little defect. St. Hippolytus, who never heard of Christianity, since
he lived, if at all, several hundred years before the Christian era,
was canonized by a mistake. St. Filomena’s legend rests upon nothing
save the dreams of a priest and an artist, who were thus favored with
unluckily quite incompatible revelations. The name of St. Viar was
presented for beatification because of a time-disfigured tombstone,
like mine, a stone upon which remained only part of the Latin word
_viarum_: and two syllables of a road-inspector’s vocation were thus
esteemed worthy of being canonized. The record of St. Undecimilla was
misread as relating to eleven thousand virgins, and so swelled the
Calendar with that many saints who were later discovered never to have
existed. No, Florian, mistakes seem to occur everywhere, in awarding
the prizes of celestial as well as earthly life: but not even those of
the elect who have without any provocation been thrust into the highest
places of heaven ought to complain, for one never really gains anything
by being hypercritical.”
“Why, then, monsieur, I say that all these legends—”
“You are quite wrong. They are excellent legends. I know that, for
one, I have been moved to tears and to the most exalted emotions of
every kind through considering my own history. What boy had ever a more
edifying start in life than that ten years of meditation in a barrel?
It was not a beer barrel either, I am sure, for stale beer has a vile
odor. No, Florian, you may depend upon it, that barrel had been made
aromatic by a generous and full-bodied wine, by a rather sweetish wine,
I think—”
“Yes, but, monsieur—”
Still Hoprig’s rolling voice went on, unhurriedly and very nobly, and
with something of the stateliness of an organ’s music: and in the
saint’s face you saw unlimited benevolence, and magnanimity, and such
deep and awe-begetting wisdom as seemed more than human.
And Hoprig said: “Wonder awakens in me when I consider my travels, and
stout admiration when I regard the magnificence of my deeds. Why,
but, my son, I defied two emperors to their pagan faces, I sailed in
a stone trough beyond the sunset, I killed five dragons, I forget
how many barbarous tribes I converted, and I intrepidly went down
into Pohjola and into the fearful land of Xibalba, among big tigers
and blood-sucking bats, to the rescue of my poor friend Hork! Now I
consider these things with a pride which is not selfish, but with pride
in the race and in the religion which produces such heroism: and I
consider these things with tears also, when I think of my steadfastness
under heathen persecution. Do you but recall, my dear child, what
torments I endured! I was bound to a wheel set with knives, I was given
poison to drink, I was made to run in red-hot iron shoes, I was cast
into quicklime—But I abridge the list of my sufferings, for it is too
harrowing. I merely point out that the legend is excellent.”
“But, monsieur, this legend is not true.”
“The truth, my son,” replied the saint, “is that which a person, for
one reason or another, believes. Now if I had really been put to the
horrible inconvenience of doing all these splendid things, and they had
been quite accurately reported, my legend would to-day be precisely
what it is: it would be no more or less than the fine legend which
piety has begotten upon imagination. You will grant that, I hope?”
“Nobody denies that. It is only—”
“Then how can it to-day matter a pennyworth whether or not I did these
things?” asked the saint, reasonably.
“Well, truly now, Monsieur Hoprig, the way you put it—”
“I put it, my son, in the one rational way. We must zealously preserve
those invigorating stories of the heroic and virtuous persons who
lived here before our time so gloriously, because people have need of
these excellent examples. It would be a terrible misfortune if these
stories were not known everywhere, and were not always at hand to
hearten everybody in hours of despondency by showing what virtuous
men can rise to at need. These examples comfort the discouraged with
a sentiment of their importance as moral beings and of the greatness
of their destinies. So, since the actual living of men has at no time,
unluckily, afforded quite the necessary examples, the philanthropic
historian selects, he prunes, he colors, he endeavors, like any other
artist, to make something admirable out of his raw material. The
miracles which the painter performs with evil-smelling greases, the
sculptor with mud, and the musician with the intestines of a cat, the
historian emulates through the even more unpromising medium of human
action. And that is as it should be: for life is a continuous battle
between the forces of good and evil, and news from the front ought to
be delivered in the form best suited to maintain our morale. Yes, it is
quite as it should be, for fine beliefs do everybody good.”
