THREE FRIENDS.
The roundest and happiest-looking priest in the city of New Orleans was
a little man fondly known among his people as Père Jerome. He was a
Creole and a member of one of the city's leading families. His dwelling
was a little frame cottage, standing on high pillars just inside a tall,
close fence, and reached by a narrow out-door stair from the green
batten gate. It was well surrounded by crape myrtles, and communicated
behind by a descending stair and a plank-walk with the rear entrance of
the chapel over whose worshippers he daily spread his hands in
benediction. The name of the street--ah! there is where light is
wanting. Save the Cathedral and the Ursulines, there is very little of
record concerning churches at that time, though they were springing up
here and there. All there is certainty of is that Père Jerome's frame
chapel was some little new-born "down-town" thing, that may have
survived the passage of years, or may have escaped "Paxton's Directory"
"so as by fire." His parlor was dingy and carpetless; one could smell
distinctly there the vow of poverty. His bed-chamber was bare and clean,
and the bed in it narrow and hard; but between the two was a dining-room
that would tempt a laugh to the lips of any who looked in. The table was
small, but stout, and all the furniture of the room substantial, made of
fine wood, and carved just enough to give the notion of wrinkling
pleasantry. His mother's and sister's doing, Père Jerome would explain;
they would not permit this apartment--or department--to suffer. Therein,
as well as in the parlor, there was odor, but of a more epicurean sort,
that explained interestingly the Père Jerome's rotundity and rosy smile.
In this room, and about this miniature round table, used sometimes to
sit with Père Jerome two friends to whom he was deeply attached--one,
Evariste Varrillat, a playmate from early childhood, now his brother
in-law; the other, Jean Thompson, a companion from youngest manhood, and
both, like the little priest himself, the regretful rememberers of a
fourth comrade who was a comrade no more. Like Père Jerome, they had
come, through years, to the thick of life's conflicts,--the priest's
brother-in-law a physician, the other an attorney, and brother-in-law to
the lonely wanderer,--yet they loved to huddle around this small board,
and be boys again in heart while men in mind. Neither one nor another
was leader. In earlier days they had always yielded to him who no longer
met with them a certain chieftainship, and they still thought of him and
talked of him, and, in their conjectures, groped after him, as one of
whom they continued to expect greater things than of themselves.
They sat one day drawn thus close together, sipping and theorizing,
speculating upon the nature of things in an easy, bold, sophomoric way,
the conversation for the most part being in French, the native tongue of
the doctor and priest, and spoken with facility by Jean Thompson the
lawyer, who was half Américain; but running sometimes into English and
sometimes into mild laughter. Mention had been made of the absentee.
Père Jerome advanced an idea something like this:
"It is impossible for any finite mind to fix the degree of criminality
of any human act or of any human life. The Infinite One alone can know
how much of our sin is chargeable to us, and how much to our brothers or
our fathers. We all participate in one another's sins. There is a
community of responsibility attaching to every misdeed. No human since
Adam--nay, nor Adam himself--ever sinned entirely to himself. And so I
never am called upon to contemplate a crime or a criminal but I feel my
conscience pointing at me as one of the accessories."
"In a word," said Evariste Varrillat, the physician, "you think we are
partly to blame for the omission of many of your Paternosters, eh?"
Father Jerome smiled.
"No; a man cannot plead so in his own defence; our first father tried
that, but the plea was not allowed. But, now, there is our absent
friend. I tell you truly this whole community ought to be recognized as
partners in his moral errors. Among another people, reared under wiser
care and with better companions, how different might he not have been!
How can we speak of him as a law-breaker who might have saved him from
that name?" Here the speaker turned to Jean Thompson, and changed his
speech to English. "A lady sez to me to-day: 'Père Jerome, 'ow dat is a
dreadfool dat 'e gone at de coas' of Cuba to be one corsair! Ain't it?'
'Ah, madame,' I sez, ''tis a terrible! I 'ope de good God will fo'give
me an' you fo' dat!'"
Jean Thompson answered quickly:
"You should not have let her say that."
"_Mais_, fo' w'y?"
"Why, because, if you are partly responsible, you ought so much the more
to do what you can to shield his reputation. You should have said,"--the
attorney changed to French,--"'He is no pirate; he has merely taken out
letters of marque and reprisal under the flag of the republic of
Carthagena!'"
"_Ah, bah_!" exclaimed Doctor Varrillat, and both he and his
brother-in-law, the priest, laughed.
"Why not?" demanded Thompson.
"Oh!" said the physician, with a shrug, "say id thad way iv you wand."
Then, suddenly becoming serious, he was about to add something else,
when Père Jerome spoke.
"I will tell you what I could have said, I could have said: 'Madame,
yes; 'tis a terrible fo' him. He stum'le in de dark; but dat good God
will mek it a _mo' terrible fo'_ dat man oohever he is, w'at put 'at
light out!'"
"But how do you know he is a pirate?" demanded Thompson, aggressively.
"How do we know?" said the little priest, returning to French. "Ah!
there is no other explanation of the ninety-and-nine stories that come
to us, from every port where ships arrive from the north coast of Cuba,
of a commander of pirates there who is a marvel of courtesy and
gentility"--[1]
[Footnote 1: See gazettes of the period.]
"And whose name is Lafitte," said the obstinate attorney.
"And who, nevertheless, is not Lafitte," insisted Père Jerome.
"Daz troo, Jean," said Doctor Varrillat. "We hall know daz troo."
Père Jerome leaned forward over the board and spoke, with an air of
secrecy, in French.
"You have heard of the ship which came into port here last Monday. You
have heard that she was boarded by pirates, and that the captain of the
ship himself drove them off."
"An incredible story," said Thompson.
"But not so incredible as the truth. I have it from a passenger. There
was on the ship a young girl who was very beautiful. She came on deck,
where the corsair stood, about to issue his orders, and, more beautiful
than ever in the desperation of the moment, confronted him with a small
missal spread open, and her finger on the Apostles' Creed, commanded him
to read. He read it, uncovering his head as he read, then stood gazing
on her face, which did not quail; and then with a low bow, said: 'Give
me this book and I will do your bidding.' She gave him the book and bade
him leave the ship, and he left it unmolested."
Père Jerome looked from the physician to the attorney and back again,
once or twice, with his dimpled smile.
"But he speaks English, they say," said Jean Thompson.
"He has, no doubt, learned it since he left us," said the priest.
"But this ship-master, too, says his men called him Lafitte."
"Lafitte? No. Do you not see? It is your brother-in-law, Jean Thompson!
It is your wife's brother! Not Lafitte, but" (softly) "Lemaitre!
Lemaitre! Capitaine Ursin Lemaitre!"
The two guests looked at each other with a growing drollery on either
face, and presently broke into a laugh.
"Ah!" said the doctor, as the three rose up, "you juz kip dad
cog-an'-bull fo' yo' negs summon."
Père Jerome's eyes lighted up--
"I goin' to do it!"
"I tell you," said Evariste, turning upon him with sudden gravity, "iv
dad is troo, I tell you w'ad is sure-sure! Ursin Lemaitre din kyare
nut'n fo' doze creed; _he fall in love!_"
Then, with a smile, turning to Jean Thompson, and back again to Père
Jerome:
"But anny'ow you tell it in dad summon dad 'e hyare fo' dad creed."
Père Jerome sat up late that night, writing a letter. The remarkable
effects upon a certain mind, effects which we shall presently find him
attributing solely to the influences of surrounding nature, may find for
some a more sufficient explanation in the fact that this letter was but
one of a series, and that in the rover of doubted identity and
incredible eccentricity Père Jerome had a regular correspondent.