summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/9170-0.txt
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
authorRoger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>2025-10-15 05:32:52 -0700
committerRoger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>2025-10-15 05:32:52 -0700
commit8cbc6db13450ff93bd47cbdf7b1635462b3a97ef (patch)
tree3d9774a0ad62538d45a3a5811f52f4af3be5aff1 /9170-0.txt
initial commit of ebook 9170HEADmain
Diffstat (limited to '9170-0.txt')
-rw-r--r--9170-0.txt63486
1 files changed, 63486 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/9170-0.txt b/9170-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bc3db20
--- /dev/null
+++ b/9170-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,63486 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete, by Émile Zola
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete
+ Lourdes, Rome and Paris
+
+Author: Émile Zola
+
+Release Date: September 10, 2003 [eBook #9170]
+[Most recently updated: March 9, 2022]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Dagny and David Widger
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THREE CITIES TRILOGY ***
+
+
+
+
+THE THREE CITIES
+
+LOURDES, ROME, PARIS
+
+
+By Émile Zola
+
+
+Translated By Ernest A. Vizetelly
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+BEFORE perusing this work, it is as well that the reader should
+understand M. Zola’s aim in writing it, and his views--as distinct from
+those of his characters--upon Lourdes, its Grotto, and its cures. A short
+time before the book appeared M. Zola was interviewed upon the subject by
+his friend and biographer, Mr. Robert H. Sherard, to whom he spoke as
+follows:
+
+
+“‘Lourdes’ came to be written by mere accident. In 1891 I happened to be
+travelling for my pleasure, with my wife, in the Basque country and by
+the Pyrenees, and being in the neighbourhood of Lourdes, included it in
+my tour. I spent fifteen days there, and was greatly struck by what I
+saw, and it then occurred to me that there was material here for just the
+sort of novel that I like to write--a novel in which great masses of men
+can be shown in motion--_un grand mouvement de foule_--a novel the
+subject of which stirred up my philosophical ideas.
+
+“It was too late then to study the question, for I had visited Lourdes
+late in September, and so had missed seeing the best pilgrimage, which
+takes place in August, under the direction of the Pères de la
+Miséricorde, of the Rue de l’Assomption in Paris--the National
+Pilgrimage, as it is called. These Fathers are very active, enterprising
+men, and have made a great success of this annual national pilgrimage.
+Under their direction thirty thousand pilgrims are transported to
+Lourdes, including over a thousand sick persons.
+
+“So in the following year I went in August, and saw a national
+pilgrimage, and followed it during the three days which it lasts, in
+addition to the two days given to travelling. After its departure, I
+stayed on ten or twelve days, working up the subject in every detail. My
+book is the story of such a national pilgrimage, and is, accordingly, the
+story of five days. It is divided into five parts, each of which parts is
+limited to one day.
+
+“There are from ninety to one hundred characters in the story: sick
+persons, pilgrims, priests, nuns, hospitallers, nurses, and peasants; and
+the book shows Lourdes under every aspect. There are the piscinas, the
+processions, the Grotto, the churches at night, the people in the
+streets. It is, in one word, Lourdes in its entirety. In this canvas is
+worked out a very delicate central intrigue, as in ‘Dr. Pascal,’ and
+around this are many little stories or subsidiary plots. There is the
+story of the sick person who gets well, of the sick person who is not
+cured, and so on. The philosophical idea which pervades the whole book is
+the idea of human suffering, the exhibition of the desperate and
+despairing sufferers who, abandoned by science and by man, address
+themselves to a higher Power in the hope of relief; as where parents have
+a dearly loved daughter dying of consumption, who has been given up, and
+for whom nothing remains but death. A sudden hope, however, breaks in
+upon them: ‘supposing that after all there should be a Power greater than
+that of man, higher than that of science.’ They will haste to try this
+last chance of safety. It is the instinctive hankering after the lie
+which creates human credulity.
+
+“I will admit that I came across some instances of real cure. Many cases
+of nervous disorders have undoubtedly been cured, and there have also
+been other cures which may, perhaps be attributed to errors of diagnosis
+on the part of doctors who attended the patients so cured. Often a
+patient is described by his doctor as suffering from consumption. He goes
+to Lourdes, and is cured. However, the probability is that the doctor
+made a mistake. In my own case I was at one time suffering from a violent
+pain in my chest, which presented all the symptoms of _angina pectoris_,
+a mortal malady. It was nothing of the sort. Indigestion, doubtless, and,
+as such, curable. Remember that most of the sick persons who go to
+Lourdes come from the country, and that the country doctors are not
+usually men of either great skill or great experience. But all doctors
+mistake symptoms. Put three doctors together to discuss a case, and in
+nine cases out of ten they will disagree in their diagnosis. Look at the
+quantities of tumours, swellings, and sores, which cannot be properly
+classified. These cures are based on the ignorance of the medical
+profession. The sick pretend, believe, that they suffer from such and
+such a desperate malady, whereas it is from some other malady that they
+are suffering. And so the legend forms itself. And, of course, there must
+be cures out of so large a number of cases. Nature often cures without
+medical aid. Certainly, many of the workings of Nature are wonderful, but
+they are not supernatural. The Lourdes miracles can neither be proved nor
+denied. The miracle is based on human ignorance. And so the doctor who
+lives at Lourdes, and who is commissioned to register the cures and to
+tabulate the miracles, has a very careless time of it. A person comes,
+and gets cured. He has but to get three doctors together to examine the
+case. They will disagree as to what was the disease from which the
+patient suffered, and the only explanation left which will be acceptable
+to the public, with its hankering after the lie, is that a miracle has
+been vouchsafed.
+
+“I interviewed a number of people at Lourdes, and could not find one who
+would declare that he had witnessed a miracle. All the cases which I
+describe in my book are real cases, in which I have only changed the
+names of the persons concerned. In none of these instances was I able to
+discover any real proof for or against the miraculous nature of the cure.
+Thus, in the case of Clementine Trouve, who figures in my story as
+Sophie--the patient who, after suffering for a long time from a horrid
+open sore on her foot, was suddenly cured, according to current report,
+by bathing her foot in the piscina, where the bandages fell off, and her
+foot was entirely restored to a healthy condition--I investigated that
+case thoroughly. I was told that there were three or four ladies living
+in Lourdes who could guarantee the facts as stated by little Clementine.
+I looked up those ladies. The first said No, she could not vouch for
+anything. She had seen nothing. I had better consult somebody else. The
+next answered in the same way, and nowhere was I able to find any
+corroboration of the girl’s story. Yet the little girl did not look like
+a liar, and I believe that she was fully convinced of the miraculous
+nature of her cure. It is the facts themselves which lie.
+
+“Lourdes, the Grotto, the cures, the miracles, are, indeed, the creation
+of that need of the Lie, that necessity for credulity, which is a
+characteristic of human nature. At first, when little Bernadette came
+with her strange story of what she had witnessed, everybody was against
+her. The Prefect of the Department, the Bishop, the clergy, objected to
+her story. But Lourdes grew up in spite of all opposition, just as the
+Christian religion did, because suffering humanity in its despair must
+cling to something, must have some hope; and, on the other hand, because
+humanity thirsts after illusions. In a word, it is the story of the
+foundation of all religions.”
+
+
+To the foregoing account of “Lourdes” as supplied by its author, it may
+be added that the present translation, first made from early proofs of
+the French original whilst the latter was being completed, has for the
+purposes of this new American edition been carefully and extensively
+revised by Mr. E. A. Vizetelly,--M. Zola’s representative for all
+English-speaking countries. “Lourdes” forms the first volume of the
+“Trilogy of the Three Cities,” the second being “Rome,” and the third
+“Paris.”
+
+
+
+
+
+LOURDES
+
+
+
+
+THE FIRST DAY
+
+
+
+
+I. PILGRIMS AND PATIENTS
+
+THE pilgrims and patients, closely packed on the hard seats of a
+third-class carriage, were just finishing the “Ave maris Stella,” which
+they had begun to chant on leaving the terminus of the Orleans line, when
+Marie, slightly raised on her couch of misery and restless with feverish
+impatience, caught sight of the Paris fortifications through the window
+of the moving train.
+
+“Ah, the fortifications!” she exclaimed, in a tone which was joyous
+despite her suffering. “Here we are, out of Paris; we are off at last!”
+
+Her delight drew a smile from her father, M. de Guersaint, who sat in
+front of her, whilst Abbé Pierre Froment, who was looking at her with
+fraternal affection, was so carried away by his compassionate anxiety as
+to say aloud: “And now we are in for it till to-morrow morning. We shall
+only reach Lourdes at three-forty. We have more than two-and-twenty
+hours’ journey before us.”
+
+It was half-past five, the sun had risen, radiant in the pure sky of a
+delightful morning. It was a Friday, the 19th of August. On the horizon,
+however, some small, heavy clouds already presaged a terrible day of
+stormy heat. And the oblique sunrays were enfilading the compartments of
+the railway carriage, filling them with dancing, golden dust.
+
+“Yes, two-and-twenty hours,” murmured Marie, relapsing into a state of
+anguish. “_Mon Dieu_! what a long time we must still wait!”
+
+Then her father helped her to lie down again in the narrow box, a kind of
+wooden gutter, in which she had been living for seven years past. Making
+an exception in her favour, the railway officials had consented to take
+as luggage the two pairs of wheels which could be removed from the box,
+or fitted to it whenever it became necessary to transport her from place
+to place. Packed between the sides of this movable coffin, she occupied
+the room of three passengers on the carriage seat; and for a moment she
+lay there with eyes closed. Although she was three-and-twenty; her ashen,
+emaciated face was still delicately infantile, charming despite
+everything, in the midst of her marvellous fair hair, the hair of a
+queen, which illness had respected. Clad with the utmost simplicity in a
+gown of thin woollen stuff, she wore, hanging from her neck, the card
+bearing her name and number, which entitled her to _hospitalisation_, or
+free treatment. She herself had insisted on making the journey in this
+humble fashion, not wishing to be a source of expense to her relatives,
+who little by little had fallen into very straitened circumstances. And
+thus it was that she found herself in a third-class carriage of the
+“white train,” the train which carried the greatest sufferers, the most
+woeful of the fourteen trains going to Lourdes that day, the one in
+which, in addition to five hundred healthy pilgrims, nearly three hundred
+unfortunate wretches, weak to the point of exhaustion, racked by
+suffering, were heaped together, and borne at express speed from one to
+the other end of France.
+
+Sorry that he had saddened her, Pierre continued to gaze at her with the
+air of a compassionate elder brother. He had just completed his thirtieth
+year, and was pale and slight, with a broad forehead. After busying
+himself with all the arrangements for the journey, he had been desirous
+of accompanying her, and, having obtained admission among the
+Hospitallers of Our Lady of Salvation as an auxiliary member, wore on his
+cassock the red, orange-tipped cross of a bearer. M. de Guersaint on his
+side had simply pinned the little scarlet cross of the pilgrimage on his
+grey cloth jacket. The idea of travelling appeared to delight him;
+although he was over fifty he still looked young, and, with his eyes ever
+wandering over the landscape, he seemed unable to keep his head still--a
+bird-like head it was, with an expression of good nature and
+absent-mindedness.
+
+However, in spite of the violent shaking of the train, which constantly
+drew sighs from Marie, Sister Hyacinthe had risen to her feet in the
+adjoining compartment. She noticed that the sun’s rays were streaming in
+the girl’s face.
+
+“Pull down the blind, Monsieur l’Abbé,” she said to Pierre. “Come, come,
+we must install ourselves properly, and set our little household in
+order.”
+
+Clad in the black robe of a Sister of the Assumption, enlivened by a
+white coif, a white wimple, and a large white apron, Sister Hyacinthe
+smiled, the picture of courageous activity. Her youth bloomed upon her
+small, fresh lips, and in the depths of her beautiful blue eyes, whose
+expression was ever gentle. She was not pretty, perhaps, still she was
+charming, slender, and tall, the bib of her apron covering her flat chest
+like that of a young man; one of good heart, displaying a snowy
+complexion, and overflowing with health, gaiety, and innocence.
+
+“But this sun is already roasting us,” said she; “pray pull down your
+blind as well, madame.”
+
+Seated in the corner, near the Sister, was Madame de Jonquière, who had
+kept her little bag on her lap. She slowly pulled down the blind. Dark,
+and well built, she was still nice-looking, although she had a daughter,
+Raymonde, who was four-and-twenty, and whom for motives of propriety she
+had placed in the charge of two lady-hospitallers, Madame Désagneaux and
+Madame Volmar, in a first-class carriage. For her part, directress as she
+was of a ward of the Hospital of Our Lady of Dolours at Lourdes, she did
+not quit her patients; and outside, swinging against the door of her
+compartment, was the regulation placard bearing under her own name those
+of the two Sisters of the Assumption who accompanied her. The widow of a
+ruined man, she lived with her daughter on the scanty income of four or
+five thousand francs a year, at the rear of a courtyard in the Rue
+Vanneau. But her charity was inexhaustible, and she gave all her time to
+the work of the Hospitality of Our Lady of Salvation, an institution
+whose red cross she wore on her gown of carmelite poplin, and whose aims
+she furthered with the most active zeal. Of a somewhat proud disposition,
+fond of being flattered and loved, she took great delight in this annual
+journey, from which both her heart and her passion derived contentment.
+
+“You are right, Sister,” she said, “we will organise matters. I really
+don’t know why I am encumbering myself with this bag.”
+
+And thereupon she placed it under the seat, near her.
+
+“Wait a moment,” resumed Sister Hyacinthe; “you have the water-can
+between your legs--it is in your way.”
+
+“No, no, it isn’t, I assure you. Let it be. It must always be somewhere.”
+
+Then they both set their house in order as they expressed it, so that for
+a day and a night they might live with their patients as comfortably as
+possible. The worry was that they had not been able to take Marie into
+their compartment, as she wished to have Pierre and her father near her;
+however neighbourly intercourse was easy enough over the low partition.
+Moreover the whole carriage, with its five compartments of ten seats
+each, formed but one moving chamber, a common room as it were which the
+eye took in at a glance from end to end. Between its wooden walls, bare
+and yellow, under its white-painted panelled roof, it showed like a
+hospital ward, with all the disorder and promiscuous jumbling together of
+an improvised ambulance. Basins, brooms, and sponges lay about,
+half-hidden by the seats. Then, as the train only carried such luggage as
+the pilgrims could take with them, there were valises, deal boxes, bonnet
+boxes, and bags, a wretched pile of poor worn-out things mended with bits
+of string, heaped up a little bit everywhere; and overhead the litter
+began again, what with articles of clothing, parcels, and baskets hanging
+from brass pegs and swinging to and fro without a pause.
+
+Amidst all this frippery the more afflicted patients, stretched on their
+narrow mattresses, which took up the room of several passengers, were
+shaken, carried along by the rumbling gyrations of the wheels; whilst
+those who were able to remain seated, leaned against the partitions,
+their faces pale, their heads resting upon pillows. According to the
+regulations there should have been one lady-hospitaller to each
+compartment. However, at the other end of the carriage there was but a
+second Sister of the Assumption, Sister Claire des Anges. Some of the
+pilgrims who were in good health were already getting up, eating and
+drinking. One compartment was entirely occupied by women, ten pilgrims
+closely pressed together, young ones and old ones, all sadly, pitifully
+ugly. And as nobody dared to open the windows on account of the
+consumptives in the carriage, the heat was soon felt and an unbearable
+odour arose, set free as it were by the jolting of the train as it went
+its way at express speed.
+
+They had said their chaplets at Juvisy; and six o’clock was striking, and
+they were rushing like a hurricane past the station of Bretigny, when
+Sister Hyacinthe stood up. It was she who directed the pious exercises,
+which most of the pilgrims followed from small, blue-covered books.
+
+“The Angelus, my children,” said she with a pleasant smile, a maternal
+air which her great youth rendered very charming and sweet.
+
+Then the “Aves” again followed one another, and were drawing to an end
+when Pierre and Marie began to feel interested in two women who occupied
+the other corner seats of their compartment. One of them, she who sat at
+Marie’s feet, was a blonde of slender build and _bourgeoise_ appearance,
+some thirty and odd years of age, and faded before she had grown old. She
+shrank back, scarcely occupying any room, wearing a dark dress, and
+showing colourless hair, and a long grief-stricken face which expressed
+unlimited self-abandonment, infinite sadness. The woman in front of her,
+she who sat on the same seat as Pierre, was of the same age, but belonged
+to the working classes. She wore a black cap and displayed a face ravaged
+by wretchedness and anxiety, whilst on her lap she held a little girl of
+seven, who was so pale, so wasted by illness, that she scarcely seemed
+four. With her nose contracted, her eyelids lowered and showing blue in
+her waxen face, the child was unable to speak, unable to give utterance
+to more than a low plaint, a gentle moan, which rent the heart of her
+mother, leaning over her, each time that she heard it.
+
+“Would she eat a few grapes?” timidly asked the lady, who had hitherto
+preserved silence. “I have some in my basket.”
+
+“Thank you, madame,” replied the woman, “she only takes milk, and
+sometimes not even that willingly. I took care to bring a bottleful with
+me.”
+
+Then, giving way to the desire which possesses the wretched to confide
+their woes to others, she began to relate her story. Her name was
+Vincent, and her husband, a gilder by trade, had been carried off by
+consumption. Left alone with her little Rose, who was the passion of her
+heart, she had worked by day and night at her calling as a dressmaker in
+order to bring the child up. But disease had come, and for fourteen
+months now she had had her in her arms like that, growing more and more
+woeful and wasted until reduced almost to nothingness. She, the mother,
+who never went to mass, entered a church, impelled by despair to pray for
+her daughter’s cure; and there she had heard a voice which had told her
+to take the little one to Lourdes, where the Blessed Virgin would have
+pity on her. Acquainted with nobody, not knowing even how the pilgrimages
+were organised, she had had but one idea--to work, save up the money
+necessary for the journey, take a ticket, and start off with the thirty
+sous remaining to her, destitute of all supplies save a bottle of milk
+for the child, not having even thought of purchasing a crust of bread for
+herself.
+
+“What is the poor little thing suffering from?” resumed the lady.
+
+“Oh, it must be consumption of the bowels, madame! But the doctors have
+names they give it. At first she only had slight pains in the stomach.
+Then her stomach began to swell and she suffered, oh, so dreadfully! it
+made one cry to see her. Her stomach has gone down now, only she’s worn
+out; she has got so thin that she has no legs left her, and she’s wasting
+away with continual sweating.”
+
+Then, as Rose, raising her eyelids, began to moan, her mother leant over
+her, distracted and turning pale. “What is the matter, my jewel, my
+treasure?” she asked. “Are you thirsty?”
+
+But the little girl was already closing her dim eyes of a hazy sky-blue
+hue, and did not even answer, but relapsed into her torpor, quite white
+in the white frock she wore--a last coquetry on the part of her mother,
+who had gone to this useless expense in the hope that the Virgin would be
+more compassionate and gentle to a little sufferer who was well dressed,
+so immaculately white.
+
+There was an interval of silence, and then Madame Vincent inquired: “And
+you, madame, it’s for yourself no doubt that you are going to Lourdes?
+One can see very well that you are ill.”
+
+But the lady, with a frightened look, shrank woefully into her corner,
+murmuring: “No, no, I am not ill. Would to God that I were! I should
+suffer less.”
+
+Her name was Madame Maze, and her heart was full of an incurable grief.
+After a love marriage to a big, gay fellow with ripe, red lips, she had
+found herself deserted at the end of a twelvemonth’s honeymoon. Ever
+travelling, following the profession of a jeweller’s bagman, her husband,
+who earned a deal of money, would disappear for six months at a stretch,
+deceive her from one frontier to the other of France, at times even
+carrying creatures about with him. And she worshipped him; she suffered
+so frightfully from it all that she had sought a remedy in religion, and
+had at last made up her mind to repair to Lourdes, in order to pray the
+Virgin to restore her husband to her and make him amend his ways.
+
+Although Madame Vincent did not understand the other’s words, she
+realised that she was a prey to great mental affliction, and they
+continued looking at one another, the mother, whom the sight of her dying
+daughter was killing, and the abandoned wife, whom her passion cast into
+throes of death-like agony.
+
+However, Pierre, who, like Marie, had been listening to the conversation,
+now intervened. He was astonished that the dressmaker had not sought free
+treatment for her little patient. The Association of Our Lady of
+Salvation had been founded by the Augustine Fathers of the Assumption
+after the Franco-German war, with the object of contributing to the
+salvation of France and the defence of the Church by prayer in common and
+the practice of charity; and it was this association which had promoted
+the great pilgrimage movement, in particular initiating and unremittingly
+extending the national pilgrimage which every year, towards the close of
+August, set out for Lourdes. An elaborate organisation had been gradually
+perfected, donations of considerable amounts were collected in all parts
+of the world, sufferers were enrolled in every parish, and agreements
+were signed with the railway companies, to say nothing of the active help
+of the Little Sisters of the Assumption and the establishment of the
+Hospitality of Our Lady of Salvation, a widespread brotherhood of the
+benevolent, in which one beheld men and women, mostly belonging to
+society, who, under the orders of the pilgrimage managers, nursed the
+sick, helped to transport them, and watched over the observance of good
+discipline. A written request was needed for the sufferers to obtain
+hospitalisation, which dispensed them from making the smallest payment in
+respect either of their journey or their sojourn; they were fetched from
+their homes and conveyed back thither; and they simply had to provide a
+few provisions for the road. By far the greater number were recommended
+by priests or benevolent persons, who superintended the inquiries
+concerning them and obtained the needful papers, such as doctors’
+certificates and certificates of birth. And, these matters being settled,
+the sick ones had nothing further to trouble about, they became but so
+much suffering flesh, food for miracles, in the hands of the hospitallers
+of either sex.
+
+“But you need only have applied to your parish priest, madame,” Pierre
+explained. “This poor child is deserving of all sympathy. She would have
+been immediately admitted.”
+
+“I did not know it, monsieur l’Abbé.”
+
+“Then how did you manage?”
+
+“Why, Monsieur l’Abbé, I went to take a ticket at a place which one of my
+neighbours, who reads the newspapers, told me about.”
+
+She was referring to the tickets, at greatly reduced rates, which were
+issued to the pilgrims possessed of means. And Marie, listening to her,
+felt great pity for her, and also some shame; for she who was not
+entirely destitute of resources had succeeded in obtaining
+_hospitalisation_, thanks to Pierre, whereas that mother and her sorry
+child, after exhausting their scanty savings, remained without a copper.
+
+However, a more violent jolt of the carriage drew a cry of pain from the
+girl. “Oh, father,” she said, “pray raise me a little! I can’t stay on my
+back any longer.”
+
+When M. de Guersaint had helped her into a sitting posture, she gave a
+deep sigh of relief. They were now at Etampes, after a run of an hour and
+a half from Paris, and what with the increased warmth of the sun, the
+dust, and the noise, weariness was becoming apparent already. Madame de
+Jonquière had got up to speak a few words of kindly encouragement to
+Marie over the partition; and Sister Hyacinthe moreover again rose, and
+gaily clapped her hands that she might be heard and obeyed from one to
+the other end of the carriage.
+
+“Come, come!” said she, “we mustn’t think of our little troubles. Let us
+pray and sing, and the Blessed Virgin will be with us.”
+
+She herself then began the rosary according to the rite of Our Lady of
+Lourdes, and all the patients and pilgrims followed her. This was the
+first chaplet--the five joyful mysteries, the Annunciation, the
+Visitation, the Nativity, the Purification, and Jesus found in the
+Temple. Then they all began to chant the canticle: “Let us contemplate
+the heavenly Archangel!” Their voices were lost amid the loud rumbling of
+the wheels; you heard but the muffled surging of that human wave,
+stifling within the closed carriage which rolled on and on without a
+pause.
+
+Although M. de Guersaint was a worshipper, he could never follow a hymn
+to the end. He got up, sat down again, and finished by resting his elbow
+on the partition and conversing in an undertone with a patient who sat
+against this same partition in the next compartment. The patient in
+question was a thick-set man of fifty, with a good-natured face and a
+large head, completely bald. His name was Sabathier, and for fifteen
+years he had been stricken with ataxia. He only suffered pain by fits and
+starts, but he had quite lost the use of his legs, which his wife, who
+accompanied him, moved for him as though they had been dead legs,
+whenever they became too heavy, weighty like bars of lead.
+
+“Yes, monsieur,” he said, “such as you see me, I was formerly fifth-class
+professor at the Lycée Charlemagne. At first I thought that it was mere
+sciatica, but afterwards I was seized with sharp, lightning-like pains,
+red-hot sword thrusts, you know, in the muscles. For nearly ten years the
+disease kept on mastering me more and more. I consulted all the doctors,
+tried every imaginable mineral spring, and now I suffer less, but I can
+no longer move from my seat. And then, after long living without a
+thought of religion, I was led back to God by the idea that I was too
+wretched, and that Our Lady of Lourdes could not do otherwise than take
+pity on me.”
+
+Feeling interested, Pierre in his turn had leant over the partition and
+was listening.
+
+“Is it not so, Monsieur l’Abbé?” continued M. Sabathier. “Is not
+suffering the best awakener of souls? This is the seventh year that I am
+going to Lourdes without despairing of cure. This year the Blessed Virgin
+will cure me, I feel sure of it. Yes, I expect to be able to walk about
+again; I now live solely in that hope.”
+
+M. Sabathier paused, he wished his wife to push his legs a little more to
+the left; and Pierre looked at him, astonished to find such obstinate
+faith in a man of intellect, in one of those university professors who,
+as a rule, are such Voltairians. How could the belief in miracles have
+germinated and taken root in this man’s brain? As he himself said, great
+suffering alone explained this need of illusion, this blossoming of
+eternal and consolatory hope.
+
+“And my wife and I,” resumed the ex-professor, “are dressed, you see, as
+poor folks, for I wished to go as a mere pauper this year, and applied
+for _hospitalisation_ in a spirit of humility in order that the Blessed
+Virgin might include me among the wretched, her children--only, as I did
+not wish to take the place of a real pauper, I gave fifty francs to the
+Hospitalite, and this, as you are aware, gives one the right to have a
+patient of one’s own in the pilgrimage. I even know my patient. He was
+introduced to me at the railway station. He is suffering from
+tuberculosis, it appears, and seemed to me very low, very low.”
+
+A fresh interval of silence ensued. “Well,” said M. Sabathier at last,
+“may the Blessed Virgin save him also, she who can do everything. I shall
+be so happy; she will have loaded me with favours.”
+
+Then the three men, isolating themselves from the others, went on
+conversing together, at first on medical subjects, and at last diverging
+into a discussion on romanesque architecture, _à propos_ of a steeple
+which they had perceived on a hillside, and which every pilgrim had
+saluted with a sign of the cross. Swayed once more by the habits of
+cultivated intellect, the young priest and his two companions forgot
+themselves together in the midst of their fellow-passengers, all those
+poor, suffering, simple-minded folk, whom wretchedness stupefied. Another
+hour went by, two more canticles had just been sung, and the stations of
+Toury and Les Aubrais had been left behind, when, at Beaugency, they at
+last ceased their chat, on hearing Sister Hyacinthe clap her hands and
+intonate in her fresh, sonorous voice:
+
+“_Parce, Domine, parce populo tuo_.”
+
+And then the chant went on; all voices became mingled in that
+ever-surging wave of prayer which stilled pain, excited hope, and little
+by little penetrated the entire being, harassed by the haunting thought
+of the grace and cure which one and all were going to seek so far away.
+
+However, as Pierre sat down again, he saw that Marie was very pale, and
+had her eyes closed. By the painful contraction of her features he could
+tell that she was not asleep. “Are you in great suffering?” he asked.
+
+“Yes, yes, I suffer dreadfully. I shall never last to the end. It is this
+incessant jolting.”
+
+She moaned, raised her eyelids, and, half-fainting, remained in a sitting
+posture, her eyes turned on the other sufferers. In the adjoining
+compartment, La Grivotte, hitherto stretched out, scarce breathing, like
+a corpse, had just raised herself up in front of M. Sabathier. She was a
+tall, slip-shod, singular-looking creature of over thirty, with a round,
+ravaged face, which her frizzy hair and flaming eyes rendered almost
+pretty. She had reached the third stage of phthisis.
+
+“Eh, mademoiselle,” she said, addressing herself in a hoarse, indistinct
+voice to Marie, “how nice it would be if we could only doze off a little.
+But it can’t be managed; all these wheels keep on whirling round and
+round in one’s head.”
+
+Then, although it fatigued her to speak, she obstinately went on talking,
+volunteering particulars about herself. She was a mattress-maker, and
+with one of her aunts had long gone from yard to yard at Bercy to comb
+and sew up mattresses. And, indeed, it was to the pestilential wool which
+she had combed in her youth that she ascribed her malady. For five years
+she had been making the round of the hospitals of Paris, and she spoke
+familiarly of all the great doctors. It was the Sisters of Charity, at
+the Lariboisiere hospital, who, finding that she had a passion for
+religious ceremonies, had completed her conversion, and convinced her
+that the Virgin awaited her at Lourdes to cure her.
+
+“I certainly need it,” said she. “The doctors say that I have one lung
+done for, and that the other one is scarcely any better. There are great
+big holes you know. At first I only felt bad between the shoulders and
+spat up some froth. But then I got thin, and became a dreadful sight. And
+now I’m always in a sweat, and cough till I think I’m going to bring my
+heart up. And I can no longer spit. And I haven’t the strength to stand,
+you see. I can’t eat.”
+
+A stifling sensation made her pause, and she became livid.
+
+“All the same I prefer being in my skin instead of in that of the Brother
+in the compartment behind you. He has the same complaint as I have, but
+he is in a worse state that I am.”
+
+She was mistaken. In the farther compartment, beyond Marie, there was
+indeed a young missionary, Brother Isidore, who was lying on a mattress
+and could not be seen, since he was unable to raise even a finger. But he
+was not suffering from phthisis. He was dying of inflammation of the
+liver, contracted in Senegal. Very long and lank, he had a yellow face,
+with skin as dry and lifeless as parchment. The abscess which had formed
+in his liver had ended by breaking out externally, and amidst the
+continuous shivering of fever, vomiting, and delirium, suppuration was
+exhausting him. His eyes alone were still alive, eyes full of
+unextinguishable love, whose flame lighted up his expiring face, a
+peasant face such as painters have given to the crucified Christ, common,
+but rendered sublime at moments by its expression of faith and passion.
+He was a Breton, the last puny child of an over-numerous family, and had
+left his little share of land to his elder brothers. One of his sisters,
+Marthe, older than himself by a couple of years, accompanied him. She had
+been in service in Paris, an insignificant maid-of-all-work, but withal
+so devoted to her brother that she had left her situation to follow him,
+subsisting scantily on her petty savings.
+
+“I was lying on the platform,” resumed La Grivotte, “when he was put in
+the carriage. There were four men carrying him--”
+
+But she was unable to speak any further, for just then an attack of
+coughing shook her and threw her back upon the seat. She was suffocating,
+and the red flush on her cheek-bones turned blue. Sister Hyacinthe,
+however, immediately raised her head and wiped her lips with a linen
+cloth, which became spotted with blood. At the same time Madame de
+Jonquière gave her attention to a patient in front of her, who had just
+fainted. She was called Madame Vetu, and was the wife of a petty
+clockmaker of the Mouffetard district, who had not been able to shut up
+his shop in order to accompany her to Lourdes. And to make sure that she
+would be cared for she had sought and obtained _hospitalisation_. The
+fear of death was bringing her back to religion, although she had not set
+foot in church since her first communion. She knew that she was lost,
+that a cancer in the chest was eating into her; and she already had the
+haggard, orange-hued mark of the cancerous patient. Since the beginning
+of the journey she had not spoken a word, but, suffering terribly, had
+remained with her lips tightly closed. Then all at once, she had swooned
+away after an attack of vomiting.
+
+“It is unbearable!” murmured Madame de Jonquière, who herself felt faint;
+“we must let in a little fresh air.”
+
+Sister Hyacinthe was just then laying La Grivotte to rest on her pillows,
+“Certainly,” said she, “we will open the window for a few moments. But
+not on this side, for I am afraid we might have a fresh fit of coughing.
+Open the window on your side, madame.”
+
+The heat was still increasing, and the occupants of the carriage were
+stifling in that heavy evil-smelling atmosphere. The pure air which came
+in when the window was opened brought relief however. For a moment there
+were other duties to be attended to, a clearance and cleansing. The
+Sister emptied the basins out of the window, whilst the lady-hospitaller
+wiped the shaking floor with a sponge. Next, things had to be set in
+order; and then came a fresh anxiety, for the fourth patient, a slender
+girl whose face was entirely covered by a black fichu, and who had not
+yet moved, was saying that she felt hungry.
+
+With quiet devotion Madame de Jonquière immediately tendered her
+services. “Don’t you trouble, Sister,” she said, “I will cut her bread
+into little bits for her.”
+
+Marie, with the need she felt of diverting her mind from her own
+sufferings, had already begun to take an interest in that motionless
+sufferer whose countenance was so thickly veiled, for she not unnaturally
+suspected that it was a case of some distressing facial sore. She had
+merely been told that the patient was a servant, which was true, but it
+happened that the poor creature, a native of Picardy, named Elise
+Rouquet, had been obliged to leave her situation, and seek a home with a
+sister who ill-treated her, for no hospital would take her in. Extremely
+devout, she had for many months been possessed by an ardent desire to go
+to Lourdes.
+
+While Marie, with dread in her heart, waited for the fichu to be moved
+aside, Madame de Jonquière, having cut some bread into small pieces,
+inquired maternally: “Are they small enough? Can you put them into your
+mouth?”
+
+Thereupon a hoarse voice growled confused words under the black fichu:
+“Yes, yes, madame.” And at last the veil fell and Marie shuddered with
+horror.
+
+It was a case of lupus which had preyed upon the unhappy woman’s nose and
+mouth. Ulceration had spread, and was hourly spreading--in short, all the
+hideous peculiarities of this terrible disease were in full process of
+development, almost obliterating the traces of what once were pleasing
+womanly lineaments.
+
+“Oh, look, Pierre!” Marie murmured, trembling. The priest in his turn
+shuddered as he beheld Elise Rouquet cautiously slipping the tiny pieces
+of bread into her poor shapeless mouth. Everyone in the carriage had
+turned pale at sight of the awful apparition. And the same thought
+ascended from all those hope-inflated souls. Ah! Blessed Virgin, Powerful
+Virgin, what a miracle indeed if such an ill were cured!
+
+“We must not think of ourselves, my children, if we wish to get well,”
+ resumed Sister Hyacinthe, who still retained her encouraging smile.
+
+And then she made them say the second chaplet, the five sorrowful
+mysteries: Jesus in the Garden of Olives, Jesus scourged, Jesus crowned
+with thorns, Jesus carrying the cross, and Jesus crucified. Afterwards
+came the canticle: “In thy help, Virgin, do I put my trust.”
+
+They had just passed through Blois; for three long hours they had been
+rolling onward; and Marie, who had averted her eyes from Elise Rouquet,
+now turned them upon a man who occupied a corner seat in the compartment
+on her left, that in which Brother Isidore was lying. She had noticed
+this man several times already. Poorly clad in an old black frock-coat,
+he looked still young, although his sparse beard was already turning
+grey; and, short and emaciated, he seemed to experience great suffering,
+his fleshless, livid face being covered with sweat. However, he remained
+motionless, ensconced in his corner, speaking to nobody, but staring
+straight before him with dilated eyes. And all at once Marie noticed that
+his eyelids were falling, and that he was fainting away.
+
+She thereupon drew Sister’s Hyacinthe’s attention to him: “Look, Sister!
+One would think that that gentleman is dangerously ill.”
+
+“Which one, my dear child?”
+
+“That one, over there, with his head thrown back.”
+
+General excitement followed, all the healthy pilgrims rose up to look,
+and it occurred to Madame de Jonquière to call to Marthe, Brother
+Isidore’s sister, and tell her to tap the man’s hands.
+
+“Question him,” she added; “ask what ails him.”
+
+Marthe drew near, shook the man, and questioned him.
+
+But instead of an answer only a rattle came from his throat, and his eyes
+remained closed.
+
+Then a frightened voice was heard saying, “I think he is going to die.”
+
+The dread increased, words flew about, advice was tendered from one to
+the other end of the carriage. Nobody knew the man. He had certainly not
+obtained _hospitalisation_, for no white card was hanging from his neck.
+Somebody related, however, that he had seen him arrive, dragging himself
+along, but three minutes or so before the train started; and that he had
+remained quite motionless, scarce breathing, ever since he had flung
+himself with an air of intense weariness into that corner, where he was
+now apparently dying. His ticket was at last seen protruding from under
+the band of an old silk hat which was hung from a peg near him.
+
+“Ah, he is breathing again now!” Sister Hyacinthe suddenly exclaimed.
+“Ask him his name.”
+
+However, on being again questioned by Marthe, the man merely gave vent to
+a low plaint, an exclamation scarcely articulated, “Oh, how I suffer!”
+
+And thenceforward that was the only answer that could be obtained from
+him. With reference to everything that they wished to know, who he was,
+whence he came, what his illness was, what could be done for him, he gave
+no information, but still and ever continued moaning, “Oh, how I
+suffer--how I suffer!”
+
+Sister Hyacinthe grew restless with impatience. Ah, if she had only been
+in the same compartment with him! And she resolved that she would change
+her seat at the first station they should stop at. Only there would be no
+stoppage for a long time. The position was becoming terrible, the more so
+as the man’s head again fell back.
+
+“He is dying, he is dying!” repeated the frightened voice.
+
+What was to be done, _mon Dieu_? The Sister was aware that one of the
+Fathers of the Assumption, Father Massias, was in the train with the Holy
+Oils, ready to administer extreme unction to the dying; for every year
+some of the patients passed away during the journey. But she did not dare
+to have recourse to the alarm signal. Moreover, in the _cantine_ van
+where Sister Saint François officiated, there was a doctor with a little
+medicine chest. If the sufferer should survive until they reached
+Poitiers, where there would be half an hour’s stoppage, all possible help
+might be given to him.
+
+But on the other hand he might suddenly expire. However, they ended by
+becoming somewhat calmer. The man, though still unconscious, began to
+breathe in a more regular manner, and seemed to fall asleep.
+
+“To think of it, to die before getting there,” murmured Marie with a
+shudder, “to die in sight of the promised land!” And as her father sought
+to reassure her she added: “I am suffering--I am suffering dreadfully
+myself.”
+
+“Have confidence,” said Pierre; “the Blessed Virgin is watching over
+you.”
+
+She could no longer remain seated, and it became necessary to replace her
+in a recumbent position in her narrow coffin. Her father and the priest
+had to take every precaution in doing so, for the slightest hurt drew a
+moan from her. And she lay there breathless, like one dead, her face
+contracted by suffering, and surrounded by her regal fair hair. They had
+now been rolling on, ever rolling on for nearly four hours. And if the
+carriage was so greatly shaken, with an unbearable spreading tendency, it
+was from its position at the rear part of the train. The coupling irons
+shrieked, the wheels growled furiously; and as it was necessary to leave
+the windows partially open, the dust came in, acrid and burning; but it
+was especially the heat which grew terrible, a devouring, stormy heat
+falling from a tawny sky which large hanging clouds had slowly covered.
+The hot carriages, those rolling boxes where the pilgrims ate and drank,
+where the sick lay in a vitiated atmosphere, amid dizzying moans,
+prayers, and hymns, became like so many furnaces.
+
+And Marie was not the only one whose condition had been aggravated;
+others also were suffering from the journey. Resting in the lap of her
+despairing mother, who gazed at her with large, tear-blurred eyes, little
+Rose had ceased to stir, and had grown so pale that Madame Maze had twice
+leant forward to feel her hands, fearful lest she should find them cold.
+At each moment also Madame Sabathier had to move her husband’s legs, for
+their weight was so great, said he, that it seemed as if his hips were
+being torn from him. Brother Isidore too had just begun to cry out,
+emerging from his wonted torpor; and his sister had only been able to
+assuage his sufferings by raising him, and clasping him in her arms. La
+Grivotte seemed to be asleep, but a continuous hiccoughing shook her, and
+a tiny streamlet of blood dribbled from her mouth. Madame Vetu had again
+vomited, Elise Rouquet no longer thought of hiding the frightful sore
+open on her face. And from the man yonder, breathing hard, there still
+came a lugubrious rattle, as though he were at every moment on the point
+of expiring. In vain did Madame de Jonquière and Sister Hyacinthe lavish
+their attentions on the patients, they could but slightly assuage so much
+suffering. At times it all seemed like an evil dream--that carriage of
+wretchedness and pain, hurried along at express speed, with a continuous
+shaking and jolting which made everything hanging from the pegs--the old
+clothes, the worn-out baskets mended with bits of string--swing to and
+fro incessantly. And in the compartment at the far end, the ten female
+pilgrims, some old, some young, and all pitifully ugly, sang on without a
+pause in cracked voices, shrill and dreary.
+
+Then Pierre began to think of the other carriages of the train, that
+white train which conveyed most, if not all, of the more seriously
+afflicted patients; these carriages were rolling along, all displaying
+similar scenes of suffering among the three hundred sick and five hundred
+healthy pilgrims crowded within them. And afterwards he thought of the
+other trains which were leaving Paris that day, the grey train and the
+blue train* which had preceded the white one, the green train, the yellow
+train, the pink train, the orange train which were following it. From
+hour to hour trains set out from one to the other end of France. And he
+thought, too, of those which that same morning had started from Orleans,
+Le Mans, Poitiers, Bordeaux, Marseilles, and Carcassonne. Coming from all
+parts, trains were rushing across that land of France at the same hour,
+all directing their course yonder towards the holy Grotto, bringing
+thirty thousand patients and pilgrims to the Virgin’s feet. And he
+reflected that other days of the year witnessed a like rush of human
+beings, that not a week went by without Lourdes beholding the arrival of
+some pilgrimage; that it was not merely France which set out on the
+march, but all Europe, the whole world; that in certain years of great
+religious fervour there had been three hundred thousand, and even five
+hundred thousand, pilgrims and patients streaming to the spot.
+
+ * Different-coloured tickets are issued for these trains; it is for
+ this reason that they are called the white, blue, and grey trains,
+ etc.--Trans.
+
+Pierre fancied that he could hear those flying trains, those trains from
+everywhere, all converging towards the same rocky cavity where the tapers
+were blazing. They all rumbled loudly amid the cries of pain and snatches
+of hymns wafted from their carriages. They were the rolling hospitals of
+disease at its last stage, of human suffering rushing to the hope of
+cure, furiously seeking consolation between attacks of increased
+severity, with the ever-present threat of death--death hastened,
+supervening under awful conditions, amidst the mob-like scramble. They
+rolled on, they rolled on again and again, they rolled on without a
+pause, carrying the wretchedness of the world on its way to the divine
+illusion, the health of the infirm, the consolation of the afflicted.
+
+And immense pity overflowed from Pierre’s heart, human compassion for all
+the suffering and all the tears that consumed weak and naked men. He was
+sad unto death and ardent charity burnt within him, the unextinguishable
+flame as it were of his fraternal feelings towards all things and beings.
+
+When they left the station of Saint Pierre des Corps at half-past ten,
+Sister Hyacinthe gave the signal, and they recited the third chaplet, the
+five glorious mysteries, the Resurrection of Our Lord, the Ascension of
+Our Lord, the Mission of the Holy Ghost, the Assumption of the Most
+Blessed Virgin, the Crowning of the Most Blessed Virgin. And afterwards
+they sang the canticle of Bernadette, that long, long chant, composed of
+six times ten couplets, to which the ever recurring Angelic Salutation
+serves as a refrain--a prolonged lullaby slowly besetting one until it
+ends by penetrating one’s entire being, transporting one into ecstatic
+sleep, in delicious expectancy of a miracle.
+
+
+
+
+II. PIERRE AND MARIE
+
+THE green landscapes of Poitou were now defiling before them, and Abbé
+Pierre Froment, gazing out of the window, watched the trees fly away
+till, little by little, he ceased to distinguish them. A steeple appeared
+and then vanished, and all the pilgrims crossed themselves. They would
+not reach Poitiers until twelve-thirty-five, and the train was still
+rolling on amid the growing weariness of that oppressive, stormy day.
+Falling into a deep reverie, the young priest no longer heard the words
+of the canticle, which sounded in his ears merely like a slow, wavy
+lullaby.
+
+Forgetfulness of the present had come upon him, an awakening of the past
+filled his whole being. He was reascending the stream of memory,
+reascending it to its source. He again beheld the house at Neuilly, where
+he had been born and where he still lived, that home of peace and toil,
+with its garden planted with a few fine trees, and parted by a quickset
+hedge and palisade from the garden of the neighbouring house, which was
+similar to his own. He was again three, perhaps four, years old, and
+round a table, shaded by the big horse-chestnut tree he once more beheld
+his father, his mother, and his elder brother at _déjeuner_. To his
+father, Michel Froment, he could give no distinct lineaments; he pictured
+him but faintly, vaguely, renowned as an illustrious chemist, bearing the
+title of Member of the Institute, and leading a cloistered life in the
+laboratory which he had installed in that secluded, deserted suburb.
+However he could plainly see his first brother Guillaume, then fourteen
+years of age, whom some holiday had brought from college that morning,
+and then and even more vividly his mother, so gentle and so quiet, with
+eyes so full of active kindliness. Later on he learnt what anguish had
+racked that religious soul, that believing woman who, from esteem and
+gratitude, had resignedly accepted marriage with an unbeliever, her
+senior by fifteen years, to whom her relatives were indebted for great
+services. He, Pierre, the tardy offspring of this union, born when his
+father was already near his fiftieth year, had only known his mother as a
+respectful, conquered woman in the presence of her husband, whom she had
+learnt to love passionately, with the frightful torment of knowing,
+however, that he was doomed to perdition. And, all at once, another
+memory flashed upon the young priest, the terrible memory of the day when
+his father had died, killed in his laboratory by an accident, the
+explosion of a retort. He, Pierre, had then been five years old, and he
+remembered the slightest incidents--his mother’s cry when she had found
+the shattered body among the remnants of the chemical appliances, then
+her terror, her sobs, her prayers at the idea that God had slain the
+unbeliever, damned him for evermore. Not daring to burn his books and
+papers, she had contented herself with locking up the laboratory, which
+henceforth nobody entered. And from that moment, haunted by a vision of
+hell, she had had but one idea, to possess herself of her second son, who
+was still so young, to give him a strictly religious training, and
+through him to ransom her husband--secure his forgiveness from God.
+Guillaume, her elder boy, had already ceased to belong to her, having
+grown up at college, where he had been won over by the ideas of the
+century; but she resolved that the other, the younger one, should not
+leave the house, but should have a priest as tutor; and her secret dream,
+her consuming hope, was that she might some day see him a priest himself,
+saying his first mass and solacing souls whom the thought of eternity
+tortured.
+
+Then between green, leafy boughs, flecked with sunlight, another figure
+rose vividly before Pierre’s eyes. He suddenly beheld Marie de Guersaint
+as he had seen her one morning through a gap in the hedge dividing the
+two gardens. M. de Guersaint, who belonged to the petty Norman
+_noblesse_, was a combination of architect and inventor; and he was at
+that time busy with a scheme of model dwellings for the poor, to which
+churches and schools were to be attached; an affair of considerable
+magnitude, planned none too well, however, and in which, with his
+customary impetuosity, the lack of foresight of an imperfect artist, he
+was risking the three hundred thousand francs that he possessed. A
+similarity of religious faith had drawn Madame de Guersaint and Madame
+Froment together; but the former was altogether a superior woman,
+perspicuous and rigid, with an iron hand which alone prevented her
+household from gliding to a catastrophe; and she was bringing up her two
+daughters, Blanche and Marie, in principles of narrow piety, the elder
+one already being as grave as herself, whilst the younger, albeit very
+devout, was still fond of play, with an intensity of life within her
+which found vent in gay peals of sonorous laughter. From their early
+childhood Pierre and Marie played together, the hedge was ever being
+crossed, the two families constantly mingled. And on that clear sunshiny
+morning, when he pictured her parting the leafy branches she was already
+ten years old. He, who was sixteen, was to enter the seminary on the
+following Tuesday. Never had she seemed to him so pretty. Her hair, of a
+pure golden hue, was so long that when it was let down it sufficed to
+clothe her. Well did he remember her face as it had been, with round
+cheeks, blue eyes, red mouth, and skin of dazzling, snowy whiteness. She
+was indeed as gay and brilliant as the sun itself, a transplendency. Yet
+there were tears at the corners of her eyes, for she was aware of his
+coming departure. They sat down together at the far end of the garden, in
+the shadow cast by the hedge. Their hands mingled, and their hearts were
+very heavy. They had, however, never exchanged any vows amid their
+pastimes, for their innocence was absolute. But now, on the eve of
+separation, their mutual tenderness rose to their lips, and they spoke
+without knowing, swore that they would ever think of one another, and
+find one another again, some day, even as one meets in heaven to be very,
+very happy. Then, without understanding how it happened, they clasped
+each other tightly, to the point of suffocation, and kissed each other’s
+face, weeping, the while, hot tears. And it was that delightful memory
+which Pierre had ever carried with him, which he felt alive within him
+still, after so many years, and after so many painful renunciations.
+
+Just then a more violent shock roused him from his reverie. He turned his
+eyes upon the carriage and vaguely espied the suffering beings it
+contained--Madame Maze motionless, overwhelmed with grief; little Rose
+gently moaning in her mother’s lap; La Grivotte, whom a hoarse cough was
+choking. For a moment Sister Hyacinthe’s gay face shone out amidst the
+whiteness of her coif and wimple, dominating all the others. The painful
+journey was continuing, with a ray of divine hope still and ever shining
+yonder. Then everything slowly vanished from Pierre’s eyes as a fresh
+wave of memory brought the past back from afar; and nothing of the
+present remained save the lulling hymn, the indistinct voices of
+dreamland, emerging from the invisible.
+
+Henceforth he was at the seminary. The classrooms, the recreation ground
+with its trees, rose up clearly before him. But all at once he only
+beheld, as in a mirror, the youthful face which had then been his, and he
+contemplated it and scrutinised it, as though it had been the face of a
+stranger. Tall and slender, he had an elongated visage, with an unusually
+developed forehead, lofty and straight like a tower; whilst his jaws
+tapered, ending in a small refined chin. He seemed, in fact, to be all
+brains; his mouth, rather large, alone retained an expression of
+tenderness. Indeed, when his usually serious face relaxed, his mouth and
+eyes acquired an exceedingly soft expression, betokening an unsatisfied,
+hungry desire to love, devote oneself, and live. But immediately
+afterwards, the look of intellectual passion would come back again, that
+intellectuality which had ever consumed him with an anxiety to understand
+and know. And it was with surprise that he now recalled those years of
+seminary life. How was it that he had so long been able to accept the
+rude discipline of blind faith, of obedient belief in everything without
+the slightest examination? It had been required of him that he should
+absolutely surrender his reasoning faculties, and he had striven to do
+so, had succeeded indeed in stifling his torturing need of truth.
+Doubtless he had been softened, weakened by his mother’s tears, had been
+possessed by the sole desire to afford her the great happiness she dreamt
+of. Yet now he remembered certain quiverings of revolt; he found in the
+depths of his mind the memory of nights which he had spent in weeping
+without knowing why, nights peopled with vague images, nights through
+which galloped the free, virile life of the world, when Marie’s face
+incessantly returned to him, such as he had seen it one morning, dazzling
+and bathed in tears, while she embraced him with her whole soul. And that
+alone now remained; his years of religious study with their monotonous
+lessons, their ever similar exercises and ceremonies, had flown away into
+the same haze, into a vague half-light, full of mortal silence.
+
+Then, just as the train had passed though a station at full speed, with
+the sudden uproar of its rush there arose within him a succession of
+confused visions. He had noticed a large deserted enclosure, and fancied
+that he could see himself within it at twenty years of age. His reverie
+was wandering. An indisposition of rather long duration had, however, at
+one time interrupted his studies, and led to his being sent into the
+country. He had remained for a long time without seeing Marie; during his
+vacations spent at Neuilly he had twice failed to meet her, for she was
+almost always travelling. He knew that she was very ill, in consequence
+of a fall from a horse when she was thirteen, a critical moment in a
+girl’s life; and her despairing mother, perplexed by the contradictory
+advice of medical men, was taking her each year to a different
+watering-place. Then he learnt the startling news of the sudden tragical
+death of that mother, who was so severe and yet so useful to her kin. She
+had been carried off in five days by inflammation of the lungs, which she
+had contracted one evening whilst she was out walking at La Bourboule,
+through having taken off her mantle to place it round the shoulders of
+Marie, who had been conveyed thither for treatment. It had been necessary
+that the father should at once start off to fetch his daughter, who was
+mad with grief, and the corpse of his wife, who had been so suddenly torn
+from him. And unhappily, after losing her, the affairs of the family went
+from bad to worse in the hands of this architect, who, without counting,
+flung his fortune into the yawning gulf of his unsuccessful enterprises.
+Marie no longer stirred from her couch; only Blanche remained to manage
+the household, and she had matters of her own to attend to, being busy
+with the last examinations which she had to pass, the diplomas which she
+was obstinately intent on securing, foreseeing as she did that she would
+someday have to earn her bread.
+
+All at once, from amidst this mass of confused, half-forgotten incidents,
+Pierre was conscious of the rise of a vivid vision. Ill-health, he
+remembered, had again compelled him to take a holiday. He had just
+completed his twenty-fourth year, he was greatly behindhand, having so
+far only secured the four minor orders; but on his return a
+sub-deaconship would be conferred on him, and an inviolable vow would
+bind him for evermore. And the Guersaints’ little garden at Neuilly,
+whither he had formerly so often gone to play, again distinctly appeared
+before him. Marie’s couch had been rolled under the tall trees at the far
+end of the garden near the hedge, they were alone together in the sad
+peacefulness of an autumnal afternoon, and he saw Marie, clad in deep
+mourning for her mother and reclining there with legs inert; whilst he,
+also clad in black, in a cassock already, sat near her on an iron garden
+chair. For five years she had been suffering. She was now eighteen, paler
+and thinner than formerly, but still adorable with her regal golden hair,
+which illness respected. He believed from what he had heard that she was
+destined to remain infirm, condemned never to become a woman, stricken
+even in her sex. The doctors, who failed to agree respecting her case,
+had abandoned her. Doubtless it was she who told him these things that
+dreary afternoon, whilst the yellow withered leaves rained upon them.
+However, he could not remember the words that they had spoken; her pale
+smile, her young face, still so charming though already dimmed by
+regretfulness for life, alone remained present with him. But he realised
+that she had evoked the far-off day of their parting, on that same spot,
+behind the hedge flecked with sunlight; and all that was already as
+though dead--their tears, their embrace, their promise to find one
+another some day with a certainty of happiness. For although they had
+found one another again, what availed it, since she was but a corpse, and
+he was about to bid farewell to the life of the world? As the doctors
+condemned her, as she would never be woman, nor wife, nor mother, he, on
+his side, might well renounce manhood, and annihilate himself, dedicate
+himself to God, to whom his mother gave him. And he still felt within him
+the soft bitterness of that last interview: Marie smiling painfully at
+memory of their childish play and prattle, and speaking to him of the
+happiness which he would assuredly find in the service of God; so
+penetrated indeed with emotion at this thought, that she had made him
+promise that he would let her hear him say his first mass.
+
+But the train was passing the station of Sainte-Maure, and just then a
+sudden uproar momentarily brought Pierre’s attention back to the carriage
+and its occupants. He fancied that there had been some fresh seizure or
+swooning, but the suffering faces that he beheld were still the same,
+ever contracted by the same expression of anxious waiting for the divine
+succour which was so slow in coming. M. Sabathier was vainly striving to
+get his legs into a comfortable position, whilst Brother Isidore raised a
+feeble continuous moan like a dying child, and Madame Vetu, a prey to
+terrible agony, devoured by her disease, sat motionless, and kept her
+lips tightly closed, her face distorted, haggard, and almost black. The
+noise which Pierre had heard had been occasioned by Madame de Jonquière,
+who whilst cleansing a basin had dropped the large zinc water-can. And,
+despite their torment, this had made the patients laugh, like the simple
+souls they were, rendered puerile by suffering. However, Sister
+Hyacinthe, who rightly called them her children, children whom she
+governed with a word, at once set them saying the chaplet again, pending
+the Angelus, which would only be said at Chatellerault, in accordance
+with the predetermined programme. And thereupon the “Aves” followed one
+after the other, spreading into a confused murmuring and mumbling amidst
+the rattling of the coupling irons and noisy growling of the wheels.
+
+Pierre had meantime relapsed into his reverie, and beheld himself as he
+had been at six-and-twenty, when ordained a priest. Tardy scruples had
+come to him a few days before his ordination, a semi-consciousness that
+he was binding himself without having clearly questioned his heart and
+mind. But he had avoided doing so, living in the dizzy bewilderment of
+his decision, fancying that he had lopped off all human ties and feelings
+with a voluntary hatchet-stroke. His flesh had surely died with his
+childhood’s innocent romance, that white-skinned girl with golden hair,
+whom now he never beheld otherwise than stretched upon her couch of
+suffering, her flesh as lifeless as his own. And he had afterwards made
+the sacrifice of his mind, which he then fancied even an easier one,
+hoping as he did that determination would suffice to prevent him from
+thinking. Besides, it was too late, he could not recoil at the last
+moment, and if when he pronounced the last solemn vow he felt a secret
+terror, an indeterminate but immense regret agitating him, he forgot
+everything, saving a divine reward for his efforts on the day when he
+afforded his mother the great and long-expected joy of hearing him say
+his first mass.
+
+He could still see the poor woman in the little church of Neuilly, which
+she herself had selected, the church where the funeral service for his
+father had been celebrated; he saw her on that cold November morning,
+kneeling almost alone in the dark little chapel, her hands hiding her
+face as she continued weeping whilst he raised the Host. It was there
+that she had tasted her last happiness, for she led a sad and lonely
+life, no longer seeing her elder son, who had gone away, swayed by other
+ideas than her own, bent on breaking off all family intercourse since his
+brother intended to enter the Church. It was said that Guillaume, a
+chemist of great talent, like his father, but at the same time a
+Bohemian, addicted to revolutionary dreams, was living in a little house
+in the suburbs, where he devoted himself to the dangerous study of
+explosive substances; and folks added that he was living with a woman who
+had come no one knew whence. This it was which had severed the last tie
+between himself and his mother, all piety and propriety. For three years
+Pierre had not once seen Guillaume, whom in his childhood he had
+worshipped as a kind, merry, and fatherly big brother.
+
+But there came an awful pang to his heart--he once more beheld his mother
+lying dead. This again was a thunderbolt, an illness of scarce three
+days’ duration, a sudden passing away, as in the case of Madame de
+Guersaint. One evening, after a wild hunt for the doctor, he had found
+her motionless and quite white. She had died during his absence; and his
+lips had ever retained the icy thrill of the last kiss that he had given
+her. Of everything else--the vigil, the preparations, the funeral--he
+remembered nothing. All that had become lost in the black night of his
+stupor and grief, grief so extreme that he had almost died of it--seized
+with shivering on his return from the cemetery, struck down by a fever
+which during three weeks had kept him delirious, hovering between life
+and death. His brother had come and nursed him and had then attended to
+pecuniary matters, dividing the little inheritance, leaving him the house
+and a modest income and taking his own share in money. And as soon as
+Guillaume had found him out of danger he had gone off again, once more
+vanishing into the unknown. But then through what a long convalescence
+he, Pierre, had passed, buried as it were in that deserted house. He had
+done nothing to detain Guillaume, for he realised that there was an abyss
+between them. At first the solitude had brought him suffering, but
+afterwards it had grown very pleasant, whether in the deep silence of the
+rooms which the rare noises of the street did not disturb, or under the
+screening, shady foliage of the little garden, where he could spend whole
+days without seeing a soul. His favourite place of refuge, however, was
+the old laboratory, his father’s cabinet, which his mother for twenty
+years had kept carefully locked up, as though to immure within it all the
+incredulity and damnation of the past. And despite the gentleness, the
+respectful submissiveness which she had shown in former times, she would
+perhaps have some day ended by destroying all her husband’s books and
+papers, had not death so suddenly surprised her. Pierre, however, had
+once more had the windows opened, the writing-table and the bookcase
+dusted; and, installed in the large leather arm-chair, he now spent
+delicious hours there, regenerated as it were by his illness, brought
+back to his youthful days again, deriving a wondrous intellectual delight
+from the perusal of the books which he came upon.
+
+The only person whom he remembered having received during those two
+months of slow recovery was Doctor Chassaigne, an old friend of his
+father, a medical man of real merit, who, with the one ambition of curing
+disease, modestly confined himself to the _rôle_ of the practitioner. It
+was in vain that the doctor had sought to save Madame Froment, but he
+flattered himself that he had extricated the young priest from grievous
+danger; and he came to see him from time to time, to chat with him and
+cheer him, talking with him of his father, the great chemist, of whom he
+recounted many a charming anecdote, many a particular, still glowing with
+the flame of ardent friendship. Little by little, amidst the weak languor
+of convalescence, the son had thus beheld an embodiment of charming
+simplicity, affection, and good nature rising up before him. It was his
+father such as he had really been, not the man of stern science whom he
+had pictured whilst listening to his mother. Certainly she had never
+taught him aught but respect for that dear memory; but had not her
+husband been the unbeliever, the man who denied, and made the angels
+weep, the artisan of impiety who sought to change the world that God had
+made? And so he had long remained a gloomy vision, a spectre of damnation
+prowling about the house, whereas now he became the house’s very light,
+clear and gay, a worker consumed by a longing for truth, who had never
+desired anything but the love and happiness of all. For his part, Doctor
+Chassaigne, a Pyrenean by birth, born in a far-off secluded village where
+folks still believed in sorceresses, inclined rather towards religion,
+although he had not set his foot inside a church during the forty years
+he had been living in Paris. However, his conviction was absolute: if
+there were a heaven somewhere, Michel Froment was assuredly there, and
+not merely there, but seated upon a throne on the Divinity’s right hand.
+
+Then Pierre, in a few minutes, again lived through the frightful torment
+which, during two long months, had ravaged him. It was not that he had
+found controversial works of an anti-religious character in the bookcase,
+or that his father, whose papers he sorted, had ever gone beyond his
+technical studies as a _savant_. But little by little, despite himself,
+the light of science dawned upon him, an _ensemble_ of proven phenomena,
+which demolished dogmas and left within him nothing of the things which
+as a priest he should have believed. It seemed, in fact, as though
+illness had renewed him, as though he were again beginning to live and
+learn amidst the physical pleasantness of convalescence, that still
+subsisting weakness which lent penetrating lucidity to his brain. At the
+seminary, by the advice of his masters, he had always kept the spirit of
+inquiry, his thirst for knowledge, in check. Much of that which was
+taught him there had surprised him; however, he had succeeded in making
+the sacrifice of his mind required of his piety. But now, all the
+laboriously raised scaffolding of dogmas was swept away in a revolt of
+that sovereign mind which clamoured for its rights, and which he could no
+longer silence. Truth was bubbling up and overflowing in such an
+irresistible stream that he realised he would never succeed in lodging
+error in his brain again. It was indeed the total and irreparable ruin of
+faith. Although he had been able to kill his flesh by renouncing the
+romance of his youth, although he felt that he had altogether mastered
+carnal passion, he now knew that it would be impossible for him to make
+the sacrifice of his intelligence. And he was not mistaken; it was indeed
+his father again springing to life in the depths of his being, and at
+last obtaining the mastery in that dual heredity in which, during so many
+years, his mother had dominated. The upper part of his face, his
+straight, towering brow, seemed to have risen yet higher, whilst the
+lower part, the small chin, the affectionate mouth, were becoming less
+distinct. However, he suffered; at certain twilight hours when his
+kindliness, his need of love awoke, he felt distracted with grief at no
+longer believing, distracted with desire to believe again; and it was
+necessary that the lighted lamp should be brought in, that he should see
+clearly around him and within him, before he could recover the energy and
+calmness of reason, the strength of martyrdom, the determination to
+sacrifice everything to the peace of his conscience.
+
+Then came the crisis. He was a priest and he no longer believed. This had
+suddenly dawned before him like a bottomless abyss. It was the end of his
+life, the collapse of everything. What should he do? Did not simple
+rectitude require that he should throw off the cassock and return to the
+world? But he had seen some renegade priests and had despised them. A
+married priest with whom he was acquainted filled him with disgust. All
+this, no doubt, was but a survival of his long religious training. He
+retained the notion that a priest cannot, must not, weaken; the idea that
+when one has dedicated oneself to God one cannot take possession of
+oneself again. Possibly, also, he felt that he was too plainly branded,
+too different from other men already, to prove otherwise than awkward and
+unwelcome among them. Since he had been cut off from them he would remain
+apart in his grievous pride; And, after days of anguish, days of struggle
+incessantly renewed, in which his thirst for happiness warred with the
+energies of his returning health, he took the heroic resolution to remain
+a priest, and an honest one. He would find the strength necessary for
+such abnegation. Since he had conquered the flesh, albeit unable to
+conquer the brain, he felt sure of keeping his vow of chastity, and that
+would be unshakable; therein lay the pure, upright life which he was
+absolutely certain of living. What mattered the rest if he alone
+suffered, if nobody in the world suspected that his heart was reduced to
+ashes, that nothing remained of his faith, that he was agonising amidst
+fearful falsehood? His rectitude would prove a firm prop; he would follow
+his priestly calling like an honest man, without breaking any of the vows
+he had taken; he would, in due accordance with the rites, discharge his
+duties as a minister of the Divinity, whom he would praise and glorify at
+the altar, and distribute as the Bread of Life to the faithful. Who,
+then, would dare to impute his loss of faith to him as a crime, even if
+this great misfortune should some day become known? And what more could
+be asked of him than lifelong devotion to his vow, regard for his
+ministry, and the practice of every charity without the hope of any
+future reward? In this wise he ended by calming himself, still upright,
+still bearing his head erect, with the desolate grandeur of the priest
+who himself no longer believes, but continues watching over the faith of
+others. And he certainly was not alone; he felt that he had many
+brothers, priests with ravaged minds, who had sunk into incredulity, and
+who yet, like soldiers without a fatherland, remained at the altar, and,
+despite, everything, found the courage to make the divine illusion shine
+forth above the kneeling crowds.
+
+On recovering his health Pierre had immediately resumed his service at
+the little church of Neuilly. He said his mass there every morning. But
+he had resolved to refuse any appointment, any preferment. Months and
+years went by, and he obstinately insisted on remaining the least known
+and the most humble of those priests who are tolerated in a parish, who
+appear and disappear after discharging their duty. The acceptance of any
+appointment would have seemed to him an aggravation of his falsehood, a
+theft from those who were more deserving than himself. And he had to
+resist frequent offers, for it was impossible for his merits to remain
+unnoticed. Indeed, his obstinate modesty provoked astonishment at the
+archbishop’s palace, where there was a desire to utilise the power which
+could be divined in him. Now and again, it is true, he bitterly regretted
+that he was not useful, that he did not co-operate in some great work, in
+furthering the purification of the world, the salvation and happiness of
+all, in accordance with his own ardent, torturing desire. Fortunately his
+time was nearly all his own, and to console himself he gave rein to his
+passion for work by devouring every volume in his father’s bookcase, and
+then again resuming and considering his studies, feverishly preoccupied
+with regard to the history of nations, full of a desire to explore the
+depths of the social and religious crisis so that he might ascertain
+whether it were really beyond remedy.
+
+It was at this time, whilst rummaging one morning in one of the large
+drawers in the lower part of the bookcase, that he discovered quite a
+collection of papers respecting the apparitions of Lourdes. It was a very
+complete set of documents, comprising detailed notes of the
+interrogatories to which Bernadette had been subjected, copies of
+numerous official documents, and police and medical reports, in addition
+to many private and confidential letters of the greatest interest. This
+discovery had surprised Pierre, and he had questioned, Doctor Chassaigne
+concerning it. The latter thereupon remembered that his friend, Michel
+Froment, had at one time passionately devoted himself to the study of
+Bernadette’s case; and he himself, a native of the village near Lourdes,
+had procured for the chemist a portion of the documents in the
+collection. Pierre, in his turn, then became impassioned, and for a whole
+month continued studying the affair, powerfully attracted by the
+visionary’s pure, upright nature, but indignant with all that had
+subsequently sprouted up--the barbarous fetishism, the painful
+superstitions, and the triumphant simony. In the access of unbelief which
+had come upon him, this story of Lourdes was certainly of a nature to
+complete the collapse of his faith. However, it had also excited his
+curiosity, and he would have liked to investigate it, to establish beyond
+dispute what scientific truth might be in it, and render pure
+Christianity the service of ridding it of this scoria, this fairy tale,
+all touching and childish as it was. But he had been obliged to
+relinquish his studies, shrinking from the necessity of making a journey
+to the Grotto, and finding that it would be extremely difficult to obtain
+the information which he still needed; and of it all there at last only
+remained within him a tender feeling for Bernadette, of whom he could not
+think without a sensation of delightful charm and infinite pity.
+
+The days went by, and Pierre led a more and more lonely life. Doctor
+Chassaigne had just left for the Pyrenees in a state of mortal anxiety.
+Abandoning his patients, he had set out for Cauterets with his ailing
+wife, who was sinking more and more each day, to the infinite distress of
+both his charming daughter and himself. From that moment the little house
+at Neuilly fell into deathlike silence and emptiness. Pierre had no other
+distraction than that of occasionally going to see the Guersaints, who
+had long since left the neighbouring house, but whom he had found again
+in a small lodging in a wretched tenement of the district. And the memory
+of his first visit to them there was yet so fresh within him, that he
+felt a pang at his heart as he recalled his emotion at sight of the
+hapless Marie.
+
+That pang roused him from his reverie, and on looking round he perceived
+Marie stretched on the seat, even as he had found her on the day which he
+recalled, already imprisoned in that gutter-like box, that coffin to
+which wheels were adapted when she was taken out-of-doors for an airing.
+She, formerly so brimful of life, ever astir and laughing, was dying of
+inaction and immobility in that box. Of her old-time beauty she had
+retained nothing save her hair, which clad her as with a royal mantle,
+and she was so emaciated that she seemed to have grown smaller again, to
+have become once more a child. And what was most distressing was the
+expression on her pale face, the blank, frigid stare of her eyes which
+did not see, the ever haunting absent look, as of one whom suffering
+overwhelmed. However, she noticed that Pierre was gazing at her, and at
+once desired to smile at him; but irresistible moans escaped her, and
+when she did at last smile, it was like a poor smitten creature who is
+convinced that she will expire before the miracle takes place. He was
+overcome by it, and, amidst all the sufferings with which the carriage
+abounded, hers were now the only ones that he beheld and heard, as though
+one and all were summed up in her, in the long and terrible agony of her
+beauty, gaiety, and youth.
+
+Then by degrees, without taking his eyes from Marie, he again reverted to
+former days, again lived those hours, fraught with a mournful and bitter
+charm, which he had often spent beside her, when he called at the sorry
+lodging to keep her company. M. de Guersaint had finally ruined himself
+by trying to improve the artistic quality of the religious prints so
+widely sold in France, the faulty execution of which quite irritated him.
+His last resources had been swallowed up in the failure of a
+colour-printing firm; and, heedless as he was, deficient in foresight,
+ever trusting in Providence, his childish mind continually swayed by
+illusions, he did not notice the awful pecuniary embarrassment of the
+household; but applied himself to the study of aerial navigation, without
+even realising what prodigious activity his elder daughter, Blanche, was
+forced to display, in order to earn the living of her two children, as
+she was wont to call her father and her sister. It was Blanche who, by
+running about Paris in the dust or the mud from morning to evening in
+order to give French or music lessons, contrived to provide the money
+necessary for the unremitting attentions which Marie required. And Marie
+often experienced attacks of despair--bursting into tears and accusing
+herself of being the primary cause of their ruin, as for years and years
+now it had been necessary to pay for medical attendance and for taking
+her to almost every imaginable spring--La Bourboule, Aix, Lamalou,
+Amelie-les-Bains, and others. And the outcome of ten years of varied
+diagnosis and treatment was that the doctors had now abandoned her. Some
+thought her illness to be due to the rupture of certain ligaments, others
+believed in the presence of a tumour, others again to paralysis due to
+injury to the spinal cord, and as she, with maidenly revolt, refused to
+undergo any examination, and they did not even dare to address precise
+questions to her, they each contented themselves with their several
+opinions and declared that she was beyond cure. Moreover, she now solely
+relied upon the divine help, having grown rigidly pious since she had
+been suffering, and finding her only relief in her ardent faith. Every
+morning she herself read the holy offices, for to her great sorrow she
+was unable to go to church. Her inert limbs indeed seemed quite lifeless,
+and she had sunk into a condition of extreme weakness, to such a point,
+in fact, that on certain days it became necessary for her sister to place
+her food in her mouth.
+
+Pierre was thinking of this when all at once he recalled an evening he
+had spent with her. The lamp had not yet been lighted, he was seated
+beside her in the growing obscurity, and she suddenly told him that she
+wished to go to Lourdes, feeling certain that she would return cured. He
+had experienced an uncomfortable sensation on hearing her speak in this
+fashion, and quite forgetting himself had exclaimed that it was folly to
+believe in such childishness. He had hitherto made it a rule never to
+converse with her on religious matters, having not only refused to be her
+confessor, but even to advise her with regard to the petty uncertainties
+of her pietism. In this respect he was influenced by feelings of mingled
+shame and compassion; to lie to her of all people would have made him
+suffer, and, moreover, he would have deemed himself a criminal had he
+even by a breath sullied that fervent pure faith which lent her such
+strength against pain. And so, regretting that he had not been able to
+restrain his exclamation, he remained sorely embarrassed, when all at
+once he felt the girl’s cold hand take hold of his own. And then,
+emboldened by the darkness, she ventured in a gentle, faltering voice, to
+tell him that she already knew his secret, his misfortune, that
+wretchedness, so fearful for a priest, of being unable to believe.
+
+Despite himself he had revealed everything during their chats together,
+and she, with the delicate intuition of a friend, had been able to read
+his conscience. She felt terribly distressed on his account; she deemed
+him, with that mortal moral malady, to be more deserving of pity than
+herself. And then as he, thunderstruck, was still unable to find an
+answer, acknowledging the truth of her words by his very silence, she
+again began to speak to him of Lourdes, adding in a low whisper that she
+wished to confide him as well as herself to the protection of the Blessed
+Virgin, whom she entreated to restore him to faith. And from that evening
+forward she did not cease speaking on the subject, repeating again and
+again, that if she went to Lourdes she would be surely cured. But she was
+prevented from making the journey by lack of means and she did not even
+dare to speak to her sister of the pecuniary question. So two months went
+by, and day by day she grew weaker, exhausted by her longing dreams, her
+eyes ever turned towards the flashing light of the miraculous Grotto far
+away. Pierre then experienced many painful days. He had at first told
+Marie that he would not accompany her. But his decision was somewhat
+shaken by the thought that if he made up his mind to go, he might profit
+by the journey to continue his inquiries with regard to Bernadette, whose
+charming image lingered in his heart. And at last he even felt penetrated
+by a delightful feeling, an unacknowledged hope, the hope that Marie was
+perhaps right, that the Virgin might take pity on him and restore to him
+his former blind faith, the faith of the child who loves and does not
+question. Oh! to believe, to believe with his whole soul, to plunge into
+faith for ever! Doubtless there was no other possible happiness. He
+longed for faith with all the joyousness of his youth, with all the love
+that he had felt for his mother, with all his burning desire to escape
+from the torment of understanding and knowing, and to slumber forever in
+the depths of divine ignorance. It was cowardly, and yet so delightful;
+to exist no more, to become a mere thing in the hands of the Divinity.
+And thus he was at last possessed by a desire to make the supreme
+experiment.
+
+A week later the journey to Lourdes was decided upon. Pierre, however,
+had insisted on a final consultation of medical men in order to ascertain
+if it were really possible for Marie to travel; and this again was a
+scene which rose up before him, with certain incidents which he ever
+beheld whilst others were already fading from his mind. Two of the
+doctors who had formerly attended the patient, and one of whom believed
+in the rupture of certain ligaments, whilst the other asserted the case
+to be one of medullary paralysis, had ended by agreeing that this
+paralysis existed, and that there was also, possibly, some ligamentary
+injury. In their opinion all the symptoms pointed to this diagnosis, and
+the nature of the case seemed to them so evident that they did not
+hesitate to give certificates, each his own, agreeing almost word for
+word with one another, and so positive in character as to leave no room
+for doubt. Moreover, they thought that the journey was practicable,
+though it would certainly prove an exceedingly painful one. Pierre
+thereupon resolved to risk it, for he had found the doctors very prudent,
+and very desirous to arrive at the truth; and he retained but a confused
+recollection of the third medical man who had been called in, a distant
+cousin of his named De Beauclair, who was young, extremely intelligent,
+but little known as yet, and said by some to be rather strange in his
+theories. This doctor, after looking at Marie for a long time, had asked
+somewhat anxiously about her parents, and had seemed greatly interested
+by what was told him of M. de Guersaint, this architect and inventor with
+a weak and exuberant mind. Then he had desired to measure the sufferer’s
+visual field, and by a slight discreet touch had ascertained the locality
+of the pain, which, under certain pressure, seemed to ascend like a heavy
+shifting mass towards the breast. He did not appear to attach importance
+to the paralysis of the legs; but on a direct question being put to him
+he exclaimed that the girl ought to be taken to Lourdes and that she
+would assuredly be cured there, if she herself were convinced of it.
+Faith sufficed, said he, with a smile; two pious lady patients of his,
+whom he had sent thither during the preceding year, had returned in
+radiant health. He even predicted how the miracle would come about; it
+would be like a lightning stroke, an awakening, an exaltation of the
+entire being, whilst the evil, that horrid, diabolical weight which
+stifled the poor girl would once more ascend and fly away as though
+emerging by her mouth. But at the same time he flatly declined to give a
+certificate. He had failed to agree with his two _confrères_, who treated
+him coldly, as though they considered him a wild, adventurous young
+fellow. Pierre confusedly remembered some shreds of the discussion which
+had begun again in his presence, some little part of the diagnosis framed
+by Beauclair. First, a dislocation of the organ, with a slight laceration
+of the ligaments, resulting from the patient’s fall from her horse; then
+a slow healing, everything returning to its place, followed by
+consecutive nervous symptoms, so that the sufferer was now simply beset
+by her original fright, her attention fixed on the injured part, arrested
+there amidst increasing pain, incapable of acquiring fresh notions unless
+it were under the lash of some violent emotion. Moreover, he also
+admitted the probability of accidents due to nutrition, as yet
+unexplained, and on the course and importance of which he himself would
+not venture to give an opinion. However, the idea that Marie _dreamt_ her
+disease, that the fearful sufferings torturing her came from an injury
+long since healed, appeared such a paradox to Pierre when he gazed at her
+and saw her in such agony, her limbs already stretched out lifeless on
+her bed of misery, that he did not even pause to consider it; but at that
+moment felt simply happy in the thought that all three doctors agreed in
+authorising the journey to Lourdes. To him it was sufficient that she
+_might_ be cured, and to attain that result he would have followed her to
+the end of the world.
+
+Ah! those last days of Paris, amid what a scramble they were spent! The
+national pilgrimage was about to start, and in order to avoid heavy
+expenses, it had occurred to him to obtain _hospitalisation_ for Marie.
+Then he had been obliged to run about in order to obtain his own
+admission, as a helper, into the Hospitality of Our Lady of Salvation. M.
+de Guersaint was delighted with the prospect of the journey, for he was
+fond of nature, and ardently desired to become acquainted with the
+Pyrenees. Moreover, he did not allow anything to worry him, but was
+perfectly willing that the young priest should pay his railway fare, and
+provide for him at the hotel yonder as for a child; and his daughter
+Blanche, having slipped a twenty-franc piece into his hand at the last
+moment, he had even thought himself rich again. That poor brave Blanche
+had a little hidden store of her own, savings to the amount of fifty
+francs, which it had been absolutely necessary to accept, for she became
+quite angry in her determination to contribute towards her sister’s cure,
+unable as she was to form one of the party, owing to the lessons which
+she had to give in Paris, whose hard pavements she must continue pacing,
+whilst her dear ones were kneeling yonder, amidst the enchantments of the
+Grotto. And so the others had started on, and were now rolling, ever
+rolling along.
+
+As they passed the station of Chatellerault a sudden burst of voices made
+Pierre start, and drove away the torpor into which his reverie had
+plunged him. What was the matter? Were they reaching Poitiers? But it was
+only half-past twelve o’clock, and it was simply Sister Hyacinthe who had
+roused him, by making her patients and pilgrims say the Angelus, the
+three “Aves” thrice repeated. Then the voices burst forth, and the sound
+of a fresh canticle arose, and continued like a lamentation. Fully five
+and twenty minutes must elapse before they would reach Poitiers, where it
+seemed as if the half-hour’s stoppage would bring relief to every
+suffering! They were all so uncomfortable, so roughly shaken in that
+malodorous, burning carriage! Such wretchedness was beyond endurance. Big
+tears coursed down the cheeks of Madame Vincent, a muttered oath escaped
+M. Sabathier usually so resigned, and Brother Isidore, La Grivotte, and
+Madame Vetu seemed to have become inanimate, mere waifs carried along by
+a torrent. Moreover, Marie no longer answered, but had closed her eyes
+and would not open them, pursued as she was by the horrible vision of
+Elise Rouquet’s face, that face with its gaping cavities which seemed to
+her to be the image of death. And whilst the train increased its speed,
+bearing all this human despair onward, under the heavy sky, athwart the
+burning plains, there was yet another scare in the carriage. The strange
+man had apparently ceased to breathe, and a voice cried out that he was
+expiring.
+
+
+
+
+III. POITIERS
+
+AS soon as the train arrived at Poitiers, Sister Hyacinthe alighted in
+all haste, amidst the crowd of porters opening the carriage doors, and of
+pilgrims darting forward to reach the platform. “Wait a moment, wait a
+moment,” she repeated, “let me pass first. I wish to see if all is over.”
+
+Then, having entered the other compartment, she raised the strange man’s
+head, and seeing him so pale, with such blank eyes, she did at first
+think him already dead. At last, however, she detected a faint breathing.
+“No, no,” she then exclaimed, “he still breathes. Quick! there is no time
+to be lost.” And, perceiving the other Sister, she added: “Sister Claire
+des Anges, will you go and fetch Father Massias, who must be in the third
+or fourth carriage of the train? Tell him that we have a patient in very
+great danger here, and ask him to bring the Holy Oils at once.”
+
+Without answering, the other Sister at once plunged into the midst of the
+scramble. She was small, slender, and gentle, with a meditative air and
+mysterious eyes, but withal extremely active.
+
+Pierre, who was standing in the other compartment watching the scene, now
+ventured to make a suggestion: “And would it not be as well to fetch the
+doctor?” said he.
+
+“Yes, I was thinking of it,” replied Sister Hyacinthe, “and, Monsieur
+l’Abbé, it would be very kind of you to go for him yourself.”
+
+It so happened that Pierre intended going to the cantine carriage to
+fetch some broth for Marie. Now that she was no longer being jolted she
+felt somewhat relieved, and had opened her eyes, and caused her father to
+raise her to a sitting posture. Keenly thirsting for fresh air, she would
+have much liked them to carry her out on to the platform for a moment,
+but she felt that it would be asking too much, that it would be too
+troublesome a task to place her inside the carriage again. So M. de
+Guersaint remained by himself on the platform, near the open door,
+smoking a cigarette, whilst Pierre hastened to the cantine van, where he
+knew he would find the doctor on duty, with his travelling pharmacy.
+
+Some other patients, whom one could not think of removing, also remained
+in the carriage. Amongst them was La Grivotte, who was stifling and
+almost delirious, in such a state indeed as to detain Madame de
+Jonquière, who had arranged to meet her daughter Raymonde, with Madame
+Volmar and Madame Désagneaux, in the refreshment-room, in order that they
+might all four lunch together. But that unfortunate creature seemed on
+the point of expiring, so how could she leave her all alone, on the hard
+seat of that carriage? On his side, M. Sabathier, likewise riveted to his
+seat, was waiting for his wife, who had gone to fetch a bunch of grapes
+for him; whilst Marthe had remained with her brother the missionary,
+whose faint moan never ceased. The others, those who were able to walk,
+had hustled one another in their haste to alight, all eager as they were
+to escape for a moment from that cage of wretchedness where their limbs
+had been quite numbed by the seven hours’ journey which they had so far
+gone. Madame Maze had at once drawn apart, straying with melancholy face
+to the far end of the platform, where she found herself all alone; Madame
+Vetu, stupefied by her sufferings, had found sufficient strength to take
+a few steps, and sit down on a bench, in the full sunlight, where she did
+not even feel the burning heat; whilst Elise Rouquet, who had had the
+decency to cover her face with a black wrap, and was consumed by a desire
+for fresh water, went hither and thither in search of a drinking
+fountain. And meantime Madame Vincent, walking slowly, carried her little
+Rose about in her arms, trying to smile at her, and to cheer her by
+showing her some gaudily coloured picture bills, which the child gravely
+gazed at, but did not see.
+
+Pierre had the greatest possible difficulty in making his way through the
+crowd inundating the platform. No effort of imagination could enable one
+to picture the living torrent of ailing and healthy beings which the
+train had here set down--a mob of more than a thousand persons just
+emerging from suffocation, and bustling, hurrying hither and thither.
+Each carriage had contributed its share of wretchedness, like some
+hospital ward suddenly evacuated; and it was now possible to form an idea
+of the frightful amount of suffering which this terrible white train
+carried along with it, this train which disseminated a legend of horror
+wheresoever it passed. Some infirm sufferers were dragging themselves
+about, others were being carried, and many remained in a heap on the
+platform. There were sudden pushes, violent calls, innumerable displays
+of distracted eagerness to reach the refreshment-room and the _buvette_.
+Each and all made haste, going wheresoever their wants called them. This
+stoppage of half an hour’s duration, the only stoppage there would be
+before reaching Lourdes, was, after all, such a short one. And the only
+gay note, amidst all the black cassocks and the threadbare garments of
+the poor, never of any precise shade of colour, was supplied by the
+smiling whiteness of the Little Sisters of the Assumption, all bright and
+active in their snowy coifs, wimples, and aprons.
+
+When Pierre at last reached the cantine van near the middle of the train,
+he found it already besieged. There was here a petroleum stove, with a
+small supply of cooking utensils. The broth prepared from concentrated
+meat-extract was being warmed in wrought-iron pans, whilst the preserved
+milk in tins was diluted and supplied as occasion required. There were
+some other provisions, such as biscuits, fruit, and chocolate, on a few
+shelves. But Sister Saint-François, to whom the service was entrusted, a
+short, stout woman of five-and-forty, with a good-natured fresh-coloured
+face, was somewhat losing her head in the presence of all the hands so
+eagerly stretched towards her. Whilst continuing her distribution, she
+lent ear to Pierre, as he called the doctor, who with his travelling
+pharmacy occupied another corner of the van. Then, when the young priest
+began to explain matters, speaking of the poor unknown man who was dying,
+a sudden desire came to her to go and see him, and she summoned another
+Sister to take her place.
+
+“Oh! I wished to ask you, Sister, for some broth for a passenger who is
+ill,” said Pierre, at that moment turning towards her.
+
+“Very well, Monsieur l’Abbé, I will bring some. Go on in front.”
+
+The doctor and the abbé went off in all haste, rapidly questioning and
+answering one another, whilst behind them followed Sister Saint-François,
+carrying the bowl of broth with all possible caution amidst the jostling
+of the crowd. The doctor was a dark-complexioned man of eight-and-twenty,
+robust and extremely handsome, with the head of a young Roman emperor,
+such as may still be occasionally met with in the sunburnt land of
+Provence. As soon as Sister Hyacinthe caught sight of him, she raised an
+exclamation of surprise: “What! Monsieur Ferrand, is it you?” Indeed,
+they both seemed amazed at meeting in this manner.
+
+It is, however, the courageous mission of the Sisters of the Assumption
+to tend the ailing poor, those who lie in agony in their humble garrets,
+and cannot pay for nursing; and thus these good women spend their lives
+among the wretched, installing themselves beside the sufferer’s pallet in
+his tiny lodging, and ministering to every want, attending alike to
+cooking and cleaning, and living there as servants and relatives, until
+either cure or death supervenes. And it was in this wise that Sister
+Hyacinthe, young as she was, with her milky face, and her blue eyes which
+ever laughed, had installed herself one day in the abode of this young
+fellow, Ferrand, then a medical student, prostrated by typhoid fever, and
+so desperately poor that he lived in a kind of loft reached by a ladder,
+in the Rue du Four. And from that moment she had not stirred from his
+side, but had remained with him until she cured him, with the passion of
+one who lived only for others, one who when an infant had been found in a
+church porch, and who had no other family than that of those who
+suffered, to whom she devoted herself with all her ardently affectionate
+nature. And what a delightful month, what exquisite comradeship, fraught
+with the pure fraternity of suffering, had followed! When he called her
+“Sister,” it was really to a sister that he was speaking. And she was a
+mother also, a mother who helped him to rise, and who put him to bed as
+though he were her child, without aught springing up between them save
+supreme pity, the divine, gentle compassion of charity. She ever showed
+herself gay, sexless, devoid of any instinct excepting that which
+prompted her to assuage and to console. And he worshipped her, venerated
+her, and had retained of her the most chaste and passionate of
+recollections.
+
+“O Sister Hyacinthe!” he murmured in delight.
+
+Chance alone had brought them face to face again, for Ferrand was not a
+believer, and if he found himself in that train it was simply because he
+had at the last moment consented to take the place of a friend who was
+suddenly prevented from coming. For nearly a twelvemonth he had been a
+house-surgeon at the Hospital of La Pitie. However, this journey to
+Lourdes, in such peculiar circumstances, greatly interested him.
+
+The joy of the meeting was making them forget the ailing stranger. And so
+the Sister resumed: “You see, Monsieur Ferrand, it is for this man that
+we want you. At one moment we thought him dead. Ever since we passed
+Amboise he has been filling us with fear, and I have just sent for the
+Holy Oils. Do you find him so very low? Could you not revive him a
+little?”
+
+The doctor was already examining the man, and thereupon the sufferers who
+had remained in the carriage became greatly interested and began to look.
+Marie, to whom Sister Saint-François had given the bowl of broth, was
+holding it with such an unsteady hand that Pierre had to take it from
+her, and endeavour to make her drink; but she could not swallow, and she
+left the broth scarce tasted, fixing her eyes upon the man waiting to see
+what would happen like one whose own existence is at stake.
+
+“Tell me,” again asked Sister Hyacinthe, “how do you find him? What is
+his illness?”
+
+“What is his illness!” muttered Ferrand; “he has every illness.”
+
+Then, drawing a little phial from his pocket, he endeavoured to introduce
+a few drops of the contents between the sufferer’s clenched teeth. The
+man heaved a sigh, raised his eyelids and let them fall again; that was
+all, he gave no other sign of life.
+
+Sister Hyacinthe, usually so calm and composed, so little accustomed to
+despair, became impatient.
+
+“But it is terrible,” said she, “and Sister Claire des Anges does not
+come back! Yet I told her plainly enough where she would find Father
+Massias’s carriage. _Mon Dieu!_ what will become of us?”
+
+Sister Saint-François, seeing that she could render no help, was now
+about to return to the cantine van. Before doing so, however, she
+inquired if the man were not simply dying of hunger; for such cases
+presented themselves, and indeed she had only come to the compartment
+with the view of offering some of her provisions. At last, as she went
+off, she promised that she would make Sister Claire des Anges hasten her
+return should she happen to meet her; and she had not gone twenty yards
+when she turned round and waved her arm to call attention to her
+colleague, who with discreet short steps was coming back alone.
+
+Leaning out of the window, Sister Hyacinthe kept on calling to her, “Make
+haste, make haste! Well, and where is Father Massias?”
+
+“He isn’t there.”
+
+“What! not there?”
+
+“No. I went as fast as I could, but with all these people about it was
+not possible to get there quickly. When I reached the carriage Father
+Massias had already alighted, and gone out of the station, no doubt.”
+
+She thereupon explained, that according to what she had heard, Father
+Massias and the priest of Sainte-Radegonde had some appointment together.
+In other years the national pilgrimage halted at Poitiers for
+four-and-twenty hours, and after those who were ill had been placed in
+the town hospital the others went in procession to Sainte-Radegonde.*
+That year, however, there was some obstacle to this course being
+followed, so the train was going straight on to Lourdes; and Father
+Massias was certainly with his friend the priest, talking with him on
+some matter of importance.
+
+ * The church of Sainte-Radegonde, built by the saint of that name
+ in the sixth century, is famous throughout Poitou. In the crypt
+ between the tombs of Ste. Agnes and St. Disciole is that of Ste.
+ Radegonde herself, but it now only contains some particles of her
+ remains, as the greater portion was burnt by the Huguenots in
+ 1562. On a previous occasion (1412) the tomb had been violated by
+ Jean, Duc de Berry, who wished to remove both the saint’s head
+ and her two rings. Whilst he was making the attempt, however, the
+ skeleton is said to have withdrawn its hand so that he might not
+ possess himself of the rings. A greater curiosity which the church
+ contains is a footprint on a stone slab, said to have been left
+ by Christ when He appeared to Ste. Radegonde in her cell. This
+ attracts pilgrims from many parts.--Trans.
+
+“They promised to tell him and send him here with the Holy Oils as soon
+as they found him,” added Sister Claire.
+
+However, this was quite a disaster for Sister Hyacinthe. Since Science
+was powerless, perhaps the Holy Oils would have brought the sufferer some
+relief. She had often seen that happen.
+
+“O Sister, Sister, how worried I am!” she said to her companion. “Do you
+know, I wish you would go back and watch for Father Massias and bring him
+to me as soon as you see him. It would be so kind of you to do so!”
+
+“Yes, Sister,” compliantly answered Sister Claire des Anges, and off she
+went again with that grave, mysterious air of hers, wending her way
+through the crowd like a gliding shadow.
+
+Ferrand, meantime, was still looking at the man, sorely distressed at his
+inability to please Sister Hyacinthe by reviving him. And as he made a
+gesture expressive of his powerlessness she again raised her voice
+entreatingly: “Stay with me, Monsieur Ferrand, pray stay,” she said.
+“Wait till Father Massias comes--I shall be a little more at ease with
+you here.”
+
+He remained and helped her to raise the man, who was slipping down upon
+the seat. Then, taking a linen cloth, she wiped the poor fellow’s face
+which a dense perspiration was continually covering. And the spell of
+waiting continued amid the uneasiness of the patients who had remained in
+the carriage, and the curiosity of the folks who had begun to assemble on
+the platform in front of the compartment.
+
+All at once however a girl hastily pushed the crowd aside, and, mounting
+on the footboard, addressed herself to Madame de Jonquière: “What is the
+matter, mamma?” she said. “They are waiting for you in the
+refreshment-room.”
+
+It was Raymonde de Jonquière, who, already somewhat ripe for her
+four-and-twenty years, was remarkably like her mother, being very dark,
+with a pronounced nose, large mouth, and full, pleasant-looking face.
+
+“But, my dear, you can see for yourself. I can’t leave this poor woman,”
+ replied the lady-hospitaller; and thereupon she pointed to La Grivotte,
+who had been attacked by a fit of coughing which shook her frightfully.
+
+“Oh, how annoying, mamma!” retorted Raymonde, “Madame Désagneaux and
+Madame Volmar were looking forward with so much pleasure to this little
+lunch together.”
+
+“Well, it can’t be helped, my dear. At all events, you can begin without
+waiting for me. Tell the ladies that I will come and join them as soon as
+I can.” Then, an idea occurring to her, Madame de Jonquière added: “Wait
+a moment, the doctor is here. I will try to get him to take charge of my
+patient. Go back, I will follow you. As you can guess, I am dying of
+hunger.”
+
+Raymonde briskly returned to the refreshment-room whilst her mother
+begged Ferrand to come into her compartment to see if he could do
+something to relieve La Grivotte. At Marthe’s request he had already
+examined Brother Isidore, whose moaning never ceased; and with a
+sorrowful gesture he had again confessed his powerlessness. However, he
+hastened to comply with Madame de Jonquière’s appeal, and raised the
+consumptive woman to a sitting posture in the hope of thus stopping her
+cough, which indeed gradually ceased. And then he helped the
+lady-hospitaller to make her swallow a spoonful of some soothing draught.
+The doctor’s presence in the carriage was still causing a stir among the
+ailing ones. M. Sabathier, who was slowly eating the grapes which his
+wife had been to fetch him, did not, however, question Ferrand, for he
+knew full well what his answer would be, and was weary, as he expressed
+it, of consulting all the princes of science; nevertheless he felt
+comforted as it were at seeing him set that poor consumptive woman on her
+feet again. And even Marie watched all that the doctor did with
+increasing interest, though not daring to call him herself, certain as
+she also was that he could do nothing for her.
+
+Meantime, the crush on the platform was increasing. Only a quarter of an
+hour now remained to the pilgrims. Madame Vetu, whose eyes were open but
+who saw nothing, sat like an insensible being in the broad sunlight, in
+the hope possibly that the scorching heat would deaden her pains; whilst
+up and down, in front of her, went Madame Vincent ever with the same
+sleep-inducing step and ever carrying her little Rose, her poor ailing
+birdie, whose weight was so trifling that she scarcely felt her in her
+arms. Many people meantime were hastening to the water tap in order to
+fill their pitchers, cans, and bottles. Madame Maze, who was of refined
+tastes and careful of her person, thought of going to wash her hands
+there; but just as she arrived she found Elise Rouquet drinking, and she
+recoiled at sight of that disease-smitten face, so terribly disfigured
+and robbed of nearly all semblance of humanity. And all the others
+likewise shuddered, likewise hesitated to fill their bottles, pitchers,
+and cans at the tap from which she had drunk.
+
+A large number of pilgrims had now begun to eat whilst pacing the
+platform. You could hear the rhythmical taps of the crutches carried by a
+woman who incessantly wended her way through the groups. On the ground, a
+legless cripple was painfully dragging herself about in search of nobody
+knew what. Others, seated there in heaps, no longer stirred. All these
+sufferers, momentarily unpacked as it were, these patients of a
+travelling hospital emptied for a brief half-hour, were taking the air
+amidst the bewilderment and agitation of the healthy passengers; and the
+whole throng had a frightfully woeful, poverty-stricken appearance in the
+broad noontide light.
+
+Pierre no longer stirred from the side of Marie, for M. de Guersaint had
+disappeared, attracted by a verdant patch of landscape which could be
+seen at the far end of the station. And, feeling anxious about her, since
+she had not been able to finish her broth, the young priest with a
+smiling air tried to tempt her palate by offering to go and buy her a
+peach; but she refused it; she was suffering too much, she cared for
+nothing. She was gazing at him with her large, woeful eyes, on the one
+hand impatient at this stoppage which delayed her chance of cure, and on
+the other terrified at the thought of again being jolted along that hard
+and endless railroad.
+
+Just then a stout gentleman whose full beard was turning grey, and who
+had a broad, fatherly kind of face, drew near and touched Pierre’s arm:
+“Excuse me, Monsieur l’Abbé,” said he, “but is it not in this carriage
+that there is a poor man dying?”
+
+And on the priest returning an affirmative answer, the gentleman became
+quite affable and familiar.
+
+“My name is Vigneron,” he said; “I am the head clerk at the Ministry of
+Finances, and applied for leave in order that I might help my wife to
+take our son Gustave to Lourdes. The dear lad places all his hope in the
+Blessed Virgin, to whom we pray morning and evening on his behalf. We are
+in a second-class compartment of the carriage just in front of yours.”
+
+Then, turning round, he summoned his party with a wave of the hand.
+“Come, come!” said he, “it is here. The unfortunate man is indeed in the
+last throes.”
+
+Madame Vigneron was a little woman with the correct bearing of a
+respectable _bourgeoise_, but her long, livid face denoted impoverished
+blood, terrible evidence of which was furnished by her son Gustave. The
+latter, who was fifteen years of age, looked scarcely ten. Twisted out of
+shape, he was a mere skeleton, with his right leg so wasted, so reduced,
+that he had to walk with a crutch. He had a small, thin face, somewhat
+awry, in which one saw little excepting his eyes, clear eyes, sparkling
+with intelligence, sharpened as it were by suffering, and doubtless well
+able to dive into the human soul.
+
+An old puffy-faced lady followed the others, dragging her legs along with
+difficulty; and M. Vigneron, remembering that he had forgotten her,
+stepped back towards Pierre so that he might complete the introduction.
+“That lady,” said he, “is Madame Chaise, my wife’s eldest sister. She
+also wished to accompany Gustave, whom she is very fond of.” And then,
+leaning forward, he added in a whisper, with a confidential air: “She is
+the widow of Chaise, the silk merchant, you know, who left such an
+immense fortune. She is suffering from a heart complaint which causes her
+much anxiety.”
+
+The whole family, grouped together, then gazed with lively curiosity at
+what was taking place in the railway carriage. People were incessantly
+flocking to the spot; and so that the lad might be the better able to
+see, his father took him up in his arms for a moment whilst his aunt held
+the crutch, and his mother on her side raised herself on tip-toe.
+
+The scene in the carriage was still the same; the strange man was still
+stiffly seated in his corner, his head resting against the hard wood. He
+was livid, his eyes were closed, and his mouth was twisted by suffering;
+and every now and then Sister Hyacinthe with her linen cloth wiped away
+the cold sweat which was constantly covering his face. She no longer
+spoke, no longer evinced any impatience, but had recovered her serenity
+and relied on Heaven. From time to time she would simply glance towards
+the platform to see if Father Massias were coming.
+
+“Look at him, Gustave,” said M. Vigneron to his son; “he must be
+consumptive.”
+
+The lad, whom scrofula was eating away, whose hip was attacked by an
+abscess, and in whom there were already signs of necrosis of the
+vertebrae, seemed to take a passionate interest in the agony he thus
+beheld. It did not frighten him, he smiled at it with a smile of infinite
+sadness.
+
+“Oh! how dreadful!” muttered Madame Chaise, who, living in continual
+terror of a sudden attack which would carry her off, turned pale with the
+fear of death.
+
+“Ah! well,” replied M. Vigneron, philosophically, “it will come to each
+of us in turn. We are all mortal.”
+
+Thereupon, a painful, mocking expression came over Gustave’s smile, as
+though he had heard other words than those--perchance an unconscious
+wish, the hope that the old aunt might die before he himself did, that he
+would inherit the promised half-million of francs, and then not long
+encumber his family.
+
+“Put the boy down now,” said Madame Vigneron to her husband. “You are
+tiring him, holding him by the legs like that.”
+
+Then both she and Madame Chaise bestirred themselves in order that the
+lad might not be shaken. The poor darling was so much in need of care and
+attention. At each moment they feared that they might lose him. Even his
+father was of opinion that they had better put him in the train again at
+once. And as the two women went off with the child, the old gentleman
+once more turned towards Pierre, and with evident emotion exclaimed: “Ah!
+Monsieur l’Abbé, if God should take him from us, the light of our life
+would be extinguished--I don’t speak of his aunt’s fortune, which would
+go to other nephews. But it would be unnatural, would it not, that he
+should go off before her, especially as she is so ill? However, we are
+all in the hands of Providence, and place our reliance in the Blessed
+Virgin, who will assuredly perform a miracle.”
+
+Just then Madame de Jonquière, having been reassured by Doctor Ferrand,
+was able to leave La Grivotte. Before going off, however, she took care
+to say to Pierre: “I am dying of hunger and am going to the
+refreshment-room for a moment. But if my patient should begin coughing
+again, pray come and fetch me.”
+
+When, after great difficulty, she had managed to cross the platform and
+reach the refreshment-room, she found herself in the midst of another
+scramble. The better-circumstanced pilgrims had taken the tables by
+assault, and a great many priests were to be seen hastily lunching amidst
+all the clatter of knives, forks, and crockery. The three or four waiters
+were not able to attend to all the requirements, especially as they were
+hampered in their movements by the crowd purchasing fruit, bread, and
+cold meat at the counter. It was at a little table at the far end of the
+room that Raymonde was lunching with Madame Désagneaux and Madame Volmar.
+
+“Ah! here you are at last, mamma!” the girl exclaimed, as Madame de
+Jonquière approached. “I was just going back to fetch you. You certainly
+ought to be allowed time to eat!”
+
+She was laughing, with a very animated expression on her face, quite
+delighted as she was with the adventures of the journey and this
+indifferent scrambling meal. “There,” said she, “I have kept you some
+trout with green sauce, and there’s a cutlet also waiting for you. We
+have already got to the artichokes.”
+
+Then everything became charming. The gaiety prevailing in that little
+corner rejoiced the sight.
+
+Young Madame Désagneaux was particularly adorable. A delicate blonde,
+with wild, wavy, yellow hair, a round, dimpled, milky face, a gay,
+laughing disposition, and a remarkably good heart, she had made a rich
+marriage, and for three years past had been wont to leave her husband at
+Trouville in the fine August weather, in order to accompany the national
+pilgrimage as a lady-hospitaller. This was her great passion, an access
+of quivering pity, a longing desire to place herself unreservedly at the
+disposal of the sick for five days, a real debauch of devotion from which
+she returned tired to death but full of intense delight. Her only regret
+was that she as yet had no children, and with comical passion, she
+occasionally expressed a regret that she had missed her true vocation,
+that of a sister of charity.
+
+“Ah! my dear,” she hastily said to Raymonde, “don’t pity your mother for
+being so much taken up with her patients. She, at all events, has
+something to occupy her.” And addressing herself to Madame de Jonquière,
+she added: “If you only knew how long we find the time in our fine
+first-class carriage. We cannot even occupy ourselves with a little
+needlework, as it is forbidden. I asked for a place with the patients,
+but all were already distributed, so that my only resource will be to try
+to sleep tonight.”
+
+She began to laugh, and then resumed: “Yes, Madame Volmar, we will try to
+sleep, won’t we, since talking seems to tire you?” Madame Volmar, who
+looked over thirty, was very dark, with a long face and delicate but
+drawn features. Her magnificent eyes shone out like brasiers, though
+every now and then a cloud seemed to veil and extinguish them. At the
+first glance she did not appear beautiful, but as you gazed at her she
+became more and more perturbing, till she conquered you and inspired you
+with passionate admiration. It should be said though that she shrank from
+all self-assertion, comporting herself with much modesty, ever keeping in
+the background, striving to hide her lustre, invariably clad in black and
+unadorned by a single jewel, although she was the wife of a Parisian
+diamond-merchant.
+
+“Oh! for my part,” she murmured, “as long as I am not hustled too much I
+am well pleased.”
+
+She had been to Lourdes as an auxiliary lady-helper already on two
+occasions, though but little had been seen of her there--at the hospital
+of Our Lady of Dolours--as, on arriving, she had been overcome by such
+great fatigue that she had been forced, she said, to keep her room.
+
+However, Madame de Jonquière, who managed the ward, treated her with
+good-natured tolerance. “Ah! my poor friends,” said she, “there will be
+plenty of time for you to exert yourselves. Get to sleep if you can, and
+your turn will come when I can no longer keep up.” Then addressing her
+daughter, she resumed: “And you would do well, darling, not to excite
+yourself too much if you wish to keep your head clear.”
+
+Raymonde smiled and gave her mother a reproachful glance: “Mamma, mamma,
+why do you say that? Am I not sensible?” she asked.
+
+Doubtless she was not boasting, for, despite her youthful, thoughtless
+air, the air of one who simply feels happy in living, there appeared in
+her grey eyes an expression of firm resolution, a resolution to shape her
+life for herself.
+
+“It is true,” the mother confessed with a little confusion, “this little
+girl is at times more sensible than I am myself. Come, pass me the
+cutlet--it is welcome, I assure you. Lord! how hungry I was!”
+
+The meal continued, enlivened by the constant laughter of Madame
+Désagneaux and Raymonde. The latter was very animated, and her face,
+which was already growing somewhat yellow through long pining for a
+suitor, again assumed the rosy bloom of twenty. They had to eat very
+fast, for only ten minutes now remained to them. On all sides one heard
+the growing tumult of customers who feared that they would not have time
+to take their coffee.
+
+All at once, however, Pierre made his appearance; a fit of stifling had
+again come over La Grivotte; and Madame de Jonquière hastily finished her
+artichoke and returned to her compartment, after kissing her daughter,
+who wished her “good-night” in a facetious way. The priest, however, had
+made a movement of surprise on perceiving Madame Volmar with the red
+cross of the lady-hospitallers on her black bodice. He knew her, for he
+still called at long intervals on old Madame Volmar, the
+diamond-merchant’s mother, who had been one of his own mother’s friends.
+She was the most terrible woman in the world, religious beyond all
+reason, so harsh and stern, moreover, as to close the very window
+shutters in order to prevent her daughter-in-law from looking into the
+street. And he knew the young woman’s story, how she had been imprisoned
+on the very morrow of her marriage, shut up between her mother-in-law,
+who tyrannised over her, and her husband, a repulsively ugly monster who
+went so far as to beat her, mad as he was with jealousy, although he
+himself kept mistresses. The unhappy woman was not allowed out of the
+house excepting it were to go to mass. And one day, at La Trinité, Pierre
+had surprised her secret, on seeing her behind the church exchanging a
+few hasty words with a well-groomed, distinguished-looking man.
+
+The priest’s sudden appearance in the refreshment-room had somewhat
+disconcerted Madame Volmar.
+
+“What an unexpected meeting, Monsieur l’Abbé!” she said, offering him her
+long, warm hand. “What a long time it is since I last saw you!” And
+thereupon she explained that this was the third year she had gone to
+Lourdes, her mother-in-law having required her to join the Association of
+Our Lady of Salvation. “It is surprising that you did not see her at the
+station when we started,” she added. “She sees me into the train and
+comes to meet me on my return.”
+
+This was said in an apparently simple way, but with such a subtle touch
+of irony that Pierre fancied he could guess the truth. He knew that she
+really had no religious principles at all, and that she merely followed
+the rites and ceremonies of the Church in order that she might now and
+again obtain an hour’s freedom; and all at once he intuitively realised
+that someone must be waiting for her yonder, that it was for the purpose
+of meeting him that she was thus hastening to Lourdes with her shrinking
+yet ardent air and flaming eyes, which she so prudently shrouded with a
+veil of lifeless indifference.
+
+“For my part,” he answered, “I am accompanying a friend of my childhood,
+a poor girl who is very ill indeed. I must ask your help for her; you
+shall nurse her.”
+
+Thereupon she faintly blushed, and he no longer doubted the truth of his
+surmise. However, Raymonde was just then settling the bill with the easy
+assurance of a girl who is expert in figures; and immediately afterwards
+Madame Désagneaux led Madame Volmar away. The waiters were now growing
+more distracted and the tables were fast being vacated; for, on hearing a
+bell ring, everybody had begun to rush towards the door.
+
+Pierre, on his side, was hastening back to his carriage, when he was
+stopped by an old priest. “Ah! Monsieur le Curé,” he said, “I saw you
+just before we started, but I was unable to get near enough to shake
+hands with you.”
+
+Thereupon he offered his hand to his brother ecclesiastic, who was
+looking and smiling at him in a kindly way. The Abbé Judaine was the
+parish priest of Saligny, a little village in the department of the Oise.
+Tall and sturdy, he had a broad pink face, around which clustered a mass
+of white, curly hair, and it could be divined by his appearance that he
+was a worthy man whom neither the flesh nor the spirit had ever
+tormented. He believed indeed firmly and absolutely, with a tranquil
+godliness, never having known a struggle, endowed as he was with the
+ready faith of a child who is unacquainted with human passions. And ever
+since the Virgin at Lourdes had cured him of a disease of the eyes, by a
+famous miracle which folks still talked about, his belief had become yet
+more absolute and tender, as though impregnated with divine gratitude.
+
+“I am pleased that you are with us, my friend,” he gently said; “for
+there is much in these pilgrimages for young priests to profit by. I am
+told that some of them at times experience a feeling of rebellion. Well,
+you will see all these poor people praying,--it is a sight which will
+make you weep. How can one do otherwise than place oneself in God’s
+hands, on seeing so much suffering cured or consoled?”
+
+The old priest himself was accompanying a patient; and he pointed to a
+first-class compartment, at the door of which hung a placard bearing the
+inscription: “M. l’Abbé Judaine, Reserved.” Then lowering his voice, he
+said: “It is Madame Dieulafay, you know, the great banker’s wife. Their
+château, a royal domain, is in my parish, and when they learned that the
+Blessed Virgin had vouchsafed me such an undeserved favour, they begged
+me to intercede for their poor sufferer. I have already said several
+masses, and most sincerely pray for her. There, you see her yonder on the
+ground. She insisted on being taken out of the carriage, in spite of all
+the trouble which one will have to place her in it again.”
+
+On a shady part of the platform, in a kind of long box, there was, as the
+old priest said, a woman whose beautiful, perfectly oval face, lighted up
+by splendid eyes, denoted no greater age than six-and-twenty. She was
+suffering from a frightful disease. The disappearance from her system of
+the calcareous salts had led to a softening of the osseous framework, the
+slow destruction of her bones. Three years previously, after the advent
+of a stillborn child, she had felt vague pains in the spinal column. And
+then, little by little, her bones had rarefied and lost shape, the
+vertebrae had sunk, the bones of the pelvis had flattened, and those of
+the arms and legs had contracted. Thus shrunken, melting away as it were,
+she had become a mere human remnant, a nameless, fluid thing, which could
+not be set erect, but had to be carried hither and thither with infinite
+care, for fear lest she should vanish between one’s fingers. Her face, a
+motionless face, on which sat a stupefied imbecile expression, still
+retained its beauty of outline, and yet it was impossible to gaze at this
+wretched shred of a woman without feeling a heart-pang, the keener on
+account of all the luxury surrounding her; for not only was the box in
+which she lay lined with blue quilted silk, but she was covered with
+valuable lace, and a cap of rare valenciennes was set upon her head, her
+wealth thus being proclaimed, displayed, in the midst of her awful agony.
+
+“Ah! how pitiable it is,” resumed the Abbé Judaine in an undertone. “To
+think that she is so young, so pretty, possessed of millions of money!
+And if you knew how dearly loved she was, with what adoration she is
+still surrounded. That tall gentleman near her is her husband, that
+elegantly dressed lady is her sister, Madame Jousseur.”
+
+Pierre remembered having often noticed in the newspapers the name of
+Madame Jousseur, wife of a diplomatist, and a conspicuous member of the
+higher spheres of Catholic society in Paris. People had even circulated a
+story of some great passion which she had fought against and vanquished.
+She also was very prettily dressed, with marvellously tasteful
+simplicity, and she ministered to the wants of her sorry sister with an
+air of perfect devotion. As for the unhappy woman’s husband, who at the
+age of five-and-thirty had inherited his father’s colossal business, he
+was a clear-complexioned, well-groomed, handsome man, clad in a closely
+buttoned frock-coat. His eyes, however, were full of tears, for he adored
+his wife, and had left his business in order to take her to Lourdes,
+placing his last hope in this appeal to the mercy of Heaven.
+
+Ever since the morning, Pierre had beheld many frightful sufferings in
+that woeful white train. But none had so distressed his soul as did that
+wretched female skeleton, slowly liquefying in the midst of its lace and
+its millions. “The unhappy woman!” he murmured with a shudder.
+
+The Abbé Judaine, however, made a gesture of serene hope. “The Blessed
+Virgin will cure her,” said he; “I have prayed to her so much.”
+
+Just then a bell again pealed, and this time it was really the signal for
+starting. Only two minutes remained. There was a last rush, and folks
+hurried back towards the train carrying eatables wrapped in paper, and
+bottles and cans which they had filled with water. Several of them quite
+lost their heads, and in their inability to find their carriages, ran
+distractedly from one to the other end of the train; whilst some of the
+infirm ones dragged themselves about amidst the precipitate tapping of
+crutches, and others, only able to walk with difficulty, strove to hasten
+their steps whilst leaning on the arms of some of the lady-hospitallers.
+It was only with infinite difficulty that four men managed to replace
+Madame Dieulafay in her first-class compartment. The Vignerons, who were
+content with second-class accommodation, had already reinstalled
+themselves in their quarters amidst an extraordinary heap of baskets,
+boxes, and valises which scarcely allowed little Gustave enough room to
+stretch his poor puny limbs--the limbs as it were of a deformed insect.
+And then all the women appeared again: Madame Maze gliding along in
+silence; Madame Vincent raising her dear little girl in her outstretched
+arms and dreading lest she should hear her cry out; Madame Vetu, whom it
+had been necessary to push into the train, after rousing her from her
+stupefying torment; and Elise Rouquet, who was quite drenched through her
+obstinacy in endeavouring to drink from the tap, and was still wiping her
+monstrous face. Whilst each returned to her place and the carriage filled
+once more, Marie listened to her father, who had come back delighted with
+his stroll to a pointsman’s little house beyond the station, whence a
+really pleasant stretch of landscape could be discerned.
+
+“Shall we lay you down again at once?” asked Pierre, sorely distressed by
+the pained expression on Marie’s face.
+
+“Oh no, no, by-and-by!” she replied. “I shall have plenty of time to hear
+those wheels roaring in my head as though they were grinding my bones.”
+
+Then, as Ferrand seemed on the point of returning to the cantine van,
+Sister Hyacinthe begged him to take another look at the strange man
+before he went off. She was still waiting for Father Massias, astonished
+at the inexplicable delay in his arrival, but not yet without hope, as
+Sister Claire des Anges had not returned.
+
+“Pray, Monsieur Ferrand,” said she, “tell me if this unfortunate man is
+in any immediate danger.”
+
+The young doctor again looked at the sufferer, felt him, and listened to
+his breathing. Then with a gesture of discouragement he answered in a low
+voice, “I feel convinced that you will not get him to Lourdes alive.”
+
+Every head was still anxiously stretched forward. If they had only known
+the man’s name, the place he had come from, who he was! But it was
+impossible to extract a word from this unhappy stranger, who was about to
+die there, in that carriage, without anybody being able to give his face
+a name!
+
+It suddenly occurred to Sister Hyacinthe to have him searched. Under the
+circumstances there could certainly be no harm in such a course. “Feel in
+his pockets, Monsieur Ferrand,” she said.
+
+The doctor thereupon searched the man in a gentle, cautious way, but the
+only things that he found in his pockets were a chaplet, a knife, and
+three sous. And nothing more was ever learnt of the man.
+
+At that moment, however, a voice announced that Sister Claire des Anges
+was at last coming back with Father Massias. All this while the latter
+had simply been chatting with the priest of Sainte-Radegonde in one of
+the waiting-rooms. Keen emotion attended his arrival; for a moment all
+seemed saved. But the train was about to start, the porters were already
+closing the carriage doors, and it was necessary that extreme unction
+should be administered in all haste in order to avoid too long a delay.
+
+“This way, reverend Father!” exclaimed Sister Hyacinthe; “yes, yes, pray
+come in; our unfortunate patient is here.”
+
+Father Massias, who was five years older than Pierre, whose
+fellow-student however he had been at the seminary, had a tall, spare
+figure with an ascetic countenance, framed round with a light-coloured
+beard and vividly lighted up by burning eyes, He was neither the priest
+harassed by doubt, nor the priest with childlike faith, but an apostle
+carried away by his passion, ever ready to fight and vanquish for the
+pure glory of the Blessed Virgin. In his black cloak with its large hood,
+and his broad-brimmed flossy hat, he shone resplendently with the
+perpetual ardour of battle.
+
+He immediately took from his pocket the silver case containing the Holy
+Oils, and the ceremony began whilst the last carriage doors were being
+slammed and belated pilgrims were rushing back to the train; the
+station-master, meantime, anxiously glancing at the clock, and realising
+that it would be necessary for him to grant a few minutes’ grace.
+
+“_Credo in unum Deum_,” hastily murmured the Father.
+
+“_Amen_,” replied Sister Hyacinthe and the other occupants of the
+carriage.
+
+Those who had been able to do so, had knelt upon the seats, whilst the
+others joined their hands, or repeatedly made the sign of the cross; and
+when the murmured prayers were followed by the Litanies of the ritual,
+every voice rose, an ardent desire for the remission of the man’s sins
+and for his physical and spiritual cure winging its flight heavenward
+with each successive _Kyrie eleison_. Might his whole life, of which they
+knew nought, be forgiven him; might he enter, stranger though he was, in
+triumph into the Kingdom of God!
+
+“_Christe, exaudi nos_.”
+
+“_Ora pro nobis, sancta Dei Genitrix_.”
+
+Father Massias had pulled out the silver needle from which hung a drop of
+Holy Oil. In the midst of such a scramble, with the whole train
+waiting--many people now thrusting their heads out of the carriage
+windows in surprise at the delay in starting--he could not think of
+following the usual practice, of anointing in turn all the organs of the
+senses, those portals of the soul which give admittance to evil.
+
+He must content himself, as the rules authorised him to do in pressing
+cases, with one anointment; and this he made upon the man’s lips, those
+livid parted lips from between which only a faint breath escaped, whilst
+the rest of his face, with its lowered eyelids, already seemed
+indistinct, again merged into the dust of the earth.
+
+“_Per istam sanctam unctionem_,” said the Father, “_et suam piissimam
+misericordiam indulgeat tibi Dominus quidquid per visum, auditum,
+odoratum, gustum, tactum, deliquisti_.”*
+
+ * Through this holy unction and His most tender mercy may the
+ Lord pardon thee whatever sins thou hast committed by thy sight,
+ hearing, etc.
+
+The remainder of the ceremony was lost amid the hurry and scramble of the
+departure. Father Massias scarcely had time to wipe off the oil with the
+little piece of cotton-wool which Sister Hyacinthe held in readiness,
+before he had to leave the compartment and get into his own as fast as
+possible, setting the case containing the Holy Oils in order as he did
+so, whilst the pilgrims finished repeating the final prayer.
+
+“We cannot wait any longer! It is impossible!” repeated the
+station-master as he bustled about. “Come, come, make haste everybody!”
+
+At last then they were about to resume their journey. Everybody sat down,
+returned to his or her corner again. Madame de Jonquière, however, had
+changed her place, in order to be nearer La Grivotte, whose condition
+still worried her, and she was now seated in front of M. Sabathier, who
+remained waiting with silent resignation. Moreover, Sister Hyacinthe had
+not returned to her compartment, having decided to remain near the
+unknown man so that she might watch over him and help him. By following
+this course, too, she was able to minister to Brother Isidore, whose
+sufferings his sister Marthe was at a loss to assuage. And Marie, turning
+pale, felt the jolting of the train in her ailing flesh, even before it
+had resumed its journey under the heavy sun, rolling onward once more
+with its load of sufferers stifling in the pestilential atmosphere of the
+over-heated carriages.
+
+At last a loud whistle resounded, the engine puffed, and Sister Hyacinthe
+rose up to say: The _Magnificat_, my children!
+
+
+
+
+IV. MIRACLES
+
+JUST as the train was beginning to move, the door of the compartment in
+which Pierre and Marie found themselves was opened and a porter pushed a
+girl of fourteen inside, saying: “There’s a seat here--make haste!”
+
+The others were already pulling long faces and were about to protest,
+when Sister Hyacinthe exclaimed: “What, is it you, Sophie? So you are
+going back to see the Blessed Virgin who cured you last year!”
+
+And at the same time Madame de Jonquière remarked: “Ah! Sophie, my little
+friend, I am very pleased to see that you are grateful.”
+
+“Why, yes, Sister; why, yes, madame,” answered the girl, in a pretty way.
+
+The carriage door had already been closed again, so that it was necessary
+that they should accept the presence of this new pilgrim who had fallen
+from heaven as it were at the very moment when the train, which she had
+almost missed, was starting off again. She was a slender damsel and would
+not take up much room. Moreover these ladies knew her, and all the
+patients had turned their eyes upon her on hearing that the Blessed
+Virgin had been pleased to cure her. They had now got beyond the station,
+the engine was still puffing, whilst the wheels increased their speed,
+and Sister Hyacinthe, clapping her hands, repeated: “Come, come, my
+children, the _Magnificat_.”
+
+Whilst the joyful chant arose amidst the jolting of the train, Pierre
+gazed at Sophie. She was evidently a young peasant girl, the daughter of
+some poor husbandman of the vicinity of Poitiers, petted by her parents,
+treated in fact like a young lady since she had become the subject of a
+miracle, one of the elect, whom the priests of the district flocked to
+see. She wore a straw hat with pink ribbons, and a grey woollen dress
+trimmed with a flounce. Her round face although not pretty was a very
+pleasant one, with a beautifully fresh complexion and clear, intelligent
+eyes which lent her a smiling, modest air.
+
+When the _Magnificat_ had been sung, Pierre was unable to resist his
+desire to question Sophie. A child of her age, with so candid an air, so
+utterly unlike a liar, greatly interested him.
+
+“And so you nearly missed the train, my child?” he said.
+
+“I should have been much ashamed if I had, Monsieur l’Abbé,” she replied.
+“I had been at the station since twelve o’clock. And all at once I saw
+his reverence, the priest of Sainte-Radegonde, who knows me well and who
+called me to him, to kiss me and tell me that it was very good of me to
+go back to Lourdes. But it seems the train was starting and I only just
+had time to run on to the platform. Oh! I ran so fast!”
+
+She paused, laughing, still slightly out of breath, but already repenting
+that she had been so giddy.
+
+“And what is your name, my child?” asked Pierre.
+
+“Sophie Couteau, Monsieur l’Abbé.”
+
+“You do not belong to the town of Poitiers?”
+
+“Oh no! certainly not. We belong to Vivonne, which is seven kilometres
+away. My father and mother have a little land there, and things would not
+be so bad if there were not eight children at home--I am the
+fifth,--fortunately the four older ones are beginning to work.”
+
+“And you, my child, what do you do?”
+
+“I, Monsieur l’Abbé! Oh! I am no great help. Since last year, when I came
+home cured, I have not been left quiet a single day, for, as you can
+understand, so many people have come to see me, and then too I have been
+taken to Monseigneur’s,* and to the convents and all manner of other
+places. And before all that I was a long time ill. I could not walk
+without a stick, and each step I took made me cry out, so dreadfully did
+my foot hurt me.”
+
+ * The Bishop’s residence.
+
+“So it was of some injury to the foot that the Blessed Virgin cured you?”
+
+Sophie did not have time to reply, for Sister Hyacinthe, who was
+listening, intervened: “Of caries of the bones of the left heel, which
+had been going on for three years,” said she. “The foot was swollen and
+quite deformed, and there were fistulas giving egress to continual
+suppuration.”
+
+On hearing this, all the sufferers in the carriage became intensely
+interested. They no longer took their eyes off this little girl on whom a
+miracle had been performed, but scanned her from head to foot as though
+seeking for some sign of the prodigy. Those who were able to stand rose
+up in order that they might the better see her, and the others, the
+infirm ones, stretched on their mattresses, strove to raise themselves
+and turn their heads. Amidst the suffering which had again come upon them
+on leaving Poitiers, the terror which filled them at the thought that
+they must continue rolling onward for another fifteen hours, the sudden
+advent of this child, favoured by Heaven, was like a divine relief, a ray
+of hope whence they would derive sufficient strength to accomplish the
+remainder of their terrible journey. The moaning had abated somewhat
+already, and every face was turned towards the girl with an ardent desire
+to believe.
+
+This was especially the case with Marie, who, already reviving, joined
+her trembling hands, and in a gentle supplicating voice said to Pierre,
+“Question her, pray question her, ask her to tell us everything--cured, O
+God! cured of such a terrible complaint!”
+
+Madame de Jonquière, who was quite affected, had leant over the partition
+to kiss the girl. “Certainly,” said she, “our little friend will tell you
+all about it. Won’t you, my darling? You will tell us what the Blessed
+Virgin did for you?”
+
+“Oh, certainly! madame--as much as you like,” answered Sophie with her
+smiling, modest air, her eyes gleaming with intelligence. Indeed, she
+wished to begin at once, and raised her right hand with a pretty gesture,
+as a sign to everybody to be attentive. Plainly enough, she had already
+acquired the habit of speaking in public.
+
+She could not be seen, however, from some parts of the carriage, and an
+idea came to Sister Hyacinthe, who said: “Get up on the seat, Sophie, and
+speak loudly, on account of the noise which the train makes.”
+
+This amused the girl, and before beginning she needed time to become
+serious again. “Well, it was like this,” said she; “my foot was past
+cure, I couldn’t even go to church any more, and it had to be kept
+bandaged, because there was always a lot of nasty matter coming from it.
+Monsieur Rivoire, the doctor, who had made a cut in it, so as to see
+inside it, said that he should be obliged to take out a piece of the
+bone; and that, sure enough, would have made me lame for life. But when I
+got to Lourdes and had prayed a great deal to the Blessed Virgin, I went
+to dip my foot in the water, wishing so much that I might be cured that I
+did not even take the time to pull the bandage off. And everything
+remained in the water, there was no longer anything the matter with my
+foot when I took it out.”
+
+A murmur of mingled surprise, wonder, and desire arose and spread among
+those who heard this marvellous tale, so sweet and soothing to all who
+were in despair. But the little one had not yet finished. She had simply
+paused. And now, making a fresh gesture, holding her arms somewhat apart,
+she concluded: “When I got back to Vivonne and Monsieur Rivoire saw my
+foot again, he said: ‘Whether it be God or the Devil who has cured this
+child, it is all the same to me; but in all truth she _is_ cured.’”
+
+This time a burst of laughter rang out. The girl spoke in too recitative
+a way, having repeated her story so many times already that she knew it
+by heart. The doctor’s remark was sure to produce an effect, and she
+herself laughed at it in advance, certain as she was that the others
+would laugh also. However, she still retained her candid, touching air.
+
+But she had evidently forgotten some particular, for Sister Hyacinthe, a
+glance from whom had foreshadowed the doctor’s jest, now softly prompted
+her “And what was it you said to Madame la Comtesse, the superintendent
+of your ward, Sophie?”
+
+“Ah! yes. I hadn’t brought many bandages for my foot with me, and I said
+to her, ‘It was very kind of the Blessed Virgin to cure me the first day,
+as I should have run out of linen on the morrow.’”
+
+This provoked a fresh outburst of delight. They all thought her so nice,
+to have been cured like that! And in reply to a question from Madame de
+Jonquière, she also had to tell the story of her boots, a pair of
+beautiful new boots which Madame la Comtesse had given her, and in which
+she had run, jumped, and danced about, full of childish delight. Boots!
+think of it, she who for three years had not even been able to wear a
+slipper.
+
+Pierre, who had become grave, waxing pale with the secret uneasiness
+which was penetrating him, continued to look at her. And he also asked
+her other questions. She was certainly not lying, and he merely suspected
+a slow distortion of the actual truth, an easily explained embellishment
+of the real facts amidst all the joy she felt at being cured and becoming
+an important little personage. Who now knew if the cicatrisation of her
+injuries, effected, so it was asserted, completely, instantaneously, in a
+few seconds, had not in reality been the work of days? Where were the
+witnesses?
+
+Just then Madame de Jonquière began to relate that she had been at the
+hospital at the time referred to. “Sophie was not in my ward,” said she,
+“but I had met her walking lame that very morning--”
+
+Pierre hastily interrupted the lady-hospitaller. “Ah! you saw her foot
+before and after the immersion?”
+
+“No, no! I don’t think that anybody was able to see it, for it was bound
+round with bandages. She told you that the bandages had fallen into the
+piscina.” And, turning towards the child, Madame de Jonquière added, “But
+she will show you her foot--won’t you, Sophie? Undo your shoe.”
+
+The girl took off her shoe, and pulled down her stocking, with a
+promptness and ease of manner which showed how thoroughly accustomed she
+had become to it all. And she not only stretched out her foot, which was
+very clean and very white, carefully tended indeed, with well-cut, pink
+nails, but complacently turned it so that the young priest might examine
+it at his ease. Just below the ankle there was a long scar, whose whity
+seam, plainly defined, testified to the gravity of the complaint from
+which the girl had suffered.
+
+“Oh! take hold of the heel, Monsieur l’Abbé,” said she. “Press it as hard
+as you like. I no longer feel any pain at all.”
+
+Pierre made a gesture from which it might have been thought that he was
+delighted with the power exercised by the Blessed Virgin. But he was
+still tortured by doubt. What unknown force had acted in this case? Or
+rather what faulty medical diagnosis, what assemblage of errors and
+exaggerations, had ended in this fine tale?
+
+All the patients, however, wished to see the miraculous foot, that
+outward and visible sign of the divine cure which each of them was going
+in search of. And it was Marie, sitting up in her box, and already
+feeling less pain, who touched it first. Then Madame Maze, quite roused
+from her melancholy, passed it on to Madame Vincent, who would have
+kissed it for the hope which it restored to her. M. Sabathier had
+listened to all the explanations with a beatific air; Madame Vetu, La
+Grivotte, and even Brother Isidore opened their eyes, and evinced signs
+of interest; whilst the face of Elise Rouquet had assumed an
+extraordinary expression, transfigured by faith, almost beatified. If a
+sore had thus disappeared, might not her own sore close and disappear,
+her face retaining no trace of it save a slight scar, and again becoming
+such a face as other people had? Sophie, who was still standing, had to
+hold on to one of the iron rails, and place her foot on the partition,
+now on the right, now on the left. And she did not weary of it all, but
+felt exceedingly happy and proud at the many exclamations which were
+raised, the quivering admiration and religious respect which were
+bestowed on that little piece of her person, that little foot which had
+now, so to say, become sacred.
+
+“One must possess great faith, no doubt,” said Marie, thinking aloud.
+“One must have a pure unspotted soul.” And, addressing herself to M. de
+Guersaint, she added: “Father, I feel that I should get well if I were
+ten years old, if I had the unspotted soul of a little girl.”
+
+“But you are ten years old, my darling! Is it not so, Pierre? A little
+girl of ten years old could not have a more spotless soul.”
+
+Possessed of a mind prone to chimeras, M. de Guersaint was fond of
+hearing tales of miracles. As for the young priest, profoundly affected
+by the ardent purity which the young girl evinced, he no longer sought to
+discuss the question, but let her surrender herself to the consoling
+illusions which Sophie’s tale had wafted through the carriage.
+
+The temperature had become yet more oppressive since their departure from
+Poitiers, a storm was rising in the coppery sky, and it seemed as though
+the train were rushing through a furnace. The villages passed, mournful
+and solitary under the burning sun. At Couhe-Verac they had again said
+their chaplets, and sung another canticle. At present, however, there was
+some slight abatement of the religious exercises. Sister Hyacinthe, who
+had not yet been able to lunch, ventured to eat a roll and some fruit in
+all haste, whilst still ministering to the strange man whose faint,
+painful breathing seemed to have become more regular. And it was only on
+passing Ruffec at three o’clock that they said the vespers of the Blessed
+Virgin.
+
+“_Ora pro nobis, sancta Dei Genitrix_.”
+
+“_Ut digni efficiamur promissionibus Christi_.”*
+
+ * “Pray for us, O holy Mother of God,
+ That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.”
+
+As they were finishing, M. Sabathier, who had watched little Sophie while
+she put on her shoe and stocking, turned towards M. de Guersaint.
+
+“This child’s case is interesting, no doubt,” he remarked. “But it is a
+mere nothing, monsieur, for there have been far more marvellous cures
+than that. Do you know the story of Pierre de Rudder, a Belgian
+working-man?”
+
+Everybody had again begun to listen.
+
+“This man,” continued M. Sabathier, “had his leg broken by the fall of a
+tree. Eight years afterwards the two fragments of the bone had not yet
+joined together again--the two ends could be seen in the depths of a sore
+which was continually suppurating; and the leg hung down quite limp,
+swaying in all directions. Well, it was sufficient for this man to drink
+a glassful of the miraculous water, and his leg was made whole again. He
+was able to walk without crutches, and the doctor said to him: ‘Your leg
+is like that of a new-born child.’ Yes, indeed, a perfectly new leg.”
+
+Nobody spoke, but the listeners exchanged glances of ecstasy.
+
+“And, by the way,” resumed M. Sabathier, “it is like the story of Louis
+Bouriette, a quarryman, one of the first of the Lourdes miracles. Do you
+know it? Bouriette had been injured by an explosion during some blasting
+operations. The sight of his right eye was altogether destroyed, and he
+was even threatened with the loss of the left one. Well, one day he sent
+his daughter to fetch a bottleful of the muddy water of the source, which
+then scarcely bubbled up to the surface. He washed his eye with this
+muddy liquid, and prayed fervently. And, all at once, he raised a cry,
+for he could see, monsieur, see as well as you and I. The doctor who was
+attending him drew up a detailed narrative of the case, and there cannot
+be the slightest doubt about its truth.”
+
+“It is marvellous,” murmured M. de Guersaint in his delight.
+
+“Would you like another example, monsieur? I can give you a famous one,
+that of François Macary, the carpenter of Lavaur. During eighteen years
+he had suffered from a deep varicose ulcer, with considerable enlargement
+of the tissues in the mesial part of the left leg. He had reached such a
+point that he could no longer move, and science decreed that he would
+forever remain infirm. Well, one evening he shuts himself up with a
+bottle of Lourdes water. He takes off his bandages, washes both his legs,
+and drinks what little water then remains in the bottle. Then he goes to
+bed and falls asleep; and when he awakes, he feels his legs and looks at
+them. There is nothing left; the varicose enlargement, the ulcers, have
+all disappeared. The skin of his knee, monsieur, had become as smooth, as
+fresh as it had been when he was twenty.”
+
+This time there was an explosion of surprise and admiration. The patients
+and the pilgrims were entering into the enchanted land of miracles, where
+impossibilities are accomplished at each bend of the pathways, where one
+marches on at ease from prodigy to prodigy. And each had his or her story
+to tell, burning with a desire to contribute a fresh proof, to fortify
+faith and hope by yet another example.
+
+That silent creature, Madame Maze, was so transported that she spoke the
+first. “I have a friend,” said she, “who knew the Widow Rizan, that lady
+whose cure also created so great a stir. For four-and-twenty years her
+left side had been entirely paralysed. Her stomach was unable to retain
+any solid food, and she had become an inert bag of bones which had to be
+turned over in bed, The friction of the sheets, too, had ended by rubbing
+her skin away in parts. Well, she was so low one evening that the doctor
+announced that she would die during the night. An hour later, however,
+she emerged from her torpor and asked her daughter in a faint voice to go
+and fetch her a glass of Lourdes water from a neighbour’s. But she was
+only able to obtain this glass of water on the following morning; and she
+cried out to her daughter: ‘Oh! it is life that I am drinking--rub my
+face with it, rub my arm and my leg, rub my whole body with it!’ And when
+her daughter obeyed her, she gradually saw the huge swelling subside, and
+the paralysed, tumefied limbs recover their natural suppleness and
+appearance. Nor was that all, for Madame Rizan cried out that she was
+cured and felt hungry, and wanted bread and meat--she who had eaten none
+for four-and-twenty years! And she got out of bed and dressed herself,
+whilst her daughter, who was so overpowered that the neighbours thought
+she had become an orphan, replied to them: ‘No, no, mamma isn’t dead, she
+has come to life again!’”
+
+This narrative had brought tears to Madame Vincent’s eyes. Ah! if she had
+only been able to see her little Rose recover like that, eat with a good
+appetite, and run about again! At the same time, another case, which she
+had been told of in Paris and which had greatly influenced her in
+deciding to take her ailing child to Lourdes, returned to her memory.
+
+“And I, too,” said she, “know the story of a girl who was paralysed. Her
+name was Lucie Druon, and she was an inmate of an orphan asylum. She was
+quite young and could not even kneel down. Her limbs were bent like
+hoops. Her right leg, the shorter of the two, had ended by becoming
+twisted round the left one; and when any of the other girls carried her
+about you saw her feet hanging down quite limp, like dead ones. Please
+notice that she did not even go to Lourdes. She simply performed a
+novena; but she fasted during the nine days, and her desire to be cured
+was so great that she spent her nights in prayer. At last, on the ninth
+day, whilst she was drinking a little Lourdes water, she felt a violent
+commotion in her legs. She picked herself up, fell down, picked herself
+up again and walked. All her little companions, who were astonished,
+almost frightened at the sight, began to cry out ‘Lucie can walk! Lucie
+can walk!’ It was quite true. In a few seconds her legs had become
+straight and strong and healthy. She crossed the courtyard and was able
+to climb up the steps of the chapel, where the whole sisterhood,
+transported with gratitude, chanted the _Magnificat_. Ah! the dear child,
+how happy, how happy she must have been!”
+
+As Madame Vincent finished, two tears fell from her cheeks on to the pale
+face of her little girl, whom she kissed distractedly.
+
+The general interest was still increasing, becoming quite impassioned.
+The rapturous joy born of these beautiful stories, in which Heaven
+invariably triumphed over human reality, transported these childlike
+souls to such a point that those who were suffering the most grievously
+sat up in their turn, and recovered the power of speech. And with the
+narratives of one and all was blended a thought of the sufferer’s own
+ailment, a belief that he or she would also be cured, since a malady of
+the same description had vanished like an evil dream beneath the breath
+of the Divinity.
+
+“Ah!” stammered Madame Vetu, her articulation hindered by her sufferings,
+“there was another one, Antoinette Thardivail, whose stomach was being
+eaten away like mine. You would have said that dogs were devouring it,
+and sometimes there was a swelling in it as big as a child’s head.
+Tumours indeed were ever forming in it, like fowl’s eggs, so that for
+eight months she brought up blood. And she also was at the point of
+death, with nothing but her skin left on her bones, and dying of hunger,
+when she drank some water of Lourdes and had the pit of her stomach
+washed with it. Three minutes afterwards, her doctor, who on the previous
+day had left her almost in the last throes, scarce breathing, found her
+up and sitting by the fireside, eating a tender chicken’s wing with a
+good appetite. She had no more tumours, she laughed as she had laughed
+when she was twenty, and her face had regained the brilliancy of youth.
+Ah! to be able to eat what one likes, to become young again, to cease
+suffering!”
+
+“And the cure of Sister Julienne!” then exclaimed La Grivotte, raising
+herself on one of her elbows, her eyes glittering with fever. “In her
+case it commenced with a bad cold as it did with me, and then she began
+to spit blood. And every six months she fell ill again and had to take to
+her bed. The last time everybody said that she wouldn’t leave it alive.
+The doctors had vainly tried every remedy, iodine, blistering, and
+cauterising. In fact, hers was a real case of phthisis, certified by half
+a dozen medical men. Well, she comes to Lourdes, and Heaven alone knows
+amidst what awful suffering--she was so bad, indeed, that at Toulouse
+they thought for a moment that she was about to die! The Sisters had to
+carry her in their arms, and on reaching the piscina the
+lady-hospitallers wouldn’t bathe her. She was dead, they said. No matter!
+she was undressed at last, and plunged into the water, quite unconscious
+and covered with perspiration. And when they took her out she was so pale
+that they laid her on the ground, thinking that it was certainly all over
+with her at last. But, all at once, colour came back to her cheeks, her
+eyes opened, and she drew a long breath. She was cured; she dressed
+herself without any help and made a good meal after she had been to the
+Grotto to thank the Blessed Virgin. There! there’s no gainsaying it, that
+was a real case of phthisis, completely cured as though by medicine!”
+
+Thereupon Brother Isidore in his turn wished to speak; but he was unable
+to do so at any length, and could only with difficulty manage to say to
+his sister: “Marthe, tell them the story of Sister Dorothée which the
+priest of Saint-Sauveur related to us.”
+
+“Sister Dorothée,” began the peasant girl in an awkward way, “felt her
+leg quite numbed when she got up one morning, and from that time she lost
+the use of it, for it got as cold and as heavy as a stone. Besides which
+she felt a great pain in the back. The doctors couldn’t understand it.
+She saw half a dozen of them, who pricked her with pins and burnt her
+skin with a lot of drugs. But it was just as if they had sung to her.
+Sister Dorothée had well understood that only the Blessed Virgin could
+find the right remedy for her, and so she went off to Lourdes, and had
+herself dipped in the piscina. She thought at first that the water was
+going to kill her, for it was so bitterly cold. But by-and-by it became
+so soft that she fancied it was warm, as nice as milk. She had never felt
+so nice before, it seemed to her as if her veins were opening and the
+water were flowing into them. As you will understand, life was returning
+into her body since the Blessed Virgin was concerning herself in the
+case. She no longer had anything the matter with her when she came out,
+but walked about, ate the whole of a pigeon for her dinner, and slept all
+night long like the happy woman she was. Glory to the Blessed Virgin,
+eternal gratitude to the most Powerful Mother and her Divine Son!”
+
+Elise Rouquet would also have liked to bring forward a miracle which she
+was acquainted with. Only she spoke with so much difficulty owing to the
+deformity of her mouth, that she had not yet been able to secure a turn.
+Just then, however, there was a pause, and drawing the wrap, which
+concealed the horror of her sore, slightly on one side, she profited by
+the opportunity to begin.
+
+“For my part, I wasn’t told anything about a great illness, but it was a
+very funny case at all events,” she said. “It was about a woman,
+Célestine Dubois, as she was called, who had run a needle right into her
+hand while she was washing. It stopped there for seven years, for no
+doctor was able to take it out. Her hand shrivelled up, and she could no
+longer open it. Well, she got to Lourdes, and dipped her hand into the
+piscina. But as soon as she did so she began to shriek, and took it out
+again. Then they caught hold of her and put her hand into the water by
+force, and kept it there while she continued sobbing, with her face
+covered with sweat. Three times did they plunge her hand into the
+piscina, and each time they saw the needle moving along, till it came out
+by the tip of the thumb. She shrieked, of course, because the needle was
+moving though her flesh just as though somebody had been pushing it to
+drive it out. And after that Célestine never suffered again, and only a
+little scar could be seen on her hand as a mark of what the Blessed
+Virgin had done.”
+
+This anecdote produced a greater effect than even the miraculous cures of
+the most fearful illnesses. A needle which moved as though somebody were
+pushing it! This peopled the Invisible, showed each sufferer his Guardian
+Angel standing behind him, only awaiting the orders of Heaven in order to
+render him assistance. And besides, how pretty and childlike the story
+was--this needle which came out in the miraculous water after obstinately
+refusing to stir during seven long years. Exclamations of delight
+resounded from all the pleased listeners; they smiled and laughed with
+satisfaction, radiant at finding that nothing was beyond the power of
+Heaven, and that if it were Heaven’s pleasure they themselves would all
+become healthy, young, and superb. It was sufficient that one should
+fervently believe and pray in order that nature might be confounded and
+that the Incredible might come to pass. Apart from that there was merely
+a question of good luck, since Heaven seemed to make a selection of those
+sufferers who should be cured.
+
+“Oh! how beautiful it is, father,” murmured Marie, who, revived by the
+passionate interest which she took in the momentous subject, had so far
+contented herself with listening, dumb with amazement as it were. “Do you
+remember,” she continued, “what you yourself told me of that poor woman,
+Joachine Dehaut, who came from Belgium and made her way right across
+France with her twisted leg eaten away by an ulcer, the awful smell of
+which drove everybody away from her? First of all the ulcer was healed;
+you could press her knee and she felt nothing, only a slight redness
+remained to mark where it had been. And then came the turn of the
+dislocation. She shrieked while she was in the water, it seemed to her as
+if somebody were breaking her bones, pulling her leg away from her; and,
+at the same time, she and the woman who was bathing her, saw her deformed
+foot rise and extend into its natural shape with the regular movement of
+a clock hand. Her leg also straightened itself, the muscles extended, the
+knee replaced itself in its proper position, all amidst such acute pain
+that Joachine ended by fainting. But as soon as she recovered
+consciousness, she darted off, erect and agile, to carry her crutches to
+the Grotto.”
+
+M. de Guersaint in his turn was laughing with wonderment, waving his hand
+to confirm this story, which had been told him by a Father of the
+Assumption. He could have related a score of similar instances, said he,
+each more touching, more extraordinary than the other. He even invoked
+Pierre’s testimony, and the young priest, who was unable to believe,
+contented himself with nodding his head. At first, unwilling as he was to
+afflict Marie, he had striven to divert his thoughts by gazing though the
+carriage window at the fields, trees, and houses which defiled before his
+eyes. They had just passed Angoulême, and meadows stretched out, and
+lines of poplar trees fled away amidst the continuous fanning of the air,
+which the velocity of the train occasioned.
+
+They were late, no doubt, for they were hastening onward at full speed,
+thundering along under the stormy sky, through the fiery atmosphere,
+devouring kilometre after kilometre in swift succession. However, despite
+himself, Pierre heard snatches of the various narratives, and grew
+interested in these extravagant stories, which the rough jolting of the
+wheels accompanied like a lullaby, as though the engine had been turned
+loose and were wildly bearing them away to the divine land of dreams,
+They were rolling, still rolling along, and Pierre at last ceased to gaze
+at the landscape, and surrendered himself to the heavy, sleep-inviting
+atmosphere of the carriage, where ecstasy was growing and spreading,
+carrying everyone far from the world of reality across which they were so
+rapidly rushing, The sight of Marie’s face with its brightened look
+filled the young priest with sincere joy, and he let her retain his hand,
+which she had taken in order to acquaint him, by the pressure of her
+fingers, with all the confidence which was reviving in her soul. And why
+should he have saddened her by his doubts, since he was so desirous of
+her cure? So he continued clasping her small, moist hand, feeling
+infinite affection for her, a dolorous brotherly love which distracted
+him, and made him anxious to believe in the pity of the spheres, in a
+superior kindness which tempered suffering to those who were plunged in
+despair, “Oh!” she repeated, “how beautiful it is, Pierre! How beautiful
+it is! And what glory it will be if the Blessed Virgin deigns to disturb
+herself for me! Do you really think me worthy of such a favour?”
+
+“Assuredly I do,” he exclaimed; “you are the best and the purest, with a
+spotless soul as your father said; there are not enough good angels in
+Paradise to form your escort.”
+
+But the narratives were not yet finished. Sister Hyacinthe and Madame de
+Jonquière were now enumerating all the miracles with which they were
+acquainted, the long, long series of miracles which for more than thirty
+years had been flowering at Lourdes, like the uninterrupted budding of
+the roses on the Mystical Rose-tree. They could be counted by thousands,
+they put forth fresh shoots every year with prodigious verdancy of sap,
+becoming brighter and brighter each successive season. And the sufferers
+who listened to these marvellous stories with increasing feverishness
+were like little children who, after hearing one fine fairy tale, ask for
+another, and another, and yet another. Oh! that they might have more and
+more of those stories in which evil reality was flouted, in which unjust
+nature was cuffed and slapped, in which the Divinity intervened as the
+supreme healer, He who laughs at science and distributes happiness
+according to His own good pleasure.
+
+First of all there were the deaf and the dumb who suddenly heard and
+spoke; such as Aurélie Bruneau, who was incurably deaf, with the drums of
+both ears broken, and yet was suddenly enraptured by the celestial music
+of a harmonium; such also as Louise Pourchet, who on her side had been
+dumb for five-and-twenty years, and yet, whilst praying in the Grotto,
+suddenly exclaimed, “Hail, Mary, full of grace!” And there were others and
+yet others who were completely cured by merely letting a few drops of
+water fall into their ears or upon their tongues. Then came the procession
+of the blind: Father Hermann, who felt the Blessed Virgin’s gentle hand
+removing the veil which covered his eyes; Mademoiselle de Pontbriant, who
+was threatened with a total loss of sight, but after a simple prayer was
+enabled to see better than she had ever seen before; then a child twelve
+years old whose corneas resembled marbles, but who, in three seconds,
+became possessed of clear, deep eyes, bright with an angelic smile.
+However, there was especially an abundance of paralytics, of lame people
+suddenly enabled to walk upright, of sufferers for long years powerless to
+stir from their beds of misery and to whom the voice said: “Arise and
+walk!” Delannoy,* afflicted with ataxia, vainly cauterised and burnt,
+fifteen times an inmate of the Paris hospitals, whence he had emerged with
+the concurring diagnosis of twelve doctors, feels a strange force raising
+him up as the Blessed Sacrament goes by, and he begins to follow it, his
+legs strong and healthy once more. Marie Louise Delpon, a girl of
+fourteen, suffering from paralysis which had stiffened her legs, drawn
+back her hands, and twisted her mouth on one side, sees her limbs loosen
+and the distortion of her mouth disappear as though an invisible hand were
+severing the fearful bonds which had deformed her. Marie Vachier, riveted
+to her arm-chair during seventeen years by paraplegia, not only runs and
+flies on emerging from the piscina, but finds no trace even of the sores
+with which her long-enforced immobility had covered her body. And Georges
+Hanquet, attacked by softening of the spinal marrow, passes without
+transition from agony to perfect health; while Léonie Charton, likewise
+afflicted with softening of the medulla, and whose vertebrae bulge out to
+a considerable extent, feels her hump melting away as though by
+enchantment, and her legs rise and straighten, renovated and vigorous.
+
+ * This was one of the most notorious of the recorded cases and had
+ a very strange sequel subsequent to the first publication of this
+ work. Pierre Delannoy had been employed as a ward-assistant in one
+ of the large Paris hospitals from 1877 to 1881, when he came to
+ the conclusion that the life of an in-patient was far preferable
+ to the one he was leading. He, therefore, resolved to pass the
+ rest of his days inside different hospitals in the capacity of
+ invalid. He started by feigning locomotor ataxia, and for six
+ years deceived the highest medical experts in Paris, so curiously
+ did he appear to suffer. He stayed in turn in all the hospitals in
+ the city, being treated with every care and consideration, until
+ at last he met with a doctor who insisted on cauterisation and
+ other disagreeable remedies. Delannoy thereupon opined that the
+ time to be cured had arrived, and cured he became, and was
+ discharged. He next appeared at Lourdes, supported by crutches,
+ and presenting every symptom of being hopelessly crippled. With
+ other infirm and decrepid people he was dipped in the piscina and
+ so efficacious did this treatment prove that he came out another
+ man, threw his crutches to the ground and walked, as an onlooker
+ expressed it, “like a rural postman.” All Lourdes rang with the
+ fame of the miracle, and the Church, after starring Delannoy
+ round the country as a specimen of what could be done at the holy
+ spring, placed him in charge of a home for invalids. But this was
+ too much like hard work, and he soon decamped with all the money
+ he could lay his hands on. Returning to Paris he was admitted to
+ the Hospital of Ste. Anne as suffering from mental debility, but
+ this did not prevent him from running off one night with about
+ $300 belonging to a dispenser. The police were put on his track
+ and arrested him in May, 1895, when he tried to pass himself off
+ as a lunatic; but he had become by this time too well known, and
+ was indicted in due course. At his trial he energetically denied
+ that he had ever shammed, but the Court would not believe him,
+ and sentenced him to four years’ imprisonment with hard labour.
+ --Trans.
+
+Then came all sorts of ailments. First those brought about by scrofula--a
+great many more legs long incapable of service and made anew. There was
+Margaret Gehier, who had suffered from coxalgia for seven-and-twenty
+years, whose hip was devoured by the disease, whose left knee was
+anchylosed, and who yet was suddenly able to fall upon her knees to thank
+the Blessed Virgin for healing her. There was also Philomène Simonneau,
+the young Vendéenne, whose left leg was perforated by three horrible
+sores in the depths of which her carious bones were visible, and whose
+bones, whose flesh, and whose skin were all formed afresh.
+
+Next came the dropsical ones: Madame Ancelin, the swelling of whose feet,
+hands, and entire body subsided without anyone being able to tell whither
+all the water had gone; Mademoiselle Montagnon, from whom, on various
+occasions, nearly twenty quarts of water had been drawn, and who, on
+again swelling, was entirely rid of the fluid by the application of a
+bandage which had been dipped in the miraculous source. And, in her case
+also, none of the water could be found, either in her bed or on the
+floor. In the same way, not a complaint of the stomach resisted, all
+disappeared with the first glass of water. There was Marie Souchet, who
+vomited black blood, who had wasted to a skeleton, and who devoured her
+food and recovered her flesh in two days’ time! There was Marie Jarlaud,
+who had burnt herself internally through drinking a glass of a metallic
+solution used for cleansing and brightening kitchen utensils, and who
+felt the tumour which had resulted from her injuries melt rapidly away.
+Moreover, every tumour disappeared in this fashion, in the piscina,
+without leaving the slightest trace behind. But that which caused yet
+greater wonderment was the manner in which ulcers, cancers, all sorts of
+horrible, visible sores were cicatrised as by a breath from on high. A
+Jew, an actor, whose hand was devoured by an ulcer, merely had to dip it
+in the water and he was cured. A very wealthy young foreigner, who had a
+wen as large as a hen’s egg, on his right wrist, _beheld_ it dissolve.
+Rose Duval, who, as a result of a white tumour, had a hole in her left
+elbow, large enough to accommodate a walnut, was able to watch and follow
+the prompt action of the new flesh in filling up this cavity! The Widow
+Fromond, with a lip half decoyed by a cancerous formation, merely had to
+apply the miraculous water to it as a lotion, and not even a red mark
+remained. Marie Moreau, who experienced fearful sufferings from a cancer
+in the breast, fell asleep, after laying on it a linen cloth soaked in
+some water of Lourdes, and when she awoke, two hours later, the pain had
+disappeared, and her flesh was once more smooth and pink and fresh.
+
+At last Sister Hyacinthe began to speak of the immediate and complete
+cures of phthisis, and this was the triumph, the healing of that terrible
+disease which ravages humanity, which unbelievers defied the Blessed
+Virgin to cure, but which she did cure, it was said, by merely raising
+her little finger. A hundred instances, more extraordinary one than the
+other, pressed forward for citation.
+
+Marguerite Coupel, who had suffered from phthisis for three years, and
+the upper part of whose lungs is destroyed by tuberculosis, rises up and
+goes off, radiant with health. Madame de la Rivière, who spits blood, who
+is ever covered with a cold perspiration, whose nails have already
+acquired a violet tinge, who is indeed on the point of drawing her last
+breath, requires but a spoonful of the water to be administered to her
+between her teeth, and lo! the rattles cease, she sits up, makes the
+responses to the litanies, and asks for some broth. Julie Jadot requires
+four spoonfuls; but then she could no longer hold up her head, she was of
+such a delicate constitution that disease had reduced her to nothing; and
+yet, in a few days, she becomes quite fat. Anna Catry, who is in the most
+advanced stage of the malady, with her left lung half destroyed by a
+cavity, is plunged five times into the cold water, contrary to all the
+dictates of prudence, and she is cured, her lung is healthy once more.
+Another consumptive girl, condemned by fifteen doctors, has asked
+nothing, has simply fallen on her knees in the Grotto, by chance as it
+were, and is afterwards quite surprised at having been cured _au
+passage_, through the lucky circumstance of having been there, no doubt,
+at the hour when the Blessed Virgin, moved to pity, allows miracles to
+fall from her invisible hands.
+
+Miracles and yet more miracles! They rained down like the flowers of
+dreams from a clear and balmy sky. Some of them were touching, some of
+them were childish. An old woman, who, having her hand anchylosed, had
+been incapable of moving it for thirty years, washes it in the water and
+is at once able to make the sign of the Cross. Sister Sophie, who barked
+like a dog, plunges into the piscina and emerges from it with a clear,
+pure voice, chanting a canticle. Mustapha, a Turk, invokes the White Lady
+and recovers the use of his right eye by applying a compress to it. An
+officer of Turcos was protected at Sedan; a cuirassier of Reichsoffen
+would have died, pierced in the heart by a bullet, if this bullet after
+passing though his pocket-book had not stayed its flight on reaching a
+little picture of Our Lady of Lourdes! And, as with the men and women, so
+did the children, the poor, suffering little ones, find mercy; a
+paralytic boy of five rose and walked after being held for five minutes
+under the icy jet of the spring; another one, fifteen years of age, who,
+lying in bed, could only raise an inarticulate cry, sprang out of the
+piscina, shouting that he was cured; another one, but two years old, a
+poor tiny fellow who had never been able to walk, remained for a quarter
+of an hour in the cold water and then, invigorated and smiling, took his
+first steps like a little man! And for all of them, the little ones as
+well as the adults, the pain was acute whilst the miracle was being
+accomplished; for the work of repair could not be effected without
+causing an extraordinary shock to the whole human organism; the bones
+grew again, new flesh was formed, and the disease, driven away, made its
+escape in a final convulsion. But how great was the feeling of comfort
+which followed! The doctors could not believe their eyes, their
+astonishment burst forth at each fresh cure, when they saw the patients
+whom they had despaired of run and jump and eat with ravenous appetites.
+All these chosen ones, these women cured of their ailments, walked a
+couple of miles, sat down to roast fowl, and slept the soundest of sleeps
+for a dozen hours. Moreover, there was no convalescence, it was a sudden
+leap from the death throes to complete health. Limbs were renovated,
+sores were filled up, organs were reformed in their entirety, plumpness
+returned to the emaciated, all with the velocity of a lightning flash!
+Science was completely baffled. Not even the most simple precautions were
+taken, women were bathed at all times and seasons, perspiring
+consumptives were plunged into the icy water, sores were left to their
+putrefaction without any thought of employing antiseptics. And then what
+canticles of joy, what shouts of gratitude and love arose at each fresh
+miracle! The favoured one falls upon her knees, all who are present weep,
+conversions are effected, Protestants and Jews alike embrace
+Catholicism--other miracles these, miracles of faith, at which Heaven
+triumphs. And when the favoured one, chosen for the miracle, returns to
+her village, all the inhabitants crowd to meet her, whilst the bells peal
+merrily; and when she is seen springing lightly from the vehicle which
+has brought her home, shouts and sobs of joy burst forth and all intonate
+the _Magnificat_: Glory to the Blessed Virgin! Gratitude and love for
+ever!
+
+Indeed, that which was more particularly evolved from the realisation of
+all these hopes, from the celebration of all these ardent thanksgivings,
+was gratitude--gratitude to the Mother most pure and most admirable. She
+was the great passion of every soul, she, the Virgin most powerful, the
+Virgin most merciful, the Mirror of Justice, the Seat of Wisdom.* All
+hands were stretched towards her, Mystical Rose in the dim light of the
+chapels, Tower of Ivory on the horizon of dreamland, Gate of Heaven
+leading into the Infinite. Each day at early dawn she shone forth, bright
+Morning Star, gay with juvenescent hope. And was she not also the Health
+of the weak, the Refuge of sinners, the Comforter of the afflicted?
+France had ever been her well-loved country, she was adored there with an
+ardent worship, the worship of her womanhood and her motherhood, the
+soaring of a divine affection; and it was particularly in France that it
+pleased her to show herself to little shepherdesses. She was so good to
+the little and the humble; she continually occupied herself with them;
+and if she was appealed to so willingly it was because she was known to
+be the intermediary of love betwixt Earth and Heaven. Every evening she
+wept tears of gold at the feet of her divine Son to obtain favours from
+Him, and these favours were the miracles which He permitted her to
+work,--these beautiful, flower-like miracles, as sweet-scented as the
+roses of Paradise, so prodigiously splendid and fragrant.
+
+ * For the information of Protestant and other non-Catholic readers
+ it may be mentioned that all the titles enumerated in this passage
+ are taken from the Litany of the Blessed Virgin.--Trans.
+
+But the train was still rolling, rolling onward. They had just passed
+Contras, it was six o’clock, and Sister Hyacinthe, rising to her, feet,
+clapped her hands together and once again repeated: “The Angelus, my
+children!”
+
+Never had “Aves” impregnated with greater faith, inflamed with a more
+fervent desire to be heard by Heaven, winged their flight on high. And
+Pierre suddenly understood everything, clearly realised the meaning of
+all these pilgrimages, of all these trains rolling along through every
+country of the civilised world, of all these eager crowds, hastening
+towards Lourdes, which blazed over yonder like the abode of salvation for
+body and for mind. Ah! the poor wretches whom, ever since morning, he had
+heard groaning with pain, the poor wretches who exposed their sorry
+carcasses to the fatigues of such a journey! They were all condemned,
+abandoned by science, weary of consulting doctors, of having tried the
+torturing effects of futile remedies. And how well one could understand
+that, burning with a desire to preserve their lives, unable to resign
+themselves to the injustice and indifference of Nature, they should dream
+of a superhuman power, of an almighty Divinity who, in their favour,
+would perchance annul the established laws, alter the course of the
+planets, and reconsider His creation! For if the world failed them, did
+not the Divinity remain to them? In their cases reality was too
+abominable, and an immense need of illusion and falsehood sprang up
+within them. Oh! to believe that there is a supreme Justiciar somewhere,
+one who rights the apparent wrongs of things and beings; to believe that
+there is a Redeemer, a consoler who is the real master, who can carry the
+torrents back to their source, who can restore youth to the aged, and
+life to the dead! And when you are covered with sores, when your limbs
+are twisted, when your stomach is swollen by tumours, when your lungs are
+destroyed by disease, to be able to say that all this is of no
+consequence, that everything may disappear and be renewed at a sign from
+the Blessed Virgin, that it is sufficient that you should pray to her,
+touch her heart, and obtain the favour of being chosen by her. And then
+what a heavenly fount of hope appeared with the prodigious flow of those
+beautiful stories of cure, those adorable fairy tales which lulled and
+intoxicated the feverish imaginations of the sick and the infirm. Since
+little Sophie Couteau, with her white, sound foot, had climbed into that
+carriage, opening to the gaze of those within it the limitless heavens of
+the Divine and the Supernatural, how well one could understand the breath
+of resurrection that was passing over the world, slowly raising those who
+despaired the most from their beds of misery, and making their eyes shine
+since life was itself a possibility for them, and they were, perhaps,
+about to begin it afresh.
+
+Yes, ’twas indeed that. If that woeful train was rolling, rolling on, if
+that carriage was full, if the other carriages were full also, if France
+and the world, from the uttermost limits of the earth, were crossed by
+similar trains, if crowds of three hundred thousand believers, bringing
+thousands of sick along with them, were ever setting out, from one end of
+the year to the other, it was because the Grotto yonder was shining forth
+in its glory like a beacon of hope and illusion, like a sign of the
+revolt and triumph of the Impossible over inexorable materiality. Never
+had a more impassionating romance been devised to exalt the souls of men
+above the stern laws of life. To dream that dream, this was the great,
+the ineffable happiness. If the Fathers of the Assumption had seen the
+success of their pilgrimages increase and spread from year to year, it
+was because they sold to all the flocking peoples the bread of
+consolation and illusion, the delicious bread of hope, for which
+suffering humanity ever hungers with a hunger that nothing will ever
+appease. And it was not merely the physical sores which cried aloud for
+cure, the whole of man’s moral and intellectual being likewise shrieked
+forth its wretchedness, with an insatiable yearning for happiness. To be
+happy, to place the certainty of life in faith, to lean till death should
+come upon that one strong staff of travel--such was the desire exhaled by
+every breast, the desire which made every moral grief bend the knee,
+imploring a continuance of grace, the conversion of dear ones, the
+spiritual salvation of self and those one loved. The mighty cry spread
+from pole to pole, ascended and filled all the regions of space: To be
+happy, happy for evermore, both in life and in death!
+
+And Pierre saw the suffering beings around him lose all perception of the
+jolting and recover their strength as league by league they drew nearer
+to the miracle. Even Madame Maze grew talkative, certain as she felt that
+the Blessed Virgin would restore her husband to her. With a smile on her
+face Madame Vincent gently rocked her little Rose in her arms, thinking
+that she was not nearly so ill as those all but lifeless children who,
+after being plunged in the icy water, sprang out and played. M. Sabathier
+jested with M. de Guersaint, and explained to him that, next October,
+when he had recovered the use of his legs, he should go on a trip to
+Rome--a journey which he had been postponing for fifteen years and more.
+Madame Vetu, quite calmed, feeling nothing but a slight twinge in the
+stomach, imagined that she was hungry, and asked Madame de Jonquière to
+let her dip some strips of bread in a glass of milk; whilst Elise
+Rouquet, forgetting her sores, ate some grapes, with face uncovered. And
+in La Grivotte who was sitting up and Brother Isidore who had ceased
+moaning, all those fine stories had left a pleasant fever, to such a
+point that, impatient to be cured, they grew anxious to know the time.
+For a minute also the man, the strange man, resuscitated. Whilst Sister
+Hyacinthe was again wiping the cold sweat from his brow, he raised his
+eyelids, and a smile momentarily brightened his pallid countenance. Yet
+once again he, also, had hoped.
+
+Marie was still holding Pierre’s fingers in her own small, warm hand. It
+was seven o’clock, they were not due at Bordeaux till half-past seven;
+and the belated train was quickening its pace yet more and more, rushing
+along with wild speed in order to make up for the minutes it had lost.
+The storm had ended by coming down, and now a gentle light of infinite
+purity fell from the vast clear heavens.
+
+“Oh! how beautiful it is, Pierre--how beautiful it is!” Marie again
+repeated, pressing his hand with tender affection. And leaning towards
+him, she added in an undertone: “I beheld the Blessed Virgin a little
+while ago, Pierre, and it was your cure that I implored and shall
+obtain.”
+
+The priest, who understood her meaning, was thrown into confusion by the
+divine light which gleamed in her eyes as she fixed them on his own. She
+had forgotten her own sufferings; that which she had asked for was his
+conversion; and that prayer of faith, emanating, pure and candid, from
+that dear, suffering creature, upset his soul. Yet why should he not
+believe some day? He himself had been distracted by all those
+extraordinary narratives. The stifling heat of the carriage had made him
+dizzy, the sight of all the woe heaped up there caused his heart to bleed
+with pity. And contagion was doing its work; he no longer knew where the
+real and the possible ceased, he lacked the power to disentangle such a
+mass of stupefying facts, to explain such as admitted of explanation and
+reject the others. At one moment, indeed, as a hymn once more resounded
+and carried him off with its stubborn importunate rhythm, he ceased to be
+master of himself, and imagined that he was at last beginning to believe
+amidst the hallucinatory vertigo which reigned in that travelling
+hospital, rolling, ever rolling onward at full speed.
+
+
+
+
+V. BERNADETTE
+
+THE train left Bordeaux after a stoppage of a few minutes, during which
+those who had not dined hastened to purchase some provisions. Moreover,
+the ailing ones were constantly drinking milk, and asking for biscuits,
+like little children. And, as soon as they were off again, Sister
+Hyacinthe clapped her hands, and exclaimed: “Come, let us make haste; the
+evening prayer.”
+
+Thereupon, during a quarter of an hour came a confused murmuring, made up
+of “Paters” and “Aves,” self-examinations, acts of contrition, and vows
+of trustful reliance in God, the Blessed Virgin, and the Saints, with
+thanksgiving for protection and preservation that day, and, at last, a
+prayer for the living and for the faithful departed.
+
+“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.”
+
+It was ten minutes past eight o’clock, the shades of night were already
+bedimming the landscape--a vast plain which the evening mist seemed to
+prolong into the infinite, and where, far away, bright dots of light
+shone out from the windows of lonely, scattered houses. In the carriage,
+the lights of the lamps were flickering, casting a subdued yellow glow on
+the luggage and the pilgrims, who were sorely shaken by the spreading
+tendency of the train’s motion.
+
+“You know, my children,” resumed Sister Hyacinthe, who had remained
+standing, “I shall order silence when we get to Lamothe, in about an
+hour’s time. So you have an hour to amuse yourselves, but you must be
+reasonable and not excite yourselves too much. And when we have passed
+Lamothe, you hear me, there must not be another word, another sound, you
+must all go to sleep.”
+
+This made them laugh.
+
+“Oh! but it is the rule, you know,” added the Sister, “and surely you
+have too much sense not to obey me.”
+
+Since the morning they had punctually fulfilled the programme of
+religious exercises specified for each successive hour. And now that all
+the prayers had been said, the beads told, the hymns chanted, the day’s
+duties were over, and a brief interval for recreation was allowed before
+sleeping. They were, however, at a loss as to what they should do.
+
+“Sister,” suddenly said Marie, “if you would allow Monsieur l’Abbé to
+read to us--he reads extremely well,--and as it happens I have a little
+book with me--a history of Bernadette which is so interesting--”
+
+The others did nor let her finish, but with the suddenly awakened desire
+of children to whom a beautiful story has been promised, loudly
+exclaimed: “Oh! yes, Sister. Oh! yes, Sister--”
+
+“Of course I will allow it,” replied Sister Hyacinthe, “since it is a
+question of reading something instructive and edifying.”
+
+Pierre was obliged to consent. But to be able to read the book he wished
+to be under the lamp, and it was necessary that he should change seats
+with M. de Guersaint, whom the promise of a story had delighted as much
+as it did the ailing ones. And when the young priest, after changing
+seats and declaring that he would be able to see well enough, at last
+opened the little book, a quiver of curiosity sped from one end of the
+carriage to the other, and every head was stretched out, lending ear with
+rapt attention. Fortunately, Pierre had a clear, powerful voice and made
+himself distinctly heard above the wheels, which, now that the train
+travelled across a vast level plain, gave out but a subdued, rumbling
+sound.
+
+Before beginning, however, the young priest had examined the book. It was
+one of those little works of propaganda issued from the Catholic
+printing-presses and circulated in profusion throughout all Christendom.
+Badly printed, on wretched paper, it was adorned on its blue cover with a
+little wood-cut of Our Lady of Lourdes, a naive design alike stiff and
+awkward. The book itself was short, and half an hour would certainly
+suffice to read it from cover to cover without hurrying.
+
+Accordingly, in his fine, clear voice, with its penetrating, musical
+tones, he began his perusal as follows:--
+
+“It happened at Lourdes, a little town near the Pyrenees, on a Thursday,
+February 11, 1858. The weather was cold, and somewhat cloudy, and in the
+humble home of a poor but honest miller named François Soubirous there
+was no wood to cook the dinner. The miller’s wife, Louise, said to her
+younger daughter Marie, ‘Go and gather some wood on the bank of the Gave
+or on the common-land.’ The Gave is a torrent which passes through
+Lourdes.
+
+“Marie had an elder sister, named Bernadette, who had lately arrived from
+the country, where some worthy villagers had employed her as a
+shepherdess. She was a slender, delicate, extremely innocent child, and
+knew nothing except her rosary. Louise Soubirous hesitated to send her
+out with her sister, on account of the cold, but at last, yielding to the
+entreaties of Marie and a young girl of the neighbourhood called Jeanne
+Abadie, she consented to let her go.
+
+“Following the bank of the torrent and gathering stray fragments of dead
+wood, the three maidens at last found themselves in front of the Grotto,
+hollowed out in a huge mass of rock which the people of the district
+called Massabielle.”
+
+Pierre had reached this point and was turning the page when he suddenly
+paused and let the little book fall on his knees. The childish character
+of the narrative, its ready-made, empty phraseology, filled him with
+impatience. He himself possessed quite a collection of documents
+concerning this extraordinary story, had passionately studied even its
+most trifling details, and in the depths of his heart retained a feeling
+of tender affection and infinite pity for Bernadette. He had just
+reflected, too, that on the very next day he would be able to begin that
+decisive inquiry which he had formerly dreamt of making at Lourdes. In
+fact, this was one of the reasons which had induced him to accompany
+Marie on her journey. And he was now conscious of an awakening of all his
+curiosity respecting the Visionary, whom he loved because he felt that
+she had been a girl of candid soul, truthful and ill-fated, though at the
+same time he would much have liked to analyse and explain her case.
+Assuredly, she had not lied, she had indeed beheld a vision and heard
+voices, like Joan of Arc; and like Joan of Arc also, she was now, in the
+opinion of the devout, accomplishing the deliverance of France--from sin
+if not from invaders. Pierre wondered what force could have produced
+her--her and her work. How was it that the visionary faculty had become
+developed in that lowly girl, so distracting believing souls as to bring
+about a renewal of the miracles of primitive times, as to found almost a
+new religion in the midst of a Holy City, built at an outlay of millions,
+and ever invaded by crowds of worshippers more numerous and more exalted
+in mind than had ever been known since the days of the Crusades?
+
+And so, ceasing to read the book, Pierre began to tell his companions all
+that he knew, all that he had divined and reconstructed of that story
+which is yet so obscure despite the vast rivers of ink which it has
+already caused to flow. He knew the country and its manners and customs,
+through his long conversations with his friend Doctor Chassaigne. And he
+was endowed with charming fluency of language, an emotional power of
+exquisite purity, many remarkable gifts well fitting him to be a pulpit
+orator, which he never made use of, although he had known them to be
+within him ever since his seminary days. When the occupants of the
+carriage perceived that he knew the story, far better and in far greater
+detail than it appeared in Marie’s little book, and that he related it
+also in such a gentle yet passionate way, there came an increase of
+attention, and all those afflicted souls hungering for happiness went
+forth towards him. First came the story of Bernadette’s childhood at
+Bartres, where she had grown up in the abode of her foster-mother, Madame
+Lagues, who, having lost an infant of her own, had rendered those poor
+folks, the Soubirouses, the service of suckling and keeping their child
+for them. Bartres, a village of four hundred souls, at a league or so
+from Lourdes, lay as it were in a desert oasis, sequestered amidst
+greenery, and far from any frequented highway. The road dips down, the
+few houses are scattered over grassland, divided by hedges and planted
+with walnut and chestnut trees, whilst the clear rivulets, which are
+never silent, follow the sloping banks beside the pathways, and nothing
+rises on high save the small ancient romanesque church, which is perched
+on a hillock, covered with graves. Wooded slopes undulate upon all sides.
+Bartres lies in a hollow amidst grass of delicious freshness, grass of
+intense greenness, which is ever moist at the roots, thanks to the
+eternal subterraneous expanse of water which is fed by the mountain
+torrents. And Bernadette, who, since becoming a big girl, had paid for
+her keep by tending lambs, was wont to take them with her, season after
+season, through all the greenery where she never met a soul. It was only
+now and then, from the summit of some slope, that she saw the far-away
+mountains, the Pic du Midi, the Pic de Viscos, those masses which rose
+up, bright or gloomy, according to the weather, and which stretched away
+to other peaks, lightly and faintly coloured, vaguely and confusedly
+outlined, like apparitions seen in dreams.
+
+Then came the home of the Lagueses, where her cradle was still preserved,
+a solitary, silent house, the last of the village. A meadow planted with
+pear and apple trees, and only separated from the open country by a
+narrow stream which one could jump across, stretched out in front of the
+house. Inside the latter, a low and damp abode, there were, on either
+side of the wooden stairway leading to the loft, but two spacious rooms,
+flagged with stones, and each containing four or five beds. The girls,
+who slept together, fell asleep at even, gazing at the fine pictures
+affixed to the walls, whilst the big clock in its pinewood case gravely
+struck the hours in the midst of the deep silence.
+
+Ah! those years at Bartres; in what sweet peacefulness did Bernadette
+live them! Yet she grew up very thin, always in bad health, suffering
+from a nervous asthma which stifled her in the least veering of the wind;
+and on attaining her twelfth year she could neither read nor write, nor
+speak otherwise than in dialect, having remained quite infantile,
+behindhand in mind as in body. She was a very good little girl, very
+gentle and well behaved, and but little different from other children,
+except that instead of talking she preferred to listen. Limited as was
+her intelligence, she often evinced much natural common-sense, and at
+times was prompt in her _réparties_, with a kind of simple gaiety which
+made one smile. It was only with infinite trouble that she was taught her
+rosary, and when she knew it she seemed bent on carrying her knowledge no
+further, but repeated it all day long, so that whenever you met her with
+her lambs, she invariably had her chaplet between her fingers, diligently
+telling each successive “Pater” and “Ave.” For long, long hours she lived
+like this on the grassy slopes of the hills, hidden away and haunted as
+it were amidst the mysteries of the foliage, seeing nought of the world
+save the crests of the distant mountains, which, for an instant, every
+now and then, would soar aloft in the radiant light, as ethereal as the
+peaks of dreamland.
+
+Days followed days, and Bernadette roamed, dreaming her one narrow dream,
+repeating the sole prayer she knew, which gave her amidst her solitude,
+so fresh and naïvely infantile, no other companion and friend than the
+Blessed Virgin. But what pleasant evenings she spent in the winter-time
+in the room on the left, where a fire was kept burning! Her foster-mother
+had a brother, a priest, who occasionally read some marvellous stories to
+them--stories of saints, prodigious adventures of a kind to make one
+tremble with mingled fear and joy, in which Paradise appeared upon earth,
+whilst the heavens opened and a glimpse was caught of the splendour of
+the angels. The books he brought with him were often full of
+pictures--God the Father enthroned amidst His glory; Jesus, so gentle and
+so handsome with His beaming face; the Blessed Virgin, who recurred again
+and again, radiant with splendour, clad now in white, now in azure, now
+in gold, and ever so amiable that Bernadette would see her again in her
+dreams. But the book which was read more than all others was the Bible,
+an old Bible which had been in the family for more than a hundred years,
+and which time and usage had turned yellow. Each winter evening
+Bernadette’s foster-father, the only member of the household who had
+learnt to read, would take a pin, pass it at random between the leaves of
+the book, open the latter, and then start reading from the top of the
+right-hand page, amidst the deep attention of both the women and the
+children, who ended by knowing the book by heart, and could have
+continued reciting it without a single mistake.
+
+However, Bernadette, for her part, preferred the religious works in which
+the Blessed Virgin constantly appeared with her engaging smile. True, one
+reading of a different character amused her, that of the marvellous story
+of the Four Brothers Aymon. On the yellow paper cover of the little book,
+which had doubtless fallen from the bale of some peddler who had lost his
+way in that remote region, there was a naive cut showing the four doughty
+knights, Renaud and his brothers, all mounted on Bayard, their famous
+battle charger, that princely present made to them by the fairy Orlanda.
+And inside were narratives of bloody fights, of the building and
+besieging of fortresses, of the terrible swordthrusts exchanged by Roland
+and Renaud, who was at last about to free the Holy Land, without
+mentioning the tales of Maugis the Magician and his marvellous
+enchantments, and the Princess Clarisse, the King of Aquitaine’s sister,
+who was more lovely than sunlight. Her imagination fired by such stories
+as these, Bernadette often found it difficult to get to sleep; and this
+was especially the case on the evenings when the books were left aside,
+and some person of the company related a tale of witchcraft. The girl was
+very superstitious, and after sundown could never be prevailed upon to
+pass near a tower in the vicinity, which was said to be haunted by the
+fiend. For that matter, all the folks of the region were superstitious,
+devout, and simple-minded, the whole countryside being peopled, so to
+say, with mysteries--trees which sang, stones from which blood flowed,
+cross-roads where it was necessary to say three “Paters” and three
+“Aves,” if you did not wish to meet the seven-horned beast who carried
+maidens off to perdition. And what a wealth of terrifying stories there
+was! Hundreds of stories, so that there was no finishing on the evenings
+when somebody started them. First came the wehrwolf adventures, the tales
+of the unhappy men whom the demon forced to enter into the bodies of
+dogs, the great white dogs of the mountains. If you fire a gun at the dog
+and a single shot should strike him, the man will be delivered; but if
+the shot should fall on the dog’s shadow, the man will immediately die.
+Then came the endless procession of sorcerers and sorceresses. In one of
+these tales Bernadette evinced a passionate interest; it was the story of
+a clerk of the tribunal of Lourdes who, wishing to see the devil, was
+conducted by a witch into an untilled field at midnight on Good Friday.
+The devil arrived clad in magnificent scarlet garments, and at once
+proposed to the clerk that he should buy his soul, an offer which the
+clerk pretended to accept. It so happened that the devil was carrying
+under his arm a register in which different persons of the town, who had
+already sold themselves, had signed their names. However, the clerk, who
+was a cunning fellow, pulled out of his pocket a pretended bottle of ink,
+which in reality contained holy water, and with this he sprinkled the
+devil, who raised frightful shrieks, whilst the clerk took to flight,
+carrying the register off with him. Then began a wild, mad race, which
+might last throughout the night, over the mountains, through the valleys,
+across the forests and the torrents. “Give me back my register!” shouted
+the fiend. “No, you sha’n’t have it!” replied the clerk. And again and
+again it began afresh: “Give me back my register!”--“No, you sha’n’t have
+it’!” And at last, finding himself out of breath, near the point of
+succumbing, the clerk, who had his plan, threw himself into the cemetery,
+which was consecrated ground, and was there able to deride the devil at
+his ease, waving the register which he had purloined so as to save the
+souls of all the unhappy people who had signed their names in it. On the
+evening when this story was told, Bernadette, before surrendering herself
+to sleep, would mentally repeat her rosary, delighted with the thought
+that hell should have been baffled, though she trembled at the idea that
+it would surely return to prowl around her, as soon as the lamp should
+have been put out.
+
+Throughout one winter, the long evenings were spent in the church. Abbé
+Ader, the village priest, had authorised it, and many families came, in
+order to economise oil and candles. Moreover, they felt less cold when
+gathered together in this fashion. The Bible was read, and prayers were
+repeated, whilst the children ended by falling asleep. Bernadette alone
+struggled on to the finish, so pleased she was at being there, in that
+narrow nave whose slender nervures were coloured blue and red. At the
+farther end was the altar, also painted and gilded, with its twisted
+columns and its screens on which appeared the Virgin and Ste. Anne, and
+the beheading of St. John the Baptist--the whole of a gaudy and somewhat
+barbaric splendour. And as sleepiness grew upon her, the child must have
+often seen a mystical vision as it were of those crudely coloured designs
+rising before her--have seen the blood flowing from St. John’s severed
+head, have seen the aureolas shining, the Virgin ever returning and
+gazing at her with her blue, living eyes, and looking as though she were
+on the point of opening her vermilion lips in order to speak to her. For
+some months Bernadette spent her evenings in this wise, half asleep in
+front of that sumptuous, vaguely defined altar, in the incipiency of a
+divine dream which she carried away with her, and finished in bed,
+slumbering peacefully under the watchful care of her guardian angel.
+
+And it was also in that old church, so humble yet so impregnated with
+ardent faith, that Bernadette began to learn her catechism. She would
+soon be fourteen now, and must think of her first communion. Her
+foster-mother, who had the reputation of being avaricious, did not send
+her to school, but employed her in or about the house from morning till
+evening. M. Barbet, the schoolmaster, never saw her at his classes,
+though one day, when he gave the catechism lesson, in the place of Abbé
+Ader who was indisposed, he remarked her on account of her piety and
+modesty. The village priest was very fond of Bernadette and often spoke
+of her to the schoolmaster, saying that he could never look at her
+without thinking of the children of La Salette, since they must have been
+good, candid, and pious as she was, for the Blessed Virgin to have
+appeared to them.* On another occasion whilst the two men were walking
+one morning near the village, and saw Bernadette disappear with her
+little flock under some spreading trees in the distance, the Abbé
+repeatedly turned round to look for her, and again remarked “I cannot
+account for it, but every time I meet that child it seems to me as if I
+saw Mélanie, the young shepherdess, little Maximin’s companion.” He was
+certainly beset by this singular idea, which became, so to say, a
+prediction. Moreover, had he not one day after catechism, or one evening,
+when the villagers were gathered in the church, related that marvellous
+story which was already twelve years old, that story of the Lady in the
+dazzling robes who walked upon the grass without even making it bend, the
+Blessed Virgin who showed herself to Mélanie and Maximin on the banks of
+a stream in the mountains, and confided to them a great secret and
+announced the anger of her Son? Ever since that day a source had sprung
+up from the tears which she had shed, a source which cured all ailments,
+whilst the secret, inscribed on parchment fastened with three seals,
+slumbered at Rome! And Bernadette, no doubt, with her dreamy, silent air,
+had listened passionately to that wonderful tale and carried it off with
+her into the desert of foliage where she spent her days, so that she
+might live it over again as she walked along behind her lambs with her
+rosary, slipping bead by bead between her slender fingers.
+
+ * It was on September 19, 1846, that the Virgin is said to have
+ appeared in the ravine of La Sezia, adjacent to the valley of La
+ Salette, between Corps and Eutraigues, in the department of the
+ Isère. The visionaries were Mélanie Mathieu, a girl of fourteen,
+ and Maximin Giraud, a boy of twelve. The local clergy speedily
+ endorsed the story of the miracle, and thousands of people still
+ go every year in pilgrimage to a church overlooking the valley,
+ and bathe and drink at a so-called miraculous source. Two priests
+ of Grenoble, however, Abbé Deleon and Abbé Cartellier, accused a
+ Mlle. de Lamerliere of having concocted the miracle, and when she
+ took proceedings against them for libel she lost her case.--Trans.
+
+Thus her childhood ran its course at Bartres. That which delighted one in
+this Bernadette, so poor-blooded, so slight of build, was her ecstatic
+eyes, beautiful visionary eyes, from which dreams soared aloft like birds
+winging their flight in a pure limpid sky. Her mouth was large, with lips
+somewhat thick, expressive of kindliness; her square-shaped head had a
+straight brow, and was covered with thick black hair, whilst her face
+would have seemed rather common but for its charming expression of gentle
+obstinacy. Those who did not gaze into her eyes, however, gave her no
+thought. To them she was but an ordinary child, a poor thing of the
+roads, a girl of reluctant growth, timidly humble in her ways. Assuredly
+it was in her glance that Abbé Ader had with agitation detected the
+stifling ailment which filled her puny, girlish form with suffering--that
+ailment born of the greeny solitude in which she had grown up, the
+gentleness of her bleating lambs, the Angelic Salutation which she had
+carried with her, hither and thither, under the sky, repeating and
+repeating it to the point of hallucination, the prodigious stories, too,
+which she had heard folks tell at her foster-mother’s, the long evenings
+spent before the living altar-screens in the church, and all the
+atmosphere of primitive faith which she had breathed in that far-away
+rural region, hemmed in by mountains.
+
+At last, on one seventh of January, Bernadette had just reached her
+fourteenth birthday, when her parents, finding that she learnt nothing at
+Bartres, resolved to bring her back to Lourdes for good, in order that
+she might diligently study her catechism, and in this wise seriously
+prepare herself for her first communion. And so it happened that she had
+already been at Lourdes some fifteen or twenty days, when on February 11,
+a Thursday, cold and somewhat cloudy--
+
+But Pierre could carry his narrative no further, for Sister Hyacinthe had
+risen to her feet and was vigorously clapping her hands. “My children,”
+ she exclaimed, “it is past nine o’clock. Silence! silence!”
+
+The train had indeed just passed Lamothe, and was rolling with a dull
+rumble across a sea of darkness--the endless plains of the Landes which
+the night submerged. For ten minutes already not a sound ought to have
+been heard in the carriage, one and all ought to have been sleeping or
+suffering uncomplainingly. However, a mutiny broke out.
+
+“Oh! Sister!” exclaimed Marie, whose eyes were sparkling, “allow us just
+another short quarter of an hour! We have got to the most interesting
+part.”
+
+Ten, twenty voices took up the cry: “Oh yes, Sister, please do let us
+have another short quarter of an hour!”
+
+They all wished to hear the continuation, burning with as much curiosity
+as though they had not known the story, so captivated were they by the
+touches of compassionate human feeling which Pierre introduced into his
+narrative. Their glances never left him, all their heads were stretched
+towards him, fantastically illumined by the flickering light of the
+lamps. And it was not only the sick who displayed this interest; the ten
+women occupying the compartment at the far end of the carriage had also
+become impassioned, and, happy at not missing a single word, turned their
+poor ugly faces now beautified by naive faith.
+
+“No, I cannot!” Sister Hyacinthe at first declared; “the rules are very
+strict--you must be silent.”
+
+However, she weakened, she herself feeling so interested in the tale that
+she could detect her heart beating under her stomacher. Then Marie again
+repeated her request in an entreating tone; whilst her father, M. de
+Guersaint, who had listened like one hugely amused, declared that they
+would all fall ill if the story were not continued. And thereupon, seeing
+Madame de Jonquière smile with an indulgent air, Sister Hyacinthe ended
+by consenting.
+
+“Well, then,” said she, “I will allow you another short quarter of an
+hour; but only a short quarter of an hour, mind. That is understood, is
+it not? For I should otherwise be in fault.”
+
+Pierre had waited quietly without attempting to intervene. And he resumed
+his narrative in the same penetrating voice as before, a voice in which
+his own doubts were softened by pity for those who suffer and who hope.
+
+The scene of the story was now transferred to Lourdes, to the Rue des
+Petits Fossés, a narrow, tortuous, mournful street taking a downward
+course between humble houses and roughly plastered dead walls. The
+Soubirous family occupied a single room on the ground floor of one of
+these sorry habitations, a room at the end of a dark passage, in which
+seven persons were huddled together, the father, the mother, and five
+children. You could scarcely see in the chamber; from the tiny, damp
+inner courtyard of the house there came but a greenish light. And in that
+room they slept, all of a heap; and there also they ate, when they had
+bread. For some time past, the father, a miller by trade, could only with
+difficulty obtain work as a journeyman. And it was from that dark hole,
+that lowly wretchedness, that Bernadette, the elder girl, with Marie, her
+sister, and Jeanne, a little friend of the neighbourhood, went out to
+pick up dead wood, on the cold February Thursday already spoken of.
+
+Then the beautiful tale was unfolded at length; how the three girls
+followed the bank of the Gave from the other side of the castle, and how
+they ended by finding themselves on the Ile du Chalet in front of the
+rock of Massabielle, from which they were only separated by the narrow
+stream diverted from the Gave, and used for working the mill of Savy. It
+was a wild spot, whither the common herdsman often brought the pigs of
+the neighbourhood, which, when showers suddenly came on, would take
+shelter under this rock of Massabielle, at whose base there was a kind of
+grotto of no great depth, blocked at the entrance by eglantine and
+brambles. The girls found dead wood very scarce that day, but at last on
+seeing on the other side of the stream quite a gleaning of branches
+deposited there by the torrent, Marie and Jeanne crossed over through the
+water; whilst Bernadette, more delicate than they were, a trifle
+young-ladyfied, perhaps, remained on the bank lamenting, and not daring
+to wet her feet. She was suffering slightly from humour in the head, and
+her mother had expressly bidden her to wrap herself in her _capulet_,* a
+large white _capulet_ which contrasted vividly with her old black woollen
+dress. When she found that her companions would not help her, she
+resignedly made up her mind to take off her _sabots_, and pull down her
+stockings. It was then about noon, the three strokes of the Angelus rang
+out from the parish church, rising into the broad calm winter sky, which
+was somewhat veiled by fine fleecy clouds. And it was then that a great
+agitation arose within her, resounding in her ears with such a
+tempestuous roar that she fancied a hurricane had descended from the
+mountains, and was passing over her. But she looked at the trees and was
+stupefied, for not a leaf was stirring. Then she thought that she had
+been mistaken, and was about to pick up her _sabots_, when again the
+great gust swept through her; but, this time, the disturbance in her ears
+reached her eyes, she no longer saw the trees, but was dazzled by a
+whiteness, a kind of bright light which seemed to her to settle itself
+against the rock, in a narrow, lofty slit above the Grotto, not unlike an
+ogival window of a cathedral. In her fright she fell upon her knees. What
+could it be, _mon Dieu_? Sometimes, during bad weather, when her asthma
+oppressed her more than usual, she spent very bad nights, incessantly
+dreaming dreams which were often painful, and whose stifling effect she
+retained on awaking, even when she had ceased to remember anything.
+Flames would surround her, the sun would flash before her face. Had she
+dreamt in that fashion during the previous night? Was this the
+continuation of some forgotten dream? However, little by little a form
+became outlined, she believed that she could distinguish a figure which
+the vivid light rendered intensely white. In her fear lest it should be
+the devil, for her mind was haunted by tales of witchcraft, she began to
+tell her beads. And when the light had slowly faded away, and she had
+crossed the canal and joined Marie and Jeanne, she was surprised to find
+that neither of them had seen anything whilst they were picking up the
+wood in front of the Grotto. On their way back to Lourdes the three girls
+talked together. So she, Bernadette, had seen something then? What was
+it? At first, feeling uneasy, and somewhat ashamed, she would not answer;
+but at last she said that she had seen something white.
+
+ * This is a kind of hood, more generally known among the Bearnese
+ peasantry as a _sarot_. Whilst forming a coif it also completely
+ covers the back and shoulders.--Trans.
+
+From this the rumours started and grew. The Soubirouses, on being made
+acquainted with the circumstance, evinced much displeasure at such
+childish nonsense, and told their daughter that she was not to return to
+the rock of Massabielle. All the children of the neighbourhood, however,
+were already repeating the tale, and when Sunday came the parents had to
+give way, and allow Bernadette to betake herself to the Grotto with a
+bottle of holy water to ascertain if it were really the devil whom one
+had to deal with. She then again beheld the light, the figure became more
+clearly defined, and smiled upon her, evincing no fear whatever of the
+holy water. And, on the ensuing Thursday, she once more returned to the
+spot accompanied by several persons, and then for the first time the
+radiant lady assumed sufficient corporality to speak, and say to her: “Do
+me the kindness to come here for fifteen days.”
+
+Thus, little by little, the lady had assumed a precise appearance. The
+something clad in white had become indeed a lady more beautiful than a
+queen, of a kind such as is only seen in pictures. At first, in presence
+of the questions with which all the neighbours plied her from morning
+till evening, Bernadette had hesitated, disturbed, perhaps, by scruples
+of conscience. But then, as though prompted by the very interrogatories
+to which she was subjected, she seemed to perceive the figure which she
+had beheld, more plainly, so that it definitely assumed life, with lines
+and hues from which the child, in her after-descriptions, never departed.
+The lady’s eyes were blue and very mild, her mouth was rosy and smiling,
+the oval of her face expressed both the grace of youth and of maternity.
+Below the veil covering her head and falling to her heels, only a glimpse
+was caught of her admirable fair hair, which was slightly curled. Her
+robe, which was of dazzling whiteness, must have been of some material
+unknown on earth, some material woven of the sun’s rays. Her sash, of the
+same hue as the heavens, was fastened loosely about her, its long ends
+streaming downwards, with the light airiness of morning. Her chaplet,
+wound about her right arm, had beads of a milky whiteness, whilst the
+links and the cross were of gold. And on her bare feet, on her adorable
+feet of virgin snow, flowered two golden roses, the mystic roses of this
+divine mother’s immaculate flesh.
+
+Where was it that Bernadette had seen this Blessed Virgin, of such
+traditionally simple composition, unadorned by a single jewel, having but
+the primitive grace imagined by the painters of a people in its
+childhood? In which illustrated book belonging to her foster-mother’s
+brother, the good priest, who read such attractive stories, had she
+beheld this Virgin? Or in what picture, or what statuette, or what
+stained-glass window of the painted and gilded church where she had spent
+so many evenings whilst growing up? And whence, above all things, had
+come those golden roses poised on the Virgin’s feet, that piously
+imagined florescence of woman’s flesh--from what romance of chivalry,
+from what story told after catechism by the Abbé Ader, from what
+unconscious dream indulged in under the shady foliage of Bartres, whilst
+ever and ever repeating that haunting Angelic Salutation?
+
+Pierre’s voice had acquired a yet more feeling tone, for if he did not
+say all these things to the simple-minded folks who were listening to
+him, still the human explanation of all these prodigies which the feeling
+of doubt in the depths of his being strove to supply, imparted to his
+narrative a quiver of sympathetic, fraternal love. He loved Bernadette
+the better for the great charm of her hallucination--that lady of such
+gracious access, such perfect amiability, such politeness in appearing
+and disappearing so appropriately. At first the great light would show
+itself, then the vision took form, came and went, leant forward, moved
+about, floating imperceptibly, with ethereal lightness; and when it
+vanished the glow lingered for yet another moment, and then disappeared
+like a star fading away. No lady in this world could have such a white
+and rosy face, with a beauty so akin to that of the Virgins on the
+picture-cards given to children at their first communions. And it was
+strange that the eglantine of the Grotto did not even hurt her adorable
+bare feet blooming with golden flowers.
+
+Pierre, however, at once proceeded to recount the other apparitions. The
+fourth and fifth occurred on the Friday and the Saturday; but the Lady,
+who shone so brightly and who had not yet told her name, contented
+herself on these occasions with smiling and saluting without pronouncing
+a word. On the Sunday, however, she wept, and said to Bernadette, “Pray
+for sinners.” On the Monday, to the child’s great grief, she did not
+appear, wishing, no doubt, to try her. But on the Tuesday she confided to
+her a secret which concerned her (the girl) alone, a secret which she was
+never to divulge*; and then she at last told her what mission it was that
+she entrusted to her: “Go and tell the priests,” she said, “that they
+must build a chapel here.” On the Wednesday she frequently murmured the
+word “Penitence! penitence! penitence!” which the child repeated,
+afterwards kissing the earth. On the Thursday the Lady said to her: “Go,
+and drink, and wash at the spring, and eat of the grass that is beside
+it,” words which the Visionary ended by understanding, when in the depths
+of the Grotto a source suddenly sprang up beneath her fingers. And this
+was the miracle of the enchanted fountain.
+
+ * In a like way, it will be remembered, the apparition at La
+ Salette confided a secret to Mélanie and Maximin (see _ante_,
+ note). There can be little doubt that Bernadette was acquainted
+ with the story of the miracle of La Salette.--Trans.
+
+Then the second week ran its course. The lady did not appear on the
+Friday, but was punctual on the five following days, repeating her
+commands and gazing with a smile at the humble girl whom she had chosen
+to do her bidding, and who, on her side, duly told her beads at each
+apparition, kissed the earth, and repaired on her knees to the source,
+there to drink and wash. At last, on Thursday, March 4, the last day of
+these mystical assignations, the Lady requested more pressingly than
+before that a chapel might be erected in order that the nations might
+come thither in procession from all parts of the earth. So far, however,
+in reply to all Bernadette’s appeals, she had refused to say who she was;
+and it was only three weeks later, on Thursday, March 25, that, joining
+her hands together, and raising her eyes to Heaven, she said: “I am the
+Immaculate Conception.” On two other occasions, at somewhat long
+intervals, April 7 and July 16, she again appeared: the first time to
+perform the miracle of the lighted taper, that taper above which the
+child, plunged in ecstasy, for a long time unconsciously left her hand,
+without burning it; and the second time to bid Bernadette farewell, to
+favour her with a last smile, and a last inclination of the head full of
+charming politeness. This made eighteen apparitions all told; and never
+again did the Lady show herself.
+
+Whilst Pierre went on with his beautiful, marvellous story, so soothing
+to the wretched, he evoked for himself a vision of that pitiable, lovable
+Bernadette, whose sufferings had flowered so wonderfully. As a doctor had
+roughly expressed it, this girl of fourteen, at a critical period of her
+life, already ravaged, too, by asthma, was, after all, simply an
+exceptional victim of hysteria, afflicted with a degenerate heredity and
+lapsing into infancy. If there were no violent crises in her case, if
+there were no stiffening of the muscles during her attacks, if she
+retained a precise recollection of her dreams, the reason was that her
+case was peculiar to herself, and she added, so to say, a new and very
+curious form to all the forms of hysteria known at the time. Miracles
+only begin when things cannot be explained; and science, so far, knows
+and can explain so little, so infinitely do the phenomena of disease vary
+according to the nature of the patient! But how many shepherdesses there
+had been before Bernadette who had seen the Virgin in a similar way,
+amidst all the same childish nonsense! Was it not always the same story,
+the Lady clad in light, the secret confided, the spring bursting forth,
+the mission which had to be fulfilled, the miracles whose enchantments
+would convert the masses? And was not the personal appearance of the
+Virgin always in accordance with a poor child’s dreams--akin to some
+coloured figure in a missal, an ideal compounded of traditional beauty,
+gentleness, and politeness. And the same dreams showed themselves in the
+naïveté of the means which were to be employed and of the object which
+was to be attained--the deliverance of nations, the building of churches,
+the processional pilgrimages of the faithful! Then, too, all the words
+which fell from Heaven resembled one another, calls for penitence,
+promises of help; and in this respect, in Bernadette’s case the only new
+feature was that most extraordinary declaration: “I am the Immaculate
+Conception,” which burst forth--very usefully--as the recognition by the
+Blessed Virgin herself of the dogma promulgated by the Court of Rome but
+three years previously! It was not the Immaculate Virgin who appeared:
+no, it was the Immaculate Conception, the abstraction itself, the thing,
+the dogma, so that one might well ask oneself if really the Virgin had
+spoken in such a fashion. As for the other words, it was possible that
+Bernadette had heard them somewhere and stored them up in some
+unconscious nook of her memory. But these--“I am the Immaculate
+Conception”--whence had they come as though expressly to fortify a
+dogma--still bitterly discussed--with such prodigious support as the
+direct testimony of the Mother conceived without sin? At this thought,
+Pierre, who was convinced of Bernadette’s absolute good faith, who
+refused to believe that she had been the instrument of a fraud, began to
+waver, deeply agitated, feeling his belief in truth totter within him.
+
+The apparitions, however, had caused intense emotion at Lourdes; crowds
+flocked to the spot, miracles began, and those inevitable persecutions
+broke out which ensure the triumph of new religions. Abbé Peyramale, the
+parish priest of Lourdes, an extremely honest man, with an upright,
+vigorous mind, was able in all truth to declare that he did not know this
+child, that she had not yet been seen at catechism. Where was the
+pressure, then, where the lesson learnt by heart? There was nothing but
+those years of childhood spent at Bartres, the first teachings of Abbé
+Ader, conversations possibly, religious ceremonies in honour of the
+recently proclaimed dogma, or simply the gift of one of those
+commemorative medals which had been scattered in profusion. Never did
+Abbé Ader reappear upon the scene, he who had predicted the mission of
+the future Visionary. He was destined to remain apart from Bernadette and
+her future career, he who, the first, had seen her little soul blossom in
+his pious hands. And yet all the unknown forces that had sprung from that
+sequestered village, from that nook of greenery where superstition and
+poverty of intelligence prevailed, were still making themselves felt,
+disturbing the brains of men, disseminating the contagion of the
+mysterious. It was remembered that a shepherd of Argelès, speaking of the
+rock of Massabielle, had prophesied that great things would take place
+there. Other children, moreover, now fell in ecstasy with their eyes
+dilated and their limbs quivering with convulsions, but these only saw
+the devil. A whirlwind of madness seemed to be passing over the region.
+An old lady of Lourdes declared that Bernadette was simply a witch and
+that she had herself seen the toad’s foot in her eye. But for the others,
+for the thousands of pilgrims who hastened to the spot, she was a saint,
+and they kissed her garments. Sobs burst forth and frenzy seemed to seize
+upon the souls of the beholders, when she fell upon her knees before the
+Grotto, a lighted taper in her right hand, whilst with the left she told
+the beads of her rosary. She became very pale and quite beautiful,
+transfigured, so to say. Her features gently ascended in her face,
+lengthened into an expression of extraordinary beatitude, whilst her eyes
+filled with light, and her lips parted as though she were speaking words
+which could not be heard. And it was quite certain that she had no will
+of her own left her, penetrated as she was by a dream, possessed by it to
+such a point in the confined, exclusive sphere in which she lived, that
+she continued dreaming it even when awake, and thus accepted it as the
+only indisputable reality, prepared to testify to it even at the cost of
+her blood, repeating it over and over again, obstinately, stubbornly
+clinging to it, and never varying in the details she gave. She did not
+lie, for she did not know, could not and would not desire anything apart
+from it.
+
+Forgetful of the flight of time, Pierre was now sketching a charming
+picture of old Lourdes, that pious little town, slumbering at the foot of
+the Pyrenees. The castle, perched on a rock at the point of intersection
+of the seven valleys of Lavedan, had formerly been the key of the
+mountain districts. But, in Bernadette’s time, it had become a mere
+dismantled, ruined pile, at the entrance of a road leading nowhere.
+Modern life found its march stayed by a formidable rampart of lofty,
+snow-capped peaks, and only the trans-Pyrenean railway--had it been
+constructed--could have established an active circulation of social life
+in that sequestered nook where human existence stagnated like dead water.
+Forgotten, therefore, Lourdes remained slumbering, happy and sluggish
+amidst its old-time peacefulness, with its narrow, pebble-paved streets
+and its bleak houses with dressings of marble. The old roofs were still
+all massed on the eastern side of the castle; the Rue de la Grotte, then
+called the Rue du Bois, was but a deserted and often impassable road; no
+houses stretched down to the Gave as now, and the scum-laden waters
+rolled through a perfect solitude of pollard willows and tall grass. On
+week-days but few people passed across the Place du Marcadal, such as
+housewives hastening on errands, and petty cits airing their leisure
+hours; and you had to wait till Sundays or fair days to find the
+inhabitants rigged out in their best clothes and assembled on the Champ
+Commun, in company with the crowd of graziers who had come down from the
+distant tablelands with their cattle. During the season when people
+resort to the Pyrenean-waters, the passage of the visitors to Cauterets
+and Bagnères also brought some animation; _diligences_ passed through the
+town twice a day, but they came from Pau by a wretched road, and had to
+ford the Lapaca, which often overflowed its banks. Then climbing the
+steep ascent of the Rue Basse, they skirted the terrace of the church,
+which was shaded by large elms. And what soft peacefulness prevailed in
+and around that old semi-Spanish church, full of ancient carvings,
+columns, screens, and statues, peopled with visionary patches of gilding
+and painted flesh, which time had mellowed and which you faintly
+discerned as by the light of mystical lamps! The whole population came
+there to worship, to fill their eyes with the dream of the mysterious.
+There were no unbelievers, the inhabitants of Lourdes were a people of
+primitive faith; each corporation marched behind the banner of its saint,
+brotherhoods of all kinds united the entire town, on festival mornings,
+in one large Christian family. And, as with some exquisite flower that
+has grown in the soil of its choice, great purity of life reigned there.
+There was not even a resort of debauchery for young men to wreck their
+lives, and the girls, one and all, grew up with the perfume and beauty of
+innocence, under the eyes of the Blessed Virgin, Tower of Ivory and Seat
+of Wisdom.
+
+And how well one could understand that Bernadette, born in that holy
+soil, should flower in it, like one of nature’s roses budding in the
+wayside bushes! She was indeed the very florescence of that region of
+ancient belief and rectitude; she would certainly not have sprouted
+elsewhere; she could only appear and develop there, amidst that belated
+race, amidst the slumberous peacefulness of a childlike people, under the
+moral discipline of religion. And what intense love at once burst forth
+all around her! What blind confidence was displayed in her mission, what
+immense consolation and hope came to human hearts on the very morrow of
+the first miracles! A long cry of relief had greeted the cure of old
+Bourriette recovering his sight, and of little Justin Bouhohorts coming
+to life again in the icy water of the spring. At last, then, the Blessed
+Virgin was intervening in favour of those who despaired, forcing that
+unkind mother, Nature, to be just and charitable. This was divine
+omnipotence returning to reign on earth, sweeping the laws of the world
+aside in order to work the happiness of the suffering and the poor. The
+miracles multiplied, blazed forth, from day to day more and more
+extraordinary, like unimpeachable proof of Bernadette’s veracity. And she
+was, indeed, the rose of the divine garden, whose deeds shed perfume, the
+rose who beholds all the other flowers of grace and salvation spring into
+being around her.
+
+Pierre had reached this point of his story, and was again enumerating the
+miracles, on the point of recounting the prodigious triumph of the
+Grotto, when Sister Hyacinthe, awaking with a start from the ecstasy into
+which the narrative had plunged her, hastily rose to her feet. “Really,
+really,” said she, “there is no sense in it. It will soon be eleven
+o’clock.”
+
+This was true. They had left Morceux behind them, and would now soon be
+at Mont de Marsan. So Sister Hyacinthe clapped her hands once more, and
+added: “Silence, my children, silence!”
+
+This time they did not dare to rebel, for they felt she was in the right;
+they were unreasonable. But how greatly they regretted not hearing the
+continuation, how vexed they were that the story should cease when only
+half told! The ten women in the farther compartment even let a murmur of
+disappointment escape them; whilst the sick, their faces still
+outstretched, their dilated eyes gazing upon the light of hope, seemed to
+be yet listening. Those miracles which ever and ever returned to their
+minds and filled them with unlimited, haunting, supernatural joy.
+
+“And don’t let me hear anyone breathe, even,” added Sister Hyacinthe
+gaily, “or otherwise I shall impose penance on you.”
+
+Madame de Jonquière laughed good-naturedly. “You must obey, my children,”
+ she said; “be good and get to sleep, so that you may have strength to
+pray at the Grotto to-morrow with all your hearts.”
+
+Then silence fell, nobody spoke any further; and the only sounds were
+those of the rumbling of the wheels and the jolting of the train as it
+was carried along at full speed through the black night.
+
+Pierre, however, was unable to sleep. Beside him, M. de Guersaint was
+already snoring lightly, looking very happy despite the hardness of his
+seat. For a time the young priest saw Marie’s eyes wide open, still full
+of all the radiance of the marvels that he had related. For a long while
+she kept them ardently fixed upon his own, but at last closed them, and
+then he knew not whether she was sleeping, or with eyelids simply closed
+was living the everlasting miracle over again. Some of the sufferers were
+dreaming aloud, giving vent to bursts of laughter which unconscious moans
+interrupted. Perhaps they beheld the Archangels opening their flesh to
+wrest their diseases from them. Others, restless with insomnia, turned
+over and over, stifling their sobs and gazing fixedly into the darkness.
+And, with a shudder born of all the mystery he had evoked, Pierre,
+distracted, no longer master of himself in that delirious sphere of
+fraternal suffering, ended by hating his very mind, and, drawn into close
+communion with all those humble folks, sought to believe like them. What
+could be the use of that physiological inquiry into Bernadette’s case, so
+full of gaps and intricacies? Why should he not accept her as a messenger
+from the spheres beyond, as one of the elect chosen for the divine
+mystery? Doctors were but ignorant men with rough and brutal hands, and
+it would be so delightful to fall asleep in childlike faith, in the
+enchanted gardens of the impossible. And for a moment indeed he
+surrendered himself, experiencing a delightful feeling of comfort, no
+longer seeking to explain anything, but accepting the Visionary with her
+sumptuous _cortège_ of miracles, and relying on God to think and
+determine for him. Then he looked out through the window, which they did
+not dare to open on account of the consumptive patients, and beheld the
+immeasurable night which enwrapped the country across which the train was
+fleeing. The storm must have burst forth there; the sky was now of an
+admirable nocturnal purity, as though cleansed by the masses of fallen
+water. Large stars shone out in the dark velvet, alone illumining, with
+their mysterious gleams, the silent, refreshed fields, which incessantly
+displayed only the black solitude of slumber. And across the Landes,
+through the valleys, between the hills, that carriage of wretchedness and
+suffering rolled on and on, over-heated, pestilential, rueful, and
+wailing, amidst the serenity of the august night, so lovely and so mild.
+
+They had passed Riscle at one in the morning. Between the jolting, the
+painful, the hallucinatory silence still continued. At two o’clock, as
+they reached Vic-de-Bigorre, low moans were heard; the bad state of the
+line, with the unbearable spreading tendency of the train’s motion, was
+sorely shaking the patients. It was only at Tarbes, at half-past two,
+that silence was at length broken, and that morning prayers were said,
+though black night still reigned around them. There came first the
+“Pater,” and then the “Ave,” the “Credo,” and the supplication to God to
+grant them the happiness of a glorious day.
+
+“O God, vouchsafe me sufficient strength that I may avoid all that is
+evil, do all that is good, and suffer uncomplainingly every pain.”
+
+And now there was to be no further stoppage until they reached Lourdes.
+Barely three more quarters of an hour, and Lourdes, with all its vast
+hopes, would blaze forth in the midst of that night, so long and cruel.
+Their painful awakening was enfevered by the thought; a final agitation
+arose amidst the morning discomfort, as the abominable sufferings began
+afresh.
+
+Sister Hyacinthe, however, was especially anxious about the strange man,
+whose sweat-covered face she had been continually wiping. He had so far
+managed to keep alive, she watching him without a pause, never having
+once closed her eyes, but unremittingly listening to his faint breathing
+with the stubborn desire to take him to the holy Grotto before he died.
+
+All at once, however, she felt frightened; and addressing Madame de
+Jonquière, she hastily exclaimed, “Pray pass me the vinegar bottle at
+once--I can no longer hear him breathe.”
+
+For an instant, indeed, the man’s faint breathing had ceased. His eyes
+were still closed, his lips parted; he could not have been paler, he had
+an ashen hue, and was cold. And the carriage was rolling along with its
+ceaseless rattle of coupling-irons; the speed of the train seemed even to
+have increased.
+
+“I will rub his temples,” resumed Sister Hyacinthe. “Help me, do!”
+
+But, at a more violent jolt of the train, the man suddenly fell from the
+seat, face downward.
+
+“Ah! _mon Dieu_, help me, pick him up!”
+
+They picked him up, and found him dead. And they had to seat him in his
+corner again, with his back resting against the woodwork. He remained
+there erect, his torso stiffened, and his head wagging slightly at each
+successive jolt. Thus the train continued carrying him along, with the
+same thundering noise of wheels, while the engine, well pleased, no
+doubt, to be reaching its destination, began whistling shrilly, giving
+vent to quite a flourish of delirious joy as it sped through the calm
+night.
+
+And then came the last and seemingly endless half-hour of the journey, in
+company with that wretched corpse. Two big tears had rolled down Sister
+Hyacinthe’s cheeks, and with her hands joined she had begun to pray. The
+whole carriage shuddered with terror at sight of that terrible companion
+who was being taken, too late alas! to the Blessed Virgin.
+
+Hope, however, proved stronger than sorrow or pain, and although all the
+sufferings there assembled awoke and grew again, irritated by
+overwhelming weariness, a song of joy nevertheless proclaimed the
+sufferers’ triumphal entry into the Land of Miracles. Amidst the tears
+which their pains drew from them, the exasperated and howling sick began
+to chant the “Ave maris Stella” with a growing clamour in which
+lamentation finally turned into cries of hope.
+
+Marie had again taken Pierre’s hand between her little feverish fingers.
+“Oh, _mon Dieu!_” said she, “to think that poor man is dead, and I feared
+so much that it was I who would die before arriving. And we are
+there--there at last!”
+
+The priest was trembling with intense emotion. “It means that you are to
+be cured, Marie,” he replied, “and that I myself shall be cured if you
+pray for me--”
+
+The engine was now whistling in a yet louder key in the depths of the
+bluish darkness. They were nearing their destination. The lights of
+Lourdes already shone out on the horizon. Then the whole train again sang
+a canticle--the rhymed story of Bernadette, that endless ballad of six
+times ten couplets, in which the Angelic Salutation ever returns as a
+refrain, all besetting and distracting, opening to the human mind the
+portals of the heaven of ecstasy:--
+
+
+ “It was the hour for ev’ning pray’r;
+ Soft bells chimed on the chilly air.
+ Ave, ave, ave Maria!
+
+ “The maid stood on the torrent’s bank,
+ A breeze arose, then swiftly sank.
+ Ave, ave, ave Maria!
+
+ “And she beheld, e’en as it fell,
+ The Virgin on Massabielle.
+ Ave, ave, ave Maria!
+
+ “All white appeared the Lady chaste,
+ A zone of Heaven round her waist.
+ Ave, ave, ave Maria!
+
+ “Two golden roses, pure and sweet,
+ Bloomed brightly on her naked feet.
+ Ave, ave, ave Maria!
+
+ “Upon her arm, so white and round,
+ Her chaplet’s milky pearls were wound.
+ Ave, ave, ave Maria!
+
+ “The maiden prayed till, from her eyes,
+ The vision sped to Paradise.
+ Ave, ave, ave Maria!”
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SECOND DAY
+
+
+
+
+I. THE TRAIN ARRIVES
+
+IT was twenty minutes past three by the clock of the Lourdes railway
+station, the dial of which was illumined by a reflector. Under the
+slanting roof sheltering the platform, a hundred yards or so in length,
+some shadowy forms went to and fro, resignedly waiting. Only a red signal
+light peeped out of the black countryside, far away.
+
+Two of the promenaders suddenly halted. The taller of them, a Father of
+the Assumption, none other indeed than the Reverend Father Fourcade,
+director of the national pilgrimage, who had reached Lourdes on the
+previous day, was a man of sixty, looking superb in his black cloak with
+its large hood. His fine head, with its clear, domineering eyes and thick
+grizzly beard, was the head of a general whom an intelligent
+determination to conquer inflames. In consequence, however, of a sudden
+attack of gout he slightly dragged one of his legs, and was leaning on
+the shoulder of his companion, Dr. Bonamy, the practitioner attached to
+the Miracle Verification Office, a short, thick-set man, with a
+square-shaped, clean-shaven face, which had dull, blurred eyes and a
+tranquil cast of features.
+
+Father Fourcade had stopped to question the station-master whom he
+perceived running out of his office. “Will the white train be very late,
+monsieur?” he asked.
+
+“No, your reverence. It hasn’t lost more than ten minutes; it will be
+here at the half-hour. It’s the Bayonne train which worries me; it ought
+to have passed through already.”
+
+So saying, he ran off to give an order; but soon came back again, his
+slim, nervous figure displaying marked signs of agitation. He lived,
+indeed, in a state of high fever throughout the period of the great
+pilgrimages. Apart from the usual service, he that day expected eighteen
+trains, containing more than fifteen thousand passengers. The grey and
+the blue trains which had started from Paris the first had already
+arrived at the regulation hour. But the delay in the arrival of the white
+train was very troublesome, the more so as the Bayonne express--which
+passed over the same rails--had not yet been signalled. It was easy to
+understand, therefore, what incessant watchfulness was necessary, not a
+second passing without the entire staff of the station being called upon
+to exercise its vigilance.
+
+“In ten minutes, then?” repeated Father Fourcade.
+
+“Yes, in ten minutes, unless I’m obliged to close the line!” cried the
+station-master as he hastened into the telegraph office.
+
+Father Fourcade and the doctor slowly resumed their promenade. The thing
+which astonished them was that no serious accident had ever happened in
+the midst of such a fearful scramble. In past times, especially, the most
+terrible disorder had prevailed. Father Fourcade complacently recalled
+the first pilgrimage which he had organised and led, in 1875; the
+terrible endless journey without pillows or mattresses, the patients
+exhausted, half dead, with no means of reviving them at hand; and then
+the arrival at Lourdes, the train evacuated in confusion, no _matériel_
+in readiness, no straps, nor stretchers, nor carts. But now there was a
+powerful organisation; a hospital awaited the sick, who were no longer
+reduced to lying upon straw in sheds. What a shock for those unhappy
+ones! What force of will in the man of faith who led them to the scene of
+miracles! The reverend Father smiled gently at the thought of the work
+which he had accomplished.
+
+Then, still leaning on the doctor’s shoulder, he began to question him:
+“How many pilgrims did you have last year?” he asked.
+
+“About two hundred thousand. That is still the average. In the year of
+the Coronation of the Virgin the figure rose to five hundred thousand.
+But to bring that about an exceptional occasion was needed with a great
+effort of propaganda. Such vast masses cannot be collected together every
+day.”
+
+A pause followed, and then Father Fourcade murmured: “No doubt. Still the
+blessing of Heaven attends our endeavours; our work thrives more and
+more. We have collected more than two hundred thousand francs in
+donations for this journey, and God will be with us, there will be many
+cures for you to proclaim to-morrow, I am sure of it.” Then, breaking
+off, he inquired: “Has not Father Dargeles come here?”
+
+Dr. Bonamy waved his hand as though to say that he did not know. Father
+Dargeles was the editor of the “Journal de la Grotte.” He belonged to the
+Order of the Fathers of the Immaculate Conception whom the Bishop had
+installed at Lourdes and who were the absolute masters there; though,
+when the Fathers of the Assumption came to the town with the national
+pilgrimage from Paris, which crowds of faithful Catholics from Cambrai,
+Arras, Chartres, Troyes, Rheims, Sens, Orleans, Blois, and Poitiers
+joined, they evinced a kind of affectation in disappearing from the
+scene. Their omnipotence was no longer felt either at the Grotto or at
+the Basilica; they seemed to surrender every key together with every
+responsibility. Their superior, Father Capdebarthe, a tall, peasant-like
+man, with a knotty frame, a big head which looked as if it had been
+fashioned with a bill-hook, and a worn face which retained a ruddy
+mournful reflection of the soil, did not even show himself. Of the whole
+community you only saw little, insinuating Father Dargeles; but he was
+met everywhere, incessantly on the look-out for paragraphs for his
+newspaper. At the same time, however, although the Fathers of the
+Immaculate Conception disappeared in this fashion, it could be divined
+that they were behind the vast stage, like a hidden sovereign power,
+coining money and toiling without a pause to increase the triumphant
+prosperity of their business. Indeed, they turned even their humility to
+account.
+
+“It’s true that we have had to get up early--two in the morning,” resumed
+Father Fourcade gaily. “But I wished to be here. What would my poor
+children have said, indeed, if I had not come?”
+
+He was alluding to the sick pilgrims, those who were so much flesh for
+miracle-working; and it was a fact that he had never missed coming to the
+station, no matter what the hour, to meet that woeful white train, that
+train which brought such grievous suffering with it.
+
+“Five-and-twenty minutes past three--only another five minutes now,”
+ exclaimed Dr. Bonamy repressing a yawn as he glanced at the clock; for,
+despite his obsequious air, he was at bottom very much annoyed at having
+had to get out of bed so early. However, he continued his slow promenade
+with Father Fourcade along that platform which resembled a covered walk,
+pacing up and down in the dense night which the gas jets here and there
+illumined with patches of yellow light. Little parties, dimly outlined,
+composed of priests and gentlemen in frock-coats, with a solitary officer
+of dragoons, went to and fro incessantly, talking together the while in
+discreet murmuring tones. Other people, seated on benches, ranged along
+the station wall, were also chatting or putting their patience to proof
+with their glances wandering away into the black stretch of country
+before them. The doorways of the offices and waiting-rooms, which were
+brilliantly lighted, looked like great holes in the darkness, and all was
+flaring in the refreshment-room, where you could see the marble tables
+and the counter laden with bottles and glasses and baskets of bread and
+fruit.
+
+On the right hand, beyond the roofing of the platform, there was a
+confused swarming of people. There was here a goods gate, by which the
+sick were taken out of the station, and a mass of stretchers, litters,
+and hand-carts, with piles of pillows and mattresses, obstructed the
+broad walk. Three parties of bearers were also assembled here, persons of
+well-nigh every class, but more particularly young men of good society,
+all wearing red, orange-tipped crosses and straps of yellow leather. Many
+of them, too, had adopted the Bearnese cap, the convenient head-gear of
+the region; and a few, clad as though they were bound on some distant
+expedition, displayed wonderful gaiters reaching to their knees. Some
+were smoking, whilst others, installed in their little vehicles, slept or
+read newspapers by the light of the neighbouring gas jets. One group,
+standing apart, were discussing some service question.
+
+Suddenly, however, one and all began to salute. A paternal-looking man,
+with a heavy but good-natured face, lighted by large blue eyes, like
+those of a credulous child, was approaching. It was Baron Suire, the
+President of the Hospitality of Our Lady of Salvation. He possessed a
+great fortune and occupied a high position at Toulouse.
+
+“Where is Berthaud?” he inquired of one bearer after another, with a busy
+air. “Where is Berthaud? I must speak to him.”
+
+The others answered, volunteering contradictory information. Berthaud was
+their superintendent, and whilst some said that they had seen him with
+the Reverend Father Fourcade, others affirmed that he must be in the
+courtyard of the station inspecting the ambulance vehicles. And they
+thereupon offered to go and fetch him.
+
+“No, no, thank you,” replied the Baron. “I shall manage to find him
+myself.”
+
+Whilst this was happening, Berthaud, who had just seated himself on a
+bench at the other end of the station, was talking with his young friend,
+Gérard de Peyrelongue, by way of occupation pending the arrival of the
+train. The superintendent of the bearers was a man of forty, with a
+broad, regular-featured, handsome face and carefully trimmed whiskers of
+a lawyer-like pattern. Belonging to a militant Legitimist family and
+holding extremely reactionary opinions, he had been Procureur de la
+Republique (public prosecutor) in a town of the south of France from the
+time of the parliamentary revolution of the twenty-fourth of May* until
+that of the decree of the Religious Communities,** when he had resigned
+his post in a blusterous fashion, by addressing an insulting letter to
+the Minister of Justice. And he had never since laid down his arms, but
+had joined the Hospitality of Our Lady of Salvation as a sort of protest,
+repairing year after year to Lourdes in order to “demonstrate”; convinced
+as he was that the pilgrimages were both disagreeable and hurtful to the
+Republic, and that God alone could re-establish the Monarchy by one of
+those miracles which He worked so lavishly at the Grotto. Despite all
+this, however, Berthaud possessed no small amount of good sense, and
+being of a gay disposition, displayed a kind of jovial charity towards
+the poor sufferers whose transport he had to provide for during the three
+days that the national pilgrimage remained at Lourdes.
+
+ * The parliamentary revolution of May, 1873, by which M. Thiers
+ was overthrown and Marshal MacMahon installed in his place with
+ the object of restoring the Monarchy in France.--Trans.
+
+ ** M. Grevy’s decree by which the Jesuits were expelled.--Trans.
+
+“And so, my dear Gérard,” he said to the young man seated beside him,
+“your marriage is really to come off this year?”
+
+“Why yes, if I can find such a wife as I want,” replied the other. “Come,
+cousin, give me some good advice.”
+
+Gérard de Peyrelongue, a short, thin, carroty young man, with a
+pronounced nose and prominent cheek-bones, belonged to Tarbes, where his
+father and mother had lately died, leaving him at the utmost some seven
+or eight thousand francs a year. Extremely ambitious, he had been unable
+to find such a wife as he desired in his native province--a
+well-connected young woman capable of helping him to push both forward
+and upward in the world; and so he had joined the Hospitality, and betook
+himself every summer to Lourdes, in the vague hope that amidst the mass
+of believers, the torrent of devout mammas and daughters which flowed
+thither, he might find the family whose help he needed to enable him to
+make his way in this terrestrial sphere. However, he remained in
+perplexity, for if, on the one hand, he already had several young ladies
+in view, on the other, none of them completely satisfied him.
+
+“Eh, cousin? You will advise me, won’t you?” he said to Berthaud. “You
+are a man of experience. There is Mademoiselle Lemercier who comes here
+with her aunt. She is very rich; according to what is said she has over a
+million francs. But she doesn’t belong to our set, and besides I think
+her a bit of a madcap.”
+
+Berthaud nodded. “I told you so; if I were you I should choose little
+Raymonde, Mademoiselle de Jonquière.”
+
+“But she hasn’t a copper!”
+
+“That’s true--she has barely enough to pay for her board. But she is
+fairly good-looking, she has been well brought up, and she has no
+extravagant tastes. That is the really important point, for what is the
+use of marrying a rich girl if she squanders the dowry she brings you?
+Besides, I know Madame and Mademoiselle de Jonquière very well, I meet
+them all through the winter in the most influential drawing-rooms of
+Paris. And, finally, don’t forget the girl’s uncle, the diplomatist, who
+has had the painful courage to remain in the service of the Republic. He
+will be able to do whatever he pleases for his niece’s husband.”
+
+For a moment Gérard seemed shaken, and then he relapsed into perplexity.
+“But she hasn’t a copper,” he said, “no, not a copper. It’s too stiff. I
+am quite willing to think it over, but it really frightens me too much.”
+
+This time Berthaud burst into a frank laugh. “Come, you are ambitious, so
+you must be daring. I tell you that it means the secretaryship of an
+embassy before two years are over. By the way, Madame and Mademoiselle de
+Jonquière are in the white train which we are waiting for. Make up your
+mind and pay your court at once.”
+
+“No, no! Later on. I want to think it over.”
+
+At this moment they were interrupted, for Baron Suire, who had already
+once gone by without perceiving them, so completely did the darkness
+enshroud them in that retired corner, had just recognised the ex-public
+prosecutor’s good-natured laugh. And, thereupon, with the volubility of a
+man whose head is easily unhinged, he gave him several orders respecting
+the vehicles and the transport service, deploring the circumstance that
+it would be impossible to conduct the patients to the Grotto immediately
+on their arrival, as it was yet so extremely early. It had therefore been
+decided that they should in the first instance be taken to the Hospital
+of Our Lady of Dolours, where they would be able to rest awhile after
+their trying journey.
+
+Whilst the Baron and the superintendent were thus settling what measures
+should be adopted, Gérard shook hands with a priest who had sat down
+beside him. This was the Abbé des Hermoises, who was barely
+eight-and-thirty years of age and had a superb head--such a head as one
+might expect to find on the shoulders of a worldly priest. With his hair
+well combed, and his person perfumed, he was not unnaturally a great
+favourite among women. Very amiable and distinguished in his manners, he
+did not come to Lourdes in any official capacity, but simply for his
+pleasure, as so many other people did; and the bright, sparkling smile of
+a sceptic above all idolatry gleamed in the depths of his fine eyes. He
+certainly believed, and bowed to superior decisions; but the Church--the
+Holy See--had not pronounced itself with regard to the miracles; and he
+seemed quite ready to dispute their authenticity. Having lived at Tarbes
+he was already acquainted with Gérard.
+
+“Ah!” he said to him, “how impressive it is--isn’t it?--this waiting for
+the trains in the middle of the night! I have come to meet a lady--one of
+my former Paris penitents--but I don’t know what train she will come by.
+Still, as you see, I stop on, for it all interests me so much.”
+
+Then another priest, an old country priest, having come to sit down on
+the same bench, the Abbé considerately began talking to him, speaking of
+the beauty of the Lourdes district and of the theatrical effect which
+would take place by-and-by when the sun rose and the mountains appeared.
+
+However, there was again a sudden alert, and the station-master ran along
+shouting orders. Removing his hand from Dr. Bonamy’s shoulder, Father
+Fourcade, despite his gouty leg, hastily drew near.
+
+“Oh! it’s that Bayonne express which is so late,” answered the
+station-master in reply to the questions addressed to him. “I should like
+some information about it; I’m not at ease.”
+
+At this moment the telegraph bells rang out and a porter rushed away into
+the darkness swinging a lantern, whilst a distant signal began to work.
+Thereupon the station-master resumed: “Ah! this time it’s the white
+train. Let us hope we shall have time to get the sick people out before
+the express passes.”
+
+He started off once more and disappeared. Berthaud meanwhile called to
+Gérard, who was at the head of a squad of bearers, and they both made
+haste to join their men, into whom Baron Suire was already instilling
+activity. The bearers flocked to the spot from all sides, and setting
+themselves in motion began dragging their little vehicles across the
+lines to the platform at which the white train would come in--an unroofed
+platform plunged in darkness. A mass of pillows, mattresses, stretchers,
+and litters was soon waiting there, whilst Father Fourcade, Dr. Bonamy,
+the priests, the gentlemen, and the officer of dragoons in their turn
+crossed over in order to witness the removal of the ailing pilgrims. All
+that they could as yet see, far away in the depths of the black country,
+was the lantern in front of the engine, looking like a red star which
+grew larger and larger. Strident whistles pierced the night, then
+suddenly ceased, and you only heard the panting of the steam and the dull
+roar of the wheels gradually slackening their speed. Then the canticle
+became distinctly audible, the song of Bernadette with the ever-recurring
+“Aves” of its refrain, which the whole train was chanting in chorus. And
+at last this train of suffering and faith, this moaning, singing train,
+thus making its entry into Lourdes, drew up in the station.
+
+The carriage doors were at once opened, the whole throng of healthy
+pilgrims, and of ailing ones able to walk, alighted, and streamed over
+the platform. The few gas lamps cast but a feeble light on the crowd of
+poverty-stricken beings clad in faded garments, and encumbered with all
+sorts of parcels, baskets, valises, and boxes. And amidst all the
+jostling of this scared flock, which did not know in which direction to
+turn to find its way out of the station, loud exclamations were heard,
+the shouts of people calling relatives whom they had lost, mingled with
+the embraces of others whom relatives or friends had come to meet. One
+woman declared with beatifical satisfaction, “I have slept well.” A
+priest went off carrying his travelling-bag, after wishing a crippled
+lady “good luck!” Most of them had the bewildered, weary, yet joyous
+appearance of people whom an excursion train sets down at some unknown
+station. And such became the scramble and the confusion in the darkness,
+that they did not hear the railway _employés_ who grew quite hoarse
+through shouting, “This way! this way!” in their eagerness to clear the
+platform as soon as possible.
+
+Sister Hyacinthe had nimbly alighted from her compartment, leaving the
+dead man in the charge of Sister Claire des Anges; and, losing her head
+somewhat, she ran off to the cantine van in the idea that Ferrand would
+be able to help her. Fortunately she found Father Fourcade in front of
+the van and acquainted him with the fatality in a low voice. Repressing a
+gesture of annoyance, he thereupon called Baron Suire, who was passing,
+and began whispering in his ear. The muttering lasted for a few seconds,
+and then the Baron rushed off, and clove his way through the crowd with
+two bearers carrying a covered litter. In this the man was removed from
+the carriage as though he were a patient who had simply fainted, the mob
+of pilgrims paying no further attention to him amidst all the emotion of
+their arrival. Preceded by the Baron, the bearers carried the corpse into
+a goods office, where they provisionally lodged it behind some barrels;
+one of them, a fair-haired little fellow, a general’s son, remaining to
+watch over it.
+
+Meanwhile, after begging Ferrand and Sister Saint-François to go and wait
+for her in the courtyard of the station, near the reserved vehicle which
+was to take them to the Hospital of Our Lady of Dolours, Sister Hyacinthe
+returned to the railway carriage and talked of helping her patients to
+alight before going away. But Marie would not let her touch her. “No,
+no!” said the girl, “do not trouble about me, Sister. I shall remain here
+the last. My father and Abbé Froment have gone to the van to fetch the
+wheels; I am waiting for their return; they know how to fix them, and
+they will take me away all right, you may be sure of it.”
+
+In the same way M. Sabathier and Brother Isidore did not desire to be
+moved until the crowd had decreased. Madame de Jonquière, who had taken
+charge of La Grivotte, also promised to see to Madame Vetu’s removal in
+an ambulance vehicle. And thereupon Sister Hyacinthe decided that she
+would go off at once so as to get everything ready at the hospital.
+Moreover, she took with her both little Sophie Couteau and Elise Rouquet,
+whose face she very carefully wrapped up. Madame Maze preceded them,
+while Madame Vincent, carrying her little girl, who was unconscious and
+quite white, struggled through the crowd, possessed by the fixed idea of
+running off as soon as possible and depositing the child in the Grotto at
+the feet of the Blessed Virgin.
+
+The mob was now pressing towards the doorway by which passengers left the
+station, and to facilitate the egress of all these people it at last
+became necessary to open the luggage gates. The _employés_, at a loss how
+to take the tickets, held out their caps, which a downpour of the little
+cards speedily filled. And in the courtyard, a large square courtyard,
+skirted on three sides by the low buildings of the station, the most
+extraordinary uproar prevailed amongst all the vehicles of divers kinds
+which were there jumbled together. The hotel omnibuses, backed against
+the curb of the footway, displayed the most sacred names on their large
+boards--Jesus and Mary, St. Michel, the Rosary, and the Sacred Heart.
+Then there were ambulance vehicles, landaus, cabriolets, brakes, and
+little donkey carts, all entangled together, with their drivers shouting,
+swearing, and cracking their whips--the tumult being apparently increased
+by the obscurity in which the lanterns set brilliant patches of light.
+
+Rain had fallen heavily a few hours previously. Liquid mud splashed up
+under the hoofs of the horses; the foot passengers sank into it to their
+ankles. M. Vigneron, whom Madame Vigneron and Madame Chaise were
+following in a state of distraction, raised Gustave, in order to place
+him in the omnibus from the Hotel of the Apparitions, after which he
+himself and the ladies climbed into the vehicle. Madame Maze, shuddering
+slightly, like a delicate tabby who fears to dirty the tips of her paws,
+made a sign to the driver of an old brougham, got into it, and quickly
+drove away, after giving as address the Convent of the Blue Sisters. And
+at last Sister Hyacinthe was able to install herself with Elise Rouquet
+and Sophie Couteau in a large _char-a-bancs_, in which Ferrand and
+Sisters Saint-François and Claire des Anges were already seated. The
+drivers whipped up their spirited little horses, and the vehicles went
+off at a breakneck pace, amidst the shouts of those left behind, and the
+splashing of the mire.
+
+In presence of that rushing torrent, Madame Vincent, with her dear little
+burden in her arms, hesitated to cross over. Bursts of laughter rang out
+around her every now and then. Oh! what a filthy mess! And at sight of
+all the mud, the women caught up their skirts before attempting to pass
+through it. At last, when the courtyard had somewhat emptied, Madame
+Vincent herself ventured on her way, all terror lest the mire should make
+her fall in that black darkness. Then, on reaching a downhill road, she
+noticed there a number of women of the locality who were on the watch,
+offering furnished rooms, bed and board, according to the state of the
+pilgrim’s purse.
+
+“Which is the way to the Grotto, madame, if you please?” asked Madame
+Vincent, addressing one old woman of the party.
+
+Instead of answering the question, however, the other offered her a cheap
+room. “You won’t find anything in the hotels,” said she, “for they are
+all full. Perhaps you will be able to eat there, but you certainly won’t
+find a closet even to sleep in.”
+
+Eat, sleep, indeed! Had Madame Vincent any thought of such things; she
+who had left Paris with thirty sous in her pocket, all that remained to
+her after the expenses she had been put to!
+
+“The way to the Grotto, if you please, madame?” she repeated.
+
+Among the women who were thus touting for lodgers, there was a tall,
+well-built girl, dressed like a superior servant, and looking very clean,
+with carefully tended hands. She glanced at Madame Vincent and slightly
+shrugged her shoulders. And then, seeing a broad-chested priest with a
+red face go by, she rushed after him, offered him a furnished room, and
+continued following him, whispering in his ear.
+
+Another girl, however, at last took pity on Madame Vincent and said to
+her: “Here, go down this road, and when you get to the bottom, turn to
+the right and you will reach the Grotto.”
+
+Meanwhile, the confusion inside the station continued. The healthy
+pilgrims, and those of the sick who retained the use of their legs could
+go off, thus, in some measure, clearing the platform; but the others, the
+more grievously stricken sufferers whom it was difficult to get out of
+the carriages and remove to the hospital, remained waiting. The bearers
+seemed to become quite bewildered, rushing madly hither and thither with
+their litters and vehicles, not knowing at what end to set about the
+profusion of work which lay before them.
+
+As Berthaud, followed by Gérard, went along the platform, gesticulating,
+he noticed two ladies and a girl who were standing under a gas jet and to
+all appearance waiting. In the girl he recognised Raymonde, and with a
+sign of the hand he at once stopped his companion. “Ah! mademoiselle,”
+ said he, “how pleased I am to see you! Is Madame de Jonquière quite well?
+You have made a good journey, I hope?” Then, without a pause, he added:
+“This is my friend, Monsieur Gérard de Peyrelongue.”
+
+Raymonde gazed fixedly at the young man with her clear, smiling eyes.
+“Oh! I already have the pleasure of being slightly acquainted with this
+gentleman,” she said. “We have previously met one another at Lourdes.”
+
+Thereupon Gérard, who thought that his cousin Berthaud was conducting
+matters too quickly, and was quite resolved that he would not enter into
+any hasty engagement, contented himself with bowing in a ceremonious way.
+
+“We are waiting for mamma,” resumed Raymonde. “She is extremely busy; she
+has to see after some pilgrims who are very ill.”
+
+At this, little Madame Désagneaux, with her pretty, light wavy-haired
+head, began to say that it served Madame de Jonquière right for refusing
+her services. She herself was stamping with impatience, eager to join in
+the work and make herself useful, whilst Madame Volmar, silent, shrinking
+back as though taking no interest in it at all, seemed simply desirous of
+penetrating the darkness, as though, indeed, she were seeking somebody
+with those magnificent eyes of hers, usually bedimmed, but now shining
+out like brasiers.
+
+Just then, however, they were all pushed back. Madame Dieulafay was being
+removed from her first-class compartment, and Madame Désagneaux could not
+restrain an exclamation of pity. “Ah! the poor woman!”
+
+There could in fact be no more distressing sight than this young woman,
+encompassed by luxury, covered with lace in her species of coffin, so
+wasted that she seemed to be a mere human shred, deposited on that
+platform till it could be taken away. Her husband and her sister, both
+very elegant and very sad, remained standing near her, whilst a
+man-servant and maid ran off with the valises to ascertain if the
+carriage which had been ordered by telegram was in the courtyard. Abbé
+Judaine also helped the sufferer; and when two men at last took her up he
+bent over her and wished her _au revoir_, adding some kind words which
+she did not seem to hear. Then as he watched her removal, he resumed,
+addressing himself to Berthaud, whom he knew: “Ah! the poor people, if
+they could only purchase their dear sufferer’s cure. I told them that
+prayer was the most precious thing in the Blessed Virgin’s eyes, and I
+hope that I have myself prayed fervently enough to obtain the compassion
+of Heaven. Nevertheless, they have brought a magnificent gift, a golden
+lantern for the Basilica, a perfect marvel, adorned with precious stones.
+May the Immaculate Virgin deign to smile upon it!”
+
+In this way a great many offerings were brought by the pilgrims. Some
+huge bouquets of flowers had just gone by, together with a kind of triple
+crown of roses, mounted on a wooden stand. And the old priest explained
+that before leaving the station he wished to secure a banner, the gift of
+the beautiful Madame Jousseur, Madame Dieulafay’s sister.
+
+Madame de Jonquière was at last approaching, however, and on perceiving
+Berthaud and Gérard she exclaimed: “Pray do go to that carriage,
+gentlemen--that one, there! We want some men very badly. There are three
+or four sick persons to be taken out. I am in despair; I can do nothing
+myself.”
+
+Gérard ran off after bowing to Raymonde, whilst Berthaud advised Madame
+de Jonquière to leave the station with her daughter and those ladies
+instead of remaining on the platform. Her presence was in nowise
+necessary, he said; he would undertake everything, and within three
+quarters of an hour she would find her patients in her ward at the
+hospital. She ended by giving way, and took a conveyance in company with
+Raymonde and Madame Désagneaux. As for Madame Volmar, she had at the last
+moment disappeared, as though seized with a sudden fit of impatience. The
+others fancied that they had seen her approach a strange gentleman, with
+the object no doubt of making some inquiry of him. However, they would of
+course find her at the hospital.
+
+Berthaud joined Gérard again just as the young man, assisted by two
+fellow-bearers, was endeavouring to remove M. Sabathier from the
+carriage. It was a difficult task, for he was very stout and very heavy,
+and they began to think that he would never pass through the doorway of
+the compartment. However, as he had been got in they ought to be able to
+get him out; and indeed when two other bearers had entered the carriage
+from the other side, they were at last able to deposit him on the
+platform.
+
+The dawn was now appearing, a faint pale dawn; and the platform presented
+the woeful appearance of an improvised hospital. La Grivotte, who had
+lost consciousness, lay there on a mattress pending her removal in a
+litter; whilst Madame Vetu had been seated against a lamp-post, suffering
+so severely from another attack of her ailment that they scarcely dared
+to touch her. Some hospitallers, whose hands were gloved, were with
+difficulty wheeling their little vehicles in which were poor,
+sordid-looking women with old baskets at their feet. Others, with
+stretchers on which lay the stiffened, woeful bodies of silent sufferers,
+whose eyes gleamed with anguish, found themselves unable to pass; but
+some of the infirm pilgrims, some unfortunate cripples, contrived to slip
+through the ranks, among them a young priest who was lame, and a little
+humpbacked boy, one of whose legs had been amputated, and who, looking
+like a gnome, managed to drag himself with his crutches from group to
+group. Then there was quite a block around a man who was bent in half,
+twisted by paralysis to such a point that he had to be carried on a chair
+with his head and feet hanging downward. It seemed as though hours would
+be required to clear the platform.
+
+The dismay therefore reached a climax when the station-master suddenly
+rushed up shouting: “The Bayonne express is signalled. Make haste! make
+haste! You have only three minutes left!”
+
+Father Fourcade, who had remained in the midst of the throng, leaning on
+Doctor Bonamy’s arm, and gaily encouraging the more stricken of the
+sufferers, beckoned to Berthaud and said to him: “Finish taking them out
+of the train; you will be able to clear the platform afterwards!”
+
+The advice was very sensible, and in accordance with it they finished
+placing the sufferers on the platform. In Madame de Jonquière’s carriage
+Marie now alone remained, waiting patiently. M. de Guersaint and Pierre
+had at last returned to her, bringing the two pairs of wheels by means of
+which the box in which she lay was rolled about. And with Gérard’s
+assistance Pierre in all haste removed the girl from the train. She was
+as light as a poor shivering bird, and it was only the box that gave them
+any trouble. However, they soon placed it on the wheels and made the
+latter fast, and then Pierre might have rolled Marie away had it not been
+for the crowd which hampered him.
+
+“Make haste! make haste!” furiously repeated the station-master.
+
+He himself lent a hand, taking hold of a sick man by the feet in order to
+remove him from the compartment more speedily. And he also pushed the
+little hand-carts back, so as to clear the edge of the platform. In a
+second-class carriage, however, there still remained one woman who had
+just been overpowered by a terrible nervous attack. She was howling and
+struggling, and it was impossible to think of touching her at that
+moment. But on the other hand the express, signalled by the incessant
+tinkling of the electric bells, was now fast approaching, and they had to
+close the door and in all haste shunt the train to the siding where it
+would remain for three days, until in fact it was required to convey its
+load of sick and healthy passengers back to Paris. As it went off to the
+siding the crowd still heard the cries of the suffering woman, whom it
+had been necessary to leave in it, in charge of a Sister, cries which
+grew weaker and weaker, like those of a strengthless child whom one at
+last succeeds in consoling.
+
+“Good Lord!” muttered the station-master; “it was high time!”
+
+In fact the Bayonne express was now coming along at full speed, and the
+next moment it rushed like a crash of thunder past that woeful platform
+littered with all the grievous wretchedness of a hospital hastily
+evacuated. The litters and little handcarts were shaken, but there was no
+accident, for the porters were on the watch, and pushed back the
+bewildered flock which was still jostling and struggling in its eagerness
+to get away. As soon as the express had passed, however, circulation was
+re-established, and the bearers were at last able to complete the removal
+of the sick with prudent deliberation.
+
+Little by little the daylight was increasing--a clear dawn it was,
+whitening the heavens whose reflection illumined the earth, which was
+still black. One began to distinguish things and people clearly.
+
+“Oh, by-and-by!” Marie repeated to Pierre, as he endeavoured to roll her
+away. “Let us wait till some part of the crowd has gone.”
+
+Then, looking around, she began to feel interested in a man of military
+bearing, apparently some sixty years of age, who was walking about among
+the sick pilgrims. With a square-shaped head and white bushy hair, he
+would still have looked sturdy if he had not dragged his left foot,
+throwing it inward at each step he took. With the left hand, too, he
+leant heavily on a thick walking-stick. When M. Sabathier, who had
+visited Lourdes for six years past, perceived him, he became quite gay.
+“Ah!” said he, “it is you, Commander!”
+
+Commander was perhaps the old man’s name. But as he was decorated with a
+broad red riband, he was possibly called Commander on account of his
+decoration, albeit the latter was that of a mere chevalier. Nobody
+exactly knew his story. No doubt he had relatives and children of his own
+somewhere, but these matters remained vague and mysterious. For the last
+three years he had been employed at the railway station as a
+superintendent in the goods department, a simple occupation, a little
+berth which had been given him by favour and which enabled him to live in
+perfect happiness. A first stroke of apoplexy at fifty-five years of age
+had been followed by a second one three years later, which had left him
+slightly paralysed in the left side. And now he was awaiting the third
+stroke with an air of perfect tranquillity. As he himself put it, he was
+at the disposal of death, which might come for him that night, the next
+day, or possibly that very moment. All Lourdes knew him on account of the
+habit, the mania he had, at pilgrimage time, of coming to witness the
+arrival of the trains, dragging his foot along and leaning upon his
+stick, whilst expressing his astonishment and reproaching the ailing ones
+for their intense desire to be made whole and sound again.
+
+This was the third year that he had seen M. Sabathier arrive, and all his
+anger fell upon him. “What! you have come back _again_!” he exclaimed.
+“Well, you _must_ be desirous of living this hateful life! But
+_sacrebleu_! go and die quietly in your bed at home. Isn’t that the best
+thing that can happen to anyone?”
+
+M. Sabathier evinced no anger, but laughed, exhausted though he was by
+the handling to which he had been subjected during his removal from the
+carriage. “No, no,” said he, “I prefer to be cured.”
+
+“To be cured, to be cured! That’s what they all ask for. They travel
+hundreds of leagues and arrive in fragments, howling with pain, and all
+this to be cured--to go through every worry and every suffering again.
+Come, monsieur, you would be nicely caught if, at your age and with your
+dilapidated old body, your Blessed Virgin should be pleased to restore
+the use of your legs to you. What would you do with them, _mon Dieu?_
+What pleasure would you find in prolonging the abomination of old age for
+a few years more? It’s much better to die at once, while you are like
+that! Death is happiness!”
+
+He spoke in this fashion, not as a believer who aspires to the delicious
+reward of eternal life, but as a weary man who expects to fall into
+nihility, to enjoy the great everlasting peace of being no more.
+
+Whilst M. Sabathier was gaily shrugging his shoulders as though he had a
+child to deal with, Abbé Judaine, who had at last secured his banner,
+came by and stopped for a moment in order that he might gently scold the
+Commander, with whom he also was well acquainted.
+
+“Don’t blaspheme, my dear friend,” he said. “It is an offence against God
+to refuse life and to treat health with contempt. If you yourself had
+listened to me, you would have asked the Blessed Virgin to cure your leg
+before now.”
+
+At this the Commander became angry. “My leg! The Virgin can do nothing to
+it! I’m quite at my ease. May death come and may it all be over forever!
+When the time comes to die you turn your face to the wall and you
+die--it’s simple enough.”
+
+The old priest interrupted him, however. Pointing to Marie, who was lying
+on her box listening to them, he exclaimed: “You tell all our sick to go
+home and die--even mademoiselle, eh? She who is full of youth and wishes
+to live.”
+
+Marie’s eyes were wide open, burning with the ardent desire which she
+felt to _be_, to enjoy her share of the vast world; and the Commander,
+who had drawn near, gazed upon her, suddenly seized with deep emotion
+which made his voice tremble. “If mademoiselle gets well,” he said, “I
+will wish her another miracle, that she be happy.”
+
+Then he went off, dragging his foot and tapping the flagstones with the
+ferrule of his stout stick as he continued wending his way, like an angry
+philosopher among the suffering pilgrims.
+
+Little by little, the platform was at last cleared. Madame Vetu and La
+Grivotte were carried away, and Gérard removed M. Sabathier in a little
+cart, whilst Baron Suire and Berthaud already began giving orders for the
+green train, which would be the next one to arrive. Of all the ailing
+pilgrims the only one now remaining at the station was Marie, of whom
+Pierre jealously took charge. He had already dragged her into the
+courtyard when he noticed that M. de Guersaint had disappeared; but a
+moment later he perceived him conversing with the Abbé des Hermoises,
+whose acquaintance he had just made. Their admiration of the beauties of
+nature had brought them together. The daylight had now appeared, and the
+surrounding mountains displayed themselves in all their majesty.
+
+“What a lovely country, monsieur!” exclaimed M. de Guersaint. “I have
+been wishing to see the Cirque de Gavarnie for thirty years past. But it
+is some distance away and the trip must be an expensive one, so that I
+fear I shall not be able to make it.”
+
+“You are mistaken, monsieur,” said the Abbé; “nothing is more easily
+managed. By making up a party the expense becomes very slight. And as it
+happens, I wish to return there this year, so that if you would like to
+join us--”
+
+“Oh, certainly, monsieur. We will speak of it again. A thousand thanks,”
+ replied M. de Guersaint.
+
+His daughter was now calling him, however, and he joined her after taking
+leave of the Abbé in a very cordial manner. Pierre had decided that he
+would drag Marie to the hospital so as to spare her the pain of
+transference to another vehicle. But as the omnibuses, landaus, and other
+conveyances were already coming back, again filling the courtyard in
+readiness for the arrival of the next train, the young priest had some
+difficulty in reaching the road with the little chariot whose low wheels
+sank deeply in the mud. Some police agents charged with maintaining order
+were cursing that fearful mire which splashed their boots; and indeed it
+was only the touts, the young and old women who had rooms to let, who
+laughed at the puddles, which they crossed and crossed again in every
+direction, pursuing the last pilgrims that emerged from the station.
+
+When the little car had begun to roll more easily over the sloping road
+Marie suddenly inquired of M. de Guersaint, who was walking near her:
+“What day of the week is it, father?”
+
+“Saturday, my darling.”
+
+“Ah! yes, Saturday, the day of the Blessed Virgin. Is it to-day that she
+will cure me?”
+
+Then she began thinking again; while, at some distance behind her, two
+bearers came furtively down the road, with a covered stretcher in which
+lay the corpse of the man who had died in the train. They had gone to
+take it from behind the barrels in the goods office, and were now
+conveying it to a secret spot of which Father Fourcade had told them.
+
+
+
+
+II. HOSPITAL AND GROTTO
+
+BUILT, so far as it extends, by a charitable Canon, and left unfinished
+through lack of money, the Hospital of Our Lady of Dolours is a vast
+pile, four storeys high, and consequently far too lofty, since it is
+difficult to carry the sufferers to the topmost wards. As a rule the
+building is occupied by a hundred infirm and aged paupers; but at the
+season of the national pilgrimage these old folks are for three days
+sheltered elsewhere, and the hospital is let to the Fathers of the
+Assumption, who at times lodge in it as many as five and six hundred
+patients. Still, however closely packed they may be, the accommodation
+never suffices, so that the three or four hundred remaining sufferers
+have to be distributed between the Hospital of Salvation and the town
+hospital, the men being sent to the former and the women to the latter
+institution.
+
+That morning at sunrise great confusion prevailed in the sand-covered
+courtyard of Our Lady of Dolours, at the door of which a couple of
+priests were mounting guard. The temporary staff, with its formidable
+supply of registers, cards, and printed formulas, had installed itself in
+one of the ground-floor rooms on the previous day. The managers were
+desirous of greatly improving upon the organisation of the preceding
+year. The lower wards were this time to be reserved to the most helpless
+sufferers; and in order to prevent a repetition of the cases of mistaken
+identity which had occurred in the past, very great care was to be taken
+in filling in and distributing the admission cards, each of which bore
+the name of a ward and the number of a bed. It became difficult, however,
+to act in accordance with these good intentions in presence of the
+torrent of ailing beings which the white train had brought to Lourdes,
+and the new formalities so complicated matters that the patients had to
+be deposited in the courtyard as they arrived, to wait there until it
+became possible to admit them in something like an orderly manner. It was
+the scene witnessed at the railway station all over again, the same
+woeful camping in the open, whilst the bearers and the young seminarists
+who acted as the secretary’s assistants ran hither and thither in
+bewilderment.
+
+“We have been over-ambitious, we wanted to do things too well!” exclaimed
+Baron Suire in despair.
+
+There was much truth in his remark, for never had a greater number of
+useless precautions been taken, and they now discovered that, by some
+inexplicable error, they had allotted not the lower--but the
+higher-placed wards to the patients whom it was most difficult to move.
+It was impossible to begin the classification afresh, however, and so as
+in former years things must be allowed to take their course, in a
+haphazard way. The distribution of the cards began, a young priest at the
+same time entering each patient’s name and address in a register.
+Moreover, all the _hospitalisation_ cards bearing the patients’ names and
+numbers had to be produced, so that the names of the wards and the
+numbers of the beds might be added to them; and all these formalities
+greatly protracted the _défile_.
+
+Then there was an endless coming and going from the top to the bottom of
+the building, and from one to the other end of each of its four floors.
+M. Sabathier was one of the first to secure admittance, being placed in a
+ground-floor room which was known as the Family Ward. Sick men were there
+allowed to have their wives with them; but to the other wards of the
+hospital only women were admitted. Brother Isidore, it is true, was
+accompanied by his sister; however, by a special favour it was agreed
+that they should be considered as conjoints, and the missionary was
+accordingly placed in the bed next to that allotted to M. Sabathier. The
+chapel, still littered with plaster and with its unfinished windows
+boarded up, was close at hand. There were also various wards in an
+unfinished state; still these were filled with mattresses, on which
+sufferers were rapidly placed. All those who could walk, however, were
+already besieging the refectory, a long gallery whose broad windows
+looked into an inner courtyard; and the Saint-Frai Sisters, who managed
+the hospital at other times, and had remained to attend to the cooking,
+began to distribute bowls of coffee and chocolate among the poor women
+whom the terrible journey had exhausted.
+
+“Rest yourselves and try to gain a little strength,” repeated Baron
+Suire, who was ever on the move, showing himself here, there, and
+everywhere in rapid succession. “You have three good hours before you, it
+is not yet five, and their reverences have given orders that you are not
+to be taken to the Grotto until eight o’clock, so as to avoid any
+excessive fatigue.”
+
+Meanwhile, up above on the second floor, Madame de Jonquière had been one
+of the first to take possession of the Sainte-Honorine Ward of which she
+was the superintendent. She had been obliged to leave her daughter
+Raymonde downstairs, for the regulations did not allow young girls to
+enter the wards, where they might have witnessed sights that were
+scarcely proper or else too horrible for such eyes as theirs. Raymonde
+had therefore remained in the refectory as a helper; however, little
+Madame Désagneaux, being a lady-hospitaller, had not left the
+superintendent, and was already asking her for orders, in her delight
+that she should at last be able to render some assistance.
+
+“Are all these beds properly made, madame?” she inquired; “perhaps I had
+better make them afresh with Sister Hyacinthe.”
+
+The ward, whose walls were painted a light yellow, and whose few windows
+admitted but little light from an inner yard, contained fifteen beds,
+standing in two rows against the walls.
+
+“We will see by-and-by,” replied Madame de Jonquière with an absorbed
+air. She was busy counting the beds and examining the long narrow
+apartment. And this accomplished she added in an undertone: “I shall
+never have room enough. They say that I must accommodate twenty-three
+patients. We shall have to put some mattresses down.”
+
+Sister Hyacinthe, who had followed the ladies after leaving Sister
+Saint-François and Sister Claire des Anges in a small adjoining apartment
+which was being transformed into a linen-room, then began to lift up the
+coverlets and examine the bedding. And she promptly reassured Madame
+Désagneaux with regard to her surmises. “Oh! the beds are properly made,”
+ she said; “everything is very clean too. One can see that the Saint-Frai
+Sisters have attended to things themselves. The reserve mattresses are in
+the next room, however, and if madame will lend me a hand we can place
+some of them between the beds at once.
+
+“Oh, certainly!” exclaimed young Madame Désagneaux, quite excited by the
+idea of carrying mattresses about with her weak slender arms.
+
+It became necessary for Madame de Jonquière to calm her. “By-and-by,”
+ said the lady-superintendent; “there is no hurry. Let us wait till our
+patients arrive. I don’t much like this ward, it is so difficult to air.
+Last year I had the Sainte-Rosalie Ward on the first floor. However, we
+will organise matters, all the same.”
+
+Some other lady-hospitallers were now arriving, quite a hiveful of busy
+bees, all eager to start on their work. The confusion which so often
+arose was, in fact, increased by the excessive number of nurses, women of
+the aristocracy and upper-middle class, with whose fervent zeal some
+little vanity was blended. There were more than two hundred of them, and
+as each had to make a donation on joining the Hospitality of Our Lady of
+Salvation, the managers did not dare to refuse any applicants, for fear
+lest they might check the flow of alms-giving. Thus the number of
+lady-hospitallers increased year by year. Fortunately there were among
+them some who cared for nothing beyond the privilege of wearing the red
+cloth cross, and who started off on excursions as soon as they reached
+Lourdes. Still it must be acknowledged that those who devoted themselves
+were really deserving, for they underwent five days of awful fatigue,
+sleeping scarcely a couple of hours each night, and living in the midst
+of the most terrible and repulsive spectacles. They witnessed the death
+agonies, dressed the pestilential sores, cleaned up, changed linen,
+turned the sufferers over in their beds, went through a sickening and
+overwhelming labour to which they were in no wise accustomed. And thus
+they emerged from it aching all over, tired to death, with feverish eyes
+flaming with the joy of the charity which so excited them.
+
+“And Madame Volmar?” suddenly asked Madame Désagneaux. “I thought we
+should find her here.”
+
+This was apparently a subject which Madame de Jonquière did not care to
+have discussed; for, as though she were aware of the truth and wished to
+bury it in silence, with the indulgence of a woman who compassionates
+human wretchedness, she promptly retorted: “Madame Volmar isn’t strong,
+she must have gone to the hotel to rest. We must let her sleep.”
+
+Then she apportioned the beds among the ladies present, allotting two to
+each of them; and this done they all finished taking possession of the
+place, hastening up and down and backwards and forwards in order to
+ascertain where the offices, the linen-room, and the kitchens were
+situated.
+
+“And the dispensary?” then asked one of the ladies.
+
+But there was no dispensary. There was no medical staff even. What would
+have been the use of any?--since the patients were those whom science had
+given up, despairing creatures who had come to beg of God the cure which
+powerless men were unable to promise them. Logically enough, all
+treatment was suspended during the pilgrimage. If a patient seemed likely
+to die, extreme unction was administered. The only medical man about the
+place was the young doctor who had come by the white train with his
+little medicine chest; and his intervention was limited to an endeavour
+to assuage the sufferings of those patients who chanced to ask for him
+during an attack.
+
+As it happened, Sister Hyacinthe was just bringing Ferrand, whom Sister
+Saint-François had kept with her in a closet near the linen-room which he
+proposed to make his quarters. “Madame,” said he to Madame de Jonquière,
+“I am entirely at your disposal. In case of need you will only have to
+ring for me.”
+
+She barely listened to him, however, engaged as she was in a quarrel with
+a young priest belonging to the management with reference to a deficiency
+of certain utensils. “Certainly, monsieur, if we should need a soothing
+draught,” she answered, and then, reverting to her discussion, she went
+on: “Well, Monsieur l’Abbé, you must certainly get me four or five more.
+How can we possibly manage with so few? Things are bad enough as it is.”
+
+Ferrand looked and listened, quite bewildered by the extraordinary
+behaviour of the people amongst whom he had been thrown by chance since
+the previous day. He who did not believe, who was only present out of
+friendship and charity, was amazed at this extraordinary scramble of
+wretchedness and suffering rushing towards the hope of happiness. And, as
+a medical man of the new school, he was altogether upset by the careless
+neglect of precautions, the contempt which was shown for the most simple
+teachings of science, in the certainty which was apparently felt that, if
+Heaven should so will it, cure would supervene, sudden and resounding,
+like a lie given to the very laws of nature. But if this were the case,
+what was the use of that last concession to human prejudices--why engage
+a doctor for the journey if none were wanted? At this thought the young
+man returned to his little room, experiencing a vague feeling of shame as
+he realised that his presence was useless, and even a trifle ridiculous.
+
+“Get some opium pills ready all the same,” said Sister Hyacinthe, as she
+went back with him as far as the linen-room. “You will be asked for some,
+for I feel anxious about some of the patients.”
+
+While speaking she looked at him with her large blue eyes, so gentle and
+so kind, and ever lighted by a divine smile. The constant exercise which
+she gave herself brought the rosy flush of her quick blood to her skin
+all dazzling with youthfulness. And like a good friend who was willing
+that he should share the work to which she gave her heart, she added:
+“Besides, if I should need somebody to get a patient in or out of bed,
+you will help me, won’t you?”
+
+Thereupon, at the idea that he might be of use to her, he was pleased
+that he had come and was there. In his mind’s eye, he again beheld her at
+his bedside, at the time when he had so narrowly escaped death, nursing
+him with fraternal hands, with the smiling, compassionate grace of a
+sexless angel, in whom there was something more than a comrade, something
+of a woman left. However, the thought never occurred to him that there
+was religion, belief, behind her.
+
+“Oh! I will help you as much as you like, Sister,” he replied. “I belong
+to you, I shall be so happy to serve you. You know very well what a debt
+of gratitude I have to pay you.”
+
+In a pretty way she raised her finger to her lips so as to silence him.
+Nobody owed her anything. She was merely the servant of the ailing and
+the poor.
+
+At this moment a first patient was making her entry into the
+Sainte-Honorine Ward. It was Marie, lying in her wooden box, which
+Pierre, with Gérard’s assistance, had just brought up-stairs. The last to
+start from the railway station, she had secured admission before the
+others, thanks to the endless complications which, after keeping them all
+in suspense, now freed them according to the chance distribution of the
+admission cards. M. de Guersaint had quitted his daughter at the hospital
+door by her own desire; for, fearing the hotels would be very full, she
+had wished him to secure two rooms for himself and Pierre at once. Then,
+on reaching the ward, she felt so weary that, after venting her chagrin
+at not being immediately taken to the Grotto, she consented to be laid on
+a bed for a short time.
+
+“Come, my child,” repeated Madame de Jonquière, “you have three hours
+before you. We will put you to bed. It will ease you to take you out of
+that case.”
+
+Thereupon the lady-superintendent raised her by the shoulders, whilst
+Sister Hyacinthe held her feet. The bed was in the central part of the
+ward, near a window. For a moment the poor girl remained on it with her
+eyes closed, as though exhausted by being moved about so much. Then it
+became necessary that Pierre should be readmitted, for she grew very
+fidgety, saying that there were things which she must explain to him.
+
+“Pray don’t go away, my friend,” she exclaimed when he approached her.
+“Take the case out on to the landing, but stay there, because I want to
+be taken down as soon as I can get permission.”
+
+“Do you feel more comfortable now?” asked the young priest.
+
+“Yes, no doubt--but I really don’t know. I so much want to be taken
+yonder to the Blessed Virgin’s feet.”
+
+However, when Pierre had removed the case, the successive arrivals of the
+other patients supplied her with some little diversion. Madame Vetu, whom
+two bearers had brought up-stairs, holding her under the arms, was laid,
+fully dressed, on the next bed, where she remained motionless, scarce
+breathing, with her heavy, yellow, cancerous mask. None of the patients,
+it should be mentioned, were divested of their clothes, they were simply
+stretched out on the beds, and advised to go to sleep if they could
+manage to do so. Those whose complaints were less grievous contented
+themselves with sitting down on their mattresses, chatting together, and
+putting the things they had brought with them in order. For instance,
+Elise Rouquet, who was also near Marie, on the other side of the latter’s
+bed, opened her basket to take a clean fichu out of it, and seemed sorely
+annoyed at having no hand-glass with her. In less than ten minutes all
+the beds were occupied, so that when La Grivotte appeared, half carried
+by Sister Hyacinthe and Sister Claire des Anges, it became necessary to
+place some mattresses on the floor.
+
+“Here! here is one,” exclaimed Madame Désagneaux; “she will be very well
+here, out of the draught from the door.”
+
+Seven other mattresses were soon added in a line, occupying the space
+between the rows of beds, so that it became difficult to move about. One
+had to be very careful, and follow narrow pathways which had been left
+between the beds and the mattresses. Each of the patients had retained
+possession of her parcel, or box, or bag, and round about the improvised
+shakedowns were piles of poor old things, sorry remnants of garments,
+straying among the sheets and the coverlets. You might have thought
+yourself in some woeful infirmary, hastily organised after some great
+catastrophe, some conflagration or earthquake which had thrown hundreds
+of wounded and penniless beings into the streets.
+
+Madame de Jonquière made her way from one to the other end of the ward,
+ever and ever repeating, “Come, my children, don’t excite yourselves; try
+to sleep a little.”
+
+However, she did not succeed in calming them, and indeed, she herself,
+like the other lady-hospitallers under her orders, increased the general
+fever by her own bewilderment. The linen of several patients had to be
+changed, and there were other needs to be attended to. One woman,
+suffering from an ulcer in the leg, began moaning so dreadfully that
+Madame Désagneaux undertook to dress her sore afresh; but she was not
+skilful, and despite all her passionate courage she almost fainted, so
+greatly was she distressed by the unbearable odour. Those patients who
+were in better health asked for broth, bowlfuls of which began to
+circulate amidst the calls, the answers, and the contradictory orders
+which nobody executed. And meanwhile, let loose amidst this frightful
+scramble, little Sophie Couteau, who remained with the Sisters, and was
+very gay, imagined that it was playtime, and ran, and jumped, and hopped
+in turn, called and petted first by one and then by another, dear as she
+was to all alike for the miraculous hope which she brought them.
+
+However, amidst this agitation, the hours went by. Seven o’clock had just
+struck when Abbé Judaine came in. He was the chaplain of the
+Sainte-Honorine Ward, and only the difficulty of finding an unoccupied
+altar at which he might say his mass had delayed his arrival. As soon as
+he appeared, a cry of impatience arose from every bed.
+
+“Oh! Monsieur le Curé, let us start, let us start at once!”
+
+An ardent desire, which each passing minute heightened and irritated, was
+upbuoying them, like a more and more devouring thirst, which only the
+waters of the miraculous fountain could appease. And more fervently than
+any of the others, La Grivotte, sitting up on her mattress, and joining
+her hands, begged and begged that she might be taken to the Grotto. Was
+there not a beginning of the miracle in this--in this awakening of her
+will power, this feverish desire for cure which enabled her to set
+herself erect? Inert and fainting on her arrival, she was now seated,
+turning her dark glances in all directions, waiting and watching for the
+happy moment when she would be removed. And colour also was returning to
+her livid face. She was already resuscitating.
+
+“Oh! Monsieur le Curé, pray do tell them to take me--I feel that I shall
+be cured,” she exclaimed.
+
+With a loving, fatherly smile on his good-natured face, Abbé Judaine
+listened to them all, and allayed their impatience with kind words. They
+would soon set out; but they must be reasonable, and allow sufficient
+time for things to be organised; and besides, the Blessed Virgin did not
+like to have violence done her; she bided her time, and distributed her
+divine favours among those who behaved themselves the best.
+
+As he paused before Marie’s bed and beheld her, stammering entreaties
+with joined hands, he again paused. “And you, too, my daughter, you are
+in a hurry?” he said. “Be easy, there is grace enough in heaven for you
+all.”
+
+“I am dying of love, Father,” she murmured in reply. “My heart is so
+swollen with prayers, it stifles me--”
+
+He was greatly touched by the passion of this poor emaciated child, so
+harshly stricken in her youth and beauty, and wishing to appease her, he
+called her attention to Madame Vetu, who did not move, though with her
+eyes wide open she stared at all who passed.
+
+“Look at madame, how quiet she is!” he said. “She is meditating, and she
+does right to place herself in God’s hands, like a little child.”
+
+However, in a scarcely audible voice, a mere breath, Madame Vetu
+stammered: “Oh! I am suffering, I am suffering.”
+
+At last, at a quarter to eight o’clock, Madame de Jonquière warned her
+charges that they would do well to prepare themselves. She herself,
+assisted by Sister Hyacinthe and Madame Désagneaux, buttoned several
+dresses, and put shoes on impotent feet. It was a real toilette, for they
+all desired to appear to the greatest advantage before the Blessed
+Virgin. A large number had sufficient sense of delicacy to wash their
+hands. Others unpacked their parcels, and put on clean linen. On her
+side, Elise Rouquet had ended by discovering a little pocket-glass in the
+hands of a woman near her, a huge, dropsical creature, who was very
+coquettish; and having borrowed it, she leant it against the bolster, and
+then, with infinite care, began to fasten her fichu as elegantly as
+possible about her head, in order to hide her distorted features.
+Meanwhile, erect in front of her, little Sophie watched her with an air
+of profound interest.
+
+It was Abbé Judaine who gave the signal for starting on the journey to
+the Grotto. He wished, he said, to accompany his dear suffering daughters
+thither, whilst the lady-hospitallers and the Sisters remained in the
+ward, so as to put things in some little order again. Then the ward was
+at once emptied, the patients being carried down-stairs amidst renewed
+tumult. And Pierre, having replaced Marie’s box upon its wheels, took the
+first place in the _cortège_, which was formed of a score of little
+handcarts, bath-chairs, and litters. The other wards, however, were also
+emptying, the courtyard became crowded, and the _défile_ was organised in
+haphazard fashion. There was soon an interminable train descending the
+rather steep slope of the Avenue de la Grotte, so that Pierre was already
+reaching the Plateau de la Merlasse when the last stretchers were barely
+leaving the precincts of the hospital.
+
+It was eight o’clock, and the sun, already high, a triumphant August sun,
+was flaming in the great sky, which was beautifully clear. It seemed as
+if the blue of the atmosphere, cleansed by the storm of the previous
+night, were quite new, fresh with youth. And the frightful _défile_, a
+perfect “Cour des Miracles” of human woe, rolled along the sloping
+pavement amid all the brilliancy of that radiant morning. There was no
+end to the train of abominations; it appeared to grow longer and longer.
+No order was observed, ailments of all kinds were jumbled together; it
+seemed like the clearing of some inferno where the most monstrous
+maladies, the rare and awful cases which provoke a shudder, had been
+gathered together. Eczema, roseola, elephantiasis, presented a long array
+of doleful victims. Well-nigh vanished diseases reappeared; one old woman
+was affected with leprosy, another was, covered with impetiginous lichen
+like a tree which has rotted in the shade. Then came the dropsical ones,
+inflated like wine-skins; and beside some stretchers there dangled hands
+twisted by rheumatism, while from others protruded feet swollen by œdema
+beyond all recognition, looking, in fact, like bags full of rags. One
+woman, suffering from hydrocephalus, sat in a little cart, the dolorous
+motions of her head bespeaking her grievous malady. A tall girl afflicted
+with chorea--St. Vitus’s dance--was dancing with every limb, without a
+pause, the left side of her face being continually distorted by sudden,
+convulsive grimaces. A younger one, who followed, gave vent to a bark, a
+kind of plaintive animal cry, each time that the tic douloureux which was
+torturing her twisted her mouth and her right cheek, which she seemed to
+throw forward. Next came the consumptives, trembling with fever,
+exhausted by dysentery, wasted to skeletons, with livid skins, recalling
+the colour of that earth in which they would soon be laid to rest; and
+there was one among them who was quite white, with flaming eyes, who
+looked indeed like a death’s head in which a torch had been lighted. Then
+every deformity of the contractions followed in succession--twisted
+trunks, twisted arms, necks askew, all the distortions of poor creatures
+whom nature had warped and broken; and among these was one whose right
+hand was thrust back behind her ribs whilst her head fell to the left
+resting fixedly upon her shoulder. Afterwards came poor rachitic girls
+displaying waxen complexions and slender necks eaten away by sores, and
+yellow-faced women in the painful stupor which falls on those whose
+bosoms are devoured by cancers; whilst others, lying down with their
+mournful eyes gazing heavenwards, seemed to be listening to the throbs of
+the tumours which obstructed their organs. And still more and more went
+by; there was always something more frightful to come; this woman
+following that other one increased the general shudder of horror. From
+the neck of a girl of twenty who had a crushed, flattened head like a
+toad’s, there hung so large a goitre that it fell even to her waist like
+the bib of an apron. A blind woman walked along, her head erect, her face
+pale like marble, displaying the acute inflammation of her poor,
+ulcerated eyes. An aged woman stricken with imbecility, afflicted with
+dreadful facial disfigurements, laughed aloud with a terrifying laugh.
+And all at once an epileptic was seized with convulsions, and began
+foaming on her stretcher, without, however, causing any stoppage of the
+procession, which never slackened its march, lashed onward as it was by
+the blizzard of feverish passion which impelled it towards the Grotto.
+
+The bearers, the priests, and the ailing ones themselves had just
+intonated a canticle, the song of Bernadette, and all rolled along amid
+the besetting “Aves,” so that the little carts, the litters, and the
+pedestrians descended the sloping road like a swollen and overflowing
+torrent of roaring water. At the corner of the Rue Saint-Joseph, near the
+Plateau de la Merlasse, a family of excursionists, who had come from
+Cauterets or Bagnères, stood at the edge of the footway, overcome with
+profound astonishment. These people were evidently well-to-do
+_bourgeois_, the father and mother very correct in appearance and
+demeanour, while their two big girls, attired in light-coloured dresses,
+had the smiling faces of happy creatures who are amusing themselves. But
+their first feeling of surprise was soon followed by terror, a growing
+terror, as if they beheld the opening of some pesthouse of ancient times,
+some hospital of the legendary ages, evacuated after a great epidemic.
+The two girls became quite pale, while the father and the mother felt icy
+cold in presence of that endless _défile_ of so many horrors, the
+pestilential emanations of which were blown full in their faces. O God!
+to think that such hideousness, such filth, such suffering, should exist!
+Was it possible--under that magnificently radiant sun, under those broad
+heavens so full of light and joy whither the freshness of the Gave’s
+waters ascended, and the breeze of morning wafted the pure perfumes of
+the mountains!
+
+When Pierre, at the head of the _cortège_, reached the Plateau de la
+Merlasse, he found himself immersed in that clear sunlight, that fresh
+and balmy air. He turned round and smiled affectionately at Marie; and as
+they came out on the Place du Rosaire in the morning splendour, they were
+both enchanted with the lovely panorama which spread around them.
+
+In front, on the east, was Old Lourdes, lying in a broad fold of the
+ground beyond a rock. The sun was rising behind the distant mountains,
+and its oblique rays clearly outlined the dark lilac mass of that
+solitary rock, which was crowned by the tower and crumbling walls of the
+ancient castle, once the redoubtable key of the seven valleys. Through
+the dancing, golden dust you discerned little of the ruined pile except
+some stately outlines, some huge blocks of building which looked as
+though reared by Cyclopean hands; and beyond the rock you but vaguely
+distinguished the discoloured, intermingled house-roofs of the old town.
+Nearer in than the castle, however, the new town--the rich and noisy city
+which had sprung up in a few years as though by miracle--spread out on
+either hand, displaying its hotels, its stylish shops, its lodging-houses
+all with white fronts smiling amidst patches of greenery. Then there was
+the Gave flowing along at the base of the rock, rolling clamorous, clear
+waters, now blue and now green, now deep as they passed under the old
+bridge, and now leaping as they careered under the new one, which the
+Fathers of the Immaculate Conception had built in order to connect the
+Grotto with the railway station and the recently opened Boulevard. And as
+a background to this delightful picture, this fresh water, this greenery,
+this gay, scattered, rejuvenated town, the little and the big Gers arose,
+two huge ridges of bare rock and low herbage, which, in the projected
+shade that bathed them, assumed delicate tints of pale mauve and green,
+fading softly into pink.
+
+Then, upon the north, on the right bank of the Gave, beyond the hills
+followed by the railway line, the heights of La Buala ascended, their
+wooded slopes radiant in the morning light. On that side lay Bartres.
+More to the left arose the Serre de Julos, dominated by the Miramont.
+Other crests, far off, faded away into the ether. And in the foreground,
+rising in tiers among the grassy valleys beyond the Gave, a number of
+convents, which seemed to have sprung up in this region of prodigies like
+early vegetation, imparted some measure of life to the landscape. First,
+there was an Orphan Asylum founded by the Sisters of Nevers, whose vast
+buildings shone brightly in the sunlight. Next came the Carmelite
+convent, on the highway to Pau, just in front of the Grotto; and then
+that of the Assumptionists higher up, skirting the road to Poueyferre;
+whilst the Dominicans showed but a corner of their roofs, sequestered in
+the far-away solitude. And at last appeared the establishment of the
+Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, those who were called the Blue
+Sisters, and who had founded at the far end of the valley a home where
+they received well-to-do lady pilgrims, desirous of solitude, as
+boarders.
+
+At that early hour all the bells of these convents were pealing joyfully
+in the crystalline atmosphere, whilst the bells of other convents, on the
+other, the southern horizon, answered them with the same silvery strains
+of joy. The bell of the nunnery of Sainte Clarissa, near the old bridge,
+rang a scale of gay, clear notes, which one might have fancied to be the
+chirruping of a bird. And on this side of the town, also, there were
+valleys that dipped down between the ridges, and mountains that upreared
+their bare sides, a commingling of smiling and of agitated nature, an
+endless surging of heights amongst which you noticed those of Visens,
+whose slopes the sunlight tinged ornately with soft blue and carmine of a
+rippling, moire-like effect.
+
+However, when Marie and Pierre turned their eyes to the west, they were
+quite dazzled. The sun rays were here streaming on the large and the
+little Bêout with their cupolas of unequal height. And on this side the
+background was one of gold and purple, a dazzling mountain on whose sides
+one could only discern the road which snaked between the trees on its way
+to the Calvary above. And here, too, against the sunlit background,
+radiant like an aureola, stood out the three superposed churches which at
+the voice of Bernadette had sprung from the rock to the glory of the
+Blessed Virgin. First of all, down below, came the church of the Rosary,
+squat, circular, and half cut out of the rock, at the farther end of an
+esplanade on either side of which, like two huge arms, were colossal
+gradient ways ascending gently to the Crypt church. Vast labour had been
+expended here, a quarryful of stones had been cut and set in position,
+there were arches as lofty as naves supporting the gigantic terraced
+avenues which had been constructed so that the processions might roll
+along in all their pomp, and the little conveyances containing sick
+children might ascend without hindrance to the divine presence. Then came
+the Crypt, the subterranean church within the rock, with only its low
+door visible above the church of the Rosary, whose paved roof, with its
+vast promenade, formed a continuation of the terraced inclines. And at
+last, from the summit sprang the Basilica, somewhat slender and frail,
+recalling some finely chased jewel of the Renascence, and looking very
+new and very white--like a prayer, a spotless dove, soaring aloft from
+the rocks of Massabielle. The spire, which appeared the more delicate and
+slight when compared with the gigantic inclines below, seemed like the
+little vertical flame of a taper set in the midst of the vast landscape,
+those endless waves of valleys and mountains. By the side, too, of the
+dense greenery of the Calvary hill, it looked fragile and candid, like
+childish faith; and at sight of it you instinctively thought of the
+little white arm, the little thin hand of the puny girl, who had here
+pointed to Heaven in the crisis of her human sufferings. You could not
+see the Grotto, the entrance of which was on the left, at the base of the
+rock. Beyond the Basilica, the only buildings which caught the eye were
+the heavy square pile where the Fathers of the Immaculate Conception had
+their abode, and the episcopal palace, standing much farther away, in a
+spreading, wooded valley. And the three churches were flaming in the
+morning glow, and the rain of gold scattered by the sun rays was sweeping
+the whole countryside, whilst the flying peals of the bells seemed to be
+the very vibration of the light, the musical awakening of the lovely day
+that was now beginning.
+
+Whilst crossing the Place du Rosaire, Pierre and Marie glanced at the
+Esplanade, the public walk with its long central lawn skirted by broad
+parallel paths and extending as far as the new bridge. Here, with face
+turned towards the Basilica, was the great crowned statue of the Virgin.
+All the sufferers crossed themselves as they went by. And still
+passionately chanting its canticle, the fearful _cortège_ rolled on,
+through nature in festive array. Under the dazzling sky, past the
+mountains of gold and purple, amidst the centenarian trees, symbolical of
+health, the running waters whose freshness was eternal, that _cortège_
+still and ever marched on with its sufferers, whom nature, if not God,
+had condemned, those who were afflicted with skin diseases, those whose
+flesh was eaten away, those who were dropsical and inflated like
+wine-skins, and those whom rheumatism and paralysis had twisted into
+postures of agony. And the victims of hydrocephalus followed, with the
+dancers of St. Vitus, the consumptives, the rickety, the epileptic, the
+cancerous, the goitrous, the blind, the mad, and the idiotic. “Ave, ave,
+ave, Maria!” they sang; and the stubborn plaint acquired increased
+volume, as nearer and nearer to the Grotto it bore that abominable
+torrent of human wretchedness and pain, amidst all the fright and horror
+of the passers-by, who stopped short, unable to stir, their hearts frozen
+as this nightmare swept before their eyes.
+
+Pierre and Marie were the first to pass under the lofty arcade of one of
+the terraced inclines. And then, as they followed the quay of the Gave,
+they all at once came upon the Grotto. And Marie, whom Pierre wheeled as
+near to the railing as possible, was only able to raise herself in her
+little conveyance, and murmur: “O most Blessed Virgin, Virgin most
+loved!”
+
+She had seen neither the entrances to the piscinas nor the twelve-piped
+fountain, which she had just passed; nor did she distinguish any better
+the shop on her left hand where crucifixes, chaplets, statuettes,
+pictures, and other religious articles were sold, or the stone pulpit on
+her right which Father Massias already occupied. Her eyes were dazzled by
+the splendour of the Grotto; it seemed to her as if a hundred thousand
+tapers were burning there behind the railing, filling the low entrance
+with the glow of a furnace and illuminating, as with star rays, the
+statue of the Virgin, which stood, higher up, at the edge of a narrow
+ogive-like cavity. And for her, apart from that glorious apparition,
+nothing existed there, neither the crutches with which a part of the
+vault had been covered, nor the piles of bouquets fading away amidst the
+ivy and the eglantine, nor even the altar placed in the centre near a
+little portable organ over which a cover had been thrown. However, as she
+raised her eyes above the rock, she once more beheld the slender white
+Basilica profiled against the sky, its slight, tapering spire soaring
+into the azure of the Infinite like a prayer.
+
+“O Virgin most powerful--Queen of the Virgins--Holy Virgin of Virgins!”
+
+Pierre had now succeeded in wheeling Marie’s box to the front rank,
+beyond the numerous oak benches which were set out here in the open air
+as in the nave of a church. Nearly all these benches were already
+occupied by those sufferers who could sit down, while the vacant spaces
+were soon filled with litters and little vehicles whose wheels became
+entangled together, and on whose close-packed mattresses and pillows all
+sorts of diseases were gathered pell-mell. Immediately on arriving, the
+young priest had recognised the Vignerons seated with their sorry child
+Gustave in the middle of a bench, and now, on the flagstones, he caught
+sight of the lace-trimmed bed of Madame Dieulafay, beside whom her
+husband and sister knelt in prayer. Moreover, all the patients of Madame
+de Jonquière’s carriage took up position here--M. Sabathier and Brother
+Isidore side by side, Madame Vetu reclining hopelessly in a conveyance,
+Elise Rouquet seated, La Grivotte excited and raising herself on her
+clenched hands. Pierre also again perceived Madame Maze, standing
+somewhat apart from the others, and humbling herself in prayer; whilst
+Madame Vincent, who had fallen on her knees, still holding her little
+Rose in her arms, presented the child to the Virgin with ardent entreaty,
+the distracted gesture of a mother soliciting compassion from the mother
+of divine grace. And around this reserved space was the ever-growing
+throng of pilgrims, the pressing, jostling mob which gradually stretched
+to the parapet overlooking the Gave.
+
+“O Virgin most merciful,” continued Marie in an undertone, “Virgin most
+faithful, Virgin conceived without sin!”
+
+Then, almost fainting, she spoke no more, but with her lips still moving,
+as though in silent prayer, gazed distractedly at Pierre. He thought that
+she wished to speak to him and leant forward: “Shall I remain here at
+your disposal to take you to the piscina by-and-by?” he asked.
+
+But as soon as she understood him she shook her head. And then in a
+feverish way she said: “No, no, I don’t want to be bathed this morning.
+It seems to me that one must be truly worthy, truly pure, truly holy
+before seeking the miracle! I want to spend the whole morning in
+imploring it with joined hands; I want to pray, to pray with all my
+strength and all my soul--” She was stifling, and paused. Then she added:
+“Don’t come to take me back to the hospital till eleven o’clock. I will
+not let them take me from here till then.”
+
+However, Pierre did not go away, but remained near her. For a moment, he
+even fell upon his knees; he also would have liked to pray with the same
+burning faith, to beg of God the cure of that poor sick child, whom he
+loved with such fraternal affection. But since he had reached the Grotto
+he had felt a singular sensation invading him, a covert revolt, as it
+were, which hampered the pious flight of his prayer. He wished to
+believe; he had spent the whole night hoping that belief would once more
+blossom in his soul, like some lovely flower of innocence and candour, as
+soon as he should have knelt upon the soil of that land of miracle. And
+yet he only experienced discomfort and anxiety in presence of the
+theatrical scene before him, that pale stiff statue in the false light of
+the tapers, with the chaplet shop full of jostling customers on the one
+hand, and the large stone pulpit whence a Father of the Assumption was
+shouting “Aves” on the other. Had his soul become utterly withered then?
+Could no divine dew again impregnate it with innocence, render it like
+the souls of little children, who at the slightest caressing touch of the
+sacred legend give themselves to it entirely?
+
+Then, while his thoughts were still wandering, he recognised Father
+Massias in the ecclesiastic who occupied the pulpit. He had formerly
+known him, and was quite stirred by his sombre ardour, by the sight of
+his thin face and sparkling eyes, by the eloquence which poured from his
+large mouth as he offered violence to Heaven to compel it to descend upon
+earth. And whilst he thus examined Father Massias, astonished at feeling
+himself so unlike the preacher, he caught sight of Father Fourcade, who,
+at the foot of the pulpit, was deep in conference with Baron Suire. The
+latter seemed much perplexed by something which Father Fourcade said to
+him; however he ended by approving it with a complaisant nod. Then, as
+Abbé Judaine was also standing there, Father Fourcade likewise spoke to
+him for a moment, and a scared expression came over the Abbé’s broad,
+fatherly face while he listened; nevertheless, like the Baron, he at last
+bowed assent.
+
+Then, all at once, Father Fourcade appeared in the pulpit, erect, drawing
+up his lofty figure which his attack of gout had slightly bent; and he
+had not wished that Father Massias, his well-loved brother, whom he
+preferred above all others, should altogether go down the narrow
+stairway, for he had kept him upon one of the steps, and was leaning on
+his shoulder. And in a full, grave voice, with an air of sovereign
+authority which caused perfect silence to reign around, he spoke as
+follows:
+
+“My dear brethren, my dear sisters, I ask your forgiveness for
+interrupting your prayers, but I have a communication to make to you, and
+I have to ask the help of all your faithful souls. We had a very sad
+accident to deplore this morning, one of our brethren died in one of the
+trains by which you came to Lourdes, died just as he was about to set
+foot in the promised land.”
+
+A brief pause followed and Father Fourcade seemed to become yet taller,
+his handsome face beaming with fervour, amidst his long, streaming, royal
+beard.
+
+“Well, my dear brethren, my dear sisters,” he resumed, “in spite of
+everything, the idea has come to me that we ought not to despair. Who
+knows if God Almighty did not will that death in order that He might
+prove His Omnipotence to the world? It is as though a voice were speaking
+to me, urging me to ascend this pulpit and ask your prayers for this man,
+this man who is no more, but whose life is nevertheless in the hands of
+the most Blessed Virgin who can still implore her Divine Son in his
+favour. Yes, the man is here, I have caused his body to be brought
+hither, and it depends on you, perhaps, whether a brilliant miracle shall
+dazzle the universe, if you pray with sufficient ardour to touch the
+compassion of Heaven. We will plunge the man’s body into the piscina and
+we will entreat the Lord, the master of the world, to resuscitate him, to
+give unto us this extraordinary sign of His sovereign beneficence!”
+
+An icy thrill, wafted from the Invisible, passed through the listeners.
+They had all become pale, and though the lips of none of them had opened,
+it seemed as if a murmur sped through their ranks amidst a shudder.
+
+“But with what ardour must we not pray!” violently resumed Father
+Fourcade, exalted by genuine faith. “It is your souls, your whole souls,
+that I ask of you, my dear brothers, my dear sisters, it is a prayer in
+which you must put your hearts, your blood, your very life with whatever
+may be most noble and loving in it! Pray with all your strength, pray
+till you no longer know who you are, or where you are; pray as one loves,
+pray as one dies, for that which we are about to ask is so precious, so
+rare, so astounding a grace that only the energy of our worship can
+induce God to answer us. And in order that our prayers may be the more
+efficacious, in order that they may have time to spread and ascend to the
+feet of the Eternal Father, we will not lower the body into the piscina
+until four o’clock this afternoon. And now my dear brethren, now my dear
+sisters, pray, pray to the most Blessed Virgin, the Queen of the Angels,
+the Comforter of the Afflicted!”
+
+Then he himself, distracted by emotion, resumed the recital of the
+rosary, whilst near him Father Massias burst into sobs. And thereupon the
+great anxious silence was broken, contagion seized upon the throng, it
+was transported and gave vent to shouts, tears, and confused stammered
+entreaties. It was as though a breath of delirium were sweeping by,
+reducing men’s wills to naught, and turning all these beings into one
+being, exasperated with love and seized with a mad desire for the
+impossible prodigy.
+
+And for a moment Pierre had thought that the ground was giving way
+beneath him, that he was about to fall and faint. But with difficulty he
+managed to rise from his knees and slowly walked away.
+
+
+
+
+III. FOUNTAIN AND PISCINA
+
+As Pierre went off, ill at ease, mastered by invincible repugnance,
+unwilling to remain there any longer, he caught sight of M. de Guersaint,
+kneeling near the Grotto, with the absorbed air of one who is praying
+with his whole soul. The young priest had not seen him since the morning,
+and did not know whether he had managed to secure a couple of rooms in
+one or other of the hotels, so that his first impulse was to go and join
+him. Then, however, he hesitated, unwilling to disturb his meditations,
+for he was doubtless praying for his daughter, whom he fondly loved, in
+spite of the constant absent-mindedness of his volatile brain.
+Accordingly, the young priest passed on, and took his way under the
+trees. Nine o’clock was now striking, he had a couple of hours before
+him.
+
+By dint of money, the wild bank where swine had formerly pastured had
+been transformed into a superb avenue skirting the Gave. It had been
+necessary to put back the river’s bed in order to gain ground, and lay
+out a monumental quay bordered by a broad footway, and protected by a
+parapet. Some two or three hundred yards farther on, a hill brought the
+avenue to an end, and it thus resembled an enclosed promenade, provided
+with benches, and shaded by magnificent trees. Nobody passed along,
+however; merely the overflow of the crowd had settled there, and solitary
+spots still abounded between the grassy wall limiting the promenade on
+the south, and the extensive fields spreading out northward beyond the
+Gave, as far as the wooded slopes which the white-walled convents
+brightened. Under the foliage, on the margin of the running water, one
+could enjoy delightful freshness, even during the burning days of August.
+
+Thus Pierre, like a man at last awakening from a painful dream, soon
+found rest of mind again. He had questioned himself in the acute anxiety
+which he felt with regard to his sensations. Had he not reached Lourdes
+that morning possessed by a genuine desire to believe, an idea that he
+was indeed again beginning to believe even as he had done in the docile
+days of childhood when his mother had made him join his hands, and taught
+him to fear God? Yet as soon as he had found himself at the Grotto, the
+idolatry of the worship, the violence of the display of faith, the
+onslaught upon human reason which he witnessed, had so disturbed him that
+he had almost fainted. What would become of him then? Could he not even
+try to contend against his doubts by examining things and convincing
+himself of their truth, thus turning his journey to profit? At all
+events, he had made a bad beginning, which left him sorely agitated, and
+he indeed needed the environment of those fine trees, that limpid,
+rushing water, that calm, cool avenue, to recover from the shock.
+
+Still pondering, he was approaching the end of the pathway, when he most
+unexpectedly met a forgotten friend. He had, for a few seconds, been
+looking at a tall old gentleman who was coming towards him, dressed in a
+tightly buttoned frock-coat and broad-brimmed hat; and he had tried to
+remember where it was that he had previously beheld that pale face, with
+eagle nose, and black and penetrating eyes. These he had seen before, he
+felt sure of it; but the promenader’s long white beard and long curly
+white hair perplexed him. However, the other halted, also looking
+extremely astonished, though he promptly exclaimed, “What, Pierre? Is it
+you, at Lourdes?”
+
+Then all at once the young priest recognised Doctor Chassaigne, his
+father’s old friend, his own friend, the man who had cured and consoled
+him in the terrible physical and mental crisis which had come upon him
+after his mother’s death.
+
+“Ah! my dear doctor, how pleased I am to see you!” he replied.
+
+They embraced with deep emotion. And now, in presence of that snowy hair
+and snowy beard, that slow walk, that sorrowful demeanour, Pierre
+remembered with what unrelenting ferocity misfortune had fallen on that
+unhappy man and aged him. But a few years had gone by, and now, when they
+met again, he was bowed down by destiny.
+
+“You did not know, I suppose, that I had remained at Lourdes?” said the
+doctor. “It’s true that I no longer write to anybody; in fact, I am no
+longer among the living. I live in the land of the dead.” Tears were
+gathering in his eyes, and emotion made his voice falter as he resumed:
+“There! come and sit down on that bench yonder; it will please me to live
+the old days afresh with you, just for a moment.”
+
+In his turn the young priest felt his sobs choking him. He could only
+murmur: “Ah! my dear doctor, my old friend, I can truly tell you that I
+pitied you with my whole heart, my whole soul.”
+
+Doctor Chassaigne’s story was one of disaster, the shipwreck of a life.
+He and his daughter Marguerite, a tall and lovable girl of twenty, had
+gone to Cauterets with Madame Chassaigne, the model wife and mother,
+whose state of health had made them somewhat anxious. A fortnight had
+elapsed and she seemed much better, and was already planning several
+pleasure trips, when one morning she was found dead in her bed. Her
+husband and daughter were overwhelmed, stupefied by this sudden blow,
+this cruel treachery of death. The doctor, who belonged to Bartres, had a
+family vault in the Lourdes cemetery, a vault constructed at his own
+expense, and in which his father and mother already rested. He desired,
+therefore, that his wife should be interred there, in a compartment
+adjoining that in which he expected soon to lie himself. And after the
+burial he had lingered for a week at Lourdes, when Marguerite, who was
+with him, was seized with a great shivering, and, taking to her bed one
+evening, died two days afterwards without her distracted father being
+able to form any exact notion of the illness which had carried her off.
+And thus it was not himself, but his daughter, lately radiant with beauty
+and health, in the very flower of her youth, who was laid in the vacant
+compartment by the mother’s side. The man who had been so happy, so
+worshipped by his two helpmates, whose heart had been kept so warm by the
+love of two dear creatures all his own, was now nothing more than an old,
+miserable, stammering, lost being, who shivered in his icy solitude. All
+the joy of his life had departed; he envied the men who broke stones upon
+the highways when he saw their barefooted wives and daughters bring them
+their dinners at noontide. And he had refused to leave Lourdes, he had
+relinquished everything, his studies, his practice in Paris, in order
+that he might live near the tomb in which his wife and his daughter slept
+the eternal sleep.
+
+“Ah, my old friend,” repeated Pierre, “how I pitied you! How frightful
+must have been your grief! But why did you not rely a little on those who
+love you? Why did you shut yourself up here with your sorrow?”
+
+The doctor made a gesture which embraced the horizon. “I could not go
+away, they are here and keep me with them. It is all over, I am merely
+waiting till my time comes to join them again.”
+
+Then silence fell. Birds were fluttering among the shrubs on the bank
+behind them, and in front they heard the loud murmur of the Gave. The sun
+rays were falling more heavily in a slow, golden dust, upon the
+hillsides; but on that retired bench under the beautiful trees, the
+coolness was still delightful. And although the crowd was but a couple of
+hundred yards distant, they were, so to say, in a desert, for nobody tore
+himself away from the Grotto to stray as far as the spot which they had
+chosen.
+
+They talked together for a long time, and Pierre related under what
+circumstances he had reached Lourdes that morning with M. de Guersaint
+and his daughter, all three forming part of the national pilgrimage. Then
+all at once he gave a start of astonishment and exclaimed: “What! doctor,
+so you now believe that miracles are possible? You, good heavens! whom I
+knew as an unbeliever, or at least as one altogether indifferent to these
+matters?”
+
+He was gazing at M. Chassaigne quite stupefied by something which he had
+just heard him say of the Grotto and Bernadette. It was amazing, coming
+from a man with so strong a mind, a _savant_ of such intelligence, whose
+powerful analytical faculties he had formerly so much admired! How was it
+that a lofty, clear mind, nourished by experience and method, had become
+so changed as to acknowledge the miraculous cures effected by that divine
+fountain which the Blessed Virgin had caused to spurt forth under the
+pressure of a child’s fingers?
+
+“But just think a little, my dear doctor,” he resumed. “It was you
+yourself who supplied my father with memoranda about Bernadette, your
+little fellow-villager as you used to call her; and it was you, too, who
+spoke to me at such length about her, when, later on, I took a momentary
+interest in her story. In your eyes she was simply an ailing child, prone
+to hallucinations, infantile, but self-conscious of her acts, deficient
+of will-power. Recollect our chats together, my doubts, and the healthy
+reason which you again enabled me, to acquire!”
+
+Pierre was feeling very moved, for was not this the strangest of
+adventures? He a priest, who in a spirit of resignation had formerly
+endeavoured to believe, had ended by completely losing all faith through
+intercourse with this same doctor, who was then an unbeliever, but whom
+he now found converted, conquered by the supernatural, whilst he himself
+was racked by the torture of no longer believing.
+
+“You who would only rely on accurate facts,” he said, “you who based
+everything on observation! Do you renounce science then?”
+
+Chassaigne, hitherto quiet, with a sorrowful smile playing on his lips,
+now made a violent gesture expressive of sovereign contempt. “Science
+indeed!” he exclaimed. “Do I know anything? Can I accomplish anything?
+You asked me just now what malady it was that killed my poor Marguerite.
+But I do not know! I, whom people think so learned, so well armed against
+death, I understood nothing of it, and I could do nothing--not even
+prolong my daughter’s life for a single hour! And my wife, whom I found
+in bed already cold, when on the previous evening she had lain down in
+much better health and quite gay--was I even capable of foreseeing what
+ought to have been done in her case? No, no! for me at all events,
+science has become bankrupt. I wish to know nothing; I am but a fool and
+a poor old man!”
+
+He spoke like this in a furious revolt against all his past life of pride
+and happiness. Then, having become calm again, he added: “And now I only
+feel a frightful remorse. Yes, a remorse which haunts me, which ever
+brings me here, prowling around the people who are praying. It is remorse
+for not having in the first instance come and humbled myself at that
+Grotto, bringing my two dear ones with me. They would have knelt there
+like those women whom you see, I should have knelt beside them, and
+perhaps the Blessed Virgin would have cured and preserved them. But, fool
+that I was, I only knew how to lose them! It is my fault.”
+
+Tears were now streaming from his eyes. “I remember,” he continued, “that
+in my childhood at Bartres, my mother, a peasant woman, made me join my
+hands and implore God’s help each morning. The prayer she taught me came
+back to my mind, word for word, when I again found myself alone, as weak,
+as lost, as a little child. What would you have, my friend? I joined my
+hands as in my younger days, I felt too wretched, too forsaken, I had too
+keen a need of a superhuman help, of a divine power which should think
+and determine for me, which should lull me and carry me on with its
+eternal prescience. How great at first was the confusion, the aberration
+of my poor brain, under the frightful, heavy blow which fell upon it! I
+spent a score of nights without being able to sleep, thinking that I
+should surely go mad. All sorts of ideas warred within me; I passed
+through periods of revolt when I shook my fist at Heaven, and then I
+lapsed into humility, entreating God to take me in my turn. And it was at
+last a conviction that there must be justice, a conviction that there
+must be love, which calmed me by restoring me my faith. You knew my
+daughter, so tall and strong, so beautiful, so brimful of life. Would it
+not be the most monstrous injustice if for her, who did not know life,
+there should be nothing beyond the tomb? She will live again, I am
+absolutely convinced of it, for I still hear her at times, she tells me
+that we shall meet, that we shall see one another again. Oh! the dear
+beings whom one has lost, my dear daughter, my dear wife, to see them
+once more, to live with them elsewhere, that is the one hope, the one
+consolation for all the sorrows of this world! I have given myself to
+God, since God alone can restore them to me!”
+
+He was shaking with a slight tremor, like the weak old man he had become;
+and Pierre was at last able to understand and explain the conversion of
+this _savant_, this man of intellect who, growing old, had reverted to
+belief under the influence of sentiment. First of all, and this he had
+previously suspected, he discovered a kind of atavism of faith in this
+Pyrenean, this son of peasant mountaineers, who had been brought up in
+belief of the legend, and whom the legend had again mastered even when
+fifty years, of positive study had rolled over it. Then, too, there was
+human weariness; this man, to whom science had not brought happiness,
+revolted against science on the day when it seemed to him shallow,
+powerless to prevent him from shedding tears. And finally there was
+discouragement, a doubt of all things, ending in a need of certainty on
+the part of one whom age had softened, and who felt happy at being able
+to fall asleep in credulity.
+
+Pierre did not protest, however; he did not jeer, for his heart was rent
+at sight of this tall, stricken old man, with his woeful senility. Is it
+not indeed pitiful to see the strongest, the clearest-minded become mere
+children again under such blows of fate? “Ah!” he faintly sighed, “if I
+could only suffer enough to be able to silence my reason, and kneel
+yonder and believe in all those fine stories.”
+
+The pale smile, which at times still passed over Doctor Chassaigne’s
+lips, reappeared on them. “You mean the miracles?” said he. “You are a
+priest, my child, and I know what your misfortune is. The miracles seem
+impossible to you. But what do you know of them? Admit that you know
+nothing, and that what to our senses seems impossible is every minute
+taking place. And now we have been talking together for a long time, and
+eleven o’clock will soon strike, so that you must return to the Grotto.
+However, I shall expect you, at half-past three, when I will take you to
+the Medical Verification Office, where I hope I shall be able to show you
+some surprising things. Don’t forget, at half-past three.”
+
+Thereupon he sent him off, and remained on the bench alone. The heat had
+yet increased, and the distant hills were burning in the furnace-like
+glow of the sun. However, he lingered there forgetfully, dreaming in the
+greeny half-light amidst the foliage, and listening to the continuous
+murmur of the Gave, as if a voice, a dear voice from the realms beyond,
+were speaking to him.
+
+Pierre meantime hastened back to Marie. He was able to join her without
+much difficulty, for the crowd was thinning, a good many people having
+already gone off to _déjeuner_. And on arriving he perceived the girl’s
+father, who was quietly seated beside her, and who at once wished to
+explain to him the reason of his long absence. For more than a couple of
+hours that morning he had scoured Lourdes in all directions, applying at
+twenty hotels in turn without being able to find the smallest closet
+where they might sleep. Even the servants’ rooms were let and you could
+not have even secured a mattress on which to stretch yourself in some
+passage. However, all at once, just as he was despairing, he had
+discovered two rooms, small ones, it is true, and just under the roof,
+but in a very good hotel, that of the Apparitions, one of the best
+patronised in the town. The persons who had retained these rooms had just
+telegraphed that the patient whom they had meant to bring with them was
+dead. Briefly, it was a piece of rare good luck, and seemed to make M. de
+Guersaint quite gay.
+
+Eleven o’clock was now striking and the woeful procession of sufferers
+started off again through the sunlit streets and squares. When it reached
+the hospital Marie begged her father and Pierre to go to the hotel, lunch
+and rest there awhile, and return to fetch her at two o’clock, when the
+patients would again be conducted to the Grotto. But when, after
+lunching, the two men went up to the rooms which they were to occupy at
+the Hotel of the Apparitions, M. de Guersaint, overcome by fatigue, fell
+so soundly asleep that Pierre had not the heart to awaken him. What would
+have been the use of it? His presence was not indispensable. And so the
+young priest returned to the hospital alone. Then the _cortège_ again
+descended the Avenue de la Grotte, again wended its way over the Plateau
+de la Merlasse, again crossed the Place du Rosaire, past an ever-growing
+crowd which shuddered and crossed itself amid all the joyousness of that
+splendid August day. It was now the most glorious hour of a lovely
+afternoon.
+
+When Marie was again installed in front of the Grotto she inquired if her
+father were coming. “Yes,” answered Pierre; “he is only taking a little
+rest.”
+
+She waved her hand as though to say that he was acting rightly, and then
+in a sorely troubled voice she added: “Listen, Pierre; don’t take me to
+the piscina for another hour. I am not yet in a state to find favour from
+Heaven, I wish to pray, to keep on praying.”
+
+After evincing such an ardent desire to come to Lourdes, terror was
+agitating her now that the moment for attempting the miracle was at hand.
+In fact, she began to relate that she had been unable to eat anything,
+and a girl who overheard her at once approached saying: “If you feel too
+weak, my dear young lady, remember we have some broth here.”
+
+Marie looked at her and recognised Raymonde. Several young girls were in
+this wise employed at the Grotto to distribute cups of broth and milk
+among the sufferers. Some of them, indeed, in previous years had
+displayed so much coquetry in the matter of silk, aprons trimmed with
+lace, that a uniform apron, of modest linen, with a small check pattern,
+blue and white, had been imposed on them. Nevertheless, in spite of this
+enforced simplicity, Raymonde, thanks to her freshness and her active,
+good-natured, housewifely air, had succeeded in making herself look quite
+charming.
+
+“You will remember, won’t you?” she added; “you have only to make me a
+sign and I will serve you.”
+
+Marie thanked her, saying, however, that she felt sure she would not be
+able to take anything; and then, turning towards the young priest, she
+resumed: “One hour--you must allow me one more hour, my friend.”
+
+Pierre wished at any rate to remain near her, but the entire space was
+reserved to the sufferers, the bearers not being allowed there. So he had
+to retire, and, caught in the rolling waves of the crowd, he found
+himself carried towards the piscinas, where he came upon an extraordinary
+spectacle which stayed his steps. In front of the low buildings where the
+baths were, three by three, six for the women and three for the men, he
+perceived under the trees a long stretch of ground enclosed by a rope
+fastened to the tree-trunks; and here, various sufferers, some sitting in
+their bath-chairs and others lying on the mattresses of their litters,
+were drawn up in line, waiting to be bathed, whilst outside the rope, a
+huge, excited throng was ever pressing and surging. A Capuchin, erect in
+the centre of the reserved space, was at that moment conducting the
+prayers. “Aves” followed one after the other, repeated by the crowd in a
+loud confused murmur. Then, all at once, as Madame Vincent, who, pale
+with agony, had long been waiting, was admitted to the baths, carrying
+her dear burden, her little girl who looked like a waxen image of the
+child Christ, the Capuchin let himself fall upon his knees with his arms
+extended, and cried aloud: “Lord, heal our sick!” He raised this cry a
+dozen, twenty times, with a growing fury, and each time the crowd
+repeated it, growing more and more excited at each shout, till it sobbed
+and kissed the ground in a state of frenzy. It was like a hurricane of
+delirium rushing by and laying every head in the dust. Pierre was utterly
+distracted by the sob of suffering which arose from the very bowels of
+these poor folks--at first a prayer, growing louder and louder, then
+bursting forth like a demand in impatient, angry, deafening, obstinate
+accents, as though to compel the help of Heaven. “Lord, heal our
+sick!”--“Lord, heal our sick!” The shout soared on high incessantly.
+
+An incident occurred, however; La Grivotte was weeping hot tears because
+they would not bathe her. “They say that I’m a consumptive,” she
+plaintively exclaimed, “and that they can’t dip consumptives in cold
+water. Yet they dipped one this morning; I saw her. So why won’t they dip
+me? I’ve been wearing myself out for the last half-hour in telling them
+that they are only grieving the Blessed Virgin, for I am going to be
+cured, I feel it, I am going to be cured!”
+
+As she was beginning to cause a scandal, one of the chaplains of the
+piscinas approached and endeavoured to calm her. They would see what they
+could do for her, by-and-by, said he; they would consult the reverend
+Fathers, and, if she were very good, perhaps they would bathe her all the
+same.
+
+Meantime the cry continued: “Lord, heal our sick! Lord, heal our sick!”
+ And Pierre, who had just perceived Madame Vetu, also waiting at the
+piscina entry, could no longer turn his eyes away from her hope-tortured
+face, whose eyes were fixed upon the doorway by which the happy ones, the
+elect, emerged from the divine presence, cured of all their ailments.
+However, a sudden increase of the crowd’s frenzy, a perfect rage of
+entreaties, gave him such a shock as to draw tears from his eyes. Madame
+Vincent was now coming out again, still carrying her little girl in her
+arms, her wretched, her fondly loved little girl, who had been dipped in
+a fainting state in the icy water, and whose little face, but imperfectly
+wiped, was as pale as ever, and indeed even more woeful and lifeless. The
+mother was sobbing, crucified by this long agony, reduced to despair by
+the refusal of the Blessed Virgin, who had remained insensible to her
+child’s sufferings. And yet when Madame Vetu in her turn entered, with
+the eager passion of a dying woman about to drink the water of life, the
+haunting, obstinate cry burst out again, without sign of discouragement
+or lassitude: “Lord, heal our sick! Lord, heal our sick!” The Capuchin
+had now fallen with his face to the ground, and the howling crowd, with
+arms outstretched, devoured the soil with its kisses.
+
+Pierre wished to join Madame Vincent to soothe her with a few kind,
+encouraging words; however, a fresh string of pilgrims not only prevented
+him from passing, but threw him towards the fountain which another throng
+besieged. There was here quite a range of low buildings, a long stone
+wall with carved coping, and it had been necessary for the people to form
+in procession, although there were twelve taps from which the water fell
+into a narrow basin. Many came hither to fill bottles, metal cans, and
+stoneware pitchers. To prevent too great a waste of water, the tap only
+acted when a knob was pressed with the hand. And thus many weak-handed
+women lingered there a long time, the water dripping on their feet. Those
+who had no cans to fill at least came to drink and wash their faces.
+Pierre noticed one young man who drank seven small glassfuls of water,
+and washed his eyes seven times without wiping them. Others were drinking
+out of shells, tin goblets, and leather cups. And he was particularly
+interested by the sight of Elise Rouquet, who, thinking it useless to go
+to the piscinas to bathe the frightful sore which was eating away her
+face, had contented herself with employing the water of the fountain as a
+lotion, every two hours since her arrival that morning. She knelt down,
+threw back her fichu, and for a long time applied a handkerchief to her
+face--a handkerchief which she had soaked with the miraculous fluid like
+a sponge; and the crowd around rushed upon the fountain in such fury that
+folks no longer noticed her diseased face, but washed themselves and
+drank from the same pipe at which she constantly moistened her
+handkerchief.
+
+Just then, however, Gérard, who passed by dragging M. Sabathier to the
+piscinas, called to Pierre, whom he saw unoccupied, and asked him to come
+and help him, for it would not be an easy task to move and bathe this
+helpless victim of ataxia. And thus Pierre lingered with the sufferer in
+the men’s piscina for nearly half an hour, whilst Gérard returned to the
+Grotto to fetch another patient. These piscinas seemed to the young
+priest to be very well arranged. They were divided into three
+compartments, three baths separated by partitions, with steps leading
+into them. In order that one might isolate the patient, a linen curtain
+hug before each entry, which was reached through a kind of waiting-room
+having a paved floor, and furnished with a bench and a couple of chairs.
+Here the patients undressed and dressed themselves with an awkward haste,
+a nervous kind of shame. One man, whom Pierre found there when he
+entered, was still naked, and wrapped himself in the curtain before
+putting on a bandage with trembling hands. Another one, a consumptive who
+was frightfully emaciated, sat shivering and groaning, his livid skin
+mottled with violet marks. However, Pierre became more interested in
+Brother Isidore, who was just being removed from one of the baths. He had
+fainted away, and for a moment, indeed, it was thought that he was dead.
+But at last he began moaning again, and one’s heart filled with pity at
+sight of his long, lank frame, which suffering had withered, and which,
+with his diseased hip, looked a human remnant on exhibition. The two
+hospitallers who had been bathing him had the greatest difficulty to put
+on his shirt, fearful as they were that if he were suddenly shaken he
+might expire in their arms.
+
+“You will help me, Monsieur l’Abbé, won’t you?” asked another hospitaller
+as he began to undress M. Sabathier.
+
+Pierre hastened to give his services, and found that the attendant,
+discharging such humble duties, was none other than the Marquis de
+Salmon-Roquebert whom M. de Guersaint had pointed out to him on the way
+from the station to the hospital that morning. A man of forty, with a
+large, aquiline, knightly nose set in a long face, the Marquis was the
+last representative of one of the most ancient and illustrious families
+of France. Possessing a large fortune, a regal mansion in the Rue de
+Lille at Paris, and vast estates in Normandy, he came to Lourdes each
+year, for the three days of the national pilgrimage, influenced solely by
+his benevolent feelings, for he had no religious zeal and simply observed
+the rites of the Church because it was customary for noblemen to do so.
+And he obstinately declined any high functions. Resolved to remain a
+hospitaller, he had that year assumed the duty of bathing the patients,
+exhausting the strength of his arms, employing his fingers from morning
+till night in handling rags and re-applying dressings to sores.
+
+“Be careful,” he said to Pierre; “take off the stockings very slowly.
+Just now, some flesh came away when they were taking off the things of
+that poor fellow who is being dressed again, over yonder.”
+
+Then, leaving M. Sabathier for a moment in order to put on the shoes of
+the unhappy sufferer whom he alluded to, the Marquis found the left shoe
+wet inside. Some matter had flowed into the fore part of it, and he had
+to take the usual medical precautions before putting it on the patient’s
+foot, a task which he performed with extreme care; and so as not to touch
+the man’s leg, into which an ulcer was eating.
+
+“And now,” he said to Pierre, as he returned to M. Sabathier, “pull down
+the drawers at the same time I do, so that we may get them off at one
+pull.”
+
+In addition to the patients and the hospitallers selected for duty at the
+piscinas, the only person in the little dressing-room was a chaplain who
+kept on repeating “Paters” and “Aves,” for not even a momentary pause was
+allowed in the prayers. Merely a loose curtain hung before the doorway
+leading to the open space which the rope enclosed; and the ardent
+clamorous entreaties of the throng were incessantly wafted into the room,
+with the piercing shouts of the Capuchin, who ever repeated “Lord, heal
+our sick! Lord, heal our sick!” A cold light fell from the high windows
+of the building and constant dampness reigned there, with the mouldy
+smell like that of a cellar dripping with water.
+
+At last M. Sabathier was stripped, divested of all garments save a little
+apron which had been fastened about his loins for decency’s sake.
+
+“Pray don’t plunge me,” said he; “let me down into the water by degrees.”
+
+In point of fact that cold water quite terrified him. He was still wont
+to relate that he had experienced such a frightful chilling sensation on
+the first occasion that he had sworn never to go in again. According to
+his account, there could be no worse torture than that icy cold. And then
+too, as he put it, the water was scarcely inviting; for, through fear
+lest the output of the source should not suffice, the Fathers of the
+Grotto only allowed the water of the baths to be changed twice a day. And
+nearly a hundred patients being dipped in the same water, it can be
+imagined what a terrible soup the latter at last became. All manner of
+things were found in it, so that it was like a frightful _consommé_ of
+all ailments, a field of cultivation for every kind of poisonous germ, a
+quintessence of the most dreaded contagious diseases; the miraculous
+feature of it all being that men should emerge alive from their immersion
+in such filth.
+
+“Gently, gently,” repeated M. Sabathier to Pierre and the Marquis, who
+had taken hold of him under the hips in order to carry him to the bath.
+And he gazed with childlike terror at that thick, livid water on which
+floated so many greasy, nauseating patches of scum. However, his dread of
+the cold was so great that he preferred the polluted baths of the
+afternoon, since all the bodies that were dipped in the water during the
+early part of the day ended by slightly warming it.
+
+“We will let you slide down the steps,” exclaimed the Marquis in an
+undertone; and then he instructed Pierre to hold the patient with all his
+strength under the arm-pits.
+
+“Have no fear,” replied the priest; “I will not let go.”
+
+M. Sabathier was then slowly lowered. You could now only see his back,
+his poor painful back which swayed and swelled, mottled by the rippling
+of a shiver. And when they dipped him his head fell back in a spasm, a
+sound like the cracking of bones was heard, and breathing hard, he almost
+stifled.
+
+The chaplain, standing beside the bath, had begun calling with renewed
+fervour: “Lord, heal our sick! Lord, heal our sick!”
+
+M. de Salmon-Roquebert repeated the cry, which the regulations required
+the hospitallers to raise at each fresh immersion. Pierre, therefore, had
+to imitate his companion, and his pitiful feelings at the sight of so
+much suffering were so intense that he regained some little of his faith.
+It was long indeed since he had prayed like this, devoutly wishing that
+there might be a God in heaven, whose omnipotence could assuage the
+wretchedness of humanity. At the end of three or four minutes, however,
+when with great difficulty they drew M. Sabathier, livid and shivering,
+out of the bath, the young priest fell into deeper, more despairing
+sorrow than ever at beholding how downcast, how overwhelmed the sufferer
+was at having experienced no relief. Again had he made a futile attempt;
+for the seventh time the Blessed Virgin had not deigned to listen to his
+prayers. He closed his eyes, from between the lids of which big tears
+began to roll while they were dressing him again.
+
+Then Pierre recognised little Gustave Vigneron coming in, on his crutch,
+to take his first bath. His relatives, his father, his mother, and his
+aunt, Madame Chaise, all three of substantial appearance and exemplary
+piety, had just fallen on their knees at the door. Whispers ran through
+the crowd; it was said that the gentleman was a functionary of the
+Ministry of Finances. However, while the child was beginning to undress,
+a tumult arose, and Father Fourcade and Father Massias, suddenly
+arriving, gave orders to suspend the immersions. The great miracle was
+about to be attempted, the extraordinary favour which had been so
+ardently prayed for since the morning--the restoration of the dead man to
+life.
+
+The prayers were continuing outside, rising in a furious appeal which
+died away in the sky of that warm summer afternoon. Two bearers came in
+with a covered stretcher, which they deposited in the middle of the
+dressing-room. Baron Suire, President of the Association, followed,
+accompanied by Berthaud, one of its principal officers, for the affair
+was causing a great stir among the whole staff, and before anything was
+done a few words were exchanged in low voices between the gentlemen and
+the two Fathers of the Assumption. Then the latter fell upon their knees,
+with arms extended, and began to pray, their faces illumined,
+transfigured by their burning desire to see God’s omnipotence displayed.
+
+“Lord, hear us! Lord, grant our prayer!”
+
+M. Sabathier had just been taken away, and the only patient now present
+was little Gustave, who had remained on a chair, half-undressed and
+forgotten. The curtains of the stretcher were raised, and the man’s
+corpse appeared, already stiff, and seemingly reduced and shrunken, with
+large eyes which had obstinately remained wide open. It was necessary,
+however, to undress the body, which was still fully clad, and this
+terrible duty made the bearers momentarily hesitate. Pierre noticed that
+the Marquis de Salmon-Roquebert, who showed such devotion to the living,
+such freedom from all repugnance whenever they were in question, had now
+drawn aside and fallen on his knees, as though to avoid the necessity of
+touching that lifeless corpse. And the young priest thereupon followed
+his example, and knelt near him in order to keep countenance.
+
+Father Massias meanwhile was gradually becoming excited, praying in so
+loud a voice that it drowned that of his superior, Father Fourcade:
+“Lord, restore our brother to us!” he cried. “Lord, do it for Thy glory!”
+
+One of the hospitallers had already begun to pull at the man’s trousers,
+but his legs were so stiff that the garment would not come off. In fact
+the corpse ought to have been raised up; and the other hospitaller, who
+was unbuttoning the dead man’s old frock coat, remarked in an undertone
+that it would be best to cut everything away with a pair of scissors.
+Otherwise there would be no end of the job.
+
+Berthaud, however, rushed up to them, after rapidly consulting Baron
+Suire. As a politician he secretly disapproved of Father Fourcade’s
+action in making such an attempt, only they could not now do otherwise
+than carry matters to an issue; for the crowd was waiting and had been
+entreating God on the dead man’s behalf ever since the morning. The
+wisest course, therefore, was to finish with the affair at once, showing
+as much respect as possible for the remains of the deceased. In lieu,
+therefore, of pulling the corpse about in order to strip it bare,
+Berthaud was of opinion that it would be better to dip it in the piscina
+clad as it was. Should the man resuscitate, it would be easy to procure
+fresh clothes for him; and in the contrary event, no harm would have been
+done. This is what he hastily said to the bearers; and forthwith he
+helped them to pass some straps under the man’s hips and arms.
+
+Father Fourcade had nodded his approval of this course, whilst Father
+Massias prayed with increased fervour: “Breathe upon him, O Lord, and he
+shall be born anew! Restore his soul to him, O, Lord, that he may glorify
+Thee!”
+
+Making an effort, the two hospitallers now raised the man by means of the
+straps, carried him to the bath, and slowly lowered him into the water,
+at each moment fearing that he would slip away from their hold. Pierre,
+although overcome by horror, could not do otherwise than look at them,
+and thus he distinctly beheld the immersion of this corpse in its sorry
+garments, which on being wetted clung to the bones, outlining the
+skeleton-like figure of the deceased, who floated like a man who has been
+drowned. But the repulsive part of it all was, that in spite of the
+_rigor mortis_, the head fell backward into the water, and was submerged
+by it. In vain did the hospitallers try to raise it by pulling the
+shoulder straps; as they made the attempt, the man almost sank to the
+bottom of the bath. And how could he have recovered his breath when his
+mouth was full of water, his staring eyes seemingly dying afresh, beneath
+that watery veil?
+
+Then, during the three long minutes allowed for the immersion, the two
+Fathers of the Assumption and the chaplain, in a paroxysm of desire and
+faith, strove to compel the intervention of Heaven, praying in such loud
+voices that they seemed to choke.
+
+“Do Thou but look on him, O Lord, and he will live again! Lord! may he
+rise at Thy voice to convert the earth! Lord! Thou hast but one word to
+say and all Thy people will acclaim Thee!”
+
+At last, as though some vessel had broken in his throat, Father Massias
+fell groaning and choking on his elbows, with only enough strength left
+him to kiss the flagstones. And from without came the clamour of the
+crowd, the ever-repeated cry, which the Capuchin was still leading:
+“Lord, heal our sick! Lord, heal our sick!” This appeal seemed so
+singular at that moment, that Pierre’s sufferings were increased. He
+could feel, too, that the Marquis was shuddering beside him. And so the
+relief was general when Berthaud, thoroughly annoyed with the whole
+business, curtly shouted to the hospitallers: “Take him out! Take him out
+at once!”
+
+The body was removed from the bath and laid on the stretcher, looking
+like the corpse of a drowned man with its sorry garments clinging to its
+limbs. The water was trickling from the hair, and rivulets began falling
+on either side, spreading out in pools on the floor. And naturally, dead
+as the man had been, dead he remained.
+
+The others had all risen and stood looking at him amidst a distressing
+silence. Then, as he was covered up and carried away, Father Fourcade
+followed the bier leaning on the shoulder of Father Massias and dragging
+his gouty leg, the painful weight of which he had momentarily forgotten.
+But he was already recovering his strong serenity, and as a hush fell
+upon the crowd outside, he could be heard saying: “My dear brothers, my
+dear sisters, God has not been willing to restore him to us, doubtless
+because in His infinite goodness He has desired to retain him among His
+elect.”
+
+And that was all; there was no further question of the dead man. Patients
+were again being brought into the dressing-room, the two other baths were
+already occupied. And now little Gustave, who had watched that terrible
+scene with his keen inquisitive eyes, evincing no sign of terror,
+finished undressing himself. His wretched body, the body of a scrofulous
+child, appeared with its prominent ribs and projecting spine, its limbs
+so thin that they looked like mere walking-sticks. Especially was this
+the case as regards the left one, which was withered, wasted to the bone;
+and he also had two sores, one on the hip, and the other in the loins,
+the last a terrible one, the skin being eaten away so that you distinctly
+saw the raw flesh. Yet he smiled, rendered so precocious by his
+sufferings that, although but fifteen years old and looking no more than
+ten, he seemed to be endowed with the reason and philosophy of a grown
+man.
+
+The Marquis de Salmon-Roquebert, who had taken him gently in his arms,
+refused Pierre’s offer of service: “Thanks, but he weighs no more than a
+bird. And don’t be frightened, my dear little fellow. I will do it
+gently.”
+
+“Oh, I am not afraid of cold water, monsieur,” replied the boy; “you may
+duck me.”
+
+Then he was lowered into the bath in which the dead man had been dipped.
+Madame Vigneron and Madame Chaise, who were not allowed to enter, had
+remained at the door on their knees, whilst the father, M. Vigneron, who
+was admitted into the dressing-room, went on making the sign of the
+cross.
+
+Finding that his services were no longer required, Pierre now departed.
+The sudden idea that three o’clock must have long since struck and that
+Marie must be waiting for him made him hasten his steps. However, whilst
+he was endeavouring to pierce the crowd, he saw the girl arrive in her
+little conveyance, dragged along by Gérard, who had not ceased
+transporting sufferers to the piscina. She had become impatient, suddenly
+filled with a conviction that she was at last in a frame of mind to find
+grace. And at sight of Pierre she reproached him, saying, “What, my
+friend, did you forget me?”
+
+He could find no answer, but watched her as she was taken into the
+piscina reserved for women, and then, in mortal sorrow, fell upon his
+knees. It was there that he would wait for her, humbly kneeling, in order
+that he might take her back to the Grotto, cured without doubt and
+singing a hymn of praise. Since she was certain of it, would she not
+assuredly be cured? However, it was in vain that he sought for words of
+prayer in the depths of his distracted being. He was still under the blow
+of all the terrible things that he had beheld, worn out with physical
+fatigue, his brain depressed, no longer knowing what he saw or what he
+believed. His desperate affection for Marie alone remained, making him
+long to humble himself and supplicate, in the thought that when little
+ones really love and entreat the powerful they end by obtaining favours.
+And at last he caught himself repeating the prayers of the crowd, in a
+distressful voice that came from the depths of his being “Lord, heal our
+sick! Lord, heal our sick!”
+
+Ten minutes, a quarter of an hour perhaps, went by. Then Marie reappeared
+in her little conveyance. Her face was very pale and wore an expression
+of despair. Her beautiful hair was fastened above her head in a heavy
+golden coil which the water had not touched. And she was not cured. The
+stupor of infinite discouragement hollowed and lengthened her face, and
+she averted her eyes as though to avoid meeting those of the priest who
+thunderstruck, chilled to the heart, at last made up his mind to grasp
+the handle of the little vehicle, so as to take the girl back to the
+Grotto.
+
+And meantime the cry of the faithful, who with open arms were kneeling
+there and kissing the earth, again rose with a growing fury, excited by
+the Capuchin’s shrill voice: “Lord, heal our sick! Heal our sick, O
+Lord!”
+
+As Pierre was placing Marie in position again in front of the Grotto, an
+attack of weakness came over her and she almost fainted. Gérard, who was
+there, saw Raymonde quickly hurry to the spot with a cup of broth, and at
+once they began zealously rivalling each other in their attentions to the
+ailing girl. Raymonde, holding out the cup in a pretty way, and assuming
+the coaxing airs of an expert nurse, especially insisted that Marie
+should accept the bouillon; and Gérard, glancing at this portionless
+girl, could not help finding her charming, already expert in the business
+of life, and quite ready to manage a household with a firm hand without
+ceasing to be amiable. Berthaud was no doubt right, this was the wife
+that he, Gérard, needed.
+
+“Mademoiselle,” said he to Raymonde, “shall I raise the young lady a
+little?”
+
+“Thank you, monsieur, I am quite strong enough. And besides I will give
+it to her in spoonfuls; that will be the better way.”
+
+Marie, however, obstinately preserving her fierce silence as she
+recovered consciousness, refused the broth with a gesture. She wished to
+be left in quietness, she did not want anybody to question her. And it
+was only when the others had gone off smiling at one another, that she
+said to Pierre in a husky voice: “Has not my father come then?”
+
+After hesitating for a moment the priest was obliged to confess the
+truth. “I left him sleeping and he cannot have woke up.”
+
+Then Marie relapsed into her state of languid stupor and dismissed him in
+his turn, with the gesture with which she declined all succour. She no
+longer prayed, but remained quite motionless, gazing fixedly with her
+large eyes at the marble Virgin, the white statue amidst the radiance of
+the Grotto. And as four o’clock was now striking, Pierre with his heart
+sore went off to the Verification Office, having suddenly remembered the
+appointment given him by Doctor Chassaigne.
+
+
+
+
+IV. VERIFICATION
+
+THE doctor was waiting for the young priest outside the Verification
+Office, in front of which a compact and feverish crowd of pilgrims was
+assembled, waylaying and questioning the patients who went in, and
+acclaiming them as they came out whenever the news spread of any miracle,
+such as the restoration of some blind man’s sight, some deaf woman’s
+hearing, or some paralytic’s power of motion.
+
+Pierre had no little difficulty in making his way through the throng, but
+at last he reached his friend. “Well,” he asked, “are we going to have a
+miracle--a real, incontestable one I mean?”
+
+The doctor smiled, indulgent despite his new faith. “Ah, well,” said he,
+“a miracle is not worked to order. God intervenes when He pleases.”
+
+Some hospitallers were mounting guard at the door, but they all knew M.
+Chassaigne, and respectfully drew aside to let him enter with his
+companion. The office where the cures were verified was very badly
+installed in a wretched wooden shanty divided into two apartments, first
+a narrow ante-chamber, and then a general meeting room which was by no
+means so large as it should have been. However, there was a question of
+providing the department with better accommodation the following year;
+with which view some large premises, under one of the inclined ways of
+the Rosary, were already being fitted up.
+
+The only article of furniture in the antechamber was a wooden bench on
+which Pierre perceived two female patients awaiting their turn in the
+charge of a young hospitaller. But on entering the meeting room the
+number of persons packed inside it quite surprised him, whilst the
+suffocating heat within those wooden walls on which the sun was so
+fiercely playing, almost scorched his face. It was a square bare room,
+painted a light yellow, with the panes of its single window covered with
+whitening, so that the pressing throng outside might see nothing of what
+went on within. One dared not even open this window to admit a little
+fresh air, for it was no sooner set ajar than a crowd of inquisitive
+heads peeped in. The furniture was of a very rudimentary kind, consisting
+simply of two deal tables of unequal height placed end to end and not
+even covered with a cloth; together with a kind of big “canterbury”
+ littered with untidy papers, sets of documents, registers and pamphlets,
+and finally some thirty rush-seated chairs placed here and there over the
+floor and a couple of ragged arm-chairs usually reserved for the
+patients.
+
+Doctor Bonamy at once hastened forward to greet Doctor Chassaigne, who
+was one of the latest and most glorious conquests of the Grotto. He found
+a chair for him and, bowing to Pierre’s cassock, also made the young
+priest sit down. Then, in the tone of extreme politeness which was
+customary with him, he exclaimed: “_Mon cher confrère_, you will kindly
+allow me to continue. We were just examining mademoiselle.”
+
+He referred to a deaf peasant girl of twenty, who was seated in one of
+the arm-chairs. Instead of listening, however, Pierre, who was very
+weary, still with a buzzing in his head, contented himself with gazing at
+the scene, endeavouring to form some notion of the people assembled in
+the room. There were some fifty altogether, many of them standing and
+leaning against the walls. Half a dozen, however, were seated at the two
+tables, a central position being occupied by the superintendent of the
+piscinas, who was constantly consulting a thick register; whilst around
+him were a Father of the Assumption and three young seminarists who acted
+as secretaries, writing, searching for documents, passing them and
+classifying them again after each examination. Pierre, however, took most
+interest in a Father of the Immaculate Conception, Father Dargeles, who
+had been pointed out to him that morning as being the editor of the
+“Journal de la Grotte.” This ecclesiastic, whose thin little face, with
+its blinking eyes, pointed nose, and delicate mouth was ever smiling, had
+modestly seated himself at the end of the lower table where he
+occasionally took notes for his newspaper. He alone, of the community to
+which he belonged, showed himself during the three days of the national
+pilgrimage. Behind him, however, one could divine the presence of all the
+others, the slowly developed hidden power which organised everything and
+raked in all the proceeds.
+
+The onlookers consisted almost entirely of inquisitive people and
+witnesses, including a score of doctors and a few priests. The medical
+men, who had come from all parts, mostly preserved silence, only a few of
+them occasionally venturing to ask a question; and every now and then
+they would exchange oblique glances, more occupied apparently in watching
+one another than in verifying the facts submitted to their examination.
+Who could they be? Some names were mentioned, but they were quite
+unknown. Only one had caused any stir, that of a celebrated doctor,
+professor at a Catholic university.
+
+That afternoon, however, Doctor Bonamy, who never sat down, busy as he
+was conducting the proceedings and questioning the patients, reserved
+most of his attentions for a short, fair-haired man, a writer of some
+talent who contributed to one of the most widely read Paris newspapers,
+and who, in the course of a holiday tour, had by chance reached Lourdes
+that morning. Was not this an unbeliever whom it might be possible to
+convert, whose influence it would be desirable to gain for
+advertisement’s sake? Such at all events appeared to be M. Bonamy’s
+opinion, for he had compelled the journalist to take the second
+arm-chair, and with an affectation of smiling good-nature was treating
+him to a full performance, again and again repeating that he and his
+patrons had nothing to hide, and that everything took place in the most
+open manner.
+
+“We only desire light,” he exclaimed. “We never cease to call for the
+investigations of all willing men.”
+
+Then, as the alleged cure of the deaf girl did not seem at all a
+promising case, he addressed her somewhat roughly: “Come, come, my girl,
+this is only a beginning. You must come back when there are more distinct
+signs of improvement.” And turning to the journalist he added in an
+undertone: “If we were to believe them they would all be healed. But the
+only cures we accept are those which are thoroughly proven, which are as
+apparent as the sun itself. Pray notice moreover that I say cures and not
+miracles; for we doctors do not take upon ourselves to interpret and
+explain. We are simply here to see if the patients, who submit themselves
+to our examination, have really lost all symptoms of their ailments.”
+
+Thereupon he struck an attitude. Doubtless he spoke like this in order
+that his rectitude might not be called in question. Believing without
+believing, he knew that science was yet so obscure, so full of surprises,
+that what seemed impossible might always come to pass; and thus, in the
+declining years of his life, he had contrived to secure an exceptional
+position at the Grotto, a position which had both its inconveniences and
+its advantages, but which, taken for all in all, was very comfortable and
+pleasant.
+
+And now, in reply to a question from the Paris journalist, he began to
+explain his mode of proceeding. Each patient who accompanied the
+pilgrimage arrived provided with papers, amongst which there was almost
+always a certificate of the doctor who had been attending the case. At
+times even there were certificates given by several doctors, hospital
+bulletins and so forth--quite a record of the illness in its various
+stages. And thus if a cure took place and the cured person came forward,
+it was only necessary to consult his or her set of documents in order to
+ascertain the nature of the ailment, and then examination would show if
+that ailment had really disappeared.
+
+Pierre was now listening. Since he had been there, seated and resting
+himself, he had grown calmer, and his mind was clear once more. It was
+only the heat which at present caused him any inconvenience. And thus,
+interested as he was by Doctor Bonamy’s explanations, and desirous of
+forming an opinion, he would have spoken out and questioned, had it not
+been for his cloth which condemned him to remain in the background. He
+was delighted, therefore, when the little fair-haired gentleman, the
+influential writer, began to bring forward the objections which at once
+occurred to him.* Was it not most unfortunate that one doctor should
+diagnose the illness and that another one should verify the cure? In this
+mode of proceeding there was certainly a source of frequent error. The
+better plan would have been for a medical commission to examine all the
+patients as soon as they arrived at Lourdes and draw up reports on every
+case, to which reports the same commission would have referred whenever
+an alleged cure was brought before it. Doctor Bonamy, however, did not
+fall in with this suggestion. He replied, with some reason, that a
+commission would never suffice for such gigantic labour. Just think of
+it! A thousand patients to examine in a single morning! And how many
+different theories there would be, how many contrary diagnoses, how many
+endless discussions, all of a nature to increase the general uncertainty!
+The preliminary examination of the patients, which was almost always
+impossible, would, even if attempted, leave the door open for as many
+errors as the present system. In practice, it was necessary to remain
+content with the certificates delivered by the medical men who had been
+in attendance on the patients, and these certificates accordingly
+acquired capital, decisive importance. Doctor Bonamy ran through the
+documents lying on one of the tables and gave the Paris journalist some
+of these certificates to read. A great many of them unfortunately were
+very brief. Others, more skilfully drawn up, clearly specified the nature
+of the complaint; and some of the doctors’ signatures were even certified
+by the mayors of the localities where they resided. Nevertheless doubts
+remained, innumerable and not to be surmounted. Who were these doctors?
+Who could tell if they possessed sufficient scientific authority to write
+as they did? With all respect to the medical profession, were there not
+innumerable doctors whose attainments were very limited? And, besides,
+might not these have been influenced by circumstances that one knew
+nothing of, in some cases by considerations of a personal character? One
+was tempted to ask for an inquiry respecting each of these medical men.
+Since everything was based on the documents supplied by the patients,
+these documents ought to have been most carefully controlled; for there
+could be no proof of any miracle if the absolute certainty of the alleged
+ailments had not been demonstrated by stringent examination.
+
+ * The reader will doubtless have understood that the Parisian
+ journalist is none other than M. Zola himself--Trans.
+
+Very red and covered with perspiration, Doctor Bonamy waved his arms.
+“But that is the course we follow, that is the course we follow!” said
+he. “As soon as it seems to us that a case of cure cannot be explained by
+natural means, we institute a minute inquiry, we request the person who
+has been cured to return here for further examination. And as you can
+see, we surround ourselves with all means of enlightenment. These
+gentlemen here, who are listening to us, are nearly every one of them
+doctors who have come from all parts of France. We always entreat them to
+express their doubts if they feel any, to discuss the cases with us, and
+a very detailed report of each discussion is drawn up. You hear me,
+gentlemen; by all means protest if anything occurs here of a nature to
+offend your sense of truth.”
+
+Not one of the onlookers spoke. Most of the doctors present were
+undoubtedly Catholics, and naturally enough they merely bowed. As for the
+others, the unbelievers, the _savants_ pure and simple, they looked on
+and evinced some interest in certain phenomena, but considerations of
+courtesy deterred them from entering into discussions which they knew
+would have been useless. When as men of sense their discomfort became too
+great, and they felt themselves growing angry, they simply left the room.
+
+As nobody breathed a word, Doctor Bonamy became quite triumphant, and on
+the journalist asking him if he were all alone to accomplish so much
+work, he replied: “Yes, all alone; but my functions as doctor of the
+Grotto are not so complicated as you may think, for, I repeat it, they
+simply consist in verifying cures whenever any take place.” However, he
+corrected himself, and added with a smile: “All! I was forgetting, I am
+not quite alone, I have Raboin, who helps me to keep things a little bit
+in order here.”
+
+So saying, he pointed to a stout, grey-haired man of forty, with a heavy
+face and bull-dog jaw. Raboin was an ardent believer, one of those
+excited beings who did not allow the miracles to be called in question.
+And thus he often suffered from his duties at the Verification Office,
+where he was ever ready to growl with anger when anybody disputed a
+prodigy. The appeal to the doctors had made him quite lose his temper,
+and his superior had to calm him.
+
+“Come, Raboin, my friend, be quiet!” said Doctor Bonamy. “All sincere
+opinions are entitled to a hearing.”
+
+However, the _défile_ of patients was resumed. A man was now brought in
+whose trunk was so covered with eczema that when he took off his shirt a
+kind of grey flour fell from his skin. He was not cured, but simply
+declared that he came to Lourdes every year, and always went away feeling
+relieved. Then came a lady, a countess, who was fearfully emaciated, and
+whose story was an extraordinary one. Cured of tuberculosis by the
+Blessed Virgin, a first time, seven years previously, she had
+subsequently given birth to four children, and had then again fallen into
+consumption. At present she was a morphinomaniac, but her first bath had
+already relieved her so much, that she proposed taking part in the
+torchlight procession that same evening with the twenty-seven members of
+her family whom she had brought with her to Lourdes. Then there was a
+woman afflicted with nervous aphonia, who after months of absolute
+dumbness had just recovered her voice at the moment when the Blessed
+Sacrament went by at the head of the four o’clock procession.
+
+“Gentlemen,” declared Doctor Bonamy, affecting the graciousness of a
+_savant_ of extremely liberal views, “as you are aware, we do not draw
+any conclusions when a nervous affection is in question. Still you will
+kindly observe that this woman was treated at the Salpêtrière for six
+months, and that she had to come here to find her tongue suddenly
+loosened.”
+
+Despite all these fine words he displayed some little impatience, for he
+would have greatly liked to show the gentleman from Paris one of those
+remarkable instances of cure which occasionally presented themselves
+during the four o’clock procession--that being the moment of grace and
+exaltation when the Blessed Virgin interceded for those whom she had
+chosen. But on this particular afternoon there had apparently been none.
+The cures which had so far passed before them were doubtful ones,
+deficient in interest. Meanwhile, out-of-doors, you could hear the
+stamping and roaring of the crowd, goaded into a frenzy by repeated
+hymns, enfevered by its earnest desire for the Divine interposition, and
+growing more and more enervated by the delay.
+
+All at once, however, a smiling, modest-looking young girl, whose clear
+eyes sparkled with intelligence, entered the office. “Ah!” exclaimed
+Doctor Bonamy joyously, “here is our little friend Sophie. A remarkable
+cure, gentlemen, which took place at the same season last year, and the
+results of which I will ask permission to show you.”
+
+Pierre had immediately recognized Sophie Couteau, the _miraculée_ who had
+got into the train at Poitiers. And he now witnessed a repetition of the
+scene which had already been enacted in his presence. Doctor Bonamy began
+giving detailed explanations to the little fair-haired gentleman, who
+displayed great attention. The case, said the doctor, had been one of
+caries of the bones of the left heel, with a commencement of necrosis
+necessitating excision; and yet the frightful, suppurating sore had been
+healed in a minute at the first immersion in the piscina.
+
+“Tell the gentlemen how it happened, Sophie,” he added.
+
+The little girl made her usual pretty gesture as a sign to everybody to
+be attentive. And then she began: “Well, it was like this; my foot was
+past cure, I couldn’t even go to church any more, and it had to be kept
+bandaged because there was always a lot of matter coming from it.
+Monsieur Rivoire, the doctor, who had made a cut in it so as to see
+inside it, said that he should be obliged to take out a piece of the
+bone; and that, sure enough, would have made me lame for life. But when I
+got to Lourdes, and had prayed a great deal to the Blessed Virgin, I went
+to dip my foot in the water, wishing so much that I might be cured, that
+I did not even take the time to pull the bandages off. And everything
+remained in the water; there was no longer anything the matter with my
+foot when I took it out.”
+
+Doctor Bonamy listened, and punctuated each word with an approving nod.
+“And what did your doctor say, Sophie?” he asked.
+
+“When I got back to Vivonne, and Monsieur Rivoire saw my foot again, he
+said: ‘Whether it be God or the Devil who has cured this child, it is all
+the same to me; but in all truth, she is cured.’”
+
+A burst of laughter rang out. The doctor’s remark was sure to produce an
+effect.
+
+“And what was it, Sophie, that you said to Madame la Comtesse, the
+superintendent of your ward?”
+
+“Ah, yes! I hadn’t brought many bandages for my foot with me, and I said
+to her, ‘It was very kind of the Blessed Virgin to cure me the first day,
+as I should have run out of linen on the morrow.’”
+
+Then there was fresh laughter, a general display of satisfaction at
+seeing her look so pretty, telling her story, which she now knew by
+heart, in too recitative a manner, but, nevertheless, remaining very
+touching and truthful in appearance.
+
+“Take off your shoe, Sophie,” now said Doctor Bonamy; “show your foot to
+these gentlemen. Let them feel it. Nobody must retain any doubt.”
