necessary, in order to reach the chapel, to cross the first court,
which was full of carriages, footmen and sedan chairs, and was quite
illuminated by the blaze of torches and the glare of the kitchen
fires. Here were heard the click of turnspits, the rattle of
sauce-pans, the clash of glasses and silver plate in the commotion
attending the preparation of the feast; while over all rose a warm
vapour smelling pleasantly of roast meat, piquant herbs, and complex
sauces, and which seemed to say to the farmers, as well as to the
chaplain and to the bailiff, and to everybody:
"What a good midnight repast we are going to have after the mass!"
II
Ting-a-ring!--a--ring!
The midnight mass is beginning in the chapel of the château, which is
a cathedral in miniature, with groined and vaulted roofs, oak
wood-work as high as the walls, expanded draperies, and tapers all
aglow. And what a lot of people! What grand dresses! First of all,
seated in the carved stalls that line the choir, is the Lord of
Trinquelague in a coat of salmon-coloured silk, and about him are
ranged all the noble lords who have been invited.
On the opposite side, on velvet-covered praying-stools, the old
dowager marchioness in flame-coloured brocade, and the youthful Lady
of Trinquelague wearing a lofty head-dress of plaited lace in the
newest fashion of the French court, have taken their places. Lower
down, dressed in black, with punctilious wigs, and shaven faces, like
two grave notes among the gay silks and the figured damasks, are seen
the bailiff, Thomas Arnoton, and the notary Master Ambroy. Then come
the stout major-domos, the pages, the horsemen, the stewards, Dame
Barbara, with all her keys hanging at her side on a real silver ring.
At the end, on the forms, are the lower class, the female servants,
the cotter farmers and their families; and lastly, down there, near
the door, which they open and shut very carefully, are messieurs the
scullions, who enter in the interval between two sauces, to take a
little whiff of mass; and these bring the smell of the repast with
them into the church, which now is in high festival and warm from the
number of lighted tapers.
Is it the sight of their little white caps that so distracts the
celebrant? Is it not rather Garrigou's bell? that mad little bell
which is shaken at the altar foot with an infernal impetuosity that
seems all the time to be saying: "Come, let us make haste, make
haste.... The sooner we shall have finished, the sooner shall we be at
table." The fact is that every time this devil's bell tinkles the
chaplain forgets his mass, and thinks of nothing but the midnight
repast. He fancies he sees the cooks bustling about, the stoves
glowing with forge-like fires, the two magnificent turkeys, filled,
crammed, marbled with truffles....
Then again he sees, passing along, files of little pages carrying
dishes enveloped in tempting vapours, and with them he enters the
great hall now prepared for the feast. Oh delight! there is the
immense table all laden and luminous, peacocks adorned with their
feathers, pheasants spreading out their reddish-brown wings,
ruby-coloured decanters, pyramids of fruit glowing amid green boughs,
and those wonderful fish Garrigou (ah well, yes, Garrigou!) had
mentioned, laid on a couch of fennel, with their pearly scales
gleaming as if they had just come out of the water, and bunches of
sweet-smelling herbs in their monstrous snouts. So clear is the vision
of these marvels that it seems to Dom Balaguère that all these
wondrous dishes are served before him on the embroidered altar-cloth,
and two or three times instead of the _Dominus vobiscum_, he finds
himself saying the _Benedicite_. Except these slight mistakes, the
worthy man pronounces the service very conscientiously, without
skipping a line, without omitting a genuflexion; and all goes
tolerably well until the end of the first mass; for you know that on
Christmas Day the same officiating priest must celebrate three
consecutive masses.
"That's one done!" says the chaplain to himself with a sigh of
relief; then, without losing a moment, he motioned to his clerk, or to
him whom he supposed to be his clerk, and...
"Ting-a-ring ... Ting-a-ring, a-ring!"
Now the second mass is beginning, and with it begins also Dom
Balaguère's sin. "Quick, quick, let us make haste," Garrigou's bell
cries out to him in its shrill little voice, and this time the unhappy
celebrant, completely given over to the demon of gluttony, fastens
upon the missal and devours its pages with the eagerness of his
over-excited appetite. Frantically he bows down, rises up, merely
indicates the sign of the cross and the genuflexions, and curtails all
his gestures in order to get sooner finished. Scarcely has he
stretched out his arms at the gospel, before he is striking his breast
at the _Confiteor_. It is a contest between himself and the clerk as
to who shall mumble the faster. Versicles and responses are hurried
over and run one into another. The words, half pronounced, without
opening the mouth, which would take up too much time, terminate in
unmeaning murmurs.
