“The Church has never absolutely proscribed nude studies; but she has
always judiciously restrained their employment.”
Madame Worms-Clavelin looked at the priest and thought how remarkably
like Madame Vacherie he was. She confided to him that she had a passion
for curios, that she was mad about brocades, stamped velvets, gold
fringes, embroidery and lace. She disclosed to him the covetous desires
accumulated in her mind since the days when she used to trail in her
youth and poverty in front of the shop-windows of the second-hand
dealers in the Quartier Bréda. She told him that she had dreams of
a salon with old copes and old chasubles, and that she was also
collecting antique jewels.
He answered that in truth the ornaments of the priests provided
precious models for artists, and that there we had a proof that the
Church was no enemy to art.
From that day forward M. Guitrel began to hunt in the country
sacristies for splendid antiques, and scarcely a week passed that
he did not carry into Rondonneau junior’s, under his great-coat, a
chasuble or a cope, adroitly pillaged from some innocent priest. M.
Guitrel was, moreover, very scrupulous in remitting to the rifled
vestry-board the hundred-sou piece with which the _préfet_ paid for the
silk, the brocade, the velvet and the lace.
In six months’ time Madame Worms-Clavelin’s drawing-room had become
like a cathedral treasury; a clinging odour of incense lingered round
it.
One summer day in that year, M. Guitrel, according to custom, mounted
the goldsmith’s stairs, and found M. Worms-Clavelin puffing away
merrily in the shop. For the day before the _préfet_ had succeeded
in getting his candidate, a cattle-breeder, and young turn-coat
royalist, returned; and he was counting on the approval of the
minister, who secretly preferred the new to the old republicans as
being less exacting and more humble. In the elation of his boisterous
satisfaction, he slapped the priest on the shoulder:
“Monsieur l’abbé, what we want is many priests like you, enlightened,
tolerant, free from prejudices—for you haven’t any prejudices, not
you!—priests who recognise the needs of the present day and the
requirements of a democratic society. If the episcopate, if the French
clergy would only catch the progressive yet conservative sentiments
that the Republic professes, they would still have a fine part to play.”
Then, amidst the smoke of his big cigar, he expounded ideas on
religion which testified to an ignorance that filled M. Guitrel with
inward dismay. The _préfet_, however, declared himself to be more
Christian than many Christians, and in the language of the masonic
lodge he extolled the moral teaching of Jesus, while he rejected
indiscriminately local superstitions and fundamental dogmas, the
needles thrown into the piscina of Saint Phal by marriageable girls,
and the real presence in the Eucharist.
M. Guitrel, an easy-going soul, but incapable of yielding a point as to
dogma, stammered out:
“One must make a distinction, monsieur _le préfet_, one must make a
distinction.”
In order to make a diversion, he drew out from a pocket of his
great-coat a roll of parchment which he opened on the counter. It was
a large page of plain-chant, with Gothic text under the four-line
divisions, with rubrics and a decorated initial.
The _préfet_ fixed his great, lamp-globe eyes on the page. Rondonneau
junior, stretching out his rosy bald head, said:
“The miniature in the initial is rather fine. It’s Saint Agatha, isn’t
it?”
“The martyrdom of Saint Agatha,” said M. Guitrel. “Here are seen the
executioners torturing the breasts of the saint.”
And he added in a voice which flowed as sweetly as thick syrup:
“According to authentic records, such was in fact the torment
inflicted on Saint Agatha of blessed memory by the proconsul. A page
from an antiphonary, Monsieur _le préfet_—a trifle, a mere trifle,
which perhaps will find a little niche in the collections of Madame
Worms-Clavelin, so devoted to our Christian antiquities. This page
gives us a fragment of the proper of the saint.”
And he deciphered the Latin text, marking the tonic accent
energetically:
“_Dum torqueretur beata Agata in mamillâ graviter dixit ad judicem:
‘Impie, crudelis et dire tyranne, non es confusus amputare in feminâ
quod ipse in matre suxisti? Ego habeo mamillas integras intus in animâ
quas Domino consecravi.’_”[D]
[D] “While the blessed Agatha was being cruelly tortured in the
breast, she said to the judge: ‘Oh, wicked, cruel, and savage
tyrant, art thou not ashamed to mutilate in a woman that with
which your mother fed you? Within my soul I have breasts
undesecrated which I have sanctified to God.’”
The _préfet_, who was a graduate, half understood, and in his desire
to appear Gallic, remarked that it was piquant.
“Naïve,” answered Abbé Guitrel gently, “naïve.”
M. Worms-Clavelin granted that the language of the Middle Ages had, in
fact, a certain naïveté.
“It has also sublimity,” said M. Guitrel.
But the _préfet_ was rather inclined to seek in Church Latin for
the piquancy of broad humour, and it was with a sly little laugh of
obstinacy that he crammed the parchment into his pocket, with many
thanks to his dear Guitrel for this discovery.