+
+The little foot promptly appeared, very white, very clean, carefully
+tended indeed, with its scar just below the ankle, a long scar, whose
+whity seam testified to the gravity of the complaint. Some of the medical
+men had drawn near, and looked on in silence. Others, whose opinions, no
+doubt, were already formed, did not disturb themselves, though one of
+them, with an air of extreme politeness, inquired why the Blessed Virgin
+had not made a new foot while she was about it, for this would assuredly
+have given her no more trouble. Doctor Bonamy, however, quickly replied,
+that if the Blessed Virgin had left a scar, it was certainly in order
+that a trace, a proof of the miracle, might remain. Then he entered into
+technical particulars, demonstrating that a fragment of bone and flesh
+must have been instantly formed, and this, of course, could not be
+explained in any natural way.
+
+“_Mon Dieu_!” interrupted the little fair-haired gentleman, “there is no
+need of any such complicated affair. Let me merely see a finger cut with
+a penknife, let me see it dipped in the water, and let it come out with
+the cut cicatrised. The miracle will be quite as great, and I shall bow
+to it respectfully.” Then he added: “If I possessed a source which could
+thus close up sores and wounds, I would turn the world topsy-turvy. I do
+not know exactly how I should manage it, but at all events I would summon
+the nations, and the nations would come. I should cause the miracles to
+be verified in such an indisputable manner, that I should be the master
+of the earth. Just think what an extraordinary power it would be--a
+divine power. But it would be necessary that not a doubt should remain,
+the truth would have to be as patent, as apparent as the sun itself. The
+whole world would behold it and believe!”
+
+Then he began discussing various methods of control with the doctor. He
+had admitted that, owing to the great number of patients, it would be
+difficult, if not impossible, to examine them all on their arrival. Only,
+why didn’t they organise a special ward at the hospital, a ward which
+would be reserved for cases of visible sores? They would have thirty such
+cases all told, which might be subjected to the preliminary examination
+of a committee. Authentic reports would be drawn up, and the sores might
+even be photographed. Then, if a case of cure should present itself, the
+commission would merely have to authenticate it by a fresh report. And in
+all this there would be no question of any internal complaint, the
+diagnostication of which is difficult, and liable to be controverted.
+There would be visible evidence of the ailment, and cure could be proved.
+
+Somewhat embarrassed, Doctor Bonamy replied: “No doubt, no doubt; all we
+ask for is enlightenment. The difficulty would be in forming the
+committee you speak of. If you only knew how little medical men agree!
+However, there is certainly an idea in what you say.”
+
+Fortunately a fresh patient now came to his assistance. Whilst little
+Sophie Couteau, already forgotten, was putting on, her shoes again, Elise
+Rouquet appeared, and, removing her wrap, displayed her diseased face to
+view. She related that she had been bathing it with her handkerchief ever
+since the morning, and it seemed to her that her sore, previously so
+fresh and raw, was already beginning to dry and grow paler in colour.
+This was true; Pierre noticed, with great surprise, that the aspect of
+the sore was now less horrible. This supplied fresh food for the
+discussion on visible sores, for the little fair-haired gentleman clung
+obstinately to his idea of organising a special ward. Indeed, said he, if
+the condition of this girl had been verified that morning, and she should
+be cured, what a triumph it would have been for the Grotto, which could
+have claimed to have healed a lupus! It would then have no longer been
+possible to deny that miracles were worked.
+
+Doctor Chassaigne had so far kept in the background, motionless and
+silent, as though he desired that the facts alone should exercise their
+influence on Pierre. But he now leant forward and said to him in an
+undertone: “Visible sores, visible sores indeed! That gentleman can have
+no idea that our most learned medical men suspect many of these sores to
+be of nervous origin. Yes, we are discovering that complaints of this
+kind are often simply due to bad nutrition of the skin. These questions
+of nutrition are still so imperfectly studied and understood! And some
+medical men are also beginning to prove that the faith which heals can
+even cure sores, certain forms of lupus among others. And so I would ask
+what certainty that gentleman would obtain with his ward for visible
+sores? There would simply be a little more confusion and passion in
+arguing the eternal question. No, no! Science is vain, it is a sea of
+uncertainty.”
+
+He smiled sorrowfully whilst Doctor Bonamy, after advising Elise Rouquet
+to continue using the water as lotion and to return each day for further
+examination, repeated with his prudent, affable air: “At all events,
+gentlemen, there are signs of improvement in this case--that is beyond
+doubt.”
+
+But all at once the office was fairly turned topsy-turvy by the arrival
+of La Grivotte, who swept in like a whirlwind, almost dancing with
+delight and shouting in a full voice: “I am cured! I am cured!”
+
+And forthwith she began to relate that they had first of all refused to
+bathe her, and that she had been obliged to insist and beg and sob in
+order to prevail upon them to do so, after receiving Father Fourcade’s
+express permission. And then it had all happened as she had previously
+said it would. She had not been immersed in the icy water for three
+minutes--all perspiring as she was with her consumptive rattle--before
+she had felt strength returning to her like a whipstroke lashing her
+whole body. And now a flaming excitement possessed her; radiant, stamping
+her feet, she was unable to keep still.
+
+“I am cured, my good gentlemen, I am cured!”
+
+Pierre looked at her, this time quite stupefied. Was this the same girl
+whom, on the previous night, he had seen lying on the carriage seat,
+annihilated, coughing and spitting blood, with her face of ashen hue? He
+could not recognise her as she now stood there, erect and slender, her
+cheeks rosy, her eyes sparkling, upbuoyed by a determination to live, a
+joy in living already.
+
+“Gentlemen,” declared Doctor Bonamy, “the case appears to me to be a very
+interesting one. We will see.”
+
+Then he asked for the documents concerning La Grivotte. But they could
+not be found among all the papers heaped together on the tables. The
+young seminarists who acted as secretaries began turning everything over;
+and the superintendent of the piscinas who sat in their midst himself had
+to get up to see if these documents were in the “canterbury.” At last,
+when he had sat down again, he found them under the register which lay
+open before him. Among them were three medical certificates which he read
+aloud. All three of them agreed in stating that the case was one of
+advanced phthisis, complicated by nervous incidents which invested it
+with a peculiar character.
+
+Doctor Bonamy wagged his head as though to say that such an _ensemble_ of
+testimony could leave no room for doubt. Forthwith, he subjected the
+patient to a prolonged auscultation. And he murmured: “I hear nothing--I
+hear nothing.” Then, correcting himself, he added: “At least I hear
+scarcely anything.”
+
+Finally he turned towards the five-and-twenty or thirty doctors who were
+assembled there in silence. “Will some of you gentlemen,” he asked,
+“kindly lend me the help of your science? We are here to study and
+discuss these questions.”
+
+At first nobody stirred. Then there was one who ventured to come forward
+and, in his turn subject the patient to auscultation. But instead of
+declaring himself, he continued reflecting, shaking his head anxiously.
+At last he stammered that in his opinion one must await further
+developments. Another doctor, however, at once took his place, and this
+one expressed a decided opinion. He could hear nothing at all, that woman
+could never have suffered from phthisis. Then others followed him; in
+fact, with the exception of five or six whose smiling faces remained
+impenetrable, they all joined the _défile_. And the confusion now
+attained its apogee; for each gave an opinion sensibly differing from
+that of his colleagues, so that a general uproar arose and one could no
+longer hear oneself speak. Father Dargeles alone retained the calmness of
+perfect serenity, for he had scented one of those cases which impassion
+people and redound to the glory of Our Lady of Lourdes. He was already
+taking notes on a corner of the table.
+
+Thanks to all the noise of the discussion, Pierre and Doctor Chassaigne,
+seated at some distance from the others, were now able to talk together
+without being heard. “Oh! those piscinas!” said the young priest, “I have
+just seen them. To think that the water should be so seldom changed! What
+filth it is, what a soup of microbes! What a terrible blow for the
+present-day mania, that rage for antiseptic precautions! How is it that
+some pestilence does not carry off all these poor people? The opponents
+of the microbe theory must be having a good laugh--”
+
+M. Chassaigne stopped him. “No, no, my child,” said he. “The baths may be
+scarcely clean, but they offer no danger. Please notice that the
+temperature of the water never rises above fifty degrees, and that
+seventy-seven are necessary for the cultivation of germs.* Besides,
+scarcely any contagious diseases come to Lourdes, neither cholera, nor
+typhus, nor variola, nor measles, nor scarlatina. We only see certain
+organic affections here, paralysis, scrofula, tumours, ulcers and
+abscesses, cancers and phthisis; and the latter cannot be transmitted by
+the water of the baths. The old sores which are bathed have nothing to
+fear, and offer no risk of contagion. I can assure you that on this point
+there is even no necessity for the Blessed Virgin to intervene.”
+
+ * The above are Fahrenheit degrees.--Trans.
+
+“Then, in that case, doctor,” rejoined Pierre, “when you were practising,
+you would have dipped all your patients in icy water--women at no matter
+what season, rheumatic patients, people suffering from diseases of the
+heart, consumptives, and so on? For instance, that unhappy girl, half
+dead, and covered with sweat--would you have bathed her?”
+
+“Certainly not! There are heroic methods of treatment to which, in
+practice, one does not dare to have recourse. An icy bath may undoubtedly
+kill a consumptive; but do we know, whether, in certain circumstances, it
+might not save her? I, who have ended by admitting that a supernatural
+power is at work here, I willingly admit that some cures must take place
+under natural conditions, thanks to that immersion in cold water which
+seems to us idiotic and barbarous. Ah! the things we don’t know, the
+things we don’t know!”
+
+He was relapsing into his anger, his hatred of science, which he scorned
+since it had left him scared and powerless beside the deathbed of his
+wife and his daughter. “You ask for certainties,” he resumed, “but
+assuredly it is not medicine which will give you them. Listen for a
+moment to those gentlemen and you will be edified. Is it not beautiful,
+all that confusion in which so many opinions clash together? Certainly
+there are ailments with which one is thoroughly acquainted, even to the
+most minute details of their evolution; there are remedies also, the
+effects of which have been studied with the most scrupulous care; but the
+thing that one does not know, that one cannot know, is the relation of
+the remedy to the ailment, for there are as many cases as there may be
+patients, each liable to variation, so that experimentation begins afresh
+every time. This is why the practice of medicine remains an art, for
+there can be no experimental finality in it. Cure always depends on
+chance, on some fortunate circumstance, on some bright idea of the
+doctor’s. And so you will understand that all the people who come and
+discuss here make me laugh when they talk about the absolute laws of
+science. Where are those laws in medicine? I should like to have them
+shown to me.”
+
+He did not wish to say any more, but his passion carried him away, so he
+went on: “I told you that I had become a believer--nevertheless, to speak
+the truth, I understand very well why this worthy Doctor Bonamy is so
+little affected, and why he continues calling upon doctors in all parts
+of the world to come and study his miracles. The more doctors that might
+come, the less likelihood there would be of the truth being established
+in the inevitable battle between contradictory diagnoses and methods of
+treatment. If men cannot agree about a visible sore, they surely cannot
+do so about an internal lesion the existence of which will be admitted by
+some, and denied by others. And why then should not everything become a
+miracle? For, after all, whether the action comes from nature or from
+some unknown power, medical men are, as a rule, none the less astonished
+when an illness terminates in a manner which they have not foreseen. No
+doubt, too, things are very badly organised here. Those certificates from
+doctors whom nobody knows have no real value. All documents ought to be
+stringently inquired into. But even admitting any absolute scientific
+strictness, you must be very simple, my dear child, if you imagine that a
+positive conviction would be arrived at, absolute for one and all. Error
+is implanted in man, and there is no more difficult task than that of
+demonstrating to universal satisfaction the most insignificant truth.”
+
+Pierre had now begun to understand what was taking place at Lourdes, the
+extraordinary spectacle which the world had been witnessing for years,
+amidst the reverent admiration of some and the insulting laughter of
+others. Forces as yet but imperfectly studied, of which one was even
+ignorant, were certainly at work--auto-suggestion, long prepared
+disturbance of the nerves; inspiriting influence of the journey, the
+prayers, and the hymns; and especially the healing breath, the unknown
+force which was evolved from the multitude, in the acute crisis of faith.
+Thus it seemed to him anything but intelligent to believe in trickery.
+The facts were both of a much more lofty and much more simple nature.
+There was no occasion for the Fathers of the Grotto to descend to
+falsehood; it was sufficient that they should help in creating confusion,
+that they should utilise the universal ignorance. It might even be
+admitted that everybody acted in good faith--the doctors void of genius
+who delivered the certificates, the consoled patients who believed
+themselves cured, and the impassioned witnesses who swore that they had
+beheld what they described. And from all this was evolved the obvious
+impossibility of proving whether there was a miracle or not. And such
+being the case, did not the miracle naturally become a reality for the
+greater number, for all those who suffered and who had need of hope?
+
+Then, as Doctor Bonamy, who had noticed that they were chatting apart,
+came up to them, Pierre ventured to inquire: “What is about the
+proportion of the cures to the number of cases?”
+
+“About ten per cent.,” answered the doctor; and reading in the young
+priest’s eyes the words that he could not utter, he added in a very
+cordial way: “Oh! there would be many more, they would all be cured if we
+chose to listen to them. But it is as well to say it, I am only here to
+keep an eye on the miracles, like a policeman as it were. My only
+functions are to check excessive zeal, and to prevent holy things from
+being made ridiculous. In one word, this office is simply an office where
+a _visa_ is given when the cures have been verified and seem real ones.”
+
+He was interrupted, however, by a low growl. Raboin was growing angry:
+“The cures verified, the cures verified,” he muttered. “What is the use
+of that? There is no pause in the working of the miracles. What is the
+use of verifying them so far as believers are concerned? _They_ merely
+have to bow down and believe. And what is the use, too, as regards the
+unbelievers? _They_ will never be convinced. The work we do here is so
+much foolishness.”
+
+Doctor Bonamy severely ordered him to hold his tongue. “You are a rebel,
+Raboin,” said he; “I shall tell Father Capdebarthe that I won’t have you
+here any longer since you pass your time in sowing disobedience.”
+
+Nevertheless, there was truth in what had just been said by this man, who
+so promptly showed his teeth, eager to bite whenever his faith was
+assailed; and Pierre looked at him with sympathy. All the work of the
+Verification Office--work anything but well performed--was indeed
+useless, for it wounded the feelings of the pious, and failed to satisfy
+the incredulous. Besides, can a miracle be proved? No, you must believe
+in it! When God is pleased to intervene, it is not for man to try to
+understand. In the ages of real belief, Science did not make any
+meddlesome attempt to explain the nature of the Divinity. And why should
+it come and interfere here? By doing so, it simply hampered faith and
+diminished its own prestige. No, no, there must be no Science, you must
+throw yourself upon the ground, kiss it, and believe. Or else you must
+take yourself off. No compromise was possible. If examination once began
+it must go on, and must, fatally, conduct to doubt.
+
+Pierre’s greatest sufferings, however, came from the extraordinary
+conversations which he heard around him. There were some believers
+present who spoke of the miracles with the most amazing ease and
+tranquillity. The most stupefying stories left their serenity entire.
+Another miracle, and yet another! And with smiles on their faces, their
+reason never protesting, they went on relating such imaginings as could
+only have come from diseased brains. They were evidently living in such a
+state of visionary fever that nothing henceforth could astonish them. And
+not only did Pierre notice this among folks of simple, childish minds,
+illiterate, hallucinated creatures like Raboin, but also among the men of
+intellect, the men with cultivated brains, the _savants_ like Doctor
+Bonamy and others. It was incredible. And thus Pierre felt a growing
+discomfort arising within him, a covert anger which would doubtless end
+by bursting forth. His reason was struggling, like that of some poor
+wretch who after being flung into a river, feels the waters seize him
+from all sides and stifle him; and he reflected that the minds which,
+like Doctor Chassaigne’s, sink at last into blind belief, must pass
+though this same discomfort and struggle before the final shipwreck.
+
+He glanced at his old friend and saw how sorrowful he looked, struck down
+by destiny, as weak as a crying child, and henceforth quite alone in
+life. Nevertheless, he was unable to check the cry of protest which rose
+to his lips: “No, no, if we do not know everything, even if we shall
+never know everything, there is no reason why we should leave off
+learning. It is wrong that the Unknown should profit by man’s debility
+and ignorance. On the contrary, the eternal hope should be that the
+things which now seem inexplicable will some day be explained; and we
+cannot, under healthy conditions, have any other ideal than this march
+towards the discovery of the Unknown, this victory slowly achieved by
+reason amidst all the miseries both of the flesh and of the mind. Ah!
+reason--it is my reason which makes me suffer, and it is from my reason
+too that I await all my strength. When reason dies, the whole being
+perishes. And I feel but an ardent thirst to satisfy my reason more and
+more, even though I may lose all happiness in doing so.”
+
+Tears were appearing in Doctor Chassaigne’s eyes; doubtless the memory of
+his dear dead ones had again flashed upon him. And, in his turn, he
+murmured: “Reason, reason, yes, certainly it is a thing to be very proud
+of; it embodies the very dignity of life. But there is love, which is
+life’s omnipotence, the one blessing to be won again when you have lost
+it.”
+
+His voice sank in a stifled sob; and as in a mechanical way he began to
+finger the sets of documents lying on the table, he espied among them one
+whose cover bore the name of Marie de Guersaint in large letters. He
+opened it and read the certificates of the two doctors who had inferred
+that the case was one of paralysis of the marrow. “Come, my child,” he
+then resumed, “I know that you feel warm affection for Mademoiselle de
+Guersaint. What should you say if she were cured here? There are here
+some certificates, bearing honourable names, and you know that paralysis
+of this nature is virtually incurable. Well, if this young person should
+all at once run and jump about as I have seen so many others do, would
+you not feel very happy, would you not at last acknowledge the
+intervention of a supernatural power?”
+
+Pierre was about to reply, when he suddenly remembered his cousin
+Beauclair’s expression of opinion, the prediction that the miracle would
+come about like a lightning stroke, an awakening, an exaltation of the
+whole being; and he felt his discomfort increase and contented himself
+with replying: “Yes, indeed, I should be very happy. And you are right;
+there is doubtless only a determination to secure happiness in all the
+agitation one beholds here.”
+
+However, he could remain in that office no longer. The heat was becoming
+so great that perspiration streamed down the faces of those present.
+Doctor Bonamy had begun to dictate a report of the examination of La
+Grivotte to one of the seminarists, while Father Dargeles, watchful with
+regard to the phraseology employed, occasionally rose and whispered some
+verbal alteration in the writer’s ear. Meantime, the tumult around them
+was continuing; the discussion among the medical men had taken another
+turn and now bore on certain technical points of no significance with
+regard to the case in question. You could no longer breathe within those
+wooden walls, nausea was upsetting every heart and every head. The little
+fair-haired gentleman, the influential writer from Paris, had already
+gone away, quite vexed at not having seen a real miracle.
+
+Pierre thereupon said to Doctor Chassaigne, “Let us go; I shall be taken
+ill if I stay here any longer.”
+
+They left the office at the same time as La Grivotte, who was at last
+being dismissed. And as soon as they reached the door they found
+themselves caught in a torrential, surging, jostling crowd, which was
+eager to behold the girl so miraculously healed; for the report of the
+miracle must have already spread, and one and all were struggling to see
+the chosen one, question her, and touch her. And she, with her empurpled
+cheeks, her flaming eyes, her dancing gait, could do nothing but repeat,
+“I am cured, I am cured!”
+
+Shouts drowned her voice, she herself was submerged, carried off amidst
+the eddies of the throng. For a moment one lost sight of her as though
+she had sunk in those tumultuous waters; then she suddenly reappeared
+close to Pierre and the doctor, who endeavoured to extricate her from the
+crush. They had just perceived the Commander, one of whose manias was to
+come down to the piscinas and the Grotto in order to vent his anger
+there. With his frock-coat tightly girding him in military fashion, he
+was, as usual, leaning on his silver-knobbed walking-stick, slightly
+dragging his left leg, which his second attack of paralysis had
+stiffened. And his face reddened and his eyes flashed with anger when La
+Grivotte, pushing him aside in order that she might pass, repeated amidst
+the wild enthusiasm of the crowd, “I am cured, I am cured!”
+
+“Well!” he cried, seized with sudden fury, “so much the worse for you, my
+girl!”
+
+Exclamations arose, folks began to laugh, for he was well known, and his
+maniacal passion for death was forgiven him. However, when he began
+stammering confused words, saying that it was pitiful to desire life when
+one was possessed of neither beauty nor fortune, and that this girl ought
+to have preferred to die at once rather than suffer again, people began
+to growl around him, and Abbé Judaine, who was passing, had to extricate
+him from his trouble. The priest drew him away. “Be quiet, my friend, be
+quiet,” he said. “It is scandalous. Why do you rebel like this against
+the goodness of God who occasionally shows His compassion for our
+sufferings by alleviating them? I tell you again that you yourself ought
+to fall on your knees and beg Him to restore to you the use of your leg
+and let you live another ten years.”
+
+The Commander almost choked with anger. “What!” he replied, “ask to live
+for another ten years, when my finest day will be the day I die! Show
+myself as spiritless, as cowardly as the thousands of patients whom I see
+pass along here, full of a base terror of death, shrieking aloud their
+weakness, their passion to remain alive! Ah! no, I should feel too much
+contempt for myself. I want to die!--to die at once! It will be so
+delightful to be no more.”
+
+He was at last out of the scramble of the pilgrims, and again found
+himself near Doctor Chassaigne and Pierre on the bank of the Gave. And he
+addressed himself to the doctor, whom he often met: “Didn’t they try to
+restore a dead man to life just now?” he asked; “I was told of it--it
+almost suffocated me. Eh, doctor? You understand? That man was happy
+enough to be dead, and they dared to dip him in their water in the
+criminal hope to make him alive again! But suppose they had succeeded,
+suppose their water had animated that poor devil once more--for one never
+knows what may happen in this funny world--don’t you think that the man
+would have had a perfect right to spit his anger in the face of those
+corpse-menders? Had he asked them to awaken him? How did they know if he
+were not well pleased at being dead? Folks ought to be consulted at any
+rate. Just picture them playing the same vile trick on me when I at last
+fall into the great deep sleep. Ah! I would give them a nice reception.
+‘Meddle with what concerns you,’ I should say, and you may be sure I
+should make all haste to die again!”
+
+He looked so singular in the fit of rage which had come over him that
+Abbé Judaine and the doctor could not help smiling. Pierre, however,
+remained grave, chilled by the great quiver which swept by. Were not
+those words he had just heard the despairing imprecations of Lazarus? He
+had often imagined Lazarus emerging from the tomb and crying aloud: “Why
+hast Thou again awakened me to this abominable life, O Lord? I was
+sleeping the eternal, dreamless sleep so deeply; I was at last enjoying
+such sweet repose amidst the delights of nihility! I had known every
+wretchedness and every dolour, treachery, vain hope, defeat, sickness; as
+one of the living I had paid my frightful debt to suffering, for I was
+born without knowing why, and I lived without knowing how; and now,
+behold, O Lord, Thou requirest me to pay my debt yet again; Thou
+condemnest me to serve my term of punishment afresh! Have I then been
+guilty of some inexpiable transgression that thou shouldst inflict such
+cruel chastisement upon me? Alas! to live again, to feel oneself die a
+little in one’s flesh each day, to have no intelligence save such as is
+required in order to doubt; no will, save such as one must have to be
+unable; no tenderness, save such as is needed to weep over one’s own
+sorrows. Yet it was passed, I had crossed the terrifying threshold of
+death, I had known that second which is so horrible that it sufficeth to
+poison the whole of life. I had felt the sweat of agony cover me with
+moisture, the blood flow back from my limbs, my breath forsake me, flee
+away in a last gasp. And Thou ordainest that I should know this distress
+a second time, that I should die twice, that my human misery should
+exceed that of all mankind. Then may it be even now, O Lord! Yes, I
+entreat Thee, do also this great miracle; may I once more lay myself down
+in this grave, and again fall asleep without suffering from the
+interruption of my eternal slumber. Have mercy upon me, and forbear from
+inflicting on me the torture of living yet again; that torture which is
+so frightful that Thou hast never inflicted it on any being. I have
+always loved Thee and served Thee; and I beseech Thee do not make of me
+the greatest example of Thy wrath, a cause of terror unto all
+generations. But show unto me Thy gentleness and loving kindness, O Lord!
+restore unto me the slumber I have earned, and let me sleep once more
+amid the delights of Thy nihility.”
+
+While Pierre was pondering in this wise, Abbé Judaine had led the
+Commander away, at last managing to calm him; and now the young priest
+shook hands with Doctor Chassaigne, recollecting that it was past five
+o’clock, and that Marie must be waiting for him. On his way back to the
+Grotto, however, he encountered the Abbé des Hermoises deep in
+conversation with M. de Guersaint, who had only just left his room at the
+hotel, and was quite enlivened by his good nap. He and his companion were
+admiring the extraordinary beauty which the fervour of faith imparted to
+some women’s countenances, and they also spoke of their projected trip to
+the Cirque de Gavarnie.
+
+On learning, however, that Marie had taken a first bath with no effect,
+M. de Guersaint at once followed Pierre. They found the poor girl still
+in the same painful stupor, with her eyes still fixed on the Blessed
+Virgin who had not deigned to hear her. She did not answer the loving
+words which her father addressed to her, but simply glanced at him with
+her large distressful eyes, and then again turned them upon the marble
+statue which looked so white amid the radiance of the tapers. And whilst
+Pierre stood waiting to take her back to the hospital, M. de Guersaint
+devoutly fell upon his knees. At first he prayed with passionate ardour
+for his daughter’s cure, and then he solicited, on his own behalf, the
+favour of finding some wealthy person who would provide him with the
+million francs that he needed for his studies on aerial navigation.
+
+
+
+
+V. BERNADETTE’S TRIALS
+
+ABOUT eleven o’clock that night, leaving M. de Guersaint in his room at
+the Hotel of the Apparitions, it occurred to Pierre to return for a
+moment to the Hospital of Our Lady of Dolours before going to bed
+himself. He had left Marie in such a despairing state, so fiercely
+silent, that he was full of anxiety about her. And when he had asked for
+Madame de Jonquière at the door of the Sainte-Honorine Ward he became yet
+more anxious, for the news was by no means good. The young girl, said the
+superintendent, had not even opened her mouth. She would answer nobody,
+and had even refused to eat. Madame de Jonquière, insisted therefore that
+Pierre should come in. True, the presence of men was forbidden in the
+women’s wards at night-time, but then a priest is not a man.
+
+“She only cares for you and will only listen to you,” said the worthy
+lady. “Pray come in and sit down near her till Abbé Judaine arrives. He
+will come at about one in the morning to administer the communion to our
+more afflicted sufferers, those who cannot move and who have to eat at
+daybreak. You will be able to assist him.”
+
+Pierre thereupon followed Madame de Jonquière, who installed him at the
+head of Marie’s bed. “My dear child,” she said to the girl, “I have
+brought you somebody who is very fond of you. You will be able to chat
+with him, and you will be reasonable now, won’t you?”
+
+Marie, however, on recognising Pierre, gazed at him with an air of
+exasperated suffering, a black, stern expression of revolt.
+
+“Would you like him to read something to you,” resumed Madame de
+Jonquière, “something that would ease and console you as he did in the
+train? No? It wouldn’t interest you, you don’t care for it? Well, we will
+see by-and-by. I will leave him with you, and I am sure you will be quite
+reasonable again in a few minutes.”
+
+Pierre then began speaking to her in a low voice, saying all the kind
+consoling things that his heart could think of, and entreating her not to
+allow herself to sink into such despair. If the Blessed Virgin had not
+cured her on the first day, it was because she reserved her for some
+conspicuous miracle. But he spoke in vain. Marie had turned her head
+away, and did not even seem to listen as she lay there with a bitter
+expression on her mouth and a gleam of irritation in her eyes, which
+wandered away into space. Accordingly he ceased speaking and began to
+gaze at the ward around him.
+
+The spectacle was a frightful one. Never before had such a nausea of pity
+and terror affected his heart. They had long since dined, nevertheless
+plates of food which had been brought up from the kitchens still lay
+about the beds; and all through the night there were some who ate whilst
+others continued restlessly moaning, asking to be turned over or helped
+out of bed. As the hours went by a kind of vague delirium seemed to come
+upon almost all of them. Very few were able to sleep quietly. Some had
+been undressed and were lying between the sheets, but the greater number
+were simply stretched out on the beds, it being so difficult to get their
+clothes off that they did not even change their linen during the five
+days of the pilgrimage. In the semi-obscurity, moreover, the obstruction
+of the ward seemed to have increased. To the fifteen beds ranged along
+the walls and the seven mattresses filling the central space, some fresh
+pallets had been added, and on all sides there was a confused litter of
+ragged garments, old baskets, boxes, and valises. Indeed, you no longer
+knew where to step. Two smoky lanterns shed but a dim light upon this
+encampment of dying women, in which a sickly smell prevailed; for,
+instead of any freshness, merely the heavy heat of the August night came
+in through the two windows which had been left ajar. Nightmare-like
+shadows and cries sped to and fro, peopling the inferno, amidst the
+nocturnal agony of so much accumulated suffering.
+
+However, Pierre recognised Raymonde, who, her duties over, had come to
+kiss her mother, before going to sleep in one of the garrets reserved to
+the Sisters of the hospital. For her own part, Madame de Jonquière,
+taking her functions to heart, did not close her eyes during the three
+nights spent at Lourdes.
+
+She certainly had an arm-chair in which to rest herself, but she never
+sat down in it for a moment with out being disturbed. It must be admitted
+that she was bravely seconded by little Madame Désagneaux, who displayed
+such enthusiastic zeal that Sister Hyacinthe asked her, with a smile:
+“Why don’t you take the vows?” whereupon she responded, with an air of
+scared surprise: “Oh! I can’t, I’m married, you know, and I’m very fond
+of my husband.” As for Madame Volmar, she had not even shown herself; but
+it was alleged that Madame de Jonquière had sent her to bed on hearing
+her complain of a frightful headache. And this had put Madame Désagneaux
+in quite a temper; for, as she sensibly enough remarked, a person had no
+business to offer to nurse the sick when the slightest exertion exhausted
+her. She herself, however, at last began to feel her legs and arms
+aching, though she would not admit it, but hastened to every patient whom
+she heard calling, ever ready as she was to lend a helping hand. In Paris
+she would have rung for a servant rather than have moved a candlestick
+herself; but here she was ever coming and going, bringing and emptying
+basins, and passing her arms around patients to hold them up, whilst
+Madame de Jonquière slipped pillows behind them. However, shortly after
+eleven o’clock, she was all at once overpowered. Having imprudently
+stretched herself in the armchair for a moment’s rest, she there fell
+soundly asleep, her pretty head sinking on one of her shoulders amidst
+her lovely, wavy fair hair, which was all in disorder. And from that
+moment neither moan nor call, indeed no sound whatever, could waken her.
+
+Madame de Jonquière, however, had softly approached the young priest
+again. “I had an idea,” said she in a low voice, “of sending for Monsieur
+Ferrand, the house-surgeon, you know, who accompanies us. He would have
+given the poor girl something to calm her. Only he is busy downstairs
+trying to relieve Brother Isidore, in the Family Ward. Besides, as you
+know, we are not supposed to give medical attendance here; our work
+consists in placing our dear sick ones in the hands of the Blessed
+Virgin.”
+
+Sister Hyacinthe, who had made up her mind to spend the night with the
+superintendent, now drew, near. “I have just come from the Family Ward,”
+ she said; “I went to take Monsieur Sabathier some oranges which I had
+promised him, and I saw Monsieur Ferrand, who had just succeeded in
+reviving Brother Isidore. Would you like me to go down and fetch him?”
+
+But Pierre declined the offer. “No, no,” he replied, “Marie will be
+sensible. I will read her a few consoling pages by-and-by, and then she
+will rest.”
+
+For the moment, however, the girl still remained obstinately silent. One
+of the two lanterns was hanging from the wall close by, and Pierre could
+distinctly see her thin face, rigid and motionless like stone. Then,
+farther away, in the adjoining bed, he perceived Elise Rouquet, who was
+sound asleep and no longer wore her fichu, but openly displayed her face,
+the ulcerations of which still continued to grow paler. And on the young
+priest’s left hand was Madame Vetu, now greatly weakened, in a hopeless
+state, unable to doze off for a moment, shaken as she was by a continuous
+rattle. He said a few kind words to her, for which she thanked him with a
+nod; and, gathering her remaining strength together, she was at last able
+to say: “There were several cures to-day; I was very pleased to hear of
+them.”
+
+On a mattress at the foot of her bed was La Grivotte, who in a fever of
+extraordinary activity kept on sitting up to repeat her favourite phrase:
+“I am cured, I am cured!” And she went on to relate that she had eaten
+half a fowl for dinner, she who had been unable to eat for long months
+past. Then, too, she had followed the torchlight procession on foot
+during nearly a couple of hours, and she would certainly have danced till
+daybreak had the Blessed Virgin only been pleased to give a ball. And
+once more she repeated: “I am cured, yes, cured, quite cured!”
+
+Thereupon Madame Vetu found enough strength to say with childlike
+serenity and perfect, gladsome abnegation: “The Blessed Virgin did well
+to cure her since she is poor. I am better pleased than if it had been
+myself, for I have my little shop to depend upon and can wait. We each
+have our turn, each our turn.”
+
+One and all displayed a like charity, a like pleasure that others should
+have been cured. Seldom, indeed, was any jealousy shown; they surrendered
+themselves to a kind of epidemical beatitude, to a contagious hope that
+they would all be cured whenever it should so please the Blessed Virgin.
+And it was necessary that she should not be offended by any undue
+impatience; for assuredly she had her reasons and knew right well why she
+began by healing some rather than others. Thus with the fraternity born
+of common suffering and hope, the most grievously afflicted patients
+prayed for the cure of their neighbours. None of them ever despaired,
+each fresh miracle was the promise of another one, of the one which would
+be worked on themselves. Their faith remained unshakable. A story was
+told of a paralytic woman, some farm servant, who with extraordinary
+strength of will had contrived to take a few steps at the Grotto, and who
+while being conveyed back to the hospital had asked to be set down that
+she might return to the Grotto on foot. But she had gone only half the
+distance when she had staggered, panting and livid; and on being brought
+to the hospital on a stretcher, she had died there, cured, however, said
+her neighbours in the ward. Each, indeed, had her turn; the Blessed
+Virgin forgot none of her dear daughters unless it were her design to
+grant some chosen one immediate admission into Paradise.
+
+All at once, at the moment when Pierre was leaning towards her, again
+offering to read to her, Marie burst into furious sobs. Letting her head
+fall upon her friend’s shoulder, she vented all her rebellion in a low,
+terrible voice, amidst the vague shadows of that awful room. She had
+experienced what seldom happened to her, a collapse of faith, a sudden
+loss of courage, all the rage of the suffering being who can no longer
+wait. Such was her despair, indeed, that she even became sacrilegious.
+
+“No, no,” she stammered, “the Virgin is cruel; she is unjust, for she did
+not cure me just now. Yet I felt so certain that she would grant my
+prayer, I had prayed to her so fervently. I shall never be cured, now
+that the first day is past. It was a Saturday, and I was convinced that I
+should be cured on a Saturday. I did not want to speak--and oh! prevent
+me, for my heart is too full, and I might say more than I ought to do.”
+
+With fraternal hands he had quickly taken hold of her head, and he was
+endeavouring to stifle the cry of her rebellion. “Be quiet, Marie, I
+entreat you! It would never do for anyone to hear you--you so pious! Do
+you want to scandalise every soul?”
+
+But in spite of her efforts she was unable to keep silence. “I should
+stifle, I must speak out,” she said. “I no longer love her, no longer
+believe in her. The tales which are related here are all falsehoods;
+there is _nothing_, she does not even exist, since she does not hear when
+one speaks to her, and sobs. If you only knew all that I said to her! Oh!
+I want to go away at once. Take me away, carry me away in your arms, so
+that I may go and die in the street, where the passers-by, at least, will
+take pity on my sufferings!”
+
+She was growing weak again, and had once more fallen on her back,
+stammering, talking childishly. “Besides, nobody loves me,” she said. “My
+father was not even there. And you, my friend, forsook me. When I saw
+that it was another who was taking me to the piscinas, I began to feel a
+chill. Yes, that chill of doubt which I often felt in Paris. And that is
+at least certain, I doubted--perhaps, indeed, that is why she did not
+cure me. I cannot have prayed well enough, I am not pious enough, no
+doubt.”
+
+She was no longer blaspheming, but seeking for excuses to explain the
+non-intervention of Heaven. However, her face retained an angry
+expression amidst this struggle which she was waging with the Supreme
+Power, that Power which she had loved so well and entreated so fervently,
+but which had not obeyed her. When, on rare occasions, a fit of rage of
+this description broke out in the ward, and the sufferers, lying on their
+beds, rebelled against their fate, sobbing and lamenting, and at times
+even swearing, the lady-hospitallers and the Sisters, somewhat shocked,
+would content themselves with simply closing the bed-curtains. Grace had
+departed, one must await its return. And at last, sometimes after long
+hours, the rebellious complaints would die away, and peace would reign
+again amidst the deep, woeful silence.
+
+“Calm yourself, calm yourself, I implore you,” Pierre gently repeated to
+Marie, seeing that a fresh attack was coming upon her, an attack of doubt
+in herself, of fear that she was unworthy of the divine assistance.
+
+Sister Hyacinthe, moreover, had again drawn near. “You will not be able
+to take the sacrament by-and-by, my dear child,” said she, “if you
+continue in such a state. Come, since we have given Monsieur l’Abbé
+permission to read to you, why don’t you let him do so?”
+
+Marie made a feeble gesture as though to say that she consented, and
+Pierre at once took out of the valise at the foot of her bed, the little
+blue-covered book in which the story of Bernadette was so naïvely
+related. As on the previous night, however, when the train was rolling
+on, he did not confine himself to the bald phraseology of the book, but
+began improvising, relating all manner of details in his own fashion, in
+order to charm the simple folks who listened to him. Nevertheless, with
+his reasoning, analytical proclivities, he could not prevent himself from
+secretly re-establishing the real facts, imparting, for himself alone, a
+human character to this legend, whose wealth of prodigies contributed so
+greatly to the cure of those that suffered. Women were soon sitting up on
+all the surrounding beds. They wished to hear the continuation of the
+story, for the thought of the sacrament which they were passionately
+awaiting had prevented almost all of them from getting to sleep. And
+seated there, in the pale light of the lantern hanging from the wall
+above him, Pierre little by little raised his voice, so that he might be
+heard by the whole ward.
+
+“The persecutions began with the very first miracles. Called a liar and a
+lunatic, Bernadette was threatened with imprisonment. Abbé Peyramale, the
+parish priest of Lourdes, and Monseigneur Laurence, Bishop of Tarbes,
+like the rest of the clergy, refrained from all intervention, waiting the
+course of events with the greatest prudence; whilst the civil
+authorities, the Prefect, the Public Prosecutor, the Mayor, and the
+Commissary of Police, indulged in excessive anti-religious zeal.”
+
+Continuing his perusal in this fashion, Pierre saw the real story rise up
+before him with invincible force. His mind travelled a short distance
+backward and he beheld Bernadette at the time of the first apparitions,
+so candid, so charming in her ignorance and good faith, amidst all her
+sufferings. And she was truly the visionary, the saint, her face assuming
+an expression of superhuman beauty during her crises of ecstasy. Her brow
+beamed, her features seemed to ascend, her eyes were bathed with light,
+whilst her parted lips burnt with divine love. And then her whole person
+became majestic; it was in a slow, stately way that she made the sign of
+the cross, with gestures which seemed to embrace the whole horizon. The
+neighbouring valleys, the villages, the towns, spoke of Bernadette alone.
+Although the Lady had not yet told her name, she was recognised, and
+people said, “It is she, the Blessed Virgin.” On the first market-day, so
+many people flocked into Lourdes that the town quite overflowed. All
+wished to see the blessed child whom the Queen of the Angels had chosen,
+and who became so beautiful when the heavens opened to her enraptured
+gaze. The crowd on the banks of the Gave grew larger each morning, and
+thousands of people ended by installing themselves there, jostling one
+another that they might lose nothing of the spectacle! As soon as
+Bernadette appeared, a murmur of fervour spread: “Here is the saint, the
+saint, the saint!” Folks rushed forward to kiss her garments. She was a
+Messiah, the eternal Messiah whom the nations await, and the need of whom
+is ever arising from generation to generation. And, moreover, it was ever
+the same adventure beginning afresh: an apparition of the Virgin to a
+shepherdess; a voice exhorting the world to penitence; a spring gushing
+forth; and miracles astonishing and enrapturing the crowds that hastened
+to the spot in larger and larger numbers.
+
+Ah! those first miracles of Lourdes, what a spring-tide flowering of
+consolation and hope they brought to the hearts of the wretched, upon
+whom poverty and sickness were preying! Old Bourriette’s restored
+eyesight, little Bouhohort’s resuscitation in the icy water, the deaf
+recovering their hearing, the lame suddenly enabled to walk, and so many
+other cases, Blaise Maumus, Bernade Soubies,* Auguste Bordes, Blaisette
+Soupenne, Benoite Cazeaux, in turn cured of the most dreadful ailments,
+became the subject of endless conversations, and fanned the illusions of
+all those who suffered either in their hearts or their flesh. On
+Thursday, March 4th, the last day of the fifteen visits solicited by the
+Virgin, there were more than twenty thousand persons assembled before the
+Grotto. Everybody, indeed, had come down from the mountains. And this
+immense throng found at the Grotto the divine food that it hungered for,
+a feast of the Marvellous, a sufficient meed of the Impossible to content
+its belief in a superior Power, which deigned to bestow some attention
+upon poor folks, and to intervene in the wretched affairs of this lower
+world, in order to re-establish some measure of justice and kindness. It
+was indeed the cry of heavenly charity bursting forth, the invisible
+helping hand stretched out at last to dress the eternal sores of
+humanity. Ah! that dream in which each successive generation sought
+refuge, with what indestructible energy did it not arise among the
+disinherited ones of this world as soon as it found a favourable spot,
+prepared by circumstances! And for centuries, perhaps, circumstances had
+never so combined to kindle the mystical fire of faith as they did at
+Lourdes.
+
+ * I give this name as written by M. Zola; but in other works on
+ Lourdes I find it given as “Bernarde Loubie--a bed-ridden old
+ woman, cured of a paralytic affection by drinking the water of
+ the Grotto.”--Trans.
+
+A new religion was about to be founded, and persecutions at once began,
+for religions only spring up amidst vexations and rebellions. And even as
+it was long ago at Jerusalem, when the tidings of miracles spread, the
+civil authorities--the Public Prosecutor, the Justice of the Peace, the
+Mayor, and particularly the Prefect of Tarbes--were all roused and began
+to bestir themselves. The Prefect was a sincere Catholic, a worshipper, a
+man of perfect honour, but he also had the firm mind of a public
+functionary, was a passionate defender of order, and a declared adversary
+of fanaticism which gives birth to disorder and religious perversion.
+Under his orders at Lourdes there was a Commissary of Police, a man of
+great intelligence and shrewdness, who had hitherto discharged his
+functions in a very proper way, and who, legitimately enough, beheld in
+this affair of the apparitions an opportunity to put his gift of
+sagacious skill to the proof. So the struggle began, and it was this
+Commissary who, on the first Sunday in Lent, at the time of the first
+apparitions, summoned Bernadette to his office in order that he might
+question her. He showed himself affectionate, then angry, then
+threatening, but all in vain; the answers which the girl gave him were
+ever the same. The story which she related, with its slowly accumulated
+details, had little by little irrevocably implanted itself in her
+infantile mind. And it was no lie on the part of this poor suffering
+creature, this exceptional victim of hysteria, but an unconscious
+haunting, a radical lack of will-power to free herself from her original
+hallucination. She knew not how to exert any such will, she could not,
+she would not exert it. Ah! the poor child, the dear child, so amiable
+and so gentle, so incapable of any evil thought, from that time forward
+lost to life, crucified by her fixed idea, whence one could only have
+extricated her by changing her environment, by restoring her to the open
+air, in some land of daylight and human affection. But she was the chosen
+one, she had beheld the Virgin, she would suffer from it her whole life
+long and die from it at last!
+
+Pierre, who knew Bernadette so well, and who felt a fraternal pity for
+her memory, the fervent compassion with which one regards a human saint,
+a simple, upright, charming creature tortured by her faith, allowed his
+emotion to appear in his moist eyes and trembling voice. And a pause in
+his narrative ensued. Marie, who had hitherto been lying there quite
+stiff, with a hard expression of revolt still upon her face, opened her
+clenched hands and made a vague gesture of pity. “Ah,” she murmured, “the
+poor child, all alone to contend against those magistrates, and so
+innocent, so proud, so unshakable in her championship of the truth!”
+
+The same compassionate sympathy was arising from all the beds in the
+ward. That hospital inferno with its nocturnal wretchedness, its
+pestilential atmosphere, its pallets of anguish heaped together, its
+weary lady-hospitallers and Sisters flitting phantom-like hither and
+thither, now seemed to be illumined by a ray of divine charity. Was not
+the eternal illusion of happiness rising once more amidst tears and
+unconscious falsehoods? Poor, poor Bernadette! All waxed indignant at the
+thought of the persecutions which she had endured in defence of her
+faith.
+
+Then Pierre, resuming his story, related all that the child had had to
+suffer. After being questioned by the Commissary she had to appear before
+the judges of the local tribunal. The entire magistracy pursued her, and
+endeavoured to wring a retractation from her. But the obstinacy of her
+dream was stronger than the common sense of all the civil authorities put
+together. Two doctors who were sent by the Prefect to make a careful
+examination of the girl came, as all doctors would have done, to the
+honest opinion that it was a case of nervous trouble, of which the asthma
+was a sure sign, and which, in certain circumstances, might have induced
+visions. This nearly led to her removal and confinement in a hospital at
+Tarbes. But public exasperation was feared. A bishop had fallen on his
+knees before her. Some ladies had sought to buy favours from her for
+gold. Moreover she had found a refuge with the Sisters of Nevers, who
+tended the aged in the town asylum, and there she made her first
+communion, and was with difficulty taught to read and write. As the
+Blessed Virgin seemed to have chosen her solely to work the happiness of
+others, and she herself had not been cured, it was very sensibly decided
+to take her to the baths of Cauterets, which were so near at hand.
+However, they did her no good. And no sooner had she returned to Lourdes
+than the torture of being questioned and adored by a whole people began
+afresh, became aggravated, and filled her more and more with horror of
+the world. Her life was over already; she would be a playful child no
+more; she could never be a young girl dreaming of a husband, a young wife
+kissing the cheeks of sturdy children. She had beheld the Virgin, she was
+the chosen one, the martyr. If the Virgin, said believers, had confided
+three secrets to her, investing her with a triple armour as it were, it
+was simply in order to sustain her in her appointed course.
+
+The clergy had for a long time remained aloof, on its own side full of
+doubt and anxiety. Abbé Peyramale, the parish priest of Lourdes, was a
+man of somewhat blunt ways, but full of infinite kindness, rectitude, and
+energy whenever he found himself in what he thought the right path. On
+the first occasion when Bernadette visited him, he received this child
+who had been brought up at Bartres and had not yet been seen at
+Catechism, almost as sternly as the Commissary of Police had done; in
+fact, he refused to believe her story, and with some irony told her to
+entreat the Lady to begin by making the briars blossom beneath her feet,
+which, by the way, the Lady never did. And if the Abbé ended by taking
+the child under his protection like a good pastor who defends his flock,
+it was simply through the advent of persecution and the talk of
+imprisoning this puny child, whose clear eyes shone so frankly, and who
+clung with such modest, gentle stubbornness to her original tale.
+Besides, why should he have continued denying the miracle after merely
+doubting it like a prudent priest who had no desire to see religion mixed
+up in any suspicious affair? Holy Writ is full of prodigies, all dogma is
+based on the mysterious; and that being so, there was nothing to prevent
+him, a priest, from believing that the Virgin had really entrusted
+Bernadette with a pious message for him, an injunction to build a church
+whither the faithful would repair in procession. Thus it was that he
+began loving and defending Bernadette for her charm’s sake, whilst still
+refraining from active interference, awaiting as he did the decision of
+his Bishop.
+
+This Bishop, Monseigneur Laurence, seemed to have shut himself up in his
+episcopal residence at Tarbes, locking himself within it and preserving
+absolute silence as though there were nothing occurring at Lourdes of a
+nature to interest him. He had given strict instructions to his clergy,
+and so far not a priest had appeared among the vast crowds of people who
+spent their days before the Grotto. He waited, and even allowed the
+Prefect to state in his administrative circulars that the civil and the
+religious authorities were acting in concert. In reality, he cannot have
+believed in the apparitions of the Grotto of Massabielle, which he
+doubtless considered to be the mere hallucinations of a sick child. This
+affair, which was revolutionising the region, was of sufficient
+importance for him to have studied it day by day, and the manner in which
+he disregarded it for so long a time shows how little inclined he was to
+admit the truth of the alleged miracles, and how greatly he desired to
+avoid compromising the Church in a matter which seemed destined to end
+badly. With all his piety, Monseigneur Laurence had a cool, practical
+intellect, which enabled him to govern his diocese with great good sense.
+Impatient and ardent people nicknamed him Saint Thomas at the time, on
+account of the manner in which his doubts persisted until events at last
+forced his hand. Indeed, he turned a deaf ear to all the stories that
+were being related, firmly resolved as he was that he would only listen
+to them if it should appear certain that religion had nothing to lose.
+
+However, the persecutions were about to become more pronounced. The
+Minister of Worship in Paris, who had been informed of what was going on,
+required that a stop should be put to all disorders, and so the Prefect
+caused the approaches to the Grotto to be occupied by the military. The
+Grotto had already been decorated with vases of flowers offered by the
+zeal of the faithful and the gratitude of sufferers who had been healed.
+Money, moreover, was thrown into it; gifts to the Blessed Virgin
+abounded. Rudimentary improvements, too, were carried out in a
+spontaneous way; some quarrymen cut a kind of reservoir to receive the
+miraculous water, and others removed the large blocks of stone, and
+traced a path in the hillside. However, in presence of the swelling
+torrents of people, the Prefect, after renouncing his idea of arresting
+Bernadette, took the serious resolution of preventing all access to the
+Grotto by placing a strong palisade in front of it. Some regrettable
+incidents had lately occurred; various children pretended that they had
+seen the devil, some of them being guilty of simulation in this respect,
+whilst others had given way to real attacks of hysteria, in the
+contagious nervous unhinging which was so prevalent. But what a terrible
+business did the removal of the offerings from the Grotto prove! It was
+only towards evening that the Commissary was able to find a girl willing
+to let him have a cart on hire, and two hours later this girl fell from a
+loft and broke one of her ribs. Likewise, a man who had lent an axe had
+one of his feet crushed on the morrow by the fall of a block of stone.*
+It was in the midst of jeers and hisses that the Commissary carried off
+the pots of flowers, the tapers which he found burning, the coppers and
+the silver hearts which lay upon the sand. People clenched their fists,
+and covertly called him “thief” and “murderer.” Then the posts for the
+palisades were planted in the ground, and the rails were nailed to the
+crossbars, no little labour being performed to shut off the Mystery, in
+order to bar access to the Unknown, and put the miracles in prison. And
+the civil authorities were simple enough to imagine that it was all over,
+that those few bits of boarding would suffice to stay the poor people who
+hungered for illusion and hope.
+
+ * Both of these accidents were interpreted as miracles.--Trans.
+
+But as soon as the new religion was proscribed, forbidden by the law as
+an offence, it began to burn with an inextinguishable flame in the depths
+of every soul. Believers came to the river bank in far greater numbers,
+fell upon their knees at a short distance from the Grotto, and sobbed
+aloud as they gazed at the forbidden heaven. And the sick, the poor
+ailing folks, who were forbidden to seek cure, rushed on the Grotto
+despite all prohibitions, slipped in whenever they could find an aperture
+or climbed over the palings when their strength enabled them to do so, in
+the one ardent desire to steal a little of the water. What! there was a
+prodigious water in that Grotto, which restored the sight to the blind,
+which set the infirm erect upon their legs again, which instantaneously
+healed all ailments; and there were officials cruel enough to put that
+water under lock and key so that it might not cure any more poor people!
+Why, it was monstrous! And a cry of hatred arose from all the humble
+ones, all the disinherited ones who had as much need of the Marvellous as
+of bread to live! In accordance with a municipal decree, the names of all
+delinquents were to be taken by the police, and thus one soon beheld a
+woeful _défile_ of old women and lame men summoned before the Justice of
+the Peace for the sole offence of taking a little water from the fount of
+life! They stammered and entreated, at their wit’s end when a fine was
+imposed upon them. And, outside, the crowd was growling; rageful
+unpopularity was gathering around those magistrates who treated human
+wretchedness so harshly, those pitiless masters who after taking all the
+wealth of the world, would not even leave to the poor their dream of the
+realms beyond, their belief that a beneficent superior power took a
+maternal interest in them, and was ready to endow them with peace of soul
+and health of body. One day a whole band of poverty-stricken and ailing
+folks went to the Mayor, knelt down in his courtyard, and implored him
+with sobs to allow the Grotto to be reopened; and the words they spoke
+were so pitiful that all who heard them wept. A mother showed her child
+who was half-dead; would they let the little one die like that in her
+arms when there was a source yonder which had saved the children of other
+mothers? A blind man called attention to his dim eyes; a pale, scrofulous
+youth displayed the sores on his legs; a paralytic woman sought to join
+her woeful twisted hands: did the authorities wish to see them all
+perish, did they refuse them the last divine chance of life, condemned
+and abandoned as they were by the science of man? And equally great was
+the distress of the believers, of those who were convinced that a corner
+of heaven had opened amidst the night of their mournful existences, and
+who were indignant that they should be deprived of the chimerical
+delight, the supreme relief for their human and social sufferings, which
+they found in the belief that the Blessed Virgin had indeed come down
+from heaven to bring them the priceless balm of her intervention.
+However, the Mayor was unable to promise anything, and the crowd withdrew
+weeping, ready for rebellion, as though under the blow of some great act
+of injustice, an act of idiotic cruelty towards the humble and the simple
+for which Heaven would assuredly take vengeance.
+
+The struggle went on for several months; and it was an extraordinary
+spectacle which those sensible men--the Minister, the Prefect, and the
+Commissary of Police--presented, all animated with the best intentions
+and contending against the ever-swelling crowd of despairing ones, who
+would not allow the doors of dreamland to be closed upon them, who would
+not be shut off from the mystic glimpse of future happiness in which they
+found consolation for their present wretchedness. The authorities
+required order, the respect of a discreet religion, the triumph of
+reason; whereas the need of happiness carried the people off into an
+enthusiastic desire for cure both in this world and in the next. Oh! to
+cease suffering, to secure equality in the comforts of life; to march on
+under the protection of a just and beneficent Mother, to die only to
+awaken in heaven! And necessarily the burning desire of the multitude,
+the holy madness of the universal joy, was destined to sweep aside the
+rigid, morose conceptions of a well-regulated society in which the
+ever-recurring epidemical attacks of religious hallucination are
+condemned as prejudicial to good order and healthiness of mind.
+
+The Sainte-Honorine Ward, on hearing the story, likewise revolted. Pierre
+again had to pause, for many were the stifled exclamations in which the
+Commissary of Police was likened to Satan and Herod. La Grivotte had sat
+up on her mattress, stammering: “Ah! the monsters! To behave like that to
+the Blessed Virgin who has cured me!”
+
+And even Madame Vetu--once more penetrated by a ray of hope amidst the
+covert certainty she felt that she was going to die--grew angry at the
+idea that the Grotto would not have existed had the Prefect won the day.
+“There would have been no pilgrimages,” she said, “we should not be here,
+hundreds of us would not be cured every year.”
+
+A fit of stifling came over her, however, and Sister Hyacinthe had to
+raise her to a sitting posture. Madame de Jonquière was profiting by the
+interruption to attend to a young woman afflicted with a spinal
+complaint, whilst two other women, unable to remain on their beds, so
+unbearable was the heat, prowled about with short, silent steps, looking
+quite white in the misty darkness. And from the far end of the ward,
+where all was black, there resounded a noise of painful breathing, which
+had been going on without a pause, accompanying Pierre’s narrative like a
+rattle. Elise Rouquet alone was sleeping peacefully, still stretched upon
+her back, and displaying her disfigured countenance, which was slowly
+drying.
+
+Midnight had struck a quarter of an hour previously, and Abbé Judaine
+might arrive at any moment for the communion. Grace was now again
+descending into Marie’s heart, and she was convinced that if the Blessed
+Virgin had refused to cure her it was, indeed, her own fault in having
+doubted when she entered the piscina. And she, therefore, repented of her
+rebellion as of a crime. Could she ever be forgiven? Her pale face sank
+down among her beautiful fair hair, her eyes filled with tears, and she
+looked at Pierre with an expression of anguish. “Oh! how wicked I was, my
+friend,” she said. “It was through hearing you relate how that Prefect
+and those magistrates sinned through pride, that I understood my
+transgression. One must believe, my friend; there is no happiness outside
+faith and love.”
+
+Then, as Pierre wished to break off at the point which he had reached,
+they all began protesting and calling for the continuation of his
+narrative, so that he had to promise to go on to the triumph of the
+Grotto.
+
+Its entrance remained barred by the palisade, and you had to come
+secretly at night if you wished to pray and carry off a stolen bottle of
+water. Still, the fear of rioting increased, for it was rumoured that
+whole villages intended to come down from the hills in order to deliver
+God, as they naïvely expressed it. It was a _levée en masse_ of the
+humble, a rush of those who hungered for the miraculous, so irresistible
+in its impetuosity that mere common sense, mere considerations of public
+order were to be swept away like chaff. And it was Monseigneur Laurence,
+in his episcopal residence at Tarbes, who was first forced to surrender.
+All his prudence, all his doubts were outflanked by the popular outburst.
+For five long months he had been able to remain aloof, preventing his
+clergy from following the faithful to the Grotto, and defending the
+Church against the tornado of superstition which had been let loose. But
+what was the use of struggling any longer? He felt the wretchedness of
+the suffering people committed to his care to be so great that he
+resigned himself to granting them the idolatrous religion for which he
+realised them to be eager. Some prudence remaining to him, however, he
+contented himself in the first instance with drawing up an _ordonnance_,
+appointing a commission of inquiry, which was to investigate the
+question; this implied the acceptance of the miracles after a period of
+longer or shorter duration. If Monseigneur Laurence was the man of
+healthy culture and cool reason that he is pictured to have been, how
+great must have been his anguish on the morning when he signed that
+_ordonnance_! He must have knelt in his oratory, and have begged the
+Sovereign Master of the world to dictate his conduct to him. He did not
+believe in the apparitions; he had a loftier, more intellectual idea of
+the manifestations of the Divinity. Only would he not be showing true
+pity and mercy in silencing the scruples of his reason, the noble
+prejudices of his faith, in presence of the necessity of granting that
+bread of falsehood which poor humanity requires in order to be happy?
+Doubtless, he begged the pardon of Heaven for allowing it to be mixed up
+in what he regarded as childish pastime, for exposing it to ridicule in
+connection with an affair in which there was only sickliness and
+dementia. But his flock suffered so much, hungered so ravenously for the
+marvellous, for fairy stories with which to lull the pains of life. And
+thus, in tears, the Bishop at last sacrificed his respect for the dignity
+of Providence to his sensitive pastoral charity for the woeful human
+flock.
+
+Then the Emperor in his turn gave way. He was at Biarritz at the time,
+and was kept regularly informed of everything connected with this affair
+of the apparitions, with which the entire Parisian press was also
+occupying itself, for the persecutions would not have been complete if
+the pens of Voltairean newspaper-men had not meddled in them. And whilst
+his Minister, his Prefect, and his Commissary of Police were fighting for
+common sense and public order, the Emperor preserved his wonted
+silence--the deep silence of a day-dreamer which nobody ever penetrated.
+Petitions arrived day by day, yet he held his tongue. Bishops came, great
+personages, great ladies of his circle watched and drew him on one side,
+and still he held his tongue. A truceless warfare was being waged around
+him: on one side the believers and the men of fanciful minds whom the
+Mysterious strongly interested; on the other the unbelievers and the
+statesmen who distrusted the disturbances of the imagination;--and still
+and ever he held his tongue. Then, all at once, with the sudden decision
+of a naturally timid man, he spoke out. The rumour spread that he had
+yielded to the entreaties of his wife Eugénie. No doubt she did
+intervene, but the Emperor was more deeply influenced by a revival of his
+old humanitarian dreams, his genuine compassion for the disinherited.*
+Like the Bishop, he did not wish to close the portals of illusion to the
+wretched by upholding the unpopular decree which forbade despairing
+sufferers to go and drink life at the holy source. So he sent a telegram,
+a curt order to remove the palisade, so as to allow everybody free access
+to the Grotto.
+
+ * I think this view of the matter the right one, for, as all who
+ know the history of the Second Empire are aware, it was about
+ this time that the Emperor began taking great interest in the
+ erection of model dwellings for the working classes, and the
+ plantation and transformation of the sandy wastes of the
+ Landes.--Trans.
+
+Then came a shout of joy and triumph. The decree annulling the previous
+one was read at Lourdes to the sound of drum and trumpet. The Commissary
+of Police had to come in person to superintend the removal of the
+palisade. He was afterwards transferred elsewhere like the Prefect.*
+People flocked to Lourdes from all parts, the new _cultus_ was organised
+at the Grotto, and a cry of joy ascended: God had won the victory!
+God?--alas, no! It was human wretchedness which had won the battle, human
+wretchedness with its eternal need of falsehood, its hunger for the
+marvellous, its everlasting hope akin to that of some condemned man who,
+for salvation’s sake, surrenders himself into the hands of an invisible
+Omnipotence, mightier than nature, and alone capable, should it be
+willing, of annulling nature’s laws. And that which had also conquered
+was the sovereign compassion of those pastors, the merciful Bishop and
+merciful Emperor who allowed those big sick children to retain the fetich
+which consoled some of them and at times even cured others.
+
+ * The Prefect was transferred to Grenoble, and curiously enough his
+ new jurisdiction extended over the hills and valleys of La
+ Salette, whither pilgrims likewise flocked to drink, pray, and
+ wash themselves at a miraculous fountain. Warned by experience,
+ however, Baron Massy (such was the Prefect’s name) was careful to
+ avoid any further interference in religious matters.--Trans.
+
+In the middle of November the episcopal commission came to Lourdes to
+prosecute the inquiry which had been entrusted to it. It questioned
+Bernadette yet once again, and studied a large number of miracles.
+However, in order that the evidence might be absolute, it only registered
+some thirty cases of cure. And Monseigneur Laurence declared himself
+convinced. Nevertheless, he gave a final proof of his prudence, by
+continuing to wait another three years before declaring in a pastoral
+letter that the Blessed Virgin had in truth appeared at the Grotto of
+Massabielle and that numerous miracles had subsequently taken place
+there. Meantime, he had purchased the Grotto itself, with all the land
+around it, from the municipality of Lourdes, on behalf of his see. Work
+was then begun, modestly at first, but soon on a larger and larger scale
+as money began to flow in from all parts of Christendom. The Grotto was
+cleared and enclosed with an iron railing. The Gave was thrown back into
+a new bed, so as to allow of spacious approaches to the shrine, with
+lawns, paths, and walks. At last, too, the church which the Virgin had
+asked for, the Basilica, began to rise on the summit of the rock itself.
+From the very first stroke of the pick, Abbé Peyramale, the parish priest
+of Lourdes, went on directing everything with even excessive zeal, for
+the struggle had made him the most ardent and most sincere of all
+believers in the work that was to be accomplished. With his somewhat
+rough but truly fatherly nature, he had begun to adore Bernadette, making
+her mission his own, and devoting himself, soul and body, to realising
+the orders which he had received from Heaven through her innocent mouth.
+And he exhausted himself in mighty efforts; he wished everything to be
+very beautiful and very grand, worthy of the Queen of the Angels who had
+deigned to visit this mountain nook. The first religious ceremony did not
+take place till six years after the apparitions. A marble statue of the
+Virgin was installed with great pomp on the very spot where she had
+appeared. It was a magnificent day, all Lourdes was gay with flags, and
+every bell rang joyously. Five years later, in 1869, the first mass was
+celebrated in the crypt of the Basilica, whose spire was not yet
+finished. Meantime, gifts flowed in without a pause, a river of gold was
+streaming towards the Grotto, a whole town was about to spring up from
+the soil. It was the new religion completing its foundations. The desire
+to be healed did heal; the thirst for a miracle worked the miracle. A
+Deity of pity and hope was evolved from man’s sufferings, from that
+longing for falsehood and relief which, in every age of humanity, has
+created the marvellous palaces of the realms beyond, where an almighty
+Power renders justice and distributes eternal happiness.
+
+And thus the ailing ones of the Sainte-Honorine Ward only beheld in the
+victory of the Grotto the triumph of their hopes of cure. Along the rows
+of beds there was a quiver of joy when, with his heart stirred by all
+those poor faces turned towards him, eager for certainty, Pierre
+repeated: “God had conquered. Since that day the miracles have never
+ceased, and it is the most humble who are the most frequently relieved.”
+
+Then he laid down the little book. Abbé Judaine was coming in, and the
+Sacrament was about to be administered. Marie, however, again penetrated
+by the fever of faith, her hands burning, leant towards Pierre. “Oh, my
+friend!” said she, “I pray you hear me confess my fault and absolve me. I
+have blasphemed, and have been guilty of mortal sin. If you do not
+succour me, I shall be unable to receive the Blessed Sacrament, and yet I
+so greatly need to be consoled and strengthened.”
+
+The young priest refused her request with a wave of the hand. He had
+never been willing to act as confessor to this friend, the only woman he
+had loved in the healthy, smiling days of youth. However, she insisted.
+“I beg you to do so,” said she; “you will help to work the miracle of my
+cure.”
+
+Then he gave way and received the avowal of her fault, that impious
+rebellion induced by suffering, that rebellion against the Virgin who had
+remained deaf to her prayers. And afterwards he granted her absolution in
+the sacramental form.
+
+Meanwhile Abbé Judaine had already deposited the ciborium on a little
+table, between two lighted tapers, which looked like woeful stars in the
+semi-obscurity of the ward. Madame de Jonquière had just decided to open
+one of the windows quite wide, for the odour emanating from all the
+suffering bodies and heaped-up rags had become unbearable. But no air
+came in from the narrow courtyard into which the window opened; though
+black with night, it seemed like a well of fire. Having offered to act as
+server, Pierre repeated the “Confiteor.” Then, after responding with the
+“Misereatur” and the “Indulgentiam,” the chaplain, who wore his alb,
+raised the pyx, saying, “Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins
+of the world.” All the women who, writhing in agony, were impatiently
+awaiting the communion, like dying creatures who await life from some
+fresh medicine which is a long time coming, thereupon thrice repeated, in
+all humility, and with lips almost closed: “Lord, I am not worthy that
+Thou shouldst enter under my roof; but only say the word and my soul
+shall be healed.”
+
+Abbé Judaine had begun to make the round of those woeful beds,
+accompanied by Pierre, and followed by Madame de Jonquière and Sister
+Hyacinthe, each of whom carried one of the lighted tapers. The Sister
+designated those who were to communicate; and, murmuring the customary
+Latin words, the priest leant forward and placed the Host somewhat at
+random on the sufferer’s tongue. Almost all were waiting for him with
+widely opened, glittering eyes, amidst the disorder of that hastily
+pitched camp. Two were found to be sound asleep, however, and had to be
+awakened. Several were moaning without being conscious of it, and
+continued moaning even after they had received the sacrament. At the far
+end of the ward, the rattle of the poor creature who could not be seen
+still resounded. And nothing could have been more mournful than the
+appearance of that little _cortège_ in the semi-darkness, amidst which
+the yellow flames of the tapers gleamed like stars.
+
+But Marie’s face, to which an expression of ecstasy had returned, was
+like a divine apparition. Although La Grivotte was hungering for the
+bread of life, they had refused her the sacrament on this occasion, as it
+was to be administered to her in the morning at the Rosary; Madame Vetu,
+however, had received the Host on her black tongue in a hiccough. And now
+Marie was lying there under the pale light of the tapers, looking so
+beautiful amidst her fair hair, with her eyes dilated and her features
+transfigured by faith, that everyone admired her. She received the
+sacrament with rapture; Heaven visibly descended into her poor, youthful
+frame, reduced to such physical wretchedness. And, clasping Pierre’s
+hand, she detained him for a moment, saying: “Oh! she will heal me, my
+friend, she has just promised me that she will do so. Go and take some
+rest. I shall sleep so soundly now!”
+
+As he withdrew in company with Abbé Judaine, Pierre caught sight of
+little Madame Désagneaux stretched out in the arm-chair in which
+weariness had overpowered her. Nothing could awaken her. It was now
+half-past one in the morning; and Madame de Jonquière and her assistant,
+Sister Hyacinthe, were still going backwards and forwards, turning the
+patients over, cleansing them, and dressing their sores. However, the
+ward was becoming more peaceful, its heavy darkness had grown less
+oppressive since Bernadette with her charm had passed through it. The
+visionary’s little shadow was now flitting in triumph from bed to bed,
+completing its work, bringing a little of heaven to each of the
+despairing ones, each of the disinherited ones of this world; and as they
+all at last sank to sleep they could see the little shepherdess, so
+young, so ill herself, leaning over them and kissing them with a kindly
+smile.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE THIRD DAY
+
+
+
+
+I. BED AND BOARD
+
+AT seven o’clock on the morning of that fine, bright, warm August Sunday,
+M. de Guersaint was already up and dressed in one of the two little rooms
+which he had fortunately been able to secure on the third floor of the
+Hotel of the Apparitions. He had gone to bed at eleven o’clock the night
+before and had awoke feeling quite fresh and gay. As soon as he was
+dressed he entered the adjoining room which Pierre occupied; but the
+young priest, who had not returned to the hotel until past one in the
+morning, with his blood heated by insomnia, had been unable to doze off
+until daybreak and was now still slumbering. His cassock flung across a
+chair, his other garments scattered here and there, testified to his
+great weariness and agitation of mind.
+
+“Come, come, you lazybones!” cried M. de Guersaint gaily; “can’t you hear
+the bells ringing?”
+
+Pierre awoke with a start, quite surprised to find himself in that little
+hotel room into which the sunlight was streaming. All the joyous peals of
+the bells, the music of the chiming, happy town, moreover, came in
+through the window which he had left open.
+
+“We shall never have time to get to the hospital before eight o’clock to
+fetch Marie,” resumed M. de Guersaint, “for we must have some breakfast,
+eh?”
+
+“Of course, make haste and order two cups of chocolate. I will get up at
+once, I sha’n’t be long,” replied Pierre.
+
+In spite of the fatigue which had already stiffened his joints, he sprang
+out of bed as soon as he was alone, and made all haste with his toilet.
+However, he still had his head in the washing basin, ducking it in the
+fresh, cool water, when M. de Guersaint, who was unable to remain alone,
+came back again. “I’ve given the order,” said he; “they will bring it up.
+Ah! what a curious place this hotel is! You have of course seen the
+landlord, Master Majesté, clad in white from head to foot and looking so
+dignified in his office. The place is crammed, it appears; they have
+never had so many people before. So it is no wonder that there should be
+such a fearful noise. I was wakened up three times during the night.
+People kept on talking in the room next to mine. And you, did you sleep
+well?”
+
+“No, indeed,” answered Pierre; “I was tired to death, but I couldn’t
+close my eyes. No doubt it was the uproar you speak of that prevented
+me.”
+
+In his turn he then began to talk of the thin partitions, and the manner
+in which the house had been crammed with people until it seemed as though
+the floors and the walls would collapse with the strain. The place had
+been shaking all night long; every now and then people suddenly rushed
+along the passages, heavy footfalls resounded, gruff voices ascended
+nobody knew whence; without speaking of all the moaning and coughing, the
+frightful coughing which seemed to re-echo from every wall. Throughout
+the night people evidently came in and went out, got up and lay down
+again, paying no attention to time in the disorder in which they lived,
+amid shocks of passion which made them hurry to their devotional
+exercises as to pleasure parties.
+
+“And Marie, how was she when you left her last night?” M. de Guersaint
+suddenly inquired.
+
+“A great deal better,” replied Pierre; “she had an attack of extreme
+discouragement, but all her courage and faith returned to her at last.”
+
+A pause followed; and then the girl’s father resumed with his tranquil
+optimism: “Oh! I am not anxious. Things will go on all right, you’ll see.
+For my own part, I am delighted. I had asked the Virgin to grant me her
+protection in my affairs--you know, my great invention of navigable
+balloons. Well, suppose I told you that she has already shown me her
+favour? Yes, indeed yesterday evening while I was talking with Abbé des
+Hermoises, he told me that at Toulouse he would no doubt be able to find
+a person to finance me--one of his friends, in fact, who is extremely
+wealthy and takes great interest in mechanics! And in this I at once saw
+the hand of God!” M. de Guersaint began laughing with his childish laugh,
+and then he added: “That Abbé des Hermoises is a charming man. I shall
+see this afternoon if there is any means of my accompanying him on an
+excursion to the Cirque de Gavarnie at small cost.”
+
+Pierre, who wished to pay everything, the hotel bill and all the rest, at
+once encouraged him in this idea. “Of course,” said he, “you ought not to
+miss this opportunity to visit the mountains, since you have so great a
+wish to do so. Your daughter will be very happy to know that you are
+pleased.”
+
+Their talk, however, was now interrupted by a servant girl bringing the
+two cups of chocolate with a couple of rolls on a metal tray covered with
+a napkin. She left the door open as she entered the room, so that a
+glimpse was obtained of some portion of the passage. “Ah! they are
+already doing my neighbour’s room!” exclaimed M. de Guersaint. “He is a
+married man, isn’t he? His wife is with him?”
+
+The servant looked astonished. “Oh, no,” she replied, “he is quite
+alone!”
+
+“Quite alone? Why, I heard people talking in his room this morning.”
+
+“You must be mistaken, monsieur,” said the servant; “he has just gone out
+after giving orders that his room was to be tidied up at once.” And then,
+while taking the cups of chocolate off the tray and placing them on the
+table, she continued: “Oh! he is a very respectable gentleman. Last year
+he was able to have one of the pavilions which Monsieur Majesté lets out
+to visitors, in the lane by the side of the hotel; but this year he
+applied too late and had to content himself with that room, which greatly
+worried him, for it isn’t a large one, though there is a big cupboard in
+it. As he doesn’t care to eat with everybody, he takes his meals there,
+and he orders good wine and the best of everything, I can tell you.”
+
+“That explains it all!” replied M. de Guersaint gaily; “he dined too well
+last night, and I must have heard him talking in his sleep.”
+
+Pierre had been listening somewhat inquisitively to all this chatter.
+“And on this side, my side,” said he, “isn’t there a gentleman with two
+ladies, and a little boy who walks about with a crutch?”
+
+“Yes, Monsieur l’Abbé, I know them. The aunt, Madame Chaise, took one of
+the two rooms for herself; and Monsieur and Madame Vigneron with their
+son Gustave have had to content themselves with the other one. This is
+the second year they have come to Lourdes. They are very respectable
+people too.”
+
+Pierre nodded. During the night he had fancied he could recognise the
+voice of M. Vigneron, whom the heat doubtless had incommoded. However,
+the servant was now thoroughly started, and she began to enumerate the
+other persons whose rooms were reached by the same passage; on the left
+hand there was a priest, then a mother with three daughters, and then an
+old married couple; whilst on the right lodged another gentleman who was
+all alone, a young lady, too, who was unaccompanied, and then a family
+party which included five young children. The hotel was crowded to its
+garrets. The servants had had to give up their rooms the previous evening
+and lie in a heap in the washhouse. During the night, also, some camp
+bedsteads had even been set up on the landings; and one honourable
+ecclesiastic, for lack of other accommodation, had been obliged to sleep
+on a billiard-table.
+
+When the girl had retired and the two men had drunk their chocolate, M.
+de Guersaint went back into his own room to wash his hands again, for he
+was very careful of his person; and Pierre, who remained alone, felt
+attracted by the gay sunlight, and stepped for a moment on to the narrow
+balcony outside his window. Each of the third-floor rooms on this side of
+the hotel was provided with a similar balcony, having a carved-wood
+balustrade. However, the young priest’s surprise was very great, for he
+had scarcely stepped outside when he suddenly saw a woman protrude her
+head over the balcony next to him--that of the room occupied by the
+gentleman whom M. de Guersaint and the servant had been speaking of.
+
+And this woman he had recognised: it was Madame Volmar. There was no
+mistaking her long face with its delicate drawn features, its magnificent
+large eyes, those brasiers over which a veil, a dimming _moire_, seemed
+to pass at times. She gave a start of terror on perceiving him. And he,
+extremely ill at ease, grieved that he should have frightened her, made
+all haste to withdraw into his apartment. A sudden light had dawned upon
+him, and he now understood and could picture everything. So this was why
+she had not been seen at the hospital, where little Madame Désagneaux was
+always asking for her. Standing motionless, his heart upset, Pierre fell
+into a deep reverie, reflecting on the life led by this woman whom he
+knew, that torturing conjugal life in Paris between a fierce
+mother-in-law and an unworthy husband, and then those three days of
+complete liberty spent at Lourdes, that brief bonfire of passion to which
+she had hastened under the sacrilegious pretext of serving the divinity.
+Tears whose cause he could not even explain, tears that ascended from the
+very depths of his being, from his own voluntary chastity, welled into
+his eyes amidst the feeling of intense sorrow which came over him.
+
+“Well, are you ready?” joyously called M. de Guersaint as he came back,
+with his grey jacket buttoned up and his hands gloved.
+
+“Yes, yes, let us go,” replied Pierre, turning aside and pretending to
+look for his hat so that he might wipe his eyes.
+
+Then they went out, and on crossing the threshold heard on their left
+hand an unctuous voice which they recognised; it was that of M. Vigneron,
+who was loudly repeating the morning prayers. A moment afterwards came a
+meeting which interested them. They were walking down the passage when
+they were passed by a middle-aged, thick-set, sturdy-looking gentleman,
+wearing carefully trimmed whiskers. He bent his back and passed so
+rapidly that they were unable to distinguish his features, but they
+noticed that he was carrying a carefully made parcel. And immediately
+afterwards he slipped a key into the lock of the room adjoining M. de
+Guersaint’s, and opening the door disappeared noiselessly, like a shadow.
+
+M. de Guersaint had glanced round: “Ah! my neighbour,” said he; “he has
+been to market and has brought back some delicacies, no doubt!”
+
+Pierre pretended not to hear, for his companion was so light-minded that
+he did not care to trust him with a secret which was not his own.
+Besides, a feeling of uneasiness was returning to him, a kind of chaste
+terror at the thought that the world and the flesh were there taking
+their revenge, amidst all the mystical enthusiasm which he could feel
+around him.
+
+They reached the hospital just as the patients were being brought out to
+be carried to the Grotto; and they found that Marie had slept well and
+was very gay. She kissed her father and scolded him when she learnt that
+he had not yet decided on his trip to Gavarnie. She should really be
+displeased with him, she said, if he did not go. Still with the same
+restful, smiling expression, she added that she did not expect to be
+cured that day; and then, assuming an air of mystery, she begged Pierre
+to obtain permission for her to spend the following night before the
+Grotto. This was a favour which all the sufferers ardently coveted, but
+which only a few favoured ones with difficulty secured. After protesting,
+anxious as he felt with regard to the effect which a night spent in the
+open air might have upon her health, the young priest, seeing how unhappy
+she had suddenly become, at last promised that he would make the
+application. Doubtless she imagined that she would only obtain a hearing
+from the Virgin when they were alone together in the slumbering
+peacefulness of the night. That morning, indeed, she felt so lost among
+the innumerable patients who were heaped together in front of the Grotto,
+that already at ten o’clock she asked to be taken back to the hospital,
+complaining that the bright light tired her eyes. And when her father and
+the priest had again installed her in the Sainte-Honorine Ward, she gave
+them their liberty for the remainder of the day. “No, don’t come to fetch
+me,” she said, “I shall not go back to the Grotto this afternoon--it
+would be useless. But you will come for me this evening at nine o’clock,
+won’t you, Pierre? It is agreed, you have given me your word.”
+
+He repeated that he would endeavour to secure the requisite permission,
+and that, if necessary, he would apply to Father Fourcade in person.
+
+“Then, till this evening, darling,” said M. de Guersaint, kissing his
+daughter. And he and Pierre went off together, leaving her lying on her
+bed, with an absorbed expression on her features, as her large, smiling
+eyes wandered away into space.
+
+It was barely half-past ten when they got back to the Hotel of the
+Apparitions; but M. de Guersaint, whom the fine weather delighted, talked
+of having _déjeuner_ at once, so that he might the sooner start upon a
+ramble through Lourdes. First of all, however, he wished to go up to his
+room, and Pierre following him, they encountered quite a drama on their
+way. The door of the room occupied by the Vignerons was wide open, and
+little Gustave could be seen lying on the sofa which served as his bed.
+He was livid; a moment previously he had suddenly fainted, and this had
+made the father and mother imagine that the end had come. Madame Vigneron
+was crouching on a chair, still stupefied by her fright, whilst M.
+Vigneron rushed about the room, thrusting everything aside in order that
+he might prepare a glass of sugared-water, to which he added a few drops
+of some elixir. This draught, he exclaimed, would set the lad right
+again. But all the same, it was incomprehensible. The boy was still
+strong, and to think that he should have fainted like that, and have
+turned as white as a chicken! Speaking in this wise, M. Vigneron glanced
+at Madame Chaise, the aunt, who was standing in front of the sofa,
+looking in good health that morning; and his hands shook yet more
+violently at the covert idea that if that stupid attack had carried off
+his son, they would no longer have inherited the aunt’s fortune. He was
+quite beside himself at this thought, and eagerly opening the boy’s mouth
+he compelled him to swallow the entire contents of the glass. Then,
+however, when he heard Gustave sigh, and saw him open his eyes again, his
+fatherly good-nature reappeared, and he shed tears, and called the lad
+his dear little fellow. But on Madame Chaise drawing near to offer some
+assistance, Gustave repulsed her with a sudden gesture of hatred, as
+though he understood how this woman’s money unconsciously perverted his
+parents, who, after all, were worthy folks. Greatly offended, the old
+lady turned on her heel, and seated herself in a corner, whilst the
+father and mother, at last freed from their anxiety, returned thanks to
+the Blessed Virgin for having preserved their darling, who smiled at them
+with his intelligent and infinitely sorrowful smile, knowing and
+understanding everything as he did, and no longer having any taste for
+life, although he was not fifteen.
+
+“Can we be of any help to you?” asked Pierre in an obliging way.
+
+“No, no, I thank you, gentlemen,” replied M. Vigneron, coming for a
+moment into the passage. “But oh! we did have a fright! Think of it, an
+only son, who is so dear to us too.”
+
+All around them the approach of the _déjeuner_ hour was now throwing the
+house into commotion. Every door was banging, and the passages and the
+staircase resounded with the constant pitter-patter of feet. Three big
+girls passed by, raising a current of air with the sweep of their skirts.
+Some little children were crying in a neighbouring room. Then there were
+old people who seemed quite scared, and distracted priests who,
+forgetting their calling, caught up their cassocks with both hands, so
+that they might run the faster to the dining-room. From the top to the
+bottom of the house one could feel the floors shaking under the excessive
+weight of all the people who were packed inside the hotel.
+
+“Oh, I hope that it is all over now, and that the Blessed Virgin will
+cure him,” repeated M. Vigneron, before allowing his neighbours to
+retire. “We are going down-stairs, for I must confess that all this has
+made me feel faint. I need something to eat, I am terribly hungry.”
+
+When Pierre and M. de Guersaint at last left their rooms, and went
+down-stairs, they found to their annoyance that there was not the
+smallest table-corner vacant in the large dining-room. A most
+extraordinary mob had assembled there, and the few seats that were still
+unoccupied were reserved. A waiter informed them that the room never
+emptied between ten and one o’clock, such was the rush of appetite,
+sharpened by the keen mountain air. So they had to resign themselves to
+wait, requesting the waiter to warn them as soon as there should be a
+couple of vacant places. Then, scarcely knowing what to do with
+themselves, they went to walk about the hotel porch, whence there was a
+view of the street, along which the townsfolk, in their Sunday best,
+streamed without a pause.
+
+All at once, however, the landlord of the Hotel of the Apparitions,
+Master Majesté in person, appeared before them, clad in white from head
+to foot; and with a great show of politeness he inquired if the gentlemen
+would like to wait in the drawing-room. He was a stout man of
+five-and-forty, and strove to bear the burden of his name in a right
+royal fashion. Bald and clean-shaven, with round blue eyes in a waxy
+face, displaying three superposed chins, he always deported himself with
+much dignity. He had come from Nevers with the Sisters who managed the
+orphan asylum, and was married to a dusky little woman, a native of
+Lourdes. In less than fifteen years they had made their hotel one of the
+most substantial and best patronised establishments in the town. Of
+recent times, moreover, they had started a business in religious
+articles, installed in a large shop on the left of the hotel porch and
+managed by a young niece under Madame Majesté’s Supervision.
+
+“You can wait in the drawing-room, gentlemen,” again suggested the
+hotel-keeper whom Pierre’s cassock rendered very attentive.
+
+They replied, however, that they preferred to walk about and wait in the
+open air. And thereupon Majesté would not leave them, but deigned to chat
+with them for a moment as he was wont to do with those of his customers
+whom he desired to honour. The conversation turned at first on the
+procession which would take place that night and which promised to be a
+superb spectacle as the weather was so fine. There were more than fifty
+thousand strangers gathered together in Lourdes that day, for visitors
+had come in from all the neighbouring bathing stations. This explained
+the crush at the _table d’hôte_. Possibly the town would run short of
+bread as had been the case the previous year.
+
+“You saw what a scramble there is,” concluded Majesté, “we really don’t
+know how to manage. It isn’t my fault, I assure you, if you are kept
+waiting for a short time.”
+
+At this moment, however, a postman arrived with a large batch of
+newspapers and letters which he deposited on a table in the office. He
+had kept one letter in his hand and inquired of the landlord, “Have you a
+Madame Maze here?”
+
+“Madame Maze, Madame Maze,” repeated the hotel-keeper. “No, no, certainly
+not.”
+
+Pierre had heard both question and answer, and drawing near he exclaimed,
+“I know of a Madame Maze who must be lodging with the Sisters of the
+Immaculate Conception, the Blue Sisters as people call them here, I
+think.”
+
+The postman thanked him for the information and went off, but a somewhat
+bitter smile had risen to Majesté’s lips. “The Blue Sisters,” he
+muttered, “ah! the Blue Sisters.” Then, darting a side glance at Pierre’s
+cassock, he stopped short, as though he feared that he might say too
+much. Yet his heart was overflowing; he would have greatly liked to ease
+his feelings, and this young priest from Paris, who looked so
+liberal-minded, could not be one of the “band” as he called all those who
+discharged functions at the Grotto and coined money out of Our Lady of
+Lourdes. Accordingly, little by little, he ventured to speak out.
+
+“I am a good Christian, I assure you, Monsieur l’Abbé,” said he. “In fact
+we are all good Christians here. And I am a regular worshipper and take
+the sacrament every Easter. But, really, I must say that members of a
+religious community ought not to keep hotels. No, no, it isn’t right!”
+
+And thereupon he vented all the spite of a tradesman in presence of what
+he considered to be disloyal competition. Ought not those Blue Sisters,
+those Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, to have confined themselves
+to their real functions, the manufacture of wafers for sacramental
+purposes, and the repairing and washing of church linen? Instead of that,
+however, they had transformed their convent into a vast hostelry, where
+ladies who came to Lourdes unaccompanied found separate rooms, and were
+able to take their meals either in privacy or in a general dining-room.
+Everything was certainly very clean, very well organised and very
+inexpensive, thanks to the thousand advantages which the Sisters enjoyed;
+in fact, no hotel at Lourdes did so much business. “But all the same,”
+ continued Majesté, “I ask you if it is proper. To think of nuns selling
+victuals! Besides, I must tell you that the lady superior is really a
+clever woman, and as soon as she saw the stream of fortune rolling in,
+she wanted to keep it all for her own community and resolutely parted
+with the Fathers of the Grotto who wanted to lay their hands on it. Yes,
+Monsieur l’Abbé, she even went to Rome and gained her cause there, so
+that now she pockets all the money that her bills bring in. Think of it,
+nuns, yes nuns, _mon Dieu_! letting furnished rooms and keeping a _table
+d’hôte_!”
+
+He raised his arms to heaven, he was stifling with envy and vexation.
+
+“But as your house is crammed,” Pierre gently objected, “as you no longer
+have either a bed or a plate at anybody’s disposal, where would you put
+any additional visitors who might arrive here?”
+
+Majesté at once began protesting. “Ah! Monsieur l’Abbé!” said he, “one
+can see very well that you don’t know the place. It’s quite true that
+there is work for all of us, and that nobody has reason to complain
+during the national pilgrimage. But that only lasts four or five days,
+and in ordinary times the custom we secure isn’t nearly so great. For
+myself, thank Heaven, I am always satisfied. My house is well known, it
+occupies the same rank as the Hotel of the Grotto, where two landlords
+have already made their fortunes. But no matter, it is vexing to see
+those Blue Sisters taking all the cream of the custom, for instance the
+ladies of the _bourgeoisie_ who spend a fortnight and three weeks here at
+a stretch; and that, too, just in the quiet season, when there are not
+many people here. You understand, don’t you? There are people of position
+who dislike uproar; they go by themselves to the Grotto, and pray there
+all day long, for days together, and pay good prices for their
+accommodation without any higgling.”
+
+Madame Majesté, whom Pierre and M. de Guersaint had not noticed leaning
+over an account-book in which she was adding up some figures, thereupon
+intervened in a shrill voice: “We had a customer like that, gentlemen,
+who stayed here for two months last year. She went to the Grotto, came
+back, went there again, took her meals, and went to bed. And never did we
+have a word of complaint from her; she was always smiling, as though to
+say that she found everything very nice. She paid her bill, too, without
+even looking at it. Ah! one regrets people of that kind.”
+
+Short, thin, very dark, and dressed in black, with a little white collar,
+Madame Majesté had risen to her feet; and she now began to solicit
+custom: “If you would like to buy a few little souvenirs of Lourdes
+before you leave, gentlemen, I hope that you will not forget us. We have
+a shop close by, where you will find an assortment of all the articles
+that are most in request. As a rule, the persons who stay here are kind
+enough not to deal elsewhere.”
+
+However, Majesté was again wagging his head, with the air of a good
+Christian saddened by the scandals of the time. “Certainly,” said he, “I
+don’t want to show any disrespect to the reverend Fathers, but it must in
+all truth be admitted that they are too greedy. You must have seen the
+shop which they have set up near the Grotto, that shop which is always
+crowded, and where tapers and articles of piety are sold. A bishop
+declared that it was shameful, and that the buyers and sellers ought to
+be driven out of the temple afresh. It is said, too, that the Fathers run
+that big shop yonder, just across the street, which supplies all the
+petty dealers in the town. And, according to the reports which circulate,
+they have a finger in all the trade in religious articles, and levy a
+percentage on the millions of chaplets, statuettes, and medals which are
+sold every year at Lourdes.”
+
+Majesté had now lowered his voice, for his accusations were becoming
+precise, and he ended by trembling somewhat at his imprudence in talking
+so confidentially to strangers. However, the expression of Pierre’s
+gentle, attentive face reassured him; and so he continued with the
+passion of a wounded rival, resolved to go on to the very end: “I am
+willing to admit that there is some exaggeration in all this. But all the
+same, it does religion no good for people to see the reverend Fathers
+keeping shops like us tradesmen. For my part, of course, I don’t go and
+ask for a share of the money which they make by their masses, or a
+percentage on the presents which they receive, so why should they start
+selling what I sell? Our business was a poor one last year owing to them.
+There are already too many of us; nowadays everyone at Lourdes sells
+‘religious articles,’ to such an extent, in fact, that there will soon be
+no butchers or wine merchants left--nothing but bread to eat and water to
+drink. Ah! Monsieur l’Abbé, it is no doubt nice to have the Blessed
+Virgin with us, but things are none the less very bad at times.”
+
+A person staying at the hotel at that moment disturbed him, but he
+returned just as a young girl came in search of Madame Majesté. The
+damsel, who evidently belonged to Lourdes, was very pretty, small but
+plump, with beautiful black hair, and a round face full of bright gaiety.
+
+“That is our niece Apolline,” resumed Majesté. “She has been keeping our
+shop for two years past. She is the daughter of one of my wife’s
+brothers, who is in poor circumstances. She was keeping sheep at Ossun,
+in the neighbourhood of Bartres, when we were struck by her intelligence
+and nice looks and decided to bring her here; and we don’t repent having
+done so, for she has a great deal of merit, and has become a very good
+saleswoman.”
+
+A point to which he omitted to refer, was that there were rumours current
+of somewhat flighty conduct on Mademoiselle Apolline’s part. But she
+undoubtedly had her value: she attracted customers by the power,
+possibly, of her large black eyes, which smiled so readily. During his
+sojourn at Lourdes the previous year, Gérard de Peyrelongue had scarcely
+stirred from the shop she managed, and doubtless it was only the
+matrimonial ideas now flitting through his head that prevented him from
+returning thither. It seemed as though the Abbé des Hermoises had taken
+his place, for this gallant ecclesiastic brought a great many ladies to
+make purchases at the repository.
+
+“Ah! you are speaking of Apolline,” said Madame Majesté, at that moment
+coming back from the shop. “Have you noticed one thing about her,
+gentlemen--her extraordinary likeness to Bernadette? There, on the wall
+yonder, is a photograph of Bernadette when she was eighteen years old.”
+
+Pierre and M. de Guersaint drew near to examine the portrait, whilst
+Majesté exclaimed: “Bernadette, yes, certainly--she was rather like
+Apolline, but not nearly so nice; she looked so sad and poor.”
+
+He would doubtless have gone on chattering, but just then the waiter
+appeared and announced that there was at last a little table vacant. M.
+de Guersaint had twice gone to glance inside the dining-room, for he was
+eager to have his _déjeuner_ and spend the remainder of that fine Sunday
+out-of-doors. So he now hastened away, without paying any further
+attention to Majesté, who remarked, with an amiable smile, that the
+gentlemen had not had so very long to wait after all.
+
+To reach the table mentioned by the waiter, the architect and Pierre had
+to cross the dining-room from end to end. It was a long apartment,
+painted a light oak colour, an oily yellow, which was already peeling
+away in places and soiled with stains in others. You realised that rapid
+wear and tear went on here amidst the continual scramble of the big
+eaters who sat down at table. The only ornaments were a gilt zinc clock
+and a couple of meagre candelabra on the mantelpiece. Guipure curtains,
+moreover, hung at the five large windows looking on to the street, which
+was flooded with sunshine; some of the fierce arrow-like rays penetrating
+into the room although the blinds had been lowered. And, in the middle of
+the apartment, some forty persons were packed together at the _table
+d’hôte_, which was scarcely eleven yards in length and did not supply
+proper accommodation for more than thirty people; whilst at the little
+tables standing against the walls upon either side another forty persons
+sat close together, hustled by the three waiters each time that they went
+by. You had scarcely reached the threshold before you were deafened by
+the extraordinary uproar, the noise of voices and the clatter of forks
+and plates; and it seemed, too, as if you were entering a damp oven, for
+a warm, steamy mist, laden with a suffocating smell of victuals, assailed
+the face.
+
+Pierre at first failed to distinguish anything, but, when he was
+installed at the little table--a garden-table which had been brought
+indoors for the occasion, and on which there was scarcely room for two
+covers--he felt quite upset, almost sick, in fact, at the sight presented
+by the _table d’hôte_, which his glance now enfiladed from end to end.
+People had been eating at it for an hour already, two sets of customers
+had followed one upon the other, and the covers were strewn about in
+higgledy-piggledy fashion. On the cloth were numerous stains of wine and
+sauce, while there was no symmetry even in the arrangement of the glass
+fruit-stands, which formed the only decorations of the table. And one’s
+astonishment increased at sight of the motley mob which was collected
+there--huge priests, scraggy girls, mothers overflowing with superfluous
+fat, gentlemen with red faces, and families ranged in rows and displaying
+all the pitiable, increasing ugliness of successive generations. All
+these people were perspiring, greedily swallowing, seated slantwise,
+lacking room to move their arms, and unable even to use their hands
+deftly. And amidst this display of appetite, increased tenfold by
+fatigue, and of eager haste to fill one’s stomach in order to return to
+the Grotto more quickly, there was a corpulent ecclesiastic who in no
+wise hurried, but ate of every dish with prudent slowness, crunching his
+food with a ceaseless, dignified movement of the jaws.
+
+“_Fichtre_!” exclaimed M. de Guersaint, “it is by no means cool in here.
+All the same, I shall be glad of something to eat, for I’ve felt a
+sinking in the stomach ever since I have been at Lourdes. And you--are
+you hungry?”
+
+“Yes, yes, I shall eat,” replied Pierre, though, truth to tell, he felt
+quite upset.
+
+The _menu_ was a copious one. There was salmon, an omelet, mutton cutlets
+with mashed potatoes, stewed kidneys, cauliflowers, cold meats, and
+apricot tarts--everything cooked too much, and swimming in sauce which,
+but for its grittiness, would have been flavourless. However, there was
+some fairly fine fruit on the glass stands, particularly some peaches.
+And, besides, the people did not seem at all difficult to please; they
+apparently had no palates, for there was no sign of nausea. Hemmed in
+between an old priest and a dirty, full-bearded man, a girl of delicate
+build, who looked very pretty with her soft eyes and silken skin, was
+eating some kidneys with an expression of absolute beatitude, although
+the so-called “sauce” in which they swam was simply greyish water.
+
+“Hum!” resumed even M. de Guersaint, “this salmon is not so bad. Add a
+little salt to it and you will find it all right.”
+
+Pierre made up his mind to eat, for after all he must take sustenance for
+strength’s sake. At a little table close by, however, he had just caught
+sight of Madame Vigneron and Madame Chaise, who sat face to face,
+apparently waiting. And indeed, M. Vigneron and his son Gustave soon
+appeared, the latter still pale, and leaning more heavily than usual on
+his crutch. “Sit down next to your aunt,” said his father; “I will take
+the chair beside your mother.” But just then he perceived his two
+neighbours, and stepping up to them, he added: “Oh! he is now all right
+again. I have been rubbing him with some eau-de-Cologne, and by-and-by he
+will be able to take his bath at the piscina.”
+
+Thereupon M. Vigneron sat down and began to devour. But what an awful
+fright he had had! He again began talking of it aloud, despite himself,
+so intense had been his terror at the thought that the lad might go off
+before his aunt. The latter related that whilst she was kneeling at the
+Grotto the day before, she had experienced a sudden feeling of relief; in
+fact, she flattered herself that she was cured of her heart complaint,
+and began giving precise particulars, to which her brother-in-law
+listened with dilated eyes, full of involuntary anxiety. Most certainly
+he was a good-natured man, he had never desired anybody’s death; only he
+felt indignant at the idea that the Virgin might cure this old woman, and
+forget his son, who was so young. Talking and eating, he had got to the
+cutlets, and was swallowing the mashed potatoes by the forkful, when he
+fancied he could detect that Madame Chaise was sulking with her nephew.
+“Gustave,” he suddenly inquired, “have you asked your aunt’s
+forgiveness?” The lad, quite astonished, began staring at his father with
+his large clear eyes. “Yes,” added M. Vigneron, “you behaved very badly,
+you pushed her back just now when she wanted to help you to sit up.”
+
+Madame Chaise said nothing, but waited with a dignified air, whilst
+Gustave, who, without any show of appetite, was finishing the _noix_ of
+his cutlet, which had been cut into small pieces, remained with his eyes
+lowered on his plate, this time obstinately refusing to make the sorry
+show of affection which was demanded of him.
+
+“Come, Gustave,” resumed his father, “be a good boy. You know how kind
+your aunt is, and all that she intends to do for you.”
+
+But no, he would not yield. At that moment, indeed, he really hated that
+woman, who did not die quickly enough, who polluted the affection of his
+parents, to such a point that when he saw them surround him with
+attentions he no longer knew whether it were himself or the inheritance
+which his life represented that they wished to save. However, Madame
+Vigneron, so dignified in her demeanour, came to her husband’s help. “You
+really grieve me, Gustave,” said she; “ask your aunt’s forgiveness, or
+you will make me quite angry with you.”
+
+Thereupon he gave way. What was the use of resisting? Was it not better
+that his parents should obtain that money? Would he not himself die later
+on, so as to suit the family convenience? He was aware of all that; he
+understood everything, even when not a word was spoken. So keen was the
+sense of hearing with which suffering had endowed him, that he even heard
+the others’ thoughts.
+
+“I beg your pardon, aunt,” he said, “for not having behaved well to you
+just now.”
+
+Then two big tears rolled from his eyes, whilst he smiled with the air of
+a tender-hearted man who has seen too much of life and can no longer be
+deceived by anything. Madame Chaise at once kissed him and told him that
+she was not at all angry. And the Vignerons’ delight in living was
+displayed in all candour.
+
+“If the kidneys are not up to much,” M. de Guersaint now said to Pierre,
+“here at all events are some cauliflowers with a good flavour.”
+
+The formidable mastication was still going on around them. Pierre had
+never seen such an amount of eating, amidst such perspiration, in an
+atmosphere as stifling as that of a washhouse full of hot steam. The
+odour of the victuals seemed to thicken into a kind of smoke. You had to
+shout to make yourself heard, for everybody was talking in loud tones,
+and the scared waiters raised a fearful clatter in changing the plates
+and forks; not to mention the noise of all the jaw-crunching, a mill-like
+grinding which was distinctly audible. What most hurt the feelings of the
+young priest, however, was the extraordinary promiscuity of the _table
+d’hôte_, at which men and women, young girls and ecclesiastics, were
+packed together in chance order, and satisfied their hunger like a pack
+of hounds snapping at offal in all haste. Baskets of bread went round and
+were promptly emptied. And there was a perfect massacre of cold meats,
+all the remnants of the victuals of the day before, leg of mutton, veal,
+and ham, encompassed by a fallen mass of transparent jelly which quivered
+like soft glue. They had all eaten too much already, but these viands
+seemed to whet their appetites afresh, as though the idea had come to
+them that nothing whatever ought to be left. The fat priest in the middle
+of the table, who had shown himself such a capital knife-and-fork, was
+now lingering over the fruit, having just got to his third peach, a huge
+one, which he slowly peeled and swallowed in slices with an air of
+compunction.
+
+All at once, however, the whole room was thrown into agitation. A waiter
+had come in and begun distributing the letters which Madame Majesté had
+finished sorting. “Hallo!” exclaimed M. Vigneron; “a letter for me! This
+is surprising--I did not give my address to anybody.” Then, at a sudden
+recollection, he added, “Yes I did, though; this must have come from
+Sauvageot, who is filling my place at the Ministry.” He opened the
+letter, his hands began to tremble, and suddenly he raised a cry: “The
+chief clerk is dead!”
+
+Deeply agitated, Madame Vigneron was also unable to bridle her tongue:
+“Then you will have the appointment!”
+
+This was the secret dream in which they had so long and so fondly
+indulged: the chief clerk’s death, in order that he, Vigneron, assistant
+chief clerk for ten years past, might at last rise to the supreme post,
+the bureaucratic marshalship. And so great was his delight that he cast
+aside all restraint. “Ah! the Blessed Virgin is certainly protecting me,
+my dear. Only this morning I again prayed to her for a rise, and, you
+see, she grants my prayer!”
+
+However, finding Madame Chaise’s eyes fixed upon his own, and seeing
+Gustave smile, he realised that he ought not to exult in this fashion.
+Each member of the family no doubt thought of his or her interests and
+prayed to the Blessed Virgin for such personal favours as might be
+desired. And so, again putting on his good-natured air, he resumed: “I
+mean that the Blessed Virgin takes an interest in every one of us and
+will send us all home well satisfied. Ah! the poor chief, I’m sorry for
+him. I shall have to send my card to his widow.”
+
+In spite of all his efforts he could not restrain his exultation, and no
+longer doubted that his most secret desires, those which he did not even
+confess to himself, would soon be gratified. And so all honour was done
+to the apricot tarts, even Gustave being allowed to eat a portion of one.
+
+“It is surprising,” now remarked M. de Guersaint, who had just ordered a
+cup of coffee; “it is surprising that one doesn’t see more sick people
+here. All these folks seem to me to have first-rate appetites.”
+
+After a close inspection, however, in addition to Gustave, who ate no
+more than a little chicken, he ended by finding a man with a goitre
+seated at the _table d’hôte_ between two women, one of whom certainly
+suffered from cancer. Farther on, too, there was a girl so thin and pale
+that she must surely be a consumptive. And still farther away there was a
+female idiot who had made her entry leaning on two relatives, and with
+expressionless eyes and lifeless features was now carrying her food to
+her mouth with a spoon, and slobbering over her napkin. Perhaps there
+were yet other ailing ones present who could not be distinguished among
+all those noisy appetites, ailing ones whom the journey had braced, and
+who were eating as they had not eaten for a long time past. The apricot
+tarts, the cheese, the fruits were all engulfed amidst the increasing
+disorder of the table, where at last there only remained the stains of
+all the wine and sauce which had been spilt upon the cloth.
+
+It was nearly noon. “We will go back to the Grotto at once, eh?” said M.
+Vigneron.
+
+Indeed, “To the Grotto! To the Grotto!” were well-nigh the only words you
+now heard. The full mouths were eagerly masticating and swallowing, in
+order that they might repeat prayers and hymns again with all speed.
+“Well, as we have the whole afternoon before us,” declared M. de
+Guersaint, “I suggest that we should visit the town a little. I want to
+see also if I can get a conveyance for my excursion, as my daughter so
+particularly wishes me to make it.”
+
+Pierre, who was stifling, was glad indeed to leave the dining-room. In
+the porch he was able to breathe again, though even there he found a
+torrent of customers, new arrivals who were waiting for places. No sooner
+did one of the little tables become vacant than its possession was
+eagerly contested, whilst the smallest gap at the _table d’hôte_ was
+instantly filled up. In this wise the assault would continue for more
+than another hour, and again would the different courses of the _menu_
+appear in procession, to be engulfed amidst the crunching of jaws, the
+stifling heat, and the growing nausea.
+
+
+
+
+II. THE “ORDINARY.”
+
+WHEN Pierre and M. de Guersaint got outside they began walking slowly
+amidst the ever-growing stream of the Sundayfied crowd. The sky was a
+bright blue, the sun warmed the whole town, and there was a festive
+gaiety in the atmosphere, the keen delight that attends those great fairs
+which bring entire communities into the open air. When they had descended
+the crowded footway of the Avenue de la Grotte, and had reached the
+corner of the Plateau de la Merlasse, they found their way barred by a
+throng which was flowing backward amidst a block of vehicles and stamping
+of horses. “There is no hurry, however,” remarked M. de Guersaint. “My
+idea is to go as far as the Place du Marcadal in the old town; for the
+servant girl at the hotel told me of a hairdresser there whose brother
+lets out conveyances cheaply. Do you mind going so far?”
+
+“I?” replied Pierre. “Go wherever you like, I’ll follow you.”
+
+“All right--and I’ll profit by the opportunity to have a shave.”
+
+They were nearing the Place du Rosaire, and found themselves in front of
+the lawns stretching to the Gave, when an encounter again stopped them.
+Mesdames Désagneaux and Raymonde de Jonquière were here, chatting gaily
+with Gérard de Peyrelongue. Both women wore light-coloured gowns, seaside
+dresses as it were, and their white silk parasols shone in the bright
+sunlight. They imparted, so to say, a pretty note to the scene--a touch
+of society chatter blended with the fresh laughter of youth.
+
+“No, no,” Madame Désagneaux was saying, “we certainly can’t go and visit
+your ‘ordinary’ like that--at the very moment when all your comrades are
+eating.”
+
+Gérard, however, with a very gallant air, insisted on their accompanying
+him, turning more particularly towards Raymonde, whose somewhat massive
+face was that day brightened by the radiant charm of health.
+
+“But it is a very curious sight, I assure you,” said the young man, “and
+you would be very respectfully received. Trust yourself to me,
+mademoiselle. Besides, we should certainly find M. Berthaud there, and he
+would be delighted to do you the honours.”
+
+Raymonde smiled, her clear eyes plainly saying that she was quite
+agreeable. And just then, as Pierre and M. de Guersaint drew near in
+order to present their respects to the ladies, they were made acquainted
+with the question under discussion. The “ordinary” was a kind of
+restaurant or _table d’hôte_ which the members of the Hospitality of Our
+Lady of Salvation--the bearers, the hospitallers of the Grotto, the
+piscinas, and the hospitals--had established among themselves with the
+view of taking their meals together at small cost. Many of them were not
+rich, for they were recruited among all classes; however, they had
+contrived to secure three good meals for the daily payment of three
+francs apiece. And in fact they soon had provisions to spare and
+distributed them among the poor. Everything was in their own management;
+they purchased their own supplies, recruited a cook and a few waiters,
+and did not disdain to lend a hand themselves, in order that everything
+might be comfortable and orderly.
+
+“It must be very interesting,” said M, de Guersaint, when these
+explanations had been given him. “Let us go and see it, if we are not in
+the way.”
+
+Little Madame Désagneaux thereupon gave her consent. “Well, if we are
+going in a party,” said she, “I am quite willing. But when this gentleman
+first proposed to take Raymonde and me, I was afraid that it might not be
+quite proper.”
+
+Then, as she began to laugh, the others followed her example. She had
+accepted M. de Guersaint’s arm, and Pierre walked beside her on the other
+hand, experiencing a sudden feeling of sympathy for this gay little
+woman, who was so full of life and so charming with her fair frizzy hair
+and creamy complexion.
+
+Behind them came Raymonde, leaning upon Gérard’s arm and talking to him
+in the calm, staid voice of a young lady who holds the best principles
+despite her air of heedless youth. And since here was the husband whom
+she had so often dreamt of, she resolved that she would this time secure
+him, make him beyond all question her own. She intoxicated him with the
+perfume of health and youth which she diffused, and at the same time
+astonished him by her knowledge of housewifely duties and of the manner
+in which money may be economised even in the most trifling matters; for
+having questioned him with regard to the purchases which he and his
+comrades made for their “ordinary,” she proceeded to show him that they
+might have reduced their expenditure still further.
+
+Meantime M. de Guersaint and Madame Désagneaux were also chatting
+together: “You must be fearfully tired, madame,” said the architect.
+
+But with a gesture of revolt, and an exclamation of genuine anger, she
+replied: “Oh no, indeed! Last night, it is true, fatigue quite overcame
+me at the hospital; I sat down and dozed off, and Madame de Jonquière and
+the other ladies were good enough to let me sleep on.” At this the others
+again began to laugh; but still with the same angry air she continued:
+“And so I slept like a log until this morning. It was disgraceful,
+especially as I had sworn that I would remain up all night.” Then,
+merriment gaining upon her in her turn, she suddenly burst into a
+sonorous laugh, displaying her beautiful white teeth. “Ah! a pretty nurse
+I am, and no mistake! It was poor Madame de Jonquière who had to remain
+on her legs all the time. I tried to coax her to come out with us just
+now. But she preferred to take a little rest.”
+
+Raymonde, who overheard these words, thereupon raised her voice to say:
+“Yes, indeed, my poor mamma could no longer keep on her feet. It was I
+who compelled her to lie down, telling her that she could go to sleep
+without any uneasiness, for we should get on all right without her--”
+
+So saying, the girl gave Gérard a laughing glance. He even fancied that
+he could detect a faint squeeze of the fresh round arm which was resting
+on his own, as though, indeed, she had wished to express her happiness at
+being alone with him so that they might settle their own affairs without
+any interference. This quite delighted him; and he began to explain that
+if he had not had _déjeuner_ with his comrades that day, it was because
+some friends had invited him to join them at the railway-station
+refreshment-room at ten o’clock, and had not given him his liberty until
+after the departure of the eleven-thirty train.
+
+“Ah! the rascals!” he suddenly resumed. “Do you hear them, mademoiselle?”
+
+The little party was now nearing its destination, and the uproarious
+laughter and chatter of youth rang out from a clump of trees which
+concealed the old zinc and plaster building in which the “ordinary” was
+installed. Gérard began by taking the visitors into the kitchen, a very
+spacious apartment, well fitted up, and containing a huge range and an
+immense table, to say nothing of numerous gigantic cauldrons. Here,
+moreover, the young man called the attention of his companions to the
+circumstance that the cook, a fat, jovial-looking man, had the red cross
+pinned on his white jacket, being himself a member of the pilgrimage.
+Then, pushing open a door, Gérard invited his friends to enter the common
+room.
+
+It was a long apartment containing two rows of plain deal tables; and the
+only other articles of furniture were numerous rush-seated tavern chairs,
+with an additional table which served as a sideboard. The whitewashed
+walls and the flooring of shiny, red tiles looked, however, extremely
+clean amidst this intentional bareness, which was similar to that of a
+monkish refectory. But, the feature of the place which more particularly
+struck you, as you crossed the threshold, was the childish gaiety which
+reigned there; for, packed together at the tables, were a hundred and
+fifty hospitallers of all ages, eating with splendid appetites, laughing,
+applauding, and singing, with their mouths full. A wondrous fraternity
+united these men, who had flocked to Lourdes from every province of
+France, and who belonged to all classes, and represented every degree of
+fortune. Many of them knew nothing of one another, save that they met
+here and elbowed one another during three days every year, living
+together like brothers, and then going off and remaining in absolute
+ignorance of each other during the rest of the twelvemonth. Nothing could
+be more charming, however, than to meet again at the next pilgrimage,
+united in the same charitable work, and to spend a few days of hard
+labour and boyish delight in common once more; for it all became, as it
+were, an “outing” of a number of big fellows, let loose under a lovely
+sky, and well pleased to be able to enjoy themselves and laugh together.
+And even the frugality of the table, with the pride of managing things
+themselves, of eating the provisions which they had purchased and cooked,
+added to the general good humour.
+
+“You see,” explained Gérard, “we are not at all inclined to be sad,
+although we have so much hard work to get through. The Hospitality
+numbers more than three hundred members, but there are only about one
+hundred and fifty here at a time, for we have had to organise two
+successive services, so that there may always be some of us on duty at
+the Grotto and the hospitals.”
+
+The sight of the little party of visitors assembled on the threshold of
+the room seemed to have increased the general delight; and Berthaud, the
+superintendent of the bearers, who was lunching at the head of one of the
+tables, gallantly rose up to receive the ladies.
+
+“But it smells very nice,” exclaimed Madame Désagneaux in her giddy way.
+“Won’t you invite us to come and taste your cookery to-morrow?”
+
+“Oh! we can’t ask ladies,” replied Berthaud, laughing. “But if you
+gentlemen would like to join us to-morrow we should be extremely pleased
+to entertain you.”
+
+He had at once noticed the good understanding which prevailed between
+Gérard and Raymonde, and seemed delighted at it, for he greatly wished
+his cousin to make this match. He laughed pleasantly, at the enthusiastic
+gaiety which the young girl displayed as she began to question him. “Is
+not that the Marquis de Salmon-Roquebert,” she asked, “who is sitting
+over yonder between those two young men who look like shop assistants?”
+
+“They are, in fact, the sons of a small stationer at Tarbes,” replied
+Berthaud; “and that is really the Marquis, your neighbour of the Rue de
+Lille, the owner of that magnificent mansion, one of the richest and most
+noble men of title in France. You see how he is enjoying our mutton
+stew!”
+
+It was true, the millionaire Marquis seemed delighted to be able to board
+himself for his three francs a day, and to sit down at table in genuine
+democratic fashion by the side of petty _bourgeois_ and workmen who would
+not have dared to accost him in the street. Was not that chance table
+symbolical of social communion, effected by the joint practice of
+charity? For his part, the Marquis was the more hungry that day, as he
+had bathed over sixty patients, sufferers from all the most abominable
+diseases of unhappy humanity, at the piscinas that morning. And the scene
+around him seemed like a realisation of the evangelical commonalty; but
+doubtless it was so charming and so gay simply because its duration was
+limited to three days.
+
+Although M. de Guersaint had but lately risen from table, his curiosity
+prompted him to taste the mutton stew, and he pronounced it perfect.
+Meantime, Pierre caught sight of Baron Suire, the director of the
+Hospitality, walking about between the rows of tables with an air of some
+importance, as though he had allotted himself the task of keeping an eye
+on everything, even on the manner in which his staff fed itself. The
+young priest thereupon remembered the ardent desire which Marie had
+expressed to spend the night in front of the Grotto, and it occurred to
+him that the Baron might be willing to give the necessary authorisation.
+
+“Certainly,” replied the director, who had become quite grave whilst
+listening to Pierre, “we do sometimes allow it; but it is always a very
+delicate matter! You assure me at all events that this young person is
+not consumptive? Well, well, since you say that she so much desires it I
+will mention the matter to Father Fourcade and warn Madame de Jonquière,
+so that she may let you take the young lady away.”
+
+He was in reality a very good-natured fellow, albeit so fond of assuming
+the air of an indispensable man weighed down by the heaviest
+responsibilities. In his turn he now detained the visitors, and gave them
+full particulars concerning the organisation of the Hospitality. Its
+members said prayers together every morning. Two board meetings were held
+each day, and were attended by all the heads of departments, as well as
+by the reverend Fathers and some of the chaplains. All the hospitallers
+took the Sacrament as frequently as possible. And, moreover, there were
+many complicated tasks to be attended to, a prodigious rotation of
+duties, quite a little world to be governed with a firm hand. The Baron
+spoke like a general who each year gains a great victory over the spirit
+of the age; and, sending Berthaud back to finish his _déjeuner_, he
+insisted on escorting the ladies into the little sanded courtyard, which
+was shaded by some fine trees.
+
+“It is very interesting, very interesting,” repeated Madame Désagneaux.
+“We are greatly obliged to you for your kindness, monsieur.”
+
+“Don’t mention it, don’t mention it, madame,” answered the Baron. “It is
+I who am pleased at having had an opportunity to show you my little
+army.”
+
+So far Gérard had not quitted Raymonde’s side; but M. de Guersaint and
+Pierre were already exchanging glances suggestive of leave-taking, in
+order that they might repair by themselves to the Place du Marcadal, when
+Madame Désagneaux suddenly remembered that a friend had requested her to
+send her a bottle of Lourdes water. And she thereupon asked Gérard how
+she was to execute this commission. The young man began to laugh. “Will
+you again accept me as a guide?” said he. “And by the way, if these
+gentlemen like to come as well, I will show you the place where the
+bottles are filled, corked, packed in cases, and then sent off. It is a
+curious sight.”
+
+M. de Guersaint immediately consented; and all five of them set out
+again, Madame Désagneaux still between the architect and the priest,
+whilst Raymonde and Gérard brought up the rear. The crowd in the burning
+sunlight was increasing; the Place du Rosaire was now overflowing with an
+idle sauntering mob resembling some concourse of sight-seers on a day of
+public rejoicing.
+
+The bottling and packing shops were situated under one of the arches on
+the left-hand side of the Place. They formed a suite of three apartments
+of very simple aspect. In the first one the bottles were filled in the
+most ordinary of fashions. A little green-painted zinc barrel, not unlike
+a watering-cask, was dragged by a man from the Grotto, and the
+light-coloured bottles were then simply filled at its tap, one by one;
+the blouse-clad workman entrusted with the duty exercising no particular
+watchfulness to prevent the water from overflowing. In fact there was
+quite a puddle of it upon the ground. There were no labels on the
+bottles; the little leaden capsules placed over the corks alone bore an
+inscription, and they were coated with a kind of ceruse, doubtless to
+ensure preservation. Then came two other rooms which formed regular
+packing shops, with carpenters’ benches, tools, and heaps of shavings.
+The boxes, most frequently made for one bottle or for two, were put
+together with great care, and the bottles were deposited inside them, on
+beds of fine wood parings. The scene reminded one in some degree of the
+packing halls for flowers at Nice and for preserved fruits at Grasse.
+
+Gérard went on giving explanations with a quiet, satisfied air. “The
+water,” he said, “really comes from the Grotto, as you can yourselves
+see, so that all the foolish jokes which one hears really have no basis.
+And everything is perfectly simple, natural, and goes on in the broad
+daylight. I would also point out to you that the Fathers don’t sell the
+water as they are accused of doing. For instance, a bottle of water here
+costs twenty centimes,* which is only the price of the bottle itself. If
+you wish to have it sent to anybody you naturally have to pay for the
+packing and the carriage, and then it costs you one franc and seventy
+centimes.** However, you are perfectly at liberty to go to the source and
+fill the flasks and cans and other receptacles that you may choose to
+bring with you.”
+
+ * Four cents, U.S.A.
+
+ ** About 32 cents, U.S.A.
+
+Pierre reflected that the profits of the reverend Fathers in this respect
+could not be very large ones, for their gains were limited to what they
+made by manufacturing the boxes and supplying the bottles, which latter,
+purchased by the thousand, certainly did not cost them so much as twenty
+centimes apiece. However, Raymonde and Madame Désagneaux, as well as M.
+de Guersaint, who had such a lively imagination, experienced deep
+disappointment at sight of the little green barrel, the capsules, sticky
+with ceruse, and the piles of shavings lying around the benches. They had
+doubtless imagined all sorts of ceremonies, the observance of certain
+rites in bottling the miraculous water, priests in vestments pronouncing
+blessings, and choir-boys singing hymns of praise in pure crystalline
+voices. For his part, Pierre, in presence of all this vulgar bottling and
+packing, ended by thinking of the active power of faith. When one of
+those bottles reaches some far-away sick-room, and is unpacked there, and
+the sufferer falls upon his knees, and so excites himself by
+contemplating and drinking the pure water that he actually brings about
+the cure of his ailment, there must truly be a most extraordinary plunge
+into all-powerful illusion.
+
+“Ah!” exclaimed Gérard as they came out, “would you like to see the
+storehouse where the tapers are kept, before going to the offices? It is
+only a couple of steps away.”
+
+And then, not even waiting for their answer, he led them to the opposite
+side of the Place du Rosaire. His one desire was to amuse Raymonde, but,
+in point of fact, the aspect of the place where the tapers were stored
+was even less entertaining than that of the packing-rooms which they had
+just left. This storehouse, a kind of deep vault under one of the
+right-hand arches of the Place, was divided by timber into a number of
+spacious compartments, in which lay an extraordinary collection of
+tapers, classified according to size. The overplus of all the tapers
+offered to the Grotto was deposited here; and such was the number of
+these superfluous candles that the little conveyances stationed near the
+Grotto railing, ready to receive the pilgrims’ offerings, had to be
+brought to the storehouse several times a day in order to be emptied
+there, after which they were returned to the Grotto, and were promptly
+filled again. In theory, each taper that was offered ought to have been
+burnt at the feet of the Virgin’s statue; but so great was the number of
+these offerings, that, although a couple of hundred tapers of all sizes
+were kept burning by day and night, it was impossible to exhaust the
+supply, which went on increasing and increasing. There was a rumour that
+the Fathers could not even find room to store all this wax, but had to
+sell it over and over again; and, indeed, certain friends of the Grotto
+confessed, with a touch of pride, that the profit on the tapers alone
+would have sufficed to defray all the expenses of the business.
+
+The quantity of these votive candles quite stupefied Raymonde and Madame
+Désagneaux. How many, how many there were! The smaller ones, costing from
+fifty centimes to a franc apiece, were piled up in fabulous numbers. M.
+de Guersaint, desirous of getting at the exact figures, quite lost
+himself in the puzzling calculation he attempted. As for Pierre, it was
+in silence that he gazed upon this mass of wax, destined to be burnt in
+open daylight to the glory of God; and although he was by no means a
+rigid utilitarian, and could well understand that some apparent acts of
+extravagance yield an illusive enjoyment and satisfaction which provide
+humanity with as much sustenance as bread, he could not, on the other
+hand, refrain from reflecting on the many benefits which might have been
+conferred on the poor and the ailing with the money represented by all
+that wax, which would fly away in smoke.
+
+“But come, what about that bottle which I am to send off?” abruptly asked
+Madame Désagneaux.
+
+“We will go to the office,” replied Gérard. “In five minutes everything
+will be settled.”
+
+They had to cross the Place du Rosaire once more and ascend the stone
+stairway leading to the Basilica. The office was up above, on the left
+hand, at the corner of the path leading to the Calvary. The building was
+a paltry one, a hut of lath and plaster which the wind and the rain had
+reduced to a state of ruin. On a board outside was the inscription:
+“Apply here with reference to Masses, Offerings, and Brotherhoods.
+Forwarding office for Lourdes water. Subscriptions to the ‘Annals of O.
+L. of Lourdes.’” How many millions of people must have already passed
+through this wretched shanty, which seemed to date from the innocent days
+when the foundations of the adjacent Basilica had scarcely been laid!
+
+The whole party went in, eager to see what might be inside. But they
+simply found a wicket at which Madame Désagneaux had to stop in order to
+give her friend’s name and address; and when she had paid one franc and
+seventy centimes, a small printed receipt was handed her, such as you
+receive on registering luggage at a railway station.
+
+As soon as they were outside again Gérard pointed to a large building
+standing two or three hundred yards away, and resumed: “There, that is
+where the Fathers reside.”
+
+“But we see nothing of them,” remarked Pierre.
+
+This observation so astonished the young man that he remained for a
+moment without replying. “It’s true,” he at last said, “we do not see
+them, but then they give up the custody of everything--the Grotto and all
+the rest--to the Fathers of the Assumption during the national
+pilgrimage.”
+
+Pierre looked at the building which had been pointed out to him, and
+noticed that it was a massive stone pile resembling a fortress. The
+windows were closed, and the whole edifice looked lifeless. Yet
+everything at Lourdes came from it, and to it also everything returned.
+It seemed, in fact, to the young priest that he could hear the silent,
+formidable rake-stroke which extended over the entire valley, which
+caught hold of all who had come to the spot, and placed both the gold and
+the blood of the throng in the clutches of those reverend Fathers!
+However, Gérard just then resumed in a low voice “But come, they do show
+themselves, for here is the reverend superior, Father Capdebarthe
+himself.”
+
+An ecclesiastic was indeed just passing, a man with the appearance of a
+peasant, a knotty frame, and a large head which looked as though carved
+with a billhook. His opaque eyes were quite expressionless, and his face,
+with its worn features, had retained a loamy tint, a gloomy, russet
+reflection of the earth. Monseigneur Laurence had really made a politic
+selection in confiding the organisation and management of the Grotto to
+those Garaison missionaries, who were so tenacious and covetous, for the
+most part sons of mountain peasants and passionately attached to the
+soil.
+
+However, the little party now slowly retraced its steps by way of the
+Plateau de la Merlasse, the broad boulevard which skirts the inclined way
+on the left hand and leads to the Avenue de la Grotte. It was already
+past one o’clock, but people were still eating their _déjeuners_ from one
+to the other end of the overflowing town. Many of the fifty thousand
+pilgrims and sight-seers collected within it had not yet been able to sit
+down and eat; and Pierre, who had left the _table d’hôte_ still crowded,
+who had just seen the hospitallers squeezing together so gaily at the
+“ordinary,” found more and more tables at each step he took. On all sides
+people were eating, eating without a pause. Hereabouts, however, in the
+open air, on either side of the broad road, the hungry ones were humble
+folk who had rushed upon the tables set up on either footway--tables
+formed of a couple of long boards, flanked by two forms, and shaded from
+the sun by narrow linen awnings. Broth and coffee were sold at these
+places at a penny a cup. The little loaves heaped up in high baskets also
+cost a penny apiece. Hanging from the poles which upheld the awnings were
+sausages, chitterlings, and hams. Some of the open-air _restaurateurs_
+were frying potatoes, and others were concocting more or less savoury
+messes of inferior meat and onions. A pungent smoke, a violent odour,
+arose into the sunlight, mingling with the dust which was raised by the
+continuous tramp of the promenaders. Rows of people, moreover, were
+waiting at each cantine, so that each time a party rose from table fresh
+customers took possession of the benches ranged beside the
+oilcloth-covered planks, which were so narrow that there was scarcely
+room for two bowls of soup to be placed side by side. And one and all
+made haste, and devoured with the ravenous hunger born of their fatigue,
+that insatiable appetite which so often follows upon great moral shocks.
+In fact, when the mind had exhausted itself in prayer, when everything
+physical had been forgotten amidst the mental flight into the legendary
+heavens, the human animal suddenly appeared, again asserted itself, and
+began to gorge. Moreover, under that dazzling Sunday sky, the scene was
+like that of a fair-field with all the gluttony of a merrymaking
+community, a display of the delight which they felt in living, despite
+the multiplicity of their abominable ailments and the dearth of the
+miracles they hoped for.
+
+“They eat, they amuse themselves; what else can one expect?” remarked
+Gérard, guessing the thoughts of his amiable companions.
+
+“Ah! poor people!” murmured Pierre, “they have a perfect right to do so.”
+
+He was greatly touched to see human nature reassert itself in this
+fashion. However, when they had got to the lower part of the boulevard
+near the Grotto, his feelings were hurt at sight of the desperate
+eagerness displayed by the female vendors of tapers and bouquets, who
+with the rough fierceness of conquerors assailed the passers-by in bands.
+They were mostly young women, with bare heads, or with kerchiefs tied
+over their hair, and they displayed extraordinary effrontery. Even the
+old ones were scarcely more discreet. With parcels of tapers under their
+arms, they brandished the one which they offered for sale and even thrust
+it into the hand of the promenader. “Monsieur,” “madame,” they called,
+“buy a taper, buy a taper, it will bring you luck!” One gentleman, who
+was surrounded and shaken by three of the youngest of these harpies,
+almost lost the skirts of his frock-coat in attempting to escape their
+clutches. Then the scene began afresh with the bouquets--large round
+bouquets they were, carelessly fastened together and looking like
+cabbages. “A bouquet, madame!” was the cry. “A bouquet for the Blessed
+Virgin!” If the lady escaped, she heard muttered insults behind her.
+Trafficking, impudent trafficking, pursued the pilgrims to the very
+outskirts of the Grotto. Trade was not merely triumphantly installed in
+every one of the shops, standing close together and transforming each
+street into a bazaar, but it overran the footways and barred the road
+with hand-carts full of chaplets, medals, statuettes, and religious
+prints. On all sides people were buying almost to the same extent as they
+ate, in order that they might take away with them some souvenir of this
+holy Kermesse. And the bright gay note of this commercial eagerness, this
+scramble of hawkers, was supplied by the urchins who rushed about through
+the crowd, crying the “Journal de la Grotte.” Their sharp, shrill voices
+pierced the ear: “The ‘Journal de la Grotte,’ this morning’s number, two
+sous, the ‘Journal de la Grotte.’”
+
+Amidst the continual pushing which accompanied the eddying of the
+ever-moving crowd, Gérard’s little party became separated. He and
+Raymonde remained behind the others. They had begun talking together in
+low tones, with an air of smiling intimacy, lost and isolated as they
+were in the dense crowd. And Madame Désagneaux at last had to stop, look
+back, and call to them: “Come on, or we shall lose one another!”
+
+As they drew near, Pierre heard the girl exclaim: “Mamma is so very busy;
+speak to her before we leave.” And Gérard thereupon replied: “It is
+understood. You have made me very happy, mademoiselle.”
+
+Thus the husband had been secured, the marriage decided upon, during this
+charming promenade among the sights of Lourdes. Raymonde had completed
+her conquest, and Gérard had at last taken a resolution, realising how
+gay and sensible she was, as she walked beside him leaning on his arm.
+
+M. de Guersaint, however, had raised his eyes, and was heard inquiring:
+“Are not those people up there, on that balcony, the rich folk who made
+the journey in the same train as ourselves?--You know whom I mean, that
+lady who is so very ill, and whose husband and sister accompany her?”
+
+He was alluding to the Dieulafays; and they indeed were the persons whom
+he now saw on the balcony of a suite of rooms which they had rented in a
+new house overlooking the lawns of the Rosary. They here occupied a
+first-floor, furnished with all the luxury that Lourdes could provide,
+carpets, hangings, mirrors, and many other things, without mentioning a
+staff of servants despatched beforehand from Paris. As the weather was so
+fine that afternoon, the large armchair on which lay the poor ailing
+woman had been rolled on to the balcony. You could see her there, clad in
+a lace _peignoir_. Her husband, always correctly attired in a black
+frock-coat, stood beside her on her right hand, whilst her sister, in a
+delightful pale mauve gown, sat on her left smiling and leaning over
+every now and then so as to speak to her, but apparently receiving no
+reply.
+
+“Oh!” declared little Madame Désagneaux, “I have often heard people speak
+of Madame Jousseur, that lady in mauve. She is the wife of a diplomatist
+who neglects her, it seems, in spite of her great beauty; and last year
+there was a deal of talk about her fancy for a young colonel who is well
+known in Parisian society. It is said, however, in Catholic _salons_ that
+her religious principles enabled her to conquer it.”
+
+They all five remained there, looking up at the balcony. “To think,”
+ resumed Madame Désagneaux, “that her sister, poor woman, was once her
+living portrait.” And, indeed, there was an expression of greater
+kindliness and more gentle gaiety on Madame Dieulafay’s face. And now you
+see her--no different from a dead woman except that she is above instead
+of under ground--with her flesh wasted away, reduced to a livid, boneless
+thing which they scarcely dare to move. Ah! the unhappy woman!
+
+Raymonde thereupon assured the others that Madame Dieulafay, who had been
+married scarcely two years previously, had brought all the jewellery
+given her on the occasion of her wedding to offer it as a gift to Our
+Lady of Lourdes; and Gérard confirmed this assertion, saying that the
+jewellery had been handed over to the treasurer of the Basilica that very
+morning with a golden lantern studded with gems and a large sum of money
+destined for the relief of the poor. However, the Blessed Virgin could
+not have been touched as yet, for the sufferer’s condition seemed, if
+anything, to be worse.
+
+From that moment Pierre no longer beheld aught save that young woman on
+that handsome balcony, that woeful, wealthy creature lying there high
+above the merrymaking throng, the Lourdes mob which was feasting and
+laughing in the Sunday sunshine. The two dear ones who were so tenderly
+watching over her--her sister who had forsaken her society triumphs, her
+husband who had forgotten his financial business, his millions dispersed
+throughout the world--increased, by their irreproachable demeanour, the
+woefulness of the group which they thus formed high above all other
+heads, and face to face with the lovely valley. For Pierre they alone
+remained; and they were exceedingly wealthy and exceedingly wretched.
+
+However, lingering in this wise on the footway with their eyes upturned,
+the five promenaders narrowly escaped being knocked down and run over,
+for at every moment fresh vehicles were coming up, for the most part
+landaus drawn by four horses, which were driven at a fast trot, and whose
+bells jingled merrily. The occupants of these carriages were tourists,
+visitors to the waters of Pau, Bareges, and Cauterets, whom curiosity had
+attracted to Lourdes, and who were delighted with the fine weather and
+quite inspirited by their rapid drive across the mountains. They would
+remain at Lourdes only a few hours; after hastening to the Grotto and the
+Basilica in seaside costumes, they would start off again, laughing, and
+well pleased at having seen it all. In this wise families in light
+attire, bands of young women with bright parasols, darted hither and
+thither among the grey, neutral-tinted crowd of pilgrims, imparting to
+it, in a yet more pronounced manner, the aspect of a fair-day mob, amidst
+which folks of good society deign to come and amuse themselves.
+
+All at once Madame Désagneaux raised a cry “What, is it you, Berthe?” And
+thereupon she embraced a tall, charming brunette who had just alighted
+from a landau with three other young women, the whole party smiling and
+animated. Everyone began talking at once, and all sorts of merry
+exclamations rang out, in the delight they felt at meeting in this
+fashion. “Oh! we are at Cauterets, my dear,” said the tall brunette. “And
+as everybody comes here, we decided to come all four together. And your
+husband, is he here with you?”
+
+Madame Désagneaux began protesting: “Of course not,” said she. “He is at
+Trouville, as you ought to know. I shall start to join him on Thursday.”
+
+“Yes, yes, of course,” resumed the tall brunette, who, like her friend,
+seemed to be an amiable, giddy creature, “I was forgetting; you are here
+with the pilgrimage.”
+
+Then Madame Désagneaux offered to guide her friends, promising to show
+them everything of interest in less than a couple of hours; and turning
+to Raymonde, who stood by, smiling, she added “Come with us, my dear;
+your mother won’t be anxious.”
+
+The ladies and Pierre and M. de Guersaint thereupon exchanged bows: and
+Gérard also took leave, tenderly pressing Raymonde’s hand, with his eyes
+fixed on hers, as though to pledge himself definitively. The women
+swiftly departed, directing their steps towards the Grotto, and when
+Gérard also had gone off, returning to his duties, M. de Guersaint said
+to Pierre: “And the hairdresser on the Place du Marcadal, I really must
+go and see him. You will come with me, won’t you?”
+
+“Of course I will go wherever you like. I am quite at your disposal as
+Marie does not need us.”
+
+Following the pathways between the large lawns which stretch out in front
+of the Rosary, they reached the new bridge, where they had another
+encounter, this time with Abbé des Hermoises, who was acting as guide to
+two young married ladies who had arrived that morning from Tarbes.
+Walking between them with the gallant air of a society priest, he was
+showing them Lourdes and explaining it to them, keeping them well away,
+however, from its more repugnant features, its poor and its ailing folk,
+its odour of low misery, which, it must be admitted, had well-nigh
+disappeared that fine, sunshiny day. At the first word which M. de
+Guersaint addressed to him with respect to the hiring of a vehicle for
+the trip to Gavarnie, the Abbé was seized with a dread lest he should be
+obliged to leave his pretty lady-visitors: “As you please, my dear sir,”
+ he replied. “Kindly attend to the matter, and--you are quite right, make
+the cheapest arrangements possible, for I shall have two ecclesiastics of
+small means with me. There will be four of us. Let me know at the hotel
+this evening at what hour we shall start.”
+
+Thereupon he again joined his lady-friends, and led them towards the
+Grotto, following the shady path which skirts the Gave, a cool,
+sequestered path well suited for lovers’ walks.
+
+Feeling somewhat tired, Pierre had remained apart from the others,
+leaning against the parapet of the new bridge. And now for the first time
+he was struck by the prodigious number of priests among the crowd. He saw
+all varieties of them swarming across the bridge: priests of correct mien
+who had come with the pilgrimage and who could be recognised by their air
+of assurance and their clean cassocks; poor village priests who were far
+more timid and badly clothed, and who, after making sacrifices in order
+that they might indulge in the journey, would return home quite scared
+and, finally, there was the whole crowd of unattached ecclesiastics who
+had come nobody knew whence, and who enjoyed such absolute liberty that
+it was difficult to be sure whether they had even said their mass that
+morning. They doubtless found this liberty very agreeable; and thus the
+greater number of them, like Abbé des Hermoises, had simply come on a
+holiday excursion, free from all duties, and happy at being able to live
+like ordinary men, lost, unnoticed as they were in the multitude around
+them. And from the young, carefully groomed and perfumed priest, to the
+old one in a dirty cassock and shoes down at heel, the entire species had
+its representative in the throng--there were corpulent ones, others but
+moderately fat, thin ones, tall ones and short ones, some whom faith had
+brought and whom ardour was consuming, some also who simply plied their
+calling like worthy men, and some, moreover, who were fond of intriguing,
+and who were only present in order that they might help the good cause.
+However, Pierre was quite surprised to see such a stream of priests pass
+before him, each with his special passion, and one and all hurrying to
+the Grotto as one hurries to a duty, a belief, a pleasure, or a task. He
+noticed one among the number, a very short, slim, dark man with a
+pronounced Italian accent, whose glittering eyes seemed to be taking a
+plan of Lourdes, who looked, indeed, like one of those spies who come and
+peer around with a view to conquest; and then he observed another one, an
+enormous fellow with a paternal air, who was breathing hard through
+inordinate eating, and who paused in front of a poor sick woman, and
+ended by slipping a five-franc piece into her hand.
+
+Just then, however, M. de Guersaint returned: “We merely have to go down
+the boulevard and the Rue Basse,” said he.
+
+Pierre followed him without answering. He had just felt his cassock on
+his shoulders for the first time that afternoon, for never had it seemed
+so light to him as whilst he was walking about amidst the scramble of the
+pilgrimage. The young fellow was now living in a state of mingled
+unconsciousness and dizziness, ever hoping that faith would fall upon him
+like a lightning flash, in spite of all the vague uneasiness which was
+growing within him at sight of the things which he beheld. However, the
+spectacle of that ever-swelling stream of priests no longer wounded his
+heart; fraternal feelings towards these unknown colleagues had returned
+to him; how many of them there must be who believed no more than he did
+himself, and yet, like himself, honestly fulfilled their mission as
+guides and consolers!
+
+“This boulevard is a new one, you know,” said M. de Guersaint, all at
+once raising his voice. “The number of houses built during the last
+twenty years is almost beyond belief. There is quite a new town here.”
+
+The Lapaca flowed along behind the buildings on their right and, their
+curiosity inducing them to turn into a narrow lane, they came upon some
+strange old structures on the margin of the narrow stream. Several
+ancient mills here displayed their wheels; among them one which
+Monseigneur Laurence had given to Bernadette’s parents after the
+apparitions. Tourists, moreover, were here shown the pretended abode of
+Bernadette, a hovel whither the Soubirous family had removed on leaving
+the Rue des Petits Fossés, and in which the young girl, as she was
+already boarding with the Sisters of Nevers, can have but seldom slept.
+At last, by way of the Rue Basse, Pierre and his companion reached the
+Place du Marcadal.
+
+This was a long, triangular, open space, the most animated and luxurious
+of the squares of the old town, the one where the cafés, the chemists,
+all the finest shops were situated. And, among the latter, one showed
+conspicuously, coloured as it was a lively green, adorned with lofty
+mirrors, and surmounted by a broad board bearing in gilt letters the
+inscription: “Cazaban, Hairdresser”.
+
+M. de Guersaint and Pierre went in, but there was nobody in the salon and
+they had to wait. A terrible clatter of forks resounded from the
+adjoining room, an ordinary dining-room transformed into a _table
+d’hôte_, in which some twenty people were having _déjeuner_ although it
+was already two o’clock. The afternoon was progressing, and yet people
+were still eating from one to the other end of Lourdes. Like every other
+householder in the town, whatever his religious convictions might be,
+Cazaban, in the pilgrimage season, let his bedrooms, surrendered his
+dining-room, end sought refuge in his cellar, where, heaped up with his
+family, he ate and slept, although this unventilated hole was no more
+than three yards square. However, the passion for trading and moneymaking
+carried all before it; at pilgrimage time the whole population
+disappeared like that of a conquered city, surrendering even the beds of
+its women and its children to the pilgrims, seating them at its tables,
+and supplying them with food.
+
+“Is there nobody here?” called M. de Guersaint after waiting a moment.
+
+At last a little man made his appearance, Cazaban himself, a type of the
+knotty but active Pyrenean, with a long face, prominent cheek-bones, and
+a sunburned complexion spotted here and there with red. His big,
+glittering eyes never remained still; and the whole of his spare little
+figure quivered with incessant exuberance of speech and gesture.
+
+“For you, monsieur--a shave, eh?” said he. “I must beg your pardon for
+keeping you waiting; but my assistant has gone out, and I was in there
+with my boarders. If you will kindly sit down, I will attend to you at
+once.”
+
+Thereupon, deigning to operate in person, Cazaban began to stir up the
+lather and strop the razor. He had glanced rather nervously, however, at
+the cassock worn by Pierre, who without a word had seated himself in a
+corner and taken up a newspaper in the perusal of which he appeared to be
+absorbed.
+
+A short interval of silence followed; but it was fraught with suffering
+for Cazaban, and whilst lathering his customer’s chin he began to
+chatter: “My boarders lingered this morning such a long time at the
+Grotto, monsieur, that they have scarcely sat down to _déjeuner_. You can
+hear them, eh? I was staying with them out of politeness. However, I owe
+myself to my customers as well, do I not? One must try to please
+everybody.”
+
+M. de Guersaint, who also was fond of a chat, thereupon began to question
+him: “You lodge some of the pilgrims, I suppose?”
+
+“Oh! we all lodge some of them, monsieur; it is necessary for the town,”
+ replied the barber.
+
+“And you accompany them to the Grotto?”
+
+At this, however, Cazaban revolted, and, holding up his razor, he
+answered with an air of dignity “Never, monsieur, never! For five years
+past I have not been in that new town which they are building.”
+
+He was still seeking to restrain himself, and again glanced at Pierre,
+whose face was hidden by the newspaper. The sight of the red cross pinned
+on M. de Guersaint’s jacket was also calculated to render him prudent;
+nevertheless his tongue won the victory. “Well, monsieur, opinions are
+free, are they not?” said he. “I respect yours, but for my part I don’t
+believe in all that phantasmagoria! Oh I’ve never concealed it! I was
+already a republican and a freethinker in the days of the Empire. There
+were barely four men of those views in the whole town at that time. Oh!
+I’m proud of it.”
+
+He had begun to shave M. de Guersaint’s left cheek and was quite
+triumphant. From that moment a stream of words poured forth from his
+mouth, a stream which seemed to be inexhaustible. To begin with, he
+brought the same charges as Majesté against the Fathers of the Grotto. He
+reproached them for their dealings in tapers, chaplets, prints, and
+crucifixes, for the disloyal manner in which they competed with those who
+sold those articles as well as with the hotel and lodging-house keepers.
+And he was also wrathful with the Blue Sisters of the Immaculate
+Conception, for had they not robbed him of two tenants, two old ladies,
+who spent three weeks at Lourdes each year? Moreover you could divine
+within him all the slowly accumulated, overflowing spite with which the
+old town regarded the new town--that town which had sprung up so quickly
+on the other side of the castle, that rich city with houses as big as
+palaces, whither flowed all the life, all the luxury, all the money of
+Lourdes, so that it was incessantly growing larger and wealthier, whilst
+its elder sister, the poor, antique town of the mountains, with its
+narrow, grass-grown, deserted streets, seemed near the point of death.
+Nevertheless the struggle still continued; the old town seemed determined
+not to die, and, by lodging pilgrims and opening shops on her side,
+endeavoured to compel her ungrateful junior to grant her a share of the
+spoils. But custom only flowed to the shops which were near the Grotto,
+and only the poorer pilgrims were willing to lodge so far away; so that
+the unequal conditions of the struggle intensified the rupture and turned
+the high town and the low town into two irreconcilable enemies, who
+preyed upon one another amidst continual intrigues.
+
+“Ah, no! They certainly won’t see me at their Grotto,” resumed Cazaban,
+with his rageful air. “What an abusive use they make of that Grotto of
+theirs! They serve it up in every fashion! To think of such idolatry,
+such gross superstition in the nineteenth century! Just ask them if they
+have cured a single sufferer belonging to the town during the last twenty
+years! Yet there are plenty of infirm people crawling about our streets.
+It was our folk that benefited by the first miracles; but it would seem
+that the miraculous water has long lost all its power, so far as we are
+concerned. We are too near it; people have to come from a long distance
+if they want it to act on them. It’s really all too stupid; why, I
+wouldn’t go there even if I were offered a hundred francs!”
+
+Pierre’s immobility was doubtless irritating the barber. He had now begun
+to shave M. de Guersaint’s right cheek; and was inveighing against the
+Fathers of the Immaculate Conception, whose greed for gain was the one
+cause of all the misunderstanding. These Fathers who were at home there,
+since they had purchased from the Municipality the land on which they
+desired to build, did not even carry out the stipulations of the contract
+they had signed, for there were two clauses in it forbidding all trading,
+such as the sale of the water and of religious articles. Innumerable
+actions might have been brought against them. But they snapped their
+fingers, and felt themselves so powerful that they no longer allowed a
+single offering to go to the parish, but arranged matters so that the
+whole harvest of money should be garnered by the Grotto and the Basilica.
+
+And, all at once, Cazaban candidly exclaimed: “If they were only
+reasonable, if they would only share with us!” Then, when M. de Guersaint
+had washed his face, and reseated himself, the hairdresser resumed: “And
+if I were to tell you, monsieur, what they have done with our poor town!
+Forty years ago all the young girls here conducted themselves properly, I
+assure you. I remember that in my young days when a young man was wicked
+he generally had to go elsewhere. But times have changed, our manners are
+no longer the same. Nowadays nearly all the girls content themselves with
+selling candles and nosegays; and you must have seen them catching hold
+of the passers-by and thrusting their goods into their hands! It is
+really shameful to see so many bold girls about! They make a lot of
+money, acquire lazy habits, and, instead of working during the winter,
+simply wait for the return of the pilgrimage season. And I assure you
+that the young men don’t need to go elsewhere nowadays. No, indeed! And
+add to all this the suspicious floating element which swells the
+population as soon as the first fine weather sets in--the coachmen, the
+hawkers, the cantine keepers, all the low-class, wandering folk reeking
+with grossness and vice--and you can form an idea of the honest new town
+which they have given us with the crowds that come to their Grotto and
+their Basilica!”
+
+Greatly struck by these remarks, Pierre had let his newspaper fall and
+begun to listen. It was now, for the first time, that he fully realised
+the difference between the two Lourdes--old Lourdes so honest and so
+pious in its tranquil solitude, and new Lourdes corrupted, demoralised by
+the circulation of so much money, by such a great enforced increase of
+wealth, by the ever-growing torrent of strangers sweeping through it, by
+the fatal rotting influence of the conflux of thousands of people, the
+contagion of evil examples. And what a terrible result it seemed when one
+thought of Bernadette, the pure, candid girl kneeling before the wild
+primitive grotto, when one thought of all the naive faith, all the
+fervent purity of those who had first begun the work! Had they desired
+that the whole countryside should be poisoned in this wise by lucre and
+human filth? Yet it had sufficed that the nations should flock there for
+a pestilence to break out.
+
+Seeing that Pierre was listening, Cazaban made a final threatening
+gesture as though to sweep away all this poisonous superstition. Then,
+relapsing into silence, he finished cutting M. de Guersaint’s hair.
+
+“There you are, monsieur!”
+
+The architect rose, and it was only now that he began to speak of the
+conveyance which he wished to hire. At first the hairdresser declined to
+enter into the matter, pretending that they must apply to his brother at
+the Champ Commun; but at last he consented to take the order. A
+pair-horse landau for Gavarnie was priced at fifty francs. However, he
+was so pleased at having talked so much, and so flattered at hearing
+himself called an honest man, that he eventually agreed to charge only
+forty francs. There were four persons in the party, so this would make
+ten francs apiece. And it was agreed that they should start off at about
+two in the morning, so that they might get back to Lourdes at a tolerably
+early hour on the Monday evening.
+
+“The landau will be outside the Hotel of the Apparitions at the appointed
+time,” repeated Cazaban in his emphatic way. “You may rely on me,
+monsieur.”
+
+Then he began to listen. The clatter of crockery did not cease in the
+adjoining room. People were still eating there with that impulsive
+voracity which had spread from one to the other end of Lourdes. And all
+at once a voice was heard calling for more bread.
+
+“Excuse me,” hastily resumed Cazaban, “my boarders want me.” And
+thereupon he rushed away, his hands still greasy through fingering the
+comb.
+
+The door remained open for a second, and on the walls of the dining-room
+Pierre espied various religious prints, and notably a view of the Grotto,
+which surprised him; in all probability, however, the hairdresser only
+hung these engravings there during the pilgrimage season by way of
+pleasing his boarders.
+
+It was now nearly three o’clock. When the young priest and M. de
+Guersaint got outside they were astonished at the loud pealing of bells
+which was flying through the air. The parish church had responded to the
+first stroke of vespers chiming at the Basilica; and now all the
+convents, one after another, were contributing to the swelling peals. The
+crystalline notes of the bell of the Carmelites mingled with the grave
+notes of the bell of the Immaculate Conception; and all the joyous bells
+of the Sisters of Nevers and the Dominicans were jingling together. In
+this wise, from morning till evening on fine days of festivity, the
+chimes winged their flight above the house-roofs of Lourdes. And nothing
+could have been gayer than that sonorous melody resounding in the broad
+blue heavens above the gluttonous town, which had at last lunched, and
+was now comfortably digesting as it strolled about in the sunlight.
+
+
+
+
+III. THE NIGHT PROCESSION
+
+AS soon as night had fallen Marie, still lying on her bed at the Hospital
+of Our Lady of Dolours, became extremely impatient, for she had learnt
+from Madame de Jonquière that Baron Suire had obtained from Father
+Fourcade the necessary permission for her to spend the night in front of
+the Grotto. Thus she kept on questioning Sister Hyacinthe, asking her:
+“Pray, Sister, is it not yet nine o’clock?”
+
+“No, my child, it is scarcely half-past eight,” was the reply. “Here is a
+nice woollen shawl for you to wrap round you at daybreak, for the Gave is
+close by, and the mornings are very fresh, you know, in these mountainous
+parts.”
+
+“Oh! but the nights are so lovely, Sister, and besides, I sleep so little
+here!” replied Marie; “I cannot be worse off out-of-doors. _Mon Dieu_,
+how happy I am; how delightful it will be to spend the whole night with
+the Blessed Virgin!”
+
+The entire ward was jealous of her; for to remain in prayer before the
+Grotto all night long was the most ineffable of joys, the supreme
+beatitude. It was said that in the deep peacefulness of night the chosen
+ones undoubtedly beheld the Virgin, but powerful protection was needed to
+obtain such a favour as had been granted to Marie; for nowadays the
+reverend Fathers scarcely liked to grant it, as several sufferers had
+died during the long vigil, falling asleep, as it were, in the midst of
+their ecstasy.
+
+“You will take the Sacrament at the Grotto tomorrow morning, before you
+are brought back here, won’t you, my child?” resumed Sister Hyacinthe.
+
+However, nine o’clock at last struck, and, Pierre not arriving, the girl
+wondered whether he, usually so punctual, could have forgotten her? The
+others were now talking to her of the night procession, which she would
+see from beginning to end if she only started at once. The ceremonies
+concluded with a procession every night, but the Sunday one was always
+the finest, and that evening, it was said, would be remarkably splendid,
+such, indeed, as was seldom seen. Nearly thirty thousand pilgrims would
+take part in it, each carrying a lighted taper: the nocturnal marvels of
+the sky would be revealed; the stars would descend upon earth. At this
+thought the sufferers began to bewail their fate; what a wretched lot was
+theirs, to be tied to their beds, unable to see any of those wonders.
+
+At last Madame de Jonquière approached Marie’s bed. “My dear girl,” said
+she, “here is your father with Monsieur l’Abbé.”
+
+Radiant with delight, the girl at once forgot her weary waiting. “Oh!
+pray let us make haste, Pierre,” she exclaimed; “pray let us make haste!”
+
+They carried her down the stairs, and the young priest harnessed himself
+to the little car, which gently rolled along, under the star-studded
+heavens, whilst M. de Guersaint walked beside it. The night was moonless,
+but extremely beautiful; the vault above looked like deep blue velvet,
+spangled with diamonds, and the atmosphere was exquisitely mild and pure,
+fragrant with the perfumes from the mountains. Many pilgrims were
+hurrying along the street, all bending their steps towards the Grotto,
+but they formed a discreet, pensive crowd, with naught of the fair-field,
+lounging character of the daytime throng. And, as soon as the Plateau de
+la Merlasse was reached, the darkness spread out, you entered into a
+great lake of shadows formed by the stretching lawns and lofty trees, and
+saw nothing rising on high save the black, tapering spire of the
+Basilica.
+
+Pierre grew rather anxious on finding that the crowd became more and more
+compact as he advanced. Already on reaching the Place du Rosaire it was
+difficult to take another forward step. “There is no hope of getting to
+the Grotto yet awhile,” he said. “The best course would be to turn into
+one of the pathways behind the pilgrims’ shelter-house and wait there.”
+
+Marie, however, greatly desired to see the procession start. “Oh! pray
+try to go as far as the Gave,” said she. “I shall then see everything
+from a distance; I don’t want to go near.”
+
+M. de Guersaint, who was equally inquisitive, seconded this proposal.
+“Don’t be uneasy,” he said to Pierre. “I am here behind, and will take
+care to let nobody jostle her.”
+
+Pierre had to begin pulling the little vehicle again. It took him a
+quarter of an hour to pass under one of the arches of the inclined way on
+the left hand, so great was the crush of pilgrims at that point. Then,
+taking a somewhat oblique course, he ended by reaching the quay beside
+the Gave, where there were only some spectators standing on the sidewalk,
+so that he was able to advance another fifty yards. At last he halted,
+and backed the little car against the quay parapet, in full view of the
+Grotto. “Will you be all right here?” he asked.
+
+“Oh yes, thank you. Only you must sit me up; I shall then be able to see
+much better.”
+
+M. de Guersaint raised her into a sitting posture, and then for his part
+climbed upon the stonework running from one to the other end of the quay.
+A mob of inquisitive people had already scaled it in part, like
+sight-seers waiting for a display of fireworks; and they were all raising
+themselves on tiptoe, and craning their necks to get a better view.
+Pierre himself at last grew interested, although there was, so far,
+little to see.
+
+Some thirty thousand people were assembled, and, every moment there were
+fresh arrivals. All carried candles, the lower parts of which were
+wrapped in white paper, on which a picture of Our Lady of Lourdes was
+printed in blue ink. However, these candles were not yet lighted, and the
+only illumination that you perceived above the billowy sea of heads was
+the bright, forge-like glow of the taper-lighted Grotto. A great buzzing
+arose, whiffs of human breath blew hither and thither, and these alone
+enabled you to realise that thousands of serried, stifling creatures were
+gathered together in the black depths, like a living sea that was ever
+eddying and spreading. There were even people hidden away under the trees
+beyond the Grotto, in distant recesses of the darkness of which one had
+no suspicion.
+
+At last a few tapers began to shine forth here and there, like sudden
+sparks of light spangling the obscurity at random. Their number rapidly
+increased, eyots of stars were formed, whilst at other points there were
+meteoric trails, milky ways, so to say, flowing midst the constellations.
+The thirty thousand tapers were being lighted one by one, their beams
+gradually increasing in number till they obscured the bright glow of the
+Grotto and spread, from one to the other end of the promenade, the small
+yellow flames of a gigantic brasier.
+
+“Oh! how beautiful it is, Pierre!” murmured Marie; “it is like the
+resurrection of the humble, the bright awakening of the souls of the
+poor.”
+
+“It is superb, superb!” repeated M. de Guersaint, with impassioned
+artistic satisfaction. “Do you see those two trails of light yonder,
+which intersect one another and form a cross?”
+
+Pierre’s feelings, however, had been touched by what Marie had just said.
+He was reflecting upon her words. There was truth in them. Taken singly,
+those slender flames, those mere specks of light, were modest and
+unobtrusive, like the lowly; it was only their great number that supplied
+the effulgence, the sun-like resplendency. Fresh ones were continually
+appearing, farther and farther away, like waifs and strays. “Ah!”
+ murmured the young priest, “do you see that one which has just begun to
+flicker, all by itself, far away--do you see it, Marie? Do you see how it
+floats and slowly approaches until it is merged in the great lake of
+light?”
+
+In the vicinity of the Grotto one could see now as clearly as in the
+daytime. The trees, illumined from below, were intensely green, like the
+painted trees in stage scenery. Above the moving brasier were some
+motionless banners, whose embroidered saints and silken cords showed with
+vivid distinctness. And the great reflection ascended to the rock, even
+to the Basilica, whose spire now shone out, quite white, against the
+black sky; whilst the hillsides across the Gave were likewise brightened,
+and displayed the pale fronts of their convents amidst their sombre
+foliage.
+
+There came yet another moment of uncertainty. The flaming lake, in which
+each burning wick was like a little wave, rolled its starry sparkling as
+though it were about to burst from its bed and flow away in a river. Then
+the banners began to oscillate, and soon a regular motion set in.
+
+“Oh! so they won’t pass this way!” exclaimed M. de Guersaint in a tone of
+disappointment.
+
+Pierre, who had informed himself on the matter, thereupon explained that
+the procession would first of all ascend the serpentine road--constructed
+at great cost up the hillside--and that it would afterwards pass behind
+the Basilica, descend by the inclined way on the right hand, and then
+spread out through the gardens.
+
+“Look!” said he; “you can see the foremost tapers ascending amidst the
+greenery.”
+
+Then came an enchanting spectacle. Little flickering lights detached
+themselves from the great bed of fire, and began gently rising, without
+it being possible for one to tell at that distance what connected them
+with the earth. They moved upward, looking in the darkness like golden
+particles of the sun. And soon they formed an oblique streak, a streak
+which suddenly twisted, then extended again until it curved once more. At
+last the whole hillside was streaked by a flaming zigzag, resembling
+those lightning flashes which you see falling from black skies in cheap
+engravings. But, unlike the lightning, the luminous trail did not fade
+away; the little lights still went onward in the same slow, gentle,
+gliding manner. Only for a moment, at rare intervals, was there a sudden
+eclipse; the procession, no doubt, was then passing behind some clump of
+trees. But, farther on, the tapers beamed forth afresh, rising heavenward
+by an intricate path, which incessantly diverged and then started upward
+again. At last, however, the time came when the lights no longer
+ascended, for they had reached the summit of the hill and had begun to
+disappear at the last turn of the road.
+
+Exclamations were rising from the crowd. “They are passing behind the
+Basilica,” said one. “Oh! it will take them twenty minutes before they
+begin coming down on the other side,” remarked another. “Yes, madame,”
+ said a third, “there are thirty thousand of them, and an hour will go by
+before the last of them leaves the Grotto.”
+
+Ever since the start a sound of chanting had risen above the low rumbling
+of the crowd. The hymn of Bernadette was being sung, those sixty couplets
+between which the Angelic Salutation, with its all-besetting rhythm, was
+ever returning as a refrain. When the sixty couplets were finished they
+were sung again; and that lullaby of “Ave, ave, ave Maria!” came back
+incessantly, stupefying the mind, and gradually transporting those
+thousands of beings into a kind of wide-awake dream, with a vision of
+Paradise before their eyes. And, indeed, at night-time when they were
+asleep, their beds would rock to the eternal tune, which they still and
+ever continued singing.
+
+“Are we going to stop here?” asked M. de Guersaint, who speedily got
+tired of remaining in any one spot. “We see nothing but the same thing
+over and over again.”
+
+Marie, who had informed herself by listening to what was said in the
+crowd, thereupon exclaimed: “You were quite right, Pierre; it would be
+much better to go back yonder under the trees. I so much wish to see
+everything.”
+
+“Yes, certainly; we will seek a spot whence you may see it all,” replied
+the priest. “The only difficulty lies in getting away from here.”
+
+Indeed, they were now inclosed within the mob of sight-seers; and, in
+order to secure a passage, Pierre with stubborn perseverance had to keep
+on begging a little room for a suffering girl.
+
+M. de Guersaint meantime brought up the rear, screening the little
+conveyance so that it might not be upset by the jostling; whilst Marie
+turned her head, still endeavouring to see the sheet of flame spread out
+before the Grotto, that lake of little sparkling waves which never seemed
+to diminish, although the procession continued to flow from it without a
+pause.
+
+At last they all three found themselves out of the crowd, near one of the
+arches, on a deserted spot where they were able to breathe for a moment.
+They now heard nothing but the distant canticle with its besetting
+refrain, and they only saw the reflection of the tapers, hovering like a
+luminous cloud in the neighbourhood of the Basilica.
+
+“The best plan would be to climb to the Calvary,” said M. de Guersaint.
+“The servant at the hotel told me so this morning. From up there, it
+seems, the scene is fairy-like.”
+
+But they could not think of making the ascent. Pierre at once enumerated
+the difficulties. “How could we hoist ourselves to such a height with
+Marie’s conveyance?” he asked. “Besides, we should have to come down
+again, and that would be dangerous work in the darkness amidst all the
+scrambling.”
+
+Marie herself preferred to remain under the trees in the gardens, where
+it was very mild. So they started off, and reached the esplanade in front
+of the great crowned statue of the Virgin. It was illuminated by means of
+blue and yellow globes which encompassed it with a gaudy splendour; and
+despite all his piety M. de Guersaint could not help finding these
+decorations in execrable taste.
+
+“There!” exclaimed Marie, “a good place would be near those shrubs
+yonder.”
+
+She was pointing to a shrubbery near the pilgrims’ shelter-house; and the
+spot was indeed an excellent one for their purpose, as it enabled them to
+see the procession come down by the gradient way on the left, and watch
+it as it passed between the lawns to the new bridge and back again.
+Moreover, a delightful freshness prevailed there by reason of the
+vicinity of the Gave. There was nobody there as yet, and one could enjoy
+deep peacefulness in the dense shade which fell from the big plane-trees
+bordering the path.
+
+In his impatience to see the first tapers reappear as soon as they should
+have passed behind the Basilica, M. de Guersaint had risen on tiptoe. “I
+see nothing as yet,” he muttered, “so whatever the regulations may be I
+shall sit on the grass for a moment. I’ve no strength left in my legs.”
+ Then, growing anxious about his daughter, he inquired: “Shall I cover you
+up? It is very cool here.”
+
+“Oh, no! I’m not cold, father!” answered Marie; “I feel so happy. It is
+long since I breathed such sweet air. There must be some roses
+about--can’t you smell that delicious perfume?” And turning to Pierre she
+asked: “Where are the roses, my friend? Can you see them?”
+
+When M. de Guersaint had seated himself on the grass near the little
+vehicle, it occurred to Pierre to see if there was not some bed of roses
+near at hand. But is was in vain that he explored the dark lawns; he
+could only distinguish sundry clumps of evergreens. And, as he passed in
+front of the pilgrims’ shelter-house on his way back, curiosity prompted
+him to enter it.
+
+This building formed a long and lofty hall, lighted by large windows upon
+two sides. With bare walls and a stone pavement, it contained no other
+furniture than a number of benches, which stood here and there in
+haphazard fashion. There was neither table nor shelf, so that the
+homeless pilgrims who had sought refuge there had piled up their baskets,
+parcels, and valises in the window embrasures. Moreover, the place was
+apparently empty; the poor folk that it sheltered had no doubt joined the
+procession. Nevertheless, although the door stood wide open, an almost
+unbearable smell reigned inside. The very walls seemed impregnated with
+an odour of poverty, and in spite of the bright sunshine which had
+prevailed during the day, the flagstones were quite damp, soiled and
+soaked with expectorations, spilt wine, and grease. This mess had been
+made by the poorer pilgrims, who with their dirty skins and wretched rags
+lived in the hall, eating and sleeping in heaps on the benches. Pierre
+speedily came to the conclusion that the pleasant smell of roses must
+emanate from some other spot; still, he was making the round of the hall,
+which was lighted by four smoky lanterns, and which he believed to be
+altogether unoccupied, when, against the left-hand wall, he was surprised
+to espy the vague figure of a woman in black, with what seemed to be a
+white parcel lying on her lap. She was all alone in that solitude, and
+did not stir; however, her eyes were wide open.
+
+He drew near and recognised Madame Vincent. She addressed him in a deep,
+broken voice: “Rose has suffered so dreadfully to-day! Since daybreak she
+has not ceased moaning. And so, as she fell asleep a couple of hours ago,
+I haven’t dared to stir for fear lest she should awake and suffer again.”
+
+Thus the poor woman remained motionless, martyr-mother that she was,
+having for long months held her daughter in her arms in this fashion, in
+the stubborn hope of curing her. In her arms, too, she had brought her to
+Lourdes; in her arms she had carried her to the Grotto; in her arms she
+had rocked her to sleep, having neither a room of her own, nor even a
+hospital bed at her disposal.
+
+“Isn’t the poor little thing any better?” asked Pierre, whose heart ached
+at the sight.
+
+“No, Monsieur l’Abbé; no, I think not.”
+
+“But you are very badly off here on this bench. You should have made an
+application to the pilgrimage managers instead of remaining like this, in
+the street, as it were. Some accommodation would have been found for your
+little girl, at any rate; that’s certain.”
+
+“Oh! what would have been the use of it, Monsieur l’Abbé? She is all
+right on my lap. And besides, should I have been allowed to stay with
+her? No, no, I prefer to have her on my knees; it seems to me that it
+will end by curing her.” Two big tears rolled down the poor woman’s
+motionless cheeks, and in her stifled voice she continued: “I am not
+penniless. I had thirty sous when I left Paris, and I still have ten
+left. All I need is a little bread, and she, poor darling, can no longer
+drink any milk even. I have enough to last me till we go back, and if she
+gets well again, oh! we shall be rich, rich, rich!”
+
+She had leant forward while speaking, and by the flickering light of a
+lantern near by, gazed at Rose, who was breathing faintly, with parted
+lips. “You see how soundly she is sleeping,” resumed the unhappy mother.
+“Surely the Blessed Virgin will take pity on her and cure her, won’t she,
+Monsieur l’Abbé? We only have one day left; still, I don’t despair; and I
+shall again pray all night long without moving from here. She will be
+cured to-morrow; we must live till then.”
+
+Infinite pity was filling the heart of Pierre, who, fearing that he also
+might weep, now went away. “Yes, yes, my poor woman, we must hope, still
+hope,” said he, as he left her there among the scattered benches, in that
+deserted, malodorous hall, so motionless in her painful maternal passion
+as to hold her own breath, fearful lest the heaving of her bosom should
+awaken the poor little sufferer. And in deepest grief, with closed lips,
+she prayed ardently.
+
+On Pierre returning to Marie’s side, the girl inquired of him: “Well, and
+those roses? Are there any near here?”
+
+He did not wish to sadden her by telling her what he had seen, so he
+simply answered: “No, I have searched the lawns; there are none.”
+
+“How singular!” she rejoined, in a thoughtful way. “The perfume is both
+so sweet and penetrating. You can smell it, can’t you? At this moment it
+is wonderfully strong, as though all the roses of Paradise were flowering
+around us in the darkness.”
+
+A low exclamation from her father interrupted her. M. de Guersaint had
+risen to his feet again on seeing some specks of light shine out above
+the gradient ways on the left side of the Basilica. “At last! Here they
+come!” said he.
+
+It was indeed the head of the procession again appearing; and at once the
+specks of light began to swarm and extend in long, wavering double files.
+The darkness submerged everything except these luminous points, which
+seemed to be at a great elevation, and to emerge, as it were, from the
+black depths of the Unknown. And at the same time the everlasting
+canticle was again heard, but so lightly, for the procession was far
+away, that it seemed as yet merely like the rustle of a coming storm,
+stirring the leaves of the trees.
+
+“Ah! I said so,” muttered M. de Guersaint; “one ought to be at the
+Calvary to see everything.” With the obstinacy of a child he kept on
+returning to his first idea, again and again complaining that they had
+chosen “the worst possible place.”
+
+“But why don’t you go up to the Calvary, papa?” at last said Marie.
+“There is still time. Pierre will stay here with me.” And with a mournful
+laugh she added: “Go; you know very well that nobody will run away with
+me.”
+
+He at first refused to act upon the suggestion, but, unable to resist his
+desire, he all at once fell in with it. And he had to hasten his steps,
+crossing the lawns at a run. “Don’t move,” he called; “wait for me under
+the trees. I will tell you of all that I may see up there.”
+
+Then Pierre and Marie remained alone in that dim, solitary nook, whence
+came such a perfume of roses, albeit no roses could be found. And they
+did not speak, but in silence watched the procession, which was now
+coming down from the hill with a gentle, continuous, gliding motion.
+
+A double file of quivering stars leapt into view on the left-hand side of
+the Basilica, and then followed the monumental, gradient way, whose curve
+is gradually described. At that distance you were still unable to see the
+pilgrims themselves, and you beheld simply those well-disciplined
+travelling lights tracing geometrical lines amidst the darkness. Under
+the deep blue heavens, even the buildings at first remained vague,
+forming but blacker patches against the sky. Little by little, however,
+as the number of candles increased, the principal architectural
+lines--the tapering spire of the Basilica, the cyclopean arches of the
+gradient ways, the heavy, squat façade of the Rosary--became more
+distinctly visible. And with that ceaseless torrent of bright sparks,
+flowing slowly downward with the stubborn persistence of a stream which
+has overflowed its banks and can be stopped by nothing, there came as it
+were an aurora, a growing, invading mass of light, which would at last
+spread its glory over the whole horizon.
+
+“Look, look, Pierre!” cried Marie, in an access of childish joy. “There
+is no end of them; fresh ones are ever shining out.”
+
+Indeed, the sudden appearances of the little lights continued with
+mechanical regularity, as though some inexhaustible celestial source were
+pouring forth all those solar specks. The head of the procession had just
+reached the gardens, near the crowned statue of the Virgin, so that as
+yet the double file of flames merely outlined the curves of the Rosary
+and the broad inclined way. However, the approach of the multitude was
+foretokened by the perturbation of the atmosphere, by the gusts of human
+breath coming from afar; and particularly did the voices swell, the
+canticle of Bernadette surging with the clamour of a rising tide, through
+which, with rhythmical persistence, the refrain of “Ave, ave, ave Maria!”
+ rolled ever in a louder key.
+
+“Ah, that refrain!” muttered Pierre; “it penetrates one’s very skin. It
+seems to me as though my whole body were at last singing it.”
+
+Again did Marie give vent to that childish laugh of hers. “It is true,”
+ said she; “it follows me about everywhere. I heard it the other night
+whilst I was asleep. And now it is again taking possession of me, rocking
+me, wafting me above the ground.” Then she broke off to say: “Here they
+come, just across the lawn, in front of us.”
+
+The procession had entered one of the long, straight paths; and then,
+turning round the lawn by way of the Breton’s Cross, it came back by a
+parallel path. It took more than a quarter of an hour to execute this
+movement, during which the double file of tapers resembled two long
+parallel streams of flame. That which ever excited one’s admiration was
+the ceaseless march of this serpent of fire, whose golden coils crept so
+gently over the black earth, winding, stretching into the far distance,
+without the immense body ever seeming to end. There must have been some
+jostling and scrambling every now and then, for some of the luminous
+lines shook and bent as though they were about to break; but order was
+soon re-established, and then the slow, regular, gliding movement set in
+afresh. There now seemed to be fewer stars in the heavens; it was as
+though a milky way had fallen from on high, rolling its glittering dust
+of worlds, and transferring the revolutions of the planets from the
+empyrean to earth. A bluish light streamed all around; there was naught
+but heaven left; the buildings and the trees assumed a visionary aspect
+in the mysterious glow of those thousands of tapers, whose number still
+and ever increased.
+
+A faint sigh of admiration came from Marie. She was at a loss for words,
+and could only repeat “How beautiful it is! _Mon Dieu_! how beautiful it
+is! Look, Pierre, is it not beautiful?”
+
+However, since the procession had been going by at so short a distance
+from them it had ceased to be a rhythmic march of stars which no human
+hand appeared to guide, for amidst the stream of light they could
+distinguish the figures of the pilgrims carrying the tapers, and at times
+even recognise them as they passed. First they espied La Grivotte, who,
+exaggerating her cure, and repeating that she had never felt in better
+health, had insisted upon taking part in the ceremony despite the
+lateness of the hour; and she still retained her excited demeanour, her
+dancing gait in that cool night air, which often made her shiver. Then
+the Vignerons appeared; the father at the head of the party, raising his
+taper on high, and followed by Madame Vigneron and Madame Chaise, who
+dragged their weary legs; whilst little Gustave, quite worn out, kept on
+tapping the sanded path with his crutch, his right hand covered meantime
+with all the wax that had dripped upon it. Every sufferer who could walk
+was there, among others Elise Rouquet, who, with her bare red face,
+passed by like some apparition from among the damned. Others were
+laughing; Sophie Couteau, the little girl who had been miraculously
+healed the previous year, was quite forgetting herself, playing with her
+taper as though it were a switch. Heads followed heads without a pause,
+heads of women especially, more often with sordid, common features, but
+at times wearing an exalted expression, which you saw for a second ere it
+vanished amidst the fantastic illumination. And there was no end to that
+terrible march past; fresh pilgrims were ever appearing. Among them
+Pierre and Marie noticed yet another little black shadowy figure, gliding
+along in a discreet, humble way; it was Madame Maze, whom they would not
+have recognised if she had not for a moment raised her pale face, down
+which the tears were streaming.
+
+“Look!” exclaimed Pierre; “the first tapers in the procession are
+reaching the Place du Rosaire, and I am sure that half of the pilgrims
+are still in front of the Grotto.”
+
+Marie had raised her eyes. Up yonder, on the left-hand side of the
+Basilica, she could see other lights incessantly appearing with that
+mechanical kind of movement which seemed as though it would never cease.
+“Ah!” she said, “how many, how many distressed souls there are! For each
+of those little flames is a suffering soul seeking deliverance, is it
+not?”
+
+Pierre had to lean over in order to hear her, for since the procession
+had been streaming by, so near to them, they had been deafened by the
+sound of the endless canticle, the hymn of Bernadette. The voices of the
+pilgrims rang out more loudly than ever amidst the increasing vertigo;
+the couplets became jumbled together--each batch of processionists
+chanted a different one with the ecstatic voices of beings possessed, who
+can no longer hear themselves. There was a huge indistinct clamour, the
+distracted clamour of a multitude intoxicated by its ardent faith. And
+meantime the refrain of “Ave, ave, ave Maria!” was ever returning,
+rising, with its frantic, importunate rhythm, above everything else.
+
+All at once Pierre and Marie, to their great surprise, saw M. de
+Guersaint before them again. “Ah! my children,” he said, “I did not want
+to linger too long up there, I cut through the procession twice in order
+to get back to you. But what a sight, what a sight it is! It is certainly
+the first beautiful thing that I have seen since I have been here!”
+ Thereupon he began to describe the procession as he had beheld it from
+the Calvary height. “Imagine,” said he, “another heaven, a heaven down
+below reflecting that above, a heaven entirely filled by a single immense
+constellation. The swarming stars seem to be lost, to lie in dim faraway
+depths; and the trail of fire is in form like a monstrance--yes, a real
+monstrance, the base of which is outlined by the inclined ways, the stem
+by the two parallel paths, and the Host by the round lawn which crowns
+them. It is a monstrance of burning gold, shining out in the depths of
+the darkness with a perpetual sparkle of moving stars. Nothing else seems
+to exist; it is gigantic, paramount. I really never saw anything so
+extraordinary before!”
+
+He was waving his arms, beside himself, overflowing with the emotion of
+an artist.
+
+“Father dear,” said Marie, tenderly, “since you have come back you ought
+to go to bed. It is nearly eleven o’clock, and you know that you have to
+start at two in the morning.” Then, to render him compliant, she added:
+“I am so pleased that you are going to make that excursion! Only, come
+back early to-morrow evening, because you’ll see, you’ll see--” She
+stopped short, not daring to express her conviction that she would be
+cured.
+
+“You are right; I will go to bed,” replied M. de Guersaint, quite calmed.
+“Since Pierre will be with you I sha’n’t feel anxious.”
+
+“But I don’t wish Pierre to pass the night out here. He will join you
+by-and-by after he has taken me to the Grotto. I sha’n’t have any further
+need of anybody; the first bearer who passes can take me back to the
+hospital to-morrow morning.”
+
+Pierre had not interrupted her, and now he simply said: “No, no, Marie, I
+shall stay. Like you, I shall spend the night at the Grotto.”
+
+She opened her mouth to insist and express her displeasure. But he had
+spoken those words so gently, and she had detected in them such a
+dolorous thirst for happiness, that, stirred to the depths of her soul,
+she stayed her tongue.
+
+“Well, well, my children,” replied her father, “settle the matter between
+you. I know that you are both very sensible. And now good-night, and
+don’t be at all uneasy about me.”
+
+He gave his daughter a long, loving kiss, pressed the young priest’s
+hands, and then went off, disappearing among the serried ranks of the
+procession, which he once more had to cross.
+
+Then they remained alone in their dark, solitary nook under the spreading
+trees, she still sitting up in her box, and he kneeling on the grass,
+with his elbow resting on one of the wheels. And it was truly sweet to
+linger there while the tapers continued marching past, and, after a
+turning movement, assembled on the Place du Rosaire. What delighted
+Pierre was that nothing of all the daytime junketing remained. It seemed
+as though a purifying breeze had come down from the mountains, sweeping
+away all the odour of strong meats, the greedy Sunday delights, the
+scorching, pestilential, fair-field dust which, at an earlier hour, had
+hovered above the town. Overhead there was now only the vast sky, studded
+with pure stars, and the freshness of the Gave was delicious, whilst the
+wandering breezes were laden with the perfumes of wild flowers. The
+mysterious Infinite spread far around in the sovereign peacefulness of
+night, and nothing of materiality remained save those little
+candle-flames which the young priest’s companion had compared to
+suffering souls seeking deliverance. All was now exquisitely restful,
+instinct with unlimited hope. Since Pierre had been there all the
+heart-rending memories of the afternoon, of the voracious appetites, the
+impudent simony, and the poisoning of the old town, had gradually left
+him, allowing him to savour the divine refreshment of that beautiful
+night, in which his whole being was steeped as in some revivifying water.
+
+A feeling of infinite sweetness had likewise come over Marie, who
+murmured: “Ah! how happy Blanche would be to see all these marvels.”
+
+She was thinking of her sister, who had been left in Paris to all the
+worries of her hard profession as a teacher forced to run hither and
+thither giving lessons. And that simple mention of her sister, of whom
+Marie had not spoken since her arrival at Lourdes, but whose figure now
+unexpectedly arose in her mind’s eye, sufficed to evoke a vision of all
+the past.
+
+Then, without exchanging a word, Marie and Pierre lived their childhood’s
+days afresh, playing together once more in the neighbouring gardens
+parted by the quickset hedge. But separation came on the day when he
+entered the seminary and when she kissed him on the cheeks, vowing that
+she would never forget him. Years went by, and they found themselves
+forever parted: he a priest, she prostrated by illness, no longer with
+any hope of ever being a woman. That was their whole story--an ardent
+affection of which they had long been ignorant, then absolute severance,
+as though they were dead, albeit they lived side by side. They again
+beheld the sorry lodging whence they had started to come to Lourdes after
+so much battling, so much discussion--his doubts and her passionate
+faith, which last had conquered. And it seemed to them truly delightful
+to find themselves once more quite alone together, in that dark nook on
+that lovely night, when there were as many stars upon earth as there were
+in heaven.
+
+Marie had hitherto retained the soul of a child, a spotless soul, as her
+father said, good and pure among the purest. Stricken low in her
+thirteenth year, she had grown no older in mind. Although she was now
+three-and-twenty, she was still a child, a child of thirteen, who had
+retired within herself, absorbed in the bitter catastrophe which had
+annihilated her. You could tell this by the frigidity of her glance, by
+her absent expression, by the haunted air she ever wore, unable as she
+was to bestow a thought on anything but her calamity. And never was
+woman’s soul more pure and candid, arrested as it had been in its
+development. She had had no other romance in life save that tearful
+farewell to her friend, which for ten long years had sufficed to fill her
+heart. During the endless days which she had spent on her couch of
+wretchedness, she had never gone beyond this dream--that if she had grown
+up in health, he doubtless would not have become a priest, in order to
+live near her. She never read any novels. The pious works which she was
+allowed to peruse maintained her in the excitement of a superhuman love.
+Even the rumours of everyday life died away at the door of the room where
+she lived in seclusion; and, in past years, when she had been taken from
+one to the other end of France, from one inland spa to another, she had
+passed through the crowds like a somnambulist who neither sees nor hears
+anything, possessed, as she was, by the idea of the calamity that had
+befallen her, the bond which made her a sexless thing. Hence her purity
+and childishness; hence she was but an adorable daughter of suffering,
+who, despite the growth of her sorry flesh, harboured nothing in her
+heart save that distant awakening of passion, the unconscious love of her
+thirteenth year.
+
+Her hand sought Pierre’s in the darkness, and when she found it, coming
+to meet her own, she, for a long time, continued pressing it. Ah! how
+sweet it was! Never before, indeed, had they tasted such pure and perfect
+joy in being together, far from the world, amidst the sovereign
+enchantment of darkness and mystery. Around them nothing subsisted, save
+the revolving stars. The lulling hymns were like the very vertigo that
+bore them away. And she knew right well that after spending a night of
+rapture at the Grotto, she would, on the morrow, be cured. Of this she
+was, indeed, absolutely convinced; she would prevail upon the Blessed
+Virgin to listen to her; she would soften her, as soon as she should be
+alone, imploring her face to face. And she well understood what Pierre
+had wished to say a short time previously, when expressing his desire to
+spend the whole night outside the Grotto, like herself. Was it not that
+he intended to make a supreme effort to believe, that he meant to fall
+upon his knees like a little child, and beg the all-powerful Mother to
+restore his lost faith? Without need of any further exchange of words,
+their clasped hands repeated all those things. They mutually promised
+that they would pray for each other, and so absorbed in each other did
+they become that they forgot themselves, with such an ardent desire for
+one another’s cure and happiness, that for a moment they attained to the
+depths of the love which offers itself in sacrifice. It was divine
+enjoyment.
+
+“Ah!” murmured Pierre, “how beautiful is this blue night, this infinite
+darkness, which has swept away all the hideousness of things and beings,
+this deep, fresh peacefulness, in which I myself should like to bury my
+doubts!”
+
+His voice died away, and Marie, in her turn, said in a very low voice:
+“And the roses, the perfume of the roses? Can’t you smell them, my
+friend? Where can they be since you could not see them?”
+
+“Yes, yes, I smell them, but there are none,” he replied. “I should
+certainly have seen them, for I hunted everywhere.”
+
+“How can you say that there are no roses when they perfume the air around
+us, when we are steeped in their aroma? Why, there are moments when the
+scent is so powerful that I almost faint with delight in inhaling it!
+They must certainly be here, innumerable, under our very feet.”
+
+“No, no,” said Pierre, “I swear to you I hunted everywhere, and there are
+no roses. They must be invisible, or they may be the very grass we tread
+and the spreading trees that are around us; their perfume may come from
+the soil itself, from the torrent which flows along close by, from the
+woods and the mountains that rise yonder.”
+
+For a moment they remained silent. Then, in an undertone, she resumed:
+“How sweet they smell, Pierre! And it seems to me that even our clasped
+hands form a bouquet.”
+
+“Yes, they smell delightfully sweet; but it is from you, Marie, that the
+perfume now ascends, as though the roses were budding from your hair.”
+
+Then they ceased speaking. The procession was still gliding along, and at
+the corner of the Basilica bright sparks were still appearing, flashing
+suddenly from out of the obscurity, as though spurting from some
+invisible source. The vast train of little flames, marching in double
+file, threw a riband of light across the darkness. But the great sight
+was now on the Place du Rosaire, where the head of the procession, still
+continuing its measured evolutions, was revolving and revolving in a
+circle which ever grew smaller, with a stubborn whirl which increased the
+dizziness of the weary pilgrims and the violence of their chants. And
+soon the circle formed a nucleus, the nucleus of a nebula, so to say,
+around which the endless riband of fire began to coil itself. And the
+brasier grew larger and larger--there was first a pool, then a lake of
+light. The whole vast Place du Rosaire changed at last into a burning
+ocean, rolling its little sparkling wavelets with the dizzy motion of a
+whirlpool that never rested. A reflection like that of dawn whitened the
+Basilica; while the rest of the horizon faded into deep obscurity, amidst
+which you only saw a few stray tapers journeying alone, like glowworms
+seeking their way with the help of their little lights. However, a
+straggling rear-guard of the procession must have climbed the Calvary
+height, for up there, against the sky, some moving stars could also be
+seen. Eventually the moment came when the last tapers appeared down
+below, marched round the lawns, flowed away, and were merged in the sea
+of flame. Thirty thousand tapers were burning there, still and ever
+revolving, quickening their sparkles under the vast calm heavens where
+the planets had grown pale. A luminous glow ascended in company with the
+strains of the canticle which never ceased. And the roar of voices
+incessantly repeating the refrain of “Ave, ave, ave Maria!” was like the
+very crackling of those hearts of fire which were burning away in prayers
+in order that souls might be saved.
+
+The candles had just been extinguished, one by one, and the night was
+falling again, paramount, densely black, and extremely mild, when Pierre
+and Marie perceived that they were still there, hand in hand, hidden away
+among the trees. In the dim streets of Lourdes, far off, there were now
+only some stray, lost pilgrims inquiring their way, in order that they
+might get to bed. Through the darkness there swept a rustling sound--the
+rustling of those who prowl and fall asleep when days of festivity draw
+to a close. But the young priest and the girl lingered in their nook
+forgetfully, never stirring, but tasting delicious happiness amidst the
+perfume of the invisible roses.
+
+
+
+
+IV. THE VIGIL
+
+WHEN Pierre dragged Marie in her box to the front of the Grotto, and
+placed her as near as possible to the railing, it was past midnight, and
+about a hundred persons were still there, some seated on the benches, but
+the greater number kneeling as though prostrated in prayer. The Grotto
+shone from afar, with its multitude of lighted tapers, similar to the
+illumination round a coffin, though all that you could distinguish was a
+star-like blaze, from the midst of which, with visionary whiteness,
+emerged the statue of the Virgin in its niche. The hanging foliage
+assumed an emerald sheen, the hundreds of crutches covering the vault
+resembled an inextricable network of dead wood on the point of
+reflowering. And the darkness was rendered more dense by so great a
+brightness, the surroundings became lost in a deep shadow in which
+nothing, neither walls nor trees, remained; whilst all alone ascended the
+angry and continuous murmur of the Gave, rolling along beneath the
+gloomy, boundless sky, now heavy with a gathering storm.
+
+“Are you comfortable, Marie?” gently inquired Pierre. “Don’t you feel
+chilly?”
+
+She had just shivered. But it was only at a breath from the other world,
+which had seemed to her to come from the Grotto.
+
+“No, no, I am so comfortable! Only place the shawl over my knees.
+And--thank you, Pierre--don’t be anxious about me. I no longer require
+anyone now that I am with her.”
+
+Her voice died away, she was already falling into an ecstasy, her hands
+clasped, her eyes raised towards the white statue, in a beatific
+transfiguration of the whole of her poor suffering face.
+
+Yet Pierre remained a few minutes longer beside her. He would have liked
+to wrap her in the shawl, for he perceived the trembling of her little
+wasted hands. But he feared to annoy her, so confined himself to tucking
+her in like a child; whilst she, slightly raised, with her elbows on the
+edges of her box, and her eyes fixed on the Grotto, no longer beheld him.
+
+A bench stood near, and he had just seated himself upon it, intending to
+collect his thoughts, when his glance fell upon a woman kneeling in the
+gloom. Dressed in black, she was so slim, so discreet, so unobtrusive, so
+wrapt in darkness, that at first he had not noticed her. After a while,
+however, he recognised her as Madame Maze. The thought of the letter
+which she had received during the day then recurred to him. And the sight
+of her filled him with pity; he could feel for the forlornness of this
+solitary woman, who had no physical sore to heal, but only implored the
+Blessed Virgin to relieve her heart-pain by converting her inconstant
+husband. The letter had no doubt been some harsh reply, for, with bowed
+head, she seemed almost annihilated, filled with the humility of some
+poor beaten creature. It was only at night-time that she readily forgot
+herself there, happy at disappearing, at being able to weep, suffer
+martyrdom, and implore the return of the lost caresses, for hours
+together, without anyone suspecting her grievous secret. Her lips did not
+even move; it was her wounded heart which prayed, which desperately
+begged for its share of love and happiness.
+
+Ah! that inextinguishable thirst for happiness which brought them all
+there, wounded either in body or in spirit; Pierre also felt it parching
+his throat, in an ardent desire to be quenched. He longed to cast himself
+upon his knees, to beg the divine aid with the same humble faith as that
+woman. But his limbs were as though tied; he could not find the words he
+wanted, and it was a relief when he at last felt someone touch him on the
+arm. “Come with me, Monsieur l’Abbé, if you do not know the Grotto,” said
+a voice. “I will find you a place. It is so pleasant there at this time!”
+
+He raised his head, and recognised Baron Suire, the director of the
+Hospitality of Our Lady of Salvation. This benevolent and simple man no
+doubt felt some affection for him. He therefore accepted his offer, and
+followed him into the Grotto, which was quite empty. The Baron had a key,
+with which he locked the railing behind them.
+
+“You see, Monsieur l’Abbé,” said he, “this is the time when one can
+really be comfortable here. For my part, whenever I come to spend a few
+days at Lourdes, I seldom retire to rest before daybreak, as I have
+fallen into the habit of finishing my night here. The place is deserted,
+one is quite alone, and is it not pleasant? How well one feels oneself to
+be in the abode of the Blessed Virgin!”
+
+He smiled with a kindly air, doing the honours of the Grotto like an old
+frequenter of the place, somewhat enfeebled by age, but full of genuine
+affection for this delightful nook. Moreover, in spite of his great
+piety, he was in no way ill at ease there, but talked on and explained
+matters with the familiarity of a man who felt himself to be the friend
+of Heaven.
+
+“Ah! you are looking at the tapers,” he said. “There are about two
+hundred of them which burn together night and day; and they end by making
+the place warm. It is even warm here in winter.”
+
+Indeed, Pierre was beginning to feel incommoded by the warm odour of the
+wax. Dazzled by the brilliant light into which he was penetrating, he
+gazed at the large, central, pyramidal holder, all bristling with little
+tapers, and resembling a luminous clipped yew glistening with stars. In
+the background, a straight holder, on a level with the ground, upheld the
+large tapers, which, like the pipes of an organ, formed a row of uneven
+height, some of them being as large as a man’s thigh. And yet other
+holders, resembling massive candelabra, stood here and there on the
+jutting parts of the rock. The vault of the Grotto sank towards the left,
+where the stone seemed baked and blackened by the eternal flames which
+had been heating it for years. And the wax was perpetually dripping like
+fine snow; the trays of the holders were smothered with it, whitened by
+its ever-thickening dust. In fact, it coated the whole rock, which had
+become quite greasy to the touch; and to such a degree did it cover the
+ground that accidents had occurred, and it had been necessary to spread
+some mats about to prevent persons from slipping.
+
+“You see those large ones there,” obligingly continued Baron Suire. “They
+are the most expensive and cost sixty francs apiece; they will continue
+burning for a month. The smallest ones, which cost but five sous each,
+only last three hours. Oh! we don’t husband them; we never run short.
+Look here! Here are two more hampers full, which there has not yet been
+time to remove to the storehouse.”
+
+Then he pointed to the furniture, which comprised a harmonium covered
+with a cloth, a substantial dresser with several large drawers in which
+the sacred vestments were kept, some benches and chairs reserved for the
+privileged few who were admitted during the ceremonies, and finally a
+very handsome movable altar, which was adorned with engraved silver
+plates, the gift of a great lady, and--for fear of injury from
+dampness--was only brought out on the occasions of remunerative
+pilgrimages.
+
+Pierre was disturbed by all this well-meant chatter. His religious
+emotion lost some of its charm. In spite of his lack of faith, he had, on
+entering, experienced a feeling of agitation, a heaving of the soul, as
+though the mystery were about to be revealed to him. It was at the same
+time both an anxious and a delicious feeling. And he beheld things which
+deeply stirred him: bunches of flowers, lying in a heap at the Virgin’s
+feet, with the votive offerings of children--little faded shoes, a tiny
+iron corselet, and a doll-like crutch which almost seemed to be a toy.
+Beneath the natural ogival cavity in which the apparition had appeared,
+at the spot where the pilgrims rubbed the chaplets and medals they wished
+to consecrate, the rock was quite worn away and polished. Millions of
+ardent lips had pressed kisses on the wall with such intensity of love
+that the stone was as though calcined, streaked with black veins, shining
+like marble.
+
+However, he stopped short at last opposite a cavity in which lay a
+considerable pile of letters and papers of every description.
+
+“Ah! I was forgetting,” hastily resumed Baron Suire; “this is the most
+interesting part of it. These are the letters which the faithful throw
+into the Grotto through the railing every day. We gather them up and
+place them there; and in the winter I amuse myself by glancing through
+them. You see, we cannot burn them without opening them, for they often
+contain money--francs, half-francs, and especially postage-stamps.”
+
+He stirred up the letters, and, selecting a few at random, showed the
+addresses, and opened them to read. Nearly all of them were letters from
+illiterate persons, with the superscription, “To Our Lady of Lourdes,”
+ scrawled on the envelopes in big, irregular handwriting. Many of them
+contained requests or thanks, incorrectly worded and wondrously spelt;
+and nothing was more affecting than the nature of some of the petitions:
+a little brother to be saved, a lawsuit to be gained, a lover to be
+preserved, a marriage to be effected. Other letters, however, were angry
+ones, taking the Blessed Virgin to task for not having had the politeness
+to acknowledge a former communication by granting the writer’s prayers.
+Then there were still others, written in a finer hand, with carefully
+worded phrases containing confessions and fervent entreaties; and these
+were from women who confided to the Queen of Heaven things which they
+dared not even say to a priest in the shadow of the confessional.
+Finally, one envelope, selected at random, merely contained a photograph;
+a young girl had sent her portrait to Our Lady of Lourdes, with this
+dedication: “To my good Mother.” In short, they every day received the
+correspondence of a most powerful Queen, to whom both prayers and secrets
+were addressed, and who was expected to reply with favours and kindnesses
+of every kind. The franc and half-franc pieces were simple tokens of love
+to propitiate her; while, as for the postage-stamps, these could only be
+sent for convenience’ sake, in lieu of coined money; unless, indeed, they
+were sent guilelessly, as in the case of a peasant woman who had added a
+postscript to her letter to say that she enclosed a stamp for the reply.
+
+“I can assure you,” concluded the Baron, “that there are some very nice
+ones among them, much less foolish than you might imagine. During a
+period of three years I constantly found some very interesting letters
+from a lady who did nothing without relating it to the Blessed Virgin.
+She was a married woman, and entertained a most dangerous passion for a
+friend of her husband’s. Well, Monsieur l’Abbé, she overcame it; the
+Blessed Virgin answered her by sending her an armour for her chastity, an
+all-divine power to resist the promptings of her heart.” Then he broke
+off to say: “But come and seat yourself here, Monsieur l’Abbé. You will
+see how comfortable you will be.”
+
+Pierre went and placed himself beside him on a bench on the left hand, at
+the spot where the rock sloped down. This was a deliciously reposeful
+corner, and neither the one nor the other spoke; a profound silence had
+ensued, when, behind him, Pierre heard an indistinct murmur, a light
+crystalline voice, which seemed to come from the Invisible. He gave a
+start, which Baron Suire understood.
+
+“That is the spring which you hear,” said he; “it is there, underground,
+below this grating. Would you like to see it?”
+
+And without waiting for Pierre’s reply, he at once bent down to open one
+of the iron plates protecting the spring, mentioning that it was thus
+closed up in order to prevent freethinkers from throwing poison into it.
+For a moment this extraordinary idea quite amazed the priest; but he
+ended by attributing it entirely to the Baron, who was, indeed, very
+childish. The latter, meantime, was vainly struggling with the padlock,
+which opened by a combination of letters, and refused to yield to his
+endeavours. “It is singular,” he muttered; “the word is _Rome_, and I am
+positive that it hasn’t been changed. The damp destroys everything. Every
+two years or so we are obliged to replace those crutches up there,
+otherwise they would all rot away. Be good enough to bring me a taper.”
+
+By the light of the candle which Pierre then took from one of the
+holders, he at last succeeded in unfastening the brass padlock, which was
+covered with _vert-de-gris_. Then, the plate having been raised, the
+spring appeared to view. Upon a bed of muddy gravel, in a fissure of the
+rock, there was a limpid stream, quite tranquil, but seemingly spreading
+over a rather large surface. The Baron explained that it had been
+necessary to conduct it to the fountains through pipes coated with
+cement; and he even admitted that, behind the piscinas, a large cistern
+had been dug in which the water was collected during the night, as
+otherwise the small output of the source would not suffice for the daily
+requirements.
+
+“Will you taste it?” he suddenly asked. “It is much better here, fresh
+from the earth.”
+
+Pierre did not answer; he was gazing at that tranquil, innocent water,
+which assumed a moire-like golden sheen in the dancing light of the
+taper. The falling drops of wax now and again ruffled its surface. And,
+as he gazed at it, the young priest pondered upon all the mystery it
+brought with it from the distant mountain slopes.
+
+“Come, drink some!” said the Baron, who had already dipped and filled a
+glass which was kept there handy. The priest had no choice but to empty
+it; it was good pure, water, fresh and transparent, like that which flows
+from all the lofty uplands of the Pyrenees.
+
+After refastening the padlock, they both returned to the bench. Now and
+again Pierre could still hear the spring flowing behind him, with a music
+resembling the gentle warble of some unseen bird. And now the Baron again
+raised his voice, giving him the history of the Grotto at all times and
+seasons, in a pathetic babble, replete with puerile details.
+
+The summer was the roughest season, for then came the great itinerant
+pilgrimage crowds, with the uproarious fervour of thousands of eager
+beings, all praying and vociferating together. But with the autumn came
+the rain, those diluvial rains which beat against the Grotto entrance for
+days together; and with them arrived the pilgrims from remote countries,
+small, silent, and ecstatic bands of Indians, Malays, and even Chinese,
+who fell upon their knees in the mud at the sign from the missionaries
+accompanying them. Of all the old provinces of France, it was Brittany
+that sent the most devout pilgrims, whole parishes arriving together, the
+men as numerous as the women, and all displaying a pious deportment, a
+simple and unostentatious faith, such as might edify the world. Then came
+the winter, December with its terrible cold, its dense snow-drifts
+blocking the mountain ways. But even then families put up at the hotels,
+and, despite everything, faithful worshippers--all those who, fleeing the
+noise of the world, wished to speak to the Virgin in the tender intimacy
+of solitude--still came every morning to the Grotto. Among them were some
+whom no one knew, who appeared directly they felt certain they would be
+alone there to kneel and love like jealous lovers; and who departed,
+frightened away by the first suspicion of a crowd. And how warm and
+pleasant the place was throughout the foul winter weather! In spite of
+rain and wind and snow, the Grotto still continued flaring. Even during
+nights of howling tempest, when not a soul was there, it lighted up the
+empty darkness, blazing like a brasier of love that nothing could
+extinguish. The Baron related that, at the time of the heavy snowfall of
+the previous winter, he had spent whole afternoons there, on the bench
+where they were then seated. A gentle warmth prevailed, although the spot
+faced the north and was never reached by a ray of sunshine. No doubt the
+circumstance of the burning tapers continually heating the rock explained
+this generous warmth; but might one not also believe in some charming
+kindness on the part of the Virgin, who endowed the spot with perpetual
+springtide? And the little birds were well aware of it; when the snow on
+the ground froze their feet, all the finches of the neighbourhood sought
+shelter there, fluttering about in the ivy around the holy statue. At
+length came the awakening of the real spring: the Gave, swollen with
+melted snow, and rolling on with a voice of thunder: the trees, under the
+action of their sap, arraying themselves in a mantle of greenery, whilst
+the crowds, once more returning, noisily invaded the sparkling Grotto,
+whence they drove the little birds of heaven.
+
+“Yes, yes,” repeated Baron Suire, in a declining voice, “I spent some
+most delightful winter days here all alone. I saw no one but a woman, who
+leant against the railing to avoid kneeling in the snow. She was quite
+young, twenty-five perhaps, and very pretty--dark, with magnificent blue
+eyes. She never spoke, and did not even seem to pray, but remained there
+for hours together, looking intensely sad. I do not know who she was, nor
+have I ever seen her since.”
+
+He ceased speaking; and when, a couple of minutes later, Pierre,
+surprised at his silence, looked at him, he perceived that he had fallen
+asleep. With his hands clasped upon his belly, his chin resting on his
+chest, he slept as peacefully as a child, a smile hovering the while
+about his mouth. Doubtless, when he said that he spent the night there,
+he meant that he came thither to indulge in the early nap of a happy old
+man, whose dreams are of the angels. And now Pierre tasted all the charms
+of the solitude. It was indeed true that a feeling of peacefulness and
+comfort permeated the soul in this rocky nook. It was occasioned by the
+somewhat stifling fumes of the burning wax, by the transplendent ecstasy
+into which one sank amidst the glare of the tapers. The young priest
+could no longer distinctly see the crutches on the roof, the votive
+offerings hanging from the sides, the altar of engraved silver, and the
+harmonium in its wrapper, for a slow intoxication seemed to be stealing
+over him, a gradual prostration of his whole being. And he particularly
+experienced the divine sensation of having left the living world, of
+having attained to the far realms of the marvellous and the superhuman,
+as though that simple iron railing yonder had become the very barrier of
+the Infinite.
+
+However, a slight noise on his left again disturbed him. It was the
+spring flowing, ever flowing on, with its bird-like warble. Ah! how he
+would have liked to fall upon his knees and believe in the miracle, to
+acquire a certain conviction that that divine water had gushed from the
+rock solely for the healing of suffering humanity. Had he not come there
+to prostrate himself and implore the Virgin to restore the faith of his
+childhood? Why, then, did he not pray, why did he not beseech her to
+bring him back to grace? His feeling of suffocation increased, the
+burning tapers dazzled him almost to the point of giddiness. And, all at
+once, the recollection came to him that for two days past, amidst the
+great freedom which priests enjoyed at Lourdes, he had neglected to say
+his mass. He was in a state of sin, and perhaps it was the weight of this
+transgression which was oppressing his heart. He suffered so much that he
+was at last compelled to rise from his seat and walk away. He gently
+closed the gate behind him, leaving Baron Suire still asleep on the
+bench. Marie, he found, had not stirred, but was still raised on her
+elbows, with her ecstatic eyes uplifted towards the figure of the Virgin.
+
+“How are you, Marie?” asked Pierre. “Don’t you feel cold?”
+
+She did not reply. He felt her hands and found them warm and soft, albeit
+slightly trembling. “It is not the cold which makes you tremble, is it,
+Marie?” he asked.
+
+In a voice as gentle as a zephyr she replied: “No, no! let me be; I am so
+happy! I shall see her, I feel it. Ah! what joy!”
+
+So, after slightly pulling up her shawl, he went forth into the night, a
+prey to indescribable agitation. Beyond the bright glow of the Grotto was
+a night as black as ink, a region of darkness, into which he plunged at
+random. Then, as his eyes became accustomed to this gloom, he found
+himself near the Gave, and skirted it, following a path shaded by tall
+trees, where he again came upon a refreshing obscurity. This shade and
+coolness, both so soothing, now brought him relief. And his only surprise
+was that he had not fallen on his knees in the Grotto, and prayed, even
+as Marie was praying, with all the power of his soul. What could be the
+obstacle within him? Whence came the irresistible revolt which prevented
+him from surrendering himself to faith even when his overtaxed, tortured
+being longed to yield? He understood well enough that it was his reason
+alone which protested, and the time had come when he would gladly have
+killed that voracious reason, which was devouring his life and preventing
+him from enjoying the happiness allowed to the ignorant and the simple.
+Perhaps, had he beheld a miracle, he might have acquired enough strength
+of will to believe. For instance, would he not have bowed himself down,
+vanquished at last, if Marie had suddenly risen up and walked before him.
+The scene which he conjured up of Marie saved, Marie cured, affected him
+so deeply that he stopped short, his trembling arms uplifted towards the
+star-spangled vault of heaven. What a lovely night it was!--so deep and
+mysterious, so airy and fragrant; and what joy rained down at the hope
+that eternal health might be restored, that eternal love might ever
+revive, even as spring returns! Then he continued his walk, following the
+path to the end. But his doubts were again coming back to him; when you
+need a miracle to gain belief, it means that you are incapable of
+believing. There is no need for the Almighty to prove His existence.
+Pierre also felt uneasy at the thought that, so long as he had not
+discharged his priestly duties by saying his mass, his prayers would not
+be answered. Why did he not go at once to the church of the Rosary, whose
+altars, from midnight till noon, are placed at the disposal of the
+priests who come from a distance? Thus thinking, he descended by another
+path, again finding himself beneath the trees, near the leafy spot whence
+he and Marie had watched the procession of tapers. Not a light now
+remained, there was but a boundless expanse of gloom.
+
+Here Pierre experienced a fresh attack of faintness, and as though to
+gain time, he turned mechanically into the pilgrims’ shelter-house. Its
+door had remained wide open; still this failed to sufficiently ventilate
+the spacious hall, which was now full of people. On the very threshold
+Pierre felt oppressed by the stifling heat emanating from the multitude
+of bodies, the dense pestilential smell of human breath and perspiration.
+The smoking lanterns gave out so bad a light that he had to pick his way
+with extreme care in order to avoid treading upon outstretched limbs; for
+the overcrowding was extraordinary, and many persons, unable to find room
+on the benches, had stretched themselves on the pavement, on the damp
+stone slabs fouled by all the refuse of the day. And on all sides
+indescribable promiscuousness prevailed: prostrated by overpowering
+weariness, men, women, and priests were lying there, pell-mell, at
+random, open-mouthed and utterly exhausted. A large number were snoring,
+seated on the slabs, with their backs against the walls and their heads
+drooping on their chests. Others had slipped down, with limbs
+intermingled, and one young girl lay prostrate across an old country
+priest, who in his calm, childlike slumber was smiling at the angels. It
+was like a cattle-shed sheltering poor wanderers of the roads, all those
+who were homeless on that beautiful holiday night, and who had dropped in
+there and fallen fraternally asleep. Still, there were some who found no
+repose in their feverish excitement, but turned and twisted, or rose up
+to finish eating the food which remained in their baskets. Others could
+be seen lying perfectly motionless, their eyes wide open and fixed upon
+the gloom. The cries of dreamers, the wailing of sufferers, arose amidst
+general snoring. And pity came to the heart, a pity full of anguish, at
+sight of this flock of wretches lying there in heaps in loathsome rags,
+whilst their poor spotless souls no doubt were far away in the blue realm
+of some mystical dream. Pierre was on the point of withdrawing, feeling
+sick at heart, when a low continuous moan attracted his attention. He
+looked, and recognised Madame Vincent, on the same spot and in the same
+position as before, still nursing little Rose upon her lap. “Ah! Monsieur
+l’Abbé,” the poor woman murmured, “you hear her; she woke up nearly an
+hour ago, and has been sobbing ever since. Yet I assure you I have not
+moved even a finger, I felt so happy at seeing her sleep.”
+
+The priest bent down, examining the little one, who had not even the
+strength to raise her eyelids. A plaintive cry no stronger than a breath
+was coming from her lips; and she was so white that he shuddered, for he
+felt that death was hovering near.
+
+“Dear me! what shall I do?” continued the poor mother, utterly worn out.
+“This cannot last; I can no longer bear to hear her cry. And if you knew
+all that I have been saying to her: ‘My jewel, my treasure, my angel, I
+beseech you cry no more. Be good; the Blessed Virgin will cure you!’ And
+yet she still cries on.”
+
+With these words the poor creature burst out sobbing, her big tears
+falling on the face of the child, whose rattle still continued. “Had it
+been daylight,” she resumed, “I would long ago have left this hall, the
+more especially as she disturbs the others. There is an old lady yonder
+who has already complained. But I fear it may be chilly outside; and
+besides, where could I go in the middle of the night? Ah! Blessed Virgin,
+Blessed Virgin, take pity upon us!”
+
+Overcome by emotion, Pierre kissed the child’s fair head, and then
+hastened away to avoid bursting into tears like the sorrowing mother. And
+he went straight to the Rosary, as though he were determined to conquer
+death.
+
+He had already beheld the Rosary in broad daylight, and had been
+displeased by the aspect of this church, which the architect, fettered by
+the rockbound site, had been obliged to make circular and low, so that it
+seemed crushed beneath its great cupola, which square pillars supported.
+The worst was that, despite its archaic Byzantine style, it altogether
+lacked any religious appearance, and suggested neither mystery nor
+meditation. Indeed, with the glaring light admitted by the cupola and the
+broad glazed doors it was more like some brand-new corn-market. And then,
+too, it was not yet completed: the decorations were lacking, the bare
+walls against which the altars stood had no other embellishment than some
+artificial roses of coloured paper and a few insignificant votive
+offerings; and this bareness heightened the resemblance to some vast
+public hall. Moreover, in time of rain the paved floor became as muddy as
+that of a general waiting-room at a railway station. The high altar was a
+temporary structure of painted wood. Innumerable rows of benches filled
+the central rotunda, benches free to the public, on which people could
+come and rest at all hours, for night and day alike the Rosary remained
+open to the swarming pilgrims. Like the shelter-house, it was a cow-shed
+in which the Almighty received the poor ones of the earth.
+
+On entering, Pierre felt himself to be in some common hall trod by the
+footsteps of an ever-changing crowd. But the brilliant sunlight no longer
+streamed on the pallid walls, the tapers burning at every altar simply
+gleamed like stars amidst the uncertain gloom which filled the building.
+A solemn high mass had been celebrated at midnight with extraordinary
+pomp, amidst all the splendour of candles, chants, golden vestments, and
+swinging, steaming censers; but of all this glorious display there now
+remained only the regulation number of tapers necessary for the
+celebration of the masses at each of the fifteen altars ranged around the
+edifice. These masses began at midnight and did not cease till noon.
+Nearly four hundred were said during those twelve hours at the Rosary
+alone. Taking the whole of Lourdes, where there were altogether some
+fifty altars, more than two thousand masses were celebrated daily. And so
+great was the abundance of priests, that many had extreme difficulty in
+fulfilling their duties, having to wait for hours together before they
+could find an altar unoccupied. What particularly struck Pierre that
+evening, was the sight of all the altars besieged by rows of priests
+patiently awaiting their turn in the dim light at the foot of the steps;
+whilst the officiating minister galloped through the Latin phrases,
+hastily punctuating them with the prescribed signs of the cross. And the
+weariness of all the waiting ones was so great, that most of them were
+seated on the flagstones, some even dozing on the altar steps in heaps,
+quite overpowered, relying on the beadle to come and rouse them.
+
+For a moment Pierre walked about undecided. Was he going to wait like the
+others? However, the scene determined him against doing so. At every
+altar, at every mass, a crowd of pilgrims was gathered, communicating in
+all haste with a sort of voracious fervour. Each pyx was filled and
+emptied incessantly; the priests’ hands grew tired in thus distributing
+the bread of life; and Pierre’s surprise increased at the sight. Never
+before had he beheld a corner of this earth so watered by the divine
+blood, whence faith took wing in such a flight of souls. It was like a
+return to the heroic days of the Church, when all nations prostrated
+themselves beneath the same blast of credulity in their terrified
+ignorance which led them to place their hope of eternal happiness in an
+Almighty God. He could fancy himself carried back some eight or nine
+centuries, to the time of great public piety, when people believed in the
+approaching end of the world; and this he could fancy the more readily as
+the crowd of simple folk, the whole host that had attended high mass, was
+still seated on the benches, as much at ease in God’s house as at home.
+Many had no place of refuge. Was not the church their home, the asylum
+where consolation awaited them both by day and by night? Those who knew
+not where to sleep, who had not found room even at the shelter place,
+came to the Rosary, where sometimes they succeeded in finding a vacant
+seat on a bench, at others sufficient space to lie down on the
+flagstones. And others who had beds awaiting them lingered there for the
+joy of passing a whole night in that divine abode, so full of beautiful
+dreams. Until daylight the concourse and promiscuity were extraordinary;
+every row of benches was occupied, sleeping persons were scattered in
+every corner and behind every pillar; men, women, children were leaning
+against each other, their heads on one another’s shoulders, their breath
+mingling in calm unconsciousness. It was the break-up of a religious
+gathering overwhelmed by sleep, a church transformed into a chance
+hospital, its doors wide open to the lovely August night, giving access
+to all who were wandering in the darkness, the good and the bad, the
+weary and the lost. And all over the place, from each of the fifteen
+altars, the bells announcing the elevation of the Host incessantly
+sounded, whilst from among the mob of sleepers bands of believers now and
+again arose, went and received the sacrament, and then returned to mingle
+once more with the nameless, shepherdless flock which the semi-obscurity
+enveloped like a veil.
+
+With an air of restless indecision, Pierre was still wandering through
+the shadowy groups, when an old priest, seated on the step of an altar,
+beckoned to him. For two hours he had been waiting there, and now that
+his turn was at length arriving he felt so faint that he feared he might
+not have strength to say the whole of his mass, and preferred, therefore,
+to surrender his place to another. No doubt the sight of Pierre,
+wandering so distressfully in the gloom, had moved him. He pointed the
+vestry out to him, waited until he returned with chasuble and chalice,
+and then went off and fell into a sound sleep on one of the neighbouring
+benches. Pierre thereupon said his mass in the same way as he said it at
+Paris, like a worthy man fulfilling a professional duty. He outwardly
+maintained an air of sincere faith. But, contrary to what he had expected
+from the two feverish days through which he had just gone, from the
+extraordinary and agitating surroundings amidst which he had spent the
+last few hours, nothing moved him nor touched his heart. He had hoped
+that a great commotion would overpower him at the moment of the
+communion, when the divine mystery is accomplished; that he would find
+himself in view of Paradise, steeped in grace, in the very presence of
+the Almighty; but there was no manifestation, his chilled heart did not
+even throb, he went on to the end pronouncing the usual words, making the
+regulation gestures, with the mechanical accuracy of the profession. In
+spite of his effort to be fervent, one single idea kept obstinately
+returning to his mind--that the vestry was far too small, since such an
+enormous number of masses had to be said. How could the sacristans manage
+to distribute the holy vestments and the cloths? It puzzled him, and
+engaged his thoughts with absurd persistency.
+
+At length, to his surprise, he once more found himself outside. Again he
+wandered through the night, a night which seemed to him utterly void,
+darker and stiller than before. The town was lifeless, not a light was
+gleaming. There only remained the growl of the Gave, which his accustomed
+ears no longer heard. And suddenly, similar to a miraculous apparition,
+the Grotto blazed before him, illumining the darkness with its
+everlasting brasier, which burnt with a flame of inextinguishable love.
+He had returned thither unconsciously, attracted no doubt by thoughts of
+Marie. Three o’clock was about to strike, the benches before the Grotto
+were emptying, and only some twenty persons remained there, dark,
+indistinct forms, kneeling in slumberous ecstasy, wrapped in divine
+torpor. It seemed as though the night in progressing had increased the
+gloom, and imparted a remote visionary aspect to the Grotto. All faded
+away amidst delicious lassitude, sleep reigned supreme over the dim,
+far-spreading country side; whilst the voice of the invisible waters
+seemed to be merely the breathing of this pure slumber, upon which the
+Blessed Virgin, all white with her aureola of tapers, was smiling. And
+among the few unconscious women was Madame Maze, still kneeling, with
+clasped hands and bowed head, but so indistinct that she seemed to have
+melted away amidst her ardent prayer.
+
+Pierre, however, had immediately gone up to Marie. He was shivering, and
+fancied that she must be chilled by the early morning air. “I beseech
+you, Marie, cover yourself up,” said he. “Do you want to suffer still
+more?” And thereupon he drew up the shawl which had slipped off her, and
+endeavoured to fasten it about her neck. “You are cold, Marie,” he added;
+“your hands are like ice.”
+
+She did not answer, she was still in the same attitude as when he had
+left her a couple of hours previously. With her elbows resting on the
+edges of her box, she kept herself raised, her soul still lifted towards
+the Blessed Virgin and her face transfigured, beaming with a celestial
+joy. Her lips moved, though no sound came from them. Perhaps she was
+still carrying on some mysterious conversation in the world of
+enchantments, dreaming wide awake, as she had been doing ever since he
+had placed her there. He spoke to her again, but still she answered not.
+At last, however, of her own accord, she murmured in a far-away voice:
+“Oh! I am so happy, Pierre! I have seen her; I prayed to her for you, and
+she smiled at me, slightly nodding her head to let me know that she heard
+me and would grant my prayers. And though she did not speak to me,
+Pierre, I understood what she wished me to know. ‘Tis to-day, at four
+o’clock in the afternoon, when the Blessed Sacrament passes by, that I
+shall be cured!”
+
+He listened to her in deep agitation. Had she been sleeping with her eyes
+wide open? Was it in a dream that she had seen the marble figure of the
+Blessed Virgin bend its head and smile? A great tremor passed through him
+at the thought that this poor child had prayed for him. And he walked up
+to the railing, and dropped upon his knees, stammering: “O Marie! O
+Marie!” without knowing whether this heart-cry were intended for the
+Virgin or for the beloved friend of his childhood. And he remained there,
+utterly overwhelmed, waiting for grace to come to him.
+
+Endless minutes went by. This was indeed the superhuman effort, the
+waiting for the miracle which he had come to seek for himself, the sudden
+revelation, the thunderclap which was to sweep away his unbelief and
+restore him, rejuvenated and triumphant, to the faith of the
+simple-minded. He surrendered himself, he wished that some mighty power
+might ravage his being and transform it. But, even as before whilst
+saying his mass, he heard naught within him but an endless silence, felt
+nothing but a boundless vacuum. There was no divine intervention, his
+despairing heart almost seemed to cease beating. And although he strove
+to pray, to fix his mind wholly upon that powerful Virgin, so
+compassionate to poor humanity, his thoughts none the less wandered, won
+back by the outside world, and again turning to puerile trifles. Within
+the Grotto, on the other side of the railing, he had once more caught
+sight of Baron Suire, still asleep, still continuing his pleasant nap
+with his hands clasped in front of him. Other things also attracted his
+attention: the flowers deposited at the feet of the Virgin, the letters
+cast there as though into a heavenly letter-box, the delicate lace-like
+work of wax which remained erect around the flames of the larger tapers,
+looking like some rich silver ornamentation. Then, without any apparent
+reason, his thoughts flew away to the days of his childhood, and his
+brother Guillaume’s face rose before him with extreme distinctness. He
+had not seen him since their mother’s death. He merely knew that he led a
+very secluded life, occupying himself with scientific matters, in a
+little house in which he had buried himself with a mistress and two big
+dogs; and he would have known nothing more about him, but for having
+recently read his name in a newspaper in connection with some
+revolutionary attempt. It was stated that he was passionately devoting
+himself to the study of explosives, and in constant intercourse with the
+leaders of the most advanced parties. Why, however, should Guillaume
+appear to him in this wise, in this ecstatic spot, amidst the mystical
+light of the tapers,--appear to him, moreover, such as he had formerly
+known him, so good, affectionate, and brotherly, overflowing with charity
+for every affliction! The thought haunted him for a moment, and filled
+him with painful regret for that brotherliness now dead and gone. Then,
+with hardly a moment’s pause, his mind reverted to himself, and he
+realised that he might stubbornly remain there for hours without
+regaining faith. Nevertheless, he felt a sort of tremor pass through him,
+a final hope, a feeling that if the Blessed Virgin should perform the
+great miracle of curing Marie, he would at last believe. It was like a
+final delay which he allowed himself, an appointment with Faith for that
+very day, at four o’clock in the afternoon, when, according to what the
+girl had told him, the Blessed Sacrament would pass by. And at this
+thought his anguish at once ceased, he remained kneeling, worn out with
+fatigue and overcome by invincible drowsiness.
+
+The hours passed by, the resplendent illumination of the Grotto was still
+projected into the night, its reflection stretching to the neighbouring
+hillsides and whitening the walls of the convents there. However, Pierre
+noticed it grow paler and paler, which surprised him, and he roused
+himself, feeling thoroughly chilled; it was the day breaking, beneath a
+leaden sky overcast with clouds. He perceived that one of those storms,
+so sudden in mountainous regions, was rapidly rising from the south. The
+thunder could already be heard rumbling in the distance, whilst gusts of
+wind swept along the roads. Perhaps he also had been sleeping, for he no
+longer beheld Baron Suire, whose departure he did not remember having
+witnessed. There were scarcely ten persons left before the Grotto, though
+among them he again recognised Madame Maze with her face hidden in her
+hands. However, when she noticed that it was daylight and that she could
+be seen, she rose up, and vanished at a turn of the narrow path leading
+to the convent of the Blue Sisters.
+
+Feeling anxious, Pierre went up to Marie to tell her she must not remain
+there any longer, unless she wished to get wet through. “I will take you
+back to the hospital,” said he.
+
+She refused and then entreated: “No, no! I am waiting for mass; I
+promised to communicate here. Don’t trouble about me, return to the hotel
+at once, and go to bed, I implore you. You know very well that covered
+vehicles are sent here for the sick whenever it rains.”
+
+And she persisted in refusing to leave, whilst on his side he kept on
+repeating that he did not wish to go to bed. A mass, it should be
+mentioned, was said at the Grotto early every morning, and it was a
+divine joy for the pilgrims to be able to communicate, amidst the glory
+of the rising sun, after a long night of ecstasy. And now, just as some
+large drops of rain were beginning to fall, there came the priest,
+wearing a chasuble and accompanied by two acolytes, one of whom, in order
+to protect the chalice, held a large white silk umbrella, embroidered
+with gold, over him.
+
+Pierre, after pushing Marie’s little conveyance close to the railing, so
+that the girl might be sheltered by the overhanging rock, under which the
+few other worshippers had also sought refuge, had just seen her receive
+the sacrament with ardent fervour, when his attention was attracted by a
+pitiful spectacle which quite wrung his heart.
+
+Beneath a dense, heavy deluge of rain, he caught sight of Madame Vincent,
+still with that precious, woeful burden, her little Rose, whom with
+outstretched arms she was offering to the Blessed Virgin. Unable to stay
+any longer at the shelter-house owing to the complaints caused by the
+child’s constant moaning, she had carried her off into the night, and
+during two hours had roamed about in the darkness, lost, distracted,
+bearing this poor flesh of her flesh, which she pressed to her bosom,
+unable to give it any relief. She knew not what road she had taken,
+beneath what trees she had strayed, so absorbed had she been in her
+revolt against the unjust sufferings which had so sorely stricken this
+poor little being, so feeble and so pure, and as yet quite incapable of
+sin. Was it not abominable that the grip of disease should for weeks have
+been incessantly torturing her child, whose cry she knew not how to
+quiet? She carried her about, rocking her in her arms as she went wildly
+along the paths, obstinately hoping that she would at last get her to
+sleep, and so hush that wail which was rending her heart. And suddenly,
+utterly worn-out, sharing each of her daughter’s death pangs, she found
+herself opposite the Grotto, at the feet of the miracle-working Virgin,
+she who forgave and who healed.
+
+“O Virgin, Mother most admirable, heal her! O Virgin, Mother of Divine
+Grace, heal her!”
+
+She had fallen on her knees, and with quivering, outstretched arms was
+still offering her expiring daughter, in a paroxysm of hope and desire
+which seemed to raise her from the ground. And the rain, which she never
+noticed, beat down behind her with the fury of an escaped torrent, whilst
+violent claps of thunder shook the mountains. For one moment she thought
+her prayer was granted, for Rose had slightly shivered as though visited
+by the archangel, her face becoming quite white, her eyes and mouth
+opening wide; and with one last little gasp she ceased to cry.
+
+“O Virgin, Mother of Our Redeemer, heal her! O Virgin, All-powerful
+Mother, heal her!”
+
+But the poor woman felt her child become even lighter in her extended
+arms. And now she became afraid at no longer hearing her moan, at seeing
+her so white, with staring eyes and open mouth, without a sign of life.
+How was it that she did not smile if she were cured? Suddenly a loud
+heart-rending cry rang out, the cry of the mother, surpassing even the
+din of the thunder in the storm, whose violence was increasing. Her child
+was dead. And she rose up erect, turned her back on that deaf Virgin who
+let little children die, and started off like a madwoman beneath the
+lashing downpour, going straight before her without knowing whither, and
+still and ever carrying and nursing that poor little body which she had
+held in her arms during so many days and nights. A thunderbolt fell,
+shivering one of the neighbouring trees, as though with the stroke of a
+giant axe, amidst a great crash of twisted and broken branches.
+
+Pierre had rushed after Madame Vincent, eager to guide and help her. But
+he was unable to follow her, for he at once lost sight of her behind the
+blurring curtain of rain. When he returned, the mass was drawing to an
+end, and, as soon as the rain fell less violently, the officiating priest
+went off under the white silk umbrella embroidered with gold. Meantime a
+kind of omnibus awaited the few patients to take them back to the
+hospital.
+
+Marie pressed Pierre’s hands. “Oh! how happy I am!” she said. “Do not
+come for me before three o’clock this afternoon.”
+
+On being left amidst the rain, which had now become an obstinate fine
+drizzle, Pierre re-entered the Grotto and seated himself on the bench
+near the spring. He would not go to bed, for in spite of his weariness he
+dreaded sleep in the state of nervous excitement in which he had been
+plunged ever since the day before. Little Rose’s death had increased his
+fever; he could not banish from his mind the thought of that heart-broken
+mother, wandering along the muddy paths with the dead body of her child.
+What could be the reasons which influenced the Virgin? He was amazed that
+she could make a choice. Divine Mother as she was, he wondered how her
+heart could decide upon healing only ten out of a hundred sufferers--that
+ten per cent. of miracles which Doctor Bonamy had proved by statistics.
+He, Pierre, had already asked himself the day before which ones he would
+have chosen had he possessed the power of saving ten. A terrible power in
+all truth, a formidable selection, which he would never have had the
+courage to make. Why this one, and not that other? Where was the justice,
+where the compassion? To be all-powerful and heal every one of them, was
+not that the desire which rose from each heart? And the Virgin seemed to
+him to be cruel, badly informed, as harsh and indifferent as even
+impassible nature, distributing life and death at random, or in
+accordance with laws which mankind knew nothing of.
+
+The rain was at last leaving off, and Pierre had been there a couple of
+hours when he felt that his feet were damp. He looked down, and was
+greatly surprised, for the spring was overflowing through the gratings.
+The soil of the Grotto was already covered; whilst outside a sheet of
+water was flowing under the benches, as far as the parapet against the
+Gave. The late storms had swollen the waters in the neighbourhood. Pierre
+thereupon reflected that this spring, in spite of its miraculous origin,
+was subject to the laws that governed other springs, for it certainly
+communicated with some natural reservoirs, wherein the rain penetrated
+and accumulated. And then, to keep his ankles dry, he left the place.
+
+
+
+
+V. THE TWO VICTIMS
+
+
+PIERRE walked along thirsting for fresh air, his head so heavy that he
+took off his hat to relieve his burning brow. Despite all the fatigue of
+that terrible night of vigil, he did not think of sleeping. He was kept
+erect by that rebellion of his whole being which he could not quiet.
+Eight o’clock was striking, and he walked at random under the glorious
+morning sun, now shining forth in a spotless sky, which the storm seemed
+to have cleansed of all the Sunday dust.
+
+All at once, however, he raised his head, anxious to know where he was;
+and he was quite astonished, for he found that he had already covered a
+deal of ground, and was now below the station, near the municipal
+hospital. He was hesitating at a point where the road forked, not knowing
+which direction to take, when a friendly hand was laid on his shoulder,
+and a voice inquired: “Where are you going at this early hour?”
+
+It was Doctor Chassaigne who addressed him, drawing up his lofty figure,
+clad in black from head to foot. “Have you lost yourself?” he added; “do
+you want to know your way?”
+
+“No, thanks, no,” replied Pierre, somewhat disturbed. “I spent the night
+at the Grotto with that young patient to whom I am so much attached, and
+my heart was so upset that I have been walking about in the hope it would
+do me good, before returning to the hotel to take a little sleep.”
+
+The doctor continued looking at him, clearly detecting the frightful
+struggle which was raging within him, the despair which he felt at being
+unable to sink asleep in faith, the suffering which the futility of all
+his efforts brought him. “Ah, my poor child!” murmured M. Chassaigne; and
+in a fatherly way he added: “Well, since you are walking, suppose we take
+a walk together? I was just going down yonder, to the bank of the Gave.
+Come along, and on our way back you will see what a lovely view we shall
+have.”
+
+For his part, the doctor took a walk of a couple of hours’ duration each
+morning, ever alone, seeking, as it were, to tire and exhaust his grief.
+First of all, as soon as he had risen, he repaired to the cemetery, and
+knelt on the tomb of his wife and daughter, which, at all seasons, he
+decked with flowers. And afterwards he would roam along the roads, with
+tearful eyes, never returning home until fatigue compelled him.
+
+With a wave of the hand, Pierre accepted his proposal, and in perfect
+silence they went, side by side, down the sloping road. They remained for
+a long time without speaking; the doctor seemed more overcome than was
+his wont that morning; it was as though his chat with his dear lost ones
+had made his heart bleed yet more copiously. He walked along with his
+head bowed; his face, round which his white hair streamed, was very pale,
+and tears still blurred his eyes. And yet it was so pleasant, so warm in
+the sunlight on that lovely morning. The road now followed the Gave on
+its right bank, on the other side of the new town; and you could see the
+gardens, the inclined ways, and the Basilica. And, all at once, the
+Grotto appeared, with the everlasting flare of its tapers, now paling in
+the broad light.
+
+Doctor Chassaigne, who had turned his head, made the sign of the cross,
+which Pierre did not at first understand. And when, in his turn, he had
+perceived the Grotto, he glanced in surprise at his old friend, and once
+more relapsed into the astonishment which had come over him a couple of
+days previously on finding this man of science, this whilom atheist and
+materialist, so overwhelmed by grief that he was now a believer, longing
+for the one delight of meeting his dear ones in another life. His heart
+had swept his reason away; old and lonely as he was, it was only the
+illusion that he would live once more in Paradise, where loving souls
+meet again, that prolonged his life on earth. This thought increased the
+young priest’s discomfort. Must he also wait until he had grown old and
+endured equal sufferings in order to find a refuge in faith?
+
+Still walking beside the Gave, leaving the town farther and farther
+behind them, they were lulled as it were by the noise of those clear
+waters rolling over the pebbles between banks shaded by trees. And they
+still remained silent, walking on with an equal step, each, on his own
+side, absorbed in his sorrows.
+
+“And Bernadette,” Pierre suddenly inquired; “did you know her?”
+
+The doctor raised his head. “Bernadette? Yes, yes,” said he. “I saw her
+once--afterwards.” He relapsed into silence for a moment, and then began
+chatting: “In 1858, you know, at the time of the apparitions, I was
+thirty years of age. I was in Paris, still young in my profession, and
+opposed to all supernatural notions, so that I had no idea of returning
+to my native mountains to see a girl suffering from hallucinations. Five
+or six years later, however, some time about 1864, I passed through
+Lourdes, and was inquisitive enough to pay Bernadette a visit. She was
+then still at the asylum with the Sisters of Nevers.”
+
+Pierre remembered that one of the reasons of his journey had been his
+desire to complete his inquiry respecting Bernadette. And who could tell
+if grace might not come to him from that humble, lovable girl, on the day
+when he should be convinced that she had indeed fulfilled a mission of
+divine love and forgiveness? For this consummation to ensue it would
+perhaps suffice that he should know her better and learn to feel that she
+was really the saint, the chosen one, as others believed her to have
+been.
+
+“Tell me about her, I pray you,” he said; “tell me all you know of her.”
+
+A faint smile curved the doctor’s lips. He understood, and would have
+greatly liked to calm and comfort the young priest whose soul was so
+grievously tortured by doubt. “Oh! willingly, my poor child!” he
+answered. “I should be so happy to help you on the path to light. You do
+well to love Bernadette--that may save you; for since all those old-time
+things I have deeply reflected on her case, and I declare to you that I
+never met a more charming creature, or one with a better heart.”
+
+Then, to the slow rhythm of their footsteps along the well-kept, sunlit
+road, in the delightful freshness of morning, the doctor began to relate
+his visit to Bernadette in 1864. She had then just attained her twentieth
+birthday, the apparitions had taken place six years previously, and she
+had astonished him by her candid and sensible air, her perfect modesty.
+The Sisters of Nevers, who had taught her to read, kept her with them at
+the asylum in order to shield her from public inquisitiveness. She found
+an occupation there, helping them in sundry petty duties; but she was
+very often taken ill, and would spend weeks at a time in her bed. The
+doctor had been particularly struck by her beautiful eyes, pure, candid,
+and frank, like those of a child. The rest of her face, said he, had
+become somewhat spoilt; her complexion was losing its clearness, her
+features had grown less delicate, and her general appearance was that of
+an ordinary servant-girl, short, puny, and unobtrusive. Her piety was
+still keen, but she had not seemed to him to be the ecstatical, excitable
+creature that many might have supposed; indeed, she appeared to have a
+rather positive mind which did not indulge in flights of fancy; and she
+invariably had some little piece of needlework, some knitting, some
+embroidery in her hand. In a word, she appeared to have entered the
+common path, and in nowise resembled the intensely passionate female
+worshippers of the Christ. She had no further visions, and never of her
+own accord spoke of the eighteen apparitions which had decided her life.
+To learn anything it was necessary to interrogate her, to address precise
+questions to her. These she would briefly answer, and then seek to change
+the conversation, as though she did not like to talk of such mysterious
+things. If wishing to probe the matter further, you asked her the nature
+of the three secrets which the Virgin had confided to her, she would
+remain silent, simply averting her eyes. And it was impossible to make
+her contradict herself; the particulars she gave invariably agreed with
+her original narrative, and, indeed, she always seemed to repeat the same
+words, with the same inflections of the voice.
+
+“I had her in hand during the whole of one afternoon,” continued Doctor
+Chassaigne, “and there was not the variation of a syllable in her story.
+It was disconcerting. Still, I am prepared to swear that she was not
+lying, that she never lied, that she was altogether incapable of
+falsehood.”
+
+Pierre boldly ventured to discuss this point. “But won’t you admit,
+doctor, the possibility of some disorder of the will?” he asked. “Has it
+not been proved, is it not admitted nowadays, that when certain
+degenerate creatures with childish minds fall into an hallucination, a
+fancy of some kind or other, they are often unable to free themselves
+from it, especially when they remain in the same environment in which the
+phenomenon occurred? Cloistered, living alone with her fixed idea,
+Bernadette, naturally enough, obstinately clung to it.”
+
+The doctor’s faint smile returned to his lips, and vaguely waving his
+arm, he replied: “Ah! my child, you ask me too much. You know very well
+that I am now only a poor old man, who prides himself but little on his
+science, and no longer claims to be able to explain anything. However, I
+do of course know of that famous medical-school example of the young girl
+who allowed herself to waste away with hunger at home, because she
+imagined that she was suffering from a serious complaint of the digestive
+organs, but who nevertheless began to eat when she was taken elsewhere.
+However, that is but one circumstance, and there are so many
+contradictory cases.”
+
+For a moment they became silent, and only the rhythmical sound of their
+steps was heard along the road. Then the doctor resumed: “Moreover, it is
+quite true that Bernadette shunned the world, and was only happy in her
+solitary corner. She was never known to have a single intimate female
+friend, any particular human love for anybody. She was kind and gentle
+towards all, but it was only for children that she showed any lively
+affection. And as, after all, the medical man is not quite dead within
+me, I will confess to you that I have sometimes wondered if she remained
+as pure in mind, as, most undoubtedly, she did remain in body. However, I
+think it quite possible, given her sluggish, poor-blooded temperament,
+not to speak of the innocent sphere in which she grew up, first Bartres,
+and then the convent. Still, a doubt came to me when I heard of the
+tender interest which she took in the orphan asylum built by the Sisters
+of Nevers, farther along this very road. Poor little girls are received
+into it, and shielded from the perils of the highways. And if Bernadette
+wished it to be extremely large, so as to lodge all the little lambs in
+danger, was it not because she herself remembered having roamed the roads
+with bare feet, and still trembled at the idea of what might have become
+of her but for the help of the Blessed Virgin?”
+
+Then, resuming his narrative, he went on telling Pierre of the crowds
+that flocked to see Bernadette and pay her reverence in her asylum at
+Lourdes. This had proved a source of considerable fatigue to her. Not a
+day went by without a stream of visitors appearing before her. They came
+from all parts of France, some even from abroad; and it soon proved
+necessary to refuse the applications of those who were actuated by mere
+inquisitiveness, and to grant admittance only to the genuine believers,
+the members of the clergy, and the people of mark on whom the doors could
+not well have been shut. A Sister was always present to protect
+Bernadette against the excessive indiscretion of some of her visitors,
+for questions literally rained upon her, and she often grew faint through
+having to repeat her story so many times. Ladies of high position fell on
+their knees, kissed her gown, and would have liked to carry a piece of it
+away as a relic. She also had to defend her chaplet, which in their
+excitement they all begged her to sell to them for a fabulous amount. One
+day a certain marchioness endeavoured to secure it by giving her another
+one which she had brought with her--a chaplet with a golden cross and
+beads of real pearls. Many hoped that she would consent to work a miracle
+in their presence; children were brought to her in order that she might
+lay her hands upon them; she was also consulted in cases of illness, and
+attempts were made to purchase her influence with the Virgin. Large sums
+were offered to her. At the slightest sign, the slightest expression of a
+desire to be a queen, decked with jewels and crowned with gold, she would
+have been overwhelmed with regal presents. And while the humble remained
+on their knees on her threshold, the great ones of the earth pressed
+round her, and would have counted it a glory to act as her escort. It was
+even related that one among them, the handsomest and wealthiest of
+princes, came one clear sunny April day to ask her hand in marriage.
+
+“But what always struck and displeased me,” said Pierre, “was her
+departure from Lourdes when she was two-and-twenty, her sudden
+disappearance and sequestration in the convent of Saint Gildard at
+Nevers, whence she never emerged. Didn’t that give a semblance of truth
+to those spurious rumours of insanity which were circulated? Didn’t it
+help people to suppose that she was being shut up, whisked away for fear
+of some indiscretion on her part, some naive remark or other which might
+have revealed the secret of a prolonged fraud? Indeed, to speak plainly,
+I will confess to you that for my own part I still believe that she was
+spirited away.”
+
+Doctor Chassaigne gently shook his head. “No, no,” said he, “there was no
+story prepared in advance in this affair, no big melodrama secretly
+staged and afterwards performed by more or less unconscious actors. The
+developments came of themselves, by the sole force of circumstances; and
+they were always very intricate, very difficult to analyse. Moreover, it
+is certain that it was Bernadette herself who wished to leave Lourdes.
+Those incessant visits wearied her, she felt ill at ease amidst all that
+noisy worship. All that _she_ desired was a dim nook where she might live
+in peace, and so fierce was she at times in her disinterestedness, that
+when money was handed to her, even with the pious intent of having a mass
+said or a taper burnt, she would fling it upon the floor. She never
+accepted anything for herself or for her family, which remained in
+poverty. And with such pride as she possessed, such natural simplicity,
+such a desire to remain in the background, one can very well understand
+that she should have wished to disappear and cloister herself in some
+lonely spot so as to prepare herself to make a good death. Her work was
+accomplished; she had initiated this great movement scarcely knowing how
+or why; and she could really be of no further utility. Others were about
+to conduct matters to an issue and insure the triumph of the Grotto.”
+
+“Let us admit, then, that she went off of her own accord,” said Pierre;
+“still, what a relief it must have been for the people you speak of, who
+thenceforth became the real masters, whilst millions of money were
+raining down on Lourdes from the whole world.”
+
+“Oh! certainly; I don’t pretend that any attempt was made to detain her
+here!” exclaimed the doctor. “Frankly, I even believe that she was in
+some degree urged into the course she took. She ended by becoming
+somewhat of an incumbrance. It was not that any annoying revelations were
+feared from her; but remember that with her extreme timidity and frequent
+illnesses she was scarcely ornamental. Besides, however small the room
+which she took up at Lourdes, however obedient she showed herself, she
+was none the less a power, and attracted the multitude, which made her,
+so to say, a competitor of the Grotto. For the Grotto to remain alone,
+resplendent in its glory, it was advisable that Bernadette should
+withdraw into the background, become as it were a simple legend. Such,
+indeed, must have been the reasons which induced Monseigneur Laurence,
+the Bishop of Tarbes, to hasten her departure. The only mistake that was
+made was in saying that it was a question of screening her from the
+enterprises of the world, as though it were feared that she might fall
+into the sin of pride, by growing vain of the saintly fame with which the
+whole of Christendom re-echoed. And this was doing her a grave injury,
+for she was as incapable of pride as she was of falsehood. Never, indeed,
+was there a more candid or more modest child.”
+
+The doctor was growing impassioned, excited. But all at once he became
+calm again, and a pale smile returned to his lips. “‘Tis true,” said he,
+“I love her; the more I have thought of her, the more have I learned to
+love her. But you must not think, Pierre, that I am completely brutified
+by belief. If I nowadays acknowledge the existence of an unseen power, if
+I feel a need of believing in another, better, and more just life, I
+nevertheless know right well that there are men remaining in this world
+of ours; and at times, even when they wear the cowl or the cassock, the
+work they do is vile.”
+
+There came another interval of silence. Each was continuing his dream
+apart from the other. Then the doctor resumed: “I will tell you of a
+fancy which has often haunted me. Suppose we admit that Bernadette was
+not the shy, simple child we knew her to be; let us endow her with a
+spirit of intrigue and domination, transform her into a conqueress, a
+leader of nations, and try to picture what, in that case, would have
+happened. It is evident that the Grotto would be hers, the Basilica also.
+We should see her lording it at all the ceremonies, under a dais, with a
+gold mitre on her head. She would distribute the miracles; with a
+sovereign gesture her little hand would lead the multitudes to heaven.
+All the lustre and glory would come from her, she being the saint, the
+chosen one, the only one that had been privileged to see the Divinity
+face to face. And indeed nothing would seem more just, for she would
+triumph after toiling, enjoy the fruit of her labour in all glory. But
+you see, as it happens, she is defrauded, robbed. The marvellous harvests
+sown by her are reaped by others. During the twelve years which she lived
+at Saint Gildard, kneeling in the gloom, Lourdes was full of victors,
+priests in golden vestments chanting thanksgivings, and blessing churches
+and monuments erected at a cost of millions. She alone did not behold the
+triumph of the new faith, whose author she had been. You say that she
+dreamt it all. Well, at all events, what a beautiful dream it was, a
+dream which has stirred the whole world, and from which she, dear girl,
+never awakened!”
+
+They halted and sat down for a moment on a rock beside the road, before
+returning to the town. In front of them the Gave, deep at this point of
+its course, was rolling blue waters tinged with dark moire-like
+reflections, whilst, farther on, rushing hurriedly over a bed of large
+stones, the stream became so much foam, a white froth, light like snow.
+Amidst the gold raining from the sun, a fresh breeze came down from the
+mountains.
+
+Whilst listening to that story of how Bernadette had been exploited and
+suppressed, Pierre had simply found in it all a fresh motive for revolt;
+and, with his eyes fixed on the ground, he began to think of the
+injustice of nature, of that law which wills that the strong should
+devour the weak. Then, all at once raising his head, he inquired: “And
+did you also know Abbé Peyramale?”
+
+The doctor’s eyes brightened once more, and he eagerly replied:
+“Certainly I did! He was an upright, energetic man, a saint, an apostle.
+He and Bernadette were the great makers of Our Lady of Lourdes. Like her,
+he endured frightful sufferings, and, like her, he died from them. Those
+who do not know his story can know nothing, understand nothing, of the
+drama enacted here.”
+
+Thereupon he related that story at length. Abbé Peyramale was the parish
+priest of Lourdes at the time of the apparitions. A native of the region,
+tall, broad-shouldered, with a powerful leonine head, he was extremely
+intelligent, very honest and goodhearted, though at times violent and
+domineering. He seemed built for combat. An enemy of all pious
+exaggerations, discharging the duties of his ministry in a broad, liberal
+spirit, he regarded the apparitions with distrust when he first heard of
+them, refused to believe in Bernadette’s stories, questioned her, and
+demanded proofs. It was only at a later stage, when the blast of faith
+became irresistible, upsetting the most rebellious minds and mastering
+the multitude, that he ended, in his turn, by bowing his head; and when
+he was finally conquered, it was more particularly by his love for the
+humble and the oppressed which he could not restrain when he beheld
+Bernadette threatened with imprisonment. The civil authorities were
+persecuting one of his flock; at this his shepherd’s heart awoke, and, in
+her defence, he gave full reign to his ardent passion for justice.
+Moreover, the charm which the child diffused had worked upon him; he felt
+her to be so candid, so truthful, that he began to place a blind faith in
+her and love her even as everybody else loved her. Moreover, why should
+he have curtly dismissed all questions of miracles, when miracles abound
+in the pages of Holy Writ? It was not for a minister of religion,
+whatever his prudence, to set himself up as a sceptic when entire
+populations were falling on their knees and the Church seemed to be on
+the eve of another great triumph. Then, too, he had the nature of one who
+leads men, who stirs up crowds, who builds, and in this affair he had
+really found his vocation, the vast field in which he might exercise his
+energy, the great cause to which he might wholly devote himself with all
+his passionate ardour and determination to succeed.
+
+From that moment, then, Abbé Peyramale had but one thought, to execute
+the orders which the Virgin had commissioned Bernadette to transmit to
+him. He caused improvements to be carried out at the Grotto. A railing
+was placed in front of it; pipes were laid for the conveyance of the
+water from the source, and a variety of work was accomplished in order to
+clear the approaches. However, the Virgin had particularly requested that
+a chapel might be built; and he wished to have a church, quite a
+triumphal Basilica. He pictured everything on a grand scale, and, full of
+confidence in the enthusiastic help of Christendom, he worried the
+architects, requiring them to design real palaces worthy of the Queen of
+Heaven. As a matter of fact, offerings already abounded, gold poured from
+the most distant dioceses, a rain of gold destined to increase and never
+end. Then came his happy years: he was to be met among the workmen at all
+hours, instilling activity into them like the jovial, good-natured fellow
+he was, constantly on the point of taking a pick or trowel in hand
+himself, such was his eagerness to behold the realisation of his dream.
+But days of trial were in store for him: he fell ill, and lay in danger
+of death on the fourth of April, 1864, when the first procession started
+from his parish church to the Grotto, a procession of sixty thousand
+pilgrims, which wound along the streets amidst an immense concourse of
+spectators.
+
+On the day when Abbé Peyramale rose from his bed, saved, a first time,
+from death, he found himself despoiled. To second him in his heavy task,
+Monseigneur Laurence, the Bishop, had already given him as assistant a
+former episcopal secretary, Father Sempé, whom he had appointed warden of
+the Missionaries of Geraison, a community founded by himself. Father
+Sempé was a sly, spare little man, to all appearance most disinterested
+and humble, but in reality consumed by all the thirst of ambition. At the
+outset he kept in his place, serving the parish priest of Lourdes like a
+faithful subordinate, attending to matters of all kinds in order to
+lighten the other’s work, and acquiring information on every possible
+subject in his desire to render himself indispensable. He must soon have
+realised what a rich farm the Grotto was destined to become, and what a
+colossal revenue might be derived from it, if only a little skill were
+exercised. And thenceforth he no longer stirred from the episcopal
+residence, but ended by acquiring great influence over the calm,
+practical Bishop, who was in great need of money for the charities of his
+diocese. And thus it was that during Abbé Peyramale’s illness Father
+Sempé succeeded in effecting a separation between the parish of Lourdes
+and the domain of the Grotto, which last he was commissioned to manage at
+the head of a few Fathers of the Immaculate Conception, over whom the
+Bishop placed him as Father Superior.
+
+The struggle soon began, one of those covert, desperate, mortal struggles
+which are waged under the cloak of ecclesiastical discipline. There was a
+pretext for rupture all ready, a field of battle on which the longer
+purse would necessarily end by conquering. It was proposed to build a new
+parish church, larger and more worthy of Lourdes than the old one already
+in existence, which was admitted to have become too small since the
+faithful had been flocking into the town in larger and larger numbers.
+Moreover, it was an old idea of Abbé Peyramale, who desired to carry out
+the Virgin’s orders with all possible precision. Speaking of the Grotto,
+she had said that people would go “thither in procession”; and the Abbé
+had always seen the pilgrims start in procession from the town, whither
+they were expected to return in the same fashion, as indeed had been the
+practice on the first occasions after the apparitions. A central point, a
+rallying spot, was therefore required, and the Abbé’s dream was to erect
+a magnificent church, a cathedral of gigantic proportions, which would
+accommodate a vast multitude. Builder as he was by temperament,
+impassioned artisan working for the glory of Heaven, he already pictured
+this cathedral springing from the soil, and rearing its clanging belfry
+in the sunlight. And it was also his own house that he wished to build,
+the edifice which would be his act of faith and adoration, the temple
+where he would be the pontiff, and triumph in company with the sweet
+memory of Bernadette, in full view of the spot of which both he and she
+had been so cruelly dispossessed. Naturally enough, bitterly as he felt
+that act of spoliation, the building of this new parish church was in
+some degree his revenge, his share of all the glory, besides being a task
+which would enable him to utilise both his militant activity and the
+fever that had been consuming him ever since he had ceased going to the
+Grotto, by reason of his soreness of heart.
+
+At the outset of the new enterprise there was again a flash of
+enthusiasm. At the prospect of seeing all the life and all the money flow
+into the new city which was springing from the ground around the
+Basilica, the old town, which felt itself thrust upon one side, espoused
+the cause of its priest. The municipal council voted a sum of one hundred
+thousand francs, which, unfortunately, was not to be paid until the new
+church should be roofed in. Abbé Peyramale had already accepted the plans
+of his architect--plans which, he had insisted, should be on a grand
+scale--and had also treated with a contractor of Chartres, who engaged to
+complete the church in three or four years if the promised supplies of
+funds should be regularly forthcoming. The Abbé believed that offerings
+would assuredly continue raining down from all parts, and so he launched
+into this big enterprise without any anxiety, overflowing with a careless
+bravery, and fully expecting that Heaven would not abandon him on the
+road. He even fancied that he could rely upon the support of Monseigneur
+Jourdan, who had now succeeded Monseigneur Laurence as Bishop of Tarbes,
+for this prelate, after blessing the foundation-stone of the new church,
+had delivered an address in which he admitted that the enterprise was
+necessary and meritorious. And it seemed, too, as though Father Sempé,
+with his customary humility, had bowed to the inevitable and accepted
+this vexatious competition, which would compel him to relinquish a share
+of the plunder; for he now pretended to devote himself entirely to the
+management of the Grotto, and even allowed a collection-box for
+contributions to the building of the new parish church to be placed
+inside the Basilica.
+
+Then, however, the secret, rageful struggle began afresh. Abbé Peyramale,
+who was a wretched manager, exulted on seeing his new church so rapidly
+take shape. The work was being carried on at a fast pace, and he troubled
+about nothing else, being still under the delusion that the Blessed
+Virgin would find whatever money might be needed. Thus he was quite
+stupefied when he at last perceived that the offerings were falling off,
+that the money of the faithful no longer reached him, as though, indeed,
+someone had secretly diverted its flow. And eventually the day came when
+he was unable to make the stipulated payments. In all this there had been
+so much skilfully combined strangulation, of which he only became aware
+later on. Father Sempé, however, had once more prevailed on the Bishop to
+grant his favour exclusively to the Grotto. There was even a talk of some
+confidential circulars distributed through the various dioceses, so that
+the many sums of money offered by the faithful should no longer be sent
+to the parish. The voracious, insatiable Grotto was bent upon securing
+everything, and to such a point were things carried that five hundred
+franc notes slipped into the collection-box at the Basilica were kept
+back; the box was rifled and the parish robbed. Abbé Peyramale, however,
+in his passion for the rising church, his child, continued fighting most
+desperately, ready if need were to give his blood. He had at first
+treated with the contractor in the name of the vestry; then, when he was
+at a loss how to pay, he treated in his own name. His life was bound up
+in the enterprise, he wore himself out in the heroic efforts which he
+made. Of the four hundred thousand francs that he had promised, he had
+only been able to pay two hundred thousand; and the municipal council
+still obstinately refused to hand over the hundred thousand francs which
+it had voted, until the new church should be covered in. This was acting
+against the town’s real interests. However, it was said that Father Sempé
+was trying to bring influence to bear on the contractor. And, all at
+once, the work was stopped.
+
+From that moment the death agony began. Wounded in the heart, the Abbé
+Peyramale, the broad-shouldered mountaineer with the leonine face,
+staggered and fell like an oak struck down by a thunderbolt. He took to
+his bed, and never left it alive. Strange stories circulated: it was said
+that Father Sempé had sought to secure admission to the parsonage under
+some pious pretext, but in reality to see if his much-dreaded adversary
+were really mortally stricken; and it was added, that it had been
+necessary to drive him from the sick-room, where his presence was an
+outrageous scandal. Then, when the unhappy priest, vanquished and steeped
+in bitterness, was dead, Father Sempé was seen triumphing at the funeral,
+from which the others had not dared to keep him away. It was affirmed
+that he openly displayed his abominable delight, that his face was
+radiant that day with the joy of victory. He was at last rid of the only
+man who had been an obstacle to his designs, whose legitimate authority
+he had feared. He would no longer be forced to share anything with
+anybody now that both the founders of Our Lady of Lourdes had been
+suppressed--Bernadette placed in a convent, and Abbé Peyramale lowered
+into the ground. The Grotto was now his own property, the alms would come
+to him alone, and he could do what he pleased with the eight hundred
+thousand francs* or so which were at his disposal every year. He would
+complete the gigantic works destined to make the Basilica a
+self-supporting centre, and assist in embellishing the new town in order
+to increase the isolation of the old one and seclude it behind its rock,
+like an insignificant parish submerged beneath the splendour of its
+all-powerful neighbour. All the money, all the sovereignty, would be his;
+he henceforth would reign.
+
+ * About 145,000 dollars.
+
+However, although the works had been stopped, and the new parish church
+was slumbering inside its wooden fence, it was none the less more than
+half built. The vaulted aisles were already erected. And the imperfect
+pile remained there like a threat, for the town might some day attempt to
+finish it. Like Abbé Peyramale, therefore, it must be killed for good,
+turned into an irreparable ruin. The secret labour therefore continued, a
+work of refined cruelty and slow destruction. To begin with, the new
+parish priest, a simple-minded creature, was cowed to such a point that
+he no longer opened the envelopes containing remittances for the parish;
+all the registered letters were at once taken to the Fathers. Then the
+site selected for the new parish church was criticised, and the diocesan
+architect was induced to draw up a report stating that the old church was
+still in good condition and of ample size for the requirements of the
+community. Moreover, influence was brought to bear on the Bishop, and
+representations were made to him respecting the annoying features of the
+pecuniary difficulties which had arisen with the contractor. With a
+little imagination poor Peyramale was transformed into a violent,
+obstinate madman, through whose undisciplined zeal the Church had almost
+been compromised. And, at last, the Bishop, forgetting that he himself
+had blessed the foundation-stone, issued a pastoral letter laying the
+unfinished church under interdict, and prohibiting all religious services
+in it. This was the supreme blow. Endless lawsuits had already begun; the
+contractor, who had only received two hundred thousand francs for the
+five hundred thousand francs’ worth of work which had been executed, had
+taken proceedings against Abbé Peyramale’s heir-at-law, the vestry, and
+the town, for the last still refused to pay over the amount which it had
+voted. At first the Prefect’s Council declared itself incompetent to deal
+with the case, and when it was sent back to it by the Council of State,
+it rendered a judgment by which the town was condemned to pay the hundred
+thousand francs and the heir-at-law to finish the church. At the same
+time the vestry was put out of court. However, there was a fresh appeal
+to the Council of State, which quashed this judgment, and condemned the
+vestry, and, in default, the heir-at-law, to pay the contractor. Neither
+party being solvent, matters remained in this position. The lawsuits had
+lasted fifteen years. The town had now resignedly paid over the hundred
+thousand francs, and only two hundred thousand remained owing to the
+contractor. However, the costs and the accumulated interest had so
+increased the amount of indebtedness that it had risen to six hundred
+thousand francs; and as, on the other hand, it was estimated that four
+hundred thousand francs would be required to finish the church, a million
+was needed to save this young ruin from certain destruction. The Fathers
+of the Grotto were thenceforth able to sleep in peace; they had
+assassinated the poor church; it was as dead as Abbé Peyramale himself.
+
+The bells of the Basilica rang out triumphantly, and Father Sempé reigned
+as a victor at the conclusion of that great struggle, that dagger warfare
+in which not only a man but stones also had been done to death in the
+shrouding gloom of intriguing sacristies. And old Lourdes, obstinate and
+unintelligent, paid a hard penalty for its mistake in not giving more
+support to its minister, who had died struggling, killed by his love for
+his parish, for now the new town did not cease to grow and prosper at the
+expense of the old one. All the wealth flowed to the former: the Fathers
+of the Grotto coined money, financed hotels and candle shops, and sold
+the water of the source, although a clause of their agreement with the
+municipality expressly prohibited them from carrying on any commercial
+pursuits.
+
+The whole region began to rot and fester; the triumph of the Grotto had
+brought about such a passion for lucre, such a burning, feverish desire
+to possess and enjoy, that extraordinary perversion set in, growing worse
+and worse each day, and changing Bernadette’s peaceful Bethlehem into a
+perfect Sodom or Gomorrah. Father Sempé had ensured the triumph of his
+Divinity by spreading human abominations all around and wrecking
+thousands of souls. Gigantic buildings rose from the ground, five or six
+millions of francs had already been expended, everything being sacrificed
+to the stern determination to leave the poor parish out in the cold and
+keep the entire plunder for self and friends. Those costly, colossal
+gradient ways had only been erected in order to avoid compliance with the
+Virgin’s express desire that the faithful should come to the Grotto in
+procession. For to go down from the Basilica by the incline on the left,
+and climb up to it again by the incline on the right, could certainly not
+be called going to the Grotto in procession: it was simply so much
+revolving in a circle. However, the Fathers cared little about that; they
+had succeeded in compelling people to start from their premises and
+return to them, in order that they might be the sole proprietors of the
+affair, the opulent farmers who garnered the whole harvest. Abbé
+Peyramale lay buried in the crypt of his unfinished, ruined church, and
+Bernadette, who had long since dragged out her life of suffering in the
+depths of a convent far away, was now likewise sleeping the eternal sleep
+under a flagstone in a chapel.
+
+Deep silence fell when Doctor Chassaigne had finished this long
+narrative. Then, with a painful effort, he rose to his feet again: “It
+will soon be ten o’clock, my dear child,” said he, “and I want you to
+take a little rest. Let us go back.”
+
+Pierre followed him without speaking; and they retraced their steps
+toward the town at a more rapid pace.
+
+“Ah! yes,” resumed the doctor, “there were great iniquities and great
+sufferings in it all. But what else could you expect? Man spoils and
+corrupts the most beautiful things. And you cannot yet understand all the
+woeful sadness of the things of which I have been talking to you. You
+must see them, lay your hand on them. Would you like me to show you
+Bernadette’s room and Abbé Peyramale’s unfinished church this evening?”
+
+“Yes, I should indeed,” replied Pierre.
+
+“Well, I will meet you in front of the Basilica after the four-o’clock
+procession, and you can come with me.”
+
+Then they spoke no further, each becoming absorbed in his reverie once
+more.
+
+The Gave, now upon their right hand, was flowing through a deep gorge, a
+kind of cleft into which it plunged, vanishing from sight among the
+bushes. But at intervals a clear stretch of it, looking like unburnished
+silver, would appear to view; and, farther on, after a sudden turn in the
+road, they found it flowing in increased volume across a plain, where it
+spread at times into glassy sheets which must often have changed their
+beds, for the gravelly soil was ravined on all sides. The sun was now
+becoming very hot, and was already high in the heavens, whose limpid
+azure assumed a deeper tinge above the vast circle of mountains.
+
+And it was at this turn of the road that Lourdes, still some distance
+away, reappeared to the eyes of Pierre and Doctor Chassaigne. In the
+splendid morning atmosphere, amid a flying dust of gold and purple rays,
+the town shone whitely on the horizon, its houses and monuments becoming
+more and more distinct at each step which brought them nearer. And the
+doctor, still silent, at last waved his arm with a broad, mournful
+gesture in order to call his companion’s attention to this growing town,
+as though to a proof of all that he had been telling him. There, indeed,
+rising up in the dazzling daylight, was the evidence which confirmed his
+words.
+
+The flare of the Grotto, fainter now that the sun was shining, could
+already be espied amidst the greenery. And soon afterwards the gigantic
+monumental works spread out: the quay with its freestone parapet skirting
+the Gave, whose course had been diverted; the new bridge connecting the
+new gardens with the recently opened boulevard; the colossal gradient
+ways, the massive church of the Rosary, and, finally, the slim, tapering
+Basilica, rising above all else with graceful pride. Of the new town
+spread all around the monuments, the wealthy city which had sprung, as
+though by enchantment, from the ancient impoverished soil, the great
+convents and the great hotels, you could, at this distance, merely
+distinguish a swarming of white façades and a scintillation of new
+slates; whilst, in confusion, far away, beyond the rocky mass on which
+the crumbling castle walls were profiled against the sky, appeared the
+humble roofs of the old town, a jumble of little time-worn roofs,
+pressing timorously against one another. And as a background to this
+vision of the life of yesterday and to-day, the little and the big Gers
+rose up beneath the splendour of the everlasting sun, and barred the
+horizon with their bare slopes, which the oblique rays were tingeing with
+streaks of pink and yellow.
+
+Doctor Chassaigne insisted on accompanying Pierre to the Hotel of the
+Apparitions, and only parted from him at its door, after reminding him of
+their appointment for the afternoon. It was not yet eleven o’clock.
+Pierre, whom fatigue had suddenly mastered, forced himself to eat before
+going to bed, for he realised that want of food was one of the chief
+causes of the weakness which had come over him. He fortunately found a
+vacant seat at the _table d’hôte_, and made some kind of a _déjeuner_,
+half asleep all the time, and scarcely knowing what was served to him.
+Then he went up-stairs and flung himself on his bed, after taking care to
+tell the servant to awake him at three o’clock.
+
+However, on lying down, the fever that consumed him at first prevented
+him from closing his eyes. A pair of gloves, forgotten in the next room,
+had reminded him of M. de Guersaint, who had left for Gavarnie before
+daybreak, and would only return in the evening. What a delightful gift
+was thoughtlessness, thought Pierre. For his own part, with his limbs
+worn out by weariness and his mind distracted, he was sad unto death.
+Everything seemed to conspire against his willing desire to regain the
+faith of his childhood. The tale of Abbé Peyramale’s tragic adventures
+had simply aggravated the feeling of revolt which the story of
+Bernadette, chosen and martyred, had implanted in his breast. And thus he
+asked himself whether his search after the truth, instead of restoring
+his faith, would not rather lead him to yet greater hatred of ignorance
+and credulity, and to the bitter conviction that man is indeed all alone
+in the world, with naught to guide him save his reason.
+
+At last he fell asleep, but visions continued hovering around him in his
+painful slumber. He beheld Lourdes, contaminated by Mammon, turned into a
+spot of abomination and perdition, transformed into a huge bazaar, where
+everything was sold, masses and souls alike! He beheld also Abbé
+Peyramale, dead and slumbering under the ruins of his church, among the
+nettles which ingratitude had sown there. And he only grew calm again,
+only tasted the delights of forgetfulness when a last pale, woeful vision
+had faded from his gaze--a vision of Bernadette upon her knees in a
+gloomy corner at Nevers, dreaming of her far-away work, which she was
+never, never to behold.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE FOURTH DAY
+
+
+
+
+I. THE BITTERNESS OP DEATH
+
+AT the Hospital of Our Lady of Dolours, that morning, Marie remained
+seated on her bed, propped up by pillows. Having spent the whole night at
+the Grotto, she had refused to let them take her back there. And, as
+Madame de Jonquière approached her, to raise one of the pillows which was
+slipping from its place, she asked: “What day is it, madame?”
+
+“Monday, my dear child.”
+
+“Ah! true. One so soon loses count of time. And, besides, I am so happy!
+It is to-day that the Blessed Virgin will cure me!”
+
+She smiled divinely, with the air of a day-dreamer, her eyes gazing into
+vacancy, her thoughts so far away, so absorbed in her one fixed idea,
+that she beheld nothing save the certainty of her hope. Round about her,
+the Sainte-Honorine Ward was now quite deserted, all the patients,
+excepting Madame Vetu, who lay at the last extremity in the next bed,
+having already started for the Grotto. But Marie did not even notice her
+neighbour; she was delighted with the sudden stillness which had fallen.
+One of the windows overlooking the courtyard had been opened, and the
+glorious morning sunshine entered in one broad beam, whose golden dust
+was dancing over her bed and streaming upon her pale hands. It was indeed
+pleasant to find this room, so dismal at nighttime with its many beds of
+sickness, its unhealthy atmosphere, and its nightmare groans, thus
+suddenly filled with sunlight, purified by the morning air, and wrapped
+in such delicious silence! “Why don’t you try to sleep a little?”
+ maternally inquired Madame de Jonquière. “You must be quite worn out by
+your vigil.”
+
+Marie, who felt so light and cheerful that she no longer experienced any
+pain, seemed surprised.
+
+“But I am not at all tired, and I don’t feel a bit sleepy. Go to sleep?
+Oh! no, that would be too sad. I should no longer know that I was going
+to be cured!”
+
+At this the superintendent laughed. “Then why didn’t you let them take
+you to the Grotto?” she asked. “You won’t know what to do with yourself
+all alone here.”
+
+“I am not alone, madame, I am with her,” replied Marie; and thereupon,
+her vision returning to her, she clasped her hands in ecstasy. “Last
+night, you know, I saw her bend her head towards me and smile. I quite
+understood her, I could hear her voice, although she never opened her
+lips. When the Blessed Sacrament passes at four o’clock I shall be
+cured.”
+
+Madame de Jonquière tried to calm her, feeling rather anxious at the
+species of somnambulism in which she beheld her. However, the sick girl
+went on: “No, no, I am no worse, I am waiting. Only, you must surely see,
+madame, that there is no need for me to go to the Grotto this morning,
+since the appointment which she gave me is for four o’clock.” And then the
+girl added in a lower tone: “Pierre will come for me at half-past three.
+At four o’clock I shall be cured.”
+
+The sunbeam slowly made its way up her bare arms, which were now almost
+transparent, so wasted had they become through illness; whilst her
+glorious fair hair, which had fallen over her shoulders, seemed like the
+very effulgence of the great luminary enveloping her. The trill of a bird
+came in from the courtyard, and quite enlivened the tremulous silence of
+the ward. Some child who could not be seen must also have been playing
+close by, for now and again a soft laugh could be heard ascending in the
+warm air which was so delightfully calm.
+
+“Well,” said Madame de Jonquière by way of conclusion, “don’t sleep then,
+as you don’t wish to. But keep quite quiet, and it will rest you all the
+same.”
+
+Meantime Madame Vetu was expiring in the adjoining bed. They had not
+dared to take her to the Grotto, for fear they should see her die on the
+way. For some little time she had lain there with her eyes closed; and
+Sister Hyacinthe, who was watching, had beckoned to Madame Désagneaux in
+order to acquaint her with the bad opinion she had formed of the case.
+Both of them were now leaning over the dying woman, observing her with
+increasing anxiety. The mask upon her face had turned more yellow than
+ever, and now looked like a coating of mud; her eyes too had become more
+sunken, her lips seemed to have grown thinner, and the death rattle had
+begun, a slow, pestilential wheezing, polluted by the cancer which was
+finishing its destructive work. All at once she raised her eyelids, and
+was seized with fear on beholding those two faces bent over her own.
+Could her death be near, that they should thus be gazing at her? Immense
+sadness showed itself in her eyes, a despairing regret of life. It was
+not a vehement revolt, for she no longer had the strength to struggle;
+but what a frightful fate it was to have left her shop, her surroundings,
+and her husband, merely to come and die so far away; to have braved the
+abominable torture of such a journey, to have prayed both day and night,
+and then, instead of having her prayer granted, to die when others
+recovered!
+
+However, she could do no more than murmur “Oh! how I suffer; oh! how I
+suffer. Do something, anything, to relieve this pain, I beseech you.”
+
+Little Madame Désagneaux, with her pretty milk-white face showing amidst
+her mass of fair, frizzy hair, was quite upset. She was not used to
+deathbed scenes, she would have given half her heart, as she expressed
+it, to see that poor woman recover. And she rose up and began to question
+Sister Hyacinthe, who was also in tears but already resigned, knowing as
+she did that salvation was assured when one died well. Could nothing
+really be done, however? Could not something be tried to ease the dying
+woman? Abbé Judaine had come and administered the last sacrament to her a
+couple of hours earlier that very morning. She now only had Heaven to
+look to; it was her only hope, for she had long since given up expecting
+aid from the skill of man.
+
+“No, no! we must do something,” exclaimed Madame Désagneaux. And
+thereupon she went and fetched Madame de Jonquière from beside Marie’s
+bed. “Look how this poor creature is suffering, madame!” she exclaimed.
+“Sister Hyacinthe says that she can only last a few hours longer. But we
+cannot leave her moaning like this. There are things which give relief.
+Why not call that young doctor who is here?”
+
+“Of course we will,” replied the superintendent. “We will send for him at
+once.”
+
+They seldom thought of the doctor in the wards. It only occurred to the
+ladies to send for him when a case was at its very worst, when one of
+their patients was howling with pain. Sister Hyacinthe, who herself felt
+surprised at not having thought of Ferrand, whom she believed to be in an
+adjoining room, inquired if she should fetch him.
+
+“Certainly,” was the reply. “Bring him as quickly as possible.”
+
+When the Sister had gone off, Madame de Jonquière made Madame Désagneaux
+help her in slightly raising the dying woman’s head, thinking that this
+might relieve her. The two ladies happened to be alone there that
+morning, all the other lady-hospitallers having gone to their devotions
+or their private affairs. However, from the end of the large deserted
+ward, where, amidst the warm quiver of the sunlight such sweet
+tranquillity prevailed, there still came at intervals the light laughter
+of the unseen child.
+
+“Can it be Sophie who is making such a noise?” suddenly asked the
+lady-superintendent, whose nerves were somewhat upset by all the worry of
+the death which she foresaw. Then quickly walking to the end of the ward,
+she found that it was indeed Sophie Couteau--the young girl so
+miraculously healed the previous year--who, seated on the floor behind a
+bed, had been amusing herself, despite her fourteen years, in making a
+doll out of a few rags. She was now talking to it, so happy, so absorbed
+in her play, that she laughed quite heartily. “Hold yourself up,
+mademoiselle,” said she. “Dance the polka, that I may see how you can do
+it! One! two! dance, turn, kiss the one you like best!”
+
+Madame de Jonquière, however, was now coming up. “Little girl,” she said,
+“we have one of our patients here in great pain, and not expected to
+recover. You must not laugh so loud.”
+
+“Ah! madame, I didn’t know,” replied Sophie, rising up, and becoming
+quite serious, although still holding the doll in her hand. “Is she going
+to die, madame?”
+
+“I fear so, my poor child.”
+
+Thereupon Sophie became quite silent. She followed the superintendent,
+and seated herself on an adjoining bed; whence, without the slightest
+sign of fear, but with her large eyes burning with curiosity, she began
+to watch Madame Vetu’s death agony. In her nervous state, Madame
+Désagneaux was growing impatient at the delay in the doctor’s arrival;
+whilst Marie, still enraptured, and resplendent in the sunlight, seemed
+unconscious of what was taking place about her, wrapt as she was in
+delightful expectancy of the miracle.
+
+Not having found Ferrand in the small apartment near the linen-room which
+he usually occupied, Sister Hyacinthe was now searching for him all over
+the building. During the past two days the young doctor had become more
+bewildered than ever in that extraordinary hospital, where his assistance
+was only sought for the relief of death pangs. The small medicine-chest
+which he had brought with him proved quite useless; for there could be no
+thought of trying any course of treatment, as the sick were not there to
+be doctored, but simply to be cured by the lightning stroke of a miracle.
+And so he mainly confined himself to administering a few opium pills, in
+order to deaden the severer sufferings. He had been fairly amazed when
+accompanying Doctor Bonamy on a round through the wards. It had resolved
+itself into a mere stroll, the doctor, who had only come out of
+curiosity, taking no interest in the patients, whom he neither questioned
+nor examined. He solely concerned himself with the pretended cases of
+cure, stopping opposite those women whom he recognised from having seen
+them at his office where the miracles were verified. One of them had
+suffered from three complaints, only one of which the Blessed Virgin had
+so far deigned to cure; but great hopes were entertained respecting the
+other two. Sometimes, when a wretched woman, who the day before had
+claimed to be cured, was questioned with reference to her health, she
+would reply that her pains had returned to her. However, this never
+disturbed the doctor’s serenity; ever conciliatory, the good man declared
+that Heaven would surely complete what Heaven had begun. Whenever there
+was an improvement in health, he would ask if it were not something to be
+thankful for. And, indeed, his constant saying was: “There’s an
+improvement already; be patient!” What he most dreaded were the
+importunities of the lady-superintendents, who all wished to detain him
+to show him sundry extraordinary cases. Each prided herself on having the
+most serious illnesses, the most frightful, exceptional cases in her
+ward; so that she was eager to have them medically authenticated, in
+order that she might share in the triumph should cure supervene. One
+caught the doctor by the arm and assured him that she felt confident she
+had a leper in her charge; another entreated him to come and look at a
+young girl whose back, she said, was covered with fish’s scales; whilst a
+third, whispering in his ear, gave him some terrible details about a
+married lady of the best society. He hastened away, however, refusing to
+see even one of them, or else simply promising to come back later on when
+he was not so busy. As he himself said, if he listened to all those
+ladies, the day would pass in useless consultations. However, he at last
+suddenly stopped opposite one of the miraculously cured inmates, and,
+beckoning Ferrand to his side, exclaimed: “Ah! now here is an interesting
+cure!” and Ferrand, utterly bewildered, had to listen to him whilst he
+described all the features of the illness, which had totally disappeared
+at the first immersion in the piscina.
+
+At last Sister Hyacinthe, still wandering about, encountered Abbé
+Judaine, who informed her that the young doctor had just been summoned to
+the Family Ward. It was the fourth time he had gone thither to attend to
+Brother Isidore, whose sufferings were as acute as ever, and whom he
+could only fill with opium. In his agony, the Brother merely asked to be
+soothed a little, in order that he might gather together sufficient
+strength to return to the Grotto in the afternoon, as he had not been
+able to do so in the morning. However, his pains increased, and at last
+he swooned away.
+
+When the Sister entered the ward she found the doctor seated at the
+missionary’s bedside. “Monsieur Ferrand,” she said, “come up-stairs with
+me to the Sainte-Honorine Ward at once. We have a patient there at the
+point of death.”
+
+He smiled at her; indeed, he never beheld her without feeling brighter
+and comforted. “I will come with you, Sister,” he replied. “But you’ll
+wait a minute, won’t you? I must try to restore this poor man.”
+
+She waited patiently and made herself useful. The Family Ward, situated
+on the ground-floor, was also full of sunshine and fresh air which
+entered through three large windows opening on to a narrow strip of
+garden. In addition to Brother Isidore, only Monsieur Sabathier had
+remained in bed that morning, with the view of obtaining a little rest;
+whilst Madame Sabathier, taking advantage of the opportunity, had gone to
+purchase a few medals and pictures, which she intended for presents.
+Comfortably seated on his bed, his back supported by some pillows, the
+ex-professor was rolling the beads of a chaplet between his fingers. He
+was no longer praying, however, but merely continuing the operation in a
+mechanical manner, his eyes, meantime, fixed upon his neighbour, whose
+attack he was following with painful interest.
+
+“Ah! Sister,” said he to Sister Hyacinthe, who had drawn near, “that poor
+Brother fills me with admiration. Yesterday I doubted the Blessed Virgin
+for a moment, seeing that she did not deign to hear me, though I have
+been coming here for seven years past; but the example set me by that
+poor martyr, so resigned amidst his torments, has quite shamed me for my
+want of faith. You can have no idea how grievously he suffers, and you
+should see him at the Grotto, with his eyes glowing with divine hope! It
+is really sublime! I only know of one picture at the Louvre--a picture by
+some unknown Italian master--in which there is the head of a monk
+beatified by a similar faith.”
+
+The man of intellect, the ex-university-professor, reared on literature
+and art, was reappearing in this poor old fellow, whose life had been
+blasted, and who had desired to become a free patient, one of the poor of
+the earth, in order to move the pity of Heaven. He again began thinking
+of his own case, and with tenacious hopefulness, which the futility of
+seven journeys to Lourdes had failed to destroy, he added: “Well, I still
+have this afternoon, since we sha’n’t leave till to-morrow. The water is
+certainly very cold, but I shall let them dip me a last time; and all the
+morning I have been praying and asking pardon for my revolt of yesterday.
+When the Blessed Virgin chooses to cure one of her children, it only
+takes her a second to do so; is that not so, Sister? May her will be
+done, and blessed be her name!”
+
+Passing the beads of the chaplet more slowly between his fingers, he
+again began saying his “Aves” and “Paters,” whilst his eyelids drooped on
+his flabby face, to which a childish expression had been returning during
+the many years that he had been virtually cut off from the world.
+
+Meantime Ferrand had signalled to Brother Isidore’s sister, Marthe, to
+come to him. She had been standing at the foot of the bed with her arms
+hanging down beside her, showing the tearless resignation of a poor,
+narrow-minded girl whilst she watched that dying man whom she worshipped.
+She was no more than a faithful dog; she had accompanied her brother and
+spent her scanty savings, without being of any use save to watch him
+suffer. Accordingly, when the doctor told her to take the invalid in her
+arms and raise him up a little, she felt quite happy at being of some
+service at last. Her heavy, freckled, mournful face actually grew bright.
+
+“Hold him,” said the doctor, “whilst I try to give him this.”
+
+When she had raised him, Ferrand, with the aid of a small spoon,
+succeeded in introducing a few drops of liquid between his set teeth.
+Almost immediately the sick man opened his eyes and heaved a deep sigh.
+He was calmer already; the opium was taking effect and dulling the pain
+which he felt burning his right side, as though a red-hot iron were being
+applied to it. However, he remained so weak that, when he wished to
+speak, it became necessary to place one’s ear close to his mouth in order
+to catch what he said. With a slight sign he had begged Ferrand to bend
+over him. “You are the doctor, monsieur, are you not?” he faltered. “Give
+me sufficient strength that I may go once more to the Grotto, this
+afternoon. I am certain that, if I am able to go, the Blessed Virgin will
+cure me.”
+
+“Why, of course you shall go,” replied the young man. “Don’t you feel
+ever so much better?”
+
+“Oh! ever so much better--no! I know very well what my condition is,
+because I saw many of our Brothers die, out there in Senegal. When the
+liver is attacked and the abscess has worked its way outside, it means
+the end. Sweating, fever, and delirium follow. But the Blessed Virgin
+will touch the sore with her little finger and it will be healed. Oh! I
+implore you all, take me to the Grotto, even if I should be unconscious!”
+
+Sister Hyacinthe had also approached, and leant over him. “Be easy, dear
+Brother,” said she. “You shall go to the Grotto after _déjeuner_, and we
+will all pray for you.”
+
+At length, in despair at these delays and extremely anxious about Madame
+Vetu, she was able to get Ferrand away. Still, the Brother’s state filled
+her with pity; and, as they ascended the stairs, she questioned the
+doctor, asking him if there were really no more hope. The other made a
+gesture expressive of absolute hopelessness. It was madness to come to
+Lourdes when one was in such a condition. However, he hastened to add,
+with a smile: “I beg your pardon, Sister. You know that I am unfortunate
+enough not to be a believer.”
+
+But she smiled in her turn, like an indulgent friend who tolerates the
+shortcomings of those she loves. “Oh! that doesn’t matter,” she replied.
+“I know you; you’re all the same a good fellow. Besides, we see so many
+people, we go amongst such pagans that it would be difficult to shock
+us.”
+
+Up above, in the Sainte-Honorine Ward, they found Madame Vetu still
+moaning, a prey to most intolerable suffering. Madame de Jonquière and
+Madame Désagneaux had remained beside the bed, their faces turning pale,
+their hearts distracted by that death-cry, which never ceased. And when
+they consulted Ferrand in a whisper, he merely replied, with a slight
+shrug of the shoulders, that she was a lost woman, that it was only a
+question of hours, perhaps merely of minutes. All he could do was to
+stupefy her also, in order to ease the atrocious death agony which he
+foresaw. She was watching him, still conscious, and also very obedient,
+never refusing the medicine offered her. Like the others, she now had but
+one ardent desire--to go back to the Grotto--and she gave expression to
+it in the stammering accents of a child who fears that its prayer may not
+be granted: “To the Grotto--will you? To the Grotto!”
+
+“You shall be taken there by-and-by, I promise you,” said Sister
+Hyacinthe. “But you must be good. Try to sleep a little to gain some
+strength.”
+
+The sick woman appeared to sink into a doze, and Madame de Jonquière then
+thought that she might take Madame Désagneaux with her to the other end
+of the ward to count the linen, a troublesome business, in which they
+became quite bewildered, as some of the articles were missing. Meantime
+Sophie, seated on the bed opposite Madame Vetu, had not stirred. She had
+laid her doll on her lap, and was waiting for the lady’s death, since
+they had told her that she was about to die. Sister Hyacinthe, moreover,
+had remained beside the dying woman, and, unwilling to waste her time,
+had taken a needle and cotton to mend some patient’s bodice which had a
+hole in the sleeve.
+
+“You’ll stay a little while with us, won’t you?” she asked Ferrand.
+
+The latter, who was still watching Madame Vetu, replied: “Yes, yes. She
+may go off at any moment. I fear hemorrhage.” Then, catching sight of
+Marie on the neighbouring bed, he added in a lower voice: “How is she?
+Has she experienced any relief?”
+
+“No, not yet. Ah, dear child! we all pray for her very sincerely. She is
+so young, so sweet, and so sorely afflicted. Just look at her now! Isn’t
+she pretty? One might think her a saint amid all this sunshine, with her
+large, ecstatic eyes, and her golden hair shining like an aureola!”
+
+Ferrand watched Marie for a moment with interest. Her absent air, her
+indifference to all about her, the ardent faith, the internal joy which
+so completely absorbed her, surprised him. “She will recover,” he
+murmured, as though giving utterance to a prognostic. “She will recover.”
+
+Then he rejoined Sister Hyacinthe, who had seated herself in the
+embrasure of the lofty window, which stood wide open, admitting the warm
+air of the courtyard. The sun was now creeping round, and only a narrow
+golden ray fell upon her white coif and wimple. Ferrand stood opposite to
+her, leaning against the window bar and watching her while she sewed. “Do
+you know, Sister,” said he, “this journey to Lourdes, which I undertook
+to oblige a friend, will be one of the few delights of my life.”
+
+She did not understand him, but innocently asked: “Why so?”
+
+“Because I have found you again, because I am here with you, assisting
+you in your admirable work. And if you only knew how grateful I am to
+you, what sincere affection and reverence I feel for you!”
+
+She raised her head to look him straight in the face, and began jesting
+without the least constraint. She was really delicious, with her pure
+lily-white complexion, her small laughing mouth, and adorable blue eyes
+which ever smiled. And you could realise that she had grown up in all
+innocence and devotion, slender and supple, with all the appearance of a
+girl hardly in her teens.
+
+“What! You are so fond of me as all that!” she exclaimed. “Why?”
+
+“Why I’m fond of you? Because you are the best, the most consoling, the
+most sisterly of beings. You are the sweetest memory in my life, the
+memory I evoke whenever I need to be encouraged and sustained. Do you no
+longer remember the month we spent together, in my poor room, when I was
+so ill and you so affectionately nursed me?”
+
+“Of course, of course I remember it! Why, I never had so good a patient
+as you. You took all I offered you; and when I tucked you in, after
+changing your linen, you remained as still as a little child.”
+
+So speaking, she continued looking at him, smiling ingenuously the while.
+He was very handsome and robust, in the very prime of youth, with a
+rather pronounced nose, superb eyes, and red lips showing under his black
+moustache. But she seemed to be simply pleased at seeing him there before
+her moved almost to tears.
+
+“Ah! Sister, I should have died if it hadn’t been for you,” he said. “It
+was through having you that I was cured.”
+
+Then, as they gazed at one another, with tender gaiety of heart, the
+memory of that adorable month recurred to them. They no longer heard
+Madame Vetu’s death moans, nor beheld the ward littered with beds, and,
+with all its disorder, resembling some infirmary improvised after a
+public catastrophe. They once more found themselves in a small attic at
+the top of a dingy house in old Paris, where air and light only reached
+them through a tiny window opening on to a sea of roofs. And how charming
+it was to be alone there together--he who had been prostrated by fever,
+she who had appeared there like a good angel, who had quietly come from
+her convent like a comrade who fears nothing! It was thus that she nursed
+women, children, and men, as chance ordained, feeling perfectly happy so
+long as she had something to do, some sufferer to relieve. She never
+displayed any consciousness of her sex; and he, on his side, never seemed
+to have suspected that she might be a woman, except it were for the
+extreme softness of her hands, the caressing accents of her voice, the
+beneficent gentleness of her manner; and yet all the tender love of a
+mother, all the affection of a sister, radiated from her person. During
+three weeks, as she had said, she had nursed him like a child, helping
+him in and out of bed, and rendering him every necessary attention,
+without the slightest embarrassment or repugnance, the holy purity born
+of suffering and charity shielding them both the while. They were indeed
+far removed from the frailties of life. And when he became convalescent,
+what a happy existence began, how joyously they laughed, like two old
+friends! She still watched over him, scolding him and gently slapping his
+arms when he persisted in keeping them uncovered. He would watch her
+standing at the basin, washing him a shirt in order to save him the
+trifling expense of employing a laundress. No one ever came up there;
+they were quite alone, thousands of miles away from the world, delighted
+with this solitude, in which their youth displayed such fraternal gaiety.
+
+“Do you remember, Sister, the morning when I was first able to walk
+about?” asked Ferrand. “You helped me to get up, and supported me whilst
+I awkwardly stumbled about, no longer knowing how to use my legs. We did
+laugh so.”
+
+“Yes, yes, you were saved, and I was very pleased.”
+
+“And the day when you brought me some cherries--I can see it all again:
+myself reclining on my pillows, and you seated at the edge of the bed,
+with the cherries lying between us in a large piece of white paper. I
+refused to touch them unless you ate some with me. And then we took them
+in turn, one at a time, until the paper was emptied; and they were very
+nice.”
+
+“Yes, yes, very nice. It was the same with the currant syrup: you would
+only drink it when I took some also.”
+
+Thereupon they laughed yet louder; these recollections quite delighted
+them. But a painful sigh from Madame Vetu brought them back to the
+present. Ferrand leant over and cast a glance at the sick woman, who had
+not stirred. The ward was still full of a quivering peacefulness, which
+was only broken by the clear voice of Madame Désagneaux counting the
+linen. Stifling with emotion, the young man resumed in a lower tone: “Ah!
+Sister, were I to live a hundred years, to know every joy, every
+pleasure, I should never love another woman as I love you!”
+
+Then Sister Hyacinthe, without, however, showing any confusion, bowed her
+head and resumed her sewing. An almost imperceptible blush tinged her
+lily-white skin with pink.
+
+“I also love you well, Monsieur Ferrand,” she said, “but you must not
+make me vain. I only did for you what I do for so many others. It is my
+business, you see. And there was really only one pleasant thing about it
+all, that the Almighty cured you.”
+
+They were now again interrupted. La Grivotte and Elise Rouquet had
+returned from the Grotto before the others. La Grivotte at once squatted
+down on her mattress on the floor, at the foot of Madame Vetu’s bed, and,
+taking a piece of bread from her pocket, proceeded to devour it. Ferrand,
+since the day before, had felt some interest in this consumptive patient,
+who was traversing such a curious phase of agitation, a prey to an
+inordinate appetite and a feverish need of motion. For the moment,
+however, Elise Rouquet’s case interested him still more; for it had now
+become evident that the lupus, the sore which was eating away her face,
+was showing signs of cure. She had continued bathing her face at the
+miraculous fountain, and had just come from the Verification Office,
+where Doctor Bonamy had triumphed. Ferrand, quite surprised, went and
+examined the sore, which, although still far from healed, was already
+paler in colour and slightly desiccated, displaying all the symptoms of
+gradual cure. And the case seemed to him so curious, that he resolved to
+make some notes upon it for one of his old masters at the medical
+college, who was studying the nervous origin of certain skin diseases due
+to faulty nutrition.
+
+“Have you felt any pricking sensation?” he asked.
+
+“Not at all, monsieur,” she replied. “I bathe my face and tell my beads
+with my whole soul, and that is all.”
+
+La Grivotte, who was vain and jealous, and ever since the day before had
+been going in triumph among the crowds, thereupon called to the doctor.
+“I say, monsieur, I am cured, cured, cured completely!”
+
+He waved his hand to her in a friendly way, but refused to examine her.
+“I know, my girl. There is nothing more the matter with you.”
+
+Just then Sister Hyacinthe called to him. She had put her sewing down on
+seeing Madame Vetu raise herself in a frightful fit of nausea. In spite
+of her haste, however, she was too late with the basin; the sick woman
+had brought up another discharge of black matter, similar to soot; but,
+this time, some blood was mixed with it, little specks of violet-coloured
+blood. It was the hemorrhage coming, the near end which Ferrand had been
+dreading.
+
+“Send for the superintendent,” he said in a low voice, seating himself at
+the bedside.
+
+Sister Hyacinthe ran for Madame de Jonquière. The linen having been
+counted, she found her deep in conversation with her daughter Raymonde,
+at some distance from Madame Désagneaux, who was washing her hands.
+
+Raymonde had just escaped for a few minutes from the refectory, where she
+was on duty. This was the roughest of her labours. The long narrow room,
+with its double row of greasy tables, its sickening smell of food and
+misery, quite disgusted her. And taking advantage of the half-hour still
+remaining before the return of the patients, she had hurried up-stairs,
+where, out of breath, with a rosy face and shining eyes, she had thrown
+her arms around her mother’s neck.
+
+“Ah! mamma,” she cried, “what happiness! It’s settled!”
+
+Amazed, her head buzzing, busy with the superintendence of her ward,
+Madame de Jonquière did not understand. “What’s settled, my child?” she
+asked.
+
+Then Raymonde lowered her voice, and, with a faint blush, replied: “My
+marriage!”
+
+It was now the mother’s turn to rejoice. Lively satisfaction appeared
+upon her face, the fat face of a ripe, handsome, and still agreeable
+woman. She at once beheld in her mind’s eye their little lodging in the
+Rue Vaneau, where, since her husband’s death, she had reared her daughter
+with great difficulty upon the few thousand francs he had left her. This
+marriage, however, meant a return to life, to society, the good old times
+come back once more.
+
+“Ah! my child, how happy you make me!” she exclaimed.
+
+But a feeling of uneasiness suddenly restrained her. God was her witness
+that for three years past she had been coming to Lourdes through pure
+motives of charity, for the one great joy of nursing His beloved
+invalids. Perhaps, had she closely examined her conscience, she might,
+behind her devotion, have found some trace of her fondness for authority,
+which rendered her present managerial duties extremely pleasant to her.
+However, the hope of finding a husband for her daughter among the
+suitable young men who swarmed at the Grotto was certainly her last
+thought. It was a thought which came to her, of course, but merely as
+something that was possible, though she never mentioned it. However, her
+happiness, wrung an avowal from her:
+
+“Ah! my child, your success doesn’t surprise me. I prayed to the Blessed
+Virgin for it this morning.”
+
+Then she wished to be quite sure, and asked for further information.
+Raymonde had not yet told her of her long walk leaning on Gérard’s arm
+the day before, for she did not wish to speak of such things until she
+was triumphant, certain of having at last secured a husband. And now it
+was indeed settled, as she had exclaimed so gaily: that very morning she
+had again seen the young man at the Grotto, and he had formally become
+engaged to her. M. Berthaud would undoubtedly ask for her hand on his
+cousin’s behalf before they took their departure from Lourdes.
+
+“Well,” declared Madame de Jonquière, who was now convinced, smiling, and
+delighted at heart, “I hope you will be happy, since you are so sensible
+and do not need my aid to bring your affairs to a successful issue. Kiss
+me.”
+
+It was at this moment that Sister Hyacinthe arrived to announce Madame
+Vetu’s imminent death. Raymonde at once ran off. And Madame Désagneaux,
+who was wiping her hands, began to complain of the lady-assistants, who
+had all disappeared precisely on the morning when they were most wanted.
+“For instance,” said she, “there’s Madame Volmar. I should like to know
+where she can have got to. She has not been seen, even for an hour, ever
+since our arrival.”
+
+“Pray leave Madame Volmar alone!” replied Madame de Jonquière with some
+asperity. “I have already told you that she is ill.”
+
+They both hastened to Madame Vetu. Ferrand stood there waiting; and
+Sister Hyacinthe having asked him if there were indeed nothing to be
+done, he shook his head. The dying woman, relieved by her first emesis,
+now lay inert, with closed eyes. But, a second time, the frightful nausea
+returned to her, and she brought up another discharge of black matter
+mingled with violet-coloured blood. Then she had another short interval
+of calm, during which she noticed La Grivotte, who was greedily devouring
+her hunk of bread on the mattress on the floor.
+
+“She is cured, isn’t she?” the poor woman asked, feeling that she herself
+was dying.
+
+La Grivotte heard her, and exclaimed triumphantly: “Oh, yes, madame,
+cured, cured, cured completely!”
+
+For a moment Madame Vetu seemed overcome by a miserable feeling of grief,
+the revolt of one who will not succumb while others continue to live. But
+almost immediately she became resigned, and they heard her add very
+faintly, “It is the young ones who ought to remain.”
+
+Then her eyes, which remained wide open, looked round, as though bidding
+farewell to all those persons, whom she seemed surprised to see about
+her. She attempted to smile as she encountered the eager gaze of
+curiosity which little Sophie Couteau still fixed upon her: the charming
+child had come to kiss her that very morning, in her bed. Elise Rouquet,
+who troubled herself about nobody, was meantime holding her hand-glass,
+absorbed in the contemplation of her face, which seemed to her to be
+growing beautiful, now that the sore was healing. But what especially
+charmed the dying woman was the sight of Marie, so lovely in her ecstasy.
+She watched her for a long time, constantly attracted towards her, as
+towards a vision of light and joy. Perhaps she fancied that she already
+beheld one of the saints of Paradise amid the glory of the sun.
+
+Suddenly, however, the fits of vomiting returned, and now she solely
+brought up blood, vitiated blood, the colour of claret. The rush was so
+great that it bespattered the sheet, and ran all over the bed. In vain
+did Madame de Jonquière and Madame Désagneaux bring cloths; they were
+both very pale and scarce able to remain standing. Ferrand, knowing how
+powerless he was, had withdrawn to the window, to the very spot where he
+had so lately experienced such delicious emotion; and with an instinctive
+movement, of which she was surely unconscious, Sister Hyacinthe had
+likewise returned to that happy window, as though to be near him.
+
+“Really, can you do nothing?” she inquired.
+
+“No, nothing! She will go off like that, in the same way as a lamp that
+has burnt out.”
+
+Madame Vetu, who was now utterly exhausted, with a thin red stream still
+flowing from her mouth, looked fixedly at Madame de Jonquière whilst
+faintly moving her lips. The lady-superintendent thereupon bent over her
+and heard these slowly uttered words:
+
+“About my husband, madame--the shop is in the Rue Mouffetard--oh! it’s
+quite a tiny one, not far from the Gobelins.--He’s a clockmaker, he is;
+he couldn’t come with me, of course, having to attend to the business;
+and he will be very much put out when he finds I don’t come back.--Yes, I
+cleaned the jewelry and did the errands--” Then her voice grew fainter,
+her words disjointed by the death rattle, which began. “Therefore,
+madame, I beg you will write to him, because I haven’t done so, and now
+here’s the end.--Tell him my body had better remain here at Lourdes, on
+account of the expense.--And he must marry again; it’s necessary for one
+in trade--his cousin--tell him his cousin--”
+
+The rest became a confused murmur. Her weakness was too great, her breath
+was halting. Yet her eyes continued open and full of life, amid her pale,
+yellow, waxy mask. And those eyes seemed to fix themselves despairingly
+on the past, on all that which soon would be no more: the little
+clockmaker’s shop hidden away in a populous neighbourhood; the gentle
+humdrum existence, with a toiling husband who was ever bending over his
+watches; the great pleasures of Sunday, such as watching children fly
+their kites upon the fortifications. And at last these staring eyes gazed
+vainly into the frightful night which was gathering.
+
+A last time did Madame de Jonquière lean over her, seeing that her lips
+were again moving. There came but a faint breath, a voice from far away,
+which distantly murmured in an accent of intense grief: “She did not cure
+me.”
+
+And then Madame Vetu expired, very gently.
+
+As though this were all that she had been waiting for, little Sophie
+Couteau jumped from the bed quite satisfied, and went off to play with
+her doll again at the far end of the ward. Neither La Grivotte, who was
+finishing her bread, nor Elise Rouquet, busy with her mirror, noticed the
+catastrophe. However, amidst the cold breath which seemingly swept by,
+while Madame de Jonquière and Madame Désagneaux--the latter of whom was
+unaccustomed to the sight of death--were whispering together in
+agitation, Marie emerged from the expectant rapture in which the
+continuous, unspoken prayer of her whole being had plunged her so long.
+And when she understood what had happened, a feeling of sisterly
+compassion--the compassion of a suffering companion, on her side certain
+of cure--brought tears to her eyes.
+
+“Ah! the poor woman!” she murmured; “to think that she has died so far
+from home, in such loneliness, at the hour when others are being born
+anew!”
+
+Ferrand, who, in spite of professional indifference, had also been
+stirred by the scene, stepped forward to verify the death; and it was on
+a sign from him that Sister Hyacinthe turned up the sheet, and threw it
+over the dead woman’s face, for there could be no question of removing
+the corpse at that moment. The patients were now returning from the
+Grotto in bands, and the ward, hitherto so calm, so full of sunshine, was
+again filling with the tumult of wretchedness and pain--deep coughing and
+feeble shuffling, mingled with a noisome smell--a pitiful display, in
+fact, of well-nigh every human infirmity.
+
+
+
+
+II. THE SERVICE AT THE GROTTO
+
+ON that day, Monday, the crowd at the Grotto, was enormous. It was the
+last day that the national pilgrimage would spend at Lourdes, and Father
+Fourcade, in his morning address, had said that it would be necessary to
+make a supreme effort of fervour and faith to obtain from Heaven all that
+it might be willing to grant in the way of grace and prodigious cure. So,
+from two o’clock in the afternoon, twenty thousand pilgrims were
+assembled there, feverish, and agitated by the most ardent hopes. From
+minute to minute the throng continued increasing, to such a point,
+indeed, that Baron Suire became alarmed, and came out of the Grotto to
+say to Berthaud: “My friend, we shall be overwhelmed, that’s certain.
+Double your squads, bring your men closer together.”
+
+The Hospitality of Our Lady of Salvation was alone entrusted with the
+task of keeping order, for there were neither guardians nor policemen, of
+any sort present; and it was for this reason that the President of the
+Association was so alarmed. However, Berthaud, under grave circumstances,
+was a leader whose words commanded attention, and who was endowed with
+energy that could be relied on.
+
+“Be easy,” said he; “I will be answerable for everything. I shall not
+move from here until the four-o’clock procession has passed by.”
+
+Nevertheless, he signalled to Gérard to approach.
+
+“Give your men the strictest instructions,” he said to him. “Only those
+persons who have cards should be allowed to pass. And place your men
+nearer each other; tell them to hold the cord tight.”
+
+Yonder, beneath the ivy which draped the rock, the Grotto opened, with
+the eternal flaring of its candles. From a distance it looked rather
+squat and misshapen, a very narrow and modest aperture for the breath of
+the Infinite which issued from it, turning all faces pale and bowing
+every head. The statue of the Virgin had become a mere white spot, which
+seemed to move amid the quiver of the atmosphere, heated by the small
+yellow flames. To see everything it was necessary to raise oneself; for
+the silver altar, the harmonium divested of its housing, the heap of
+bouquets flung there, and the votive offerings streaking the smoky walls
+were scarcely distinguishable from behind the railing. And the day was
+lovely; never yet had a purer sky expanded above the immense crowd; the
+softness of the breeze in particular seemed delicious after the storm of
+the night, which had brought down the over-oppressive heat of the two
+first days.
+
+Gérard had to fight his way with his elbows in order to repeat the orders
+to his men. The crowd had already begun pushing. “Two more men here!” he
+called. “Come, four together, if necessary, and hold the rope well!”
+
+The general impulse was instinctive and invincible; the twenty thousand
+persons assembled there were drawn towards the Grotto by an irresistible
+attraction, in which burning curiosity mingled with the thirst for
+mystery. All eyes converged, every mouth, hand, and body was borne
+towards the pale glitter of the candles and the white moving speck of the
+marble Virgin. And, in order that the large space reserved to the sick,
+in front of the railings, might not be invaded by the swelling mob, it
+had been necessary to inclose it with a stout rope which the bearers at
+intervals of two or three yards grasped with both hands. Their orders
+were to let nobody pass excepting the sick provided with hospital cards
+and the few persons to whom special authorisations had been granted. They
+limited themselves, therefore, to raising the cords and then letting them
+fall behind the chosen ones, without heeding the supplications of the
+others. In fact they even showed themselves somewhat rough, taking a
+certain pleasure in exercising the authority with which they were
+invested for a day. In truth, however, they were very much pushed about,
+and had to support each other and resist with all the strength of their
+loins to avoid being swept away.
+
+While the benches before the Grotto and the vast reserved space were
+filling with sick people, handcarts, and stretchers, the crowd, the
+immense crowd, swayed about on the outskirts. Starting from the Place du
+Rosaire, it extended to the bottom of the promenade along the Gave, where
+the pavement throughout its entire length was black with people, so dense
+a human sea that all circulation was prevented. On the parapet was an
+interminable line of women--most of them seated, but some few standing so
+as to see the better--and almost all carrying silk parasols, which, with
+holiday-like gaiety, shimmered in the sunlight. The managers had wished
+to keep a path open in order that the sick might be brought along; but it
+was ever being invaded and obstructed, so that the carts and stretchers
+remained on the road, submerged and lost until a bearer freed them.
+Nevertheless, the great tramping was that of a docile flock, an innocent,
+lamb-like crowd; and it was only the involuntary pushing, the blind
+rolling towards the light of the candles that had to be contended
+against. No accident had ever happened there, notwithstanding the
+excitement, which gradually increased and threw the people into the
+unruly delirium of faith.
+
+However, Baron Suire again forced his way through the throng. “Berthaud!
+Berthaud!” he called, “see that the _défile_ is conducted less rapidly.
+There are women and children stifling.”
+
+This time Berthaud gave a sign of impatience. “Ah! hang it, I can’t be
+everywhere! Close the gate for a moment if it’s necessary.”
+
+It was a question of the march through the Grotto which went on
+throughout the afternoon. The faithful were permitted to enter by the
+door on the left, and made their exit by that on the right.
+
+“Close the gate!” exclaimed the Baron. “But that would be worse; they
+would all get crushed against it!”
+
+As it happened Gérard was there, thoughtlessly talking for an instant
+with Raymonde, who was standing on the other side of the cord, holding a
+bowl of milk which she was about to carry to a paralysed old woman; and
+Berthaud ordered the young fellow to post two men at the entrance gate of
+the iron railing, with instructions only to allow the pilgrims to enter
+by tens. When Gérard had executed this order, and returned, he found
+Berthaud laughing and joking with Raymonde. She went off on her errand,
+however, and the two men stood watching her while she made the paralysed
+woman drink.
+
+“She is charming, and it’s settled, eh?” said Berthaud. “You are going to
+marry her, aren’t you?”
+
+“I shall ask her mother to-night. I rely upon you to accompany me.”
+
+“Why, certainly. You know what I told you. Nothing could be more
+sensible. The uncle will find you a berth before six months are over.”
+
+A push of the crowd separated them, and Berthaud went off to make sure
+whether the march through the Grotto was now being accomplished in a
+methodical manner, without any crushing. For hours the same unbroken tide
+rolled in--women, men, and children from all parts of the world, all who
+chose, all who passed that way. As a result, the crowd was singularly
+mixed: there were beggars in rags beside neat _bourgeois_, peasants of
+either sex, well dressed ladies, servants with bare hair, young girls
+with bare feet, and others with pomatumed hair and foreheads bound with
+ribbons. Admission was free; the mystery was open to all, to unbelievers
+as well as to the faithful, to those who were solely influenced by
+curiosity as well as to those who entered with their hearts faint with
+love. And it was a sight to see them, all almost equally affected by the
+tepid odour of the wax, half stifling in the heavy tabernacle air which
+gathered beneath the rocky vault, and lowering their eyes for fear of
+slipping on the gratings. Many stood there bewildered, not even bowing,
+examining the things around with the covert uneasiness of indifferent
+folks astray amidst the redoubtable mysteries of a sanctuary. But the
+devout crossed themselves, threw letters, deposited candles and bouquets,
+kissed the rock below the Virgin’s statue, or else rubbed their chaplets,
+medals, and other small objects of piety against it, as the contact
+sufficed to bless them. And the _défile_ continued, continued without end
+during days and months as it had done for years; and it seemed as if the
+whole world, all the miseries and sufferings of humanity, came in turn
+and passed in the same hypnotic, contagious kind of round, through that
+rocky nook, ever in search of happiness.
+
+When Berthaud had satisfied himself that everything was working well, he
+walked about like a mere spectator, superintending his men. Only one
+matter remained to trouble him: the procession of the Blessed Sacrament,
+during which such frenzy burst forth that accidents were always to be
+feared.
+
+This last day seemed likely to be a very fervent one, for he already felt
+a tremor of exalted faith rising among the crowd. The treatment needed
+for miraculous care was drawing to an end; there had been the fever of
+the journey, the besetting influence of the same endlessly repeated
+hymns, and the stubborn continuation of the same religious exercises; and
+ever and ever the conversation had been turned on miracles, and the mind
+fixed on the divine illumination of the Grotto. Many, not having slept
+for three nights, had reached a state of hallucination, and walked about
+in a rageful dream. No repose was granted them, the continual prayers
+were like whips lashing their souls. The appeals to the Blessed Virgin
+never ceased; priest followed priest in the pulpit, proclaiming the
+universal dolour and directing the despairing supplications of the
+throng, during the whole time that the sick remained with hands clasped
+and eyes raised to heaven before the pale, smiling, marble statue.
+
+At that moment the white stone pulpit against the rock on the right of
+the Grotto was occupied by a priest from Toulouse, whom Berthaud knew,
+and to whom he listened for a moment with an air of approval. He was a
+stout man with an unctuous diction, famous for his rhetorical successes.
+However, all eloquence here consisted in displaying the strength of one’s
+lungs in a violent delivery of the phrase or cry which the whole crowd
+had to repeat; for the addresses were nothing more than so much
+vociferation interspersed with “Ayes” and “Paters.”
+
+The priest, who had just finished the Rosary, strove to increase his
+stature by stretching his short legs, whilst shouting the first appeal of
+the litanies which he improvised, and led in his own way, according to
+the inspiration which possessed him.
+
+“Mary, we love thee!” he called.
+
+And thereupon the crowd repeated in a lower, confused, and broken tone:
+“Mary, we love thee!”
+
+From that moment there was no stopping. The voice of the priest rang out
+at full swing, and the voices of the crowd responded in a dolorous
+murmur:
+
+“Mary, thou art our only hope!”
+
+“Mary, thou art our only hope!”
+
+“Pure Virgin, make us purer, among the pure!”
+
+“Pure Virgin, make us purer, among the pure!”
+
+“Powerful Virgin, save our sick!”
+
+“Powerful Virgin, save our sick!”
+
+Often, when the priest’s imagination failed him, or he wished to thrust a
+cry home with greater force, he would repeat it thrice; while the docile
+crowd would do the same, quivering under the enervating effect of the
+persistent lamentation, which increased the fever.
+
+The litanies continued, and Berthaud went back towards the Grotto. Those
+who defiled through it beheld an extraordinary sight when they turned and
+faced the sick. The whole of the large space between the cords was
+occupied by the thousand or twelve hundred patients whom the national
+pilgrimage had brought with it; and beneath the vast, spotless sky on
+that radiant day there was the most heart-rending jumble of sufferers
+that one could behold. The three hospitals of Lourdes had emptied their
+chambers of horror. To begin with, those who were still able to remain
+seated had been piled upon the benches. Many of them, however, were
+propped up with cushions, whilst others kept shoulder to shoulder, the
+strong ones supporting the weak. Then, in front of the benches, before
+the Grotto itself, were the more grievously afflicted sufferers lying at
+full length; the flagstones disappearing from view beneath this woeful
+assemblage, which was like a large, stagnant pool of horror. There was an
+indescribable block of vehicles, stretchers, and mattresses. Some of the
+invalids in little boxes not unlike coffins had raised themselves up and
+showed above the others, but the majority lay almost on a level with the
+ground. There were some lying fully dressed on the check-patterned ticks
+of mattresses; whilst others had been brought with their bedding, so that
+only their heads and pale hands were seen outside the sheets. Few of
+these pallets were clean. Some pillows of dazzling whiteness, which by a
+last feeling of coquetry had been trimmed with embroidery, alone shone
+out among all the filthy wretchedness of all the rest--a fearful
+collection of rags, worn-out blankets, and linen splashed with stains.
+And all were pushed, squeezed, piled up by chance as they came, women,
+men, children, and priests, people in nightgowns beside people who were
+fully attired being jumbled together in the blinding light of day.
+
+And all forms of disease were there, the whole frightful procession
+which, twice a day, left the hospitals to wend its way through horrified
+Lourdes. There were the heads eaten away by eczema, the foreheads crowned
+with roseola, and the noses and mouths which elephantiasis had
+transformed into shapeless snouts. Next, the dropsical ones, swollen out
+like leathern bottles; the rheumatic ones with twisted hands and swollen
+feet, like bags stuffed full of rags; and a sufferer from hydrocephalus,
+whose huge and weighty skull fell backwards. Then the consumptive ones,
+with livid skins, trembling with fever, exhausted by dysentery, wasted to
+skeletons. Then the deformities, the contractions, the twisted trunks,
+the twisted arms, the necks all awry; all the poor broken, pounded
+creatures, motionless in their tragic, marionette-like postures. Then the
+poor rachitic girls displaying their waxen complexions and slender necks
+eaten into by sores; the yellow-faced, besotted-looking women in the
+painful stupor which falls on unfortunate creatures devoured by cancer;
+and the others who turned pale, and dared not move, fearing as they did
+the shock of the tumours whose weighty pain was stifling them. On the
+benches sat bewildered deaf women, who heard nothing, but sang on all the
+same, and blind ones with heads erect, who remained for hours turned
+toward the statue of the Virgin which they could not see. And there was
+also the woman stricken with imbecility, whose nose was eaten away, and
+who laughed with a terrifying laugh, displaying the black, empty cavern
+of her mouth; and then the epileptic woman, whom a recent attack had left
+as pale as death, with froth still at the corners of her lips.
+
+But sickness and suffering were no longer of consequence, since they were
+all there, seated or stretched with their eyes upon the Grotto. The poor,
+fleshless, earthy-looking faces became transfigured, and began to glow
+with hope. Anchylosed hands were joined, heavy eyelids found the strength
+to rise, exhausted voices revived as the priest shouted the appeals. At
+first there was nothing but indistinct stuttering, similar to slight
+puffs of air rising, here and there above the multitude. Then the cry
+ascended and spread through the crowd itself from one to the other end of
+the immense square.
+
+“Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us!” cried the priest in his
+thundering voice.
+
+And the sick and the pilgrims repeated louder and louder: “Mary,
+conceived without sin, pray for us!”
+
+Then the flow of the litany set in, and continued with increasing speed:
+
+“Most pure Mother, most chaste Mother, thy children are at thy feet!”
+
+“Most pure Mother, most chaste Mother, thy children are at thy feet!”
+
+“Queen of the Angels, say but a word, and our sick shall be healed!”
+
+“Queen of the Angels, say but a word, and our sick shall be healed!”
+
+In the second row of sufferers, near the pulpit, was M. Sabathier, who
+had asked to be brought there early, wishing to choose his place like an
+old _habitué_ who knew the cosy corners. Moreover, it seemed to him that
+it was of paramount importance that he should be as near as possible,
+under the very eyes of the Virgin, as though she required to see her
+faithful in order not to forget them. However, for the seven years that
+he had been coming there he had nursed this one hope of being some day
+noticed by her, of touching her, and of obtaining his cure, if not by
+selection, at least by seniority. This merely needed patience on his part
+without the firmness of his faith being in the least shaken by his way of
+thinking. Only, like a poor, resigned man just a little weary of being
+always put off, he sometimes allowed himself diversions. For instance, he
+had obtained permission to keep his wife near him, seated on a
+camp-stool, and he liked to talk to her, and acquaint her with his
+reflections.
+
+“Raise me a little, my dear,” said he. “I am slipping. I am very
+uncomfortable.”
+
+Attired in trousers and a coarse woollen jacket, he was sitting upon his
+mattress, with his back leaning against a tilted chair.
+
+“Are you better?” asked his wife, when she had raised him.
+
+“Yes, yes,” he answered; and then began to take an interest in Brother
+Isidore, whom they had succeeded in bringing in spite of everything, and
+who was lying upon a neighbouring mattress, with a sheet drawn up to his
+chin, and nothing protruding but his wasted hands, which lay clasped upon
+the blanket.
+
+“Ah! the poor man,” said M. Sabathier. “It’s very imprudent, but the
+Blessed Virgin is so powerful when she chooses!”
+
+He took up his chaplet again, but once more broke off from his devotions
+on perceiving Madame Maze, who had just glided into the reserved
+space--so slender and unobtrusive that she had doubtless slipped under
+the ropes without being noticed. She had seated herself at the end of a
+bench and, very quiet and motionless, did not occupy more room there than
+a child. And her long face, with its weary features, the face of a woman
+of two-and-thirty faded before her time, wore an expression of unlimited
+sadness, infinite abandonment.
+
+“And so,” resumed M. Sabathier in a low voice, again addressing his wife
+after attracting her attention by a slight movement of the chin, “it’s
+for the conversion of her husband that this lady prays. You came across
+her this morning in a shop, didn’t you?”
+
+“Yes, yes,” replied Madame Sabathier. “And, besides, I had some talk
+about her with another lady who knows her. Her husband is a
+commercial-traveller. He leaves her for six months at a time, and goes
+about with other people. Oh! he’s a very gay fellow, it seems, very nice,
+and he doesn’t let her want for money; only she adores him, she cannot
+accustom herself to his neglect, and comes to pray the Blessed Virgin to
+give him back to her. At this moment, it appears, he is close by, at
+Luchon, with two ladies--two sisters.”
+
+M. Sabathier signed to his wife to stop. He was now looking at the
+Grotto, again becoming a man of intellect, a professor whom questions of
+art had formerly impassioned. “You see, my dear,” he said, “they have
+spoilt the Grotto by endeavouring to make it too beautiful. I am certain
+it looked much better in its original wildness. It has lost its
+characteristic features--and what a frightful shop they have stuck there,
+on the left!”
+
+However, he now experienced sudden remorse for his thoughtlessness.
+Whilst he was chatting away, might not the Blessed Virgin be noticing one
+of his neighbours, more fervent, more sedate than himself? Feeling
+anxious on the point, he reverted to his customary modesty and patience,
+and with dull, expressionless eyes again began waiting for the good
+pleasure of Heaven.
+
+Moreover, the sound of a fresh voice helped to bring him back to this
+annihilation, in which nothing was left of the cultured reasoner that he
+had formerly been. It was another preacher who had just entered the
+pulpit, a Capuchin this time, whose guttural call, persistently repeated,
+sent a tremor through the crowd.
+
+“Holy Virgin of virgins, be blessed!”
+
+“Holy Virgin of virgins, be blessed!”
+
+“Holy Virgin of virgins, turn not thy face from thy children!”
+
+“Holy Virgin of virgins, turn not thy face from thy children!”
+
+“Holy Virgin of virgins, breathe upon our sores, and our sores shall
+heal!”
+
+“Holy Virgin of virgins, breathe upon our sores, and our sores shall
+heal!”
+
+At the end of the first bench, skirting the central path, which was
+becoming crowded, the Vigneron family had succeeded in finding room for
+themselves. They were all there: little Gustave, seated in a sinking
+posture, with his crutch between his legs; his mother, beside him,
+following the prayers like a punctilious _bourgeoise_; his aunt, Madame
+Chaise, on the other side, so inconvenienced by the crowd that she was
+stifling; and M. Vigneron, who remained silent and, for a moment, had
+been examining Madame Chaise attentively.
+
+“What is the matter with you, my dear?” he inquired. “Do you feel
+unwell?”
+
+She was breathing with difficulty. “Well, I don’t know,” she answered;
+“but I can’t feel my limbs, and my breath fails me.”
+
+At that very moment the thought had occurred to him that all the
+agitation, fever, and scramble of a pilgrimage could not be very good for
+heart-disease. Of course he did not desire anybody’s death, he had never
+asked the Blessed Virgin for any such thing. If his prayer for
+advancement had already been granted through the sudden death of his
+chief, it must certainly be because Heaven had already ordained the
+latter’s death. And, in the same way, if Madame Chaise should die first,
+leaving her fortune to Gustave, he would only have to bow before the will
+of God, which generally requires that the aged should go off before the
+young. Nevertheless, his hope unconsciously became so keen that he could
+not help exchanging a glance with his wife, to whom had come the same
+involuntary thought.
+
+“Gustave, draw back,” he exclaimed; “you are inconveniencing your aunt.”
+ And then, as Raymonde passed, he asked; “Do you happen to have a glass of
+water, mademoiselle? One of our relatives here is losing consciousness.”
+
+But Madame Chaise refused the offer with a gesture. She was getting
+better, recovering her breath with an effort. “No, I want nothing, thank
+you,” she gasped. “There, I’m better--still, I really thought this time
+that I should stifle!”
+
+Her fright left her trembling, with haggard eyes in her pale face. She
+again joined her hands, and begged the Blessed Virgin to save her from
+other attacks and cure her; while the Vignerons, man and wife, honest
+folk both of them, reverted to the covert prayer for happiness that they
+had come to offer up at Lourdes: a pleasant old age, deservedly gained by
+twenty years of honesty, with a respectable fortune which in later years
+they would go and enjoy in the country, cultivating flowers. On the other
+hand, little Gustave, who had seen and noted everything with his bright
+eyes and intelligence sharpened by suffering, was not praying, but
+smiling at space, with his vague enigmatical smile. What could be the use
+of his praying? He knew that the Blessed Virgin would not cure him, and
+that he would die.
+
+However, M. Vigneron could not remain long without busying himself about
+his neighbours. Madame Dieulafay, who had come late, had been deposited
+in the crowded central pathway; and he marvelled at the luxury about the
+young woman, that sort of coffin quilted with white silk, in which she
+was lying, attired in a pink dressing-gown trimmed with Valenciennes
+lace. The husband in a frock-coat, and the sister in a black gown of
+simple but marvellous elegance, were standing by; while Abbé Judaine,
+kneeling near the sufferer, finished offering up a fervent prayer.
+
+When the priest had risen, M. Vigneron made him a little room on the
+bench beside him; and he then took the liberty of questioning him. “Well,
+Monsieur le Curé, does that poor young woman feel a little better?”
+
+Abbé Judaine made a gesture of infinite sadness.
+
+“Alas! no. I was full of so much hope! It was I who persuaded the family
+to come. Two years ago the Blessed Virgin showed me such extraordinary
+grace by curing my poor lost eyes, that I hoped to obtain another favour
+from her. However, I will not despair. We still have until to-morrow.”
+
+M. Vigneron again looked towards Madame Dieulafay and examined her face,
+still of a perfect oval and with admirable eyes; but it was
+expressionless, with ashen hue, similar to a mask of death, amidst the
+lace. “It’s really very sad,” he murmured.
+
+“And if you had seen her last summer!” resumed the priest. “They have
+their country seat at Saligny, my parish, and I often dined with them. I
+cannot help feeling sad when I look at her elder sister, Madame Jousseur,
+that lady in black who stands there, for she bears a strong resemblance
+to her; and the poor sufferer was even prettier, one of the beauties of
+Paris. And now compare them together--observe that brilliancy, that
+sovereign grace, beside that poor, pitiful creature--it oppresses one’s
+heart--ah! what a frightful lesson!”
+
+He became silent for an instant. Saintly man that he was naturally,
+altogether devoid of passions, with no keen intelligence to disturb him
+in his faith, he displayed a naive admiration for beauty, wealth, and
+power, which he had never envied. Nevertheless, he ventured to express a
+doubt, a scruple, which troubled his usual serenity. “For my part, I
+should have liked her to come here with more simplicity, without all
+that surrounding of luxury, because the Blessed Virgin prefers the
+humble--But I understand very well that there are certain social
+exigencies. And, then, her husband and sister love her so! Remember that
+he has forsaken his business and she her pleasures in order to come here
+with her; and so overcome are they at the idea of losing her that their
+eyes are never dry, they always have that bewildered look which you can
+notice. So they must be excused for trying to procure her the comfort of
+looking beautiful until the last hour.”
+
+M. Vigneron nodded his head approvingly. Ah! it was certainly not the
+wealthy who had the most luck at the Grotto! Servants, country folk, poor
+beggars, were cured, while ladies returned home with their ailments
+unrelieved, notwithstanding their gifts and the big candles they had
+burnt. And, in spite of himself, Vigneron then looked at Madame Chaise,
+who, having recovered from her attack, was now reposing with a
+comfortable air.
+
+But a tremor passed through the crowd and Abbé Judaine spoke again: “Here
+is Father Massias coming towards the pulpit. He is a saint; listen to
+him.”
+
+They knew him, and were aware that he could not make his appearance
+without every soul being stirred by sudden hope, for it was reported that
+the miracles were often brought to pass by his great fervour. His voice,
+full of tenderness and strength, was said to be appreciated by the
+Virgin.
+
+All heads were therefore uplifted and the emotion yet further increased
+when Father Fourcade was seen coming to the foot of the pulpit, leaning
+on the shoulder of his well-beloved brother, the preferred of all; and he
+stayed there, so that he also might hear him. His gouty foot had been
+paining him more acutely since the morning, so that it required great
+courage on his part to remain thus standing and smiling. The increasing
+exaltation of the crowd made him happy, however; he foresaw prodigies and
+dazzling cures which would redound to the glory of Mary and Jesus.
+
+Having ascended the pulpit, Father Massias did not at once speak. He
+seemed, very tall, thin, and pale, with an ascetic face, elongated the
+more by his discoloured beard. His eyes sparkled, and his large eloquent
+mouth protruded passionately.
+
+“Lord, save us, for we perish!” he suddenly cried; and in a fever, which
+increased minute by minute, the transported crowd repeated: “Lord, save
+us, for we perish!”
+
+Then he opened his arms and again launched forth his flaming cry, as if
+he had torn it from his glowing heart: “Lord, if it be Thy will, Thou
+canst heal me!”
+
+“Lord, if it be Thy will, Thou canst heal me!”
+
+“Lord, I am not worthy that Thou shouldst enter under my roof, but only
+say the word, and I shall be healed!”
+
+“Lord, I am not worthy that Thou shouldst enter under my roof, but only
+say the word, and I shall be healed!”
+
+Marthe, Brother Isidore’s sister, had now begun to talk in a whisper to
+Madame Sabathier, near whom she had at last seated herself. They had
+formed an acquaintance at the hospital; and, drawn together by so much
+suffering, the servant had familiarly confided to the _bourgeoise_ how
+anxious she felt about her brother; for she could plainly see that he had
+very little breath left in him. The Blessed Virgin must be quick indeed
+if she desired to save him. It was already a miracle that they had been
+able to bring him alive as far as the Grotto.
+
+In her resignation, poor, simple creature that she was, she did not weep;
+but her heart was so swollen that her infrequent words came faintly from
+her lips. Then a flood of past memories suddenly returned to her; and
+with her utterance thickened by prolonged silence, she began to relieve
+her heart: “We were fourteen at home, at Saint Jacut, near Vannes. He,
+big as he was, has always been delicate, and that was why he remained
+with our priest, who ended by placing him among the Christian Brothers.
+The elder ones took over the property, and, for my part, I preferred
+going out to service. Yes, it was a lady who took me with her to Paris,
+five years ago already. Ah! what a lot of trouble there is in life!
+Everyone has so much trouble!”
+
+“You are quite right, my girl,” replied Madame Sabathier, looking the
+while at her husband, who was devoutly repeating each of Father Massias’s
+appeals.
+
+“And then,” continued Marthe, “there I learned last month that Isidore,
+who had returned from a hot climate where he had been on a mission, had
+brought a bad sickness back with him. And, when I ran to see him, he told
+me he should die if he did not leave for Lourdes, but that he couldn’t
+make the journey, because he had nobody to accompany him. Then, as I had
+eighty francs saved up, I gave up my place, and we set out together. You
+see, madame, if I am so fond of him, it’s because he used to bring me
+gooseberries from the parsonage, whereas all the others beat me.”
+
+She relapsed into silence for a moment, her countenance swollen by grief,
+and her poor eyes so scorched by watching that no tears could come from
+them. Then she began to stutter disjointed words: “Look at him, madame.
+It fills one with pity. Ah! my God, his poor cheeks, his poor chin, his
+poor face--”
+
+It was, in fact, a lamentable spectacle. Madame Sabathier’s heart was
+quite upset when she observed Brother Isidore so yellow, cadaverous,
+steeped in a cold sweat of agony. Above the sheet he still only showed
+his clasped hands and his face encircled with long scanty hair; but if
+those wax-like hands seemed lifeless, if there was not a feature of that
+long-suffering face that stirred, its eyes were still alive,
+inextinguishable eyes of love, whose flame sufficed to illumine the whole
+of his expiring visage--the visage of a Christ upon the cross. And never
+had the contrast been so clearly marked between his low forehead and
+unintelligent, loutish, peasant air, and the divine splendour which came
+from his poor human mask, ravaged and sanctified by suffering, sublime at
+this last hour in the passionate radiance of his faith. His flesh had
+melted, as it were; he was no longer a breath, nothing but a look, a
+light.
+
+Since he had been set down there his eyes had not strayed from the statue
+of the Virgin. Nothing else existed around him. He did not see the
+enormous multitude, he did not even hear the wild cries of the priests,
+the incessant cries which shook this quivering crowd. His eyes alone
+remained to him, his eyes burning with infinite tenderness, and they were
+fixed upon the Virgin, never more to turn from her. They drank her in,
+even unto death; they made a last effort of will to disappear, die out in
+her. For an instant, however, his mouth half opened and his drawn visage
+relaxed as an expression of celestial beatitude came over it. Then
+nothing more stirred, his eyes remained wide open, still obstinately
+fixed upon the white statue.
+
+A few seconds elapsed. Marthe had felt a cold breath, chilling the roots
+of her hair. “I say, madame, look!” she stammered.
+
+Madame Sabathier, who felt anxious, pretended that she did not
+understand. “What is it, my girl?”
+
+“My brother! look! He no longer moves. He opened his mouth, and has not
+stirred since.” Then they both shuddered, feeling certain he was dead. He
+had, indeed, just passed away, without a rattle, without a breath, as if
+life had escaped in his glance, through his large, loving eyes, ravenous
+with passion. He had expired gazing upon the Virgin, and nothing could
+have been so sweet; and he still continued to gaze upon her with his dead
+eyes, as though with ineffable delight.
+
+“Try to close his eyes,” murmured Madame Sabathier. “We shall soon know
+then.”
+
+Marthe had already risen, and, leaning forward, so as not to be observed,
+she endeavoured to close the eyes with a trembling finger. But each time
+they reopened, and again looked at the Virgin with invincible obstinacy.
+He was dead, and Marthe had to leave his eyes wide open, steeped in
+unbounded ecstasy.
+
+“Ah! it’s finished, it’s quite finished, madame!” she stuttered.
+
+Two tears then burst from her heavy eyelids and ran down her cheeks;
+while Madame Sabathier caught hold of her hand to keep her quiet. There
+had been whisperings, and uneasiness was already spreading. But what
+course could be adopted? It was impossible to carry off the corpse amidst
+such a mob, during the prayers, without incurring the risk of creating a
+disastrous effect. The best plan would be to leave it there, pending a
+favourable moment. The poor fellow scandalised no one, he did not seem
+any more dead now than he had seemed ten minutes previously, and
+everybody would think that his flaming eyes were still alive, ardently
+appealing to the divine compassion of the Blessed Virgin.
+
+Only a few persons among those around knew the truth. M. Sabathier, quite
+scared, had made a questioning sign to his wife, and on being answered by
+a prolonged affirmative nod, he had returned to his prayers without any
+rebellion, though he could not help turning pale at the thought of the
+mysterious almighty power which sent death when life was asked for. The
+Vignerons, who were very much interested, leaned forward, and whispered
+as though in presence of some street accident, one of those petty
+incidents which in Paris the father sometimes related on returning home
+from the Ministry, and which sufficed to occupy them all, throughout the
+evening. Madame Jousseur, for her part, had simply turned round and
+whispered a word or two in M. Dieulafay’s ear, and then they had both
+reverted to the heart-rending contemplation of their own dear invalid;
+whilst Abbé Judaine, informed by M. Vigneron, knelt down, and in a low,
+agitated voice recited the prayers for the dead. Was he not a Saint, that
+missionary who had returned from a deadly climate, with a mortal wound in
+his side, to die there, beneath the smiling gaze of the Blessed Virgin?
+And Madame Maze, who also knew what had happened, suddenly felt a taste
+for death, and resolved that she would implore Heaven to suppress her
+also, in unobtrusive fashion, if it would not listen to her prayer and
+give her back her husband.
+
+But the cry of Father Massias rose into a still higher key, burst forth
+with a strength of terrible despair, with a rending like that of a sob:
+“Jesus, son of David, I am perishing, save me!”
+
+And the crowd sobbed after him in unison “Jesus, son of David, I am
+perishing, save me!”
+
+Then, in quick succession, and in higher and higher keys, the appeals
+went on proclaiming the intolerable misery of the world:
+
+“Jesus, son of David, take pity on Thy sick children!”
+
+“Jesus, son of David, take pity on Thy sick children!”
+
+“Jesus, son of David, come, heal them, that they may live!”
+
+“Jesus, son of David, come, heal them, that they may live!”
+
+It was delirium. At the foot of the pulpit Father Fourcade, succumbing to
+the extraordinary passion which overflowed from all hearts, had likewise
+raised his arms, and was shouting the appeals in his thundering voice as
+though to compel the intervention of Heaven. And the exaltation was still
+increasing beneath this blast of desire, whose powerful breath bowed
+every head in turn, spreading even to the young women who, in a spirit of
+mere curiosity, sat watching the scene from the parapet of the Gave; for
+these also turned pale under their sunshades.
+
+Miserable humanity was clamouring from the depths of its abyss of
+suffering, and the clamour swept along, sending a shudder down every
+spine, for one and all were plunged in agony, refusing to die, longing to
+compel God to grant them eternal life. Ah! life, life! that was what all
+those unfortunates, who had come so far, amid so many obstacles,
+wanted--that was the one boon they asked for in their wild desire to live
+it over again, to live it always! O Lord, whatever our misery, whatever
+the torment of our life may be, cure us, grant that we may begin to live
+again and suffer once more what we have suffered already. However unhappy
+we may be, to be is what we wish. It is not heaven that we ask Thee for,
+it is earth; and grant that we may leave it at the latest possible
+moment, never leave it, indeed, if such be Thy good pleasure. And even
+when we no longer implore a physical cure, but a moral favour, it is
+still happiness that we ask Thee for; happiness, the thirst for which
+alone consumes us. O Lord, grant that we may be happy and healthy; let us
+live, ay, let us live forever!
+
+This wild cry, the cry of man’s furious desire for life, came in broken
+accents, mingled with tears, from every breast.
+
+“O Lord, son of David, heal our sick!”
+
+“O Lord, son of David, heal our sick!”
+
+Berthaud had twice been obliged to dash forward to prevent the cords from
+giving way under the unconscious pressure of the crowd. Baron Suire, in
+despair, kept on making signs, begging someone to come to his assistance;
+for the Grotto was now invaded, and the march past had become the mere
+trampling of a flock rushing to its passion. In vain did Gérard again
+leave Raymonde and post himself at the entrance gate of the iron railing,
+so as to carry out the orders, which were to admit the pilgrims by tens.
+He was hustled and swept aside, while with feverish excitement everybody
+rushed in, passing like a torrent between the flaring candles, throwing
+bouquets and letters to the Virgin, and kissing the rock, which the
+pressure of millions of inflamed lips had polished. It was faith run
+wild, the great power that nothing henceforth could stop.
+
+And now, whilst Gérard stood there, hemmed in against the iron railing,
+he heard two countrywomen, whom the advance was bearing onward, raise
+loud exclamations at sight of the sufferers lying on the stretchers
+before them. One of them was so greatly impressed by the pallid face of
+Brother Isidore, whose large dilated eyes were still fixed on the statue
+of the Virgin, that she crossed herself, and, overcome by devout
+admiration, murmured: “Oh! look at that one; see how he is praying with
+his whole heart, and how he gazes on Our Lady of Lourdes!”
+
+The other peasant woman thereupon replied “Oh! she will certainly cure
+him, he is so beautiful!”
+
+Indeed, as the dead man lay there, his eyes still fixedly staring whilst
+he continued his prayer of love and faith, his appearance touched every
+heart. No one in that endless, streaming throng could behold him without
+feeling edified.
+
+
+
+
+III. MARIE’S CURE
+
+IT was good Abbé Judaine who was to carry the Blessed Sacrament in the
+four-o’clock procession. Since the Blessed Virgin had cured him of a
+disease of the eyes, a miracle with which the Catholic press still
+resounded, he had become one of the glories of Lourdes, was given the
+first place, and honoured with all sorts of attentions.
+
+At half-past three he rose, wishing to leave the Grotto, but the
+extraordinary concourse of people quite frightened him, and he feared he
+would be late if he did not succeed in getting out of it. Fortunately
+help came to him in the person of Berthaud. “Monsieur le Curé,” exclaimed
+the superintendent of the bearers, “don’t attempt to pass out by way of
+the Rosary; you would never arrive in time. The best course is to ascend
+by the winding paths--and come! follow me; I will go before you.”
+
+By means of his elbows, he thereupon parted the dense throng and opened a
+path for the priest, who overwhelmed him with thanks. “You are too kind.
+It’s my fault; I had forgotten myself. But, good heavens! how shall we
+manage to pass with the procession presently?”
+
+This procession was Berthaud’s remaining anxiety. Even on ordinary days
+it provoked wild excitement, which forced him to take special measures;
+and what would now happen, as it wended its way through this dense
+multitude of thirty thousand persons, consumed by such a fever of faith,
+already on the verge of divine frenzy? Accordingly, in a sensible way, he
+took advantage of this opportunity to give Abbé Judaine the best advice.
+
+“Ah! Monsieur le Curé, pray impress upon your colleagues of the clergy
+that they must not leave any space between their ranks; they should come
+on slowly, one close behind the other. And, above all, the banners should
+be firmly grasped, so that they may not be overthrown. As for yourself,
+Monsieur le Curé, see that the canopy-bearers are strong, tighten the
+cloth around the monstrance, and don’t be afraid to carry it in both
+hands with all your strength.”
+
+A little frightened by this advice, the priest went on expressing his
+thanks. “Of course, of course; you are very good,” said he. “Ah!
+monsieur, how much I am indebted to you for having helped me to escape
+from all those people!”
+
+Then, free at last, he hastened towards the Basilica by the narrow
+serpentine path which climbs the hill; while his companion again plunged
+into the mob, to return to his post of inspection.
+
+At that same moment Pierre, who was bringing Marie to the Grotto in her
+little cart, encountered on the other side, that of the Place du Rosaire,
+the impenetrable wall formed by the crowd. The servant at the hotel had
+awakened him at three o’clock, so that he might go and fetch the young
+girl at the hospital. There seemed to be no hurry; they apparently had
+plenty of time to reach the Grotto before the procession. However, that
+immense throng, that resisting, living wall, through which he did not
+know how to break, began to cause him some uneasiness. He would never
+succeed in passing with the little car if the people did not evince some
+obligingness. “Come, ladies, come!” he appealed. “I beg of you! You see,
+it’s for a patient!”
+
+The ladies, hypnotised as they were by the spectacle of the Grotto
+sparkling in the distance, and standing on tiptoe so as to lose nothing
+of the sight, did not move, however. Besides, the clamour of the litanies
+was so loud at this moment that they did not even hear the young priest’s
+entreaties.
+
+Then Pierre began again: “Pray stand on one side, gentlemen; allow me to
+pass. A little room for a sick person. Come, please, listen to what I am
+saying!”
+
+But the men, beside themselves, in a blind, deaf rapture, would stir no
+more than the women.
+
+Marie, however, smiled serenely, as if ignorant of the impediments, and
+convinced that nothing in the world could prevent her from going to her
+cure. However, when Pierre had found an aperture, and begun to work his
+way through the moving mass, the situation became more serious. From all
+parts the swelling human waves beat against the frail chariot, and at
+times threatened to submerge it. At each step it became necessary to
+stop, wait, and again entreat the people. Pierre had never before felt
+such an anxious sensation in a crowd. True, it was not a threatening mob,
+it was as innocent as a flock of sheep; but he found a troubling thrill
+in its midst, a peculiar atmosphere that upset him. And, in spite of his
+affection for the humble, the ugliness of the features around him, the
+common, sweating faces, the evil breath, and the old clothes, smelling of
+poverty, made him suffer even to nausea.
+
+“Now, ladies, now, gentlemen, it’s for a patient,” he repeated. “A little
+room, I beg of you!”
+
+Buffeted about in this vast ocean, the little vehicle continued to
+advance by fits and starts, taking long minutes to get over a few yards
+of ground. At one moment you might have thought it swamped, for no sign
+of it could be detected. Then, however, it reappeared near the piscinas.
+Tender sympathy had at length been awakened for this sick girl, so wasted
+by suffering, but still so beautiful. When people had been compelled to
+give way before the priest’s stubborn pushing, they turned round, but did
+not dare to get angry, for pity penetrated them at sight of that thin,
+suffering face, shining out amidst a halo of fair hair. Words of
+compassion and admiration were heard on all sides: “Ah, the poor
+child!”--“Was it not cruel to be infirm at her age?”--“Might the Blessed
+Virgin be merciful to her!” Others, however, expressed surprise, struck
+as they were by the ecstasy in which they saw her, with her clear eyes
+open to the spheres beyond, where she had placed her hope. She beheld
+Heaven, she would assuredly be cured. And thus the little car left, as it
+were, a feeling of wonder and fraternal charity behind it, as it made its
+way with so much difficulty through that human ocean.
+
+Pierre, however, was in despair and at the end of his strength, when some
+of the stretcher-bearers came to his aid by forming a path for the
+passage of the procession--a path which Berthaud had ordered them to keep
+clear by means of cords, which they were to hold at intervals of a couple
+of yards. From that moment the young priest was able to drag Marie along
+in a fairly easy manner, and at last place her within the reserved space,
+where he halted, facing the Grotto on the left side. You could no longer
+move in this reserved space, where the crowd seemed to increase every
+minute. And, quite exhausted by the painful journey he had just
+accomplished, Pierre reflected what a prodigious concourse of people
+there was; it had seemed to him as if he were in the midst of an ocean,
+whose waves he had heard heaving around him without a pause.
+
+Since leaving the hospital Marie had not opened her lips. He now
+realised, however, that she wished to speak to him, and accordingly bent
+over her. “And my father,” she inquired, “is he here? Hasn’t he returned
+from his excursion?”
+
+Pierre had to answer that M. de Guersaint had not returned, and that he
+had doubtless been delayed against his will. And thereupon she merely
+added with a smile: “Ah I poor father, won’t he be pleased when he finds
+me cured!”
+
+Pierre looked at her with tender admiration. He did not remember having
+ever seen her looking so adorable since the slow wasting of sickness had
+begun. Her hair, which alone disease had respected, clothed her in gold.
+Her thin, delicate face had assumed a dreamy expression, her eyes
+wandering away to the haunting thought of her sufferings, her features
+motionless, as if she had fallen asleep in a fixed thought until the
+expected shock of happiness should waken her. She was absent from
+herself, ready, however, to return to consciousness whenever God might
+will it. And, indeed, this delicious infantile creature, this little girl
+of three-and-twenty, still a child as when an accident had struck her,
+delaying her growth, preventing her from becoming a woman, was at last
+ready to receive the visit of the angel, the miraculous shock which would
+draw her out of her torpor and set her upright once more. Her morning
+ecstasy continued; she had clasped her hands, and a leap of her whole
+being had ravished her from earth as soon as she had perceived the image
+of the Blessed Virgin yonder. And now she prayed and offered herself
+divinely.
+
+It was an hour of great mental trouble for Pierre. He felt that the drama
+of his priestly life was about to be enacted, and that if he did not
+recover faith in this crisis, it would never return to him. And he was
+without bad thoughts, without resistance, hoping with fervour, he also,
+that they might both be healed! Oh! that he might be convinced by her
+cure, that he might believe like her, that they might be saved together!
+He wished to pray, ardently, as she herself did. But in spite of himself
+he was preoccupied by the crowd, that limitless crowd, among which he
+found it so difficult to drown himself, disappear, become nothing more
+than a leaf in the forest, lost amidst the rustle of all the leaves. He
+could not prevent himself from analysing and judging it. He knew that for
+four days past it had been undergoing all the training of suggestion;
+there had been the fever of the long journey, the excitement of the new
+landscapes, the days spent before the splendour of the Grotto, the
+sleepless nights, and all the exasperating suffering, ravenous for
+illusion. Then, again, there had been the all-besetting prayers, those
+hymns, those litanies, which agitated it without a pause. Another priest
+had followed Father Massias in the pulpit, a little thin, dark Abbé, whom
+Pierre heard hurling appeals to the Virgin and Jesus in a lashing voice
+which resounded like a whip. Father Massias and Father Fourcade had
+remained at the foot of the pulpit, and were now directing the cries of
+the crowd, whose lamentations rose in louder and louder tones beneath the
+limpid sunlight. The general exaltation had yet increased; it was the
+hour when the violence done to Heaven at last produced the miracles.
+
+All at once a paralytic rose up and walked towards the Grotto, holding
+his crutch in the air; and this crutch, waving like a flag above the
+swaying heads, wrung loud applause from the faithful. They were all on
+the look-out for prodigies, they awaited them with the certainty that
+they would take place, innumerable and wonderful. Some eyes seemed to
+behold them, and feverish voices pointed them out. Another woman had been
+cured! Another! Yet another! A deaf person had heard, a mute had spoken,
+a consumptive had revived! What, a consumptive? Certainly, that was a
+daily occurrence! Surprise was no longer possible; you might have
+certified that an amputated leg was growing again without astonishing
+anyone. Miracle-working became the actual state of nature, the usual
+thing, quite commonplace, such was its abundance. The most incredible
+stories seemed quite simple to those overheated imaginations, given what
+they expected from the Blessed Virgin. And you should have heard the
+tales that went about, the quiet affirmations, the expressions of
+absolute certainty which were exchanged whenever a delirious patient
+cried out that she was cured. Another! Yet another! However, a piteous
+voice would at times exclaim: “Ah! she’s cured; that one; she’s lucky,
+she is!”
+
+Already, at the Verification Office, Pierre had suffered from this
+credulity of the folk among whom he lived. But here it surpassed
+everything he could have imagined; and he was exasperated by the
+extravagant things he heard people say in such a placid fashion, with the
+open smiles of children. Accordingly he tried to absorb himself in his
+thoughts and listen to nothing. “O God!” he prayed, “grant that my reason
+may be annihilated, that I may no longer desire to understand, that I may
+accept the unreal and impossible.” For a moment he thought the spirit of
+inquiry dead within him, and allowed the cry of supplication to carry him
+away: “Lord, heal our sick! Lord, heal our sick!” He repeated this appeal
+with all his charity, clasped his hands, and gazed fixedly at the statue
+of the Virgin, until he became quite giddy, and imagined that the figure
+moved. Why should he not return to a state of childhood like the others,
+since happiness lay in ignorance and falsehood? Contagion would surely
+end by acting; he would become nothing more than a grain of sand among
+innumerable other grains, one of the humblest among the humble ones under
+the millstone, who trouble not about the power that crushes them. But
+just at that second, when he hoped that he had killed the old man in him,
+that he had annihilated himself along with his will and intelligence, the
+stubborn work of thought, incessant and invincible, began afresh in the
+depths of his brain. Little by little, notwithstanding his efforts to the
+contrary, he returned to his inquiries, doubted, and sought the truth.
+What was the unknown force thrown off by this crowd, the vital fluid
+powerful enough to work the few cures that really occurred? There was
+here a phenomenon that no physiologist had yet studied. Ought one to
+believe that a multitude became a single being, as it were, able to
+increase the power of auto-suggestion tenfold upon itself? Might one
+admit that, under certain circumstances of extreme exaltation, a
+multitude became an agent of sovereign will compelling the obedience of
+matter? That would have explained how sudden cure fell at times upon the
+most sincerely excited of the throng. The breaths of all of them united
+in one breath, and the power that acted was a power of consolation, hope,
+and life.
+
+This thought, the outcome of his human charity, filled Pierre with
+emotion. For another moment he was able to regain possession of himself,
+and prayed for the cure of all, deeply touched by the belief that he
+himself might in some degree contribute towards the cure of Marie. But
+all at once, without knowing what transition of ideas led to it, a
+recollection returned to him of the medical consultation which he had
+insisted upon prior to the young girl’s departure for Lourdes. The scene
+rose before him with extraordinary clearness and precision; he saw the
+room with its grey, blue-flowered wall-paper, and he heard the three
+doctors discuss and decide. The two who had given certificates
+diagnosticating paralysis of the marrow spoke discreetly, slowly, like
+esteemed, well-known, perfectly honourable practitioners; but Pierre
+still heard the warm, vivacious voice of his cousin Beauclair, the third
+doctor, a young man of vast and daring intelligence, who was treated
+coldly by his colleagues as being of an adventurous turn of mind. And at
+this supreme moment Pierre was surprised to find in his memory things
+which he did not know were there; but it was only an instance of that
+singular phenomenon by which it sometimes happens that words scarce
+listened to, words but imperfectly heard, words stored away in the brain
+almost in spite of self, will awaken, burst forth, and impose themselves
+on the mind after they have long been forgotten. And thus it now seemed
+to him that the very approach of the miracle was bringing him a vision of
+the conditions under which--according to Beauclair’s predictions--the
+miracle would be accomplished.
