At six o’clock in the evening Abbé Guitrel got out of the train in
Paris and called a cab in the station-yard. Then, driving in the dusk
through the murky, rain-swept streets, dotted with lights, he made
for Number 5, Rue des Boulangers. There, in a narrow, rugged, hilly
street, above the coopers and the cork-dealers, and amidst a smell of
casks, lived his old friend Abbé Le Génil, chaplain to the Convent of
the Seven Wounds, who was a popular Lenten preacher in one of the most
fashionable parishes in Paris. Here Abbé Guitrel was in the habit of
putting up, whenever he visited Paris in the hope of expediting the
progress of his tardy fortunes. All day long the soles of his buckled
shoes tapped discreetly upon the pavements, staircases and floors of
all sorts of different houses. In the evening he supped with M. Le
Génil. The two old comrades from the seminary spun each other merry
yarns, chatted over the rates charged for mass and sermon, and played
their game of manille. At ten o’clock Nanette, the maid, rolled into
the dining-room an iron bedstead for M. Guitrel, who always gave her
when he left the same tip—a brand-new twenty-sou piece.
On this occasion, as in the past, M. Le Génil, who was a tall, stout
man, smacked his great hand down on Guitrel’s flinching shoulder, and
rumbling out a good-day in his deep organ note, instantly challenged
him in his usual jolly style:
“Well, old miser, have you brought me twelve dozen masses at a crown
each, or are you, as usual, going to keep to yourself the gold that
your pious provincials swamp you with?”
Being a poor man, and knowing that Guitrel was as poor as himself, he
regarded this sort of talk as a good jest.
Guitrel went so far as to understand a joke, though, being of a gloomy
temperament, he never jested himself. He had, he explained, been
obliged to come to Paris to carry out several commissions with which
he had been charged, more especially the purchase of books. Would his
friend, then, put him up for a day or two, three at the most?
“Now do tell the truth for once in your life!” answered M. Le Génil.
“You have just come up to smell out a mitre, you old fox! To-morrow
morning you will be showing yourself to the nuncio with a sanctimonious
expression. Guitrel, you are going to be a bishop!”
Hereupon the chaplain of the Convent of the Seven Wounds, the preacher
at the church of Sainte-Louise, made a bow to the future bishop.
Mingled with his ironic courtesy there was, perhaps, a certain strain
of instinctive deference. Then once more his face fell into the harsh
lines that revealed the temperament of a second Olivier Maillard.[1]
[1] An eccentric priest of the fifteenth century. His sermons
were full of denunciations against his enemies. He once
attacked Louis XI, who threatened to throw him into the
Seine. Maillard replied: “The King is master, but tell
him that I shall get to heaven by water sooner than he
will by his post-horses.”
“Come in, then! Will you take some refreshment?”
M. Guitrel was a reserved man, whose compressed lips showed his
determination not to be pumped. As a matter of fact, it was quite true
that he had come up to enlist powerful influence in support of his
candidature, but he had no wish to explain all his wily courses to this
naturally frank friend of his. For M. Le Génil made, not only a virtue
of his natural frankness, but even a policy.