"_Oremus ps ... ps ... ps...._"
"_Mea culpa ... pa ... pa...._"
Like vintagers in a hurry pressing grapes in the vat, these two paddle
in the mass Latin, sending splashes in every direction.
"_Dom ... scum!..._" says Balaguère.
"_... Stutuo!..._" replies Garrigou; and all the time the cursed
little bell is tinkling there in their ears, like the jingles they put
on post-horses to make them gallop fast. You may imagine at that speed
a low mass is quickly disposed of.
"That makes two," says the chaplain quite panting; then without taking
time to breathe, red and perspiring, he descends the altar steps
and...
"Ting-a-ring!... Ting-a-ring!..."
Now the third mass is beginning. There are but a few more steps to be
taken to reach the dining-hall; but, alas! the nearer the midnight
repast approaches the more does the unfortunate Balaguère feel himself
possessed by mad impatience and gluttony. The vision becomes more
distinct; the golden carps, the roasted turkeys are there, there!...
He touches them, ... he ... oh heavens! The dishes are smoking, the
wines perfume the air; and with furiously agitated clapper, the little
bell is crying out to him:
"Quick, quick, quicker yet!"
But how could he go quicker? His lips scarcely move. He no longer
pronounces the words; ... unless he were to impose upon Heaven
outright and trick it out of its mass.... And that is precisely what
he does, the unfortunate man!... From temptation to temptation; he
begins by skipping a verse, then two. Then the epistle is too long--he
does not finish it, skims over the gospel, passes before the _Credo_
without going into it, skips the _Pater_, salutes the _Preface_ from a
distance, and by leaps and bounds thus hurls himself into eternal
damnation, constantly followed by the vile Garrigou (_vade retro,
Satanas!_), who seconds him with wonderful skill, sustains his
chasuble, turns over the leaves two at a time, elbows the
reading-desks, upsets the vessels, and is continually sounding the
little bell louder and louder, quicker and quicker.
You should have seen the scared faces of all who were present, as they
were obliged to follow this mass by mere mimicry of the priest,
without hearing a word; some rise when others kneel, and sit down when
the others are standing up, and all the phases of this singular
service are mixed up together in the multitude of different attitudes
presented by the worshippers on the benches....
"The _abbé_ goes too fast.... One can't follow him," murmured the old
dowager, shaking her head-dress in confusion. Master Arnoton with
great steel spectacles on his nose is searching in his prayer-book to
find where the dickens they are. But at heart all these good folks,
who themselves are thinking about feasting, are not sorry that the
mass is going on at this post haste; and when Dom Balaguère with
radiant face turns towards those present and cries with all his might:
"_Ite, missa est_," they all respond to him a "_Deo gratias_" in but
one voice, and that as joyous and enthusiastic, as if they thought
themselves already seated at the midnight repast and drinking the
first toast.
III
Five minutes afterwards the crowd of nobles were sitting down in the
great hall, with the chaplain in the midst of them. The château,
illuminated from top to bottom, was resounding with songs, with
shouts, with laughter, with uproar; and the venerable Dom Balaguère
was thrusting his fork into the wing of a fowl, and drowning all
remorse for his sin in streams of regal wine and the luscious juices
of the viands. He ate and drank so much, the dear, holy man, that he
died during the night of a terrible attack, without even having had
time to repent; and then in the morning when he got to heaven, I leave
you to imagine how he was received.
He was told to withdraw on account of his wickedness. His fault was so
grievous that it effaced a whole lifetime of virtue.... He had robbed
them of a midnight mass.... He should have to pay for it with three
hundred, and he should not enter into Paradise until he had celebrated
in his own chapel these three hundred Christmas masses in the presence
of all those who had sinned with him and by his fault....