+
+In vain did Pierre endeavour to drive away this recollection by praying
+with an increase of fervour. The scene again appeared to him, and the old
+words rang out, filling his ears like a trumpet-blast. He was now again
+in the dining-room, where Beauclair and he had shut themselves up after
+the departure of the two others, and Beauclair recapitulated the history
+of the malady: the fall from a horse at the age of fourteen; the
+dislocation and displacement of the organ, with doubtless a slight
+laceration of the ligaments, whence the weight which the sufferer had
+felt, and the weakness of the legs leading to paralysis. Then, a slow
+healing of the disorder, everything returning to its place of itself, but
+without the pain ceasing. In fact this big, nervous child, whose mind had
+been so grievously impressed by her accident, was unable to forget it;
+her attention remained fixed on the part where she suffered, and she
+could not divert it, so that, even after cure, her sufferings had
+continued--a neuropathic state, a consecutive nervous exhaustion,
+doubtless aggravated by accidents due to faulty nutrition as yet
+imperfectly understood. And further, Beauclair easily explained the
+contrary and erroneous diagnosis of the numerous doctors who had attended
+her, and who, as she would not submit to examination, had groped in the
+dark, some believing in a tumour, and the others, the more numerous,
+convinced of some lesion of the marrow. He alone, after inquiring into
+the girl’s parentage, had just begun to suspect a simple state of
+auto-suggestion, in which she had obstinately remained ever since the
+first violent shock of pain; and among the reasons which he gave for this
+belief were the contraction of her visual field, the fixity of her eyes,
+the absorbed, inattentive expression of her face, and above all the
+nature of the pain she felt, which, leaving the organ, had borne to the
+left, where it continued in the form of a crushing, intolerable weight,
+which sometimes rose to the breast in frightful fits of stifling. A
+sudden determination to throw off the false notion she had formed of her
+complaint, the will to rise, breathe freely, and suffer no more, could
+alone place her on her feet again, cured, transfigured, beneath the lash
+of some intense emotion.
+
+A last time did Pierre endeavour to see and hear no more, for he felt
+that the irreparable ruin of all belief in the miraculous was in him.
+And, in spite of his efforts, in spite of the ardour with which he began
+to cry, “Jesus, son of David, heal our sick!” he still saw, he still
+heard Beauclair telling him, in his calm, smiling manner how the miracle
+would take place, like a lightning flash, at the moment of extreme
+emotion, under the decisive circumstance which would complete the
+loosening of the muscles. The patient would rise and walk in a wild
+transport of joy, her legs would all at once be light again, relieved of
+the weight which had so long made them like lead, as though this weight
+had melted, fallen to the ground. But above all, the weight which bore
+upon the lower part of the trunk, which rose, ravaged the breast, and
+strangled the throat, would this time depart in a prodigious soaring
+flight, a tempest blast bearing all the evil away with it. And was it not
+thus that, in the Middle Ages, possessed women had by the mouth cast up
+the Devil, by whom their flesh had so long been tortured? And Beauclair
+had added that Marie would at last become a woman, that in that moment of
+supreme joy she would cease to be a child, that although seemingly worn
+out by her prolonged dream of suffering, she would all at once be
+restored to resplendent health, with beaming face, and eyes full of life.
+
+Pierre looked at her, and his trouble increased still more on seeing her
+so wretched in her little cart, so distractedly imploring health, her
+whole being soaring towards Our Lady of Lourdes, who gave life. Ah! might
+she be saved, at the cost even of his own damnation! But she was too ill;
+science lied like faith; he could not believe that this child, whose
+limbs had been dead for so many years, would indeed return to life. And,
+in the bewildered doubt into which he again relapsed, his bleeding heart
+clamoured yet more loudly, ever and ever repeating with the delirious
+crowd: “Lord, son of David, heal our sick!--Lord, son of David, heal our
+sick!”
+
+At that moment a tumult arose agitating one and all. People shuddered,
+faces were turned and raised. It was the cross of the four-o’clock
+procession, a little behind time that day, appearing from beneath one of
+the arches of the monumental gradient way. There was such applause and
+such violent, instinctive pushing that Berthaud, waving his arms,
+commanded the bearers to thrust the crowd back by pulling strongly on the
+cords. Overpowered for a moment, the bearers had to throw themselves
+backward with sore hands; however, they ended by somewhat enlarging the
+reserved path, along which the procession was then able to slowly wend
+its way. At the head came a superb beadle, all blue and gold, followed by
+the processional cross, a tall cross shining like a star. Then followed
+the delegations of the different pilgrimages with their banners,
+standards of velvet and satin, embroidered with metal and bright silk,
+adorned with painted figures, and bearing the names of towns: Versailles,
+Rheims, Orleans, Poitiers, and Toulouse. One, which was quite white,
+magnificently rich, displayed in red letters the inscription “Association
+of Catholic Working Men’s Clubs.” Then came the clergy, two or three
+hundred priests in simple cassocks, about a hundred in surplices, and
+some fifty clothed in golden chasubles, effulgent like stars. They all
+carried lighted candles, and sang the “Laudate Sion Salvatorem” in full
+voices. And then the canopy appeared in royal pomp, a canopy of purple
+silk, braided with gold, and upheld by four ecclesiastics, who, it could
+be seen, had been selected from among the most robust. Beneath it,
+between two other priests who assisted him, was Abbé Judaine, vigorously
+clasping the Blessed Sacrament with both hands, as Berthaud had
+recommended him to do; and the somewhat uneasy glances that he cast on
+the encroaching crowd right and left showed how anxious he was that no
+injury should befall the heavy divine monstrance, whose weight was
+already straining his wrists. When the slanting sun fell upon him in
+front, the monstrance itself looked like another sun. Choir-boys meantime
+were swinging censers in the blinding glow which gave splendour to the
+entire procession; and, finally, in the rear, there was a confused mass
+of pilgrims, a flock-like tramping of believers and sightseers all
+aflame, hurrying along, and blocking the track with their ever-rolling
+waves.
+
+Father Massias had returned to the pulpit a moment previously; and this
+time he had devised another pious exercise. After the burning cries of
+faith, hope, and love that he threw forth, he all at once commanded
+absolute silence, in order that one and all might, with closed lips,
+speak to God in secret for a few minutes. These sudden spells of silence
+falling upon the vast crowd, these minutes of mute prayer, in which all
+souls unbosomed their secrets, were deeply, wonderfully impressive. Their
+solemnity became formidable; you heard desire, the immense desire for
+life, winging its flight on high. Then Father Massias invited the sick
+alone to speak, to implore God to grant them what they asked of His
+almighty power. And, in response, came a pitiful lamentation, hundreds of
+tremulous, broken voices rising amidst a concert of sobs. “Lord Jesus, if
+it please Thee, Thou canst cure me!”--“Lord Jesus take pity on Thy child,
+who is dying of love!”--“Lord Jesus, grant that I may see, grant that I
+may hear, grant that I may walk!” And, all at once, the shrill voice of a
+little girl, light and vivacious as the notes of a flute, rose above the
+universal sob, repeating in the distance: “Save the others, save the
+others, Lord Jesus!” Tears streamed from every eye; these supplications
+upset all hearts, threw the hardest into the frenzy of charity, into a
+sublime disorder which would have impelled them to open their breasts
+with both hands, if by doing so they could have given their neighbours
+their health and youth. And then Father Massias, not letting this
+enthusiasm abate, resumed his cries, and again lashed the delirious crowd
+with them; while Father Fourcade himself sobbed on one of the steps of
+the pulpit, raising his streaming face to heaven as though to command God
+to descend on earth.
+
+But the procession had arrived; the delegations, the priests, had ranged
+themselves on the right and left; and, when the canopy entered the space
+reserved to the sick in front of the Grotto, when the sufferers perceived
+Jesus the Host, the Blessed Sacrament, shining like a sun, in the hands
+of Abbé Judaine, it became impossible to direct the prayers, all voices
+mingled together, and all will was borne away by vertigo. The cries,
+calls, entreaties broke, lapsing into groans. Human forms rose from
+pallets of suffering; trembling arms were stretched forth; clenched hands
+seemingly desired to clutch at the miracle on the way. “Lord Jesus, save
+us, for we perish!”--“Lord Jesus, we worship Thee; heal us!”--“Lord
+Jesus, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God; heal us!” Thrice
+did the despairing, exasperated voices give vent to the supreme
+lamentation in a clamour which rushed up to Heaven; and the tears
+redoubled, flooding all the burning faces which desire transformed. At
+one moment, the delirium became so great, the instinctive leap toward the
+Blessed Sacrament seemed so irresistible, that Berthaud placed the
+bearers who were there in a chain about it. This was the extreme
+protective manœuvre, a hedge of bearers drawn up on either side of the
+canopy, each placing an arm firmly round his neighbour’s neck, so as to
+establish a sort of living wall. Not the smallest aperture was left in
+it; nothing whatever could pass. Still, these human barriers staggered
+under the pressure of the unfortunate creatures who hungered for life,
+who wished to touch, to kiss Jesus; and, oscillating and recoiling, the
+bearers were at last thrust against the canopy they were defending, and
+the canopy itself began swaying among the crowd, ever in danger of being
+swept away like some holy bark in peril of being wrecked.
+
+Then, at the very climax of this holy frenzy, the miracles began amidst
+supplications and sobs, as when the heavens open during a storm, and a
+thunderbolt falls on earth. A paralytic woman rose and cast aside her
+crutches. There was a piercing yell, and another woman appeared erect on
+her mattress, wrapped in a white blanket as in a winding sheet; and
+people said it was a half-dead consumptive who had thus been
+resuscitated. Then grace fell upon two others in quick succession: a
+blind woman suddenly perceived the Grotto in a flame; a dumb woman fell
+on both her knees, thanking the Blessed Virgin in a loud, clear voice.
+And all in a like way prostrated themselves at the feet of Our Lady of
+Lourdes, distracted with joy and gratitude.
+
+But Pierre had not taken his eyes off Marie, and he was overcome with
+tender emotion at what he saw. The sufferer’s eyes were still
+expressionless, but they had dilated, while her poor, pale face, with its
+heavy mask, was contracted as if she were suffering frightfully. She did
+not speak in her despair; she undoubtedly thought that she was again in
+the clutches of her ailment. But all at once, when the Blessed Sacrament
+passed by, and she saw the star-like monstrance sparkling in the sun, a
+sensation of dizziness came over her. She imagined herself struck by
+lightning. Her eyes caught fire from the glare which flashed upon her,
+and at last regained their flame of life, shining out like stars. And
+under the influence of a wave of blood her face became animated, suffused
+with colour, beaming with a smile of joy and health. And, suddenly,
+Pierre saw her rise, stand upright in her little car, staggering,
+stuttering, and finding in her mind only these caressing words: “Oh, my
+friend! Oh, my friend!”
+
+He hurriedly drew near in order to support her. But she drove him back
+with a gesture. She was regaining strength, looking so touching, so
+beautiful, in the little black woollen gown and slippers which she always
+wore; tall and slender, too, and crowned as with a halo of gold by her
+beautiful flaxen hair, which was covered with a simple piece of lace. The
+whole of her virgin form was quivering as if some powerful fermentation
+had regenerated her. First of all, it was her legs that were relieved of
+the chains that bound them; and then, while she felt the spirit of
+life--the life of woman, wife, and mother--within her, there came a final
+agony, an enormous weight that rose to her very throat. Only, this time,
+it did not linger there, did not stifle her, but burst from her open
+mouth, and flew away in a cry of sublime joy.
+
+“I am cured!--I am cured!”
+
+Then there was an extraordinary sight. The blanket lay at her feet, she
+was triumphant, she had a superb, glowing face. And her cry of cure had
+resounded with such rapturous delight that the entire crowd was
+distracted by it. She had become the sole point of interest, the others
+saw none but her, erect, grown so radiant and so divine.
+
+“I am cured!--I am cured!”
+
+Pierre, at the violent shock his heart had received, had begun to weep.
+Indeed, tears glistened again in every eye. Amidst exclamations of
+gratitude and praise, frantic enthusiasm passed from one to another,
+throwing the thousands of pilgrims who pressed forward to see into a
+state of violent emotion. Applause broke out, a fury of applause, whose
+thunder rolled from one to the other end of the valley.
+
+However, Father Fourcade began waving his arms, and Father Massias was at
+last able to make himself heard from the pulpit: “God has visited us, my
+dear brothers, my dear sisters!” said he. “_Magnificat anima mea
+Dominum_, My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in
+God my Saviour.”
+
+And then all the voices, the thousands of voices, began the chant of
+adoration and gratitude. The procession found itself at a stand-still.
+Abbé Judaine had been able to reach the Grotto with the monstrance, but
+he patiently remained there before giving the Benediction. The canopy was
+awaiting him outside the railings, surrounded by priests in surplices and
+chasubles, all a glitter of white and gold in the rays of the setting
+sun.
+
+Marie, however, had knelt down, sobbing; and, whilst the canticle lasted,
+a burning prayer of faith and love ascended from her whole being. But the
+crowd wanted to see her walk, delighted women called to her, a group
+surrounded her, and swept her towards the Verification Office, so that
+the miracle might be proved true, as patent as the very light of the sun.
+Her box was forgotten, Pierre followed her, while she, stammering and
+hesitating, she who for seven years had not used her legs, advanced with
+adorable awkwardness, the uneasy, charming gait of a little child making
+its first steps; and it was so affecting, so delicious, that the young
+priest thought of nothing but the immense happiness of seeing her thus
+return to her childhood. Ah! the dear friend of infancy, the dear
+tenderness of long ago, so she would at last be the beautiful and
+charming woman that she had promised to be as a young girl when, in the
+little garden at Neuilly, she had looked so gay and pretty beneath the
+tall trees flecked with sunlight!
+
+The crowd continued to applaud her furiously, a huge wave of people
+accompanied her; and all remained awaiting her egress, swarming in a
+fever before the door, when she had entered the office, whither Pierre
+only was admitted with her.
+
+That particular afternoon there were few people at the Verification
+Office. The small square room, with its hot wooden walls and rudimentary
+furniture, its rush-bottomed chairs, and its two tables of unequal
+height, contained, apart from the usual staff only some five or six
+doctors, seated and silent. At the tables were the inspector of the
+piscinas and two young Abbés making entries in the registers, and
+consulting the sets of documents; while Father Dargeles, at one end,
+wrote a paragraph for his newspaper. And, as it happened, Doctor Bonamy
+was just then examining Elise Rouquet, who, for the third time, had come
+to have the increasing cicatrisation of her sore certified.
+
+“Anyhow, gentlemen,” exclaimed the doctor, “have you ever seen a lupus
+heal in this way so rapidly? I am aware that a new work has appeared on
+faith healing in which it is stated that certain sores may have a nervous
+origin. Only that is by no means proved in the case of lupus, and I defy
+a committee of doctors to assemble and explain mademoiselle’s cure by
+ordinary means.”
+
+He paused, and turning towards Father Dargeles, inquired: “Have you
+noted, Father, that the suppuration has completely disappeared, and that
+the skin is resuming its natural colour?”
+
+However, he did not wait for the reply, for just then Marie entered,
+followed by Pierre; and by her beaming radiance he immediately guessed
+what good-fortune was befalling him. She looked superb, admirably fitted
+to transport and convert the multitude. He therefore promptly dismissed
+Elise Rouquet, inquired the new arrival’s name, and asked one of the
+young priests to look for her papers. Then, as she slightly staggered, he
+wished to seat her in the arm-chair.
+
+“Oh no! oh no!” she exclaimed. “I am so happy to be able to use my legs!”
+
+Pierre, with a glance, had sought for Doctor Chassaigne, whom he was
+sorry not to see there. He remained on one side, waiting while they
+rummaged in the untidy drawers without being able to place their hands on
+the required papers. “Let’s see,” repeated Dr. Bonamy; “Marie de
+Guersaint, Marie de Guersaint. I have certainly seen that name before.”
+
+At last Raboin discovered the documents classified under a wrong letter;
+and when the doctor had perused the two medical certificates he became
+quite enthusiastic. “Here is something very interesting, gentlemen,” said
+he. “I beg you to listen attentively. This young lady, whom you see
+standing here, was afflicted with a very serious lesion of the marrow.
+And, if one had the least doubt of it, these two certificates would
+suffice to convince the most incredulous, for they are signed by two
+doctors of the Paris faculty, whose names are well known to us all.”
+
+Then he passed the certificates to the doctors present, who read them,
+wagging their heads the while. It was beyond dispute; the medical men who
+had drawn up these documents enjoyed the reputation of being honest and
+clever practitioners.
+
+“Well, gentlemen, if the diagnosis is not disputed--and it cannot be when
+a patient brings us documents of this value--we will now see what change
+has taken place in the young lady’s condition.”
+
+However, before questioning her he turned towards Pierre. “Monsieur
+l’Abbé,” said he, “you came from Paris with Mademoiselle de Guersaint, I
+think. Did you converse with the doctors before your departure?”
+
+The priest shuddered amidst all his great delight.
+
+“I was present at the consultation, monsieur,” he replied.
+
+And again the scene rose up before him. He once more saw the two doctors,
+so serious and rational, and he once more saw Beauclair smiling, while
+his colleagues drew up their certificates, which were identical. And was
+he, Pierre, to reduce these certificates to nothing, reveal the other
+diagnosis, the one that allowed of the cure being explained
+scientifically? The miracle had been predicted, shattered beforehand.
+
+“You will observe, gentlemen,” now resumed Dr. Bonamy, “that the presence
+of the Abbé gives these proofs additional weight. However, mademoiselle
+will now tell us exactly what she felt.”
+
+He had leant over Father Dargeles’s shoulder to impress upon him that he
+must not forget to make Pierre play the part of a witness in the
+narrative.
+
+“_Mon Dieu_! gentlemen, how can I tell you?” exclaimed Marie in a halting
+voice, broken by her surging happiness. “Since yesterday I had felt
+certain that I should be cured. And yet, a little while ago, when the
+pins and needles seized me in the legs again, I was afraid it might only
+be another attack. For an instant I doubted. Then the feeling stopped.
+But it began again as soon as I recommenced praying. Oh! I prayed, I
+prayed with all my soul! I ended by surrendering myself like a child.
+‘Blessed Virgin, Our Lady of Lourdes, do with me as thou wilt,’ I said.
+But the feeling did not cease, it seemed as if my blood were boiling; a
+voice cried to me: ‘Rise! Rise!’ And I felt the miracle fall on me in a
+cracking of all my bones, of all my flesh, as if I had been struck by
+lightning.”
+
+Pierre, very pale, listened to her. Beauclair had positively told him
+that the cure would come like a lightning flash, that under the influence
+of extreme excitement a sudden awakening of will so long somnolent would
+take place within her.
+
+“It was my legs which the Holy Virgin first of all delivered,” she
+continued. “I could well feel that the iron bands which bound them were
+gliding along my skin like broken chains. Then the weight which still
+suffocated me, there, in the left side, began to ascend; and I thought I
+was going to die, it hurt me so. But it passed my chest, it passed my
+throat, and I felt it there in my mouth, and spat it out violently. It
+was all over, I no longer had any pain, it had flown away!”
+
+She had made a gesture expressive of the motion of a night bird beating
+its wings, and, lapsing into silence, stood smiling at Pierre, who was
+bewildered. Beauclair had told him all that beforehand, using almost the
+same words and the same imagery. Point by point, his prognostics were
+realised, there was nothing more in the case than natural phenomena,
+which had been foreseen.
+
+Raboin, however, had followed Marie’s narrative with dilated eyes and the
+passion of a pietist of limited intelligence, ever haunted by the idea of
+hell. “It was the devil,” he cried; “it was the devil that she spat out!”
+
+Doctor Bonamy, who was more wary, made him hold his tongue. And turning
+towards the doctors he said: “Gentlemen, you know that we always avoid
+pronouncing the big word of miracle here. Only here is a fact, and I am
+curious to know how any of you can explain it by natural means. Seven
+years ago this young lady was struck with serious paralysis, evidently
+due to a lesion of the marrow. And that cannot be denied; the
+certificates are there, irrefutable. She could no longer walk, she could
+no longer make a movement without a cry of pain, she had reached that
+extreme state of exhaustion which precedes but by little an unfortunate
+issue. All at once, however, here she rises, walks, laughs, and beams on
+us. The paralysis has completely disappeared, no pain remains, she is as
+well as you and I. Come, gentlemen, approach, examine her, and tell me
+what has happened.”
+
+He triumphed. Not one of the doctors spoke. Two, who were doubtless true
+Catholics, had shown their approval of his speech by their vigorous nods,
+while the others remained motionless, with a constrained air, not caring
+to mix themselves up in the business. However, a little thin man, whose
+eyes shone behind the glasses he was wearing, ended by rising to take a
+closer look at Marie. He caught hold of her hand, examined the pupils of
+her eyes, and merely seemed preoccupied by the air of transfiguration
+which she wore. Then, in a very courteous manner, without even showing a
+desire to discuss the matter, he came back and sat down again.
+
+“The case is beyond science, that is all I can assume,” concluded Doctor
+Bonamy, victoriously. “I will add that we have no convalescence here;
+health is at once restored, full, entire. Observe the young lady. Her
+eyes are bright, her colour is rosy, her physiognomy has recovered its
+lively gaiety. Without doubt, the healing of the tissues will proceed
+somewhat slowly, but one can already say that mademoiselle has been born
+again. Is it not so, Monsieur l’Abbé, you who have seen her so
+frequently; you no longer recognise her, eh?”
+
+“That’s true, that’s true,” stammered Pierre.
+
+And, in fact, she already appeared strong to him, her cheeks full and
+fresh, gaily blooming. But Beauclair had also foreseen this sudden joyful
+change, this straightening and resplendency of her invalid frame, when
+life should re-enter it, with the will to be cured and be happy. Once
+again, however, had Doctor Bonamy leant over Father Dargeles, who was
+finishing his note, a brief but fairly complete account of the affair.
+They exchanged a few words in low tones, consulting together, and the
+doctor ended by saying: “You have witnessed these marvels, Monsieur
+l’Abbé, so you will not refuse to sign the careful report which the
+reverend Father has drawn up for publication in the ‘Journal de la
+Grotte.’”
+
+He--Pierre--sign that page of error and falsehood! A revolt roused him,
+and he was on the point of shouting out the truth. But he felt the weight
+of his cassock on his shoulders; and, above all, Marie’s divine joy
+filled his heart. He was penetrated with deep happiness at seeing her
+saved. Since they had ceased questioning her she had come and leant on
+his arm, and remained smiling at him with eyes full of enthusiasm.
+
+“Oh, my, friend, thank the Blessed Virgin!” she murmured in a low voice.
+“She has been so good to me; I am now so well, so beautiful, so young!
+And how pleased my father, my poor father, will be!”
+
+Then Pierre signed. Everything was collapsing within him, but it was
+enough that she should be saved; he would have thought it sacrilegious to
+interfere with the faith of that child, the great pure faith which had
+healed her.
+
+When Marie reappeared outside the office, the applause began afresh, the
+crowd clapped their hands. It now seemed that the miracle was official.
+However, certain charitable persons, fearing that she might again fatigue
+herself and again require her little car, which she had abandoned before
+the Grotto, had brought it to the office, and when she found it there she
+felt deeply moved. Ah! that box in which she had lived so many years,
+that rolling coffin in which she had sometimes imagined herself buried
+alive, how many tears, how much despair, how many bad days it had
+witnessed! And, all at once, the idea occurred to her that it had so long
+been linked with her sufferings, it ought also to share her triumph. It
+was a sudden inspiration, a kind of holy folly, that made her seize the
+handle.
+
+At that moment the procession passed by, returning from the Grotto, where
+Abbé Judaine had pronounced the Benediction. And thereupon Marie,
+dragging the little car, placed herself behind the canopy. And, in her
+slippers, her head covered with a strip of lace, her bosom heaving, her
+face erect, glowing, and superb, she walked on behind the clergy,
+dragging after her that car of misery, that rolling coffin, in which she
+had endured so much agony. And the crowd which acclaimed her, the frantic
+crowd, followed in her wake.
+
+
+
+
+IV. TRIUMPH--DESPAIR
+
+PIERRE also had followed Marie, and like her was behind the canopy,
+carried along as it were by the blast of glory which made her drag her
+little car along in triumph. Every moment, however, there was so much
+tempestuous pushing that the young priest would assuredly have fallen if
+a rough hand had not upheld him.
+
+“Don’t be alarmed,” said a voice; “give me your arm, otherwise you won’t
+be able to remain on your feet.”
+
+Pierre turned round, and was surprised to recognise Father Massias, who
+had left Father Fourcade in the pulpit in order to accompany the
+procession. An extraordinary fever was sustaining him, throwing him
+forward, as solid as a rock, with eyes glowing like live coals, and an
+excited face covered with perspiration.
+
+“Take care, then!” he again exclaimed; “give me your arm.”
+
+A fresh human wave had almost swept them away. And Pierre now yielded to
+the support of this terrible enthusiast, whom he remembered as a
+fellow-student at the seminary. What a singular meeting it was, and how
+greatly he would have liked to possess that violent faith, that mad
+faith, which was making Massias pant, with his throat full of sobs,
+whilst he continued giving vent to the ardent entreaty “Lord Jesus, heal
+our sick! Lord Jesus, heal our sick!”
+
+There was no cessation of this cry behind the canopy, where there was
+always a crier whose duty it was to accord no respite to the slow
+clemency of Heaven. At times a thick voice full of anguish, and at others
+a shrill and piercing voice, would arise. The Father’s, which was an
+imperious one, was now at last breaking through sheer emotion.
+
+“Lord Jesus, heal our sick! Lord Jesus, heal our sick!”
+
+The rumour of Marie’s wondrous cure, of the miracle whose fame would
+speedily fill all Christendom, had already spread from one to the other
+end of Lourdes; and from this had come the increased vertigo of the
+multitude, the attack of contagious delirium which now caused it to whirl
+and rush toward the Blessed Sacrament like the resistless flux of a
+rising tide. One and all yielded to the desire of beholding the Sacrament
+and touching it, of being cured and becoming happy. The Divinity was
+passing; and now it was not merely a question of ailing beings glowing
+with a desire for life, but a longing for happiness which consumed all
+present and raised them up with bleeding, open hearts and eager hands.
+
+Berthaud, who feared the excesses of this religious adoration, had
+decided to accompany his men. He commanded them, carefully watching over
+the double chain of bearers beside the canopy in order that it might not
+be broken.
+
+“Close your ranks--closer--closer!” he called, “and keep your arms firmly
+linked!”
+
+These young men, chosen from among the most vigorous of the bearers, had
+an extremely difficult duty to discharge. The wall which they formed,
+shoulder to shoulder, with arms linked at the waist and the neck, kept on
+giving way under the involuntary assaults of the throng. Nobody,
+certainly, fancied that he was pushing, but there was constant eddying,
+and deep waves of people rolled towards the procession from afar and
+threatened to submerge it.
+
+When the canopy had reached the middle of the Place du Rosaire, Abbé
+Judaine really thought that he would be unable to go any farther.
+Numerous conflicting currents had set in over the vast expanse, and were
+whirling, assailing him from all sides, so that he had to halt under the
+swaying canopy, which shook like a sail in a sudden squall on the open
+sea. He held the Blessed Sacrament aloft with his numbed hands, each
+moment fearing that a final push would throw him over; for he fully
+realised that the golden monstrance, radiant like a sun, was the one
+passion of all that multitude, the Divinity they demanded to kiss, in
+order that they might lose themselves in it, even though they should
+annihilate it in doing so. Accordingly, while standing there, the priest
+anxiously turned his eyes on Berthaud.
+
+“Let nobody pass!” called the latter to the bearers--“nobody! The orders
+are precise; you hear me?”
+
+Voices, however, were rising in supplication on all sides, wretched
+beings were sobbing with arms outstretched and lips protruding, in the
+wild desire that they might be allowed to approach and kneel at the
+priest’s feet. What divine grace it would be to be thrown upon the ground
+and trampled under foot by the whole procession!* An infirm old man
+displayed his withered hand in the conviction that it would be made sound
+again were he only allowed to touch the monstrance. A dumb woman wildly
+pushed her way through the throng with her broad shoulders, in order that
+she might loosen her tongue by a kiss. Others were shouting, imploring,
+and even clenching their fists in their rage with those cruel men who
+denied cure to their bodily sufferings and their mental wretchedness. The
+orders to keep them back were rigidly enforced, however, for the most
+serious accidents were feared.
+
+ * One is here irresistibly reminded of the car of Juggernaut, and
+ of the Hindoo fanatics throwing themselves beneath its wheels
+ in the belief that they would thus obtain an entrance into
+ Paradise.--Trans.
+
+“Nobody, nobody!” repeated Berthaud; “let nobody whatever pass!”
+
+There was a woman there, however, who touched every heart with
+compassion. Clad in wretched garments, bareheaded, her face wet with
+tears, she was holding in her arms a little boy of ten years or so, whose
+limp, paralysed legs hung down inertly. The lad’s weight was too great
+for one so weak as herself, still she did not seem to feel it. She had
+brought the boy there, and was now entreating the bearers with an
+invincible obstinacy which neither words nor hustling could conquer.
+
+At last, as Abbé Judaine, who felt deeply moved, beckoned to her to
+approach, two of the bearers, in deference to his compassion, drew apart,
+despite all the danger of opening a breach, and the woman then rushed
+forward with her burden, and fell in a heap before the priest. For a
+moment he rested the foot of the monstrance on the child’s head, and the
+mother herself pressed her eager, longing lips to it; and, as they
+started off again, she wished to remain behind the canopy, and followed
+the procession, with streaming hair and panting breast, staggering the
+while under the heavy burden, which was fast exhausting her strength.
+
+They managed, with great difficulty, to cross the remainder of the Place
+du Rosaire, and then the ascent began, the glorious ascent by way of the
+monumental incline; whilst upon high, on the fringe of heaven, the
+Basilica reared its slim spire, whence pealing bells were winging their
+flight, sounding the triumphs of Our Lady of Lourdes. And now it was
+towards an apotheosis that the canopy slowly climbed, towards the lofty
+portal of the high-perched sanctuary which stood open, face to face with
+the Infinite, high above the huge multitude whose waves continued soaring
+across the valley’s squares and avenues. Preceding the processional
+cross, the magnificent beadle, all blue and silver, was already rearing
+the level of the Rosary cupola, the spacious esplanade formed by the roof
+of the lower church, across which the pilgrimage deputations began to
+wind, with their bright-coloured silk and velvet banners waving in the
+ruddy glow of the sunset. Then came the clergy, the priests in snowy
+surplices, and the priests in golden chasubles, likewise shining out like
+a procession of stars. And the censers swung, and the canopy continued
+climbing, without anything of its bearers being seen, so that it seemed
+as though a mysterious power, some troop of invisible angels, were
+carrying it off in this glorious ascension towards the open portal of
+heaven.
+
+A sound of chanting had burst forth; the voices in the procession no
+longer called for the healing of the sick, now that the _cortège_ had
+extricated itself from amidst the crowd. The miracle had been worked, and
+they were celebrating it with the full power of their lungs, amidst the
+pealing of the bells and the quivering gaiety of the atmosphere.
+
+“_Magnificat anima mea Dominum_”--they began. “My soul doth magnify the
+Lord.”
+
+‘Twas the song of gratitude, already chanted at the Grotto, and again
+springing from every heart: “_Et exsultavit spiritus meus in Deo salutari
+meo_.” “And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.”
+
+Meantime it was with increasing, overflowing joy that Marie took part in
+that radiant ascent, by the colossal gradient way, towards the glowing
+Basilica. It seemed to her, as she continued climbing, that she was
+growing stronger and stronger, that her legs, so long lifeless, became
+firmer at each step. The little car which she victoriously dragged behind
+her was like the earthly tenement of her illness, the _inferno_ whence
+the Blessed Virgin had extricated her, and although its handle was making
+her hands sore, she nevertheless wished to pull it up yonder with her, in
+order that she might cast it at last at the feet of the Almighty. No
+obstacle could stay her course, she laughed through the big tears which
+were falling on her cheeks, her bosom was swelling, her demeanour
+becoming warlike. One of her slippers had become unfastened, and the
+strip of lace had fallen from her head to her shoulders. Nevertheless,
+with her lovely fair hair crowning her like a helmet and her face beaming
+brightly, she still marched on and on with such an awakening of will and
+strength that, behind her, you could hear her car leap and rattle over
+the rough slope of the flagstones, as though it had been a mere toy.
+
+Near Marie was Pierre, still leaning on the arm of Father Massias, who
+had not relinquished his hold. Lost amidst the far-spreading emotion, the
+young priest was unable to reflect. Moreover his companion’s sonorous
+voice quite deafened him.
+
+“_Deposuit potentes de sede et exaltavit humiles_.” “He hath put down the
+mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble.”
+
+On Pierre’s other side, the right, Berthaud, who no longer had any cause
+for anxiety, was now also following the canopy. He had given his bearers
+orders to break their chain, and was gazing with an expression of delight
+on the human sea through which the procession had lately passed. The
+higher they ascended the incline, the more did the Place du Rosaire and the
+avenues and paths of the gardens expand below them, black with the
+swarming multitude. It was a bird’s-eye view of a whole nation, an
+ant-hill which ever increased in size, spreading farther and farther
+away. “Look!” Berthaud at last exclaimed to Pierre. “How vast and how
+beautiful it is! Ah! well, the year won’t have been a bad one after all.”
+
+Looking upon Lourdes as a centre of propaganda, where his political
+rancour found satisfaction, he always rejoiced when there was a numerous
+pilgrimage, as in his mind it was bound to prove unpleasant to the
+Government. Ah! thought he, if they had only been able to bring the
+working classes of the towns thither, and create a Catholic democracy.
+“Last year we scarcely reached the figure of two hundred thousand
+pilgrims,” he continued, “but we shall exceed it this year, I hope.” And
+then, with the gay air of the jolly fellow that he was, despite his
+sectarian passions, he added: “Well, ‘pon my word, I was really pleased
+just now when there was such a crush. Things are looking up, I thought,
+things are looking up.”
+
+Pierre, however, was not listening to him; his mind had been struck by
+the grandeur of the spectacle. That multitude, which spread out more and
+more as the procession rose higher and higher above it, that magnificent
+valley which was hollowed out below and ever became more and more
+extensive, displaying afar off its gorgeous horizon of mountains, filled
+him with quivering admiration. His mental trouble was increased by it
+all, and seeking Marie’s glance, he waved his arm to draw her attention
+to the vast circular expanse of country. And his gesture deceived her,
+for in the purely spiritual excitement that possessed her she did not
+behold the material spectacle he pointed at, but thought that he was
+calling earth to witness the prodigious favours which the Blessed Virgin
+had heaped upon them both; for she imagined that he had had his share of
+the miracle, and that in the stroke of grace which had set her erect with
+her flesh healed, he, so near to her that their hearts mingled, had felt
+himself enveloped and raised by the same divine power, his soul saved
+from doubt, conquered by faith once more. How could he have witnessed her
+wondrous cure, indeed, without being convinced? Moreover, she had prayed
+so fervently for him outside the Grotto on the previous night. And now,
+therefore, to her excessive delight, she espied him transfigured like
+herself, weeping and laughing, restored to God again. And this lent
+increased force to her blissful fever; she dragged her little car along
+with unwearying hands, and--as though it were their double cross, her own
+redemption and her friend’s redemption which she was carrying up that
+incline with its resounding flagstones--she would have liked to drag it
+yet farther, for leagues and leagues, ever higher and higher, to the most
+inaccessible summits, to the transplendent threshold of Paradise itself.
+
+“O Pierre, Pierre!” she stammered, “how sweet it is that this great
+happiness should have fallen on us together--yes, together! I prayed for
+it so fervently, and she granted my prayer, and saved you even in saving
+me. Yes, I felt your soul mingling with my own. Tell me that our mutual
+prayers have been granted, tell me that I have won your salvation even as
+you have won mine!”
+
+He understood her mistake and shuddered.
+
+“If you only knew,” she continued, “how great would have been my grief
+had I thus ascended into light alone. Oh! to be chosen without you, to
+soar yonder without you! But with you, Pierre, it is rapturous delight!
+We have been saved together, we shall be happy forever! I feel all
+needful strength for happiness, yes, strength enough to raise the world!”
+
+And in spite of everything, he was obliged to answer her and lie,
+revolting at the idea of spoiling, dimming that great and pure felicity.
+“Yes, yes, be happy, Marie,” he said, “for I am very happy myself, and
+all our sufferings are redeemed.”
+
+But even while he spoke he felt a deep rending within him, as though a
+brutal hatchet-stroke were parting them forever. Amidst their common
+sufferings, she had hitherto remained the little friend of childhood’s
+days, the first artlessly loved woman, whom he knew to be still his own,
+since she could belong to none. But now she was cured, and he remained
+alone in his hell, repeating to himself that she would never more be his!
+This sudden thought so upset him that he averted his eyes, in despair at
+reaping such suffering from the prodigious felicity with which she
+exulted.
+
+However the chant went on, and Father Massias, hearing nothing and seeing
+nothing, absorbed as he was in his glowing gratitude to God, shouted the
+final verse in a thundering voice: “_Sicut locutus est ad patres nostros,
+Abraham, et semini ejus in saecula_.” “As He spake to our fathers, to
+Abraham, and to his seed for ever!”
+
+Yet another incline had to be climbed, yet another effort had to be made
+up that rough acclivity, with its large slippery flagstones. And the
+procession rose yet higher, and the ascent still went on in the full,
+bright light. There came a last turn, and the wheels of Marie’s car
+grated against a granite curb. Then, still higher, still and ever higher,
+did it roll until it finally reached what seemed to be the very fringe of
+heaven.
+
+And all at once the canopy appeared on the summit of the gigantic
+inclined ways, on the stone balcony overlooking the stretch of country
+outside the portal of the Basilica. Abbé Judaine stepped forward holding
+the Blessed Sacrament aloft with both hands. Marie, who had pulled her
+car up the balcony steps, was near him, her heart beating from her
+exertion, her face all aglow amidst the gold of her loosened hair. Then
+all the clergy, the snowy surplices, and the dazzling chasubles ranged
+themselves behind, whilst the banners waved like bunting decking the
+white balustrades. And a solemn minute followed.
+
+From on high there could have been no grander spectacle. First,
+immediately below, there was the multitude, the human sea with its dark
+waves, its heaving billows, now for a moment stilled, amidst which you
+only distinguished the small pale specks of the faces uplifted towards
+the Basilica, in expectation of the Benediction; and as far as the eye
+could reach, from the place du Rosaire to the Gave, along the paths and
+avenues and across the open spaces, even to the old town in the distance;
+those little pale faces multiplied and multiplied, all with lips parted,
+and eyes fixed upon the august heaven was about to open to their gaze.
+
+Then the vast amphitheatre of slopes and hills and mountains surged
+aloft, ascended upon all sides, crests following crests, until they faded
+away in the far blue atmosphere. The numerous convents among the trees on
+the first of the northern slopes, beyond the torrent--those of the
+Carmelites, the Dominicans, the Assumptionists, and the Sisters of
+Nevers--were coloured by a rosy reflection from the fire-like glow of the
+sunset. Then wooded masses rose one above the other, until they reached
+the heights of Le Buala, which were surmounted by the Serre de Julos, in
+its turn capped by the Miramont.
+
+Deep valleys opened on the south, narrow gorges between piles of gigantic
+rocks whose bases were already steeped in lakes of bluish shadow, whilst
+the summits sparkled with the smiling farewell of the sun. The hills of
+Visens upon this side were empurpled, and shewed like a promontory of
+coral, in front of the stagnant lake of the ether, which was bright with
+a sapphire-like transparency. But, on the east, in front of you, the
+horizon again spread out to the very point of intersection of the seven
+valleys. The castle which had formerly guarded them still stood with its
+keep, its lofty walls, its black outlines--the outlines of a fierce
+fortress of feudal time,--upon the rock whose base was watered by the
+Gave; and upon this side of the stern old pile was the new town, looking
+quite gay amidst its gardens, with its swarm of white house-fronts, its
+large hotels, its lodging-houses, and its fine shops, whose windows were
+glowing like live embers; whilst, behind the castle, the discoloured
+roofs of old Lourdes spread out in confusion, in a ruddy light which
+hovered over them like a cloud of dust. At this late hour, when the
+declining luminary was sinking in royal splendour behind the little Gers
+and the big Gers, those two huge ridges of bare rock, spotted with
+patches of short herbage, formed nothing but a neutral, somewhat violet,
+background, as though, indeed, they were two curtains of sober hue drawn
+across the margin of the horizon.
+
+And higher and still higher, in front of this immensity, did Abbé Judaine
+with both hands raise the Blessed Sacrament. He moved it slowly from one
+to the other horizon, causing it to describe a huge sign of the cross
+against the vault of heaven. He saluted the convents, the heights of Le
+Buala, the Serre de Julos, and the Miramont, upon his left; he saluted
+the huge fallen rocks of the dim valleys, and the empurpled hills of
+Visens, on his right; he saluted the new and the old town, the castle
+bathed by the Gave, the big and the little Gers, already drowsy, in front
+of him; and he saluted the woods, the torrents, the mountains, the faint
+chains linking the distant peaks, the whole earth, even beyond the
+visible horizon: Peace upon earth, hope and consolation to mankind! The
+multitude below had quivered beneath that great sign of the cross which
+enveloped it. It seemed as though a divine breath were passing, rolling
+those billows of little pale faces which were as numerous as the waves of
+an ocean. A loud murmur of adoration ascended; all those parted lips
+proclaimed the glory of God when, in the rays of the setting sun, the
+illumined monstrance again shone forth like another sun, a sun of pure
+gold, describing the sign of the cross in streaks of flame upon the
+threshold of the Infinite.
+
+The banners, the clergy, with Abbé Judaine under the canopy, were already
+returning to the Basilica, when Marie, who was also entering it, still
+dragging her car by the handle, was stopped by two ladies, who kissed
+her, weeping. They were Madame de Jonquière and her daughter Raymonde,
+who had come thither to witness the Benediction, and had been told of the
+miracle.
+
+“Ah! my dear child, what happiness!” repeated the lady-hospitaller; “and
+how proud I am to have you in my ward! It is so precious a favour for all
+of us that the Blessed Virgin should have been pleased to select you.”
+
+Raymonde, meanwhile, had kept one of the young girl’s hands in her own.
+“Will you allow me to call you my friend, mademoiselle?” said she. “I
+felt so much pity for you, and I am now so pleased to see you walking, so
+strong and beautiful already. Let me kiss you again. It will bring me
+happiness.”
+
+“Thank you, thank you with all my heart,” Marie stammered amidst her
+rapture. “I am so happy, so very happy!”
+
+“Oh! we will not leave you,” resumed Madame de Jonquière. “You hear me,
+Raymonde? We must follow her, and kneel beside her, and we will take her
+back after the ceremony.”
+
+Thereupon the two ladies joined the _cortège_, and, following the canopy,
+walked beside Pierre and Father Massias, between the rows of chairs which
+the deputations already occupied, to the very centre of the choir. The
+banners alone were allowed on either side of the high altar; but Marie
+advanced to its steps, still dragging her car, whose wheels resounded
+over the flagstones. She had at last brought it to the spot whither the
+sacred madness of her desire had longingly impelled her to drag it. She
+had brought it, indeed, woeful, wretched-looking as it was, into the
+splendour of God’s house, so that it might there testify to the truth of
+the miracle. The threshold had scarcely been crossed when the organs
+burst into a hymn of triumph, the sonorous acclamation of a happy people,
+from amidst which there soon arose a celestial, angelic voice, of joyful
+shrillness and crystalline purity. Abbé Judaine had placed the Blessed
+Sacrament upon the altar, and the crowd was streaming into the nave, each
+taking a seat, installing him or herself in a corner, pending the
+commencement of the ceremony. Marie had at once fallen on her knees
+between Madame de Jonquière and Raymonde, whose eyes were moist with
+tender emotion; whilst Father Massias, exhausted by the extraordinary
+tension of the nerves which had been sustaining him ever since his
+departure from the Grotto, had sunk upon the ground, sobbing, with his
+head between his hands. Behind him Pierre and Berthaud remained standing,
+the latter still busy with his superintendence, his eyes ever on the
+watch, seeing that good order was preserved even during the most violent
+outbursts of emotion.
+
+Then, amidst all his mental confusion, increased by the deafening strains
+of the organ, Pierre raised his head and examined the interior of the
+Basilica. The nave was narrow and lofty, and streaked with bright
+colours, which numerous windows flooded with light. There were scarcely
+any aisles; they were reduced to the proportions of a mere passage
+running between the side-chapels and the clustering columns, and this
+circumstance seemed to increase the slim loftiness of the nave, the
+soaring of the stonework in perpendicular lines of infantile, graceful
+slenderness. A gilded railing, as transparent as lace, closed the choir,
+where the high altar, of white marble richly sculptured, arose in all its
+lavish chasteness. But the feature of the building which astonished you
+was the mass of extraordinary ornamentation which transformed the whole
+of it into an overflowing exhibition of embroidery and jewellery. What
+with all the banners and votive offerings, the perfect river of gifts
+which had flowed into it and remained clinging to its walls in a stream
+of gold and silver, velvet and silk, covering it from top to bottom, it
+was, so to say, the ever-glowing sanctuary of gratitude, whose thousand
+rich adornments seemed to be chanting a perpetual canticle of faith and
+thankfulness.
+
+The banners, in particular, abounded, as innumerable as the leaves of
+trees. Some thirty hung from the vaulted roof, whilst others were
+suspended, like pictures, between the little columns around the
+triforium. And others, again, displayed themselves on the walls, waved in
+the depths of the side-chapels, and encompassed the choir with a heaven
+of silk, satin, and velvet. You could count them by hundreds, and your
+eyes grew weary of admiring them. Many of them were quite celebrated, so
+renowned for their skilful workmanship that talented embroideresses took
+the trouble to come to Lourdes on purpose to examine them. Among these
+were the banner of our Lady of Fourvières, bearing the arms of the city
+of Lyons; the banner of Alsace, of black velvet embroidered with gold;
+the banner of Lorraine, on which you beheld the Virgin casting her cloak
+around two children; and the white and blue banner of Brittany, on which
+bled the sacred heart of Jesus in the midst of a halo. All empires and
+kingdoms of the earth were represented; the most distant lands--Canada,
+Brazil, Chili, Haiti--here had their flags, which, in all piety, were
+being offered as a tribute of homage to the Queen of Heaven.
+
+Then, after the banners, there were other marvels, the thousands and
+thousands of gold and silver hearts which were hanging everywhere,
+glittering on the walls like stars in the heavens. Some were grouped
+together in the form of mystical roses, others described festoons and
+garlands, others, again, climbed up the pillars, surrounded the windows,
+and constellated the deep, dim chapels. Below the triforium somebody had
+had the ingenious idea of employing these hearts to trace in tall letters
+the various words which the Blessed Virgin had addressed to Bernadette;
+and thus, around the nave, there extended a long frieze of words, the
+delight of the infantile minds which busied themselves with spelling
+them. It was a swarming, a prodigious resplendency of hearts, whose
+infinite number deeply impressed you when you thought of all the hands,
+trembling with gratitude, which had offered them. Moreover, the
+adornments comprised many other votive offerings, and some of quite an
+unexpected description. There were bridal wreaths and crosses of honour,
+jewels and photographs, chaplets, and even spurs, in glass cases or
+frames. There were also the epaulets and swords of officers, together
+with a superb sabre, left there in memory of a miraculous conversion.
+
+But all this was not sufficient; other riches, riches of every kind,
+shone out on all sides--marble statues, diadems enriched with brilliants,
+a marvellous carpet designed at Blois and embroidered by ladies of all
+parts of France, and a golden palm with ornaments of enamel, the gift of
+the sovereign pontiff. The lamps suspended from the vaulted roof, some of
+them of massive gold and the most delicate workmanship, were also gifts.
+They were too numerous to be counted, they studded the nave with stars of
+great price. Immediately in front of the tabernacle there was one, a
+masterpiece of chasing, offered by Ireland. Others--one from Lille, one
+from Valence, one from Macao in far-off China--were veritable jewels,
+sparkling with precious stones. And how great was the resplendency when
+the choir’s score of chandeliers was illumined, when the hundreds of
+lamps and the hundreds of candles burned all together, at the great
+evening ceremonies! The whole church then became a conflagration, the
+thousands of gold and silver hearts reflecting all the little flames with
+thousands of fiery scintillations. It was like a huge and wondrous
+brasier; the walls streamed with live flakes of light; you seemed to be
+entering into the blinding glory of Paradise itself; whilst on all sides
+the innumerable banners spread out their silk, their satin, and their
+velvet, embroidered with sanguifluous sacred hearts, victorious saints,
+and Virgins whose kindly smiles engendered miracles.
+
+Ah! how many ceremonies had already displayed their pomp in that
+Basilica! Worship, prayer, chanting, never ceased there. From one end of
+the year to the other incense smoked, organs roared, and kneeling
+multitudes prayed there with their whole souls. Masses, vespers, sermons,
+were continually following one upon another; day by day the religious
+exercises began afresh, and each festival of the Church was celebrated
+with unparalleled magnificence. The least noteworthy anniversary supplied
+a pretext for pompous solemnities. Each pilgrimage was granted its share
+of the dazzling resplendency. It was necessary that those suffering ones
+and those humble ones who had come from such long distances should be
+sent home consoled and enraptured, carrying with them a vision of
+Paradise espied through its opening portals. They beheld the luxurious
+surroundings of the Divinity, and would forever remain enraptured by the
+sight. In the depths of bare, wretched rooms, indeed, by the side of
+humble pallets of suffering throughout all Christendom, a vision of the
+Basilica with its blazing riches continually arose like a vision of
+fortune itself, like a vision of the wealth of that life to be, into
+which the poor would surely some day enter after their long, long misery
+in this terrestrial sphere.
+
+Pierre, however, felt no delight; no consolation, no hope, came to him as
+he gazed upon all the splendour. His frightful feeling of discomfort was
+increasing, all was becoming black within him, with that blackness of the
+tempest which gathers when men’s thoughts and feelings pant and shriek.
+He had felt immense desolation rising in his soul ever since Marie,
+crying that she was healed, had risen from her little car and walked
+along with such strength and fulness of life. Yet he loved her like a
+passionately attached brother, and had experienced unlimited happiness on
+seeing that she no longer suffered. Why, therefore, should her felicity
+bring him such agony? He could now no longer gaze at her, kneeling there,
+radiant amidst her tears, with beauty recovered and increased, without
+his poor heart bleeding as from some mortal wound. Still he wished to
+remain there, and so, averting his eyes, he tried to interest himself in
+Father Massias, who was still shaking with violent sobbing on the
+flagstones, and whose prostration and annihilation, amidst the consuming
+illusion of divine love, he sorely envied. For a moment, moreover, he
+questioned Berthaud, feigning to admire some banner and requesting
+information respecting it.
+
+“Which one?” asked the superintendent of the bearers; “that lace banner
+over there?”
+
+“Yes, that one on the left.”
+
+“Oh! it is a banner offered by Le Puy. The arms are those of Le Puy and
+Lourdes linked together by the Rosary. The lace is so fine that if you
+crumpled the banner up, you could hold it in the hollow of your hand.”
+
+However, Abbé Judaine was now stepping forward; the ceremony was about to
+begin. Again did the organs resound, and again was a canticle chanted,
+whilst, on the altar, the Blessed Sacrament looked like the sovereign
+planet amidst the scintillations of the gold and silver hearts, as
+innumerable as stars. And then Pierre lacked the strength to remain there
+any longer. Since Marie had Madame de Jonquière and Raymonde with her,
+and they would accompany her back, he might surely go off by himself,
+vanish into some shadowy corner, and there, at last, vent his grief. In a
+few words he excused himself, giving his appointment with Doctor
+Chassaigne as a pretext for his departure. However, another fear suddenly
+came to him, that of being unable to leave the building, so densely did
+the serried throng of believers bar the open doorway. But immediately
+afterwards he had an inspiration, and, crossing the sacristy, descended
+into the crypt by the narrow interior stairway.
+
+Deep silence and sepulchral gloom suddenly succeeded to the joyous chants
+and prodigious radiance of the Basilica above. Cut in the rock, the crypt
+formed two narrow passages, parted by a massive block of stone which
+upheld the nave, and conducting to a subterranean chapel under the apse,
+where some little lamps remained burning both day and night. A dim forest
+of pillars rose up there, a mystic terror reigned in that semi-obscurity
+where the mystery ever quivered. The chapel walls remained bare, like the
+very stones of the tomb, in which all men must some day sleep the last
+sleep. And along the passages, against their sides, covered from top to
+bottom with marble votive offerings, you only saw a double row of
+confessionals; for it was here, in the lifeless tranquillity of the
+bowels of the earth, that sins were confessed; and there were priests,
+speaking all languages, to absolve the sinners who came thither from the
+four corners of the world.
+
+At that hour, however, when the multitude was thronging the Basilica
+above, the crypt had become quite deserted. Not a soul, save Pierre’s,
+throbbed there ever so faintly; and he, amidst that deep silence, that
+darkness, that coolness of the grave, fell upon his knees. It was not,
+however, through any need of prayer and worship, but because his whole
+being was giving way beneath his crushing mental torment. He felt a
+torturing longing to be able to see clearly within himself. Ah! why could
+he not plunge even more deeply into the heart of things, reflect,
+understand, and at last calm himself.
+
+And it was a fearful agony that he experienced. He tried to remember all
+the minutes that had gone by since Marie, suddenly springing from her
+pallet of wretchedness, had raised her cry of resurrection. Why had he
+even then, despite his fraternal joy in seeing her erect, felt such an
+awful sensation of discomfort, as though, indeed, the greatest of all
+possible misfortunes had fallen upon him? Was he jealous of the divine
+grace? Did he suffer because the Virgin, whilst healing her, had
+forgotten him, whose soul was so afflicted? He remembered how he had
+granted himself a last delay, fixed a supreme appointment with Faith for
+the moment when the Blessed Sacrament should pass by, were Marie only
+cured; and she was cured, and still he did not believe, and henceforth
+there was no hope, for never, never would he be able to believe. Therein
+lay the bare, bleeding sore. The truth burst upon him with blinding
+cruelty and certainty--she was saved, he was lost. That pretended miracle
+which had restored her to life had, in him, completed the ruin of all
+belief in the supernatural. That which he had, for a moment, dreamed of
+seeking, and perhaps finding, at Lourdes,--naive faith, the happy faith
+of a little child,--was no longer possible, would never bloom again after
+that collapse of the miraculous, that cure which Beauclair had foretold,
+and which had afterwards come to pass, exactly as had been predicted.
+Jealous! No--he was not jealous; but he was ravaged, full of mortal
+sadness at thus remaining all alone in the icy desert of his
+intelligence, regretting the illusion, the lie, the divine love of the
+simpleminded, for which henceforth there was no room in his heart.
+
+A flood of bitterness stifled him, and tears started from his eyes. He
+had slipped on to the flagstones, prostrated by his anguish. And, by
+degrees, he remembered the whole delightful story, from the day when
+Marie, guessing how he was tortured by doubt, had become so passionately
+eager for his conversion, taking hold of his hand in the gloom, retaining
+it in her own, and stammering that she would pray for him--oh! pray for
+him with her whole soul. She forgot herself, she entreated the Blessed
+Virgin to save her friend rather than herself if there were but one grace
+that she could obtain from her Divine Son. Then came another memory, the
+memory of the delightful hours which they had spent together amid the
+dense darkness of the trees during the night procession. There, again,
+they had prayed for one another, mingled one in the other with so ardent
+a desire for mutual happiness that, for a moment, they had attained to
+the very depths of the love which gives and immolates itself. And now
+their long, tear-drenched tenderness, their pure idyl of suffering, was
+ending in this brutal separation; she on her side saved, radiant amidst
+the hosannas of the triumphant Basilica; and he lost, sobbing with
+wretchedness, bowed down in the depths of the dark crypt in an icy,
+grave-like solitude. It was as though he had just lost her again, and
+this time forever and forever.
+
+All at once Pierre felt the sharp stab which this thought dealt his
+heart. He at last understood his pain--a sudden light illumined the
+terrible crisis of woe amidst which he was struggling. He had lost Marie
+for the first time on the day when he had become a priest, saying to
+himself that he might well renounce his manhood since she, stricken in
+her sex by incurable illness, would never be a woman. But behold! she
+_was_ cured. Behold! she _had_ become a woman. She had all at once
+appeared to him very strong, very beautiful, living, and desirable. He,
+who was dead, however, could not become a man again. Never more would he
+be able to raise the tombstone which crushed and imprisoned his flesh.
+She fled away alone, leaving him in the cold grave. The whole wide world
+was opening before her with smiling happiness, with the love which laughs
+in the sunlit paths, with the husband, with children, no doubt. Whereas
+he, buried, as it were to his shoulders, had naught of his body free,
+save his brain, and that remained free, no doubt, in order that he might
+suffer the more. She had still been his so long as she had not belonged
+to another; and if he had been enduring such agony during the past hour,
+it was only through this final rending which, this time, parted her from
+him forever and forever.
+
+Then rage shook Pierre from head to foot. He was tempted to return to the
+Basilica, and cry the truth aloud to Marie. The miracle was a lie! The
+helpful beneficence of an all-powerful Divinity was but so much illusion!
+Nature alone had acted, life had conquered once again. And he would have
+given proofs: he would have shown how life, the only sovereign, worked
+for health amid all the sufferings of this terrestrial sphere. And then
+they would have gone off together; they would have fled far, far away,
+that they might be happy. But a sudden terror took possession of him.
+What! lay hands upon that little spotless soul, kill all belief in it,
+fill it with the ruins which worked such havoc in his own soul? It all at
+once occurred to him that this would be odious sacrilege. He would
+afterwards become horrified with himself, he would look upon himself as
+her murderer were he some day to realise that he was unable to give her a
+happiness equal to that which she would have lost. Perhaps, too, she
+would not believe him. And, moreover, would she ever consent to marry a
+priest who had broken his vows? She who would always retain the sweet and
+never-to be-forgotten memory of how she had been healed in ecstasy! His
+design then appeared to him insane, monstrous, polluting. And his revolt
+rapidly subsided, until he only retained a feeling of infinite weariness,
+a sensation of a burning, incurable wound--the wound of his poor,
+bruised, lacerated heart.
+
+Then, however, amidst his abandonment, the void in which he was whirling,
+a supreme struggle began, filling him again with agony. What should he
+do? His sufferings made a coward of him, and he would have liked to flee,
+so that he might never see Marie again. For he understood very well that
+he would now have to lie to her, since she thought that he was saved like
+herself, converted, healed in soul, even as she had been healed in body.
+She had told him of her joy while dragging her car up the colossal
+gradient way. Oh! to have had that great happiness together, together; to
+have felt their hearts melt and mingle one in the other! And even then he
+had already lied, as he would always be obliged to lie in order that he
+might not spoil her pure and blissful illusion. He let the last
+throbbings of his veins subside, and vowed that he would find sufficient
+strength for the sublime charity of feigning peacefulness of soul, the
+rapture of one who is redeemed. For he wished her to be wholly
+happy--without a regret, without a doubt--in the full serenity of faith,
+convinced that the blessed Virgin had indeed given her consent to their
+purely mystical union. What did his torments matter? Later on, perhaps,
+he might recover possession of himself. Amidst his desolate solitude of
+mind would there not always be a little joy to sustain him, all that joy
+whose consoling falsity he would leave to her?
+
+Several minutes again elapsed, and Pierre, still overwhelmed, remained on
+the flagstones, seeking to calm his fever. He no longer thought, he no
+longer lived; he was a prey to that prostration of the entire being which
+follows upon great crises. But, all at once, he fancied he could hear a
+sound of footsteps, and thereupon he painfully rose to his feet, and
+feigned to be reading the inscriptions graven in the marble votive slabs
+along the walls. He had been mistaken--nobody was there; nevertheless,
+seeking to divert his mind, he continued perusing the inscriptions, at
+first in a mechanical kind of way, and then, little by little, feeling a
+fresh emotion steal over him.
+
+The sight was almost beyond imagination. Faith, love, and gratitude
+displayed themselves in a hundred, a thousand ways on these marble slabs
+with gilded lettering. Some of the inscriptions were so artless as to
+provoke a smile. A colonel had sent a sculptured representation of his
+foot with the words: “Thou hast preserved it; grant that it may serve
+Thee.” Farther on you read the line: “May Her protection extend to the
+glass trade.” And then, by the frankness of certain expressions of
+thanks, you realised of what a strange character the appeals had been.
+“To Mary the Immaculate,” ran one inscription, “from a father of a
+family, in recognition of health restored, a lawsuit won, and advancement
+gained.” However, the memory of these instances faded away amidst the
+chorus of soaring, fervent cries. There was the cry of the lovers: “Paul
+and Anna entreat Our Lady of Lourdes to bless their union.” There was the
+cry of the mothers in various forms: “Gratitude to Mary, who has thrice
+healed my child.”--“Gratitude to Mary for the birth of Antoinette, whom I
+dedicate, like myself and all my kin, to Her.”--“P. D., three years old,
+has been preserved to the love of his parents.” And then came the cry of
+the wives, the cry, too, of the sick restored to health, and of the souls
+restored to happiness: “Protect my husband; grant that my husband may
+enjoy good health.”--“I was crippled in both legs, and now I am
+healed.”--“We came, and now we hope.”--“I prayed, I wept, and She heard
+me.” And there were yet other cries, cries whose veiled glow conjured up
+thoughts of long romances: “Thou didst join us together; protect us, we
+pray Thee.”--“To Mary, for the greatest of all blessings.” And the same
+cries, the same words--gratitude, thankfulness, homage,
+acknowledgment,--occurred again and again, ever with the same passionate
+fervour. All! those hundreds, those thousands of cries which were forever
+graven on that marble, and from the depths of the crypt rose clamorously
+to the Virgin, proclaiming the everlasting devotion of the unhappy beings
+whom she had succoured.
+
+Pierre did not weary of reading them, albeit his mouth was bitter and
+increasing desolation was filling him. So it was only he who had no
+succour to hope for! When so many sufferers were listened to, he alone
+had been unable to make himself heard! And he now began to think of the
+extraordinary number of prayers which must be said at Lourdes from one
+end of the year to the other. He tried to cast them up; those said during
+the days spent at the Grotto and during the nights spent at the Rosary,
+those said at the ceremonies at the Basilica, and those said at the
+sunlight and the starlight processions. But this continual entreaty of
+every second was beyond computation. It seemed as if the faithful were
+determined to weary the ears of the Divinity, determined to extort
+favours and forgiveness by the very multitude, the vast multitude of
+their prayers. The priests said that it was necessary to offer to God the
+acts of expiation which the sins of France required, and that when the
+number of these acts of expiation should be large enough, God would smite
+France no more. What a harsh belief in the necessity of chastisement!
+What a ferocious idea born of the gloomiest pessimism! How evil life must
+be if it were indeed necessary that such imploring cries, such cries of
+physical and moral wretchedness, should ever and ever ascend to Heaven!
+
+In the midst of all his sadness, Pierre felt deep compassion penetrate
+his heart. He was upset by the thought that mankind should be so
+wretched, reduced to such a state of woe, so bare, so weak, so utterly
+forsaken, that it renounced its own reason to place the one sole
+possibility of happiness in the hallucinatory intoxication of dreams.
+Tears once more filled his eyes; he wept for himself and for others, for
+all the poor tortured beings who feel a need of stupefying and numbing
+their pains in order to escape from the realities of the world. He again
+seemed to hear the swarming, kneeling crowd of the Grotto, raising the
+glowing entreaty of its prayer to Heaven, the multitude of twenty and
+thirty thousand souls from whose midst ascended such a fervour of desire
+that you seemed to see it smoking in the sunlight like incense. Then
+another form of the exaltation of faith glowed, beneath the crypt, in the
+Church of the Rosary, where nights were spent in a paradise of rapture,
+amidst the silent delights of the communion, the mute appeals in which
+the whole being pines, burns, and soars aloft. And as though the cries
+raised before the Grotto and the perpetual adoration of the Rosary were
+not sufficient, that clamour of ardent entreaty burst forth afresh on the
+walls of the crypt around him; and here it was eternised in marble, here
+it would continue shrieking the sufferings of humanity even into the
+far-away ages. It was the marble, it was the walls themselves praying,
+seized by that shudder of universal woe which penetrated even the world’s
+stones. And, at last, the prayers ascended yet higher, still higher,
+soared aloft from the radiant Basilica, which was humming and buzzing
+above him, full as it now was of a frantic multitude, whose mighty voice,
+bursting into a canticle of hope, he fancied he could hear through the
+flagstones of the nave. And it finally seemed to him that he was being
+whirled away, transported, as though he were indeed amidst the very
+vibrations of that huge wave of prayer, which, starting from the dust of
+the earth, ascended the tier of superposed churches, spreading from
+tabernacle to tabernacle, and filling even the walls with such pity that
+they sobbed aloud, and that the supreme cry of wretchedness pierced its
+way into heaven with the white spire, the lofty golden cross, above the
+steeple. O Almighty God, O Divinity, Helpful Power, whoever, whatever
+Thou mayst be, take pity upon poor mankind and make human suffering
+cease!
+
+All at once Pierre was dazzled. He had followed the left-hand passage,
+and was coming out into broad daylight, above the inclined ways, and two
+affectionate arms at once caught hold of him and clasped him. It was
+Doctor Chassaigne, whose appointment he had forgotten, and who had been
+waiting there to take him to visit Bernadette’s room and Abbé Peyramale’s
+church. “Oh! what joy must be yours, my child!” exclaimed the good old
+man. “I have just learnt the great news, the extraordinary favour which
+Our Lady of Lourdes has granted to your young friend. Recollect what I
+told you the day before yesterday. I am now at ease--you are saved!”
+
+A last bitterness came to the young priest who was very pale. However, he
+was able to smile, and he gently answered: “Yes, we are saved, we are
+very happy.”
+
+It was the lie beginning; the divine illusion which in a spirit of
+charity he wished to give to others.
+
+And then one more spectacle met Pierre’s eyes. The principal door of the
+Basilica stood wide open, and a red sheet of light from the setting sun
+was enfilading the nave from one to the other end. Everything was flaring
+with the splendour of a conflagration--the gilt railings of the choir,
+the votive offerings of gold and silver, the lamps enriched with precious
+stones, the banners with their bright embroideries, and the swinging
+censers, which seemed like flying jewels. And yonder, in the depths of
+this burning splendour, amidst the snowy surplices and the golden
+chasubles, he recognised Marie, with hair unbound, hair of gold like all
+else, enveloping her in a golden mantle. And the organs burst into a hymn
+of triumph; and the delirious people acclaimed God; and Abbé Judaine, who
+had again just taken the Blessed Sacrament from off the altar, raised it
+aloft and presented it to their gaze for the last time; and radiantly
+magnificent it shone out like a glory amidst the streaming gold of the
+Basilica, whose prodigious triumph all the bells proclaimed in clanging,
+flying peals.
+
+
+
+
+V. CRADLE AND GRAVE
+
+IMMEDIATELY afterwards, as they descended the steps, Doctor Chassaigne
+said to Pierre: “You have just seen the triumph; I will now show you two
+great injustices.”
+
+And he conducted him into the Rue des Petits-Fossés to visit Bernadette’s
+room, that low, dark chamber whence she set out on the day the Blessed
+Virgin appeared to her.
+
+The Rue des Petits-Fossés starts from the former Rue des Bois, now the
+Rue de la Grotte, and crosses the Rue du Tribunal. It is a winding lane,
+slightly sloping and very gloomy. The passers-by are few; it is skirted
+by long walls, wretched-looking houses, with mournful façades in which
+never a window opens. All its gaiety consists in an occasional tree in a
+courtyard.
+
+“Here we are,” at last said the doctor.
+
+At the part where he had halted, the street contracted, becoming very
+narrow, and the house faced the high, grey wall of a barn. Raising their
+heads, both men looked up at the little dwelling, which seemed quite
+lifeless, with its narrow casements and its coarse, violet pargeting,
+displaying the shameful ugliness of poverty. The entrance passage down
+below was quite black; an old light iron gate was all that closed it; and
+there was a step to mount, which in rainy weather was immersed in the
+water of the gutter.
+
+“Go in, my friend, go in,” said the doctor. “You have only to push the
+gate.”
+
+The passage was long, and Pierre kept on feeling the damp wall with his
+hand, for fear of making a false step. It seemed to him as if he were
+descending into a cellar, in deep obscurity, and he could feel a slippery
+soil impregnated with water beneath his feet. Then at the end, in
+obedience to the doctor’s direction, he turned to the right.
+
+“Stoop, or you may hurt yourself,” said M. Chassaigne; “the door is very
+low. There, here we are.”
+
+The door of the room, like the gate in the street, stood wide open, as if
+the place had been carelessly abandoned; and Pierre, who had stopped in
+the middle of the chamber, hesitating, his eyes still full of the bright
+daylight outside, could distinguish absolutely nothing. He had fallen
+into complete darkness, and felt an icy chill about the shoulders similar
+to the sensation that might be caused by a wet towel.
+
+But, little by little, his eyes became accustomed to the dimness. Two
+windows of unequal size opened on to a narrow, interior courtyard, where
+only a greenish light descended, as at the bottom of a well; and to read
+there, in the middle of the day, it would be necessary to have a candle.
+Measuring about fifteen feet by twelve, the room was flagged with large
+uneven stones; while the principal beam and the rafters of the roof,
+which were visible, had darkened with time and assumed a dirty, sooty
+hue. Opposite the door was the chimney, a miserable plaster chimney, with
+a mantelpiece formed of a rotten old plank. There was a sink between this
+chimney and one of the windows. The walls, with their decaying,
+damp-stained plaster falling off by bits, were full of cracks, and
+turning a dirty black like the ceiling. There was no longer any furniture
+there; the room seemed abandoned; you could only catch a glimpse of some
+confused, strange objects, unrecognisable in the heavy obscurity that
+hung about the corners.
+
+After a spell of silence, the doctor exclaimed “Yes, this is the room;
+all came from here. Nothing has been changed, with the exception that the
+furniture has gone. I have tried to picture how it was placed: the beds
+certainly stood against this wall, opposite the windows; there must have
+been three of them at least, for the Soubirouses were seven--the father,
+mother, two boys, and three girls. Think of that! Three beds filling this
+room! Seven persons living in this small space! All of them buried alive,
+without air, without light, almost without bread! What frightful misery!
+What lowly, pity-awaking poverty!”
+
+But he was interrupted. A shadowy form, which Pierre at first took for an
+old woman, entered. It was a priest, however, the curate of the parish,
+who now occupied the house. He was acquainted with the doctor.
+
+“I heard your voice, Monsieur Chassaigne, and came down,” said he. “So
+there you are, showing the room again?”
+
+“Just so, Monsieur l’ Abbé; I took the liberty. It does not inconvenience
+you?”
+
+“Oh! not at all, not at all! Come as often as you please, and bring other
+people.”
+
+He laughed in an engaging manner, and bowed to Pierre, who, astonished by
+this quiet carelessness, observed: “The people who come, however, must
+sometimes plague you?”
+
+The curate in his turn seemed surprised. “Indeed, no! Nobody comes. You
+see the place is scarcely known. Every one remains over there at the
+Grotto. I leave the door open so as not to be worried. But days and days
+often pass without my hearing even the sound of a mouse.”
+
+Pierre’s eyes were becoming more and more accustomed to the obscurity;
+and among the vague, perplexing objects which filled the corners, he
+ended by distinguishing some old barrels, remnants of fowl cages, and
+broken tools, a lot of rubbish such as is swept away and thrown to the
+bottom of cellars. Hanging from the rafters, moreover, were some
+provisions, a salad basket full of eggs, and several bunches of big pink
+onions.
+
+“And, from what I see,” resumed Pierre, with a slight shudder, “you have
+thought that you might make use of the room?”
+
+The curate was beginning to feel uncomfortable. “Of course, that’s it,”
+ said he. “What can one do? The house is so small, I have so little space.
+And then you can’t imagine how damp it is here; it is altogether
+impossible to occupy the room. And so, _mon Dieu_, little by little all
+this has accumulated here by itself, contrary to one’s own desire.”
+
+“It has become a lumber-room,” concluded Pierre.
+
+“Oh no! hardly that. An unoccupied room, and yet in truth, if you insist
+on it, it is a lumber-room!”
+
+His uneasiness was increasing, mingled with a little shame. Doctor
+Chassaigne remained silent and did not interfere; but he smiled, and was
+visibly delighted at his companion’s revolt against human ingratitude.
+Pierre, unable to restrain himself, now continued: “You must excuse me,
+Monsieur l’Abbé, if I insist. But just reflect that you owe everything to
+Bernadette; but for her Lourdes would still be one of the least known
+towns of France. And really it seems to me that out of mere gratitude the
+parish ought to have transformed this wretched room into a chapel.”
+
+“Oh! a chapel!” interrupted the curate. “It is only a question of a human
+creature: the Church could not make her an object of worship.”
+
+“Well, we won’t say a chapel, then; but at all events there ought to be
+some lights and flowers--bouquets of roses constantly renewed by the
+piety of the inhabitants and the pilgrims. In a word, I should like some
+little show of affection--a touching souvenir, a picture of
+Bernadette--something that would delicately indicate that she deserves to
+have a place in all hearts. This forgetfulness and desertion are
+shocking. It is monstrous that so much dirt should have been allowed to
+accumulate!”
+
+The curate, a poor, thoughtless, nervous man, at once adopted Pierre’s
+views: “In reality, you are a thousand times right,” said he; “but I
+myself have no power, I can do nothing. Whenever they ask me for the
+room, to set it to rights, I will give it up and remove my barrels,
+although I really don’t know where else to put them. Only, I repeat, it
+does not depend on me. I can do nothing, nothing at all!” Then, under the
+pretext that he had to go out, he hastened to take leave and run away
+again, saying to Doctor Chassaigne: “Remain, remain as long as you
+please; you are never in my way.”
+
+When the doctor once more found himself alone with Pierre he caught hold
+of both his hands with effusive delight. “Ah, my dear child,” said he,
+“how pleased you have made me! How admirably you expressed to him all
+that has been boiling in my own heart so long! Like you, I thought of
+bringing some roses here every morning. I should have simply had the room
+cleaned, and would have contented myself with placing two large bunches
+of roses on the mantelpiece; for you know that I have long felt deep
+affection for Bernadette, and it seemed to me that those roses would be
+like the very flowering and perfume of her memory. Only--only--” and so
+saying he made a despairing gesture, “only courage failed me. Yes, I say
+courage, no one having yet dared to declare himself openly against the
+Fathers of the Grotto. One hesitates and recoils in the fear of stirring
+up a religious scandal. Fancy what a deplorable racket all this would
+create. And so those who are as indignant as I am are reduced to the
+necessity of holding their tongues--preferring a continuance of silence
+to anything else.” Then, by way of conclusion, he added: “The ingratitude
+and rapacity of man, my dear child, are sad things to see. Each time I
+come into this dim wretchedness, my heart swells and I cannot restrain my
+tears.”
+
+He ceased speaking, and neither of them said another word, both being
+overcome by the extreme melancholy which the surroundings fostered. They
+were steeped in gloom. The dampness made them shudder as they stood there
+amidst the dilapidated walls and the dust of the old rubbish piled upon
+either side. And the idea returned to them that without Bernadette none
+of the prodigies which had made Lourdes a town unique in the world would
+have existed. It was at her voice that the miraculous spring had gushed
+forth, that the Grotto, bright with candles, had opened. Immense works
+were executed, new churches rose from the ground, giant-like causeways
+led up to God. An entire new city was built, as if by enchantment, with
+gardens, walks, quays, bridges, shops, and hotels. And people from the
+uttermost parts of the earth flocked thither in crowds, and the rain of
+millions fell with such force and so abundantly that the young city
+seemed likely to increase indefinitely--to fill the whole valley, from
+one to the other end of the mountains. If Bernadette had been suppressed
+none of those things would have existed, the extraordinary story would
+have relapsed into nothingness, old unknown Lourdes would still have been
+plunged in the sleep of ages at the foot of its castle. Bernadette was
+the sole labourer and creatress; and yet this room, whence she had set
+out on the day she beheld the Virgin, this cradle, indeed, of the miracle
+and of all the marvellous fortune of the town, was disdained, left a prey
+to vermin, good only for a lumber-room, where onions and empty barrels
+were put away.
+
+Then the other side of the question vividly appeared in Pierre’s mind,
+and he again seemed to see the triumph which he had just witnessed, the
+exaltation of the Grotto and Basilica, while Marie, dragging her little
+car, ascended behind the Blessed Sacrament, amidst the clamour of the
+multitude. But the Grotto especially shone out before him. It was no
+longer the wild, rocky cavity before which the child had formerly knelt
+on the deserted bank of the torrent; it was a chapel, transformed and
+enriched, a chapel illumined by a vast number of candles, where nations
+marched past in procession. All the noise, all the brightness, all the
+adoration, all the money, burst forth there in a splendour of constant
+victory. Here, at the cradle, in this dark, icy hole, there was not a
+soul, not a taper, not a hymn, not a flower. Of the infrequent visitors
+who came thither, none knelt or prayed. All that a few tender-hearted
+pilgrims had done in their desire to carry away a souvenir had been to
+reduce to dust, between their fingers, the half-rotten plank serving as a
+mantelshelf. The clergy ignored the existence of this spot of misery,
+which the processions ought to have visited as they might visit a station
+of glory. It was there that the poor child had begun her dream, one cold
+night, lying in bed between her two sisters, and seized with a fit of her
+ailment while the whole family was fast asleep. It was thence, too, that
+she had set out, unconsciously carrying along with her that dream, which
+was again to be born within her in the broad daylight and to flower so
+prettily in a vision such as those of the legends. And no one now
+followed in her footsteps. The manger was forgotten, and left in
+darkness--that manger where had germed the little humble seed which over
+yonder was now yielding such prodigious harvests, reaped by the workmen
+of the last hour amidst the sovereign pomp of ceremonies.
+
+Pierre, whom the great human emotion of the story moved to tears, at last
+summed up his thoughts in three words, saying in a low voice, “It is
+Bethlehem.”
+
+“Yes,” remarked Doctor Chassaigne, in his turn, “it is the wretched
+lodging, the chance refuge, where new religions are born of suffering and
+pity. And at times I ask myself if all is not better thus: if it is not
+better that this room should remain in its actual state of wretchedness
+and abandonment. It seems to me that Bernadette has nothing to lose by
+it, for I love her all the more when I come to spend an hour here.”
+
+He again became silent, and then made a gesture of revolt: “But no, no! I
+cannot forgive it--this ingratitude sets me beside myself. I told you I
+was convinced that Bernadette had freely gone to cloister herself at
+Nevers. But although no one smuggled her away, what a relief it was for
+those whom she had begun to inconvenience here! And they are the same
+men, so anxious to be the absolute masters, who at the present time
+endeavour by all possible means to wrap her memory in silence. Ah! my
+dear child, if I were to tell you all!”
+
+Little by little he spoke out and relieved himself. Those Fathers of the
+Grotto, who showed such greed in trading on the work of Bernadette,
+dreaded her still more now that she was dead than they had done whilst
+she was alive. So long as she had lived, their great terror had assuredly
+been that she might return to Lourdes to claim a portion of the spoil;
+and her humility alone reassured them, for she was in nowise of a
+domineering disposition, and had herself chosen the dim abode of
+renunciation where she was destined to pass away. But at present their
+fears had increased at the idea that a will other than theirs might bring
+the relics of the visionary back to Lourdes; that, thought had, indeed,
+occurred to the municipal council immediately after her death; the town
+had wished to raise a tomb, and there had been talk of opening a
+subscription. The Sisters of Nevers, however, formally refused to give up
+the body, which they said belonged to them. Everyone felt that the
+Sisters were acting under the influence of the Fathers, who were very
+uneasy, and energetically bestirred themselves to prevent by all means in
+their power the return of those venerated ashes, in whose presence at
+Lourdes they foresaw a possible competition with the Grotto itself. Could
+they have imagined some such threatening occurrence as this--a monumental
+tomb in the cemetery, pilgrims proceeding thither in procession, the sick
+feverishly kissing the marble, and miracles being worked there amidst a
+holy fervour? This would have been disastrous rivalry, a certain
+displacement of all the present devotion and prodigies. And the great,
+the sole fear, still and ever returned to them, that of having to divide
+the spoils, of seeing the money go elsewhere should the town, now taught
+by experience, know how to turn the tomb to account.
+
+The Fathers were even credited with a scheme of profound craftiness. They
+were supposed to have the secret idea of reserving Bernadette’s remains
+for themselves; the Sisters of Nevers having simply undertaken to keep it
+for them within the peaceful precincts of their chapel. Only, they were
+waiting, and would not bring it back until the affluence of the pilgrims
+should decrease. What was the use of a solemn return at present, when
+crowds flocked to the place without interruption and in increasing
+numbers? Whereas, when the extraordinary success of Our Lady of Lourdes
+should decline, like everything else in this world, one could imagine
+what a reawakening of faith would attend the solemn, resounding ceremony
+at which Christendom would behold the relics of the chosen one take
+possession of the soil whence she had made so many marvels spring. And
+the miracles would then begin again on the marble of her tomb before the
+Grotto or in the choir of the Basilica.
+
+“You may search,” continued Doctor Chassaigne, “but you won’t find a
+single official picture of Bernadette at Lourdes. Her portrait is sold,
+but it is hung no where, in no sanctuary. It is systematic forgetfulness,
+the same sentiment of covert uneasiness as that which has wrought silence
+and abandonment in this sad chamber where we are. In the same way as they
+are afraid of worship at her tomb, so are they afraid of crowds coming
+and kneeling here, should two candles burn or a couple of bouquets of
+roses bloom upon this chimney. And if a paralytic woman were to rise
+shouting that she was cured, what a scandal would arise, how disturbed
+would be those good traders of the Grotto on seeing their monopoly
+seriously threatened! They are the masters, and the masters they intend
+to remain; they will not part with any portion of the magnificent farm
+that they have acquired and are working. Nevertheless they tremble--yes,
+they tremble at the memory of the workers of the first hour, of that
+little girl who is still so great in death, and for whose huge
+inheritance they burn with such greed that after having sent her to live
+at Nevers, they dare not even bring back her corpse, but leave it
+imprisoned beneath the flagstones of a convent!”
+
+Ah! how wretched was the fate of that poor creature, who had been cut off
+from among the living, and whose corpse in its turn was condemned to
+exile! And how Pierre pitied her, that daughter of misery, who seemed to
+have been chosen only that she might suffer in her life and in her death!
+Even admitting that an unique, persistent will had not compelled her to
+disappear, still guarding her even in her tomb, what a strange succession
+of circumstances there had been--how it seemed as if someone, uneasy at
+the idea of the immense power she might grasp, had jealously sought to
+keep her out of the way! In Pierre’s eyes she remained the chosen one,
+the martyr; and if he could no longer believe, if the history of this
+unfortunate girl sufficed to complete within him the ruin of his faith,
+it none the less upset him in all his brotherly love for mankind by
+revealing a new religion to him, the only one which might still fill his
+heart, the religion of life, of human sorrow.
+
+Just then, before leaving the room, Doctor Chassaigne exclaimed: “And
+it’s here that one must believe, my dear child. Do you see this obscure
+hole, do you think of the resplendent Grotto, of the triumphant Basilica,
+of the town built, of the world created, the crowds that flock to
+Lourdes! And if Bernadette was only hallucinated, only an idiot, would
+not the outcome be more astonishing, more inexplicable still? What! An
+idiot’s dream would have sufficed to stir up nations like this! No! no!
+The Divine breath which alone can explain prodigies passed here.”
+
+Pierre was on the point of hastily replying “Yes!” It was true, a breath
+had passed there, the sob of sorrow, the inextinguishable yearning
+towards the Infinite of hope. If the dream of a suffering child had
+sufficed to attract multitudes, to bring about a rain of millions and
+raise a new city from the soil, was it not because this dream in a
+measure appeased the hunger of poor mankind, its insatiable need of being
+deceived and consoled? She had once more opened the Unknown, doubtless at
+a favourable moment both socially and historically; and the crowds had
+rushed towards it. Oh! to take refuge in mystery, when reality is so
+hard, to abandon oneself to the miraculous, since cruel nature seems
+merely one long injustice! But although you may organise the Unknown,
+reduce it to dogmas, make revealed religions of it, there is never
+anything at the bottom of it beyond the appeal of suffering, the cry of
+life, demanding health, joy, and fraternal happiness, and ready to accept
+them in another world if they cannot be obtained on earth. What use is it
+to believe in dogmas? Does it not suffice to weep and love?
+
+Pierre, however, did not discuss the question. He withheld the answer
+that was on his lips, convinced, moreover, that the eternal need of the
+supernatural would cause eternal faith to abide among sorrowing mankind.
+The miraculous, which could not be verified, must be a food necessary to
+human despair. Besides, had he not vowed in all charity that he would not
+wound anyone with his doubts?
+
+“What a prodigy, isn’t it?” repeated the doctor.
+
+“Certainly,” Pierre ended by answering. “The whole human drama has been
+played, all the unknown forces have acted in this poor room, so damp and
+dark.”
+
+They remained there a few minutes more in silence; they walked round the
+walls, raised their eyes toward the smoky ceiling, and cast a final
+glance at the narrow, greenish yard. Truly it was a heart-rending sight,
+this poverty of the cobweb level, with its dirty old barrels, its
+worn-out tools, its refuse of all kinds rotting in the corners in heaps.
+And without adding a word they at last slowly retired, feeling extremely
+sad.
+
+It was only in the street that Doctor Chassaigne seemed to awaken. He
+gave a slight shudder and hastened his steps, saying: “It is not
+finished, my dear child; follow me. We are now going to look at the other
+great iniquity.” He referred to Abbé Peyramale and his church.
+
+They crossed the Place du Porche and turned into the Rue Saint Pierre; a
+few minutes would suffice them. But their conversation had again fallen
+on the Fathers of the Grotto, on the terrible, merciless war waged by
+Father Sempé against the former Curé of Lourdes. The latter had been
+vanquished, and had died in consequence, overcome by feelings of
+frightful bitterness; and, after thus killing him by grief, they had
+completed the destruction of his church, which he had left unfinished,
+without a roof, open to the wind and to the rain. With what a glorious
+dream had that monumental edifice filled the last year of the Curé’s
+life! Since he had been dispossessed of the Grotto, driven from the work
+of Our Lady of Lourdes, of which he, with Bernadette, had been the first
+artisan, his church had become his revenge, his protestation, his own
+share of the glory, the House of the Lord where he would triumph in his
+sacred vestments, and whence he would conduct endless processions in
+compliance with the formal desire of the Blessed Virgin. Man of authority
+and domination as he was at bottom, a pastor of the multitude, a builder
+of temples, he experienced a restless delight in hurrying on the work,
+with the lack of foresight of an eager man who did not allow indebtedness
+to trouble him, but was perfectly contented so long as he always had a
+swarm of workmen busy on the scaffoldings. And thus he saw his church
+rise up, and pictured it finished, one bright summer morning, all new in
+the rising sun.
+
+Ah! that vision constantly evoked gave him courage for the struggle,
+amidst the underhand, murderous designs by which he felt himself to be
+enveloped. His church, towering above the vast square, at last rose in
+all its colossal majesty. He had decided that it should be in the
+Romanesque style, very large, very simple, its nave nearly three hundred
+feet long, its steeple four hundred and sixty feet high. It shone out
+resplendently in the clear sunlight, freed on the previous day of the
+last scaffolding, and looking quite smart in its newness, with its broad
+courses of stone disposed with perfect regularity. And, in thought, he
+sauntered around it, charmed with its nudity, its stupendous candour, its
+chasteness recalling that of a virgin child, for there was not a piece of
+sculpture, not an ornament that would have uselessly loaded it. The roofs
+of the nave, transept, and apse were of equal height above the
+entablature, which was decorated with simple mouldings. In the same way
+the apertures in the aisles and nave had no other adornments than
+archivaults with mouldings, rising above the piers. He stopped in thought
+before the great coloured glass windows of the transept, whose roses were
+sparkling; and passing round the building he skirted the semicircular
+apse against which stood the vestry building with its two rows of little
+windows; and then he returned, never tiring of his contemplation of that
+regal ordonnance, those great lines standing out against the blue sky,
+those superposed roofs, that enormous mass of stone, whose solidity
+promised to defy centuries. But, when he closed his eyes he, above all
+else, conjured up, with rapturous pride, a vision of the façade and
+steeple; down below, the three portals, the roofs of the two lateral ones
+forming terraces, while from the central one, in the very middle of the
+façade, the steeple boldly sprang. Here again columns resting on piers
+supported archivaults with simple mouldings. Against the gable, at a
+point where there was a pinnacle, and between the two lofty windows
+lighting the nave, was a statue of Our Lady of Lourdes under a canopy. Up
+above, were other bays with freshly painted luffer-boards. Buttresses
+started from the ground at the four corners of the steeple-base, becoming
+less and less massive from storey to storey, till they reached the spire,
+a bold, tapering spire in stone, flanked by four turrets and adorned with
+pinnacles, and soaring upward till it vanished in the sky. And to the
+parish priest of Lourdes it seemed as if it were his own fervent soul
+which had grown and flown aloft with this spire, to testify to his faith
+throughout the ages, there on high, quite close to God.
+
+At other times another vision delighted him still more. He thought he
+could see the inside of his church on the day of the first solemn mass he
+would perform there. The coloured windows threw flashes of fire brilliant
+like precious stones; the twelve chapels, the aisles, were beaming with
+lighted candles. And he was at the high altar of marble and gold; and the
+fourteen columns of the nave in single blocks of Pyrenean marble,
+magnificent marble purchased with money that had come from the four
+corners of Christendom, rose up supporting the vaulted roof, while the
+sonorous voices of the organs filled the whole building with a hymn of
+joy. A multitude of the faithful was gathered there, kneeling on the
+flags in front of the choir, which was screened by ironwork as delicate
+as lace, and covered with admirably carved wood. The pulpit, the regal
+present of a great lady, was a marvel of art cut in massive oak. The
+baptismal fonts had been hewn out of hard stone by an artist of great
+talent. Pictures by masters ornamented the walls. Crosses, pyxes,
+precious monstrances, sacred vestments, similar to suns, were piled up in
+the vestry cupboards. And what a dream it was to be the pontiff of such a
+temple, to reign there after having erected it with passion, to bless the
+crowds who hastened to it from the entire earth, while the flying peals
+from the steeple told the Grotto and Basilica that they had over there,
+in old Lourdes, a rival, a victorious sister, in whose great nave God
+triumphed also!
+
+After following the Rue Saint Pierre for a moment, Doctor Chassaigne and
+his companion turned into the little Rue de Langelle.
+
+“We are coming to it,” said the doctor. But though Pierre looked around
+him he could see no church. There were merely some wretched hovels, a
+whole district of poverty, littered with foul buildings. At length,
+however, at the bottom of a blind alley, he perceived a remnant of the
+half-rotten palings which still surrounded the vast square site bordered
+by the Rue Saint Pierre, the Rue de Bagnères, the Rue de Langelle, and
+the Rue des Jardins.
+
+“We must turn to the left,” continued the doctor, who had entered a
+narrow passage among the rubbish. “Here we are!”
+
+And the ruin suddenly appeared amidst the ugliness and wretchedness that
+masked it.
+
+The whole great carcase of the nave and the aisles, the transept and the
+apse was standing. The walls rose on all sides to the point where the
+vaulting would have begun. You entered as into a real church, you could
+walk about at ease, identifying all the usual parts of an edifice of this
+description. Only when you raised your eyes you saw the sky; the roofs
+were wanting, the rain could fall and the wind blow there freely. Some
+fifteen years previously the works had been abandoned, and things had
+remained in the same state as the last workman had left them. What struck
+you first of all were the ten pillars of the nave and the four pillars of
+the choir, those magnificent columns of Pyrenean marble, each of a single
+block, which had been covered with a casing of planks in order to protect
+them from damage. The bases and capitals were still in the rough,
+awaiting the sculptors. And these isolated columns, thus cased in wood,
+had a mournful aspect indeed. Moreover, a dismal sensation filled you at
+sight of the whole gaping enclosure, where grass had sprung up all over
+the ravaged, bumpy soil of the aisles and the nave, a thick cemetery
+grass, through which the women of the neighbourhood had ended by making
+paths. They came in to spread out their washing there. And even now a
+collection of poor people’s washing--thick sheets, shirts in shreds, and
+babies’ swaddling clothes--was fast drying in the last rays of the sun,
+which glided in through the broad, empty bays.
+
+Slowly, without speaking, Pierre and Doctor Chassaigne walked round the
+inside of the church. The ten chapels of the aisles formed a species of
+compartments full of rubbish and remnants. The ground of the choir had
+been cemented, doubtless to protect the crypt below against
+infiltrations; but unfortunately the vaults must be sinking; there was a
+hollow there which the storm of the previous night had transformed into a
+little lake. However, it was these portions of the transept and the apse
+which had the least suffered. Not a stone had moved; the great central
+rose windows above the triforium seemed to be awaiting their coloured
+glass, while some thick planks, forgotten atop of the walls of the apse,
+might have made anyone think that the workmen would begin covering it the
+next day. But, when Pierre and the doctor had retraced their steps, and
+went out to look at the façade, the lamentable woefulness of the young
+ruin was displayed to their gaze. On this side, indeed, the works had not
+been carried forward to anything like the same extent: the porch with its
+three portals alone was built, and fifteen years of abandonment had
+sufficed for the winter weather to eat into the sculptures, the small
+columns and the archivaults, with a really singular destructive effect,
+as though the stones, deeply penetrated, destroyed, had melted away
+beneath tears. The heart grieved at the sight of the decay which had
+attacked the work before it was even finished. Not yet to be, and
+nevertheless to crumble away in this fashion under the sky! To be
+arrested in one’s colossal growth, and simply strew the weeds with ruins!
+
+They returned to the nave, and were overcome by the frightful sadness
+which this assassination of a monument provoked. The spacious plot of
+waste ground inside was littered with the remains of scaffoldings, which
+had been pulled down when half rotten, in fear lest their fall might
+crush people; and everywhere amidst the tall grass were boards, put-logs,
+moulds for arches, mingled with bundles of old cord eaten away by damp.
+There was also the long narrow carcase of a crane rising up like a
+gibbet. Spade-handles, pieces of broken wheelbarrows, and heaps of
+greenish bricks, speckled with moss and wild convolvuli in bloom, were
+still lying among the forgotten materials. In the beds of nettles you
+here and there distinguished the rails of a little railway laid down for
+the trucks, one of which was lying overturned in a corner. But the
+saddest sight in all this death of things was certainly the portable
+engine which had remained in the shed that sheltered it. For fifteen
+years it had been standing there cold and lifeless. A part of the roof of
+the shed had ended by falling in upon it, and now the rain drenched it at
+every shower. A bit of the leather harness by which the crane was worked
+hung down, and seemed to bind the engine like a thread of some gigantic
+spider’s web. And its metal-work, its steel and copper, was also
+decaying, as if rusted by lichens, covered with the vegetation of old
+age, whose yellowish patches made it look like a very ancient,
+grass-grown machine which the winters had preyed upon. This lifeless
+engine, this cold engine with its empty firebox and its silent boiler,
+was like the very soul of the departed labour vainly awaiting the advent
+of some great charitable heart, whose coming through the eglantine and
+the brambles would awaken this sleeping church in the wood from its heavy
+slumber of ruin.
+
+At last Doctor Chassaigne spoke: “Ah!” he said, “when one thinks that
+fifty thousand francs would have sufficed to prevent such a disaster!
+With fifty thousand francs the roof could have been put on, the heavy
+work would have been saved, and one could have waited patiently. But they
+wanted to kill the work just as they had killed the man.” With a gesture
+he designated the Fathers of the Grotto, whom he avoided naming. “And to
+think,” he continued, “that their annual receipts are eight hundred
+thousand francs. However, they prefer to send presents to Rome to
+propitiate powerful friends there.”
+
+In spite of himself, he was again opening hostilities against the
+adversaries of Curé Peyramale. The whole story caused a holy anger of
+justice to haunt him. Face to face with those lamentable ruins, he
+returned to the facts--the enthusiastic Curé starting on the building of
+his beloved church, and getting deeper and deeper into debt, whilst
+Father Sempé, ever on the lookout, took advantage of each of his
+mistakes, discrediting him with the Bishop, arresting the flow of
+offerings, and finally stopping the works. Then, after the conquered man
+was dead, had come interminable lawsuits, lawsuits lasting fifteen years,
+which gave the winters time to devour the building. And now it was in
+such a woeful state, and the debt had risen to such an enormous figure,
+that all seemed over. The slow death, the death of the stones, was
+becoming irrevocable. The portable engine beneath its tumbling shed would
+fall to pieces, pounded by the rain and eaten away by the moss.
+
+“I know very well that they chant victory,” resumed the doctor; “that
+they alone remain. It is just what they wanted--to be the absolute
+masters, to have all the power, all the money for themselves alone. I may
+tell you that their terror of competition has even made them intrigue
+against the religious Orders that have attempted to come to Lourdes.
+Jesuits, Dominicans, Benedictines, Capuchins, and Carmelites have made
+applications at various times, and the Fathers of the Grotto have always
+succeeded in keeping them away. They only tolerate the female Orders, and
+will only have one flock. And the town belongs to them; they have opened
+shop there, and sell God there wholesale and retail!”
+
+Walking slowly, he had while speaking returned to the middle of the nave,
+amidst the ruins, and with a sweeping wave of the arm he pointed to all
+the devastation surrounding him. “Look at this sadness, this frightful
+wretchedness! Over yonder the Rosary and Basilica cost them three
+millions of francs.”*
+
+ * About 580,000 dollars.
+
+Then, as in Bernadette’s cold, dark room, Pierre saw the Basilica rise
+before him, radiant in its triumph. It was not here that you found the
+realisation of the dream of Curé Peyramale, officiating and blessing
+kneeling multitudes while the organs resounded joyfully. The Basilica,
+over yonder, appeared, vibrating with the pealing of its bells, clamorous
+with the superhuman joy of an accomplished miracle, all sparkling with
+its countless lights, its banners, its lamps, its hearts of silver and
+gold, its clergy attired in gold, and its monstrance akin to a golden
+star. It flamed in the setting sun, it touched the heavens with its
+spire, amidst the soaring of the milliards of prayers which caused its
+walls to quiver. Here, however, was the church that had died before being
+born, the church placed under interdict by a mandamus of the Bishop, the
+church falling into dust, and open to the four winds of heaven. Each
+storm carried away a little more of the stones, big flies buzzed all
+alone among the nettles which had invaded the nave; and there were no
+other devotees than the poor women of the neighbourhood, who came thither
+to turn their sorry linen, spread upon the grass.
+
+It seemed amidst the mournful silence as though a low voice were sobbing,
+perhaps the voice of the marble columns weeping over their useless beauty
+under their wooden shirts. At times birds would fly across the deserted
+apse uttering a shrill cry. Bands of enormous rats which had taken refuge
+under bits of the lowered scaffoldings would fight, and bite, and bound
+out of their holes in a gallop of terror. And nothing could have been more
+heart-rending than the sight of this pre-determined ruin, face to face
+with its triumphant rival, the Basilica, which beamed with gold.
+
+Again Doctor Chassaigne curtly said, “Come.”
+
+They left the church, and following the left aisle, reached a door,
+roughly fashioned out of a few planks nailed together; and, when they had
+passed down a half-demolished wooden staircase, the steps of which shook
+beneath their feet, they found themselves in the crypt.
+
+It was a low vault, with squat arches, on exactly the same plan as the
+choir. The thick, stunted columns, left in the rough, also awaited their
+sculptors. Materials were lying about, pieces of wood were rotting on the
+beaten ground, the whole vast hall was white with plaster in the
+abandonment in which unfinished buildings are left. At the far end, three
+bays, formerly glazed, but in which not a pane of glass remained, threw a
+clear, cold light upon the desolate bareness of the walls.
+
+And there, in the middle, lay Curé Peyramale’s corpse. Some pious friends
+had conceived the touching idea of thus burying him in the crypt of his
+unfinished church. The tomb stood on a broad step and was all marble. The
+inscriptions, in letters of gold, expressed the feelings of the
+subscribers, the cry of truth and reparation that came from the monument
+itself. You read on the face: “This tomb has been erected by the aid of
+pious offerings from the entire universe to the blessed memory of the
+great servant of Our Lady of Lourdes.” On the right side were these words
+from a Brief of Pope Pius IX.: “You have entirely devoted yourself to
+erecting a temple to the Mother of God.” And on the left were these words
+from the New Testament: “Happy are they who suffer persecution for
+justice’ sake.” Did not these inscriptions embody the true plaint, the
+legitimate hope of the vanquished man who had fought so long in the sole
+desire of strictly executing the commands of the Virgin as transmitted to
+him by Bernadette? She, Our Lady of Lourdes, was there personified by a
+slender statuette, standing above the commemorative inscription, against
+the naked wall whose only decorations were a few bead wreaths hanging
+from nails. And before the tomb, as before the Grotto, were five or six
+benches in rows, for the faithful who desired to sit down.
+
+But with another gesture of sorrowful compassion, Doctor Chassaigne had
+silently pointed out to Pierre a huge damp spot which was turning the
+wall at the far end quite green. Pierre remembered the little lake which
+he had noticed up above on the cracked cement flooring of the
+choir--quite a quantity of water left by the storm of the previous night.
+Infiltration had evidently commenced, a perfect stream ran down, invading
+the crypt, whenever there was heavy rain. And they both felt a pang at
+their hearts when they perceived that the water was trickling along the
+vaulted roof in narrow threads, and thence falling in large, regular
+rhythmical drops upon the tomb. The doctor could not restrain a groan.
+“Now it rains,” he said; “it rains on him!”
+
+Pierre remained motionless, in a kind of awe. In the presence of that
+falling water, at the thought of the blasts which must rush at winter
+time through the glassless windows, that corpse appeared to him both
+woeful and tragic. It acquired a fierce grandeur, lying there alone in
+its splendid marble tomb, amidst all the rubbish, at the bottom of the
+crumbling ruins of its own church. It was the solitary guardian, the dead
+sleeper and dreamer watching over the empty spaces, open to all the birds
+of night. It was the mute, obstinate, eternal protest, and it was
+expectation also. Curé Peyramale, stretched in his coffin, having all
+eternity before him to acquire patience, there, without weariness,
+awaited the workmen who would perhaps return thither some fine April
+morning. If they should take ten years to do so, he would be there, and
+if it should take them a century, he would be there still. He was waiting
+for the rotten scaffoldings up above, among the grass of the nave, to be
+resuscitated like the dead, and by the force of some miracle to stand
+upright once more, along the walls. He was waiting, too, for the
+moss-covered engine to become all at once burning hot, recover its
+breath, and raise the timbers for the roof. His beloved enterprise, his
+gigantic building, was crumbling about his head, and yet with joined
+hands and closed eyes he was watching over its ruins, watching and
+waiting too.
+
+In a low voice, the doctor finished the cruel story, telling how, after
+persecuting Curé Peyramale and his work, they persecuted his tomb. There
+had formerly been a bust of the Curé there, and pious hands had kept a
+little lamp burning before it. But a woman had one day fallen with her
+face to the earth, saying that she had perceived the soul of the
+deceased, and thereupon the Fathers of the Grotto were in a flutter. Were
+miracles about to take place there? The sick already passed entire days
+there, seated on the benches before the tomb. Others knelt down, kissed
+the marble, and prayed to be cured. And at this a feeling of terror
+arose: supposing they should be cured, supposing the Grotto should find a
+competitor in this martyr, lying all alone, amidst the old tools left
+there by the masons! The Bishop of Tarbes, informed and influenced,
+thereupon published the mandamus which placed the church under interdict,
+forbidding all worship there and all pilgrimages and processions to the
+tomb of the former priest of Lourdes. As in the case of Bernadette, his
+memory was proscribed, his portrait could be found, officially, nowhere.
+In the same manner as they had shown themselves merciless against the
+living man, so did the Fathers prove merciless to his memory. They
+pursued him even in his tomb. They alone, again nowadays, prevented the
+works of the church from being proceeded with, by raising continual
+obstacles, and absolutely refusing to share their rich harvest of alms.
+And they seemed to be waiting for the winter rains to fall and complete
+the work of destruction, for the vaulted roof of the crypt, the walls,
+the whole gigantic pile to crumble down upon the tomb of the martyr, upon
+the body of the defeated man, so that he might be buried beneath them and
+at last pounded to dust!
+
+“Ah!” murmured the doctor, “I, who knew him so valiant, so enthusiastic
+in all noble labour! Now, you see it, it rains, it rains on him!”
+
+Painfully, he set himself on his knees and found relief in a long prayer.
+
+Pierre, who could not pray, remained standing. Compassionate sorrow was
+overflowing from his heart. He listened to the heavy drops from the roof
+as one by one they broke on the tomb with a slow rhythmical pit-a-pat,
+which seemed to be numbering the seconds of eternity, amidst the profound
+silence. And he reflected on the eternal misery of this world, on the
+choice which suffering makes in always falling on the best. The two great
+makers of Our Lady of Lourdes, Bernadette and Curé Peyramale, rose up in
+the flesh again before him, like woeful victims, tortured during their
+lives and exiled after their deaths. That alone, indeed, would have
+completed within him the destruction of his faith; for the Bernadette,
+whom he had just found at the end of his researches, was but a human
+sister, loaded with every dolour. But none the less he preserved a tender
+brotherly veneration for her, and two tears slowly trickled down his
+cheeks.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE FIFTH DAY
+
+
+
+
+I. EGOTISM AND LOVE
+
+AGAIN that night Pierre, at the Hotel of the Apparitions, was unable to
+obtain a wink of sleep. After calling at the hospital to inquire after
+Marie, who, since her return from the procession, had been soundly
+enjoying the delicious, restoring sleep of a child, he had gone to bed
+himself feeling anxious at the prolonged absence of M. de Guersaint. He
+had expected him at latest at dinner-time, but probably some mischance
+had detained him at Gavarnie; and he thought how disappointed Marie would
+be if her father were not there to embrace her the first thing in the
+morning. With a man like M. de Guersaint, so pleasantly heedless and so
+hare-brained, everything was possible, every fear might be realised.
+
+Perhaps this anxiety had at first sufficed to keep Pierre awake in spite
+of his great fatigue; but afterwards the nocturnal noises of the hotel
+had really assumed unbearable proportions. The morrow, Tuesday, was the
+day of departure, the last day which the national pilgrimage would spend
+at Lourdes, and the pilgrims no doubt were making the most of their time,
+coming from the Grotto and returning thither in the middle of the night,
+endeavouring as it were to force the grace of Heaven by their commotion,
+and apparently never feeling the slightest need of repose. The doors
+slammed, the floors shook, the entire building vibrated beneath the
+disorderly gallop of a crowd. Never before had the walls reverberated
+with such obstinate coughs, such thick, husky voices. Thus Pierre, a prey
+to insomnia, tossed about on his bed and continually rose up, beset with
+the idea that the noise he heard must have been made by M. de Guersaint
+who had returned. For some minutes he would listen feverishly; but he
+could only hear the extraordinary sounds of the passage, amid which he
+could distinguish nothing precisely. Was it the priest, the mother and
+her three daughters, or the old married couple on his left, who were
+fighting with the furniture? or was it rather the larger family, or the
+single gentleman, or the young single woman on his right, whom some
+incomprehensible occurrences were leading into adventures? At one moment
+he jumped from his bed, wishing to explore his absent friend’s empty
+room, as he felt certain that some deeds of violence were taking place in
+it. But although he listened very attentively when he got there, the only
+sound he could distinguish was the tender caressing murmur of two voices.
+Then a sudden recollection of Madame Volmar came to him, and he returned
+shuddering to bed.
+
+At length, when it was broad daylight and Pierre had just fallen asleep,
+a loud knocking at his door awoke him with a start. This time there could
+be no mistake, a loud voice broken by sobs was calling “Monsieur l’Abbé!
+Monsieur l’Abbé! for Heaven’s sake wake up!”
+
+Surely it must be M. de Guersaint who had been brought back dead, at
+least. Quite scared, Pierre ran and opened the door, in his night-shirt,
+and found himself in the presence of his neighbour, M. Vigneron.
+
+“Oh! for Heaven’s sake, Monsieur l’Abbé, dress yourself at once!”
+ exclaimed the assistant head-clerk. “Your holy ministry is required.”
+ And he began to relate that he had just got up to see the time by his
+watch on the mantelpiece, when he had heard some most frightful sighs
+issuing from the adjoining room, where Madame Chaise slept. She had left
+the communicating door open in order to be more with them, as she
+pleasantly expressed it. Accordingly he had hastened in, and flung the
+shutters open so as to admit both light and air. “And what a sight,
+Monsieur l’Abbé!” he continued. “Our poor aunt lying on her bed, nearly
+purple in the face already, her mouth wide open in a vain effort to
+breathe, and her hands fumbling with the sheet. It’s her heart complaint,
+you know. Come, come at once, Monsieur l’Abbé, and help her, I implore
+you!”
+
+Pierre, utterly bewildered, could find neither his breeches nor his
+cassock. “Of course, of course I’ll come with you,” said he. “But I have
+not what is necessary for administering the last sacraments.”
+
+M. Vigneron had assisted him to dress, and was now stooping down looking
+for his slippers. “Never mind,” he said, “the mere sight of you will
+assist her in her last moments, if Heaven has this affliction in store
+for us. Here! put these on your feet, and follow me at once--oh! at
+once!”
+
+He went off like a gust of wind and plunged into the adjoining room. All
+the doors remained wide open. The young priest, who followed him, noticed
+nothing in the first room, which was in an incredible state of disorder,
+beyond the half-naked figure of little Gustave, who sat on the sofa
+serving him as a bed, motionless, very pale, forgotten, and shivering
+amid this drama of inexorable death. Open bags littered the floor, the
+greasy remains of supper soiled the table, the parents’ bed seemed
+devastated by the catastrophe, its coverlets torn off and lying on the
+floor. And almost immediately afterwards he caught sight of the mother,
+who had hastily enveloped herself in an old yellow dressing-gown,
+standing with a terrified look in the inner room.
+
+“Well, my love, well, my love?” repeated M. Vigneron, in stammering
+accents.
+
+With a wave of her hand and without uttering a word Madame Vigneron drew
+their attention to Madame Chaise, who lay motionless, with her head sunk
+in the pillow and her hands stiffened and twisted. She was blue in the
+face, and her mouth gaped, as though with the last great gasp that had
+come from her.
+
+Pierre bent over her. Then in a low voice he said: “She is dead!”
+
+Dead! The word rang through the room where a heavy silence reigned, and
+the husband and wife looked at each other in amazement, bewilderment. So
+it was over? The aunt had died before Gustave, and the youngster
+inherited her five hundred thousand francs. How many times had they dwelt
+on that dream; whose sudden realisation dumfounded them? How many times
+had despair overcome them when they feared that the poor child might
+depart before her? Dead! Good heavens! was it their fault? Had they
+really prayed to the Blessed Virgin for this? She had shown herself so
+good to them that they trembled at the thought that they had not been
+able to express a wish without its being granted. In the death of the
+chief clerk, so suddenly carried off so that they might have his place,
+they had already recognised the powerful hand of Our Lady of Lourdes. Had
+she again loaded them with favours, listening even to the unconscious
+dreams of their desire? Yet they had never desired anyone’s death; they
+were worthy people incapable of any bad action, loving their relations,
+fulfilling their religious duties, going to confession, partaking of the
+communion like other people without any ostentation. Whenever they
+thought of those five hundred thousand francs, of their son who might be
+the first to go, and of the annoyance it would be to them to see another
+and far less worthy nephew inherit that fortune, it was merely in the
+innermost recesses of their hearts, in short, quite innocently and
+naturally. Certainly they _had_ thought of it when they were at the
+Grotto, but was not the Blessed Virgin wisdom itself? Did she not know
+far better than ourselves what she ought to do for the happiness of both
+the living and the dead?
+
+Then Madame Vigneron in all sincerity burst into tears and wept for the
+sister whom she loved so much. “Ah! Monsieur l’Abbé,” she said, “I saw
+her expire; she passed away before my eyes. What a misfortune that you
+were not here sooner to receive her soul! She died without a priest; your
+presence would have consoled her so much.”
+
+A prey also to emotion, his eyes full of tears, Vigneron sought to
+console his wife. “Your sister was a saint,” said he; “she communicated
+again yesterday morning, and you need have no anxiety concerning her; her
+soul has gone straight to heaven. No doubt, if Monsieur l’Abbé had been
+here in time she would have been glad to see him. But what would you?
+Death was quicker. I went at once, and really there is nothing for us to
+reproach ourselves with.”
+
+Then, turning towards the priest, he added “Monsieur l’Abbé, it was her
+excessive piety which certainly hastened her end. Yesterday, at the
+Grotto, she had a bad attack, which was a warning. And in spite of her
+fatigue she obstinately followed the procession afterwards. I thought
+then that she could not last long. Yet, out of delicacy, one did not like
+to say anything to her, for fear of frightening her.”
+
+Pierre gently knelt down and said the customary prayers, with that human
+emotion which was his nearest approach to faith in the presence of
+eternal life and eternal death, both so pitiful. Then, as he remained
+kneeling a little longer, he overheard snatches of the conversation
+around him.
+
+Little Gustave, forgotten on his couch amid the disorder of the other
+room, must have lost patience, for he had begun to cry and call out,
+“Mamma! mamma! mamma!”
+
+At length Madame Vigneron went to quiet him, and it occurred to her to
+carry him in her arms to kiss his poor aunt for the last time. But at
+first he struggled and refused, crying so much that M. Vigneron was
+obliged to interfere and try to make him ashamed of himself. What! he who
+was never frightened of anything! who bore suffering with the courage of
+a grown-up man! And to think it was a question of kissing his poor aunt,
+who had always been so kind, whose last thought must most certainly have
+been for him!
+
+“Give him to me,” said he to his wife; “he’s going to be good.”
+
+Gustave ended by clinging to his father’s neck. He came shivering in his
+night-shirt, displaying his wretched little body devoured by scrofula. It
+seemed indeed as though the miraculous water of the piscinas, far from
+curing him, had freshened the sore on his back; whilst his scraggy leg
+hung down inertly like a dry stick.
+
+“Kiss her,” resumed M. Vigneron.
+
+The child leant forward and kissed his aunt on the forehead. It was not
+death which upset him and caused him to struggle. Since he had been in
+the room he had been looking at the dead woman with an air of quiet
+curiosity. He did not love her, he had suffered on her account so long.
+He had the ideas and feelings of a man, and the weight of them was
+stifling him as, like his complaint, they developed and became more
+acute. He felt full well that he was too little, that children ought not
+to understand what only concerns their elders.
+
+However, his father, seating himself out of the way, kept him on his
+knee, whilst his mother closed the window and lit the two candles on the
+mantelpiece. “Ah! my poor dear,” murmured M. Vigneron, feeling that he
+must say something, “it’s a cruel loss for all of us. Our trip is now
+completely spoilt; this is our last day, for we start this afternoon. And
+the Blessed Virgin, too, was showing herself so kind to us.”
+
+However, seeing his son’s surprised look, a look of infinite sadness and
+reproach, he hastened to add: “Yes, of course, I know that she hasn’t yet
+quite cured you. But we must not despair of her kindness. She loves us so
+well, she shows us so many favours that she will certainly end by curing
+you, since that is now the only favour that remains for her to grant us.”
+
+Madame Vigneron, who was listening, drew near and said: “How happy we
+should have been to have returned to Paris all three hale and hearty!
+Nothing is ever perfect!”
+
+“I say!” suddenly observed Monsieur Vigneron, “I sha’n’t be able to leave
+with you this afternoon, on account of the formalities which have to be
+gone through. I hope that my return ticket will still be available
+to-morrow!”
+
+They were both getting over the frightful shock, feeling a sense of
+relief in spite of their affection for Madame Chaise; and, in fact, they
+were already forgetting her, anxious above all things to leave Lourdes as
+soon as possible, as though the principal object of their journey had
+been attained. A decorous, unavowed delight was slowly penetrating them.
+
+“When I get back to Paris there will be so much for me to do,” continued
+M. Vigneron. “I, who now only long for repose! All the same I shall
+remain my three years at the Ministry, until I can retire, especially now
+that I am certain of the retiring pension of chief clerk. But
+afterwards--oh! afterwards I certainly hope to enjoy life a bit. Since
+this money has come to us I shall purchase the estate of Les Billottes,
+that superb property down at my native place which I have always been
+dreaming of. And I promise you that I sha’n’t find time hanging heavy on
+my hands in the midst of my horses, my dogs, and my flowers!”
+
+Little Gustave was still on his father’s knee, his night-shirt tucked up,
+his whole wretched misshapen body shivering, and displaying the
+scragginess of a slowly dying child. When he perceived that his father,
+now full of his dream of an opulent life, no longer seemed to notice that
+he was there, he gave one of his enigmatical smiles, in which melancholy
+was tinged with malice. “But what about me, father?” he asked.
+
+M. Vigneron started, like one aroused from sleep, and did not at first
+seem to understand. “You, little one? You’ll be with us, of course!”
+
+But Gustave gave him a long, straight look, without ceasing to smile with
+his artful, though woeful lips. “Oh! do you think so?” he asked.
+
+“Of course I think so! You’ll be with us, and it will be very nice to be
+with us.”
+
+Uneasy, stammering, unable to find the proper words, M. Vigneron felt a
+chill come over him when his son shrugged his skinny shoulders with an
+air of philosophical disdain and answered: “Oh, no! I shall be dead.”
+
+And then the terrified father was suddenly able to detect in the child’s
+deep glance the glance of a man who was very aged, very knowing in all
+things, acquainted with all the abominations of life through having gone
+through them. What especially alarmed him was the abrupt conviction that
+this child had always seen into the innermost recesses of his heart, even
+farther than the things he dared to acknowledge to himself. He could
+recall that when the little sufferer had been but a baby in his cradle
+his eyes would frequently be fixed upon his own--and even then those eyes
+had been rendered so sharp by suffering, endowed, too, with such an
+extraordinary power of divination, that they had seemed able to dive into
+the unconscious thoughts buried in the depths of his brain. And by a
+singular counter-effect all the things that he had never owned to himself
+he now found in his child’s eyes--he beheld them, read them there,
+against his will. The story of his cupidity lay unfolded before him, his
+anger at having such a sorry son, his anguish at the idea that Madame
+Chaise’s fortune depended upon such a fragile existence, his eager desire
+that she might make haste and die whilst the youngster was still there,
+in order that he might finger the legacy. It was simply a question of
+days, this duel as to which should go off first. And then, at the end, it
+still meant death--the youngster must in his turn disappear, whilst he,
+the father, alone pocketed the cash, and lived joyfully to a good old
+age. And these frightful things shone forth so clearly from the keen,
+melancholy, smiling eyes of the poor condemned child, passed from son to
+father with such evident distinctness, that for a moment it seemed to
+them that they were shouting them aloud.
+
+However, M. Vigneron struggled against it all, and, averting his head,
+began energetically protesting: “How! You’ll be dead? What an idea! It’s
+absurd to have such ideas as that!”
+
+Meantime, Madame Vigneron was sobbing. “You wicked child,” she gasped;
+“how can you make us so unhappy, when we already have such a cruel loss
+to deplore?”
+
+Gustave had to kiss them, and to promise them that he would live for
+their sakes. Yet he did not cease smiling, conscious as he was that a lie
+is necessary when one does not wish to be too miserable, and quite
+prepared, moreover, to leave his parents happy behind him, since even the
+Blessed Virgin herself was powerless to grant him in this world the
+little happy lot to which each creature should be born.
+
+His mother took him back to bed, and Pierre at length rose up, just as M.
+Vigneron had finished arranging the chamber of death in a suitable
+manner. “You’ll excuse me, won’t you, Monsieur l’Abbé?” said he,
+accompanying the young priest to the door. “I’m not quite myself. Well,
+it’s an unpleasant time to go through. I must get over it somehow,
+however.”
+
+When Pierre got into the passage he stopped for a moment, listening to a
+sound of voices which was ascending the stairs. He had just been thinking
+of M. de Guersaint again, and imagined that he could recognise his voice.
+However, whilst he stood there waiting, an incident occurred which caused
+him intense discomfort. The door of the room next to M. de Guersaint’s
+softly opened and a woman, clad in black, slipped into the passage. As
+she turned, she found herself face to face with Pierre, in such a fashion
+that it was impossible for them to pretend not to recognise each other.
+
+The woman was Madame Volmar. Six o’clock had not yet struck, and she was
+going off, hoping that nobody would notice her, with the intention of
+showing herself at the hospital, and there spending this last morning, in
+order, in some measure, to justify her journey to Lourdes. When she
+perceived Pierre, she began to tremble, and, at first, could only
+stammer: “Oh, Monsieur l’Abbé, Monsieur l’Abbé!”
+
+Then, noticing that the priest had left his door wide open, she seemed to
+give way to the fever consuming her, to a need of speaking out,
+explaining things and justifying herself. With her face suffused by a
+rush of blood she entered the young man’s room, whither he had to follow
+her, greatly disturbed by this strange adventure. And, as he still left
+the door open, it was she who, in her desire to confide her sorrow and
+her sin to him, begged that he would close it.
+
+“Oh! I pray you, Monsieur l’Abbé,” said she, “do not judge me too
+harshly.”
+
+He made a gesture as though to reply that he did not allow himself the
+right to pass judgment upon her.
+
+“But yes, but yes,” she responded; “I know very well that you are
+acquainted with my misfortune. You saw me once in Paris behind the church
+of La Trinité, and the other day you recognised me on the balcony here!
+You were aware that I was there--in that room. But if you only knew--ah,
+if you only knew!”
+
+Her lips were quivering, and tears were welling into her eyes. As he
+looked at her he was surprised by the extraordinary beauty transfiguring
+her face. This woman, invariably clad in black, extremely simple, with
+never a jewel, now appeared to him in all the brilliancy of her passion;
+no longer drawing back into the gloom, no longer seeking to bedim the
+lustre of her eyes, as was her wont. She, who at first sight did not seem
+pretty, but too dark and slender, with drawn features, a large mouth and
+long nose, assumed, as he now examined her, a troubling charm, a
+powerful, irresistible beauty. Her eyes especially--her large,
+magnificent eyes, whose brasiers she usually sought to cover with a veil
+of indifference--were flaring like torches; and he understood that she
+should be loved, adored, to madness.
+
+“If you only knew, Monsieur l’Abbé,” she continued. “If I were only to
+tell you all that I have suffered. Doubtless you have suspected something
+of it, since you are acquainted with my mother-in-law and my husband. On
+the few occasions when you have called on us you cannot but have
+understood some of the abominable things which go on in my home, though I
+have always striven to appear happy in my silent little corner. But to
+live like that for ten years, to have no existence--never to love, never
+to be loved--no, no, it was beyond my power!”
+
+And then she related the whole painful story: her marriage with the
+diamond merchant, a disastrous, though it seemed an advantageous one; her
+mother-in-law, with the stern soul of a jailer or an executioner, and her
+husband, a monster of physical ugliness and mental villainy. They
+imprisoned her, they did not even allow her to look out of a window. They
+had beaten her, they had pitilessly assailed her in her tastes, her
+inclinations, in all her feminine weaknesses. She knew that her husband
+wandered in his affections, and yet if she smiled to a relative, if she
+had a flower in her corsage on some rare day of gaiety, he would tear it
+from her, enter into the most jealous rage, and seize and bruise her
+wrists whilst shouting the most fearful threats. For years and years she
+had lived in that hell, hoping, hoping still, having within her such a
+power of life, such an ardent need of affection, that she continued
+waiting for happiness, ever thinking, at the faintest breath, that it was
+about to enter.
+
+“I swear to you, Monsieur l’Abbé,” said she, “that I could not do
+otherwise than I have done. I was too unhappy: my whole being longed for
+someone who would care for me. And when my friend the first time told me
+that he loved me it was all over--I was his forever. Ah! to be loved, to
+be spoken to gently, to have someone near you who is always solicitous
+and amiable; to know that in absence he thinks of you, that there is a
+heart somewhere in which you live... Ah! if it be a crime, Monsieur
+l’Abbé, I cannot, cannot feel remorse for it. I will not even say that I
+was urged to it; I simply say that it came to me as naturally as my
+breath, because it was as necessary to my life!”
+
+She had carried her hand to her lips as though to throw a kiss to the
+world, and Pierre felt deeply disturbed in presence of this lovely woman,
+who personified all the ardour of human passion, and at the same time a
+feeling of deep pity began to arise within him.
+
+“Poor woman!” he murmured.
+
+“It is not to the priest that I am confessing,” she resumed; “it is to
+the man that I am speaking, to a man by whom I should greatly like to be
+understood. No, I am not a believer: religion has not sufficed me. It is
+said that some women find contentment in it, a firm protection even
+against all transgressions. But I have ever felt cold in church, weary
+unto death. Oh! I know very well that it is wrong to feign piety, to
+mingle religion with my heart affairs. But what would you? I am forced to
+it. If you saw me in Paris behind La Trinité it was because that church
+is the only place to which I am allowed to go alone; and if you find me
+here at Lourdes it is because, in the whole long year, I have but these
+three days of happiness and freedom.”
+
+Again she began to tremble. Hot tears were coursing down her cheeks. A
+vision of it all arose in Pierre’s mind, and, distracted by the thought
+of the ardent earthly love which possessed this unhappy creature, he
+again murmured: “Poor woman!”
+
+“And, Monsieur l’Abbé,” she continued, “think of the hell to which I am
+about to return! For weeks and months I live my life of martyrdom without
+complaint. Another year, another year must go by without a day, an hour
+of happiness! Ah! I am indeed very unhappy, Monsieur l’Abbé, yet do you
+not think all the same that I am a good woman?”
+
+He had been deeply moved by her sincere display of mingled grief and
+passion. He felt in her the breath of universal desire--a sovereign
+flame. And his compassion overflowed from his heart, and his words were
+words of pardon. “Madame,” he said, “I pity you and respect you
+infinitely.”
+
+Then she spoke no further, but looked at him with her large tear-blurred
+eyes. And suddenly catching hold of both his hands, she grasped them
+tightly with her burning fingers. And then she went off, vanishing down
+the passage as light, as ethereal, as a shadow.
+
+However, Pierre suffered from her presence in that room even more acutely
+after she had departed. He opened the window wide that the fresh air
+might carry off the breath of passion which she had left there. Already
+on the Sunday when he had seen her on the balcony he had been seized with
+terror at the thought that she personified the revenge of the world and
+the flesh amidst all the mystical exaltation of immaculate Lourdes. And
+now his terror was returning to him. Love seemed stronger than faith, and
+perhaps it was only love that was divine. To love, to belong to one
+another, to create and continue life--was not that the one sole object of
+nature outside of all social and religious policies? For a moment he was
+conscious of the abyss before him: his chastity was his last prop, the
+very dignity of his spoilt life; and he realised that, if after yielding
+to his reason he also yielded to his flesh, he would be utterly lost. All
+his pride of purity, all his strength which he had placed in professional
+rectitude, thereupon returned to him, and he again vowed that he would
+never be a man, since he had voluntarily cut himself off from among men.
+
+Seven o’clock was striking, and Pierre did not go back to bed, but began
+to wash himself, thoroughly enjoying the cool water, which ended by
+calming his fever. As he finished dressing, the anxious thought of M. de
+Guersaint recurred to him on hearing a sound of footsteps in the passage.
+These steps stopped outside his room and someone knocked. With a feeling
+of relief he went to open the door, but on doing so exclaimed in great
+surprise “What, it’s you! How is it that you’re already up, running about
+to see people?”
+
+Marie stood on the threshold smiling, whilst behind her was Sister
+Hyacinthe, who had come with her, and who also was smiling, with her
+lovely, candid eyes.
+
+“Ah! my friend,” said the girl, “I could not remain in bed. I sprang out
+directly I saw the sunshine. I had such a longing to walk, to run and
+jump about like a child, and I begged and implored so much that Sister
+was good enough to come with me. I think I should have got out through
+the window if the door had been closed against me.”
+
+Pierre ushered them in, and an indescribable emotion oppressed him as he
+heard her jest so gaily and saw her move about so freely with such grace
+and liveliness. She, good heavens! she whom he had seen for years with
+lifeless legs and colourless face! Since he had left her the day before
+at the Basilica she had blossomed into full youth and beauty. One night
+had sufficed for him to find again, developed it is true, the sweet
+creature whom he had loved so tenderly, the superb, radiant child whom he
+had embraced so wildly in the by-gone days behind the flowering hedge,
+beneath the sun-flecked trees.
+
+“How tall and lovely you are, Marie!” said he, in spite of himself.
+
+Then Sister Hyacinthe interposed: “Hasn’t the Blessed Virgin done things
+well, Monsieur l’Abbé? When she takes us in hand, you see, she turns us
+out as fresh as roses and smelling quite as sweet.”
+
+“Ah!” resumed Marie, “I’m so happy; I feel quite strong and well and
+spotless, as though I had just been born!”
+
+All this was very delicious to Pierre. It seemed to him that the
+atmosphere was now truly purified of Madame Volmar’s presence. Marie
+filled the room with her candour, with the perfume and brightness of her
+innocent youth. And yet the joy he felt at the sight of pure beauty and
+life reflowering was not exempt from sadness. For, after all, the revolt
+which he had felt in the crypt, the wound of his wrecked life, must
+forever leave him a bleeding heart. As he gazed upon all that
+resuscitated grace, as the woman he loved thus reappeared before him in
+the flower of her youth, he could not but remember that she would never
+be his, that he belonged no longer to the world, but to the grave.
+However, he no longer lamented; he experienced a boundless melancholy--a
+sensation of utter nothingness as he told himself that he was dead, that
+this dawn of beauty was rising on the tomb in which his manhood slept. It
+was renunciation, accepted, resolved upon amidst all the desolate
+grandeur attaching to those lives which are led contrary to nature’s law.
+Then, like the other woman, the impassioned one, Marie took hold of
+Pierre’s hands. But hers were so soft, so fresh, so soothing! She looked
+at him with so little confusion and a great longing which she dared not
+express. After a while, however, she summoned up her courage and said:
+“Will you kiss me, Pierre? It would please me so much.”
+
+He shuddered, his heart crushed by this last torture. Ah! the kisses of
+other days--those kisses which had ever lingered on his lips! Never since
+had he kissed her, and to-day she was like a sister flinging her arms
+around his neck. She kissed him with a loud smack on both his cheeks, and
+offering her own, insisted on his doing likewise to her. So twice, in his
+turn, he embraced her.
+
+“I, too, Marie,” said he, “am pleased, very pleased, I assure you.” And
+then, overcome by emotion, his courage exhausted, whilst at the same time
+filled with delight and bitterness, he burst into sobs, weeping with his
+face buried in his hands, like a child seeking to hide its tears.
+
+“Come, come, we must not give way,” said Sister Hyacinthe, gaily.
+“Monsieur l’Abbé would feel too proud if he fancied that we had merely
+come on his account. M. de Guersaint is about, isn’t he?”
+
+Marie raised a cry of deep affection. “Ah! my dear father! After all,
+it’s he who’ll be most pleased!”
+
+Thereupon Pierre had to relate that M. de Guersaint had not returned from
+his excursion to Gavarnie. His increasing anxiety showed itself while he
+spoke, although he sought to explain his friend’s absence, surmising all
+sorts of obstacles and unforeseen complications. Marie, however, did not
+seem afraid, but again laughed, saying that her father never could be
+punctual. Still she was extremely eager for him to see her walking, to
+find her on her legs again, resuscitated, in the fresh blossoming of her
+youth.
+
+All at once Sister Hyacinthe, who had gone to lean over the balcony,
+returned to the room, saying “Here he comes! He’s down below, just
+alighting from his carriage.”
+
+“Ah!” cried Marie, with the eager playfulness of a school-girl, “let’s
+give him a surprise. Yes, we must hide, and when he’s here we’ll show
+ourselves all of a sudden.”
+
+With these words, she hastily dragged Sister Hyacinthe into the adjoining
+room.
+
+Almost immediately afterwards, M. de Guersaint entered like a whirlwind
+from the passage, the door communicating with which had been quickly
+opened by Pierre, and, shaking the young priest’s hand, the belated
+excursionist exclaimed: “Here I am at last! Ah! my friend, you can’t have
+known what to think since four o’clock yesterday, when you expected me
+back, eh? But you have no idea of the adventures we have had. To begin
+with, one of the wheels of our landau came off just as we reached
+Gavarnie; then, yesterday evening--though we managed to start off
+again--a frightful storm detained us all night long at Saint-Sauveur. I
+wasn’t able to sleep a wink.” Then, breaking off, he inquired, “And you,
+are you all right?”
+
+“I wasn’t able to sleep either,” said the priest; “they made such a noise
+in the hotel.”
+
+But M. de Guersaint had already started off again: “All the same, it was
+delightful. I must tell you; you can’t imagine it. I was with three
+delightful churchmen. Abbé des Hermoises is certainly the most charming
+man I know. Oh! we did laugh--we did laugh!”
+
+Then he again stopped, to inquire, “And how’s my daughter?”
+
+Thereupon a clear laugh behind him caused him to turn round, and he
+remained with his mouth wide open. Marie was there, and was walking, with
+a look of rapturous delight upon her face, which was beaming with health.
+He had never for a moment doubted the miracle, and was not in the least
+surprised that it had taken place, for he had returned with the
+conviction that everything would end well, and that he would surely find
+her cured. But what so utterly astounded him was the prodigious spectacle
+which he had not foreseen: his daughter, looking so beautiful, so divine,
+in her little black gown!--his daughter, who had not even brought a hat
+with her, and merely had a piece of lace tied over her lovely fair
+hair!--his daughter, full of life, blooming, triumphant, similar to all
+the daughters of all the fathers whom he had envied for so many years!
+
+“O my child! O my child!” he exclaimed.
+
+And, as she had flown into his arms, he pressed her to his heart, and
+then they fell upon their knees together. Everything disappeared from
+before them in a radiant effusion of faith and love. This heedless,
+hare-brained man, who fell asleep instead of accompanying his daughter to
+the Grotto, who went off to Gavarnie on the day the Blessed Virgin was to
+cure her, overflowed with such paternal affection, with such Christian
+faith so exalted by thankfulness, that for a moment he appeared sublime.
+
+“O Jesus! O Mary! let me thank you for having restored my child to me! O
+my child, we shall never have breath enough, soul enough, to render
+thanks to Mary and Jesus for the great happiness they have vouchsafed us!
+O my child, whom they have resuscitated, O my child, whom they have made
+so beautiful again, take my heart to offer it to them with your own! I am
+yours, I am theirs eternally, O my beloved child, my adored child!”
+
+Kneeling before the open window they both, with uplifted eyes, gazed
+ardently on heaven. The daughter had rested her head on her father’s
+shoulder; whilst he had passed an arm round her waist. They had become
+one. Tears slowly trickled down their enraptured faces, which were
+smiling with superhuman felicity, whilst they stammered together
+disconnected expressions of gratitude.
+
+“O Jesus, we give Thee thanks! O Holy Mother of Jesus, we give thee
+thanks! We love you, we adore you both. You have rejuvenated the best
+blood in our veins; it is yours, it circulates only for you. O
+All-powerful Mother, O Divine and Well-beloved Son, behold a daughter and
+a father who bless you, who prostrate themselves with joy at your feet.”
+
+So affecting was this mingling of two beings, happy at last after so many
+dark days, this happiness, which could but stammer as though still tinged
+with suffering, that Pierre was again moved to tears. But this time they
+were soothing tears which relieved his heart. Ah! poor pitiable humanity!
+how pleasant it was to see it somewhat consoled and enraptured! and what
+did it matter, after all, if its great joys of a few seconds’ duration
+sprang from the eternal illusion! Was not the whole of humanity, pitiable
+humanity, saved by love, personified by that poor childish man who
+suddenly became sublime because he found his daughter resuscitated?
+
+Standing a little aside, Sister Hyacinthe was also weeping, her heart
+very full, full of human emotion which she had never before experienced,
+she who had known no other parents than the Almighty and the Blessed
+Virgin. Silence had now fallen in this room full of so much tearful
+fraternity. And it was she who spoke the first, when the father and the
+daughter, overcome with emotion, at length rose up.
+
+“Now, mademoiselle,” she said, “we must be quick and get back to the
+hospital.”
+
+But they all protested. M. de Guersaint wished to keep his daughter with
+him, and Marie’s eyes expressed an eager desire, a longing to enjoy life,
+to walk and ramble through the whole vast world.
+
+“Oh! no, no!” said the father, “I won’t give her back to you. We’ll each
+have a cup of milk, for I’m dying of thirst; then we’ll go out and walk
+about. Yes, yes, both of us! She shall take my arm, like a little woman!”
+
+Sister Hyacinthe laughed again. “Very well!” said she, “I’ll leave her
+with you, and tell the ladies that you’ve stolen her from me. But for my
+own part I must be off. You’ve no idea what an amount of work we have to
+get through at the hospital if we are to be ready in time to leave: there
+are all the patients and things to be seen to; and all is in the greatest
+confusion!”
+
+“So to-day’s really Tuesday, and we leave this afternoon?” asked Monsieur
+de Guersaint, already absent-minded again.
+
+“Of course we do, and don’t forget! The white train starts at 3.40. And
+if you’re sensible you’ll bring your daughter back early so that she may
+have a little rest.”
+
+Marie walked with the Sister to the door, saying “Be easy, I will be very
+good. Besides, I want to go back to the Grotto, to thank the Blessed
+Virgin once more.”
+
+When they found themselves all three alone in the little room full of
+sunshine, it was delicious. Pierre called the servant and told her to
+bring them some milk, some chocolate, and cakes, in fact the nicest
+things he could think of. And although Marie had already broken her fast,
+she ate again, so great an appetite had come upon her since the night
+before. They drew the table to the window and made quite a feast amidst
+the keen air from the mountains, whilst the hundred bells of Lourdes,
+proclaimed with flying peals the glory of that radiant day. They
+chattered and laughed, and the young woman told her father the story of
+the miracle, with all the oft-repeated details. She related, too, how she
+had left her box at the Basilica, and how she had slept twelve hours
+without stirring. Then M. de Guersaint on his side wished to relate his
+excursion, but got mixed and kept coming back to the miracle. Finally, it
+appeared that the Cirque de Gavarnie was something colossal. Only, when
+you looked at it from a distance it seemed small, for you lost all sense
+of proportion. The gigantic snow-covered tiers of cliffs, the topmost
+ridge standing out against the sky with the outlines of some cyclopean
+fortress with razed keep and jagged ramparts, the great cascade, whose
+ceaseless jet seemed so slow when in reality it must have rushed down
+with a noise like thunder, the whole immensity, the forests on right and
+left, the torrents and the landslips, looked as though they might have
+been held in the palm of one’s hand, when one gazed upon them from the
+village market-place. And what had impressed him most, what he repeatedly
+alluded to, were the strange figures described by the snow, which had
+remained up there amongst the rocks. Amongst others was a huge crucifix,
+a white cross, several thousand yards in length, which you might have
+thought had been thrown across the amphitheatre from one end to the
+other.
+
+However, all at once M. de Guersaint broke off to inquire: “By the way,
+what’s happening at our neighbour’s? As I came up-stairs a little while
+ago I met Monsieur Vigneron running about like a madman; and, through the
+open doorway of their room, I fancied I saw Madame Vigneron looking very
+red. Has their son Gustave had another attack?”
+
+Pierre had quite forgotten Madame Chaise lying dead on the other side of
+the partition. He seemed to feel a cold breath pass over him. “No, no,”
+ he answered, “the child is all right.” And he said no more, preferring to
+remain silent. Why spoil this happy hour of new life and reconquered
+youth by mingling with it the image of death? However, from that moment
+he himself could not cease thinking of the proximity of nothingness. And
+he thought, too, of that other room where Madame Volmar’s friend was now
+alone, stifling his sobs with his lips pressed upon a pair of gloves
+which he had stolen from her. All the sounds of the hotel were now
+becoming audible again--the coughs, the sighs, the indistinct voices, the
+continual slamming of doors, the creaking of the floors beneath the great
+accumulation of travellers, and all the stir in the passages, along which
+flying skirts were sweeping, and families galloping distractedly amidst
+the hurry-scurry of departure.
+
+“On my word! you’ll do yourself an injury,” all at once cried Monsieur de
+Guersaint, on seeing his daughter take up another cake.
+
+Marie was quite merry too. But at a sudden thought tears came into her
+eyes, and she exclaimed: “Ah! how glad I am! but also how sorry when I
+think that everybody is not as pleased as myself.”
+
+
+
+
+II. PLEASANT HOURS
+
+IT was eight o’clock, and Marie was so impatient that she could not keep
+still, but continued going to the window, as if she wished to inhale all
+the air of the vast, expanse and the immense sky. Ah! what a pleasure to
+be able to run about the streets, across the squares, to go everywhere as
+far as she might wish. And to show how strong she was, to have the pride
+of walking leagues in the presence of everyone, now that the Blessed
+Virgin had cured her! It was an irresistible impulsion, a flight of her
+entire being, her blood, and her heart.
+
+However, just as she was setting out she made up her mind that her first
+visit with her father ought to be to the Grotto, where both of them had
+to thank Our Lady of Lourdes. Then they would be free; they would have
+two long hours before them, and might walk wherever they chose, before
+she returned to lunch and pack up her few things at the hospital.
+
+“Well, is everyone ready?” repeated M. de Guersaint. “Shall we make a
+move?”
+
+Pierre took his hat, and all three went down-stairs, talking very loud
+and laughing on the staircase, like boisterous school-boys going for
+their holidays. They had almost reached the street, when at the doorway
+Madame Majesté rushed forward. She had evidently been waiting for them to
+go out.
+
+“Ah! mademoiselle; ah! gentlemen, allow me to congratulate you,” she
+said. “We have heard of the extraordinary favour that has been granted
+you; we are so happy, so much flattered, when the Blessed Virgin is
+pleased to select one of our customers!”
+
+Her dry, harsh face was melting with amiability, and she observed the
+miraculously healed girl with the fondest of eyes. Then she impulsively
+called her husband, who was passing: “Look, my dear! It’s mademoiselle;
+it’s mademoiselle.”
+
+Majesté’s clean-shaven face, puffed out with yellow fat, assumed a happy
+and grateful expression. “Really, mademoiselle, I cannot tell you how
+honoured we feel,” said he. “We shall never forget that your papa put up
+at our place. It has already excited the envy of many people.”
+
+While he spoke Madame Majesté stopped the other travellers who were going
+out, and with a sign summoned the families already seated in the
+dining-room; indeed, she would have called in the whole street if they
+had given her time, to show that she had in her house the miracle at
+which all Lourdes had been marvelling since the previous day. People
+ended by collecting there, a crowd gathered little by little, while she
+whispered in the ear of each “Look! that’s she; the young party, you
+know, the young party who--”
+
+But all at once she exclaimed: “I’ll go and fetch Apolline from the shop;
+I must show mademoiselle to Apolline.”
+
+Thereupon, however, Majesté, in a very dignified way, restrained her.
+“No,” he said, “leave Apolline; she has three ladies to serve already.
+Mademoiselle and these gentlemen will certainly not leave Lourdes without
+making a few purchases. The little souvenirs that one carries away with
+one are so pleasant to look at later on! And our customers make a point
+of never buying elsewhere than here, in the shop which we have annexed to
+the hotel.”
+
+“I have already offered my services,” added Madame Majesté, “and I renew
+them. Apolline will be so happy to show mademoiselle all our prettiest
+articles, at prices, too, which are incredibly low! Oh! there are some
+delightful things, delightful!”
+
+Marie was becoming impatient at being detained in this manner, and Pierre
+was suffering from the increasing curiosity which they were arousing. As
+for M. de Guersaint, he enjoyed this popularity and triumph of his
+daughter immensely, and promised to return.
+
+“Certainly,” said he, “we will purchase a few little knick-knacks. Some
+souvenirs for ourselves, and some presents that we shall have to make,
+but later on, when we come back.”
+
+At last they escaped and descended the Avenue de la Grotte. The weather
+was again superb after the storms of the two preceding nights. Cooled by
+the rain, the morning air was delicious amidst the gaiety which the
+bright sun shed around. A busy crowd, well pleased with life, was already
+hurrying along the pavements. And what pleasure it all was for Marie, to
+whom everything seemed new, charming, inappreciable! In the morning she
+had had to allow Raymonde to lend her a pair of boots, for she had taken
+good care not to put any in her portmanteau, superstitiously fearing that
+they might bring her bad luck. However, Raymonde’s boots fitted her
+admirably, and she listened with childish delight to the little heels
+tapping merrily on the flagstones. And she did not remember having ever
+seen houses so white, trees so green, and passers-by so happy. All her
+senses seemed holiday-making, endowed with a marvellously delicate
+sensibility; she heard music, smelt distant perfumes, savoured the air
+greedily, as though it were some delicious fruit. But what she
+considered, above all, so nice, so charming, was to walk along in this
+wise on her father’s arm. She had never done so before, although she had
+felt the desire for years, as for one of those impossible pleasures with
+which people occupy their minds when invalided. And now her dream was
+realised and her heart beat with joy. She pressed against her father, and
+strove to walk very upright and look very handsome, so as to do him
+honour. And he was quite proud, as happy as she was, showing, exhibiting
+her, overcome with joy at the thought that she belonged to him, that she
+was his blood, his flesh, his daughter, henceforth beaming with youth and
+health.
+
+As they were all three crossing the Plateau de la Merlasse, already
+obstructed by a band of candle and bouquet sellers running after the
+pilgrims, M. de Guersaint exclaimed, “We are surely not going to the
+Grotto empty-handed!”
+
+Pierre, who was walking on the other side of Marie, himself brightened by
+her merry humour, thereupon stopped, and they were at once surrounded by
+a crowd of female hawkers, who with eager fingers thrust their goods into
+their faces. “My beautiful young lady! My good gentleman! Buy of me, of
+me, of me!” Such was the onslaught that it became necessary to struggle
+in order to extricate oneself. M. de Guersaint ended by purchasing the
+largest nosegay he could see--a bouquet of white marguerites, as round
+and hard as a cabbage--from a handsome, fair-haired, well developed girl
+of twenty, who was extremely bold both in look and manner. It only cost
+twenty sous, and he insisted on paying for it out of his own little
+purse, somewhat abashed meantime by the girl’s unblushing effrontery.
+Then Pierre in his turn settled for the three candles which Marie had
+taken from an old woman, candles at two francs each, a very reasonable
+price, as she repeatedly said. And on being paid, the old creature, who
+had an angular face, covetous eyes, and a nose like the beak of a bird of
+prey, returned profuse and mellifluous thanks: “May Our Lady of Lourdes
+bless you, my beautiful young lady! May she cure you of your complaints,
+you and yours!” This enlivened them again, and they set out once more,
+all three laughing, amused like children at the idea that the good
+woman’s wish had already been accomplished.
+
+At the Grotto Marie wished to file off at once, in order to offer the
+bouquet and candles herself before even kneeling down. There were not
+many people there as yet, and having gone to the end of the line their
+turn came after waiting some three or four minutes. And with what
+enraptured glances did she then examine everything--the altar of engraved
+silver, the harmonium-organ, the votive offerings, the candle-holders,
+streaming with wax blazing in broad daylight. She was now inside that
+Grotto which she had hitherto only seen from her box of misery; she
+breathed there as in Paradise itself, steeped rapturously in a pleasant
+warmth and odour, which slightly oppressed her. When she had placed the
+tapers at the bottom of the large basket, and had raised herself on
+tiptoe to fix the bouquet on one of the spears of the iron railing, she
+imprinted a long kiss upon the rock, below the statue of the Blessed
+Virgin, at the very spot, indeed, which millions of lips had already
+polished. And the stone received a kiss of love in which she put forth
+all the strength of her gratitude, a kiss with which her heart melted.
+
+When she was once more outside, Marie prostrated and humbled herself in
+an almost endless act of thanksgiving. Her father also had knelt down
+near her, and mingled the fervour of his gratitude with hers. But he
+could not remain doing the same thing for long. Little by little he
+became uneasy, and ended by bending down to his daughter’s ear to tell
+her that he had a call to make which he had previously forgotten.
+Assuredly the best course would be for her to remain where she was,
+praying, and waiting for him. While she completed her devotions he would
+hurry along and get his troublesome errand over; and then they might walk
+about at ease wheresoever they liked. She did not understand him, did not
+even hear him, but simply nodded her head, promising that she would not
+move, and then such tender faith again took possession of her that her
+eyes, fixed on the white statue of the Virgin, filled with tears.
+
+When M. de Guersaint had joined Pierre, who had remained a short distance
+off, he gave him the following explanation. “My dear fellow,” he said,
+“it’s a matter of conscience; I formally promised the coachman who drove
+us to Gavarnie that I would see his master and tell him the real cause of
+our delay. You know whom I mean--the hairdresser on the Place du
+Marcadal. And, besides, I want to get shaved.”
+
+Pierre, who felt uneasy at this proposal, had to give way in face of the
+promise that they would be back within a quarter of an hour. Only, as the
+distance seemed long, he on his side insisted on taking a trap which was
+standing at the bottom of the Plateau de la Merlasse. It was a sort of
+greenish cabriolet, and its driver, a fat fellow of about thirty, with
+the usual Basque cap on his head, was smoking a cigarette whilst waiting
+to be hired. Perched sideways on the seat with his knees wide apart, he
+drove them on with the tranquil indifference of a well-fed man who
+considers himself the master of the street.
+
+“We will keep you,” said Pierre as he alighted, when they had reached the
+Place du Marcadal.
+
+“Very well, very well, Monsieur l’Abbé! I’ll wait for you!” And then,
+leaving his lean horse in the hot sun, the driver went to chat and laugh
+with a strong, dishevelled servant-girl who was washing a dog in the
+basin of the neighbouring fountain.
+
+Cazaban, as it happened, was just then on the threshold of his shop, the
+lofty windows and pale green painting of which enlivened the dull Place,
+which was so deserted on week-days. When he was not pressed with work he
+delighted to parade in this manner, standing between his two windows,
+which pots of pomatum and bottles of perfumery decorated with bright
+shades of colour.
+
+He at once recognised the gentlemen. “Very flattered, very much honoured.
+Pray walk in, I beg of you,” he said.
+
+Then, at the first words which M. de Guersaint said to him to excuse the
+man who had driven him to Gavarnie, he showed himself well disposed. Of
+course it was not the man’s fault; he could not prevent wheels coming to
+pieces, or storms falling. So long as the travellers did not complain all
+was well.
+
+“Oh!” thereupon exclaimed M. de Guersaint, “it’s a magnificent country,
+never to be forgotten.”
+
+“Well, monsieur, as our neighbourhood pleases you, you must come and see
+us again; we don’t ask anything better,” said Cazaban; and, on the
+architect seating himself in one of the arm-chairs and asking to be
+shaved, he began to bustle about.
+
+His assistant was still absent, running errands for the pilgrims whom he
+lodged, a whole family, who were taking a case of chaplets, plaster
+Virgins, and framed engravings away with them. You heard a confused
+tramping of feet and violent bursts of conversation coming from the first
+floor, all the helter-skelter of people whom the approaching departure
+and the packing of purchases lying hither and thither drove almost crazy.
+In the adjoining dining-room, the door of which had remained open, two
+children were draining the dregs of some cups of chocolate which stood
+about amidst the disorder of the breakfast service. The whole of the
+house had been let, entirely given over, and now had come the last hours
+of this invasion which compelled the hairdresser and his wife to seek
+refuge in the narrow cellar, where they slept on a small camp-bed.
+
+While Cazaban was rubbing M. de Guersaint’s cheeks with soap-suds, the
+architect questioned him. “Well, are you satisfied with the season?”
+
+“Certainly, monsieur, I can’t complain. As you hear, my travellers are
+leaving to-day, but I am expecting others to-morrow morning; barely
+sufficient time for a sweep out. It will be the same up to October.”
+
+Then, as Pierre remained standing, walking about the shop and looking at
+the walls with an air of impatience, he turned round politely and said:
+“Pray be seated, Monsieur l’Abbé; take a newspaper. It will not be long.”
+
+The priest having thanked him with a nod, and refusing to sit down, the
+hairdresser, whose tongue was ever itching to talk, continued: “Oh! as
+for myself, I am always busy, my house is renowned for the cleanliness of
+the beds and the excellence of the fare. Only the town is not satisfied.
+Ah, no! I may even say that I have never known so much discontent here.”
+
+He became silent for a moment, and shaved his customer’s left cheek; then
+again pausing in his work he suddenly declared with a cry, wrung from him
+by conviction, “The Fathers of the Grotto are playing with fire,
+monsieur, that is all I have to say.”
+
+From that moment, however, the vent-plug was withdrawn, and he talked and
+talked and talked again. His big eyes rolled in his long face with
+prominent cheek-bones and sunburnt complexion sprinkled with red, while
+the whole of his nervous little body continued on the jump, agitated by
+his growing exuberance of speech and gesture. He returned to his former
+indictment, and enumerated all the many grievances that the old town had
+against the Fathers. The hotel-keepers complained; the dealers in
+religious fancy articles did not take half the amount they ought to have
+realised; and, finally, the new town monopolised both the pilgrims and
+the cash; there was now no possibility for anyone but the keepers of the
+lodging-houses, hotels, and shops open in the neighbourhood of the Grotto
+to make any money whatever. It was a merciless struggle, a deadly
+hostility increasing from day to day, the old city losing a little of its
+life each season, and assuredly destined to disappear,--to be choked,
+assassinated, by the young town. Ah! their dirty Grotto! He would rather
+have his feet cut off than tread there. Wasn’t it heart-rending, that
+knick-knack shop which they had stuck beside it? A shameful thing, at
+which a bishop had shown himself so indignant that it was said he had
+written to the Pope! He, Cazaban, who flattered himself with being a
+freethinker and a Republican of the old days, who already under the
+Empire had voted for the Opposition candidates, assuredly had the right
+to declare that he did not believe in their dirty Grotto, and that he did
+not care a fig for it!
+
+“Look here, monsieur,” he continued; “I am going to tell you a fact. My
+brother belongs to the municipal council, and it’s through him that I
+know it. I must tell you first of all that we now have a Republican
+municipal council, which is much worried by the demoralisation of the
+town. You can no longer go out at night without meeting girls in the
+streets--you know, those candle hawkers! They gad about with the drivers
+who come here when the season commences, and swell the suspicious
+floating population which comes no one knows whence. And I must also
+explain to you the position of the Fathers towards the town. When they
+purchased the land at the Grotto they signed an agreement by which they
+undertook not to engage in any business there. Well, they have opened a
+shop in spite of their signature. Is not that an unfair rivalry, unworthy
+of honest people? So the new council decided on sending them a deputation
+to insist on the agreement being respected, and enjoining them to close
+their shop at once. What do you think they answered, monsieur? Oh! what
+they have replied twenty times before, what they will always answer, when
+they are reminded of their engagements: ‘Very well, we consent to keep
+them, but we are masters at our own place, and we’ll close the Grotto!’”
+
+He raised himself up, his razor in the air, and, repeating his words, his
+eyes dilated by the enormity of the thing, he said, “‘We’ll close the
+Grotto.’”
+
+Pierre, who was continuing his slow walk, suddenly stopped and said in
+his face, “Well! the municipal council had only to answer, ‘Close it.’”
+
+At this Cazaban almost choked; the blood rushed to his face, he was
+beside himself, and stammered out “Close the Grotto?--Close the Grotto?”
+
+“Certainly! As the Grotto irritates you and rends your heart; as it’s a
+cause of continual warfare, injustice, and corruption. Everything would
+be over, we should hear no more about it. That would really be a capital
+solution, and if the council had the power it would render you a service
+by forcing the Fathers to carry out their threat.”
+
+As Pierre went on speaking, Cazaban’s anger subsided. He became very calm
+and somewhat pale, and in the depths of his big eyes the priest detected
+an expression of increasing uneasiness. Had he not gone too far in his
+passion against the Fathers? Many ecclesiastics did not like them;
+perhaps this young priest was simply at Lourdes for the purpose of
+stirring-up an agitation against them. Then who knows?--it might possibly
+result in the Grotto being closed later on. But it was by the Grotto that
+they all lived. If the old city screeched with rage at only picking up
+the crumbs, it was well pleased to secure even that windfall; and the
+freethinkers themselves, who coined money with the pilgrims, like
+everyone else, held their tongues, ill at ease, and even frightened, when
+they found people too much of their opinion with regard to the
+objectionable features of new Lourdes. It was necessary to be prudent.
+
+Cazaban thereupon returned to M. de Guersaint, whose other cheek he began
+shaving, murmuring the while in an off-hand manner: “Oh! what I say about
+the Grotto is not because it troubles me much in reality, and, besides,
+everyone must live.”
+
+In the dining-room, the children, amidst deafening shouts, had just
+broken one of the bowls, and Pierre, glancing through the open doorway,
+again noticed the engravings of religious subjects and the plaster Virgin
+with which the hairdresser had ornamented the apartment in order to
+please his lodgers. And just then, too, a voice shouted from the first
+floor that the trunk was ready, and that they would be much obliged if
+the assistant would cord it as soon as he returned.
+
+However, Cazaban, in the presence of these two gentlemen whom, as a
+matter of fact, he did not know, remained suspicious and uneasy, his
+brain haunted by all sorts of disquieting suppositions. He was in despair
+at the idea of having to let them go away without learning anything about
+them, especially after having exposed himself. If he had only been able
+to withdraw the more rabid of his biting remarks about the Fathers.
+Accordingly, when M. de Guersaint rose to wash his chin, he yielded to a
+desire to renew the conversation.
+
+“Have you heard talk of yesterday’s miracle? The town is quite upside
+down with it; more than twenty people have already given me an account of
+what occurred. Yes, it seems they obtained an extraordinary miracle, a
+paralytic young lady got up and dragged her invalid carriage as far as
+the choir of the Basilica.”
+
+M. de Guersaint, who was about to sit down after wiping himself, gave a
+complacent laugh. “That young lady is my daughter,” he said.
+
+Thereupon, under this sudden and fortunate flash of enlightenment,
+Cazaban became all smiles. He felt reassured, and combed M. de
+Guersaint’s hair with a masterly touch, amid a returning exuberance of
+speech and gesture. “Ah! monsieur, I congratulate you, I am flattered at
+having you in my hands. Since the young lady your daughter is cured, your
+father’s heart is at ease. Am I not right?”
+
+And he also found a few pleasant words for Pierre. Then, when he had
+decided to let them go, he looked at the priest with an air of
+conviction, and remarked, like a sensible man, desirous of coming to a
+conclusion on the subject of miracles: “There are some, Monsieur l’Abbé,
+which are good fortunes for everybody. From time to time we require one
+of that description.”
+
+Outside, M. de Guersaint had to go and fetch the coachman, who was still
+laughing with the servant-girl, while her dog, dripping with water, was
+shaking itself in the sun. In five minutes the trap brought them back to
+the bottom of the Plateau de la Merlasse. The trip had taken a good
+half-hour. Pierre wanted to keep the conveyance, with the idea of showing
+Marie the town without giving her too much fatigue. So, while the father
+ran to the Grotto to fetch his daughter, he waited there beneath the
+trees.
+
+The coachman at once engaged in conversation with the priest. He had lit
+another cigarette and showed himself very familiar. He came from a
+village in the environs of Toulouse, and did not complain, for he earned
+good round sums each day at Lourdes. You fed well there, said he, you
+amused yourself, it was what you might call a good neighbourhood. He said
+these things with the _abandon_ of a man who was not troubled with
+religious scruples, but yet did not forget the respect which he owed to
+an ecclesiastic.
+
+At last, from the top of his box, where he remained half lying down,
+dangling one of his legs, he allowed this remark to fall slowly from his
+lips: “Ah! yes, Monsieur l’Abbé, Lourdes has caught on well, but the
+question is whether it will all last long!”
+
+Pierre, who was very much struck by the remark, was pondering on its
+involuntary profundity, when M. de Guersaint reappeared, bringing Marie
+with him. He had found her kneeling on the same spot, in the same act of
+faith and thankfulness, at the feet of the Blessed Virgin; and it seemed
+as if she had brought all the brilliant light of the Grotto away in her
+eyes, so vividly did they sparkle with divine joy at her cure. She would
+not entertain a proposal to keep the trap. No, no! she preferred to go on
+foot; she did not care about seeing the town, so long as she might for
+another hour continue walking on her father’s arm through the gardens,
+the streets, the squares, anywhere they pleased! And, when Pierre had
+paid the driver, it was she who turned into a path of the Esplanade
+garden, delighted at being able to saunter in this wise beside the turf
+and the flower beds, under the great trees. The grass, the leaves, the
+shady solitary walks where you heard the everlasting rippling of the
+Gave, were so sweet and fresh! But afterwards she wished to return by way
+of the streets, among the crowd, that she might find the agitation,
+noise, and life, the need of which possessed her whole being.
+
+In the Rue St. Joseph, on perceiving the panorama, where the former
+Grotto was depicted, with Bernadette kneeling down before it on the day
+of the miracle of the candle, the idea occurred to Pierre to go in. Marie
+became as happy as a child; and even M. de Guersaint was full of innocent
+delight, especially when he noticed that among the batch of pilgrims who
+dived at the same time as themselves into the depths of the obscure
+corridor, several recognised in his daughter the girl so miraculously
+healed the day before, who was already famous, and whose name flew from
+mouth to mouth. Up above, on the circular platform, when they came out
+into the diffuse light, filtering through a vellum, there was a sort of
+ovation around Marie; soft whispers, beatifical glances, a rapture of
+delight in seeing, following, and touching her. Now glory had come, she
+would be loved in that way wherever she went, and it was not until the
+showman who gave the explanations had placed himself at the head of the
+little party of visitors, and begun to walk round, relating the incident
+depicted on the huge circular canvas, nearly five hundred feet in length,
+that she was in some measure forgotten. The painting represented the
+seventeenth apparition of the Blessed Virgin to Bernadette, on the day
+when, kneeling before the Grotto during her vision, she had heedlessly
+left her hand on the flame of the candle without burning it. The whole of
+the old primitive landscape of the Grotto was shown, the whole scene was
+set out with all its historical personages: the doctor verifying the
+miracle watch in hand, the Mayor, the Commissary of Police, and the
+Public Prosecutor, whose names the showman gave out, amidst the amazement
+of the public following him.
+
+Then, by an unconscious transition of ideas, Pierre recalled the remark
+which the driver of the cabriolet had made a short time previously:
+“Lourdes has caught on well, but the question is whether it will all last
+long.” That, in fact, was the question. How many venerated sanctuaries
+had thus been built already, at the bidding of innocent chosen children,
+to whom the Blessed Virgin had shown herself! It was always the same
+story beginning afresh: an apparition; a persecuted shepherdess, who was
+called a liar; next the covert propulsion of human misery hungering after
+illusion; then propaganda, and the triumph of the sanctuary shining like
+a star; and afterwards decline, and oblivion, when the ecstatic dream of
+another visionary gave birth to another sanctuary elsewhere. It seemed as
+if the power of illusion wore away; that it was necessary in the course
+of centuries to displace it, set it amidst new scenery, under fresh
+circumstances, in order to renew its force. La Salette had dethroned the
+old wooden and stone Virgins that had healed; Lourdes had just dethroned
+La Salette, pending the time when it would be dethroned itself by Our
+Lady of to-morrow, she who will show her sweet, consoling features to
+some pure child as yet unborn. Only, if Lourdes had met with such rapid,
+such prodigious fortune, it assuredly owed it to the little sincere soul,
+the delightful charm of Bernadette. Here there was no deceit, no
+falsehood, merely the blossoming of suffering, a delicate sick child who
+brought to the afflicted multitude her dream of justice and equality in
+the miraculous. She was merely eternal hope, eternal consolation.
+Besides, all historical and social circumstances seem to have combined to
+increase the need of this mystical flight at the close of a terrible
+century of positivist inquiry; and that was perhaps the reason why
+Lourdes would still long endure in its triumph, before becoming a mere
+legend, one of those dead religions whose powerful perfume has
+evaporated.
+
+Ah! that ancient Lourdes, that city of peace and belief, the only
+possible cradle where the legend could come into being, how easily Pierre
+conjured it up before him, whilst walking round the vast canvas of the
+Panorama! That canvas said everything; it was the best lesson of things
+that could be seen. The monotonous explanations of the showman were not
+heard; the landscape spoke for itself. First of all there was the Grotto,
+the rocky hollow beside the Gave, a savage spot suitable for
+reverie--bushy slopes and heaps of fallen stone, without a path among
+them; and nothing yet in the way of ornamentation--no monumental quay, no
+garden paths winding among trimly cut shrubs; no Grotto set in order,
+deformed, enclosed with iron railings; above all, no shop for the sale of
+religious articles, that simony shop which was the scandal of all pious
+souls. The Virgin could not have selected a more solitary and charming
+nook wherein to show herself to the chosen one of her heart, the poor
+young girl who came thither still possessed by the dream of her painful
+nights, even whilst gathering dead wood. And on the opposite side of the
+Gave, behind the rock of the castle, was old Lourdes, confident and
+asleep. Another age was then conjured up; a small town, with narrow
+pebble-paved streets, black houses with marble dressings, and an antique,
+semi-Spanish church, full of old carvings, and peopled with visions of
+gold and painted flesh. Communication with other places was only kept up
+by the Bagnères and Cauterets _diligences_, which twice a day forded the
+Lapaca to climb the steep causeway of the Rue Basse. The spirit of the
+century had not breathed on those peaceful roofs sheltering a belated
+population which had remained childish, enclosed within the narrow limits
+of strict religious discipline. There was no debauchery; a slow antique
+commerce sufficed for daily life, a poor life whose hardships were the
+safeguards of morality. And Pierre had never better understood how
+Bernadette, born in that land of faith and honesty, had flowered like a
+natural rose, budding on the briars of the road.
+
+“It’s all the same very curious,” observed M. de Guersaint when they
+found themselves in the street again. “I’m not at all sorry I saw it.”
+
+Marie was also laughing with pleasure. “One would almost think oneself
+there. Isn’t it so, father? At times it seems as if the people were going
+to move. And how charming Bernadette looks on her knees, in ecstasy,
+while the candle flame licks her fingers without burning them.”
+
+“Let us see,” said the architect; “we have only an hour left, so we must
+think of making our purchases, if we wish to buy anything. Shall we take
+a look at the shops? We certainly promised Majesté to give him the
+preference; but that does not prevent us from making a few inquiries. Eh!
+Pierre, what do you say?”
+
+“Oh! certainly, as you like,” answered the priest. “Besides, it will give
+us a walk.”
+
+And he thereupon followed the young girl and her father, who returned to
+the Plateau de la Merlasse. Since he had quitted the Panorama he felt as
+though he no longer knew where he was. It seemed to him as if he had all
+at once been transported from one to another town, parted by centuries.
+He had left the solitude, the slumbering peacefulness of old Lourdes,
+which the dead light of the vellum had increased, to fall at last into
+new Lourdes, sparkling with brightness and noisy with the crowd. Ten
+o’clock had just struck, and extraordinary animation reigned on the
+footways, where before breakfast an entire people was hastening to
+complete its purchases, so that it might have nothing but its departure
+to think of afterwards. The thousands of pilgrims of the national
+pilgrimage streamed along the thoroughfares and besieged the shops in a
+final scramble. You would have taken the cries, the jostling, and the
+sudden rushes for those at some fair just breaking up amidst a ceaseless
+roll of vehicles. Many, providing themselves with provisions for the
+journey, cleared the open-air stalls where bread and slices of sausages
+and ham were sold. Others purchased fruit and wine; baskets were filled
+with bottles and greasy parcels until they almost burst. A hawker who was
+wheeling some cheeses about on a small truck saw his goods carried off as
+if swept away by the wind. But what the crowd more particularly purchased
+were religious articles, and those hawkers whose barrows were loaded with
+statuettes and sacred engravings were reaping golden gains. The customers
+at the shops stood in strings on the pavement; the women were belted with
+immense chaplets, had Blessed Virgins tucked under their arms, and were
+provided with cans which they meant to fill at the miraculous spring.
+Carried in the hand or slung from the shoulder, some of them quite plain
+and others daubed over with a Lady of Lourdes in blue paint, these cans
+held from one to ten quarts apiece; and, shining with all the brightness
+of new tin, clashing, too, at times with the sharp jingle of stew-pans,
+they added a gay note to the aspect of the noisy multitude. And the fever
+of dealing, the pleasure of spending one’s money, of returning home with
+one’s pockets crammed with photographs and medals, lit up all faces with
+a holiday expression, transforming the radiant gathering into a
+fair-field crowd with appetites either beyond control or satisfied.
+
+On the Plateau de la Merlasse, M. de Guersaint for a moment felt tempted
+to enter one of the finest and most patronised shops, on the board over
+which were these words in large letters: “Soubirous, Brother of
+Bernadette.”
+
+“Eh! what if we were to make our purchases there? It would be more
+appropriate, more interesting to remember.”
+
+However, he passed on, repeating that they must see everything first of
+all.
+
+Pierre had looked at the shop kept by Bernadette’s brother with a heavy
+heart. It grieved him to find the brother selling the Blessed Virgin whom
+the sister had beheld. However, it was necessary to live, and he had
+reason to believe that, beside the triumphant Basilica resplendent with
+gold, the visionary’s relatives were not making a fortune, the
+competition being so terrible. If on the one hand the pilgrims left
+millions behind them at Lourdes, on the other there were more than two
+hundred dealers in religious articles, to say nothing of the hotel and
+lodging-house keepers, to whom the largest part of the spoils fell; and
+thus the gain, so eagerly disputed, ended by being moderate enough after
+all. Along the Plateau on the right and left of the repository kept by
+Bernadette’s brother, other shops appeared, an uninterrupted row of them,
+pressing one against the other, each occupying a division of a long
+wooden structure, a sort of gallery erected by the town, which derived
+from it some sixty thousand francs a year. It formed a regular bazaar of
+open stalls, encroaching on the pavements so as to tempt people to stop
+as they passed along. For more than three hundred yards no other trade
+was plied: a river of chaplets, medals, and statuettes streamed without
+end behind the windows; and in enormous letters on the boards above
+appeared the venerated names of Saint Roch, Saint Joseph, Jerusalem, The
+Immaculate Virgin, The Sacred Heart of Mary, all the names in Paradise
+that were most likely to touch and attract customers.
+
+“Really,” said M. de Guersaint, “I think it’s the same thing all over the
+place. Let us go anywhere.” He himself had had enough of it, this
+interminable display was quite exhausting him.
+
+“But as you promised to make the purchases at Majesté’s,” said Marie, who
+was not, in the least tired, “the best thing will be to go back.”
+
+“That’s it; let’s return to Majesté’s place.”
+
+But the rows of shops began again in the Avenue de la Grotte. They
+swarmed on both sides; and among them here were jewellers, drapers, and
+umbrella-makers, who also dealt in religious articles. There was even a
+confectioner who sold boxes of pastilles _à l’eau de Lourdes_, with a
+figure of the Virgin on the cover. A photographer’s windows were crammed
+with views of the Grotto and the Basilica, and portraits of Bishops and
+reverend Fathers of all Orders, mixed up with views of famous sites in
+the neighbouring mountains. A bookseller displayed the last Catholic
+publications, volumes bearing devout titles, and among them the
+innumerable works published on Lourdes during the last twenty years, some
+of which had had a wonderful success, which was still fresh in memory. In
+this broad, populous thoroughfare the crowd streamed along in more open
+order; their cans jingled, everyone was in high spirits, amid the bright
+sunrays which enfiladed the road from one end to the other. And it seemed
+as if there would never be a finish to the statuettes, the medals, and
+the chaplets; one display followed another; and, indeed, there were miles
+of them running through the streets of the entire town, which was ever
+the same bazaar selling the same articles.
+
+In front of the Hotel of the Apparitions M. de Guersaint again hesitated.
+“Then it’s decided, we are going to make our purchases there?” he asked.
+
+“Certainly,” said Marie. “See what a beautiful shop it is!”
+
+And she was the first to enter the establishment, which was, in fact, one
+of the largest in the street, occupying the ground-floor of the hotel on
+the left hand. M. de Guersaint and Pierre followed her.
+
+Apolline, the niece of the Majestés, who was in charge of the place, was
+standing on a stool, taking some holy-water vases from a top shelf to
+show them to a young man, an elegant bearer, wearing beautiful yellow
+gaiters. She was laughing with the cooing sound of a dove, and looked
+charming with her thick black hair and her superb eyes, set in a somewhat
+square face, which had a straight forehead, chubby cheeks, and full red
+lips. Jumping lightly to the ground, she exclaimed: “Then you don’t think
+that this pattern would please madame, your aunt?”
+
+“No, no,” answered the bearer, as he went off. “Obtain the other pattern.
+I shall not leave until to-morrow, and will come back.”
+
+When Apolline learnt that Marie was the young person visited by the
+miracle of whom Madame Majesté had been talking ever since the previous
+day, she became extremely attentive. She looked at her with her merry
+smile, in which there was a dash of surprise and covert incredulity.
+However, like the clever saleswoman that she was, she was profuse in
+complimentary remarks. “Ah, mademoiselle, I shall be so happy to sell to
+you! Your miracle is so beautiful! Look, the whole shop is at your
+disposal. We have the largest choice.”
+
+Marie was ill at ease. “Thank you,” she replied, “you are very good. But
+we have only come to buy a few small things.”
+
+“If you will allow us,” said M. de Guersaint, “we will choose ourselves.”
+
+“Very well. That’s it, monsieur. Afterwards we will see!”
+
+And as some other customers now came in, Apolline forgot them, returned
+to her duties as a pretty saleswoman, with caressing words and seductive
+glances, especially for the gentlemen, whom she never allowed to leave
+until they had their pockets full of purchases.
+
+M. de Guersaint had only two francs left of the louis which Blanche, his
+eldest daughter, had slipped into his hand when he was leaving, as
+pocket-money; and so he did not dare to make any large selection. But
+Pierre declared that they would cause him great pain if they did not
+allow him to offer them the few things which they would like to take away
+with them from Lourdes. It was therefore understood that they would first
+of all choose a present for Blanche, and then Marie and her father should
+select the souvenirs that pleased them best.
+
+“Don’t let us hurry,” repeated M. de Guersaint, who had become very gay.
+“Come, Marie, have a good look. What would be most likely to please
+Blanche?”
+
+All three looked, searched, and rummaged. But their indecision increased
+as they went from one object to another. With its counters, show-cases,
+and nests of drawers, furnishing it from top to bottom, the spacious shop
+was a sea of endless billows, overflowing with all the religious
+knick-knacks imaginable. There were the chaplets: skeins of chaplets
+hanging along the walls, and heaps of chaplets lying in the drawers, from
+humble ones costing twenty sous a dozen, to those of sweet-scented wood,
+agate, and lapis-lazuli, with chains of gold or silver; and some of them,
+of immense length, made to go twice round the neck or waist, had carved
+beads, as large as walnuts, separated by death’s-heads. Then there were
+the medals: a shower of medals, boxes full of medals, of all sizes, of
+all metals, the cheapest and the most precious. They bore different
+inscriptions, they represented the Basilica, the Grotto, or the
+Immaculate Conception; they were engraved, _repoussées_, or enamelled,
+executed with care, or made by the gross, according to the price. And
+next there were the Blessed Virgins, great and small, in zinc, wood,
+ivory, and especially plaster; some entirely white, others tinted in
+bright colours, in accordance with the description given by Bernadette;
+the amiable and smiling face, the extremely long veil, the blue sash, and
+the golden roses on the feet, there being, however, some slight
+modification in each model so as to guarantee the copyright. And there
+was another flood of other religious objects: a hundred varieties of
+scapularies, a thousand different sorts of sacred pictures: fine
+engravings, large chromo-lithographs in glaring colours, submerged
+beneath a mass of smaller pictures, which were coloured, gilded,
+varnished, decorated with bouquets of flowers, and bordered with lace
+paper. And there was also jewellery: rings, brooches, and bracelets,
+loaded with stars and crosses, and ornamented with saintly figures.
+Finally, there was the Paris article, which rose above and submerged all
+the rest: pencil-holders, purses, cigar-holders, paperweights,
+paper-knives, even snuff-boxes; and innumerable other objects on which
+the Basilica, Grotto, and Blessed Virgin ever and ever appeared,
+reproduced in every way, by every process that is known. Heaped together
+pell-mell in one of the cases reserved to articles at fifty centimes
+apiece were napkin-rings, egg-cups, and wooden pipes, on which was carved
+the beaming apparition of Our Lady of Lourdes.
+
+Little by little, M. de Guersaint, with the annoyance of a man who prides
+himself on being an artist, became disgusted and quite sad. “But all this
+is frightful, frightful!” he repeated at every new article he took up to
+look at.
+
+Then he relieved himself by reminding Pierre of the ruinous attempt which
+he had made to improve the artistic quality of religious prints. The
+remains of his fortune had been lost in that attempt, and the thought
+made him all the more angry, in presence of the wretched productions with
+which the shop was crammed. Had anyone ever seen things of such idiotic,
+pretentious, and complicated ugliness! The vulgarity of the ideas and the
+silliness of the expressions portrayed rivalled the commonplace character
+of the composition. You were reminded of fashion-plates, the covers of
+boxes of sweets, and the wax dolls’ heads that revolve in hairdressers’
+windows; it was an art abounding in false prettiness, painfully childish,
+with no really human touch in it, no tone, and no sincerity. And the
+architect, who was wound up, could not stop, but went on to express his
+disgust with the buildings of new Lourdes, the pitiable disfigurement of
+the Grotto, the colossal monstrosity of the inclined ways, the disastrous
+lack of symmetry in the church of the Rosary and the Basilica, the former
+looking too heavy, like a corn market, whilst the latter had an anaemical
+structural leanness with no kind of style but the mongrel.
+
+“Ah! one must really be very fond of God,” he at last concluded, “to have
+courage enough to come and adore Him amidst such horrors! They have
+failed in everything, spoilt everything, as though out of pleasure. Not
+one of them has experienced that moment of true feeling, of real
+naturalness and sincere faith, which gives birth to masterpieces. They
+are all clever people, but all plagiarists; not one has given his mind
+and being to the undertaking. And what must they not require to inspire
+them, since they have failed to produce anything grand even in this land
+of miracles?”
+
+Pierre did not reply, but he was very much struck by these reflections,
+which at last gave him an explanation of a feeling of discomfort that he
+had experienced ever since his arrival at Lourdes. This discomfort arose
+from the difference between the modern surroundings and the faith of past
+ages which it sought to resuscitate. He thought of the old cathedrals
+where quivered that faith of nations; he pictured the former attributes
+of worship--the images, the goldsmith’s work, the saints in wood and
+stone--all of admirable power and beauty of expression. The fact was that
+in those ancient times the workmen had been true believers, had given
+their whole souls and bodies and all the candour of their feelings to
+their productions, just as M. de Guersaint said. But nowadays architects
+built churches with the same practical tranquillity that they erected
+five-storey houses, just as the religious articles, the chaplets, the
+medals, and the statuettes were manufactured by the gross in the populous
+quarters of Paris by merrymaking workmen who did not even follow their
+religion. And thus what slopwork, what toymakers’, ironmongers’ stuff it
+all was! of a prettiness fit to make you cry, a silly sentimentality fit
+to make your heart turn with disgust! Lourdes was inundated, devastated,
+disfigured by it all to such a point as to quite upset persons with any
+delicacy of taste who happened to stray through its streets. It clashed
+jarringly with the attempted resuscitation of the legends, ceremonies,
+and processions of dead ages; and all at once it occurred to Pierre that
+the social and historical condemnation of Lourdes lay in this, that faith
+is forever dead among a people when it no longer introduces it into the
+churches it builds or the chaplets it manufactures.
+
+However, Marie had continued examining the shelves with the impatience of
+a child, hesitating, and finding nothing which seemed to her worthy of
+the great dream of ecstasy which she would ever keep within her.
+
+“Father,” she said, “it is getting late; you must take me back to the
+hospital; and to make up my mind, look, I will give Blanche this medal
+with the silver chain. After all it’s the most simple and prettiest thing
+here. She will wear it; it will make her a little piece of jewellery. As
+for myself, I will take this statuette of Our Lady of Lourdes, this small
+one, which is rather prettily painted. I shall place it in my room and
+surround it with fresh flowers. It will be very nice, will it not?”
+
+M. de Guersaint approved of her idea, and then busied himself with his
+own choice. “O dear! oh dear! how embarrassed I am!” said he.
+
+He was examining some ivory-handled penholders capped with pea-like
+balls, in which were microscopic photographs, and while bringing one of
+the little holes to his eye to look in it he raised an exclamation of
+mingled surprise and pleasure. “Hallo! here’s the Cirque de Gavarnie! Ah!
+it’s prodigious; everything is there; how can that colossal panorama have
+been got into so small a space? Come, I’ll take this penholder; it’s
+curious, and will remind me of my excursion.”
+
+Pierre had simply chosen a portrait of Bernadette, the large photograph
+which represents her on her knees in a black gown, with a handkerchief
+tied over her hair, and which is said to be the only one in existence
+taken from life. He hastened to pay, and they were all three on the point
+of leaving when Madame Majesté entered, protested, and positively
+insisted on making Marie a little present, saying that it would bring her
+establishment good-fortune. “I beg of you, mademoiselle, take a
+scapulary,” said she. “Look among those there. The Blessed Virgin who
+chose you will repay me in good luck.”
+
+She raised her voice and made so much fuss that the purchasers filling
+the shop were interested, and began gazing at the girl with envious eyes.
+It was popularity bursting out again around her, a popularity which ended
+even by reaching the street when the landlady went to the threshold of
+the shop, making signs to the tradespeople opposite and putting all the
+neighbourhood in a flutter.
+
+“Let us go,” repeated Marie, feeling more and more uncomfortable.
+
+But her father, on noticing a priest come in, detained her. “Ah! Monsieur
+l’Abbé des Hermoises!”
+
+It was in fact the handsome Abbé, clad in a cassock of fine cloth
+emitting a pleasant odour, and with an expression of soft gaiety on his
+fresh-coloured face. He had not noticed his companion of the previous
+day, but had gone straight to Apolline and taken her on one side. And
+Pierre overheard him saying in a subdued tone: “Why didn’t you bring me
+my three-dozen chaplets this morning?”
+
+Apolline again began laughing with the cooing notes of a dove, and looked
+at him sideways, roguishly, without answering.
+
+“They are for my little penitents at Toulouse. I wanted to place them at
+the bottom of my trunk; and you offered to help me pack my linen.”
+
+She continued laughing, and her pretty eyes sparkled.
+
+“However, I shall not leave before to-morrow. Bring them me to-night,
+will you not? When you are at liberty. It’s at the end of the street, at
+Duchêne’s.”
+
+Thereupon, with a slight movement of her red lips, and in a somewhat
+bantering way, which left him in doubt as to whether she would keep her
+promise, she replied: “Certainly, Monsieur l’Abbé, I will go.”
+
+They were now interrupted by M. de Guersaint, who came forward to shake
+the priest’s hand. And the two men at once began talking again of the
+Cirque de Gavarnie: they had had a delightful trip, a most pleasant time,
+which they would never forget. Then they enjoyed a laugh at the expense
+of their two companions, ecclesiastics of slender means, good-natured
+fellows, who had much amused them. And the architect ended by reminding
+his new friend that he had kindly promised to induce a personage at
+Toulouse, who was ten times a millionaire, to interest himself in his
+studies on navigable balloons. “A first advance of a hundred thousand
+francs would be sufficient,” he said.
+
+“You can rely on me,” answered Abbé des Hermoises. “You will not have
+prayed to the Blessed Virgin in vain.”
+
+However, Pierre, who had kept Bernadette’s portrait in his hand, had just
+then been struck by the extraordinary likeness between Apolline and the
+visionary. It was the same rather massive face, the same full thick
+mouth, and the same magnificent eyes; and he recollected that Madame
+Majesté had already pointed out to him this striking resemblance, which
+was all the more peculiar as Apolline had passed through a similar
+poverty-stricken childhood at Bartres before her aunt had taken her with
+her to assist in keeping the shop. Bernadette! Apolline! What a strange
+association, what an unexpected reincarnation at thirty years’ distance!
+And, all at once, with this Apolline, who was so flightily merry and
+careless, and in regard to whom there were so many odd rumours, new
+Lourdes rose before his eyes: the coachmen, the candle-girls, the persons
+who let rooms and waylaid tenants at the railway station, the hundreds of
+furnished houses with discreet little lodgings, the crowd of free
+priests, the lady hospitallers, and the simple passers-by, who came there
+to satisfy their appetites. Then, too, there was the trading mania
+excited by the shower of millions, the entire town given up to lucre, the
+shops transforming the streets into bazaars which devoured one another,
+the hotels living gluttonously on the pilgrims, even to the Blue Sisters
+who kept a _table d’hôte_, and the Fathers of the Grotto who coined money
+with their God! What a sad and frightful course of events, the vision of
+pure Bernadette inflaming multitudes, making them rush to the illusion of
+happiness, bringing a river of gold to the town, and from that moment
+rotting everything. The breath of superstition had sufficed to make
+humanity flock thither, to attract abundance of money, and to corrupt
+this honest corner of the earth forever. Where the candid lily had
+formerly bloomed there now grew the carnal rose, in the new loam of
+cupidity and enjoyment. Bethlehem had become Sodom since an innocent
+child had seen the Virgin.
+
+“Eh? What did I tell you?” exclaimed Madame Majesté, perceiving that
+Pierre was comparing her niece with the portrait. “Apolline is Bernadette
+all over!”
+
+The young girl approached with her amiable smile, flattered at first by
+the comparison.
+
+“Let’s see, let’s see!” said Abbé des Hermoises, with an air of lively
+interest.
+
+He took the photograph in his turn, compared it with the girl, and then
+exclaimed in amazement: “It’s wonderful; the same features. I had not
+noticed it before. Really I’m delighted--”
+
+“Still I fancy she had a larger nose,” Apolline ended by remarking.
+
+The Abbé then raised an exclamation of irresistible admiration: “Oh! you
+are prettier, much prettier, that’s evident. But that does not matter,
+anyone would take you for two sisters.”
+
+Pierre could not refrain from laughing, he thought the remark so
+peculiar. Ah! poor Bernadette was absolutely dead, and she had no sister.
+She could not have been born again; it would have been impossible for her
+to exist in the region of crowded life and passion which she had made.
+
+At length Marie went off leaning on her father’s arm, and it was agreed
+that they would both call and fetch her at the hospital to go to the
+station together. More than fifty people were awaiting her in the street
+in a state of ecstasy. They bowed to her and followed her; and one woman
+even made her infirm child, whom she was bringing back from the Grotto,
+touch her gown.
+
+
+
+
+III. DEPARTURE
+
+At half-past two o’clock the white train, which was to leave Lourdes at
+three-forty, was already in the station, alongside the second platform.
+For three days it had been waiting on a siding, in the same state as when
+it had come from Paris, and since it had been run into the station again
+white flags had been waving from the foremost and hindmost of its
+carriages, by way of preventing any mistakes on the part of the pilgrims,
+whose entraining was usually a very long and troublesome affair.
+Moreover, all the fourteen trains of the pilgrimage were timed to leave
+that day. The green train had started off at ten o’clock, followed by the
+pink and the yellow trains, and the others--the orange, the grey, and the
+blue--would start in turn after the white train had taken its departure.
+It was, indeed, another terrible day’s work for the station staff, amidst
+a tumult and a scramble which altogether distracted them.
+
+However, the departure of the white train was always the event of the day
+which provoked most interest and emotion, for it took away with it all
+the more afflicted patients, amongst whom were naturally those loved by
+the Virgin and chosen by her for the miraculous cures. Accordingly, a
+large, serried crowd was collected under the roofing of the spacious
+platform, a hundred yards in length, where all the benches were already
+covered with waiting pilgrims and their parcels. In the refreshment-room,
+at one end of the buildings, men were drinking beer and women ordering
+lemonade at the little tables which had been taken by assault, whilst at
+the other end bearers stood on guard at the goods entrance so as to keep
+the way clear for the speedy passage of the patients, who would soon be
+arriving. And all along the broad platform there was incessant coming and
+going, poor people rushing hither and thither in bewilderment, priests
+trotting along to render assistance, gentlemen in frock-coats looking on
+with quiet inquisitiveness: indeed, all the jumbling and jostling of the
+most mixed, most variegated throng ever elbowed in a railway station.
+
+At three o’clock, however, the sick had not yet reached the station, and
+Baron Suire was in despair, his anxiety arising from the dearth of
+horses, for a number of unexpected tourists had arrived at Lourdes that
+morning and hired conveyances for Bareges, Cauterets, and Gavarnie. At
+last, however, the Baron espied Berthaud and Gérard arriving in all
+haste, after scouring the town; and when he had rushed up to them they
+soon pacified him by announcing that things were going splendidly. They
+had been able to procure the needful animals, and the removal of the
+patients from the hospital was now being carried out under the most
+favorable circumstances. Squads of bearers with their stretchers and
+little carts were already in the station yard, watching for the arrival
+of the vans, breaks, and other vehicles which had been recruited. A
+reserve supply of mattresses and cushions was, moreover, heaped up beside
+a lamp-post. Nevertheless, just as the first patients arrived, Baron
+Suire again lost his head, whilst Berthaud and Gérard hastened to the
+platform from which the train would start. There they began to
+superintend matters, and gave orders amidst an increasing scramble.
+
+Father Fourcade was on this platform, walking up and down alongside the
+train, on Father Massias’s arm. Seeing Doctor Bonamy approach, he stopped
+short to speak to him: “Ah, doctor,” said he, “I am pleased to see you.
+Father Massias, who is about to leave us, was again telling me just now
+of the extraordinary favor granted by the Blessed Virgin to that
+interesting young person, Mademoiselle Marie de Guersaint. There has not
+been such a brilliant miracle for years! It is signal good-fortune for
+us--a blessing which should render our labours fruitful. All Christendom
+will be illumined, comforted, enriched by it.”
+
+He was radiant with pleasure, and forthwith the doctor with his
+clean-shaven face, heavy, peaceful features, and usually tired eyes, also
+began to exult: “Yes, your reverence, it is prodigious, prodigious! I
+shall write a pamphlet about it. Never was cure produced by supernatural
+means in a more authentic manner. Ah! what a stir it will create!”
+
+Then, as they had begun walking to and fro again, all three together, he
+noticed that Father Fourcade was dragging his leg with increased
+difficulty, leaning heavily the while on his companion’s arm. “Is your
+attack of gout worse, your reverence?” he inquired. “You seem to be
+suffering a great deal.”
+
+“Oh! don’t speak of it; I wasn’t able to close my eyes all night! It is
+very annoying that this attack should have come on me the very day of my
+arrival here! It might as well have waited. But there is nothing to be
+done, so don’t let us talk of it any more. I am, at all events, very
+pleased with this year’s result.”
+
+“Ah! yes, yes indeed,” in his turn said Father Massias, in a voice which
+quivered with fervour; “we may all feel proud, and go away with our
+hearts full of enthusiasm and gratitude. How many prodigies there have
+been, in addition to the healing of that young woman you spoke of! There
+is no counting all the miracles: deaf women and dumb women have recovered
+their faculties, faces disfigured by sores have become as smooth as the
+hand, moribund consumptives have come to life again and eaten and danced!
+It is not a train of sufferers, but a train of resurrection, a train of
+glory, that I am about to take back to Paris!”
+
+He had ceased to see the ailing creatures around him, and in the
+blindness of his faith was soaring triumphantly.
+
+Then, alongside the carriages, whose compartments were beginning to fill,
+they all three continued their slow saunter, smiling at the pilgrims who
+bowed to them, and at times again stopping to address a kind word to some
+mournful woman who, pale and shivering, passed by upon a stretcher. They
+boldly declared that she was looking much better, and would assuredly
+soon get well.
+
+However, the station-master, who was incessantly bustling about, passed
+by, calling in a shrill voice: “Don’t block up the platform, please;
+don’t block up the platform!” And on Berthaud pointing out to him that it
+was, at all events, necessary to deposit the stretchers on the platform
+before hoisting the patients into the carriages, he became quite angry:
+“But, come, come; is it reasonable?” he asked. “Look at that little
+hand-cart which has been left on the rails over yonder. I expect the
+train to Toulouse in a few minutes. Do you want your people to be crushed
+to death?”
+
+Then he went off at a run to instruct some porters to keep the bewildered
+flock of pilgrims away from the rails. Many of them, old and simple
+people, did not even recognise the colour of their train, and this was
+the reason why one and all wore cards of some particular hue hanging from
+their necks, so that they might be led and entrained like marked cattle.
+And what a constant state of excitement it was, with the starting of
+these fourteen special trains, in addition to all the ordinary traffic,
+in which no change had been made.
+
+Pierre arrived, valise in hand, and found some difficulty in reaching the
+platform. He was alone, for Marie had expressed an ardent desire to kneel
+once more at the Grotto, so that her soul might burn with gratitude
+before the Blessed Virgin until the last moment; and so he had left M. de
+Guersaint to conduct her thither whilst he himself settled the hotel
+bill. Moreover, he had made them promise that they would take a fly to
+the station, and they would certainly arrive within a quarter of an hour.
+Meantime, his idea was to seek their carriage, and there rid himself of
+his valise. This, however, was not an easy task, and he only recognised
+the carriage eventually by the placard which had been swinging from it in
+the sunlight and the storms during the last three days--a square of
+pasteboard bearing the names of Madame de Jonquière and Sisters Hyacinthe
+and Claire des Anges. There could be no mistake, and Pierre again
+pictured the compartments full of his travelling companions. Some
+cushions already marked M. Sabathier’s corner, and on the seat where
+Marie had experienced such suffering he still found some scratches caused
+by the ironwork of her box. Then, having deposited his valise in his own
+place, he remained on the platform waiting and looking around him, with a
+slight feeling of surprise at not perceiving Doctor Chassaigne, who had
+promised to come and embrace him before the train started.
+
+Now that Marie was well again, Pierre had laid his bearer straps aside,
+and merely wore the red cross of the pilgrimage on his cassock. The
+station, of which he had caught but a glimpse, in the livid dawn amidst
+the anguish of the terrible morning of their arrival, now surprised him
+by its spacious platforms, its broad exits, and its clear gaiety. He
+could not see the mountains, but some verdant slopes rose up on the other
+side, in front of the waiting-rooms; and that afternoon the weather was
+delightfully mild, the sky of a milky whiteness, with light fleecy clouds
+veiling the sun, whence there fell a broad diffuse light, like a
+nacreous, pearly dust: “maiden’s weather,” as country folk are wont to
+say.
+
+The big clock had just struck three, and Pierre was looking at it when he
+saw Madame Désagneaux and Madame Volmar arrive, followed by Madame de
+Jonquière and her daughter. These ladies, who had driven from the
+hospital in a landau, at once began looking for their carriage, and it
+was Raymonde who first recognised the first-class compartment in which
+she had travelled from Paris. “Mamma, mamma, here; here it is!” she
+called. “Stay a little while with us; you have plenty of time to install
+yourself among your patients, since they haven’t yet arrived.”
+
+Pierre now again found himself face to face with Madame Volmar, and their
+glances met. However, he gave no sign of recognition, and on her side
+there was but a slight sudden drooping of the eyelids. She had again
+assumed the air of a languid, indolent, black-robed woman, who modestly
+shrinks back, well pleased to escape notice. Her brasier-like eyes no
+longer glowed; it was only at long intervals that they kindled into a
+spark beneath the veil of indifference, the moire-like shade, which
+dimmed them.
+
+“Oh! it was a fearful sick headache!” she was repeating to Madame
+Désagneaux. “And, you can see, I’ve hardly recovered the use of my poor
+head yet. It’s the journey which brings it on. It’s the same thing every
+year.”
+
+However, Berthaud and Gérard, who had just perceived the ladies, were
+hurrying up to them. That morning they had presented themselves at the
+Hospital of Our Lady of Dolours, and Madame de Jonquière had received
+them in a little office near the linen-room. Thereupon, apologising with
+smiling affability for making his request amidst such a hurly-burly,
+Berthaud had solicited the hand of Mademoiselle Raymonde for his cousin,
+Gérard. They at once felt themselves at ease, the mother, with some show
+of emotion, saying that Lourdes would bring the young couple good luck.
+And so the marriage was arranged in a few words, amidst general
+satisfaction. A meeting was even appointed for the fifteenth of September
+at the Château of Berneville, near Caen, an estate belonging to
+Raymonde’s uncle, the diplomatist, whom Berthaud knew, and to whom he
+promised to introduce Gérard. Then Raymonde was summoned, and blushed
+with pleasure as she placed her little hand in those of her betrothed.
+
+Binding her now upon the platform, the latter began paying her every
+attention, and asking, “Would you like some pillows for the night? Don’t
+make any ceremony about it; I can give you plenty, both for yourself and
+for these ladies who are accompanying you.”
+
+However, Raymonde gaily refused the offer, “No, no,” said she, “we are
+not so delicate. Keep them for the poor sufferers.”
+
+All the ladies were now talking together. Madame de Jonquière declared
+that she was so tired, so tired that she no longer felt alive; and yet
+she displayed great happiness, her eyes smiling as she glanced at her
+daughter and the young man she was engaged to. But neither Berthaud nor
+Gérard could remain there; they had their duties to perform, and
+accordingly took their leave, after reminding Madame de Jonquière and
+Raymonde of the appointed meeting. It was understood, was it not, on
+September 15th, at the Château of Berneville? Yes, yes, it was
+understood! And then came fresh smiles and handshakes, whilst the eyes of
+the newly engaged couple--caressing, delighted eyes--added all that they
+dared not say aloud in the midst of such a throng.
+
+“What!” exclaimed little Madame Désagneaux, “you will go to Berneville on
+the 15th? But if we stay at Trouville till the 10th, as my husband wishes
+to do, we will go to see you!” And then, turning towards Madame Volmar,
+who stood there silent, she added, “You ought to come as well, my dear.
+It would be so nice to meet there all together.”
+
+But, with a slow wave of the hand and an air of weary indifference,
+Madame Volmar answered, “Oh! my holiday is all over; I am going home.”
+
+Just then her eyes again met those of Pierre, who had remained standing
+near the party, and he fancied that she became confused, whilst an
+expression of indescribable suffering passed over her lifeless face.
+
+The Sisters of the Assumption were now arriving, and the ladies joined
+them in front of the cantine van. Ferrand, who had come with the Sisters
+from the hospital, got into the van, and then helped Sister
+Saint-François to mount upon the somewhat high footboard. Then he
+remained standing on the threshold of the van--transformed into a kitchen
+and containing all sorts of supplies for the journey, such as bread,
+broth, milk, and chocolate,--whilst Sister Hyacinthe and Sister Claire
+des Anges, who were still on the platform, passed him his little
+medicine-chest and some small articles of luggage.
+
+“You are sure you have everything?” Sister Hyacinthe asked him. “All
+right. Well, now you only have to go and lie down in your corner and get
+to sleep, since you complain that your services are not utilised.”
+
+Ferrand began to laugh softly. “I shall help Sister Saint-François,” said
+he. “I shall light the oil-stove, wash the crockery, carry the cups of
+broth and milk to the patients whenever we stop, according to the
+time-table hanging yonder; and if, all the same, you _should_ require a
+doctor, you will please come to fetch me.”
+
+Sister Hyacinthe had also begun to laugh. “But we no longer require a
+doctor since all our patients are cured,” she replied; and, fixing her
+eyes on his, with her calm, sisterly air, she added, “Good-bye, Monsieur
+Ferrand.”
+
+He smiled again, whilst a feeling of deep emotion brought moisture to his
+eyes. The tremulous accents of his voice expressed his conviction that he
+would never be able to forget this journey, his joy at having seen her
+again, and the souvenir of divine and eternal affection which he was
+taking away with him. “Good-bye, Sister,” said he.
+
+Then Madame de Jonquière talked of going to her carriage with Sister
+Claire des Anges and Sister Hyacinthe; but the latter assured her that
+there was no hurry, since the sick pilgrims were as yet scarcely
+arriving. She left her, therefore, taking the other Sister with her, and
+promising to see to everything. Moreover, she even insisted on ridding
+the superintendent of her little bag, saying that she would find it on
+her seat when it was time for her to come. Thus the ladies continued
+walking and chatting gaily on the broad platform, where the atmosphere
+was so pleasant.
+
+Pierre, however, his eyes fixed upon the big clock, watched the minutes
+hasten by on the dial, and began to feel surprised at not seeing Marie
+arrive with her father. It was to be hoped that M. de Guersaint would not
+lose himself on the road!
+
+The young priest was still watching, when, to his surprise, he caught
+sight of M. Vigneron, in a state of perfect exasperation, pushing his
+wife and little Gustave furiously before him.
+
+“Oh, Monsieur l’Abbé,” he exclaimed, “tell me where our carriage is! Help
+me to put our luggage and this child in it. I am at my wit’s end! They
+have made me altogether lose my temper.”
+
+Then, on reaching the second-class compartment, he caught hold of
+Pierre’s hands, just as the young man was about to place little Gustave
+inside, and quite an outburst followed. “Could you believe it? They
+insist on my starting. They tell me that my return-ticket will not be
+available if I wait here till to-morrow. It was of no use my telling them
+about the accident. As it is, it’s by no means pleasant to have to stay
+with that corpse, watch over it, see it put in a coffin, and remove it
+to-morrow within the regulation time. But they pretend that it doesn’t
+concern them, that they already make large enough reductions on the
+pilgrimage tickets, and that they can’t enter into any questions of
+people dying.”
+
+Madame Vigneron stood all of a tremble listening to him, whilst Gustave,
+forgotten, staggering on his crutch with fatigue, raised his poor,
+inquisitive, suffering face.
+
+“But at all events,” continued the irate father, “as I told them, it’s a
+case of compulsion. What do they expect me to do with that corpse? I
+can’t take it under my arm, and bring it them to-day, like an article of
+luggage! I am therefore absolutely obliged to remain behind. But no! ah!
+how many stupid and wicked people there are!”
+
+“Have you spoken to the station-master?” asked Pierre.
+
+“The station-master! Oh! he’s somewhere about, in the midst of the
+scramble. They were never able to find him. How could you have anything
+done properly in such a bear-garden? Still, I mean to rout him out, and
+give him a bit of my mind!”
+
+Then, perceiving his wife standing beside him motionless, glued as it
+were to the platform, he cried: “What are you doing there? Get in, so
+that we may pass you the youngster and the parcels!”
+
+With these words he pushed her in, and threw the parcels after her,
+whilst the young priest took Gustave in his arms. The poor little fellow,
+who was as light as a bird, seemingly thinner than before, consumed by
+sores, and so full of pain, raised a faint cry. “Oh, my dear child, have
+I hurt you?” asked Pierre.
+
+“No, no, Monsieur l’Abbé, but I’ve been moved about so much to-day, and
+I’m very tired this afternoon.” As he spoke, he smiled with his usual
+intelligent and mournful expression, and then, sinking back into his
+corner, closed his eyes, exhausted, indeed done for, by this fearful trip
+to Lourdes.
+
+“As you can very well understand,” now resumed M. Vigneron, “it by no
+means amuses me to stay here, kicking my heels, while my wife and my son
+go back to Paris without me. They have to go, however, for life at the
+hotel is no longer bearable; and besides, if I kept them with me, and the
+railway people won’t listen to reason, I should have to pay three extra
+fares. And to make matters worse, my wife hasn’t got much brains. I’m
+afraid she won’t be able to manage things properly.”
+
+Then, almost breathless, he overwhelmed Madame Vigneron with the most
+minute instructions--what she was to do during the journey, how she was
+to get back home on arriving in Paris, and what steps she was to take if
+Gustave was to have another attack. Somewhat scared, she responded, in
+all docility, to each recommendation: “Yes, yes, dear--of course, dear,
+of course.”
+
+But all at once her husband’s rage came back to him. “After all,” he
+shouted, “what I want to know is whether my return ticket be good or not!
+I must know for certain! They must find that station-master for me!”
+
+He was already on the point of rushing away through the crowd, when he
+noticed Gustave’s crutch lying on the platform. This was disastrous, and
+he raised his eyes to heaven as though to call Providence to witness that
+he would never be able to extricate himself from such awful
+complications. And, throwing the crutch to his wife, he hurried off,
+distracted and shouting, “There, take it! You forget everything!”
+
+The sick pilgrims were now flocking into the station, and, as on the
+occasion of their arrival, there was plenty of disorderly carting along
+the platform and across the lines. All the abominable ailments, all the
+sores, all the deformities, went past once more, neither their gravity
+nor their number seeming to have decreased; for the few cures which had
+been effected were but a faint inappreciable gleam of light amidst the
+general mourning. They were taken back as they had come. The little
+carts, laden with helpless old women with their bags at their feet,
+grated over the rails. The stretchers on which you saw inflated bodies
+and pale faces with glittering eyes, swayed amidst the jostling of the
+throng. There was wild and senseless haste, indescribable confusion,
+questions, calls, sudden running, all the whirling of a flock which
+cannot find the entrance to the pen. And the bearers ended by losing
+their heads, no longer knowing which direction to take amidst the warning
+cries of the porters, who at each moment were frightening people,
+distracting them with anguish. “Take care, take care over there! Make
+haste! No, no, don’t cross! The Toulouse train, the Toulouse train!”
+
+Retracing his steps, Pierre again perceived the ladies, Madame de
+Jonquière and the others, still gaily chatting together. Lingering near
+them, he listened to Berthaud, whom Father Fourcade had stopped, to
+congratulate him on the good order which had been maintained throughout
+the pilgrimage. The ex-public prosecutor was now bowing his thanks,
+feeling quite flattered by this praise. “Is it not a lesson for their
+Republic, your reverence?” he asked. “People get killed in Paris when
+such crowds as these celebrate some bloody anniversary of their hateful
+history. They ought to come and take a lesson here.”
+
+He was delighted with the thought of being disagreeable to the Government
+which had compelled him to resign. He was never so happy as when women
+were just saved from being knocked over amidst the great concourse of
+believers at Lourdes. However, he did not seem to be satisfied with the
+results of the political propaganda which he came to further there,
+during three days, every year. Fits of impatience came over him, things
+did not move fast enough. When did Our Lady of Lourdes mean to bring back
+the monarchy?
+
+“You see, your reverence,” said he, “the only means, the real triumph,
+would be to bring the working classes of the towns here _en masse_. I
+shall cease dreaming, I shall devote myself to that entirely. Ah! if one
+could only create a Catholic democracy!”
+
+Father Fourcade had become very grave. His fine, intelligent eyes filled
+with a dreamy expression, and wandered far away. How many times already
+had he himself made the creation of that new people the object of his
+efforts! But was not the breath of a new Messiah needed for the
+accomplishment of such a task? “Yes, yes,” he murmured, “a Catholic
+democracy; ah! the history of humanity would begin afresh!”
+
+But Father Massias interrupted him in a passionate voice, saying that all
+the nations of the earth would end by coming; whilst Doctor Bonamy, who
+already detected a slight subsidence of fervour among the pilgrims,
+wagged his head and expressed the opinion that the faithful ones of the
+Grotto ought to increase their zeal. To his mind, success especially
+depended on the greatest possible measure of publicity being given to the
+miracles. And he assumed a radiant air and laughed complacently whilst
+pointing to the tumultuous _défile_ of the sick. “Look at them!” said he.
+“Don’t they go off looking better? There are a great many who, although
+they don’t appear to be cured, are nevertheless carrying the germs of
+cure away with them; of that you may be certain! Ah! the good people;
+they do far more than we do all together for the glory of Our Lady of
+Lourdes!”
+
+However, he had to check himself, for Madame Dieulafay was passing before
+them, in her box lined with quilted silk. She was deposited in front of
+the door of the first-class carriage, in which a maid was already placing
+the luggage. Pity came to all who beheld the unhappy woman, for she did
+not seem to have awakened from her prostration during her three days’
+sojourn at Lourdes. What she had been when they had removed her from the
+carriage on the morning of her arrival, that she also was now when the
+bearers were about to place her inside it again--clad in lace, covered
+with jewels, still with the lifeless, imbecile face of a mummy slowly
+liquefying; and, indeed, one might have thought that she had become yet
+more wasted, that she was being taken back diminished, shrunken more and
+more to the proportions of a child, by the march of that horrible disease
+which, after destroying her bones, was now dissolving the softened fibres
+of her muscles. Inconsolable, bowed down by the loss of their last hope,
+her husband and sister, their eyes red, were following her with Abbé
+Judaine, even as one follows a corpse to the grave.
+
+“No, no! not yet!” said the old priest to the bearers, in order to
+prevent them from placing the box in the carriage. “She will have time
+enough to roll along in there. Let her have the warmth of that lovely sky
+above her till the last possible moment.”
+
+Then, seeing Pierre near him, he drew him a few steps aside, and, in a
+voice broken by grief, resumed: “Ah! I am indeed distressed. Again this
+morning I had a hope. I had her taken to the Grotto, I said my mass for
+her, and came back to pray till eleven o’clock. But nothing came of it;
+the Blessed Virgin did not listen to me. Although she cured me, a poor,
+useless old man like me, I could not obtain from her the cure of this
+beautiful, young, and wealthy woman, whose life ought to be a continual
+_fête_. Undoubtedly the Blessed Virgin knows what she ought to do better
+than ourselves, and I bow and bless her name. Nevertheless, my soul is
+full of frightful sadness.”
+
+He did not tell everything; he did not confess the thought which was
+upsetting him, simple, childish, worthy man that he was, whose life had
+never been troubled by either passion or doubt. But his thought was that
+those poor weeping people, the husband and the sister, had too many
+millions, that the presents they had brought were too costly, that they
+had given far too much money to the Basilica. A miracle is not to be
+bought. The wealth of the world is a hindrance rather than an advantage
+when you address yourself to God. Assuredly, if the Blessed Virgin had
+turned a deaf ear to their entreaties, had shown them but a stern, cold
+countenance, it was in order that she might the more attentively listen
+to the weak voices of the lowly ones who had come to her with empty
+hands, with no other wealth than their love, and these she had loaded
+with grace, flooded with the glowing affection of her Divine Motherhood.
+And those poor wealthy ones, who had not been heard, that sister and that
+husband, both so wretched beside the sorry body they were taking away
+with them, they themselves felt like pariahs among the throng of the
+humble who had been consoled or healed; they seemed embarrassed by their
+very luxury, and recoiled, awkward and ill at ease, covered with shame at
+the thought that Our Lady of Lourdes had relieved beggars whilst never
+casting a glance upon that beautiful and powerful lady agonising unto
+death amidst all her lace!
+
+All at once it occurred to Pierre that he might have missed seeing M. de
+Guersaint and Marie arrive, and that they were perhaps already in the
+carriage. He returned thither, but there was still only his valise on the
+seat. Sister Hyacinthe and Sister Claire des Anges, however, had begun to
+install themselves, pending the arrival of their charges, and as Gérard
+just then brought up M. Sabathier in a little handcart, Pierre helped to
+place him in the carriage, a laborious task which put both the young
+priest and Gérard into a perspiration. The ex-professor, who looked
+disconsolate though very calm, at once settled himself in his corner.
+
+“Thank you, gentlemen,” said he. “That’s over, thank goodness. And now
+they’ll only have to take me out at Paris.”
+
+After wrapping a rug round his legs, Madame Sabathier, who was also
+there, got out of the carriage and remained standing near the open door.
+She was talking to Pierre when all at once she broke off to say: “Ah!
+here’s Madame Maze coming to take her seat. She confided in me the other
+day, you know. She’s a very unhappy little woman.”
+
+Then, in an obliging spirit, she called to her and offered to watch over
+her things. But Madame Maze shook her head, laughed, and gesticulated as
+though she were out of her senses.
+
+“No, no, I am not going,” said she.
+
+“What! you are not going back?”
+
+“No, no, I am not going--that is, I am, but not with you, not with you!”
+
+She wore such an extraordinary air, she looked so bright, that Pierre and
+Madame Sabathier found it difficult to recognise her. Her fair,
+prematurely faded face was radiant, she seemed to be ten years younger,
+suddenly aroused from the infinite sadness into which desertion had
+plunged her. And, at last, her joy overflowing, she raised a cry: “I am
+going off with him! Yes, he has come to fetch me, he is taking me with
+him. Yes, yes, we are going to Luchon together, together!”
+
+Then, with a rapturous glance, she pointed out a dark, sturdy-looking
+young man, with gay eyes and bright red lips, who was purchasing some
+newspapers. “There! that’s my husband,” said she, “that handsome man
+who’s laughing over there with the newspaper-girl. He turned up here
+early this morning, and he’s carrying me off. We shall take the Toulouse
+train in a couple of minutes. Ah! dear madame, I told you of all my
+worries, and you can understand my happiness, can’t you?”
+
+However, she could not remain silent, but again spoke of the frightful
+letter which she had received on Sunday, a letter in which he had
+declared to her that if she should take advantage of her sojourn at
+Lourdes to come to Luchon after him, he would not open the door to her.
+And, think of it, theirs had been a love match! But for ten years he had
+neglected her, profiting by his continual journeys as a commercial
+traveller to take friends about with him from one to the other end of
+France. Ah! that time she had thought it all over, she had asked the
+Blessed Virgin to let her die, for she knew that the faithless one was at
+that very moment at Luchon with two friends. What was it then that had
+happened? A thunderbolt must certainly have fallen from heaven. Those two
+friends must have received a warning from on high--perhaps they had
+dreamt that they were already condemned to everlasting punishment. At all
+events they had fled one evening without a word of explanation, and he,
+unable to live alone, had suddenly been seized with a desire to fetch his
+wife and keep her with him for a week. Grace must have certainly fallen
+on him, though he did not say it, for he was so kind and pleasant that
+she could not do otherwise than believe in a real beginning of
+conversion.
+
+“Ah! how grateful I am to the Blessed Virgin,” she continued; “she alone
+can have acted, and I well understood her last evening. It seemed to me
+that she made me a little sign just at the very moment when my husband
+was making up his mind to come here to fetch me. I asked him at what time
+it was that the idea occurred to him, and the hours fit in exactly. Ah!
+there has been no greater miracle. The others make me smile with their
+mended legs and their vanished sores. Blessed be Our Lady of Lourdes, who
+has healed my heart!”
+
+Just then the sturdy young man turned round, and she darted away to join
+him, so full of delight that she forgot to bid the others good-bye. And
+it was at this moment, amidst the growing crowd of patients whom the
+bearers were bringing, that the Toulouse train at last came in. The
+tumult increased, the confusion became extraordinary. Bells rang and
+signals worked, whilst the station-master was seen rushing up, shouting
+with all the strength of his lungs: “Be careful there! Clear the line at
+once!”
+
+A railway _employé_ had to rush from the platform to push a little
+vehicle, which had been forgotten on the line, with an old woman in it,
+out of harm’s way; however, yet another scared band of pilgrims ran
+across when the steaming, growling engine was only thirty yards distant.
+Others, losing their heads, would have been crushed by the wheels if
+porters had not roughly caught them by the shoulders. Then, without
+having pounded anybody, the train at last stopped alongside the
+mattresses, pillows, and cushions lying hither and thither, and the
+bewildered, whirling groups of people. The carriage doors opened and a
+torrent of travellers alighted, whilst another torrent climbed in, these
+two obstinately contending currents bringing the tumult to a climax.
+Faces, first wearing an inquisitive expression, and then overcome by
+stupefaction at the astonishing sight, showed themselves at the windows
+of the doors which remained closed; and, among them, one especially
+noticed the faces of two remarkably pretty girls, whose large candid eyes
+ended by expressing the most dolorous compassion.
+
+Followed by her husband, however, Madame Maze had climbed into one of the
+carriages, feeling as happy and buoyant as if she were in her twentieth
+year again, as on the already distant evening of her honeymoon journey.
+And the doors having been slammed, the engine gave a loud whistle and
+began to move, going off slowly and heavily between the throng, which, in
+the rear of the train, flowed on to the lines again like an invading
+torrent whose flood-gates have been swept away.
+
+“Bar the platform!” shouted the station-master to his men. “Keep watch
+when the engine comes up!”
+
+The belated patients and pilgrims had arrived during this alert. La
+Grivotte passed by with her feverish eyes and excited, dancing gait,
+followed by Elise Rouquet and Sophie Couteau, who were very gay, and
+quite out of breath through running. All three hastened to their
+carriage, where Sister Hyacinthe scolded them. They had almost been left
+behind at the Grotto, where, at times, the pilgrims lingered forgetfully,
+unable to tear themselves away, still imploring and entreating the
+Blessed Virgin, when the train was waiting for them at the
+railway-station.
+
+All at once Pierre, who likewise was anxious, no longer knowing what to
+think, perceived M. de Guersaint and Marie quietly talking with Abbé
+Judaine on the covered platform. He hastened to join them, and told them
+of his impatience. “What have you been doing?” he asked. “I was losing
+all hope.”
+
+“What have we been doing?” responded M. de Guersaint, with quiet
+astonishment. “We were at the Grotto, as you know very well. There was a
+priest there, preaching in a most remarkable manner, and we should still
+be there if I hadn’t remembered that we had to leave. And we took a fly
+here, as we promised you we would do.”
+
+He broke off to look at the clock. “But hang it all!” he added, “there’s
+no hurry. The train won’t start for another quarter of an hour.”
+
+This was true. Then Marie, smiling with divine joy, exclaimed: “Oh! if
+you only knew, Pierre, what happiness I have brought away from that last
+visit to the Blessed Virgin. I saw her smile at me, I felt her giving me
+strength to live. Really, that farewell was delightful, and you must not
+scold us, Pierre.”
+
+He himself had begun to smile, somewhat ill at ease, however, as he
+thought of his nervous fidgeting. Had he, then, experienced so keen a
+desire to get far away from Lourdes? Had he feared that the Grotto might
+keep Marie, that she might never come away from it again? Now that she
+was there beside him, he was astonished at having indulged such thoughts,
+and felt himself to be very calm.
+
+However, whilst he was advising them to go and take their seats in the
+carriage, he recognised Doctor Chassaigne hastily approaching. “Ah! my
+dear doctor,” he said, “I was waiting for you. I should have been sorry
+indeed to have gone away without embracing you.”
+
+But the old doctor, who was trembling with emotion, interrupted him.
+“Yes, yes, I am late. But ten minutes ago, just as I arrived, I caught
+sight of that eccentric fellow, the Commander, and had a talk with him
+over yonder. He was sneering at the sight of your people taking the train
+again to go and die at home, when, said he, they ought to have done so
+before coming to Lourdes. Well, all at once, while he was talking like
+this, he fell on the ground before me. It was his third attack of
+paralysis; the one he had long been expecting.”
+
+“Oh! _mon Dieu_,” murmured Abbé Judaine, who heard the doctor, “he was
+blaspheming. Heaven has punished him.”
+
+M. de Guersaint and Marie were listening, greatly interested and deeply
+moved.
+
+“I had him carried yonder, into that shed,” continued the doctor. “It is
+all over; I can do nothing. He will doubtless be dead before a quarter of
+an hour has gone by. But I thought of a priest, and hastened up to you.”
+
+Then, turning towards Abbé Judaine, M. Chassaigne added: “Come with me,
+Monsieur le Curé; you know him. We cannot let a Christian depart
+unsuccoured. Perhaps he will be moved, recognise his error, and become
+reconciled with God.”
+
+Abbé Judaine quickly followed the doctor, and in the rear went M. de
+Guersaint, leading Marie and Pierre, whom the thought of this tragedy
+impassioned. All five entered the goods shed, at twenty paces from the
+crowd which was still bustling and buzzing, without a soul in it
+expecting that there was a man dying so near by.
+
+In a solitary corner of the shed, between two piles of sacks filled with
+oats, lay the Commander, on a mattress borrowed from the Hospitality
+reserve supply. He wore his everlasting frock-coat, with its buttonhole
+decked with a broad red riband, and somebody who had taken the precaution
+to pick up his silver-knobbed walking-stick had carefully placed it on
+the ground beside the mattress.
+
+Abbé Judaine at once leant over him. “You recognise us, you can hear us,
+my poor friend, can’t you?” asked the priest.
+
+Only the Commander’s eyes now appeared to be alive; but they _were_
+alive, still glittering brightly with a stubborn flame of energy. The
+attack had this time fallen on his right side, almost entirely depriving
+him of the power of speech. He could only stammer a few words, by which
+he succeeded in making them understand that he wished to die there,
+without being moved or worried any further. He had no relative at
+Lourdes, where nobody knew anything either of his former life or his
+family. For three years he had lived there happily on the salary attached
+to his little post at the station, and now he at last beheld his ardent,
+his only desire, approaching fulfilment--the desire that he might depart
+and fall into the eternal sleep. His eyes expressed the great joy he felt
+at being so near his end.
+
+“Have you any wish to make known to us?” resumed Abbé Judaine. “Cannot we
+be useful to you in any way?”
+
+No, no; his eyes replied that he was all right, well pleased. For three
+years past he had never got up in the morning without hoping that by
+night time he would be sleeping in the cemetery. Whenever he saw the sun
+shine he was wont to say in an envious tone: “What a beautiful day for
+departure!” And now that death was at last at hand, ready to deliver him
+from his hateful existence, it was indeed welcome.
+
+“I can do nothing, science is powerless. He is condemned,” said Doctor
+Chassaigne in a low, bitter tone to the old priest, who begged him to
+attempt some effort.
+
+However, at that same moment it chanced that an aged woman, a pilgrim of
+fourscore years, who had lost her way and knew not whither she was going,
+entered the shed. Lame and humpbacked, reduced to the stature of
+childhood’s days, afflicted with all the ailments of extreme old age, she
+was dragging herself along with the assistance of a stick, and at her
+side was slung a can full of Lourdes water, which she was taking away
+with her, in the hope of yet prolonging her old age, in spite of all its
+frightful decay. For a moment her senile, imbecile mind was quite scared.
+She stood looking at that outstretched, stiffened man, who was dying.
+Then a gleam of grandmotherly kindliness appeared in the depths of her
+dim, vague eyes; and with the sisterly feelings of one who was very aged
+and suffered very grievously she drew nearer, and, taking hold of her can
+with her hands, which never ceased shaking, she offered it to the man.
+
+To Abbé Judaine this seemed like a sudden flash of light, an inspiration
+from on high. He, who had prayed so fervently and so often for the cure
+of Madame Dieulafay without being heard by the Blessed Virgin, now glowed
+with fresh faith in the conviction that if the Commander would only drink
+that water he would be cured.
+
+The old priest fell upon his knees beside the mattress. “O brother!” he
+said, “it is God who has sent you this woman. Reconcile yourself with
+God, drink and pray, whilst we ourselves implore the divine mercy with
+our whole souls. God will prove His power to you; God will work the great
+miracle of setting you erect once more, so that you may yet spend many
+years upon this earth, loving Him and glorifying Him.”
+
+No, no! the Commander’s sparkling eyes cried no! He, indeed, show himself
+as cowardly as those flocks of pilgrims who came from afar, through so
+many fatigues, in order to drag themselves on the ground and sob and beg
+Heaven to let them live a month, a year, ten years longer! It was so
+pleasant, so simple to die quietly in your bed. You turned your face to
+the wall and you died.
+
+“Drink, O my brother, I implore you!” continued the old priest. “It is
+life that you will drink, it is strength and health, the very joy of
+living. Drink that you may become young again, that you may begin a new
+and pious life; drink that you may sing the praises of the Divine Mother,
+who will have saved both your body and your soul. She is speaking to me,
+your resurrection is certain.”
+
+But no! but no! The eyes refused, repelled the offer of life with growing
+obstinacy, and in their expression now appeared a covert fear of the
+miraculous. The Commander did not believe; for three years he had been
+shrugging his shoulders at the pretended cases of cure. But could one
+ever tell in this strange world of ours? Such extraordinary things did
+sometimes happen. And if by chance their water should really have a
+supernatural power, and if by force they should make him drink some of
+it, it would be terrible to have to live again--to endure once more the
+punishment of a galley-slave existence, that abomination which
+Lazarus--the pitiable object of the great miracle--had suffered twice.
+No, no, he would not drink; he would not incur the fearful risk of
+resurrection.
+
+“Drink, drink, my brother,” repeated Abbé Judaine, who was now in tears;
+“do not harden your heart to refuse the favours of Heaven.”
+
+And then a terrible thing was seen; this man, already half dead, raised
+himself, shaking off the stifling bonds of paralysis, loosening for a
+second his tied tongue, and stammering, growling in a hoarse voice: “No,
+no, NO!”
+
+Pierre had to lead the stupefied old woman away and put her in the right
+direction again. She had failed to understand that refusal of the water
+which she herself was taking home with her like an inestimable treasure,
+the very gift of God’s eternity to the poor who did not wish to die. Lame
+of one leg, humpbacked, dragging the sorry remnants of her fourscore
+years along by the assistance of her stick, she disappeared among the
+tramping crowd, consumed by the passion of being, eager for space, air,
+sunshine, and noise.
+
+Marie and her father had shuddered in presence of that appetite for
+death, that greedy hungering for the end which the Commander showed. Ah!
+to sleep, to sleep without a dream, in the infinite darkness forever and
+ever--nothing in the world could have seemed so sweet to him. He did not
+hope in a better life; he had no desire to become happy, at last, in
+Paradise where equality and justice would reign. His sole longing was for
+black night and endless sleep, the joy of being no more, of never, never
+being again. And Doctor Chassaigne also had shuddered, for he also
+nourished but one thought, the thought of the happy moment when he would
+depart. But, in his case, on the other side of this earthly existence he
+would find his dear lost ones awaiting him, at the spot where eternal
+life began; and how icy cold all would have seemed had he but for a
+single moment thought that he might not meet them there.
+
+Abbé Judaine painfully rose up. It had seemed to him that the Commander
+was now fixing his bright eyes upon Marie. Deeply grieved that his
+entreaties should have been of no avail, the priest wished to show the
+dying man an example of that goodness of God which he repulsed.
+
+“You recognise her, do you not?” he asked. “Yes, it is the young lady who
+arrived here on Saturday so ill, with both legs paralysed. And you see
+her now, so full of health, so strong, so beautiful. Heaven has taken
+pity on her, and now she is reviving to youth, to the long life she was
+born to live. Do you feel no regret in seeing her? Would you also like
+her to be dead? would you have advised her not to drink the water?”
+
+The Commander could not answer; but his eyes no longer strayed from
+Marie’s young face, on which one read such great happiness at having
+resuscitated, such vast hopes in countless morrows; and tears appeared in
+those fixed eyes of his, gathered under their lids, and rolled down his
+cheeks, which were already cold. He was certainly weeping for her; he
+must have been thinking of that other miracle which he had wished
+her--that if she should be cured, she might be happy. It was the
+tenderness of an old man, who knows the miseries of this world, stirred
+to pity by the thought of all the sorrows which awaited this young
+creature. Ah! poor woman, how many times; perhaps, might she regret that
+she had not died in her twentieth year!
+
+Then the Commander’s eyes grew very dim, as though those last pitiful
+tears had dissolved them. It was the end; coma was coming; the mind was
+departing with the breath. He slightly turned, and died.
+
+Doctor Chassaigne at once drew Marie aside. “The train’s starting,” he
+said; “make haste, make haste!”
+
+Indeed, the loud ringing of a bell was clearly resounding above the
+growing tumult of the crowd. And the doctor, having requested two bearers
+to watch the body, which would be removed later on when the train had
+gone, desired to accompany his friends to their carriage.
+
+They hastened their steps. Abbé Judaine, who was in despair, joined them
+after saying a short prayer for the repose of that rebellious soul.
+However, while Marie, followed by Pierre and M. de Guersaint, was running
+along the platform, she was stopped once more, and this time by Doctor
+Bonamy, who triumphantly presented her to Father Fourcade. “Here is
+Mademoiselle de Guersaint, your reverence, the young lady who was healed
+so marvellously yesterday.”
+
+The radiant smile of a general who is reminded of his most decisive
+victory appeared on Father Fourcade’s face. “I know, I know; I was
+there,” he replied. “God has blessed you among all women, my dear
+daughter; go, and cause His name to be worshipped.”
+
+Then he congratulated M. de Guersaint, whose paternal pride savoured
+divine enjoyment. It was the ovation beginning afresh--the concert of
+loving words and enraptured glances which had followed the girl through
+the streets of Lourdes that morning, and which again surrounded her at
+the moment of departure. The bell might go on ringing; a circle of
+delighted pilgrims still lingered around her; it seemed as if she were
+carrying away in her person all the glory of the pilgrimage, the triumph
+of religion, which would echo and echo to the four corners of the earth.
+
+And Pierre was moved as he noticed the dolorous group which Madame
+Jousseur and M. Dieulafay formed near by. Their eyes were fixed upon
+Marie; like the others, they were astonished by the resurrection of this
+beautiful girl, whom they had seen lying inert, emaciated, with ashen
+face. Why should that child have been healed? Why not the young woman,
+the dear woman, whom they were taking home in a dying state? Their
+confusion, their sense of shame, seemed to increase; they drew back,
+uneasy, like pariahs burdened with too much wealth; and it was a great
+relief for them when, three bearers having with difficulty placed Madame
+Dieulafay in the first-class compartment, they themselves were able to
+vanish into it in company with Abbé Judaine.
+
+The _employés_ were already shouting, “Take your seats! take your seats,”
+ and Father Massias, the spiritual director of the train, had returned to
+his compartment, leaving Father Fourcade on the platform leaning on
+Doctor Bonamy’s shoulder. In all haste Gérard and Berthaud again saluted
+the ladies, while Raymonde got in to join Madame Désagneaux and Madame
+Volmar in their corner; and Madame de Jonquière at last ran off to her
+carriage, which she reached at the same time as the Guersaints. There was
+hustling, and shouting, and wild running from one to the other end of the
+long train, to which the engine, a copper engine, glittering like a star,
+had just been coupled.
+
+Pierre was helping Marie into the carriage, when M. Vigneron, coming back
+at a gallop, shouted to him: “It’ll be good to-morrow, it’ll be good
+tomorrow!” Very red in the face, he showed and waved his ticket, and then
+galloped off again to the compartment where his wife and son had their
+seats, in order to announce the good news to them.
+
+When Marie and her father were installed in their places, Pierre lingered
+for another moment on the platform with Doctor Chassaigne, who embraced
+him paternally. The young man wished to induce the doctor to return to
+Paris and take some little interest in life again. But M. Chassaigne
+shook his head. “No, no, my dear child,” he replied. “I shall remain
+here. They are here, they keep me here.” He was speaking of his dear lost
+ones. Then, very gently and lovingly, he said, “Farewell.”
+
+“Not farewell, my dear doctor; till we meet again.”
+
+“Yes, yes, farewell. The Commander was right, you know; nothing can be so
+sweet as to die, but to die in order to live again.”
+
+Baron Suire was now giving orders for the removal of the white flags on
+the foremost and hindmost carriages of the train; the shouts of the
+railway _employés_ were ringing out in more and more imperious tones,
+“Take your seats! take your seats!” and now came the supreme scramble,
+the torrent of belated pilgrims rushing up distracted, breathless, and
+covered with perspiration. Madame de Jonquière and Sister Hyacinthe were
+counting their party in the carriage. La Grivotte, Elise Rouquet, and
+Sophie Couteau were all three there. Madame Sabathier, too, had taken her
+seat in front of her husband, who, with his eyes half closed, was
+patiently awaiting the departure. However, a voice inquired, “And Madame
+Vincent, isn’t she going back with us?”
+
+Thereupon Sister Hyacinthe, who was leaning out of the window exchanging
+a last smile with Ferrand, who stood at the door of the cantine van,
+exclaimed: “Here she comes!”
+
+Madame Vincent crossed the lines, rushed up, the last of all, breathless
+and haggard. And at once, by an involuntary impulse, Pierre glanced at
+her arms. They carried nothing now.
+
+All the doors were being closed, slammed one after the other; the
+carriages were full, and only the signal for departure was awaited.
+Panting and smoking, the engine gave vent to a first loud whistle, shrill
+and joyous; and at that moment the sun, hitherto veiled from sight,
+dissipated the light cloudlets and made the whole train resplendent,
+gilding the engine, which seemed on the point of starting for the
+legendary Paradise. No bitterness, but a divine, infantile gaiety
+attended the departure. All the sick appeared to be healed. Though most
+of them were being taken away in the same condition as they had been
+brought, they went off relieved and happy, at all events, for an hour.
+And not the slightest jealousy tainted their brotherly and sisterly
+feelings; those who were not cured waxed quite gay, triumphant at the
+cure of the others. Their own turns would surely come; yesterday’s
+miracle was the formal promise of to-morrow’s. Even after those three
+days of burning entreaty their fever of desire remained within them; the
+faith of the forgotten ones continued as keen as ever in the conviction
+that the Blessed Virgin had simply deferred a cure for their souls’
+benefit. Inextinguishable love, invincible hope glowed within all those
+wretched ones thirsting for life. And so a last outburst of joy, a
+turbulent display of happiness, laughter and shouts, overflowed from all
+the crowded carriages. “Till next year! We’ll come back, we’ll come
+back again!” was the cry; and then the gay little Sisters of the
+Assumption clapped their hands, and the hymn of gratitude, the
+“Magnificat,” began, sung by all the eight hundred pilgrims: “_Magnificat
+anima mea Dominum_.” “My soul doth magnify the Lord.”
+
+Thereupon the station-master, his mind at last at ease, his arms hanging
+beside him, caused the signal to be given. The engine whistled once again
+and then set out, rolling along in the dazzling sunlight as amidst a
+glory. Although his leg was causing him great suffering, Father Fourcade
+had remained on the platform, leaning upon Doctor Bonamy’s shoulder, and,
+in spite of everything, saluting the departure of his dear children with
+a smile. Berthaud, Gérard, and Baron Suire formed another group, and near
+them were Doctor Chassaigne and M. Vigneron waving their handkerchiefs.
+Heads were looking joyously out of the windows of the fleeing carriages,
+whence other handkerchiefs were streaming in the current of air produced
+by the motion of the train. Madame Vigneron compelled Gustave to show his
+pale little face, and for a long time Raymonde’s small hand could be seen
+waving good wishes; but Marie remained the last, looking back on Lourdes
+as it grew smaller and smaller amidst the trees.
+
+Across the bright countryside the train triumphantly disappeared,
+resplendent, growling, chanting at the full pitch of its eight hundred
+voices: “_Et exsultavit spiritus meus in Deo salutari meo_.” “And my
+spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour!”
+
+
+
+
+IV. MARIE’S VOW
+
+ONCE more was the white train rolling, rolling towards Paris on its way
+home; and the third-class carriage, where the shrill voices singing the
+“Magnificat” at full pitch rose above the growling of the wheels, had
+again become a common room, a travelling hospital ward, full of disorder,
+littered like an improvised ambulance. Basins and brooms and sponges lay
+about under the seats, which half concealed them. Articles of luggage,
+all the wretched mass of poor worn-out things, were heaped together, a
+little bit everywhere; and up above, the litter began again, what with
+the parcels, the baskets, and the bags hanging from the brass pegs and
+swinging to and fro without a moment’s rest. The same Sisters of the
+Assumption and the same lady-hospitallers were there with their patients,
+amidst the contingent of healthy pilgrims, who were already suffering
+from the overpowering heat and unbearable odour. And at the far end there
+was again the compartment full of women, the ten close-packed female
+pilgrims, some young, some old, and all looking pitifully ugly as they
+violently chanted the canticle in cracked and woeful voices.
+
+“At what time shall we reach Paris?” M. de Guersaint inquired of Pierre.
+
+“To-morrow at about two in the afternoon, I think,” the priest replied.
+
+Since starting, Marie had been looking at the latter with an air of
+anxious preoccupation, as though haunted by a sudden sorrow which she
+could not reveal. However, she found her gay, healthful smile again to
+say: “Twenty-two hours’ journey! Ah! it won’t be so long and trying as it
+was coming.”
+
+“Besides,” resumed her father, “we have left some of our people behind.
+We have plenty of room now.”
+
+In fact Madame Maze’s absence left a corner free at the end of the seat
+which Marie, now sitting up like any other passenger, no longer
+encumbered with her box. Moreover, little Sophie had this time been
+placed in the next compartment, where there was neither Brother Isidore
+nor his sister Marthe. The latter, it was said, had remained at Lourdes
+in service with a pious lady. On the other side, Madame de Jonquière and
+Sister Hyacinthe also had the benefit of a vacant seat, that of Madame
+Vetu; and it had further occurred to them to get rid of Elise Rouquet by
+placing her with Sophie, so that only La Grivotte and the Sabathier
+couple were with them in their compartment. Thanks to these new
+arrangements, they were better able to breathe, and perhaps they might
+manage to sleep a little.
+
+The last verse of the “Magnificat” having been sung, the ladies finished
+installing themselves as comfortably as possible by setting their little
+household in order. One of the most important matters was to put the zinc
+water-can, which interfered with their legs, out of the way. All the
+blinds of the left-hand windows had been pulled down, for the oblique
+sunrays were falling on the train, and had poured into it in sheets of
+fire. The last storms, however, must have laid the dust, and the night
+would certainly be cool. Moreover, there was less suffering: death had
+carried off the most afflicted ones, and only stupefied ailments, numbed
+by fatigue and lapsing into a slow torpor, remained. The overpowering
+reaction which always follows great moral shocks was about to declare
+itself. The souls had made the efforts required of them, the miracles had
+been worked, and now the relaxing was beginning amidst a hebetude tinged
+with profound relief.
+
+Until they got to Tarbes they were all very much occupied in setting
+things in order and making themselves comfortable. But as they left that
+station Sister Hyacinthe rose up and clapped her hands. “My children,”
+ said she, “we must not forget the Blessed Virgin who has been so kind to
+us. Let us begin the Rosary.”
+
+Then the whole carriage repeated the first chaplet--the five joyful
+mysteries, the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity, the
+Purification, and the Finding of Jesus in the Temple. And afterwards they
+intoned the canticle, “Let us contemplate the heavenly Archangel,” in
+such loud voices that the peasants working in the fields raised their
+heads to look at this singing train as it rushed past them at full speed.
+
+Marie was at the window, gazing with admiration at the vast landscape and
+the immense stretch of sky, which had gradually freed itself of its mist
+and was now of a dazzling blue. It was the delicious close of a fine day.
+However, she at last looked back into the carriage, and her eyes were
+fixing themselves on Pierre with that mute sadness which had previously
+dimmed them, when all at once a sound of furious sobbing burst forth in
+front of her. The canticle was finished, and it was Madame Vincent who
+was crying, stammering confused words, half-choked by her tears: “Ah, my
+poor little one!” she gasped. “Ah, my jewel, my treasure, my life!”
+
+She had previously remained in her corner, shrinking back into it as
+though anxious to disappear. With a fierce face, her lips tightly set,
+and her eyes closed, as though to isolate herself in the depths of her
+cruel grief, she had hitherto not said a word. But, chancing to open her
+eyes, she had espied the leathern window-strap hanging down beside the
+door, and the sight of that strap, which her daughter had touched, almost
+played with at one moment during the previous journey, had overwhelmed
+her with a frantic despair which swept away her resolution to remain
+silent.
+
+“Ah! my poor little Rose,” she continued. “Her little hand touched that
+strap, she turned it, and looked at it--ah, it was her last plaything!
+And we were there both together then; she was still alive, I still had
+her on my lap, in my arms. It was still so nice, so nice! But now I no
+longer have her; I shall never, never have her again, my poor little
+Rose, my poor little Rose!”
+
+Distracted, sobbing bitterly, she looked at her knees and her arms, on
+which nothing now rested, and which she was at a loss how to employ. She
+had so long rocked her daughter on her knees, so long carried her in her
+arms, that it now seemed to her as if some portion of her being had been
+amputated, as if her body had been deprived of one of its functions,
+leaving her diminished, unoccupied, distracted at being unable to fulfil
+that function any more. Those useless arms and knees of hers quite
+embarrassed her.
+
+Pierre and Marie, who were deeply moved, had drawn near, uttering kind
+words and striving to console the unhappy mother. And, little by little,
+from the disconnected sentences which mingled with her sobs, they learned
+what a Calvary she had ascended since her daughter’s death. On the
+morning of the previous day, when she had carried the body off in her
+arms amidst the storm, she must have long continued walking, blind and
+deaf to everything, whilst the torrential rain beat down upon her. She no
+longer remembered what squares she had crossed, what streets she had
+traversed, as she roamed through that infamous Lourdes, that Lourdes
+which killed little children, that Lourdes which she cursed.
+
+“Ah! I can’t remember, I can’t remember,” she faltered. “But some people
+took me in, had pity upon me, some people whom I don’t know, but who live
+somewhere. Ah! I can’t remember where, but it was somewhere high up, far
+away, at the other end of the town. And they were certainly very poor
+folk, for I can still see myself in a poor-looking room with my dear
+little one who was quite cold, and whom they laid upon their bed.”
+
+At this recollection a fresh attack of sobbing shook her, in fact almost
+stifled her.
+
+“No, no,” she at last resumed, “I would not part with her dear little
+body by leaving it in that abominable town. And I can’t tell exactly how
+it happened, but it must have been those poor people who took me with
+them. We did a great deal of walking, oh! a great deal of walking; we saw
+all those gentlemen of the pilgrimage and the railway. ‘What can it
+matter to you?’ I repeated to them. ‘Let me take her back to Paris in my
+arms. I brought her here like that when she was alive, I may surely take
+her back dead? Nobody will notice anything, people will think that she is
+asleep.’”
+
+“And all of them, all those officials, began shouting and driving me away
+as though I were asking them to let me do something wicked. Then I ended
+by telling them my mind. When people make so much fuss, and bring so many
+agonising sick to a place like that, they surely ought to send the dead
+ones home again, ought they not? And do you know how much money they
+ended by asking of me at the station? Three hundred francs! Yes, it
+appears it is the price! Three hundred francs, good Lord! of me, who came
+here with thirty sous in my pocket and have only five left. Why, I don’t
+earn that amount of money by six months’ sewing. They ought to have asked
+me for my life; I would have given it so willingly. Three hundred francs!
+three hundred francs for that poor little bird-like body, which it would
+have consoled me so much to have brought away on my knees!”
+
+Then she began stammering and complaining in a confused, husky voice:
+“Ah, if you only knew how sensibly those poor people talked to me to
+induce me to go back. A work-woman like myself, with work waiting, ought
+to return to Paris, they said; and, besides, I couldn’t afford to
+sacrifice my return ticket; I must take the three-forty train. And they
+told me, too, that people are compelled to put up with things when they
+are not rich. Only the rich can keep their dead, do what they like with
+them, eh? And I can’t remember--no, again I can’t remember! I didn’t even
+know the time; I should never have been able to find my way back to the
+station. After the funeral over there, at a place where there were two
+trees, it must have been those poor people who led me away, half out of
+my senses, and brought me to the station, and pushed me into the carriage
+just at the moment when the train was starting. But what a rending it
+was--as if my heart had remained there underground, and it is frightful,
+that it is, frightful, my God!”
+
+“Poor woman!” murmured Marie. “Take courage, and pray to the Blessed
+Virgin for the succour which she never refuses to the afflicted.”
+
+But at this Madame Vincent shook with rage. “It isn’t true!” she cried.
+“The Blessed Virgin doesn’t care a rap about me. She doesn’t tell the
+truth! Why did she deceive me? I should never have gone to Lourdes if I
+hadn’t heard that voice in a church. My little girl would still be alive,
+and perhaps the doctors would have saved her. I, who would never set my
+foot among the priests formerly! Ah! I was right! I was right! There’s no
+Blessed Virgin at all!”
+
+And in this wise, without resignation, without illusion, without hope,
+she continued blaspheming with the coarse fury of a woman of the people,
+shrieking the sufferings of her heart aloud in such rough fashion that
+Sister Hyacinthe had to intervene: “Be quiet, you unhappy woman! It is
+God who is making you suffer, to punish you.”
+
+The scene had already lasted a long time, and as they passed Riscle at
+full speed the Sister again clapped her hands and gave the signal for the
+chanting of the “Laudate Mariam.” “Come, come, my children,” she
+exclaimed, “all together, and with all your hearts:
+
+ “In heav’n, on earth,
+ All voices raise,
+ In concert sing
+ My Mother’s praise:
+ _Laudate, laudate, laudate Mariam_!”
+
+Madame Vincent, whose voice was drowned by this canticle of love, now
+only sobbed, with her hands pressed to her face. Her revolt was over, she
+was again strengthless, weak like a suffering woman whom grief and
+weariness have stupefied.
+
+After the canticle, fatigue fell more or less heavily upon all the
+occupants of the carriage. Only Sister Hyacinthe, so quick and active,
+and Sister Claire des Anges, so gentle, serious, and slight, retained, as
+on their departure from Paris and during their sojourn at Lourdes, the
+professional serenity of women accustomed to everything, amidst the
+bright gaiety of their white coifs and wimples. Madame de Jonquière, who
+had scarcely slept for five days past, had to make an effort to keep her
+poor eyes open; and yet she was delighted with the journey, for her heart
+was full of joy at having arranged her daughter’s marriage, and at
+bringing back with her the greatest of all the miracles, a _miraculée_
+whom everybody was talking of. She decided in her own mind that she would
+get to sleep that night, however bad the jolting might be; though on the
+other hand she could not shake off a covert fear with regard to La
+Grivotte, who looked very strange, excited, and haggard, with dull eyes,
+and cheeks glowing with patches of violet colour. Madame de Jonquière had
+tried a dozen times to keep her from fidgeting, but had not been able to
+induce her to remain still, with joined hands and closed eyes.
+Fortunately, the other patients gave her no anxiety; most of them were
+either so relieved or so weary that they were already dozing off. Elise
+Rouquet, however, had bought herself a pocket mirror, a large round one,
+in which she did not weary of contemplating herself, finding herself
+quite pretty, and verifying from minute to minute the progress of her
+cure with a coquetry which, now that her monstrous face was becoming
+human again, made her purse her lips and try a variety of smiles. As for
+Sophie Couteau, she was playing very prettily; for finding that nobody
+now asked to examine her foot, she had taken off her shoe and stocking of
+her own accord, repeating that she must surely have a pebble in one or
+the other of them; and as her companions still paid no attention to that
+little foot which the Blessed Virgin had been pleased to visit, she kept
+it in her hands, caressing it, seemingly delighted to touch it and turn
+it into a plaything.
+
+M. de Guersaint had meantime risen from his seat, and, leaning on the low
+partition between the compartments, he was glancing at M. Sabathier, when
+all of a sudden Marie called: “Oh! father, father, look at this notch in
+the seat; it was the ironwork of my box that made it!”
+
+The discovery of this trace rendered her so happy that for a moment she
+forgot the secret sorrow which she seemed anxious to keep to herself. And
+in the same way as Madame Vincent had burst out sobbing on perceiving the
+leather strap which her little girl had touched, so she burst into joy at
+the sight of this scratch, which reminded her of her long martyrdom in
+this same carriage, all the abomination which had now disappeared,
+vanished like a nightmare. “To think that four days have scarcely gone
+by,” she said; “I was lying there, I could not stir, and now, now I come
+and go, and feel so comfortable!”
+
+Pierre and M. de Guersaint were smiling at her; and M. Sabathier, who had
+heard her, slowly said: “It is quite true. We leave a little of ourselves
+in things, a little of our sufferings and our hopes, and when we find
+them again they speak to us, and once more tell us the things which
+sadden us or make us gay.”
+
+He had remained in his corner silent, with an air of resignation, ever
+since their departure from Lourdes. Even his wife whilst wrapping up his
+legs had only been able to obtain sundry shakes of the head from him in
+response to her inquiries whether he was suffering. In point of fact he
+was not suffering, but extreme dejection was overcoming him.
+
+“Thus for my own part,” he continued, “during our long journey from Paris
+I tried to divert my thoughts by counting the bands in the roofing up
+there. There were thirteen from the lamp to the door. Well, I have just
+been counting them again, and naturally enough there are still thirteen.
+It’s like that brass knob beside me. You can’t imagine what dreams I had
+whilst I watched it shining at night-time when Monsieur l’Abbé was
+reading the story of Bernadette to us. Yes, I saw myself cured; I was
+making that journey to Rome which I have been talking of for twenty years
+past; I walked and travelled the world--briefly, I had all manner of wild
+and delightful dreams. And now here we are on our way back to Paris, and
+there are thirteen bands across the roofing there, and the knob is still
+shining--all of which tells me that I am again on the same seat, with my
+legs lifeless. Well, well, it’s understood, I’m a poor, old, used-up
+animal, and such I shall remain.”
+
+Two big tears appeared in his eyes; he must have been passing through an
+hour of frightful bitterness. However, he raised his big square head,
+with its jaw typical of patient obstinacy, and added: “This is the
+seventh year that I have been to Lourdes, and the Blessed Virgin has not
+listened to me. No matter! It won’t prevent me from going back next year.
+Perhaps she will at last deign to hear me.”
+
+For his part he did not revolt. And Pierre, whilst chatting with him, was
+stupefied to find persistent, tenacious credulity springing up once more,
+in spite of everything, in the cultivated brain of this man of intellect.
+What ardent desire of cure and life was it that had led to this refusal
+to accept evidence, this determination to remain blind? He stubbornly
+clung to the resolution to be saved when all human probabilities were
+against him, when the experiment of the miracle itself had failed so many
+times already; and he had reached such a point that he wished to explain
+his fresh rebuff, urging moments of inattention at the Grotto, a lack of
+sufficient contrition, and all sorts of little transgressions which must
+have displeased the Blessed Virgin. Moreover, he was already deciding in
+his mind that he would perform a novena somewhere next year, before again
+repairing to Lourdes.
+
+“Ah! by the way,” he resumed, “do you know of the good-luck which my
+substitute has had? Yes, you must remember my telling you about that poor
+fellow suffering from tuberculosis, for whom I paid fifty francs when I
+obtained _hospitalisation_ for myself. Well, he has been thoroughly
+cured.”
+
+“Really! And he was suffering from tuberculosis!” exclaimed M. de
+Guersaint.
+
+“Certainly, monsieur, perfectly cured I had seen him looking so low, so
+yellow, so emaciated, when we started; but when he came to pay me a visit
+at the hospital he was quite a new man; and, dear me, I gave him five
+francs.”
+
+Pierre had to restrain a smile, for be had heard the story from Doctor
+Chassaigne. This miraculously healed individual was a feigner, who had
+eventually been recognised at the Medical Verification Office. It was,
+apparently, the third year that he had presented himself there, the first
+time alleging paralysis and the second time a tumour, both of which had
+been as completely healed as his pretended tuberculosis. On each occasion
+he obtained an outing, lodging and food, and returned home loaded with
+alms. It appeared that he had formerly been a hospital nurse, and that he
+transformed himself, “made-up” a face suited to his pretended ailment, in
+such an extremely artistic manner that it was only by chance that Doctor
+Bonamy had detected the imposition. Moreover, the Fathers had immediately
+required that the incident should be kept secret. What was the use of
+stirring up a scandal which would only have led to jocular remarks in the
+newspapers? Whenever any fraudulent miracles of this kind were
+discovered, the Fathers contented themselves with forcing the guilty
+parties to go away. Moreover, these feigners were far from numerous,
+despite all that was related of them in the amusing stories concocted by
+Voltairean humourists. Apart from faith, human stupidity and ignorance,
+alas! were quite sufficient to account for the miracles.
+
+M. Sabathier, however, was greatly stirred by the idea that Heaven had
+healed this man who had gone to Lourdes at his expense, whereas he
+himself was returning home still helpless, still in the same woeful
+state. He sighed, and, despite all his resignation, could not help
+saying, with a touch of envy: “What would you, however? The Blessed
+Virgin must know very well what she’s about. Neither you nor I can call
+her to account to us for her actions. Whenever it may please her to cast
+her eyes on me she will find me at her feet.”
+
+After the “Angelus” when they got to Mont-de-Marsan, Sister Hyacinthe
+made them repeat the second chaplet, the five sorrowful mysteries, Jesus
+in the Garden of Olives, Jesus scourged, Jesus crowned with thorns, Jesus
+carrying the cross, and Jesus crucified. Then they took dinner in the
+carriage, for there would be no stopping until they reached Bordeaux,
+where they would only arrive at eleven o’clock at night. All the
+pilgrims’ baskets were crammed with provisions, to say nothing of the
+milk, broth, chocolate, and fruit which Sister Saint-François had sent
+from the cantine. Then, too, there was fraternal sharing: they sat with
+their food on their laps and drew close together, every compartment
+becoming, as it were, the scene of a picnic, to which each contributed
+his share. And they had finished their meal and were packing up the
+remaining bread again when the train passed Morceux.
+
+“My children,” now said Sister Hyacinthe, rising up, “the evening
+prayer!”
+
+Thereupon came a confused murmuring made up of “Paters” and “Aves,”
+ self-examinations, acts of contrition and vows of trustful reliance in
+God, the Blessed Virgin, and the Saints, with thanksgivings for that
+happy day, and, at last, a prayer for the living and for the faithful
+departed.
+
+“I warn you,” then resumed the Sister, “that when we get to Lamothe, at
+ten o’clock, I shall order silence. However, I think you will all be very
+good and won’t require any rocking to get to sleep.”
+
+This made them laugh. It was now half-past eight o’clock, and the night
+had slowly covered the country-side. The hills alone retained a vague
+trace of the twilight’s farewell, whilst a dense sheet of darkness
+blotted out all the low ground. Rushing on at full speed, the train
+entered an immense plain, and then there was nothing but a sea of
+darkness, through which they ever and ever rolled under a blackish sky,
+studded with stars.
+
+For a moment or so Pierre had been astonished by the demeanour of La
+Grivotte. While the other pilgrims and patients were already dozing off,
+sinking down amidst the luggage, which the constant jolting shook, she
+had risen to her feet and was clinging to the partition in a sudden spasm
+of agony. And under the pale, yellow, dancing gleam of the lamp she once
+more looked emaciated, with a livid, tortured face.
+
+“Take care, madame, she will fall!” the priest called to Madame de
+Jonquière, who, with eyelids lowered, was at last giving way to sleep.
+
+She made all haste to intervene, but Sister Hyacinthe had turned more
+quickly and caught La Grivotte in her arms. A frightful fit of coughing,
+however, prostrated the unhappy creature upon the seat, and for five
+minutes she continued stifling, shaken by such an attack that her poor
+body seemed to be actually cracking and rending. Then a red thread oozed
+from between her lips, and at last she spat up blood by the throatful.
+
+“Good heavens! good heavens! it’s coming on her again!” repeated Madame
+de Jonquière in despair. “I had a fear of it; I was not at ease, seeing
+her looking so strange. Wait a moment; I will sit down beside her.”
+
+But the Sister would not consent: “No, no, madame, sleep a little. I’ll
+watch over her. You are not accustomed to it: you would end by making
+yourself ill as well.”
+
+Then she settled herself beside La Grivotte, made her rest her head
+against her shoulder, and wiped the blood from her lips. The attack
+subsided, but weakness was coming back, so extreme that the wretched
+woman was scarcely able to stammer: “Oh, it is nothing, nothing at all; I
+am cured, I am cured, completely cured!”
+
+Pierre was thoroughly upset: This sudden, overwhelming relapse had sent
+an icy chill through the whole carriage. Many of the passengers raised
+themselves up and looked at La Grivotte with terror in their eyes. Then
+they dived down into their corners again, and nobody spoke, nobody
+stirred any further. Pierre, for his part, reflected on the curious
+medical aspect of this girl’s case. Her strength had come back to her
+over yonder. She had displayed a ravenous appetite, she had walked long
+distances with a dancing gait, her face quite radiant the while; and now
+she had spat blood, her cough had broken out afresh, she again had the
+heavy ashen face of one in the last agony. Her ailment had returned to
+her with brutal force, victorious over everything. Was this, then, some
+special case of phthisis complicated by neurosis? Or was it some other
+malady, some unknown disease, quietly continuing its work in the midst of
+contradictory diagnosis? The sea of error and ignorance, the darkness
+amidst which human science is still struggling, again appeared to Pierre.
+And he once more saw Doctor Chassaigne shrugging his shoulders with
+disdain, whilst Doctor Bonamy, full of serenity, quietly continued his
+verification work, absolutely convinced that nobody would be able to
+prove to him the impossibility of his miracles any more than he himself
+could have proved their possibility.
+
+“Oh! I am not frightened,” La Grivotte continued, stammering. “I am
+cured, completely cured; they all told me so, over yonder.”
+
+Meantime the carriage was rolling, rolling along, through the black
+night. Each of its occupants was making preparations, stretching himself
+out in order to sleep more comfortably. They compelled Madame Vincent to
+lie down on the seat, and gave her a pillow on which to rest her poor
+pain-racked head; and then, as docile as a child, quite stupefied, she
+fell asleep in a nightmare-like torpor, with big, silent tears still
+flowing from her closed eyes. Elise Rouquet, who had a whole seat to
+herself, was also getting ready to lie down, but first of all she made
+quite an elaborate toilet, tying the black wrap which had served to hide
+her sore about her head, and then again peering into her glass to see if
+this headgear became her, now that the swelling of her lip had subsided.
+And again did Pierre feel astonished at sight of that sore, which was
+certainly healing, if not already healed--that face, so lately a
+monster’s face, which one could now look at without feeling horrified.
+The sea of incertitude stretched before him once more. Was it even a real
+lupus? Might it not rather be some unknown form of ulcer of hysterical
+origin? Or ought one to admit that certain forms of lupus, as yet but
+imperfectly studied and arising from faulty nutrition of the skin, might
+be benefited by a great moral shock? At all events there here seemed to
+be a miracle, unless, indeed, the sore should reappear again in three
+weeks’, three months’, or three years’ time, like La Grivotte’s phthisis.
+
+It was ten o’clock, and the people in the carriage were falling asleep
+when they left Lamothe. Sister Hyacinthe, upon whose knees La Grivotte
+was now drowsily resting her head, was unable to rise, and, for form’s
+sake, merely said, “Silence, silence, my children!” in a low voice, which
+died away amidst the growling rumble of the wheels.
+
+However, something continued stirring in an adjoining compartment; she
+heard a noise which irritated her nerves, and the cause of which she at
+last fancied she could understand.
+
+“Why do you keep on kicking the seat, Sophie?” she asked. “You must get
+to sleep, my child.”
+
+“I’m not kicking, Sister. It’s a key that was rolling about under my
+foot.”
+
+“A key!--how is that? Pass it to me.”
+
+Then she examined it. A very old, poor-looking key it was--blackened,
+worn away, and polished by long use, its ring bearing the mark of where
+it had been broken and resoldered. However, they all searched their
+pockets, and none of them, it seemed, had lost a key.
+
+“I found it in the corner,” now resumed Sophie; “it must have belonged to
+the man.”
+
+“What man?” asked Sister Hyacinthe.
+
+“The man who died there.”
+
+They had already forgotten him. But it had surely been his, for Sister
+Hyacinthe recollected that she had heard something fall while she was
+wiping his forehead. And she turned the key over and continued looking at
+it, as it lay in her hand, poor, ugly, wretched key that it was, no
+longer of any use, never again to open the lock it belonged to--some
+unknown lock, hidden far away in the depths of the world. For a moment
+she was minded to put it in her pocket, as though by a kind of compassion
+for this little bit of iron, so humble and so mysterious, since it was
+all that remained of that unknown man. But then the pious thought came to
+her that it is wrong to show attachment to any earthly thing; and, the
+window being half-lowered, she threw out the key, which fell into the
+black night.
+
+“You must not play any more, Sophie,” she resumed. “Come, come, my
+children, silence!”
+
+It was only after the brief stay at Bordeaux, however, at about half-past
+eleven o’clock, that sleep came back again and overpowered all in the
+carriage. Madame de Jonquière had been unable to contend against it any
+longer, and her head was now resting against the partition, her face
+wearing an expression of happiness amidst all her fatigue. The Sabathiers
+were, in a like fashion, calmly sleeping; and not a sound now came from
+the compartment which Sophie Couteau and Elise Rouquet occupied,
+stretched in front of each other, on the seats. From time to time a low
+plaint would rise, a strangled cry of grief or fright, escaping from the
+lips of Madame Vincent, who, amidst her prostration, was being tortured
+by evil dreams. Sister Hyacinthe was one of the very few who still had
+their eyes open, anxious as she was respecting La Grivotte, who now lay
+quite motionless, like a felled animal, breathing painfully, with a
+continuous wheezing sound. From one to the other end of this travelling
+dormitory, shaken by the rumbling of the train rolling on at full speed,
+the pilgrims and the sick surrendered themselves to sleep, and limbs
+dangled and heads swayed under the pale, dancing gleams from the lamps.
+At the far end, in the compartment occupied by the ten female pilgrims,
+there was a woeful jumbling of poor, ugly faces, old and young, and all
+open-mouthed, as though sleep had suddenly fallen upon them at the moment
+they were finishing some hymn. Great pity came to the heart at the sight
+of all those mournful, weary beings, prostrated by five days of wild hope
+and infinite ecstasy, and destined to awaken, on the very morrow, to the
+stern realities of life.
+
+And now Pierre once more felt himself to be alone with Marie. She had not
+consented to stretch herself on the seat--she had been lying down too
+long, she said, for seven years, alas! And in order that M. de Guersaint,
+who on leaving Bordeaux had again fallen into his childlike slumber,
+might be more at ease, Pierre came and sat down beside the girl. As the
+light of the lamp annoyed her he drew the little screen, and they thus
+found themselves in the shade, a soft and transparent shade. The train
+must now have been crossing a plain, for it glided through the night as
+in an endless flight, with a sound like the regular flapping of huge
+wings. Through the window, which they had opened, a delicious coolness
+came from the black fields, the fathomless fields, where not even any
+lonely little village lights could be seen gleaming. For a moment Pierre
+had turned towards Marie and had noticed that her eyes were closed. But
+he could divine that she was not sleeping, that she was savouring the
+deep peacefulness which prevailed around them amidst the thundering roar
+of their rush through the darkness, and, like her, he closed his eyelids
+and began dreaming.
+
+Yet once again did the past arise before him: the little house at
+Neuilly, the embrace which they had exchanged near the flowering hedge
+under the trees flecked with sunlight. How far away all that already was,
+and with what perfume had it not filled his life! Then bitter thoughts
+returned to him at the memory of the day when he had become a priest.
+Since she would never be a woman, he had consented to be a man no more;
+and that was to prove their eternal misfortune, for ironical Nature was
+to make her a wife and a mother after all. Had he only been able to
+retain his faith he might have found eternal consolation in it. But all
+his attempts to regain it had been in vain. He had gone to Lourdes, he
+had striven his utmost at the Grotto, he had hoped for a moment that he
+would end by believing should Marie be miraculously healed; but total and
+irremediable ruin had come when the predicted cure had taken place even
+as science had foretold. And their idyl, so pure and so painful, the long
+story of their affection bathed in tears, likewise spread out before him.
+She, having penetrated his sad secret, had come to Lourdes to pray to
+Heaven for the miracle of his conversion. When they had remained alone
+under the trees amidst the perfume of the invisible roses, during the
+night procession, they had prayed one for the other, mingling one in the
+other, with an ardent desire for their mutual happiness. Before the
+Grotto, too, she had entreated the Blessed Virgin to forget her and to
+save him, if she could obtain but one favour from her Divine Son. Then,
+healed, beside herself, transported with love and gratitude, whirled with
+her little car up the inclined ways to the Basilica, she had thought her
+prayers granted, and had cried aloud the joy she felt that they should
+have both been saved, together, together! Ah! that lie which he, prompted
+by affection and charity, had told, that error in which he had from that
+moment suffered her to remain, with what a weight did it oppress his
+heart! It was the heavy slab which walled him in his voluntarily chosen
+sepulchre. He remembered the frightful attack of grief which had almost
+killed him in the gloom of the crypt, his sobs, his brutal revolt, his
+longing to keep her for himself alone, to possess her since he knew her
+to be his own--all that rising passion of his awakened manhood, which
+little by little had fallen asleep again, drowned by the rushing river of
+his tears; and in order that he might not destroy the divine illusion
+which possessed her, yielding to brotherly compassion, he had taken that
+heroic vow to lie to her, that vow which now filled him with such
+anguish.
+
+Pierre shuddered amidst his reverie. Would he have the strength to keep
+that vow forever? Had he not detected a feeling of impatience in his
+heart even whilst he was waiting for her at the railway station, a
+jealous longing to leave that Lourdes which she loved too well, in the
+vague hope that she might again become his own, somewhere far away? If he
+had not been a priest he would have married her. And what rapture, what
+felicity would then have been his! He would have given himself wholly
+unto her, she would have been wholly his own, and he and she would have
+lived again in the dear child that would doubtless have been born to
+them. Ah! surely that alone was divine, the life which is complete, the
+life which creates life! And then his reverie strayed: he pictured
+himself married, and the thought filled him with such delight that he
+asked why such a dream should be unrealisable? She knew no more than a
+child of ten; he would educate her, form her mind. She would then
+understand that this cure for which she thought herself indebted to the
+Blessed Virgin, had in reality come to her from the Only Mother, serene
+and impassive Nature. But even whilst he was thus settling things in his
+mind, a kind of terror, born of his religious education, arose within
+him. Could he tell if that human happiness with which he desired to endow
+her would ever be worth as much as the holy ignorance, the infantile
+candour in which she now lived? How bitterly he would reproach himself
+afterwards if she should not be happy. Then, too, what a drama it would
+all be; he to throw off the cassock, and marry this girl healed by an
+alleged miracle--ravage her faith sufficiently to induce her to consent
+to such sacrilege? Yet therein lay the brave course; there lay reason,
+life, real manhood, real womanhood. Why, then, did he not dare? Horrible
+sadness was breaking upon his reverie, he became conscious of nothing
+beyond the sufferings of his poor heart.
+
+The train was still rolling along with its great noise of flapping wings.
+Beside Pierre and Marie, only Sister Hyacinthe was still awake amidst the
+weary slumber of the carriage; and just then, Marie leant towards Pierre,
+and softly said to him: “It’s strange, my friend; I am so sleepy, and yet
+I can’t sleep.” Then, with a light laugh, she added: “I’ve got Paris in my
+head!”
+
+“How is that--Paris?”
+
+“Yes, yes. I’m thinking that it’s waiting for me, that I am about to
+return to it--that Paris which I know nothing of, and where I shall have
+to live!”
+
+These words brought fresh anguish to Pierre’s heart. He had well foreseen
+it; she could no longer belong to him, she would belong to others. If
+Lourdes had restored her to him, Paris was about to take her from him
+again. And he pictured this ignorant little being fatally acquiring all
+the education of woman. That little spotless soul which had remained so
+candid in the frame of a big girl of three-and-twenty, that soul which
+illness had kept apart from others, far from life, far even from novels,
+would soon ripen, now that it could fly freely once more. He beheld her,
+a gay, healthy young girl, running everywhere, looking and learning, and,
+some day, meeting the husband who would finish her education.
+
+“And so,” said he, “you propose to amuse yourself in Paris?”
+
+“Oh! what are you saying, my friend? Are we rich enough to amuse
+ourselves?” she replied. “No, I was thinking of my poor sister Blanche,
+and wondering what I should be able to do in Paris to help her a little.
+She is so good, she works so hard; I don’t wish that she should have to
+continue earning all the money.”
+
+And, after a fresh pause, as he, deeply moved, remained silent, she
+added: “Formerly, before I suffered so dreadfully, I painted miniatures
+rather nicely. You remember, don’t you, that I painted a portrait of papa
+which was very like him, and which everybody praised. You will help me,
+won’t you? You will find me customers?”
+
+Then she began talking of the new life which she was about to live. She
+wanted to arrange her room and hang it with cretonne, something pretty,
+with a pattern of little blue flowers. She would buy it out of the first
+money she could save. Blanche had spoken to her of the big shops where
+things could be bought so cheaply. To go out with Blanche and run about a
+little would be so amusing for her, who, confined to her bed since
+childhood, had never seen anything. Then Pierre, who for a moment had
+been calmer, again began to suffer, for he could divine all her glowing
+desire to live, her ardour to see everything, know everything, and taste
+everything. It was at last the awakening of the woman whom she was
+destined to be, whom he had divined in childhood’s days--a dear creature
+of gaiety and passion, with blooming lips, starry eyes, a milky
+complexion, golden hair, all resplendent with the joy of being.
+
+“Oh! I shall work, I shall work,” she resumed; “but you are right,
+Pierre, I shall also amuse myself, because it cannot be a sin to be gay,
+can it?”
+
+“No, surely not, Marie.”
+
+“On Sundays we will go into the country, oh very far away, into the woods
+where there are beautiful trees. And we will sometimes go to the theatre,
+too, if papa will take us. I have been told that there are many plays
+that one may see. But, after all, it’s not all that. Provided I can go
+out and walk in the streets and see things, I shall be so happy; I shall
+come home so gay. It is so nice to live, is it not, Pierre?”
+
+“Yes, yes, Marie, it is very nice.”
+
+A chill like that of death was coming over him; his regret that he was no
+longer a man was filling him with agony. But since she tempted him like
+this with her irritating candour, why should he not confess to her the
+truth which was ravaging his being? He would have won her, have conquered
+her. Never had a more frightful struggle arisen between his heart and his
+will. For a moment he was on the point of uttering irrevocable words.
+
+But with the voice of a joyous child she was already resuming: “Oh! look
+at poor papa; how pleased he must be to sleep so soundly!”
+
+On the seat in front of them M. de Guersaint was indeed slumbering with a
+comfortable expression on his face, as though he were in his bed, and had
+no consciousness of the continual jolting of the train. This monotonous
+rolling and heaving seemed, in fact, a lullaby rocking the whole carriage
+to sleep. All surrendered themselves to it, sinking powerless on to the
+piles of bags and parcels, many of which had also fallen; and the
+rhythmical growling of the wheels never ceased in the unknown darkness
+through which the train was still rolling. Now and again, as they passed
+through a station or under a bridge, there would be a loud rush of wind,
+a tempest would suddenly sweep by; and then the lulling, growling sound
+would begin again, ever the same for hours together.
+
+Marie gently took hold of Pierre’s hands; he and she were so lost, so
+completely alone among all those prostrated beings, in the deep, rumbling
+peacefulness of the train flying across the black night. And sadness, the
+sadness which she had hitherto hidden, had again come back to her,
+casting a shadow over her large blue eyes.
+
+“You will often come with us, my good Pierre, won’t you?” she asked.
+
+He had started on feeling her little hand pressing his own. His heart was
+on his lips, he was making up his mind to speak. However, he once again
+restrained himself and stammered: “I am not always at liberty, Marie; a
+priest cannot go everywhere.”
+
+“A priest?” she repeated. “Yes, yes, a priest. I understand.”
+
+Then it was she who spoke, who confessed the mortal secret which had been
+oppressing her heart ever since they had started. She leant nearer, and
+in a lower voice resumed: “Listen, my good Pierre; I am fearfully sad. I
+may look pleased, but there is death in my soul. You did not tell me the
+truth yesterday.”
+
+He became quite scared, but did not at first understand her. “I did not
+tell you the truth--About what?” he asked.
+
+A kind of shame restrained her, and she again hesitated at the moment of
+descending into the depths of another conscience than her own. Then, like
+a friend, a sister, she continued: “No, you let me believe that you had
+been saved with me, and it was not true, Pierre, you have not found your
+lost faith again.”
+
+Good Lord! she knew. For him this was desolation, such a catastrophe that
+he forgot his torments. And, at first, he obstinately clung to the
+falsehood born of his fraternal charity. “But I assure you, Marie. How
+can you have formed such a wicked idea?”
+
+“Oh! be quiet, my friend, for pity’s sake. It would grieve me too deeply
+if you were to speak to me falsely again. It was yonder, at the station,
+at the moment when we were starting, and that unhappy man had died. Good
+Abbé Judaine had knelt down to pray for the repose of that rebellious
+soul. And I divined everything, I understood everything when I saw that
+you did not kneel as well, that prayer did not rise to your lips as to
+his.”
+
+“But, really, I assure you, Marie--”
+
+“No, no, you did not pray for the dead; you no longer believe. And
+besides, there is something else; something I can guess, something which
+comes to me from you, a despair which you can’t hide from me, a
+melancholy look which comes into your poor eyes directly they meet mine.
+The Blessed Virgin did not grant my prayer, she did not restore your
+faith, and I am very, very wretched.”
+
+She was weeping, a hot tear fell upon the priest’s hand, which she was
+still holding. It quite upset him, and he ceased struggling, confessing,
+in his turn letting his tears flow, whilst, in a very low voice, he
+stammered: “Ah! Marie, I am very wretched also. Oh! so very wretched.”
+
+For a moment they remained silent, in their cruel grief at feeling that
+the abyss which parts different beliefs was yawning between them. They
+would never belong to one another again, and they were in despair at
+being so utterly unable to bring themselves nearer to one another; but
+the severance was henceforth definitive, since Heaven itself had been
+unable to reconnect the bond. And thus, side by side, they wept over
+their separation.
+
+“I who prayed so fervently for your conversion,” she said in a dolorous
+voice, “I who was so happy. It had seemed to me that your soul was
+mingling with mine; and it was so delightful to have been saved together,
+together. I felt such strength for life; oh, strength enough to raise the
+world!”
+
+He did not answer; his tears were still flowing, flowing without end.
+
+“And to think,” she resumed, “that I was saved all alone; that this great
+happiness fell upon me without you having any share in it. And to see you
+so forsaken, so desolate, when I am loaded with grace and joy, rends my
+heart. Ah! how severe the Blessed Virgin has been! Why did she not heal
+your soul at the same time that she healed my body?”
+
+The last opportunity was presenting itself; he ought to have illumined
+this innocent creature’s mind with the light of reason, have explained
+the miracle to her, in order that life, after accomplishing its healthful
+work in her body, might complete its triumph by throwing them into one
+another’s arms. He also was healed, his mind was healthy now, and it was
+not for the loss of faith, but for the loss of herself, that he was
+weeping. However, invincible compassion was taking possession of him
+amidst all his grief. No, no, he would not trouble that dear soul; he
+would not rob her of her belief, which some day might prove her only stay
+amidst the sorrows of this world. One cannot yet require of children and
+women the bitter heroism of reason. He had not the strength to do it; he
+even thought that he had not the right. It would have seemed to him
+violation, abominable murder. And he did not speak out, but his tears
+flowed, hotter and hotter, in this immolation of his love, this
+despairing sacrifice of his own happiness in order that she might remain
+candid and ignorant and gay at heart.
+
+“Oh, Marie, how wretched I am! Nowhere on the roads, nowhere at the
+galleys even, is there a man more wretched than myself! Oh, Marie, if you
+only knew; if you only knew how wretched I am!”
+
+She was distracted, and caught him in her trembling arms, wishing to
+console him with a sisterly embrace. And at that moment the woman awaking
+within her understood everything, and she herself sobbed with sorrow that
+both human and divine will should thus part them. She had never yet
+reflected on such things, but suddenly she caught a glimpse of life, with
+its passions, its struggles, and its sufferings; and then, seeking for
+what she might say to soothe in some degree that broken heart, she
+stammered very faintly, distressed that she could find nothing sweet
+enough, “I know, I know--”
+
+Then the words it was needful she should speak came to her; and as though
+that which she had to say ought only to be heard by the angels, she
+became anxious and looked around her. But the slumber which reigned in
+the carriage seemed more heavy even than before. Her father was still
+sleeping, with the innocent look of a big child. Not one of the pilgrims,
+not one of the ailing ones, had stirred amidst the rough rocking which
+bore them onward. Even Sister Hyacinthe, giving way to her overpowering
+weariness, had just closed her eyes, after drawing the lamp-screen in her
+own compartment. And now there were only vague shadows there, ill-defined
+bodies amidst nameless things, ghostly forms scarce visible, which a
+tempest blast, a furious rush, was carrying on and on through the
+darkness. And she likewise distrusted that black country-side whose
+unknown depths went by on either side of the train without one even being
+able to tell what forests, what rivers, what hills one was crossing. A
+short time back some bright sparks of light had appeared, possibly the
+lights of some distant forges, or the woeful lamps of workers or
+sufferers. Now, however, the night again streamed deeply all around, the
+obscure, infinite, nameless sea, farther and farther through which they
+ever went, not knowing where they were.
+
+Then, with a chaste confusion, blushing amidst her tears, Marie placed
+her lips near Pierre’s ear. “Listen, my friend; there is a great secret
+between the Blessed Virgin and myself. I had sworn that I would never
+tell it to anybody. But you are too unhappy, you are suffering too
+bitterly; she will forgive me; I will confide it to you.”
+
+And in a faint breath she went on: “During that night of love, you know,
+that night of burning ecstasy which I spent before the Grotto, I engaged
+myself by a vow: I promised the Blessed Virgin the gift of my chastity if
+she would but heal me.... She has healed me, and never--you hear me,
+Pierre, never will I marry anybody.”
+
+Ah! what unhoped-for sweetness! He thought that a balmy dew was falling
+on his poor wounded heart. It was a divine enchantment, a delicious
+relief. If she belonged to none other she would always be a little bit
+his own. And how well she had known his torment and what it was needful
+she should say in order that life might yet be possible for him.
+
+In his turn he wished to find happy words and promise that he also would
+ever be hers, ever love her as he had loved her since childhood, like the
+dear creature she was, whose one kiss, long, long ago, had sufficed to
+perfume his entire life. But she made him stop, already anxious, fearing
+to spoil that pure moment. “No, no, my friend,” she murmured, “let us say
+nothing more; it would be wrong, perhaps. I am very weary; I shall sleep
+quietly now.”
+
+And, with her head against his shoulder, she fell asleep at once, like a
+sister who is all confidence. He for a moment kept himself awake in that
+painful happiness of renunciation which they had just tasted together. It
+was all over, quite over now; the sacrifice was consummated. He would
+live a solitary life, apart from the life of other men. Never would he
+know woman, never would any child be born to him. And there remained to
+him only the consoling pride of that accepted and desired suicide, with
+the desolate grandeur that attaches to lives which are beyond the pale of
+nature.
+
+But fatigue overpowered him also; his eyes closed, and in his turn he
+fell asleep. And afterwards his head slipped down, and his cheek touched
+the cheek of his dear friend, who was sleeping very gently with her brow
+against his shoulder. Then their hair mingled. She had her golden hair,
+her royal hair, half unbound, and it streamed over his face, and he
+dreamed amidst its perfume. Doubtless the same blissful dream fell upon
+them both, for their loving faces assumed the same expression of rapture;
+they both seemed to be smiling to the angels. It was chaste and
+passionate abandon, the innocence of chance slumber placing them in one
+another’s arms, with warm, close lips so that their breath mingled, like
+the breath of two babes lying in the same cradle. And such was their
+bridal night, the consummation of the spiritual marriage in which they
+were to live, a delicious annihilation born of extreme fatigue, with
+scarcely a fleeting dream of mystical possession, amidst that carriage of
+wretchedness and suffering, which still and ever rolled along through the
+dense night. Hours and hours slipped by, the wheels growled, the bags and
+baskets swung from the brass hooks, whilst from the piled-up, crushed
+bodies there only arose a sense of terrible fatigue, the great physical
+exhaustion brought back from the land of miracles when the overworked
+souls returned home.
+
+At last, at five o’clock, whilst the sun was rising, there was a sudden
+awakening, a resounding entry into a large station, with porters calling,
+doors opening, and people scrambling together. They were at Poitiers, and
+at once the whole carriage was on foot, amidst a chorus of laughter and
+exclamations. Little Sophie Couteau alighted here, and was bidding
+everybody farewell. She embraced all the ladies, even passing over the
+partition to take leave of Sister Claire des Anges, whom nobody had seen
+since the previous evening, for, silent and slight of build, with eyes
+full of mystery, she had vanished into her corner. Then the child came
+back again, took her little parcel, and showed herself particularly
+amiable towards Sister Hyacinthe and Madame de Jonquière.
+
+“_Au revoir_, Sister! _Au revoir_, madame! I thank you for all your
+kindness.”
+
+“You must come back again next year, my child.”
+
+“Oh, I sha’n’t fail, Sister; it’s my duty.”
+
+“And be good, my dear child, and take care of your health, so that the
+Blessed Virgin may be proud of you.”
+
+“To be sure, madame, she was so good to me, and it amuses me so much to
+go to see her.”
+
+When she was on the platform, all the pilgrims in the carriage leaned
+out, and with happy faces watched her go off.
+
+“Till next year!” they called to her; “till next year!”
+
+“Yes, yes, thank you kindly. Till next year.”
+
+The morning prayer was only to be said at Chatelherault. After the
+stoppage at Poitiers, when the train was once more rolling on in the
+fresh breeze of morning, M. de Guersaint gaily declared that he had slept
+delightfully, in spite of the hardness of the seat. Madame de Jonquière
+also congratulated herself on the good rest which she had had, and of
+which she had been in so much need; though, at the same time, she was
+somewhat annoyed at having left Sister Hyacinthe all alone to watch over
+La Grivotte, who was now shivering with intense fever, again attacked by
+her horrible cough. Meanwhile the other female pilgrims were tidying
+themselves. The ten women at the far end were fastening their _fichus_
+and tying their cap strings, with a kind of modest nervousness displayed
+on their mournfully ugly faces. And Elise Rouquet, all attention, with
+her face close to her pocket glass, did not cease examining her nose,
+mouth, and cheeks, admiring herself with the thought that she was really
+and truly becoming nice-looking.
+
+And it was then that Pierre and Marie again experienced a feeling of deep
+compassion on glancing at Madame Vincent, whom nothing had been able to
+rouse from a state of torpor, neither the tumultuous stoppage at
+Poitiers, nor the noise of voices which had continued ever since they had
+started off again. Prostrate on the seat, she had not opened her eyes,
+but still and ever slumbered, tortured by atrocious dreams. And, with big
+tears still streaming from her closed eyes, she had caught hold of the
+pillow which had been forced upon her, and was closely pressing it to her
+breast in some nightmare born of her suffering. Her poor arms, which had
+so long carried her dying daughter, her arms now unoccupied, forever
+empty, had found this cushion whilst she slept, and had coiled around
+them, as around a phantom, with a blind and frantic embrace.
+
+On the other hand, M. Sabathier had woke up feeling quite joyous. Whilst
+his wife was pulling up his rug, carefully wrapping it round his lifeless
+legs; he began to chat with sparkling eyes, once more basking in
+illusion. He had dreamt of Lourdes, said he, and had seen the Blessed
+Virgin leaning towards him with a smile of kindly promise. And then,
+although he had before him both Madame Vincent, that mother whose
+daughter the Virgin had allowed to die, and La Grivotte, the wretched
+woman whom she had healed and who had so cruelly relapsed into her mortal
+disease, he nevertheless rejoiced and made merry, repeating to M. de
+Guersaint, with an air of perfect conviction: “Oh! I shall return home
+quite easy in mind, monsieur--I shall be cured next year. Yes, yes, as
+that dear little girl said just now: ‘Till next year, till next year!’”
+
+It was indestructible illusion, victorious even over certainty, eternal
+hope determined not to die, but shooting up with more life than ever,
+after each defeat, upon the ruins of everything.
+
+At Chatelherault, Sister Hyacinthe made them say the morning prayer, the
+“Pater,” the “Ave,” the “Credo,” and an appeal to God begging Him for the
+happiness of a glorious day: “O God, grant me sufficient strength that I
+may avoid all that is evil, do all that is good, and suffer without
+complaint every pain.”
+
+
+
+
+V. THE DEATH OP BERNADETTE--THE NEW RELIGION
+
+AND the journey continued; the train rolled, still rolled along.
+At Sainte-Maure the prayers of the mass were said, and at
+Sainte-Pierre-des-Corps the “Credo” was chanted. However, the religious
+exercises no longer proved so welcome; the pilgrims’ zeal was flagging
+somewhat in the increasing fatigue of their return journey, after such
+prolonged mental excitement. It occurred to Sister Hyacinthe that the
+happiest way of entertaining these poor worn-out folks would be for
+someone to read aloud; and she promised that she would allow Monsieur
+l’Abbé to read them the finish of Bernadette’s life, some of the
+marvellous episodes of which he had already on two occasions related to
+them. However, they must wait until they arrived at Les Aubrais; there
+would be nearly two hours between Les Aubrais and Etampes, ample time to
+finish the story without being disturbed.
+
+Then the various religious exercises followed one after the other, in a
+monotonous repetition of the order which had been observed whilst they
+crossed the same plains on their way to Lourdes. They again began the
+Rosary at Amboise, where they said the first chaplet, the five joyful
+mysteries; then, after singing the canticle, “O loving Mother, bless,” at
+Blois, they recited the second chaplet, the five sorrowful mysteries, at
+Beaugency. Some little fleecy clouds had veiled the sun since morning,
+and the landscapes, very sweet and somewhat sad, flew by with a
+continuous fan-like motion. The trees and houses on either side of the
+line disappeared in the grey light with the fleetness of vague visions,
+whilst the distant hills, enveloped in mist, vanished more slowly, with
+the gentle rise and fall of a swelling sea. Between Beaugency and Les
+Aubrais the train seemed to slacken speed, though it still kept up its
+rhythmical, persistent rumbling, which the deafened pilgrims no longer
+even heard.
+
+At length, when Les Aubrais had been left behind, they began to lunch in
+the carriage. It was then a quarter to twelve, and when they had said the
+“Angelus,” and the three “Aves” had been thrice repeated, Pierre took
+from Marie’s bag the little book whose blue cover was ornamented with an
+artless picture of Our Lady of Lourdes. Sister Hyacinthe clapped her
+hands as a signal for silence, and amidst general wakefulness and ardent
+curiosity like that of big children impassioned by the marvellous story,
+the priest was able to begin reading in his fine, penetrating voice. Now
+came the narrative of Bernadette’s sojourn at Nevers, and then her death
+there. Pierre, however, as on the two previous occasions, soon ceased
+following the exact text of the little book, and added charming anecdotes
+of his own, both what he knew and what he could divine; and, for himself
+alone, he again evolved the true story, the human, pitiful story, that
+which none had ever told, but which he felt so deeply.
+
+It was on the 8th July, 1866, that Bernadette left Lourdes. She went to
+take the veil at Nevers, in the convent of Saint-Gildard, the chief
+habitation of the Sisters on duty at the Asylum where she had learnt to
+read and had been living for eight years. She was then twenty-two years
+of age, and it was eight years since the Blessed Virgin had appeared to
+her. And her farewells to the Grotto, to the Basilica, to the whole town
+which she loved, were watered with tears. But she could no longer remain
+there, owing to the continuous persecution of public curiosity, the
+visits, the homage, and the adoration paid to her, from which, on account
+of her delicate health, she suffered cruelly. Her sincere humility, her
+timid love of shade and silence, had at last produced in her an ardent
+desire to disappear, to hide her resounding glory--the glory of one whom
+heaven had chosen and whom the world would not leave in peace--in the
+depth of some unknown darkness; and she longed only for
+simple-mindedness, for a quiet humdrum life devoted to prayer and petty
+daily occupations. Her departure was therefore a relief both to her and
+to the Grotto, which she was beginning to embarrass with her excessive
+innocence and burdensome complaints.
+
+At Nevers, Saint-Gildard ought to have proved a paradise. She there found
+fresh air, sunshine, spacious apartments, and an extensive garden planted
+with fine trees. Yet she did not enjoy peace,--that utter forgetfulness
+of the world for which one flees to the far-away desert. Scarcely twenty
+days after her arrival, she donned the garb of the Order and assumed the
+name of Sister Marie-Bernard, for the time simply engaging herself by
+partial vows. However, the world still flocked around her, the
+persecution of the multitude began afresh. She was pursued even into the
+cloister through an irresistible desire to obtain favours from her
+saintly person. Ah! to see her, touch her, become lucky by gazing on her
+or surreptitiously rubbing some medal against her dress. It was the
+credulous passion of fetishism, a rush of believers pursuing this poor
+beatified being in the desire which each felt to secure a share of hope
+and divine illusion. She wept at it with very weariness, with impatient
+revolt, and often repeated: “Why do they torment me like this? What more
+is there in me than in others?” And at last she felt real grief at thus
+becoming “the raree-show,” as she ended by calling herself with a sad,
+suffering smile. She defended herself as far as she could, refusing to
+see anyone. Her companions defended her also, and sometimes very sternly,
+showing her only to such visitors as were authorised by the Bishop. The
+doors of the Convent remained closed, and ecclesiastics almost alone
+succeeded in effecting an entrance. Still, even this was too much for her
+desire for solitude, and she often had to be obstinate, to request that
+the priests who had called might be sent away, weary as she was of always
+telling the same story, of ever answering the same questions. She was
+incensed, wounded, on behalf of the Blessed Virgin herself. Still, she
+sometimes had to yield, for the Bishop in person would bring great
+personages, dignitaries, and prelates; and she would then appear with her
+grave air, answering politely and as briefly as possible; only feeling at
+ease when she was allowed to return to her shadowy corner. Never, indeed,
+had distinction weighed more heavily on a mortal. One day, when she was
+asked if she was not proud of the continual visits paid her by the
+Bishop, she answered simply: “Monseigneur does not come to see me, he
+comes to show me.” On another occasion some princes of the Church, great
+militant Catholics, who wished to see her, were overcome with emotion and
+sobbed before her; but, in her horror of being shown, in the vexation
+they caused her simple mind, she left them without comprehending, merely
+feeling very weary and very sad.
+
+At length, however, she grew accustomed to Saint-Gildard, and spent a
+peaceful existence there, engaged in avocations of which she became very
+fond. She was so delicate, so frequently ill, that she was employed in
+the infirmary. In addition to the little assistance she rendered there,
+she worked with her needle, with which she became rather skilful,
+embroidering albs and altar-cloths in a delicate manner. But at times
+she, would lose all strength, and be unable to do even this light work.
+When she was not confined to her bed she spent long days in an
+easy-chair, her only diversion being to recite her rosary or to read some
+pious work. Now that she had learnt to read, books interested her,
+especially the beautiful stories of conversion, the delightful legends in
+which saints of both sexes appear, and the splendid and terrible dramas
+in which the devil is baffled and cast back into hell. But her great
+favourite, the book at which she continually marvelled, was the Bible,
+that wonderful New Testament of whose perpetual miracle she never
+wearied. She remembered the Bible at Bartres, that old book which had
+been in the family a hundred years, and whose pages had turned yellow;
+she could again see her foster-father slip a pin between the leaves to
+open the book at random, and then read aloud from the top of the
+right-hand page; and even at that time she had already known those
+beautiful stories so well that she could have continued repeating the
+narrative by heart, whatever might be the passage at which the perusal
+had ceased. And now that she read the book herself, she found in it a
+constant source of surprise, an ever-increasing delight. The story of the
+Passion particularly upset her, as though it were some extraordinary
+tragical event that had happened only the day before. She sobbed with
+pity; it made her poor suffering body quiver for hours. Mingled with her
+tears, perhaps, there was the unconscious dolour of her own passion, the
+desolate Calvary which she also had been ascending ever since her
+childhood.
+
+When Bernadette was well and able to perform her duties in the infirmary,
+she bustled about, filling the building with childish liveliness. Until
+her death she remained an innocent, infantile being, fond of laughing,
+romping, and play. She was very little, the smallest Sister of the
+community, so that her companions always treated her somewhat like a
+child. Her face grew long and hollow, and lost its bloom of youth; but
+she retained the pure divine brightness of her eyes, the beautiful eyes
+of a visionary, in which, as in a limpid sky, you detected the flight of
+her dreams. As she grew older and her sufferings increased, she became
+somewhat sour-tempered and violent, cross-grained, anxious, and at times
+rough; little imperfections which after each attack filled her with
+remorse. She would humble herself, think herself damned, and beg pardon
+of everyone. But, more frequently, what a good little daughter of
+Providence she was! She became lively, alert, quick at repartee, full of
+mirth-provoking remarks, with a grace quite her own, which made her
+beloved. In spite of her great devotion, although she spent days in
+prayer, she was not at all bigoted or over-exacting with regard to
+others, but tolerant and compassionate. In fact, no nun was ever so much
+a woman, with distinct features, a decided personality, charming even in
+its puerility. And this gift of childishness which she had retained, the
+simple innocence of the child she still was, also made children love her,
+as though they recognised in her one of themselves. They all ran to her,
+jumped upon her lap, and passed their tiny arms round her neck, and the
+garden would then fill with the noise of joyous games, races, and cries;
+and it was not she who ran or cried the least, so happy was she at once
+more feeling herself a poor unknown little girl as in the far-away days
+of Bartres! Later on it was related that a mother had one day brought her
+paralysed child to the convent for the saint to touch and cure it. The
+woman sobbed so much that the Superior ended by consenting to make the
+attempt. However, as Bernadette indignantly protested whenever she was
+asked to perform a miracle, she was not forewarned, but simply called to
+take the sick child to the infirmary. And she did so, and when she stood
+the child on the ground it walked. It was cured.
+
+Ah! how many times must Bartres and her free childhood spent watching her
+lambs--the years passed among the hills, in the long grass, in the leafy
+woods--have returned to her during the hours she gave to her dreams when
+weary of praying for sinners! No one then fathomed her soul, no one could
+say if involuntary regrets did not rend her wounded heart. One day she
+spoke some words, which her historians have preserved, with the view of
+making her passion more touching. Cloistered far away from her mountains,
+confined to a bed of sickness, she exclaimed: “It seems to me that I was
+made to live, to act, to be ever on the move, and yet the Lord will have
+me remain motionless.” What a revelation, full of terrible testimony and
+immense sadness! Why should the Lord wish that dear being, all grace and
+gaiety, to remain motionless? Could she not have honoured Him equally
+well by living the free, healthy life that she had been born to live? And
+would she not have done more to increase the world’s happiness and her
+own if, instead of praying for sinners, her constant occupation, she had
+given her love to the husband who might have been united to her and to
+the children who might have been born to her? She, so gay and so active,
+would, on certain evenings, become extremely depressed. She turned gloomy
+and remained wrapped in herself, as though overcome by excess of pain. No
+doubt the cup was becoming too bitter. The thought of her life’s
+perpetual renunciation was killing her.
+
+Did Bernadette often think of Lourdes whilst she was at Saint-Gildard?
+What knew she of the triumph of the Grotto, of the prodigies which were
+daily transforming the land of miracles? These questions were never
+thoroughly elucidated. Her companions were forbidden to talk to her of
+such matters, which remained enveloped in absolute, continual silence.
+She herself did not care to speak of them; she kept silent with regard to
+the mysterious past, and evinced no desire to know the present, however
+triumphant it might be. But all the same did not her heart, in
+imagination, fly away to the enchanted country of her childhood, where
+lived her kith and kin, where all her life-ties had been formed, where
+she had left the most extraordinary dream that ever human being dreamt?
+Surely she must have sometimes travelled the beautiful journey of memory,
+she must have known the main features of the great events that had taken
+place at Lourdes. What she most dreaded was to go there herself, and, she
+always refused to do so, knowing full well that she could not remain
+unrecognised, and fearful of meeting the crowds whose adoration awaited
+her. What glory would have been hers had she been headstrong, ambitious,
+domineering! She would have returned to the holy spot of her visions,
+have worked miracles there, have become a priestess, a female pope, with
+the infallibility and sovereignty of one of the elect, a friend of the
+Blessed Virgin. But the Fathers never really feared this, although
+express orders had been given to withdraw her from the world for her
+salvation’s sake. In reality they were easy, for they knew her, so gentle
+and so humble in her fear of becoming divine, in her ignorance of the
+colossal machine which she had put in motion, and the working of which
+would have made her recoil with affright had she understood it. No, no!
+that was no longer her land, that place of crowds, of violence and
+trafficking. She would have suffered too much there, she would have been
+out of her element, bewildered, ashamed. And so, when pilgrims bound
+thither asked her with a smile, “Will you come with us?” she shivered
+slightly, and then hastily replied, “No, no! but how I should like to,
+were I a little bird!”
+
+Her reverie alone was that little travelling bird, with rapid flight and
+noiseless wings, which continually went on pilgrimage to the Grotto. In
+her dreams, indeed, she must have continually lived at Lourdes, though in
+the flesh she had not even gone there for either her father’s or her
+mother’s funeral. Yet she loved her kin; she was anxious to procure work
+for her relations who had remained poor, and she had insisted on seeing
+her eldest brother, who, coming to Nevers to complain, had been refused
+admission to the convent. However, he found her weary and resigned, and
+she did not ask him a single question about New Lourdes, as though that
+rising town were no longer her own. The year of the crowning of the
+Virgin, a priest whom she had deputed to pray for her before the Grotto
+came back and told her of the never-to-be forgotten wonders of the
+ceremony, the hundred thousand pilgrims who had flocked to it, and the
+five-and-thirty bishops in golden vestments who had assembled in the
+resplendent Basilica. Whilst listening, she trembled with her customary
+little quiver of desire and anxiety. And when the priest exclaimed, “Ah!
+if you had only seen that pomp!” she answered: “Me! I was much better
+here in my little corner in the infirmary.” They had robbed her of her
+glory; her work shone forth resplendently amidst a continuous hosanna,
+and she only tasted joy in forgetfulness, in the gloom of the cloister,
+where the opulent farmers of the Grotto forgot her. It was never the
+re-echoing solemnities that prompted her mysterious journeys; the little
+bird of her soul only winged its lonesome flight to Lourdes on days of
+solitude, in the peaceful hours when no one could there disturb its
+devotions. It was before the wild primitive Grotto that she returned to
+kneel, amongst the bushy eglantine, as in the days when the Gave was not
+walled in by a monumental quay. And it was the old town that she visited
+at twilight, when the cool, perfumed breezes came down from the
+mountains, the old painted and gilded semi-Spanish church where she had
+made her first communion, the old Asylum so full of suffering where
+during eight years she had grown accustomed to solitude--all that poor,
+innocent old town, whose every paving-stone awoke old affections in her
+memory’s depths.
+
+And did Bernadette ever extend the pilgrimage of her dreams as far as
+Bartres? Probably, at times when she sat in her invalid-chair and let
+some pious book slip from her tired hands, and closed her eyes, Bartres
+did appear to her, lighting up the darkness of her view. The little
+antique Romanesque church with sky-blue nave and blood-red altar screens
+stood there amidst the tombs of the narrow cemetery. Then she would find
+herself once more in the house of the Lagues, in the large room on the
+left, where the fire was burning, and where, in winter-time, such
+wonderful stories were told whilst the big clock gravely ticked the hours
+away. At times the whole countryside spread out before her, meadows
+without end, giant chestnut-trees beneath which you lost yourself,
+deserted table-lands whence you descried the distant mountains, the Pic
+du Midi and the Pic de Viscos soaring aloft as airy and as rose-coloured
+as dreams, in a paradise such as the legends have depicted. And
+afterwards, afterwards came her free childhood, when she scampered off
+whither she listed in the open air, her lonely, dreamy thirteenth year,
+when with all the joy of living she wandered through the immensity of
+nature. And now, too, perhaps, she again beheld herself roaming in the
+tall grass among the hawthorn bushes beside the streams on a warm sunny
+day in June. Did she not picture herself grown, with a lover of her own
+age, whom she would have loved with all the simplicity and affection of
+her heart? Ah! to be a child again, to be free, unknown, happy once more,
+to love afresh, and to love differently! The vision must have passed
+confusedly before her--a husband who worshipped her, children gaily
+growing up around her, the life that everybody led, the joys and sorrows
+that her own parents had known, and which her children would have had to
+know in their turn. But little by little all vanished, and she again
+found herself in her chair of suffering, imprisoned between four cold
+walls, with no other desire than a longing one for a speedy death, since
+she had been denied a share of the poor common happiness of this world.
+
+Bernadette’s ailments increased each year. It was, in fact, the
+commencement of her passion, the passion of this new child-Messiah, who
+had come to bring relief to the unhappy, to announce to mankind the
+religion of divine justice and equality in the face of miracles which
+flouted the laws of impassible nature. If she now rose it was only to
+drag herself from chair to chair for a few days at a time, and then she
+would have a relapse and be again forced to take to her bed. Her
+sufferings became terrible. Her hereditary nervousness, her asthma,
+aggravated by cloister life, had probably turned into phthisis. She
+coughed frightfully, each fit rending her burning chest and leaving her
+half dead. To complete her misery, caries of the right knee-cap
+supervened, a gnawing disease, the shooting pains of which caused her to
+cry aloud. Her poor body, to which dressings were continually being
+applied, became one great sore, which was irritated by the warmth of her
+bed, by her prolonged sojourn between sheets whose friction ended by
+breaking her skin. One and all pitied her; those who beheld her martyrdom
+said that it was impossible to suffer more, or with greater fortitude.
+She tried some of the Lourdes water, but it brought her no relief. Lord,
+Almighty King, why cure others and not cure her? To save her soul? Then
+dost Thou not save the souls of the others? What an inexplicable
+selection! How absurd that in the eternal evolution of worlds it should
+be necessary for this poor being to be tortured! She sobbed, and again
+and again said in order to keep up her courage: “Heaven is at the end,
+but how long the end is in coming!” There was ever the idea that
+suffering is the test, that it is necessary to suffer upon earth if one
+would triumph elsewhere, that suffering is indispensable, enviable, and
+blessed. But is this not blasphemous, O Lord? Hast Thou not created youth
+and joy? Is it Thy wish that Thy creatures should enjoy neither the sun,
+nor the smiling Nature which Thou hast created, nor the human affections
+with which Thou hast endowed their flesh? She dreaded the feeling of
+revolt which maddened her at times, and wished also to strengthen herself
+against the disease which made her groan, and she crucified herself in
+thought, extending her arms so as to form a cross and unite herself to
+Jesus, her limbs against His limbs, her mouth against His mouth,
+streaming the while with blood like Him, and steeped like Him in
+bitterness! Jesus died in three hours, but a longer agony fell to her,
+who again brought redemption by pain, who died to give others life. When
+her bones ached with agony she would sometimes utter complaints, but she
+reproached herself immediately. “Oh! how I suffer, oh! how I suffer! but
+what happiness it is to bear this pain!” There can be no more frightful
+words, words pregnant with a blacker pessimism. Happy to suffer, O Lord!
+but why, and to what unknown and senseless end? Where is the reason in
+this useless cruelty, in this revolting glorification of suffering, when
+from the whole of humanity there ascends but one desperate longing for
+health and happiness?
+
+In the midst of her frightful sufferings, however, Sister Marie-Bernard
+took the final vows on September 22, 1878. Twenty years had gone by since
+the Blessed Virgin had appeared to her, visiting her as the Angel had
+visited the Virgin, choosing her as the Virgin had been chosen, amongst
+the most lowly and the most candid, that she might hide within her the
+secret of King Jesus. Such was the mystical explanation of that election
+of suffering, the _raison d’être_ of that being who was so harshly
+separated from her fellows, weighed down by disease, transformed into the
+pitiable field of every human affliction. She was the “garden inclosed”*
+that brings such pleasure to the gaze of the Spouse. He had chosen her,
+then buried her in the death of her hidden life. And even when the
+unhappy creature staggered beneath the weight of her cross, her
+companions would say to her: “Do you forget that the Blessed Virgin
+promised you that you should be happy, not in this world, but in the
+next?” And with renewed strength, and striking her forehead, she would
+answer: “Forget? no, no! it is here!” She only recovered temporary energy
+by means of this illusion of a paradise of glory, into which she would
+enter escorted by seraphims, to be forever and ever happy. The three
+personal secrets which the Blessed Virgin had confided to her, to arm her
+against evil, must have been promises of beauty, felicity, and
+immortality in heaven. What monstrous dupery if there were only the
+darkness of the earth beyond the grave, if the Blessed Virgin of her
+dream were not there to meet her with the prodigious guerdons she had
+promised! But Bernadette had not a doubt; she willingly undertook all the
+little commissions with which her companions naïvely entrusted her for
+Heaven: “Sister Marie-Bernard, you’ll say this, you’ll say that, to the
+Almighty.” “Sister Marie-Bernard, you’ll kiss my brother if you meet him
+in Paradise.” “Sister Marie-Bernard, give me a little place beside you
+when I die.” And she obligingly answered each one: “Have no fear, I will
+do it!” Ah! all-powerful illusion, delicious repose, power ever reviving
+and consolatory!
+
+ * Song of Solomon iv. 12.
+
+And then came the last agony, then came death.
+
+On Friday, March 28, 1879, it was thought that she would not last the
+night. She had a despairing longing for the tomb, in order that she might
+suffer no more, and live again in heaven. And thus she obstinately
+refused to receive extreme unction, saying that twice already it had
+cured her. She wished, in short, that God would let her die, for it was
+more than she could bear; it would have been unreasonable to require that
+she should suffer longer. Yet she ended by consenting to receive the
+sacraments, and her last agony was thereby prolonged for nearly three
+weeks. The priest who attended her frequently said: “My daughter, you
+must make the sacrifice of your life”; and one day, quite out of
+patience, she sharply answered him: “But, Father, it is no sacrifice.” A
+terrible saying, that also, for it implied disgust at _being_, furious
+contempt for existence, and an immediate ending of her humanity, had she
+had the power to suppress herself by a gesture. It is true that the poor
+girl had nothing to regret, that she had been compelled to banish
+everything from her life, health, joy, and love, so that she might leave
+it as one casts off a soiled, worn, tattered garment. And she was right;
+she condemned her useless, cruel life when she said: “My passion will
+finish only at my death; it will not cease until I enter into eternity.”
+ And this idea of her passion pursued her, attaching her more closely to
+the cross with her Divine Master. She had induced them to give her a
+large crucifix; she pressed it vehemently against her poor maidenly
+breast, exclaiming that she would like to thrust it into her bosom and
+leave it there. Towards the end, her strength completely forsook her, and
+she could no longer grasp the crucifix with her trembling hands. “Let it
+be tightly tied to me,” she prayed, “that I may feel it until my last
+breath!” The Redeemer upon that crucifix was the only spouse that she was
+destined to know; His bleeding kiss was to be the only one bestowed upon
+her womanhood, diverted from nature’s course. The nuns took cords, passed
+them under her aching back, and fastened the crucifix so roughly to her
+bosom that it did indeed penetrate it.
+
+At last death took pity upon her. On Easter Monday she was seized with a
+great fit of shivering. Hallucinations perturbed her, she trembled with
+fright, she beheld the devil jeering and prowling around her. “Be off, be
+off, Satan!” she gasped; “do not touch me, do not carry me away!” And
+amidst her delirium she related that the fiend had sought to throw
+himself upon her, that she had felt his mouth scorching her with all the
+flames of hell. The devil in a life so pure, in a soul without sin! what
+for, O Lord! and again I ask it, why this relentless suffering, intense
+to the very last, why this nightmare-like ending, this death troubled
+with such frightful fancies, after so beautiful a life of candour,
+purity, and innocence? Could she not fall asleep serenely in the
+peacefulness of her chaste soul? But doubtless so long as breath remained
+in her body it was necessary to leave her the hatred and dread of life,
+which is the devil. It was life which menaced her, and it was life which
+she cast out, in the same way that she denied life when she reserved to
+the Celestial Bridegroom her tortured, crucified womanhood. That dogma of
+the Immaculate Conception, which her dream had come to strengthen, was a
+blow dealt by the Church to woman, both wife and mother. To decree that
+woman is only worthy of worship on condition that she be a virgin, to
+imagine that virgin to be herself born without sin, is not this an insult
+to Nature, the condemnation of life, the denial of womanhood, whose true
+greatness consists in perpetuating life? “Be off, be off, Satan! let me
+die without fulfilling Nature’s law.” And she drove the sunshine from the
+room and the free air that entered by the window, the air that was sweet
+with the scent of flowers, laden with all the floating germs which
+transmit love throughout the whole vast world.
+
+On the Wednesday after Easter (April 16th), the death agony commenced. It
+is related that on the morning of that day one of Bernadette’s
+companions, a nun attacked with a mortal illness and lying in the
+infirmary in an adjoining bed, was suddenly healed upon drinking a glass
+of Lourdes water. But she, the privileged one, had drunk of it in vain.
+God at last granted her the signal favour which she desired by sending
+her into the good sound sleep of the earth, in which there is no more
+suffering. She asked pardon of everyone. Her passion was consummated;
+like the Saviour, she had the nails and the crown of thorns, the scourged
+limbs, the pierced side. Like Him she raised her eyes to heaven, extended
+her arms in the form of a cross, and uttered a loud cry: “My God!” And,
+like Him, she said, towards three o’clock: “I thirst.” She moistened her
+lips in the glass, then bowed her head and expired.
+
+Thus, very glorious and very holy, died the Visionary of Lourdes,
+Bernadette Soubirous, Sister Marie-Bernard, one of the Sisters of Charity
+of Nevers. During three days her body remained exposed to view, and vast
+crowds passed before it; a whole people hastened to the convent, an
+interminable procession of devotees hungering after hope, who rubbed
+medals, chaplets, pictures, and missals against the dead woman’s dress,
+to obtain from her one more favour, a fetish bringing happiness. Even in
+death her dream of solitude was denied her: a mob of the wretched ones of
+this world rushed to the spot, drinking in illusion around her coffin.
+And it was noticed that her left eye, the eye which at the time of the
+apparitions had been nearest to the Blessed Virgin, remained obstinately
+open. Then a last miracle amazed the convent: the body underwent no
+change, but was interred on the third day, still supple, warm, with red
+lips, and a very white skin, rejuvenated as it were, and smelling sweet.
+And to-day Bernadette Soubirous, exiled from Lourdes, obscurely sleeps
+her last sleep at Saint Gildard, beneath a stone slab in a little chapel,
+amidst the shade and silence of the old trees of the garden, whilst
+yonder the Grotto shines resplendently in all its triumph.
+
+Pierre ceased speaking; the beautiful, marvellous story was ended. And
+yet the whole carriage was still listening, deeply impressed by that
+death, at once so tragic and so touching. Compassionate tears fell from
+Marie’s eyes, while the others, Elise Rouquet, La Grivotte herself, now
+calmer, clasped their hands and prayed to her who was in heaven to
+intercede with the Divinity to complete their cure. M. Sabathier made a
+big sign of the cross, and then ate a cake which his wife had bought him
+at Poitiers.
+
+M. de Guersaint, whom sad things always upset, had fallen asleep again in
+the middle of the story. And there was only Madame Vincent, with her face
+buried in her pillow, who had not stirred, like a deaf and blind
+creature, determined to see and hear nothing more.
+
+Meanwhile the train rolled, still rolled along. Madame de Jonquière,
+after putting her head out of the window, informed them that they were
+approaching Etampes. And, when they had left that station behind them,
+Sister Hyacinthe gave the signal, and they recited the third chaplet of
+the Rosary, the five glorious mysteries--the Resurrection of Our Lord,
+the Ascension of Our Lord, the Mission of the Holy Ghost, the Assumption
+of the Most Blessed Virgin, and the Crowning of the Most Blessed Virgin.
+And afterwards they sang the canticle:
+
+ “O Virgin, in thy help I put my trust.”
+
+Then Pierre fell into a deep reverie. His glance had turned towards the
+now sunlit landscape, the continual flight of which seemed to lull his
+thoughts. The noise of the wheels was making him dizzy, and he ended by
+no longer recognising the familiar horizon of this vast suburban expanse
+with which he had once been acquainted. They still had to pass Bretigny
+and Juvisy, and then, in an hour and a half at the utmost, they would at
+last be at Paris. So the great journey was finished! the inquiry, which
+he had so much desired to make, the experiment which he had attempted
+with so much passion, were over! He had wished to acquire certainty, to
+study Bernadette’s case on the spot, and see if grace would not come back
+to him in a lightning flash, restoring him his faith. And now he had
+settled the point--Bernadette had dreamed through the continual torments
+of her flesh, and he himself would never believe again. And this forced
+itself upon his mind like a brutal fact: the simple faith of the child
+who kneels and prays, the primitive faith of young people, bowed down by
+an awe born of their ignorance, was dead. Though thousands of pilgrims
+might each year go to Lourdes, the nations were no longer with them; this
+attempt to bring about the resurrection of absolute faith, the faith of
+dead-and-gone centuries, without revolt or examination, was fatally
+doomed to fail. History never retraces its steps, humanity cannot return
+to childhood, times have too much changed, too many new inspirations have
+sown new harvests for the men of to-day to become once more like the men
+of olden time. It was decisive; Lourdes was only an explainable accident,
+whose reactionary violence was even a proof of the extreme agony in which
+belief under the antique form of Catholicism was struggling. Never again,
+as in the cathedrals of the twelfth century, would the entire nation
+kneel like a docile flock in the hands of the Master. To blindly,
+obstinately cling to the attempt to bring that to pass would mean to dash
+oneself against the impossible, to rush, perhaps, towards great moral
+catastrophes.
+
+And of his journey there already only remained to Pierre an immense
+feeling of compassion. Ah! his heart was overflowing with pity; his poor
+heart was returning wrung by all that he had seen. He recalled the words
+of worthy Abbé Judaine; and he had seen those thousands of unhappy beings
+praying, weeping, and imploring God to take pity on their suffering; and
+he had wept with them, and felt within himself, like an open wound, a
+sorrowful fraternal feeling for all their ailments. He could not think of
+those poor people without burning with a desire to relieve them. If it
+were true that the faith of the simple-minded no longer sufficed; if one
+ran the risk of going astray in wishing to turn back, would it become
+necessary to close the Grotto, to preach other efforts, other sufferings?
+However, his compassion revolted at that thought. No, no! it would be a
+crime to snatch their dream of Heaven from those poor creatures who
+suffered either in body or in mind, and who only found relief in kneeling
+yonder amidst the splendour of tapers and the soothing repetition of
+hymns. He had not taken the murderous course of undeceiving Marie, but
+had sacrificed himself in order to leave her the joy of her fancy, the
+divine consolation of having been healed by the Virgin. Where was the man
+hard enough, cruel enough, to prevent the lowly from believing, to rob
+them of the consolation of the supernatural, the hope that God troubled
+Himself about them, that He held a better life in His paradise in reserve
+for them? All humanity was weeping, desperate with anguish, like some
+despairing invalid, irrevocably condemned, and whom only a miracle could
+save. He felt mankind to be unhappy indeed, and he shuddered with
+fraternal affection in the presence of such pitiable humility, ignorance,
+poverty in its rags, disease with its sores and evil odour, all the lowly
+sufferers, in hospital, convent, and slums, amidst vermin and dirt, with
+ugliness and imbecility written on their faces, an immense protest
+against health, life, and Nature, in the triumphal name of justice,
+equality, and benevolence. No, no! it would never do to drive the
+wretched to despair. Lourdes must be tolerated, in the same way that you
+tolerate a falsehood which makes life possible. And, as he had already
+said in Bernadette’s chamber, she remained the martyr, she it was who
+revealed to him the only religion which still filled his heart, the
+religion of human suffering. Ah! to be good and kindly, to alleviate all
+ills, to lull pain, to sleep in a dream, to lie even, so that no one
+might suffer any more!
+
+The train passed at full speed through a village, and Pierre vaguely
+caught sight of a church nestling amidst some large apple trees. All the
+pilgrims in the carriage crossed themselves. But he was now becoming
+uneasy, scruples were tingeing his reverie with anxiety. This religion of
+human suffering, this redemption by pain, was not this yet another lure,
+a continual aggravation of pain and misery? It is cowardly and dangerous
+to allow superstition to live. To tolerate and accept it is to revive the
+dark evil ages afresh. It weakens and stupefies; the sanctimoniousness
+bequeathed by heredity produces humiliated, timorous generations,
+decadent and docile nations, who are an easy prey to the powerful of the
+earth. Whole nations are imposed upon, robbed, devoured, when they have
+devoted the whole effort of their will to the mere conquest of a future
+existence. Would it not, therefore, be better to cure humanity at once by
+boldly closing the miraculous Grottos whither it goes to weep, and thus
+restore to it the courage to live the real life, even in the midst of
+tears? And it was the same prayer, that incessant flood of prayer which
+ascended from Lourdes, the endless supplication in which he had been
+immersed and softened: was it not after all but puerile lullaby, a
+debasement of all one’s energies? It benumbed the will, one’s very being
+became dissolved in it and acquired disgust for life and action. Of what
+use could it be to will anything, do anything, when you totally resigned
+yourself to the caprices of an unknown almighty power? And, in another
+respect, what a strange thing was this mad desire for prodigies, this
+anxiety to drive the Divinity to transgress the laws of Nature
+established by Himself in His infinite wisdom! Therein evidently lay
+peril and unreasonableness; at the risk even of losing illusion, that
+divine comforter, only the habit of personal effort and the courage of
+truth should have been developed in man, and especially in the child.
+
+Then a great brightness arose in Pierre’s mind and dazzled him. It was
+Reason, protesting against the glorification of the absurd and the
+deposition of common-sense. Ah! reason, it was through her that he had
+suffered, through her alone that he was happy. As he had told Doctor
+Chassaigne, his one consuming longing was to satisfy reason ever more and
+more, although it might cost him happiness to do so. It was reason, he
+now well understood it, whose continual revolt at the Grotto, at the
+Basilica, throughout entire Lourdes, had prevented him from believing.
+Unlike his old friend--that stricken old man, who was afflicted with such
+dolorous senility, who had fallen into second childhood since the
+shipwreck of his affections,--he had been unable to kill reason and
+humiliate and annihilate himself. Reason remained his sovereign mistress,
+and she it was who buoyed him up even amidst the obscurities and failures
+of science. Whenever he met with a thing which he could not understand,
+it was she who whispered to him, “There is certainly a natural
+explanation which escapes me.” He repeated that there could be no healthy
+ideal outside the march towards the discovery of the unknown, the slow
+victory of reason amidst all the wretchedness of body and mind. In the
+clashing of the twofold heredity which he had derived from his father,
+all brain, and his mother, all faith, he, a priest, found it possible to
+ravage his life in order that he might keep his vows. He had acquired
+strength enough to master his flesh, but he felt that his paternal
+heredity had now definitely gained the upper hand, for henceforth the
+sacrifice of his reason had become an impossibility; this he would not
+renounce and would not master. No, no, even human suffering, the hallowed
+suffering of the poor, ought not to prove an obstacle, enjoining the
+necessity of ignorance and folly. Reason before all; in her alone lay
+salvation. If at Lourdes, whilst bathed in tears, softened by the sight
+of so much affliction, he had said that it was sufficient to weep and
+love, he had made a dangerous mistake. Pity was but a convenient
+expedient. One must live, one must act; reason must combat suffering,
+unless it be desired that the latter should last forever.
+
+However, as the train rolled on and the landscape flew by, a church once
+more appeared, this time on the fringe of heaven, some votive chapel
+perched upon a hill and surmounted by a lofty statue of the Virgin. And
+once more all the pilgrims made the sign of the cross, and once more
+Pierre’s reverie strayed, a fresh stream of reflections bringing his
+anguish back to him. What was this imperious need of the things beyond,
+which tortured suffering humanity? Whence came it? Why should equality
+and justice be desired when they did not seem to exist in impassive
+nature? Man had set them in the unknown spheres of the Mysterious, in the
+supernatural realms of religious paradises, and there contented his
+ardent thirst for them. That unquenchable thirst for happiness had ever
+consumed, and would consume him always. If the Fathers of the Grotto
+drove such a glorious trade, it was simply because they made motley out
+of what was divine. That thirst for the Divine, which nothing had
+quenched through the long, long ages, seemed to have returned with
+increased violence at the close of our century of science. Lourdes was a
+resounding and undeniable proof that man could never live without the
+dream of a Sovereign Divinity, re-establishing equality and re-creating
+happiness by dint of miracles. When man has reached the depths of life’s
+misfortunes, he returns to the divine illusion, and the origin of all
+religions lies there. Man, weak and bare, lacks the strength to live
+through his terrestrial misery without the everlasting lie of a paradise.
+To-day, thought Pierre, the experiment had been made; it seemed that
+science alone could not suffice, and that one would be obliged to leave a
+door open on the Mysterious.
+
+All at once in the depths of his deeply absorbed mind the words rang out,
+A new religion! The door which must be left open on the Mysterious was
+indeed a new religion. To subject mankind to brutal amputation, lop off
+its dream, and forcibly deprive it of the Marvellous, which it needed to
+live as much as it needed bread, would possibly kill it. Would it ever
+have the philosophical courage to take life as it is, and live it for its
+own sake, without any idea of future rewards and penalties? It certainly
+seemed that centuries must elapse before the advent of a society wise
+enough to lead a life of rectitude without the moral control of some
+cultus and the consolation of superhuman equality and justice. Yes, a new
+religion! The call burst forth, resounded within Pierre’s brain like the
+call of the nations, the eager, despairing desire of the modern soul. The
+consolation and hope which Catholicism had brought the world seemed
+exhausted after eighteen hundred years full of so many tears, so much
+blood, so much vain and barbarous agitation. It was an illusion
+departing, and it was at least necessary that the illusion should be
+changed. If mankind had long ago darted for refuge into the Christian
+paradise, it was because that paradise then opened before it like a fresh
+hope. But now a new religion, a new hope, a new paradise, yes, that was
+what the world thirsted for, in the discomfort in which it was
+struggling. And Father Fourcade, for his part, fully felt such to be the
+case; he had not meant to imply anything else when he had given rein to
+his anxiety, entreating that the people of the great towns, the dense
+mass of the humble which forms the nation, might be brought to Lourdes.
+One hundred thousand, two hundred thousand pilgrims at Lourdes each year,
+that was, after all, but a grain of sand. It was the people, the whole
+people, that was required. But the people has forever deserted the
+churches, it no longer puts any soul in the Blessed Virgins which it
+manufactures, and nothing nowadays could restore its lost faith. A
+Catholic democracy--yes, history would then begin afresh; only were it
+possible to create a new Christian people, would not the advent of a new
+Saviour, the mighty breath of a new Messiah, have been needed for such a
+task?
+
+However, the words still sounded, still rang out in Pierre’s mind with
+the growing clamour of pealing bells. A new religion; a new religion.
+Doubtless it must be a religion nearer to life, giving a larger place to
+the things of the world, and taking the acquired truths into due account.
+And, above all, it must be a religion which was not an appetite for
+death--Bernadette living solely in order that she might die, Doctor
+Chassaigne aspiring to the tomb as to the only happiness--for all that
+spiritualistic abandonment was so much continuous disorganisation of the
+will to live. At bottom of it was hatred to life, disgust with and
+cessation of action. Every religion, it is true, is but a promise of
+immortality, an embellishment of the spheres beyond, an enchanted garden
+to be entered on the morrow of death. Could a new religion ever place
+such a garden of eternal happiness on earth? Where was the formula, the
+dogma, that would satisfy the hopes of the mankind of to-day? What belief
+should be sown to blossom forth in a harvest of strength and peace? How
+could one fecundate the universal doubt so that it should give birth to a
+new faith? and what sort of illusion, what divine falsehood of any kind
+could be made to germinate in the contemporary world, ravaged as it had
+been upon all sides, broken up by a century of science?
+
+At that moment, without any apparent transition, Pierre saw the face of
+his brother Guillaume arise in the troublous depths of his mind. Still,
+he was not surprised; some secret link must have brought that vision
+there. Ah! how fond they had been of one another long ago, and what a
+good brother that elder brother, so upright and gentle, had been!
+Henceforth, also, the rupture was complete; Pierre no longer saw
+Guillaume, since the latter had cloistered himself in his chemical
+studies, living like a savage in a little suburban house, with a mistress
+and two big dogs. Then Pierre’s reverie again diverged, and he thought of
+that trial in which Guillaume had been mentioned, like one suspected of
+having compromising friendships amongst the most violent revolutionaries.
+It was related, too, that the young man had, after long researches,
+discovered the formula of a terrible explosive, one pound of which would
+suffice to blow up a cathedral. And Pierre then thought of those
+Anarchists who wished to renew and save the world by destroying it. They
+were but dreamers, horrible dreamers; yet dreamers in the same way as
+those innocent pilgrims whom he had seen kneeling at the Grotto in an
+enraptured flock. If the Anarchists, if the extreme Socialists, demanded
+with violence the equality of wealth, the sharing of all the enjoyments
+of the world, the pilgrims on their side demanded with tears equality of
+health and an equitable sharing of moral and physical peace. The latter
+relied on miracles, the former appealed to brute force. At bottom,
+however, it was but the same exasperated dream of fraternity and justice,
+the eternal desire for happiness--neither poor nor sick left, but bliss
+for one and all. And, in fact, had not the primitive Christians been
+terrible revolutionaries for the pagan world, which they threatened, and
+did, indeed, destroy? They who were persecuted, whom the others sought to
+exterminate, are to-day inoffensive, because they have become the Past.
+The frightful Future is ever the man who dreams of a future society; even
+as to-day it is the madman so wildly bent on social renovation that he
+harbours the great black dream of purifying everything by the flame of
+conflagrations. This seemed monstrous to Pierre. Yet, who could tell?
+Therein, perchance, lay the rejuvenated world of to-morrow.
+
+Astray, full of doubts, he nevertheless, in his horror of violence, made
+common cause with old society now reduced to defend itself, unable though
+he was to say whence would come the new Messiah of Gentleness, in whose
+hands he would have liked to place poor ailing mankind. A new religion,
+yes, a new religion. But it is not easy to invent one, and he knew not to
+what conclusion to come between the ancient faith, which was dead, and
+the young faith of to-morrow, as yet unborn. For his part, in his
+desolation, he was only sure of keeping his vow, like an unbelieving
+priest watching over the belief of others, chastely and honestly
+discharging his duties, with the proud sadness that he had been unable to
+renounce his reason as he had renounced his flesh. And for the rest, he
+would wait.
+
+However, the train rolled on between large parks, and the engine gave a
+prolonged whistle, a joyful flourish, which drew Pierre from his
+reflections. The others were stirring, displaying emotion around him. The
+train had just left Juvisy, and Paris was at last near at hand, within a
+short half-hour’s journey. One and all were getting their things
+together: the Sabathiers were remaking their little parcels, Elise
+Rouquet was giving a last glance at her mirror. For a moment Madame de
+Jonquière again became anxious concerning La Grivotte, and decided that
+as the girl was in such a pitiful condition she would have her taken
+straight to a hospital on arriving; whilst Marie endeavoured to rouse
+Madame Vincent from the torpor in which she seemed determined to remain.
+M. de Guersaint, who had been indulging in a little siesta, also had to
+be awakened. And at last, when Sister Hyacinthe had clapped her hands,
+the whole carriage intonated the “Te Deum,” the hymn of praise and
+thanksgiving. “_Te Deum, laudamus, te Dominum confitemur_.” The voices
+rose amidst a last burst of fervour. All those glowing souls returned
+thanks to God for the beautiful journey, the marvellous favours that He
+had already bestowed on them, and would bestow on them yet again.
+
+At last came the fortifications. The two o’clock sun was slowly
+descending the vast, pure heavens, so serenely warm. Distant smoke, a
+ruddy smoke, was rising in light clouds above the immensity of Paris like
+the scattered, flying breath of that toiling colossus. It was Paris in
+her forge, Paris with her passions, her battles, her ever-growling
+thunder, her ardent life ever engendering the life of to-morrow. And the
+white train, the woeful train of every misery and every dolour, was
+returning into it all at full speed, sounding in higher and higher
+strains the piercing flourishes of its whistle-calls. The five hundred
+pilgrims, the three hundred patients, were about to disappear in the vast
+city, fall again upon the hard pavement of life after the prodigious
+dream in which they had just indulged, until the day should come when
+their need of the consolation of a fresh dream would irresistibly impel
+them to start once more on the everlasting pilgrimage to mystery and
+forgetfulness.
+
+Ah! unhappy mankind, poor ailing humanity, hungering for illusion, and in
+the weariness of this waning century distracted and sore from having too
+greedily acquired science; it fancies itself abandoned by the physicians
+of both the mind and the body, and, in great danger of succumbing to
+incurable disease, retraces its steps and asks the miracle of its cure of
+the mystical Lourdes of a past forever dead! Yonder, however, Bernadette,
+the new Messiah of suffering, so touching in her human reality,
+constitutes the terrible lesson, the sacrifice cut off from the world,
+the victim condemned to abandonment, solitude, and death, smitten with
+the penalty of being neither woman, nor wife, nor mother, because she
+beheld the Blessed Virgin.
+
+
+THE END
+
+ *****
+
+
+
+
+
+ROME
+
+FROM “THE THREE CITIES”
+
+
+By Émile Zola
+
+
+Translated By Ernest A. Vizetelly
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+IN submitting to the English-speaking public this second volume of M.
+Zola’s trilogy “Lourdes, Rome, Paris,” I have no prefatory remarks to
+offer on behalf of the author, whose views on Rome, its past, present,
+and future, will be found fully expounded in the following pages. That a
+book of this character will, like its forerunner “Lourdes,” provoke
+considerable controversy is certain, but comment or rejoinder may well be
+postponed until that controversy has arisen. At present then I only
+desire to say, that in spite of the great labour which I have bestowed on
+this translation, I am sensible of its shortcomings, and in a work of
+such length, such intricacy, and such a wide range of subject, it will
+not be surprising if some slips are discovered. Any errors which may be
+pointed out to me, however, shall be rectified in subsequent editions. I
+have given, I think, the whole essence of M. Zola’s text; but he himself
+has admitted to me that he has now and again allowed his pen to run away
+with him, and thus whilst sacrificing nothing of his sense I have at
+times abbreviated his phraseology so as slightly to condense the book. I
+may add that there are no chapter headings in the original, and that the
+circumstances under which the translation was made did not permit me to
+supply any whilst it was passing through the press; however, as some
+indication of the contents of the book--which treats of many more things
+than are usually found in novels--may be a convenience to the reader, I
+have prepared a table briefly epitomising the chief features of each
+successive chapter.
+
+ E. A. V.
+
+ MERTON, SURREY, ENGLAND,
+ April, 1896.
+
+
+
+
+ CONTENTS TO PART I. I
+ “NEW ROME”--Abbé Froment in the Eternal City--His First Impressions--His
+ Book and the Rejuvenation of Christianity
+
+ II
+ “BLACK MOUTH, RED SOUL”--The Boccaneras, their Mansion, Ancestors,
+ History, and Friends
+
+ III
+ ROMANS OF THE CHURCH--Cardinals Boccanera and Sanguinetti--Abbés
+ Paparelli and Santobono--Don Vigilio--Monsignor Nani
+
+
+
+
+ CONTENTS TO PART II. IV
+ ROMANS OF NEW ITALY--The Pradas and the Saccos--The Corso and the Pincio
+
+ V
+ THE BLOOD OF AUGUSTUS--The Palaces of the Caesars--The Capitol--The
+ Forum--The Appian Way--The Campagna--The Catacombs--St. Peter’s.
+
+ VI
+ VENUS AND HERCULES--The Vatican--The Sixtine Chapel--Michael Angelo and
+ Raffaelle--Botticelli and Bernini--Gods and Goddesses--The Gardens--Leo
+ XIII--The Revolt of Passion
+
+
+
+
+ CONTENTS TO PART III. VII
+ PRINCE AND PONTIFF--The International Pilgrimage--The Papal Revenue--A
+ Function at St. Peter’s--The Pope-King--The Temporal Power
+
+ VIII
+ THE POOR AND THE POPE--The Building Mania--The Financial Crash--The
+ Horrors of the Castle Fields--The Roman Workman--May Christ’s Vicar
+ Gamble?--Hopes and Fears of the Papacy
+
+ IX
+ TITO’s WARNING--Aspects of Rome--The Via Giulia--The Tiber by Day--The
+ Gardens--The Villa Medici---The Squares--The Fountains--Poussin and the
+ Campagna--The Campo Verano--The Trastevere--The “Palaces”--Aristocracy,
+ Middle Class, Democracy--The Tiber by Night
+
+
+
+
+ CONTENTS TO PART IV. X
+ FROM PILLAR TO POST--The Propaganda--The Index--Dominicans, Jesuits,
+ Franciscans--The Secular Clergy--Roman Worship--Freemasonry--Cardinal
+ Vicar and Cardinal Secretary--The Inquisition.
+
+ XI
+ POISON!--Frascati--A Cardinal and his Creature--Albano, Castel Gandolfo,
+ Nemi--Across the Campagna--An Osteria--Destiny on the March
+
+ XII
+ THE AGONY OF PASSION--A Roman Gala--The Buongiovannis--The Grey
+ World--The Triumph of Benedetta--King Humbert and Queen Margherita--The
+ Fig-tree of Judas
+
+ XIII
+ DESTINY!--A Happy Morning--The Mid-day Meal--Dario and the Figs--Extreme
+ Unction--Benedetta’s Curse--The Lovers’ Death
+
+
+
+
+ CONTENTS TO PART V. XIV
+ SUBMISSION--The Vatican by Night--The Papal Anterooms--Some Great
+ Popes--His Holiness’s Bed-room--Pierre’s Reception--Papal Wrath--Pierre’s
+ Appeal--The Pope’s Policy--Dogma and Lourdes--Pierre Reprobates his Book
+
+ XV
+ A HOUSE OF MOURNING--Lying in State--Mother and Son--Princess and
+ Work-girl--Nani the Jesuit--Rival Cardinals--The Pontiff of Destruction
+
+ XVI
+ JUDGMENT--Pierre and Orlando--Italian Rome--Wanted, a Democracy--Italy
+ and France--The Rome of the Anarchists--The Agony of Guilt--A
+ Botticelli--The Papacy Condemned--The Coming Schism--The March of
+ Science--The Destruction of Rome--The Victory of Reason--Justice not
+ Charity--Departure--The March of Civilisation--One Fatherland for All
+ Mankind
+
+
+
+
+
+ROME
+
+
+
+
+PART I.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+THE train had been greatly delayed during the night between Pisa and
+Civita Vecchia, and it was close upon nine o’clock in the morning when,
+after a fatiguing journey of twenty-five hours’ duration, Abbé Pierre
+Froment at last reached Rome. He had brought only a valise with him, and,
+springing hastily out of the railway carriage amidst the scramble of the
+arrival, he brushed the eager porters aside, intent on carrying his
+trifling luggage himself, so anxious was he to reach his destination, to
+be alone, and look around him. And almost immediately, on the Piazza dei
+Cinquecento, in front of the railway station, he climbed into one of the
+small open cabs ranged alongside the footwalk, and placed the valise near
+him after giving the driver this address:
+
+“Via Giulia, Palazzo Boccanera.”*
+
+ * Boccanera mansion, Julia Street.
+
+It was a Monday, the 3rd of September, a beautifully bright and mild
+morning, with a clear sky overhead. The cabby, a plump little man with
+sparkling eyes and white teeth, smiled on realising by Pierre’s accent
+that he had to deal with a French priest. Then he whipped up his lean
+horse, and the vehicle started off at the rapid pace customary to the
+clean and cheerful cabs of Rome. However, on reaching the Piazza delle
+Terme, after skirting the greenery of a little public garden, the man
+turned round, still smiling, and pointing to some ruins with his whip,
+
+“The baths of Diocletian,” said he in broken French, like an obliging
+driver who is anxious to court favour with foreigners in order to secure
+their custom.
+
+Then, at a fast trot, the vehicle descended the rapid slope of the Via
+Nazionale, which dips down from the summit of the Viminalis,* where the
+railway station is situated. And from that moment the driver scarcely
+ceased turning round and pointing at the monuments with his whip. In this
+broad new thoroughfare there were only buildings of recent erection.
+Still, the wave of the cabman’s whip became more pronounced and his voice
+rose to a higher key, with a somewhat ironical inflection, when he gave
+the name of a huge and still chalky pile on his left, a gigantic erection
+of stone, overladen with sculptured work-pediments and statues.
+
+ * One of the seven hills on which Rome is built. The other six
+ are the Capitoline, Aventine, Quirinal, Esquiline, Cœlian,
+ and Palatine. These names will perforce frequently occur in
+ the present narrative.
+
+“The National Bank!” he said.
+
+Pierre, however, during the week which had followed his resolve to make
+the journey, had spent wellnigh every day in studying Roman topography in
+maps and books. Thus he could have directed his steps to any given spot
+without inquiring his way, and he anticipated most of the driver’s
+explanations. At the same time he was disconcerted by the sudden slopes,
+the perpetually recurring hills, on which certain districts rose, house
+above house, in terrace fashion. On his right-hand clumps of greenery
+were now climbing a height, and above them stretched a long bare yellow
+building of barrack or convent-like aspect.
+
+“The Quirinal, the King’s palace,” said the driver.
+
+Lower down, as the cab turned across a triangular square, Pierre, on
+raising his eyes, was delighted to perceive a sort of aerial garden high
+above him--a garden which was upheld by a lofty smooth wall, and whence
+the elegant and vigorous silhouette of a parasol pine, many centuries
+old, rose aloft into the limpid heavens. At this sight he realised all
+the pride and grace of Rome.
+
+“The Villa Aldobrandini,” the cabman called.
+
+Then, yet lower down, there came a fleeting vision which decisively
+impassioned Pierre. The street again made a sudden bend, and in one
+corner, beyond a short dim alley, there was a blazing gap of light. On a
+lower level appeared a white square, a well of sunshine, filled with a
+blinding golden dust; and amidst all that morning glory there arose a
+gigantic marble column, gilt from base to summit on the side which the
+sun in rising had laved with its beams for wellnigh eighteen hundred
+years. And Pierre was surprised when the cabman told him the name of the
+column, for in his mind he had never pictured it soaring aloft in such a
+dazzling cavity with shadows all around. It was the column of Trajan.
+
+The Via Nazionale turned for the last time at the foot of the slope. And
+then other names fell hastily from the driver’s lips as his horse went on
+at a fast trot. There was the Palazzo Colonna, with its garden edged by
+meagre cypresses; the Palazzo Torlonia, almost ripped open by recent
+“improvements”; the Palazzo di Venezia, bare and fearsome, with its
+crenelated walls, its stern and tragic appearance, that of some fortress
+of the middle ages, forgotten there amidst the commonplace life of
+nowadays. Pierre’s surprise increased at the unexpected aspect which
+certain buildings and streets presented; and the keenest blow of all was
+dealt him when the cabman with his whip triumphantly called his attention
+to the Corso, a long narrow thoroughfare, about as broad as Fleet
+Street,* white with sunshine on the left, and black with shadows on the
+right, whilst at the far end the Piazza del Popolo (the Square of the
+People) showed like a bright star. Was this, then, the heart of the city,
+the vaunted promenade, the street brimful of life, whither flowed all the
+blood of Rome?
+
+ * M. Zola likens the Corso to the Rue St. Honoré in Paris, but
+ I have thought that an English comparison would be preferable
+ in the present version.--Trans.
+
+However, the cab was already entering the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, which
+follows the Via Nazionale, these being the two piercings effected right
+across the olden city from the railway station to the bridge of St.
+Angelo. On the left-hand the rounded apsis of the Gesù church looked
+quite golden in the morning brightness. Then, between the church and the
+heavy Altieri palace which the “improvers” had not dared to demolish, the
+street became narrower, and one entered into cold, damp shade. But a
+moment afterwards, before the façade of the Gesù, when the square was
+reached, the sun again appeared, dazzling, throwing golden sheets of
+light around; whilst afar off at the end of the Via di Ara Coeli, steeped
+in shadow, a glimpse could be caught of some sunlit palm-trees.
+
+“That’s the Capitol yonder,” said the cabman.
+
+The priest hastily leant to the left, but only espied the patch of
+greenery at the end of the dim corridor-like street. The sudden
+alternations of warm light and cold shade made him shiver. In front of
+the Palazzo di Venezia, and in front of the Gesù, it had seemed to him as
+if all the night of ancient times were falling icily upon his shoulders;
+but at each fresh square, each broadening of the new thoroughfares, there
+came a return to light, to the pleasant warmth and gaiety of life. The
+yellow sunflashes, in falling from the house fronts, sharply outlined the
+violescent shadows. Strips of sky, very blue and very benign, could be
+perceived between the roofs. And it seemed to Pierre that the air he
+breathed had a particular savour, which he could not yet quite define,
+but it was like that of fruit, and increased the feverishness which had
+possessed him ever since his arrival.
+
+The Corso Vittorio Emanuele is, in spite of its irregularity, a very fine
+modern thoroughfare; and for a time Pierre might have fancied himself in
+any great city full of huge houses let out in flats. But when he passed
+before the Cancelleria,* Bramante’s masterpiece, the typical monument of
+the Roman Renascence, his astonishment came back to him and his mind
+returned to the mansions which he had previously espied, those bare,
+huge, heavy edifices, those vast cubes of stone-work resembling hospitals
+or prisons. Never would he have imagined that the famous Roman “palaces”
+ were like that, destitute of all grace and fancy and external
+magnificence. However, they were considered very fine and must be so; he
+would doubtless end by understanding things, but for that he would
+require reflection.**
+
+ * Formerly the residence of the Papal Vice-Chancellors.
+
+ ** It is as well to point out at once that a palazzo is not a
+ palace as we understand the term, but rather a mansion.--Trans.
+
+All at once the cab turned out of the populous Corso Vittorio Emanuele
+into a succession of winding alleys, through which it had difficulty in
+making its way. Quietude and solitude now came back again; the olden
+city, cold and somniferous, followed the new city with its bright
+sunshine and its crowds. Pierre remembered the maps which he had
+consulted, and realised that he was drawing near to the Via Giulia, and
+thereupon his curiosity, which had been steadily increasing, augmented to
+such a point that he suffered from it, full of despair at not seeing more
+and learning more at once. In the feverish state in which he had found
+himself ever since leaving the station, his astonishment at not finding
+things such as he had expected, the many shocks that his imagination had
+received, aggravated his passion beyond endurance, and brought him an
+acute desire to satisfy himself immediately. Nine o’clock had struck but
+a few minutes previously, he had the whole morning before him to repair
+to the Boccanera palace, so why should he not at once drive to the
+classic spot, the summit whence one perceives the whole of Rome spread
+out upon her seven hills? And when once this thought had entered into his
+mind it tortured him until he was at last compelled to yield to it.
+
+The driver no longer turned his head, so that Pierre rose up to give him
+this new address: “To San Pietro in Montorio!”
+
+On hearing him the man at first looked astonished, unable to understand.
+He indicated with his whip that San Pietro was yonder, far away. However,
+as the priest insisted, he again smiled complacently, with a friendly nod
+of his head. All right! For his own part he was quite willing.
+
+The horse then went on at a more rapid pace through the maze of narrow
+streets. One of these was pent between high walls, and the daylight
+descended into it as into a deep trench. But at the end came a sudden
+return to light, and the Tiber was crossed by the antique bridge of
+Sixtus IV, right and left of which stretched the new quays, amidst the
+ravages and fresh plaster-work of recent erections. On the other side of
+the river the Trastevere district also was ripped open, and the vehicle
+ascended the slope of the Janiculum by a broad thoroughfare where large
+slabs bore the name of Garibaldi. For the last time the driver made a
+gesture of good-natured pride as he named this triumphal route.
+
+“Via Garibaldi!”
+
+The horse had been obliged to slacken its pace, and Pierre, mastered by
+childish impatience, turned round to look at the city as by degrees it
+spread out and revealed itself behind him. The ascent was a long one;
+fresh districts were ever rising up, even to the most distant hills.
+Then, in the increasing emotion which made his heart beat, the young
+priest felt that he was spoiling the contentment of his desire by thus
+gradually satisfying it, slowly and but partially effecting his conquest
+of the horizon. He wished to receive the shock full in the face, to
+behold all Rome at one glance, to gather the holy city together, and
+embrace the whole of it at one grasp. And thereupon he mustered
+sufficient strength of mind to refrain from turning round any more, in
+spite of the impulses of his whole being.
+
+There is a spacious terrace on the summit of the incline. The church of
+San Pietro in Montorio stands there, on the spot where, as some say, St.
+Peter was crucified. The square is bare and brown, baked by the hot
+summer suns; but a little further away in the rear, the clear and noisy
+waters of the Acqua Paola fall bubbling from the three basins of a
+monumental fountain amidst sempiternal freshness. And alongside the
+terrace parapet, on the very crown of the Trastevere, there are always
+rows of tourists, slim Englishmen and square-built Germans, agape with
+traditional admiration, or consulting their guide-books in order to
+identify the monuments.
+
+Pierre sprang lightly from the cab, leaving his valise on the seat, and
+making a sign to the driver, who went to join the row of waiting cabs,
+and remained philosophically seated on his box in the full sunlight, his
+head drooping like that of his horse, both resigning themselves to the
+customary long stoppage.
+
+Meantime Pierre, erect against the parapet, in his tight black cassock,
+and with his bare feverish hands nervously clenched, was gazing before
+him with all his eyes, with all his soul. Rome! Rome! the city of the
+Caesars, the city of the Popes, the Eternal City which has twice
+conquered the world, the predestined city of the glowing dream in which
+he had indulged for months! At last it was before him, at last his eyes
+beheld it! During the previous days some rainstorms had abated the
+intense August heat, and on that lovely September morning the air had
+freshened under the pale blue of the spotless far-spreading heavens. And
+the Rome that Pierre beheld was a Rome steeped in mildness, a visionary
+Rome which seemed to evaporate in the clear sunshine. A fine bluey haze,
+scarcely perceptible, as delicate as gauze, hovered over the roofs of the
+low-lying districts; whilst the vast Campagna, the distant hills, died
+away in a pale pink flush. At first Pierre distinguished nothing, sought
+no particular edifice or spot, but gave sight and soul alike to the whole
+of Rome, to the living colossus spread out below him, on a soil
+compounded of the dust of generations. Each century had renewed the
+city’s glory as with the sap of immortal youth. And that which struck
+Pierre, that which made his heart leap within him, was that he found Rome
+such as he had desired to find her, fresh and youthful, with a volatile,
+almost incorporeal, gaiety of aspect, smiling as at the hope of a new
+life in the pure dawn of a lovely day.
+
+And standing motionless before the sublime vista, with his hands still
+clenched and burning, Pierre in a few minutes again lived the last three
+years of his life. Ah! what a terrible year had the first been, spent in
+his little house at Neuilly, with doors and windows ever closed,
+burrowing there like some wounded animal suffering unto death. He had
+come back from Lourdes with his soul desolate, his heart bleeding, with
+nought but ashes within him. Silence and darkness fell upon the ruins of
+his love and his faith. Days and days went by, without a pulsation of his
+veins, without the faintest gleam arising to brighten the gloom of his
+abandonment. His life was a mechanical one; he awaited the necessary
+courage to resume the tenor of existence in the name of sovereign reason,
+which had imposed upon him the sacrifice of everything. Why was he not
+stronger, more resistant, why did he not quietly adapt his life to his
+new opinions? As he was unwilling to cast off his cassock, through
+fidelity to the love of one and disgust of backsliding, why did he not
+seek occupation in some science suited to a priest, such as astronomy or
+archaeology? The truth was that something, doubtless his mother’s spirit,
+wept within him, an infinite, distracted love which nothing had yet
+satisfied and which ever despaired of attaining contentment. Therein lay
+the perpetual suffering of his solitude: beneath the lofty dignity of
+reason regained, the wound still lingered, raw and bleeding.
+
+One autumn evening, however, under a dismal rainy sky, chance brought him
+into relations with an old priest, Abbé Rose, who was curate at the
+church of Ste. Marguerite, in the Faubourg St. Antoine. He went to see
+Abbé Rose in the Rue de Charonne, where in the depths of a damp ground
+floor he had transformed three rooms into an asylum for abandoned
+children, whom he picked up in the neighbouring streets. And from that
+moment Pierre’s life changed, a fresh and all-powerful source of interest
+had entered into it, and by degrees he became the old priest’s passionate
+helper. It was a long way from Neuilly to the Rue de Charonne, and at
+first he only made the journey twice a week. But afterwards he bestirred
+himself every day, leaving home in the morning and not returning until
+night. As the three rooms no longer sufficed for the asylum, he rented
+the first floor of the house, reserving for himself a chamber in which
+ultimately he often slept. And all his modest income was expended there,
+in the prompt succouring of poor children; and the old priest, delighted,
+touched to tears by the young devoted help which had come to him from
+heaven, would often embrace Pierre, weeping, and call him a child of God.
+
+It was then that Pierre knew want and wretchedness--wicked, abominable
+wretchedness; then that he lived amidst it for two long years. The
+acquaintance began with the poor little beings whom he picked up on the
+pavements, or whom kind-hearted neighbours brought to him now that the
+asylum was known in the district--little boys, little girls, tiny mites
+stranded on the streets whilst their fathers and mothers were toiling,
+drinking, or dying. The father had often disappeared, the mother had gone
+wrong, drunkenness and debauchery had followed slack times into the home;
+and then the brood was swept into the gutter, and the younger ones half
+perished of cold and hunger on the footways, whilst their elders betook
+themselves to courses of vice and crime. One evening Pierre rescued from
+the wheels of a stone-dray two little nippers, brothers, who could not
+even give him an address, tell him whence they had come. On another
+evening he returned to the asylum with a little girl in his arms, a
+fair-haired little angel, barely three years old, whom he had found on a
+bench, and who sobbed, saying that her mother had left her there. And by
+a logical chain of circumstances, after dealing with the fleshless,
+pitiful fledglings ousted from their nests, he came to deal with the
+parents, to enter their hovels, penetrating each day further and further
+into a hellish sphere, and ultimately acquiring knowledge of all its
+frightful horror, his heart meantime bleeding, rent by terrified anguish
+and impotent charity.
+
+Oh! the grievous City of Misery, the bottomless abyss of human suffering
+and degradation--how frightful were his journeys through it during those
+two years which distracted his whole being! In that Ste. Marguerite
+district of Paris, in the very heart of that Faubourg St. Antoine, so
+active and so brave for work, however hard, he discovered no end of
+sordid dwellings, whole lanes and alleys of hovels without light or air,
+cellar-like in their dampness, and where a multitude of wretches wallowed
+and suffered as from poison. All the way up the shaky staircases one’s
+feet slipped upon filth. On every story there was the same destitution,
+dirt, and promiscuity. Many windows were paneless, and in swept the wind
+howling, and the rain pouring torrentially. Many of the inmates slept on
+the bare tiled floors, never unclothing themselves. There was neither
+furniture nor linen, the life led there was essentially an animal life, a
+commingling of either sex and of every age--humanity lapsing into
+animality through lack of even indispensable things, through indigence of
+so complete a character that men, women, and children fought even with
+tooth and nail for the very crumbs swept from the tables of the rich. And
+the worst of it all was the degradation of the human being; this was no
+case of the free naked savage, hunting and devouring his prey in the
+primeval forests; here civilised man was found, sunk into brutishness,
+with all the stigmas of his fall, debased, disfigured, and enfeebled,
+amidst the luxury and refinement of that city of Paris which is one of
+the queens of the world.
+
+In every household Pierre heard the same story. There had been youth and
+gaiety at the outset, brave acceptance of the law that one must work.
+Then weariness had come; what was the use of always toiling if one were
+never to get rich? And so, by way of snatching a share of happiness, the
+husband turned to drink; the wife neglected her home, also drinking at
+times, and letting the children grow up as they might. Sordid
+surroundings, ignorance, and overcrowding did the rest. In the great
+majority of cases, prolonged lack of work was mostly to blame; for this
+not only empties the drawers of the savings hidden away in them, but
+exhausts human courage, and tends to confirmed habits of idleness. During
+long weeks the workshops empty, and the arms of the toilers lose
+strength. In all Paris, so feverishly inclined to action, it is
+impossible to find the slightest thing to do. And then the husband comes
+home in the evening with tearful eyes, having vainly offered his arms
+everywhere, having failed even to get a job at street-sweeping, for that
+employment is much sought after, and to secure it one needs influence and
+protectors. Is it not monstrous to see a man seeking work that he may
+eat, and finding no work and therefore no food in this great city
+resplendent and resonant with wealth? The wife does not eat, the children
+do not eat. And then comes black famine, brutishness, and finally revolt
+and the snapping of all social ties under the frightful injustice meted
+out to poor beings who by their weakness are condemned to death. And the
+old workman, he whose limbs have been worn out by half a century of hard
+toil, without possibility of saving a copper, on what pallet of agony, in
+what dark hole must he not sink to die? Should he then be finished off
+with a mallet, like a crippled beast of burden, on the day when ceasing
+to work he also ceases to eat? Almost all pass away in the hospitals,
+others disappear, unknown, swept off by the muddy flow of the streets.
