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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche, by
+Anatole France
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche
+       1909
+
+Author: Anatole France
+
+Translator: Alfred Allinson
+
+Release Date: May 9, 2008 [EBook #25407]
+Last Updated: October 5, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JACQUES TOURNEBROCHE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE MERRIE TALES OF JACQUES TOURNEBROCHE
+
+AND CHILD LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY
+
+By Anatole France
+
+John Lane Company, MCMXIX
+
+Copyright 1909
+
+John Lane Company
+
+
+
+
+THE MERRIE TALES OF JACQUES TOURNEBROCHE
+
+
+
+
+OLIVIER’S BRAG
+
+[Illustration: 016]
+
+The Emperor Charlemagne and his twelve peers, having taken the palmer’s
+staff at Saint-Denis, made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. They prostrated
+themselves before the tomb of Our Lord, and sat in the thirteen chairs
+of the great hall wherein Jesus Christ and his Apostles met together
+to celebrate the blessed sacrifice of the Mass. Then they fared to
+Constantinople, being fain to see King Hugo, who was renowned for his
+magnificence.
+
+The King welcomed them in his Palace, where, beneath a golden dome,
+birds of ruby, wrought with a wondrous art, sat and sang in bushes of
+emerald.
+
+He seated the Emperor of France and the twelve Counts about a table
+loaded with stags, boars, cranes, wild geese, and peacocks, served in
+pepper. And he offered his guests, in ox-horns, the wines of Greece and
+Asia to drink. Charlemagne and his companions quaffed all these wines
+in honour of the King and his daughter, the Princess Helen. After supper
+Hugo led them to the chamber where they were to sleep. Now this chamber
+was circular, and a column, springing in the midst thereof, carried the
+vaulted roof. Nothing could be finer to look upon. Against the walls,
+which were hung with gold and purple, twelve beds were ranged, while
+another greater than the rest stood beside the pillar.
+
+Charlemagne lay in this, and the Counts stretched themselves round about
+him on the others. The wine they had drunk ran hot in their veins, and
+their brains were afire. They could not sleep, and fell to making brags
+instead, and laying of wagers, as is the way of the knights of France,
+each striving to outdo the other in warranting himself to do some
+doughty deed for to manifest his prowess. The Emperor opened the game.
+He said:
+
+“Let them fetch me, a-horseback and fully armed, the best knight King
+Hugo hath. I will lift my sword and bring it down upon him in such wise
+it shall cleave helm and hauberk, saddle and steed, and the blade shall
+delve a foot deep underground.”
+
+Guillaume d’Orange spake up after the Emperor and made the second brag.
+
+“I will take,” said he, “a ball of iron sixty men can scarce lift, and
+hurl it so mightily against the Palace wall that it shall beat down
+sixty fathoms’ length thereof.”
+
+Ogier, the Dane, spake next.
+
+“Ye see yon proud pillar which bears up the vault. To-morrow will I tear
+it down and break it like a straw.”
+
+After which Renaud de Montauban cried with an oath:
+
+“‘Od’s life! Count Ogier, whiles you overset the pillar, I will clap the
+dome on my shoulders and hale it down to the seashore.”
+
+Gérard de Rousillon it was made the fifth brag.
+
+He boasted he would uproot single-handed, in one hour, all the trees in
+the Royal pleasaunce.
+
+Aimer took up his parable when Gérard was done.
+
+“I have a magic hat,” said he, “made of a sea-calf’s skin, which renders
+me invisible. I will set it on my head, and to-morrow, whenas King Hugo
+is seated at meat, I will eat up his fish and drink down his wine, I
+will tweak his nose and buffet his ears. Not knowing whom or what
+to blame, he will clap all his serving-men in gaol and scourge them
+sore,--and we shall laugh.”
+
+“For me,” declared Huon de Bordeaux, whose turn it was, “for me, I am
+so nimble I will trip up to the King and cut off his beard and eyebrows
+without his knowing aught about the matter. ‘T is a piece of sport I
+will show you to-morrow. And I shall have no need of a sea-calf hat
+either!”
+
+Doolin de Mayence made his brag too. He promised to eat up in one
+hour all the figs and all the oranges and all the lemons in the King’s
+orchards.
+
+Next the Due Naisme said in this wise:
+
+“By my faith! _I_ will go into the banquet hall, I will catch up flagons
+and cups of gold and fling them so high they will never light down again
+save to tumble into the moon.”
+
+Bernard de Brabant then lifted his great voice:
+
+“I will do better yet,” he roared. “Ye know the river that flows by
+Constantinople is broad and deep, for it is come nigh its mouth by then,
+after traversing Egypt, Babylon, and the Earthly Paradise. Well, I will
+turn it from its bed and make it flood the Great Square of the City.”
+
+Gérard de Viane said:
+
+“Put a dozen knights in line of array. And I will tumble all the twelve
+on their noses, only by the wind of my sword.”
+
+It was the Count Roland laid the twelfth wager, in the fashion
+following:
+
+“I will take my horn, I will go forth of the city and I will blow such a
+blast all the gates of the town will drop from their hinges.”
+
+Olivier alone had said no word yet. He was young and courteous, and the
+Emperor loved him dearly.
+
+“Olivier, my son,” he asked, “will you not make your brag like the rest
+of us?”
+
+“Right willingly, sire,” Olivier replied.
+
+“Do you know the name of Hercules of Greece?”
+
+“Yea, I have heard some discourse of him,” said Charlemagne. “He was an
+idol of the misbelievers, like the false god Mahound.”
+
+“Not so, sire,” said Olivier. “Hercules of Greece was a knight among
+the Pagans and King of a Pagan kingdom. He was a gallant champion and
+stoutly framed in all his limbs. Visiting the Court of a certain Emperor
+who had fifty daughters, virgins, he wedded them all on one and the same
+night, and that so well and throughly that next morning they all avowed
+themselves well-contented women and with naught left to learn. He had
+not slighted ever a one of them. Well, sire, an you will, I will lay my
+wager to do after the fashion of Hercules of Greece.”
+
+“Nay, beware, Olivier, my son,” cried the Emperor, “beware what you do;
+the thing would be a sin. I felt sure this King Hercules was a Saracen!”
+
+“Sire,” returned Olivier, “know this--I warrant me to show in the same
+space of time the selfsame prowess with one virgin that Herailes of
+Greece did with fifty. And the maid shall be none other but the Princess
+Helen, King Hugo’s daughter.”
+
+“Good and well,” agreed Charlemagne; “that will be to deal honestly and
+as a good Christian should. But you were in the wrong, my son, to drag
+the fifty virgins of King Hercules into your business, wherein, the
+Devil fly away with me else, I can see but one to be concerned.”
+
+“Sire,” answered Olivier mildly, “there is but one of a truth. But she
+shall win such satisfaction of me that, an I number the tokens of my
+love, you will to-morrow see fifty crosses scored on the wall, and that
+is _my_ brag.”
+
+The Count Olivier was yet speaking when lo! the column which bare the
+vault opened. The pillar was hollow and contrived in such sort that
+a man could lie hid therein at his ease to see and hear everything.
+Charlemagne and the twelve Counts had never a notion of this; so they
+were sore surprised to behold the King of Constantinople step forth. He
+was white with anger and his eyes flashed fire.
+
+He said in a terrible voice:
+
+“So this is how ye show your gratitude for the hospitality I offer you.
+Ye are ill-mannered guests. For a whole hour have ye been insulting me
+with your bragging wagers. Well, know this,--you, Sir Emperor, and ye,
+his knights; if to-morrow ye do not all of you make good your boasts, I
+will have your heads cut off.”
+
+Having said his say, he stepped back within the pillar, which shut to
+again closely behind him. For a while the twelve paladins were dumb
+with wonder and consternation. The Emperor was the first to break the
+silence.
+
+“Comrades,” he said, “‘tis true we have bragged too freely. Mayhap we
+have spoken things better unsaid. We have drunk overmuch wine, and have
+shown unwisdom. The chiefest fault is mine; I am your Emperor, and I
+gave you the bad example. I will devise with you to-morrow of the means
+whereby we may save us from this perilous pass; meantime, it behoves us
+to get to sleep. I wish you a good night. God have you in his keeping!”
+
+A moment later the Emperor and the twelve peers were snoring under their
+coverlets of silk and cloth of gold.
+
+They awoke on the morrow, their minds still distraught and deeming the
+thing was but a nightmare. But anon soldiers came to lead them to the
+Palace, that they might make good their brags before the King’s face.
+
+“Come,” cried the Emperor, “come; and let us pray God and His Holy
+Mother. By Our Lady’s help shall we easily make good our brags.”
+
+He marched in front with a more than human majesty of port. Arriving
+anon at the King’s Palace, Charlemagne, Naisme, Aimer, Huon, Doolin,
+Guillaume, Ogier, Bernard, Renaud, the two Gérards, and Roland fell on
+their knees and, joining their hands in prayer, made this supplication
+to the Holy Virgin:
+
+“Lady, which art in Paradise, look on us now in our extremity; for love
+of the Realm of the Lilies, which is thine own, protect the Emperor of
+France and his twelve peers, and give them the puissance to make good
+their brags.”
+
+Thereafter they rose up comforted and fulfilled of bright courage and
+gallant confidence, for they knew that Our Lady would answer their
+prayer.
+
+King Hugo, seated on a golden throne, accosted them, saying:
+
+“The hour is come to make good your brags. But an if ye fail so to do, I
+will have your heads cut off. Begone therefore, straightway, escorted by
+my men-at-arms, each one of you to the place meet for the doing of the
+fine things ye have insolently boasted ye will accomplish.”
+
+At this order they separated and went divers ways, each followed by a
+little troop of armed men. Whiles some returned to the hall where they
+had passed the night, others betook them to the gardens and orchards.
+Bernard de Brabant made for the river, Roland hied him to the ramparts,
+and all marched valiantly. Only Olivier and Charlemagne tarried in the
+Palace, waiting, the one for the knight that he had sworn to cleave in
+twain, the other for the maiden he was to wed.
+
+But in very brief while a fearful sound arose, awful as the last trump
+that shall proclaim to mankind the end of the world. It reached the
+Great Hall of the Palace, set the birds of ruby trembling on their
+emerald perches and shook King Hugo on his throne of gold.
+
+‘Twas a noise of walls crumbling into ruin and floods roaring, and
+high above the din blared out an ear-splitting trumpet blast. Meanwhile
+messengers had come hurrying in from all quarters of the city, and
+thrown themselves trembling at the King’s feet, bearing strange and
+terrible tidings.
+
+“Sire,” said one, “sixty fathoms’ length of the city walls is fallen in
+at one crash.”
+
+“Sire,” cried another, “the pillar which bare up your vaulted hall is
+broken down, and the dome thereof we have seen walking like a tortoise
+toward the sea.”
+
+“Sire,” faltered a third, “the river, with its ships and its fishes,
+is pouring through the streets, and will soon be beating against your
+Palace walls.”
+
+King Hugo, white with terror, muttered:
+
+“By my faith! these men are wizards.”
+
+“Well, Sir King,” Charlemagne addressed him with a smile on his lips,
+“the Knight I wait for is long of coming.”
+
+The King sent for him, and he came. He was a knight of stately stature
+and well armed. The good Emperor clave him in twain, as he had said.
+
+Now while these things were a-doing, Olivier thought to himself:
+
+“The intervention of Our Most Blessed Lady is plain to see in these
+marvels; and I am rejoiced to behold the manifest tokens she vouchsafes
+of her love for the Realm of France. Not in vain have the Emperor and
+his companions implored the succour of the Holy Virgin, Mother of God.
+Alas! _I_ shall pay for all the rest, and have my head cut off. For I
+cannot well ask the Virgin Mary to help me make good _my_ brag. ‘Tis
+an enterprise of a sort wherein ‘twould be indiscreet to crave the
+interference of Her who is the _Lily of Purity_, the _Tower of Ivory_,
+the _Guarded Door_ and the _Fenced Orchard-Close_. And, lacking aid from
+on high, I am sore afraid I may not do so much as I have said.”
+
+Thus ran Olivier’s thoughts, when King Hugo roughly accosted him with
+the words:
+
+“‘T is now your turn, Count, to fulfil your promise.”
+
+“Sire,” replied Olivier, “I am waiting with great impatience for the
+Princess your daughter. For you must needs do me the priceless grace of
+giving me her hand.”
+
+“That is but fair,” said King Hugo. “I will therefore bid her come to
+you and a chaplain with her for to celebrate the marriage.”
+
+At church, during the ceremony, Olivier reflected:
+
+“The maid is sweet and comely as ever a man could desire, and too fain
+am I to clip her in my arms to regret the brag I have made.”
+
+That evening, after supper, the Princess Helen and the Count Olivier
+were escorted by twelve ladies and twelve knights to a chamber, wherein
+the twain were left alone together.
+
+There they passed the night, and on the morrow guards came and led them
+both before King Hugo. He was on his throne, surrounded by his knights.
+Near by stood Charlemagne and the peers.
+
+“Well, Count Olivier,” demanded the King, “is your brag made good?”
+
+Olivier held his peace, and already was King Hugo rejoiced at heart
+to think his new son-in-law’s head must fall. For of all the brags and
+boasts, it was Olivier’s had angered him worst.
+
+“Answer,” he stormed. “Do you dare to tell me your brag is
+accomplished?”
+
+Thereupon the Princess Helen, blushing and smiling, spake with eyes
+downcast and in a faint voice, yet clear withal, and said,--“Yea!”
+
+Right glad were Charlemagne and the peers to hear the Princess say this
+word.
+
+“Well, well,” said Hugo, “these Frenchmen have God and the Devil
+o’ their side. It was fated I should cut off none of these knights’
+heads.... Come hither, son-in-law,”--and he stretched forth his hand to
+Olivier, who kissed it.
+
+The Emperor Charlemagne embraced the Princess and said to her:
+
+“Helen, I hold you for my daughter and my son’s wife. You will go along
+with us to France, and you will live at our Court.”
+
+Then, as his lips lay on the Princess’s cheek, he rounded softly in her
+ear:
+
+“You spake as a loving-hearted woman should. But tell me this in closest
+confidence,--Did you speak the truth?”
+
+She answered:
+
+“Sire, Olivier is a gallant man and a courteous. He was so full of
+pretty ways and dainty devices for to distract my mind, _I_ never
+thought of counting. Nor yet did _he_ keep score. Needs therefore must I
+hold him quit of his promise.”