... And now this is the true legend of Dom Balaguère as it is related
in the olive country. At the present time the château of Trinquelague
no longer exists, but the chapel still stands on the top of Mount
Ventoux, amid a cluster of green oaks. Its decayed door rattles in the
wind, and its threshold is choked up with vegetation; there are birds'
nests at the corners of the altar, and in the recesses of the lofty
windows, from which the stained glass has long ago disappeared. It
seems, however, that every year at Christmas, a supernatural light
wanders amid these ruins, and the peasants, in going to the masses and
to the midnight repasts, see this phantom of a chapel illuminated by
invisible tapers that burn in the open air, even in snow and wind. You
may laugh at it if you like, but a vine-dresser of the place, named
Garrigue, doubtless a descendant of Garrigou, declared to me that one
Christmas night, when he was a little tipsy, he lost his way on the
hill of Trinquelague; and this is what he saw.... Till eleven
o'clock, nothing. All was silent, motionless, inanimate. Suddenly,
about midnight, a chime sounded from the top of the steeple, an old,
old chime, which seemed as if it were ten leagues off. Very soon
Garrigue saw lights flitting about, and uncertain shadows moving in
the road that climbs the hill. They passed on beneath the chapel
porch, and murmured:
"Good evening, Master Arnoton!"
"Good evening, good evening, my friends!" ...
When all had entered, my vine-dresser, who was very courageous,
silently approached, and when he looked through the broken door, a
singular spectacle met his gaze. All those he had seen pass were
seated round the choir, and in the ruined nave, just as if the old
seats still existed. Fine ladies in brocade, with lace head-dresses;
lords adorned from head to foot; peasants in flowered jackets such as
our grandfathers had; all with an old, faded, dusty, tired look. From
time to time the night birds, the usual inhabitants of the chapel, who
were aroused by all these lights, would come and flit round the
tapers, the flames of which rose straight and ill-defined, as if they
were burning behind a veil; and what amused Garrigue very much was a
certain personage with large steel spectacles, who was ever shaking
his tall black wig, in which one of these birds was quite entangled,
and kept itself upright by noiselessly flapping its wings....
At the farther end, a little old man of childish figure was on his
knees in the middle of the choir, desperately shaking a clapperless
and soundless bell, whilst a priest, clad in ancient gold, was coming
and going before the altar, reciting prayers of which not a word was
heard.... Most certainly this was Dom Balaguère in the act of saying
his third low mass.
DEVIL-PUZZLERS[19]
BY FREDERICK BEECHER PERKINS
[19] By permission of G. P. Putnam's Sons, Publishers. New
York and London.
It will not do at all to disbelieve in the existence of a personal
devil. It is not so many years ago that one of our profoundest divines
remarked with indignation upon such disbelief. "No such person?" cried
the doctor with energy. "Don't tell me! I can hear his tail snap and
crack about amongst the churches any day!"
And if the enemy is, in truth, still as vigorously active among the
sons of God as he was in the days of Job (that is to say, in the time
of Solomon, when, as the critics have found out, the Book of Job was
written), then surely still more is he vigilant and sly in his tricks
for foreclosing his mortgages upon the souls of the wicked.
And once more: still more than ever is his personal appearance
probable in these latter days. The everlasting tooting of the wordy
Cumming has proclaimed the end of all things for a quarter of a
century; and he will surely see his prophecy fulfilled if he can only
keep it up long enough. But, though we discredit the sapient
Second-Adventist as to the precise occasion of the diabolic avatar,
has there not been a strange coincidence between his noisy
declarations, and other evidences of an approximation of the spiritual
to the bodily sphere of life? Is not this same quarter of a century
that of the Spiritists? Has it not witnessed the development of Od?
And of clairvoyance? And have not the doctrines of ghosts, and
re-appearances of the dead, and of messages from them, risen into a
prominence entirely new, and into a coherence and semblance at least
of fact and fixed law such as was never known before? Yea, verily. Of
all times in the world's history, to reject out of one's beliefs
either good spirits or bad, angelology or diabology, chief good being,
or chief bad being, this is the most improper.
Dr. Hicok was trebly liable to the awful temptation, under which he
had assuredly fallen, over and above the fact that he was a prig,
which makes one feel the more glad that he was so handsomely come up
with in the end; such a prig that everybody who knew him, invariably
called him (when he wasn't by) Hicok-alorum. This charming surname had
been conferred on him by a crazy old fellow with whom he once got into
a dispute. Lunatics have the most awfully tricky ways of dodging out
of pinches in reasoning; but Hicok knew too much to know _that_; and
so he acquired his fine title to teach him one thing more.