+One morning, on some rotten straw in a loathsome hovel, Pierre found a
+poor devil who had died of hunger and had been forgotten there for a
+week. The rats had devoured his face.
+
+But it was particularly on an evening of the last winter that Pierre’s
+heart had overflowed with pity. Awful in winter time are the sufferings
+of the poor in their fireless hovels, where the snow penetrates by every
+chink. The Seine rolls blocks of ice, the soil is frost-bound, in all
+sorts of callings there is an enforced cessation of work. Bands of
+urchins, barefooted, scarcely clad, hungry and racked by coughing, wander
+about the ragpickers’ “rents” and are carried off by sudden hurricanes of
+consumption. Pierre found families, women with five and six children, who
+had not eaten for three days, and who huddled together in heaps to try to
+keep themselves warm. And on that terrible evening, before anybody else,
+he went down a dark passage and entered a room of terror, where he found
+that a mother had just committed suicide with her five little
+ones--driven to it by despair and hunger--a tragedy of misery which for a
+few hours would make all Paris shudder! There was not an article of
+furniture or linen left in the place; it had been necessary to sell
+everything bit by bit to a neighbouring dealer. There was nothing but the
+stove where the charcoal was still smoking and a half-emptied palliasse
+on which the mother had fallen, suckling her last-born, a babe but three
+months old. And a drop of blood had trickled from the nipple of her
+breast, towards which the dead infant still protruded its eager lips. Two
+little girls, three and five years old, two pretty little blondes, were
+also lying there, sleeping the eternal sleep side by side; whilst of the
+two boys, who were older, one had succumbed crouching against the wall
+with his head between his hands, and the other had passed through the
+last throes on the floor, struggling as though he had sought to crawl on
+his knees to the window in order to open it. Some neighbours, hurrying
+in, told Pierre the fearful commonplace story; slow ruin, the father
+unable to find work, perchance taking to drink, the landlord weary of
+waiting, threatening the family with expulsion, and the mother losing her
+head, thirsting for death, and prevailing on her little ones to die with
+her, while her husband, who had been out since the morning, was vainly
+scouring the streets. Just as the Commissary of Police arrived to verify
+what had happened, the poor devil returned, and when he had seen and
+understood things, he fell to the ground like a stunned ox, and raised a
+prolonged, plaintive howl, such a poignant cry of death that the whole
+terrified street wept at it.
+
+Both in his ears and in his heart Pierre carried away with him that
+horrible cry, the plaint of a condemned race expiring amidst abandonment
+and hunger; and that night he could neither eat nor sleep. Was it
+possible that such abomination, such absolute destitution, such black
+misery leading straight to death should exist in the heart of that great
+city of Paris, brimful of wealth, intoxicated with enjoyment, flinging
+millions out of the windows for mere pleasure? What! there should on one
+side be such colossal fortunes, so many foolish fancies gratified, with
+lives endowed with every happiness, whilst on the other was found
+inveterate poverty, lack even of bread, absence of every hope, and
+mothers killing themselves with their babes, to whom they had nought to
+offer but the blood of their milkless breast! And a feeling of revolt
+stirred Pierre; he was for a moment conscious of the derisive futility of
+charity. What indeed was the use of doing that which he did--picking up
+the little ones, succouring the parents, prolonging the sufferings of the
+aged? The very foundations of the social edifice were rotten; all would
+soon collapse amid mire and blood. A great act of justice alone could
+sweep the old world away in order that the new world might be built. And
+at that moment he realised so keenly how irreparable was the breach, how
+irremediable the evil, how deathly the cancer of misery, that he
+understood the actions of the violent, and was himself ready to accept
+the devastating and purifying whirlwind, the regeneration of the world by
+flame and steel, even as when in the dim ages Jehovah in His wrath sent
+fire from heaven to cleanse the accursed cities of the plains.
+
+However, on hearing him sob that evening, Abbé Rose came up to
+remonstrate in fatherly fashion. The old priest was a saint, endowed with
+infinite gentleness and infinite hope. Why despair indeed when one had
+the Gospel? Did not the divine commandment, “Love one another,” suffice
+for the salvation of the world? He, Abbé Rose, held violence in horror
+and was wont to say that, however great the evil, it would soon be
+overcome if humanity would but turn backward to the age of humility,
+simplicity, and purity, when Christians lived together in innocent
+brotherhood. What a delightful picture he drew of evangelical society, of
+whose second coming he spoke with quiet gaiety as though it were to take
+place on the very morrow! And Pierre, anxious to escape from his
+frightful recollections, ended by smiling, by taking pleasure in Abbé
+Rose’s bright consoling tale. They chatted until a late hour, and on the
+following days reverted to the same subject of conversation, one which
+the old priest was very fond of, ever supplying new particulars, and
+speaking of the approaching reign of love and justice with the touching
+confidence of a good if simple man, who is convinced that he will not die
+till he shall have seen the Deity descend upon earth.
+
+And now a fresh evolution took place in Pierre’s mind. The practice of
+benevolence in that poor district had developed infinite compassion in
+his breast, his heart failed him, distracted, rent by contemplation of
+the misery which he despaired of healing. And in this awakening of his
+feelings he often thought that his reason was giving way, he seemed to be
+retracing his steps towards childhood, to that need of universal love
+which his mother had implanted in him, and dreamt of chimerical
+solutions, awaiting help from the unknown powers. Then his fears, his
+hatred of the brutality of facts at last brought him an increasing desire
+to work salvation by love. No time should be lost in seeking to avert the
+frightful catastrophe which seemed inevitable, the fratricidal war of
+classes which would sweep the old world away beneath the accumulation of
+its crimes. Convinced that injustice had attained its apogee, that but
+little time remained before the vengeful hour when the poor would compel
+the rich to part with their possessions, he took pleasure in dreaming of
+a peaceful solution, a kiss of peace exchanged by all men, a return to
+the pure morals of the Gospel as it had been preached by Jesus.
+
+Doubts tortured him at the outset. Could olden Catholicism be
+rejuvenated, brought back to the youth and candour of primitive
+Christianity? He set himself to study things, reading and questioning,
+and taking a more and more passionate interest in that great problem of
+Catholic socialism which had made no little noise for some years past.
+And quivering with pity for the wretched, ready as he was for the miracle
+of fraternisation, he gradually lost such scruples as intelligence might
+have prompted, and persuaded himself that once again Christ would work
+the redemption of suffering humanity. At last a precise idea took
+possession of him, a conviction that Catholicism purified, brought back
+to its original state, would prove the one pact, the supreme law that
+might save society by averting the sanguinary crisis which threatened it.
+
+When he had quitted Lourdes two years previously, revolted by all its
+gross idolatry, his faith for ever dead, but his mind worried by the
+everlasting need of the divine which tortures human creatures, a cry had
+arisen within him from the deepest recesses of his being: “A new
+religion! a new religion!” And it was this new religion, or rather this
+revived religion which he now fancied he had discovered in his desire to
+work social salvation--ensuring human happiness by means of the only
+moral authority that was erect, the distant outcome of the most admirable
+implement ever devised for the government of nations.
+
+During the period of slow development through which Pierre passed, two
+men, apart from Abbé Rose, exercised great influence on him. A benevolent
+action brought him into intercourse with Monseigneur Bergerot, a bishop
+whom the Pope had recently created a cardinal, in reward for a whole life
+of charity, and this in spite of the covert opposition of the papal
+_curia_ which suspected the French prelate to be a man of open mind,
+governing his diocese in paternal fashion. Pierre became more impassioned
+by his intercourse with this apostle, this shepherd of souls, in whom he
+detected one of the good simple leaders that he desired for the future
+community. However, his apostolate was influenced even more decisively by
+meeting Viscount Philibert de la Choue at the gatherings of certain
+workingmen’s Catholic associations. A handsome man, with military
+manners, and a long noble-looking face, spoilt by a small and broken nose
+which seemed to presage the ultimate defeat of a badly balanced mind, the
+Viscount was one of the most active agitators of Catholic socialism in
+France. He was the possessor of vast estates, a vast fortune, though it
+was said that some unsuccessful agricultural enterprises had already
+reduced his wealth by nearly one-half. In the department where his
+property was situated he had been at great pains to establish model
+farms, at which he had put his ideas on Christian socialism into
+practice, but success did not seem to follow him. However, it had all
+helped to secure his election as a deputy, and he spoke in the Chamber,
+unfolding the programme of his party in long and stirring speeches.
+
+Unwearying in his ardour, he also led pilgrimages to Rome, presided over
+meetings, and delivered lectures, devoting himself particularly to the
+people, the conquest of whom, so he privately remarked, could alone
+ensure the triumph of the Church. And thus he exercised considerable
+influence over Pierre, who in him admired qualities which himself did not
+possess--an organising spirit and a militant if somewhat blundering will,
+entirely applied to the revival of Christian society in France. However,
+though the young priest learnt a good deal by associating with him, he
+nevertheless remained a sentimental dreamer, whose imagination,
+disdainful of political requirements, straightway winged its flight to
+the future abode of universal happiness; whereas the Viscount aspired to
+complete the downfall of the liberal ideas of 1789 by utilising the
+disillusion and anger of the democracy to work a return towards the past.
+
+Pierre spent some delightful months. Never before had neophyte lived so
+entirely for the happiness of others. He was all love, consumed by the
+passion of his apostolate. The sight of the poor wretches whom he
+visited, the men without work, the women, the children without bread,
+filled him with a keener and keener conviction that a new religion must
+arise to put an end to all the injustice which otherwise would bring the
+rebellious world to a violent death. And he was resolved to employ all
+his strength in effecting and hastening the intervention of the divine,
+the resuscitation of primitive Christianity. His Catholic faith remained
+dead; he still had no belief in dogmas, mysteries, and miracles; but a
+hope sufficed him, the hope that the Church might still work good, by
+connecting itself with the irresistible modern democratic movement, so as
+to save the nations from the social catastrophe which impended. His soul
+had grown calm since he had taken on himself the mission of replanting
+the Gospel in the hearts of the hungry and growling people of the
+Faubourgs. He was now leading an active life, and suffered less from the
+frightful void which he had brought back from Lourdes; and as he no
+longer questioned himself, the anguish of uncertainty no longer tortured
+him. It was with the serenity which attends the simple accomplishment of
+duty that he continued to say his mass. He even finished by thinking that
+the mystery which he thus celebrated--indeed, that all the mysteries and
+all the dogmas were but symbols--rites requisite for humanity in its
+childhood, which would be got rid of later on, when enlarged, purified,
+and instructed humanity should be able to support the brightness of naked
+truth.
+
+And in his zealous desire to be useful, his passion to proclaim his
+belief aloud, Pierre one morning found himself at his table writing a
+book. This had come about quite naturally; the book proceeded from him
+like a heart-cry, without any literary idea having crossed his mind. One
+night, whilst he lay awake, its title suddenly flashed before his eyes in
+the darkness: “NEW ROME.” That expressed everything, for must not the new
+redemption of the nations originate in eternal and holy Rome? The only
+existing authority was found there; rejuvenescence could only spring from
+the sacred soil where the old Catholic oak had grown. He wrote his book
+in a couple of months, having unconsciously prepared himself for the work
+by his studies in contemporary socialism during a year past. There was a
+bubbling flow in his brain as in a poet’s; it seemed to him sometimes as
+if he dreamt those pages, as if an internal distant voice dictated them
+to him.
+
+When he read passages written on the previous day to Viscount Philibert
+de la Choue, the latter often expressed keen approval of them from a
+practical point of view, saying that one must touch the people in order
+to lead them, and that it would also be a good plan to compose pious and
+yet amusing songs for singing in the workshops. As for Monseigneur
+Bergerot, without examining the book from the dogmatic standpoint, he was
+deeply touched by the glowing breath of charity which every page exhaled,
+and was even guilty of the imprudence of writing an approving letter to
+the author, which letter he authorised him to insert in his work by way
+of preface. And yet now the Congregation of the Index Expurgatorius was
+about to place this book, issued in the previous June, under interdict;
+and it was to defend it that the young priest had hastened to Rome,
+inflamed by the desire to make his ideas prevail, and resolved to plead
+his cause in person before the Holy Father, having, he was convinced of
+it, simply given expression to the pontiff’s views.
+
+Pierre had not stirred whilst thus living his three last years afresh: he
+still stood erect before the parapet, before Rome, which he had so often
+dreamt of and had so keenly desired to see. There was a constant
+succession of arriving and departing vehicles behind him; the slim
+Englishmen and the heavy Germans passed away after bestowing on the
+classic view the five minutes prescribed by their guidebooks; whilst the
+driver and the horse of Pierre’s cab remained waiting complacently, each
+with his head drooping under the bright sun, which was heating the valise
+on the seat of the vehicle. And Pierre, in his black cassock, seemed to
+have grown slimmer and elongated, very slight of build, as he stood there
+motionless, absorbed in the sublime spectacle. He had lost flesh after
+his journey to Lourdes, his features too had become less pronounced.
+Since his mother’s part in his nature had regained ascendency, the broad,
+straight forehead, the intellectual air which he owed to his father
+seemed to have grown less conspicuous, while his kind and somewhat large
+mouth, and his delicate chin, bespeaking infinite affection, dominated,
+revealing his soul, which also glowed in the kindly sparkle of his eyes.
+
+Ah! how tender and glowing were the eyes with which he gazed upon the
+Rome of his book, the new Rome that he had dreamt of! If, first of all,
+the _ensemble_ had claimed his attention in the soft and somewhat veiled
+light of that lovely morning, at present he could distinguish details,
+and let his glance rest upon particular edifices. And it was with
+childish delight that he identified them, having long studied them in
+maps and collections of photographs. Beneath his feet, at the bottom of
+the Janiculum, stretched the Trastevere district with its chaos of old
+ruddy houses, whose sunburnt tiles hid the course of the Tiber. He was
+somewhat surprised by the flattish aspect of everything as seen from the
+terraced summit. It was as though a bird’s-eye view levelled the city,
+the famous hills merely showing like bosses, swellings scarcely
+perceptible amidst the spreading sea of house-fronts. Yonder, on the
+right, distinct against the distant blue of the Alban mountains, was
+certainly the Aventine with its three churches half-hidden by foliage;
+there, too, was the discrowned Palatine, edged as with black fringe by a
+line of cypresses. In the rear, the Cœlian hill faded away, showing only
+the trees of the Villa Mattei paling in the golden sunshine. The slender
+spire and two little domes of Sta. Maria Maggiore alone indicated the
+summit of the Esquiline, right in front and far away at the other end of
+the city; whilst on the heights of the neighbouring Viminal, Pierre only
+perceived a confused mass of whitish blocks, steeped in light and
+streaked with fine brown lines--recent erections, no doubt, which at that
+distance suggested an abandoned stone quarry. He long sought the Capitol
+without being able to discover it; he had to take his bearings, and ended
+by convincing himself that the square tower, modestly lost among
+surrounding house-roofs, which he saw in front of Sta. Maria Maggiore was
+its campanile. Next, on the left, came the Quirinal, recognisable by the
+long façade of the royal palace, a barrack or hospital-like façade, flat,
+crudely yellow in hue, and pierced by an infinite number of regularly
+disposed windows. However, as Pierre was completing the circuit, a sudden
+vision made him stop short. Without the city, above the trees of the
+Botanical Garden, the dome of St. Peter’s appeared to him. It seemed to
+be poised upon the greenery, and rose up into the pure blue sky, sky-blue
+itself and so ethereal that it mingled with the azure of the infinite.
+The stone lantern which surmounts it, white and dazzling, looked as
+though it were suspended on high.
+
+Pierre did not weary, and his glances incessantly travelled from one end
+of the horizon to the other. They lingered on the noble outlines, the
+proud gracefulness of the town-sprinkled Sabine and Alban mountains,
+whose girdle limited the expanse. The Roman Campagna spread out in far
+stretches, bare and majestic, like a desert of death, with the glaucous
+green of a stagnant sea; and he ended by distinguishing “the stern round
+tower” of the tomb of Cecilia Metella, behind which a thin pale line
+indicated the ancient Appian Way. Remnants of aqueducts strewed the short
+herbage amidst the dust of the fallen worlds. And, bringing his glance
+nearer in, the city again appeared with its jumble of edifices, on which
+his eyes lighted at random. Close at hand, by its loggia turned towards
+the river, he recognised the huge tawny cube of the Palazzo Farnese. The
+low cupola, farther away and scarcely visible, was probably that of the
+Pantheon. Then by sudden leaps came the freshly whitened walls of San
+Paolo-fuori-le-Mura,* similar to those of some huge barn, and the statues
+crowning San Giovanni in Laterano, delicate, scarcely as big as insects.
+Next the swarming of domes, that of the Gesù, that of San Carlo, that of
+St’. Andrea della Valle, that of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini; then a
+number of other sites and edifices, all quivering with memories, the
+castle of St’. Angelo with its glittering statue of the Destroying Angel,
+the Villa Medici dominating the entire city, the terrace of the Pincio
+with its marbles showing whitely among its scanty verdure; and the
+thick-foliaged trees of the Villa Borghese, whose green crests bounded
+the horizon. Vainly however did Pierre seek the Colosseum.
+
+ * St. Paul-beyond-the-walls.
+
+The north wind, which was blowing very mildly, had now begun to dissipate
+the morning haze. Whole districts vigorously disentangled themselves, and
+showed against the vaporous distance like promontories in a sunlit sea.
+Here and there, in the indistinct swarming of houses, a strip of white
+wall glittered, a row of window panes flared, or a garden supplied a
+black splotch, of wondrous intensity of hue. And all the rest, the medley
+of streets and squares, the endless blocks of buildings, scattered about
+on either hand, mingled and grew indistinct in the living glory of the
+sun, whilst long coils of white smoke, which had ascended from the roofs,
+slowly traversed the pure sky.
+
+Guided by a secret influence, however, Pierre soon ceased to take
+interest in all but three points of the mighty panorama. That line of
+slender cypresses which set a black fringe on the height of the Palatine
+yonder filled him with emotion: beyond it he saw only a void: the palaces
+of the Caesars had disappeared, had fallen, had been razed by time; and
+he evoked their memory, he fancied he could see them rise like vague,
+trembling phantoms of gold amidst the purple of that splendid morning.
+Then his glances reverted to St. Peter’s, and there the dome yet soared
+aloft, screening the Vatican which he knew was beside the colossus,
+clinging to its flanks. And that dome, of the same colour as the heavens,
+appeared so triumphant, so full of strength, so vast, that it seemed to
+him like a giant king, dominating the whole city and seen from every spot
+throughout eternity. Then he fixed his eyes on the height in front of
+him, on the Quirinal, and there the King’s palace no longer appeared
+aught but a flat low barracks bedaubed with yellow paint.
+
+And for him all the secular history of Rome, with its constant
+convulsions and successive resurrections, found embodiment in that
+symbolical triangle, in those three summits gazing at one another across
+the Tiber. Ancient Rome blossoming forth in a piling up of palaces and
+temples, the monstrous florescence of imperial power and splendour; Papal
+Rome, victorious in the middle ages, mistress of the world, bringing that
+colossal church, symbolical of beauty regained, to weigh upon all
+Christendom; and the Rome of to-day, which he knew nothing of, which he
+had neglected, and whose royal palace, so bare and so cold, brought him
+disparaging ideas--the idea of some out-of-place, bureaucratic effort,
+some sacrilegious attempt at modernity in an exceptional city which
+should have been left entirely to the dreams of the future. However, he
+shook off the almost painful feelings which the importunate present
+brought to him, and would not let his eyes rest on a pale new district,
+quite a little town, in course of erection, no doubt, which he could
+distinctly see near St. Peter’s on the margin of the river. He had dreamt
+of his own new Rome, and still dreamt of it, even in front of the
+Palatine whose edifices had crumbled in the dust of centuries, of the
+dome of St. Peter’s whose huge shadow lulled the Vatican to sleep, of the
+Palace of the Quirinal repaired and repainted, reigning in homely fashion
+over the new districts which swarmed on every side, while with its ruddy
+roofs the olden city, ripped up by improvements, coruscated beneath the
+bright morning sun.
+
+Again did the title of his book, “NEW ROME,” flare before Pierre’s eyes,
+and another reverie carried him off; he lived his book afresh even as he
+had just lived his life. He had written it amid a flow of enthusiasm,
+utilising the _data_ which he had accumulated at random; and its division
+into three parts, past, present, and future, had at once forced itself
+upon him.
+
+The PAST was the extraordinary story of primitive Christianity, of the
+slow evolution which had turned this Christianity into present-day
+Catholicism. He showed that an economical question is invariably hidden
+beneath each religious evolution, and that, upon the whole, the
+everlasting evil, the everlasting struggle, has never been aught but one
+between the rich and the poor. Among the Jews, when their nomadic life
+was over, and they had conquered the land of Canaan, and ownership and
+property came into being, a class warfare at once broke out. There were
+rich, and there were poor; thence arose the social question. The
+transition had been sudden, and the new state of things so rapidly went
+from bad to worse that the poor suffered keenly, and protested with the
+greater violence as they still remembered the golden age of the nomadic
+life. Until the time of Jesus the prophets are but rebels who surge from
+out the misery of the people, proclaim its sufferings, and vent their
+wrath upon the rich, to whom they prophesy every evil in punishment for
+their injustice and their harshness. Jesus Himself appears as the
+claimant of the rights of the poor. The prophets, whether socialists or
+anarchists, had preached social equality, and called for the destruction
+of the world if it were unjust. Jesus likewise brings to the wretched
+hatred of the rich. All His teaching threatens wealth and property; and
+if by the Kingdom of Heaven which He promised one were to understand
+peace and fraternity upon this earth, there would only be a question of
+returning to a life of pastoral simplicity, to the dream of the Christian
+community, such as after Him it would seem to have been realised by His
+disciples. During the first three centuries each Church was an experiment
+in communism, a real association whose members possessed all in
+common--wives excepted. This is shown to us by the apologists and early
+fathers of the Church. Christianity was then but the religion of the
+humble and the poor, a form of democracy, of socialism struggling against
+Roman society. And when the latter toppled over, rotted by money, it
+succumbed far more beneath the results of frantic speculation, swindling
+banks, and financial disasters, than beneath the onslaught of barbarian
+hordes and the stealthy, termite-like working of the Christians.
+
+The money question will always be found at the bottom of everything. And
+a new proof of this was supplied when Christianity, at last triumphing by
+virtue of historical, social, and human causes, was proclaimed a State
+religion. To ensure itself complete victory it was forced to range itself
+on the side of the rich and the powerful; and one should see by means of
+what artfulness and sophistry the fathers of the Church succeeded in
+discovering a defence of property and wealth in the Gospel of Jesus. All
+this, however, was a vital political necessity for Christianity; it was
+only at this price that it became Catholicism, the universal religion.
+From that time forth the powerful machine, the weapon of conquest and
+rule, was reared aloft: up above were the powerful and the wealthy, those
+whose duty it was to share with the poor, but who did not do so; while
+down below were the poor, the toilers, who were taught resignation and
+obedience, and promised the kingdom of futurity, the divine and eternal
+reward--an admirable monument which has lasted for ages, and which is
+entirely based on the promise of life beyond life, on the
+inextinguishable thirst for immortality and justice that consumes
+mankind.
+
+Pierre had completed this first part of his book, this history of the
+past, by a broad sketch of Catholicism until the present time. First
+appeared St. Peter, ignorant and anxious, coming to Rome by an
+inspiration of genius, there to fulfil the ancient oracles which had
+predicted the eternity of the Capitol. Then came the first popes, mere
+heads of burial associations, the slow rise of the all-powerful papacy
+ever struggling to conquer the world, unremittingly seeking to realise
+its dream of universal domination. At the time of the great popes of the
+middle ages it thought for a moment that it had attained its goal, that
+it was the sovereign master of the nations. Would not absolute truth and
+right consist in the pope being both pontiff and ruler of the world,
+reigning over both the souls and the bodies of all men, even like the
+Deity whose vicar he is? This, the highest and mightiest of all
+ambitions, one, too, that is perfectly logical, was attained by Augustus,
+emperor and pontiff, master of all the known world; and it is the
+glorious figure of Augustus, ever rising anew from among the ruins of
+ancient Rome, which has always haunted the popes; it is his blood which
+has pulsated in their veins.
+
+But power had become divided into two parts amidst the crumbling of the
+Roman empire; it was necessary to content oneself with a share, and leave
+temporal government to the emperor, retaining over him, however, the
+right of coronation by divine grant. The people belonged to God, and in
+God’s name the pope gave the people to the emperor, and could take it
+from him; an unlimited power whose most terrible weapon was
+excommunication, a superior sovereignty, which carried the papacy towards
+real and final possession of the empire. Looking at things broadly, the
+everlasting quarrel between the pope and the emperor was a quarrel for
+the people, the inert mass of humble and suffering ones, the great silent
+multitude whose irremediable wretchedness was only revealed by occasional
+covert growls. It was disposed of, for its good, as one might dispose of
+a child. Yet the Church really contributed to civilisation, rendered
+constant services to humanity, diffused abundant alms. In the convents,
+at any rate, the old dream of the Christian community was ever coming
+back: one-third of the wealth accumulated for the purposes of worship,
+the adornment and glorification of the shrine, one-third for the priests,
+and one-third for the poor. Was not this a simplification of life, a
+means of rendering existence possible to the faithful who had no earthly
+desires, pending the marvellous contentment of heavenly life? Give us,
+then, the whole earth, and we will divide terrestrial wealth into three
+such parts, and you shall see what a golden age will reign amidst the
+resignation and the obedience of all!
+
+However, Pierre went on to show how the papacy was assailed by the
+greatest dangers on emerging from its all-powerfulness of the middle
+ages. It was almost swept away amidst the luxury and excesses of the
+Renascence, the bubbling of living sap which then gushed from eternal
+nature, downtrodden and regarded as dead for ages past. More threatening
+still were the stealthy awakenings of the people, of the great silent
+multitude whose tongue seemed to be loosening. The Reformation burst
+forth like the protest of reason and justice, like a recall to the
+disregarded truths of the Gospel; and to escape total annihilation Rome
+needed the stern defence of the Inquisition, the slow stubborn labour of
+the Council of Trent, which strengthened the dogmas and ensured the
+temporal power. And then the papacy entered into two centuries of peace
+and effacement, for the strong absolute monarchies which had divided
+Europe among themselves could do without it, and had ceased to tremble at
+the harmless thunderbolts of excommunication or to look on the pope as
+aught but a master of ceremonies, controlling certain rites. The
+possession of the people was no longer subject to the same rules.
+Allowing that the kings still held the people from God, it was the pope’s
+duty to register the donation once for all, without ever intervening,
+whatever the circumstances, in the government of states. Never was Rome
+farther away from the realisation of its ancient dream of universal
+dominion. And when the French Revolution burst forth, it may well have
+been imagined that the proclamation of the rights of man would kill that
+papacy to which the exercise of divine right over the nations had been
+committed. And so how great at first was the anxiety, the anger, the
+desperate resistance with which the Vatican opposed the idea of freedom,
+the new _credo_ of liberated reason, of humanity regaining
+self-possession and control. It was the apparent _dénouement_ of the long
+struggle between the pope and the emperor for possession of the people:
+the emperor vanished, and the people, henceforward free to dispose of
+itself, claimed to escape from the pope--an unforeseen solution, in which
+it seemed as though all the ancient scaffolding of the Catholic world
+must fall to the very ground.
+
+At this point Pierre concluded the first part of his book by contrasting
+primitive Christianity with present-day Catholicism, which is the triumph
+of the rich and the powerful. That Roman society which Jesus had come to
+destroy in the name of the poor and humble, had not Catholic Rome
+steadily continued rebuilding it through all the centuries, by its policy
+of cupidity and pride? And what bitter irony it was to find, after
+eighteen hundred years of the Gospel, that the world was again collapsing
+through frantic speculation, rotten banks, financial disasters, and the
+frightful injustice of a few men gorged with wealth whilst thousands of
+their brothers were dying of hunger! The whole redemption of the wretched
+had to be worked afresh. However, Pierre gave expression to all these
+terrible things in words so softened by charity, so steeped in hope, that
+they lost their revolutionary danger. Moreover, he nowhere attacked the
+dogmas. His book, in its sentimental, somewhat poetic form, was but the
+cry of an apostle glowing with love for his fellow-men.
+
+Then came the second part of the work, the PRESENT, a study of Catholic
+society as it now exists. Here Pierre had painted a frightful picture of
+the misery of the poor, the misery of a great city, which he knew so well
+and bled for, through having laid his hands upon its poisonous wounds.
+The present-day injustice could no longer be tolerated, charity was
+becoming powerless, and so frightful was the suffering that all hope was
+dying away from the hearts of the people. And was it not the monstrous
+spectacle presented by Christendom, whose abominations corrupted the
+people, and maddened it with hatred and vengeance, that had largely
+destroyed its faith? However, after this picture of rotting and crumbling
+society, Pierre returned to history, to the period of the French
+Revolution, to the mighty hope with which the idea of freedom had filled
+the world. The middle classes, the great Liberal party, on attaining
+power had undertaken to bring happiness to one and all. But after a
+century’s experience it really seemed that liberty had failed to bring
+any happiness whatever to the outcasts. In the political sphere illusions
+were departing. At all events, if the reigning third estate declares
+itself satisfied, the fourth estate, that of the toilers,* still suffers
+and continues to demand its share of fortune. The working classes have
+been proclaimed free; political equality has been granted them, but the
+gift has been valueless, for economically they are still bound to
+servitude, and only enjoy, as they did formerly, the liberty of dying of
+hunger. All the socialist revendications have come from that; between
+labour and capital rests the terrifying problem, the solution of which
+threatens to sweep away society. When slavery disappeared from the olden
+world to be succeeded by salaried employment the revolution was immense,
+and certainly the Christian principle was one of the great factors in the
+destruction of slavery. Nowadays, therefore, when the question is to
+replace salaried employment by something else, possibly by the
+participation of the workman in the profits of his work, why should not
+Christianity again seek a new principle of action? The fatal and
+proximate accession of the democracy means the beginning of another phase
+in human history, the creation of the society of to-morrow. And Rome
+cannot keep away from the arena; the papacy must take part in the quarrel
+if it does not desire to disappear from the world like a piece of
+mechanism that has become altogether useless.
+
+ * In England we call the press the fourth estate, but in France
+ and elsewhere the term is applied to the working classes, and
+ in that sense must be taken here.--Trans.
+
+Hence it followed that Catholic socialism was legitimate. On every side
+the socialist sects were battling with their various solutions for the
+privilege of ensuring the happiness of the people, and the Church also
+must offer her solution of the problem. Here it was that New Rome
+appeared, that the evolution spread into a renewal of boundless hope.
+Most certainly there was nothing contrary to democracy in the principles
+of the Roman Catholic Church. Indeed she had only to return to the
+evangelical traditions, to become once more the Church of the humble and
+the poor, to re-establish the universal Christian community. She is
+undoubtedly of democratic essence, and if she sided with the rich and
+the powerful when Christianity became Catholicism, she only did so
+perforce, that she might live by sacrificing some portion of her
+original purity; so that if to-day she should abandon the condemned
+governing classes in order to make common cause with the multitude of
+the wretched, she would simply be drawing nearer to Christ, thereby
+securing a new lease of youth and purifying herself of all the political
+compromises which she formerly was compelled to accept. Without
+renouncing aught of her absolutism the Church has at all times known how
+to bow to circumstances; but she reserves her perfect sovereignty,
+simply tolerating that which she cannot prevent, and patiently waiting,
+even through long centuries, for the time when she shall again become
+the mistress of the world.
+
+Might not that time come in the crisis which was now at hand? Once more,
+all the powers are battling for possession of the people. Since the
+people, thanks to liberty and education, has become strong, since it has
+developed consciousness and will, and claimed its share of fortune, all
+rulers have been seeking to attach it to themselves, to reign by it, and
+even with it, should that be necessary. Socialism, therein lies the
+future, the new instrument of government; and the kings tottering on
+their thrones, the middle-class presidents of anxious republics, the
+ambitious plotters who dream of power, all dabble in socialism! They all
+agree that the capitalist organisation of the State is a return to pagan
+times, to the olden slave-market; and they all talk of breaking for ever
+the iron law by which the labour of human beings has become so much
+merchandise, subject to supply and demand, with wages calculated on an
+estimate of what is strictly necessary to keep a workman from dying of
+hunger. And, down in the sphere below, the evil increases, the workmen
+agonise with hunger and exasperation, while above them discussion still
+goes on, systems are bandied about, and well-meaning persons exhaust
+themselves in attempting to apply ridiculously inadequate remedies.
+There is much stir without any progress, all the wild bewilderment which
+precedes great catastrophes. And among the many, Catholic socialism,
+quite as ardent as Revolutionary socialism, enters the lists and strives
+to conquer.
+
+After these explanations Pierre gave an account of the long efforts made
+by Catholic socialism throughout the Christian world. That which
+particularly struck one in this connection was that the warfare became
+keener and more victorious whenever it was waged in some land of
+propaganda, as yet not completely conquered by Roman Catholicism. For
+instance, in the countries where Protestantism confronted the latter, the
+priests fought with wondrous passion, as for dear life itself, contending
+with the schismatical clergy for possession of the people by dint of
+daring, by unfolding the most audacious democratic theories. In Germany,
+the classic land of socialism, Mgr. Ketteler was one of the first to
+speak of adequately taxing the rich; and later he fomented a wide-spread
+agitation which the clergy now directs by means of numerous associations
+and newspapers. In Switzerland Mgr. Mermillod pleaded the cause of the
+poor so loudly that the bishops there now almost make common cause with
+the democratic socialists, whom they doubtless hope to convert when the
+day for sharing arrives. In England, where socialism penetrates so very
+slowly, Cardinal Manning achieved considerable success, stood by the
+working classes on the occasion of a famous strike, and helped on a
+popular movement, which was signalised by numerous conversions. But it
+was particularly in the United States of America that Catholic socialism
+proved triumphant, in a sphere of democracy where the bishops, like Mgr.
+Ireland, were forced to set themselves at the head of the working-class
+agitation. And there across the Atlantic a new Church seems to be
+germinating, still in confusion but overflowing with sap, and upheld by
+intense hope, as at the aurora of the rejuvenated Christianity of
+to-morrow.
+
+Passing thence to Austria and Belgium, both Catholic countries, one found
+Catholic socialism mingling in the first instance with anti-semitism,
+while in the second it had no precise sense. And all movement ceased and
+disappeared when one came to Spain and Italy, those old lands of faith.
+The former with its intractable bishops who contented themselves with
+hurling excommunication at unbelievers as in the days of the Inquisition,
+seemed to be abandoned to the violent theories of revolutionaries, whilst
+Italy, immobilised in the traditional courses, remained without
+possibility of initiative, reduced to silence and respect by the presence
+of the Holy See. In France, however, the struggle remained keen, but it
+was more particularly a struggle of ideas. On the whole, the war was
+there being waged against the revolution, and to some it seemed as though
+it would suffice to re-establish the old organisation of monarchical
+times in order to revert to the golden age. It was thus that the question
+of working-class corporations had become the one problem, the panacea for
+all the ills of the toilers. But people were far from agreeing; some,
+those Catholics who rejected State interference and favoured purely moral
+action, desired that the corporations should be free; whilst others, the
+young and impatient ones, bent on action, demanded that they should be
+obligatory, each with capital of its own, and recognised and protected by
+the State.
+
+Viscount Philibert de la Choue had by pen and speech carried on a
+vigorous campaign in favour of the obligatory corporations; and his great
+grief was that he had so far failed to prevail on the Pope to say whether
+in his opinion these corporations should be closed or open. According to
+the Viscount, herein lay the fate of society, a peaceful solution of the
+social question or the frightful catastrophe which must sweep everything
+away. In reality, though he refused to own it, the Viscount had ended by
+adopting State socialism. And, despite the lack of agreement, the
+agitation remained very great; attempts, scarcely happy in their results,
+were made; co-operative associations, companies for erecting workmen’s
+dwellings, popular savings’ banks were started; many more or less
+disguised efforts to revert to the old Christian community organisation
+were tried; while day by day, amidst the prevailing confusion, in the
+mental perturbation and political difficulties through which the country
+passed, the militant Catholic party felt its hopes increasing, even to
+the blind conviction of soon resuming sway over the whole world.
+
+The second part of Pierre’s book concluded by a picture of the moral and
+intellectual uneasiness amidst which the end of the century is
+struggling. While the toiling multitude suffers from its hard lot and
+demands that in any fresh division of wealth it shall be ensured at least
+its daily bread, the _élite_ is no better satisfied, but complains of the
+void induced by the freeing of its reason and the enlargement of its
+intelligence. It is the famous bankruptcy of rationalism, of positivism,
+of science itself which is in question. Minds consumed by need of the
+absolute grow weary of groping, weary of the delays of science which
+recognises only proven truths; doubt tortures them, they need a complete
+and immediate synthesis in order to sleep in peace; and they fall on
+their knees, overcome by the roadside, distracted by the thought that
+science will never tell them all, and preferring the Deity, the mystery
+revealed and affirmed by faith. Even to-day, it must be admitted, science
+calms neither our thirst for justice, our desire for safety, nor our
+everlasting idea of happiness after life in an eternity of enjoyment. To
+one and all it only brings the austere duty to live, to be a mere
+contributor in the universal toil; and how well one can understand that
+hearts should revolt and sigh for the Christian heaven, peopled with
+lovely angels, full of light and music and perfumes! Ah! to embrace one’s
+dead, to tell oneself that one will meet them again, that one will live
+with them once more in glorious immortality! And to possess the certainty
+of sovereign equity to enable one to support the abominations of
+terrestrial life! And in this wise to trample on the frightful thought of
+annihilation, to escape the horror of the disappearance of the _ego_, and
+to tranquillise oneself with that unshakable faith which postpones until
+the portal of death be crossed the solution of all the problems of
+destiny! This dream will be dreamt by the nations for ages yet. And this
+it is which explains why, in these last days of the century, excessive
+mental labour and the deep unrest of humanity, pregnant with a new world,
+have awakened religious feeling, anxious, tormented by thoughts of the
+ideal and the infinite, demanding a moral law and an assurance of
+superior justice. Religions may disappear, but religious feelings will
+always create new ones, even with the help of science. A new religion! a
+new religion! Was it not the ancient Catholicism, which in the soil of
+the present day, where all seemed conducive to a miracle, was about to
+spring up afresh, throw out green branches and blossom in a young yet
+mighty florescence?
+
+At last, in the third part of his book and in the glowing language of an
+apostle, Pierre depicted the FUTURE: Catholicism rejuvenated, and
+bringing health and peace, the forgotten golden age of primitive
+Christianity, back to expiring society. He began with an emotional and
+sparkling portrait of Leo XIII, the ideal Pope, the Man of Destiny
+entrusted with the salvation of the nations. He had conjured up a
+presentment of him and beheld him thus in his feverish longing for the
+advent of a pastor who should put an end to human misery. It was perhaps
+not a close likeness, but it was a portrait of the needed saviour, with
+open heart and mind, and inexhaustible benevolence, such as he had
+dreamed. At the same time he had certainly searched documents, studied
+encyclical letters, based his sketch upon facts: first Leo’s religious
+education at Rome, then his brief nunciature at Brussels, and afterwards
+his long episcopate at Perugia. And as soon as Leo became pope in the
+difficult situation bequeathed by Pius IX, the duality of his nature
+appeared: on one hand was the firm guardian of dogmas, on the other the
+supple politician resolved to carry conciliation to its utmost limits. We
+see him flatly severing all connection with modern philosophy, stepping
+backward beyond the Renascence to the middle ages and reviving Christian
+philosophy, as expounded by “the angelic doctor,” St. Thomas Aquinas, in
+Catholic schools. Then the dogmas being in this wise sheltered, he
+adroitly maintains himself in equilibrium by giving securities to every
+power, striving to utilise every opportunity. He displays extraordinary
+activity, reconciles the Holy See with Germany, draws nearer to Russia,
+contents Switzerland, asks the friendship of Great Britain, and writes to
+the Emperor of China begging him to protect the missionaries and
+Christians in his dominions. Later on, too, he intervenes in France and
+acknowledges the legitimacy of the Republic.
+
+From the very outset an idea becomes apparent in all his actions, an idea
+which will place him among the great papal politicians. It is moreover
+the ancient idea of the papacy--the conquest of every soul, Rome capital
+and mistress of the world. Thus Leo XIII has but one desire, one object,
+that of unifying the Church, of drawing all the dissident communities to
+it in order that it may be invincible in the coming social struggle. He
+seeks to obtain recognition of the moral authority of the Vatican in
+Russia; he dreams of disarming the Anglican Church and of drawing it into
+a sort of fraternal truce; and he particularly seeks to come to an
+understanding with the Schismatical Churches of the East, which he
+regards as sisters, simply living apart, whose return his paternal heart
+entreats. Would not Rome indeed dispose of victorious strength if she
+exercised uncontested sway over all the Christians of the earth?
+
+And here the social ideas of Leo XIII come in. Whilst yet Bishop of
+Perugia he wrote a pastoral letter in which a vague humanitarian
+socialism appeared. As soon, however, as he had assumed the triple crown
+his opinions changed and he anathematised the revolutionaries whose
+audacity was terrifying Italy. But almost at once he corrected himself,
+warned by events and realising the great danger of leaving socialism in
+the hands of the enemies of the Church. Then he listened to the bishops
+of the lands of propaganda, ceased to intervene in the Irish quarrel,
+withdrew the excommunications which he had launched against the American
+“knights of labour,” and would not allow the bold works of Catholic
+socialist writers to be placed in the Index. This evolution towards
+democracy may be traced through his most famous encyclical letters:
+_Immortale Dei_, on the constitution of States; _Libertas_, on human
+liberty; _Sapientoe_, on the duties of Christian citizens; _Rerum
+novarum_, on the condition of the working classes; and it is particularly
+this last which would seem to have rejuvenated the Church. The Pope
+herein chronicles the undeserved misery of the toilers, the undue length
+of the hours of labour, the insufficiency of salaries. All men have the
+right to live, and all contracts extorted by threats of starvation are
+unjust. Elsewhere he declares that the workman must not be left
+defenceless in presence of a system which converts the misery of the
+majority into the wealth of a few. Compelled to deal vaguely with
+questions of organisation, he contents himself with encouraging the
+corporative movement, placing it under State patronage; and after thus
+contributing to restore the secular power, he reinstates the Deity on the
+throne of sovereignty, and discerns the path to salvation more
+particularly in moral measures, in the ancient respect due to family ties
+and ownership. Nevertheless, was not the helpful hand which the august
+Vicar of Christ thus publicly tendered to the poor and the humble, the
+certain token of a new alliance, the announcement of a new reign of Jesus
+upon earth? Thenceforward the people knew that it was not abandoned. And
+from that moment too how glorious became Leo XIII, whose sacerdotal
+jubilee and episcopal jubilee were celebrated by all Christendom amidst
+the coming of a vast multitude, of endless offerings, and of flattering
+letters from every sovereign!
+
+Pierre next dealt with the question of the temporal power, and this he
+thought he might treat freely. Naturally, he was not ignorant of the fact
+that the Pope in his quarrel with Italy upheld the rights of the Church
+over Rome as stubbornly as his predecessor; but he imagined that this was
+merely a necessary conventional attitude, imposed by political
+considerations, and destined to be abandoned when the times were ripe.
+For his own part he was convinced that if the Pope had never appeared
+greater than he did now, it was to the loss of the temporal power that he
+owed it; for thence had come the great increase of his authority, the
+pure splendour of moral omnipotence which he diffused.
+
+What a long history of blunders and conflicts had been that of the
+possession of the little kingdom of Rome during fifteen centuries!
+Constantine quits Rome in the fourth century, only a few forgotten
+functionaries remaining on the deserted Palatine, and the Pope naturally
+rises to power, and the life of the city passes to the Lateran. However,
+it is only four centuries later that Charlemagne recognises accomplished
+facts and formally bestows the States of the Church upon the papacy. From
+that time warfare between the spiritual power and the temporal powers has
+never ceased; though often latent it has at times become acute, breaking
+forth with blood and fire. And to-day, in the midst of Europe in arms, is
+it not unreasonable to dream of the papacy ruling a strip of territory
+where it would be exposed to every vexation, and where it could only
+maintain itself by the help of a foreign army? What would become of it in
+the general massacre which is apprehended? Is it not far more sheltered,
+far more dignified, far more lofty when disentangled from all terrestrial
+cares, reigning over the world of souls?
+
+In the early times of the Church the papacy from being merely local,
+merely Roman, gradually became catholicised, universalised, slowly
+acquiring dominion over all Christendom. In the same way the Sacred
+College, at first a continuation of the Roman Senate, acquired an
+international character, and in our time has ended by becoming the most
+cosmopolitan of assemblies, in which representatives of all the nations
+have seats. And is it not evident that the Pope, thus leaning on the
+cardinals, has become the one great international power which exercises
+the greater authority since it is free from all monarchical interests,
+and can speak not merely in the name of country but in that of humanity
+itself? The solution so often sought amidst such long wars surely lies in
+this: Either give the Pope the temporal sovereignty of the world, or
+leave him only the spiritual sovereignty. Vicar of the Deity, absolute
+and infallible sovereign by divine delegation, he can but remain in the
+sanctuary if, ruler already of the human soul, he is not recognised by
+every nation as the one master of the body also--the king of kings.
+
+But what a strange affair was this new incursion of the papacy into the
+field sown by the French Revolution, an incursion conducting it perhaps
+towards the domination, which it has striven for with a will that has
+upheld it for centuries! For now it stands alone before the people. The
+kings are down. And as the people is henceforth free to give itself to
+whomsoever it pleases, why should it not give itself to the Church? The
+depreciation which the idea of liberty has certainly undergone renders
+every hope permissible. The liberal party appears to be vanquished in the
+sphere of economics. The toilers, dissatisfied with 1789 complain of the
+aggravation of their misery, bestir themselves, seek happiness
+despairingly. On the other hand the new _régimes_ have increased the
+international power of the Church; Catholic members are numerous in the
+parliaments of the republics and the constitutional monarchies. All
+circumstances seem therefore to favour this extraordinary return of
+fortune, Catholicism reverting to the vigour of youth in its old age.
+Even science, remember, is accused of bankruptcy, a charge which saves
+the _Syllabus_ from ridicule, troubles the minds of men, and throws the
+limitless sphere of mystery and impossibility open once more. And then a
+prophecy is recalled, a prediction that the papacy shall be mistress of
+the world on the day when she marches at the head of the democracy after
+reuniting the Schismatical Churches of the East to the Catholic,
+Apostolic, and Roman Church. And, in Pierre’s opinion, assuredly the
+times had come since Pope Leo XIII, dismissing the great and the wealthy
+of the world, left the kings driven from their thrones in exile to place
+himself like Jesus on the side of the foodless toilers and the beggars of
+the high roads. Yet a few more years, perhaps, of frightful misery,
+alarming confusion, fearful social danger, and the people, the great
+silent multitude which others have so far disposed of, will return to the
+cradle, to the unified Church of Rome, in order to escape the destruction
+which threatens human society.
+
+Pierre concluded his book with a passionate evocation of New Rome, the
+spiritual Rome which would soon reign over the nations, reconciled and
+fraternising as in another golden age. Herein he even saw the end of
+superstitions. Without making a direct attack on dogma, he allowed
+himself to dream of an enlargement of religious feeling, freed from
+rites, and absorbed in the one satisfaction of human charity. And still
+smarting from his journey to Lourdes, he felt the need of contenting his
+heart. Was not that gross superstition of Lourdes the hateful symptom of
+the excessive suffering of the times? On the day when the Gospel should
+be universally diffused and practised, suffering ones would cease seeking
+an illusory relief so far away, assured as they would be of finding
+assistance, consolation, and cure in their homes amidst their brothers.
+At Lourdes there was an iniquitous displacement of wealth, a spectacle so
+frightful as to make one doubt of God, a perpetual conflict which would
+disappear in the truly Christian society of to-morrow. Ah! that society,
+that Christian community, all Pierre’s work ended in an ardent longing
+for its speedy advent: Christianity becoming once more the religion of
+truth and justice which it had been before it allowed itself to be
+conquered by the rich and the powerful! The little ones and the poor ones
+reigning, sharing the wealth of earth, and owing obedience to nought but
+the levelling law of work! The Pope alone erect at the head of the
+federation of nations, prince of peace, with the simple mission of
+supplying the moral rule, the link of charity and love which was to unite
+all men! And would not this be the speedy realisation of the promises of
+Christ? The times were near accomplishment, secular and religious society
+would mingle so closely that they would form but one; and it would be the
+age of triumph and happiness predicted by all the prophets, no more
+struggles possible, no more antagonism between the mind and the body, but
+a marvellous equilibrium which would kill evil and set the kingdom of
+heaven upon earth. New Rome, the centre of the world, bestowing on the
+world the new religion!
+
+Pierre felt that tears were coming to his eyes, and with an unconscious
+movement, never noticing how much he astonished the slim Englishmen and
+thick-set Germans passing along the terrace, he opened his arms and
+extended them towards the _real_ Rome, steeped in such lovely sunshine
+and stretched out at his feet. Would she prove responsive to his dream?
+Would he, as he had written, find within her the remedy for our
+impatience and our alarms? Could Catholicism be renewed, could it return
+to the spirit of primitive Christianity, become the religion of the
+democracy, the faith which the modern world, overturned and in danger of
+perishing, awaits in order to be pacified and to live?
+
+Pierre was full of generous passion, full of faith. He again beheld good
+Abbé Rose weeping with emotion as he read his book. He heard Viscount
+Philibert de la Choue telling him that such a book was worth an army. And
+he particularly felt strong in the approval of Cardinal Bergerot, that
+apostle of inexhaustible charity. Why should the Congregation of the
+Index threaten his work with interdiction? Since he had been officiously
+advised to go to Rome if he desired to defend himself, he had been
+turning this question over in his mind without being able to discover
+which of his pages were attacked. To him indeed they all seemed to glow
+with the purest Christianity. However, he had arrived quivering with
+enthusiasm and courage: he was all eagerness to kneel before the Pope,
+and place himself under his august protection, assuring him that he had
+not written a line without taking inspiration from his ideas, without
+desiring the triumph of his policy. Was it possible that condemnation
+should be passed on a book in which he imagined in all sincerity that he
+had exalted Leo XIII by striving to help him in his work of Christian
+reunion and universal peace?
+
+For a moment longer Pierre remained standing before the parapet. He had
+been there for nearly an hour, unable to drink in enough of the grandeur
+of Rome, which, given all the unknown things she hid from him, he would
+have liked to possess at once. Oh! to seize hold of her, know her,
+ascertain at once the true word which he had come to seek from her! This
+again, like Lourdes, was an experiment, but a graver one, a decisive one,
+whence he would emerge either strengthened or overcome for evermore. He
+no longer sought the simple, perfect faith of the little child, but the
+superior faith of the intellectual man, raising himself above rites and
+symbols, working for the greatest happiness of humanity as based on its
+need of certainty. His temples throbbed responsive to his heart. What
+would be the answer of Rome?
+
+The sunlight had increased and the higher districts now stood out more
+vigorously against the fiery background. Far away the hills became gilded
+and empurpled, whilst the nearer house-fronts grew very distinct and
+bright with their thousands of windows sharply outlined. However, some
+morning haze still hovered around; light veils seemed to rise from the
+lower streets, blurring the summits for a moment, and then evaporating in
+the ardent heavens where all was blue. For a moment Pierre fancied that
+the Palatine had vanished, for he could scarcely see the dark fringe of
+cypresses; it was as though the dust of its ruins concealed the hill. But
+the Quirinal was even more obscured; the royal palace seemed to have
+faded away in a fog, so paltry did it look with its low flat front, so
+vague in the distance that he no longer distinguished it; whereas above
+the trees on his left the dome of St. Peter’s had grown yet larger in the
+limpid gold of the sunshine, and appeared to occupy the whole sky and
+dominate the whole city!
+
+Ah! the Rome of that first meeting, the Rome of early morning, whose new
+districts he had not even noticed in the burning fever of his
+arrival--with what boundless hopes did she not inspirit him, this Rome
+which he believed he should find alive, such indeed as he had dreamed!
+And whilst he stood there in his thin black cassock, thus gazing on her
+that lovely day, what a shout of coming redemption seemed to arise from
+her house-roofs, what a promise of universal peace seemed to issue from
+that sacred soil, twice already Queen of the world! It was the third
+Rome, it was New Rome whose maternal love was travelling across the
+frontiers to all the nations to console them and reunite them in a common
+embrace. In the passionate candour of his dream he beheld her, he heard
+her, rejuvenated, full of the gentleness of childhood, soaring, as it
+were, amidst the morning freshness into the vast pure heavens.
+
+But at last Pierre tore himself away from the sublime spectacle. The
+driver and the horse, their heads drooping under the broad sunlight, had
+not stirred. On the seat the valise was almost burning, hot with rays of
+the sun which was already heavy. And once more Pierre got into the
+vehicle and gave this address:
+
+“Via Giulia, Palazzo Boccanera.”
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+THE Via Giulia, which runs in a straight line over a distance of five
+hundred yards from the Farnese palace to the church of St. John of the
+Florentines, was at that hour steeped in bright sunlight, the glow
+streaming from end to end and whitening the small square paving stones.
+The street had no footways, and the cab rolled along it almost to the
+farther extremity, passing the old grey sleepy and deserted residences
+whose large windows were barred with iron, while their deep porches
+revealed sombre courts resembling wells. Laid out by Pope Julius II, who
+had dreamt of lining it with magnificent palaces, the street, then the
+most regular and handsome in Rome, had served as Corso* in the sixteenth
+century. One could tell that one was in a former luxurious district,
+which had lapsed into silence, solitude, and abandonment, instinct with a
+kind of religious gentleness and discretion. The old house-fronts
+followed one after another, their shutters closed and their gratings
+occasionally decked with climbing plants. At some doors cats were seated,
+and dim shops, appropriated to humble trades, were installed in certain
+dependencies. But little traffic was apparent. Pierre only noticed some
+bare-headed women dragging children behind them, a hay cart drawn by a
+mule, a superb monk draped in drugget, and a bicyclist speeding along
+noiselessly, his machine sparkling in the sun.
+
+ * The Corso was so called on account of the horse races held in
+ it at carnival time.--Trans.
+
+At last the driver turned and pointed to a large square building at the
+corner of a lane running towards the Tiber.
+
+“Palazzo Boccanera.”
+
+Pierre raised his head and was pained by the severe aspect of the
+structure, so bare and massive and blackened by age. Like its neighbours
+the Farnese and Sacchetti palaces, it had been built by Antonio da
+Sangallo in the early part of the sixteenth century, and, as with the
+former of those residences, the tradition ran that in raising the pile
+the architect had made use of stones pilfered from the Colosseum and the
+Theatre of Marcellus. The vast, square-looking façade had three upper
+stories, each with seven windows, and the first one very lofty and noble.
+Down below, the only sign of decoration was that the high ground-floor
+windows, barred with huge projecting gratings as though from fear of
+siege, rested upon large consoles, and were crowned by attics which
+smaller consoles supported. Above the monumental entrance, with folding
+doors of bronze, there was a balcony in front of the central first-floor
+window. And at the summit of the façade against the sky appeared a
+sumptuous entablature, whose frieze displayed admirable grace and purity
+of ornamentation. The frieze, the consoles, the attics, and the door-case
+were of white marble, but marble whose surface had so crumbled and so
+darkened that it now had the rough yellowish grain of stone. Right and
+left of the entrance were two antique seats upheld by griffons also of
+marble; and incrusted in the wall at one corner, a lovely Renascence
+fountain, its source dried up, still lingered; and on it a cupid riding a
+dolphin could with difficulty be distinguished, to such a degree had the
+wear and tear of time eaten into the sculpture.
+
+Pierre’s eyes, however, had been more particularly attracted by an
+escutcheon carved above one of the ground-floor windows, the escutcheon
+of the Boccaneras, a winged dragon venting flames, and underneath it he
+could plainly read the motto which had remained intact: “_Bocca nera,
+Alma rossa_” (black mouth, red soul). Above another window, as a pendant
+to the escutcheon, there was one of those little shrines which are still
+common in Rome, a satin-robed statuette of the Blessed Virgin, before
+which a lantern burnt in the full daylight.
+
+The cabman was about to drive through the dim and gaping porch, according
+to custom, when the young priest, overcome by timidity, stopped him. “No,
+no,” he said; “don’t go in, it’s useless.”
+
+Then he alighted from the vehicle, paid the man, and, valise in hand,
+found himself first under the vaulted roof, and then in the central court
+without having met a living soul.
+
+It was a square and fairly spacious court, surrounded by a porticus like
+a cloister. Some remnants of statuary, marbles discovered in excavating,
+an armless Apollo, and the trunk of a Venus, were ranged against the
+walls under the dismal arcades; and some fine grass had sprouted between
+the pebbles which paved the soil as with a black and white mosaic. It
+seemed as if the sun-rays could never reach that paving, mouldy with
+damp. A dimness and a silence instinct with departed grandeur and
+infinite mournfulness reigned there.
+
+Surprised by the emptiness of this silent mansion, Pierre continued
+seeking somebody, a porter, a servant; and, fancying that he saw a shadow
+flit by, he decided to pass through another arch which led to a little
+garden fringing the Tiber. On this side the façade of the building was
+quite plain, displaying nothing beyond its three rows of symmetrically
+disposed windows. However, the abandonment reigning in the garden brought
+Pierre yet a keener pang. In the centre some large box-plants were
+growing in the basin of a fountain which had been filled up; while among
+the mass of weeds, some orange-trees with golden, ripening fruit alone
+indicated the tracery of the paths which they had once bordered. Between
+two huge laurel-bushes, against the right-hand wall, there was a
+sarcophagus of the second century--with fauns offering violence to
+nymphs, one of those wild _baccanali_, those scenes of eager passion
+which Rome in its decline was wont to depict on the tombs of its dead;
+and this marble sarcophagus, crumbling with age and green with moisture,
+served as a tank into which a streamlet of water fell from a large tragic
+mask incrusted in the wall. Facing the Tiber there had formerly been a
+sort of colonnaded loggia, a terrace whence a double flight of steps
+descended to the river. For the construction of the new quays, however,
+the river bank was being raised, and the terrace was already lower than
+the new ground level, and stood there crumbling and useless amidst piles
+of rubbish and blocks of stone, all the wretched chalky confusion of the
+improvements which were ripping up and overturning the district.
+
+Pierre, however, was suddenly convinced that he could see somebody
+crossing the court. So he returned thither and found a woman somewhat
+short of stature, who must have been nearly fifty, though as yet she had
+not a white hair, but looked very bright and active. At sight of the
+priest, however, an expression of distrust passed over her round face and
+clear eyes.
+
+Employing the few words of broken Italian which he knew, Pierre at once
+sought to explain matters: “I am Abbé Pierre Froment, madame--” he began.
+
+However, she did not let him continue, but exclaimed in fluent French,
+with the somewhat thick and lingering accent of the province of the
+Ile-de-France: “Ah! yes, Monsieur l’Abbé, I know, I know--I was expecting
+you, I received orders about you.” And then, as he gazed at her in
+amazement, she added: “Oh! I’m a Frenchwoman! I’ve been here for five and
+twenty years, but I haven’t yet been able to get used to their horrible
+lingo!”
+
+Pierre thereupon remembered that Viscount Philibert de la Choue had
+spoken to him of this servant, one Victorine Bosquet, a native of Auneau
+in La Beauce, who, when two and twenty, had gone to Rome with a
+consumptive mistress. The latter’s sudden death had left her in as much
+terror and bewilderment as if she had been alone in some land of savages;
+and so she had gratefully devoted herself to the Countess Ernesta
+Brandini, a Boccanera by birth, who had, so to say, picked her up in the
+streets. The Countess had at first employed her as a nurse to her
+daughter Benedetta, hoping in this way to teach the child some French;
+and Victorine--remaining for some five and twenty years with the same
+family--had by degrees raised herself to the position of housekeeper,
+whilst still remaining virtually illiterate, so destitute indeed of any
+linguistic gift that she could only jabber a little broken Italian, just
+sufficient for her needs in her intercourse with the other servants.
+
+“And is Monsieur le Vicomte quite well?” she resumed with frank
+familiarity. “He is so very pleasant, and we are always so pleased to see
+him. He stays here, you know, each time he comes to Rome. I know that the
+Princess and the Contessina received a letter from him yesterday
+announcing you.”
+
+It was indeed Viscount Philibert de la Choue who had made all the
+arrangements for Pierre’s sojourn in Rome. Of the ancient and once
+vigorous race of the Boccaneras, there now only remained Cardinal Pio
+Boccanera, the Princess his sister, an old maid who from respect was
+called “Donna” Serafina, their niece Benedetta--whose mother Ernesta had
+followed her husband, Count Brandini, to the tomb--and finally their
+nephew, Prince Dario Boccanera, whose father, Prince Onofrio, was
+likewise dead, and whose mother, a Montefiori, had married again. It so
+chanced that the Viscount de la Choue was connected with the family, his
+younger brother having married a Brandini, sister to Benedetta’s father;
+and thus, with the courtesy rank of uncle, he had, in Count Brandini’s
+time, frequently sojourned at the mansion in the Via Giulia. He had also
+become attached to Benedetta, especially since the advent of a private
+family drama, consequent upon an unhappy marriage which the young woman
+had contracted, and which she had petitioned the Holy Father to annul.
+Since Benedetta had left her husband to live with her aunt Serafina and
+her uncle the Cardinal, M. de la Choue had often written to her and sent
+her parcels of French books. Among others he had forwarded her a copy of
+Pierre’s book, and the whole affair had originated in that wise. Several
+letters on the subject had been exchanged when at last Benedetta sent
+word that the work had been denounced to the Congregation of the Index,
+and that it was advisable the author should at once repair to Rome, where
+she graciously offered him the hospitality of the Boccanera mansion.
+
+The Viscount was quite as much astonished as the young priest at these
+tidings, and failed to understand why the book should be threatened at
+all; however, he prevailed on Pierre to make the journey as a matter of
+good policy, becoming himself impassioned for the achievement of a
+victory which he counted in anticipation as his own. And so it was easy
+to understand the bewildered condition of Pierre, on tumbling into this
+unknown mansion, launched into an heroic adventure, the reasons and
+circumstances of which were beyond him.
+
+Victorine, however, suddenly resumed: “But I am leaving you here,
+Monsieur l’Abbé. Let me conduct you to your rooms. Where is your
+luggage?”
+
+Then, when he had shown her his valise which he had placed on the ground
+beside him, and explained that having no more than a fortnight’s stay in
+view he had contented himself with bringing a second cassock and some
+linen, she seemed very much surprised.
+
+“A fortnight! You only expect to remain here a fortnight? Well, well,
+you’ll see.”
+
+And then summoning a big devil of a lackey who had ended by making his
+appearance, she said: “Take that up into the red room, Giacomo. Will you
+kindly follow me, Monsieur l’Abbé?”
+
+Pierre felt quite comforted and inspirited by thus unexpectedly meeting
+such a lively, good-natured compatriot in this gloomy Roman “palace.”
+ Whilst crossing the court he listened to her as she related that the
+Princess had gone out, and that the Contessina--as Benedetta from motives
+of affection was still called in the house, despite her marriage--had not
+yet shown herself that morning, being rather poorly. However, added
+Victorine, she had her orders.
+
+The staircase was in one corner of the court, under the porticus. It was
+a monumental staircase with broad, low steps, the incline being so gentle
+that a horse might easily have climbed it. The stone walls, however, were
+quite bare, the landings empty and solemn, and a death-like mournfulness
+fell from the lofty vault above.
+
+As they reached the first floor, noticing Pierre’s emotion, Victorine
+smiled. The mansion seemed to be uninhabited; not a sound came from its
+closed chambers. Simply pointing to a large oaken door on the right-hand,
+the housekeeper remarked: “The wing overlooking the court and the river
+is occupied by his Eminence. But he doesn’t use a quarter of the rooms.
+All the reception-rooms on the side of the street have been shut. How
+could one keep up such a big place, and what, too, would be the use of
+it? We should need somebody to lodge.”
+
+With her lithe step she continued ascending the stairs. She had remained
+essentially a foreigner, a Frenchwoman, too different from those among
+whom she lived to be influenced by her environment. On reaching the
+second floor she resumed: “There, on the left, are Donna Serafina’s
+rooms; those of the Contessina are on the right. This is the only part of
+the house where there’s a little warmth and life. Besides, it’s Monday
+to-day, the Princess will be receiving visitors this evening. You’ll
+see.”
+
+Then, opening a door, beyond which was a second and very narrow
+staircase, she went on: “We others have our rooms on the third floor. I
+must ask Monsieur l’Abbé to let me go up before him.”
+
+The grand staircase ceased at the second floor, and Victorine explained
+that the third story was reached exclusively by this servants’ staircase,
+which led from the lane running down to the Tiber on one side of the
+mansion. There was a small private entrance in this lane, which was very
+convenient.
+
+At last, reaching the third story, she hurried along a passage, again
+calling Pierre’s attention to various doors. “These are the apartments of
+Don Vigilio, his Eminence’s secretary. These are mine. And these will be
+yours. Monsieur le Vicomte will never have any other rooms when he comes
+to spend a few days in Rome. He says that he enjoys more liberty up here,
+as he can come in and go out as he pleases. I gave him a key to the door
+in the lane, and I’ll give you one too. And, besides, you’ll see what a
+nice view there is from here!”
+
+Whilst speaking she had gone in. The apartments comprised two rooms: a
+somewhat spacious _salon_, with wall-paper of a large scroll pattern on a
+red ground, and a bed-chamber, where the paper was of a flax grey,
+studded with faded blue flowers. The sitting-room was in one corner of
+the mansion overlooking the lane and the Tiber, and Victorine at once
+went to the windows, one of which afforded a view over the distant lower
+part of the river, while the other faced the Trastevere and the Janiculum
+across the water.
+
+“Ah! yes, it’s very pleasant!” said Pierre, who had followed and stood
+beside her.
+
+Giaccomo, who did not hurry, came in behind them with the valise. It was
+now past eleven o’clock; and seeing that the young priest looked tired,
+and realising that he must be hungry after such a journey, Victorine
+offered to have some breakfast served at once in the sitting-room. He
+would then have the afternoon to rest or go out, and would only meet the
+ladies in the evening at dinner. At the mere suggestion of resting,
+however, Pierre began to protest, declaring that he should certainly go
+out, not wishing to lose an entire afternoon. The breakfast he readily
+accepted, for he was indeed dying of hunger.
+
+However, he had to wait another full half hour. Giaccomo, who served him
+under Victorine’s orders, did everything in a most leisurely way. And
+Victorine, lacking confidence in the man, remained with the young priest
+to make sure that everything he might require was provided.
+
+“Ah! Monsieur l’Abbé,” said she, “what people! What a country! You can’t
+have an idea of it. I should never get accustomed to it even if I were to
+live here for a hundred years. Ah! if it were not for the Contessina, but
+she’s so good and beautiful.”
+
+Then, whilst placing a dish of figs on the table, she astonished Pierre
+by adding that a city where nearly everybody was a priest could not
+possibly be a good city. Thereupon the presence of this gay, active,
+unbelieving servant in the queer old palace again scared him.
+
+“What! you are not religious?” he exclaimed.
+
+“No, no, Monsieur l’Abbé, the priests don’t suit me,” said Victorine; “I
+knew one in France when I was very little, and since I’ve been here I’ve
+seen too many of them. It’s all over. Oh! I don’t say that on account of
+his Eminence, who is a holy man worthy of all possible respect. And
+besides, everybody in the house knows that I’ve nothing to reproach
+myself with. So why not leave me alone, since I’m fond of my employers
+and attend properly to my duties?”
+
+She burst into a frank laugh. “Ah!” she resumed, “when I was told that
+another priest was coming, just as if we hadn’t enough already, I
+couldn’t help growling to myself. But you look like a good young man,
+Monsieur l’Abbé, and I feel sure we shall get on well together.... I
+really don’t know why I’m telling you all this--probably it’s because
+you’ve come from yonder, and because the Contessina takes an interest in
+you. At all events, you’ll excuse me, won’t you, Monsieur l’Abbé? And
+take my advice, stay here and rest to-day; don’t be so foolish as to go
+running about their tiring city. There’s nothing very amusing to be seen
+in it, whatever they may say to the contrary.”
+
+When Pierre found himself alone, he suddenly felt overwhelmed by all the
+fatigue of his journey coupled with the fever of enthusiasm that had
+consumed him during the morning. And as though dazed, intoxicated by the
+hasty meal which he had just made--a couple of eggs and a cutlet--he
+flung himself upon the bed with the idea of taking half an hour’s rest.
+He did not fall asleep immediately, but for a time thought of those
+Boccaneras, with whose history he was partly acquainted, and of whose
+life in that deserted and silent palace, instinct with such dilapidated
+and melancholy grandeur, he began to dream. But at last his ideas grew
+confused, and by degrees he sunk into sleep amidst a crowd of shadowy
+forms, some tragic and some sweet, with vague faces which gazed at him
+with enigmatical eyes as they whirled before him in the depths of
+dreamland.
+
+The Boccaneras had supplied two popes to Rome, one in the thirteenth, the
+other in the fifteenth century, and from those two favoured ones, those
+all-powerful masters, the family had formerly derived its vast
+fortune--large estates in the vicinity of Viterbo, several palaces in
+Rome, enough works of art to fill numerous spacious galleries, and a pile
+of gold sufficient to cram a cellar. The family passed as being the most
+pious of the Roman _patriziato_, a family of burning faith whose sword
+had always been at the service of the Church; but if it were the most
+believing family it was also the most violent, the most disputatious,
+constantly at war, and so fiercely savage that the anger of the
+Boccaneras had become proverbial. And thence came their arms, the winged
+dragon spitting flames, and the fierce, glowing motto, with its play on
+the name “_Bocca sera, Alma rossa_” (black mouth, red soul), the mouth
+darkened by a roar, the soul flaming like a brazier of faith and love.
+
+Legends of endless passion, of terrible deeds of justice and vengeance
+still circulated. There was the duel fought by Onfredo, the Boccanera by
+whom the present palazzo had been built in the sixteenth century on the
+site of the demolished antique residence of the family. Onfredo, learning
+that his wife had allowed herself to be kissed on the lips by young Count
+Costamagna, had caused the Count to be kidnapped one evening and brought
+to the palazzo bound with cords. And there in one of the large halls,
+before freeing him, he compelled him to confess himself to a monk. Then
+he severed the cords with a stiletto, threw the lamps over and
+extinguished them, calling to the Count to keep the stiletto and defend
+himself. During more than an hour, in complete obscurity, in this hall
+full of furniture, the two men sought one another, fled from one another,
+seized hold of one another, and pierced one another with their blades.
+And when the doors were broken down and the servants rushed in they found
+among the pools of blood, among the overturned tables and broken seats,
+Costamagna with his nose sliced off and his hips pierced with two and
+thirty wounds, whilst Onfredo had lost two fingers of his right hand, and
+had both shoulders riddled with holes! The wonder was that neither died
+of the encounter.
+
+A century later, on that same bank of the Tiber, a daughter of the
+Boccaneras, a girl barely sixteen years of age, the lovely and passionate
+Cassia, filled all Rome with terror and admiration. She loved Flavio
+Corradini, the scion of a rival and hated house, whose alliance her
+father, Prince Boccanera, roughly rejected, and whom her elder brother,
+Ercole, swore to slay should he ever surprise him with her. Nevertheless
+the young man came to visit her in a boat, and she joined him by the
+little staircase descending to the river. But one evening Ercole, who was
+on the watch, sprang into the boat and planted his dagger full in
+Flavio’s heart. Later on the subsequent incidents were unravelled; it was
+understood that Cassia, wrathful and frantic with despair, unwilling to
+survive her love and bent on wreaking justice, had thrown herself upon
+her brother, had seized both murderer and victim with the same grasp
+whilst overturning the boat; for when the three bodies were recovered
+Cassia still retained her hold upon the two men, pressing their faces one
+against the other with her bare arms, which had remained as white as
+snow.
+
+But those were vanished times. Nowadays, if faith remained, blood
+violence seemed to be departing from the Boccaneras. Their huge fortune
+also had been lost in the slow decline which for a century past has been
+ruining the Roman _patriziato_. It had been necessary to sell the
+estates; the palace had emptied, gradually sinking to the mediocrity and
+bourgeois life of the new times. For their part the Boccaneras
+obstinately declined to contract any alien alliances, proud as they were
+of the purity of their Roman blood. And poverty was as nothing to them;
+they found contentment in their immense pride, and without a plaint
+sequestered themselves amidst the silence and gloom in which their race
+was dwindling away.
+
+Prince Ascanio, dead since 1848, had left four children by his wife, a
+Corvisieri; first Pio, the Cardinal; then Serafina, who, in order to
+remain with her brother, had not married; and finally Ernesta and
+Onofrio, both of whom were deceased. As Ernesta had merely left a
+daughter, Benedetta, behind her, it followed that the only male heir, the
+only possible continuator of the family name was Onofrio’s son, young
+Prince Dario, now some thirty years of age. Should he die without
+posterity, the Boccaneras, once so full of life and whose deeds had
+filled Roman history in papal times, must fatally disappear.
+
+Dario and his cousin Benedetta had been drawn together by a deep,
+smiling, natural passion ever since childhood. They seemed born one for
+the other; they could not imagine that they had been brought into the
+world for any other purpose than that of becoming husband and wife as
+soon as they should be old enough to marry. When Prince Onofrio--an
+amiable man of forty, very popular in Rome, where he spent his modest
+fortune as his heart listed--espoused La Montefiori’s daughter, the
+little Marchesa Flavia, whose superb beauty, suggestive of a youthful
+Juno, had maddened him, he went to reside at the Villa Montefiori, the
+only property, indeed the only belonging, that remained to the two
+ladies. It was in the direction of St’. Agnese-fuori-le-Mura,* and there
+were vast grounds, a perfect park in fact, planted with centenarian
+trees, among which the villa, a somewhat sorry building of the
+seventeenth century, was falling into ruins.
+
+ * St. Agnes-without-the-walls, N.E. of Rome.
+
+Unfavourable reports were circulated about the ladies, the mother having
+almost lost caste since she had become a widow, and the girl having too
+bold a beauty, too conquering an air. Thus the marriage had not met with
+the approval of Serafina, who was very rigid, or of Onofrio’s elder
+brother Pio, at that time merely a _Cameriere segreto_ of the Holy Father
+and a Canon of the Vatican basilica. Only Ernesta kept up a regular
+intercourse with Onofrio, fond of him as she was by reason of his gaiety
+of disposition; and thus, later on, her favourite diversion was to go
+each week to the Villa Montefiori with her daughter Benedetta, there to
+spend the day. And what a delightful day it always proved to Benedetta
+and Dario, she ten years old and he fifteen, what a fraternal loving day
+in that vast and almost abandoned garden with its parasol pines, its
+giant box-plants, and its clumps of evergreen oaks, amidst which one lost
+oneself as in a virgin forest.
+
+The poor stifled soul of Ernesta was a soul of pain and passion. Born
+with a mighty longing for life, she thirsted for the sun--for a free,
+happy, active existence in the full daylight. She was noted for her large
+limpid eyes and the charming oval of her gentle face. Extremely ignorant,
+like all the daughters of the Roman nobility, having learnt the little
+she knew in a convent of French nuns, she had grown up cloistered in the
+black Boccanera palace, having no knowledge of the world than by those
+daily drives to the Corso and the Pincio on which she accompanied her
+mother. Eventually, when she was five and twenty, and was already weary
+and desolate, she contracted the customary marriage of her caste,
+espousing Count Brandini, the last-born of a very noble, very numerous
+and poor family, who had to come and live in the Via Giulia mansion,
+where an entire wing of the second floor was got ready for the young
+couple. And nothing changed, Ernesta continued to live in the same cold
+gloom, in the midst of the same dead past, the weight of which, like that
+of a tombstone, she felt pressing more and more heavily upon her.
+
+The marriage was, on either side, a very honourable one. Count Brandini
+soon passed as being the most foolish and haughty man in Rome. A strict,
+intolerant formalist in religious matters, he became quite triumphant
+when, after innumerable intrigues, secret plottings which lasted ten long
+years, he at last secured the appointment of grand equerry to the Holy
+Father. With this appointment it seemed as if all the dismal majesty of
+the Vatican entered his household. However, Ernesta found life still
+bearable in the time of Pius IX--that is until the latter part of
+1870--for she might still venture to open the windows overlooking the
+street, receive a few lady friends otherwise than in secrecy, and accept
+invitations to festivities. But when the Italians had conquered Rome and
+the Pope declared himself a prisoner, the mansion in the Via Giulia
+became a sepulchre. The great doors were closed and bolted, even nailed
+together in token of mourning; and during ten years the inmates only went
+out and came in by the little staircase communicating with the lane. It
+was also forbidden to open the window shutters of the façade. This was
+the sulking, the protest of the black world, the mansion sinking into
+death-like immobility, complete seclusion; no more receptions, barely a
+few shadows, the intimates of Donna Serafina who on Monday evenings
+slipped in by the little door in the lane which was scarcely set ajar.
+And during those ten lugubrious years, overcome by secret despair, the
+young woman wept every night, suffered untold agony at thus being buried
+alive.
+
+Ernesta had given birth to her daughter Benedetta rather late in life,
+when three and thirty years of age. At first the little one helped to
+divert her mind. But afterwards her wonted existence, like a grinding
+millstone, again seized hold of her, and she had to place the child in
+the charge of the French nuns, by whom she herself had been educated, at
+the convent of the Sacred Heart of La Trinita de’ Monti. When Benedetta
+left the convent, grown up, nineteen years of age, she was able to speak
+and write French, knew a little arithmetic and her catechism, and
+possessed a few hazy notions of history. Then the life of the two women
+was resumed, the life of a _gynoeceum_, suggestive of the Orient; never
+an excursion with husband or father, but day after day spent in closed,
+secluded rooms, with nought to cheer one but the sole, everlasting,
+obligatory promenade, the daily drive to the Corso and the Pincio.
+
+At home, absolute obedience was the rule; the tie of relationship
+possessed an authority, a strength, which made both women bow to the will
+of the Count, without possible thought of rebellion; and to the Count’s
+will was added that of Donna Serafina and that of Cardinal Pio, both of
+whom were stern defenders of the old-time customs. Since the Pope had
+ceased to show himself in Rome, the post of grand equerry had left the
+Count considerable leisure, for the number of equipages in the pontifical
+stables had been very largely reduced; nevertheless, he was constant in
+his attendance at the Vatican, where his duties were now a mere matter of
+parade, and ever increased his devout zeal as a mark of protest against
+the usurping monarchy installed at the Quirinal. However, Benedetta had
+just attained her twentieth year, when one evening her father returned
+coughing and shivering from some ceremony at St. Peter’s. A week later he
+died, carried off by inflammation of the lungs. And despite their
+mourning, the loss was secretly considered a deliverance by both women,
+who now felt that they were free.
+
+Thenceforward Ernesta had but one thought, that of saving her daughter
+from that awful life of immurement and entombment. She herself had
+sorrowed too deeply: it was no longer possible for her to remount the
+current of existence; but she was unwilling that Benedetta should in her
+turn lead a life contrary to nature, in a voluntary grave. Moreover,
+similar lassitude and rebellion were showing themselves among other
+patrician families, which, after the sulking of the first years, were
+beginning to draw nearer to the Quirinal. Why indeed should the children,
+eager for action, liberty, and sunlight, perpetually keep up the quarrel
+of the fathers? And so, though no reconciliation could take place between
+the black world and the white world,* intermediate tints were already
+appearing, and some unexpected matrimonial alliances were contracted.
+
+ * The “blacks” are the supporters of the papacy, the “whites”
+ those of the King of Italy.--Trans.
+
+Ernesta for her part was indifferent to the political question; she knew
+next to nothing about it; but that which she passionately desired was
+that her race might at last emerge from that hateful sepulchre, that
+black, silent Boccanera mansion, where her woman’s joys had been frozen
+by so long a death. She had suffered very grievously in her heart, as
+girl, as lover, and as wife, and yielded to anger at the thought that her
+life should have been so spoiled, so lost through idiotic resignation.
+Then, too, her mind was greatly influenced by the choice of a new
+confessor at this period; for she had remained very religious, practising
+all the rites of the Church, and ever docile to the advice of her
+spiritual director. To free herself the more, however, she now quitted
+the Jesuit father whom her husband had chosen for her, and in his stead
+took Abbé Pisoni, the rector of the little church of Sta. Brigida, on the
+Piazza Farnese, close by. He was a man of fifty, very gentle, and very
+good-hearted, of a benevolence seldom found in the Roman world; and
+archaeology, a passion for the old stones of the past, had made him an
+ardent patriot. Humble though his position was, folks whispered that he
+had on several occasions served as an intermediary in delicate matters
+between the Vatican and the Quirinal. And, becoming confessor not only of
+Ernesta but of Benedetta also, he was fond of discoursing to them about
+the grandeur of Italian unity, the triumphant sway that Italy would
+exercise when the Pope and the King should agree together.
+
+Meantime Benedetta and Dario loved as on the first day, patiently, with
+the strong tranquil love of those who know that they belong to one
+another. But it happened that Ernesta threw herself between them and
+stubbornly opposed their marriage. No, no! her daughter must not espouse
+that Dario, that cousin, the last of the name, who in his turn would
+immure his wife in the black sepulchre of the Boccanera palace! Their
+union would be a prolongation of entombment, an aggravation of ruin, a
+repetition of the haughty wretchedness of the past, of the everlasting
+peevish sulking which depressed and benumbed one! She was well acquainted
+with the young man’s character; she knew that he was egotistical and
+weak, incapable of thinking and acting, predestined to bury his race with
+a smile on his lips, to let the last remnant of the house crumble about
+his head without attempting the slightest effort to found a new family.
+And that which she desired was fortune in another guise, a new birth for
+her daughter with wealth and the florescence of life amid the victors and
+powerful ones of to-morrow.
+
+From that moment the mother did not cease her stubborn efforts to ensure
+her daughter’s happiness despite herself. She told her of her tears,
+entreated her not to renew her own deplorable career. Yet she would have
+failed, such was the calm determination of the girl who had for ever
+given her heart, if certain circumstances had not brought her into
+connection with such a son-in-law as she dreamt of. At that very Villa
+Montefiori where Benedetta and Dario had plighted their troth, she met
+Count Prada, son of Orlando, one of the heroes of the reunion of Italy.
+Arriving in Rome from Milan, with his father, when eighteen years of age,
+at the time of the occupation of the city by the Italian Government,
+Prada had first entered the Ministry of Finances as a mere clerk, whilst
+the old warrior, his sire, created a senator, lived scantily on a petty
+income, the last remnant of a fortune spent in his country’s service. The
+fine war-like madness of the former comrade of Garibaldi had, however, in
+the son turned into a fierce appetite for booty, so that the young man
+became one of the real conquerors of Rome, one of those birds of prey
+that dismembered and devoured the city. Engaged in vast speculations on
+land, already wealthy according to popular report, he had--at the time of
+meeting Ernesta--just become intimate with Prince Onofrio, whose head he
+had turned by suggesting to him the idea of selling the far-spreading
+grounds of the Villa Montefiori for the erection of a new suburban
+district on the site. Others averred that he was the lover of the
+princess, the beautiful Flavia, who, although nine years his senior, was
+still superb. And, truth to tell, he was certainly a man of violent
+desires, with an eagerness to rush on the spoils of conquest which
+rendered him utterly unscrupulous with regard either to the wealth or to
+the wives of others.
+
+From the first day that he beheld Benedetta he desired her. But she, at
+any rate, could only become his by marriage. And he did not for a moment
+hesitate, but broke off all connection with Flavia, eager as he was for
+the pure virgin beauty, the patrician youth of the other. When he
+realised that Ernesta, the mother, favoured him, he asked her daughter’s
+hand, feeling certain of success. And the surprise was great, for he was
+some fifteen years older than the girl. However, he was a count, he bore
+a name which was already historical, he was piling up millions, he was
+regarded with favour at the Quirinal, and none could tell to what heights
+he might not attain. All Rome became impassioned.
+
+Never afterwards was Benedetta able to explain to herself how it happened
+that she had eventually consented. Six months sooner, six months later,
+such a marriage would certainly have been impossible, given the fearful
+scandal which it raised in the black world. A Boccanera, the last maiden
+of that antique papal race, given to a Prada, to one of the despoilers of
+the Church! Was it credible? In order that the wild project might prove
+successful it had been necessary that it should be formed at a particular
+brief moment--a moment when a supreme effort was being made to conciliate
+the Vatican and the Quirinal. A report circulated that an agreement was
+on the point of being arrived at, that the King consented to recognise
+the Pope’s absolute sovereignty over the Leonine City,* and a narrow band
+of territory extending to the sea. And if such were the case would not
+the marriage of Benedetta and Prada become, so to say, a symbol of union,
+of national reconciliation? That lovely girl, the pure lily of the black
+world, was she not the acquiescent sacrifice, the pledge granted to the
+whites?
+
+ * The Vatican suburb of Rome, called the _Civitas Leonina_,
+ because Leo IV, to protect it from the Saracens and Arabs,
+ enclosed it with walls in the ninth century.--Trans.
+
+For a fortnight nothing else was talked of; people discussed the
+question, allowed their emotion rein, indulged in all sorts of hopes. The
+girl, for her part, did not enter into the political reasons, but simply
+listened to her heart, which she could not bestow since it was hers no
+more. From morn till night, however, she had to encounter her mother’s
+prayers entreating her not to refuse the fortune, the life which offered.
+And she was particularly exercised by the counsels of her confessor, good
+Abbé Pisoni, whose patriotic zeal now burst forth. He weighed upon her
+with all his faith in the Christian destinies of Italy, and returned
+heartfelt thanks to Providence for having chosen one of his penitents as
+the instrument for hastening the reconciliation which would work God’s
+triumph throughout the world. And her confessor’s influence was certainly
+one of the decisive factors in shaping Benedetta’s decision, for she was
+very pious, very devout, especially with regard to a certain Madonna
+whose image she went to adore every Sunday at the little church on the
+Piazza Farnese. One circumstance in particular struck her: Abbé Pisoni
+related that the flame of the lamp before the image in question whitened
+each time that he himself knelt there to beg the Virgin to incline his
+penitent to the all-redeeming marriage. And thus superior forces
+intervened; and she yielded in obedience to her mother, whom the Cardinal
+and Donna Serafina had at first opposed, but whom they left free to act
+when the religious question arose.
+
+Benedetta had grown up in such absolute purity and ignorance, knowing
+nothing of herself, so shut off from existence, that marriage with
+another than Dario was to her simply the rupture of a long-kept promise
+of life in common. It was not the violent wrenching of heart and flesh
+that it would have been in the case of a woman who knew the facts of
+life. She wept a good deal, and then in a day of self-surrender she
+married Prada, lacking the strength to continue resisting everybody, and
+yielding to a union which all Rome had conspired to bring about.
+
+But the clap of thunder came on the very night of the nuptials. Was it
+that Prada, the Piedmontese, the Italian of the North, the man of
+conquest, displayed towards his bride the same brutality that he had
+shown towards the city he had sacked? Or was it that the revelation of
+married life filled Benedetta with repulsion since nothing in her own
+heart responded to the passion of this man? On that point she never
+clearly explained herself; but with violence she shut the door of her
+room, locked it and bolted it, and refused to admit her husband. For a
+month Prada was maddened by her scorn. He felt outraged; both his pride
+and his passion bled; and he swore to master her, even as one masters a
+colt, with the whip. But all his virile fury was impotent against the
+indomitable determination which had sprung up one evening behind
+Benedetta’s small and lovely brow. The spirit of the Boccaneras had awoke
+within her; nothing in the world, not even the fear of death, would have
+induced her to become her husband’s wife.* And then, love being at last
+revealed to her, there came a return of her heart to Dario, a conviction
+that she must reserve herself for him alone, since it was to him that she
+had promised herself.
+
+ * Many readers will doubtless remember that the situation as
+ here described is somewhat akin to that of the earlier part
+ of M. George Ohnet’s _Ironmaster_, which, in its form as a
+ novel, I translated into English many years ago. However,
+ all resemblance between _Rome_ and the _Ironmaster_ is confined
+ to this one point.--Trans.
+
+Ever since that marriage, which he had borne like a bereavement, the
+young man had been travelling in France. She did not hide the truth from
+him, but wrote to him, again vowing that she would never be another’s.
+And meantime her piety increased, her resolve to reserve herself for the
+lover she had chosen mingled in her mind with constancy of religious
+faith. The ardent heart of a great _amorosa_ had ignited within her, she
+was ready for martyrdom for faith’s sake. And when her despairing mother
+with clasped hands entreated her to resign herself to her conjugal
+duties, she replied that she owed no duties, since she had known nothing
+when she married. Moreover, the times were changing; the attempts to
+reconcile the Quirinal and the Vatican had failed, so completely, indeed,
+that the newspapers of the rival parties had, with renewed violence,
+resumed their campaign of mutual insult and outrage; and thus that
+triumphal marriage, to which every one had contributed as to a pledge of
+peace, crumbled amid the general smash-up, became but a ruin the more
+added to so many others.
+
+Ernesta died of it. She had made a mistake. Her spoilt life--the life of
+a joyless wife--had culminated in this supreme maternal error. And the
+worst was that she alone had to bear all the responsibility of the
+disaster, for both her brother, the Cardinal, and her sister, Donna
+Serafina, overwhelmed her with reproaches. For consolation she had but
+the despair of Abbé Pisoni, whose patriotic hopes had been destroyed, and
+who was consumed with grief at having contributed to such a catastrophe.
+And one morning Ernesta was found, icy white and cold, in her bed. Folks
+talked of the rupture of a blood-vessel, but grief had been sufficient,
+for she had suffered frightfully, secretly, without a plaint, as indeed
+she had suffered all her life long.
+
+At this time Benedetta had been married about a twelvemonth: still strong
+in her resistance to her husband, but remaining under the conjugal roof
+in order to spare her mother the terrible blow of a public scandal.
+However, her aunt Serafina had brought influence to bear on her, by
+opening to her the hope of a possible nullification of her marriage,
+should she throw herself at the feet of the Holy Father and entreat his
+intervention. And Serafina ended by persuading her of this, when,
+deferring to certain advice, she removed her from the spiritual control
+of Abbé Pisoni, and gave her the same confessor as herself. This was a
+Jesuit father named Lorenza, a man scarce five and thirty, with bright
+eyes, grave and amiable manners, and great persuasive powers. However, it
+was only on the morrow of her mother’s death that Benedetta made up her
+mind, and returned to the Palazzo Boccanera, to occupy the apartments
+where she had been born, and where her mother had just passed away.
+
+Immediately afterwards proceedings for annulling the marriage were
+instituted, in the first instance, for inquiry, before the Cardinal Vicar
+charged with the diocese of Rome. It was related that the Contessina had
+only taken this step after a secret audience with his Holiness, who had
+shown her the most encouraging sympathy. Count Prada at first spoke of
+applying to the law courts to compel his wife to return to the conjugal
+domicile; but, yielding to the entreaties of his old father Orlando, whom
+the affair greatly grieved, he eventually consented to accept the
+ecclesiastical jurisdiction. He was infuriated, however, to find that the
+nullification of the marriage was solicited on the ground of its
+non-consummation through _impotentia mariti_; this being one of the most
+valid and decisive pleas on which the Church of Rome consents to part
+those whom she has joined. And far more unhappy marriages than might be
+imagined are severed on these grounds, though the world only gives
+attention to those cases in which people of title or renown are
+concerned, as it did, for instance, with the famous Martinez Campos suit.
+
+In Benedetta’s case, her counsel, Consistorial-Advocate Morano, one of
+the leading authorities of the Roman bar, simply neglected to mention, in
+his memoir, that if she was still merely a wife in name, this was
+entirely due to herself. In addition to the evidence of friends and
+servants, showing on what terms the husband and wife had lived since
+their marriage, the advocate produced a certificate of a medical
+character, showing that the non-consummation of the union was certain.
+And the Cardinal Vicar, acting as Bishop of Rome, had thereupon remitted
+the case to the Congregation of the Council. This was a first success for
+Benedetta, and matters remained in this position. She was waiting for the
+Congregation to deliver its final pronouncement, hoping that the
+ecclesiastical dissolution of the marriage would prove an irresistible
+argument in favour of the divorce which she meant to solicit of the civil
+courts. And meantime, in the icy rooms where her mother Ernesta,
+submissive and desolate, had lately died, the Contessina resumed her
+girlish life, showing herself calm, yet very firm in her passion, having
+vowed that she would belong to none but Dario, and that she would not
+belong to him until the day when a priest should have joined them
+together in God’s holy name.
+
+As it happened, some six months previously, Dario also had taken up his
+abode at the Boccanera palace in consequence of the death of his father
+and the catastrophe which had ruined him. Prince Onofrio, after adopting
+Prada’s advice and selling the Villa Montefiori to a financial company
+for ten million _lire_,* had, instead of prudently keeping his money in
+his pockets, succumbed to the fever of speculation which was consuming
+Rome. He began to gamble, buying back his own land, and ending by losing
+everything in the formidable _krach_ which was swallowing up the wealth
+of the entire city. Totally ruined, somewhat deeply in debt even, the
+Prince nevertheless continued to promenade the Corso, like the handsome,
+smiling, popular man he was, when he accidentally met his death through
+falling from his horse; and four months later his widow, the ever
+beautiful Flavia--who had managed to save a modern villa and a personal
+income of forty thousand _lire_* from the disaster--was remarried to a
+man of magnificent presence, her junior by some ten years. This was a
+Swiss named Jules Laporte, originally a sergeant in the Papal Swiss
+Guard, then a traveller for a shady business in “relics,” and finally
+Marchese Montefiore, having secured that title in securing his wife,
+thanks to a special brief of the Holy Father. Thus the Princess Boccanera
+had again become the Marchioness Montefiori.
+
+ * 400,000 pounds.
+ ** 1,800 pounds.
+
+It was then that Cardinal Boccanera, feeling greatly hurt, insisted on
+his nephew Dario coming to live with him, in a small apartment on the
+first floor of the palazzo. In the heart of that holy man, who seemed
+dead to the world, there still lingered pride of name and lineage, with a
+feeling of affection for his young, slightly built nephew, the last of
+the race, the only one by whom the old stock might blossom anew.
+Moreover, he was not opposed to Dario’s marriage with Benedetta, whom he
+also loved with a paternal affection; and so proud was he of the family
+honour, and so convinced of the young people’s pious rectitude that, in
+taking them to live with him, he absolutely scorned the abominable
+rumours which Count Prada’s friends in the white world had begun to
+circulate ever since the two cousins had resided under the same roof.
+Donna Serafina guarded Benedetta, as he, the Cardinal, guarded Dario, and
+in the silence and the gloom of the vast deserted mansion, ensanguined of
+olden time by so many tragic deeds of violence, there now only remained
+these four with their restrained, stilled passions, last survivors of a
+crumbling world upon the threshold of a new one.
+
+When Abbé Pierre Froment all at once awoke from sleep, his head heavy
+with painful dreams, he was worried to find that the daylight was already
+waning. His watch, which he hastened to consult, pointed to six o’clock.
+Intending to rest for an hour at the utmost, he had slept on for nearly
+seven hours, overcome beyond power of resistance. And even on awaking he
+remained on the bed, helpless, as though he were conquered before he had
+fought. Why, he wondered, did he experience this prostration, this
+unreasonable discouragement, this quiver of doubt which had come he knew
+not whence during his sleep, and which was annihilating his youthful
+enthusiasm of the morning? Had the Boccaneras any connection with this
+sudden weakening of his powers? He had espied dim disquieting figures in
+the black night of his dreams; and the anguish which they had brought him
+continued, and he again evoked them, scared as he was at thus awaking in
+a strange room, full of uneasiness in presence of the unknown. Things no
+longer seemed natural to him. He could not understand why Benedetta
+should have written to Viscount Philibert de la Choue to tell him that
+his, Pierre’s, book had been denounced to the Congregation of the Index.
+What interest too could she have had in his coming to Rome to defend
+himself; and with what object had she carried her amiability so far as to
+desire that he should take up his quarters in the mansion? Pierre’s
+stupefaction indeed arose from his being there, on that bed in that
+strange room, in that palace whose deep, death-like silence encompassed
+him. As he lay there, his limbs still overpowered and his brain seemingly
+empty, a flash of light suddenly came to him, and he realised that there
+must be certain circumstances that he knew nothing of that, simple though
+things appeared, they must really hide some complicated intrigue.
+However, it was only a fugitive gleam of enlightenment; his suspicions
+faded; and he rose up shaking himself and accusing the gloomy twilight of
+being the sole cause of the shivering and the despondency of which he
+felt ashamed.
+
+In order to bestir himself, Pierre began to examine the two rooms. They
+were furnished simply, almost meagrely, in mahogany, there being scarcely
+any two articles alike, though all dated from the beginning of the
+century. Neither the bed nor the windows nor the doors had any hangings.
+On the floor of bare tiles, coloured red and polished, there were merely
+some little foot-mats in front of the various seats. And at sight of this
+middle-class bareness and coldness Pierre ended by remembering a room
+where he had slept in childhood--a room at Versailles, at the abode of
+his grandmother, who had kept a little grocer’s shop there in the days of
+Louis Philippe. However, he became interested in an old painting which
+hung in the bed-room, on the wall facing the bed, amidst some childish
+and valueless engravings. But partially discernible in the waning light,
+this painting represented a woman seated on some projecting stone-work,
+on the threshold of a great stern building, whence she seemed to have
+been driven forth. The folding doors of bronze had for ever closed behind
+her, yet she remained there in a mere drapery of white linen; whilst
+scattered articles of clothing, thrown forth chance-wise with a violent
+hand, lay upon the massive granite steps. Her feet were bare, her arms
+were bare, and her hands, distorted by bitter agony, were pressed to her
+face--a face which one saw not, veiled as it was by the tawny gold of her
+rippling, streaming hair. What nameless grief, what fearful shame, what
+hateful abandonment was thus being hidden by that rejected one, that
+lingering victim of love, of whose unknown story one might for ever dream
+with tortured heart? It could be divined that she was adorably young and
+beautiful in her wretchedness, in the shred of linen draped about her
+shoulders; but a mystery enveloped everything else--her passion, possibly
+her misfortune, perhaps even her transgression--unless, indeed, she were
+there merely as a symbol of all that shivers and that weeps visageless
+before the ever closed portals of the unknown. For a long time Pierre
+looked at her, and so intently that he at last imagined he could
+distinguish her profile, divine in its purity and expression of
+suffering. But this was only an illusion; the painting had greatly
+suffered, blackened by time and neglect; and he asked himself whose work
+it might be that it should move him so intensely. On the adjoining wall a
+picture of a Madonna, a bad copy of an eighteenth-century painting,
+irritated him by the banality of its smile.
+
+Night was falling faster and faster, and, opening the sitting-room
+window, Pierre leant out. On the other bank of the Tiber facing him arose
+the Janiculum, the height whence he had gazed upon Rome that morning. But
+at this dim hour Rome was no longer the city of youth and dreamland
+soaring into the early sunshine. The night was raining down, grey and
+ashen; the horizon was becoming blurred, vague, and mournful. Yonder, to
+the left, beyond the sea of roofs, Pierre could still divine the presence
+of the Palatine; and yonder, to the right, there still arose the Dome of
+St. Peter’s, now grey like slate against the leaden sky; whilst behind
+him the Quirinal, which he could not see, must also be fading away into
+the misty night. A few minutes went by, and everything became yet more
+blurred; he realised that Rome was fading, departing in its immensity of
+which he knew nothing. Then his causeless doubt and disquietude again
+came on him so painfully that he could no longer remain at the window. He
+closed it and sat down, letting the darkness submerge him with its flood
+of infinite sadness. And his despairing reverie only ceased when the door
+gently opened and the glow of a lamp enlivened the room.
+
+It was Victorine who came in quietly, bringing the light. “Ah! so you are
+up, Monsieur l’Abbé,” said she; “I came in at about four o’clock but I
+let you sleep on. You have done quite right to take all the rest you
+required.”
+
+Then, as he complained of pains and shivering, she became anxious. “Don’t
+go catching their nasty fevers,” she said. “It isn’t at all healthy near
+their river, you know. Don Vigilio, his Eminence’s secretary, is always
+having the fever, and I assure you that it isn’t pleasant.”
+
+She accordingly advised him to remain upstairs and lie down again. She
+would excuse his absence to the Princess and the Contessina. And he ended
+by letting her do as she desired, for he was in no state to have any will
+of his own. By her advice he dined, partaking of some soup, a wing of a
+chicken, and some preserves, which Giaccomo, the big lackey, brought up
+to him. And the food did him a great deal of good; he felt so restored
+that he refused to go to bed, desiring, said he, to thank the ladies that
+very evening for their kindly hospitality. As Donna Serafina received on
+Mondays he would present himself before her.
+
+“Very good,” said Victorine approvingly. “As you are all right again it
+can do you no harm, it will even enliven you. The best thing will be for
+Don Vigilio to come for you at nine o’clock and accompany you. Wait for
+him here.”
+
+Pierre had just washed and put on the new cassock he had brought with
+him, when, at nine o’clock precisely, he heard a discreet knock at his
+door. A little priest came in, a man scarcely thirty years of age, but
+thin and debile of build, with a long, seared, saffron-coloured face. For
+two years past attacks of fever, coming on every day at the same hour,
+had been consuming him. Nevertheless, whenever he forgot to control the
+black eyes which lighted his yellow face, they shone out ardently with
+the glow of his fiery soul. He bowed, and then in fluent French
+introduced himself in this simple fashion: “Don Vigilio, Monsieur l’Abbé,
+who is entirely at your service. If you are willing, we will go down.”
+
+Pierre immediately followed him, expressing his thanks, and Don Vigilio,
+relapsing into silence, answered his remarks with a smile. Having
+descended the small staircase, they found themselves on the second floor,
+on the spacious landing of the grand staircase. And Pierre was surprised
+and saddened by the scanty illumination, which, as in some dingy
+lodging-house, was limited to a few gas-jets, placed far apart, their
+yellow splotches but faintly relieving the deep gloom of the lofty,
+endless corridors. All was gigantic and funereal. Even on the landing,
+where was the entrance to Donna Serafina’s apartments, facing those
+occupied by her niece, nothing indicated that a reception was being held
+that evening. The door remained closed, not a sound came from the rooms,
+a death-like silence arose from the whole palace. And Don Vigilio did not
+even ring, but, after a fresh bow, discreetly turned the door-handle.
+
+A single petroleum lamp, placed on a table, lighted the ante-room, a
+large apartment with bare fresco-painted walls, simulating hangings of
+red and gold, draped regularly all around in the antique fashion. A few
+men’s overcoats and two ladies’ mantles lay on the chairs, whilst a pier
+table was littered with hats, and a servant sat there dozing, with his
+back to the wall.
+
+However, as Don Vigilio stepped aside to allow Pierre to enter a first
+reception-room, hung with red _brocatelle_, a room but dimly lighted and
+which he imagined to be empty, the young priest found himself face to
+face with an apparition in black, a woman whose features he could not at
+first distinguish. Fortunately he heard his companion say, with a low
+bow, “Contessina, I have the honour to present to you Monsieur l’Abbé
+Pierre Froment, who arrived from France this morning.”
+
+Then, for a moment, Pierre remained alone with Benedetta in that deserted
+_salon_, in the sleepy glimmer of two lace-veiled lamps. At present,
+however, a sound of voices came from a room beyond, a larger apartment
+whose doorway, with folding doors thrown wide open, described a
+parallelogram of brighter light.
+
+The young woman at once showed herself very affable, with perfect
+simplicity of manner: “Ah! I am happy to see you, Monsieur l’Abbé. I was
+afraid that your indisposition might be serious. You are quite recovered
+now, are you not?”
+
+Pierre listened to her, fascinated by her slow and rather thick voice, in
+which restrained passion seemed to mingle with much prudent good sense.
+And at last he saw her, with her hair so heavy and so dark, her skin so
+white, the whiteness of ivory. She had a round face, with somewhat full
+lips, a small refined nose, features as delicate as a child’s. But it was
+especially her eyes that lived, immense eyes, whose infinite depths none
+could fathom. Was she slumbering? Was she dreaming? Did her motionless
+face conceal the ardent tension of a great saint and a great _amorosa_?
+So white, so young, and so calm, her every movement was harmonious, her
+appearance at once very staid, very noble, and very rhythmical. In her
+ears she wore two large pearls of matchless purity, pearls which had come
+from a famous necklace of her mother’s, known throughout Rome.
+
+Pierre apologised and thanked her. “You see me in confusion, madame,”
+ said he; “I should have liked to express to you this morning my gratitude
+for your great kindness.”
+
+He had hesitated to call her madame, remembering the plea brought forward
+in the suit for the dissolution of her marriage. But plainly enough
+everybody must call her madame. Moreover, her face had retained its calm
+and kindly expression.
+
+“Consider yourself at home here, Monsieur l’Abbé,” she responded, wishing
+to put him at his ease. “It is sufficient that our relative, Monsieur de
+la Choue, should be fond of you, and take interest in your work. I have,
+you know, much affection for him.” Then her voice faltered slightly, for
+she realised that she ought to speak of the book, the one reason of
+Pierre’s journey and her proffered hospitality. “Yes,” she added, “the
+Viscount sent me your book. I read it and found it very beautiful. It
+disturbed me. But I am only an ignoramus, and certainly failed to
+understand everything in it. We must talk it over together; you will
+explain your ideas to me, won’t you, Monsieur l’Abbé?”
+
+In her large clear eyes, which did not know how to lie, Pierre then read
+the surprise and emotion of a child’s soul when confronted by disquieting
+and undreamt-of problems. So it was not she who had become impassioned
+and had desired to have him near her that she might sustain him and
+assist his victory. Once again, and this time very keenly, he suspected a
+secret influence, a hidden hand which was directing everything towards
+some unknown goal. However, he was charmed by so much simplicity and
+frankness in so beautiful, young, and noble a creature; and he gave
+himself to her after the exchange of those few words, and was about to
+tell her that she might absolutely dispose of him, when he was
+interrupted by the advent of another woman, whose tall, slight figure,
+also clad in black, stood out strongly against the luminous background of
+the further reception-room as seen through the open doorway.
+
+“Well, Benedetta, have you sent Giaccomo up to see?” asked the newcomer.
+“Don Vigilio has just come down and he is quite alone. It is improper.”
+
+“No, no, aunt. Monsieur l’Abbé is here,” was the reply of Benedetta,
+hastening to introduce the young priest. “Monsieur l’Abbé Pierre
+Froment--The Princess Boccanera.”
+
+Ceremonious salutations were exchanged. The Princess must have been
+nearly sixty, but she laced herself so tightly that from behind one might
+have taken her for a young woman. This tight lacing, however, was her
+last coquetry. Her hair, though still plentiful, was quite white, her
+eyebrows alone remaining black in her long, wrinkled face, from which
+projected the large obstinate nose of the family. She had never been
+beautiful, and had remained a spinster, wounded to the heart by the
+selection of Count Brandini, who had preferred her younger sister,
+Ernesta. From that moment she had resolved to seek consolation and
+satisfaction in family pride alone, the hereditary pride of the great
+name which she bore. The Boccaneras had already supplied two Popes to the
+Church, and she hoped that before she died her brother would become the
+third. She had transformed herself into his housekeeper, as it were,
+remaining with him, watching over him, and advising him, managing all the
+household affairs herself, and accomplishing miracles in order to conceal
+the slow ruin which was bringing the ceilings about their heads. If every
+Monday for thirty years past she had continued receiving a few intimates,
+all of them folks of the Vatican, it was from high political
+considerations, so that her drawing-room might remain a meeting-place of
+the black world, a power and a threat.
+
+And Pierre divined by her greeting that she deemed him of little account,
+petty foreign priest that he was, not even a prelate. This too again
+surprised him, again brought the puzzling question to the fore: Why had
+he been invited, what was expected of him in this society from which the
+humble were usually excluded? Knowing the Princess to be austerely
+devout, he at last fancied that she received him solely out of regard for
+her kinsman, the Viscount, for in her turn she only found these words of
+welcome: “We are so pleased to receive good news of Monsieur de la Choue!
+He brought us such a beautiful pilgrimage two years ago.”
+
+Passing the first through the doorway, she at last ushered the young
+priest into the adjoining reception-room. It was a spacious square
+apartment, hung with old yellow _brocatelle_ of a flowery Louis XIV
+pattern. The lofty ceiling was adorned with a very fine panelling, carved
+and coloured, with gilded roses in each compartment. The furniture,
+however, was of all sorts. There were some high mirrors, a couple of
+superb gilded pier tables, and a few handsome seventeenth-century
+arm-chairs; but all the rest was wretched. A heavy round table of
+first-empire style, which had come nobody knew whence, caught the eye
+with a medley of anomalous articles picked up at some bazaar, and a
+quantity of cheap photographs littered the costly marble tops of the pier
+tables. No interesting article of _virtu_ was to be seen. The old
+paintings on the walls were with two exceptions feebly executed. There
+was a delightful example of an unknown primitive master, a
+fourteenth-century Visitation, in which the Virgin had the stature and
+pure delicacy of a child of ten, whilst the Archangel, huge and superb,
+inundated her with a stream of dazzling, superhuman love; and in front of
+this hung an antique family portrait, depicting a very beautiful young
+girl in a turban, who was thought to be Cassia Boccanera, the _amorosa_
+and avengeress who had flung herself into the Tiber with her brother
+Ercole and the corpse of her lover, Flavio Corradini. Four lamps threw a
+broad, peaceful glow over the faded room, and, like a melancholy sunset,
+tinged it with yellow. It looked grave and bare, with not even a flower
+in a vase to brighten it.
+
+In a few words Donna Serafina at once introduced Pierre to the company;
+and in the silence, the pause which ensued in the conversation, he felt
+that every eye was fixed upon him as upon a promised and expected
+curiosity. There were altogether some ten persons present, among them
+being Dario, who stood talking with little Princess Celia Buongiovanni,
+whilst the elderly relative who had brought the latter sat whispering to
+a prelate, Monsignor Nani, in a dim corner. Pierre, however, had been
+particularly struck by the name of Consistorial-Advocate Morano, of whose
+position in the house Viscount de la Choue had thought proper to inform
+him in order to avert any unpleasant blunder. For thirty years past
+Morano had been Donna Serafina’s _amico_. Their connection, formerly a
+guilty one, for the advocate had wife and children of his own, had in
+course of time, since he had been left a widower, become one of those
+_liaisons_ which tolerant people excuse and except. Both parties were
+extremely devout and had certainly assured themselves of all needful
+“indulgences.” And thus Morano was there in the seat which he had always
+taken for a quarter of a century past, a seat beside the chimney-piece,
+though as yet the winter fire had not been lighted, and when Donna
+Serafina had discharged her duties as mistress of the house, she returned
+to her own place in front of him, on the other side of the chimney.
+
+When Pierre in his turn had seated himself near Don Vigilio, who, silent
+and discreet, had already taken a chair, Dario resumed in a louder voice
+the story which he had been relating to Celia. Dario was a handsome man,
+of average height, slim and elegant. He wore a full beard, dark and
+carefully tended, and had the long face and pronounced nose of the
+Boccaneras, but the impoverishment of the family blood over a course of
+centuries had attenuated, softened as it were, any sharpness or undue
+prominence of feature.
+
+“Oh! a beauty, an astounding beauty!” he repeated emphatically.
+
+“Whose beauty?” asked Benedetta, approaching him.
+
+Celia, who resembled the little Virgin of the primitive master hanging
+above her head, began to laugh. “Oh! Dario’s speaking of a poor girl, a
+work-girl whom he met to-day,” she explained.
+
+Thereupon Dario had to begin his narrative again. It appeared that while
+passing along a narrow street near the Piazza Navona, he had perceived a
+tall, shapely girl of twenty, who was weeping and sobbing violently,
+prone upon a flight of steps. Touched particularly by her beauty, he had
+approached her and learnt that she had been working in the house outside
+which she was, a manufactory of wax beads, but that, slack times having
+come, the workshops had closed and she did not dare to return home, so
+fearful was the misery there. Amidst the downpour of her tears she raised
+such beautiful eyes to his that he ended by drawing some money from his
+pocket. But at this, crimson with confusion, she sprang to her feet,
+hiding her hands in the folds of her skirt, and refusing to take
+anything. She added, however, that he might follow her if it so pleased
+him, and give the money to her mother. And then she hurried off towards
+the Ponte St’. Angelo.*
+
+ * Bridge of St. Angelo.
+
+“Yes, she was a beauty, a perfect beauty,” repeated Dario with an air of
+ecstasy. “Taller than I, and slim though sturdy, with the bosom of a
+goddess. In fact, a real antique, a Venus of twenty, her chin rather
+bold, her mouth and nose of perfect form, and her eyes wonderfully pure
+and large! And she was bare-headed too, with nothing but a crown of heavy
+black hair, and a dazzling face, gilded, so to say, by the sun.”
+
+They had all begun to listen to him, enraptured, full of that passionate
+admiration for beauty which, in spite of every change, Rome still retains
+in her heart.
+
+“Those beautiful girls of the people are becoming very rare,” remarked
+Morano. “You might scour the Trastevere without finding any. However,
+this proves that there is at least one of them left.”
+
+“And what was your goddess’s name?” asked Benedetta, smiling, amused and
+enraptured like the others.
+
+“Pierina,” replied Dario, also with a laugh.
+
+“And what did you do with her?”
+
+At this question the young man’s excited face assumed an expression of
+discomfort and fear, like the face of a child on suddenly encountering
+some ugly creature amidst its play.
+
+“Oh! don’t talk of it,” said he. “I felt very sorry afterwards. I saw
+such misery--enough to make one ill.”
+
+Yielding to his curiosity, it seemed, he had followed the girl across the
+Ponte St’. Angelo into the new district which was being built over the
+former castle meadows*; and there, on the first floor of an abandoned
+house which was already falling into ruins, though the plaster was
+scarcely dry, he had come upon a frightful spectacle which still stirred
+his heart: a whole family, father and mother, children, and an infirm old
+uncle, dying of hunger and rotting in filth! He selected the most
+dignified words he could think of to describe the scene, waving his hand
+the while with a gesture of fright, as if to ward off some horrible
+vision.
+
+ * The meadows around the Castle of St. Angelo. The district, now
+ covered with buildings, is quite flat and was formerly greatly
+ subject to floods. It is known as the Quartiere dei Prati.--Trans.
+
+“At last,” he concluded, “I ran away, and you may be sure that I shan’t
+go back again.”
+
+A general wagging of heads ensued in the cold, irksome silence which fell
+upon the room. Then Morano summed up the matter in a few bitter words, in
+which he accused the despoilers, the men of the Quirinal, of being the
+sole cause of all the frightful misery of Rome. Were not people even
+talking of the approaching nomination of Deputy Sacco as Minister of
+Finances--Sacco, that intriguer who had engaged in all sorts of underhand
+practices? His appointment would be the climax of impudence; bankruptcy
+would speedily and infallibly ensue.
+
+Meantime Benedetta, who had fixed her eyes on Pierre, with his book in
+her mind, alone murmured: “Poor people, how very sad! But why not go back
+to see them?”
+
+Pierre, out of his element and absent-minded during the earlier moments,
+had been deeply stirred by the latter part of Dario’s narrative. His
+thoughts reverted to his apostolate amidst the misery of Paris, and his
+heart was touched with compassion at being confronted by the story of
+such fearful sufferings on the very day of his arrival in Rome.
+Unwittingly, impulsively, he raised his voice, and said aloud: “Oh! we
+will go to see them together, madame; you will take me. These questions
+impassion me so much.”
+
+The attention of everybody was then again turned upon the young priest.
+The others questioned him, and he realised that they were all anxious
+about his first impressions, his opinion of their city and of themselves.
+He must not judge Rome by mere outward appearances, they said. What
+effect had the city produced on him? How had he found it, and what did he
+think of it? Thereupon he politely apologised for his inability to answer
+them. He had not yet gone out, said he, and had seen nothing. But this
+answer was of no avail; they pressed him all the more keenly, and he
+fully understood that their object was to gain him over to admiration and
+love. They advised him, adjured him not to yield to any fatal
+disillusion, but to persist and wait until Rome should have revealed to
+him her soul.
+
+“How long do you expect to remain among us, Monsieur l’Abbé?” suddenly
+inquired a courteous voice, with a clear but gentle ring.
+
+It was Monsignor Nani, who, seated in the gloom, thus raised his voice
+for the first time. On several occasions it had seemed to Pierre that the
+prelate’s keen blue eyes were steadily fixed upon him, though all the
+while he pretended to be attentively listening to the drawling chatter of
+Celia’s aunt. And before replying Pierre glanced at him. In his
+crimson-edged cassock, with a violet silk sash drawn tightly around his
+waist, Nani still looked young, although he was over fifty. His hair had
+remained blond, he had a straight refined nose, a mouth very firm yet
+very delicate of contour, and beautifully white teeth.
+
+“Why, a fortnight or perhaps three weeks, Monsignor,” replied Pierre.
+
+The whole _salon_ protested. What, three weeks! It was his pretension to
+know Rome in three weeks! Why, six weeks, twelve months, ten years were
+required! The first impression was always a disastrous one, and a long
+sojourn was needed for a visitor to recover from it.
+
+“Three weeks!” repeated Donna Serafina with her disdainful air. “Is it
+possible for people to study one another and get fond of one another in
+three weeks? Those who come back to us are those who have learned to know
+us.”
+
+Instead of launching into exclamations like the others, Nani had at first
+contented himself with smiling, and gently waving his shapely hand, which
+bespoke his aristocratic origin. Then, as Pierre modestly explained
+himself, saying that he had come to Rome to attend to certain matters and
+would leave again as soon as those matters should have been concluded,
+the prelate, still smiling, summed up the argument with the remark: “Oh!
+Monsieur l’Abbé will stay with us for more than three weeks; we shall
+have the happiness of his presence here for a long time, I hope.”
+
+These words, though spoken with quiet cordiality, strangely disturbed the
+young priest. What was known, what was meant? He leant towards Don
+Vigilio, who had remained near him, still and ever silent, and in a
+whisper inquired: “Who is Monsignor Nani?”
+
+The secretary, however, did not at once reply. His feverish face became
+yet more livid. Then his ardent eyes glanced round to make sure that
+nobody was watching him, and in a breath he responded: “He is the
+Assessor of the Holy Office.”*
+
+ * Otherwise the Inquisition.
+
+This information sufficed, for Pierre was not ignorant of the fact that
+the assessor, who was present in silence at the meetings of the Holy
+Office, waited upon his Holiness every Wednesday evening after the
+sitting, to render him an account of the matters dealt with in the
+afternoon. This weekly audience, this hour spent with the Pope in a
+privacy which allowed of every subject being broached, gave the assessor
+an exceptional position, one of considerable power. Moreover the office
+led to the cardinalate; the only “rise” that could be given to the
+assessor was his promotion to the Sacred College.
+
+Monsignor Nani, who seemed so perfectly frank and amiable, continued to
+look at the young priest with such an encouraging air that the latter
+felt obliged to go and occupy the seat beside him, which Celia’s old aunt
+at last vacated. After all, was there not an omen of victory in meeting,
+on the very day of his arrival, a powerful prelate whose influence would
+perhaps open every door to him? He therefore felt very touched when
+Monsignor Nani, immediately after the first words, inquired in a tone of
+deep interest, “And so, my dear child, you have published a book?”
+
+After this, gradually mastered by his enthusiasm and forgetting where he
+was, Pierre unbosomed himself, and recounted the birth and progress of
+his burning love amidst the sick and the humble, gave voice to his dream
+of a return to the olden Christian community, and triumphed with the
+rejuvenescence of Catholicism, developing into the one religion of the
+universal democracy. Little by little he again raised his voice, and
+silence fell around him in the stern, antique reception-room, every one
+lending ear to his words with increasing surprise, with a growing
+coldness of which he remained unconscious.
+
+At last Nani gently interrupted him, still wearing his perpetual smile,
+the faint irony of which, however, had departed. “No doubt, no doubt, my
+dear child,” he said, “it is very beautiful, oh! very beautiful, well
+worthy of the pure and noble imagination of a Christian. But what do you
+count on doing now?”
+
+“I shall go straight to the Holy Father to defend myself,” answered
+Pierre.
+
+A light, restrained laugh went round, and Donna Serafina expressed the
+general opinion by exclaiming: “The Holy Father isn’t seen as easily as
+that.”
+
+Pierre, however, was quite impassioned. “Well, for my part,” he rejoined,
+“I hope I shall see him. Have I not expressed his views? Have I not
+defended his policy? Can he let my book be condemned when I believe that
+I have taken inspiration from all that is best in him?”
+
+“No doubt, no doubt,” Nani again hastily replied, as if he feared that
+the others might be too brusque with the young enthusiast. “The Holy
+Father has such a lofty mind. And of course it would be necessary to see
+him. Only, my dear child, you must not excite yourself so much; reflect a
+little; take your time.” And, turning to Benedetta, he added, “Of course
+his Eminence has not seen Abbé Froment yet. It would be well, however,
+that he should receive him to-morrow morning to guide him with his wise
+counsel.”
+
+Cardinal Boccanera never attended his sister’s Monday-evening receptions.
+Still, he was always there in the spirit, like some absent sovereign
+master.
+
+“To tell the truth,” replied the Contessina, hesitating, “I fear that my
+uncle does not share Monsieur l’Abbé’s views.”
+
+Nani again smiled. “Exactly; he will tell him things which it is good he
+should hear.”
+
+Thereupon it was at once settled with Don Vigilio that the latter would
+put down the young priest’s name for an audience on the following morning
+at ten o’clock.
+
+However, at that moment a cardinal came in, clad in town costume--his
+sash and his stockings red, but his simar black, with a red edging and
+red buttons. It was Cardinal Sarno, a very old intimate of the
+Boccaneras; and whilst he apologised for arriving so late, through press
+of work, the company became silent and deferentially clustered round him.
+This was the first cardinal Pierre had seen, and he felt greatly
+disappointed, for the newcomer had none of the majesty, none of the fine
+port and presence to which he had looked forward. On the contrary, he was
+short and somewhat deformed, with the left shoulder higher than the
+right, and a worn, ashen face with lifeless eyes. To Pierre he looked
+like some old clerk of seventy, half stupefied by fifty years of office
+work, dulled and bent by incessantly leaning over his writing desk ever
+since his youth. And indeed that was Sarno’s story. The puny child of a
+petty middle-class family, he had been educated at the Seminario Romano.
+Then later he had for ten years professed Canon Law at that same
+seminary, afterwards becoming one of the secretaries of the Congregation
+for the Propagation of the Faith. Finally, five and twenty years ago, he
+had been created a cardinal, and the jubilee of his cardinalate had
+recently been celebrated. Born in Rome, he had always lived there; he was
+the perfect type of the prelate who, through growing up in the shade of
+the Vatican, has become one of the masters of the world. Although he had
+never occupied any diplomatic post, he had rendered such important
+services to the Propaganda, by his methodical habits of work, that he had
+become president of one of the two commissions which furthered the
+interests of the Church in those vast countries of the west which are not
+yet Catholic. And thus, in the depths of his dim eyes, behind his low,
+dull-looking brow, the huge map of Christendom was stored away.
+
+Nani himself had risen, full of covert respect for the unobtrusive but
+terrible man whose hand was everywhere, even in the most distant corners
+of the earth, although he had never left his office. As Nani knew,
+despite his apparent nullity, Sarno, with his slow, methodical, ably
+organised work of conquest, possessed sufficient power to set empires in
+confusion.
+
+“Has your Eminence recovered from that cold which distressed us so much?”
+ asked Nani.
+
+“No, no, I still cough. There is a most malignant passage at the offices.
+I feel as cold as ice as soon as I leave my room.”
+
+From that moment Pierre felt quite little, virtually lost. He was not
+even introduced to the Cardinal. And yet he had to remain in the room for
+nearly another hour, looking around and observing. That antiquated world
+then seemed to him puerile, as though it had lapsed into a mournful
+second childhood. Under all the apparent haughtiness and proud reserve he
+could divine real timidity, unacknowledged distrust, born of great
+ignorance. If the conversation did not become general, it was because
+nobody dared to speak out frankly; and what he heard in the corners was
+simply so much childish chatter, the petty gossip of the week, the
+trivial echoes of sacristies and drawing-rooms. People saw but little of
+one another, and the slightest incidents assumed huge proportions. At
+last Pierre ended by feeling as though he were transported into some
+_salon_ of the time of Charles X, in one of the episcopal cities of the
+French provinces. No refreshments were served. Celia’s old aunt secured
+possession of Cardinal Sarno; but, instead of replying to her, he simply
+wagged his head from time to time. Don Vigilio had not opened his mouth
+the whole evening. However, a conversation in a very low tone was started
+by Nani and Morano, to whom Donna Serafina listened, leaning forward and
+expressing her approval by slowly nodding her head. They were doubtless
+speaking of the dissolution of Benedetta’s marriage, for they glanced at
+the young woman gravely from time to time. And in the centre of the
+spacious room, in the sleepy glow of the lamps, there was only the young
+people, Benedetta, Dario, and Celia who seemed to be at all alive,
+chattering in undertones and occasionally repressing a burst of laughter.
+
+All at once Pierre was struck by the great resemblance between Benedetta
+and the portrait of Cassia hanging on the wall. Each displayed the same
+delicate youth, the same passionate mouth, the same large, unfathomable
+eyes, set in the same round, sensible, healthy-looking face. In each
+there was certainly the same upright soul, the same heart of flame. Then
+a recollection came to Pierre, that of a painting by Guido Reni, the
+adorable, candid head of Beatrice Cenci, which, at that moment and to his
+thinking, the portrait of Cassia closely resembled. This resemblance
+stirred him and he glanced at Benedetta with anxious sympathy, as if all
+the fierce fatality of race and country were about to fall on her. But
+no, it could not be; she looked so calm, so resolute, and so patient!
+Besides, ever since he had entered that room he had noticed none other
+than signs of gay fraternal tenderness between her and Dario, especially
+on her side, for her face ever retained the bright serenity of a love
+which may be openly confessed. At one moment, it is true, Dario in a
+joking way had caught hold of her hands and pressed them; but while he
+began to laugh rather nervously, with a brighter gleam darting from his
+eyes, she on her side, all composure, slowly freed her hands, as though
+theirs was but the play of old and affectionate friends. She loved him,
+though, it was visible, with her whole being and for her whole life.
+
+At last when Dario, after stifling a slight yawn and glancing at his
+watch, had slipped off to join some friends who were playing cards at a
+lady’s house, Benedetta and Celia sat down together on a sofa near
+Pierre; and the latter, without wishing to listen, overheard a few words
+of their confidential chat. The little Princess was the eldest daughter
+of Prince Matteo Buongiovanni, who was already the father of five
+children by an English wife, a Mortimer, to whom he was indebted for a
+dowry of two hundred thousand pounds. Indeed, the Buongiovannis were
+known as one of the few patrician families of Rome that were still rich,
+still erect among the ruins of the past, now crumbling on every side.
+They also numbered two popes among their forerunners, yet this had not
+prevented Prince Matteo from lending support to the Quirinal without
+quarrelling with the Vatican. Son of an American woman, no longer having
+the pure Roman blood in his veins, he was a more supple politician than
+other aristocrats, and was also, folks said, extremely grasping,
+struggling to be one of the last to retain the wealth and power of olden
+times, which he realised were condemned to death. Yet it was in his
+family, renowned for its superb pride and its continued magnificence,
+that a love romance had lately taken birth, a romance which was the
+subject of endless gossip: Celia had suddenly fallen in love with a young
+lieutenant to whom she had never spoken; her love was reciprocated, and
+the passionate attachment of the officer and the girl only found vent in
+the glances they exchanged on meeting each day during the usual drive
+through the Corso. Nevertheless Celia displayed a tenacious will, and
+after declaring to her father that she would never take any other
+husband, she was waiting, firm and resolute, in the certainty that she
+would ultimately secure the man of her choice. The worst of the affair
+was that the lieutenant, Attilio Sacco, happened to be the son of Deputy
+Sacco, a parvenu whom the black world looked down upon, as upon one sold
+to the Quirinal and ready to undertake the very dirtiest job.
+
+“It was for me that Morano spoke just now,” Celia murmured in Benedetta’s
+ear. “Yes, yes, when he spoke so harshly of Attilio’s father and that
+ministerial appointment which people are talking about. He wanted to give
+me a lesson.”
+
+The two girls had sworn eternal affection in their school-days, and
+Benedetta, the elder by five years, showed herself maternal. “And so,”
+ she said, “you’ve not become a whit more reasonable. You still think of
+that young man?”
+
+“What! are you going to grieve me too, dear?” replied Celia. “I love
+Attilio and mean to have him. Yes, him and not another! I want him and
+I’ll have him, because I love him and he loves me. It’s simple enough.”
+
+Pierre glanced at her, thunderstruck. With her gentle virgin face she was
+like a candid, budding lily. A brow and a nose of blossom-like purity; a
+mouth all innocence with its lips closing over pearly teeth, and eyes
+like spring water, clear and fathomless. And not a quiver passed over her
+cheeks of satiny freshness, no sign, however faint, of anxiety or
+inquisitiveness appeared in her candid glance. Did she think? Did she
+know? Who could have answered? She was virginity personified with all its
+redoubtable mystery.
+
+“Ah! my dear,” resumed Benedetta, “don’t begin my sad story over again.
+One doesn’t succeed in marrying the Pope and the King.”
+
+All tranquillity, Celia responded: “But you didn’t love Prada, whereas I
+love Attilio. Life lies in that: one must love.”
+
+These words, spoken so naturally by that ignorant child, disturbed Pierre
+to such a point that he felt tears rising to his eyes. Love! yes, therein
+lay the solution of every quarrel, the alliance between the nations, the
+reign of peace and joy throughout the world! However, Donna Serafina had
+now risen, shrewdly suspecting the nature of the conversation which was
+impassioning the two girls. And she gave Don Vigilio a glance, which the
+latter understood, for he came to tell Pierre in an undertone that it was
+time to retire. Eleven o’clock was striking, and Celia went off with her
+aunt. Advocate Morano, however, doubtless desired to retain Cardinal
+Sarno and Nani for a few moments in order that they might privately
+discuss some difficulty which had arisen in the divorce proceedings. On
+reaching the outer reception-room, Benedetta, after kissing Celia on both
+cheeks, took leave of Pierre with much good grace.
+
+“In answering the Viscount to-morrow morning,” said she, “I shall tell
+him how happy we are to have you with us, and for longer than you think.
+Don’t forget to come down at ten o’clock to see my uncle, the Cardinal.”
+
+Having climbed to the third floor again, Pierre and Don Vigilio, each
+carrying a candlestick which the servant had handed to them, were about
+to part for the night, when the former could not refrain from asking the
+secretary a question which had been worrying him for hours: “Is Monsignor
+Nani a very influential personage?”
+
+Don Vigilio again became quite scared, and simply replied by a gesture,
+opening his arms as if to embrace the world. Then his eyes flashed, and
+in his turn he seemed to yield to inquisitiveness. “You already knew him,
+didn’t you?” he inquired.
+
+“I? not at all!”
+
+“Really! Well, he knows you very well. Last Monday I heard him speak of
+you in such precise terms that he seemed to be acquainted with the
+slightest particulars of your career and your character.”
+
+“Why, I never even heard his name before.”
+
+“Then he must have procured information.”
+
+Thereupon Don Vigilio bowed and entered his room; whilst Pierre,
+surprised to find his door open, saw Victorine come out with her calm
+active air.
+
+“Ah! Monsieur l’Abbé, I wanted to make sure that you had everything you
+were likely to want. There are candles, water, sugar, and matches. And
+what do you take in the morning, please? Coffee? No, a cup of milk with a
+roll. Very good; at eight o’clock, eh? And now rest and sleep well. I was
+awfully afraid of ghosts during the first nights I spent in this old
+palace! But I never saw a trace of one. The fact is, when people are
+dead, they are too well pleased, and don’t want to break their rest!”
+
+Then off she went, and Pierre at last found himself alone, glad to be
+able to shake off the strain imposed on him, to free himself from the
+discomfort which he had felt in that reception-room, among those people
+who in his mind still mingled and vanished like shadows in the sleepy
+glow of the lamps. Ghosts, thought he, are the old dead ones of long ago
+whose distressed spirits return to love and suffer in the breasts of the
+living of to-day. And, despite his long afternoon rest, he had never felt
+so weary, so desirous of slumber, confused and foggy as was his mind,
+full of the fear that he had hitherto not understood things aright. When
+he began to undress, his astonishment at being in that room returned to
+him with such intensity that he almost fancied himself another person.
+What did all those people think of his book? Why had he been brought to
+this cold dwelling whose hostility he could divine? Was it for the
+purpose of helping him or conquering him? And again in the yellow
+glimmer, the dismal sunset of the drawing-room, he perceived Donna
+Serafina and Advocate Morano on either side of the chimney-piece, whilst
+behind the calm yet passionate visage of Benedetta appeared the smiling
+face of Monsignor Nani, with cunning eyes and lips bespeaking indomitable
+energy.
+
+He went to bed, but soon got up again, stifling, feeling such a need of
+fresh, free air that he opened the window wide in order to lean out. But
+the night was black as ink, the darkness had submerged the horizon. A
+mist must have hidden the stars in the firmament; the vault above seemed
+opaque and heavy like lead; and yonder in front the houses of the
+Trastevere had long since been asleep. Not one of all their windows
+glittered; there was but a single gaslight shining, all alone and far
+away, like a lost spark. In vain did Pierre seek the Janiculum. In the
+depths of that ocean of nihility all sunk and vanished, Rome’s four and
+twenty centuries, the ancient Palatine and the modern Quirinal, even the
+giant dome of St. Peter’s, blotted out from the sky by the flood of
+gloom. And below him he could not see, he could not even hear the Tiber,
+the dead river flowing past the dead city.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+AT a quarter to ten o’clock on the following morning Pierre came down to
+the first floor of the mansion for his audience with Cardinal Boccanera.
+He had awoke free of all fatigue and again full of courage and candid
+enthusiasm; nothing remaining of his strange despondency of the previous
+night, the doubts and suspicions which had then come over him. The
+morning was so fine, the sky so pure and so bright, that his heart once
+more palpitated with hope.
+
+On the landing he found the folding doors of the first ante-room wide
+open. While closing the gala saloons which overlooked the street, and
+which were rotting with old age and neglect, the Cardinal still used the
+reception-rooms of one of his grand-uncles, who in the eighteenth century
+had risen to the same ecclesiastical dignity as himself. There was a
+suite of four immense rooms, each sixteen feet high, with windows facing
+the lane which sloped down towards the Tiber; and the sun never entered
+them, shut off as it was by the black houses across the lane. Thus the
+installation, in point of space, was in keeping with the display and pomp
+of the old-time princely dignitaries of the Church. But no repairs were
+ever made, no care was taken of anything, the hangings were frayed and
+ragged, and dust preyed on the furniture, amidst an unconcern which
+seemed to betoken some proud resolve to stay the course of time.
+
+Pierre experienced a slight shock as he entered the first room, the
+servants’ ante-chamber. Formerly two pontifical _gente d’armi_ in full
+uniform had always stood there amidst a stream of lackeys; and the single
+servant now on duty seemed by his phantom-like appearance to increase the
+melancholiness of the vast and gloomy hall. One was particularly struck
+by an altar facing the windows, an altar with red drapery surmounted by a
+_baldacchino_ with red hangings, on which appeared the escutcheon of the
+Boccaneras, the winged dragon spitting flames with the device, _Bocca
+nera, Alma rossa_. And the grand-uncle’s red hat, the old huge ceremonial
+hat, was also there, with the two cushions of red silk, and the two
+antique parasols which were taken in the coach each time his Eminence
+went out. And in the deep silence it seemed as if one could almost hear
+the faint noise of the moths preying for a century past upon all this
+dead splendour, which would have fallen into dust at the slightest touch
+of a feather broom.
+
+The second ante-room, that was formerly occupied by the secretary, was
+also empty, and it was only in the third one, the _anticamera nobile_,
+that Pierre found Don Vigilio. With his retinue reduced to what was
+strictly necessary, the Cardinal had preferred to have his secretary near
+him--at the door, so to say, of the old throne-room, where he gave
+audience. And Don Vigilio, so thin and yellow, and quivering with fever,
+sat there like one lost, at a small, common, black table covered with
+papers. Raising his head from among a batch of documents, he recognised
+Pierre, and in a low voice, a faint murmur amidst the silence, he said,
+“His Eminence is engaged. Please wait.”
+
+Then he again turned to his reading, doubtless to escape all attempts at
+conversation.
+
+Not daring to sit down, Pierre examined the apartment. It looked perhaps
+yet more dilapidated than the others, with its hangings of green damask
+worn by age and resembling the faded moss on ancient trees. The ceiling,
+however, had remained superb. Within a frieze of gilded and coloured
+ornaments was a fresco representing the Triumph of Amphitrite, the work
+of one of Raffaelle’s pupils. And, according to antique usage, it was
+here that the _berretta_, the red cap, was placed, on a credence, below a
+large crucifix of ivory and ebony.
+
+As Pierre grew used to the half-light, however, his attention was more
+particularly attracted by a recently painted full-length portrait of the
+Cardinal in ceremonial costume--cassock of red moire, rochet of lace, and
+_cappa_ thrown like a royal mantle over his shoulders. In these vestments
+of the Church the tall old man of seventy retained the proud bearing of a
+prince, clean shaven, but still boasting an abundance of white hair which
+streamed in curls over his shoulders. He had the commanding visage of the
+Boccaneras, a large nose and a large thin-lipped mouth in a long face
+intersected by broad lines; and the eyes which lighted his pale
+countenance were indeed the eyes of his race, very dark, yet sparkling
+with ardent life under bushy brows which had remained quite black. With
+laurels about his head he would have resembled a Roman emperor, very
+handsome and master of the world, as though indeed the blood of Augustus
+pulsated in his veins.
+
+Pierre knew his story which this portrait recalled. Educated at the
+College of the Nobles, Pio Boccanera had but once absented himself from
+Rome, and that when very young, hardly a deacon, but nevertheless
+appointed ablegate to convey a _berretta_ to Paris. On his return his
+ecclesiastical career had continued in sovereign fashion. Honours had
+fallen on him naturally, as by right of birth. Ordained by Pius IX
+himself, afterwards becoming a Canon of the Vatican Basilica, and
+_Cameriere segreto_, he had risen to the post of Majordomo about the time
+of the Italian occupation, and in 1874 had been created a Cardinal. For
+the last four years, moreover, he had been Papal Chamberlain
+(_Camerlingo_), and folks whispered that Leo XIII had appointed him to
+that post, even as he himself had been appointed to it by Pius IX, in
+order to lessen his chance of succeeding to the pontifical throne; for
+although the conclave in choosing Leo had set aside the old tradition
+that the Camerlingo was ineligible for the papacy, it was not probable
+that it would again dare to infringe that rule. Moreover, people asserted
+that, even as had been the case in the reign of Pius, there was a secret
+warfare between the Pope and his Camerlingo, the latter remaining on one
+side, condemning the policy of the Holy See, holding radically different
+opinions on all things, and silently waiting for the death of Leo, which
+would place power in his hands with the duty of summoning the conclave,
+and provisionally watching over the affairs and interests of the Church
+until a new Pope should be elected. Behind Cardinal Pio’s broad, stern
+brow, however, in the glow of his dark eyes, might there not also be the
+ambition of actually rising to the papacy, of repeating the career of
+Gioachino Pecci, Camerlingo and then Pope, all tradition notwithstanding?
+With the pride of a Roman prince Pio knew but Rome; he almost gloried in
+being totally ignorant of the modern world; and verily he showed himself
+very pious, austerely religious, with a full firm faith into which the
+faintest doubt could never enter.
+
+But a whisper drew Pierre from his reflections. Don Vigilio, in his
+prudent way, invited him to sit down: “You may have to wait some time:
+take a stool.”
+
+Then he began to cover a large sheet of yellowish paper with fine
+writing, while Pierre seated himself on one of the stools ranged
+alongside the wall in front of the portrait. And again the young man fell
+into a reverie, picturing in his mind a renewal of all the princely pomp
+of the old-time cardinals in that antique room. To begin with, as soon as
+nominated, a cardinal gave public festivities, which were sometimes very
+splendid. During three days the reception-rooms remained wide open, all
+could enter, and from room to room ushers repeated the names of those who
+came--patricians, people of the middle class, poor folks, all Rome
+indeed, whom the new cardinal received with sovereign kindliness, as a
+king might receive his subjects. Then there was quite a princely retinue;
+some cardinals carried five hundred people about with them, had no fewer
+than sixteen distinct offices in their households, lived, in fact, amidst
+a perfect court. Even when life subsequently became simplified, a
+cardinal, if he were a prince, still had a right to a gala train of four
+coaches drawn by black horses. Four servants preceded him in liveries,
+emblazoned with his arms, and carried his hat, cushion, and parasols. He
+was also attended by a secretary in a mantle of violet silk, a
+train-bearer in a gown of violet woollen stuff, and a gentleman in
+waiting, wearing an Elizabethan style of costume, and bearing the
+_berretta_ with gloved hands. Although the household had then become
+smaller, it still comprised an _auditore_ specially charged with the
+congregational work, a secretary employed exclusively for correspondence,
+a chief usher who introduced visitors, a gentleman in attendance for the
+carrying of the _berretta_, a train-bearer, a chaplain, a majordomo and a
+_valet-de-chambre_, to say nothing of a flock of underlings, lackeys,
+cooks, coachmen, grooms, quite a population, which filled the vast
+mansions with bustle. And with these attendants Pierre mentally sought to
+fill the three spacious ante-rooms now so deserted; the stream of lackeys
+in blue liveries broidered with emblazonry, the world of abbés and
+prelates in silk mantles appeared before him, again setting magnificent
+and passionate life under the lofty ceilings, illumining all the
+semi-gloom with resuscitated splendour.
+
+But nowadays--particularly since the Italian occupation of Rome--nearly
+all the great fortunes of the Roman princes have been exhausted, and the
+pomp of the great dignitaries of the Church has disappeared. The ruined
+patricians have kept aloof from badly remunerated ecclesiastical offices
+to which little renown attaches, and have left them to the ambition of
+the petty _bourgeoisie_. Cardinal Boccanera, the last prince of ancient
+nobility invested with the purple, received scarcely more than 30,000
+_lire_* a year to enable him to sustain his rank, that is 22,000
+_lire_,** the salary of his post as Camerlingo, and various small sums
+derived from other functions. And he would never have made both ends meet
+had not Donna Serafina helped him with the remnants of the former family
+fortune which he had long previously surrendered to his sisters and his
+brother. Donna Serafina and Benedetta lived apart, in their own rooms,
+having their own table, servants, and personal expenses. The Cardinal
+only had his nephew Dario with him, and he never gave a dinner or held a
+public reception. His greatest source of expense was his carriage, the
+heavy pair-horse coach, which ceremonial usage compelled him to retain,
+for a cardinal cannot go on foot through the streets of Rome. However,
+his coachman, an old family servant, spared him the necessity of keeping
+a groom by insisting on taking entire charge of the carriage and the two
+black horses, which, like himself, had grown old in the service of the
+Boccaneras. There were two footmen, father and son, the latter born in
+the house. And the cook’s wife assisted in the kitchen. However, yet
+greater reductions had been made in the ante-rooms, where the staff, once
+so brilliant and numerous, was now simply composed of two petty priests,
+Don Vigilio, who was at once secretary, auditore, and majordomo, and Abbé
+Paparelli, who acted as train-bearer, chaplain, and chief usher. There,
+where a crowd of salaried people of all ranks had once moved to and fro,
+filling the vast halls with bustle and colour, one now only beheld two
+little black cassocks gliding noiselessly along, two unobtrusive shadows
+flitting about amidst the deep gloom of the lifeless rooms.
+
+ * 1,200 pounds.
+
+ ** 880 pounds.
+
+And Pierre now fully understood the haughty unconcern of the Cardinal,
+who suffered time to complete its work of destruction in that ancestral
+mansion, to which he was powerless to restore the glorious life of former
+times! Built for that shining life, for the sovereign display of a
+sixteenth-century prince, it was now deserted and empty, crumbling about
+the head of its last master, who had no servants left him to fill it, and
+would not have known how to pay for the materials which repairs would
+have necessitated. And so, since the modern world was hostile, since
+religion was no longer sovereign, since men had changed, and one was
+drifting into the unknown, amidst the hatred and indifference of new
+generations, why not allow the old world to collapse in the stubborn,
+motionless pride born of its ancient glory? Heroes alone died standing,
+without relinquishing aught of their past, preserving the same faith
+until their final gasp, beholding, with pain-fraught bravery and infinite
+sadness, the slow last agony of their divinity. And the Cardinal’s tall
+figure, his pale, proud face, so full of sovereign despair and courage,
+expressed that stubborn determination to perish beneath the ruins of the
+old social edifice rather than change a single one of its stones.
+
+Pierre was roused by a rustling of furtive steps, a little mouse-like
+trot, which made him raise his head. A door in the wall had just opened,
+and to his surprise there stood before him an abbé of some forty years,
+fat and short, looking like an old maid in a black skirt, a very old maid
+in fact, so numerous were the wrinkles on his flabby face. It was Abbé
+Paparelli, the train-bearer and usher, and on seeing Pierre he was about
+to question him, when Don Vigilio explained matters.
+
+“Ah! very good, very good, Monsieur l’Abbé Froment. His Eminence will
+condescend to receive you, but you must wait, you must wait.”
+
+Then, with his silent rolling walk, he returned to the second ante-room,
+where he usually stationed himself.
+
+Pierre did not like his face--the face of an old female devotee, whitened
+by celibacy, and ravaged by stern observance of the rites; and so, as Don
+Vigilio--his head weary and his hands burning with fever--had not resumed
+his work, the young man ventured to question him. Oh! Abbé Paparelli, he
+was a man of the liveliest faith, who from simple humility remained in a
+modest post in his Eminence’s service. On the other hand, his Eminence
+was pleased to reward him for his devotion by occasionally condescending
+to listen to his advice.
+
+As Don Vigilio spoke, a faint gleam of irony, a kind of veiled anger
+appeared in his ardent eyes. However, he continued to examine Pierre, and
+gradually seemed reassured, appreciating the evident frankness of this
+foreigner who could hardly belong to any clique. And so he ended by
+departing somewhat from his continual sickly distrust, and even engaged
+in a brief chat.
+
+“Yes, yes,” he said, “there is a deal of work sometimes, and rather hard
+work too. His Eminence belongs to several Congregations, the
+Consistorial, the Holy Office, the Index, the Rites. And all the
+documents concerning the business which falls to him come into my hands.
+I have to study each affair, prepare a report on it, clear the way, so to
+say. Besides which all the correspondence is carried on through me.
+Fortunately his Eminence is a holy man, and intrigues neither for himself
+nor for others, and this enables us to taste a little peace.”
+
+Pierre took a keen interest in these particulars of the life led by a
+prince of the Church. He learnt that the Cardinal rose at six o’clock,
+summer and winter alike. He said his mass in his chapel, a little room
+which simply contained an altar of painted wood, and which nobody but
+himself ever entered. His private apartments were limited to three
+rooms--a bed-room, dining-room, and study--all very modest and small,
+contrived indeed by partitioning off portions of one large hall. And he
+led a very retired life, exempt from all luxury, like one who is frugal
+and poor. At eight in the morning he drank a cup of cold milk for his
+breakfast. Then, when there were sittings of the Congregations to which
+he belonged, he attended them; otherwise he remained at home and gave
+audience. Dinner was served at one o’clock, and afterwards came the
+siesta, lasting until five in summer and until four at other seasons--a
+sacred moment when a servant would not have dared even to knock at the
+door. On awaking, if it were fine, his Eminence drove out towards the
+ancient Appian Way, returning at sunset when the _Ave Maria_ began to
+ring. And finally, after again giving audience between seven and nine, he
+supped and retired into his room, where he worked all alone or went to
+bed. The cardinals wait upon the Pope on fixed days, two or three times
+each month, for purposes connected with their functions. For nearly a
+year, however, the Camerlingo had not been received in private audience
+by his Holiness, and this was a sign of disgrace, a proof of secret
+warfare, of which the entire black world spoke in prudent whispers.
+
+“His Eminence is sometimes a little rough,” continued Don Vigilio in a
+soft voice. “But you should see him smile when his niece the Contessina,
+of whom he is very fond, comes down to kiss him. If you have a good
+reception, you know, you will owe it to the Contessina.”
+
+At this moment the secretary was interrupted. A sound of voices came from
+the second ante-room, and forthwith he rose to his feet, and bent very
+low at sight of a stout man in a black cassock, red sash, and black hat,
+with twisted cord of red and gold, whom Abbé Paparelli was ushering in
+with a great display of deferential genuflections. Pierre also had risen
+at a sign from Don Vigilio, who found time to whisper to him, “Cardinal
+Sanguinetti, Prefect of the Congregation of the Index.”
+
+Meantime Abbé Paparelli was lavishing attentions on the prelate,
+repeating with an expression of blissful satisfaction: “Your most
+reverend Eminence was expected. I have orders to admit your most reverend
+Eminence at once. His Eminence the Grand Penitentiary is already here.”
+
+Sanguinetti, loud of voice and sonorous of tread, spoke out with sudden
+familiarity, “Yes, yes, I know. A number of importunate people detained
+me! One can never do as one desires. But I am here at last.”
+
+He was a man of sixty, squat and fat, with a round and highly coloured
+face distinguished by a huge nose, thick lips, and bright eyes which were
+always on the move. But he more particularly struck one by his active,
+almost turbulent, youthful vivacity, scarcely a white hair as yet showing
+among his brown and carefully tended locks, which fell in curls about his
+temples. Born at Viterbo, he had studied at the seminary there before
+completing his education at the Universita Gregoriana in Rome. His
+ecclesiastical appointments showed how rapidly he had made his way, how
+supple was his mind: first of all secretary to the nunciature at Lisbon;
+then created titular Bishop of Thebes, and entrusted with a delicate
+mission in Brazil; on his return appointed nuncio first at Brussels and
+next at Vienna; and finally raised to the cardinalate, to say nothing of
+the fact that he had lately secured the suburban episcopal see of
+Frascati.* Trained to business, having dealt with every nation in Europe,
+he had nothing against him but his ambition, of which he made too open a
+display, and his spirit of intrigue, which was ever restless. It was said
+that he was now one of the irreconcilables who demanded that Italy should
+surrender Rome, though formerly he had made advances to the Quirinal. In
+his wild passion to become the next Pope he rushed from one opinion to
+the other, giving himself no end of trouble to gain people from whom he
+afterwards parted. He had twice already fallen out with Leo XIII, but had
+deemed it politic to make his submission. In point of fact, given that he
+was an almost openly declared candidate to the papacy, he was wearing
+himself out by his perpetual efforts, dabbling in too many things, and
+setting too many people agog.
+
+ * Cardinals York and Howard were Bishops of Frascati.--Trans.
+
+Pierre, however, had only seen in him the Prefect of the Congregation of
+the Index; and the one idea which struck him was that this man would
+decide the fate of his book. And so, when the Cardinal had disappeared
+and Abbé Paparelli had returned to the second ante-room, he could not
+refrain from asking Don Vigilio, “Are their Eminences Cardinal
+Sanguinetti and Cardinal Boccanera very intimate, then?”
+
+An irrepressible smile contracted the secretary’s lips, while his eyes
+gleamed with an irony which he could no longer subdue: “Very
+intimate--oh! no, no--they see one another when they can’t do otherwise.”
+
+Then he explained that considerable deference was shown to Cardinal
+Boccanera’s high birth, and that his colleagues often met at his
+residence, when, as happened to be the case that morning, any grave
+affair presented itself, requiring an interview apart from the usual
+official meetings. Cardinal Sanguinetti, he added, was the son of a petty
+medical man of Viterbo. “No, no,” he concluded, “their Eminences are not
+at all intimate. It is difficult for men to agree when they have neither
+the same ideas nor the same character, especially too when they are in
+each other’s way.”
+
+Don Vigilio spoke these last words in a lower tone, as if talking to
+himself and still retaining his sharp smile. But Pierre scarcely
+listened, absorbed as he was in his own worries. “Perhaps they have met
+to discuss some affair connected with the Index?” said he.
+
+Don Vigilio must have known the object of the meeting. However, he merely
+replied that, if the Index had been in question, the meeting would have
+taken place at the residence of the Prefect of that Congregation.
+Thereupon Pierre, yielding to his impatience, was obliged to put a
+straight question. “You know of my affair--the affair of my book,” he
+said. “Well, as his Eminence is a member of the Congregation, and all the
+documents pass through your hands, you might be able to give me some
+useful information. I know nothing as yet and am so anxious to know!”
+
+At this Don Vigilio relapsed into scared disquietude. He stammered,
+saying that he had not seen any documents, which was true. “Nothing has
+yet reached us,” he added; “I assure you I know nothing.”
+
+Then, as the other persisted, he signed to him to keep quiet, and again
+turned to his writing, glancing furtively towards the second ante-room as
+if he believed that Abbé Paparelli was listening. He had certainly said
+too much, he thought, and he made himself very small, crouching over the
+table, and melting, fading away in his dim corner.
+
+Pierre again fell into a reverie, a prey to all the mystery which
+enveloped him--the sleepy, antique sadness of his surroundings. Long
+minutes went by; it was nearly eleven when the sound of a door opening
+and a buzz of voices roused him. Then he bowed respectfully to Cardinal
+Sanguinetti, who went off accompanied by another cardinal, a very thin
+and tall man, with a grey, bony, ascetic face. Neither of them, however,
+seemed even to see the petty foreign priest who bent low as they went by.
+They were chatting aloud in familiar fashion.
+
+“Yes! the wind is falling; it is warmer than yesterday.”
+
+“We shall certainly have the sirocco to-morrow.”
+
+Then solemn silence again fell on the large, dim room. Don Vigilio was
+still writing, but his pen made no noise as it travelled over the stiff
+yellow paper. However, the faint tinkle of a cracked bell was suddenly
+heard, and Abbé Paparelli, after hastening into the throne-room for a
+moment, returned to summon Pierre, whom he announced in a restrained
+voice: “Monsieur l’Abbé Pierre Froment.”
+
+The spacious throne-room was like the other apartments, a virtual ruin.
+Under the fine ceiling of carved and gilded wood-work, the red
+wall-hangings of _brocatelle_, with a large palm pattern, were falling
+into tatters. A few holes had been patched, but long wear had streaked
+the dark purple of the silk--once of dazzling magnificence--with pale
+hues. The curiosity of the room was its old throne, an arm-chair
+upholstered in red silk, on which the Holy Father had sat when visiting
+Cardinal Pio’s grand-uncle. This chair was surmounted by a canopy,
+likewise of red silk, under which hung the portrait of the reigning Pope.
+And, according to custom, the chair was turned towards the wall, to show
+that none might sit on it. The other furniture of the apartment was made
+up of sofas, arm-chairs, and chairs, with a marvellous Louis Quatorze
+table of gilded wood, having a top of mosaic-work representing the rape
+of Europa.
+
+But at first Pierre only saw Cardinal Boccanera standing by the table
+which he used for writing. In his simple black cassock, with red edging
+and red buttons, the Cardinal seemed to him yet taller and prouder than
+in the portrait which showed him in ceremonial costume. There was the
+same curly white hair, the same long, strongly marked face, with large
+nose and thin lips, and the same ardent eyes, illumining the pale
+countenance from under bushy brows which had remained black. But the
+portrait did not express the lofty tranquil faith which shone in this
+handsome face, a complete certainty of what truth was, and an absolute
+determination to abide by it for ever.
+
+Boccanera had not stirred, but with black, fixed glance remained watching
+his visitor’s approach; and the young priest, acquainted with the usual
+ceremonial, knelt and kissed the large ruby which the prelate wore on his
+hand. However, the Cardinal immediately raised him.
+
+“You are welcome here, my dear son. My niece spoke to me about you with
+so much sympathy that I am happy to receive you.” With these words Pio
+seated himself near the table, as yet not telling Pierre to take a chair,
+but still examining him whilst speaking slowly and with studied
+politeness: “You arrived yesterday morning, did you not, and were very
+tired?”
+
+“Your Eminence is too kind--yes, I was worn out, as much through emotion
+as fatigue. This journey is one of such gravity for me.”
+
+The Cardinal seemed indisposed to speak of serious matters so soon. “No
+doubt; it is a long way from Paris to Rome,” he replied. “Nowadays the
+journey may be accomplished with fair rapidity, but formerly how
+interminable it was!” Then speaking yet more slowly: “I went to Paris
+once--oh! a long time ago, nearly fifty years ago--and then for barely a
+week. A large and handsome city; yes, yes, a great many people in the
+streets, extremely well-bred people, a nation which has accomplished
+great and admirable things. Even in these sad times one cannot forget
+that France was the eldest daughter of the Church. But since that one
+journey I have not left Rome--”
+
+Then he made a gesture of quiet disdain, expressive of all he left
+unsaid. What was the use of journeying to a land of doubt and rebellion?
+Did not Rome suffice--Rome, which governed the world--the Eternal City
+which, when the times should be accomplished, would become the capital of
+the world once more?
+
+Silently glancing at the Cardinal’s lofty stature, the stature of one of
+the violent war-like princes of long ago, now reduced to wearing that
+simple cassock, Pierre deemed him superb with his proud conviction that
+Rome sufficed unto herself. But that stubborn resolve to remain in
+ignorance, that determination to take no account of other nations
+excepting to treat them as vassals, disquieted him when he reflected on
+the motives that had brought him there. And as silence had again fallen
+he thought it politic to approach the subject he had at heart by words of
+homage.
+
+“Before taking any other steps,” said he, “I desired to express my
+profound respect for your Eminence; for in your Eminence I place my only
+hope; and I beg your Eminence to be good enough to advise and guide me.”
+
+With a wave of the hand Boccanera thereupon invited Pierre to take a
+chair in front of him. “I certainly do not refuse you my counsel, my dear
+son,” he replied. “I owe my counsel to every Christian who desires to do
+well. But it would be wrong for you to rely on my influence. I have none.
+I live entirely apart from others; I cannot and will not ask for
+anything. However, this will not prevent us from chatting.” Then,
+approaching the question in all frankness, without the slightest
+artifice, like one of brave and absolute mind who fears no responsibility
+however great, he continued: “You have written a book, have you
+not?--‘New Rome,’ I believe--and you have come to defend this book which
+has been denounced to the Congregation of the Index. For my own part I
+have not yet read it. You will understand that I cannot read everything.
+I only see the works that are sent to me by the Congregation which I have
+belonged to since last year; and, besides, I often content myself with
+the reports which my secretary draws up for me. However, my niece
+Benedetta has read your book, and has told me that it is not lacking in
+interest. It first astonished her somewhat, and then greatly moved her.
+So I promise you that I will go through it and study the incriminated
+passages with the greatest care.”
+
+Pierre profited by the opportunity to begin pleading his cause. And it
+occurred to him that it would be best to give his references at once.
+“Your Eminence will realise how stupefied I was when I learnt that
+proceedings were being taken against my book,” he said. “Monsieur le
+Vicomte Philibert de la Choue, who is good enough to show me some
+friendship, does not cease repeating that such a book is worth the best
+of armies to the Holy See.”
+
+“Oh! De la Choue, De la Choue!” repeated the Cardinal with a pout of
+good-natured disdain. “I know that De la Choue considers himself a good
+Catholic. He is in a slight degree our relative, as you know. And when he
+comes to Rome and stays here, I willingly see him, on condition however
+that no mention is made of certain subjects on which it would be
+impossible for us to agree. To tell the truth, the Catholicism preached
+by De la Choue--worthy, clever man though he is--his Catholicism, I say,
+with his corporations, his working-class clubs, his cleansed democracy
+and his vague socialism, is after all merely so much literature!”
+
+This pronouncement struck Pierre, for he realised all the disdainful
+irony contained in it--an irony which touched himself. And so he hastened
+to name his other reference, whose authority he imagined to be above
+discussion: “His Eminence Cardinal Bergerot has been kind enough to
+signify his full approval of my book.”
+
+At this Boccanera’s face suddenly changed. It no longer wore an
+expression of derisive blame, tinged with the pity that is prompted by a
+child’s ill-considered action fated to certain failure. A flash of anger
+now lighted up the Cardinal’s dark eyes, and a pugnacious impulse
+hardened his entire countenance. “In France,” he slowly resumed,
+“Cardinal Bergerot no doubt has a reputation for great piety. We know
+little of him in Rome. Personally, I have only seen him once, when he
+came to receive his hat. And I would not therefore allow myself to judge
+him if his writings and actions had not recently saddened my believing
+soul. Unhappily, I am not the only one; you will find nobody here, of the
+Sacred College, who approves of his doings.” Boccanera paused, then in a
+firm voice concluded: “Cardinal Bergerot is a Revolutionary!”
+
+This time Pierre’s surprise for a moment forced him to silence. A
+Revolutionary--good heavens! a Revolutionary--that gentle pastor of
+souls, whose charity was inexhaustible, whose one dream was that Jesus
+might return to earth to ensure at last the reign of peace and justice!
+So words did not have the same signification in all places; into what
+religion had he now tumbled that the faith of the poor and the humble
+should be looked upon as a mere insurrectional, condemnable passion? As
+yet unable to understand things aright, Pierre nevertheless realised that
+discussion would be both discourteous and futile, and his only remaining
+desire was to give an account of his book, explain and vindicate it. But
+at his first words the Cardinal interposed.
+
+“No, no, my dear son. It would take us too long and I wish to read the
+passages. Besides, there is an absolute rule. All books which meddle with
+the faith are condemnable and pernicious. Does your book show perfect
+respect for dogma?”
+
+“I believe so, and I assure your Eminence that I have had no intention of
+writing a work of negation.”
+
+“Good: I may be on your side if that is true. Only, in the contrary case,
+I have but one course to advise you, which is to withdraw your work,
+condemn it, and destroy it without waiting until a decision of the Index
+compels you to do so. Whosoever has given birth to scandal must stifle it
+and expiate it, even if he have to cut into his own flesh. The only
+duties of a priest are humility and obedience, the complete annihilation
+of self before the sovereign will of the Church. And, besides, why write
+at all? For there is already rebellion in expressing an opinion of one’s
+own. It is always the temptation of the devil which puts a pen in an
+author’s hand. Why, then, incur the risk of being for ever damned by
+yielding to the pride of intelligence and domination? Your book again, my
+dear son--your book is literature, literature!”
+
+This expression again repeated was instinct with so much contempt that
+Pierre realised all the wretchedness that would fall upon the poor pages
+of his apostolate on meeting the eyes of this prince who had become a
+saintly man. With increasing fear and admiration he listened to him, and
+beheld him growing greater and greater.
+
+“Ah! faith, my dear son, everything is in faith--perfect, disinterested
+faith--which believes for the sole happiness of believing! How restful it
+is to bow down before the mysteries without seeking to penetrate them,
+full of the tranquil conviction that, in accepting them, one possesses
+both the certain and the final! Is not the highest intellectual
+satisfaction that which is derived from the victory of the divine over
+the mind, which it disciplines, and contents so completely that it knows
+desire no more? And apart from that perfect equilibrium, that explanation
+of the unknown by the divine, no durable peace is possible for man. If
+one desires that truth and justice should reign upon earth, it is in God
+that one must place them. He that does not believe is like a battlefield,
+the scene of every disaster. Faith alone can tranquillise and deliver.”
+
+For an instant Pierre remained silent before the great figure rising up
+in front of him. At Lourdes he had only seen suffering humanity rushing
+thither for health of the body and consolation of the soul; but here was
+the intellectual believer, the mind that needs certainty, finding
+satisfaction, tasting the supreme enjoyment of doubting no more. He had
+never previously heard such a cry of joy at living in obedience without
+anxiety as to the morrow of death. He knew that Boccanera’s youth had
+been somewhat stormy, traversed by acute attacks of sensuality, a flaring
+of the red blood of his ancestors; and he marvelled at the calm majesty
+which faith had at last implanted in this descendant of so violent a
+race, who had no passion remaining in him but that of pride.
+
+“And yet,” Pierre at last ventured to say in a timid, gentle voice, “if
+faith remains essential and immutable, forms change. From hour to hour
+evolution goes on in all things--the world changes.”
+
+“That is not true!” exclaimed the Cardinal, “the world does not change.
+It continually tramps over the same ground, loses itself, strays into the
+most abominable courses, and it continually has to be brought back into
+the right path. That is the truth. In order that the promises of Christ
+may be fulfilled, is it not necessary that the world should return to its
+starting point, its original innocence? Is not the end of time fixed for
+the day when men shall be in possession of the full truth of the Gospel?
+Yes, truth is in the past, and it is always to the past that one must
+cling if one would avoid the pitfalls which evil imaginations create. All
+those fine novelties, those mirages of that famous so-called progress,
+are simply traps and snares of the eternal tempter, causes of perdition
+and death. Why seek any further, why constantly incur the risk of error,
+when for eighteen hundred years the truth has been known? Truth! why it
+is in Apostolic and Roman Catholicism as created by a long succession of
+generations! What madness to desire to change it when so many lofty
+minds, so many pious souls have made of it the most admirable of
+monuments, the one instrument of order in this world, and of salvation in
+the next!”
+
+Pierre, whose heart had contracted, refrained from further protest, for
+he could no longer doubt that he had before him an implacable adversary
+of his most cherished ideas. Chilled by a covert fear, as though he felt
+a faint breath, as of a distant wind from a land of ruins, pass over his
+face, bringing with it the mortal cold of a sepulchre, he bowed
+respectfully whilst the Cardinal, rising to his full height, continued in
+his obstinate voice, resonant with proud courage: “And if Catholicism, as
+its enemies pretend, be really stricken unto death, it must die standing
+and in all its glorious integrality. You hear me, Monsieur l’Abbé--not
+one concession, not one surrender, not a single act of cowardice!
+Catholicism is such as it is, and cannot be otherwise. No modification of
+the divine certainty, the entire truth, is possible. The removal of the
+smallest stone from the edifice could only prove a cause of instability.
+Is this not evident? You cannot save old houses by attacking them with
+the pickaxe under pretence of decorating them. You only enlarge the
+fissures. Even if it were true that Rome were on the eve of falling into
+dust, the only result of all the repairing and patching would be to
+hasten the catastrophe. And instead of a noble death, met unflinchingly,
+we should then behold the basest of agonies, the death throes of a coward
+who struggles and begs for mercy! For my part I wait. I am convinced that
+all that people say is but so much horrible falsehood, that Catholicism
+has never been firmer, that it imbibes eternity from the one and only
+source of life. But should the heavens indeed fall, on that day I should
+be here, amidst these old and crumbling walls, under these old ceilings
+whose beams are being devoured by the worms, and it is here, erect, among
+the ruins, that I should meet my end, repeating my _credo_ for the last
+time.”
+
+His final words fell more slowly, full of haughty sadness, whilst with a
+sweeping gesture he waved his arms towards the old, silent, deserted
+palace around him, whence life was withdrawing day by day. Had an
+involuntary presentiment come to him, did the faint cold breath from the
+ruins also fan his own cheeks? All the neglect into which the vast rooms
+had fallen was explained by his words; and a superb, despondent grandeur
+enveloped this prince and cardinal, this uncompromising Catholic who,
+withdrawing into the dim half-light of the past, braved with a soldier’s
+heart the inevitable downfall of the olden world.
+
+Deeply impressed, Pierre was about to take his leave when, to his
+surprise, a little door opened in the hangings. “What is it? Can’t I be
+left in peace for a moment?” exclaimed Boccanera with sudden impatience.
+
+Nevertheless, Abbé Paparelli, fat and sleek, glided into the room without
+the faintest sign of emotion. And he whispered a few words in the ear of
+the Cardinal, who, on seeing him, had become calm again. “What curate?”
+ asked Boccanera. “Oh! yes, Santobono, the curate of Frascati. I
+know--tell him I cannot see him just now.”
+
+Paparelli, however, again began whispering in his soft voice, though not
+in so low a key as previously, for some of his words could be overheard.
+The affair was urgent, the curate was compelled to return home, and had
+only a word or two to say. And then, without awaiting consent, the
+train-bearer ushered in the visitor, a _protégé_ of his, whom he had left
+just outside the little door. And for his own part he withdrew with the
+tranquillity of a retainer who, whatever the modesty of his office, knows
+himself to be all powerful.
+
+Pierre, who was momentarily forgotten, looked at the visitor--a big
+fellow of a priest, the son of a peasant evidently, and still near to the
+soil. He had an ungainly, bony figure, huge feet and knotted hands, with
+a seamy tanned face lighted by extremely keen black eyes. Five and forty
+and still robust, his chin and cheeks bristling, and his cassock,
+overlarge, hanging loosely about his big projecting bones, he suggested a
+bandit in disguise. Still there was nothing base about him; the
+expression of his face was proud. And in one hand he carried a small
+wicker basket carefully covered over with fig-leaves.
+
+Santobono at once bent his knees and kissed the Cardinal’s ring, but with
+hasty unconcern, as though only some ordinary piece of civility were in
+question. Then, with that commingling of respect and familiarity which
+the little ones of the world often evince towards the great, he said, “I
+beg your most reverend Eminence’s forgiveness for having insisted. But
+there were people waiting, and I should not have been received if my old
+friend Paparelli had not brought me by way of that door. Oh! I have a
+very great service to ask of your Eminence, a real service of the heart.
+But first of all may I be allowed to offer your Eminence a little
+present?”
+
+The Cardinal listened with a grave expression. He had been well
+acquainted with Santobono in the years when he had spent the summer at
+Frascati, at a princely residence which the Boccaneras had possessed
+there--a villa rebuilt in the seventeenth century, surrounded by a
+wonderful park, whose famous terrace overlooked the Campagna, stretching
+far and bare like the sea. This villa, however, had since been sold, and
+on some vineyards, which had fallen to Benedetta’s share, Count Prada,
+prior to the divorce proceedings, had begun to erect quite a district of
+little pleasure houses. In former times, when walking out, the Cardinal
+had condescended to enter and rest in the dwelling of Santobono, who
+officiated at an antique chapel dedicated to St. Mary of the Fields,
+without the town. The priest had his home in a half-ruined building
+adjoining this chapel, and the charm of the place was a walled garden
+which he cultivated himself with the passion of a true peasant.
+
+“As is my rule every year,” said he, placing his basket on the table, “I
+wished that your Eminence might taste my figs. They are the first of the
+season. I gathered them expressly this morning. You used to be so fond of
+them, your Eminence, when you condescended to gather them from the tree
+itself. You were good enough to tell me that there wasn’t another tree in
+the world that produced such fine figs.”
+
+The Cardinal could not help smiling. He was indeed very fond of figs, and
+Santobono spoke truly: his fig-tree was renowned throughout the district.
+“Thank you, my dear Abbé,” said Boccanera, “you remember my little
+failings. Well, and what can I do for you?”
+
+Again he became grave, for, in former times, there had been unpleasant
+discussions between him and the curate, a lack of agreement which had
+angered him. Born at Nemi, in the core of a fierce district, Santobono
+belonged to a violent family, and his eldest brother had died of a stab.
+He himself had always professed ardently patriotic opinions. It was said
+that he had all but taken up arms for Garibaldi; and, on the day when the
+Italians had entered Rome, force had been needed to prevent him from
+raising the flag of Italian unity above his roof. His passionate dream
+was to behold Rome mistress of the world, when the Pope and the King
+should have embraced and made cause together. Thus the Cardinal looked on
+him as a dangerous revolutionary, a renegade who imperilled Catholicism.
+
+“Oh! what your Eminence can do for me, what your Eminence can do if only
+condescending and willing!” repeated Santobono in an ardent voice,
+clasping his big knotty hands. And then, breaking off, he inquired, “Did
+not his Eminence Cardinal Sanguinetti explain my affair to your most
+reverend Eminence?”
+
+“No, the Cardinal simply advised me of your visit, saying that you had
+something to ask of me.”
+
+Whilst speaking Boccanera’s face had clouded over, and it was with
+increased sternness of manner that he again waited. He was aware that the
+priest had become Sanguinetti’s “client” since the latter had been in the
+habit of spending weeks together at his suburban see of Frascati. Walking
+in the shadow of every cardinal who is a candidate to the papacy, there
+are familiars of low degree who stake the ambition of their life on the
+possibility of that cardinal’s election. If he becomes Pope some day, if
+they themselves help him to the throne, they enter the great pontifical
+family in his train. It was related that Sanguinetti had once already
+extricated Santobono from a nasty difficulty: the priest having one day
+caught a marauding urchin in the act of climbing his wall, had beaten the
+little fellow with such severity that he had ultimately died of it.
+However, to Santobono’s credit it must be added that his fanatical
+devotion to the Cardinal was largely based upon the hope that he would
+prove the Pope whom men awaited, the Pope who would make Italy the
+sovereign nation of the world.
+
+“Well, this is my misfortune,” he said. “Your Eminence knows my brother
+Agostino, who was gardener at the villa for two years in your Eminence’s
+time. He is certainly a very pleasant and gentle young fellow, of whom
+nobody has ever complained. And so it is hard to understand how such an
+accident can have happened to him, but it seems that he has killed a man
+with a knife at Genzano, while walking in the street in the evening. I am
+dreadfully distressed about it, and would willingly give two fingers of
+my right hand to extricate him from prison. However, it occurred to me
+that your Eminence would not refuse me a certificate stating that
+Agostino was formerly in your Eminence’s service, and that your Eminence
+was always well pleased with his quiet disposition.”
+
+But the Cardinal flatly protested: “I was not at all pleased with
+Agostino. He was wildly violent, and I had to dismiss him precisely
+because he was always quarrelling with the other servants.”
+
+“Oh! how grieved I am to hear your Eminence say that! So it is true,
+then, my poor little Agostino’s disposition has really changed! Still
+there is always a way out of a difficulty, is there not? You can still
+give me a certificate, first arranging the wording of it. A certificate
+from your Eminence would have such a favourable effect upon the law
+officers.”
+
+“No doubt,” replied Boccanera; “I can understand that, but I will give no
+certificate.”
+
+“What! does your most reverend Eminence refuse my prayer?”
+
+“Absolutely! I know that you are a priest of perfect morality, that you
+discharge the duties of your ministry with strict punctuality, and that
+you would be deserving of high commendation were it not for your
+political fancies. Only your fraternal affection is now leading you
+astray. I cannot tell a lie to please you.”
+
+Santobono gazed at him in real stupefaction, unable to understand that a
+prince, an all-powerful cardinal, should be influenced by such petty
+scruples, when the entire question was a mere knife thrust, the most
+commonplace and frequent of incidents in the yet wild land of the old
+Roman castles.
+
+“A lie! a lie!” he muttered; “but surely it isn’t lying just to say what
+is good of a man, leaving out all the rest, especially when a man has
+good points as Agostino certainly has. In a certificate, too, everything
+depends on the words one uses.”
+
+He stubbornly clung to that idea; he could not conceive that a person
+should refuse to soften the rigour of justice by an ingenious
+presentation of the facts. However, on acquiring a certainty that he
+would obtain nothing, he made a gesture of despair, his livid face
+assuming an expression of violent rancour, whilst his black eyes flamed
+with restrained passion.
+
+“Well, well! each looks on truth in his own way,” he said. “I shall go
+back to tell his Eminence Cardinal Sanguinetti. And I beg your Eminence
+not to be displeased with me for having disturbed your Eminence to no
+purpose. By the way, perhaps the figs are not yet quite ripe; but I will
+take the liberty to bring another basketful towards the end of the
+season, when they will be quite nice and sweet. A thousand thanks and a
+thousand felicities to your most reverend Eminence.”
+
+Santobono went off backwards, his big bony figure bending double with
+repeated genuflections. Pierre, whom the scene had greatly interested, in
+him beheld a specimen of the petty clergy of Rome and its environs, of
+whom people had told him before his departure from Paris. This was not
+the _scagnozzo_, the wretched famished priest whom some nasty affair
+brings from the provinces, who seeks his daily bread on the pavements of
+Rome; one of the herd of begowned beggars searching for a livelihood
+among the crumbs of Church life, voraciously fighting for chance masses,
+and mingling with the lowest orders in taverns of the worst repute. Nor
+was this the country priest of distant parts, a man of crass ignorance
+and superstition, a peasant among the peasants, treated as an equal by
+his pious flock, which is careful not to mistake him for the Divinity,
+and which, whilst kneeling in all humility before the parish saint, does
+not bend before the man who from that saint derives his livelihood. At
+Frascati the officiating minister of a little church may receive a
+stipend of some nine hundred _lire_ a year,* and he has only bread and
+meat to buy if his garden yields him wine and fruit and vegetables. This
+one, Santobono, was not without education; he knew a little theology and
+a little history, especially the history of the past grandeur of Rome,
+which had inflamed his patriotic heart with the mad dream that universal
+domination would soon fall to the portion of renascent Rome, the capital
+of united Italy. But what an insuperable distance still remained between
+this petty Roman clergy, often very worthy and intelligent, and the high
+clergy, the high dignitaries of the Vatican! Nobody that was not at least
+a prelate seemed to count.
+
+ * About 36 pounds. One is reminded of Goldsmith’s line: “And
+ passing rich with forty pounds a year.”--Trans.
+
+“A thousand thanks to your most reverend Eminence, and may success attend
+all your Eminence’s desires.”
+
+With these words Santobono finally disappeared, and the Cardinal returned
+to Pierre, who also bowed preparatory to taking his leave.
+
+“To sum up the matter, Monsieur l’Abbé,” said Boccanera, “the affair of
+your book presents certain difficulties. As I have told you, I have no
+precise information, I have seen no documents. But knowing that my niece
+took an interest in you, I said a few words on the subject to Cardinal
+Sanguinetti, the Prefect of the Index, who was here just now. And he
+knows little more than I do, for nothing has yet left the Secretary’s
+hands. Still he told me that the denunciation emanated from personages of
+rank and influence, and applied to numerous pages of your work, in which
+it was said there were passages of the most deplorable character as
+regards both discipline and dogma.”
+
+Greatly moved by the idea that he had hidden foes, secret adversaries who
+pursued him in the dark, the young priest responded: “Oh! denounced,
+denounced! If your Eminence only knew how that word pains my heart! And
+denounced, too, for offences which were certainly involuntary, since my
+one ardent desire was the triumph of the Church! All I can do, then, is
+to fling myself at the feet of the Holy Father and entreat him to hear my
+defence.”
+
+Boccanera suddenly became very grave again. A stern look rested on his
+lofty brow as he drew his haughty figure to its full height. “His
+Holiness,” said he, “can do everything, even receive you, if such be his
+good pleasure, and absolve you also. But listen to me. I again advise you
+to withdraw your book yourself, to destroy it, simply and courageously,
+before embarking in a struggle in which you will reap the shame of being
+overwhelmed. Reflect on that.”
+
+Pierre, however, had no sooner spoken of the Pope than he had regretted
+it, for he realised that an appeal to the sovereign authority was
+calculated to wound the Cardinal’s feelings. Moreover, there was no
+further room for doubt. Boccanera would be against his book, and the
+utmost that he could hope for was to gain his neutrality by bringing
+pressure to bear on him through those about him. At the same time he had
+found the Cardinal very plain spoken, very frank, far removed from all
+the secret intriguing in which the affair of his book was involved, as he
+now began to realise; and so it was with deep respect and genuine
+admiration for the prelate’s strong and lofty character that he took
+leave of him.
+
+“I am infinitely obliged to your Eminence,” he said, “and I promise that
+I will carefully reflect upon all that your Eminence has been kind enough
+to say to me.”
+
+On returning to the ante-room, Pierre there found five or six persons who
+had arrived during his audience, and were now waiting. There was a
+bishop, a domestic prelate, and two old ladies, and as he drew near to
+Don Vigilio before retiring, he was surprised to find him conversing with
+a tall, fair young fellow, a Frenchman, who, also in astonishment,
+exclaimed, “What! are you here in Rome, Monsieur l’Abbé?”
+
+For a moment Pierre had hesitated. “Ah! I must ask your pardon, Monsieur
+Narcisse Habert,” he replied, “I did not at first recognise you! It was
+the less excusable as I knew that you had been an _attaché_ at our
+embassy here ever since last year.”
+
+Tall, slim, and elegant of appearance, Narcisse Habert had a clear
+complexion, with eyes of a bluish, almost mauvish, hue, a fair frizzy
+beard, and long curling fair hair cut short over the forehead in the
+Florentine fashion. Of a wealthy family of militant Catholics, chiefly
+members of the bar or bench, he had an uncle in the diplomatic
+profession, and this had decided his own career. Moreover, a place at
+Rome was marked out for him, for he there had powerful connections. He
+was a nephew by marriage of Cardinal Sarno, whose sister had married
+another of his uncles, a Paris notary; and he was also cousin german of
+Monsignor Gamba del Zoppo, a _Cameriere segreto_, and son of one of his
+aunts, who had married an Italian colonel. And in some measure for these
+reasons he had been attached to the embassy to the Holy See, his
+superiors tolerating his somewhat fantastic ways, his everlasting passion
+for art which sent him wandering hither and thither through Rome. He was
+moreover very amiable and extremely well-bred; and it occasionally
+happened, as was the case that morning, that with his weary and somewhat
+mysterious air he came to speak to one or another of the cardinals on
+some real matter of business in the ambassador’s name.
+
+So as to converse with Pierre at his ease, he drew him into the deep
+embrasure of one of the windows. “Ah! my dear Abbé, how pleased I am to
+see you!” said he. “You must remember what pleasant chats we had when we
+met at Cardinal Bergerot’s! I told you about some paintings which you
+were to see for your book, some miniatures of the fourteenth and
+fifteenth centuries. And now, you know, I mean to take possession of you.
+I’ll show you Rome as nobody else could show it to you. I’ve seen and
+explored everything. Ah! there are treasures, such treasures! But in
+truth there is only one supreme work; one always comes back to one’s
+particular passion. The Botticelli in the Sixtine Chapel--ah, the
+Botticelli!”
+
+His voice died away, and he made a faint gesture as if overcome by
+admiration. Then Pierre had to promise that he would place himself in his
+hands and accompany him to the Sixtine Chapel. “You know why I am here,”
+ at last said the young priest. “Proceedings have been taken against my
+book; it has been denounced to the Congregation of the Index.”
+
+“Your book! is it possible?” exclaimed Narcisse: “a book like that with
+pages recalling the delightful St. Francis of Assisi!” And thereupon he
+obligingly placed himself at Pierre’s disposal. “But our ambassador will
+be very useful to you,” he said. “He is the best man in the world, of
+charming affability, and full of the old French spirit. I will present
+you to him this afternoon or to-morrow morning at the latest; and since
+you desire an immediate audience with the Pope, he will endeavour to
+obtain one for you. His position naturally designates him as your
+intermediary. Still, I must confess that things are not always easily
+managed. Although the Holy Father is very fond of him, there are times
+when his Excellency fails, for the approaches are so extremely
+intricate.”
+
+Pierre had not thought of employing the ambassador’s good offices, for he
+had naïvely imagined that an accused priest who came to defend himself
+would find every door open. However, he was delighted with Narcisse’s
+offer, and thanked him as warmly as if the audience were already
+obtained.
+
+“Besides,” the young man continued, “if we encounter any difficulties I
+have relatives at the Vatican, as you know. I don’t mean my uncle the
+Cardinal, who would be of no use to us, for he never stirs out of his
+office at the Propaganda, and will never apply for anything. But my
+cousin, Monsignor Gamba del Zoppo, is very obliging, and he lives in
+intimacy with the Pope, his duties requiring his constant attendance on
+him. So, if necessary, I will take you to see him, and he will no doubt
+find a means of procuring you an interview, though his extreme prudence
+keeps him perpetually afraid of compromising himself. However, it’s
+understood, you may rely on me in every respect.”
+
+“Ah! my dear sir,” exclaimed Pierre, relieved and happy, “I heartily
+accept your offer. You don’t know what balm your words have brought me;
+for ever since my arrival everybody has been discouraging me, and you are
+the first to restore my strength by looking at things in the true French
+way.”
+
+Then, lowering his voice, he told the _attaché_ of his interview with
+Cardinal Boccanera, of his conviction that the latter would not help him,
+of the unfavourable information which had been given by Cardinal
+Sanguinetti, and of the rivalry which he had divined between the two
+prelates. Narcisse listened, smiling, and in his turn began to gossip
+confidentially. The rivalry which Pierre had mentioned, the premature
+contest for the tiara which Sanguinetti and Boccanera were waging,
+impelled to it by a furious desire to become the next Pope, had for a
+long time been revolutionising the black world. There was incredible
+intricacy in the depths of the affair; none could exactly tell who was
+pulling the strings, conducting the vast intrigue. As regards
+generalities it was simply known that Boccanera represented
+absolutism--the Church freed from all compromises with modern society,
+and waiting in immobility for the Deity to triumph over Satan, for Rome
+to be restored to the Holy Father, and for repentant Italy to perform
+penance for its sacrilege; whereas Sanguinetti, extremely politic and
+supple, was reported to harbour bold and novel ideas: permission to vote
+to be granted to all true Catholics,* a majority to be gained by this
+means in the Legislature; then, as a fatal corollary, the downfall of the
+House of Savoy, and the proclamation of a kind of republican federation
+of all the former petty States of Italy under the august protectorate of
+the Pope. On the whole, the struggle was between these two antagonistic
+elements--the first bent on upholding the Church by a rigorous
+maintenance of the old traditions, and the other predicting the fall of
+the Church if it did not follow the bent of the coming century. But all
+was steeped in so much mystery that people ended by thinking that, if the
+present Pope should live a few years longer, his successor would
+certainly be neither Boccanera nor Sanguinetti.
+
+ * Since the occupation of Rome by the Italian authorities, the
+ supporters of the Church, obedient to the prohibition of the
+ Vatican, have abstained from taking part in the political
+ elections, this being their protest against the new order of
+ things which they do not recognise. Various attempts have been
+ made, however, to induce the Pope to give them permission to
+ vote, many members of the Roman aristocracy considering the
+ present course impolitic and even harmful to the interests of
+ the Church.--Trans.
+
+All at once Pierre interrupted Narcisse: “And Monsignor Nani, do you know
+him? I spoke with him yesterday evening. And there he is coming in now!”
+
+Nani was indeed just entering the ante-room with his usual smile on his
+amiable pink face. His cassock of fine texture, and his sash of violet
+silk shone with discreet soft luxury. And he showed himself very amiable
+to Abbé Paparelli, who, accompanying him in all humility, begged him to
+be kind enough to wait until his Eminence should be able to receive him.
+
+“Oh! Monsignor Nani,” muttered Narcisse, becoming serious, “he is a man
+whom it is advisable to have for a friend.”
+
+Then, knowing Nani’s history, he related it in an undertone. Born at
+Venice, of a noble but ruined family which had produced heroes, Nani,
+after first studying under the Jesuits, had come to Rome to perfect
+himself in philosophy and theology at the Collegio Romano, which was then
+also under Jesuit management. Ordained when three and twenty, he had at
+once followed a nuncio to Bavaria as private secretary; and then had gone
+as _auditore_ to the nunciatures of Brussels and Paris, in which latter
+city he had lived for five years. Everything seemed to predestine him to
+diplomacy, his brilliant beginnings and his keen and encyclopaedical
+intelligence; but all at once he had been recalled to Rome, where he was
+soon afterwards appointed Assessor to the Holy Office. It was asserted at
+the time that this was done by the Pope himself, who, being well
+acquainted with Nani, and desirous of having a person he could depend
+upon at the Holy Office, had given instructions for his recall, saying
+that he could render far more services at Rome than abroad. Already a
+domestic prelate, Nani had also lately become a Canon of St. Peter’s and
+an apostolic prothonotary, with the prospect of obtaining a cardinal’s
+hat whenever the Pope should find some other favourite who would please
+him better as assessor.
+
+“Oh, Monsignor Nani!” continued Narcisse. “He’s a superior man,
+thoroughly well acquainted with modern Europe, and at the same time a
+very saintly priest, a sincere believer, absolutely devoted to the
+Church, with the substantial faith of an intelligent politician--a belief
+different, it is true, from the narrow gloomy theological faith which we
+know so well in France. And this is one of the reasons why you will
+hardly understand things here at first. The Roman prelates leave the
+Deity in the sanctuary and reign in His name, convinced that Catholicism
+is the human expression of the government of God, the only perfect and
+eternal government, beyond the pales of which nothing but falsehood and
+social danger can be found. While we in our country lag behind, furiously
+arguing whether there be a God or not, they do not admit that God’s
+existence can be doubted, since they themselves are his delegated
+ministers; and they entirely devote themselves to playing their parts as
+ministers whom none can dispossess, exercising their power for the
+greatest good of humanity, and devoting all their intelligence, all their
+energy to maintaining themselves as the accepted masters of the nations.
+As for Monsignor Nani, after being mixed up in the politics of the whole
+world, he has for ten years been discharging the most delicate functions
+in Rome, taking part in the most varied and most important affairs. He
+sees all the foreigners who come to Rome, knows everything, has a hand in
+everything. Add to this that he is extremely discreet and amiable, with a
+modesty which seems perfect, though none can tell whether, with his light
+silent footstep, he is not really marching towards the highest ambition,
+the purple of sovereignty.”
+
+“Another candidate for the tiara,” thought Pierre, who had listened
+passionately; for this man Nani interested him, caused him an instinctive
+disquietude, as though behind his pink and smiling face he could divine
+an infinity of obscure things. At the same time, however, the young
+priest but ill understood his friend, for he again felt bewildered by all
+this strange Roman world, so different from what he had expected.
+
+Nani had perceived the two young men and came towards them with his hand
+cordially outstretched “Ah! Monsieur l’Abbé Froment, I am happy to meet
+you again. I won’t ask you if you have slept well, for people always
+sleep well at Rome. Good-day, Monsieur Habert; your health has kept good
+I hope, since I met you in front of Bernini’s Santa Teresa, which you
+admire so much.* I see that you know one another. That is very nice. I
+must tell you, Monsieur l’Abbé, that Monsieur Habert is a passionate
+lover of our city; he will be able to show you all its finest sights.”
+
+ * The allusion is to a statue representing St. Theresa in ecstasy,
+ with the Angel of Death descending to transfix her with his dart.
+ It stands in a transept of Sta. Maria della Vittoria.--Trans.
+
+Then, in his affectionate way, he at once asked for information
+respecting Pierre’s interview with the Cardinal. He listened attentively
+to the young man’s narrative, nodding his head at certain passages, and
+occasionally restraining his sharp smile. The Cardinal’s severity and
+Pierre’s conviction that he would accord him no support did not at all
+astonish Nani. It seemed as if he had expected that result. However, on
+hearing that Cardinal Sanguinetti had been there that morning, and had
+pronounced the affair of the book to be very serious, he appeared to lose
+his self-control for a moment, for he spoke out with sudden vivacity:
+
+“It can’t be helped, my dear child, my intervention came too late.
+Directly I heard of the proceedings I went to his Eminence Cardinal
+Sanguinetti to tell him that the result would be an immense advertisement
+for your book. Was it sensible? What was the use of it? We know that you
+are inclined to be carried away by your ideas, that you are an
+enthusiast, and are prompt to do battle. So what advantage should we gain
+by embarrassing ourselves with the revolt of a young priest who might
+wage war against us with a book of which some thousands of copies have
+been sold already? For my part I desired that nothing should be done. And
+I must say that the Cardinal, who is a man of sense, was of the same
+mind. He raised his arms to heaven, went into a passion, and exclaimed
+that he was never consulted, that the blunder was already committed
+beyond recall, and that it was impossible to prevent process from taking
+its course since the matter had already been brought before the
+Congregation, in consequence of denunciations from authoritative sources,
+based on the gravest motives. Briefly, as he said, the blunder was
+committed, and I had to think of something else.”
+
+All at once Nani paused. He had just noticed that Pierre’s ardent eyes
+were fixed upon his own, striving to penetrate his meaning. A faint flush
+then heightened the pinkiness of his complexion, whilst in an easy way he
+continued, unwilling to reveal how annoyed he was at having said too
+much: “Yes, I thought of helping you with all the little influence I
+possess, in order to extricate you from the worries in which this affair
+will certainly land you.”
+
+An impulse of revolt was stirring Pierre, who vaguely felt that he was
+perhaps being made game of. Why should he not be free to declare his
+faith, which was so pure, so free from personal considerations, so full
+of glowing Christian charity? “Never,” said he, “will I withdraw; never
+will I myself suppress my book, as I am advised to do. It would be an act
+of cowardice and falsehood, for I regret nothing, I disown nothing. If I
+believe that my book brings a little truth to light I cannot destroy it
+without acting criminally both towards myself and towards others. No,
+never! You hear me--never!”
+
+Silence fell. But almost immediately he resumed: “It is at the knees of
+the Holy Father that I desire to make that declaration. He will
+understand me, he will approve me.”
+
+Nani no longer smiled; henceforth his face remained as it were closed. He
+seemed to be studying the sudden violence of the young priest with
+curiosity; then sought to calm him with his own tranquil kindliness. “No
+doubt, no doubt,” said he. “There is certainly great sweetness in
+obedience and humility. Still I can understand that, before anything
+else, you should desire to speak to his Holiness. And afterwards you will
+see--is that not so?--you will see--”
+
+Then he evinced a lively interest in the suggested application for an
+audience. He expressed keen regret that Pierre had not forwarded that
+application from Paris, before even coming to Rome: in that course would
+have rested the best chance of a favourable reply. Bother of any kind was
+not liked at the Vatican, and if the news of the young priest’s presence
+in Rome should only spread abroad, and the motives of his journey be
+discussed, all would be lost. Then, on learning that Narcisse had offered
+to present Pierre to the French ambassador, Nani seemed full of anxiety,
+and deprecated any such proceeding: “No, no! don’t do that--it would be
+most imprudent. In the first place you would run the risk of embarrassing
+the ambassador, whose position is always delicate in affairs of this
+kind. And then, too, if he failed--and my fear is that he might
+fail--yes, if he failed it would be all over; you would no longer have
+the slightest chance of obtaining an audience by any other means. For the
+Vatican would not like to hurt the ambassador’s feelings by yielding to
+other influence after resisting his.”
+
+Pierre anxiously glanced at Narcisse, who wagged his head, embarrassed
+and hesitating. “The fact is,” the _attaché_ at last murmured, “we lately
+solicited an audience for a high French personage and it was refused,
+which was very unpleasant for us. Monsignor is right. We must keep our
+ambassador in reserve, and only utilise him when we have exhausted all
+other means.” Then, noticing Pierre’s disappointment, he added
+obligingly: “Our first visit therefore shall be for my cousin at the
+Vatican.”
+
+Nani, his attention again roused, looked at the young man in
+astonishment. “At the Vatican? You have a cousin there?”
+
+“Why, yes--Monsignor Gamba del Zoppo.”
+
+“Gamba! Gamba! Yes, yes, excuse me, I remember now. Ah! so you thought of
+Gamba to bring influence to bear on his Holiness? That’s an idea, no
+doubt; one must see--one must see.”
+
+He repeated these words again and again as if to secure time to see into
+the matter himself, to weigh the pros and cons of the suggestion.
+Monsignor Gamba del Zoppo was a worthy man who played no part at the
+Papal Court, whose nullity indeed had become a byword at the Vatican. His
+childish stories, however, amused the Pope, whom he greatly flattered,
+and who was fond of leaning on his arm while walking in the gardens. It
+was during these strolls that Gamba easily secured all sorts of little
+favours. However, he was a remarkable poltroon, and had such an intense
+fear of losing his influence that he never risked a request without
+having convinced himself by long meditation that no possible harm could
+come to him through it.
+
+“Well, do you know, the idea is not a bad one,” Nani at last declared.
+“Yes, yes, Gamba can secure the audience for you, if he is willing. I
+will see him myself and explain the matter.”
+
+At the same time Nani did not cease advising extreme caution. He even
+ventured to say that it was necessary to be on one’s guard with the papal
+_entourage_, for, alas! it was a fact his Holiness was so good, and had
+such a blind faith in the goodness of others, that he had not always
+chosen his familiars with the critical care which he ought to have
+displayed. Thus one never knew to what sort of man one might be applying,
+or in what trap one might be setting one’s foot. Nani even allowed it to
+be understood that on no account ought any direct application to be made
+to his Eminence the Secretary of State, for even his Eminence was not a
+free agent, but found himself encompassed by intrigues of such intricacy
+that his best intentions were paralysed. And as Nani went on discoursing
+in this fashion, in a very gentle, extremely unctuous manner, the Vatican
+appeared like some enchanted castle, guarded by jealous and treacherous
+dragons--a castle where one must not take a step, pass through a doorway,
+risk a limb, without having carefully assured oneself that one would not
+leave one’s whole body there to be devoured.
+
+Pierre continued listening, feeling colder and colder at heart, and again
+sinking into uncertainty. “_Mon Dieu_!” he exclaimed, “I shall never know
+how to act. You discourage me, Monsignor.”
+
+At this Nani’s cordial smile reappeared. “I, my dear child? I should be
+sorry to do so. I only want to repeat to you that you must wait and do
+nothing. Avoid all feverishness especially. There is no hurry, I assure
+you, for it was only yesterday that a _consultore_ was chosen to report
+upon your book, so you have a good full month before you. Avoid
+everybody, live in such a way that people shall be virtually ignorant of
+your existence, visit Rome in peace and quietness--that is the best
+course you can adopt to forward your interests.” Then, taking one of the
+priest’s hands between both his own, so aristocratic, soft, and plump, he
+added: “You will understand that I have my reasons for speaking to you
+like this. I should have offered my own services; I should have made it a
+point of honour to take you straight to his Holiness, had I thought it
+advisable. But I do not wish to mix myself up in the matter at this
+stage; I realise only too well that at the present moment we should
+simply make sad work of it. Later on--you hear me--later on, in the event
+of nobody else succeeding, I myself will obtain you an audience; I
+formally promise it. But meanwhile, I entreat you, refrain from using
+those words ‘a new religion,’ which, unfortunately, occur in your book,
+and which I heard you repeat again only last night. There can be no new
+religion, my dear child; there is but one eternal religion, which is
+beyond all surrender and compromise--the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman
+religion. And at the same time leave your Paris friends to themselves.
+Don’t rely too much on Cardinal Bergerot, whose lofty piety is not
+sufficiently appreciated in Rome. I assure you that I am speaking to you
+as a friend.”
+
+Then, seeing how disabled Pierre appeared to be, half overcome already,
+no longer knowing in what direction to begin his campaign, he again
+strove to comfort him: “Come, come, things will right themselves;
+everything will end for the best, both for the welfare of the Church and
+your own. And now you must excuse me, I must leave you; I shall not be
+able to see his Eminence to-day, for it is impossible for me to wait any
+longer.”
+
+Abbé Paparelli, whom Pierre had noticed prowling around with his ears
+cocked, now hastened forward and declared to Monsignor Nani that there
+were only two persons to be received before him. But the prelate very
+graciously replied that he would come back again at another time, for the
+affair which he wished to lay before his Eminence was in no wise
+pressing. Then he withdrew, courteously bowing to everybody.
+
+Narcisse Habert’s turn came almost immediately afterwards. However,
+before entering the throne-room he pressed Pierre’s hand, repeating, “So
+it is understood. I will go to see my cousin at the Vatican to-morrow,
+and directly I get a reply I will let you know. We shall meet again soon
+I hope.”
+
+It was now past twelve o’clock, and the only remaining visitor was one of
+the two old ladies who seemed to have fallen asleep. At his little
+secretarial table Don Vigilio still sat covering huge sheets of yellow
+paper with fine handwriting, from which he only lifted his eyes at
+intervals to glance about him distrustfully, and make sure that nothing
+threatened him.
+
+In the mournful silence which fell around, Pierre lingered for yet
+another moment in the deep embrasure of the window. Ah! what anxiety
+consumed his poor, tender, enthusiastic heart! On leaving Paris things
+had seemed so simple, so natural to him! He was unjustly accused, and he
+started off to defend himself, arrived and flung himself at the feet of
+the Holy Father, who listened to him indulgently. Did not the Pope
+personify living religion, intelligence to understand, justice based upon
+truth? And was he not, before aught else, the Father, the delegate of
+divine forgiveness and mercy, with arms outstretched towards all the
+children of the Church, even the guilty ones? Was it not meet, then, that
+he should leave his door wide open so that the humblest of his sons might
+freely enter to relate their troubles, confess their transgressions,
+explain their conduct, imbibe comfort from the source of eternal loving
+kindness? And yet on the very first day of his, Pierre’s, arrival, the
+doors closed upon him with a bang; he felt himself sinking into a hostile
+sphere, full of traps and pitfalls. One and all cried out to him
+“Beware!” as if he were incurring the greatest dangers in setting one
+foot before the other. His desire to see the Pope became an extraordinary
+pretension, so difficult of achievement that it set the interests and
+passions and influences of the whole Vatican agog. And there was endless
+conflicting advice, long-discussed manoeuvring, all the strategy of
+generals leading an army to victory, and fresh complications ever arising
+in the midst of a dim stealthy swarming of intrigues. Ah! good Lord! how
+different all this was from the charitable reception that Pierre had
+anticipated: the pastor’s house standing open beside the high road for
+the admission of all the sheep of the flock, both those that were docile
+and those that had gone astray.
+
+That which began to frighten Pierre, however, was the evil, the
+wickedness, which he could divine vaguely stirring in the gloom: Cardinal
+Bergerot suspected, dubbed a Revolutionary, deemed so compromising that
+he, Pierre, was advised not to mention his name again! The young priest
+once more saw Cardinal Boccanera’s pout of disdain while speaking of his
+colleague. And then Monsignor Nani had warned him not to repeat those
+words “a new religion,” as if it were not clear to everybody that they
+simply signified the return of Catholicism to the primitive purity of
+Christianity! Was that one of the crimes denounced to the Congregation of
+the Index? He had begun to suspect who his accusers were, and felt
+alarmed, for he was now conscious of secret subterranean plotting, a
+great stealthy effort to strike him down and suppress his work. All that
+surrounded him became suspicious. If he listened to advice and
+temporised, it was solely to follow the same politic course as his
+adversaries, to learn to know them before acting. He would spend a few
+days in meditation, in surveying and studying that black world of Rome
+which to him had proved so unexpected. But, at the same time, in the
+revolt of his apostle-like faith, he swore, even as he had said to Nani,
+that he would never yield, never change either a page or a line of his
+book, but maintain it in its integrity in the broad daylight as the
+unshakable testimony of his belief. Even were the book condemned by the
+Index, he would not tender submission, withdraw aught of it. And should
+it become necessary he would quit the Church, he would go even as far as
+schism, continuing to preach the new religion and writing a new book,
+_Real Rome_, such as he now vaguely began to espy.
+
+However, Don Vigilio had ceased writing, and gazed so fixedly at Pierre
+that the latter at last stepped up to him politely in order to take
+leave. And then the secretary, yielding, despite his fears, to a desire
+to confide in him, murmured, “He came simply on your account, you know;
+he wanted to ascertain the result of your interview with his Eminence.”
+
+It was not necessary for Don Vigilio to mention Nani by name; Pierre
+understood. “Really, do you think so?” he asked.
+
+“Oh! there is no doubt of it. And if you take my advice you will do what
+he desires with a good grace, for it is absolutely certain that you will
+do it later on.”
+
+These words brought Pierre’s disquietude and exasperation to a climax. He
+went off with a gesture of defiance. They would see if he would ever
+yield.
+
+The three ante-rooms which he again crossed appeared to him blacker,
+emptier, more lifeless than ever. In the second one Abbé Paparelli
+saluted him with a little silent bow; in the first the sleepy lackey did
+not even seem to see him. A spider was weaving its web between the
+tassels of the great red hat under the _baldacchino_. Would not the
+better course have been to set the pick at work amongst all that rotting
+past, now crumbling into dust, so that the sunlight might stream in
+freely and restore to the purified soil the fruitfulness of youth?
+
+
+
+
+
+PART II.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+ON the afternoon of that same day Pierre, having leisure before him, at
+once thought of beginning his peregrinations through Rome by a visit on
+which he had set his heart. Almost immediately after the publication of
+“New Rome” he had been deeply moved and interested by a letter addressed
+to him from the Eternal City by old Count Orlando Prada, the hero of
+Italian independence and reunion, who, although unacquainted with him,
+had written spontaneously after a first hasty perusal of his book. And
+the letter had been a flaming protest, a cry of the patriotic faith still
+young in the heart of that aged man, who accused him of having forgotten
+Italy and claimed Rome, the new Rome, for the country which was at last
+free and united. Correspondence had ensued, and the priest, while
+clinging to his dream of Neo-Catholicism saving the world, had from afar
+grown attached to the man who wrote to him with such glowing love of
+country and freedom. He had eventually informed him of his journey, and
+promised to call upon him. But the hospitality which he had accepted at
+the Boccanera mansion now seemed to him somewhat of an impediment; for
+after Benedetta’s kindly, almost affectionate, greeting, he felt that he
+could not, on the very first day and with out warning her, sally forth to
+visit the father of the man from whom she had fled and from whom she now
+asked the Church to part her for ever. Moreover, old Orlando was actually
+living with his son in a little palazzo which the latter had erected at
+the farther end of the Via Venti Settembre.
+
+Before venturing on any step Pierre resolved to confide in the Contessina
+herself; and this seemed the easier as Viscount Philibert de la Choue had
+told him that the young woman still retained a filial feeling, mingled
+with admiration, for the old hero. And indeed, at the very first words
+which he uttered after lunch, Benedetta promptly retorted: “But go,
+Monsieur l’Abbé, go at once! Old Orlando, you know, is one of our
+national glories--you must not be surprised to hear me call him by his
+Christian name. All Italy does so, from pure affection and gratitude. For
+my part I grew up among people who hated him, who likened him to Satan.
+It was only later that I learned to know him, and then I loved him, for
+he is certainly the most just and gentle man in the world.”
+
+She had begun to smile, but timid tears were moistening her eyes at the
+recollection, no doubt, of the year of suffering she had spent in her
+husband’s house, where her only peaceful hours had been those passed with
+the old man. And in a lower and somewhat tremulous voice she added: “As
+you are going to see him, tell him from me that I still love him, and,
+whatever happens, shall never forget his goodness.”
+
+So Pierre set out, and whilst he was driving in a cab towards the Via
+Venti Settembre, he recalled to mind the heroic story of old Orlando’s
+life which had been told him in Paris. It was like an epic poem, full of
+faith, bravery, and the disinterestedness of another age.
+
+Born of a noble house of Milan, Count Orlando Prada had learnt to hate
+the foreigner at such an early age that, when scarcely fifteen, he
+already formed part of a secret society, one of the ramifications of the
+antique Carbonarism. This hatred of Austrian domination had been
+transmitted from father to son through long years, from the olden days of
+revolt against servitude, when the conspirators met by stealth in
+abandoned huts, deep in the recesses of the forests; and it was rendered
+the keener by the eternal dream of Italy delivered, restored to herself,
+transformed once more into a great sovereign nation, the worthy daughter
+of those who had conquered and ruled the world. Ah! that land of whilom
+glory, that unhappy, dismembered, parcelled Italy, the prey of a crowd of
+petty tyrants, constantly invaded and appropriated by neighbouring
+nations--how superb and ardent was that dream to free her from such long
+opprobrium! To defeat the foreigner, drive out the despots, awaken the
+people from the base misery of slavery, to proclaim Italy free and Italy
+united--such was the passion which then inflamed the young with
+inextinguishable ardour, which made the youthful Orlando’s heart leap
+with enthusiasm. He spent his early years consumed by holy indignation,
+proudly and impatiently longing for an opportunity to give his blood for
+his country, and to die for her if he could not deliver her.
+
+Quivering under the yoke, wasting his time in sterile conspiracies, he
+was living in retirement in the old family residence at Milan, when,
+shortly after his marriage and his twenty-fifth birthday, tidings came to
+him of the flight of Pius IX and the Revolution of Rome.* And at once he
+quitted everything, wife and hearth, and hastened to Rome as if summoned
+thither by the call of destiny. This was the first time that he set out
+scouring the roads for the attainment of independence; and how
+frequently, yet again and again, was he to start upon fresh campaigns,
+never wearying, never disheartened! And now it was that he became
+acquainted with Mazzini, and for a moment was inflamed with enthusiasm
+for that mystical unitarian Republican. He himself indulged in an ardent
+dream of a Universal Republic, adopted the Mazzinian device, “_Dio e
+popolo_” (God and the people), and followed the procession which wended
+its way with great pomp through insurrectionary Rome. The time was one of
+vast hopes, one when people already felt a need of renovated religion,
+and looked to the coming of a humanitarian Christ who would redeem the
+world yet once again. But before long a man, a captain of the ancient
+days, Giuseppe Garibaldi, whose epic glory was dawning, made Orlando
+entirely his own, transformed him into a soldier whose sole cause was
+freedom and union. Orlando loved Garibaldi as though the latter were a
+demi-god, fought beside him in defence of Republican Rome, took part in
+the victory of Rieti over the Neapolitans, and followed the stubborn
+patriot in his retreat when he sought to succour Venice, compelled as he
+was to relinquish the Eternal City to the French army of General Oudinot,
+who came thither to reinstate Pius IX. And what an extraordinary and
+madly heroic adventure was that of Garibaldi and Venice! Venice, which
+Manin, another great patriot, a martyr, had again transformed into a
+republican city, and which for long months had been resisting the
+Austrians! And Garibaldi starts with a handful of men to deliver the
+city, charters thirteen fishing barks, loses eight in a naval engagement,
+is compelled to return to the Roman shores, and there in all wretchedness
+is bereft of his wife, Anita, whose eyes he closes before returning to
+America, where, once before, he had awaited the hour of insurrection. Ah!
+that land of Italy, which in those days rumbled from end to end with the
+internal fire of patriotism, where men of faith and courage arose in
+every city, where riots and insurrections burst forth on all sides like
+eruptions--it continued, in spite of every check, its invincible march to
+freedom!
+
+ * It was on November 24, 1848, that the Pope fled to Gaeta,
+ consequent upon the insurrection which had broken out nine
+ days previously.--Trans.
+
+Orlando returned to his young wife at Milan, and for two years lived
+there, almost in concealment, devoured by impatience for the glorious
+morrow which was so long in coming. Amidst his fever a gleam of happiness
+softened his heart; a son, Luigi, was born to him, but the birth killed
+the mother, and joy was turned into mourning. Then, unable to remain any
+longer at Milan, where he was spied upon, tracked by the police,
+suffering also too grievously from the foreign occupation, Orlando
+decided to realise the little fortune remaining to him, and to withdraw
+to Turin, where an aunt of his wife took charge of the child. Count di
+Cavour, like a great statesman, was then already seeking to bring about
+independence, preparing Piedmont for the decisive _rôle_ which it was
+destined to play. It was the time when King Victor Emmanuel evinced
+flattering cordiality towards all the refugees who came to him from every
+part of Italy, even those whom he knew to be Republicans, compromised and
+flying the consequences of popular insurrection. The rough, shrewd House
+of Savoy had long been dreaming of bringing about Italian unity to the
+profit of the Piedmontese monarchy, and Orlando well knew under what
+master he was taking service; but in him the Republican already went
+behind the patriot, and indeed he had begun to question the possibility
+of a united Republican Italy, placed under the protectorate of a liberal
+Pope, as Mazzini had at one time dreamed. Was that not indeed a chimera
+beyond realisation which would devour generation after generation if one
+obstinately continued to pursue it? For his part, he did not wish to die
+without having slept in Rome as one of the conquerors. Even if liberty
+was to be lost, he desired to see his country united and erect, returning
+once more to life in the full sunlight. And so it was with feverish
+happiness that he enlisted at the outset of the war of 1859; and his
+heart palpitated with such force as almost to rend his breast, when,
+after Magenta, he entered Milan with the French army--Milan which he had
+quitted eight years previously, like an exile, in despair. The treaty of
+Villafranca which followed Solferino proved a bitter deception: Venetia
+was not secured, Venice remained enthralled. Nevertheless the Milanese
+was conquered from the foe, and then Tuscany and the duchies of Parma and
+Modena voted for annexation. So, at all events, the nucleus of the
+Italian star was formed; the country had begun to build itself up afresh
+around victorious Piedmont.
+
+Then, in the following year, Orlando plunged into epopœia once more.
+Garibaldi had returned from his two sojourns in America, with the halo of
+a legend round him--paladin-like feats in the pampas of Uruguay, an
+extraordinary passage from Canton to Lima--and he had returned to take
+part in the war of 1859, forestalling the French army, overthrowing an
+Austrian marshal, and entering Como, Bergamo, and Brescia. And now, all
+at once, folks heard that he had landed at Marsala with only a thousand
+men--the Thousand of Marsala, the ever illustrious handful of braves!
+Orlando fought in the first rank, and Palermo after three days’
+resistance was carried. Becoming the dictator’s favourite lieutenant, he
+helped him to organise a government, then crossed the straits with him,
+and was beside him on the triumphal entry into Naples, whose king had
+fled. There was mad audacity and valour at that time, an explosion of the
+inevitable; and all sorts of supernatural stories were current--Garibaldi
+invulnerable, protected better by his red shirt than by the strongest
+armour, Garibaldi routing opposing armies like an archangel, by merely
+brandishing his flaming sword! The Piedmontese on their side had defeated
+General Lamoriciere at Castelfidardo, and were invading the States of the
+Church. And Orlando was there when the dictator, abdicating power, signed
+the decree which annexed the Two Sicilies to the Crown of Italy; even as
+subsequently he took part in that forlorn attempt on Rome, when the
+rageful cry was “Rome or Death!”--an attempt which came to a tragic issue
+at Aspromonte, when the little army was dispersed by the Italian troops,
+and Garibaldi, wounded, was taken prisoner, and sent back to the solitude
+of his island of Caprera, where he became but a fisherman and a tiller of
+the rocky soil.*
+
+ * M. Zola’s brief but glowing account of Garibaldi’s glorious
+ achievements has stirred many memories in my mind. My uncle,
+ Frank Vizetelly, the war artist of the _Illustrated London
+ News_, whose bones lie bleaching somewhere in the Soudan, was
+ one of Garibaldi’s constant companions throughout the memorable
+ campaign of the Two Sicilies, and afterwards he went with him
+ to Caprera. Later, in 1870, my brother, Edward Vizetelly, acted
+ as orderly-officer to the general when he offered the help of
+ his sword to France.--Trans.
+
+Six years of waiting again went by, and Orlando still dwelt at Turin,
+even after Florence had been chosen as the new capital. The Senate had
+acclaimed Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy; and Italy was indeed almost
+built, it lacked only Rome and Venice. But the great battles seemed all
+over, the epic era was closed; Venice was to be won by defeat. Orlando
+took part in the unlucky battle of Custozza, where he received two
+wounds, full of furious grief at the thought that Austria should be
+triumphant. But at that same moment the latter, defeated at Sadowa,
+relinquished Venetia, and five months later Orlando satisfied his desire
+to be in Venice participating in the joy of triumph, when Victor Emmanuel
+made his entry amidst the frantic acclamations of the people. Rome alone
+remained to be won, and wild impatience urged all Italy towards the city;
+but friendly France had sworn to maintain the Pope, and this acted as a
+check. Then, for the third time, Garibaldi dreamt of renewing the feats
+of the old-world legends, and threw himself upon Rome like a soldier of
+fortune illumined by patriotism and free from every tie. And for the
+third time Orlando shared in that fine heroic madness destined to be
+vanquished at Mentana by the Pontifical Zouaves supported by a small
+French corps. Again wounded, he came back to Turin in almost a dying
+condition. But, though his spirit quivered, he had to resign himself; the
+situation seemed to have no outlet; only an upheaval of the nations could
+give Rome to Italy.
+
+All at once the thunderclap of Sedan, of the downfall of France,
+resounded through the world; and then the road to Rome lay open, and
+Orlando, having returned to service in the regular army, was with the
+troops who took up position in the Campagna to ensure the safety of the
+Holy See, as was said in the letter which Victor Emmanuel wrote to Pius
+IX. There was, however, but the shadow of an engagement: General
+Kanzler’s Pontifical Zouaves were compelled to fall back, and Orlando was
+one of the first to enter the city by the breach of the Porta Pia. Ah!
+that twentieth of September--that day when he experienced the greatest
+happiness of his life--a day of delirium, of complete triumph, which
+realised the dream of so many years of terrible contest, the dream for
+which he had sacrificed rest and fortune, and given both body and mind!
+
+Then came more than ten happy years in conquered Rome--in Rome adored,
+flattered, treated with all tenderness, like a woman in whom one has
+placed one’s entire hope. From her he awaited so much national vigour,
+such a marvellous resurrection of strength and glory for the endowment of
+the young nation. Old Republican, old insurrectional soldier that he was,
+he had been obliged to adhere to the monarchy, and accept a senatorship.
+But then did not Garibaldi himself--Garibaldi his divinity--likewise call
+upon the King and sit in parliament? Mazzini alone, rejecting all
+compromises, was unwilling to rest content with a united and independent
+Italy that was not Republican. Moreover, another consideration influenced
+Orlando, the future of his son Luigi, who had attained his eighteenth
+birthday shortly after the occupation of Rome. Though he, Orlando, could
+manage with the crumbs which remained of the fortune he had expended in
+his country’s service, he dreamt of a splendid destiny for the child of
+his heart. Realising that the heroic age was over, he desired to make a
+great politician of him, a great administrator, a man who should be
+useful to the mighty nation of the morrow; and it was on this account
+that he had not rejected royal favour, the reward of long devotion,
+desiring, as he did, to be in a position to help, watch, and guide Luigi.
+Besides, was he himself so old, so used-up, as to be unable to assist in
+organisation, even as he had assisted in conquest? Struck by his son’s
+quick intelligence in business matters, perhaps also instinctively
+divining that the battle would now continue on financial and economic
+grounds, he obtained him employment at the Ministry of Finances. And
+again he himself lived on, dreaming, still enthusiastically believing in
+a splendid future, overflowing with boundless hope, seeing Rome double
+her population, grow and spread with a wild vegetation of new districts,
+and once more, in his loving enraptured eyes, become the queen of the
+world.
+
+But all at once came a thunderbolt. One morning, as he was going
+downstairs, Orlando was stricken with paralysis. Both his legs suddenly
+became lifeless, as heavy as lead. It was necessary to carry him up
+again, and never since had he set foot on the street pavement. At that
+time he had just completed his fifty-sixth year, and for fourteen years
+since he had remained in his arm-chair, as motionless as stone, he who
+had so impetuously trod every battlefield of Italy. It was a pitiful
+business, the collapse of a hero. And worst of all, from that room where
+he was for ever imprisoned, the old soldier beheld the slow crumbling of
+all his hopes, and fell into dismal melancholy, full of unacknowledged
+fear for the future. Now that the intoxication of action no longer dimmed
+his eyes, now that he spent his long and empty days in thought, his
+vision became clear. Italy, which he had desired to see so powerful, so
+triumphant in her unity, was acting madly, rushing to ruin, possibly to
+bankruptcy. Rome, which to him had ever been the one necessary capital,
+the city of unparalleled glory, requisite for the sovereign people of
+to-morrow, seemed unwilling to take upon herself the part of a great
+modern metropolis; heavy as a corpse she weighed with all her centuries
+on the bosom of the young nation. Moreover, his son Luigi distressed him.
+Rebellious to all guidance, the young man had become one of the devouring
+offsprings of conquest, eager to despoil that Italy, that Rome, which his
+father seemed to have desired solely in order that he might pillage them
+and batten on them. Orlando had vainly opposed Luigi’s departure from the
+ministry, his participation in the frantic speculations on land and house
+property to which the mad building of the new districts had given rise.
+But at the same time he loved his son, and was reduced to silence,
+especially now when everything had succeeded with Luigi, even his most
+risky financial ventures, such as the transformation of the Villa
+Montefiori into a perfect town--a colossal enterprise in which many of
+great wealth had been ruined, but whence he himself had emerged with
+millions. And it was in part for this reason that Orlando, sad and
+silent, had obstinately restricted himself to one small room on the third
+floor of the little palazzo erected by Luigi in the Via Venti
+Settembre--a room where he lived cloistered with a single servant,
+subsisting on his own scanty income, and accepting nothing but that
+modest hospitality from his son.
+
+As Pierre reached that new Via Venti Settembre* which climbs the side and
+summit of the Viminal hill, he was struck by the heavy sumptuousness of
+the new “palaces,” which betokened among the moderns the same taste for
+the huge that marked the ancient Romans. In the warm afternoon glow,
+blent of purple and old gold, the broad, triumphant thoroughfare, with
+its endless rows of white house-fronts, bore witness to new Rome’s proud
+hope of futurity and sovereign power. And Pierre fairly gasped when he
+beheld the Palazzo delle Finanze, or Treasury, a gigantic erection, a
+cyclopean cube with a profusion of columns, balconies, pediments, and
+sculptured work, to which the building mania had given birth in a day of
+immoderate pride. And on the other side of the street, a little higher
+up, before reaching the Villa Bonaparte, stood Count Prada’s little
+palazzo.
+
+ * The name--Twentieth September Street--was given to the
+ thoroughfare to commemorate the date of the occupation
+ of Rome by Victor Emmanuel’s army.--Trans.
+
+After discharging his driver, Pierre for a moment remained somewhat
+embarrassed. The door was open, and he entered the vestibule; but, as at
+the mansion in the Via Giulia, no door porter or servant was to be seen.
+So he had to make up his mind to ascend the monumental stairs, which with
+their marble balustrades seemed to be copied, on a smaller scale, from
+those of the Palazzo Boccanera. And there was much the same cold
+bareness, tempered, however, by a carpet and red door-hangings, which
+contrasted vividly with the white stucco of the walls. The
+reception-rooms, sixteen feet high, were on the first floor, and as a
+door chanced to be ajar he caught a glimpse of two _salons_, one
+following the other, and both displaying quite modern richness, with a
+profusion of silk and velvet hangings, gilt furniture, and lofty mirrors
+reflecting a pompous assemblage of stands and tables. And still there was
+nobody, not a soul, in that seemingly forsaken abode, which exhaled
+nought of woman’s presence. Indeed Pierre was on the point of going down
+again to ring, when a footman at last presented himself.
+
+“Count Prada, if you please.”
+
+The servant silently surveyed the little priest, and seemed to
+understand. “The father or the son?” he asked.
+
+“The father, Count Orlando Prada.”
+
+“Oh! that’s on the third floor.” And he condescended to add: “The little
+door on the right-hand side of the landing. Knock loudly if you wish to
+be admitted.”
+
+Pierre indeed had to knock twice, and then a little withered old man of
+military appearance, a former soldier who had remained in the Count’s
+service, opened the door and apologised for the delay by saying that he
+had been attending to his master’s legs. Immediately afterwards he
+announced the visitor, and the latter, after passing through a dim and
+narrow ante-room, was lost in amazement on finding himself in a
+relatively small chamber, extremely bare and bright, with wall-paper of a
+light hue studded with tiny blue flowers. Behind a screen was an iron
+bedstead, the soldier’s pallet, and there was no other furniture than the
+arm-chair in which the cripple spent his days, with a table of black wood
+placed near him, and covered with books and papers, and two old
+straw-seated chairs which served for the accommodation of the infrequent
+visitors. A few planks, fixed to one of the walls, did duty as
+book-shelves. However, the broad, clear, curtainless window overlooked
+the most admirable panorama of Rome that could be desired.
+
+Then the room disappeared from before Pierre’s eyes, and with a sudden
+shock of deep emotion he only beheld old Orlando, the old blanched lion,
+still superb, broad, and tall. A forest of white hair crowned his
+powerful head, with its thick mouth, fleshy broken nose, and large,
+sparkling, black eyes. A long white beard streamed down with the vigour
+of youth, curling like that of an ancient god. By that leonine muzzle one
+divined what great passions had growled within; but all, carnal and
+intellectual alike, had erupted in patriotism, in wild bravery, and
+riotous love of independence. And the old stricken hero, his torso still
+erect, was fixed there on his straw-seated arm-chair, with lifeless legs
+buried beneath a black wrapper. Alone did his arms and hands live, and
+his face beam with strength and intelligence.
+
+Orlando turned towards his servant, and gently said to him: “You can go
+away, Batista. Come back in a couple of hours.” Then, looking Pierre full
+in the face, he exclaimed in a voice which was still sonorous despite his
+seventy years: “So it’s you at last, my dear Monsieur Froment, and we
+shall be able to chat at our ease. There, take that chair, and sit down
+in front of me.”
+
+He had noticed the glance of surprise which the young priest had cast
+upon the bareness of the room, and he gaily added: “You will excuse me
+for receiving you in my cell. Yes, I live here like a monk, like an old
+invalided soldier, henceforth withdrawn from active life. My son long
+begged me to take one of the fine rooms downstairs. But what would have
+been the use of it? I have no needs, and I scarcely care for feather
+beds, for my old bones are accustomed to the hard ground. And then too I
+have such a fine view up here, all Rome presenting herself to me, now
+that I can no longer go to her.”
+
+With a wave of the hand towards the window he sought to hide the
+embarrassment, the slight flush which came to him each time that he thus
+excused his son; unwilling as he was to tell the true reason, the scruple
+of probity which had made him obstinately cling to his bare pauper’s
+lodging.
+
+“But it is very nice, the view is superb!” declared Pierre, in order to
+please him. “I am for my own part very glad to see you, very glad to be
+able to grasp your valiant hands, which accomplished so many great
+things.”
+
+Orlando made a fresh gesture, as though to sweep the past away. “Pooh!
+pooh! all that is dead and buried. Let us talk about you, my dear
+Monsieur Froment, you who are young and represent the present; and
+especially about your book, which represents the future! Ah! if you only
+knew how angry your book, your ‘New Rome,’ made me first of all.”
+
+He began to laugh, and took the book from off the table near him; then,
+tapping on its cover with his big, broad hand, he continued: “No, you
+cannot imagine with what starts of protest I read your book. The Pope,
+and again the Pope, and always the Pope! New Rome to be created by the
+Pope and for the Pope, to triumph thanks to the Pope, to be given to the
+Pope, and to fuse its glory in the glory of the Pope! But what about us?
+What about Italy? What about all the millions which we have spent in
+order to make Rome a great capital? Ah! only a Frenchman, and a Frenchman
+of Paris, could have written such a book! But let me tell you, my dear
+sir, if you are ignorant of it, that Rome has become the capital of the
+kingdom of Italy, that we here have King Humbert, and the Italian people,
+a whole nation which must be taken into account, and which means to keep
+Rome--glorious, resuscitated Rome--for itself!”
+
+This juvenile ardour made Pierre laugh in turn. “Yes, yes,” said he, “you
+wrote me that. Only what does it matter from my point of view? Italy is
+but one nation, a part of humanity, and I desire concord and fraternity
+among all the nations, mankind reconciled, believing, and happy. Of what
+consequence, then, is any particular form of government, monarchy or
+republic, of what consequence is any question of a united and independent
+country, if all mankind forms but one free people subsisting on truth and
+justice?”
+
+To only one word of this enthusiastic outburst did Orlando pay attention.
+In a lower tone, and with a dreamy air, he resumed: “Ah! a republic. In
+my youth I ardently desired one. I fought for one; I conspired with
+Mazzini, a saintly man, a believer, who was shattered by collision with
+the absolute. And then, too, one had to bow to practical necessities; the
+most obstinate ended by submitting. And nowadays would a republic save
+us? In any case it would differ but little from our parliamentary
+monarchy. Just think of what goes on in France! And so why risk a
+revolution which would place power in the hands of the extreme
+revolutionists, the anarchists? We fear all that, and this explains our
+resignation. I know very well that a few think they can detect salvation
+in a republican federation, a reconstitution of all the former little
+states in so many republics, over which Rome would preside. The Vatican
+would gain largely by any such transformation; still one cannot say that
+it endeavours to bring it about; it simply regards the eventuality
+without disfavour. But it is a dream, a dream!”
+
+At this Orlando’s gaiety came back to him, with even a little gentle
+irony: “You don’t know, I suppose, what it was that took my fancy in your
+book--for, in spite of all my protests, I have read it twice. Well, what
+pleased me was that Mazzini himself might almost have written it at one
+time. Yes! I found all my youth again in your pages, all the wild hope of
+my twenty-fifth year, the new religion of a humanitarian Christ, the
+pacification of the world effected by the Gospel! Are you aware that,
+long before your time, Mazzini desired the renovation of Christianity? He
+set dogma and discipline on one side and only retained morals. And it was
+new Rome, the Rome of the people, which he would have given as see to the
+universal Church, in which all the churches of the past were to be
+fused--Rome, the eternal and predestined city, the mother and queen,
+whose domination was to arise anew to ensure the definitive happiness of
+mankind! Is it not curious that all the present-day Neo-Catholicism, the
+vague, spiritualistic awakening, the evolution towards communion and
+Christian charity, with which some are making so much stir, should be
+simply a return of the mystical and humanitarian ideas of 1848? Alas! I
+saw all that, I believed and burned, and I know in what a fine mess those
+flights into the azure of mystery landed us! So it cannot be helped, I
+lack confidence.”
+
+Then, as Pierre on his side was growing impassioned and sought to reply,
+he stopped him: “No, let me finish. I only want to convince you how
+absolutely necessary it was that we should take Rome and make her the
+capital of Italy. Without Rome new Italy could not have existed; Rome
+represented the glory of ancient time; in her dust lay the sovereign
+power which we wished to re-establish; she brought strength, beauty,
+eternity to those who possessed her. Standing in the middle of our
+country, she was its heart, and must assuredly become its life as soon as
+she should be awakened from the long sleep of ruin. Ah! how we desired
+her, amidst victory and amidst defeat, through years and years of
+frightful impatience! For my part I loved her, and longed for her, far
+more than for any woman, with my blood burning, and in despair that I
+should be growing old. And when we possessed her, our folly was a desire
+to behold her huge, magnificent, and commanding all at once, the equal of
+the other great capitals of Europe--Berlin, Paris, and London. Look at
+her! she is still my only love, my only consolation now that I am
+virtually dead, with nothing alive in me but my eyes.”
+
+With the same gesture as before, he directed Pierre’s attention to the
+window. Under the glowing sky Rome stretched out in its immensity,
+empurpled and gilded by the slanting sunrays. Across the horizon, far,
+far away, the trees of the Janiculum stretched a green girdle, of a
+limpid emerald hue, whilst the dome of St. Peter’s, more to the left,
+showed palely blue, like a sapphire bedimmed by too bright a light. Then
+came the low town, the old ruddy city, baked as it were by centuries of
+burning summers, soft to the eye and beautiful with the deep life of the
+past, an unbounded chaos of roofs, gables, towers, _campanili_, and
+cupolas. But, in the foreground under the window, there was the new
+city--that which had been building for the last five and twenty
+years--huge blocks of masonry piled up side by side, still white with
+plaster, neither the sun nor history having as yet robed them in purple.
+And in particular the roofs of the colossal Palazzo delle Finanze had a
+disastrous effect, spreading out like far, bare steppes of cruel
+hideousness. And it was upon the desolation and abomination of all the
+newly erected piles that the eyes of the old soldier of conquest at last
+rested.
+
+Silence ensued. Pierre felt the faint chill of hidden, unacknowledged
+sadness pass by, and courteously waited.
+
+“I must beg your pardon for having interrupted you just now,” resumed
+Orlando; “but it seems to me that we cannot talk about your book to any
+good purpose until you have seen and studied Rome closely. You only
+arrived yesterday, did you not? Well, stroll about the city, look at
+things, question people, and I think that many of your ideas will change.
+I shall particularly like to know your impression of the Vatican since
+you have come here solely to see the Pope and defend your book against
+the Index. Why should we discuss things to-day, if facts themselves are
+calculated to bring you to other views, far more readily than the finest
+speeches which I might make? It is understood, you will come to see me
+again, and we shall then know what we are talking about, and, maybe,
+agree together.”
+
+“Why certainly, you are too kind,” replied Pierre. “I only came to-day to
+express my gratitude to you for having read my book so attentively, and
+to pay homage to one of the glories of Italy.”
+
+Orlando was not listening, but remained for a moment absorbed in thought,
+with his eyes still resting upon Rome. And overcome, despite himself, by
+secret disquietude, he resumed in a low voice as though making an
+involuntary confession: “We have gone too fast, no doubt. There were
+expenses of undeniable utility--the roads, ports, and railways. And it
+was necessary to arm the country also; I did not at first disapprove of
+the heavy military burden. But since then how crushing has been the war
+budget--a war which has never come, and the long wait for which has
+ruined us. Ah! I have always been the friend of France. I only reproach
+her with one thing, that she has failed to understand the position in
+which we were placed, the vital reasons which compelled us to ally
+ourselves with Germany. And then there are the thousand millions of
+_lire_* swallowed up in Rome! That was the real madness; pride and
+enthusiasm led us astray. Old and solitary as I’ve been for many years
+now, given to deep reflection, I was one of the first to divine the
+pitfall, the frightful financial crisis, the deficit which would bring
+about the collapse of the nation. I shouted it from the housetops, to my
+son, to all who came near me; but what was the use? They didn’t listen;
+they were mad, still buying and selling and building, with no thought but
+for gambling booms and bubbles. But you’ll see, you’ll see. And the worst
+is that we are not situated as you are; we haven’t a reserve of men and
+money in a dense peasant population, whose thrifty savings are always at
+hand to fill up the gaps caused by big catastrophes. There is no social
+rise among our people as yet; fresh men don’t spring up out of the lower
+classes to reinvigorate the national blood, as they constantly do in your
+country. And, besides, the people are poor; they have no stockings to
+empty. The misery is frightful, I must admit it. Those who have any money
+prefer to spend it in the towns in a petty way rather than to risk it in
+agricultural or manufacturing enterprise. Factories are but slowly built,
+and the land is almost everywhere tilled in the same primitive manner as
+it was two thousand years ago. And then, too, take Rome--Rome, which
+didn’t make Italy, but which Italy made its capital to satisfy an ardent,
+overpowering desire--Rome, which is still but a splendid bit of scenery,
+picturing the glory of the centuries, and which, apart from its
+historical splendour, has only given us its degenerate papal population,
+swollen with ignorance and pride! Ah! I loved Rome too well, and I still
+love it too well to regret being now within its walls. But, good heavens!
+what insanity its acquisition brought us, what piles of money it has cost
+us, and how heavily and triumphantly it weighs us down! Look! look!”
+
+ * 40,000,000 pounds.
+
+He waved his hand as he spoke towards the livid roofs of the Palazzo
+delle Finanze, that vast and desolate steppe, as though he could see the
+harvest of glory all stripped off and bankruptcy appear with its fearful,
+threatening bareness. Restrained tears were dimming his eyes, and he
+looked superbly pitiful with his expression of baffled hope and grievous
+disquietude, with his huge white head, the muzzle of an old blanched lion
+henceforth powerless and caged in that bare, bright room, whose
+poverty-stricken aspect was instinct with so much pride that it seemed,
+as it were, a protest against the monumental splendour of the whole
+surrounding district! So those were the purposes to which the conquest
+had been put! And to think that he was impotent, henceforth unable to
+give his blood and his soul as he had done in the days gone by.
+
+“Yes, yes,” he exclaimed in a final outburst; “one gave everything, heart
+and brain, one’s whole life indeed, so long as it was a question of
+making the country one and independent. But, now that the country is
+ours, just try to stir up enthusiasm for the reorganisation of its
+finances! There’s no ideality in that! And this explains why, whilst the
+old ones are dying off, not a new man comes to the front among the young
+ones--”
+
+All at once he stopped, looking somewhat embarrassed, yet smiling at his
+feverishness. “Excuse me,” he said, “I’m off again, I’m incorrigible. But
+it’s understood, we’ll leave that subject alone, and you’ll come back
+here, and we’ll chat together when you’ve seen everything.”
+
+From that moment he showed himself extremely pleasant, and it was
+apparent to Pierre that he regretted having said so much, by the
+seductive affability and growing affection which he now displayed. He
+begged the young priest to prolong his sojourn, to abstain from all hasty
+judgments on Rome, and to rest convinced that, at bottom, Italy still
+loved France. And he was also very desirous that France should love
+Italy, and displayed genuine anxiety at the thought that perhaps she
+loved her no more. As at the Boccanera mansion, on the previous evening,
+Pierre realised that an attempt was being made to persuade him to
+admiration and affection. Like a susceptible woman with secret misgivings
+respecting the attractive power of her beauty, Italy was all anxiety with
+regard to the opinion of her visitors, and strove to win and retain their
+love.
+
+However, Orlando again became impassioned when he learnt that Pierre was
+staying at the Boccanera mansion, and he made a gesture of extreme
+annoyance on hearing, at that very moment, a knock at the outer door.
+“Come in!” he called; but at the same time he detained Pierre, saying,
+“No, no, don’t go yet; I wish to know--”
+
+But a lady came in--a woman of over forty, short and extremely plump, and
+still attractive with her small features and pretty smile swamped in fat.
+She was a blonde, with green, limpid eyes; and, fairly well dressed in a
+sober, nicely fitting mignonette gown, she looked at once pleasant,
+modest, and shrewd.
+
+“Ah! it’s you, Stefana,” said the old man, letting her kiss him.
+
+“Yes, uncle, I was passing by and came up to see how you were getting
+on.”
+
+The visitor was the Signora Sacco, niece of Prada and a Neapolitan by
+birth, her mother having quitted Milan to marry a certain Pagani, a
+Neapolitan banker, who had afterwards failed. Subsequent to that disaster
+Stefana had married Sacco, then merely a petty post-office clerk. He,
+later on, wishing to revive his father-in-law’s business, had launched
+into all sorts of terrible, complicated, suspicious affairs, which by
+unforeseen luck had ended in his election as a deputy. Since he had
+arrived in Rome, to conquer the city in his turn, his wife had been
+compelled to assist his devouring ambition by dressing well and opening a
+_salon_; and, although she was still a little awkward, she rendered him
+many real services, being very economical and prudent, a thorough good
+housewife, with all the sterling, substantial qualities of Northern Italy
+which she had inherited from her mother, and which showed conspicuously
+beside the turbulence and carelessness of her husband, in whom flared
+Southern Italy with its perpetual, rageful appetite.
+
+Despite his contempt for Sacco, old Orlando had retained some affection
+for his niece, in whose veins flowed blood similar to his own. He thanked
+her for her kind inquiries, and then at once spoke of an announcement
+which he had read in the morning papers, for he suspected that the deputy
+had sent his wife to ascertain his opinion.
+
+“Well, and that ministry?” he asked.
+
+The Signora had seated herself and made no haste to reply, but glanced at
+the newspapers strewn over the table. “Oh! nothing is settled yet,” she
+at last responded; “the newspapers spoke out too soon. The Prime Minister
+sent for Sacco, and they had a talk together. But Sacco hesitates a good
+deal; he fears that he has no aptitude for the Department of Agriculture.
+Ah! if it were only the Finances--However, in any case, he would not have
+come to a decision without consulting you. What do you think of it,
+uncle?”
+
+He interrupted her with a violent wave of the hand: “No, no, I won’t mix
+myself up in such matters!”
+
+To him the rapid success of that adventurer Sacco, that schemer and
+gambler who had always fished in troubled waters, was an abomination, the
+beginning of the end. His son Luigi certainly distressed him; but it was
+even worse to think that--whilst Luigi, with his great intelligence and
+many remaining fine qualities, was nothing at all--Sacco, on the other
+hand, Sacco, blunderhead and ever-famished battener that he was, had not
+merely slipped into parliament, but was now, it seemed, on the point of
+securing office! A little, swarthy, dry man he was, with big, round eyes,
+projecting cheekbones, and prominent chin. Ever dancing and chattering,
+he was gifted with a showy eloquence, all the force of which lay in his
+voice--a voice which at will became admirably powerful or gentle! And
+withal an insinuating man, profiting by every opportunity, wheedling and
+commanding by turn.
+
+“You hear, Stefana,” said Orlando; “tell your husband that the only
+advice I have to give him is to return to his clerkship at the
+post-office, where perhaps he may be of use.”
+
+What particularly filled the old soldier with indignation and despair was
+that such a man, a Sacco, should have fallen like a bandit on Rome--on
+that Rome whose conquest had cost so many noble efforts. And in his turn
+Sacco was conquering the city, was carrying it off from those who had won
+it by such hard toil, and was simply using it to satisfy his wild passion
+for power and its attendant enjoyments. Beneath his wheedling air there
+was the determination to devour everything. After the victory, while the
+spoil lay there, still warm, the wolves had come. It was the North that
+had made Italy, whereas the South, eager for the quarry, simply rushed
+upon the country, preyed upon it. And beneath the anger of the old
+stricken hero of Italian unity there was indeed all the growing
+antagonism of the North towards the South--the North industrious,
+economical, shrewd in politics, enlightened, full of all the great modern
+ideas, and the South ignorant and idle, bent on enjoying life
+immediately, amidst childish disorder in action, and an empty show of
+fine sonorous words.
+
+Stefana had begun to smile in a placid way while glancing at Pierre, who
+had approached the window. “Oh, you say that, uncle,” she responded; “but
+you love us well all the same, and more than once you have given me
+myself some good advice, for which I’m very thankful to you. For
+instance, there’s that affair of Attilio’s--”
+
+She was alluding to her son, the lieutenant, and his love affair with
+Celia, the little Princess Buongiovanni, of which all the drawing-rooms,
+white and black alike, were talking.
+
+“Attilio--that’s another matter!” exclaimed Orlando. “He and you are both
+of the same blood as myself, and it’s wonderful how I see myself again in
+that fine fellow. Yes, he is just the same as I was at his age,
+good-looking and brave and enthusiastic! I’m paying myself compliments,
+you see. But, really now, Attilio warms my heart, for he is the future,
+and brings me back some hope. Well, and what about his affair?”
+
+“Oh! it gives us a lot of worry, uncle. I spoke to you about it before,
+but you shrugged your shoulders, saying that in matters of that kind all
+that the parents had to do was to let the lovers settle their affairs
+between them. Still, we don’t want everybody to repeat that we are urging
+our son to get the little princess to elope with him, so that he may
+afterwards marry her money and title.”
+
+At this Orlando indulged in a frank outburst of gaiety: “That’s a fine
+scruple! Was it your husband who instructed you to tell me of it? I know,
+however, that he affects some delicacy in this matter. For my own part, I
+believe myself to be as honest as he is, and I can only repeat that, if I
+had a son like yours, so straightforward and good, and candidly loving, I
+should let him marry whomsoever he pleased in his own way. The
+Buongiovannis--good heavens! the Buongiovannis--why, despite all their
+rank and lineage and the money they still possess, it will be a great
+honour for them to have a handsome young man with a noble heart as their
+son-in-law!”
+
+Again did Stefana assume an expression of placid satisfaction. She had
+certainly only come there for approval. “Very well, uncle,” she replied,
+“I’ll repeat that to my husband, and he will pay great attention to it;
+for if you are severe towards him he holds you in perfect veneration. And
+as for that ministry--well, perhaps nothing will be done, Sacco will
+decide according to circumstances.”
+
+She rose and took her leave, kissing the old soldier very affectionately
+as on her arrival. And she complimented him on his good looks, declaring
+that she found him as handsome as ever, and making him smile by speaking
+of a lady who was still madly in love with him. Then, after acknowledging
+the young priest’s silent salutation by a slight bow, she went off, once
+more wearing her modest and sensible air.
+
+For a moment Orlando, with his eyes turned towards the door, remained
+silent, again sad, reflecting no doubt on all the difficult, equivocal
+present, so different from the glorious past. But all at once he turned
+to Pierre, who was still waiting. “And so, my friend,” said he, “you are
+staying at the Palazzo Boccanera? Ah! what a grievous misfortune there
+has been on that side too!”
+
+However, when the priest had told him of his conversation with Benedetta,
+and of her message that she still loved him and would never forget his
+goodness to her, no matter whatever happened, he appeared moved and his
+voice trembled: “Yes, she has a good heart, she has no spite. But what
+would you have? She did not love Luigi, and he was possibly violent.
+There is no mystery about the matter now, and I can speak to you freely,
+since to my great grief everybody knows what has happened.”
+
+Then Orlando abandoned himself to his recollections, and related how keen
+had been his delight on the eve of the marriage at the thought that so
+lovely a creature would become his daughter, and set some youth and charm
+around his invalid’s arm-chair. He had always worshipped beauty, and
+would have had no other love than woman, if his country had not seized
+upon the best part of him. And Benedetta on her side loved him, revered
+him, constantly coming up to spend long hours with him, sharing his poor
+little room, which at those times became resplendent with all the divine
+grace that she brought with her. With her fresh breath near him, the pure
+scent she diffused, the caressing womanly tenderness with which she
+surrounded him, he lived anew. But, immediately afterwards, what a
+frightful drama and how his heart had bled at his inability to reconcile
+the husband and the wife! He could not possibly say that his son was in
+the wrong in desiring to be the loved and accepted spouse. At first
+indeed he had hoped to soften Benedetta, and throw her into Luigi’s arms.
+But when she had confessed herself to him in tears, owning her old love
+for Dario, and her horror of belonging to another, he realised that she
+would never yield. And a whole year had then gone by; he had lived for a
+whole year imprisoned in his arm-chair, with that poignant drama
+progressing beneath him in those luxurious rooms whence no sound even
+reached his ears. How many times had he not listened, striving to hear,
+fearing atrocious quarrels, in despair at his inability to prove still
+useful by creating happiness. He knew nothing by his son, who kept his
+own counsel; he only learnt a few particulars from Benedetta at intervals
+when emotion left her defenceless; and that marriage in which he had for
+a moment espied the much-needed alliance between old and new Rome, that
+unconsummated marriage filled him with despair, as if it were indeed the
+defeat of every hope, the final collapse of the dream which had filled
+his life. And he himself had ended by desiring the divorce, so unbearable
+had become the suffering caused by such a situation.
+
+“Ah! my friend!” he said to Pierre; “never before did I so well
+understand the fatality of certain antagonism, the possibility of working
+one’s own misfortune and that of others, even when one has the most
+loving heart and upright mind!”
+
+But at that moment the door again opened, and this time, without
+knocking, Count Luigi Prada came in. And after rapidly bowing to the
+visitor, who had risen, he gently took hold of his father’s hands and
+felt them, as if fearing that they might be too warm or too cold.
+
+“I’ve just arrived from Frascati, where I had to sleep,” said he; “for
+the interruption of all that building gives me a lot of worry. And I’m
+told that you spent a bad night!”
+
+“No, I assure you.”
+
+“Oh! I knew you wouldn’t own it. But why will you persist in living up
+here without any comfort? All this isn’t suited to your age. I should be
+so pleased if you would accept a more comfortable room where you might
+sleep better.”
+
+“No, no--I know that you love me well, my dear Luigi. But let me do as my
+old head tells me. That’s the only way to make me happy.”
+
+Pierre was much struck by the ardent affection which sparkled in the eyes
+of the two men as they gazed at one another, face to face. This seemed to
+him very touching and beautiful, knowing as he did how many contrary
+ideas and actions, how many moral divergencies separated them. And he
+next took an interest in comparing them physically. Count Luigi Prada,
+shorter, more thick-set than his father, had, however, much the same
+strong energetic head, crowned with coarse black hair, and the same frank
+but somewhat stern eyes set in a face of clear complexion, barred by
+thick moustaches. But his mouth differed--a sensual, voracious mouth it
+was, with wolfish teeth--a mouth of prey made for nights of rapine, when
+the only question is to bite, and tear, and devour others. And for this
+reason, when some praised the frankness in his eyes, another would
+retort: “Yes, but I don’t like his mouth.” His feet were large, his hands
+plump and over-broad, but admirably cared for.
+
+And Pierre marvelled at finding him such as he had anticipated. He knew
+enough of his story to picture in him a hero’s son spoilt by conquest,
+eagerly devouring the harvest garnered by his father’s glorious sword.
+And he particularly studied how the father’s virtues had deflected and
+become transformed into vices in the son--the most noble qualities being
+perverted, heroic and disinterested energy lapsing into a ferocious
+appetite for possession, the man of battle leading to the man of booty,
+since the great gusts of enthusiasm no longer swept by, since men no
+longer fought, since they remained there resting, pillaging, and
+devouring amidst the heaped-up spoils. And the pity of it was that the
+old hero, the paralytic, motionless father beheld it all--beheld the
+degeneration of his son, the speculator and company promoter gorged with
+millions!
+
+However, Orlando introduced Pierre. “This is Monsieur l’Abbé Pierre
+Froment, whom I spoke to you about,” he said, “the author of the book
+which I gave you to read.”
+
+Luigi Prada showed himself very amiable, at once talking of home with an
+intelligent passion like one who wished to make the city a great modern
+capital. He had seen Paris transformed by the Second Empire; he had seen
+Berlin enlarged and embellished after the German victories; and,
+according to him, if Rome did not follow the movement, if it did not
+become the inhabitable capital of a great people, it was threatened with
+prompt death: either a crumbling museum or a renovated, resuscitated
+city--those were the alternatives.*
+
+ * Personally I should have thought the example of Berlin a great
+ deterrent. The enlargement and embellishment of the Prussian
+ capital, after the war of 1870, was attended by far greater
+ roguery and wholesale swindling than even the previous
+ transformation of Paris. Thousands of people too were ruined,
+ and instead of an increase of prosperity the result was the
+ very reverse.--Trans.
+
+Greatly struck, almost gained over already, Pierre listened to this
+clever man, charmed with his firm, clear mind. He knew how skilfully
+Prada had manœuvred in the affair of the Villa Montefiori, enriching
+himself when every one else was ruined, having doubtless foreseen the
+fatal catastrophe even while the gambling passion was maddening the
+entire nation. However, the young priest could already detect marks of
+weariness, precocious wrinkles and a fall of the lips, on that
+determined, energetic face, as though its possessor were growing tired of
+the continual struggle that he had to carry on amidst surrounding
+downfalls, the shock of which threatened to bring the most firmly
+established fortunes to the ground. It was said that Prada had recently
+had grave cause for anxiety; and indeed there was no longer any solidity
+to be found; everything might be swept away by the financial crisis which
+day by day was becoming more and more serious. In the case of Luigi,
+sturdy son though he was of Northern Italy, a sort of degeneration had
+set in, a slow rot, caused by the softening, perversive influence of
+Rome. He had there rushed upon the satisfaction of every appetite, and
+prolonged enjoyment was exhausting him. This, indeed, was one of the
+causes of the deep silent sadness of Orlando, who was compelled to
+witness the swift deterioration of his conquering race, whilst Sacco, the
+Italian of the South--served as it were by the climate, accustomed to the
+voluptuous atmosphere, the life of those sun-baked cities compounded of
+the dust of antiquity--bloomed there like the natural vegetation of a
+soil saturated with the crimes of history, and gradually grasped
+everything, both wealth and power.
+
+As Orlando spoke of Stefana’s visit to his son, Sacco’s name was
+mentioned. Then, without another word, the two men exchanged a smile. A
+rumour was current that the Minister of Agriculture, lately deceased,
+would perhaps not be replaced immediately, and that another minister
+would take charge of the department pending the next session of the
+Chamber.
+
+Next the Palazzo Boccanera was mentioned, and Pierre, his interest
+awakened, became more attentive. “Ah!” exclaimed Count Luigi, turning to
+him, “so you are staying in the Via Giulia? All the Rome of olden time
+sleeps there in the silence of forgetfulness.”
+
+With perfect ease he went on to speak of the Cardinal and even of
+Benedetta--“the Countess,” as he called her. But, although he was careful
+to let no sign of anger escape him, the young priest could divine that he
+was secretly quivering, full of suffering and spite. In him the
+enthusiastic energy of his father appeared in a baser, degenerate form.
+Quitting the yet handsome Princess Flavia in his passion for Benedetta,
+her divinely beautiful niece, he had resolved to make the latter his own
+at any cost, determined to marry her, to struggle with her and overcome
+her, although he knew that she loved him not, and that he would almost
+certainly wreck his entire life. Rather than relinquish her, however, he
+would have set Rome on fire. And thus his hopeless suffering was now
+great indeed: this woman was but his wife in name, and so torturing was
+the thought of her disdain, that at times, however calm his outward
+demeanour, he was consumed by a jealous vindictive sensual madness that
+did not even recoil from the idea of crime.
+
+“Monsieur l’Abbé is acquainted with the situation,” sadly murmured old
+Orlando.
+
+His son responded by a wave of the hand, as though to say that everybody
+was acquainted with it. “Ah! father,” he added, “but for you I should
+never have consented to take part in those proceedings for annulling the
+marriage! The Countess would have found herself compelled to return here,
+and would not nowadays be deriding us with her lover, that cousin of
+hers, Dario!”
+
+At this Orlando also waved his hand, as if in protest.
+
+“Oh! it’s a fact, father,” continued Luigi. “Why did she flee from here
+if it wasn’t to go and live with her lover? And indeed, in my opinion,
+it’s scandalous that a Cardinal’s palace should shelter such goings-on!”
+
+This was the report which he spread abroad, the accusation which he
+everywhere levelled against his wife, of publicly carrying on a shameless
+_liaison_. In reality, however, he did not believe a word of it, being
+too well acquainted with Benedetta’s firm rectitude, and her
+determination to belong to none but the man she loved, and to him only in
+marriage. However, in Prada’s eyes such accusations were not only fair
+play but also very efficacious.
+
+And now, although he turned pale with covert exasperation, and laughed a
+hard, vindictive, cruel laugh, he went on to speak in a bantering tone of
+the proceedings for annulling the marriage, and in particular of the plea
+put forward by Benedetta’s advocate Morano. And at last his language
+became so free that Orlando, with a glance towards the priest, gently
+interposed: “Luigi! Luigi!”
+
+“Yes, you are right, father, I’ll say no more,” thereupon added the young
+Count. “But it’s really abominable and ridiculous. Lisbeth, you know, is
+highly amused at it.”
+
+Orlando again looked displeased, for when visitors were present he did
+not like his son to refer to the person whom he had just named. Lisbeth
+Kauffmann, very blonde and pink and merry, was barely thirty years of
+age, and belonged to the Roman foreign colony. For two years past she had
+been a widow, her husband having died at Rome whither he had come to
+nurse a complaint of the lungs. Thenceforward free, and sufficiently well
+off, she had remained in the city by taste, having a marked predilection
+for art, and painting a little, herself. In the Via Principe Amadeo, in
+the new Viminal district, she had purchased a little palazzo, and
+transformed a large apartment on its second floor into a studio hung with
+old stuffs, and balmy in every season with the scent of flowers. The
+place was well known to tolerant and intellectual society. Lisbeth was
+there found in perpetual jubilation, clad in a long blouse, somewhat of a
+_gamine_ in her ways, trenchant too and often bold of speech, but
+nevertheless capital company, and as yet compromised with nobody but
+Prada. Their _liaison_ had begun some four months after his wife had left
+him, and now Lisbeth was near the time of becoming a mother. This she in
+no wise concealed, but displayed such candid tranquillity and happiness
+that her numerous acquaintances continued to visit her as if there were
+nothing in question, so facile and free indeed is the life of the great
+cosmopolitan continental cities. Under the circumstances which his wife’s
+suit had created, Prada himself was not displeased at the turn which
+events had taken with regard to Lisbeth, but none the less his incurable
+wound still bled.
+
+There could be no compensation for the bitterness of Benedetta’s disdain,
+it was she for whom his heart burned, and he dreamt of one day wreaking
+on her a tragic punishment.
+
+Pierre, knowing nothing of Lisbeth, failed to understand the allusions of
+Orlando and his son. But realising that there was some embarrassment
+between them, he sought to take countenance by picking from off the
+littered table a thick book which, to his surprise, he found to be a
+French educational work, one of those manuals for the _baccalaureat_,*
+containing a digest of the knowledge which the official programmes
+require. It was but a humble, practical, elementary work, yet it
+necessarily dealt with all the mathematical, physical, chemical, and
+natural sciences, thus broadly outlining the intellectual conquests of
+the century, the present phase of human knowledge.
+
+ * The examination for the degree of bachelor, which degree is
+ the necessary passport to all the liberal professions in France.
+ M. Zola, by the way, failed to secure it, being ploughed for
+ “insufficiency in literature”!--Trans.
+
+“Ah!” exclaimed Orlando, well pleased with the diversion, “you are
+looking at the book of my old friend Théophile Morin. He was one of the
+thousand of Marsala, you know, and helped us to conquer Sicily and
+Naples. A hero! But for more than thirty years now he has been living in
+France again, absorbed in the duties of his petty professorship, which
+hasn’t made him at all rich. And so he lately published that book, which
+sells very well in France it seems; and it occurred to him that he might
+increase his modest profits on it by issuing translations, an Italian one
+among others. He and I have remained brothers, and thinking that my
+influence would prove decisive, he wishes to utilise it. But he is
+mistaken; I fear, alas! that I shall be unable to get anybody to take up
+his book.”
+
+At this Luigi Prada, who had again become very composed and amiable,
+shrugged his shoulders slightly, full as he was of the scepticism of his
+generation which desired to maintain things in their actual state so as
+to derive the greatest profit from them. “What would be the good of it?”
+ he murmured; “there are too many books already!”
+
+“No, no!” the old man passionately retorted, “there can never be too many
+books! We still and ever require fresh ones! It’s by literature, not by
+the sword, that mankind will overcome falsehood and injustice and attain
+to the final peace of fraternity among the nations--Oh! you may smile; I
+know that you call these ideas my fancies of ‘48, the fancies of a
+greybeard, as people say in France. But it is none the less true that
+Italy is doomed, if the problem be not attacked from down below, if the
+people be not properly fashioned. And there is only one way to make a
+nation, to create men, and that is to educate them, to develop by
+educational means the immense lost force which now stagnates in ignorance
+and idleness. Yes, yes, Italy is made, but let us make an Italian nation.
+And give us more and more books, and let us ever go more and more forward
+into science and into light, if we wish to live and to be healthy, good,
+and strong!”
+
+With his torso erect, with his powerful leonine muzzle flaming with the
+white brightness of his beard and hair, old Orlando looked superb. And in
+that simple, candid chamber, so touching with its intentional poverty, he
+raised his cry of hope with such intensity of feverish faith, that before
+the young priest’s eyes there arose another figure--that of Cardinal
+Boccanera, erect and black save for his snow-white hair, and likewise
+glowing with heroic beauty in his crumbling palace whose gilded ceilings
+threatened to fall about his head! Ah! the magnificent stubborn men of
+the past, the believers, the old men who still show themselves more
+virile, more ardent than the young! Those two represented the opposite
+poles of belief; they had not an idea, an affection in common, and in
+that ancient city of Rome, where all was being blown away in dust, they
+alone seemed to protest, indestructible, face to face like two parted
+brothers, standing motionless on either horizon. And to have seen them
+thus, one after the other, so great and grand, so lonely, so detached
+from ordinary life, was to fill one’s day with a dream of eternity.
+
+Luigi, however, had taken hold of the old man’s hands to calm him by an
+affectionate filial clasp. “Yes, yes, you are right, father, always
+right, and I’m a fool to contradict you. Now, pray don’t move about like
+that, for you are uncovering yourself, and your legs will get cold
+again.”
+
+So saying, he knelt down and very carefully arranged the wrapper; and
+then remaining on the floor like a child, albeit he was two and forty, he
+raised his moist eyes, full of mute, entreating worship towards the old
+man who, calmed and deeply moved, caressed his hair with a trembling
+touch.
+
+Pierre had been there for nearly two hours, when he at last took leave,
+greatly struck and affected by all that he had seen and heard. And again
+he had to promise that he would return and have a long chat with Orlando.
+Once out of doors he walked along at random. It was barely four o’clock,
+and it was his idea to ramble in this wise, without any predetermined
+programme, through Rome at that delightful hour when the sun sinks in the
+refreshed and far blue atmosphere. Almost immediately, however, he found
+himself in the Via Nazionale, along which he had driven on arriving the
+previous day. And he recognised the huge livid Banca d’Italia, the green
+gardens climbing to the Quirinal, and the heaven-soaring pines of the
+Villa Aldobrandini. Then, at the turn of the street, as he stopped short
+in order that he might again contemplate the column of Trajan which now
+rose up darkly from its low piazza, already full of twilight, he was
+surprised to see a victoria suddenly pull up, and a young man courteously
+beckon to him.
+
+“Monsieur l’Abbé Froment! Monsieur l’Abbé Froment!”
+
+It was young Prince Dario Boccanera, on his way to his daily drive along
+the Corso. He now virtually subsisted on the liberality of his uncle the
+Cardinal, and was almost always short of money. But, like all the Romans,
+he would, if necessary, have rather lived on bread and water than have
+forgone his carriage, horse, and coachman. An equipage, indeed, is the
+one indispensable luxury of Rome.
+
+“If you will come with me, Monsieur l’Abbé Froment,” said the young
+Prince, “I will show you the most interesting part of our city.”
+
+He doubtless desired to please Benedetta, by behaving amiably towards her
+protégé. Idle as he was, too, it seemed to him a pleasant occupation to
+initiate that young priest, who was said to be so intelligent, into what
+he deemed the inimitable side, the true florescence of Roman life.
+
+Pierre was compelled to accept, although he would have preferred a
+solitary stroll. Yet he was interested in this young man, the last born
+of an exhausted race, who, while seemingly incapable of either thought or
+action, was none the less very seductive with his high-born pride and
+indolence. Far more a Roman than a patriot, Dario had never had the
+faintest inclination to rally to the new order of things, being well
+content to live apart and do nothing; and passionate though he was, he
+indulged in no follies, being very practical and sensible at heart, as
+are all his fellow-citizens, despite their apparent impetuosity. As soon
+as his carriage, after crossing the Piazza di Venezia, entered the Corso,
+he gave rein to his childish vanity, his desire to shine, his passion for
+gay, happy life in the open under the lovely sky. All this, indeed, was
+clearly expressed in the simple gesture which he made whilst exclaiming:
+“The Corso!”
+
+As on the previous day, Pierre was filled with astonishment. The long
+narrow street again stretched before him as far as the white dazzling
+Piazza del Popolo, the only difference being that the right-hand houses
+were now steeped in sunshine, whilst those on the left were black with
+shadow. What! was that the Corso then, that semi-obscure trench, close
+pressed by high and heavy house-fronts, that mean roadway where three
+vehicles could scarcely pass abreast, and which serried shops lined with
+gaudy displays? There was neither space, nor far horizon, nor refreshing
+greenery such as the fashionable drives of Paris could boast! Nothing but
+jostling, crowding, and stifling on the little footways under the narrow
+strip of sky. And although Dario named the pompous and historical
+palaces, Bonaparte, Doria, Odescalchi, Sciarra, and Chigi; although he
+pointed out the column of Marcus Aurelius on the Piazza Colonna, the most
+lively square of the whole city with its everlasting throng of lounging,
+gazing, chattering people; although, all the way to the Piazza del
+Popolo, he never ceased calling attention to churches, houses, and
+side-streets, notably the Via dei Condotti, at the far end of which the
+Trinity de’ Monti, all golden in the glory of the sinking sun, appeared
+above that famous flight of steps, the triumphal Scala di Spagna--Pierre
+still and ever retained the impression of disillusion which the narrow,
+airless thoroughfare had conveyed to him: the “palaces” looked to him
+like mournful hospitals or barracks, the Piazza Colonna suffered terribly
+from a lack of trees, and the Trinity de’ Monti alone took his fancy by
+its distant radiance of fairyland.
+
+But it was necessary to come back from the Piazza del Popolo to the
+Piazza di Venezia, then return to the former square, and come back yet
+again, following the entire Corso three and four times without wearying.
+The delighted Dario showed himself and looked about him, exchanging
+salutations. On either footway was a compact crowd of promenaders whose
+eyes roamed over the equipages and whose hands could have shaken those of
+the carriage folks. So great at last became the number of vehicles that
+both lines were absolutely unbroken, crowded to such a point that the
+coachmen could do no more than walk their horses. Perpetually going up
+and coming down the Corso, people scrutinised and jostled one another. It
+was open-air promiscuity, all Rome gathered together in the smallest
+possible space, the folks who knew one another and who met here as in a
+friendly drawing-room, and the folks belonging to adverse parties who did
+not speak together but who elbowed each other, and whose glances
+penetrated to each other’s soul. Then a revelation came to Pierre, and he
+suddenly understood the Corso, the ancient custom, the passion and glory
+of the city. Its pleasure lay precisely in the very narrowness of the
+street, in that forced elbowing which facilitated not only desired
+meetings but the satisfaction of curiosity, the display of vanity, and
+the garnering of endless tittle-tattle. All Roman society met here each
+day, displayed itself, spied on itself, offering itself in spectacle to
+its own eyes, with such an indispensable need of thus beholding itself
+that the man of birth who missed the Corso was like one out of his
+element, destitute of newspapers, living like a savage. And withal the
+atmosphere was delightfully balmy, and the narrow strip of sky between
+the heavy, rusty mansions displayed an infinite azure purity.
+
+Dario never ceased smiling, and slightly inclining his head while he
+repeated to Pierre the names of princes and princesses, dukes and
+duchesses--high-sounding names whose flourish had filled history, whose
+sonorous syllables conjured up the shock of armour on the battlefield and
+the splendour of papal pomp with robes of purple, tiaras of gold, and
+sacred vestments sparkling with precious stones. And as Pierre listened
+and looked he was pained to see merely some corpulent ladies or
+undersized gentlemen, bloated or shrunken beings, whose ill-looks seemed
+to be increased by their modern attire. However, a few pretty women went
+by, particularly some young, silent girls with large, clear eyes. And
+just as Dario had pointed out the Palazzo Buongiovanni, a huge
+seventeenth-century façade, with windows encompassed by foliaged
+ornamentation deplorably heavy in style, he added gaily:
+
+“Ah! look--that’s Attilio there on the footway. Young Lieutenant
+Sacco--you know, don’t you?”
+
+Pierre signed that he understood. Standing there in uniform, Attilio, so
+young, so energetic and brave of appearance, with a frank countenance
+softly illumined by blue eyes like his mother’s, at once pleased the
+priest. He seemed indeed the very personification of youth and love, with
+all their enthusiastic, disinterested hope in the future.
+
+“You’ll see by and by, when we pass the palace again,” said Dario. “He’ll
+still be there and I’ll show you something.”
+
+Then he began to talk gaily of the girls of Rome, the little princesses,
+the little duchesses, so discreetly educated at the convent of the Sacred
+Heart, quitting it for the most part so ignorant and then completing
+their education beside their mothers, never going out but to accompany
+the latter on the obligatory drive to the Corso, and living through
+endless days, cloistered, imprisoned in the depths of sombre mansions.
+Nevertheless what tempests raged in those mute souls to which none had
+ever penetrated! what stealthy growth of will suddenly appeared from
+under passive obedience, apparent unconsciousness of surroundings! How
+many there were who stubbornly set their minds on carving out their lives
+for themselves, on choosing the man who might please them, and securing
+him despite the opposition of the entire world! And the lover was chosen
+there from among the stream of young men promenading the Corso, the lover
+hooked with a glance during the daily drive, those candid eyes speaking
+aloud and sufficing for confession and the gift of all, whilst not a
+breath was wafted from the lips so chastely closed. And afterwards there
+came love letters, furtively exchanged in church, and the winning-over of
+maids to facilitate stolen meetings, at first so innocent. In the end, a
+marriage often resulted.
+
+Celia, for her part, had determined to win Attilio on the very first day
+when their eyes had met. And it was from a window of the Palazzo
+Buongiovanni that she had perceived him one afternoon of mortal
+weariness. He had just raised his head, and she had taken him for ever
+and given herself to him with those large, pure eyes of hers as they
+rested on his own. She was but an _amorosa_--nothing more; he pleased
+her; she had set her heart on him--him and none other. She would have
+waited twenty years for him, but she relied on winning him at once by
+quiet stubbornness of will. People declared that the terrible fury of the
+Prince, her father, had proved impotent against her respectful, obstinate
+silence. He, man of mixed blood as he was, son of an American woman, and
+husband of an English woman, laboured but to retain his own name and
+fortune intact amidst the downfall of others; and it was rumoured that as
+the result of a quarrel which he had picked with his wife, whom he
+accused of not sufficiently watching over their daughter, the Princess
+had revolted, full not only of the pride of a foreigner who had brought a
+huge dowry in marriage, but also of such plain, frank egotism that she
+had declared she no longer found time enough to attend to herself, let
+alone another. Had she not already done enough in bearing him five
+children? She thought so; and now she spent her time in worshipping
+herself, letting Celia do as she listed, and taking no further interest
+in the household through which swept stormy gusts.
+
+However, the carriage was again about to pass the Buongiovanni mansion,
+and Dario forewarned Pierre. “You see,” said he, “Attilio has come back.
+And now look up at the third window on the first floor.”
+
+It was at once rapid and charming. Pierre saw the curtain slightly drawn
+aside and Celia’s gentle face appear. Closed, candid lily, she did not
+smile, she did not move. Nothing could be read on those pure lips, or in
+those clear but fathomless eyes of hers. Yet she was taking Attilio to
+herself, and giving herself to him without reserve. And soon the curtain
+fell once more.
+
+“Ah, the little mask!” muttered Dario. “Can one ever tell what there is
+behind so much innocence?”
+
+As Pierre turned round he perceived Attilio, whose head was still raised,
+and whose face was also motionless and pale, with closed mouth, and
+widely opened eyes. And the young priest was deeply touched, for this was
+love, absolute love in its sudden omnipotence, true love, eternal and
+juvenescent, in which ambition and calculation played no part.
+
+Then Dario ordered the coachman to drive up to the Pincio; for, before or
+after the Corso, the round of the Pincio is obligatory on fine, clear
+afternoons. First came the Piazza del Popolo, the most airy and regular
+square of Rome, with its conjunction of thoroughfares, its churches and
+fountains, its central obelisk, and its two clumps of trees facing one
+another at either end of the small white paving-stones, betwixt the
+severe and sun-gilt buildings. Then, turning to the right, the carriage
+began to climb the inclined way to the Pincio--a magnificent winding
+ascent, decorated with bas-reliefs, statues, and fountains--a kind of
+apotheosis of marble, a commemoration of ancient Rome, rising amidst
+greenery. Up above, however, Pierre found the garden small, little better
+than a large square, with just the four necessary roadways to enable the
+carriages to drive round and round as long as they pleased. An
+uninterrupted line of busts of the great men of ancient and modern Italy
+fringed these roadways. But what Pierre most admired was the trees--trees
+of the most rare and varied kinds, chosen and tended with infinite care,
+and nearly always evergreens, so that in winter and summer alike the spot
+was adorned with lovely foliage of every imaginable shade of verdure. And
+beside these trees, along the fine, breezy roadways, Dario’s victoria
+began to turn, following the continuous, unwearying stream of the other
+carriages.
+
+Pierre remarked one young woman of modest demeanour and attractive
+simplicity who sat alone in a dark-blue victoria, drawn by a
+well-groomed, elegantly harnessed horse. She was very pretty, short, with
+chestnut hair, a creamy complexion, and large gentle eyes. Quietly robed
+in dead-leaf silk, she wore a large hat, which alone looked somewhat
+extravagant. And seeing that Dario was staring at her, the priest
+inquired her name, whereat the young Prince smiled. Oh! she was nobody,
+La Tonietta was the name that people gave her; she was one of the few
+_demi-mondaines_ that Roman society talked of. Then, with the freeness
+and frankness which his race displays in such matters, Dario added some
+particulars. La Tonietta’s origin was obscure; some said that she was the
+daughter of an innkeeper of Tivoli, and others that of a Neapolitan
+banker. At all events, she was very intelligent, had educated herself,
+and knew thoroughly well how to receive and entertain people at the
+little palazzo in the Via dei Mille, which had been given to her by old
+Marquis Manfredi now deceased. She made no scandalous show, had but one
+protector at a time, and the princesses and duchesses who paid attention
+to her at the Corso every afternoon, considered her nice-looking. One
+peculiarity had made her somewhat notorious. There was some one whom she
+loved and from whom she never accepted aught but a bouquet of white
+roses; and folks would smile indulgently when at times for weeks together
+she was seen driving round the Pincio with those pure, white bridal
+flowers on the carriage seat.
+
+Dario, however, suddenly paused in his explanations to address a
+ceremonious bow to a lady who, accompanied by a gentleman, drove by in a
+large landau. Then he simply said to the priest: “My mother.”
+
+Pierre already knew of her. Viscount de la Choue had told him her story,
+how, after Prince Onofrio Boccanera’s death, she had married again,
+although she was already fifty; how at the Corso, just like some young
+girl, she had hooked with her eyes a handsome man to her liking--one,
+too, who was fifteen years her junior. And Pierre also knew who that man
+was, a certain Jules Laporte, an ex-sergeant of the papal Swiss Guard, an
+ex-traveller in relics, compromised in an extraordinary “false relic”
+ fraud; and he was further aware that Laporte’s wife had made a
+fine-looking Marquis Montefiori of him, the last of the fortunate
+adventurers of romance, triumphing as in the legendary lands where
+shepherds are wedded to queens.
+
+At the next turn, as the large landau again went by, Pierre looked at the
+couple. The Marchioness was really wonderful, blooming with all the
+classical Roman beauty, tall, opulent, and very dark, with the head of a
+goddess and regular if somewhat massive features, nothing as yet
+betraying her age except the down upon her upper lip. And the Marquis,
+the Romanised Swiss of Geneva, really had a proud bearing, with his solid
+soldierly figure and long wavy moustaches. People said that he was in no
+wise a fool but, on the contrary, very gay and very supple, just the man
+to please women. His wife so gloried in him that she dragged him about
+and displayed him everywhere, having begun life afresh with him as if she
+were still but twenty, spending on him the little fortune which she had
+saved from the Villa Montefiori disaster, and so completely forgetting
+her son that she only saw the latter now and again at the promenade and
+acknowledged his bow like that of some chance acquaintance.
+
+“Let us go to see the sun set behind St. Peter’s,” all at once said
+Dario, conscientiously playing his part as a showman of curiosities.
+
+The victoria thereupon returned to the terrace, where a military band was
+now playing with a terrific blare of brass instruments. In order that
+their occupants might hear the music, a large number of carriages had
+already drawn up, and a growing crowd of loungers on foot had assembled
+there. And from that beautiful terrace, so broad and lofty, one of the
+most wonderful views of Rome was offered to the gaze. Beyond the Tiber,
+beyond the pale chaos of the new district of the castle meadows,* and
+between the greenery of Monte Mario and the Janiculum arose St. Peter’s.
+Then on the left came all the olden city, an endless stretch of roofs, a
+rolling sea of edifices as far as the eye could reach. But one’s glances
+always came back to St. Peter’s, towering into the azure with pure and
+sovereign grandeur. And, seen from the terrace, the slow sunsets in the
+depths of the vast sky behind the colossus were sublime.
+
+ * See _ante_ note on castle meadows.
+
+Sometimes there are topplings of sanguineous clouds, battles of giants
+hurling mountains at one another and succumbing beneath the monstrous
+ruins of flaming cities. Sometimes only red streaks or fissures appear on
+the surface of a sombre lake, as if a net of light has been flung to fish
+the submerged orb from amidst the seaweed. Sometimes, too, there is a
+rosy mist, a kind of delicate dust which falls, streaked with pearls by a
+distant shower, whose curtain is drawn across the mystery of the horizon.
+And sometimes there is a triumph, a _cortège_ of gold and purple chariots
+of cloud rolling along a highway of fire, galleys floating upon an azure
+sea, fantastic and extravagant pomps slowly sinking into the less and
+less fathomable abyss of the twilight.
+
+But that night the sublime spectacle presented itself to Pierre with a
+calm, blinding, desperate grandeur. At first, just above the dome of St.
+Peter’s, the sun, descending in a spotless, deeply limpid sky, proved yet
+so resplendent that one’s eyes could not face its brightness. And in this
+resplendency the dome seemed to be incandescent, you would have said a
+dome of liquid silver; whilst the surrounding districts, the house-roofs
+of the Borgo, were as though changed into a lake of live embers. Then, as
+the sun was by degrees inclined, it lost some of its blaze, and one could
+look; and soon afterwards sinking with majestic slowness it disappeared
+behind the dome, which showed forth darkly blue, while the orb, now
+entirely hidden, set an aureola around it, a glory like a crown of
+flaming rays. And then began the dream, the dazzling symbol, the singular
+illumination of the row of windows beneath the cupola which were
+transpierced by the light and looked like the ruddy mouths of furnaces,
+in such wise that one might have imagined the dome to be poised upon a
+brazier, isolated, in the air, as though raised and upheld by the
+violence of the fire. It all lasted barely three minutes. Down below the
+jumbled roofs of the Borgo became steeped in violet vapour, sank into
+increasing gloom, whilst from the Janiculum to Monte Mario the horizon
+showed its firm black line. And it was the sky then which became all
+purple and gold, displaying the infinite placidity of a supernatural
+radiance above the earth which faded into nihility. Finally the last
+window reflections were extinguished, the glow of the heavens departed,
+and nothing remained but the vague, fading roundness of the dome of St.
+Peter’s amidst the all-invading night.
+
+And, by some subtle connection of ideas, Pierre at that moment once again
+saw rising before him the lofty, sad, declining figures of Cardinal
+Boccanera and old Orlando. On the evening of that day when he had learnt
+to know them, one after the other, both so great in the obstinacy of
+their hope, they seemed to be there, erect on the horizon above their
+annihilated city, on the fringe of the heavens which death apparently was
+about to seize. Was everything then to crumble with them? was everything
+to fade away and disappear in the falling night following upon
+accomplished Time?
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+ON the following day Narcisse Habert came in great worry to tell Pierre
+that Monsignor Gamba del Zoppo complained of being unwell, and asked for
+a delay of two or three days before receiving the young priest and
+considering the matter of his audience. Pierre was thus reduced to
+inaction, for he dared not make any attempt elsewhere in view of seeing
+the Pope. He had been so frightened by Nani and others that he feared he
+might jeopardise everything by inconsiderate endeavours. And so he began
+to visit Rome in order to occupy his leisure.
+
+His first visit was for the ruins of the Palatine. Going out alone one
+clear morning at eight o’clock, he presented himself at the entrance in
+the Via San Teodoro, an iron gateway flanked by the lodges of the
+keepers. One of the latter at once offered his services, and though
+Pierre would have preferred to roam at will, following the bent of his
+dream, he somehow did not like to refuse the offer of this man, who spoke
+French very distinctly, and smiled in a very good-natured way. He was a
+squatly built little man, a former soldier, some sixty years of age, and
+his square-cut, ruddy face was barred by thick white moustaches.
+
+“Then will you please follow me, Monsieur l’Abbé,” said he. “I can see
+that you are French, Monsieur l’Abbé. I’m a Piedmontese myself, but I
+know the French well enough; I was with them at Solferino. Yes, yes,
+whatever people may say, one can’t forget old friendships. Here, this
+way, please, to the right.”
+
+Raising his eyes, Pierre had just perceived the line of cypresses edging
+the plateau of the Palatine on the side of the Tiber; and in the delicate
+blue atmosphere the intense greenery of these trees showed like a black
+fringe. They alone attracted the eye; the slope, of a dusty, dirty grey,
+stretched out bare and devastated, dotted by a few bushes, among which
+peeped fragments of ancient walls. All was instinct with the ravaged,
+leprous sadness of a spot handed over to excavation, and where only men
+of learning could wax enthusiastic.
+
+“The palaces of Tiberius, Caligula, and the Flavians are up above,”
+ resumed the guide. “We must keep then for the end and go round.”
+ Nevertheless he took a few steps to the left, and pausing before an
+excavation, a sort of grotto in the hillside, exclaimed: “This is the
+Lupercal den where the wolf suckled Romulus and Remus. Just here at the
+entry used to stand the Ruminal fig-tree which sheltered the twins.”
+
+Pierre could not restrain a smile, so convinced was the tone in which the
+old soldier gave these explanations, proud as he was of all the ancient
+glory, and wont to regard the wildest legends as indisputable facts.
+However, when the worthy man pointed out some vestiges of Roma
+Quadrata--remnants of walls which really seemed to date from the
+foundation of the city--Pierre began to feel interested, and a first
+touch of emotion made his heart beat. This emotion was certainly not due
+to any beauty of scene, for he merely beheld a few courses of tufa
+blocks, placed one upon the other and uncemented. But a past which had
+been dead for seven and twenty centuries seemed to rise up before him,
+and those crumbling, blackened blocks, the foundation of such a mighty
+eclipse of power and splendour, acquired extraordinary majesty.
+
+Continuing their inspection, they went on, skirting the hillside. The
+outbuildings of the palaces must have descended to this point; fragments
+of porticoes, fallen beams, columns and friezes set up afresh, edged the
+rugged path which wound through wild weeds, suggesting a neglected
+cemetery; and the guide repeated the words which he had used day by day
+for ten years past, continuing to enunciate suppositions as facts, and
+giving a name, a destination, a history, to every one of the fragments.
+
+“The house of Augustus,” he said at last, pointing towards some masses of
+earth and rubbish.
+
+Thereupon Pierre, unable to distinguish anything, ventured to inquire:
+“Where do you mean?”
+
+“Oh!” said the man, “it seems that the walls were still to be seen at the
+end of the last century. But it was entered from the other side, from the
+Sacred Way. On this side there was a huge balcony which overlooked the
+Circus Maximus so that one could view the sports. However, as you can
+see, the greater part of the palace is still buried under that big garden
+up above, the garden of the Villa Mills. When there’s money for fresh
+excavations it will be found again, together with the temple of Apollo
+and the shrine of Vesta which accompanied it.”
+
+Turning to the left, he next entered the Stadium, the arena erected for
+foot-racing, which stretched beside the palace of Augustus; and the
+priest’s interest was now once more awakened. It was not that he found
+himself in presence of well-preserved and monumental remains, for not a
+column had remained erect, and only the right-hand walls were still
+standing. But the entire plan of the building had been traced, with the
+goals at either end, the porticus round the course, and the colossal
+imperial tribune which, after being on the left, annexed to the house of
+Augustus, had afterwards opened on the right, fitting into the palace of
+Septimius Severus. And while Pierre looked on all the scattered remnants,
+his guide went on chattering, furnishing the most copious and precise
+information, and declaring that the gentlemen who directed the
+excavations had mentally reconstructed the Stadium in each and every
+particular, and were even preparing a most exact plan of it, showing all
+the columns in their proper order and the statues in their niches, and
+even specifying the divers sorts of marble which had covered the walls.
+
+“Oh! the directors are quite at ease,” the old soldier eventually added
+with an air of infinite satisfaction. “There will be nothing for the
+Germans to pounce on here. They won’t be allowed to set things
+topsy-turvy as they did at the Forum, where everybody’s at sea since they
+came along with their wonderful science!”
+
+Pierre--a Frenchman--smiled, and his interest increased when, by broken
+steps and wooden bridges thrown over gaps, he followed the guide into the
+great ruins of the palace of Severus. Rising on the southern point of the
+Palatine, this palace had overlooked the Appian Way and the Campagna as
+far as the eye could reach. Nowadays, almost the only remains are the
+substructures, the subterranean halls contrived under the arches of the
+terraces, by which the plateau of the hill was enlarged; and yet these
+dismantled substructures suffice to give some idea of the triumphant
+palace which they once upheld, so huge and powerful have they remained in
+their indestructible massiveness. Near by arose the famous Septizonium,
+the tower with the seven tiers of arcades, which only finally disappeared
+in the sixteenth century. One of the palace terraces yet juts out upon
+cyclopean arches and from it the view is splendid. But all the rest is a
+commingling of massive yet crumbling walls, gaping depths whose ceilings
+have fallen, endless corridors and vast halls of doubtful destination.
+Well cared for by the new administration, swept and cleansed of weeds,
+the ruins have lost their romantic wildness and assumed an aspect of bare
+and mournful grandeur. However, flashes of living sunlight often gild the
+ancient walls, penetrate by their breaches into the black halls, and
+animate with their dazzlement the mute melancholy of all this dead
+splendour now exhumed from the earth in which it slumbered for centuries.
+Over the old ruddy masonry, stripped of its pompous marble covering, is
+the purple mantle of the sunlight, draping the whole with imperial glory
+once more.
+
+For more than two hours already Pierre had been walking on, and yet he
+still had to visit all the earlier palaces on the north and east of the
+plateau. “We must go back,” said the guide, “the gardens of the Villa
+Mills and the convent of San Bonaventura stop the way. We shall only be
+able to pass on this side when the excavations have made a clearance. Ah!
+Monsieur l’Abbé, if you had walked over the Palatine merely some fifty
+years ago! I’ve seen some plans of that time. There were only some
+vineyards and little gardens with hedges then, a real campagna, where not
+a soul was to be met. And to think that all these palaces were sleeping
+underneath!”
+
+Pierre followed him, and after again passing the house of Augustus, they
+ascended the slope and reached the vast Flavian palace,* still half
+buried by the neighbouring villa, and composed of a great number of halls
+large and small, on the nature of which scholars are still arguing. The
+aula regia, or throne-room, the basilica, or hall of justice, the
+triclinium, or dining-room, and the peristylium seem certainties; but for
+all the rest, and especially the small chambers of the private part of
+the structure, only more or less fanciful conjectures can be offered.
+Moreover, not a wall is entire; merely foundations peep out of the
+ground, mutilated bases describing the plan of the edifice. The only ruin
+preserved, as if by miracle, is the house on a lower level which some
+assert to have been that of Livia,* a house which seems very small beside
+all the huge palaces, and where are three halls comparatively intact,
+with mural paintings of mythological scenes, flowers, and fruits, still
+wonderfully fresh. As for the palace of Tiberius, not one of its stones
+can be seen; its remains lie buried beneath a lovely public garden;
+whilst of the neighbouring palace of Caligula, overhanging the Forum,
+there are only some huge substructures, akin to those of the house of
+Severus--buttresses, lofty arcades, which upheld the palace, vast
+basements, so to say, where the praetorians were posted and gorged
+themselves with continual junketings. And thus this lofty plateau
+dominating the city merely offered some scarcely recognisable vestiges to
+the view, stretches of grey, bare soil turned up by the pick, and dotted
+with fragments of old walls; and it needed a real effort of scholarly
+imagination to conjure up the ancient imperial splendour which once had
+triumphed there.
+
+ * Begun by Vespasian and finished by Domitian.--Trans.
+
+ ** Others assert it to have been the house of Germanicus,
+ father of Caligula.--Trans.
+
+Nevertheless Pierre’s guide, with quiet conviction, persisted in his
+explanations, pointing to empty space as though the edifices still rose
+before him. “Here,” said he, “we are in the Area Palatina. Yonder, you
+see, is the façade of Domitian’s palace, and there you have that of
+Caligula’s palace, while on turning round the temple of Jupiter Stator is
+in front of you. The Sacred Way came up as far as here, and passed under
+the Porta Mugonia, one of the three gates of primitive Rome.”
+
+He paused and pointed to the northwest portion of the height. “You will
+have noticed,” he resumed, “that the Caesars didn’t build yonder. And
+that was evidently because they had to respect some very ancient
+monuments dating from before the foundation of the city and greatly
+venerated by the people. There stood the temple of Victory built by
+Evander and his Arcadians, the Lupercal grotto which I showed you, and
+the humble hut of Romulus constructed of reeds and clay. Oh! everything
+has been found again, Monsieur l’Abbé; and, in spite of all that the
+Germans say there isn’t the slightest doubt of it.”
+
+Then, quite abruptly, like a man suddenly remembering the most
+interesting thing of all, he exclaimed: “Ah! to wind up we’ll just go to
+see the subterranean gallery where Caligula was murdered.”
+
+Thereupon they descended into a long crypto-porticus, through the
+breaches of which the sun now casts bright rays. Some ornaments of stucco
+and fragments of mosaic-work are yet to be seen. Still the spot remains
+mournful and desolate, well fitted for tragic horror. The old soldier’s
+voice had become graver as he related how Caligula, on returning from the
+Palatine games, had been minded to descend all alone into this gallery to
+witness certain sacred dances which some youths from Asia were practising
+there. And then it was that the gloom gave Cassius Chaereas, the chief of
+the conspirators, an opportunity to deal him the first thrust in the
+abdomen. Howling with pain, the emperor sought to flee; but the
+assassins, his creatures, his dearest friends, rushed upon him, threw him
+down, and dealt him blow after blow, whilst he, mad with rage and fright,
+filled the dim, deaf gallery with the howling of a slaughtered beast.
+When he had expired, silence fell once more, and the frightened murderers
+fled.
+
+The classical visit to the Palatine was now over, and when Pierre came up
+into the light again, he wished to rid himself of his guide and remain
+alone in the pleasant, dreamy garden on the summit of the height. For
+three hours he had been tramping about with the guide’s voice buzzing in
+his ears. The worthy man was now talking of his friendship for France and
+relating the battle of Magenta in great detail. He smiled as he took the
+piece of silver which Pierre offered him, and then started on the battle
+of Solferino. Indeed, it seemed impossible to stop him, when fortunately
+a lady came up to ask for some information. And, thereupon, he went off
+with her. “Good-evening, Monsieur l’Abbé,” he said; “you can go down by
+way of Caligula’s palace.”
+
+Delightful was Pierre’s relief when he was at last able to rest for a
+moment on one of the marble seats in the garden. There were but few
+clumps of trees, cypresses, box-trees, palms, and some fine evergreen
+oaks; but the latter, sheltering the seat, cast a dark shade of exquisite
+freshness around. The charm of the spot was also largely due to its
+dreamy solitude, to the low rustle which seemed to come from that ancient
+soil saturated with resounding history. Here formerly had been the
+pleasure grounds of the Villa Farnese which still exists though greatly
+damaged, and the grace of the Renascence seems to linger here, its breath
+passing caressingly through the shiny foliage of the old evergreen oaks.
+You are, as it were, enveloped by the soul of the past, an ethereal
+conglomeration of visions, and overhead is wafted the straying breath of
+innumerable generations buried beneath the sod.
+
+After a time, however, Pierre could no longer remain seated, so powerful
+was the attraction of Rome, scattered all around that august summit. So
+he rose and approached the balustrade of a terrace; and beneath him
+appeared the Forum, and beyond it the Capitoline hill. To the eye the
+latter now only presented a commingling of grey buildings, lacking both
+grandeur and beauty. On the summit one saw the rear of the Palace of the
+Senator, flat, with little windows, and surmounted by a high, square
+campanile. The large, bare, rusty-looking walls hid the church of Santa
+Maria in Ara Coeli and the spot where the temple of Capitoline Jove had
+formerly stood, radiant in all its royalty. On the left, some ugly houses
+rose terrace-wise upon the slope of Monte Caprino, where goats were
+pastured in the middle ages; while the few fine trees in the grounds of
+the Caffarelli palace, the present German embassy, set some greenery
+above the ancient Tarpeian rock now scarcely to be found, lost, hidden as
+it is, by buttress walls. Yet this was the Mount of the Capitol, the most
+glorious of the seven hills, with its citadel and its temple, the temple
+to which universal dominion was promised, the St. Peter’s of pagan Rome;
+this indeed was the hill--steep on the side of the Forum, and a precipice
+on that of the Campus Martius--where the thunder of Jupiter fell, where
+in the dimmest of the far-off ages the Asylum of Romulus rose with its
+sacred oaks, a spot of infinite savage mystery. Here, later, were
+preserved the public documents of Roman grandeur inscribed on tablets of
+brass; hither climbed the heroes of the triumphs; and here the emperors
+became gods, erect in statues of marble. And nowadays the eye inquires
+wonderingly how so much history and so much glory can have had for their
+scene so small a space, such a rugged, jumbled pile of paltry buildings,
+a mole-hill, looking no bigger, no loftier than a hamlet perched between
+two valleys.
+
+Then another surprise for Pierre was the Forum, starting from the Capitol
+and stretching out below the Palatine: a narrow square, close pressed by
+the neighbouring hills, a hollow where Rome in growing had been compelled
+to rear edifice close to edifice till all stifled for lack of breathing
+space. It was necessary to dig very deep--some fifty feet--to find the
+venerable republican soil, and now all you see is a long, clean, livid
+trench, cleared of ivy and bramble, where the fragments of paving, the
+bases of columns, and the piles of foundations appear like bits of bone.
+Level with the ground the Basilica Julia, entirely mapped out, looks like
+an architect’s ground plan. On that side the arch of Septimius Severus
+alone rears itself aloft, virtually intact, whilst of the temple of
+Vespasian only a few isolated columns remain still standing, as if by
+miracle, amidst the general downfall, soaring with a proud elegance, with
+sovereign audacity of equilibrium, so slender and so gilded, into the
+blue heavens. The column of Phocas is also erect; and you see some
+portions of the Rostra fitted together out of fragments discovered near
+by. But if the eye seeks a sensation of extraordinary vastness, it must
+travel beyond the three columns of the temple of Castor and Pollux,
+beyond the vestiges of the house of the Vestals, beyond the temple of
+Faustina, in which the Christian Church of San Lorenzo has so composedly
+installed itself, and even beyond the round temple of Romulus, to light
+upon the Basilica of Constantine with its three colossal, gaping
+archways. From the Palatine they look like porches built for a nation of
+giants, so massive that a fallen fragment resembles some huge rock hurled
+by a whirlwind from a mountain summit. And there, in that illustrious,
+narrow, overflowing Forum the history of the greatest of nations held for
+centuries, from the legendary time of the Sabine women, reconciling their
+relatives and their ravishers, to that of the proclamation of public
+liberty, so slowly wrung from the patricians by the plebeians. Was not
+the Forum at once the market, the exchange, the tribunal, the open-air
+hall of public meeting? The Gracchi there defended the cause of the
+humble; Sylla there set up the lists of those whom he proscribed; Cicero
+there spoke, and there, against the rostra, his bleeding head was hung.
+Then, under the emperors, the old renown was dimmed, the centuries buried
+the monuments and temples with such piles of dust that all that the
+middle ages could do was to turn the spot into a cattle market! Respect
+has come back once more, a respect which violates tombs, which is full of
+feverish curiosity and science, which is dissatisfied with mere
+hypotheses, which loses itself amidst this historical soil where
+generations rise one above the other, and hesitates between the fifteen
+or twenty restorations of the Forum that have been planned on paper, each
+of them as plausible as the other. But to the mere passer-by, who is not
+a professional scholar and has not recently re-perused the history of
+Rome, the details have no significance. All he sees on this searched and
+scoured spot is a city’s cemetery where old exhumed stones are whitening,
+and whence rises the intense sadness that envelops dead nations. Pierre,
+however, noting here and there fragments of the Sacred Way, now turning,
+now running down, and now ascending with their pavement of silex indented
+by the chariot-wheels, thought of the triumphs, of the ascent of the
+triumpher, so sorely shaken as his chariot jolted over that rough
+pavement of glory.
+
+But the horizon expanded towards the southeast, and beyond the arches of
+Titus and Constantine he perceived the Colosseum. Ah! that colossus, only
+one-half or so of which has been destroyed by time as with the stroke of
+a mighty scythe, it rises in its enormity and majesty like a stone
+lace-work with hundreds of empty bays agape against the blue of heaven!
+There is a world of halls, stairs, landings, and passages, a world where
+one loses oneself amidst death-like silence and solitude. The furrowed
+tiers of seats, eaten into by the atmosphere, are like shapeless steps
+leading down into some old extinct crater, some natural circus excavated
+by the force of the elements in indestructible rock. The hot suns of
+eighteen hundred years have baked and scorched this ruin, which has
+reverted to a state of nature, bare and golden-brown like a
+mountain-side, since it has been stripped of its vegetation, the flora
+which once made it like a virgin forest. And what an evocation when the
+mind sets flesh and blood and life again on all that dead osseous
+framework, fills the circus with the 90,000 spectators which it could
+hold, marshals the games and the combats of the arena, gathers a whole
+civilisation together, from the emperor and the dignitaries to the
+surging plebeian sea, all aglow with the agitation and brilliancy of an
+impassioned people, assembled under the ruddy reflection of the giant
+purple velum. And then, yet further, on the horizon, were other cyclopean
+ruins, the baths of Caracalla, standing there like relics of a race of
+giants long since vanished from the world: halls extravagantly and
+inexplicably spacious and lofty; vestibules large enough for an entire
+population; a _frigidarium_ where five hundred people could swim
+together; a _tepidarium_ and a _calidarium_* on the same proportions,
+born of a wild craving for the huge; and then the terrific massiveness of
+the structures, the thickness of the piles of brick-work, such as no
+feudal castle ever knew; and, in addition, the general immensity which
+makes passing visitors look like lost ants; such an extraordinary riot of
+the great and the mighty that one wonders for what men, for what
+multitudes, this monstrous edifice was reared. To-day, you would say a
+mass of rocks in the rough, thrown from some height for building the
+abode of Titans.
+
+ * Tepidarium, warm bath; calidarium, vapour bath.--Trans.
+
+And as Pierre gazed, he became more and more immersed in the limitless
+past which encompassed him. On all sides history rose up like a surging
+sea. Those bluey plains on the north and west were ancient Etruria; those
+jagged crests on the east were the Sabine Mountains; while southward, the
+Alban Mountains and Latium spread out in the streaming gold of the
+sunshine. Alba Longa was there, and so was Monte Cavo, with its crown of
+old trees, and the convent which has taken the place of the ancient
+temple of Jupiter. Then beyond the Forum, beyond the Capitol, the greater
+part of Rome stretched out, whilst behind Pierre, on the margin of the
+Tiber, was the Janiculum. And a voice seemed to come from the whole city,
+a voice which told him of Rome’s eternal life, resplendent with past
+greatness. He remembered just enough of what he had been taught at school
+to realise where he was; he knew just what every one knows of Rome with
+no pretension to scholarship, and it was more particularly his artistic
+temperament which awoke within him and gathered warmth from the flame of
+memory. The present had disappeared, and the ocean of the past was still
+rising, buoying him up, carrying him away.
+
+And then his mind involuntarily pictured a resurrection instinct with
+life. The grey, dismal Palatine, razed like some accursed city, suddenly
+became animated, peopled, crowned with palaces and temples. There had
+been the cradle of the Eternal City, founded by Romulus on that summit
+overlooking the Tiber. There assuredly the seven kings of its two and a
+half centuries of monarchical rule had dwelt, enclosed within high,
+strong walls, which had but three gateways. Then the five centuries of
+republican sway spread out, the greatest, the most glorious of all the
+centuries, those which brought the Italic peninsula and finally the known
+world under Roman dominion. During those victorious years of social and
+war-like struggle, Rome grew and peopled the seven hills, and the
+Palatine became but a venerable cradle with legendary temples, and was
+even gradually invaded by private residences. But at last Caesar, the
+incarnation of the power of his race, after Gaul and after Pharsalia
+triumphed in the name of the whole Roman people, having completed the
+colossal task by which the five following centuries of imperialism were
+to profit, with a pompous splendour and a rush of every appetite. And
+then Augustus could ascend to power; glory had reached its climax;
+millions of gold were waiting to be filched from the depths of the
+provinces; and the imperial gala was to begin in the world’s capital,
+before the eyes of the dazzled and subjected nations. Augustus had been
+born on the Palatine, and after Actium had given him the empire, he set
+his pride in reigning from the summit of that sacred mount, venerated by
+the people. He bought up private houses and there built his palace with
+luxurious splendour: an atrium upheld by four pilasters and eight
+columns; a peristylium encompassed by fifty-six Ionic columns; private
+apartments all around, and all in marble; a profusion of marble, brought
+at great cost from foreign lands, and of the brightest hues, resplendent
+like gems. And he lodged himself with the gods, building near his own
+abode a large temple of Apollo and a shrine of Vesta in order to ensure
+himself divine and eternal sovereignty. And then the seed of the imperial
+palaces was sown; they were to spring up, grow and swarm, and cover the
+entire mount.
+
+Ah! the all-powerfulness of Augustus, his four and forty years of total,
+absolute, superhuman power, such as no despot has known even in his
+dreams! He had taken to himself every title, united every magistracy in
+his person. Imperator and consul, he commanded the armies and exercised
+executive power; pro-consul, he was supreme in the provinces; perpetual
+censor and princeps, he reigned over the senate; tribune, he was the
+master of the people. And, formerly called Octavius, he had caused
+himself to be declared Augustus, sacred, god among men, having his
+temples and his priests, worshipped in his lifetime like a divinity
+deigning to visit the earth. And finally he had resolved to be supreme
+pontiff, annexing religious to civil power, and thus by a stroke of
+genius attaining to the most complete dominion to which man can climb. As
+the supreme pontiff could not reside in a private house, he declared his
+abode to be State property. As the supreme pontiff could not leave the
+vicinity of the temple of Vesta, he built a temple to that goddess near
+his own dwelling, leaving the guardianship of the ancient altar below the
+Palatine to the Vestal virgins. He spared no effort, for he well realised
+that human omnipotence, the mastery of mankind and the world, lay in that
+reunion of sovereignty, in being both king and priest, emperor and pope.
+All the sap of a mighty race, all the victories achieved, and all the
+favours of fortune yet to be garnered, blossomed forth in Augustus, in a
+unique splendour which was never again to shed such brilliant radiance.
+He was really the master of the world, amidst the conquered and pacified
+nations, encompassed by immortal glory in literature and in art. In him
+would seem to have been satisfied the old intense ambition of his people,
+the ambition which it had pursued through centuries of patient conquest,
+to become the people-king. The blood of Rome, the blood of Augustus, at
+last coruscated in the sunlight, in the purple of empire. And the blood
+of Augustus, of the divine, triumphant, absolute sovereign of bodies and
+souls, of the man in whom seven centuries of national pride had
+culminated, was to descend through the ages, through an innumerable
+posterity with a heritage of boundless pride and ambition. For it was
+fatal: the blood of Augustus was bound to spring into life once more and
+pulsate in the veins of all the successive masters of Rome, ever haunting
+them with the dream of ruling the whole world. And later on, after the
+decline and fall, when power had once more become divided between the
+king and the priest, the popes--their hearts burning with the red,
+devouring blood of their great forerunner--had no other passion, no other
+policy, through the centuries, than that of attaining to civil dominion,
+to the totality of human power.
+
+But Augustus being dead, his palace having been closed and consecrated,
+Pierre saw that of Tiberius spring up from the soil. It had stood where
+his feet now rested, where the beautiful evergreen oaks sheltered him. He
+pictured it with courts, porticoes, and halls, both substantial and
+grand, despite the gloomy bent of the emperor who betook himself far from
+Rome to live amongst informers and debauchees, with his heart and brain
+poisoned by power to the point of crime and most extraordinary insanity.
+Then the palace of Caligula followed, an enlargement of that of Tiberius,
+with arcades set up to increase its extent, and a bridge thrown over the
+Forum to the Capitol, in order that the prince might go thither at his
+ease to converse with Jove, whose son he claimed to be. And sovereignty
+also rendered this one ferocious--a madman with omnipotence to do as he
+listed! Then, after Claudius, Nero, not finding the Palatine large
+enough, seized upon the delightful gardens climbing the Esquiline in
+order to set up his Golden House, a dream of sumptuous immensity which he
+could not complete and the ruins of which disappeared in the troubles
+following the death of this monster whom pride demented. Next, in
+eighteen months, Galba, Otho, and Vitellius fell one upon the other, in
+mire and in blood, the purple converting them also into imbeciles and
+monsters, gorged like unclean beasts at the trough of imperial enjoyment.
+And afterwards came the Flavians, at first a respite, with commonsense
+and human kindness: Vespasian; next Titus, who built but little on the
+Palatine; but then Domitian, in whom the sombre madness of omnipotence
+burst forth anew amidst a _régime_ of fear and spying, idiotic atrocities
+and crimes, debauchery contrary to nature, and building enterprises born
+of insane vanity instinct with a desire to outvie the temples of the
+gods. The palace of Domitian, parted by a lane from that of Tiberius,
+arose colossal-like--a palace of fairyland. There was the hall of
+audience, with its throne of gold, its sixteen columns of Phrygian and
+Numidian marble and its eight niches containing colossal statues; there
+were the hall of justice, the vast dining-room, the peristylium, the
+sleeping apartments, where granite, porphyry, and alabaster overflowed,
+carved and decorated by the most famous artists, and lavished on all
+sides in order to dazzle the world. And finally, many years later, a last
+palace was added to all the others--that of Septimius Severus: again a
+building of pride, with arches supporting lofty halls, terraced storeys,
+towers o’er-topping the roofs, a perfect Babylonian pile, rising up at
+the extreme point of the mount in view of the Appian Way, so that the
+emperor’s compatriots--those from the province of Africa, where he was
+born--might, on reaching the horizon, marvel at his fortune and worship
+him in his glory.
+
+And now Pierre beheld all those palaces which he had conjured up around
+him, resuscitated, resplendent in the full sunlight. They were as if
+linked together, parted merely by the narrowest of passages. In order
+that not an inch of that precious summit might be lost, they had sprouted
+thickly like the monstrous florescence of strength, power, and unbridled
+pride which satisfied itself at the cost of millions, bleeding the whole
+world for the enjoyment of one man. And in truth there was but one palace
+altogether, a palace enlarged as soon as one emperor died and was placed
+among the deities, and another, shunning the consecrated pile where
+possibly the shadow of death frightened him, experienced an imperious
+need to build a house of his own and perpetuate in everlasting stone the
+memory of his reign. All the emperors were seized with this building
+craze; it was like a disease which the very throne seemed to carry from
+one occupant to another with growing intensity, a consuming desire to
+excel all predecessors by thicker and higher walls, by a more and more
+wonderful profusion of marbles, columns, and statues. And among all these
+princes there was the idea of a glorious survival, of leaving a testimony
+of their greatness to dazzled and stupefied generations, of perpetuating
+themselves by marvels which would not perish but for ever weigh heavily
+upon the earth, when their own light ashes should long since have been
+swept away by the winds. And thus the Palatine became but the venerable
+base of a monstrous edifice, a thick vegetation of adjoining buildings,
+each new pile being like a fresh eruption of feverish pride; while the
+whole, now showing the snowy brightness of white marble and now the
+glowing hues of coloured marble, ended by crowning Rome and the
+world with the most extraordinary and most insolent abode of
+sovereignty--whether palace, temple, basilica, or cathedral--that
+omnipotence and dominion have ever reared under the heavens.
+
+But death lurked beneath this excess of strength and glory. Seven hundred
+and thirty years of monarchy and republic had sufficed to make Rome
+great; and in five centuries of imperial sway the people-king was to be
+devoured down to its last muscles. There was the immensity of the
+territory, the more distant provinces gradually pillaged and exhausted;
+there was the fisc consuming everything, digging the pit of fatal
+bankruptcy; and there was the degeneration of the people, poisoned by the
+scenes of the circus and the arena, fallen to the sloth and debauchery of
+their masters, the Caesars, while mercenaries fought the foe and tilled
+the soil. Already at the time of Constantine, Rome had a rival,
+Byzantium; disruption followed with Honorius; and then some ten emperors
+sufficed for decomposition to be complete, for the bones of the dying
+prey to be picked clean, the end coming with Romulus Augustulus, the
+sorry creature whose name is, so to say, a mockery of the whole glorious
+history, a buffet for both the founder of Rome and the founder of the
+empire.
+
+The palaces, the colossal assemblage of walls, storeys, terraces, and
+gaping roofs, still remained on the deserted Palatine; many ornaments and
+statues, however, had already been removed to Byzantium. And the empire,
+having become Christian, had afterwards closed the temples and
+extinguished the fire of Vesta, whilst yet respecting the ancient
+Palladium. But in the fifth century the barbarians rush upon Rome, sack
+and burn it, and carry the spoils spared by the flames away in their
+chariots. As long as the city was dependent on Byzantium a custodian of
+the imperial palaces remained there watching over the Palatine. Then all
+fades and crumbles in the night of the middle ages. It would really seem
+that the popes then slowly took the place of the Caesars, succeeding them
+both in their abandoned marble halls and their ever-subsisting passion
+for domination. Some of them assuredly dwelt in the palace of Septimius
+Severus; a council of the Church was held in the Septizonium; and, later
+on, Gelasius II was elected in a neighbouring monastery on the sacred
+mount. It was as if Augustus were again rising from the tomb, once more
+master of the world, with a Sacred College of Cardinals resuscitating the
+Roman Senate. In the twelfth century the Septizonium belonged to some
+Benedictine monks, and was sold by them to the powerful Frangipani
+family, who fortified it as they had already fortified the Colosseum and
+the arches of Constantine and Titus, thus forming a vast fortress round
+about the venerable cradle of the city. And the violent deeds of civil
+war and the ravages of invasion swept by like whirlwinds, throwing down
+the walls, razing the palaces and towers. And afterwards successive
+generations invaded the ruins, installed themselves in them by right of
+trover and conquest, turned them into cellars, store-places for forage,
+and stables for mules. Kitchen gardens were formed, vines were planted on
+the spots where fallen soil had covered the mosaics of the imperial
+halls. All around nettles and brambles grew up, and ivy preyed on the
+overturned porticoes, till there came a day when the colossal assemblage
+of palaces and temples, which marble was to have rendered eternal, seemed
+to dive beneath the dust, to disappear under the surging soil and
+vegetation which impassive Nature threw over it. And then, in the hot
+sunlight, among the wild flowerets, only big, buzzing flies remained,
+whilst herds of goats strayed in freedom through the throne-room of
+Domitian and the fallen sanctuary of Apollo.
+
+A great shudder passed through Pierre. To think of so much strength,
+pride, and grandeur, and such rapid ruin--a world for ever swept away! He
+wondered how entire palaces, yet peopled by admirable statuary, could
+thus have been gradually buried without any one thinking of protecting
+them. It was no sudden catastrophe which had swallowed up those
+masterpieces, subsequently to be disinterred with exclamations of
+admiring wonder; they had been drowned, as it were--caught progressively
+by the legs, the waist, and the neck, till at last the head had sunk
+beneath the rising tide. And how could one explain that generations had
+heedlessly witnessed such things without thought of putting forth a
+helping hand? It would seem as if, at a given moment, a black curtain
+were suddenly drawn across the world, as if mankind began afresh, with a
+new and empty brain which needed moulding and furnishing. Rome had become
+depopulated; men ceased to repair the ruins left by fire and sword; the
+edifices which by their very immensity had become useless were utterly
+neglected, allowed to crumble and fall. And then, too, the new religion
+everywhere hunted down the old one, stole its temples, overturned its
+gods. Earthly deposits probably completed the disaster--there were, it is
+said, both earthquakes and inundations--and the soil was ever rising, the
+alluvia of the young Christian world buried the ancient pagan society.
+And after the pillaging of the temples, the theft of the bronze roofs and
+marble columns, the climax came with the filching of the stones torn from
+the Colosseum and the Theatre of Marcellus, with the pounding of the
+statuary and sculpture-work, thrown into kilns to procure the lime needed
+for the new monuments of Catholic Rome.
+
+It was nearly one o’clock, and Pierre awoke as from a dream. The sun-rays
+were streaming in a golden rain between the shiny leaves of the
+ever-green oaks above him, and down below Rome lay dozing, overcome by
+the great heat. Then he made up his mind to leave the garden, and went
+stumbling over the rough pavement of the Clivus Victoriae, his mind still
+haunted by blinding visions. To complete his day, he had resolved to
+visit the old Appian Way during the afternoon, and, unwilling to return
+to the Via Giulia, he lunched at a suburban tavern, in a large, dim room,
+where, alone with the buzzing flies, he lingered for more than two hours,
+awaiting the sinking of the sun.
+
+Ah! that Appian Way, that ancient queen of the high roads, crossing the
+Campagna in a long straight line with rows of proud tombs on either
+hand--to Pierre it seemed like a triumphant prolongation of the Palatine.
+He there found the same passion for splendour and domination, the same
+craving to eternise the memory of Roman greatness in marble and daylight.
+Oblivion was vanquished; the dead refused to rest, and remained for ever
+erect among the living, on either side of that road which was traversed
+by multitudes from the entire world. The deified images of those who were
+now but dust still gazed on the passers-by with empty eyes; the
+inscriptions still spoke, proclaiming names and titles. In former times
+the rows of sepulchres must have extended without interruption along all
+the straight, level miles between the tomb of Cæcilia Metella and that
+of Casale Rotondo, forming an elongated cemetery where the powerful and
+wealthy competed as to who should leave the most colossal and lavishly
+decorated mausoleum: such, indeed, was the craving for survival, the
+passion for pompous immortality, the desire to deify death by lodging it
+in temples; whereof the present-day monumental splendour of the Genoese
+Campo Santo and the Roman Campo Verano is, so to say, a remote
+inheritance. And what a vision it was to picture all the tremendous tombs
+on the right and left of the glorious pavement which the legions trod on
+their return from the conquest of the world! That tomb of Cæcilia
+Metella, with its bond-stones so huge, its walls so thick that the middle
+ages transformed it into the battlemented keep of a fortress! And then
+all the tombs which follow, the modern structures erected in order that
+the marble fragments discovered might be set in place, the old blocks of
+brick and concrete, despoiled of their sculptured-work and rising up like
+seared rocks, yet still suggesting their original shapes as shrines,
+_cippi_, and _sarcophagi_. There is a wondrous succession of high reliefs
+figuring the dead in groups of three and five; statues in which the dead
+live deified, erect; seats contrived in niches in order that wayfarers
+may rest and bless the hospitality of the dead; laudatory epitaphs
+celebrating the dead, both the known and the unknown, the children of
+Sextius Pompeius Justus, the departed Marcus Servilius Quartus, Hilarius
+Fuscus, Rabirius Hermodorus; without counting the sepulchres venturously
+ascribed to Seneca and the Horatii and Curiatii. And finally there is the
+most extraordinary and gigantic of all the tombs, that known as Casale
+Rotondo, which is so large that it has been possible to establish a
+farmhouse and an olive garden on its substructures, which formerly upheld
+a double rotunda, adorned with Corinthian pilasters, large candelabra,
+and scenic masks.*
+
+ * Some believe this tomb to have been that of Messalla Corvinus,
+ the historian and poet, a friend of Augustus and Horace; others
+ ascribe it to his son, Aurelius Messallinus Cotta.--Trans.
+
+Pierre, having driven in a cab as far as the tomb of Cæcilia Metella,
+continued his excursion on foot, going slowly towards Casale Rotondo. In
+many places the old pavement appears--large blocks of basaltic lava, worn
+into deep ruts that jolt the best-hung vehicles. Among the ruined tombs
+on either hand run bands of grass, the neglected grass of cemeteries,
+scorched by the summer suns and sprinkled with big violet thistles and
+tall sulphur-wort. Parapets of dry stones, breast high, enclose the
+russet roadsides, which resound with the crepitation of grasshoppers;
+and, beyond, the Campagna stretches, vast and bare, as far as the eye can
+see. A parasol pine, a eucalyptus, some olive or fig trees, white with
+dust, alone rise up near the road at infrequent intervals. On the left
+the ruddy arches of the Acqua Claudia show vigorously in the meadows, and
+stretches of poorly cultivated land, vineyards, and little farms, extend
+to the blue and lilac Sabine and Alban hills, where Frascati, Rocca di
+Papa, and Albano set bright spots, which grow and whiten as one gets
+nearer to them. Then, on the right, towards the sea, the houseless,
+treeless plain grows and spreads with vast, broad ripples, extraordinary
+ocean-like simplicity and grandeur, a long, straight line alone parting
+it from the sky. At the height of summer all burns and flares on this
+limitless prairie, then of a ruddy gold; but in September a green tinge
+begins to suffuse the ocean of herbage, which dies away in the pink and
+mauve and vivid blue of the fine sunsets.
+
+As Pierre, quite alone and in a dreary mood, slowly paced the endless,
+flat highway, that resurrection of the past which he had beheld on the
+Palatine again confronted his mind’s eye. On either hand the tombs once
+more rose up intact, with marble of dazzling whiteness. Had not the head
+of a colossal statue been found, mingled with fragments of huge sphinxes,
+at the foot of yonder vase-shaped mass of bricks? He seemed to see the
+entire colossal statue standing again between the huge, crouching beasts.
+Farther on a beautiful headless statue of a woman had been discovered in
+the cella of a sepulchre, and he beheld it, again whole, with features
+expressive of grace and strength smiling upon life. The inscriptions also
+became perfect; he could read and understand them at a glance, as if
+living among those dead ones of two thousand years ago. And the road,
+too, became peopled: the chariots thundered, the armies tramped along,
+the people of Rome jostled him with the feverish agitation of great
+communities. It was a return of the times of the Flavians or the
+Antonines, the palmy years of the empire, when the pomp of the Appian
+Way, with its grand sepulchres, carved and adorned like temples, attained
+its apogee. What a monumental Street of Death, what an approach to Rome,
+that highway, straight as an arrow, where with the extraordinary pomp of
+their pride, which had survived their dust, the great dead greeted the
+traveller, ushered him into the presence of the living! He may well have
+wondered among what sovereign people, what masters of the world, he was
+about to find himself--a nation which had committed to its dead the duty
+of telling strangers that it allowed nothing whatever to perish--that its
+dead, like its city, remained eternal and glorious in monuments of
+extraordinary vastness! To think of it--the foundations of a fortress,
+and a tower sixty feet in diameter, that one woman might be laid to rest!
+And then, far away, at the end of the superb, dazzling highway, bordered
+with the marble of its funereal palaces, Pierre, turning round,
+distinctly beheld the Palatine, with the marble of its imperial
+palaces--the huge assemblage of palaces whose omnipotence had dominated
+the world!
+
+But suddenly he started: two carabiniers had just appeared among the
+ruins. The spot was not safe; the authorities watched over tourists even
+in broad daylight. And later on came another meeting which caused him
+some emotion. He perceived an ecclesiastic, a tall old man, in a black
+cassock, edged and girt with red; and was surprised to recognise Cardinal
+Boccanera, who had quitted the roadway, and was slowly strolling along
+the band of grass, among the tall thistles and sulphur-wort. With his
+head lowered and his feet brushing against the fragments of the tombs,
+the Cardinal did not even see Pierre. The young priest courteously turned
+aside, surprised to find him so far from home and alone. Then, on
+perceiving a heavy coach, drawn by two black horses, behind a building,
+he understood matters. A footman in black livery was waiting motionless
+beside the carriage, and the coachman had not quitted his box. And Pierre
+remembered that the Cardinals were not expected to walk in Rome, so that
+they were compelled to drive into the country when they desired to take
+exercise. But what haughty sadness, what solitary and, so to say,
+ostracised grandeur there was about that tall, thoughtful old man, thus
+forced to seek the desert, and wander among the tombs, in order to
+breathe a little of the evening air!
+
+Pierre had lingered there for long hours; the twilight was coming on, and
+once again he witnessed a lovely sunset. On his left the Campagna became
+blurred, and assumed a slaty hue, against which the yellowish arcades of
+the aqueduct showed very plainly, while the Alban hills, far away, faded
+into pink. Then, on the right, towards the sea, the planet sank among a
+number of cloudlets, figuring an archipelago of gold in an ocean of dying
+embers. And excepting the sapphire sky, studded with rubies, above the
+endless line of the Campagna, which was likewise changed into a sparkling
+lake, the dull green of the herbage turning to a liquid emerald tint,
+there was nothing to be seen, neither a hillock nor a flock--nothing,
+indeed, but Cardinal Boccanera’s black figure, erect among the tombs, and
+looking, as it were, enlarged as it stood out against the last purple
+flush of the sunset.
+
+Early on the following morning Pierre, eager to see everything, returned
+to the Appian Way in order to visit the catacomb of St. Calixtus, the
+most extensive and remarkable of the old Christian cemeteries, and one,
+too, where several of the early popes were buried. You ascend through a
+scorched garden, past olives and cypresses, reach a shanty of boards and
+plaster in which a little trade in “articles of piety” is carried on, and
+there a modern and fairly easy flight of steps enables you to descend.
+Pierre fortunately found there some French Trappists, who guard these
+catacombs and show them to strangers. One brother was on the point of
+going down with two French ladies, the mother and daughter, the former
+still comely and the other radiant with youth. They stood there smiling,
+though already slightly frightened, while the monk lighted some long,
+slim candles. He was a man with a bossy brow, the large, massive jaw of
+an obstinate believer and pale eyes bespeaking an ingenuous soul.
+
+“Ah! Monsieur l’Abbé,” he said to Pierre, “you’ve come just in time. If
+the ladies are willing, you had better come with us; for three Brothers
+are already below with people, and you would have a long time to wait.
+This is the great season for visitors.”
+
+The ladies politely nodded, and the Trappist handed a candle to the
+priest. In all probability neither mother nor daughter was devout, for
+both glanced askance at their new companion’s cassock, and suddenly
+became serious. Then they all went down and found themselves in a narrow
+subterranean corridor. “Take care, mesdames,” repeated the Trappist,
+lighting the ground with his candle. “Walk slowly, for there are
+projections and slopes.”
+
+Then, in a shrill voice full of extraordinary conviction, he began his
+explanations. Pierre had descended in silence, his heart beating with
+emotion. Ah! how many times, indeed, in his innocent seminary days, had
+he not dreamt of those catacombs of the early Christians, those asylums
+of the primitive faith! Even recently, while writing his book, he had
+often thought of them as of the most ancient and venerable remains of
+that community of the lowly and simple, for the return of which he
+called. But his brain was full of pages written by poets and great prose
+writers. He had beheld the catacombs through the magnifying glass of
+those imaginative authors, and had believed them to be vast, similar to
+subterranean cities, with broad highways and spacious halls, fit for the
+accommodation of vast crowds. And now how poor and humble the reality!
+
+“Well, yes,” said the Trappist in reply to the ladies’ questions, “the
+corridor is scarcely more than a yard in width; two persons could not
+pass along side by side. How they dug it? Oh! it was simple enough. A
+family or a burial association needed a place of sepulchre. Well, a first
+gallery was excavated with pickaxes in soil of this description--granular
+tufa, as it is called--a reddish substance, as you can see, both soft and
+yet resistant, easy to work and at the same time waterproof. In a word,
+just the substance that was needed, and one, too, that has preserved the
+remains of the buried in a wonderful way.” He paused and brought the
+flamelet of his candle near to the compartments excavated on either hand
+of the passage. “Look,” he continued, “these are the _loculi_. Well, a
+subterranean gallery was dug, and on both sides these compartments were
+hollowed out, one above the other. The bodies of the dead were laid in
+them, for the most part simply wrapped in shrouds. Then the aperture was
+closed with tiles or marble slabs, carefully cemented. So, as you can
+see, everything explains itself. If other families joined the first one,
+or the burial association became more numerous, fresh galleries were
+added to those already filled. Passages were excavated on either hand, in
+every sense; and, indeed, a second and lower storey, at times even a
+third, was dug out. And here, you see, we are in a gallery which is
+certainly thirteen feet high. Now, you may wonder how they raised the
+bodies to place them in the compartments of the top tier. Well, they did
+not raise them to any such height; in all their work they kept on going
+lower and lower, removing more and more of the soil as the compartments
+became filled. And in this wise, in these catacombs of St. Calixtus, in
+less than four centuries, the Christians excavated more than ten miles of
+galleries, in which more than a million of their dead must have been laid
+to rest. Now, there are dozens of catacombs; the environs of Rome are
+honeycombed with them. Think of that, and perhaps you will be able to
+form some idea of the vast number of people who were buried in this
+manner.”
+
+Pierre listened, feeling greatly impressed. He had once visited a coal
+pit in Belgium, and he here found the same narrow passages, the same
+heavy, stifling atmosphere, the same nihility of darkness and silence.
+The flamelets of the candles showed merely like stars in the deep gloom;
+they shed no radiance around. And he at last understood the character of
+this funereal, termite-like labour--these chance burrowings continued
+according to requirements, without art, method, or symmetry. The rugged
+soil was ever ascending and descending, the sides of the gallery snaked:
+neither plumb-line nor square had been used. All this, indeed, had simply
+been a work of charity and necessity, wrought by simple, willing
+grave-diggers, illiterate craftsmen, with the clumsy handiwork of the
+decline and fall. Proof thereof was furnished by the inscriptions and
+emblems on the marble slabs. They reminded one of the childish drawings
+which street urchins scrawl upon blank walls.
+
+“You see,” the Trappist continued, “most frequently there is merely a
+name; and sometimes there is no name, but simply the words _In Pace_. At
+other times there is an emblem, the dove of purity, the palm of
+martyrdom, or else the fish whose name in Greek is composed of five
+letters which, as initials, signify: ‘Jesus Christ, Son of God,
+Saviour.’”
+
+He again brought his candle near to the marble slabs, and the palm could
+be distinguished: a central stroke, whence started a few oblique lines;
+and then came the dove or the fish, roughly outlined, a zigzag indicating
+a tail, two bars representing the bird’s feet, while a round point
+simulated an eye. And the letters of the short inscriptions were all
+askew, of various sizes, often quite misshapen, as in the coarse
+handwriting of the ignorant and simple.
+
+However, they reached a crypt, a sort of little hall, where the graves of
+several popes had been found; among others that of Sixtus II, a holy
+martyr, in whose honour there was a superbly engraved metrical
+inscription set up by Pope Damasus. Then, in another hall, a family vault
+of much the same size, decorated at a later stage, with naive mural
+paintings, the spot where St. Cecilia’s body had been discovered was
+shown. And the explanations continued. The Trappist dilated on the
+paintings, drawing from them a confirmation of every dogma and belief,
+baptism, the Eucharist, the resurrection, Lazarus arising from the tomb,
+Jonas cast up by the whale, Daniel in the lions’ den, Moses drawing water
+from the rock, and Christ--shown beardless, as was the practice in the
+early ages--accomplishing His various miracles.
+
+“You see,” repeated the Trappist, “all those things are shown there; and
+remember that none of the paintings was specially prepared: they are
+absolutely authentic.”
+
+At a question from Pierre, whose astonishment was increasing, he admitted
+that the catacombs had been mere cemeteries at the outset, when no
+religious ceremonies had been celebrated in them. It was only later, in
+the fourth century, when the martyrs were honoured, that the crypts were
+utilised for worship. And in the same way they only became places of
+refuge during the persecutions, when the Christians had to conceal the
+entrances to them. Previously they had remained freely and legally open.
+This was indeed their true history: cemeteries four centuries old
+becoming places of asylum, ravaged at times during the persecutions;
+afterwards held in veneration till the eighth century; then despoiled of
+their holy relics, and subsequently blocked up and forgotten, so that
+they remained buried during more than seven hundred years, people
+thinking of them so little that at the time of the first searches in the
+fifteenth century they were considered an extraordinary discovery--an
+intricate historical problem--one, moreover, which only our own age has
+solved.
+
+“Please stoop, mesdames,” resumed the Trappist. “In this compartment here
+is a skeleton which has not been touched. It has been lying here for
+sixteen or seventeen hundred years, and will show you how the bodies were
+laid out. Savants say that it is the skeleton of a female, probably a
+young girl. It was still quite perfect last spring; but the skull, as you
+can see, is now split open. An American broke it with his walking stick
+to make sure that it was genuine.”
+
+The ladies leaned forward, and the flickering light illumined their pale
+faces, expressive of mingled fright and compassion. Especially noticeable
+was the pitiful, pain-fraught look which appeared on the countenance of
+the daughter, so full of life with her red lips and large black eyes.
+Then all relapsed into gloom, and the little candles were borne aloft and
+went their way through the heavy darkness of the galleries. The visit
+lasted another hour, for the Trappist did not spare a detail, fond as he
+was of certain nooks and corners, and as zealous as if he desired to work
+the redemption of his visitors.
+
+While Pierre followed the others, a complete evolution took place within
+him. As he looked about him, and formed a more and more complete idea of
+his surroundings, his first stupefaction at finding the reality so
+different from the embellished accounts of story-tellers and poets, his
+disillusion at being plunged into such rudely excavated mole-burrows,
+gave way to fraternal emotion. It was not that he thought of the fifteen
+hundred martyrs whose sacred bones had rested there. But how humble,
+resigned, yet full of hope had been those who had chosen such a place of
+sepulchre! Those low, darksome galleries were but temporary
+sleeping-places for the Christians. If they did not burn the bodies of
+their dead, as the Pagans did, it was because, like the Jews, they
+believed in the resurrection of the body; and it was that lovely idea of
+sleep, of tranquil rest after a just life, whilst awaiting the celestial
+reward, which imparted such intense peacefulness, such infinite charm, to
+the black, subterranean city. Everything there spoke of calm and silent
+night; everything there slumbered in rapturous quiescence, patient until
+the far-off awakening. What could be more touching than those terra-cotta
+tiles, those marble slabs, which bore not even a name--nothing but the
+words _In Pace_--at peace. Ah! to be at peace--life’s work at last
+accomplished; to sleep in peace, to hope in peace for the advent of
+heaven! And the peacefulness seemed the more delightful as it was enjoyed
+in such deep humility. Doubtless the diggers worked chance-wise and
+clumsily; the craftsmen no longer knew how to engrave a name or carve a
+palm or a dove. Art had vanished; but all the feebleness and ignorance
+were instinct with the youth of a new humanity. Poor and lowly and meek
+ones swarmed there, reposing beneath the soil, whilst up above the sun
+continued its everlasting task. You found there charity and fraternity
+and death; husband and wife often lying together with their offspring at
+their feet; the great mass of the unknown submerging the personage, the
+bishop, or the martyr; the most touching equality--that springing from
+modesty--prevailing amidst all that dust, with compartments ever similar
+and slabs destitute of ornament, so that rows and rows of the sleepers
+mingled without distinctive sign. The inscriptions seldom ventured on a
+word of praise, and then how prudent, how delicate it was: the men were
+very worthy, very pious: the women very gentle, very beautiful, very
+chaste. A perfume of infancy arose, unlimited human affection spread:
+this was death as understood by the primitive Christians--death which hid
+itself to await the resurrection, and dreamt no more of the empire of the
+world!
+
+And all at once before Pierre’s eyes arose a vision of the sumptuous
+tombs of the Appian Way, displaying the domineering pride of a whole
+civilisation in the sunlight--tombs of vast dimensions, with a profusion
+of marbles, grandiloquent inscriptions, and masterpieces of
+sculptured-work. Ah! what an extraordinary contrast between that pompous
+avenue of death, conducting, like a highway of triumph, to the regal
+Eternal City, when compared with the subterranean necropolis of the
+Christians, that city of hidden death, so gentle, so beautiful, and so
+chaste! Here only quiet slumber, desired and accepted night, resignation
+and patience were to be found. Millions of human beings had here laid
+themselves to rest in all humility, had slept for centuries, and would
+still be sleeping here, lulled by the silence and the gloom, if the
+living had not intruded on their desire to remain in oblivion so long as
+the trumpets of the Judgment Day did not awaken them. Death had then
+spoken of Life: nowhere had there been more intimate and touching life
+than in these buried cities of the unknown, lowly dead. And a mighty
+breath had formerly come from them--the breath of a new humanity destined
+to renew the world. With the advent of meekness, contempt for the flesh,
+terror and hatred of nature, relinquishment of terrestrial joys, and a
+passion for death, which delivers and opens the portals of Paradise,
+another world had begun. And the blood of Augustus, so proud of purpling
+in the sunlight, so fired by the passion for sovereign dominion, seemed
+for a moment to disappear, as if, indeed, the new world had sucked it up
+in the depths of its gloomy sepulchres.
+
+However, the Trappist insisted on showing the ladies the steps of
+Diocletian, and began to tell them the legend. “Yes,” said he, “it was a
+miracle. One day, under that emperor, some soldiers were pursuing several
+Christians, who took refuge in these catacombs; and when the soldiers
+followed them inside the steps suddenly gave way, and all the persecutors
+were hurled to the bottom. The steps remain broken to this day. Come and
+see them; they are close by.”
+
+But the ladies were quite overcome, so affected by their prolonged
+sojourn in the gloom and by the tales of death which the Trappist had
+poured into their ears that they insisted on going up again. Moreover,
+the candles were coming to an end. They were all dazzled when they found
+themselves once more in the sunlight, outside the little hut where
+articles of piety and souvenirs were sold. The girl bought a paper
+weight, a piece of marble on which was engraved the fish symbolical of
+“Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour of Mankind.”
+
+On the afternoon of that same day Pierre decided to visit St. Peter’s. He
+had as yet only driven across the superb piazza with its obelisk and twin
+fountains, encircled by Bernini’s colonnades, those four rows of columns
+and pilasters which form a girdle of monumental majesty. At the far end
+rises the basilica, its façade making it look smaller and heavier than it
+really is, but its sovereign dome nevertheless filling the heavens.
+
+Pebbled, deserted inclines stretched out, and steps followed steps, worn
+and white, under the burning sun; but at last Pierre reached the door and
+went in. It was three o’clock. Broad sheets of light streamed in through
+the high square windows, and some ceremony--the vesper service, no
+doubt--was beginning in the Capella Clementina on the left. Pierre,
+however, heard nothing; he was simply struck by the immensity of the
+edifice, as with raised eyes he slowly walked along. At the entrance came
+the giant basins for holy water with their boy-angels as chubby as
+Cupids; then the nave, vaulted and decorated with sunken coffers; then
+the four cyclopean buttress-piers upholding the dome, and then again the
+transepts and apsis, each as large as one of our churches. And the proud
+pomp, the dazzling, crushing splendour of everything, also astonished
+him: he marvelled at the cupola, looking like a planet, resplendent with
+the gold and bright colours of its mosaic-work, at the sumptuous
+_baldacchino_ of bronze, crowning the high altar raised above the very
+tomb of St. Peter, and whence descend the double steps of the Confession,
+illumined by seven and eighty lamps, which are always kept burning. And
+finally he was lost in astonishment at the extraordinary profusion of
+marble, both white and coloured. Oh! those polychromatic marbles,
+Bernini’s luxurious passion! The splendid pavement reflecting the entire
+edifice, the facings of the pilasters with their medallions of popes, the
+tiara and the keys borne aloft by chubby angels, the walls covered with
+emblems, particularly the dove of Innocent X, the niches with their
+colossal statues uncouth in taste, the _loggie_ and their balconies, the
+balustrade and double steps of the Confession, the rich altars and yet
+richer tombs--all, nave, aisles, transepts, and apsis, were in marble,
+resplendent with the wealth of marble; not a nook small as the palm of
+one’s hand appearing but it showed the insolent opulence of marble. And
+the basilica triumphed, beyond discussion, recognised and admired by
+every one as the largest and most splendid church in the whole world--the
+personification of hugeness and magnificence combined.
+
+Pierre still wandered on, gazing, overcome, as yet not distinguishing
+details. He paused for a moment before the bronze statue of St. Peter,
+seated in a stiff, hierarchical attitude on a marble pedestal. A few of
+the faithful were there kissing the large toe of the Saint’s right foot.
+Some of them carefully wiped it before applying their lips; others, with
+no thought of cleanliness, kissed it, pressed their foreheads to it, and
+then kissed it again. Next, Pierre turned into the transept on the left,
+where stand the confessionals. Priests are ever stationed there, ready to
+confess penitents in every language. Others wait, holding long staves,
+with which they lightly tap the heads of kneeling sinners, who thereby
+obtain thirty days’ indulgence. However, there were few people present,
+and inside the small wooden boxes the priests occupied their leisure time
+in reading and writing, as if they were at home. Then Pierre again found
+himself before the Confession, and gazed with interest at the eighty
+lamps, scintillating like stars. The high altar, at which the Pope alone
+can officiate, seemed wrapped in the haughty melancholy of solitude under
+its gigantic, flowery _baldacchino_, the casting and gilding of which
+cost two and twenty thousand pounds. But suddenly Pierre remembered the
+ceremony in the Capella Clementina, and felt astonished, for he could
+hear nothing of it. As he drew near a faint breath, like the far-away
+piping of a flute, was wafted to him. Then the volume of sound slowly
+increased, but it was only on reaching the chapel that he recognised an
+organ peal. The sunlight here filtered through red curtains drawn before
+the windows, and thus the chapel glowed like a furnace whilst resounding
+with the grave music. But in that huge pile all became so slight, so
+weak, that at sixty paces neither voice nor organ could be distinguished.
+
+On entering the basilica Pierre had fancied that it was quite empty and
+lifeless. There were, however, some people there, but so few and far
+between that their presence was not noticed. A few tourists wandered
+about wearily, guide-book in hand. In the grand nave a painter with his
+easel was taking a view, as in a public gallery. Then a French seminary
+went by, conducted by a prelate who named and explained the tombs. But in
+all that space these fifty or a hundred people looked merely like a few
+black ants who had lost themselves and were vainly seeking their way. And
+Pierre pictured himself in some gigantic gala hall or tremendous
+vestibule in an immeasurable palace of reception. The broad sheets of
+sunlight streaming through the lofty square windows of plain white glass
+illumined the church with blending radiance. There was not a single stool
+or chair: nothing but the superb, bare pavement, such as you might find
+in a museum, shining mirror-like under the dancing shower of sunrays. Nor
+was there a single corner for solitary reflection, a nook of gloom and
+mystery, where one might kneel and pray. In lieu thereof the sumptuous,
+sovereign dazzlement of broad daylight prevailed upon every side. And, on
+thus suddenly finding himself in this deserted opera-house, all aglow
+with flaring gold and purple, Pierre could but remember the quivering
+gloom of the Gothic cathedrals of France, where dim crowds sob and
+supplicate amidst a forest of pillars. In presence of all this ceremonial
+majesty--this huge, empty pomp, which was all Body--he recalled with a
+pang the emaciate architecture and statuary of the middle ages, which
+were all Soul. He vainly sought for some poor, kneeling woman, some
+creature swayed by faith or suffering, yielding in a modest half-light to
+thoughts of the unknown, and with closed lips holding communion with the
+invisible. These he found not: there was but the weary wandering of the
+tourists, and the bustle of the prelates conducting the young priests to
+the obligatory stations; while the vesper service continued in the
+left-hand chapel, nought of it reaching the ears of the visitors save,
+perhaps, a confused vibration, as of the peal of a bell penetrating from
+outside through the vaults above.
+
+And Pierre then understood that this was the splendid skeleton of a
+colossus whence life was departing. To fill it, to animate it with a
+soul, all the gorgeous display of great religious ceremonies was needed;
+the eighty thousand worshippers which it could hold, the great pontifical
+pomps, the festivals of Christmas and Easter, the processions and
+_cortèges_ displaying all the luxury of the Church amidst operatic
+scenery and appointments. And he tried to conjure up a picture of the
+past magnificence--the basilica overflowing with an idolatrous multitude,
+and the superhuman _cortège_ passing along whilst every head was lowered;
+the cross and the sword opening the march, the cardinals going two by
+two, like twin divinities, in their rochets of lace and their mantles and
+robes of red moire, which train-bearers held up behind them; and at last,
+with Jove-like pomp, the Pope, carried on a stage draped with red velvet,
+seated in an arm-chair of red velvet and gold, and dressed in white
+velvet, with cope of gold, stole of gold, and tiara of gold. The bearers
+of the _Sedia gestatoria_* shone bravely in red tunics broidered with
+gold. Above the one and only Sovereign Pontiff of the world the
+_flabelli_ waved those huge fans of feathers which formerly were waved
+before the idols of pagan Rome. And around the seat of triumph what a
+dazzling, glorious court there was! The whole pontifical family, the
+stream of assistant prelates, the patriarchs, the archbishops, and the
+bishops, with vestments and mitres of gold, the _Camerieri segreti
+partecipanti_ in violet silk, the _Camerieri partecipanti_ of the cape
+and the sword in black velvet Renascence costumes, with ruffs and golden
+chains, the whole innumerable ecclesiastical and laical suite, which not
+even a hundred pages of the “Gerarchia” can completely enumerate, the
+prothonotaries, the chaplains, the prelates of every class and degree,
+without mentioning the military household, the gendarmes with their
+busbies, the Palatine Guards in blue trousers and black tunics, the Swiss
+Guards costumed in red, yellow, and black, with breastplates of silver,
+suggesting the men at arms of some drama of the Romantic school, and the
+Noble Guards, superb in their high boots, white pigskins, red tunics,
+gold lace, epaulets, and helmets! However, since Rome had become the
+capital of Italy the doors were no longer thrown wide open; on the rare
+occasions when the Pope yet came down to officiate, to show himself as
+the supreme representative of the Divinity on earth, the basilica was
+filled with chosen ones. To enter it you needed a card of invitation. You
+no longer saw the people--a throng of fifty, even eighty, thousand
+Christians--flocking to the Church and swarming within it promiscuously;
+there was but a select gathering, a congregation of friends convened as
+for a private function. Even when, by dint of effort, thousands were
+collected together there, they formed but a picked audience invited to
+the performance of a monster concert.
+
+ * The chair and stage are known by that name.--Trans.
+
+And as Pierre strolled among the bright, crude marbles in that cold if
+gorgeous museum, the feeling grew upon him that he was in some pagan
+temple raised to the deity of Light and Pomp. The larger temples of
+ancient Rome were certainly similar piles, upheld by the same precious
+columns, with walls covered with the same polychromatic marbles and
+vaulted ceilings having the same gilded panels. And his feeling was
+destined to become yet more acute after his visits to the other
+basilicas, which could but reveal the truth to him. First one found the
+Christian Church quietly, audaciously quartering itself in a pagan
+church, as, for instance, San Lorenzo in Miranda installed in the temple
+of Antoninus and Faustina, and retaining the latter’s rare porticus in
+_cipollino_ marble and its handsome white marble entablature. Then there
+was the Christian Church springing from the ruins of the destroyed pagan
+edifice, as, for example, San Clemente, beneath which centuries of
+contrary beliefs are stratified: a very ancient edifice of the time of
+the kings or the republic, then another of the days of the empire
+identified as a temple of Mithras, and next a basilica of the primitive
+faith. Then, too, there was the Christian Church, typified by that of
+Saint Agnes-beyond-the-walls which had been built on exactly the same
+pattern as the Roman secular basilica--that Tribunal and Exchange which
+accompanied every Forum. And, in particular, there was the Christian
+Church erected with material stolen from the demolished pagan temples. To
+this testified the sixteen superb columns of that same Saint Agnes,
+columns of various marbles filched from various gods; the one and twenty
+columns of Santa Maria in Trastevere, columns of all sorts of orders torn
+from a temple of Isis and Serapis, who even now are represented on their
+capitals; also the six and thirty white marble Ionic columns of Santa
+Maria Maggiore derived from the temple of Juno Lucina; and the two and
+twenty columns of Santa Maria in Ara Coeli, these varying in substance,
+size, and workmanship, and certain of them said to have been stolen from
+Jove himself, from the famous temple of Jupiter Capitolinus which rose
+upon the sacred summit. In addition, the temples of the opulent Imperial
+period seemed to resuscitate in our times at San Giovanni in Laterano and
+San Paolo-fuori-le-mura. Was not that Basilica of San Giovanni--“the
+Mother and Head of all the churches of the city and the earth”--like the
+abode of honour of some pagan divinity whose splendid kingdom was of this
+world? It boasted five naves, parted by four rows of columns; it was a
+profusion of bas-reliefs, friezes, and entablatures, and its twelve
+colossal statues of the Apostles looked like subordinate deities lining
+the approach to the master of the gods! And did not San Paolo, lately
+completed, its new marbles shimmering like mirrors, recall the abode of
+the Olympian immortals, typical temple as it was with its majestic
+colonnade, its flat, gilt-panelled ceiling, its marble pavement
+incomparably beautiful both in substance and workmanship, its violet
+columns with white bases and capitals, and its white entablature with
+violet frieze: everywhere, indeed, you found, the mingling of those two
+colours so divinely carnal in their harmony. And there, as at St.
+Peter’s, not one patch of gloom, not one nook of mystery where one might
+peer into the invisible, could be found! And, withal, St. Peter’s
+remained the monster, the colossus, larger than the largest of all
+others, an extravagant testimony of what the mad passion for the huge can
+achieve when human pride, by dint of spending millions, dreams of lodging
+the divinity in an over-vast, over-opulent palace of stone, where in
+truth that pride itself, and not the divinity, triumphs!
+
+And to think that after long centuries that gala colossus had been the
+outcome of the fervour of primitive faith! You found there a blossoming
+of that ancient sap, peculiar to the soil of Rome, which in all ages has
+thrown up preposterous edifices, of exaggerated hugeness and dazzling and
+ruinous luxury. It would seem as if the absolute masters successively
+ruling the city brought that passion for cyclopean building with them,
+derived it from the soil in which they grew, for they transmitted it one
+to the other, without a pause, from civilisation to civilisation, however
+diverse and contrary their minds. It has all been, so to say, a
+continuous blossoming of human vanity, a passionate desire to set one’s
+name on an imperishable wall, and, after being master of the world, to
+leave behind one an indestructible trace, a tangible proof of one’s
+passing glory, an eternal edifice of bronze and marble fit to attest that
+glory until the end of time. At the bottom the spirit of conquest, the
+proud ambition to dominate the world, subsists; and when all has
+crumbled, and a new society has sprung up from the ruins of its
+predecessor, men have erred in imagining it to be cured of the sin of
+pride, steeped in humility once more, for it has had the old blood in its
+veins, and has yielded to the same insolent madness as its ancestors, a
+prey to all the violence of its heredity directly it has become great and
+strong. Among the illustrious popes there has not been one that did not
+seek to build, did not revert to the traditions of the Caesars,
+eternising their reigns in stone and raising temples for resting-places,
+so as to rank among the gods. Ever the same passion for terrestrial
+immortality has burst forth: it has been a battle as to who should leave
+the highest, most substantial, most gorgeous monument; and so acute has
+been the disease that those who, for lack of means and opportunity, have
+been unable to build, and have been forced to content themselves with
+repairing, have, nevertheless, desired to bequeath the memory of their
+modest achievements to subsequent generations by commemorative marble
+slabs engraved with pompous inscriptions! These slabs are to be seen on
+every side: not a wall has ever been strengthened but some pope has
+stamped it with his arms, not a ruin has been restored, not a palace
+repaired, not a fountain cleaned, but the reigning pope has signed the
+work with his Roman and pagan title of “Pontifex Maximus.” It is a
+haunting passion, a form of involuntary debauchery, the fated florescence
+of that compost of ruins, that dust of edifices whence new edifices are
+ever arising. And given the perversion with which the old Roman soil
+almost immediately tarnished the doctrines of Jesus, that resolute
+passion for domination and that desire for terrestrial glory which
+wrought the triumph of Catholicism in scorn of the humble and pure, the
+fraternal and simple ones of the primitive Church, one may well ask
+whether Rome has ever been Christian at all!
+
+And whilst Pierre was for the second time walking round the huge
+basilica, admiring the tombs of the popes, truth, like a sudden
+illumination, burst upon him and filled him with its glow. Ah! those
+tombs! Yonder in the full sunlight, in the rosy Campagna, on either side
+of the Appian Way--that triumphal approach to Rome, conducting the
+stranger to the august Palatine with its crown of circling palaces--there
+arose the gigantic tombs of the powerful and wealthy, tombs of
+unparalleled artistic splendour, perpetuating in marble the pride and
+pomp of a strong race that had mastered the world. Then, near at hand,
+beneath the sod, in the shrouding night of wretched mole-holes, other
+tombs were hidden--the tombs of the lowly, the poor, and the
+suffering--tombs destitute of art or display, but whose very humility
+proclaimed that a breath of affection and resignation had passed by, that
+One had come preaching love and fraternity, the relinquishment of the
+wealth of the earth for the everlasting joys of a future life, and
+committing to the soil the good seed of His Gospel, sowing the new
+humanity which was to transform the olden world. And, behold, from that
+seed, buried in the soil for centuries, behold, from those humble,
+unobtrusive tombs, where martyrs slept their last and gentle sleep whilst
+waiting for the glorious call, yet other tombs had sprung, tombs as
+gigantic and as pompous as the ancient, destroyed sepulchres of the
+idolaters, tombs uprearing their marbles among a pagan-temple-like
+splendour, proclaiming the same superhuman pride, the same mad passion
+for universal sovereignty. At the time of the Renascence Rome became
+pagan once more; the old imperial blood frothed up and swept Christianity
+away with the greatest onslaught ever directed against it. Ah! those
+tombs of the popes at St. Peter’s, with their impudent, insolent
+glorification of the departed, their sumptuous, carnal hugeness, defying
+death and setting immortality upon this earth. There are giant popes of
+bronze, allegorical figures and angels of equivocal character wearing the
+beauty of lovely girls, of passion-compelling women with the thighs and
+the breasts of pagan goddesses! Paul III is seated on a high pedestal,
+Justice and Prudence are almost prostrate at his feet. Urban VIII is
+between Prudence and Religion, Innocent XI between Religion and Justice,
+Innocent XII between Justice and Charity, Gregory XIII between Religion
+and Strength. Attended by Prudence and Justice, Alexander VII appears
+kneeling, with Charity and Truth before him, and a skeleton rises up
+displaying an empty hour-glass. Clement XIII, also on his knees, triumphs
+above a monumental sarcophagus, against which leans Religion bearing the
+Cross; while the Genius of Death, his elbow resting on the right-hand
+corner, has two huge, superb lions, emblems of omnipotence, beneath him.
+Bronze bespeaks the eternity of the figures, white marble describes
+opulent flesh, and coloured marble winds around in rich draperies,
+deifying the monuments under the bright, golden glow of nave and aisles.
+
+And Pierre passed from one tomb to the other on his way through the
+magnificent, deserted, sunlit basilica. Yes, these tombs, so imperial in
+their ostentation, were meet companions for those of the Appian Way.
+Assuredly it was Rome, the soil of Rome, that soil where pride and
+domination sprouted like the herbage of the fields that had transformed
+the humble Christianity of primitive times, the religion of fraternity,
+justice, and hope into what it now was: victorious Catholicism, allied to
+the rich and powerful, a huge implement of government, prepared for the
+conquest of every nation. The popes had awoke as Caesars. Remote heredity
+had acted, the blood of Augustus had bubbled forth afresh, flowing
+through their veins and firing their minds with immeasurable ambition. As
+yet none but Augustus had held the empire of the world, had been both
+emperor and pontiff, master of the body and the soul. And thence had come
+the eternal dream of the popes in despair at only holding the spiritual
+power, and obstinately refusing to yield in temporal matters, clinging
+for ever to the ancient hope that their dream might at last be realised,
+and the Vatican become another Palatine, whence they might reign with
+absolute despotism over all the conquered nations.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+PIERRE had been in Rome for a fortnight, and yet the affair of his book
+was no nearer solution. He was still possessed by an ardent desire to see
+the Pope, but could in no wise tell how to satisfy it, so frequent were
+the delays and so greatly had he been frightened by Monsignor Nani’s
+predictions of the dire consequences which might attend any imprudent
+action. And so, foreseeing a prolonged sojourn, he at last betook himself
+to the Vicariate in order that his “celebret” might be stamped, and
+afterwards said his mass each morning at the Church of Santa Brigida,
+where he received a kindly greeting from Abbé Pisoni, Benedetta’s former
+confessor.