+
+King Hugo made great rejoicings for his daughter’s nuptials. Thereafter
+Charlemagne and his twelve peers returned back to France, taking with
+them the Princess Helen.
+
+
+
+
+THE MIRACLE OF THE MAGPIE
+
+[Illustration: 034]
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+LENT, of the year 1429, presented a strange marvel of the Calendar, a
+conjunction that moved the admiration not only of the common crowd
+of the Faithful, but eke of Clerks, well learned in Arithmetic. For
+Astronomy, mother of the Calendar, was Christian in those days. In 1429
+Good Friday fell on the Feast of the Annunciation, so that one and the
+same day combined the commemoration of the two several mysteries which
+did commence and consummate the redemption of mankind, and in wondrous
+wise superimposed one on top of the other, Jesus conceived in the
+Virgin’s womb and Jesus dying on the Cross. This Friday, whereon the
+mystery of joy came so to coincide exactly with the mystery of sorrow,
+was named the “Grand Friday,” and was kept holy with solemn Feasts on
+Mount Anis, in the Church of the Annunciation. For many years, by gift
+of the Popes of Rome, the sanctuary of Mount Anis had possessed the
+privilege of the plenary indulgences of a great jubilee, and the
+late-deceased Bishop of Le Puy, Élie de Le-strange, had gotten Pope
+Martin to restore this _pardon_. It was a favour of the sort the Popes
+scarce ever refused, when asked in due and proper form.
+
+The _pardon_ of the Grand Friday drew a great crowd of pilgrims and
+traders to Le Puy-en-Velay. As early as mid February folk from distant
+lands set out thither in cold and wind and rain. For the most part
+they fared on foot, staff in hand. Whenever they could, these pilgrims
+travelled in companies, to the end they might not be robbed and held to
+ransom by the armed bands that infested the country parts, and by the
+barons who exacted toll on the confines of their lands. Inasmuch as
+the mountain districts were especially dangerous, they tarried in the
+neighbouring towns, Clermont, Issoire, Brioude, Lyons, Issingeaux,
+Alais, till they were gathered in a great host, and then went forth on
+their road in the snow. During Holy Week a strange multitude thronged
+the hilly streets of Le Puy,--pedlars from Languedoc and Provence and
+Catalonia, leading their mules laded with leather goods, oil, wool, webs
+of cloth, or wines of Spain in goat-skins; lords a-horseback and ladies
+in wains, artisans and traders pacing on their mules, with wife or
+daughter perched behind, Then came the poor pilgrim folk, limping along,
+halting and hobbling, stick in hand and bag on back, panting up the
+stiff climb. Last were the flocks of oxen and sheep being driven to the
+slaughterhouses.
+
+Now, leant against the wall of the Bishop’s palace, stood Florent
+Guillaume, looking as long and dry and black as an espalier vine in
+winter, and devoured pilgrims and cattle with his eyes.
+
+“Look,” he called to Marguerite the lace-maker, “look at yonder fine
+heads of bestial.”
+
+And Marguerite, squatted beside her bobbins, called back:
+
+“Yea, fine beasts, and fat withal!”
+
+Both the twain were very bare and scant of the goods of this world, and
+even then were feeling bitterly the pinch of hunger. And folk said
+it came of their own fault. At that very moment Pierre Grandmange the
+tripe-seller was saying as much, where he stood in his tripe-shop,
+pointing a finger at them. “‘T would be sinful,” he was crying, “to give
+an alms to such good-for-nothing varlets.” The tripe-seller would fain
+have been very charitable, but he feared to lose his soul by giving to
+evil-livers, and all the fat citizens of Le Puy had the selfsame
+scruples.
+
+To say truth, we must needs allow that, in the heyday of her hot youth,
+Marguerite the lace-maker had not matched St. Lucy in purity, St. Agatha
+in constancy, and St. Catherine in staidness. As for Florent Guillaume,
+he had been the best scrivener in the city. For years he had not had his
+equal for engrossing the Hours of Our Lady of Le Puy. But he had been
+over fond of merrymakings and junketings. Now his hand had lost its
+cunning, and his eye its clearness; he could no more trace the letters
+on the parchment with the needful steadiness of touch. Even so, he might
+have won his livelihood by teaching apprentices in his shop at the
+sign of the Image of Our Lady, under the choir buttresses of _The
+Annunciation_, for he was a fellow of good counsel and experience. But
+having had the ill fortune to borrow of Maître Jacquet Coquedouille the
+sum of six livres ten sous, and having paid him back at divers terms
+eighty livres two sous, he had found himself at the last to owe yet
+six livres two sous to the account of his creditor, which account was
+approved correct by the judges, for Jacquet Coquedouille was a sound
+arithmetician. This was the reason why the scrivenry of Florent
+Guillaume, under the choir buttresses of _The Annunciation_, was sold,
+on Saturday the fifth day of March, being the Feast of St. Theophilus,
+to the profit of Maître Jacquet Coquedouille. Since that time the poor
+penman had never a place to call his own. But by the good help of Jean
+Magne the bell-ringer and with the protection of Our Lady, whose Hours
+he had aforetime written, Florent Guillaume found a perch o’ nights in
+the steeple of the Cathedral.
+
+The scrivener and the lace-maker had much ado to live. Marguerite only
+kept body and soul together by chance and charity, for she had long lost
+her good looks and she hated the lace-making. They helped each other.
+Folks said so by way of reproach; they had been better advised to
+account it to them for righteousness. Florent Guillaume was a learned
+clerk. Well knowing every word of the history of the beautiful Black
+Virgin of Le Puy and the ordering of the ceremonies of the great
+_pardon_, he had conceived the notion he might serve as guide to the
+pilgrims, deeming he would surely light on someone compassionate enough
+to pay him a supper in guerdon of his fine stories. But the first folk
+he had offered his services to had bidden him begone because his ragged
+coat bespoke neither good guidance nor clerkly wit; so he had come back,
+downhearted and crestfallen, to the Bishop’s wall, where he had his
+bit of sunshine and his kind gossip Marguerite. “They reckon,” he said
+bitterly, “I am not learned enough to number them the relics and recount
+the miracles of Our Lady. Do they think my wits have escaped away
+through the holes in my gaberdine?”
+
+“‘Tis not the wits,” replied Marguerite, “escape by the holes in a
+body’s clothes, but the good natural heat. I am sore a-cold. And it
+is but too true that, man and woman, they judge us by our dress. The
+gallants would find me comely enough yet if I was accoutred like my Lady
+the Comtesse de Clermont.”
+
+Meanwhile, all the length of the street in front of them the pilgrims
+were elbowing and fighting their way to the Sanctuary, where they were
+to win pardon for their sins.
+
+“They will surely suffocate anon,” said Marguerite. “Twenty-two years
+agone, on the Grand Friday, two hundred persons died stifled under the
+porch of _The Annunciation_. God have their souls in keeping! Ay, those
+were the good times, when I was young!”
+
+“‘Tis very true indeed, that year you tell of, two hundred pilgrims
+crushed each other to death and departed from this world to the other.
+And next day was never a sign to be seen of aught untoward.”
+
+As he so spake, Florent Guillaume noted a pilgrim, a very fat man, who
+was not hurrying to get him assoiled with the same hot haste as the
+rest, but kept rolling his wide eyes to right and left with a look of
+distress and fear. Florent Guillaume stepped up to him and louted low.
+
+“Messire,” he accosted him, “one may see at a glance you are a sensible
+man and an experienced; you do not rush blindly to the _pardon_ like a
+sheep to the slaughter. The rest of the folk go helter-skelter thither,
+the nose of one under the tail of the other; but you follow a wiser
+fashion. Grant me the boon to be your guide, and you will not repent
+your bargain.”
+
+The pilgrim, who proved to be a gentleman of Limoges, answered in the
+patois of his countryside, that he had no use for a scurvy beggarman and
+could very well find his own way to _The Annunciation_ for to receive
+pardon for his faults. And therewith he set his face resolutely to the
+hill. But Florent Guillaume cast himself at his feet, and tearing at his
+hair:
+
+“Stop! stop! messire,” he cried; “i’ God’s name and by all the Saints,
+I warn you go no farther! ‘T will be your death, and you are not the man
+we could see perish without grief and dolour. A few steps more and you
+are a dead man! They are suffocating up yonder. Already full six hundred
+pilgrims have given up the ghost. And this is but a small beginning! Do
+you not know, messire, that twenty-two years agone, in the year of grace
+one thousand four hundred and seven, on the selfsame day and at the
+selfsame hour, under yonder porch, nine thousand six hundred and
+thirty-eight persons, without reckoning women and children, trampled
+each other underfoot and perished miserably? An you met the same fate,
+I should never smile again. To see you is to love you, messire; to know
+you is to conceive a sudden and overmastering desire to serve you.”
+
+The Limousin gentleman had halted in no small surprise and turned
+pale to hear such discourse and see the fellow tearing out his hair in
+fistfuls. In his terror he was for turning back the way he had come. But
+Florent Guillaume, on his knees in the mud, held him back by the skirt
+of his jacket.
+
+“Never go that way, messire! not that way. You might meet Jacquet
+Coquedouille, and you would be all in an instant turned into stone.
+Better encounter the basilisk than Jacquet Coquedouille. I will tell you
+what you must do if, like the wise and prudent man your face proclaims
+you to be, you would live long and make your peace with God. Hearken
+to me; I am a scholar, a Bachelor. To-day the holy relics will be borne
+through the streets and crossways of the city. You will find great
+solace in touching the carven shrines which enclose the cornelian cup
+wherefrom the child Jesus drank, one of the wine-jars of the Marriage at
+Cana, the cloth of the Last Supper, and the holy foreskin. If you take
+my advice, we will go wait for them, under cover, at a cookshop I wot
+of, before which they will pass without fail.”
+
+Then, in a wheedling voice, without loosing his hold of the pilgrim’s
+jacket, he pointed to the lace-maker and said:
+
+“Messire, you must give six sous to yonder worthy woman, that she may go
+buy us wine, for she knows where good liquor is to be gotten.”
+
+The Limousin gentleman, who was a simple soul after all, went where he
+was led, and Florent Guillaume supped on the leg and wing of a goose,
+the bones whereof he put in his pocket as a present for Madame Ysabeau,
+his fellow lodger in the timbers of the steeple,--to wit, Jean Magne the
+bell-ringer’s magpie.
+
+He found her that night perched on the beam where she was used to roost,
+beside the hole in the wall which was her storeroom wherein she hoarded
+walnuts and hazel-nuts, almonds and beech-nuts. She had awoke at the
+noise of his coming and flapped her wings; so he greeted her very
+courteously, addressing her in these obliging terms:
+
+“Magpie most pious, lady recluse, bird of the cloister, Margot of the
+Nunnery, sable-frocked Abbess, Church fowl of the lustrous coat, all
+hail!”
+
+Then offering her the goose bones nicely folded in a cabbage leaf:
+
+“Lady,” he said, “I bring you here the scraps remaining of a good dinner
+a gentleman from Limoges gave me. His countrymen are radish eaters; but
+I have taught this one to prefer an Anis goose to all the radishes in
+the Limousin.”
+
+Next day and the rest of the week Florent Guillaume,--for he could never
+light on his fat friend again nor yet any other good pilgrim with a
+well-lined travelling wallet,--fasted _a solis ortu usque ad occasum_,
+from rising sun to dewy eve. Marguerite the lace-maker did likewise.
+This was very meet and right, seeing the time was Holy Week.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+[Illustration: 046]
+
+Now on Holy Easter Day, Maître Jacquet Coquedouille, a notable citizen
+of the place, was peeping through a hole in a shutter of his house and
+watching the countless throng of pilgrims passing down the steep street.
+They were wending homewards, happy to have won their pardon; and the
+sight of them greatly magnified his veneration for the Black Virgin. For
+he deemed a lady so much sought after must needs be a puissant dame.
+He was old, and his only hope lay in God’s mercy. Yet was he but
+ill-assured of his eternal salvation, for he remembered how many a time
+he had ruthlessly fleeced the widow and the orphan. Moreover, he had
+robbed Florent Guillaume of his scrivenry at the sign of Our Lady. He
+was used to lend at high interest on sound security. Yet could no man
+infer he was a usurer, forasmuch as he was a Christian, and it was only
+the Jews practised usury,--the Jews, and, if you will, the Lombards and
+the men of Cahors.
+
+Now Jacquet Coquedouille went about the matter quite otherwise than the
+Jews. He never said, like Jacob, Ephraim, and Manasses, “I am lending
+you money.” What he did say was, “I am putting money into your business
+to help your trafficking,” a different thing altogether. For usury and
+lending upon interest were forbidden by the Church, but trafficking was
+lawful and permitted.
+
+And yet at the thought how he had brought many Christian folk to poverty
+and despair, Jacquet Coquedouille felt the pangs of remorse, as he
+pictured the sword of Divine Justice hanging over his head. So on this
+holy Easter Day he was fain to secure him against the Last Judgment
+by winning the protection of Our Lady. He thought to himself she would
+plead for him at the judgment seat of her divine Son, if only he gave
+her a handsome fee. So he went to the great chest where he kept his
+gold, and, after making sure the chamber door was shut fast, he opened
+the chest, which was full of angels, flor-ins, esterlings, nobles, gold
+crowns, gold ducats, and golden sous, and all the coins ever struck by
+Christian or Saracen. He extracted with a sigh of regret twelve
+deniers of fine gold and laid them on the table, which was crowded
+with balances, files, scissors, gold-scales, and account books. After
+shutting his chest again and triple-locking it, he numbered the deniers,
+renumbered them, gazed long at them with looks of affection, and
+addressed them in words so soft and sweet, so affable and ingratiating,
+so gentle and courteous, it seemed rather the music of the spheres than
+human speech.
+
+“Oh, little angels!” sighed the good old man. “Oh, my dear little
+angels! Oh, my pretty gold sheep, with the fine, precious fleece!”
+
+And taking the pieces between his fingers with as much reverence as it
+had been the body of Our Lord, he put them in the balance and made sure
+they were of the full weight,--or very near, albeit a trifle clipped
+already by the Lombards and the Jews, through whose hands they had
+passed. After which he spoke to them yet more graciously than before:
+
+“Oh, my pretty sheep, my sweet, pretty lambs, there, let me shear you!
+‘T will do you no hurt at all.”