Trebly liable, we said. The three reasons are,--
1. He was foreign-born.
2. He was a Scotchman.
3. He was a physician and surgeon.
The way in which these causes operated was as follows (I wish it were
allowable to use Artemas Ward's curiously satisfactory vocable
"thusly:" like Mrs. Wiggle's soothing syrup, it "supplies a real
want"):--
Being foreign-born, Dr. Hicok had not the unfailing moral stamina of a
native American, and therefore was comparatively easily beset by sin.
Being, secondly, a Scotchman, he was not only thoroughly conceited,
with a conceit as immovable as the Bass Rock, just as other folks
sometimes are, but, in particular, he was perfectly sure of his utter
mastery of metaphysics, logic and dialectics, or, as he used to call
it, with a snobbish Teutonicalization, _dialektik_. Now, in the latter
two, the Scotch can do something, but in metaphysics they are simply
imbecile; which quality, in the inscrutable providence of God, has
been joined with an equally complete conviction of the exact opposite.
Let not man, therefore, put those traits asunder--not so much by
reason of any divine ordinance, as because no man in his senses would
try to convince a Scotchman--or anybody else, for that matter.
Thirdly, he was a physician and surgeon; and gentlemen of this
profession are prone to become either thoroughgoing materialists, or
else implicit and extreme Calvinistic Presbyterians, "of the large
blue kind." And they are, moreover, positive, hard-headed, bold, and
self-confident. So they have good need to be. Did not Majendie say to
his students, "Gentlemen, disease is a subject which physicians know
nothing about"?
So the doctor both believed in the existence of a personal devil, and
believed in his own ability to get the upper hand of that individual
in a tournament of the wits. Ah, he learned better by terrible
experience! The doctor was a dry-looking little chap, with sandy hair,
a freckled face, small grey eyes, and absurd white eyebrows and
eyelashes, which made him look as if he had finished off his toilet
with just a light flourish from the dredging-box. He was erect of
carriage, and of a prompt, ridiculous alertness of step and motion,
very much like that of Major Wellington De Boots. And his face
commonly wore a kind of complacent serenity such as the Hindoos
ascribe to Buddha. I know a little snappish dentist's-goods dealer up
town, who might be mistaken for Hicok-alorum any day.
Well, well--what had the doctor done? Why--it will sound absurd,
probably, to some unbelieving people--but really Dr. Hicok confessed
the whole story to me himself: he had made a bargain with the Evil
One! And indeed he was such an uncommonly disagreeable-looking fellow,
that, unless on some such hypothesis, it is impossible to imagine how
he could have prospered as he did. He gained patients, and cured them
too; made money; invested successfully; bought a brown-stone front--a
house, not a wiglet--then bought other real estate; began to put his
name on charity subscription lists, and to be made vice-president of
various things.
Chiefest of all,--it must have been by some superhuman aid that Dr.
Hicok married his wife, the then and present Mrs. Hicok. Dear me! I
have described the doctor easily enough. But how infinitely more
difficult it is to delineate Beauty than the Beast: did you ever think
of it? All I can say is, that she is a very lovely woman now; and she
must have been, when the doctor married her, one of the loveliest
creatures that ever lived--a lively, graceful, bright-eyed brunette,
with thick fine long black hair, pencilled delicate eyebrows, little
pink ears, thin high nose, great astonished brown eyes, perfect
teeth, a little rosebud of a mouth, and a figure so extremely
beautiful that nobody believed she did not pad--hardly even the
artists who--those of them at least who work faithfully in the
life-school--are the very best judges extant of truth in costume and
personal beauty. But, furthermore, she was good, with the innocent
unconscious goodness of a sweet little child; and of all feminine
charms--even beyond her supreme grace of motion--she possessed the
sweetest, the most resistless--a lovely voice; whose tones, whether in
speech or song, were perfect in sweetness, and with a strange
penetrating sympathetic quality and at the same time with the most
wonderful half-delaying completeness of articulation and modulation,
as if she enjoyed the sound of her own music. No doubt she did; but it
was unconsciously, like a bird. The voice was so sweet, the great
loveliness and kindness of soul it expressed were so deep, that, like
every exquisite beauty, it rayed forth a certain sadness within the
pleasure it gave. It awakened infinite, indistinct emotions of beauty
and perfection--infinite longings.