“Parbleu, monsieur, I cannot presume to argue with you; but this sort
of logic is unsettling. It is also unsettling to reflect that all the
magnificent gifts I have been offering to your church were sheer waste,
since you have not been at your post attending to the forgiveness of my
irregularities. You conceive, monsieur, I had kept very exact accounts,
with an equitable and even generous assessment for every form of
offence; and to find that all this painstaking has gone for nothing has
upset my conscience.”
“That is probable. Still, I suspect that famous conscience of yours is
as much good to you upset as in any other position.”
“Well, but, monsieur, now that my other troubles seem in every
likelihood to approach a settlement,” said Florian, caressing the
pommel of Flamberge, “what would you have me do about rectifying my
unfortunate religious status?”
The saint looked now at Florian for a long while. In the great shining
pale blue eyes of Hoprig was much of knowledge and of pity. “You must
repent, my son. What are good works without repentance?”
“A pest! if that is all which is needful, I shall put my mind to it
at once,” said Florian, brightening. “And doubtless, I shall find
something to repent of.”
“I think that more than probable. What is certain is that I have no
more time to be wasting on you. I have given you my fair warning,
in the most delicate possible terms, without even once alluding to
my enjoyment of thaumaturgic powers and my especial proficiency in
blasting, cursing and smiting people with terrible afflictions. I
prefer, my dear child, to keep matters on a pleasant footing as long,”
the saint said meaningly, “as may prove possible. So I have not in
any way alluded to these little personal gifts. I have merely warned
you quite affably that, for the sake of my celestial credit, I intend
to put up with no wickedness from you; and I have duly called you to
repentance. With these duties rid of, I can be off to Morven. After
having seen, during the last five months, as much of this modern
world as particularly appeals to a saint in the prime of life, I am
establishing a hermitage upon Morven.”
“And for what purpose, may one ask?” Florian was reflecting that Morven
stood uncomfortably near to Bellegarde.
The saint regarded Florian with some astonishment. “One may ask, to be
sure, my son: but why should one answer?”
“Well, but, monsieur, Morven is a place of horrible fame, a place which
is reputed still to be given over to sorcery—”
“I would feel some unavoidable compassion for any sorcerer that I
caught near my hermitage: but, none the less, I would do my duty as a
Christian saint with especial proficiency—”
“—And, monsieur, you would be terribly lonely upon Morven.”
It appeared to Florian that the saint’s smile was distinctly peculiar.
“One need never be lonely,” St. Hoprig stated, “when one is able to
work miracles.”
With that he slightly smacked his lips and vanished.
And Florian remained alone with many and firm grounds for depression,
and with forebodings which caused him to look somewhat forlornly at the
sword Flamberge. For there seemed troubles ahead with which Flamberge
could hardly cope.
_19._
_Locked Gates_
Florian did not at once set forth for Bellegarde, to make the utmost of
the four months of happiness he might yet hope to share with Melior.
Instead, he despatched a very loving letter to his wife, lamenting that
business matters would prevent his returning before February.
Meanwhile he had gone to the Hôtel de Puysange. Along with Clermont,
Simiane, the two Belle-Isles, and all the rest of Orléans’ fraternity
of roués, Florian found himself evicted from Versailles. His rooms
there had already been assigned to the de Pries, by the new minister,
Monsieur de Bourbon, whom Florian esteemed to have acted with
unbecoming promptness and ingratitude.
Florian, in any event, went to the Hôtel de Puysange, where he lived
rather retiredly for a month. He did not utterly neglect his social
duties between supper-and breakfast-time. But during the day he
excused himself from participation in any debauchery, and save for
three trivial affairs of honor,—in which Florian took part only as a
second, and killed only one of his opponents, an uninteresting looking
young Angevin gentleman, whose name he did not catch,—with these
exceptions, Florian throughout that month lived diurnally like an
anchorite.
Nobody could speak certainly of what went on in the day-time within the
now inhospitable gates of the Hôtel de Puysange, but the rumors as to
Florian’s doings were on that account none the less numerous.