Then, pushing the Abbé into the window-recess, he whispered in his ear:
“My dear Guitrel, when the chance comes, I will do something for you.”
V
There was one party in the town which openly declared that Abbé
Lantaigne, principal of the high seminary, was a priest worthy of a
bishopric and fitted to fill the vacant see of Tourcoing honourably,
until the time when Monseigneur Charlot’s death should enable him,
cross in hand and amethyst on finger, to assume the mitre in the
town that had witnessed his labours and his merits. This was the
scheme of the venerable M. Cassignol, ex-president in chief, and a
State pensioner of twenty-five years’ standing. With these plans
were associated M. Lerond, deputy attorney-general at the time
of the decrees,[E] now a barrister practising at …, and Abbé de
Lalonde, formerly an Army chaplain, and now chaplain to the Dames du
Salut. These, belonging to the most respected, but not to the most
influential, class in the town, made up practically the whole of Abbé
Lantaigne’s party. The head of the high seminary had been invited to
dine with M. Cassignol, the chief president, who said to him, in the
presence of M. de Lalonde and M. Lerond:
[E] The _coup d’état_ of 1851.
“Monsieur l’abbé, put yourself forward as a candidate. When it shall
come to a choice between Abbé Lantaigne, who has so nobly served both
religion and Christian France by pen and tongue, who has protected
the oft-betrayed cause of the rights of the French Church within the
Catholic Church with the force of his mental endowments and high
character, and M. Guitrel, none will have the effrontery to hesitate.
And since it seems that this time the honour of supplying a bishop
for the town of Tourcoing is to fall to our city, the faithful of
the diocese are willing to lose you for a time for the good of the
episcopate as well as of Christendom.”
And the venerable M. Cassignol, who was now in his eighty-sixth year,
added with a smile:
“We shall see you again, I have a firm conviction of that. You will
come back to us from Tourcoing, monsieur l’abbé.”
Abbé Lantaigne had replied:
“Monsieur _le président_, with no intention of anticipating any honour,
I yet shall shirk no duty.”
He yearned and longed for the see of the lamented Monseigneur Duclou.
But this priest, whose ambition was frozen by his pride, was waiting
until they came to bring him the mitre.
One morning M. Lerond came to see him at the seminary, and brought news
of how Abbé Guitrel’s candidature was progressing at the Ministry of
Public Worship. It was suspected that M. _le préfet_ Worms-Clavelin was
working hard in favour of M. Guitrel in the offices of the Ministry,
where all the freemasons had already received their orders. This was
what he had been told at the offices of _le Libéral_, the religious and
moderate paper of the district. With regard to the intentions of the
Cardinal-Archbishop, nothing was known.
The truth was that Monseigneur Charlot dared neither oppose nor support
any candidate. His characteristic caution had been growing on him
for years. If he had any preferences he let no one guess them. For
a long time he had been comfortably and pleasurably concealing his
policy, just as he played his game of bezique every evening with M.
de Goulet. And, in fact, the promotion of a priest of his diocese to
a non-suffragan bishopric was in no way an affair of his. But he was
forced to take part in this intrigue. M. Worms-Clavelin, the _préfet_,
whom he did not wish to offend, had caused him to be sounded. His
Eminence could not be ignorant of the shrewd and urbane disposition of
which M. Guitrel had given plain proofs in the diocese. On the other
hand, he believed this Guitrel to be capable of anything. “Who knows,”
thought he, “whether he is not scheming to get himself appointed here
as my coadjutor, instead of going to that gloomy little metropolis of
Northern Gaul? And if I declare him worthy of a bishopric, will it not
be believed that I intend him to share my see?” This apprehension that
he would be given a coadjutor embittered Monseigneur Charlot’s old age.
In Abbé Lantaigne’s case he had strong reasons for being silent and
holding aloof. He would not have supported this priest’s candidature
for the simple reason that he foresaw its failure. Monseigneur Charlot
never willingly put himself on the losing side. Moreover, he loathed
the principal of the high seminary. Yet this hatred, in a mind so
easy-going and kindly as Monseigneur’s, was not actually prejudicial
to M. Lantaigne’s ambitions. In order to get rid of him, Monseigneur
Charlot would have consented to his becoming either bishop or Pope. M.
Lantaigne had a high reputation for piety, learning, and eloquence: one
could not, without a certain shamelessness, be openly against him. Now
Monseigneur Charlot, being popular and very keen to gain every one’s
goodwill, did not despise the opinion of honourable men.
M. Lerond was unable to follow the secret thoughts of Monseigneur, but
he knew that the Archbishop had not yet committed himself. He judged
that it might be possible to bring influence to bear on the old man’s
mind and that an appeal to his pastoral instincts might not be in
vain. He urged M. Lantaigne to proceed at once to the Archbishop’s
palace.
“You will beg His Eminence, with filial deference, for advice in the
probable event of the bishopric of Tourcoing being offered to you. It
is the right step, and it will produce an excellent effect.”