+
+Then, seizing his great scissors, he clipped off shreds of gold here and
+there, as he was used to clip every piece of money before parting with
+it. And he gathered the clippings carefully in a wooden bowl that was
+already half full of bits of gold. He was ready to give twelve angels
+to the Holy Virgin; but he felt no way bound to depart from his use and
+wont. This done, he went to the aumry where his pledges lay, and drew
+out a little blue purse, broidered with silver, which a dame of the
+petty trading sort had left with him in her distress. He remembered that
+blue and white are Our Lady’s colours.
+
+That day and the next he did nothing further. But in the night, betwixt
+Monday and Tuesday, he had cramps, and dreamt the devils were pulling
+him by the feet. This he took for a warning of God and our Blessed Lady,
+tarried within doors pondering the matter all the day, and then toward
+evening went to lay his offering at the feet of the Black Virgin.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+[Illustration: 051]
+
+THAT same day, as night was closing in, Florent Guillaume thought
+ruefully of returning to his airy bedchamber. He had fasted the livelong
+day, sore against the grain, holding that a good Christian ought not to
+fast in the glorious Resurrection week. Before mounting to his bed in
+the steeple, he went to offer a pious prayer to the Lady of Le Puy. She
+was still there in the midst of the Church at the spot where she had
+offered herself on the Grand Friday to the veneration of the Faithful.
+Small and black, crowned with jewels, in a mantle blazing with gold and
+precious stones and pearls, she held on her knees the Child Jesus, who
+was as black as his mother and passed his head through a slit in her
+cloak. It was the miraculous image which St. Louis had received as a
+gift from the Soldan of Egypt and had carried with his own hands to the
+Church of Anis.
+
+All the pilgrims were gone now, and the Church was dark and empty. The
+last offerings of the Faithful were spread at the feet of the beautiful
+Black Virgin, displayed on a table lit with wax tapers. You could see
+amongst the rest a head, hearts, hands, feet, a woman’s breasts of
+silver, a little boat of gold, eggs, loaves, Aurillac cheeses, and in
+a bowl full of deniers, sous, and groats, a little blue purse broidered
+with silver. Over against the table, in a huge chair, dozed the priest
+who guarded the offerings.
+
+Florent Guillaume dropped on his knees before the holy image, and said
+over to himself this pious prayer:
+
+“Lady, an it be true that the holy prophet Jeremias, having beheld thee
+with the eyes of faith ere ever thou wast conceived, carved with his
+hands out of cedar-wood in thy likeness the holy image before which I
+am at this present kneeling; an it be true that afterward King Ptolemy,
+instructed of the miracles wrought by this same holy image, took it
+from the Jewish priests, bare it to Egypt and set it up, covered
+with precious stones, in the temple of the idols; an it be true that
+Nebuchadnezzar, conqueror of the Egyptians, seized it in his turn and
+had it laid amongst his treasure, where the Saracens found it when they
+captured Babylon; an it be true that the Soldan loved it in his heart
+above all things, and was used to adore it at the least once every day;
+an it be true that the said Soldan had never given it to our saintly
+King Louis, but that his wife, who was a Saracen dame, yet prized
+chivalry and knightly prowess, resolved to make it a gift to the best
+knight and worthiest champion of all Christendom; in a word, an this
+image be miraculous, as I do firmly credit, have it do a miracle, Lady,
+in favour of the poor clerk who hath many a time writ thy praises on
+the vellum of the service books. He hath sanctified his sinful hands by
+engrossing in a fair writing, with great red capitals at the beginning
+of each clause, ‘the fifteen joys of Our Lady,’ in the vulgar tongue
+and in rhyme, for the comforting of the afflicted. ‘Tis pious work this.
+Think of it, Lady, and heed not his sins. Give him somewhat to eat.
+‘Twill both do me much profit, and bring thee great honour, for the
+miracle will appear no mean one to all them that know the world. Thou
+hast this day gotten gold, eggs, cheeses, and a little blue purse
+broidered with silver. Lady, I grudge thee none of the gifts that have
+been made thee. Thou dost well deserve them, yea, and more than they. I
+do not so much as ask thee to make them give me back what a thief hath
+robbed me of, a thief by name Jacquet Coque-douille, one of the most
+honoured citizens of this thy town of Le Puy. No, all I ask of thee
+is not to let me die of hunger. And if thou grant me this boon, I will
+indite a full and fair history of thine holy image here present.”
+
+So prayed Florent Guillaume. The soft murmur of his petition was
+answered only by the deep-chested, placid snore of the sleeping priest.
+The poor scrivener rose from his knees, stepped noiselessly adown the
+nave, for he was grown so light his footfall could scarce be heard, and,
+fasting as he was, climbed the tower stairs that had as many steps as
+there are days in the year.
+
+Meanwhile Madame Ysabeau, slipping under the cloister gate, entered
+her Church. The pilgrims had driven her away, for she loved peace and
+solitude. The bird came forward cautiously, putting one foot slowly
+in front of the other, then stopped and craned her neck, casting a
+suspicious look to right and left. Then giving a graceful little jump
+and shaking out her tail feathers, she hopped up to the Black Madonna.
+Then she stood stock still a few moments, scrutinising the sleeping
+watchman and questioning the darkness and silence with eyes and ears
+alert. At last with a mighty flutter of wings she alighted on the table
+of offerings.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+[Illustration: 056]
+
+MEANWHILE Florent Guillaume had settled himself for the night in the
+steeple. It was bitter cold. The wind came blowing in through the
+luffer-boards and fluted and organed among the bells to rejoice the
+heart of the cats and owls. And this was not the only objection to
+the lodging. Since the earthquake of 1427, which had shaken the whole
+church, the spire was dropping to pieces stone by stone and threatened
+to collapse altogether in the first storm. Our Lady suffered this
+dilapidation because of the people’s sins.
+
+Presently Florent Guillaume fell asleep, which is a token of his
+innocency of heart. What dreams he dreamt is clean forgot, except that
+he had a vision in his sleep of a lady of consummate beauty who came and
+kissed him on the mouth. But when his lips opened to return her salute,
+he swallowed two or three woodlice that were walking over his face and
+by their tickling had deluded his sleeping senses into the agreeable
+fancy. He awoke, and hearing a noise of wings beating above his head, he
+thought it was a devil, as was very natural for him to opine, seeing how
+the evil spirits flock in countless swarms to torment mankind, and above
+all at night time. But the moon just then breaking through the clouds,
+he recognised Madame Ysabeau and saw she was busy with her beak pushing
+into a crack in the wall that served her for storehouse a blue purse
+broidered with silver. He let her do as she list; but when she had left
+her hoard, he clambered onto a beam, took the purse, opened it, and saw
+it contained twelve good gold deniers, which he clapped in his belt,
+giving thanks to the incomparable Black Virgin of Le Puy. For he was a
+clerk and versed in the Scriptures, and he remembered how the Lord fed
+his prophet Elias by a raven; whence he inferred that the Holy Mother
+of God had sent by a magpie twelve deniers to her poor penman, Florent
+Guillaume.
+
+On the morrow Florent and Marguerite the lace-maker ate a dish of
+tripe,--a treat they had craved for many a long year.
+
+So ends the Miracle of the Magpie. May he who tells the tale live, as he
+would fain live, in good and gentle peace, and all good hap befall such
+folk as shall read the same.
+
+
+
+
+BROTHER JOCONDE
+
+[Illustration: 062]
+
+THE Parisians were far from loving the English and found it hard to put
+up with them. When, after the obsequies of the late King Charles VI, the
+Duke of Bedford had the sword of the King of France borne before him,
+the people murmured. But what cannot be cured must be endured. Besides,
+though the capital hated the English, it loved the Burgundians. What
+more natural for citizen folk, and especially for money-changers and
+traders, than to admire Duke Philip, a prince of seemly presence and the
+richest nobleman in Christendom. As for the “little King of Bourges,”
+ a sorry-looking mortal and very poor, strongly suspected, moreover, of
+foul murder at the Bridge of Montereau, what had he about him to please
+folk withal? Scorn was the sentiment felt for him, and horror and
+loathing for his partisans. For ten years now had these been riding and
+raiding around the walls, pillaging and holding to ransom. No doubt the
+English and Burgun-dians did much the same; when, in the month of
+August, 1423, Duke Philip came to Paris, his men-at-arms had ravaged all
+the country about. And they were friends and allies of course; but after
+all they only came and went. The Armagnacs, on the contrary, were always
+in the field, stealing whatever they could lay their hands upon, firing
+farmsteads and churches, killing women and children, deflowering virgins
+and nuns, hanging men by the thumbs. In 1420 they threw themselves like
+devils let loose on the village of Champigny and burnt up altogether
+oats, wheat, lambs, cows, oxen, children, and women. They did the like
+and worse at Croissy. A very great clerk of the University declared they
+wrought all wickedness that can be wrought and conceived, and that more
+Christian folk had been martyred at their hands than ever Maximian or
+Diocletian did to death.
+
+At the news that these accursed Armagnacs were at the gates of Compiègne
+and occupying the neighbouring castles and their lands, the folk of
+Paris were sore afraid. They believed that the Dauphin’s soldiers had
+sworn, if they entered Paris, to slay whomsoever they found there. They
+affirmed openly that Messire Charles de Valois had given up to his men’s
+mercy town and townsmen, great and small, of every rank and condition,
+men and women, and that he proposed to drive the plough over the site of
+the city. The inhabitants mostly believed the tale; so they set the St.
+Andrew’s cross on their coats, in token that they were of the party of
+the Burgundians. Their hatred was doubled, and their fears with it, when
+they learned that Brother Richard and the Maid Jeanne were at the head
+of King Charles’ army. They knew nothing of the Maid save from the
+rumour of the victories she was reported to have won at Orleans. But
+they deemed she had vanquished the English by the Devil’s aid, by means
+of spells and enchantments.
+
+The Masters of the University all said: “A creature in shape of a woman
+is with the Armagnacs. What it is, God knows!”
+
+For Brother Richard, they knew him well. He had come to Paris before,
+and they had hearkened reverently to his sermons. He had even persuaded
+them to renounce those games of chance for which they had been used
+to forget meat and drink and the services of the Church. Now, at the
+tidings that Brother Richard was on foray with the Armagnacs and
+winning over for them by his well-hung tongue good towns like Troyes in
+Champagne, they called down on him the curse of God and his Saints. They
+tore out of their hats the leaden medals inscribed with the holy name
+of Jesus, which the good Brother had given them, and to show in what
+detestation they held him, resumed dice, bowls, draughts, and all other
+games they had renounced at his exhortation.
+
+The city was strongly fortified, for in the days when King Jean was a
+prisoner of the English, the citizens of Paris, seeing the enemy in the
+heart of the Kingdom, had feared a siege and had hastened to put the
+walls in a state of defence. They had surrounded the place with moats
+and counter-moats. The moats, on the left bank of the river, were dug
+at the foot of the walls forming the old circle of fortification. But
+on the right bank there were faubourgs, both extensive and well built,
+outside the walls and almost touching them. The new moats enclosed a
+part of these, and the Dauphin Charles, King Jean’s son, afterward had
+a wall built along the line of them. Nevertheless there was some feeling
+of insecurity, for the Cathedral Chapter took measures to put the relics
+and treasure out of reach of the enemy.
+
+Meantime, on Sunday, August 21st, a Cordelier, by name Brother Joconde,
+entered the town. He had made pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and was said,
+like Brother Vincent Ferrier and Brother Bernardino of Sienna, to
+have enjoyed by the abounding grace of God many revelations anent the
+forthcoming end of the world. He gave out that he would preach his first
+sermon to the Parisians on Tuesday following, St. Bartholomew’s day, in
+the Cloister of “The Innocents.” On the eve of that day more than six
+thousand persons spent the night in the Cloister. At the foot of the
+platform wherefrom he was to preach, the women sat squatted on their
+heels, and amongst them Guillaumette Dyonis, who was blind from birth.
+She was the child of an artisan who had been killed by the Burgundians
+in the woods of Boulogne-la-Grande. Her mother had been carried off by
+a Burgundian man-at-arms, and none knew what had become of her.
+Guillaumette was fifteen or sixteen years of age. She lived at “The
+Innocents” on what she made by spinning wool, at which trade there was
+not a better worker to be found in all the town. She went and came in
+the streets without the help of any and knew everything as well as those
+who can see. As she lived a good and holy life and fasted often, she
+was favoured with visions. In especial she had been accorded notable
+revelations by the Apostle St. John concerning the troubles that then
+beset the Kingdom of France. Now, as she was reciting her Hours at the
+foot of the platform, under the great Dance of Death, a woman called
+Simone la Bardine, who was seated on the ground beside her, asked her if
+the good Brother was not coming soon.
+
+Guillaumette Dyonis could not see the tailed gown of green and the
+horned wimple which Simone la Bardine wore; yet she knew by instinct the
+woman was no honest dame. She felt a natural aversion for light women
+and the sort the soldiers called their sweethearts or “doxies,” but it
+had been revealed to her that we should hold such in great pity and
+deal compassionately with them. Wherefore she answered Simone la Bardine
+gently:
+
+“The good Father will come soon, please God. And we shall have no reason
+to regret having waited, for he is eloquent in prayer and his sermons
+turn the folk to devotion more even than those of Brother Richard, who
+spake in these Cloisters in the springtime. He knows more than any man
+living of the times that shall come and shall show us strange portents.
+I trow we shall gain great profit of his words.”
+
+“God grant it,” sighed Simone la Bardine. “But are you not very sorry to
+be blind?”
+
+“No. I wait to see God.”
+
+Simone la Bardine made her mantle into a cushion, and said:
+
+“Life is all ups and downs. I live at the top of the Rue Saint-Antoine.
+‘T is the finest part of the city and the merriest, for the best
+hostelries are in the Place Baudet and thereabout. Before the Wars there
+was aye abundance there of hot cakes and fresh herrings and Auxerre
+wine by the tun. With the English famine entered the town. Now is there
+neither bread in the bin nor firewood on the hearth. One after other the
+Armagnacs and the Burgundians have drunk up all the wine, and there is
+naught left in the cellar but a little thin, sour cider and sloe-juice.
+Knights armed for the tourney, pilgrims with their cockleshells
+and staves, traders with their chests full of knives and little
+service-books, where are they gone? They never come now to seek a
+lodging and good living in the Rue Saint-Antoine. But the wolves quit
+covert in the forests and prowl of nights in the faubourgs and devour
+little children.”
+
+“Put your trust in God,” Guillaumette Dyonis answered her.
+
+“Amen!” returned Simone la Bardine. “But I have not told you the worst.