+
+One Monday evening he resolved to repair early to Donna Serafina’s
+customary reception in the hope of learning some news and expediting his
+affairs. Perhaps Monsignor Nani would look in; perhaps he might be lucky
+enough to come across some cardinal or domestic prelate willing to help
+him. It was in vain that he had tried to extract any positive information
+from Don Vigilio, for, after a short spell of affability and willingness,
+Cardinal Pio’s secretary had relapsed into distrust and fear, and avoided
+Pierre as if he were resolved not to meddle in a business which, all
+considered, was decidedly suspicious and dangerous. Moreover, for a
+couple of days past a violent attack of fever had compelled him to keep
+his room.
+
+Thus the only person to whom Pierre could turn for comfort was Victorine
+Bosquet, the old Beauceronne servant who had been promoted to the rank of
+housekeeper, and who still retained a French heart after thirty years’
+residence in Rome. She often spoke to the young priest of Auneau, her
+native place, as if she had left it only the previous day; but on that
+particular Monday even she had lost her wonted gay vivacity, and when she
+heard that he meant to go down in the evening to see the ladies she
+wagged her head significantly. “Ah! you won’t find them very cheerful,”
+ said she. “My poor Benedetta is greatly worried. Her divorce suit is not
+progressing at all well.”
+
+All Rome, indeed, was again talking of this affair. An extraordinary
+revival of tittle-tattle had set both white and black worlds agog. And so
+there was no need for reticence on Victorine’s part, especially in
+conversing with a compatriot. It appeared, then, that, in reply to
+Advocate Morano’s memoir setting forth that the marriage had not been
+consummated, there had come another memoir, a terrible one, emanating
+from Monsignor Palma, a doctor in theology, whom the Congregation of the
+Council had selected to defend the marriage. As a first point, Monsignor
+Palma flatly disputed the alleged non-consummation, questioned the
+certificate put forward on Benedetta’s behalf, and quoted instances
+recorded in scientific text-books which showed how deceptive appearances
+often were. He strongly insisted, moreover, on the narrative which Count
+Prada supplied in another memoir, a narrative well calculated to inspire
+doubt; and, further, he so turned and twisted the evidence of Benedetta’s
+own maid as to make that evidence also serve against her. Finally he
+argued in a decisive way that, even supposing the marriage had not been
+consummated, this could only be ascribed to the resistance of the
+Countess, who had thus set at defiance one of the elementary laws of
+married life, which was that a wife owed obedience to her husband.
+
+Next had come a fourth memoir, drawn up by the reporter of the
+Congregation, who analysed and discussed the three others, and
+subsequently the Congregation itself had dealt with the matter, opining
+in favour of the dissolution of the marriage by a majority of one
+vote--such a bare majority, indeed, that Monsignor Palma, exercising his
+rights, had hastened to demand further inquiry, a course which brought
+the whole _procédure_ again into question, and rendered a fresh vote
+necessary.
+
+“Ah! the poor Contessina!” exclaimed Victorine, “she’ll surely die of
+grief, for, calm as she may seem, there’s an inward fire consuming her.
+It seems that Monsignor Palma is the master of the situation, and can
+make the affair drag on as long as he likes. And then a deal of money had
+already been spent, and one will have to spend a lot more. Abbé Pisoni,
+whom you know, was very badly inspired when he helped on that marriage;
+and though I certainly don’t want to soil the memory of my good mistress,
+Countess Ernesta, who was a real saint, it’s none the less true that she
+wrecked her daughter’s life when she gave her to Count Prada.”
+
+The housekeeper paused. Then, impelled by an instinctive sense of
+justice, she resumed. “It’s only natural that Count Prada should be
+annoyed, for he’s really being made a fool of. And, for my part, as there
+is no end to all the fuss, and this divorce is so hard to obtain, I
+really don’t see why the Contessina shouldn’t live with her Dario without
+troubling any further. Haven’t they loved one another ever since they
+were children? Aren’t they both young and handsome, and wouldn’t they be
+happy together, whatever the world might say? Happiness, _mon Dieu_! one
+finds it so seldom that one can’t afford to let it pass.”
+
+Then, seeing how greatly surprised Pierre was at hearing such language,
+she began to laugh with the quiet composure of one belonging to the
+humble classes of France, whose only desire is a quiet and happy life,
+irrespective of matrimonial ties. Next, in more discreet language, she
+proceeded to lament another worry which had fallen on the household,
+another result of the divorce affair. A rupture had come about between
+Donna Serafina and Advocate Morano, who was very displeased with the ill
+success of his memoir to the congregation, and accused Father
+Lorenza--the confessor of the Boccanera ladies--of having urged them into
+a deplorable lawsuit, whose only fruit could be a wretched scandal
+affecting everybody. And so great had been Morano’s annoyance that he had
+not returned to the Boccanera mansion, but had severed a connection of
+thirty years’ standing, to the stupefaction of all the Roman
+drawing-rooms, which altogether disapproved of his conduct. Donna
+Serafina was, for her part, the more grieved as she suspected the
+advocate of having purposely picked the quarrel in order to secure an
+excuse for leaving her; his real motive, in her estimation, being a
+sudden, disgraceful passion for a young and intriguing woman of the
+middle classes.
+
+That Monday evening, when Pierre entered the drawing-room, hung with
+yellow brocatelle of a flowery Louis XIV pattern, he at once realised
+that melancholy reigned in the dim light radiating from the lace-veiled
+lamps. Benedetta and Celia, seated on a sofa, were chatting with Dario,
+whilst Cardinal Sarno, ensconced in an arm-chair, listened to the
+ceaseless chatter of the old relative who conducted the little Princess
+to each Monday gathering. And the only other person present was Donna
+Serafina, seated all alone in her wonted place on the right-hand side of
+the chimney-piece, and consumed with secret rage at seeing the chair on
+the left-hand side unoccupied--that chair which Morano had always taken
+during the thirty years that he had been faithful to her. Pierre noticed
+with what anxious and then despairing eyes she observed his entrance, her
+glance ever straying towards the door, as though she even yet hoped for
+the fickle one’s return. Withal her bearing was erect and proud; she
+seemed to be more tightly laced than ever; and there was all the wonted
+haughtiness on her hard-featured face, with its jet-black eyebrows and
+snowy hair.
+
+Pierre had no sooner paid his respects to her than he allowed his own
+worry to appear by inquiring whether they would not have the pleasure of
+seeing Monsignor Nani that evening. Thereupon Donna Serafina could not
+refrain from answering: “Oh! Monsignor Nani is forsaking us like the
+others. People always take themselves off when they can be of service.”
+
+She harboured a spite against the prelate for having done so little to
+further the divorce in spite of his many promises. Beneath his outward
+show of extreme willingness and caressing affability he doubtless
+concealed some scheme of his own which he was tenaciously pursuing.
+However, Donna Serafina promptly regretted the confession which anger had
+wrung from her, and resumed: “After all, he will perhaps come. He is so
+good-natured, and so fond of us.”
+
+In spite of the vivacity of her temperament she really wished to act
+diplomatically, so as to overcome the bad luck which had recently set in.
+Her brother the Cardinal had told her how irritated he was by the
+attitude of the Congregation of the Council; he had little doubt that the
+frigid reception accorded to his niece’s suit had been due in part to the
+desire of some of his brother cardinals to be disagreeable to him.
+Personally, he desired the divorce, as it seemed to him the only means of
+ensuring the perpetuation of the family; for Dario obstinately refused to
+marry any other woman than his cousin. And thus there was an accumulation
+of disasters; the Cardinal was wounded in his pride, his sister shared
+his sufferings and on her own side was stricken in the heart, whilst both
+lovers were plunged in despair at finding their hopes yet again deferred.
+
+As Pierre approached the sofa where the young folks were chatting he
+found that they were speaking of the catastrophe. “Why should you be so
+despondent?” asked Celia in an undertone. “After all, there was a
+majority of a vote in favour of annulling the marriage. Your suit hasn’t
+been rejected; there is only a delay.”
+
+But Benedetta shook her head. “No, no! If Monsignor Palma proves
+obstinate his Holiness will never consent. It’s all over.”
+
+“Ah! if one were only rich, very rich!” murmured Dario, with such an air
+of conviction that no one smiled. And, turning to his cousin, he added in
+a whisper: “I must really have a talk with you. We cannot go on living
+like this.”
+
+In a breath she responded: “Yes, you are right. Come down to-morrow
+evening at five. I will be here alone.”
+
+Then dreariness set in; the evening seemed to have no end. Pierre was
+greatly touched by the evident despair of Benedetta, who as a rule was so
+calm and sensible. The deep eyes which illumined her pure, delicate,
+infantile face were now blurred as by restrained tears. He had already
+formed a sincere affection for her, pleased as he was with her equable if
+somewhat indolent disposition, the semblance of discreet good sense with
+which she veiled her soul of fire. That Monday even she certainly tried
+to smile while listening to the pretty secrets confided to her by Celia,
+whose love affairs were prospering far more than her own. There was only
+one brief interval of general conversation, and that was brought about by
+the little Princess’s aunt, who, suddenly raising her voice, began to
+speak of the infamous manner in which the Italian newspapers referred to
+the Holy Father. Never, indeed, had there been so much bad feeling
+between the Vatican and the Quirinal. Cardinal Sarno felt so strongly on
+the subject that he departed from his wonted silence to announce that on
+the occasion of the sacrilegious festivities of the Twentieth of
+September, celebrating the capture of Rome, the Pope intended to cast a
+fresh letter of protest in the face of all the Christian powers, whose
+indifference proved their complicity in the odious spoliation of the
+Church.
+
+“Yes, indeed! what folly to try and marry the Pope and the King,”
+ bitterly exclaimed Donna Serafina, alluding to her niece’s deplorable
+marriage.
+
+The old maid now seemed quite beside herself; it was already so late that
+neither Monsignor Nani nor anybody else was expected. However, at the
+unhoped-for sound of footsteps her eyes again brightened and turned
+feverishly towards the door. But it was only to encounter a final
+disappointment. The visitor proved to be Narcisse Habert, who stepped up
+to her, apologising for making so late a call. It was Cardinal Sarno, his
+uncle by marriage, who had introduced him into this exclusive _salon_,
+where he had received a cordial reception on account of his religious
+views, which were said to be most uncompromising. If, however, despite
+the lateness of the hour, he had ventured to call there that evening, it
+was solely on account of Pierre, whom he at once drew on one side.
+
+“I felt sure I should find you here,” he said. “Just now I managed to see
+my cousin, Monsignor Gamba del Zoppo, and I have some good news for you.
+He will see us to-morrow at about eleven in his rooms at the Vatican.”
+ Then, lowering his voice: “I think he will endeavour to conduct you to
+the Holy Father. Briefly, the audience seems to me assured.”
+
+Pierre was greatly delighted by this promised certainty, which came to
+him so suddenly in that dreary drawing-room, where for a couple of hours
+he had been gradually sinking into despair! So at last a solution was at
+hand!
+
+Meantime Narcisse, after shaking hands with Dario and bowing to Benedetta
+and Celia, approached his uncle the Cardinal, who, having rid himself of
+the old relation, made up his mind to talk. But his conversation was
+confined to the state of his health, and the weather, and sundry
+insignificant anecdotes which he had lately heard. Not a word escaped him
+respecting the thousand complicated matters with which he dealt at the
+Propaganda. It was as though, once outside his office, he plunged into
+the commonplace and the unimportant by way of resting from the anxious
+task of governing the world. And after he had spoken for a time every one
+got up, and the visitors took leave.
+
+“Don’t forget,” Narcisse repeated to Pierre, “you will find me at the
+Sixtine Chapel to-morrow at ten. And I will show you the Botticellis
+before we go to our appointment.”
+
+At half-past nine on the following morning Pierre, who had come on foot,
+was already on the spacious Piazza of St. Peter’s; and before turning to
+the right, towards the bronze gate near one corner of Bernini’s
+colonnade, he raised his eyes and lingered, gazing at the Vatican.
+Nothing to his mind could be less monumental than the jumble of buildings
+which, without semblance of architectural order or regularity of any
+kind, had grown up in the shadow cast by the dome of the basilica. Roofs
+rose one above the other and broad, flat walls stretched out chance-wise,
+just as wings and storeys had been added. The only symmetry observable
+above the colonnade was that of the three sides of the court of San
+Damaso, where the lofty glass-work which now encloses the old _loggie_
+sparkled in the sun between the ruddy columns and pilasters, suggesting,
+as it were, three huge conservatories.
+
+And this was the most beautiful palace in the world, the largest of all
+palaces, comprising no fewer than eleven thousand apartments and
+containing the most admirable masterpieces of human genius! But Pierre,
+disillusioned as he was, had eyes only for the lofty façade on the right,
+overlooking the piazza, for he knew that the second-floor windows there
+were those of the Pope’s private apartments. And he contemplated those
+windows for a long time, and remembered having been told that the fifth
+one on the right was that of the Pope’s bed-room, and that a lamp could
+always be seen burning there far into the night.
+
+What was there, too, behind that gate of bronze which he saw before
+him--that sacred portal by which all the kingdoms of the world
+communicated with the kingdom of heaven, whose august vicar had secluded
+himself behind those lofty, silent walls? From where he stood Pierre
+gazed on that gate with its metal panels studded with large square-headed
+nails, and wondered what it defended, what it concealed, what it shut off
+from the view, with its stern, forbidding air, recalling that of the gate
+of some ancient fortress. What kind of world would he find behind it,
+what treasures of human charity jealously preserved in yonder gloom, what
+revivifying hope for the new nations hungering for fraternity and
+justice? He took pleasure in fancying, in picturing the one holy pastor
+of humanity, ever watching in the depths of that closed palace, and,
+while the nations strayed into hatred, preparing all for the final reign
+of Jesus, and at last proclaiming the advent of that reign by
+transforming our democracies into the one great Christian community
+promised by the Saviour. Assuredly the world’s future was being prepared
+behind that bronze portal; assuredly it was that future which would issue
+forth.
+
+But all at once Pierre was amazed to find himself face to face with
+Monsignor Nani, who had just left the Vatican on his way to the
+neighbouring Palace of the Inquisition, where, as Assessor, he had his
+residence.
+
+“Ah! Monsignor,” said Pierre, “I am very pleased. My friend Monsieur
+Habert is going to present me to his cousin, Monsignor Gamba del Zoppo,
+and I think I shall obtain the audience I so greatly desire.”
+
+Monsignor Nani smiled with his usual amiable yet keen expression. “Yes,
+yes, I know.” But, correcting himself as it were, he added: “I share your
+satisfaction, my dear son. Only, you must be prudent.” And then, as if
+fearing that the young priest might have understood by his first words
+that he had just seen Monsignor Gamba, the most easily terrified prelate
+of the whole prudent pontifical family, he related that he had been
+running about since an early hour on behalf of two French ladies, who
+likewise were dying of a desire to see the Pope. However, he greatly
+feared that the help he was giving them would not prove successful.
+
+“I will confess to you, Monsignor,” replied Pierre, “that I myself was
+getting very discouraged. Yes, it is high time I should find a little
+comfort, for my sojourn here is hardly calculated to brace my soul.”
+
+He went on in this strain, allowing it to be seen that the sights of Rome
+were finally destroying his faith. Such days as those which he had spent
+on the Palatine and along the Appian Way, in the Catacombs and at St.
+Peter’s, grievously disturbed him, spoilt his dream of Christianity
+rejuvenated and triumphant. He emerged from them full of doubt and
+growing lassitude, having already lost much of his usually rebellious
+enthusiasm.
+
+Still smiling, Monsignor Nani listened and nodded approvingly. Yes, no
+doubt that was the fatal result. He seemed to have foreseen it, and to be
+well satisfied thereat. “At all events, my dear son,” said he,
+“everything is going on well, since you are now certain that you will see
+his Holiness.”
+
+“That is true, Monsignor; I have placed my only hope in the very just and
+perspicacious Leo XIII. He alone can judge me, since he alone can
+recognise in my book his own ideas, which I think I have very faithfully
+set forth. Ah! if he be willing he will, in Jesus’ name and by democracy
+and science, save this old world of ours!”
+
+Pierre’s enthusiasm was returning again, and Nani, smiling more and more
+affably with his piercing eyes and thin lips, again expressed approval:
+“Certainly; quite so, my dear son. You will speak to him, you will see.”
+
+Then as they both raised their heads and looked towards the Vatican, Nani
+carried his amiability so far as to undeceive Pierre with respect to the
+Pope’s bed-room. No, the window where a light was seen every evening was
+simply that of a landing where the gas was kept burning almost all night.
+The window of his Holiness’s bed-chamber was the second one farther on.
+Then both relapsed into silence, equally grave as they continued to gaze
+at the façade.
+
+“Well, till we meet again, my dear son,” said Nani at last. “You will
+tell me of your interview, I hope.”
+
+As soon as Pierre was alone he went in by the bronze portal, his heart
+beating violently, as if he were entering some redoubtable sanctuary
+where the future happiness of mankind was elaborated. A sentry was on
+duty there, a Swiss guard, who walked slowly up and down in a grey-blue
+cloak, below which one only caught a glimpse of his baggy red, black, and
+yellow breeches; and it seemed as if this cloak of sober hue were
+purposely cast over a disguise in order to conceal its strangeness, which
+had become irksome. Then, on the right-hand, came the covered stairway
+conducting to the Court of San Damaso; but to reach the Sixtine Chapel it
+was necessary to follow a long gallery, with columns on either hand, and
+ascend the royal staircase, the Scala Regia. And in this realm of the
+gigantic, where every dimension is exaggerated and replete with
+overpowering majesty, Pierre’s breath came short as he ascended the broad
+steps.
+
+He was much surprised on entering the Sixtine Chapel, for it at first
+seemed to him small, a sort of rectangular and lofty hall, with a
+delicate screen of white marble separating the part where guests
+congregate on the occasion of great ceremonies from the choir where the
+cardinals sit on simple oaken benches, while the inferior prelates remain
+standing behind them. On a low platform to the right of the soberly
+adorned altar is the pontifical throne; while in the wall on the left
+opens the narrow singing gallery with its balcony of marble. And for
+everything suddenly to spread out and soar into the infinite one must
+raise one’s head, allow one’s eyes to ascend from the huge fresco of the
+Last Judgment, occupying the whole of the end wall, to the paintings
+which cover the vaulted ceiling down to the cornice extending between the
+twelve windows of white glass, six on either hand.
+
+Fortunately there were only three or four quiet tourists there; and
+Pierre at once perceived Narcisse Habert occupying one of the cardinals’
+seats above the steps where the train-bearers crouch. Motionless, and
+with his head somewhat thrown back, the young man seemed to be in
+ecstasy. But it was not the work of Michael Angelo that he thus
+contemplated. His eyes never strayed from one of the earlier frescoes
+below the cornice; and on recognising the priest he contented himself
+with murmuring: “Ah! my friend, just look at the Botticelli.” Then, with
+dreamy eyes, he relapsed into a state of rapture.
+
+Pierre, for his part, had received a great shock both in heart and in
+mind, overpowered as he was by the superhuman genius of Michael Angelo.
+The rest vanished; there only remained, up yonder, as in a limitless
+heaven, the extraordinary creations of the master’s art. That which at
+first surprised one was that the painter should have been the sole
+artisan of the mighty work. No marble cutters, no bronze workers, no
+gilders, no one of another calling had intervened. The painter with his
+brush had sufficed for all--for the pilasters, columns, and cornices of
+marble, for the statues and the ornaments of bronze, for the _fleurons_
+and roses of gold, for the whole of the wondrously rich decorative work
+which surrounded the frescoes. And Pierre imagined Michael Angelo on the
+day when the bare vault was handed over to him, covered with plaster,
+offering only a flat white surface, hundreds of square yards to be
+adorned. And he pictured him face to face with that huge white page,
+refusing all help, driving all inquisitive folks away, jealously,
+violently shutting himself up alone with his gigantic task, spending four
+and a half years in fierce solitude, and day by day adding to his
+colossal work of creation. Ah! that mighty work, a task to fill a whole
+lifetime, a task which he must have begun with quiet confidence in his
+own will and power, drawing, as it were, an entire world from his brain
+and flinging it there with the ceaseless flow of creative virility in the
+full heyday of its omnipotence.
+
+And Pierre was yet more overcome when he began to examine these
+presentments of humanity, magnified as by the eyes of a visionary,
+overflowing in mighty sympathetic pages of cyclopean symbolisation. Royal
+grace and nobility, sovereign peacefulness and power--every beauty shone
+out like natural florescence. And there was perfect science, the most
+audacious foreshortening risked with the certainty of success--an
+everlasting triumph of technique over the difficulty which an arched
+surface presented. And, in particular, there was wonderful simplicity of
+medium; matter was reduced almost to nothingness; a few colours were used
+broadly without any studied search for effect or brilliancy. Yet that
+sufficed, the blood seethed freely, the muscles projected, the figures
+became animated and stood out of their frames with such energy and dash
+that it seemed as if a flame were flashing by aloft, endowing all those
+beings with superhuman and immortal life. Life, aye, it was life, which
+burst forth and triumphed--mighty, swarming life, miraculous life, the
+creation of one sole hand possessed of the supreme gift--simplicity
+blended with power.
+
+That a philosophical system, a record of the whole of human destiny,
+should have been found therein, with the creation of the world, of man,
+and of woman, the fall, the chastisement, then the redemption, and
+finally God’s judgment on the last day--this was a matter on which Pierre
+was unable to dwell, at this first visit, in the wondering stupor into
+which the paintings threw him. But he could not help noticing how the
+human body, its beauty, its power, and its grace were exalted! Ah! that
+regal Jehovah, at once terrible and paternal, carried off amid the
+whirlwind of his creation, his arms outstretched and giving birth to
+worlds! And that superb and nobly outlined Adam, with extended hand, whom
+Jehovah, though he touch him not, animates with his finger--a wondrous
+and admirable gesture, leaving a sacred space between the finger of the
+Creator and that of the created--a tiny space, in which, nevertheless,
+abides all the infinite of the invisible and the mysterious. And then
+that powerful yet adorable Eve, that Eve with the sturdy flanks fit for
+the bearing of humanity, that Eve with the proud, tender grace of a woman
+bent on being loved even to perdition, that Eve embodying the whole of
+woman with her fecundity, her seductiveness, her empire! Moreover, even
+the decorative figures of the pilasters at the corners of the frescoes
+celebrate the triumph of the flesh: there are the twenty young men
+radiant in their nakedness, with incomparable splendour of torso and of
+limb, and such intensity of life that a craze for motion seems to carry
+them off, bend them, throw them over in superb attitudes. And between the
+windows are the giants, the prophets and the sibyls--man and woman
+deified, with inordinate wealth of muscle and grandeur of intellectual
+expression. There is Jeremiah with his elbow resting on his knee and his
+chin on his hand, plunged as he is in reflection--in the very depths of
+his visions and his dreams; there is the Sibylla Erithraea, so pure of
+profile, so young despite the opulence of her form, and with one finger
+resting on the open book of destiny; there is Isaiah with the thick lips
+of truth, virile and haughty, his head half turned and his hand raised
+with a gesture of command; there is the Sibylla Cumaea, terrifying with
+her science and her old age, her wrinkled countenance, her vulture’s
+nose, her square protruding chin; there is Jonah cast forth by the whale,
+and wondrously foreshortened, his torso twisted, his arms bent, his head
+thrown back, and his mouth agape and shouting: and there are the others,
+all of the same full-blown, majestic family, reigning with the
+sovereignty of eternal health and intelligence, and typifying the dream
+of a broader, loftier, and indestructible humanity. Moreover, in the
+lunettes and the arches over the windows other figures of grace, power,
+and beauty appear and throng, the ancestors of the Christ, thoughtful
+mothers with lovely nude infants, men with wondering eyes peering into
+the future, representatives of the punished weary race longing for the
+promised Redeemer; while in the pendentives of the four corners various
+biblical episodes, the victories of Israel over the Spirit of Evil,
+spring into life. And finally there is the gigantic fresco at the far
+end, the Last Judgment with its swarming multitude, so numerous that days
+and days are needed to see each figure aright, a distracted crowd, full
+of the hot breath of life, from the dead rising in response to the
+furious trumpeting of the angels, from the fearsome groups of the damned
+whom the demons fling into hell, even to Jesus the justiciar, surrounded
+by the saints and apostles, and to the radiant concourse of the blessed
+who ascend upheld by angels, whilst higher and still higher other angels,
+bearing the instruments of the Passion, triumph as in full glory. And
+yet, above this gigantic composition, painted thirty years subsequently,
+in the full ripeness of age, the ceiling retains its ethereality, its
+unquestionable superiority, for on it the artist bestowed all his virgin
+power, his whole youth, the first great flare of his genius.
+
+And Pierre found but one word to express his feelings: Michael Angelo was
+the monster dominating and crushing all others. Beneath his immense
+achievement you had only to glance at the works of Perugino,
+Pinturicchio, Roselli, Signorelli, and Botticelli, those earlier
+frescoes, admirable in their way, which below the cornice spread out
+around the chapel.
+
+Narcisse for his part had not raised his eyes to the overpowering
+splendour of the ceiling. Wrapt in ecstasy, he did not allow his gaze to
+stray from one of the three frescoes of Botticelli. “Ah! Botticelli,” he
+at last murmured; “in him you have the elegance and the grace of the
+mysterious; a profound feeling of sadness even in the midst of
+voluptuousness, a divination of the whole modern soul, with the most
+troublous charm that ever attended artist’s work.”
+
+Pierre glanced at him in amazement, and then ventured to inquire: “You
+come here to see the Botticellis?”
+
+“Yes, certainly,” the young man quietly replied; “I only come here for
+him, and five hours every week I only look at his work. There, just study
+that fresco, Moses and the daughters of Jethro. Isn’t it the most
+penetrating work that human tenderness and melancholy have produced?”
+
+Then, with a faint, devout quiver in his voice and the air of a priest
+initiating another into the delightful but perturbing atmosphere of a
+sanctuary, he went on repeating the praises of Botticelli’s art; his
+women with long, sensual, yet candid faces, supple bearing, and rounded
+forms showing from under light drapery; his young men, his angels of
+doubtful sex, blending stateliness of muscle with infinite delicacy of
+outline; next the mouths he painted, fleshy, fruit-like mouths, at times
+suggesting irony, at others pain, and often so enigmatical with their
+sinuous curves that one knew not whether the words they left unuttered
+were words of purity or filth; then, too, the eyes which he bestowed on
+his figures, eyes of languor and passion, of carnal or mystical rapture,
+their joy at times so instinct with grief as they peer into the nihility
+of human things that no eyes in the world could be more impenetrable. And
+finally there were Botticelli’s hands, so carefully and delicately
+painted, so full of life, wantoning so to say in a free atmosphere, now
+joining, caressing, and even, as it were, speaking, the whole evincing
+such intense solicitude for gracefulness that at times there seems to be
+undue mannerism, though every hand has its particular expression, each
+varying expression of the enjoyment or pain which the sense of touch can
+bring. And yet there was nothing effeminate or false about the painter’s
+work: on all sides a sort of virile pride was apparent, an atmosphere of
+superb passionate motion, absolute concern for truth, direct study from
+life, conscientiousness, veritable realism, corrected and elevated by a
+genial strangeness of feeling and character that imparted a
+never-to-be-forgotten charm even to ugliness itself.
+
+Pierre’s stupefaction, however, increased as he listened to Narcisse,
+whose somewhat studied elegance, whose curly hair cut in the Florentine
+fashion, and whose blue, mauvish eyes paling with enthusiasm he now for
+the first time remarked. “Botticelli,” he at last said, “was no doubt a
+marvellous artist, only it seems to me that here, at any rate, Michael
+Angelo--”
+
+But Narcisse interrupted him almost with violence. “No! no! Don’t talk of
+him! He spoilt everything, ruined everything! A man who harnessed himself
+to his work like an ox, who laboured at his task like a navvy, at the
+rate of so many square yards a day! And a man, too, with no sense of the
+mysterious and the unknown, who saw everything so huge as to disgust one
+with beauty, painting girls like the trunks of oak-trees, women like
+giant butchers, with heaps and heaps of stupid flesh, and never a gleam
+of a divine or infernal soul! He was a mason--a colossal mason, if you
+like--but he was nothing more.”
+
+Weary “modern” that Narcisse was, spoilt by the pursuit of the original
+and the rare, he thus unconsciously gave rein to his fated hate of health
+and power. That Michael Angelo who brought forth without an effort, who
+had left behind him the most prodigious of all artistic creations, was
+the enemy. And his crime precisely was that he had created life, produced
+life in such excess that all the petty creations of others, even the most
+delightful among them, vanished in presence of the overflowing torrent of
+human beings flung there all alive in the sunlight.
+
+“Well, for my part,” Pierre courageously declared, “I’m not of your
+opinion. I now realise that life is everything in art; that real
+immortality belongs only to those who create. The case of Michael Angelo
+seems to me decisive, for he is the superhuman master, the monster who
+overwhelms all others, precisely because he brought forth that
+magnificent living flesh which offends your sense of delicacy. Those who
+are inclined to the curious, those who have minds of a pretty turn, whose
+intellects are ever seeking to penetrate things, may try to improve on
+the equivocal and invisible, and set all the charm of art in some
+elaborate stroke or symbolisation; but, none the less, Michael Angelo
+remains the all-powerful, the maker of men, the master of clearness,
+simplicity, and health.”
+
+At this Narcisse smiled with indulgent and courteous disdain. And he
+anticipated further argument by remarking: “It’s already eleven. My
+cousin was to have sent a servant here as soon as he could receive us. I
+am surprised to have seen nobody as yet. Shall we go up to see the
+_stanze_ of Raffaelle while we wait?”
+
+Once in the rooms above, he showed himself perfect, both lucid in his
+remarks and just in his appreciations, having recovered all his easy
+intelligence as soon as he was no longer upset by his hatred of colossal
+labour and cheerful decoration.
+
+It was unfortunate that Pierre should have first visited the Sixtine
+Chapel; for it was necessary he should forget what he had just seen and
+accustom himself to what he now beheld in order to enjoy its pure beauty.
+It was as if some potent wine had confused him, and prevented any
+immediate relish of a lighter vintage of delicate fragrance. Admiration
+did not here fall upon one with lightning speed; it was slowly,
+irresistibly that one grew charmed. And the contrast was like that of
+Racine beside Corneille, Lamartine beside Hugo, the eternal pair, the
+masculine and feminine genius coupled through centuries of glory. With
+Raffaelle it is nobility, grace, exquisiteness, and correctness of line,
+and divineness of harmony that triumph. You do not find in him merely the
+materialist symbolism so superbly thrown off by Michael Angelo; he
+introduces psychological analysis of deep penetration into the painter’s
+art. Man is shown more purified, idealised; one sees more of that which
+is within him. And though one may be in presence of an artist of
+sentimental bent, a feminine genius whose quiver of tenderness one can
+feel, it is also certain that admirable firmness of workmanship confronts
+one, that the whole is very strong and very great. Pierre gradually
+yielded to such sovereign masterliness, such virile elegance, such a
+vision of supreme beauty set in supreme perfection. But if the “Dispute
+on the Sacrament” and the so-called “School of Athens,” both prior to the
+paintings of the Sixtine Chapel, seemed to him to be Raffaelle’s
+masterpieces, he felt that in the “Burning of the Borgo,” and
+particularly in the “Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple,” and “Pope
+St. Leo staying Attila at the Gates of Rome,” the artist had lost the
+flower of his divine grace, through the deep impression which the
+overwhelming grandeur of Michael Angelo had wrought upon him. How
+crushing indeed had been the blow when the Sixtine Chapel was thrown open
+and the rivals entered! The creations of the monster then appeared, and
+the greatest of the humanisers lost some of his soul at sight of them,
+thenceforward unable to rid himself of their influence.
+
+From the _stanze_ Narcisse took Pierre to the _loggie_, those glazed
+galleries which are so high and so delicately decorated. But here you
+only find work which pupils executed after designs left by Raffaelle at
+his death. The fall was sudden and complete, and never had Pierre better
+understood that genius is everything--that when it disappears the school
+collapses. The man of genius sums up his period; at a given hour he
+throws forth all the sap of the social soil, which afterwards remains
+exhausted often for centuries. So Pierre became more particularly
+interested in the fine view that the _loggie_ afford, and all at once he
+noticed that the papal apartments were in front of him, just across the
+Court of San Damaso. This court, with its porticus, fountain, and white
+pavement, had an aspect of empty, airy, sunlit solemnity which surprised
+him. There was none of the gloom or pent-up religious mystery that he had
+dreamt of with his mind full of the surroundings of the old northern
+cathedrals. Right and left of the steps conducting to the rooms of the
+Pope and the Cardinal Secretary of State four or five carriages were
+ranged, the coachmen stiffly erect and the horses motionless in the
+brilliant light; and nothing else peopled that vast square desert of a
+court which, with its bareness gilded by the coruscations of its
+glass-work and the ruddiness of its stones, suggested a pagan temple
+dedicated to the sun. But what more particularly struck Pierre was the
+splendid panorama of Rome, for he had not hitherto imagined that the Pope
+from his windows could thus behold the entire city spread out before him
+as if he merely had to stretch forth his hand to make it his own once
+more.
+
+While Pierre contemplated the scene a sound of voices caused him to turn;
+and he perceived a servant in black livery who, after repeating a message
+to Narcisse, was retiring with a deep bow. Looking much annoyed, the
+_attaché_ approached the young priest. “Monsignor Gamba del Zoppo,” said
+he, “has sent word that he can’t see us this morning. Some unexpected
+duties require his presence.” However, Narcisse’s embarrassment showed
+that he did not believe in the excuse, but rather suspected some one of
+having so terrified his cousin that the latter was afraid of compromising
+himself. Obliging and courageous as Habert himself was, this made him
+indignant. Still he smiled and resumed: “Listen, perhaps there’s a means
+of forcing an entry. If your time is your own we can lunch together and
+then return to visit the Museum of Antiquities. I shall certainly end by
+coming across my cousin and we may, perhaps, be lucky enough to meet the
+Pope should he go down to the gardens.”
+
+At the news that his audience was yet again postponed Pierre had felt
+keenly disappointed. However, as the whole day was at his disposal, he
+willingly accepted the _attaché’s_ offer. They lunched in front of St.
+Peter’s, in a little restaurant of the Borgo, most of whose customers
+were pilgrims, and the fare, as it happened, was far from good. Then at
+about two o’clock they set off for the museum, skirting the basilica by
+way of the Piazza della Sagrestia. It was a bright, deserted, burning
+district; and again, but in a far greater degree, did the young priest
+experience that sensation of bare, tawny, sun-baked majesty which had
+come upon him while gazing into the Court of San Damaso. Then, as he
+passed the apse of St. Peter’s, the enormity of the colossus was brought
+home to him more strongly than ever: it rose like a giant bouquet of
+architecture edged by empty expanses of pavement sprinkled with fine
+weeds. And in all the silent immensity there were only two children
+playing in the shadow of a wall. The old papal mint, the Zecca, now an
+Italian possession, and guarded by soldiers of the royal army, is on the
+left of the passage leading to the museums, while on the right, just in
+front, is one of the entrances of honour to the Vatican where the papal
+Swiss Guard keeps watch and ward; and this is the entrance by which,
+according to etiquette, the pair-horse carriages convey the Pope’s
+visitors into the Court of San Damaso.
+
+Following the long lane which ascends between a wing of the palace and
+its garden wall, Narcisse and Pierre at last reached the Museum of
+Antiquities. Ah! what a museum it is, with galleries innumerable, a
+museum compounded of three museums, the Pio-Clementino, Chiaramonti, and
+the Braccio-Nuovo, and containing a whole world found beneath the soil,
+then exhumed, and now glorified in full sunlight. For more than two hours
+Pierre went from one hall to another, dazzled by the masterpieces,
+bewildered by the accumulation of genius and beauty. It was not only the
+celebrated examples of statuary, the Laocoon and the Apollo of the
+cabinets of the Belvedere, the Meleager, or even the torso of
+Hercules--that astonished him. He was yet more impressed by the
+_ensemble_, by the innumerable quantities of Venuses, Bacchuses, and
+deified emperors and empresses, by the whole superb growth of beautiful
+or August flesh celebrating the immortality of life. Three days
+previously he had visited the Museum of the Capitol, where he had admired
+the Venus, the Dying Gaul,* the marvellous Centaurs of black marble, and
+the extraordinary collection of busts, but here his admiration became
+intensified into stupor by the inexhaustible wealth of the galleries.
+And, with more curiosity for life than for art, perhaps, he again
+lingered before the busts which so powerfully resuscitate the Rome of
+history--the Rome which, whilst incapable of realising the ideal beauty
+of Greece, was certainly well able to create life. The emperors, the
+philosophers, the learned men, the poets are all there, and live such as
+they really were, studied and portrayed in all scrupulousness with their
+deformities, their blemishes, the slightest peculiarities of their
+features. And from this extreme solicitude for truth springs a wonderful
+wealth of character and an incomparable vision of the past. Nothing,
+indeed, could be loftier: the very men live once more, and retrace the
+history of their city, that history which has been so falsified that the
+teaching of it has caused generations of school-boys to hold antiquity in
+horror. But on seeing the men, how well one understands, how fully one
+can sympathise! And indeed the smallest bits of marble, the maimed
+statues, the bas-reliefs in fragments, even the isolated limbs--whether
+the divine arm of a nymph or the sinewy, shaggy thigh of a satyr--evoke
+the splendour of a civilisation full of light, grandeur, and strength.
+
+ * Best known in England, through Byron’s lines, as the
+ Dying Gladiator, though that appellation is certainly
+ erroneous.--Trans.
+
+At last Narcisse brought Pierre back into the Gallery of the Candelabra,
+three hundred feet in length and full of fine examples of sculpture.
+“Listen, my dear Abbé,” said he. “It is scarcely more than four o’clock,
+and we will sit down here for a while, as I am told that the Holy Father
+sometimes passes this way to go down to the gardens. It would be really
+lucky if you could see him, perhaps even speak to him--who can tell? At
+all events, it will rest you, for you must be tired out.”
+
+Narcisse was known to all the attendants, and his relationship to
+Monsignor Gamba gave him the run of almost the entire Vatican, where he
+was fond of spending his leisure time. Finding two chairs, they sat down,
+and the _attaché_ again began to talk of art.
+
+How astonishing had been the destiny of Rome, what a singular, borrowed
+royalty had been hers! She seemed like a centre whither the whole world
+converged, but where nothing grew from the soil itself, which from the
+outset appeared to be stricken with sterility. The arts required to be
+acclimatised there; it was necessary to transplant the genius of
+neighbouring nations, which, once there, however, flourished
+magnificently. Under the emperors, when Rome was the queen of the earth,
+the beauty of her monuments and sculpture came to her from Greece. Later,
+when Christianity arose in Rome, it there remained impregnated with
+paganism; it was on another soil that it produced Gothic art, the
+Christian Art _par excellence_. Later still, at the Renascence, it was
+certainly at Rome that the age of Julius II and Leo X shone forth; but
+the artists of Tuscany and Umbria prepared the evolution, brought it to
+Rome that it might thence expand and soar. For the second time, indeed,
+art came to Rome from without, and gave her the royalty of the world by
+blossoming so triumphantly within her walls. Then occurred the
+extraordinary awakening of antiquity, Apollo and Venus resuscitated
+worshipped by the popes themselves, who from the time of Nicholas V
+dreamt of making papal Rome the equal of the imperial city. After the
+precursors, so sincere, tender, and strong in their art--Fra Angelico,
+Perugino, Botticelli, and so many others--came the two sovereigns,
+Michael Angelo and Raffaelle, the superhuman and the divine. Then the
+fall was sudden, years elapsed before the advent of Caravaggio with power
+of colour and modelling, all that the science of painting could achieve
+when bereft of genius. And afterwards the decline continued until Bernini
+was reached--Bernini, the real creator of the Rome of the present popes,
+the prodigal child who at twenty could already show a galaxy of colossal
+marble wenches, the universal architect who with fearful activity
+finished the façade, built the colonnade, decorated the interior of St.
+Peter’s, and raised fountains, churches, and palaces innumerable. And
+that was the end of all, for since then Rome has little by little
+withdrawn from life, from the modern world, as though she, who always
+lived on what she derived from others, were dying of her inability to
+take anything more from them in order to convert it to her own glory.
+
+“Ah! Bernini, that delightful Bernini!” continued Narcisse with his
+rapturous air. “He is both powerful and exquisite, his verve always
+ready, his ingenuity invariably awake, his fecundity full of grace and
+magnificence. As for their Bramante with his masterpiece, that cold,
+correct Cancelleria, we’ll dub him the Michael Angelo and Raffaelle of
+architecture and say no more about it. But Bernini, that exquisite
+Bernini, why, there is more delicacy and refinement in his pretended bad
+taste than in all the hugeness and perfection of the others! Our own age
+ought to recognise itself in his art, at once so varied and so deep, so
+triumphant in its mannerisms, so full of a perturbing solicitude for the
+artificial and so free from the baseness of reality. Just go to the Villa
+Borghese to see the group of Apollo and Daphne which Bernini executed
+when he was eighteen,* and in particular see his statue of Santa Teresa
+in ecstasy at Santa Maria della Vittoria! Ah! that Santa Teresa! It is
+like heaven opening, with the quiver that only a purely divine enjoyment
+can set in woman’s flesh, the rapture of faith carried to the point of
+spasm, the creature losing breath and dying of pleasure in the arms of
+the Divinity! I have spent hours and hours before that work without
+exhausting the infinite scope of its precious, burning symbolisation.”
+
+ * There is also at the Villa Borghese Bernini’s _Anchises carried
+ by Aeneas_, which he sculptured when only sixteen. No doubt his
+ faults were many; but it was his misfortune to belong to a
+ decadent period.--Trans.
+
+Narcisse’s voice died away, and Pierre, no longer astonished at his
+covert, unconscious hatred of health, simplicity, and strength, scarcely
+listened to him. The young priest himself was again becoming absorbed in
+the idea he had formed of pagan Rome resuscitating in Christian Rome and
+turning it into Catholic Rome, the new political, sacerdotal, domineering
+centre of earthly government. Apart from the primitive age of the
+Catacombs, had Rome ever been Christian? The thoughts that had come to
+him on the Palatine, in the Appian Way, and in St. Peter’s were gathering
+confirmation. Genius that morning had brought him fresh proof. No doubt
+the paganism which reappeared in the art of Michael Angelo and Raffaelle
+was tempered, transformed by the Christian spirit. But did it not still
+remain the basis? Had not the former master peered across Olympus when
+snatching his great nudities from the terrible heavens of Jehovah? Did
+not the ideal figures of Raffaelle reveal the superb, fascinating flesh
+of Venus beneath the chaste veil of the Virgin? It seemed so to Pierre,
+and some embarrassment mingled with his despondency, for all those
+beautiful forms glorifying the ardent passions of life, were in
+opposition to his dream of rejuvenated Christianity giving peace to the
+world and reviving the simplicity and purity of the early ages.
+
+All at once he was surprised to hear Narcisse, by what transition he
+could not tell, speaking to him of the daily life of Leo XIII. “Yes, my
+dear Abbé, at eighty-four* the Holy Father shows the activity of a young
+man and leads a life of determination and hard work such as neither you
+nor I would care for! At six o’clock he is already up, says his mass in
+his private chapel, and drinks a little milk for breakfast. Then, from
+eight o’clock till noon, there is a ceaseless procession of cardinals and
+prelates, all the affairs of the congregations passing under his eyes,
+and none could be more numerous or intricate. At noon the public and
+collective audiences usually begin. At two he dines. Then comes the
+siesta which he has well earned, or else a promenade in the gardens until
+six o’clock. The private audiences then sometimes keep him for an hour or
+two. He sups at nine and scarcely eats, lives on nothing, in fact, and is
+always alone at his little table. What do you think, eh, of the etiquette
+which compels him to such loneliness? There you have a man who for
+eighteen years has never had a guest at his table, who day by day sits
+all alone in his grandeur! And as soon as ten o’clock strikes, after
+saying the Rosary with his familiars, he shuts himself up in his room.
+But, although he may go to bed, he sleeps very little; he is frequently
+troubled by insomnia, and gets up and sends for a secretary to dictate
+memoranda or letters to him. When any interesting matter requires his
+attention he gives himself up to it heart and soul, never letting it
+escape his thoughts. And his life, his health, lies in all this. His mind
+is always busy; his will and strength must always be exerting themselves.
+You may know that he long cultivated Latin verse with affection; and I
+believe that in his days of struggle he had a passion for journalism,
+inspired the articles of the newspapers he subsidised, and even dictated
+some of them when his most cherished ideas were in question.”
+
+ * The reader should remember that the period selected for this
+ narrative is the year 1894. Leo XIII was born in 1810.--Trans.
+
+Silence fell. At every moment Narcisse craned his neck to see if the
+little papal _cortège_ were not emerging from the Gallery of the
+Tapestries to pass them on its way to the gardens. “You are perhaps
+aware,” he resumed, “that his Holiness is brought down on a low chair
+which is small enough to pass through every doorway. It’s quite a
+journey, more than a mile, through the _loggie_, the _stanze_ of
+Raffaelle, the painting and sculpture galleries, not to mention the
+numerous staircases, before he reaches the gardens, where a pair-horse
+carriage awaits him. It’s quite fine this evening, so he will surely
+come. We must have a little patience.”
+
+Whilst Narcisse was giving these particulars Pierre again sank into a
+reverie and saw the whole extraordinary history pass before him. First
+came the worldly, ostentatious popes of the Renascence, those who
+resuscitated antiquity with so much passion and dreamt of draping the
+Holy See with the purple of empire once more. There was Paul II, the
+magnificent Venetian who built the Palazzo di Venezia; Sixtus IV, to whom
+one owes the Sixtine Chapel; and Julius II and Leo X, who made Rome a
+city of theatrical pomp, prodigious festivities, tournaments, ballets,
+hunts, masquerades, and banquets. At that time the papacy had just
+rediscovered Olympus amidst the dust of buried ruins, and as though
+intoxicated by the torrent of life which arose from the ancient soil, it
+founded the museums, thus reviving the superb temples of the pagan age,
+and restoring them to the cult of universal admiration. Never had the
+Church been in such peril of death, for if the Christ was still honoured
+at St. Peter’s, Jupiter and all the other gods and goddesses, with their
+beauteous, triumphant flesh, were enthroned in the halls of the Vatican.
+Then, however, another vision passed before Pierre, one of the modern
+popes prior to the Italian occupation--notably Pius IX, who, whilst yet
+free, often went into his good city of Rome. His huge red and gold coach
+was drawn by six horses, surrounded by Swiss Guards and followed by Noble
+Guards; but now and again he would alight in the Corso, and continue his
+promenade on foot, and then the mounted men of the escort galloped
+forward to give warning and stop the traffic. The carriages drew up, the
+gentlemen had to alight and kneel on the pavement, whilst the ladies
+simply rose and devoutly inclined their heads, as the Holy Father,
+attended by his Court, slowly wended his way to the Piazza del Popolo,
+smiling and blessing at every step. And now had come Leo XIII, the
+voluntary prisoner, shut up in the Vatican for eighteen years, and he,
+behind the high, silent walls, in the unknown sphere where each of his
+days flowed by so quietly, had acquired a more exalted majesty, instinct
+with sacred and redoubtable mysteriousness.
+
+Ah! that Pope whom you no longer meet or see, that Pope hidden from the
+common of mankind like some terrible divinity whom the priests alone dare
+to approach! It is in that sumptuous Vatican which his forerunners of the
+Renascence built and adorned for giant festivities that he has secluded
+himself; it is there he lives, far from the crowd, in prison with the
+handsome men and the lovely women of Michael Angelo and Raffaelle, with
+the gods and goddesses of marble, with the whole of resplendent Olympus
+celebrating around him the religion of life and light. With him the
+entire Papacy is there steeped in paganism. What a spectacle when the
+slender, weak old man, all soul, so purely white, passes along the
+galleries of the Museum of Antiquities on his way to the gardens. Right
+and left the statues behold him pass with all their bare flesh. There is
+Jupiter, there is Apollo, there is Venus the _dominatrix_, there is Pan,
+the universal god in whose laugh the joys of earth ring out. Nereids
+bathe in transparent water. Bacchantes roll, unveiled, in the warm grass.
+Centaurs gallop by carrying lovely girls, faint with rapture, on their
+steaming haunches. Ariadne is surprised by Bacchus, Ganymede fondles the
+eagle, Adonis fires youth and maiden with his flame. And on and on passes
+the weak, white old man, swaying on his low chair, amidst that splendid
+triumph, that display and glorification of the flesh, which shouts aloud
+the omnipotence of Nature, of everlasting matter! Since they have found
+it again, exhumed it, and honoured it, that it is which once more reigns
+there imperishable; and in vain have they set vine leaves on the statues,
+even as they have swathed the huge figures of Michael Angelo; sex still
+flares on all sides, life overflows, its germs course in torrents through
+the veins of the world. Near by, in that Vatican library of incomparable
+wealth, where all human science lies slumbering, there lurks a yet more
+terrible danger--the danger of an explosion which would sweep away
+everything, Vatican and St. Peter’s also, if one day the books in their
+turn were to awake and speak aloud as speak the beauty of Venus and the
+manliness of Apollo. But the white, diaphanous old man seems neither to
+see nor to hear, and the huge heads of Jupiter, the trunks of Hercules,
+the equivocal statues of Antinous continue to watch him as he passes on!
+
+However, Narcisse had become impatient, and, going in search of an
+attendant, he learnt from him that his Holiness had already gone down. To
+shorten the distance, indeed, the _cortège_ often passes along a kind of
+open gallery leading towards the Mint. “Well, let us go down as well,”
+ said Narcisse to Pierre; “I will try to show you the gardens.”
+
+Down below, in the vestibule, a door of which opened on to a broad path,
+he spoke to another attendant, a former pontifical soldier whom he
+personally knew. The man at once let him pass with Pierre, but was unable
+to tell him whether Monsignor Gamba del Zoppo had accompanied his
+Holiness that day.
+
+“No matter,” resumed Narcisse when he and his companion were alone in the
+path; “I don’t despair of meeting him--and these, you see, are the famous
+gardens of the Vatican.”
+
+They are very extensive grounds, and the Pope can go quite two and a half
+miles by passing along the paths of the wood, the vineyard, and the
+kitchen garden. Occupying the plateau of the Vatican hill, which the
+medieval wall of Leo IV still girdles, the gardens are separated from the
+neighbouring valleys as by a fortified rampart. The wall formerly
+stretched to the castle of Sant’ Angelo, thereby forming what was known
+as the Leonine City. No inquisitive eyes can peer into the grounds
+excepting from the dome of St. Peter’s, which casts its huge shadow over
+them during the hot summer weather. They are, too, quite a little world,
+which each pope has taken pleasure in embellishing. There is a large
+parterre with lawns of geometrical patterns, planted with handsome palms
+and adorned with lemon and orange trees in pots; there is a less formal,
+a shadier garden, where, amidst deep plantations of yoke-elms, you find
+Giovanni Vesanzio’s fountain, the Aquilone, and Pius IV’s old Casino;
+then, too, there are the woods with their superb evergreen oaks, their
+thickets of plane-trees, acacias, and pines, intersected by broad
+avenues, which are delightfully pleasant for leisurely strolls; and
+finally, on turning to the left, beyond other clumps of trees, come the
+kitchen garden and the vineyard, the last well tended.
+
+Whilst walking through the wood Narcisse told Pierre of the life led by
+the Holy Father in these gardens. He strolls in them every second day
+when the weather allows. Formerly the popes left the Vatican for the
+Quirinal, which is cooler and healthier, as soon as May arrived; and
+spent the dog days at Castle Gandolfo on the margins of the Lake of
+Albano. But nowadays the only summer residence possessed by his Holiness
+is a virtually intact tower of the old rampart of Leo IV. He here spends
+the hottest days, and has even erected a sort of pavilion beside it for
+the accommodation of his suite. Narcisse, like one at home, went in and
+secured permission for Pierre to glance at the one room occupied by the
+Pope, a spacious round chamber with semispherical ceiling, on which are
+painted the heavens with symbolical figures of the constellations; one of
+the latter, the lion, having two stars for eyes--stars which a system of
+lighting causes to sparkle during the night. The walls of the tower are
+so thick that after blocking up a window, a kind of room, for the
+accommodation of a couch, has been contrived in the embrasure. Beside
+this couch the only furniture is a large work-table, a dining-table with
+flaps, and a large regal arm-chair, a mass of gilding, one of the gifts
+of the Pope’s episcopal jubilee. And you dream of the days of solitude
+and perfect silence, spent in that low donjon hall, where the coolness of
+a tomb prevails whilst the heavy suns of August are scorching overpowered
+Rome.
+
+An astronomical observatory has been installed in another tower,
+surmounted by a little white cupola, which you espy amidst the greenery;
+and under the trees there is also a Swiss chalet, where Leo XIII is fond
+of resting. He sometimes goes on foot to the kitchen garden, and takes
+much interest in the vineyard, visiting it to see if the grapes are
+ripening and if the vintage will be a good one. What most astonished
+Pierre, however, was to learn that the Holy Father had been very fond of
+“sport” before age had weakened him. He was indeed passionately addicted
+to bird snaring. Broad-meshed nets were hung on either side of a path on
+the fringe of a plantation, and in the middle of the path were placed
+cages containing the decoys, whose songs soon attracted all the birds of
+the neighbourhood--red-breasts, white-throats, black-caps, nightingales,
+fig-peckers of all sorts. And when a numerous company of them was
+gathered together Leo XIII, seated out of sight and watching, would
+suddenly clap his hands and startle the birds, which flew up and were
+caught by the wings in the meshes of the nets. All that then remained to
+be done was to take them out of the nets and stifle them by a touch of
+the thumb. Roast fig-peckers are delicious.*
+
+ * Perhaps so; but what a delightful pastime for the Vicar of the
+ Divinity!--Trans.
+
+As Pierre came back through the wood he had another surprise. He suddenly
+lighted on a “Grotto of Lourdes,” a miniature imitation of the original,
+built of rocks and blocks of cement. And such was his emotion at the
+sight that he could not conceal it. “It’s true, then!” said he. “I was
+told of it, but I thought that the Holy Father was of loftier mind--free
+from all such base superstitions!”
+
+“Oh!” replied Narcisse, “I fancy that the grotto dates from Pius IX, who
+evinced especial gratitude to our Lady of Lourdes. At all events, it must
+be a gift, and Leo XIII simply keeps it in repair.”
+
+For a few moments Pierre remained motionless and silent before that
+imitation grotto, that childish plaything. Some zealously devout visitors
+had left their visiting cards in the cracks of the cement-work! For his
+part, he felt very sad, and followed his companion with bowed head,
+lamenting the wretched idiocy of the world. Then, on emerging from the
+wood, on again reaching the parterre, he raised his eyes.
+
+Ah! how exquisite in spite of everything was that decline of a lovely
+day, and what a victorious charm ascended from the soil in that part of
+the gardens. There, in front of that bare, noble, burning parterre, far
+more than under the languishing foliage of the wood or among the fruitful
+vines, Pierre realised the strength of Nature. Above the grass growing
+meagrely over the compartments of geometrical pattern which the pathways
+traced there were barely a few low shrubs, dwarf roses, aloes, rare tufts
+of withering flowers. Some green bushes still described the escutcheon of
+Pius IX in accordance with the strange taste of former times. And amidst
+the warm silence one only heard the faint crystalline murmur of the water
+trickling from the basin of the central fountain. But all Rome, its
+ardent heavens, sovereign grace, and conquering voluptuousness, seemed
+with their own soul to animate this vast rectangular patch of decorative
+gardening, this mosaic of verdure, which in its semi-abandonment and
+scorched decay assumed an aspect of melancholy pride, instinct with the
+ever returning quiver of a passion of fire that could not die. Some
+antique vases and statues, whitely nude under the setting sun, skirted
+the parterres. And above the aroma of eucalyptus and of pine, stronger
+even than that of the ripening oranges, there rose the odour of the
+large, bitter box-shrubs, so laden with pungent life that it disturbed
+one as one passed as if indeed it were the very scent of the fecundity of
+that ancient soil saturated with the dust of generations.
+
+“It’s very strange that we have not met his Holiness,” exclaimed
+Narcisse. “Perhaps his carriage took the other path through the wood
+while we were in the tower.”
+
+Then, reverting to Monsignor Gamba del Zoppo, the _attaché_ explained
+that the functions of _Copiere_, or papal cup-bearer, which his cousin
+should have discharged as one of the four _Camerieri segreti
+partecipanti_ had become purely honorary since the dinners offered to
+diplomatists or in honour of newly consecrated bishops had been given by
+the Cardinal Secretary of State. Monsignor Gamba, whose cowardice and
+nullity were legendary, seemed therefore to have no other _rôle_ than
+that of enlivening Leo XIII, whose favour he had won by his incessant
+flattery and the anecdotes which he was ever relating about both the
+black and the white worlds. Indeed this fat, amiable man, who could even
+be obliging when his interests were not in question, was a perfect
+newspaper, brimful of tittle-tattle, disdaining no item of gossip
+whatever, even if it came from the kitchens. And thus he was quietly
+marching towards the cardinalate, certain of obtaining the hat without
+other exertion than that of bringing a budget of gossip to beguile the
+pleasant hours of the promenade. And Heaven knew that he was always able
+to garner an abundant harvest of news in that closed Vatican swarming
+with prelates of every kind, in that womanless pontifical family of old
+begowned bachelors, all secretly exercised by vast ambitions, covert and
+revolting rivalries, and ferocious hatreds, which, it is said, are still
+sometimes carried as far as the good old poison of ancient days.
+
+All at once Narcisse stopped. “Ah!” he exclaimed, “I was certain of it.
+There’s the Holy Father! But we are not in luck. He won’t even see us; he
+is about to get into his carriage again.”
+
+As he spoke a carriage drew up at the verge of the wood, and a little
+_cortège_ emerging from a narrow path, went towards it.
+
+Pierre felt as if he had received a great blow in the heart. Motionless
+beside his companion, and half hidden by a lofty vase containing a
+lemon-tree, it was only from a distance that he was able to see the white
+old man, looking so frail and slender in the wavy folds of his white
+cassock, and walking so very slowly with short, gliding steps. The young
+priest could scarcely distinguish the emaciated face of old diaphanous
+ivory, emphasised by a large nose which jutted out above thin lips.
+However, the Pontiff’s black eyes were glittering with an inquisitive
+smile, while his right ear was inclined towards Monsignor Gamba del
+Zoppo, who was doubtless finishing some story at once rich and short,
+flowery and dignified. And on the left walked a Noble Guard; and two
+other prelates followed.
+
+It was but a familiar apparition; Leo XIII was already climbing into the
+closed carriage. And Pierre, in the midst of that large, odoriferous,
+burning garden, again experienced the singular emotion which had come
+upon him in the Gallery of the Candelabra while he was picturing the Pope
+on his way between the Apollos and Venuses radiant in their triumphant
+nudity. There, however, it was only pagan art which had celebrated the
+eternity of life, the superb, almighty powers of Nature. But here he had
+beheld the Pontiff steeped in Nature itself, in Nature clad in the most
+lovely, most voluptuous, most passionate guise. Ah! that Pope, that old
+man strolling with his Divinity of grief, humility, and renunciation
+along the paths of those gardens of love, in the languid evenings of the
+hot summer days, beneath the caressing scents of pine and eucalyptus,
+ripe oranges, and tall, acrid box-shrubs! The whole atmosphere around him
+proclaimed the powers of the great god Pan. How pleasant was the thought
+of living there, amidst that magnificence of heaven and of earth, of
+loving the beauty of woman and of rejoicing in the fruitfulness of all!
+And suddenly the decisive truth burst forth that from a land of such joy
+and light it was only possible for a temporal religion of conquest and
+political domination to rise; not the mystical, pain-fraught religion of
+the North--the religion of the soul!
+
+However, Narcisse led the young priest away, telling him other anecdotes
+as they went--anecdotes of the occasional _bonhomie_ of Leo XIII, who
+would stop to chat with the gardeners, and question them about the health
+of the trees and the sale of the oranges. And he also mentioned the
+Pope’s former passion for a pair of gazelles, sent him from Africa, two
+graceful creatures which he had been fond of caressing, and at whose
+death he had shed tears. But Pierre no longer listened. When they found
+themselves on the Piazza of St. Peter’s, he turned round and gazed at the
+Vatican once more.
+
+His eyes had fallen on the gate of bronze, and he remembered having
+wondered that morning what there might be behind these metal panels
+ornamented with big nails. And he did not yet dare to answer the
+question, and decide if the new nations thirsting for fraternity and
+justice would really find there the religion necessary for the
+democracies of to-morrow; for he had not been able to probe things, and
+only carried a first impression away with him. But how keen it was, and
+how ill it boded for his dreams! A gate of bronze! Yes, a hard,
+impregnable gate, so completely shutting the Vatican off from the rest of
+the world that nothing new had entered the palace for three hundred
+years. Behind that portal the old centuries, as far as the sixteenth,
+remained immutable. Time seemed to have stayed its course there for ever;
+nothing more stirred; the very costumes of the Swiss Guards, the Noble
+Guards, and the prelates themselves were unchanged; and you found
+yourself in the world of three hundred years ago, with its etiquette, its
+costumes, and its ideas. That the popes in a spirit of haughty protest
+should for five and twenty years have voluntarily shut themselves up in
+their palace was already regrettable; but this imprisonment of centuries
+within the past, within the grooves of tradition, was far more serious
+and dangerous. It was all Catholicism which was thus imprisoned, whose
+dogmas and sacerdotal organisation were obstinately immobilised. Perhaps,
+in spite of its apparent flexibility, Catholicism was really unable to
+yield in anything, under peril of being swept away, and therein lay both
+its weakness and its strength. And then what a terrible world was there,
+how great the pride and ambition, how numerous the hatreds and rivalries!
+And how strange the prison, how singular the company assembled behind the
+bars--the Crucified by the side of Jupiter Capitolinus, all pagan
+antiquity fraternising with the Apostles, all the splendours of the
+Renascence surrounding the pastor of the Gospel who reigns in the name of
+the humble and the poor!
+
+The sun was sinking, the gentle, luscious sweetness of the Roman evenings
+was falling from the limpid heavens, and after that splendid day spent
+with Michael Angelo, Raffaelle, the ancients, and the Pope, in the finest
+palace of the world, the young priest lingered, distracted, on the Piazza
+of St. Peter’s.
+
+“Well, you must excuse me, my dear Abbé,” concluded Narcisse. “But I will
+now confess to you that I suspect my worthy cousin of a fear that he
+might compromise himself by meddling in your affair. I shall certainly
+see him again, but you will do well not to put too much reliance on him.”
+
+It was nearly six o’clock when Pierre got back to the Boccanera mansion.
+As a rule, he passed in all modesty down the lane, and entered by the
+little side door, a key of which had been given him. But he had that
+morning received a letter from M. de la Choue, and desired to communicate
+it to Benedetta. So he ascended the grand staircase, and on reaching the
+anteroom was surprised to find nobody there. As a rule, whenever the
+man-servant went out Victorine installed herself in his place and busied
+herself with some needlework. Her chair was there, and Pierre even
+noticed some linen which she had left on a little table when probably
+summoned elsewhere. Then, as the door of the first reception-room was
+ajar, he at last ventured in. It was almost night there already, the
+twilight was softly dying away, and all at once the young priest stopped
+short, fearing to take another step, for, from the room beyond, the large
+yellow _salon_, there came a murmur of feverish, distracted words, ardent
+entreaties, fierce panting, a rustling and a shuffling of footsteps. And
+suddenly Pierre no longer hesitated, urged on despite himself by the
+conviction that the sounds he heard were those of a struggle, and that
+some one was hard pressed.
+
+And when he darted into the further room he was stupefied, for Dario was
+there, no longer showing the degenerate elegance of the last scion of an
+exhausted race, but maddened by the hot, frantic blood of the Boccaneras
+which had bubbled up within him. He had clasped Benedetta by the
+shoulders in a frenzy of passion and was scorching her face with his hot,
+entreating words: “But since you say, my darling, that it is all over,
+that your marriage will never be dissolved--oh! why should we be wretched
+for ever! Love me as you do love me, and let me love you--let me love
+you!”
+
+But the Contessina, with an indescribable expression of tenderness and
+suffering on her tearful face, repulsed him with her outstretched arms,
+she likewise evincing a fierce energy as she repeated: “No, no; I love
+you, but it must not, it must not be.”
+
+At that moment, amidst the roar of his despair, Dario became conscious
+that some one was entering the room. He turned and gazed at Pierre with
+an expression of stupefied insanity, scarce able even to recognise him.
+Then he carried his two hands to his face, to his bloodshot eyes and his
+cheeks wet with scalding tears, and fled, heaving a terrible,
+pain-fraught sigh in which baffled passion mingled with grief and
+repentance.
+
+Benedetta seated herself, breathing hard, her strength and courage
+wellnigh exhausted. But as Pierre, too much embarrassed to speak, turned
+towards the door, she addressed him in a calmer voice: “No, no, Monsieur
+l’Abbé, do not go away--sit down, I pray you; I should like to speak to
+you for a moment.”
+
+He thereupon thought it his duty to account for his sudden entrance, and
+explained that he had found the door of the first _salon_ ajar, and that
+Victorine was not in the ante-room, though he had seen her work lying on
+the table there.
+
+“Yes,” exclaimed the Contessina, “Victorine ought to have been there; I
+saw her there but a short time ago. And when my poor Dario lost his head
+I called her. Why did she not come?” Then, with sudden expansion, leaning
+towards Pierre, she continued: “Listen, Monsieur l’Abbé, I will tell you
+what happened, for I don’t want you to form too bad an opinion of my poor
+Dario. It was all in some measure my fault. Last night he asked me for an
+appointment here in order that we might have a quiet chat, and as I knew
+that my aunt would be absent at this time to-day I told him to come. It
+was only natural--wasn’t it?--that we should want to see one another and
+come to an agreement after the grievous news that my marriage will
+probably never be annulled. We suffer too much, and must form a decision.
+And so when he came this evening we began to weep and embrace, mingling
+our tears together. I kissed him again and again, telling him how I
+adored him, how bitterly grieved I was at being the cause of his
+sufferings, and how surely I should die of grief at seeing him so
+unhappy. Ah! no doubt I did wrong; I ought not to have caught him to my
+heart and embraced him as I did, for it maddened him, Monsieur l’Abbé; he
+lost his head, and would have made me break my vow to the Blessed
+Virgin.”
+
+She spoke these words in all tranquillity and simplicity, without sign of
+embarrassment, like a young and beautiful woman who is at once sensible
+and practical. Then she resumed: “Oh! I know my poor Dario well, but it
+does not prevent me from loving him; perhaps, indeed, it only makes me
+love him the more. He looks delicate, perhaps rather sickly, but in truth
+he is a man of passion. Yes, the old blood of my people bubbles up in
+him. I know something of it myself, for when I was a child I sometimes
+had fits of angry passion which left me exhausted on the floor, and even
+now, when the gusts arise within me, I have to fight against myself and
+torture myself in order that I may not act madly. But my poor Dario does
+not know how to suffer. He is like a child whose fancies must be
+gratified. And yet at bottom he has a good deal of common sense; he waits
+for me because he knows that the only real happiness lies with the woman
+who adores him.”
+
+As Pierre listened he was able to form a more precise idea of the young
+prince, of whose character he had hitherto had but a vague perception.
+Whilst dying of love for his cousin, Dario had ever been a man of
+pleasure. Though he was no doubt very amiable, the basis of his
+temperament was none the less egotism. And, in particular, he was unable
+to endure suffering; he loathed suffering, ugliness, and poverty, whether
+they affected himself or others. Both his flesh and his soul required
+gaiety, brilliancy, show, life in the full sunlight. And withal he was
+exhausted, with no strength left him but for the idle life he led, so
+incapable of thought and will that the idea of joining the new _régime_
+had not even occurred to him. Yet he had all the unbounded pride of a
+Roman; sagacity--a keen, practical perception of the real--was mingled
+with his indolence; while his inveterate love of woman, more frequently
+displayed in charm of manner, burst forth at times in attacks of frantic
+sensuality.
+
+“After all he is a man,” concluded Benedetta in a low voice, “and I must
+not ask impossibilities of him.” Then, as Pierre gazed at her, his
+notions of Italian jealousy quite upset, she exclaimed, aglow with
+passionate adoration: “No, no. Situated as we are, I am not jealous. I
+know very well that he will always return to me, and that he will be mine
+alone whenever I please, whenever it may be possible.”
+
+Silence followed; shadows were filling the room, the gilding of the large
+pier tables faded away, and infinite melancholy fell from the lofty, dim
+ceiling and the old hangings, yellow like autumn leaves. But soon, by
+some chance play of the waning light, a painting stood out above the sofa
+on which the Contessina was seated. It was the portrait of the beautiful
+young girl with the turban--Cassia Boccanera the forerunner, the
+_amorosa_ and avengeress. Again was Pierre struck by the portrait’s
+resemblance to Benedetta, and, thinking aloud, he resumed: “Passion
+always proves the stronger; there invariably comes a moment when one
+succumbs--”
+
+But Benedetta violently interrupted him: “I! I! Ah! you do not know me; I
+would rather die!” And with extraordinary exaltation, all aglow with
+love, as if her superstitious faith had fired her passion to ecstasy, she
+continued: “I have vowed to the Madonna that I will belong to none but
+the man I love, and to him only when he is my husband. And hitherto I
+have kept that vow, at the cost of my happiness, and I will keep it
+still, even if it cost me my life! Yes, we will die, my poor Dario and I,
+if it be necessary; but the holy Virgin has my vow, and the angels shall
+not weep in heaven!”
+
+She was all in those words, her nature all simplicity, intricate,
+inexplicable though it might seem. She was doubtless swayed by that idea
+of human nobility which Christianity has set in renunciation and purity;
+a protest, as it were, against eternal matter, against the forces of
+Nature, the everlasting fruitfulness of life. But there was more than
+this; she reserved herself, like a divine and priceless gift, to be
+bestowed on the one being whom her heart had chosen, he who would be her
+lord and master when God should have united them in marriage. For her
+everything lay in the blessing of the priest, in the religious
+solemnisation of matrimony. And thus one understood her long resistance
+to Prada, whom she did not love, and her despairing, grievous resistance
+to Dario, whom she did love, but who was not her husband. And how
+torturing it was for that soul of fire to have to resist her love; how
+continual was the combat waged by duty in the Virgin’s name against the
+wild, passionate blood of her race! Ignorant, indolent though she might
+be, she was capable of great fidelity of heart, and, moreover, she was
+not given to dreaming: love might have its immaterial charms, but she
+desired it complete.
+
+As Pierre looked at her in the dying twilight he seemed to see and
+understand her for the first time. The duality of her nature appeared in
+her somewhat full, fleshy lips, in her big black eyes, which suggested a
+dark, tempestuous night illumined by flashes of lightning, and in the
+calm, sensible expression of the rest of her gentle, infantile face. And,
+withal, behind those eyes of flame, beneath that pure, candid skin, one
+divined the internal tension of a superstitious, proud, and self-willed
+woman, who was obstinately intent on reserving herself for her one love.
+And Pierre could well understand that she should be adored, that she
+should fill the life of the man she chose with passion, and that to his
+own eyes she should appear like the younger sister of that lovely, tragic
+Cassia who, unwilling to survive the blow that had rendered self-bestowal
+impossible, had flung herself into the Tiber, dragging her brother Ercole
+and the corpse of her lover Flavio with her.
+
+However, with a gesture of kindly affection Benedetta caught hold of
+Pierre’s hands. “You have been here a fortnight, Monsieur l’Abbé,” said
+she, “and I have come to like you very much, for I feel you to be a
+friend. If at first you do not understand us, at least pray do not judge
+us too severely. Ignorant as I may be, I always strive to act for the
+best, I assure you.”
+
+Pierre was greatly touched by her affectionate graciousness, and thanked
+her whilst for a moment retaining her beautiful hands in his own, for he
+also was becoming much attached to her. A fresh dream was carrying him
+off, that of educating her, should he have the time, or, at all events,
+of not returning home before winning her soul over to his own ideas of
+future charity and fraternity. Did not that adorable, unoccupied,
+indolent, ignorant creature, who only knew how to defend her love,
+personify the Italy of yesterday? The Italy of yesterday, so lovely and
+so sleepy, instinct with a dying grace, charming one even in her
+drowsiness, and retaining so much mystery in the fathomless depths of her
+black, passionate eyes! And what a _rôle_ would be that of awakening her,
+instructing her, winning her over to truth, making her the rejuvenated
+Italy of to-morrow such as he had dreamt of! Even in that disastrous
+marriage with Count Prada he tried to see merely a first attempt at
+revival which had failed, the modern Italy of the North being over-hasty,
+too brutal in its eagerness to love and transform that gentle, belated
+Rome which was yet so superb and indolent. But might he not take up the
+task? Had he not noticed that his book, after the astonishment of the
+first perusal, had remained a source of interest and reflection with
+Benedetta amidst the emptiness of her days given over to grief? What! was
+it really possible that she might find some appeasement for her own
+wretchedness by interesting herself in the humble, in the happiness of
+the poor? Emotion already thrilled her at the idea, and he, quivering at
+the thought of all the boundless love that was within her and that she
+might bestow, vowed to himself that he would draw tears of pity from her
+eyes.
+
+But the night had now almost completely fallen, and Benedetta rose to ask
+for a lamp. Then, as Pierre was about to take leave, she detained him for
+another moment in the gloom. He could no longer see her; he only heard
+her grave voice: “You will not go away with too bad an opinion of us,
+will you, Monsieur l’Abbé? We love one another, Dario and I, and that is
+no sin when one behaves as one ought. Ah! yes, I love him, and have loved
+him for years. I was barely thirteen, he was eighteen, and we already
+loved one another wildly in those big gardens of the Villa Montefiori
+which are now all broken up. Ah! what days we spent there, whole
+afternoons among the trees, hours in secret hiding-places, where we
+kissed like little angels. When the oranges ripened their perfume
+intoxicated us. And the large box-plants, ah, _Dio!_ how they enveloped
+us, how their strong, acrid scent made our hearts beat! I can never smell
+then nowadays without feeling faint!”
+
+A man-servant brought in the lamp, and Pierre ascended to his room. But
+when half-way up the little staircase he perceived Victorine, who started
+slightly, as if she had posted herself there to watch his departure from
+the _salon_. And now, as she followed him up, talking and seeking for
+information, he suddenly realised what had happened. “Why did you not go
+to your mistress instead of running off,” he asked, “when she called you,
+while you were sewing in the ante-room?”
+
+At first she tried to feign astonishment and reply that she had heard
+nothing. But her good-natured, frank face did not know how to lie, and
+she ended by confessing, with a gay, courageous air. “Well,” she said,
+“it surely wasn’t for me to interfere between lovers! Besides, my poor
+little Benedetta is simply torturing herself to death with those ideas of
+hers. Why shouldn’t they be happy, since they love one another? Life
+isn’t so amusing as some may think. And how bitterly one regrets not
+having seized hold of happiness when the time for it has gone!”
+
+Once alone in his room, Pierre suddenly staggered, quite overcome. The
+great box-plants, the great box-plants with their acrid, perturbing
+perfume! She, Benedetta, like himself, had quivered as she smelt them;
+and he saw them once more in a vision of the pontifical gardens, the
+voluptuous gardens of Rome, deserted, glowing under the August sun. And
+now his whole day crystallised, assumed clear and full significance. It
+spoke to him of the fruitful awakening, of the eternal protest of Nature
+and life, Venus and Hercules, whom one may bury for centuries beneath the
+soil, but who, nevertheless, one day arise from it, and though one may
+seek to wall them up within the domineering, stubborn, immutable Vatican,
+reign yet even there, and rule the whole, wide world with sovereign
+power!
+
+
+
+
+
+PART III.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+
+On the following day as Pierre, after a long ramble, once more found
+himself in front of the Vatican, whither a harassing attraction ever led
+him, he again encountered Monsignor Nani. It was a Wednesday evening, and
+the Assessor of the Holy Office had just come from his weekly audience
+with the Pope, whom he had acquainted with the proceedings of the
+Congregation at its meeting that morning. “What a fortunate chance, my
+dear sir,” said he; “I was thinking of you. Would you like to see his
+Holiness in public while you are waiting for a private audience?”
+
+Nani had put on his pleasant expression of smiling civility, beneath
+which one would barely detect the faint irony of a superior man who knew
+everything, prepared everything, and could do everything.
+
+“Why, yes, Monsignor,” Pierre replied, somewhat astonished by the
+abruptness of the offer. “Anything of a nature to divert one’s mind is
+welcome when one loses one’s time in waiting.”
+
+“No, no, you are not losing your time,” replied the prelate. “You are
+looking round you, reflecting, and enlightening yourself. Well, this is
+the point. You are doubtless aware that the great international
+pilgrimage of the Peter’s Pence Fund will arrive in Rome on Friday, and
+be received on Saturday by his Holiness. On Sunday, moreover, the Holy
+Father will celebrate mass at the Basilica. Well, I have a few cards
+left, and here are some very good places for both ceremonies.” So saying
+he produced an elegant little pocketbook bearing a gilt monogram and
+handed Pierre two cards, one green and the other pink. “If you only knew
+how people fight for them,” he resumed. “You remember that I told you of
+two French ladies who are consumed by a desire to see his Holiness. Well,
+I did not like to support their request for an audience in too pressing a
+way, and they have had to content themselves with cards like these. The
+fact is, the Holy Father is somewhat fatigued at the present time. I
+found him looking yellow and feverish just now. But he has so much
+courage; he nowadays only lives by force of soul.” Then Nani’s smile came
+back with its almost imperceptible touch of derision as he resumed:
+“Impatient ones ought to find a great example in him, my dear son. I
+heard that Monsignor Gamba del Zoppo had been unable to help you. But you
+must not be too much distressed on that account. This long delay is
+assuredly a grace of Providence in order that you may instruct yourself
+and come to understand certain things which you French priests do not,
+unfortunately, realise when you arrive in Rome. And perhaps it will
+prevent you from making certain mistakes. Come, calm yourself, and
+remember that the course of events is in the hands of God, who, in His
+sovereign wisdom, fixes the hour for all things.”
+
+Thereupon Nani offered Pierre his plump, supple, shapely hand, a hand
+soft like a woman’s but with the grasp of a vice. And afterwards he
+climbed into his carriage, which was waiting for him.
+
+It so happened that the letter which Pierre had received from Viscount
+Philibert de la Choue was a long cry of spite and despair in connection
+with the great international pilgrimage of the Peter’s Pence Fund. The
+Viscount wrote from his bed, to which he was confined by a very severe
+attack of gout, and his grief at being unable to come to Rome was the
+greater as the President of the Committee, who would naturally present
+the pilgrims to the Pope, happened to be Baron de Fouras, one of his most
+bitter adversaries of the old conservative, Catholic party. M. de la
+Choue felt certain that the Baron would profit by his opportunity to win
+the Pope over to the theory of free corporations; whereas he, the
+Viscount, believed that the salvation of Catholicism and the world could
+only be worked by a system in which the corporations should be closed and
+obligatory. And so he urged Pierre to exert himself with such cardinals
+as were favourable, to secure an audience with the Holy Father whatever
+the obstacles, and to remain in Rome until he should have secured the
+Pontiff’s approbation, which alone could decide the victory. The letter
+further mentioned that the pilgrimage would be made up of a number of
+groups headed by bishops and other ecclesiastical dignitaries, and would
+comprise three thousand people from France, Belgium, Spain, Austria, and
+even Germany. Two thousand of these would come from France alone. An
+international committee had assembled in Paris to organise everything and
+select the pilgrims, which last had proved a delicate task, as a
+representative gathering had been desired, a commingling of members of
+the aristocracy, sisterhood of middle-class ladies, and associations of
+the working classes, among whom all social differences would be forgotten
+in the union of a common faith. And the Viscount added that the
+pilgrimage would bring the Pope a large sum of money, and had settled the
+date of its arrival in the Eternal City in such wise that it would figure
+as a solemn protest of the Catholic world against the festivities of
+September 20, by which the Quirinal had just celebrated the anniversary
+of the occupation of Rome.
+
+The reception of the pilgrimage being fixed for noon, Pierre in all
+simplicity thought that he would be sufficiently early if he reached St.
+Peter’s at eleven. The function was to take place in the Hall of
+Beatifications, which is a large and handsome apartment over the portico,
+and has been arranged as a chapel since 1890. One of its windows opens on
+to the central balcony, whence the popes formerly blessed the people, the
+city, and the world. To reach the apartment you pass through two other
+halls of audience, the Sala Regia and Sala Ducale, and when Pierre wished
+to gain the place to which his green card entitled him he found both
+those rooms so extremely crowded that he could only elbow his way forward
+with the greatest difficulty. For an hour already the three or four
+thousand people assembled there had been stifling, full of growing
+emotion and feverishness. At last the young priest managed to reach the
+threshold of the third hall, but was so discouraged at sight of the
+extraordinary multitude of heads before him that he did not attempt to go
+any further.
+
+The apartment, which he could survey at a glance by rising on tip-toe,
+appeared to him to be very rich of aspect, with walls gilded and painted
+under a severe and lofty ceiling. On a low platform, where the altar
+usually stood, facing the entry, the pontifical throne had now been set:
+a large arm-chair upholstered in red velvet with glittering golden back
+and arms; whilst the hangings of the _baldacchino_, also of red velvet,
+fell behind and spread out on either side like a pair of huge purple
+wings. However, what more particularly interested Pierre was the wildly
+passionate concourse of people whose hearts he could almost hear beating
+and whose eyes sought to beguile their feverish impatience by
+contemplating and adoring the empty throne. As if it had been some golden
+monstrance which the Divinity in person would soon deign to occupy, that
+throne dazzled them, disturbed them, filled them all with devout rapture.
+Among the throng were workmen rigged out in their Sunday best, with clear
+childish eyes and rough ecstatic faces; ladies of the upper classes
+wearing black, as the regulations required, and looking intensely pale
+from the sacred awe which mingled with their excessive desire; and
+gentlemen in evening dress, who appeared quite glorious, inflated with
+the conviction that they were saving both the Church and the nations. One
+cluster of dress-coats assembled near the throne, was particularly
+noticeable; it comprised the members of the International Committee,
+headed by Baron de Fouras, a very tall, stout, fair man of fifty, who
+bestirred and exerted himself and issued orders like some commander on
+the morning of a decisive victory. Then, amidst the general mass of grey,
+neutral hue, there gleamed the violet silk of some bishop’s cassock, for
+each pastor had desired to remain with his flock; whilst members of
+various religious orders, superiors in brown, black, and white habits,
+rose up above all others with lofty bearded or shaven heads. Right and
+left drooped banners which associations and congregations had brought to
+present to the Pope. And the sea of pilgrims ever waved and surged with a
+growing clamour: so much impatient love being exhaled by those perspiring
+faces, burning eyes, and hungry mouths that the atmosphere, reeking with
+the odour of the throng, seemed thickened and darkened.
+
+All at once, however, Pierre perceived Monsignor Nani standing near the
+throne and beckoning him to approach; and although the young priest
+replied by a modest gesture, implying that he preferred to remain where
+he was, the prelate insisted and even sent an usher to make way for him.
+Directly the usher had led him forward, Nani inquired: “Why did you not
+come to take your place? Your card entitled you to be here, on the left
+of the throne.”
+
+“The truth is,” answered the priest, “I did not like to disturb so many
+people. Besides, this is an undue honour for me.”
+
+“No, no; I gave you that place in order that you should occupy it. I want
+you to be in the first rank, so that you may see everything of the
+ceremony.”
+
+Pierre could not do otherwise than thank him. Then, on looking round, he
+saw that several cardinals and many other prelates were likewise waiting
+on either side of the throne. But it was in vain that he sought Cardinal
+Boccanera, who only came to St. Peter’s and the Vatican on the days when
+his functions required his presence there. However, he recognised
+Cardinal Sanguinetti, who, broad and sturdy and red of face, was talking
+in a loud voice to Baron de Fouras. And Nani, with his obliging air,
+stepped up again to point out two other Eminences who were high and
+mighty personages--the Cardinal Vicar, a short, fat man, with a feverish
+countenance scorched by ambition, and the Cardinal Secretary, who was
+robust and bony, fashioned as with a hatchet, suggesting a romantic type
+of Sicilian bandit, who, to other courses, had preferred the discreet,
+smiling diplomacy of the Church. A few steps further on, and quite alone,
+the Grand Penitentiary, silent and seemingly suffering, showed his grey,
+lean, ascetic profile.
+
+Noon had struck. There was a false alert, a burst of emotion, which swept
+in like a wave from the other halls. But it was merely the ushers opening
+a passage for the _cortège_. Then, all at once, acclamations arose in the
+first hall, gathered volume, and drew nearer. This time it was the
+_cortège_ itself. First came a detachment of the Swiss Guard in undress,
+headed by a sergeant; then a party of chair-bearers in red; and next the
+domestic prelates, including the four _Camerieri segreti partecipanti_.
+And finally, between two rows of Noble Guards, in semi-gala uniforms,
+walked the Holy Father, alone, smiling a pale smile, and slowly blessing
+the pilgrims on either hand. In his wake the clamour which had risen in
+the other apartments swept into the Hall of Beatifications with the
+violence of delirious love; and, under his slender, white, benedictive
+hand, all those distracted creatures fell upon both knees, nought
+remaining but the prostration of a devout multitude, overwhelmed, as it
+were, by the apparition of its god.
+
+Quivering, carried away, Pierre had knelt like the others. Ah! that
+omnipotence, that irresistible contagion of faith, of the redoubtable
+current from the spheres beyond, increased tenfold by a _scenario_ and a
+pomp of sovereign grandeur! Profound silence fell when Leo XIII was
+seated on the throne surrounded by the cardinals and his court; and then
+the ceremony proceeded according to rite and usage. First a bishop spoke,
+kneeling and laying the homage of the faithful of all Christendom at his
+Holiness’s feet. The President of the Committee, Baron de Fouras,
+followed, remaining erect whilst he read a long address in which he
+introduced the pilgrimage and explained its motive, investing it with all
+the gravity of a political and religious protest. This stout man had a
+shrill and piercing voice, and his words jarred like the grating of a
+gimlet as he proclaimed the grief of the Catholic world at the spoliation
+which the Holy See had endured for a quarter of a century, and the desire
+of all the nations there represented by the pilgrims to console the
+supreme and venerated Head of the Church by bringing him the offerings of
+rich and poor, even to the mites of the humblest, in order that the
+Papacy might retain the pride of independence and be able to treat its
+enemies with contempt. And he also spoke of France, deplored her errors,
+predicted her return to healthy traditions, and gave it to be understood
+that she remained in spite of everything the most opulent and generous of
+the Christian nations, the donor whose gold and presents flowed into Rome
+in a never ending stream. At last Leo XIII arose to reply to the bishop
+and the baron. His voice was full, with a strong nasal twang, and
+surprised one coming from a man so slight of build. In a few sentences he
+expressed his gratitude, saying how touched he was by the devotion of the
+nations to the Holy See. Although the times might be bad, the final
+triumph could not be delayed much longer. There were evident signs that
+mankind was returning to faith, and that iniquity would soon cease under
+the universal dominion of the Christ. As for France, was she not the
+eldest daughter of the Church, and had she not given too many proofs of
+her affection for the Holy See for the latter ever to cease loving her?
+Then, raising his arm, he bestowed on all the pilgrims present, on the
+societies and enterprises they represented, on their families and
+friends, on France, on all the nations of the Catholic world, his
+apostolic benediction, in gratitude for the precious help which they sent
+him. And whilst he was again seating himself applause burst forth,
+frantic salvoes of applause lasting for ten minutes and mingling with
+vivats and inarticulate cries--a passionate, tempestuous outburst, which
+made the very building shake.
+
+Amidst this blast of frantic adoration Pierre gazed at Leo XIII, now
+again motionless on his throne. With the papal cap on his head and the
+red cape edged with ermine about his shoulders, he retained in his long
+white cassock the rigid, sacerdotal attitude of an idol venerated by two
+hundred and fifty millions of Christians. Against the purple background
+of the hangings of the _baldacchino_, between the wing-like drapery on
+either side, enclosing, as it were, a brasier of glory, he assumed real
+majesty of aspect. He was no longer the feeble old man with the slow,
+jerky walk and the slender, scraggy neck of a poor ailing bird. The
+simious ugliness of his face, the largeness of his nose, the long slit of
+his mouth, the hugeness of his ears, the conflicting jumble of his
+withered features disappeared. In that waxen countenance you only
+distinguished the admirable, dark, deep eyes, beaming with eternal youth,
+with extraordinary intelligence and penetration. And then there was a
+resolute bracing of his entire person, a consciousness of the eternity
+which he represented, a regal nobility, born of the very circumstance
+that he was now but a mere breath, a soul set in so pellucid a body of
+ivory that it became visible as though it were already freed from the
+bonds of earth. And Pierre realised what such a man--the Sovereign
+Pontiff, the king obeyed by two hundred and fifty millions of
+subjects--must be for the devout and dolent creatures who came to adore
+him from so far, and who fell at his feet awestruck by the splendour of
+the powers incarnate in him. Behind him, amidst the purple of the
+hangings, what a gleam was suddenly afforded of the spheres beyond, what
+an Infinite of ideality and blinding glory! So many centuries of history
+from the Apostle Peter downward, so much strength and genius, so many
+struggles and triumphs to be summed up in one being, the Elect, the
+Unique, the Superhuman! And what a miracle, incessantly renewed, was that
+of Heaven deigning to descend into human flesh, of the Deity fixing His
+abode in His chosen servant, whom He consecrated above and beyond all
+others, endowing him with all power and all science! What sacred
+perturbation, what emotion fraught with distracted love might one not
+feel at the thought of the Deity being ever there in the depths of that
+man’s eyes, speaking with his voice and emanating from his hand each time
+that he raised it to bless! Could one imagine the exorbitant absoluteness
+of that sovereign who was infallible, who disposed of the totality of
+authority in this world and of salvation in the next! At all events, how
+well one understood that souls consumed by a craving for faith should fly
+towards him, that those who at last found the certainty they had so
+ardently sought should seek annihilation in him, the consolation of
+self-bestowal and disappearance within the Deity Himself.
+
+Meantime, the ceremony was drawing to an end; Baron de Fouras was now
+presenting the members of the committee and a few other persons of
+importance. There was a slow procession with trembling genuflections and
+much greedy kissing of the papal ring and slipper. Then the banners were
+offered, and Pierre felt a pang on seeing that the finest and richest of
+them was one of Lourdes, an offering no doubt from the Fathers of the
+Immaculate Conception. On one side of the white, gold-bordered silk Our
+Lady of Lourdes was painted, while on the other appeared a portrait of
+Leo XIII. Pierre saw the Pope smile at the presentment of himself, and
+was greatly grieved thereat, as though, indeed, his whole dream of an
+intellectual, evangelical Pope, disentangled from all low superstition,
+were crumbling away. And just then his eyes met those of Nani, who from
+the outset had been watching him with the inquisitive air of a man who is
+making an experiment.
+
+“That banner is superb, isn’t it?” said Nani, drawing near. “How it must
+please his Holiness to be so nicely painted in company with so pretty a
+virgin.” And as the young priest, turning pale, did not reply, the
+prelate added, with an air of devout enjoyment: “We are very fond of
+Lourdes in Rome; that story of Bernadette is so delightful.”
+
+However, the scene which followed was so extraordinary that for a long
+time Pierre remained overcome by it. He had beheld never-to-be-forgotten
+idolatry at Lourdes, incidents of naive faith and frantic religious
+passion which yet made him quiver with alarm and grief. But the crowds
+rushing on the grotto, the sick dying of divine love before the Virgin’s
+statue, the multitudes delirious with the contagion of the
+miraculous--nothing of all that gave an idea of the blast of madness
+which suddenly inflamed the pilgrims at the feet of the Pope. Some
+bishops, superiors of religious orders, and other delegates of various
+kinds had stepped forward to deposit near the throne the offerings which
+they brought from the whole Catholic world, the universal “collection” of
+St. Peter’s Pence. It was the voluntary tribute of the nations to their
+sovereign: silver, gold, and bank notes in purses, bags, and cases.
+Ladies came and fell on their knees to offer silk and velvet alms-bags
+which they themselves had embroidered. Others had caused the note cases
+which they tendered to be adorned with the monogram of Leo XIII in
+diamonds. And at one moment the enthusiasm became so intense that several
+women stripped themselves of their adornments, flung their own purses on
+to the platform, and emptied their pockets even to the very coppers they
+had about them. One lady, tall and slender, very beautiful and very dark,
+wrenched her watch from about her neck, pulled off her rings, and threw
+everything upon the carpet. Had it been possible, they would have torn
+away their flesh to pluck out their love-burnt hearts and fling them
+likewise to the demi-god. They would even have flung themselves, have
+given themselves without reserve. It was a rain of presents, an explosion
+of the passion which impels one to strip oneself for the object of one’s
+cult, happy at having nothing of one’s own that shall not belong to him.
+And meantime the clamour grew, vivats and shrill cries of adoration arose
+amidst pushing and jostling of increased violence, one and all yielding
+to the irresistible desire to kiss the idol!
+
+But a signal was given, and Leo XIII made haste to quit the throne and
+take his place in the _cortège_ in order to return to his apartments. The
+Swiss Guards energetically thrust back the throng, seeking to open a way
+through the three halls. But at sight of his Holiness’s departure a
+lamentation of despair arose and spread, as if heaven had suddenly closed
+again and shut out those who had not yet been able to approach. What a
+frightful disappointment--to have beheld the living manifestation of the
+Deity and to see it disappear before gaining salvation by just touching
+it! So terrible became the scramble, so extraordinary the confusion, that
+the Swiss Guards were swept away. And ladies were seen to dart after the
+Pope, to drag themselves on all fours over the marble slabs and kiss his
+footprints and lap up the dust of his steps! The tall dark lady suddenly
+fell at the edge of the platform, raised a loud shriek, and fainted; and
+two gentlemen of the committee had to hold her so that she might not do
+herself an injury in the convulsions of the hysterical fit which had come
+upon her. Another, a plump blonde, was wildly, desperately kissing one of
+the golden arms of the throne-chair, on which the old man’s poor, bony
+elbow had just rested. And others, on seeing her, came to dispute
+possession, seized both arms, gilding and velvet, and pressed their
+mouths to wood-work or upholstery, their bodies meanwhile shaking with
+their sobs. Force had to be employed in order to drag them away.
+
+When it was all over Pierre went off, emerging as it were from a painful
+dream, sick at heart, and with his mind revolting. And again he
+encountered Nani’s glance, which never left him. “It was a superb
+ceremony, was it not?” said the prelate. “It consoles one for many
+iniquities.”
+
+“Yes, no doubt; but what idolatry!” the young priest murmured despite
+himself.
+
+Nani, however, merely smiled, as if he had not heard the last word. At
+that same moment the two French ladies whom he had provided with tickets
+came up to thank him, and. Pierre was surprised to recognise the mother
+and daughter whom he had met at the Catacombs. Charming, bright, and
+healthy as they were, their enthusiasm was only for the spectacle: they
+declared that they were well pleased at having seen it--that it was
+really astonishing, unique.
+
+As the crowd slowly withdrew Pierre all at once felt a tap on his
+shoulder, and, on turning his head, perceived Narcisse Habert, who also
+was very enthusiastic. “I made signs to you, my dear Abbé,” said he, “but
+you didn’t see me. Ah! how superb was the expression of that dark woman
+who fell rigid beside the platform with her arms outstretched. She
+reminded me of a masterpiece of one of the primitives, Cimabue, Giotto,
+or Fra Angelico. And the others, those who devoured the chair arms with
+their kisses, what suavity, beauty, and love! I never miss these
+ceremonies: there are always some fine scenes, perfect pictures, in which
+souls reveal themselves.”
+
+The long stream of pilgrims slowly descended the stairs, and Pierre,
+followed by Nani and Narcisse, who had begun to chat, tried to bring the
+ideas which were tumultuously throbbing in his brain into something like
+order. There was certainly grandeur and beauty in that Pope who had shut
+himself up in his Vatican, and who, the more he became a purely moral,
+spiritual authority, freed from all terrestrial cares, had grown in the
+adoration and awe of mankind. Such a flight into the ideal deeply stirred
+Pierre, whose dream of rejuvenated Christianity rested on the idea of the
+supreme Head of the Church exercising only a purified, spiritual
+authority. He had just seen what an increase of majesty and power was in
+that way gained by the Supreme Pontiff of the spheres beyond, at whose
+feet the women fainted, and behind whom they beheld a vision of the
+Deity. But at the same moment the pecuniary side of the question had
+risen before him and spoilt his joy. If the enforced relinquishment of
+the temporal power had exalted the Pope by freeing him from the worries
+of a petty sovereignty which was ever threatened, the need of money still
+remained like a chain about his feet tying him to earth. As he could not
+accept the proffered subvention of the Italian Government,* there was
+certainly in the Peter’s Pence a means of placing the Holy See above all
+material cares, provided, however, that this Peter’s Pence were really
+the Catholic _sou_, the mite of each believer, levied on his daily income
+and sent direct to Rome. Such a voluntary tribute paid by the flock to
+its pastor would, moreover, suffice for the wants of the Church if each
+of the 250,000,000 of Catholics gave his or her _sou_ every week. In this
+wise the Pope, indebted to each and all of his children, would be
+indebted to none in particular. A _sou_ was so little and so easy to
+give, and there was also something so touching about the idea. But,
+unhappily, things were not worked in that way; the great majority of
+Catholics gave nothing whatever, while the rich ones sent large sums from
+motives of political passion; and a particular objection was that the
+gifts were centralised in the hands of certain bishops and religious
+orders, so that these became ostensibly the benefactors of the papacy,
+the indispensable cashiers from whom it drew the sinews of life. The
+lowly and humble whose mites filled the collection boxes were, so to say,
+suppressed, and the Pope became dependent on the intermediaries, and was
+compelled to act cautiously with them, listen to their remonstrances, and
+even at times obey their passions, lest the stream of gifts should
+suddenly dry up. And so, although he was disburdened of the dead weight
+of the temporal power, he was not free; but remained the tributary of his
+clergy, with interests and appetites around him which he must needs
+satisfy. And Pierre remembered the “Grotto of Lourdes” in the Vatican
+gardens, and the banner which he had just seen, and he knew that the
+Lourdes fathers levied 200,000 francs a year on their receipts to send
+them as a present to the Holy Father. Was not that the chief reason of
+their great power? He quivered, and suddenly became conscious that, do
+what he might, he would be defeated, and his book would be condemned.
+
+ * 110,000 pounds per annum. It has never been accepted, and the
+ accumulations lapse to the Government every five years, and
+ cannot afterwards be recovered.--Trans.
+
+At last, as he was coming out on to the Piazza of St. Peter’s, he heard
+Narcisse asking Monsignor Nani: “Indeed! Do you really think that
+to-day’s gifts exceeded that figure?”
+
+“Yes, more than three millions,* I’m convinced of it,” the prelate
+replied.
+
+ * All the amounts given on this and the following pages are
+ calculated in francs. The reader will bear in mind that a
+ million francs is equivalent to 40,000 pounds.--Trans.
+
+For a moment the three men halted under the right-hand colonnade and
+gazed at the vast, sunlit piazza where the pilgrims were spreading out
+like little black specks hurrying hither and thither--an ant-hill, as it
+were, in revolution.
+
+Three millions! The words had rung in Pierre’s ears. And, raising his
+head, he gazed at the Vatican, all golden in the sunlight against the
+expanse of blue sky, as if he wished to penetrate its walls and follow
+the steps of Leo XIII returning to his apartments. He pictured him laden
+with those millions, with his weak, slender arms pressed to his breast,
+carrying the silver, the gold, the bank notes, and even the jewels which
+the women had flung him. And almost unconsciously the young priest spoke
+aloud: “What will he do with those millions? Where is he taking them?”
+
+Narcisse and even Nani could not help being amused by this strangely
+expressed curiosity. It was the young _attaché_ who replied. “Why, his
+Holiness is taking them to his room; or, at least, is having them carried
+there before him. Didn’t you see two persons of his suite picking up
+everything and filling their pockets? And now his Holiness has shut
+himself up quite alone; and if you could see him you would find him
+counting and recounting his treasure with cheerful care, ranging the
+rolls of gold in good order, slipping the bank notes into envelopes in
+equal quantities, and then putting everything away in hiding-places which
+are only known to himself.”
+
+While his companion was speaking Pierre again raised his eyes to the
+windows of the Pope’s apartments, as if to follow the scene. Moreover,
+Narcisse gave further explanations, asserting that the money was put away
+in a certain article of furniture, standing against the right-hand wall
+in the Holy Father’s bedroom. Some people, he added, also spoke of a
+writing table or secrétaire with deep drawers; and others declared that
+the money slumbered in some big padlocked trunks stored away in the
+depths of the alcove, which was very roomy. Of course, on the left side
+of the passage leading to the Archives there was a large room occupied by
+a general cashier and a monumental safe; but the funds kept there were
+simply those of the Patrimony of St. Peter, the administrative receipts
+of Rome; whereas the Peter’s Pence money, the voluntary donations of
+Christendom, remained in the hands of Leo XIII: he alone knew the exact
+amount of that fund, and lived alone with its millions, which he disposed
+of like an absolute master, rendering account to none. And such was his
+prudence that he never left his room when the servants cleaned and set it
+in order. At the utmost he would consent to remain on the threshold of
+the adjoining apartment in order to escape the dust. And whenever he
+meant to absent himself for a few hours, to go down into the gardens, for
+instance, he double-locked the doors and carried the keys away with him,
+never confiding them to another.
+
+At this point Narcisse paused and, turning to Nani, inquired: “Is not
+that so, Monsignor? These are things known to all Rome.”
+
+The prelate, ever smiling and wagging his head without expressing either
+approval or disapproval, had begun to study on Pierre’s face the effect
+of these curious stories. “No doubt, no doubt,” he responded; “so many
+things are said! I know nothing myself, but you seem to be certain of it
+all, Monsieur Habert.”
+
+“Oh!” resumed the other, “I don’t accuse his Holiness of sordid avarice,
+such as is rumoured. Some fabulous stories are current, stories of
+coffers full of gold in which the Holy Father is said to plunge his hands
+for hours at a time; treasures which he has heaped up in corners for the
+sole pleasure of counting them over and over again. Nevertheless, one may
+well admit that his Holiness is somewhat fond of money for its own sake,
+for the pleasure of handling it and setting it in order when he happens
+to be alone--and after all that is a very excusable mania in an old man
+who has no other pastime. But I must add that he is yet fonder of money
+for the social power which it brings, the decisive help which it will
+give to the Holy See in the future, if the latter desires to triumph.”
+
+These words evoked the lofty figure of a wise and prudent Pope, conscious
+of modern requirements, inclined to utilise the powers of the century in
+order to conquer it, and for this reason venturing on business and
+speculation. As it happened, the treasure bequeathed by Pius IX had
+nearly been lost in a financial disaster, but ever since that time Leo
+XIII had sought to repair the breach and make the treasure whole again,
+in order that he might leave it to his successor intact and even
+enlarged. Economical he certainly was, but he saved for the needs of the
+Church, which, as he knew, increased day by day; and money was absolutely
+necessary if Atheism was to be met and fought in the sphere of the
+schools, institutions, and associations of all sorts. Without money,
+indeed, the Church would become a vassal at the mercy of the civil
+powers, the Kingdom of Italy and other Catholic states; and so, although
+he liberally helped every enterprise which might contribute to the
+triumph of the Faith, Leo XIII had a contempt for all expenditure without
+an object, and treated himself and others with stern closeness.
+Personally, he had no needs. At the outset of his pontificate he had set
+his small private patrimony apart from the rich patrimony of St. Peter,
+refusing to take aught from the latter for the purpose of assisting his
+relatives. Never had pontiff displayed less nepotism: his three nephews
+and his two nieces had remained poor--in fact, in great pecuniary
+embarrassment. Still he listened neither to complaints nor accusations,
+but remained inflexible, proudly resolved to bequeath the sinews of life,
+the invincible weapon money, to the popes of future times, and therefore
+vigorously defending the millions of the Holy See against the desperate
+covetousness of one and all.
+
+“But, after all, what are the receipts and expenses of the Holy See?”
+ inquired Pierre.
+
+In all haste Nani again made his amiable, evasive gesture. “Oh! I am
+altogether ignorant in such matters,” he replied. “Ask Monsieur Habert,
+who is so well informed.”
+
+“For my part,” responded the _attaché_, “I simply know what is known to
+all the embassies here, the matters which are the subject of common
+report. With respect to the receipts there is, first of all, the treasure
+left by Pius IX, some twenty millions, invested in various ways and
+formerly yielding about a million a year in interest. But, as I said
+before, a disaster happened, and there must then have been a falling off
+in the income. Still, nowadays it is reported that nearly all
+deficiencies have been made good. Well, besides the regular income from
+the invested money, a few hundred thousand francs are derived every year
+from chancellery dues, patents of nobility, and all sorts of little fees
+paid to the Congregations. However, as the annual expenses exceed seven
+millions, it has been necessary to find quite six millions every year;
+and certainly it is the Peter’s Pence Fund that has supplied, not the six
+millions, perhaps, but three or four of them, and with these the Holy See
+has speculated in the hope of doubling them and making both ends meet. It
+would take me too long just now to relate the whole story of these
+speculations, the first huge gains, then the catastrophe which almost
+swept everything away, and finally the stubborn perseverance which is
+gradually supplying all deficiencies. However, if you are anxious on the
+subject, I will one day tell you all about it.”
+
+Pierre had listened with deep interest. “Six millions--even four!” he
+exclaimed, “what does the Peter’s Pence Fund bring in, then?”
+
+“Oh! I can only repeat that nobody has ever known the exact figures. In
+former times the Catholic Press published lists giving the amounts of
+different offerings, and in this way one could frame an approximate
+estimate. But the practice must have been considered unadvisable, for no
+documents nowadays appear, and it is absolutely impossible for people to
+form any real idea of what the Pope receives. He alone knows the correct
+amount, keeps the money, and disposes of it with absolute authority.
+Still I believe that in good years the offerings have amounted to between
+four and five millions. Originally France contributed one-half of the
+sum; but nowadays it certainly gives much less. Then come Belgium and
+Austria, England and Germany. As for Spain and Italy--oh! Italy--”
+
+Narcisse paused and smiled at Monsignor Nani, who was wagging his head
+with the air of a man delighted at learning some extremely curious things
+of which he had previously had no idea.
+
+“Oh, you may proceed, you may proceed, my dear son,” said he.
+
+“Well, then, Italy scarcely distinguishes itself. If the Pope had to
+provide for his living out of the gifts of the Italian Catholics there
+would soon be a famine at the Vatican. Far from helping him, indeed, the
+Roman nobility has cost him dear; for one of the chief causes of his
+pecuniary losses was his folly in lending money to the princes who
+speculated. It is really only from France and England that rich people,
+noblemen and so forth, have sent royal gifts to the imprisoned and
+martyred Pontiff. Among others there was an English nobleman who came to
+Rome every year with a large offering, the outcome of a vow which he had
+made in the hope that Heaven would cure his unhappy idiot son. And, of
+course, I don’t refer to the extraordinary harvest garnered during the
+sacerdotal and the episcopal jubilees--the forty millions which then fell
+at his Holiness’s feet.”
+
+“And the expenses?” asked Pierre.
+
+“Well, as I told you, they amount to about seven millions. We may reckon
+two of them for the pensions paid to former officials of the pontifical
+government who were unwilling to take service under Italy; but I must add
+that this source of expense is diminishing every year as people die off
+and their pensions become extinguished. Then, broadly speaking, we may
+put down one million for the Italian sees, another for the Secretariate
+and the Nunciatures, and another for the Vatican. In this last sum I
+include the expenses of the pontifical Court, the military establishment,
+the museums, and the repair of the palace and the Basilica. Well, we have
+reached five millions, and the two others may be set down for the various
+subsidised enterprises, the Propaganda, and particularly the schools,
+which Leo XIII, with great practical good sense, subsidises very
+handsomely, for he is well aware that the battle and the triumph be in
+that direction--among the children who will be men to-morrow, and who
+will then defend their mother the Church, provided that they have been
+inspired with horror for the abominable doctrines of the age.”
+
+A spell of silence ensued, and the three men slowly paced the majestic
+colonnade. The swarming crowd had gradually disappeared, leaving the
+piazza empty, so that only the obelisk and the twin fountains now arose
+from the burning desert of symmetrical paving; whilst on the entablature
+of the porticus across the square a noble line of motionless statues
+stood out in the bright sunlight. And Pierre, with his eyes still raised
+to the Pope’s windows, again fancied that he could see Leo XIII amidst
+all the streaming gold that had been spoken of, his whole, white, pure
+figure, his poor, waxen, transparent form steeped amidst those millions
+which he hid and counted and expended for the glory of God alone. “And
+so,” murmured the young priest, “he has no anxiety, he is not in any
+pecuniary embarrassment.”
+
+“Pecuniary embarrassment!” exclaimed Monsignor Nani, his patience so
+sorely tried by the remark that he could no longer retain his diplomatic
+reserve. “Oh! my dear son! Why, when Cardinal Mocenni, the treasurer,
+goes to his Holiness every month, his Holiness always gives him the sum
+he asks for; he would give it, and be able to give it, however large it
+might be! His Holiness has certainly had the wisdom to effect great
+economies; the Treasure of St. Peter is larger than ever. Pecuniary
+embarrassment, indeed! Why, if a misfortune should occur, and the
+Sovereign Pontiff were to make a direct appeal to all his children, the
+Catholics of the entire world, do you know that in that case a thousand
+millions would fall at his feet just like the gold and the jewels which
+you saw raining on the steps of his throne just now?” Then suddenly
+calming himself and recovering his pleasant smile, Nani added: “At least,
+that is what I sometimes hear said; for, personally, I know nothing,
+absolutely nothing; and it is fortunate that Monsieur Habert should have
+been here to give you information. Ah! Monsieur Habert, Monsieur Habert!
+Why, I fancied that you were always in the skies absorbed in your passion
+for art, and far removed from all base mundane interests! But you really
+understand these things like a banker or a notary. Nothing escapes you,
+nothing. It is wonderful.”
+
+Narcisse must have felt the sting of the prelate’s delicate sarcasm. At
+bottom, beneath this make-believe Florentine all-angelicalness, with long
+curly hair and mauve eyes which grew dim with rapture at sight of a
+Botticelli, there was a thoroughly practical, business-like young man,
+who took admirable care of his fortune and was even somewhat miserly.
+However, he contented himself with lowering his eyelids and assuming a
+languorous air. “Oh!” said he, “I’m all reverie; my soul is elsewhere.”
+
+“At all events,” resumed Nani, turning towards Pierre, “I am very glad
+that you were able to see such a beautiful spectacle. A few more such
+opportunities and you will understand things far better than you would
+from all the explanations in the world. Don’t miss the grand ceremony at
+St. Peter’s to-morrow. It will be magnificent, and will give you food for
+useful reflection; I’m sure of it. And now allow me to leave you,
+delighted at seeing you in such a fit frame of mind.”
+
+Darting a last glance at Pierre, Nani seemed to have observed with
+pleasure the weariness and uncertainty which were paling his face. And
+when the prelate had gone off, and Narcisse also had taken leave with a
+gentle hand-shake, the young priest felt the ire of protest rising within
+him. What fit frame of mind did Nani mean? Did that man hope to weary him
+and drive him to despair by throwing him into collision with obstacles,
+so that he might afterwards overcome him with perfect ease? For the
+second time Pierre became suddenly and briefly conscious of the stealthy
+efforts which were being made to invest and crush him. But, believing as
+he did in his own strength of resistance, pride filled him with disdain.
+Again he swore that he would never yield, never withdraw his book, no
+matter what might happen. And then, before crossing the piazza, he once
+more raised his eyes to the windows of the Vatican, all his impressions
+crystallising in the thought of that much-needed money which like a last
+bond still attached the Pope to earth. Its chief evil doubtless lay in
+the manner in which it was provided; and if indeed the only question were
+to devise an improved method of collection, his dream of a pope who
+should be all soul, the bond of love, the spiritual leader of the world,
+would not be seriously affected. At this thought, Pierre felt comforted
+and was unwilling to look on things otherwise than hopefully, moved as he
+was by the extraordinary scene which he had just beheld, that feeble old
+man shining forth like the symbol of human deliverance, obeyed and
+venerated by the multitudes, and alone among all men endowed with the
+moral omnipotence that might at last set the reign of charity and peace
+on earth.
+
+For the ceremony on the following day, it was fortunate that Pierre held
+a private ticket which admitted him to a reserved gallery, for the
+scramble at the entrances to the Basilica proved terrible. The mass,
+which the Pope was to celebrate in person, was fixed for ten o’clock, but
+people began to pour into St. Peter’s four hours earlier, as soon,
+indeed, as the gates had been thrown open. The three thousand members of
+the International Pilgrimage were increased tenfold by the arrival of all
+the tourists in Italy, who had hastened to Rome eager to witness one of
+those great pontifical functions which nowadays are so rare. Moreover,
+the devotees and partisans whom the Holy See numbered in Rome itself and
+in other great cities of the kingdom, helped to swell the throng, all
+alacrity at the prospect of a demonstration. Judging by the tickets
+distributed, there would be a concourse of 40,000 people. And, indeed, at
+nine o’clock, when Pierre crossed the piazza on his way to the Canons’
+Entrance in the Via Santa Marta, where the holders of pink tickets were
+admitted, he saw the portico of the façade still thronged with people who
+were but slowly gaining admittance, while several gentlemen in evening
+dress, members of some Catholic association, bestirred themselves to
+maintain order with the help of a detachment of Pontifical Guards.
+Nevertheless, violent quarrels broke out in the crowd, and blows were
+exchanged amidst the involuntary scramble. Some people were almost
+stifled, and two women were carried off half crushed to death.
+
+A disagreeable surprise met Pierre on his entry into the Basilica. The
+huge edifice was draped; coverings of old red damask with bands of gold
+swathed the columns and pilasters, seventy-five feet high; even the
+aisles were hung with the same old and faded silk; and the shrouding of
+those pompous marbles, of all the superb dazzling ornamentation of the
+church bespoke a very singular taste, a tawdry affectation of pomposity,
+extremely wretched in its effect. However, he was yet more amazed on
+seeing that even the statue of St. Peter was clad, costumed like a living
+pope in sumptuous pontifical vestments, with a tiara on its metal head.
+He had never imagined that people could garment statues either for their
+glory or for the pleasure of the eyes, and the result seemed to him
+disastrous.
+
+The Pope was to say mass at the papal altar of the Confession, the high
+altar which stands under the dome. On a platform at the entrance of the
+left-hand transept was the throne on which he would afterwards take his
+place. Then, on either side of the nave, tribunes had been erected for
+the choristers of the Sixtine Chapel, the Corps Diplomatique, the Knights
+of Malta, the Roman nobility, and other guests of various kinds. And,
+finally, in the centre, before the altar, there were three rows of
+benches covered with red rugs, the first for the cardinals and the other
+two for the bishops and the prelates of the pontifical court. All the
+rest of the congregation was to remain standing.
+
+Ah! that huge concert-audience, those thirty, forty thousand believers
+from here, there, and everywhere, inflamed with curiosity, passion, or
+faith, bestirring themselves, jostling one another, rising on tip-toe to
+see the better! The clamour of a human sea arose, the crowd was as gay
+and familiar as if it had found itself in some heavenly theatre where it
+was allowable for one to chat aloud and recreate oneself with the
+spectacle of religious pomp! At first Pierre was thunderstruck, he who
+only knew of nervous, silent kneeling in the depths of dim cathedrals,
+who was not accustomed to that religion of light, whose brilliancy
+transformed a religious celebration into a morning festivity. Around him,
+in the same tribune as himself, were gentlemen in dress-coats and ladies
+gowned in black, carrying glasses as in an opera-house. There were German
+and English women, and numerous Americans, all more or less charming,
+displaying the grace of thoughtless, chirruping birds. In the tribune of
+the Roman nobility on the left he recognised Benedetta and Donna
+Serafina, and there the simplicity of the regulation attire for ladies
+was relieved by large lace veils rivalling one another in richness and
+elegance. Then on the right was the tribune of the Knights of Malta,
+where the Grand Master stood amidst a group of commanders: while across
+the nave rose the diplomatic tribune where Pierre perceived the
+ambassadors of all the Catholic nations, resplendent in gala uniforms
+covered with gold lace. However, the young priest’s eyes were ever
+returning to the crowd, the great surging throng in which the three
+thousand pilgrims were lost amidst the multitude of other spectators. And
+yet as the Basilica was so vast that it could easily contain eighty
+thousand people, it did not seem to be more than half full. People came
+and went along the aisles and took up favourable positions without
+impediment. Some could be seen gesticulating, and calls rang out above
+the ceaseless rumble of voices. From the lofty windows of plain white
+glass fell broad sheets of sunlight, which set a gory glow upon the faded
+damask hangings, and these cast a reflection as of fire upon all the
+tumultuous, feverish, impatient faces. The multitude of candles, and the
+seven-and-eighty lamps of the Confession paled to such a degree that they
+seemed but glimmering night-lights in the blinding radiance; and
+everything proclaimed the worldly gala of the imperial Deity of Roman
+pomp.
+
+All at once there came a premature shock of delight, a false alert. Cries
+burst forth and circulated through the crowd: “Eccolo! eccolo! Here he
+comes!” And then there was pushing and jostling, eddying which made the
+human sea whirl and surge, all craning their necks, raising themselves to
+their full height, darting forward in a frenzied desire to see the Holy
+Father and the _cortège_. But only a detachment of Noble Guards marched
+by and took up position right and left of the altar. A flattering murmur
+accompanied them, their fine impassive bearing with its exaggerated
+military stiffness, provoking the admiration of the throng. An American
+woman declared that they were superb-looking fellows; and a Roman lady
+gave an English friend some particulars about the select corps to which
+they belonged. Formerly, said she, young men of the aristocracy had
+greatly sought the honour of forming part of it, for the sake of wearing
+its rich uniform and caracoling in front of the ladies. But recruiting
+was now such a difficult matter that one had to content oneself with
+good-looking young men of doubtful or ruined nobility, whose only care
+was for the meagre “pay” which just enabled them to live.
+
+When another quarter of an hour of chatting and scrutinising had elapsed,
+the papal _cortège_ at last made its appearance, and no sooner was it
+seen than applause burst forth as in a theatre--furious applause it was
+which rose and rolled along under the vaulted ceilings, suggesting the
+acclamations which ring out when some popular, idolised actor makes his
+entry on the stage. As in a theatre, too, everything had been very
+skilfully contrived so as to produce all possible effect amidst the
+magnificent scenery of the Basilica. The _cortège_ was formed in the
+wings, that is in the Cappella della Pieta, the first chapel of the right
+aisle, and in order to reach it, the Holy Father, coming from his
+apartments by the way of the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, had been
+stealthily carried behind the hangings of the aisle which served the
+purpose of a drop-scene. Awaiting him in all readiness in the Cappella
+della Pieta were the cardinals, archbishops, and bishops, the whole
+pontifical prelacy, hierarchically classified and grouped. And then, as
+at a signal from a ballet master, the _cortège_ made its entry, reaching
+the nave and ascending it in triumph from the closed Porta Santa to the
+altar of the Confession. On either hand were the rows of spectators whose
+applause at the sight of so much magnificence grew louder and louder as
+their delirious enthusiasm increased.
+
+It was the _cortège_ of the olden solemnities, the cross and sword, the
+Swiss Guard in full uniform, the valets in scarlet simars, the Knights of
+the Cape and the Sword in Renascence costumes, the Canons in rochets of
+lace, the superiors of the religious communities, the apostolic
+prothonotaries, the archbishops, and bishops, all the pontifical prelates
+in violet silk, the cardinals, each wearing the _cappa magna_ and draped
+in purple, walking solemnly two by two with long intervals between each
+pair. Finally, around his Holiness were grouped the officers of the
+military household, the chamber prelates, Monsignor the Majordomo,
+Monsignor the Grand Chamberlain, and all the other high dignitaries of
+the Vatican, with the Roman prince assistant of the throne, the
+traditional, symbolical defender of the Church. And on the _sedia
+gestatoria_, screened by the _flabelli_ with their lofty triumphal fans
+of feathers and carried on high by the bearers in red tunics broidered
+with silk, sat the Pope, clad in the sacred vestments which he had
+assumed in the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, the amict, the alb, the
+stole, and the white chasuble and white mitre enriched with gold, two
+gifts of extraordinary sumptuousness that had come from France. And, as
+his Holiness drew near, all hands were raised and clapped yet more loudly
+amidst the waves of living sunlight which streamed from the lofty
+windows.
+
+Then a new and different impression of Leo XIII came to Pierre. The Pope,
+as he now beheld him, was no longer the familiar, tired, inquisitive old
+man, leaning on the arm of a talkative prelate as he strolled through the
+loveliest gardens in the world. He no longer recalled the Holy Father, in
+red cape and papal cap, giving a paternal welcome to a pilgrimage which
+brought him a fortune. He was here the Sovereign Pontiff, the
+all-powerful Master whom Christendom adored. His slim waxen form seemed
+to have stiffened within his white vestments, heavy with golden broidery,
+as in a reliquary of precious metal; and he retained a rigid, haughty,
+hieratic attitude, like that of some idol, gilded, withered for centuries
+past by the smoke of sacrifices. Amidst the mournful stiffness of his
+face only his eyes lived--eyes like black sparkling diamonds gazing afar,
+beyond earth, into the infinite. He gave not a glance to the crowd, he
+lowered his eyes neither to right nor to left, but remained soaring in
+the heavens, ignoring all that took place at his feet.
+
+And as that seemingly embalmed idol, deaf and blind, in spite of the
+brilliancy of his eyes, was carried through the frantic multitude which
+it appeared neither to hear nor to see, it assumed fearsome majesty,
+disquieting grandeur, all the rigidity of dogma, all the immobility of
+tradition exhumed with its _fascioe_ which alone kept it erect. Still
+Pierre fancied he could detect that the Pope was ill and weary, suffering
+from the attack of fever which Nani had spoken of when glorifying the
+courage of that old man of eighty-four, whom strength of soul alone now
+kept alive.
+
+The service began. Alighting from the _sedia gestatoria_ before the altar
+of the Confession, his Holiness slowly celebrated a low mass, assisted by
+four prelates and the pro-prefect of the ceremonies. When the time came
+for washing his fingers, Monsignor the Majordomo and Monsignor the Grand
+Chamberlain, accompanied by two cardinals, poured the water on his august
+hands; and shortly before the elevation of the host all the prelates of
+the pontifical court, each holding a lighted taper, came and knelt around
+the altar. There was a solemn moment, the forty thousand believers there
+assembled shuddered as if they could feel the terrible yet delicious
+blast of the invisible sweeping over them when during the elevation the
+silver clarions sounded the famous chorus of angels which invariably
+makes some women swoon. Almost immediately an aerial chant descended from
+the cupola, from a lofty gallery where one hundred and twenty choristers
+were concealed, and the enraptured multitude marvelled as though the
+angels had indeed responded to the clarion call. The voices descended,
+taking their flight under the vaulted ceilings with the airy sweetness of
+celestial harps; then in suave harmony they died away, reascended to the
+heavens as with a faint flapping of wings. And, after the mass, his
+Holiness, still standing at the altar, in person started the _Te Deum_,
+which the singers of the Sixtine Chapel and the other choristers took up,
+each party chanting a verse alternately. But soon the whole congregation
+joined them, forty thousand voices were raised, and a hymn of joy and
+glory spread through the vast nave with incomparable splendour of effect.
+And then the scene became one of extraordinary magnificence: there was
+Bernini’s triumphal, flowery, gilded _baldacchino_, surrounded by the
+whole pontifical court with the lighted tapers showing like starry
+constellations, there was the Sovereign Pontiff in the centre, radiant
+like a planet in his gold-broidered chasuble, there were the benches
+crowded with cardinals in purple and archbishops and bishops in violet
+silk, there were the tribunes glittering with official finery, the gold
+lace of the diplomatists, the variegated uniforms of foreign officers,
+and then there was the throng flowing and eddying on all sides, rolling
+billows after billows of heads from the most distant depths of the
+Basilica. And the hugeness of the temple increased one’s amazement; and
+even the glorious hymn which the multitude repeated became colossal,
+ascended like a tempest blast amidst the great marble tombs, the
+superhuman statues and gigantic pillars, till it reached the vast vaulted
+heavens of stone, and penetrated into the firmament of the cupola where
+the Infinite seemed to open resplendent with the gold-work of the
+mosaics.
+
+A long murmur of voices followed the _Te Deum_, whilst Leo XIII, after
+donning the tiara in lieu of the mitre, and exchanging the chasuble for
+the pontifical cope, went to occupy his throne on the platform at the
+entry of the left transept. He thence dominated the whole assembly,
+through which a quiver sped when after the prayers of the ritual, he once
+more rose erect. Beneath the symbolic, triple crown, in the golden
+sheathing of his cope, he seemed to have grown taller. Amidst sudden and
+profound silence, which only feverish heart-beats interrupted, he raised
+his arm with a very noble gesture and pronounced the papal benediction in
+a slow, loud, full voice, which seemed, as it were, the very voice of the
+Deity, so greatly did its power astonish one, coming from such waxen
+lips, from such a bloodless, lifeless frame. And the effect was
+prodigious: as soon as the _cortège_ reformed to return whence it had
+come, applause again burst forth, a frenzy of enthusiasm which the
+clapping of hands could no longer content. Acclamations resounded and
+gradually gained upon the whole multitude. They began among a group of
+ardent partisans stationed near the statue of St. Peter: _“Evviva il
+Papa-Rè! evviva il Papa-Rè_! Long live the Pope-King!” as the _cortège_
+went by the shout rushed along like leaping fire, inflaming heart after
+heart, and at last springing from every mouth in a thunderous protest
+against the theft of the states of the Church. All the faith, all the
+love of those believers, overexcited by the regal spectacle they had just
+beheld, returned once more to the dream, to the rageful desire that the
+Pope should be both King and Pontiff, master of men’s bodies as he was of
+their souls--in one word, the absolute sovereign of the earth. Therein
+lay the only truth, the only happiness, the only salvation! Let all be
+given to him, both mankind and the world! “_Evviva il Papa-Rè! evviva il
+Papa-Rè_! Long live the Pope-King!”
+
+Ah! that cry, that cry of war which had caused so many errors and so much
+bloodshed, that cry of self-abandonment and blindness which, realised,
+would have brought back the old ages of suffering, it shocked Pierre, and
+impelled him in all haste to quit the tribune where he was in order that
+he might escape the contagion of idolatry. And while the _cortège_ still
+went its way and the deafening clamour of the crowd continued, he for a
+moment followed the left aisle amidst the general scramble. This,
+however, made him despair of reaching the street, and anxious to escape
+the crush of the general departure, it occurred to him to profit by a
+door which he saw open and which led him into a vestibule, whence
+ascended the steps conducting to the dome. A sacristan standing in the
+doorway, both bewildered and delighted at the demonstration, looked at
+him for a moment, hesitating whether he should stop him or not. However,
+the sight of the young priest’s cassock combined with his own emotion
+rendered the man tolerant. Pierre was allowed to pass, and at once began
+to climb the staircase as rapidly as he could, in order that he might
+flee farther and farther away, ascend higher and yet higher into peace
+and silence.
+
+And the silence suddenly became profound, the walls stifled the cry of
+the multitude. The staircase was easy and light, with broad paved steps
+turning within a sort of tower. When Pierre came out upon the roofs of
+nave and aisles, he was delighted to find himself in the bright sunlight
+and the pure keen air which blew there as in the open country. And it was
+with astonishment that he gazed upon the huge expanse of lead, zinc, and
+stone-work, a perfect aerial city living a life of its own under the blue
+sky. He saw cupolas, spires, terraces, even houses and gardens, houses
+bright with flowers, the residences of the workmen who live atop of the
+Basilica, which is ever and ever requiring repair. A little population
+here bestirs itself, labours, loves, eats, and sleeps. However, Pierre
+desired to approach the balustrade so as to get a near view of the
+colossal statues of the Saviour and the Apostles which surmount the
+façade on the side of the piazza. These giants, some nineteen feet in
+height, are constantly being mended; their arms, legs, and heads, into
+which the atmosphere is ever eating, nowadays only hold together by the
+help of cement, bars, and hooks. And having examined them, Pierre was
+leaning forward to glance at the Vatican’s jumble of ruddy roofs, when it
+seemed to him that the shout from which he had fled was rising from the
+piazza, and thereupon, in all haste, he resumed his ascent within the
+pillar conducting to the dome. There was first a staircase, and then came
+some narrow, oblique passages, inclines intersected by a few steps,
+between the inner and outer walls of the cupola. Yielding to curiosity,
+Pierre pushed a door open, and suddenly found himself inside the Basilica
+again, at nearly 200 feet from the ground. A narrow gallery there ran
+round the dome just above the frieze, on which, in letters five feet
+high, appeared the famous inscription: _Tu es Petrus et super hanc petram
+œdificabo ecclesiam meam et tibi dabo claves regni cœlorum._* And then,
+as Pierre leant over to gaze into the fearful cavity beneath him and the
+wide openings of nave, and aisles, and transepts, the cry, the delirious
+cry of the multitude, yet clamorously swarming below, struck him full in
+the face. He fled once more; but, higher up, yet a second time he pushed
+another door open and found another gallery, one perched above the
+windows, just where the splendid mosaics begin, and whence the crowd
+seemed to him lost in the depths of a dizzy abyss, altar and
+_baldacchino_ alike looking no larger than toys. And yet the cry of
+idolatry and warfare arose again, and smote him like the buffet of a
+tempest which gathers increase of strength the farther it rushes. So to
+escape it he had to climb higher still, even to the outer gallery which
+encircles the lantern, hovering in the very heavens.
+
+ * Thou art Peter (Petrus) and on that rock (Petram) will I build
+ my church, and to thee will I give the keys of the Kingdom of
+ Heaven.
+
+How delightful was the relief which that bath of air and sunlight at
+first brought him! Above him now there only remained the ball of gilt
+copper into which emperors and queens have ascended, as is testified by
+the pompous inscriptions in the passages; a hollow ball it is, where the
+voice crashes like thunder, where all the sounds of space reverberate. As
+he emerged on the side of the apse, his eyes at first plunged into the
+papal gardens, whose clumps of trees seemed mere bushes almost level with
+the soil; and he could retrace his recent stroll among them, the broad
+_parterre_ looking like a faded Smyrna rug, the large wood showing the
+deep glaucous greenery of a stagnant pool. Then there were the kitchen
+garden and the vineyard easily identified and tended with care. The
+fountains, the observatory, the casino, where the Pope spent the hot days
+of summer, showed merely like little white spots in those undulating
+grounds, walled in like any other estate, but with the fearsome rampart
+of the fourth Leo, which yet retained its fortress-like aspect. However,
+Pierre took his way round the narrow gallery and abruptly found himself
+in front of Rome, a sudden and immense expanse, with the distant sea on
+the west, the uninterrupted mountain chains on the east and the south,
+the Roman Campagna stretching to the horizon like a bare and greenish
+desert, while the city, the Eternal City, was spread out at his feet.
+Never before had space impressed him so majestically. Rome was there, as
+a bird might see it, within the glance, as distinct as some geographical
+plan executed in relief. To think of it, such a past, such a history, so
+much grandeur, and Rome so dwarfed and contracted by distance! Houses as
+lilliputian and as pretty as toys; and the whole a mere mouldy speck upon
+the earth’s face! What impassioned Pierre was that he could at a glance
+understand the divisions of Rome: the antique city yonder with the
+Capitol, the Forum, and the Palatine; the papal city in that Borgo which
+he overlooked, with St. Peter’s and the Vatican gazing across the city of
+the middle ages--which was huddled together in the right angle described
+by the yellow Tiber--towards the modern city, the Quirinal of the Italian
+monarchy. And particularly did he remark the chalky girdle with which the
+new districts encompassed the ancient, central, sun-tanned quarters, thus
+symbolising an effort at rejuvenescence, the old heart but slowly mended,
+whereas the outlying limbs were renewed as if by miracle.
+
+In that ardent noontide glow, however, Pierre no longer beheld the pure
+ethereal Rome which had met his eyes on the morning of his arrival in the
+delightfully soft radiance of the rising sun. That smiling, unobtrusive
+city, half veiled by golden mist, immersed as it were in some dream of
+childhood, now appeared to him flooded with a crude light, motionless,
+hard of outline and silent like death. The distance was as if devoured by
+too keen a flame, steeped in a luminous dust in which it crumbled. And
+against that blurred background the whole city showed with violent
+distinctness in great patches of light and shade, their tracery harshly
+conspicuous. One might have fancied oneself above some very ancient,
+abandoned stone quarry, which a few clumps of trees spotted with dark
+green. Of the ancient city one could see the sunburnt tower of the
+Capitol, the black cypresses of the Palatine, and the ruins of the palace
+of Septimius Severus, suggesting the white osseous carcase of some fossil
+monster, left there by a flood. In front, was enthroned the modern city
+with the long, renovated buildings of the Quirinal, whose yellow walls
+stood forth with wondrous crudity amidst the vigorous crests of the
+garden trees. And to right and left on the Viminal, beyond the palace,
+the new districts appeared like a city of chalk and plaster mottled by
+innumerable windows as with a thousand touches of black ink. Then here
+and there were the Pincio showing like a stagnant mere, the Villa Medici
+uprearing its campanili, the castle of Sant’ Angelo brown like rust, the
+spire of Santa Maria Maggiore aglow like a burning taper, the three
+churches of the Aventine drowsy amidst verdure, the Palazzo Farnese with
+its summer-baked tiles showing like old gold, the domes of the Gesù, of
+Sant’ Andrea della Valle, of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, and yet other
+domes and other domes, all in fusion, incandescent in the brazier of the
+heavens. And Pierre again felt a heart-pang in presence of that harsh,
+stern Rome, so different from the Rome of his dream, the Rome of
+rejuvenescence and hope, which he had fancied he had found on his first
+morning, but which had now faded away to give place to the immutable city
+of pride and domination, stubborn under the sun even unto death.
+
+And there on high, all alone with his thoughts, Pierre suddenly
+understood. It was as if a dart of flaming light fell on him in that
+free, unbounded expanse where he hovered. Had it come from the ceremony
+which he had just beheld, from the frantic cry of servitude still ringing
+in his ears? Had it come from the spectacle of that city beneath him,
+that city which suggested an embalmed queen still reigning amidst the
+dust of her tomb? He knew not; but doubtless both had acted as factors,
+and at all events the light which fell upon his mind was complete: he
+felt that Catholicism could not exist without the temporal power, that it
+must fatally disappear whenever it should no longer be king over this
+earth. A first reason of this lay in heredity, in the forces of history,
+the long line of the heirs of the Caesars, the popes, the great pontiffs,
+in whose veins the blood of Augustus, demanding the empire of the world,
+had never ceased to flow. Though they might reside in the Vatican they
+had come from the imperial abodes on the Palatine, from the palace of
+Septimius Severus, and throughout the centuries their policy had ever
+pursued the dream of Roman mastery, of all the nations vanquished,
+submissive, and obedient to Rome. If its sovereignty were not universal,
+extending alike over bodies and over souls, Catholicism would lose its
+_raison d’être_; for the Church cannot recognise any empire or kingdom
+otherwise than politically--the emperors and the kings being purely and
+simply so many temporary delegates placed in charge of the nations
+pending the time when they shall be called upon to relinquish their
+trust. All the nations, all humanity, and the whole world belong to the
+Church to whom they have been given by God. And if real and effective
+possession is not hers to-day, this is only because she yields to force,
+compelled to face accomplished facts, but with the formal reserve that
+she is in presence of guilty usurpation, that her possessions are
+unjustly withheld from her, and that she awaits the realisation of the
+promises of the Christ, who, when the time shall be accomplished, will
+for ever restore to her both the earth and mankind. Such is the real
+future city which time is to bring: Catholic Rome, sovereign of the world
+once more. And Rome the city forms a substantial part of the dream, Rome
+whose eternity has been predicted, Rome whose soil has imparted to
+Catholicism the inextinguishable thirst of absolute power. And thus the
+destiny of the papacy is linked to that of Rome, to such a point indeed
+that a pope elsewhere than at Rome would no longer be a Catholic pope.
+The thought of all this frightened Pierre; a great shudder passed through
+him as he leant on the light iron balustrade, gazing down into the abyss
+where the stern mournful city was even now crumbling away under the
+fierce sun.
+
+There was, however, evidence of the facts which had dawned on him. If
+Pius IX and Leo XIII had resolved to imprison themselves in the Vatican,
+it was because necessity bound them to Rome. A pope is not free to leave
+the city, to be the head of the Church elsewhere; and in the same way a
+pope, however well he may understand the modern world, has not the right
+to relinquish the temporal power. This is an inalienable inheritance
+which he must defend, and it is moreover a question of life, peremptory,
+above discussion. And thus Leo XIII has retained the title of Master of
+the temporal dominions of the Church, and this he has done the more
+readily since as a cardinal--like all the members of the Sacred College
+when elected--he swore that he would maintain those dominions intact.
+Italy may hold Rome as her capital for another century or more, but the
+coming popes will never cease to protest and claim their kingdom. If ever
+an understanding should be arrived at, it must be based on the gift of a
+strip of territory. Formerly, when rumours of reconciliation were
+current, was it not said that the papacy exacted, as a formal condition,
+the possession of at least the Leonine City with the neutralisation of a
+road leading to the sea? Nothing is not enough, one cannot start from
+nothing to attain to everything, whereas that Civitas Leonina, that bit
+of a city, would already be a little royal ground, and it would then only
+be necessary to conquer the rest, first Rome, next Italy, then the
+neighbouring states, and at last the whole world. Never has the Church
+despaired, even when, beaten and despoiled, she seemed to be at the last
+gasp. Never will she abdicate, never will she renounce the promises of
+the Christ, for she believes in a boundless future and declares herself
+to be both indestructible and eternal. Grant her but a pebble on which to
+rest her head, and she will hope to possess, first the field in which
+that pebble lies, and then the empire in which the field is situated. If
+one pope cannot achieve the recovery of the inheritance, another pope,
+ten, twenty other popes will continue the work. The centuries do not
+count. And this explains why an old man of eighty-four has undertaken
+colossal enterprises whose achievement requires several lives, certain as
+he is that his successors will take his place, and that the work will
+ever and ever be carried forward and completed.
+
+As these thoughts coursed through his mind, Pierre, overlooking that
+ancient city of glory and domination, so stubbornly clinging to its
+purple, realised that he was an imbecile with his dream of a purely
+spiritual pope. The notion seemed to him so different from the reality,
+so out of place, that he experienced a sort of shame-fraught despair. The
+new pope, consonant to the teachings of the Gospel, such as a purely
+spiritual pope reigning over souls alone, would be, was virtually beyond
+the ken of a Roman prelate. At thought of that papal court congealed in
+ritual, pride, and authority, Pierre suddenly understood what horror and
+repugnance such a pastor would inspire. How great must be the
+astonishment and contempt of the papal prelates for that singular notion
+of the northern mind, a pope without dominions or subjects, military
+household or royal honours, a pope who would be, as it were, a spirit,
+exercising purely moral authority, dwelling in the depths of God’s
+temple, and governing the world solely with gestures of benediction and
+deeds of kindliness and love! All that was but a misty Gothic invention
+for this Latin clergy, these priests of light and magnificence, who were
+certainly pious and even superstitious, but who left the Deity well
+sheltered within the tabernacle in order to govern in His name, according
+to what they considered the interests of Heaven. Thence it arose that
+they employed craft and artifice like mere politicians, and lived by dint
+of expedients amidst the great battle of human appetites, marching with
+the prudent, stealthy steps of diplomatists towards the final terrestrial
+victory of the Christ, who, in the person of the Pope, was one day to
+reign over all the nations. And how stupefied must a French prelate have
+been--a prelate like Monseigneur Bergerot, that apostle of renunciation
+and charity--when he lighted amidst that world of the Vatican! How
+difficult must it have been for him to understand and focus things, and
+afterwards how great his grief at finding himself unable to come to any
+agreement with those men without country, without fatherland, those
+“internationals,” who were ever poring over the maps of both hemispheres,
+ever absorbed in schemes which were to bring them empire. Days and days
+were necessary, one needed to live in Rome, and he, Pierre himself, had
+only seen things clearly after a month’s sojourn, whilst labouring under
+the violent shock of the royal pomp of St. Peter’s, and standing face to
+face with the ancient city as it slumbered heavily in the sunlight and
+dreamt its dream of eternity.
+
+But on lowering his eyes to the piazza in front of the Basilica he
+perceived the multitude, the 40,000 believers streaming over the pavement
+like insects. And then he thought that he could hear the cry again
+rising: “_Evviva il Papa-Rè! evviva il Papa-Rè_! Long live the
+Pope-King!” Whilst ascending those endless staircases a moment previously
+it had seemed to him as if the colossus of stone were quivering with the
+frantic shout raised beneath its ceilings. And now that he had climbed
+even into cloudland that shout apparently was traversing space. If the
+colossal pile beneath him still vibrated with it, was it not as with a
+last rise of sap within its ancient walls, a reinvigoration of that
+Catholic blood which formerly had demanded that the pile should be a
+stupendous one, the veritable king of temples, and which now was striving
+to reanimate it with the powerful breath of life, and this at the very
+hour when death was beginning to fall upon its over-vast, deserted nave
+and aisles? The crowd was still streaming forth, filling the piazza, and
+Pierre’s heart was wrung by frightful anguish, for that throng with its
+shout had just swept his last hope away. On the previous afternoon, after
+the reception of the pilgrimage, he had yet been able to deceive himself
+by overlooking the necessity for money which bound the Pope to earth in
+order that he might see nought but the feeble old man, all spirituality,
+resplendent like the symbol of moral authority. But his faith in such a
+pastor of the Gospel, free from all considerations of earthly wealth, and
+king of none other than a heavenly kingdom, had fled. Not only did the
+Peter’s Pence impose hard servitude upon Leo XIII but he was also the
+prisoner of papal tradition--the eternal King of Rome, riveted to the
+soil of Rome, unable either to quit the city or to renounce the temporal
+power. The fatal end would be collapse on the spot, the dome of St.
+Peter’s falling even as the temple of Olympian Jupiter had fallen,
+Catholicism strewing the grass with its ruins whilst elsewhere schism
+burst forth: a new faith for the new nations. Of this Pierre had a
+grandiose and tragical vision: he beheld his dream destroyed, his book
+swept away amidst that cry which spread around him as if flying to the
+four corners of the Catholic world “_Evviva il Papa-Rè! evviva il
+Papa-Rè!_ Long live the Pope-King!” But even in that hour of the papacy’s
+passing triumph he already felt that the giant of gold and marble on
+which he stood was oscillating, even as totter all old and rotten
+societies.
+
+At last he took his way down again, and a fresh shock of emotion came to
+him as he reached the roofs, that sunlit expanse of lead and zinc, large
+enough for the site of a town. Monsignor Nani was there, in company with
+the two French ladies, the mother and the daughter, both looking very
+happy and highly amused. No doubt the prelate had good-naturedly offered
+to conduct them to the dome. However, as soon as he recognised the young
+priest he went towards him: “Well, my dear son,” he inquired, “are you
+pleased? Have you been impressed, edified?” As he spoke, his searching
+eyes dived into Pierre’s soul, as if to ascertain the present result of
+his experiments. Then, satisfied with what he detected, he began to laugh
+softly: “Yes, yes, I see--come, you are a sensible fellow after all. I
+begin to think that the unfortunate affair which brought you here will
+have a happy ending.”
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+WHEN Pierre remained in the morning at the Boccanera mansion he often
+spent some hours in the little neglected garden which had formerly ended
+with a sort of colonnaded _loggia_, whence two flights of steps descended
+to the Tiber. This garden was a delightful, solitary nook, perfumed by
+the ripe fruit of the centenarian orange-trees, whose symmetrical lines
+were the only indication of the former pathways, now hidden beneath rank
+weeds. And Pierre also found there the acrid scent of the large
+box-shrubs growing in the old central fountain basin, which had been
+filled up with loose earth and rubbish.
+
+On those luminous October mornings, full of such tender and penetrating
+charm, the spot was one where all the joy of living might well be
+savoured, but Pierre brought thither his northern dreaminess, his concern
+for suffering, his steadfast feeling of compassion, which rendered yet
+sweeter the caress of the sunlight pervading that atmosphere of love. He
+seated himself against the right-hand wall on a fragment of a fallen
+column over which a huge laurel cast a deep-black shadow, fresh and
+aromatic. In the antique greenish sarcophagus beside him, on which fauns
+offered violence to nymphs, the streamlet of water trickling from the
+mask incrusted in the wall, set the unchanging music of its crystal note,
+whilst he read the newspapers and the letters which he received, all the
+communications of good Abbé Rose, who kept him informed of his mission
+among the wretched ones of gloomy Paris, now already steeped in fog and
+mud.
+
+One morning however, Pierre unexpectedly found Benedetta seated on the
+fallen column which he usually made his chair. She raised a light cry of
+surprise on seeing him, and for a moment remained embarrassed, for she
+had with her his book “New Rome,” which she had read once already, but
+had then imperfectly understood. And overcoming her embarrassment she now
+hastened to detain him, making him sit down beside her, and frankly
+owning that she had come to the garden in order to be alone and apply
+herself to an attentive study of the book, in the same way as some
+ignorant school-girl. Then they began to chat like a pair of friends, and
+the young priest spent a delightful hour. Although Benedetta did not
+speak of herself, he realised that it was her grief alone which brought
+her nearer to him, as if indeed her own sufferings enlarged her heart and
+made her think of all who suffered in the world. Patrician as she was,
+regarding social hierarchy as a divine law, she had never previously
+thought of such things, and some pages of Pierre’s book greatly
+astonished her. What! one ought to take interest in the lowly, realise
+that they had the same souls and the same griefs as oneself, and seek in
+brotherly or sisterly fashion to make them happy? She certainly sought to
+acquire such an interest, but with no great success, for she secretly
+feared that it might lead her into sin, as it could not be right to alter
+aught of the social system which had been established by God and
+consecrated by the Church. Charitable she undoubtedly was, wont to bestow
+small sums in alms, but she did not give her heart, she felt no true
+sympathy for the humble, belonging as she did to such a different race,
+which looked to a throne in heaven high above the seats of all the
+plebeian elect.
+
+She and Pierre, however, found themselves on other mornings side by side
+in the shade of the laurels near the trickling, singing water; and he,
+lacking occupation, weary of waiting for a solution which seemed to
+recede day by day, fervently strove to animate this young and beautiful
+woman with some of his own fraternal feelings. He was impassioned by the
+idea that he was catechising Italy herself, the queen of beauty, who was
+still slumbering in ignorance, but who would recover all her past glory
+if she were to awake to the new times with soul enlarged, swelling with
+pity for men and things. Reading good Abbé Rose’s letters to Benedetta,
+he made her shudder at the frightful wail of wretchedness which ascends
+from all great cities. With such deep tenderness in her eyes, with the
+happiness of love reciprocated emanating from her whole being, why should
+she not recognise, even as he did, that the law of love was the sole
+means of saving suffering humanity, which, through hatred, incurred the
+danger of death? And to please him she did try to believe in democracy,
+in the fraternal remodelling of society, but among other nations
+only--not at Rome, for an involuntary, gentle laugh came to her lips
+whenever his words evoked the idea of the poor still remaining in the
+Trastevere district fraternising with those who yet dwelt in the old
+princely palaces. No, no, things had been as they were so long; they
+could not, must not, be altered! And so, after all, Pierre’s pupil made
+little progress: she was, in reality, simply touched by the wealth of
+ardent love which the young priest had chastely transferred from one
+alone to the whole of human kind. And between him and her, as those
+sunlit October mornings went by, a tie of exquisite sweetness was formed;
+they came to love one another with deep, pure, fraternal affection,
+amidst the great glowing passion which consumed them both.
+
+Then, one day, Benedetta, her elbow resting on the sarcophagus, spoke of
+Dario, whose name she had hitherto refrained from mentioning. Ah! poor
+_amico_, how circumspect and repentant he had shown himself since that
+fit of brutal insanity! At first, to conceal his embarrassment, he had
+gone to spend three days at Naples, and it was said that La Tonietta, the
+sentimental _demi-mondaine_, had hastened to join him there, wildly in
+love with him. Since his return to the mansion he had avoided all private
+meetings with his cousin, and scarcely saw her except at the Monday
+receptions, when he wore a submissive air, and with his eyes silently
+entreated forgiveness.
+
+“Yesterday, however,” continued Benedetta, “I met him on the staircase
+and gave him my hand. He understood that I was no longer angry with him
+and was very happy. What else could I have done? One must not be severe
+for ever. Besides, I do not want things to go too far between him and
+that woman. I want him to remember that I still love him, and am still
+waiting for him. Oh! he is mine, mine alone. But alas! I cannot say the
+word: our affairs are in such sorry plight.”
+
+She paused, and two big tears welled into her eyes. The divorce
+proceedings to which she alluded had now come to a standstill, fresh
+obstacles ever arising to stay their course.
+
+Pierre was much moved by her tears, for she seldom wept. She herself
+sometimes confessed, with her calm smile, that she did not know how to
+weep. But now her heart was melting, and for a moment she remained
+overcome, leaning on the mossy, crumbling sarcophagus, whilst the clear
+water falling from the gaping mouth of the tragic mask still sounded its
+flutelike note. And a sudden thought of death came to the priest as he
+saw her, so young and so radiant with beauty, half fainting beside that
+marble resting-place where fauns were rushing upon nymphs in a frantic
+bacchanal which proclaimed the omnipotence of love--that omnipotence
+which the ancients were fond of symbolising on their tombs as a token of
+life’s eternity. And meantime a faint, warm breeze passed through the
+sunlit, silent garden, wafting hither and thither the penetrating scent
+of box and orange.
+
+“One has so much strength when one loves,” Pierre at last murmured.
+
+“Yes, yes, you are right,” she replied, already smiling again. “I am
+childish. But it is the fault of your book. It is only when I suffer that
+I properly understand it. But all the same I am making progress, am I
+not? Since you desire it, let all the poor, all those who suffer, as I
+do, be my brothers and sisters.”
+
+Then for a while they resumed their chat.
+
+On these occasions Benedetta was usually the first to return to the
+house, and Pierre would linger alone under the laurels, vaguely dreaming
+of sweet, sad things. Often did he think how hard life proved for poor
+creatures whose only thirst was for happiness!
+
+One Monday evening, at a quarter-past ten, only the young folks remained
+in Donna Serafina’s reception-room. Monsignor Nani had merely put in an
+appearance that night, and Cardinal Sarno had just gone off.
+
+Even Donna Serafina, in her usual seat by the fireplace, seemed to have
+withdrawn from the others, absorbed as she was in contemplation of the
+chair which the absent Morano still stubbornly left unoccupied. Chatting
+and laughing in front of the sofa on which sat Benedetta and Celia were
+Dario, Pierre, and Narcisse Habert, the last of whom had begun to twit
+the young Prince, having met him, so he asserted, a few days previously,
+in the company of a very pretty girl.
+
+“Oh! don’t deny it, my dear fellow,” continued Narcisse, “for she was
+really superb. She was walking beside you, and you turned into a lane
+together--the Borgo Angelico, I think.”
+
+Dario listened smiling, quite at his ease and incapable of denying his
+passionate predilection for beauty. “No doubt, no doubt; it was I, I
+don’t deny it,” he responded. “Only the inferences you draw are not
+correct.” And turning towards Benedetta, who, without a thought of
+jealous anxiety, wore as gay a look as himself, as though delighted that
+he should have enjoyed that passing pleasure of the eyes, he went on: “It
+was the girl, you know, whom I found in tears six weeks ago. Yes, that
+bead-worker who was sobbing because the workshop was shut up, and who
+rushed along, all blushing, to conduct me to her parents when I offered
+her a bit of silver. Pierina her name is, as you, perhaps, remember.”
+
+“Oh! yes, Pierina.”
+
+“Well, since then I’ve met her in the street on four or five occasions.
+And, to tell the truth, she is so very beautiful that I’ve stopped and
+spoken to her. The other day, for instance, I walked with her as far as a
+manufacturer’s. But she hasn’t yet found any work, and she began to cry,
+and so, to console her a little, I kissed her. She was quite taken aback
+at it, but she seemed very well pleased.”
+
+At this all the others began to laugh. But suddenly Celia desisted and
+said very gravely, “You know, Dario, she loves you; you must not be hard
+on her.”
+
+Dario, no doubt, was of Celia’s opinion, for he again looked at
+Benedetta, but with a gay toss of the head, as if to say that, although
+the girl might love him, he did not love her. A bead-worker indeed, a
+girl of the lowest classes, pooh! She might be a Venus, but she could be
+nothing to him. And he himself made merry over his romantic adventure,
+which Narcisse sought to arrange in a kind of antique sonnet: A beautiful
+bead-worker falling madly in love with a young prince, as fair as
+sunlight, who, touched by her misfortune, hands her a silver crown; then
+the beautiful bead-worker, quite overcome at finding him as charitable as
+handsome, dreaming of him incessantly, and following him everywhere,
+chained to his steps by a link of flame; and finally the beautiful
+bead-worker, who has refused the silver crown, so entreating the handsome
+prince with her soft, submissive eyes, that he at last deigns to grant
+her the alms of his heart. This pastime greatly amused Benedetta; but
+Celia, with her angelic face and the air of a little girl who ought to
+have been ignorant of everything, remained very grave and repeated sadly,
+“Dario, Dario, she loves you; you must not make her suffer.”
+
+Then the Contessina, in her turn, was moved to pity. “And those poor
+folks are not happy!” said she.
+
+“Oh!” exclaimed the Prince, “it’s misery beyond belief. On the day she
+took me to the Quartiere dei Prati* I was quite overcome; it was awful,
+astonishingly awful!”
+
+ * The district of the castle meadows--see _ante_ note.--Trans.
+
+“But I remember that we promised to go to see the poor people,” resumed
+Benedetta, “and we have done wrong in delaying our visit so long. For
+your studies, Monsieur l’Abbé Froment, you greatly desired to accompany
+us and see the poor of Rome--was that not so?”
+
+As she spoke she raised her eyes to Pierre, who for a moment had been
+silent. He was much moved by her charitable thought, for he realised, by
+the faint quiver of her voice, that she desired to appear a docile pupil,
+progressing in affection for the lowly and the wretched. Moreover, his
+passion for his apostolate had at once returned to him. “Oh!” said he, “I
+shall not quit Rome without having seen those who suffer, those who lack
+work and bread. Therein lies the malady which affects every nation;
+salvation can only be attained by the healing of misery. When the roots
+of the tree cannot find sustenance the tree dies.”
+
+“Well,” resumed the Contessina, “we will fix an appointment at once; you
+shall come with us to the Quartiere dei Prati--Dario will take us there.”
+
+At this the Prince, who had listened to the priest with an air of
+stupefaction, unable to understand the simile of the tree and its roots,
+began to protest distressfully, “No, no, cousin, take Monsieur l’Abbé for
+a stroll there if it amuses you. But I’ve been, and don’t want to go
+back. Why, when I got home the last time I was so upset that I almost
+took to my bed. No, no; such abominations are too awful--it isn’t
+possible.”
+
+At this moment a voice, bitter with displeasure, arose from the chimney
+corner. Donna Serafina was emerging from her long silence. “Dario is
+quite right! Send your alms, my dear, and I will gladly add mine. There
+are other places where you might take Monsieur l’Abbé, and which it would
+be far more useful for him to see. With that idea of yours you would send
+him away with a nice recollection of our city.”
+
+Roman pride rang out amidst the old lady’s bad temper. Why, indeed, show
+one’s sores to foreigners, whose visit is possibly prompted by hostile
+curiosity? One always ought to look beautiful; Rome should not be shown
+otherwise than in the garb of glory.
+
+Narcisse, however, had taken possession of Pierre. “It’s true, my dear
+Abbé,” said he; “I forgot to recommend that stroll to you. You really
+must visit the new district built over the castle meadows. It’s typical,
+and sums up all the others. And you won’t lose your time there, I’ll
+warrant you, for nowhere can you learn more about the Rome of the present
+day. It’s extraordinary, extraordinary!” Then, addressing Benedetta, he
+added, “Is it decided? Shall we say to-morrow morning? You’ll find the
+Abbé and me over there, for I want to explain matters to him beforehand,
+in order that he may understand them. What do you say to ten o’clock?”
+
+Before answering him the Contessina turned towards her aunt and
+respectfully opposed her views. “But Monsieur l’Abbé, aunt, has met
+enough beggars in our streets already, so he may well see everything.
+Besides, judging by his book, he won’t see worse things than he has seen
+in Paris. As he says in one passage, hunger is the same all the world
+over.” Then, with her sensible air, she gently laid siege to Dario. “You
+know, Dario,” said she, “you would please me very much by taking me
+there. We can go in the carriage and join these gentlemen. It will be a
+very pleasant outing for us. It is such a long time since we went out
+together.”
+
+It was certainly that idea of going out with Dario, of having a pretext
+for a complete reconciliation with him, that enchanted her; he himself
+realised it, and, unable to escape, he tried to treat the matter as a
+joke. “Ah! cousin,” he said, “it will be your fault; I shall have the
+nightmare for a week. An excursion like that spoils all the enjoyment of
+life for days and days.”
+
+The mere thought made him quiver with revolt. However, laughter again
+rang out around him, and, in spite of Donna Serafina’s mute disapproval,
+the appointment was finally fixed for the following morning at ten
+o’clock. Celia as she went off expressed deep regret that she could not
+form one of the party; but, with the closed candour of a budding lily,
+she really took interest in Pierina alone. As she reached the ante-room
+she whispered in her friend’s ear: “Take a good look at that beauty, my
+dear, so as to tell me whether she is so very beautiful--beautiful beyond
+compare.”
+
+When Pierre met Narcisse near the Castle of Sant’ Angelo on the morrow,
+at nine o’clock, he was surprised to find him again languid and
+enraptured, plunged anew in artistic enthusiasm. At first not a word was
+said of the excursion. Narcisse related that he had risen at sunrise in
+order that he might spend an hour before Bernini’s “Santa Teresa.” It
+seemed that when he did not see that statue for a week he suffered as
+acutely as if he were parted from some cherished mistress. And his
+adoration varied with the time of day, according to the light in which he
+beheld the figure: in the morning, when the pale glow of dawn steeped it
+in whiteness, he worshipped it with quite a mystical transport of the
+soul, whilst in the afternoon, when the glow of the declining sun’s
+oblique rays seemed to permeate the marble, his passion became as fiery
+red as the blood of martyrs. “Ah! my friend,” said he with a weary air
+whilst his dreamy eyes faded to mauve, “you have no idea how delightful
+and perturbing her awakening was this morning--how languorously she
+opened her eyes, like a pure, candid virgin, emerging from the embrace of
+the Divinity. One could die of rapture at the sight!”
+
+Then, growing calm again when he had taken a few steps, he resumed in the
+voice of a practical man who does not lose his balance in the affairs of
+life: “We’ll walk slowly towards the castle-fields district--the
+buildings yonder; and on our way I’ll tell you what I know of the things
+we shall see there. It was the maddest affair imaginable, one of those
+delirious frenzies of speculation which have a splendour of their own,
+just like the superb, monstrous masterpiece of a man of genius whose mind
+is unhinged. I was told of it all by some relatives of mine, who took
+part in the gambling, and, in point of fact, made a good deal of money by
+it.”
+
+Thereupon, with the clearness and precision of a financier, employing
+technical terms with perfect ease, he recounted the extraordinary
+adventure. That all Italy, on the morrow of the occupation of Rome,
+should have been delirious with enthusiasm at the thought of at last
+possessing the ancient and glorious city, the eternal capital to which
+the empire of the world had been promised, was but natural. It was, so to
+say, a legitimate explosion of the delight and the hopes of a young
+nation anxious to show its power. The question was to make Rome a modern
+capital worthy of a great kingdom, and before aught else there were
+sanitary requirements to be dealt with: the city needed to be cleansed of
+all the filth which disgraced it. One cannot nowadays imagine in what
+abominable putrescence the city of the popes, the _Roma sporca_ which
+artists regret, was then steeped: the vast majority of the houses lacked
+even the most primitive arrangements, the public thoroughfares were used
+for all purposes, noble ruins served as store-places for sewage, the
+princely palaces were surrounded by filth, and the streets were perfect
+manure beds which fostered frequent epidemics. Thus vast municipal works
+were absolutely necessary, the question was one of health and life
+itself. And in much the same way it was only right to think of building
+houses for the newcomers, who would assuredly flock into the city. There
+had been a precedent at Berlin, whose population, after the establishment
+of the German empire, had suddenly increased by some hundreds of
+thousands. In the same way the population of Rome would certainly be
+doubled, tripled, quadrupled, for as the new centre of national life the
+city would necessarily attract all the _vis viva_ of the provinces. And
+at this thought pride stepped in: the fallen government of the Vatican
+must be shown what Italy was capable of achieving, what splendour she
+would bestow on the new and third Rome, which, by the magnificence of its
+thoroughfares and the multitude of its people, would far excel either the
+imperial or the papal city.
+
+True, during the early years some prudence was observed; wisely enough,
+houses were only built in proportion as they were required. The
+population had doubled at one bound, rising from two to four hundred
+thousand souls, thanks to the arrival of the little world of employees
+and officials of the public services--all those who live on the State or
+hope to live on it, without mentioning the idlers and enjoyers of life
+whom a Court always carries in its train. However, this influx of
+newcomers was a first cause of intoxication, for every one imagined that
+the increase would continue, and, in fact, become more and more rapid.
+And so the city of the day before no longer seemed large enough; it was
+necessary to make immediate preparations for the morrow’s need by
+enlarging Rome on all sides. Folks talked, too, of the Paris of the
+second empire, which had been so extended and transformed into a city of
+light and health. But unfortunately on the banks of the Tiber there was
+neither any preconcerted general plan nor any clear-seeing man, master of
+the situation, supported by powerful financial organisations. And the
+work, begun by pride, prompted by the ambition of surpassing the Rome of
+the Caesars and the Popes, the determination to make the eternal,
+predestined city the queen and centre of the world once more, was
+completed by speculation, one of those extraordinary gambling frenzies,
+those tempests which arise, rage, destroy, and carry everything away
+without premonitory warning or possibility of arresting their course. All
+at once it was rumoured that land bought at five francs the metre had
+been sold again for a hundred francs the metre; and thereupon the fever
+arose--the fever of a nation which is passionately fond of gambling. A
+flight of speculators descending from North Italy swooped down upon Rome,
+the noblest and easiest of preys. Those needy, famished mountaineers
+found spoils for every appetite in that voluptuous South where life is so
+benign, and the very delights of the climate helped to corrupt and hasten
+moral gangrene. At first, too; it was merely necessary to stoop; money
+was to be found by the shovelful among the rubbish of the first districts
+which were opened up. People who were clever enough to scent the course
+which the new thoroughfares would take and purchase buildings threatened
+with demolition increased their capital tenfold in a couple of years. And
+after that the contagion spread, infecting all classes--the princes,
+burgesses, petty proprietors, even the shop-keepers, bakers, grocers, and
+boot-makers; the delirium rising to such a pitch that a mere baker
+subsequently failed for forty-five millions.* Nothing, indeed, was left
+but rageful gambling, in which the stakes were millions, whilst the lands
+and the houses became mere fictions, mere pretexts for stock-exchange
+operations. And thus the old hereditary pride, which had dreamt of
+transforming Rome into the capital of the world, was heated to madness by
+the high fever of speculation--folks buying, and building, and selling
+without limit, without a pause, even as one might throw shares upon the
+market as fast and as long as presses can be found to print them.
+
+ * 1,800,000 pounds. See _ante_ note.--Trans.
+
+No other city in course of evolution has ever furnished such a spectacle.
+Nowadays, when one strives to penetrate things one is confounded. The
+population had increased to five hundred thousand, and then seemingly
+remained stationary; nevertheless, new districts continued to sprout up
+more thickly than ever. Yet what folly it was not to wait for a further
+influx of inhabitants! Why continue piling up accommodation for thousands
+of families whose advent was uncertain? The only excuse lay in having
+beforehand propounded the proposition that the third Rome, the triumphant
+capital of Italy, could not count less than a million souls, and in
+regarding that proposition as indisputable fact. The people had not come,
+but they surely would come: no patriot could doubt it without being
+guilty of treason. And so houses were built and built without a pause,
+for the half-million citizens who were coming. There was no anxiety as to
+the date of their arrival; it was sufficient that they should be
+expected. Inside Rome the companies which had been formed in connection
+with the new thoroughfares passing through the old, demolished,
+pestiferous districts, certainly sold or let their house property, and
+thereby realised large profits. But, as the craze increased, other
+companies were established for the purpose of erecting yet more and more
+districts outside Rome--veritable little towns, of which there was no
+need whatever. Beyond the Porta San Giovanni and the Porta San Lorenzo,
+suburbs sprang up as by miracle. A town was sketched out over the vast
+estate of the Villa Ludovisi, from the Porta Pia to the Porta Salaria and
+even as far as Sant’ Agnese. And then came an attempt to make quite a
+little city, with church, school, and market, arise all at once on the
+fields of the Castle of Sant’ Angelo. And it was no question of small
+dwellings for labourers, modest flats for employees, and others of
+limited means; no, it was a question of colossal mansions three and four
+storeys high, displaying uniform and endless façades which made these new
+excentral quarters quite Babylonian, such districts, indeed, as only
+capitals endowed with intense life, like Paris and London, could contrive
+to populate. However, such were the monstrous products of pride and
+gambling; and what a page of history, what a bitter lesson now that Rome,
+financially ruined, is further disgraced by that hideous girdle of empty,
+and, for the most part, uncompleted carcases, whose ruins already strew
+the grassy streets!
+
+The fatal collapse, the disaster proved a frightful one. Narcisse
+explained its causes and recounted its phases so clearly that Pierre
+fully understood. Naturally enough, numerous financial companies had
+sprouted up: the Immobiliere, the Society d’Edilizia e Construzione, the
+Fondaria, the Tiberiana, and the Esquilino. Nearly all of them built,
+erected huge houses, entire streets of them, for purposes of sale; but
+they also gambled in land, selling plots at large profit to petty
+speculators, who also dreamt of making large profits amidst the
+continuous, fictitious rise brought about by the growing fever of
+agiotage. And the worst was that the petty speculators, the middle-class
+people, the inexperienced shop-keepers without capital, were crazy enough
+to build in their turn by borrowing of the banks or applying to the
+companies which had sold them the land for sufficient cash to enable them
+to complete their structures. As a general rule, to avoid the loss of
+everything, the companies were one day compelled to take back both land
+and buildings, incomplete though the latter might be, and from the
+congestion which resulted they were bound to perish. If the expected
+million of people had arrived to occupy the dwellings prepared for them
+the gains would have been fabulous, and in ten years Rome might have
+become one of the most flourishing capitals of the world. But the people
+did not come, and the dwellings remained empty. Moreover, the buildings
+erected by the companies were too large and costly for the average
+investor inclined to put his money into house property. Heredity had
+acted, the builders had planned things on too huge a scale, raising a
+series of magnificent piles whose purpose was to dwarf those of all other
+ages; but, as it happened, they were fated to remain lifeless and
+deserted, testifying with wondrous eloquence to the impotence of pride.
+
+So there was no private capital that dared or could take the place of
+that of the companies. Elsewhere, in Paris for instance, new districts
+have been erected and embellishments have been carried out with the
+capital of the country--the money saved by dint of thrift. But in Rome
+all was built on the credit system, either by means of bills of exchange
+at ninety days, or--and this was chiefly the case--by borrowing money
+abroad. The huge sum sunk in these enterprises is estimated at a
+milliard, four-fifths of which was French money. The bankers did
+everything; the French ones lent to the Italian bankers at 3 1-2 or 4 per
+cent.; and the Italian bankers accommodated the speculators, the Roman
+builders, at 6, 7, and even 8 per cent. And thus the disaster was great
+indeed when France, learning of Italy’s alliance with Germany, withdrew
+her 800,000,000 francs in less than two years. The Italian banks were
+drained of their specie, and the land and building companies, being
+likewise compelled to reimburse their loans, were compelled to apply to
+the banks of issue, those privileged to issue notes. At the same time
+they intimidated the Government, threatening to stop all work and throw
+40,000 artisans and labourers starving on the pavement of Rome if it did
+not compel the banks of issue to lend them the five or six millions of
+paper which they needed. And this the Government at last did, appalled by
+the possibility of universal bankruptcy. Naturally, however, the five or
+six millions could not be paid back at maturity, as the newly built
+houses found neither purchasers nor tenants; and so the great fall began,
+and continued with a rush, heaping ruin upon ruin. The petty speculators
+fell on the builders, the builders on the land companies, the land
+companies on the banks of issue, and the latter on the public credit,
+ruining the nation. And that was how a mere municipal crisis became a
+frightful disaster: a whole milliard sunk to no purpose, Rome disfigured,
+littered with the ruins of the gaping and empty dwellings which had been
+prepared for the five or six hundred thousand inhabitants for whom the
+city yet waits in vain!
+
+Moreover, in the breeze of glory which swept by, the state itself took a
+colossal view of things. It was a question of at once making Italy
+triumphant and perfect, of accomplishing in five and twenty years what
+other nations have required centuries to effect. So there was feverish
+activity and a prodigious outlay on canals, ports, roads, railway lines,
+and improvements in all the great cities. Directly after the alliance
+with Germany, moreover, the military and naval estimates began to devour
+millions to no purpose. And the ever growing financial requirements were
+simply met by the issue of paper, by a fresh loan each succeeding year.
+In Rome alone, too, the building of the Ministry of War cost ten
+millions, that of the Ministry of Finances fifteen, whilst a hundred was
+spent on the yet unfinished quays, and two hundred and fifty were sunk on
+works of defence around the city. And all this was a flare of the old
+hereditary pride, springing from that soil whose sap can only blossom in
+extravagant projects; the determination to dazzle and conquer the world
+which comes as soon as one has climbed to the Capitol, even though one’s
+feet rest amidst the accumulated dust of all the forms of human power
+which have there crumbled one above the other.
+
+“And, my dear friend,” continued Narcisse, “if I could go into all the
+stories that are current, that are whispered here and there, you would be
+stupefied at the insanity which overcame the whole city amidst the
+terrible fever to which the gambling passion gave rise. Folks of small
+account, and fools and ignorant people were not the only ones to be
+ruined; nearly all the Roman nobles lost their ancient fortunes, their
+gold and their palaces and their galleries of masterpieces, which they
+owed to the munificence of the popes. The colossal wealth which it had
+taken centuries of nepotism to pile up in the hands of a few melted away
+like wax, in less than ten years, in the levelling fire of modern
+speculation.” Then, forgetting that he was speaking to a priest, he went
+on to relate one of the whispered stories to which he had alluded:
+“There’s our good friend Dario, Prince Boccanera, the last of the name,
+reduced to live on the crumbs which fall to him from his uncle the
+Cardinal, who has little beyond his stipend left him. Well, Dario would
+be a rich man had it not been for that extraordinary affair of the Villa
+Montefiori. You have heard of it, no doubt; how Prince Onofrio, Dario’s
+father, speculated, sold the villa grounds for ten millions, then bought
+them back and built on them, and how, at last, not only the ten millions
+were lost, but also all that remained of the once colossal fortune of the
+Boccaneras. What you haven’t been told, however, is the secret part which
+Count Prada--our Contessina’s husband--played in the affair. He was the
+lover of Princess Boccanera, the beautiful Flavia Montefiori, who had
+brought the villa as dowry to the old Prince. She was a very fine woman,
+much younger than her husband, and it is positively said that it was
+through her that Prada mastered the Prince--for she held her old doting
+husband at arm’s length whenever he hesitated to give a signature or go
+farther into the affair of which he scented the danger. And in all this
+Prada gained the millions which he now spends, while as for the beautiful
+Flavia, you are aware, no doubt, that she saved a little fortune from the
+wreck and bought herself a second and much younger husband, whom she
+turned into a Marquis Montefiori. In the whole affair the only victim is
+our good friend Dario, who is absolutely ruined, and wishes to marry his
+cousin, who is as poor as himself. It’s true that she’s determined to
+have him, and that it’s impossible for him not to reciprocate her love.
+But for that he would have already married some American girl with a
+dowry of millions, like so many of the ruined princes, on the verge of
+starvation, have done; that is, unless the Cardinal and Donna Serafina
+had opposed such a match, which would not have been surprising, proud and
+stubborn as they are, anxious to preserve the purity of their old Roman
+blood. However, let us hope that Dario and the exquisite Benedetta will
+some day be happy together.”
+
+Narcisse paused; but, after taking a few steps in silence, he added in a
+lower tone: “I’ve a relative who picked up nearly three millions in that
+Villa Montefiori affair. Ah! I regret that I wasn’t here in those heroic
+days of speculation. It must have been very amusing; and what strokes
+there were for a man of self-possession to make!”
+
+However, all at once, as he raised his head, he saw before him the
+Quartiere dei Prati--the new district of the castle fields; and his face
+thereupon changed: he again became an artist, indignant with the modern
+abominations with which old Rome had been disfigured. His eyes paled, and
+a curl of his lips expressed the bitter disdain of a dreamer whose
+passion for the vanished centuries was sorely hurt: “Look, look at it
+all!” he exclaimed. “To think of it, in the city of Augustus, the city of
+Leo X, the city of eternal power and eternal beauty!”
+
+Pierre himself was thunderstruck. The meadows of the Castle of Sant’
+Angelo, dotted with a few poplar trees, had here formerly stretched
+alongside the Tiber as far as the first slopes of Monte Mario, thus
+supplying, to the satisfaction of artists, a foreground or greenery to
+the Borgo and the dome of St. Peter’s. But now, amidst the white,
+leprous, overturned plain, there stood a town of huge, massive houses,
+cubes of stone-work, invariably the same, with broad streets intersecting
+one another at right angles. From end to end similar façades appeared,
+suggesting series of convents, barracks, or hospitals. Extraordinary and
+painful was the impression produced by this town so suddenly immobilised
+whilst in course of erection. It was as if on some accursed morning a
+wicked magician had with one touch of his wand stopped the works and
+emptied the noisy stone-yards, leaving the buildings in mournful
+abandonment. Here on one side the soil had been banked up; there deep
+pits dug for foundations had remained gaping, overrun with weeds. There
+were houses whose halls scarcely rose above the level of the soil; others
+which had been raised to a second or third floor; others, again, which
+had been carried as high as was intended, and even roofed in, suggesting
+skeletons or empty cages. Then there were houses finished excepting that
+their walls had not been plastered, others which had been left without
+window frames, shutters, or doors; others, again, which had their doors
+and shutters, but were nailed up like coffins with not a soul inside
+them; and yet others which were partly, and in a few cases fully,
+inhabited--animated by the most unexpected of populations. And no words
+could describe the fearful mournfulness of that City of the Sleeping
+Beauty, hushed into mortal slumber before it had even lived, lying
+annihilated beneath the heavy sun pending an awakening which, likely
+enough, would never come.
+
+Following his companion, Pierre walked along the broad, deserted streets,
+where all was still as in a cemetery. Not a vehicle nor a pedestrian
+passed by. Some streets had no foot ways; weeds were covering the unpaved
+roads, turning them once more into fields; and yet there were temporary
+gas lamps, mere leaden pipes bound to poles, which had been there for
+years. To avoid payment of the door and window tax, the house owners had
+generally closed all apertures with planks; while some houses, of which
+little had been built, were surrounded by high palings for fear lest
+their cellars should become the dens of all the bandits of the district.
+But the most painful sight of all was that of the young ruins, the proud,
+lofty structures, which, although unfinished, were already cracking on
+all sides, and required the support of an intricate arrangement of
+timbers to prevent them from falling in dust upon the ground. A pang came
+to one’s heart as though one was in a city which some scourge had
+depopulated--pestilence, war, or bombardment, of which these gaping
+carcases seem to retain the mark. Then at the thought that this was
+abortment, not death--that destruction would complete its work before the
+dreamt-of, vainly awaited denizens would bring life to the still-born
+houses, one’s melancholy deepened to hopeless discouragement. And at each
+corner, moreover, there was the frightful irony of the magnificent marble
+slabs which bore the names of the streets, illustrious historical names,
+Gracchus, Scipio, Pliny, Pompey, Julius Caesar, blazing forth on those
+unfinished, crumbling walls like a buffet dealt by the Past to modern
+incompetency.
+
+Then Pierre was once more struck by this truth--that whosoever possesses
+Rome is consumed by the building frenzy, the passion for marble, the
+boastful desire to build and leave his monument of glory to future
+generations. After the Caesars and the Popes had come the Italian
+Government, which was no sooner master of the city than it wished to
+reconstruct it, make it more splendid, more huge than it had ever been
+before. It was the fatal suggestion of the soil itself--the blood of
+Augustus rushing to the brain of these last-comers and urging them to a
+mad desire to make the third Rome the queen of the earth. Thence had come
+all the vast schemes such as the cyclopean quays and the mere ministries
+struggling to outvie the Colosseum; and thence had come all the new
+districts of gigantic houses which had sprouted like towns around the
+ancient city. It was not only on the castle fields, but at the Porta San
+Giovanni, the Porta San Lorenzo, the Villa Ludovisi, and on the heights
+of the Viminal and the Esquiline that unfinished, empty districts were
+already crumbling amidst the weeds of their deserted streets. After two
+thousand years of prodigious fertility the soil really seemed to be
+exhausted. Even as in very old fruit gardens newly planted plum and
+cherry trees wither and die, so the new walls, no doubt, found no life in
+that old dust of Rome, impoverished by the immemorial growth of so many
+temples, circuses, arches, basilicas, and churches. And thus the modern
+houses, which men had sought to render fruitful, the useless, over-huge
+houses, swollen with hereditary ambition, had been unable to attain
+maturity, and remained there sterile like dry bushes on a plot of land
+exhausted by over-cultivation. And the frightful sadness that one felt
+arose from the fact that so creative and great a past had culminated in
+such present-day impotency--Rome, who had covered the world with
+indestructible monuments, now so reduced that she could only generate
+ruins.
+
+“Oh, they’ll be finished some day!” said Pierre.
+
+Narcisse gazed at him in astonishment: “For whom?”
+
+That was the cruel question! Only by dint of patriotic enthusiasm on the
+morrow of the conquest had one been able to indulge in the hope of a
+mighty influx of population, and now singular blindness was needed for
+the belief that such an influx would ever take place. The past
+experiments seemed decisive; moreover, there was no reason why the
+population should double: Rome offered neither the attraction of pleasure
+nor that of gain to be amassed in commerce and industry for those she had
+not, nor of intensity of social and intellectual life, since of this she
+seemed no longer capable. In any case, years and years would be
+requisite. And, meantime, how could one people those houses which were
+finished; and for whom was one to finish those which had remained mere
+skeletons, falling to pieces under sun and rain? Must they all remain
+there indefinitely, some gaunt and open to every blast and others closed
+and silent like tombs, in the wretched hideousness of their inutility and
+abandonment? What a terrible proof of error they offered under the
+radiant sky! The new masters of Rome had made a bad start, and even if
+they now knew what they ought to have done would they have the courage to
+undo what they had done? Since the milliard sunk there seemed to be
+definitely lost and wasted, one actually hoped for the advent of a Nero,
+endowed with mighty, sovereign will, who would take torch and pick and
+burn and raze everything in the avenging name of reason and beauty.
+
+“Ah!” resumed Narcisse, “here are the Contessina and the Prince.”
+
+Benedetta had told the coachman to pull up in one of the open spaces
+intersecting the deserted streets, and now along the broad, quiet, grassy
+road--well fitted for a lovers’ stroll--she was approaching on Dario’s
+arm, both of them delighted with their outing, and no longer thinking of
+the sad things which they had come to see. “What a nice day it is!” the
+Contessina gaily exclaimed as she reached Pierre and Narcisse. “How
+pleasant the sunshine is! It’s quite a treat to be able to walk about a
+little as if one were in the country!”
+
+Dario was the first to cease smiling at the blue sky, all the delight of
+his stroll with his cousin on his arm suddenly departing. “My dear,” said
+he, “we must go to see those people, since you are bent on it, though it
+will certainly spoil our day. But first I must take my bearings. I’m not
+particularly clever, you know, in finding my way in places where I don’t
+care to go. Besides, this district is idiotic with all its dead streets
+and dead houses, and never a face or a shop to serve as a reminder. Still
+I think the place is over yonder. Follow me; at all events, we shall
+see.”
+
+The four friends then wended their way towards the central part of the
+district, the part facing the Tiber, where a small nucleus of a
+population had collected. The landlords turned the few completed houses
+to the best advantage they could, letting the rooms at very low rentals,
+and waiting patiently enough for payment. Some needy employees, some
+poverty-stricken families--had thus installed themselves there, and in
+the long run contrived to pay a trifle for their accommodation. In
+consequence, however, of the demolition of the ancient Ghetto and the
+opening of the new streets by which air had been let into the Trastevere
+district, perfect hordes of tatterdemalions, famished and homeless, and
+almost without garments, had swooped upon the unfinished houses, filling
+them with wretchedness and vermin; and it had been necessary to tolerate
+this lawless occupation lest all the frightful misery should remain
+displayed in the public thoroughfares. And so it was to those frightful
+tenants that had fallen the huge four and five storeyed palaces, entered
+by monumental doorways flanked by lofty statues and having carved
+balconies upheld by caryatides all along their fronts. Each family had
+made its choice, often closing the frameless windows with boards and the
+gaping doorways with rags, and occupying now an entire princely flat and
+now a few small rooms, according to its taste. Horrid-looking linen hung
+drying from the carved balconies, foul stains already degraded the white
+walls, and from the magnificent porches, intended for sumptuous
+equipages, there poured a stream of filth which rotted in stagnant pools
+in the roads, where there was neither pavement nor footpath.
+
+On two occasions already Dario had caused his companions to retrace their
+steps. He was losing his way and becoming more and more gloomy. “I ought
+to have taken to the left,” said he, “but how is one to know amidst such
+a set as that!”
+
+Parties of verminous children were now to be seen rolling in the dust;
+they were wondrously dirty, almost naked, with black skins and tangled
+locks as coarse as horsehair. There were also women in sordid skirts and
+with their loose jackets unhooked. Many stood talking together in yelping
+voices, whilst others, seated on old chairs with their hands on their
+knees, remained like that idle for hours. Not many men were met; but a
+few lay on the scorched grass, sleeping heavily in the sunlight. However,
+the stench was becoming unbearable--a stench of misery as when the human
+animal eschews all cleanliness to wallow in filth. And matters were made
+worse by the smell from a small, improvised market--the emanations of the
+rotting fruit, cooked and sour vegetables, and stale fried fish which a
+few poor women had set out on the ground amidst a throng of famished,
+covetous children.
+
+“Ah! well, my dear, I really don’t know where it is,” all at once
+exclaimed the Prince, addressing his cousin. “Be reasonable; we’ve surely
+seen enough; let’s go back to the carriage.”
+
+He was really suffering, and, as Benedetta had said, he did not know how
+to suffer. It seemed to him monstrous that one should sadden one’s life
+by such an excursion as this. Life ought to be buoyant and benign under
+the clear sky, brightened by pleasant sights, by dance and song. And he,
+with his naive egotism, had a positive horror of ugliness, poverty, and
+suffering, the sight of which caused him both mental and physical pain.
+
+Benedetta shuddered even as he did, but in presence of Pierre she desired
+to be brave. Glancing at him, and seeing how deeply interested and
+compassionate he looked, she desired to persevere in her effort to
+sympathise with the humble and the wretched. “No, no, Dario, we must
+stay. These gentlemen wish to see everything--is it not so?”
+
+“Oh, the Rome of to-day is here,” exclaimed Pierre; “this tells one more
+about it than all the promenades among the ruins and the monuments.”
+
+“You exaggerate, my dear Abbé,” declared Narcisse. “Still, I will admit
+that it is very interesting. Some of the old women are particularly
+expressive.”
+
+At this moment Benedetta, seeing a superbly beautiful girl in front of
+her, could not restrain a cry of enraptured admiration: “_O che
+bellezza!_”
+
+And then Dario, having recognised the girl, exclaimed with the same
+delight: “Why, it’s La Pierina; she’ll show us the way.”
+
+The girl had been following the party for a moment already without daring
+to approach. Her eyes, glittering with the joy of a loving slave, had at
+first darted towards the Prince, and then had hastily scrutinised the
+Contessina--not, however, with any show of jealous anger, but with an
+expression of affectionate submission and resigned happiness at seeing
+that she also was very beautiful. And the girl fully answered to the
+Prince’s description of her--tall, sturdy, with the bust of a goddess, a
+real antique, a Juno of twenty, her chin somewhat prominent, her mouth
+and nose perfect in contour, her eyes large and full like a heifer’s, and
+her whole face quite dazzling--gilded, so to say, by a sunflash--beneath
+her casque of heavy jet-black hair.
+
+“So you will show us the way?” said Benedetta, familiar and smiling,
+already consoled for all the surrounding ugliness by the thought that
+there should be such beautiful creatures in the world.
+
+“Oh yes, signora, yes, at once!” And thereupon Pierina ran off before
+them, her feet in shoes which at any rate had no holes, whilst the old
+brown woollen dress which she wore appeared to have been recently washed
+and mended. One seemed to divine in her a certain coquettish care, a
+desire for cleanliness, which none of the others displayed; unless,
+indeed, it were simply that her great beauty lent radiance to her humble
+garments and made her appear a goddess.
+
+“_Che bellezza! the bellezza!_” the Contessina repeated without wearying.
+“That girl, Dario _mio_, is a real feast for the eyes!”
+
+“I knew she would please you,” he quietly replied, flattered at having
+discovered such a beauty, and no longer talking of departure, since he
+could at last rest his eyes on something pleasant.
+
+Behind them came Pierre, likewise full of admiration, whilst Narcisse
+spoke to him of the scrupulosity of his own tastes, which were for the
+rare and the subtle. “She’s beautiful, no doubt,” said he; “but at bottom
+nothing can be more gross than the Roman style of beauty; there’s no
+soul, none of the infinite in it. These girls simply have blood under
+their skins without ever a glimpse of heaven.”
+
+Meantime Pierina had stopped, and with a wave of the hand directed
+attention to her mother, who sat on a broken box beside the lofty doorway
+of an unfinished mansion. She also must have once been very beautiful,
+but at forty she was already a wreck, with dim eyes, drawn mouth, black
+teeth, broadly wrinkled countenance, and huge fallen bosom. And she was
+also fearfully dirty, her grey wavy hair dishevelled and her skirt and
+jacket soiled and slit, revealing glimpses of grimy flesh. On her knees
+she held a sleeping infant, her last-born, at whom she gazed like one
+overwhelmed and courageless, like a beast of burden resigned to her fate.
+
+“_Bene, bene,_” said she, raising her head, “it’s the gentleman who came
+to give me a crown because he saw you crying. And he’s come back to see
+us with some friends. Well, well, there are some good hearts in the world
+after all.”
+
+Then she related their story, but in a spiritless way, without seeking to
+move her visitors. She was called Giacinta, it appeared, and had married
+a mason, one Tomaso Gozzo, by whom she had had seven children, Pierina,
+then Tito, a big fellow of eighteen, then four more girls, each at an
+interval of two years, and finally the infant, a boy, whom she now had on
+her lap. They had long lived in the Trastevere district, in an old house
+which had lately been pulled down; and their existence seemed to have
+then been shattered, for since they had taken refuge in the Quartiere dei
+Prati the crisis in the building trade had reduced Tomaso and Tito to
+absolute idleness, and the bead factory where Pierina had earned as much
+as tenpence a day--just enough to prevent them from dying of hunger--had
+closed its doors. At present not one of them had any work; they lived
+purely by chance.
+
+“If you like to go up,” the woman added, “you’ll find Tomaso there with
+his brother Ambrogio, whom we’ve taken to live with us. They’ll know
+better than I what to say to you. Tomaso is resting; but what else can he
+do? It’s like Tito--he’s dozing over there.”
+
+So saying she pointed towards the dry grass amidst which lay a tall young
+fellow with a pronounced nose, hard mouth, and eyes as admirable as
+Pierina’s. He had raised his head to glance suspiciously at the visitors,
+a fierce frown gathering on his forehead when he remarked how rapturously
+his sister contemplated the Prince. Then he let his head fall again, but
+kept his eyes open, watching the pair stealthily.
+
+“Take the lady and gentlemen upstairs, Pierina, since they would like to
+see the place,” said the mother.
+
+Other women had now drawn near, shuffling along with bare feet in old
+shoes; bands of children, too, were swarming around; little girls but
+half clad, amongst whom, no doubt, were Giacinta’s four. However, with
+their black eyes under their tangled mops they were all so much alike
+that only their mothers could identify them. And the whole resembled a
+teeming camp of misery pitched on that spot of majestic disaster, that
+street of palaces, unfinished yet already in ruins.
+
+With a soft, loving smile, Benedetta turned to her cousin. “Don’t you
+come up,” she gently said; “I don’t desire your death, Dario _mio_. It
+was very good of you to come so far. Wait for me here in the pleasant
+sunshine: Monsieur l’Abbé and Monsieur Habert will go up with me.”
+
+Dario began to laugh, and willingly acquiesced. Then lighting a
+cigarette, he walked slowly up and down, well pleased with the mildness
+of the atmosphere.
+
+La Pierina had already darted into the spacious porch whose lofty,
+vaulted ceiling was adorned with coffers displaying a rosaceous pattern.
+However, a veritable manure heap covered such marble slabs as had already
+been laid in the vestibule, whilst the steps of the monumental stone
+staircase with sculptured balustrade were already cracked and so grimy
+that they seemed almost black. On all sides appeared the greasy stains of
+hands; the walls, whilst awaiting the painter and gilder, had been
+smeared with repulsive filth.
+
+On reaching the spacious first-floor landing Pierina paused, and
+contented herself with calling through a gaping portal which lacked both
+door and framework: “Father, here’s a lady and two gentlemen to see you.”
+ Then to the Contessina she added: “It’s the third room at the end.” And
+forthwith she herself rapidly descended the stairs, hastening back to her
+passion.
+
+Benedetta and her companions passed through two large rooms, bossy with
+plaster under foot and having frameless windows wide open upon space; and
+at last they reached a third room, where the whole Gozzo family had
+installed itself with the remnants it used as furniture. On the floor,
+where the bare iron girders showed, no boards having been laid down, were
+five or six leprous-looking palliasses. A long table, which was still
+strong, occupied the centre of the room, and here and there were a few
+old, damaged, straw-seated chairs mended with bits of rope. The great
+business had been to close two of the three windows with boards, whilst
+the third one and the door were screened with some old mattress ticking
+studded with stains and holes.
+
+Tomaso’s face expressed the surprise of a man who is unaccustomed to
+visits of charity. Seated at the table, with his elbows resting on it and
+his chin supported by his hands, he was taking repose, as his wife
+Giacinta had said. He was a sturdy fellow of five and forty, bearded and
+long-haired; and, in spite of all his misery and idleness, his large face
+had remained as serene as that of a Roman senator. However, the sight of
+the two foreigners--for such he at once judged Pierre and Narcisse to be,
+made him rise to his feet with sudden distrust. But he smiled on
+recognising Benedetta, and as she began to speak of Dario, and to explain
+the charitable purpose of their visit, he interrupted her: “Yes, yes, I
+know, Contessina. Oh! I well know who you are, for in my father’s time I
+once walled up a window at the Palazzo Boccanera.”
+
+Then he complaisantly allowed himself to be questioned, telling Pierre,
+who was surprised, that although they were certainly not happy they would
+have found life tolerable had they been able to work two days a week. And
+one could divine that he was, at heart, fairly well content to go on
+short commons, provided that he could live as he listed without fatigue.
+His narrative and his manner suggested the familiar locksmith who, on
+being summoned by a traveller to open his trunk, the key of which was
+lost, sent word that he could not possibly disturb himself during the
+hour of the siesta. In short, there was no rent to pay, as there were
+plenty of empty mansions open to the poor, and a few coppers would have
+sufficed for food, easily contented and sober as one was.
+
+“But oh, sir,” Tomaso continued, “things were ever so much better under
+the Pope. My father, a mason like myself, worked at the Vatican all his
+life, and even now, when I myself get a job or two, it’s always there. We
+were spoilt, you see, by those ten years of busy work, when we never left
+our ladders and earned as much as we pleased. Of course, we fed ourselves
+better, and bought ourselves clothes, and took such pleasure as we cared
+for; so that it’s all the harder nowadays to have to stint ourselves. But
+if you’d only come to see us in the Pope’s time! No taxes, everything to
+be had for nothing, so to say--why, one merely had to let oneself live.”
+
+At this moment a growl arose from one of the palliasses lying in the
+shade of the boarded windows, and the mason, in his slow, quiet way,
+resumed: “It’s my brother Ambrogio, who isn’t of my opinion.
+
+“He was with the Republicans in ‘49, when he was fourteen. But it doesn’t
+matter; we took him with us when we heard that he was dying of hunger and
+sickness in a cellar.”
+
+The visitors could not help quivering with pity. Ambrogio was the elder
+by some fifteen years; and now, though scarcely sixty, he was already a
+ruin, consumed by fever, his legs so wasted that he spent his days on his
+palliasse without ever going out. Shorter and slighter, but more
+turbulent than his brother, he had been a carpenter by trade. And,
+despite his physical decay, he retained an extraordinary head--the head
+of an apostle and martyr, at once noble and tragic in its expression, and
+encompassed by bristling snowy hair and beard.
+
+“The Pope,” he growled; “I’ve never spoken badly of the Pope. Yet it’s
+his fault if tyranny continues. He alone in ‘49 could have given us the
+Republic, and then we shouldn’t have been as we are now.”
+
+Ambrogio had known Mazzini, whose vague religiosity remained in him--the
+dream of a Republican pope at last establishing the reign of liberty and
+fraternity. But later on his passion for Garibaldi had disturbed these
+views, and led him to regard the papacy as worthless, incapable of
+achieving human freedom. And so, between the dream of his youth and the
+stern experience of his life, he now hardly knew in which direction the
+truth lay. Moreover, he had never acted save under the impulse of violent
+emotion, but contented himself with fine words--vague, indeterminate
+wishes.
+
+“Brother Ambrogio,” replied Tomaso, all tranquillity, “the Pope is the
+Pope, and wisdom lies in putting oneself on his side, because he will
+always be the Pope--that is to say, the stronger. For my part, if we had
+to vote to-morrow I’d vote for him.”
+
+Calmed by the shrewd prudence characteristic of his race, the old
+carpenter made no haste to reply. At last he said, “Well, as for me,
+brother Tomaso, I should vote against him--always against him. And you
+know very well that we should have the majority. The Pope-king indeed!
+That’s all over. The very Borgo would revolt. Still, I won’t say that we
+oughtn’t to come to an understanding with him, so that everybody’s
+religion may be respected.”
+
+Pierre listened, deeply interested, and at last ventured to ask: “Are
+there many socialists among the Roman working classes?”
+
+This time the answer came after a yet longer pause. “Socialists? Yes,
+there are some, no doubt, but much fewer than in other places. All those
+things are novelties which impatient fellows go in for without
+understanding much about them. We old men, we were for liberty; we don’t
+believe in fire and massacre.”
+
+Then, fearing to say too much in presence of that lady and those
+gentlemen, Ambrogio began to moan on his pallet, whilst the Contessina,
+somewhat upset by the smell of the place, took her departure, after
+telling the young priest that it would be best for them to leave their
+alms with the wife downstairs. Meantime Tomaso resumed his seat at the
+table, again letting his chin rest on his hands as he nodded to his
+visitors, no more impressed by their departure than he had been by their
+arrival: “To the pleasure of seeing you again, and am happy to have been
+able to oblige you.”
+
+On the threshold, however, Narcisse’s enthusiasm burst forth; he turned
+to cast a final admiring glance at old Ambrogio’s head, “a perfect
+masterpiece,” which he continued praising whilst he descended the stairs.
+
+Down below Giacinta was still sitting on the broken box with her infant
+across her lap, and a few steps away Pierina stood in front of Dario,
+watching him with an enchanted air whilst he finished his cigarette.
+Tito, lying low in the grass like an animal on the watch for prey, did
+not for a moment cease to gaze at them.
+
+“Ah, signora!” resumed the woman, in her resigned, doleful voice, “the
+place is hardly inhabitable, as you must have seen. The only good thing
+is that one gets plenty of room. But there are draughts enough to kill
+me, and I’m always so afraid of the children falling down some of the
+holes.”
+
+Thereupon she related a story of a woman who had lost her life through
+mistaking a window for a door one evening and falling headlong into the
+street. Then, too, a little girl had broken both arms by tumbling from a
+staircase which had no banisters. And you could die there without anybody
+knowing how bad you were and coming to help you. Only the previous day
+the corpse of an old man had been found lying on the plaster in a lonely
+room. Starvation must have killed him quite a week previously, yet he
+would still have been stretched there if the odour of his remains had not
+attracted the attention of neighbours.
+
+“If one only had something to eat things wouldn’t be so bad!” continued
+Giacinta. “But it’s dreadful when there’s a baby to suckle and one gets
+no food, for after a while one has no milk. This little fellow wants his
+titty and gets angry with me because I can’t give him any. But it isn’t
+my fault. He has sucked me till the blood came, and all I can do is to
+cry.”
+
+As she spoke tears welled into her poor dim eyes. But all at once she
+flew into a tantrum with Tito, who was still wallowing in the grass like
+an animal instead of rising by way of civility towards those fine people,
+who would surely leave her some alms. “Eh! Tito, you lazy fellow, can’t
+you get up when people come to see you?” she called.
+
+After some pretence of not hearing, the young fellow at last rose with an
+air of great ill-humour; and Pierre, feeling interested in him, tried to
+draw him out as he had done with the father and uncle upstairs. But Tito
+only returned curt answers, as if both bored and suspicious. Since there
+was no work to be had, said he, the only thing was to sleep. It was of no
+use to get angry; that wouldn’t alter matters. So the best was to live as
+one could without increasing one’s worry. As for socialists--well, yes,
+perhaps there were a few, but he didn’t know any. And his weary,
+indifferent manner made it quite clear that, if his father was for the
+Pope and his uncle for the Republic, he himself was for nothing at all.
+In this Pierre divined the end of a nation, or rather the slumber of a
+nation in which democracy has not yet awakened. However, as the priest
+continued, asking Tito his age, what school he had attended, and in what
+district he had been born, the young man suddenly cut the questions short
+by pointing with one finger to his breast and saying gravely, “_Io son’
+Romano di Roma_.”
+
+And, indeed, did not that answer everything? “I am a Roman of Rome.”
+ Pierre smiled sadly and spoke no further. Never had he more fully
+realised the pride of that race, the long-descending inheritance of glory
+which was so heavy to bear. The sovereign vanity of the Caesars lived
+anew in that degenerate young fellow who was scarcely able to read and
+write. Starveling though he was, he knew his city, and could
+instinctively have recounted the grand pages of its history. The names of
+the great emperors and great popes were familiar to him. And why should
+men toil and moil when they had been the masters of the world? Why not
+live nobly and idly in the most beautiful of cities, under the most
+beautiful of skies? “_Io son’ Romano di Roma_!”
+
+Benedetta had slipped her alms into the mother’s hand, and Pierre and
+Narcisse were following her example when Dario, who had already done so,
+thought of Pierina. He did not like to offer her money, but a pretty,
+fanciful idea occurred to him. Lightly touching his lips with his
+finger-tips, he said, with a faint laugh, “For beauty!”
+
+There was something really pretty and pleasing in the kiss thus wafted
+with a slightly mocking laugh by that familiar, good-natured young Prince
+who, as in some love story of the olden time, was touched by the
+beautiful bead-worker’s mute adoration. Pierina flushed with pleasure,
+and, losing her head, darted upon Dario’s hand and pressed her warm lips
+to it with unthinking impulsiveness, in which there was as much divine
+gratitude as tender passion. But Tito’s eyes flashed with anger at the
+sight, and, brutally seizing his sister by the skirt, he threw her back,
+growling between his teeth, “None of that, you know, or I’ll kill you,
+and him too!”
+
+It was high time for the visitors to depart, for other women, scenting
+the presence of money, were now coming forward with outstretched hands,
+or despatching tearful children in their stead. The whole wretched,
+abandoned district was in a flutter, a distressful wail ascended from
+those lifeless streets with high resounding names. But what was to be
+done? One could not give to all. So the only course lay in flight--amidst
+deep sadness as one realised how powerless was charity in presence of
+such appalling want.
+
+When Benedetta and Dario had reached their carriage they hastened to take
+their seats and nestle side by side, glad to escape from all such
+horrors. Still the Contessina was well pleased with her bravery in the
+presence of Pierre, whose hand she pressed with the emotion of a pupil
+touched by the master’s lesson, after Narcisse had told her that he meant
+to take the young priest to lunch at the little restaurant on the Piazza
+of St. Peter’s whence one obtained such an interesting view of the
+Vatican.
+
+“Try some of the light white wine of Genzano,” said Dario, who had become
+quite gay again. “There’s nothing better to drive away the blues.”
+
+However, Pierre’s curiosity was insatiable, and on the way he again
+questioned Narcisse about the people of modern Rome, their life, habits,
+and manners. There was little or no education, he learnt; no large
+manufactures and no export trade existed. The men carried on the few
+trades that were current, all consumption being virtually limited to the
+city itself. Among the women there were bead-workers and embroiderers;
+and the manufacture of religious articles, such as medals and chaplets,
+and of certain popular jewellery had always occupied a fair number of
+hands. But after marriage the women, invariably burdened with numerous
+offspring, attempted little beyond household work. Briefly, the
+population took life as it came, working just sufficiently to secure
+food, contenting itself with vegetables, pastes, and scraggy mutton,
+without thought of rebellion or ambition. The only vices were gambling
+and a partiality for the red and white wines of the Roman province--wines
+which excited to quarrel and murder, and on the evenings of feast days,
+when the taverns emptied, strewed the streets with groaning men, slashed
+and stabbed with knives. The girls, however, but seldom went wrong; one
+could count those who allowed themselves to be seduced; and this arose
+from the great union prevailing in each family, every member of which
+bowed submissively to the father’s absolute authority. Moreover, the
+brothers watched over their sisters even as Tito did over Pierina,
+guarding them fiercely for the sake of the family honour. And amidst all
+this there was no real religion, but simply a childish idolatry, all
+hearts going forth to Madonna and the Saints, who alone were entreated
+and regarded as having being: for it never occurred to anybody to think
+of God.
+
+Thus the stagnation of the lower orders could easily be understood.
+Behind them were the many centuries during which idleness had been
+encouraged, vanity flattered, and nerveless life willingly accepted. When
+they were neither masons, nor carpenters, nor bakers, they were servants
+serving the priests, and more or less directly in the pay of the Vatican.
+Thence sprang the two antagonistic parties, on the one hand the more
+numerous party composed of the old Carbonari, Mazzinians, and
+Garibaldians, the _élite_ of the Trastevere; and on the other the
+“clients” of the Vatican, all who lived on or by the Church and regretted
+the Pope-King. But, after all, the antagonism was confined to opinions;
+there was no thought of making an effort or incurring a risk. For that,
+some sudden flare of passion, strong enough to overcome the sturdy
+calmness of the race, would have been needed. But what would have been
+the use of it? The wretchedness had lasted for so many centuries, the sky
+was so blue, the siesta preferable to aught else during the hot hours!
+And only one thing seemed positive--that the majority was certainly in
+favour of Rome remaining the capital of Italy. Indeed, rebellion had
+almost broken out in the Leonine City when the cession of the latter to
+the Holy See was rumoured. As for the increase of want and poverty, this
+was largely due to the circumstance that the Roman workman had really
+gained nothing by the many works carried on in his city during fifteen
+years. First of all, over 40,000 provincials, mostly from the North, more
+spirited and resistant than himself, and working at cheaper rates, had
+invaded Rome; and when he, the Roman, had secured his share of the
+labour, he had lived in better style, without thought of economy; so that
+after the crisis, when the 40,000 men from the provinces were sent home
+again, he had found himself once more in a dead city where trade was
+always slack. And thus he had relapsed into his antique indolence, at
+heart well pleased at no longer being hustled by press of work, and again
+accommodating himself as best he could to his old mistress, Want, empty
+in pocket yet always a _grand seigneur_.
+
+However, Pierre was struck by the great difference between the want and
+wretchedness of Rome and Paris. In Rome the destitution was certainly
+more complete, the food more loathsome, the dirt more repulsive. Yet at
+the same time the Roman poor retained more ease of manner and more real
+gaiety. The young priest thought of the fireless, breadless poor of
+Paris, shivering in their hovels at winter time; and suddenly he
+understood. The destitution of Rome did not know cold. What a sweet and
+eternal consolation; a sun for ever bright, a sky for ever blue and
+benign out of charity to the wretched! And what mattered the vileness of
+the dwelling if one could sleep under the sky, fanned by the warm breeze!
+What mattered even hunger if the family could await the windfall of
+chance in sunlit streets or on the scorched grass! The climate induced
+sobriety; there was no need of alcohol or red meat to enable one to face
+treacherous fogs. Blissful idleness smiled on the golden evenings,
+poverty became like the enjoyment of liberty in that delightful
+atmosphere where the happiness of living seemed to be all sufficient.
+Narcisse told Pierre that at Naples, in the narrow odoriferous streets of
+the port and Santa Lucia districts, the people spent virtually their
+whole lives out-of-doors, gay, childish, and ignorant, seeking nothing
+beyond the few pence that were needed to buy food. And it was certainly
+the climate which fostered the prolonged infancy of the nation, which
+explained why such a democracy did not awaken to social ambition and
+consciousness of itself. No doubt the poor of Naples and Rome suffered
+from want; but they did not know the rancour which cruel winter implants
+in men’s hearts, the dark rancour which one feels on shivering with cold
+while rich people are warming themselves before blazing fires. They did
+not know the infuriated reveries in snow-swept hovels, when the guttering
+dip burns low, the passionate need which then comes upon one to wreak
+justice, to revolt, as from a sense of duty, in order that one may save
+wife and children from consumption, in order that they also may have a
+warm nest where life shall be a possibility! Ah! the want that shivers
+with the bitter cold--therein lies the excess of social injustice, the
+most terrible of schools, where the poor learn to realise their
+sufferings, where they are roused to indignation, and swear to make those
+sufferings cease, even if in doing so they annihilate all olden society!
+
+And in that same clemency of the southern heavens Pierre also found an
+explanation of the life of St. Francis,* that divine mendicant of love
+who roamed the high roads extolling the charms of poverty. Doubtless he
+was an unconscious revolutionary, protesting against the overflowing
+luxury of the Roman court by his return to the love of the humble, the
+simplicity of the primitive Church. But such a revival of innocence and
+sobriety would never have been possible in a northern land. The
+enchantment of Nature, the frugality of a people whom the sunlight
+nourished, the benignity of mendicancy on roads for ever warm, were
+needed to effect it. And yet how was it possible that a St. Francis,
+glowing with brotherly love, could have appeared in a land which nowadays
+so seldom practises charity, which treats the lowly so harshly and
+contemptuously, and cannot even bestow alms on its own Pope? Is it
+because ancient pride ends by hardening all hearts, or because the
+experience of very old races leads finally to egotism, that one now
+beholds Italy seemingly benumbed amidst dogmatic and pompous Catholicism,
+whilst the return to the ideals of the Gospel, the passionate interest in
+the poor and the suffering comes from the woeful plains of the North,
+from the nations whose sunlight is so limited? Yes, doubtless all that
+has much to do with the change, and the success of St. Francis was in
+particular due to the circumstance that, after so gaily espousing his
+lady, Poverty, he was able to lead her, bare-footed and scarcely clad,
+during endless and delightful spring-tides, among communities whom an
+ardent need of love and compassion then consumed.
+
+ * St. Francis of Assisi, the founder of the famous order of
+ mendicant friars.--Trans.
+
+While conversing, Pierre and Narcisse had reached the Piazza of St.
+Peter’s, and they sat down at one of the little tables skirting the
+pavement outside the restaurant where they had lunched once before. The
+linen was none too clean, but the view was splendid. The Basilica rose up
+in front of them, and the Vatican on the right, above the majestic curve
+of the colonnade. Just as the waiter was bringing the _hors-d’œuvre_,
+some _finocchio_* and anchovies, the young priest, who had fixed his eyes
+on the Vatican, raised an exclamation to attract Narcisse’s attention:
+“Look, my friend, at that window, which I am told is the Holy Father’s.
+Can’t you distinguish a pale figure standing there, quite motionless?”
+
+ * Fennel-root, eaten raw, a favourite “appetiser” in Rome during
+ the spring and autumn.--Trans.
+
+The young man began to laugh. “Oh! well,” said he, “it must be the Holy
+Father in person. You are so anxious to see him that your very anxiety
+conjures him into your presence.”
+
+“But I assure you,” repeated Pierre, “that he is over there behind the
+window-pane. There is a white figure looking this way.”
+
+Narcisse, who was very hungry, began to eat whilst still indulging in
+banter. All at once, however, he exclaimed: “Well, my dear Abbé, as the
+Pope is looking at us, this is the moment to speak of him. I promised to
+tell you how he sunk several millions of St. Peter’s Patrimony in the
+frightful financial crisis of which you have just seen the ruins; and,
+indeed, your visit to the new district of the castle fields would not be
+complete without this story by way of appendix.”
+
+Thereupon, without losing a mouthful, Narcisse spoke at considerable
+length. At the death of Pius IX the Patrimony of St. Peter, it seemed,
+had exceeded twenty millions of francs. Cardinal Antonelli, who
+speculated, and whose ventures were usually successful, had for a long
+time left a part of this money with the Rothschilds and a part in the
+hands of different nuncios, who turned it to profit abroad. After
+Antonelli’s death, however, his successor, Cardinal Simeoni, withdrew the
+money from the nuncios to invest it at Rome; and Leo XIII on his
+accession entrusted the administration of the Patrimony to a commission
+of cardinals, of which Monsignor Folchi was appointed secretary. This
+prelate, who for twelve years played such an important _rôle_, was the
+son of an employee of the Dataria, who, thanks to skilful financial
+operations, had left a fortune of a million francs. Monsignor Folchi
+inherited his father’s cleverness, and revealed himself to be a financier
+of the first rank in such wise that the commission gradually relinquished
+its powers to him, letting him act exactly as he pleased and contenting
+itself with approving the reports which he laid before it at each
+meeting. The Patrimony, however, yielded scarcely more than a million
+francs per annum, and, as the expenditure amounted to seven millions, six
+had to be found. Accordingly, from that other source of income, the
+Peter’s Pence, the Pope annually gave three million francs to Monsignor
+Folchi, who, by skilful speculations and investments, was able to double
+them every year, and thus provide for all disbursements without ever
+breaking into the capital of the Patrimony. In the earlier times he
+realised considerable profit by gambling in land in and about Rome. He
+took shares also in many new enterprises, speculated in mills, omnibuses,
+and water-services, without mentioning all the gambling in which he
+participated with the Banca di Roma, a Catholic institution. Wonderstruck
+by his skill, the Pope, who, on his own side, had hitherto speculated
+through the medium of a confidential employee named Sterbini, dismissed
+the latter, and entrusted Monsignor Folchi with the duty of turning his
+money to profit in the same way as he turned that of the Holy See. This
+was the climax of the prelate’s favour, the apogee of his power. Bad days
+were dawning, things were tottering already, and the great collapse was
+soon to come, sudden and swift like lightning. One of Leo XIII’s
+practices was to lend large sums to the Roman princes who, seized with
+the gambling frenzy, and mixed up in land and building speculations, were
+at a loss for money. To guarantee the Pope’s advances they deposited
+shares with him, and thus, when the downfall came, he was left with heaps
+of worthless paper on his hands. Then another disastrous affair was an
+attempt to found a house of credit in Paris in view of working off the
+shares which could not be disposed of in Italy among the French
+aristocracy and religious people. To egg these on it was said that the
+Pope was interested in the venture; and the worst was that he dropped
+three millions of francs in it.* The situation then became the more
+critical as he had gradually risked all the money he disposed of in the
+terrible agiotage going on in Rome, tempted thereto by the prospect of
+huge profits and perhaps indulging in the hope that he might win back by
+money the city which had been torn from him by force. His own
+responsibility remained complete, for Monsignor Folchi never made an
+important venture without consulting him; and he must have been therefore
+the real artisan of the disaster, mastered by his passion for gain, his
+desire to endow the Church with a huge capital, that great source of
+power in modern times. As always happens, however, the prelate was the
+only victim. He had become imperious and difficult to deal with; and was
+no longer liked by the cardinals of the commission, who were merely
+called together to approve such transactions as he chose to entrust to
+them. So, when the crisis came, a plot was laid; the cardinals terrified
+the Pope by telling him of all the evil rumours which were current, and
+then forced Monsignor Folchi to render a full account of his
+speculations. The situation proved to be very bad; it was no longer
+possible to avoid heavy losses. And so Monsignor Folchi was disgraced,
+and since then has vainly solicited an audience of Leo XIII, who has
+always refused to receive him, as if determined to punish him for their
+common fault--that passion for lucre which blinded them both. Very pious
+and submissive, however, Monsignor Folchi has never complained, but has
+kept his secrets and bowed to fate. Nobody can say exactly how many
+millions the Patrimony of St. Peter lost when Rome was changed into a
+gambling-hell, but if some prelates only admit ten, others go as far as
+thirty. The probability is that the loss was about fifteen millions.**
+
+ * The allusion is evidently to the famous Union Générale, on
+ which the Pope bestowed his apostolic benediction, and with
+ which M. Zola deals at length in his novel _Money_. Certainly
+ a very brilliant idea was embodied in the Union Générale, that
+ of establishing a great international Catholic bank which
+ would destroy the Jewish financial autocracy throughout Europe,
+ and provide both the papacy and the Legitimist cause in several
+ countries with the sinews of war. But in the battle which
+ ensued the great Jew financial houses proved the stronger, and
+ the disaster which overtook the Catholic speculators was a
+ terrible one.--Trans.
+
+ ** That is 600,000 pounds.
+
+Whilst Narcisse was giving this account he and Pierre had despatched
+their cutlets and tomatoes, and the waiter was now serving them some
+fried chicken. “At the present time,” said Narcisse by way of conclusion,
+“the gap has been filled up; I told you of the large sums yielded by the
+Peter’s Pence Fund, the amount of which is only known by the Pope, who
+alone fixes its employment. And, by the way, he isn’t cured of
+speculating: I know from a good source that he still gambles, though with
+more prudence. Moreover, his confidential assistant is still a prelate.
+And, when all is said, my dear Abbé, he’s in the right: a man must belong
+to his times--dash it all!”
+
+Pierre had listened with growing surprise, in which terror and sadness
+mingled. Doubtless such things were natural, even legitimate; yet he, in
+his dream of a pastor of souls free from all terrestrial cares, had never
+imagined that they existed. What! the Pope--the spiritual father of the
+lowly and the suffering--had speculated in land and in stocks and shares!
+He had gambled, placed funds in the hands of Jew bankers, practised
+usury, extracted hard interest from money--he, the successor of the
+Apostle, the Pontiff of Christ, the representative of Jesus, of the
+Gospel, that divine friend of the poor! And, besides, what a painful
+contrast: so many millions stored away in those rooms of the Vatican, and
+so many millions working and fructifying, constantly being diverted from
+one speculation to another in order that they might yield the more gain;
+and then down below, near at hand, so much want and misery in those
+abominable unfinished buildings of the new districts, so many poor folks
+dying of hunger amidst filth, mothers without milk for their babes, men
+reduced to idleness by lack of work, old ones at the last gasp like
+beasts of burden who are pole-axed when they are of no more use! Ah! God
+of Charity, God of Love, was it possible! The Church doubtless had
+material wants; she could not live without money; prudence and policy had
+dictated the thought of gaining for her such a treasure as would enable
+her to fight her adversaries victoriously. But how grievously this
+wounded one’s feelings, how it soiled the Church, how she descended from
+her divine throne to become nothing but a party, a vast international
+association organised for the purpose of conquering and possessing the
+world!
+
+And the more Pierre thought of the extraordinary adventure the greater
+was his astonishment. Could a more unexpected, startling drama be
+imagined? That Pope shutting himself up in his palace--a prison, no
+doubt, but one whose hundred windows overlooked immensity; that Pope who,
+at all hours of the day and night, in every season, could from his window
+see his capital, the city which had been stolen from him, and the
+restitution of which he never ceased to demand; that Pope who, day by
+day, beheld the changes effected in the city--the opening of new streets,
+the demolition of ancient districts, the sale of land, and the gradual
+erection of new buildings which ended by forming a white girdle around
+the old ruddy roofs; that Pope who, in presence of this daily spectacle,
+this building frenzy, which he could follow from morn till eve, was
+himself finally overcome by the gambling passion, and, secluded in his
+closed chamber, began to speculate on the embellishments of his old
+capital, seeking wealth in the spurt of work and trade brought about by
+that very Italian Government which he reproached with spoliation; and
+finally that Pope losing millions in a catastrophe which he ought to have
+desired, but had been unable to foresee! No, never had dethroned monarch
+yielded to a stranger idea, compromised himself in a more tragical
+venture, the result of which fell upon him like divine punishment. And it
+was no mere king who had done this, but the delegate of God, the man who,
+in the eyes of idolatrous Christendom, was the living manifestation of
+the Deity!
+
+Dessert had now been served--a goat’s cheese and some fruit--and Narcisse
+was just finishing some grapes when, on raising his eyes, he in turn
+exclaimed: “Well, you are quite right, my dear Abbé, I myself can see a
+pale figure at the window of the Holy Father’s room.”
+
+Pierre, who scarcely took his eyes from the window, answered slowly:
+“Yes, yes, it went away, but has just come back, and stands there white
+and motionless.”
+
+“Well, after all, what would you have the Pope do?” resumed Narcisse with
+his languid air. “He’s like everybody else; he looks out of the window
+when he wants a little distraction, and certainly there’s plenty for him
+to look at.”
+
+The same idea had occurred to Pierre, and was filling him with emotion.
+People talked of the Vatican being closed, and pictured a dark, gloomy
+palace, encompassed by high walls, whereas this palace overlooked all
+Rome, and the Pope from his window could see the world. Pierre himself
+had viewed the panorama from the summit of the Janiculum, the _loggie_ of
+Raffaelle, and the dome of St. Peter’s, and so he well knew what it was
+that Leo XIII was able to behold. In the centre of the vast desert of the
+Campagna, bounded by the Sabine and Alban mountains, the seven
+illustrious hills appeared to him with their trees and edifices. His eyes
+ranged also over all the basilicas, Santa Maria Maggiore, San Giovanni in
+Laterano, the cradle of the papacy, San Paolo-fuori-le-Mura, Santa Croce
+in Gerusalemme, Sant’ Agnese, and the others; they beheld, too, the domes
+of the Gesù of Sant’ Andrea della Valle, San Carlo and San Giovanni dei
+Fiorentini, and indeed all those four hundred churches of Rome which make
+the city like a _campo santo_ studded with crosses. And Leo XIII could
+moreover see the famous monuments testifying to the pride of successive
+centuries--the Castle of Sant’ Angelo, that imperial mausoleum which was
+transformed into a papal fortress, the distant white line of the tombs of
+the Appian Way, the scattered ruins of the baths of Caracalla and the
+abode of Septimius Severus; and then, after the innumerable columns,
+porticoes, and triumphal arches, there were the palaces and villas of the
+sumptuous cardinals of the Renascence, the Palazzo Farnese, the Palazzo
+Borghese, the Villa Medici, and others, amidst a swarming of façades and
+roofs. But, in particular, just under his window, on the left, the Pope
+was able to see the abominations of the unfinished district of the castle
+fields. In the afternoon, when he strolled through his gardens, bastioned
+by the wall of the fourth Leo like the plateau of a citadel, his view
+stretched over the ravaged valley at the foot of Monte Mario, where so
+many brick-works were established during the building frenzy. The green
+slopes are still ripped up, yellow trenches intersect them in all
+directions, and the closed works and factories have become wretched ruins
+with lofty, black, and smokeless chimneys. And at any other hour of the
+day Leo XIII could not approach his window without beholding the
+abandoned houses for which all those brick-fields had worked, those
+houses which had died before they even lived, and where there was now
+nought but the swarming misery of Rome, rotting there like some
+decomposition of olden society.
+
+However, Pierre more particularly thought of Leo XIII, forgetting the
+rest of the city to let his thoughts dwell on the Palatine, now bereft of
+its crown of palaces and rearing only its black cypresses towards the
+blue heavens. Doubtless in his mind he rebuilt the palaces of the
+Caesars, whilst before him rose great shadowy forms arrayed in purple,
+visions of his real ancestors, those emperors and Supreme Pontiffs who
+alone could tell him how one might reign over every nation and be the
+absolute master of the world. Then, however, his glances strayed to the
+Quirinal, and there he could contemplate the new and neighbouring
+royalty. How strange the meeting of those two palaces, the Quirinal and
+the Vatican, which rise up and gaze at one another across the Rome of the
+middle ages and the Renascence, whose roofs, baked and gilded by the
+burning sun, are jumbled in confusion alongside the Tiber. When the Pope
+and the King go to their windows they can with a mere opera-glass see
+each other quite distinctly. True, they are but specks in the boundless
+immensity, and what a gulf there is between them--how many centuries of
+history, how many generations that battled and suffered, how much
+departed greatness, and how much new seed for the mysterious future!
+Still, they can see one another, and they are yet waging the eternal
+fight, the fight as to which of them--the pontiff and shepherd of the
+soul or the monarch and master of the body--shall possess the people
+whose stream rolls beneath them, and in the result remain the absolute
+sovereign. And Pierre wondered also what might be the thoughts and dreams
+of Leo XIII behind those window-panes where he still fancied he could
+distinguish his pale, ghostly figure. On surveying new Rome, the ravaged
+olden districts and the new ones laid waste by the blast of disaster, the
+Pope must certainly rejoice at the colossal failure of the Italian
+Government. His city had been stolen from him; the newcomers had
+virtually declared that they would show him how a great capital was
+created, and their boast had ended in that catastrophe--a multitude of
+hideous and useless buildings which they did not even know how to finish!
+He, the Pope, could moreover only be delighted with the terrible worries
+into which the usurping _régime_ had fallen, the political crisis, and
+the financial crisis, the whole growing national unrest amidst which that
+_régime_ seemed likely to sink some day; and yet did not he himself
+possess a patriotic soul? was he not a loving son of that Italy whose
+genius and ancient ambition coursed in the blood of his veins? Ah! no,
+nothing against Italy; rather everything that would enable her to become
+once more the mistress of the world. And so, even amidst the joy of hope,
+he must have been grieved to see her thus ruined, threatened with
+bankruptcy, displaying like a sore that overturned, unfinished Rome which
+was a confession of her impotency. But, on the other hand, if the House
+of Savoy were to be swept away, would he not be there to take its place,
+and at last resume possession of his capital, which, from his window, for
+fifteen years past, he had beheld in the grip of masons and demolishers?
+And then he would again be the master and reign over the world, enthroned
+in the predestined city to which prophecy has ensured eternity and
+universal dominion.
+
+But the horizon spread out, and Pierre wondered what Leo XIII beheld
+beyond Rome, beyond the Campagna and the Sabine and Alban mountains. What
+had he seen for eighteen years past from that window whence he obtained
+his only view of the world? What echoes of modern society, its truths and
+certainties, had reached his ears? From the heights of the Viminal, where
+the railway terminus stands, the prolonged whistling of engines must have
+occasionally been carried towards him, suggesting our scientific
+civilisation, the nations brought nearer together, free humanity marching
+on towards the future. Did he himself ever dream of liberty when, on
+turning to the right, he pictured the sea over yonder, past the tombs of
+the Appian Way? Had he ever desired to go off, quit Rome and her
+traditions, and found the Papacy of the new democracies elsewhere? As he
+was said to possess so clear and penetrating a mind he ought to have
+understood and trembled at the far-away stir and noise that came from
+certain lands of battle, from those United States of America, for
+instance, where revolutionary bishops were conquering, winning over the
+people. Were they working for him or for themselves? If he could not
+follow them, if he remained stubborn within his Vatican, bound on every
+side by dogma and tradition, might not rupture some day become
+unavoidable? And, indeed, the fear of a blast of schism, coming from
+afar, must have filled him with growing anguish. It was assuredly on that
+account that he had practised the diplomacy of conciliation, seeking to
+unite in his hands all the scattered forces of the Church, overlooking
+the audacious proceedings of certain bishops as far as possible, and
+himself striving to gain the support of the people by putting himself on
+its side against the fallen monarchies. But would he ever go any farther?
+Shut up in that Vatican, behind that bronze portal, was he not bound to
+the strict formulas of Catholicism, chained to them by the force of
+centuries? There obstinacy was fated; it was impossible for him to resign
+himself to that which was his real and surpassing power, the purely
+spiritual power, the moral authority which brought mankind to his feet,
+made thousands of pilgrims kneel and women swoon. Departure from Rome and
+the renunciation of the temporal power would not displace the centre of
+the Catholic world, but would transform him, the head of the Catholic
+Church, into the head of something else. And how anxious must have been
+his thoughts if the evening breeze ever brought him a vague presentiment
+of that something else, a fear of the new religion which was yet dimly,
+confusedly dawning amidst the tramp of the nations on the march, and the
+sound of which must have reached him at one and the same time from every
+point of the compass.
+
+At this precise moment, however, Pierre felt that the white and
+motionless shadow behind those windowpanes was held erect by pride, by
+the ever present conviction of victory. If man could not achieve it, a
+miracle would intervene. He, the Pope, was absolutely convinced that he
+or some successor would recover possession of Rome. Had not the Church
+all eternity before it? And, moreover, why should not the victor be
+himself? Could not God accomplish the impossible? Why, if it so pleased
+God, on the very morrow his city would be restored to him, in spite of
+all the objections of human reason, all the apparent logic of facts. Ah!
+how he would welcome the return of that prodigal daughter whose equivocal
+adventures he had ever watched with tears bedewing his paternal eyes! He
+would soon forget the excesses which he had beheld during eighteen years
+at all hours and in all seasons. Perhaps he dreamt of what he would do
+with those new districts with which the city had been soiled. Should they
+be razed, or left as evidence of the insanity of the usurpers? At all
+events, Rome would again become the august and lifeless city, disdainful
+of such vain matters as material cleanliness and comfort, and shining
+forth upon the world like a pure soul encompassed by the traditional
+glory of the centuries. And his dream continued, picturing the course
+which events would take on the very morrow, no doubt. Anything, even a
+republic was preferable to that House of Savoy. Why not a federal
+republic, reviving the old political divisions of Italy, restoring Rome
+to the Church, and choosing him, the Pope, as the natural protector of
+the country thus reorganised? But his eyes travelled beyond Rome and
+Italy, and his dream expanded, embracing republican France, Spain which
+might become republican again, Austria which would some day be won, and
+indeed all the Catholic nations welded into the United States of Europe,
+and fraternising in peace under his high presidency as Sovereign Pontiff.
+And then would follow the supreme triumph, all the other churches at last
+vanishing, and all the dissident communities coming to him as to the one
+and only pastor, who would reign in the name of Jesus over the universal
+democracy.
+
+However, whilst Pierre was immersed in this dream which he attributed to
+Leo XIII, he was all at once interrupted by Narcisse, who exclaimed: “Oh!
+my dear Abbé, just look at those statues on the colonnade.” The young
+fellow had ordered a cup of coffee and was languidly smoking a cigar,
+deep once more in the subtle aesthetics which were his only
+preoccupation. “They are rosy, are they not?” he continued; “rosy, with a
+touch of mauve, as if the blue blood of angels circulated in their stone
+veins. It is the sun of Rome which gives them that supra-terrestrial
+life; for they live, my friend; I have seen them smile and hold out their
+arms to me during certain fine sunsets. Ah! Rome, marvellous, delicious
+Rome! One could live here as poor as Job, content with the very
+atmosphere, and in everlasting delight at breathing it!”
+
+This time Pierre could not help feeling surprised at Narcisse’s language,
+for he remembered his incisive voice and clear, precise, financial acumen
+when speaking of money matters. And, at this recollection, the young
+priest’s mind reverted to the castle fields, and intense sadness filled
+his heart as for the last time all the want and suffering rose before
+him. Again he beheld the horrible filth which was tainting so many human
+beings, that shocking proof of the abominable social injustice which
+condemns the greater number to lead the joyless, breadless lives of
+accursed beasts. And as his glance returned yet once more to the window
+of the Vatican, and he fancied he could see a pale hand uplifted behind
+the glass panes, he thought of that papal benediction which Leo XIII gave
+from that height, over Rome, and over the plain and the hills, to the
+faithful of all Christendom. And that papal benediction suddenly seemed
+to him a mockery, destitute of all power, since throughout such a
+multitude of centuries it had not once been able to stay a single one of
+the sufferings of mankind, and could not even bring a little justice for
+those poor wretches who were agonising yonder beneath the very window.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+THAT evening at dusk, as Benedetta had sent Pierre word that she desired
+to see him, he went down to her little _salon_, and there found her
+chatting with Celia.
+
+“I’ve seen your Pierina, you know,” exclaimed the latter, just as the
+young priest came in. “And with Dario, too. Or rather, she must have been
+watching for him; he found her waiting in a path on the Pincio and smiled
+at her. I understood at once. What a beauty she is!”
+
+Benedetta smiled at her friend’s enthusiasm; but her lips twitched
+somewhat painfully, for, however sensible she might be, this passion,
+which she realised to be so naive and so strong, was beginning to make
+her suffer. She certainly made allowances for Dario, but the girl was too
+much in love with him, and she feared the consequences. Even in turning
+the conversation she allowed the secret of her heart to escape her. “Pray
+sit down, Monsieur l’Abbé,” she said, “we are talking scandal, you see.
+My poor Dario is accused of making love to every pretty woman in Rome.
+People say that it’s he who gives La Tonietta those white roses which she
+has been exhibiting at the Corso every afternoon for a fortnight past.”
+
+“That’s certain, my dear,” retorted Celia impetuously. “At first people
+were in doubt, and talked of little Pontecorvo and Lieutenant Moretta.
+But every one now knows that La Tonietta’s caprice is Dario. Besides, he
+joined her in her box at the Costanzi the other evening.”
+
+Pierre remembered that the young Prince had pointed out La Tonietta at
+the Pincio one afternoon. She was one of the few _demi-mondaines_ that
+the higher-class society of Rome took an interest in. For a month or so
+the rich Englishman to whom she owed her means had been absent,
+travelling.
+
+“Ah!” resumed Benedetta, whose budding jealousy was entirely confined to
+La Pierina, “so my poor Dario is ruining himself in white roses! Well, I
+shall have to twit him about it. But one or another of these beauties
+will end by robbing me of him if our affairs are not soon settled.
+Fortunately, I have had some better news. Yes, my suit is to be taken in
+hand again, and my aunt has gone out to-day on that very account.”
+
+Then, as Victorine came in with a lamp, and Celia rose to depart,
+Benedetta turned towards Pierre, who also was rising from his chair:
+“Please stay,” said she; “I wish to speak to you.”
+
+However, Celia still lingered, interested by the mention of the divorce
+suit, and eager to know if the cousins would soon be able to marry. And
+at last throwing her arms round Benedetta, she kissed her passionately.
+“So you are hopeful, my dear,” she exclaimed. “You think that the Holy
+Father will give you back your liberty? Oh! I am so pleased; it will be
+so nice for you to marry Dario! And I’m well pleased on my own account,
+for my father and mother are beginning to yield. Only yesterday I said to
+them with that quiet little air of mine, ‘I want Attilio, and you must
+give him me.’ And then my father flew into a furious passion and
+upbraided me, and shook his fist at me, saying that if he’d made my head
+as hard as his own he would know how to break it. My mother was there
+quite silent and vexed, and all at once he turned to her and said: ‘Here,
+give her that Attilio she wants, and then perhaps we shall have some
+peace!’ Oh yes! I’m well pleased, very well pleased indeed!”
+
+As she spoke her pure virginal face beamed with so much innocent,
+celestial joy that Pierre and Benedetta could not help laughing. And at
+last she went off attended by a maid who had waited for her in the first
+_salon_.
+
+When they were alone Benedetta made the priest sit down again: “I have
+been asked to give you some important advice, my friend,” she said. “It
+seems that the news of your presence in Rome is spreading, and that bad
+reports of you are circulated. Your book is said to be a fierce appeal to
+schism, and you are spoken of as a mere ambitious, turbulent schismatic.
+After publishing your book in Paris you have come to Rome, it is said, to
+raise a fearful scandal over it in order to make it sell. Now, if you
+still desire to see his Holiness, so as to plead your cause before him,
+you are advised to make people forget you, to disappear altogether for a
+fortnight or three weeks.”
+
+Pierre was stupefied. Why, they would end by maddening him with all the
+obstacles they raised to exhaust his patience; they would actually
+implant in him an idea of schism, of an avenging, liberating scandal! He
+wished to protest and refuse the advice, but all at once he made a
+gesture of weariness. What would be the good of it, especially with that
+young woman, who was certainly sincere and affectionate. “Who asked you
+to give me this advice?” he inquired. She did not answer, but smiled, and
+with sudden intuition he resumed: “It was Monsignor Nani, was it not?”
+
+Thereupon, still unwilling to give a direct reply, she began to praise
+the prelate. He had at last consented to guide her in her divorce affair;
+and Donna Serafina had gone to the Palace of the Inquisition that very
+afternoon in order to acquaint him with the result of certain steps she
+had taken. Father Lorenza, the confessor of both the Boccanera ladies,
+was to be present at the interview, for the idea of the divorce was in
+reality his own. He had urged the two women to it in his eagerness to
+sever the bond which the patriotic priest Pisoni had tied full of such
+fine illusions. Benedetta became quite animated as she explained the
+reasons of her hopefulness. “Monsignor Nani can do everything,” she said,
+“and I am very happy that my affair should be in his hands. You must be
+reasonable also, my friend; do as you are requested. I’m sure you will
+some day be well pleased at having taken this advice.”
+
+Pierre had bowed his head and remained thoughtful. There was nothing
+unpleasant in the idea of remaining for a few more weeks in Rome, where
+day by day his curiosity found so much fresh food. Of course, all these
+delays were calculated to discourage him and bend his will. Yet what did
+he fear, since he was still determined to relinquish nothing of his book,
+and to see the Holy Father for the sole purpose of proclaiming his new
+faith? Once more, in silence, he took that oath, then yielded to
+Benedetta’s entreaties. And as he apologised for being a source of
+embarrassment in the house she exclaimed: “No, no, I am delighted to have
+you here. I fancy that your presence will bring us good fortune now that
+luck seems to be changing in our favour.”
+
+It was then agreed that he would no longer prowl around St. Peter’s and
+the Vatican, where his constant presence must have attracted attention.
+He even promised that he would virtually spend a week indoors, desirous
+as he was of reperusing certain books, certain pages of Rome’s history.
+Then he went on chatting for a moment, lulled by the peacefulness which
+reigned around him, since the lamp had illumined the _salon_ with its
+sleepy radiance. Six o’clock had just struck, and outside all was dark.
+
+“Wasn’t his Eminence indisposed to-day?” the young man asked.
+
+“Yes,” replied the Contessina. “But we are not anxious: it is only a
+little fatigue. He sent Don Vigilio to tell me that he intended to shut
+himself up in his room and dictate some letters. So there can be nothing
+much the matter, you see.”
+
+Silence fell again. For a while not a sound came from the deserted street
+or the old empty mansion, mute and dreamy like a tomb. But all at once
+the soft somnolence, instinct with all the sweetness of a dream of hope,
+was disturbed by a tempestuous entry, a whirl of skirts, a gasp of
+terror. It was Victorine, who had gone off after bringing the lamp, but
+now returned, scared and breathless: “Contessina! Contessina!”
+
+Benedetta had risen, suddenly quite white and cold, as at the advent of a
+blast of misfortune. “What, what is it? Why do you run and tremble?” she
+asked.
+
+“Dario, Monsieur Dario--down below. I went down to see if the lantern in
+the porch were alight, as it is so often forgotten. And in the dark, in
+the porch, I stumbled against Monsieur Dario. He is on the ground; he has
+a knife-thrust somewhere.”
+
+A cry leapt from the _amorosa’s_ heart: “Dead!”
+
+“No, no, wounded.”
+
+But Benedetta did not hear; in a louder and louder voice she cried:
+“Dead! dead!”
+
+“No, no, I tell you, he spoke to me. And for Heaven’s sake, be quiet. He
+silenced me because he did not want any one to know; he told me to come
+and fetch you--only you. However, as Monsieur l’Abbé is here, he had
+better help us. We shall be none too many.”
+
+Pierre listened, also quite aghast. And when Victorine wished to take the
+lamp her trembling hand, with which she had no doubt felt the prostrate
+body, was seen to be quite bloody. The sight filled Benedetta with so
+much horror that she again began to moan wildly.
+
+“Be quiet, be quiet!” repeated Victorine. “We ought not to make any noise
+in going down. I shall take the lamp, because we must at all events be
+able to see. Now, quick, quick!”
+
+Across the porch, just at the entrance of the vestibule, Dario lay prone
+upon the slabs, as if, after being stabbed in the street, he had only had
+sufficient strength to take a few steps before falling. And he had just
+fainted, and lay there with his face very pale, his lips compressed, and
+his eyes closed. Benedetta, recovering the energy of her race amidst her
+excessive grief, no longer lamented or cried out, but gazed at him with
+wild, tearless, dilated eyes, as though unable to understand. The horror
+of it all was the suddenness and mysteriousness of the catastrophe, the
+why and wherefore of this murderous attempt amidst the silence of the old
+deserted palace, black with the shades of night. The wound had as yet
+bled but little, for only the Prince’s clothes were stained.
+
+“Quick, quick!” repeated Victorine in an undertone after lowering the
+lamp and moving it around. “The porter isn’t there--he’s always at the
+carpenter’s next door--and you see that he hasn’t yet lighted the
+lantern. Still he may come back at any moment. So the Abbé and I will
+carry the Prince into his room at once.” She alone retained her head,
+like a woman of well-balanced mind and quiet activity. The two others,
+whose stupor continued, listened to her and obeyed her with the docility
+of children. “Contessina,” she continued, “you must light us. Here, take
+the lamp and lower it a little so that we may see the steps. You, Abbé,
+take the feet; I’ll take hold of him under the armpits. And don’t be
+alarmed, the poor dear fellow isn’t heavy.”
+
+Ah! that ascent of the monumental staircase with its low steps and its
+landings as spacious as guardrooms. They facilitated the cruel journey,
+but how lugubrious looked the little _cortège_ under the flickering
+glimmer of the lamp which Benedetta held with arm outstretched, stiffened
+by determination! And still not a sound came from the old lifeless
+dwelling, nothing but the silent crumbling of the walls, the slow decay
+which was making the ceilings crack. Victorine continued to whisper words
+of advice whilst Pierre, afraid of slipping on the shiny slabs, put forth
+an excess of strength which made his breath come short. Huge, wild
+shadows danced over the big expanse of bare wall up to the very vaults
+decorated with sunken panels. So endless seemed the ascent that at last a
+halt became necessary; but the slow march was soon resumed. Fortunately
+Dario’s apartments--bed-chamber, dressing-room, and sitting-room--were on
+the first floor adjoining those of the Cardinal in the wing facing the
+Tiber; so, on reaching the landing, they only had to walk softly along
+the corridor, and at last, to their great relief, laid the wounded man
+upon his bed.
+
+Victorine vented her satisfaction in a light laugh. “That’s done,” said
+she; “put the lamp on that table, Contessina. I’m sure nobody heard us.
+It’s lucky that Donna Serafina should have gone out, and that his
+Eminence should have shut himself up with Don Vigilio. I wrapped my skirt
+round Monsieur Dario’s shoulders, you know, so I don’t think any blood
+fell on the stairs. By and by, too, I’ll go down with a sponge and wipe
+the slabs in the porch--” She stopped short, looked at Dario, and then
+quickly added: “He’s breathing--now I’ll leave you both to watch over him
+while I go for good Doctor Giordano, who saw you come into the world,
+Contessina. He’s a man to be trusted.”
+
+Alone with the unconscious sufferer in that dim chamber, which seemed to
+quiver with the frightful horror that filled their hearts, Benedetta and
+Pierre remained on either side of the bed, as yet unable to exchange a
+word. The young woman first opened her arms and wrung her hands whilst
+giving vent to a hollow moan, as if to relieve and exhale her grief; and
+then, leaning forward, she watched for some sign of life on that pale
+face whose eyes were closed. Dario was certainly breathing, but his
+respiration was slow and very faint, and some time went by before a touch
+of colour returned to his cheeks. At last, however, he opened his eyes,
+and then she at once took hold of his hand and pressed it, instilling
+into the pressure all the anguish of her heart. Great was her happiness
+on feeling that he feebly returned the clasp.
+
+“Tell me,” she said, “you can see me and hear me, can’t you? What has
+happened, good God?”
+
+He did not at first answer, being worried by the presence of Pierre. On
+recognising the young priest, however, he seemed content that he should
+be there, and then glanced apprehensively round the room to see if there
+were anybody else. And at last he murmured: “No one saw me, no one
+knows?”
+
+“No, no; be easy. We carried you up with Victorine without meeting a
+soul. Aunt has just gone out, uncle is shut up in his rooms.”
+
+At this Dario seemed relieved, and he even smiled. “I don’t want anybody
+to know, it is so stupid,” he murmured.
+
+“But in God’s name what has happened?” she again asked him.
+
+“Ah! I don’t know, I don’t know,” was his response, as he lowered his
+eyelids with a weary air as if to escape the question. But he must have
+realised that it was best for him to confess some portion of the truth at
+once, for he resumed: “A man was hidden in the shadow of the porch--he
+must have been waiting for me. And so, when I came in, he dug his knife
+into my shoulder, there.”
+
+Forthwith she again leant over him, quivering, and gazing into the depths
+of his eyes: “But who was the man, who was he?” she asked. Then, as he,
+in a yet more weary way, began to stammer that he didn’t know, that the
+man had fled into the darkness before he could recognise him, she raised
+a terrible cry: “It was Prada! it was Prada, confess it, I know it
+already!” And, quite delirious, she went on: “I tell you that I know it!
+Ah! I would not be his, and he is determined that we shall never belong
+to one another. Rather than have that he will kill you on the day when I
+am free to be your wife! Oh! I know him well; I shall never, never be
+happy. Yes, I know it well, it was Prada, Prada!”
+
+But sudden energy upbuoyed the wounded man, and he loyally protested:
+“No, no, it was not Prada, nor was it any one working for him. That I
+swear to you. I did not recognise the man, but it wasn’t Prada--no, no!”
+
+There was such a ring of truth in Dario’s words that Benedetta must have
+been convinced by them. But terror once more overpowered her, for the
+hand she held was suddenly growing soft, moist, and powerless. Exhausted
+by his effort, Dario had fallen back, again fainting, his face quite
+white and his eyes closed. And it seemed to her that he was dying.
+Distracted by her anguish, she felt him with trembling, groping hands:
+“Look, look, Monsieur l’Abbé!” she exclaimed. “But he is dying, he is
+dying; he is already quite cold. Ah! God of heaven, he is dying!”
+
+Pierre, terribly upset by her cries, sought to reassure her, saying: “He
+spoke too much; he has lost consciousness, as he did before. But I assure
+you that I can feel his heart beating. Here, put your hand here,
+Contessina. For mercy’s sake don’t distress yourself like that; the
+doctor will soon be here, and everything will be all right.”
+
+But she did not listen to him, and all at once he was lost in amazement,
+for she flung herself upon the body of the man she adored, caught it in a
+frantic embrace, bathed it with tears and covered it with kisses whilst
+stammering words of fire: “Ah! if I were to lose you, if I were to lose
+you! And to think that I repulsed you, that I would not accept happiness
+when it was yet possible! Yes, that idea of mine, that vow I made to the
+Madonna! Yet how could she be offended by our happiness? And then, and
+then, if she has deceived me, if she takes you from me, ah! then I can
+have but one regret--that I did not damn myself with you--yes, yes,
+damnation rather than that we should never, never be each other’s!”
+
+Was this the woman who had shown herself so calm, so sensible, so patient
+the better to ensure her happiness? Pierre was terrified, and no longer
+recognised her. He had hitherto seen her so reserved, so modest, with a
+childish charm that seemed to come from her very nature! But under the
+threatening blow she feared, the terrible blood of the Boccaneras had
+awoke within her with a long heredity of violence, pride, frantic and
+exasperated longings. She wished for her share of life, her share of
+love! And she moaned and she clamoured, as if death, in taking her lover
+from her, were tearing away some of her own flesh.
+
+“Calm yourself, I entreat you, madame,” repeated the priest. “He is
+alive, his heart beats. You are doing yourself great harm.”
+
+But she wished to die with her lover: “O my darling! if you must go, take
+me, take me with you. I will lay myself on your heart, I will clasp you
+so tightly with my arms that they shall be joined to yours, and then we
+must needs be buried together. Yes, yes, we shall be dead, and we shall
+be wedded all the same--wedded in death! I promised that I would belong
+to none but you, and I will be yours in spite of everything, even in the
+grave. O my darling, open your eyes, open your mouth, kiss me if you
+don’t want me to die as soon as you are dead!”
+
+A blaze of wild passion, full of blood and fire, had passed through that
+mournful chamber with old, sleepy walls. But tears were now overcoming
+Benedetta, and big gasping sobs at last threw her, blinded and
+strengthless, on the edge of the bed. And fortunately an end was put to
+the terrible scene by the arrival of the doctor whom Victorine had
+fetched.
+
+Doctor Giordano was a little old man of over sixty, with white curly
+hair, and fresh-looking, clean-shaven countenance. By long practice among
+Churchmen he had acquired the paternal appearance and manner of an
+amiable prelate. And he was said to be a very worthy man, tending the
+poor for nothing, and displaying ecclesiastical reserve and discretion in
+all delicate cases. For thirty years past the whole Boccanera family,
+children, women, and even the most eminent Cardinal himself, had in all
+cases of sickness been placed in the hands of this prudent practitioner.
+Lighted by Victorine and helped by Pierre, he undressed Dario, who was
+roused from his swoon by pain; and after examining the wound he declared
+with a smile that it was not at all dangerous. The young Prince would at
+the utmost have to spend three weeks in bed, and no complications were to
+be feared. Then, like all the doctors of Rome, enamoured of the fine
+thrusts and cuts which day by day they have to dress among chance
+patients of the lower classes, he complacently lingered over the wound,
+doubtless regarding it as a clever piece of work, for he ended by saying
+to the Prince in an undertone: “That’s what we call a warning. The man
+didn’t want to kill, the blow was dealt downwards so that the knife might
+slip through the flesh without touching the bone. Ah! a man really needs
+to be skilful to deal such a stab; it was very neatly done.”
+
+“Yes, yes,” murmured Dario, “he spared me; had he chosen he could have
+pierced me through.”
+
+Benedetta did not hear. Since the doctor had declared the case to be free
+from danger, and had explained that the fainting fits were due to nervous
+shock, she had fallen in a chair, quite prostrated. Gradually, however,
+some gentle tears coursed from her eyes, bringing relief after her
+frightful despair, and then, rising to her feet, she came and kissed
+Dario with mute and passionate delight.
+
+“I say, my dear doctor,” resumed the Prince, “it’s useless for people to
+know of this. It’s so ridiculous. Nobody has seen anything, it seems,
+excepting Monsieur l’Abbé, whom I ask to keep the matter secret. And in
+particular I don’t want anybody to alarm the Cardinal or my aunt, or
+indeed any of our friends.”
+
+Doctor Giordano indulged in one of his placid smiles. “_Bene, bene_,”
+ said he, “that’s natural; don’t worry yourself. We will say that you have
+had a fall on the stairs and have dislocated your shoulder. And now that
+the wound is dressed you must try to sleep, and don’t get feverish. I
+will come back to-morrow morning.”
+
+That evening of excitement was followed by some very tranquil days, and a
+new life began for Pierre, who at first remained indoors, reading and
+writing, with no other recreation than that of spending his afternoons in
+Dario’s room, where he was certain to find Benedetta. After a somewhat
+intense fever lasting for eight and forty hours, cure took its usual
+course, and the story of the dislocated shoulder was so generally
+believed, that the Cardinal insisted on Donna Serafina departing from her
+habits of strict economy, to have a second lantern lighted on the landing
+in order that no such accident might occur again. And then the monotonous
+peacefulness was only disturbed by a final incident, a threat of trouble,
+as it were, with which Pierre found himself mixed up one evening when he
+was lingering beside the convalescent patient.
+
+Benedetta had absented herself for a few minutes, and as Victorine, who
+had brought up some broth, was leaning towards the Prince to take the
+empty cup from him, she said in a low voice: “There’s a girl, Monsieur,
+La Pierina, who comes here every day, crying and asking for news of you.
+I can’t get rid of her, she’s always prowling about the place, so I
+thought it best to tell you of it.”
+
+Unintentionally, Pierre heard her and understood everything. Dario, who
+was looking at him, at once guessed his thoughts, and without answering
+Victorine exclaimed: “Yes, Abbé, it was that brute Tito! How idiotic,
+eh?” At the same time, although the young man protested that he had done
+nothing whatever for the girl’s brother to give him such a “warning,” he
+smiled in an embarrassed way, as if vexed and even somewhat ashamed of
+being mixed up in an affair of the kind. And he was evidently relieved
+when the priest promised that he would see the girl, should she come
+back, and make her understand that she ought to remain at home.
+
+“It was such a stupid affair!” the Prince repeated, with an exaggerated
+show of anger. “Such things are not of our times.”
+
+But all at once he ceased speaking, for Benedetta entered the room. She
+sat down again beside her dear patient, and the sweet, peaceful evening
+then took its course in the old sleepy chamber, the old, lifeless palace,
+whence never a sound arose.
+
+When Pierre began to go out again he at first merely took a brief airing
+in the district. The Via Giulia interested him, for he knew how splendid
+it had been in the time of Julius II, who had dreamt of lining it with
+sumptuous palaces. Horse and foot races then took place there during the
+carnival, the Palazzo Farnese being the starting-point, and the Piazza of
+St. Peter’s the goal. Pierre had also lately read that a French
+ambassador, D’Estrée, Marquis de Coure, had resided at the Palazzo
+Sacchetti, and in 1638 had given some magnificent entertainments in
+honour of the birth of the Dauphin,* when on three successive days there
+had been racing from the Ponte Sisto to San Giovanni dei Fiorentini
+amidst an extraordinary display of sumptuosity: the street being strewn
+with flowers, and rich hangings adorning every window. On the second
+evening there had been fireworks on the Tiber, with a machine
+representing the ship Argo carrying Jason and his companions to the
+recovery of the Golden Fleece; and, on another occasion, the Farnese
+fountain, the Mascherone, had flowed with wine. Nowadays, however, all
+was changed. The street, bright with sunshine or steeped in shadow
+according to the hour, was ever silent and deserted. The heavy, ancient
+palatial houses, their old doors studded with plates and nails, their
+windows barred with huge iron gratings, always seemed to be asleep, whole
+storeys showing nothing but closed shutters as if to keep out the
+daylight for evermore. Now and again, when a door was open, you espied
+deep vaults, damp, cold courts, green with mildew, and encompassed by
+colonnades like cloisters. Then, in the outbuildings of the mansions, the
+low structures which had collected more particularly on the side of the
+Tiber, various small silent shops had installed themselves. There was a
+baker’s, a tailor’s, and a bookbinder’s, some fruiterers’ shops with a
+few tomatoes and salad plants set out on boards, and some wine-shops
+which claimed to sell the vintages of Frascati and Genzano, but whose
+customers seemed to be dead. Midway along the street was a modern prison,
+whose horrid yellow wall in no wise enlivened the scene, whilst,
+overhead, a flight of telegraph wires stretched from the arcades of the
+Farnese palace to the distant vista of trees beyond the river. With its
+infrequent traffic the street, even in the daytime, was like some
+sepulchral corridor where the past was crumbling into dust, and when
+night fell its desolation quite appalled Pierre. You did not meet a soul,
+you did not see a light in any window, and the glimmering gas lamps, few
+and far between, seemed powerless to pierce the gloom. On either hand the
+doors were barred and bolted, and not a sound, not a breath came from
+within. Even when, after a long interval, you passed a lighted wine-shop,
+behind whose panes of frosted glass a lamp gleamed dim and motionless,
+not an exclamation, not a suspicion of a laugh ever reached your ear.
+There was nothing alive save the two sentries placed outside the prison,
+one before the entrance and the other at the corner of the right-hand
+lane, and they remained erect and still, coagulated, as it were, in that
+dead street.
+
+ * Afterwards Louis XIV.--Trans.
+
+Pierre’s interest, however, was not merely confined to the Via Giulia; it
+extended to the whole district, once so fine and fashionable, but now
+fallen into sad decay, far removed from modern life, and exhaling a faint
+musty odour of monasticism. Towards San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, where
+the new Corso Vittorio Emanuele has ripped up every olden district, the
+lofty five-storeyed houses with their dazzling sculptured fronts
+contrasted violently with the black sunken dwellings of the neighbouring
+lanes. In the evening the globes of the electric lamps on the Corso shone
+out with such dazzling whiteness that the gas lamps of the Via Giulia and
+other streets looked like smoky lanterns. There were several old and
+famous thoroughfares, the Via Banchi Vecchi, the Via del Pellegrino, the
+Via di Monserrato, and an infinity of cross-streets which intersected and
+connected the others, all going towards the Tiber, and for the most part
+so narrow that vehicles scarcely had room to pass. And each street had
+its church, a multitude of churches all more or less alike, highly
+decorated, gilded, and painted, and open only at service time when they
+were full of sunlight and incense. In the Via Giulia, in addition to San
+Giovanni dei Fiorentini, San Biagio della Pagnotta, San Eligio degli
+Orefici, and three or four others, there was the so-called Church of the
+Dead, Santa Maria dell’ Orazione; and this church, which is at the lower
+end behind the Farnese palace, was often visited by Pierre, who liked to
+dream there of the wild life of Rome, and of the pious brothers of the
+Confraternita della Morte, who officiate there, and whose mission is to
+search for and bury such poor outcasts as die in the Campagna. One
+evening he was present at the funeral of two unknown men, whose bodies,
+after remaining unburied for quite a fortnight, had been discovered in a
+field near the Appian Way.
+
+However, Pierre’s favourite promenade soon became the new quay of the
+Tiber beyond the Palazzo Boccanera. He had merely to take the narrow lane
+skirting the mansion to reach a spot where he found much food for
+reflection. Although the quay was not yet finished, the work seemed to be
+quite abandoned. There were heaps of rubbish, blocks of stone, broken
+fences, and dilapidated tool-sheds all around. To such a height had it
+been necessary to carry the quay walls--designed to protect the city from
+floods, for the river bed has been rising for centuries past--that the
+old terrace of the Boccanera gardens, with its double flight of steps to
+which pleasure boats had once been moored, now lay in a hollow,
+threatened with annihilation whenever the works should be finished. But
+nothing had yet been levelled; the soil, brought thither for making up
+the bank, lay as it had fallen from the carts, and on all sides were pits
+and mounds interspersed with the abandoned building materials. Wretched
+urchins came to play there, workmen without work slept in the sunshine,
+and women after washing ragged linen spread it out to dry upon the
+stones. Nevertheless the spot proved a happy, peaceful refuge for Pierre,
+one fruitful in inexhaustible reveries when for hours at a time he
+lingered gazing at the river, the quays, and the city, stretching in
+front of him and on either hand.
+
+At eight in the morning the sun already gilded the vast opening. On
+turning to the left he perceived the roofs of the Trastevere, of a misty,
+bluish grey against the dazzling sky. Then, just beyond the apse of San
+Giovanni, on the right, the river curved, and on its other bank the
+poplars of the Ospedale di Santo Spirito formed a green curtain, while
+the castle of Sant’ Angelo showed brightly in the distance. But Pierre’s
+eyes dwelt more particularly on the bank just in front of him, for there
+he found some lingering vestiges of old Rome. On that side indeed between
+the Ponte Sisto and the Ponte Sant’ Angelo, the quays, which were to
+imprison the river within high, white, fortress-like walls, had not yet
+been raised, and the bank with its remnants of the old papal city
+conjured up an extraordinary vision of the middle ages. The houses,
+descending to the river brink, were cracked, scorched, rusted by
+innumerable burning summers, like so many antique bronzes. Down below
+there were black vaults into which the water flowed, piles upholding
+walls, and fragments of Roman stone-work plunging into the river bed;
+then, rising from the shore, came steep, broken stairways, green with
+moisture, tiers of terraces, storeys with tiny windows pierced here and
+their in hap-hazard fashion, houses perched atop of other houses, and the
+whole jumbled together with a fantastic commingling of balconies and
+wooden galleries, footbridges spanning courtyards, clumps of trees
+growing apparently on the very roofs, and attics rising from amidst pinky
+tiles. The contents of a drain fell noisily into the river from a worn
+and soiled gorge of stone; and wherever the houses stood back and the
+bank appeared, it was covered with wild vegetation, weeds, shrubs, and
+mantling ivy, which trailed like a kingly robe of state. And in the glory
+of the sun the wretchedness and dirt vanished, the crooked, jumbled
+houses seemed to be of gold, draped with the purple of the red petticoats
+and the dazzling white of the shifts which hung drying from their
+windows; while higher still, above the district, the Janiculum rose into
+all the luminary’s dazzlement, uprearing the slender profile of Sant’
+Onofrio amidst cypresses and pines.
+
+Leaning on the parapet of the quay wall, Pierre sadly gazed at the Tiber
+for hours at a time. Nothing could convey an idea of the weariness of
+those old waters, the mournful slowness of their flow along that
+Babylonian trench where they were confined within huge, bare, livid
+prison-like walls. In the sunlight their yellowness was gilded, and the
+faint quiver of the current brought ripples of green and blue; but as
+soon as the shade spread over it the stream became opaque like mud, so
+turbid in its venerable old age that it no longer even gave back a
+reflection of the houses lining it. And how desolate was its abandonment,
+what a stream of silence and solitude it was! After the winter rains it
+might roll furiously and threateningly, but during the long months of
+bright weather it traversed Rome without a sound, and Pierre could remain
+there all day long without seeing either a skiff or a sail. The two or
+three little steam-boats which arrived from the coast, the few tartanes
+which brought wine from Sicily, never came higher than the Aventine,
+beyond which there was only a watery desert in which here and there, at
+long intervals, a motionless angler let his line dangle. All that Pierre
+ever saw in the way of shipping was a sort of ancient, covered pinnace, a
+rotting Noah’s ark, moored on the right beside the old bank, and he
+fancied that it might be used as a washhouse, though on no occasion did
+he see any one in it. And on a neck of mud there also lay a stranded boat
+with one side broken in, a lamentable symbol of the impossibility and the
+relinquishment of navigation. Ah! that decay of the river, that decay of
+father Tiber, as dead as the famous ruins whose dust he is weary of
+laving! And what an evocation! all the centuries of history, so many
+things, so many men, that those yellow waters have reflected till, full
+of lassitude and disgust, they have grown heavy, silent and deserted,
+longing only for annihilation.
+
+One morning on the river bank Pierre found La Pierina standing behind an
+abandoned tool-shed. With her neck extended, she was looking fixedly at
+the window of Dario’s room, at the corner of the quay and the lane.
+Doubtless she had been frightened by Victorine’s severe reception, and
+had not dared to return to the mansion; but some servant, possibly, had
+told her which was the young Prince’s window, and so she now came to this
+spot, where without wearying she waited for a glimpse of the man she
+loved, for some sign of life and salvation, the mere hope of which made
+her heart leap. Deeply touched by the way in which she hid herself, all
+humility and quivering with adoration, the priest approached her, and
+instead of scolding her and driving her away as he had been asked to do,
+spoke to her in a gentle, cheerful manner, asking her for news of her
+people as though nothing had happened, and at last contriving to mention
+Dario’s name in order that she might understand that he would be up and
+about again within a fortnight. On perceiving Pierre, La Pierina had
+started with timidity and distrust as if anxious to flee; but when she
+understood him, tears of happiness gushed from her eyes, and with a
+bright smile she kissed her hand to him, calling: “_Grazie, grazie_,
+thanks, thanks!” And thereupon she darted away, and he never saw her
+again.
+
+On another morning at an early hour, as Pierre was going to say mass at
+Santa Brigida on the Piazza Farnese, he was surprised to meet Benedetta
+coming out of the church and carrying a small phial of oil. She evinced
+no embarrassment, but frankly told him that every two or three days she
+went thither to obtain from the beadle a few drops of the oil used for
+the lamp that burnt before an antique wooden statue of the Madonna, in
+which she had perfect confidence. She even confessed that she had never
+had confidence in any other Madonna, having never obtained anything from
+any other, though she had prayed to several of high repute, Madonnas of
+marble and even of silver. And so her heart was full of ardent devotion
+for the holy image which refused her nothing. And she declared in all
+simplicity, as though the matter were quite natural and above discussion,
+that the few drops of oil which she applied, morning and evening, to
+Dario’s wound, were alone working his cure, so speedy a cure as to be
+quite miraculous. Pierre, fairly aghast, distressed indeed to find such
+childish, superstitious notions in one so full of sense and grace and
+passion, did not even venture to smile.
+
+In the evenings, when he came back from his strolls and spent an hour or
+so in Dario’s room, he would for a time divert the patient by relating
+what he had done and seen and thought of during the day. And when he
+again ventured to stray beyond the district, and became enamoured of the
+lovely gardens of Rome, which he visited as soon as they opened in the
+morning in order that he might be virtually alone, he delighted the young
+prince and Benedetta with his enthusiasm, his rapturous passion for the
+splendid trees, the plashing water, and the spreading terraces whence the
+views were so sublime. It was not the most extensive of these gardens
+which the more deeply impressed his heart. In the grounds of the Villa
+Borghese, the little Roman Bois de Boulogne, there were certainly some
+majestic clumps of greenery, some regal avenues where carriages took a
+turn in the afternoon before the obligatory drive to the Pincio; but
+Pierre was more touched by the reserved garden of the villa--that villa
+dazzling with marble and now containing one of the finest museums in the
+world. There was a simple lawn of fine grass with a vast central basin
+surmounted by a figure of Venus, nude and white; and antique fragments,
+vases, statues, columns, and _sarcophagi_ were ranged symmetrically all
+around the deserted, sunlit yet melancholy, sward. On returning on one
+occasion to the Pincio Pierre spent a delightful morning there,
+penetrated by the charm of this little nook with its scanty evergreens,
+and its admirable vista of all Rome and St. Peter’s rising up afar off in
+the soft limpid radiance. At the Villa Albani and the Villa Pamphili he
+again came upon superb parasol pines, tall, stately, and graceful, and
+powerful elm-trees with twisted limbs and dusky foliage. In the Pamphili
+grounds, the elm-trees steeped the paths in a delicious half-light, the
+lake with its weeping willows and tufts of reeds had a dreamy aspect,
+while down below the _parterre_ displayed a fantastic floral mosaic
+bright with the various hues of flowers and foliage. That which most
+particularly struck Pierre, however, in this, the noblest, most spacious,
+and most carefully tended garden of Rome, was the novel and unexpected
+view that he suddenly obtained of St. Peter’s, whilst skirting a low
+wall: a view whose symbolism for ever clung to him. Rome had completely
+vanished, and between the slopes of Monte Mario and another wooded height
+which hid the city, there only appeared the colossal dome which seemed to
+be poised on an infinity of scattered blocks, now white, now red. These
+were the houses of the Borgo, the jumbled piles of the Vatican and the
+Basilica which the huge dome surmounted and annihilated, showing greyly
+blue in the light blue of the heavens, whilst far away stretched a
+delicate, boundless vista of the Campagna, likewise of a bluish tint.
+
+It was, however, more particularly in the less sumptuous gardens, those
+of a more homely grace, that Pierre realised that even things have souls.
+Ah! that Villa Mattei on one side of the Cœlius with its terraced
+grounds, its sloping alleys edged with laurel, aloe, and spindle tree,
+its box-plants forming arbours, its oranges, its roses, and its
+fountains! Pierre spent some delicious hours there, and only found a
+similar charm on visiting the Aventine, where three churches are
+embowered in verdure. The little garden of Santa Sabina, the birthplace
+of the Dominican order, is closed on all sides and affords no view: it
+slumbers in quiescence, warm and perfumed by its orange-trees, amongst
+which that planted by St. Dominic stands huge and gnarled but still laden
+with ripe fruit. At the adjoining Priorato, however, the garden, perched
+high above the Tiber, overlooks a vast expanse, with the river and the
+buildings on either bank as far as the summit of the Janiculum. And in
+these gardens of Rome Pierre ever found the same clipped box-shrubs, the
+same eucalypti with white trunks and pale leaves long like hair, the same
+ilex-trees squat and dusky, the same giant pines, the same black
+cypresses, the same marbles whitening amidst tufts of roses, and the same
+fountains gurgling under mantling ivy. Never did he enjoy more gentle,
+sorrow-tinged delight than at the Villa of Pope Julius, where all the
+life of a gay and sensual period is suggested by the semi-circular
+porticus opening on the gardens, a porticus decorated with paintings,
+golden trellis-work laden with flowers, amidst which flutter flights of
+smiling Cupids. Then, on the evening when he returned from the Farnesina,
+he declared that he had brought all the dead soul of ancient Rome away
+with him, and it was not the paintings executed after Raffaelle’s designs
+that had touched him, it was rather the pretty hall on the river side
+decorated in soft blue and pink and lilac, with an art devoid of genius
+yet so charming and so Roman; and in particular it was the abandoned
+garden once stretching down to the Tiber, and now shut off from it by the
+new quay, and presenting an aspect of woeful desolation, ravaged, bossy
+and weedy like a cemetery, albeit the golden fruit of orange and citron
+tree still ripened there.
+
+And for the last time a shock came to Pierre’s heart on the lovely
+evening when he visited the Villa Medici. There he was on French soil.*
+And again what a marvellous garden he found with box-plants, and pines,
+and avenues full of magnificence and charm! What a refuge for antique
+reverie was that wood of ilex-trees, so old and so sombre, where the sun
+in declining cast fiery gleams of red gold amidst the sheeny bronze of
+the foliage. You ascend by endless steps, and from the crowning belvedere
+on high you embrace all Rome at a glance as though by opening your arms
+you could seize it in its entirety. From the villa’s dining-room,
+decorated with portraits of all the artists who have successfully
+sojourned there, and from the spacious peaceful library one beholds the
+same splendid, broad, all-conquering panorama, a panorama of unlimited
+ambition, whose infinite ought to set in the hearts of the young men
+dwelling there a determination to subjugate the world. Pierre, who came
+thither opposed to the principle of the “Prix de Rome,” that traditional,
+uniform education so dangerous for originality, was for a moment charmed
+by the warm peacefulness, the limpid solitude of the garden, and the
+sublime horizon where the wings of genius seemed to flutter. Ah! how
+delightful, to be only twenty and to live for three years amidst such
+infinite sweetness, encompassed by the finest works of man; to say to
+oneself that one is as yet too young to produce, and to reflect, and
+seek, and learn how to enjoy, suffer, and love! But Pierre afterwards
+reflected that this was not a fit task for youth, and that to appreciate
+the divine enjoyment of such a retreat, all art and blue sky, ripe age
+was needed, age with victories already gained and weariness following
+upon the accomplishment of work. He chatted with some of the young
+pensioners, and remarked that if those who were inclined to dreaminess
+and contemplation, like those who could merely claim mediocrity,
+accommodated themselves to this life cloistered in the art of the past,
+on the other hand artists of active bent and personal temperament pined
+with impatience, their eyes ever turned towards Paris, their souls eager
+to plunge into the furnace of battle and production.
+
+ * Here is the French Academy, where winners of the “Prix de
+ Rome” in painting, sculpture, architecture, engraving, and
+ music are maintained by the French Government for three
+ years. The creation dates from Louis XIV.--Trans.
+
+All those gardens of which Pierre spoke to Dario and Benedetta with so
+much rapture, awoke within them the memory of the garden of the Villa
+Montefiori, now a waste, but once so green, planted with the finest
+orange-trees of Rome, a grove of centenarian orange-trees where they had
+learnt to love one another. And the memory of their early love brought
+thoughts of their present situation and their future prospects. To these
+the conversation always reverted, and evening after evening Pierre
+witnessed their delight, and heard them talk of coming happiness like
+lovers transported to the seventh heaven. The suit for the dissolution of
+Benedetta’s marriage was now assuming a more and more favourable aspect.
+Guided by a powerful hand, Donna Serafina was apparently acting very
+vigorously, for almost every day she had some further good news to
+report. She was indeed anxious to finish the affair both for the
+continuity and for the honour of the name, for on the one hand Dario
+refused to marry any one but his cousin, and on the other this marriage
+would explain everything and put an end to an intolerable situation. The
+scandalous rumours which circulated both in the white and the black world
+quite incensed her, and a victory was the more necessary as Leo XIII,
+already so aged, might be snatched away at any moment, and in the
+Conclave which would follow she desired that her brother’s name should
+shine forth with untarnished, sovereign radiance. Never had the secret
+ambition of her life, the hope that her race might give a third pope to
+the Church, filled her with so much passion. It was as if she therein
+sought a consolation for the harsh abandonment of Advocate Morano.
+Invariably clad in sombre garb, ever active and slim, so tightly laced
+that from behind one might have taken her for a young girl, she was so to
+say the black soul of that old palace; and Pierre, who met her
+everywhere, prowling and inspecting like a careful house-keeper, and
+jealously watching over her brother the Cardinal, bowed to her in
+silence, chilled to the heart by the stern look of her withered wrinkled
+face in which was set the large, opiniative nose of her family. However
+she barely returned his bows, for she still disdained that paltry foreign
+priest, and only tolerated him in order to please Monsignor Nani and
+Viscount Philibert de la Choue.
+
+A witness every evening of the anxious delight and impatience of
+Benedetta and Dario, Pierre by degrees became almost as impassioned as
+themselves, as desirous for an early solution. Benedetta’s suit was about
+to come before the Congregation of the Council once more. Monsignor
+Palma, the defender of the marriage, had demanded a supplementary inquiry
+after the favourable decision arrived at in the first instance by a bare
+majority of one vote--a majority which the Pope would certainly not have
+thought sufficient had he been asked for his ratification. So the
+question now was to gain votes among the ten cardinals who formed the
+Congregation, to persuade and convince them, and if possible ensure an
+almost unanimous pronouncement. The task was arduous, for, instead of
+facilitating matters, Benedetta’s relationship to Cardinal Boccanera
+raised many difficulties, owing to the intriguing spirit rife at the
+Vatican, the spite of rivals who, by perpetuating the scandal, hoped to
+destroy Boccanera’s chance of ever attaining to the papacy. Every
+afternoon, however, Donna Serafina devoted herself to the task of winning
+votes under the direction of her confessor, Father Lorenza, whom she saw
+daily at the Collegio Germanico, now the last refuge of the Jesuits in
+Rome, for they have ceased to be masters of the Gesù. The chief hope of
+success lay in Prada’s formal declaration that he would not put in an
+appearance. The whole affair wearied and irritated him; the imputations
+levelled against him as a man, seemed to him supremely odious and
+ridiculous; and he no longer even took the trouble to reply to the
+assignations which were sent to him. He acted indeed as if he had never
+been married, though deep in his heart the wound dealt to his passion and
+his pride still lingered, bleeding afresh whenever one or another of the
+scandalous rumours in circulation reached his ears. However, as their
+adversary desisted from all action, one can understand that the hopes of
+Benedetta and Dario increased, the more so as hardly an evening passed
+without Donna Serafina telling them that she believed she had gained the
+support of another cardinal.
+
+But the man who terrified them all was Monsignor Palma, whom the
+Congregation had appointed to defend the sacred ties of matrimony. His
+rights and privileges were almost unlimited, he could appeal yet again,
+and in any case would make the affair drag on as long as it pleased him.
+His first report, in reply to Morano’s memoir, had been a terrible blow,
+and it was now said that a second one which he was preparing would prove
+yet more pitiless, establishing as a fundamental principle of the Church
+that it could not annul a marriage whose nonconsummation was purely and
+simply due to the action of the wife in refusing obedience to her
+husband. In presence of such energy and logic, it was unlikely that the
+cardinals, even if sympathetic, would dare to advise the Holy Father to
+dissolve the marriage. And so discouragement was once more overcoming
+Benedetta when Donna Serafina, on returning from a visit to Monsignor
+Nani, calmed her somewhat by telling her that a mutual friend had
+undertaken to deal with Monsignor Palma. However, said she, even if they
+succeeded, it would doubtless cost them a large sum.
+
+Monsignor Palma, a theologist expert in all canonical affairs, and a
+perfectly honest man in pecuniary matters, had met with a great
+misfortune in his life. He had a niece, a poor and lovely girl, for whom,
+unhappily, in his declining years he conceived an insensate passion, with
+the result that to avoid a scandal he was compelled to marry her to a
+rascal who now preyed upon her and even beat her. And the prelate was now
+passing through a fearful crisis, weary of reducing himself to beggary,
+and indeed no longer having the money necessary to extricate his nephew
+by marriage from a very nasty predicament, the result of cheating at
+cards. So the idea was to save the young man by a considerable pecuniary
+payment, and then to procure him employment without asking aught of his
+uncle, who, as if offering complicity, came in tears one evening, when
+night had fallen, to thank Donna Serafina for her exceeding goodness.
+
+Pierre was with Dario that evening when Benedetta entered the room,
+laughing and joyfully clapping her bands. “It’s done, it’s done!” she
+said, “he has just left aunt, and vowed eternal gratitude to her. He will
+now be obliged to show himself amiable.”
+
+However Dario distrustfully inquired: “But was he made to sign anything,
+did he enter into a formal engagement?”
+
+“Oh! no; how could one do that? It’s such a delicate matter,” replied
+Benedetta. “But people say that he is a very honest man.” Nevertheless,
+in spite of these words, she herself became uneasy. What if Monsignor
+Palma should remain incorruptible in spite of the great service which had
+been rendered him? Thenceforth this idea haunted them, and their suspense
+began once more.
+
+Dario, eager to divert his mind, was imprudent enough to get up before he
+was perfectly cured, and, his wound reopening, he was obliged to take to
+his bed again for a few days. Every evening, as previously, Pierre strove
+to enliven him with an account of his strolls. The young priest was now
+getting bolder, rambling in turn through all the districts of Rome, and
+discovering the many “classical” curiosities catalogued in the
+guide-books. One evening he spoke with a kind of affection of the
+principal squares of the city which he had first thought commonplace, but
+which now seemed to him very varied, each with original features of its
+own. There was the noble Piazza del Popolo of such monumental symmetry
+and so full of sunlight; there was the Piazza di Spagna, the lively
+meeting-place of foreigners, with its double flight of a hundred and
+thirty steps gilded by the sun; there was the vast Piazza Colonna, always
+swarming with people, and the most Italian of all the Roman squares from
+the presence of the idle, careless crowd which ever lounged round the
+column of Marcus Aurelius as if waiting for fortune to fall from heaven;
+there was also the long and regular Piazza Navona, deserted since the
+market was no longer held there, and retaining a melancholy recollection
+of its former bustling life; and there was the Campo dei Fiori, which was
+invaded each morning by the tumultuous fruit and vegetable markets, quite
+a plantation of huge umbrellas sheltering heaps of tomatoes, pimentoes,
+and grapes amidst a noisy stream of dealers and housewives. Pierre’s
+great surprise, however, was the Piazza del Campidoglio--the “Square of
+the Capitol”--which to him suggested a summit, an open spot overlooking
+the city and the world, but which he found to be small and square, and on
+three sides enclosed by palaces, whilst on the fourth side the view was
+of little extent.* There are no passers-by there; visitors usually come
+up by a flight of steps bordered by a few palm-trees, only foreigners
+making use of the winding carriage-ascent. The vehicles wait, and the
+tourists loiter for a while with their eyes raised to the admirable
+equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, in antique bronze, which occupies
+the centre of the piazza. Towards four o’clock, when the sun gilds the
+left-hand palace, and the slender statues of its entablature show vividly
+against the blue sky, you might think yourself in some warm cosy square
+of a little provincial town, what with the women of the neighbourhood who
+sit knitting under the arcade, and the bands of ragged urchins who
+disport themselves on all sides like school-boys in a playground.
+
+ * The Piazza del Campidoglio is really a depression between the
+ Capitolium proper and the northern height called the Arx. It is
+ supposed to have been the exact site of Romulus’s traditional
+ Asylum.--Trans.
+
+Then, on another evening Pierre told Benedetta and Dario of his
+admiration for the Roman fountains, for in no other city of the world
+does water flow so abundantly and magnificently in fountains of bronze
+and marble, from the boat-shaped Fontana della Barcaccia on the Piazza di
+Spagna, the Triton on the Piazza Barberini, and the Tortoises which give
+their name to the Piazza delle Tartarughe, to the three fountains of the
+Piazza Navona where Bernini’s vast central composition of rock and
+river-gods rises so triumphantly, and to the colossal and pompous
+fountain of Trevi, where King Neptune stands on high attended by lofty
+figures of Health and Fruitfulness. And on yet another evening Pierre
+came home quite pleased, relating that he had at last discovered why it
+was that the old streets around the Capitol and along the Tiber seemed to
+him so strange: it was because they had no footways, and pedestrians,
+instead of skirting the walls, invariably took the middle of the road,
+leisurely wending their way among the vehicles. Pierre was very fond of
+those old districts with their winding lanes, their tiny squares so
+irregular in shape, and their huge square mansions swamped by a
+multitudinous jumble of little houses. He found a charm, too, in the
+district of the Esquiline, where, besides innumerable flights of
+ascending steps, each of grey pebbles edged with white stone, there were
+sudden sinuous slopes, tiers of terraces, seminaries and convents,
+lifeless, with their windows ever closed, and lofty, blank walls above
+which a superb palm-tree would now and again soar into the spotless blue
+of the sky. And on yet another evening, having strolled into the Campagna
+beside the Tiber and above the Ponte Molle, he came back full of
+enthusiasm for a form of classical art which hitherto he had scarcely
+appreciated. Along the river bank, however, he had found the very scenery
+that Poussin so faithfully depicted: the sluggish, yellow stream fringed
+with reeds; low riven cliffs, whose chalky whiteness showed against the
+ruddy background of a far-stretching, undulating plain, bounded by blue
+hills; a few spare trees with a ruined porticus opening on to space atop
+of the bank, and a line of pale-hued sheep descending to drink, whilst
+the shepherd, with an elbow resting on the trunk of an ilex-tree, stood
+looking on. It was a special kind of beauty, broad and ruddy, made up of
+nothing, sometimes simplified into a series of low, horizontal lines, but
+ever ennobled by the great memories it evoked: the Roman legions marching
+along the paved highways across the bare Campagna; the long slumber of
+the middle ages; and then the awakening of antique nature in the midst of
+Catholicism, whereby, for the second time, Rome became ruler of the
+world.
+
+One day when Pierre came back from seeing the great modern cemetery, the
+Campo Verano, he found Celia, as well as Benedetta, by the side of
+Dario’s bed. “What, Monsieur l’Abbé!” exclaimed the little Princess when
+she learnt where he had been; “it amuses you to visit the dead?”
+
+“Oh those Frenchmen,” remarked Dario, to whom the mere idea of a cemetery
+was repulsive; “those Frenchmen seem to take a pleasure in making their
+lives wretched with their partiality for gloomy scenes.”
+
+“But there is no escaping the reality of death,” gently replied Pierre;
+“the best course is to look it in the face.”
+
+This made the Prince quite angry. “Reality, reality,” said he, “when
+reality isn’t pleasant I don’t look at it; I try never to think of it
+even.”
+
+In spite of this rejoinder, Pierre, with his smiling, placid air, went on
+enumerating the things which had struck him: first, the admirable manner
+in which the cemetery was kept, then the festive appearance which it
+derived from the bright autumn sun, and the wonderful profusion in which
+marble was lavished in slabs, statues, and chapels. The ancient atavism
+had surely been at work, the sumptuous mausoleums of the Appian Way had
+here sprung up afresh, making death a pretext for the display of pomp and
+pride. In the upper part of the cemetery the Roman nobility had a
+district of its own, crowded with veritable temples, colossal statues,
+groups of several figures; and if at times the taste shown in these
+monuments was deplorable, it was none the less certain that millions had
+been expended on them. One charming feature of the place, said Pierre,
+was that the marbles, standing among yews and cypresses were remarkably
+well preserved, white and spotless; for, if the summer sun slowly gilded
+them, there were none of those stains of moss and rain which impart an
+aspect of melancholy decay to the statues of northern climes.
+
+Touched by the discomfort of Dario, Benedetta, hitherto silent, ended by
+interrupting Pierre. “And was the hunt interesting?” she asked, turning
+to Celia.
+
+The little Princess had been taken by her mother to see a fox-hunt, and
+had been speaking of it when the priest entered the room.
+
+“Yes, it was very interesting, my dear,” she replied; “the meet was at
+noon near the tomb of Cæcilia Metella, where a buffet had been arranged
+under a tent. And there was such a number of people--the foreign colony,
+the young men of the embassies, and some officers, not to mention
+ourselves--all the men in scarlet and a great many ladies in habits. The
+‘throw-off’ was at one o’clock, and the gallop lasted more than two hours
+and a half, so that the fox had a very long run. I wasn’t able to follow,
+but all the same I saw some extraordinary things--a great wall which the
+whole hunt had to leap, and then ditches and hedges--a mad race indeed in
+the rear of the hounds. There were two accidents, but nothing serious;
+one gentleman, who was unseated, sprained his wrist badly, and another
+broke his leg.”*
+
+ * The Roman Hunt, which counts about one hundred subscribers,
+ has flourished since 1840. There is a kennel of English
+ hounds, an English huntsman and whip, and a stable of
+ English hunters.--Trans.
+
+Dario had listened to Celia with passionate interest, for fox-hunting is
+one of the great pleasures of Rome, and the Campagna, flat and yet
+bristling with obstacles, is certainly well adapted to the sport. “Ah!”
+ said the young Prince in a despairing tone, “how idiotic it is to be
+riveted to this room! I shall end by dying of _ennui_!”
+
+Benedetta contented herself with smiling; neither reproach nor expression
+of sadness came from her at this candid display of egotism. Her own
+happiness at having him all to herself in the room where she nursed him
+was great indeed; still her love, at once full of youth and good sense,
+included a maternal element, and she well understood that he hardly
+amused himself, deprived as he was of his customary pleasures and severed
+from his friends, few of whom he was willing to receive, for he feared
+that they might think the story of the dislocated shoulder suspicious. Of
+course there were no more _fêtes_, no more evenings at the theatre, no
+more flirtations. But above everything else Dario missed the Corso, and
+suffered despairingly at no longer seeing or learning anything by
+watching the procession of Roman society from four to five each
+afternoon. Accordingly, as soon as an intimate called, there were endless
+questions: Had the visitor seen so and so? Had such a one reappeared? How
+had a certain friend’s love affair ended? Was any new adventure setting
+the city agog? And so forth; all the petty frivolities, nine days’
+wonders, and puerile intrigues in which the young Prince had hitherto
+expended his manly energy.
+
+After a pause Celia, who was fond of coming to him with innocent gossip,
+fixed her candid eyes on him--the fathomless eyes of an enigmatical
+virgin, and resumed: “How long it takes to set a shoulder right!”
+
+Had she, child as she was, with love her only business, divined the
+truth? Dario in his embarrassment glanced at Benedetta, who still smiled.
+However, the little Princess was already darting to another subject: “Ah!
+you know, Dario, at the Corso yesterday I saw a lady--” Then she stopped
+short, surprised and embarrassed that these words should have escaped
+her. However, in all bravery she resumed like one who had been a friend
+since childhood, sharing many a little love secret: “Yes, a very pretty
+person whom you know. Well, she had a bouquet of white roses with her all
+the same.”
+
+At this Benedetta indulged in a burst of frank merriment, and Dario,
+still looking at her, also laughed. She had twitted him during the early
+days because no young woman ever sent to make inquiries about him. For
+his part, he was not displeased with the rupture, for the continuance of
+the connection might have proved embarrassing; and so, although his
+vanity may have been slightly hurt, the news that he was already replaced
+in La Tonietta’s affections was welcome rather than otherwise. “Ah!” he
+contented himself with saying, “the absent are always in the wrong.”
+
+“The man one loves is never absent,” declared Celia with her grave,
+candid air.
+
+However, Benedetta had stepped up to the bed to raise the young man’s
+pillows: “Never mind, Dario _mio_,” said she, “all those things are over;
+I mean to keep you, and you will only have me to love.”
+
+He gave her a passionate glance and kissed her hair. She spoke the truth:
+he had never loved any one but her, and she was not mistaken in her
+anticipation of keeping him always to herself alone, as soon as they
+should be wedded. To her great delight, since she had been nursing him he
+had become quite childish again, such as he had been when she had learnt
+to love him under the orange-trees of the Villa Montefiori. He retained a
+sort of puerility, doubtless the outcome of impoverished blood, that
+return to childhood which one remarks amongst very ancient races; and he
+toyed on his bed with pictures, gazed for hours at photographs, which
+made him laugh. Moreover, his inability to endure suffering had yet
+increased; he wished Benedetta to be gay and sing, and amused her with
+his petty egotism which led him to dream of a life of continual joy with
+her. Ah! how pleasant it would be to live together and for ever in the
+sunlight, to do nothing and care for nothing, and even if the world
+should crumble somewhere to heed it not!
+
+“One thing which greatly pleases me,” suddenly said the young Prince, “is
+that Monsieur l’Abbé has ended by falling in love with Rome.”
+
+Pierre admitted it with a good grace.
+
+“We told you so,” remarked Benedetta. “A great deal of time is needed for
+one to understand and love Rome. If you had only stayed here for a
+fortnight you would have gone off with a deplorable idea of us, but now
+that you have been here for two full months we are quite at ease, for you
+will never think of us without affection.”
+
+She looked exceedingly charming as she spoke these words, and Pierre
+again bowed. However, he had already given thought to the phenomenon, and
+fancied he could explain it. When a stranger comes to Rome he brings with
+him a Rome of his own, a Rome such as he dreams of, so ennobled by
+imagination that the real Rome proves a terrible disenchantment. And so
+it is necessary to wait for habituation, for the mediocrity of the
+reality to soften, and for the imagination to have time to kindle again,
+and only behold things such as they are athwart the prodigious splendour
+of the past.
+
+However, Celia had risen and was taking leave. “Good-bye, dear,” she
+said; “I hope the wedding will soon take place. You know, Dario, that I
+mean to be betrothed before the end of the month. Oh yes, I intend to
+make my father give a grand entertainment. And how nice it would be if
+the two weddings could take place at the same time!”
+
+Two days later, after a long ramble through the Trastevere district,
+followed by a visit to the Palazzo Farnese, Pierre felt that he could at
+last understand the terrible, melancholy truth about Rome. He had several
+times already strolled through the Trastevere, attracted towards its
+wretched denizens by his compassion for all who suffered. Ah! that
+quagmire of wretchedness and ignorance! He knew of abominable nooks in
+the faubourgs of Paris, frightful “rents” and “courts” where people
+rotted in heaps, but there was nothing in France to equal the listless,
+filthy stagnation of the Trastevere. On the brightest days a dank gloom
+chilled the sinuous, cellar-like lanes, and the smell of rotting
+vegetables, rank oil, and human animality brought on fits of nausea.
+Jumbled together in a confusion which artists of romantic turn would
+admire, the antique, irregular houses had black, gaping entrances diving
+below ground, outdoor stairways conducting to upper floors, and wooden
+balconies which only a miracle upheld. There were crumbling fronts,
+shored up with beams; sordid lodgings whose filth and bareness could be
+seen through shattered windows; and numerous petty shops, all the
+open-air cook-stalls of a lazy race which never lighted a fire at home:
+you saw frying-shops with heaps of polenta, and fish swimming in stinking
+oil, and dealers in cooked vegetables displaying huge turnips, celery,
+cauliflowers, and spinach, all cold and sticky. The butcher’s meat was
+black and clumsily cut up; the necks of the animals bristled with bloody
+clots, as though the heads had simply been torn away. The baker’s loaves,
+piled on planks, looked like little round paving stones; at the beggarly
+greengrocers’ merely a few pimentoes and fir-apples were shown under the
+strings of dry tomatoes which festooned the doorways; and the only shops
+which were at all attractive were those of the pork butchers with their
+salted provisions and their cheese, whose pungent smell slightly
+attenuated the pestilential reek of the gutters. Lottery offices,
+displaying lists of winning numbers, alternated with wine-shops, of which
+latter there was a fresh one every thirty yards with large inscriptions
+setting forth that the best wines of Genzano, Marino, and Frascati were
+to be found within. And the whole district teemed with ragged, grimy
+denizens, children half naked and devoured by vermin, bare-headed,
+gesticulating and shouting women, whose skirts were stiff with grease,
+old men who remained motionless on benches amidst swarms of hungry flies;
+idleness and agitation appearing on all sides, whilst cobblers sat on the
+sidewalks quietly plying their trade, and little donkeys pulled carts
+hither and thither, and men drove turkeys along, whip in hand, and hands
+of beggars rushed upon the few anxious tourists who had timorously
+ventured into the district. At the door of a little tailor’s shop an old
+house-pail dangled full of earth, in which a succulent plant was
+flowering. And from every window and balcony, as from the many cords
+which stretched across the street from house to house, all the household
+washing hung like bunting, nameless drooping rags, the symbolical banners
+of abominable misery.
+
+Pierre’s fraternal, soul filled with pity at the sight. Ah! yes, it was
+necessary to demolish all those pestilential districts where the populace
+had wallowed for centuries as in a poisonous gaol! He was for demolition
+and sanitary improvement, even if old Rome were killed and artists
+scandalised. Doubtless the Trastevere was already greatly changed,
+pierced with several new thoroughfares which let the sun stream in. And
+amidst the _abattis_ of rubbish and the spacious clearings, where nothing
+new had yet been erected, the remaining portions of the old district
+seemed even blacker and more loathsome. Some day, no doubt, it would all
+be rebuilt, but how interesting was this phase of the city’s evolution:
+old Rome expiring and new Rome just dawning amidst countless
+difficulties! To appreciate the change it was necessary to have known the
+filthy Rome of the past, swamped by sewage in every form. The recently
+levelled Ghetto had, over a course of centuries, so rotted the soil on
+which it stood that an awful pestilential odour yet arose from its bare
+site. It was only fitting that it should long remain waste, so that it
+might dry and become purified in the sun. In all the districts on either
+side of the Tiber where extensive improvements have been undertaken you
+find the same scenes. You follow some narrow, damp, evil-smelling street
+with black house-fronts and overhanging roofs, and suddenly come upon a
+clearing as in a forest of ancient leprous hovels. There are squares,
+broad footways; lofty white carved buildings yet in the rough, littered
+with rubbish and fenced off. On every side you find as it were a huge
+building yard, which the financial crisis perpetuates; the city of
+to-morrow arrested in its growth, stranded there in its monstrous,
+precocious, surprising infancy. Nevertheless, therein lies good and
+healthful work, such as was and is absolutely necessary if Rome is to
+become a great modern city, instead of being left to rot, to dwindle into
+a mere ancient curiosity, a museum show-piece.
+
+That day, as Pierre went from the Trastevere to the Palazzo Farnese,
+where he was expected, he chose a roundabout route, following the Via di
+Pettinari and the Via dei Giubbonari, the former so dark and narrow with
+a great hospital wall on one side and a row of wretched houses on the
+other, and the latter animated by a constant stream of people and
+enlivened by the jewellers’ windows, full of big gold chains, and the
+displays of the drapers’ shops, where stuffs hung in bright red, blue,
+green, and yellow lengths. And the popular district through which he had
+roamed and the trading district which he was now crossing reminded him of
+the castle fields with their mass of workpeople reduced to mendicity by
+lack of employment and forced to camp in the superb, unfinished,
+abandoned mansions. Ah! the poor, sad people, who were yet so childish,
+kept in the ignorance and credulity of a savage race by centuries of
+theocracy, so habituated to mental night and bodily suffering that even
+to-day they remained apart from the social awakening, simply desirous of
+enjoying their pride, indolence, and sunlight in peace! They seemed both
+blind and deaf in their decadence, and whilst Rome was being overturned
+they continued to lead the stagnant life of former times, realising
+nought but the worries of the improvements, the demolition of the old
+favourite districts, the consequent change in habits, and the rise in the
+cost of food, as if indeed they would rather have gone without light,
+cleanliness, and health, since these could only be secured by a great
+financial and labour crisis. And yet, at bottom, it was solely for the
+people, the populace, that Rome was being cleansed and rebuilt with the
+idea of making it a great modern capital, for democracy lies at the end
+of these present day transformations; it is the people who will inherit
+the cities whence dirt and disease are being expelled, and where the law
+of labour will end by prevailing and killing want. And so, though one may
+curse the dusting and repairing of the ruins and the stripping of all the
+wild flora from the Colosseum, though one may wax indignant at sight of
+the hideous fortress like ramparts which imprison the Tiber, and bewail
+the old romantic banks with their greenery and their antique dwellings
+dipping into the stream, one must at the same time acknowledge that life
+springs from death, and that to-morrow must perforce blossom in the dust
+of the past.
+
+While thinking of all these things Pierre had reached the deserted,
+stern-looking Piazza Farnese, and for a moment he looked up at the bare
+monumental façade of the heavy square Palazzo, its lofty entrance where
+hung the tricolour, its rows of windows and its famous cornice sculptured
+with such marvellous art. Then he went in. A friend of Narcisse Habert,
+one of the _attachés_ of the embassy to the King of Italy, was waiting
+for him, having offered to show him over the huge pile, the finest palace
+in Rome, which France had leased as a lodging for her ambassador.* Ah!
+that colossal, sumptuous, deadly dwelling, with its vast court whose
+porticus is so dark and damp, its giant staircase with low steps, its
+endless corridors, its immense galleries and halls. All was sovereign
+pomp blended with death. An icy, penetrating chill fell from the walls.
+With a discreet smile the _attaché_ owned that the embassy was frozen in
+winter and baked in summer. The only part of the building which was at
+all lively and pleasant was the first storey, overlooking the Tiber,
+which the ambassador himself occupied. From the gallery there, containing
+the famous frescoes of Annibale Caracci, one can see the Janiculum, the
+Corsini gardens, and the Acqua Paola above San Pietro in Montorio. Then,
+after a vast drawing-room comes the study, peaceful and pleasant, and
+enlivened by sunshine. But the dining-room, the bed-chambers, and other
+apartments occupied by the _personnel_ look out on to the mournful gloom
+of a side street. All these vast rooms, twenty and four-and-twenty feet
+high, have admirable carved or painted ceilings, bare walls, a few of
+them decorated with frescoes, and incongruous furniture, superb pier
+tables mingling with modern _bric-à-brac_. And things become abominable
+when you enter the gala reception-rooms overlooking the piazza, for there
+you no longer find an article of furniture, no longer a hanging, nothing
+but disaster, a series of magnificent deserted halls given over to rats
+and spiders. The embassy occupies but one of them, where it heaps up its
+dusty archives. Near by is a huge hall occupying the height of two
+floors, and thus sixty feet in elevation. Reserved by the owner of the
+palace, the ex-King of Naples, it has become a mere lumber-room where
+_maquettes_, unfinished statues, and a very fine sarcophagus are stowed
+away amidst all kinds of remnants. And this is but a part of the palace.
+The ground floor is altogether uninhabited; the French “École de Rome”
+ occupies a corner of the second floor; while the embassy huddles in
+chilly fashion in the most habitable corner of the first floor, compelled
+to abandon everything else and lock the doors to spare itself the useless
+trouble of sweeping. No doubt it is grand to live in the Palazzo Farnese,
+built by Pope Paul III and for more than a century inhabited by
+cardinals; but how cruel the discomfort and how frightful the melancholy
+of this huge ruin, three-fourths of whose rooms are dead, useless,
+impossible, cut off from life. And the evenings, oh! the evenings, when
+porch, court, stairs, and corridors are invaded by dense gloom, against
+which a few smoky gas lamps struggle in vain, when a long, long journey
+lies before one through the lugubrious desert of stone, before one
+reaches the ambassador’s warm and cheerful drawing-room!
+
+ * The French have two embassies at Rome: one at the Palazzo
+ Farnese, to the Italian Court, and the other at the Palazzo
+ Rospigliosi, to the Vatican.--Trans.
+
+Pierre came away quite aghast. And, as he walked along, the many other
+grand palaces which he had seen during his strolls rose before him, one
+and all of them stripped of their splendour, shorn of their princely
+establishments, let out in uncomfortable flats! What could be done with
+those grandiose galleries and halls now that no fortune could defray the
+cost of the pompous life for which they had been built, or even feed the
+retinue needed to keep them up? Few indeed were the nobles who, like
+Prince Aldobrandini, with his numerous progeny, still occupied their
+entire mansions. Almost all of them let the antique dwellings of their
+forefathers to companies or individual tenants, reserving only a storey,
+and at times a mere lodging in some dark corner, for themselves. The
+Palazzo Chigi was let: the ground floor to bankers and the first floor to
+the Austrian ambassador, while the Prince and his family divided the
+second floor with a cardinal. The Palazzo Sciarra was let: the first
+floor to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the second to a senator,
+while the Prince and his mother merely occupied the ground floor. The
+Palazzo Barberini was let: its ground floor, first floor, and second
+floor to various families, whilst the Prince found a refuge on the third
+floor in the rooms which had been occupied by his ancestors’ lackeys. The
+Palazzo Borghese was let: the ground floor to a dealer in antiquities,
+the first floor to a Lodge of Freemasons, and the rest to various
+households, whilst the Prince only retained the use of a small suite of
+apartments. And the Palazzo Odescalchi, the Palazzo Colonna, the Palazzo
+Doria were let: their Princes reduced to the position of needy landlords
+eager to derive as much profit as possible from their property in order
+to make both ends meet. A blast of ruin was sweeping over the Roman
+patriziato, the greatest fortunes had crumbled in the financial crisis,
+very few remained wealthy, and what a wealth it was, stagnant and dead,
+which neither commerce nor industry could renew. The numerous princes who
+had tried speculation were stripped of their fortunes. The others,
+terrified, called upon to pay enormous taxes, amounting to nearly
+one-third of their incomes, could henceforth only wait and behold their
+last stagnant millions dwindle away till they were exhausted or
+distributed according to the succession laws. Such wealth as remained to
+these nobles must perish, for, like everything else, wealth perishes when
+it lacks a soil in which it may fructify. In all this there was solely a
+question of time: eventual ruin was a foregone and irremediable
+conclusion, of absolute, historical certainty. Those who resigned
+themselves to the course of letting their deserted mansions still
+struggled for life, seeking to accommodate themselves to present-day
+exigencies; whilst death already dwelt among the others, those stubborn,
+proud ones who immured themselves in the tombs of their race, like that
+appalling Palazzo Boccanera, which was falling into dust amidst such
+chilly gloom and silence, the latter only broken at long intervals when
+the Cardinal’s old coach rumbled over the grassy court.
+
+The point which most struck Pierre, however, was that his visits to the
+Trastevere and the Palazzo Farnese shed light one on the other, and led
+him to a conclusion which had never previously seemed so manifest. As yet
+no “people,” and soon no aristocracy. He had found the people so
+wretched, ignorant, and resigned in its long infancy induced by historic
+and climatic causes that many years of instruction and culture were
+necessary for it to become a strong, healthy, and laborious democracy,
+conscious of both its rights and its duties. As for the aristocracy, it
+was dwindling to death in its crumbling palaces, no longer aught than a
+finished, degenerate race, with such an admixture also of American,
+Austrian, Polish, and Spanish blood that pure Roman blood became a rare
+exception; and, moreover, it had ceased to belong either to sword or
+gown, unwilling to serve constitutional Italy and forsaking the Sacred
+College, where only _parvenus_ now donned the purple. And between the
+lowly and the aristocracy there was as yet no firmly seated middle class,
+with the vigour of fresh sap and sufficient knowledge, and good sense to
+act as the transitional educator of the nation. The middle class was made
+up in part of the old servants and clients of the princes, the farmers
+who rented their lands, the stewards, notaries, and solicitors who
+managed their fortunes; in part, too, of all the employees, the
+functionaries of every rank and class, the deputies and senators, whom
+the new Government had brought from the provinces; and, in particular, of
+the voracious hawks who had swooped down upon Rome, the Pradas, the men
+of prey from all parts of the kingdom, who with beak and talon devoured
+both people and aristocracy. For whom, then, had one laboured? For whom
+had those gigantic works of new Rome been undertaken? A shudder of fear
+sped by, a crack as of doom was heard, arousing pitiful disquietude in
+every fraternal heart. Yes, a threat of doom and annihilation: as yet no
+people, soon no aristocracy, and only a ravenous middle class, quarrying,
+vulture-like, among the ruins.
+
+On the evening of that day, when all was dark, Pierre went to spend an
+hour on the river quay beyond the Boccanera mansion. He was very fond of
+meditating on that deserted spot in spite of the warnings of Victorine,
+who asserted that it was not safe. And, indeed, on such inky nights as
+that one, no cutthroat place ever presented a more tragic aspect. Not a
+soul, not a passer-by; a dense gloom, a void in front and on either hand.
+At a corner of the mansion, now steeped in darkness, there was a gas lamp
+which stood in a hollow since the river margin had been banked up, and
+this lamp cast an uncertain glimmer upon the quay, level with the
+latter’s bossy soil. Thus long vague shadows stretched from the various
+materials, piles of bricks and piles of stone, which were strewn around.
+On the right a few lights shone upon the bridge near San Giovanni and in
+the windows of the hospital of the Santo Spirito. On the left, amidst the
+dim recession of the river, the distant districts were blotted out. Then
+yonder, across the stream, was the Trastevere, the houses on the bank
+looking like vague, pale phantoms, with infrequent window-panes showing a
+blurred yellow glimmer, whilst on high only a dark band shadowed the
+Janiculum, near whose summit the lamps of some promenade scintillated
+like a triangle of stars. But it was the Tiber which impassioned Pierre;
+such was its melancholy majesty during those nocturnal hours. Leaning
+over the parapet, he watched it gliding between the new walls, which
+looked like those of some black and monstrous prison built for a giant.
+So long as lights gleamed in the windows of the houses opposite he saw
+the sluggish water flow by, showing slow, moire-like ripples there where
+the quivering reflections endowed it with a mysterious life. And he often
+mused on the river’s famous past and evoked the legends which assert that
+fabulous wealth lies buried in its muddy bed. At each fresh invasion of
+the barbarians, and particularly when Rome was sacked, the treasures of
+palaces and temples are said to have been cast into the water to prevent
+them from falling into the hands of the conquerors. Might not those
+golden bars trembling yonder in the glaucous stream be the branches of
+the famous candelabrum which Titus brought from Jerusalem? Might not
+those pale patches whose shape remained uncertain amidst the frequent
+eddies indicate the white marble of statues and columns? And those deep
+moires glittering with little flamelets, were they not promiscuous heaps
+of precious metal, cups, vases, ornaments enriched with gems? What a
+dream was that of the swarming riches espied athwart the old river’s
+bosom, of the hidden life of the treasures which were said to have
+slumbered there for centuries; and what a hope for the nation’s pride and
+enrichment centred in the miraculous finds which might be made in the
+Tiber if one could some day dry it up and search its bed, as had already
+been suggested! Therein, perchance, lay Rome’s new fortune.
+
+However, on that black night, whilst Pierre leant over the parapet, it
+was stern reality alone which occupied his mind. He was still pursuing
+the train of thought suggested by his visits to the Trastevere and the
+Farnese palace, and in presence of that lifeless water was coming to the
+conclusion that the selection of Rome for transformation into a modern
+capital was the great misfortune to which the sufferings of young Italy
+were due. He knew right well that the selection had been inevitable: Rome
+being the queen of glory, the antique ruler of the world to whom eternity
+had been promised, and without whom the national unity had always seemed
+an impossibility. And so the problem was a terrible one, since without
+Rome Italy could not exist, and with Rome it seemed difficult for it to
+exist. Ah! that dead river, how it symbolised disaster! Not a boat upon
+its surface, not a quiver of the commercial and industrial activity of
+those waters which bear life to the very hearts of great modern cities!
+There had been fine schemes, no doubt--Rome a seaport, gigantic works,
+canalisation to enable vessels of heavy tonnage to come up to the
+Aventine; but these were mere delusions; the authorities would scarcely
+be able to clear the river mouth, which deposits were continually
+choking. And there was that other cause of mortal languishment, the
+Campagna--the desert of death which the dead river crossed and which
+girdled Rome with sterility. There was talk of draining and planting it;
+much futile discussion on the question whether it had been fertile in the
+days of the old Romans; and even a few experiments were made; but, all
+the same, Rome remained in the midst of a vast cemetery like a city of
+other times, for ever separated from the modern world by that _lande_ or
+moor where the dust of centuries had accumulated. The geographical
+considerations which once gave the city the empire of the world no longer
+exist. The centre of civilisation has been displaced. The basin of the
+Mediterranean has been divided among powerful nations. In Italy all roads
+now lead to Milan, the city of industry and commerce, and Rome is but a
+town of passage. And so the most valiant efforts have failed to rouse it
+from its invincible slumber. The capital which the newcomers sought to
+improvise with such extreme haste has remained unfinished, and has almost
+ruined the nation. The Government, legislators, and functionaries only
+camp there, fleeing directly the warm weather sets in so as to escape the
+pernicious climate. The hotels and shops even put up their shutters, and
+the streets and promenades become deserts, the city having failed to
+acquire any life of its own, and relapsing into death as soon as the
+artificial life instilled into it is withdrawn. So all remains in
+suspense in this purely decorative capital, where only a fresh growth of
+men and money can finish and people the huge useless piles of the new
+districts. If it be true that to-morrow always blooms in the dust of the
+past, one ought to force oneself to hope; but Pierre asked himself if the
+soil were not exhausted, and since mere buildings could no longer grow on
+it, if it were not for ever drained of the sap which makes a race
+healthy, a nation powerful.
+
+As the night advanced the lights in the houses of the Trastevere went out
+one by one: yet Pierre for a long time lingered on the quay, leaning over
+the blackened river and yielding to hopelessness. There was now no
+distance to the gloom; all had become dense; no longer did any
+reflections set a moire-like, golden quiver in the water, or reveal
+beneath its mystery-concealing current a fantastic, dancing vision of
+fabulous wealth. Gone was the legend, gone the seven-branched golden
+candelabrum, gone the golden vases, gone the golden jewellery, the whole
+dream of antique treasure that had vanished into night, even like the
+antique glory of Rome. Not a glimmer, nothing but slumber, disturbed
+solely by the heavy fall of sewage from the drain on the right-hand,
+which could not be seen. The very water had disappeared, and Pierre no
+longer espied its leaden flow through the darkness, no longer had any
+perception of the sluggish senility, the long-dating weariness, the
+intense sadness of that ancient and glorious Tiber, whose waters now
+rolled nought but death. Only the vast, opulent sky, the eternal, pompous
+sky displayed the dazzling life of its milliards of planets above that
+river of darkness, bearing away the ruins of wellnigh three thousand
+years.
+
+Before returning to his own chamber that evening Pierre entered Dario’s
+room, and found Victorine there preparing things for the night. And as
+soon as she heard where he had been she raised her voice in protest:
+“What! you have again been to the quay at this time of night, Monsieur
+l’Abbé? You want to get a good knife thrust yourself, it seems. Well, for
+my part, I certainly wouldn’t take the air at such a late hour in this
+dangerous city.” Then, with her wonted familiarity, she turned and spoke
+to the Prince, who was lying back in an arm-chair and smiling: “That
+girl, La Pierina,” she said, “hasn’t been back here, but all the same
+I’ve lately seen her prowling about among the building materials.”
+
+Dario raised his hand to silence her, and, addressing Pierre, exclaimed:
+“But you spoke to her, didn’t you? It’s becoming idiotic! Just fancy that
+brute Tito coming back to dig his knife into my other shoulder--”
+
+All at once he paused, for he had just perceived Benedetta standing there
+and listening to him; she had slipped into the room a moment previously
+in order to wish him good-night. At sight of her his embarrassment was
+great indeed; he wished to speak, explain his words, and swear that he
+was wholly innocent in the affair. But she, with a smiling face,
+contented herself with saying, “I knew all about it, Dario _mio_. I am
+not so foolish as not to have thought it all over and understood the
+truth. If I ceased questioning you it was because I knew, and loved you
+all the same.”
+
+The young woman looked very happy as she spoke, and for this she had good
+cause, for that very evening she had learnt that Monsignor Palma had
+shown himself grateful for the service rendered to his nephew by laying a
+fresh and favourable memoir on the marriage affair before the
+Congregation of the Council. He had been unwilling to recall his previous
+opinions so far as to range himself completely on the Contessina’s side,
+but the certificates of two doctors whom she had recently seen had
+enabled him to conclude that her own declarations were accurate. And
+gliding over the question of wifely obedience, on which he had previously
+laid stress, he had skilfully set forth the reasons which made a
+dissolution of the marriage desirable. No hope of reconciliation could be
+entertained, so it was certain that both parties were constantly exposed
+to temptation and sin. He discreetly alluded to the fact that the husband
+had already succumbed to this danger, and praised the wife’s lofty
+morality and piety, all the virtues which she displayed, and which
+guaranteed her veracity. Then, without formulating any conclusion of his
+own, he left the decision to the wisdom of the Congregation. And as he
+virtually repeated Advocate Morano’s arguments, and Prada stubbornly
+refused to enter an appearance, it now seemed certain that the
+Congregation would by a great majority pronounce itself in favour of
+dissolution, a result which would enable the Holy Father to act
+benevolently.
+
+“Ah! Dario _mio_!” said Benedetta, “we are at the end of our worries. But
+what a lot of money, what a lot of money it all costs! Aunt says that
+they will scarcely leave us water to drink.”
+
+So speaking she laughed with the happy heedlessness of an impassioned
+_amorosa_. It was not that the jurisdiction of the Congregations was in
+itself ruinous; indeed, in principle, it was gratuitous. Still there were
+a multitude of petty expenses, payments to subaltern employees, payments
+for medical consultations and certificates, copies of documents, and the
+memoirs and addresses of counsel. And although the votes of the cardinals
+were certainly not bought direct, some of them ended by costing
+considerable sums, for it often became necessary to win over dependants,
+to induce quite a little world to bring influence to bear upon their
+Eminences; without mentioning that large pecuniary gifts, when made with
+tact, have a decisive effect in clearing away the greatest difficulties
+in that sphere of the Vatican. And, briefly, Monsignor Palma’s nephew by
+marriage had cost the Boccaneras a large sum.
+
+“But it doesn’t matter, does it, Dario _mio_?” continued Benedetta.
+“Since you are now cured, they must make haste to give us permission to
+marry. That’s all we ask of them. And if they want more, well, I’ll give
+them my pearls, which will be all I shall have left me.”
+
+He also laughed, for money had never held any place in his life. He had
+never had it at his pleasure, and simply hoped that he would always live
+with his uncle the cardinal, who would certainly not leave him and his
+young wife in the streets. Ruined as the family was, one or two hundred
+thousand francs represented nothing to his mind, and he had heard that
+certain dissolutions of marriage had cost as much as half a million. So,
+by way of response, he could only find a jest: “Give them my ring as
+well,” said he; “give them everything, my dear, and we shall still be
+happy in this old palace even if we have to sell the furniture!”
+
+His words filled her with enthusiasm; she took his head between both
+hands and kissed him madly on the eyes in an extraordinary transport of
+passion. Then, suddenly turning to Pierre, she said: “Oh! excuse me,
+Monsieur l’Abbé. I was forgetting that I have a commission for you. Yes,
+Monsignor Nani, who brought us that good news, bade me tell you that you
+are making people forget you too much, and that you ought to set to work
+to defend your book.”
+
+The priest listened in astonishment; then replied: “But it was he who
+advised me to disappear.”
+
+“No doubt--only it seems that the time has now come for you to see people
+and plead your cause. And Monsignor Nani has been able to learn that the
+reporter appointed to examine your book is Monsignor Fornaro, who lives
+on the Piazza Navona.”
+
+Pierre’s stupefaction was increasing, for a reporter’s name is never
+divulged, but kept quite secret, in order to ensure a free exercise of
+judgment. Was a new phase of his sojourn in Rome about to begin then? His
+mind was all wonderment. However, he simply answered: “Very good, I will
+set to work and see everybody.”
+
+
+
+
+
+PART IV.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+
+IN his anxiety to bring things to a finish, Pierre wished to begin his
+campaign on the very next day. But on whom should he first call if he
+were to steer clear of blunders in that intricate and conceited
+ecclesiastical world? The question greatly perplexed him; however, on
+opening his door that morning he luckily perceived Don Vigilio in the
+passage, and with a sudden inspiration asked him to step inside. He
+realised that this thin little man with the saffron face, who always
+trembled with fever and displayed such exaggerated, timorous discretion,
+was in reality well informed, mixed up in everything. At one period it
+had seemed to Pierre that the secretary purposely avoided him, doubtless
+for fear of compromising himself; but recently Don Vigilio had proved
+less unsociable, as though he were not far from sharing the impatience
+which must be consuming the young Frenchman amidst his long enforced
+inactivity. And so, on this occasion, he did not seek to avoid the chat
+on which Pierre was bent.
+
+“I must apologise,” said the latter, “for asking you in here when things
+are in such disorder. But I have just received some more linen and some
+winter clothing from Paris. I came, you know, with just a little valise,
+meaning to stay for a fortnight, and yet I’ve now been here for nearly
+three months, and am no more advanced than I was on the morning of my
+arrival.”
+
+Don Vigilio nodded. “Yes, yes, I know,” said he.
+
+Thereupon Pierre explained to him that Monsignor Nani had informed him,
+through the Contessina, that he now ought to act and see everybody for
+the defence of his book. But he was much embarrassed, as he did not know
+in what order to make his visits so that they might benefit him. For
+instance, ought he to call in the first place on Monsignor Fornaro, the
+_consultore_ selected to report on his book, and whose name had been
+given him?
+
+“Ah!” exclaimed Don Vigilio, quivering; “has Monsignor Nani gone as far
+as that--given you the reporter’s name? That’s even more than I
+expected.” Then, forgetting his prudence, yielding to his secret interest
+in the affair, he resumed: “No, no; don’t begin with Monsignor Fornaro.
+Your first visit should be a very humble one to the Prefect of the
+Congregation of the Index--his Eminence Cardinal Sanguinetti; for he
+would never forgive you for having offered your first homage to another
+should he some day hear of it.” And, after a pause, Don Vigilio added, in
+a low voice, amidst a faint, feverish shiver: “And he _would_ hear of it;
+everything becomes known.”
+
+Again he hesitated, and then, as if yielding to sudden, sympathetic
+courage, he took hold of the young Frenchman’s hands. “I swear to you, my
+dear Monsieur Froment,” he said, “that I should be very happy to help
+you, for you are a man of simple soul, and I really begin to feel worried
+for you. But you must not ask me for impossibilities. Ah! if you only
+knew--if I could only tell you of all the perils which surround us!
+However, I think I can repeat to you that you must in no wise rely on my
+patron, his Eminence Cardinal Boccanera. He has expressed absolute
+disapproval of your book in my presence on several occasions. Only he is
+a saint, a most worthy, honourable man; and, though he won’t defend you,
+he won’t attack you--he will remain neutral out of regard for his niece,
+whom he loves so dearly, and who protects you. So, when you see him,
+don’t plead your cause; it would be of no avail, and might even irritate
+him.”
+
+Pierre was not particularly distressed by this news, for at his first
+interview with the Cardinal, and on the few subsequent occasions when he
+had respectfully visited him, he had fully understood that his Eminence
+would never be other than an adversary. “Well,” said he, “I will wait on
+him to thank him for his neutrality.”
+
+But at this all Don Vigilio’s terrors returned. “No, no, don’t do that;
+he would perhaps realise that I have spoken to you, and then what a
+disaster--my position would be compromised. I’ve said nothing, nothing!
+See the cardinals to begin with, see all the cardinals. Let it be
+understood between us that I’ve said nothing more.” And, on that occasion
+at any rate, Don Vigilio would speak no further, but left the room
+shuddering and darting fiery, suspicious glances on either side of the
+corridor.
+
+Pierre at once went out to call on Cardinal Sanguinetti. It was ten
+o’clock, and there was a chance that he might find him at home. This
+cardinal resided on the first floor of a little palazzo in a dark, narrow
+street near San Luigi dei Francesi.* There was here none of the giant
+ruin full of princely and melancholy grandeur amidst which Cardinal
+Boccanera so stubbornly remained. The old regulation gala suite of rooms
+had been cut down just like the number of servants. There was no
+throne-room, no red hat hanging under a _baldacchino_, no arm-chair
+turned to the wall pending a visit from the Pope. A couple of apartments
+served as ante-rooms, and then came a _salon_ where the Cardinal
+received; and there was no luxury, indeed scarcely any comfort; the
+furniture was of mahogany, dating from the empire period, and the
+hangings and carpets were dusty and faded by long use. Moreover, Pierre
+had to wait a long time for admittance, and when a servant, leisurely
+putting on his jacket, at last set the door ajar, it was only to say that
+his Eminence had been away at Frascati since the previous day.
+
+ * This is the French church of Rome, and is under the protection
+ of the French Government.--Trans.
+
+Pierre then remembered that Cardinal Sanguinetti was one of the suburban
+bishops. At his see of Frascati he had a villa where he occasionally
+spent a few days whenever a desire for rest or some political motive
+impelled him to do so.
+
+“And will his Eminence soon return?” Pierre inquired.
+
+“Ah! we don’t know. His Eminence is poorly, and expressly desired us to
+send nobody to worry him.”
+
+When Pierre reached the street again he felt quite bewildered by this
+disappointment. At first he wondered whether he had not better call on
+Monsignor Fornaro without more ado, but he recollected Don Vigilio’s
+advice to see the cardinals first of all, and, an inspiration coming to
+him, he resolved that his next visit should be for Cardinal Sarno, whose
+acquaintance he had eventually made at Donna Serafina’s Mondays. In spite
+of Cardinal Sarno’s voluntary self-effacement, people looked upon him as
+one of the most powerful and redoubtable members of the Sacred College,
+albeit his nephew Narcisse Habert declared that he knew no man who showed
+more obtuseness in matters which did not pertain to his habitual
+occupations. At all events, Pierre thought that the Cardinal, although
+not a member of the Congregation of the Index, might well give him some
+good advice, and possibly bring his great influence to bear on his
+colleagues.
+
+The young man straightway betook himself to the Palace of the Propaganda,
+where he knew he would find the Cardinal. This palace, which is seen from
+the Piazza di Spagna, is a bare, massive corner pile between two streets.
+And Pierre, hampered by his faulty Italian, quite lost himself in it,
+climbing to floors whence he had to descend again, and finding himself in
+a perfect labyrinth of stairs, passages, and halls. At last he luckily
+came across the Cardinal’s secretary, an amiable young priest, whom he
+had already seen at the Boccanera mansion. “Why, yes,” said the
+secretary, “I think that his Eminence will receive you. You did well to
+come at this hour, for he is always here of a morning. Kindly follow me,
+if you please.”
+
+Then came a fresh journey. Cardinal Sarno, long a Secretary of the
+Propaganda, now presided over the commission which controlled the
+organisation of worship in those countries of Europe, Africa, America,
+and Oceanica where Catholicism had lately gained a footing; and he thus
+had a private room of his own with special officers and assistants,
+reigning there with the ultra-methodical habits of a functionary who had
+grown old in his arm-chair, closely surrounded by nests of drawers, and
+knowing nothing of the world save the usual sights of the street below
+his window.
+
+The secretary left Pierre on a bench at the end of a dark passage, which
+was lighted by gas even in full daylight. And quite a quarter of an hour
+went by before he returned with his eager, affable air. “His Eminence is
+conferring with some missionaries who are about to leave Rome,” he said;
+“but it will soon be over, and he told me to take you to his room, where
+you can wait for him.”
+
+As soon as Pierre was alone in the Cardinal’s sanctum he examined it with
+curiosity. Fairly spacious, but in no wise luxurious, it had green paper
+on its walls, and its furniture was of black wood and green damask. From
+two windows overlooking a narrow side street a mournful light reached the
+dark wall-paper and faded carpets. There were a couple of pier tables and
+a plain black writing-table, which stood near one window, its worn
+mole-skin covering littered with all sorts of papers. Pierre drew near to
+it for a moment, and glanced at the arm-chair with damaged, sunken seat,
+the screen which sheltered it from draughts, and the old inkstand
+splotched with ink. And then, in the lifeless and oppressive atmosphere,
+the disquieting silence, which only the low rumbles from the street
+disturbed, he began to grow impatient.
+
+However, whilst he was softly walking up and down he suddenly espied a
+map affixed to one wall, and the sight of it filled him with such
+absorbing thoughts that he soon forgot everything else. It was a coloured
+map of the world, the different tints indicating whether the territories
+belonged to victorious Catholicism or whether Catholicism was still
+warring there against unbelief; these last countries being classified as
+vicariates or prefectures, according to the general principles of
+organisation. And the whole was a graphic presentment of the long efforts
+of Catholicism in striving for the universal dominion which it has sought
+so unremittingly since its earliest hour. God has given the world to His
+Church, but it is needful that she should secure possession of it since
+error so stubbornly abides. From this has sprung the eternal battle, the
+fight which is carried on, even in our days, to win nations over from
+other religions, as it was in the days when the Apostles quitted Judaea
+to spread abroad the tidings of the Gospel. During the middle ages the
+great task was to organise conquered Europe, and this was too absorbing
+an enterprise to allow of any attempt at reconciliation with the
+dissident churches of the East. Then the Reformation burst forth, schism
+was added to schism, and the Protestant half of Europe had to be
+reconquered as well as all the orthodox East.
+
+War-like ardour, however, awoke at the discovery of the New World. Rome
+was ambitious of securing that other side of the earth, and missions were
+organised for the subjection of races of which nobody had known anything
+the day before, but which God had, nevertheless, given to His Church,
+like all the others. And by degrees the two great divisions of
+Christianity were formed, on one hand the Catholic nations, those where
+the faith simply had to be kept up, and which the Secretariate of State
+installed at the Vatican guided with sovereign authority, and on the
+other the schismatical or pagan nations which were to be brought back to
+the fold or converted, and over which the Congregation of the Propaganda
+sought to reign. Then this Congregation had been obliged to divide itself
+into two branches in order to facilitate its work--the Oriental branch,
+which dealt with the dissident sects of the East, and the Latin branch,
+whose authority extended over all the other lands of mission: the two
+forming a vast organisation--a huge, strong, closely meshed net cast over
+the whole world in order that not a single soul might escape.
+
+It was in presence of that map that Pierre for the first time became
+clearly conscious of the mechanism which for centuries had been working
+to bring about the absorption of humanity. The Propaganda, richly dowered
+by the popes, and disposing of a considerable revenue, appeared to him
+like a separate force, a papacy within the papacy, and he well understood
+that the Prefect of the Congregation should be called the “Red Pope,” for
+how limitless were the powers of that man of conquest and domination,
+whose hands stretched from one to the other end of the earth. Allowing
+that the Cardinal Secretary held Europe, that diminutive portion of the
+globe, did not he, the Prefect, hold all the rest--the infinity of space,
+the distant countries as yet almost unknown? Besides, statistics showed
+that Rome’s uncontested dominion was limited to 200 millions of Apostolic
+and Roman Catholics; whereas the schismatics of the East and the
+Reformation, if added together, already exceeded that number, and how
+small became the minority of the true believers when, besides the
+schismatics, one brought into line the 1000 millions of infidels who yet
+remained to be converted. The figures struck Pierre with a force which
+made him shudder. What! there were 5 million Jews, nearly 200 million
+Mahommedans, more than 700 million Brahmanists and Buddhists, without
+counting another 100 million pagans of divers creeds, the whole making
+1000 millions, and against these the Christians could marshal barely more
+than 400 millions, who were divided among themselves, ever in conflict,
+one half with Rome and the other half against her?* Was it possible that
+in 1800 years Christianity had not proved victorious over even one-third
+of mankind, and that Rome, the eternal and all-powerful, only counted a
+sixth part of the nations among her subjects? Only one soul saved out of
+every six--how fearful was the disproportion! However, the map spoke with
+brutal eloquence: the red-tinted empire of Rome was but a speck when
+compared with the yellow-hued empire of the other gods--the endless
+countries which the Propaganda still had to conquer. And the question
+arose: How many centuries must elapse before the promises of the Christ
+were realised, before the whole world were gained to Christianity, before
+religious society spread over secular society, and there remained but one
+kingdom and one belief? And in presence of this question, in presence of
+the prodigious labour yet to be accomplished, how great was one’s
+astonishment when one thought of Rome’s tranquil serenity, her patient
+stubbornness, which has never known doubt or weariness, her bishops and
+ministers toiling without cessation in the conviction that she alone will
+some day be the mistress of the world!
+
+ * Some readers may question certain of the figures given by M.
+ Zola, but it must be remembered that all such calculations
+ (even those of the best “authorities”) are largely guesswork.
+ I myself think that there are more than 5 million Jews, and
+ more than 200 millions of Mahommedans, but I regard the alleged
+ number of Brahmanists and Buddhists as exaggerated. On the
+ other hand, some statistical tables specify 80 millions of
+ Confucianists, of whom M. Zola makes no separate mention.
+ However, as regards the number of Christians in the world, the
+ figures given above are, within a few millions, probably
+ accurate.--Trans.
+
+Narcisse had told Pierre how carefully the embassies at Rome watched the
+doings of the Propaganda, for the missions were often the instruments of
+one or another nation, and exercised decisive influence in far-away
+lands. And so there was a continual struggle, in which the Congregation
+did all it could to favour the missionaries of Italy and her allies. It
+had always been jealous of its French rival, “L’Œuvre de la Propagation
+de la Foi,” installed at Lyons, which is as wealthy in money as itself,
+and richer in men of energy and courage. However, not content with
+levelling tribute on this French association, the Propaganda thwarted it,
+sacrificed it on every occasion when it had reason to think it might
+achieve a victory. Not once or twice, but over and over again had the
+French missionaries, the French orders, been driven from the scenes of
+their labours to make way for Italians or Germans. And Pierre, standing
+in that mournful, dusty room, which the sunlight never brightened,
+pictured the secret hot-bed of political intrigue masked by the
+civilising ardour of faith. Again he shuddered as one shudders when
+monstrous, terrifying things are brought home to one. And might not the
+most sensible be overcome? Might not the bravest be dismayed by the
+thought of that universal engine of conquest and domination, which worked
+with the stubbornness of eternity, not merely content with the gain of
+souls, but ever seeking to ensure its future sovereignty over the whole
+of corporeal humanity, and--pending the time when it might rule the
+nations itself--disposing of them, handing them over to the charge of
+this or that temporary master, in accordance with its good pleasure. And
+then, too, what a prodigious dream! Rome smiling and tranquilly awaiting
+the day when she will have united Christians, Mahommedans, Brahmanists,
+and Buddhists into one sole nation, of whom she will be both the
+spiritual and the temporal queen!
+
+However, a sound of coughing made Pierre turn, and he started on
+perceiving Cardinal Sarno, whom he had not heard enter. Standing in front
+of that map, he felt like one caught in the act of prying into a secret,
+and a deep flush overspread his face. The Cardinal, however, after
+looking at him fixedly with his dim eyes, went to his writing-table, and
+let himself drop into the arm-chair without saying a word. With a gesture
+he dispensed Pierre of the duty of kissing his ring.
+
+“I desired to offer my homage to your Eminence,” said the young man. “Is
+your Eminence unwell?”
+
+“No, no, it’s nothing but a dreadful cold which I can’t get rid of. And
+then, too, I have so many things to attend to just now.”
+
+Pierre looked at the Cardinal as he appeared in the livid light from the
+window, puny, lopsided, with the left shoulder higher than the right, and
+not a sign of life on his worn and ashen countenance. The young priest
+was reminded of one of his uncles, who, after thirty years spent in the
+offices of a French public department, displayed the same lifeless
+glance, parchment-like skin, and weary hebetation. Was it possible that
+this withered old man, so lost in his black cassock with red edging, was
+really one of the masters of the world, with the map of Christendom so
+deeply stamped on his mind, albeit he had never left Rome, that the
+Prefect of the Propaganda did not take a decision without asking his
+opinion?
+
+“Sit down, Monsieur l’Abbé,” said the Cardinal. “So you have come to see
+me--you have something to ask of me!” And, whilst disposing himself to
+listen, he stretched out his thin bony hands to finger the documents
+heaped up before him, glancing at each of them like some general, some
+strategist, profoundly versed in the science of his profession, who,
+although his army is far away, nevertheless directs it to victory from
+his private room, never for a moment allowing it to escape his mind.
+
+Pierre was somewhat embarrassed by such a plain enunciation of the
+interested object of his visit; still, he decided to go to the point.
+“Yes, indeed,” he answered, “it is a liberty I have taken to come and
+appeal to your Eminence’s wisdom for advice. Your Eminence is aware that
+I am in Rome for the purpose of defending a book of mine, and I should be
+grateful if your Eminence would help and guide me.” Then he gave a brief
+account of the present position of the affair, and began to plead his
+cause; but as he continued speaking he noticed that the Cardinal gave him
+very little attention, as though indeed he were thinking of something
+else, and failed to understand.
+
+“Ah! yes,” the great man at last muttered, “you have written a book.
+There was some question of it at Donna Serafina’s one evening. But a
+priest ought not to write; it is a mistake for him to do so. What is the
+good of it? And the Congregation of the Index must certainly be in the
+right if it is prosecuting your book. At all events, what can I do? I
+don’t belong to the Congregation, and I know nothing, nothing about the
+matter.”
+
+Pierre, pained at finding him so listless and indifferent, went on trying
+to enlighten and move him. But he realised that this man’s mind, so
+far-reaching and penetrating in the field in which it had worked for
+forty years, closed up as soon as one sought to divert it from its
+specialty. It was neither an inquisitive nor a supple mind. All trace of
+life faded from the Cardinal’s eyes, and his entire countenance assumed
+an expression of mournful imbecility. “I know nothing, nothing,” he
+repeated, “and I never recommend anybody.” However, at last he made an
+effort: “But Nani is mixed up in this,” said he. “What does Nani advise
+you to do?”
+
+“Monsignor Nani has been kind enough to reveal to me that the reporter is
+Monsignor Fornaro, and advises me to see him.”
+
+At this Cardinal Sarno seemed surprised and somewhat roused. A little
+light returned to his eyes. “Ah! really,” he rejoined, “ah!
+really--Well, if Nani has done that he must have some idea. Go and see
+Monsignor Fornaro.” Then, after rising and dismissing his visitor, who
+was compelled to thank him, bowing deeply, he resumed his seat, and a
+moment later the only sound in the lifeless room was that of his bony
+fingers turning over the documents before him.
+
+Pierre, in all docility, followed the advice given him, and immediately
+betook himself to the Piazza Navona, where, however, he learnt from one
+of Monsignor Fornaro’s servants that the prelate had just gone out, and
+that to find him at home it was necessary to call in the morning at ten
+o’clock. Accordingly it was only on the following day that Pierre was
+able to obtain an interview. He had previously made inquiries and knew
+what was necessary concerning Monsignor Fornaro. Born at Naples, he had
+there begun his studies under the Barnabites, had finished them at the
+Seminario Romano, and had subsequently, for many years, been a professor
+at the University Gregoriana. Nowadays Consultor to several Congregations
+and a Canon of Santa Maria Maggiore, he placed his immediate ambition in
+a Canonry at St. Peter’s, and harboured the dream of some day becoming
+Secretary of the Consistorial Congregation, a post conducting to the
+cardinalate. A theologian of remarkable ability, Monsignor Fornaro
+incurred no other reproach than that of occasionally sacrificing to
+literature by contributing articles, which he carefully abstained from
+signing, to certain religious reviews. He was also said to be very
+worldly.
+
+Pierre was received as soon as he had sent in his card, and perhaps he
+would have fancied that his visit was expected had not an appearance of
+sincere surprise, blended with a little anxiety, marked his reception.
+
+“Monsieur l’Abbé Froment, Monsieur l’Abbé Froment,” repeated the prelate,
+looking at the card which he still held. “Kindly step in--I was about to
+forbid my door, for I have some urgent work to attend to. But no matter,
+sit down.”
+
+Pierre, however, remained standing, quite charmed by the blooming
+appearance of this tall, strong, handsome man who, although five and
+forty years of age, was quite fresh and rosy, with moist lips, caressing
+eyes, and scarcely a grey hair among his curly locks. Nobody more
+fascinating and decorative could be found among the whole Roman prelacy.
+Careful of his person undoubtedly, and aiming at a simple elegance, he
+looked really superb in his black cassock with violet collar. And around
+him the spacious room where he received his visitors, gaily lighted as it
+was by two large windows facing the Piazza Navona, and furnished with a
+taste nowadays seldom met with among the Roman clergy, diffused a
+pleasant odour and formed a setting instinct with kindly cheerfulness.
+
+“Pray sit down, Monsieur l’Abbé Froment,” he resumed, “and tell me to
+what I am indebted for the honour of your visit.”
+
+He had already recovered his self-possession and assumed a _naïf_, purely
+obliging air; and Pierre, though the question was only natural, and he
+ought to have foreseen it, suddenly felt greatly embarrassed, more
+embarrassed indeed than in Cardinal Sarno’s presence. Should he go to the
+point at once, confess the delicate motive of his visit? A moment’s
+reflection showed him that this would be the best and worthier course.
+“Dear me, Monseigneur,” he replied, “I know very well that the step I
+have taken in calling on you is not usually taken, but it has been
+advised me, and it has seemed to me that among honest folks there can
+never be any harm in seeking in all good faith to elucidate the truth.”
+
+“What is it, what is it, then?” asked the prelate with an expression of
+perfect candour, and still continuing to smile.
+
+“Well, simply this. I have learnt that the Congregation of the Index has
+handed you my book ‘New Rome,’ and appointed you to examine it; and I
+have ventured to present myself before you in case you should have any
+explanations to ask of me.”
+
+But Monsignor Fornaro seemed unwilling to hear any more. He had carried
+both hands to his head and drawn back, albeit still courteous. “No, no,”
+ said he, “don’t tell me that, don’t continue, you would grieve me
+dreadfully. Let us say, if you like, that you have been deceived, for
+nothing ought to be known, in fact nothing is known, either by others or
+myself. I pray you, do not let us talk of such matters.”
+
+Pierre, however, had fortunately remarked what a decisive effect was
+produced when he had occasion to mention the name of the Assessor of the
+Holy Office. So it occurred to him to reply: “I most certainly do not
+desire to give you the slightest cause for embarrassment, Monseigneur,
+and I repeat to you that I would never have ventured to importune you if
+Monsignor Nani himself had not acquainted me with your name and address.”
+
+This time the effect was immediate, though Monsignor Fornaro, with that
+easy grace which he introduced into all things, made some ceremony about
+surrendering. He began by a demurrer, speaking archly with subtle shades
+of expression. “What! is Monsignor Nani the tattler! But I shall scold
+him, I shall get angry with him! And what does he know? He doesn’t belong
+to the Congregation; he may have been led into error. You must tell him
+that he has made a mistake, and that I have nothing at all to do with
+your affair. That will teach him not to reveal needful secrets which
+everybody respects!” Then, in a pleasant way, with winning glance and
+flowery lips, he went on: “Come, since Monsignor Nani desires it, I am
+willing to chat with you for a moment, my dear Monsieur Froment, but on
+condition that you shall know nothing of my report or of what may have
+been said or done at the Congregation.”
+
+Pierre in his turn smiled, admiring how easy things became when forms
+were respected and appearances saved. And once again he began to explain
+his case, the profound astonishment into which the prosecution of his
+book had thrown him, and his ignorance of the objections which were taken
+to it, and for which he had vainly sought a cause.
+
+“Really, really,” repeated the prelate, quite amazed at so much
+innocence. “The Congregation is a tribunal, and can only act when a case
+is brought before it. Proceedings have been taken against your book
+simply because it has been denounced.”
+
+“Yes, I know, denounced.”
+
+“Of course. Complaint was laid by three French bishops, whose names you
+will allow me to keep secret, and it consequently became necessary for
+the Congregation to examine the incriminated work.”
+
+Pierre looked at him quite scared. Denounced by three bishops? Why? With
+what object? Then he thought of his protector. “But Cardinal Bergerot,”
+ said he, “wrote me a letter of approval, which I placed at the beginning
+of my work as a preface. Ought not a guarantee like that to have been
+sufficient for the French episcopacy?”
+
+Monsignor Fornaro wagged his head in a knowing way before making up his
+mind to reply: “Ah! yes, no doubt, his Eminence’s letter, a very
+beautiful letter. I think, however, that it would have been much better
+if he had not written it, both for himself and for you especially.” Then
+as the priest, whose surprise was increasing, opened his mouth to urge
+him to explain himself, he went on: “No, no, I know nothing, I say
+nothing. His Eminence Cardinal Bergerot is a saintly man whom everybody
+venerates, and if it were possible for him to sin it would only be
+through pure goodness of heart.”
+
+Silence fell. Pierre could divine that an abyss was opening, and dared
+not insist. However, he at last resumed with some violence: “But, after
+all, why should my book be prosecuted, and the books of others be left
+untouched? I have no intention of acting as a denouncer myself, but how
+many books there are to which Rome closes her eyes, and which are far
+more dangerous than mine can be!”
+
+This time Monsignor Fornaro seemed glad to be able to support Pierre’s
+views. “You are right,” said he, “we cannot deal with every bad book, and
+it greatly distresses us. But you must remember what an incalculable
+number of works we should be compelled to read. And so we have to content
+ourselves with condemning the worst _en bloc_.”
+
+Then he complacently entered into explanations. In principle, no printer
+ought to send any work to press without having previously submitted the
+manuscript to the approval of the bishop of the diocese. Nowadays,
+however, with the enormous output of the printing trade, one could
+understand how terribly embarrassed the bishops would be if the printers
+were suddenly to conform to the Church’s regulation. There was neither
+the time nor the money, nor were there the men necessary for such
+colossal labour. And so the Congregation of the Index condemned _en
+masse_, without examination, all works of certain categories: first,
+books which were dangerous for morals, all erotic writings, and all
+novels; next the various bibles in the vulgar tongue, for the perusal of
+Holy Writ without discretion was not allowable; then the books on magic
+and sorcery, and all works on science, history, or philosophy that were
+in any way contrary to dogma, as well as the writings of heresiarchs or
+mere ecclesiastics discussing religion, which should never be discussed.
+All these were wise laws made by different popes, and were set forth in
+the preface to the catalogue of forbidden books which the Congregation
+published, and without them this catalogue, to have been complete, would
+in itself have formed a large library. On turning it over one found that
+the works singled out for interdiction were chiefly those of priests, the
+task being so vast and difficult that Rome’s concern extended but little
+beyond the observance of good order within the Church. And Pierre and his
+book came within the limit.
+
+“You will understand,” continued Monsignor Fornaro, “that we have no
+desire to advertise a heap of unwholesome writings by honouring them with
+special condemnation. Their name is legion in every country, and we
+should have neither enough paper nor enough ink to deal with them all. So
+we content ourselves with condemning one from time to time, when it bears
+a famous name and makes too much noise, or contains disquieting attacks
+on the faith. This suffices to remind the world that we exist and defend
+ourselves without abandoning aught of our rights or duties.”
+
+“But my book, my book,” exclaimed Pierre, “why these proceedings against
+my book?”
+
+“I am explaining that to you as far as it is allowable for me to do, my
+dear Monsieur Froment. You are a priest, your book is a success, you have
+published a cheap edition of it which sells very readily; and I don’t
+speak of its literary merit, which is remarkable, for it contains a
+breath of real poetry which transported me, and on which I must really
+compliment you. However, under the circumstances which I have enumerated,
+how could we close our eyes to such a work as yours, in which the
+conclusion arrived at is the annihilation of our holy religion and the
+destruction of Rome?”
+
+Pierre remained open-mouthed, suffocating with surprise. “The destruction
+of Rome!” he at last exclaimed; “but I desire to see Rome rejuvenated,
+eternal, again the queen of the world.” And, once more mastered by his
+glowing enthusiasm, he defended himself and confessed his faith:
+Catholicism reverting to the principles and practices of the primitive
+Church, drawing the blood of regeneration from the fraternal Christianity
+of Jesus; the Pope, freed from all terrestrial royalty, governing the
+whole of humanity with charity and love, and saving the world from the
+frightful social cataclysm that threatens it by leading it to the real
+Kingdom of God: the Christian communion of all nations united in one
+nation only. “And can the Holy Father disavow me?” he continued. “Are not
+these his secret ideas, which people are beginning to divine, and does
+not my only offence lie in having expressed them perhaps too soon and too
+freely? And if I were allowed to see him should I not at once obtain from
+him an order to stop these proceedings?”
+
+Monsignor Fornaro no longer spoke, but wagged his head without appearing
+offended by the priest’s juvenile ardour. On the contrary, he smiled with
+increasing amiability, as though highly amused by so much innocence and
+imagination. At last he gaily responded, “Oh! speak on, speak on; it
+isn’t I who will stop you. I’m forbidden to say anything. But the
+temporal power, the temporal power.”
+
+“Well, what of the temporal power?” asked Pierre.
+
+The prelate had again become silent, raising his amiable face to heaven
+and waving his white hands with a pretty gesture. And when he once more
+opened his mouth it was to say: “Then there’s your new religion--for the
+expression occurs twice: the new religion, the new religion--ah, _Dio_!”
+
+Again he became restless, going off into an ecstasy of wonderment, at
+sight of which Pierre impatiently exclaimed: “I do not know what your
+report will be, Monseigneur, but I declare to you that I have had no
+desire to attack dogma. And, candidly now, my whole book shows that I
+only sought to write a work of pity and salvation. It is only justice
+that some account should be taken of one’s intentions.”
+
+Monsignor Fornaro had become very calm and paternal again. “Oh!
+intentions! intentions!” he said as he rose to dismiss his visitor. “You
+may be sure, my dear Monsieur Froment, that I feel much honoured by your
+visit. Naturally I cannot tell you what my report will be; as it is, we
+have talked too much about it, and, in fact, I ought to have refused to
+listen to your defence. At the same time, you will always find me ready
+to be of service to you in anything that does not go against my duty. But
+I greatly fear that your book will be condemned.” And then, as Pierre
+again started, he added: “Well, yes. It is facts that are judged, you
+know, not intentions. So all defence is useless; the book is there, and
+we take it such as it is. However much you may try to explain it, you
+cannot alter it. And this is why the Congregation never calls the accused
+parties before it, and never accepts from them aught but retraction pure
+and simple. And, indeed, the wisest course would be for you to withdraw
+your book and make your submission. No? You won’t? Ah! how young you are,
+my friend!”
+
+He laughed yet more loudly at the gesture of revolt, of indomitable pride
+which had just escaped his young friend, as he called him. Then, on
+reaching the door, he again threw off some of his reserve, and said in a
+low voice, “Come, my dear Abbé, there is something I will do for you. I
+will give you some good advice. At bottom, I myself am nothing. I deliver
+my report, and it is printed, and the members of the Congregation read
+it, but are quite free to pay no attention to it. However, the Secretary
+of the Congregation, Father Dangelis, can accomplish everything, even
+impossibilities. Go to see him; you will find him at the Dominican
+convent behind the Piazza di Spagna. Don’t name me. And for the present
+good-bye, my dear fellow, good-bye.”
+
+Pierre once more found himself on the Piazza Navona, quite dazed, no
+longer knowing what to believe or hope. A cowardly idea was coming over
+him; why should he continue this struggle, in which his adversaries
+remained unknown and indiscernible? Why carry obstinacy any further, why
+linger any longer in that impassionating but deceptive Rome? He would
+flee that very evening, return to Paris, disappear there, and forget his
+bitter disillusion in the practice of humble charity. He was traversing
+one of those hours of weakness when the long-dreamt-of task suddenly
+seems to be an impossibility. However, amidst his great confusion he was
+nevertheless walking on, going towards his destination. And when he found
+himself in the Corso, then in the Via dei Condotti, and finally in the
+Piazza di Spagna, he resolved that he would at any rate see Father
+Dangelis. The Dominican convent is there, just below the Trinity de’
+Monti.
+
+Ah! those Dominicans! Pierre had never thought of them without a feeling
+of respect with which mingled a little fear. What vigorous pillars of the
+principle of authority and theocracy they had for centuries proved
+themselves to be! To them the Church had been indebted for its greatest
+measure of authority; they were the glorious soldiers of its triumph.
+Whilst St. Francis won the souls of the humble over to Rome, St. Dominic,
+on Rome’s behalf, subjected all the superior souls--those of the
+intelligent and powerful. And this he did with passion, amidst a blaze of
+faith and determination, making use of all possible means, preachings,
+writings, and police and judicial pressure. Though he did not found the
+Inquisition, its principles were his, and it was with fire and sword that
+his fraternal, loving heart waged war on schism. Living like his monks,
+in poverty, chastity, and obedience--the great virtues of those times of
+pride and licentiousness--he went from city to city, exhorting the
+impious, striving to bring them back to the Church and arraigning them
+before the ecclesiastical courts when his preachings did not suffice. He
+also laid siege to science, sought to make it his own, dreamt of
+defending God with the weapons of reason and human knowledge like a true
+forerunner of the angelic St. Thomas, that light of the middle ages, who
+joined the Dominican order and set everything in his “Summa Theologiae,”
+ psychology, logic, policy, and morals. And thus it was that the
+Dominicans filled the world, upholding the doctrines of Rome in the most
+famous pulpits of every nation, and contending almost everywhere against
+the free sprit of the Universities, like the vigilant guardians of dogma
+that they were, the unwearying artisans of the fortunes of the popes, the
+most powerful amongst all the artistic, scientific, and literary workers
+who raised the huge edifice of Catholicism such as it exists to-day.
+
+However, Pierre, who could feel that this edifice was even now tottering,
+though it had been built, people fancied, so substantially as to last
+through all eternity, asked himself what could be the present use of the
+Dominicans, those toilers of another age, whose police system and whose
+tribunals had perished beneath universal execration, whose voices were no
+longer listened to, whose books were but seldom read, and whose _rôle_ as
+_savants_ and civilisers had come to an end in presence of latter-day
+science, the truths of which were rending dogma on all sides. Certainly
+the Dominicans still form an influential and prosperous order; but how
+far one is from the times when their general reigned in Rome, Master of
+the Holy Palace, with convents and schools, and subjects throughout
+Europe! Of all their vast inheritance, so far as the Roman curia is
+concerned, only a few posts now remain to them, and among others the
+Secretaryship of the Congregation of the Index, a former dependency of
+the Holy Office where they once despotically ruled.
+
+Pierre was immediately ushered into the presence of Father Dangelis. The
+convent parlour was vast, bare, and white, flooded with bright sunshine.
+The only furniture was a table and some stools; and a large brass
+crucifix hung from the wall. Near the table stood the Father, a very thin
+man of about fifty, severely draped in his ample white habit and black
+mantle. From his long ascetic face, with thin lips, thin nose, and
+pointed, obstinate chin, his grey eyes shone out with a fixity that
+embarrassed one. And, moreover, he showed himself very plain and simple
+of speech, and frigidly polite in manner.
+
+“Monsieur l’Abbé Froment--the author of ‘New Rome,’ I suppose?” Then
+seating himself on one stool and pointing to another, he added: “Pray
+acquaint me with the object of your visit, Monsieur l’Abbé.”
+
+Thereupon Pierre had to begin his explanation, his defence, all over
+again; and the task soon became the more painful as his words fell from
+his lips amidst death-like silence and frigidity. Father Dangelis did not
+stir; with his hands crossed upon his knees he kept his sharp,
+penetrating eyes fixed upon those of the priest. And when the latter had
+at last ceased speaking, he slowly said: “I did not like to interrupt
+you, Monsieur l’Abbé, but it was not for me to hear all this. Process
+against your book has begun, and no power in the world can stay or impede
+its course. I do not therefore realise what it is that you apparently
+expect of me.”
+
+In a quivering voice Pierre was bold enough to answer: “I look for some
+kindness and justice.”
+
+A pale smile, instinct with proud humility, arose to the Dominican’s
+lips. “Be without fear,” he replied, “God has ever deigned to enlighten
+me in the discharge of my modest duties. Personally, be it said, I have
+no justice to render; I am but an employee whose duty is to classify
+matters and draw up documents concerning them. Their Eminences, the
+members of the Congregation, will alone pronounce judgment on your book.
+And assuredly they will do so with the help of the Holy Spirit. You will
+only have to bow to their sentence when it shall have been ratified by
+his Holiness.”
+
+Then he broke off the interview by rising, and Pierre was obliged to do
+the same. The Dominican’s words were virtually identical with those that
+had fallen from Monsignor Fornaro, but they were spoken with cutting
+frankness, a sort of tranquil bravery. On all sides Pierre came into
+collision with the same anonymous force, the same powerful engine whose
+component parts sought to ignore one another. For a long time yet, no
+doubt, he would be sent from one to the other, without ever finding the
+volitional element which reasoned and acted. And the only thing that he
+could do was to bow to it all.
+
+However, before going off, it occurred to him once more to mention the
+name of Monsignor Nani, the powerful effect of which he had begun to
+realise. “I ask your pardon,” he said, “for having disturbed you to no
+purpose, but I simply deferred to the kind advice of Monsignor Nani, who
+has condescended to show me some interest.”
+
+The effect of these words was unexpected. Again did Father Dangelis’s
+thin face brighten into a smile, but with a twist of the lips, sharp with
+ironical contempt. He had become yet paler, and his keen intelligent eyes
+were flaming. “Ah! it was Monsignor Nani who sent you!” he said. “Well,
+if you think you need a protector, it is useless for you to apply to any
+other than himself. He is all-powerful. Go to see him; go to see him!”
+
+And that was the only encouragement Pierre derived from his visit: the
+advice to go back to the man who had sent him. At this he felt that he
+was losing ground, and he resolved to return home in order to reflect on
+things and try to understand them before taking any further steps. The
+idea of questioning Don Vigilio at once occurred to him, and that same
+evening after supper he luckily met the secretary in the corridor, just
+as, candle in hand, he was on his way to bed.
+
+“I have so many things that I should like to say to you,” Pierre said to
+him. “Can you kindly come to my rooms for a moment?”
+
+But the other promptly silenced him with a gesture, and then whispered:
+“Didn’t you see Abbé Paparelli on the first floor? He was following us,
+I’m sure.”
