Jahel comes to my Room--What the Abbé saw on the Stairs--His Encounter
with Mosaïde.
Jahel kept her word. On the second day after, she scratched at my door.
We were a great deal more comfortable in my room than we had been in M.
d’Asterac’s study, and what had taken place at our first meeting was
but child’s play in comparison to what love inspired us at our second
opportunity. She tore herself out of my arms at the dawn with a thousand
oaths to join me again very soon, calling me her soul, her life, her
dearest sweetheart.
That day I rose very late. When I reached the library, my master was
already sitting over the papyrus of Zosimus, his pen in one hand, his
magnifying-glass in the other, and worthy of the admiration of anyone
having due consideration for good literature.
“Jacques Tournebroche,” he said to me, “the principal difficulty of this
reading consists in not a few of the letters being easily confounded
with others, and it is important for the success of the deciphering to
make a list of the characters lending themselves to similar mistakes,
because by not taking such precautions we are running the risk of
employing the wrong terminations, to our eternal shame and just
vituperation. I have to-day already committed some ridiculous blunders.
It must have been because, since daybreak, my mind has been troubled by
what I saw last night, and of which I will give you an account.
“I woke up in the morning twilight, and I felt a longing for a glass of
that light white wine about which I made yesterday my compliments to M.
d’Asterac, if you remember. For there exists, my son, between white wine
and the crowing of the cock a sympathy, doubtless dating from Noah’s
time, and I am certain that if Saint Peter, in that sacred night he
passed in the yard of the great high priest, had had just a mouthful
of Moselle claret or only wine of Orleans, he never would have disowned
Jesus Christ before the cock crowed a second time. But in no sense, my
boy, have we to regret that bad action; it was of the utmost importance
that the prophecies were fulfilled, and if Peter, or Cephas, had not
committed on that very night the worst of infamies, he would not now be
the greatest saint in heaven, and the corner-stone of our holy Church,
to the confusion of honest men according to the world, who have to see
the keys of their eternal bliss held by a dastardly knave. O salutary
example, which, drawing man out of the fallacious inspirations of human
honour, leads him on the road of salvation! O masterly disposition
of religion! O divine wisdom, exalting the meek and wretched to the
humiliation of the haughty! O marvel! O mystery! To the eternal shame of
the Pharisees and lawyers, a common mariner of the Lake of Tiberias,
who by his gross cowardice had become the laughing-stock of the kitchen
wenches who warmed themselves with him in the courtyard of the high
priest, a churl and a dastard, who denied his master and his faith
before slatterns certainly not so pretty by far as the chamber-maid of
the bailiff’s wife at Séez, wears the triple crown, the pontifical
ring on his finger and rules over princes and bishops, over kings
and emperors, is invested with the right to bind and loose; the most
respectable of men, the most honest dame, cannot enter heaven unless he
gives them admission.
“But tell me, Tournebroche, my boy, at what part of my narrative had I
arrived when I got muddled over that great Saint Peter, the prince of
apostles? If I remember well I spoke to you of a glass of white wine I
drank at daybreak. I came down to the pantry in my shirt, and took out
of a certain cupboard, the key of which I had prudently kept by me the
day before, a bottle, the contents of which I emptied with no little
pleasure. Afterwards reascending the stairs I met, between the second
and third flights, a tiny damsel clad as a pierrot, who descended the
steps. She seemed to be mightily afraid, and fled into the farthest
corner of the passage. I followed her, caught her, took her in my arms,
and kissed her in a sudden and irresistible outbreak of sympathy. Don’t
blame me, my boy; in my place you would have done as much, perhaps more.
It was a pretty girl, reminding me of the serving-maid of the bailiff’s
wife, but with more vivacity in her looks. She did not dare to scream.
She whispered breathless in my ear: ‘Leave me, leave me; you’re mad!’
Look here, Tournebroche, I still have the marks of her finger nails on
my wrist. O that I could keep as vivid on my lips the impression of the
kiss she gave me!”
“What, Monsieur Abbé,” I exclaimed, “she gave you a kiss?”
“Be sure, my boy, that in my place you would have had one too--that is
to say, if you, as I did, seized the opportunity. I believe I told you
that I held the damsel in close embrace. She tried to fly from me, she
suppressed her screams, she murmured groans. ‘For heaven’s sake, leave
me! It begins to be light, a moment more and I am lost.’ Her fears, her
fright, her danger--who could be barbarous enough not to be affected by
them? I am not inhuman. I gave her freedom at the price of a kiss, which
she gave me quickly. On my word, I never enjoyed a more delicious one.”
At this part of his tale, my dear tutor, raising his nose to sniff a
pinch of snuff, became aware of my confusion and pain, which he thought
to be utter astonishment, and continued to say:
“Jacques Tournebroche, all that remains for me to tell will astonish you
still more. To my regret I let the pretty girl go, but curiosity tempted
me to follow her. I went down the stairs after her, saw her cross the
lobby, go out by a little door opening on the fields in the direction
where the park extends farthest, and run up the lane. I followed
swiftly. I was quite sure that she would not go far, dressed as a
pierrot and wearing a night-cap. She took the path wherein the mandrakes
dwell. My curiosity doubled, and I followed her up to Mosaïde’s lodge.
