An article in _le Libéral_ informed the town of … that it possessed a
prophetess. This was Mademoiselle Claude Deniseau, daughter of a man
who kept a registry for country servants. Up to the age of seventeen
Mademoiselle Deniseau had not revealed to the closest observer any
abnormality of mind or body. She was a fair, fat, short girl, neither
pretty nor ugly, but pleasant and of a lively disposition. “She had
received,” said _le Libéral_, “a good middle-class education, and she
was religious without bigotry.” At the beginning of her eighteenth
year, on the 3rd of February, 189–, at six o’clock in the evening,
being engaged in laying the cloth on the table in the dining-room, she
thought she heard her mother’s voice saying, “Claudine, go to your
room.” She went there and between the bed and the door she perceived
a bright light, and heard a voice which spoke from the light, saying:
“Claudine, this country must do penance, for that will ward off great
misfortunes. I am Saint Radegonde, Queen of France.” Mademoiselle
Deniseau then descried in the splendour a luminous and, as it were,
transparent face that wore a crown of gold and gems.
After that Saint Radegonde came every day to converse with Mademoiselle
Deniseau, to whom she revealed secrets and made prophecies. She had
foretold the frosts that blighted the vine in blossom, and revealed
that M. Rieu, curé of Sainte-Agnès, would not see the Easter festival.
The venerable M. Rieu actually died on Holy Thursday. For the Republic
and for France she never ceased to foretell terrible disasters close
at hand—fires, floods, massacres. But God, wearied of chastising a
faithless people, would at last, under a king, bring back peace and
prosperity to it. The saint diagnosed and cured diseases. Under her
inspiration, Mademoiselle Deniseau had told Jobelin, the road-mender,
of an ointment which had cured him of an anchylosis of the knee.
Jobelin had been able to resume his work again.
These marvels attracted a crowd of inquirers to the flat inhabited
by the Deniseau family in the Place Saint-Exupère, above the tramway
office. The young girl was studied by ecclesiastics, retired officers,
and doctors of medicine. They believed that they noticed, when she was
repeating the words of Saint Radegonde, that her voice became deeper,
her expression sterner, and that her limbs became rigid. They also
noticed that she used expressions which are not customary with young
girls, and that her words could be explained by no natural means.
M. _le préfet_ Worms-Clavelin, at first indifferent and scoffing, soon
followed the extraordinary success of the prophetess with anxiety, for
she announced the end of the Republic and the return of France to a
Christian monarchy.
M. Worms-Clavelin had entered office at the time of the scandals at
the Élysée under President Grévy. Since then he had participated in
those cases of corruption that are endlessly being hushed up and
as constantly revived to the great detriment of Parliament and the
public authority. And this spectacle, which seemed natural to him,
had ingrafted in his mind a profound feeling of laxity, which spread
from him to all his subordinates. A senator and two deputies from his
department were being threatened with legal proceedings. The most
influential members of the party, engineers and financiers, were either
in prison or in hiding. Under these circumstances, satisfied that the
people were attached to the republican rule, he expected from them
neither enthusiasm nor deference, which seemed to him but old-fashioned
qualities and the empty symbols of a vanished age. Events had enlarged
his naturally limited intelligence. The vast irony of things had
passed into his soul, making it easy-going, mocking, indifferent.
Having recognised, moreover, that the electoral committees constituted
the only real authority that still subsisted in the department, he
obeyed them with a semblance of zeal and with secret opposition. If he
executed their orders, it was not without a considerable modification
of their rigour. In a word, from opportunist he had become liberal
and progressive. He willingly allowed liberty of speech and action.
But he was too wise to allow any unbearable excesses, and, like a
conscientious official, he took good care that the government should
not receive any glaring insult, and that the ministers should peaceably
enjoy that common attitude of indifference which, by gaining over their
friends as well as their enemies, ensured at the same time both their
power and their repose.
