WHEN Maxime was approaching his seventeenth year he filled the holy
Bishop Nicolas with grief and the diocese with scandal by forming and
training a company of rogues of his own age, with a view to kidnapping
the girls of a village called Grosses-Nates, situated at a distance
of four leagues from Trinqueballe. The expedition was marvellously
successful. The ravishers entered the village by night, clasping to
their bosoms the dishevelled virgins, who vainly uplifted to heaven
their burning eyes and imploring hands. But when the fathers, brothers,
and betrothed of these ravished maidens sought them out, they refused to
return to the place of their birth, alleging that they felt too deeply
shamed, and preferred to hide their dishonour in _the_ arms that
had caused it. Maxime, who, for his share, had taken the three most
beautiful, was living in their company in a little manor dependent upon
the episcopal See. In the absence of their ravisher, the Deacon Modernus
arrived, by order of the Bishop, to knock at their door, answering that
he came to set them free. They refused to open; and when he represented
to them the abomination of their lives they dropped upon his head
a crockful of dishwater, with the crock, by which his skull was
fractured.
Armed with a gentle severity, the holy Bishop reproached Maxime for this
violence and disorder:
“Alas,” he said, “did I draw you from out of the salting-box to the ruin
of the virgins of Vervignole?”
And he reproached him with the magnitude of his offence. But Maxime
shrugged his shoulders, and turned his back, without making any reply.
At that moment King Berlu, in the fourteenth year of his reign, was
assembling a powerful army to fight the Mambournians, the determined
enemies of his kingdom, who, having entered Vervignole, were ravaging
and depopulating the richest provinces of that great country.
Maxime left Trinqueballe without saying goodbye to a soul. When he was
some leagues distant from the town, seeing in a field a mare of moderate
quality, except that she was blind in one eye and lame, he jumped on her
back and galloped off. On the following morning, accidentally meeting
a farm lad who was taking a great plough horse to water, he immediately
dismounted, bestrode the great horse, and ordered the lad to mount the
blind mare, and to follow him, saying that he would take him for his
squire should he prove satisfactory. Thus equipped Maxime presented
himself to King Berlu, who accepted his services. He became in a very
short time one of Vervignole’s greatest captains.
Meanwhile, Sulpice was giving the holy Bishop cause for perhaps more
cruel, and certainly more momentous, uneasiness; for if Maxime sinned
grievously, he sinned without malice, and offending God without thought,
and, so to speak, unknowingly. But Sulpice set himself to do evil with a
greater and more unusual malignity. Being destined from early youth for
the Church he assiduously studied letters, both sacred and profane; but
his soul was a corrupted vessel, wherein Truth was turned into Error.
He sinned in spirit; he erred in matters of faith with surprising
precocity. At an age when people have as yet no ideas at all, he
overflowed with wrong ones. A thought occurred to him which was
doubtless suggested by the devil. In a field belonging to the Bishop he
gathered a multitude of boys and girls of his own age and, climbing into
a tree, he exhorted them to leave their fathers and mothers to follow
Jesus Christ, and to go in, parties through the country-side, burning
priories and presbyteries in order to lead the Church back into
evangelical poverty. This youthful mob, led away by emotion, followed
the sinner along the roads of Vervignole, singing canticles, burning
barns, pillaging chapels, and devastating the ecclesiastical lands. Many
of these crazy creatures perished of fatigue, hunger, and cold, or were
killed by villagers. The episcopal palace re-echoed with the complaints
of the priesthood and the lamentations of mothers.
The pious Bishop Nicolas sent for the originator of these disorders.
With extreme mildness, and infinite sadness, he reproached him for
having misused the Word for the misleading of souls, and reminded him
that God had not picked him out of the salting-tub in order that he
should attack the property of our Holy Mother, the Church.
“Consider, my son,” he said, “the greatness of your offence. You appear
before your pastor charged with turmoil, sedition, and murder.”
But young Sulpice, maintaining a horrid calm, answered with a voice full
of assurance, that he had not sinned, neither had he offended God; but,
on the contrary, he had acted in accordance with the bidding of Heaven,
for the good of the Church. And he professed before the dismayed Bishop
the false doctrines of the Manicheans, the Arians, the Nestorians, the
Sabellians, the Vaudois, the Albigenses, and the Bégards. So eager
was he to embrace these monstrous errors that he did not see how they
contradicted one another, and were mutually devoured in the bosom that
cherished and revived them.