At this moment the hideous Jew appeared at a window in his dressing-gown
and monstrous headgear, like one of those figures who show themselves
at the stroke of noon, outside those old clocks more Gothic and more
ridiculous than the churches wherein they are kept, for the enjoyment of
the yokels and the profit of the beadle.
“He discovered me, hidden as I was behind the foliage, at the very
moment when that pretty girl, fleet as Galatea, slipped into the lodge.
It looked as if I had followed her up in the manner, way and habit of
those satyrs of which we have spoken of late when conferring on the
finest passages of Ovid. My dress could but add to such resemblance--did
I tell you, my boy, that I wore only a shirt? Seeing me, Mosaide’s eyes
vomited fire. Out of his dirty yellow greatcoat he drew a neat little
stiletto and shook it through the window with an arm in no way weighed
down by age. He roared bilingual curses on me. Yes, Tournebroche,
my grammatical knowledge authorises me to say that his curses were
bilingual, that Spanish, or rather Portuguese, was mixed in them with
Hebrew. I went into a rage at not being able to catch their exact sense,
as I do not know these languages, although I can recognise them by
certain sounds which are frequent when they are spoken. It is very
possible that he accused me of wanting to corrupt that girl, whom I
believe to be his niece Jahel, whom, as you will remember, M. d’Asterac
has repeatedly mentioned to us. As such his invectives were rather
flattering to me, as I have become, my boy, by the progress of age and
the fatigues of an agitated life, so that I cannot aspire any longer to
the love of juvenile maidens. Alas! should I become a bishop that is a
dish of which I shall never taste. I am sorry for it. But it is no good
to be closely attached to the perishable things of this world, and we
are compelled to leave what leaves us. Accordingly Mosaïde, brandishing
his stiletto, squalled out his hoarse sounds mingled with sharp yelpings
in such a manner that I felt insulted, as well as vituperated, in a
chant or song. And without flattering myself, my dear boy, I can say
that I have been treated as a rake and a seducer in a tune solemn and
ceremonious. When yonder Mosaide brought his imprecations to an end, I
endeavoured to let him have my reply in two languages also. I replied in
a mixture of Latin and French that he was a manslayer and a sacrilegist,
who murdered tiny babes and stabbed sacred hosts. The fresh morning wind
blowing between my naked legs reminded me that I wore a shirt only. I
felt somewhat embarrassed, because it is evident, my boy, that a man
without breeches is in a state highly inconvenient to speak of sacred
truth, to confound error and to prevent crime. Withal I gave him a
prodigious sketch of his outrages, and I threatened him with the terrors
of justice both human and divine.”
“What do you say, my good master?” I nearly screamed, “yonder Mosaïde,
who has such a pretty niece, kills newborn babes and stabs hosts?”
“I don’t know anything about him,” M. Jérôme Coignard replied, “and
besides cannot know it. But those crimes are his, they are of his race,
and I can charge him with them without slandering him. I place on that
miscreant’s back a long array of flagitious ancestors. You cannot
have remained ignorant of all that is said of the Jews and of their
abominable rites. You may see in an ancient cosmography of Munster in
Westphalia a drawing representing some Jews mutilating a child; they are
recognisable by the wheel or round of cloth they wear on their clothes
in sign of infamy. For all that I do not believe these misdeeds to be
of their daily and domestic use. I also doubt that the majority of
Israelites are inclined to outrage the holy wafers. To accuse them of
doing so would be to believe that they are as deeply convinced of the
divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ as we are ourselves. Sacrilege without
faith is unbelievable, and the Jew who stabbed a host rendered by that
very deed a sincere homage to the truth of transubstantiation. These are
fables, my boy, to be left to the ignorant and, if I throw them in the
face of that horrible Mosaïde, I do it less by the counsels of sound
criticism than by the impressive suggestions of resentment and anger.”
“Oh! sir,” I said, “you might have contented yourself with reproaching
him for the murder of the Portuguese he killed in the frenzy of his
jealousy; that certainly was a murder.”
“What!” broke out my good master. “Mosaïde has killed a Christian? He
is dangerous, my dear Tournebroche. You’ll have to come to the same
conclusion that I have arrived at myself about this adventure. It is
quite certain that his niece is the mistress of M. d’Asterac, whose room
she doubtless had just left when I met her on the stairs.
“I am too religious a man not to be sorry that so amiable a person comes
of the Jewish race, who crucified Jesus Christ. Alas! do not doubt, my
dear boy, that villain Mordecai is the uncle of an Esther who does not
need to macerate six months in myrrh to become worthy of the bed of a
king. That old spagyric raven is not the man fit for such a beauty, and
I am rather inclined to take an interest in her myself.
“Mosaïde will have to hide her very secretly and carefully; should she
show herself once only at the promenade or the theatre, she would have
all the world at her feet on the following morning. Don’t you wish to
see her, Tournebroche?”
I replied that I wished it very much. And then both of us drove deeper
in our Greek.