+On the Thursday before St, John’s day, at three after midnight, two
+Englishmen came knocking at my door. Not knowing but they had come to
+rob me or break up my chests and coffers out of mischief, or do some
+other devilment, I shouted to them from my window to go their ways, that
+I did not know them and I was not going to open the door. But they only
+hammered louder, swearing they were going to break in the door and
+come in and cut off my nose and ears. To stop their uproar I emptied a
+crockful of water on their heads; but the crock slipped out of my hands
+and broke on the back of one fellow’s neck so unchancily that it felled
+him. His comrade called up the watch. I was haled to the Châtelet and
+clapped in prison, where I was very hardly handled, and only escaped by
+paying a heavy sum of money. I found my house pillaged from cellar to
+attic. From that day my affairs have gone from bad to worse, and I have
+naught in the wide world but the clothes I stand up in. In very despair
+I have come hither to hear the good Father, who they say abounds in
+comforting words.”
+
+“God, who loves you,” said Guillaumctte Dyonis, “has moved you in all
+this.”
+
+Then a great silence fell on the crowd as Brother Joconde appeared. His
+eyes flashed like lightning. When he opened his lips, his voice pealed
+out like thunder.
+
+“I have come from Jerusalem,” he began; “and to prove it, see in this
+wallet are roses of Jericho, a branch of the olive under which Our
+Saviour sweated drops of blood, and a handful of the earth of Calvary.”
+
+He gave a long narrative of his pilgrimage. And he added:
+
+“In Syria I met Jews travelling in companies; I asked them whither they
+were bound, and they told me: ‘We are flocking in crowds to Babylon,
+because in very deed the Messiah is born among men, and will restore
+us our heritage, and stablish us again in the Land of Promise.’ So said
+these Jews of Syria. Now the Scriptures teach us that he they call the
+Messiah is, in truth, Antichrist, of whom it is said he must be born at
+Babylon, chief city of the kingdom of Persia, be reared at Bethsaida,
+and dwell in his youth at Chorazin. That is why Our Lord said: ‘Woe unto
+thee, Chor-azin! Woe unto thee, Bethsaida!’
+
+“The year that is at hand,” went on Brother Joconde, “will bring the
+greatest marvels that have ever been beheld.
+
+“The times are at hand. He is born, the man of sin, the son of
+perdition, the wicked man, the beast from out the abyss, the abomination
+of desolation. He comes from the tribe of Dan, of which it is written:
+‘Dan shall be a serpent in the way, an adder in the path.’
+
+“Brethren, soon shall ye see returning to this earth the Prophets Elias
+and Enoch, Moses, Jeremias, and St. John Evangelist. And lo! the day of
+wrath is dawning, the day which ‘solvet sæclum in favilla, teste David
+et Sibylla.’ Wherefore now is the time to repent and do penance and
+renounce the false delights of this world.”
+
+At the good Brother’s word bosoms heaved with remorse and deep-drawn
+sighs were heard. Not a few, both men and women, were near fainting when
+the preacher cried:
+
+“I read in your souls that ye keep mandrakes at home, which will bring
+you to hell fire.”
+
+It was true. Many Parisians paid heavily to the old witch-wives, who
+profess unholy knowledge, for to buy mandrakes, and were used to keep
+them treasured in a chest. These magic roots have the likeness of
+a little man, hideously ugly and misshapen in a weird and diabolic
+fashion. They would dress them out magnificently, in fine linen and
+silks, and the mannikins brought them riches, chief source of all the
+ills of this world.
+
+Next Brother Joconde thundered against women’s extravagant attire.
+
+“Leave off,” he bade them, “your horns and your tails! Are ye not shamed
+so to bedizen yourselves like she-devils? Light bonfires, I say, in the
+public streets, and cast therein and burn your damnable head-gear,--pads
+and rolls, erections of leather and whalebone, wherewith ye stiffen out
+the front of your hoods.”
+
+He ended by exhorting them with so much zeal and loving-kindness not to
+lose their souls, but put themselves in the grace of God, that all who
+heard him wept hot tears. And Simone la Bardine wept more abundantly
+than any.
+
+When, finally, coming down from his platform, Brother Joconde crossed
+the cloister and graveyard, the people fell on their knees as he went
+by. The women gave him their little ones to bless, or besought him to
+touch medals and rosaries for them. Some plucked threads from his gown,
+thinking to get healing by putting them, like relics of the Saints, on
+the places where they were afflicted. Guillaumette Dyonis followed the
+good Father as easily as if she saw him with her bodily eyes. Simone
+la Bardine trailed behind her, sobbing. She had pulled off her horned
+wimple and tied a kerchief round her head.
+
+Thus they marched, the three of them, along the streets, where men and
+women, who had been at the preaching, were kindling fires before their
+doors to cast therein head-gear and mandrake roots. But on reaching
+the river bank, Brother Joconde sat down under an elm, and Guillaumette
+Dyonis came up to him and said:
+
+“Father, it hath been revealed to me in vision that you are come to this
+Kingdom to restore the same to good peace and concord. I have had myself
+many revelations concerning the peace of the Kingdom.”
+
+Next Simone la Bardine took up her parable and said:
+
+“Brother Joconde, I lived once in a fine house in the Rue Saint-Antoine,
+near by the Place Baudet, which is the fairest quarter of Paris, and the
+wealthiest. I had a matted chamber, mantles of cloth of gold, and
+gowns trimmed with miniver, enough to fill three great chests; I had a
+feather-bed, a dresser loaded with pewter, and a little book wherein you
+saw in pictures the story of Our Lord. But since the wars and pillagings
+that devastate the Kingdom, I have lost everything. The gallants never
+come now to take their pleasure in the Place Baudet. But the wolves come
+there instead to devour little children. The Burgundians and the English
+are as bad as the Armagnacs. Would you have me go with you?”
+
+The Monk gazed a while in silence at the two women; and deeming it
+was Jesus Christ himself had led them to him, he received them for his
+Penitents, and thereafter the twain followed him wherever he went. Every
+day he preached to the people, now at “The Innocents,” now at the Porte
+Saint-Honoré, or at the Halles. But he never went outside the Walls, by
+reason of the Armagnacs, who were raiding all the countryside round the
+city.
+
+His words led many souls to a better life; and at the fourth sermon he
+preached in Paris, he received for Penitents Jeannette Chastenier, wife
+of a merchant-draper on the Pont-au-Change, and another woman, by name
+Opportune Jadoin, who nursed the sick at the Hôtel-Dieu and was no
+longer very young. He admitted likewise into his company a gardener of
+the Ville-l’Evêque, a lad of about sixteen, Robin by name, who bare on
+his feet and hands the stigmata of the crucifixion, and was shaken by
+a sore trembling of all his limbs. He often saw the Holy Virgin in
+corporeal presence, and heard her speech and savoured the divine odours
+of her glorified body. She had entrusted him with a message for the
+Regent of England and for the Duke of Burgundy. Meantime the army of
+Messire Charles of Valois entered the town of Saint-Denis. And no man
+durst from that day go out of Paris to harvest the fields or gather
+aught from the market-gardens which covered the plain to the northward
+of the city. Instantly famine prices ruled, and the inhabitants began to
+suffer cruelly. And they were further exasperated because they believed
+themselves betrayed. It was openly said that certain folk, and in
+especial certain men of Religion, suborned by Messire Charles of Valois,
+were watching for the best time to stir up trouble and bring in the
+enemy in an hour of panic and confusion. Haunted by this fear, which
+was not perhaps altogether baseless, the citizens who kept guard of the
+ramparts showed scant mercy to any men of evil looks whom they found
+loitering near the Gates and whom they might suspect, on the most
+trivial evidence, of making signals to the Armagnacs. On Thursday,
+September 8th, the good people of Paris awoke without any fear of being
+attacked before the next day. This day, September 8th, was the Feast of
+the Nativity of the Virgin, and it was an established custom with the
+two factions that tore the Kingdom in twain to keep holy the feast-days
+of Our Lord and His Blessed Mother.
+
+Yet at this holy season the Parisians, on coming forth from Mass, learnt
+that, notwithstanding the sacredness of the day, the Armagnacs had
+appeared before the Porte Saint-Honoré and had set fire to the outwork
+which defended its approach. It was further reported that Messire
+Charles of Valois was posted, for the time being, along with Brother
+Richard and the Maid Jeanne, in the Hog Market without the Walls. The
+same afternoon, through all the city, on either side the bridges, shouts
+of fear arose--“Save yourselves! fly, the enemy are come in, all is
+lost!” The cries were heard even inside the Churches, where pious folks
+were singing Vespers. These came flying out in terror and ran to their
+houses to take refuge behind barred doors.
+
+Now the men who went about raising these cries were emissaries of
+Messire Charles of Valois. In fact, at that very time, the Company of
+the Maréchal de Rais was making assault on the Walls near by the Porte
+Saint-Honoré. The Armagnacs had brought up in carts great bundles of
+faggots and wattled hurdles to fill up the moats, and above six hundred
+scaling-ladders for storming the ramparts. The Maid Jeanne, who was
+nowise as the Burgundians believed, but lived a pious life and guarded
+her chastity, set foot to ground, and was the first down into a dry
+moat, which for that cause was easy to cross. But thereupon they found
+themselves exposed to the arrows and cross-bolts that rained down thick
+and fast from the Walls. Then they had in front of them a second moat.
+Wherefore were the Maid and her men-at-arms sore hampered. Jeanne
+sounded the great moat with her lance and shouted to throw in faggots.
+
+Inside the town could be heard the roar of cannon, and all along the
+streets the citizens were running, half accoutred, to their posts on
+the ramparts, knocking over as they went the brats playing about in the
+gutters. The chains were drawn across the roadways, and barricades were
+begun. Tribulation and tumult filled all the place.
+
+But neither the Brother Joconde nor his Penitents saw aught of it,
+forasmuch as they took heed only of eternal things, and deemed the vain
+agitation of men to be but a foolish game. They marched through the
+streets singing the “Veni creator spiritus,” and crying out: “Pray, for
+the times are at hand.”
+
+Thus they made their way in good array down the Rue Saint-Antoine, which
+was densely crowded with men, women, and children. Coming presently to
+the Place Baudet, Brother Joconde pushed through the throng and mounted
+a great stone that stood at the door of the Hôtel de la Truie, which
+Messire Florimont Lecocq, the master of the house, used to help him
+mount his mule. This Messire Florimont Lecocq was Sergeant at the
+Châtelet Prison and a partisan of the English.
+
+So, standing on the great stone, Brother Joconde preached to the people.
+“Sow ye,” he cried, “sow ye, good folk; sow abundantly of beans, for He
+which is to come will come quickly.”
+
+By the beans they were to sow, the good Brother signified the charitable
+works it behoved them accomplish before Our Lord should come, in the
+clouds of heaven, to judge both the quick and the dead. And it was
+urgent to sow these works without tarrying, for that the harvest would
+be soon. Guillaumette Dyonis, Simone la Bardine, Jeanne Chastenier,
+Opportune Jadoin, and Robin the gardener, stood in a ring about the
+Preacher, and cried “Amen!”
+
+But the citizens, who thronged behind in a great crowd, pricked up their
+ears and bent their brows, thinking the Monk was foretelling the entry
+of Charles of Valois into his good town of Paris, over which he was
+fain--at any rate, so they believed--to drive the ploughshare.
+
+Meanwhile the good Brother went on with his soul-awakening discourse.
+
+“Oh! ye men of Paris, ye are worse than the Pagans of old Rome.”
+
+Just then the mangonels firing from the Porte Saint-Denis mingled their
+thunder with Brother Joconde’s voice and shook the bystanders’
+hearts within them. Some one in the press cried out, “Death! death to
+traitors!” All this time Messire Florimont Lecocq was within-doors doing
+on his armour. He now came forth at the noise, before he had buckled his
+leg-pieces. Seeing the Monk standing on his mounting-block, he asked:
+“What is this good Father saying?” And a chorus of voices answered:
+“Telling us that Messire Charles of Valois is going to enter the city,”
+ while others cried:
+
+“He is against the folk of Paris,” and others again:
+
+“He would fain cozen and betray us, like the Brother Richard, who at
+this very time is riding with our enemies.”
+
+But Brother Joconde made answer: “There be neither Armagnacs, nor
+Burgundians, nor French, nor English, but only the sons of light and
+the sons of darkness. Ye are lewd fellows and your women wantons.”
+
+“Go to, thou apostate! thou sorcerer! thou traitor!” yelled Messire
+Florimont Lecocq,--and lugging out his sword, he plunged it in the good
+Brother’s bosom.
+
+With pale lips and faltering voice, the man of God still managed to say:
+
+“Pray, fast, do penance, and ye shall be forgiven, my brethren...”
+
+Then his voice choked, as the blood poured from his mouth, and he fell
+on the stones. Two knights, Sir John Stewart and Sir George Morris,
+threw themselves on the body and pierced it with more than a hundred
+dagger thrusts, vociferating:
+
+“Long life to King Henry! Long life to my Lord the Duke of Bedford! Down
+with the Dauphin! Down with the mad Maid of the Armagnacs! Up, up! To
+the Gates, to the Gates!”
+
+Therewith they ran to the Walls, drawing off with them Messire Florimont
+and the crowd of citizens.
+
+Meanwhile the holy women and the gardener tarried about the bleeding
+corse. Simone la Bardine lay prostrate on the ground, kissing the good
+Brother’s feet and wiping away his blood with her unbound hair.
+
+But Guillaumette Dyonis, standing up with her arms lifted to heaven,
+cried in a voice as clear as the sound of bells:
+
+“My sisters, Jeanne, Opportune and Simone, and you, my brother, Robin
+the gardener, let us be going, for the times are at hand. The soul
+of this good Father holds me by the hand, and it will lead me aright.
+Wherefore ye must follow along with me. And we will say to those who are
+making cruel war upon each other: ‘Kiss and make peace. And if ye must
+needs use your arms, take up the cross and go forth all together to
+fight the Saracens.’ Come! my sisters and my brother.”
+
+Jeanne Chastenier picked up the shaft of an arrow from the ground, brake
+it, and made a cross, which she laid on good Brother Joconde’s bosom.