It pleased him that the governmental papers and the opposition ones,
both being compromised by financial transactions, should be utterly
discredited, alike as to their praise and their blame. The socialist
sheet, being the only independent one, was also the only violent one.
But it was very poor; and the fear which it inspired drove people
back towards the government. Thus M. _le préfet_ Worms-Clavelin
was entirely sincere when he informed the Home Secretary that the
political situation was excellent in his department. And here was
the prophetess of the Place Saint-Exupère destroying the harmony
of this happy state. Under the direction of Saint Radegonde, she
announced the fall of the ministry, the dissolution of Parliament, the
resignation of the President of the Republic, and the collapse of a
discredited government. She was much more violent than _le Libéral_
and far more influential. For _le Libéral_ drew but few, while the
whole town thronged around Mademoiselle Deniseau. The clergy, the large
landowners, the nobility, the clerical press, hung upon her and drank
in her words. Saint Radegonde rallied the defeated enemies of the
Republic and brought together the “Conservatives.” A harmless rally,
but inconvenient. M. Worms-Clavelin was especially afraid lest a Paris
paper should noise the affair about. “It would then assume,” said he
to himself, “the proportions of a scandal and would expose me to a
reprimand from the minister.” He resolved to look for the quietest way
of silencing Mademoiselle Deniseau, and first began to make inquiries
as to the character of her relations.
Her father’s family was not much respected in the town. The Deniseaux
were people of no position. Mademoiselle Claude’s father kept a
registry office, the reputation of which was neither better nor worse
than that of other registries. Masters and servants complained of
it, but still made use of it. In 1871 Deniseau had had the Commune
proclaimed in the Place Saint-Exupère. Somewhat later, upon the
expulsion of three Dominicans at the point of the sword, he had offered
resistance to the gendarmes, and had got himself arrested. Next he had
stood at municipal elections as a socialist, and had only obtained a
very small number of votes. He was hot-headed and weak-minded, but
believed to be honest.
The mother was a Nadal. The Nadals, in a better position than the
Deniseaux, were small agricultural proprietors, all much respected.
One of the Nadals, an aunt to Mademoiselle Claude, being subject to
hallucinations, had been shut up in an asylum for some years. The
Nadals were religious and had clerical connections. M. Worms-Clavelin
could learn nothing more about them.
One morning he had a conversation on this subject with his private
secretary, M. Lacarelle, who belonged to an old family in the
neighbourhood and knew the department well.
“My dear Lacarelle, we must put an end to this madness. For it is plain
that Mademoiselle Deniseau is mad.”
Lacarelle replied gravely, not without the kind of arrogance
inseparable from his long fair moustaches.
“Monsieur _le préfet_, opinions are divided with respect to this, and
many people believe that Mademoiselle Deniseau is perfectly sane.”
“After all, Lacarelle, you do not believe that Saint Radegonde comes
every morning to chat with her and to drag the head of the State, along
with the Government, down into the mire.”
But Lacarelle was of opinion that there had been exaggeration,
that ill-disposed persons were making the most of an extraordinary
manifestation. It really was extraordinary that Mademoiselle Deniseau
should prescribe sovereign remedies for incurable diseases; she had
cured Jobelin, the road-mender, and an old bailiff called Favru. That
was not all. She foretold events that fell out as she had said.
“I can vouch for one fact, monsieur _le préfet_. Last week Mademoiselle
Deniseau said: ‘There is a treasure hidden in a field called Faifeu, at
Noiselles.’ They dug at the place described and discovered a great slab
of stone which blocked the entrance of an underground passage.”
“But, still,” cried the _préfet_, “you cannot maintain that Saint
Radegonde …”
He stopped, thoughtful and questioning. He was profoundly ignorant of
the saintly legends of Christian Gaul and of the national antiquities
of France. But at school he had studied text-books of history. He was
struggling to recall his boyish recollections.
“Saint Radegonde was the mother of Saint Louis?”