It was public, in any event, that he had retained Albert Aluys, the
most accomplished sorcerer then practising in the city. What these
two were actually about at this time, behind the locked gates of the
Hôtel de Puysange, remains uncertain, for Florian never discussed the
matter. Aluys, when questioned,—though the value of his evidence is
somewhat tempered by his known proficiency and ardor at lying,—reported
that Monsieur the Duke made use of his services only to evoke the most
famous and beautiful women of bygone times. That was reasonable enough:
but, what the deuce! once these marvelous creatures were materialized
and ready for all appropriate employment, monseigneur asked nothing of
the loveliest queens and empresses except to talk with him. It was not
as if he got any pleasure from it, either: for after ten minutes of
the prettiest woman’s talking about how historians had misunderstood
her with a fatuity equalled only by that of her husband and his
relatives, and about what had been the true facts in her earthly
life,—after ten minutes of these friendly confidences, monseigneur
would shake his head, and would sometimes groan outright, before he
requested that the lady be returned to her last home.
Monseigneur, in point of fact, seemed put out by the circumstance that
these ladies manifested so little intelligence. As if, a shrugging
Aluys demanded of Heaven’s common-sense, it were not for the benefit
of humanity at large that all beautiful women were created a trifle
stupid. The ladies whom one most naturally desired to seduce were thus
made the most apt to listen to the seducer: for the good God planned
the greatest good for the greatest number.
When February had come, and Florian might hope to share with Melior
only three more months of happiness, Florian sent a letter to his
wife to bewail the necessity of his remaining away from home until
March. The rumors as to his doings were now less colorful but equally
incredible. Yet nothing certainly was known of his pursuits, beyond the
fact that Aluys reported they were evoking the dead persons who had
been most famed for holiness and other admirable virtues. And with
these also Monsieur de Puysange seemed unaccountably disappointed.
For he seemed, Aluys lamented, really not to have comprehended that
when men perform high actions or voice impressive sentiments, this
is by ordinary the affair of a few moments in a life of which the
remainder is much like the living of all other persons. Monsieur de
Puysange appeared to have believed that famous captains won seven
battles every week, that authentic poets conversed in hexameters, and
that profound sages did not think far less frequently about philosophy
than their family affairs. As if too, Aluys cried out, it were not
very pleasant to know the littlenesses of the great and the frailties
of the most admirable! Æschylus had confessed to habitual drunkenness,
the prophet Moses stuttered, and Charlemagne told how terribly he had
suffered with bunions. Monsieur de Puysange ought to be elated by
securing these valuable bits of historical information, but, to the
contrary, they seemed to depress him. He regretted, one judged, that
his colloquies with the renowned dead revealed that human history had
been shaped and guided by human beings. A romantic! was Aluys’ verdict:
and you cannot cure that. The gentleman will have an unhappy life.
“His wives die quickly,” was hazarded.
“They would,” Aluys returned: “and it makes for the benefit of all
parties.”
Upon the first day of March, when Florian could hope at most to share
only two more months of happiness with Melior, Florian sent a letter to
his wife announcing the postponement until April of his homecoming. And
throughout this month too he lived in equal mystery, except that toward
the end of March he entertained a party of young persons at a supper
followed by the debauch just then most fashionable, a fête d’Adam.
“Let us not be epigrammatic,” Florian had said, at outset. “Love
differs from marriage; and men are different from women; and a
restatement of either of these facts is cleverness. It is understood
that we are all capable of such revamping. So let us, upon this my
birthnight, talk logically.”
They discussed, in consequence, the new world and the new era that was
upon them. For Europe was just then tidying up the ruin into which the
insane ambition of one man, discredited Louis Quatorze, had plunged
civilization. All the conventions of society had given way under the
strain of war, so that the younger generation was left without any
illusions. Those older people, who had so boggled matters, had been
thrust aside in favor of more youthful and more vigorous exponents of
quite new fallacies, and everyone knew that he was privileged to live
at a period in the world’s history hitherto unparalleled. So they had
a great deal to talk over at supper, with the errors of human society
at last triumphantly exposed, and with the younger generation at last
permitted utter freedom in self expression, and with recipes for all
the needful social regeneration obtainable everywhere.
“We live,” it was confidently stated, “in a new world, which can never
again become the world we used to know.”