+Then these holy women, and the gardener with them, followed after
+Guillaumette Dyonis, who led them by the streets and squares and alleys
+as if her eyes had seen the light of day. They reached the foot of the
+rampart, and by the stairway of a tower that was left unguarded, they
+mounted onto the curtain-wall. There had been no time to furnish it with
+its hoardings of wood; so they went along in the open. They proceeded
+toward the Porte Saint-Honoré, by this time enveloped in clouds of dust
+and smoke. It was there the Maréchal de Rais and his men were making
+assault. Their bolts flew thick and fast against the ramparts, and they
+were hurling faggots into the water of the great moat. On the hog’s-back
+parting the great moat from the little, stood the Maid, crying: “Yield,
+yield you to the King of France.” The English had abandoned the top
+of the wall in terror, leaving their dead and wounded behind them.
+Guillaumette Dyonis walked first, her head high and her left arm
+extended before her, while with her right hand she kept signing herself
+reverently. Simone la Bardine followed close on her heels. Then came
+Jeanne Chastenier and Opportune Jadoin. Robin the gardener brought
+up the rear, his body all shaking with his infirmity, and showing
+the divine stigmata on his hands. They were singing canticles as they
+walked.
+
+And Guillaumette, turning now toward the city and now toward the open
+country, cried: “Brethren, embrace ye one another. Live in peace
+and harmony. Take the iron of your spearheads and forge it into
+ploughshares!”
+
+Scarce had she spoken ere a shower of arrows, some from the parapet-way
+where a Company of Citizens was defiling, some from the hog’s-back
+where the Armagnac men-at-arms were massed, flew in her direction, and
+therewith a storm of insults:
+
+“Wanton! traitress! witch!”
+
+Meanwhile she went on exhorting the two sides to stablish the Kingdom
+of Jesus Christ upon earth and to live in innocency and brotherly love,
+till a cross-bow bolt struck her in the throat and she staggered and
+fell backward.
+
+It was which could laugh the louder at this, Armagnacs or Burgundians.
+Drawing her gown over her feet, she lay still and made no other stir,
+but gave up her soul, sighing the name of Jesus. Her eyes, which
+remained open, glowed like two opals.
+
+Short while after the death of Guillaumette Dyonis the men of Paris
+returned in great force to man their Wall, and defended their city right
+valorously. Jeanne the Maid was wounded by a cross-bow bolt in the leg,
+and Messire Charles of Valois’ men-at-arms fell back upon the Chapelle
+Saint-Denis. What became of Jeanne Chastenier and Opportune Jadoin no
+one knows. They were never heard of more. Simone la Bardine and Robin
+the gardener were taken the same day by the citizens on guard at the
+Walls and handed over to the Bishop’s officer, who duly brought them
+before the Courts. The Church adjudged Simone heretic, and condemned
+her for salutary penance to the bread of suffering and the water of
+affliction. Robin was convicted of sorcery, and, persevering in his
+error, was burned alive in the Place du Parvis.
+
+
+
+
+FIVE FAIR LADIES OF PICARDY, OF POITOU, OF TOURAINE, OF LYONS, AND OF PARIS
+
+[Illustration: 090]
+
+ONE day the Capuchin, Brother Jean Chavaray, meeting my good master the
+Abbé Coign-ard in the cloister of “The Innocents,” fell into talk
+with him of the Brother Olivier Maillard, whose sermons, edifying and
+macaronic, he had lately been reading.
+
+“There are good bits to be found in these sermons,” said the Capuchin,
+“notably the tale of the five ladies and the go-between...” You will
+readily understand that Brother Olivier, who lived in the reign of
+Louis XI and whose language smacks of the coarseness of that age, uses a
+different word. But our century demands a certain politeness and decency
+in speech; wherefore I employ the term I have, to wit, _go-between_.
+
+“You mean,” replied my good master, “to signify by the expression a
+woman who is so obliging as to play intermediary in matters of love
+and love-making. The Latin has several names for her,--as _lena,
+conciliatrix_, also _internuntia libidinum_, ambassadress of naughty
+desires. These prudish dames perform the best of services; but
+seeing they busy themselves therein for money, we distrust their
+disinterestedness. Call yours a _procuress_, good Father, and have done
+with it; ‘t is a word in common use, and has a not unseemly sound.”
+
+“So I will, Monsieur l’Abbé,” assented Brother Jean Chavaray. “Only
+don’t say _mine_, I pray, but the Brother Olivier’s. A procuress then,
+who lived on the Pont des Tournelles, was visited one day by a knight,
+who put a ring into her hands. ‘It is of fine gold,’ he told her, ‘and
+hath a balass ruby mounted in the bezel. An you know any dames of good
+estate, go say to the most comely of them that the ring is hers if she
+is willing to come to see me and do at my pleasure.’
+
+“The procuress knew, by having seen them at Mass, five ladies of an
+excellent beauty,--natives the first of Picardy, the second of Poitou,
+the third of Touraine, another from the good city of Lyons, and the last
+a Parisian, all dwelling in the Cite or its near neighbourhood.
+
+“She knocked first at the Picard lady’s door. A maid opened, but her
+mistress refused to have one word to say to her visitor. She was an
+honest woman.
+
+“The procuress went next to see the lady of Poitiers and solicit her
+favours for the gallant knight. This dame answered her:
+
+“‘Prithee, go tell him who sent you that he is come to the wrong house,
+and that I am not the woman he takes me for.’
+
+“She too is an honest woman; yet less honest than the first, in that she
+tried to appear more so.
+
+“The procuress then went to see the lady from Tours, made the same offer
+to her as to the other, and showed her the ring.
+
+“‘I’ faith,’ said the lady, ‘but the ring is right lovely.’
+
+“‘’T is yours, an you will have it.’
+
+“‘I will not have it at the price you set on it. My husband might catch
+me, and I should be doing him a grief he doth not deserve.’
+
+“This lady of Touraine is a harlot, I trow, at bottom of her heart.
+
+“The procuress left her and went straight to the dame of Lyons, who
+cried:
+
+“‘Alack! my good friend, my husband is a jealous wight, and he would cut
+the nose off my face to hinder me winning any more rings at this pretty
+tilting.’
+
+“This dame of Lyons, I tell you, is a worthless good-for-naught.
+
+“Last of all the procuress hurried to the Parisian’s. She was a hussy,
+and answered brazenly:
+
+“‘My husband goes Wednesday to his vineyards; tell the good sir who sent
+you I will come that day and see him.’
+
+“Such, according to Brother Olivier, from Picardy to Paris, are the
+degrees from good to evil amongst women. What think you of the matter,
+Monsieur Coignard?”
+
+To which my good master made answer:
+
+“‘T is a shrewd matter to consider the acts and impulses of these petty
+creatures in their relations with Eternal Justice. I have no lights
+thereanent. But methinks the Lyons dame who feared having her nose cut
+off was a more good-for-nothing baggage than the Parisian who was afraid
+of nothing.”
+
+“I am far, very far, from allowing it,” replied Brother Jean Chavaray.
+“A woman who fears her husband may come to fear hell fire. Her
+Confessor, it may be, will bring her to do penance and give alms. For,
+after all, that is the end we must come at. But what can a poor Capuchin
+hope to get of a woman whom _nothing_ terrifies?”
+
+
+
+
+A GOOD LESSON WELL LEARNT
+
+[Illustration: 098]
+
+IN the days of King Louis XI there lived at Paris, in a matted chamber,
+a citizen dame called Violante, who was comely and well-liking in all
+her person. She had so bright a face that Master Jacques Tribouillard,
+doctor in law and a renowned cosmographer, who was often a visitor at
+her house, was used to tell her:
+
+“Seeing you, madame, I deem credible and even hold it proven, what
+Cucurbitus Piger lays down in one of his scholia on Strabo, to wit, that
+the famous city and university of Paris was of old known by the name of
+Lutetia or Leucecia, or some such like word coming from _Leukê_, that
+is to say, ‘the white,’ forasmuch as the ladies of the same had bosoms
+white as snow,--yet not so clear and bright and white as is your own,
+madame.”
+
+To which Violante would say in answer:
+
+“‘T is enough for me if my bosom is not fit to fright folks, like some
+I wot of. And, if I show it, why, ‘tis to follow the fashion. I have not
+the hardihood to do otherwise than the rest of the world.”
+
+Now Madame Violante had been wedded, in the flower of her youth, to an
+Advocate of the Parlement, a man of a harsh temper and sorely set on the
+arraignment and punishing of unfortunate prisoners. For the rest, he
+was of sickly habit and a weakling, of such a sort he seemed more fit to
+give pain to folks outside his doors than pleasure to his wife within.
+The old fellow thought more of his blue bags than of his better
+half, though these were far otherwise shapen, being bulgy and fat and
+formless. But the lawyer spent his nights over them.
+
+Madame Violante was too reasonable a woman to love a husband that was
+so unlovable. Master Jacques Tribouillard upheld she was a good wife,
+as steadfastly and surely confirmed and stablished in conjugal virtue
+as Lucretia the Roman. And for proof he alleged that he had altogether
+failed to turn her aside from the path of honour. The judicious observed
+a prudent silence on the point, holding that what is hid will only be
+made manifest at the last Judgment Day. They noted how the lady was over
+fond of gewgaws and laces and wore in company and at church gowns of
+velvet and silk and cloth of gold, purfled with miniver; but they were
+too fair-minded folk to decide whether, damning as she did Christian
+men who saw her so comely and so finely dressed to the torments of vain
+longing, she was not damning her own soul too with one of them. In a
+word, they were well ready to stake Madame Violante’s virtue on the toss
+of a coin, cross or pile,--which is greatly to the honour of that fair
+lady.
+
+The truth is her Confessor, Brother Jean Turelure, was for ever
+upbraiding her.
+
+“Think you, madame,” he would ask her, “that the blessed St. Catherine
+won heaven by leading such a life as yours, baring her bosom and sending
+to Genoa for lace ruffles?”
+
+But he was a great preacher, very severe on human weaknesses, who could
+condone naught and thought he had done everything when he had inspired
+terror. He threatened her with hell fire for having washed her face with
+ass’s milk.
+
+As a fact, no one could say if she had given her old husband a meet and
+proper head-dress, and Messire Philippe de Coetquis used to warn the
+honest dame in a merry vein:
+
+“See to it, I say! He is bald, he will catch his death of cold!”
+
+Messire Philippe de Coetquis was a knight of gallant bearing, as
+handsome as the knave of hearts in the noble game of cards. He had first
+encountered Madame Violante one evening at a ball, and after dancing
+with her far into the night, had carried her home on his crupper, while
+the Advocate splashed his way through the mud and mire of the kennels
+by the dancing light of the torches his four tipsy lackeys bore. In the
+course of these merry doings, a-foot and on horseback, Messire Philippe
+de Coetquis had formed a shrewd notion that Madame Violante had a limber
+waist and a full, firm bosom of her own, and there and then had been
+smit by her charms.
+
+He was a frank and guileless wight and made bold to tell her outright
+what he would have of her,--to wit, to hold her naked in his two arms.
+
+To which she would make answer:
+
+“Messire Philippe, you know not what you say. I am a virtuous wife,”--
+
+Or another time:
+
+“Messire Philippe, come back again tomorrow,--”
+
+And when he came next day she would ask innocently:
+
+“Nay, where is the hurry?”
+
+These never-ending postponements caused the Chevalier no little distress
+and chagrin. He was ready to believe, with Master Tribouillard, that
+Madame Violante was indeed a Lucretia, so true is it that all men are
+alike in fatuous self-conceit! And we are bound to say she had not so
+much as suffered him to kiss her mouth,--only a pretty diversion after
+all and a bit of wanton playfulness.
+
+Things were in this case when Brother Jean Turelure was called to Venice
+by the General of his Order, to preach to sundry Turks lately converted
+to the true Faith.
+
+Before setting forth, the good Brother went to take leave of his fair
+Penitent, and upbraided her with more than usual sternness for living
+a dissolute life. He exhorted her urgently to repent and pressed her to
+wear a hair-shirt next her skin,--an incomparable remedy against naughty
+cravings and a sovran medicine for natures over prone to the sins of the
+flesh.
+
+She besought him: “Good Brother, never ask too much of me.”
+
+But he would not hearken, and threatened her with the pains of hell if
+she did not amend her ways. Then he told her he would gladly execute any
+commissions she might be pleased to entrust him with. He was in hopes
+she would beg him to bring her back some consecrated medal, a rosary,
+or, better still, a little of the soil of the Holy Sepulchre which the
+Turks carry from Jerusalem together with dried roses, and which the
+Italian monks sell.
+
+But Madame Violante preferred a quite other request:
+
+“Good Brother, dear Brother, as you are going to Venice, where such
+cunning workmen in this sort are to be found, I pray you bring me back a
+Venetian mirror, the clearest and truest can be gotten.”
+
+Brother Jean Turelure promised to content her wish.
+
+While her Confessor was abroad, Madame Violante led the same life as
+before. And when Messire Philippe pressed her: “Were it not well to take
+our pleasure together?” she would answer: “Nay! ‘t is too hot. Look at
+the weathercock if the wind will not change anon.” And the good folk
+who watched her ways were in despair of her ever giving a proper pair
+of horns to her crabbed old husband. “‘T is a sin and a shame!” they
+declared.
+
+On his return from Italy Brother Jean Turelure presented himself before
+Madame Violante and told her he had brought what she desired.
+
+“Look, madame,” he said, and drew from under his gown a death’s-head.
+
+“Here, madame, is your mirror. This death’s-head was given me for that
+of the prettiest woman in all Venice. She was what you are, and you will
+be much like her anon.”
+
+Madame Violante, mastering her surprise and horror, answered the good
+Father in a well-assured voice that she understood the lesson he would
+teach her and she would not fail to profit thereby.
+
+“I shall aye have present in my mind, good Brother, the mirror you
+have brought me from Venice, wherein I see my likeness not as I am at
+present, but as doubtless I soon shall be. I promise you to govern my
+behaviour by this salutary thought.”
+
+Brother Jean Turelure was far from expecting such pious words. He
+expressed some satisfaction.
+
+“So, madame,” he murmured, “you see yourself the need of altering your
+ways. You promise me henceforth to govern your behaviour by the thought
+this fleshless skull hath brought home to you. Will you not make the
+same promise to God as you have to me?”
+
+She asked if indeed she must, and he assured her it behoved her so to
+do.
+
+“Well, I will give this promise then,” she declared.
+
+“Madame, this is very well. There is no going back on your word now.”
+
+“I shall not go back on it, never fear.”
