WHICH DESCRIBES HOW NECTAIRE'S FLUTE WAS HEARD IN THE TAVERN
OF CLODOMIR
Madame de la Verdelière having failed to force an _entrée_ as
sick-nurse, returned after several days had elapsed,--during the absence
of Madame des Aubels,--to ask Maurice d'Esparvieu for his subscription
to the French churches. Arcade led her to the bedside of the
convalescent. Maurice whispered in the angel's ear:
"Traitor, deliver me from this ogress immediately, or you will be
answerable for the evil which will soon befall."
"Be calm," said Arcade, with a confident air.
After the conventional complimentary flourishes, Madame de la Verdelière
signed to Maurice to dismiss the angel. Maurice feigned not to
understand. And Madame de la Verdelière disclosed the ostensible reason
of her visit.
"Our churches," she said, "our beloved country churches,--what is to
become of them?"
Arcade gazed at her angelically and sighed.
"They will disappear, Madame; they will fall into ruin. And what a pity!
I shall be inconsolable. The church amid the villagers' cottages is like
the hen amidst her chickens."
"Just so!" exclaimed Madame de la Verdelière with a delighted smile. "It
is just like that."
"And the spires, Madame?"
"Oh, Monsieur, the spires!..."
"Yes, the spires, Madame, that stick up into the skies towards the
little Cherubim, like so many syringes."
Madame de la Verdelière incontinently left the place.
That same day Monsieur l'Abbé Patouille came to offer the wounded man
good counsel and consolation. He exhorted him to break with his bad
companions and to be reconciled to his family.
He drew a picture of the sorrowful father, the mother in tears, ready to
receive their long-lost child with open arms. Renouncing with manly
effort a life of profligacy and deluding joys, Maurice would recover his
peace and strength of mind, he would free himself from devouring
chimeras, and shake off the Evil Spirit.
Young d'Esparvieu thanked Abbé Patouille for all his kindness, and made
a protestation of his religious feelings.
"Never," said he, "have I had such faith. And never have I been in such
need of it. Just imagine, Monsieur l'Abbé, I have to teach my guardian
angel his catechism all over again, for he has quite forgotten it!"
Monsieur l'Abbé Patouille heaved a deep sigh, and exhorted his dear
child to pray, there being no other resource but prayer for a soul
assailed by the Devil.
"Monsieur l'Abbé," asked Maurice, "may I introduce my guardian angel to
you? Do stay a moment; he has gone to get me some cigarettes."
"Unhappy child!"
And Abbé Patouille's fat cheeks drooped in token of affliction. But almost
immediately they plumped up again, as a sign of light-heartedness. For in
his heart there was matter for rejoicing. Public opinion was improving.
The Jacobins, the Freemasons, the Coalitionists were everywhere in
disgrace. The Smart Set led the way. The Académie Française was of the
right way of thinking. The number of Christian schools was increasing by
leaps and bounds. The young men of the Quartier Latin were submitting to
the Church, and the École Normale exhaled the perfume of the seminary. The
Cross was gaining the day; but money was wanted,--more money, always
money.
After six weeks' rest, Maurice was allowed by his doctor to take a
drive. He wore his arm in a sling. His mistress and his friend went
with him. They drove to the Bois, and took a gentle pleasure in looking
upon the grass and the trees. They smiled on everything and everything
smiled on them. As Arcade had said, their faults had made them better.
By the unlooked-for ways of jealousy and anger, Maurice had attained to
calm and kindliness. He still loved Gilberte and he loved her with an
indulgent love. The angel still desired her as much as ever, but having
once possessed her, his desire had lost the sting of curiosity. Gilberte
forbore trying to please, and thereby pleased the more. They drank milk
at the Cascade, and found it good. They were all three innocent. Arcade
forgot the injustice of the old tyrant of the world. But he was soon to
be reminded of it.
On entering his friend's house, he found Zita awaiting him, looking like
a statue in ivory and gold.
