him particularly, the King, you know; I never
knew him, and I daresay he wasn't very much different from other men.
But they are bad people. They are cruel to poor girls. They torment and
vex and abuse me in every kind of way; they want to stop me following my
trade. I have no other trade. You may be sure, if I had, I should not be
doing what I do.... What is it they want? They are so hard on poor
humble folks, the milkman, the charcoalman, the water carrier, the
laundress. They won't rest content till they've set all poor people
against them."
He looked at her; she seemed a mere child. She was no longer afraid; she
was almost smiling, as she limped along lightly at his side. He asked
her her name. She said she was called Athenaïs and was sixteen.
Brotteaux offered to see her safe to anywhere she wished to go. She did
not know a soul in Paris; but she had an aunt, in service at Palaiseau,
who would take her in.
Brotteaux made up his mind at once.
"Come with me, my child," he ordered, and led the way home, with her
hanging on his arm.
On his arrival, he found the Père Longuemare in the garret reading his
breviary.
Holding Athenaïs by the hand, he drew the other's attention to her:
"Father," he said, "here is a girl from the Rue Fromenteau who has been
shouting: 'Vive le roi!' The revolutionary police are on her track. She
has nowhere to lay head. Will you allow the girl to pass the night
here?"
The Père Longuemare closed his breviary.
"If I understand you right," he said, "you ask me, sir, if this young
girl, who is like myself subject to be molested under a warrant of
arrest, may be suffered, for her temporal salvation, to spend the night
in the same room as I?"
"Yes, Father."
"By what right should I object? and why must I suppose myself affronted
by her presence? am I so sure that I am any better than she?"
He established himself for the night in an old broken-down armchair,
declaring he should sleep excellently in it. Athenaïs lay on the
mattress. Brotteaux stretched himself on the palliasse and blew out the
candle.
The hours and half-hours sounded one after the other from the church
towers, but the old man could not sleep; he lay awake listening to the
mingled breathing of the man of religion and the girl of pleasure. The
moon rose, symbol and witness of his old-time loves, and threw a silvery
ray into the attic, illuminating the fair hair and golden lashes, the
delicate nose and round, red mouth of Athenaïs, who lay sound asleep.
"Truly," he thought to himself, "a terrible enemy for the Republic!"
When Athenaïs awoke, the day was breaking. The Monk had disappeared.
Brotteaux was reading Lucretius under the skylight, learning from the
maxims of the Latin poet to live without fears and without desires; but
for all this he felt himself at the moment devoured with regrets and
disquietudes.
Opening her eyes, Athenaïs was dumfounded to see the roof beams of a
garret above her head. Then she remembered, smiled at her preserver and
extended towards him with a caressing gesture her pretty little dirty
hands.
Rising on her elbow, she pointed to the dilapidated armchair in which
the Monk had passed the night.
"He is not there?... He has not gone to denounce me, has he?"
"No, no, my child. You could not find a more honest soul than that old
madman."
Athenaïs asked in what the old fellow's madness consisted; and when
Brotteaux informed her it was religion, she gravely reproached him for
speaking so, declaring that men without faith were worse than the beasts
that perish and that for her part she often prayed to God, hoping He
would forgive her her sins and receive her in His blessed mercy.
Then, noticing that Brotteaux held a book in his hand, she thought it
was a book of the Mass and said:
"There you see, you too, you say your prayers! God will reward you for
what you have done for me."
Brotteaux having told her that it was not a Mass-book, and that it had
been written before ever the Mass had been invented in the world, she
opined it was an _Interpretation of Dreams_, and asked if it did not
contain an explanation of an extraordinary dream she had had. She could
not read and these were the only two sorts of books she had heard tell
of.
Brotteaux informed her that this book was only by way of explaining the
dream of life. Finding this a hard saying, the pretty child did not try
to understand it and dipped the end of her nose in the earthenware crock
that replaced the silver basins Brotteaux had once been accustomed to
use. Next, she arranged her hair before her host's shaving-glass with
scrupulous care and gravity. Her white arms raised above her head, she
let fall an observation from time to time with long intervals between:
"You, you were rich once."
"What makes you think that?"
"I don't know. But you _were_ rich,--and you are an aristocrat, I am
certain of it."
She drew from her pocket a little Holy Virgin of silver in a round ivory
shrine, a bit of sugar, thread, scissors, a flint and steel, two or
three cases for needles and the like, and after selecting what she
required, sat down to mend her skirt, which had got torn in several
places.
"For your own safety, my child, put this in your cap!" Brotteaux bade
her, handing her a tricolour cockade.
"I will do that gladly, sir," she agreed, "but it will be for the love
of you and not for love of the Nation."
When she was dressed and had made herself look her best, taking her
skirt in both hands, she dropped a curtsey as she had been taught to do
in her village, and addressing Brotteaux:
"Sir," she said, "I am your very humble servant."
She was prepared to oblige her benefactor in all ways he might wish,
but she thought it more becoming that he asked for no favour and she
offered none; it seemed to her a pretty way to part so, and what good
manners required.
Brotteaux slipped a few assignats into her hand to pay her coach-hire to
Palaiseau. It was the half of his fortune, and, albeit he was notorious
for his lavishness towards women, it was the first time he had ever made
so equal a partition of his goods with any of the sex.
She asked him his name.
"I am called Maurice."
It was with reluctance he opened the garret door for her:
"Good-bye, Athenaïs."
She kissed him. "Monsieur Maurice," she said, "when you think of me, if
ever you do, call me Marthe; that is the name I was christened, the name
they called me by in the village.... Good-bye and thank you.... Your
very humble servant, Monsieur Maurice."