+
+Pierre often saw the train-bearer roaming about the house, and greatly
+disliked his stealthy, prying ways. However, he had hitherto attached no
+importance to him, and was therefore much surprised by Don Vigilio’s
+question. The other, without awaiting his reply, had returned to the end
+of the corridor, where for a long while he remained listening. Then he
+came back on tip-toe, blew out his candle, and darted into Pierre’s
+sitting-room. “There--that’s done,” he murmured directly the door was
+shut. “But if it is all the same to you, we won’t stop in this
+sitting-room. Let us go into your bed-room. Two walls are better than
+one.”
+
+When the lamp had been placed on the table and they found themselves
+seated face to face in that bare, faded bed-chamber, Pierre noticed that
+the secretary was suffering from a more violent attack of fever than
+usual. His thin puny figure was shivering from head to foot, and his
+ardent eyes had never before blazed so blackly in his ravaged, yellow
+face. “Are you poorly?” asked Pierre. “I don’t want to tire you.”
+
+“Poorly, yes, I am on fire--but I want to talk. I can’t bear it any
+longer. One always has to relieve oneself some day or other.”
+
+Was it his complaint that he desired to relieve; or was he anxious to
+break his long silence in order that it might not stifle him? This at
+first remained uncertain. He immediately asked for an account of the
+steps that Pierre had lately taken, and became yet more restless when he
+heard how the other had been received by Cardinal Sarno, Monsignor
+Fornaro, and Father Dangelis. “Yes, that’s quite it,” he repeated,
+“nothing astonishes me nowadays, and yet I feel indignant on your
+account. Yes, it doesn’t concern me, but all the same it makes me ill,
+for it reminds me of all my own troubles. You must not rely on Cardinal
+Sarno, remember, for he is always elsewhere, with his mind far away, and
+has never helped anybody. But that Fornaro, that Fornaro!”
+
+“He seemed to me very amiable, even kindly disposed,” replied Pierre;
+“and I really think that after our interview, he will considerably soften
+his report.”
+
+“He! Why, the gentler he was with you the more grievously he will saddle
+you! He will devour you, fatten himself with such easy prey. Ah! you
+don’t know him, _dilizioso_ that he is, ever on the watch to rear his own
+fortune on the troubles of poor devils whose defeat is bound to please
+the powerful. I prefer the other one, Father Dangelis, a terrible man, no
+doubt, but frank and brave and of superior mind. I must admit, however,
+that he would burn you like a handful of straw if he were the master. And
+ah! if I could tell you everything, if I could show you the frightful
+under-side of this world of ours, the monstrous, ravenous ambition, the
+abominable network of intrigues, venality, cowardice, treachery, and even
+crime!”
+
+On seeing Don Vigilio so excited, in such a blaze of spite, Pierre
+thought of extracting from him some of the many items of information
+which he had hitherto sought in vain. “Well, tell me merely what is the
+position of my affair,” he responded. “When I questioned you on my
+arrival here you said that nothing had yet reached Cardinal Boccanera.
+But all information must now have been collected, and you must know of
+it. And, by the way, Monsignor Fornaro told me that three French bishops
+had asked that my book should be prosecuted. Three bishops, is it
+possible?”
+
+Don Vigilio shrugged his shoulders. “Ah!” said he, “yours is an innocent
+soul! I’m surprised that there were _only_ three! Yes, several documents
+relating to your affair are in our hands; and, moreover, things have
+turned out much as I suspected. The three bishops are first the Bishop of
+Tarbes, who evidently carries out the vengeance of the Fathers of
+Lourdes; and then the Bishops of Poitiers and Evreux, who are both known
+as uncompromising Ultramontanists and passionate adversaries of Cardinal
+Bergerot. The Cardinal, you know, is regarded with disfavour at the
+Vatican, where his Gallican ideas and broad liberal mind provoke perfect
+anger. And don’t seek for anything else. The whole affair lies in that:
+an execution which the powerful Fathers of Lourdes demand of his
+Holiness, and a desire to reach and strike Cardinal Bergerot through your
+book, by means of the letter of approval which he imprudently wrote to
+you and which you published by way of preface. For a long time past the
+condemnations of the Index have largely been secret knock-down blows
+levelled at Churchmen. Denunciation reigns supreme, and the law applied
+is that of good pleasure. I could tell you some almost incredible things,
+how perfectly innocent books have been selected among a hundred for the
+sole object of killing an idea or a man; for the blow is almost always
+levelled at some one behind the author, some one higher than he is. And
+there is such a hot-bed of intrigue, such a source of abuses in this
+institution of the Index, that it is tottering, and even among those who
+surround the Pope it is felt that it must soon be freshly regulated if it
+is not to fall into complete discredit. I well understand that the Church
+should endeavour to retain universal power, and govern by every fit
+weapon, but the weapons must be such as one can use without their
+injustice leading to revolt, or their antique childishness provoking
+merriment!”
+
+Pierre listened with dolorous astonishment in his heart. Since he had
+been at Rome and had seen the Fathers of the Grotto saluted and feared
+there, holding an authoritative position, thanks to the large alms which
+they contributed to the Peter’s Pence, he had felt that they were behind
+the proceedings instituted against him, and realised that he would have
+to pay for a certain page of his book in which he had called attention to
+an iniquitous displacement of fortune at Lourdes, a frightful spectacle
+which made one doubt the very existence of the Divinity, a continual
+cause of battle and conflict which would disappear in the truly Christian
+society of to-morrow. And he could also now understand that his delight
+at the loss of the temporal power must have caused a scandal, and
+especially that the unfortunate expression “a new religion” had alone
+been sufficient to arm _delatores_ against him. But that which amazed and
+grieved him was to learn that Cardinal Bergerot’s letter was looked upon
+as a crime, and that his (Pierre’s) book was denounced and condemned in
+order that adversaries who dared not attack the venerable pastor face to
+face might, deal him a cowardly blow from behind. The thought of
+afflicting that saintly man, of serving as the implement to strike him in
+his ardent charity, cruelly grieved Pierre. And how bitter and
+disheartening it was to find the most hideous questions of pride and
+money, ambition and appetite, running riot with the most ferocious
+egotism, beneath the quarrels of those leaders of the Church who ought
+only to have contended together in love for the poor!
+
+And then Pierre’s mind revolted against that supremely odious and idiotic
+Index. He now understood how it worked, from the arrival of the
+denunciations to the public posting of the titles of the condemned works.
+He had just seen the Secretary of the Congregation, Father Dangelis, to
+whom the denunciations came, and who then investigated the affair,
+collecting all documents and information concerning it with the passion
+of a cultivated authoritarian monk, who dreamt of ruling minds and
+consciences as in the heroic days of the Inquisition. Then, too, Pierre
+had visited one of the consultive prelates, Monsignor Fornaro, who was so
+ambitious and affable, and so subtle a theologian that he would have
+discovered attacks against the faith in a treatise on algebra, had his
+interests required it. Next there were the infrequent meetings of the
+cardinals, who at long intervals voted for the interdiction of some
+hostile book, deeply regretting that they could not suppress them all;
+and finally came the Pope, approving and signing the decrees, which was a
+mere formality, for were not all books guilty? But what an extraordinary
+wretched Bastille of the past was that aged Index, that senile
+institution now sunk into second childhood. One realised that it must
+have been a formidable power when books were rare and the Church had
+tribunals of blood and fire to enforce her edicts. But books had so
+greatly multiplied, the written, printed thoughts of mankind had swollen
+into such a deep broad river, that they had swept all opposition away,
+and now the Index was swamped and reduced to powerlessness, compelled
+more and more to limit its field of action, to confine itself to the
+examination of the writings of ecclesiastics, and even in this respect it
+was becoming corrupt, fouled by the worst passions and changed into an
+instrument of intrigue, hatred, and vengeance. Ah! that confession of
+decay, of paralysis which grew more and more complete amidst the scornful
+indifference of the nations. To think that Catholicism, the once glorious
+agent of civilisation, had come to such a pass that it cast books into
+hell-fire by the heap; and what books they were, almost the entire
+literature, history, philosophy, and science of the past and the present!
+Few works, indeed, are published nowadays that would not fall under the
+ban of the Church. If she seems to close her eyes, it is in order to
+avoid the impossible task of hunting out and destroying everything. Yet
+she stubbornly insists on retaining a semblance of sovereign authority
+over human intelligence, just as some very aged queen, dispossessed of
+her states and henceforth without judges or executioners, might continue
+to deliver vain sentences to which only an infinitesimal minority would
+pay heed. But imagine the Church momentarily victorious, miraculously
+mastering the modern world, and ask yourself what she, with her tribunals
+to condemn and her gendarmes to enforce, would do with human thought.
+Imagine a strict application of the Index regulations: no printer able to
+put anything whatever to press without the approval of his bishop, and
+even then every book laid before the Congregation, the past expunged, the
+present throttled, subjected to an intellectual Reign of Terror! Would
+not the closing of every library perforce ensue, would not the long
+heritage of written thought be cast into prison, would not the future be
+barred, would not all progress, all conquest of knowledge, be totally
+arrested? Rome herself is nowadays a terrible example of such a
+disastrous experiment--Rome with her congealed soil, her dead sap, killed
+by centuries of papal government, Rome which has become so barren that
+not a man, not a work has sprung from her midst even after five and
+twenty years of awakening and liberty! And who would accept such a state
+of things, not among people of revolutionary mind, but among those of
+religious mind that might possess any culture and breadth of view?
+Plainly enough it was all mere childishness and absurdity.
+
+Deep silence reigned, and Pierre, quite upset by his reflections, made a
+gesture of despair whilst glancing at Don Vigilio, who sat speechless in
+front of him. For a moment longer, amidst the death-like quiescence of
+that old sleeping mansion, both continued silent, seated face to face in
+the closed chamber which the lamp illumined with a peaceful glow. But at
+last Don Vigilio leant forward, his eyes sparkling, and with a feverish
+shiver murmured: “It is they, you know, always they, at the bottom of
+everything.”
+
+Pierre, who did not understand, felt astonished, indeed somewhat anxious
+at such a strange remark coming without any apparent transition. “Who are
+_they_?” he asked.
+
+“The Jesuits!”
+
+In this reply the little, withered, yellow priest had set all the
+concentrated rage of his exploding passion. Ah! so much the worse if he
+had perpetrated a fresh act of folly. The cat was out of the bag at last!
+Nevertheless, he cast a final suspicious glance around the walls. And
+then he relieved his mind at length, with a flow of words which gushed
+forth the more irresistibly since he had so long held them in check. “Ah!
+the Jesuits, the Jesuits! You fancy that you know them, but you haven’t
+even an idea of their abominable actions and incalculable power. They it
+is whom one always comes upon, everywhere, in every circumstance.
+Remember _that_ whenever you fail to understand anything, if you wish to
+understand it. Whenever grief or trouble comes upon you, whenever you
+suffer, whenever you weep, say to yourself at once: ‘It is they; they are
+there!’ Why, for all I know, there may be one of them under that bed,
+inside that cupboard. Ah! the Jesuits, the Jesuits! They have devoured
+me, they are devouring me still, they will leave nothing of me at last,
+neither flesh nor bone.”
+
+Then, in a halting voice, he related the story of his life, beginning
+with his youth, which had opened so hopefully. He belonged to the petty
+provincial nobility, and had been dowered with a fairly large income,
+besides a keen, supple intelligence, which looked smilingly towards the
+future. Nowadays, he would assuredly have been a prelate, on the road to
+high dignities, but he had been foolish enough to speak ill of the
+Jesuits and to thwart them in two or three circumstances. And from that
+moment, if he were to be believed, they had caused every imaginable
+misfortune to rain upon him: his father and mother had died, his banker
+had robbed him and fled, good positions had escaped him at the very
+moment when he was about to occupy them, the most awful misadventures had
+pursued him amidst the duties of his ministry to such a point indeed,
+that he had narrowly escaped interdiction. It was only since Cardinal
+Boccanera, compassionating his bad luck, had taken him into his house and
+attached him to his person, that he had enjoyed a little repose. “Here I
+have a refuge, an asylum,” he continued. “They execrate his Eminence, who
+has never been on their side, but they haven’t yet dared to attack him or
+his servants. Oh! I have no illusions, they will end by catching me
+again, all the same. Perhaps they will even hear of our conversation this
+evening, and make me pay dearly for it; for I do wrong to speak, I speak
+in spite of myself. They have stolen all my happiness, and brought all
+possible misfortune on me, everything that was possible, everything--you
+hear me!”
+
+Increasing discomfort was taking possession of Pierre, who, seeking to
+relieve himself by a jest, exclaimed: “Come, come, at any rate it wasn’t
+the Jesuits who gave you the fever.”
+
+“Yes, yes, it was!” Don Vigilio violently declared. “I caught it on the
+bank of the Tiber one evening, when I went to weep there in my grief at
+having been driven from the little church where I officiated.”
+
+Pierre, hitherto, had never believed in the terrible legend of the
+Jesuits. He belonged to a generation which laughed at the idea of
+wehr-wolves, and considered the _bourgeois_ fear of the famous black men,
+who hid themselves in walls and terrorised families, to be a trifle
+ridiculous. To him all such things seemed to be nursery tales,
+exaggerated by religious and political passion. And so it was with
+amazement that he examined Don Vigilio, suddenly fearing that he might
+have to deal with a maniac.
+
+Nevertheless he could not help recalling the extraordinary story of the
+Jesuits. If St. Francis of Assisi and St. Dominic are the very soul and
+spirit of the middle ages, its masters and teachers, the former a living
+expression of all the ardent, charitable faith of the humble, and the
+other defending dogma and fixing doctrines for the intelligent and the
+powerful, on the other hand Ignatius de Loyola appeared on the threshold
+of modern times to save the tottering heritage by accommodating religion
+to the new developments of society, thereby ensuring it the empire of the
+world which was about to appear.
+
+At the advent of the modern era it seemed as if the Deity were to be
+vanquished in the uncompromising struggle with sin, for it was certain
+that the old determination to suppress Nature, to kill the man within
+man, with his appetites, passions, heart, and blood, could only result in
+a disastrous defeat, in which, indeed, the Church found herself on the
+very eve of sinking; and it was the Jesuits who came to extricate her
+from this peril and reinvigorate her by deciding that it was she who now
+ought to go to the world, since the world seemed unwilling to go any
+longer to her. All lay in that; you find the Jesuits declaring that one
+can enter into arrangements with heaven; they bend and adjust themselves
+to the customs, prejudices, and even vices of the times; they smile, all
+condescension, cast rigourism aside, and practice the diplomacy of
+amiability, ever ready to turn the most awful abominations “to the
+greater glory of God.” That is their motto, their battle-cry, and thence
+springs the moral principle which many regard as their crime: that all
+means are good to attain one’s end, especially when that end is the
+furtherance of the Deity’s interests as represented by those of the
+Church. And what overwhelming success attends the efforts of the Jesuits!
+they swarm and before long cover the earth, on all sides becoming
+uncontested masters. They shrive kings, they acquire immense wealth, they
+display such victorious power of invasion that, however humbly they may
+set foot in any country, they soon wholly possess it: souls, bodies,
+power, and fortune alike falling to them. And they are particularly
+zealous in founding schools, they show themselves to be incomparable
+moulders of the human brain, well understanding that power always belongs
+to the morrow, to the generations which are growing up and whose master
+one must be if one desire to reign eternally. So great is their power,
+based on the necessity of compromise with sin, that, on the morrow of the
+Council of Trent, they transform the very spirit of Catholicism,
+penetrate it, identify it with themselves and become the indispensable
+soldiers of the papacy which lives by them and for them. And from that
+moment Rome is theirs, Rome where their general so long commands, whence
+so long go forth the directions for the obscure tactics which are blindly
+followed by their innumerable army, whose skilful organisation covers the
+globe as with an iron network hidden by the velvet of hands expert in
+dealing gently with poor suffering humanity. But, after all, the most
+prodigious feature is the stupefying vitality of the Jesuits who are
+incessantly tracked, condemned, executed, and yet still and ever erect.
+As soon as their power asserts itself, their unpopularity begins and
+gradually becomes universal. Hoots of execration arise around them,
+abominable accusations, scandalous law cases in which they appear as
+corruptors and felons. Pascal devotes them to public contempt,
+parliaments condemn their books to be burnt, universities denounce their
+system of morals and their teaching as poisonous. They foment such
+disturbances, such struggles in every kingdom, that organised persecution
+sets in, and they are soon driven from everywhere. During more than a
+century they become wanderers, expelled, then recalled, passing and
+repassing frontiers, leaving a country amidst cries of hatred to return
+to it as soon as quiet has been restored. Finally, for supreme disaster,
+they are suppressed by one pope, but another re-establishes them, and
+since then they have been virtually tolerated everywhere. And in the
+diplomatic self-effacement, the shade in which they have the prudence to
+sequester themselves, they are none the less triumphant, quietly
+confident of their victory like soldiers who have once and for ever
+subdued the earth.
+
+Pierre was aware that, judging by mere appearances, the Jesuits were
+nowadays dispossessed of all influence in Rome. They no longer officiated
+at the Gesù, they no longer directed the Collegio Romano, where they
+formerly fashioned so many souls; and with no abode of their own, reduced
+to accept foreign hospitality, they had modestly sought a refuge at the
+Collegio Germanico, where there is a little chapel. There they taught and
+there they still confessed, but without the slightest bustle or display.
+Was one to believe, however, that this effacement was but masterly
+cunning, a feigned disappearance in order that they might really remain
+secret, all-powerful masters, the hidden hand which directs and guides
+everything? People certainly said that the proclamation of papal
+Infallibility had been their work, a weapon with which they had armed
+themselves whilst feigning to bestow it on the papacy, in readiness for
+the coming decisive task which their genius foresaw in the approaching
+social upheavals. And thus there might perhaps be some truth in what Don
+Vigilio, with a shiver of mystery, related about their occult
+sovereignty, a seizin, as it were, of the government of the Church, a
+royalty ignored but nevertheless complete.
+
+As this idea occurred to Pierre, a dim connection between certain of his
+experiences arose in his mind and he all at once inquired: “Is Monsignor
+Nani a Jesuit, then?”
+
+These words seemed to revive all Don Vigilio’s anxious passion. He waved
+his trembling hand, and replied: “He? Oh, he’s too clever, too skilful by
+far to have taken the robe. But he comes from that Collegio Romano where
+his generation grew up, and he there imbibed that Jesuit genius which
+adapted itself so well to his own. Whilst fully realising the danger of
+wearing an unpopular and embarrassing livery, and wishing to be free, he
+is none the less a Jesuit in his flesh, in his bones, in his very soul.
+He is evidently convinced that the Church can only triumph by utilising
+the passions of mankind, and withal he is very fond of the Church, very
+pious at bottom, a very good priest, serving God without weakness in
+gratitude for the absolute power which God gives to His ministers. And
+besides, he is so charming, incapable of any brutal action, full of the
+good breeding of his noble Venetian ancestors, and deeply versed in
+knowledge of the world, thanks to his experiences at the nunciatures of
+Paris, Vienna, and other places, without mentioning that he knows
+everything that goes on by reason of the delicate functions which he has
+discharged for ten years past as Assessor of the Holy Office. Yes, he is
+powerful, all-powerful, and in him you do not have the furtive Jesuit
+whose robe glides past amidst suspicion, but the head, the brain, the
+leader whom no uniform designates.”
+
+This reply made Pierre grave, for he was quite willing to admit that an
+opportunist code of morals, like that of the Jesuits, was inoculable and
+now predominated throughout the Church. Indeed, the Jesuits might
+disappear, but their doctrine would survive them, since it was the one
+weapon of combat, the one system of strategy which might again place the
+nations under the dominion of Rome. And in reality the struggle which
+continued lay precisely in the attempts to accommodate religion to the
+century, and the century to religion. Such being the case, Pierre
+realised that such men as Monsignor Nani might acquire vast and even
+decisive importance.
+
+“Ah! if you knew, if you knew,” continued Don Vigilio, “he’s everywhere,
+he has his hand in everything. For instance, nothing has ever happened
+here, among the Boccaneras, but I’ve found him at the bottom of it,
+tangling or untangling the threads according to necessities with which he
+alone is acquainted.”
+
+Then, in the unquenchable fever for confiding things which was now
+consuming him, the secretary related how Monsignor Nani had most
+certainly brought on Benedetta’s divorce case. The Jesuits, in spite of
+their conciliatory spirit, have always taken up a hostile position with
+regard to Italy, either because they do not despair of reconquering Rome,
+or because they wait to treat in due season with the ultimate and real
+victor, whether King or Pope. And so Nani, who had long been one of Donna
+Serafina’s intimates, had helped to precipitate the rupture with Prada as
+soon as Benedetta’s mother was dead. Again, it was he who, to prevent any
+interference on the part of the patriotic Abbé Pisoni, the young woman’s
+confessor and the artisan of her marriage, had urged her to take the same
+spiritual director as her aunt, Father Lorenza, a handsome Jesuit with
+clear and kindly eyes, whose confessional in the chapel of the Collegio
+Germanico was incessantly besieged by penitents. And it seemed certain
+that this manœuvre had brought about everything; what one cleric working
+for Italy had done, was to be undone by another working against Italy.
+Why was it, however, that Nani, after bringing about the rupture, had
+momentarily ceased to show all interest in the affair to the point even
+of jeopardising the suit for the dissolution of the marriage? And why was
+he now again busying himself with it, setting Donna Serafina in action,
+prompting her to buy Monsignor Palma’s support, and bringing his own
+influence to bear on the cardinals of the Congregation? There was mystery
+in all this, as there was in everything he did, for his schemes were
+always complicated and distant in their effects. However, one might
+suppose that he now wished to hasten the marriage of Benedetta and Dario,
+in order to stop all the abominable rumours which were circulating in the
+white world; unless, indeed, this divorce secured by pecuniary payments
+and the pressure of notorious influences were an intentional scandal at
+first spun out and now hastened, in order to harm Cardinal Boccanera,
+whom the Jesuits might desire to brush aside in certain eventualities
+which were possibly near at hand.
+
+“To tell the truth, I rather incline to the latter view,” said Don
+Vigilio, “the more so indeed as I learnt this evening that the Pope is
+not well. With an old man of eighty-four the end may come at any moment,
+and so the Pope can never catch cold but what the Sacred College and the
+prelacies are all agog, stirred by sudden ambitious rivalries. Now, the
+Jesuits have always opposed Cardinal Boccanera’s candidature. They ought
+to be on his side, on account of his rank, and his uncompromising
+attitude towards Italy, but the idea of giving themselves such a master
+disquiets them, for they consider him unseasonably rough and stern, too
+violent in his faith, which unbending as it is would prove dangerous in
+these diplomatic times through which the Church is passing. And so I
+should in no wise be astonished if there were an attempt to discredit him
+and render his candidature impossible, by employing the most underhand
+and shameful means.”
+
+A little quiver of fear was coming over Pierre. The contagion of the
+unknown, of the black intrigues plotted in the dark, was spreading amidst
+the silence of the night in the depths of that palace, near that Tiber,
+in that Rome so full of legendary tragedies. But all at once the young
+man’s mind reverted to himself, to his own affair. “But what is my part
+in all this?” he asked: “why does Monsignor Nani seem to take an interest
+in me? Why is he mixed up in the proceedings against my book?”
+
+“Oh! one never knows, one never knows exactly!” replied Don Vigilio,
+waving his arms. “One thing I can say, that he only knew of the affair
+when the denunciations of the three bishops were already in the hands of
+Father Dangelis; and I have also learnt that he then tried to stop the
+proceedings, which he no doubt thought both useless and impolitic. But
+when a matter is once before the Congregation it is almost impossible for
+it to be withdrawn, and Monsignor Nani must also have come into collision
+with Father Dangelis who, like a faithful Dominican, is the passionate
+adversary of the Jesuits. It was then that he caused the Contessina to
+write to Monsieur de la Choue, requesting him to tell you to hasten here
+in order to defend yourself, and to arrange for your acceptance of
+hospitality in this mansion, during your stay.”
+
+This revelation brought Pierre’s emotion to a climax. “You are sure of
+that?” he asked.
+
+“Oh! quite sure. I heard Nani speak of you one Monday, and some time ago
+I told you that he seemed to know all about you, as if he had made most
+minute inquiries. My belief is that he had already read your book, and
+was extremely preoccupied about it.”
+
+“Do you think that he shares my ideas, then? Is he sincere, is he
+defending himself while striving to defend me?”
+
+“Oh! no, no, not at all. Your ideas, why he certainly hates them, and
+your book and yourself as well. You have no idea what contempt for the
+weak, what hatred of the poor, and love of authority and domination he
+conceals under his caressing amiability. Lourdes he might abandon to you,
+though it embodies a marvellous weapon of government; but he will never
+forgive you for being on the side of the little ones of the world, and
+for pronouncing against the temporal power. If you only heard with what
+gentle ferocity he derides Monsieur de la Choue, whom he calls the
+weeping willow of Neo-Catholicism!”
+
+Pierre carried his hands to his temples and pressed his head
+despairingly. “Then why, why, tell me I beg of you, why has he brought me
+here and kept me here in this house at his disposal? Why has he
+promenaded me up and down Rome for three long months, throwing me against
+obstacles and wearying me, when it was so easy for him to let the Index
+condemn my book if it embarrassed him? It’s true, of course, that things
+would not have gone quietly, for I was disposed to refuse submission and
+openly confess my new faith, even against the decisions of Rome.”
+
+Don Vigilio’s black eyes flared in his yellow face: “Perhaps it was that
+which he wished to prevent. He knows you to be very intelligent and
+enthusiastic, and I have often heard him say that intelligence and
+enthusiasm should not be fought openly.”
+
+Pierre, however, had risen to his feet, and instead of listening, was
+striding up and down the room as though carried away by the whirlwind of
+his thoughts. “Come, come,” he said at last, “it is necessary that I
+should know and understand things if I am to continue the struggle. You
+must be kind enough to give me some detailed particulars about each of
+the persons mixed up in my affair. Jesuits, Jesuits everywhere? _Mon
+Dieu_, it may be so, you are perhaps right! But all the same you must
+point out the different shades to me. Now, for instance, what of that
+Fornaro?”
+
+“Monsignor Fornaro, oh! he’s whatever you like. Still he also was brought
+up at the Collegio Romano, so you may be certain that he is a Jesuit, a
+Jesuit by education, position, and ambition. He is longing to become a
+cardinal, and if he some day becomes one, he’ll long to be the next pope.
+Besides, you know, every one here is a candidate to the papacy as soon as
+he enters the seminary.”
+
+“And Cardinal Sanguinetti?”
+
+“A Jesuit, a Jesuit! To speak plainly, he was one, then ceased to be one,
+and is now undoubtedly one again. Sanguinetti has flirted with every
+influence. It was long thought that he was in favour of conciliation
+between the Holy See and Italy; but things drifted into a bad way, and he
+violently took part against the usurpers. In the same style he has
+frequently fallen out with Leo XIII and then made his peace. To-day at
+the Vatican, he keeps on a footing of diplomatic reserve. Briefly he only
+has one object, the tiara, and even shows it too plainly, which is a
+mistake, for it uses up a candidate. Still, just at present the struggle
+seems to be between him and Cardinal Boccanera. And that’s why he has
+gone over to the Jesuits again, utilising their hatred of his rival, and
+anticipating that they will be forced to support _him_ in order to defeat
+the other. But I doubt it, they are too shrewd, they will hesitate to
+patronise a candidate who is already so compromised. He, blunder-head,
+passionate and proud as he is, doubts nothing, and since you say that he
+is now at Frascati, I’m certain that he made all haste to shut himself up
+there with some grand strategical object in view, as soon as he heard of
+the Pope’s illness.”
+
+“Well, and the Pope himself, Leo XIII?” asked Pierre.
+
+This time Don Vigilio slightly hesitated, his eyes blinking. Then he
+said: “Leo XIII? He is a Jesuit, a Jesuit! Oh! I know it is said that he
+sides with the Dominicans, and this is in a measure true, for he fancies
+that he is animated with their spirit and he has brought St. Thomas into
+favour again, and has restored all the ecclesiastical teaching of
+doctrine. But there is also the Jesuit, remember, who is one
+involuntarily and without knowing it, and of this category the present
+Pope will prove the most famous example. Study his acts, investigate his
+policy, and you will find that everything in it emanates from the Jesuit
+spirit. The fact is that he has unwittingly become impregnated with that
+spirit, and that all the influence, directly or indirectly brought to
+bear on him comes from a Jesuit centre. Ah! why don’t you believe me? I
+repeat that the Jesuits have conquered and absorbed everything, that all
+Rome belongs to them from the most insignificant cleric to his Holiness
+in person.”
+
+Then he continued, replying to each fresh name that Pierre gave with the
+same obstinate, maniacal cry: “Jesuit, Jesuit!” It seemed as if a
+Churchman could be nothing else, as if each answer were a confirmation of
+the proposition that the clergy must compound with the modern world if it
+desired to preserve its Deity. The heroic age of Catholicism was
+accomplished, henceforth it could only live by dint of diplomacy and
+ruses, concessions and arrangements. “And that Paparelli, he’s a Jesuit
+too, a Jesuit!” Don Vigilio went on, instinctively lowering his voice.
+“Yes, the humble but terrible Jesuit, the Jesuit in his most abominable
+_rôle_ as a spy and a perverter! I could swear that he has merely been
+placed here in order to keep watch on his Eminence! And you should see
+with what supple talent and craft he has performed his task, to such a
+point indeed that it is now he alone who wills and orders things. He
+opens the door to whomsoever he pleases, uses his master like something
+belonging to him, weighs on each of his resolutions, and holds him in his
+power by dint of his stealthy unremitting efforts. Yes! it’s the lion
+conquered by the insect; the infinitesimally small disposing of the
+infinitely great; the train-bearer--whose proper part is to sit at his
+cardinal’s feet like a faithful hound--in reality reigning over him, and
+impelling him in whatsoever direction he chooses. Ah! the Jesuit! the
+Jesuit! Mistrust him when you see him gliding by in his shabby old
+cassock, with the flabby wrinkled face of a devout old maid. And make
+sure that he isn’t behind the doors, or in the cupboards, or under the
+beds. Ah! I tell you that they’ll devour you as they’ve devoured me; and
+they’ll give you the fever too, perhaps even the plague if you are not
+careful!”
+
+Pierre suddenly halted in front of his companion. He was losing all
+assurance, both fear and rage were penetrating him. And, after all, why
+not? These extraordinary stories must be true. “But in that case give me
+some advice,” he exclaimed, “I asked you to come in here this evening
+precisely because I no longer know what to do, and need to be set in the
+right path--” Then he broke off and again paced to and fro, as if urged
+into motion by his exploding passion. “Or rather no, tell me nothing!” he
+abruptly resumed. “It’s all over; I prefer to go away. The thought
+occurred to me before, but it was in a moment of cowardice and with the
+idea of disappearing and of returning to live in peace in my little nook:
+whereas now, if I go off, it will be as an avenger, a judge, to cry aloud
+to all the world from Paris, to proclaim what I have seen in Rome, what
+men have done there with the Christianity of Jesus, the Vatican falling
+into dust, the corpse-like odour which comes from it, the idiotic
+illusions of those who hope that they will one day see a renascence of
+the modern soul arise from a sepulchre where the remnants of dead
+centuries rot and slumber. Oh! I will not yield, I will not make my
+submission, I will defend my book by a fresh one. And that book, I
+promise you, will make some noise in the world, for it will sound the
+last agony of a dying religion, which one must make all haste to bury
+lest its remains should poison the nations!”
+
+All this was beyond Don Vigilio’s mind. The Italian priest, with narrow
+belief and ignorant terror of the new ideas, awoke within him. He clasped
+his hands, affrighted. “Be quiet, be quiet! You are blaspheming! And,
+besides, you cannot go off like that without again trying to see his
+Holiness. He alone is sovereign. And I know that I shall surprise you;
+but Father Dangelis has given you in jest the only good advice that can
+be given: Go back to see Monsignor Nani, for he alone will open the door
+of the Vatican for you.”
+
+Again did Pierre give a start of anger: “What! It was with Monsignor Nani
+that I began, from him that I set out; and I am to go back to him? What
+game is that? Can I consent to be a shuttlecock sent flying hither and
+thither by every battledore? People are having a game with me!”
+
+Then, harassed and distracted, the young man fell on his chair in front
+of Don Vigilio, who with his face drawn by his prolonged vigil, and his
+hands still and ever faintly trembling, remained for some time silent. At
+last he explained that he had another idea. He was slightly acquainted
+with the Pope’s confessor, a Franciscan father, a man of great
+simplicity, to whom he might recommend Pierre. This Franciscan, despite
+his self-effacement, would perhaps prove of service to him. At all events
+he might be tried. Then, once more, silence fell, and Pierre, whose
+dreamy eyes were turned towards the wall, ended by distinguishing the old
+picture which had touched him so deeply on the day of his arrival. In the
+pale glow of the lamp it gradually showed forth and lived, like an
+incarnation of his own case, his own futile despair before the sternly
+closed portal of truth and justice. Ah! that outcast woman, that stubborn
+victim of love, weeping amidst her streaming hair, her visage hidden
+whilst with pain and grief she sank upon the steps of that palace whose
+door was so pitilessly shut--how she resembled him! Draped with a mere
+strip of linen, she was shivering, and amidst the overpowering distress
+of her abandonment she did not reveal her secret, misfortune, or
+transgression, whichever it might be. But he, behind her close-pressed
+hands, endowed her with a face akin to his own: she became his sister, as
+were all the poor creatures without roof or certainty who weep because
+they are naked and alone, and wear out their strength in seeking to force
+the wicked thresholds of men. He could never gaze at her without pitying
+her, and it stirred him so much that evening to find her ever so unknown,
+nameless and visageless, yet steeped in the most bitter tears, that he
+suddenly began to question his companion.
+
+“Tell me,” said he, “do you know who painted that old picture? It stirs
+me to the soul like a masterpiece.”
+
+Stupefied by this unexpected question, the secretary raised his head and
+looked, feeling yet more astonished when he had examined the blackened,
+forsaken panel in its sorry frame.
+
+“Where did it come from?” resumed Pierre; “why has it been stowed away in
+this room?”
+
+“Oh!” replied Don Vigilio, with a gesture of indifference, “it’s nothing.
+There are heaps of valueless old paintings everywhere. That one, no
+doubt, has always been here. But I don’t know; I never noticed it
+before.”
+
+Whilst speaking he had at last risen to his feet, and this simple action
+had brought on such a fit of shivering that he could scarcely take leave,
+so violently did his teeth chatter with fever. “No, no, don’t show me
+out,” he stammered, “keep the lamp here. And to conclude: the best course
+is for you to leave yourself in the hands of Monsignor Nani, for he, at
+all events, is a superior man. I told you on your arrival that, whether
+you would or not, you would end by doing as he desired. And so what’s the
+use of struggling? And mind, not a word of our conversation to-night; it
+would mean my death.”
+
+Then he noiselessly opened the doors, glanced distrustfully into the
+darkness of the passage, and at last ventured out and disappeared,
+regaining his own room with such soft steps that not the faintest
+footfall was heard amidst the tomb-like slumber of the old mansion.
+
+On the morrow, Pierre, again mastered by a desire to fight on to the very
+end, got Don Vigilio to recommend him to the Pope’s confessor, the
+Franciscan friar with whom the secretary was slightly acquainted.
+However, this friar proved to be an extremely timid if worthy man,
+selected precisely on account of his great modesty, simplicity, and
+absolute lack of influence in order that he might not abuse his position
+with respect to the Holy Father. And doubtless there was an affectation
+of humility on the latter’s part in taking for confessor a member of the
+humblest of the regular orders, a friend of the poor, a holy beggar of
+the roads. At the same time the friar certainly enjoyed a reputation for
+oratory; and hidden by a veil the Pope at times listened to his sermons;
+for although as infallible Sovereign Pontiff Leo XIII could not receive
+lessons from any priest, it was admitted that as a man he might reap
+profit by listening to good discourse. Nevertheless apart from his
+natural eloquence, the worthy friar was really a mere washer of souls, a
+confessor who listens and absolves without even remembering the
+impurities which he removes in the waters of penitence. And Pierre,
+finding him really so poor and such a cipher, did not insist on an
+intervention which he realised would be futile.
+
+All that day the young priest was haunted by the figure of that ingenuous
+lover of poverty, that delicious St. Francis, as Narcisse Habert was wont
+to say. Pierre had often wondered how such an apostle, so gentle towards
+both animate and inanimate creation, and so full of ardent charity for
+the wretched, could have arisen in a country of egotism and enjoyment
+like Italy, where the love of beauty alone has remained queen. Doubtless
+the times have changed; yet what a strong sap of love must have been
+needed in the old days, during the great sufferings of the middle ages,
+for such a consoler of the humble to spring from the popular soil and
+preach the gift of self to others, the renunciation of wealth, the horror
+of brutal force, the equality and obedience which would ensure the peace
+of the world. St. Francis trod the roads clad as one of the poorest, a
+rope girdling his grey gown and his bare feet shod with sandals, and he
+carried with him neither purse nor staff. And he and his brethren spoke
+aloud and freely, with sovereign florescence of poetry and boldness of
+truth, attacking the rich and the powerful, and daring even to denounce
+the priests of evil life, the debauched, simoniacal, and perjured
+bishops. A long cry of relief greeted the Franciscans, the people
+followed them in crowds--they were the friends, the liberators of all the
+humble ones who suffered. And thus, like revolutionaries, they at first
+so alarmed Rome, that the popes hesitated to authorise their Order. When
+they at last gave way it was assuredly with the hope of using this new
+force for their own profit, by conquering the whole vague mass of the
+lowly whose covert threats have ever growled through the ages, even in
+the most despotic times. And thenceforward in the sons of St. Francis the
+Church possessed an ever victorious army--a wandering army which spread
+over the roads, in the villages and through the towns, penetrating to the
+firesides of artisan and peasant, and gaining possession of all simple
+hearts. How great the democratic power of such an Order which had sprung
+from the very entrails of the people! And thence its rapid prosperity,
+its teeming growth in a few years, friaries arising upon all sides, and
+the third Order* so invading the secular population as to impregnate and
+absorb it. And that there was here a genuine growth of the soil, a
+vigorous vegetation of the plebeian stock was shown by an entire national
+art arising from it--the precursors of the Renascence in painting and
+even Dante himself, the soul of Italia’s genius.
+
+ * The Franciscans, like the Dominicans and others, admit, in
+ addition to the two Orders of friars and nuns, a third Order
+ comprising devout persons of either sex who have neither the
+ vocation nor the opportunity for cloistered life, but live in
+ the world, privately observing the chief principles of the
+ fraternity with which they are connected. In central and
+ southern Europe members of these third Orders are still
+ numerous.--Trans.
+
+For some days now, in the Rome of the present time, Pierre had been
+coming into contact with those great Orders of the past. The Franciscans
+and the Dominicans were there face to face in their vast convents of
+prosperous aspect. But it seemed as if the humility of the Franciscans
+had in the long run deprived them of influence. Perhaps, too, their
+_rôle_ as friends and liberators of the people was ended since the people
+now undertook to liberate itself. And so the only real remaining battle
+was between the Dominicans and the Jesuits, both of whom still claimed to
+mould the world according to their particular views. Warfare between them
+was incessant, and Rome--the supreme power at the Vatican--was ever the
+prize for which they contended. But, although the Dominicans had St.
+Thomas on their side, they must have felt that their old dogmatic science
+was crumbling, compelled as they were each day to surrender a little
+ground to the Jesuits whose principles accorded better with the spirit of
+the century. And, in addition to these, there were the white-robed
+Carthusians, those very holy, pure, and silent meditators who fled from
+the world into quiet cells and cloisters, those despairing and consoled
+ones whose numbers may decrease but whose Order will live for ever, even
+as grief and desire for solitude will live. And then there were the
+Benedictines whose admirable rules have sanctified labour, passionate
+toilers in literature and science, once powerful instruments of
+civilisation, enlarging universal knowledge by their immense historical
+and critical works. These Pierre loved, and with them would have sought a
+refuge two centuries earlier, yet he was astonished to find them building
+on the Aventine a huge dwelling, for which Leo XIII has already given
+millions, as if the science of to-day and to-morrow were yet a field
+where they might garner harvests. But _cui bono_, when the workmen have
+changed, and dogmas are there to bar the road--dogmas which totter, no
+doubt, but which believers may not fling aside in order to pass onward?
+And finally came the swarm of less important Orders, hundreds in number;
+there were the Carmelites, the Trappists, the Minims, the Barnabites, the
+Lazzarists, the Eudists, the Mission Fathers, the Servites, the Brothers
+of the Christian Doctrine; there were the Bernadines, the Augustinians,
+the Theatines, the Observants, the Passionists, the Célestines, and the
+Capuchins, without counting the corresponding Orders of women or the Poor
+Clares, or the innumerable nuns like those of the Visitation and the
+Calvary. Each community had its modest or sumptuous dwelling, certain
+districts of Rome were entirely composed of convents, and behind the
+silent lifeless façades all those people buzzed, intrigued, and waged the
+everlasting warfare of rival interests and passions. The social evolution
+which produced them had long since ceased, still they obstinately sought
+to prolong their life, growing weaker and more useless day by day,
+destined to a slow agony until the time shall come when the new
+development of society will leave them neither foothold nor breathing
+space.
+
+And it was not only with the regulars that Pierre came in contact during
+his peregrinations through Rome; indeed, he more particularly had to deal
+with the secular clergy, and learnt to know them well. A hierarchical
+system which was still vigorously enforced maintained them in various
+ranks and classes. Up above, around the Pope, reigned the pontifical
+family, the high and noble cardinals and prelates whose conceit was great
+in spite of their apparent familiarity. Below them the parish clergy
+formed a very worthy middle class of wise and moderate minds; and here
+patriot priests were not rare. Moreover, the Italian occupation of a
+quarter of a century, by installing in the city a world of functionaries
+who saw everything that went on, had, curiously enough, greatly purified
+the private life of the Roman priesthood, in which under the popes women,
+beyond all question, played a supreme part. And finally one came to the
+plebeian clergy whom Pierre studied with curiosity, a collection of
+wretched, grimy, half-naked priests who like famished animals prowled
+around in search of masses, and drifted into disreputable taverns in the
+company of beggars and thieves. However, he was more interested by the
+floating population of foreign priests from all parts of Christendom--the
+adventurers, the ambitious ones, the believers, the madmen whom Rome
+attracted just as a lamp at night time attracts the insects of the gloom.
+Among these were men of every nationality, position, and age, all lashed
+on by their appetites and scrambling from morn till eve around the
+Vatican, in order to snap at the prey which they hoped to secure. He
+found them everywhere, and told himself with some shame that he was one
+of them, that the unit of his own personality served to increase the
+incredible number of cassocks that one encountered in the streets. Ah!
+that ebb and flow, that ceaseless tide of black gowns and frocks of every
+hue! With their processions of students ever walking abroad, the
+seminaries of the different nations would alone have sufficed to drape
+and decorate the streets, for there were the French and the English all
+in black, the South Americans in black with blue sashes, the North
+Americans in black with red sashes, the Poles in black with green sashes,
+the Greeks in blue, the Germans in red, the Scots in violet, the Romans
+in black or violet or purple, the Bohemians with chocolate sashes, the
+Irish with red lappets, the Spaniards with blue cords, to say nothing of
+all the others with broidery and bindings and buttons in a hundred
+different styles. And in addition there were the confraternities, the
+penitents, white, black, blue, and grey, with sleeveless frocks and capes
+of different hue, grey, blue, black, or white. And thus even nowadays
+Papal Rome at times seemed to resuscitate, and one could realise how
+tenaciously and vivaciously she struggled on in order that she might not
+disappear in the cosmopolitan Rome of the new era. However, Pierre,
+whilst running about from one prelate to another, frequenting priests and
+crossing churches, could not accustom himself to the worship, the Roman
+piety which astonished him when it did not wound him. One rainy Sunday
+morning, on entering Santa Maria Maggiore, he fancied himself in some
+waiting-room, a very splendid one, no doubt, but where God seemed to have
+no habitation. There was not a bench, not a chair in the nave, across
+which people passed, as they might pass through a railway station,
+wetting and soiling the precious mosaic pavement with their muddy shoes;
+and tired women and children sat round the bases of the columns, even as
+in railway stations one sees people sitting and waiting for their trains
+during the great crushes of the holiday season. And for this tramping
+throng of folks of small degree, who had looked in _en passant_, a priest
+was saying a low mass in a side chapel, before which a narrow file of
+standing people had gathered, extending across the nave, and recalling
+the crowds which wait in front of theatres for the opening of the doors.
+At the elevation of the host one and all inclined themselves devoutly,
+but almost immediately afterwards the gathering dispersed. And indeed why
+linger? The mass was said. Pierre everywhere found the same form of
+attendance, peculiar to the countries of the sun; the worshippers were in
+a hurry and only favoured the Deity with short familiar visits, unless it
+were a question of some gala scene at San Paolo or San Giovanni in
+Laterano or some other of the old basilicas. It was only at the Gesù, on
+another Sunday morning, that the young priest came upon a high-mass
+congregation, which reminded him of the devout throngs of the North. Here
+there were benches and women seated, a worldly warmth and cosiness under
+the luxurious, gilded, carved, and painted roof, whose tawny splendour is
+very fine now that time has toned down the eccentricities of the
+decoration. But how many of the churches were empty, among them some of
+the most ancient and venerable, San Clemente, Sant’ Agnese, Santa Croce
+in Gerusalemme, where during the offices one saw but a few believers of
+the neighbourhood. Four hundred churches were a good many for even Rome
+to people; and, indeed, some were merely attended on fixed ceremonial
+occasions, and a good many merely opened their doors once every year--on
+the feast day, that is, of their patron saint. Some also subsisted on the
+lucky possession of a fetish, an idol compassionate to human sufferings.
+Santa Maria in Ara Coeli possessed the miraculous little Jesus, the
+“Bambino,” who healed sick children, and Sant’ Agostino had the “Madonna
+del Parto,” who grants a happy delivery to mothers. Then others were
+renowned for the holy water of their fonts, the oil of their lamps, the
+power of some wooden saint or marble virgin. Others again seemed
+forsaken, given up to tourists and the perquisites of beadles, like mere
+museums peopled with dead gods: Finally others disturbed one’s faith by
+the suggestiveness of their aspects, as, for instance, that Santa Maria
+Rotonda, which is located in the Pantheon, a circular hall recalling a
+circus, where the Virgin remains the evident tenant of the Olympian
+deities.
+
+Pierre took no little interest in the churches of the poor districts, but
+did not find there the keen faith and the throngs he had hoped for. One
+afternoon, at Santa Maria in Trastevere, he heard the choir in full song,
+but the church was quite empty, and the chant had a most lugubrious sound
+in such a desert. Then, another day, on entering San Crisogono, he found
+it draped, probably in readiness for some festival on the morrow. The
+columns were cased with red damask, and between them were hangings and
+curtains alternately yellow and blue, white and red; and the young man
+fled from such a fearful decoration as gaudy as that of a fair booth. Ah!
+how far he was from the cathedrals where in childhood he had believed and
+prayed! On all sides he found the same type of church, the antique
+basilica accommodated to the taste of eighteenth-century Rome. Though the
+style of San Luigi dei Francesi is better, more soberly elegant, the only
+thing that touched him even there was the thought of the heroic or
+saintly Frenchmen, who sleep in foreign soil beneath the flags. And as he
+sought for something Gothic, he ended by going to see Santa Maria sopra
+Minerva,* which, he was told, was the only example of the Gothic style in
+Rome. Here his stupefaction attained a climax at sight of the clustering
+columns cased in stucco imitating marble, the ogives which dared not
+soar, the rounded vaults condemned to the heavy majesty of the dome
+style. No, no, thought he, the faith whose cooling cinders lingered there
+was no longer that whose brazier had invaded and set all Christendom
+aglow! However, Monsignor Fornaro whom he chanced to meet as he was
+leaving the church, inveighed against the Gothic style as rank heresy.
+The first Christian church, said the prelate, had been the basilica,
+which had sprung from the temple, and it was blasphemy to assert that the
+Gothic cathedral was the real Christian house of prayer, for Gothic
+embodied the hateful Anglo-Saxon spirit, the rebellious genius of Luther.
+At this a passionate reply rose to Pierre’s lips, but he said nothing for
+fear that he might say too much. However, he asked himself whether in all
+this there was not a decisive proof that Catholicism was the very
+vegetation of Rome, Paganism modified by Christianity. Elsewhere
+Christianity has grown up in quite a different spirit, to such a point
+that it has risen in rebellion and schismatically turned against the
+mother-city. And the breach has ever gone on widening, the dissemblance
+has become more and more marked; and amidst the evolution of new
+societies, yet a fresh schism appears inevitable and proximate in spite
+of all the despairing efforts to maintain union.
+
+ * So called because it occupies the site of a temple to
+ Minerva.--Trans.
+
+While Pierre thus visited the Roman churches, he also continued his
+efforts to gain support in the matter of his book, his irritation tending
+to such stubbornness, that if in the first instance he failed to obtain
+an interview, he went back again and again to secure one, steadfastly
+keeping his promise to call in turn upon each cardinal of the
+Congregation of the Index. And as a cardinal may belong to several
+Congregations, it resulted that he gradually found himself roaming
+through those former ministries of the old pontifical government which,
+if less numerous than formerly, are still very intricate institutions,
+each with its cardinal-prefect, its cardinal-members, its consultative
+prelates, and its numerous employees. Pierre repeatedly had to return to
+the Cancelleria, where the Congregation of the Index meets, and lost
+himself in its world of staircases, corridors, and halls. From the moment
+he passed under the porticus he was overcome by the icy shiver which fell
+from the old walls, and was quite unable to appreciate the bare, frigid
+beauty of the palace, Bramante’s masterpiece though it be, so purely
+typical of the Roman Renascence. He also knew the Propaganda where he had
+seen Cardinal Sarno; and, sent as he was hither and thither, in his
+efforts to gain over influential prelates, chance made him acquainted
+with the other Congregations, that of the Bishops and Regulars, that of
+the Rites and that of the Council. He even obtained a glimpse of the
+Consistorial, the Dataria,* and the sacred Penitentiary. All these formed
+part of the administrative mechanism of the Church under its several
+aspects--the government of the Catholic world, the enlargement of the
+Church’s conquests, the administration of its affairs in conquered
+countries, the decision of all questions touching faith, morals, and
+individuals, the investigation and punishment of offences, the grant of
+dispensations and the sale of favours. One can scarcely imagine what a
+fearful number of affairs are each morning submitted to the Vatican,
+questions of the greatest gravity, delicacy, and intricacy, the solution
+of which gives rise to endless study and research. It is necessary to
+reply to the innumerable visitors who flock to Rome from all parts, and
+to the letters, the petitions, and the batches of documents which are
+submitted and require to be distributed among the various offices. And
+Pierre was struck by the deep and discreet silence in which all this
+colossal labour was accomplished; not a sound reaching the streets from
+the tribunals, parliaments, and factories for the manufacture of saints
+and nobles, whose mechanism was so well greased, that in spite of the
+rust of centuries and the deep and irremediable wear and tear, the whole
+continued working without clank or creak to denote its presence behind
+the walls. And did not that silence embody the whole policy of the
+Church, which is to remain mute and await developments? Nevertheless what
+a prodigious mechanism it was, antiquated no doubt, but still so
+powerful! And amidst those Congregations how keenly Pierre felt himself
+to be in the grip of the most absolute power ever devised for the
+domination of mankind. However much he might notice signs of decay and
+coming ruin he was none the less seized, crushed, and carried off by that
+huge engine made up of vanity and venality, corruption and ambition,
+meanness and greatness. And how far, too, he now was from the Rome that
+he had dreamt of, and what anger at times filled him amidst his
+weariness, as he persevered in his resolve to defend himself!
+
+ * It is from the Dataria that bulls, rescripts, letters of
+ appointment to benefices, and dispensations of marriage,
+ are issued, after the affixture of the date and formula
+ _Datum Romae_, “Given at Rome.”--Trans.
+
+All at once certain things which he had never understood were explained
+to him. One day, when he returned to the Propaganda, Cardinal Sarno spoke
+to him of Freemasonry with such icy rage that he was abruptly
+enlightened. Freemasonry had hitherto made him smile; he had believed in
+it no more than he had believed in the Jesuits. Indeed, he had looked
+upon the ridiculous stories which were current--the stories of
+mysterious, shadowy men who governed the world with secret incalculable
+power--as mere childish legends. In particular he had been amazed by the
+blind hatred which maddened certain people as soon as Freemasonry was
+mentioned. However, a very distinguished and intelligent prelate had
+declared to him, with an air of profound conviction, that at least on one
+occasion every year each masonic Lodge was presided over by the Devil in
+person, incarnate in a visible shape! And now, by Cardinal Sarno’s
+remarks, he understood the rivalry, the furious struggle of the Roman
+Catholic Church against that other Church, the Church of over the way.*
+Although the former counted on her own triumph, she none the less felt
+that the other, the Church of Freemasonry, was a competitor, a very
+ancient enemy, who indeed claimed to be more ancient than herself, and
+whose victory always remained a possibility. And the friction between
+them was largely due to the circumstance that they both aimed at
+universal sovereignty, and had a similar international organisation, a
+similar net thrown over the nations, and in a like way mysteries, dogmas,
+and rites. It was deity against deity, faith against faith, conquest
+against conquest: and so, like competing tradesmen in the same street,
+they were a source of mutual embarrassment, and one of them was bound to
+kill the other. But if Roman Catholicism seemed to Pierre to be worn out
+and threatened with ruin, he remained quite as sceptical with regard to
+the power of Freemasonry. He had made inquiries as to the reality of that
+power in Rome, where both Grand Master and Pope were enthroned, one in
+front of the other. He was certainly told that the last Roman princes had
+thought themselves compelled to become Freemasons in order to render
+their own difficult position somewhat easier and facilitate the future of
+their sons. But was this true? had they not simply yielded to the force
+of the present social evolution? And would not Freemasonry eventually be
+submerged by its own triumph--that of the ideas of justice, reason, and
+truth, which it had defended through the dark and violent ages of
+history? It is a thing which constantly happens; the victory of an idea
+kills the sect which has propagated it, and renders the apparatus with
+which the members of the sect surrounded themselves, in order to fire
+imaginations, both useless and somewhat ridiculous. Carbonarism did not
+survive the conquest of the political liberties which it demanded; and on
+the day when the Catholic Church crumbles, having accomplished its work
+of civilisation, the other Church, the Freemasons’ Church of across the
+road, will in a like way disappear, its task of liberation ended.
+Nowadays the famous power of the Lodges, hampered by traditions, weakened
+by a ceremonial which provokes laughter, and reduced to a simple bond of
+brotherly agreement and mutual assistance, would be but a sorry weapon of
+conquest for humanity, were it not that the vigorous breath of science
+impels the nations onwards and helps to destroy the old religions.
+
+ * Some readers may think the above passages an exaggeration, but
+ such is not the case. The hatred with which the Catholic
+ priesthood, especially in Italy, Spain, and France, regards
+ Freemasonry is remarkable. At the moment of writing these lines
+ I have before me several French clerical newspapers, which
+ contain the most abusive articles levelled against President
+ Faure solely because he is a Freemason. One of these prints, a
+ leading journal of Lyons, tells the French President that he
+ cannot serve both God and the Devil; and that if he cannot give
+ up Freemasonry he would do well to cease desecrating the abode
+ of the Deity by his attendance at divine service.--Trans.
+
+However, all Pierre’s journeyings and applications brought him no
+certainty; and, while stubbornly clinging to Rome, intent on fighting to
+the very end, like a soldier who will not believe in the possibility of
+defeat, he remained as anxious as ever. He had seen all the cardinals
+whose influence could be of use to him. He had seen the Cardinal Vicar,
+entrusted with the diocese of Rome, who, like the man of letters he was,
+had spoken to him of Horace, and, like a somewhat blundering politician,
+had questioned him about France, the Republic, the Army, and the Navy
+Estimates, without dealing in the slightest degree with the incriminated
+book. He had also seen the Grand Penitentiary, that tall old man, with
+fleshless, ascetic face, of whom he had previously caught a glimpse at
+the Boccanera mansion, and from whom he now only drew a long and severe
+sermon on the wickedness of young priests, whom the century had perverted
+and who wrote most abominable books. Finally, at the Vatican, he had seen
+the Cardinal Secretary, in some wise his Holiness’s Minister of Foreign
+Affairs, the great power of the Holy See, whom he had hitherto been
+prevented from approaching by terrifying warnings as to the possible
+result of an unfavourable reception. However, whilst apologising for
+calling at such a late stage, he had found himself in presence of a most
+amiable man, whose somewhat rough appearance was softened by diplomatic
+affability, and who, after making him sit down, questioned him with an
+air of interest, listened to him, and even spoke some words of comfort.
+Nevertheless, on again reaching the Piazza of St. Peter’s, Pierre well
+understood that his affair had not made the slightest progress, and that
+if he ever managed to force the Pope’s door, it would not be by way of
+the Secretariate of State. And that evening he returned home quite
+exhausted by so many visits, in such distraction at feeling that little
+by little he had been wholly caught in that huge mechanism with its
+hundred wheels, that he asked himself in terror what he should do on the
+morrow now that there remained nothing for him to do--unless, indeed, it
+were to go mad.
+
+However, meeting Don Vigilio in a passage of the house, he again wished
+to ask him for some good advice. But the secretary, who had a gleam of
+terror in his eyes, silenced him, he knew not why, with an anxious
+gesture. And then in a whisper, in Pierre’s ear, he said: “Have you seen
+Monsignor Nani? No! Well, go to see him, go to see him. I repeat that you
+have nothing else to do!”
+
+Pierre yielded. And indeed why should he have resisted? Apart from the
+motives of ardent charity which had brought him to Rome to defend his
+book, was he not there for a self-educating, experimental purpose? It was
+necessary that he should carry his attempts to the very end.
+
+On the morrow, when he reached the colonnade of St. Peter’s, the hour was
+so early that he had to wait there awhile. He had never better realised
+the enormity of those four curving rows of columns, forming a forest of
+gigantic stone trunks among which nobody ever promenades. In fact, the
+spot is a grandiose and dreary desert, and one asks oneself the why and
+wherefore of such a majestic porticus. Doubtless, however, it was for its
+sole majesty, for the mere pomp of decoration, that this colonnade was
+reared; and therein, again, one finds the whole Roman spirit. However,
+Pierre at last turned into the Via di Sant’ Offizio, and passing the
+sacristy of St. Peter’s, found himself before the Palace of the Holy
+Office in a solitary silent district, which the footfall of pedestrians
+or the rumble of wheels but seldom disturbs. The sun alone lives there,
+in sheets of light which spread slowly over the small, white paving. You
+divine the vicinity of the Basilica, for there is a smell as of incense,
+a cloisteral quiescence as of the slumber of centuries. And at one corner
+the Palace of the Holy Office rises up with heavy, disquieting bareness,
+only a single row of windows piercing its lofty, yellow front. The wall
+which skirts a side street looks yet more suspicious with its row of even
+smaller casements, mere peep-holes with glaucous panes. In the bright
+sunlight this huge cube of mud-coloured masonry ever seems asleep,
+mysterious, and closed like a prison, with scarcely an aperture for
+communication with the outer world.
+
+Pierre shivered, but then smiled as at an act of childishness, for he
+reflected that the Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition, nowadays the
+Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, was no longer the institution it
+had been, the purveyor of heretics for the stake, the occult tribunal
+beyond appeal which had right of life and death over all mankind. True,
+it still laboured in secrecy, meeting every Wednesday, and judging and
+condemning without a sound issuing from within its walls. But on the
+other hand if it still continued to strike at the crime of heresy, if it
+smote men as well as their works, it no longer possessed either weapons
+or dungeons, steel or fire to do its bidding, but was reduced to a mere
+_rôle_ of protest, unable to inflict aught but disciplinary penalties
+even upon the ecclesiastics of its own Church.
+
+When Pierre on entering was ushered into the reception-room of Monsignor
+Nani who, as assessor, lived in the palace, he experienced an agreeable
+surprise. The apartment faced the south, and was spacious and flooded
+with sunshine. And stiff as was the furniture, dark as were the hangings,
+an exquisite sweetness pervaded the room, as though a woman had lived in
+it and accomplished the prodigy of imparting some of her own grace to all
+those stern-looking things. There were no flowers, yet there was a
+pleasant smell. A charm expanded and conquered every heart from the very
+threshold.
+
+Monsignor Nani at once came forward, with a smile on his rosy face, his
+blue eyes keenly glittering, and his fine light hair powdered by age.
+With hands outstretched, he exclaimed: “Ah! how kind of you to have come
+to see me, my dear son! Come, sit down, let us have a friendly chat.”
+ Then with an extraordinary display of affection, he began to question
+Pierre: “How are you getting on? Tell me all about it, exactly what you
+have done.”
+
+Touched in spite of Don Vigilio’s revelations, won over by the sympathy
+which he fancied he could detect, Pierre thereupon confessed himself,
+relating his visits to Cardinal Sarno, Monsignor Fornaro and Father
+Dangelis, his applications to all the influential cardinals, those of the
+Index, the Grand Penitentiary, the Cardinal Vicar, and the Cardinal
+Secretary; and dwelling on his endless journeys from door to door through
+all the Congregations and all the clergy, that huge, active, silent
+bee-hive amidst which he had wearied his feet, exhausted his limbs, and
+bewildered his poor brain. And at each successive Station of this Calvary
+of entreaty, Monsignor Nani, who seemed to listen with an air of rapture,
+exclaimed: “But that’s very good, that’s capital! Oh! your affair is
+progressing. Yes, yes, it’s progressing marvellously well.”
+
+He was exultant, though he allowed no unseemly irony to appear, while his
+pleasant, penetrating eyes fathomed the young priest, to ascertain if he
+had been brought to the requisite degree of obedience. Had he been
+sufficiently wearied, disillusioned and instructed in the reality of
+things, for one to finish with him? Had three months’ sojourn in Rome
+sufficed to turn the somewhat mad enthusiast of the first days into an
+unimpassioned or at least resigned being?
+
+However, all at once Monsignor Nani remarked: “But, my dear son, you tell
+me nothing of his Eminence Cardinal Sanguinetti.”
+
+“The fact is, Monseigneur, that his Eminence is at Frascati, so I have
+been unable to see him.”
+
+Thereupon the prelate, as if once more postponing the _dénouement_ with
+the secret enjoyment of an artistic _diplomate_, began to protest,
+raising his little plump hands with the anxious air of a man who
+considers everything lost: “Oh! but you must see his Eminence; it is
+absolutely necessary! Think of it! The Prefect of the Index! We can only
+act after your visit to him, for as you have not seen _him_ it is as if
+you had seen nobody. Go, go to Frascati, my dear son.”
+
+And thereupon Pierre could only bow and reply: “I will go, Monseigneur.”
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+ALTHOUGH Pierre knew that he would be unable to see Cardinal Sanguinetti
+before eleven o’clock, he nevertheless availed himself of an early train,
+so that it was barely nine when he alighted at the little station of
+Frascati. He had already visited the place during his enforced idleness,
+when he had made the classical excursion to the Roman castles which
+extend from Frascati to Rocco di Papa, and from Rocco di Papa to Monte
+Cavo, and he was now delighted with the prospect of strolling for a
+couple of hours along those first slopes of the Alban hills, where,
+amidst rushes, olives, and vines, Frascati, like a promontory, overlooks
+the immense ruddy sea of the Campagna even as far as Rome, which, six
+full leagues away, wears the whitish aspect of a marble isle.
+
+Ah! that charming Frascati, on its greeny knoll at the foot of the wooded
+Tusculan heights, with its famous terrace whence one enjoys the finest
+view in the world, its old patrician villas with proud and elegant
+Renascence façades and magnificent parks, which, planted with cypress,
+pine, and ilex, are for ever green! There was a sweetness, a delight, a
+fascination about the spot, of which Pierre would have never wearied. And
+for more than an hour he had wandered blissfully along roads edged with
+ancient, knotty olive-trees, along dingle ways shaded by the spreading
+foliage of neighbouring estates, and along perfumed paths, at each turn
+of which the Campagna was seen stretching far away, when all at once he
+was accosted by a person whom he was both surprised and annoyed to meet.
+He had strolled down to some low ground near the railway station, some
+old vineyards where a number of new houses had been built of recent
+years, and suddenly saw a stylish pair-horse victoria, coming from the
+direction of Rome, draw up close by, whilst its occupant called to him:
+“What! Monsieur l’Abbé Froment, are you taking a walk here, at this early
+hour?”
+
+Thereupon Pierre recognised Count Luigi Prada, who alighted, shook hands
+with him and began to walk beside him, whilst the empty carriage went on
+in advance. And forthwith the Count explained his tastes: “I seldom take
+the train,” he said, “I drive over. It gives my horses an outing. I have
+interests over here as you may know, a big building enterprise which is
+unfortunately not progressing very well. And so, although the season is
+advanced, I’m obliged to come rather more frequently than I care to do.”
+
+As Prada suggested, Pierre was acquainted with the story. The Boccaneras
+had been obliged to sell a sumptuous villa which a cardinal of their
+family had built at Frascati in accordance with the plans of Giacomo
+della Porta, during the latter part of the sixteenth century: a regal
+summer-residence it had been, finely wooded, with groves and basins and
+cascades, and in particular a famous terrace projecting like a cape above
+the Roman Campagna whose expanse stretches from the Sabine mountains to
+the Mediterranean sands. Through the division of the property, Benedetta
+had inherited from her mother some very extensive vineyards below
+Frascati, and these she had brought as dowry to Prada at the very moment
+when the building mania was extending from Rome into the provinces. And
+thereupon Prada had conceived the idea of erecting on the spot a number
+of middle-class villas like those which litter the suburbs of Paris. Few
+purchasers, however, had come forward, the financial crash had
+supervened, and he was now with difficulty liquidating this unlucky
+business, having indemnified his wife at the time of their separation.
+
+“And then,” he continued, addressing Pierre, “one can come and go as one
+likes with a carriage, whereas, on taking the train, one is at the mercy
+of the time table. This morning, for instance, I have appointments with
+contractors, experts, and lawyers, and I have no notion how long they
+will keep me. It’s a wonderful country, isn’t it? And we are quite right
+to be proud of it in Rome. Although I may have some worries just now, I
+can never set foot here without my heart beating with delight.”
+
+A circumstance which he did not mention, was that his _amica_, Lisbeth
+Kauffmann, had spent the summer in one of the newly erected villas, where
+she had installed her studio and had been visited by all the foreign
+colony, which tolerated her irregular position on account of her gay
+spirits and artistic talent. Indeed, people had even ended by accepting
+the outcome of her connection with Prada, and a fortnight previously she
+had returned to Rome, and there given birth to a son--an event which had
+again revived all the scandalous tittle-tattle respecting Benedetta’s
+divorce suit. And Prada’s attachment to Frascati doubtless sprang from
+the recollection of the happy hours he had spent there, and the joyful
+pride with which the birth of the boy inspired him.
+
+Pierre, for his part, felt ill at ease in the young Count’s presence, for
+he had an instinctive hatred of money-mongers and men of prey.
+Nevertheless, he desired to respond to his amiability, and so inquired
+after his father, old Orlando, the hero of the Liberation.
+
+“Oh!” replied Prada, “excepting for his legs he’s in wonderfully good
+health. He’ll live a hundred years. Poor father! I should so much have
+liked to install him in one of these little houses, last summer. But I
+could not get him to consent; he’s determined not to leave Rome; he’s
+afraid, perhaps, that it might be taken away from him during his
+absence.” Then the young Count burst into a laugh, quite merry at the
+thought of jeering at the heroic but no longer fashionable age of
+independence. And afterwards he said, “My father was speaking of you
+again only yesterday, Monsieur l’Abbé. He is astonished that he has not
+seen you lately.”
+
+This distressed Pierre, for he had begun to regard Orlando with
+respectful affection. Since his first visit, he had twice called on the
+old hero, but the latter had refused to broach the subject of Rome so
+long as his young friend should not have seen, felt, and understood
+everything. There would be time for a talk later on, said he, when they
+were both in a position to formulate their conclusions.
+
+“Pray tell Count Orlando,” responded Pierre, “that I have not forgotten
+him, and that, if I have deferred a fresh visit, it is because I desire
+to satisfy him. However, I certainly will not leave Rome without going to
+tell him how deeply his kind greeting has touched me.”
+
+Whilst talking, the two men slowly followed the ascending road past the
+newly erected villas, several of which were not yet finished. And when
+Prada learned that the priest had come to call on Cardinal Sanguinetti,
+he again laughed, with the laugh of a good-natured wolf, showing his
+white fangs. “True,” he exclaimed, “the Cardinal has been here since the
+Pope has been laid up. Ah! you’ll find him in a pretty fever.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Why, because there’s bad news about the Holy Father this morning. When I
+left Rome it was rumoured that he had spent a fearful night.”
+
+So speaking, Prada halted at a bend of the road, not far from an antique
+chapel, a little church of solitary, mournful grace of aspect, on the
+verge of an olive grove. Beside it stood a ruinous building, the old
+parsonage, no doubt, whence there suddenly emerged a tall, knotty priest
+with coarse and earthy face, who, after roughly locking the door, went
+off in the direction of the town.
+
+“Ah!” resumed the Count in a tone of raillery, “that fellow’s heart also
+must be beating violently; he’s surely gone to your Cardinal in search of
+news.”
+
+Pierre had looked at the priest. “I know him,” he replied; “I saw him, I
+remember, on the day after my arrival at Cardinal Boccanera’s. He brought
+the Cardinal a basket of figs and asked him for a certificate in favour
+of his young brother, who had been sent to prison for some deed of
+violence--a knife thrust if I recollect rightly. However, the Cardinal
+absolutely refused him the certificate.”
+
+“It’s the same man,” said Prada, “you may depend on it. He was often at
+the Villa Boccanera formerly; for his young brother was gardener there.
+But he’s now the client, the creature of Cardinal Sanguinetti. Santobono
+his name is, and he’s a curious character, such as you wouldn’t find in
+France, I fancy. He lives all alone in that falling hovel, and officiates
+at that old chapel of St. Mary in the Fields, where people don’t go to
+hear mass three times in a year. Yes, it’s a perfect sinecure, which with
+its stipend of a thousand francs enables him to live there like a peasant
+philosopher, cultivating the somewhat extensive garden whose big walls
+you see yonder.”
+
+The close to which he called attention stretched down the slope behind
+the parsonage, without an aperture, like some savage place of refuge into
+which not even the eye could penetrate. And all that could be seen above
+the left-hand wall was a superb, gigantic fig-tree, whose big leaves
+showed blackly against the clear sky. Prada had moved on again, and
+continued to speak of Santobono, who evidently interested him. Fancy, a
+patriot priest, a Garibaldian! Born at Nemi, in that yet savage nook
+among the Alban hills, he belonged to the people and was still near to
+the soil. However, he had studied, and knew sufficient history to realise
+the past greatness of Rome, and dream of the re-establishment of Roman
+dominion as represented by young Italy. And he had come to believe, with
+passionate fervour, that only a great pope could realise his dream by
+seizing upon power, and then conquering all the other nations. And what
+could be easier, since the Pope commanded millions of Catholics? Did not
+half Europe belong to him? France, Spain, and Austria would give way as
+soon as they should see him powerful, dictating laws to the world.
+Germany and Great Britain, indeed all the Protestant countries, would
+also inevitably be conquered, for the papacy was the only dike that could
+be opposed to error, which must some day fatally succumb in its efforts
+against such a barrier. Politically, however, Santobono had declared
+himself for Germany, for he considered that France needed to be crushed
+before she would throw herself into the arms of the Holy Father. And thus
+contradictions and fancies clashed in his foggy brain, whose burning
+ideas swiftly turned to violence under the influence of primitive, racial
+fierceness. Briefly, the priest was a barbarian upholder of the Gospel, a
+friend of the humble and woeful, a sectarian of that school which is
+capable alike of great virtues and great crimes.
+
+“Yes,” concluded Prada, “he is now devoted to Cardinal Sanguinetti
+because he believes that the latter will prove the great pope of
+to-morrow, who is to make Rome the one capital of the nations. At the
+same time he doubtless harbours a lower personal ambition, that of
+attaining to a canonry or of gaining assistance in the little worries of
+life, as when he wished to extricate his brother from trouble. Here, you
+know, people stake their luck on a cardinal just as they nurse a ‘trey’
+in the lottery, and if their cardinal proves the winning number and
+becomes pope they gain a fortune. And that’s why you now see Santobono
+striding along yonder, all anxiety to know if Leo XIII will die and
+Sanguinetti don the tiara.”
+
+“Do you think the Pope so very ill, then?” asked Pierre, both anxious and
+interested.
+
+The Count smiled and raised both arms: “Ah!” said he, “can one ever tell?
+They all get ill when their interest lies that way. However, I believe
+that the Pope is this time really indisposed; a complaint of the bowels,
+it is said; and at his age, you know, the slightest indisposition may
+prove fatal.”
+
+The two men took a few steps in silence, then the priest again asked a
+question: “Would Cardinal Sanguinetti have a great chance if the Holy See
+were vacant?”
+
+“A great chance! Ah! that’s another of those things which one never
+knows. The truth is people class Sanguinetti among the acceptable
+candidates, and if personal desire sufficed he would certainly be the
+next pope, for ambition consumes him to the marrow, and he displays
+extraordinary passion and determination in his efforts to succeed. But
+therein lies his very weakness; he is using himself up, and he knows it.
+And so he must be resolved to every step during the last days of battle.
+You may be quite sure that if he has shut himself up here at this
+critical time, it is in order that he may the better direct his
+operations from a distance, whilst at the same time feigning a retreat, a
+disinterestedness which is bound to have a good effect.”
+
+Then Prada began to expatiate on Sanguinetti with no little complacency,
+for he liked the man’s spirit of intrigue, his keen, conquering appetite,
+his excessive, and even somewhat blundering activity. He had become
+acquainted with him on his return from the nunciature at Vienna, when he
+had already resolved to win the tiara. That ambition explained
+everything, his quarrels and reconciliations with the reigning pope, his
+affection for Germany, followed by a sudden evolution in the direction of
+France, his varying attitude with regard to Italy, at first a desire for
+agreement, and then absolute rejection of all compromises, a refusal to
+grant any concession, so long as Rome should not be evacuated. This,
+indeed, seemed to be Sanguinetti’s definite position; he made a show of
+disliking the wavering sway of Leo XIII, and of retaining a fervent
+admiration for Pius IX, the great, heroic pope of the days of resistance,
+whose goodness of heart had proved no impediment to unshakable firmness.
+And all this was equivalent to a promise that he, Sanguinetti, would
+again make kindliness exempt from weakness, the rule of the Church, and
+would steer clear of the dangerous compounding of politics. At bottom,
+however, politics were his only dream, and he had even formulated a
+complete programme of intentional vagueness, which his clients and
+creatures spread abroad with an air of rapturous mystery. However, since
+a previous indisposition of the Pope’s, during the spring, he had been
+living in mortal disquietude, for it had then been rumoured that the
+Jesuits would resign themselves to support Cardinal Pio Boccanera,
+although the latter scarcely favoured them. He was rough and stern, no
+doubt, and his extreme bigotry might be a source of danger in this
+tolerant age; but, on the other hand, was he not a patrician, and would
+not his election imply that the papacy would never cease to claim the
+temporal power? From that moment Boccanera had been the one man whom
+Sanguinetti feared, for he beheld himself despoiled of his prize, and
+spent his time in devising plans to rid himself of such a powerful rival,
+repeating abominable stories of Cardinal Pio’s alleged complaisance with
+regard to Benedetta and Dario, and incessantly representing him as
+Antichrist, the man of sin, whose reign would consummate the ruin of the
+papacy. Finally, to regain the support of the Jesuits, Sanguinetti’s last
+idea was to repeat through his familiars that for his part he would not
+merely maintain the principle of the temporal power intact, but would
+even undertake to regain that power. And he had a full plan on the
+subject, which folks confided to one another in whispers, a plan which,
+in spite of its apparent concessions, would lead to the overwhelming
+victory of the Church. It was to raise the prohibition which prevented
+Catholics from voting or becoming candidates at the Italian elections; to
+send a hundred, then two hundred, and then three hundred deputies to the
+Chamber, and in that wise to overthrow the House of Savoy, and establish
+a Federation of the Italian provinces, whereof the Holy Father, once more
+placed in possession of Rome, would become the august and sovereign
+President.
+
+As Prada finished he again laughed, showing his white teeth--teeth which
+would never readily relinquish the prey they held. “So you see,” he
+added, “we need to defend ourselves, since it’s a question of turning us
+out. Fortunately, there are some little obstacles in the way of that.
+Nevertheless, such dreams naturally have great influence on excited
+minds, such as that of Santobono, for instance. He’s a man whom one word
+from Sanguinetti would lead far indeed. Ah! he has good legs. Look at him
+up yonder, he has already reached the Cardinal’s little palace--that
+white villa with the sculptured balconies.”
+
+Pierre raised his eyes and perceived the episcopal residence, which was
+one of the first houses of Frascati. Of modern construction and
+Renascence style, it overlooked the immensity of the Roman Campagna.
+
+It was now eleven o’clock, and as the young priest, before going up to
+pay his own visit, bade the Count good-bye, the latter for a moment kept
+hold of his hand. “Do you know,” said he, “it would be very kind of you
+to lunch with me--will you? Come and join me at that restaurant yonder
+with the pink front as soon as you are at liberty. I shall have settled
+my own business in an hour’s time, and I shall be delighted to have your
+company at table.”
+
+Pierre began by declining, but he could offer no possible excuse, and at
+last surrendered, won over, despite himself, by Prada’s real charm of
+manner. When they had parted, the young priest only had to climb a street
+in order to reach the Cardinal’s door. With his natural expansiveness and
+craving for popularity, Sanguinetti was easy of access, and at Frascati
+in particular his doors were flung open even to the most humble cassocks.
+So Pierre was at once ushered in, a circumstance which somewhat surprised
+him, for he remembered the bad humour of the servant whom he had seen on
+calling at the Cardinal’s residence in Rome, when he had been advised to
+forego the journey, as his Eminence did not like to be disturbed when he
+was ill. However, nothing spoke of illness in that pleasant villa,
+flooded with sunshine. True, the waiting-room, where he was momentarily
+left alone, displayed neither luxury nor comfort; but it was brightened
+by the finest light in the world, and overlooked that extraordinary
+Campagna, so flat, so bare, and so unique in its beauty, for in front of
+it one ever dreams and sees the past arise. And so, whilst waiting,
+Pierre stationed himself at an open window, conducting on to a balcony,
+and his eyes roamed over the endless sea of herbage to the far-away
+whiteness of Rome, above which rose the dome of St. Peter’s, at that
+distance a mere sparkling speck, barely as large as the nail of one’s
+little finger.
+
+However, the young man had scarcely taken up this position when he was
+surprised to hear some people talking, their words reaching him with
+great distinctness. And on leaning forward he realised that his Eminence
+in person was standing on another balcony close by, and conversing with a
+priest, only a portion of whose cassock could be seen. Still, this
+sufficed for Pierre to recognise Santobono. His first impulse, dictated
+by natural discretion, was to withdraw from the window, but the words he
+next heard riveted him to the spot.
+
+“We shall know in a moment,” his Eminence was saying in his full voice.
+“I sent Eufemio to Rome, for he is the only person in whom I’ve any
+confidence. And see, there is the train bringing him back.”
+
+A train, still as small as a plaything, could in fact be seen approaching
+over the vast plain, and doubtless it was to watch for its arrival that
+Sanguinetti had stationed himself on the balcony. And there he lingered,
+with his eyes fixed on distant Rome. Then Santobono, in a passionate
+voice, spoke some words which Pierre imperfectly understood, but the
+Cardinal with clear articulation rejoined, “Yes, yes, my dear fellow, a
+catastrophe would be a great misfortune. Ah! may his Holiness long be
+preserved to us.” Then he paused, and as he was no hypocrite, gave full
+expression to the thoughts which were in his mind: “At least, I hope that
+he will be preserved just now, for the times are bad, and I am in
+frightful anguish. The partisans of Antichrist have lately gained much
+ground.”
+
+A cry escaped Santobono: “Oh! your Eminence will act and triumph.”
+
+“I, my dear fellow? What would you have me do? I am simply at the
+disposal of my friends, those who are willing to believe in me, with the
+sole object of ensuring the victory of the Holy See. It is they who ought
+to act, it is they--each according to the measure of his means--who ought
+to bar the road to the wicked in order that the righteous may succeed.
+Ah! if Antichrist should reign--”
+
+The recurrence of this word Antichrist greatly disturbed Pierre; but he
+suddenly remembered what the Count had told him: Antichrist was Cardinal
+Boccanera.
+
+“Think of that, my dear fellow,” continued Sanguinetti. “Picture
+Antichrist at the Vatican, consummating the ruin of religion by his
+implacable pride, his iron will, his gloomy passion for nihility; for
+there can be no doubt of it, he is the Beast of Death announced by the
+prophecies, the Beast who will expose one and all to the danger of being
+swallowed up with him in his furious rush into abysmal darkness. I know
+him; he only dreams of obstinacy and destruction, he will seize the
+pillars of the temple and shake them in order that he may sink beneath
+the ruins, he and the whole Catholic world! In less than six months he
+will be driven from Rome, at strife with all the nations, execrated by
+Italy, and roaming the world like the phantom of the last pope!”
+
+It was with a low growl, suggestive of a stifled oath, that Santobono
+responded to this frightful prediction. But the train had now reached the
+station, and among the few passengers who had alighted, Pierre could
+distinguish a little Abbé, who was walking so fast that his cassock
+flapped against his hips. It was Abbé Eufemio, the Cardinal’s secretary,
+and when he had perceived his Eminence on the balcony he lost all
+self-respect, and broke into a run, in order that he might the sooner
+ascend the sloping street. “Ah! here’s Eufemio,” exclaimed the Cardinal,
+quivering with anxiety. “We shall know now, we shall know now.”
+
+The secretary had plunged into the doorway below, and he climbed the
+stairs with such rapidity that almost immediately afterwards Pierre saw
+him rush breathlessly across the waiting-room, and vanish into the
+Cardinal’s sanctum. Sanguinetti had quitted the balcony to meet his
+messenger, but soon afterwards he returned to it asking questions,
+venting exclamations, raising, in fact, quite a tumult over the news
+which he had received. “And so it’s really true, the night was a bad one.
+His Holiness scarcely slept! Colic, you were told? But nothing could be
+worse at his age; it might carry him off in a couple of hours. And the
+doctors, what do they say?”
+
+The answer did not reach Pierre, but he understood its purport as the
+Cardinal in his naturally loud voice resumed: “Oh! the doctors never
+know. Besides, when they refuse to speak death is never far off. _Dio_!
+what a misfortune if the catastrophe cannot be deferred for a few days!”
+
+Then he became silent, and Pierre realised that his eyes were once more
+travelling towards Rome, gazing with ambitious anguish at the dome of St.
+Peter’s, that little, sparkling speck above the vast, ruddy plain. What a
+commotion, what agitation if the Pope were dead! And he wished that it
+had merely been necessary for him to stretch forth his arm in order to
+take and hold the Eternal City, the Holy City, which, yonder on the
+horizon, occupied no more space than a heap of gravel cast there by a
+child’s spade. And he was already dreaming of the coming Conclave, when
+the canopy of each other cardinal would fall, and his own, motionless and
+sovereign, would crown him with purple.
+
+“But you are right, my friend!” he suddenly exclaimed, addressing
+Santobono, “one must act, the salvation of the Church is at stake. And,
+besides, it is impossible that Heaven should not be with us, since our
+sole desire is its triumph. If necessary, at the supreme moment, Heaven
+will know how to crush Antichrist.”
+
+Then, for the first time, Pierre distinctly heard the voice of Santobono,
+who, gruffly, with a sort of savage decision, responded: “Oh! if Heaven
+is tardy it shall be helped.”
+
+That was all; the young man heard nothing further save a confused murmur
+of voices. The speakers quitted the balcony, and his spell of waiting
+began afresh in the sunlit _salon_ so peaceful and delightful in its
+brightness. But all at once the door of his Eminence’s private room was
+thrown wide open and a servant ushered him in; and he was surprised to
+find the Cardinal alone, for he had not witnessed the departure of the
+two priests, who had gone off by another door. The Cardinal, with his
+highly coloured face, big nose, thick lips, square-set, vigorous figure,
+which still looked young despite his sixty years, was standing near a
+window in the bright golden light. He had put on the paternal smile with
+which he greeted even the humblest from motives of good policy, and as
+soon as Pierre had knelt and kissed his ring, he motioned him to a chair.
+“Sit down, dear son, sit down. You have come of course about that
+unfortunate affair of your book. I am very pleased indeed to be able to
+speak with you about it.”
+
+He himself then took a chair in front of that window overlooking Rome
+whence he seemed unable to drag himself. And the young priest, whilst
+apologising for coming to disturb his rest, perceived that he scarcely
+listened, for his eyes again sought the prey which he so ardently
+coveted. Yet the semblance of good-natured attention was perfect, and
+Pierre marvelled at the force of will which this man must possess to
+appear so calm, so interested in the affairs of others, when such a
+tempest was raging in him.
+
+“Your Eminence will, I hope, kindly forgive me,” continued the young
+priest.
+
+“But you have done right to come, since I am kept here by my failing
+health,” said the Cardinal. “Besides, I am somewhat better, and it is
+only natural that you should wish to give me some explanations and defend
+your work and enlighten my judgment. In fact, I was astonished at not yet
+having seen you, for I know that your faith in your cause is great and
+that you spare no steps to convert your judges. So speak, my dear son, I
+am listening and shall be pleased indeed if I can absolve you.”
+
+Pierre was caught by these kind words, and a hope returned to him, that
+of winning the support of the all-powerful Prefect of the Index. He
+already regarded this ex-nuncio--who at Brussels and Vienna had acquired
+the worldly art of sending people away satisfied with indefinite promises
+though he meant to grant them nothing--as a man of rare intelligence and
+exquisite cordiality. And so once more he regained the fervour of his
+apostolate to express his views respecting the future Rome, the Rome he
+dreamt of, which was destined yet again to become the mistress of the
+world if she would return to the Christianity of Jesus, to an ardent love
+for the weak and the humble.
+
+Sanguinetti smiled, wagged his head, and raised exclamations of rapture:
+“Very good, very good indeed, perfect! Oh! I agree with you, dear son.
+One cannot put things better. It is quite evident; all good minds must
+agree with you.” And then, said he, the poetic side deeply touched him.
+Like Leo XIII--and doubtless in a spirit of rivalry--he courted the
+reputation of being a very distinguished Latinist, and professed a
+special and boundless affection for Virgil. “I know, I know,” he
+exclaimed, “I remember your page on the return of spring, which consoles
+the poor whom winter has frozen. Oh! I read it three times over! And are
+you aware that your writing is full of Latin turns of style. I noticed
+more than fifty expressions which could be found in the ‘Bucolics.’ Your
+book is a charm, a perfect charm!”
+
+As he was no fool, and realised that the little priest before him was a
+man of high intelligence, he ended by interesting himself, not in Pierre
+personally, but in the profit which he might possibly derive from him.
+Amidst his feverish intrigues, he unceasingly sought to utilise all the
+qualities possessed by those whom God sent to him that might in any way
+be conducive to his own triumph. So, for a moment, he turned away from
+Rome and looked his companion in the face, listening to him and asking
+himself in what way he might employ him--either at once in the crisis
+through which he was passing, or later on when he should be pope. But the
+young priest again made the mistake of attacking the temporal power, and
+of employing that unfortunate expression, “a new religion.” Thereupon the
+Cardinal stopped him with a gesture, still smiling, still retaining all
+his amiability, although the resolution which he had long since formed
+became from that moment definitive. “You are certainly in the right on
+many points, my dear son,” he said, “and I often share your views--share
+them completely. But come, you are doubtless not aware that I am the
+protector of Lourdes here at Rome. And so, after the page which you have
+written about the Grotto, how can I possibly pronounce in your favour and
+against the Fathers?”
+
+Pierre was utterly overcome by this announcement, for he was indeed
+unaware of the Cardinal’s position with respect to Lourdes, nobody having
+taken the precaution to warn him. However, each of the Catholic
+enterprises distributed throughout the world has a protector at Rome, a
+cardinal who is designated by the Pope to represent it and, if need be,
+to defend it.
+
+“Those good Fathers!” Sanguinetti continued in a gentle voice, “you have
+caused them great grief, and really our hands are tied, we cannot add to
+their sorrow. If you only knew what a number of masses they send us! I
+know more than one of our poor priests who would die of hunger if it were
+not for them.”
+
+Pierre could only bow beneath the blow. Once more he found himself in
+presence of the pecuniary question, the necessity in which the Holy See
+is placed to secure the revenue it requires one year with another. And
+thus the Pope was ever in servitude, for if the loss of Rome had freed
+him of the cares of state, his enforced gratitude for the alms he
+received still riveted him to earth. So great, indeed, were the
+requirements, that money was the ruler, the sovereign power, before which
+all bowed at the Court of Rome.
+
+And now Sanguinetti rose to dismiss his visitor. “You must not despair,
+dear son,” he said effusively. “I have only my own vote, you know, and I
+promise you that I will take into account the excellent explanations
+which you have just given me. And who can tell? If God be with you, He
+will save you even in spite of all!” This speech formed part of the
+Cardinal’s usual tactics; for one of his principles was never to drive
+people to extremes by sending them away hopeless. What good, indeed,
+would it do to tell this one that the condemnation of his book was a
+foregone conclusion, and that his only prudent course would be to disavow
+it? Only a savage like Boccanera breathed anger upon fiery souls and
+plunged them into rebellion. “You must hope, hope!” repeated Sanguinetti
+with a smile, as if implying a multitude of fortunate things which he
+could not plainly express.
+
+Thereupon Pierre, who was deeply touched, felt born anew. He even forgot
+the conversation he had surprised, the Cardinal’s keen ambition and
+covert rage with his redoubtable rival. Besides, might not intelligence
+take the place of heart among the powerful? If this man should some day
+become pope, and had understood him, might he not prove the pope who was
+awaited, the pope who would accept the task of reorganising the Church of
+the United States of Europe, and making it the spiritual sovereign of the
+world? So he thanked him with emotion, bowed, and left him to his dream,
+standing before that widely open window whence Rome appeared to him,
+glittering like a jewel, even indeed as the tiara of gold and gems, in
+the splendour of the autumn sun.
+
+It was nearly one o’clock when Pierre and Count Prada were at last able
+to sit down to _déjeuner_ in the little restaurant where they had agreed
+to meet. They had both been delayed by their affairs. However, the Count,
+having settled some worrying matters to his own advantage, was very
+lively, whilst the priest on his side was again hopeful, and yielded to
+the delightful charm of that last fine day. And so the meal proved a very
+pleasant one in the large, bright room, which, as usual at that season of
+the year, was quite deserted. Pink and blue predominated in the
+decoration, but Cupids fluttered on the ceiling, and landscapes, vaguely
+recalling the Roman castles, adorned the walls. The things they ate were
+fresh, and they drank the wine of Frascati, to which the soil imparts a
+kind of burnt flavour as if the old volcanoes of the region had left some
+little of their fire behind.
+
+For a long while the conversation ranged over those wild and graceful
+Alban hills, which, fortunately for the pleasure of the eye, overlook the
+flat Roman Campagna. Pierre, who had made the customary carriage
+excursion from Frascati to Nemi, still felt its charm and spoke of it in
+glowing language. First came the lovely road from Frascati to Albano,
+ascending and descending hillsides planted with reeds, vines, and
+olive-trees, amongst which one obtained frequent glimpses of the
+Campagna’s wavy immensity. On the right-hand the village of Rocca di Papa
+arose in amphitheatrical fashion, showing whitely on a knoll below Monte
+Cavo, which was crowned by lofty and ancient trees. And from this point
+of the road, on looking back towards Frascati, one saw high up, on the
+verge of a pine wood the ruins of Tusculum, large ruddy ruins, baked by
+centuries of sunshine, and whence the boundless panorama must have been
+superb. Next one passed through Marino, with its sloping streets, its
+large cathedral, and its black decaying palace belonging to the Colonnas.
+Then, beyond a wood of ilex-trees, the lake of Albano was skirted with
+scenery which has no parallel in the world. In front, beyond the clear
+mirror of motionless water, were the ruins of Alba Longa; on the left
+rose Monte Cavo with Rocca di Papa and Palazzuolo; whilst on the right
+Castel Gandolfo overlooked the lake as from the summit of a cliff. Down
+below in the extinct crater, as in the depths of a gigantic cup of
+verdure, the lake slept heavy and lifeless: a sheet of molten metal,
+which the sun on one side streaked with gold, whilst the other was black
+with shade. And the road then ascended all the way to Castel Gandolfo,
+which was perched on its rock, like a white bird betwixt the lake and the
+sea. Ever refreshed by breezes, even in the most burning hours of summer,
+the little place was once famous for its papal villa, where Pius IX loved
+to spend hours of indolence, and whither Leo XIII has never come. And
+next the road dipped down, and the ilex-trees appeared again, ilex-trees
+famous for their size, a double row of monsters with twisted limbs, two
+and three hundred years old. Then one at last reached Albano, a small
+town less modernised and less cleansed than Frascati, a patch of the old
+land which has retained some of its ancient wildness; and afterwards
+there was Ariccia with the Palazzo Chigi, and hills covered with forests
+and viaducts spanning ravines which overflowed with foliage; and there
+was yet Genzano, and yet Nemi, growing still wilder and more remote, lost
+in the midst of rocks and trees.
+
+Ah! how ineffaceable was the recollection which Pierre had retained of
+Nemi, Nemi on the shore of its lake, Nemi so delicious and fascinating
+from afar, conjuring up all the ancient legends of fairy towns springing
+from amidst the greenery of mysterious waters, but so repulsively filthy
+when one at last reaches it, crumbling on all sides but yet dominated by
+the Orsini tower, as by the evil genius of the middle ages, which there
+seems to perpetuate the ferocious habits, the violent passions, the knife
+thrusts of the past! Thence came that Santobono whose brother had killed,
+and who himself, with his eyes of crime glittering like live embers,
+seemed to be consumed by a murderous flame. And the lake, that lake round
+like an extinguished moon fallen into the depths of a former crater, a
+deeper and less open cup than that of the lake of Albano, a cup rimmed
+with trees of wondrous vigour and density! Pines, elms, and willows
+descend to the very margin, with a green mass of tangled branches which
+weigh each other down. This formidable fecundity springs from the vapour
+which constantly arises from the water under the parching action of the
+sun, whose rays accumulate in this hollow till it becomes like a furnace.
+There is a warm, heavy dampness, the paths of the adjacent gardens grow
+green with moss, and in the morning dense mists often fill the large cup
+with white vapour, as with the steaming milk of some sorceress of
+malevolent craft. And Pierre well remembered how uncomfortable he had
+felt before that lake where ancient atrocities, a mysterious religion
+with abominable rites, seemed to slumber amidst the superb scenery. He
+had seen it at the approach of evening, looking, in the shade of its
+forest girdle, like a plate of dull metal, black and silver, motionless
+by reason of its weight. And that water, clear and yet so deep, that
+water deserted, without a bark upon its surface, that water august,
+lifeless, and sepulchral, had left him a feeling of inexpressible
+sadness, of mortal melancholy, the hopelessness of great solitary
+passion, earth and water alike swollen by the mute spasms of germs,
+troublous in their fecundity. Ah! those black and plunging banks, and
+that black mournful lake prone at the bottom!*
+
+ * Some literary interest attaches to M. Zola’s account of Nemi,
+ whose praises have been sung by a hundred poets. It will be
+ observed that he makes no mention of Egeria. The religion
+ distinguished by abominable practices to which he alludes,
+ may perhaps be the worship of the Egyptian Diana, who had a
+ famous temple near Nemi, which was excavated by Lord Savile
+ some ten years ago, when all the smaller objects discovered
+ were presented to the town of Nottingham. At this temple,
+ according to some classical writers, the chief priest was
+ required to murder his predecessor, and there were other
+ abominable usages.--Trans.
+
+Count Prada began to laugh when Pierre told him of these impressions.
+“Yes, yes,” said he, “it’s true, Nemi isn’t always gay. In dull weather I
+have seen the lake looking like lead, and even the full sunshine scarcely
+animates it. For my part, I know I should die of _ennui_ if I had to live
+face to face with that bare water. But it is admired by poets and
+romantic women, those who adore great tragedies of passion.”
+
+Then, as he and Pierre rose from the table to go and take coffee on the
+terrace of the restaurant, the conversation changed: “Do you mean to
+attend Prince Buongiovanni’s reception this evening?” the Count inquired.
+“It will be a curious sight, especially for a foreigner, and I advise you
+not to miss it.”
+
+“Yes, I have an invitation,” Pierre replied. “A friend of mine, Monsieur
+Narcisse Habert, an _attaché_ at our embassy, procured it for me, and I
+am going with him.”
+
+That evening, indeed, there was to be a _fête_ at the Palazzo
+Buongiovanni on the Corso, one of the few galas that take place in Rome
+each winter. People said that this one would surpass all others in
+magnificence, for it was to be given in honour of the betrothal of little
+Princess Celia. The Prince, her father, after boxing her ears, it was
+rumoured, and narrowly escaping an attack of apoplexy as the result of a
+frightful fit of anger, had, all at once, yielded to her quiet, gentle
+stubbornness, and consented to her marriage with Lieutenant Attilio, the
+son of Minister Sacco. And all the drawing-rooms of Rome, those of the
+white world quite as much as those of the black, were thoroughly upset by
+the tidings.
+
+Count Prada made merry over the affair. “Ah! you’ll see a fine sight!” he
+exclaimed. “Personally, I’m delighted with it all for the sake of my good
+cousin Attilio, who is really a very nice and worthy fellow. And nothing
+in the world would keep me from going to see my dear uncle Sacco make his
+entry into the ancient _salons_ of the Buongiovanni. It will be something
+extraordinary and superb. He has at last become Minister of Agriculture,
+you know. My father, who always takes things so seriously, told me this
+morning that the affair so worried him he hadn’t closed his eyes all
+night.”
+
+The Count paused, but almost immediately added: “I say, it is half-past
+two and you won’t have a train before five o’clock. Do you know what you
+ought to do? Why, drive back to Rome with me in my carriage.”
+
+“No, no,” rejoined Pierre, “I’m deeply obliged to you but I’m to dine
+with my friend Narcisse this evening, and I mustn’t be late.”
+
+“But you won’t be late--on the contrary! We shall start at three and
+reach Rome before five o’clock. There can’t be a more pleasant promenade
+when the light falls; and, come, I promise you a splendid sunset.”
+
+He was so pressing that the young priest had to accept, quite subjugated
+by so much amiability and good humour. They spent another half-hour very
+pleasantly in chatting about Rome, Italy, and France. Then, for a moment,
+they went up into Frascati where the Count wished to say a few words to a
+contractor, and just as three o’clock was striking they started off,
+seated side by side on the soft cushions and gently rocked by the motion
+of the victoria as the two horses broke into a light trot. As Prada had
+predicted, that return to Rome across the bare Campagna under the vast
+limpid heavens at the close of such a mild autumn day proved most
+delightful. First of all, however, the victoria had to descend the slopes
+of Frascati between vineyards and olive-trees. The paved road snaked, and
+was but little frequented; they merely saw a few peasants in old felt
+hats, a white mule, and a cart drawn by a donkey, for it is only upon
+Sundays that the _osterie_ or wine-shops are filled and that artisans in
+easy circumstances come to eat a dish of kid at the surrounding
+_bastides_. However, at one turn of the road they passed a monumental
+fountain. Then a flock of sheep momentarily barred the way before
+defiling past. And beyond the gentle undulations of the ruddy Campagna
+Rome appeared amidst the violet vapours of evening, sinking by degrees as
+the carriage itself descended to a lower and lower level. There came a
+moment when the city was a mere thin grey streak, speckled whitely here
+and there by a few sunlit house-fronts. And then it seemed to plunge
+below the ground--to be submerged by the swell of the far-spreading
+fields.
+
+The victoria was now rolling over the plain, leaving the Alban hills
+behind, whilst before it and on either hand came the expanse of meadows
+and stubbles. And then it was that the Count, after leaning forward,
+exclaimed: “Just look ahead, yonder, there’s our man of this morning,
+Santobono in person--what a strapping fellow he is, and how fast he
+walks! My horses can scarcely overtake him.”
+
+Pierre in his turn leant forward and likewise perceived the priest of St.
+Mary in the Fields, looking tall and knotty, fashioned as it were with a
+bill-hook. Robed in a long black cassock, he showed like a vigorous
+splotch of ink amidst the bright sunshine streaming around him; and he
+was walking on at such a fast, stern, regular pace that he suggested
+Destiny on the march. Something, which could not be well distinguished,
+was hanging from his right arm.
+
+When the carriage had at last overtaken him Prada told the coachman to
+slacken speed, and then entered into conversation.
+
+“Good-day, Abbé; you are well, I hope?” he asked.
+
+“Very well, Signor Conte, I thank you.”
+
+“And where are you going so bravely?”
+
+“Signor Conte, I am going to Rome.”
+
+“What! to Rome, at this late hour?”
+
+“Oh! I shall be there nearly as soon as yourself. The distance doesn’t
+frighten me, and money’s quickly earned by walking.”
+
+Scarcely turning his head to reply, stepping out beside the wheels,
+Santobono did not miss a stride. And Prada, diverted by the meeting,
+whispered to Pierre: “Wait a bit, he’ll amuse us.” Then he added aloud:
+“Since you are going to Rome, Abbé, you had better get in here; there’s
+room for you.”
+
+Santobono required no pressing, but at once accepted the offer.
+“Willingly; a thousand thanks,” he said. “It’s still better to save one’s
+shoe leather.”
+
+Then he got in and installed himself on the bracket-seat, declining with
+abrupt humility the place which Pierre politely offered him beside the
+Count. The young priest and the latter now saw that the object he was
+carrying was a little basket of fresh figs, nicely arranged and covered
+with leaves.
+
+The horses set off again at a faster trot, and the carriage rolled on and
+on over the superb, flat plain. “So you are going to Rome?” the Count
+resumed in order to make Santobono talk.
+
+“Yes,” the other replied, “I am taking his Eminence Cardinal Boccanera
+these few figs, the last of the season: a little present which I had
+promised him.” He had placed the basket on his knees and was holding it
+between his big knotty hands as if it were something rare and fragile.
+
+“Ah! some of the famous figs of your garden,” said Prada. “It’s quite
+true, they are like honey. But why don’t you rid yourself of them. You
+surely don’t mean to keep them on your knees all the way to Rome. Give
+them to me, I’ll put them in the hood.”
+
+However, Santobono became quite agitated, and vigorously declined the
+offer. “No, no, a thousand thanks! They don’t embarrass me in the least;
+they are very well here; and in this way I shall be sure that no accident
+will befall them.”
+
+His passion for the fruit he grew quite amused Prada, who nudged Pierre,
+and then inquired: “Is the Cardinal fond of your figs?”
+
+“Oh! his Eminence condescends to adore them. In former years, when he
+spent the summer at the villa, he would never touch the figs from other
+trees. And so, you see, knowing his tastes, it costs me very little to
+gratify him.”
+
+Whilst making this reply Santobono had shot such a keen glance in the
+direction of Pierre that the Count felt it necessary to introduce them to
+one another. This he did saying: “As it happens, Monsieur l’Abbé Froment
+is stopping at the Palazzo Boccanera; he has been there for three months
+or so.”
+
+“Yes, I’m aware of it,” Santobono quietly replied; “I found Monsieur
+l’Abbé with his Eminence one day when I took some figs to the Palazzo.
+Those were less ripe, but these are perfect.” So speaking he gave the
+little basket a complacent glance, and seemed to press it yet more
+closely between his huge and hairy fingers.
+
+Then came a spell of silence, whilst on either hand the Campagna spread
+out as far as the eye could reach. All houses had long since disappeared;
+there was not a wall, not a tree, nothing but the undulating expanse
+whose sparse, short herbage was, with the approach of winter, beginning
+to turn green once more. A tower, a half-fallen ruin which came into
+sight on the left, rising in solitude into the limpid sky above the flat,
+boundless line of the horizon, suddenly assumed extraordinary importance.
+Then, on the right, the distant silhouettes of cattle and horses were
+seen in a large enclosure with wooden rails. Urged on by the goad, oxen,
+still yoked, were slowly coming back from ploughing; whilst a farmer,
+cantering beside the ploughed land on a little sorrel nag, gave a final
+look round for the night. Now and again the road became peopled. A
+_biroccino_, an extremely light vehicle with two huge wheels and a small
+seat perched upon the springs, whisked by like a gust of wind. From time
+to time also the victoria passed a _carrotino_, one of the low carts in
+which peasants, sheltered by a kind of bright-hued tent, bring the wine,
+vegetables, and fruit of the castle-lands to Rome. The shrill tinkling of
+horses’ bells was heard afar off as the animals followed the well-known
+road of their own accord, their peasant drivers usually being sound
+asleep. Women with bare, black hair, scarlet neckerchiefs, and skirts
+caught up, were seen going home in groups of three and four. And then the
+road again emptied, and the solitude became more and more complete,
+without a wayfarer or an animal appearing for miles and miles, whilst
+yonder, at the far end of the lifeless sea, so grandiose and mournful in
+its monotony, the sun continued to descend from the infinite vault of
+heaven.
+
+“And the Pope, Abbé, is he dead?” Prada suddenly inquired.
+
+Santobono did not even start. “I trust,” he replied in all simplicity,
+“that his Holiness still has many long years to live for the triumph of
+the Church.”
+
+“So you had good news this morning when you called on your bishop,
+Cardinal Sanguinetti?”
+
+This time the priest was unable to restrain a slight start. Had he been
+seen, then? In his haste he had failed to notice the two men following
+the road behind him. However, he at once regained self-possession, and
+replied: “Oh! one can never tell exactly whether news is good or bad. It
+seems that his Holiness passed a somewhat painful night, but I devoutly
+hope that the next will be a better one.” Then he seemed to meditate for
+a moment, and added: “Moreover, if God should have deemed it time to call
+his Holiness to Himself, He would not leave His flock without a shepherd.
+He would have already chosen and designated the Sovereign Pontiff of
+to-morrow.”
+
+This superb answer increased Prada’s gaiety. “You are really
+extraordinary, Abbé,” he said. “So you think that popes are solely
+created by the grace of the Divinity! The pope of to-morrow is chosen up
+in heaven, eh, and simply waits? Well, I fancied that men had something
+to do with the matter. But perhaps you already know which cardinal it is
+that the divine favour has thus elected in advance?”
+
+Then, like the unbeliever he was, he went on with his facile jests, which
+left the priest unruffled. In fact, the latter also ended by laughing
+when the Count, after alluding to the gambling passion which at each
+fresh Conclave sets wellnigh the whole population of Rome betting for or
+against this or that candidate, told him that he might easily make his
+fortune if he were in the divine secret. Next the talk turned on the
+three white cassocks of different sizes which are always kept in
+readiness in a cupboard at the Vatican. Which of them would be required
+on this occasion?--the short one, the long one, or the one of medium
+size? Each time that the reigning pope falls somewhat seriously ill there
+is in this wise an extraordinary outburst of emotion, a keen awakening of
+all ambitions and intrigues, to such a point that not merely in the black
+world, but throughout the city, people have no other subject of
+curiosity, conversation, and occupation than that of discussing the
+relative claims of the cardinals and predicting which of them will be
+elected.
+
+“Come, come,” Prada resumed, “since you know the truth, I’m determined
+that you shall tell me. Will it be Cardinal Moretta?”
+
+Santobono, in spite of his evident desire to remain dignified and
+disinterested, like a good, pious priest, was gradually growing
+impassioned, yielding to the hidden fire which consumed him. And this
+interrogatory finished him off; he could no longer restrain himself, but
+replied: “Moretta! What an idea! Why, he is sold to all Europe!”
+
+“Well, will it be Cardinal Bartolini?”
+
+“Oh! you can’t think that. Bartolini has used himself up in striving for
+everything and getting nothing.”
+
+“Will it be Cardinal Dozio, then?”
+
+“Dozio, Dozio! Why, if Dozio were to win one might altogether despair of
+our Holy Church, for no man can have a baser mind than he!”
+
+Prada raised his hands, as if he had exhausted the serious candidates. In
+order to increase the priest’s exasperation he maliciously refrained from
+naming Cardinal Sanguinetti, who was certainly Santobono’s nominee. All
+at once, however, he pretended to make a good guess, and gaily exclaimed:
+“Ah! I have it; I know your man--Cardinal Boccanera!”
+
+The blow struck Santobono full in the heart, wounding him both in his
+rancour and his patriotic faith. His terrible mouth was already opening,
+and he was about to shout “No! no!” with all his strength, but he managed
+to restrain the cry, compelled as he was to silence by the present on his
+knees--that little basket of figs which he pressed so convulsively with
+both hands; and the effort which he was obliged to make left him
+quivering to such a point that he had to wait some time before he could
+reply in a calm voice: “His most reverend Eminence Cardinal Boccanera is
+a saintly man, well worthy of the throne, and my only fear is that, with
+his hatred of new Italy, he might bring us warfare.”
+
+Prada, however, desired to enlarge the wound. “At all events,” said he,
+“you accept him and love him too much not to rejoice over his chances of
+success. And I really think that we have arrived at the truth, for
+everybody is convinced that the Conclave’s choice cannot fall elsewhere.
+Come, come; Boccanera is a very tall man, so it’s the long white cassock
+which will be required.”
+
+“The long cassock, the long cassock,” growled Santobono, despite himself;
+“that’s all very well, but--”
+
+Then he stopped short, and, again overcoming his passion, left his
+sentence unfinished. Pierre, listening in silence, marvelled at the man’s
+self-restraint, for he remembered the conversation which he had overheard
+at Cardinal Sanguinetti’s. Those figs were evidently a mere pretext for
+gaining admission to the Boccanera mansion, where some friend--Abbé
+Paparelli, no doubt--could alone supply certain positive information
+which was needed. But how great was the command which the hot-blooded
+priest exercised over himself amidst the riotous impulses of his soul!
+
+On either side of the road the Campagna still and ever spread its expanse
+of verdure, and Prada, who had become grave and dreamy, gazed before him
+without seeing anything. At last, however, he gave expression to his
+thoughts. “You know, Abbé, what will be said if the Pope should die this
+time. That sudden illness, those colics, those refusals to make any
+information public, mean nothing good--Yes, yes, poison, just as for the
+others!”
+
+Pierre gave a start of stupefaction. The Pope poisoned! “What! Poison?
+Again?” he exclaimed as he gazed at his companions with dilated eyes.
+Poison at the end of the nineteenth century, as in the days of the
+Borgias, as on the stage in a romanticist melodrama! To him the idea
+appeared both monstrous and ridiculous.
+
+Santobono, whose features had become motionless and impenetrable, made no
+reply. But Prada nodded, and the conversation was henceforth confined to
+him and the young priest. “Why, yes, poison,” he replied. “The fear of it
+has remained very great in Rome. Whenever a death seems inexplicable,
+either by reason of its suddenness or the tragic circumstances which
+attend it, the unanimous thought is poison. And remark this: in no city,
+I believe, are sudden deaths so frequent. The causes I don’t exactly
+know, but some doctors put everything down to the fevers. Among the
+people, however, the one thought is poison, poison with all its legends,
+poison which kills like lightning and leaves no trace, the famous recipe
+bequeathed from age to age, through the emperors and the popes, down to
+these present times of middle-class democracy.”
+
+As he spoke he ended by smiling, for he was inclined to be somewhat
+sceptical on the point, despite the covert terror with which he was
+inspired by racial and educational causes. However, he quoted instances.
+The Roman matrons had rid themselves of their husbands and lovers by
+employing the venom of red toads. Locusta, in a more practical spirit,
+sought poison in plants, one of which, probably aconite, she was wont to
+boil. Then, long afterwards, came the age of the Borgias, and
+subsequently, at Naples, La Toffana sold a famous water, doubtless some
+preparation of arsenic, in phials decorated with a representation of St.
+Nicholas of Bari. There were also extraordinary stories of pins, a prick
+from which killed one like lightning, of cups of wine poisoned by the
+infusion of rose petals, of woodcocks cut in half with prepared knives,
+which poisoned but one-half of the bird, so that he who partook of that
+half was killed. “I myself, in my younger days,” continued Prada, “had a
+friend whose bride fell dead in church during the marriage service
+through simply inhaling a bouquet of flowers. And so isn’t it possible
+that the famous recipe may really have been handed down, and have
+remained known to a few adepts?”
+
+“But chemistry has made too much progress,” Pierre replied. “If
+mysterious poisons were believed in by the ancients and remained
+undetected in their time it was because there were no means of analysis.
+But the drug of the Borgias would now lead the simpleton who might employ
+it straight to the Assizes. Such stories are mere nonsense, and at the
+present day people scarcely tolerate them in newspaper serials and
+shockers.”
+
+“Perhaps so,” resumed the Count with his uneasy smile. “You are right, no
+doubt--only go and tell that to your host, for instance, Cardinal
+Boccanera, who last summer held in his arms an old and deeply-loved
+friend, Monsignor Gallo, who died after a seizure of a couple of hours.”
+
+“But apoplexy may kill one in two hours, and aneurism only takes two
+minutes.”
+
+“True, but ask the Cardinal what he thought of his friend’s prolonged
+shudders, the leaden hue which overcame his face, the sinking of his
+eyes, and the expression of terror which made him quite unrecognisable.
+The Cardinal is convinced that Monsignor Gallo was poisoned, because he
+was his dearest confidant, the counsellor to whom he always listened, and
+whose wise advice was a guarantee of success.”
+
+Pierre’s bewilderment was increasing, and, irritated by the impassibility
+of Santobono, he addressed him direct. “It’s idiotic, it’s awful! Does
+your reverence also believe in these frightful stories?”
+
+But the priest of Frascati gave no sign. His thick, passionate lips
+remained closed while his black glowing eyes never ceased to gaze at
+Prada. The latter, moreover, was quoting other instances. There was the
+case of Monsignor Nazzarelli, who had been found in bed, shrunken and
+calcined like carbon. And there was that of Monsignor Brando, struck down
+in his sacerdotal vestments at St. Peter’s itself, in the very sacristy,
+during vespers!
+
+“Ah! _Mon Dieu_!” sighed Pierre, “you will tell me so much that I myself
+shall end by trembling, and sha’n’t dare to eat anything but boiled eggs
+as long as I stay in this terrible Rome of yours.”
+
+For a moment this whimsical reply enlivened both the Count and Pierre.
+But it was quite true that their conversation showed Rome under a
+terrible aspect, for it conjured up the Eternal City of Crime, the city
+of poison and the knife, where for more than two thousand years, ever
+since the raising of the first bit of wall, the lust of power, the
+frantic hunger for possession and enjoyment, had armed men’s hands,
+ensanguined the pavements, and cast victims into the river and the
+ground. Assassinations and poisonings under the emperors, poisonings and
+assassinations under the popes, ever did the same torrent of abominations
+strew that tragic soil with death amidst the sovereign glory of the sun.
+
+“All the same,” said the Count, “those who take precautions are perhaps
+not ill advised. It is said that more than one cardinal shudders and
+mistrusts people. One whom I know will never eat anything that has not
+been bought and prepared by his own cook. And as for the Pope, if he is
+anxious--”
+
+Pierre again raised a cry of stupefaction. “What, the Pope himself! The
+Pope afraid of being poisoned!”
+
+“Well, my dear Abbé, people commonly assert it. There are certainly days
+when he considers himself more menaced than anybody else. And are you not
+aware of the old Roman view that a pope ought never to live till too
+great an age, and that when he is so obstinate as not to die at the right
+time he ought to be assisted? As soon as a pope begins to fall into
+second childhood, and by reason of his senility becomes a source of
+embarrassment, and possibly even danger, to the Church, his right place
+is heaven. Moreover, matters are managed in a discreet manner; a slight
+cold becomes a decent pretext to prevent him from tarrying any longer on
+the throne of St. Peter.”
+
+Prada then gave some curious details. One prelate, it was said, wishing
+to dispel his Holiness’s fears, had devised an elaborate precautionary
+system which, among other things, was to comprise a little padlocked
+vehicle, in which the food destined for the frugal pontifical table was
+to be securely placed before leaving the kitchen, so that it might not be
+tampered with on its way to the Pope’s apartments. However, this project
+had not yet been carried into effect.
+
+“After all,” the Count concluded with a laugh, “every pope has to die
+some day, especially when his death is needful for the welfare of the
+Church. Isn’t that so, Abbé?”
+
+Santobono, whom he addressed, had a moment previously lowered his eyes as
+if to contemplate the little basket of figs which he held on his lap with
+as much care as if it had been the Blessed Sacrament. On being questioned
+in such a direct, sharp fashion he could not do otherwise than look up.
+However, he did not depart from his prolonged silence, but limited his
+answer to a slow nod.
+
+“And it is God alone, and not poison, who causes one to die. Is that not
+so, Abbé?” repeated Prada. “It is said that those were the last words of
+poor Monsignor Gallo before he expired in the arms of his friend Cardinal
+Boccanera.”
+
+For the second time Santobono nodded without speaking. And then silence
+fell, all three sinking into a dreamy mood.
+
+Meantime, without a pause, the carriage rolled on across the immensity of
+the Campagna. The road, straight as an arrow, seemed to extend into the
+infinite. As the sun descended towards the horizon the play of light and
+shade became more marked on the broad undulations of the ground which
+stretched away, alternately of a pinky green and a violet grey, till they
+reached the distant fringe of the sky. At the roadside on either hand
+there were still and ever tall withered thistles and giant fennel with
+yellow umbels. Then, after a time, came a team of four oxen, that had
+been kept ploughing until late, and stood forth black and huge in the
+pale atmosphere and mournful solitude. Farther on some flocks of sheep,
+whence the breeze wafted a tallowy odour, set patches of brown amidst the
+herbage, which once more was becoming verdant; whilst at intervals a dog
+was heard to bark, his voice the only distinct sound amidst the low
+quivering of that silent desert where the sovereign peacefulness of death
+seemed to reign. But all at once a light melody arose and some larks flew
+up, one of them soaring into the limpid golden heavens. And ahead, at the
+far extremity of the pure sky, Rome, with her towers and domes, grew
+larger and larger, like a city of white marble springing from a mirage
+amidst the greenery of some enchanted garden.
+
+“Matteo!” Prada called to his coachman, “pull up at the Osteria Romana.”
+ And to his companions he added: “Pray excuse me, but I want to see if I
+can get some new-laid eggs for my father. He is so fond of them.”
+
+A few minutes afterwards the carriage stopped. At the very edge of the
+road stood a primitive sort of inn, bearing the proud and sonorous name
+of “Antica Osteria Romana.” It had now become a mere house of call for
+carters and chance sportsmen, who ventured to drink a flagon of white
+wine whilst eating an omelet and a slice of ham. Occasionally, on
+Sundays, some of the humble classes would walk over from Rome and make
+merry there; but the week days often went by without a soul entering the
+place, such was its isolation amidst the bare Campagna.
+
+The Count was already springing from the carriage. “I shall only be a
+minute,” said he as he turned away.
+
+The _osteria_ was a long, low pile with a ground floor and one upper
+storey, the last being reached by an outdoor stairway built of large
+blocks of stone which had been scorched by the hot suns. The entire
+place, indeed, was corroded, tinged with the hue of old gold. On the
+ground floor one found a common room, a cart-house, and a stable with
+adjoining sheds. At one side, near a cluster of parasol pines--the only
+trees that could grow in that ungrateful soil--there was an arbour of
+reeds where five or six rough wooden tables were set out. And, as a
+background to this sorry, mournful nook of life, there arose a fragment
+of an ancient aqueduct whose arches, half fallen and opening on to space,
+alone interrupted the flat line of the horizon.
+
+All at once, however, the Count retraced his steps, and, addressing
+Santobono, exclaimed: “I say, Abbé, you’ll surely accept a glass of white
+wine. I know that you are a bit of a vine grower, and they have a little
+white wine here which you ought to make acquaintance with.”
+
+Santobono again required no pressing, but quietly alighted. “Oh! I know
+it,” said he; “it’s a wine from Marino; it’s grown in a lighter soil than
+ours at Frascati.”
+
+Then, as he would not relax his hold on his basket of figs, but even now
+carried it along with him, the Count lost patience. “Come, you don’t want
+that basket,” said he; “leave it in the carriage.”
+
+The priest gave no reply, but walked ahead, whilst Pierre also made up
+his mind to descend from the carriage in order to see what a suburban
+_osteria_ was like. Prada was known at this place, and an old woman,
+tall, withered, but looking quite queenly in her wretched garments, had
+at once presented herself. On the last occasion when the Count had called
+she had managed to find half a dozen eggs. This time she said she would
+go to see, but could promise nothing, for the hens laid here and there
+all over the place, and she could never tell what eggs there might be.
+
+“All right!” Prada answered, “go and look; and meantime we will have a
+_caraffa_ of white wine.”
+
+The three men entered the common room, which was already quite dark.
+Although the hot weather was now over, one heard the buzzing of
+innumerable flies immediately one reached the threshold, and a pungent
+odour of acidulous wine and rancid oil caught one at the throat. As soon
+as their eyes became accustomed to the dimness they were able to
+distinguish the spacious, blackened, malodorous chamber, whose only
+furniture consisted of some roughly made tables and benches. It seemed to
+be quite empty, so complete was the silence, apart from the buzz of the
+flies. However, two men were seated there, two wayfarers who remained
+mute and motionless before their untouched, brimming glasses. Moreover,
+on a low chair near the door, in the little light which penetrated from
+without, a thin, sallow girl, the daughter of the house, sat idle,
+trembling with fever, her hands close pressed between her knees.
+
+Realising that Pierre felt uncomfortable there, the Count proposed that
+they should drink their wine outside. “We shall be better out of doors,”
+ said he, “it’s so very in mild this evening.”
+
+Accordingly, whilst the mother looked for the eggs, and the father mended
+a wheel in an adjacent shed, the daughter was obliged to get up shivering
+to carry the flagon of wine and the three glasses to the arbour, where
+she placed them on one of the tables. And, having pocketed the price of
+the wine--threepence--in silence, she went back to her seat with a sullen
+look, as if annoyed at having been compelled to make such a long journey.
+Meanwhile the three men had sat down, and Prada gaily filled each of the
+glasses, although Pierre declared that he was quite unable to drink wine
+between his meals. “Pooh, pooh,” said the Count, “you can always clink
+glasses with us. And now, Abbé, isn’t this little wine droll? Come,
+here’s to the Pope’s better health, since he’s unwell!”
+
+Santobono at one gulp emptied his glass and clacked his tongue. With
+gentle, paternal care he had deposited his basket on the ground beside
+him: and, taking off his hat, he drew a long breath. The evening was
+really delightful. A superb sky of a soft golden hue stretched over that
+endless sea of the Campagna which was soon to fall asleep with sovereign
+quiescence. And the light breeze which went by amidst the deep silence
+brought with it an exquisite odour of wild herbs and flowers.
+
+“How pleasant it is!” muttered Pierre, affected by the surrounding charm.
+“And what a desert for eternal rest, forgetfulness of all the world!”
+
+Prada, who had emptied the flagon by filling Santobono’s glass a second
+time, made no reply; he was silently amusing himself with an occurrence
+which at first he was the only one to observe. However, with a merry
+expression of complicity, he gave the young priest a wink, and then they
+both watched the dramatic incidents of the affair. Some scraggy fowls
+were wandering round them searching the yellow turf for grasshoppers; and
+one of these birds, a little shiny black hen with an impudent manner, had
+caught sight of the basket of figs and was boldly approaching it. When
+she got near, however, she took fright, and retreated somewhat, with neck
+stiffened and head turned, so as to cast suspicious glances at the basket
+with her round sparkling eye. But at last covetousness gained the
+victory, for she could see one of the figs between the leaves, and so she
+slowly advanced, lifting her feet very high at each step; and, all at
+once, stretching out her neck, she gave the fig a formidable peck, which
+ripped it open and made the juice exude.
+
+Prada, who felt as happy as a child, was then able to give vent to the
+laughter which he had scarcely been able to restrain: “Look out, Abbé,”
+ he called, “mind your figs!”
+
+At that very moment Santobono was finishing his second glass of wine with
+his head thrown back and his eyes blissfully raised to heaven. He gave a
+start, looked round, and on seeing the hen at once understood the
+position. And then came a terrible outburst of anger, with sweeping
+gestures and terrible invectives. But the hen, who was again pecking,
+would not be denied; she dug her beak into the fig and carried it off,
+flapping her wings, so quick and so comical that Prada, and Pierre as
+well, laughed till tears came into their eyes, their merriment increasing
+at sight of the impotent fury of Santobono, who, for a moment, pursued
+the thief, threatening her with his fist.
+
+“Ah!” said the Count, “that’s what comes of not leaving the basket in the
+carriage. If I hadn’t warned you the hen would have eaten all the figs.”
+
+The priest did not reply, but, growling out vague imprecations, placed
+the basket on the table, where he raised the leaves and artistically
+rearranged the fruit so as to fill up the void. Then, the harm having
+been repaired as far as was possible, he at last calmed down.
+
+It was now time for them to resume their journey, for the sun was sinking
+towards the horizon, and night would soon fall. Thus the Count ended by
+getting impatient. “Well, and those eggs?” he called.
+
+Then, as the woman did not return, he went to seek her. He entered the
+stable, and afterwards the cart-house, but she was neither here nor
+there. Next he went towards the rear of the _osteria_ in order to look in
+the sheds. But all at once an unexpected spectacle made him stop short.
+The little black hen was lying on the ground, dead, killed as by
+lightning. She showed no sign of hurt; there was nothing but a little
+streamlet of violet blood still trickling from her beak. Prada was at
+first merely astonished. He stooped and touched the hen. She was still
+warm and soft like a rag. Doubtless some apoplectic stroke had killed
+her. But immediately afterwards he became fearfully pale; the truth
+appeared to him, and turned him as cold as ice. In a moment he conjured
+up everything: Leo XIII attacked by illness, Santobono hurrying to
+Cardinal Sanguinetti for tidings, and then starting for Rome to present a
+basket of figs to Cardinal Boccanera. And Prada also remembered the
+conversation in the carriage: the possibility of the Pope’s demise, the
+candidates for the tiara, the legendary stories of poison which still
+fostered terror in and around the Vatican; and he once more saw the
+priest, with his little basket on his knees, lavishing paternal attention
+on it, and he saw the little black hen pecking at the fruit and fleeing
+with a fig on her beak. And now that little black hen lay there, suddenly
+struck down, dead!
+
+His conviction was immediate and absolute. But he did not have time to
+decide what course he should take, for a voice behind him exclaimed:
+“Why, it’s the little hen; what’s the matter with her?”
+
+The voice was that of Pierre, who, letting Santobono climb into the
+carriage alone, had in his turn come round to the rear of the house in
+order to obtain a better view of the ruined aqueduct among the parasol
+pines.
+
+Prada, who shuddered as if he himself were the culprit, answered him with
+a lie, a lie which he did not premeditate, but to which he was impelled
+by a sort of instinct. “But she’s dead,” he said.... “Just fancy,
+there was a fight. At the moment when I got here that other hen, which
+you see yonder, sprang upon this one to get the fig, which she was still
+holding, and with a thrust of the beak split her head open.... The
+blood’s flowing, as you can see yourself.”
+
+Why did he say these things? He himself was astonished at them whilst he
+went on inventing them. Was it then that he wished to remain master of
+the situation, keep the abominable secret entirely to himself, in order
+that he might afterwards act in accordance with his own desires?
+Certainly his feelings partook of shame and embarrassment in presence of
+that foreigner, whilst his personal inclination for violence set some
+admiration amidst the revolt of his conscience, and a covert desire arose
+within him to examine the matter from the standpoint of his interests
+before he came to a decision. But, on the other hand, he claimed to be a
+man of integrity, and would assuredly not allow people to be poisoned.
+
+Pierre, who was compassionately inclined towards all creation, looked at
+the hen with the emotion which he always felt at the sudden severance of
+life. However, he at once accepted Prada’s story. “Ah! those fowls!” said
+he. “They treat one another with an idiotic ferocity which even men can
+scarcely equal. I kept fowls at home at one time, and one of the hens no
+sooner hurt her leg than all the others, on seeing the blood oozing,
+would flock round and peck at the limb till they stripped it to the
+bone.”
+
+Prada, however, did not listen, but at once went off; and it so happened
+that the woman was, on her side, looking for him in order to hand him
+four eggs which, after a deal of searching, she had discovered in odd
+corners about the house. The Count made haste to pay for them, and called
+to Pierre, who was lingering behind: “We must look sharp! We sha’n’t
+reach Rome now until it is quite dark.”
+
+They found Santobono quietly waiting in the carriage, where he had again
+installed himself on the bracket with his spine resting against the
+box-seat and his long legs drawn back under him, and he again had the
+little basket of figs on his knees, and clasped it with his big knotty
+hands as though it were something fragile and rare which the slightest
+jolting might damage. His cassock showed like a huge blot, and in his
+coarse ashen face, that of a peasant yet near to the wild soil and but
+slightly polished by a few years of theological studies, his eyes alone
+seemed to live, glowing with the dark flame of a devouring passion. On
+seeing him seated there in such composure Prada could not restrain a
+slight shudder. Then, as soon as the victoria was again rolling along the
+road, he exclaimed: “Well, Abbé, that glass of wine will guarantee us
+against the malaria. The Pope would soon be cured if he could imitate our
+example.”
+
+Santobono’s only reply was a growl. He was in no mood for conversation,
+but wrapped himself in perfect silence, as in the night which was slowly
+falling. And Prada in his turn ceased to speak, and, with his eyes still
+fixed upon the other, reflected on the course that he should follow.
+
+The road turned, and then the carriage rolled on and on over another
+interminable straight highway with white paving, whose brilliancy made
+the road look like a ribbon of snow stretching across the Campagna, where
+delicate shadows were slowly falling. Gloom gathered in the hollows of
+the broad undulations whence a tide of violet hue seemed to spread over
+the short herbage until all mingled and the expanse became an indistinct
+swell of neutral hue from one to the other horizon. And the solitude was
+now yet more complete; a last indolent cart had gone by and a last
+tinkling of horses’ bells had subsided in the distance. There was no
+longer a passer-by, no longer a beast of the fields to be seen, colour
+and sound died away, all forms of life sank into slumber, into the serene
+stillness of nihility. Some fragments of an aqueduct were still to be
+seen at intervals on the right hand, where they looked like portions of
+gigantic millepeds severed by the scythe of time; next, on the left, came
+another tower, whose dark and ruined pile barred the sky as with a huge
+black stake; and then the remains of another aqueduct spanned the road,
+assuming yet greater dimensions against the sunset glow. Ah! that unique
+hour, the hour of twilight in the Campagna, when all is blotted out and
+simplified, the hour of bare immensity, of the infinite in its simplest
+expression! There is nothing, nothing all around you, but the flat line
+of the horizon with the one splotch of an isolated tower, and yet that
+nothing is instinct with sovereign majesty.
+
+However, on the left, towards the sea, the sun was setting, descending in
+the limpid sky like a globe of fire of blinding redness. It slowly
+plunged beneath the horizon, and the only sign of cloud was some fiery
+vapour, as if indeed the distant sea had seethed at contact with that
+royal and flaming visit. And directly the sun had disappeared the heavens
+above it purpled and became a lake of blood, whilst the Campagna turned
+to grey. At the far end of the fading plain there remained only that
+purple lake whose brasier slowly died out behind the black arches of the
+aqueduct, while in the opposite direction the scattered arches remained
+bright and rosy against a pewter-like sky. Then the fiery vapour was
+dissipated, and the sunset ended by fading away. One by one the stars
+came out in the pacified vault, now of an ashen blue, while the lights of
+Rome, still far away on the verge of the horizon, scintillated like the
+lamps of light-houses.
+
+And Prada, amidst the dreamy silence of his companions and the infinite
+melancholy of the evening and the inexpressible distress which even he
+experienced, continued to ask himself what course he should adopt. Again
+and again he mentally repeated that he could not allow people to be
+poisoned. The figs were certainly intended for Cardinal Boccanera, and on
+the whole it mattered little to him whether there were a cardinal the
+more or the fewer in the world. Moreover, it had always seemed to him
+best to let Destiny follow its course; and, infidel that he was, he saw
+no harm in one priest devouring another. Again, it might be dangerous for
+him to intervene in that abominable affair, to mix himself up in the
+base, fathomless intrigues of the black world. But on the other hand the
+Cardinal was not the only person who lived in the Boccanera mansion, and
+might not the figs go to others, might they not be eaten by people to
+whom no harm was intended? This idea of a treacherous chance haunted him,
+and in spite of every effort the figures of Benedetta and Dario rose up
+before him, returned and imposed themselves on him though he again and
+again sought to banish them from his mind. What if Benedetta, what if
+Dario should partake of that fruit? For Benedetta he felt no fear, for he
+knew that she and her aunt ate their meals by themselves, and that their
+cuisine and the Cardinal’s had nothing in common. But Dario sat at his
+uncle’s table every day, and for a moment Prada, pictured the young
+Prince suddenly seized with a spasm, then falling, like poor Monsignor
+Gallo, into the Cardinal’s arms with livid face and receding eyes, and
+dying within two hours.
+
+But no, no! That would be frightful, he could not suffer such an
+abomination. And thereupon he made up his mind. He would wait till the
+night had completely gathered round and would then simply take the basket
+from Santobono’s lap and fling it into some dark hollow without saying a
+word. The priest would understand him. The other one, the young
+Frenchman, would perhaps not even notice the incident. Besides, that
+mattered little, for he would not even attempt to explain his action. And
+he felt quite calm again when the idea occurred to him to throw the
+basket away while the carriage passed through the Porta Furba, a couple
+of miles or so before reaching Rome. That would suit him exactly; in the
+darkness of the gateway nothing whatever would be seen.
+
+“We stopped too long at that _osteria_,” he suddenly exclaimed aloud,
+turning towards Pierre. “We sha’n’t reach Rome much before six o’clock.
+Still you will have time to dress and join your friend.” And then without
+awaiting the young man’s reply he said to Santobono: “Your figs will
+arrive very late, Abbé.”
+
+“Oh!” answered the priest, “his Eminence receives until eight o’clock.
+And, besides, the figs are not for this evening. People don’t eat figs in
+the evening. They will be for to-morrow morning.” And thereupon he again
+relapsed into silence.
+
+“For to-morrow morning--yes, yes, no doubt,” repeated Prada. “And the
+Cardinal will be able to thoroughly regale himself if nobody helps him to
+eat the fruit.”
+
+Thereupon Pierre, without pausing to reflect, exclaimed: “He will no
+doubt eat it by himself, for his nephew, Prince Dario, must have started
+to-day for Naples on a little convalescence trip to rid himself of the
+effects of the accident which laid him up during the last month.” Then,
+having got so far, the young priest remembered to whom he was speaking,
+and abruptly stopped short.
+
+The Count noticed his embarrassment. “Oh! speak on, my dear Monsieur
+Froment,” said he, “you don’t offend me. It’s an old affair now. So that
+young man has left, you say?”
+
+“Yes, unless he has postponed his departure. However, I don’t expect to
+find him at the palazzo when I get there.”
+
+For a moment the only sound was that of the continuous rumble of the
+wheels. Prada again felt worried, a prey to the discomfort of
+uncertainty. Why should he mix himself up in the affair if Dario were
+really absent? All the ideas which came to him tired his brain, and he
+ended by thinking aloud: “If he has gone away it must be for propriety’s
+sake, so as to avoid attending the Buongiovanni reception, for the
+Congregation of the Council met this morning to give its decision in the
+suit which the Countess has brought against me. Yes, I shall know by and
+by whether our marriage is to be dissolved.”
+
+It was in a somewhat hoarse voice that he spoke these words, and one
+could realise that the old wound was again bleeding within him. Although
+Lisbeth had borne him a son, the charge levelled against him in his
+wife’s petition for divorce still filled him with blind fury each time
+that he thought of it. And all at once he shuddered violently, as if an
+icy blast had darted through his frame. Then, turning the conversation,
+he added: “It’s not at all warm this evening. This is the dangerous hour
+of the Roman climate, the twilight hour when it’s easy to catch a
+terrible fever if one isn’t prudent. Here, pull the rug over your legs,
+wrap it round you as carefully as you can.”
+
+Then, as they drew near the Porta Furba, silence again fell, more
+profound, like the slumber which was invincibly spreading over the
+Campagna, now steeped in night. And at last, in the bright starlight,
+appeared the gate, an arch of the Acqua Felice, under which the road
+passed. From a distance, this fragment seemed to bar the way with its
+mass of ancient half-fallen walls. But afterwards the gigantic arch where
+all was black opened like a gaping porch. And the carriage passed under
+it in darkness whilst the wheels rumbled with increased sonority.
+
+When the victoria emerged on the other side, Santobono still had the
+little basket of figs upon his knees and Prada looked at it, quite
+overcome, asking himself what sudden paralysis of the hands had prevented
+him from seizing it and throwing it into the darkness. Such had still
+been his intention but a few seconds before they passed under the arch.
+He had even given the basket a final glance in order that he might the
+better realise what movements he should make. What had taken place within
+him then? At present he was yielding to increasing irresolution,
+henceforth incapable of decisive action, feeling a need of delay in order
+that he might, before everything else, fully satisfy himself as to what
+was likely to happen. And as Dario had doubtless gone away and the figs
+would certainly not be eaten until the following morning, what reason was
+there for him to hurry? He would know that evening if the Congregation of
+the Council had annulled his marriage, he would know how far the
+so-called “Justice of God” was venal and mendacious! Certainly he would
+suffer nobody to be poisoned, not even Cardinal Boccanera, though the
+latter’s life was of little account to him personally. But had not that
+little basket, ever since leaving Frascati, been like Destiny on the
+march? And was it not enjoyment, the enjoyment of omnipotence, to be able
+to say to himself that he was the master who could stay that basket’s
+course, or allow it to go onward and accomplish its deadly purpose?
+Moreover, he yielded to the dimmest of mental struggles, ceasing to
+reason, unable to raise his hand, and yet convinced that he would drop a
+warning note into the letter-box at the palazzo before he went to bed,
+though at the same time he felt happy in the thought that if his interest
+directed otherwise he would not do so.
+
+And the remainder of the journey was accomplished in silent weariness,
+amidst the shiver of evening which seemed to have chilled all three men.
+In vain did the Count endeavour to escape from the battle of his
+thoughts, by reverting to the Buongiovanni reception, and giving
+particulars of the splendours which would be witnessed at it: his words
+fell sparsely in an embarrassed and absent-minded way. Then he sought to
+inspirit Pierre by speaking to him of Cardinal Sanguinetti’s amiable
+manner and fair words, but although the young priest was returning home
+well pleased with his journey, in the idea that with a little help he
+might yet triumph, he scarcely answered the Count, so wrapt he was in his
+reverie. And Santobono, on his side, neither spoke nor moved. Black like
+the night itself, he seemed to have vanished. However, the lights of Rome
+were increasing in number, and houses again appeared on either hand, at
+first at long intervals, and then in close succession. They were suburban
+houses, and there were yet more fields of reeds, quickset hedges,
+olive-trees overtopping long walls, and big gateways with vase-surmounted
+pillars; but at last came the city with its rows of small grey houses,
+its petty shops and its dingy taverns, whence at times came shouts and
+rumours of battle.
+
+Prada insisted on setting his companions down in the Via Giulia, at fifty
+paces from the palazzo. “It doesn’t inconvenience me at all,” said he to
+Pierre. “Besides, with the little time you have before you, it would
+never do for you to go on foot.”
+
+The Via Giulia was already steeped in slumber, and wore a melancholy
+aspect of abandonment in the dreary light of the gas lamps standing on
+either hand. And as soon as Santobono had alighted from the carriage, he
+took himself off without waiting for Pierre, who, moreover, always went
+in by the little door in the side lane.
+
+“Good-bye, Abbé,” exclaimed Prada.
+
+“Good-bye, Count, a thousand thanks,” was Santobono’s response.
+
+Then the two others stood watching him as he went towards the Boccanera
+mansion, whose old, monumental entrance, full of gloom, was still wide
+open. For a moment they saw his tall, rugged figure erect against that
+gloom. Then in he plunged, he and his little basket, bearing Destiny.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+IT was ten o’clock when Pierre and Narcisse, after dining at the Caffe di
+Roma, where they had long lingered chatting, at last walked down the
+Corso towards the Palazzo Buongiovanni. They had the greatest difficulty
+to reach its entrance, for carriages were coming up in serried files, and
+the inquisitive crowd of on-lookers, who pressed even into the roadway,
+in spite of the injunctions of the police, was growing so compact that
+even the horses could no longer approach. The ten lofty windows on the
+first floor of the long monumental façade shone with an intense white
+radiance, the radiance of electric lamps, which illumined the street like
+sunshine, spreading over the equipages aground in that human sea, whose
+billows of eager, excited faces rolled to and fro amidst an extraordinary
+tumult.
+
+And in all this there was not merely the usual curiosity to see uniforms
+go by and ladies in rich attire alight from their carriages, for Pierre
+soon gathered from what he heard that the crowd had come to witness the
+arrival of the King and Queen, who had promised to appear at the ball
+given by Prince Buongiovanni, in celebration of the betrothal of his
+daughter Celia to Lieutenant Attilio Sacco, the son of one of his
+Majesty’s ministers. Moreover, people were enraptured with this marriage,
+the happy ending of a love story which had impassioned the whole city: to
+begin with, love at first sight, with the suddenness of a
+lightning-flash, and then stubborn fidelity triumphing over all
+obstacles, amidst romantic circumstances whose story sped from lip to
+lip, moistening every eye and stirring every heart.
+
+It was this story that Narcisse had related at dessert to Pierre, who
+already knew some portion of it. People asserted that if the Prince had
+ended by yielding after a final terrible scene, it was only from fear of
+seeing Celia elope from the palace with her lover. She did not threaten
+to do so, but, amidst her virginal calmness, there was so much contempt
+for everything foreign to her love, that her father felt her to be
+capable of acting with the greatest folly in all ingenuousness. Only
+indifference was manifested by the Prince’s wife, a phlegmatic and still
+beautiful Englishwoman, who considered that she had done quite enough for
+the household by bringing her husband a dowry of five millions, and
+bearing him five children. The Prince, anxious and weak despite his
+violence, in which one found a trace of the old Roman blood, already
+spoilt by mixture with that of a foreign race, was nowadays ever
+influenced in his actions by the fear that his house and fortune--which
+hitherto had remained intact amidst the accumulated ruins of the
+_patriziato_--might suddenly collapse. And in finally yielding to Celia,
+he must have been guided by the idea of rallying to the new _régime_
+through his daughter, so as to have one foot firmly set at the Quirinal,
+without withdrawing the other from the Vatican. It was galling, no doubt;
+his pride must have bled at the idea of allying his name with that of
+such low folks as the Saccos. But then Sacco was a minister, and had sped
+so quickly from success to success that it seemed likely he would rise
+yet higher, and, after the portfolio of Agriculture, secure that of
+Finances, which he had long coveted. And an alliance with Sacco meant the
+certain favour of the King, an assured retreat in that direction should
+the papacy some day collapse. Then, too, the Prince had made inquiries
+respecting the son, and was somewhat disarmed by the good looks, bravery,
+and rectitude of young Attilio, who represented the future, and possibly
+the glorious Italy of to-morrow. He was a soldier, and could be helped
+forward to the highest rank. And people spitefully added that the last
+reason which had influenced the Prince, who was very avaricious, and
+greatly worried by the thought that his fortune must be divided among his
+five children,* was that an opportunity presented itself for him to
+bestow a ridiculously small dowry on Celia. However, having consented to
+the marriage, he resolved to give a splendid _fête_, such as was now
+seldom witnessed in Rome, throwing his doors open to all the rival
+sections of society, inviting the sovereigns, and setting the palazzo
+ablaze as in the grand days of old. In doing this he would necessarily
+have to expend some of the money to which he clung, but a boastful spirit
+incited him to show the world that he at any rate had not been vanquished
+by the financial crisis, and that the Buongiovannis had nothing to hide
+and nothing to blush for. To tell the truth, some people asserted that
+this bravado had not originated with himself, but had been instilled into
+him without his knowledge by the quiet and innocent Celia, who wished to
+exhibit her happiness to all applauding Rome.
+
+ * The Italian succession law is similar to the French. Children
+ cannot be disinherited. All property is divided among them,
+ and thus the piling up of large hereditary fortunes is
+ prevented.--Trans.
+
+“Dear me!” said Narcisse, whom the throng prevented from advancing. “We
+shall never get in. Why, they seem to have invited the whole city.” And
+then, as Pierre seemed surprised to see a prelate drive up in his
+carriage, the _attaché_ added: “Oh! you will elbow more than one of them
+upstairs. The cardinals won’t like to come on account of the presence of
+the King and Queen, but the prelates are sure to be here. This, you know,
+is a neutral drawing-room where the black and the white worlds can
+fraternise. And then too, there are so few _fêtes_ that people rush on
+them.”
+
+He went on to explain that there were two grand balls at Court every
+winter, but that it was only under exceptional circumstances that the
+_patriziato_ gave similar _galas_. Two or three of the black _salons_
+were opened once in a way towards the close of the Carnival, but little
+dances among intimates replaced the pompous entertainments of former
+times. Some princesses moreover merely had their day. And as for the few
+white _salons_ that existed, these likewise retained the same character
+of intimacy, more or less mixed, for no lady had yet become the
+undisputed queen of the new society.
+
+“Well, here we are at last,” resumed Narcisse as they eventually climbed
+the stairs.
+
+“Let us keep together,” Pierre somewhat anxiously replied. “My only
+acquaintance is with the _fiancée_, and I want you to introduce me.”
+
+However, a considerable effort was needed even to climb the monumental
+staircase, so great was the crush of arriving guests. Never, in the old
+days of wax candles and oil lamps, had this staircase offered such a
+blaze of light. Electric lamps, burning in clusters in superb bronze
+candelabra on the landings, steeped everything in a white radiance. The
+cold stucco of the walls was hidden by a series of lofty tapestries
+depicting the story of Cupid and Psyche, marvels which had remained in
+the family since the days of the Renascence. And a thick carpet covered
+the worn marble steps, whilst clumps of evergreens and tall spreading
+palms decorated every corner. An affluence of new blood warmed the
+antique mansion that evening; there was a resurrection of life, so to
+say, as the women surged up the staircase, smiling and perfumed,
+bare-shouldered, and sparkling with diamonds.
+
+At the entrance of the first reception-room Pierre at once perceived
+Prince and Princess Buongiovanni, standing side by side and receiving
+their guests. The Prince, a tall, slim man with fair complexion and hair
+turning grey, had the pale northern eyes of his American mother in an
+energetic face such as became a former captain of the popes. The
+Princess, with small, delicate, and rounded features, looked barely
+thirty, though she had really passed her fortieth year. And still pretty,
+displaying a smiling serenity which nothing could disconcert, she purely
+and simply basked in self-adoration. Her gown was of pink satin, and a
+marvellous parure of large rubies set flamelets about her dainty neck and
+in her fine, fair hair. Of her five children, her son, the eldest, was
+travelling, and three of the girls, mere children, were still at school,
+so that only Celia was present, Celia in a modest gown of white muslin,
+fair like her mother, quite bewitching with her large innocent eyes and
+her candid lips, and retaining to the very end of her love story the
+semblance of a closed lily of impenetrable, virginal mysteriousness. The
+Saccos had but just arrived, and Attilio, in his simple lieutenant’s
+uniform, had remained near his betrothed, so naïvely and openly delighted
+with his great happiness that his handsome face, with its caressing mouth
+and brave eyes, was quite resplendent with youth and strength. Standing
+there, near one another, in the triumph of their passion they appeared
+like life’s very joy and health, like the personification of hope in the
+morrow’s promises; and the entering guests who saw them could not refrain
+from smiling and feeling moved, momentarily forgetting their loquacious
+and malicious curiosity to give their hearts to those chosen ones of love
+who looked so handsome and so enraptured.
+
+Narcisse stepped forward in order to present Pierre, but Celia
+anticipated him. Going to meet the young priest she led him to her father
+and mother, saying: “Monsieur l’Abbé Pierre Froment, a friend of my dear
+Benedetta.” Ceremonious salutations followed. Then the young girl, whose
+graciousness greatly touched Pierre, said to him: “Benedetta is coming
+with her aunt and Dario. She must be very happy this evening! And you
+will also see how beautiful she will be.”
+
+Pierre and Narcisse next began to congratulate her, but they could not
+remain there, the throng was ever jostling them; and the Prince and
+Princess, quite lost in the crush, had barely time to answer the many
+salutations with amiable, continuous nods. And Celia, after conducting
+the two friends to Attilio, was obliged to return to her parents so as to
+take her place beside them as the little queen of the _fête_.
+
+Narcisse was already slightly acquainted with Attilio, and so fresh
+congratulations ensued. Then the two friends manœuvred to find a spot
+where they might momentarily tarry and contemplate the spectacle which
+this first _salon_ presented. It was a vast hall, hung with green velvet
+broidered with golden flowers, and contained a very remarkable collection
+of weapons and armour, breast-plates, battle-axes, and swords, almost all
+of which had belonged to the Buongiovannis of the fifteenth and sixteenth
+centuries. And amidst those stern implements of war there was a lovely
+sedan-chair of the last century, gilded and decorated with delicate
+paintings. It was in this chair that the Prince’s great-grandmother, the
+celebrated Bettina, whose beauty was historical, had usually been carried
+to mass. On the walls, moreover, there were numerous historical
+paintings: battles, peace congresses, and royal receptions in which the
+Buongiovannis had taken part, without counting the many family portraits,
+tall and proud figures of sea-captains, commanders in the field, great
+dignitaries of the Church, prelates and cardinals, amongst whom, in the
+place of honour, appeared the family pope, the white-robed Buongiovanni
+whose accession to the pontifical throne had enriched a long line of
+descendants. And it was among those armours, near that coquettish sedan,
+and below those antique portraits, that the Saccos, husband and wife, had
+in their turn just halted, at a few steps from the master and mistress of
+the house, in order to secure their share of congratulations and bows.
+
+“Look over there!” Narcisse whispered to Pierre, “those are the Saccos in
+front of us, that dark little fellow and the lady in mauve silk.”
+
+Pierre promptly recognised the bright face and pleasant smile of Stefana,
+whom he had already met at old Orlando’s. But he was more interested in
+her husband, a dark dry man, with big eyes, sallow complexion, prominent
+chin, and vulturine nose. Like some gay Neapolitan “Pulcinello,” he was
+dancing, shouting, and displaying such infectious good humour that it
+spread to all around him. He possessed a wonderful gift of speech, with a
+voice that was unrivalled as an instrument of fascination and conquest;
+and on seeing how easily he ingratiated himself with the people in that
+drawing-room, one could understand his lightning-like successes in the
+political world. He had manoeuvered with rare skill in the matter of his
+son’s marriage, affecting such exaggerated delicacy of feeling as to set
+himself against the lovers, and declare that he would never consent to
+their union, as he had no desire to be accused of stealing a dowry and a
+title. As a matter of fact, he had only yielded after the Buongiovannis
+had given their consent, and even then he had desired to take the opinion
+of old Orlando, whose lofty integrity was proverbial. However, he knew
+right well that he would secure the old hero’s approval in this
+particular affair, for Orlando made no secret of his opinion that the
+Buongiovannis ought to be glad to admit his grand-nephew into their
+family, as that handsome young fellow, with brave and healthy heart,
+would help to regenerate their impoverished blood. And throughout the
+whole affair, Sacco had shrewdly availed himself of Orlando’s famous
+name, for ever talking of the relationship between them, and displaying
+filial veneration for this glorious founder of the country, as if indeed
+he had no suspicion that the latter despised and execrated him and
+mourned his accession to power in the conviction that he would lead Italy
+to shame and ruin.
+
+“Ah!” resumed Narcisse addressing Pierre, “he’s one of those supple,
+practical men who care nothing for a smack in the face. It seems that
+unscrupulous individuals like himself become necessary when states get
+into trouble and have to pass through political, financial, and moral
+crises. It is said that Sacco with his imperturbable assurance and
+ingenious and resourceful mind has quite won the King’s favour. Just look
+at him! Why, with that crowd of courtiers round him, one might think him
+the master of this palace!”
+
+And indeed the guests, after passing the Prince and Princess with a bow,
+at once congregated around Sacco, for he represented power, emoluments,
+pensions, and crosses; and if folks still smiled at seeing his dark,
+turbulent, and scraggy figure amidst that framework of family portraits
+which proclaimed the mighty ancestry of the Buongiovannis, they none the
+less worshipped him as the personification of the new power, the
+democratic force which was confusedly rising even from the old Roman soil
+where the _patriziato_ lay in ruins.
+
+“What a crowd!” muttered Pierre. “Who are all these people?”
+
+“Oh!” replied Narcisse, “it is a regular mixture. These people belong
+neither to the black nor the white world; they form a grey world as it
+were. The evolution was certain; a man like Cardinal Boccanera may retain
+an uncompromising attitude, but a whole city, a nation can’t. The Pope
+alone will always say no and remain immutable. But everything around him
+progresses and undergoes transformation, so that in spite of all
+resistance, Rome will become Italian in a few years’ time. Even now,
+whenever a prince has two sons only one of them remains on the side of
+the Vatican, the other goes over to the Quirinal. People must live, you
+see; and the great families threatened with annihilation have not
+sufficient heroism to carry obstinacy to the point of suicide. And I have
+already told you that we are here on neutral ground, for Prince
+Buongiovanni was one of the first to realise the necessity of
+conciliation. He feels that his fortune is perishing, he does not care to
+risk it either in industry or in speculation, and already sees it
+portioned out among his five children, by whose descendants it will be
+yet further divided; and this is why he prudently makes advances to the
+King without, however, breaking with the Pope. In this _salon_,
+therefore, you see a perfect picture of the _debâcle_, the confusion
+which reigns in the Prince’s ideas and opinions.” Narcisse paused, and
+then began to name some of the persons who were coming in. “There’s a
+general,” said he, “who has become very popular since his last campaign
+in Africa. There will be a great many military men here this evening, for
+all Attilio’s superiors have been invited, so as to give the young man an
+_entourage_ of glory. Ah! and there’s the German ambassador. I fancy that
+nearly all the Corps Diplomatique will come on account of their
+Majesties’ presence. But, by way of contrast, just look at that stout
+fellow yonder. He’s a very influential deputy, a _parvenu_ of the new
+middle class. Thirty years ago he was merely one of Prince Albertini’s
+farmers, one of those _mercanti di campagna_ who go about the environs of
+Rome in stout boots and a soft felt hat. And now look at that prelate
+coming in--”
+
+“Oh! I know him,” Pierre interrupted. “He’s Monsignor Fornaro.”
+
+“Exactly, Monsignor Fornaro, a personage of some importance. You told me,
+I remember, that he is the reporter of the Congregation in that affair of
+your book. A most delightful man! Did you see how he bowed to the
+Princess? And what a noble and graceful bearing he has in his little
+mantle of violet silk!”
+
+Then Narcisse went on enumerating the princes and princesses, the dukes
+and duchesses, the politicians and functionaries, the diplomatists and
+ministers, and the officers and well-to-do middle-class people, who of
+themselves made up a most wonderful medley of guests, to say nothing of
+the representatives of the various foreign colonies, English people,
+Americans, Germans, Spaniards, and Russians, in a word, all ancient
+Europe, and both Americas. And afterwards the young man reverted to the
+Saccos, to the little Signora Sacco in particular, in order to tell
+Pierre of the heroic efforts which she had made to open a _salon_ for the
+purpose of assisting her husband’s ambition. Gentle and modest as she
+seemed, she was also very shrewd, endowed with genuine qualities,
+Piedmontese patience and strength of resistance, orderly habits and
+thriftiness. And thus it was she who re-established the equilibrium in
+household affairs which her husband by his exuberance so often disturbed.
+He was indeed greatly indebted to her, though nobody suspected it. At the
+same time, however, she had so far failed in her attempts to establish a
+white _salon_ which should take the lead in influencing opinion. Only the
+people of her own set visited her, not a single prince ever came, and her
+Monday dances were the same as in a score of other middle-class homes,
+having no brilliancy and no importance. In fact, the real white _salon_,
+which should guide men and things and sway all Rome was still in
+dreamland.
+
+“Just notice her keen smile as she examines everything here,” resumed
+Narcisse. “She’s teaching herself and forming plans, I’m sure of it. Now
+that she is about to be connected with a princely family she probably
+hopes to receive some of the best society.”
+
+Large as was the room, the crowd in it had by this time grown so dense
+that the two friends were pressed back to a wall, and felt almost
+stifled. The _attaché_ therefore decided to lead the priest elsewhere,
+and as they walked along he gave him some particulars concerning the
+palace, which was one of the most sumptuous in Rome, and renowned for the
+magnificence of its reception-rooms. Dancing took place in the picture
+gallery, a superb apartment more than sixty feet long, with eight windows
+overlooking the Corso; while the buffet was installed in the Hall of the
+Antiques, a marble hall, which among other precious things contained a
+statue of Venus, rivalling the one at the Capitol. Then there was a suite
+of marvellous _salons_, still resplendent with ancient luxury, hung with
+the rarest stuffs, and retaining some unique specimens of old-time
+furniture, on which covetous antiquaries kept their eyes fixed, whilst
+waiting and hoping for the inevitable future ruin. And one of these
+apartments, the little Saloon of the Mirrors, was particularly famous. Of
+circular shape and Louis XV style, it was surrounded by mirrors in
+_rococo_ frames, extremely rich, and most exquisitely carved.
+
+“You will see all that by and by,” continued Narcisse. “At present we had
+better go in here if we want to breathe a little. It is here that the
+arm-chairs from the adjacent gallery have been brought for the
+accommodation of the ladies who desire to sit down and be seen and
+admired.”
+
+The apartment they entered was a spacious one, draped with the most
+superb Genoese velvet, that antique _jardinière_ velvet with pale satin
+ground, and flowers once of dazzling brightness, whose greens and blues
+and reds had now become exquisitely soft, with the subdued, faded tones
+of old floral love-tokens. On the pier tables and in the cabinets all
+around were some of the most precious curios in the palace, ivory
+caskets, gilt and painted wood carvings, pieces of antique
+plate--briefly, a collection of marvels. And several ladies, fleeing the
+crush, had already taken refuge on the numerous seats, clustering in
+little groups, and laughing and chatting with the few gentlemen who had
+discovered this retreat of grace and _galanterie_. In the bright glow of
+the lamps nothing could be more delightful than the sight of all those
+bare, sheeny shoulders, and those supple necks, above whose napes were
+coiled tresses of fair or raven hair. Bare arms emerged like living
+flowers of flesh from amidst the mingling lace and silk of soft-hued
+bodices. The fans played slowly, as if to heighten the fires of the
+precious stones, and at each beat wafted around an _odore di femina_
+blended with a predominating perfume of violets.
+
+“Hallo!” exclaimed Narcisse, “there’s our good friend Monsignor Nani
+bowing to the Austrian ambassadress.”
+
+As soon as Nani perceived the young priest and his companion he came
+towards them, and the trio then withdrew into the embrasure of a window
+in order that they might chat for a moment at their ease. The prelate was
+smiling like one enchanted with the beauty of the _fête_, but at the same
+time he retained all the serenity of innocence, as if he had not even
+noticed the exhibition of bare shoulders by which he was surrounded. “Ah,
+my dear son!” he said to Pierre, “I am very pleased to see you! Well, and
+what do you think of our Rome when she makes up her mind to give
+_fêtes_?”
+
+“Why, it is superb, Monseigneur.”
+
+Then, in an emotional manner, Nani spoke of Celia’s lofty piety; and, in
+order to give the Vatican the credit of this sumptuous _gala_, affected
+to regard the Prince and Princess as staunch adherents of the Church, as
+if he were altogether unaware that the King and Queen were presently
+coming. And afterwards he abruptly exclaimed: “I have been thinking of
+you all day, my dear son. Yes, I heard that you had gone to see his
+Eminence Cardinal Sanguinetti. Well, and how did he receive you?”
+
+“Oh! in a most paternal manner,” Pierre replied. “At first he made me
+understand the embarrassment in which he was placed by his position as
+protector of Lourdes; but just as I was going off he showed himself
+charming, and promised me his help with a delicacy which deeply touched
+me.”
+
+“Did he indeed, my dear son? But it doesn’t surprise me, his Eminence is
+so good-hearted!”
+
+“And I must add, Monseigneur, that I came back with a light and hopeful
+heart. It now seems to me as if my suit were half gained.”
+
+“Naturally, I understand it,” replied Nani, who was still smiling with
+that keen, intelligent smile of his, sharpened by a touch of almost
+imperceptible irony. And after a short pause he added in a very simple
+way: “The misfortune is that on the day before yesterday your book was
+condemned by the Congregation of the Index, which was convoked by its
+Secretary expressly for that purpose. And the judgment will be laid
+before his Holiness, for him to sign it, on the day after to-morrow.”
+
+Pierre looked at the prelate in bewilderment. Had the old mansion fallen
+on his head he would not have felt more overcome. What! was it all over?
+His journey to Rome, the experiment he had come to attempt there, had
+resulted in that defeat, of which he was thus suddenly apprised amidst
+that betrothal _fête_. And he had not even been able to defend himself,
+he had sacrificed his time without finding any one to whom he might
+speak, before whom he might plead his cause! Anger was rising within him,
+and he could not prevent himself from muttering bitterly: “Ah! how I have
+been duped! And that Cardinal who said to me only this morning: ‘If God
+be with you he will save you in spite of everything.’ Yes, yes, I now
+understand him; he was juggling with words, he only desired a disaster in
+order that submission might lead me to Heaven! Submit, indeed, ah! I
+cannot, I cannot yet! My heart is too full of indignation and grief.”
+
+Nani examined and studied him with curiosity. “But my dear son,” he said,
+“nothing is final so long as the Holy Father has not signed the judgment.
+You have all to-morrow and even the morning of the day after before you.
+A miracle is always possible.” Then, lowering his voice and drawing
+Pierre on one side whilst Narcisse in an aesthetical spirit examined the
+ladies, he added: “Listen, I have a communication to make to you in great
+secrecy. Come and join me in the little Saloon of the Mirrors by and by,
+during the Cotillon. We shall be able to talk there at our ease.”
+
+Pierre nodded, and thereupon the prelate discreetly withdrew and
+disappeared in the crowd. However, the young man’s ears were buzzing; he
+could no longer hope; what indeed could he accomplish in one day since he
+had lost three months without even being able to secure an audience with
+the Pope? And his bewilderment increased as he suddenly heard Narcisse
+speaking to him of art. “It’s astonishing how the feminine figure has
+deteriorated in these dreadful democratic days. It’s all fat and horribly
+common. Not one of those women yonder shows the Florentine contour, with
+small bosom and slender, elegant neck. Ah! that one yonder isn’t so bad
+perhaps, the fair one with her hair coiled up, whom Monsignor Fornaro has
+just approached.”
+
+For a few minutes indeed Monsignor Fornaro had been fluttering from
+beauty to beauty, with an amiable air of conquest. He looked superb that
+evening with his lofty decorative figure, blooming cheeks, and victorious
+affability. No unpleasant scandal was associated with his name; he was
+simply regarded as a prelate of gallant ways who took pleasure in the
+society of ladies. And he paused and chatted, and leant over their bare
+shoulders with laughing eyes and humid lips as if experiencing a sort of
+devout rapture. However, on perceiving Narcisse whom he occasionally met,
+he at once came forward and the _attaché_ had to bow to him. “You have
+been in good health I hope, Monseigneur, since I had the honour of seeing
+you at the embassy.”
+
+“Oh! yes, I am very well, very well indeed. What a delightful _fête_, is
+it not?”
+
+Pierre also had bowed. This was the man whose report had brought about
+the condemnation of his book; and it was with resentment that he recalled
+his caressing air and charming greeting, instinct with such lying
+promise. However, the prelate, who was very shrewd, must have guessed
+that the young priest was already acquainted with the decision of the
+Congregation, and have thought it more dignified to abstain from open
+recognition; for on his side he merely nodded and smiled at him. “What a
+number of people!” he went on, “and how many charming persons there are!
+It will soon be impossible for one to move in this room.”
+
+All the seats in fact were now occupied by ladies, and what with the
+strong perfume of violets and the exhalations of warm necks and shoulders
+the atmosphere was becoming most oppressive. The fans flapped more
+briskly, and clear laughter rang out amidst a growing hubbub of
+conversation in which the same words constantly recurred. Some news,
+doubtless, had just arrived, some rumour was being whispered from group
+to group, throwing them all into feverish excitement. As it happened,
+Monsignor Fornaro, who was always well informed, desired to be the
+proclaimer of this news, which nobody as yet had ventured to announce
+aloud.
+
+“Do you know what is exciting them all?” he inquired.
+
+“Is it the Holy Father’s illness?” asked Pierre in his anxiety. “Is he
+worse this evening?”
+
+The prelate looked at him in astonishment, and then somewhat impatiently
+replied: “Oh, no, no. His Holiness is much better, thank Heaven. A person
+belonging to the Vatican was telling me just now that he was able to get
+up this afternoon and receive his intimates as usual.”
+
+“All the same, people have been alarmed,” interrupted Narcisse. “I must
+confess that we did not feel easy at the embassy, for a Conclave at the
+present time would be a great worry for France. She would exercise no
+influence at it. It is a great mistake on the part of our Republican
+Government to treat the Holy See as of no importance! However, can one
+ever tell whether the Pope is ill or not? I know for a certainty that he
+was nearly carried off last winter when nobody breathed a word about any
+illness, whereas on the last occasion when the newspapers killed him and
+talked about a dreadful attack of bronchitis, I myself saw him quite
+strong and in the best of spirits! His reported illnesses are mere
+matters of policy, I fancy.”*
+
+ * There is much truth in this; but the reader must not imagine
+ that the Pope is never ill. At his great age, indispositions
+ are only natural.--Trans.
+
+With a hasty gesture, however, Monsignor Fornaro brushed this importunate
+subject aside. “No, no,” said he, “people are tranquillised and no longer
+talk of it. What excites all those ladies is that the Congregation of the
+Council to-day voted the dissolution of the Prada marriage by a great
+majority.”
+
+Again did Pierre feel moved. However, not having had time to see any
+members of the Boccanera family on his return from Frascati he feared
+that the news might be false and said so. Thereupon the prelate gave his
+word of honour that things were as he stated. “The news is certain,” he
+declared. “I had it from a member of the Congregation.” And then, all at
+once, he apologised and hurried off: “Excuse me but I see a lady whom I
+had not yet caught sight of, and desire to pay my respects to her.”
+
+He at once hastened to the lady in question, and, being unable to sit
+down, inclined his lofty figure as if to envelop her with his gallant
+courtesy; whilst she, young, fresh, and bare-shouldered, laughed with a
+pearly laugh as his cape of violet silk lightly brushed her sheeny skin.
+
+“You know that person, don’t you?” Narcisse inquired of Pierre. “No!
+Really? Why, that is Count Prada’s _inamorata_, the charming Lisbeth
+Kauffmann, by whom he has just had a son. It’s her first appearance in
+society since that event. She’s a German, you know, and lost her husband
+here. She paints a little; in fact, rather nicely. A great deal is
+forgiven to the ladies of the foreign colony, and this one is
+particularly popular on account of the very affable manner in which she
+receives people at her little palazzo in the Via Principe Amedeo. As you
+may imagine, the news of the dissolution of that marriage must amuse
+her!”
+
+She looked really exquisite, that Lisbeth, very fair, rosy, and gay, with
+satiny skin, soft blue eyes, and lips wreathed in an amiable smile, which
+was renowned for its grace. And that evening, in her gown of white silk
+spangled with gold, she showed herself so delighted with life, so
+securely happy in the thought that she was free, that she loved and was
+loved in return, that the whispered tidings, the malicious remarks
+exchanged behind the fans of those around her, seemed to turn to her
+personal triumph. For a moment all eyes had sought her, and people talked
+of the outcome of her connection with Prada, the man whose manhood the
+Church solemnly denied by its decision of that very day! And there came
+stifled laughter and whispered jests, whilst she, radiant in her insolent
+serenity, accepted with a rapturous air the gallantry of Monsignor
+Fornaro, who congratulated her on a painting of the Virgin with the lily,
+which she had lately sent to a fine-art show.
+
+Ah! that matrimonial nullity suit, which for a year had supplied Rome
+with scandal, what a final hubbub it occasioned as the tidings of its
+termination burst forth amidst that ball! The black and white worlds had
+long chosen it as a battlefield for the exchange of incredible slander,
+endless gossip, the most nonsensical tittle-tattle. And now it was over;
+the Vatican with imperturbable impudence had pronounced the marriage null
+and void on the ground that the husband was no man, and all Rome would
+laugh over the affair, with that free scepticism which it displayed as
+soon as the pecuniary affairs of the Church came into question. The
+incidents of the struggle were already common property: Prada’s feelings
+revolting to such a point that he had withdrawn from the contest, the
+Boccaneras moving heaven and earth in their feverish anxiety, the money
+which they had distributed among the creatures of the various cardinals
+in order to gain their influence, and the large sum which they had
+indirectly paid for the second and favourable report of Monsignor Palma.
+People said that, altogether, more than a hundred thousand francs had
+been expended, but this was not thought over-much, as a well-known French
+countess had been obliged to disburse nearly ten times that amount to
+secure the dissolution of her marriage. But then the Holy Father’s need
+was so great! And, moreover, nobody was angered by this venality; it
+merely gave rise to malicious witticisms; and the fans continued waving
+in the increasing heat, and the ladies quivered with contentment as the
+whispered pleasantries took wing and fluttered over their bare shoulders.
+
+“Oh! how pleased the Contessina must be!” Pierre resumed. “I did not
+understand what her little friend, Princess Celia, meant by saying when
+we came in that she would be so happy and beautiful this evening. It is
+doubtless on that account that she is coming here, after cloistering
+herself all the time the affair lasted, as if she were in mourning.”
+
+However, Lisbeth’s eyes had chanced to meet those of Narcisse, and as she
+smiled at him he was, in his turn, obliged to pay his respects to her,
+for, like everybody else of the foreign colony, he knew her through
+having visited her studio. He was again returning to Pierre when a fresh
+outburst of emotion stirred the diamond aigrettes and the flowers
+adorning the ladies’ hair. People turned to see what was the matter, and
+again did the hubbub increase. “Ah! it’s Count Prada in person!” murmured
+Narcisse, with an admiring glance. “He has a fine bearing, whatever folks
+may say. Dress him up in velvet and gold, and what a splendid,
+unscrupulous, fifteenth-century adventurer he would make!”
+
+Prada entered the room, looking quite gay, in fact, almost triumphant.
+And above his large, white shirtfront, edged by the black of his coat, he
+really had a commanding, predacious expression, with his frank, stern
+eyes, and his energetic features barred by a large black moustache. Never
+had a more rapturous smile of sensuality revealed the wolfish teeth of
+his voracious mouth. With rapid glances he took stock of the women, dived
+into their very souls. Then, on seeing Lisbeth, who looked so pink, and
+fair, and girlish, his expression softened, and he frankly went up to
+her, without troubling in the slightest degree about the ardent,
+inquisitive eyes which were turned upon him. As soon as Monsignor Fornaro
+had made room, he stooped and conversed with the young woman in a low
+tone. And she no doubt confirmed the news which was circulating, for as
+he again drew himself erect, he laughed a somewhat forced laugh, and made
+an involuntary gesture.
+
+However, he then caught sight of Pierre, and joined him in the embrasure
+of the window; and when he had also shaken hands with Narcisse, he said
+to the young priest with all his wonted _bravura_: “You recollect what I
+told you as we were coming back from Frascati? Well, it’s done, it seems,
+they’ve annulled my marriage. It’s such an impudent, such an imbecile
+decision, that I still doubted it a moment ago!”
+
+“Oh! the news is certain,” Pierre made bold to reply. “It has just been
+confirmed to us by Monsignor Fornaro, who had it from a member of the
+Congregation. And it is said that the majority was very large.”
+
+Prada again shook with laughter. “No, no,” said he, “such a farce is
+beyond belief! It’s the finest smack given to justice and common-sense
+that I know of. Ah! if the marriage can also be annulled by the civil
+courts, and if my friend whom you see yonder be only willing, we shall
+amuse ourselves in Rome! Yes, indeed, I’d marry her at Santa Maria
+Maggiore with all possible pomp. And there’s a dear little being in the
+world who would take part in the _fête_ in his nurse’s arms!”
+
+He laughed too loud as he spoke, alluded in too brutal a fashion to his
+child, that living proof of his manhood. Was it suffering that made his
+lips curve upwards and reveal his white teeth? It could be divined that
+he was quivering, fighting against an awakening of covert, tumultuous
+passion, which he would not acknowledge even to himself.
+
+“And you, my dear Abbé?” he hastily resumed. “Do you know the other
+report? Do you know that the Countess is coming here?” It was thus, by
+force of habit, that he designated Benedetta, forgetting that she was no
+longer his wife.
+
+“Yes, I have just been told so,” Pierre replied; and then he hesitated
+for a moment before adding, with a desire to prevent any disagreeable
+surprise: “And we shall no doubt see Prince Dario also, for he has not
+started for Naples as I told you. Something prevented his departure at
+the last moment, I believe. At least so I gathered from a servant.”
+
+Prada no longer laughed. His face suddenly became grave, and he contented
+himself with murmuring: “Ah! so the cousin is to be of the party. Well,
+we shall see them, we shall see them both!”
+
+Then, whilst the two friends went on chatting, he became silent, as if
+serious considerations impelled him to reflect. And suddenly making a
+gesture of apology he withdrew yet farther into the embrasure in which he
+stood, pulled a note-book out of his pocket, and tore from it a leaf on
+which, without modifying his handwriting otherwise than by slightly
+enlarging it, he pencilled these four lines: “A legend avers that the fig
+tree of Judas now grows at Frascati, and that its fruit is deadly for him
+who may desire to become Pope. Eat not the poisoned figs, nor give them
+either to your servants or your fowls.” Then he folded the paper,
+fastened it with a postage stamp, and wrote on it the address: “To his
+most Reverend and most Illustrious Eminence, Cardinal Boccanera.” And
+when he had placed everything in his pocket again, he drew a long breath
+and once more called back his laugh.
+
+A kind of invincible discomfort, a far-away terror had momentarily frozen
+him. Without being guided by any clear train of reasoning, he had felt
+the need of protecting himself against any cowardly temptation, any
+possible abomination. He could not have told what course of ideas had
+induced him to write those four lines without a moment’s delay, on the
+very spot where he stood, under penalty of contributing to a great
+catastrophe. But one thought was firmly fixed in his brain, that on
+leaving the ball he would go to the Via Giulia and throw that note into
+the letter-box at the Palazzo Boccanera. And that decided, he was once
+more easy in mind.
+
+“Why, what is the matter with you, my dear Abbé?” he inquired on again
+joining in the conversation of the two friends. “You are quite gloomy.”
+ And on Pierre telling him of the bad news which he had received, the
+condemnation of his book, and the single day which remained to him for
+action if he did not wish his journey to Rome to result in defeat, he
+began to protest as if he himself needed agitation and diversion in order
+to continue hopeful and bear the ills of life. “Never mind, never mind,
+don’t worry yourself,” said he, “one loses all one’s strength by
+worrying. A day is a great deal, one can do ever so many things in a day.
+An hour, a minute suffices for Destiny to intervene and turn defeat into
+victory!” He grew feverish as he spoke, and all at once added, “Come,
+let’s go to the ball-room. It seems that the scene there is something
+prodigious.”
+
+Then he exchanged a last loving glance with Lisbeth whilst Pierre and
+Narcisse followed him, the three of them extricating themselves from
+their corner with the greatest difficulty, and then wending their way
+towards the adjoining gallery through a sea of serried skirts, a billowy
+expanse of necks and shoulders whence ascended the passion which makes
+life, the odour alike of love and of death.
+
+With its eight windows overlooking the Corso, their panes uncurtained and
+throwing a blaze of light upon the houses across the road, the picture
+gallery, sixty-five feet in length and more than thirty in breadth,
+spread out with incomparable splendour. The illumination was dazzling.
+Clusters of electric lamps had changed seven pairs of huge marble
+candelabra into gigantic _torchères_, akin to constellations; and all
+along the cornice up above, other lamps set in bright-hued floral glasses
+formed a marvellous garland of flaming flowers: tulips, paeonies, and
+roses. The antique red velvet worked with gold, which draped the walls,
+glowed like a furnace fire. About the doors and windows there were
+hangings of old lace broidered with flowers in coloured silk whose hues
+had the very intensity of life. But the sight of sights beneath the
+sumptuous panelled ceiling adorned with golden roses, the unique
+spectacle of a richness not to be equalled, was the collection of
+masterpieces such as no museum could excel. There were works of Raffaelle
+and Titian, Rembrandt and Rubens, Velasquez and Ribera, famous works
+which in this unexpected illumination suddenly showed forth, triumphant
+with youth regained, as if awakened to the immortal life of genius. And,
+as their Majesties would not arrive before midnight, the ball had just
+been opened, and flights of soft-hued gowns were whirling in a waltz past
+all the pompous throng, the glittering jewels and decorations, the
+gold-broidered uniforms and the pearl-broidered robes, whilst silk and
+satin and velvet spread and overflowed upon every side.
+
+“It is prodigious, really!” declared Prada with his excited air; “let us
+go this way and place ourselves in a window recess again. There is no
+better spot for getting a good view without being too much jostled.”
+
+They lost Narcisse somehow or other, and on reaching the desired recess
+found themselves but two, Pierre and the Count. The orchestra, installed
+on a little platform at the far end of the gallery, had just finished the
+waltz, and the dancers, with an air of giddy rapture, were slowly walking
+through the crowd when a fresh arrival caused every head to turn. Donna
+Serafina, arrayed in a robe of purple silk as if she had worn the colours
+of her brother the Cardinal, was making a royal entry on the arm of
+Consistorial-Advocate Morano. And never before had she laced herself so
+tightly, never had her waist looked so slim and girlish; and never had
+her stern, wrinkled face, which her white hair scarcely softened,
+expressed such stubborn and victorious domination. A discreet murmur of
+approval ran round, a murmur of public relief as it were, for all Roman
+society had condemned the unworthy conduct of Morano in severing a
+connection of thirty years to which the drawing-rooms had grown as
+accustomed as if it had been a legal marriage. The rupture had lasted for
+two months, to the great scandal of Rome where the cult of long and
+faithful affections still abides. And so the reconciliation touched every
+heart and was regarded as one of the happiest consequences of the victory
+which the Boccaneras had that day gained in the affair of Benedetta’s
+marriage. Morano repentant and Donna Serafina reappearing on his arm,
+nothing could have been more satisfactory; love had conquered, decorum
+was preserved and good order re-established.
+
+But there was a deeper sensation as soon as Benedetta and Dario were seen
+to enter, side by side, behind the others. This tranquil indifference for
+the ordinary forms of propriety, on the very day when the marriage with
+Prada had been annulled, this victory of love, confessed and celebrated
+before one and all, seemed so charming in its audacity, so full of the
+bravery of youth and hope, that the pair were at once forgiven amidst a
+murmur of universal admiration. And as in the case of Celia and Attilio,
+all hearts flew to them, to their radiant beauty, to the wondrous
+happiness that made their faces so resplendent. Dario, still pale after
+his long convalescence, somewhat slight and delicate of build, with the
+fine clear eyes of a big child, and the dark curly beard of a young god,
+bore himself with a light pride, in which all the old princely blood of
+the Boccaneras could be traced. And Benedetta, she so white under her
+casque of jetty hair, she so calm and so sensible, wore her lovely smile,
+that smile so seldom seen on her face but which was irresistibly
+fascinating, transfiguring her, imparting the charm of a flower to her
+somewhat full mouth, and filling the infinite of her dark and fathomless
+eyes with a radiance as of heaven. And in this gay return of youth and
+happiness, an exquisite instinct had prompted her to put on a white gown,
+a plain girlish gown which symbolised her maidenhood, which told that she
+had remained through all a pure untarnished lily for the husband of her
+choice. And nothing of her form was to be seen, not a glimpse of bosom or
+shoulder. It was as if the impenetrable, redoubtable mystery of love, the
+sovereign beauty of woman slumbered there, all powerful, but veiled with
+white. Again, not a jewel appeared on her fingers or in her ears. There
+was simply a necklace falling about her _corsage_, but a necklace fit for
+royalty, the famous pearl necklace of the Boccaneras, which she had
+inherited from her mother, and which was known to all Rome--pearls of
+fabulous size cast negligently about her neck, and sufficing, simply as
+she was gowned, to make her queen of all.
+
+“Oh!” murmured Pierre in ecstasy, “how happy and how beautiful she is!”
+
+But he at once regretted that he had expressed his thoughts aloud, for
+beside him he heard a low plaint, an involuntary growl which reminded him
+of the Count’s presence. However, Prada promptly stifled this cry of
+returning anguish, and found strength enough to affect a brutish gaiety:
+“The devil!” said he, “they have plenty of impudence. I hope we shall see
+them married and bedded at once!” Then regretting this coarse jest which
+had been prompted by the revolt of passion, he sought to appear
+indifferent: “She looks very nice this evening,” he said; “she has the
+finest shoulders in the world, you know, and its a real success for her
+to hide them and yet appear more beautiful than ever.”
+
+He went on speaking, contriving to assume an easy tone, and giving
+various little particulars about the Countess as he still obstinately
+called the young woman. However, he had drawn rather further into the
+recess, for fear, no doubt, that people might remark his pallor, and the
+painful twitch which contracted his mouth. He was in no state to fight,
+to show himself gay and insolent in presence of the joy which the lovers
+so openly and naïvely expressed. And he was glad of the respite which the
+arrival of the King and Queen at this moment offered him. “Ah! here are
+their Majesties!” he exclaimed, turning towards the window. “Look at the
+scramble in the street!”
+
+Although the windows were closed, a tumult could be heard rising from the
+footways. And Pierre on looking down saw, by the light of the electric
+lamps, a sea of human heads pour over the road and encompass the
+carriages. He had several times already seen the King during the latter’s
+daily drives to the grounds of the Villa Borghese, whither he came like
+any private gentleman--unguarded, unescorted, with merely an aide-de-camp
+accompanying him in his victoria. At other times he drove a light phaeton
+with only a footman in black livery to attend him. And on one occasion
+Pierre had seen him with the Queen, the pair of them seated side by side
+like worthy middle-class folks driving abroad for pleasure. And, as the
+royal couple went by, the busy people in the streets and the promenaders
+in the public gardens contented themselves with wafting them an
+affectionate wave of the hand, the most expansive simply approaching to
+smile at them, and no one importuning them with acclamations. Pierre, who
+harboured the traditional idea of kings closely guarded and passing
+processionally with all the accompaniment of military pomp, was therefore
+greatly surprised and touched by the amiable _bonhomie_ of this royal
+pair, who went wherever they listed in full security amidst the smiling
+affection of their people. Everybody, moreover, had told him of the
+King’s kindliness and simplicity, his desire for peace, and his passion
+for sport, solitude, and the open air, which, amidst the worries of
+power, must often have made him dream of a life of freedom far from the
+imperious duties of royalty for which he seemed unfitted.* But the Queen
+was yet more tenderly loved. So naturally and serenely virtuous that she
+alone remained ignorant of the scandals of Rome, she was also a woman of
+great culture and great refinement, conversant with every field of
+literature, and very happy in being so intelligent, so superior to those
+around her--a pre-eminence which she realised and which she was fond of
+showing, but in the most natural and most graceful of ways.
+
+ * King Humbert inherited these tastes from his father Victor
+ Emanuel, who was likewise a great sportsman and had a perfect
+ horror of court life, pageantry, and the exigencies of
+ politics.--Trans.
+
+Like Pierre, Prada had remained with his face to the window, and suddenly
+pointing to the crowd he said: “Now that they have seen the Queen they
+will go to bed well pleased. And there isn’t a single police agent there,
+I’m sure. Ah! to be loved, to be loved!” Plainly enough his distress of
+spirit was coming back, and so, turning towards the gallery again, he
+tried to play the jester. “Attention, my dear Abbé, we mustn’t miss their
+Majesties’ entry. That will be the finest part of the _fête_!”
+
+A few minutes went by, and then, in the very midst of a polka, the
+orchestra suddenly ceased playing. But a moment afterwards, with all the
+blare of its brass instruments, it struck up the Royal March. The dancers
+fled in confusion, the centre of the gallery was cleared, and the King
+and Queen entered, escorted by the Prince and Princess Buongiovanni, who
+had received them at the foot of the staircase. The King was in ordinary
+evening dress, while the Queen wore a robe of straw-coloured satin,
+covered with superb white lace; and under the diadem of brilliants which
+encircled her beautiful fair hair, she looked still young, with a fresh
+and rounded face, whose expression was all amiability, gentleness, and
+wit. The music was still sounding with the enthusiastic violence of
+welcome. Behind her father and mother, Celia appeared amidst the press of
+people who were following to see the sight; and then came Attilio, the
+Saccos, and various relatives and official personages. And, pending the
+termination of the Royal March, only salutations, glances, and smiles
+were exchanged amidst the sonorous music and dazzling light; whilst all
+the guests crowded around on tip-toe, with outstretched necks and
+glittering eyes--a rising tide of heads and shoulders, flashing with the
+fires of precious stones.
+
+At last the march ended and the presentations began. Their Majesties were
+already acquainted with Celia, and congratulated her with quite
+affectionate kindliness. However, Sacco, both as minister and father, was
+particularly desirous of presenting his son Attilio. He bent his supple
+spine, and summoned to his lips the fine words which were appropriate, in
+such wise that he contrived to make the young man bow to the King in the
+capacity of a lieutenant in his Majesty’s army, whilst his homage as a
+handsome young man, so passionately loved by his betrothed was reserved
+for Queen Margherita. Again did their Majesties show themselves very
+gracious, even towards the Signora Sacco who, ever modest and prudent,
+had remained in the background. And then occurred an incident that was
+destined to give rise to endless gossip. Catching sight of Benedetta,
+whom Count Prada had presented to her after his marriage, the Queen, who
+greatly admired her beauty and charm of manner, addressed her a smile in
+such wise that the young woman was compelled to approach. A conversation
+of some minutes’ duration ensued, and the Contessina was favoured with
+some extremely amiable expressions which were perfectly audible to all
+around. Most certainly the Queen was ignorant of the event of the day,
+the dissolution of Benedetta’s marriage with Prada, and her coming union
+with Dario so publicly announced at this _gala_, which now seemed to have
+been given to celebrate a double betrothal. Nevertheless that
+conversation caused a deep impression; the guests talked of nothing but
+the compliments which Benedetta had received from the most virtuous and
+intelligent of queens, and her triumph was increased by it all, she
+became yet more beautiful and more victorious amidst the happiness she
+felt at being at last able to bestow herself on the spouse of her choice,
+that happiness which made her look so radiant.
+
+But, on the other hand, the torture which Prada experienced now became
+intense. Whilst the sovereigns continued conversing, the Queen with the
+ladies who came to pay her their respects, the King with the officers,
+diplomatists, and other important personages who approached him, Prada
+saw none but Benedetta--Benedetta congratulated, caressed, exalted by
+affection and glory. Dario was near her, flushing with pleasure, radiant
+like herself. It was for them that this ball had been given, for them
+that the lamps shone out, for them that the music played, for them that
+the most beautiful women of Rome had bared their bosoms and adorned them
+with precious stones. It was for them that their Majesties had entered to
+the strains of the Royal March, for them that the _fête_ was becoming
+like an apotheosis, for them that a fondly loved queen was smiling,
+appearing at that betrothal _gala_ like the good fairy of the nursery
+tales, whose coming betokens life-long happiness. And for Prada, this
+wondrously brilliant hour when good fortune and joyfulness attained their
+apogee, was one of defeat. It was fraught with the victory of that woman
+who had refused to be his wife in aught but name, and of that man who now
+was about to take her from him: such a public, ostentatious, insulting
+victory that it struck him like a buffet in the face. And not merely did
+his pride and passion bleed for that: he felt that the triumph of the
+Saccos dealt a blow to his fortune. Was it true, then, that the rough
+conquerors of the North were bound to deteriorate in the delightful
+climate of Rome, was that the reason why he already experienced such a
+sensation of weariness and exhaustion? That very morning at Frascati in
+connection with that disastrous building enterprise he had realised that
+his millions were menaced, albeit he refused to admit that things were
+going badly with him, as some people rumoured. And now, that evening,
+amidst that _fête_ he beheld the South victorious, Sacco winning the day
+like one who feeds at his ease on the warm prey so gluttonously pounced
+upon under the flaming sun.
+
+And the thought of Sacco being a minister, an intimate of the King,
+allying himself by marriage to one of the noblest families of the Roman
+aristocracy, and already laying hands on the people and the national
+funds with the prospect of some day becoming the master of Rome and
+Italy--that thought again was a blow for the vanity of this man of prey,
+for the ever voracious appetite of this enjoyer, who felt as if he were
+being pushed away from table before the feast was over! All crumbled and
+escaped him, Sacco stole his millions, and Benedetta tortured his flesh,
+stirring up that awful wound of unsatisfied passion which never would be
+healed.
+
+Again did Pierre hear that dull plaint, that involuntary despairing
+growl, which had upset him once before. And he looked at the Count, and
+asked him: “Are you suffering?” But on seeing how livid was the face of
+Prada, who only retained his calmness by a superhuman effort, he
+regretted his indiscreet question, which, moreover, remained unanswered.
+And then to put the other more at ease, the young priest went on
+speaking, venting the thoughts which the sight before him inspired: “Your
+father was right,” said he, “we Frenchmen whose education is so full of
+the Catholic spirit, even in these days of universal doubt, we never
+think of Rome otherwise than as the old Rome of the popes. We scarcely
+know, we can scarcely understand the great changes which, year by year,
+have brought about the Italian Rome of the present day. Why, when I
+arrived here, the King and his government and the young nation working to
+make a great capital for itself, seemed to me of no account whatever!
+Yes, I dismissed all that, thought nothing of it, in my dream of
+resuscitating a Christian and evangelical Rome, which should assure the
+happiness of the world.”
+
+He laughed as he spoke, pitying his own artlessness, and then pointed
+towards the gallery where Prince Buongiovanni was bowing to the King
+whilst the Princess listened to the gallant remarks of Sacco: a scene
+full of symbolism, the old papal aristocracy struck down, the _parvenus_
+accepted, the black and white worlds so mixed together that one and all
+were little else than subjects, on the eve of forming but one united
+nation. That conciliation between the Quirinal and the Vatican which in
+principle was regarded as impossible, was it not in practice fatal, in
+face of the evolution which went on day by day? People must go on living,
+loving, and creating life throughout the ages. And the marriage of
+Attilio and Celia would be the symbol of the needful union: youth and
+love triumphing over ancient hatred, all quarrels forgotten as a handsome
+lad goes by, wins a lovely girl, and carries her off in his arms in order
+that the world may last.
+
+“Look at them!” resumed Pierre, “how handsome and young and gay both the
+_fiancés_ are, all confidence in the future. Ah! I well understand that
+your King should have come here to please his minister and win one of the
+old Roman families over to his throne; it is good, brave, and fatherly
+policy. But I like to think that he has also realised the touching
+significance of that marriage--old Rome, in the person of that candid,
+loving child giving herself to young Italy, that upright, enthusiastic
+young man who wears his uniform so jauntily. And may their nuptials be
+definitive and fruitful; from them and from all the others may there
+arise the great nation which, now that I begin to know you, I trust you
+will soon become!”
+
+Amidst the tottering of his former dream of an evangelical and universal
+Rome, Pierre expressed these good wishes for the Eternal City’s future
+fortune with such keen and deep emotion that Prada could not help
+replying: “I thank you; that wish of yours is in the heart of every good
+Italian.”
+
+But his voice quavered, for even whilst he was looking at Celia and
+Attilio, who stood smiling and talking together, he saw Benedetta and
+Dario approach them, wearing the same joyful expression of perfect
+happiness. And when the two couples were united, so radiant and so
+triumphant, so full of superb and happy life, he no longer had strength
+to stay there, see them, and suffer.
+
+“I am frightfully thirsty,” he hoarsely exclaimed. “Let’s go to the
+buffet to drink something.” And, thereupon, in order to avoid notice, he
+so manœuvred as to glide behind the throng, skirting the windows in the
+direction of the entrance to the Hall of the Antiques, which was beyond
+the gallery.
+
+Whilst Pierre was following him they were parted by an eddy of the crowd,
+and the young priest found himself carried towards the two loving couples
+who still stood chatting together. And Celia, on recognising him,
+beckoned to him in a friendly way. With her passionate cult for beauty,
+she was enraptured with the appearance of Benedetta, before whom she
+joined her little lily hands as before the image of the Madonna. “Oh!
+Monsieur l’Abbé,” said she, “to please me now, do tell her how beautiful
+she is, more beautiful than anything on earth, more beautiful than even
+the sun, and the moon and stars. If you only knew, my dear, it makes me
+quiver to see you so beautiful as that, as beautiful as happiness, as
+beautiful as love itself!”
+
+Benedetta began to laugh, while the two young men made merry. “But you
+are as beautiful as I am, darling,” said the Contessina. “And if we are
+beautiful it is because we are happy.”
+
+“Yes, yes, happy,” Celia gently responded. “Do you remember the evening
+when you told me that one didn’t succeed in marrying the Pope and the
+King? But Attilio and I are marrying them, and yet we are very happy.”
+
+“But we don’t marry them, Dario and I! On the contrary!” said Benedetta
+gaily. “No matter; as you answered me that same evening, it is sufficient
+that we should love one another, love saves the world.”
+
+When Pierre at last succeeded in reaching the door of the Hall of the
+Antiques, where the buffet was installed, he found Prada there,
+motionless, gazing despite himself on the galling spectacle which he
+desired to flee. A power stronger than his will had kept him there,
+forcing him to turn round and look, and look again. And thus, with a
+bleeding heart, he still lingered and witnessed the resumption of the
+dancing, the first figure of a quadrille which the orchestra began to
+play with a lively flourish of its brass instruments. Benedetta and
+Dario, Celia and Attilio were _vis-à-vis_. And so charming and
+delightful was the sight which the two couples presented dancing in the
+white blaze, all youth and joy, that the King and Queen drew near to them
+and became interested. And soon bravos of admiration rang out, while from
+every heart spread a feeling of infinite tenderness.
+
+“I’m dying of thirst, let’s go!” repeated Prada, at last managing to
+wrench himself away from the torturing sight.
+
+He called for some iced lemonade and drank the glassful at one draught,
+gulping it down with the greedy eagerness of a man stricken with fever,
+who will never more be able to quench the burning fire within him.
+
+The Hall of the Antiques was a spacious room with mosaic pavement, and
+decorations of stucco; and a famous collection of vases, bas-reliefs, and
+statues, was disposed along its walls. The marbles predominated, but
+there were a few bronzes, and among them a dying gladiator of extreme
+beauty. The marvel however was the famous statue of Venus, a companion to
+that of the Capitol, but with a more elegant and supple figure and with
+the left arm falling loosely in a gesture of voluptuous surrender. That
+evening a powerful electric reflector threw a dazzling light upon the
+statue, which, in its divine and pure nudity, seemed to be endowed with
+superhuman, immortal life. Against the end-wall was the buffet, a long
+table covered with an embroidered cloth and laden with fruit, pastry, and
+cold meats. Sheaves of flowers rose up amidst bottles of champagne, hot
+punch, and iced _sorbetto_, and here and there were marshalled armies of
+glasses, tea-cups, and broth-bowls, a perfect wealth of sparkling
+crystal, porcelain, and silver. And a happy innovation had been to fill
+half of the hall with rows of little tables, at which the guests, in lieu
+of being obliged to refresh themselves standing, were able to sit down
+and order what they desired as in a café.
+
+At one of these little tables, Pierre perceived Narcisse seated near a
+young woman, whom Prada, on approaching, recognised to be Lisbeth. “You
+find me, you see, in delightful company,” gallantly exclaimed the
+_attaché_. “As we lost one another, I could think of nothing better than
+of offering madame my arm to bring her here.”
+
+“It was, in fact, a good idea,” said Lisbeth with her pretty laugh, “for
+I was feeling very thirsty.”
+
+They had ordered some iced coffee, which they were slowly sipping out of
+little silver-gilt spoons.
+
+“I have a terrible thirst, too,” declared the Count, “and I can’t quench
+it. You will allow us to join you, will you not, my dear sir? Some of
+that coffee will perhaps calm me.” And then to Lisbeth he added, “Ah! my
+dear, allow me to introduce to you Monsieur l’Abbé Froment, a young
+French priest of great distinction.”
+
+Then for a long time they all four remained seated at that table,
+chatting and making merry over certain of the guests who went by. Prada,
+however, in spite of his usual gallantry towards Lisbeth, frequently
+became absent-minded; at times he quite forgot her, being again mastered
+by his anguish, and, in spite of all his efforts, his eyes ever turned
+towards the neighbouring gallery whence the sound of music and dancing
+reached him.
+
+“Why, what are you thinking of, _caro mio_?” Lisbeth asked in her pretty
+way, on seeing him at one moment so pale and lost. “Are you indisposed?”
+
+He did not reply, however, but suddenly exclaimed, “Ah! look there,
+that’s the real pair, there’s real love and happiness for you!”
+
+With a jerk of the hand he designated Dario’s mother, the Marchioness
+Montefiori and her second husband, Jules Laporte--that ex-sergeant of the
+papal Swiss Guard, her junior by fifteen years, whom she had one day
+hooked at the Corso with her eyes of fire, which yet had remained superb,
+and whom she had afterwards triumphantly transformed into a Marquis
+Montefiori in order to have him entirely to herself. Such was her passion
+that she never relaxed her hold on him whether at ball or reception, but,
+despite all usages, kept him beside her, and even made him escort her to
+the buffet, so much did she delight in being able to exhibit him and say
+that this handsome man was her own exclusive property. And standing there
+side by side, the pair of them began to drink champagne and eat
+sandwiches, she yet a marvel of massive beauty although she was over
+fifty, and he with long wavy moustaches, and proud bearing, like a
+fortunate adventurer whose jovial impudence pleased the ladies.
+
+“You know that she had to extricate him from a nasty affair,” resumed the
+Count in a lower tone. “Yes, he travelled in relics; he picked up a
+living by supplying relics on commission to convents in France and
+Switzerland; and he had launched quite a business in false relics with
+the help of some Jews here who concocted little ancient reliquaries out
+of mutton bones, with everything sealed and signed by the most genuine
+authorities. The affair was hushed up, as three prelates were also
+compromised in it! Ah! the happy man! Do you see how she devours him with
+her eyes? And he, doesn’t he look quite a _grand seigneur_ by the mere
+way in which he holds that plate for her whilst she eats the breast of a
+fowl out of it!”
+
+Then, in a rough way and with biting irony, he went on to speak of the
+_amours_ of Rome. The Roman women, said he, were ignorant, obstinate, and
+jealous. When a woman had managed to win a man, she kept him for ever, he
+became her property, and she disposed of him as she pleased. By way of
+proof, he cited many interminable _liaisons_, such as that of Donna
+Serafina and Morano which, in time became virtual marriages; and he
+sneered at such a lack of fancy, such an excess of fidelity whose only
+ending, when it did end, was some very disagreeable unpleasantness.
+
+At this, Lisbeth interrupted him. “But what is the matter with you this
+evening, my dear?” she asked with a laugh. “What you speak of is on the
+contrary very nice and pretty! When a man and a woman love one another
+they ought to do so for ever!”
+
+She looked delightful as she spoke, with her fine wavy blonde hair and
+delicate fair complexion; and Narcisse with a languorous expression in
+his half-closed eyes compared her to a Botticelli which he had seen at
+Florence. However, the night was now far advanced, and Pierre had once
+more sunk into gloomy thoughtfulness when he heard a passing lady remark
+that they had already begun to dance the Cotillon in the gallery; and
+thereupon he suddenly remembered that Monsignor Nani had given him an
+appointment in the little Saloon of the Mirrors.
+
+“Are you leaving?” hastily inquired Prada on seeing him rise and bow to
+Lisbeth.
+
+“No, no, not yet,” Pierre answered.
+
+“Oh! all right. Don’t go away without me. I want to walk a little, and
+I’ll see you home. It’s agreed, eh? You will find me here.”
+
+The young priest had to cross two rooms, one hung with yellow and the
+other with blue, before he at last reached the mirrored _salon_. This was
+really an exquisite example of the _rococo_ style, a rotunda as it were
+of pale mirrors framed with superb gilded carvings. Even the ceiling was
+covered with mirrors disposed slantwise so that on every side things
+multiplied, mingled, and appeared under all possible aspects. Discreetly
+enough no electric lights had been placed in the room, the only
+illumination being that of some pink tapers burning in a pair of
+candelabra. The hangings and upholstery were of soft blue silk, and the
+impression on entering was very sweet and charming, as if one had found
+oneself in the abode of some fairy queen of the rills, a palace of limpid
+water, illumined to its farthest depths by clusters of stars.
+
+Pierre at once perceived Monsignor Nani, who was sitting on a low couch,
+and, as the prelate had hoped, he was quite alone, for the Cotillon had
+attracted almost everybody to the picture gallery. And the silence in the
+little _salon_ was nearly perfect, for at that distance the blare of the
+orchestra subsided into a faint, flute-like murmur. The young priest at
+once apologised to the prelate for having kept him waiting.
+
+“No, no, my dear son,” said Nani, with his inexhaustible amiability. “I
+was very comfortable in this retreat--when the press of the crowd became
+over-threatening I took refuge here.” He did not speak of the King and
+Queen, but he allowed it to be understood that he had politely avoided
+their company. If he had come to the _fête_ it was on account of his
+sincere affection for Celia and also with a very delicate diplomatic
+object, for the Church wished to avoid any appearance of having entirely
+broken with the Buongiovanni family, that ancient house which was so
+famous in the annals of the papacy. Doubtless the Vatican was unable to
+subscribe to this marriage which seemed to unite old Rome with the young
+Kingdom of Italy, but on the other hand it did not desire people to think
+that it abandoned old and faithful supporters and took no interest in
+what befell them.
+
+“But come, my dear son,” the prelate resumed, “it is you who are now in
+question. I told you that although the Congregation of the Index had
+pronounced itself for the condemnation of your book, the sentence would
+only be submitted to the Holy Father and signed by him on the day after
+to-morrow. So you still have a whole day before you.”
+
+At this Pierre could not refrain from a dolorous and vivacious
+interruption.
+
+“Alas! Monseigneur, what can I do?” said he; “I have thought it all over,
+and I see no means, no opportunity of defending myself. How could I even
+see his Holiness now that he is so ill?”
+
+“Oh! ill, ill!” muttered Nani with his shrewd expression. “His Holiness
+is ever so much better, for this very day, like every other Wednesday, I
+had the honour to be received by him. When his Holiness is a little tired
+and people say that he is very ill, he often lets them do so, for it
+gives him a rest and enables him to judge certain ambitions and
+manifestations of impatience around him.”
+
+Pierre, however, was too upset to listen attentively. “No, it’s all
+over,” he continued, “I’m in despair. You spoke to me of the possibility
+of a miracle, but I am no great believer in miracles. Since I am defeated
+here at Rome, I shall go away, I shall return to Paris, and continue the
+struggle there. Oh! I cannot resign myself, my hope in salvation by the
+practice of love cannot die, and I shall answer my denouncers in a new
+book, in which I shall tell in what new soil the new religion will grow
+up!”
+
+Silence fell. Nani looked at him with his clear eyes in which
+intelligence shone distinct and sharp like steel. And amidst the deep
+calm, the warm heavy atmosphere of the little _salon_, whose mirrors were
+starred with countless reflections of candles, a more sonorous burst of
+music was suddenly wafted from the gallery, a rhythmical waltz melody,
+which slowly expanded, then died away.
+
+“My dear son,” said Nani, “anger is always harmful. You remember that on
+your arrival here I promised that if your own efforts to obtain an
+interview with the Holy Father should prove unavailing, I would myself
+endeavour to secure an audience for you.” Then, seeing how agitated the
+young priest was getting, he went on: “Listen to me and don’t excite
+yourself. His Holiness, unfortunately, is not always prudently advised.
+Around him are persons whose devotion, however great, is at times
+deficient in intelligence. I told you that, and warned you against
+inconsiderate applications. And this is why, already three weeks ago, I
+myself handed your book to his Holiness in the hope that he would deign
+to glance at it. I rightly suspected that it had not been allowed to
+reach him. And this is what I am instructed to tell you: his Holiness,
+who has had the great kindness to read your book, expressly desires to
+see you.”
+
+A cry of joy and gratitude died away in Pierre’s throat: “Ah!
+Monseigneur. Ah! Monseigneur!”
+
+But Nani quickly silenced him and glanced around with an expression of
+keen anxiety as if he feared that some one might hear them. “Hush! Hush!”
+ said he, “it is a secret. His Holiness wishes to see you privately,
+without taking anybody else into his confidence. Listen attentively. It
+is now two o’clock in the morning. Well, this very day, at nine in the
+evening precisely, you must present yourself at the Vatican and at every
+door ask for Signor Squadra. You will invariably be allowed to pass.
+Signor Squadra will be waiting for you upstairs, and will introduce you.
+And not a word, mind; not a soul must have the faintest suspicion of
+these things.”
+
+Pierre’s happiness and gratitude at last flowed forth. He had caught hold
+of the prelate’s soft, plump hands, and stammered, “Ah! Monseigneur, how
+can I express my gratitude to you? If you only knew how full my soul was
+of night and rebellion since I realised that I had been a mere plaything
+in the hands of those powerful cardinals. But you have saved me, and
+again I feel sure that I shall win the victory, for I shall at last be
+able to fling myself at the feet of his Holiness the father of all truth
+and all justice. He can but absolve me, I who love him, I who admire him,
+I who have never battled for aught but his own policy and most cherished
+ideas. No, no, it is impossible; he will not sign that judgment; he will
+not condemn my book!”
+
+Releasing his hands, Nani sought to calm him with a fatherly gesture,
+whilst retaining a faint smile of contempt for such a useless expenditure
+of enthusiasm. At last he succeeded, and begged him to retire. The
+orchestra was again playing more loudly in the distance. And when the
+young priest at last withdrew, thanking him once more, he said very
+simply, “Remember, my dear son, that only obedience is great.”
+
+Pierre, whose one desire now was to take himself off, found Prada almost
+immediately afterwards in the first reception-room. Their Majesties had
+just left the ball in grand ceremony, escorted to the threshold by the
+Buongiovannis and the Saccos. And before departing the Queen had
+maternally kissed Celia, whilst the King shook hands with
+Attilio--honours instinct with a charming good nature which made the
+members of both families quite radiant. However, a good many of the
+guests were following the example of the sovereigns and disappearing in
+small batches. And the Count, who seemed strangely nervous, and showed
+more sternness and bitterness than ever, was, on his side, also eager to
+be gone. “Ah! it’s you at last. I was waiting for you,” he said to
+Pierre. “Well, let’s get off at once, eh? Your compatriot Monsieur
+Narcisse Habert asked me to tell you not to look for him. The fact is, he
+has gone to see my friend Lisbeth to her carriage. I myself want a breath
+of fresh air, a stroll, and so I’ll go with you as far as the Via
+Giulia.”
+
+Then, as they took their things from the cloak-room, he could not help
+sneering and saying in his brutal way: “I saw your good friends go off,
+all four together. It’s lucky that you prefer to go home on foot, for
+there was no room for you in the carriage. What superb impudence it was
+on the part of that Donna Serafina to drag herself here, at her age, with
+that Morano of hers, so as to triumph over the return of the fickle one!
+And the two others, the two young ones--ah! I confess that I can hardly
+speak calmly of _them_, for in parading here together as they did this
+evening, they have shown an impudence and a cruelty such as is rarely
+seen!” Prada’s hands trembled, and he murmured: “A good journey, a good
+journey to the young man, since he is going to Naples. Yes, I heard Celia
+say that he was starting for Naples this evening at six o’clock. Well, my
+wishes go with him; a good journey!”
+
+The two men found the change delightful when they at last emerged from
+the stifling heat of the reception-rooms into the lovely, cool, and
+limpid night. It was a night illumined by a superb full moon, one of
+those matchless Roman nights when the city slumbers in Elysian radiance,
+steeped in a dream of the Infinite, under the vast vault of heaven. And
+they took the most agreeable route, going down the Corso proper and then
+turning into the Corso Vittorio Emanuele.
+
+Prada had grown somewhat calmer, but remained full of irony. To divert
+his mind, no doubt, he talked on in the most voluble manner, reverting to
+the women of Rome and to that _fête_ which he had at first found
+splendid, but at which he now began to rail.
+
+“Oh! of course they have very fine gowns,” said he, speaking of the
+women; “but gowns which don’t fit them, gowns which are sent them from
+Paris, and which, of course, they can’t try on. It’s just the same with
+their jewels; they still have diamonds and pearls, in particular, which
+are very fine, but they are so wretchedly, so heavily mounted that they
+look frightful. And if you only knew how ignorant and frivolous these
+women are, despite all their conceit! Everything is on the surface with
+them, even religion: there’s nothing beneath. I looked at them eating at
+the buffet. Oh! they at least have fine appetites. This evening some
+decorum was observed, there wasn’t too much gorging. But at one of the
+Court balls you would see a general pillage, the buffets besieged, and
+everything swallowed up amidst a scramble of amazing voracity!”
+
+To all this talk Pierre only returned monosyllabic responses. He was
+wrapped in overflowing delight at the thought of that audience with the
+Pope, which, unable as he was to confide in any one, he strove to arrange
+and picture in his own mind, even in its pettiest details. And meantime
+the footsteps of the two men rang out on the dry pavement of the clear,
+broad, deserted thoroughfare, whose black shadows were sharply outlined
+by the moonlight.
+
+All at once Prada himself became silent. His loquacious _bravura_ was
+exhausted, the frightful struggle going on in his mind wholly possessed
+and paralysed him. Twice already he had dipped his hand into his coat
+pocket and felt the pencilled note whose four lines he mentally repeated:
+“A legend avers that the fig-tree of Judas now grows at Frascati, and
+that its fruit is deadly for him who may desire to become pope. Eat not
+the poisoned figs, nor give them either to your servants or your fowls.”
+ The note was there; he could feel it; and if he had desired to accompany
+Pierre, it was in order that he might drop it into the letter-box at the
+Palazzo Boccanera. And he continued to step out briskly, so that within
+another ten minutes that note would surely be in the box, for no power in
+the world could prevent it, since such was his express determination.
+Never would he commit such a crime as to allow people to be poisoned.
+
+But he was suffering such abominable torture. That Benedetta and that
+Dario had raised such a tempest of jealous hatred within him! For them he
+forgot Lisbeth whom he loved, and even that flesh of his flesh, the child
+of whom he was so proud. All sex as he was, eager to conquer and subdue,
+he had never cared for facile loves. His passion was to overcome. And now
+there was a woman in the world who defied him, a woman forsooth whom he
+had bought, whom he had married, who had been handed over to him, but who
+would never, never be his. Ah! in the old days, to subdue her, he would
+if needful have fired Rome like a Nero; but now he asked himself what he
+could possibly do to prevent her from belonging to another. That galling
+thought made the blood gush from his gaping wound. How that woman and her
+lover must deride him! And to think that they had sought to turn him to
+ridicule by a baseless charge, an arrant lie which still and ever made
+him smart, all proof of its falsity to the contrary. He, on his side, had
+accused them in the past without much belief in what he said, but now the
+charges he had imputed to them must come true, for they were free, freed
+at all events of the religious bond, and that no doubt was their only
+care. And then visions of their happiness passed before his eyes,
+infuriating him. Ah! no, ah! no, it was impossible, he would rather
+destroy the world!
+
+Then, as he and Pierre turned out of the Corso Vittorio Emanuele to
+thread the old narrow tortuous streets leading to the Via Giulia, he
+pictured himself dropping the note into the letter-box at the palazzo.
+And next he conjured up what would follow. The note would lie in the
+letter-box till morning. At an early hour Don Vigilio, the secretary, who
+by the Cardinal’s express orders kept the key of the box, would come
+down, find the note, and hand it to his Eminence, who never allowed
+another to open any communication addressed to him. And then the figs
+would be thrown away, there would be no further possibility of crime, the
+black world would in all prudence keep silent. But if the note should not
+be in the letter-box, what would happen then? And admitting that
+supposition he pictured the figs placed on the table at the one o’clock
+meal, in their pretty little leaf-covered basket. Dario would be there as
+usual, alone with his uncle, since he was not to leave for Naples till
+the evening. And would both the uncle and the nephew eat the figs, or
+would only one of them partake of the fruit, and which of them would that
+be? At this point Prada’s clearness of vision failed him; again he
+conjured up Destiny on the march, that Destiny which he had met on the
+road from Frascati, going on towards its unknown goal, athwart all
+obstacles without possibility of stoppage. Aye, the little basket of figs
+went ever on and on to accomplish its fateful purpose, which no hand in
+the world had power enough to prevent.
+
+And at last, on either hand of Pierre and Prada, the Via Giulia stretched
+away in a long line white with moonlight, and the priest emerged as if
+from a dream at sight of the Palazzo Boccanera rising blackly under the
+silver sky. Three o’clock struck at a neighbouring church. And he felt
+himself quivering slightly as once again he heard near him the dolorous
+moan of a lion wounded unto death, that low involuntary growl which the
+Count, amidst the frightful struggle of his feelings, had for the third
+time allowed to escape him. But immediately afterwards he burst into a
+sneering laugh, and pressing the priest’s hands, exclaimed: “No, no, I am
+not going farther. If I were seen here at this hour, people would think
+that I had fallen in love with my wife again.”
+
+And thereupon he lighted a cigar, and retraced his steps in the clear
+night, without once looking round.
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+WHEN Pierre awoke he was much surprised to hear eleven o’clock striking.
+Fatigued as he was by that ball where he had lingered so long, he had
+slept like a child in delightful peacefulness, and as soon as he opened
+his eyes the radiant sunshine filled him with hope. His first thought was
+that he would see the Pope that evening at nine o’clock. Ten more hours
+to wait! What would he be able to do with himself during that lovely day,
+whose radiant sky seemed to him of such happy augury? He rose and opened
+the windows to admit the warm air which, as he had noticed on the day of
+his arrival, had a savour of fruit and flowers, a blending, as it were,
+of the perfume of rose and orange. Could this possibly be December? What
+a delightful land, that the spring should seem to flower on the very
+threshold of winter! Then, having dressed, he was leaning out of the
+window to glance across the golden Tiber at the evergreen slopes of the
+Janiculum, when he espied Benedetta seated in the abandoned garden of the
+mansion. And thereupon, unable to keep still, full of a desire for life,
+gaiety, and beauty, he went down to join her.
+
+With radiant visage and outstretched hands, she at once vented the cry he
+had expected: “Ah! my dear Abbé, how happy I am!”
+
+They had often spent their mornings in that quiet, forsaken nook; but
+what sad mornings those had been, hopeless as they both were! To-day,
+however, the weed-grown paths, the box-plants growing in the old basin,
+the orange-trees which alone marked the outline of the beds--all seemed
+full of charm, instinct with a sweet and dreamy cosiness in which it was
+very pleasant to lull one’s joy. And it was so warm, too, beside the big
+laurel-bush, in the corner where the streamlet of water ever fell with
+flute-like music from the gaping, tragic mask.
+
+“Ah!” repeated Benedetta, “how happy I am! I was stifling upstairs, and
+my heart felt such a need of space, and air, and sunlight, that I came
+down here!”
+
+She was seated on the fallen column beside the old marble sarcophagus,
+and desired the priest to place himself beside her. Never had he seen her
+looking so beautiful, with her black hair encompassing her pure face,
+which in the sunshine appeared pinky and delicate as a flower. Her large,
+fathomless eyes showed in the light like braziers rolling gold, and her
+childish mouth, all candour and good sense, laughed the laugh of one who
+was at last free to love as her heart listed, without offending either
+God or man. And, dreaming aloud, she built up plans for the future. “It’s
+all simple enough,” said she; “I have already obtained a separation, and
+shall easily get that changed into civil divorce now that the Church has
+annulled my marriage. And I shall marry Dario next spring, perhaps
+sooner, if the formalities can be hastened. He is going to Naples this
+evening about the sale of some property which we still possess there, but
+which must now be sold, for all this business has cost us a lot of money.
+Still, that doesn’t matter since we now belong to one another. And when
+he comes back in a few days, what a happy time we shall have! I could not
+sleep when I got back from that splendid ball last night, for my head was
+so full of plans--oh! splendid plans, as you shall see, for I mean to
+keep you in Rome until our marriage.”
+
+Like herself, Pierre began to laugh, so gained upon by this explosion of
+youth and happiness that he had to make a great effort to refrain from
+speaking of his own delight, his hopefulness at the thought of his coming
+interview with the Pope. Of that, however, he had sworn to speak to
+nobody.
+
+Every now and again, amidst the quivering silence of the sunlit garden,
+the cry of a bird persistently rang out; and Benedetta, raising her head
+and looking at a cage hanging beside one of the first-floor windows,
+jestingly exclaimed: “Yes, yes, Tata, make a good noise, show that you
+are pleased, my dear. Everybody in the house must be pleased now.” Then,
+turning towards Pierre, she added gaily: “You know Tata, don’t you? What!
+No? Why, Tata is my uncle’s parrot. I gave her to him last spring; he’s
+very fond of her, and lets her help herself out of his plate. And he
+himself attends to her, puts her out and takes her in, and keeps her in
+his dining-room, for fear lest she should take cold, as that is the only
+room of his which is at all warm.”
+
+Pierre in his turn looked up and saw the bird, one of those pretty little
+parrots with soft, silky, dull-green plumage. It was hanging by the beak
+from a bar of its cage, swinging itself and flapping its wings, all mirth
+in the bright sunshine.
+
+“Does the bird talk?” he asked.
+
+“No, she only screams,” replied Benedetta, laughing. “Still my uncle
+pretends that he understands her.” And then the young woman abruptly
+darted to another subject, as if this mention of her uncle the Cardinal
+had made her think of the uncle by marriage whom she had in Paris. “I
+suppose you have heard from Viscount de la Choue,” said she. “I had a
+letter from him yesterday, in which he said how grieved he was that you
+were unable to see the Holy Father, as he had counted on you for the
+triumph of his ideas.”
+
+Pierre indeed frequently heard from the Viscount, who was greatly
+distressed by the importance which his adversary, Baron de Fouras, had
+acquired since his success with the International Pilgrimage of the
+Peter’s Pence. The old, uncompromising Catholic party would awaken, said
+the Viscount, and all the conquests of Neo-Catholicism would be
+threatened, if one could not obtain the Holy Father’s formal adhesion to
+the proposed system of free guilds, in order to overcome the demand for
+closed guilds which was brought forward by the Conservatives. And the
+Viscount overwhelmed Pierre with injunctions, and sent him all sorts of
+complicated plans in his eagerness to see him received at the Vatican.
+“Yes, yes,” muttered the young priest in reply to Benedetta. “I had a
+letter on Sunday, and found another waiting for me on my return from
+Frascati yesterday. Ah! it would make me very happy to be able to send
+the Viscount some good news.” Then again Pierre’s joy overflowed at the
+thought that he would that evening see the Pope, and, on opening his
+loving heart to the Pontiff, receive the supreme encouragement which
+would strengthen him in his mission to work social salvation in the name
+of the lowly and the poor. And he could not restrain himself any longer,
+but let his secret escape him: “It’s settled, you know,” said he. “My
+audience is for this evening.”
+
+Benedetta did not understand at first. “What audience?” she asked.
+
+“Oh! Monsignor Nani was good enough to tell me at the ball this morning,
+that the Holy Father has read my book and desires to see me. I shall be
+received this evening at nine o’clock.”
+
+At this the Contessina flushed with pleasure, participating in the
+delight of the young priest to whom she had grown much attached. And this
+success of his, coming in the midst of her own felicity, acquired
+extraordinary importance in her eyes as if it were an augury of complete
+success for one and all. Superstitious as she was, she raised a cry of
+rapture and excitement: “Ah! _Dio_, that will bring us good luck. How
+happy I am, my friend, to see happiness coming to you at the same time as
+to me! You cannot think how pleased I am! And all will go well now, it’s
+certain, for a house where there is any one whom the Pope welcomes is
+blessed, the thunder of Heaven falls on it no more!”
+
+She laughed yet more loudly as she spoke, and clapped her hands with such
+exuberant gaiety that Pierre became anxious. “Hush! hush!” said he, “it’s
+a secret. Pray don’t mention it to any one, either your aunt or even his
+Eminence. Monsignor Nani would be much annoyed.”
+
+She thereupon promised to say nothing, and in a kindly voice spoke of
+Nani as a benefactor, for was she not indebted to him for the dissolution
+of her marriage? Then, with a fresh explosion of gaiety, she went on:
+“But come, my friend, is not happiness the only good thing? You don’t ask
+me to weep over the suffering poor to-day! Ah! the happiness of life,
+that’s everything. People don’t suffer or feel cold or hungry when they
+are happy.”
+
+He looked at her in stupefaction at the idea of that strange solution of
+the terrible question of human misery. And suddenly he realised that,
+with that daughter of the sun who had inherited so many centuries of
+sovereign aristocracy, all his endeavours at conversion were vain. He had
+wished to bring her to a Christian love for the lowly and the wretched,
+win her over to the new, enlightened, and compassionate Italy that he had
+dreamt of; but if she had been moved by the sufferings of the multitude
+at the time when she herself had suffered, when grievous wounds had made
+her own heart bleed, she was no sooner healed than she proclaimed the
+doctrine of universal felicity like a true daughter of a clime of burning
+summers, and winters as mild as spring. “But everybody is not happy!”
+ said he.
+
+“Yes, yes, they are!” she exclaimed. “You don’t know the poor! Give a
+girl of the Trastevere the lad she loves, and she becomes as radiant as a
+queen, and finds her dry bread quite sweet. The mothers who save a child
+from sickness, the men who conquer in a battle, or who win at the
+lottery, one and all in fact are like that, people only ask for good
+fortune and pleasure. And despite all your striving to be just and to
+arrive at a more even distribution of fortune, the only satisfied ones
+will be those whose hearts sing--often without their knowing the
+cause--on a fine sunny day like this.”
+
+Pierre made a gesture of surrender, not wishing to sadden her by again
+pleading the cause of all the poor ones who at that very moment were
+somewhere agonising with physical or mental pain. But, all at once,
+through the luminous mild atmosphere a shadow seemed to fall, tingeing
+joy with sadness, the sunshine with despair. And the sight of the old
+sarcophagus, with its bacchanal of satyrs and nymphs, brought back the
+memory that death lurks even amidst the bliss of passion, the unsatiated
+kisses of love. For a moment the clear song of the water sounded in
+Pierre’s ears like a long-drawn sob, and all seemed to crumble in the
+terrible shadow which had fallen from the invisible.
+
+Benedetta, however, caught hold of his hands and roused him once more to
+the delight of being there beside her. “Your pupil is rebellious, is she
+not, my friend?” said she. “But what would you have? There are ideas
+which can’t enter into our heads. No, you will never get those things
+into the head of a Roman girl. So be content with loving us as we are,
+beautiful with all our strength, as beautiful as we can be.”
+
+She herself, in her resplendent happiness, looked at that moment so
+beautiful that he trembled as in presence of a divinity whose
+all-powerfulness swayed the world. “Yes, yes,” he stammered, “beauty,
+beauty, still and ever sovereign. Ah! why can it not suffice to satisfy
+the eternal longings of poor suffering men?”
+
+“Never mind!” she gaily responded. “Do not distress yourself; it is
+pleasant to live. And now let us go upstairs, my aunt must be waiting.”
+
+The midday meal was served at one o’clock, and on the few occasions when
+Pierre did not eat at one or another restaurant a cover was laid for him
+at the ladies’ table in the little dining-room of the second floor,
+overlooking the courtyard. At the same hour, in the sunlit dining-room of
+the first floor, whose windows faced the Tiber, the Cardinal likewise sat
+down to table, happy in the society of his nephew Dario, for his
+secretary, Don Vigilio, who also was usually present, never opened his
+mouth unless to reply to some question. And the two services were quite
+distinct, each having its own kitchen and servants, the only thing at all
+common to them both being a large room downstairs which served as a
+pantry and store-place.
+
+Although the second-floor dining-room was so gloomy, saddened by the
+greeny half-light of the courtyard, the meal shared that day by the two
+ladies and the young priest proved a very gay one. Even Donna Serafina,
+usually so rigid, seemed to relax under the influence of great internal
+felicity. She was no doubt still enjoying her triumph of the previous
+evening, and it was she who first spoke of the ball and sung its praises,
+though the presence of the King and Queen had much embarrassed her, said
+she. According to her account, she had only avoided presentation by
+skilful strategy; however she hoped that her well-known affection for
+Celia, whose god-mother she was, would explain her presence in that
+neutral mansion where Vatican and Quirinal had met. At the same time she
+must have retained certain scruples, for she declared that directly after
+dinner she was going to the Vatican to see the Cardinal Secretary, to
+whom she desired to speak about an enterprise of which she was
+lady-patroness. This visit would compensate for her attendance at the
+Buongiovanni entertainment. And on the other hand never had Donna
+Serafina seemed so zealous and hopeful of her brother’s speedy accession
+to the throne of St. Peter: therein lay a supreme triumph, an elevation
+of her race, which her pride deemed both needful and inevitable; and
+indeed during Leo XIII’s last indisposition she had actually concerned
+herself about the trousseau which would be needed and which would require
+to be marked with the new Pontiff’s arms.
+
+On her side, Benedetta was all gaiety during the repast, laughing at
+everything, and speaking of Celia and Attilio with the passionate
+affection of a woman whose own happiness delights in that of her friends.
+Then, just as the dessert had been served, she turned to the servant with
+an air of surprise: “Well, and the figs, Giacomo?” she asked.
+
+Giacomo, slow and sleepy of notion, looked at her without understanding.
+However, Victorine was crossing the room, and Benedetta’s next question
+was for her: “Why are the figs not served, Victorine?” she inquired.
+
+“What figs, Contessina?”
+
+“Why the figs I saw in the pantry as I passed through it this morning on
+my way to the garden. They were in a little basket and looked superb. I
+was even astonished to see that there were still some fresh figs left at
+this season. I’m very fond of them, and felt quite pleased at the thought
+that I should eat some at dinner.”
+
+Victorine began to laugh: “Ah! yes, Contessina, I understand,” she
+replied. “They were some figs which that priest of Frascati, whom you
+know very well, brought yesterday evening as a present for his Eminence.
+I was there, and I heard him repeat three or four times that they were a
+present, and were to be put on his Eminence’s table without a leaf being
+touched. And so one did as he said.”
+
+“Well, that’s nice,” retorted Benedetta with comical indignation. “What
+_gourmands_ my uncle and Dario are to regale themselves without us! They
+might have given us a share!”
+
+Donna Serafina thereupon intervened, and asked Victorine: “You are
+speaking, are you not, of that priest who used to come to the villa at
+Frascati?”
+
+“Yes, yes, Abbé Santobono his name is, he officiates at the little church
+of St. Mary in the Fields. He always asks for Abbé Paparelli when he
+calls; I think they were at the seminary together. And it was Abbé
+Paparelli who brought him to the pantry with his basket last night. To
+tell the truth, the basket was forgotten there in spite of all the
+injunctions, so that nobody would have eaten the figs to-day if Abbé
+Paparelli hadn’t run down just now and carried them upstairs as piously
+as if they were the Blessed Sacrament. It’s true though that his Eminence
+is so fond of them.”
+
+“My brother won’t do them much honour to-day,” remarked the Princess. “He
+is slightly indisposed. He passed a bad night.” The repeated mention of
+Abbé Paparelli had made the old lady somewhat thoughtful. She had
+regarded the train-bearer with displeasure ever since she had noticed the
+extraordinary influence he was gaining over the Cardinal, despite all his
+apparent humility and self-effacement. He was but a servant and
+apparently a very insignificant one, yet he governed, and she could feel
+that he combated her own influence, often undoing things which she had
+done to further her brother’s interests. Twice already, moreover, she had
+suspected him of having urged the Cardinal to courses which she looked
+upon as absolute blunders. But perhaps she was wrong; she did the
+train-bearer the justice to admit that he had great merits and displayed
+exemplary piety.
+
+However, Benedetta went on laughing and jesting, and as Victorine had now
+withdrawn, she called the man-servant: “Listen, Giacomo, I have a
+commission for you.” Then she broke off to say to her aunt and Pierre:
+“Pray let us assert our rights. I can see them at table almost underneath
+us. Uncle is taking the leaves off the basket and serving himself with a
+smile; then he passes the basket to Dario, who passes it on to Don
+Vigilio. And all three of them eat and enjoy the figs. You can see them,
+can’t you?” She herself could see them well. And it was her desire to be
+near Dario, the constant flight of her thoughts to him that now made her
+picture him at table with the others. Her heart was down below, and there
+was nothing there that she could not see, and hear, and smell, with such
+keenness of the senses did her love endow her. “Giacomo,” she resumed,
+“you are to go down and tell his Eminence that we are longing to taste
+his figs, and that it will be very kind of him if he will send us such as
+he can spare.”
+
+Again, however, did Donna Serafina intervene, recalling her wonted
+severity of voice: “Giacomo, you will please stay here.” And to her niece
+she added: “That’s enough childishness! I dislike such silly freaks.”
+
+“Oh! aunt,” Benedetta murmured. “But I’m so happy, it’s so long since I
+laughed so good-heartedly.”
+
+Pierre had hitherto remained listening, enlivened by the sight of her
+gaiety. But now, as a little chill fell, he raised his voice to say that
+on the previous day he himself had been astonished to see the famous
+fig-tree of Frascati still bearing fruit so late in the year. This was
+doubtless due, however, to the tree’s position and the protection of a
+high wall.
+
+“Ah! so you saw the tree?” said Benedetta.
+
+“Yes, and I even travelled with those figs which you would so much like
+to taste.”
+
+“Why, how was that?”
+
+The young man already regretted the reply which had escaped him. However,
+having gone so far, he preferred to say everything. “I met somebody at
+Frascati who had come there in a carriage and who insisted on driving me
+back to Rome,” said he. “On the way we picked up Abbé Santobono, who was
+bravely making the journey on foot with his basket in his hand. And
+afterwards we stopped at an _osteria_--” Then he went on to describe the
+drive and relate his impressions whilst crossing the Campagna amidst the
+falling twilight. But Benedetta gazed at him fixedly, aware as she was of
+Prada’s frequent visits to the land and houses which he owned at
+Frascati; and suddenly she murmured: “Somebody, somebody, it was the
+Count, was it not?”
+
+“Yes, madame, the Count,” Pierre answered. “I saw him again last night;
+he was overcome, and really deserves to be pitied.”
+
+The two women took no offence at this charitable remark which fell from
+the young priest with such deep and natural emotion, full as he was of
+overflowing love and compassion for one and all. Donna Serafina remained
+motionless as if she had not even heard him, and Benedetta made a gesture
+which seemed to imply that she had neither pity nor hatred to express for
+a man who had become a perfect stranger to her. However, she no longer
+laughed, but, thinking of the little basket which had travelled in
+Prada’s carriage, she said: “Ah! I don’t care for those figs at all now,
+I am even glad that I haven’t eaten any of them.”
+
+Immediately after the coffee Donna Serafina withdrew, saying that she was
+at once going to the Vatican; and the others, being left to themselves,
+lingered at table, again full of gaiety, and chatting like friends. The
+priest, with his feverish impatience, once more referred to the audience
+which he was to have that evening. It was now barely two o’clock, and he
+had seven more hours to wait. How should he employ that endless
+afternoon? Thereupon Benedetta good-naturedly made him a proposal. “I’ll
+tell you what,” said she, “as we are all in such good spirits we mustn’t
+leave one another. Dario has his victoria, you know. He must have
+finished lunch by now, and I’ll ask him to take us for a long drive along
+the Tiber.”
+
+This fine project so delighted her that she began to clap her hands; but
+just then Don Vigilio appeared with a scared look on his face. “Isn’t the
+Princess here?” he inquired.
+
+“No, my aunt has gone out. What is the matter?”
+
+“His Eminence sent me. The Prince has just felt unwell on rising from
+table. Oh! it’s nothing--nothing serious, no doubt.”
+
+Benedetta raised a cry of surprise rather than anxiety: “What, Dario!
+Well, we’ll all go down. Come with me, Monsieur l’Abbé. He mustn’t get
+ill if he is to take us for a drive!” Then, meeting Victorine on the
+stairs, she bade her follow. “Dario isn’t well,” she said. “You may be
+wanted.”
+
+They all four entered the spacious, antiquated, and simply furnished
+bed-room where the young Prince had lately been laid up for a whole
+month. It was reached by way of a small _salon_, and from an adjoining
+dressing-room a passage conducted to the Cardinal’s apartments, the
+relatively small dining-room, bed-room, and study, which had been devised
+by subdividing one of the huge galleries of former days. In addition, the
+passage gave access to his Eminence’s private chapel, a bare, uncarpeted,
+chairless room, where there was nothing beyond the painted, wooden altar,
+and the hard, cold tiles on which to kneel and pray.
+
+On entering, Benedetta hastened to the bed where Dario was lying, still
+fully dressed. Near him, in fatherly fashion, stood Cardinal Boccanera,
+who, amidst his dawning anxiety, retained his proud and lofty
+bearing--the calmness of a soul beyond reproach. “Why, what is the
+matter, Dario _mio_?” asked the young woman.
+
+He smiled, eager to reassure her. One only noticed that he was very pale,
+with a look as of intoxication on his face.
+
+“Oh! it’s nothing, mere giddiness,” he replied. “It’s just as if I had
+drunk too much. All at once things swam before my eyes, and I thought I
+was going to fall. And then I only had time to come and fling myself on
+the bed.”
+
+Then he drew a long breath, as though talking exhausted him, and the
+Cardinal in his turn gave some details. “We had just finished our meal,”
+ said he, “I was giving Don Vigilio some orders for this afternoon, and
+was about to rise when I saw Dario get up and reel. He wouldn’t sit down
+again, but came in here, staggering like a somnambulist, and fumbling at
+the doors to open them. We followed him without understanding. And I
+confess that I don’t yet comprehend it.”
+
+So saying, the Cardinal punctuated his surprise by waving his arm towards
+the rooms, through which a gust of misfortune seemed to have suddenly
+swept. All the doors had remained wide open: the dressing-room could be
+seen, and then the passage, at the end of which appeared the dining-room,
+in a disorderly state, like an apartment suddenly vacated; the table
+still laid, the napkins flung here and there, and the chairs pushed back.
+As yet, however, there was no alarm.
+
+Benedetta made the remark which is usually made in such cases: “I hope
+you haven’t eaten anything which has disagreed with you.”
+
+The Cardinal, smiling, again waved his hand as if to attest the frugality
+of his table. “Oh!” said he, “there were only some eggs, some lamb
+cutlets, and a dish of sorrel--they couldn’t have overloaded his stomach.
+I myself only drink water; he takes just a sip of white wine. No, no, the
+food has nothing to do with it.”
+
+“Besides, in that case his Eminence and I would also have felt
+indisposed,” Don Vigilio made bold to remark.
+
+Dario, after momentarily closing his eyes, opened them again, and once
+more drew a long breath, whilst endeavouring to laugh. “Oh, it will be
+nothing;” he said. “I feel more at ease already. I must get up and stir
+myself.”
+
+“In that case,” said Benedetta, “this is what I had thought of. You will
+take Monsieur l’Abbé Froment and me for a long drive in the Campagna.”
+
+“Willingly. It’s a nice idea. Victorine, help me.”
+
+Whilst speaking he had raised himself by means of one arm; but, before
+the servant could approach, a slight convulsion seized him, and he fell
+back again as if overcome by a fainting fit. It was the Cardinal, still
+standing by the bedside, who caught him in his arms, whilst the
+Contessina this time lost her head: “_Dio, Dio_! It has come on him
+again. Quick, quick, a doctor!”
+
+“Shall I run for one?” asked Pierre, whom the scene was also beginning to
+upset.
+
+“No, no, not you; stay with me. Victorine will go at once. She knows the
+address. Doctor Giordano, Victorine.”
+
+The servant hurried away, and a heavy silence fell on the room where the
+anxiety became more pronounced every moment. Benedetta, now quite pale,
+had again approached the bed, whilst the Cardinal looked down at Dario,
+whom he still held in his arms. And a terrible suspicion, vague,
+indeterminate as yet, had just awoke in the old man’s mind: Dario’s face
+seemed to him to be ashen, to wear that mask of terrified anguish which
+he had already remarked on the countenance of his dearest friend,
+Monsignor Gallo, when he had held him in his arms, in like manner, two
+hours before his death. There was also the same swoon and the same
+sensation of clasping a cold form whose heart ceases to beat. And above
+everything else there was in Boccanera’s mind the same growing thought of
+poison, poison coming one knew not whence or how, but mysteriously
+striking down those around him with the suddenness of lightning. And for
+a long time he remained with his head bent over the face of his nephew,
+that last scion of his race, seeking, studying, and recognising the signs
+of the mysterious, implacable disorder which once already had rent his
+heart atwain.
+
+But Benedetta addressed him in a low, entreating voice: “You will tire
+yourself, uncle. Let me take him a little, I beg you. Have no fear, I’ll
+hold him very gently, he will feel that it is I, and perhaps that will
+rouse him.”
+
+At last the Cardinal raised his head and looked at her, and allowed her
+to take his place after kissing her with distracted passion, his eyes the
+while full of tears--a sudden burst of emotion in which his great love
+for the young woman melted the stern frigidity which he usually affected.
+“Ah! my poor child, my poor child!” he stammered, trembling from head to
+foot like an oak-tree about to fall. Immediately afterwards, however, he
+mastered himself, and whilst Pierre and Don Vigilio, mute and motionless,
+regretted that they could be of no help, he walked slowly to and fro.
+Soon, moreover, that bed-chamber became too small for all the thoughts
+revolving in his mind, and he strayed first into the dressing-room and
+then down the passage as far as the dining-room. And again and again he
+went to and fro, grave and impassible, his head low, ever lost in the
+same gloomy reverie. What were the multitudinous thoughts stirring in the
+brain of that believer, that haughty Prince who had given himself to God
+and could do naught to stay inevitable Destiny? From time to time he
+returned to the bedside, observed the progress of the disorder, and then
+started off again at the same slow regular pace, disappearing and
+reappearing, carried along as it were by the monotonous alternations of
+forces which man cannot control. Possibly he was mistaken, possibly this
+was some mere indisposition at which the doctor would smile. One must
+hope and wait. And again he went off and again he came back; and amidst
+the heavy silence nothing more clearly bespoke the torture of anxious
+fear than the rhythmical footsteps of that tall old man who was thus
+awaiting Destiny.
+
+The door opened, and Victorine came in breathless. “I found the doctor,
+here he is,” she gasped.
+
+With his little pink face and white curls, his discreet paternal bearing
+which gave him the air of an amiable prelate, Doctor Giordano came in
+smiling; but on seeing that room and all the anxious people waiting in
+it, he turned very grave, at once assuming the expression of profound
+respect for all ecclesiastical secrets which he had acquired by long
+practice among the clergy. And when he had glanced at the sufferer he let
+but a low murmur escape him: “What, again! Is it beginning again!”
+
+He was probably alluding to the knife thrust for which he had recently
+tended Dario. Who could be thus relentlessly pursuing that poor and
+inoffensive young prince? However no one heard the doctor unless it were
+Benedetta, and she was so full of feverish impatience, so eager to be
+tranquillised, that she did not listen but burst into fresh entreaties:
+“Oh! doctor, pray look at him, examine him, tell us that it is nothing.
+It can’t be anything serious, since he was so well and gay but a little
+while ago. It’s nothing serious, is it?”
+
+“You are right no doubt, Contessina, it can be nothing dangerous. We will
+see.”
+
+However, on turning round, Doctor Giordano perceived the Cardinal, who
+with regular, thoughtful footsteps had come back from the dining-room to
+place himself at the foot of the bed. And while bowing, the doctor
+doubtless detected a gleam of mortal anxiety in the dark eyes fixed upon
+his own, for he added nothing but began to examine Dario like a man who
+realises that time is precious. And as his examination progressed the
+affable optimism which usually appeared upon his countenance gave place
+to ashen gravity, a covert terror which made his lips slightly tremble.
+It was he who had attended Monsignor Gallo when the latter had been
+carried off so mysteriously; it was he who for imperative reasons had
+then delivered a certificate stating the cause of death to be infectious
+fever; and doubtless he now found the same terrible symptoms as in that
+case, a leaden hue overspreading the sufferer’s features, a stupor as of
+excessive intoxication; and, old Roman practitioner that he was,
+accustomed to sudden deaths, he realised that the _malaria_ which kills
+was passing, that _malaria_ which science does not yet fully understand,
+which may come from the putrescent exhalations of the Tiber unless it be
+but a name for the ancient poison of the legends.
+
+As the doctor raised his head his glance again encountered the black eyes
+of the Cardinal, which never left him. “Signor Giordano,” said his
+Eminence, “you are not over-anxious, I hope? It is only some case of
+indigestion, is it not?”
+
+The doctor again bowed. By the slight quiver of the Cardinal’s voice he
+understood how acute was the anxiety of that powerful man, who once more
+was stricken in his dearest affections.
+
+“Your Eminence must be right,” he said, “there’s a bad digestion
+certainly. Such accidents sometimes become dangerous when fever
+supervenes. I need not tell your Eminence how thoroughly you may rely on
+my prudence and zeal.” Then he broke off and added in a clear
+professional voice: “We must lose no time; the Prince must be undressed.
+I should prefer to remain alone with him for a moment.”
+
+Whilst speaking in this way, however, Doctor Giordano detained Victorine,
+who would be able to help him, said he; should he need any further
+assistance he would take Giacomo. His evident desire was to get rid of
+the members of the family in order that he might have more freedom of
+action. And the Cardinal, who understood him, gently led Benedetta into
+the dining-room, whither Pierre and Don Vigilio followed.
+
+When the doors had been closed, the most mournful and oppressive silence
+reigned in that dining-room, which the bright sun of winter filled with
+such delightful warmth and radiance. The table was still laid, its cloth
+strewn here and there with bread-crumbs; and a coffee cup had remained
+half full. In the centre stood the basket of figs, whose covering of
+leaves had been removed. However, only two or three of the figs were
+missing. And in front of the window was Tata, the female parrot, who had
+flown out of her cage and perched herself on her stand, where she
+remained, dazzled and enraptured, amidst the dancing dust of a broad
+yellow sunray. In her astonishment however, at seeing so many people
+enter, she had ceased to scream and smooth her feathers, and had turned
+her head the better to examine the newcomers with her round and
+scrutinising eye.
+
+The minutes went by slowly amidst all the feverish anxiety as to what
+might be occurring in the neighbouring room. Don Vigilio had taken a
+corner seat in silence, whilst Benedetta and Pierre, who had remained
+standing, preserved similar muteness, and immobility. But the Cardinal
+had reverted to that instinctive, lulling tramp by which he apparently
+hoped to quiet his impatience and arrive the sooner at the explanation
+for which he was groping through a tumultuous maze of ideas. And whilst
+his rhythmical footsteps resounded with mechanical regularity, dark fury
+was taking possession of his mind, exasperation at being unable to
+understand the why and wherefore of that sickness. As he passed the table
+he had twice glanced at the things lying on it in confusion, as if
+seeking some explanation from them. Perhaps the harm had been done by
+that unfinished coffee, or by that bread whose crumbs lay here and there,
+or by those cutlets, a bone of which remained? Then as for the third time
+he passed by, again glancing, his eyes fell upon the basket of figs, and
+at once he stopped, as if beneath the shock of a revelation. An idea
+seized upon him and mastered him, without any plan, however, occurring to
+him by which he might change his sudden suspicion into certainty. For a
+moment he remained puzzled with his eyes fixed upon the basket. Then he
+took a fig and examined it, but, noticing nothing strange, was about to
+put it back when Tata, the parrot, who was very fond of figs, raised a
+strident cry. And this was like a ray of light; the means of changing
+suspicion into certainty was found.
+
+Slowly, with grave air and gloomy visage, the Cardinal carried the fig to
+the parrot and gave it to her without hesitation or regret. She was a
+very pretty bird, the only being of the lower order of creation to which
+he had ever really been attached. Stretching out her supple, delicate
+form, whose silken feathers of dull green here and there assumed a pinky
+tinge in the sunlight, she took hold of the fig with her claws, then
+ripped it open with her beak. But when she had raked it she ate but
+little, and let all the rest fall upon the floor. Still grave and
+impassible, the Cardinal looked at her and waited. Quite three minutes
+went by, and then feeling reassured, he began to scratch the bird’s poll,
+whilst she, taking pleasure in the caress, turned her neck and fixed her
+bright ruby eye upon her master. But all at once she sank back without
+even a flap of the wings, and fell like a bullet. She was dead, killed as
+by a thunderbolt.
+
+Boccanera made but a gesture, raising both hands to heaven as if in
+horror at what he now knew. Great God! such a terrible crime, and such a
+fearful mistake, such an abominable trick of Destiny! No cry of grief
+came from him, but the gloom upon his face grew black and fierce. Yet
+there was a cry, a piercing cry from Benedetta, who like Pierre and Don
+Vigilio had watched the Cardinal with an astonishment which had changed
+into terror: “Poison! poison! Ah! Dario, my heart, my soul!”
+
+But the Cardinal violently caught his niece by the wrist, whilst darting
+a suspicious glance at the two petty priests, the secretary and the
+foreigner, who were present: “Be quiet, be quiet!” said he.
+
+She shook herself free, rebelling, frantic with rage and hatred: “Why
+should I be quiet!” she cried. “It is Prada’s work, I shall denounce him,
+he shall die as well! I tell you it is Prada, I know it, for yesterday
+Abbé Froment came back with him from Frascati in his carriage with that
+priest Santobono and that basket of figs! Yes, yes, I have witnesses, it
+is Prada, Prada!”
+
+“No, no, you are mad, be quiet!” said the Cardinal, who had again taken
+hold of the young woman’s hands and sought to master her with all his
+sovereign authority. He, who knew the influence which Cardinal
+Sanguinetti exercised over Santobono’s excitable mind, had just
+understood the whole affair; no direct complicity but covert propulsion,
+the animal excited and then let loose upon the troublesome rival at the
+moment when the pontifical throne seemed likely to be vacant. The
+probability, the certainty of all this flashed upon Boccanera who, though
+some points remained obscure, did not seek to penetrate them. It was not
+necessary indeed that he should know every particular: the thing was as
+he said, since it was bound to be so. “No, no, it was not Prada,” he
+exclaimed, addressing Benedetta. “That man can bear me no personal
+grudge, and I alone was aimed at, it was to me that those figs were
+given. Come, think it out! Only an unforeseen indisposition prevented me
+from eating the greater part of the fruit, for it is known that I am very
+fond of figs, and while my poor Dario was tasting them, I jested and told
+him to leave the finer ones for me to-morrow. Yes, the abominable blow
+was meant for me, and it is on him that it has fallen by the most
+atrocious of chances, the most monstrous of the follies of fate. Ah! Lord
+God, Lord God, have you then forsaken us!”
+
+Tears came into the old man’s eyes, whilst she still quivered and seemed
+unconvinced: “But you have no enemies, uncle,” she said. “Why should that
+Santobono try to take your life?”
+
+For a moment he found no fitting reply. With supreme grandeur he had
+already resolved to keep the truth secret. Then a recollection came to
+him, and he resigned himself to the telling of a lie: “Santobono’s mind
+has always been somewhat unhinged,” said he, “and I know that he has
+hated me ever since I refused to help him to get a brother of his, one of
+our former gardeners, out of prison. Deadly spite often has no more
+serious cause. He must have thought that he had reason to be revenged on
+me.”
+
+Thereupon Benedetta, exhausted, unable to argue any further, sank upon a
+chair with a despairing gesture: “Ah! God, God! I no longer know--and
+what matters it now that my Dario is in such danger? There’s only one
+thing to be done, he must be saved. How long they are over what they are
+doing in that room--why does not Victorine come for us!”
+
+The silence again fell, full of terror. Without speaking the Cardinal
+took the basket of figs from the table and carried it to a cupboard in
+which he locked it. Then he put the key in his pocket. No doubt, when
+night had fallen, he himself would throw the proofs of the crime into the
+Tiber. However, on coming back from the cupboard he noticed the two
+priests, who naturally had watched him; and with mingled grandeur and
+simplicity he said to them: “Gentlemen, I need not ask you to be
+discreet. There are scandals which we must spare the Church, which is
+not, cannot be guilty. To deliver one of ourselves, even when he is a
+criminal, to the civil tribunals, often means a blow for the whole
+Church, for men of evil mind may lay hold of the affair and seek to
+impute the responsibility of the crime even to the Church itself. We
+therefore have but to commit the murderer to the hands of God, who will
+know more surely how to punish him. Ah! for my part, whether I be struck
+in my own person or whether the blow be directed against my family, my
+dearest affections, I declare in the name of the Christ who died upon the
+cross, that I feel neither anger, nor desire for vengeance, that I efface
+the murderer’s name from my memory and bury his abominable act in the
+eternal silence of the grave.”
+
+Tall as he was, he seemed of yet loftier stature whilst with hand
+upraised he took that oath to leave his enemies to the justice of God
+alone; for he did not refer merely to Santobono, but to Cardinal
+Sanguinetti, whose evil influence he had divined. And amidst all the
+heroism of his pride, he was rent by tragic dolour at thought of the dark
+battle which was waged around the tiara, all the evil hatred and
+voracious appetite which stirred in the depths of the gloom. Then, as
+Pierre and Don Vigilio bowed to him as a sign that they would preserve
+silence, he almost choked with invincible emotion, a sob of loving grief
+which he strove to keep down rising to his throat, whilst he stammered:
+“Ah! my poor child, my poor child, the only scion of our race, the only
+love and hope of my heart! Ah! to die, to die like this!”
+
+But Benedetta, again all violence, sprang up: “Die! Who, Dario? I won’t
+have it! We’ll nurse him, we’ll go back to him. We will take him in our
+arms and save him. Come, uncle, come at once! I won’t, I won’t, I won’t
+have him die!”
+
+She was going towards the door, and nothing would have prevented her from
+re-entering the bed-room, when, as it happened, Victorine appeared with a
+wild look on her face, for, despite her wonted serenity, all her courage
+was now exhausted. “The doctor begs madame and his Eminence to come at
+once, at once,” said she.
+
+Stupefied by all these things, Pierre did not follow the others, but
+lingered for a moment in the sunlit dining-room with Don Vigilio. What!
+poison? Poison as in the time of the Borgias, elegantly hidden away,
+served up with luscious fruit by a crafty traitor, whom one dared not
+even denounce! And he recalled the conversation on his way back from
+Frascati, and his Parisian scepticism with respect to those legendary
+drugs, which to his mind had no place save in the fifth acts of
+melodramas. Yet those abominable stories were true, those tales of
+poisoned knives and flowers, of prelates and even dilatory popes being
+suppressed by a drop or a grain of something administered to them in
+their morning chocolate. That passionate tragical Santobono was really a
+poisoner, Pierre could no longer doubt it, for a lurid light now
+illumined the whole of the previous day: there were the words of ambition
+and menace which had been spoken by Cardinal Sanguinetti, the eagerness
+to act in presence of the probable death of the reigning pope, the
+suggestion of a crime for the sake of the Church’s salvation, then that
+priest with his little basket of figs encountered on the road, then that
+basket carried for hours so carefully, so devoutly, on the priest’s
+knees, that basket which now haunted Pierre like a nightmare, and whose
+colour, and odour, and shape he would ever recall with a shudder. Aye,
+poison, poison, there was truth in it; it existed and still circulated in
+the depths of the black world, amidst all the ravenous, rival longings
+for conquest and sovereignty.
+
+And all at once the figure of Prada likewise arose in Pierre’s mind. A
+little while previously, when Benedetta had so violently accused the
+Count, he, Pierre, had stepped forward to defend him and cry aloud what
+he knew, whence the poison had come, and what hand had offered it. But a
+sudden thought had made him shiver: though Prada had not devised the
+crime, he had allowed it to be perpetrated. Another memory darted keen
+like steel through the young priest’s mind--that of the little black hen
+lying lifeless beside the shed, amidst the dismal surroundings of the
+_osteria_, with a tiny streamlet of violet blood trickling from her beak.
+And here again, Tata, the parrot, lay still soft and warm at the foot of
+her stand, with her beak stained by oozing blood. Why had Prada told that
+lie about a battle between two fowls? All the dim intricacy of passion
+and contention bewildered Pierre, he could not thread his way through it;
+nor was he better able to follow the frightful combat which must have
+been waged in that man’s mind during the night of the ball. At the same
+time he could not again picture him by his side during their nocturnal
+walk towards the Boccanera mansion without shuddering, dimly divining
+what a frightful decision had been taken before that mansion’s door.
+Moreover, whatever the obscurities, whether Prada had expected that the
+Cardinal alone would be killed, or had hoped that some chance stroke of
+fate might avenge him on others, the terrible fact remained--he had
+known, he had been able to stay Destiny on the march, but had allowed it
+to go onward and blindly accomplish its work of death.
+
+Turning his head Pierre perceived Don Vigilio still seated on the corner
+chair whence he had not stirred, and looking so pale and haggard that
+perhaps he also had swallowed some of the poison. “Do you feel unwell?”
+ the young priest asked.
+
+At first the secretary could not reply, for terror had gripped him at the
+throat. Then in a low voice he said: “No, no, I didn’t eat any. Ah,
+Heaven, when I think that I so much wanted to taste them, and that merely
+deference kept me back on seeing that his Eminence did not take any!” Don
+Vigilio’s whole body shivered at the thought that his humility alone had
+saved him; and on his face and his hands there remained the icy chill of
+death which had fallen so near and grazed him as it passed.
+
+Then twice he heaved a sigh, and with a gesture of affright sought to
+brush the horrid thing away while murmuring: “Ah! Paparelli, Paparelli!”
+
+Pierre, deeply stirred, and knowing what he thought of the train-bearer,
+tried to extract some information from him: “What do you mean?” he asked.
+“Do you accuse him too? Do you think they urged him on, and that it was
+they at bottom?”
+
+The word Jesuits was not even spoken, but a big black shadow passed
+athwart the gay sunlight of the dining-room, and for a moment seemed to
+fill it with darkness. “They! ah yes!” exclaimed Don Vigilio, “they are
+everywhere; it is always they! As soon as one weeps, as soon as one dies,
+they are mixed up in it. And this is intended for me too; I am quite
+surprised that I haven’t been carried off.” Then again he raised a dull
+moan of fear, hatred, and anger: “Ah! Paparelli, Paparelli!” And he
+refused to reply any further, but darted scared glances at the walls as
+if from one or another of them he expected to see the train-bearer
+emerge, with his wrinkled flabby face like that of an old maid, his
+furtive mouse-like trot, and his mysterious, invading hands which had
+gone expressly to bring the forgotten figs from the pantry and deposit
+them on the table.
+
+At last the two priests decided to return to the bedroom, where perhaps
+they might be required; and Pierre on entering was overcome by the
+heart-rending scene which the chamber now presented. Doctor Giordano,
+suspecting poison, had for half an hour been trying the usual remedies,
+an emetic and then magnesia. Just then, too, he had made Victorine whip
+some whites of eggs in water. But the disorder was progressing with such
+lightning-like rapidity that all succour was becoming futile. Undressed
+and lying on his back, his bust propped up by pillows and his arms lying
+outstretched over the sheets, Dario looked quite frightful in the sort of
+painful intoxication which characterised that redoubtable and mysterious
+disorder to which already Monsignor Gallo and others had succumbed. The
+young man seemed to be stricken with a sort of dizzy stupor, his eyes
+receded farther and farther into the depth of their dark sockets, whilst
+his whole face became withered, aged as it were, and covered with an
+earthy pallor. A moment previously he had closed his eyes, and the only
+sign that he still lived was the heaving of his chest induced by painful
+respiration. And leaning over his poor dying face stood Benedetta,
+sharing his sufferings, and mastered by such impotent grief that she also
+was unrecognisable, so white, so distracted by anguish, that it seemed as
+if death were gradually taking her at the same time as it was taking him.
+
+In the recess by the window whither Cardinal Boccanera had led Doctor
+Giordano, a few words were exchanged in low tones. “He is lost, is he
+not?”
+
+The doctor made the despairing gesture of one who is vanquished: “Alas!
+yes. I must warn your Eminence that in an hour all will be over.”
+
+A short interval of silence followed. “And the same malady as Gallo, is
+it not?” asked the Cardinal; and as the doctor trembling and averting his
+eyes did not answer he added: “At all events of an infectious fever!”
+
+Giordano well understood what the Cardinal thus asked of him: silence,
+the crime for ever hidden away for the sake of the good renown of his
+mother, the Church. And there could be no loftier, no more tragical
+grandeur than that of this old man of seventy, still so erect and
+sovereign, who would neither suffer a slur to be cast upon his spiritual
+family, nor consent to his human family being dragged into the inevitable
+mire of a sensational murder trial. No, no, there must be none of that,
+there must be silence, the eternal silence in which all becomes
+forgotten.
+
+At last the doctor bowed with his gentle air of discretion. “Evidently,
+of an infectious fever as your Eminence so well says,” he replied.
+
+Two big tears then again appeared in Boccanera’s eyes. Now that he had
+screened the Deity from attack in the person of the Church, his heart as
+a man again bled. He begged the doctor to make a supreme effort, to
+attempt the impossible; but, pointing to the dying man with trembling
+hands, Giordano shook his head. For his own father, his own mother he
+could have done nothing. Death was there. So why weary, why torture a
+dying man, whose sufferings he would only have increased? And then, as
+the Cardinal, finding the end so near at hand, thought of his sister
+Serafina, and lamented that she would not be able to kiss her nephew for
+the last time if she lingered at the Vatican, the doctor offered to fetch
+her in his carriage which was waiting below. It would not take him more
+than twenty minutes, said he, and he would be back in time for the end,
+should he then be needed.
+
+Left to himself in the window recess the Cardinal remained there
+motionless for another moment. With eyes blurred by tears, he gazed
+towards heaven. And his quivering arms were suddenly raised in a gesture
+of ardent entreaty. O God, since the science of man was so limited and
+vain, since that doctor had gone off happy to escape the embarrassment of
+his impotence, O God, why not a miracle which should proclaim the
+splendour of Thy Almighty Power! A miracle, a miracle! that was what the
+Cardinal asked from the depths of his believing soul, with the
+insistence, the imperious entreaty of a Prince of the Earth, who deemed
+that he had rendered considerable services to Heaven by dedicating his
+whole life to the Church. And he asked for that miracle in order that his
+race might be perpetuated, in order that its last male scion might not
+thus miserably perish, but be able to marry that fondly loved cousin, who
+now stood there all woe and tears. A miracle, a miracle for the sake of
+those two dear children! A miracle which would endow the family with
+fresh life: a miracle which would eternise the glorious name of Boccanera
+by enabling an innumerable posterity of valiant ones and faithful ones to
+spring from that young couple!
+
+When the Cardinal returned to the centre of the room he seemed
+transfigured. Faith had dried his eyes, his soul had become strong and
+submissive, exempt from all human weakness. He had placed himself in the
+hands of God, and had resolved that he himself would administer extreme
+unction to Dario. With a gesture he summoned Don Vigilio and led him into
+the little room which served as a chapel, and the key of which he always
+carried. A cupboard had been contrived behind the altar of painted wood,
+and the Cardinal went to it to take both stole and surplice. The coffer
+containing the Holy Oils was likewise there, a very ancient silver coffer
+bearing the Boccanera arms. And on Don Vigilio following the Cardinal
+back into the bed-room they in turn pronounced the Latin words:
+
+“_Pax huic domui_.”
+
+“_Et omnibus habitantibus in ea_.”*
+
+ * “Peace unto this house and unto all who dwell in it.”--Trans.
+
+Death was coming so fast and threatening, that all the usual preparations
+were perforce dispensed with. Neither the two lighted tapers, nor the
+little table covered with white cloth had been provided. And, in the same
+way, Don Vigilio the assistant, having failed to bring the Holy Water
+basin and sprinkler, the Cardinal, as officiating priest, could merely
+make the gesture of blessing the room and the dying man, whilst
+pronouncing the words of the ritual: “_Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo, et
+mundabor; lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor._“*
+
+ * “Sprinkle me, Lord, with hyssop, and purify me; wash me, and
+ make me whiter than snow.”--Trans.
+
+Benedetta on seeing the Cardinal appear carrying the Holy Oils, had with
+a long quiver fallen on her knees at the foot of the bed, whilst,
+somewhat farther away, Pierre and Victorine likewise knelt, overcome by
+the dolorous grandeur of the scene. And the dilated eyes of the
+Contessina, whose face was pale as snow, never quitted her Dario, whom
+she no longer recognised, so earthy was his face, its skin tanned and
+wrinkled like that of an old man. And it was not for their marriage which
+he so much desired that their uncle, the all-powerful Prince of the
+Church, was bringing the Sacrament, but for the supreme rupture, the end
+of all pride, Death which finishes off the haughtiest races, and sweeps
+them away, even as the wind sweeps the dust of the roads.
+
+It was needful that there should be no delay, so the Cardinal promptly
+repeated the Credo in an undertone, “_Credo in unum Deum--_”
+
+“_Amen_,” responded Don Vigilio, who, after the prayers of the ritual,
+stammered the Litanies in order that Heaven might take pity on the
+wretched man who was about to appear before God, if God by a prodigy did
+not spare him.
+
+Then, without taking time to wash his fingers, the Cardinal opened the
+case containing the Holy Oils, and limiting himself to one anointment, as
+is permissible in pressing cases, he deposited a single drop of the oil
+on Dario’s parched mouth which was already withered by death. And in
+doing so he repeated the words of the formula, his heart all aglow with
+faith as he asked that the divine mercy might efface each and every sin
+that the young man had committed by either of his five senses, those five
+portals by which everlasting temptation assails the soul. And the
+Cardinal’s fervour was also instinct with the hope that if God had
+smitten the poor sufferer for his offences, perhaps He would make His
+indulgence entire and even restore him to life as soon as He should have
+forgiven his sins. Life, O Lord, life in order that the ancient line of
+the Boccaneras might yet multiply and continue to serve Thee in battle
+and at the altar until the end of time!
+
+For a moment the Cardinal remained with quivering hands, gazing at the
+mute face, the closed eyes of the dying man, and waiting for the miracle.
+But no sign appeared, not the faintest glimmer brightened that haggard
+countenance, nor did a sigh of relief come from the withered lips as Don
+Vigilio wiped them with a little cotton wool. And the last prayer was
+said, and whilst the frightful silence fell once more the Cardinal,
+followed by his assistant, returned to the chapel. There they both knelt,
+the Cardinal plunging into ardent prayer upon the bare tiles. With his
+eyes raised to the brass crucifix upon the altar he saw nothing, heard
+nothing, but gave himself wholly to his entreaties, supplicating God to
+take him in place of his nephew, if a sacrifice were necessary, and yet
+clinging to the hope that so long as Dario retained a breath of life and
+he himself thus remained on his knees addressing the Deity, he might
+succeed in pacifying the wrath of Heaven. He was both so humble and so
+great. Would not accord surely be established between God and a
+Boccanera? The old palace might have fallen to the ground, he himself
+would not even have felt the toppling of its beams.
+
+In the bed-room, however, nothing had yet stirred beneath the weight of
+tragic majesty which the ceremony had left there. It was only now that
+Dario raised his eyelids, and when on looking at his hands he saw them so
+aged and wasted the depths of his eyes kindled with an expression of
+immense regretfulness that life should be departing. Doubtless it was at
+this moment of lucidity amidst the kind of intoxication with which the
+poison overwhelmed him, that he for the first time realised his perilous
+condition. Ah! to die, amidst such pain, such physical degradation, what
+a revolting horror for that frivolous and egotistical man, that lover of
+beauty, joy, and light, who knew not how to suffer! In him ferocious fate
+chastised racial degeneracy with too heavy a hand. He became horrified
+with himself, seized with childish despair and terror, which lent him
+strength enough to sit up and gaze wildly about the room, in order to see
+if every one had not abandoned him. And when his eyes lighted on
+Benedetta still kneeling at the foot of the bed, a supreme impulse
+carried him towards her, he stretched forth both arms as passionately as
+his strength allowed and stammered her name: “O Benedetta, Benedetta!”
+
+She, motionless in the stupor of her anxiety, had not taken her eyes from
+his face. The horrible disorder which was carrying off her lover, seemed
+also to possess and annihilate her more and more, even as he himself grew
+weaker and weaker. Her features were assuming an immaterial whiteness;
+and through the void of her clear eyeballs one began to espy her soul.
+However, when she perceived him thus resuscitating and calling her with
+arms outstretched, she in her turn arose and standing beside the bed made
+answer: “I am coming, my Dario, here I am.”
+
+And then Pierre and Victorine, still on their knees, beheld a sublime
+deed of such extraordinary grandeur that they remained rooted to the
+floor, spell-bound as in the presence of some supra-terrestrial spectacle
+in which human beings may not intervene. Benedetta herself spoke and
+acted like one freed from all social and conventional ties, already
+beyond life, only seeing and addressing beings and things from a great
+distance, from the depths of the unknown in which she was about to
+disappear.
+
+“Ah! my Dario, so an attempt has been made to part us! It was in order
+that I might never belong to you--that we might never be happy, that your
+death was resolved upon, and it was known that with your life my own must
+cease! And it is that man who is killing you! Yes, he is your murderer,
+even if the actual blow has been dealt by another. He is the first
+cause--he who stole me from you when I was about to become yours, he who
+ravaged our lives, and who breathed around us the hateful poison which is
+killing us. Ah! how I hate him, how I hate him; how I should like to
+crush him with my hate before I die with you!”
+
+She did not raise her voice, but spoke those terrible words in a deep
+murmur, simply and passionately. Prada was not even named, and she
+scarcely turned towards Pierre--who knelt, paralysed, behind her--to add
+with a commanding air: “You will see his father, I charge you to tell him
+that I cursed his son! That kind-hearted hero loved me well--I love him
+even now, and the words you will carry to him from me will rend his
+heart. But I desire that he should know--he must know, for the sake of
+truth and justice.”
+
+Distracted by terror, sobbing amidst a last convulsion, Dario again
+stretched forth his arms, feeling that she was no longer looking at him,
+that her clear eyes were no longer fixed upon his own: “Benedetta,
+Benedetta!”
+
+“I am coming, I am coming, my Dario--I am here!” she responded, drawing
+yet nearer to the bedside and almost touching him. “Ah!” she went on,
+“that vow which I made to the Madonna to belong to none, not even you,
+until God should allow it by the blessing of one of his priests! Ah! I
+set a noble, a divine pride in remaining immaculate for him who should be
+the one master of my soul and body. And that chastity which I was so
+proud of, I defended it against the other as one defends oneself against
+a wolf, and I defended it against you with tears for fear of sacrilege.
+And if you only knew what terrible struggles I was forced to wage with
+myself, for I loved you and longed to be yours, like a woman who accepts
+the whole of love, the love that makes wife and mother! Ah! my vow to the
+Madonna--with what difficulty did I keep it when the old blood of our
+race arose in me like a tempest; and now what a disaster!” She drew yet
+nearer, and her low voice became more ardent: “You remember that evening
+when you came back with a knife-thrust in your shoulder. I thought you
+dead, and cried aloud with rage at the idea of losing you like that. I
+insulted the Madonna and regretted that I had not damned myself with you
+that we might die together, so tightly clasped that we must needs be
+buried together also. And to think that such a terrible warning was of no
+avail! I was blind and foolish; and now you are again stricken, again
+being taken from my love. Ah! my wretched pride, my idiotic dream!”
+
+That which now rang out in her stifled voice was the anger of the
+practical woman that she had ever been, all superstition notwithstanding.
+Could the Madonna, who was so maternal, desire the woe of lovers? No,
+assuredly not. Nor did the angels make the mere absence of a priest a
+cause for weeping over the transports of true and mutual love. Was not
+such love holy in itself, and did not the angels rather smile upon it and
+burst into gladsome song! And ah! how one cheated oneself by not loving
+to heart’s content under the sun, when the blood of life coursed through
+one’s veins!
+
+“Benedetta! Benedetta!” repeated the dying man, full of child-like terror
+at thus going off all alone into the depths of the black and everlasting
+night.
+
+“Here I am, my Dario, I am coming!”
+
+Then, as she fancied that the servant, albeit motionless, had stirred, as
+if to rise and interfere, she added: “Leave me, leave me, Victorine,
+nothing in the world can henceforth prevent it. A moment ago, when I was
+on my knees, something roused me and urged me on. I know whither I am
+going. And besides, did I not swear on the night of the knife thrust? Did
+I not promise to belong to him alone, even in the earth if it were
+necessary? I must embrace him, and he will carry me away! We shall be
+dead, and we shall be wedded in spite of all, and for ever and for ever!”
+
+She stepped back to the dying man, and touched him: “Here I am, my Dario,
+here I am!”
+
+Then came the apogee. Amidst growing exaltation, buoyed up by a blaze of
+love, careless of glances, candid like a lily, she divested herself of
+her garments and stood forth so white, that neither marble statue, nor
+dove, nor snow itself was ever whiter. “Here I am, my Dario, here I am!”
+
+Recoiling almost to the ground as at sight of an apparition, the glorious
+flash of a holy vision, Pierre and Victorine gazed at her with dazzled
+eyes. The servant had not stirred to prevent this extraordinary action,
+seized as she was with that shrinking reverential terror which comes upon
+one in presence of the wild, mad deeds of faith and passion. And the
+priest, whose limbs were paralysed, felt that something so sublime was
+passing that he could only quiver in distraction. And no thought of
+impurity came to him on beholding that lily, snowy whiteness. All candour
+and all nobility as she was, that virgin shocked him no more than some
+sculptured masterpiece of genius.
+
+“Here I am, my Dario, here I am.”
+
+She had lain herself down beside the spouse whom she had chosen, she had
+clasped the dying man whose arms only had enough strength left to fold
+themselves around her. Death was stealing him from her, but she would go
+with him; and again she murmured: “My Dario, here I am.”
+
+And at that moment, against the wall at the head of the bed, Pierre
+perceived the escutcheon of the Boccaneras, embroidered in gold and
+coloured silks on a groundwork of violet velvet. There was the winged
+dragon belching flames, there was the fierce and glowing motto “_Bocca
+nera, Alma rossa_” (black mouth, red soul), the mouth darkened by a roar,
+the soul flaming like a brazier of faith and love. And behold! all that
+old race of passion and violence with its tragic legends had reappeared,
+its blood bubbling up afresh to urge that last and adorable daughter of
+the line to those terrifying and prodigious nuptials in death. And to
+Pierre that escutcheon recalled another memory, that of the portrait of
+Cassia Boccanera the _amorosa_ and avengeress who had flung herself into
+the Tiber with her brother Ercole and the corpse of her lover Flavio. Was
+there not here even with Benedetta the same despairing clasp seeking to
+vanquish death, the same savagery in hurling oneself into the abyss with
+the corpse of the one’s only love? Benedetta and Cassia were as sisters,
+Cassia, who lived anew in the old painting in the _salon_ overhead,
+Benedetta who was here dying of her lover’s death, as though she were but
+the other’s spirit. Both had the same delicate childish features, the
+same mouth of passion, the same large dreamy eyes set in the same round,
+practical, and stubborn head.
+
+“My Dario, here I am!”
+
+For a second, which seemed an eternity, they clasped one another, she
+neither repelled nor terrified by the disorder which made him so
+unrecognisable, but displaying a delirious passion, a holy frenzy as if
+to pass beyond life, to penetrate with him into the black Unknown. And
+beneath the shock of the felicity at last offered to him he expired, with
+his arms yet convulsively wound around her as though indeed to carry her
+off. Then, whether from grief or from bliss amidst that embrace of death,
+there came such a rush of blood to her heart that the organ burst: she
+died on her lover’s neck, both tightly and for ever clasped in one
+another’s arms.
+
+There was a faint sigh. Victorine understood and drew near, while Pierre,
+also erect, remained quivering with the tearful admiration of one who has
+beheld the sublime.
+
+“Look, look!” whispered the servant, “she no longer moves, she no longer
+breathes. Ah! my poor child, my poor child, she is dead!”
+
+Then the priest murmured: “Oh! God, how beautiful they are.”
+
+It was true, never had loftier and more resplendent beauty appeared on
+the faces of the dead. Dario’s countenance, so lately aged and earthen,
+had assumed the pallor and nobility of marble, its features lengthened
+and simplified as by a transport of ineffable joy. Benedetta remained
+very grave, her lips curved by ardent determination, whilst her whole
+face was expressive of dolorous yet infinite beatitude in a setting of
+infinite whiteness. Their hair mingled, and their eyes, which had
+remained open, continued gazing as into one another’s souls with eternal,
+caressing sweetness. They were for ever linked, soaring into immortality
+amidst the enchantment of their union, vanquishers of death, radiant with
+the rapturous beauty of love, the conqueror, the immortal.
+
+But Victorine’s sobs at last burst forth, mingled with such lamentations
+that great confusion followed. Pierre, now quite beside himself, in some
+measure failed to understand how it was that the room suddenly became
+invaded by terrified people. The Cardinal and Don Vigilio, however, must
+have hastened in from the chapel; and at the same moment, no doubt,
+Doctor Giordano must have returned with Donna Serafina, for both were now
+there, she stupefied by the blows which had thus fallen on the house in
+her absence, whilst he, the doctor, displayed the perturbation and
+astonishment which comes upon the oldest practitioners when facts seem to
+give the lie to their experience. However, he sought an explanation of
+Benedetta’s death, and hesitatingly ascribed it to aneurism, or possibly
+embolism.
+
+Thereupon Victorine, like a servant whose grief makes her the equal of
+her employers, boldly interrupted him: “Ah! Sir,” said she, “they loved
+each other too fondly; did not that suffice for them to die together?”
+
+Meantime Donna Serafina, after kissing the poor children on the brow,
+desired to close their eyes; but she could not succeed in doing so, for
+the lids lifted directly she removed her finger and once more the eyes
+began to smile at one another, to exchange in all fixity their loving and
+eternal glance. And then as she spoke of parting the bodies, Victorine
+again protested: “Oh! madame, oh! madame,” she said, “you would have to
+break their arms. Cannot you see that their fingers are almost dug into
+one another’s shoulders? No, they can never be parted!”
+
+Thereupon Cardinal Boccanera intervened. God had not granted the miracle;
+and he, His minister, was livid, tearless, and full of icy despair. But
+he waved his arm with a sovereign gesture of absolution and
+sanctification, as if, Prince of the Church that he was, disposing of the
+will of Heaven, he consented that the lovers should appear in that
+embrace before the supreme tribunal. In presence of such wondrous love,
+indeed, profoundly stirred by the sufferings of their lives and the
+beauty of their death, he showed a broad and lofty contempt for mundane
+proprieties. “Leave them, leave me, my sister,” said he, “do not disturb
+their slumber. Let their eyes remain open since they desire to gaze on
+one another till the end of time without ever wearying. And let them
+sleep in one another’s arms since in their lives they did not sin, and
+only locked themselves in that embrace in order that they might be laid
+together in the ground.”
+
+And then, again becoming a Roman Prince whose proud blood was yet hot
+with old-time deeds of battle and passion, he added: “Two Boccaneras may
+well sleep like that; all Rome will admire them and weep for them. Leave
+them, leave them together, my sister. God knows them and awaits them!”
+
+All knelt, and the Cardinal himself repeated the prayers for the dead.
+Night was coming, increasing gloom stole into the chamber, where two
+burning tapers soon shone out like stars.
+
+And then, without knowing how, Pierre again found himself in the little
+deserted garden on the bank of the Tiber. Suffocating with fatigue and
+grief, he must have come thither for fresh air. Darkness shrouded the
+charming nook where the streamlet of water falling from the tragic mask
+into the ancient sarcophagus ever sang its shrill and flute-like song;
+and the laurel-bush which shaded it, and the bitter box-plants and the
+orange-trees skirting the paths now formed but vague masses under the
+blue-black sky. Ah! how gay and sweet had that melancholy garden been in
+the morning, and what a desolate echo it retained of Benedetta’s winsome
+laughter, all that fine delight in coming happiness which now lay prone
+upstairs, steeped in the nothingness of things and beings! So dolorous
+was the pang which came to Pierre’s heart that he burst into sobs, seated
+on the same broken column where she had sat, and encompassed by the same
+atmosphere that she had breathed, in which still lingered the perfume of
+her presence.
+
+But all at once a distant clock struck six, and the young priest started
+on remembering that he was to be received by the Pope that very evening
+at nine. Yet three more hours! He had not thought of that interview
+during the terrifying catastrophe, and it seemed to him now as if months
+and months had gone by, as if the appointment were some very old one
+which a man is only able to keep after years of absence, when he has
+grown aged and had his heart and brain modified by innumerable
+experiences. However, he made an effort and rose to his feet. In three
+hours’ time he would go to the Vatican and at last he would see the Pope.
+
+
+
+
+
+PART V.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+
+THAT evening, when Pierre emerged from the Borgo in front of the Vatican,
+a sonorous stroke rang out from the clock amidst the deep silence of the
+dark and sleepy district. It was only half-past eight, and being in
+advance the young priest resolved to wait some twenty minutes in order to
+reach the doors of the papal apartments precisely at nine, the hour fixed
+for his audience.
+
+This respite brought him some relief amidst the infinite emotion and
+grief which gripped his heart. That tragic afternoon which he had spent
+in the chamber of death, where Dario and Benedetta now slept the eternal
+sleep in one another’s arms, had left him very weary. He was haunted by a
+wild, dolorous vision of the two lovers, and involuntary sighs came from
+his lips whilst tears continually moistened his eyes. He had been
+altogether unable to eat that evening. Ah! how he would have liked to
+hide himself and weep at his ease! His heart melted at each fresh
+thought. The pitiful death of the lovers intensified the grievous feeling
+with which his book was instinct, and impelled him to yet greater
+compassion, a perfect anguish of charity for all who suffered in the
+world. And he was so distracted by the thought of the many physical and
+moral sores of Paris and of Rome, where he had beheld so much unjust and
+abominable suffering, that at each step he took he feared lest he should
+burst into sobs with arms upstretched towards the blackness of heaven.
+
+In the hope of somewhat calming himself he began to walk slowly across
+the Piazza of St. Peter’s, now all darkness and solitude. On arriving he
+had fancied that he was losing himself in a murky sea, but by degrees his
+eyes grew accustomed to the dimness. The vast expanse was only lighted by
+the four candelabra at the corners of the obelisk and by infrequent lamps
+skirting the buildings which run on either hand towards the Basilica.
+Under the colonnade, too, other lamps threw yellow gleams across the
+forest of pillars, showing up their stone trunks in fantastic fashion;
+while on the piazza only the pale, ghostly obelisk was at all distinctly
+visible. Pierre could scarcely perceive the dim, silent façade of St.
+Peter’s; whilst of the dome he merely divined a gigantic, bluey roundness
+faintly shadowed against the sky. In the obscurity he at first heard the
+plashing of the fountains without being at all able to see them, but on
+approaching he at last distinguished the slender phantoms of the ever
+rising jets which fell again in spray. And above the vast square
+stretched the vast and moonless sky of a deep velvety blue, where the
+stars were large and radiant like carbuncles; Charles’s Wain, with golden
+wheels and golden shaft tilted back as it were, over the roof of the
+Vatican, and Orion, bedizened with the three bright stars of his belt,
+showing magnificently above Rome, in the direction of the Via Giulia.
+
+At last Pierre raised his eyes to the Vatican, but facing the piazza
+there was here merely a confused jumble of walls, amidst which only two
+gleams of light appeared on the floor of the papal apartments. The Court
+of San Damaso was, however, lighted, for the conservatory-like glass-work
+of two of its sides sparkled as with the reflection of gas lamps which
+could not be seen. For a time there was not a sound or sign of movement,
+but at last two persons crossed the expanse of the piazza, and then came
+a third who in his turn disappeared, nothing remaining but a rhythmical
+far-away echo of steps. The spot was indeed a perfect desert, there were
+neither promenaders nor passers-by, nor was there even the shadow of a
+prowler in the pillared forest of the colonnade, which was as empty as
+the wild primeval forests of the world’s infancy. And what a solemn
+desert it was, full of the silence of haughty desolation. Never had so
+vast and black a presentment of slumber, so instinct with the sovereign
+nobility of death, appeared to Pierre.
+
+At ten minutes to nine he at last made up his mind and went towards the
+bronze portal. Only one of the folding doors was now open at the end of
+the right-hand porticus, where the increasing density of the gloom
+steeped everything in night. Pierre remembered the instructions which
+Monsignor Nani had given him; at each door that he reached he was to ask
+for Signor Squadra without adding a word, and thereupon each door would
+open and he would have nothing to do but to let himself be guided on. No
+one but the prelate now knew that he was there, since Benedetta, the only
+being to whom he had confided the secret, was dead. When he had crossed
+the threshold of the bronze doors and found himself in presence of the
+motionless, sleeping Swiss Guard, who was on duty there, he simply spoke
+the words agreed upon: “Signor Squadra.” And as the Guard did not stir,
+did not seek to bar his way, he passed on, turning into the vestibule of
+the Scala Pia, the stone stairway which ascends to the Court of San
+Damaso. And not a soul was to be seen: there was but the faint sound of
+his own light footsteps and the sleepy glow of the gas jets whose light
+was softly whitened by globes of frosted glass. Up above, on reaching the
+courtyard he found it a solitude, whose slumber seemed sepulchral amidst
+the mournful gleams of the gas lamps which cast a pallid reflection on
+the lofty glass-work of the façades. And feeling somewhat nervous,
+affected by the quiver which pervaded all that void and silence, Pierre
+hastened on, turning to the right, towards the low flight of steps which
+leads to the staircase of the Pope’s private apartments.
+
+Here stood a superb gendarme in full uniform. “Signor Squadra,” said
+Pierre, and without a word the gendarme pointed to the stairs.
+
+The young man went up. It was a broad stairway, with low steps,
+balustrade of white marble, and walls covered with yellowish stucco. The
+gas, burning in globes of round glass, seemed to have been already turned
+down in a spirit of prudent economy. And in the glimmering light nothing
+could have been more mournfully solemn than that cold and pallid
+staircase. On each landing there was a Swiss Guard, halbard in hand, and
+in the heavy slumber spreading through the palace one only heard the
+regular monotonous footsteps of these men, ever marching up and down, in
+order no doubt that they might not succumb to the benumbing influence of
+their surroundings.
+
+Amidst the invading dimness and the quivering silence the ascent of the
+stairs seemed interminable to Pierre, who by the time he reached the
+second-floor landing imagined that he had been climbing for ages. There,
+outside the glass door of the Sala Clementina, only the right-hand half
+of which was open, a last Swiss Guard stood watching.
+
+“Signor Squadra,” Pierre said again, and the Guard drew back to let him
+pass.
+
+The Sala Clementina, spacious enough by daylight, seemed immense at that
+nocturnal hour, in the twilight glimmer of its lamps. All the opulent
+decorative-work, sculpture, painting, and gilding became blended, the
+walls assuming a tawny vagueness amidst which appeared bright patches
+like the sparkle of precious stones. There was not an article of
+furniture, nothing but the endless pavement stretching away into the
+semi-darkness. At last, however, near a door at the far end Pierre espied
+some men dozing on a bench. They were three Swiss Guards. “Signor
+Squadra,” he said to them.
+
+One of the Guards thereupon slowly rose and left the hall, and Pierre
+understood that he was to wait. He did not dare to move, disturbed as he
+was by the sound of his own footsteps on the paved floor, so he contented
+himself with gazing around and picturing the crowds which at times
+peopled that vast apartment, the first of the many papal ante-chambers.
+But before long the Guard returned, and behind him, on the threshold of
+the adjoining room, appeared a man of forty or thereabouts, who was clad
+in black from head to foot and suggested a cross between a butler and a
+beadle. He had a good-looking, clean-shaven face, with somewhat
+pronounced nose and large, clear, fixed eyes. “Signor Squadra,” said
+Pierre for the last time.
+
+The man bowed as if to say that he was Signor Squadra, and then, with a
+fresh reverence, he invited the priest to follow him. Thereupon at a
+leisurely step, one behind the other, they began to thread the
+interminable suite of waiting-rooms. Pierre, who was acquainted with the
+ceremonial, of which he had often spoken with Narcisse, recognised the
+different apartments as he passed through them, recalling their names and
+purpose, and peopling them in imagination with the various officials of
+the papal retinue who have the right to occupy them. These according to
+their rank cannot go beyond certain doors, so that the persons who are to
+have audience of the Pope are passed on from the servants to the Noble
+Guards, from the Noble Guards to the honorary _Camerieri_, and from the
+latter to the _Camerieri segreti_, until they at last reach the presence
+of the Holy Father. At eight o’clock, however, the ante-rooms empty and
+become both deserted and dim, only a few lamps being left alight upon the
+pier tables standing here and there against the walls.
+
+And first Pierre came to the ante-room of the _bussolanti_, mere ushers
+clad in red velvet broidered with the papal arms, who conduct visitors to
+the door of the ante-room of honour. At that late hour only one of them
+was left there, seated on a bench in such a dark corner that his purple
+tunic looked quite black. Then the Hall of the Gendarmes was crossed,
+where according to the regulations the secretaries of cardinals and other
+high personages await their masters’ return; and this was now completely
+empty, void both of the handsome blue uniforms with white shoulder belts
+and the cassocks of fine black cloth which mingled in it during the
+brilliant reception hours. Empty also was the following room, a smaller
+one reserved to the Palatine Guards, who are recruited among the Roman
+middle class and wear black tunics with gold epaulets and shakoes
+surmounted by red plumes. Then Pierre and his guide turned into another
+series of apartments, and again was the first one empty. This was the
+Hall of the Arras, a superb waiting-room with lofty painted ceiling and
+admirable Gobelins tapestry designed by Audran and representing the
+miracles of Jesus. And empty also was the ante-chamber of the Noble
+Guards which followed, with its wooden stools, its pier table on the
+right-hand surmounted by a large crucifix standing between two lamps, and
+its large door opening at the far end into another but smaller room, a
+sort of alcove indeed, where there is an altar at which the Holy Father
+says mass by himself whilst those privileged to be present remain
+kneeling on the marble slabs of the outer apartment which is resplendent
+with the dazzling uniforms of the Guards. And empty likewise was the
+ensuing ante-room of honour, otherwise the grand throne-room, where the
+Pope receives two or three hundred people at a time in public audience.
+The throne, an arm-chair of elaborate pattern, gilded, and upholstered
+with red velvet, stands under a velvet canopy of the same hue, in front
+of the windows. Beside it is the cushion on which the Pope rests his foot
+in order that it may be kissed. Then facing one another, right and left
+of the room, there are two pier tables, on one of which is a clock and on
+the other a crucifix between lofty candelabra with feet of gilded wood.
+The wall hangings, of red silk damask with a Louis XIV palm pattern, are
+topped by a pompous frieze, framing a ceiling decorated with allegorical
+figures and attributes, and it is only just in front of the throne that a
+Smyrna carpet covers the magnificent marble pavement. On the days of
+private audience, when the Pope remains in the little throne-room or at
+times in his bed-chamber, the grand throne-room becomes simply the
+ante-room of honour, where high dignitaries of the Church, ambassadors,
+and great civilian personages, wait their turns. Two _Camerieri_, one in
+violet coat, the other of the Cape and the Sword, here do duty, receiving
+from the _bussolanti_ the persons who are to be honoured with audiences
+and conducting them to the door of the next room, the secret or private
+ante-chamber, where they hand them over to the _Camerieri segreti_.
+
+Signor Squadra who, walking on with slow and silent steps, had not yet
+once turned round, paused for a moment on reaching the door of the
+_anticamera segreta_ so as to give Pierre time to breathe and recover
+himself somewhat before crossing the threshold of the sanctuary. The
+_Camerieri segreti_ alone had the right to occupy that last ante-chamber,
+and none but the cardinals might wait there till the Pope should
+condescend to receive them. And so when Signor Squadra made up his mind
+to admit Pierre, the latter could not restrain a slight nervous shiver as
+if he were passing into some redoubtable mysterious sphere beyond the
+limits of the lower world. In the daytime a Noble Guard stood on sentry
+duty before the door, but the latter was now free of access, and the room
+within proved as empty as all the others. It was rather narrow, almost
+like a passage, with two windows overlooking the new district of the
+castle fields and a third one facing the Piazza of St. Peter’s. Near the
+last was a door conducting to the little throne-room, and between this
+door and the window stood a small table at which a secretary, now absent,
+usually sat. And here again, as in all the other rooms, one found a
+gilded pier table surmounted by a crucifix flanked by a pair of lamps. In
+a corner too there was a large clock, loudly ticking in its ebony case
+incrusted with brass-work. Still there was nothing to awaken curiosity
+under the panelled and gilded ceiling unless it were the wall-hangings of
+red damask, on which yellow scutcheons displaying the Keys and the Tiara
+alternated with armorial lions, each with a paw resting on a globe.
+
+Signor Squadra, however, now noticed that Pierre still carried his hat in
+his hand, whereas according to etiquette he should have left it in the
+hall of the _bussolanti_, only cardinals being privileged to carry their
+hats with them into the Pope’s presence. Accordingly he discreetly took
+the young priest’s from him, and deposited it on the pier table to
+indicate that it must at least remain there. Then, without a word, by a
+simple bow he gave Pierre to understand that he was about to announce him
+to his Holiness, and that he must be good enough to wait for a few
+minutes in that room.
+
+On being left to himself Pierre drew a long breath. He was stifling; his
+heart was beating as though it would burst. Nevertheless his mind
+remained clear, and in spite of the semi-obscurity he had been able to
+form some idea of the famous and magnificent apartments of the Pope, a
+suite of splendid _salons_ with tapestried or silken walls, gilded or
+painted friezes, and frescoed ceilings. By way of furniture, however,
+there were only pier table, stools,* and thrones. And the lamps and the
+clocks, and the crucifixes, even the thrones, were all presents brought
+from the four quarters of the world in the great fervent days of jubilee.
+There was no sign of comfort, everything was pompous, stiff, cold, and
+inconvenient. All olden Italy was there, with its perpetual display and
+lack of intimate, cosy life. It had been necessary to lay a few carpets
+over the superb marble slabs which froze one’s feet; and some
+_calorifères_ had even lately been installed, but it was not thought
+prudent to light them lest the variations of temperature should give the
+Pope a cold. However, that which more particularly struck Pierre now that
+he stood there waiting was the extraordinary silence which prevailed all
+around, silence so deep that it seemed as if all the dark quiescence of
+that huge, somniferous Vatican were concentrated in that one suite of
+lifeless, sumptuous rooms, which the motionless flamelets of the lamps as
+dimly illumined.
+
+ * M. Zola seems to have fallen into error here. Many of the seats,
+ which are of peculiar antique design, do, in the lower part,
+ resemble stools, but they have backs, whereas a stool proper has
+ none. Briefly, these seats, which are entirely of wood, are not
+ unlike certain old-fashioned hall chairs.--Trans.
+
+All at once the ebony clock struck nine and the young man felt
+astonished. What! had only ten minutes elapsed since he had crossed the
+threshold of the bronze doors below? He felt as if he had been walking on
+for days and days. Then, desiring to overcome the nervous feeling which
+oppressed him--for he ever feared lest his enforced calmness should
+collapse amidst a flood of tears--he began to walk up and down, passing
+in front of the clock, glancing at the crucifix on the pier table, and
+the globe of the lamp on which had remained the mark of a servant’s
+greasy fingers. And the light was so faint and yellow that he felt
+inclined to turn the lamp up, but did not dare. Then he found himself
+with his brow resting against one of the panes of the window facing the
+Piazza of St. Peter’s, and for a moment he was thunderstruck, for between
+the imperfectly closed shutters he could see all Rome, as he had seen it
+one day from the _loggie_ of Raffaelle, and as he had pictured Leo XIII
+contemplating it from the window of his bed-room. However, it was now
+Rome by night, Rome spreading out into the depths of the gloom, as
+limitless as the starry sky. And in that sea of black waves one could
+only with certainty identify the larger thoroughfares which the white
+brightness of electric lights turned, as it were, into Milky Ways. All
+the rest showed but a swarming of little yellow sparks, the crumbs, as it
+were, of a half-extinguished heaven swept down upon the earth. Occasional
+constellations of bright stars, tracing mysterious figures, vainly
+endeavoured to show forth distinctly, but they were submerged, blotted
+out by the general chaos which suggested the dust of some old planet that
+had crumbled there, losing its splendour and reduced to mere
+phosphorescent sand. And how immense was the blackness thus sprinkled
+with light, how huge the mass of obscurity and mystery into which the
+Eternal City with its seven and twenty centuries, its ruins, its
+monuments, its people, its history seemed to have been merged. You could
+no longer tell where it began or where it ended, whether it spread to the
+farthest recesses of the gloom, or whether it were so reduced that the
+sun on rising would illumine but a little pile of ashes.
+
+However, in spite of all Pierre’s efforts, his nervous anguish increased
+each moment, even in presence of that ocean of darkness which displayed
+such sovereign quiescence. He drew away from the window and quivered from
+head to foot on hearing a faint footfall and thinking it was that of
+Signor Squadra approaching to fetch him. The sound came from an adjacent
+apartment, the little throne-room, whose door, he now perceived, had
+remained ajar. And at last, as he heard nothing further, he yielded to
+his feverish impatience and peeped into this room which he found to be
+fairly spacious, again hung with red damask, and containing a gilded
+arm-chair, covered with red velvet under a canopy of the same material.
+And again there was the inevitable pier table, with a tall ivory
+crucifix, a clock, a pair of lamps, a pair of candelabra, a pair of large
+vases on pedestals, and two smaller ones of Sevres manufacture decorated
+with the Holy Father’s portrait. At the same time, however, the room
+displayed rather more comfort, for a Smyrna carpet covered the whole of
+the marble floor, while a few arm-chairs stood against the walls, and an
+imitation chimney-piece, draped with damask, served as counterpart to the
+pier table. As a rule the Pope, whose bed-chamber communicated with this
+little throne-room, received in the latter such persons as he desired to
+honour. And Pierre’s shiver became more pronounced at the idea that in
+all likelihood he would merely have the throne-room to cross and that Leo
+XIII was yonder behind its farther door. Why was he kept waiting, he
+wondered? He had been told of mysterious audiences granted at a similar
+hour to personages who had been received in similar silent fashion, great
+personages whose names were only mentioned in the lowest whispers. With
+regard to himself no doubt, it was because he was considered compromising
+that there was a desire to receive him in this manner unknown to the
+personages of the Court, and so as to speak with him at ease. Then, all
+at once, he understood the cause of the noise he had recently heard, for
+beside the lamp on the pier table of the little throne-room he saw a kind
+of butler’s tray containing some soiled plates, knives, forks, and
+spoons, with a bottle and a glass, which had evidently just been removed
+from a supper table. And he realised that Signor Squadra, having seen
+these things in the Pope’s room, had brought them there, and had then
+gone in again, perhaps to tidy up. He knew also of the Pope’s frugality,
+how he took his meals all alone at a little round table, everything being
+brought to him in that tray, a plate of meat, a plate of vegetables, a
+little Bordeaux claret as prescribed by his doctor, and a large allowance
+of beef broth of which he was very fond. In the same way as others might
+offer a cup of tea, he was wont to offer cups of broth to the old
+cardinals his friends and favourites, quite an invigorating little treat
+which these old bachelors much enjoyed. And, O ye orgies of Alexander VI,
+ye banquets and _galas_ of Julius II and Leo X, only eight _lire_ a
+day--six shillings and fourpence--were allowed to defray the cost of Leo
+XIII’s table! However, just as that recollection occurred to Pierre, he
+again heard a slight noise, this time in his Holiness’s bed-chamber, and
+thereupon, terrified by his indiscretion, he hastened to withdraw from
+the entrance of the throne-room which, lifeless and quiescent though it
+was, seemed in his agitation to flare as with sudden fire.
+
+Then, quivering too violently to be able to remain still, he began to
+walk up and down the ante-chamber. He remembered that Narcisse had spoken
+to him of that Signor Squadra, his Holiness’s cherished valet, whose
+importance and influence were so great. He alone, on reception days, was
+able to prevail on the Pope to don a clean cassock if the one he was
+wearing happened to be soiled by snuff. And though his Holiness
+stubbornly shut himself up alone in his bed-room every night from a
+spirit of independence, which some called the anxiety of a miser
+determined to sleep alone with his treasure, Signor Squadra at all events
+occupied an adjoining chamber, and was ever on the watch, ready to
+respond to the faintest call. Again, it was he who respectfully
+intervened whenever his Holiness sat up too late or worked too long. But
+on this point it was difficult to induce the Pope to listen to reason.
+During his hours of insomnia he would often rise and send Squadra to
+fetch a secretary in order that he might detail some memoranda or sketch
+out an encyclical letter. When the drafting of one of the latter
+impassioned him he would have spent days and nights over it, just as
+formerly, when claiming proficiency in Latin verse, he had often let the
+dawn surprise him whilst he was polishing a line. But, indeed, he slept
+very little, his brain ever being at work, ever scheming out the
+realisation of some former ideas. His memory alone seemed to have
+slightly weakened during recent times.
+
+Pierre, as he slowly paced to and fro, gradually became absorbed in his
+thoughts of that lofty and sovereign personality. From the petty details
+of the Pope’s daily existence, he passed to his intellectual life, to the
+_rôle_ which he was certainly bent on playing as a great pontiff. And
+Pierre asked himself which of his two hundred and fifty-seven
+predecessors, the long line of saints and criminals, men of mediocrity
+and men of genius, he most desired to resemble. Was it one of the first
+humble popes, those who followed on during the first three centuries,
+mere heads of burial guilds, fraternal pastors of the Christian
+community? Was it Pope Damasus, the first great builder, the man of
+letters who took delight in intellectual matters, the ardent believer who
+is said to have opened the Catacombs to the piety of the faithful? Was it
+Leo III, who by crowning Charlemagne boldly consummated the rupture with
+the schismatic East and conveyed the Empire to the West by the
+all-powerful will of God and His Church, which thenceforth disposed of
+the crowns of monarchs? Was it the terrible Gregory VII, the purifier of
+the temple, the sovereign of kings; was it Innocent III or Boniface VIII,
+those masters of souls, nations, and thrones, who, armed with the fierce
+weapon of excommunication, reigned with such despotism over the terrified
+middle ages that Catholicism was never nearer the attainment of its dream
+of universal dominion? Was it Urban II or Gregory IX or another of those
+popes in whom flared the red Crusading passion which urged the nations on
+to the conquest of the unknown and the divine? Was it Alexander III, who
+defended the Holy See against the Empire, and at last conquered and set
+his foot on the neck of Frederick Barbarossa? Was it, long after the
+sorrows of Avignon, Julius II, who wore the cuirass and once more
+strengthened the political power of the papacy? Was it Leo X, the
+pompous, glorious patron of the Renascence, of a whole great century of
+art, whose mind, however, was possessed of so little penetration and
+foresight that he looked on Luther as a mere rebellious monk? Was it Pius
+V, who personified dark and avenging reaction, the fire of the stakes
+that punished the heretic world? Was it some other of the popes who
+reigned after the Council of Trent with faith absolute, belief
+re-established in its full integrity, the Church saved by pride and the
+stubborn upholding of every dogma? Or was it a pope of the decline, such
+as Benedict XIV, the man of vast intelligence, the learned theologian
+who, as his hands were tied, and he could not dispose of the kingdoms of
+the world, spent a worthy life in regulating the affairs of heaven?
+
+In this wise, in Pierre’s mind there spread out the whole history of the
+popes, the most prodigious of all histories, showing fortune in every
+guise, the lowest, the most wretched, as well as the loftiest and most
+dazzling; whilst an obstinate determination to live enabled the papacy to
+survive everything--conflagrations, massacres, and the downfall of many
+nations, for always did it remain militant and erect in the persons of
+its popes, that most extraordinary of all lines of absolute, conquering,
+and domineering sovereigns, every one of them--even the puny and
+humble--masters of the world, every one of them glorious with the
+imperishable glory of heaven when they were thus evoked in that ancient
+Vatican, where their spirits assuredly awoke at night and prowled about
+the endless galleries and spreading halls in that tomb-like silence whose
+quiver came no doubt from the light touch of their gliding steps over the
+marble slabs.
+
+However, Pierre was now thinking that he indeed knew which of the great
+popes Leo XIII most desired to resemble. It was first Gregory the Great,
+the conqueror and organiser of the early days of Catholic power. He had
+come of ancient Roman stock, and in his heart there was a little of the
+blood of the emperors. He administered Rome after it had been saved from
+the Goths, cultivated the ecclesiastical domains, and divided earthly
+wealth into thirds, one for the poor, one for the clergy, and one for the
+Church. Then too he was the first to establish the Propaganda, sending
+his priests forth to civilise and pacify the nations, and carrying his
+conquests so far as to win Great Britain over to the divine law of
+Christ. And the second pope whom Leo XIII took as model was one who had
+arisen after a long lapse of centuries, Sixtus V, the pope financier and
+politician, the vine-dresser’s son, who, when he had donned the tiara,
+revealed one of the most extensive and supple minds of a period fertile
+in great diplomatists. He heaped up treasure and displayed stern avarice,
+in order that he might ever have in his coffers all the money needful for
+war or for peace. He spent years and years in negotiations with kings,
+never despairing of his own triumph; and never did he display open
+hostility for his times, but took them as they were and then sought to
+modify them in accordance with the interests of the Holy See, showing
+himself conciliatory in all things and with every one, already dreaming
+of an European balance of power which he hoped to control. And withal a
+very saintly pope, a fervent mystic, yet a pope of the most absolute and
+domineering mind blended with a politician ready for whatever courses
+might most conduce to the rule of God’s Church on earth.
+
+And, after all, Pierre amidst his rising enthusiasm, which despite his
+efforts at calmness was sweeping away all prudence and doubt, Pierre
+asked himself why he need question the past. Was not Leo XIII the pope
+whom he had depicted in his book, the great pontiff, who was desired and
+expected? No doubt the portrait which he had sketched was not accurate in
+every detail, but surely its main lines must be correct if mankind were
+to retain a hope of salvation. Whole pages of that book of his arose
+before him, and he again beheld the Leo XIII that he had portrayed, the
+wise and conciliatory politician, labouring for the unity of the Church
+and so anxious to make it strong and invincible against the day of the
+inevitable great struggle. He again beheld him freed from the cares of
+the temporal power, elevated, radiant with moral splendour, the only
+authority left erect above the nations; he beheld him realising what
+mortal danger would be incurred if the solution of the social question
+were left to the enemies of Christianity, and therefore resolving to
+intervene in contemporary quarrels for the defence of the poor and the
+lowly, even as Jesus had intervened once before. And he again beheld him
+putting himself on the side of the democracies, accepting the Republic in
+France, leaving the dethroned kings in exile, and verifying the
+prediction which promised the empire of the world to Rome once more when
+the papacy should have unified belief and have placed itself at the head
+of the people. The times indeed were near accomplishment, Caesar was
+struck down, the Pope alone remained, and would not the people, the great
+silent multitude, for whom the two powers had so long contended, give
+itself to its Father now that it knew him to be both just and charitable,
+with heart aglow and hand outstretched to welcome all the penniless
+toilers and beggars of the roads! Given the catastrophe which threatened
+our rotten modern societies, the frightful misery which ravaged every
+city, there was surely no other solution possible: Leo XIII, the
+predestined, necessary redeemer, the pastor sent to save the flock from
+coming disaster by re-establishing the true Christian community, the
+forgotten golden age of primitive Christianity. The reign of justice
+would at last begin, all men would be reconciled, there would be but one
+nation living in peace and obeying the equalising law of work, under the
+high patronage of the Pope, sole bond of charity and love on earth!
+
+And at this thought Pierre was upbuoyed by fiery enthusiasm. At last he
+was about to see the Holy Father, empty his heart and open his soul to
+him! He had so long and so passionately looked for the advent of that
+moment! To secure it he had fought with all his courage through ever
+recurring obstacles, and the length and difficulty of the struggle and
+the success now at last achieved, increased his feverishness, his desire
+for final victory. Yes, yes, he would conquer, he would confound his
+enemies. As he had said to Monsignor Fornaro, could the Pope disavow him?
+Had he not expressed the Holy Father’s secret ideas? Perhaps he might
+have done so somewhat prematurely, but was not that a fault to be
+forgiven? And then too, he remembered his declaration to Monsignor Nani,
+that he himself would never withdraw and suppress his book, for he
+neither regretted nor disowned anything that was in it. At this very
+moment he again questioned himself, and felt that all his valour and
+determination to defend his book, all his desire to work the triumph of
+his belief, remained intact. Yet his mental perturbation was becoming
+great, he had to seek for ideas, wondering how he should enter the Pope’s
+presence, what he should say, what precise terms he should employ.
+Something heavy and mysterious which he could hardly account for seemed
+to weigh him down. At bottom he was weary, already exhausted, only held
+up by his dream, his compassion for human misery. However, he would enter
+in all haste, he would fall upon his knees and speak as he best could,
+letting his heart flow forth. And assuredly the Holy Father would smile
+on him, and dismiss him with a promise that he would not sign the
+condemnation of a work in which he had found the expression of his own
+most cherished thoughts.
+
+Then, again, such an acute sensation as of fainting came over Pierre that
+he went up to the window to press his burning brow against the cold
+glass. His ears were buzzing, his legs staggering, whilst his brain
+throbbed violently. And he was striving to forget his thoughts by gazing
+upon the black immensity of Rome, longing to be steeped in night himself,
+total, healing night, the night in which one sleeps on for ever, knowing
+neither pain nor wretchedness, when all at once he became conscious that
+somebody was standing behind him; and thereupon, with a start, he turned
+round.
+
+And there, indeed, stood Signor Squadra in his black livery. Again he
+made one of his customary bows to invite the visitor to follow him, and
+again he walked on in front, crossing the little throne-room, and slowly
+opening the farther door. Then he drew aside, allowed Pierre to enter,
+and noiselessly closed the door behind him.
+
+Pierre was in his Holiness’s bed-room. He had feared one of those
+overwhelming attacks of emotion which madden or paralyse one. He had been
+told of women reaching the Pope’s presence in a fainting condition,
+staggering as if intoxicated, while others came with a rush, as though
+upheld and borne along by invisible pinions. And suddenly the anguish of
+his own spell of waiting, his intense feverishness, ceased in a sort of
+astonishment, a reaction which rendered him very calm and so restored his
+clearness of vision, that he could see everything. As he entered he
+distinctly realised the decisive importance of such an audience, he, a
+mere petty priest in presence of the Supreme Pontiff, the Head of the
+Church. All his religious and moral life would depend on it; and possibly
+it was this sudden thought that thus chilled him on the threshold of the
+redoubtable sanctuary, which he had approached with such quivering steps,
+and which he would not have thought to enter otherwise than with
+distracted heart and loss of senses, unable to do more than stammer the
+simple prayers of childhood.
+
+Later on, when he sought to classify his recollections he remembered that
+his eyes had first lighted on Leo XIII, not, however, to the exclusion of
+his surroundings, but in conjunction with them, that spacious room hung
+with yellow damask whose alcove, adorned with fluted marble columns, was
+so deep that the bed was quite hidden away in it, as well as other
+articles of furniture, a couch, a wardrobe, and some trunks, those famous
+trunks in which the treasure of the Peter’s Pence was said to be securely
+locked. A sort of Louis XIV writing-desk with ornaments of engraved brass
+stood face to face with a large gilded and painted Louis XV pier table on
+which a lamp was burning beside a lofty crucifix. The room was virtually
+bare, only three arm-chairs and four or five other chairs, upholstered in
+light silk, being disposed here and there over the well-worn carpet. And
+on one of the arm-chairs sat Leo XIII, near a small table on which
+another lamp with a shade had been placed. Three newspapers, moreover,
+lay there, two of them French and one Italian, and the last was half
+unfolded as if the Pope had momentarily turned from it to stir a glass of
+syrup, standing beside him, with a long silver-gilt spoon.
+
+In the same way as Pierre saw the Pope’s room, he saw his costume, his
+cassock of white cloth with white buttons, his white skull-cap, his white
+cape and his white sash fringed with gold and broidered at either end
+with golden keys. His stockings were white, his slippers were of red
+velvet, and these again were broidered with golden keys. What surprised
+the young priest, however, was his Holiness’s face and figure, which now
+seemed so shrunken that he scarcely recognised them. This was his fourth
+meeting with the Pope. He had seen him walking in the Vatican gardens,
+enthroned in the Hall of Beatifications, and pontifying at St. Peter’s,
+and now he beheld him on that arm-chair, in privacy, and looking so
+slight and fragile that he could not restrain a feeling of affectionate
+anxiety. Leo’s neck was particularly remarkable, slender beyond belief,
+suggesting the neck of some little, aged, white bird. And his face, of
+the pallor of alabaster, was characteristically transparent, to such a
+degree, indeed, that one could see the lamplight through his large
+commanding nose, as if the blood had entirely withdrawn from that organ.
+A mouth of great length, with white bloodless lips, streaked the lower
+part of the papal countenance, and the eyes alone had remained young and
+handsome. Superb eyes they were, brilliant like black diamonds, endowed
+with sufficient penetration and strength to lay souls open and force them
+to confess the truth aloud. Some scanty white curls emerged from under
+the white skull-cap, thus whitely crowning the thin white face, whose
+ugliness was softened by all this whiteness, this spiritual whiteness in
+which Leo XIII’s flesh seemed as it were but pure lily-white florescence.
+
+At the first glance, however, Pierre noticed that if Signor Squadra had
+kept him waiting, it had not been in order to compel the Holy Father to
+don a clean cassock, for the one he was wearing was badly soiled by
+snuff. A number of brown stains had trickled down the front of the
+garment beside the buttons, and just like any good _bourgeois_, his
+Holiness had a handkerchief on his knees to wipe himself. Apart from all
+this he seemed in good health, having recovered from his recent
+indisposition as easily as he usually recovered from such passing
+illnesses, sober, prudent old man that he was, quite free from organic
+disease, and simply declining by reason of progressive natural
+exhaustion.
+
+Immediately on entering Pierre had felt that the Pope’s sparkling eyes,
+those two black diamonds, were fixed upon him. The silence was profound,
+and the lamps burned with motionless, pallid flames. He had to approach,
+and after making the three genuflections prescribed by etiquette, he
+stooped over one of the Pope’s feet resting on a cushion in order to kiss
+the red velvet slipper. And on the Pope’s side there was not a word, not
+a gesture, not a movement. When the young man drew himself up again he
+found the two black diamonds, those two eyes which were all brightness
+and intelligence, still riveted on him.
+
+But at last Leo XIII, who had been unwilling to spare the young priest
+the humble duty of kissing his foot and who now left him standing, began
+to speak, whilst still examining him, probing, as it were, his very soul.
+“My son,” he said, “you greatly desired to see me, and I consented to
+afford you that satisfaction.”
+
+He spoke in French, somewhat uncertain French, pronounced after the
+Italian fashion, and so slowly did he articulate each sentence that one
+could have written it down like so much dictation. And his voice, as
+Pierre had previously noticed, was strong and nasal, one of those full
+voices which people are surprised to hear coming from debile and
+apparently bloodless and breathless frames.
+
+In response to the Holy Father’s remark Pierre contented himself with
+bowing, knowing that respect required him to wait for a direct answer
+before speaking. However, this question promptly came. “You live in
+Paris?” asked Leo XIII.
+
+“Yes, Holy Father.”
+
+“Are you attached to one of the great parishes of the city?”
+
+“No, Holy Father. I simply officiate at the little church of Neuilly.”
+
+“Ah, yes, Neuilly, that is in the direction of the Bois de Boulogne, is
+it not? And how old are you, my son?”
+
+“Thirty-four, Holy Father.”
+
+A short interval followed. Leo XIII had at last lowered his eyes. With
+frail, ivory hand he took up the glass beside him, again stirred the
+syrup with the long spoon, and then drank a little of it. And all this he
+did gently and slowly, with a prudent, judicious air, as was his wont no
+doubt in everything. “I have read your book, my son,” he resumed. “Yes,
+the greater part of it. As a rule only fragments are submitted to me. But
+a person who is interested in you handed me the volume, begging me to
+glance through it. And that is how I was able to look into it.”
+
+As he spoke he made a slight gesture in which Pierre fancied he could
+detect a protest against the isolation in which he was kept by those
+surrounding him, who, as Monsignor Nani had said, maintained a strict
+watch in order that nothing they objected to might reach him. And
+thereupon the young priest ventured to say: “I thank your Holiness for
+having done me so much honour. No greater or more desired happiness could
+have befallen me.” He was indeed so happy! On seeing the Pope so calm, so
+free from all signs of anger, and on hearing him speak in that way of his
+book, like one well acquainted with it, he imagined that his cause was
+won.
+
+“You are in relations with Monsieur le Vicomte Philibert de la Choue, are
+you not, my son?” continued Leo XIII. “I was struck by the resemblance
+between some of your ideas and those of that devoted servant of the
+Church, who has in other ways given us previous testimony of his good
+feelings.”
+
+“Yes, indeed, Holy Father, Monsieur de la Choue is kind enough to show me
+some affection. We have often talked together, so it is not surprising
+that I should have given expression to some of his most cherished ideas.”
+
+“No doubt, no doubt. For instance, there is that question of the
+working-class guilds with which he largely occupies himself--with which,
+in fact, he occupies himself rather too much. At the time of his last
+journey to Rome he spoke to me of it in the most pressing manner. And in
+the same way, quite recently, another of your compatriots, one of the
+best and worthiest of men, Monsieur le Baron de Fouras, who brought us
+that superb pilgrimage of the St. Peter’s Pence Fund, never ceased his
+efforts until I consented to receive him, when he spoke to me on the same
+subject during nearly an hour. Only it must be said that they do not
+agree in the matter, for one begs me to do things which the other will
+not have me do on any account.”
+
+Pierre realised that the conversation was straying away from his book,
+but he remembered having promised the Viscount that if he should see the
+Pope he would make an attempt to obtain from him a decisive expression of
+opinion on the famous question as to whether the working-class guilds or
+corporations should be free or obligatory, open or closed. And the
+unhappy Viscount, kept in Paris by the gout, had written the young priest
+letter after letter on the subject, whilst his rival the Baron, availing
+himself of the opportunity offered by the international pilgrimage,
+endeavoured to wring from the Pope an approval of his own views, with
+which he would have returned in triumph to France. Pierre conscientiously
+desired to keep his promise, and so he answered: “Your Holiness knows
+better than any of us in which direction true wisdom lies. Monsieur de
+Fouras is of opinion that salvation, the solution of the labour question,
+lies simply in the re-establishment of the old free corporations, whilst
+Monsieur de la Choue desires the corporations to be obligatory, protected
+by the state and governed by new regulations. This last conception is
+certainly more in agreement with the social ideas now prevalent in
+France. Should your Holiness condescend to express a favourable opinion
+in that sense, the young French Catholic party would certainly know how
+to turn it to good result, by producing quite a movement of the working
+classes in favour of the Church.”
+
+In his quiet way Leo XIII responded: “But I cannot. Frenchmen always ask
+things of me which I cannot, will not do. What I will allow you to say on
+my behalf to Monsieur de la Choue is, that though I cannot content him I
+have not contented Monsieur de Fouras. He obtained from me nothing beyond
+the expression of my sincere good-will for the French working classes,
+who are so dear to me and who can do so much for the restoration of the
+faith. You must surely understand, however, that among you Frenchmen
+there are questions of detail, of mere organisation, so to say, into
+which I cannot possibly enter without imparting to them an importance
+which they do not have, and at the same time greatly discontenting some
+people should I please others.”
+
+As the Pope pronounced these last words he smiled a pale smile, in which
+the shrewd, conciliatory politician, who was determined not to allow his
+infallibility to be compromised in useless and risky ventures, was fully
+revealed. And then he drank a little more syrup and wiped his mouth with
+his handkerchief, like a sovereign whose Court day is over and who takes
+his ease, having chosen this hour of solitude and silence to chat as long
+as he may be so inclined.
+
+Pierre, however, sought to bring him back to the subject of his book.
+“Monsieur de la Choue,” said he, “has shown me so much kindness and is so
+anxious to know the fate reserved to my book--as if, indeed, it were his
+own--that I should have been very happy to convey to him an expression of
+your Holiness’s approval.”
+
+However, the Pope continued wiping his mouth and did not reply.
+
+“I became acquainted with the Viscount,” continued Pierre, “at the
+residence of his Eminence Cardinal Bergerot, another great heart whose
+ardent charity ought to suffice to restore the faith in France.”
+
+This time the effect was immediate. “Ah! yes, Monsieur le Cardinal
+Bergerot!” said Leo XIII. “I read that letter of his which is printed at
+the beginning of your book. He was very badly inspired in writing it to
+you; and you, my son, acted very culpably on the day you published it. I
+cannot yet believe that Monsieur le Cardinal Bergerot had read some of
+your pages when he sent you an expression of his complete and full
+approval. I prefer to charge him with ignorance and thoughtlessness. How
+could he approve of your attacks on dogma, your revolutionary theories
+which tend to the complete destruction of our holy religion? If it be a
+fact that he had read your book, the only excuse he can invoke is sudden
+and inexplicable aberration. It is true that a very bad spirit prevails
+among a small portion of the French clergy. What are called Gallican
+ideas are ever sprouting up like noxious weeds; there is a malcontent
+Liberalism rebellious to our authority which continually hungers for free
+examination and sentimental adventures.”
+
+The Pope grew animated as he spoke. Italian words mingled with his
+hesitating French, and every now and again his full nasal voice resounded
+with the sonority of a brass instrument. “Monsieur le Cardinal Bergerot,”
+ he continued, “must be given to understand that we shall crush him on the
+day when we see in him nothing but a rebellious son. He owes the example
+of obedience; we shall acquaint him with our displeasure, and we hope
+that he will submit. Humility and charity are great virtues doubtless,
+and we have always taken pleasure in recognising them in him. But they
+must not be the refuge of a rebellious heart, for they are as nothing
+unless accompanied by obedience--obedience, obedience, the finest
+adornment of the great saints!”
+
+Pierre listened thunderstruck, overcome. He forgot himself to think of
+the apostle of kindliness and tolerance upon whose head he had drawn this
+all-powerful anger. So Don Vigilio had spoken the truth: over and above
+his--Pierre’s--head the denunciations of the Bishops of Evreux and
+Poitiers were about to fall on the man who opposed their Ultramontane
+policy, that worthy and gentle Cardinal Bergerot, whose heart was open to
+all the woes of the lowly and the poor. This filled the young priest with
+despair; he could accept the denunciation of the Bishop of Tarbes acting
+on behalf of the Fathers of the Grotto, for that only fell on himself, as
+a reprisal for what he had written about Lourdes; but the underhand
+warfare of the others exasperated him, filled him with dolorous
+indignation. And from that puny old man before him with the slender,
+scraggy neck of an aged bird, he had suddenly seen such a wrathful,
+formidable Master arise that he trembled. How could he have allowed
+himself to be deceived by appearances on entering? How could he have
+imagined that he was simply in presence of a poor old man, worn out by
+age, desirous of peace, and ready for every concession? A blast had swept
+through that sleepy chamber, and all his doubts and his anguish awoke
+once more. Ah! that Pope, how thoroughly he answered to all the accounts
+that he, Pierre, had heard but had refused to believe; so many people had
+told him in Rome that he would find Leo XIII a man of intellect rather
+than of sentiment, a man of the most unbounded pride, who from his very
+youth had nourished the supreme ambition, to such a point indeed that he
+had promised eventual triumph to his relatives in order that they might
+make the necessary sacrifices for him, while since he had occupied the
+pontifical throne his one will and determination had been to reign, to
+reign in spite of all, to be the sole absolute and omnipotent master of
+the world! And now here was reality arising with irresistible force and
+confirming everything. And yet Pierre struggled, stubbornly clutching at
+his dream once more.
+
+“Oh! Holy Father,” said he, “I should be grieved indeed if his Eminence
+should have a moment’s worry on account of my unfortunate book. If I be
+guilty I can answer for my error, but his Eminence only obeyed the
+dictates of his heart and can only have transgressed by excess of love
+for the disinherited of the world!”
+
+Leo XIII made no reply. He had again raised his superb eyes, those eyes
+of ardent life, set, as it were, in the motionless countenance of an
+alabaster idol; and once more he was fixedly gazing at the young priest.
+
+And Pierre, amidst his returning feverishness, seemed to behold him
+growing in power and splendour, whilst behind him arose a vision of the
+ages, a vision of that long line of popes whom the young priest had
+previously evoked, the saintly and the proud ones, the warriors and the
+ascetics, the theologians and the diplomatists, those who had worn
+armour, those who had conquered by the Cross, those who had disposed of
+empires as of mere provinces which God had committed to their charge. And
+in particular Pierre beheld the great Gregory, the conqueror and founder,
+and Sixtus V, the negotiator and politician, who had first foreseen the
+eventual victory of the papacy over all the vanquished monarchies. Ah!
+what a throng of magnificent princes, of sovereign masters with powerful
+brains and arms, there was behind that pale, motionless, old man! What an
+accumulation of inexhaustible determination, stubborn genius, and
+boundless domination! The whole history of human ambition, the whole
+effort of the ages to subject the nations to the pride of one man, the
+greatest force that has ever conquered, exploited, and fashioned mankind
+in the name of its happiness! And even now, when territorial sovereignty
+had come to an end, how great was the spiritual sovereignty of that pale
+and slender old man, in whose presence women fainted, as if overcome by
+the divine splendour radiating from his person. Not only did all the
+resounding glories, the masterful triumphs of history spread out behind
+him, but heaven opened, the very spheres beyond life shone out in their
+dazzling mystery. He--the Pope--stood at the portals of heaven, holding
+the keys and opening those portals to human souls; all the ancient
+symbolism was revived, freed at last from the stains of royalty here
+below.
+
+“Oh! I beg you, Holy Father,” resumed Pierre, “if an example be needed
+strike none other than myself. I have come, and am here; decide my fate,
+but do not aggravate my punishment by filling me with remorse at having
+brought condemnation on the innocent.”
+
+Leo XIII still refrained from replying, though he continued to look at
+the young priest with burning eyes. And he, Pierre, no longer beheld Leo
+XIII, the last of a long line of popes, the Vicar of Jesus Christ, the
+Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, the Supreme Pontiff of the
+Universal Church, Patriarch of the East, Primate of Italy, Archbishop and
+Metropolitan of the Roman Province, Sovereign of the Temporal Domains of
+the Holy Church; he saw the Leo XIII that he had dreamt of, the awaited
+saviour who would dispel the frightful cataclysm in which rotten society
+was sinking. He beheld him with his supple, lofty intelligence and
+fraternal, conciliatory tactics, avoiding friction and labouring to bring
+about unity whilst with his heart overflowing with love he went straight
+to the hearts of the multitude, again giving the best of his blood in
+sign of the new alliance. He raised him aloft as the sole remaining moral
+authority, the sole possible bond of charity and peace--as the Father, in
+fact, who alone could stamp out injustice among his children, destroy
+misery, and re-establish the liberating Law of Work by bringing the
+nations back to the faith of the primitive Church, the gentleness and the
+wisdom of the true Christian community. And in the deep silence of that
+room the great figure which he thus set up assumed invincible
+all-powerfulness, extraordinary majesty.
+
+“Oh, I beseech you, Holy Father, listen to me,” he said. “Do not even
+strike me, strike no one, neither a being nor a thing, anything that can
+suffer under the sun. Show kindness and indulgence to all, show all the
+kindness and indulgence which the sight of the world’s sufferings must
+have set in you!”
+
+And then, seeing that Leo XIII still remained silent and still left him
+standing there, he sank down upon his knees, as if felled by the growing
+emotion which rendered his heart so heavy. And within him there was a
+sort of _debâcle_; all his doubts, all his anguish and sadness burst
+forth in an irresistible stream. There was the memory of the frightful
+day that he had just spent, the tragic death of Dario and Benedetta,
+which weighed on him like lead; there were all the sufferings that he had
+experienced since his arrival in Rome, the destruction of his illusions,
+the wounds dealt to his delicacy, the buffets with which men and things
+had responded to his young enthusiasm; and, lying yet more deeply within
+his heart, there was the sum total of human wretchedness, the thought of
+famished ones howling for food, of mothers whose breasts were drained and
+who sobbed whilst kissing their hungry babes, of fathers without work,
+who clenched their fists and revolted--indeed, the whole of that hateful
+misery which is as old as mankind itself, which has preyed upon mankind
+since its earliest hour, and which he now had everywhere found increasing
+in horror and havoc, without a gleam of hope that it would ever be
+healed. And withal, yet more immense and more incurable, he felt within
+him a nameless sorrow to which he could assign no precise cause or
+name--an universal, an illimitable sorrow with which he melted
+despairingly, and which was perhaps the very sorrow of life.
+
+“O Holy Father!” he exclaimed, “I myself have no existence and my book
+has no existence. I desired, passionately desired to see your Holiness
+that I might explain and defend myself. But I no longer know, I can no
+longer recall a single one of the things that I wished to say, I can only
+weep, weep the tears which are stifling me. Yes, I am but a poor man, and
+the only need I feel is to speak to you of the poor. Oh! the poor ones,
+oh! the lowly ones, whom for two years past I have seen in our faubourgs
+of Paris, so wretched and so full of pain; the poor little children that
+I have picked out of the snow, the poor little angels who had eaten
+nothing for two days; the women too, consumed by consumption, without
+bread or fire, shivering in filthy hovels; and the men thrown on the
+street by slackness of trade, weary of begging for work as one begs for
+alms, sinking back into night, drunken with rage and harbouring the sole
+avenging thought of setting the whole city afire! And that night too,
+that terrible night, when in a room of horror I beheld a mother who had
+just killed herself with her five little ones, she lying on a palliasse
+suckling her last-born, and two little girls, two pretty little blondes,
+sleeping the last sleep beside her, while the two boys had succumbed
+farther away, one of them crouching against a wall, and the other lying
+upon the floor, distorted as though by a last effort to avoid death!...
+O Holy Father! I am but an ambassador, the messenger of those who suffer
+and who sob, the humble delegate of the humble ones who die of want
+beneath the hateful harshness, the frightful injustice of our present-day
+social system! And I bring your Holiness their tears, and I lay their
+tortures at your Holiness’s feet, I raise their cry of woe, like a cry
+from the abyss, that cry which demands justice unless indeed the very
+heavens are to fall! Oh! show your loving kindness, Holy Father, show
+compassion!”
+
+The young man had stretched out his arms and implored Leo XIII with a
+gesture as of supreme appeal to the divine compassion. Then he continued:
+“And here, Holy Father, in this splendid and eternal Rome, is not the
+want and misery as frightful! During the weeks that I have roamed hither
+and thither among the dust of famous ruins, I have never ceased to come
+in contact with evils which demand cure. Ah! to think of all that is
+crumbling, all that is expiring, the agony of so much glory, the fearful
+sadness of a world which is dying of exhaustion and hunger! Yonder, under
+your Holiness’s windows, have I not seen a district of horrors, a
+district of unfinished palaces stricken like rickety children who cannot
+attain to full growth, palaces which are already in ruins and have become
+places of refuge for all the woeful misery of Rome? And here, as in
+Paris, what a suffering multitude, what a shameless exhibition too of the
+social sore, the devouring cancer openly tolerated and displayed in utter
+heedlessness! There are whole families leading idle and hungry lives in
+the splendid sunlight; fathers waiting for work to fall to them from
+heaven; sons listlessly spending their days asleep on the dry grass;
+mothers and daughters, withered before their time, shuffling about in
+loquacious idleness. O Holy Father, already to-morrow at dawn may your
+Holiness open that window yonder and with your benediction awaken that
+great childish people, which still slumbers in ignorance and poverty! May
+your Holiness give it the soul it lacks, a soul with the consciousness of
+human dignity, of the necessary law of work, of free and fraternal life
+regulated by justice only! Yes, may your Holiness make a people out of
+that heap of wretches, whose excuse lies in all their bodily suffering
+and mental night, who live like the beasts that go by and die, never
+knowing nor understanding, yet ever lashed onward with the whip!”
+
+Pierre’s sobs were gradually choking him, and it was only the impulse of
+his passion which still enabled him to speak. “And, Holy Father,” he
+continued, “is it not to you that I ought to address myself in the name
+of all these wretched ones? Are you not the Father, and is it not before
+the Father that the messenger of the poor and the lowly should kneel as I
+am kneeling now? And is it not to the Father that he should bring the
+huge burden of their sorrows and ask for pity and help and justice? Yes,
+particularly for justice! And since you are the Father throw the doors
+wide open so that all may enter, even the humblest of your children, the
+faithful, the chance passers, even the rebellious ones and those who have
+gone astray but who will perhaps enter and whom you will save from the
+errors of abandonment! Be as the house of refuge on the dangerous road,
+the loving greeter of the wayfarer, the lamp of hospitality which ever
+burns, and is seen afar off and saves one in the storm! And since, O
+Father, you are power be salvation also! You can do all; you have
+centuries of domination behind you; you have nowadays risen to a moral
+authority which has rendered you the arbiter of the world; you are there
+before me like the very majesty of the sun which illumines and
+fructifies! Oh! be the star of kindness and charity, be the redeemer;
+take in hand once more the purpose of Jesus, which has been perverted by
+being left in the hands of the rich and the powerful who have ended by
+transforming the work of the Gospel into the most hateful of all
+monuments of pride and tyranny! And since the work has been spoilt, take
+it in hand, begin it afresh, place yourself on the side of the little
+ones, the lowly ones, the poor ones, and bring them back to the peace,
+the fraternity, and the justice of the original Christian communion. And
+say, O Father, that I have understood you, that I have sincerely
+expressed in this respect your most cherished ideas, the sole living
+desire of your reign! The rest, oh! the rest, my book, myself, what
+matter they! I do not defend myself, I only seek your glory and the
+happiness of mankind. Say that from the depths of this Vatican you have
+heard the rending of our corrupt modern societies! Say that you have
+quivered with loving pity, say that you desire to prevent the awful
+impending catastrophe by recalling the Gospel to the hearts of your
+children who are stricken with madness, and by bringing them back to the
+age of simplicity and purity when the first Christians lived together in
+innocent brotherhood! Yes, it is for that reason, is it not, that you
+have placed yourself, Father, on the side of the poor, and for that
+reason I am here and entreat you for pity and kindness and justice with
+my whole soul!”
+
+Then the young man gave way beneath his emotion, and fell all of a heap
+upon the floor amidst a rush of sobs--loud, endless sobs, which flowed
+forth in billows, coming as it were not only from himself but from all
+the wretched, from the whole world in whose veins sorrow coursed mingled
+with the very blood of life. He was there as the ambassador of suffering,
+as he had said. And indeed, at the foot of that mute and motionless pope,
+he was like the personification of the whole of human woe.
+
+Leo XIII, who was extremely fond of talking and could only listen to
+others with an effort, had twice raised one of his pallid hands to
+interrupt the young priest. Then, gradually overcome by astonishment,
+touched by emotion himself, he had allowed him to continue, to go on to
+the end of his outburst. A little blood even had suffused the snowy
+whiteness of the Pontiff’s face whilst his eyes shone out yet more
+brilliantly. And as soon as he saw the young man speechless at his feet,
+shaken by those sobs which seemed to be wrenching away his heart, he
+became anxious and leant forward: “Calm yourself, my son, raise
+yourself,” he said.
+
+But the sobs still continued, still flowed forth, all reason and respect
+being swept away amidst that distracted plaint of a wounded soul, that
+moan of suffering, dying flesh.
+
+“Raise yourself, my son, it is not proper,” repeated Leo XIII. “There,
+take that chair.” And with a gesture of authority he at last invited the
+young man to sit down.
+
+Pierre rose with pain, and at once seated himself in order that he might
+not fall. He brushed his hair back from his forehead, and wiped his
+scalding tears away with his hands, unable to understand what had just
+happened, but striving to regain his self-possession.
+
+“You appeal to the Holy Father,” said Leo XIII. “Ah! rest assured that
+his heart is full of pity and affection for those who are unfortunate.
+But that is not the point, it is our holy religion which is in question.
+I have read your book, a bad book, I tell you so at once, the most
+dangerous and culpable of books, precisely on account of its qualities,
+the pages in which I myself felt interested. Yes, I was often fascinated,
+I should not have continued my perusal had I not felt carried away,
+transported by the ardent breath of your faith and enthusiasm. The
+subject ‘New Rome’ is such a beautiful one and impassions me so much! and
+certainly there is a book to be written under that title, but in a very
+different spirit to yours. You think that you have understood me, my son,
+that you have so penetrated yourself with my writings and actions that
+you simply express my most cherished ideas. But no, no, you have not
+understood me, and that is why I desired to see you, explain things to
+you, and convince you.”
+
+It was now Pierre who sat listening, mute and motionless. Yet he had only
+come thither to defend himself; for three months past he had been
+feverishly desiring this interview, preparing his arguments and feeling
+confident of victory; and now although he heard his book spoken of as
+dangerous and culpable he did not protest, did not reply with any one of
+those good reasons which he had deemed so irresistible. But the fact was
+that intense weariness had come upon him, the appeal that he had made,
+the tears that he had shed had left him utterly exhausted. By and by,
+however, he would be brave and would say what he had resolved to say.
+
+“People do not understand me, do not understand me!” resumed Leo XIII
+with an air of impatient irritation. “It is incredible what trouble I
+have to make myself understood, in France especially! Take the temporal
+power for instance; how can you have fancied that the Holy See would ever
+enter into any compromise on that question? Such language is unworthy of
+a priest, it is the chimerical dream of one who is ignorant of the
+conditions in which the papacy has hitherto lived and in which it must
+still live if it does not desire to disappear. Cannot you see the
+sophistry of your argument that the Church becomes the loftier the more
+it frees itself from the cares of terrestrial sovereignty? A purely
+spiritual royalty, a sway of charity and love, indeed, ’tis a fine
+imaginative idea! But who will ensure us respect? Who will grant us the
+alms of a stone on which to rest our head if we are ever driven forth and
+forced to roam the highways? Who will guarantee our independence when we
+are at the mercy of every state?... No, no! this soil of Rome is ours,
+we have inherited it from the long line of our ancestors, and it is the
+indestructible, eternal soil on which the Church is built, so that any
+relinquishment would mean the downfall of the Holy Catholic Apostolic and
+Roman Church. And, moreover, we could not relinquish it; we are bound by
+our oath to God and man.”
+
+He paused for a moment to allow Pierre to answer him. But the latter to
+his stupefaction could say nothing, for he perceived that this pope spoke
+as he was bound to speak. All the heavy mysterious things which had
+weighed the young priest down whilst he was waiting in the ante-room, now
+became more and more clearly defined. They were, indeed, the things which
+he had seen and learnt since his arrival in Rome, the disillusions, the
+rebuffs which he had experienced, all the many points of difference
+between existing reality and imagination, whereby his dream of a return
+to primitive Christianity was already half shattered. And in particular
+he remembered the hour which he had spent on the dome of St. Peter’s,
+when, in presence of the old city of glory so stubbornly clinging to its
+purple, he had realised that he was an imbecile with his idea of a purely
+spiritual pope. He had that day fled from the furious shouts of the
+pilgrims acclaiming the Pope-King. He had only accepted the necessity for
+money, that last form of servitude still binding the Pope to earth. But
+all had crumbled afterwards, when he had beheld the real Rome, the
+ancient city of pride and domination where the papacy can never be
+complete without the temporal power. Too many bonds, dogma, tradition,
+environment, the very soil itself rendered the Church for ever immutable.
+It was only in appearances that she could make concessions, and a time
+would even arrive when her concessions would cease, in presence of the
+impossibility of going any further without committing suicide. If his,
+Pierre’s, dream of a New Rome were ever to be realised, it would only be
+faraway from ancient Rome. Only in some distant region could the new
+Christianity arise, for Catholicism was bound to die on the spot when the
+last of the popes, riveted to that land of ruins, should disappear
+beneath the falling dome of St. Peter’s, which would fall as surely as
+the temple of Jupiter had fallen! And, as for that pope of the present
+day, though he might have no kingdom, though age might have made him weak
+and fragile, though his bloodless pallor might be that of some ancient
+idol of wax, he none the less flared with the red passion for universal
+sovereignty, he was none the less the stubborn scion of his ancestry, the
+Pontifex Maximus, the Caesar Imperator in whose veins flowed the blood of
+Augustus, master of the world.
+
+“You must be fully aware,” resumed Leo XIII, “of the ardent desire for
+unity which has always possessed us. We were very happy on the day when
+we unified the rite, by imposing the Roman rite throughout the whole
+Catholic world. This is one of our most cherished victories, for it can
+do much to uphold our authority. And I hope that our efforts in the
+East will end by bringing our dear brethren of the dissident communions
+back to us, in the same way as I do not despair of convincing the
+Anglican sects, without speaking of the other so-called Protestant
+sects who will be compelled to return to the bosom of the only Church,
+the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church, when the times predicted by
+the Christ shall be accomplished. But a thing which you did not say in
+your book is that the Church can relinquish nothing whatever of dogma.
+On the contrary, you seem to fancy that an agreement might be effected,
+concessions made on either side, and that, my son, is a culpable
+thought, such language as a priest cannot use without being guilty of a
+crime. No, the truth is absolute, not a stone of the edifice shall be
+changed. Oh! in matters of form, we will do whatever may be asked. We
+are ready to adopt the most conciliatory courses if it be only a
+question of turning certain difficulties and weighing expressions in
+order to facilitate agreement.... Again, there is the part we have
+taken in contemporary socialism, and here too it is necessary that we
+should be understood. Those whom you have so well called the
+disinherited of the world, are certainly the object of our solicitude.
+If socialism be simply a desire for justice, and a constant
+determination to come to the help of the weak and the suffering, who
+can claim to give more thought to the matter and work with more energy
+than ourselves? Has not the Church always been the mother of the
+afflicted, the helper and benefactress of the poor? We are for all
+reasonable progress, we admit all new social forms which will promote
+peace and fraternity.... Only we can but condemn that socialism which
+begins by driving away God as a means of ensuring the happiness of
+mankind. Therein lies simple savagery, an abominable relapse into the
+primitive state in which there can only be catastrophe, conflagration,
+and massacre. And that again is a point on which you have not laid
+sufficient stress, for you have not shown in your book that there can
+be no progress outside the pale of the Church, that she is really the
+only initiatory and guiding power to whom one may surrender oneself
+without fear. Indeed, and in this again you have sinned, it seemed to
+me as if you set God on one side, as if for you religion lay solely in
+a certain bent of the soul, a florescence of love and charity, which
+sufficed one to work one’s salvation. But that is execrable heresy. God
+is ever present, master of souls and bodies; and religion remains the
+bond, the law, the very governing power of mankind, apart from which
+there can only be barbarism in this world and damnation in the next.
+And, once again, forms are of no importance; it is sufficient that
+dogma should remain. Thus our adhesion to the French Republic proves
+that we in no wise mean to link the fate of religion to that of any
+form of government, however august and ancient the latter may be.
+Dynasties may have done their time, but God is eternal. Kings may
+perish, but God lives! And, moreover, there is nothing anti-Christian
+in the republican form of government; indeed, on the contrary, it would
+seem like an awakening of that Christian commonwealth to which you have
+referred in some really charming pages. The worst is that liberty at
+once becomes license, and that our desire for conciliation is often
+very badly requited.... But ah! what a wicked book you have written, my
+son,--with the best intentions, I am willing to believe,--and how your
+silence shows that you are beginning to recognise the disastrous
+consequences of your error.”
+
+Pierre still remained silent, overcome, feeling as if his arguments would
+fall against some deaf, blind, and impenetrable rock, which it was
+useless to assail since nothing could enter it. And only one thing now
+preoccupied him; he wondered how it was that a man of such intelligence
+and such ambition had not formed a more distinct and exact idea of the
+modern world. He could divine that the Pope possessed much information
+and carried the map of Christendom with many of the needs, deeds, and
+hopes of the nations, in his mind amidst his complicated diplomatic
+enterprises; but at the same time what gaps there were in his knowledge!
+The truth, no doubt, was that his personal acquaintance with the world
+was confined to his brief nunciature at Brussels.*
+
+ * That too, was in 1843-44, and the world is now utterly unlike
+ what it was then!--Trans.
+
+During his occupation of the see of Perugia, which had followed, he had
+only mingled with the dawning life of young Italy. And for eighteen years
+now he had been shut up in the Vatican, isolated from the rest of mankind
+and communicating with the nations solely through his _entourage_, which
+was often most unintelligent, most mendacious, and most treacherous.
+Moreover, he was an Italian priest, a superstitious and despotic High
+Pontiff, bound by tradition, subjected to the influences of race
+environment, pecuniary considerations, and political necessities, not to
+speak of his great pride, the conviction that he ought to be implicitly
+obeyed in all things as the one sole legitimate power upon earth. Therein
+lay fatal causes of mental deformity, of errors and gaps in his
+extraordinary brain, though the latter certainly possessed many admirable
+qualities, quickness of comprehension and patient stubbornness of will
+and strength to draw conclusions and act. Of all his powers, however,
+that of intuition was certainly the most wonderful, for was it not this
+alone which, owing to his voluntary imprisonment, enabled him to divine
+the vast evolution of humanity at the present day? He was thus keenly
+conscious of the dangers surrounding him, of the rising tide of democracy
+and the boundless ocean of science which threatened to submerge the
+little islet where the dome of St. Peter’s yet triumphed. And the object
+of all his policy, of all his labour, was to conquer so that he might
+reign. If he desired the unity of the Church it was in order that the
+latter might become strong and inexpugnable in the contest which he
+foresaw. If he preached conciliation, granting concessions in matters of
+form, tolerating audacious actions on the part of American bishops, it
+was because he deeply and secretly feared the dislocation of the Church,
+some sudden schism which might hasten disaster. And this fear explained
+his returning affection for the people, the concern which he displayed
+respecting socialism, and the Christian solution which he offered to the
+woes of earthly life. As Caesar was stricken low, was not the long
+contest for possession of the people over, and would not the people, the
+great silent multitude, speak out, and give itself to him, the Pope? He
+had begun experiments with France, forsaking the lost cause of the
+monarchy and recognising the Republic which he hoped might prove strong
+and victorious, for in spite of everything France remained the eldest
+daughter of the Church, the only Catholic nation which yet possessed
+sufficient strength to restore the temporal power at some propitious
+moment. And briefly Leo’s desire was to reign. To reign by the support of
+France since it seemed impossible to do so by the support of Germany! To
+reign by the support of the people, since the people was now becoming the
+master, the bestower of thrones! To reign by means even of an Italian
+Republic, if only that Republic could wrest Rome from the House of Savoy
+and restore her to him, a federal Republic which would make him President
+of the United States of Italy pending the time when he should be
+President of the United States of Europe! To reign in spite of everybody
+and everything, such was his ambition, to reign over the world, even as
+Augustus had reigned, Augustus whose devouring blood alone upheld this
+expiring old man, yet so stubbornly clinging to power!
+
+“And another crime of yours, my son,” resumed Leo XIII, “is that you have
+dared to ask for a new religion. That is impious, blasphemous,
+sacrilegious. There is but one religion in the world, our Holy Catholic
+Apostolic and Roman Religion, apart from which there can be but darkness
+and damnation. I quite understand that what you mean to imply is a return
+to early Christianity. But the error of so-called Protestantism, so
+culpable and so deplorable in its consequences, never had any other
+pretext. As soon as one departs from the strict observance of dogma and
+absolute respect for tradition one sinks into the most frightful
+precipices.... Ah! schism, schism, my son, is a crime beyond
+forgiveness, an assassination of the true God, a device of the loathsome
+Beast of Temptation which Hell sends into the world to work the ruin of
+the faithful! If your book contained nothing beyond those words ‘a new
+religion,’ it would be necessary to destroy and burn it like so much
+poison fatal in its effects upon the human soul.”
+
+He continued at length on this subject, while Pierre recalled what Don
+Vigilio had told him of those all-powerful Jesuits who at the Vatican as
+elsewhere remained in the background, secretly but none the less
+decisively governing the Church. Was it true then that this pope, whose
+opportunist tendencies were so freely displayed, was one of them, a mere
+docile instrument in their hands, though he fancied himself penetrated
+with the doctrines of St. Thomas Aquinas? In any case, like them he
+compounded with the century, made approaches to the world, and was
+willing to flatter it in order that he might possess it. Never before had
+Pierre so cruelly realised that the Church was now so reduced that she
+could only live by dint of concessions and diplomacy. And he could at
+last distinctly picture that Roman clergy which at first is so difficult
+of comprehension to a French priest, that Government of the Church,
+represented by the pope, the cardinals, and the prelates, whom the Deity
+has appointed to govern and administer His mundane possessions--mankind
+and the earth. They begin by setting that very Deity on one side, in the
+depths of the tabernacle, and impose whatever dogmas they please as so
+many essential truths. That the Deity exists is evident, since they
+govern in His name which is sufficient for everything. And being by
+virtue of their charge the masters, if they consent to sign covenants,
+Concordats, it is only as matters of form; they do not observe them, and
+never yield to anything but force, always reserving the principle of
+their absolute sovereignty which must some day finally triumph. Pending
+that day’s arrival, they act as diplomatists, slowly carrying on their
+work of conquest as the Deity’s functionaries; and religion is but the
+public homage which they pay to the Deity, and which they organise with
+all the pomp and magnificence that is likely to influence the multitude.
+Their only object is to enrapture and conquer mankind in order that the
+latter may submit to the rule of the Deity, that is the rule of
+themselves, since they are the Deity’s visible representatives, expressly
+delegated to govern the world. In a word, they straightway descend from
+Roman law, they are still but the offspring of the old pagan soul of
+Rome, and if they have lasted until now and if they rely on lasting for
+ever, until the awaited hour when the empire of the world shall be
+restored to them, it is because they are the direct heirs of the
+purple-robed Caesars, the uninterrupted and living progeny of the blood
+of Augustus.
+
+And thereupon Pierre felt ashamed of his tears. Ah! those poor nerves of
+his, that outburst of sentiment and enthusiasm to which he had given way!
+His very modesty was appalled, for he felt as if he had exhibited his
+soul in utter nakedness. And so uselessly too, in that room where nothing
+similar had ever been said before, and in presence of that Pontiff-King
+who could not understand him. His plan of the popes reigning by means of
+the poor and lowly now horrified him. His idea of the papacy going to the
+people, at last rid of its former masters, seemed to him a suggestion
+worthy of a wolf, for if the papacy should go to the people it would only
+be to prey upon it as the others had done. And really he, Pierre, must
+have been mad when he had imagined that a Roman prelate, a cardinal, a
+pope, was capable of admitting a return to the Christian commonwealth, a
+fresh florescence of primitive Christianity to pacify the aged nations
+whom hatred consumed. Such a conception indeed was beyond the
+comprehension of men who for centuries had regarded themselves as masters
+of the world, so heedless and disdainful of the lowly and the suffering,
+that they had at last become altogether incapable of either love or
+charity.*
+
+ * The reader should bear in mind that these remarks apply to the
+ Italian cardinals and prelates, whose vanity and egotism are
+ remarkable.--Trans.
+
+Leo XIII, however, was still holding forth in his full, unwearying voice.
+And the young priest heard him saying: “Why did you write that page on
+Lourdes which shows such a thoroughly bad spirit? Lourdes, my son, has
+rendered great services to religion. To the persons who have come and
+told me of the touching miracles which are witnessed at the Grotto almost
+daily, I have often expressed my desire to see those miracles confirmed,
+proved by the most rigorous scientific tests. And, indeed, according to
+what I have read, I do not think that the most evilly disposed minds can
+entertain any further doubt on the matter, for the miracles _are_ proved
+scientifically in the most irrefutable manner. Science, my son, must be
+God’s servant. It can do nothing against Him, it is only by His grace
+that it arrives at the truth. All the solutions which people nowadays
+pretend to discover and which seemingly destroy dogma will some day be
+recognised as false, for God’s truth will remain victorious when the
+times shall be accomplished. That is a very simple certainty, known even
+to little children, and it would suffice for the peace and salvation of
+mankind, if mankind would content itself with it. And be convinced, my
+son, that faith and reason are not incompatible. Have we not got St.
+Thomas who foresaw everything, explained everything, regulated
+everything? Your faith has been shaken by the onslaught of the spirit of
+examination, you have known trouble and anguish which Heaven has been
+pleased to spare our priests in this land of ancient belief, this city of
+Rome which the blood of so many martyrs has sanctified. However, we have
+no fear of the spirit of examination, study St. Thomas, read him
+thoroughly and your faith will return, definitive and triumphant, firmer
+than ever.”
+
+These remarks caused Pierre as much dismay as if fragments of the
+celestial vault were raining on his head. O God of truth, miracles--the
+miracles of Lourdes!--proved scientifically, faith in the dogmas
+compatible with reason, and the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas sufficient
+to instil certainty into the minds of this present generation! How could
+one answer that, and indeed why answer it at all?
+
+“Yes, yours is a most culpable and dangerous book,” concluded Leo XIII;
+“its very title ‘New Rome’ is mendacious and poisonous, and the work is
+the more to be condemned as it offers every fascination of style, every
+perversion of generous fancy. Briefly it is such a book that a priest, if
+he conceived it in an hour of error, can have no other duty than that of
+burning it in public with the very hand which traced the pages of error
+and scandal.”
+
+All at once Pierre rose up erect. He was about to exclaim: “‘Tis true, I
+had lost my faith, but I thought I had found it again in the compassion
+which the woes of the world set in my heart. You were my last hope, the
+awaited saviour. But, behold, that again is a dream, you cannot take the
+work of Jesus in hand once more and pacify mankind so as to avert the
+frightful fratricidal war which is preparing. You cannot leave your
+throne and come along the roads with the poor and the humble to carry out
+the supreme work of fraternity. Well, it is all over with you, your
+Vatican and your St. Peter’s. All is falling before the onslaught of the
+rising multitude and growing science. You no longer exist, there are only
+ruins and remnants left here.”