Thus it was not until the coming of spring that Florian rode away
from the Hôtel de Puysange, wherein he had just passed the first
actually unhappy period of Florian’s life. For this man had long and
fervently cherished his exalted ideals: and since his boyhood the
beauty of Melior and the holiness of Hoprig had been at once the
criteria and the assurance of human perfectibility. To think of these
two had preserved him in faith and in wholesome optimism: for here was
perfect beauty and perfect holiness attained once by mankind, and in
consequence not unattainable. To dream of these two had kept Florian
prodigally supplied with lofty thoughts of human excellence. And these
two had thus enriched the living of Florian with unfailing streams of
soothing and ennobling poesy, of exactly the kind which, in Hoprig’s
fine phrase, was best suited to impress him with a sentiment of his
importance as a moral being and of the greatness of man’s destiny.
Now all was changed. Now in the saint he found, somehow, a sort of
ambiguity; not anything toward which one could plump a corporeal
fore-finger, but, rather, a nuance of some indescribable inadequacy.
Florian could not but, very respectfully and with profound
unwillingness, suspect that any daily living, hour in and hour
out, with Holy Hoprig—in that so awkwardly situated hermitage upon
Morven,—would bear as fruitage discoveries woefully parallel to the
results of such intimacy with Melior.
And of Melior her husband thought with even more unwillingness. At
Bellegarde he had found her, to the very last, endurable. But now that
Florian was again at court, the exigencies of his social obligations
had drawn him into many boudoirs. One could not be uncivil, nobody
would willingly foster a reputation for being an eccentric with a
mania for spending every night in the same bed. In fact, a husband
who had lost four wives in a gossip-loving world had obvious need to
avoid the imputation of being a misogynist. So Florian followed the
best-thought-of customs; and in divers bedrooms had, unavoidably and
logically, drawn comparisons.
For at this time Florian was brought into quite intimate contact with
many delightful and very various ladies: with Madame de Polignac,
just then in the highest fashion on account of her victory in the
pistol duel she had fought with Madame de Nesle; with La Fillon,
most brilliant of blondes,—though, to be sure, she was no longer
in her first youth,—who was not less than six feet in height; with
Madame du Maine (in her Cardinal’s absence), who was the tiniest and
most fairy-like creature imaginable; with La Tencin, the former nun,
and with Emilie and La Souris, those most charming actresses; with
Madame de Modena and the Abbess de Chelles, both of whom were poor
Philippe’s daughters; with dashing Madame de Prie, who now ruled
everything through her official lover, Monsieur de Bourbon, and who in
the apartments from which Florian had been evicted accorded him such
hospitality as soon removed all hard feeling; and with some seven or
eight other ladies of the very finest breeding and wit. These ladies
now were Florian’s companions night after night: it was as companions
that he compared them with Melior: and his deductions were unavoidable.
He found in no tête-à-tête, and through no personal investigation, any
beauty at all comparable to the beauty of Melior. This much seemed
certain: she was the most lovely animal in existence. But one must be
logical. She was also an insufferable idiot: she was, to actually
considerate eyes, a garrulous blasphemer who profaned the shrine
of beauty by living in it: and Florian was tired of her, with an
all-possessing weariness that troubled him with the incessancy of a
physical aching.
Time and again, in the soft arms of countesses and abbesses of the
very highest fashion, even there would Florian groan to think how many
months must elapse before he could with any pretence of decency get
rid of that dreadful woman at Bellegarde. For the methods formerly
available would not serve here: his pact with brown Janicot afforded to
a man of honor no choice except to wait for the birth of the child that
was to be Janicot’s honorarium, of the dear child, already beloved with
more than the ordinary paternal fondness, whose coming was to ransom
its father from so much discomfort. No, it was tempting, of course, to
have here, actually in hand, the requisite and unique means for killing
any of the Léshy. But to return to Bellegarde now, and to replace that
maddening idiotic chatter by the fine taciturnity of death, would be
a reprehensible action in that it would impugn the good faith of a
Puysange. For to do this would be to swindle Janicot, and to evade an
explicit bargain. One had no choice except to wait for the child’s
birth.