It's of no use to tell me that such a spirit--she really ought not to
be noted so low down as amongst human beings--that such a spirit could
have been made glad by becoming the yoke-fellow of Hicok-alorum, by
influences exclusively human. No!--I don't believe it--I won't believe
it--it can't be believed. I can't convince you, of course, for you
don't know her; but if you did, along with the rest of the evidence,
and if your knowledge was like mine, that from the testimony of my
own eyes and ears and judgment--you would know, just as I do, that
the doctor's possession of his wife was the key-stone of the arch of
completed proof on which I found my absolute assertion that he had
made that bargain.
He certainly had! A most characteristic transaction too; for while,
after the usual fashion, it was agreed by the "party of the first
part,"--viz., Old Scratch--that Dr. Hicok should succeed in whatever
he undertook during twenty years, and by the party of the second part,
that at the end of that time the D---- should fetch him in manner and
form as is ordinarily provided, yet there was added a peculiar clause.
This was, that, when the time came for the doctor to depart, he should
be left entirely whole and unharmed, in mind, body, and estate,
provided he could put to the Devil three consecutive questions, of
which either one should be such that that cunning spirit could not
solve it on the spot.
So for twenty years Dr. Hicok lived and prospered, and waxed very
great. He did not gain one single pound avoirdupois however, which may
perchance seem strange, but is the most natural thing in the world.
Who ever saw a little, dry, wiry, sandy, freckled man, with white
eyebrows, that did grow fat? And besides, the doctor spent all his
leisure time in hunting up his saving trinity of questions; and hard
study, above all for such a purpose, is as sure an anti-fattener as
Banting.
He knew the Scotch metaphysicians by heart already, _ex-officio_ as it
were; but he very early gave up the idea of trying to fool the Devil
with such mud-pie as that. Yet be it understood, that he found cause
to except Sir William Hamilton from the muddle-headed crew. He chewed
a good while, and pretty hopefully, upon the Quantification of the
Predicate; but he had to give that up too, when he found out how small
and how dry a meat rattled within the big, noisy nut-shell. He read
Saint Thomas Aquinas, and Peter Dens, and a cartload more of old
casuists, Romanist and Protestant.
He exhausted the learning of the Development Theory. He studied and
experimented up to the existing limits of knowledge on the question of
the Origin of Life, and then poked out alone, as much farther as he
could, into the ineffable black darkness that is close at the end of
our noses on that, as well as most other questions. He hammered his
way through the whole controversy on the Freedom of the Will. He
mastered the whole works of Mrs. Henry C. Carey on one side, and of
two hundred and fifty English capitalists and American college
professors on the other, on the question of Protection or Free Trade.
He made, with vast pains, an extensive collection of the questions
proposed at debating societies and college-students' societies with
long Greek names. The last effort was a failure. Dr. Hicok had got the
idea, that, from the spontaneous activity of so many free young
geniuses, many wondrous and suggestive thoughts would be born. Having,
however, tabulated his collection, he found, that, among all these
innumerable gymnasia of intellect, there were only seventeen questions
debated! The doctor read me a curious little memorandum of his
conclusions on this unexpected fact, which will perhaps be printed
some day.
He investigated many other things too; for a sharp-witted little
Presbyterian Scotch doctor, working to cheat the Devil out of his
soul, can accomplish an amazing deal in twenty years. He even went so
far as to take into consideration mere humbugs; for, if he could cheat
the enemy with a humbug, why not? The only pain in that case, would be
the mortification of having stooped to an inadequate adversary--a
foeman unworthy of his steel. So he weighed such queries as the old
scholastic _brocard, An chimoera bombinans in vacuo devorat secundas
intentiones?_ and that beautiful moot point wherewith Sir Thomas More
silenced the challenging schoolmen of Bruges, _An averia carrucae
capta in vetito nomio sint irreplegibilia?_
He glanced a little at the subject of conundrums; and among the chips
from his workshop is a really clever theory of conundrums. He has a
classification and discussion of them, all his own, and quite
ingenious and satisfactory, which divides them into answerable and
unanswerable, and, under each of these, into resemblant and
differential.