The pious Bishop endeavoured to lead Sulpice back into the right path,
but he failed to overcome the unhappy lad’s obstinacy.
Having dismissed him, he knelt and prayed.
“I thank thee, O Lord, for having sent me this young man, as a whetstone
on which to sharpen my patience and my charity.”
While two of the children he had rescued from the salting-tub were
causing him so much pain, St. Nicolas was obtaining some consolation
from the third. Robin showed himself neither violent in his actions nor
arrogant in his thoughts. He had not the sturdy, ruddy appearance of
Maxime; nor the grave, audacious manner of Sulpice. Small, thin, yellow,
lined, and shrunken, of humble, obsequious and reverential bearing, he
devoted himself to assisting the Bishop and clergy, helping the clerks
to keep the accounts of the episcopal revenues, and making complicated
calculations with the assistance of balls threaded on rods; he even
multiplied and divided numbers in his head, without the use of slate or
pencil, with a rapidity and accuracy that would have been admired even
in a past master of money and finance. For him it was a pleasure to keep
the books of the Deacon Modernus, who, growing old, used to muddle the
figures and fall asleep at his desk. To oblige the Bishop, and obtain
money for him, he spared neither trouble nor fatigue. From the Lombards,
he learnt how to calculate both the simple and compound interest on a
sum of money for a day, week, month, or year; he feared not to visit
the filthy Jews in the black lanes of the Ghetto, in order to learn,
by mingling with them, the standard of metals, the price of precious
stones, and the art of clipping coin. Ultimately, with a little store
which he had accumulated by marvellous industry in Vervignole, in
Mondousiana, and even in Mambournia, he attended the fairs, tournaments,
pardons, and jubilees, to which people of all conditions flocked from
all parts of Christendom: peasants, burghers, clerics, and _seigneurs_;
there he changed their money, and every time he returned a little richer
than he had departed. Robin did not spend the money he had made, but
brought it to the Bishop.
St. Nicolas was extremely hospitable, and very liberal in almsgiving.
He spent all his property and that of the Church in making gifts to
pilgrims and assisting the unfortunate. Thus he continually found
himself short of money; and he was much obliged to Robin for the skill
and energy with which the young treasurer obtained the sums which he
required. The condition of penury in which the holy Bishop had placed
himself owing to his magnificence and liberality was greatly aggravated
by the condition of the times. The war which was ravaging Vervignole
also ruined the Church in Trinqueballe. The soldiery who were
fighting in the country-side about the town pillaged the farms, levied
contributions on the peasantry, drove out the religious orders, and
burned the castles and abbeys.
The clergy and the faithful could no longer contribute to the expenses
of their creed, and thousands of peasants, fleeing from the free-booters
came daily to beg their bread at the door of the episcopal palace. For
their sakes, the good St. Nicolas felt the poverty which he had never
felt for his own. Fortunately, Robin was always ready to lend him money,
which the holy pontiff naturally agreed to return in more prosperous
times.
Alas, the war was now raging throughout the kingdom, from north to
south, from east to west, attended by its two inseparable companions,
famine and pestilence. The peasantry turned robbers, and the monks
followed the armies. The inhabitants of Trinqueballe, having neither
wood for firing, nor bread to eat, died like flies at the approach of
winter. Wolves entered the outlying parts of the town, devouring little
children. At this sad juncture, Robin came to inform the Bishop that not
only was he unable to provide any further sum of money, however small,
but that being unable to obtain anything from his debtors, and being
pressed by his creditors, he had been compelled to hand over all his
assets to the Jews.
He brought this distressing news to his benefactor with the obsequious
politeness which was usual to him; but he appeared a great deal less
afflicted than he might have been in this grevions extremity. As a
matter of fact, he was hard put to it to conceal, under a long face, his
joyous feelings and his lively satisfaction. The parchment of his dry,
humble, yellow eyelids ill concealed the light of joy which shone from
his sharp eyes.
Sadly stricken, St. Nicolas remained quiet and serene under the blow.
“God will soon re-establish our declining affairs,” he said. “He will
not permit the house which He has built to be overthrown.”
“That is true,” said Modernus, “but you may be sure that Robin, whom you
drew out of the salting-tub, has made an arrangement with the Lombards
of Pont-Vieux and the Jews of the Ghetto to despoil you, and that he is
retaining the lion’s share of the plunder.”
Modernus spoke the truth. Robin had lost no money. He was richer than
ever, and had just been appointed treasurer to the King.