+
+Having won this binding promise, Brother Jean Turelure left the place,
+radiant with satisfaction. And as he went from the house, he cried out
+loud in the street:
+
+“Here is a good work done! By Our Lord God’s good help, I have turned
+and set in the way toward the gate of Paradise a lady, who, albeit not
+sinning precisely in the way of fornication spoken of by the Prophet,
+yet was wont to employ for men’s temptation the clay whereof the Creator
+had kneaded her that she might serve and adore him withal. She will
+forsake these naughty habits to adopt a better life. I have throughly
+changed her. Praise be to God!”
+
+Hardly had the good Brother gone down the stairs when Messire Philippe
+de Coetquis ran up them and scratched at Madame Violante’s door. She
+welcomed him with a beaming smile, and led him into a closet, furnished
+with carpets and cushions galore, wherein he had never been admitted
+before. From this he augured well. He offered her sweetmeats he had in a
+box.
+
+“Here be sugar-plums to suck, madame; they are sweet and sugared, but
+not so sweet as your lips.”
+
+To which the lady retorted he was a vain, silly fop to make boast of a
+fruit he had never tasted.
+
+He answered her meetly, kissing her forthwith on the mouth.
+
+She manifested scarce any annoyance and said only she was an honest
+woman and a true wife. He congratulated her and advised her not to lock
+up this jewel of hers in such close keeping that no man could enjoy it.
+“For, of a surety,” he swore, “you will be robbed of it, and that right
+soon.”
+
+“Try then,” said she, cuffing him daintily over the ears with her pretty
+pink palms.
+
+But he was master by this time to take whatsoever he wished of her. She
+kept protesting with little cries:
+
+“I won’t have it. Fie! fie on you, messire! You must not do it. Oh!
+sweetheart... oh! my love... my life! You are killing me!”
+
+Anon, when she had done sighing and dying, she said sweetly:
+
+“Messire Philippe, never flatter yourself you have mastered me by force
+or guile. You have had of me what you craved, but ‘t was of mine own
+free will, and I only resisted so much as was needful that I might yield
+me as I liked best. Sweetheart, I am yours. If, for all your handsome
+face, which I loved from the first, and despite the tenderness of
+your wooing, I did not before grant you what you have just won with my
+consent, ‘t was because I had no true understanding of things. I had
+no thought of the flight of time and the shortness of life and love;
+plunged in a soft languor of indolence, I reaped no harvest of my youth
+and beauty. However, the good Brother Jean Turelure hath given me a
+profitable lesson. He hath taught me the preciousness of the hours. But
+now he showed me a death’s-head, saying: ‘Suchlike you will be soon.’
+This taught me we must be quick to enjoy the pleasures of love and make
+the most of the little space of time reserved to us for that end.”
+
+These words and the caresses wherewith Madame Violante seconded them
+persuaded Messire Philippe to turn the time to good account, to set to
+work afresh to his own honour and profit and the pleasure and glory
+of his mistress, and to multiply the sure proofs of prowess which it
+behoves every good and loyal servant to give on suchlike an occasion.
+
+After which, she was ready to cry quits. Taking him by the hand, she
+guided him back to the door, kissed him daintily on the eyes, and asked:
+
+“Sweetheart Philippe, is it not well done to follow the precepts of the
+good Brother Jean Turelure?”
+
+
+
+
+SATAN’S TONGUE-PIE
+
+[Illustration: 112]
+
+SATAN lay in his bed with the flaming curtains. The physicians and
+apothecaries of Hell, finding their patient had a white tongue, inferred
+he was suffering from a weakness of the stomach and prescribed a diet at
+once light and nourishing.
+
+Satan swore he had no appetite for aught but a certain earthly
+dish, which women excel in making when they meet in company, to wit,
+tongue-pie.
+
+The doctors agreed there was nothing could better suit His Majesty’s
+stomach.
+
+In an hour’s time the dish was set before the King; but he found it
+insipid and tasteless.
+
+He sent for his Head Cook and asked him where the pie came from.
+
+“From Paris, sire. It is quite fresh; ‘twas baked this very morning,
+in the Marais Quarter, by a dozen gossips gathered round the bed at a
+woman’s lying-in.”
+
+“Ah! now I know the reason it is so flavourless,” returned the Prince of
+Darkness. “You have not been to the best cooks for dishes of the sort.
+Citizens’ wives, they do their best; but they lack delicacy, they lack
+the fine touch of genius. Women of the people are clumsier still. For a
+real good tongue-pie a Nunnery is the place to go to. There’s nobody to
+match these old maids of Religion for a pretty skill in compounding all
+the needful ingredients,--fine spices of rancour, thyme of backbiting,
+fennel of insinuation, bay-leaf of calumny.”
+
+This parable is taken from a sermon of the good Father Gillotin
+Landoulle, a poor, unworthy Capuchin.
+
+
+
+
+CONCERNING AN HORRIBLE PICTURE
+
+[Illustration: 116]
+
+     THE WHICH WAS SHOWED IN A TEMPLE AND OF SUNDRY LIMNINGS OF A
+     RIGHT PACIFIC AND AMOROUS SORT THE WHICH THE SAGE PHILEMON
+     HAD HANGED IN HIS LIBRARIE AND OF A NOBLE PORTRAITURE OF THE
+     POET HOMER THE WHICH THE AFORESAID PHILEMON DID PRIZE ABOVE
+     ALL OTHER LIMNINGS
+
+PHILEMON was used to confess how, in the fire of his callow youth
+and fine flower of his lustie springal days, he had been stung with
+murderous frenzie at view of a certaine picture of Apelles, the which
+in those times was showed in a temple. And the said picture did present
+Alexander the Great laying on right shrewdly at Darius, king of the
+Indians, whiles round about these twain, soldiers and captains were
+a-slaying one another with a savage furie and in divers strange
+fashions. And the said work was right cunningly wrought and in very
+close mimicrie of nature. And none, an they were in the hot and lustie
+season of their life, could cast a look thereon without being stirred
+incontinent to be striking and killing poor harmlesse folk for the sole
+sake of donning so rich an harnesse and bestriding such high-stepping
+chargers as did these good codpieces in their battle,--for that young
+blood doth aye take pleasure in horseflesh and the practise of arms.
+This had the aforesaid Philemon proven in his day. And he was used to
+say how ever after ‘twas his wont to turn aside his eyen of set purpose
+from suchlike pictures of wars and bloodshed, and that he did so
+heartily loathe these cruelties as that he could not abear to behold
+them even set forth in counterfeit presentment.
+
+And he was used to say that any honest and prudent wight must needs be
+sore offended and scandalized by all this appalling array of armour
+and bucklers and the horde of warriors Homer calls _Corythaioloi_
+(glancing-helmed) by reason of the terrifying hideousness of their
+head-gear, and that the portrayal of these same fighting fellows was
+in very truth unseemly, as contrarie to good and peaceable manners,
+immodest, no thing in the world being more shameful then homicide, and
+eke lascivious, as alluring folk to cruelty, the which is the worst of
+all allurements. For to entice to pleasant dalliaunce is a far lesse
+heinous fault.
+
+And the aforesaid Philemon was used to say that it was honest, decent,
+of good ensample and entirely modest to show by painting, chiselling, or
+any other fine artifice the scenes of the Golden Age, to wit maidens and
+young men interlacing limbs in accord with the craving of kindly Nature,
+or other the like delectable fancy, as of a Nymph lying laughing in the
+grass. And on her ripe smiling mouth a Faun is crushing a purple grape.
+
+And he was used to say that belike the Golden Age had never flourished
+save only in the fond imagining of the poets, and that our first
+forebears of human kind, being yet barbarous and silly folk, had known
+naught at all thereof; but that, an the said age could not credibly be
+deemed to have been at the beginning of the world, we might well wish
+it should be at the end, and that meanwhiles it was a gracious boon to
+offer us a likeness of the same in pictured image.
+
+And like as it is (so he would say) obscene,--‘t is the word Virgil
+writes of dogs wallowing in the mud and mire,--to depict murderers,
+whoreson men-at arms, fighting-men, conquering heroes and plundering
+thieves, wreaking their foul and wicked will, yea! and poor devils
+licking the dust and swallowing the same in great mouthfuls, and one
+unhappie wretch that hath been felled to the earth and is striving to
+get to his feet againe, but is pinned down by an horse’s hoof pressing
+on his chops, and another that looketh piteously about him for that his
+pennon hath been shorn from him and his hand with it,--so is it of right
+subtile and so to say heavenly art to exhibit prettie blandishments,
+caresses, frolickings, beauties and delights, and the loves of the
+Nymphs and Fauns in the woods. And he would have it there was none
+offence in these naked bodies, clothed upon enow with their owne grace
+and comeliness.
+
+And he had in his closet, this same Philemon aforesaid, a very
+marvellous painting, wherein was limned a young Faun in act to filch
+away with a craftie hand a light cloth did cover the belly of a sleeping
+Nymph. ‘T was plain to see he was full fain of his freak and seemed to
+be saying: The body of this young goddess is so sweet and refreshing
+as that the fountaine springing in the shade of the woods is not more
+delightsome. How I do love to look upon you, soft sweet lap, and prettie
+white thighs, and shady cavern at once terrifying and entrancing! And
+over the heads of the twain did hover winged Cupids and watched them
+laughingly, whiles fair dames and their gallants, their brows wreathen
+with flowers, footed it on the lush grass.
+
+And he had, the aforesaid Philemon, yet other limnings of cunning
+craftsmanship in his closet. And he did prize very high the portraiture
+of a good doctor a-sitting in his cabinet writing at a table by
+candle-light. The said cabinet was fully furnished with globes, gnomons,
+and astrolabes, proper for meting the movements of the orbs of heaven,
+the which is a right praiseworthy task and one that doth lift the spirit
+to sublime thoughts and the exceeding pure love of Venus Urania.
+
+And there was hanging from the joists of the said cabinet a great
+serpent and crocodile, forasmuch as they be rarities and very needful
+for the due understanding of anatomy. And he had likewise, the
+said doctor, amid his belongings, the books of the most excellent
+philosophers of Antiquity and eke the treatises of Hippocrates. And he
+was an ensample to young men which should be fain, by hard swinking, to
+stuff their pates with as much high learning and occult lore as he had
+under his own bonnet.
+
+And he had, the aforesaid Philemon, painted on a panel that shined like
+a polished mirror a portraiture of Homer in the guise of an old blind
+man, his beard white as the flowers of the hawthorn and his temples
+bound about with the fillets sacred to the god Apollo, which had loved
+him above all other men. And, to look at that good old man, you deemed
+verily his lips were presently to ope and break into words of mélodie.
+
+
+
+
+MADEMOISELLE DE DOUCINE’S NEW YEAR’S PRESENT
+
+[Illustration: 124]
+
+ON January 1st, in the forenoon, the good M. Chanterelle sallied out on
+foot from his hôtel in the Faubourg Saint-Marcel. He felt the cold and
+was a poor walker; so it was a real penance to him to face the chilly
+air and the bleak streets which were full of half-melted snow. He had
+refused to take his coach by way of mortifying the flesh, having grown
+very solicitous since his illness about the salvation of his soul. He
+lived in retirement, aloof from all society and company, and paid no
+visits save to his niece, Mademoiselle de Doucine, a little girl of
+seven.
+
+Leaning on his walking-cane, he made his way painfully to the Rue
+Saint-Honoré and entered the shop of Madame Pinson at the sign of the
+_Panier Fleuri_. Here was displayed an abundant stock of children’s toys
+to tempt customers seeking presents for this New Year’s Day of 1696.
+You could scarce move for the host of mechanical figures of dancers and
+tipplers, birds in the bush that clapped their wings and sang, cabinets
+full of wax puppets, soldiers in white and blue ranged in battle array,
+and dolls dressed some as fine ladies, others as servant wenches, for
+the inequality of stations, established by God himself among mankind,
+appeared even in these innocent mannikins.
+
+M. Chanterelle chose a doll. The one he selected was dressed like the
+Princess of Savoy on her arrival in France, on November 4th. The head
+was a mass of bows and ribbons; she wore a very stiff corsage, covered
+with gold filigrees, and a brocade petticoat with an overskirt caught up
+by pearl clasps.
+
+M. Chanterelle smiled to think of the delight such a lovely doll would
+give Mademoiselle de Doucine, and when Madame Pinson handed him
+the Princess of Savoy wrapped up in silk paper, a gleam of sensuous
+satisfaction flitted over his kind face, pinched as it was with illness,
+pale with fasting and haggard with the fear of hell.
+
+He thanked Madame Pinson courteously, clapped the Princess under his arm
+and walked away, dragging his leg painfully, towards the house where he
+knew Mademoiselle de Doucine was waiting for him to attend her morning
+levée.
+
+At the corner of the Rue de l’ Arbre-Sec, he met M. Spon, whose great
+nose dived almost into his lace cravat.
+
+“Good morning, Monsieur Spon,” he greeted him. “I wish you a happy New
+Year, and I pray God everything may turn out according to your wishes.”
+
+“Oh! my good sir, don’t say that,” cried M. Spon. “‘T is often for our
+chastisement that God grants our wishes. _Et tribuit eis petittonem
+eorum_.”
+
+“‘Tis very true,” returned M. Chanterelle, “we do not know our own best
+interests. I am an example myself, as I stand before you. I thought at
+first that the complaint I have suffered from for the last two years was
+a curse; but I see now it is a blessing, since it has removed me from
+the abominable life I was leading at the play-houses and in society.
+This complaint, which tortures my limbs and is like to turn my brain, is
+a signal token of God’s goodness toward me. But, sir, will you not do
+me the favour to accompany me as far as the Rue du Roule, whither I am
+bound, to carry a New Year’s gift to my niece Mademoiselle de Doucine?”
+
+At the words M. Spon threw up his arms and gave a great cry of horror.
+
+“What!” he exclaimed. “Can it be M. Chanterelle I hear say such
+things,--and not some profligate libertine? Is it possible, sir, that
+living as you do a religious and retired life, I see you all in a moment
+plunge into the vices of the day?”
+
+“Alack! I did not think I was plunging into vice,” faltered M.
+Chanterelle, trembling all over. “But I sorely lack a lamp of guidance.
+Is it so great a sin then to offer a doll to Mademoiselle de Doucine?”
+
+“Yes, a great and terrible sin,” replied M. Spon. “And what you are
+offering this innocent child to-day is meeter to be called an idol,
+a devilish simulacrum, than a doll. Are you not aware, sir, that the
+custom of New Year’s gifts is a foul superstition and a hideous survival
+of Paganism?”
+
+“No, I did not know that,” said M. Chanterelle.