+
+However, he did not speak those words. He simply bowed and said: “Holy
+Father, I make my submission and reprobate my book.” And as he thus
+replied his voice trembled with disgust, and his open hands made a
+gesture of surrender as though he were yielding up his soul. The words he
+had chosen were precisely those of the required formula: _Auctor
+laudabiliter se subjecit et opus reprobavit_. “The author has laudably
+made his submission and reprobated his work.” No error could have been
+confessed, no hope could have accomplished self-destruction with loftier
+despair, more sovereign grandeur. But what frightful irony: that book
+which he had sworn never to withdraw, and for whose triumph he had fought
+so passionately, and which he himself now denied and suppressed, not
+because he deemed it guilty, but because he had just realised that it was
+as futile, as chimerical as a lover’s desire, a poet’s dream. Ah! yes,
+since he had been mistaken, since he had merely dreamed, since he had
+found there neither the Deity nor the priest that he had desired for the
+happiness of mankind, why should he obstinately cling to the illusion of
+an awakening which was impossible! ‘Twere better to fling his book on the
+ground like a dead leaf, better to deny it, better to cut it away like a
+dead limb that could serve no purpose whatever!
+
+Somewhat surprised by such a prompt victory Leo XIII raised a slight
+exclamation of content. “That is well said, my son, that is well said!
+You have spoken the only words that can become a priest.”
+
+And in his evident satisfaction, he who left nothing to chance, who
+carefully prepared each of his audiences, deciding beforehand what words
+he would say, what gestures even he would make, unbent somewhat and
+displayed real _bonhomie_. Unable to understand, mistaking the real
+motives of this rebellious priest’s submission, he tasted positive
+delight in having so easily reduced him to silence, the more so as report
+had stated the young man to be a terrible revolutionary. And thus his
+Holiness felt quite proud of such a conversion. “Moreover, my son,” he
+said, “I did not expect less of one of your distinguished mind. There can
+be no loftier enjoyment than that of owning one’s error, doing penance,
+and submitting.”
+
+He had again taken the glass off the little table beside him and was
+stirring the last spoonful of syrup before drinking it. And Pierre was
+amazed at again finding him as he had found him at the outset, shrunken,
+bereft of sovereign majesty, and simply suggestive of some aged
+_bourgeois_ drinking his glass of sugared water before getting into bed.
+It was as if after growing and radiating, like a planet ascending to the
+zenith, he had again sunk to the level of the soil in all human
+mediocrity. Again did Pierre find him puny and fragile, with the slender
+neck of a little sick bird, and all those marks of senile ugliness which
+rendered him so exacting with regard to his portraits, whether they were
+oil paintings or photographs, gold medals, or marble busts, for of one
+and the other he would say that the artist must not portray “Papa Pecci”
+ but Leo XIII, the great Pope, of whom he desired to leave such a lofty
+image to posterity. And Pierre, after momentarily ceasing to see them,
+was again embarrassed by the handkerchief which lay on the Pope’s lap,
+and the dirty cassock soiled by snuff. His only feelings now were
+affectionate pity for such white old age, deep admiration for the
+stubborn power of life which had found a refuge in those dark black eyes,
+and respectful deference, such as became a worker, for that large brain
+which harboured such vast projects and overflowed with such innumerable
+ideas and actions.
+
+The audience was over, and the young man bowed low: “I thank your
+Holiness for having deigned to give me such a fatherly reception,” he
+said.
+
+However, Leo XIII detained him for a moment longer, speaking to him of
+France and expressing his sincere desire to see her prosperous, calm, and
+strong for the greater advantage of the Church. And Pierre, during that
+last moment, had a singular vision, a strange haunting fancy. As he gazed
+at the Holy Father’s ivory brow and thought of his great age and of his
+liability to be carried off by the slightest chill, he involuntarily
+recalled the scene instinct with a fierce grandeur which is witnessed
+each time a pope dies. He recalled Pius IX, Giovanni Mastai, two hours
+after death, his face covered by a white linen cloth, while the
+pontifical family surrounded him in dismay; and then Cardinal Pecci, the
+_Camerlingo_, approaching the bed, drawing aside the veil and dealing
+three taps with his silver hammer on the forehead of the deceased,
+repeating at each tap the call, “Giovanni! Giovanni! Giovanni!” And as
+the corpse made no response, turning, after an interval of a few seconds,
+and saying: “The Pope is dead!” And at the same time, yonder in the Via
+Giulia Pierre pictured Cardinal Boccanera, the present _Camerlingo_,
+awaiting his turn with his silver hammer, and he imagined Leo XIII,
+otherwise Gioachino Pecci, dead, like his predecessor, his face covered
+by a white linen cloth and his corpse surrounded by his prelates in that
+very room. And he saw the _Camerlingo_ approach, draw the veil aside and
+tap the ivory forehead, each time repeating the call: “Gioachino!
+Gioachino! Gioachino!” Then, as the corpse did not answer, he waited for
+a few seconds and turned and said “The Pope is dead!” Did Leo XIII
+remember how he had thrice tapped the forehead of Pius IX, and did he
+ever feel on the brow an icy dread of the silver hammer with which he had
+armed his own _Camerlingo_, the man whom he knew to be his implacable
+adversary, Cardinal Boccanera?
+
+“Go in peace, my son,” at last said his Holiness by way of parting
+benediction. “Your transgression will be forgiven you since you have
+confessed and testify your horror for it.”
+
+With distressful spirit, accepting humiliation as well-deserved
+chastisement for his chimerical fancies, Pierre retired, stepping
+backwards according to the customary ceremonial. He made three deep bows
+and crossed the threshold without turning, followed by the black eyes of
+Leo XIII, which never left him. Still he saw the Pope stretch his arm
+towards the table to take up the newspaper which he had been reading
+prior to the audience, for Leo retained a great fancy for newspapers, and
+was very inquisitive as to news, though in the isolation in which he
+lived he frequently made mistakes respecting the relative importance of
+articles. And once more the chamber sank into deep quietude, whilst the
+two lamps continued to diffuse a soft and steady light.
+
+In the centre of the _anticamera segreta_ Signor Squadra stood waiting
+black and motionless. And on noticing that Pierre in his flurry forgot to
+take his hat from the pier table, he himself discreetly fetched it and
+handed it to the young priest with a silent bow. Then without any
+appearance of haste, he walked ahead to conduct the visitor back to the
+Sala Clementina. The endless promenade through the interminable
+ante-rooms began once more, and there was still not a soul, not a sound,
+not a breath. In each empty room stood the one solitary lamp, burning low
+amidst a yet deeper silence than before. The wilderness seemed also to
+have grown larger as the night advanced, casting its gloom over the few
+articles of furniture scattered under the lofty gilded ceilings, the
+thrones, the stools, the pier tables, the crucifixes, and the candelabra
+which recurred in each succeeding room. And at last the Sala Clementina
+which the Swiss Guards had just quitted was reached again, and Signor
+Squadra, who hitherto had not turned his head, thereupon drew aside
+without word or gesture, and, saluting Pierre with a last bow, allowed
+him to pass on. Then he himself disappeared.
+
+And Pierre descended the two flights of the monumental staircase where
+the gas jets in their globes of ground glass glimmered like night lights
+amidst a wondrously heavy silence now that the footsteps of the sentries
+no longer resounded on the landings. And he crossed the Court of St.
+Damasus, empty and lifeless in the pale light of the lamps above the
+steps, and descended the Scala Pia, that other great stairway as dim,
+deserted, and void of life as all the rest, and at last passed beyond the
+bronze door which a porter slowly shut behind him. And with what a
+rumble, what a fierce roar did the hard metal close upon all that was
+within; all the accumulated darkness and silence; the dead, motionless
+centuries perpetuated by tradition; the indestructible idols, the dogmas,
+bound round for preservation like mummies; every chain which may weigh on
+one or hamper one, the whole apparatus of bondage and sovereign
+domination, with whose formidable clang all the dark, deserted halls
+re-echoed.
+
+Once more the young man found himself alone on the gloomy expanse of the
+Piazza of St. Peter’s. Not a single belated pedestrian was to be seen.
+There was only the lofty, livid, ghost-like obelisk, emerging between its
+four candelabra, from the mosaic pavement of red and serpentine porphyry.
+The façade of the Basilica also showed vaguely, pale as a vision, whilst
+from it on either side like a pair of giant arms stretched the quadruple
+colonnade, a thicket of stone, steeped in obscurity. The dome was but a
+huge roundness scarcely discernible against the moonless sky; and only
+the jets of the fountains, which could at last be detected rising like
+slim phantoms ever on the move, lent a voice to the silence, the endless
+murmur of a plaint of sorrow coming one knew not whence. Ah! how great
+was the melancholy grandeur of that slumber, that famous square, the
+Vatican and St. Peter’s, thus seen by night when wrapped in silence and
+darkness! But suddenly the clock struck ten with so slow and loud a chime
+that never, so it seemed, had more solemn and decisive an hour rung out
+amidst blacker and more unfathomable gloom. All Pierre’s poor weary frame
+quivered at the sound as he stood motionless in the centre of the
+expanse. What! had he spent barely three-quarters of an hour, chatting up
+yonder with that white old man who had just wrenched all his soul away
+from him! Yes, it was the final wrench; his last belief had been torn
+from his bleeding heart and brain. The supreme experiment had been made,
+a world had collapsed within him. And all at once he thought of Monsignor
+Nani, and reflected that he alone had been right. He, Pierre, had been
+told that in any case he would end by doing what Monsignor Nani might
+desire, and he was now stupefied to find that he had done so.
+
+But sudden despair seized upon him, such atrocious distress of spirit
+that, from the depths of the abyss of darkness where he stood, he raised
+his quivering arms into space and spoke aloud: “No, no, Thou art not
+here, O God of life and love, O God of Salvation! But come, appear since
+Thy children are perishing because they know neither who Thou art, nor
+where to find Thee amidst the Infinite of the worlds!”
+
+Above the vast square spread the vast sky of dark-blue velvet, the silent
+disturbing Infinite, where the constellations palpitated. Over the roofs
+of the Vatican, Charles’s Wain seemed yet more tilted, its golden wheels
+straying from the right path, its golden shaft upreared in the air;
+whilst yonder, over Rome towards the Via Giulia, Orion was about to
+disappear and already showed but one of the three golden stars which
+bedecked his belt.
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+IT was nearly daybreak when Pierre fell asleep, exhausted by emotion and
+hot with fever. And at nine o’clock, when he had risen and breakfasted,
+he at once wished to go down into Cardinal Boccanera’s rooms where the
+bodies of Dario and Benedetta had been laid in state in order that the
+members of the family, its friends and clients, might bring them their
+tears and prayers.
+
+Whilst he breakfasted, Victorine who, showing an active bravery amidst
+her despair, had not been to bed at all, told him of what had taken place
+in the house during the night and early morning. Donna Serafina, prude
+that she was, had again made an attempt to have the bodies separated; but
+this had proved an impossibility, as _rigor mortis_ had set in, and to
+part the lovers it would have been necessary to break their limbs.
+Moreover, the Cardinal, who had interposed once before, almost quarrelled
+with his sister on the subject, unwilling as he was that any one should
+disturb the lovers’ last slumber, their union of eternity. Beneath his
+priestly garb there coursed the blood of his race, a pride in the
+passions of former times; and he remarked that if the family counted two
+popes among its forerunners, it had also been rendered illustrious by
+great captains and ardent lovers. Never would he allow any one to touch
+those two children, whose dolorous lives had been so pure and whom the
+grave alone had united. He was the master in his house, and they should
+be sewn together in the same shroud, and nailed together in the same
+coffin. Then too the religious service should take place at the
+neighbouring church of San Carlo, of which he was Cardinal-priest and
+where again he was the master. And if needful he would address himself to
+the Pope. And such being his sovereign will, so authoritatively
+expressed, everybody in the house had to bow submissively.
+
+Donna Serafina at once occupied herself with the laying-out. According to
+the Roman custom the servants were present, and Victorine as the oldest
+and most appreciated of them, assisted the relatives. All that could be
+done in the first instance was to envelop both corpses in Benedetta’s
+unbound hair, thick and odorous hair, which spread out into a royal
+mantle; and they were then laid together in one shroud of white silk,
+fastened about their necks in such wise that they formed but one being in
+death. And again the Cardinal imperatively ordered that they should be
+brought into his apartments and placed on a state bed in the centre of
+the throne-room, so that a supreme homage might be rendered to them as to
+the last scions of the name, the two tragic lovers with whom the once
+resounding glory of the Boccaneras was about to return to earth. The
+story which had been arranged was already circulating through Rome; folks
+related how Dario had been carried off in a few hours by infectious
+fever, and how Benedetta, maddened by grief, had expired whilst clasping
+him in her arms to bid him a last farewell; and there was talk too of the
+royal honours which the bodies were to receive, the superb funeral
+nuptials which were to be accorded them as they lay clasped on their bed
+of eternal rest. All Rome, quite overcome by this tragic story of love
+and death, would talk of nothing else for several weeks.
+
+Pierre would have started for France that same night, eager as he was to
+quit the city of disaster where he had lost the last shreds of his faith,
+but he desired to attend the obsequies, and therefore postponed his
+departure until the following evening. And thus he would spend one more
+day in that old crumbling palace, near the corpse of that unhappy young
+woman to whom he had been so much attached and for whom he would try to
+find some prayers in the depths of his empty and lacerated heart.
+
+When he reached the threshold of the Cardinal’s reception-rooms, he
+suddenly remembered his first visit to them. They still presented the
+same aspect of ancient princely pomp falling into decay and dust. The
+doors of the three large ante-rooms were wide open, and the rooms
+themselves were at that early hour still empty. In the first one, the
+servants’ anteroom, there was nobody but Giacomo who stood motionless in
+his black livery in front of the old red hat hanging under the
+_baldacchino_ where spiders spun their webs between the crumbling
+tassels. In the second room, which the secretary formerly had occupied,
+Abbé Paparelli, the train-bearer, was softly walking up and down whilst
+waiting for visitors; and with his conquering humility, his all-powerful
+obsequiousness, he had never before so closely resembled an old maid,
+whitened and wrinkled by excess of devout observances. Finally, in the
+third ante-room, the _anticamera nobile_, where the red cap lay on a
+credence facing the large imperious portrait of the Cardinal in
+ceremonial costume, there was Don Vigilio who had left his little
+work-table to station himself at the door of the throne-room and there
+bow to those who crossed the threshold. And on that gloomy winter morning
+the rooms appeared more mournful and dilapidated than ever, the hangings
+frayed and ragged, the few articles of furniture covered with dust, the
+old wood-work crumbling beneath the continuous onslaught of worms, and
+the ceilings alone retaining their pompous show of gilding and painting.
+
+However, Pierre, to whom Abbé Paparelli addressed a profound bow, in
+which one divined the irony of a sort of dismissal given to one who was
+vanquished, felt more impressed by the mournful grandeur which those
+three dilapidated rooms presented that day, conducting as they did to the
+old throne-room, now a chamber of death, where the two last children of
+the house slept their last sleep. What a superb and sorrowful _gala_ of
+death! Every door wide open and all the emptiness of those over-spacious
+rooms, void of the throngs of ancient days and leading to the supreme
+affliction--the end of a race! The Cardinal had shut himself up in his
+little work-room where he received the relatives and intimates who
+desired to present their condolences to him, whilst Donna Serafina had
+chosen an adjoining apartment to await her lady friends who would come in
+procession until evening. And Pierre, informed of the ceremonial by
+Victorine, had in the first place to enter the throne-room, greeted as he
+passed by a deep bow from Don Vigilio who, pale and silent, did not seem
+to recognise him.
+
+A surprise awaited the young priest. He had expected such a
+lying-in-state as is seen in France and elsewhere, all windows closed so
+as to steep the room in night, and hundreds of candles burning round a
+_catafalco_, whilst from ceiling to floor the walls were hung with black
+drapery. He had been told that the bodies would lie in the throne-room
+because the antique chapel on the ground floor of the palazzo had been
+shut up for half a century and was in no condition to be used, whilst the
+Cardinal’s little private chapel was altogether too small for any such
+ceremony. And thus it had been necessary to improvise an altar in the
+throne-room, an altar at which masses had been said ever since dawn.
+Masses and other religious services were moreover to be celebrated all
+day long in the private chapel; and two additional altars had even been
+set up, one in a small room adjoining the _anticamera nobile_ and the
+other in a sort of alcove communicating with the second anteroom: and in
+this wise priests, Franciscans, and members of other Orders bound by the
+vow of poverty, would simultaneously and without intermission celebrate
+the divine sacrifice on those four altars. The Cardinal, indeed, had
+desired that the Divine Blood should flow without pause under his roof
+for the redemption of those two dear souls which had flown away together.
+And thus in that mourning mansion, through those funeral halls the bells
+scarcely stopped tinkling for the elevation of the host, whilst the
+quivering murmur of Latin words ever continued, and consecrated wafers
+were continually broken and chalices drained, in such wise that the
+Divine Presence could not for a moment quit the heavy atmosphere all
+redolent of death.
+
+On the other hand, however, Pierre, to his great astonishment, found the
+throne-room much as it had been on the day of his first visit. The
+curtains of the four large windows had not even been drawn, and the grey,
+cold, subdued light of the gloomy winter morning freely entered. Under
+the ceiling of carved and gilded wood-work there were the customary red
+wall-hangings of _brocatelle_, worn away by long usage; and there was the
+old throne with the arm-chair turned to the wall, uselessly waiting for a
+visit from the Pope which would never more come. The principal changes in
+the aspect of the room were that its seats and tables had been removed,
+and that, in addition to the improvised altar arranged beside the throne,
+it now contained the state bed on which lay the bodies of Benedetta and
+Dario, amidst a profusion of flowers. The bed stood in the centre of the
+room on a low platform, and at its head were two lighted candles, one on
+either side. There was nothing else, nothing but that wealth of flowers,
+such a harvest of white roses that one wondered in what fairy garden they
+had been culled, sheaves of them on the bed, sheaves of them toppling
+from the bed, sheaves of them covering the step of the platform, and
+falling from that step on to the magnificent marble paving of the room.
+
+Pierre drew near to the bed, his heart faint with emotion. Those tapers
+whose little yellow flamelets scarcely showed in the pale daylight, that
+continuous low murmur of the mass being said at the altar, that
+penetrating perfume of roses which rendered the atmosphere so heavy,
+filled the antiquated, dusty room with a spirit of infinite woe, a
+lamentation of boundless mourning. And there was not a gesture, not a
+word spoken, save by the priest officiating at the altar, nothing but an
+occasional faint sound of stifled sobbing among the few persons present.
+Servants of the house constantly relieved one another, four always
+standing erect and motionless at the head of the bed, like faithful,
+familiar guards. From time to time Consistorial-Advocate Morano who,
+since early morning had been attending to everything, crossed the room
+with a silent step and the air of a man in a hurry. And at the edge of
+the platform all who entered, knelt, prayed, and wept. Pierre perceived
+three ladies there, their faces hidden by their handkerchiefs; and there
+was also an old priest who trembled with grief and hung his head in such
+wise that his face could not be distinguished. However, the young man was
+most moved by the sight of a poorly clad girl, whom he took for a
+servant, and whom sorrow had utterly prostrated on the marble slabs.
+
+Then in his turn he knelt down, and with the professional murmur of the
+lips sought to repeat the Latin prayers which, as a priest, he had so
+often said at the bedside of the departed. But his growing emotion
+confused his memory, and he became wrapt in contemplation of the lovers
+whom his eyes were unable to quit. Under the wealth of flowers which
+covered them the clasped bodies could scarcely be distinguished, but the
+two heads emerged from the silken shroud, and lying there on the same
+cushion, with their hair mingling, they were still beautiful, beautiful
+as with satisfied passion. Benedetta had kept her divinely gay, loving,
+and faithful face for eternity, transported with rapture at having
+rendered up her last breath in a kiss of love; whilst Dario retained a
+more dolorous expression amidst his final joy. And their eyes were still
+wide open, gazing at one another with a persistent and caressing
+sweetness which nothing would ever more disturb.
+
+Oh! God, was it true that yonder lay that Benedetta whom he, Pierre, had
+loved with such pure, brotherly affection? He was stirred to the very
+depths of his soul by the recollection of the delightful hours which he
+had spent with her. She had been so beautiful, so sensible, yet so full
+of passion! And he had indulged in so beautiful a dream, that of
+animating with his own liberating fraternal feelings that admirable
+creature with soul of fire and indolent air, in whom he had pictured all
+ancient Rome, and whom he would have liked to awaken and win over to the
+Italy of to-morrow. He had dreamt of enlarging her brain and heart by
+filling her with love for the lowly and the poor, with all present-day
+compassion for things and beings. How he would now have smiled at such a
+dream had not his tears been flowing! Yet how charming she had shown
+herself in striving to content him despite the invincible obstacles of
+race, education, and environment. She had been a docile pupil, but was
+incapable of any real progress. One day she had certainly seemed to draw
+nearer to him, as though her own sufferings had opened her soul to every
+charity; but the illusion of happiness had come back, and then she had
+lost all understanding of the woes of others, and had gone off in the
+egotism of her own hope and joy. Did that mean then that this Roman race
+must finish in that fashion, beautiful as it still often is, and fondly
+adored but so closed to all love for others, to those laws of charity and
+justice which, by regulating labour, can henceforth alone save this world
+of ours?
+
+Then there came another great sorrow to Pierre which left him stammering,
+unable to speak any precise prayer. He thought of the overwhelming
+reassertion of Nature’s powers which had attended the death of those two
+poor children. Was it not awful? To have taken that vow to the Virgin, to
+have endured torment throughout life, and to end by plunging into death,
+on the loved one’s neck, distracted by vain regret and eager for
+self-bestowal! The brutal fact of impending separation had sufficed for
+Benedetta to realise how she had duped herself, and to revert to the
+universal instinct of love. And therein, again once more, was the Church
+vanquished; therein again appeared the great god Pan, mating the sexes
+and scattering life around! If in the days of the Renascence the Church
+did not fall beneath the assault of the Venuses and Hercules then exhumed
+from the old soil of Rome, the struggle at all events continued as
+bitterly as ever; and at each and every hour new nations, overflowing
+with sap, hungering for life, and warring against a religion which was
+nothing more than an appetite for death, threatened to sweep away that
+old Holy Apostolic Roman and Catholic edifice whose walls were already
+tottering on all sides.
+
+And at that moment Pierre felt that the death of that adorable Benedetta
+was for him the supreme disaster. He was still looking at her and tears
+were scorching his eyes. She was carrying off his chimera. This time
+’twas really the end. Rome the Catholic and the Princely was dead, lying
+there like marble on that funeral bed. She had been unable to go to the
+humble, the suffering ones of the world, and had just expired amidst the
+impotent cry of her egotistical passion when it was too late either to
+love or to create. Never more would children be born of her, the old
+Roman house was henceforth empty, sterile, beyond possibility of
+awakening. Pierre whose soul mourned such a splendid dream, was so
+grieved at seeing her thus motionless and frigid, that he felt himself
+fainting. He feared lest he might fall upon the step beside the bed, and
+so struggled to his feet and drew aside.
+
+Then, as he sought refuge in a window recess in order that he might try
+to recover self-possession, he was astonished to perceive Victorine
+seated there on a bench which the hangings half concealed. She had come
+thither by Donna Serafina’s orders, and sat watching her two dear
+children as she called them, whilst keeping an eye upon all who came in
+and went out. And, on seeing the young priest so pale and nearly
+swooning, she at once made room for him to sit down beside her. “Ah!” he
+murmured after drawing a long breath, “may they at least have the joy of
+being together elsewhere, of living a new life in another world.”
+
+Victorine, however, shrugged her shoulders, and in an equally low voice
+responded, “Oh! live again, Monsieur l’Abbé, why? When one’s dead the
+best is to remain so and to sleep. Those poor children had enough
+torments on earth, one mustn’t wish that they should begin again
+elsewhere.”
+
+This naive yet deep remark on the part of an ignorant unbelieving woman
+sent a shudder through Pierre’s very bones. To think that his own teeth
+had chattered with fear at night time at the sudden thought of
+annihilation. He deemed her heroic at remaining so undisturbed by any
+ideas of eternity and the infinite. And she, as she felt he was
+quivering, went on: “What can you suppose there should be after death?
+We’ve deserved a right to sleep, and nothing to my thinking can be more
+desirable and consoling.”
+
+“But those two did not live,” murmured Pierre, “so why not allow oneself
+the joy of believing that they now live elsewhere, recompensed for all
+their torments?”
+
+Victorine, however, again shook her head; “No, no,” she replied. “Ah! I
+was quite right in saying that my poor Benedetta did wrong in torturing
+herself with all those superstitious ideas of hers when she was really so
+fond of her lover. Yes, happiness is rarely found, and how one regrets
+having missed it when it’s too late to turn back! That’s the whole story
+of those poor little ones. It’s too late for them, they are dead.” Then
+in her turn she broke down and began to sob. “Poor little ones! poor
+little ones! Look how white they are, and think what they will be when
+only the bones of their heads lie side by side on the cushion, and only
+the bones of their arms still clasp one another. Ah! may they sleep, may
+they sleep; at least they know nothing and feel nothing now.”
+
+A long interval of silence followed. Pierre, amidst the quiver of his own
+doubts, the anxious desire which in common with most men he felt for a
+new life beyond the grave, gazed at this woman who did not find priests
+to her fancy, and who retained all her Beauceronne frankness of speech,
+with the tranquil, contented air of one who has ever done her duty in her
+humble station as a servant, lost though she had been for five and twenty
+years in a land of wolves, whose language she had not even been able to
+learn. Ah! yes, tortured as the young man was by his doubts, he would
+have liked to be as she was, a well-balanced, healthy, ignorant creature
+who was quite content with what the world offered, and who, when she had
+accomplished her daily task, went fully satisfied to bed, careless as to
+whether she might never wake again!
+
+However, as Pierre’s eyes once more sought the state bed, he suddenly
+recognised the old priest, who was kneeling on the step of the platform,
+and whose features he had hitherto been unable to distinguish. “Isn’t
+that Abbé Pisoni, the priest of Santa Brigida, where I sometimes said
+mass?” he inquired. “The poor old man, how he weeps!”
+
+In her quiet yet desolate voice Victorine replied, “He has good reason to
+weep. He did a fine thing when he took it into his head to marry my poor
+Benedetta to Count Prada. All those abominations would never have
+happened if the poor child had been given her Dario at once. But in this
+idiotic city they are all mad with their politics; and that old priest,
+who is none the less a very worthy man, thought he had accomplished a
+real miracle and saved the world by marrying the Pope and the King as he
+said with a soft laugh, poor old _savant_ that he is, who for his part
+has never been in love with anything but old stones--you know, all that
+antiquated rubbish of theirs of a hundred thousand years ago. And now,
+you see, he can’t keep from weeping. The other one too came not twenty
+minutes ago, Father Lorenza, the Jesuit who became the Contessina’s
+confessor after Abbé Pisoni, and who undid what the other had done. Yes,
+a handsome man he is, but a fine bungler all the same, a perfect killjoy
+with all the crafty hindrances which he brought into that divorce affair.
+I wish you had been here to see what a big sign of the cross he made
+after he had knelt down. He didn’t cry, he didn’t: he seemed to be saying
+that as things had ended so badly it was evident that God had withdrawn
+from all share in the business. So much the worse for the dead!”
+
+Victorine spoke gently and without a pause, as it relieved her, to empty
+her heart after the terrible hours of bustle and suffocation which she
+had spent since the previous day. “And that one yonder,” she resumed in a
+lower voice, “don’t you recognise her?”
+
+She glanced towards the poorly clad girl whom Pierre had taken for a
+servant, and whom intensity of grief had prostrated beside the bed. With
+a gesture of awful suffering this girl had just thrown back her head, a
+head of extraordinary beauty, enveloped by superb black hair.
+
+“La Pierina!” said Pierre. “Ah! poor girl.”
+
+Victorine made a gesture of compassion and tolerance.
+
+“What would you have?” said she, “I let her come up. I don’t know how she
+heard of the trouble, but it’s true that she is always prowling round the
+house. She sent and asked me to come down to her, and you should have
+heard her sob and entreat me to let her see her Prince once more! Well,
+she does no harm to anybody there on the floor, looking at them both with
+her beautiful loving eyes full of tears. She’s been there for half an
+hour already, and I had made up my mind to turn her out if she didn’t
+behave properly. But since she’s so quiet and doesn’t even move, she may
+well stop and fill her heart with the sight of them for her whole life
+long.”
+
+It was really sublime to see that ignorant, passionate, beautiful Pierina
+thus overwhelmed below the nuptial couch on which the lovers slept for
+all eternity. She had sunk down on her heels, her arms hanging heavily
+beside her, and her hands open. And with raised face, motionless as in an
+ecstasy of suffering, she did not take her eyes from that adorable and
+tragic pair. Never had human face displayed such beauty, such a dazzling
+splendour of suffering and love; never had there been such a portrayal of
+ancient Grief, not however cold like marble but quivering with life. What
+was she thinking of, what were her sufferings, as she thus fixedly gazed
+at her Prince now and for ever locked in her rival’s arms? Was it some
+jealousy which could have no end that chilled the blood of her veins? Or
+was it mere suffering at having lost him, at realising that she was
+looking at him for the last time, without thought of hatred for that
+other woman who vainly sought to warm him with her arms as icy cold as
+his own? There was still a soft gleam in the poor girl’s blurred eyes,
+and her lips were still lips of love though curved in bitterness by
+grief. She found the lovers so pure and beautiful as they lay there
+amidst that profusion of flowers! And beautiful herself, beautiful like a
+queen, ignorant of her own charms, she remained there breathless, a
+humble servant, a loving slave as it were, whose heart had been wrenched
+away and carried off by her dying master.
+
+People were now constantly entering the room, slowly approaching with
+mournful faces, then kneeling and praying for a few minutes, and
+afterwards retiring with the same mute, desolate mien. A pang came to
+Pierre’s heart when he saw Dario’s mother, the ever beautiful Flavia,
+enter, accompanied by her husband, the handsome Jules Laporte, that
+ex-sergeant of the Swiss Guard whom she had turned into a Marquis
+Montefiori. Warned of the tragedy directly it had happened, she had
+already come to the mansion on the previous evening; but now she returned
+in grand ceremony and full mourning, looking superb in her black garments
+which were well suited to her massive, Juno-like style of beauty. When
+she had approached the bed with a queenly step, she remained for a moment
+standing with two tears at the edges of her eyelids, tears which did not
+fall. Then, at the moment of kneeling, she made sure that Jules was
+beside her, and glanced at him as if to order him to kneel as well. They
+both sank down beside the platform and remained in prayer for the proper
+interval, she very dignified in her grief and he even surpassing her,
+with the perfect sorrow-stricken bearing of a man who knew how to conduct
+himself in every circumstance of life, even the gravest. And afterwards
+they rose together, and slowly betook themselves to the entrance of the
+private apartments where the Cardinal and Donna Serafina were receiving
+their relatives and friends.
+
+Five ladies then came in one after the other, while two Capuchins and the
+Spanish ambassador to the Holy See went off. And Victorine, who for a few
+minutes had remained silent, suddenly resumed. “Ah! there’s the little
+Princess, she’s much afflicted too, and, no wonder, she was so fond of
+our Benedetta.”
+
+Pierre himself had just noticed Celia coming in. She also had attired
+herself in full mourning for this abominable visit of farewell. Behind
+her was a maid, who carried on either arm a huge sheaf of white roses.
+
+“The dear girl!” murmured Victorine, “she wanted her wedding with her
+Attilio to take place on the same day as that of the poor lovers who lie
+there. And they, alas! have forestalled her, their wedding’s over; there
+they sleep in their bridal bed.”
+
+Celia had at once crossed herself and knelt down beside the bed, but it
+was evident that she was not praying. She was indeed looking at the
+lovers with desolate stupefaction at finding them so white and cold with
+a beauty as of marble. What! had a few hours sufficed, had life departed,
+would those lips never more exchange a kiss! She could again see them at
+the ball of that other night, so resplendent and triumphant with their
+living love. And a feeling of furious protest rose from her young heart,
+so open to life, so eager for joy and sunlight, so angry with the hateful
+idiocy of death. And her anger and affright and grief, as she thus found
+herself face to face with the annihilation which chills every passion,
+could be read on her ingenuous, candid, lily-like face. She herself stood
+on the threshold of a life of passion of which she yet knew nothing, and
+behold! on that very threshold she encountered the corpses of those
+dearly loved ones, the loss of whom racked her soul with grief.
+
+She gently closed her eyes and tried to pray, whilst big tears fell from
+under her lowered eyelids. Some time went by amidst the quivering
+silence, which only the murmur of the mass near by disturbed. At last she
+rose and took the sheaves of flowers from her maid; and standing on the
+platform she hesitated for a moment, then placed the roses to the right
+and left of the cushion on which the lovers’ heads were resting, as if
+she wished to crown them with those blossoms, perfume their young brows
+with that sweet and powerful aroma. Then, though her hands remained empty
+she did not retire, but remained there leaning over the dead ones,
+trembling and seeking what she might yet say to them, what she might
+leave them of herself for ever more. An inspiration came to her, and she
+stooped forward, and with her whole, deep, loving soul set a long, long
+kiss on the brow of either spouse.
+
+“Ah! the dear girl!” said Victorine, whose tears were again flowing. “You
+saw that she kissed them, and nobody had yet thought of that, not even
+the poor young Prince’s mother. Ah! the dear little heart, she surely
+thought of her Attilio.”
+
+However, as Celia turned to descend from the platform she perceived La
+Pierina, whose figure was still thrown back in an attitude of mute and
+dolorous adoration. And she recognised the girl and melted with pity on
+seeing such a fit of sobbing come over her that her whole body, her
+goddess-like hips and bosom, shook as with frightful anguish. That agony
+of love quite upset the little Princess, and she could be heard murmuring
+in a tone of infinite compassion, “Calm yourself, my dear, calm yourself.
+Be reasonable, my dear, I beg you.”
+
+Then as La Pierina, thunderstruck at thus being pitied and succoured,
+began to sob yet more loudly so as to create quite a stir in the room,
+Celia raised her and held her up with both arms, for fear lest she should
+fall again. And she led her away in a sisterly clasp, like a sister of
+affection and despair, lavishing the most gentle, consoling words upon
+her as they went.
+
+“Follow them, go and see what becomes of them,” Victorine said to Pierre.
+“I do not want to stir from here, it quiets me to watch over my two poor
+children.”
+
+A Capuchin was just beginning a fresh mass at the improvised altar, and
+the low Latin psalmody went on again, while in the adjoining
+ante-chamber, where another mass was being celebrated, a bell was heard
+tinkling for the elevation of the host. The perfume of the flowers was
+becoming more violent and oppressive amidst the motionless and mournful
+atmosphere of the spacious throne-room. The four servants standing at the
+head of the bed, as for a _gala_ reception, did not stir, and the
+procession of visitors ever continued, men and women entering in silence,
+suffocating there for a moment, and then withdrawing, carrying away with
+them the never-to-be-forgotten vision of the two tragic lovers sleeping
+their eternal sleep.
+
+Pierre joined Celia and La Pierina in the _anticamera nobile_, where
+stood Don Vigilio. The few seats belonging to the throne-room had there
+been placed in a corner, and the little Princess had just compelled the
+work-girl to sit down in an arm-chair, in order that she might recover
+self-possession. Celia was in ecstasy before her, enraptured at finding
+her so beautiful, more beautiful than any other, as she said. Then she
+spoke of the two dead ones, who also had seemed to her very beautiful,
+endowed with an extraordinary beauty, at once superb and sweet; and
+despite all her tears, she still remained in a transport of admiration.
+On speaking with La Pierina, Pierre learnt that her brother Tito was at
+the hospital in great danger from the effects of a terrible knife thrust
+dealt him in the side; and since the beginning of the winter, said the
+girl, the misery in the district of the castle fields had become
+frightful. It was a source of great suffering to every one, and those
+whom death carried off had reason to rejoice.
+
+Celia, however, with a gesture of invincible hopefulness, brushed all
+idea of suffering, even of death, aside. “No, no, we must live,” she
+said. “And beauty is sufficient for life. Come, my dear, do not remain
+here, do not weep any more; live for the delight of being beautiful.”
+
+Then she led La Pierina away, and Pierre remained seated in one of the
+arm-chairs, overcome by such sorrow and weariness that he would have
+liked to remain there for ever. Don Vigilio was still bowing to each
+fresh visitor that arrived. A severe attack of fever had come on him
+during the night, and he was shivering from it, with his face very
+yellow, and his eyes ablaze and haggard. He constantly glanced at Pierre,
+as if anxious to speak to him, but his dread lest he should be seen by
+Abbé Paparelli, who stood in the next ante-room, the door of which was
+wide open, doubtless restrained him, for he did not cease to watch the
+train-bearer. At last the latter was compelled to absent himself for a
+moment, and the secretary thereupon approached the young Frenchman.
+
+“You saw his Holiness last night,” he said; and as Pierre gazed at him in
+stupefaction he added: “Oh! everything gets known, I told you so before.
+Well, and you purely and simply withdrew your book, did you not?” The
+young priest’s increasing stupor was sufficient answer, and without
+leaving him time to reply, Don Vigilio went on: “I suspected it, but I
+wished to make certain. Ah! that’s just the way they work! Do you believe
+me now, have you realised that they stifle those whom they don’t poison?”
+
+He was no doubt referring to the Jesuits. However, after glancing into
+the adjoining room to make sure that Abbé Paparelli had not returned
+thither, he resumed: “And what has Monsignor Nani just told you?”
+
+“But I have not yet seen Monsignor Nani,” was Pierre’s reply.
+
+“Oh! I thought you had. He passed through before you arrived. If you did
+not see him in the throne-room he must have gone to pay his respects to
+Donna Serafina and his Eminence. However, he will certainly pass this way
+again; you will see him by and by.” Then with the bitterness of one who
+was weak, ever terror-smitten and vanquished, Don Vigilio added: “I told
+you that you would end by doing what Monsignor Nani desired.”
+
+With these words, fancying that he heard the light footfall of Abbé
+Paparelli, he hastily returned to his place and bowed to two old ladies
+who just then walked in. And Pierre, still seated, overcome, his eyes
+wearily closing, at last saw the figure of Nani arise before him in all
+its reality so typical of sovereign intelligence and address. He
+remembered what Don Vigilio, on the famous night of his revelations, had
+told him of this man who was far too shrewd to have labelled himself, so
+to say, with an unpopular robe, and who, withal, was a charming prelate
+with thorough knowledge of the world, acquired by long experience at
+different nunciatures and at the Holy Office, mixed up in everything,
+informed with regard to everything, one of the heads, one of the chief
+minds in fact of that modern black army, which by dint of Opportunism
+hopes to bring this century back to the Church. And all at once, full
+enlightenment fell on Pierre, he realised by what supple, clever strategy
+that man had led him to the act which he desired of him, the pure and
+simple withdrawal of his book, accomplished with every appearance of free
+will. First there had been great annoyance on Nani’s part on learning
+that the book was being prosecuted, for he feared lest its excitable
+author might be prompted to some dangerous revolt; then plans had at once
+been formed, information had been collected concerning this young priest
+who seemed so capable of schism, he had been urged to come to Rome,
+invited to stay in an ancient mansion whose very walls would chill and
+enlighten him. And afterwards had come the ever recurring obstacles, the
+system of prolonging his sojourn in Rome by preventing him from seeing
+the Pope, but promising him the much-desired interview when the proper
+time should come, that is after he had been sent hither and thither and
+brought into collision with one and all. And finally, when every one and
+everything had shaken, wearied, and disgusted him, and he was restored
+once more to his old doubts, there had come the audience for which he had
+undergone all this preparation, that visit to the Pope which was destined
+to shatter whatever remained to him of his dream. Pierre could picture
+Nani smiling at him and speaking to him, declaring that the repeated
+delays were a favour of Providence, which would enable him to visit Rome,
+study and understand things, reflect, and avoid blunders. How delicate
+and how profound had been the prelate’s diplomacy in thus crushing his
+feelings beneath his reason, appealing to his intelligence to suppress
+his work without any scandalous struggle as soon as his knowledge of the
+real Rome should have shown him how supremely ridiculous it was to dream
+of a new one!
+
+At that moment Pierre perceived Nani in person just coming from the
+throne-room, and did not feel the irritation and rancour which he had
+anticipated. On the contrary he was glad when the prelate, in his turn
+seeing him, drew near and held out his hand. Nani, however, did not wear
+his wonted smile, but looked very grave, quite grief-stricken. “Ah! my
+dear son,” he said, “what a frightful catastrophe! I have just left his
+Eminence, he is in tears. It is horrible, horrible!”
+
+He seated himself on one of the chairs, inviting the young priest, who
+had risen, to do the same; and for a moment he remained silent, weary
+with emotion no doubt, and needing a brief rest to free himself of the
+weight of thoughts which visibly darkened his usually bright face. Then,
+with a gesture, he strove to dismiss that gloom, and recover his amiable
+cordiality. “Well, my dear son,” he began, “you saw his Holiness?”
+
+“Yes, Monseigneur, yesterday evening; and I thank you for your great
+kindness in satisfying my desire.”
+
+Nani looked at him fixedly, and his invincible smile again returned to
+his lips. “You thank me.... I can well see that you behaved sensibly
+and laid your full submission at his Holiness’s feet. I was certain of
+it, I did not expect less of your fine intelligence. But, all the same,
+you render me very happy, for I am delighted to find that I was not
+mistaken concerning you.” And then, setting aside his reserve, the
+prelate went on: “I never discussed things with you. What would have been
+the good of it, since facts were there to convince you? And now that you
+have withdrawn your book a discussion would be still more futile.
+However, just reflect that if it were possible for you to bring the
+Church back to her early period, to that Christian community which you
+have sketched so delightfully, she could only again follow the same
+evolutions as those in which God the first time guided her; so that, at
+the end of a similar number of centuries, she would find herself exactly
+in the position which she occupies to-day. No, what God has done has been
+well done, the Church such as she is must govern the world, such as it
+is; it is for her alone to know how she will end by firmly establishing
+her reign here below. And this is why your attack upon the temporal power
+was an unpardonable fault, a crime even, for by dispossessing the papacy
+of her domains you hand her over to the mercy of the nations. Your new
+religion is but the final downfall of all religion, moral anarchy, the
+liberty of schism, in a word, the destruction of the divine edifice, that
+ancient Catholicism which has shown such prodigious wisdom and solidity,
+which has sufficed for the salvation of mankind till now, and will alone
+be able to save it to-morrow and always.”
+
+Pierre felt that Nani was sincere, pious even, and really unshakable in
+his faith, loving the Church like a grateful son, and convinced that she
+was the only social organisation which could render mankind happy. And if
+he were bent on governing the world, it was doubtless for the pleasure of
+governing, but also in the conviction that no one could do so better than
+himself.
+
+“Oh! certainly,” said he, “methods are open to discussion. I desire them
+to be as affable and humane as possible, as conciliatory as can be with
+this present century, which seems to be escaping us, precisely because
+there is a misunderstanding between us. But we shall bring it back, I am
+sure of it. And that is why, my dear son, I am so pleased to see you
+return to the fold, thinking as we think, and ready to battle on our
+side, is that not so?”
+
+In Nani’s words the young priest once more found the arguments of Leo
+XIII. Desiring to avoid a direct reply, for although he now felt no anger
+the wrenching away of his dream had left him a smarting wound, he bowed,
+and replied slowly in order to conceal the bitter tremble of his voice:
+“I repeat, Monseigneur, that I deeply thank you for having amputated my
+vain illusions with the skill of an accomplished surgeon. A little later,
+when I shall have ceased to suffer, I shall think of you with eternal
+gratitude.”
+
+Monsignor Nani still looked at him with a smile. He fully understood that
+this young priest would remain on one side, that as an element of
+strength he was lost to the Church. What would he do now? Something
+foolish no doubt. However, the prelate had to content himself with having
+helped him to repair his first folly; he could not foresee the future.
+And he gracefully waved his hand as if to say that sufficient unto the
+day was the evil thereof.
+
+“Will you allow me to conclude, my dear son?” he at last exclaimed. “Be
+sensible, your happiness as a priest and a man lies in humility. You will
+be terribly unhappy if you use the great intelligence which God has given
+you against Him.”
+
+Then with another gesture he dismissed this affair, which was all over,
+and with which he need busy himself no more. And thereupon the other
+affair came back to make him gloomy, that other affair which also was
+drawing to a close, but so tragically, with those two poor children
+slumbering in the adjoining room. “Ah!” he resumed, “that poor Princess
+and that poor Cardinal quite upset my heart! Never did catastrophe fall
+so cruelly on a house. No, no, it is indeed too much, misfortune goes too
+far--it revolts one’s soul!”
+
+Just as he finished a sound of voices came from the second ante-room, and
+Pierre was thunderstruck to see Cardinal Sanguinetti go by, escorted with
+the greatest obsequiousness by Abbé Paparelli.
+
+“If your most Reverend Eminence will have the extreme kindness to follow
+me,” the train-bearer was saying, “I will conduct your most Reverend
+Eminence myself.”
+
+“Yes,” replied Sanguinetti, “I arrived yesterday evening from Frascati,
+and when I heard the sad news, I at once desired to express my sorrow and
+offer consolation.”
+
+“Your Eminence will perhaps condescend to remain for a moment near the
+bodies. I will afterwards escort your Eminence to the private
+apartments.”
+
+“Yes, by all means. I desire every one to know how greatly I participate
+in the sorrow which has fallen on this illustrious house.”
+
+Then Sanguinetti entered the throne-room, leaving Pierre quite aghast at
+his quiet audacity. The young priest certainly did not accuse him of
+direct complicity with Santobono, he did not even dare to measure how far
+his moral complicity might go. But on seeing him pass by like that, his
+brow so lofty, his speech so clear, he had suddenly felt convinced that
+he knew the truth. How or through whom, he could not have told; but
+doubtless crimes become known in those shady spheres by those whose
+interest it is to know of them. And Pierre remained quite chilled by the
+haughty fashion in which that man presented himself, perhaps to stifle
+suspicion and certainly to accomplish an act of good policy by giving his
+rival a public mark of esteem and affection.
+
+“The Cardinal! Here!” Pierre murmured despite himself.
+
+Nani, who followed the young man’s thoughts in his childish eyes, in
+which all could be read, pretended to mistake the sense of his
+exclamation. “Yes,” said he, “I learnt that the Cardinal returned to Rome
+yesterday evening. He did not wish to remain away any longer; the Holy
+Father being so much better that he might perhaps have need of him.”
+
+Although these words were spoken with an air of perfect innocence, Pierre
+was not for a moment deceived by them. And having in his turn glanced at
+the prelate, he was convinced that the latter also knew the truth. Then,
+all at once, the whole affair appeared to him in its intricacy, in the
+ferocity which fate had imparted to it. Nani, an old intimate of the
+Palazzo Boccanera, was not heartless, he had surely loved Benedetta with
+affection, charmed by so much grace and beauty. One could thus explain
+the victorious manner in which he had at last caused her marriage to be
+annulled. But if Don Vigilio were to be believed, that divorce, obtained
+by pecuniary outlay, and under pressure of the most notorious influences,
+was simply a scandal which he, Nani, had in the first instance spun out,
+and then precipitated towards a resounding finish with the sole object of
+discrediting the Cardinal and destroying his chances of the tiara on the
+eve of the Conclave which everybody thought imminent. It seemed certain,
+too, that the Cardinal, uncompromising as he was, could not be the
+candidate of Nani, who was so desirous of universal agreement, and so the
+latter’s long labour in that house, whilst conducing to the happiness of
+the Contessina, had been designed to frustrate Donna Serafina and
+Cardinal Pio in their burning ambition, that third triumphant elevation
+to the papacy which they sought to secure for their ancient family.
+However, if Nani had always desired to baulk this ambition, and had even
+at one moment placed his hopes in Sanguinetti and fought for him, he had
+never imagined that Boccanera’s foes would go to the point of crime, to
+such an abomination as poison which missed its mark and killed the
+innocent. No, no, as he himself said, that was too much, and made one’s
+soul rebel. He employed more gentle weapons; such brutality filled him
+with indignation; and his face, so pinky and carefully tended, still wore
+the grave expression of his revolt in presence of the tearful Cardinal
+and those poor lovers stricken in his stead.
+
+Believing that Sanguinetti was still the prelate’s secret candidate,
+Pierre was worried to know how far their moral complicity in this baleful
+affair might go. So he resumed the conversation by saying: “It is
+asserted that his Holiness is on bad terms with his Eminence Cardinal
+Sanguinetti. Of course the reigning pope cannot look on the future pope
+with a very kindly eye.”
+
+At this, Nani for a moment became quite gay in all frankness. “Oh,” said
+he, “the Cardinal has quarrelled and made things up with the Vatican
+three or four times already. And, in any event, the Holy Father has no
+motive for posthumous jealousy; he knows very well that he can give his
+Eminence a good greeting.” Then, regretting that he had thus expressed a
+certainty, he added: “I am joking, his Eminence is altogether worthy of
+the high fortune which perhaps awaits him.”
+
+Pierre knew what to think however; Sanguinetti was certainly Nani’s
+candidate no longer. It was doubtless considered that he had used himself
+up too much by his impatient ambition, and was too dangerous by reason of
+the equivocal alliances which in his feverishness he had concluded with
+every party, even that of patriotic young Italy. And thus the situation
+became clearer. Cardinals Sanguinetti and Boccanera devoured and
+suppressed one another; the first, ever intriguing, accepting every
+compromise, dreaming of winning Rome back by electoral methods; and the
+other, erect and motionless in his stern maintenance of the past,
+excommunicating the century, and awaiting from God alone the miracle
+which would save the Church. And, indeed, why not leave the two theories,
+thus placed face to face, to destroy one another, including all the
+extreme, disquieting views which they respectively embodied? If Boccanera
+had escaped the poison, he had none the less become an impossible
+candidate, killed by all the stories which had set Rome buzzing; while if
+Sanguinetti could say that he was rid of a rival, he had at the same time
+dealt a mortal blow to his own candidature, by displaying such passion
+for power, and such unscrupulousness with regard to the methods he
+employed, as to be a danger for every one. Monsignor Nani was visibly
+delighted with this result; neither candidate was left, it was like the
+legendary story of the two wolves who fought and devoured one another so
+completely that nothing of either of them was found left, not even their
+tails! And in the depths of the prelate’s pale eyes, in the whole of his
+discreet person, there remained nothing but redoubtable mystery: the
+mystery of the yet unknown, but definitively selected candidate who would
+be patronised by the all-powerful army of which he was one of the most
+skilful leaders. A man like him always had a solution ready. Who, then,
+who would be the next pope?
+
+However, he now rose and cordially took leave of the young priest. “I
+doubt if I shall see you again, my dear son,” he said; “I wish you a good
+journey.”
+
+Still he did not go off, but continued to look at Pierre with his
+penetrating eyes, and finally made him sit down again and did the same
+himself. “I feel sure,” he said, “that you will go to pay your respects
+to Cardinal Bergerot as soon as you have returned to France. Kindly tell
+him that I respectfully desired to be reminded to him. I knew him a
+little at the time when he came here for his hat. He is one of the great
+luminaries of the French clergy. Ah! a man of such intelligence would
+only work for a good understanding in our holy Church. Unfortunately I
+fear that race and environment have instilled prejudices into him, for he
+does not always help us.”
+
+Pierre, who was surprised to hear Nani speak of the Cardinal for the
+first time at this moment of farewell, listened with curiosity. Then in
+all frankness he replied: “Yes, his Eminence has very decided ideas about
+our old Church of France. For instance, he professes perfect horror of
+the Jesuits.”
+
+With a light exclamation Nani stopped the young man. And he wore the most
+sincerely, frankly astonished air that could be imagined. “What! horror
+of the Jesuits! In what way can the Jesuits disquiet him? The Jesuits,
+there are none, that’s all over! Have you seen any in Rome? Have they
+troubled you in any way, those poor Jesuits who haven’t even a stone of
+their own left here on which to lay their heads? No, no, that bogey
+mustn’t be brought up again, it’s childish.”
+
+Pierre in his turn looked at him, marvelling at his perfect ease, his
+quiet courage in dealing with this burning subject. He did not avert his
+eyes, but displayed an open face like a book of truth. “Ah!” he
+continued, “if by Jesuits you mean the sensible priests who, instead of
+entering into sterile and dangerous struggles with modern society, seek
+by human methods to bring it back to the Church, why, then of course we
+are all of us more or less Jesuits, for it would be madness not to take
+into account the times in which one lives. And besides, I won’t haggle
+over words; they are of no consequence! Jesuits, well, yes, if you like,
+Jesuits!” He was again smiling with that shrewd smile of his in which
+there was so much raillery and so much intelligence. “Well, when you see
+Cardinal Bergerot tell him that it is unreasonable to track the Jesuits
+and treat them as enemies of the nation. The contrary is the truth. The
+Jesuits are for France, because they are for wealth, strength, and
+courage. France is the only great Catholic country which has yet remained
+erect and sovereign, the only one on which the papacy can some day lean.
+Thus the Holy Father, after momentarily dreaming of obtaining support
+from victorious Germany, has allied himself with France, the vanquished,
+because he has understood that apart from France there can be no
+salvation for the Church. And in this he has only followed the policy of
+the Jesuits, those frightful Jesuits, whom your Parisians execrate. And
+tell Cardinal Bergerot also that it would be grand of him to work for
+pacification by making people understand how wrong it is for your
+Republic to help the Holy Father so little in his conciliatory efforts.
+It pretends to regard him as an element in the world’s affairs that may
+be neglected; and that is dangerous, for although he may seem to have no
+political means of action he remains an immense moral force, and can at
+any moment raise consciences in rebellion and provoke a religious
+agitation of the most far-reaching consequences. It is still he who
+disposes of the nations, since he disposes of their souls, and the
+Republic acts most inconsiderately, from the standpoint of its own
+interests, in showing that it no longer even suspects it. And tell the
+Cardinal too, that it is really pitiful to see in what a wretched way
+your Republic selects its bishops, as though it intentionally desired to
+weaken its episcopacy. Leaving out a few fortunate exceptions, your
+bishops are men of small brains, and as a result your cardinals, likewise
+mere mediocrities, have no influence, play no part here in Rome. Ah! what
+a sorry figure you Frenchmen will cut at the next Conclave! And so why do
+you show such blind and foolish hatred of those Jesuits, who,
+politically, are your friends? Why don’t you employ their intelligent
+zeal, which is ready to serve you, so that you may assure yourselves the
+help of the next, the coming pope? It is necessary for you that he should
+be on your side, that he should continue the work of Leo XIII, which is
+so badly judged and so much opposed, but which cares little for the petty
+results of to-day, since its purpose lies in the future, in the union of
+all the nations under their holy mother the Church. Tell Cardinal
+Bergerot, tell him plainly that he ought to be with us, that he ought to
+work for his country by working for us. The coming pope, why the whole
+question lies in that, and woe to France if in him she does not find a
+continuator of Leo XIII!”
+
+Nani had again risen, and this time he was going off. Never before had he
+unbosomed himself at such length. But most assuredly he had only said
+what he desired to say, for a purpose that he alone knew of, and in a
+firm, gentle, and deliberate voice by which one could tell that each word
+had been weighed and determined beforehand. “Farewell, my dear son,” he
+said, “and once again think over all you have seen and heard in Rome. Be
+as sensible as you can, and do not spoil your life.”
+
+Pierre bowed, and pressed the small, plump, supple hand which the prelate
+offered him. “Monseigneur,” he replied, “I again thank you for all your
+kindness; you may be sure that I shall forget nothing of my journey.”
+
+Then he watched Nani as he went off, with a light and conquering step as
+if marching to all the victories of the future. No, no, he, Pierre, would
+forget nothing of his journey! He well knew that union of all the nations
+under their holy mother the Church, that temporal bondage in which the
+law of Christ would become the dictatorship of Augustus, master of the
+world! And as for those Jesuits, he had no doubt that they did love
+France, the eldest daughter of the Church, and the only daughter that
+could yet help her mother to reconquer universal sovereignty, but they
+loved her even as the black swarms of locusts love the harvests which
+they swoop upon and devour. Infinite sadness had returned to the young
+man’s heart as he dimly realised that in that sorely-stricken mansion, in
+all that mourning and downfall, it was they, they again, who must have
+been the artisans of grief and disaster.
+
+As this thought came to him he turned round and perceived Don Vigilio
+leaning against the credence in front of the large portrait of the
+Cardinal. Holding his hands to his face as if he desired to annihilate
+himself, the secretary was shivering in every limb as much with fear as
+with fever. At a moment when no fresh visitors were arriving he had
+succumbed to an attack of terrified despair.
+
+“_Mon Dieu_! What is the matter with you?” asked Pierre stepping forward,
+“are you ill, can I help you?”
+
+But Don Vigilio, suffocating and still hiding his face, could only gasp
+between his close-pressed hands “Ah! Paparelli, Paparelli!”
+
+“What is it? What has he done to you?” asked the other astonished.
+
+Then the secretary disclosed his face, and again yielded to his quivering
+desire to confide in some one. “Eh? what he has done to me? Can’t you
+feel anything, can’t you see anything then? Didn’t you notice the manner
+in which he took possession of Cardinal Sanguinetti so as to conduct him
+to his Eminence? To impose that suspected, hateful rival on his Eminence
+at such a moment as this, what insolent audacity! And a few minutes
+previously did you notice with what wicked cunning he bowed out an old
+lady, a very old family friend, who only desired to kiss his Eminence’s
+hand and show a little real affection which would have made his Eminence
+so happy! Ah! I tell you that he’s the master here, he opens or closes
+the door as he pleases, and holds us all between his fingers like a pinch
+of dust which one throws to the wind!”
+
+Pierre became anxious, seeing how yellow and feverish Don Vigilio was:
+“Come, come, my dear fellow,” he said, “you are exaggerating!”
+
+“Exaggerating? Do you know what happened last night, what I myself
+unwillingly witnessed? No, you don’t know it; well, I will tell you.”
+
+Thereupon he related that Donna Serafina, on returning home on the
+previous day to face the terrible catastrophe awaiting her, had already
+been overcome by the bad news which she had learnt when calling on the
+Cardinal Secretary and various prelates of her acquaintance. She had then
+acquired a certainty that her brother’s position was becoming extremely
+bad, for he had made so many fresh enemies among his colleagues of the
+Sacred College, that his election to the pontifical throne, which a year
+previously had seemed probable, now appeared an impossibility. Thus, all
+at once, the dream of her life collapsed, the ambition which she had so
+long nourished lay in dust at her feet. On despairingly seeking the why
+and wherefore of this change, she had been told of all sorts of blunders
+committed by the Cardinal, acts of rough sternness, unseasonable
+manifestations of opinion, inconsiderate words or actions which had
+sufficed to wound people, in fact such provoking demeanour that one might
+have thought it adopted with the express intention of spoiling
+everything. And the worst was that in each of the blunders she had
+recognised errors of judgment which she herself had blamed, but which her
+brother had obstinately insisted on perpetrating under the unacknowledged
+influence of Abbé Paparelli, that humble and insignificant train-bearer,
+in whom she detected a baneful and powerful adviser who destroyed her own
+vigilant and devoted influence. And so, in spite of the mourning in which
+the house was plunged, she did not wish to delay the punishment of the
+traitor, particularly as his old friendship with that terrible Santobono,
+and the story of that basket of figs which had passed from the hands of
+the one to those of the other, chilled her blood with a suspicion which
+she even recoiled from elucidating. However, at the first words she
+spoke, directly she made a formal request that the traitor should be
+immediately turned out of the house, she was confronted by invincible
+resistance on her brother’s part. He would not listen to her, but flew
+into one of those hurricane-like passions which swept everything away,
+reproaching her for laying blame on so modest, pious, and saintly a man,
+and accusing her of playing into the hands of his enemies, who, after
+killing Monsignor Gallo, were seeking to poison his sole remaining
+affection for that poor, insignificant priest. He treated all the stories
+he was told as abominable inventions, and swore that he would keep the
+train-bearer in his service if only to show his disdain for calumny. And
+she was thereupon obliged to hold her peace.
+
+However, Don Vigilio’s shuddering fit had again come back; he carried his
+hands to his face stammering: “Ah! Paparelli, Paparelli!” And muttered
+invectives followed: the train-bearer was an artful hypocrite who feigned
+modesty and humility, a vile spy appointed to pry into everything, listen
+to everything, and pervert everything that went on in the palace; he was
+a loathsome, destructive insect, feeding on the most noble prey,
+devouring the lion’s mane, a Jesuit--the Jesuit who is at once lackey and
+tyrant, in all his base horror as he accomplishes the work of vermin.
+
+“Calm yourself, calm yourself,” repeated Pierre, who whilst allowing for
+foolish exaggeration on the secretary’s part could not help shivering at
+thought of all the threatening things which he himself could divine astir
+in the gloom.
+
+However, since Don Vigilio had so narrowly escaped eating those horrible
+figs, his fright was such that nothing could calm it. Even when he was
+alone at night, in bed, with his door locked and bolted, sudden terror
+fell on him and made him hide his head under the sheet and vent stifled
+cries as if he thought that men were coming through the wall to strangle
+him. In a faint, breathless voice, as if just emerging from a struggle,
+he now resumed: “I told you what would happen on the evening when we had
+a talk together in your room. Although all the doors were securely shut,
+I did wrong to speak of them to you, I did wrong to ease my heart by
+telling you all that they were capable of. I was sure they would learn
+it, and you see they did learn it, since they tried to kill me.... Why
+it’s even wrong of me to tell you this, for it will reach their ears and
+they won’t miss me the next time. Ah! it’s all over, I’m as good as dead;
+this house which I thought so safe will be my tomb.”
+
+Pierre began to feel deep compassion for this ailing man, whose feverish
+brain was haunted by nightmares, and whose life was being finally wrecked
+by the anguish of persecution mania. “But you must run away in that
+case!” he said. “Don’t stop here; come to France.”
+
+Don Vigilio looked at him, momentarily calmed by surprise. “Run away,
+why? Go to France? Why, they are there! No matter where I might go, they
+would be there. They are everywhere, I should always be surrounded by
+them! No, no, I prefer to stay here and would rather die at once if his
+Eminence can no longer defend me.” With an expression of ardent entreaty
+in which a last gleam of hope tried to assert itself, he raised his eyes
+to the large painting in which the Cardinal stood forth resplendent in
+his cassock of red moire; but his attack came back again and overwhelmed
+him with increased intensity of fever. “Leave me, I beg you, leave me,”
+ he gasped. “Don’t make me talk any more. Ah! Paparelli, Paparelli! If he
+should come back and see us and hear me speak.... Oh! I’ll never say
+anything again. I’ll tie up my tongue, I’ll cut it off. Leave me, you are
+killing me, I tell you, he’ll be coming back and that will mean my death.
+Go away, oh! for mercy’s sake, go away!”
+
+Thereupon Don Vigilio turned towards the wall as if to flatten his face
+against it, and immure his lips in tomb-like silence; and Pierre resolved
+to leave him to himself, fearing lest he should provoke a yet more
+serious attack if he went on endeavouring to succour him.
+
+On returning to the throne-room the young priest again found himself
+amidst all the frightful mourning. Mass was following mass; without
+cessation murmured prayers entreated the divine mercy to receive the two
+dear departed souls with loving kindness. And amidst the dying perfume of
+the fading roses, in front of the pale stars of the lighted candles,
+Pierre thought of that supreme downfall of the Boccaneras. Dario was the
+last of the name, and one could well understand that the Cardinal, whose
+only sin was family pride, should have loved that one remaining scion by
+whom alone the old stock might yet blossom afresh. And indeed, if he and
+Donna Serafina had desired the divorce, and then the marriage of the
+cousins, it had been less with the view of putting an end to scandal than
+with the hope of seeing a new line of Boccaneras spring up. But the
+lovers were dead, and the last remains of a long series of dazzling
+princes of sword and of gown lay there on that bed, soon to rot in the
+grave. It was all over; that old maid and that aged Cardinal could leave
+no posterity. They remained face to face like two withered oaks, sole
+remnants of a vanished forest, and their fall would soon leave the plain
+quite clear. And how terrible the grief of surviving in impotence, what
+anguish to have to tell oneself that one is the end of everything, that
+with oneself all life, all hope for the morrow will depart! Amidst the
+murmur of the prayers, the dying perfume of the roses, the pale gleams of
+the two candies, Pierre realised what a downfall was that bereavement,
+how heavy was the gravestone which fell for ever on an extinct house, a
+vanished world.
+
+He well understood that as one of the familiars of the mansion he must
+pay his respects to Donna Serafina and the Cardinal, and he at once
+sought admission to the neighbouring room where the Princess was
+receiving her friends. He found her robed in black, very slim and very
+erect in her arm-chair, whence she rose with slow dignity to respond to
+the bow of each person that entered. She listened to the condolences but
+answered never a word, overcoming her physical pain by rigidity of
+bearing. Pierre, who had learnt to know her, could divine, however, by
+the hollowness of her cheeks, the emptiness of her eyes, and the bitter
+twinge of her mouth, how frightful was the collapse within her. Not only
+was her race ended, but her brother would never be pope, never secure the
+elevation which she had so long fancied she was winning for him by dint
+of devotion, dint of feminine renunciation, giving brain and heart, care
+and money, foregoing even wifehood and motherhood, spoiling her whole
+life, in order to realise that dream. And amidst all the ruin of hope, it
+was perhaps the nonfulfilment of that ambition which most made her heart
+bleed. She rose for the young priest, her guest, as she rose for the
+other persons who presented themselves; but she contrived to introduce
+shades of meaning into the manner in which she quitted her chair, and
+Pierre fully realised that he had remained in her eyes a mere petty
+French priest, an insignificant domestic of the Divinity who had not
+known how to acquire even the title of prelate. When she had again seated
+herself after acknowledging his compliment with a slight inclination of
+the head, he remained for a moment standing, out of politeness. Not a
+word, not a sound disturbed the mournful quiescence of the room, for
+although there were four or five lady visitors seated there they remained
+motionless and silent as with grief. Pierre was most struck, however, by
+the sight of Cardinal Sarno, who was lying back in an arm-chair with his
+eyes closed. The poor puny lopsided old man had lingered there
+forgetfully after expressing his condolences, and, overcome by the heavy
+silence and close atmosphere, had just fallen asleep. And everybody
+respected his slumber. Was he dreaming as he dozed of that map of
+Christendom which he carried behind his low obtuse-looking brow? Was he
+continuing in dreamland his terrible work of conquest, that task of
+subjecting and governing the earth which he directed from his dark room
+at the Propaganda? The ladies glanced at him affectionately and
+deferentially; he was gently scolded at times for over-working himself,
+the sleepiness which nowadays frequently overtook him in all sorts of
+places being attributed to excess of genius and zeal. And of this
+all-powerful Eminence Pierre was destined to carry off only this last
+impression: an exhausted old man, resting amidst the emotion of a
+mourning-gathering, sleeping there like a candid child, without any one
+knowing whether this were due to the approach of senile imbecility, or to
+the fatigues of a night spent in organising the reign of God over some
+distant continent.
+
+Two ladies went off and three more arrived. Donna Serafina rose, bowed,
+and then reseated herself, reverting to her rigid attitude, her bust
+erect, her face stern and full of despair. Cardinal Sarno was still
+asleep. Then Pierre felt as if he would stifle, a kind of vertigo came on
+him, and his heart beat violently. So he bowed and withdrew: and on
+passing through the dining-room on his way to the little study where
+Cardinal Boccanera received his visitors, he found himself in the
+presence of Paparelli who was jealously guarding the door. When the
+train-bearer had sniffed at the young man, he seemed to realise that he
+could not refuse him admittance. Moreover, as this intruder was going
+away the very next day, defeated and covered with shame, there was
+nothing to be feared from him.
+
+“You wish to see his Eminence?” said Paparelli. “Good, good. By and by,
+wait.” And opining that Pierre was too near the door, he pushed him back
+to the other end of the room, for fear no doubt lest he should overhear
+anything. “His Eminence is still engaged with his Eminence Cardinal
+Sanguinetti. Wait, wait there!”
+
+Sanguinetti indeed had made a point of kneeling for a long time in front
+of the bodies in the throne-room, and had then spun out his visit to
+Donna Serafina in order to mark how largely he shared the family sorrow.
+And for more than ten minutes now he had been closeted with Cardinal
+Boccanera, nothing but an occasional murmur of their voices being heard
+through the closed door.
+
+Pierre, however, on finding Paparelli there, was again haunted by all
+that Don Vigilio had told him. He looked at the train-bearer, so fat and
+short, puffed out with bad fat in his dirty cassock, his face flabby and
+wrinkled, and his whole person at forty years of age suggestive of that
+of a very old maid: and he felt astonished. How was it that Cardinal
+Boccanera, that superb prince who carried his head so high, and who was
+so supremely proud of his name, had allowed himself to be captured and
+swayed by such a frightful creature reeking of baseness and abomination?
+Was it not the man’s very physical degradation and profound humility that
+had struck him, disturbed him, and finally fascinated him, as wondrous
+gifts conducing to salvation, which he himself lacked? Paparelli’s person
+and disposition were like blows dealt to his own handsome presence and
+his own pride. He, who could not be so deformed, he who could not
+vanquish his passion for glory, must, by an effort of faith, have grown
+jealous of that man who was so extremely ugly and so extremely
+insignificant, he must have come to admire him as a superior force of
+penitence and human abasement which threw the portals of heaven wide
+open. Who can ever tell what ascendency is exercised by the monster over
+the hero; by the horrid-looking saint covered with vermin over the
+powerful of this world in their terror at having to endure everlasting
+flames in payment of their terrestrial joys? And ’twas indeed the lion
+devoured by the insect, vast strength and splendour destroyed by the
+invisible. Ah! to have that fine soul which was so certain of paradise,
+which for its welfare was enclosed in such a disgusting body, to possess
+the happy humility of that wide intelligence, that remarkable theologian,
+who scourged himself with rods each morning on rising, and was content to
+be the lowest of servants.
+
+Standing there a heap of livid fat, Paparelli on his side watched Pierre
+with his little grey eyes blinking amidst the myriad wrinkles of his
+face. And the young priest began to feel uneasy, wondering what their
+Eminences could be saying to one another, shut up together like that for
+so long a time. And what an interview it must be if Boccanera suspected
+Sanguinetti of counting Santobono among his clients. What serene audacity
+it was on Sanguinetti’s part to have dared to present himself in that
+house, and what strength of soul there must be on Boccanera’s part, what
+empire over himself, to prevent all scandal by remaining silent and
+accepting the visit as a simple mark of esteem and affection! What could
+they be saying to one another, however? How interesting it would have
+been to have seen them face to face, and have heard them exchange the
+diplomatic phrases suited to such an interview, whilst their souls were
+raging with furious hatred!
+
+All at once the door opened and Cardinal Sanguinetti appeared with calm
+face, no ruddier than usual, indeed a trifle paler, and retaining the
+fitting measure of sorrow which he had thought it right to assume. His
+restless eyes alone revealed his delight at being rid of a difficult
+task. And he was going off, all hope, in the conviction that he was the
+only eligible candidate to the papacy that remained.
+
+Abbé Paparelli had darted forward: “If your Eminence will kindly follow
+me--I will escort your Eminence to the door.” Then, turning towards
+Pierre, he added: “You may go in now.”
+
+Pierre watched them walk away, the one so humble behind the other, who
+was so triumphant. Then he entered the little work-room, furnished simply
+with a table and three chairs, and in the centre of it he at once
+perceived Cardinal Boccanera still standing in the lofty, noble attitude
+which he had assumed to take leave of Sanguinetti, his hated rival to the
+pontifical throne. And, visibly, Boccanera also believed himself the only
+possible pope, the one whom the coming Conclave would elect.
+
+However, when the door had been closed, and the Cardinal beheld that
+young priest, his guest, who had witnessed the death of those two dear
+children lying in the adjoining room, he was again mastered by emotion,
+an unexpected attack of weakness in which all his energy collapsed. His
+human feelings were taking their revenge now that his rival was no longer
+there to see him. He staggered like an old tree smitten with the axe, and
+sank upon a chair, stifling with sobs.
+
+And as Pierre, according to usage, was about to stoop and kiss his ring,
+he raised him and at once made him sit down, stammering in a halting
+voice: “No, no, my dear son! Seat yourself there, wait--Excuse me, leave
+me to myself for a moment, my heart is bursting.”
+
+He sobbed with his hands to his face, unable to master himself, unable to
+drive back his grief with those yet vigorous fingers which were pressed
+to his cheeks and temples.
+
+Tears came into Pierre’s eyes, for he also lived through all that woe
+afresh, and was much upset by the weeping of that tall old man, that
+saint and prince, usually so haughty, so fully master of himself, but now
+only a poor, suffering, agonising man, as weak and as lost as a child.
+However, although the young priest was likewise stifling with grief, he
+desired to present his condolences, and sought for kindly words by which
+he might soothe the other’s despair. “I beg your Eminence to believe in
+my profound grief,” he said. “I have been overwhelmed with kindness here,
+and desired at once to tell your Eminence how much that irreparable
+loss--”
+
+But with a brave gesture the Cardinal silenced him. “No, no, say nothing,
+for mercy’s sake say nothing!”
+
+And silence reigned while he continued weeping, shaken by the struggle he
+was waging, his efforts to regain sufficient strength to overcome
+himself. At last he mastered his quiver and slowly uncovered his face,
+which had again become calm, like that of a believer strong in his faith,
+and submissive to the will of God. In refusing a miracle, in dealing so
+hard a blow to that house, God had doubtless had His reasons, and he, the
+Cardinal, one of God’s ministers, one of the high dignitaries of His
+terrestrial court, was in duty bound to bow to it. The silence lasted for
+another moment, and then, in a voice which he managed to render natural
+and cordial, Boccanera said: “You are leaving us, you are going back to
+France to-morrow, are you not, my dear son?”
+
+“Yes, I shall have the honour to take leave of your Eminence to-morrow,
+again thanking your Eminence for your inexhaustible kindness.”
+
+“And you have learnt that the Congregation of the Index has condemned
+your book, as was inevitable?”
+
+“Yes, I obtained the signal favour of being received by his Holiness, and
+in his presence made my submission and reprobated my book.”
+
+The Cardinal’s moist eyes again began to sparkle. “Ah! you did that, ah!
+you did well, my dear son,” he said. “It was only your strict duty as a
+priest, but there are so many nowadays who do not even do their duty! As
+a member of the Congregation I kept the promise I gave you to read your
+book, particularly the incriminated pages. And if I afterwards remained
+neutral, to such a point even as to miss the sitting in which judgment
+was pronounced, it was only to please my poor, dear niece, who was so
+fond of you, and who pleaded your cause to me.”
+
+Tears were coming into his eyes again, and he paused, feeling that he
+would once more be overcome if he evoked the memory of that adored and
+lamented Benedetta. And so it was with a pugnacious bitterness that he
+resumed: “But what an execrable book it was, my dear son, allow me to
+tell you so. You told me that you had shown respect for dogma, and I
+still wonder what aberration can have come over you that you should have
+been so blind to all consciousness of your offences. Respect for
+dogma--good Lord! when the entire work is the negation of our holy
+religion! Did you not realise that by asking for a new religion you
+absolutely condemned the old one, the only true one, the only good one,
+the only one that can be eternal? And that sufficed to make your book the
+most deadly of poisons, one of those infamous books which in former times
+were burnt by the hangman, and which one is nowadays compelled to leave
+in circulation after interdicting them and thereby designating them to
+evil curiosity, which explains the contagious rottenness of the century.
+Ah! I well recognised there some of the ideas of our distinguished and
+poetical relative, that dear Viscount Philibert de la Choue. A man of
+letters, yes! a man of letters! Literature, mere literature! I beg God to
+forgive him, for he most surely does not know what he is doing, or
+whither he is going with his elegiac Christianity for talkative working
+men and young persons of either sex, to whom scientific notions have
+given vagueness of soul. And I only feel angry with his Eminence Cardinal
+Bergerot, for he at any rate knows what he does, and does as he pleases.
+No, say nothing, do not defend him. He personifies Revolution in the
+Church, and is against God.”
+
+Although Pierre had resolved that he would not reply or argue, he had
+allowed a gesture of protest to escape him on hearing this furious attack
+upon the man whom he most respected in the whole world. However, he
+yielded to Cardinal Boccanera’s injunction and again bowed.
+
+“I cannot sufficiently express my horror,” the Cardinal roughly
+continued; “yes, my horror for all that hollow dream of a new religion!
+That appeal to the most hideous passions which stir up the poor against
+the rich, by promising them I know not what division of wealth, what
+community of possession which is nowadays impossible! That base flattery
+shown to the lower orders to whom equality and justice are promised but
+never given, for these can come from God alone, it is only He who can
+finally make them reign on the day appointed by His almighty power! And
+there is even that interested charity which people abuse of to rail
+against Heaven itself and accuse it of iniquity and indifference, that
+lackadaisical weakening charity and compassion, unworthy of strong firm
+hearts, for it is as if human suffering were not necessary for salvation,
+as if we did not become more pure, greater and nearer to the supreme
+happiness, the more and more we suffer!”
+
+He was growing excited, full of anguish, and superb. It was his
+bereavement, his heart wound, which thus exasperated him, the great blow
+which had felled him for a moment, but against which he again rose erect,
+defying grief, and stubborn in his stoic belief in an omnipotent God, who
+was the master of mankind, and reserved felicity to those whom He
+selected. Again, however, he made an effort to calm himself, and resumed
+in a more gentle voice: “At all events the fold is always open, my dear
+son, and here you are back in it since you have repented. You cannot
+imagine how happy it makes me.”
+
+In his turn Pierre strove to show himself conciliatory in order that he
+might not further ulcerate that violent, grief-stricken soul: “Your
+Eminence,” said he, “may be sure that I shall endeavour to remember every
+one of the kind words which your Eminence has spoken to me, in the same
+way as I shall remember the fatherly greeting of his Holiness Leo XIII.”
+
+This sentence seemed to throw Boccanera into agitation again. At first
+only murmured, restrained words came from him, as if he were struggling
+against a desire to question the young priest. “Ah yes! you saw his
+Holiness, you spoke to him, and he told you I suppose, as he tells all
+the foreigners who go to pay their respects to him, that he desires
+conciliation and peace. For my part I now only see him when it is
+absolutely necessary; for more than a year I have not been received in
+private audience.”
+
+This proof of disfavour, of the covert struggle which as in the days of
+Pius IX kept the Holy Father and the _Camerlingo_ at variance, filled the
+latter with bitterness. He was unable to restrain himself and spoke out,
+reflecting no doubt that he had a familiar before him, one whose
+discretion was certain, and who moreover was leaving Rome on the morrow.
+“One may go a long way,” said he, “with those fine words, peace and
+conciliation, which are so often void of real wisdom and courage. The
+terrible truth is that Leo XIII’s eighteen years of concessions have
+shaken everything in the Church, and should he long continue to reign
+Catholicism would topple over and crumble into dust like a building whose
+pillars have been undermined.”
+
+Interested by this remark, Pierre in his desire for knowledge began to
+raise objections. “But hasn’t his Holiness shown himself very prudent?”
+ he asked; “has he not placed dogma on one side in an impregnable
+fortress? If he seems to have made concessions on many points, have they
+not always been concessions in mere matters of form?”
+
+“Matters of form; ah, yes!” the Cardinal resumed with increasing passion.
+“He told you, no doubt, as he tells others, that whilst in substance he
+will make no surrender, he will readily yield in matters of form! It’s a
+deplorable axiom, an equivocal form of diplomacy even when it isn’t so
+much low hypocrisy! My soul revolts at the thought of that Opportunism,
+that Jesuitism which makes artifice its weapon, and only serves to cast
+doubt among true believers, the confusion of a _sauve-qui-peut_, which by
+and by must lead to inevitable defeat. It is cowardice, the worst form of
+cowardice, abandonment of one’s weapons in order that one may retreat the
+more speedily, shame of oneself, assumption of a mask in the hope of
+deceiving the enemy, penetrating into his camp, and overcoming him by
+treachery! No, no, form is everything in a traditional and immutable
+religion, which for eighteen hundred years has been, is now, and till the
+end of time will be the very law of God!”
+
+The Cardinal’s feelings so stirred him that he was unable to remain
+seated, and began to walk about the little room. And it was the whole
+reign, the whole policy of Leo XIII which he discussed and condemned.
+“Unity too,” he continued, “that famous unity of the Christian Church
+which his Holiness talks of bringing about, and his desire for which
+people turn to his great glory, why, it is only the blind ambition of a
+conqueror enlarging his empire without asking himself if the new nations
+that he subjects may not disorganise, adulterate, and impregnate his old
+and hitherto faithful people with every error. What if all the
+schismatical nations on returning to the Catholic Church should so
+transform it as to kill it and make it a new Church? There is only one
+wise course, which is to be what one is, and that firmly. Again, isn’t
+there both shame and danger in that pretended alliance with the democracy
+which in itself gives the lie to the ancient spirit of the papacy? The
+right of kings is divine, and to abandon the monarchical principle is to
+set oneself against God, to compound with revolution, and harbour a
+monstrous scheme of utilising the madness of men the better to establish
+one’s power over them. All republics are forms of anarchy, and there can
+be no more criminal act, one which must for ever shake the principle of
+authority, order, and religion itself, than that of recognising a
+republic as legitimate for the sole purpose of indulging a dream of
+impossible conciliation. And observe how this bears on the question of
+the temporal power. He continues to claim it, he makes a point of no
+surrender on that question of the restoration of Rome; but in reality,
+has he not made the loss irreparable, has he not definitively renounced
+Rome, by admitting that nations have the right to drive away their kings
+and live like wild beasts in the depths of the forest?”
+
+All at once the Cardinal stopped short and raised his arms to Heaven in a
+burst of holy anger. “Ah! that man, ah! that man who by his vanity and
+craving for success will have proved the ruin of the Church, that man who
+has never ceased corrupting everything, dissolving everything, crumbling
+everything in order to reign over the world which he fancies he will
+reconquer by those means, why, Almighty God, why hast Thou not already
+called him to Thee?”
+
+So sincere was the accent in which that appeal to Death was raised, to
+such a point was hatred magnified by a real desire to save the Deity
+imperilled here below, that a great shudder swept through Pierre also. He
+now understood that Cardinal Boccanera who religiously and passionately
+hated Leo XIII; he saw him in the depths of his black palace, waiting and
+watching for the Pope’s death, that death which as _Camerlingo_ he must
+officially certify. How feverishly he must wait, how impatiently he must
+desire the advent of the hour, when with his little silver hammer he
+would deal the three symbolic taps on the skull of Leo XIII, while the
+latter lay cold and rigid on his bed surrounded by his pontifical Court.
+Ah! to strike that wall of the brain, to make sure that nothing more
+would answer from within, that nothing beyond night and silence was left
+there. And the three calls would ring out: “Gioachino! Gioachino!
+Gioachino!” And, the corpse making no answer, the _Camerlingo_ after
+waiting for a few seconds would turn and say: “The Pope is dead!”
+
+“Conciliation, however, is the weapon of the times,” remarked Pierre,
+wishing to bring the Cardinal back to the present, “and it is in order to
+make sure of conquering that the Holy Father yields in matters of form.”
+
+“He will not conquer, he will be conquered,” cried Boccanera. “Never has
+the Church been victorious save in stubbornly clinging to its
+integrality, the immutable eternity of its divine essence. And it would
+for a certainty fall on the day when it should allow a single stone of
+its edifice to be touched. Remember the terrible period through which it
+passed at the time of the Council of Trent. The Reformation had just
+deeply shaken it, laxity of discipline and morals was everywhere
+increasing, there was a rising tide of novelties, ideas suggested by the
+spirit of evil, unhealthy projects born of the pride of man, running riot
+in full license. And at the Council itself many members were disturbed,
+poisoned, ready to vote for the wildest changes, a fresh schism added to
+all the others. Well, if Catholicism was saved at that critical period,
+under the threat of such great danger, it was because the majority,
+enlightened by God, maintained the old edifice intact, it was because
+with divinely inspired obstinacy it kept itself within the narrow limits
+of dogma, it was because it made no concession, none, whether in
+substance or in form! Nowadays the situation is certainly not worse than
+it was at the time of the Council of Trent. Let us suppose it to be much
+the same, and tell me if it is not nobler, braver, and safer for the
+Church to show the courage which she showed before and declare aloud what
+she is, what she has been, and what she will be. There is no salvation
+for her otherwise than in her complete, indisputable sovereignty; and
+since she has always conquered by non-surrender, all attempts to
+conciliate her with the century are tantamount to killing her!”
+
+The Cardinal had again begun to walk to and fro with thoughtful step.
+“No, no,” said he, “no compounding, no surrender, no weakness! Rather the
+wall of steel which bars the road, the block of granite which marks the
+limit of a world! As I told you, my dear son, on the day of your arrival,
+to try to accommodate Catholicism to the new times is to hasten its end,
+if really it be threatened, as atheists pretend. And in that way it would
+die basely and shamefully instead of dying erect, proud, and dignified in
+its old glorious royalty! Ah! to die standing, denying nought of the
+past, braving the future and confessing one’s whole faith!”
+
+That old man of seventy seemed to grow yet loftier as he spoke, free from
+all dread of final annihilation, and making the gesture of a hero who
+defies futurity. Faith had given him serenity of peace; he believed, he
+knew, he had neither doubt nor fear of the morrow of death. Still his
+voice was tinged with haughty sadness as he resumed, “God can do all,
+even destroy His own work should it seem evil in His eyes. But though all
+should crumble to-morrow, though the Holy Church should disappear among
+the ruins, though the most venerated sanctuaries should be crushed by the
+falling stars, it would still be necessary for us to bow and adore God,
+who after creating the world might thus annihilate it for His own glory.
+And I wait, submissive to His will, for nothing happens unless He wills
+it. If really the temples be shaken, if Catholicism be fated to fall
+to-morrow into dust, I shall be here to act as the minister of death,
+even as I have been the minister of life! It is certain, I confess it,
+that there are hours when terrible signs appear to me. Perhaps, indeed,
+the end of time is nigh, and we shall witness that fall of the old world
+with which others threaten us. The worthiest, the loftiest are struck
+down as if Heaven erred, and in them punished the crimes of the world.
+Have I not myself felt the blast from the abyss into which all must sink,
+since my house, for transgressions that I am ignorant of, has been
+stricken with that frightful bereavement which precipitates it into the
+gulf which casts it back into night everlasting!”
+
+He again evoked those two dear dead ones who were always present in his
+mind. Sobs were once more rising in his throat, his hands trembled, his
+lofty figure quivered with the last revolt of grief. Yes, if God had
+stricken him so severely by suppressing his race, if the greatest and
+most faithful were thus punished, it must be that the world was
+definitively condemned. Did not the end of his house mean the approaching
+end of all? And in his sovereign pride as priest and as prince, he found
+a cry of supreme resignation, once more raising his hands on high:
+“Almighty God, Thy will be done! May all die, all fall, all return to the
+night of chaos! I shall remain standing in this ruined palace, waiting to
+be buried beneath its fragments. And if Thy will should summon me to bury
+Thy holy religion, be without fear, I shall do nothing unworthy to
+prolong its life for a few days! I will maintain it erect, like myself,
+as proud, as uncompromising as in the days of all its power. I will yield
+nothing, whether in discipline, or in rite, or in dogma. And when the day
+shall come I will bury it with myself, carrying it whole into the grave
+rather than yielding aught of it, encompassing it with my cold arms to
+restore it to Thee, even as Thou didst commit it to the keeping of Thy
+Church. O mighty God and sovereign Master, dispose of me, make me if such
+be Thy good pleasure the pontiff of destruction, the pontiff of the death
+of the world.”
+
+Pierre, who was thunderstruck, quivered with fear and admiration at the
+extraordinary vision this evoked: the last of the popes interring
+Catholicism. He understood that Boccanera must at times have made that
+dream; he could see him in the Vatican, in St. Peter’s which the
+thunderbolts had riven asunder, he could see him erect and alone in the
+spacious halls whence his terrified, cowardly pontifical Court had fled.
+Clad in his white cassock, thus wearing white mourning for the Church, he
+once more descended to the sanctuary, there to wait for heaven to fall on
+the evening of Time’s accomplishment and annihilate the earth. Thrice he
+raised the large crucifix, overthrown by the supreme convulsions of the
+soil. Then, when the final crack rent the steps apart, he caught it in
+his arms and was annihilated with it beneath the falling vaults. And
+nothing could be more instinct with fierce and kingly grandeur.
+
+Voiceless, but without weakness, his lofty stature invincible and erect
+in spite of all, Cardinal Boccanera made a gesture dismissing Pierre, who
+yielding to his passion for truth and beauty found that he alone was
+great and right, and respectfully kissed his hand.
+
+It was in the throne-room, with closed doors, at nightfall, after the
+visits had ceased, that the two bodies were laid in their coffin. The
+religious services had come to an end, and in the close silent atmosphere
+there only lingered the dying perfume of the roses and the warm odour of
+the candles. As the latter’s pale stars scarcely lighted the spacious
+room, some lamps had been brought, and servants held them in their hands
+like torches. According to custom, all the servants of the house were
+present to bid a last farewell to the departed.
+
+There was a little delay. Morano, who had been giving himself no end of
+trouble ever since morning, was forced to run off again as the triple
+coffin did not arrive. At last it came, some servants brought it up, and
+then they were able to begin. The Cardinal and Donna Serafina stood side
+by side near the bed. Pierre also was present, as well as Don Vigilio. It
+was Victorine who sewed the lovers up in the white silk shroud, which
+seemed like a bridal robe, the gay pure robe of their union. Then two
+servants came forward and helped Pierre and Don Vigilio to lay the bodies
+in the first coffin, of pine wood lined with pink satin. It was scarcely
+broader than an ordinary coffin, so young and slim were the lovers and so
+tightly were they clasped in their last embrace. When they were stretched
+inside they there continued their eternal slumber, their heads half
+hidden by their odorous, mingling hair. And when this first coffin had
+been placed in the second one, a leaden shell, and the second had been
+enclosed in the third, of stout oak, and when the three lids had been
+soldered and screwed down, the lovers’ faces could still be seen through
+the circular opening, covered with thick glass, which in accordance with
+the Roman custom had been left in each of the coffins. And then, for ever
+parted from the living, alone together, they still gazed at one another
+with their eyes obstinately open, having all eternity before them wherein
+to exhaust their infinite love.
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+ON the following day, on his return from the funeral Pierre lunched alone
+in his room, having decided to take leave of the Cardinal and Donna
+Serafina during the afternoon. He was quitting Rome that evening by the
+train which started at seventeen minutes past ten. There was nothing to
+detain him any longer; there was only one visit which he desired to make,
+a visit to old Orlando, with whom he had promised to have a long chat
+prior to his departure. And so a little before two o’clock he sent for a
+cab which took him to the Via Venti Settembre. A fine rain had fallen all
+night, its moisture steeping the city in grey vapour; and though this
+rain had now ceased the sky remained very dark, and the huge new mansions
+of the Via Venti Settembre were quite livid, interminably mournful with
+their balconies ever of the same pattern and their regular and endless
+rows of windows. The Ministry of Finances, that colossal pile of masonry
+and sculpture, looked in particular like a dead town, a huge bloodless
+body whence all life had withdrawn. On the other hand, although all was
+so gloomy the rain had made the atmosphere milder, in fact it was almost
+warm, damply and feverishly warm.
+
+In the hall of Prada’s little palazzo Pierre was surprised to find four
+or five gentlemen taking off their overcoats; however he learnt from a
+servant that Count Luigi had a meeting that day with some contractors. As
+he, Pierre, wished to see the Count’s father he had only to ascend to the
+third floor, added the servant. He must knock at the little door on the
+right-hand side of the landing there.
+
+On the very first landing, however, the priest found himself face to face
+with the young Count who was there receiving the contractors, and who on
+recognising him became frightfully pale. They had not met since the
+tragedy at the Boccanera mansion, and Pierre well realised how greatly
+his glance disturbed that man, what a troublesome recollection of moral
+complicity it evoked, and what mortal dread lest he should have guessed
+the truth.
+
+“Have you come to see me, have you something to tell me?” the Count
+inquired.
+
+“No, I am leaving Rome, I have come to wish your father good-bye.”
+
+Prada’s pallor increased at this, and his whole face quivered: “Ah! it is
+to see my father. He is not very well, be gentle with him,” he replied,
+and as he spoke, his look of anguish clearly proclaimed what he feared
+from Pierre, some imprudent word, perhaps even a final mission, the
+malediction of that man and woman whom he had killed. And surely if his
+father knew, he would die as well. “Ah! how annoying it is,” he resumed,
+“I can’t go up with you! There are gentlemen waiting for me. Yes, how
+annoyed I am. As soon as possible, however, I will join you, yes, as soon
+as possible.”
+
+He knew not how to stop the young priest, whom he must evidently allow to
+remain with his father, whilst he himself stayed down below, kept there
+by his pecuniary worries. But how distressful were the eyes with which he
+watched Pierre climb the stairs, how he seemed to supplicate him with his
+whole quivering form. His father, good Lord, the only true love, the one
+great, pure, faithful passion of his life!
+
+“Don’t make him talk too much, brighten him, won’t you?” were his parting
+words.
+
+Up above it was not Batista, the devoted ex-soldier, who opened the door,
+but a very young fellow to whom Pierre did not at first pay any
+attention. The little room was bare and light as on previous occasions,
+and from the broad curtainless window there was the superb view of Rome,
+Rome crushed that day beneath a leaden sky and steeped in shade of
+infinite mournfulness. Old Orlando, however, had in no wise changed, but
+still displayed the superb head of an old blanched lion, a powerful
+muzzle and youthful eyes, which yet sparkled with the passions which had
+growled in a soul of fire. Pierre found the stricken hero in the same
+arm-chair as previously, near the same table littered with newspapers,
+and with his legs buried in the same black wrapper, as if he were there
+immobilised in a sheath of stone, to such a point that after months and
+years one was sure to perceive him quite unchanged, with living bust, and
+face glowing with strength and intelligence.
+
+That grey day, however, he seemed gloomy, low in spirits. “Ah! so here
+you are, my dear Monsieur Froment,” he exclaimed, “I have been thinking
+of you these three days past, living the awful days which you must have
+lived in that tragic Palazzo Boccanera. Ah, God! What a frightful
+bereavement! My heart is quite overwhelmed, these newspapers have again
+just upset me with the fresh details they give!” He pointed as he spoke
+to the papers scattered over the table. Then with a gesture he strove to
+brush aside the gloomy story, and banish that vision of Benedetta dead,
+which had been haunting him. “Well, and yourself?” he inquired.
+
+“I am leaving this evening,” replied Pierre, “but I did not wish to quit
+Rome without pressing your brave hands.”
+
+“You are leaving? But your book?”
+
+“My book--I have been received by the Holy Father, I have made my
+submission and reprobated my book.”
+
+Orlando looked fixedly at the priest. There was a short interval of
+silence, during which their eyes told one another all that they had to
+tell respecting the affair. Neither felt the necessity of any longer
+explanation. The old man merely spoke these concluding words: “You have
+done well, your book was a chimera.”
+
+“Yes, a chimera, a piece of childishness, and I have condemned it myself
+in the name of truth and reason.”
+
+A smile appeared on the dolorous lips of the impotent hero. “Then you
+have seen things, you understand and know them now?”
+
+“Yes, I know them; and that is why I did not wish to go off without
+having that frank conversation with you which we agreed upon.”
+
+Orlando was delighted, but all at once he seemed to remember the young
+fellow who had opened the door to Pierre, and who had afterwards modestly
+resumed his seat on a chair near the window. This young fellow was a
+youth of twenty, still beardless, of a blonde handsomeness such as
+occasionally flowers at Naples, with long curly hair, a lily-like
+complexion, a rosy mouth, and soft eyes full of a dreamy languor. The old
+man presented him in fatherly fashion, Angiolo Mascara his name was, and
+he was the grandson of an old comrade in arms, the epic Mascara of the
+Thousand, who had died like a hero, his body pierced by a hundred wounds.
+
+“I sent for him to scold him,” continued Orlando with a smile. “Do you
+know that this fine fellow with his girlish airs goes in for the new
+ideas? He is an Anarchist, one of the three or four dozen Anarchists that
+we have in Italy. He’s a good little lad at bottom, he has only his
+mother left him, and supports her, thanks to the little berth which he
+holds, but which he’ll lose one of these fine days if he is not careful.
+Come, come, my child, you must promise me to be reasonable.”
+
+Thereupon Angiolo, whose clean but well-worn garments bespoke decent
+poverty, made answer in a grave and musical voice: “I am reasonable, it
+is the others, all the others who are not. When all men are reasonable
+and desire truth and justice, the world will be happy.”
+
+“Ah! if you fancy that he’ll give way!” cried Orlando. “But, my poor
+child, just ask Monsieur l’Abbé if one ever knows where truth and justice
+are. Well, well, one must leave you the time to live, and see, and
+understand things.”
+
+Then, paying no more attention to the young man, he returned to Pierre,
+while Angiolo, remaining very quiet in his corner, kept his eyes ardently
+fixed on them, and with open, quivering ears lost not a word they said.
+
+“I told you, my dear Monsieur Froment,” resumed Orlando, “that your ideas
+would change, and that acquaintance with Rome would bring you to accurate
+views far more readily than any fine speeches I could make to you. So I
+never doubted but what you would of your own free will withdraw your book
+as soon as men and things should have enlightened you respecting the
+Vatican at the present day. But let us leave the Vatican on one side,
+there is nothing to be done but to let it continue falling slowly and
+inevitably into ruin. What interests me is our Italian Rome, which you
+treated as an element to be neglected, but which you have now seen and
+studied, so that we can both speak of it with the necessary knowledge!”
+
+He thereupon at once granted a great many things, acknowledged that
+blunders had been committed, that the finances were in a deplorable
+state, and that there were serious difficulties of all kinds. They, the
+Italians, had sinned by excess of legitimate pride, they had proceeded
+too hastily with their attempt to improvise a great nation, to change
+ancient Rome into a great modern capital as by the mere touch of a wand.
+And thence had come that mania for erecting new districts, that mad
+speculation in land and shares, which had brought the country within a
+hair’s breadth of bankruptcy.
+
+At this Pierre gently interrupted him to tell him of the view which he
+himself had arrived at after his peregrinations and studies through Rome.
+“That fever of the first hour, that financial _debâcle_,” said he, “is
+after all nothing. All pecuniary sores can be healed. But the grave point
+is that your Italy still remains to be created. There is no aristocracy
+left, and as yet there is no people, nothing but a devouring middle
+class, dating from yesterday, which preys on the rich harvest of the
+future before it is ripe.”
+
+Silence fell. Orlando sadly wagged his old leonine head. The cutting
+harshness of Pierre’s formula struck him in the heart. “Yes, yes,” he
+said at last, “that is so, you have seen things plainly; and why say no
+when facts are there, patent to everybody? I myself had already spoken to
+you of that middle class which hungers so ravenously for place and
+office, distinctions and plumes, and which at the same time is so
+avaricious, so suspicious with regard to its money which it invests in
+banks, never risking it in agriculture or manufactures or commerce,
+having indeed the one desire to enjoy life without doing anything, and so
+unintelligent that it cannot see it is killing its country by its
+loathing for labour, its contempt for the poor, its one ambition to live
+in a petty way with the barren glory of belonging to some official
+administration. And, as you say, the aristocracy is dying, discrowned,
+ruined, sunk into the degeneracy which overtakes races towards their
+close, most of its members reduced to beggary, the others, the few who
+have clung to their money, crushed by heavy imposts, possessing nought
+but dead fortunes which constant sharing diminishes and which must soon
+disappear with the princes themselves. And then there is the people,
+which has suffered so much and suffers still, but is so used to suffering
+that it can seemingly conceive no idea of emerging from it, blind and
+deaf as it is, almost regretting its ancient bondage, and so ignorant, so
+abominably ignorant, which is the one cause of its hopeless, morrowless
+misery, for it has not even the consolation of understanding that if we
+have conquered and are trying to resuscitate Rome and Italy in their
+ancient glory, it is for itself, the people, alone. Yes, yes, no
+aristocracy left, no people as yet, and a middle class which really
+alarms one. How can one therefore help yielding at times to the terrors
+of the pessimists, who pretend that our misfortunes are as yet nothing,
+that we are going forward to yet more awful catastrophes, as though,
+indeed, what we now behold were but the first symptoms of our race’s end,
+the premonitory signs of final annihilation!”
+
+As he spoke he raised his long quivering arms towards the window, towards
+the light, and Pierre, deeply moved, remembered how Cardinal Boccanera on
+the previous day had made a similar gesture of supplicant distress when
+appealing to the divine power. And both men, Cardinal and patriot, so
+hostile in their beliefs, were instinct with the same fierce and
+despairing grandeur.
+
+“As I told you, however, on the first day,” continued Orlando, “we only
+sought to accomplish logical and inevitable things. As for Rome, with her
+past history of splendour and domination which weighs so heavily upon us,
+we could not do otherwise than take her for capital, for she alone was
+the bond, the living symbol of our unity at the same time as the promise
+of eternity, the renewal offered to our great dream of resurrection and
+glory.”
+
+He went on, recognising the disastrous conditions under which Rome
+laboured as a capital. She was a purely decorative city with exhausted
+soil, she had remained apart from modern life, she was unhealthy, she
+offered no possibility of commerce or industry, she was invincibly preyed
+upon by death, standing as she did amidst that sterile desert of the
+Campagna. Then he compared her with the other cities which are jealous of
+her; first Florence, which, however, has become so indifferent and so
+sceptical, impregnated with a happy heedlessness which seems inexplicable
+when one remembers the frantic passions, and the torrents of blood
+rolling through her history; next Naples, which yet remains content with
+her bright sun, and whose childish people enjoy their ignorance and
+wretchedness so indolently that one knows not whether one ought to pity
+them; next Venice, which has resigned herself to remaining a marvel of
+ancient art, which one ought to put under glass so as to preserve her
+intact, slumbering amid the sovereign pomp of her annals; next Genoa,
+which is absorbed in trade, still active and bustling, one of the last
+queens of that Mediterranean, that insignificant lake which was once the
+opulent central sea, whose waters carried the wealth of the world; and
+then particularly Turin and Milan, those industrial and commercial
+centres, which are so full of life and so modernised that tourists
+disdain them as not being “Italian” cities, both of them having saved
+themselves from ruin by entering into that Western evolution which is
+preparing the next century. Ah! that old land of Italy, ought one to
+leave it all as a dusty museum for the pleasure of artistic souls, leave
+it to crumble away, even as its little towns of Magna Graecia, Umbria,
+and Tuscany are already crumbling, like exquisite _bibelots_ which one
+dares not repair for fear that one might spoil their character. At all
+events, there must either be death, death soon and inevitable, or else
+the pick of the demolisher, the tottering walls thrown to the ground, and
+cities of labour, science, and health created on all sides; in one word,
+a new Italy really rising from the ashes of the old one, and adapted to
+the new civilisation into which humanity is entering.
+
+“However, why despair?” Orlando continued energetically. “Rome may weigh
+heavily on our shoulders, but she is none the less the summit we coveted.
+We are here, and we shall stay here awaiting events. Even if the
+population does not increase it at least remains stationary at a figure
+of some 400,000 souls, and the movement of increase may set in again when
+the causes which stopped it shall have ceased. Our blunder was to think
+that Rome would become a Paris or Berlin; but, so far, all sorts of
+social, historical, even ethnical considerations seem opposed to it; yet
+who can tell what may be the surprises of to-morrow? Are we forbidden to
+hope, to put faith in the blood which courses in our veins, the blood of
+the old conquerors of the world? I, who no longer stir from this room,
+impotent as I am, even I at times feel my madness come back, believe in
+the invincibility and immortality of Rome, and wait for the two millions
+of people who must come to populate those dolorous new districts which
+you have seen so empty and already falling into ruins! And certainly they
+will come! Why not? You will see, you will see, everything will be
+populated, and even more houses will have to be built. Moreover, can you
+call a nation poor, when it possesses Lombardy? Is there not also
+inexhaustible wealth in our southern provinces? Let peace settle down,
+let the South and the North mingle together, and a new generation of
+workers grow up. Since we have the soil, such a fertile soil, the great
+harvest which is awaited will surely some day sprout and ripen under the
+burning sun!”
+
+Enthusiasm was upbuoying him, all the _furia_ of youth inflamed his eyes.
+Pierre smiled, won over; and as soon as he was able to speak, he said:
+“The problem must be tackled down below, among the people. You must make
+men!”
+
+“Exactly!” cried Orlando. “I don’t cease repeating it, one must make
+Italy. It is as if a wind from the East had blown the seed of humanity,
+the seed which makes vigorous and powerful nations, elsewhere. Our people
+is not like yours in France, a reservoir of men and money from which one
+can draw as plentifully as one pleases. It is such another inexhaustible
+reservoir that I wish to see created among us. And one must begin at the
+bottom. There must be schools everywhere, ignorance must be stamped out,
+brutishness and idleness must be fought with books, intellectual and
+moral instruction must give us the industrious people which we need if we
+are not to disappear from among the great nations. And once again for
+whom, if not for the democracy of to-morrow, have we worked in taking
+possession of Rome? And how easily one can understand that all should
+collapse here, and nothing grow up vigorously since such a democracy is
+absolutely absent. Yes, yes, the solution of the problem does not lie
+elsewhere; we must make a people, make an Italian democracy.”
+
+Pierre had grown calm again, feeling somewhat anxious yet not daring to
+say that it is by no means easy to modify a nation, that Italy is such as
+soil, history, and race have made her, and that to seek to transform her
+so radically and all at once might be a dangerous enterprise. Do not
+nations like beings have an active youth, a resplendent prime, and a more
+or less prolonged old age ending in death? A modern democratic Rome, good
+heavens! The modern Romes are named Paris, London, Chicago. So he
+contented himself with saying: “But pending this great renovation of the
+people, don’t you think that you ought to be prudent? Your finances are
+in such a bad condition, you are passing through such great social and
+economic difficulties, that you run the risk of the worst catastrophes
+before you secure either men or money. Ah! how prudent would that
+minister be who should say in your Chamber: ‘Our pride has made a
+mistake, it was wrong of us to try to make ourselves a great nation in
+one day; more time, labour, and patience are needed; and we consent to
+remain for the present a young nation, which will quietly reflect and
+labour at self-formation, without, for a long time yet, seeking to play a
+dominant part. So we intend to disarm, to strike out the war and naval
+estimates, all the estimates intended for display abroad, in order to
+devote ourselves to our internal prosperity, and to build up by
+education, physically and morally, the great nation which we swear we
+will be fifty years hence!’ Yes, yes, strike out all needless
+expenditure, your salvation lies in that!”
+
+But Orlando, while listening, had become gloomy again, and with a vague,
+weary gesture he replied in an undertone: “No, no, the minister who
+should use such language would be hooted. It would be too hard a
+confession, such as one cannot ask a nation to make. Every heart would
+bound, leap forth at the idea. And, besides, would not the danger perhaps
+be even greater if all that has been done were allowed to crumble? How
+many wrecked hopes, how much discarded, useless material there would be!
+No, we can now only save ourselves by patience and courage--and forward,
+ever forward! We are a very young nation, and in fifty years we desired
+to effect the unity which others have required two hundred years to
+arrive at. Well, we must pay for our haste, we must wait for the harvest
+to ripen, and fill our barns.” Then, with another and more sweeping wave
+of the arm, he stubbornly strengthened himself in his hopes. “You know,”
+ said he, “that I was always against the alliance with Germany. As I
+predicted, it has ruined us. We were not big enough to march side by side
+with such a wealthy and powerful person, and it is in view of a war,
+always near at hand and inevitable, that we now suffer so cruelly from
+having to support the budgets of a great nation. Ah! that war which has
+never come, it is that which has exhausted the best part of our blood and
+sap and money without the slightest profit. To-day we have nothing before
+us but the necessity of breaking with our ally, who speculated on our
+pride, who has never helped us in any way, who has never given us
+anything but bad advice, and treated us otherwise than with suspicion.
+But it was all inevitable, and that’s what people won’t admit in France.
+I can speak freely of it all, for I am a declared friend of France, and
+people even feel some spite against me on that account. However, explain
+to your compatriots, that on the morrow of our conquest of Rome, in our
+frantic desire to resume our ancient rank, it was absolutely necessary
+that we should play our part in Europe and show that we were a power with
+whom the others must henceforth count. And hesitation was not allowable,
+all our interests impelled us toward Germany, the evidence was so binding
+as to impose itself. The stern law of the struggle for life weighs as
+heavily on nations as on individuals, and this it is which explains and
+justifies the rupture between the two sisters, France and Italy, the
+forgetting of so many ties, race, commercial intercourse, and, if you
+like, services also. The two sisters, ah! they now pursue each other with
+so much hatred that all common sense even seems at an end. My poor old
+heart bleeds when I read the articles which your newspapers and ours
+exchange like poisoned darts. When will this fratricidal massacre cease,
+which of the two will first realise the necessity of peace, the necessity
+of the alliance of the Latin races, if they are to remain alive amidst
+those torrents of other races which more and more invade the world?” Then
+gaily, with the _bonhomie_ of a hero disarmed by old age, and seeking a
+refuge in his dreams, Orlando added: “Come, you must promise to help me
+as soon as you are in Paris. However small your field of action may be,
+promise me you will do all you can to promote peace between France and
+Italy; there can be no more holy task. Relate all you have seen here, all
+you have heard, oh! as frankly as possible. If we have faults, you
+certainly have faults as well. And, come, family quarrels can’t last for
+ever!”
+
+“No doubt,” Pierre answered in some embarrassment. “Unfortunately they
+are the most tenacious. In families, when blood becomes exasperated with
+blood, hate goes as far as poison and the knife. And pardon becomes
+impossible.”
+
+He dared not fully express his thoughts. Since he had been in Rome,
+listening, and considering things, the quarrel between Italy and France
+had resumed itself in his mind in a fine tragic story. Once upon a time
+there were two princesses, daughters of a powerful queen, the mistress of
+the world. The elder one, who had inherited her mother’s kingdom, was
+secretly grieved to see her sister, who had established herself in a
+neighbouring land, gradually increase in wealth, strength, and
+brilliancy, whilst she herself declined as if weakened by age,
+dismembered, so exhausted, and so sore, that she already felt defeated on
+the day when she attempted a supreme effort to regain universal power.
+And so how bitter were her feelings, how hurt she always felt on seeing
+her sister recover from the most frightful shocks, resume her dazzling
+_gala_, and continue to reign over the world by dint of strength and
+grace and wit. Never would she forgive it, however well that envied and
+detested sister might act towards her. Therein lay an incurable wound,
+the life of one poisoned by that of the other, the hatred of old blood
+for young blood, which could only be quieted by death. And even if peace,
+as was possible, should soon be restored between them in presence of the
+younger sister’s evident triumph, the other would always harbour deep
+within her heart an endless grief at being the elder yet the vassal.
+
+“However, you may rely on me,” Pierre affectionately resumed. “This
+quarrel between the two countries is certainly a great source of grief
+and a great peril. And assuredly I will only say what I think to be the
+truth about you. At the same time I fear that you hardly like the truth,
+for temperament and custom have hardly prepared you for it. The poets of
+every nation who at various times have written on Rome have intoxicated
+you with so much praise that you are scarcely fitted to hear the real
+truth about your Rome of to-day. No matter how superb a share of praise
+one may accord you, one must all the same look at the reality of things,
+and this reality is just what you won’t admit, lovers of the beautiful as
+you ever are, susceptible too like women, whom the slightest hint of a
+wrinkle sends into despair.”
+
+Orlando began to laugh. “Well, certainly, one must always beautify things
+a little,” said he. “Why speak of ugly faces at all? We in our theatres
+only care for pretty music, pretty dancing, pretty pieces which please
+one. As for the rest, whatever is disagreeable let us hide it, for
+mercy’s sake!”
+
+“On the other hand,” the priest continued, “I will cheerfully confess the
+great error of my book. The Italian Rome which I neglected and sacrificed
+to papal Rome not only exists but is already so powerful and triumphant
+that it is surely the other one which is bound to disappear in course of
+time. However much the Pope may strive to remain immutable within his
+Vatican, a steady evolution goes on around him, and the black world, by
+mingling with the white, has already become a grey world. I never
+realised that more acutely than at the _fête_ given by Prince
+Buongiovanni for the betrothal of his daughter to your grand-nephew. I
+came away quite enchanted, won over to the cause of your resurrection.”
+
+The old man’s eyes sparkled. “Ah! you were present?” said he, “and you
+witnessed a never-to-be-forgotten scene, did you not, and you no longer
+doubt our vitality, our growth into a great people when the difficulties
+of to-day are overcome? What does a quarter of a century, what does even
+a century matter! Italy will again rise to her old glory, as soon as the
+great people of to-morrow shall have sprung from the soil. And if I
+detest that man Sacco it is because to my mind he is the incarnation of
+all the enjoyers and intriguers whose appetite for the spoils of our
+conquest has retarded everything. But I live again in my dear
+grand-nephew Attilio, who represents the future, the generation of brave
+and worthy men who will purify and educate the country. Ah! may some of
+the great ones of to-morrow spring from him and that adorable little
+Princess Celia, whom my niece Stefana, a sensible woman at bottom,
+brought to see me the other day. If you had seen that child fling her
+arms about me, call me endearing names, and tell me that I should be
+godfather to her first son, so that he might bear my name and once again
+save Italy! Yes, yes, may peace be concluded around that coming cradle;
+may the union of those dear children be the indissoluble marriage of Rome
+and the whole nation, and may all be repaired, and all blossom anew in
+their love!”
+
+Tears came to his eyes, and Pierre, touched by his inextinguishable
+patriotism, sought to please him. “I myself,” said he, “expressed to your
+son much the same wish on the evening of the betrothal _fête_, when I
+told him I trusted that their nuptials might be definitive and fruitful,
+and that from them and all the others there might arise the great nation
+which, now that I begin to know you, I hope you will soon become!”
+
+“You said that!” exclaimed Orlando. “Well, I forgive your book, for you
+have understood at last; and new Rome, there she is, the Rome which is
+ours, which we wish to make worthy of her glorious past, and for the
+third time the queen of the world.”
+
+With one of those broad gestures into which he put all his remaining
+life, he pointed to the curtainless window where Rome spread out in
+solemn majesty from one horizon to the other. But, suddenly he turned his
+head and in a fit of paternal indignation began to apostrophise young
+Angiolo Mascara. “You young rascal!” said he, “it’s our Rome which you
+dream of destroying with your bombs, which you talk of razing like a
+rotten, tottering house, so as to rid the world of it for ever!”
+
+Angiolo had hitherto remained silent, passionately listening to the
+others. His pretty, girlish, beardless face reflected the slightest
+emotion in sudden flashes; and his big blue eyes also had glowed on
+hearing what had been said of the people, the new people which it was
+necessary to create. “Yes!” he slowly replied in his pure and musical
+voice, “we mean to raze it and not leave a stone of it, but raze it in
+order to build it up again.”
+
+Orlando interrupted him with a soft, bantering laugh: “Oh! you would
+build it up again; that’s fortunate!” he said.
+
+“I would build it up again,” the young man replied, in the trembling
+voice of an inspired prophet. “I would build it up again oh, so vast, so
+beautiful, and so noble! Will not the universal democracy of to-morrow,
+humanity when it is at last freed, need an unique city, which shall be
+the ark of alliance, the very centre of the world? And is not Rome
+designated, Rome which the prophecies have marked as eternal and
+immortal, where the destinies of the nations are to be accomplished? But
+in order that it may become the final definitive sanctuary, the capital
+of the destroyed kingdoms, where the wise men of all countries shall meet
+once every year, one must first of all purify it by fire, leave nothing
+of its old stains remaining. Then, when the sun shall have absorbed all
+the pestilence of the old soil, we will rebuild the city ten times more
+beautiful and ten times larger than it has ever been. And what a city of
+truth and justice it will at last be, the Rome that has been announced
+and awaited for three thousand years, all in gold and all in marble,
+filling the Campagna from the sea to the Sabine and the Alban mountains,
+and so prosperous and so sensible that its twenty millions of inhabitants
+after regulating the law of labour will live with the unique joy of
+being. Yes, yes, Rome the Mother, Rome the Queen, alone on the face of
+the earth and for all eternity!”
+
+Pierre listened to him, aghast. What! did the blood of Augustus go to
+such a point as this? The popes had not become masters of Rome without
+feeling impelled to rebuild it in their passion to rule over the world;
+young Italy, likewise yielding to the hereditary madness of universal
+domination, had in its turn sought to make the city larger than any
+other, erecting whole districts for people who had never come, and now
+even the Anarchists were possessed by the same stubborn dream of the
+race, a dream beyond all measure this time, a fourth and monstrous Rome,
+whose suburbs would invade continents in order that liberated humanity,
+united in one family, might find sufficient lodging! This was the climax.
+Never could more extravagant proof be given of the blood of pride and
+sovereignty which had scorched the veins of that race ever since Augustus
+had bequeathed it the inheritance of his absolute empire, with the
+furious instinct that the world legally belonged to it, and that its
+mission was to conquer it again. This idea had intoxicated all the
+children of that historic soil, impelling all of them to make their city
+The City, the one which had reigned and which would reign again in
+splendour when the days predicted by the oracles should arrive. And
+Pierre remembered the four fatidical letters, the S.P.Q.R. of old and
+glorious Rome, which like an order of final triumph given to Destiny he
+had everywhere found in present-day Rome, on all the walls, on all the
+insignia, even on the municipal dust-carts! And he understood the
+prodigious vanity of these people, haunted by the glory of their
+ancestors, spellbound by the past of their city, declaring that she
+contains everything, that they themselves cannot know her thoroughly,
+that she is the sphinx who will some day explain the riddle of the
+universe, that she is so great and noble that all within her acquires
+increase of greatness and nobility, in such wise that they demand for her
+the idolatrous respect of the entire world, so vivacious in their minds
+is the illusive legend which clings to her, so incapable are they of
+realising that what was once great may be so no longer.
+
+“But I know your fourth Rome,” resumed Orlando, again enlivened. “It’s
+the Rome of the people, the capital of the Universal Republic, which
+Mazzini dreamt of. Only he left the pope in it. Do you know, my lad, that
+if we old Republicans rallied to the monarchy, it was because we feared
+that in the event of revolution the country might fall into the hands of
+dangerous madmen such as those who have upset your brain? Yes, that was
+why we resigned ourselves to our monarchy, which is not much different
+from a parliamentary republic. And now, goodbye and be sensible, remember
+that your poor mother would die of it if any misfortune should befall
+you. Come, let me embrace you all the same.”
+
+On receiving the hero’s affectionate kiss Angiolo coloured like a girl.
+Then he went off with his gentle, dreamy air, never adding a word but
+politely inclining his head to the priest. Silence continued till
+Orlando’s eyes encountered the newspapers scattered on the table, when he
+once more spoke of the terrible bereavement of the Boccaneras. He had
+loved Benedetta like a dear daughter during the sad days when she had
+dwelt near him; and finding the newspaper accounts of her death somewhat
+singular, worried in fact by the obscure points which he could divine in
+the tragedy, he was asking Pierre for particulars, when his son Luigi
+suddenly entered the room, breathless from having climbed the stairs so
+quickly and with his face full of anxious fear. He had just dismissed his
+contractors with impatient roughness, giving no thought to his serious
+financial position, the jeopardy in which his fortune was now placed, so
+anxious was he to be up above beside his father. And when he was there
+his first uneasy glance was for the old man, to make sure whether the
+priest by some imprudent word had not dealt him his death blow.
+
+He shuddered on noticing how Orlando quivered, moved to tears by the
+terrible affair of which he was speaking; and for a moment he thought he
+had arrived too late, that the harm was done. “Good heavens, father!” he
+exclaimed, “what is the matter with you, why are you crying?” And as he
+spoke he knelt at the old man’s feet, taking hold of his hands and giving
+him such a passionate, loving glance that he seemed to be offering all
+the blood of his heart to spare him the slightest grief.
+
+“It is about the death of that poor woman,” Orlando sadly answered. “I
+was telling Monsieur Froment how it grieved me, and I added that I could
+not yet understand it all. The papers talk of a sudden death which is
+always so extraordinary.”
+
+The young Count rose again looking very pale. The priest had not yet
+spoken. But what a frightful moment was this! What if he should reply,
+what if he should speak out?
+
+“You were present, were you not?” continued the old man addressing
+Pierre. “You saw everything. Tell me then how the thing happened.”
+
+Luigi Prada looked at Pierre. Their eyes met fixedly, plunging into one
+another’s souls. All began afresh in their minds, Destiny on the march,
+Santobono encountered with his little basket, the drive across the
+melancholy Campagna, the conversation about poison while the little
+basket was gently rocked on the priest’s knees; then, in particular, the
+sleepy _osteria_, and the little black hen, so suddenly killed, lying on
+the ground with a tiny streamlet of violet blood trickling from her beak.
+And next there was that splendid ball at the Buongiovanni mansion, with
+all its _odore di femina_ and its triumph of love: and finally, before
+the Palazzo Boccanera, so black under the silvery moon, there was the man
+who lighted a cigar and went off without once turning his head, allowing
+dim Destiny to accomplish its work of death. Both of them, Pierre and
+Prada, knew that story and lived it over again, having no need to recall
+it aloud in order to make certain that they had fully penetrated one
+another’s soul.
+
+Pierre did not immediately answer the old man. “Oh!” he murmured at last,
+“there were frightful things, yes, frightful things.”
+
+“No doubt--that is what I suspected,” resumed Orlando. “You can tell us
+all. In presence of death my son has freely forgiven.”
+
+The young Count’s gaze again sought that of Pierre with such weight, such
+ardent entreaty that the priest felt deeply stirred. He had just
+remembered that man’s anguish during the ball, the atrocious torture of
+jealousy which he had undergone before allowing Destiny to avenge him.
+And he pictured also what must have been his feelings after the terrible
+outcome of it all: at first stupefaction at Destiny’s harshness, at this
+full vengeance which he had never desired so ferocious; then icy calmness
+like that of the cool gambler who awaits events, reading the newspapers,
+and feeling no other remorse than that of the general whose victory has
+cost him too many men. He must have immediately realised that the
+Cardinal would stifle the affair for the sake of the Church’s honour; and
+only retained one weight on his heart, regret possibly for that woman
+whom he had never won, with perhaps a last horrible jealousy which he did
+not confess to himself but from which he would always suffer, jealousy at
+knowing that she lay in another’s arms in the grave, for all eternity.
+But behold, after that victorious effort to remain calm, after that cold
+and remorseless waiting, Punishment arose, the fear that Destiny,
+travelling on with its poisoned figs, might have not yet ceased its
+march, and might by a rebound strike down his own father. Yet another
+thunderbolt, yet another victim, the most unexpected, the being he most
+adored! At that thought all his strength of resistance had in one moment
+collapsed, and he was there, in terror of Destiny, more at a loss, more
+trembling than a child.
+
+“The newspapers, however,” slowly said Pierre as if he were seeking his
+words, “the newspapers must have told you that the Prince succumbed
+first, and that the Contessina died of grief whilst embracing him for the
+last time.... As for the cause of death, _mon Dieu_, you know that
+doctors themselves in sudden cases scarcely dare to pronounce an exact
+opinion--”
+
+He stopped short, for within him he had suddenly heard the voice of
+Benedetta giving him just before she died that terrible order: “You, who
+will see his father, I charge you to tell him that I cursed his son. I
+wish that he should know, it is necessary that he should know, for the
+sake of truth and justice.” And was he, oh! Lord, about to obey that
+order, was it one of those divine commands which must be executed even if
+the result be a torrent of blood and tears? For a few seconds Pierre
+suffered from a heart-rending combat within him, hesitating between the
+act of truth and justice which the dead woman had called for and his own
+personal desire for forgiveness, and the horror he would feel should he
+kill that poor old man by fulfilling his implacable mission which could
+benefit nobody. And certainly the other one, the son, must have
+understood what a supreme struggle was going on in the priest’s mind, a
+struggle which would decide his own father’s fate, for his glance became
+yet more suppliant than ever.
+
+“One first thought that it was merely indigestion,” continued Pierre,
+“but the Prince became so much worse, that one was alarmed, and the
+doctor was sent for--”
+
+Ah! Prada’s eyes, they had become so despairing, so full of the most
+touching and weightiest things, that the priest could read in them all
+the decisive reasons which were about to stay his tongue. No, no, he
+would not strike an innocent old man, he had promised nothing, and to
+obey the last expression of the dead woman’s hatred would have seemed to
+him like charging her memory with a crime. The young Count, too, during
+those few minutes of anguish, had suffered a whole life of such
+abominable torture, that after all some little justice was done.
+
+“And then,” Pierre concluded, “when the doctor arrived he at once
+recognised that it was a case of infectious fever. There can be no doubt
+of it. This morning I attended the funeral, it was very splendid and very
+touching.”
+
+Orlando did not insist, but contented himself with saying that he also
+had felt much emotion all the morning on thinking of that funeral. Then,
+as he turned to set the papers on the table in order with his trembling
+hands, his son, icy cold with perspiration, staggering and clinging to
+the back of a chair in order that he might not fall, again gave Pierre a
+long glance, but a very soft one, full of distracted gratitude.
+
+“I am leaving this evening,” resumed Pierre, who felt exhausted and
+wished to break off the conversation, “and I must now bid you farewell.
+Have you any commission to give me for Paris?”
+
+“No, none,” replied Orlando; and then, with sudden recollection, he
+added, “Yes, I have, though! You remember that book written by my old
+comrade in arms, Théophile Morin, one of Garibaldi’s Thousand, that
+manual for the bachelor’s degree which he desired to see translated and
+adopted here. Well, I am pleased to say that I have a promise that it
+shall be used in our schools, but on condition that he makes some
+alterations in it. Luigi, give me the book, it is there on that shelf.”
+
+Then, when his son had handed him the volume, he showed Pierre some notes
+which he had pencilled on the margins, and explained to him the
+modifications which were desired in the general scheme of the work. “Will
+you be kind enough,” he continued, “to take this copy to Morin himself?
+His address is written inside the cover. If you can do so you will spare
+me the trouble of writing him a very long letter; in ten minutes you can
+explain matters to him more clearly and completely than I could do in ten
+pages.... And you must embrace Morin for me, and tell him that I still
+love him, oh! with all my heart of the bygone days, when I could still
+use my legs and we two fought like devils side by side under a hail of
+bullets.”
+
+A short silence followed, that pause, that embarrassment tinged with
+emotion which precedes the moment of farewell. “Come, good-bye,” said
+Orlando, “embrace me for him and for yourself, embrace me affectionately
+like that lad did just now. I am so old and so near my end, my dear
+Monsieur Froment, that you will allow me to call you my child and to kiss
+you like a grandfather, wishing you all courage and peace, and that faith
+in life which alone helps one to live.”
+
+Pierre was so touched that tears rose to his eyes, and when with all his
+soul he kissed the stricken hero on either cheek, he felt that he
+likewise was weeping. With a hand yet as vigorous as a vice, Orlando
+detained him for a moment beside his arm-chair, whilst with his other
+hand waving in a supreme gesture, he for the last time showed him Rome,
+so immense and mournful under the ashen sky. And his voice came low,
+quivering and suppliant. “For mercy’s sake swear to me that you will love
+her all the same, in spite of all, for she is the cradle, the mother!
+Love her for all that she no longer is, love her for all that she desires
+to be! Do not say that her end has come, love her, love her so that she
+may live again, that she may live for ever!”
+
+Pierre again embraced him, unable to find any other response, upset as he
+was by all the passion displayed by that old warrior, who spoke of his
+city as a man of thirty might speak of the woman he adores. And he found
+him so handsome and so lofty with his old blanched, leonine mane and his
+stubborn belief in approaching resurrection, that once more the other old
+Roman, Cardinal Boccanera, arose before him, equally stubborn in his
+faith and relinquishing nought of his dream, even though he might be
+crushed on the spot by the fall of the heavens. These twain ever stood
+face to face, at either end of their city, alone rearing their lofty
+figures above the horizon, whilst awaiting the future.
+
+Then, when Pierre had bowed to Count Luigi, and found himself outside
+again in the Via Venti Settembre he was all eagerness to get back to the
+Boccanera mansion so as to pack up his things and depart. His farewell
+visits were made, and he now only had to take leave of Donna Serafina and
+the Cardinal, and to thank them for all their kind hospitality. For him
+alone did their doors open, for they had shut themselves up on returning
+from the funeral, resolved to see nobody. At twilight, therefore, Pierre
+had no one but Victorine to keep him company in the vast, black mansion,
+for when he expressed a desire to take supper with Don Vigilio she told
+him that the latter had also shut himself in his room. Desirous as he was
+of at least shaking hands with the secretary for the last time, Pierre
+went to knock at the door, which was so near his own, but could obtain no
+reply, and divined that the poor fellow, overcome by a fresh attack of
+fever and suspicion, desired not to see him again, in terror at the idea
+that he might compromise himself yet more than he had done already.
+Thereupon, it was settled that as the train only started at seventeen
+minutes past ten Victorine should serve Pierre his supper on the little
+table in his sitting-room at eight o’clock. She brought him a lamp and
+spoke of putting his linen in order, but he absolutely declined her help,
+and she had to leave him to pack up quietly by himself.
+
+He had purchased a little box, since his valise could not possibly hold
+all the linen and winter clothing which had been sent to him from Paris
+as his stay in Rome became more and more protracted. However, the packing
+was soon accomplished; the wardrobe was emptied, the drawers were
+visited, the box and valise filled and securely locked by seven o’clock.
+An hour remained to him before supper and he sat there resting, when his
+eyes whilst travelling round the walls to make sure that he had forgotten
+nothing, encountered that old painting by some unknown master, which had
+so often filled him with emotion. The lamplight now shone full upon it;
+and this time again as he gazed at it he felt a blow in the heart, a blow
+which was all the deeper, as now, at his parting hour, he found a symbol
+of his defeat at Rome in that dolent, tragic, half-naked woman, draped in
+a shred of linen, and weeping between her clasped hands whilst seated on
+the threshold of the palace whence she had been driven. Did not that
+rejected one, that stubborn victim of love, who sobbed so bitterly, and
+of whom one knew nothing, neither what her face was like, nor whence she
+had come, nor what her fault had been--did she not personify all man’s
+useless efforts to force the doors of truth, and all the frightful
+abandonment into which he falls as soon as he collides with the wall
+which shuts the unknown off from him? For a long while did Pierre look at
+her, again worried at being obliged to depart without having seen her
+face behind her streaming golden hair, that face of dolorous beauty which
+he pictured radiant with youth and delicious in its mystery. And as he
+gazed he was just fancying that he could see it, that it was becoming his
+at last, when there was a knock at the door and Narcisse Habert entered.
+
+Pierre was surprised to see the young _attaché_, for three days
+previously he had started for Florence, impelled thither by one of the
+sudden whims of his artistic fancy. However, he at once apologised for
+his unceremonious intrusion. “Ah! there is your luggage!” he said; “I
+heard that you were going away this evening, and I was unwilling to let
+you leave Rome without coming to shake hands with you. But what frightful
+things have happened since we met! I only returned this afternoon, so
+that I could not attend the funeral. However, you may well imagine how
+thunderstruck I was by the news of those frightful deaths.”
+
+Then, suspecting some unacknowledged tragedy, like a man well acquainted
+with the legendary dark side of Rome, he put some questions to Pierre but
+did not insist on them, being at bottom far too prudent to burden himself
+uselessly with redoubtable secrets. And after Pierre had given him such
+particulars as he thought fit, the conversation changed and they spoke at
+length of Italy, Rome, Naples, and Florence. “Ah! Florence, Florence!”
+ Narcisse repeated languorously. He had lighted a cigarette and his words
+fell more slowly, as he glanced round the room. “You were very well
+lodged here,” he said, “it is very quiet. I had never come up to this
+floor before.”
+
+His eyes continued wandering over the walls until they were at last
+arrested by the old painting which the lamp illumined, and thereupon he
+remained for a moment blinking as if surprised. And all at once he rose
+and approached the picture. “Dear me, dear me,” said he, “but that’s very
+good, that’s very fine.”
+
+“Isn’t it?” rejoined Pierre. “I know nothing about painting but I was
+stirred by that picture on the very day of my arrival, and over and over
+again it has kept me here with my heart beating and full of indescribable
+feelings.”
+
+Narcisse no longer spoke but examined the painting with the care of a
+connoisseur, an expert, whose keen glance decides the question of
+authenticity, and appraises commercial value. And the most extraordinary
+delight appeared upon the young man’s fair, rapturous face, whilst his
+fingers began to quiver. “But it’s a Botticelli, it’s a Botticelli! There
+can be no doubt about it,” he exclaimed. “Just look at the hands, and
+look at the folds of the drapery! And the colour of the hair, and the
+technique, the flow of the whole composition. A Botticelli, ah! _mon
+Dieu_, a Botticelli.”
+
+He became quite faint, overflowing with increasing admiration as he
+penetrated more and more deeply into the subject, at once so simple and
+so poignant. Was it not acutely modern? The artist had foreseen our
+pain-fraught century, our anxiety in presence of the invisible, our
+distress at being unable to cross the portal of mystery which was for
+ever closed. And what an eternal symbol of the world’s wretchedness was
+that woman, whose face one could not see, and who sobbed so distractedly
+without it being possible for one to wipe away her tears. Yes, a
+Botticelli, unknown, uncatalogued, what a discovery! Then he paused to
+inquire of Pierre: “Did you know it was a Botticelli?”
+
+“Oh no! I spoke to Don Vigilio about it one day, but he seemed to think
+it of no account. And Victorine, when I spoke to her, replied that all
+those old things only served to harbour dust.”
+
+Narcisse protested, quite stupefied: “What! they have a Botticelli here
+and don’t know it! Ah! how well I recognise in that the Roman princes
+who, unless their masterpieces have been labelled, are for the most part
+utterly at sea among them! No doubt this one has suffered a little, but a
+simple cleaning would make a marvel, a famous picture of it, for which a
+museum would at least give--”
+
+He abruptly stopped, completing his sentence with a wave of the hand and
+not mentioning the figure which was on his lips. And then, as Victorine
+came in followed by Giacomo to lay the little table for Pierre’s supper,
+he turned his back upon the Botticelli and said no more about it. The
+young priest’s attention was aroused, however, and he could well divine
+what was passing in the other’s mind. Under that make-believe Florentine,
+all angelicalness, there was an experienced business man, who well knew
+how to look after his pecuniary interests and was even reported to be
+somewhat avaricious. Pierre, who was aware of it, could not help smiling
+therefore when he saw him take his stand before another picture--a
+frightful Virgin, badly copied from some eighteenth-century canvas--and
+exclaim: “Dear me! that’s not at all bad! I’ve a friend, I remember, who
+asked me to buy him some old paintings. I say, Victorine, now that Donna
+Serafina and the Cardinal are left alone do you think they would like to
+rid themselves of a few valueless pictures?”
+
+The servant raised her arms as if to say that if it depended on her,
+everything might be carried away. Then she replied: “Not to a dealer,
+sir, on account of the nasty rumours which would at once spread about,
+but I’m sure they would be happy to please a friend. The house costs a
+lot to keep up, and money would be welcome.”
+
+Pierre then vainly endeavoured to persuade Narcisse to stay and sup with
+him, but the young man gave his word of honour that he was expected
+elsewhere and was even late. And thereupon he ran off, after pressing the
+priest’s hands and affectionately wishing him a good journey.
+
+Eight o’clock was striking, and Pierre seated himself at the little
+table, Victorine remaining to serve him after dismissing Giacomo, who had
+brought the supper things upstairs in a basket. “The people here make me
+wild,” said the worthy woman after the other had gone, “they are so slow.
+And besides, it’s a pleasure for me to serve you your last meal, Monsieur
+l’Abbé. I’ve had a little French dinner cooked for you, a _sole au
+gratin_ and a roast fowl.”
+
+Pierre was touched by this attention, and pleased to have the company of
+a compatriot whilst he partook of his final meal amidst the deep silence
+of the old, black, deserted mansion. The buxom figure of Victorine was
+still instinct with mourning, with grief for the loss of her dear
+Contessina, but her daily toil was already setting her erect again,
+restoring her quick activity; and she spoke almost cheerfully whilst
+passing plates and dishes to Pierre. “And to think Monsieur l’Abbé,” said
+she, “that you’ll be in Paris on the morning of the day after to-morrow!
+As for me, you know, it seems as if I only left Auneau yesterday. Ah!
+what fine soil there is there; rich soil yellow like gold, not like their
+poor stuff here which smells of sulphur! And the pretty fresh willows
+beside our stream, too, and the little wood so full of moss! They’ve no
+moss here, their trees look like tin under that stupid sun of theirs
+which burns up the grass. _Mon Dieu_! in the early times I would have
+given I don’t know what for a good fall of rain to soak me and wash away
+all the dust. Ah! I shall never get used to their awful Rome. What a
+country and what people!”
+
+Pierre was quite enlivened by her stubborn fidelity to her own nook,
+which after five and twenty years of absence still left her horrified
+with that city of crude light and black vegetation, true daughter as she
+was of a smiling and temperate clime which of a morning was steeped in
+rosy mist. “But now that your young mistress is dead,” said he, “what
+keeps you here? Why don’t you take the train with me?”
+
+She looked at him in surprise: “Go off with you, go back to Auneau! Oh!
+it’s impossible, Monsieur l’Abbé. It would be too ungrateful to begin
+with, for Donna Serafina is accustomed to me, and it would be bad on my
+part to forsake her and his Eminence now that they are in trouble. And
+besides, what could I do elsewhere? No, my little hole is here now.”
+
+“So you will never see Auneau again?”
+
+“No, never, that’s certain.”
+
+“And you don’t mind being buried here, in their ground which smells of
+sulphur?”
+
+She burst into a frank laugh. “Oh!” she said, “I don’t mind where I am
+when I’m dead. One sleeps well everywhere. And it’s funny that you should
+be so anxious as to what there may be when one’s dead. There’s nothing,
+I’m sure. That’s what tranquillises me, to feel that it will be all over
+and that I shall have a rest. The good God owes us that after we’ve
+worked so hard. You know that I’m not devout, oh! dear no. Still that
+doesn’t prevent me from behaving properly, and, true as I stand here,
+I’ve never had a lover. It seems foolish to say such a thing at my age,
+still I say it because it’s the sober truth.”
+
+She continued laughing like the worthy woman she was, having no belief in
+priests and yet without a sin upon her conscience. And Pierre once more
+marvelled at the simple courage and great practical common sense of this
+laborious and devoted creature, who for him personified the whole
+unbelieving lowly class of France, those who no longer believe and will
+believe never more. Ah! to be as she was, to do one’s work and lie down
+for the eternal sleep without any revolt of pride, satisfied with the one
+joy of having accomplished one’s share of toil!
+
+When Pierre had finished his supper Victorine summoned Giacomo to clear
+the things away. And as it was only half-past eight she advised the
+priest to spend another quiet hour in his room. Why go and catch a chill
+by waiting at the station? She could send for a cab at half-past nine,
+and as soon as it arrived she would send word to him and have his luggage
+carried down. He might be easy as to that, and need trouble himself about
+nothing.
+
+When she had gone off Pierre soon sank into a deep reverie. It seemed to
+him, indeed, as if he had already quitted Rome, as if the city were far
+away and he could look back on it, and his experiences within it. His
+book, “New Rome,” arose in his mind; and he remembered his first morning
+on the Janiculum, his view of Rome from the terrace of San Pietro in
+Montorio, a Rome such as he had dreamt of, so young and ethereal under
+the pure sky. It was then that he had asked himself the decisive
+question: Could Catholicism be renewed? Could it revert to the spirit of
+primitive Christianity, become the religion of the democracy, the faith
+which the distracted modern world, in danger of death, awaits in order
+that it may be pacified and live? His heart had then beaten with hope and
+enthusiasm. After his disaster at Lourdes from which he had scarcely
+recovered, he had come to attempt another and supreme experiment by
+asking Rome what her reply to his question would be. And now the
+experiment had failed, he knew what answer Rome had returned him through
+her ruins, her monuments, her very soil, her people, her prelates, her
+cardinals, her pope! No, Catholicism could not be renewed: no, it could
+not revert to the spirit of primitive Christianity; no, it could not
+become the religion of the democracy, the new faith which might save the
+old toppling societies in danger of death. Though it seemed to be of
+democratic origin, it was henceforth riveted to that Roman soil, it
+remained kingly in spite of everything, forced to cling to the principle
+of temporal power under penalty of suicide, bound by tradition, enchained
+by dogma, its evolutions mere simulations whilst in reality it was
+reduced to such immobility that, behind the bronze doors of the Vatican,
+the papacy was the prisoner, the ghost of eighteen centuries of atavism,
+indulging the ceaseless dream of universal dominion. There, where with
+priestly faith exalted by love of the suffering and the poor, he had come
+to seek life and a resurrection of the Christian communion, he had found
+death, the dust of a destroyed world in which nothing more could
+germinate, an exhausted soil whence now there could never grow aught but
+that despotic papacy, the master of bodies as it was of souls. To his
+distracted cry asking for a new religion, Rome had been content to reply
+by condemning his book as a work tainted with heresy, and he himself had
+withdrawn it amidst the bitter grief of his disillusions. He had seen, he
+had understood, and all had collapsed. And it was himself, his soul and
+his brain, which lay among the ruins.
+
+Pierre was stifling. He rose, threw the window overlooking the Tiber wide
+open, and leant out. The rain had begun to fall again at the approach of
+evening, but now it had once more ceased. The atmosphere was very mild,
+moist, even oppressive. The moon must have arisen in the ashen grey sky,
+for her presence could be divined behind the clouds which she illumined
+with a vague, yellow, mournful light. And under that slumberous glimmer
+the vast horizon showed blackly and phantom-like: the Janiculum in front
+with the close-packed houses of the Trastevere; the river flowing away
+yonder on the left towards the dim height of the Palatine; whilst on the
+right the dome of St. Peter’s showed forth, round and domineering in the
+pale atmosphere. Pierre could not see the Quirinal but divined it to be
+behind him, and could picture its long façade shutting off part of the
+sky. And what a collapsing Rome, half-devoured by the gloom, was this, so
+different from the Rome all youth and dreamland which he had beheld and
+passionately loved on the day of his arrival! He remembered the three
+symbolic summits which had then summed up for him the whole long history
+of Rome, the ancient, the papal, and the Italian city. But if the
+Palatine had remained the same discrowned mount on which there only rose
+the phantom of the ancestor, Augustus, emperor and pontiff, master of the
+world, he now pictured St. Peter’s and the Quirinal as strangely altered.
+To that royal palace which he had so neglected, and which had seemed to
+him like a flat, low barrack, to that new Government which had brought
+him the impression of some attempt at sacrilegious modernity, he now
+accorded the large, increasing space that they occupied in the panorama,
+the whole of which they would apparently soon fill; whilst, on the
+contrary, St. Peter’s, that dome which he had found so triumphal, all
+azure, reigning over the city like a gigantic and unshakable monarch, at
+present seemed to him full of cracks and already shrinking, as if it were
+one of those huge old piles, which, through the secret, unsuspected decay
+of their timbers, at times fall to the ground in one mass.
+
+A murmur, a growling plaint rose from the swollen Tiber, and Pierre
+shivered at the icy abysmal breath which swept past his face. And his
+thoughts of the three summits and their symbolic triangle aroused within
+him the memory of the sufferings of the great silent multitude of poor
+and lowly for whom pope and king had so long disputed. It all dated from
+long ago, from the day when, in dividing the inheritance of Augustus, the
+emperor had been obliged to content himself with men’s bodies, leaving
+their souls to the pope, whose one idea had henceforth been to gain the
+temporal power of which God, in his person, was despoiled. All the middle
+ages had been disturbed and ensanguined by the quarrel, till at last the
+silent multitude weary of vexations and misery spoke out; threw off the
+papal yoke at the Reformation, and later on began to overthrow its kings.
+And then, as Pierre had written in his book, a new fortune had been
+offered to the pope, that of reverting to the ancient dream, by
+dissociating himself from the fallen thrones and placing himself on the
+side of the wretched in the hope that this time he would conquer the
+people, win it entirely for himself. Was it not prodigious to see that
+man, Leo XIII, despoiled of his kingdom and allowing himself to be called
+a socialist, assembling under his banner the great flock of the
+disinherited, and marching against the kings at the head of that fourth
+estate to whom the coming century will belong? The eternal struggle for
+possession of the people continued as bitterly as ever even in Rome
+itself, where pope and king, who could see each other from their windows,
+contended together like falcon and hawk for the little birds of the
+woods. And in this for Pierre lay the reason why Catholicism was fatally
+condemned; for it was of monarchical essence to such a point that the
+Apostolic and Roman papacy could not renounce the temporal power under
+penalty of becoming something else and disappearing. In vain did it feign
+a return to the people, in vain did it seek to appear all soul; there was
+no room in the midst of the world’s democracies for any such total and
+universal sovereignty as that which it claimed to hold from God. Pierre
+ever beheld the Imperator sprouting up afresh in the Pontifex Maximus,
+and it was this in particular which had killed his dream, destroyed his
+book, heaped up all those ruins before which he remained distracted
+without either strength or courage.
+
+The sight of that ashen Rome, whose edifices faded away into the night,
+at last brought him such a heart-pang that he came back into the room and
+fell on a chair near his luggage. Never before had he experienced such
+distress of spirit, it seemed like the death of his soul. After his
+disaster at Lourdes he had not come to Rome in search of the candid and
+complete faith of a little child, but the superior faith of an
+intellectual being, rising above rites and symbols, and seeking to ensure
+the greatest possible happiness of mankind based on its need of
+certainty. And if this collapsed, if Catholicism could not be rejuvenated
+and become the religion and moral law of the new generations, if the Pope
+at Rome and with Rome could not be the Father, the arch of alliance, the
+spiritual leader whom all hearkened to and obeyed, why then, in Pierre’s
+eyes, the last hope was wrecked, the supreme rending which must plunge
+present-day society into the abyss was near at hand. That scaffolding of
+Catholic socialism which had seemed to him so happily devised for the
+consolidation of the old Church, now appeared to him lying on the ground;
+and he judged it severely as a mere passing expedient which might perhaps
+for some years prop up the ruined edifice, but which was simply based on
+an intentional misunderstanding, on a skilful lie, on politics and
+diplomacy. No, no, that the people should once again, as so many times
+before, be duped and gained over, caressed in order that it might be
+enthralled--this was repugnant to one’s reason, and the whole system
+appeared degenerate, dangerous, temporary, calculated to end in the worst
+catastrophes. So this then was the finish, nothing remained erect and
+stable, the old world was about to disappear amidst the frightful
+sanguinary crisis whose approach was announced by such indisputable
+signs. And he, before that chaos near at hand, had no soul left him,
+having once more lost his faith in that decisive experiment which, he had
+felt beforehand, would either strengthen him or strike him down for ever.
+The thunderbolt had fallen, and now, O God, what should he do?
+
+To shake off his anguish he began to walk across the room. Aye, what
+should he do now that he was all doubt again, all dolorous negation, and
+that his cassock weighed more heavily than it had ever weighed upon his
+shoulders? He remembered having told Monsignor Nani that he would never
+submit, would never be able to resign himself and kill his hope in
+salvation by love, but would rather reply by a fresh book, in which he
+would say in what new soil the new religion would spring up. Yes, a
+flaming book against Rome, in which he would set down all he had seen, a
+book which would depict the real Rome, the Rome which knows neither
+charity nor love, and is dying in the pride of its purple! He had spoken
+of returning to Paris, leaving the Church and going to the point of
+schism. Well, his luggage now lay there packed, he was going off and he
+would write that book, he would be the great schismatic who was awaited!
+Did not everything foretell approaching schism amidst that great movement
+of men’s minds, weary of old mummified dogmas and yet hungering for the
+divine? Even Leo XIII must be conscious of it, for his whole policy, his
+whole effort towards Christian unity, his assumed affection for the
+democracy had no other object than that of grouping the whole family
+around the papacy, and consolidating it so as to render the Pope
+invincible in the approaching struggle. But the times had come,
+Catholicism would soon find that it could grant no more political
+concessions without perishing, that at Rome it was reduced to the
+immobility of an ancient hieratic idol, and that only in the lands of
+propaganda, where it was fighting against other religions, could further
+evolution take place. It was, indeed, for this reason that Rome was
+condemned, the more so as the abolition of the temporal power, by
+accustoming men’s minds to the idea of a purely spiritual papacy, seemed
+likely to conduce to the rise of some anti-pope, far away, whilst the
+successor of St. Peter was compelled to cling stubbornly to his Apostolic
+and Roman fiction. A bishop, a priest would arise--where, who could tell?
+Perhaps yonder in that free America, where there are priests whom the
+struggle for life has turned into convinced socialists, into ardent
+democrats, who are ready to go forward with the coming century. And
+whilst Rome remains unable to relinquish aught of her past, aught of her
+mysteries and dogmas, that priest will relinquish all of those things
+which fall from one in dust. Ah! to be that priest, to be that great
+reformer, that saviour of modern society, what a vast dream, what a part,
+akin to that of a Messiah summoned by the nations in distress. For a
+moment Pierre was transported as by a breeze of hope and triumph. If that
+great change did not come in France, in Paris, it would come elsewhere,
+yonder across the ocean, or farther yet, wherever there might be a
+sufficiently fruitful soil for the new seed to spring from it in
+overflowing harvests. A new religion! a new religion! even as he had
+cried on returning from Lourdes, a religion which in particular should
+not be an appetite for death, a religion which should at last realise
+here below that Kingdom of God referred to in the Gospel, and which
+should equitably divide terrestrial wealth, and with the law of labour
+ensure the rule of truth and justice.
+
+In the fever of this fresh dream Pierre already saw the pages of his new
+book flaring before him when his eyes fell on an object lying upon a
+chair, which at first surprised him. This also was a book, that work of
+Théophile Morin’s which Orlando had commissioned him to hand to its
+author, and he felt annoyed with himself at having left it there, for he
+might have forgotten it altogether. Before putting it into his valise he
+retained it for a moment in his hand turning its pages over, his ideas
+changing as by a sudden mental revolution. The work was, however, a very
+modest one, one of those manuals for the bachelor’s degree containing
+little beyond the first elements of the sciences; still all the sciences
+were represented in it, and it gave a fair summary of the present state
+of human knowledge. And it was indeed Science which thus burst upon
+Pierre’s reverie with the energy of sovereign power. Not only was
+Catholicism swept away from his mind, but all his religious conceptions,
+every hypothesis of the divine tottered and fell. Only that little school
+book, nothing but the universal desire for knowledge, that education
+which ever extends and penetrates the whole people, and behold the
+mysteries became absurdities, the dogmas crumbled, and nothing of ancient
+faith was left. A nation nourished upon Science, no longer believing in
+mysteries and dogmas, in a compensatory system of reward and punishment,
+is a nation whose faith is for ever dead: and without faith Catholicism
+cannot be. Therein is the blade of the knife, the knife which falls and
+severs. If one century, if two centuries be needed, Science will take
+them. She alone is eternal. It is pure _naïveté_ to say that reason is
+not contrary to faith. The truth is, that now already in order to save
+mere fragments of the sacred writings, it has been necessary to
+accommodate them to the new certainties, by taking refuge in the
+assertion that they are simply symbolical! And what an extraordinary
+attitude is that of the Catholic Church, expressly forbidding all those
+who may discover a truth contrary to the sacred writings to pronounce
+upon it in definitive fashion, and ordering them to await events in the
+conviction that this truth will some day be proved an error! Only the
+Pope, says the Church, is infallible; Science is fallible, her constant
+groping is exploited against her, and divines remain on the watch
+striving to make it appear that her discoveries of to-day are in
+contradiction with her discoveries of yesterday. What do her sacrilegious
+assertions, what do her certainties rending dogma asunder, matter to a
+Catholic since it is certain that at the end of time, she, Science, will
+again join Faith, and become the latter’s very humble slave! Voluntary
+blindness and impudent denial of things as evident as the sunlight, can
+no further go. But all the same the insignificant little book, the manual
+of truth travels on continuing its work, destroying error and building up
+the new world, even as the infinitesimal agents of life built up our
+present continents.
+
+In the sudden great enlightenment which had come on him Pierre at last
+felt himself upon firm ground. Has Science ever retreated? It is
+Catholicism which has always retreated before her, and will always be
+forced to retreat. Never does Science stop, step by step she wrests truth
+from error, and to say that she is bankrupt because she cannot explain
+the world in one word and at one effort, is pure and simple nonsense. If
+she leaves, and no doubt will always leave a smaller and smaller domain
+to mystery, and if supposition may always strive to explain that mystery,
+it is none the less certain that she ruins, and with each successive hour
+will add to the ruin of the ancient hypotheses, those which crumble away
+before the acquired truths. And Catholicism is in the position of those
+ancient hypotheses, and will be in it yet more thoroughly to-morrow. Like
+all religions it is, at the bottom, but an explanation of the world, a
+superior social and political code, intended to bring about the greatest
+possible sum of peace and happiness on earth. This code which embraces
+the universality of things thenceforth becomes human, and mortal like
+everything that is human. One cannot put it on one side and say that it
+exists on one side by itself, whilst Science does the same on the other.
+Science is total and has already shown Catholicism that such is the case,
+and will show it again and again by compelling it to repair the breaches
+incessantly effected in its ramparts till the day of victory shall come
+with the final assault of resplendent truth. Frankly, it makes one laugh
+to hear people assign a _rôle_ to Science, forbid her to enter such and
+such a domain, predict to her that she shall go no further, and declare
+that at this end of the century she is already so weary that she
+abdicates! Oh! you little men of shallow or distorted brains, you
+politicians planning expedients, you dogmatics at bay, you authoritarians
+so obstinately clinging to the ancient dreams, Science will pass on, and
+sweep you all away like withered leaves!
+
+Pierre continued glancing through the humble little book, listening to
+all it told him of sovereign Science. She cannot become bankrupt, for she
+does not promise the absolute, she is simply the progressive conquest of
+truth. Never has she pretended that she could give the whole truth at one
+effort, that sort of edifice being precisely the work of metaphysics, of
+revelation, of faith. The _rôle_ of Science, on the contrary, is only to
+destroy error as she gradually advances and increases enlightenment. And
+thus, far from becoming bankrupt, in her march which nothing stops, she
+remains the only possible truth for well-balanced and healthy minds. As
+for those whom she does not satisfy, who crave for immediate and
+universal knowledge, they have the resource of seeking refuge in no
+matter what religious hypothesis, provided, if they wish to appear in the
+right, that they build their fancy upon acquired certainties. Everything
+which is raised on proven error falls. However, although religious
+feeling persists among mankind, although the need of religion may be
+eternal, it by no means follows that Catholicism is eternal, for it is,
+after all, but one form of religion, which other forms preceded and which
+others will follow. Religions may disappear, but religious feeling will
+create new ones even with the help of Science. Pierre thought of that
+alleged repulse of Science by the present-day awakening of mysticism, the
+causes of which he had indicated in his book: the discredit into which
+the idea of liberty has fallen among the people, duped in the last social
+reorganisation, and the uneasiness of the _élite_, in despair at the void
+in which their liberated minds and enlarged intelligences have left them.
+It is the anguish of the Unknown springing up again; but it is also only
+a natural and momentary reaction after so much labour, on finding that
+Science does not yet calm our thirst for justice, our desire for
+security, or our ancient idea of an eternal after-life of enjoyment. In
+order, however, that Catholicism might be born anew, as some seem to
+think it will be, the social soil would have to change, and it cannot
+change; it no longer possesses the sap needful for the renewal of a
+decaying formula which schools and laboratories destroy more and more
+each day. The ground is other than it once was, a different oak must
+spring from it. May Science therefore have her religion, for such a
+religion will soon be the only one possible for the coming democracies,
+for the nations, whose knowledge ever increases whilst their Catholic
+faith is already nought but dust.
+
+And all at once, by way of conclusion, Pierre bethought himself of the
+idiocy of the Congregation of the Index. It had condemned his book, and
+would surely condemn the other one that he had thought of, should he ever
+write it. A fine piece of work truly! To fall tooth and nail on the poor
+books of an enthusiastic dreamer, in which chimera contended with
+chimera! Yet the Congregation was so foolish as not to interdict that
+little book which he held in his hands, that humble book which alone was
+to be feared, which was the ever triumphant enemy that would surely
+overthrow the Church. Modest it was in its cheap “get up” as a school
+manual, but that did not matter: danger began with the very alphabet,
+increased as knowledge was acquired, and burst forth with those _resumes_
+of the physical, chemical, and natural sciences which bring the very
+Creation, as described by Holy Writ, into question. However, the Index
+dared not attempt to suppress those humble volumes, those terrible
+soldiers of truth, those destroyers of faith. What was the use, then, of
+all the money which Leo XIII drew from his hidden treasure of the Peter’s
+Pence to subvention Catholic schools, with the thought of forming the
+believing generations which the papacy needed to enable it to conquer?
+What was the use of that precious money if it was only to serve for the
+purchase of similar insignificant yet formidable volumes, which could
+never be sufficiently “cooked” and expurgated, but would always contain
+too much Science, that growing Science which one day would blow up both
+Vatican and St. Peter’s? Ah! that idiotic and impotent Index, what
+wretchedness and what derision!
+
+Then, when Pierre had placed Théophile Morin’s book in his valise, he
+once more returned to the window, and while leaning out, beheld an
+extraordinary vision. Under the cloudy, coppery sky, in the mild and
+mournful night, patches of wavy mist had risen, hiding many of the
+house-roofs with trailing shreds which looked like shrouds. Entire
+edifices had disappeared, and he imagined that the times were at last
+accomplished, and that truth had at last destroyed St. Peter’s dome. In a
+hundred or a thousand years, it would be like that, fallen, obliterated
+from the black sky. One day, already, he had felt it tottering and
+cracking beneath him, and had foreseen that this temple of Catholicism
+would fall even as Jove’s temple had fallen on the Capitol. And it was
+over now, the dome had strewn the ground with fragments, and all that
+remained standing, in addition to a portion of the apse, where five
+columns of the central nave, still upholding a shred of entablature, and
+four cyclopean buttress-piers on which the dome had rested--piers which
+still arose, isolated and superb, looking indestructible among all the
+surrounding downfall. But a denser mist flowed past, another thousand
+years no doubt went by, and then nothing whatever remained. The apse, the
+last pillars, the giant piers themselves were felled! The wind had swept
+away their dust, and it would have been necessary to search the soil
+beneath the brambles and the nettles to find a few fragments of broken
+statues, marbles with mutilated inscriptions, on the sense of which
+learned men were unable to agree. And, as formerly, on the Capitol, among
+the buried remnants of Jupiter’s temple, goats strayed and climbed
+through the solitude, browsing upon the bushes, amidst the deep silence
+of the oppressive summer sunlight, which only the buzzing flies
+disturbed.
+
+Then, only then, did Pierre feel the supreme collapse within him. It was
+really all over, Science was victorious, nothing of the old world
+remained. What use would it be then to become the great schismatic, the
+reformer who was awaited? Would it not simply mean the building up of a
+new dream? Only the eternal struggle of Science against the Unknown, the
+searching, pursuing inquiry which incessantly moderated man’s thirst for
+the divine, now seemed to him of import, leaving him waiting to know if
+she would ever triumph so completely as to suffice mankind, by satisfying
+all its wants. And in the disaster which had overcome his apostolic
+enthusiasm, in presence of all those ruins, having lost his faith, and
+even his hope of utilising old Catholicism for social and moral
+salvation, there only remained reason that held him up. She had at one
+moment given way. If he had dreamt that book, and had just passed through
+that terrible crisis, it was because sentiment had once again overcome
+reason within him. It was his mother, so to say, who had wept in his
+heart, who had filled him with an irresistible desire to relieve the
+wretched and prevent the massacres which seemed near at hand; and his
+passion for charity had thus swept aside the scruples of his
+intelligence. But it was his father’s voice that he now heard, lofty and
+bitter reason which, though it had fled, at present came back in all
+sovereignty. As he had done already after Lourdes, he protested against
+the glorification of the absurd and the downfall of common sense. Reason
+alone enabled him to walk erect and firm among the remnants of the old
+beliefs, even amidst the obscurities and failures of Science. Ah! Reason,
+it was through her alone that he suffered, through her alone that he
+could content himself, and he swore that he would now always seek to
+satisfy her, even if in doing so he should lose his happiness.
+
+At that moment it would have been vain for him to ask what he ought to
+do. Everything remained in suspense, the world stretched before him still
+littered with the ruins of the past, of which, to-morrow, it would
+perhaps be rid. Yonder, in that dolorous faubourg of Paris, he would find
+good Abbé Rose, who but a few days previously had written begging him to
+return and tend, love, and save his poor, since Rome, so dazzling from
+afar, was dead to charity. And around the good and peaceful old priest he
+would find the ever growing flock of wretched ones; the little fledglings
+who had fallen from their nests, and whom he found pale with hunger and
+shivering with cold; the households of abominable misery in which the
+father drank and the mother became a prostitute, while the sons and the
+daughters sank into vice and crime; the dwellings, too, through which
+famine swept, where all was filth and shameful promiscuity, where there
+was neither furniture nor linen, nothing but purely animal life. And then
+there would also come the cold blasts of winter, the disasters of slack
+times, the hurricanes of consumption carrying off the weak, whilst the
+strong clenched their fists and dreamt of vengeance. One evening, too,
+perhaps, he might again enter some room of horror and find that another
+mother had killed herself and her five little ones, her last-born in her
+arms clinging to her drained breast, and the others scattered over the
+bare tiles, at last contented, feeling hunger no more, now that they were
+dead! But no, no, such awful things were no longer possible: such black
+misery conducting to suicide in the heart of that great city of Paris,
+which is brimful of wealth, intoxicated with enjoyment, and flings
+millions out of window for mere pleasure! The very foundations of the
+social edifice were rotten; all would soon collapse amidst mire and
+blood. Never before had Pierre so acutely realised the derisive futility
+of Charity. And all at once he became conscious that the long-awaited
+word, the word which was at last springing from the great silent
+multitude, the crushed and gagged people was _Justice_! Aye, Justice not
+Charity! Charity had only served to perpetuate misery, Justice perhaps
+would cure it. It was for Justice that the wretched hungered; an act of
+Justice alone could sweep away the olden world so that the new one might
+be reared. After all, the great silent multitude would belong neither to
+Vatican nor to Quirinal, neither to pope nor to king. If it had covertly
+growled through the ages in its long, sometimes mysterious, and sometimes
+open contest; if it had struggled betwixt pontiff and emperor who each
+had wished to retain it for himself alone, it had only done so in order
+that it might free itself, proclaim its resolve to belong to none on the
+day when it should cry Justice! Would to-morrow then at last prove that
+day of Justice and Truth? For his part, Pierre amidst his anguish--having
+on one hand that need of the divine which tortures man, and on the other
+sovereignty of reason which enables man to remain erect--was only sure of
+one thing, that he would keep his vows, continue a priest, watching over
+the belief of others though he could not himself believe, and would thus
+chastely and honestly follow his profession, amidst haughty sadness at
+having been unable to renounce his intelligence in the same way as he had
+renounced his flesh and his dream of saving the nations. And again, as
+after Lourdes, he would wait.
+
+So deeply was he plunged in reflection at that window, face to face with
+the mist which seemed to be destroying the dark edifices of Rome, that he
+did not hear himself called. At last, however, he felt a tap on the
+shoulder: “Monsieur l’Abbé!” And then as he turned he saw Victorine, who
+said to him: “It is half-past nine; the cab is there. Giacomo has already
+taken your luggage down. You must come away, Monsieur l’Abbé.”
+
+Then seeing him blink, still dazed as it were, she smiled and added: “You
+were bidding Rome goodbye. What a frightful sky there is.”
+
+“Yes, frightful,” was his reply.
+
+Then they descended the stairs. He had handed her a hundred-franc note to
+be shared between herself and the other servants. And she apologised for
+going down before him with the lamp, explaining that the old palace was
+so dark that evening one could scarcely see.
+
+Ah! that departure, that last descent through the black and empty
+mansion, it quite upset Pierre’s heart. He gave his room that glance of
+farewell which always saddened him, even when he was leaving a spot where
+he had suffered. Then, on passing Don Vigilio’s chamber, whence there
+only came a quivering silence, he pictured the secretary with his head
+buried in his pillows, holding his breath for fear lest he should speak
+and attract vengeance. But it was in particular on the second and first
+floor landings, on passing the closed doors of Donna Serafina and the
+Cardinal, that Pierre quivered with apprehension at hearing nothing but
+the silence of the grave. And as he followed Victorine, who, lamp in
+hand, was still descending, he thought of the brother and sister who were
+left alone in the ruined palace, last relics of a world which had half
+passed away. All hope of life had departed with Benedetta and Dario, no
+resurrection could come from that old maid and that priest who was bound
+to chastity. Ah! those interminable and lugubrious passages, that frigid
+and gigantic staircase which seemed to descend into nihility, those huge
+halls with cracking walls where all was wretchedness and abandonment! And
+that inner court, looking like a cemetery with its weeds and its damp
+porticus, where remnants of Apollos and Venuses were rotting! And the
+little deserted garden, fragrant with ripe oranges, whither nobody now
+would ever stray, where none would ever meet that adorable Contessina
+under the laurels near the sarcophagus! All was now annihilated in
+abominable mourning, in a death-like silence, amidst which the two last
+Boccaneras must wait, in savage grandeur, till their palace should fall
+about their heads. Pierre could only just detect a faint sound, the
+gnawing of a mouse perhaps, unless it were caused by Abbé Paparelli
+attacking the walls of some out-of-the-way rooms, preying on the old
+edifice down below, so as to hasten its fall.
+
+The cab stood at the door, already laden with the luggage, the box beside
+the driver, the valise on the seat; and the priest at once got in.
+
+“Oh! You have plenty of time,” said Victorine, who had remained on the
+foot-pavement. “Nothing has been forgotten. I’m glad to see you go off
+comfortably.”
+
+And indeed at that last moment Pierre was comforted by the presence of
+that worthy woman, his compatriot, who had greeted him on his arrival and
+now attended his departure. “I won’t say ‘till we meet again,’ Monsieur
+l’Abbé,” she exclaimed, “for I don’t fancy that you’ll soon be back in
+this horrid city. Good-bye, Monsieur l’Abbé.”
+
+“Good-bye, Victorine, and thank you with all my heart.”
+
+The cab was already going off at a fast trot, turning into the narrow
+sinuous street which leads to the Corso Vittoria Emanuele. It was not
+raining and so the hood had not been raised, but although the damp
+atmosphere was comparatively mild, Pierre at once felt a chill. However,
+he was unwilling to stop the driver, a silent fellow whose only desire
+seemingly was to get rid of his fare as soon as possible. When the cab
+came out into the Corso Vittoria Emanuele, the young man was astonished
+to find it already quite deserted, the houses shut, the footways bare,
+and the electric lamps burning all alone in melancholy solitude. In
+truth, however, the temperature was far from warm and the fog seemed to
+be increasing, hiding the house-fronts more and more. When Pierre passed
+the Cancelleria, that stern colossal pile seemed to him to be receding,
+fading away; and farther on, upon the right, at the end of the Via di Ara
+Coeli, starred by a few smoky gas lamps, the Capitol had quite vanished
+in the gloom. Then the thoroughfare narrowed, and the cab went on between
+the dark heavy masses of the Gesù and the Altieri palace; and there in
+that contracted passage, where even on fine sunny days one found all the
+dampness of old times, the quivering priest yielded to a fresh train of
+thought. It was an idea which had sometimes made him feel anxious, the
+idea that mankind, starting from over yonder in Asia, had always marched
+onward with the sun. An east wind had always carried the human seed for
+future harvest towards the west. And for a long while now the cradle of
+humanity had been stricken with destruction and death, as if indeed the
+nations could only advance by stages, leaving exhausted soil, ruined
+cities, and degenerate populations behind, as they marched from orient to
+occident, towards their unknown goal. Nineveh and Babylon on the banks of
+the Euphrates, Thebes and Memphis on the banks of the Nile, had been
+reduced to dust, sinking from old age and weariness into a deadly
+numbness beyond possibility of awakening. Then decrepitude had spread to
+the shores of the great Mediterranean lake, burying both Tyre and Sidon
+with dust, and afterwards striking Carthage with senility whilst it yet
+seemed in full splendour. In this wise as mankind marched on, carried by
+the hidden forces of civilisation from east to west, it marked each day’s
+journey with ruins; and how frightful was the sterility nowadays
+displayed by the cradle of History, that Asia and that Egypt, which had
+once more lapsed into childhood, immobilised in ignorance and degeneracy
+amidst the ruins of ancient cities that once had been queens of the
+world!
+
+It was thus Pierre reflected as the cab rolled on. Still he was not
+unconscious of his surroundings. As he passed the Palazzo di Venezia it
+seemed to him to be crumbling beneath some assault of the invisible, for
+the mist had already swept away its battlements, and the lofty, bare,
+fearsome walls looked as if they were staggering from the onslaught of
+the growing darkness. And after passing the deep gap of the Corso, which
+was also deserted amidst the pallid radiance of its electric lights, the
+Palazzo Torlonia appeared on the right-hand, with one wing ripped open by
+the picks of demolishers, whilst on the left, farther up, the Palazzo
+Colonna showed its long, mournful façade and closed windows, as if, now
+that it was deserted by its masters and void of its ancient pomp, it
+awaited the demolishers in its turn.
+
+Then, as the cab at a slower pace began to climb the ascent of the Via
+Nazionale, Pierre’s reverie continued. Was not Rome also stricken, had
+not the hour come for her to disappear amidst that destruction which the
+nations on the march invariably left behind them? Greece, Athens, and
+Sparta slumbered beneath their glorious memories, and were of no account
+in the world of to-day. Moreover, the growing paralysis had already
+invaded the lower portion of the Italic peninsula; and after Naples
+certainly came the turn of Rome. She was on the very margin of the death
+spot which ever extends over the old continent, that margin where agony
+begins, where the impoverished soil will no longer nourish and support
+cities, where men themselves seem stricken with old age as soon as they
+are born. For two centuries Rome had been declining, withdrawing little
+by little from modern life, having neither manufactures nor trade, and
+being incapable even of science, literature, or art. And in Pierre’s
+thoughts it was no longer St. Peter’s only that fell, but all
+Rome--basilicas, palaces, and entire districts--which collapsed amidst a
+supreme rending, and covered the seven hills with a chaos of ruins. Like
+Nineveh and Babylon, and like Thebes and Memphis, Rome became but a
+plain, bossy with remnants, amidst which one vainly sought to identify
+the sites of ancient edifices, whilst its sole denizens were coiling
+serpents and bands of rats.
+
+The cab turned, and on the right, in a huge gap of darkness Pierre
+recognised Trajan’s column, but it was no longer gilded by the sun as
+when he had first seen it; it now rose up blackly like the dead trunk of
+a giant tree whose branches have fallen from old age. And farther on,
+when he raised his eyes while crossing the little triangular piazza, and
+perceived a real tree against the leaden sky, that parasol pine of the
+Villa Aldobrandini which rises there like a symbol of Rome’s grace and
+pride, it seemed to him but a smear, a little cloud of soot ascending
+from the downfall of the whole city.
+
+With the anxious, fraternal turn of his feelings, fear was coming over
+him as he reached the end of his tragic dream. When the numbness which
+spreads across the aged world should have passed Rome, when Lombardy
+should have yielded to it, and Genoa, Turin, and Milan should have fallen
+asleep as Venice has fallen already, then would come the turn of France.
+The Alps would be crossed, Marseilles, like Tyre and Sidon, would see its
+port choked up by sand, Lyons would sink into desolation and slumber, and
+at last Paris, invaded by the invincible torpor, and transformed into a
+sterile waste of stones bristling with nettles, would join Rome and
+Nineveh and Babylon in death, whilst the nations continued their march
+from orient to occident following the sun. A great cry sped through the
+gloom, the death cry of the Latin races! History, which seemed to have
+been born in the basin of the Mediterranean, was being transported
+elsewhere, and the ocean had now become the centre of the world. How many
+hours of the human day had gone by? Had mankind, starting from its cradle
+over yonder at daybreak, strewing its road with ruins from stage to
+stage, now accomplished one-half of its day and reached the dazzling hour
+of noon? If so, then the other half of the day allotted to it was
+beginning, the new world was following the old one, the new world of
+those American cities where democracy was forming and the religion of
+to-morrow was sprouting, those sovereign queens of the coming century,
+with yonder, across another ocean, on the other side of the globe, that
+motionless Far East, mysterious China and Japan, and all the threatening
+swarm of the yellow races.
+
+However, while the cab climbed higher and higher up the Via Nazionale,
+Pierre felt his nightmare dissipating. There was here a lighter
+atmosphere, and he came back into a renewal of hope and courage. Yet the
+Banca d’Italia, with its brand-new ugliness, its chalky hugeness, looked
+to him like a phantom in a shroud; whilst above a dim expanse of gardens
+the Quirinal formed but a black streak barring the heavens. However, the
+street ever ascended and broadened, and on the summit of the Viminal, on
+the Piazza delle Terme, when he passed the ruins of Diocletian’s baths,
+he could breathe as his lungs listed. No, no, the human day could not
+finish, it was eternal, and the stages of civilisation would follow and
+follow without end! What mattered that eastern wind which carried the
+nations towards the west, as if borne on by the power of the sun! If
+necessary, they would return across the other side of the globe, they
+would again and again make the circuit of the earth, until the day should
+come when they could establish themselves in peace, truth, and justice.
+After the next civilisation on the shores of the Atlantic, which would
+become the world’s centre, skirted by queenly cities, there would spring
+up yet another civilisation, having the Pacific for its centre, with
+seaport capitals that could not be yet foreseen, whose germs yet
+slumbered on unknown shores. And in like way there would be still other
+civilisations and still others! And at that last moment, the inspiriting
+thought came to Pierre that the great movement of the nations was the
+instinct, the need which impelled them to return to unity. Originating in
+one sole family, afterwards parted and dispersed in tribes, thrown into
+collision by fratricidal hatred, their tendency was none the less to
+become one sole family again. The provinces united in nations, the
+nations would unite in races, and the races would end by uniting in one
+immortal mankind--mankind at last without frontiers, or possibility of
+wars, mankind living by just labour amidst an universal commonwealth. Was
+not this indeed the evolution, the object of the labour progressing
+everywhere, the finish reserved to History? Might Italy then become a
+strong and healthy nation, might concord be established between her and
+France, and might that fraternity of the Latin races become the beginning
+of universal fraternity! Ah! that one fatherland, the whole earth
+pacified and happy, in how many centuries would that come--and what a
+dream!
+
+Then, on reaching the station the scramble prevented Pierre from thinking
+any further. He had to take his ticket and register his luggage, and
+afterwards he at once climbed into the train. At dawn on the next day but
+one, he would be back in Paris.
+
+
+END
+
+ *****
+
+
+
+
+
+PARIS
+
+FROM THE THREE CITIES
+
+
+By Émile Zola
+
+
+Translated By Ernest A. Vizetelly
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I.
+
+
+
+
+TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
+
+WITH the present work M. Zola completes the “Trilogy of the Three
+Cities,” which he began with “Lourdes” and continued with “Rome”; and
+thus the adventures and experiences of Abbé Pierre Froment, the doubting
+Catholic priest who failed to find faith at the miraculous grotto by the
+Cave, and hope amidst the crumbling theocracy of the Vatican, are here
+brought to what, from M. Zola’s point of view, is their logical
+conclusion. From the first pages of “Lourdes,” many readers will have
+divined that Abbé Froment was bound to finish as he does, for, frankly,
+no other finish was possible from a writer of M. Zola’s opinions.
+
+Taking the Trilogy as a whole, one will find that it is essentially
+symbolical. Abbé Froment is Man, and his struggles are the struggles
+between Religion, as personified by the Roman Catholic Church, on the one
+hand, and Reason and Life on the other. In the Abbé’s case the victory
+ultimately rests with the latter; and we may take it as being M. Zola’s
+opinion that the same will eventually be the case with the great bulk of
+mankind. English writers are often accused of treating subjects from an
+insular point of view, and certainly there may be good ground for such a
+charge. But they are not the only writers guilty of the practice. The
+purview of French authors is often quite as limited: they regard French
+opinion as the only good opinion, and judge the rest of the world by
+their own standard. In the present case, if we leave the world and
+mankind generally on one side, and apply M. Zola’s facts and theories to
+France alone, it will be found, I think, that he has made out a
+remarkably good case for himself. For it is certain that Catholicism, I
+may say Christianity, is fast crumbling in France. There may be revivals
+in certain limited circles, efforts of the greatest energy to prop up the
+tottering edifice by a “rallying” of believers to the democratic cause,
+and by a kindling of the most bitter anti-Semitic warfare; but all these
+revivals and efforts, although they are extremely well-advertised and
+create no little stir, produce very little impression on the bulk of the
+population. So far as France is concerned, the policy of Leo XIII. seems
+to have come too late. The French masses regard Catholicism or
+Christianity, whichever one pleases, as a religion of death,--a religion
+which, taking its stand on the text “There shall always be poor among
+you,” condemns them to toil and moil in poverty and distress their whole
+life long, with no other consolation than the promise of happiness in
+heaven. And, on the other hand, they see the ministers of the Deity,
+“whose kingdom is not of this world,” supporting the wealthy and
+powerful, and striving to secure wealth and power for themselves. Charity
+exists, of course, but the masses declare that it is no remedy; they do
+not ask for doles, they ask for Justice. It is largely by reason of all
+this that Socialism and Anarchism have made such great strides in France
+of recent years. Robespierre, as will be remembered, once tried to
+suppress Christianity altogether, and for a time certainly there was a
+virtually general cessation of religious observances in France. But no
+such Reign of Terror prevails there to-day. Men are perfectly free to
+believe if they are inclined to do so; and yet never were there fewer
+religious marriages, fewer baptisms or smaller congregations in the
+French churches. I refer not merely to Paris and other large cities, but
+to the smaller towns, and even the little hamlets of many parts. Old
+village priests, men practising what they teach and possessed of the most
+loving, benevolent hearts, have told me with tears in their eyes of the
+growing infidelity of their parishioners.
+
+I have been studying this matter for some years, and write without
+prejudice, merely setting down what I believe to be the truth. Of course
+we are all aware that the most stupendous efforts are being made by the
+Catholic clergy and zealous believers to bring about a revival of the
+faith, and certainly in some circles there has been a measure of success.
+But the reconversion of a nation is the most formidable of tasks; and, in
+my own opinion, as in M. Zola’s, France as a whole is lost to the
+Christian religion. On this proposition, combined with a second one,
+namely, that even as France as a nation will be the first to discard
+Christianity, so she will be the first to promulgate a new faith based on
+reason, science and the teachings of life, is founded the whole argument
+of M. Zola’s Trilogy.
+
+Having thus dealt with the Trilogy’s religious aspects, I would now speak
+of “Paris,” its concluding volume. This is very different from “Lourdes”
+ and “Rome.” Whilst recounting the struggles and fate of Abbé Froment and
+his brother Guillaume, and entering largely into the problem of Capital
+and Labour, which problem has done so much to turn the masses away from
+Christianity, it contains many an interesting and valuable picture of the
+Parisian world at the close of the nineteenth century. It is no
+guide-book to Paris; but it paints the city’s social life, its rich and
+poor, its scandals and crimes, its work and its pleasures. Among the
+households to which the reader is introduced are those of a banker, an
+aged Countess of the old _noblesse_, a cosmopolitan Princess, of a kind
+that Paris knows only too well, a scientist, a manufacturer, a working
+mechanician, a priest, an Anarchist, a petty clerk and an actress of a
+class that so often dishonours the French stage. Science and art and
+learning and religion, all have their representatives. Then, too, the
+political world is well to the front. There are honest and unscrupulous
+Ministers of State, upright and venal deputies, enthusiastic and cautious
+candidates for power, together with social theoreticians of various
+schools. And the _blasé_, weak-minded man of fashion is here, as well as
+the young “symbolist” of perverted, degraded mind. The women are of all
+types, from the most loathsome to the most lovable. Then, too, the
+journalists are portrayed in such life-like fashion that I might give
+each of them his real name. And journalism, Parisian journalism, is
+flagellated, shown as it really is,--if just a few well-conducted organs
+be excepted,--that is, venal and impudent, mendacious and even petty.
+
+The actual scenes depicted are quite as kaleidoscopic as are the
+characters in their variety. We enter the banker’s gilded saloon and the
+hovel of the pauper, the busy factory, the priest’s retired home and the
+laboratory of the scientist. We wait in the lobbies of the Chamber of
+Deputies, and afterwards witness “a great debate”; we penetrate into the
+private sanctum of a Minister of the Interior; we attend a fashionable
+wedding at the Madeleine and a first performance at the Comédie
+Française; we dine at the Cafe Anglais and listen to a notorious vocalist
+in a low music hall at Montmartre; we pursue an Anarchist through the
+Bois de Boulogne; we slip into the Assize Court and see that Anarchist
+tried there; we afterwards gaze upon his execution by the guillotine; we
+are also on the boulevards when the lamps are lighted for a long night of
+revelry, and we stroll along the quiet streets in the small hours of the
+morning, when crime and homeless want are prowling round.
+
+And ever the scene changes; the whole world of Paris passes before one.
+Yet the book, to my thinking, is far less descriptive than analytical.
+The souls of the principal characters are probed to their lowest depths.
+Many of the scenes, too, are intensely dramatic, admirably adapted for
+the stage; as, for instance, Baroness Duvillard’s interview with her
+daughter in the chapter which I have called “The Rivals.” And side by
+side with baseness there is heroism, while beauty of the flesh finds its
+counterpart in beauty of the mind. M. Zola has often been reproached for
+showing us the vileness of human nature; and no doubt such vileness may
+be found in “Paris,” but there are contrasting pictures. If some of M.
+Zola’s characters horrify the reader, there are others that the latter
+can but admire. Life is compounded of good and evil, and unfortunately it
+is usually the evil that makes the most noise and attracts the most
+attention. Moreover, in M. Zola’s case, it has always been his purpose to
+expose the evils from which society suffers in the hope of directing
+attention to them and thereby hastening a remedy, and thus, in the course
+of his works, he could not do otherwise than drag the whole frightful
+mass of human villany and degradation into the full light of day. But if
+there are, again, black pages in “Paris,” others, bright and comforting,
+will be found near them. And the book ends in no pessimist strain.
+Whatever may be thought of the writer’s views on religion, most readers
+will, I imagine, agree with his opinion that, despite much social
+injustice, much crime, vice, cupidity and baseness, we are ever marching
+on to better things.
+
+In the making of the coming, though still far-away, era of truth and
+justice, Paris, he thinks, will play the leading part, for whatever the
+stains upon her, they are but surface-deep; her heart remains good and
+sound; she has genius and courage and energy and wit and fancy. She can
+be generous, too, when she chooses, and more than once her ideas have
+irradiated the world. Thus M. Zola hopes much from her, and who will
+gainsay him? Not I, who can apply to her the words which Byron addressed
+to the home of my own and M. Zola’s forefathers:--
+
+ “I loved her from my boyhood; she to me
+ Was as a fairy city of the heart.”
+
+Thus I can but hope that Paris, where I learnt the little I know, where I
+struggled and found love and happiness, whose every woe and disaster and
+triumph I have shared for over thirty years, may, however dark the clouds
+that still pass over her, some day fully justify M. Zola’s confidence,
+and bring to pass his splendid dream of perfect truth and perfect
+justice.
+
+E. A. V.
+
+MERTON, SURREY, ENGLAND,
+
+Feb. 5, 1898.
+
+
+
+
+
+I. THE PRIEST AND THE POOR
+
+THAT morning, one towards the end of January, Abbé Pierre Froment, who
+had a mass to say at the Sacred Heart at Montmartre, was on the height,
+in front of the basilica, already at eight o’clock. And before going in
+he gazed for a moment upon the immensity of Paris spread out below him.
+
+After two months of bitter cold, ice and snow, the city was steeped in a
+mournful, quivering thaw. From the far-spreading, leaden-hued heavens a
+thick mist fell like a mourning shroud. All the eastern portion of the
+city, the abodes of misery and toil, seemed submerged beneath ruddy
+steam, amid which the panting of workshops and factories could be
+divined; while westwards, towards the districts of wealth and enjoyment,
+the fog broke and lightened, becoming but a fine and motionless veil of
+vapour. The curved line of the horizon could scarcely be divined, the
+expanse of houses, which nothing bounded, appeared like a chaos of stone,
+studded with stagnant pools, which filled the hollows with pale steam;
+whilst against them the summits of the edifices, the housetops of the
+loftier streets, showed black like soot. It was a Paris of mystery,
+shrouded by clouds, buried as it were beneath the ashes of some disaster,
+already half-sunken in the suffering and the shame of that which its
+immensity concealed.
+
+Thin and sombre in his flimsy cassock, Pierre was looking on when Abbé
+Rose, who seemed to have sheltered himself behind a pillar of the porch
+on purpose to watch for him, came forward: “Ah! it’s you at last, my dear
+child,” said he, “I have something to ask you.”
+
+He seemed embarrassed and anxious, and glanced round distrustfully to
+make sure that nobody was near. Then, as if the solitude thereabouts did
+not suffice to reassure him, he led Pierre some distance away, through
+the icy, biting wind, which he himself did not seem to feel. “This is the
+matter,” he resumed, “I have been told that a poor fellow, a former
+house-painter, an old man of seventy, who naturally can work no more, is
+dying of hunger in a hovel in the Rue des Saules. So, my dear child, I
+thought of you. I thought you would consent to take him these three
+francs from me, so that he may at least have some bread to eat for a few
+days.”
+
+“But why don’t you take him your alms yourself?”
+
+At this Abbé Rose again grew anxious, and cast vague, frightened glances
+about him. “Oh, no, oh, no!” he said, “I can no longer do that after all
+the worries that have befallen me. You know that I am watched, and should
+get another scolding if I were caught giving alms like this, scarcely
+knowing to whom I give them. It is true that I had to sell something to
+get these three francs. But, my dear child, render me this service, I
+pray you.”
+
+Pierre, with heart oppressed, stood contemplating the old priest, whose
+locks were quite white, whose full lips spoke of infinite kindliness, and
+whose eyes shone clear and childlike in his round and smiling face. And
+he bitterly recalled the story of that lover of the poor, the
+semi-disgrace into which he had fallen through the sublime candour of his
+charitable goodness. His little ground-floor of the Rue de Charonne,
+which he had turned into a refuge where he offered shelter to all the
+wretchedness of the streets, had ended by giving cause for scandal. His
+_naïveté_ and innocence had been abused; and abominable things had gone
+on under his roof without his knowledge. Vice had turned the asylum into
+a meeting-place; and at last, one night, the police had descended upon it
+to arrest a young girl accused of infanticide. Greatly concerned by this
+scandal, the diocesan authorities had forced Abbé Rose to close his
+shelter, and had removed him from the church of Ste. Marguerite to that
+of St. Pierre of Montmartre, where he now again acted as curate. Truth to
+tell, it was not a disgrace but a removal to another spot. However, he
+had been scolded and was watched, as he said; and he was much ashamed of
+it, and very unhappy at being only able to give alms by stealth, much
+like some harebrained prodigal who blushes for his faults.
+
+Pierre took the three francs. “I promise to execute your commission, my
+friend, oh! with all my heart,” he said.
+
+“You will go after your mass, won’t you? His name is Laveuve, he lives in
+the Rue des Saules in a house with a courtyard, just before reaching the
+Rue Marcadet. You are sure to find it. And if you want to be very kind
+you will tell me of your visit this evening at five o’clock, at the
+Madeleine, where I am going to hear Monseigneur Martha’s address. He has
+been so good to me! Won’t you also come to hear him?”
+
+Pierre made an evasive gesture. Monseigneur Martha, Bishop of Persepolis
+and all powerful at the archiepiscopal palace, since, like the genial
+propagandist he was, he had been devoting himself to increasing the
+subscriptions for the basilica of the Sacred Heart, had indeed supported
+Abbé Rose; in fact, it was by his influence that the abbé had been kept
+in Paris, and placed once more at St. Pierre de Montmartre.
+
+“I don’t know if I shall be able to hear the address,” said Pierre, “but
+in any case I will go there to meet you.”
+
+The north wind was blowing, and the gloomy cold penetrated both of them
+on that deserted summit amidst the fog which changed the vast city into a
+misty ocean. However, some footsteps were heard, and Abbé Rose, again
+mistrustful, saw a man go by, a tall and sturdy man, who wore clogs and
+was bareheaded, showing his thick and closely-cut white hair. “Is not
+that your brother?” asked the old priest.
+
+Pierre had not stirred. “Yes, it is my brother Guillaume,” he quietly
+responded. “I have found him again since I have been coming occasionally
+to the Sacred Heart. He owns a house close by, where he has been living
+for more than twenty years, I think. When we meet we shake hands, but I
+have never even been to his house. Oh! all is quite dead between us, we
+have nothing more in common, we are parted by worlds.”
+
+Abbé Rose’s tender smile again appeared, and he waved his hand as if to
+say that one must never despair of love. Guillaume Froment, a savant of
+lofty intelligence, a chemist who lived apart from others, like one who
+rebelled against the social system, was now a parishioner of the abbé’s,
+and when the latter passed the house where Guillaume lived with his three
+sons--a house all alive with work--he must often have dreamt of leading
+him back to God.
+
+“But, my dear child,” he resumed, “I am keeping you here in this dark
+cold, and you are not warm. Go and say your mass. Till this evening, at
+the Madeleine.” Then, in entreating fashion, after again making sure that
+none could hear them, he added, still with the air of a child at fault:
+“And not a word to anybody about my little commission--it would again be
+said that I don’t know how to conduct myself.”
+
+Pierre watched the old priest as he went off towards the Rue Cartot,
+where he lived on a damp ground-floor, enlivened by a strip of garden.
+The veil of disaster, which was submerging Paris, now seemed to grow
+thicker under the gusts of the icy north wind. And at last Pierre entered
+the basilica, his heart upset, overflowing with the bitterness stirred up
+by the recollection of Abbé Rose’s story--that bankruptcy of charity, the
+frightful irony of a holy man punished for bestowing alms, and hiding
+himself that he might still continue to bestow them. Nothing could calm
+the smart of the wound reopened in Pierre’s heart--neither the warm
+peacefulness into which he entered, nor the silent solemnity of the
+broad, deep fabric, whose new stonework was quite bare, without a single
+painting or any kind of decoration; the nave being still half-barred by
+the scaffoldings which blocked up the unfinished dome. At that early hour
+the masses of entreaty had already been said at several altars, under the
+grey light falling from the high and narrow windows, and the tapers of
+entreaty were burning in the depths of the apse. So Pierre made haste to
+go to the sacristy, there to assume his vestments in order that he might
+say his mass in the chapel of St. Vincent de Paul.
+
+But the floodgates of memory had been opened, and he had no thought but
+for his distress whilst, in mechanical fashion, he performed the rites
+and made the customary gestures. Since his return from Rome three years
+previously, he had been living in the very worst anguish that can fall on
+man. At the outset, in order to recover his lost faith, he had essayed a
+first experiment: he had gone to Lourdes, there to seek the innocent
+belief of the child who kneels and prays, the primitive faith of young
+nations bending beneath the terror born of ignorance; but he had rebelled
+yet more than ever in presence of what he had witnessed at Lourdes: that
+glorification of the absurd, that collapse of common sense; and was
+convinced that salvation, the peace of men and nations nowadays, could
+not lie in that puerile relinquishment of reason. And afterwards, again
+yielding to the need of loving whilst yet allowing reason, so hard to
+satisfy, her share in his intellect, he had staked his final peace on a
+second experiment, and had gone to Rome to see if Catholicism could there
+be renewed, could revert to the spirit of primitive Christianity and
+become the religion of the democracy, the faith which the modern world,
+upheaving and in danger of death, was awaiting in order to calm down and
+live. And he had found there naught but ruins, the rotted trunk of a tree
+that could never put forth another springtide; and he had heard there
+naught but the supreme rending of the old social edifice, near to its
+fall. Then it was, that, relapsing into boundless doubt, total negation,
+he had been recalled to Paris by Abbé Rose, in the name of their poor,
+and had returned thither that he might forget and immolate himself and
+believe in them--the poor--since they and their frightful sufferings
+alone remained certain. And then it was too, that for three years he came
+into contact with that collapse, that very bankruptcy of goodness itself:
+charity a derision, charity useless and flouted.
+
+Those three years had been lived by Pierre amidst ever-growing torments,
+in which his whole being had ended by sinking. His faith was forever
+dead; dead, too, even his hope of utilising the faith of the multitudes
+for the general salvation. He denied everything, he anticipated nothing
+but the final, inevitable catastrophe: revolt, massacre and
+conflagration, which would sweep away a guilty and condemned world.
+Unbelieving priest that he was, yet watching over the faith of others,
+honestly, chastely discharging his duties, full of haughty sadness at the
+thought that he had been unable to renounce his mind as he had renounced
+his flesh and his dream of being a saviour of the nations, he withal
+remained erect, full of fierce yet solitary grandeur. And this
+despairing, denying priest, who had dived to the bottom of nothingness,
+retained such a lofty and grave demeanour, perfumed by such pure
+kindness, that in his parish of Neuilly he had acquired the reputation of
+being a young saint, one beloved by Providence, whose prayers wrought
+miracles. He was but a personification of the rules of the Church; of the
+priest he retained only the gestures; he was like an empty sepulchre in
+which not even the ashes of hope remained; yet grief-stricken weeping
+women worshipped him and kissed his cassock; and it was a tortured mother
+whose infant was in danger of death, who had implored him to come and ask
+that infant’s cure of Jesus, certain as she felt that Jesus would grant
+her the boon in that sanctuary of Montmartre where blazed the prodigy of
+His heart, all burning with love.
+
+Clad in his vestments, Pierre had reached the chapel of St. Vincent de
+Paul. He there ascended the altar-step and began the mass; and when he
+turned round with hands spread out to bless the worshippers he showed his
+hollow cheeks, his gentle mouth contracted by bitterness, his loving eyes
+darkened by suffering. He was no longer the young priest whose
+countenance had glowed with tender fever on the road to Lourdes, whose
+face had been illumined by apostolic fervour when he started for Rome.
+The two hereditary influences which were ever at strife within him--that
+of his father to whom he owed his impregnable, towering brow, that of his
+mother who had given him his love-thirsting lips, were still waging war,
+the whole human battle of sentiment and reason, in that now ravaged face
+of his, whither in moments of forgetfulness ascended all the chaos of
+internal suffering. The lips still confessed that unquenched thirst for
+love, self-bestowal and life, which he well thought he could nevermore
+content, whilst the solid brow, the citadel which made him suffer,
+obstinately refused to capitulate, whatever might be the assaults of
+error. But he stiffened himself, hid the horror of the void in which he
+struggled, and showed himself superb, making each gesture, repeating each
+word in sovereign fashion. And gazing at him through her tears, the
+mother who was there among the few kneeling women, the mother who awaited
+a supreme intercession from him, who thought him in communion with Jesus
+for the salvation of her child, beheld him radiant with angelic beauty
+like some messenger of the divine grace.
+
+When, after the offertory, Pierre uncovered the chalice he felt contempt
+for himself. The shock had been too great, and he thought of those things
+in spite of all. What puerility there had been in his two experiments at
+Lourdes and Rome, the _naïveté_ of a poor distracted being, consumed by
+desire to love and believe. To have imagined that present-day science
+would in his person accommodate itself to the faith of the year One
+Thousand, and in particular to have foolishly believed that he, petty
+priest that he was, would be able to indoctrinate the Pope and prevail on
+him to become a saint and change the face of the world! It all filled him
+with shame; how people must have laughed at him! Then, too, his idea of a
+schism made him blush. He again beheld himself at Rome, dreaming of
+writing a book by which he would violently sever himself from Catholicism
+to preach the new religion of the democracies, the purified, human and
+living Gospel. But what ridiculous folly! A schism? He had known in Paris
+an abbé of great heart and mind who had attempted to bring about that
+famous, predicted, awaited schism. Ah! the poor man, the sad, the
+ludicrous labour in the midst of universal incredulity, the icy
+indifference of some, the mockery and the reviling of others! If Luther
+were to come to France in our days he would end, forgotten and dying of
+hunger, on a Batignolles fifth-floor. A schism cannot succeed among a
+people that no longer believes, that has ceased to take all interest in
+the Church, and sets its hope elsewhere. And it was all Catholicism, in
+fact all Christianity, that would be swept away, for, apart from certain
+moral maxims, the Gospel no longer supplied a possible code for society.
+And this conviction increased Pierre’s torment on the days when his
+cassock weighed more heavily on his shoulders, when he ended by feeling
+contempt for himself at thus celebrating the divine mystery of the mass,
+which for him had become but the formula of a dead religion.
+
+Having half filled the chalice with wine from the vase, Pierre washed his
+hands and again perceived the mother with her face of ardent entreaty.
+Then he thought it was for her that, with the charitable leanings of a
+vow-bound man, he had remained a priest, a priest without belief, feeding
+the belief of others with the bread of illusion. But this heroic conduct,
+the haughty spirit of duty in which he imprisoned himself, was not
+practised by him without growing anguish. Did not elementary probity
+require that he should cast aside the cassock and return into the midst
+of men? At certain times the falsity of his position filled him with
+disgust for his useless heroism; and he asked himself if it were not
+cowardly and dangerous to leave the masses in superstition. Certainly the
+theory of a just and vigilant Providence, of a future paradise where all
+these sufferings of the world would receive compensation, had long seemed
+necessary to the wretchedness of mankind; but what a trap lay in it, what
+a pretext for the tyrannical grinding down of nations; and how far more
+virile it would be to undeceive the nations, however brutally, and give
+them courage to live the real life, even if it were in tears. If they
+were already turning aside from Christianity was not this because they
+needed a more human ideal, a religion of health and joy which should not
+be a religion of death? On the day when the idea of charity should
+crumble, Christianity would crumble also, for it was built upon the idea
+of divine charity correcting the injustice of fate, and offering future
+rewards to those who might suffer in this life. And it was crumbling; for
+the poor no longer believed in it, but grew angry at the thought of that
+deceptive paradise, with the promise of which their patience had been
+beguiled so long, and demanded that their share of happiness should not
+always be put off until the morrow of death. A cry for justice arose from
+every lip, for justice upon this earth, justice for those who hunger and
+thirst, whom alms are weary of relieving after eighteen hundred years of
+Gospel teaching, and who still and ever lack bread to eat.
+
+When Pierre, with his elbows on the altar, had emptied the chalice after
+breaking the sacred wafer, he felt himself sinking into yet greater
+distress. And so a third experiment was beginning for him, the supreme
+battle of justice against charity, in which his heart and his mind would
+struggle together in that great Paris, so full of terrible, unknown
+things. The need for the divine still battled within him against
+domineering intelligence. How among the masses would one ever be able to
+content the thirst for the mysterious? Leaving the _élite_ on one side,
+would science suffice to pacify desire, lull suffering, and satisfy the
+dream? And what would become of himself in the bankruptcy of that same
+charity, which for three years had alone kept him erect by occupying his
+every hour, and giving him the illusion of self-devotion, of being useful
+to others? It seemed, all at once, as if the ground sank beneath him, and
+he heard nothing save the cry of the masses, silent so long, but now
+demanding justice, growling and threatening to take their share, which
+was withheld from them by force and ruse. Nothing more, it seemed, could
+delay the inevitable catastrophe, the fratricidal class warfare that
+would sweep away the olden world, which was condemned to disappear
+beneath the mountain of its crimes. Every hour with frightful sadness he
+expected the collapse, Paris steeped in blood, Paris in flames. And his
+horror of all violence froze him; he knew not where to seek the new
+belief which might dissipate the peril. Fully conscious, though he was,
+that the social and religious problems are but one, and are alone in
+question in the dreadful daily labour of Paris, he was too deeply
+troubled himself, too far removed from ordinary things by his position as
+a priest, and too sorely rent by doubt and powerlessness to tell as yet
+where might be truth, and health, and life. Ah! to be healthy and to
+live, to content at last both heart and reason in the peace, the certain,
+simply honest labour, which man has come to accomplish upon this earth!
+
+The mass was finished, and Pierre descended from the altar, when the
+weeping mother, near whom he passed, caught hold of a corner of the
+chasuble with her trembling hands, and kissed it with wild fervour, as
+one may kiss some relic of a saint from whom one expects salvation. She
+thanked him for the miracle which he must have accomplished, certain as
+she felt that she would find her child cured. And he was deeply stirred
+by that love, that ardent faith of hers, in spite of the sudden and yet
+keener distress which he felt at being in no wise the sovereign minister
+that she thought him, the minister able to obtain a respite from Death.
+But he dismissed her consoled and strengthened, and it was with an ardent
+prayer that he entreated the unknown but conscious Power to succour the
+poor creature. Then, when he had divested himself in the sacristy, and
+found himself again out of doors before the basilica, lashed by the keen
+wintry wind, a mortal shiver came upon him, and froze him, while through
+the mist he looked to see if a whirlwind of anger and justice had not
+swept Paris away: that catastrophe which must some day destroy it,
+leaving under the leaden heavens only the pestilential quagmire of its
+ruins.
+
+Pierre wished to fulfil Abbé Rose’s commission immediately. He followed
+the Rue des Norvins, on the crest of Montmartre; and, reaching the Rue
+des Saules, descended by its steep slope, between mossy walls, to the
+other side of Paris. The three francs which he was holding in his
+cassock’s pocket, filled him at once with gentle emotion and covert anger
+against the futility of charity. But as he gradually descended by the
+sharp declivities and interminable storeys of steps, the mournful nooks
+of misery which he espied took possession of him, and infinite pity wrung
+his heart. A whole new district was here being built alongside the broad
+thoroughfares opened since the great works of the Sacred Heart had begun.
+Lofty middle-class houses were already rising among ripped-up gardens and
+plots of vacant land, still edged with palings. And these houses with
+their substantial frontages, all new and white, lent a yet more sombre
+and leprous aspect to such of the old shaky buildings as remained, the
+low pot-houses with blood-coloured walls, the _cités_ of workmen’s
+dwellings, those abodes of suffering with black, soiled buildings in
+which human cattle were piled. Under the low-hanging sky that day, the
+pavement, dented by heavily-laden carts, was covered with mud; the thaw
+soaked the walls with an icy dampness, whilst all the filth and
+destitution brought terrible sadness to the heart.
+
+After going as far as the Rue Marcadet, Pierre retraced his steps; and in
+the Rue des Saules, certain that he was not mistaken, he entered the
+courtyard of a kind of barracks or hospital, encompassed by three
+irregular buildings. This court was a quagmire, where filth must have
+accumulated during the two months of terrible frost; and now all was
+melting, and an abominable stench arose. The buildings were half falling,
+the gaping vestibules looked like cellar holes, strips of paper streaked
+the cracked and filthy window-panes, and vile rags hung about like flags
+of death. Inside a shanty which served as the door-keeper’s abode Pierre
+only saw an infirm man rolled up in a tattered strip of what had once
+been a horse-cloth.
+
+“You have an old workman named Laveuve here,” said the priest. “Which
+staircase is it, which floor?”
+
+The man did not answer, but opened his anxious eyes, like a scared idiot.
+The door-keeper, no doubt, was in the neighbourhood. For a moment the
+priest waited; then seeing a little girl on the other side of the
+courtyard, he risked himself, crossed the quagmire on tip-toe, and asked:
+“Do you know an old workman named Laveuve in the house, my child?”
+
+The little girl, who only had a ragged gown of pink cotton stuff about
+her meagre figure, stood there shivering, her hands covered with
+chilblains. She raised her delicate face, which looked pretty though
+nipped by the cold: “Laveuve,” said she, “no, don’t know, don’t know.”
+ And with the unconscious gesture of a beggar child she put out one of her
+poor, numbed and disfigured hands. Then, when the priest had given her a
+little bit of silver, she began to prance through the mud like a joyful
+goat, singing the while in a shrill voice: “Don’t know, don’t know.”
+
+Pierre decided to follow her. She vanished into one of the gaping
+vestibules, and, in her rear, he climbed a dark and fetid staircase,
+whose steps were half-broken and so slippery, on account of the vegetable
+parings strewn over them, that he had to avail himself of the greasy rope
+by which the inmates hoisted themselves upwards. But every door was
+closed; he vainly knocked at several of them, and only elicited, at the
+last, a stifled growl, as though some despairing animal were confined
+within. Returning to the yard, he hesitated, then made his way to another
+staircase, where he was deafened by piercing cries, as of a child who is
+being butchered. He climbed on hearing this noise and at last found
+himself in front of an open room where an infant, who had been left
+alone, tied in his little chair, in order that he might not fall, was
+howling and howling without drawing breath. Then Pierre went down again,
+upset, frozen by the sight of so much destitution and abandonment.
+
+But a woman was coming in, carrying three potatoes in her apron, and on
+being questioned by him she gazed distrustfully at his cassock. “Laveuve,
+Laveuve? I can’t say,” she replied. “If the door-keeper were there, she
+might be able to tell you. There are five staircases, you see, and we
+don’t all know each other. Besides, there are so many changes. Still try
+over there; at the far end.”
+
+The staircase at the back of the yard was yet more abominable than the
+others, its steps warped, its walls slimy, as if soaked with the sweat of
+anguish. At each successive floor the drain-sinks exhaled a pestilential
+stench, whilst from every lodging came moans, or a noise of quarrelling,
+or some frightful sign of misery. A door swung open, and a man appeared
+dragging a woman by the hair whilst three youngsters sobbed aloud. On the
+next floor, Pierre caught a glimpse of a room where a young girl in her
+teens, racked by coughing, was hastily carrying an infant to and fro to
+quiet it, in despair that all the milk of her breast should be exhausted.
+Then, in an adjoining lodging, came the poignant spectacle of three
+beings, half clad in shreds, apparently sexless and ageless, who, amidst
+the dire bareness of their room, were gluttonously eating from the same
+earthen pan some pottage which even dogs would have refused. They barely
+raised their heads to growl, and did not answer Pierre’s questions.
+
+He was about to go down again, when right atop of the stairs, at the
+entry of a passage, it occurred to him to make a last try by knocking at
+the door. It was opened by a woman whose uncombed hair was already
+getting grey, though she could not be more than forty; while her pale
+lips, and dim eyes set in a yellow countenance, expressed utter
+lassitude, the shrinking, the constant dread of one whom wretchedness has
+pitilessly assailed. The sight of Pierre’s cassock disturbed her, and she
+stammered anxiously: “Come in, come in, Monsieur l’Abbé.”
+
+However, a man whom Pierre had not at first seen--a workman also of some
+forty years, tall, thin and bald, with scanty moustache and beard of a
+washed-out reddish hue--made an angry gesture--a threat as it were--to
+turn the priest out of doors. But he calmed himself, sat down near a
+rickety table and pretended to turn his back. And as there was also a
+child present--a fair-haired girl, eleven or twelve years old, with a
+long and gentle face and that intelligent and somewhat aged expression
+which great misery imparts to children--he called her to him, and held
+her between his knees, doubtless to keep her away from the man in the
+cassock.
+
+Pierre--whose heart was oppressed by his reception, and who realised the
+utter destitution of this family by the sight of the bare, fireless room,
+and the distressed mournfulness of its three inmates--decided all the
+same to repeat his question: “Madame, do you know an old workman named
+Laveuve in the house?”
+
+The woman--who now trembled at having admitted him, since it seemed to
+displease her man--timidly tried to arrange matters. “Laveuve, Laveuve?
+no, I don’t. But Salvat, you hear? Do you know a Laveuve here?”
+
+Salvat merely shrugged his shoulders; but the little girl could not keep
+her tongue still: “I say, mamma Théodore, it’s p’raps the Philosopher.”
+
+“A former house-painter,” continued Pierre, “an old man who is ill and
+past work.”
+
+Madame Théodore was at once enlightened. “In that case it’s him, it’s
+him. We call him the Philosopher, a nickname folks have given him in the
+neighbourhood. But there’s nothing to prevent his real name from being
+Laveuve.”
+
+With one of his fists raised towards the ceiling, Salvat seemed to be
+protesting against the abomination of a world and a Providence that
+allowed old toilers to die of hunger just like broken-down beasts.
+However, he did not speak, but relapsed into the savage, heavy silence,
+the bitter meditation in which he had been plunged when the priest
+arrived. He was a journeyman engineer, and gazed obstinately at the table
+where lay his little leather tool-bag, bulging with something it
+contained--something, perhaps, which he had to take back to a work-shop.
+He might have been thinking of a long, enforced spell of idleness, of a
+vain search for any kind of work during the two previous months of that
+terrible winter. Or perhaps it was the coming bloody reprisals of the
+starvelings that occupied the fiery reverie which set his large, strange,
+vague blue eyes aglow. All at once he noticed that his daughter had taken
+up the tool-bag and was trying to open it to see what it might contain.
+At this he quivered and at last spoke, his voice kindly, yet bitter with
+sudden emotion, which made him turn pale. “Céline, you must leave that
+alone. I forbade you to touch my tools,” said he; then taking the bag, he
+deposited it with great precaution against the wall behind him.
+
+“And so, madame,” asked Pierre, “this man Laveuve lives on this floor?”
+
+Madame Théodore directed a timid, questioning glance at Salvat. She was
+not in favour of hustling priests when they took the trouble to call, for
+at times there was a little money to be got from them. And when she
+realised that Salvat, who had once more relapsed into his black reverie,
+left her free to act as she pleased, she at once tendered her services.
+“If Monsieur l’Abbé is agreeable, I will conduct him. It’s just at the
+end of the passage. But one must know the way, for there are still some
+steps to climb.”
+
+Céline, finding a pastime in this visit, escaped from her father’s knees
+and likewise accompanied the priest. And Salvat remained alone in that
+den of poverty and suffering, injustice and anger, without a fire,
+without bread, haunted by his burning dream, his eyes again fixed upon
+his bag, as if there, among his tools, he possessed the wherewithal to
+heal the ailing world.
+
+It indeed proved necessary to climb a few more steps; and then, following
+Madame Théodore and Céline, Pierre found himself in a kind of narrow
+garret under the roof, a loft a few yards square, where one could not
+stand erect. There was no window, only a skylight, and as the snow still
+covered it one had to leave the door wide open in order that one might
+see. And the thaw was entering the place, the melting snow was falling
+drop by drop, and coming over the tiled floor. After long weeks of
+intense cold, dark dampness rained quivering over all. And there, lacking
+even a chair, even a plank, Laveuve lay in a corner on a little pile of
+filthy rags spread upon the bare tiles; he looked like some animal dying
+on a dung-heap.
+
+“There!” said Céline in her sing-song voice, “there he is, that’s the
+Philosopher!”
+
+Madame Théodore had bent down to ascertain if he still lived. “Yes, he
+breathes; he’s sleeping I think. Oh! if he only had something to eat
+every day, he would be well enough. But what would you have? He has
+nobody left him, and when one gets to seventy the best is to throw
+oneself into the river. In the house-painting line it often happens that
+a man has to give up working on ladders and scaffoldings at fifty. He at
+first found some work to do on the ground level. Then he was lucky enough
+to get a job as night watchman. But that’s over, he’s been turned away
+from everywhere, and, for two months now, he’s been lying in this nook
+waiting to die. The landlord hasn’t dared to fling him into the street as
+yet, though not for want of any inclination that way. We others sometimes
+bring him a little wine and a crust, of course; but when one has nothing
+oneself, how can one give to others?”
+
+Pierre, terrified, gazed at that frightful remnant of humanity, that
+remnant into which fifty years of toil, misery and social injustice had
+turned a man. And he ended by distinguishing Laveuve’s white, worn,
+sunken, deformed head. Here, on a human face, appeared all the ruin
+following upon hopeless labour. Laveuve’s unkempt beard straggled over
+his features, suggesting an old horse that is no longer cropped; his
+toothless jaws were quite askew, his eyes were vitreous, and his nose
+seemed to plunge into his mouth. But above all else one noticed his
+resemblance to some beast of burden, deformed by hard toil, lamed, worn
+to death, and now only good for the knackers.
+
+“Ah! the poor fellow,” muttered the shuddering priest. “And he is left to
+die of hunger, all alone, without any succour? And not a hospital, not an
+asylum has given him shelter?”
+
+“Well,” resumed Madame Théodore in her sad yet resigned voice, “the
+hospitals are built for the sick, and he isn’t sick, he’s simply
+finishing off, with his strength at an end. Besides he isn’t always easy
+to deal with. People came again only lately to put him in an asylum, but
+he won’t be shut up. And he speaks coarsely to those who question him,
+not to mention that he has the reputation of liking drink and talking
+badly about the gentle-folks. But, thank Heaven, he will now soon be
+delivered.”
+
+Pierre had leant forward on seeing Laveuve’s eyes open, and he spoke to
+him tenderly, telling him that he had come from a friend with a little
+money to enable him to buy what he might most pressingly require. At
+first, on seeing Pierre’s cassock, the old man had growled some coarse
+words; but, despite his extreme feebleness, he still retained the pert
+chaffing spirit of the Parisian artisan: “Well, then, I’ll willingly
+drink a drop,” he said distinctly, “and have a bit of bread with it, if
+there’s the needful; for I’ve lost taste of both for a couple of days
+past.”
+
+Céline offered her services, and Madame Théodore sent her to fetch a loaf
+and a quart of wine with Abbé Rose’s money. And in the interval she told
+Pierre how Laveuve was at one moment to have entered the Asylum of the
+Invalids of Labour, a charitable enterprise whose lady patronesses were
+presided over by Baroness Duvillard. However, the usual regulation
+inquiries had doubtless led to such an unfavourable report that matters
+had gone no further.
+
+“Baroness Duvillard! but I know her, and will go to see her to-day!”
+ exclaimed Pierre, whose heart was bleeding. “It is impossible for a man
+to be left in such circumstances any longer.”
+
+Then, as Céline came back with the loaf and the wine, the three of them
+tried to make Laveuve more comfortable, raised him on his heap of rags,
+gave him to eat and to drink, and then left the remainder of the wine and
+the loaf--a large four-pound loaf--near him, recommending him to wait
+awhile before he finished the bread, as otherwise he might stifle.
+
+“Monsieur l’Abbé ought to give me his address in case I should have any
+news to send him,” said Madame Théodore when she again found herself at
+her door.
+
+Pierre had no card with him, and so all three went into the room. But
+Salvat was no longer alone there. He stood talking in a low voice very
+quickly, and almost mouth to mouth, with a young fellow of twenty. The
+latter, who was slim and dark, with a sprouting beard and hair cut in
+brush fashion, had bright eyes, a straight nose and thin lips set in a
+pale and slightly freckled face, betokening great intelligence. With
+stern and stubborn brow, he stood shivering in his well-worn jacket.
+
+“Monsieur l’Abbé wants to leave me his address for the Philosopher’s
+affair,” gently explained Madame Théodore, annoyed to find another there
+with Salvat.
+
+The two men had glanced at the priest and then looked at one another,
+each with terrible mien. And they suddenly ceased speaking in the bitter
+cold which fell from the ceiling. Then, again with infinite precaution,
+Salvat went to take his tool-bag from alongside the wall.
+
+“So you are going down, you are again going to look for work?” asked
+Madame Théodore.
+
+He did not answer, but merely made an angry gesture, as if to say that he
+would no longer have anything to do with work since work for so long a
+time had not cared to have anything to do with him.
+
+“All the same,” resumed the woman, “try to bring something back with you,
+for you know there’s nothing. At what time will you be back?”
+
+With another gesture he seemed to answer that he would come back when he
+could, perhaps never. And tears rising, despite all his efforts, to his
+vague, blue, glowing eyes he caught hold of his daughter Céline, kissed
+her violently, distractedly, and then went off, with his bag under his
+arm, followed by his young companion.
+
+“Céline,” resumed Madame Théodore, “give Monsieur l’Abbé your pencil,
+and, see, monsieur, seat yourself here, it will be better for writing.”
+
+Then, when Pierre had installed himself at the table, on the chair
+previously occupied by Salvat, she went on talking, seeking to excuse her
+man for his scanty politeness: “He hasn’t a bad heart, but he’s had so
+many worries in life that he has become a bit cracked. It’s like that
+young man whom you just saw here, Monsieur Victor Mathis. There’s another
+for you, who isn’t happy, a young man who was well brought up, who has a
+lot of learning, and whose mother, a widow, has only just got the
+wherewithal to buy bread. So one can understand it, can’t one? It all
+upsets their heads, and they talk of blowing up everybody. For my part
+those are not my notions, but I forgive them, oh! willingly enough.”
+
+Perturbed, yet interested by all the mystery and vague horror which he
+could divine around him, Pierre made no haste to write his address, but
+lingered listening, as if inviting confidence.
+
+“If you only knew, Monsieur l’Abbé, that poor Salvat was a forsaken
+child, without father or mother, and had to scour the roads and try every
+trade at first to get a living. Then afterwards he became a mechanician,
+and a very good workman, I assure you, very skilful and very painstaking.
+But he already had those ideas of his, and quarrelled with people, and
+tried to bring his mates over to his views; and so he was unable to stay
+anywhere. At last, when he was thirty, he was stupid enough to go to
+America with an inventor, who traded on him to such a point that after
+six years of it he came back ill and penniless. I must tell you that he
+had married my younger sister Léonie, and that she died before he went to
+America, leaving him little Céline, who was then only a year old. I was
+then living with my husband, Théodore Labitte, a mason; and it’s not to
+brag that I say it, but however much I wore out my eyes with needlework
+he used to beat me till he left me half-dead on the floor. But he ended
+by deserting me and going off with a young woman of twenty, which, after
+all, caused me more pleasure than grief. And naturally when Salvat came
+back he sought me out and found me alone with his little Céline, whom he
+had left in my charge when he went away, and who called me mamma. And
+we’ve all three been living together since then--”
+
+She became somewhat embarrassed, and then, as if to show that she did not
+altogether lack some respectable family connections, she went on to say:
+“For my part I’ve had no luck; but I’ve another sister, Hortense, who’s
+married to a clerk, Monsieur Chrétiennot, and lives in a pretty lodging
+on the Boulevard Rochechouart. There were three of us born of my father’s
+second marriage,--Hortense, who’s the youngest, Léonie, who’s dead, and
+myself, Pauline, the eldest. And of my father’s first marriage I’ve still
+a brother Eugène Toussaint, who is ten years older than me and is an
+engineer like Salvat, and has been working ever since the war in the same
+establishment, the Grandidier factory, only a hundred steps away in the
+Rue Marcadet. The misfortune is that he had a stroke lately. As for me,
+my eyes are done for; I ruined them by working ten hours a day at fine
+needlework. And now I can no longer even try to mend anything without my
+eyes filling with water till I can’t see at all. I’ve tried to find
+charwoman’s work, but I can’t get any; bad luck always follows us. And so
+we are in need of everything; we’ve nothing but black misery, two or
+three days sometimes going by without a bite, so that it’s like the
+chance life of a dog that feeds on what it can find. And with these last
+two months of bitter cold to freeze us, it’s sometimes made us think that
+one morning we should never wake up again. But what would you have? I’ve
+never been happy, I was beaten to begin with, and now I’m done for, left
+in a corner, living on, I really don’t know why.”
+
+Her voice had begun to tremble, her red eyes moistened, and Pierre could
+realise that she thus wept through life, a good enough woman but one who
+had no will, and was already blotted out, so to say, from existence.
+
+“Oh! I don’t complain of Salvat,” she went on. “He’s a good fellow; he
+only dreams of everybody’s happiness, and he doesn’t drink, and he works
+when he can. Only it’s certain that he’d work more if he didn’t busy
+himself with politics. One can’t discuss things with comrades, and go to
+public meetings and be at the workshop at the same time. In that he’s at
+fault, that’s evident. But all the same he has good reason to complain,
+for one can’t imagine such misfortunes as have pursued him. Everything
+has fallen on him, everything has beaten him down. Why, a saint even
+would have gone mad, so that one can understand that a poor beggar who
+has never had any luck should get quite wild. For the last two months he
+has only met one good heart, a learned gentleman who lives up yonder on
+the height, Monsieur Guillaume Froment, who has given him a little work,
+just something to enable us to have some soup now and then.”
+
+Much surprised by this mention of his brother, Pierre wished to ask
+certain questions; but a singular feeling of uneasiness, in which fear
+and discretion mingled, checked his tongue. He looked at Céline, who
+stood before him, listening in silence with her grave, delicate air; and
+Madame Théodore, seeing him smile at the child, indulged in a final
+remark: “It’s just the idea of that child,” said she, “that throws Salvat
+out of his wits. He adores her, and he’d kill everybody if he could, when
+he sees her go supperless to bed. She’s such a good girl, she was
+learning so nicely at the Communal School! But now she hasn’t even a
+shift to go there in.”
+
+Pierre, who had at last written his address, slipped a five-franc piece
+into the little girl’s hand, and, desirous as he was of curtailing any
+thanks, he hastily said: “You will know now where to find me if you need
+me for Laveuve. But I’m going to busy myself about him this very
+afternoon, and I really hope that he will be fetched away this evening.”
+
+Madame Théodore did not listen, but poured forth all possible blessings;
+whilst Céline, thunderstruck at seeing five francs in her hand, murmured:
+“Oh! that poor papa, who has gone to hunt for money! Shall I run after
+him to tell him that we’ve got enough for to-day?”
+
+Then the priest, who was already in the passage, heard the woman answer:
+“Oh! he’s far away if he’s still walking. He’ll p’raps come back right
+enough.”
+
+However, as Pierre, with buzzing head and grief-stricken heart, hastily
+escaped out of that frightful house of suffering, he perceived to his
+astonishment Salvat and Victor Mathis standing erect in a corner of the
+filthy courtyard, where the stench was so pestilential. They had come
+downstairs, there to continue their interrupted colloquy. And again, they
+were talking in very low tones, and very quickly, mouth to mouth,
+absorbed in the violent thoughts which made their eyes flare. But they
+heard the priest’s footsteps, recognised him, and suddenly becoming cold
+and calm, exchanged an energetic hand-shake without uttering another
+word. Victor went up towards Montmartre, whilst Salvat hesitated like a
+man who is consulting destiny. Then, as if trusting himself to stern
+chance, drawing up his thin figure, the figure of a weary, hungry toiler,
+he turned into the Rue Marcadet, and walked towards Paris, his tool-bag
+still under his arm.
+
+For an instant Pierre felt a desire to run and call to him that his
+little girl wished him to go back again. But the same feeling of
+uneasiness as before came over the priest--a commingling of discretion
+and fear, a covert conviction that nothing could stay destiny. And he
+himself was no longer calm, no longer experienced the icy, despairing
+distress of the early morning. On finding himself again in the street,
+amidst the quivering fog, he felt the fever, the glow of charity which
+the sight of such frightful wretchedness had ignited, once more within
+him. No, no! such suffering was too much; he wished to struggle still, to
+save Laveuve and restore a little joy to all those poor folk. The new
+experiment presented itself with that city of Paris which he had seen
+shrouded as with ashes, so mysterious and so perturbing beneath the
+threat of inevitable justice. And he dreamed of a huge sun bringing
+health and fruitfulness, which would make of the huge city the fertile
+field where would sprout the better world of to-morrow.
+
+
+
+
+II. WEALTH AND WORLDLINESS
+
+THAT same morning, as was the case nearly every day, some intimates were
+expected to _déjeuner_ at the Duvillards’, a few friends who more or less
+invited themselves. And on that chilly day, all thaw and fog, the regal
+mansion in the Rue Godot-de-Mauroy near the Boulevard de la Madeleine
+bloomed with the rarest flowers, for flowers were the greatest passion of
+the Baroness, who transformed the lofty, sumptuous rooms, littered with
+marvels, into warm and odoriferous conservatories, whither the gloomy,
+livid light of Paris penetrated caressingly with infinite softness.
+
+The great reception rooms were on the ground-floor looking on to the
+spacious courtyard, and preceded by a little winter garden, which served
+as a vestibule where two footmen in liveries of dark green and gold were
+invariably on duty. A famous gallery of paintings, valued at millions of
+francs, occupied the whole of the northern side of the house. And the
+grand staircase, of a sumptuousness which also was famous, conducted to
+the apartments usually occupied by the family, a large red drawing-room,
+a small blue and silver drawing-room, a study whose walls were hung with
+old stamped leather, and a dining-room in pale green with English
+furniture, not to mention the various bedchambers and dressing-rooms.
+Built in the time of Louis XIV. the mansion retained an aspect of noble
+grandeur, subordinated to the epicurean tastes of the triumphant
+_bourgeoisie_, which for a century now had reigned by virtue of the
+omnipotence of money.
+
+Noon had not yet struck, and Baron Duvillard, contrary to custom, found
+himself the first in the little blue and silver _salon_. He was a man of
+sixty, tall and sturdy, with a large nose, full cheeks, broad, fleshy
+lips, and wolfish teeth, which had remained very fine. He had, however,
+become bald at an early age, and dyed the little hair that was left him.
+Moreover, since his beard had turned white, he had kept his face
+clean-shaven. His grey eyes bespoke his audacity, and in his laugh there
+was a ring of conquest, while the whole of his face expressed the fact
+that this conquest was his own, that he wielded the sovereignty of an
+unscrupulous master, who used and abused the power stolen and retained by
+his caste.
+
+He took a few steps, and then halted in front of a basket of wonderful
+orchids near the window. On the mantel-piece and table tufts of violets
+sent forth their perfume, and in the warm, deep silence which seemed to
+fall from the hangings, the Baron sat down and stretched himself in one
+of the large armchairs, upholstered in blue satin striped with silver. He
+had taken a newspaper from his pocket, and began to re-peruse an article
+it contained, whilst all around him the entire mansion proclaimed his
+immense fortune, his sovereign power, the whole history of the century
+which had made him the master. His grandfather, Jerome Duvillard, son of
+a petty advocate of Poitou, had come to Paris as a notary’s clerk in
+1788, when he was eighteen; and very keen, intelligent and hungry as he
+was, he had gained the family’s first three millions--at first in
+trafficking with the _emigrés’_ estates when they were confiscated and
+sold as national property, and later, in contracting for supplies to the
+imperial army. His father, Gregoire Duvillard, born in 1805, and the real
+great man of the family--he who had first reigned in the Rue
+Godot-de-Mauroy, after King Louis Philippe had granted him the title of
+Baron--remained one of the recognized heroes of modern finance by reason
+of the scandalous profits which he had made in every famous thieving
+speculation of the July Monarchy and the Second Empire, such as mines,
+railroads, and the Suez Canal. And he, the present Baron, Henri by name,
+and born in 1836, had only seriously gone into business on Baron
+Gregoire’s death soon after the Franco-German War. However, he had done
+so with such a rageful appetite, that in a quarter of a century he had
+again doubled the family fortune. He rotted and devoured, corrupted,
+swallowed everything that he touched; and he was also the tempter
+personified--the man who bought all consciences that were for
+sale--having fully understood the new times and its tendencies in
+presence of the democracy, which in its turn had become hungry and
+impatient. Inferior though he was both to his father and his grandfather,
+being a man of enjoyment, caring less for the work of conquest than the
+division of the spoil, he nevertheless remained a terrible fellow, a
+sleek triumpher, whose operations were all certainties, who amassed
+millions at each stroke, and treated with governments on a footing of
+equality, able as he was to place, if not France, at least a ministry in
+his pocket. In one century and three generations, royalty had become
+embodied in him: a royalty already threatened, already shaken by the
+tempest close ahead. And at times his figure grew and expanded till it
+became, as it were, an incarnation of the whole _bourgeoisie_--that
+_bourgeoisie_ which at the division of the spoils in 1789 appropriated
+everything, and has since fattened on everything at the expense of the
+masses, and refuses to restore anything whatever.
+
+The article which the Baron was re-perusing in a halfpenny newspaper
+interested him. “La Voix du Peuple” was a noisy sheet which, under the
+pretence of defending outraged justice and morality, set a fresh scandal
+circulating every morning in the hope of thereby increasing its sales.
+And that morning, in big type on its front page, this sub-title was
+displayed: “The Affair of the African Railways. Five Millions spent in
+Bribes: Two Ministers Bought, Thirty Deputies and Senators Compromised.”
+ Then in an article of odious violence the paper’s editor, the famous
+Sagnier, announced that he possessed and intended to publish the list of
+the thirty-two members of Parliament, whose support Baron Duvillard had
+purchased at the time when the Chambers had voted the bill for the
+African Railway Lines. Quite a romantic story was mingled with all this,
+the adventures of a certain Hunter, whom the Baron had employed as his
+go-between and who had now fled. The Baron, however, re-perused each
+sentence and weighed each word of the article very calmly; and although
+he was alone he shrugged his shoulders and spoke aloud with the tranquil
+assurance of a man whose responsibility is covered and who is, moreover,
+too powerful to be molested.
+
+“The idiot,” he said, “he knows even less than he pretends.”
+
+Just then, however, a first guest arrived, a man of barely four and
+thirty, elegantly dressed, dark and good looking, with a delicately
+shaped nose, and curly hair and beard. As a rule, too, he had laughing
+eyes, and something giddy, flighty, bird-like in his demeanour; but that
+morning he seemed nervous, anxious even, and smiled in a scared way.
+
+“Ah! it’s you, Duthil,” said the Baron, rising. “Have you read this?” And
+he showed the new comer the “Voix du Peuple,” which he was folding up to
+replace it in his pocket.
+
+“Why yes, I’ve read it. It’s amazing. How can Sagnier have got hold of
+the list of names? Has there been some traitor?”
+
+The Baron looked at his companion quietly, amused by his secret anguish.
+Duthil, the son of a notary of Angoulême, almost poor and very honest,
+had been sent to Paris as deputy for that town whilst yet very young,
+thanks to the high reputation of his father; and he there led a life of
+pleasure and idleness, even as he had formerly done when a student.
+However, his pleasant bachelor’s quarters in the Rue de Suresnes, and his
+success as a handsome man in the whirl of women among whom he lived, cost
+him no little money; and gaily enough, devoid as he was of any moral
+sense, he had already glided into all sorts of compromising and lowering
+actions, like a light-headed, superior man, a charming, thoughtless
+fellow, who attached no importance whatever to such trifles.
+
+“Bah!” said the Baron at last. “Has Sagnier even got a list? I doubt it,
+for there was none; Hunter wasn’t so foolish as to draw one up. And then,
+too, it was merely an ordinary affair; nothing more was done than is
+always done in such matters of business.”
+
+Duthil, who for the first time in his life had felt anxious, listened
+like one that needs to be reassured. “Quite so, eh?” he exclaimed.
+“That’s what I thought. There isn’t a cat to be whipped in the whole
+affair.”
+
+He tried to laugh as usual, and no longer exactly knew how it was that he
+had received some ten thousand francs in connection with the matter,
+whether it were in the shape of a vague loan, or else under some pretext
+of publicity, puffery, or advertising, for Hunter had acted with extreme
+adroitness so as to give no offence to the susceptibilities of even the
+least virginal consciences.
+
+“No, there’s not a cat to be whipped,” repeated Duvillard, who decidedly
+seemed amused by the face which Duthil was pulling. “And besides, my dear
+fellow, it’s well known that cats always fall on their feet. But have you
+seen Silviane?”
+
+“I just left her. I found her in a great rage with you. She learnt this
+morning that her affair of the Comédie is off.”
+
+A rush of anger suddenly reddened the Baron’s face. He, who could scoff
+so calmly at the threat of the African Railways scandal, lost his balance
+and felt his blood boiling directly there was any question of Silviane,
+the last, imperious passion of his sixtieth year. “What! off?” said he.
+“But at the Ministry of Fine Arts they gave me almost a positive promise
+only the day before yesterday.”
+
+He referred to a stubborn caprice of Silviane d’Aulnay, who, although she
+had hitherto only reaped a success of beauty on the stage, obstinately
+sought to enter the Comédie Française and make her _début_ there in the
+part of “Pauline” in Corneille’s “Polyeucte,” which part she had been
+studying desperately for several months past. Her idea seemed an insane
+one, and all Paris laughed at it; but the young woman, with superb
+assurance, kept herself well to the front, and imperiously demanded the
+_rôle_, feeling sure that she would conquer.
+
+“It was the minister who wouldn’t have it,” explained Duthil.
+
+The Baron was choking. “The minister, the minister! Ah! well, I will soon
+have that minister sent to the rightabout.”
+
+However, he had to cease speaking, for at that moment Baroness Duvillard
+came into the little drawing-room. At forty-six years of age she was
+still very beautiful. Very fair and tall, having hitherto put on but
+little superfluous fat, and retaining perfect arms and shoulders, with
+speckless silky skin, it was only her face that was spoiling, colouring
+slightly with reddish blotches. And these blemishes were her torment, her
+hourly thought and worry. Her Jewish origin was revealed by her somewhat
+long and strangely charming face, with blue and softly voluptuous eyes.
+As indolent as an Oriental slave, disliking to have to move, walk, or
+even speak, she seemed intended for a harem life, especially as she was
+for ever tending her person. That day she was all in white, gowned in a
+white silk toilette of delicious and lustrous simplicity.
+
+Duthil complimented her, and kissed her hand with an enraptured air. “Ah!
+madame, you set a little springtide in my heart. Paris is so black and
+muddy this morning.”
+
+However, a second guest entered the room, a tall and handsome man of five
+or six and thirty; and the Baron, still disturbed by his passion,
+profited by this opportunity to make his escape. He carried Duthil away
+into his study, saying, “Come here an instant, my dear fellow. I have a
+few more words to say to you about the affair in question. Monsieur de
+Quinsac will keep my wife company for a moment.”
+
+The Baroness, as soon as she was alone with the new comer, who, like
+Duthil, had most respectfully kissed her hand, gave him a long, silent
+look, while her soft eyes filled with tears. Deep silence, tinged with
+some slight embarrassment, had fallen, but she ended by saying in a very
+low voice: “How happy I am, Gérard, to find myself alone with you for a
+moment. For a month past I have not had that happiness.”
+
+The circumstances in which Henri Duvillard had married the younger
+daughter of Justus Steinberger, the great Jew banker, formed quite a
+story which was often recalled. The Steinbergers--after the fashion of
+the Rothschilds--were originally four brothers--Justus, residing in
+Paris, and the three others at Berlin, Vienna, and London, a circumstance
+which gave their secret association most formidable power in the
+financial markets of Europe. Justus, however, was the least wealthy of
+the four, and in Baron Gregoire Duvillard he had a redoubtable adversary
+against whom he was compelled to struggle each time that any large prey
+was in question. And it was after a terrible encounter between the pair,
+after the eager sharing of the spoils, that the crafty idea had come to
+Justus of giving his younger daughter Eve in marriage, by way of
+_douceur_, to the Baron’s son, Henri. So far the latter had only been
+known as an amiable fellow, fond of horses and club life; and no doubt
+Justus’s idea was that, at the death of the redoubtable Baron, who was
+already condemned by his physicians, he would be able to lay his hands on
+the rival banking-house, particularly if he only had in front of him a
+son-in-law whom it was easy to conquer. As it happened, Henri had been
+mastered by a violent passion for Eve’s blond beauty, which was then
+dazzling. He wished to marry her, and his father, who knew him,
+consented, in reality greatly amused to think that Justus was making an
+execrably bad stroke of business. The enterprise became indeed disastrous
+for Justus when Henri succeeded his father and the man of prey appeared
+from beneath the man of pleasure and carved himself his own huge share in
+exploiting the unbridled appetites of the middle-class democracy, which
+had at last secured possession of power. Not only did Eve fail to devour
+Henri, who in his turn had become Baron Duvillard, the all-powerful
+banker, more and more master of the market; but it was the Baron who
+devoured Eve, and this in less than four years’ time. After she had borne
+him a daughter and a son in turn, he suddenly drew away from her,
+neglected her, as if she were a mere toy that he no longer cared for. She
+was at first both surprised and distressed by the change, especially on
+learning that he was resuming his bachelor’s habits, and had set his
+fickle if ardent affections elsewhere. Then, however, without any kind of
+recrimination, any display of anger, or even any particular effort to
+regain her ascendency over him, she, on her side, imitated his example.
+She could not live without love, and assuredly she had only been born to
+be beautiful, to fascinate and reap adoration. To the lover whom she
+chose when she was five and twenty she remained faithful for more than
+fifteen years, as faithful as she might have been to a husband; and when
+he died her grief was intense, it was like real widowhood. Six months
+later, however, having met Count Gérard de Quinsac she had again been
+unable to resist her imperative need of adoration, and an intrigue had
+followed.
+
+“Have you been ill, my dear Gérard?” she inquired, noticing the young
+man’s embarrassment. “Are you hiding some worry from me?”
+
+She was ten years older than he was; and she clung desperately to this
+last passion of hers, revolting at the thought of growing old, and
+resolved upon every effort to keep the young man beside her.
+
+“No, I am hiding nothing, I assure you,” replied the Count. “But my
+mother has had much need of me recently.”
+
+She continued looking at him, however, with anxious passion, finding him
+so tall and aristocratic of mien, with his regular features and dark hair
+and moustaches which were always most carefully tended. He belonged to
+one of the oldest families of France, and resided on a ground-floor in
+the Rue St. Dominique with his widowed mother, who had been ruined by her
+adventurously inclined husband, and had at most an income of some fifteen
+thousand francs* to live upon. Gérard for his part had never done
+anything; contenting himself with his one year of obligatory military
+service, he had renounced the profession of arms in the same way as he
+had renounced that of diplomacy, the only one that offered him an opening
+of any dignity. He spent his days in that busy idleness common to all
+young men who lead “Paris life.” And his mother, haughtily severe though
+she was, seemed to excuse this, as if in her opinion a man of his birth
+was bound by way of protest to keep apart from official life under a
+Republic. However, she no doubt had more intimate, more disturbing
+reasons for indulgence. She had nearly lost him when he was only seven,
+through an attack of brain fever. At eighteen he had complained of his
+heart, and the doctors had recommended that he should be treated gently
+in all respects. She knew, therefore, what a lie lurked behind his proud
+demeanour, within his lofty figure, that haughty _façade_ of his race. He
+was but dust, ever threatened with illness and collapse. In the depths of
+his seeming virility there was merely girlish _abandon_; and he was
+simply a weak, good-natured fellow, liable to every stumble. It was on
+the occasion of a visit which he had paid with his mother to the Asylum
+of the Invalids of Labour that he had first seen Eve, whom he continued
+to meet; his mother, closing her eyes to this culpable connection in a
+sphere of society which she treated with contempt, in the same way as she
+had closed them to so many other acts of folly which she had forgiven
+because she regarded them as the mere lapses of an ailing child.
+Moreover, Eve had made a conquest of Madame de Quinsac, who was very
+pious, by an action which had recently amazed society. It had been
+suddenly learnt that she had allowed Monseigneur Martha to convert her to
+the Roman Catholic faith. This thing, which she had refused to do when
+solicited by her lawful husband, she had now done in the hope of ensuring
+herself a lover’s eternal affection. And all Paris was still stirred by
+the magnificence exhibited at the Madeleine, on the occasion of the
+baptism of this Jewess of five and forty, whose beauty and whose tears
+had upset every heart.
+
+ * About 3000 dollars.
+
+Gérard, on his side, was still flattered by the deep and touching
+tenderness shown to him; but weariness was coming, and he had already
+sought to break off the connection by avoiding any further assignations.
+He well understood Eve’s glances and her tears, and though he was moved
+at sight of them he tried to excuse himself. “I assure you,” said he, “my
+mother has kept me so busy that I could not get away.” But she, without a
+word, still turned her tearful glance on him, and weak, like herself, in
+despair that he should have been left alone with her in this fashion, he
+yielded, unable to continue refusing. “Well, then,” said he, “this
+afternoon at four o’clock if you are free.”
+
+He had lowered his voice in speaking, but a slight rustle made him turn
+his head and start like one in fault. It was the Baroness’s daughter
+Camille entering the room. She had heard nothing; but by the smile which
+the others had exchanged, by the very quiver of the air, she understood
+everything; an assignation for that very day and at the very spot which
+she suspected. Some slight embarrassment followed, an exchange of anxious
+and evil glances.
+
+Camille, at three and twenty, was a very dark young woman, short of
+stature and somewhat deformed, with her left shoulder higher than the
+right. There seemed to be nothing of her father or mother in her. Her
+case was one of those unforeseen accidents in family heredity which make
+people wonder whence they can arise. Her only pride lay in her beautiful
+black eyes and superb black hair, which, short as she was, would, said
+she, have sufficed to clothe her. But her nose was long, her face
+deviated to the left, and her chin was pointed. Her thin, witty, and
+malicious lips bespoke all the rancour and perverse anger stored in the
+heart of this uncomely creature, whom the thought of her uncomeliness
+enraged. However, the one whom she most hated in the whole world was her
+own mother, that _amorosa_ who was so little fitted to be a mother, who
+had never loved her, never paid attention to her, but had abandoned her
+to the care of servants from her very infancy. In this wise real hatred
+had grown up between the two women, mute and frigid on the one side, and
+active and passionate on the other. The daughter hated her mother because
+she found her beautiful, because she had not been created in the same
+image: beautiful with the beauty with which her mother crushed her. Day
+by day she suffered at being sought by none, at realising that the
+adoration of one and all still went to her mother. As she was amusing in
+her maliciousness, people listened to her and laughed; however, the
+glances of all the men--even and indeed especially the younger ones--soon
+reverted to her triumphant mother, who seemingly defied old age. In part
+for this reason Camille, with ferocious determination, had decided that
+she would dispossess her mother of her last lover Gérard, and marry him
+herself, conscious that such a loss would doubtless kill the Baroness.
+Thanks to her promised dowry of five millions of francs, the young woman
+did not lack suitors; but, little flattered by their advances, she was
+accustomed to say, with her malicious laugh: “Oh! of course; why for five
+millions they would take a wife from a mad-house.” However, she, herself,
+had really begun to love Gérard, who, good-natured as he was, evinced
+much kindness towards this suffering young woman whom nature had treated
+so harshly. It worried him to see her forsaken by everyone, and little by
+little he yielded to the grateful tenderness which she displayed towards
+him, happy, handsome man that he was, at being regarded as a demi-god and
+having such a slave. Indeed, in his attempt to quit the mother there was
+certainly a thought of allowing the daughter to marry him, which would be
+an agreeable ending to it all, though he did not as yet acknowledge this,
+ashamed as he felt and embarrassed by his illustrious name and all the
+complications and tears which he foresaw.
+
+The silence continued. Camille with her piercing glance, as sharp as any
+knife, had told her mother that she knew the truth; and then with another
+and pain-fraught glance she had complained to Gérard. He, in order to
+re-establish equilibrium, could only think of a compliment: “Good
+morning, Camille. Ah! that havana-brown gown of yours looks nice! It’s
+astonishing how well rather sombre colours suit you.”
+
+Camille glanced at her mother’s white robe, and then at her own dark
+gown, which scarcely allowed her neck and wrists to be seen. “Yes,” she
+replied laughing, “I only look passable when I don’t dress as a young
+girl.”
+
+Eve, ill at ease, worried by the growth of a rivalry in which she did not
+as yet wish to believe, changed the conversation. “Isn’t your brother
+there?” she asked.
+
+“Why yes, we came down together.”
+
+Hyacinthe, who came in at that moment, shook hands with Gérard in a weary
+way. He was twenty, and had inherited his mother’s pale blond hair, and
+her long face full of Oriental languor; while from his father he had
+derived his grey eyes and thick lips, expressive of unscrupulous
+appetites. A wretched scholar, regarding every profession with the same
+contempt, he had decided to do nothing. Spoilt by his father, he took
+some little interest in poetry and music, and lived in an extraordinary
+circle of artists, low women, madmen and bandits; boasting himself of all
+sorts of crimes and vices, professing the very worst philosophical and
+social ideas, invariably going to extremes, becoming in turn a
+Collectivist, an Individualist, an Anarchist, a Pessimist, a Symbolist,
+and what not besides; without, however, ceasing to be a Catholic, as this
+conjunction of Catholicity with something else seemed to him the supreme
+_bon ton_. In reality he was simply empty and rather a fool. In four
+generations the vigorous hungry blood of the Duvillards, after producing
+three magnificent beasts of prey, had, as if exhausted by the contentment
+of every passion, ended in this sorry emasculated creature, who was
+incapable alike of great knavery or great debauchery.
+
+Camille, who was too intelligent not to realise her brother’s
+nothingness, was fond of teasing him; and looking at him as he stood
+there, tightly buttoned in his long frock coat with pleated skirt--a
+resurrection of the romantic period, which he carried to exaggeration,
+she resumed: “Mamma has been asking for you, Hyacinthe. Come and show her
+your gown. You are the one who would look nice dressed as a young girl.”
+
+However, he eluded her without replying. He was covertly afraid of her,
+though they lived together in great intimacy, frankly exchanging
+confidences respecting their perverse views of life. And he directed a
+glance of disdain at the wonderful basket of orchids which seemed to him
+past the fashion, far too common nowadays. For his part he had left the
+lilies of life behind him, and reached the ranunculus, the flower of
+blood.
+
+The two last guests who were expected now arrived almost together. The
+first was the investigating magistrate Amadieu, a little man of five and
+forty, who was an intimate of the household and had been brought into
+notoriety by a recent anarchist affair. Between a pair of fair, bushy
+whiskers he displayed a flat, regular judicial face, to which he tried to
+impart an expression of keenness by wearing a single eyeglass behind
+which his glance sparkled. Very worldly, moreover, he belonged to the new
+judicial school, being a distinguished psychologist and having written a
+book in reply to the abuses of criminalist physiology. And he was also a
+man of great, tenacious ambition, fond of notoriety and ever on the
+lookout for those resounding legal affairs which bring glory. Behind him,
+at last appeared General de Bozonnet, Gérard’s uncle on the maternal
+side, a tall, lean old man with a nose like an eagle’s beak. Chronic
+rheumatism had recently compelled him to retire from the service. Raised
+to a colonelcy after the Franco-German War in reward for his gallant
+conduct at St. Privat, he had, in spite of his extremely monarchical
+connections, kept his sworn faith to Napoleon III. And he was excused in
+his own sphere of society for this species of military Bonapartism, on
+account of the bitterness with which he accused the Republic of having
+ruined the army. Worthy fellow that he was, extremely fond of his sister,
+Madame de Quinsac, it seemed as though he acted in accordance with some
+secret desire of hers in accepting the invitations of Baroness Duvillard
+by way of rendering Gérard’s constant presence in her house more natural
+and excusable.
+
+However, the Baron and Duthil now returned from the study, laughing
+loudly in an exaggerated way, doubtless to make the others believe that
+they were quite easy in mind. And one and all passed into the large
+dining-room where a big wood fire was burning, its gay flames shining
+like a ray of springtide amid the fine mahogany furniture of English make
+laden with silver and crystal. The room, of a soft mossy green, had an
+unassuming charm in the pale light, and the table which in the centre
+displayed the richness of its covers and the immaculate whiteness of its
+linen adorned with Venetian point, seemed to have flowered miraculously
+with a wealth of large tea roses, most admirable blooms for the season,
+and of delicious perfume.
+
+The Baroness seated the General on her right, and Amadieu on her left.
+The Baron on his right placed Duthil, and on his left Gérard. Then the
+young people installed themselves at either end, Camille between Gérard
+and the General, and Hyacinthe between Duthil and Amadieu. And forthwith,
+from the moment of starting on the scrambled eggs and truffles,
+conversation began, the usual conversation of Parisian _déjeuners_, when
+every event, great or little, of the morning or the day before is passed
+in review: the truths and the falsehoods current in every social sphere,
+the financial scandal, and the political adventure of the hour, the novel
+that has just appeared, the play that has just been produced, the stories
+which should only be retailed in whispers, but which are repeated aloud.
+And beneath all the light wit which circulates, beneath all the laughter,
+which often has a false ring, each retains his or her particular worry,
+or distress of mind, at times so acute that it becomes perfect agony.
+
+With his quiet and wonted impudence, the Baron, bravely enough, was the
+first to speak of the article in the “Voix du Peuple.” “I say, have you
+read Sagnier’s article this morning? It’s a good one; he has _verve_ you
+know, but what a dangerous lunatic he is!”
+
+This set everybody at ease, for the article would certainly have weighed
+upon the _déjeuner_ had no one mentioned it.
+
+“It’s the ‘Panama’ dodge over again!” cried Duthil. “But no, no, we’ve
+had quite enough of it!”
+
+“Why,” resumed the Baron, “the affair of the African Railway Lines is as
+clear as spring water! All those whom Sagnier threatens may sleep in
+peace. The truth is that it’s a scheme to upset Barroux’s ministry. Leave
+to interpellate will certainly be asked for this afternoon. You’ll see
+what a fine uproar there’ll be in the Chamber.”
+
+“That libellous, scandal-seeking press,” said Amadieu gravely, “is a
+dissolving agent which will bring France to ruin. We ought to have laws
+against it.”
+
+The General made an angry gesture: “Laws, what’s the use of them, since
+nobody has the courage to enforce them.”
+
+Silence fell. With a light, discreet step the house-steward presented
+some grilled mullet. So noiseless was the service amid the cheerful
+perfumed warmth that not even the faintest clatter of crockery was heard.
+Without anyone knowing how it had come about, however, the conversation
+had suddenly changed; and somebody inquired: “So the revival of the piece
+is postponed?”
+
+“Yes,” said Gérard, “I heard this morning that ‘Polyeucte’ wouldn’t get
+its turn till April at the earliest.”
+
+At this Camille, who had hitherto remained silent, watching the young
+Count and seeking to win him back, turned her glittering eyes upon her
+father and mother. It was a question of that revival in which Silviane
+was so stubbornly determined to make her _début_. However, the Baron and
+the Baroness evinced perfect serenity, having long been acquainted with
+all that concerned each other. Moreover Eve was too much occupied with
+her own passion to think of anything else; and the Baron too busy with
+the fresh application which he intended to make in tempestuous fashion at
+the Ministry of Fine Arts, so as to wrest Silviane’s engagement from
+those in office. He contented himself with saying: “How would you have
+them revive pieces at the Comédie! They have no actresses left there.”
+
+“Oh, by the way,” the Baroness on her side simply remarked, “yesterday,
+in that play at the Vaudeville, Delphine Vignot wore such an exquisite
+gown. She’s the only one too who knows how to arrange her hair.”
+
+Thereupon Duthil, in somewhat veiled language, began to relate a story
+about Delphine and a well-known senator. And then came another scandal,
+the sudden and almost suspicious death of a lady friend of the
+Duvillards’; whereupon the General, without any transition, broke in to
+relieve his bitter feelings by denouncing the idiotic manner in which the
+army was nowadays organised. Meantime the old Bordeaux glittered like
+ruby blood in the delicate crystal glasses. A truffled fillet of venison
+had just cast its somewhat sharp scent amidst the dying perfume of the
+roses, when some asparagus made its appearance, a _primeur_ which once
+had been so rare but which no longer caused any astonishment.
+
+“Nowadays we get it all through the winter,” said the Baron with a
+gesture of disenchantment.
+
+“And so,” asked Gérard at the same moment, “the Princess de Harn’s
+_matinée_ is for this afternoon?”
+
+Camille quickly intervened. “Yes, this afternoon. Shall you go?”
+
+“No, I don’t think so, I shan’t be able,” replied the young man in
+embarrassment.
+
+“Ah! that little Princess, she’s really deranged you know,” exclaimed
+Duthil. “You are aware that she calls herself a widow? But the truth, it
+seems, is that her husband, a real Prince, connected with a royal house
+and very handsome, is travelling about the world in the company of a
+singer. She with her vicious urchin-like face preferred to come and reign
+in Paris, in that mansion of the Avenue Hoche, which is certainly the
+most extraordinary Noah’s ark imaginable, with its swarming of
+cosmopolitan society indulging in every extravagance!”
+
+“Be quiet, you malicious fellow,” the Baroness gently interrupted. “We,
+here, are very fond of Rosemonde, who is a charming woman.”
+
+“Oh! certainly,” Camille again resumed. “She invited us; and we are going
+to her place by-and-by, are we not, mamma?”
+
+To avoid replying, the Baroness pretended that she did not hear, whilst
+Duthil, who seemed to be well-informed concerning the Princess, continued
+to make merry over her intended _matinée_, at which she meant to produce
+some Spanish dancing girls, whose performance was so very indecorous that
+all Paris, forewarned of the circumstance, would certainly swarm to her
+house. And he added: “You’ve heard that she has given up painting. Yes,
+she busies herself with chemistry. Her _salon_ is full of Anarchists
+now--and, by the way, it seemed to me that she had cast her eyes on you,
+my dear Hyacinthe.”
+
+Hyacinthe had hitherto held his tongue, as if he took no interest in
+anything. “Oh! she bores me to death,” he now condescended to reply. “If
+I’m going to her _matinée_ it’s simply in the hope of meeting my friend
+young Lord George Eldrett, who wrote to me from London to give me an
+appointment at the Princess’s. And I admit that hers is the only _salon_
+where I find somebody to talk to.”
+
+“And so,” asked Amadieu in an ironical way, “you have now gone over to
+Anarchism?”
+
+With his air of lofty elegance Hyacinthe imperturbably confessed his
+creed: “But it seems to me, monsieur, that in these times of universal
+baseness and ignominy, no man of any distinction can be other than an
+Anarchist.”
+
+A laugh ran round the table. Hyacinthe was very much spoilt, and
+considered very entertaining. His father in particular was immensely
+amused by the notion that he of all men should have an Anarchist for a
+son. However, the General, in his rancorous moments, talked anarchically
+enough of blowing up a society which was so stupid as to let itself be
+led by half a dozen disreputable characters. And, indeed, the
+investigating magistrate, who was gradually making a specialty of
+Anarchist affairs, proved the only one who opposed the young man,
+defending threatened civilisation and giving terrifying particulars
+concerning what he called the army of devastation and massacre. The
+others, while partaking of some delicious duck’s-liver _paté_, which the
+house-steward handed around, continued smiling. There was so much misery,
+said they; one must take everything into account: things would surely end
+by righting themselves. And the Baron himself declared, in a conciliatory
+manner: “It’s certain that one might do something, though nobody knows
+exactly what. As for all sensible and moderate claims, oh! I agree to
+them in advance. For instance, the lot of the working classes may be
+ameliorated, charitable enterprises may be undertaken, such, for
+instance, as our Asylum for the Invalids of Labour, which we have reason
+to be proud of. But we must not be asked for impossibilities.”
+
+With the dessert came a sudden spell of silence; it was as if, amidst the
+restless fluttering of the conversation, and the dizziness born of the
+copious meal, each one’s worry or distress was again wringing the heart
+and setting an expression of perturbation on the countenance. The nervous
+unconscientiousness of Duthil, threatened with denunciation, was seen to
+revive; so, too, the anxious anger of the Baron, who was meditating how
+he might possibly manage to content Silviane. That woman was this sturdy,
+powerful man’s taint, the secret sore which would perhaps end by eating
+him away and destroying him. But it was the frightful drama in which the
+Baroness, Camille and Gérard were concerned that flitted by most visibly
+across the faces of all three of them: that hateful rivalry of mother and
+daughter, contending for the man they loved. And, meantime, the
+silver-gilt blades of the dessert-knives were delicately peeling choice
+fruit. And there were bunches of golden grapes looking beautifully fresh,
+and a procession of sweetmeats, little cakes, an infinity of dainties,
+over which the most satiated appetites lingered complacently.
+
+Then, just as the finger-glasses were being served, a footman came and
+bent over the Baroness, who answered in an undertone, “Well, show him
+into the _salon_, I will join him there.” And aloud to the others she
+added: “It’s Monsieur l’Abbé Froment, who has called and asks most
+particularly to see me. He won’t be in our way; I think that almost all
+of you know him. Oh! he’s a genuine saint, and I have much sympathy for
+him.”
+
+For a few minutes longer they loitered round the table, and then at last
+quitted the dining-room, which was full of the odours of viands, wines,
+fruits and roses; quite warm, too, with the heat thrown out by the big
+logs of firewood, which were falling into embers amidst the somewhat
+jumbled brightness of all the crystal and silver, and the pale, delicate
+light which fell upon the disorderly table.
+
+Pierre had remained standing in the centre of the little blue and silver
+_salon_. Seeing a tray on which the coffee and the liqueurs were in
+readiness, he regretted that he had insisted upon being received. And his
+embarrassment increased when the company came in rather noisily, with
+bright eyes and rosy cheeks. However, his charitable fervour had revived
+so ardently within him that he overcame this embarrassment, and all that
+remained to him of it was a slight feeling of discomfort at bringing the
+whole frightful morning which he had just spent amid such scenes of
+wretchedness, so much darkness and cold, so much filth and hunger, into
+this bright, warm, perfumed affluence, where the useless and the
+superfluous overflowed around those folks who seemed so gay at having
+made a delightful meal.
+
+However, the Baroness at once came forward with Gérard, for it was
+through the latter, whose mother he knew, that the priest had been
+presented to the Duvillards at the time of the famous conversion. And as
+he apologised for having called at such an inconvenient hour, the
+Baroness responded: “But you are always welcome, Monsieur l’Abbé. You
+will allow me just to attend to my guests, won’t you? I will be with you
+in an instant.”
+
+She thereupon returned to the table on which the tray had been placed, in
+order to serve the coffee and the liqueurs, with her daughter’s
+assistance. Gérard, however, remained with Pierre; and, it so chanced,
+began to speak to him of the Asylum for the Invalids of Labour, where
+they had met one another at the recent laying of the foundation-stone of
+a new pavilion which was being erected, thanks to a handsome donation of
+100,000 francs made by Baron Duvillard. So far, the enterprise only
+comprised four pavilions out of the fourteen which it was proposed to
+erect on the vast site given by the City of Paris on the peninsula of
+Gennevilliers*; and so the subscription fund remained open, and, indeed,
+no little noise was made over this charitable enterprise, which was
+regarded as a complete and peremptory reply to the accusations of those
+evilly disposed persons who charged the satiated _bourgeoisie_ with doing
+nothing for the workers. But the truth was that a magnificent chapel,
+erected in the centre of the site, had absorbed two-thirds of the funds
+hitherto collected. Numerous lady patronesses, chosen from all the
+“worlds” of Paris--the Baroness Duvillard, the Countess de Quinsac, the
+Princess Rosemonde de Harn, and a score of others--were entrusted with
+the task of keeping the enterprise alive by dint of collections and fancy
+bazaars. But success had been chiefly obtained, thanks to the happy idea
+of ridding the ladies of all the weighty cares of organisation, by
+choosing as managing director a certain Fonsègue, who, besides being a
+deputy and editor of the “Globe” newspaper, was a prodigious promoter of
+all sorts of enterprises. And the “Globe” never paused in its propaganda,
+but answered the attacks of the revolutionaries by extolling the
+inexhaustible charity of the governing classes in such wise that, at the
+last elections, the enterprise had served as a victorious electoral
+weapon.
+
+ * This so-called peninsula lies to the northwest of Paris, and
+ is formed by the windings of the Seine.--Trans.
+
+However, Camille was walking about with a steaming cup of coffee in her
+hand: “Will you take some coffee, Monsieur l’Abbé?” she inquired.
+
+“No, thank you, mademoiselle.”
+
+“A glass of Chartreuse then?”
+
+“No, thank you.”
+
+Then everybody being served, the Baroness came back and said amiably:
+“Come, Monsieur l’Abbé, what do you desire of me?”
+
+Pierre began to speak almost in an undertone, his throat contracting and
+his heart beating with emotion. “I have come, madame, to appeal to your
+great kindness of heart. This morning, in a frightful house, in the Rue
+des Saules, behind Montmartre, I beheld a sight which utterly upset me.
+You can have no idea what an abode of misery and suffering it was; its
+inmates without fire or bread, the men reduced to idleness because there
+is no work, the mothers having no more milk for their babes, the children
+barely clad, coughing and shivering. And among all these horrors I saw
+the worst, the most abominable of all, an old workman, laid on his back
+by age, dying of hunger, huddled on a heap of rags, in a nook which a dog
+would not even accept as kennel.”
+
+He tried to recount things as discreetly as possible, frightened by the
+very words he spoke, the horrors he had to relate in that sphere of
+superlative luxury and enjoyment, before those happy ones who possessed
+all the gifts of this world; for--to use a slang expression--he fully
+realised that he sang out of tune, and in most uncourteous fashion. What
+a strange idea of his to have called at the hour when one has just
+finished _déjeuner_, when the aroma of hot coffee flatters happy
+digestion. Nevertheless he went on, and even ended by raising his voice,
+yielding to the feeling of revolt which gradually stirred him, going to
+the end of his terrible narrative, naming Laveuve, insisting on the
+unjust abandonment in which the old man was left, and asking for succour
+in the name of human compassion. And the whole company approached to
+listen to him; he could see the Baron and the General, and Duthil and
+Amadieu, in front of him, sipping their coffee, in silence, without a
+gesture.
+
+“Well, madame,” he concluded, “it seemed to me that one could not leave
+that old man an hour longer in such a frightful position, and that this
+very evening you would have the extreme goodness to have him admitted
+into the Asylum of the Invalids of Labour, which is, I think, the proper
+and only place for him.”
+
+Tears had moistened Eve’s beautiful eyes. She was in consternation at so
+sad a story coming to her to spoil her afternoon when she was looking
+forward to her assignation with Gérard. Weak and indolent as she was,
+lacking all initiative, too much occupied moreover with her own person,
+she had only accepted the presidency of the Committee on the condition
+that all administrative worries were to fall on Fonsègue. “Ah! Monsieur
+l’Abbé,” she murmured, “you rend my heart. But I can do nothing, nothing
+at all, I assure you. Moreover, I believe that we have already inquired
+into the affair of that man Laveuve. With us, you know, there must be the
+most serious guarantees with regard to every admission. A reporter is
+chosen who has to give us full information. Wasn’t it you, Monsieur
+Duthil, who was charged with this man Laveuve’s affair?”
+
+The deputy was finishing a glass of Chartreuse. “Yes, it was I. That fine
+fellow played you a comedy, Monsieur l’Abbé. He isn’t at all ill, and if
+you left him any money you may be sure he went down to drink it as soon
+as you were gone. For he is always drunk; and, besides that, he has the
+most hateful disposition imaginable, crying out from morning till evening
+against the _bourgeois_, and saying that if he had any strength left in
+his arms he would undertake to blow up the whole show. And, moreover, he
+won’t go into the asylum; he says that it’s a real prison where one’s
+guarded by Beguins who force one to hear mass, a dirty convent where the
+gates are shut at nine in the evening! And there are so many of them like
+that, who rather than be succoured prefer their liberty, with cold and
+hunger and death. Well then, let the Laveuves die in the street, since
+they refuse to be with us, and be warm and eat in our asylums!”
+
+The General and Amadieu nodded their heads approvingly. But Duvillard
+showed himself more generous. “No, no, indeed! A man’s a man after all,
+and should be succoured in spite of himself.”
+
+Eve, however, in despair at the idea that she would be robbed of her
+afternoon, struggled and sought for reasons. “I assure you that my hands
+are altogether tied. Monsieur l’Abbé does not doubt my heart or my zeal.
+But how call I possibly assemble the Committee without a few days’ delay?
+And I have particular reasons for coming to no decision, especially in an
+affair which has already been inquired into and pronounced upon, without
+the Committee’s sanction.” Then, all at once she found a solution: “What
+I advise you to do, Monsieur l’Abbé, is to go at once to see Monsieur
+Fonsègue, our managing director. He alone can act in an urgent case, for
+he knows that the ladies have unlimited confidence in him and approve
+everything he does.”
+
+“You will find Fonsègue at the Chamber,” added Duthil smiling, “only the
+sitting will be a warm one, and I doubt whether you will be able to have
+a comfortable chat with him.”
+
+Pierre, whose heart had contracted yet more painfully, insisted on the
+subject no further; but at once made up his mind to see Fonsègue, and in
+any event obtain from him a promise that the wretched Laveuve should be
+admitted to the Asylum that very evening. Then he lingered in the saloon
+for a few minutes listening to Gérard, who obligingly pointed out to him
+how he might best convince the deputy, which was by alleging how bad an
+effect such a story could have, should it be brought to light by the
+revolutionary newspapers. However, the guests were beginning to take
+their leave. The General, as he went off, came to ask his nephew if he
+should see him that afternoon at his mother’s, Madame de Quinsac, whose
+“day” it was: a question which the young man answered with an evasive
+gesture when he noticed that both Eve and Camille were looking at him.
+Then came the turn of Amadieu, who hurried off saying that a serious
+affair required his presence at the Palace of Justice. And Duthil soon
+followed him in order to repair to the Chamber.
+
+“I’ll see you between four and five at Silviane’s, eh?” said the Baron as
+he conducted him to the door. “Come and tell me what occurs at the
+Chamber in consequence of that odious article of Sagnier’s. I must at all
+events know. For my part I shall go to the Ministry of Fine Arts, to
+settle that affair of the Comédie; and besides I’ve some calls to make,
+some contractors to see, and a big launching and advertisement affair to
+settle.”
+
+“It’s understood then, between four and five, at Silviane’s,” said the
+deputy, who went off again mastered by his vague uneasiness, his anxiety
+as to what turn that nasty affair of the African Railway Lines might
+take.
+
+And all of them had forgotten Laveuve, the miserable wretch who lay at
+death’s door; and all of them were hastening away to their business or
+their passions, caught in the toils, sinking under the grindstone and
+whisked away by that rush of all Paris, whose fever bore them along,
+throwing one against another in an ardent scramble, in which the sole
+question was who should pass over the others and crush them.
+
+“And so, mamma,” said Camille, who continued to scrutinise her mother and
+Gérard, “you are going to take us to the Princess’s _matinée_?”
+
+“By-and-by, yes. Only I shan’t be able to stay there with you. I received
+a telegram from Salmon about my corsage this morning, and I must
+absolutely go to try it on at four o’clock.”
+
+By the slight trembling of her mother’s voice, the girl felt certain that
+she was telling a falsehood. “Oh!” said she, “I thought you were only
+going to try it on to-morrow? In that case I suppose we are to go and
+call for you at Salmon’s with the carriage on leaving the _matinée_?”
+
+“Oh! no my dear! One never knows when one will be free; and besides, if I
+have a moment, I shall call at the _modiste’s_.”
+
+Camille’s secret rage brought almost a murderous glare to her dark eyes.
+The truth was evident. But however passionately she might desire to set
+some obstacle across her mother’s path, she could not, dared not, carry
+matters any further. In vain had she attempted to implore Gérard with her
+eyes. He was standing to take his leave, and turned away his eyes.
+Pierre, who had become acquainted with many things since he had
+frequented the house, noticed how all three of them quivered, and divined
+thereby the mute and terrible drama.
+
+At this moment, however, Hyacinthe, stretched in an armchair, and
+munching an ether capsule, the only liqueur in which he indulged, raised
+his voice: “For my part, you know, I’m going to the Exposition du Lis.
+All Paris is swarming there. There’s one painting in particular, ‘The
+Rape of a Soul,’ which it’s absolutely necessary for one to have seen.”
+
+“Well, but I don’t refuse to drive you there,” resumed the Baroness.
+“Before going to the Princess’s we can look in at that exhibition.”
+
+“That’s it, that’s it,” hastily exclaimed Camille, who, though she
+harshly derided the symbolist painters as a rule, now doubtless desired
+to delay her mother. Then, forcing herself to smile, she asked: “Won’t
+you risk a look-in at the Exposition du Lis with us, Monsieur Gérard?”
+
+“Well, no,” replied the Count, “I want to walk. I shall go with Monsieur
+l’Abbé Froment to the Chamber.”
+
+Thereupon he took leave of mother and daughter, kissing the hand of each
+in turn. It had just occurred to him that to while away his time he also
+might call for a moment at Silviane’s, where, like the others, he had his
+_entrées_. On reaching the cold and solemn courtyard he said to the
+priest, “Ah! it does one good to breathe a little cool air. They keep
+their rooms too hot, and all those flowers, too, give one the headache.”
+
+Pierre for his part was going off with his brain in a whirl, his hands
+feverish, his senses oppressed by all the luxury which he left behind
+him, like the dream of some glowing, perfumed paradise where only the
+elect had their abode. At the same time his reviving thirst for charity
+had become keener than ever, and without listening to the Count, who was
+speaking very affectionately of his mother, he reflected as to how he
+might obtain Laveuve’s admission to the Asylum from Fonsègue. However,
+when the door of the mansion had closed behind them and they had taken a
+few steps along the street, it occurred to Pierre that a moment
+previously a sudden vision had met his gaze. Had he not seen a workman
+carrying a tool-bag, standing and waiting on the foot pavement across the
+road, gazing at that monumental door, closed upon so much fabulous
+wealth--a workman in whom he fancied he had recognised Salvat, that
+hungry fellow who had gone off that morning in search of work? At this
+thought Pierre hastily turned round. Such wretchedness in face of so much
+affluence and enjoyment made him feel anxious. But the workman, disturbed
+in his contemplation, and possibly fearing that he had been recognised,
+was going off with dragging step. And now, getting only a back view of
+him, Pierre hesitated, and ended by thinking that he must have been
+mistaken.
+
+
+
+
+III. RANTERS AND RULERS
+
+WHEN Abbé Froment was about to enter the Palais-Bourbon he remembered
+that he had no card, and he was making up his mind that he would simply
+ask for Fonsègue, though he was not known to him, when, on reaching the
+vestibule, he perceived Mège, the Collectivist deputy, with whom he had
+become acquainted in his days of militant charity in the poverty-stricken
+Charonne district.
+
+“What, you here? You surely have not come to evangelise us?” said Mège.
+
+“No, I’ve come to see Monsieur Fonsègue on an urgent matter, about a poor
+fellow who cannot wait.”
+
+“Fonsègue? I don’t know if he has arrived. Wait a moment.” And stopping a
+short, dark young fellow with a ferreting, mouse-like air, Mège said to
+him: “Massot, here’s Monsieur l’Abbé Froment, who wants to speak to your
+governor at once.”
+
+“The governor? But he isn’t here. I left him at the office of the paper,
+where he’ll be detained for another quarter of an hour. However, if
+Monsieur l’Abbé likes to wait he will surely see him here.”
+
+Thereupon Mège ushered Pierre into the large waiting-hall, the Salle des
+Pas Perdus, which in other moments looked so vast and cold with its
+bronze Minerva and Laocoon, and its bare walls on which the pale mournful
+winter light fell from the glass doors communicating with the garden.
+Just then, however, it was crowded, and warmed, as it were, by the
+feverish agitation of the many groups of men that had gathered here and
+there, and the constant coming and going of those who hastened through
+the throng. Most of these were deputies, but there were also numerous
+journalists and inquisitive visitors. And a growing uproar prevailed:
+colloquies now in undertones, now in loud voices, exclamations and bursts
+of laughter, amidst a deal of passionate gesticulation, Mège’s return
+into the tumult seemed to fan it. He was tall, apostolically thin, and
+somewhat neglectful of his person, looking already old and worn for his
+age, which was but five and forty, though his eyes still glowed with
+youth behind the glasses which never left his beak-like nose. And he had
+a warm but grating voice, and had always been known to cough, living on
+solely because he was bitterly intent on doing so in order to realise the
+dream of social re-organisation which haunted him. The son of an
+impoverished medical man of a northern town, he had come to Paris when
+very young, living there during the Empire on petty newspaper and other
+unknown work, and first making a reputation as an orator at the public
+meetings of the time. Then, after the war, having become the chief of the
+Collectivist party, thanks to his ardent faith and the extraordinary
+activity of his fighting nature, he had at last managed to enter the
+Chamber, where, brimful of information, he fought for his ideas with
+fierce determination and obstinacy, like a _doctrinaire_ who has decided
+in his own mind what the world ought to be, and who regulates in advance,
+and bit by bit, the whole dogma of Collectivism. However, since he had
+taken pay as a deputy, the outside Socialists had looked upon him as a
+mere rhetorician, an aspiring dictator who only tried to cast society in
+a new mould for the purpose of subordinating it to his personal views and
+ruling it.
+
+“You know what is going on?” he said to Pierre. “This is another nice
+affair, is it not? But what would you have? We are in mud to our very
+ears.”
+
+He had formerly conceived genuine sympathy for the priest, whom he had
+found so gentle with all who suffered, and so desirous of social
+regeneration. And the priest himself had ended by taking an interest in
+this authoritarian dreamer, who was resolved to make men happy in spite
+even of themselves. He knew that he was poor, and led a retired life with
+his wife and four children, to whom he was devoted.
+
+“You can well understand that I am no ally of Sagnier’s,” Mège resumed.
+“But as he chose to speak out this morning and threaten to publish the
+names of all those who have taken bribes, we can’t allow ourselves to
+pass as accomplices any further. It has long been said that there was
+some nasty jobbery in that suspicious affair of the African railways. And
+the worst is that two members of the present Cabinet are in question, for
+three years ago, when the Chambers dealt with Duvillard’s emission,
+Barroux was at the Home Department, and Monferrand at that of Public
+Works. Now that they have come back again, Monferrand at the Home
+Department, and Barroux at that of Finance, with the Presidency of the
+Council, it isn’t possible, is it, for us to do otherwise than compel
+them to enlighten us, in their own interest even, about their former
+goings-on? No, no, they can no longer keep silence, and I’ve announced
+that I intend to interpellate them this very day.”
+
+It was the announcement of Mège’s interpellation, following the terrible
+article of the “Voix du Peuple,” which thus set the lobbies in an uproar.
+And Pierre remained rather scared at this big political affair falling
+into the midst of his scheme to save a wretched pauper from hunger and
+death. Thus he listened without fully understanding the explanations
+which the Socialist deputy was passionately giving him, while all around
+them the uproar increased, and bursts of laughter rang out, testifying to
+the astonishment which the others felt at seeing Mège in conversation
+with a priest.
+
+“How stupid they are!” said Mège disdainfully. “Do they think then that I
+eat a cassock for _déjeuner_ every morning? But I beg your pardon, my
+dear Monsieur Froment. Come, take a place on that seat and wait for
+Fonsègue.”
+
+Then he himself plunged into all the turmoil, and Pierre realised that
+his best course was to sit down and wait quietly. His surroundings began
+to influence and interest him, and he gradually forgot Laveuve for the
+passion of the Parliamentary crisis amidst which he found himself cast.
+The frightful Panama adventure was scarcely over; he had followed the
+progress of that tragedy with the anguish of a man who every night
+expects to hear the tocsin sound the last hour of olden, agonising
+society. And now a little Panama was beginning, a fresh cracking of the
+social edifice, an affair such as had been frequent in all parliaments in
+connection with big financial questions, but one which acquired mortal
+gravity from the circumstances in which it came to the front. That story
+of the African Railway Lines, that little patch of mud, stirred up and
+exhaling a perturbing odour, and suddenly fomenting all that emotion,
+fear, and anger in the Chamber, was after all but an opportunity for
+political strife, a field on which the voracious appetites of the various
+“groups” would take exercise and sharpen; and, at bottom, the sole
+question was that of overthrowing the ministry and replacing it by
+another. Only, behind all that lust of power, that continuous onslaught
+of ambition, what a distressful prey was stirring--the whole people with
+all its poverty and its sufferings!
+
+Pierre noticed that Massot, “little Massot,” as he was generally called,
+had just seated himself on the bench beside him. With his lively eye and
+ready ear listening to everything and noting it, gliding everywhere with
+his ferret-like air, Massot was not there in the capacity of a gallery
+man, but had simply scented a stormy debate, and come to see if he could
+not pick up material for some occasional “copy.” And this priest lost in
+the midst of the throng doubtless interested him.
+
+“Have a little patience, Monsieur l’Abbé,” said he, with the amiable
+gaiety of a young gentleman who makes fun of everything. “The governor
+will certainly come, for he knows well enough that they are going to heat
+the oven here. You are not one of his constituents from La Corrèze, are
+you?”
+
+“No, no! I belong to Paris; I’ve come on account of a poor fellow whom I
+wish to get admitted into the Asylum of the Invalids of Labour.”
+
+“Oh! all right. Well, I’m a child of Paris, too.”
+
+Then Massot laughed. And indeed he was a child of Paris, son of a chemist
+of the St. Denis district, and an ex-dunce of the Lycée Charlemagne,
+where he had not even finished his studies. He had failed entirely, and
+at eighteen years of age had found himself cast into journalism with
+barely sufficient knowledge of orthography for that calling. And for
+twelve years now, as he often said, he had been a rolling stone wandering
+through all spheres of society, confessing some and guessing at others.
+He had seen everything, and become disgusted with everything, no longer
+believing in the existence of great men, or of truth, but living
+peacefully enough on universal malice and folly. He naturally had no
+literary ambition, in fact he professed a deliberate contempt for
+literature. Withal, he was not a fool, but wrote in accordance with no
+matter what views in no matter what newspaper, having neither conviction
+nor belief, but quietly claiming the right to say whatever he pleased to
+the public on condition that he either amused or impassioned it.
+
+“And so,” said he, “you know Mège, Monsieur l’Abbé? What a study in
+character, eh? A big child, a dreamer of dreams in the skin of a terrible
+sectarian! Oh! I have had a deal of intercourse with him, I know him
+thoroughly. You are no doubt aware that he lives on with the everlasting
+conviction that he will attain to power in six months’ time, and that
+between evening and morning he will have established that famous
+Collectivist community which is to succeed capitalist society, just as
+day follows night. And, by the way, as regards his interpellation to-day,
+he is convinced that in overthrowing the Barroux ministry he’ll be
+hastening his own turn. His system is to use up his adversaries. How many
+times haven’t I heard him making his calculations: there’s such a one to
+be used up, then such a one, and then such a one, so that he himself may
+at last reign. And it’s always to come off in six months at the latest.
+The misfortune is, however, that others are always springing up, and so
+his turn never comes at all.”
+
+Little Massot openly made merry over it. Then, slightly lowering his
+voice, he asked: “And Sagnier, do you know him? No? Do you see that
+red-haired man with the bull’s neck--the one who looks like a butcher?
+That one yonder who is talking in a little group of frayed frock-coats.”
+
+Pierre at last perceived the man in question. He had broad red ears, a
+hanging under-lip, a large nose, and big, projecting dull eyes.
+
+“I know that one thoroughly, as well,” continued Massot; “I was on the
+‘Voix du Peuple’ under him before I went on the ‘Globe.’ The one thing
+that nobody is exactly aware of is whence Sagnier first came. He long
+dragged out his life in the lower depths of journalism, doing nothing at
+all brilliant, but wild with ambition and appetite. Perhaps you remember
+the first hubbub he made, that rather dirty affair of a new Louis XVII.
+which he tried to launch, and which made him the extraordinary Royalist
+that he still is. Then it occurred to him to espouse the cause of the
+masses, and he made a display of vengeful Catholic socialism, attacking
+the Republic and all the abominations of the times in the name of justice
+and morality, under the pretext of curing them. He began with a series of
+sketches of financiers, a mass of dirty, uncontrolled, unproved
+tittle-tattle, which ought to have led him to the dock, but which met, as
+you know, with such wonderful success when gathered together in a volume.
+And he goes on in the same style in the ‘Voix du Peuple,’ which he
+himself made a success at the time of the Panama affair by dint of
+denunciation and scandal, and which to-day is like a sewer-pipe pouring
+forth all the filth of the times. And whenever the stream slackens, why,
+he invents things just to satisfy his craving for that hubbub on which
+both his pride and his pocket subsist.”
+
+Little Massot spoke without bitterness; indeed, he had even begun to
+laugh again. Beneath his thoughtless ferocity he really felt some respect
+for Sagnier. “Oh! he’s a bandit,” he continued, “but a clever fellow all
+the same. You can’t imagine how full of vanity he is. Lately it occurred
+to him to get himself acclaimed by the populace, for he pretends to be a
+kind of King of the Markets, you know. Perhaps he has ended by taking his
+fine judge-like airs in earnest, and really believes that he is saving
+the people and helping the cause of virtue. What astonishes me is his
+fertility in the arts of denunciation and scandalmongering. Never a
+morning comes but he discovers some fresh horror, and delivers fresh
+culprits over to the hatred of the masses. No! the stream of mud never
+ceases; there is an incessant, unexpected spurt of infamy, an increase of
+monstrous fancies each time that the disgusted public shows any sign of
+weariness. And, do you know, there’s genius in that, Monsieur l’Abbé; for
+he is well aware that his circulation goes up as soon as he threatens to
+speak out and publish a list of traitors and bribe-takers. His sales are
+certain now for some days to come.”
+
+Listening to Massot’s gay, bantering voice, Pierre began to understand
+certain things, the exact meaning of which had hitherto escaped him. He
+ended by questioning the young journalist, surprised as he was that so
+many deputies should be in the lobbies when the sitting was in progress.
+Oh! the sitting indeed. The gravest matters, some bill of national
+interest, might be under discussion, yet every member fled from it at the
+sudden threat of an interpellation which might overturn the ministry. And
+the passion stirring there was the restrained anger, the growing anxiety
+of the present ministry’s clients, who feared that they might have to
+give place to others; and it was also the sudden hope, the eager hunger
+of all who were waiting--the clients of the various possible ministries
+of the morrow.
+
+Massot pointed to Barroux, the head of the Cabinet, who, though he was
+out of his element in the Department of Finances, had taken it simply
+because his generally recognised integrity was calculated to reassure
+public opinion after the Panama crisis. Barroux was chatting in a corner
+with the Minister of Public Instruction, Senator Taboureau, an old
+university man with a shrinking, mournful air, who was extremely honest,
+but totally ignorant of Paris, coming as he did from some far-away
+provincial faculty. Barroux for his part was of decorative aspect, tall,
+and with a handsome, clean-shaven face, which would have looked quite
+noble had not his nose been rather too small. Although he was sixty, he
+still had a profusion of curly snow-white hair completing the somewhat
+theatrical majesty of his appearance, which he was wont to turn to
+account when in the tribune. Coming of an old Parisian family,
+well-to-do, an advocate by profession, then a Republican journalist under
+the Empire, he had reached office with Gambetta, showing himself at once
+honest and romantic, loud of speech, and somewhat stupid, but at the same
+time very brave and very upright, and still clinging with ardent faith to
+the principles of the great Revolution. However, his Jacobinism was
+getting out of fashion, he was becoming an “ancestor,” as it were, one of
+the last props of the middle-class Republic, and the new comers, the
+young politicians with long teeth, were beginning to smile at him.
+Moreover, beneath the ostentation of his demeanour, and the pomp of his
+eloquence, there was a man of hesitating, sentimental nature, a good
+fellow who shed tears when re-perusing the verses of Lamartine.
+
+However, Monferrand, the minister for the Home Department, passed by and
+drew Barroux aside to whisper a few words in his ear. He, Monferrand, was
+fifty, short and fat, with a smiling, fatherly air; nevertheless a look
+of keen intelligence appeared at times on his round and somewhat common
+face fringed by a beard which was still dark. In him one divined a man of
+government, with hands which were fitted for difficult tasks, and which
+never released a prey. Formerly mayor of the town of Tulle, he came from
+La Corrèze, where he owned a large estate. He was certainly a force in
+motion, one whose constant rise was anxiously watched by keen observers.
+He spoke in a simple quiet way, but with extraordinary power of
+conviction. Having apparently no ambition, affecting indeed the greatest
+disinterestedness, he nevertheless harboured the most ferocious
+appetites. Sagnier had written that he was a thief and a murderer, having
+strangled two of his aunts in order to inherit their property. But even
+if he were a murderer, he was certainly not a vulgar one.
+
+Then, too, came another personage of the drama which was about to be
+performed--deputy Vignon, whose arrival agitated the various groups. The
+two ministers looked at him, whilst he, at once surrounded by his
+friends, smiled at them from a distance. He was not yet thirty-six. Slim,
+and of average height, very fair, with a fine blond beard of which he
+took great care, a Parisian by birth, having rapidly made his way in the
+government service, at one time Prefect at Bordeaux, he now represented
+youth and the future in the Chamber. He had realised that new men were
+needed in the direction of affairs in order to accomplish the more
+urgent, indispensable reforms; and very ambitious and intelligent as he
+was, knowing many things, he already had a programme, the application of
+which he was quite capable of attempting, in part at any rate. However,
+he evinced no haste, but was full of prudence and shrewdness, convinced
+that his day would dawn, strong in the fact that he was as yet
+compromised in nothing, but had all space before him. At bottom he was
+merely a first-class administrator, clear and precise in speech, and his
+programme only differed from Barroux’s by the rejuvenation of its
+formulas, although the advent of a Vignon ministry in place of a Barroux
+ministry appeared an event of importance. And it was of Vignon that
+Sagnier had written that he aimed at the Presidency of the Republic, even
+should he have to march through blood to reach the Elysée Palace.
+
+“_Mon Dieu_!” Massot was explaining, “it’s quite possible that Sagnier
+isn’t lying this time, and that he has really found a list of names in
+some pocket-book of Hunter’s that has fallen into his hands. I myself
+have long known that Hunter was Duvillard’s vote-recruiter in the affair
+of the African Railways. But to understand matters one must first realise
+what his mode of proceeding was, the skill and the kind of amiable
+delicacy which he showed, which were far from the brutal corruption and
+dirty trafficking that people imagine. One must be such a man as Sagnier
+to picture a parliament as an open market, where every conscience is for
+sale and is impudently knocked down to the highest bidder. Oh! things
+happened in a very different way indeed; and they are explainable, and at
+times even excusable. Thus the article is levelled in particular against
+Barroux and Monferrand, who are designated in the clearest possible
+manner although they are not named. You are no doubt aware that at the
+time of the vote Barroux was at the Home Department and Monferrand at
+that of Public Works, and so now they are accused of having betrayed
+their trusts, the blackest of all social crimes. I don’t know into what
+political combinations Barroux may have entered, but I am ready to swear
+that he put nothing in his pocket, for he is the most honest of men. As
+for Monferrand, that’s another matter; he’s a man to carve himself his
+share, only I should be much surprised if he had put himself in a bad
+position. He’s incapable of a blunder, particularly of a stupid blunder,
+like that of taking money and leaving a receipt for it lying about.”
+
+Massot paused, and with a jerk of his head called Pierre’s attention to
+Duthil, who, feverish, but nevertheless smiling, stood in a group which
+had just collected around the two ministers. “There! do you see that
+young man yonder, that dark handsome fellow whose beard looks so
+triumphant?”
+
+“I know him,” said Pierre.
+
+“Oh! you know Duthil. Well, he’s one who most certainly took money. But
+he’s a mere bird. He came to us from Angoulême to lead the pleasantest of
+lives here, and he has no more conscience, no more scruples, than the
+pretty finches of his native part, who are ever love-making. Ah! for
+Duthil, Hunter’s money was like manna due to him, and he never even
+paused to think that he was dirtying his fingers. You may be quite sure
+he feels astonished that people should attach the slightest importance to
+the matter.”
+
+Then Massot designated another deputy in the same group, a man of fifty
+or thereabouts, of slovenly aspect and lachrymose mien, lanky, too, like
+a maypole, and somewhat bent by the weight of his head, which was long
+and suggestive of a horse’s. His scanty, straight, yellowish hair, his
+drooping moustaches, in fact the whole of his distracted countenance,
+expressed everlasting distress.
+
+“And Chaigneux, do you know him?” continued Massot, referring to the
+deputy in question. “No? Well, look at him and ask yourself if it isn’t
+quite as natural that he, too, should have taken money. He came from
+Arras. He was a solicitor there. When his division elected him he let
+politics intoxicate him, and sold his practice to make his fortune in
+Paris, where he installed himself with his wife and his three daughters.
+And you can picture his bewilderment amidst those four women, terrible
+women ever busy with finery, receiving and paying visits, and running
+after marriageable men who flee away. It’s ill-luck with a vengeance, the
+daily defeat of a poor devil of mediocre attainments, who imagined that
+his position as a deputy would facilitate money-making, and who is
+drowning himself in it all. And so how can Chaigneux have done otherwise
+than take money, he who is always hard up for a five-hundred-franc note!
+I admit that originally he wasn’t a dishonest man. But he’s become one,
+that’s all.”
+
+Massot was now fairly launched, and went on with his portraits, the
+series which he had, at one moment, dreamt of writing under the title of
+“Deputies for Sale.” There were the simpletons who fell into the furnace,
+the men whom ambition goaded to exasperation, the low minds that yielded
+to the temptation of an open drawer, the company-promoters who grew
+intoxicated and lost ground by dint of dealing with big figures. At the
+same time, however, Massot admitted that these men were relatively few in
+number, and that black sheep were to be found in every parliament of the
+world. Then Sagnier’s name cropped up again, and Massot remarked that
+only Sagnier could regard the French Chambers as mere dens of thieves.
+
+Pierre, meantime, felt most interested in the tempest which the threat of
+a ministerial crisis was stirring up before him. Not only the men like
+Duthil and Chaigneux, pale at feeling the ground tremble beneath them,
+and wondering whether they would not sleep at the Mazas prison that
+night, were gathered round Barroux and Monferrand; all the latters’
+clients were there, all who enjoyed influence or office through them, and
+who would collapse and disappear should they happen to fall. And it was
+something to see the anxious glances and the pale dread amidst all the
+whispered chatter, the bits of information and tittle-tattle which were
+carried hither and thither. Then, in a neighbouring group formed round
+Vignon, who looked very calm and smiled, were the other clients, those
+who awaited the moment to climb to the assault of power, in order that
+they, in their turn, might at last possess influence or office. Eyes
+glittered with covetousness, hopeful delight could be read in them,
+pleasant surprise at the sudden opportunity now offered. Vignon avoided
+replying to the over-direct questions of his friends, and simply
+announced that he did not intend to intervene. Evidently enough his plan
+was to let Mège interpellate and overthrow the ministry, for he did not
+fear him, and in his own estimation would afterwards simply have to stoop
+to pick up the fallen portfolios.
+
+“Ah! Monferrand now,” little Massot was saying, “there’s a rascal who
+trims his sails! I knew him as an anti-clerical, a devourer of priests,
+Monsieur l’Abbé, if you will allow me so to express myself; however, I
+don’t say this to be agreeable to you, but I think I may tell you for
+certain that he has become reconciled to religion. At least, I have been
+told that Monseigneur Martha, who is a great converter, now seldom leaves
+him. This is calculated to please one in these new times, when science
+has become bankrupt, and religion blooms afresh with delicious mysticism
+on all sides, whether in art, literature, or society itself.”
+
+Massot was jesting, according to his wont; but he spoke so amiably that
+the priest could not do otherwise than bow. However, a great stir had set
+in before them; it was announced that Mège was about to ascend the
+tribune, and thereupon all the deputies hastened into the assembly hall,
+leaving only the inquisitive visitors and a few journalists in the Salle
+des Pas Perdus.
+
+“It’s astonishing that Fonsègue hasn’t yet arrived,” resumed Massot;
+“he’s interested in what’s going on. However, he’s so cunning, that when
+he doesn’t behave as others do, one may be sure that he has his reasons
+for it. Do you know him?” And as Pierre gave a negative answer, Massot
+went on: “Oh! he’s a man of brains and real power--I speak with all
+freedom, you know, for I don’t possess the bump of veneration; and, as
+for my editors, well, they’re the very puppets that I know the best and
+pick to pieces with the most enjoyment. Fonsègue, also, is clearly
+designated in Sagnier’s article. Moreover, he’s one of Duvillard’s usual
+clients. There can be no doubt that he took money, for he takes money in
+everything. Only he always protects himself, and takes it for reasons
+which may be acknowledged--as payment or commission on account of
+advertising, and so forth. And if I left him just now, looking, as it
+seemed to me, rather disturbed, and if he delays his arrival here to
+establish, as it were, a moral alibi, the truth must be that he has
+committed the first imprudent action in his life.”
+
+Then Massot rattled on, telling all there was to tell about Fonsègue. He,
+too, came from the department of La Corrèze, and had quarrelled for life
+with Monferrand after some unknown underhand affairs. Formerly an
+advocate at Tulle, his ambition had been to conquer Paris; and he had
+really conquered it, thanks to his big morning newspaper, “Le Globe,” of
+which he was both founder and director. He now resided in a luxurious
+mansion in the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, and no enterprise was launched
+but he carved himself a princely share in it. He had a genius for
+“business,” and employed his newspaper as a weapon to enable him to reign
+over the market. But how very carefully he had behaved, what long and
+skilful patience he had shown, before attaining to the reputation of a
+really serious man, who guided authoritatively the most virtuous and
+respected of the organs of the press! Though in reality he believed
+neither in God nor in Devil, he had made this newspaper the supporter of
+order, property, and family ties; and though he had become a Conservative
+Republican, since it was to his interest to be such, he had remained
+outwardly religious, affecting a Spiritualism which reassured the
+_bourgeoisie_. And amidst all his accepted power, to which others bowed,
+he nevertheless had one hand deep in every available money-bag.
+
+“Ah! Monsieur l’Abbé,” said Massot, “see to what journalism may lead a
+man. There you have Sagnier and Fonsègue: just compare them a bit. In
+reality they are birds of the same feather: each has a quill and uses it.
+But how different the systems and the results. Sagnier’s print is really
+a sewer which rolls him along and carries him to the cesspool; while the
+other’s paper is certainly an example of the best journalism one can
+have, most carefully written, with a real literary flavour, a treat for
+readers of delicate minds, and an honour to the man who directs it. But
+at the bottom, good heavens! in both cases the farce is precisely the
+same!”
+
+Massot burst out laughing, well pleased with this final thrust. Then all
+at once: “Ah! here’s Fonsègue at last!” said he.
+
+Quite at his ease, and still laughing, he forthwith introduced the
+priest. “This is Monsieur l’Abbé Froment, my dear _patron_, who has been
+waiting more than twenty minutes for you--I’m just going to see what is
+happening inside. You know that Mège is interpellating the government.”
+
+The new comer started slightly: “An interpellation!” said he. “All right,
+all right, I’ll go to it.”
+
+Pierre was looking at him. He was about fifty years of age, short of
+stature, thin and active, still looking young without a grey hair in his
+black beard. He had sparkling eyes, too, but his mouth, said to be a
+terrible one, was hidden by his moustaches. And withal he looked a
+pleasant companion, full of wit to the tip of his little pointed nose,
+the nose of a sporting dog that is ever scenting game. “What can I do for
+you, Monsieur l’Abbé?” he inquired.
+
+Then Pierre briefly presented his request, recounting his visit to
+Laveuve that morning, giving every heart-rending particular, and asking
+for the poor wretch’s immediate admittance to the Asylum.
+
+“Laveuve!” said the other, “but hasn’t his affair been examined? Why,
+Duthil drew up a report on it, and things appeared to us of such a nature
+that we could not vote for the man’s admittance.”
+
+But the priest insisted: “I assure you, monsieur, that your heart would
+have burst with compassion had you been with me this morning. It is
+revolting that an old man should be left in such frightful abandonment
+even for another hour. He must sleep at the Asylum to-night.”
+
+Fonsègue began to protest. “To-night! But it’s impossible, altogether
+impossible! There are all sorts of indispensable formalities to be
+observed. And besides I alone cannot take such responsibility. I haven’t
+the power. I am only the manager; all that I do is to execute the orders
+of the committee of lady patronesses.”
+
+“But it was precisely Baroness Duvillard who sent me to you, monsieur,
+telling me that you alone had the necessary authority to grant immediate
+admittance in an exceptional case.”
+
+“Oh! it was the Baroness who sent you? Ah! that is just like her,
+incapable of coming to any decision herself, and far too desirous of her
+own quietude to accept any responsibility. Why is it that she wants me to
+have the worries? No, no, Monsieur l’Abbé, I certainly won’t go against
+all our regulations; I won’t give an order which would perhaps embroil me
+with all those ladies. You don’t know them, but they become positively
+terrible directly they attend our meetings.”
+
+He was growing lively, defending himself with a jocular air, whilst in
+secret he was fully determined to do nothing. However, just then Duthil
+abruptly reappeared, darting along bareheaded, hastening from lobby to
+lobby to recruit absent members, particularly those who were interested
+in the grave debate at that moment beginning. “What, Fonsègue!” he cried,
+“are you still here? Go, go to your seat at once, it’s serious!” And
+thereupon he disappeared.
+
+His colleague evinced no haste, however. It was as if the suspicious
+affair which was impassioning the Chamber had no concern for him. And he
+still smiled, although a slight feverish quiver made him blink. “Excuse
+me, Monsieur l’Abbé,” he said at last. “You see that my friends have need
+of me. I repeat to you that I can do absolutely nothing for your
+_protégé_.”
+
+But Pierre would not accept this reply as a final one. “No, no,
+monsieur,” he rejoined, “go to your affairs, I will wait for you here.
+Don’t come to a decision without full reflection. You are wanted, and I
+feel that your mind is not sufficiently at liberty for you to listen to
+me properly. By-and-by, when you come back and give me your full
+attention, I am sure that you will grant me what I ask.”
+
+And, although Fonsègue, as he went off, repeated that he could not alter
+his decision, the priest stubbornly resolved to make him do so, and sat
+down on the bench again, prepared, if needful, to stay there till the
+evening. The Salle des Pas Perdus was now almost quite empty, and looked
+yet more frigid and mournful with its Laocoon and its Minerva, its bare
+commonplace walls like those of a railway-station waiting-room, between
+which all the scramble of the century passed, though apparently without
+even warming the lofty ceiling. Never had paler and more callous light
+entered by the large glazed doors, behind which one espied the little
+slumberous garden with its meagre, wintry lawns. And not an echo of the
+tempest of the sitting near at hand reached the spot; from the whole
+heavy pile there fell but death-like silence, and a covert quiver of
+distress that had come from far away, perhaps from the entire country.
+
+It was that which now haunted Pierre’s reverie. The whole ancient,
+envenomed sore spread out before his mind’s eye, with its poison and
+virulence. Parliamentary rottenness had slowly increased till it had
+begun to attack society itself. Above all the low intrigues and the rush
+of personal ambition there certainly remained the loftier struggle of the
+contending principles, with history on the march, clearing the past away
+and seeking to bring more truth, justice, and happiness in the future.
+But in practice, if one only considered the horrid daily cuisine of the
+sphere, what an unbridling of egotistical appetite one beheld, what an
+absorbing passion to strangle one’s neighbour and triumph oneself alone!
+Among the various groups one found but an incessant battle for power and
+the satisfactions that it gives. “Left,” “Right,” “Catholics,”
+ “Republicans,” “Socialists,” the names given to the parties of twenty
+different shades, were simply labels classifying forms of the one burning
+thirst to rule and dominate. All questions could be reduced to a single
+one, that of knowing whether this man, that man, or that other man should
+hold France in his grasp, to enjoy it, and distribute its favours among
+his creatures. And the worst was that the outcome of the great
+parliamentary battles, the days and the weeks lost in setting this man in
+the place of that man, and that other man in the place of this man, was
+simply stagnation, for not one of the three men was better than his
+fellows, and there were but vague points of difference between them; in
+such wise that the new master bungled the very same work as the previous
+one had bungled, forgetful, perforce, of programmes and promises as soon
+as ever he began to reign.
+
+However, Pierre’s thoughts invincibly reverted to Laveuve, whom he had
+momentarily forgotten, but who now seized hold of him again with a quiver
+as of anger and death. Ah! what could it matter to that poor old wretch,
+dying of hunger on his bed of rags, whether Mège should overthrow
+Barroux’s ministry, and whether a Vignon ministry should ascend to power
+or not! At that rate, a century, two centuries, would be needed before
+there would be bread in the garrets where groan the lamed sons of labour,
+the old, broken-down beasts of burden. And behind Laveuve there appeared
+the whole army of misery, the whole multitude of the disinherited and the
+poor, who agonised and asked for justice whilst the Chamber, sitting in
+all pomp, grew furiously impassioned over the question as to whom the
+nation should belong to, as to who should devour it. Mire was flowing on
+in a broad stream, the hideous, bleeding, devouring sore displayed itself
+in all impudence, like some cancer which preys upon an organ and spreads
+to the heart. And what disgust, what nausea must such a spectacle
+inspire; and what a longing for the vengeful knife that would bring
+health and joy!
+
+Pierre could not have told for how long he had been plunged in this
+reverie, when uproar again filled the hall. People were coming back,
+gesticulating and gathering in groups. And suddenly he heard little
+Massot exclaim near him: “Well, if it isn’t down it’s not much better
+off. I wouldn’t give four sous for its chance of surviving.”
+
+He referred to the ministry, and began to recount the sitting to a fellow
+journalist who had just arrived. Mège had spoken very eloquently, with
+extraordinary fury of indignation against the rotten _bourgeoisie_, which
+rotted everything it touched; but, as usual, he had gone much too far,
+alarming the Chamber by his very violence. And so, when Barroux had
+ascended the tribune to ask for a month’s adjournment of the
+interpellation, he had merely had occasion to wax indignant, in all
+sincerity be it said, full of lofty anger that such infamous campaigns
+should be carried on by a certain portion of the press. Were the shameful
+Panama scandals about to be renewed? Were the national representatives
+going to let themselves be intimidated by fresh threats of denunciation?
+It was the Republic itself which its adversaries were seeking to submerge
+beneath a flood of abominations. No, no, the hour had come for one to
+collect one’s thoughts, and work in quietude without allowing those who
+hungered for scandal to disturb the public peace. And the Chamber,
+impressed by these words, fearing, too, lest the electorate should at
+last grow utterly weary of the continuous overflow of filth, had
+adjourned the interpellation to that day month. However, although Vignon
+had not personally intervened in the debate, the whole of his group had
+voted against the ministry, with the result that the latter had merely
+secured a majority of two votes--a mockery.
+
+“But in that case they will resign,” said somebody to Massot.
+
+“Yes, so it’s rumoured. But Barroux is very tenacious. At all events if
+they show any obstinacy they will be down before a week is over,
+particularly as Sagnier, who is quite furious, declares that he will
+publish the list of names to-morrow.”
+
+Just then, indeed, Barroux and Monferrand were seen to pass, hastening
+along with thoughtful, busy mien, and followed by their anxious clients.
+It was said that the whole Cabinet was about to assemble to consider the
+position and come to a decision. And then Vignon, in his turn, reappeared
+amidst a stream of friends. He, for his part, was radiant, with a joy
+which he sought to conceal, calming his friends in his desire not to cry
+victory too soon. However, the eyes of the band glittered, like those of
+a pack of hounds when the moment draws near for the offal of the quarry
+to be distributed. And even Mège also looked triumphant. He had all but
+overthrown the ministry. That made another one that was worn out, and
+by-and-by he would wear out Vignon’s, and at last govern in his turn.
+
+“The devil!” muttered little Massot, “Chaigneux and Duthil look like
+whipped dogs. And see, there’s nobody who is worth the governor. Just
+look at him, how superb he is, that Fonsègue! But good-by, I must now be
+off!”
+
+Then he shook hands with his brother journalist unwilling as he was to
+remain any longer, although the sitting still continued, some bill of
+public importance again being debated before the rows of empty seats.
+
+Chaigneux, with his desolate mien, had gone to lean against the pedestal
+of the high figure of Minerva; and never before had he been more bowed
+down by his needy distress, the everlasting anguish of his ill-luck. On
+the other hand, Duthil, in spite of everything, was perorating in the
+centre of a group with an affectation of scoffing unconcern; nevertheless
+nervous twitches made his nose pucker and distorted his mouth, while the
+whole of his handsome face was becoming moist with fear. And even as
+Massot had said, there really was only Fonsègue who showed composure and
+bravery, ever the same with his restless little figure, and his eyes
+beaming with wit, though at times they were just faintly clouded by a
+shadow of uneasiness.
+
+Pierre had risen to renew his request; but Fonsègue forestalled him,
+vivaciously exclaiming: “No, no, Monsieur l’Abbé, I repeat that I cannot
+take on myself such an infraction of our rules. There was an inquiry, and
+a decision was arrived at. How would you have me over-rule it?”
+
+“Monsieur,” said the priest, in a tone of deep grief, “it is a question
+of an old man who is hungry and cold, and in danger of death if he be not
+succoured.”
+
+With a despairing gesture, the director of “Le Globe” seemed to take the
+very walls as witnesses of his powerlessness. No doubt he feared some
+nasty affair for his newspaper, in which he had abused the Invalids of
+Labour enterprise as an electoral weapon. Perhaps, too, the secret terror
+into which the sitting of the Chamber had just thrown him was hardening
+his heart. “I can do nothing,” he repeated. “But naturally I don’t ask
+better than to have my hands forced by the ladies of the Committee. You
+already have the support of the Baroness Duvillard, secure that of some
+others.”
+
+Pierre, who was determined to fight on to the very end, saw in this
+suggestion a supreme chance. “I know the Countess de Quinsac,” he said,
+“I can go to see her at once.”
+
+“Quite so! an excellent idea, the Countess de Quinsac! Take a cab and go
+to see the Princess de Harn as well. She bestirs herself a great deal,
+and is becoming very influential. Secure the approval of these ladies, go
+back to the Baroness’s at seven, get a letter from her to cover me, and
+then call on me at the office of my paper. That done, your man shall
+sleep at the Asylum at nine o’clock!”
+
+He evinced in speaking a kind of joyous good nature, as though he no
+longer doubted of success now that he ran no risk of compromising
+himself. And great hope again came back to the priest: “Ah! thank you,
+monsieur,” he said; “it is a work of salvation that you will accomplish.”
+
+“But you surely know that I ask nothing better. Ah! if we could only cure
+misery, prevent hunger and thirst by a mere word. However, make haste,
+you have not a minute to lose.”
+
+They shook hands, and Pierre at once tried to get out of the throng.
+This, however, was no easy task, for the various groups had grown larger
+as all the anger and anguish, roused by the recent debate, ebbed back
+there amid a confused tumult. It was as when a stone, cast into a pool,
+stirs the ooze below, and causes hidden, rotting things to rise once more
+to the surface. And Pierre had to bring his elbows into play and force a
+passage athwart the throng, betwixt the shivering cowardice of some, the
+insolent audacity of others, and the smirchings which sullied the greater
+number, given the contagion which inevitably prevailed. However, he
+carried away a fresh hope, and it seemed to him that if he should save a
+life, make but one man happy that day, it would be like a first
+instalment of redemption, a sign that a little forgiveness would be
+extended to the many follies and errors of that egotistical and
+all-devouring political world.
+
+On reaching the vestibule a final incident detained him for a moment
+longer. Some commotion prevailed there following upon a quarrel between a
+man and an usher, the latter of whom had prevented the former from
+entering on finding that the admission ticket which he tendered was an
+old one, with its original date scratched out. The man, very rough at the
+outset, had then refrained from insisting, as if indeed sudden timidity
+had come upon him. And in this ill-dressed fellow Pierre was astonished
+to recognise Salvat, the journeyman engineer, whom he had seen going off
+in search of work that same morning. This time it was certainly he, tall,
+thin and ravaged, with dreamy yet flaming eyes, which set his pale
+starveling’s face aglow. He no longer carried his tool-bag; his ragged
+jacket was buttoned up and distended on the left side by something that
+he carried in a pocket, doubtless some hunk of bread. And on being
+repulsed by the ushers, he walked away, taking the Concorde bridge,
+slowly, as if chancewise, like a man who knows not whither he is going.
+
+
+
+
+IV. SOCIAL SIDELIGHTS
+
+IN her old faded drawing-room--a Louis Seize _salon_ with grey
+woodwork--the Countess de Quinsac sat near the chimney-piece in her
+accustomed place. She was singularly like her son, with a long and noble
+face, her chin somewhat stern, but her eyes still beautiful beneath her
+fine snowy hair, which was arranged in the antiquated style of her youth.
+And whatever her haughty coldness, she knew how to be amiable, with
+perfect, kindly graciousness.
+
+Slightly waving her hand after a long silence, she resumed, addressing
+herself to the Marquis de Morigny, who sat on the other side of the
+chimney, where for long years he had always taken the same armchair. “Ah!
+you are right, my friend, Providence has left us here forgotten, in a
+most abominable epoch.”
+
+“Yes, we passed by the side of happiness and missed it,” the Marquis
+slowly replied, “and it was your fault, and doubtless mine as well.”
+
+Smiling sadly, she stopped him with another wave of her hand. And the
+silence fell once more; not a sound from the streets reached that gloomy
+ground floor at the rear of the courtyard of an old mansion in the Rue
+St. Dominique, almost at the corner of the Rue de Bourgogne.
+
+The Marquis was an old man of seventy-five, nine years older than the
+Countess. Short and thin though he was, he none the less had a
+distinguished air, with his clean-shaven face, furrowed by deep,
+aristocratic wrinkles. He belonged to one of the most ancient families of
+France, and remained one of the last hopeless Legitimists, of very pure
+and lofty views, zealously keeping his faith to the dead monarchy amidst
+the downfall of everything. His fortune, still estimated at several
+millions of francs, remained, as it were, in a state of stagnation,
+through his refusal to invest it in any of the enterprises of the
+century. It was known that in all discretion he had loved the Countess,
+even when M. de Quinsac was alive, and had, moreover, offered marriage
+after the latter’s death, at the time when the widow had sought a refuge
+on that damp ground floor with merely an income of some 15,000 francs,
+saved with great difficulty from the wreck of the family fortune. But
+she, who adored her son Gérard, then in his tenth year, and of delicate
+health, had sacrificed everything to the boy from a kind of maternal
+chasteness and a superstitious fear that she might lose him should she
+set another affection and another duty in her life. And the Marquis,
+while bowing to her decision, had continued to worship her with his whole
+soul, ever paying his court as on the first evening when he had seen her,
+still gallant and faithful after a quarter of a century had passed. There
+had never been anything between them, not even the exchange of a kiss.
+
+Seeing how sad she looked, he feared that he might have displeased her,
+and so he asked: “I should have liked to render you happy, but I didn’t
+know how, and the fault can certainly only rest with me. Is Gérard giving
+you any cause for anxiety?”
+
+She shook her head, and then replied: “As long as things remain as they
+are we cannot complain of them, my friend, since we accepted them.”
+
+She referred to her son’s culpable connection with Baroness Duvillard.
+She had ever shown much weakness with regard to that son whom she had had
+so much trouble to rear, for she alone knew what exhaustion, what racial
+collapse was hidden behind his proud bearing. She tolerated his idleness,
+the apathetic disgust which, man of pleasure that he was, had turned him
+from the profession of diplomacy as from that of arms. How many times had
+she not repaired his acts of folly and paid his petty debts, keeping
+silent concerning them, and refusing all pecuniary help from the Marquis,
+who no longer dared offer his millions, so stubbornly intent she was on
+living upon the remnants of her own fortune. And thus she had ended by
+closing her eyes to her son’s scandalous love intrigue, divining in some
+measure how things had happened, through self-abandonment and lack of
+conscience--the man weak, unable to resume possession of himself, and the
+woman holding and retaining him. The Marquis, however, strangely enough,
+had only forgiven the intrigue on the day when Eve had allowed herself to
+be converted.
+
+“You know, my friend, how good-natured Gérard is,” the Countess resumed.
+“In that lie both his strength and weakness. How would you have me scold
+him when he weeps over it all with me? He will tire of that woman.”
+
+M. de Morigny wagged his head. “She is still very beautiful,” said he.
+“And then there’s the daughter. It would be graver still if he were to
+marry her--”
+
+“But the daughter’s infirm?”
+
+“Yes, and you know what would be said: A Quinsac marrying a monster for
+the sake of her millions.”
+
+This was their mutual terror. They knew everything that went on at the
+Duvillards, the affectionate friendship of the uncomely Camille and the
+handsome Gérard, the seeming idyll beneath which lurked the most awful of
+dramas. And they protested with all their indignation. “Oh! that, no, no,
+never!” the Countess declared. “My son in that family, no, I will never
+consent to it.”
+
+Just at that moment General de Bozonnet entered. He was much attached to
+his sister and came to keep her company on the days when she received,
+for the old circle had gradually dwindled down till now only a few
+faithful ones ventured into that grey gloomy _salon_, where one might
+have fancied oneself at thousands of leagues from present-day Paris. And
+forthwith, in order to enliven the room, he related that he had been to
+_déjeuner_ at the Duvillards, and named the guests, Gérard among them. He
+knew that he pleased his sister by going to the banker’s house whence he
+brought her news, a house, too, which he cleansed in some degree by
+conferring on it the great honour of his presence. And he himself in no
+wise felt bored there, for he had long been gained over to the century
+and showed himself of a very accommodating disposition in everything that
+did not pertain to military art.
+
+“That poor little Camille worships Gérard,” said he; “she was devouring
+him with her eyes at table.”
+
+But M. de Morigny gravely intervened: “There lies the danger, a marriage
+would be absolutely monstrous from every point of view.”
+
+The General seemed astonished: “Why, pray? She isn’t beautiful, but it’s
+not only the beauties who marry! And there are her millions. However, our
+dear child would only have to put them to a good use. True, there is also
+the mother; but, _mon Dieu_! such things are so common nowadays in Paris
+society.”
+
+This revolted the Marquis, who made a gesture of utter disgust. What was
+the use of discussion when all collapsed? How could one answer a
+Bozonnet, the last surviving representative of such an illustrious
+family, when he reached such a point as to excuse the infamous morals
+that prevailed under the Republic; after denying his king, too, and
+serving the Empire, faithfully and passionately attaching himself to the
+fortunes and memory of Caesar? However, the Countess also became
+indignant: “Oh! what are you saying, brother? I will never authorize such
+a scandal, I swore so only just now.”
+
+“Don’t swear, sister,” exclaimed the General; “for my part I should like
+to see our Gérard happy. That’s all. And one must admit that he’s not
+good for much. I can understand that he didn’t go into the Army, for that
+profession is done for. But I do not so well understand why he did not
+enter the diplomatic profession, or accept some other occupation. It is
+very fine, no doubt, to run down the present times and declare that a man
+of our sphere cannot possibly do any clean work in them. But, as a matter
+of fact, it is only idle fellows who still say that. And Gérard has but
+one excuse, his lack of aptitude, will and strength.”
+
+Tears had risen to the mother’s eyes. She even trembled, well knowing how
+deceitful were appearances: a mere chill might carry her son off, however
+tall and strong he might look. And was he not indeed a symbol of that
+old-time aristocracy, still so lofty and proud in appearance, though at
+bottom it is but dust?
+
+“Well,” continued the General, “he’s thirty-six now; he’s constantly
+hanging on your hands, and he must make an end of it all.”
+
+However, the Countess silenced him and turned to the Marquis: “Let us put
+our confidence in God, my friend,” said she. “He cannot but come to my
+help, for I have never willingly offended Him.”
+
+“Never!” replied the Marquis, who in that one word set an expression of
+all his grief, all his affection and worship for that woman whom he had
+adored for so many years.
+
+But another faithful friend came in and the conversation changed. M. de
+Larombière, Vice-President of the Appeal Court, was an old man of
+seventy-five, thin, bald and clean shaven but for a pair of little white
+whiskers. And his grey eyes, compressed mouth and square and obstinate
+chin lent an expression of great austerity to his long face. The grief of
+his life was that, being afflicted with a somewhat childish lisp, he had
+never been able to make his full merits known when a public prosecutor,
+for he esteemed himself to be a great orator. And this secret worry
+rendered him morose. In him appeared an incarnation of that old royalist
+France which sulked and only served the Republic against its heart, that
+old stern magistracy which closed itself to all evolution, to all new
+views of things and beings. Of petty “gown” nobility, originally a
+Legitimist but now supporting Orleanism, he believed himself to be the
+one man of wisdom and logic in that _salon_, where he was very proud to
+meet the Marquis.
+
+They talked of the last events; but with them political conversation was
+soon exhausted, amounting as it did to a mere bitter condemnation of men
+and occurrences, for all three were of one mind as to the abominations of
+the Republican _régime_. They themselves, however, were only ruins, the
+remnants of the old parties now all but utterly powerless. The Marquis
+for his part soared on high, yielding in nothing, ever faithful to the
+dead past; he was one of the last representatives of that lofty obstinate
+_noblesse_ which dies when it finds itself without an effort to escape
+its fate. The judge, who at least had a pretender living, relied on a
+miracle, and demonstrated the necessity for one if France were not to
+sink into the depths of misfortune and completely disappear. And as for
+the General, all that he regretted of the two Empires was their great
+wars; he left the faint hope of a Bonapartist restoration on one side to
+declare that by not contenting itself with the Imperial military system,
+and by substituting thereto obligatory service, the nation in arms, the
+Republic had killed both warfare and the country.
+
+When the Countess’s one man-servant came to ask her if she would consent
+to receive Abbé Froment she seemed somewhat surprised. “What can he want
+of me? Show him in,” she said.
+
+She was very pious, and having met Pierre in connection with various
+charitable enterprises, she had been touched by his zeal as well as by
+the saintly reputation which he owed to his Neuilly parishioners.
+
+He, absorbed by his fever, felt intimidated directly he crossed the
+threshold. He could at first distinguish nothing, but fancied he was
+entering some place of mourning, a shadowy spot where human forms seemed
+to melt away, and voices were never raised above a whisper. Then, on
+perceiving the persons present, he felt yet more out of his element, for
+they seemed so sad, so far removed from the world whence he had just
+come, and whither he was about to return. And when the Countess had made
+him sit down beside her in front of the chimney-piece, it was in a low
+voice that he told her the lamentable story of Laveuve, and asked her
+support to secure the man’s admittance to the Asylum for the Invalids of
+Labour.
+
+“Ah! yes,” said she, “that enterprise which my son wished me to belong
+to. But, Monsieur l’Abbé, I have never once attended the Committee
+meetings. So how could I intervene, having assuredly no influence
+whatever?”
+
+Again had the figures of Eve and Gérard arisen before her, for it was at
+this asylum that the pair had first met. And influenced by her sorrowful
+maternal love she was already weakening, although it was regretfully that
+she had lent her name to one of those noisy charitable enterprises, which
+people abused to further their selfish interests in a manner she
+condemned.
+
+“But, madame,” Pierre insisted, “it is a question of a poor starving old
+man. I implore you to be compassionate.”
+
+Although the priest had spoken in a low voice the General drew near.
+“It’s for your old revolutionary that you are running about, is it not,”
+ said he. “Didn’t you succeed with the manager, then? The fact is that
+it’s difficult to feel any pity for fellows who, if they were the
+masters, would, as they themselves say, sweep us all away.”
+
+M. de Larombière jerked his chin approvingly. For some time past he had
+been haunted by the Anarchist peril. But Pierre, distressed and
+quivering, again began to plead his cause. He spoke of all the frightful
+misery, the homes where there was no food, the women and children
+shivering with cold, and the fathers scouring muddy, wintry Paris in
+search of a bit of bread. All that he asked for was a line on a visiting
+card, a kindly word from the Countess, which he would at once carry to
+Baroness Duvillard to prevail on her to set the regulations aside. And
+his words fell one by one, tremulous with stifled tears, in that mournful
+_salon_, like sounds from afar, dying away in a dead world where there
+was no echo left.
+
+Madame de Quinsac turned towards M. de Morigny, but he seemed to take no
+interest in it all. He was gazing fixedly at the fire, with the haughty
+air of a stranger who was indifferent to the things and beings in whose
+midst an error of time compelled him to live. But feeling that the glance
+of the woman he worshipped was fixed upon him he raised his head; and
+then their eyes met for a moment with an expression of infinite
+gentleness, the mournful gentleness of their heroic love.
+
+“_Mon Dieu_!” said she, “I know your merits, Monsieur l’Abbé, and I won’t
+refuse my help to one of your good works.”
+
+Then she went off for a moment, and returned with a card on which she had
+written that she supported with all her heart Monsieur l’Abbé Froment in
+the steps he was taking. And he thanked her and went off delighted, as if
+he carried yet a fresh hope of salvation from that drawing-room where, as
+he retired, gloom and silence once more seemed to fall on that old lady
+and her last faithful friends gathered around the fire, last relics of a
+world that was soon to disappear.
+
+Once outside, Pierre joyfully climbed into his cab again, after giving
+the Princess de Harn’s address in the Avenue Kleber. If he could also
+obtain her approval he would no longer doubt of success. However, there
+was such a crush on the Concorde bridge, that the driver had to walk his
+horse. And, on the foot-pavement, Pierre again saw Duthil, who, with a
+cigar between his lips, was smiling at the crowd, with his amiable
+bird-like heedlessness, happy as he felt at finding the pavement dry and
+the sky blue on leaving that worrying sitting of the Chamber. Seeing how
+gay and triumphant he looked, a sudden inspiration came to the priest,
+who said to himself that he ought to win over this young man, whose
+report had had such a disastrous effect. As it happened, the cab having
+been compelled to stop altogether, the deputy had just recognized him and
+was smiling at him.
+
+“Where are you going, Monsieur Duthil?” Pierre asked.
+
+“Close by, in the Champs Elysées.”
+
+“I’m going that way, and, as I should much like to speak to you for a
+moment, it would be very kind of you to take a seat beside me. I will set
+you down wherever you like.”
+
+“Willingly, Monsieur l’Abbé. It won’t inconvenience you if I finish my
+cigar?”
+
+“Oh! not at all.”
+
+The cab found its way out of the crush, crossed the Place de la Concorde
+and began to ascend the Champs Elysées. And Pierre, reflecting that he
+had very few minutes before him, at once attacked Duthil, quite ready for
+any effort to convince him. He remembered what a sortie the young deputy
+had made against Laveuve at the Baron’s; and thus he was astonished to
+hear him interrupt and say quite pleasantly, enlivened as he seemed by
+the bright sun which was again beginning to shine: “Ah, yes! your old
+drunkard! So you didn’t settle his business with Fonsègue? And what is it
+you want? To have him admitted to-day? Well, you know I don’t oppose it?”
+
+“But there’s your report.”
+
+“My report, oh, my report! But questions change according to the way one
+looks at them. And if you are so anxious about your Laveuve I won’t
+refuse to help you.”
+
+Pierre looked at him in astonishment, at bottom extremely well pleased.
+And there was no further necessity even for him to speak.
+
+“You didn’t take the matter in hand properly,” continued Duthil, leaning
+forward with a confidential air. “It’s the Baron who’s the master at
+home, for reasons which you may divine, which you may very likely know.
+The Baroness does all that he asks without even discussing the point; and
+this morning,--instead of starting on a lot of useless visits, you only
+had to gain his support, particularly as he seemed to be very well
+disposed. And she would then have given way immediately.” Duthil began to
+laugh. “And so,” he continued, “do you know what I’ll do? Well, I’ll gain
+the Baron over to your cause. Yes, I am this moment going to a house
+where he is, where one is certain to find him every day at this time.”
+ Then he laughed more loudly. “And perhaps you are not ignorant of it,
+Monsieur l’Abbé. When he is there you may be certain he never gives a
+refusal. I promise you I’ll make him swear that he will compel his wife
+to grant your man admission this very evening. Only it will, perhaps, be
+rather late.”
+
+Then all at once, as if struck by a fresh idea, Duthil went on: “But why
+shouldn’t you come with me? You secure a line from the Baron, and
+thereupon, without losing a minute, you go in search of the Baroness. Ah!
+yes, the house embarrasses you a little, I understand it. Would you like
+to see only the Baron there? You can wait for him in a little _salon_
+downstairs; I will bring him to you.”
+
+This proposal made Duthil altogether merry, but Pierre, quite scared,
+hesitated at the idea of thus going to Silviane d’Aulnay’s. It was hardly
+a place for him. However, to achieve his purpose, he would have descended
+into the very dwelling of the fiend, and had already done so sometimes
+with Abbé Rose, when there was hope of assuaging wretchedness. So he
+turned to Duthil and consented to accompany him.
+
+Silviane d’Aulnay’s little mansion, a very luxurious one, displaying,
+too, so to say, the luxury of a temple, refined but suggestive of
+gallantry, stood in the Avenue d’Antin, near the Champs Elysées. The
+inmate of this sanctuary, where the orfrays of old dalmaticas glittered
+in the mauve reflections from the windows of stained-glass, had just
+completed her twenty-fifth year. Short and slim she was, of an adorable,
+dark beauty, and all Paris was acquainted with her delicious, virginal
+countenance of a gentle oval, her delicate nose, her little mouth, her
+candid cheeks and artless chin, above all which she wore her black hair
+in thick, heavy bands, which hid her low brow. Her notoriety was due
+precisely to her pretty air of astonishment, the infinite purity of her
+blue eyes, the whole expression of chaste innocence which she assumed
+when it so pleased her, an expression which contrasted powerfully with
+her true nature, shameless creature that she really was, of the most
+monstrous, confessed, and openly-displayed perversity; such as, in fact,
+often spring up from the rotting soil of great cities. Extraordinary
+things were related about Silviane’s tastes and fancies. Some said that
+she was a door-keeper’s, others a doctor’s, daughter. In any case she had
+managed to acquire instruction and manners, for when occasion required
+she lacked neither wit, nor style, nor deportment. She had been rolling
+through the theatres for ten years or so, applauded for her beauty’s
+sake, and she had even ended by obtaining some pretty little successes in
+such parts as those of very pure young girls or loving and persecuted
+young women. Since there had been a question, though, of her entering the
+Comédie Française to play the _rôle_ of Pauline in “Polyeucte,” some
+people had waxed indignant and others had roared with laughter, so
+ridiculous did the idea appear, so outrageous for the majesty of classic
+tragedy. She, however, quiet and stubborn, wished this thing to be, was
+resolved that it should be, certain as she was that she would secure it,
+insolent like a creature to whom men had never yet been able to refuse
+anything.
+
+That day, at three o’clock, Gérard de Quinsac, not knowing how to kill
+the time pending the appointment he had given Eve in the Rue Matignon,
+had thought of calling at Silviane’s, which was in the neighbourhood. She
+was an old caprice of his, and even nowadays he would sometimes linger at
+the little mansion if its pretty mistress felt bored. But he had this
+time found her in a fury; and, reclining in one of the deep armchairs of
+the _salon_ where “old gold” formed the predominant colour, he was
+listening to her complaints. She, standing in a white gown, white indeed
+from head to foot like Eve herself at the _déjeuner_, was speaking
+passionately, and fast convincing the young man, who, won over by so much
+youth and beauty, unconsciously compared her to his other flame, weary
+already of his coming assignation, and so mastered by supineness, both
+moral and physical, that he would have preferred to remain all day in the
+depths of that armchair.
+
+“You hear me, Gérard!” she at last exclaimed, “I’ll have nothing whatever
+to do with him, unless he brings me my nomination.”
+
+Just then Baron Duvillard came in, and forthwith she changed to ice and
+received him like some sorely offended young queen who awaits an
+explanation; whilst he, who foresaw the storm and brought moreover
+disastrous tidings, forced a smile, though very ill at ease. She was the
+stain, the blemish attaching to that man who was yet so sturdy and so
+powerful amidst the general decline of his race. And she was also the
+beginning of justice and punishment, taking all his piled-up gold from
+him by the handful, and by her cruelty avenging those who shivered and
+who starved. And it was pitiful to see that feared and flattered man,
+beneath whom states and governments trembled, here turn pale with
+anxiety, bend low in all humility, and relapse into the senile, lisping
+infancy of acute passion.
+
+“Ah! my dear friend,” said he, “if you only knew how I have been rushing
+about. I had a lot of worrying business, some contractors to see, a big
+advertisement affair to settle, and I feared that I should never be able
+to come and kiss your hand.”
+
+He kissed it, but she let her arm fall, coldly, indifferently, contenting
+herself with looking at him, waiting for what he might have to say to
+her, and embarrassing him to such a point that he began to perspire and
+stammer, unable to express himself. “Of course,” he began, “I also
+thought of you, and went to the Fine Arts Office, where I had received a
+positive promise. Oh! they are still very much in your favour at the Fine
+Arts Office! Only, just fancy, it’s that idiot of a minister, that
+Taboureau,* an old professor from the provinces who knows nothing about
+our Paris, that has expressly opposed your nomination, saying that as
+long as he is in office you shall not appear at the Comédie.”
+
+ * Taboureau is previously described as Minister of Public
+ Instruction. It should be pointed out, however, that
+ although under the present Republic the Ministries of
+ Public Instruction and Fine Arts have occasionally been
+ distinct departments, at other times they have been
+ united, one minister, as in Taboureau’s case, having
+ charge of both.--Trans.
+
+Erect and rigid, she spoke but two words: “And then?”
+
+“And then--well, my dear, what would you have me do? One can’t after all
+overthrow a ministry to enable you to play the part of Pauline.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+He pretended to laugh, but his blood rushed to his face, and the whole of
+his sturdy figure quivered with anguish. “Come, my little Silviane,” said
+he, “don’t be obstinate. You can be so nice when you choose. Give up the
+idea of that _début_. You, yourself, would risk a great deal in it, for
+what would be your worries if you were to fail? You would weep all the
+tears in your body. And besides, you can ask me for so many other things
+which I should be so happy to give you. Come now, at once, make a wish
+and I will gratify it immediately.”
+
+In a frolicsome way he sought to take her hand again. But she drew back
+with an air of much dignity. “No, you hear me, my dear fellow, I will
+have nothing whatever to do with you--nothing, so long as I don’t play
+Pauline.”
+
+He understood her fully, and he knew her well enough to realise how
+rigorously she would treat him. Only a kind of grunt came from his
+contracted throat, though he still tried to treat the matter in a jesting
+way. “Isn’t she bad-tempered to-day!” he resumed at last, turning towards
+Gérard. “What have you done to her that I find her in such a state?”
+
+But the young man, who kept very quiet for fear lest he himself might be
+bespattered in the course of the dispute, continued to stretch himself
+out in a languid way and gave no answer.
+
+But Silviane’s anger burst forth. “What has he done to me? He has pitied
+me for being at the mercy of such a man as you--so egotistical, so
+insensible to the insults heaped upon me. Ought you not to be the first
+to bound with indignation? Ought you not to have exacted my admittance to
+the Comédie as a reparation for the insult? For, after all, it is a
+defeat for you; if I’m considered unworthy, you are struck at the same
+time as I am. And so I’m a drab, eh? Say at once that I’m a creature to
+be driven away from all respectable houses.”
+
+She went on in this style, coming at last to vile words, the abominable
+words which, in moments of anger, always ended by returning to her
+innocent-looking lips. The Baron, who well knew that a syllable from him
+would only increase the foulness of the overflow, vainly turned an
+imploring glance on the Count to solicit his intervention. Gérard, with
+his keen desire for peace and quietness, often brought about a
+reconciliation, but this time he did not stir, feeling too lazy and
+sleepy to interfere. And Silviane all at once came to a finish, repeating
+her trenchant, severing words: “Well, manage as you can, secure my
+_début_, or I’ll have nothing more to do with you, nothing!”
+
+“All right! all right!” Duvillard at last murmured, sneering, but in
+despair, “we’ll arrange it all.”
+
+However, at that moment a servant came in to say that M. Duthil was
+downstairs and wished to speak to the Baron in the smoking-room.
+Duvillard was astonished at this, for Duthil usually came up as though
+the house were his own. Then he reflected that the deputy had doubtless
+brought him some serious news from the Chamber which he wished to impart
+to him confidentially at once. So he followed the servant, leaving Gérard
+and Silviane together.
+
+In the smoking-room, an apartment communicating with the hall by a wide
+bay, the curtain of which was drawn up, Pierre stood with his companion,
+waiting and glancing curiously around him. What particularly struck him
+was the almost religious solemnness of the entrance, the heavy hangings,
+the mystic gleams of the stained-glass, the old furniture steeped in
+chapel-like gloom amidst scattered perfumes of myrrh and incense. Duthil,
+who was still very gay, tapped a low divan with his cane and said: “She
+has a nicely-furnished house, eh? Oh! she knows how to look after her
+interests.”
+
+Then the Baron came in, still quite upset and anxious. And without even
+perceiving the priest, desirous as he was of tidings, he began: “Well,
+what did they do? Is there some very bad news, then?”
+
+“Mège interpellated and applied for a declaration of urgency so as to
+overthrow Barroux. You can imagine what his speech was.”
+
+“Yes, yes, against the _bourgeois_, against me, against you. It’s always
+the same thing--And then?”
+
+“Then--well, urgency wasn’t voted, but, in spite of a very fine defence,
+Barroux only secured a majority of two votes.”
+
+“Two votes, the devil! Then he’s down, and we shall have a Vignon
+ministry next week.”
+
+“That’s what everybody said in the lobbies.”
+
+The Baron frowned, as if he were estimating what good or evil might
+result to the world from such a change. Then, with a gesture of
+displeasure, he said: “A Vignon ministry! The devil! that would hardly be
+any better. Those young democrats pretend to be virtuous, and a Vignon
+ministry wouldn’t admit Silviane to the Comédie.”
+
+This, at first, was his only thought in presence of the crisis which made
+the political world tremble. And so the deputy could not refrain from
+referring to his own anxiety. “Well, and we others, what is our position
+in it all?”
+
+This brought Duvillard back to the situation. With a fresh gesture, this
+time a superbly proud one, he expressed his full and impudent confidence.
+“We others, why we remain as we are; we’ve never been in peril, I
+imagine. Oh! I am quite at ease. Sagnier can publish his famous list if
+it amuses him to do so. If we haven’t long since bought Sagnier and his
+list, it’s because Barroux is a thoroughly honest man, and for my part I
+don’t care to throw money out of the window--I repeat to you that we fear
+nothing.”
+
+Then, as he at last recognised Abbé Froment, who had remained in the
+shade, Duthil explained what service the priest desired of him. And
+Duvillard, in his state of emotion, his heart still rent by Silviane’s
+sternness, must have felt a covert hope that a good action might bring
+him luck; so he at once consented to intervene in favour of Laveuve’s
+admission. Taking a card and a pencil from his pocket-book he drew near
+to the window. “Oh! whatever you desire, Monsieur l’Abbé,” he said, “I
+shall be very happy to participate in this good work. Here, this is what
+I have written: ‘My dear, please do what M. l’Abbé Froment solicits in
+favour of this unfortunate man, since our friend Fonsègue only awaits a
+word from you to take proper steps.’”
+
+At this moment through the open bay Pierre caught sight of Gérard, whom
+Silviane, calm once more, and inquisitive no doubt to know why Duthil had
+called, was escorting into the hall. And the sight of the young woman
+filled him with astonishment, so simple and gentle did she seem to him,
+full of the immaculate candour of a virgin. Never had he dreamt of a lily
+of more unobtrusive yet delicious bloom in the whole garden of innocence.
+
+“Now,” continued Duvillard, “if you wish to hand this card to my wife at
+once, you must go to the Princess de Harn’s, where there is a
+_matinée_--”
+
+“I was going there, Monsieur le Baron.”
+
+“Very good. You will certainly find my wife there; she is to take the
+children there.” Then he paused, for he too had just seen Gérard; and he
+called him: “I say, Gérard, my wife said that she was going to that
+_matinée_, didn’t she? You feel sure--don’t you?--that Monsieur l’Abbé
+will find her there?”
+
+Although the young man was then going to the Rue Matignon, there to wait
+for Eve, it was in the most natural manner possible that he replied: “If
+Monsieur l’Abbé makes haste, I think he will find her there, for she was
+certainly going there before trying on a corsage at Salmon’s.”
+
+Then he kissed Silviane’s hand, and went off with the air of a handsome,
+indolent man, who knows no malice, and is even weary of pleasure.
+
+Pierre, feeling rather embarrassed, was obliged to let Duvillard
+introduce him to the mistress of the house. He bowed in silence, whilst
+she, likewise silent, returned his bow with modest reserve, the tact
+appropriate to the occasion, such as no _ingénue_, even at the Comédie,
+was then capable of. And while the Baron accompanied the priest to the
+door, she returned to the _salon_ with Duthil, who was scarcely screened
+by the door-curtain before he passed his arm round her waist.
+
+When Pierre, who at last felt confident of success, found himself, still
+in his cab, in front of the Princess de Harn’s mansion in the Avenue
+Kleber, he suddenly relapsed into great embarrassment. The avenue was
+crowded with carriages brought thither by the musical _matinée_, and such
+a throng of arriving guests pressed round the entrance, decorated with a
+kind of tent with scallopings of red velvet, that he deemed the house
+unapproachable. How could he manage to get in? And how in his cassock
+could he reach the Princess, and ask for a minute’s conversation with
+Baroness Duvillard? Amidst all his feverishness he had not thought of
+these difficulties. However, he was approaching the door on foot, asking
+himself how he might glide unperceived through the throng, when the sound
+of a merry voice made him turn: “What, Monsieur l’Abbé! Is it possible!
+So now I find you here!”
+
+It was little Massot who spoke. He went everywhere, witnessed ten sights
+a day,--a parliamentary sitting, a funeral, a wedding, any festive or
+mourning scene,--when he wanted a good subject for an article. “What!
+Monsieur l’Abbé,” he resumed, “and so you have come to our amiable
+Princess’s to see the Mauritanians dance!”
+
+He was jesting, for the so-called Mauritanians were simply six Spanish
+dancing-girls, who by the sensuality of their performance were then
+making all Paris rush to the Folies-Bergère. For drawing-room
+entertainments these girls reserved yet more indecorous dances--dances of
+such a character indeed that they would certainly not have been allowed
+in a theatre. And the _beau monde_ rushed to see them at the houses of
+the bolder lady-entertainers, the eccentric and foreign ones like the
+Princess, who in order to draw society recoiled from no “attraction.”
+
+But when Pierre had explained to little Massot that he was still running
+about on the same business, the journalist obligingly offered to pilot
+him. He knew the house, obtained admittance by a back door, and brought
+Pierre along a passage into a corner of the hall, near the very entrance
+of the grand drawing-room. Lofty green plants decorated this hall, and in
+the spot selected Pierre was virtually hidden. “Don’t stir, my dear
+Abbé,” said Massot, “I will try to ferret out the Princess for you. And
+you shall know if Baroness Duvillard has already arrived.”
+
+What surprised Pierre was that every window-shutter of the mansion was
+closed, every chink stopped up so that daylight might not enter, and that
+every room flared with electric lamps, an illumination of supernatural
+intensity. The heat was already very great, the atmosphere heavy with a
+violent perfume of flowers and _odore di femina_. And to Pierre, who felt
+both blinded and stifled, it seemed as if he were entering one of those
+luxurious, unearthly Dens of the Flesh such as the pleasure-world of
+Paris conjures from dreamland. By rising on tiptoes, as the drawing-room
+entrance was wide open, he could distinguish the backs of the women who
+were already seated, rows of necks crowned with fair or dark hair. The
+Mauritanians were doubtless executing their first dance. He did not see
+them, but he could divine the lascivious passion of the dance from the
+quiver of all those women’s necks, which swayed as beneath a great gust
+of wind. Then laughter arose and a tempest of bravos, quite a tumult of
+enjoyment.
+
+“I can’t put my hand on the Princess; you must wait a little,” Massot
+returned to say. “I met Janzen and he promised to bring her to me. Don’t
+you know Janzen?”
+
+Then, in part because his profession willed it, and in part for
+pleasure’s sake, he began to gossip. The Princess was a good friend of
+his. He had described her first _soiree_ during the previous year, when
+she had made her _début_ at that mansion on her arrival in Paris. He knew
+the real truth about her so far as it could be known. Rich? yes, perhaps
+she was, for she spent enormous sums. Married she must have been, and to
+a real prince, too; no doubt she was still married to him, in spite of
+her story of widowhood. Indeed, it seemed certain that her husband, who
+was as handsome as an archangel, was travelling about with a vocalist. As
+for having a bee in her bonnet that was beyond discussion, as clear as
+noonday. Whilst showing much intelligence, she constantly and suddenly
+shifted. Incapable of any prolonged effort, she went from one thing that
+had awakened her curiosity to another, never attaching herself anywhere.
+After ardently busying herself with painting, she had lately become
+impassioned for chemistry, and was now letting poetry master her.
+
+“And so you don’t know Janzen,” continued Massot. “It was he who threw
+her into chemistry, into the study of explosives especially, for, as you
+may imagine, the only interest in chemistry for her is its connection
+with Anarchism. She, I think, is really an Austrian, though one must
+always doubt anything she herself says. As for Janzen, he calls himself a
+Russian, but he’s probably German. Oh! he’s the most unobtrusive,
+enigmatical man in the world, without a home, perhaps without a name--a
+terrible fellow with an unknown past. I myself hold proofs which make me
+think that he took part in that frightful crime at Barcelona. At all
+events, for nearly a year now I’ve been meeting him in Paris, where the
+police no doubt are watching him. And nothing can rid me of the idea that
+he merely consented to become our lunatic Princess’s lover in order to
+throw the detectives off the scent. He affects to live in the midst of
+_fêtes_, and he has introduced to the house some extraordinary people,
+Anarchists of all nationalities and all colours--for instance, one
+Raphanel, that fat, jovial little man yonder, a Frenchman he is, and his
+companions would do well to mistrust him. Then there’s a Bergaz, a
+Spaniard, I think, an obscure jobber at the Bourse, whose sensual,
+blobber-lipped mouth is so disquieting. And there are others and others,
+adventurers and bandits from the four corners of the earth!... Ah! the
+foreign colonies of our Parisian pleasure-world! There are a few spotless
+fine names, a few real great fortunes among them, but as for the rest,
+ah! what a herd!”
+
+Rosemonde’s own drawing-room was summed up in those words: resounding
+titles, real millionaires, then, down below, the most extravagant medley
+of international imposture and turpitude. And Pierre thought of that
+internationalism, that cosmopolitanism, that flight of foreigners which,
+ever denser and denser, swooped down upon Paris. Most certainly it came
+thither to enjoy it, as to a city of adventure and delight, and it helped
+to rot it a little more. Was it then a necessary thing, that
+decomposition of the great cities which have governed the world, that
+affluxion of every passion, every desire, every gratification, that
+accumulation of reeking soil from all parts of the world, there where, in
+beauty and intelligence, blooms the flower of civilisation?
+
+However, Janzen appeared, a tall, thin fellow of about thirty, very fair
+with grey, pale, harsh eyes, and a pointed beard and flowing curly hair
+which elongated his livid, cloudy face. He spoke indifferent French in a
+low voice and without a gesture. And he declared that the Princess could
+not be found; he had looked for her everywhere. Possibly, if somebody had
+displeased her, she had shut herself up in her room and gone to bed,
+leaving her guests to amuse themselves in all freedom in whatever way
+they might choose.
+
+“Why, but here she is!” suddenly said Massot.
+
+Rosemonde was indeed there, in the vestibule, watching the door as if she
+expected somebody. Short, slight, and strange rather than pretty, with
+her delicate face, her sea-green eyes, her small quivering nose, her
+rather large and over-ruddy mouth, which was parted so that one could see
+her superb teeth, she that day wore a sky-blue gown spangled with silver;
+and she had silver bracelets on her arms and a silver circlet in her pale
+brown hair, which rained down in curls and frizzy, straggling locks as
+though waving in a perpetual breeze.
+
+“Oh! whatever you desire, Monsieur l’Abbé,” she said to Pierre as soon as
+she knew his business. “If they don’t take your old man in at our asylum,
+send him to me, I’ll take him, I will; I will sleep him somewhere here.”
+
+Still, she remained disturbed, and continually glanced towards the door.
+And on the priest asking if Baroness Duvillard had yet arrived, “Why no!”
+ she cried, “and I am much surprised at it. She is to bring her son and
+daughter. Yesterday, Hyacinthe positively promised me that he would
+come.”
+
+There lay her new caprice. If her passion for chemistry was giving way to
+a budding taste for decadent, symbolical verse, it was because one
+evening, whilst discussing Occultism with Hyacinthe, she had discovered
+an extraordinary beauty in him: the astral beauty of Nero’s wandering
+soul! At least, said she, the signs of it were certain.
+
+And all at once she quitted Pierre: “Ah, at last!” she cried, feeling
+relieved and happy. Then she darted forward: Hyacinthe was coming in with
+his sister Camille.
+
+On the very threshold, however, he had just met the friend on whose
+account he was there, young Lord George Eldrett, a pale and languid
+stripling with the hair of a girl; and he scarcely condescended to notice
+the tender greeting of Rosemonde, for he professed to regard woman as an
+impure and degrading creature. Distressed by such coldness, she followed
+the two young men, returning in their rear into the reeking, blinding
+furnace of the drawing-room.
+
+Massot, however, had been obliging enough to stop Camille and bring her
+to Pierre, who at the first words they exchanged relapsed into despair.
+“What, mademoiselle, has not madame your mother accompanied you here?”
+
+The girl, clad according to her wont in a dark gown, this time of
+peacock-blue, was nervous, with wicked eyes and sibilant voice. And as
+she ragefully drew up her little figure, her deformity, her left shoulder
+higher than the right one, became more apparent than ever. “No,” she
+rejoined, “she was unable. She had something to try on at her
+dressmaker’s. We stopped too long at the Exposition du Lis, and she
+requested us to set her down at Salmon’s door on our way here.”
+
+It was Camille herself who had skilfully prolonged the visit to the art
+show, still hoping to prevent her mother from meeting Gérard. And her
+rage arose from the ease with which her mother had got rid of her, thanks
+to that falsehood of having something to try on.
+
+“But,” ingenuously said Pierre, “if I went at once to this person Salmon,
+I might perhaps be able to send up my card.”
+
+Camille gave a shrill laugh, so funny did the idea appear to her. Then
+she retorted: “Oh! who knows if you would still find her there? She had
+another pressing appointment, and is no doubt already keeping it!”
+
+“Well, then, I will wait for her here. She will surely come to fetch you,
+will she not?”
+
+“Fetch us? Oh no! since I tell you that she has other important affairs
+to attend to. The carriage will take us home alone, my brother and I.”
+
+Increasing bitterness was infecting the girl’s pain-fraught irony. Did he
+not understand her then, that priest who asked such naive questions which
+were like dagger-thrusts in her heart? Yet he must know, since everybody
+knew the truth.
+
+“Ah! how worried I am,” Pierre resumed, so grieved indeed that tears
+almost came to his eyes. “It’s still on account of that poor man about
+whom I have been busying myself since this morning. I have a line from
+your father, and Monsieur Gérard told me--” But at this point he paused
+in confusion, and amidst all his thoughtlessness of the world, absorbed
+as he was in the one passion of charity, he suddenly divined the truth.
+“Yes,” he added mechanically, “I just now saw your father again with
+Monsieur de Quinsac.”
+
+“I know, I know,” replied Camille, with the suffering yet scoffing air of
+a girl who is ignorant of nothing. “Well, Monsieur l’Abbé, if you have a
+line from papa for mamma, you must wait till mamma has finished her
+business. You might come to the house about six o’clock, but I doubt if
+you’ll find her there, as she may well be detained.”
+
+While Camille thus spoke, her murderous eyes glistened, and each word she
+uttered, simple as it seemed, became instinct with ferocity, as if it
+were a knife, which she would have liked to plunge into her mother’s
+breast. In all certainty she had never before hated her mother to such a
+point as this in her envy of her beauty and her happiness in being loved.
+And the irony which poured from the girl’s virgin lips, before that
+simple priest, was like a flood of mire with which she sought to submerge
+her rival.
+
+Just then, however, Rosemonde came back again, feverish and flurried as
+usual. And she led Camille away: “Ah, my dear, make haste. They are
+extraordinary, delightful, intoxicating!”
+
+Janzen and little Massot also followed the Princess. All the men hastened
+from the adjoining rooms, scrambled and plunged into the _salon_ at the
+news that the Mauritanians had again begun to dance. That time it must
+have been the frantic, lascivious gallop that Paris whispered about, for
+Pierre saw the rows of necks and heads, now fair, now dark, wave and
+quiver as beneath a violent wind. With every window-shutter closed, the
+conflagration of the electric lamps turned the place into a perfect
+brazier, reeking with human effluvia. And there came a spell of rapture,
+fresh laughter and bravos, all the delight of an overflowing orgy.
+
+When Pierre again found himself on the footwalk, he remained for a moment
+bewildered, blinking, astonished to be in broad daylight once more.
+Half-past four would soon strike, but he had nearly two hours to wait
+before calling at the house in the Rue Godot-de-Mauroy. What should he
+do? He paid his driver; preferring to descend the Champs Elysées on foot,
+since he had some time to lose. A walk, moreover, might calm the fever
+which was burning his hands, in the passion of charity which ever since
+the morning had been mastering him more and more, in proportion as he
+encountered fresh and fresh obstacles. He now had but one pressing
+desire, to complete his good work, since success henceforth seemed
+certain. And he tried to restrain his steps and walk leisurely down the
+magnificent avenue, which had now been dried by the bright sun, and was
+enlivened by a concourse of people, while overhead the sky was again
+blue, lightly blue, as in springtime.
+
+Nearly two hours to lose while, yonder, the wretched Laveuve lay with
+life ebbing from him on his bed of rags, in his icy den. Sudden feelings
+of revolt, of well-nigh irresistible impatience ascended from Pierre’s
+heart, making him quiver with desire to run off and at once find Baroness
+Duvillard so as to obtain from her the all-saving order. He felt sure
+that she was somewhere near, in one of those quiet neighbouring streets,
+and great was his perturbation, his grief-fraught anger at having to wait
+in this wise to save a human life until she should have attended to those
+affairs of hers, of which her daughter spoke with such murderous glances!
+He seemed to hear a formidable cracking, the family life of the
+_bourgeoisie_ was collapsing: the father was at a hussy’s house, the
+mother with a lover, the son and daughter knew everything; the former
+gliding to idiotic perversity, the latter enraged and dreaming of
+stealing her mother’s lover to make a husband of him. And meantime the
+splendid equipages descended the triumphal avenue, and the crowd with its
+luxury flowed along the sidewalks, one and all joyous and superb,
+seemingly with no idea that somewhere at the far end there was a gaping
+abyss wherein everyone of them would fall and be annihilated!
+
+When Pierre got as far as the Summer Circus he was much surprised at
+again seeing Salvat, the journeyman engineer, on one of the avenue seats.
+He must have sunk down there, overcome by weariness and hunger, after
+many a vain search. However, his jacket was still distended by something
+he carried in or under it, some bit of bread, no doubt, which he meant to
+take home with him. And leaning back, with his arms hanging listlessly,
+he was watching with dreamy eyes the play of some very little children,
+who, with the help of their wooden spades, were laboriously raising
+mounds of sand, and then destroying them by dint of kicks. As he looked
+at them his red eyelids moistened, and a very gentle smile appeared on
+his poor discoloured lips. This time Pierre, penetrated by disquietude,
+wished to approach and question him. But Salvat distrustfully rose and
+went off towards the Circus, where a concert was drawing to a close; and
+he prowled around the entrance of that festive edifice in which two
+thousand happy people were heaped up together listening to music.
+
+
+
+
+V. FROM RELIGION TO ANARCHY
+
+AS Pierre was reaching the Place de la Concorde he suddenly remembered
+the appointment which Abbé Rose had given him for five o’clock at the
+Madeleine, and which he was forgetting in the feverishness born of his
+repeated steps to save Laveuve. And at thought of it he hastened on, well
+pleased at having this appointment to occupy and keep him patient.
+
+When he entered the church he was surprised to find it so dark. There
+were only a few candles burning, huge shadows were flooding the nave, and
+amidst the semi-obscurity a very loud, clear voice spoke on with a
+ceaseless streaming of words. All that one could at first distinguish of
+the numerous congregation was a pale, vague mass of heads, motionless
+with extreme attention. In the pulpit stood Monseigneur Martha, finishing
+his third address on the New Spirit. The two former ones had re-echoed
+far and wide, and so what is called “all Paris” was there--women of
+society, politicians, and writers, who were captivated by the speaker’s
+artistic oratory, his warm, skilful language, and his broad, easy
+gestures, worthy of a great actor.