"You excite my pity," she said to him. "The day is at hand the like of
which has never dawned since the beginning of Time, and perhaps will
never dawn again before the Sun enters with all its train into the
constellation of Hercules. We are on the eve of surprising Ialdabaoth in
his palace of porphyry, and you, who are burning to deliver the heavens,
who were so eager to enter in triumph into your emancipated
country,--you suddenly forget your noble purpose and fall asleep in the
arms of the daughters of men. What pleasure can you find in intercourse
with these unclean little animals, composed, as they are, of elements so
unstable that they may be said to be in a state of constant evanescence?
O Arcade! I was indeed right to distrust you. You are but an
intellectual; you do but feel idle curiosity. You are incapable of
action."
"You misjudge me, Zita," replied the angel. "It is the nature of the
sons of heaven to love the daughters of men. Corruptible though it be,
the material part of women and of flowers charms the senses none the
less. But not one of these little animals can make me forget my hatred
and my love, and I am ready to rise up against Ialdabaoth."
Zita expressed her satisfaction at seeing him in this resolute mood. She
urged him to pursue the accomplishment of this vast undertaking with
undiminished ardour. Nothing must be hurried or deferred.
"A great action, Arcade, is made up of a multitude of small ones; the
most majestic whole is composed of a thousand minute details. Let us
neglect nothing."
She had come to take him to a meeting where his presence was required.
They were to take a census of the revolutionaries.
She added but one word:
"Nectaire will be there."
When Maurice saw Zita, he deemed her lacking in attraction. She failed
to please him because she was perfectly beautiful and because true
beauty always caused him painful surprise. Zita inspired him with
antipathy when he learned that she was an angel in revolt and that she
had come to seek Arcade to take him away among the conspirators.
The poor child tried to retain his companion by all the means that his
wit and the circumstances afforded him. If his guardian angel would only
remain with him, he would take him to a magnificent boxing-match, to a
"revue" where he would witness the apotheosis of Poincaré, or, lastly,
to a certain house he knew of where he would behold women remarkable for
their beauty, talents, vices, or deformities. But the angel would not
allow himself to be tempted, and said he was going with Zita.
"What for?"
"To plot the conquest of the skies."
"Still the same nonsense! The conquest of---- but there, I proved to you
that it was neither possible nor desirable."
"Good night, Maurice."
"You are going? Well, I will accompany you."
And Maurice, his arm in a sling, went with Arcade and Zita all the way
to Clodomir's restaurant at Montmartre, where the tables were laid in an
arbour in the garden.
Prince Istar and Théophile were already there, with a little creature
who looked like a child, and was, in fact, a Japanese angel.
"We are only waiting for Nectaire," said Zita.
And at that moment the old gardener noiselessly appeared. He took his
seat, and his dog lay down at his feet. French cooking is the best in
the world. It is a glory that will transcend all others when humanity
has grown wise enough to put the spit above the sword. Clodomir served
the angels, and the mortal who was with them, with a soup made of
cabbages and bacon, a loin of pork and kidneys cooked in wine, thereby
proving himself a real Montmartre cook, and showing that he had not been
spoilt by the Americans, who corrupt the most excellent _chefs_ of the
City of Restaurants.
Clodomir brought forth some Bordeaux, which, though unrecorded among the
renowned vintages of Médoc, gave evidence by its choice and delicate
aroma of the high nobility of its origin. We must not omit to chronicle
that, after this wine and many others had been drunk, the cellarman, in
solemn state, produced a Burgundy choice and rare, full-bodied yet not
heavy, generous yet delicate, rich with the true Burgundian mellowness,
a noble and, withal, a somewhat heady wine, that brought delight alike
to mind and sense.
"Hail to thee, Dionysus, greatest of the Gods!" cried old Nectaire,
raising his glass on high. "I drink to thee who wilt restore the Golden
Age, and give again to mortal men, who will become heroes as of old, the
grapes which the Lesbians used to cull, long since, from the vines of
Methymna; who wilt restore the vineyards of Thasus, the white clusters
of Lake Mareotis, the storehouses of Falernus, the vines of the Tmolus,
and the wine of Phanae, of all wines the king. And the juice thereof
shall be divine, and, as in old Silenus' day, men shall grow drunk with
Wisdom and with Love."