+
+“Let me tell you, then,” resumed M. Spon, “that this custom descends
+from the Romans, who seeing something divine in all beginnings, held
+the beginning of the year holy also. Hence, to act as they did is to
+do idolatry. You make New Year’s offerings, sir, in imitation of the
+worshippers of the God Janus. Be consistent, and like them consecrate to
+Juno the first day of every month.”
+
+M. Chanterelle, hardly able to keep his feet, begged M. Spon to give him
+his arm, and while they moved on, M. Spon proceeded in the same vein:
+
+“Is it because the Astrologers have fixed on the first of January
+for the beginning of the year that you deem yourself obliged to make
+presents on that day? Pray, what call have you to revive at that precise
+date the affection of your friends. Was their love dying then with
+the dying year? And will it be so much worth the having when you have
+reanimated it by dint of cajolements and baneful gifts?”
+
+“Sir,” returned the good M. Chanterelle, leaning on M. Spon’s arm and
+trying hard to make his tottering steps keep pace with his impetuous
+companion’s, “sir, before my sickness, I was only a miserable sinner,
+taking no heed but to treat my friends with civility and govern my
+behaviour by the principles of honesty and honour. Providence hath
+deigned to rescue me from this abyss, and I direct my conduct since my
+conversion by the admonitions the Director of my conscience gives me.
+But I have been so light-minded and thoughtless as not to seek his
+advice on this question of New Year’s gifts. What you tell me of them,
+sir, with the authority of a man alike admirable for sober living and
+sound doctrine, amazes and confounds me.”
+
+“Nay! that is indeed what I mean to do,” resumed M. Spon,--“to confound
+you, and to illumine you, not indeed by my own lights, which burn
+feebly, but by those of a great Doctor. Sit you down on that wayside
+post.”
+
+And pushing M. Chanterelle into the archway of a carriage gate, where
+he made himself as easy as circumstances allowed, M. Spon drew from his
+pocket a little parchment-bound book, which he opened, and after hunting
+through the pages, lighted on a passage which he proceeded to read
+out loud amid a gaping circle of chimney-sweeps, chamber-maids, and
+scullions who had collected at the resounding tones of his voice:
+
+“‘We who hold in abhorrence the festivals of the Jews, and who would
+deem strange and outlandish their Sabbaths and New Moons and other Holy
+Days erst loved of the Almighty, we deal familiarly with the Saturnalia
+and the Calends of January, with the Matronalia and the Feast of the
+Winter Solstice; New Year’s gifts and foolish presents fill all our
+thoughts; merrymakings and junketings are in every house. The Heathens
+guard their religion better; they are heedful to observe none of our
+Feasts, for fear of being taken for Christians, while we never hesitate
+to make ourselves look like Heathens by celebrating their Ceremonial
+Days.’
+
+“You hear what I say,” went on M. Spon. “‘T is Tertullian speaks in this
+wise and from the depths of Africa displays before your eyes, sir, the
+odiousness of your behaviour. He it is upbraids you, declaring how ‘New
+Year’s gifts and foolish presents fill all your thoughts. You keep
+holy the feasts of the Heathen.’ I have not the honour to know your
+Confessor. But I shudder, sir, to think of the way he neglects his duty
+toward you. Tell me this, can you rest assured that at the day of your
+death, when you come to stand before God, he will be at your side, to
+take upon him the sins he hath suffered you to fall into?”
+
+After haranguing in this sort, he put back his book in his pocket and
+marched off with angry strides, followed at a distance by the astonished
+chimney-sweeps and scullions.
+
+The good M. Chanterelle was left sitting alone on his post with the
+Princess of Savoy, and thinking how he was risking the eternal pains of
+hell fire for giving a doll to Mademoiselle de Doucine, his niece, he
+fell to pondering the unfathomable mysteries of Religion.
+
+His legs, which had been tottery for several months, refused to carry
+him, and he felt as unhappy as ever a well-meaning man possibly can in
+this world.
+
+He had been sitting stranded in this distressful mood on his post for
+some minutes when a Capuchin friar stepped up and addressed him:
+
+“Sir, will you not give New Year’s presents to the Little Brethren who
+are poor, for the love of God?”
+
+“Why! what! good Father,” M. Chan-terelle burst out, “you are a man of
+religion, and you ask me for New Year’s gifts?”
+
+“Sir,” replied the Capuchin, “the good St. Francis bade his sons make
+merry with all simplicity. Give the Capuchins wherewith to make a good
+meal this day, that they may endure with cheerfulness the abstinence and
+fasting they must observe all the rest of the year,--barring, of course,
+Sundays and Feast Days.”
+
+M. Chanterelle gazed at the holy man with wonder:
+
+“Are you not afraid, Father, that this custom of New Year’s gifts is
+baneful to the soul?”
+
+“No, I am not afraid.”
+
+“The custom comes to us from the Pagans.”
+
+“The Pagans sometimes followed good customs. God was pleased to suffer
+some faint rays of his light to pierce the darkness of the Gentiles.
+Sir, if you refuse to give _us_ presents, never refuse a boon to our
+poor little ones. We have a home for foundlings. With this poor crown I
+shall buy each child a little paper windmill and a cake. They will owe
+you the only pleasure perhaps of all their life; for they are not fated
+to have much joy in the world. Their laughter will go up to heaven; when
+children laugh, they praise the Lord.”
+
+M. Chanterelle laid his well-filled purse in the poor friar’s palm and
+got him down from his post, saying over softly to himself the word he
+had just heard:
+
+“When children laugh, they praise the Lord.”
+
+Then his soul was comforted and he marched off with a firmer step to
+carry the Princess of Savoy to Mademoiselle de Doucine, his niece.
+
+
+
+
+MADEMOISELLE ROXANE
+
+[Illustration: 136]
+
+MY good master, M. l’Abbé Coignard, had taken me with him to sup
+with one of his old fellow-students, who lodged in a garret in the Rue
+Gît-le-Cour. Our host, a Premonstratensian Father of much learning and
+a fine Theologian, had fallen out with the Prior of his House for having
+writ a little book relating the calamities of Mam’zelle Fanchon. The end
+of it was he turned tavern-keeper at The Hague. He was now returned to
+France and living precariously by the sermons he composed, which were
+full of high argument and eloquence. After supper he had read us these
+same calamities of Mam’zelle Fanchon, source of his own, and the reading
+had kept us there till a late hour. At last I found myself without-doors
+with my good master, under a wondrous fine summer’s night, which made
+me straightway comprehend the verity of the ancient fables regarding the
+loves of Diana and feel how natural it is to employ in soft dalliance
+the silent, silvery hours of night. I said as much to M. l’Abbé
+Coignard, who retorted that love is to blame for many and great ills.
+
+“Tournebroche, my son,” he asked me, “have you not just heard from the
+mouth of yonder good Monk how, for having loved a recruiting sergeant,
+a clerk of M. Gaulot’s mercer at the sign of the Truie-qui-file, and the
+younger son of M. le Lieutenant-Criminel Leblanc, Mam’zelle Fanchon was
+clapped in hospital? Would you wish to be any of these,--sergeant or
+clerk or limb of the law?”
+
+I answered I would indeed. My good master thanked me for my candid
+avowal, and quoted some verses of Lucretius to persuade me that love is
+contrary to the tranquillity of a truly philosophical soul.
+
+Thus discoursing, we were come to the round-point of the Pont-Neuf.
+Leaning our elbows on the parapet, we looked over at the great tower of
+the Châtelet, which stood out black in the moonlight.
+
+“There might be much to say,” sighed my good master, “on this justice of
+the civilized nations, the punishments whereof in retaliation are often
+more cruel than the crime itself I cannot believe that these tortures
+and penalties that men inflict on their fellows are necessary for the
+safeguarding of States, seeing how from time to time one and another
+legal cruelty is done away with without hurt to the commonweal. And I
+hold it likely that the severities they still maintain are no whit more
+useful than those they have abolished. But men are cruel. Come away,
+Tournebroche, my dear lad; it grieves me to think how unhappy prisoners
+are even now lying awake behind those walls in anguish and despair. I
+know they have done faultily, but this doth not hinder me from pitying
+them. Which of us is without offence?”
+
+We went on our way. The bridge was deserted save for a beggarman and
+woman, who met on the causeway. The pair drew stealthily into one of the
+recesses over the piers, where they lurked together on the door-step
+of a hucksters booth. They seemed well enough content, both of them, to
+mingle their joint wretchedness, and when we went by were thinking
+of quite other things than craving our charity. Nevertheless my good
+master, who was the most compassionate of men, threw them a half
+farthing, the last piece of money left in his breeches pocket.
+
+“They will pick up our obol,” he said, “when they have come back to the
+consciousness of their misery. I pray they may not quarrel then over
+fiercely for possession of the coin.”
+
+We passed on without further rencounter till on the Quai des Oiseleurs
+we espied a young damsel striding along with a notable air of
+resolution. Hastening our pace to get a nearer view, we saw she had a
+slim waist and fair hair in which the moonbeams played prettily. She was
+dressed like a citizen’s wife or daughter.
+
+“There goes a pretty girl,” said the Abbé; “how comes it she is out of
+doors alone at this hour of night?”
+
+“Truly,” I agreed, “‘tis not the sort one generally encounters on the
+bridges after curfew.”
+
+Our surprise was changed to alarm when we saw her go down to the river
+bank by a little stairway the sailors use. We ran towards her; but she
+did not seem to hear us. She halted at the edge; the stream was running
+high, and the dull roar of the swollen waters could be heard some
+way off. She stood a moment motionless, her head thrown back and arms
+hanging, in an attitude of despair. Then, bending her graceful neck, she
+put her two hands over her face and kept it hid behind her fingers for
+some seconds. Next moment she suddenly grasped her skirts and dragged
+them forward with the gesture a woman always uses when she is going to
+jump. My good master and I came up with her just as she was taking the
+fatal leap, and we hauled her forcibly backward. She struggled to get
+free of our arms; and as the bank was all slimy and slippery with ooze
+deposited by the receding waters (for the river was already beginning
+to fall), M. l’Abbé Coignard came very near being dragged in too. I was
+losing my foothold myself. But as luck would have it, my feet lighted on
+a root which held me up as I crouched there with my arms round the best
+of masters and this despairing young thing. Presently, coming to the
+end of her strength and courage, she fell back on M. l’Abbé Coignard’s
+breast, and we managed all three to scramble to the top of the bank
+again. He helped her up daintily, with a certain easy grace that was
+always his. Then he led the way to a great beech-tree at the foot of
+which was a wooden bench, on which he seated her.
+
+Taking his place beside her:
+
+“Mademoiselle,” he said gently, “you need have no fear. Say nothing just
+yet, but be assured it is a friend sits by you.”
+
+Next, turning to me, my master went on:
+
+“Tournebroche, my son, we may congratulate ourselves on having brought
+this strange adventure to a good end. But I have left my hat down yonder
+on the river bank; albeit it has lost pretty near all its lace and is
+thread-bare with long service, it was still good to guard my old head,
+sorely tried by years and labours, against sun and rain. Go see, my son,
+if it may still be found where I dropped it. And if you discover it,
+bring it me, I beg,--likewise one of my shoe buckles, which I see I have
+lost. For my part I will stay by this damsel we have rescued and watch
+over her slumber.”
+
+I ran back to the spot we had just quitted and was lucky enough to find
+my good master’s hat. The buckle I could not espy anywhere. True, I did
+not take any very excessive pains to hunt for it, having never all my
+life seen my good master with more than one shoe buckle. When I returned
+to the tree, I found the damsel still in the same state, sitting quite
+motionless with her head leant against the trunk of the beech. I noticed
+now that she was of a very perfect beauty. She wore a silk mantle
+trimmed with lace, very neat and proper, and on her feet light shoes,
+the buckles of which caught the moonbeams.
+
+I could not have enough of examining her. Suddenly she opened her
+drooping lids, and casting a look that was still misty at M. Coignard
+and me, she began in a feeble voice, but with the tone and accent, I
+thought, of a person of gentility:
+
+“I am not ungrateful, sirs, for the service you have done me from
+feelings of humanity; but I cannot truthfully tell you I am glad, for
+the life to which you have restored me is a curse, a hateful, cruel
+torment.”
+
+At these sad words my good master, whose face wore a look of compassion,
+smiled softly, for he could not really think life was to be for ever
+hateful to so young and pretty a creature.
+
+“My child,” he told her, “things strike us in a totally different light
+according as they are near at hand or far off. It is no time for you to
+despair. Such as I am, and brought to this sorry plight by the buffets
+of time and fortune, I yet make shift to endure a life wherein my
+pleasures are to translate Greek and dine sometimes with sundry very
+worthy friends. Look at me, mademoiselle, and say,--would you consent to
+live in the same conditions as I?”
+
+She looked him over; her eyes almost laughed, and she shook her head.
+Then, resuming her melancholy and mournfulness, she faltered:
+
+“There is not in all the world so unhappy a being as I am.”
+
+“Mademoiselle,” returned my good master, “I am discreet both by calling
+and temperament; I will not seek to force your confidence. But your
+looks betray you; any one can see you are sick of disappointed love.
+Well, ‘t is not an incurable complaint. I have had it myself, and I have
+lived many a long year since then.”
+
+He took her hand, gave her a thousand tokens of his sympathy, and went
+on in these terms:
+
+“There is only one thing I regret for the moment,--that I cannot offer
+you a refuge for the night, or what is left of it. My present lodging
+is in an old château a long way from here, where I am busy translating a
+Greek book along with young Master Tournebroche whom you see here.”
+
+My master spoke the truth. We were living at the time with M. d’Astarac,
+at the Château des Sablons, in the village of Neuilly, and were in the
+pay of a great alchemist, who died later under tragic circumstances.
+
+“At the same time, mademoiselle,” my master added, “if you should know
+of any place where you think you could go, I shall be happy to escort
+you thither.”
+
+To which the girl answered she appreciated all his kindness, that she
+lived with a kinswoman, to whose house she could count on being admitted
+at any hour; but that she had rather not return before daylight. She was
+fain, she said, not to disturb quiet folks’ sleep, and dreaded moreover
+to have her grief too painfully renewed by the sight of her old,
+familiar surroundings.
+
+As she spoke thus, the tears rained down from her eyes. My good master
+bade her:
+
+“Mademoiselle, give me your handkerchief, if you please, and I will wipe
+your eyes. Then I will take you to wait for daybreak under the archways
+of the Halles, where we can sit in comfort under shelter from the night
+dews.”