So Florian stood resolutely, if rather miserably, upon his point of
honor. He must—since a Puysange could not break faith, not even with
a fiend,—carry out his bargain with Janicot, so far as went the reach
of Florian’s ability. He could foresee a chance of opposition. Melior
might perhaps have other views as to the proper disposal of the child:
and Melior certainly had the charmed ring which might, if she behaved
foolishly with it, overspice the affair with a tincture of Hoprig’s
officiousness. And this at worst might result in some devastating
miracle that would destroy Florian; and at best could not but harrow
his conscience with the spectacle of a Duke of Puysange embroiled in
unprecedented conflict with his patron saint.
His conscience, to be sure, was already in a sad way. Ever since
the awakening of Hoprig, Florian had stayed quite profoundly
conscience-stricken by the discovery that all the irregularities of
his past remained unforgiven. That was from every aspect a depressing
discovery. It had not merely a personal application: it revealed that
in this world the most painstaking piety might sometimes count for
nothing. It was a discovery which troubled your conscience, which
darkened your outlook deplorably, and which fostered actual pessimism.
[Illustration:
Caption surrounded by garland: Presently the COLLYN of PUYSANGE
had opened her yellow eyes and was
licking daintily her lips.
_See page 237_
The image]
For what was he to do now? “Repent!” the saint had answered: it was
the sort of saying one expected of a saint, and indeed, from Hoprig,
who was secure against eternity, such repartees were natural enough.
The serene physician had prescribed, but who would compound, the
remedy? Florian himself was ready to do anything at all reasonable
about those irregularities which had remained unforgiven through, as
he must respectfully point out to inquirers, no remissness of his;
he quite sincerely wanted to spare Heaven the discomfort of having a
Duke of Puysange in irrevocable opposition: but he did not clearly see
how repentance was possible. The great majority of such offences as
antedated, say, the last two years had, after putative atonements, gone
out of his mind, just as one puts aside and forgets about receipted
bills: he could not rationally be expected to repent for misdemeanors
without remembering them. That was the deuce of having placed unbounded
faith in this—somehow—ambiguous Hoprig and in Hoprig’s celestial
attorneyship.
Even such irregularities as Florian recalled seemed unprolific of
actual repentance. Florian now comprehended that he—perhaps through a
too careful avoidance of low company, perhaps, he granted, through a
tinge of pharisaism,—had never needed to incite the funerals of any
but estimable and honorable persons who were upon the most excellent
footing with the Church. He could not, with his rigid upbringing, for
one instant doubt that all these had passed from this unsatisfactory
world to eternal bliss. He could not question that he had actually been
the benefactor of these persons. The only thing he could be asked to
repent of here was a benevolent action, and to do that was, to anyone
of his natural kindliness, out of all thinking.
His irregularities in the way of personal friendship, too, appeared,
upon the whole, to have resulted beneficially. Girls and boys that he
had raised from sometimes the most squalid surroundings, even rescuing
them in some cases from houses of notorious ill fame, had passed from
him to other friends, and had prospered. Louison had now her duke,
Henri his prince, and little Sapho her princess of the blood royal,—and
so it went. All were now living contentedly, in opulence, and they all
entertained the liveliest gratitude for their discoverer. You could not
repent of having given the ambitious and capable young a good start in
life. Among Florian’s married friends of higher condition, among a host
of marquises and duchesses and countesses, his passing had tinged the
quiet round of matrimony with romance, had left a plenitude of pleasant
memories, and not infrequently had improved the quality of that
household’s progeny. Here too he had in logic to admit he had scattered
benefactions, of which no kindly-hearted person could repent.
He had never, he rather wistfully reflected, either coveted or stolen
anything worth speaking of: he might have had some such abominable
action to repent of, if only he had not always possessed a plenty of
money to purchase whatever he fancied. That over-well filled purse had
also kept him from laboring upon the Sabbath, or any day. And it had,
by ill luck, never even occurred to him to worship a graven image.
Nor had it ever occurred to him to break his given word. Philippe, he
remembered, had referred to that as being rather queer, but it did
not seem queer to Florian: this was simply a thing that Puysange did
not do. The word of honor of a Puysange, once given, could not in any
circumstances be broken: to Florian that was an axiom sufficiently
obvious.