Illness of M. Jerome Coignard
The next morning, at daybreak, I returned to the surgeon’s house, and
there found Jahel at the bedside of my dear tutor, sitting upright on
a straw chair, with her head wrapped up in her black cape, attentive,
grave and docile, like a sister of charity. M. Coignard, very red,
dozed.
“The night was not a good one,” she said to me in a whisper. “He has
talked, he sang, he called me Sister Germaine, and has made proposals to
me. I am not offended, but it is a proof that his mind wanders.”
“Alas!” I exclaimed, “if you had not betrayed me, Jahel, to ramble about
the country in company with a gallant, my dear master would not lie in
bed stabbed in his breast.”
“It is the misery of our friend,” she replied, “that causes me bitter
regrets. As for the rest, it is not worth while to think of it, and I
cannot understand, Jacques, how you can occupy your mind with it just
now.”
“I think of it always.”
“For my part, I hardly think of it. You are the cause of three-fourths
of your own unhappiness.”
“What do you mean by that, Jahel?”
“I mean, my friend, that I have given the cloth, but that you do the
embroidery, and that your imagination enriches far too much the plain
reality. I give you my oath that the present hour I cannot remember
the quarter of what causes you grief, and you meditate over it so
obstinately that your rival is more present to your mind than I am
myself. Do not think of it any more, and let me give the abbe a cooling
drink, for he wakes up.”
At this very moment M. Coquebert approached the bedside, his
instrument-case in hand, dressed the wound anew, and said aloud that the
wound was on the best way to heal up. But taking me aside he said:
“I can assure you, sir, that the good abbe will not die from the wound
he has received, but to tell the truth I am afraid it will be difficult
for him to escape from a pleurisy caused by his wound. He is at present
the prey of a heavy fever. But here comes the vicar.”
My good master recognised him without any difficulty, and inquired after
his health.
“Better than the grapes,” replied the vicar. “They are all spoiled by
_fleurebers_ and vermin, against which the clergy of Dijon organised
this year a fine procession with cross and banners. Next year a still
finer one will have to be arranged, and more candles burnt. It also
will be necessary for the official to excommunicate anew the flies which
destroy the grapes.”
“Vicar,” said my good master, “it is said that you seduce the girls in
your vineyards. Fie! it is not right at your age. In my youth, like you
I had a weakness for the creatures. But time has altered me very much,
and quite lately I let a nun pass without saying anything to her. You do
otherwise with the damsels and the bottles, vicar. But you do worse by
not celebrating the masses you have been paid for, and by trafficking
the goods and chattels of the Church. You are a bigamist and a
simoniac.”
Hearing this discourse the vicar was painfully surprised; his mouth
remained open, and his cheeks dropped wistfully on both sides of his big
face. And at last, with eyes on the ground, he sighed:
“What an unworthy attack on the character of my profession! What talk
for a man so near the tribunal of God! Oh, Monsieur l’Abbé, is it for
you to speak in that way, you who have lived a holy life and studied in
so many books?”
My dear master raised himself on his elbows. The fever gave him,
unhappily, that jovial mien of his that we had always liked so much.
“It is true,” he said, “that I have studied the ancient authors. But I
have read much less than the second vicar of the Bishop of Séez, for, as
he had the look and the mind of an ass, he was able to read two pages at
the same time, one with each eye. What do you say to that, you villain
of a vicar, you old seducer, who runs after the chicks by moonlight?
Vicar, your lady friend is built like a witch. She has hairs on her
chin, she’s the barber-surgeon’s wife. He is fully a cuckold, and well
he deserves it, that homunculus, whose whole medical science consists in
the art of blood-letting and giving a clyster.”
“God Almighty! What does he say?” exclaimed Madame Coquebert, “for sure
he has the devil in him.”
“I have heard the talk of many delirious patients,” said M. Coquebert,
“but not one has said such wicked things.”
“I am discovering,” said the vicar, “that we’ll have more trouble than
we expected to conduct this unhappy man to a peaceful end. There is a
biting humour in his nature and impurities I did not find out at first.
His speech is malicious, and unfit for a priest and a patient.”
“It’s the effect of the fever,” said the barber-surgeon. “But,”
continued the vicar, “that fever, if it’s not stopped, will bring him
to hell. He has gravely offended against what is due to a priest. But
still, I’ll come back to-morrow and exhort him, for I owe him, by the
example of our Lord, unlimited compassion. But I have my doubts about
it. Unhappily there is a break in my winepress, and all the labourers
are in the vineyard. Coquebert, do not fail to give word to the
carpenter, and to call me to your patient if he should suddenly get
worse. These are many troubles, Coquebert!”
The following day was such a good one for M. Coignard that we hoped he
would remain with us. He drank meat broth, and was able to rise in his
bed. He talked to each of us with his accustomed grace and sweetness.
M. d’Anquetil, who dwelt at Gaulard’s, came to see him, end rather
indiscreetly asked him to play piquet Smiling, my good master promised
to do so next week. But in the evening the fever returned. With pale
eyes swiming in unspeakable terror, and shivering and chattering teeth,
he shouted:
“There he is, the old fornicator. He is the son of Judas Iscariot begot
on a female devil, taking the form of a goat. But hanged he will be on
his father’s fig-tree, and his intestines will gush out to earth. Arrest
him. ...He kills me! I feel cold!”