+
+The girl smiled through her tears.
+
+“I do not like,” she said, “to give you so much trouble. Go your way,
+sir, and rest assured you take my best thanks with you.”
+
+For all that she laid her hand on the arm my good master offered her,
+and we set out, all the three of us, for the Halles. The night had
+turned much cooler. In the sky, which was beginning to assume a milky
+hue, the stars were growing paler and fainter. We could hear the first
+of the market-gardeners’ carts rumbling along to the Halles, drawn by a
+slow-stepping horse, half asleep in the shafts. Arrived at the archways,
+we chose a place in the recess of a porch distinguished by an image of
+St. Nicholas, and established ourselves all three on a stone step, on
+which M. l’Abbé Coignard took the precaution of spreading his cloak
+before he let his young charge sit down.
+
+Thereupon my good master fell to discoursing on divers subjects,
+choosing merry and enlivening themes of set purpose to drive away the
+gloomy thoughts that might assail our companion’s mind. He told her he
+accounted this rencounter the most fortunate he had ever chanced on all
+his life, and that he should ever cherish a fond recollection of one who
+had so deeply touched him,--all this, however, without ever asking to
+know her name and story.
+
+My good master thought no doubt that the unknown would presently tell
+him what he refrained from asking. She broke into a fresh flood of
+weeping, heaved a deep sigh and said:
+
+“I should be churlish, sir, to reward your kindness with silence. I am
+not afraid to trust myself in your hands. My name is Sophie T------. You
+have guessed the truth; ‘tis the betrayal of a lover I was too fondly
+attached to has brought me to despair. If you deem my grief excessive,
+that is because you do not know how great was my assurance, how blind my
+infatuation, and you cannot realize how enchanting was the paradise I
+have lost.”
+
+Then, raising her lovely eyes to our faces, she went on:
+
+“Sirs, I am not such a woman as your meeting me thus at night time might
+lead you to suppose. My father was a merchant. He went, in the way of
+trade, to America, and was lost on his way home in a shipwreck, he
+and his merchandise with him. My mother was so overwhelmed by these
+calamities that she fell into a decline and died, leaving me, while
+still a child, to the charge of an aunt, who brought me up. I was a
+good girl till the hour I met the man whose love was to afford me
+indescribable delights, ending in the despair wherein you now see me
+plunged.”
+
+So saying, Sophie hid her face in her handkerchief. Presently she
+resumed with a sigh:
+
+“His worldly rank was so far above my own I could never expect to be
+his except in secret. I flattered myself he would be faithful to me. He
+swore he loved me, and easily overcame my scruples. My aunt was aware
+of our feelings for one another, and raised no obstacles, for two
+reasons,--because her affection for me made her indulgent, and because
+my dear lover’s high position impressed her imagination. I lived a year
+of perfect happiness only equalled by the wretchedness I now endure.
+This morning he came to see me at my aunt’s, with whom I live. I was
+haunted by dark forebodings. As I dressed my hair but an hour or so
+before, I had broken a mirror he had given me. The sight of him only
+increased my misgivings, for I noticed instantly that his face wore an
+unaccustomed look of constraint... Oh! sir, was ever woman so unhappy as
+I?...”
+
+Her eyes filled again with tears; but she kept them back under her
+lids, and was able to finish her tale, which my good master deemed as
+touching, but by no means so unique, as she did herself.
+
+“He informed me coldly, though not without signs of embarrassment,
+that his father having bought him a Company, he was leaving to join the
+colours. First, however, he said, his family required him to plight his
+troth to the daughter of an Intendant of Finances; the connection
+was advantageous to his fortune and would bring him means adequate to
+support his rank and make a figure in the world. And the traitor, never
+deigning to notice my pale looks, added in his soft, caressing voice
+which had made me so many vows of affection, that his new obligations
+would prevent his seeing me again, at least for some while. He assured
+me further that he was still my friend and begged me to accept a sum of
+money in memory of the days we had passed together.
+
+“And with the words he held out a purse to me.
+
+“I am telling you the truth, sirs, when I assure you I had always
+refused to listen to the offers he repeated again and again, to give me
+fine clothes, furniture, plate, an establishment, and to take me away
+from my aunt’s, where I lived in very narrow circumstances, and settle
+me in a most elegant little mansion he had in the Rue di Roule. My wish
+was that we should be united only by the ties of affection, and I was
+proud to have of his gift nothing but a few jewels whose sole value came
+from the fact of his being the donor. My gorge rose at the sight of the
+purse he offered me, and the insult gave me strength to banish from my
+presence the impostor whom in one moment I had learnt to know and to
+despise. He faced my angry looks unabashed, and assured me with the
+utmost unconcern that I could know nothing of the paramount obligations
+that fill the existence of a man of quality, adding that he hoped
+eventually, when I looked at things quietly, I should come to see his
+behaviour in a better light. Then, returning the purse to his pocket,
+he declared he would readily find a way of putting the contents at my
+disposal in such a manner as to make it impossible for me to refuse his
+liberality. Thus leaving me with the odious, the intolerable implication
+that he was going to make full amends by these sordid means, he made for
+the door to which I pointed without a word. When he was gone, I felt a
+calmness of mind that surprised myself. It arose from the resolution I
+had formed to die. I dressed with some care, wrote a letter to my aunt
+asking her forgiveness for the pain I was about to cause her by my
+death, and went out into the streets. There I roamed about all the
+afternoon and evening and a part of the night, moving from busy
+thoroughfare to deserted lane without a trace of fatigue, postponing
+the execution of my purpose to make it more sure and certain under the
+favouring conditions of darkness and solitude. Possibly too I found a
+certain weak pleasure in dallying with the thought of dying and tasting
+the mournful satisfaction of my coming release from my troubles. At two
+o’clock in the morning, I went down to the river’s brink. Sirs, you know
+the rest,--you snatched me from a watery grave. I thank you for your
+goodness,--though I am sorry you saved my life. The world is full of
+forsaken women. I did not wish to add another to the number.”
+
+Sophie then fell silent and began weeping afresh. My good master took
+her hand with the greatest delicacy.
+
+“My child,” he said, “I have listened with a tender interest to the
+story of your life, and I own ‘tis a sad tale. But I am happy to discern
+that your case is curable. Not only was your lover unworthy of the
+favours you showed him and has proved himself on trial a selfish,
+cruel-hearted libertine, but I see plainly your love for him was only
+an impulse of the senses and the effect of your own sensibility, the
+particular object of which mattered far less than you imagine. What
+there was rare and excellent in the liaison came from you. Well then,
+nothing is lost, since the source still remains. Your eyes, which have
+thrown a glamour of the fairest hues over, I doubt not, a very ordinary
+individual, will not cease to go on shedding abroad elsewhere the same
+bright rays of charming self-delusion.”
+
+My good master said more in the same strain, dropping from his lips the
+finest words ever heard anent the tribulations of the senses and the
+errors lovers are prone to. But, as he talked on, Sophie, who for some
+while had let her pretty head droop on the shoulder of this best of men,
+fell softly asleep. When M. l’Abbé Coignard saw his young friend
+was wrapped in a sound slumber, he congratulated himself on having
+discoursed in a vein so meet to afford repose and peace to a suffering
+soul.
+
+“It must be allowed,” he chuckled, “my sermons have a beneficent
+effect.”
+
+Not to disturb Mademoiselle’s slumbers, he took a thousand pretty
+precautions, amongst others constraining himself to talk on
+uninterruptedly, not unreasonably apprehensive that a sudden silence
+might awake her.
+
+“Tournebroche, my son,” he said, turning to me, “look, all her sorrows
+are vanished away with the consciousness she had of them. You must see
+they were all of the imagination and resided in her own thought.
+You must understand likewise they sprang from a certain pride and
+overweening conceit that goes along with love and makes it very
+exacting. For, in truth, if only we loved in humbleness of spirit and
+forgetfulness of self, or merely with a simple heart, we should be
+content with what is vouchsafed us and should not straightway cry
+treason when some slight is put on us. And if some power of loving were
+left us still, after our lover had deserted us, we should await the
+issue in calmness of mind to make what use of it God should please to
+grant.”
+
+But the day was just breaking by this time, and the song of the birds
+grew so loud it drowned my good master’s voice. He made no complaint on
+this score.
+
+“Hearken,” he said, “to the sparrows. They make love more wisely than
+men do.”
+
+Sophie awoke in the white light of dawn, and I admired her lovely eyes,
+which fatigue and grief had ringed with a delicate pearly-grey.
+She seemed somewhat reconciled to life, and did not refuse a cup of
+chocolate which my good master made her drink at Mathurine’s door, the
+pretty chocolate-seller of the Halles.
+
+But as the poor child came into more complete possession of her wits,
+she began to trouble about sundry practical difficulties she had not
+thought of till then.
+
+“What will my aunt say? And whatever can I tell her?” she asked
+distractedly.
+
+The aunt lived just opposite Saint-Eustache, less than a hundred yards
+from Mathurine’s archway. Thither we escorted her niece; and M.
+l’Abbé Coignard, who had quite a venerable look, though one shoe _was_
+unbuckled, accompanied the fair Sophie to the door of her aunt’s lodging
+and pitched that lady a fine tale:
+
+“I had the happy fortune,” he informed her, “to encounter your good
+niece at the very moment when she was assailed by four footpads armed
+with pistols, and I shouted for the watch so lustily that the thieves
+took to their heels in a panic. But they were not quick enough to
+escape the sergeants who, by the rarest chance, ran up in answer to my
+outcries. They arrested the villains after a desperate tussle. I took my
+share of the rough and tumble, and I thought at first I had lost my hat
+in the fray. When all was over, we were all taken, your niece, the four
+footpads and myself, before his Honour the Lieutenant-Criminel, who
+treated us with much consideration and detained us till daylight in his
+cabinet, taking down our evidence.” The aunt answered drily:
+
+“I thank you, sir, for having saved my niece from a peril which, to say
+the truth, is not the risk a girl of her age need fear the most, when
+she is out alone at night in the streets of Paris.”
+
+My good master made no answer to this; but Mademoiselle Sophie spoke up
+and said in a voice of deep feeling:
+
+“I do assure you, Aunt, Monsieur l’Abbé saved my life.”
+
+*****
+
+Some years after this singular adventure, my master made the fatal
+journey to Lyons from which he never returned. He was foully murdered,
+and I had the ineffable grief of seeing him expire in my arms. The
+incidents of his death have no connexion with the matter I speak of
+here. I have taken pains to record them elsewhere; they are indeed
+memorable, and will never, I think, be forgotten. I may add that this
+journey was in all ways unfortunate, for after losing the best of
+masters on the road, I was likewise forsaken by a mistress who loved me,
+but did not love me alone, and whose loss nearly broke my heart, coming
+after that of my good master. It is a mistake to suppose that a man
+who has received one cruel blow grows callous to succeeding strokes
+of calamity. Far otherwise; he suffers agonies from the smallest
+contrarieties. I returned to Paris in a state of dejection almost beyond
+belief.
+
+Well, one evening, by way of enlivening my spirits, I went to the
+Comédie, where they were playing _Bajazet_, one of Racine’s excellent
+pieces. I was particularly struck by the charm and beauty, no less than
+the originality and talent, of the actress who took the part of Roxane.
+She expressed with a delightful naturalness the passion animating that
+character, and I shuddered as I heard her declaim in accents that were
+harmonious and yet terrible the line:
+
+     Écoutez  Bajazet, je sens que je vous aime.{*}
+
+     * “Hearken, Bajazet, I feel I love you.”
+
+I never wearied of gazing at her all the time she occupied the stage,
+and admiring the beauty of her eyes that gleamed below a brow as pure
+as marble and crowned by powdered locks all spangled with pearls. Her
+slender waist too, which her hoop showed off to perfection, did not
+fail to make a vivid impression on my heart. I had the better leisure to
+scrutinize these adorable charms as she happened to face in my direction
+to deliver several important portions of her rôle. And the more I
+looked, the more I felt convinced I had seen her before, though I found
+it impossible to recall anything connected with our previous meeting. My
+neighbour in the theatre, who was a constant frequenter of the Comédie,
+told me the beautiful actress was Mademoiselle B------, the idol of the
+pit. He added that she was as great a favourite in society as on the
+boards, that M. le Duc de La ------ had made her the fashion and that
+she was on the highroad to eclipse Mademoiselle Lecouvreur.
+
+I was just leaving my seat after the performance when a “femme de
+chambre” handed me a note in which I found written in pencil the words:
+
+“_Mademoiselle Roxane is waiting for you in her coach at the theatre
+door_.”
+
+I could not believe the missive was intended for me; and I asked the
+abigail who had delivered it if she was not mistaken in the recipient.
+
+“If I _am_ mistaken,” she replied confidently, “then you cannot be
+Monsieur de Tournebroche, that is all.”
+
+I ran to the coach which stood waiting in front of the House, and inside
+I recognized Mademoiselle B------, her head muffled in a black satin
+hood.
+
+She beckoned to me to get in, and when I was seated beside her:
+
+“Do you not,” she asked me, “recognize Sophie, whom you rescued from
+drowning on the banks of the Seine?”
+
+“What! you! Sophie--Roxane--Mademoiselle B------, is it possible?--”
+
+My confusion was extreme, but she appeared to view it without annoyance.
+
+“I saw you,” she went on, “in one corner of the pit. I knew you
+instantly and played for you. Say, did I play well? I am so glad to see
+you again!--”
+
+She asked me news of M. l’Abbé Coignard, and when I told her my good
+master had just perished miserably, she burst into tears.
+
+She was good enough to inform me of the chief events of her life:
+
+“My aunt,” she said, “used to mend her laces for Madame de Saint-Remi,
+who, as you must know, is an admirable actress. A short while after the
+night when you did me such yeoman service, I went to her house to take
+home some pieces of lace. The lady told me I had a face that interested
+her. She then asked me to read some verses, and concluded I was not
+without wits. She had me trained. I made my first appearance at the
+Comédie last year. I interpret passions I have felt myself, and the
+public credits me with some talent. M. le Duc de La ------ exhibits a
+very dear friendship for me, and I think he will never cause me pain and
+disappointment, because I have learnt to ask of men only what they can
+give. At this moment he is expecting me at supper. I must not break my
+word.”
+
+But, reading my vexation in my eyes, she added:
+
+“However, I have told my people to go the longest way round and to drive
+slowly.”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Merrie Tales Of Jacques
+Tournebroche, by Anatole France
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