When the coffee was served, Prince Istar, Zita, Arcade, and the Japanese
angel took it in turns to give an account of the forces assembled
against Ialdabaoth. Angels, in exchanging eternal bliss for the
sufferings of an earthly life, grow in intelligence, acquire the means
of going astray and the faculty of self-contradiction. Consequently
their meetings, like those of men, are tumultuous and confused. Did one
of them deal in figures, the others immediately called them in question.
They could not add one number to another without quarrelling, and
arithmetic itself, subjected to passion, lost its certitude. The Kerûb,
who had brought with him the pious Théophile, waxed indignant when he
heard the musician praising the Lord, and rained down such blows on his
head as would have felled an ox. But the head of a musician is harder
than a bucranium, and the blows which Théophile received did not avail
to modify that angel's notion of divine providence. Arcade, having at
great length set up his scientific idealism in opposition to Zita's
pragmatism, the beautiful archangel told him that he argued badly.
"And you are surprised at that!" exclaimed young Maurice's guardian
angel. "I argue, like you, in the language of human beings. And what is
human language but the cry of the beasts of the forests or the
mountains, complicated and corrupted by arrogant anthropoids. How then,
Zita, can one be expected to argue well with a collection of angry or
plaintive sounds like that? Angels do not reason at all; men, being
superior to the angels, reason imperfectly. I will not mention the
professors who think to define the absolute with the aid of cries that
they have inherited from the pithecanthropoid monkeys, marsupials, and
reptiles, their ancestors! It is a colossal joke! How it would amuse the
demiurge, if he had any brains!"
It was a beautiful starlight night. The gardener was silent.
"Nectaire," said the beautiful archangel, "play to us on your flute, if
you are not afraid that the Earth and Heaven will be stirred to their
depths thereby."
Nectaire took up his flute. Young Maurice lighted a cigarette. The flame
burnt brightly for a moment, casting back the sky and its stars into the
shadows, and then died out. And Nectaire sang of the flame on his divine
flute. The silvery voice soared aloft and sang:
"That flame was a whole universe which fulfilled its destiny in less
than a minute. Suns and planets were formed therein. Venus Urania
apportioned the orbits of the wandering spheres in those infinite
spaces. Beneath the breath of Eros--the first of the gods,--plants,
animals, and thoughts sprang into being. In the twenty seconds which
hurried by betwixt the life and death of those worlds, civilizations
were unfolded, and empires sank in long decline. Mothers shed tears, and
songs of love, cries of hatred, and sighs of victims rose upward to the
silent skies.
"In proportion to its minuteness, that universe lasted as long as this
one--whereof we see a few atoms glittering above our heads--has lasted
or will last. They are, one no less than the other, but a gleam in the
Infinite."
As the clear, pure notes welled up into the charmed air, the earth
melted into a soft mist, the stars revolved rapidly in their orbits,
the Great Bear fell asunder, its parts flew far and wide. Orion's belt
was shattered; the Pole Star forsook its magnetic axis. Sirius, whose
incandescent flame had lit up the far horizon, grew blue, then red,
flickered, and suddenly died out. The shaken constellations formed new
signs which were extinguished in their turn. By its incantations the
magic flute had compressed into one brief moment the life and the
movement of this universe which seems unchanging and eternal both to men
and angels. It ceased, and the heavens resumed their immemorial aspect.
Nectaire had vanished. Clodomir asked his guests if they were pleased
with the cabbage soup which, in order that it might be strong, had been
kept simmering for twenty-four hours on the fire, and he sang the
praises of the Beaujolais which they had drunk.
The night was mild. Arcade, accompanied by his guardian angel,
Théophile, Prince Istar, and the Japanese angel, escorted Zita home.