But a moment later he threw the blanket off and complained of the heat.
“I’m very thirsty,” he said. “Give me some wine! And let it be cool!
Madame Coquebert, hasten to cool it in the fountain: the day will be a
burning one.”
It was night-time, he confounded the hours in his head.
“Be quick,” he also said to Madame Coquebert, “but do not be as simple
as the bell-ringer of the Cathedral of Seez, who, going to lift out of
the fountain some bottles he had put there to cool, saw his own shadow
in ihe water and shouted: ‘Hello, gentleman; come and help me. There are
on the other side some Antipodeans, who’ll drink our wine if we don’t
take good care.’”
“He is jovial,” said Madame Coquebert. “But just now he talked of me
in a manner quite indecent Should I have deceived Coquebert I certainly
would not have done it with the vicar, out of regard for his profession
and his age.”
This very moment the vicar entered the room and asked:
“Well, abbe, what are your dispositions now? What is there new?”
“Thank God,” answered M. Coignard, “there is nothing new in my soul,
for, as said Saint Chrysostom, beware of new things. Don’t walk in
untrodden ways, one wanders without end when one commences to wander.
I have had that sad experience, and lost myself for having followed
untrodden roads. I have listened to my own counsels, and they have
conducted me to the abyss. Vicar, I am a poor sinner, the number of my
iniquities oppresses me.”
“These are fine words,” said the vicar. “‘Tis God Himself who dictates
them to you. I recognise His inimitable style. Do you want to advance
somewhat the salvation of your soul?”
“Willingly,” said M. Coignard. “My impurities rise against me. I see
big ones and small. I see red ones and black. I see infinitesimals which
ride on dogs and pigs, and I see others which are fat and naked, with
breasts like leather bottles, bellies in great folds, and thighs of
enormous size.”
“Is it possible,” said the vicar, “that you can see as distinctly as
that? But if your faults are such as you say, it would be better not to
describe them and to be content to detest them in your own mind.”
“Would you, then, vicar,” replied the abbe, “that my sins were all made
like an Adonis? Don’t let us speak of it any more. And you, barber, give
me a drink. Do you know M. de la Musardiere?”
“Not that I know of,” said M. Coquebert.
“Then know,” replied my dear master, “that he was very taken with the
ladies.”
“That’s the way,” interrupted the vicar, “by which the devil takes his
advantage over men. But what subject do you follow, my son?”
“You’ll soon know,” said my good master. “M. de la Musardiere gave an
appointment to a virgin in a stable. She went, and he let her go away
just as she entered it. Do you know why?”
“I do not,” said the vicar, “but let us leave it.”
“Not at all,” continued M. Coignard. “You ought to know that he took
good care to have no intercourse with her as he was afraid of begetting
a horse, on which account he would have been subject to criminal
prosecution.”
“Ah!” said the barber, “he ought rather to have been afraid to engender
an ass.”
“Doubtless,” said the vicar. “But such talk does not advance us on the
road to heaven. It would be useful to retake the good way. But a little
while ago you spoke so edifyingly!”
Instead of giving reply, my good master began to sing, with rather a
strong voice:
“Pour mettre en gout le roi Louison
On a pris quinze mirlitons
Landerinette
Qui tous le balai ont roll
Landeriri.”
“If you want to sing, my son,” said the vicar, “you’d better sing a fine
Burgundian Christmas carol. You’d rejoice your soul by it and sanctify
it.”
“With pleasure,” replied my dear tutor. “There are some by Guy Barozai
which, I think, in their apparent rusticity, to be finer than diamonds
and more precious than gold. This one, for example:
‘Lor qu’au lai saison qu’ai jaule
Au monde Jesu-chri vin
L’ane et le beu l’echaufin
De le leu sofle dans l’etaule.
Que d’ane et de beu je sai
Dans ce royaume de Gaule,
Que d’ane et de beu je sai
Qui n’en a rien pas tan fai.’”
The surgeon, his wife and the vicar sang together:
“Que d’ane et de beu je sai
Dans ce royaume de Gaule,
Que d’ane et de beu je sai
Qui n’en a rien pas tan fai.”
And my good master replied in a weaker voice:
“Mais le pu beo de l’histoire
Ce fut que l’ane et le beu
Ainsin passire to deu
La nuit sans manger ni boire
Que d’ane et de beu je sai
Couver de pane et de moire
Que d’ane et de beu je sai
Que n’en a rien pas tan fai!”
Then he let his head fall on the pillow and sang no more.
“There is good in this Christian,” said the vicar, “much good, and a
while ago he really edified me with his beautiful sentences. But I am
not without a certain apprehension, as everything depends on the end,
and nobody knows what’s hidden at the bottom of the basket God in His
kindness wills that one single moment brings us salvation, but this
moment must be the last one, so that everything depends on a single
minute, in comparison with which the whole life does not count. That’s
what makes me tremble for the patient, over whom angels and devils are
furiously quarrelling. But one must never despair of divine mercy.”