+
+Pierre did not wish to disturb the solemn attention, the quivering
+silence above which the prelate’s voice alone rang out. Accordingly he
+resolved to wait before seeking Abbé Rose, and remained standing near a
+pillar. A parting gleam of daylight fell obliquely on Monseigneur Martha,
+who looked tall and sturdy in his white surplice, and scarcely showed a
+grey hair, although he was more than fifty. He had handsome features:
+black, keen eyes, a commanding nose, a mouth and chin of the greatest
+firmness of contour. What more particularly struck one, however, what
+gained the heart of every listener, was the expression of extreme
+amiability and anxious sympathy which ever softened the imperious
+haughtiness of the prelate’s face.
+
+Pierre had formerly known him as Curé, or parish priest, of Ste.
+Clotilde. He was doubtless of Italian origin, but he had been born in
+Paris, and had quitted the seminary of St. Sulpice with the best possible
+record. Very intelligent and very ambitious, he had evinced an activity
+which even made his superiors anxious. Then, on being appointed Bishop of
+Persepolis, he had disappeared, gone to Rome, where he had spent five
+years engaged in work of which very little was known. However, since his
+return he had been astonishing Paris by his brilliant propaganda, busying
+himself with the most varied affairs, and becoming much appreciated and
+very powerful at the archiepiscopal residence. He devoted himself in
+particular, and with wonderful results, to the task of increasing the
+subscriptions for the completion of the basilica of the Sacred Heart. He
+recoiled from nothing, neither from journeys, nor lectures, nor
+collections, nor applications to Government, nor even endeavours among
+Israelites and Freemasons. And at last, again enlarging his sphere of
+action, he had undertaken to reconcile Science with Catholicism, and to
+bring all Christian France to the Republic, on all sides expounding the
+policy of Pope Leo XIII., in order that the Church might finally triumph.
+
+However, in spite of the advances of this influential and amiable man,
+Pierre scarcely liked him. He only felt grateful to him for one thing,
+the appointment of good Abbé Rose as curate at St. Pierre de Montmartre,
+which appointment he had secured for him no doubt in order to prevent
+such a scandal as the punishment of an old priest for showing himself too
+charitable. On thus finding and hearing the prelate speak in that
+renowned pulpit of the Madeleine, still and ever pursuing his work of
+conquest, Pierre remembered how he had seen him at the Duvillards’ during
+the previous spring, when, with his usual _maestria_, he had achieved his
+greatest triumph--the conversion of Eve to Catholicism. That church, too,
+had witnessed her baptism, a wonderfully pompous ceremony, a perfect gala
+offered to the public which figures in all the great events of Parisian
+life. Gérard had knelt down, moved to tears, whilst the Baron triumphed
+like a good-natured husband who was happy to find religion establishing
+perfect harmony in his household. It was related among the spectators
+that Eve’s family, and particularly old Justus Steinberger, her father,
+was not in reality much displeased by the affair. The old man sneeringly
+remarked, indeed, that he knew his daughter well enough to wish her to
+belong to his worst enemy. In the banking business there is a class of
+security which one is pleased to see discounted by one’s rivals. With the
+stubborn hope of triumph peculiar to his race, Justus, consoling himself
+for the failure of his first scheme, doubtless considered that Eve would
+prove a powerful dissolving agent in the Christian family which she had
+entered, and thus help to make all wealth and power fall into the hands
+of the Jews.
+
+However, Pierre’s vision faded. Monseigneur Martha’s voice was rising
+with increase of volume, celebrating, amidst the quivering of the
+congregation, the benefits that would accrue from the New Spirit, which
+was at last about to pacify France and restore her to her due rank and
+power. Were there not certain signs of this resurrection on every hand?
+The New Spirit was the revival of the Ideal, the protest of the soul
+against degrading materialism, the triumph of spirituality over filthy
+literature; and it was also Science accepted, but set in its proper
+place, reconciled with Faith, since it no longer pretended to encroach on
+the latter’s sacred domain; and it was further the Democracy welcomed in
+fatherly fashion, the Republic legitimated, recognised in her turn as
+Eldest Daughter of the Church. A breath of poetry passed by. The Church
+opened her heart to all her children, there would henceforth be but
+concord and delight if the masses, obedient to the New Spirit, would give
+themselves to the Master of love as they had given themselves to their
+kings, recognising that the Divinity was the one unique power, absolute
+sovereign of both body and soul.
+
+Pierre was now listening attentively, wondering where it was that he had
+previously heard almost identical words. And suddenly he remembered; and
+could fancy that he was again at Rome, listening to the last words of
+Monsignor Nani, the Assessor of the Holy Office. Here, again, he found
+the dream of a democratic Pope, ceasing to support the compromised
+monarchies, and seeking to subdue the masses. Since Caesar was down, or
+nearly so, might not the Pope realise the ancient ambition of his
+forerunners and become both emperor and pontiff, the sovereign, universal
+divinity on earth? This, too, was the dream in which Pierre himself, with
+apostolic naïveté, had indulged when writing his book, “New Rome”: a
+dream from which the sight of the real Rome had so roughly roused him. At
+bottom it was merely a policy of hypocritical falsehood, the priestly
+policy which relies on time, and is ever tenacious, carrying on the work
+of conquest with extraordinary suppleness, resolved to profit by
+everything. And what an evolution it was, the Church of Rome making
+advances to Science, to the Democracy, to the Republican _régimes_,
+convinced that it would be able to devour them if only it were allowed
+the time! Ah! yes, the New Spirit was simply the Old Spirit of
+Domination, incessantly reviving and hungering to conquer and possess the
+world.
+
+Pierre thought that he recognised among the congregation certain deputies
+whom he had seen at the Chamber. Wasn’t that tall gentleman with the fair
+beard, who listened so devoutly, one of Monferrand’s creatures? It was
+said that Monferrand, once a devourer of priests, was now smilingly
+coquetting with the clergy. Quite an underhand evolution was beginning in
+the sacristies, orders from Rome flitted hither and thither; it was a
+question of accepting the new form of government, and absorbing it by
+dint of invasion. France was still the Eldest Daughter of the Church, the
+only great nation which had sufficient health and strength to place the
+Pope in possession of his temporal power once more. So France must be
+won; it was well worth one’s while to espouse her, even if she were
+Republican. In the eager struggle of ambition the bishop made use of the
+minister, who thought it to his interest to lean upon the bishop. But
+which of the two would end by devouring the other? And to what a _rôle_
+had religion sunk: an electoral weapon, an element in a parliamentary
+majority, a decisive, secret reason for obtaining or retaining a
+ministerial portfolio! Of divine charity, the basis of religion, there
+was no thought, and Pierre’s heart filled with bitterness as he
+remembered the recent death of Cardinal Bergerot, the last of the great
+saints and pure minds of the French episcopacy, among which there now
+seemed to be merely a set of intriguers and fools.
+
+However, the address was drawing to a close. In a glowing peroration,
+which evoked the basilica of the Sacred Heart dominating Paris with the
+saving symbol of the Cross from the sacred Mount of the Martyrs,*
+Monseigneur Martha showed that great city of Paris Christian once more
+and master of the world, thanks to the moral omnipotence conferred upon
+it by the divine breath of the New Spirit. Unable to applaud, the
+congregation gave utterance to a murmur of approving rapture, delighted
+as it was with this miraculous finish which reassured both pocket and
+conscience. Then Monseigneur Martha quitted the pulpit with a noble step,
+whilst a loud noise of chairs broke upon the dark peacefulness of the
+church, where the few lighted candles glittered like the first stars in
+the evening sky. A long stream of men, vague, whispering shadows, glided
+away. The women alone remained, praying on their knees.
+
+ * Montmartre.
+
+Pierre, still in the same spot, was rising on tip-toes, looking for Abbé
+Rose, when a hand touched him. It was that of the old priest, who had
+seen him from a distance. “I was yonder near the pulpit,” said he, “and I
+saw you plainly, my dear child. Only I preferred to wait so as to disturb
+nobody. What a beautiful address dear Monseigneur delivered!”
+
+He seemed, indeed, much moved. But there was deep sadness about his
+kindly mouth and clear childlike eyes, whose smile as a rule illumined
+his good, round white face. “I was afraid you might go off without seeing
+me,” he resumed, “for I have something to tell you. You know that poor
+old man to whom I sent you this morning and in whom I asked you to
+interest yourself? Well, on getting home I found a lady there, who
+sometimes brings me a little money for my poor. Then I thought to myself
+that the three francs I gave you were really too small a sum, and as the
+thought worried me like a kind of remorse, I couldn’t resist the impulse,
+but went this afternoon to the Rue des Saules myself.”
+
+He lowered his voice from a feeling of respect, in order not to disturb
+the deep, sepulchral silence of the church. Covert shame, moreover,
+impeded his utterance, shame at having again relapsed into the sin of
+blind, imprudent charity, as his superiors reproachfully said. And,
+quivering, he concluded in a very low voice indeed: “And so, my child,
+picture my grief. I had five francs more to give the poor old man, and I
+found him dead.”
+
+Pierre suddenly shuddered. But he was unwilling to understand: “What,
+dead!” he cried. “That old man dead! Laveuve dead?”
+
+“Yes, I found him dead--ah! amidst what frightful wretchedness, like an
+old animal that has laid itself down for the finish on a heap of rags in
+the depths of a hole. No neighbours had assisted him in his last moments;
+he had simply turned himself towards the wall. And ah! how bare and cold
+and deserted it was! And what a pang for a poor creature to go off like
+that without a word, a caress. Ah! my heart bounded within me and it is
+still bleeding!”
+
+Pierre in his utter amazement at first made but a gesture of revolt
+against imbecile social cruelty. Had the bread left near the unfortunate
+wretch, and devoured too eagerly, perhaps, after long days of abstinence,
+been the cause of his death? Or was not this rather the fatal
+_dénouement_ of an ended life, worn away by labour and privation?
+However, what did the cause signify? Death had come and delivered the
+poor man. “It isn’t he that I pity,” Pierre muttered at last; “it is
+we--we who witness all that, we who are guilty of these abominations.”
+
+But good Abbé Rose was already becoming resigned, and would only think of
+forgiveness and hope. “No, no, my child, rebellion is evil. If we are all
+guilty we can only implore Providence to forget our faults. I had given
+you an appointment here hoping for good news; and it’s I who come to tell
+you of that frightful thing. Let us be penitent and pray.”
+
+Then he knelt upon the flagstones near the pillar, in the rear of the
+praying women, who looked black and vague in the gloom. And he inclined
+his white head, and for a long time remained in a posture of humility.
+
+But Pierre was unable to pray, so powerfully did revolt stir him. He did
+not even bend his knees, but remained erect and quivering. His heart
+seemed to have been crushed; not a tear came to his ardent eyes. So
+Laveuve had died yonder, stretched on his litter of rags, his hands
+clenched in his obstinate desire to cling to his life of torture, whilst
+he, Pierre, again glowing with the flame of charity, consumed by
+apostolic zeal, was scouring Paris to find him for the evening a clean
+bed on which he might be saved. Ah! the atrocious irony of it all! He
+must have been at the Duvillards’ in the warm _salon_, all blue and
+silver, whilst the old man was expiring; and it was for a wretched corpse
+that he had then hastened to the Chamber of Deputies, to the Countess de
+Quinsac’s, to that creature Silviane’s, and to that creature Rosemonde’s.
+And it was for that corpse, freed from life, escaped from misery as from
+prison, that he had worried people, broken in upon their egotism,
+disturbed the peace of some, threatened the pleasures of others! What was
+the use of hastening from the parliamentary den to the cold _salon_ where
+the dust of the past was congealing; of going from the sphere of
+middle-class debauchery to that of cosmopolitan extravagance, since one
+always arrived too late, and saved people when they were already dead?
+How ridiculous to have allowed himself to be fired once more by that
+blaze of charity, that final conflagration, only the ashes of which he
+now felt within him? This time he thought he was dead himself; he was
+naught but an empty sepulchre.
+
+And all the frightful void and chaos which he had felt that morning at
+the basilica of the Sacred Heart after his mass became yet deeper,
+henceforth unfathomable. If charity were illusory and useless the Gospel
+crumbled, the end of the Book was nigh. After centuries of stubborn
+efforts, Redemption through Christianity failed, and another means of
+salvation was needed by the world in presence of the exasperated thirst
+for justice which came from the duped and wretched nations. They would
+have no more of that deceptive paradise, the promise of which had so long
+served to prop up social iniquity; they demanded that the question of
+happiness should be decided upon this earth. But how? By means of what
+new religion, what combination between the sentiment of the Divine and
+the necessity for honouring life in its sovereignty and its fruitfulness?
+Therein lay the grievous, torturing problem, into the midst of which
+Pierre was sinking; he, a priest, severed by vows of chastity and
+superstition from the rest of mankind.
+
+He had ceased to believe in the efficacy of alms; it was not sufficient
+that one should be charitable, henceforth one must be just. Given
+justice, indeed, horrid misery would disappear, and no such thing as
+charity would be needed. Most certainly there was no lack of
+compassionate hearts in that grievous city of Paris; charitable
+foundations sprouted forth there like green leaves at the first warmth of
+springtide. There were some for every age, every peril, every misfortune.
+Through the concern shown for mothers, children were succoured even
+before they were born; then came the infant and orphan asylums lavishly
+provided for all sorts of classes; and, afterwards, man was followed
+through his life, help was tendered on all sides, particularly as he grew
+old, by a multiplicity of asylums, almshouses, and refuges. And there
+were all the hands stretched out to the forsaken ones, the disinherited
+ones, even the criminals, all sorts of associations to protect the weak,
+societies for the prevention of crime, homes that offered hospitality to
+those who repented. Whether as regards the propagation of good deeds, the
+support of the young, the saving of life, the bestowal of pecuniary help,
+or the promotion of guilds, pages and pages would have been needed merely
+to particularise the extraordinary vegetation of charity that sprouted
+between the paving-stones of Paris with so fine a vigour, in which
+goodness of soul was mingled with social vanity. Still that could not
+matter, since charity redeemed and purified all. But how terrible the
+proposition that this charity was a useless mockery! What! after so many
+centuries of Christian charity not a sore had healed. Misery had only
+grown and spread, irritated even to rage. Incessantly aggravated, the
+evil was reaching the point when it would be impossible to tolerate it
+for another day, since social injustice was neither arrested nor even
+diminished thereby. And besides, if only one single old man died of cold
+and hunger, did not the social edifice, raised on the theory of charity,
+collapse? But one victim, and society was condemned, thought Pierre.
+
+He now felt such bitterness of heart that he could remain no longer in
+that church where the shadows ever slowly fell, blurring the sanctuaries
+and the large pale images of Christ nailed upon the Cross. All was about
+to sink into darkness, and he could hear nothing beyond an expiring
+murmur of prayers, a plaint from the women who were praying on their
+knees, in the depths of the shrouding gloom.
+
+At the same time he hardly liked to go off without saying a word to Abbé
+Rose, who in his entreaties born of simple faith left the happiness and
+peace of mankind to the good pleasure of the Invisible. However, fearing
+that he might disturb him, Pierre was making up his mind to retire, when
+the old priest of his own accord raised his head. “Ah, my child,” said
+he, “how difficult it is to be good in a reasonable manner. Monseigneur
+Martha has scolded me again, and but for the forgiveness of God I should
+fear for my salvation.”
+
+For a moment Pierre paused under the porticus of the Madeleine, on the
+summit of the great flight of steps which, rising above the railings,
+dominates the Place. Before him was the Rue Royale dipping down to the
+expanse of the Place de la Concorde, where rose the obelisk and the pair
+of plashing fountains. And, farther yet, the paling colonnade of the
+Chamber of Deputies bounded the horizon. It was a vista of sovereign
+grandeur under that pale sky over which twilight was slowly stealing, and
+which seemed to broaden the thoroughfares, throw back the edifices, and
+lend them the quivering, soaring aspect of the palaces of dreamland. No
+other capital in the world could boast a scene of such aerial pomp, such
+grandiose magnificence, at that hour of vagueness, when falling night
+imparts to cities a dreamy semblance, the infinite of human immensity.
+
+Motionless and hesitating in presence of the opening expanse, Pierre
+distressfully pondered as to whither he should go now that all which he
+had so passionately sought to achieve since the morning had suddenly
+crumbled away. Was he still bound for the Duvillard mansion in the Rue
+Godot-de-Mauroy? He no longer knew. Then the exasperating remembrance,
+with its cruel irony, returned to him. Since Laveuve was dead, of what
+use was it for him to kill time and perambulate the pavements pending the
+arrival of six o’clock? The idea that he had a home, and that the most
+simple course would be to return to it, did not even occur to him. He
+felt as if there were something of importance left for him to do, though
+he could not possibly tell what it might be. It seemed to him to be
+everywhere and yet very far away, to be so vague and so difficult of
+accomplishment that he would certainly never be in time or have
+sufficient power to do it. However, with heavy feet and tumultuous brain
+he descended the steps and, yielding to some obstinate impulse, began to
+walk through the flower-market, a late winter market where the first
+azaleas were opening with a little shiver. Some women were purchasing
+Nice roses and violets; and Pierre looked at them as if he were
+interested in all that soft, delicate, perfumed luxury. But suddenly he
+felt a horror of it and went off, starting along the Boulevards.
+
+He walked straight before him without knowing why or whither. The falling
+darkness surprised him as if it were an unexpected phenomenon. Raising
+his eyes to the sky he felt astonished at seeing its azure gently pale
+between the slender black streaks of the chimney funnels. And the huge
+golden letters by which names or trades were advertised on every balcony
+also seemed to him singular in the last gleams of the daylight. Never
+before had he paid attention to the motley tints seen on the
+house-fronts, the painted mirrors, the blinds, the coats of arms, the
+posters of violent hues, the magnificent shops, like drawing-rooms and
+boudoirs open to the full light. And then, both in the roadway and along
+the foot-pavements, between the blue, red or yellow columns and kiosks,
+what mighty traffic there was, what an extraordinary crowd! The vehicles
+rolled along in a thundering stream: on all sides billows of cabs were
+parted by the ponderous tacking of huge omnibuses, which suggested lofty,
+bright-hued battle-ships. And on either hand, and farther and farther,
+and even among the wheels, the flood of passengers rushed on incessantly,
+with the conquering haste of ants in a state of revolution. Whence came
+all those people, and whither were all those vehicles going? How
+stupefying and torturing it all was.
+
+Pierre was still walking straight ahead, mechanically, carried on by his
+gloomy reverie. Night was coming, the first gas-burners were being
+lighted; it was the dusk of Paris, the hour when real darkness has not
+yet come, when the electric lights flame in the dying day. Lamps shone
+forth on all sides, the shop-fronts were being illumined. Soon, moreover,
+right along the Boulevards the vehicles would carry their vivid starry
+lights, like a milky way on the march betwixt the foot-pavements all
+glowing with lanterns and cordons and girandoles, a dazzling profusion of
+radiance akin to sunlight. And the shouts of the drivers and the jostling
+of the foot passengers re-echoed the parting haste of the Paris which is
+all business or passion, which is absorbed in the merciless struggle for
+love and for money. The hard day was over, and now the Paris of Pleasure
+was lighting up for its night of _fête_. The cafés, the wine shops, the
+restaurants, flared and displayed their bright metal bars, and their
+little white tables behind their clear and lofty windows, whilst near
+their doors, by way of temptation, were oysters and choice fruits. And
+the Paris which was thus awaking with the first flashes of the gas was
+already full of the gaiety of enjoyment, already yielding to an unbridled
+appetite for whatsoever may be purchased.
+
+However, Pierre had a narrow escape from being knocked down. A flock of
+newspaper hawkers came out of a side street, and darted through the crowd
+shouting the titles of the evening journals. A fresh edition of the “Voix
+du Peuple” gave rise, in particular, to a deafening clamour, which rose
+above all the rumbling of wheels. At regular intervals hoarse voices
+raised and repeated the cry: “Ask for the ‘Voix du Peuple’--the new
+scandal of the African Railway Lines, the repulse of the ministry, the
+thirty-two bribe-takers of the Chamber and the Senate!” And these
+announcements, set in huge type, could be read on the copies of the
+paper, which the hawkers flourished like banners. Accustomed as it was to
+such filth, saturated with infamy, the crowd continued on its way without
+paying much attention. Still a few men paused and bought the paper, while
+painted women, who had come down to the Boulevards in search of a dinner,
+trailed their skirts and waited for some chance lover, glancing
+interrogatively at the outside customers of the cafés. And meantime the
+dishonouring shout of the newspaper hawkers, that cry in which there was
+both smirch and buffet, seemed like the last knell of the day, ringing
+the nation’s funeral at the outset of the night of pleasure which was
+beginning.
+
+Then Pierre once more remembered his morning and that frightful house in
+the Rue des Saules, where so much want and suffering were heaped up. He
+again saw the yard filthy like a quagmire, the evil-smelling staircases,
+the sordid, bare, icy rooms, the families fighting for messes which even
+stray dogs would not have eaten; the mothers, with exhausted breasts,
+carrying screaming children to and fro; the old men who fell in corners
+like brute beasts, and died of hunger amidst filth. And then came his
+other hours with the magnificence or the quietude or the gaiety of the
+_salons_ through which he had passed, the whole insolent display of
+financial Paris, and political Paris, and society Paris. And at last he
+came to the dusk, and to that Paris-Sodom and Paris-Gomorrah before him,
+which was lighting itself up for the night, for the abominations of that
+accomplice night which, like fine dust, was little by little submerging
+the expanse of roofs. And the hateful monstrosity of it all howled aloud
+under the pale sky where the first pure, twinkling stars were gleaming.
+
+A great shudder came upon Pierre as he thought of all that mass of
+iniquity and suffering, of all that went on below amid want and crime,
+and all that went on above amid wealth and vice. The _bourgeoisie_,
+wielding power, would relinquish naught of the sovereignty which it had
+conquered, wholly stolen, while the people, the eternal dupe, silent so
+long, clenched its fists and growled, claiming its legitimate share. And
+it was that frightful injustice which filled the growing gloom with
+anger. From what dark-breasted cloud would the thunderbolt fall? For
+years he had been waiting for that thunderbolt which low rumbles
+announced on all points of the horizon. And if he had written a book full
+of candour and hope, if he had gone in all innocence to Rome, it was to
+avert that thunderbolt and its frightful consequences. But all hope of
+the kind was dead within him; he felt that the thunderbolt was
+inevitable, that nothing henceforth could stay the catastrophe. And never
+before had he felt it to be so near, amidst the happy impudence of some,
+and the exasperated distress of others. And it was gathering, and it
+would surely fall over that Paris, all lust and bravado, which, when
+evening came, thus stirred up its furnace.
+
+Tired out and distracted, Pierre raised his eyes as he reached the Place
+de l’Opera. Where was he then? The heart of the great city seemed to beat
+on this spot, in that vast expanse where met so many thoroughfares, as if
+from every point the blood of distant districts flowed thither along
+triumphal avenues. Right away to the horizon stretched the great gaps of
+the Avenue de l’Opera, the Rue du Quatre-Septembre, and the Rue de la
+Paix, still showing clearly in a final glimpse of daylight, but already
+starred with swarming sparks. The torrent of the Boulevard traffic poured
+across the Place, where clashed, too, all that from the neighbouring
+streets, with a constant turning and eddying which made the spot the most
+dangerous of whirlpools. In vain did the police seek to impose some
+little prudence, the stream of pedestrians still overflowed, wheels
+became entangled and horses reared amidst all the uproar of the human
+tide, which was as loud, as incessant, as the tempest voice of an ocean.
+Then there was the detached mass of the opera-house, slowly steeped in
+gloom, and rising huge and mysterious like a symbol, its lyre-bearing
+figure of Apollo, right aloft, showing a last reflection of daylight
+amidst the livid sky. And all the windows of the house-fronts began to
+shine, gaiety sprang from those thousands of lamps which coruscated one
+by one, a universal longing for ease and free gratification of each
+desire spread with the increasing darkness; whilst, at long intervals,
+the large globes of the electric lights shone as brightly as the moons of
+the city’s cloudless nights.
+
+But why was he, Pierre, there, he asked himself, irritated and wondering.
+Since Laveuve was dead he had but to go home, bury himself in his nook,
+and close up door and windows, like one who was henceforth useless, who
+had neither belief nor hope, and awaited naught save annihilation. It was
+a long journey from the Place de l’Opera to his little house at Neuilly.
+Still, however great his weariness, he would not take a cab, but retraced
+his steps, turning towards the Madeleine again, and plunging into the
+scramble of the pavements, amidst the deafening uproar from the roadway,
+with a bitter desire to aggravate his wound and saturate himself with
+revolt and anger. Was it not yonder at the corner of that street, at the
+end of that Boulevard, that he would find the expected abyss into which
+that rotten world, whose old society he could hear rending at each step,
+must soon assuredly topple?
+
+However, when Pierre wished to cross the Rue Scribe a block in the
+traffic made him halt. In front of a luxurious café two tall,
+shabbily-clad and very dirty fellows were alternately offering the “Voix
+du Peuple” with its account of the scandals and the bribe-takers of the
+Chamber and the Senate, in voices so suggestive of cracked brass that
+passers-by clustered around them. And here, in a hesitating, wandering
+man, who after listening drew near to the large café and peered through
+its windows, Pierre was once again amazed to recognise Salvat. This time
+the meeting struck him forcibly, filled him with suspicion to such a
+point that he also stopped and resolved to watch the journeyman engineer.
+He did not expect that one of such wretched aspect, with what seemed to
+be a hunk of bread distending his old ragged jacket, would enter and seat
+himself at one of the café’s little tables amidst the warm gaiety of the
+lamps. However, he waited for a moment, and then saw him wander away with
+slow and broken steps as if the café, which was nearly empty, did not
+suit him. What could he have been seeking, whither had he been going,
+since the morning, ever on a wild, solitary chase through the Paris of
+wealth and enjoyment while hunger dogged his steps? It was only with
+difficulty that he now dragged himself along, his will and energy seemed
+to be exhausted. As if quite overcome, he drew near to a kiosk, and for a
+moment leant against it. Then, however, he drew himself up again, and
+walked on further, still as it were in search of something.
+
+And now came an incident which brought Pierre’s emotion to a climax. A
+tall sturdy man on turning out of the Rue Caumartin caught sight of
+Salvat, and approached him. And just as the new comer without false pride
+was shaking the workman’s hand, Pierre recognised him as his brother
+Guillaume. Yes, it was indeed he, with his thick bushy hair already white
+like snow, though he was but seven and forty. However, his heavy
+moustaches had remained quite dark without one silver thread, thus
+lending an expression of vigorous life to his full face with its lofty
+towering brow. It was from his father that he had inherited that brow of
+impregnable logic and reason, similar to that which Pierre himself
+possessed. But the lower part of the elder brother’s countenance was
+fuller than that of his junior; his nose was larger, his chin was square,
+and his mouth broad and firm of contour. A pale scar, the mark of an old
+wound, streaked his left temple. And his physiognomy, though it might at
+first seem very grave, rough, and unexpansive, beamed with masculine
+kindliness whenever a smile revealed his teeth, which had remained
+extremely white.
+
+While looking at his brother, Pierre remembered what Madame Théodore had
+told him that morning. Guillaume, touched by Salvat’s dire want, had
+arranged to give him a few days’ employment. And this explained the air
+of interest with which he now seemed to be questioning him, while the
+engineer, whom the meeting disturbed, stamped about as if eager to resume
+his mournful ramble. For a moment Guillaume appeared to notice the
+other’s perturbation, by the embarrassed answers which he obtained from
+him. Still, they at last parted as if each were going his way. Then,
+however, almost immediately, Guillaume turned round again and watched the
+other, as with harassed stubborn mien he went off through the crowd. And
+the thoughts which had come to Guillaume must have been very serious and
+very pressing, for he all at once began to retrace his steps and follow
+the workman from a distance, as if to ascertain for certain what
+direction he would take.
+
+Pierre had watched the scene with growing disquietude. His nervous
+apprehension of some great unknown calamity, the suspicions born of his
+frequent and inexplicable meetings with Salvat, his surprise at now
+seeing his brother mingled with the affair, all helped to fill him with a
+pressing desire to know, witness, and perhaps prevent. So he did not
+hesitate, but began to follow the others in a prudent way.
+
+Fresh perturbation came upon him when first Salvat and then Guillaume
+suddenly turned into the Rue Godot-de-Mauroy. What destiny was thus
+bringing him back to that street whither a little time previously he had
+wished to return in feverish haste, and whence only the death of Laveuve
+had kept him? And his consternation increased yet further when, after
+losing sight of Salvat for a moment, he saw him standing in front of the
+Duvillard mansion, on the same spot where he had fancied he recognised
+him that morning. As it happened the carriage entrance of the mansion was
+wide open. Some repairs had been made to the paving of the porch, and
+although the workmen had now gone off, the doorway remained gaping, full
+of the falling night. The narrow street, running from the glittering
+Boulevard, was steeped in bluish gloom, starred at long intervals by a
+few gas-lamps. Some women went by, compelling Salvat to step off the
+foot-pavement. But he returned to it again, lighted the stump of a cigar,
+some remnant which he had found under a table outside a café, and then
+resumed his watch, patient and motionless, in front of the mansion.
+
+Disturbed by his dim conjectures, Pierre gradually grew frightened, and
+asked himself if he ought not to approach that man. The chief thing that
+detained him was the presence of his brother, whom he had seen disappear
+into a neighbouring doorway, whence he also was observing the engineer,
+ready to intervene. And so Pierre contented himself with not losing sight
+of Salvat, who was still waiting and watching, merely taking his eyes
+from the mansion in order to glance towards the Boulevard as though he
+expected someone or something which would come from that direction. And
+at last, indeed, the Duvillards’ landau appeared, with coachman and
+footman in livery of green and gold--a closed landau to which a pair of
+tall horses of superb build were harnessed in stylish fashion.
+
+Contrary to custom, however, the carriage, which at that hour usually
+brought the father and mother home, was only occupied that evening by the
+son and daughter, Hyacinthe and Camille. Returning from the Princess de
+Harn’s _matinée_, they were chatting freely, with that calm immodesty by
+which they sought to astonish one another. Hyacinthe, influenced by his
+perverted ideas, was attacking women, whilst Camille openly counselled
+him to respond to the Princess’s advances. However, she was visibly
+irritated and feverish that evening, and, suddenly changing the subject,
+she began to speak of their mother and Gérard de Quinsac.
+
+“But what can it matter to you?” quietly retorted Hyacinthe; and, seeing
+that she almost bounded from the seat at this remark, he continued: “Are
+you still in love with him, then? Do you still want to marry him?”
+
+“Yes, I do, and I will!” she cried with all the jealous rage of an
+uncomely girl, who suffered so acutely at seeing herself spurned whilst
+her yet beautiful mother stole from her the man she wanted.
+
+“You will, you will!” resumed Hyacinthe, well pleased to have an
+opportunity of teasing his sister, whom he somewhat feared. “But you
+won’t unless _he_ is willing--And he doesn’t care for you.”
+
+“He does!” retorted Camille in a fury. “He’s kind and pleasant with me,
+and that’s enough.”
+
+Her brother felt afraid as he noticed the blackness of her glance, and
+the clenching of her weak little hands, whose fingers bent like claws.
+And after a pause he asked: “And papa, what does he say about it?”
+
+“Oh, papa! All that he cares about is the other one.”
+
+Then Hyacinthe began to laugh.
+
+But the landau, with its tall horses trotting on sonorously, had turned
+into the street and was approaching the house, when a slim fair-haired
+girl of sixteen or seventeen, a modiste’s errand girl with a large
+bandbox on her arm, hastily crossed the road in order to enter the arched
+doorway before the carriage. She was bringing a bonnet for the Baroness,
+and had come all along the Boulevard musing, with her soft blue eyes, her
+pinky nose, and her mouth which ever laughed in the most adorable little
+face that one could see. And it was at this same moment that Salvat,
+after another glance at the landau, sprang forward and entered the
+doorway. An instant afterwards he reappeared, flung his lighted cigar
+stump into the gutter; and without undue haste went off, slinking into
+the depths of the vague gloom of the street.
+
+And then what happened? Pierre, later on, remembered that a dray of the
+Western Railway Company in coming up stopped and delayed the landau for a
+moment, whilst the young errand girl entered the doorway. And with a
+heart-pang beyond description he saw his brother Guillaume in his turn
+spring forward and rush into the mansion as though impelled to do so by
+some revelation, some sudden certainty. He, Pierre, though he understood
+nothing clearly, could divine the approach of some frightful horror. But
+when he would have run, when he would have shouted, he found himself as
+if nailed to the pavement, and felt his throat clutched as by a hand of
+lead. Then suddenly came a thunderous roar, a formidable explosion, as if
+the earth was opening, and the lightning-struck mansion was being
+annihilated. Every window-pane of the neighbouring houses was shivered,
+the glass raining down with the loud clatter of hail. For a moment a
+hellish flame fired the street, and the dust and the smoke were such that
+the few passers-by were blinded and howled with affright, aghast at
+toppling, as they thought, into that fiery furnace.
+
+And that dazzling flare brought Pierre enlightenment. He once more saw
+the bomb distending the tool-bag, which lack of work had emptied and
+rendered useless. He once more saw it under the ragged jacket, a
+protuberance caused, he had fancied, by some hunk of bread, picked up in
+a corner and treasured that it might be carried home to wife and child.
+After wandering and threatening all happy Paris, it was there that it had
+flared, there that it had burst with a thunder-clap, there on the
+threshold of the sovereign _bourgeoisie_ to whom all wealth belonged. He,
+however, at that moment thought only of his brother Guillaume, and flung
+himself into that porch where a volcanic crater seemed to have opened.
+And at first he distinguished nothing, the acrid smoke streamed over all.
+Then he perceived the walls split, the upper floor rent open, the paving
+broken up, strewn with fragments. Outside, the landau which had been on
+the point of entering, had escaped all injury; neither of the horses had
+been touched, nor was there even a scratch on any panel of the vehicle.
+But the young girl, the pretty, slim, fair-haired errand girl, lay there
+on her back, her stomach ripped open, whilst her delicate face remained
+intact, her eyes clear, her smile full of astonishment, so swiftly and
+lightning-like had come the catastrophe. And near her, from the fallen
+bandbox, whose lid had merely come unfastened, had rolled the bonnet, a
+very fragile pink bonnet, which still looked charming in its flowery
+freshness.
+
+By a prodigy Guillaume was alive and already on his legs again. His left
+hand alone streamed with blood, a projectile seemed to have broken his
+wrist. His moustaches moreover had been burnt, and the explosion by
+throwing him to the ground had so shaken and bruised him that he shivered
+from head to feet as with intense cold. Nevertheless, he recognised his
+brother without even feeling astonished to see him there, as indeed often
+happens after great disasters, when the unexplained becomes providential.
+That brother, of whom he had so long lost sight, was there, naturally
+enough, because it was necessary that he should be there. And Guillaume,
+amidst the wild quivers by which he was shaken, at once cried to him
+“Take me away! take me away! To your house at Neuilly, oh! take me away!”
+
+Then, for sole explanation, and referring to Salvat, he stammered: “I
+suspected that he had stolen a cartridge from me; only one, most
+fortunately, for otherwise the whole district would have been blown to
+pieces. Ah! the wretched fellow! I wasn’t in time to set my foot upon the
+match.”
+
+With perfect lucidity of mind, such as danger sometimes imparts, Pierre,
+neither speaking nor losing a moment, remembered that the mansion had a
+back entrance fronting the Rue Vignon. He had just realised in what
+serious peril his brother would be if he were found mixed up in that
+affair. And with all speed, when he had led him into the gloom of the Rue
+Vignon, he tied his handkerchief round his wrist, which he bade him press
+to his chest, under his coat, as that would conceal it.
+
+But Guillaume, still shivering and haunted by the horror he had
+witnessed, repeated: “Take me away--to your place at Neuilly--not to my
+home.”
+
+“Of course, of course, be easy. Come, wait here a second, I will stop a
+cab.”
+
+In his eagerness to procure a conveyance, Pierre had brought his brother
+down to the Boulevard again. But the terrible thunderclap of the
+explosion had upset the whole neighbourhood, horses were still rearing,
+and people were running demented, hither and thither. And numerous
+policemen had hastened up, and a rushing crowd was already blocking the
+lower part of the Rue Godot-de-Mauroy, which was now as black as a pit,
+every light in it having been extinguished; whilst on the Boulevard a
+hawker of the “Voix du Peuple” still stubbornly vociferated: “The new
+scandal of the African Railway Lines! The thirty-two bribe-takers of the
+Chamber and the Senate! The approaching fall of the ministry!”
+
+Pierre was at last managing to stop a cab when he heard a person who ran
+by say to another, “The ministry? Ah, well! that bomb will mend it right
+enough!”
+
+Then the brothers seated themselves in the cab, which carried them away.
+And now, over the whole of rumbling Paris black night had gathered, an
+unforgiving night, in which the stars foundered amidst the mist of crime
+and anger that had risen from the house-roofs. The great cry of justice
+swept by amidst the same terrifying flapping of wings which Sodom and
+Gomorrah once heard bearing down upon them from all the black clouds of
+the horizon.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+
+
+
+I. REVOLUTIONISTS
+
+
+IN that out-of-the-way street at Neuilly, along which nobody passed after
+dusk, Pierre’s little house was now steeped in deep slumber under the
+black sky; each of its shutters closed, and not a ray of light stealing
+forth from within. And one could divine, too, the profound quietude of
+the little garden in the rear, a garden empty and lifeless, benumbed by
+the winter cold.
+
+Pierre had several times feared that his brother would faint away in the
+cab in which they were journeying. Leaning back, and often sinking down,
+Guillaume spoke not a word. And terrible was the silence between them--a
+silence fraught with all the questions and answers which they felt it
+would be useless and painful to exchange at such a time. However, the
+priest was anxious about the wound, and wondered to what surgeon he might
+apply, desirous as he was of admitting only a sure, staunch man into the
+secret, for he had noticed with how keen a desire to disappear his
+brother had sought to hide himself.
+
+Until they reached the Arc de Triomphe the silence remained unbroken. It
+was only there that Guillaume seemed to emerge from the prostration of
+his reverie. “Mind, Pierre,” said he, “no doctor. We will attend to this
+together.”
+
+Pierre was on the point of protesting, but he realised that it would be
+useless to discuss the subject at such a moment, and so he merely waved
+his hand to signify that he should act in spite of the prohibition were
+it necessary. In point of fact, his anxiety had increased, and, when the
+cab at last drew up before the house, it was with real relief that he saw
+his brother alight without evincing any marked feebleness. He himself
+quickly paid the driver, well-pleased, too, at finding that nobody, not
+even a neighbour, was about. And having opened the door with his latch
+key, he helped the injured man to ascend the steps.
+
+A little night lamp glimmered faintly in the vestibule. On hearing the
+door open, Pierre’s servant, Sophie, had at once emerged from the
+kitchen. A short, thin, dark woman of sixty, she had formed part of the
+household for more than thirty years, having served the mother before
+serving the son. She knew Guillaume, having seen him when he was a young
+man, and doubtless she now recognised him, although well-nigh ten years
+had gone by since he had last crossed that threshold. Instead of evincing
+any surprise, she seemed to consider his extraordinary return quite
+natural, and remained as silent and discreet as usual. She led, indeed,
+the life of a recluse, never speaking unless her work absolutely required
+it. And thus she now contented herself with saying: “Monsieur l’Abbé,
+Monsieur Bertheroy is in the study, and has been waiting there for a
+quarter of an hour.”
+
+At this Guillaume intervened, as if the news revived him: “Does Bertheroy
+still come here, then? I’ll see him willingly. His is one of the best,
+the broadest, minds of these days. He has still remained my master.”
+
+A former friend of their father,--the illustrious chemist, Michel
+Froment,--Bertheroy had now, in his turn, become one of the loftiest
+glories of France, one to whom chemistry owed much of the extraordinary
+progress that has made it the mother-science, by which the very face of
+the earth is being changed. A member of the Institute, laden with offices
+and honours, he had retained much affection for Pierre, and occasionally
+visited him in this wise before dinner, by way of relaxation, he would
+say.
+
+“You showed him into the study? All right, then, we will go there,” said
+the Abbé to the servant. “Light a lamp and take it into my room, and get
+my bed ready so that my brother may go to bed at once.”
+
+While Sophie, without a word or sign of surprise, was obeying these
+instructions, the brothers went into their father’s former laboratory, of
+which the priest had now made a spacious study. And it was with a cry of
+joyous astonishment that the _savant_ greeted them on seeing them enter
+the room side by side, the one supporting the other. “What, together!” he
+exclaimed. “Ah! my dear children, you could not have caused me greater
+pleasure! I who have so often deplored your painful misunderstanding.”
+
+Bertheroy was a tall and lean septuagenarian, with angular features. His
+yellow skin clung like parchment to the projecting bones of his cheeks
+and jaw. Moreover, there was nothing imposing about him; he looked like
+some old shop-keeping herbalist. At the same time he had a fine, broad,
+smooth brow, and his eyes still glittered brightly beneath his tangled
+hair.
+
+“What, have you injured yourself, Guillaume?” he continued, as soon as he
+saw the bandaged hand.
+
+Pierre remained silent, so as to let his brother tell the story as he
+chose. Guillaume had realised that he must confess the truth, but in
+simple fashion, without detailing the circumstances. “Yes, in an
+explosion,” he answered, “and I really think that I have my wrist
+broken.”
+
+At this, Bertheroy, whose glance was fixed upon him, noticed that his
+moustaches were burnt, and that there was an expression of bewildered
+stupor, such as follows a catastrophe, in his eyes. Forthwith the
+_savant_ became grave and circumspect; and, without seeking to compel
+confidence by any questions, he simply said: “Indeed! an explosion! Will
+you let me see the injury? You know that before letting chemistry ensnare
+me I studied medicine, and am still somewhat of a surgeon.”
+
+On hearing these words Pierre could not restrain a heart-cry: “Yes, yes,
+master! Look at the injury--I was very anxious, and to find you here is
+unhoped-for good fortune!”
+
+The _savant_ glanced at him, and divined that the hidden circumstances of
+the accident must be serious. And then, as Guillaume, smiling, though
+paling with weakness, consented to the suggestion, Bertheroy retorted
+that before anything else he must be put to bed. The servant just then
+returned to say the bed was ready, and so they all went into the
+adjoining room, where the injured man was soon undressed and helped
+between the sheets.
+
+“Light me, Pierre,” said Bertheroy, “take the lamp; and let Sophie give
+me a basin full of water and some cloths.” Then, having gently washed the
+wound, he resumed: “The devil! The wrist isn’t broken, but it’s a nasty
+injury. I am afraid there must be a lesion of the bone. Some nails passed
+through the flesh, did they not?”
+
+Receiving no reply, he relapsed into silence. But his surprise was
+increasing, and he closely examined the hand, which the flame of the
+explosion had scorched, and even sniffed the shirt cuff as if seeking to
+understand the affair better. He evidently recognised the effects of one
+of those new explosives which he himself had studied, almost created. In
+the present case, however, he must have been puzzled, for there were
+characteristic signs and traces the significance of which escaped him.
+
+“And so,” he at last made up his mind to ask, carried away by
+professional curiosity, “and so it was a laboratory explosion which put
+you in this nice condition? What devilish powder were you concocting
+then?”
+
+Guillaume, ever since he had seen Bertheroy thus studying his injury,
+had, in spite of his sufferings, given marked signs of annoyance and
+agitation. And as if the real secret which he wished to keep lay
+precisely in the question now put to him, in that powder, the first
+experiment with which had thus injured him, he replied with an air of
+restrained ardour, and a straight frank glance: “Pray do not question me,
+master. I cannot answer you. You have, I know, sufficient nobility of
+nature to nurse me and care for me without exacting a confession.”
+
+“Oh! certainly, my friend,” exclaimed Bertheroy; “keep your secret. Your
+discovery belongs to you if you have made one; and I know that you are
+capable of putting it to the most generous use. Besides, you must be
+aware that I have too great a passion for truth to judge the actions of
+others, whatever their nature, without knowing every circumstance and
+motive.”
+
+So saying, he waved his hand as if to indicate how broadly tolerant and
+free from error and superstition was that lofty sovereign mind of his,
+which in spite of all the orders that bedizened him, in spite of all the
+academical titles that he bore as an official _savant_, made him a man of
+the boldest and most independent views, one whose only passion was truth,
+as he himself said.
+
+He lacked the necessary appliances to do more than dress the wound, after
+making sure that no fragment of any projectile had remained in the flesh.
+Then he at last went off, promising to return at an early hour on the
+morrow; and, as the priest escorted him to the street door, he spoke some
+comforting words: if the bone had not been deeply injured all would be
+well.
+
+On returning to the bedside, Pierre found his brother still sitting up
+and seeking fresh energy in his desire to write home and tranquillise his
+loved ones. So the priest, after providing pen and paper, again had to
+take up the lamp and light him. Guillaume fortunately retained full use
+of his right hand, and was thus able to pen a few lines to say that he
+would not be home that night. He addressed the note to Madame Leroi, the
+mother of his deceased mistress, who, since the latter’s death, had
+remained with him and had reared his three sons. Pierre was aware also
+that the household at Montmartre included a young woman of five or six
+and twenty, the daughter of an old friend, to whom Guillaume had given
+shelter on her father’s death, and whom he was soon to marry, in spite of
+the great difference in their ages. For the priest, however, all these
+were vague, disturbing things, condemnable features of disorderly life,
+and he had invariably pretended to be ignorant of them.
+
+“So you wish this note to be taken to Montmartre at once?” he said to his
+brother.
+
+“Yes, at once. It is scarcely more than seven o’clock now, and it will be
+there by eight. And you will choose a reliable man, won’t you?”
+
+“The best course will be for Sophie to take a cab. We need have no fear
+with her. She won’t chatter. Wait a moment, and I will settle
+everything.”
+
+Sophie, on being summoned, at once understood what was wanted of her, and
+promised to say, in reply to any questions, that M. Guillaume had come to
+spend the night at his brother’s, for reasons which she did not know. And
+without indulging in any reflections herself, she left the house, saying
+simply: “Monsieur l’Abbé’s dinner is ready; he will only have to take the
+broth and the stew off the stove.”
+
+However, when Pierre this time returned to the bedside to sit down there,
+he found that Guillaume had fallen back with his head resting on both
+pillows. And he looked very weary and pale, and showed signs of fever.
+The lamp, standing on a corner of a side table, cast a soft light around,
+and so deep was the quietude that the big clock in the adjoining
+dining-room could be heard ticking. For a moment the silence continued
+around the two brothers, who, after so many years of separation, were at
+last re-united and alone together. Then the injured man brought his right
+hand to the edge of the sheet, and the priest grasped it, pressed it
+tenderly in his own. And the clasp was a long one, those two brotherly
+hands remaining locked, one in the other.
+
+“My poor little Pierre,” Guillaume faintly murmured, “you must forgive me
+for falling on you in this fashion. I’ve invaded the house and taken your
+bed, and I’m preventing you from dining.”
+
+“Don’t talk, don’t tire yourself any more,” interrupted Pierre. “Is not
+this the right place for you when you are in trouble?”
+
+A warmer pressure came from Guillaume’s feverish hand, and tears gathered
+in his eyes. “Thanks, my little Pierre. I’ve found you again, and you are
+as gentle and loving as you always were. Ah! you cannot know how
+delightful it seems to me.”
+
+Then the priest’s eyes also were dimmed by tears. Amidst the deep
+quietude, the great sense of comfort which had followed their violent
+emotion, the brothers found an infinite charm in being together once more
+in the home of their childhood.* It was there that both their father and
+mother had died--the father tragically, struck down by an explosion in
+his laboratory; the mother piously, like a very saint. It was there, too,
+in that same bed, that Guillaume had nursed Pierre, when, after their
+mother’s death, the latter had nearly died; and it was there now that
+Pierre in his turn was nursing Guillaume. All helped to bow them down and
+fill them with emotion: the strange circumstances of their meeting, the
+frightful catastrophe which had caused them such a shock, the
+mysteriousness of the things which remained unexplained between them. And
+now that after so long a separation they were tragically brought together
+again, they both felt their memory awaking. The old house spoke to them
+of their childhood, of their parents dead and gone, of the far-away days
+when they had loved and suffered there. Beneath the window lay the
+garden, now icy cold, which once, under the sunbeams, had re-echoed with
+their play. On the left was the laboratory, the spacious room where their
+father had taught them to read. On the right, in the dining-room, they
+could picture their mother cutting bread and butter for them, and looking
+so gentle with her big, despairing eyes--those of a believer mated to an
+infidel. And the feeling that they were now alone in that home, and the
+pale, sleepy gleam of the lamp, and the deep silence of the garden and
+the house, and the very past itself, all filled them with the softest of
+emotion blended with the keenest bitterness.
+
+ * See M. Zola’s “Lourdes,” Day I., Chapter II.
+
+They would have liked to talk and unbosom themselves. But what could they
+say to one another? Although their hands remained so tightly clasped, did
+not the most impassable of chasms separate them? In any case, they
+thought so. Guillaume was convinced that Pierre was a saint, a priest of
+the most robust faith, without a doubt, without aught in common with
+himself, whether in the sphere of ideas or in that of practical life. A
+hatchet-stroke had parted them, and each lived in a different world. And
+in the same way Pierre pictured Guillaume as one who had lost caste,
+whose conduct was most suspicious, who had never even married the mother
+of his three children, but was on the point of marrying that girl who was
+far too young for him, and who had come nobody knew whence. In him,
+moreover, were blended the passionate ideas of a _savant_ and a
+revolutionist, ideas in which one found negation of everything,
+acceptance and possibly provocation of the worst forms of violence, with
+a glimpse of the vague monster of Anarchism underlying all. And so, on
+what basis could there be any understanding between them, since each
+retained his prejudices against the other, and saw him on the opposite
+side of the chasm, without possibility of any plank being thrown across
+it to enable them to unite? Thus, all alone in that room, their poor
+hearts bled with distracted brotherly love.
+
+Pierre knew that, on a previous occasion, Guillaume had narrowly escaped
+being compromised in an Anarchist affair. He asked him no questions, but
+he could not help reflecting that he would not have hidden himself in
+this fashion had he not feared arrest for complicity. Complicity with
+Salvat? Was he really an accomplice? Pierre shuddered, for the only
+materials on which he could found a contrary opinion were, on one hand,
+the words that had escaped his brother after the crime, the cry he had
+raised accusing Salvat of having stolen a cartridge from him; and, on the
+other hand, his heroic rush into the doorway of the Duvillard mansion in
+order to extinguish the match. A great deal still remained obscure; but
+if a cartridge of that frightful explosive had been stolen from Guillaume
+the fact must be that he manufactured such cartridges and had others at
+home. Of course, even if he were not an accomplice, the injury to his
+wrist had made it needful for him to disappear. Given his bleeding hand,
+and the previous suspicions levelled against him, he would never have
+convinced anybody of his innocence. And yet, even allowing for these
+surmises, the affair remained wrapt in darkness: a crime on Guillaume’s
+part seemed a possibility, and to Pierre it was all dreadful to think of.
+
+Guillaume, by the trembling of his brother’s moist, yielding hand, must
+in some degree have realised the prostration of his poor mind, already
+shattered by doubt and finished off by this calamity. Indeed, the
+sepulchre was empty now, the very ashes had been swept out of it.
+
+“My poor little Pierre,” the elder brother slowly said. “Forgive me if I
+do not tell you anything. I cannot do so. And besides, what would be the
+use of it? We should certainly not understand one another.... So let
+us keep from saying anything, and let us simply enjoy the delight of
+being together and loving one another in spite of all.”
+
+Pierre raised his eyes, and for a long time their glances lingered, one
+fixed on the other. “Ah!” stammered the priest, “how frightful it all
+is!”
+
+Guillaume, however, had well understood the mute inquiry of Pierre’s
+eyes. His own did not waver but replied boldly, beaming with purity and
+loftiness: “I can tell you nothing. Yet, all the same, let us love each
+other, my little Pierre.”
+
+And then Pierre for a moment felt that his brother was above all base
+anxiety, above the guilty fear of the man who trembles for himself. In
+lieu thereof he seemed to be carried away by the passion of some great
+design, the noble thought of concealing some sovereign idea, some secret
+which it was imperative for him to save. But, alas! this was only the
+fleeting vision of a vague hope; for all vanished, and again came the
+doubt, the suspicion, of a mind dealing with one that it knew nothing of.
+
+And all at once a souvenir, a frightful spectacle, arose before Pierre’s
+eyes and distracted him: “Did you see, brother,” he stammered, “did you
+see that fair-haired girl lying under the archway, ripped open, with a
+smile of astonishment on her face?”
+
+Guillaume in his turn quivered, and in a low and dolorous voice replied:
+“Yes, I saw her! Ah, poor little thing! Ah! the atrocious necessities,
+the atrocious errors, of justice!”
+
+Then, amidst the frightful shudder that seemed to sweep by, Pierre, with
+his horror of all violence, succumbed, and let his face sink upon the
+counterpane at the edge of the bed. And he sobbed distractedly: a sudden
+attack of weakness, overflowing in tears, cast him there exhausted, with
+no more strength than a child. It was as if all his sufferings since the
+morning, the deep grief with which universal injustice and woe inspired
+him, were bursting forth in that flood of tears which nothing now could
+stay. And Guillaume, who, to calm his little brother, had set his hand
+upon his head, in the same way as he had often caressingly stroked his
+hair in childhood’s days, likewise felt upset and remained silent, unable
+to find a word of consolation, resigned, as he was, to the eruption which
+in life is always possible, the cataclysm by which the slow evolution of
+nature is always liable to be precipitated. But how hard a fate for the
+wretched ones whom the lava sweeps away in millions! And then his tears
+also began to flow amidst the profound silence.
+
+“Pierre,” he gently exclaimed at last, “you must have some dinner. Go, go
+and have some. And screen the lamp; leave me by myself, and let me close
+my eyes. It will do me good.”
+
+Pierre had to content him. Still, he left the dining-room door open; and,
+weak for want of food, though he had not hitherto noticed it, he ate
+standing, with his ears on the alert, listening lest his brother should
+complain or call him. And the silence seemed to have become yet more
+complete, the little house sank, as it were, into annihilation, instinct
+with all the melancholy charm of the past.
+
+At about half-past eight, when Sophie returned from her errand to
+Montmartre, Guillaume heard her step, light though it was. And he at once
+became restless and wanted to know what news she brought. It was Pierre,
+however, who enlightened him. “Don’t be anxious. Sophie was received by
+an old lady who, after reading your note, merely answered, ‘Very well.’
+She did not even ask Sophie a question, but remained quite composed
+without sign of curiosity.”
+
+Guillaume, realising that this fine serenity perplexed his brother,
+thereupon replied with similar calmness: “Oh! it was only necessary that
+grandmother should be warned. She knows well enough that if I don’t
+return home it is because I can’t.”
+
+However, from that moment it was impossible for the injured man to rest.
+Although the lamp was hidden away in a corner, he constantly opened his
+eyes, glanced round him, and seemed to listen, as if for sounds from the
+direction of Paris. And it at last became necessary for the priest to
+summon the servant and ask her if she had noticed anything strange on her
+way to or from Montmartre. She seemed surprised by the question, and
+answered that she had noticed nothing. Besides, the cab had followed the
+outer boulevards, which were almost deserted. A slight fog had again
+begun to fall, and the streets were steeped in icy dampness.
+
+By the time it was nine o’clock Pierre realised that his brother would
+never be able to sleep if he were thus left without news. Amidst his
+growing feverishness the injured man experienced keen anxiety, a haunting
+desire to know if Salvat were arrested and had spoken out. He did not
+confess this; indeed he sought to convey the impression that he had no
+personal disquietude, which was doubtless true. But his great secret was
+stifling him; he shuddered at the thought that his lofty scheme, all his
+labour and all his hope, should be at the mercy of that unhappy man whom
+want had filled with delusions and who had sought to set justice upon
+earth by the aid of a bomb. And in vain did the priest try to make
+Guillaume understand that nothing certain could yet be known. He
+perceived that his impatience increased every minute, and at last
+resolved to make some effort to satisfy him.
+
+But where could he go, of whom could he inquire? Guillaume, while talking
+and trying to guess with whom Salvat might have sought refuge, had
+mentioned Janzen, the Princess de Harn’s mysterious lover; and for a
+moment he had even thought of sending to this man for information. But he
+reflected that if Janzen had heard of the explosion he was not at all the
+individual to wait for the police at home.
+
+Meantime Pierre repeated: “I will willingly go to buy the evening papers
+for you--but there will certainly be nothing in them. Although I know
+almost everyone in Neuilly I can think of nobody who is likely to have
+any information, unless perhaps it were Bache--”
+
+“You know Bache, the municipal councillor?” interrupted Guillaume.
+
+“Yes, we have both had to busy ourselves with charitable work in the
+neighbourhood.”
+
+“Well, Bache is an old friend of mine, and I know no safer man. Pray go
+to him and bring him back with you.”
+
+A quarter of an hour later Pierre returned with Bache, who resided in a
+neighbouring street. And it was not only Bache whom he brought with him,
+for, much to his surprise, he had found Janzen at Bache’s house. As
+Guillaume had suspected, Janzen, while dining at the Princess de Harn’s,
+had heard of the crime, and had consequently refrained from returning to
+his little lodging in the Rue des Martyrs, where the police might well
+have set a trap for him. His connections were known, and he was aware
+that he was watched and was liable at any moment to arrest or expulsion
+as a foreign Anarchist. And so he had thought it prudent to solicit a few
+days’ hospitality of Bache, a very upright and obliging man, to whom he
+entrusted himself without fear. He would never have remained with
+Rosemonde, that adorable lunatic who for a month past had been exhibiting
+him as her lover, and whose useless and dangerous extravagance of conduct
+he fully realised.
+
+Guillaume was so delighted on seeing Bache and Janzen that he wished to
+sit up in bed again. But Pierre bade him remain quiet, rest his head on
+the pillows, and speak as little as possible. Then, while Janzen stood
+near, erect and silent, Bache took a chair and sat down by the bedside
+with many expressions of friendly interest. He was a stout man of sixty,
+with a broad, full face, a large white beard and long white hair. His
+little, gentle eyes had a dim, dreamy expression, while a pleasant,
+hopeful smile played round his thick lips. His father, a fervent St.
+Simonian, had brought him up in the doctrines of that belief. While
+retaining due respect for it, however, his personal inclinations towards
+orderliness and religion had led him to espouse the ideas of Fourier, in
+such wise that one found in him a succession and an abridgment, so to
+say, of two doctrines. Moreover, when he was about thirty, he had busied
+himself with spiritualism. Possessed of a comfortable little fortune, his
+only adventure in life had been his connection with the Paris Commune of
+1871. How or why he had become a member of it he could now scarcely tell.
+Condemned to death by default, although he had sat among the Moderates,
+he had resided in Belgium until the amnesty; and since then Neuilly had
+elected him as its representative on the Paris Municipal Council, less by
+way of glorifying in him a victim of reaction than as a reward for his
+worthiness, for he was really esteemed by the whole district.
+
+Guillaume, with his desire for tidings, was obliged to confide in his two
+visitors, tell them of the explosion and Salvat’s flight, and how he
+himself had been wounded while seeking to extinguish the match. Janzen,
+with curly beard and hair, and a thin, fair face such as painters often
+attribute to the Christ, listened coldly, as was his wont, and at last
+said slowly in a gentle voice: “Ah! so it was Salvat! I thought it might
+be little Mathis--I’m surprised that it should be Salvat--for he hadn’t
+made up his mind.” Then, as Guillaume anxiously inquired if he thought
+that Salvat would speak out, he began to protest: “Oh! no; oh! no.”
+
+However, he corrected himself with a gleam of disdain in his clear, harsh
+eyes: “After all, there’s no telling. Salvat is a man of sentiment.”
+
+Then Bache, who was quite upset by the news of the explosion, tried to
+think how his friend Guillaume, to whom he was much attached, might be
+extricated from any charge of complicity should he be denounced. And
+Guillaume, at sight of Janzen’s contemptuous coldness, must have suffered
+keenly, for the other evidently believed him to be trembling, tortured by
+the one desire to save his own skin. But what could he say, how could he
+reveal the deep concern which rendered him so feverish without betraying
+the secret which he had hidden even from his brother?
+
+However, at this moment Sophie came to tell her master that M. Théophile
+Morin had called with another gentleman. Much astonished by this visit at
+so late an hour, Pierre hastened into the next room to receive the new
+comers. He had become acquainted with Morin since his return from Rome,
+and had helped him to introduce a translation of an excellent scientific
+manual, prepared according to the official programmes, into the Italian
+schools.* A Franc-Comtois by birth, a compatriot of Proudhon, with whose
+poor family he had been intimate at Besancon, Morin, himself the son of a
+journeyman clockmaker, had grown up with Proudhonian ideas, full of
+affection for the poor and an instinctive hatred of property and wealth.
+Later on, having come to Paris as a school teacher, impassioned by study,
+he had given his whole mind to Auguste Comte. Beneath the fervent
+Positivist, however, one might yet find the old Proudhonian, the pauper
+who rebelled and detested want. Moreover, it was scientific Positivism
+that he clung to; in his hatred of all mysticism he would have naught to
+do with the fantastic religious leanings of Comte in his last years. And
+in Morin’s brave, consistent, somewhat mournful life, there had been but
+one page of romance: the sudden feverish impulse which had carried him
+off to fight in Sicily by Garibaldi’s side. Afterwards he had again
+become a petty professor in Paris, obscurely earning a dismal livelihood.
+
+ * See M. Zola’s “Rome,” Chapters IV. and XVI.
+
+When Pierre returned to the bedroom he said to his brother in a tone of
+emotion: “Morin has brought me Barthès, who fancies himself in danger and
+asks my hospitality.”
+
+At this Guillaume forgot himself and became excited: “Nicholas Barthès, a
+hero with a soul worthy of antiquity. Oh! I know him; I admire and love
+him. You must set your door open wide for him.”
+
+Bache and Janzen, however, had glanced at one another smiling. And the
+latter, with his cold ironical air, slowly remarked: “Why does Monsieur
+Barthès hide himself? A great many people think he is dead; he is simply
+a ghost who no longer frightens anybody.”
+
+Four and seventy years of age as he now was, Barthès had spent nearly
+half a century in prison. He was the eternal prisoner, the hero of
+liberty whom each successive Government had carried from citadel to
+fortress. Since his youth he had been marching on amidst his dream of
+fraternity, fighting for an ideal Republic based on truth and justice,
+and each and every endeavour had led him to a dungeon; he had invariably
+finished his humanitarian reverie under bolts and bars. Carbonaro,
+Republican, evangelical sectarian, he had conspired at all times and in
+all places, incessantly struggling against the Power of the day, whatever
+it might be. And when the Republic at last had come, that Republic which
+had cost him so many years of gaol, it had, in its own turn, imprisoned
+him, adding fresh years of gloom to those which already had lacked
+sunlight. And thus he remained the martyr of freedom: freedom which he
+still desired in spite of everything; freedom, which, strive as he might,
+never came, never existed.
+
+“But you are mistaken,” replied Guillaume, wounded by Janzen’s raillery.
+“There is again a thought of getting rid of Barthès, whose uncompromising
+rectitude disturbs our politicians; and he does well to take his
+precautions!”
+
+Nicholas Barthès came in, a tall, slim, withered old man, with a nose
+like an eagle’s beak, and eyes that still burned in their deep sockets,
+under white and bushy brows. His mouth, toothless but still refined, was
+lost to sight between his moustaches and snowy beard; and his hair,
+crowning him whitely like an aureola, fell in curls over his shoulders.
+Behind him with all modesty came Théophile Morin, with grey whiskers,
+grey, brush-like hair, spectacles, and yellow, weary mien--that of an old
+professor exhausted by years of teaching. Neither of them seemed
+astonished or awaited an explanation on finding that man in bed with an
+injured wrist. And there were no introductions: those who were acquainted
+merely smiled at one another.
+
+Barthès, for his part, stooped and kissed Guillaume on both cheeks. “Ah!”
+ said the latter, almost gaily, “it gives me courage to see you.”
+
+However, the new comers had brought a little information. The boulevards
+were in an agitated state, the news of the crime had spread from café to
+café, and everybody was anxious to see the late edition which one paper
+had published giving a very incorrect account of the affair, full of the
+most extraordinary details. Briefly, nothing positive was as yet known.
+
+On seeing Guillaume turn pale Pierre compelled him to lie down again, and
+even talked of taking the visitors into the next room. But the injured
+man gently replied: “No, no, I promise you that I won’t stir again, that
+I won’t open my mouth. But stay there and chat together. I assure you
+that it will do me good to have you near me and hear you.”
+
+Then, under the sleepy gleams of the lamp, the others began to talk in
+undertones. Old Barthès, who considered that bomb to be both idiotic and
+abominable, spoke of it with the stupefaction of one who, after fighting
+like a hero through all the legendary struggles for liberty, found
+himself belated, out of his element, in a new era, which he could not
+understand. Did not the conquest of freedom suffice for everything? he
+added. Was there any other problem beyond that of founding the real
+Republic? Then, referring to Mège and his speech in the Chamber that
+afternoon, he bitterly arraigned Collectivism, which he declared to be
+one of the democratic forms of tyranny. Théophile Morin, for his part,
+also spoke against the Collectivist enrolling of the social forces, but
+he professed yet greater hatred of the odious violence of the Anarchists;
+for it was only by evolution that he expected progress, and he felt
+somewhat indifferent as to what political means might bring about the
+scientific society of to-morrow. And in like way Bache did not seem
+particularly fond of the Anarchists, though he was touched by the idyllic
+dream, the humanitarian hope, whose germs lay beneath their passion for
+destruction. And, like Barthès, he also flew into a passion with Mège,
+who since entering the Chamber had become, said he, a mere rhetorician
+and theorist, dreaming of dictatorship. Meantime Janzen, still erect, his
+face frigid and his lips curling ironically, listened to all three of
+them, and vented a few trenchant words to express his own Anarchist
+faith; the uselessness of drawing distinctions, and the necessity of
+destroying everything in order that everything might be rebuilt on fresh
+lines.
+
+Pierre, who had remained near the bed, also listened with passionate
+attention. Amidst the downfall of his own beliefs, the utter void which
+he felt within him, here were these four men, who represented the
+cardinal points of this century’s ideas, debating the very same terrible
+problem which brought him so much suffering, that of the new belief which
+the democracy of the coming century awaits. And, ah! since the days of
+the immediate ancestors, since the days of Voltaire and Diderot and
+Rousseau how incessantly had billows of ideas followed and jostled one
+another, the older ones giving birth to new ones, and all breaking and
+bounding in a tempest in which it was becoming so difficult to
+distinguish anything clearly! Whence came the wind, and whither was the
+ship of salvation going, for what port ought one to embark? Pierre had
+already thought that the balance-sheet of the century ought to be drawn
+up, and that, after accepting the legacies of Rousseau and the other
+precursors, he ought to study the ideas of St. Simon, Fourier and even
+Cabet; of Auguste Comte, Proudhon and Karl Marx as well, in order, at any
+rate, to form some idea of the distance that had been travelled, and of
+the cross-ways which one had now reached. And was not this an
+opportunity, since chance had gathered those men together in his house,
+living exponents of the conflicting doctrines which he wished to examine?
+
+On turning round, however, he perceived that Guillaume was now very pale
+and had closed his eyes. Had even he, with his faith in science, felt the
+doubt which is born of contradictory theories, and the despair which
+comes when one sees the fight for truth resulting in growth of error?
+
+“Are you in pain?” the priest anxiously inquired.
+
+“Yes, a little. But I will try to sleep.”
+
+At this they all went off with silent handshakes. Nicholas Barthès alone
+remained in the house and slept in a room on the first floor which Sophie
+had got ready for him. Pierre, unwilling to quit his brother, dozed off
+upon a sofa. And the little house relapsed into its deep quietude, the
+silence of solitude and winter, through which passed the melancholy
+quiver of the souvenirs of childhood.
+
+In the morning, as soon as it was seven o’clock, Pierre had to go for the
+newspapers. Guillaume had passed a bad night and intense fever had set
+in. Nevertheless, his brother was obliged to read him the articles on the
+explosion. There was an amazing medley of truths and inventions, of
+precise information lost amidst the most unexpected extravagance.
+Sagnier’s paper, the “Voix du Peuple,” distinguished itself by its
+sub-titles in huge print and a whole page of particulars jumbled together
+chance-wise. It had at once decided to postpone the famous list of the
+thirty-two deputies and senators compromised in the African Railways
+affair; and there was no end to the details it gave of the aspect of the
+entrance to the Duvillard mansion after the explosion the pavement broken
+up, the upper floor rent open, the huge doors torn away from their
+hinges. Then came the story of the Baron’s son and daughter preserved as
+by a miracle, the landau escaping the slightest injury, while the banker
+and his wife, it was alleged, owed their preservation to the circumstance
+that they had lingered at the Madeleine after Monseigneur Martha’s
+remarkable address there. An entire column was given to the one victim,
+the poor, pretty, fair-haired errand girl, whose identity did not seem to
+be clearly established, although a flock of reporters had rushed first to
+the modiste employing her, in the Avenue de l’Opera, and next to the
+upper part of the Faubourg St. Denis, where it was thought her
+grandmother resided. Then, in a gravely worded article in “Le Globe,”
+ evidently inspired by Fonsègue, an appeal was made to the Chamber’s
+patriotism to avoid giving cause for any ministerial crisis in the
+painful circumstances through which the country was passing. Thus the
+ministry might last, and live in comparative quietude, for a few weeks
+longer.
+
+Guillaume, however, was struck by one point only: the culprit was not
+known; Salvat, it appeared certain, was neither arrested nor even
+suspected. It seemed, indeed, as if the police were starting on a false
+scent--that of a well-dressed gentleman wearing gloves, whom a neighbour
+swore he had seen entering the mansion at the moment of the explosion.
+Thus Guillaume became a little calmer. But his brother read to him from
+another paper some particulars concerning the engine of destruction that
+had been employed. It was a preserved-meat can, and the fragments of it
+showed that it had been comparatively small. And Guillaume relapsed into
+anxiety on learning that people were much astonished at the violent
+ravages of such a sorry appliance, and that the presence of some new
+explosive of incalculable power was already suspected.
+
+At eight o’clock Bertheroy put in an appearance. Although he was
+sixty-eight, he showed as much briskness and sprightliness as any young
+sawbones calling in a friendly way to perform a little operation. He had
+brought an instrument case, some linen bands and some lint. However, he
+became angry on finding the injured man nervous, flushed and hot with
+fever.
+
+“Ah! I see that you haven’t been reasonable, my dear child,” said he.
+“You must have talked too much, and have bestirred and excited yourself.”
+ Then, having carefully probed the wound, he added, while dressing it:
+“The bone is injured, you know, and I won’t answer for anything unless
+you behave better. Any complications would make amputation necessary.”
+
+Pierre shuddered, but Guillaume shrugged his shoulders, as if to say that
+he might just as well be amputated since all was crumbling around him.
+Bertheroy, who had sat down, lingering there for another moment,
+scrutinised both brothers with his keen eyes. He now knew of the
+explosion, and must have thought it over. “My dear child,” he resumed in
+his brusque way, “I certainly don’t think that you committed that
+abominable act of folly in the Rue Godot-de-Mauroy. But I fancy that you
+were in the neighbourhood--no, no, don’t answer me, don’t defend
+yourself. I know nothing and desire to know nothing, not even the formula
+of that devilish powder of which your shirt cuff bore traces, and which
+has wrought such terrible havoc.”
+
+And then as the brothers remained surprised, turning cold with anxiety,
+in spite of his assurances, he added with a sweeping gesture: “Ah! my
+friends, I regard such an action as even more useless than criminal! I
+only feel contempt for the vain agitation of politics, whether they be
+revolutionary or conservative. Does not science suffice? Why hasten the
+times when one single step of science brings humanity nearer to the goal
+of truth and justice than do a hundred years of politics and social
+revolt? Why, it is science alone which sweeps away dogmas, casts down
+gods, and creates light and happiness. And I, Member of the Institute as
+I am, decorated and possessed of means, I am the only true
+Revolutionist.”
+
+Then he began to laugh and Guillaume realised all the good-natured irony
+of his laugh. While admiring him as a great _savant_, he had hitherto
+suffered at seeing him lead such a _bourgeois_ life, accepting whatever
+appointments and honours were offered him, a Republican under the
+Republic, but quite ready to serve science under no matter what master.
+But now, from beneath this opportunist, this hieratical _savant_, this
+toiler who accepted wealth and glory from all hands, there appeared a
+quiet yet terrible evolutionist, who certainly expected that his own work
+would help to ravage and renew the world!
+
+However, Bertheroy rose and took his leave: “I’ll come back; behave
+sensibly, and love one another as well as you can.”
+
+When the brothers again found themselves alone, Pierre seated at
+Guillaume’s bedside, their hands once more sought each other and met in a
+burning clasp instinct with all their anguish. How much threatening
+mystery and distress there was both around and within them! The grey
+wintry daylight came into the room, and they could see the black trees in
+the garden, while the house remained full of quivering silence, save that
+overhead a faint sound of footsteps was audible. They were the steps of
+Nicholas Barthès, the heroic lover of freedom, who, rising at daybreak,
+had, like a caged lion, resumed his wonted promenade, the incessant
+coming and going of one who had ever been a prisoner. And as the brothers
+ceased listening to him their eyes fell on a newspaper which had remained
+open on the bed, a newspaper soiled by a sketch in outline which
+pretended to portray the poor dead errand girl, lying, ripped open,
+beside the bandbox and the bonnet it had contained. It was so frightful,
+so atrociously hideous a scene, that two big tears again fell upon
+Pierre’s cheeks, whilst Guillaume’s blurred, despairing eyes gazed
+wistfully far away, seeking for the Future.
+
+
+
+
+II. A HOME OF INDUSTRY
+
+THE little house in which Guillaume had dwelt for so many years, a home
+of quietude and hard work, stood in the pale light of winter up yonder at
+Montmartre, peacefully awaiting his return. He reflected, however, after
+_déjeuner_ that it might not be prudent for him to go back thither for
+some three weeks, and so he thought of sending Pierre to explain the
+position of affairs. “Listen, brother,” he said. “You must render me this
+service. Go and tell them the truth--that I am here, slightly injured,
+and do not wish them to come to see me, for fear lest somebody should
+follow them and discover my retreat. After the note I wrote them last
+evening they would end by getting anxious if I did not send them some
+news.” Then, yielding to the one worry which, since the previous night,
+had disturbed his clear, frank glance, he added: “Just feel in the
+right-hand pocket of my waistcoat; you will find a little key there.
+Good! that’s it. Now you must give it to Madame Leroi, my mother-in-law,
+and tell her that if any misfortune should happen to me, she is to do
+what is understood between us. That will suffice, she will understand
+you.”
+
+At the first moment Pierre had hesitated; but he saw how even the slight
+effort of speaking exhausted his brother, so he silenced him, saying:
+“Don’t talk, but put your mind at ease. I will go and reassure your
+people, since you wish that this commission should be undertaken by me.”
+
+Truth to tell, the errand was so distasteful to Pierre that he had at
+first thought of sending Sophie in his place. All his old prejudices were
+reviving; it was as if he were going to some ogre’s den. How many times
+had he not heard his mother say “that creature!” in referring to the
+woman with whom her elder son cohabited. Never had she been willing to
+kiss Guillaume’s boys; the whole connection had shocked her, and she was
+particularly indignant that Madame Leroi, the woman’s mother, should have
+joined the household for the purpose of bringing up the little ones.
+Pierre retained so strong a recollection of all this that even nowadays,
+when he went to the basilica of the Sacred Heart and passed the little
+house on his way, he glanced at it distrustfully, and kept as far from it
+as he could, as if it were some abode of vice and error. Undoubtedly, for
+ten years now, the boys’ mother had been dead, but did not another
+scandal-inspiring creature dwell there, that young orphan girl to whom
+his brother had given shelter, and whom he was going to marry, although a
+difference of twenty years lay between them? To Pierre all this was
+contrary to propriety, abnormal and revolting, and he pictured a home
+given over to social rebellion, where lack of principle led to every kind
+of disorder.
+
+However, he was leaving the room to start upon his journey, when
+Guillaume called him back. “Tell Madame Leroi,” said he, “that if I
+should die you will let her know of it, so that she may immediately do
+what is necessary.”
+
+“Yes, yes,” answered Pierre. “But calm yourself, and don’t move about.
+I’ll say everything. And in my absence Sophie will stop here with you in
+case you should need her.”
+
+Having given full instructions to the servant, Pierre set out to take a
+tramcar, intending to alight from it on the Boulevard de Rochechouart,
+and then climb the height on foot. And on the road, lulled by the gliding
+motion of the heavy vehicle, he began to think of his brother’s past life
+and connections, with which he was but vaguely, imperfectly, acquainted.
+It was only at a later date that details of everything came to his
+knowledge. In 1850 a young professor named Leroi, who had come from Paris
+to the college of Montauban with the most ardent republican ideas, had
+there married Agathe Dagnan, the youngest of the five girls of an old
+Protestant family from the Cévennes. Young Madame Leroi was _enceinte_
+when her husband, threatened with arrest for contributing some violent
+articles to a local newspaper, immediately after the “Coup d’État,” found
+himself obliged to seek refuge at Geneva. It was there that the young
+couple’s daughter, Marguerite, a very delicate child, was born in 1852.
+For seven years, that is until the Amnesty of 1859, the household
+struggled with poverty, the husband giving but a few ill-paid lessons,
+and the wife absorbed in the constant care which the child required.
+Then, after their return to Paris, their ill-luck became even greater.
+For a long time the ex-professor vainly sought regular employment; it was
+denied him on account of his opinions, and he had to run about giving
+lessons in private houses. When he was at last on the point of being
+received back into the University a supreme blow, an attack of paralysis,
+fell upon him. He lost the use of both legs. And then came utter misery,
+every kind of sordid drudgery, the writing of articles for dictionaries,
+the copying of manuscripts, and even the addressing of newspaper
+wrappers, on the fruits of which the household barely contrived to live,
+in a little lodging in the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince.
+
+It was there that Marguerite grew up. Leroi, embittered by injustice and
+suffering, predicted the advent of a Republic which would avenge the
+follies of the Empire, and a reign of science which would sweep away the
+deceptive and cruel divinity of religious dogmas. On the other hand,
+Agathe’s religious faith had collapsed at Geneva, at sight of the narrow
+and imbecile practices of Calvinism, and all that she retained of it was
+the old Protestant leaven of rebellion. She had become at once the head
+and the arm of the house; she went for her husband’s work, took it back
+when completed, and even did much of it herself, whilst, at the same
+time, performing her house duties, and rearing and educating her
+daughter. The latter, who attended no school, was indebted for all she
+learnt to her father and mother, on whose part there was never any
+question of religious instruction. Through contact with her husband,
+Madame Leroi had lost all belief, and her Protestant heredity inclining
+her to free inquiry and examination, she had arranged for herself a kind
+of peaceful atheism, based on paramount principles of human duty and
+justice, which she applied courageously, irrespective of all social
+conventionalities. The long iniquity of her husband’s fate, the
+undeserved misfortunes which struck her through him and her daughter,
+ended by endowing her with wonderful fortitude and devotion, which made
+her, whether as a judge, a manager, or a consoler, a woman of
+incomparable energy and nobleness of character.
+
+It was in the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince that Guillaume became acquainted
+with the Leroi family, after the war of 1870. On the same floor as their
+little lodging he occupied a large room, where he devoted himself
+passionately to his studies. At the outset there was only an occasional
+bow, for Guillaume’s neighbours were very proud and very grave, leading
+their life of poverty in fierce silence and retirement. Then intercourse
+began with the rendering of little services, such as when the young man
+procured the ex-professor a commission to write a few articles for a new
+encyclopaedia. But all at once came the catastrophe: Leroi died in his
+armchair one evening while his daughter was wheeling him from his table
+to his bed. The two distracted women had not even the money to bury him.
+The whole secret of their bitter want flowed forth with their tears, and
+they were obliged to accept the help of Guillaume, who, from that moment,
+became the necessary confidant and friend. And the thing which was bound
+to happen did happen, in the most simple and loving manner, permitted by
+the mother herself, who, full of contempt for a social system which
+allowed those of good hearts to die of hunger, refused to admit the
+necessity of any social tie. Thus there was no question of a regular
+marriage. One day Guillaume, who was twenty-three years old, found
+himself mated to Marguerite, who was twenty; both of them handsome,
+healthy, and strong, adoring one another, loving work, and full of hope
+in the future.
+
+From that moment a new life began. Since his father’s death, Guillaume,
+who had broken off all intercourse with his mother, had been receiving an
+allowance of two hundred francs a month. This just represented daily
+bread; however, he was already doubling the amount by his work as a
+chemist,--his analyses and researches, which tended to the employment of
+certain chemical products in industry. So he and Marguerite installed
+themselves on the very summit of Montmartre, in a little house, at a
+rental of eight hundred francs a year, the great convenience of the place
+being a strip of garden, where one might, later on, erect a wooden
+workshop. In all tranquillity Madame Leroi took up her abode with the
+young people, helping them, and sparing them the necessity of keeping a
+second servant. And at successive intervals of two years, her three
+grandchildren were born, three sturdy boys: first Thomas, then François,
+and then Antoine. And in the same way as she had devoted herself to her
+husband and daughter, and then to Guillaume, so did she now devote
+herself to the three children. She became “Mère-Grand”--an emphatic and
+affectionate way of expressing the term “grandmother”--for all who lived
+in the house, the older as well as the younger ones. She there
+personified sense, and wisdom, and courage; it was she who was ever on
+the watch, who directed everything, who was consulted about everything,
+and whose opinion was always followed. Indeed, she reigned there like an
+all-powerful queen-mother.
+
+For fifteen years this life went on, a life of hard work and peaceful
+affection, while the strictest economy was observed in contenting every
+need of the modest little household. Then Guillaume lost his mother, took
+his share of the family inheritance, and was able to satisfy his old
+desire, which was to buy the house he lived in, and build a spacious
+workshop in the garden. He was even able to build it of bricks, and add
+an upper story to it. But the work was scarcely finished, and life seemed
+to be on the point of expanding and smiling on them all, when misfortune
+returned, and typhoid fever, with brutal force, carried off Marguerite,
+after a week’s illness. She was then five and thirty, and her eldest boy,
+Thomas, was fourteen. Thus Guillaume, distracted by his loss, found
+himself a widower at thirty-eight. The thought of introducing any unknown
+woman into that retired home, where all hearts beat in tender unison, was
+so unbearable to him that he determined to take no other mate. His work
+absorbed him, and he would know how to quiet both his heart and his
+flesh. Mère-Grand, fortunately, was still there, erect and courageous;
+the household retained its queen, and in her the children found a
+manageress and teacher, schooled in adversity and heroism.
+
+Two years passed; and then came an addition to the family. A young woman,
+Marie Couturier, the daughter of one of Guillaume’s friends, suddenly
+entered it. Couturier had been an inventor, a madman with some measure of
+genius, and had spent a fairly large fortune in attempting all sorts of
+fantastic schemes. His wife, a very pious woman, had died of grief at it
+all; and although on the rare occasions when he saw his daughter, he
+showed great fondness for her and loaded her with presents, he had first
+placed her in a boarding college, and afterwards left her in the charge
+of a poor female relative. Remembering her only on his death-bed, he had
+begged Guillaume to give her an asylum, and find her a husband. The poor
+relation, who dealt in ladies’ and babies’ linen, had just become a
+bankrupt. So, at nineteen, the girl, Marie, found herself a penniless
+outcast, possessed of nothing save a good education, health and courage.
+Guillaume would never allow her to run about giving lessons. He took her,
+in quite a natural way, to help Mère-Grand, who was no longer so active
+as formerly. And the latter approved the arrangement, well pleased at the
+advent of youth and gaiety, which would somewhat brighten the household,
+whose life had been one of much gravity ever since Marguerite’s death.
+Marie would simply be an elder sister; she was too old for the boys, who
+were still at college, to be disturbed by her presence. And she would
+work in that house where everybody worked. She would help the little
+community pending the time when she might meet and love some worthy
+fellow who would marry her.
+
+Five more years elapsed without Marie consenting to quit that happy home.
+The sterling education she had received was lodged in a vigorous brain,
+which contented itself with the acquirement of knowledge. Yet she had
+remained very pure and healthy, even very _naive_, maidenly by reason of
+her natural rectitude. And she was also very much a woman, beautifying
+and amusing herself with a mere nothing, and ever showing gaiety and
+contentment. Moreover, she was in no wise of a dreamy nature, but very
+practical, always intent on some work or other, and only asking of life
+such things as life could give, without anxiety as to what might lie
+beyond it. She lovingly remembered her pious mother, who had prepared her
+for her first Communion in tears, imagining that she was opening heaven’s
+portals to her. But since she had been an orphan she had of her own
+accord ceased all practice of religion, her good sense revolting and
+scorning the need of any moral police regulations to make her do her
+duty. Indeed, she considered such regulations dangerous and destructive
+of true health. Thus, like Mère-Grand, she had come to a sort of quiet
+and almost unconscious atheism, not after the fashion of one who reasons,
+but simply like the brave, healthy girl she was, one who had long endured
+poverty without suffering from it, and believed in nothing save the
+necessity of effort. She had been kept erect, indeed, by her conviction
+that happiness was to be found in the normal joys of life, lived
+courageously. And her happy equilibrium of mind had ever guided and saved
+her, in such wise that she willingly listened to her natural instinct,
+saying, with her pleasant laugh, that this was, after all, her best
+adviser. She rejected two offers of marriage, and on the second occasion,
+as Guillaume pressed her to accept, she grew astonished, and inquired if
+he had had enough of her in the house. She found herself very
+comfortable, and she rendered service there. So why should she leave and
+run the risk of being less happy elsewhere, particularly as she was not
+in love with anybody?
+
+Then, by degrees, the idea of a marriage between Marie and Guillaume
+presented itself; and indeed what could have been more reasonable and
+advantageous for all? If Guillaume had not mated again it was for his
+sons’ sake, because he feared that by introducing a stranger to the house
+he might impair its quietude and gaiety. But now there was a woman among
+them who already showed herself maternal towards the boys, and whose
+bright youth had ended by disturbing his own heart. He was still in his
+prime, and had always held that it was not good for man to live alone,
+although, personally, thanks to his ardour for work, he had hitherto
+escaped excessive suffering in his bereavement. However, there was the
+great difference of ages to be considered; and he would have bravely
+remained in the background and have sought a younger husband for Marie,
+if his three big sons and Mère-Grand herself had not conspired to effect
+his happiness by doing all they could to bring about a marriage which
+would strengthen every home tie and impart, as it were, a fresh
+springtide to the house. As for Marie, touched and grateful to Guillaume
+for the manner in which he had treated her for five years past, she
+immediately consented with an impulse of sincere affection, in which, she
+fancied, she could detect love. And at all events, could she act in a
+more sensible, reasonable way, base her life on more certain prospects of
+happiness? So the marriage had been resolved upon; and about a month
+previously it had been decided that it should take place during the
+ensuing spring, towards the end of April.
+
+When Pierre, after alighting from the tramcar, began to climb the
+interminable flights of steps leading to the Rue St. Eleuthère, a feeling
+of uneasiness again came over him at the thought that he was about to
+enter that suspicious ogre’s den where everything would certainly wound
+and irritate him. Given the letter which Sophie had carried thither on
+the previous night, announcing that the master would not return, how
+anxious and upset must all its inmates be! However, as Pierre ascended
+the final flight and nervously raised his head, the little house appeared
+to him right atop of the hill, looking very serene and quiet under the
+bright wintry sun, which had peered forth as if to bestow upon the modest
+dwelling an affectionate caress.
+
+There was a door in the old garden wall alongside the Rue St. Eleuthère,
+almost in front of the broad thoroughfare conducting to the basilica of
+the Sacred Heart; but to reach the house itself one had to skirt the wall
+and climb to the Place du Tertre, where one found the façade and the
+entrance. Some children were playing on the Place, which, planted as it
+was with a few scrubby trees, and edged with humble shops,--a
+fruiterer’s, a grocer’s and a baker’s,--looked like some square in a
+small provincial town. In a corner, on the left, Guillaume’s dwelling,
+which had been whitewashed during the previous spring, showed its bright
+frontage and five lifeless windows, for all its life was on the other,
+the garden, side, which overlooked Paris and the far horizon.
+
+Pierre mustered his courage and, pulling a brass knob which glittered
+like gold, rang the bell. There came a gay, distant jingle; but for a
+moment nobody appeared, and he was about to ring again, when the door was
+thrown wide open, revealing a passage which ran right through the house,
+beyond which appeared the ocean of Paris, the endless sea of house roofs
+bathed in sunlight. And against this spacious, airy background, stood a
+young woman of twenty-six, clad in a simple gown of black woolen stuff,
+half covered by a large blue apron. She had her sleeves rolled up above
+her elbows, and her arms and hands were still moist with water which she
+had but imperfectly wiped away.
+
+A moment’s surprise and embarrassment ensued. The young woman, who had
+hastened to the door with laughing mien, became grave and covertly
+hostile at sight of the visitor’s cassock. The priest thereupon realised
+that he must give his name: “I am Abbé Pierre Froment.”
+
+At this the young woman’s smile of welcome came back to her. “Oh! I beg
+your pardon, monsieur--I ought to have recognised you, for I saw you wish
+Guillaume good day one morning as you passed.”
+
+She said Guillaume; she, therefore, must be Marie. And Pierre looked at
+her in astonishment, finding her very different from what he had
+imagined. She was only of average height, but she was vigorously,
+admirably built, broad of hip and broad of shoulder, with the small firm
+bosom of an amazon. By her erect and easy step, instinct with all the
+adorable grace of woman in her prime, one could divine that she was
+strong, muscular and healthy. A brunette, but very white of skin, she had
+a heavy helm of superb black hair, which she fastened in a negligent way,
+without any show of coquetry. And under her dark locks, her pure,
+intelligent brow, her delicate nose and gay eyes appeared full of intense
+life; whilst the somewhat heavier character of her lower features, her
+fleshy lips and full chin, bespoke her quiet kindliness. She had surely
+come on earth as a promise of every form of tenderness, every form of
+devotion. In a word, she was a true mate for man.
+
+However, with her heavy, straying hair and superb arms, so ingenuous in
+their nudity, she only gave Pierre an impression of superfluous health
+and extreme self-assurance. She displeased him and even made him feel
+somewhat anxious, as if she were a creature different from all others.
+
+“It is my brother Guillaume who has sent me,” he said.
+
+At this her face again changed; she became grave and hastened to admit
+him to the passage. And when the door was closed she answered: “You have
+brought us news of him, then! I must apologise for receiving you in this
+fashion. The servants have just finished some washing, and I was making
+sure if the work had been well done. Pray excuse me, and come in here for
+a moment; it is perhaps best that I should be the first to know the
+news.”
+
+So saying, she led him past the kitchen to a little room which served as
+scullery and wash-house. A tub full of soapy water stood there, and some
+dripping linen hung over some wooden bars. “And so, Guillaume?” she
+asked.
+
+Pierre then told the truth in simple fashion: that his brother’s wrist
+had been injured; that he himself had witnessed the accident, and that
+his brother had then sought an asylum with him at Neuilly, where he
+wished to remain and get cured of his injury in peace and quietness,
+without even receiving a visit from his sons. While speaking in this
+fashion, the priest watched the effect of his words on Marie’s face:
+first fright and pity, and then an effort to calm herself and judge
+things reasonably.
+
+“His letter quite froze me last night,” she ended by replying. “I felt
+sure that some misfortune had happened. But one must be brave and hide
+one’s fear from others. His wrist injured, you say; it is not a serious
+injury, is it?”
+
+“No; but it is necessary that every precaution should be taken with it.”
+
+She looked him well in the face with her big frank eyes, which dived into
+his own as if to reach the very depths of his being, though at the same
+time she plainly sought to restrain the score of questions which rose to
+her lips. “And that is all: he was injured in an accident,” she resumed;
+“he didn’t ask you to tell us anything further about it?”
+
+“No, he simply desires that you will not be anxious.”
+
+Thereupon she insisted no further, but showed herself obedient and
+respectful of the decision which Guillaume had arrived at. It sufficed
+that he should have sent a messenger to reassure the household--she did
+not seek to learn any more. And even as she had returned to her work in
+spite of the secret anxiety in which the letter of the previous evening
+had left her, so now, with her air of quiet strength, she recovered an
+appearance of serenity, a quiet smile and clear brave glance.
+
+“Guillaume only gave me one other commission,” resumed Pierre, “that of
+handing a little key to Madame Leroi.”
+
+“Very good,” Marie answered, “Mère-Grand is here; and, besides, the
+children must see you. I will take you to them.”
+
+Once more quite tranquil, she examined Pierre without managing to conceal
+her curiosity, which seemed of rather a kindly nature blended with an
+element of vague pity. Her fresh white arms had remained bare. In all
+candour she slowly drew down her sleeves; then took off the large blue
+apron, and showed herself with her rounded figure, at once robust and
+elegant, in her modest black gown. He meanwhile looked at her, and most
+certainly he did not find her to his liking. On seeing her so natural,
+healthy, and courageous, quite a feeling of revolt arose within him,
+though he knew not why.
+
+“Will you please follow me, Monsieur l’Abbé?” she said. “We must cross
+the garden.”
+
+On the ground-floor of the house, across the passage, and facing the
+kitchen and the scullery, there were two other rooms, a library
+overlooking the Place du Tertre, and a dining-room whose windows opened
+into the garden. The four rooms on the first floor served as bedchambers
+for the father and the sons. As for the garden, originally but a small
+one, it had now been reduced to a kind of gravelled yard by the erection
+of the large workshop at one end of it. Of the former greenery, however,
+there still remained two huge plum-trees with old knotted trunks, as well
+as a big clump of lilac-bushes, which every spring were covered with
+bloom. And in front of the latter Marie had arranged a broad flower-bed,
+in which she amused herself with growing a few roses, some wallflowers
+and some mignonette.
+
+With a wave of her hand as she went past, she called Pierre’s attention
+to the black plum-trees and the lilacs and roses, which showed but a few
+greenish spots, for winter still held the little nook in sleep. “Tell
+Guillaume,” she said, “that he must make haste to get well and be back
+for the first shoots.”
+
+Then, as Pierre glanced at her, she all at once flushed purple. Much to
+her distress, sudden and involuntary blushes would in this wise
+occasionally come upon her, even at the most innocent remarks. She found
+it ridiculous to feel such childish emotion when she had so brave a
+heart. But her pure maidenly blood had retained exquisite delicacy, such
+natural and instinctive modesty that she yielded to it perforce. And
+doubtless she had merely blushed because she feared that the priest might
+think she had referred to her marriage in speaking of the spring.
+
+“Please go in, Monsieur l’Abbé. The children are there, all three.” And
+forthwith she ushered him into the workshop.
+
+It was a very spacious place, over sixteen feet high, with a brick
+flooring and bare walls painted an iron grey. A sheet of light, a stream
+of sunshine, spread to every corner through a huge window facing the
+south, where lay the immensity of Paris. The Venetian shutters often had
+to be lowered in the summer to attenuate the great heat. From morn till
+night the whole family lived here, closely and affectionately united in
+work. Each was installed as fancy listed, having a particular chosen
+place. One half of the building was occupied by the father’s chemical
+laboratory, with its stove, experiment tables, shelves for apparatus,
+glass cases and cupboards for phials and jars. Near all this Thomas, the
+eldest son, had installed a little forge, an anvil, a vice bench, in fact
+everything necessary to a working mechanician, such as he had become
+since taking his bachelor’s degree, from his desire to remain with his
+father and help him with certain researches and inventions. Then, at the
+other end, the younger brothers, François and Antoine, got on very well
+together on either side of a broad table which stood amidst a medley of
+portfolios, nests of drawers and revolving book-stands. François, laden
+with academical laurels, first on the pass list for the École Normale,
+had entered that college where young men are trained for university
+professorships, and was there preparing for his Licentiate degree, while
+Antoine, who on reaching the third class at the Lycée Condorcet had taken
+a dislike to classical studies, now devoted himself to his calling as a
+wood-engraver. And, in the full light under the window, Mère-Grand and
+Marie likewise had their particular table, where needlework, embroidery,
+all sorts of _chiffons_ and delicate things lay about near the somewhat
+rough jumble of retorts, tools and big books.
+
+Marie, however, on the very threshold called out in her calm voice, to
+which she strove to impart a gay and cheering accent: “Children!
+children! here is Monsieur l’Abbé with news of father!”
+
+Children, indeed! Yet what motherliness she already set in the word as
+she applied it to those big fellows whose elder sister she had long
+considered herself to be! At three and twenty Thomas was quite a
+colossus, already bearded and extremely like his father. But although he
+had a lofty brow and energetic features, he was somewhat slow both in
+mind and body. And he was also taciturn, almost unsociable, absorbed in
+filial devotion, delighted with the manual toil which made him a mere
+workman at his master’s orders. François, two years younger than Thomas,
+and nearly as tall, showed a more refined face, though he had the same
+large brow and firm mouth, a perfect blending of health and strength, in
+which the man of intellect, the scientific Normalian, could only be
+detected by the brighter and more subtle sparkle of the eyes. The
+youngest of the brothers, Antoine, who for his eighteen years was almost
+as strong as his elders, and promised to become as tall, differed from
+them by his lighter hair and soft, blue, dreamy eyes, which he had
+inherited from his mother. It had been difficult, however, to distinguish
+one from the other when all three were schoolboys at the Lycée Condorcet;
+and even nowadays people made mistakes unless they saw them side by side,
+so as to detect the points of difference which were becoming more marked
+as age progressed.
+
+On Pierre’s arrival the brothers were so absorbed in their work that they
+did not even hear the door open. And again, as in the case of Marie, the
+priest was surprised by the discipline and firmness of mind, which amidst
+the keenest anxiety gave the young fellows strength to take up their
+daily task. Thomas, who stood at his vice-bench in a blouse, was
+carefully filing a little piece of copper with rough but skilful hands.
+François, leaning forward, was writing in a bold, firm fashion, whilst on
+the other side of the table, Antoine, with a slender graver between his
+fingers, finished a block for an illustrated newspaper.
+
+However, Marie’s clear voice made them raise their heads: “Children,
+father has sent you some news!”
+
+Then all three with the same impulse hurriedly quitted their work and
+came forward. One could divine that directly there was any question of
+their father they were drawn together, blended one with the other, so
+that but one and the same heart beat in their three broad chests.
+However, a door at the far end of the workroom opened at that moment, and
+Mère-Grand, coming from the upper floor where she and Marie had their
+bedrooms, made her appearance. She had just absented herself to fetch a
+skein of wool; and she gazed fixedly at the priest, unable to understand
+the reason of his presence.
+
+Marie had to explain matters. “Mère-Grand,” said she, “this is Monsieur
+l’Abbé Froment, Guillaume’s brother; he has come from him.”
+
+Pierre on his side was examining the old lady, astonished to find her so
+erect and full of life at seventy. Her former beauty had left a stately
+charm on her rather long face; youthful fire still lingered in her brown
+eyes; and very firm was the contour of her pale lips, which in parting
+showed that she had retained all her teeth. A few white hairs alone
+silvered her black tresses, which were arranged in old-time fashion. Her
+cheeks had but slightly withered, and her deep, symmetrical wrinkles gave
+her countenance an expression of much nobility, a sovereign air as of a
+queen-mother, which, tall and slight of stature as she was, and
+invariably gowned in black woollen stuff, she always retained, no matter
+how humble her occupation.
+
+“So Guillaume sent you, monsieur,” she said; “he is injured, is he not?”
+
+Surprised by this proof of intuition, Pierre repeated his story. “Yes,
+his wrist is injured--but oh! it’s not a case of immediate gravity.”
+
+On the part of the three sons, he had divined a sudden quiver, an impulse
+of their whole beings to rush to the help and defence of their father.
+And for their sakes he sought words of comfort: “He is with me at
+Neuilly. And with due care it is certain that no serious complications
+will arise. He sent me to tell you to be in no wise uneasy about him.”
+
+Mère-Grand for her part evinced no fears, but preserved great calmness,
+as if the priest’s tidings contained nothing beyond what she had known
+already. If anything, she seemed rather relieved, freed from anxiety
+which she had confided to none. “If he is with you, monsieur,” she
+answered, “he is evidently as comfortable as he can be, and sheltered
+from all risks. We were surprised, however, by his letter last night, as
+it did not explain why he was detained, and we should have ended by
+feeling frightened. But now everything is satisfactory.”
+
+Mère-Grand and the three sons, following Marie’s example, asked no
+explanations. On a table near at hand Pierre noticed several morning
+newspapers lying open and displaying column after column of particulars
+about the crime. The sons had certainly read these papers, and had feared
+lest their father should be compromised in that frightful affair. How far
+did their knowledge of the latter go? They must be ignorant of the part
+played by Salvat. It was surely impossible for them to piece together all
+the unforeseen circumstances which had brought about their father’s
+meeting with the workman, and then the crime. Mère-Grand, no doubt, was
+in certain respects better informed than the others. But they, the sons
+and Marie, neither knew nor sought to know anything. And thus what a
+wealth of respect and affection there was in their unshakable confidence
+in the father, in the tranquillity they displayed directly he sent them
+word that they were not to be anxious about him!
+
+“Madame,” Pierre resumed, “Guillaume told me to give you this little key,
+and to remind you to do what he charged you to do, if any misfortune
+should befall him.”
+
+She started, but so slightly that it was scarcely perceptible; and taking
+the key she answered as if some ordinary wish on the part of a sick
+person were alone in question. “Very well. Tell him that his wishes shall
+be carried out.” Then she added, “But pray take a seat, monsieur.”
+
+Pierre, indeed, had remained standing. However, he now felt it necessary
+to accept a chair, desirous as he was of hiding the embarrassment which
+he still felt in this house, although he was _en famille_ there. Marie,
+who could not live without occupation for her fingers, had just returned
+to some embroidery, some of the fine needlework which she stubbornly
+executed for a large establishment dealing in baby-linen and bridal
+_trousseaux_; for she wished at any rate to earn her own pocket-money,
+she often said with a laugh. Mère-Grand, too, from habit, which she
+followed even when visitors were present, had once more started on her
+perpetual stocking-mending; while François and Antoine had again seated
+themselves at their table; and Thomas alone remained on his legs, leaning
+against his bench. All the charm of industrious intimacy pervaded the
+spacious, sun-lit room.
+
+“But we’ll all go to see father to-morrow,” Thomas suddenly exclaimed.
+
+Before Pierre could answer Marie raised her head. “No, no,” said she, “he
+does not wish any of us to go to him; for if we should be watched and
+followed we should betray the secret of his retreat. Isn’t that so,
+Monsieur l’Abbé?”
+
+“It would indeed be prudent of you to deprive yourselves of the pleasure
+of embracing him until he himself can come back here. It will be a matter
+of some two or three weeks,” answered Pierre.
+
+Mère-Grand at once expressed approval of this. “No doubt,” said she.
+“Nothing could be more sensible.”
+
+So the three sons did not insist, but bravely accepted the secret anxiety
+in which they must for a time live, renouncing the visit which would have
+caused them so much delight, because their father bade them do so and
+because his safety depended perhaps on their obedience.
+
+However, Thomas resumed: “Then, Monsieur l’Abbé, will you please tell him
+that as work will be interrupted here, I shall return to the factory
+during his absence. I shall be more at ease there for the researches on
+which we are engaged.”
+
+“And please tell him from me,” put in François, “that he mustn’t worry
+about my examination. Things are going very well. I feel almost certain
+of success.”
+
+Pierre promised that he would forget nothing. However, Marie raised her
+head, smiling and glancing at Antoine, who had remained silent with a
+faraway look in his eyes. “And you, little one,” said she, “don’t you
+send him any message?”
+
+Emerging from a dream, the young fellow also began to smile. “Yes, yes, a
+message that you love him dearly, and that he’s to make haste back for
+you to make him happy.”
+
+At this they all became merry, even Marie, who in lieu of embarrassment
+showed a tranquil gaiety born of confidence in the future. Between her
+and the young men there was naught but happy affection. And a grave smile
+appeared even on the pale lips of Mère-Grand, who likewise approved of
+the happiness which life seemed to be promising.
+
+Pierre wished to stay a few minutes longer. They all began to chat, and
+his astonishment increased. He had gone from surprise to surprise in this
+house where he had expected to find that equivocal, disorderly life, that
+rebellion against social laws, which destroy morality. But instead of
+this he had found loving serenity, and such strong discipline that life
+there partook of the gravity, almost the austerity, of convent life,
+tempered by youth and gaiety. The vast room was redolent of industry and
+quietude, warm with bright sunshine. However, what most particularly
+struck him was the Spartan training, the bravery of mind and heart among
+those sons who allowed nothing to be seen of their personal feelings, and
+did not presume to judge their father, but remained content with his
+message, ready to await events, stoical and silent, while carrying on
+their daily tasks. Nothing could be more simple, more dignified, more
+lofty. And there was also the smiling heroism of Mère-Grand and Marie,
+those two women who slept over that laboratory where terrible
+preparations were manipulated, and where an explosion was always
+possible.
+
+However, such courage, orderliness and dignity merely surprised Pierre,
+without touching him. He had no cause for complaint, he had received a
+polite greeting if not an affectionate one; but then he was as yet only a
+stranger there, a priest. In spite of everything, however, he remained
+hostile, feeling that he was in a sphere where none of his own torments
+could be shared or even divined. How did these folks manage to be so calm
+and happy amidst their religious unbelief, their sole faith in science,
+and in presence of that terrifying Paris which spread before them the
+boundless sea, the growling abomination of its injustice and its want? As
+this thought came to him he turned his head and gazed at the city through
+the huge window, whence it stretched away, ever present, ever living its
+giant life. And at that hour, under the oblique sun-rays of the winter
+afternoon, all Paris was speckled with luminous dust, as if some
+invisible sower, hidden amidst the glory of the planet, were fast
+scattering seed which fell upon every side in a stream of gold. The whole
+field was covered with it; for the endless chaos of house roofs and
+edifices seemed to be land in tilth, furrowed by some gigantic plough.
+And Pierre in his uneasiness, stirred, despite everything, by an
+invincible need of hope, asked himself if this was not a good sowing, the
+furrows of Paris strewn with light by the divine sun for the great future
+harvest, that harvest of truth and justice of whose advent he had
+despaired.
+
+At last he rose and took his leave, promising to return at once, if there
+should be any bad news. It was Marie who showed him to the front door.
+And there another of those childish blushes which worried her so much
+suddenly rose to her face, just as she, in her turn, also wished to send
+her loving message to the injured man. However, with her gay, candid eyes
+fixed on those of the priest, she bravely spoke the words: “_Au revoir,
+Monsieur l’Abbé_. Tell Guillaume that I love him and await him.”
+
+
+
+
+III. PENURY AND TOIL
+
+THREE days went by, and every morning Guillaume, confined to his bed and
+consumed by fever and impatience, experienced fresh anxiety directly the
+newspapers arrived. Pierre had tried to keep them from him, but Guillaume
+then worried himself the more, and so the priest had to read him column
+by column all the extraordinary articles that were published respecting
+the crime.
+
+Never before had so many rumours inundated the press. Even the “Globe,”
+ usually so grave and circumspect, yielded to the general _furore_, and
+printed whatever statements reached it. But the more unscrupulous papers
+were the ones to read. The “Voix du Peuple” in particular made use of the
+public feverishness to increase its sales. Each morning it employed some
+fresh device, and printed some frightful story of a nature to drive
+people mad with terror. It related that not a day passed without Baron
+Duvillard receiving threatening letters of the coarsest description,
+announcing that his wife, his son and his daughter would all be killed,
+that he himself would be butchered in turn, and that do what he might his
+house would none the less be blown up. And as a measure of precaution the
+house was guarded day and night alike by a perfect army of plain-clothes
+officers. Then another article contained an amazing piece of invention.
+Some anarchists, after carrying barrels of powder into a sewer near the
+Madeleine, were said to have undermined the whole district, planning a
+perfect volcano there, into which one half of Paris would sink. And at
+another time it was alleged that the police were on the track of a
+terrible plot which embraced all Europe, from the depths of Russia to the
+shores of Spain. The signal for putting it into execution was to be given
+in France, and there would be a three days’ massacre, with grape shot
+sweeping everyone off the Boulevards, and the Seine running red, swollen
+by a torrent of blood. Thanks to these able and intelligent devices of
+the Press, terror now reigned in the city; frightened foreigners fled
+from the hotels _en masse_; and Paris had become a mere mad-house, where
+the most idiotic delusions at once found credit.
+
+It was not all this, however, that worried Guillaume. He was only anxious
+about Salvat and the various new “scents” which the newspaper reporters
+attempted to follow up. The engineer was not yet arrested, and, so far
+indeed, there had been no statement in print to indicate that the police
+were on his track. At last, however, Pierre one morning read a paragraph
+which made the injured man turn pale.
+
+“Dear me! It seems that a tool has been found among the rubbish at the
+entrance of the Duvillard mansion. It is a bradawl, and its handle bears
+the name of Grandidier, which is that of a man who keeps some well-known
+metal works. He is to appear before the investigating magistrate to-day.”
+
+Guillaume made a gesture of despair. “Ah!” said he, “they are on the
+right track at last. That tool must certainly have been dropped by
+Salvat. He worked at Grandidier’s before he came to me for a few days.
+And from Grandidier they will learn all that they need to know in order
+to follow the scent.”
+
+Pierre then remembered that he had heard the Grandidier factory mentioned
+at Montmartre. Guillaume’s eldest son, Thomas, had served his
+apprenticeship there, and even worked there occasionally nowadays.
+
+“You told me,” resumed Guillaume, “that during my absence Thomas intended
+to go back to the factory. It’s in connection with a new motor which he’s
+planning, and has almost hit upon. If there should be a perquisition
+there, he may be questioned, and may refuse to answer, in order to guard
+his secret. So he ought to be warned of this, warned at once!”
+
+Without trying to extract any more precise statement from his brother,
+Pierre obligingly offered his services. “If you like,” said he, “I will
+go to see Thomas this afternoon. Perhaps I may come across Monsieur
+Grandidier himself and learn how far the affair has gone, and what was
+said at the investigating magistrate’s.”
+
+With a moist glance and an affectionate grasp of the hand, Guillaume at
+once thanked Pierre: “Yes, yes, brother, go there, it will be good and
+brave of you.”
+
+“Besides,” continued the priest, “I really wanted to go to Montmartre
+to-day. I haven’t told you so, but something has been worrying me. If
+Salvat has fled, he must have left the woman and the child all alone up
+yonder. On the morning of the day when the explosion took place I saw the
+poor creatures in such a state of destitution, such misery, that I can’t
+think of them without a heart-pang. Women and children so often die of
+hunger when the man is no longer there.”
+
+At this, Guillaume, who had kept Pierre’s hand in his own, pressed it
+more tightly, and in a trembling voice exclaimed: “Yes, yes, and that
+will be good and brave too. Go there, brother, go there.”
+
+That house of the Rue des Saules, that horrible home of want and agony,
+had lingered in Pierre’s memory. To him it was like an embodiment of the
+whole filthy _cloaca_, in which the poor of Paris suffer unto death. And
+on returning thither that afternoon, he found the same slimy mud around
+it; its yard littered with the same filth, its dark, damp stairways
+redolent of the same stench of neglect and poverty, as before. In winter
+time, while the fine central districts of Paris are dried and cleansed,
+the far-away districts of the poor remain gloomy and miry, beneath the
+everlasting tramp of the wretched ones who dwell in them.
+
+Remembering the staircase which conducted to Salvat’s lodging, Pierre
+began to climb it amidst a loud screaming of little children, who
+suddenly became quiet, letting the house sink into death-like silence
+once more. Then the thought of Laveuve, who had perished up there like a
+stray dog, came back to Pierre. And he shuddered when, on the top
+landing, he knocked at Salvat’s door, and profound silence alone answered
+him. Not a breath was to be heard.
+
+However, he knocked again, and as nothing stirred he began to think that
+nobody could be there. Perhaps Salvat had returned to fetch the woman and
+the child, and perhaps they had followed him to some humble nook abroad.
+Still this would have astonished him; for the poor seldom quit their
+homes, but die where they have suffered. So he gave another gentle knock.
+
+And at last a faint sound, the light tread of little feet, was heard
+amidst the silence. Then a weak, childish voice ventured to inquire: “Who
+is there?”
+
+“Monsieur l’Abbé.”
+
+The silence fell again, nothing more stirred. There was evidently
+hesitation on the other side.
+
+“Monsieur l’Abbé who came the other day,” said Pierre again.
+
+This evidently put an end to all uncertainty, for the door was set ajar
+and little Céline admitted the priest. “I beg your pardon, Monsieur
+l’Abbé,” said she, “but Mamma Théodore has gone out, and she told me not
+to open the door to anyone.”
+
+Pierre had, for a moment, imagined that Salvat himself was hiding there.
+But with a glance he took in the whole of the small bare room, where man,
+woman and child dwelt together. At the same time, Madame Théodore
+doubtless feared a visit from the police. Had she seen Salvat since the
+crime? Did she know where he was hiding? Had he come back there to
+embrace and tranquillise them both?
+
+“And your papa, my dear,” said Pierre to Céline, “isn’t he here either?”
+
+“Oh! no, monsieur, he has gone away.”
+
+“What, gone away?”
+
+“Yes, he hasn’t been home to sleep, and we don’t know where he is.”
+
+“Perhaps he’s working.”
+
+“Oh, no! he’d send us some money if he was.”
+
+“Then he’s gone on a journey, perhaps?”
+
+“I don’t know.”
+
+“He wrote to Mamma Théodore, no doubt?”
+
+“I don’t know.”
+
+Pierre asked no further questions. In fact, he felt somewhat ashamed of
+his attempt to extract information from this child of eleven, whom he
+thus found alone. It was quite possible that she knew nothing, that
+Salvat, in a spirit of prudence, had even refrained from sending any
+tidings of himself. Indeed, there was an expression of truthfulness on
+the child’s fair, gentle and intelligent face, which was grave with the
+gravity that extreme misery imparts to the young.
+
+“I am sorry that Mamma Théodore isn’t here,” said Pierre, “I wanted to
+speak to her.”
+
+“But perhaps you would like to wait for her, Monsieur l’Abbé. She has
+gone to my Uncle Toussaint’s in the Rue Marcadet; and she can’t stop much
+longer, for she’s been away more than an hour.”
+
+Thereupon Céline cleared one of the chairs on which lay a handful of
+scraps of wood, picked up on some waste ground.
+
+The bare and fireless room was assuredly also a breadless one. Pierre
+could divine the absence of the bread-winner, the disappearance of the
+man who represents will and strength in the home, and on whom one still
+relies even when weeks have gone by without work. He goes out and scours
+the city, and often ends by bringing back the indispensable crust which
+keeps death at bay. But with his disappearance comes complete
+abandonment, the wife and child in danger, destitute of all prop and
+help.
+
+Pierre, who had sat down and was looking at that poor, little, blue-eyed
+girl, to whose lips a smile returned in spite of everything, could not
+keep from questioning her on another point. “So you don’t go to school,
+my child?” said he.
+
+She faintly blushed and answered: “I’ve no shoes to go in.”
+
+He glanced at her feet, and saw that she was wearing a pair of ragged old
+list-slippers, from which her little toes protruded, red with cold.
+
+“Besides,” she continued, “Mamma Théodore says that one doesn’t go to
+school when one’s got nothing to eat. Mamma Théodore wanted to work but
+she couldn’t, because her eyes got burning hot and full of water. And so
+we don’t know what to do, for we’ve had nothing left since yesterday, and
+if Uncle Toussaint can’t lend us twenty sous it’ll be all over.”
+
+She was still smiling in her unconscious way, but two big tears had
+gathered in her eyes. And the sight of the child shut up in that bare
+room, apart from all the happy ones of earth, so upset the priest that he
+again felt his anger with want and misery awakening. Then, another ten
+minutes having elapsed, he became impatient, for he had to go to the
+Grandidier works before returning home.
+
+“I don’t know why Mamma Théodore doesn’t come back,” repeated Céline.
+“Perhaps she’s chatting.” Then, an idea occurring to her she continued:
+“I’ll take you to my Uncle Toussaint’s, Monsieur l’Abbé, if you like.
+It’s close by, just round the corner.”
+
+“But you have no shoes, my child.”
+
+“Oh! that don’t matter, I walk all the same.”
+
+Thereupon he rose from the chair and said simply: “Well, yes, that will
+be better, take me there. And I’ll buy you some shoes.”
+
+Céline turned quite pink, and then made haste to follow him after
+carefully locking the door of the room like a good little housewife,
+though, truth to tell, there was nothing worth stealing in the place.
+
+In the meantime it had occurred to Madame Théodore that before calling on
+her brother Toussaint to try to borrow a franc from him, she might first
+essay her luck with her younger sister, Hortense, who had married little
+Chrétiennot, the clerk, and occupied a flat of four rooms on the
+Boulevard de Rochechouart. This was quite an affair, however, and the
+poor woman only made the venture because Céline had been fasting since
+the previous day.
+
+Eugène Toussaint, the mechanician, a man of fifty, was her stepbrother,
+by the first marriage contracted by her father. A young dressmaker whom
+the latter had subsequently wedded, had borne him three daughters,
+Pauline, Léonie and Hortense. And on his death, his son Eugène, who
+already had a wife and child of his own, had found himself for a short
+time with his stepmother and sisters on his hands. The stepmother,
+fortunately, was an active and intelligent woman, and knew how to get out
+of difficulties. She returned to her former workroom where her daughter
+Pauline was already apprenticed, and she next placed Léonie there; so
+that Hortense, the youngest girl, who was a spoilt child, prettier and
+more delicate than her sisters, was alone left at school. And, later
+on,--after Pauline had married Labitte the stonemason, and Léonie, Salvat
+the journeyman-engineer,--Hortense, while serving as assistant at a
+confectioner’s in the Rue des Martyrs, there became acquainted with
+Chrétiennot, a clerk, who married her. Léonie had died young, only a few
+weeks after her mother; Pauline, forsaken by her husband, lived with her
+brother-in-law Salvat, and Hortense alone wore a light silk gown on
+Sundays, resided in a new house, and ranked as a _bourgeoise_, at the
+price, however, of interminable worries and great privation.
+
+Madame Théodore knew that her sister was generally short of money towards
+the month’s end, and therefore felt rather ill at ease in thus venturing
+to apply for a loan. Chrétiennot, moreover, embittered by his own
+mediocrity, had of late years accused his wife of being the cause of
+their spoilt life, and had ceased all intercourse with her relatives.
+Toussaint, no doubt, was a decent workman; but that Madame Théodore who
+lived in misery with her brother-in-law, and that Salvat who wandered
+from workshop to workshop like an incorrigible ranter whom no employer
+would keep; those two, with their want and dirt and rebellion, had ended
+by incensing the vain little clerk, who was not only a great stickler for
+the proprieties, but was soured by all the difficulties he encountered in
+his own life. And thus he had forbidden Hortense to receive her sister.
+
+All the same, as Madame Théodore climbed the carpeted staircase of the
+house on the Boulevard Rochechouart, she experienced a certain feeling of
+pride at the thought that she had a relation living in such luxury. The
+Chrétiennot’s rooms were on the third floor, and overlooked the
+courtyard. Their _femme-de-ménage_--a woman who goes out by the day or
+hour charring, cleaning and cooking--came back every afternoon about four
+o’clock to see to the dinner, and that day she was already there. She
+admitted the visitor, though she could not conceal her anxious surprise
+at her boldness in calling in such slatternly garb. However, on the very
+threshold of the little salon, Madame Théodore stopped short in
+wonderment herself, for her sister Hortense was sobbing and crouching on
+one of the armchairs, upholstered in blue repp, of which she was so
+proud.
+
+“What is the matter? What has happened to you?” asked Madame Théodore.
+
+Her sister, though scarcely two and thirty, was no longer “the beautiful
+Hortense” of former days. She retained a doll-like appearance, with a
+tall slim figure, pretty eyes and fine, fair hair. But she who had once
+taken so much care of herself, had now come down to dressing-gowns of
+doubtful cleanliness. Her eyelids, too, were reddening, and blotches were
+appearing on her skin. She had begun to fade after giving birth to two
+daughters, one of whom was now nine and the other seven years of age.
+Very proud and egotistical, she herself had begun to regret her marriage,
+for she had formerly considered herself a real beauty, worthy of the
+palaces and equipages of some Prince Charming. And at this moment she was
+plunged in such despair, that her sister’s sudden appearance on the scene
+did not even astonish her: “Ah! it’s you,” she gasped. “Ah! if you only
+knew what a blow’s fallen on me in the middle of all our worries!”
+
+Madame Théodore at once thought of the children, Lucienne and Marcelle.
+“Are your daughters ill?” she asked.
+
+“No, no, our neighbour has taken them for a walk on the Boulevard. But
+the fact is, my dear, I’m _enceinte_, and when I told Chrétiennot of it
+after _déjeuner_, he flew into a most fearful passion, saying the most
+dreadful, the most cruel things!”
+
+Then she again sobbed. Gentle and indolent by nature, desirous of peace
+and quietness before anything else, she was incapable of deceiving her
+husband, as he well knew. But the trouble was that an addition to the
+family would upset the whole economy of the household.
+
+“_Mon Dieu_!” said Madame Théodore at last, “you brought up the others,
+and you’ll bring up this one too.”
+
+At this an explosion of anger dried the other’s eyes; and she rose,
+exclaiming: “You are good, you are! One can see that our purse isn’t
+yours. How are we to bring up another child when we can scarcely make
+both ends meet as it is?”
+
+And thereupon, forgetting the _bourgeois_ pride which usually prompted
+her to silence or falsehood, she freely explained their embarrassment,
+the horrid pecuniary worries which made their life a perpetual misery.
+Their rent amounted to 700 francs,* so that out of the 3000 francs**
+which the husband earned at his office, barely a couple of hundred were
+left them every month. And how were they to manage with that little sum,
+provide food and clothes, keep up their rank and so forth? There was the
+indispensable black coat for monsieur, the new dress which madame must
+have at regular intervals, under penalty of losing caste, the new boots
+which the children required almost every month, in fact, all sorts of
+things that could not possibly be dispensed with. One might strike a dish
+or two out of the daily menu, and even go without wine; but evenings came
+when it was absolutely necessary to take a cab. And, apart from all this,
+one had to reckon with the wastefulness of the children, the disorder in
+which the discouraged wife left the house, and the despair of the
+husband, who was convinced that he would never extricate himself from his
+difficulties, even should his salary some day be raised to as high a
+figure as 4000 francs. Briefly, one here found the unbearable penury of
+the petty clerk, with consequences as disastrous as the black want of the
+artisan: the mock façade and lying luxury; all the disorder and suffering
+which lie behind intellectual pride at not earning one’s living at a
+bench or on a scaffolding.
+
+ * $140.
+
+ ** $600.
+
+“Well, well,” repeated Madame Théodore, “you can’t kill the child.”
+
+“No, of course not; but it’s the end of everything,” answered Hortense,
+sinking into the armchair again. “What will become of us, _mon Dieu_!
+What will become of us!” Then she collapsed in her unbuttoned dressing
+gown, tears once more gushing from her red and swollen eyes.
+
+Much vexed that circumstances should be so unpropitious, Madame Théodore
+nevertheless ventured to ask for the loan of twenty sous; and this
+brought her sister’s despair and confusion to a climax. “I really haven’t
+a centime in the house,” said she, “just now I borrowed ten sous for the
+children from the servant. I had to get ten francs from the Mont de Piété
+on a little ring the other day. And it’s always the same at the end of
+the month. However, Chrétiennot will be paid to-day, and he’s coming back
+early with the money for dinner. So if I can I will send you something
+to-morrow.”
+
+At this same moment the servant hastened in with a distracted air, being
+well aware that monsieur was in no wise partial to madame’s relatives.
+“Oh madame, madame!” said she; “here’s monsieur coming up the stairs.”
+
+“Quick then, quick, go away!” cried Hortense, “I should only have another
+scene if he met you here. To-morrow, if I can, I promise you.”
+
+To avoid Chrétiennot who was coming in, Madame Théodore had to hide
+herself in the kitchen. As he passed, she just caught sight of him, well
+dressed as usual in a tight-fitting frock-coat. Short and lean, with a
+thin face and long and carefully tended beard, he had the bearing of one
+who is both vain and quarrelsome. Fourteen years of office life had
+withered him, and now the long evening hours which he spent at a
+neighbouring café were finishing him off.
+
+When Madame Théodore had quitted the house she turned with dragging steps
+towards the Rue Marcadet where the Toussaints resided. Here, again, she
+had no great expectations, for she well knew what ill-luck and worry had
+fallen upon her brother’s home. During the previous autumn Toussaint,
+though he was but fifty, had experienced an attack of paralysis which had
+laid him up for nearly five months. Prior to this mishap he had borne
+himself bravely, working steadily, abstaining from drink, and bringing up
+his three children in true fatherly fashion. One of them, a girl, was now
+married to a carpenter, with whom she had gone to Le Havre, while of the
+others, both boys--one a soldier, had been killed in Tonquin, and the
+other Charles, after serving his time in the army, had become a working
+mechanician. Still, Toussaint’s long illness had exhausted the little
+money which he had in the Savings Bank, and now that he had been set on
+his legs again, he had to begin life once more without a copper before
+him.
+
+Madame Théodore found her sister-in-law alone in the cleanly kept room
+which she and her husband occupied. Madame Toussaint was a portly woman,
+whose corpulence increased in spite of everything, whether it were worry
+or fasting. She had a round puffy face with bright little eyes; and was a
+very worthy woman, whose only faults were an inclination for gossiping
+and a fondness for good cheer. Before Madame Théodore even opened her
+mouth she understood the object of her visit. “You’ve come on us at a bad
+moment, my dear,” she said, “we’re stumped. Toussaint wasn’t able to go
+back to the works till the day before yesterday, and he’ll have to ask
+for an advance this evening.”
+
+As she spoke, she looked at the other with no great sympathy, hurt as she
+felt by her slovenly appearance. “And Salvat,” she added, “is he still
+doing nothing?”
+
+Madame Théodore doubtless foresaw the question, for she quietly lied: “He
+isn’t in Paris, a friend has taken him off for some work over Belgium
+way, and I’m waiting for him to send us something.”
+
+Madame Toussaint still remained distrustful, however: “Ah!” she said,
+“it’s just as well that he shouldn’t be in Paris; for with all these bomb
+affairs we couldn’t help thinking of him, and saying that he was quite
+mad enough to mix himself up in them.”
+
+The other did not even blink. If she knew anything she kept it to
+herself.
+
+“But you, my dear, can’t you find any work?” continued Madame Toussaint.
+
+“Well, what would you have me do with my poor eyes? It’s no longer
+possible for me to sew.”
+
+“That’s true. A seamstress gets done for. When Toussaint was laid up here
+I myself wanted to go back to my old calling as a needlewoman. But there!
+I spoilt everything and did no good. Charring’s about the only thing that
+one can always do. Why don’t you get some jobs of that kind?”
+
+“I’m trying, but I can’t find any.”
+
+Little by little Madame Toussaint was softening at sight of the other’s
+miserable appearance. She made her sit down, and told her that she would
+give her something if Toussaint should come home with money. Then,
+yielding to her partiality for gossiping, since there was somebody to
+listen to her, she started telling stories. The one affair, however, on
+which she invariably harped was the sorry business of her son Charles and
+the servant girl at a wine shop over the way. Before going into the army
+Charles had been a most hard-working and affectionate son, invariably
+bringing his pay home to his mother. And certainly he still worked and
+showed himself good-natured; but military service, while sharpening his
+wits, had taken away some of his liking for ordinary manual toil. It
+wasn’t that he regretted army life, for he spoke of his barracks as a
+prison. Only his tools had seemed to him rather heavy when, on quitting
+the service, he had been obliged to take them in hand once more.
+
+“And so, my dear,” continued Madame Toussaint, “it’s all very well for
+Charles to be kind-hearted, he can do no more for us. I knew that he
+wasn’t in a hurry to get married, as it costs money to keep a wife. And
+he was always very prudent, too, with girls. But what would you have?
+There was that moment of folly with that Eugénie over the road, a regular
+baggage who’s already gone off with another man, and left her baby
+behind. Charles has put it out to nurse, and pays for it every month. And
+a lot of expense it is too, perfect ruination. Yes, indeed, every
+possible misfortune has fallen on us.”
+
+In this wise Madame Toussaint rattled on for a full half hour. Then
+seeing that waiting and anxiety had made her sister-in-law turn quite
+pale, she suddenly stopped short. “You’re losing patience, eh?” she
+exclaimed. “The fact is, that Toussaint won’t be back for some time.
+Shall we go to the works together? I’ll easily find out if he’s likely to
+bring any money home.”
+
+They then decided to go down, but at the bottom of the stairs they
+lingered for another quarter of an hour chatting with a neighbour who had
+lately lost a child. And just as they were at last leaving the house they
+heard a call: “Mamma! mamma!”
+
+It came from little Céline, whose face was beaming with delight. She was
+wearing a pair of new shoes and devouring a cake. “Mamma,” she resumed,
+“Monsieur l’Abbé who came the other day wants to see you. Just look! he
+bought me all this!”
+
+On seeing the shoes and the cake, Madame Théodore understood matters. And
+when Pierre, who was behind the child, accosted her she began to tremble
+and stammer thanks. Madame Toussaint on her side had quickly drawn near,
+not indeed to ask for anything herself, but because she was well pleased
+at such a God-send for her sister-in-law, whose circumstances were worse
+than her own. And when she saw the priest slip ten francs into Madame
+Théodore’s hand she explained to him that she herself would willingly
+have lent something had she been able. Then she promptly started on the
+stories of Toussaint’s attack and her son Charles’s ill-luck.
+
+But Céline broke in: “I say, mamma, the factory where papa used to work
+is here in this street, isn’t it? Monsieur l’Abbé has some business
+there.”*
+
+ * Although the children of the French peasantry almost
+ invariably address their parents as “father” and “mother,”
+ those of the working classes of Paris, and some other large
+ cities, usually employ the terms “papa” and “mamma.”--Trans.
+
+“The Grandidier factory,” resumed Madame Toussaint; “well, we were just
+going there, and we can show Monsieur l’Abbé the way.”
+
+It was only a hundred steps off. Escorted by the two women and the child,
+Pierre slackened his steps and tried to extract some information about
+Salvat from Madame Théodore. But she at once became very prudent. She had
+not seen him again, she declared; he must have gone with a mate to
+Belgium, where there was a prospect of some work. From what she said, it
+appeared to the priest that Salvat had not dared to return to the Rue des
+Saules since his crime, in which all had collapsed, both his past life of
+toil and hope, and his recent existence with its duties towards the woman
+and the child.
+
+“There’s the factory, Monsieur l’Abbé,” suddenly said Madame Toussaint,
+“my sister-in-law won’t have to wait now, since you’ve been kind enough
+to help her. Thank you for her and for us.”
+
+Madame Théodore and Céline likewise poured forth their thanks, standing
+beside Madame Toussaint in the everlasting mud of that populous district,
+amidst the jostling of the passers-by. And lingering there as if to see
+Pierre enter, they again chatted together and repeated that, after all,
+some priests were very kind.
+
+The Grandidier works covered an extensive plot of ground. Facing the
+street there was only a brick building with narrow windows and a great
+archway, through which one espied a long courtyard. But, in the rear,
+came a suite of habitations, workshops, and sheds, above whose never
+ending roofs arose the two lofty chimneys of the generators. From the
+very threshold one detected the rumbling and quivering of machinery, all
+the noise and bustle of work. Black water flowed by at one’s feet, and up
+above white vapour spurted from a slender pipe with a regular strident
+puff, as if it were the very breath of that huge, toiling hive.
+
+Bicycles were now the principal output of the works. When Grandidier had
+taken them on leaving the Dijon Arts and Trades School, they were
+declining under bad management, slowly building some little motive
+engines by the aid of antiquated machinery. Foreseeing the future,
+however, he had induced his elder brother, one of the managers of the Bon
+Marche, to finance him, on the promise that he would supply that great
+emporium with excellent bicycles at 150 francs apiece. And now quite a
+big venture was in progress, for the Bon Marché was already bringing out
+the new popular machine “La Lisette,” the “Bicycle for the Multitude,” as
+the advertisements asserted. Nevertheless, Grandidier was still in all
+the throes of a great struggle, for his new machinery had cast a heavy
+burden of debt on him. At the same time each month brought its effort,
+the perfecting or simplifying of some part of the manufacture, which
+meant a saving in the future. He was ever on the watch; and even now was
+thinking of reverting to the construction of little motors, for he
+thought he could divine in the near future the triumph of the motor-car.
+
+On asking if M. Thomas Froment were there, Pierre was led by an old
+workman to a little shed, where he found the young fellow in the linen
+jacket of a mechanician, his hands black with filings. He was adjusting
+some piece of mechanism, and nobody would have suspected him to be a
+former pupil of the Lycée Condorcet, one of the three clever Froments who
+had there rendered the name famous. But his only desire had been to act
+as his father’s faithful servant, the arm that forges, the embodiment of
+the manual toil by which conceptions are realised. And, a giant of three
+and twenty, ever attentive and courageous, he was likewise a man of
+patient, silent and sober nature.
+
+On catching sight of Pierre he quivered with anxiety and sprang forward.
+“Father is no worse?” he asked.
+
+“No, no. But he read in the papers that story of a bradawl found in the
+Rue Godot-de-Mauroy, and it made him anxious, because the police may make
+a perquisition here.”
+
+Thomas, his own anxiety allayed, began to smile. “Tell him he may sleep
+quietly,” he responded. “To begin with, I’ve unfortunately not yet hit on
+our little motor such as I want it to be. In fact, I haven’t yet put it
+together. I’m keeping the pieces at our house, and nobody here knows
+exactly what I come to do at the factory. So the police may search, it
+will find nothing. Our secret runs no risk.”
+
+Pierre promised to repeat these words to Guillaume, so as to dissipate
+his fears. However, when he tried to sound Thomas, and ascertain the
+position of affairs, what the factory people thought of the discovery of
+the bradawl, and whether there was as yet any suspicion of Salvat, he
+once more found the young man taciturn, and elicited merely a “yes” or a
+“no” in answer to his inquiries. The police had not been there as yet?
+No. But the men must surely have mentioned Salvat? Yes, of course, on
+account of his Anarchist opinions. But what had Grandidier, the master,
+said, on returning from the investigating magistrate’s? As for that
+Thomas knew nothing. He had not seen Grandidier that day.
+
+“But here he comes!” the young man added. “Ah! poor fellow, his wife, I
+fancy, had another attack this morning.”
+
+He alluded to a frightful story which Guillaume had already recounted to
+Pierre. Grandidier, falling in love with a very beautiful girl, had
+married her; but for five years now she had been insane: the result of
+puerperal fever and the death of an infant son. Her husband, with his
+ardent affection for her, had been unwilling to place her in an asylum,
+and had accordingly kept her with him in a little pavilion, whose
+windows, overlooking the courtyard of the factory, always remained
+closed. She was never seen; and never did he speak of her to anybody. It
+was said that she was usually like a child, very gentle and very sad, and
+still beautiful, with regal golden hair. At times, however, attacks of
+frantic madness came upon her, and he then had to struggle with her, and
+often hold her for hours in his arms to prevent her from splitting her
+head against the walls. Fearful shrieks would ring out for a time, and
+then deathlike silence would fall once more.
+
+Grandidier came into the shed where Thomas was working. A handsome man of
+forty, with an energetic face, he had a dark and heavy moustache,
+brush-like hair and clear eyes. He was very partial to Thomas, and during
+the young fellow’s apprenticeship there, had treated him like a son. And
+he now let him return thither whenever it pleased him, and placed his
+appliances at his disposal. He knew that he was trying to devise a new
+motor, a question in which he himself was extremely interested; still he
+evinced the greatest discretion, never questioning Thomas, but awaiting
+the result of his endeavours.
+
+“This is my uncle, Abbé Froment, who looked in to wish me good day,” said
+the young man, introducing Pierre.
+
+An exchange of polite remarks ensued. Then Grandidier sought to cast off
+the sadness which made people think him stern and harsh, and in a
+bantering tone exclaimed: “I didn’t tell you, Thomas, of my business with
+the investigating magistrate. If I hadn’t enjoyed a good reputation we
+should have had all the spies of the Prefecture here. The magistrate
+wanted me to explain the presence of that bradawl in the Rue
+Godot-de-Mauroy, and I at once realised that, in his opinion, the culprit
+must have worked here. For my part I immediately thought of Salvat. But I
+don’t denounce people. The magistrate has my hiring-book, and as for
+Salvat I simply answered that he worked here for nearly three months last
+autumn, and then disappeared. They can look for him themselves! Ah! that
+magistrate! you can picture him a little fellow with fair hair and
+cat-like eyes, very careful of his appearance, a society man evidently,
+but quite frisky at being mixed up in this affair.”
+
+“Isn’t he Monsieur Amadieu?” asked Pierre.
+
+“Yes, that’s his name. Ah! he’s certainly delighted with the present
+which those Anarchists have made him, with that crime of theirs.”
+
+The priest listened in deep anxiety. As his brother had feared, the true
+scent, the first conducting wire, had now been found. And he looked at
+Thomas to see if he also were disturbed. But the young man was either
+ignorant of the ties which linked Salvat to his father, or else he
+possessed great power of self-control, for he merely smiled at
+Grandidier’s sketch of the magistrate.
+
+Then, as Grandidier went to look at the piece of mechanism which Thomas
+was finishing, and they began to speak about it, Pierre drew near to an
+open doorway which communicated with a long workshop where engine lathes
+were rumbling, and the beams of press-drills falling quickly and
+rhythmically. Leather gearing spun along with a continuous gliding, and
+there was ceaseless bustle and activity amidst the odoriferous dampness
+of all the steam. Scores of perspiring workmen, grimy with dust and
+filings, were still toiling. Still this was the final effort of the day.
+And as three men approached a water-tap near Pierre to wash their hands,
+he listened to their talk, and became particularly interested in it when
+he heard one of them, a tall, ginger-haired fellow, call another
+Toussaint, and the third Charles.
+
+Toussaint, a big, square-shouldered man with knotty arms, only showed his
+fifty years on his round, scorched face, which besides being roughened
+and wrinkled by labour, bristled with grey hairs, which nowadays he was
+content to shave off once a week. It was only his right arm that was
+affected by paralysis, and moved rather sluggishly. As for Charles, a
+living portrait of his father, he was now in all the strength of his six
+and twentieth year, with splendid muscles distending his white skin, and
+a full face barred by a heavy black moustache. The three men, like their
+employer, were speaking of the explosion at the Duvillard mansion, of the
+bradawl found there, and of Salvat, whom they all now suspected.
+
+“Why, only a brigand would do such a thing!” said Toussaint. “That
+Anarchism disgusts me. I’ll have none of it. But all the same it’s for
+the _bourgeois_ to settle matters. If the others want to blow them up,
+it’s their concern. It’s they who brought it about.”
+
+This indifference was undoubtedly the outcome of a life of want and
+social injustice; it was the indifference of an old toiler, who, weary of
+struggling and hoping for improvements, was now quite ready to tolerate
+the crumbling of a social system, which threatened him with hunger in his
+impotent old age.
+
+“Well, you know,” rejoined Charles, “I’ve heard the Anarchists talking,
+and they really say some very true and sensible things. And just take
+yourself, father; you’ve been working for thirty years, and isn’t it
+abominable that you should have had to pass through all that you did pass
+through recently, liable to go off like some old horse that’s slaughtered
+at the first sign of illness? And, of course, it makes me think of
+myself, and I can’t help feeling that it won’t be at all amusing to end
+like that. And may the thunder of God kill me if I’m wrong, but one feels
+half inclined to join in their great flare-up if it’s really to make
+everybody happy!”
+
+He certainly lacked the flame of enthusiasm, and if he had come to these
+views it was solely from impatience to lead a less toilsome life, for
+obligatory military service had given him ideas of equality among all
+men--a desire to struggle, raise himself and obtain his legitimate share
+of life’s enjoyments. It was, in fact, the inevitable step which carries
+each generation a little more forward. There was the father, who,
+deceived in his hope of a fraternal republic, had grown sceptical and
+contemptuous; and there was the son advancing towards a new faith, and
+gradually yielding to ideas of violence, since political liberty had
+failed to keep its promises.
+
+Nevertheless, as the big, ginger-haired fellow grew angry, and shouted
+that if Salvat were guilty, he ought to be caught and guillotined at
+once, without waiting for judges, Toussaint ended by endorsing his
+opinion. “Yes, yes, he may have married one of my sisters, but I renounce
+him.... And yet, you know, it would astonish me to find him guilty,
+for he isn’t wicked at heart. I’m sure he wouldn’t kill a fly.”
+
+“But what would you have?” put in Charles. “When a man’s driven to
+extremities he goes mad.”
+
+They had now washed themselves; but Toussaint, on perceiving his
+employer, lingered there in order to ask him for an advance. As it
+happened, Grandidier, after cordially shaking hands with Pierre,
+approached the old workman of his own accord, for he held him in esteem.
+And, after listening to him, he gave him a line for the cashier on a
+card. As a rule, he was altogether against the practice of advancing
+money, and his men disliked him, and said he was over rigid, though in
+point of fact he had a good heart. But he had his position as an employer
+to defend, and to him concessions meant ruin. With such keen competition
+on all sides, with the capitalist system entailing a terrible and
+incessant struggle, how could one grant the demands of the workers, even
+when they were legitimate?
+
+Sudden compassion came upon Pierre when, after quitting Thomas, he saw
+Grandidier, who had finished his round, crossing the courtyard in the
+direction of the closed pavilion, where all the grief of his
+heart-tragedy awaited him. Here was that man waging the battle of life,
+defending his fortune with the risk that his business might melt away
+amidst the furious warfare between capital and labour; and at the same
+time, in lieu of evening repose, finding naught but anguish it his
+hearth: a mad wife, an adored wife, who had sunk back into infancy, and
+was for ever dead to love! How incurable was his secret despair! Even on
+the days when he triumphed in his workshops, disaster awaited him at
+home. And could any more unhappy man, any man more deserving of pity, be
+found even among the poor who died of hunger, among those gloomy workers,
+those vanquished sons of labour who hated and who envied him?
+
+When Pierre found himself in the street again he was astonished to see
+Madame Toussaint and Madame Théodore still there with little Céline. With
+their feet in the mud, like bits of wreckage against which beat the
+ceaseless flow of wayfarers, they had lingered there, still and ever
+chatting, loquacious and doleful, lulling their wretchedness to rest
+beneath a deluge of tittle-tattle. And when Toussaint, followed by his
+son, came out, delighted with the advance he had secured, he also found
+them on the same spot. Then he told Madame Théodore the story of the
+bradawl, and the idea which had occurred to him and all his mates that
+Salvat might well be the culprit. She, however, though turning very pale,
+began to protest, concealing both what she knew and what she really
+thought.
+
+“I tell you I haven’t seen him for several days,” said she. “He must
+certainly be in Belgium. And as for a bomb, that’s humbug. You say
+yourself that he’s very gentle and wouldn’t harm a fly!”
+
+A little later as Pierre journeyed back to Neuilly in a tramcar he fell
+into a deep reverie. All the stir and bustle of that working-class
+district, the buzzing of the factory, the overflowing activity of that
+hive of labour, seemed to have lingered within him. And for the first
+time, amidst his worries, he realised the necessity of work. Yes, it was
+fatal, but it also gave health and strength. In effort which sustains and
+saves, he at last found a solid basis on which all might be reared. Was
+this, then, the first gleam of a new faith? But ah! what mockery! Work an
+uncertainty, work hopeless, work always ending in injustice! And then
+want ever on the watch for the toiler, strangling him as soon as slack
+times came round, and casting him into the streets like a dead dog
+immediately old age set in.
+
+On reaching Neuilly, Pierre found Bertheroy at Guillaume’s bedside. The
+old _savant_ had just dressed the injured wrist, and was not yet certain
+that no complications would arise. “The fact is,” he said to Guillaume,
+“you don’t keep quiet. I always find you in a state of feverish emotion
+which is the worst possible thing for you. You must calm yourself, my
+dear fellow, and not allow anything to worry you.”
+
+A few minutes later, though, just as he was going away, he said with his
+pleasant smile: “Do you know that a newspaper writer came to interview me
+about that explosion? Those reporters imagine that scientific men know
+everything! I told the one who called on me that it would be very kind of
+_him_ to enlighten _me_ as to what powder was employed. And, by the way,
+I am giving a lesson on explosives at my laboratory to-morrow. There will
+be just a few persons present. You might come as well, Pierre, so as to
+give an account of it to Guillaume; it would interest him.”
+
+At a glance from his brother, Pierre accepted the invitation. Then,
+Bertheroy having gone, he recounted all he had learnt during the
+afternoon, how Salvat was suspected, and how the investigating magistrate
+had been put on the right scent. And at this news, intense fever again
+came over Guillaume, who, with his head buried in the pillow, and his
+eyes closed, stammered as if in a kind of nightmare: “Ah! then, this is
+the end! Salvat arrested, Salvat interrogated! Ah! that so much toil and
+so much hope should crumble!”
+
+
+
+
+IV. CULTURE AND HOPE
+
+ON the morrow, punctually at one o’clock, Pierre reached the Rue d’Ulm,
+where Bertheroy resided in a fairly large house, which the State had
+placed at his disposal, in order that he might install in it a laboratory
+for study and research. Thus the whole first floor had been transformed
+into one spacious apartment, where, from time to time, the illustrious
+chemist was fond of receiving a limited number of pupils and admirers,
+before whom he made experiments, and explained his new discoveries and
+theories.
+
+For these occasions a few chairs were set out before the long and massive
+table, which was covered with jars and appliances. In the rear one saw
+the furnace, while all around were glass cases, full of vials and
+specimens. The persons present were, for the most part, fellow _savants_,
+with a few young men, and even a lady or two, and, of course, an
+occasional journalist. The whole made up a kind of family gathering, the
+visitors chatting with the master in all freedom.
+
+Directly Bertheroy perceived Pierre he came forward, pressed his hand and
+seated him on a chair beside Guillaume’s son François, who had been one
+of the first arrivals. The young man was completing his third year at the
+École Normale, close by, so he only had a few steps to take to call upon
+his master Bertheroy, whom he regarded as one of the firmest minds of the
+age. Pierre was delighted to meet his nephew, for he had been greatly
+impressed in his favour on the occasion of his visit to Montmartre.
+François, on his side, greeted his uncle with all the cordial
+expansiveness of youth. He was, moreover, well pleased to obtain some
+news of his father.
+
+However, Bertheroy began. He spoke in a familiar and sober fashion, but
+frequently employed some very happy expressions. At first he gave an
+account of his own extensive labours and investigations with regard to
+explosive substances, and related with a laugh that he sometimes
+manipulated powders which would have blown up the entire district. But,
+said he, in order to reassure his listeners, he was always extremely
+prudent. At last he turned to the subject of that explosion in the Rue
+Godot-de-Mauroy, which, for some days, had filled Paris with dismay. The
+remnants of the bomb had been carefully examined by experts, and one
+fragment had been brought to him, in order that he might give his opinion
+on it. The bomb appeared to have been prepared in a very rudimentary
+fashion; it had been charged with small pieces of iron, and fired by
+means of a match, such as a child might have devised. The extraordinary
+part of the affair was the formidable power of the central cartridge,
+which, although it must have been a small one, had wrought as much havoc
+as any thunderbolt. And the question was this: What incalculable power of
+destruction might one not arrive at if the charge were increased ten,
+twenty or a hundredfold. Embarrassment began, and divergencies of opinion
+clouded the issue directly one tried to specify what explosive had been
+employed. Of the three experts who had been consulted, one pronounced
+himself in favour of dynamite pure and simple; but the two others,
+although they did not agree together, believed in some combination of
+explosive matters. He, Bertheroy, had modestly declined to adjudicate,
+for the fragment submitted to him bore traces of so slight a character,
+that analysis became impossible. Thus he was unwilling to make any
+positive pronouncement. But his opinion was that one found oneself in
+presence of some unknown powder, some new explosive, whose power exceeded
+anything that had hitherto been dreamt of. He could picture some unknown
+_savant_, or some ignorant but lucky inventor, discovering the formula of
+this explosive under mysterious conditions. And this brought him to the
+point he wished to reach, the question of all the explosives which are so
+far unknown, and of the coming discoveries which he could foresee. In the
+course of his investigations he himself had found cause to suspect the
+existence of several such explosives, though he had lacked time and
+opportunity to prosecute his studies in that direction. However, he
+indicated the field which should be explored, and the best way of
+proceeding. In his opinion it was there that lay the future. And in a
+broad and eloquent peroration, he declared that explosives had hitherto
+been degraded by being employed in idiotic schemes of vengeance and
+destruction; whereas it was in them possibly that lay the liberating
+force which science was seeking, the lever which would change the face of
+the world, when they should have been so domesticated and subdued as to
+be only the obedient servants of man.
+
+Throughout this familiar discourse Pierre could feel that François was
+growing impassioned, quivering at thought of the vast horizon which the
+master opened up. He himself had become extremely interested, for he
+could not do otherwise than notice certain allusions, and connect what he
+heard with what he had guessed of Guillaume’s anxiety regarding that
+secret which he feared to see at the mercy of an investigating
+magistrate. And so as he, Pierre, before going off with François,
+approached Bertheroy to wish him good day, he pointedly remarked:
+“Guillaume will be very sorry that he was unable to hear you unfold those
+admirable ideas.”
+
+The old _savant_ smiled. “Pooh!” said he; “just give him a summary of
+what I said. He will understand. He knows more about the matter than I
+do.”
+
+In presence of the illustrious chemist, François preserved the silent
+gravity of a respectful pupil, but when he and Pierre had taken a few
+steps down the street in silence, he remarked: “What a pity it is that a
+man of such broad intelligence, free from all superstition, and anxious
+for the sole triumph of truth, should have allowed himself to be
+classified, ticketed, bound round with titles and academical functions!
+How greatly our affection for him would increase if he took less State
+pay, and freed himself from all the grand cordons which tie his hands.”
+
+“What would you have!” rejoined Pierre, in a conciliatory spirit. “A man
+must live! At the same time I believe that he does not regard himself as
+tied by anything.”
+
+Then, as they had reached the entrance of the École Normale, the priest
+stopped, thinking that his companion was going back to the college. But
+François, raising his eyes and glancing at the old place, remarked: “No,
+no, to-day’s Thursday, and I’m at liberty! Oh! we have a deal of liberty,
+perhaps too much. But for my own part I’m well pleased at it, for it
+often enables me to go to Montmartre and work at my old little table.
+It’s only there that I feel any real strength and clearness of mind.”
+
+His preliminary examinations had entitled him to admission at either the
+École Polytechnique or the École Normale,* and he had chosen the latter,
+entering its scientific section with No. 1 against his name. His father
+had wished him to make sure of an avocation, that of professor, even if
+circumstances should allow him to remain independent and follow his own
+bent on leaving the college. François, who was very precocious, was now
+preparing for his last examination there, and the only rest he took was
+in walking to and from Montmartre, or in strolling through the Luxembourg
+gardens.
+
+ * The purposes of the École Normale have been referred to on
+ p. 197. At the École Polytechnique young men receive much
+ of the preliminary training which they require to become
+ either artillery officers, or military, naval or civil
+ engineers.--Trans.
+
+From force of habit he now turned towards the latter, accompanied by
+Pierre and chatting with him. One found the mildness of springtime there
+that February afternoon; for pale sunshine streamed between the trees,
+which were still leafless. It was indeed one of those first fine days
+which draw little green gems from the branches of the lilac bushes.
+
+The École Normale was still the subject of conversation and Pierre
+remarked: “I must own that I hardly like the spirit that prevails there.
+Excellent work is done, no doubt, and the only way to form professors is
+to teach men the trade by cramming them with the necessary knowledge. But
+the worst is that although all the students are trained for the teaching
+profession, many of them don’t remain in it, but go out into the world,
+take to journalism, or make it their business to control the arts,
+literature and society. And those who do this are for the most part
+unbearable. After swearing by Voltaire they have gone back to
+spirituality and mysticism, the last drawing-room craze. Now that a firm
+faith in science is regarded as brutish and inelegant, they fancy that
+they rid themselves of their caste by feigning amiable doubt, and
+ignorance, and innocence. What they most fear is that they may carry a
+scent of the schools about with them, so they put on extremely Parisian
+airs, venture on somersaults and slang, and assume all the grace of
+dancing bears in their eager desire to please. From that desire spring
+the sarcastic shafts which they aim at science, they who pretend that
+they know everything, but who go back to the belief of the humble, the
+_naive_ idealism of Biblical legends, just because they think the latter
+to be more distinguished.”
+
+François began to laugh: “The portrait is perhaps a little overdrawn,”
+ said he, “still there’s truth in it, a great deal of truth.”
+
+“I have known several of them,” continued Pierre, who was growing
+animated. “And among them all I have noticed that a fear of being duped
+leads them to reaction against the entire effort, the whole work of the
+century. Disgust with liberty, distrust of science, denial of the future,
+that is what they now profess. And they have such a horror of the
+commonplace that they would rather believe in nothing or the incredible.
+It may of course be commonplace to say that two and two make four, yet
+it’s true enough; and it is far less foolish for a man to say and repeat
+it than to believe, for instance, in the miracles of Lourdes.”
+
+François glanced at the priest in astonishment. The other noticed it and
+strove to restrain himself. Nevertheless, grief and anger carried him
+away whenever he spoke of the educated young people of the time, such as,
+in his despair, he imagined them to be. In the same way as he had pitied
+the toilers dying of hunger in the districts of misery and want, so here
+he overflowed with contempt for the young minds that lacked bravery in
+the presence of knowledge, and harked back to the consolation of
+deceptive spirituality, the promise of an eternity of happiness in death,
+which last was longed for and exalted as the very sum of life. Was not
+the cowardly thought of refusing to live for the sake of living so as to
+discharge one’s simple duty in being and making one’s effort, equivalent
+to absolute assassination of life? However, the _Ego_ was always the
+mainspring; each one sought personal happiness. And Pierre was grieved to
+think that those young people, instead of discarding the past and
+marching on to the truths of the future, were relapsing into shadowy
+metaphysics through sheer weariness and idleness, due in part perhaps to
+the excessive exertion of the century, which had been overladen with
+human toil.
+
+However, François had begun to smile again. “But you are mistaken,” said
+he; “we are not all like that at the École Normale. You only seem to know
+the Normalians of the Section of Letters, and your opinions would surely
+change if you knew those of the Section of Sciences. It is quite true
+that the reaction against Positivism is making itself felt among our
+literary fellow-students, and that they, like others, are haunted by the
+idea of that famous bankruptcy of science. This is perhaps due to their
+masters, the neo-spiritualists and dogmatical rhetoricians into whose
+hands they have fallen. And it is still more due to fashion, the whim of
+the times which, as you have very well put it, regards scientific truth
+as bad taste, something graceless and altogether too brutal for light and
+distinguished minds. Consequently, a young fellow of any shrewdness who
+desires to please is perforce won over to the new spirit.”
+
+“The new spirit!” interrupted Pierre, unable to restrain himself. “Oh!
+that is no mere innocent, passing fashion, it is a tactical device and a
+terrible one, an offensive return of the powers of darkness against those
+of light, of servitude against free thought, truth and justice.”
+
+Then, as the young man again looked at him with growing astonishment, he
+relapsed into silence. The figure of Monseigneur Martha had risen before
+his eyes, and he fancied he could again hear the prelate at the
+Madeleine, striving to win Paris over to the policy of Rome, to that
+spurious neo-Catholicism which, with the object of destroying democracy
+and science, accepted such portions of them as it could adapt to its own
+views. This was indeed the supreme struggle. Thence came all the poison
+poured forth to the young. Pierre knew what efforts were being made in
+religious circles to help on this revival of mysticism, in the mad hope
+of hastening the rout of science. Monseigneur Martha, who was
+all-powerful at the Catholic University, said to his intimates, however,
+that three generations of devout and docile pupils would be needed before
+the Church would again be absolute sovereign of France.
+
+“Well, as for the École Normale,” continued François, “I assure you that
+you are mistaken. There are a few narrow bigots there, no doubt. But even
+in the Section of Letters the majority of the students are sceptics at
+bottom--sceptics of discreet and good-natured average views. Of course
+they are professors before everything else, though they are a trifle
+ashamed of it; and, as professors, they judge things with no little
+pedantic irony, devoured by a spirit of criticism, and quite incapable of
+creating anything themselves. I should certainly be astonished to see the
+man of genius whom we await come out of their ranks. To my thinking,
+indeed, it would be preferable that some barbarian genius, neither well
+read nor endowed with critical faculty, or power of weighing and shading
+things, should come and open the next century with a hatchet stroke,
+sending up a fine flare of truth and reality.... But, as for my
+comrades of the Scientific Section, I assure you that neo-Catholicism and
+Mysticism and Occultism, and every other branch of the fashionable
+phantasmagoria trouble them very little indeed. They are not making a
+religion of science, they remain open to doubt on many points; but they
+are mostly men of very clear and firm minds, whose passion is the
+acquirement of certainty, and who are ever absorbed in the investigations
+which continue throughout the whole vast field of human knowledge. They
+haven’t flinched, they have remained Positivists, or Evolutionists, or
+Determinists, and have set their faith in observation and experiment to
+help on the final conquest of the world.”
+
+François himself was growing excited, as he thus confessed his faith
+while strolling along the quiet sunlit garden paths. “The young indeed!”
+ he resumed. “Do people know them? It makes us laugh when we see all sorts
+of apostles fighting for us, trying to attract us, and saying that we are
+white or black or grey, according to the hue which they require for the
+triumph of their particular ideas! The young, the real ones, why, they’re
+in the schools, the laboratories and the libraries. It’s they who work
+and who’ll bring to-morrow to the world. It’s not the young fellows of
+dinner and supper clubs, manifestoes and all sorts of extravagances. The
+latter make a great deal of noise, no doubt; in fact, they alone are
+heard. But if you knew of the ceaseless efforts and passionate striving
+of the others, those who remain silent, absorbed in their tasks. And I
+know many of them: they are with their century, they have rejected none
+of its hopes, but are marching on to the coming century, resolved to
+pursue the work of their forerunners, ever going towards more light and
+more equity. And just speak to them of the bankruptcy of science. They’ll
+shrug their shoulders at the mere idea, for they know well enough that
+science has never before inflamed so many hearts or achieved greater
+conquests! It is only if the schools, laboratories and libraries were
+closed, and the social soil radically changed, that one would have cause
+to fear a fresh growth of error such as weak hearts and narrow minds hold
+so dear!”
+
+At this point François’s fine flow of eloquence was interrupted. A tall
+young fellow stopped to shake hands with him; and Pierre was surprised to
+recognise Baron Duvillard’s son Hyacinthe, who bowed to him in very
+correct style. “What! you here in our old quarter,” exclaimed François.
+
+“My dear fellow, I’m going to Jonas’s, over yonder, behind the
+Observatory. Don’t you know Jonas? Ah! my dear fellow, he’s a delightful
+sculptor, who has succeeded in doing away with matter almost entirely. He
+has carved a figure of Woman, no bigger than the finger, and entirely
+soul, free from all baseness of form, and yet complete. All Woman,
+indeed, in her essential symbolism! Ah! it’s grand, it’s overpowering. A
+perfect scheme of aesthetics, a real religion!”
+
+François smiled as he looked at Hyacinthe, buttoned up in his long
+pleated frock-coat, with his made-up face, and carefully cropped hair and
+beard. “And yourself?” said he, “I thought you were working, and were
+going to publish a little poem, shortly?”
+
+“Oh! the task of creating is so distasteful to me, my dear fellow! A
+single line often takes me weeks.... Still, yes, I have a little poem
+on hand, ‘The End of Woman.’ And you see, I’m not so exclusive as some
+people pretend, since I admire Jonas, who still believes in Woman. His
+excuse is sculpture, which, after all, is at best such a gross
+materialistic art. But in poetry, good heavens, how we’ve been
+overwhelmed with Woman, always Woman! It’s surely time to drive her out
+of the temple, and cleanse it a little. Ah! if we were all pure and lofty
+enough to do without Woman, and renounce all those horrid sexual
+questions, so that the last of the species might die childless, eh? The
+world would then at least finish in a clean and proper manner!”
+
+Thereupon, Hyacinthe walked off with his languid air, well pleased with
+the effect which he had produced on the others.
+
+“So you know him?” said Pierre to François.
+
+“He was my school-fellow at Condorcet, we were in the same classes
+together. Such a funny fellow he was! A perfect dunce! And he was always
+making a parade of Father Duvillard’s millions, while pretending to
+disdain them, and act the revolutionist, for ever saying that he’d use
+his cigarette to fire the cartridge which was to blow up the world! He
+was Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, and Tolstoi, and Ibsen, rolled into one!
+And you can see what he has become with it all: a humbug with a diseased
+mind!”
+
+“It’s a terrible symptom,” muttered Pierre, “when through _ennui_ or
+lassitude, or the contagion of destructive fury, the sons of the happy
+and privileged ones start doing the work of the demolishers.”
+
+François had resumed his walk, going down towards the ornamental water,
+where some children were sailing their boats. “That fellow is simply
+grotesque,” he replied; “but how would you have sane people give any heed
+to that mysticism, that awakening of spirituality which is alleged by the
+same _doctrinaires_ who started the bankruptcy of science cry, when after
+so brief an evolution it produces such insanity, both in art and
+literature? A few years of influence have sufficed; and now Satanism,
+Occultism and other absurdities are flourishing; not to mention that,
+according to some accounts, the Cities of the Plains are reconciled with
+new Rome. Isn’t the tree judged by its fruits? And isn’t it evident that,
+instead of a renascence, a far-spreading social movement bringing back
+the past, we are simply witnessing a transitory reaction, which many
+things explain? The old world would rather not die, and is struggling in
+a final convulsion, reviving for a last hour before it is swept away by
+the overflowing river of human knowledge, whose waters ever increase. And
+yonder, in the future, is the new world, which the real young ones will
+bring into existence, those who work, those who are not known, who are
+not heard. And yet, just listen! Perhaps you will hear them, for we are
+among them, in their ‘quarter.’ This deep silence is that of the labour
+of all the young fellows who are leaning over their work-tables, and day
+by day carrying forward the conquest of truth.”
+
+So saying François waved his hand towards all the day-schools and
+colleges and high schools beyond the Luxembourg garden, towards the
+Faculties of Law and Medicine, the Institute and its five Academies, the
+innumerable libraries and museums which made up the broad domain of
+intellectual labour. And Pierre, moved by it all, shaken in his theories
+of negation, thought that he could indeed hear a low but far-spreading
+murmur of the work of thousands of active minds, rising from
+laboratories, studies and class, reading and lecture rooms. It was not
+like the jerky, breathless trepidation, the loud clamour of factories
+where manual labour toils and chafes. But here, too, there were sighs of
+weariness, efforts as killing, exertion as fruitful in its results. Was
+it indeed true that the cultured young were still and ever in their
+silent forge, renouncing no hope, relinquishing no conquest, but in full
+freedom of mind forging the truth and justice of to-morrow with the
+invincible hammers of observation and experiment?
+
+François, however, had raised his eyes to the palace clock to ascertain
+the time. “I’m going to Montmartre,” he said; “will you come part of the
+way with me?”
+
+Pierre assented, particularly as the young man added that on his way he
+meant to call for his brother Antoine at the Museum of the Louvre. That
+bright afternoon the Louvre picture galleries were steeped in warm and
+dignified quietude, which one particularly noticed on coming from the
+tumult and scramble of the streets. The majority of the few people one
+found there were copyists working in deep silence, which only the
+wandering footsteps of an occasional tourist disturbed. Pierre and
+François found Antoine at the end of the gallery assigned to the
+Primitive masters. With scrupulous, almost devout care he was making a
+drawing of a figure by Mantegna. The Primitives did not impassion him by
+reason of any particular mysticism and ideality, such as fashion pretends
+to find in them, but on the contrary, and justifiably enough, by reason
+of the sincerity of their ingenuous realism, their respect and modesty in
+presence of nature, and the minute fidelity with which they sought to
+transcribe it. He spent days of hard work in copying and studying them,
+in order to learn strictness and probity of drawing from them--all that
+lofty distinction of style which they owe to their candour as honest
+artists.
+
+Pierre was struck by the pure glow which a sitting of good hard work had
+set in Antoine’s light blue eyes. It imparted warmth and even
+feverishness to his fair face, which was usually all dreaminess and
+gentleness. His lofty forehead now truly looked like a citadel armed for
+the conquest of truth and beauty. He was only eighteen, and his story was
+simply this: as he had grown disgusted with classical studies and been
+mastered by a passion for drawing, his father had let him leave the Lycée
+Condorcet when he was in the third class there. Some little time had then
+elapsed while he felt his way and the deep originality within him was
+being evolved. He had tried etching on copper, but had soon come to wood
+engraving, and had attached himself to it in spite of the discredit into
+which it had fallen, lowered as it had been to the level of a mere trade.
+Was there not here an entire art to restore and enlarge? For his own part
+he dreamt of engraving his own drawings, of being at once the brain which
+conceives and the hand which executes, in such wise as to obtain new
+effects of great intensity both as regards perception and touch. To
+comply with the wishes of his father, who desired each of his sons to
+have a trade, he earned his bread like other engravers by working for the
+illustrated newspapers. But, in addition to this current work, he had
+already engraved several blocks instinct with wonderful power and life.
+They were simply copies of real things, scenes of everyday existence, but
+they were accentuated, elevated so to say, by the essential line, with a
+maestria which on the part of so young a lad fairly astonished one.
+
+“Do you want to engrave that?” François asked him, as he placed his copy
+of Mantegna’s figure in his portfolio.
+
+“Oh! no, that’s merely a dip into innocence, a good lesson to teach one
+to be modest and sincere. Life is very different nowadays.”
+
+Then, while walking along the streets--for Pierre, who felt growing
+sympathy for the two young fellows, went with them in the direction of
+Montmartre, forgetful of all else,--Antoine, who was beside him, spoke
+expansively of his artistic dreams.
+
+“Colour is certainly a power, a sovereign source of charm, and one may,
+indeed, say that without colour nothing can be completely represented.
+Yet, singularly enough, it isn’t indispensable to me. It seems to me that
+I can picture life as intensely and definitely with mere black and white,
+and I even fancy that I shall be able to do so in a more essential
+manner, without any of the dupery which lies in colour. But what a task
+it is! I should like to depict the Paris of to-day in a few scenes, a few
+typical figures, which would serve as testimony for all time. And I
+should like to do it with great fidelity and candour, for an artist only
+lives by reason of his candour, his humility and steadfast belief in
+Nature, which is ever beautiful. I’ve already done a few figures, I will
+show them to you. But ah! if I only dared to tackle my blocks with the
+graver, at the outset, without drawing my subject beforehand. For that
+generally takes away one’s fire. However, what I do with the pencil is a
+mere sketch; for with the graver I may come upon a find, some unexpected
+strength or delicacy of effect. And so I’m draughtsman and engraver all
+in one, in such a way that my blocks can only be turned out by myself. If
+the drawings on them were engraved by another, they would be quite
+lifeless.... Yes, life can spring from the fingers just as well as
+from the brain, when one really possesses creative power.”
+
+They walked on, and when they found themselves just below Montmartre, and
+Pierre spoke of taking a tramcar to return to Neuilly, Antoine, quite
+feverish with artistic passion, asked him if he knew Jahan, the sculptor,
+who was working for the Sacred Heart. And on receiving a negative reply,
+he added: “Well, come and see him for a moment. He has a great future
+before him. You’ll see an angel of his which has been declined.”
+
+Then, as François began to praise the angel in question, Pierre agreed to
+accompany them. On the summit of the height, among all the sheds which
+the building of the basilica necessitated, Jahan had been able to set up
+a glazed workshop large enough for the huge angel ordered of him. His
+three visitors found him there in a blouse, watching a couple of
+assistants, who were rough-hewing the block of stone whence the angel was
+to emerge. Jahan was a sturdy man of thirty-six, with dark hair and
+beard, a large, ruddy mouth and fine bright eyes. Born in Paris, he had
+studied at the Fine Art School, but his impetuous temperament had
+constantly landed him in trouble there.
+
+“Ah! yes,” said he, “you’ve come to see my angel, the one which the
+Archbishop wouldn’t take. Well, there it is.”
+
+The clay model of the figure, some three feet high, and already drying,
+looked superb in its soaring posture, with its large, outspread wings
+expanding as if with passionate desire for the infinite. The body, barely
+draped, was that of a slim yet robust youth, whose face beamed with the
+rapture of his heavenly flight.
+
+“They found him too human,” said Jahan. “And after all they were right.
+There’s nothing so difficult to conceive as an angel. One even hesitates
+as to the sex; and when faith is lacking one has to take the first model
+one finds and copy it and spoil it. For my part, while I was modelling
+that one, I tried to imagine a beautiful youth suddenly endowed with
+wings, and carried by the intoxication of his flight into all the joy of
+the sunshine. But it upset them, they wanted something more religious,
+they said; and so then I concocted that wretched thing over there. After
+all, one has to earn one’s living, you know.”
+
+So saying, he waved his hand towards another model, the one for which his
+assistants were preparing the stone. And this model represented an angel
+of the correct type, with symmetrical wings like those of a goose, a
+figure of neither sex, and commonplace features, expressing the silly
+ecstasy that tradition requires.
+
+“What would you have?” continued Jahan. “Religious art has sunk to the
+most disgusting triteness. People no longer believe; churches are built
+like barracks, and decorated with saints and virgins fit to make one
+weep. The fact is that genius is only the fruit of the social soil; and a
+great artist can only send up a blaze of the faith of the time he lives
+in. For my part, I’m the grandson of a Beauceron peasant. My father came
+to Paris to set himself up in business as a marble worker for tombstones
+and so forth, just at the top of the Rue de la Roquette. It was there I
+grew up. I began as a workman, and all my childhood was spent among the
+masses, in the streets, without ever a thought coming to me of setting
+foot in a church. So few Parisians think of doing so nowadays. And so
+what’s to become of art since there’s no belief in the Divinity or even
+in beauty? We’re forced to go forward to the new faith, which is the
+faith in life and work and fruitfulness, in all that labours and
+produces.”
+
+Then suddenly breaking off he exclaimed: “By the way, I’ve been doing
+some more work to my figure of Fecundity, and I’m fairly well pleased
+with it. Just come with me and I’ll show it you.”
+
+Thereupon he insisted on taking them to his private studio, which was
+near by, just below Guillaume’s little house. It was entered by way of
+the Rue du Calvaire, a street which is simply a succession of ladder-like
+flights of steps. The door opened on to one of the little landings, and
+one found oneself in a spacious, well-lighted apartment littered with
+models and casts, fragments and figures, quite an overflow of sturdy,
+powerful talent. On a stool was the unfinished model of Fecundity swathed
+in wet cloths. These Jahan removed, and then she stood forth with her
+rounded figure, her broad hips and her wifely, maternal bosom, full of
+the milk which nourishes and redeems.
+
+“Well, what do you think of her?” asked Jahan. “Built as she is, I fancy
+that her children ought to be less puny than the pale, languid, aesthetic
+fellows of nowadays!”
+
+While Antoine and François were admiring the figure, Pierre, for his
+part, took most interest in a young girl who had opened the door to them,
+and who had now wearily reseated herself at a little table to continue a
+book she was reading. This was Jahan’s sister, Lise. A score of years
+younger than himself, she was but sixteen, and had been living alone with
+him since their father’s death. Very slight and delicate looking, she had
+a most gentle face, with fine light hair which suggested pale gold-dust.
+She was almost a cripple, with legs so weak that she only walked with
+difficulty, and her mind also was belated, still full of childish
+_naïveté_. At first this had much saddened her brother, but with time he
+had grown accustomed to her innocence and languor. Busy as he always was,
+ever in a transport, overflowing with new plans, he somewhat neglected
+her by force of circumstances, letting her live beside him much as she
+listed.
+
+Pierre had noticed, however, the sisterly impulsiveness with which she
+had greeted Antoine. And the latter, after congratulating Jahan on his
+statue, came and sat down beside her, questioned her and wished to see
+the book which she was reading. During the last six months the most pure
+and affectionate intercourse had sprung up between them. He, from his
+father’s garden, up yonder on the Place du Tertre, could see her through
+the huge window of that studio where she led so innocent a life. And
+noticing that she was always alone, as if forsaken, he had begun to take
+an interest in her. Then had come acquaintance; and, delighted to find
+her so simple and so charming, he had conceived the design of rousing her
+to intelligence and life, by loving her, by becoming at once the mind and
+the heart whose power fructifies. Weak plant that she was, in need of
+delicate care, sunshine and affection, he became for her all that her
+brother had, through circumstances, failed to be. He had already taught
+her to read, a task in which every mistress had previously failed. But
+him she listened to and understood. And by slow degrees a glow of
+happiness came to the beautiful clear eyes set in her irregular face. It
+was love’s miracle, the creation of woman beneath the breath of a young
+lover who gave himself entirely. No doubt she still remained very
+delicate, with such poor health that one ever feared that she might
+expire in a faint sigh; and her legs, moreover, were still too weak to
+admit of her walking any distance. But all the same, she was no longer
+the little wilding, the little ailing flower of the previous spring.
+
+Jahan, who marvelled at the incipient miracle, drew near to the young
+people. “Ah!” said he, “your pupil does you honour. She reads quite
+fluently, you know, and understands the fine books you send her. You read
+to me of an evening now, don’t you, Lise?”
+
+She raised her candid eyes, and gazed at Antoine with a smile of infinite
+gratitude. “Oh! whatever he’ll teach me,” she said, “I’ll learn it, and
+do it.”
+
+The others laughed gently. Then, as the visitors were going off, François
+paused before a model which had cracked while drying. “Oh! that’s a
+spoilt thing,” said the sculptor. “I wanted to model a figure of Charity.
+It was ordered of me by a philanthropic institution. But try as I might,
+I could only devise something so commonplace that I let the clay spoil.
+Still, I must think it over and endeavour to take the matter in hand
+again.”
+
+When they were outside, it occurred to Pierre to go as far as the
+basilica of the Sacred Heart in the hope of finding Abbé Rose there. So
+the three of them went round by way of the Rue Gabrielle and climbed the
+steps of the Rue Chape. And just as they were reaching the summit where
+the basilica reared its forest of scaffoldings beneath the clear sky,
+they encountered Thomas, who, on leaving the factory, had gone to give an
+order to a founder in the Rue Lamarck.
+
+He, who as a rule was so silent and discreet, now happened to be in an
+expansive mood, which made him look quite radiant. “Ah! I’m so pleased,”
+ he said, addressing Pierre; “I fancy that I’ve found what I want for our
+little motor. Tell father that things are going on all right, and that he
+must make haste to get well.”
+
+At these words his brothers, François and Antoine, drew close to him with
+a common impulse. And they stood there all three, a valiant little group,
+their hearts uniting and beating with one and the same delight at the
+idea that their father would be gladdened, that the good news they were
+sending him would help him towards recovery. As for Pierre, who, now that
+he knew them, was beginning to love them and judge them at their worth,
+he marvelled at the sight of these three young giants, each so strikingly
+like the other, and drawn together so closely and so promptly, directly
+their filial affection took fire.
+
+“Tell him that we are waiting for him, and will come to him at the first
+sign if we are wanted.”
+
+Then each in turn shook the priest’s hand vigorously. And while he
+remained watching them as they went off towards the little house, whose
+garden he perceived over the wall of the Rue Saint Eleuthère, he fancied
+he could there detect a delicate silhouette, a white, sunlit face under a
+help of dark hair. It was doubtless the face of Marie, examining the buds
+on her lilac bushes. At that evening hour, however, the diffuse light was
+so golden that the vision seemed to fade in it as in a halo. And Pierre,
+feeling dazzled, turned his head, and on the other side saw naught but
+the overwhelming, chalky mass of the basilica, whose hugeness shut out
+all view of the horizon.
+
+For a moment he remained motionless on that spot, so agitated by
+conflicting thoughts and feelings that he could read neither heart nor
+mind clearly. Then, as he turned towards the city, all Paris spread
+itself out at his feet, a limpid, lightsome Paris, beneath the pink glow
+of that spring-like evening. The endless billows of house-roofs showed
+forth with wonderful distinctness, and one could have counted the chimney
+stacks and the little black streaks of the windows by the million. The
+edifices rising into the calm atmosphere seemed like the anchored vessels
+of some fleet arrested in its course, with lofty masting which glittered
+at the sun’s farewell. And never before had Pierre so distinctly observed
+the divisions of that human ocean. Eastward and northward was the city of
+manual toil, with the rumbling and the smoke of its factories. Southward,
+beyond the river, was the city of study, of intellectual labour, so calm,
+so perfectly serene. And on all sides the passion of trade ascended from
+the central districts, where the crowds rolled and scrambled amidst an
+everlasting uproar of wheels; while westward, the city of the happy and
+powerful ones, those who fought for sovereignty and wealth, spread out
+its piles of palaces amidst the slowly reddening flare of the declining
+planet.
+
+And then, from the depths of his negation, the chaos into which his loss
+of faith had plunged him, Pierre felt a delicious freshness pass like the
+vague advent of a new faith. So vague it was that he could not have
+expressed even his hope of it in words. But already among the rough
+factory workers, manual toil had appeared to him necessary and
+redemptive, in spite of all the misery and abominable injustice to which
+it led. And now the young men of intellect of whom he had despaired, that
+generation of the morrow which he had thought spoilt, relapsing into
+ancient error and rottenness, had appeared to him full of virile promise,
+resolved to prosecute the work of those who had gone before, and effect,
+by the aid of Science only, the conquest of absolute truth and absolute
+justice.
+
+
+
+
+V. PROBLEMS
+
+A FULL month had already gone by since Guillaume had taken refuge at his
+brother’s little house at Neuilly. His wrist was now nearly healed. He
+had long ceased to keep his bed, and often strolled through the garden.
+In spite of his impatience to go back to Montmartre, join his loved ones
+and resume his work there, he was each morning prompted to defer his
+return by the news he found in the newspapers. The situation was ever the
+same. Salvat, whom the police now suspected, had been perceived one
+evening near the central markets, and then again lost sight of. Every
+day, however, his arrest was said to be imminent. And in that case what
+would happen? Would he speak out, and would fresh perquisitions be made?
+
+For a whole week the press had been busy with the bradawl found under the
+entrance of the Duvillard mansion. Nearly every reporter in Paris had
+called at the Grandidier factory and interviewed both workmen and master.
+Some had even started on personal investigations, in the hope of
+capturing the culprit themselves. There was no end of jesting about the
+incompetence of the police, and the hunt for Salvat was followed all the
+more passionately by the general public, as the papers overflowed with
+the most ridiculous concoctions, predicting further explosions, and
+declaring even that all Paris would some morning be blown into the air.
+The “Voix du Peuple” set a fresh shudder circulating every day by its
+announcements of threatening letters, incendiary placards and mysterious,
+far-reaching plots. And never before had so base and foolish a spirit of
+contagion wafted insanity through a civilised city.
+
+Guillaume, for his part, no sooner awoke of a morning than he was all
+impatience to see the newspapers, quivering at the idea that he would at
+last read of Salvat’s arrest. In his state of nervous expectancy, the
+wild campaign which the press had started, the idiotic and the ferocious
+things which he found in one or another journal, almost drove him crazy.
+A number of “suspects” had already been arrested in a kind of chance
+razzia, which had swept up the usual Anarchist herd, together with sundry
+honest workmen and bandits, _illumines_ and lazy devils, in fact, a most
+singular, motley crew, which investigating magistrate Amadieu was
+endeavouring to turn into a gigantic association of evil-doers. One
+morning, moreover, Guillaume found his own name mentioned in connection
+with a perquisition at the residence of a revolutionary journalist, who
+was a friend of his. At this his heart bounded with revolt, but he was
+forced to the conclusion that it would be prudent for him to remain
+patient a little longer, in his peaceful retreat at Neuilly, since the
+police might at any moment break into his home at Montmartre, to arrest
+him should it find him there.
+
+Amidst all this anxiety the brothers led a most solitary and gentle life.
+Pierre himself now spent most of his time at home. The first days of
+March had come, and precocious springtide imparted delightful charm and
+warmth to the little garden. Guillaume, however, since quitting his bed,
+had more particularly installed himself in his father’s old laboratory,
+now transformed into a spacious study. All the books and papers left by
+the illustrious chemist were still there, and among the latter Guillaume
+found a number of unfinished essays, the perusal of which greatly excited
+his interest, and often absorbed him from morning till night. It was this
+which largely enabled him to bear his voluntary seclusion patiently.
+Seated on the other side of the big table, Pierre also mostly occupied
+himself with reading; but at times his eyes would quit his book and
+wander away into gloomy reverie, into all the chaos into which he still
+and ever sank. For long hours the brothers would in this wise remain side
+by side, without speaking a word. Yet they knew they were together; and
+occasionally, when their eyes met, they would exchange a smile. The
+strong affection of former days was again springing up within them; their
+childhood, their home, their parents, all seemed to live once more in the
+quiet atmosphere they breathed. However, the bay window overlooked the
+garden in the direction of Paris, and often, when they emerged from their
+reading or their reverie, it was with a sudden feeling of anxiety, and in
+order to lend ear to the distant rumbling, the increased clamour of the
+great city.
+
+On other occasions they paused as if in astonishment at hearing a
+continuous footfall overhead. It was that of Nicholas Barthès, who still
+lingered in the room above. He seldom came downstairs, and scarcely ever
+ventured into the garden, for fear, said he, that he might be perceived
+and recognised from a distant house whose windows were concealed by a
+clump of trees. One might laugh at the old conspirator’s haunting thought
+of the police. Nevertheless, the caged-lion restlessness, the ceaseless
+promenade of that perpetual prisoner who had spent two thirds of his life
+in the dungeons of France in his desire to secure the liberty of others,
+imparted to the silence of the little house a touching melancholy, the
+very rhythm as it were of all the great good things which one hoped for,
+but which would never perhaps come.
+
+Very few visits drew the brothers from their solitude. Bertheroy came
+less frequently now that Guillaume’s wrist was healing. The most
+assiduous caller was certainly Théophile Morin, whose discreet ring was
+heard every other day at the same hour. Though he did not share the ideas
+of Barthès he worshipped him as a martyr; and would always go upstairs to
+spend an hour with him. However, they must have exchanged few words, for
+not a sound came from the room. Whenever Morin sat down for a moment in
+the laboratory with the brothers, Pierre was struck by his seeming
+weariness, his ashen grey hair and beard and dismal countenance, all the
+life of which appeared to have been effaced by long years spent in the
+teaching profession. Indeed, it was only when the priest mentioned Italy
+that he saw his companion’s resigned eyes blaze up like live coals. One
+day when he spoke of the great patriot Orlando Prada, Morin’s companion
+of victory in Garibaldi’s days, he was amazed by the sudden flare of
+enthusiasm which lighted up the other’s lifeless features. However, these
+were but transient flashes: the old professor soon reappeared, and all
+that one found in Morin was the friend of Proudhon and the subsequent
+disciple of Auguste Comte. Of his Proudhonian principles he had retained
+all a pauper’s hatred of wealth, and a desire for a more equitable
+partition of fortune. But the new times dismayed him, and neither
+principle nor temperament allowed him to follow Revolutionism to its
+utmost limits. Comte had imparted unshakable convictions to him in the
+sphere of intellectual questions, and he contented himself with the clear
+and decisive logic of Positivism, rejecting all metaphysical hypotheses
+as useless, persuaded as he was that the whole human question, whether
+social or religious, would be solved by science alone. This faith, firm
+as it had remained, was, however, coupled with secret bitterness, for
+nothing seemed to advance in a sensible manner towards its goal. Comte
+himself had ended in the most cloudy mysticism; great _savants_ recoiled
+from truth in terror; and now barbarians were threatening the world with
+fresh night; all of which made Morin almost a reactionist in politics,
+already resigned to the advent of a dictator, who would set things
+somewhat in order, so that humanity might be able to complete its
+education.
+
+Other visitors who occasionally called to see Guillaume were Bache and
+Janzen, who invariably came together and at night-time. Every now and
+then they would linger chatting with Guillaume in the spacious study
+until two o’clock in the morning. Bache, who was fat and had a fatherly
+air, with his little eyes gently beaming amidst all the snowy whiteness
+of his hair and beard, would talk on slowly, unctuously and interminably,
+as soon as he had begun to explain his views. He would address merely a
+polite bow to Saint-Simon, the initiator, the first to lay down the law
+that work was a necessity for one and all according to their capacities;
+but on coming to Fourier his voice softened and he confessed his whole
+religion. To his thinking, Fourier had been the real messiah of modern
+times, the saviour of genius, who had sown the good seed of the future
+world, by regulating society such as it would certainly be organised
+to-morrow. The law of harmony had been promulgated; human passions,
+liberated and utilised in healthy fashion, would become the requisite
+machinery; and work, rendered pleasant and attractive, would prove the
+very function of life. Nothing could discourage Bache; if merely one
+parish began by transforming itself into a _phalansterium_, the whole
+department would soon follow, then the adjacent departments, and finally
+all France. Moreover, Bache even favoured the schemes of Cabet, whose
+Icaria, said he, had in no wise been such a foolish idea. Further, he
+recalled a motion he had made, when member of the Commune in 1871, to
+apply Fourier’s ideas to the French Republic; and he was apparently
+convinced that the troops of Versailles had delayed the triumph of
+Communism for half a century. Whenever people nowadays talked of
+table-turning he pretended to laugh, but at bottom he had remained an
+impenitent “spiritist.” Since he had been a municipal councillor he had
+been travelling from one socialist sect to another, according as their
+ideas offered points of resemblance to his old faith. And he was fairly
+consumed by his need of faith, his perplexity as to the Divine, which he
+was now occasionally inclined to find in the legs of some piece of
+furniture, after denying its presence in the churches.
+
+Janzen, for his part, was as taciturn as his friend Bache was garrulous.
+Such remarks as he made were brief, but they were as galling as lashes,
+as cutting as sabre-strokes. At the same time his ideas and theories
+remained somewhat obscure, partly by reason of this brevity of his, and
+partly on account of the difficulty he experienced in expressing himself
+in French. He was from over yonder, from some far-away land--Russia,
+Poland, Austria or Germany, nobody exactly knew; and it mattered little,
+for he certainly acknowledged no country, but wandered far and wide with
+his dream of blood-shedding fraternity. Whenever, with his wonted
+frigidity, he gave utterance to one of those terrible remarks of his
+which, like a scythe in a meadow, cut away all before him, little less
+than the necessity of thus mowing down nations, in order to sow the earth
+afresh with a young and better community, became apparent. At each
+proposition unfolded by Bache, such as labour rendered agreeable by
+police regulations, _phalansteria_ organised like barracks, religion
+transformed into pantheist or spiritist deism, he gently shrugged his
+shoulders. What could be the use of such childishness, such hypocritical
+repairing, when the house was falling and the only honest course was to
+throw it to the ground, and build up the substantial edifice of to-morrow
+with entirely new materials? On the subject of propaganda by deeds,
+bomb-throwing and so forth, he remained silent, though his gestures were
+expressive of infinite hope. He evidently approved that course. The
+legend which made him one of the perpetrators of the crime of Barcelona
+set a gleam of horrible glory in his mysterious past. One day when Bache,
+while speaking to him of his friend Bergaz, the shadowy Bourse jobber who
+had already been compromised in some piece of thieving, plainly declared
+that the aforesaid Bergaz was a bandit, Janzen contented himself with
+smiling, and replying quietly that theft was merely forced restitution.
+Briefly, in this man of culture and refinement, in whose own mysterious
+life one might perhaps have found various crimes but not a single act of
+base improbity, one could divine an implacable, obstinate theoretician,
+who was resolved to set the world ablaze for the triumph of his ideas.
+
+On certain evenings when a visit from Théophile Morin coincided with one
+from Bache and Janzen, and they and Guillaume lingered chatting until far
+into the night, Pierre would listen to them in despair from the shadowy
+corner where he remained motionless, never once joining in the
+discussions. Distracted, by his own unbelief and thirst for truth, he had
+at the outset taken a passionate interest in these debates, desirous as
+he was of drawing up a balance-sheet of the century’s ideas, so as to
+form some notion of the distance that had been travelled, and the profits
+that had accrued. But he recoiled from all this in fresh despair, on
+hearing the others argue, each from his own standpoint and without
+possibility of concession and agreement. After the repulses he had
+encountered at Lourdes and Rome, he well realised that in this fresh
+experiment which he was making with Paris, the whole brain of the century
+was in question, the new truths, the expected gospel which was to change
+the face of the world. And, burning with inconsiderate zeal, he went from
+one belief to another, which other he soon rejected in order to adopt a
+third. If he had first felt himself to be a Positivist with Morin, an
+Evolutionist and Determinist with Guillaume, he had afterwards been
+touched by the fraternal dream of a new golden age which he had found in
+Bache’s humanitarian Communism. And indeed even Janzen had momentarily
+shaken him by his fierce confidence in the theory of liberative
+Individualism. But afterwards he had found himself out of his depth; and
+each and every theory had seemed to him but part of the chaotic
+contradictions and incoherences of humanity on its march. It was all a
+continuous piling up of dross, amidst which he lost himself. Although
+Fourier had sprung from Saint-Simon he denied him in part; and if
+Saint-Simon’s doctrine ended in a kind of mystical sensuality, the
+other’s conducted to an unacceptable regimenting of society. Proudhon,
+for his part, demolished without rebuilding anything. Comte, who created
+method and declared science to be the one and only sovereign, had not
+even suspected the advent of the social crisis which now threatened to
+sweep all away, and had finished personally as a mere worshipper of love,
+overpowered by woman. Nevertheless, these two, Comte and Proudhon,
+entered the lists and fought against the others, Fourier and Saint-Simon;
+the combat between them or their disciples becoming so bitter and so
+blind that the truths common to them all were obscured and disfigured
+beyond recognition. Thence came the extraordinary muddle of the present
+hour; Bache with Saint-Simon and Fourier, and Morin with Proudhon and
+Comte, utterly failing to understand Mège, the Collectivist deputy, whom
+they held up to execration, him and his State Collectivism, in the same
+way, moreover, as they thundered against all the other present-time
+Socialist sects, without realising that these also, whatever their
+nature, had more or less sprung from the same masters as themselves. And
+all this seemingly indicated that Janzen was right when he declared that
+the house was past repair, fast crumbling amidst rottenness and insanity,
+and that it ought to be levelled to the ground.
+
+One night, after the three visitors had gone, Pierre, who had remained
+with Guillaume, saw him grow very gloomy as he slowly walked to and fro.
+He, in his turn, had doubtless felt that all was crumbling. And though
+his brother alone was there to hear him, he went on speaking. He
+expressed all his horror of the Collectivist State as imagined by Mège, a
+Dictator-State re-establishing ancient servitude on yet closer lines. The
+error of all the Socialist sects was their arbitrary organisation of
+Labour, which enslaved the individual for the profit of the community.
+And, forced to conciliate the two great currents, the rights of society
+and the rights of the individual, Guillaume had ended by placing his
+whole faith in free Communism, an anarchical state in which he dreamt of
+seeing the individual freed, moving and developing without restraint, for
+the benefit both of himself and of all others. Was not this, said he, the
+one truly scientific theory, unities creating worlds, atoms producing
+life by force of attraction, free and ardent love? All oppressive
+minorities would disappear; and the faculties and energies of one and all
+would by free play arrive at harmony amidst the equilibrium--which
+changed according to needs--of the active forces of advancing humanity.
+In this wise he pictured a nation, saved from State tutelage, without a
+master, almost without laws, a happy nation, each citizen of which,
+completely developed by the exercise of liberty, would, of his free will,
+come to an understanding with his neighbours with regard to the thousand
+necessities of life. And thence would spring society, free association,
+hundreds of associations which would regulate social life; though at the
+same time they would remain variable, in fact often opposed and hostile
+to one another. For progress is but the fruit of conflict and struggle;
+the world has only been created by the battle of opposing forces. And
+that was all; there would be no more oppressors, no more rich, no more
+poor; the domain of the earth with its natural treasures and its
+implements of labour would be restored to the people, its legitimate
+owners, who would know how to enjoy it with justice and logic, when
+nothing abnormal would impede their expansion. And then only would the
+law of love make its action felt; then would human solidarity, which,
+among mankind, is the living form of universal attraction, acquire all
+its power, bringing men closer and closer together, and uniting them in
+one sole family. A splendid dream it was--the noble and pure dream of
+absolute freedom--free man in free society. And thither a _savant’s_
+superior mind was fated to come after passing on the road the many
+Socialist sects which one and all bore the stigma of tyranny. And,
+assuredly, as thus indulged, the Anarchist idea is the loftiest, the
+proudest, of all ideas. And how delightful to yield to the hope of
+harmony in life--life which restored to the full exercise of its natural
+powers would of itself create happiness!
+
+When Guillaume ceased speaking, he seemed to be emerging from a dream;
+and he glanced at Pierre with some dismay, for he feared that he might
+have said too much and have hurt his feelings. Pierre--moved though he
+was, for a moment in fact almost won over--had just seen the terrible
+practical objection, which destroyed all hope, arise before his mind’s
+eye. Why had not harmony asserted itself in the first days of the world’s
+existence, at the time when societies were formed? How was it that
+tyranny had triumphed, delivering nations over to oppressors? And
+supposing that the apparently insolvable problem of destroying
+everything, and beginning everything afresh, should ever be solved, who
+could promise that mankind, obedient to the same laws, would not again
+follow the same paths as formerly? After all, mankind, nowadays, is
+simply what life has made it; and nothing proves that life would again
+make it other than it is. To begin afresh, ah, yes! but to attain another
+result! But could that other result really come from man? Was it not
+rather man himself who should be changed? To start afresh from where one
+was, to continue the evolution that had begun, undoubtedly meant slow
+travel and dismal waiting. But how great would be the danger and even the
+delay, if one went back without knowing by what road across the whole
+chaos of ruins one might regain all the lost time!
+
+“Let us go to bed,” at last said Guillaume, smiling. “It’s silly of me to
+weary you with all these things which don’t concern you.”
+
+Pierre, in his excitement, was about to reveal his own heart and mind,
+and the whole torturing battle within him. But a feeling of shame again
+restrained him. His brother only knew him as a believing priest, faithful
+to his faith. And so, without answering, he betook himself to his room.
+
+On the following evening, about ten o’clock, while Guillaume and Pierre
+sat reading in the study, the old servant entered to announce M. Janzen
+and a friend. The friend was Salvat.
+
+“He wished to see you,” Janzen explained to Guillaume. “I met him, and
+when he heard of your injury and anxiety he implored me to bring him
+here. And I’ve done so, though it was perhaps hardly prudent of me.”
+
+Guillaume had risen, full of surprise and emotion at such a visit;
+Pierre, however, though equally upset by Salvat’s appearance; did not
+stir from his chair, but kept his eyes upon the workman.
+
+“Monsieur Froment,” Salvat ended by saying, standing there in a timid,
+embarrassed way, “I was very sorry indeed when I heard of the worry I’d
+put you in; for I shall never forget that you were very kind to me when
+everybody else turned me away.”
+
+As he spoke he balanced himself alternately on either leg, and
+transferred his old felt hat from hand to hand.
+
+“And so I wanted to come and tell you myself that if I took a cartridge
+of your powder one evening when you had your back turned, it’s the only
+thing that I feel any remorse about in the whole business, since it may
+compromise you. And I also want to take my oath before you that you’ve
+nothing to fear from me, that I’ll let my head be cut off twenty times if
+need be, rather than utter your name. That’s all that I had in my heart.”
+
+He relapsed into silence and embarrassment, but his soft, dreamy eyes,
+the eyes of a faithful dog, remained fixed upon Guillaume with an
+expression of respectful worship. And Pierre was still gazing at him
+athwart the hateful vision which his arrival had conjured up, that of the
+poor, dead, errand girl, the fair pretty child lying ripped open under
+the entrance of the Duvillard mansion! Was it possible that he was there,
+he, that madman, that murderer, and that his eyes were actually moist!
+
+Guillaume, touched by Salvat’s words, had drawn near and pressed his
+hand. “I am well aware, Salvat,” said he, “that you are not wicked at
+heart. But what a foolish and abominable thing you did!”
+
+Salvat showed no sign of anger, but gently smiled. “Oh! if it had to be
+done again, Monsieur Froment, I’d do it. It’s my idea, you know. And,
+apart from you, all is well; I am content.”
+
+He would not sit down, but for another moment continued talking with
+Guillaume, while Janzen, as if he washed his hands of the business,
+deeming this visit both useless and dangerous, sat down and turned over
+the leaves of a picture book. And Guillaume made Salvat tell him what he
+had done on the day of the crime; how like a stray dog he had wandered in
+distraction through Paris, carrying his bomb with him, originally in his
+tool-bag and then under his jacket; how he had gone a first time to the
+Duvillard mansion and found its carriage entrance closed; then how he had
+betaken himself first to the Chamber of Deputies which the ushers had
+prevented him from entering, and afterwards to the Circus, where the
+thought of making a great sacrifice of _bourgeois_ had occurred to him
+too late. And finally, how he had at last come back to the Duvillard
+mansion, as if drawn thither by the very power of destiny. His tool-bag
+was lying in the depths of the Seine, he said; he had thrown it into the
+water with sudden hatred of work, since it had even failed to give him
+bread. And he next told the story of his flight; the explosion shaking
+the whole district behind him, while, with delight and astonishment, he
+found himself some distance off, in quiet streets where nothing was as
+yet known. And for a month past he had been living in chance fashion, how
+or where he could hardly tell, but he had often slept in the open, and
+gone for a day without food. One evening little Victor Mathis had given
+him five francs. And other comrades had helped him, taken him in for a
+night and sent him off at the first sign of peril. A far-spreading, tacit
+complicity had hitherto saved him from the police. As for going abroad,
+well, he had, at one moment, thought of doing so; but a description of
+his person must have been circulated, the gendarmes must be waiting for
+him at the frontiers, and so would not flight, instead of retarding,
+rather hasten his arrest? Paris, however, was an ocean; it was there that
+he incurred the least risk of capture. Moreover, he no longer had
+sufficient energy to flee. A fatalist as he was after his own fashion, he
+could not find strength to quit the pavements of Paris, but there awaited
+arrest, like a social waif carried chancewise through the multitude as in
+a dream.
+
+“And your daughter, little Céline?” Guillaume inquired. “Have you
+ventured to go back to see her?”
+
+Salvat waved his hand in a vague way. “No, but what would you have? She’s
+with Mamma Théodore. Women always find some help. And then I’m done for,
+I can do nothing for anybody. It’s as if I were already dead.” However,
+in spite of these words, tears were rising to his eyes. “Ah! the poor
+little thing!” he added, “I kissed her with all my heart before I went
+away. If she and the woman hadn’t been starving so long the idea of that
+business would perhaps never have come to me.”
+
+Then, in all simplicity, he declared that he was ready to die. If he had
+ended by depositing his bomb at the entrance of Duvillard’s house, it was
+because he knew the banker well, and was aware that he was the wealthiest
+of those _bourgeois_ whose fathers at the time of the Revolution had
+duped the people, by taking all power and wealth for themselves,--the
+power and wealth which the sons were nowadays so obstinately bent in
+retaining that they would not even bestow the veriest crumbs on others.
+As for the Revolution, he understood it in his own fashion, like an
+illiterate fellow who had learnt the little he knew from newspapers and
+speeches at public meetings. And he struck his chest with his fist as he
+spoke of his honesty, and was particularly desirous that none should
+doubt his courage because he had fled.
+
+“I’ve never robbed anybody,” said he, “and if I don’t go and hand myself
+up to the police, it’s because they may surely take the trouble to find
+and arrest me. I’m very well aware that my affair’s clear enough as
+they’ve found that bradawl and know me. All the same, it would be silly
+of me to help them in their work. Still, they’d better make haste, for
+I’ve almost had enough of being tracked like a wild beast and no longer
+knowing how I live.”
+
+Janzen, yielding to curiosity, had ceased turning over the leaves of the
+picture book and was looking at Salvat. There was a smile of disdain in
+the Anarchist leader’s cold eyes; and in his usual broken French he
+remarked: “A man fights and defends himself, kills others and tries to
+avoid being killed himself. That’s warfare.”
+
+These words fell from his lips amidst deep silence. Salvat, however, did
+not seem to have heard them, but stammered forth his faith in a long
+sentence laden with fulsome expressions, such as the sacrifice of his
+life in order that want might cease, and the example of a great action,
+in the certainty that it would inspire other heroes to continue the
+struggle. And with this certainly sincere faith and illuminism of his
+there was blended a martyr’s pride, delight at being one of the radiant,
+worshipped saints of the dawning Revolutionary Church.
+
+As he had come so he went off. When Janzen had led him away, it seemed as
+if the night which had brought him had carried him back into its
+impenetrable depths. And then only did Pierre rise from his chair. He was
+stifling, and threw the large window of the room wide open. It was a very
+mild but moonless night, whose silence was only disturbed by the
+subsiding clamour of Paris, which stretched away, invisible, on the
+horizon.
+
+Guillaume, according to his habit, had begun to walk up and down. And at
+last he spoke, again forgetting that his brother was a priest. “Ah! the
+poor fellow! How well one can understand that deed of violence and hope!
+His whole past life of fruitless labour and ever-growing want explains
+it. Then, too, there has been all the contagion of ideas; the
+frequentation of public meetings where men intoxicate themselves with
+words, and of secret meetings among comrades where faith acquires
+firmness and the mind soars wildly. Ah! I think I know that man well
+indeed! He’s a good workman, sober and courageous. Injustice has always
+exasperated him. And little by little the desire for universal happiness
+has cast him out of the realities of life which he has ended by holding
+in horror. So how can he do otherwise than live in a dream--a dream of
+redemption, which, from circumstances, has turned to fire and murder as
+its fitting instruments. As I looked at him standing there, I fancied I
+could picture one of the first Christian slaves of ancient Rome. All the
+iniquity of olden pagan society, agonising beneath the rottenness born of
+debauchery and covetousness, was weighing on his shoulders, bearing him
+down. He had come from the dark Catacombs where he had whispered words of
+deliverance and redemption with his wretched brethren. And a thirst for
+martyrdom consumed him, he spat in the face of Caesar, he insulted the
+gods, he fired the pagan temples, in order that the reign of Jesus might
+come and abolish servitude. And he was ready to die, to be torn to pieces
+by the wild beasts!”
+
+Pierre did not immediately reply. He had already been struck, however, by
+the fact that there were undoubted points of resemblance between the
+secret propaganda and militant faith of the Anarchists, and certain
+practices of the first Christians. Both sects abandon themselves to a new
+faith in the hope that the humble may thereby at last reap justice.
+Paganism disappears through weariness of the flesh and the need of a more
+lofty and pure faith. That dream of a Christian paradise opening up a
+future life with a system of compensations for the ills endured on earth,
+was the outcome of young hope dawning at its historic hour. But to-day,
+when eighteen centuries have exhausted that hope, when the long
+experiment is over and the toiler finds himself duped and still and ever
+a slave, he once more dreams of getting happiness upon this earth,
+particularly as each day Science tends more and more to show him that the
+happiness of the spheres beyond is a lie. And in all this there is but
+the eternal struggle of the poor and the rich, the eternal question of
+bringing more justice and less suffering to the world.
+
+“But surely,” Pierre at last replied, “you can’t be on the side of those
+bandits, those murderers whose savage violence horrifies me. I let you
+talk on yesterday, when you dreamt of a great and happy people, of ideal
+anarchy in which each would be free amidst the freedom of all. But what
+abomination, what disgust both for mind and heart, when one passes from
+theory to propaganda and practice! If yours is the brain that thinks,
+whose is the hateful hand that acts, that kills children, throws down
+doors and empties drawers? Do you accept that responsibility? With your
+education, your culture, the whole social heredity behind you, does not
+your entire being revolt at the idea of stealing and murdering?”
+
+Guillaume halted before his brother, quivering. “Steal and murder! no!
+no! I will not. But one must say everything and fully understand the
+history of the evil hour through which we are passing. It is madness
+sweeping by; and, to tell the truth, everything necessary to provoke it
+has been done. At the very dawn of the Anarchist theory, at the very
+first innocent actions of its partisans, there was such stern repression,
+the police so grossly ill-treating the poor devils that fell into its
+hands, that little by little came anger and rage leading to the most
+horrible reprisals. It is the Terror initiated by the _bourgeois_ that
+has produced Anarchist savagery. And would you know whence Salvat and his
+crime have come? Why, from all our centuries of impudence and iniquity,
+from all that the nations have suffered, from all the sores which are now
+devouring us, the impatience for enjoyment, the contempt of the strong
+for the weak, the whole monstrous spectacle which is presented by our
+rotting society!”
+
+Guillaume was again slowly walking to and fro; and as if he were
+reflecting aloud he continued: “Ah! to reach the point I have attained,
+through how much thought, through how many battles, have I not passed! I
+was merely a Positivist, a _savant_ devoted to observation and
+experiment, accepting nothing apart from proven facts. Scientifically and
+socially, I admitted that simple evolution had slowly brought humanity
+into being. But both in the history of the globe and that of human
+society, I found it necessary to make allowance for the volcano, the
+sudden cataclysm, the sudden eruption, by which each geological phase,
+each historical period, has been marked. In this wise one ends by
+ascertaining that no forward step has ever been taken, no progress ever
+accomplished in the world’s history, without the help of horrible
+catastrophes. Each advance has meant the sacrifice of millions and
+millions of human lives. This of course revolts us, given our narrow
+ideas of justice, and we regard nature as a most barbarous mother; but,
+if we cannot excuse the volcano, we ought to deal with it when it bursts
+forth, like _savants_ forewarned of its possibility.... And then, ah,
+then! well, perhaps I’m a dreamer like others, but I have my own
+notions.”
+
+With a sweeping gesture he confessed what a social dreamer there was
+within him beside the methodical and scrupulous _savant_. His constant
+endeavour was to bring all back to science, and he was deeply grieved at
+finding in nature no scientific sign of equality or even justice, such as
+he craved for in the social sphere. His despair indeed came from this
+inability to reconcile scientific logic with apostolic love, the dream of
+universal happiness and brotherhood and the end of all iniquity.
+
+Pierre, however, who had remained near the open window, gazing into the
+night towards Paris, whence ascended the last sounds of the evening of
+passionate pleasure, felt the whole flood of his own doubt and despair
+stifling him. It was all too much: that brother of his who had fallen
+upon him with his scientific and apostolic beliefs, those men who came to
+discuss contemporary thought from every standpoint, and finally that
+Salvat who had brought thither the exasperation of his mad deed. And
+Pierre, who had hitherto listened to them all without a word, without a
+gesture, who had hidden his secrets from his brother, seeking refuge in
+his supposed priestly views, suddenly felt such bitterness stirring his
+heart that he could lie no longer.
+
+“Ah! brother, if you have your dream, I have my sore which has eaten into
+me and left me void! Your Anarchy, your dream of just happiness, for
+which Salvat works with bombs, why, it is the final burst of insanity
+which will sweep everything away! How is it that you can’t realise it?
+The century is ending in ruins. I’ve been listening to you all for a
+month past. Fourier destroyed Saint-Simon, Proudhon and Comte demolished
+Fourier, each in turn piling up incoherences and contradictions, leaving
+mere chaos behind them, which nobody dares to sort out. And since then,
+Socialist sects have been swarming and multiplying, the more sensible of
+them leading simply to dictatorship, while the others indulge in most
+dangerous reveries. And after such a tempest of ideas there could indeed
+come nothing but your Anarchy, which undertakes to bring the old world to
+a finish by reducing it to dust.... Ah! I expected it, I was waiting
+for it--that final catastrophe, that fratricidal madness, the inevitable
+class warfare in which our civilisation was destined to collapse!
+Everything announced it: the want and misery below, the egotism up above,
+all the cracking of the old human habitation, borne down by too great a
+weight of crime and grief. When I went to Lourdes it was to see if the
+divinity of simple minds would work the awaited miracle, and restore the
+belief of the early ages to the people, which rebelled through excess of
+suffering. And when I went to Rome it was in the _naive_ hope of there
+finding the new religion required by our democracies, the only one that
+could pacify the world by bringing back the fraternity of the golden age.
+But how foolish of me all that was! Both here and there, I simply lighted
+on nothingness. There where I so ardently dreamt of finding the salvation
+of others, I only sank myself, going down apeak like a ship not a timber
+of which is ever found again. One tie still linked me to my fellow-men,
+that of charity, the dressing, relieving, and perhaps, in the long run,
+healing, of wounds and sores; but that last cable has now been severed.
+Charity, to my mind, appears futile and derisive by the side of justice,
+to whom all supremacy belongs, and whose advent has become a necessity
+and can be stayed by none. And so it is all over, I am mere ashes, an
+empty grave as it were. I no longer believe in anything, anything,
+anything whatever!”
+
+Pierre had risen to his full height, with arms outstretched as if to let
+all the nothingness within his heart and mind fall from them. And
+Guillaume, distracted by the sight of such a fierce denier, such a
+despairing Nihilist as was now revealed to him, drew near, quivering:
+“What are you saying, brother! I thought you so firm, so calm in your
+belief! A priest to be admired, a saint worshipped by the whole of this
+parish! I was unwilling even to discuss your faith, and now it is you who
+deny all, and believe in nothing whatever!”
+
+Pierre again slowly stretched out his arms. “There is nothing, I tried to
+learn all, and only found the atrocious grief born of the nothingness
+that overwhelms me.”
+
+“Ah! how you must suffer, Pierre, my little brother! Can religion, then,
+be even more withering than science, since it has ravaged you like that,
+while I have yet remained an old madman, still full of fancies?”
+
+Guillaume caught hold of Pierre’s hands and pressed them, full of
+terrified compassion in presence of all the grandeur and horror embodied
+in that unbelieving priest who watched over the belief of others, and
+chastely, honestly discharged his duty amidst the haughty sadness born of
+his falsehood. And how heavily must that falsehood have weighed upon his
+conscience for him to confess himself in that fashion, amidst an utter
+collapse of his whole being! A month previously, in the unexpansiveness
+of his proud solitude, he would never have taken such a course. To speak
+out it was necessary that he should have been stirred by many things, his
+reconciliation with his brother, the conversations he had heard of an
+evening, the terrible drama in which he was mingled, as well as his
+reflections on labour struggling against want, and the vague hope with
+which the sight of intellectual youth had inspired him. And, indeed, amid
+the very excess of his negation was there not already the faint dawn of a
+new faith?
+
+This Guillaume must have understood, on seeing how he quivered with
+unsatisfied tenderness as he emerged from the fierce silence which he had
+preserved so long. He made him sit down near the window, and placed
+himself beside him without releasing his hands. “But I won’t have you
+suffer, my little brother!” he said; “I won’t leave you, I’ll nurse you.
+For I know you much better than you know yourself. You would never have
+suffered were it not for the battle between your heart and your mind, and
+you will cease to suffer on the day when they make peace, and you love
+what you understand.” And in a lower voice, with infinite affection, he
+went on: “You see, it’s our poor mother and our poor father continuing
+their painful struggle in you. You were too young at the time, you
+couldn’t know what went on. But I knew them both very wretched: he,
+wretched through her, who treated him as if he were one of the damned;
+and she, suffering through him, tortured by his irreligion. When he died,
+struck down by an explosion in this very room, she took it to be the
+punishment of God. Yet, what an honest man he was, with a good, great
+heart, what a worker, seeking for truth alone, and desirous of the love
+and happiness of all! Since we have spent our evenings here, I have felt
+him coming back, reviving as it were both around and within us; and she,
+too, poor, saintly woman, is ever here, enveloping us with love, weeping,
+and yet stubbornly refusing to understand. It is they, perhaps, who have
+kept me here so long, and who at this very moment are present to place
+your hands in mine.”
+
+And, indeed, it seemed to Pierre as if he could feel the breath of
+vigilant affection which Guillaume evoked passing over them both. There
+was again a revival of all the past, all their youth, and nothing could
+have been more delightful.
+
+“You hear me, brother,” Guillaume resumed. “You must reconcile them, for
+it is only in you that they can be reconciled. You have his firm, lofty
+brow, and her mouth and eyes of unrealisable tenderness. So, try to bring
+them to agreement, by some day contenting, as your reason shall allow,
+the everlasting thirst for love, and self-bestowal, and life, which for
+lack of satisfaction is killing you. Your frightful wretchedness has no
+other cause. Come back to life, love, bestow yourself, be a man!”
+
+Pierre raised a dolorous cry: “No, no, the death born of doubt has swept
+through me, withering and shattering everything, and nothing more can
+live in that cold dust!”
+
+“But, come,” resumed Guillaume, “you cannot have reached such absolute
+negation. No man reaches it. Even in the most disabused of minds there
+remains a nook of fancy and hope. To deny charity, devotion, the
+prodigies which love may work, ah! for my part I do not go so far as
+that. And now that you have shown me your sore, why should I not tell you
+my dream, the wild hope which keeps me alive! It is strange; but, are
+_savants_ to be the last childish dreamers, and is faith only to spring
+up nowadays in chemical laboratories?”
+
+Intense emotion was stirring Guillaume; there was battle waging in both
+his brain and his heart. And at last, yielding to the deep compassion
+which filled him, vanquished by his ardent affection for his unhappy
+brother, he spoke out. But he had drawn yet closer to Pierre, even passed
+one arm around him; and it was thus embracing him that he, in his turn,
+made his confession, lowering his voice as if he feared that someone
+might overhear his secret. “Why should you not know it?” he said. “My own
+sons are ignorant of it. But you are a man and my brother, and since
+there is nothing of the priest left in you, it is to the brother I will
+confide it. This will make me love you the more, and perhaps it may do
+you good.”
+
+Then he told him of his invention, a new explosive, a powder of such
+extraordinary force that its effects were incalculable. And he had found
+employment for this powder in an engine of warfare, a special cannon,
+hurling bombs which would assure the most overwhelming victory to the
+army using them. The enemy’s forces would be destroyed in a few hours,
+and besieged cities would fall into dust at the slightest bombardment. He
+had long searched and doubted, calculated, recalculated and experimented;
+but everything was now ready: the precise formula of the powder, the
+drawings for the cannon and the bombs, a whole packet of precious papers
+stored in a safe spot. And after months of anxious reflection he had
+resolved to give his invention to France, so as to ensure her a certainty
+of victory in her coming, inevitable war with Germany!
+
+At the same time, he was not a man of narrow patriotism; on the contrary
+he had a very broad, international conception of the future liberative
+civilisation. Only he believed in the initiatory mission of France, and
+particularly in that of Paris, which, even as it is to-day, was destined
+to be the world’s brain to-morrow, whence all science and justice would
+proceed. The great idea of liberty and equality had already soared from
+it at the prodigious blast of the Revolution; and from its genius and
+valour the final emancipation of man would also take its flight. Thus it
+was necessary that Paris should be victorious in the struggle in order
+that the world might be saved.
+
+Pierre understood his brother, thanks to the lecture on explosives which
+he had heard at Bertheroy’s. And the grandeur of this scheme, this dream,
+particularly struck him when he thought of the extraordinary future which
+would open for Paris amidst the effulgent blaze of the bombs. Moreover,
+he was struck by all the nobility of soul which had lain behind his
+brother’s anxiety for a month past. If Guillaume had trembled it was
+simply with fear that his invention might be divulged in consequence of
+Salvat’s crime. The slightest indiscretion might compromise everything;
+and that little stolen cartridge, whose effects had so astonished
+_savants_, might reveal his secret. He felt it necessary to act in
+mystery, choosing his own time, awaiting the proper hour, until when the
+secret would slumber in its hiding-place, confided to the sole care of
+Mère-Grand, who had her orders and knew what she was to do should he, in
+any sudden accident, disappear.
+
+“And, now,” said Guillaume in conclusion, “you know my hopes and my
+anguish, and you can help me and even take my place if I am unable to
+reach the end of my task. Ah! to reach the end! Since I have been shut up
+here, reflecting, consumed by anxiety and impatience, there have been
+hours when I have ceased to see my way clearly! There is that Salvat,
+that wretched fellow for whose crime we are all of us responsible, and
+who is now being hunted down like a wild beast! There is also that
+insensate and insatiable _bourgeoisie_, which will let itself be crushed
+by the fall of the shaky old house, rather than allow the least repair to
+it! And there is further that avaricious, that abominable Parisian press,
+so harsh towards the weak and little, so fond of insulting those who have
+none to defend them, so eager to coin money out of public misfortune, and
+ready to spread insanity on all sides, simply to increase its sales!
+Where, therefore, shall one find truth and justice, the hand endowed with
+logic and health that ought to be armed with the thunderbolt? Would Paris
+the conqueror, Paris the master of the nations, prove the justiciar, the
+saviour that men await! Ah! the anguish of believing oneself to be the
+master of the world’s destinies, and to have to choose and decide.”
+
+He had risen again quivering, full of anger and fear that human
+wretchedness and baseness might prevent the realisation of his dream. And
+amidst the heavy silence which fell in the room, the little house
+suddenly resounded with a regular, continuous footfall.
+
+“Ah, yes! to save men and love them, and wish them all to be equal and
+free,” murmured Pierre, bitterly. “But just listen! Barthès’s footsteps
+are answering you, as if from the everlasting dungeon into which his love
+of liberty has thrown him!”
+
+However, Guillaume had already regained possession of himself, and coming
+back in a transport of his faith, he once more took Pierre in his loving,
+saving arms, like an elder brother who gives himself without restraint.
+“No, no, I’m wrong, I’m blaspheming,” he exclaimed; “I wish you to be
+with me, full of hope and full of certainty. You must work, you must
+love, you must revive to life. Life alone can give you back peace and
+health.”
+
+Tears returned to the eyes of Pierre, who was penetrated to the heart by
+this ardent affection. “Ah! how I should like to believe you,” he
+faltered, “and try to cure myself. True, I have already felt, as it were,
+a vague revival within me. And yet to live again, no, I cannot; the
+priest that I am is dead--a lifeless, an empty tomb.”
+
+He was shaken by so frightful a sob, that Guillaume could not restrain
+his own tears. And clasped in one another’s arms the brothers wept on,
+their hearts full of the softest emotion in that home of their youth,
+whither the dear shadows of their parents ever returned, hovering around
+until they should be reconciled and restored to the peace of the earth.
+And all the darkness and mildness of the garden streamed in through the
+open window, while yonder, on the horizon, Paris had fallen asleep in the
+mysterious gloom, beneath a very peaceful sky which was studded with
+stars.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III.
+
+
+
+
+I. THE RIVALS
+
+
+ON the Wednesday preceding the mid-Lent Thursday, a great charity bazaar
+was held at the Duvillard mansion, for the benefit of the Asylum of the
+Invalids of Labour. The ground-floor reception rooms, three spacious
+Louis Seize _salons_, whose windows overlooked the bare and solemn
+courtyard, were given up to the swarm of purchasers, five thousand
+admission cards having been distributed among all sections of Parisian
+society. And the opening of the bombarded mansion in this wise to
+thousands of visitors was regarded as quite an event, a real
+manifestation, although some people whispered that the Rue
+Godot-de-Mauroy and the adjacent streets were guarded by quite an army of
+police agents.
+
+The idea of the bazaar had come from Duvillard himself, and at his
+bidding his wife had resigned herself to all this worry for the benefit
+of the enterprise over which she presided with such distinguished
+nonchalance. On the previous day the “Globe” newspaper, inspired by its
+director Fonsègue, who was also the general manager of the asylum, had
+published a very fine article, announcing the bazaar, and pointing out
+how noble, and touching, and generous was the initiative of the Baroness,
+who still gave her time, her money, and even her home to charity, in
+spite of the abominable crime which had almost reduced that home to
+ashes. Was not this the magnanimous answer of the spheres above to the
+hateful passions of the spheres below? And was it not also a peremptory
+answer to those who accused the capitalists of doing nothing for the
+wage-earners, the disabled and broken-down sons of toil?
+
+The drawing-room doors were to be opened at two o’clock, and would only
+close at seven, so that there would be five full hours for the sales. And
+at noon, when nothing was as yet ready downstairs, when workmen and women
+were still decorating the stalls, and sorting the goods amidst a final
+scramble, there was, as usual, a little friendly _déjeuner_, to which a
+few guests had been invited, in the private rooms on the first floor.
+However, a scarcely expected incident had given a finishing touch to the
+general excitement of the house: that very morning Sagnier had resumed
+his campaign of denunciation in the matter of the African Railway Lines.
+In a virulent article in the “Voix du Peuple,” he had inquired if it were
+the intention of the authorities to beguile the public much longer with
+the story of that bomb and that Anarchist whom the police did not arrest.
+And this time, while undertaking to publish the names of the thirty-two
+corrupt senators and deputies in a very early issue, he had boldly named
+Minister Barroux as one who had pocketed a sum of 200,000 francs. Mège
+would therefore certainly revive his interpellation, which might become
+dangerous, now that Paris had been thrown into such a distracted state by
+terror of the Anarchists. At the same time it was said that Vignon and
+his party had resolved to turn circumstances to account, with the object
+of overthrowing the ministry. Thus a redoubtable crisis was inevitably at
+hand. Fortunately, the Chamber did not meet that Wednesday; in fact, it
+had adjourned until the Friday, with the view of making mid-Lent a
+holiday. And so forty-eight hours were left one to prepare for the
+onslaught.
+
+Eve, that morning, seemed more gentle and languid than ever, rather pale
+too, with an expression of sorrowful anxiety in the depths of her
+beautiful eyes. She set it all down to the very great fatigue which the
+preparations for the bazaar had entailed on her. But the truth was that
+Gérard de Quinsac, after shunning any further assignation, had for five
+days past avoided her in an embarrassed way. Still she was convinced that
+she would see him that morning, and so she had again ventured to wear the
+white silk gown which made her look so much younger than she really was.
+At the same time, beautiful as she had remained, with her delicate skin,
+superb figure and noble and charming countenance, her six and forty years
+were asserting themselves in her blotchy complexion and the little
+creases which were appearing about her lips, eyelids and temples.
+
+Camille, for her part, though her position as daughter of the house made
+it certain that she would attract much custom as a saleswoman, had
+obstinately persisted in wearing one of her usual dresses, a dark
+“carmelite” gown, an old woman’s frock, as she herself called it with a
+cutting laugh. However, her long and wicked-looking face beamed with some
+secret delight; such an expression of wit and intelligence wreathing her
+thin lips and shining in her big eyes that one lost sight of her
+deformity and thought her almost pretty.
+
+Eve experienced a first deception in the little blue and silver
+sitting-room, where, accompanied by her daughter, she awaited the arrival
+of her guests. General de Bozonnet, whom Gérard was to have brought with
+him, came in alone, explaining that Madame de Quinsac had felt rather
+poorly that morning, and that Gérard, like a good and dutiful son, had
+wished to remain with her. Still he would come to the bazaar directly
+after _déjeuner_. While the Baroness listened to the General, striving to
+hide her disappointment and her fear that she would now be unable to
+obtain any explanation from Gérard that day, Camille looked at her with
+eager, devouring eyes. And a certain covert instinct of the misfortune
+threatening her must at that moment have come to Eve, for in her turn she
+glanced at her daughter and turned pale as if with anxiety.
+
+Then Princess Rosemonde de Harn swept in like a whirlwind. She also was
+to be one of the saleswomen at the stall chosen by the Baroness, who
+liked her for her very turbulence, the sudden gaiety which she generally
+brought with her. Gowned in fire-hued satin (red shot with yellow),
+looking very eccentric with her curly hair and thin boyish figure, she
+laughed and talked of an accident by which her carriage had almost been
+cut in halves. Then, as Baron Duvillard and Hyacinthe came in from their
+rooms, late as usual, she took possession of the young man and scolded
+him, for on the previous evening she had vainly waited for him till ten
+o’clock in the expectation that he would keep his promise to escort her
+to a tavern at Montmartre, where some horrible things were said to occur.
+Hyacinthe, looking very bored, quietly replied that he had been detained
+at a seance given by some adepts in the New Magic, in the course of which
+the soul of St. Theresa had descended from heaven to recite a love
+sonnet.
+
+However, Fonsègue was now coming in with his wife, a tall, thin, silent
+and generally insignificant woman, whom he seldom took about with him. On
+this occasion he had been obliged to bring her, as she was one of the
+lady-patronesses of the asylum, and he himself was coming to lunch with
+the Duvillards in his capacity as general manager. To the superficial
+observer he looked quite as gay as usual; but he blinked nervously, and
+his first glance was a questioning one in the direction of Duvillard, as
+if he wished to know how the latter bore the fresh thrust directed at him
+by Sagnier. And when he saw the banker looking perfectly composed, as
+superb, as rubicund as usual, and chatting in a bantering way with
+Rosemonde, he also put on an easy air, like a gamester who had never lost
+but had always known how to compel good luck, even in hours of treachery.
+And by way of showing his unconstraint of mind he at once addressed the
+Baroness on managerial matters: “Have you now succeeded in seeing M.
+l’Abbé Froment for the affair of that old man Laveuve, whom he so warmly
+recommended to us? All the formalities have been gone through, you know,
+and he can be brought to us at once, as we have had a bed vacant for
+three days past.”
+
+“Yes, I know,” replied Eve; “but I can’t imagine what has become of Abbé
+Froment, for he hasn’t given us a sign of life for a month past. However,
+I made up my mind to write to him yesterday, and beg him to come to the
+bazaar to-day. In this manner I shall be able to acquaint him with the
+good news myself.”
+
+“It was to leave you the pleasure of doing so,” said Fonsègue, “that I
+refrained from sending him any official communication. He’s a charming
+priest, is he not?”
+
+“Oh! charming, we are very fond of him.”
+
+However, Duvillard now intervened to say that they need not wait for
+Duthil, as he had received a telegram from him stating that he was
+detained by sudden business. At this Fonsègue’s anxiety returned, and he
+once more questioned the Baron with his eyes. Duvillard smiled, however,
+and reassured him in an undertone: “It’s nothing serious. Merely a
+commission for me, about which he’ll only be able to bring me an answer
+by-and-by.” Then, taking Fonsègue on one side, he added: “By the way,
+don’t forget to insert the paragraph I told you of.”
+
+“What paragraph? Oh! yes, the one about that _soiree_ at which Silviane
+recited a piece of verse. Well, I wanted to speak to you about it. It
+worries me a little, on account of the excessive praise it contains.”
+
+Duvillard, but a moment before so full of serenity, with his lofty,
+conquering, disdainful mien, now suddenly became pale and agitated. “But
+I absolutely want it to be inserted, my dear fellow! You would place me
+in the greatest embarrassment if it were not to appear, for I promised
+Silviane that it should.”
+
+As he spoke his lips trembled, and a scared look came into his eyes,
+plainly revealing his dismay.
+
+“All right, all right,” said Fonsègue, secretly amused, and well pleased
+at this complicity. “As it’s so serious the paragraph shall go in, I
+promise you.”
+
+The whole company was now present, since neither Gérard nor Duthil was to
+be expected. So they went into the dining-room amidst a final noise of
+hammering in the sale-rooms below. The meal proved somewhat of a
+scramble, and was on three occasions disturbed by female attendants, who
+came to explain difficulties and ask for orders. Doors were constantly
+slamming, and the very walls seemed to shake with the unusual bustle
+which filled the house. And feverish as they all were in the dining-room,
+they talked in desultory, haphazard fashion on all sorts of subjects,
+passing from a ball given at the Ministry of the Interior on the previous
+night, to the popular mid-Lent festival which would take place on the
+morrow, and ever reverting to the bazaar, the prices that had been given
+for the goods which would be on sale, the prices at which they might be
+sold, and the probable figure of the full receipts, all this being
+interspersed with strange anecdotes, witticisms and bursts of laughter.
+On the General mentioning magistrate Amadieu, Eve declared that she no
+longer dared to invite him to _déjeuner_, knowing how busy he was at the
+Palace of Justice. Still, she certainly hoped that he would come to the
+bazaar and contribute something. Then Fonsègue amused himself with
+teasing Princess Rosemonde about her fire-hued gown, in which, said he,
+she must already feel roasted by the flames of hell; a suggestion which
+secretly delighted her, as Satanism had now become her momentary passion.
+Meantime, Duvillard lavished the most gallant politeness on that silent
+creature, Madame Fonsègue, while Hyacinthe, in order to astonish even the
+Princess, explained in a few words how the New Magic could transform a
+chaste young man into a real angel. And Camille, who seemed very happy
+and very excited, from time to time darted a hot glance at her mother,
+whose anxiety and sadness increased as she found the other more and more
+aggressive, and apparently resolved upon open and merciless warfare.
+
+At last, just as the dessert was coming to an end, the Baroness heard her
+daughter exclaim in a piercing, defiant voice: “Oh! don’t talk to me of
+the old ladies who still seem to be playing with dolls, and paint
+themselves, and dress as if they were about to be confirmed! All such
+ogresses ought to retire from the scene! I hold them in horror!”
+
+At this, Eve nervously rose from her seat, and exclaimed apologetically:
+“You must forgive me for hurrying you like this. But I’m afraid that we
+shan’t have time to drink our coffee in peace.”
+
+The coffee was served in the little blue and silver sitting-room, where
+bloomed some lovely yellow roses, testifying to the Baroness’s keen
+passion for flowers, which made the house an abode of perpetual spring.
+Duvillard and Fonsègue, however, carrying their cups of steaming coffee
+with them, at once went into the former’s private room to smoke a cigar
+there and chat in freedom. As the door remained wide open, one could
+hear their gruff voices more or less distinctly. Meantime, General de
+Bozonnet, delighted to find in Madame Fonsègue a serious, submissive
+person, who listened without interrupting, began to tell her a very long
+story of an officer’s wife who had followed her husband through
+every battle of the war of 1870. Then Hyacinthe, who took no
+coffee--contemptuously declaring it to be a beverage only fit for
+door-keepers--managed to rid himself of Rosemonde, who was sipping some
+kummel, in order to come and whisper to his sister: “I say, it was very
+stupid of you to taunt mamma in the way you did just now. I don’t care a
+rap about it myself. But it ends by being noticed, and, I warn you
+candidly, it shows ill breeding.”
+
+Camille gazed at him fixedly with her black eyes. “Pray don’t _you_
+meddle with my affairs,” said she.
+
+At this he felt frightened, scented a storm, and decided to take
+Rosemonde into the adjoining red drawing-room in order to show her a
+picture which his father had just purchased. And the General, on being
+called by him, likewise conducted Madame Fonsègue thither.
+
+The mother and daughter then suddenly found themselves alone and face to
+face. Eve was leaning on a pier-table, as if overcome; and indeed, the
+least sorrow bore her down, so weak at heart she was, ever ready to weep
+in her naive and perfect egotism. Why was it that her daughter thus hated
+her, and did her utmost to disturb that last happy spell of love in which
+her heart lingered? She looked at Camille, grieved rather than irritated;
+and the unfortunate idea came to her of making a remark about her dress
+at the very moment when the girl was on the point of following the others
+into the larger drawing-room.
+
+“It’s quite wrong of you, my dear,” said she, “to persist in dressing
+like an old woman. It doesn’t improve you a bit.”
+
+As Eve spoke, her soft eyes, those of a courted and worshipped handsome
+woman, clearly expressed the compassion she felt for that ugly, deformed
+girl, whom she had never been able to regard as a daughter. Was it
+possible that she, with her sovereign beauty, that beauty which she
+herself had ever adored and nursed, making it her one care, her one
+religion--was it possible that she had given birth to such a graceless
+creature, with a dark, goatish profile, one shoulder higher than the
+other, and a pair of endless arms such as hunchbacks often have? All her
+grief and all her shame at having had such a child became apparent in the
+quivering of her voice.
+
+Camille, however, had stopped short, as if struck in the face with a
+whip. Then she came back to her mother and the horrible explanation began
+with these simple words spoken in an undertone: “You consider that I
+dress badly? Well, you ought to have paid some attention to me, have seen
+that my gowns suited your taste, and have taught me your secret of
+looking beautiful!”
+
+Eve, with her dislike of all painful feeling, all quarrelling and bitter
+words, was already regretting her attack. So she sought to make a
+retreat, particularly as time was flying and they would soon be expected
+downstairs: “Come, be quiet, and don’t show your bad temper when all
+those people can hear us. I have loved you--”
+
+But with a quiet yet terrible laugh Camille interrupted her. “You’ve
+loved me! Oh! my poor mamma, what a comical thing to say! Have you ever
+loved _anybody_? You want others to love _you_, but that’s another
+matter. As for your child, any child, do you even know how it ought to be
+loved? You have always neglected me, thrust me on one side, deeming me so
+ugly, so unworthy of you! And besides, you have not had days and nights
+enough to love yourself! Oh! don’t deny it, my poor mamma; but even now
+you’re looking at me as if I were some loathsome monster that’s in your
+way.”
+
+From that moment the abominable scene was bound to continue to the end.
+With their teeth set, their faces close together, the two women went on
+speaking in feverish whispers.
+
+“Be quiet, Camille, I tell you! I will not allow such language!”
+
+“But I won’t be quiet when you do all you can to wound me. If it’s wrong
+of me to dress like an old woman, perhaps another is rather ridiculous in
+dressing like a girl, like a bride.”
+
+“Like a bride? I don’t understand you.”
+
+“Oh! yes, you do. However, I would have you know that everybody doesn’t
+find me so ugly as you try to make them believe.”
+
+“If you look amiss, it is because you don’t dress properly; that is all I
+said.”
+
+“I dress as I please, and no doubt I do so well enough, since I’m loved
+as I am.”
+
+“What, really! Does someone love you? Well, let him inform us of it and
+marry you.”
+
+“Yes--certainly, certainly! It will be a good riddance, won’t it? And
+you’ll have the pleasure of seeing me as a bride!”
+
+Their voices were rising in spite of their efforts to restrain them.
+However, Camille paused and drew breath before hissing out the words:
+“Gérard is coming here to ask for my hand in a day or two.”
+
+Eve, livid, with wildly staring eyes, did not seem to understand.
+“Gérard? why do you tell me that?”
+
+“Why, because it’s Gérard who loves me and who is going to marry me! You
+drive me to extremities; you’re for ever repeating that I’m ugly; you
+treat me like a monster whom nobody will ever care for. So I’m forced to
+defend myself and tell you the truth in order to prove to you that
+everybody is not of your opinion.”
+
+Silence fell; the frightful thing which had risen between them seemed to
+have arrested the quarrel. But there was neither mother nor daughter left
+there. They were simply two suffering, defiant rivals. Eve in her turn
+drew a long breath and glanced anxiously towards the adjoining room to
+ascertain if anyone were coming in or listening to them. And then in a
+tone of resolution she made answer:
+
+“You cannot marry Gérard.”
+
+“Pray, why not?”
+
+“Because I won’t have it; because it’s impossible.”
+
+“That isn’t a reason; give me a reason.”
+
+“The reason is that the marriage is impossible that is all.”
+
+“No, no, I’ll tell you the reason since you force me to it. The reason is
+that Gérard is your lover! But what does that matter, since I know it and
+am willing to take him all the same?”
+
+And to this retort Camille’s flaming eyes added the words: “And it is
+particularly on that account that I want him.” All the long torture born
+of her infirmities, all her rage at having always seen her mother
+beautiful, courted and adored, was now stirring her and seeking vengeance
+in cruel triumph. At last then she was snatching from her rival the lover
+of whom she had so long been jealous!
+
+“You wretched girl!” stammered Eve, wounded in the heart and almost
+sinking to the floor. “You don’t know what you say or what you make me
+suffer.”
+
+However, she again had to pause, draw herself erect and smile; for
+Rosemonde hastened in from the adjoining room with the news that she was
+wanted downstairs. The doors were about to be opened, and it was
+necessary she should be at her stall. Yes, Eve answered, she would be
+down in another moment. Still, even as she spoke she leant more heavily
+on the pier-table behind her in order that she might not fall.
+
+Hyacinthe had drawn near to his sister: “You know,” said he, “it’s simply
+idiotic to quarrel like that. You would do much better to come
+downstairs.”
+
+But Camille harshly dismissed him: “Just _you_ go off, and take the
+others with you. It’s quite as well that they shouldn’t be about our
+ears.”
+
+Hyacinthe glanced at his mother, like one who knew the truth and
+considered the whole affair ridiculous. And then, vexed at seeing her so
+deficient in energy in dealing with that little pest, his sister, he
+shrugged his shoulders, and leaving them to their folly, conducted the
+others away. One could hear Rosemonde laughing as she went off below,
+while the General began to tell Madame Fonsègue another story as they
+descended the stairs together. However, at the moment when the mother and
+daughter at last fancied themselves alone once more, other voices reached
+their ears, those of Duvillard and Fonsègue, who were still near at hand.
+The Baron from his room might well overhear the dispute.
+
+Eve felt that she ought to have gone off. But she had lacked the strength
+to do so; it had been a sheer impossibility for her after those words
+which had smote her like a buffet amidst her distress at the thought of
+losing her lover.
+
+“Gérard cannot marry you,” she said; “he does not love you.”
+
+“He does.”
+
+“You fancy it because he has good-naturedly shown some kindness to you,
+on seeing others pay you such little attention. But he does not love
+you.”
+
+“He does. He loves me first because I’m not such a fool as many others
+are, and particularly because I’m young.”
+
+This was a fresh wound for the Baroness; one inflicted with mocking
+cruelty in which rang out all the daughter’s triumphant delight at seeing
+her mother’s beauty at last ripening and waning. “Ah! my poor mamma, you
+no longer know what it is to be young. If I’m not beautiful, at all
+events I’m young; my eyes are clear and my lips are fresh. And my hair’s
+so long too, and I’ve so much of it that it would suffice to gown me if I
+chose. You see, one’s never ugly when one’s young. Whereas, my poor
+mamma, everything is ended when one gets old. It’s all very well for a
+woman to have been beautiful, and to strive to keep so, but in reality
+there’s only ruin left, and shame and disgust.”
+
+She spoke these words in such a sharp, ferocious voice that each of them
+entered her mother’s heart like a knife. Tears rose to the eyes of the
+wretched woman, again stricken in her bleeding wound. Ah! it was true,
+she remained without weapons against youth. And all her anguish came from
+the consciousness that she was growing old, from the feeling that love
+was departing from her now, that like a fruit she had ripened and fallen
+from the tree.
+
+“But Gérard’s mother will never let him marry you,” she said.
+
+“He will prevail on her; that’s his concern. I’ve a dowry of two
+millions, and two millions can settle many things.”
+
+“Do you now want to libel him, and say that he’s marrying you for your
+money?”
+
+“No, indeed! Gérard’s a very nice and honest fellow. He loves me and he’s
+marrying me for myself. But, after all, he isn’t rich; he still has no
+assured position, although he’s thirty-six; and there may well be some
+advantage in a wife who brings you wealth as well as happiness. For, you
+hear, mamma, it’s happiness I’m bringing him, real happiness, love that’s
+shared and is certain of the future.”
+
+Once again their faces drew close together. The hateful scene,
+interrupted by sounds around them, postponed, and then resumed, was
+dragging on, becoming a perfect drama full of murderous violence,
+although they never shouted, but still spoke on in low and gasping
+voices. Neither gave way to the other, though at every moment they were
+liable to some surprise; for not only were all the doors open, so that
+the servants might come in, but the Baron’s voice still rang out gaily,
+close at hand.
+
+“He loves you, he loves you”--continued Eve. “That’s what you say. But
+_he_ never told you so.”
+
+“He has told me so twenty times; he repeats it every time that we are
+alone together!”
+
+“Yes, just as one says it to a little girl by way of amusing her. But he
+has never told you that he meant to marry you.”
+
+“He told it me the last time he came. And it’s settled. I’m simply
+waiting for him to get his mother’s consent and make his formal offer.”
+
+“You lie, you lie, you wretched girl! You simply want to make me suffer,
+and you lie, you lie!”
+
+Eve’s grief at last burst forth in that cry of protest. She no longer
+knew that she was a mother, and was speaking to her daughter. The woman,
+the _amorosa_, alone remained in her, outraged and exasperated by a
+rival. And with a sob she confessed the truth: “It is I he loves! Only
+the last time I spoke to him, he swore to me--you hear me?--he swore upon
+his honour that he did not love you, and that he would never marry you!”
+
+A faint, sharp laugh came from Camille. Then, with an air of derisive
+compassion, she replied: “Ah! my poor mamma, you really make me sorry for
+you! What a child you are! Yes, really, you are the child, not I. What!
+you who ought to have so much experience, you still allow yourself to be
+duped by a man’s protests! That one really has no malice; and, indeed,
+that’s why he swears whatever you want him to swear, just to please and
+quiet you, for at heart he’s a bit of a coward.”
+
+“You lie, you lie!”
+
+“But just think matters over. If he no longer comes here, if he didn’t
+come to _déjeuner_ this morning, it is simply because he’s had enough of
+you. He has left you for good; just have the courage to realise it. Of
+course he’s still polite and amiable, because he’s a well-bred man, and
+doesn’t know how to break off. The fact is that he takes pity on you.”
+
+“You lie, you lie!”
+
+“Well, question him then. Have a frank explanation with him. Ask him his
+intentions in a friendly way. And then show some good nature yourself,
+and realise that if you care for him you ought to give him me at once in
+his own interest. Give him back his liberty, and you will soon see that
+I’m the one he loves.”
+
+“You lie, you lie! You wretched child, you only want to torture and kill
+me!”
+
+Then, in her fury and distress, Eve remembered that she was the mother,
+and that it was for her to chastise that unworthy daughter. There was no
+stick near her, but from a basket of the yellow roses, whose powerful
+scent intoxicated both of them, she plucked a handful of blooms, with
+long and spiny stalks, and smote Camille across the face. A drop of blood
+appeared on the girl’s left temple, near her eyelid.
+
+But she sprang forward, flushed and maddened by this correction, with her
+hand raised and ready to strike back. “Take care, mother! I swear I’d
+beat you like a gipsy! And now just put this into your head: I mean to
+marry Gérard, and I will; and I’ll take him from you, even if I have to
+raise a scandal, should you refuse to give him to me with good grace.”
+
+Eve, after her one act of angry vigour, had sunk into an armchair,
+overcome, distracted. And all the horror of quarrels, which sprang from
+her egotistical desire to be happy, caressed, flattered and adored, was
+returning to her. But Camille, still threatening, still unsatiated,
+showed her heart as it really was, her stern, black, unforgiving heart,
+intoxicated with cruelty. There came a moment of supreme silence, while
+Duvillard’s gay voice again rang out in the adjoining room.
+
+The mother was gently weeping, when Hyacinthe, coming upstairs at a run,
+swept into the little _salon_. He looked at the two women, and made a
+gesture of indulgent contempt. “Ah! you’re no doubt satisfied now! But
+what did I tell you? It would have been much better for you to have come
+downstairs at once! Everybody is asking for you. It’s all idiotic. I’ve
+come to fetch you.”
+
+Eve and Camille would not yet have followed him, perhaps, if Duvillard
+and Fonsègue had not at that moment come out of the former’s room. Having
+finished their cigars they also spoke of going downstairs. And Eve had to
+rise and smile and show dry eyes, while Camille, standing before a
+looking-glass, arranged her hair, and stanched the little drop of blood
+that had gathered on her temple.
+
+There was already quite a number of people below, in the three huge
+saloons adorned with tapestry and plants. The stalls had been draped with
+red silk, which set a gay, bright glow around the goods. And no ordinary
+bazaar could have put forth such a show, for there was something of
+everything among the articles of a thousand different kinds, from
+sketches by recognised masters, and the autographs of famous writers,
+down to socks and slippers and combs. The haphazard way in which things
+were laid out was in itself an attraction; and, in addition, there was a
+buffet, where the whitest of beautiful hands poured out champagne, and
+two lotteries, one for an organ and another for a pony-drawn village
+cart, the tickets for which were sold by a bevy of charming girls, who
+had scattered through the throng. As Duvillard had expected, however, the
+great success of the bazaar lay in the delightful little shiver which the
+beautiful ladies experienced as they passed through the entrance where
+the bomb had exploded. The rougher repairing work was finished, the walls
+and ceilings had been doctored, in part re-constructed. However, the
+painters had not yet come, and here and there the whiter stone and
+plaster work showed like fresh scars left by all the terrible gashes. It
+was with mingled anxiety and rapture that pretty heads emerged from the
+carriages which, arriving in a continuous stream, made the flagstones of
+the court re-echo. And in the three saloons, beside the stalls, there was
+no end to the lively chatter: “Ah! my dear, did you see all those marks?
+How frightful, how frightful! The whole house was almost blown up. And to
+think it might begin again while we are here! One really needs some
+courage to come, but then, that asylum is such a deserving institution,
+and money is badly wanted to build a new wing. And besides, those
+monsters will see that we are not frightened, whatever they do.”
+
+When the Baroness at last came down to her stall with Camille she found
+the saleswomen feverishly at work already under the direction of Princess
+Rosemonde, who on occasions of this kind evinced the greatest cunning and
+rapacity, robbing the customers in the most impudent fashion. “Ah! here
+you are,” she exclaimed. “Beware of a number of higglers who have come to
+secure bargains. I know them! They watch for their opportunities, turn
+everything topsy-turvy and wait for us to lose our heads and forget
+prices, so as to pay even less than they would in a real shop. But I’ll
+get good prices from them, you shall see!”
+
+At this, Eve, who for her own part was a most incapable saleswoman, had
+to laugh with the others. And in a gentle voice she made a pretence of
+addressing certain recommendations to Camille, who listened with a
+smiling and most submissive air. In point of fact the wretched mother was
+sinking with emotion, particularly at the thought that she would have to
+remain there till seven o’clock, and suffer in secret before all those
+people, without possibility of relief. And thus it was almost like a
+respite when she suddenly perceived Abbé Froment sitting and waiting for
+her on a settee, covered with red velvet, near her stall. Her legs were
+failing her, so she took a place beside him.
+
+“You received my letter then, Monsieur l’Abbé. I am glad that you have
+come, for I have some good news to give you, and wished to leave you the
+pleasure of imparting it to your _protégé_, that man Laveuve, whom you so
+warmly recommended to me. Every formality has now been fulfilled, and you
+can bring him to the asylum to-morrow.”
+
+Pierre gazed at her in stupefaction. “Laveuve? Why, he is dead!”
+
+In her turn she became astonished. “What, dead! But you never informed me
+of it! If I told you of all the trouble that has been taken, of all that
+had to be undone and done again, and the discussions and the papers and
+the writing! Are you quite sure that he is dead?”
+
+“Oh! yes, he is dead. He has been dead a month.”
+
+“Dead a month! Well, we could not know; you yourself gave us no sign of
+life. Ah! _mon Dieu_! what a worry that he should be dead. We shall now
+be obliged to undo everything again!”
+
+“He is dead, madame. It is true that I ought to have informed you of it.
+But that doesn’t alter the fact--he is dead.”
+
+Dead! that word which kept on returning, the thought too, that for a
+month past she had been busying herself for a corpse, quite froze her,
+brought her to the very depths of despair, like an omen of the cold death
+into which she herself must soon descend, in the shroud of her last
+passion. And, meantime, Pierre, despite himself, smiled bitterly at the
+atrocious irony of it all. Ah! that lame and halting Charity, which
+proffers help when men are dead!
+
+The priest still lingered on the settee when the Baroness rose. She had
+seen magistrate Amadieu hurriedly enter like one who just wished to show
+himself, purchase some trifle, and then return to the Palace of Justice.
+However, he was also perceived by little Massot, the “Globe” reporter,
+who was prowling round the stalls, and who at once bore down upon him,
+eager for information. And he hemmed him in and forthwith interviewed him
+respecting the affair of that mechanician Salvat, who was accused of
+having deposited the bomb at the entrance of the house. Was this simply
+an invention of the police, as some newspapers pretended? Or was it
+really correct? And if so, would Salvat soon be arrested? In self-defence
+Amadieu answered correctly enough that the affair did not as yet concern
+him, and would only come within his attributions, if Salvat should be
+arrested and the investigation placed in his hands. At the same time,
+however, the magistrate’s pompous and affectedly shrewd manner suggested
+that he already knew everything to the smallest details, and that, had he
+chosen, he could have promised some great events for the morrow. A circle
+of ladies had gathered round him as he spoke, quite a number of pretty
+women feverish with curiosity, who jostled one another in their eagerness
+to hear that brigand tale which sent a little shiver coursing under their
+skins. However, Amadieu managed to slip off after paying Rosemonde twenty
+francs for a cigarette case, which was perhaps worth thirty sous.
+
+Massot, on recognising Pierre, came up to shake hands with him. “Don’t
+you agree with me, Monsieur l’Abbé, that Salvat must be a long way off by
+now if he’s got good legs? Ah! the police will always make me laugh!”
+
+However, Rosemonde brought Hyacinthe up to the journalist. “Monsieur
+Massot,” said she, “you who go everywhere, I want you to be judge. That
+Chamber of Horrors at Montmartre, that tavern where Legras sings the
+‘Flowers of the Streets’--”
+
+“Oh! a delightful spot, madame,” interrupted Massot, “I wouldn’t take
+even a gendarme there.”
+
+“No, don’t jest, Monsieur Massot, I’m talking seriously. Isn’t it quite
+allowable for a respectable woman to go there when she’s accompanied by a
+gentleman?” And, without allowing the journalist time to answer her, she
+turned towards Hyacinthe: “There! you see that Monsieur Massot doesn’t
+say no! You’ve got to take me there this evening, it’s sworn, it’s
+sworn.”
+
+Then she darted away to sell a packet of pins to an old lady, while the
+young man contented himself with remarking, in the voice of one who has
+no illusions left: “She’s quite idiotic with her Chamber of Horrors!”
+
+Massot philosophically shrugged his shoulders. It was only natural that a
+woman should want to amuse herself. And when Hyacinthe had gone off,
+passing with perverse contempt beside the lovely girls who were selling
+lottery tickets, the journalist ventured to murmur: “All the same, it
+would do that youngster good if a woman were to take him in hand.”
+
+Then, again addressing Pierre, he resumed: “Why, here comes Duthil! What
+did Sagnier mean this morning by saying that Duthil would sleep at Mazas
+to-night?”
+
+In a great hurry apparently, and all smiles, Duthil was cutting his way
+through the crowd in order to join Duvillard and Fonsègue, who still
+stood talking near the Baroness’s stall. And he waved his hand to them in
+a victorious way, to imply that he had succeeded in the delicate mission
+entrusted to him. This was nothing less than a bold manœuvre to hasten
+Silviane’s admission to the Comédie Française. The idea had occurred to
+her of making the Baron give a dinner at the Cafe Anglais in order that
+she might meet at it an influential critic, who, according to her
+statements, would compel the authorities to throw the doors wide open for
+her as soon as he should know her. However, it did not seem easy to
+secure the critic’s presence, as he was noted for his sternness and
+grumbling disposition. And, indeed, after a first repulse, Duthil had for
+three days past been obliged to exert all his powers of diplomacy, and
+bring even the remotest influence into play. But he was radiant now, for
+he had conquered.
+
+“It’s for this evening, my dear Baron, at half-past seven,” he exclaimed.
+“Ah! dash it all, I’ve had more trouble than I should have had to secure
+a concession vote!” Then he laughed with the pretty impudence of a man of
+pleasure, whom political conscientiousness did not trouble. And, indeed,
+his allusion to the fresh denunciations of the “Voix du Peuple” hugely
+amused him.
+
+“Don’t jest,” muttered Fonsègue, who for his part wished to amuse himself
+by frightening the young deputy. “Things are going very badly!”
+
+Duthil turned pale, and a vision of the police and Mazas rose before his
+eyes. In this wise sheer funk came over him from time to time. However,
+with his lack of all moral sense, he soon felt reassured and began to
+laugh. “Bah!” he retorted gaily, winking towards Duvillard, “the
+governor’s there to pilot the barque!”
+
+The Baron, who was extremely pleased, had pressed his hands, thanked him,
+and called him an obliging fellow. And now turning towards Fonsègue, he
+exclaimed: “I say, you must make one of us this evening. Oh! it’s
+necessary. I want something imposing round Silviane. Duthil will
+represent the Chamber, you journalism, and I finance--” But he suddenly
+paused on seeing Gérard, who, with a somewhat grave expression, was
+leisurely picking his way through the sea of skirts. “Gérard, my friend,”
+ said the Baron, after beckoning to him, “I want you to do me a service.”
+ And forthwith he told him what was in question; how the influential
+critic had been prevailed upon to attend a dinner which would decide
+Silviane’s future; and how it was the duty of all her friends to rally
+round her.
+
+“But I can’t,” the young man answered in embarrassment. “I have to dine
+at home with my mother, who was rather poorly this morning.”
+
+“Oh! a sensible woman like your mother will readily understand that there
+are matters of exceptional importance. Go home and excuse yourself. Tell
+her some story, tell her that a friend’s happiness is in question.” And
+as Gérard began to weaken, Duvillard added: “The fact is, that I really
+want you, my dear fellow; I must have a society man. Society, you know,
+is a great force in theatrical matters; and if Silviane has society with
+her, her triumph is certain.”
+
+Gérard promised, and then chatted for a moment with his uncle, General de
+Bozonnet, who was quite enlivened by that throng of women, among whom he
+had been carried hither and thither like an old rudderless ship. After
+acknowledging the amiability with which Madame Fonsègue had listened to
+his stories, by purchasing an autograph of Monseigneur Martha from her
+for a hundred francs, he had quite lost himself amid the bevy of girls
+who had passed him on, one to another. And now, on his return from them,
+he had his hands full of lottery tickets: “Ah! my fine fellow,” said he,
+“I don’t advise you to venture among all those young persons. You would
+have to part with your last copper. But, just look! there’s Mademoiselle
+Camille beckoning to you!”
+
+Camille, indeed, from the moment she had perceived Gérard, had been
+smiling at him and awaiting his approach. And when their glances met he
+was obliged to go to her, although, at the same moment, he felt that
+Eve’s despairing and entreating eyes were fixed upon him. The girl, who
+fully realised that her mother was watching her, at once made a marked
+display of amiability, profiting by the license which charitable fervour
+authorised, to slip a variety of little articles into the young man’s
+pockets, and then place others in his hands, which she pressed within her
+own, showing the while all the sparkle of youth, indulging in fresh,
+merry laughter, which fairly tortured her rival.
+
+So extreme was Eve’s suffering, that she wished to intervene and part
+them. But it so chanced that Pierre barred her way, for he wished to
+submit an idea to her before leaving the bazaar. “Madame,” said he,
+“since that man Laveuve is dead, and you have taken so much trouble with
+regard to the bed which you now have vacant, will you be so good as to
+keep it vacant until I have seen our venerable friend, Abbé Rose? I am to
+see him this evening, and he knows so many cases of want, and would be so
+glad to relieve one of them, and bring you some poor _protégé_ of his.”
+
+“Yes, certainly,” stammered the Baroness, “I shall be very happy,--I will
+wait a little, as you desire,--of course, of course, Monsieur l’Abbé.”
+
+She was trembling all over; she no longer knew what she was saying; and,
+unable to conquer her passion, she turned aside from the priest, unaware
+even that he was still there, when Gérard, yielding to the dolorous
+entreaty of her eyes, at last managed to escape from Camille and join
+her.
+
+“What a stranger you are becoming, my friend!” she said aloud, with a
+forced smile. “One never sees you now.”
+
+“Why, I have been poorly,” he replied, in his amiable way. “Yes, I assure
+you I have been ailing a little.”
+
+He, ailing! She looked at him with maternal anxiety, quite upset. And,
+indeed, however proud and lofty his figure, his handsome regular face did
+seem to her paler than usual. It was as if the nobility of the façade
+had, in some degree, ceased to hide the irreparable dilapidation within.
+And given his real good nature, it must be true that he
+suffered--suffered by reason of his useless, wasted life, by reason of
+all the money he cost his impoverished mother, and of the needs that were
+at last driving him to marry that wealthy deformed girl, whom at first he
+had simply pitied. And so weak did he seem to Eve, so like a piece of
+wreckage tossed hither and thither by a tempest, that, at the risk of
+being overheard by the throng, she let her heart flow forth in a low but
+ardent, entreating murmur: “If you suffer, ah! what sufferings are
+mine!--Gérard, we must see one another, I will have it so.”
+
+“No, I beg you, let us wait,” he stammered in embarrassment.
+
+“It must be, Gérard; Camille has told me your plans. You cannot refuse to
+see me. I insist on it.”
+
+He made yet another attempt to escape the cruel explanation. “But it’s
+impossible at the usual place,” he answered, quivering. “The address is
+known.”
+
+“Then to-morrow, at four o’clock, at that little restaurant in the Bois
+where we have met before.”
+
+He had to promise, and they parted. Camille had just turned her head and
+was looking at them. Moreover, quite a number of women had besieged the
+stall; and the Baroness began to attend to them with the air of a ripe
+and nonchalant goddess, while Gérard rejoined Duvillard, Fonsègue and
+Duthil, who were quite excited at the prospect of their dinner that
+evening.
+
+Pierre had heard a part of the conversation between Gérard and the
+Baroness. He knew what skeletons the house concealed, what physiological
+and moral torture and wretchedness lay beneath all the dazzling wealth
+and power. There was here an envenomed, bleeding sore, ever spreading, a
+cancer eating into father, mother, daughter and son, who one and all had
+thrown social bonds aside. However, the priest made his way out of the
+_salons_, half stifling amidst the throng of lady-purchasers who were
+making quite a triumph of the bazaar. And yonder, in the depths of the
+gloom, he could picture Salvat still running and running on; while the
+corpse of Laveuve seemed to him like a buffet of atrocious irony dealt to
+noisy and delusive charity.
+
+
+
+
+II. SPIRIT AND FLESH
+
+How delightful was the quietude of the little ground-floor overlooking a
+strip of garden in the Rue Cortot, where good Abbé Rose resided!
+Hereabouts there was not even a rumble of wheels, or an echo of the
+panting breath of Paris, which one heard on the other side of the height
+of Montmartre. The deep silence and sleepy peacefulness were suggestive
+of some distant provincial town.
+
+Seven o’clock had struck, the dusk had gathered slowly, and Pierre was in
+the humble dining-room, waiting for the _femme-de-ménage_ to place the
+soup upon the table. Abbé Rose, anxious at having seen so little of him
+for a month past, had written, asking him to come to dinner, in order
+that they might have a quiet chat concerning their affairs. From time to
+time Pierre still gave his friend money for charitable purposes; in fact,
+ever since the days of the asylum in the Rue de Charonne, they had had
+accounts together, which they periodically liquidated. So that evening
+after dinner they were to talk of it all, and see if they could not do
+even more than they had hitherto done. The good old priest was quite
+radiant at the thought of the peaceful evening which he was about to
+spend in attending to the affairs of his beloved poor; for therein lay
+his only amusement, the sole pleasure to which he persistently and
+passionately returned, in spite of all the worries that his inconsiderate
+charity had already so often brought him.
+
+Glad to be able to procure his friend this pleasure, Pierre, on his side,
+grew calmer, and found relief and momentary repose in sharing the other’s
+simple repast and yielding to all the kindliness around him, far from his
+usual worries. He remembered the vacant bed at the Asylum, which Baroness
+Duvillard had promised to keep in reserve until he should have asked Abbé
+Rose if he knew of any case of destitution particularly worthy of
+interest; and so before sitting down to table he spoke of the matter.
+
+“Destitution worthy of interest!” replied Abbé Rose, “ah! my dear child,
+every case is worthy of interest. And when it’s a question of old toilers
+without work the only trouble is that of selection, the anguish of
+choosing one and leaving so many others in distress.” Nevertheless,
+painful though his scruples were, he strove to think and come to some
+decision. “I know the case which will suit you,” he said at last. “It’s
+certainly one of the greatest suffering and wretchedness; and, so humble
+a one, too--an old carpenter of seventy-five, who has been living on
+public charity during the eight or ten years that he has been unable to
+find work. I don’t know his name, everybody calls him ‘the big Old’un.’
+There are times when he does not come to my Saturday distributions for
+weeks together. We shall have to look for him at once. I think that he
+sleeps at the Night Refuge in the Rue d’Orsel when lack of room there
+doesn’t force him to spend the night crouching behind some palings. Shall
+we go down the Rue d’Orsel this evening?”
+
+Abbé Rose’s eyes beamed brightly as he spoke, for this proposal of his
+signified a great debauch, the tasting of forbidden fruit. He had been
+reproached so often and so roughly with his visits to those who had
+fallen to the deepest want and misery, that in spite of his overflowing,
+apostolic compassion, he now scarcely dared to go near them. However, he
+continued: “Is it agreed, my child? Only this once? Besides, it is our
+only means of finding the big Old’un. You won’t have to stop with me
+later than eleven. And I should so like to show you all that! You will
+see what terrible sufferings there are! And perhaps we may be fortunate
+enough to relieve some poor creature or other.”
+
+Pierre smiled at the juvenile ardour displayed by this old man with snowy
+hair. “It’s agreed, my dear Abbé,” he responded, “I shall be very pleased
+to spend my whole evening with you, for I feel it will do me good to
+follow you once more on one of those rambles which used to fill our
+hearts with grief and joy.”
+
+At this moment the servant brought in the soup; however, just as the two
+priests were taking their seats a discreet ring was heard, and when Abbé
+Rose learnt that the visitor was a neighbour, Madame Mathis, who had come
+for an answer, he gave orders that she should be shown in.
+
+“This poor woman,” he explained to Pierre, “needed an advance of ten
+francs to get a mattress out of pawn; and I didn’t have the money by me
+at the time. But I’ve since procured it. She lives in the house, you
+know, in silent poverty, on so small an income that it hardly keeps her
+in bread.”
+
+“But hasn’t she a big son of twenty?” asked Pierre, suddenly remembering
+the young man he had seen at Salvat’s.
+
+“Yes, yes. Her parents, I believe, were rich people in the provinces.
+I’ve been told that she married a music master, who gave her lessons, at
+Nantes; and who ran away with her and brought her to Paris, where he
+died. It was quite a doleful love-story. By selling the furniture and
+realising every little thing she possessed, she scraped together an
+income of about two thousand francs a year, with which she was able to
+send her son to college and live decently herself. But a fresh blow fell
+on her: she lost the greater part of her little fortune, which was
+invested in doubtful securities. So now her income amounts at the utmost
+to eight hundred francs; two hundred of which she has to expend in rent.
+For all her other wants she has to be content with fifty francs a month.
+About eighteen months ago her son left her so as not to be a burden on
+her, and he is trying to earn his living somewhere, but without success,
+I believe.”
+
+Madame Mathis, a short, dark woman, with a sad, gentle, retiring face,
+came in. Invariably clad in the same black gown, she showed all the
+anxious timidity of a poor creature whom the storms of life perpetually
+assailed. When Abbé Rose had handed her the ten francs discreetly wrapped
+in paper, she blushed and thanked him, promising to pay him back as soon
+as she received her month’s money, for she was not a beggar and did not
+wish to encroach on the share of those who starved.
+
+“And your son, Victor, has he found any employment?” asked the old
+priest.
+
+She hesitated, ignorant as she was of what her son might be doing, for
+now she did not see him for weeks together. And finally, she contented
+herself with answering: “He has a good heart, he is very fond of me. It
+is a great misfortune that we should have been ruined before he could
+enter the École Normale. It was impossible for him to prepare for the
+examination. But at the Lycée he was such a diligent and intelligent
+pupil!”
+
+“You lost your husband when your son was ten years old, did you not?”
+ said Abbé Rose.
+
+At this she blushed again, thinking that her husband’s story was known to
+the two priests. “Yes, my poor husband never had any luck,” she said.
+“His difficulties embittered and excited his mind, and he died in prison.
+He was sent there through a disturbance at a public meeting, when he had
+the misfortune to wound a police officer. He had also fought at the time
+of the Commune. And yet he was a very gentle man and extremely fond of
+me.”
+
+Tears had risen to her eyes; and Abbé Rose, much touched, dismissed her:
+“Well, let us hope that your son will give you satisfaction, and be able
+to repay you for all you have done for him.”
+
+With a gesture of infinite sorrow, Madame Mathis discreetly withdrew. She
+was quite ignorant of her son’s doings, but fate had pursued her so
+relentlessly that she ever trembled.
+
+“I don’t think that the poor woman has much to expect from her son,” said
+Pierre, when she had gone. “I only saw him once, but the gleam in his
+eyes was as harsh and trenchant as that of a knife.”
+
+“Do you think so?” the old priest exclaimed, with his kindly _naïveté_.
+“Well, he seemed to me very polite, perhaps a trifle eager to enjoy life;
+but then, all the young folks are impatient nowadays. Come, let us sit
+down to table, for the soup will be cold.”
+
+Almost at the same hour, on the other side of Paris, night had in like
+fashion slowly fallen in the drawing-room of the Countess de Quinsac, on
+the dismal, silent ground-floor of an old mansion in the Rue St.
+Dominique. The Countess was there, alone with her faithful friend, the
+Marquis de Morigny, she on one side, and he on the other side of the
+chimney-piece, where the last embers of the wood fire were dying out. The
+servant had not yet brought the lamp, and the Countess refrained from
+ringing, finding some relief from her anxiety in the falling darkness,
+which hid from view all the unconfessed thoughts that she was afraid of
+showing on her weary face. And it was only now, before that dim hearth,
+and in that black room, where never a sound of wheels disturbed the
+silence of the slumberous past, that she dared to speak.
+
+“Yes, my friend,” she said, “I am not satisfied with Gérard’s health. You
+will see him yourself, for he promised to come home early and dine with
+me. Oh! I’m well aware that he looks big and strong; but to know him
+properly one must have nursed and watched him as I have done! What
+trouble I had to rear him! In reality he is at the mercy of any petty
+ailment. His slightest complaint becomes serious illness. And the life he
+leads does not conduce to good health.”
+
+She paused and sighed, hesitating to carry her confession further.
+
+“He leads the life he can,” slowly responded the Marquis de Morigny, of
+whose delicate profile, and lofty yet loving bearing, little could be
+seen in the gloom. “As he was unable to endure military life, and as even
+the fatigues of diplomacy frighten you, what would you have him do? He
+can only live apart pending the final collapse, while this abominable
+Republic is dragging France to the grave.”
+
+“No doubt, my friend. And yet it is just that idle life which frightens
+me. He is losing in it all that was good and healthy in him. I don’t
+refer merely to the _liaisons_ which we have had to tolerate. The last
+one, which I found so much difficulty in countenancing at the outset, so
+contrary did it seem to all my ideas and beliefs, has since seemed to me
+to exercise almost a good influence. Only he is now entering his
+thirty-sixth year, and can he continue living in this fashion without
+object or duties? If he is ailing it is perhaps precisely because he does
+nothing, holds no position, and serves no purpose.” Her voice again
+quavered. “And then, my friend, since you force me to tell you
+everything, I must own that I am not in good health myself. I have had
+several fainting fits of late, and have consulted a doctor. The truth is,
+that I may go off at any moment.”
+
+With a quiver, Morigny leant forward in the still deepening gloom, and
+wished to take hold of her hands. “You! what, am I to lose you, my last
+affection!” he faltered, “I who have seen the old world I belong to
+crumble away, I who only live in the hope that you at all events will
+still be here to close my eyes!”
+
+But she begged him not to increase her grief: “No, no, don’t take my
+hands, don’t kiss them! Remain there in the shade, where I can scarcely
+see you.... We have loved one another so long without aught to cause
+shame or regret; and that will prove our strength--our divine
+strength--till we reach the grave.... And if you were to touch me, if
+I were to feel you too near me I could not finish, for I have not done so
+yet.”
+
+As soon as he had relapsed into silence and immobility, she continued:
+“If I were to die to-morrow, Gérard would not even find here the little
+fortune which he still fancies is in my hands. The dear child has often
+cost me large sums of money without apparently being conscious of it. I
+ought to have been more severe, more prudent. But what would you have?
+Ruin is at hand. I have always been too weak a mother. And do you now
+understand in what anguish I live? I ever have the thought that if I die
+Gérard will not even possess enough to live on, for he is incapable of
+effecting the miracle which I renew each day, in order to keep the house
+up on a decent footing.... Ah! I know him, so supine, so sickly, in
+spite of his proud bearing, unable to do anything, even conduct himself.
+And so what will become of him; will he not fall into the most dire
+distress?”
+
+Then her tears flowed freely, her heart opened and bled, for she foresaw
+what must happen after her death: the collapse of her race and of a whole
+world in the person of that big child. And the Marquis, still motionless
+but distracted, feeling that he had no title to offer his own fortune,
+suddenly understood her, foresaw in what disgrace this fresh disaster
+would culminate.
+
+“Ah! my poor friend!” he said at last in a voice trembling with revolt
+and grief. “So you have agreed to that marriage--yes, that abominable
+marriage with that woman’s daughter! Yet you swore it should never be!
+You would rather witness the collapse of everything, you said. And now
+you are consenting, I can feel it!”
+
+She still wept on in that black, silent drawing-room before the
+chimney-piece where the fire had died out. Did not Gérard’s marriage to
+Camille mean a happy ending for herself, a certainty of leaving her son
+wealthy, loved, and seated at the banquet of life? However, a last
+feeling of rebellion arose within her.
+
+“No, no,” she exclaimed, “I don’t consent, I swear to you that I don’t
+consent as yet. I am fighting with my whole strength, waging an incessant
+battle, the torture of which you cannot imagine.”
+
+Then, in all sincerity, she foresaw the likelihood of defeat. “If I
+should some day give way, my friend, at all events believe that I feel,
+as fully as you do, how abominable such a marriage must be. It will be
+the end of our race and our honour!”
+
+This cry profoundly stirred the Marquis, and he was unable to add a word.
+Haughty and uncompromising Catholic and Royalist that he was, he, on his
+side also, expected nothing but the supreme collapse. Yet how
+heartrending was the thought that this noble woman, so dearly and so
+purely loved, would prove one of the most mournful victims of the
+catastrophe! And in the shrouding gloom he found courage to kneel before
+her, take her hand, and kiss it.
+
+Just as the servant was at last bringing a lighted lamp Gérard made his
+appearance. The past-century charm of the old Louis XVI. drawing-room,
+with its pale woodwork, again became apparent in the soft light. In order
+that his mother might not be over-saddened by his failure to dine with
+her that evening the young man had put on an air of brisk gaiety; and
+when he had explained that some friends were waiting for him, she at once
+released him from his promise, happy as she felt at seeing him so merry.
+
+“Go, go, my dear boy,” said she, “but mind you do not tire yourself too
+much.... I am going to keep Morigny; and the General and Larombière
+are coming at nine o’clock. So be easy, I shall have someone with me to
+keep me from fretting and feeling lonely.”
+
+In this wise Gérard after sitting down for a moment and chatting with the
+Marquis was able to slip away, dress, and betake himself to the Cafe
+Anglais.
+
+When he reached it women in fur cloaks were already climbing the stairs,
+fashionable and merry parties were filling the private rooms, the
+electric lights shone brilliantly, and the walls were already vibrating
+with the stir of pleasure and debauchery. In the room which Baron
+Duvillard had engaged the young man found an extraordinary display, the
+most superb flowers, and a profusion of plate and crystal as for a royal
+gala. The pomp with which the six covers were laid called forth a smile;
+while the bill of fare and the wine list promised marvels, all the rarest
+and most expensive things that could be selected.
+
+“It’s stylish, isn’t it?” exclaimed Silviane, who was already there with
+Duvillard, Fonsègue and Duthil. “I just wanted to make your influential
+critic open his eyes a little! When one treats a journalist to such a
+dinner as this, he has got to be amiable, hasn’t he?”
+
+In her desire to conquer, it had occurred to the young woman to array
+herself in the most amazing fashion. Her gown of yellow satin, covered
+with old Alençon lace, was cut low at the neck; and she had put on all
+her diamonds, a necklace, a diadem, shoulder-knots, bracelets and rings.
+With her candid, girlish face, she looked like some Virgin in a missal, a
+Queen-Virgin, laden with the offerings of all Christendom.
+
+“Well, well, you look so pretty,” said Gérard, who sometimes jested with
+her, “that I think it will do all the same.”
+
+“Ah!” she replied with equanimity. “You consider me a _bourgeoise_, I
+see. Your opinion is that a simple little dinner and a modest gown would
+have shown better taste. But ah! my dear fellow, you don’t know the way
+to get round men!”
+
+Duvillard signified his approval, for he was delighted to be able to show
+her in all her glory, adorned like an idol. Fonsègue, for his part,
+talked of diamonds, saying that they were now doubtful investments, as
+the day when they would become articles of current manufacture was fast
+approaching, thanks to the electrical furnace and other inventions.
+Meantime Duthil, with an air of ecstasy and the dainty gestures of a
+lady’s maid, hovered around the young woman, either smoothing a
+rebellious bow or arranging some fold of her lace.
+
+“But I say,” resumed Silviane, “your critic seems to be an ill-bred man,
+for he’s keeping us waiting.”
+
+Indeed, the critic arrived a quarter of an hour late, and while
+apologising, he expressed his regret that he should be obliged to leave
+at half-past nine, for he was absolutely compelled to put in an
+appearance at a little theatre in the Rue Pigalle. He was a big fellow of
+fifty with broad shoulders and a full, bearded face. His most
+disagreeable characteristic was the narrow dogmatic pedantry which he had
+acquired at the École Normale, and had never since been able to shake
+off. All his herculean efforts to be sceptical and frivolous, and the
+twenty years he had spent in Paris mingling with every section of
+society, had failed to rid him of it. _Magister_ he was, and _magister_
+he remained, even in his most strenuous flights of imagination and
+audacity. From the moment of his arrival he tried to show himself
+enraptured with Silviane. Naturally enough, he already knew her by sight,
+and had even criticised her on one occasion in five or six contemptuous
+lines. However, the sight of her there, in full beauty, clad like a
+queen, and presented by four influential protectors, filled him with
+emotion; and he was struck with the idea that nothing would be more
+Parisian and less pedantic than to assert she had some talent and give
+her his support.
+
+They had seated themselves at table, and the repast proved a magnificent
+one, the service ever prompt and assiduous, an attendant being allotted
+to each diner. While the flowers scattered their perfumes through the
+room, and the plate and crystal glittered on the snowy cloth, an
+abundance of delicious and unexpected dishes were handed round--a
+sturgeon from Russia, prohibited game, truffles as big as eggs, and
+hothouse vegetables and fruit as full of flavour as if they had been
+naturally matured. It was money flung out of window, simply for the
+pleasure of wasting more than other people, and eating what they could
+not procure. The influential critic, though he displayed the ease of a
+man accustomed to every sort of festivity, really felt astonished at it
+all, and became servile, promising his support, and pledging himself far
+more than he really wished to. Moreover, he showed himself very gay,
+found some witty remarks to repeat, and even some rather ribald jests.
+But when the champagne appeared after the roast and the grand burgundies,
+his over-excitement brought him back perforce to his real nature. The
+conversation had now turned on Corneille’s “Polyeucte” and the part of
+“Pauline,” in which Silviane wished to make her _début_ at the Comédie
+Française. This extraordinary caprice, which had quite revolted the
+influential critic a week previously, now seemed to him simply a bold
+enterprise in which the young woman might even prove victorious if she
+consented to listen to his advice. And, once started, he delivered quite
+a lecture on the past, asserting that no actress had ever yet understood
+it properly, for at the outset Pauline was simply a well-meaning little
+creature of the middle classes, and the beauty of her conversion at the
+finish arose from the working of a miracle, a stroke of heavenly grace
+which endowed her with something divine. This was not the opinion of
+Silviane, who from the first lines regarded Pauline as the ideal heroine
+of some symbolical legend. However, as the critic talked on and on, she
+had to feign approval; and he was delighted at finding her so beautiful
+and docile beneath his ferule. At last, as ten o’clock was striking, he
+rose and tore out of the hot and reeking room in order to do his work.
+
+“Ah! my dears,” cried Silviane, “he’s a nice bore is that critic of
+yours! What a fool he is with his idea of Pauline being a little
+_bourgeoise_! I would have given him a fine dressing if it weren’t for
+the fact that I have some need of him. Ah! no, it’s too idiotic! Pour me
+out a glass of champagne. I want something to set me right after all
+that!”
+
+The _fête_ then took quite an intimate turn between the four men who
+remained and that bare-armed, bare-breasted girl, covered with diamonds;
+while from the neighbouring passages and rooms came bursts of laughter
+and sounds of kissing, all the stir and mirth of the debauchery now
+filling the house. And beneath the windows torrents of vehicles and
+pedestrians streamed along the Boulevards where reigned the wild fever of
+pleasure and harlotry.
+
+“No, don’t open it, or I shall catch cold!” resumed Silviane, addressing
+Fonsègue as he stepped towards the window. “Are you so very warm, then?
+I’m just comfortable.... But, Duvillard, my good fellow, please order
+some more champagne. It’s wonderful what a thirst your critic has given
+me!”
+
+Amidst the blinding glare of the lamps and the perfume of the flowers and
+wines, one almost stifled in the room. And Silviane was seized with an
+irresistible desire for a spree, a desire to tipple and amuse herself in
+some vulgar fashion, as in her bygone days. A few glasses of champagne
+brought her to full pitch, and she showed the boldest and giddiest
+gaiety. The others, who had never before seen her so lively, began on
+their own side to feel amused. As Fonsègue was obliged to go to his
+office she embraced him “like a daughter,” as she expressed it. However,
+on remaining alone with the others she indulged in great freedom of
+speech, which became more and more marked as her intoxication increased.
+And to the class of men with whom she consorted her great attraction, as
+she was well aware, lay in the circumstance that with her virginal
+countenance and her air of ideal purity was coupled the most monstrous
+perversity ever displayed by any shameless woman. Despite her innocent
+blue eyes and lily-like candour, she would give rein, particularly when
+she was drunk, to the most diabolical of fancies.
+
+Duvillard let her drink on, but she guessed his thoughts, like she
+guessed those of the others, and simply smiled while concocting
+impossible stories and descanting fantastically in the language of the
+gutter. And seeing her there in her dazzling gown fit for a queenly
+virgin, and hearing her pour forth the vilest words, they thought her
+most wonderfully droll. However, when she had drunk as much champagne as
+she cared for and was half crazy, a novel idea suddenly occurred to her.
+
+“I say, my children,” she exclaimed, “we are surely not going to stop
+here. It’s so precious slow! You shall take me to the Chamber of
+Horrors--eh? just to finish the evening. I want to hear Legras sing ‘La
+Chemise,’ that song which all Paris is running to hear him sing.”
+
+But Duvillard indignantly rebelled: “Oh! no,” said he; “most certainly
+not. It’s a vile song and I’ll never take you to such an abominable
+place.”
+
+But she did not appear to hear him. She had already staggered to her feet
+and was arranging her hair before a looking-glass. “I used to live at
+Montmartre,” she said, “and it’ll amuse me to go back there. And,
+besides, I want to know if this Legras is a Legras that I knew, oh! ever
+so long ago! Come, up you get, and let us be off!”
+
+“But, my dear girl,” pleaded Duvillard, “we can’t take you into that den
+dressed as you are! Just fancy your entering that place in a low-necked
+gown and covered with diamonds! Why everyone would jeer at us! Come,
+Gérard, just tell her to be a little reasonable.”
+
+Gérard, equally offended by the idea of such a freak, was quite willing
+to intervene. But she closed his mouth with her gloved hand and repeated
+with the gay obstinacy of intoxication: “Pooh, it will be all the more
+amusing if they do jeer at us! Come, let us be off, let us be off,
+quick!”
+
+Thereupon Duthil, who had been listening with a smile and the air of a
+man of pleasure whom nothing astonishes or displeases, gallantly took her
+part. “But, my dear Baron, everybody goes to the Chamber of Horrors,”
+ said he. “Why, I myself have taken the noblest ladies there, and
+precisely to hear that song of Legras, which is no worse than anything
+else.”
+
+“Ah! you hear what Duthil says!” cried Silviane. “He’s a deputy, he is,
+and he wouldn’t go there if he thought it would compromise his
+honorability!”
+
+Then, as Duvillard still struggled on in despair at the idea of
+exhibiting himself with her in such a scandalous place, she became all
+the merrier: “Well, my dear fellow, please yourself. I don’t need you.
+You and Gérard can go home if you like. But I’m going to Montmartre with
+Duthil. You’ll take charge of me, won’t you, Duthil, eh?”
+
+Still, the Baron was in no wise disposed to let the evening finish in
+that fashion. The mere idea of it gave him a shock, and he had to resign
+himself to the girl’s stubborn caprice. The only consolation he could
+think of was to secure Gérard’s presence, for the young man, with some
+lingering sense of decorum, still obstinately refused to make one of the
+party. So the Baron took his hands and detained him, repeating in urgent
+tones that he begged him to come as an essential mark of friendship. And
+at last the wife’s lover and daughter’s suitor had to give way to the man
+who was the former’s husband and the latter’s father.
+
+Silviane was immensely amused by it all, and, indiscreetly thee-ing and
+thou-ing Gérard, suggested that he at least owed the Baron some little
+compliance with his wishes.
+
+Duvillard pretended not to hear her. He was listening to Duthil, who told
+him that there was a sort of box in a corner of the Chamber of Horrors,
+in which one could in some measure conceal oneself. And then, as
+Silviane’s carriage--a large closed landau, whose coachman, a sturdy,
+handsome fellow, sat waiting impassively on his box--was down below, they
+started off.
+
+The Chamber of Horrors was installed in premises on the Boulevard de
+Rochechouart, formerly occupied by a café whose proprietor had become
+bankrupt.* It was a suffocating place, narrow, irregular, with all sorts
+of twists, turns, and secluded nooks, and a low and smoky ceiling. And
+nothing could have been more rudimentary than its decorations. The walls
+had simply been placarded with posters of violent hues, some of the
+crudest character, showing the barest of female figures. Behind a piano
+at one end there was a little platform reached by a curtained doorway.
+For the rest, one simply found a number of bare wooden forms set
+alongside the veriest pot-house tables, on which the glasses containing
+various beverages left round and sticky marks. There was no luxury, no
+artistic feature, no cleanliness even. Globeless gas burners flared
+freely, heating a dense mist compounded of tobacco smoke and human
+breath. Perspiring, apoplectical faces could be perceived through this
+veil, and an acrid odour increased the intoxication of the assembly,
+which excited itself with louder and louder shouts at each fresh song. It
+had been sufficient for an enterprising fellow to set up these boards,
+bring out Legras, accompanied by two or three girls, make him sing his
+frantic and abominable songs, and in two or three evenings overwhelming
+success had come, all Paris being enticed and flocking to the place,
+which for ten years or so had failed to pay as a mere café, where by way
+of amusement petty cits had been simply allowed their daily games at
+dominoes.
+
+ * Those who know Paris will identify the site selected by M. Zola
+ as that where ‘Colonel’ Lisbonne of the Commune installed his
+ den the ‘Bagne’ some years ago. Nevertheless, such places as the
+ ‘Chamber of Horrors’ now abound in the neighbourhood of
+ Montmartre, and it must be admitted that whilst they are
+ frequented by certain classes of Frenchmen they owe much of
+ their success in a pecuniary sense to the patronage of
+ foreigners. Among the latter, Englishmen are particularly
+ conspicuous.--Trans.
+
+And the change had been caused by the passion for filth, the irresistible
+attraction exercised by all that brought opprobrium and disgust. The
+Paris of enjoyment, the _bourgeoisie_ which held all wealth and power,
+which would relinquish naught of either, though it was surfeited and
+gradually wearying of both, simply hastened to the place in order that
+obscenity and insult might be flung in its face. Hypnotised, as it were,
+while staggering to its fall, it felt a need of being spat upon. And what
+a frightful symptom there lay in it all: those condemned ones rushing
+upon dirt of their own accord, voluntarily hastening their own
+decomposition by that unquenchable thirst for the vile, which attracted
+men, reputed to be grave and upright, and lovely women of the most
+perfect grace and luxury, to all the beastliness of that low den!
+
+At one of the tables nearest the stage sat little Princess Rosemonde de
+Harn, with wild eyes and quivering nostrils, delighted as she felt at now
+being able to satisfy her curiosity regarding the depths of Paris life.
+Young Hyacinthe had resigned himself to the task of bringing her, and,
+correctly buttoned up in his long frock-coat, he was indulgent enough to
+refrain from any marked expression of boredom. At a neighbouring table
+they had found a shadowy Spaniard of their acquaintance, a so-called
+Bourse jobber, Bergaz, who had been introduced to the Princess by Janzen,
+and usually attended her entertainments. They virtually knew nothing
+about him, not even if he really earned at the Bourse all the money which
+he sometimes spent so lavishly, and which enabled him to dress with
+affected elegance. His slim, lofty figure was not without a certain air
+of distinction, but his red lips spoke of strong passions and his bright
+eyes were those of a beast of prey. That evening he had two young fellows
+with him, one Rossi, a short, swarthy Italian, who had come to Paris as a
+painter’s model, and had soon glided into the lazy life of certain
+disreputable callings, and the other, Sanfaute, a born Parisian
+blackguard, a pale, beardless, vicious and impudent stripling of La
+Chapelle, whose long curly hair fell down upon either side of his bony
+cheeks.
+
+“Oh! pray now!” feverishly said Rosemonde to Bergaz; “as you seem to know
+all these horrid people, just show me some of the celebrities. Aren’t
+there some thieves and murderers among them?”
+
+He laughed shrilly, and in a bantering way replied: “But you know these
+people well enough, madame. That pretty, pink, delicate-looking woman
+over yonder is an American lady, the wife of a consul, whom, I believe,
+you receive at your house. That other on the right, that tall brunette
+who shows such queenly dignity, is a Countess, whose carriage passes
+yours every day in the Bois. And the thin one yonder, whose eyes glitter
+like those of a she-wolf, is the particular friend of a high official,
+who is well known for his reputation of austerity.”
+
+But she stopped him, in vexation: “I know, I know. But the others, those
+of the lower classes, those whom one comes to see.”
+
+Then she went on asking questions, and seeking for terrifying and
+mysterious countenances. At last, two men seated in a corner ended by
+attracting her attention; one of them a very young fellow with a pale,
+pinched face, and the other an ageless individual who, besides being
+buttoned up to his neck in an old coat, had pulled his cap so low over
+his eyes, that one saw little of his face beyond the beard which fringed
+it. Before these two stood a couple of mugs of beer, which they drank
+slowly and in silence.
+
+“You are making a great mistake, my dear,” said Hyacinthe with a frank
+laugh, “if you are looking for brigands in disguise. That poor fellow
+with the pale face, who surely doesn’t have food to eat every day, was my
+schoolfellow at Condorcet!”
+
+Bergaz expressed his amazement. “What! you knew Mathis at Condorcet!
+After all, though, you’re right, he received a college education. Ah! and
+so you knew him. A very remarkable young man he is, though want is
+throttling him. But, I say, the other one, his companion, you don’t know
+him?”
+
+Hyacinthe, after looking at the man with the cap-hidden face, was already
+shaking his head, when Bergaz suddenly gave him a nudge as a signal to
+keep quiet, and by way of explanation he muttered: “Hush! Here’s
+Raphanel. I’ve been distrusting him for some time past. Whenever he
+appears anywhere, the police is not far off.”
+
+Raphanel was another of the vague, mysterious Anarchists whom Janzen had
+presented to the Princess by way of satisfying her momentary passion for
+revolutionism. This one, though he was a fat, gay, little man, with a
+doll-like face and childish nose, which almost disappeared between his
+puffy cheeks, had the reputation of being a thorough desperado; and at
+public meetings he certainly shouted for fire and murder with all his
+lungs. Still, although he had already been compromised in various
+affairs, he had invariably managed to save his own bacon, whilst his
+companions were kept under lock and key; and this they were now beginning
+to think somewhat singular.
+
+He at once shook hands with the Princess in a jovial way, took a seat
+near her without being invited, and forthwith denounced the dirty
+_bourgeoisie_ which came to wallow in places of ill fame. Rosemonde was
+delighted, and encouraged him, but others near by began to get angry, and
+Bergaz examined him with his piercing eyes, like a man of energy who
+acts, and lets others talk. Now and then, too, he exchanged quick glances
+of intelligence with his silent lieutenants, Sanfaute and Rossi, who
+plainly belonged to him, both body and soul. They were the ones who found
+their profit in Anarchy, practising it to its logical conclusions,
+whether in crime or in vice.
+
+Meantime, pending the arrival of Legras with his “Flowers of the
+Pavement,” two female vocalists had followed one another on the stage,
+the first fat and the second thin, one chirruping some silly love songs
+with an under-current of dirt, and the other shouting the coarsest of
+refrains, in a most violent, fighting voice. She had just finished amidst
+a storm of bravos, when the assembly, stirred to merriment and eager for
+a laugh, suddenly exploded once more. Silviane was entering the little
+box at one end of the hall. When she appeared erect in the full light,
+with bare arms and shoulders, looking like a planet in her gown of yellow
+satin and her blazing diamonds, there arose a formidable uproar, shouts,
+jeers, hisses, laughing and growling, mingled with ferocious applause.
+And the scandal increased, and the vilest expressions flew about as soon
+as Duvillard, Gérard and Duthil also showed themselves, looking very
+serious and dignified with their white ties and spreading shirt fronts.
+
+“We told you so!” muttered Duvillard, who was much annoyed with the
+affair, while Gérard tried to conceal himself in a dim corner.
+
+She, however, smiling and enchanted, faced the public, accepting the
+storm with the candid bearing of a foolish virgin, much as one inhales
+the vivifying air of the open when it bears down upon one in a squall.
+And, indeed, she herself had sprung from the sphere before her, its
+atmosphere was her native air.
+
+“Well, what of it?” she said replying to the Baron who wanted her to sit
+down. “They are merry. It’s very nice. Oh! I’m really amusing myself!”
+
+“Why, yes, it’s very nice,” declared Duthil, who in like fashion set
+himself at his ease. “Silviane is right, people naturally like a laugh
+now and then!”
+
+Amidst the uproar, which did not cease, little Princess Rosemonde rose
+enthusiastically to get a better view. “Why, it’s your father who’s with
+that woman Silviane,” she said to Hyacinthe. “Just look at them! Well, he
+certainly has plenty of bounce to show himself here with her!”
+
+Hyacinthe, however, refused to look. It didn’t interest him, his father
+was an idiot, only a child would lose his head over a girl in that
+fashion. And with his contempt for woman the young man became positively
+insulting.
+
+“You try my nerves, my dear fellow,” said Rosemonde as she sat down. “You
+are the child with your silly ideas about us. And as for your father, he
+does quite right to love that girl. I find her very pretty indeed, quite
+adorable!”
+
+Then all at once the uproar ceased, those who had risen resumed their
+seats, and the only sound was that of the feverish throb which coursed
+through the assembly. Legras had just appeared on the platform. He was a
+pale sturdy fellow with a round and carefully shaven face, stern eyes,
+and the powerful jaws of a man who compels the adoration of women by
+terrorising them. He was not deficient in talent, he sang true, and his
+ringing voice was one of extraordinary penetration and pathetic power.
+And his _répertoire_, his “Flowers of the Pavement,” completed the
+explanation of his success; for all the foulness and suffering of the
+lower spheres, the whole abominable sore of the social hell created by
+the rich, shrieked aloud in these songs in words of filth and fire and
+blood.
+
+A prelude was played on the piano, and Legras standing there in his
+velvet jacket sang “La Chemise,” the horrible song which brought all
+Paris to hear him. All the lust and vice that crowd the streets of the
+great city appeared with their filth and their poison; and amid the
+picture of Woman stripped, degraded, ill-treated, dragged through the
+mire and cast into a cesspool, there rang out the crime of the
+_bourgeoisie_. But the scorching insult of it all was less in the words
+themselves than in the manner in which Legras cast them in the faces of
+the rich, the happy, the beautiful ladies who came to listen to him.
+Under the low ceiling, amidst the smoke from the pipes, in the blinding
+glare of the gas, he sent his lines flying through the assembly like
+expectorations, projected by a whirlwind of furious contempt. And when he
+had finished there came delirium; the beautiful ladies did not even think
+of wiping away the many affronts they had received, but applauded
+frantically. The whole assembly stamped and shouted, and wallowed,
+distracted, in its ignominy.
+
+“Bravo! bravo!” the little Princess repeated in her shrill voice. “It’s
+astonishing, astonishing, prodigious!”
+
+And Silviane, whose intoxication seemed to have increased since she had
+been there, in the depths of that fiery furnace, made herself
+particularly conspicuous by the manner in which she clapped her hands and
+shouted: “It’s he, it’s my Legras! I really must kiss him, he’s pleased
+me so much!”
+
+Duvillard, now fairly exasperated, wished to take her off by force. But
+she clung to the hand-rest of the box, and shouted yet more loudly,
+though without any show of temper. It became necessary to parley with
+her. Yes, she was willing to go off and let them drive her home; but,
+first of all, she must embrace Legras, who was an old friend of hers. “Go
+and wait for me in the carriage!” she said, “I will be with you in a
+moment.”
+
+Just as the assembly was at last becoming calmer, Rosemonde perceived
+that the box was emptying; and her own curiosity being satisfied, she
+thought of prevailing on Hyacinthe to see her home. He, who had listened
+to Legras in a languid way without even applauding, was now talking of
+Norway with Bergaz, who pretended that he had travelled in the North. Oh!
+the fiords! oh! the ice-bound lakes! oh! the pure lily-white, chaste
+coldness of the eternal winter! It was only amid such surroundings, said
+Hyacinthe, that he could understand woman and love, like a kiss of the
+very snow itself.
+
+“Shall we go off there to-morrow?” exclaimed the Princess with her
+vivacious effrontery. “I’ll shut up my house and slip the key under the
+door.”
+
+Then she added that she was jesting, of course. But Bergaz knew her to be
+quite capable of such a freak; and at the idea that she might shut up her
+little mansion and perhaps leave it unprotected he exchanged a quick
+glance with Sanfaute and Rossi, who still smiled in silence. Ah! what an
+opportunity for a fine stroke! What an opportunity to get back some of
+the wealth of the community appropriated by the blackguard _bourgeoisie_!
+
+Meantime Raphanel, after applauding Legras, was looking all round the
+place with his little grey, sharp eyes. And at last young Mathis and his
+companion, the ill-clad individual, of whose face only a scrap of beard
+could be seen, attracted his attention. They had neither laughed nor
+applauded; they seemed to be simply a couple of tired fellows who were
+resting, and in whose opinion one is best hidden in the midst of a crowd.
+
+All at once, though, Raphanel turned towards Bergaz: “That’s surely
+little Mathis over yonder. But who’s that with him?”
+
+Bergaz made an evasive gesture; he did not know. Still, he no longer took
+his eyes from Raphanel. And he saw the other feign indifference at what
+followed, and finish his beer and take his leave, with the jesting remark
+that he had an appointment with a lady at a neighbouring omnibus office.
+No sooner had he gone than Bergaz rose, sprang over some of the forms and
+jostled people in order to reach little Mathis, into whose ear he
+whispered a few words. And the young man at once left his table, taking
+his companion and pushing him outside through an occasional exit. It was
+all so rapidly accomplished that none of the general public paid
+attention to the flight.
+
+“What is it?” said the Princess to Bergaz, when he had quietly resumed
+his seat between Rossi and Sanfaute.
+
+“Oh! nothing, I merely wished to shake hands with Mathis as he was going
+off.”
+
+Thereupon Rosemonde announced that she meant to do the same.
+Nevertheless, she lingered a moment longer and again spoke of Norway on
+perceiving that nothing could impassion Hyacinthe except the idea of the
+eternal snow, the intense, purifying cold of the polar regions. In his
+poem on the “End of Woman,” a composition of some thirty lines, which he
+hoped he should never finish, he thought of introducing a forest of
+frozen pines by way of final scene. Now the Princess had risen and was
+gaily reverting to her jest, declaring that she meant to take him home to
+drink a cup of tea and arrange their trip to the Pole, when an
+involuntary exclamation fell from Bergaz, who, while listening, had kept
+his eyes on the doorway.
+
+“Mondésir! I was sure of it!”
+
+There had appeared at the entrance a short, sinewy, broad-backed little
+man, about whose round face, bumpy forehead, and snub nose there was
+considerable military roughness. One might have thought him a
+non-commissioned officer in civilian attire. He gazed over the whole
+room, and seemed at once dismayed and disappointed.
+
+Bergaz, however, wishing to account for his exclamation, resumed in an
+easy way: “Ah! I said there was a smell of the police about the place!
+You see that fellow--he’s a detective, a very clever one, named Mondésir,
+who had some trouble when he was in the army. Just look at him, sniffing
+like a dog that has lost scent! Well, well, my brave fellow, if you’ve
+been told of any game you may look and look for it, the bird’s flown
+already!”
+
+Once outside, when Rosemonde had prevailed on Hyacinthe to see her home,
+they hastened to get into the brougham, which was waiting for them, for
+near at hand they perceived Silviane’s landau, with the majestic coachman
+motionless on his box, while Duvillard, Gérard, and Duthil still stood
+waiting on the curbstone. They had been there for nearly twenty minutes
+already, in the semi-darkness of that outer boulevard, where all the
+vices of the poor districts of Paris were on the prowl. They had been
+jostled by drunkards; and shadowy women brushed against them as they went
+by whispering beneath the oaths and blows of bullies. And there were
+couples seeking the darkness under the trees, and lingering on the
+benches there; while all around were low taverns and dirty lodging-houses
+and places of ill-fame. All the human degradation which till break of day
+swarms in the black mud of this part of Paris, enveloped the three men,
+giving them the horrors, and yet neither the Baron nor Gérard nor Duthil
+was willing to go off. Each hoped that he would tire out the others, and
+take Silviane home when she should at last appear.
+
+But after a time the Baron grew impatient, and said to the coachman:
+“Jules, go and see why madame doesn’t come.”
+
+“But the horses, Monsieur le Baron?”
+
+“Oh! they will be all right, we are here.”
+
+A fine drizzle had begun to fall; and the wait went on again as if it
+would never finish. But an unexpected meeting gave them momentary
+occupation. A shadowy form, something which seemed to be a thin,
+black-skirted woman, brushed against them. And all of a sudden they were
+surprised to find it was a priest.
+
+“What, is it you, Monsieur l’Abbé Froment?” exclaimed Gérard. “At this
+time of night? And in this part of Paris?”
+
+Thereupon Pierre, without venturing either to express his own
+astonishment at finding them there themselves, or to ask them what they
+were doing, explained that he had been belated through accompanying Abbé
+Rose on a visit to a night refuge. Ah! to think of all the frightful want
+which at last drifted to those pestilential dormitories where the stench
+had almost made him faint! To think of all the weariness and despair
+which there sank into the slumber of utter prostration, like that of
+beasts falling to the ground to sleep off the abominations of life! No
+name could be given to the promiscuity; poverty and suffering were there
+in heaps, children and men, young and old, beggars in sordid rags, beside
+the shameful poor in threadbare frock-coats, all the waifs and strays of
+the daily shipwrecks of Paris life, all the laziness and vice, and
+ill-luck and injustice which the torrent rolls on, and throws off like
+scum. Some slept on, quite annihilated, with the faces of corpses.
+Others, lying on their backs with mouths agape, snored loudly as if still
+venting the plaint of their sorry life. And others tossed restlessly,
+still struggling in their slumber against fatigue and cold and hunger,
+which pursued them like nightmares of monstrous shape. And from all those
+human beings, stretched there like wounded after a battle, from all that
+ambulance of life reeking with a stench of rottenness and death, there
+ascended a nausea born of revolt, the vengeance-prompting thought of all
+the happy chambers where, at that same hour, the wealthy loved or rested
+in fine linen and costly lace.*
+
+ * Even the oldest Paris night refuges, which are the outcome
+ of private philanthropy--L’Œuvre de l’Hospitalité de Nuit--
+ have only been in existence some fourteen or fifteen years.
+ Before that time, and from the period of the great Revolution
+ forward, there was absolutely no place, either refuge, asylum,
+ or workhouse, in the whole of that great city of wealth and
+ pleasure, where the houseless poor could crave a night’s
+ shelter. The various royalist, imperialist and republican
+ governments and municipalities of modern France have often
+ been described as ‘paternal,’ but no governments and
+ municipalities in the whole civilised world have done less for
+ the very poor. The official Poor Relief Board--L’Assistance
+ Publique--has for fifty years been a by-word, a mockery and a
+ sham, in spite of its large revenue. And this neglect of the
+ very poor has been an important factor in every French
+ revolution. Each of these--even that of 1870--had its purely
+ economic side, though many superficial historians are content
+ to ascribe economic causes to the one Revolution of 1789, and
+ to pass them by in all other instances.--Trans.
+
+In vain had Pierre and Abbé Rose passed all the poor wretches in review
+while seeking the big Old’un, the former carpenter, so as to rescue him
+from the cesspool of misery, and send him to the Asylum on the very
+morrow. He had presented himself at the refuge that evening, but there
+was no room left, for, horrible to say, even the shelter of that hell
+could only be granted to early comers. And so he must now be leaning
+against a wall, or lying behind some palings. This had greatly distressed
+poor Abbé Rose and Pierre, but it was impossible for them to search every
+dark, suspicious corner; and so the former had returned to the Rue
+Cortot, while the latter was seeking a cab to convey him back to Neuilly.
+
+The fine drizzling rain was still falling and becoming almost icy, when
+Silviane’s coachman, Jules, at last reappeared and interrupted the
+priest, who was telling the Baron and the others how his visit to the
+refuge still made him shudder.
+
+“Well, Jules--and madame?” asked Duvillard, quite anxious at seeing the
+coachman return alone.
+
+Impassive and respectful, with no other sign of irony than a slight
+involuntary twist of the lips, Jules answered: “Madame sends word that
+she is not going home; and she places her carriage at the gentlemen’s
+disposal if they will allow me to drive them home.”
+
+This was the last straw, and the Baron flew into a passion. To have
+allowed her to drag him to that vile den, to have waited there hopefully
+so long, and to be treated in this fashion for the sake of a Legras! No,
+no, he, the Baron, had had enough of it, and she should pay dearly for
+her abominable conduct! Then he stopped a passing cab and pushed Gérard
+inside it saying, “You can set me down at my door.”
+
+“But she’s left us the carriage!” shouted Duthil, who was already
+consoled, and inwardly laughed at the termination of it all. “Come here,
+there’s plenty of room for three. No? you prefer the cab? Well, just as
+you like, you know.”
+
+For his part he gaily climbed into the landau and drove off lounging on
+the cushions, while the Baron, in the jolting old cab, vented his rage
+without a word of interruption from Gérard, whose face was hidden by the
+darkness. To think of it! that she, whom he had overwhelmed with gifts,
+who had already cost him two millions of francs, should in this fashion
+insult him, the master who could dispose both of fortunes and of men!
+Well, she had chosen to do it, and he was delivered! Then Duvillard drew
+a long breath like a man released from the galleys.
+
+For a moment Pierre watched the two vehicles go off; and then took his
+own way under the trees, so as to shelter himself from the rain until a
+vacant cab should pass. Full of distress and battling thoughts he had
+begun to feel icy cold. The whole monstrous night of Paris, all the
+debauchery and woe that sobbed around him made him shiver. Phantom-like
+women who, when young, had led lives of infamy in wealth, and who now,
+old and faded, led lives of infamy in poverty, were still and ever
+wandering past him in search of bread, when suddenly a shadowy form
+grazed him, and a voice murmured in his ear: “Warn your brother, the
+police are on Salvat’s track, he may be arrested at any moment.”
+
+The shadowy figure was already going its way, and as a gas ray fell upon
+it, Pierre thought that he recognised the pale, pinched face of Victor
+Mathis. And at the same time, yonder in Abbé Rose’s peaceful dining-room,
+he fancied he could again see the gentle face of Madame Mathis, so sad
+and so resigned, living on solely by the force of the last trembling hope
+which she had unhappily set in her son.
+
+
+
+
+III. PLOT AND COUNTERPLOT
+
+ALREADY at eight o’clock on that holiday-making mid-Lent Thursday, when
+all the offices of the Home Department were empty, Monferrand, the
+Minister, sat alone in his private room. A single usher guarded his door,
+and in the first ante-chamber there were only a couple of messengers.
+
+The Minister had experienced, on awaking, the most unpleasant of
+emotions. The “Voix du Peuple,” which on the previous day had revived the
+African Railway scandal, by accusing Barroux of having pocketed 20,000
+francs, had that morning published its long-promised list of the
+bribe-taking senators and deputies. And at the head of this list
+Monferrand had found his own name set down against a sum of 80,000
+francs, while Fonsègue was credited with 50,000. Then a fifth of the
+latter amount was said to have been Duthil’s share, and Chaigneux had
+contented himself with the beggarly sum of 3,000 francs--the lowest price
+paid for any one vote, the cost of each of the others ranging from 5 to
+20,000.
+
+It must be said that there was no anger in Monferrand’s emotion. Only he
+had never thought that Sagnier would carry his passion for uproar and
+scandal so far as to publish this list--a page which was said to have
+been torn from a memorandum book belonging to Duvillard’s agent, Hunter,
+and which was covered with incomprehensible hieroglyphics that ought to
+have been discussed and explained, if, indeed, the real truth was to be
+arrived at. Personally, Monferrand felt quite at ease, for he had written
+nothing, signed nothing, and knew that one could always extricate oneself
+from a mess by showing some audacity, and never confessing. Nevertheless,
+what a commotion it would all cause in the parliamentary duck-pond. He at
+once realised the inevitable consequences, the ministry overthrown and
+swept away by this fresh whirlwind of denunciation and tittle-tattle.
+Mège would renew his interpellation on the morrow, and Vignon and his
+friends would at once lay siege to the posts they coveted. And he,
+Monferrand, could picture himself driven out of that ministerial sanctum
+where, for eight months past, he had been taking his ease, not with any
+foolish vainglory, but with the pleasure of feeling that he was in his
+proper place as a born ruler, who believed he could tame and lead the
+multitude.
+
+Having thrown the newspapers aside with a disdainful gesture, he rose and
+stretched himself, growling the while like a plagued lion. And then he
+began to walk up and down the spacious room, which showed all the faded
+official luxury of mahogany furniture and green damask hangings. Stepping
+to and fro, with his hands behind his back, he no longer wore his usual
+fatherly, good-natured air. He appeared as he really was, a born
+wrestler, short, but broad shouldered, with sensual mouth, fleshy nose
+and stern eyes, that all proclaimed him to be unscrupulous, of iron will
+and fit for the greatest tasks. Still, in this case, in what direction
+lay his best course? Must he let himself be dragged down with Barroux?
+Perhaps his personal position was not absolutely compromised? And yet how
+could he part company from the others, swim ashore, and save himself
+while they were being drowned? It was a grave problem, and with his
+frantic desire to retain power, he made desperate endeavours to devise
+some suitable manœuvre.
+
+But he could think of nothing, and began to swear at the virtuous fits of
+that silly Republic, which, in his opinion, rendered all government
+impossible. To think of such foolish fiddle-faddle stopping a man of his
+acumen and strength! How on earth can one govern men if one is denied the
+use of money, that sovereign means of sway? And he laughed bitterly; for
+the idea of an idyllic country where all great enterprises would be
+carried out in an absolutely honest manner seemed to him the height of
+absurdity.
+
+At last, however, unable as he was to come to a determination, it
+occurred to him to confer with Baron Duvillard, whom he had long known,
+and whom he regretted not having seen sooner so as to urge him to
+purchase Sagnier’s silence. At first he thought of sending the Baron a
+brief note by a messenger; but he disliked committing anything to paper,
+for the veriest scrap of writing may prove dangerous; so he preferred to
+employ the telephone which had been installed for his private use near
+his writing-table.
+
+“It is Baron Duvillard who is speaking to me?... Quite so. It’s I, the
+Minister, Monsieur Monferrand. I shall be much obliged if you will come
+to see me at once.... Quite so, quite so, I will wait for you.”
+
+Then again he walked to and fro and meditated. That fellow Duvillard was
+as clever a man as himself, and might be able to give him an idea. And he
+was still laboriously trying to devise some scheme, when the usher
+entered saying that Monsieur Gascogne, the Chief of the Detective Police,
+particularly wished to speak to him. Monferrand’s first thought was that
+the Prefecture of Police desired to know his views respecting the steps
+which ought to be taken to ensure public order that day; for two mid-Lent
+processions--one of the Washerwomen and the other of the Students--were
+to march through Paris, whose streets would certainly be crowded.
+
+“Show Monsieur Gascogne in,” he said.
+
+A tall, slim, dark man, looking like an artisan in his Sunday best, then
+stepped into the ministerial sanctum. Fully acquainted with the
+under-currents of Paris life, this Chief of the Detective Force had a
+cold dispassionate nature and a clear and methodical mind.
+Professionalism slightly spoilt him, however: he would have possessed
+more intelligence if he had not credited himself with so much.
+
+He began by apologising for his superior the Prefect, who would certainly
+have called in person had he not been suffering from indisposition.
+However, it was perhaps best that he, Gascogne, should acquaint Monsieur
+le Ministre with the grave affair which brought him, for he knew every
+detail of it. Then he revealed what the grave affair was.
+
+“I believe, Monsieur le Ministre, that we at last hold the perpetrator of
+the crime in the Rue Godot-de-Mauroy.”
+
+At this, Monferrand, who had been listening impatiently, became quite
+impassioned. The fruitless searches of the police, the attacks and the
+jeers of the newspapers, were a source of daily worry to him. “Ah!--Well,
+so much the better for you Monsieur Gascogne,” he replied with brutal
+frankness. “You would have ended by losing your post. The man is
+arrested?”
+
+“Not yet, Monsieur le Ministre; but he cannot escape, and it is merely an
+affair of a few hours.”
+
+Then the Chief of the Detective Force told the whole story: how Detective
+Mondésir, on being warned by a secret agent that the Anarchist Salvat was
+in a tavern at Montmartre, had reached it just as the bird had flown;
+then how chance had again set him in presence of Salvat at a hundred
+paces or so from the tavern, the rascal having foolishly loitered there
+to watch the establishment; and afterwards how Salvat had been stealthily
+shadowed in the hope that they might catch him in his hiding-place with
+his accomplices. And, in this wise, he had been tracked to the
+Porte-Maillot, where, realising, no doubt, that he was pursued, he had
+suddenly bolted into the Bois de Boulogne. It was there that he had been
+hiding since two o’clock in the morning in the drizzle which had not
+ceased to fall. They had waited for daylight in order to organise a
+_battue_ and hunt him down like some animal, whose weariness must
+necessarily ensure capture. And so, from one moment to another, he would
+be caught.
+
+“I know the great interest you take in the arrest, Monsieur le Ministre,”
+ added Gascogne, “and it occurred to me to ask your orders. Detective
+Mondésir is over there, directing the hunt. He regrets that he did not
+apprehend the man on the Boulevard de Rochechouart; but, all the same,
+the idea of following him was a capital one, and one can only reproach
+Mondésir with having forgotten the Bois de Boulogne in his calculations.”
+
+Salvat arrested! That fellow Salvat whose name had filled the newspapers
+for three weeks past. This was a most fortunate stroke which would be
+talked of far and wide! In the depths of Monferrand’s fixed eyes one
+could divine a world of thoughts and a sudden determination to turn this
+incident which chance had brought him to his own personal advantage. In
+his own mind a link was already forming between this arrest and that
+African Railways interpellation which was likely to overthrow the
+ministry on the morrow. The first outlines of a scheme already rose
+before him. Was it not his good star that had sent him what he had been
+seeking--a means of fishing himself out of the troubled waters of the
+approaching crisis?
+
+“But tell me, Monsieur Gascogne,” said he, “are you quite sure that this
+man Salvat committed the crime?”
+
+“Oh! perfectly sure, Monsieur le Ministre. He’ll confess everything in
+the cab before he reaches the Prefecture.”
+
+Monferrand again walked to and fro with a pensive air, and ideas came to
+him as he spoke on in a slow, meditative fashion. “My orders! well, my
+orders, they are, first, that you must act with the very greatest
+prudence. Yes, don’t gather a mob of promenaders together. Try to arrange
+things so that the arrest may pass unperceived--and if you secure a
+confession keep it to yourself, don’t communicate it to the newspapers.
+Yes, I particularly recommend that point to you, don’t take the
+newspapers into your confidence at all--and finally, come and tell me
+everything, and observe secrecy, absolute secrecy, with everybody else.”
+
+Gascogne bowed and would have withdrawn, but Monferrand detained him to
+say that not a day passed without his friend Monsieur Lehmann, the Public
+Prosecutor, receiving letters from Anarchists who threatened to blow him
+up with his family; in such wise that, although he was by no means a
+coward, he wished his house to be guarded by plain-clothes officers. A
+similar watch was already kept upon the house where investigating
+magistrate Amadieu resided. And if the latter’s life was precious, that
+of Public Prosecutor Lehmann was equally so, for he was one of those
+political magistrates, one of those shrewd talented Israelites, who make
+their way in very honest fashion by invariably taking the part of the
+Government in office.
+
+Then Gascogne in his turn remarked: “There is also the Barthès affair,
+Monsieur le Ministre--we are still waiting. Are we to arrest Barthès at
+that little house at Neuilly?”
+
+One of those chances which sometimes come to the help of detectives and
+make people think the latter to be men of genius had revealed to him the
+circumstance that Barthès had found a refuge with Abbé Pierre Froment.
+Ever since the Anarchist terror had thrown Paris into dismay a warrant
+had been out against the old man, not for any precise offence, but simply
+because he was a suspicious character and might, therefore, have had some
+intercourse with the Revolutionists. However, it had been repugnant to
+Gascogne to arrest him at the house of a priest whom the whole district
+venerated as a saint; and the Minister, whom he had consulted on the
+point, had warmly approved of his reserve, since a member of the clergy
+was in question, and had undertaken to settle the affair himself.
+
+“No, Monsieur Gascogne,” he now replied, “don’t move in the matter. You
+know what my feelings are, that we ought to have the priests with us and
+not against us--I have had a letter written to Abbé Froment in order that
+he may call here this morning, as I shall have no other visitors. I will
+speak to him myself, and you may take it that the affair no longer
+concerns you.”
+
+Then he was about to dismiss him when the usher came back saying that the
+President of the Council was in the ante-room.*
+
+ * The title of President of the Council is given to the French
+ prime minister.--Trans.
+
+“Barroux!--Ah! dash it, then, Monsieur Gascogne, you had better go out
+this way. It is as well that nobody should meet you, as I wish you to
+keep silent respecting Salvat’s arrest. It’s fully understood, is it not?
+I alone am to know everything; and you will communicate with me here
+direct, by the telephone, if any serious incident should arise.”
+
+The Chief of the Detective Police had scarcely gone off, by way of an
+adjoining _salon_, when the usher reopened the door communicating with
+the ante-room: “Monsieur le President du Conseil.”
+
+With a nicely adjusted show of deference and cordiality, Monferrand
+stepped forward, his hands outstretched: “Ah! my dear President, why did
+you put yourself out to come here? I would have called on you if I had
+known that you wished to see me.”
+
+But with an impatient gesture Barroux brushed aside all question of
+etiquette. “No, no! I was taking my usual stroll in the Champs Elysées,
+and the worries of the situation impressed me so keenly that I preferred
+to come here at once. You yourself must realise that we can’t put up with
+what is taking place. And pending to-morrow morning’s council, when we
+shall have to arrange a plan of defence, I felt that there was good
+reason for us to talk things over.”
+
+He took an armchair, and Monferrand on his side rolled another forward so
+as to seat himself with his back to the light. Whilst Barroux, the elder
+of the pair by ten years, blanched and solemn, with a handsome face,
+snowy whiskers, clean-shaven chin and upper-lip, retained all the dignity
+of power, the bearing of a Conventionnel of romantic views, who sought to
+magnify the simple loyalty of a rather foolish but good-hearted
+_bourgeois_ nature into something great; the other, beneath his heavy
+common countenance and feigned frankness and simplicity, concealed
+unknown depths, the unfathomable soul of a shrewd enjoyer and despot who
+was alike pitiless and unscrupulous in attaining his ends.
+
+For a moment Barroux drew breath, for in reality he was greatly moved,
+his blood rising to his head, and his heart beating with indignation and
+anger at the thought of all the vulgar insults which the “Voix du Peuple”
+ had poured upon him again that morning. “Come, my dear colleague,” said
+he, “one must stop that scandalous campaign. Moreover, you can realise
+what awaits us at the Chamber to-morrow. Now that the famous list has
+been published we shall have every malcontent up in arms. Vignon is
+bestirring himself already--”
+
+“Ah! you have news of Vignon?” exclaimed Monferrand, becoming very
+attentive.
+
+“Well, as I passed his door just now, I saw a string of cabs waiting
+there. All his creatures have been on the move since yesterday, and at
+least twenty persons have told me that the band is already dividing the
+spoils. For, as you must know, the fierce and ingenuous Mège is again
+going to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for others. Briefly, we are
+dead, and the others claim that they are going to bury us in mud before
+they fight over our leavings.” With his arm outstretched Barroux made a
+theatrical gesture, and his voice resounded as if he were in the tribune.
+Nevertheless, his emotion was real, tears even were coming to his eyes.
+“To think that I who have given my whole life to the Republic, I who
+founded it, who saved it, should be covered with insults in this fashion,
+and obliged to defend myself against abominable charges! To say that I
+abused my trust! That I sold myself and took 200,000 francs from that man
+Hunter, simply to slip them into my pocket! Well, certainly there _was_ a
+question of 200,000 francs between us. But how and under what
+circumstances? They were doubtless the same as in your case, with regard
+to the 80,000 francs that he is said to have handed you--”
+
+But Monferrand interrupted his colleague in a clear trenchant voice: “He
+never handed me a centime.”
+
+The other looked at him in astonishment, but could only see his big,
+rough head, whose features were steeped in shadow: “Ah! But I thought you
+had business relations with him, and knew him particularly well.”
+
+“No, I simply knew Hunter as everyone knew him. I was not even aware that
+he was Baron Duvillard’s agent in the African Railways matter; and there
+was never any question of that affair between us.”
+
+This was so improbable, so contrary to everything Barroux knew of the
+business, that for a moment he felt quite scared. Then he waved his hand
+as if to say that others might as well look after their own affairs, and
+reverted to himself. “Oh! as for me,” he said, “Hunter called on me more
+than ten times, and made me quite sick with his talk of the African
+Railways. It was at the time when the Chamber was asked to authorise the
+issue of lottery stock.* And, by the way, my dear fellow, I was then here
+at the Home Department, while you had just taken that of Public Works. I
+can remember sitting at that very writing-table, while Hunter was in the
+same armchair that I now occupy. That day he wanted to consult me about
+the employment of the large sum which Duvillard’s house proposed to spend
+in advertising; and on seeing what big amounts were set down against the
+Royalist journals, I became quite angry, for I realised with perfect
+accuracy that this money would simply be used to wage war against the
+Republic. And so, yielding to Hunter’s entreaties, I also drew up a list
+allotting 200,000 francs among the friendly Republican newspapers, which
+were paid through me, I admit it. And that’s the whole story.”**
+
+ * This kind of stock is common enough in France. A part of it is
+ extinguished annually at a public “drawing,” when all such
+ shares or bonds that are drawn become entitled to redemption
+ at “par,” a percentage of them also securing prizes of various
+ amounts. City of Paris Bonds issued on this system are very
+ popular among French people with small savings; but, on the
+ other hand, many ventures, whose lottery stock has been
+ authorised by the Legislature, have come to grief and ruined
+ investors.--Trans.
+
+ ** All who are acquainted with recent French history will be
+ aware that Barroux’ narrative is simply a passage from the
+ life of the late M. Floquet, slightly modified to suit the
+ requirements of M. Zola’s story.--Trans.
+
+Then he sprang to his feet and struck his chest, whilst his voice again
+rose: “Well, I’ve had more than enough of all that calumny and falsehood!
+And I shall simply tell the Chamber my story to-morrow. It will be my
+only defence. An honest man does not fear the truth!”
+
+But Monferrand, in his turn, had sprung up with a cry which was a
+complete confession of his principles: “It’s ridiculous, one never
+confesses; you surely won’t do such a thing!”
+
+“I shall,” retorted Barroux with superb obstinacy. “And we shall see if
+the Chamber won’t absolve me by acclamation.”
+
+“No, you will fall beneath an explosion of hisses, and drag all of us
+down with you.”
+
+“What does it matter? We shall fall with dignity, like honest men!”
+
+Monferrand made a gesture of furious anger, and then suddenly became
+calm. Amidst all the anxious confusion in which he had been struggling
+since daybreak, a gleam now dawned upon him. The vague ideas suggested by
+Salvat’s approaching arrest took shape, and expanded into an audacious
+scheme. Why should he prevent the fall of that big ninny Barroux? The
+only thing of importance was that he, Monferrand, should not fall with
+him, or at any rate that he should rise again. So he protested no
+further, but merely mumbled a few words, in which his rebellious feeling
+seemingly died out. And at last, putting on his good-natured air once
+more, he said: “Well, after all you are perhaps right. One must be brave.
+Besides, you are our head, my dear President, and we will follow you.”
+
+They had now again sat down face to face, and their conversation
+continued till they came to a cordial agreement respecting the course
+which the Government should adopt in view of the inevitable
+interpellation on the morrow.
+
+Meantime, Baron Duvillard was on his way to the ministry. He had scarcely
+slept that night. When on the return from Montmartre Gérard had set him
+down at his door in the Rue Godot-de-Mauroy, he had at once gone to bed,
+like a man who is determined to compel sleep, so that he may forget his
+worries and recover self-control. But slumber would not come; for hours
+and hours he vainly sought it. The manner in which he had been insulted
+by that creature Silviane was so monstrous! To think that she, whom he
+had enriched, whose every desire he had contented, should have cast such
+mud at him, the master, who flattered himself that he held Paris and the
+Republic in his hands, since he bought up and controlled consciences just
+as others might make corners in wool or leather for the purposes of
+Bourse speculation. And the dim consciousness that Silviane was the
+avenging sore, the cancer preying on him who preyed on others, completed
+his exasperation. In vain did he try to drive away his haunting thoughts,
+remember his business affairs, his appointments for the morrow, his
+millions which were working in every quarter of the world, the financial
+omnipotence which placed the fate of nations in his grasp. Ever, and in
+spite of all, Silviane rose up before him, splashing him with mud. In
+despair he tried to fix his mind on a great enterprise which he had been
+planning for months past, a Trans-Saharan railway, a colossal venture
+which would set millions of money at work, and revolutionise the trade of
+the world. And yet Silviane appeared once more, and smacked him on both
+cheeks with her dainty little hand, which she had dipped in the gutter.
+It was only towards daybreak that he at last dozed off, while vowing in a
+fury that he would never see her again, that he would spurn her, and
+order her away, even should she come and drag herself at his feet.
+
+However, when he awoke at seven, still tired and aching, his first
+thought was for her, and he almost yielded to a fit of weakness. The idea
+came to him to ascertain if she had returned home, and if so make his
+peace. But he jumped out of bed, and after his ablutions he recovered all
+his bravery. She was a wretch, and he this time thought himself for ever
+cured of his passion. To tell the truth, he forgot it as soon as he
+opened the morning newspapers. The publication of the list of
+bribe-takers in the “Voix du Peuple” quite upset him, for he had hitherto
+thought it unlikely that Sagnier held any such list. However, he judged
+the document at a glance, at once separating the few truths it contained
+from a mass of foolishness and falsehood. And this time also he did not
+consider himself personally in danger. There was only one thing that he
+really feared: the arrest of his intermediary, Hunter, whose trial might
+have drawn him into the affair. As matters stood, and as he did not cease
+to repeat with a calm and smiling air, he had merely done what every
+banking-house does when it issues stock, that is, pay the press for
+advertisements and puffery, employ brokers, and reward services
+discreetly rendered to the enterprise. It was all a business matter, and
+for him that expression summed up everything. Moreover, he played the
+game of life bravely, and spoke with indignant contempt of a banker who,
+distracted and driven to extremities by blackmailing, had imagined that
+he would bring a recent scandal to an end by killing himself: a pitiful
+tragedy, from all the mire and blood of which the scandal had sprouted
+afresh with the most luxuriant and indestructible vegetation. No, no!
+suicide was not the course to follow: a man ought to remain erect, and
+struggle on to his very last copper, and the very end of his energy.
+
+At about nine o’clock a ringing brought Duvillard to the telephone
+installed in his private room. And then his folly took possession of him
+once more: it must be Silviane who wished to speak to him. She often
+amused herself by thus disturbing him amidst his greatest cares. No doubt
+she had just returned home, realising that she had carried things too far
+on the previous evening and desiring to be forgiven. However, when he
+found that the call was from Monferrand, who wished him to go to the
+ministry, he shivered slightly, like a man saved from the abyss beside
+which he is travelling. And forthwith he called for his hat and stick,
+desirous as he was of walking and reflecting in the open air. And again
+he became absorbed in the intricacies of the scandalous business which
+was about to stir all Paris and the legislature. Kill himself! ah, no,
+that would be foolish and cowardly. A gust of terror might be sweeping
+past; nevertheless, for his part he felt quite firm, superior to events,
+and resolved to defend himself without relinquishing aught of his power.
+
+As soon as he entered the ante-rooms of the ministry he realised that the
+gust of terror was becoming a tempest. The publication of the terrible
+list in the “Voix du Peuple” had chilled the guilty ones to the heart;
+and, pale and distracted, feeling the ground give way beneath them, they
+had come to take counsel of Monferrand, who, they hoped, might save them.
+The first whom Duvillard perceived was Duthil, looking extremely
+feverish, biting his moustaches, and constantly making grimaces in his
+efforts to force a smile. The banker scolded him for coming, saying that
+it was a great mistake to have done so, particularly with such a scared
+face. The deputy, however, his spirits already cheered by these rough
+words, began to defend himself, declaring that he had not even read
+Sagnier’s article, and had simply come to recommend a lady friend to the
+Minister. Thereupon the Baron undertook this business for him and sent
+him away with the wish that he might spend a merry mid-Lent. However, the
+one who most roused Duvillard’s pity was Chaigneux, whose figure swayed
+about as if bent by the weight of his long equine head, and who looked so
+shabby and untidy that one might have taken him for an old pauper. On
+recognising the banker he darted forward, and bowed to him with
+obsequious eagerness.
+
+“Ah! Monsieur le Baron,” said he, “how wicked some men must be! They are
+killing me, I shall die of it all; and what will become of my wife, what
+will become of my three daughters, who have none but me to help them?”
+
+The whole of his woeful story lay in that lament. A victim of politics,
+he had been foolish enough to quit Arras and his business there as a
+solicitor, in order to seek triumph in Paris with his wife and daughters,
+whose menial he had then become--a menial dismayed by the constant
+rebuffs and failures which his mediocrity brought upon him. An honest
+deputy! ah, good heavens! yes, he would have liked to be one; but was he
+not perpetually “hard-up,” ever in search of a hundred-franc note, and
+thus, perforce, a deputy for sale? And withal he led such a pitiable
+life, so badgered by the women folk about him, that to satisfy their
+demands he would have picked up money no matter where or how.
+
+“Just fancy, Monsieur le Baron, I have at last found a husband for my
+eldest girl. It is the first bit of luck that I have ever had; there will
+only be three women left on my hands if it comes off. But you can imagine
+what a disastrous impression such an article as that of this morning must
+create in the young man’s family. So I have come to see the Minister to
+beg him to give my future son-in-law a prefectoral secretaryship. I have
+already promised him the post, and if I can secure it things may yet be
+arranged.”
+
+He looked so terribly shabby and spoke in such a doleful voice that it
+occurred to Duvillard to do one of those good actions on which he
+ventured at times when they were likely to prove remunerative
+investments. It is, indeed, an excellent plan to give a crust of bread to
+some poor devil whom one can turn, if necessary, into a valet or an
+accomplice. So the banker dismissed Chaigneux, undertaking to do his
+business for him in the same way as he had undertaken to do Duthil’s. And
+he added that he would be pleased to see him on the morrow, and have a
+chat with him, as he might be able to help him in the matter of his
+daughter’s marriage.
+
+At this Chaigneux, scenting a loan, collapsed into the most lavish
+thanks. “Ah! Monsieur le Baron, my life will not be long enough to enable
+me to repay such a debt of gratitude.”
+
+As Duvillard turned round he was surprised to see Abbé Froment waiting in
+a corner of the ante-room. Surely that one could not belong to the batch
+of _suspects_, although by the manner in which he was pretending to read
+a newspaper it seemed as if he were trying to hide some keen anxiety. At
+last the Baron stepped forward, shook hands, and spoke to him cordially.
+And Pierre thereupon related that he had received a letter requesting him
+to call on the Minister that day. Why, he could not tell; in fact, he was
+greatly surprised, he said, putting on a smile in order to conceal his
+disquietude. He had been waiting a long time already, and hoped that he
+would not be forgotten on that bench.
+
+Just then the usher appeared, and hastened up to the banker. “The
+Minister,” said he, “was at that moment engaged with the President of the
+Council; but he had orders to admit the Baron as soon as the President
+withdrew.” Almost immediately afterwards Barroux came out, and as
+Duvillard was about to enter he recognised and detained him. And he spoke
+of the denunciations very bitterly, like one indignant with all the
+slander. Would not he, Duvillard, should occasion require it, testify
+that he, Barroux, had never taken a centime for himself? Then, forgetting
+that he was speaking to a banker, and that he was Minister of Finances,
+he proceeded to express all his disgust of money. Ah! what poisonous,
+murky, and defiling waters were those in which money-making went on!
+However, he repeated that he would chastise his insulters, and that a
+statement of the truth would suffice for the purpose.
+
+Duvillard listened and looked at him. And all at once the thought of
+Silviane came back, and took possession of the Baron, without any attempt
+on his part to drive it away. He reflected that if Barroux had chosen to
+give him a helping hand when he had asked for it, Silviane would now have
+been at the Comédie Française, in which case the deplorable affair of the
+previous night would not have occurred; for he was beginning to regard
+himself as guilty in the matter; if he had only contented Silviane’s whim
+she would never have dismissed him in so vile a fashion.
+
+“You know, I owe you a grudge,” he said, interrupting Barroux.
+
+The other looked at him in astonishment. “And why, pray?” he asked.
+
+“Why, because you never helped me in the matter of that friend of mine
+who wishes to make her _début_ in ‘Polyeucte.’”
+
+Barroux smiled, and with amiable condescension replied: “Ah! yes,
+Silviane d’Aulnay! But, my dear sir, it was Taboureau who put spokes in
+the wheel. The Fine Arts are his department, and the question was
+entirely one for him. And I could do nothing; for that very worthy and
+honest gentleman, who came to us from a provincial faculty, was full of
+scruples. For my own part I’m an old Parisian, I can understand anything,
+and I should have been delighted to please you.”
+
+At this fresh resistance offered to his passion Duvillard once more
+became excited, eager to obtain that which was denied him. “Taboureau,
+Taboureau!” said he, “he’s a nice deadweight for you to load yourself
+with! Honest! isn’t everybody honest? Come, my dear Minister, there’s
+still time, get Silviane admitted, it will bring you good luck for
+to-morrow.”
+
+This time Barroux burst into a frank laugh: “No, no, I can’t cast
+Taboureau adrift at this moment--people would make too much sport of
+it--a ministry wrecked or saved by a Silviane question!”
+
+Then he offered his hand before going off. The Baron pressed it, and for
+a moment retained it in his own, whilst saying very gravely and with a
+somewhat pale face: “You do wrong to laugh, my dear Minister. Governments
+have fallen or set themselves erect again through smaller matters than
+that. And should you fall to-morrow I trust that you will never have
+occasion to regret it.”
+
+Wounded to the heart by the other’s jesting air, exasperated by the idea
+that there was something he could not achieve, Duvillard watched Barroux
+as he withdrew. Most certainly the Baron did not desire a reconciliation
+with Silviane, but he vowed that he would overturn everything if
+necessary in order to send her a signed engagement for the Comédie, and
+this simply by way of vengeance, as a slap, so to say,--yes, a slap which
+would make her tingle! That moment spent with Barroux had been a decisive
+one.
+
+However, whilst still following Barroux with his eyes, Duvillard was
+surprised to see Fonsègue arrive and manœuvre in such a way as to escape
+the Prime Minister’s notice. He succeeded in doing so, and then entered
+the ante-room with an appearance of dismay about the whole of his little
+figure, which was, as a rule, so sprightly. It was the gust of terror,
+still blowing, that had brought him thither.
+
+“Didn’t you see your friend Barroux?” the Baron asked him, somewhat
+puzzled.
+
+“Barroux? No!”
+
+This quiet lie was equivalent to a confession of everything. Fonsègue was
+so intimate with Barroux that he thee’d and thou’d him, and for ten years
+had been supporting him in his newspaper, having precisely the same
+views, the same political religion. But with a smash-up threatening, he
+doubtless realised, thanks to his wonderfully keen scent, that he must
+change his friendships if he did not wish to remain under the ruins
+himself. If he had, for long years, shown so much prudence and diplomatic
+virtue in order to firmly establish the most dignified and respected of
+Parisian newspapers, it was not for the purpose of letting that newspaper
+be compromised by some foolish blunder on the part of an honest man.
+
+“I thought you were on bad terms with Monferrand,” resumed Duvillard.
+“What have you come here for?”
+
+“Oh! my dear Baron, the director of a leading newspaper is never on bad
+terms with anybody. He’s at the country’s service.”
+
+In spite of his emotion, Duvillard could not help smiling. “You are
+right,” he responded. “Besides, Monferrand is really an able man, whom
+one can support without fear.”
+
+At this Fonsègue began to wonder whether his anguish of mind was visible.
+He, who usually played the game of life so well, with his own hand under
+thorough control, had been terrified by the article in the “Voix du
+Peuple.” For the first time in his career he had perpetrated a blunder,
+and felt that he was at the mercy of some denunciation, for with
+unpardonable imprudence he had written a very brief but compromising
+note. He was not anxious concerning the 50,000 francs which Barroux had
+handed him out of the 200,000 destined for the Republican press. But he
+trembled lest another affair should be discovered, that of a sum of money
+which he had received as a present. It was only on feeling the Baron’s
+keen glance upon him that he was able to recover some self-possession.
+How silly it was to lose the knack of lying and to confess things simply
+by one’s demeanour!
+
+But the usher drew near and repeated that the Minister was now waiting
+for the Baron; and Fonsègue went to sit down beside Abbé Froment, whom he
+also was astonished to find there. Pierre repeated that he had received a
+letter, but had no notion what the Minister might wish to say to him. And
+the quiver of his hands again revealed how feverishly impatient he was to
+know what it might be. However, he could only wait, since Monferrand was
+still busy discussing such grave affairs.
+
+On seeing Duvillard enter, the Minister had stepped forward, offering his
+hand. However much the blast of terror might shake others, he had
+retained his calmness and good-natured smile. “What an affair, eh, my
+dear Baron!” he exclaimed.
+
+“It’s idiotic!” plainly declared the other, with a shrug of his
+shoulders. Then he sat down in the armchair vacated by Barroux, while the
+Minister installed himself in front of him. These two were made to
+understand one another, and they indulged in the same despairing gestures
+and furious complaints, declaring that government, like business, would
+no longer be possible if men were required to show such virtue as they
+did not possess. At all times, and under every _régime_, when a decision
+of the Chambers had been required in connection with some great
+enterprise, had not the natural and legitimate tactics been for one to do
+what might be needful to secure that decision? It was absolutely
+necessary that one should obtain influential and sympathetic support, in
+a word, make sure of votes. Well, everything had to be paid for, men like
+other things, some with fine words, others with favours or money,
+presents made in a more or less disguised manner. And even admitting
+that, in the present cases, one had gone rather far in the purchasing,
+that some of the bartering had been conducted in an imprudent way, was it
+wise to make such an uproar over it? Would not a strong government have
+begun by stifling the scandal, from motives of patriotism, a mere sense
+of cleanliness even?
+
+“Why, of course! You are right, a thousand times right!” exclaimed
+Monferrand. “Ah! if I were the master you would see what a fine
+first-class funeral I would give it all!” Then, as Duvillard looked at
+him fixedly, struck by these last words, he added with his expressive
+smile: “Unfortunately I’m not the master, and it was to talk to you of
+the situation that I ventured to disturb you. Barroux, who was here just
+now, seemed to me in a regrettable frame of mind.”
+
+“Yes, I saw him, he has such singular ideas at times--” Then, breaking
+off, the Baron added: “Do you know that Fonsègue is in the ante-room? As
+he wishes to make his peace with you, why not send for him? He won’t be
+in the way, in fact, he’s a man of good counsel, and the support of his
+newspaper often suffices to give one the victory.”
+
+“What, is Fonsègue there!” cried Monferrand. “Why, I don’t ask better
+than to shake hands with him. There were some old affairs between us that
+don’t concern anybody! But, good heavens! if you only knew what little
+spite I harbour!”
+
+When the usher had admitted Fonsègue the reconciliation took place in the
+simplest fashion. They had been great friends at college in their native
+Corrèze, but had not spoken together for ten years past in consequence of
+some abominable affair the particulars of which were not exactly known.
+However, it becomes necessary to clear away all corpses when one wishes
+to have the arena free for a fresh battle.
+
+“It’s very good of you to come back the first,” said Monferrand. “So it’s
+all over, you no longer bear me any grudge?”
+
+“No, indeed!” replied Fonsègue. “Why should people devour one another
+when it would be to their interest to come to an understanding?”
+
+Then, without further explanations, they passed to the great affair, and
+the conference began. And when Monferrand had announced Barroux’
+determination to confess and explain his conduct, the others loudly
+protested. That meant certain downfall, they would prevent him, he surely
+would not be guilty of such folly. Forthwith they discussed every
+imaginable plan by which the Ministry might be saved, for that must
+certainly be Monferrand’s sole desire. He himself with all eagerness
+pretended to seek some means of extricating his colleagues and himself
+from the mess in which they were. However, a faint smile, still played
+around his lips, and at last as if vanquished he sought no further.
+“There’s no help for it,” said he, “the ministry’s down.”
+
+The others exchanged glances, full of anxiety at the thought of another
+Cabinet dealing with the African Railways affair. A Vignon Cabinet would
+doubtless plume itself on behaving honestly.
+
+“Well, then, what shall we do?”
+
+But just then the telephone rang, and Monferrand rose to respond to the
+summons: “Allow me.”
+
+He listened for a moment and then spoke into the tube, nothing that he
+said giving the others any inkling of the information which had reached
+him. This had come from the Chief of the Detective Police, and was to the
+effect that Salvat’s whereabouts in the Bois de Boulogne had been
+discovered, and that he would be hunted down with all speed. “Very good!
+And don’t forget my orders,” replied Monferrand.
+
+Now that Salvat’s arrest was certain, the Minister determined to follow
+the plan which had gradually taken shape in his mind; and returning to
+the middle of the room he slowly walked to and fro, while saying with his
+wonted familiarity: “But what would you have, my friends? It would be
+necessary for me to be the master. Ah! if I were the master! A Commission
+of Inquiry, yes! that’s the proper form for a first-class funeral to take
+in a big affair like this, so full of nasty things. For my part, I should
+confess nothing, and I should have a Commission appointed. And then you
+would see the storm subside.”
+
+Duvillard and Fonsègue began to laugh. The latter, however, thanks to his
+intimate knowledge of Monferrand, almost guessed the truth. “Just
+listen!” said he; “even if the ministry falls it doesn’t necessarily
+follow that you must be on the ground with it. Besides, a ministry can be
+mended when there are good pieces of it left.”
+
+Somewhat anxious at finding his thoughts guessed, Monferrand protested:
+“No, no, my dear fellow, I don’t play that game. We are jointly
+responsible, we’ve got to keep together, dash it all!”
+
+“Keep together! Pooh! Not when simpletons purposely drown themselves!
+And, besides, if we others have need of you, we have a right to save you
+in spite of yourself! Isn’t that so, my dear Baron?”
+
+Then, as Monferrand sat down, no longer protesting but waiting,
+Duvillard, who was again thinking of his passion, full of anger at the
+recollection of Barroux’ refusal, rose in his turn, and exclaimed: “Why,
+certainly! If the ministry’s condemned let it fall! What good can you get
+out of a ministry which includes such a man as Taboureau! There you have
+an old, worn-out professor without any prestige, who comes to Paris from
+Grenoble, and has never set foot in a theatre in his life! Yet the
+control of the theatres is handed over to him, and naturally he’s ever
+doing the most stupid things!”
+
+Monferrand, who was well informed on the Silviane question, remained
+grave, and for a moment amused himself by trying to excite the Baron.
+“Taboureau,” said he, “is a somewhat dull and old-fashioned University
+man, but at the department of Public Instruction he’s in his proper
+element.”
+
+“Oh! don’t talk like that, my dear fellow! You are more intelligent than
+that, you are not going to defend Taboureau as Barroux did. It’s quite
+true that I should very much like to see Silviane at the Comédie. She’s a
+very good girl at heart, and she has an amazing lot of talent. Would you
+stand in her way if you were in Taboureau’s place?”
+
+“I? Good heavens, no! A pretty girl on the stage, why, it would please
+everybody, I’m sure. Only it would be necessary to have a man of the same
+views as were at the department of Instruction and Fine Arts.”
+
+His sly smile had returned to his face. The securing of that girl’s
+_début_ was certainly not a high price to pay for all the influence of
+Duvillard’s millions. Monferrand therefore turned towards Fonsègue as if
+to consult him. The other, who fully understood the importance of the
+affair, was meditating in all seriousness: “A senator is the proper man
+for Public Instruction,” said he. “But I can think of none, none at all,
+such as would be wanted. A man of broad mind, a real Parisian, and yet
+one whose presence at the head of the University wouldn’t cause too much
+astonishment--there’s perhaps Dauvergne--”
+
+“Dauvergne! Who’s he?” exclaimed Monferrand in surprise. “Ah! yes,
+Dauvergne the senator for Dijon--but he’s altogether ignorant of
+University matters, he hasn’t the slightest qualification.”
+
+“Well, as for that,” resumed Fonsègue, “I’m trying to think. Dauvergne is
+certainly a good-looking fellow, tall and fair and decorative. Besides,
+he’s immensely rich, has a most charming young wife--which does no harm,
+on the contrary--and he gives real _fêtes_ at his place on the Boulevard
+St. Germain.”
+
+It was only with hesitation that Fonsègue himself had ventured to suggest
+Dauvergne. But by degrees his selection appeared to him a real “find.”
+ “Wait a bit! I recollect now that in his young days Dauvergne wrote a
+comedy, a one act comedy in verse, and had it performed at Dijon. And
+Dijon’s a literary town, you know, so that piece of his sets a little
+perfume of ‘Belles-Lettres’ around him. And then, too, he left Dijon
+twenty years ago, and is a most determined Parisian, frequenting every
+sphere of society. Dauvergne will do whatever one desires. He’s the man
+for us, I tell you.”
+
+Duvillard thereupon declared that he knew him, and considered him a very
+decent fellow. Besides, he or another, it mattered nothing!
+
+“Dauvergne, Dauvergne,” repeated Monferrand. “_Mon Dieu_, yes! After all,
+why not? He’ll perhaps make a very good minister. Let us say Dauvergne.”
+ Then suddenly bursting into a hearty laugh: “And so we are reconstructing
+the Cabinet in order that that charming young woman may join the Comédie!
+The Silviane cabinet--well, and what about the other departments?”
+
+He jested, well knowing that gaiety often hastens difficult solutions.
+And, indeed, they merrily continued settling what should be done if the
+ministry were defeated on the morrow. Although they had not plainly said
+so the plan was to let Barroux sink, even help him to do so, and then
+fish Monferrand out of the troubled waters. The latter engaged himself
+with the two others, because he had need of them, the Baron on account of
+his financial sovereignty, and the director of “Le Globe” on account of
+the press campaign which he could carry on in his favour. And in the same
+way the others, quite apart from the Silviane business, had need of
+Monferrand, the strong-handed man of government, who undertook to bury
+the African Railways scandal by bringing about a Commission of Inquiry,
+all the strings of which would be pulled by himself. There was soon a
+perfect understanding between the three men, for nothing draws people
+more closely together than common interest, fear and need. Accordingly,
+when Duvillard spoke of Duthil’s business, the young lady whom he wished
+to recommend, the Minister declared that it was settled. A very nice
+fellow was Duthil, they needed a good many like him. And it was also
+agreed that Chaigneux’ future son-in-law should have his secretaryship.
+Poor Chaigneux! He was so devoted, always ready to undertake any
+commission, and his four women folk led him such a hard life!
+
+“Well, then, it’s understood.” And Monferrand, Duvillard and Fonsègue
+vigorously shook hands.
+
+However, when the first accompanied the others to the door, he noticed a
+prelate, in a cassock of fine material, edged with violet, speaking to a
+priest in the ante-room. Thereupon he, the Minister, hastened forward,
+looking much distressed. “Ah! you were waiting, Monseigneur Martha! Come
+in, come in quick!”
+
+But with perfect urbanity the Bishop refused. “No, no, Monsieur l’Abbé
+Froment was here before me. Pray receive him first.”
+
+Monferrand had to give way; he admitted the priest, and speedily dealt
+with him. He who usually employed the most diplomatic reserve when he was
+in presence of a member of the clergy plumply unfolded the Barthès
+business. Pierre had experienced the keenest anguish during the two hours
+that he had been waiting there, for he could only explain the letter he
+had received by a surmise that the police had discovered his brother’s
+presence in his house. And so when he heard the Minister simply speak of
+Barthès, and declare that the government would rather see him go into
+exile than be obliged to imprison him once more, he remained for a moment
+quite disconcerted. As the police had been able to discover the old
+conspirator in the little house at Neuilly, how was it that they seemed
+altogether ignorant of Guillaume’s presence there? It was, however, the
+usual gap in the genius of great detectives.
+
+“Pray what do you desire of me, Monsieur le Ministre?” said Pierre at
+last; “I don’t quite understand.”
+
+“Why, Monsieur l’Abbé, I leave all this to your sense of prudence. If
+that man were still at your house in forty-eight hours from now, we
+should be obliged to arrest him there, which would be a source of grief
+to us, for we are aware that your residence is the abode of every virtue.
+So advise him to leave France. If he does that we shall not trouble him.”
+
+Then Monferrand hastily brought Pierre back to the ante-room; and,
+smiling and bending low, he said: “Monseigneur, I am entirely at your
+disposal. Come in, come in, I beg you.”
+
+The prelate, who was gaily chatting with Duvillard and Fonsègue, shook
+hands with them, and then with Pierre. In his desire to win all hearts,
+he that morning displayed the most perfect graciousness. His bright,
+black eyes were all smiles, the whole of his handsome face wore a
+caressing expression, and he entered the ministerial sanctum leisurely
+and gracefully, with an easy air of conquest.
+
+And now only Monferrand and Monseigneur Martha were left, talking on and
+on in the deserted building. Some people had thought that the prelate
+wished to become a deputy. But he played a far more useful and lofty part
+in governing behind the scenes, in acting as the directing mind of the
+Vatican’s policy in France. Was not France still the Eldest Daughter of
+the Church, the only great nation which might some day restore
+omnipotence to the Papacy? For that reason he had accepted the Republic,
+preached the duty of “rallying” to it, and inspired the new Catholic
+group in the Chamber. And Monferrand, on his side, struck by the progress
+of the New Spirit, that reaction of mysticism which flattered itself that
+it would bury science, showed the prelate much amiability, like a
+strong-handed man who, to ensure his own victory, utilised every force
+that was offered him.
+
+
+
+
+IV. THE MAN HUNT
+
+ON the afternoon of that same day such a keen desire for space and the
+open air came upon Guillaume, that Pierre consented to accompany him on a
+long walk in the Bois de Boulogne. The priest, upon returning from his
+interview with Monferrand, had informed his brother that the government
+once more wished to get rid of Nicholas Barthès. However, they were so
+perplexed as to how they should impart these tidings to the old man, that
+they resolved to postpone the matter until the evening. During their walk
+they might devise some means of breaking the news in a gentle way. As for
+the walk, this seemed to offer no danger; to all appearance Guillaume was
+in no wise threatened, so why should he continue hiding? Thus the
+brothers sallied forth and entered the Bois by the Sablons gate, which
+was the nearest to them.
+
+The last days of March had now come, and the trees were beginning to show
+some greenery, so soft and light, however, that one might have thought it
+was pale moss or delicate lace hanging between the stems and boughs.
+Although the sky remained of an ashen grey, the rain, after falling
+throughout the night and morning, had ceased; and exquisite freshness
+pervaded that wood now awakening to life once more, with its foliage
+dripping in the mild and peaceful atmosphere. The mid-Lent rejoicings had
+apparently attracted the populace to the centre of Paris, for in the
+avenues one found only the fashionable folks of select days, the people
+of society who come thither when the multitude stops away. There were
+carriages and gentlemen on horseback; beautiful aristocratic ladies who
+had alighted from their broughams or landaus; and wet-nurses with
+streaming ribbons, who carried infants wearing the most costly lace. Of
+the middle-classes, however, one found only a few matrons living in the
+neighbourhood, who sat here and there on the benches busy with embroidery
+or watching their children play.
+
+Pierre and Guillaume followed the Allée de Longchamp as far as the road
+going from Madrid to the lakes. Then they took their way under the trees,
+alongside the little Longchamp rivulet. They wished to reach the lakes,
+pass round them, and return home by way of the Maillot gate. But so
+charming and peaceful was the deserted plantation through which they
+passed, that they yielded to a desire to sit down and taste the delight
+of resting amidst all the budding springtide around them. A fallen tree
+served them as a bench, and it was possible for them to fancy themselves
+far away from Paris, in the depths of some real forest. It was, too, of a
+real forest that Guillaume began to think on thus emerging from his long,
+voluntary imprisonment. Ah! for the space; and for the health-bringing
+air which courses between that forest’s branches, that forest of the
+world which by right should be man’s inalienable domain! However, the
+name of Barthès, the perpetual prisoner, came back to Guillaume’s lips,
+and he sighed mournfully. The thought that there should be even a single
+man whose liberty was thus ever assailed, sufficed to poison the pure
+atmosphere he breathed.
+
+“What will you say to Barthès?” he asked his brother. “The poor fellow
+must necessarily be warned. Exile is at any rate preferable to
+imprisonment.”
+
+Pierre sadly waved his hand. “Yes, of course, I must warn him. But what a
+painful task it is!”
+
+Guillaume made no rejoinder, for at that very moment, in that remote,
+deserted nook, where they could fancy themselves at the world’s end, a
+most extraordinary spectacle was presented to their view. Something or
+rather someone leapt out of a thicket and bounded past them. It was
+assuredly a man, but one who was so unrecognisable, so miry, so woeful
+and so frightful, that he might have been taken for an animal, a boar
+that hounds had tracked and forced from his retreat. On seeing the
+rivulet, he hesitated for a moment, and then followed its course. But,
+all at once, as a sound of footsteps and panting breath drew nearer, he
+sprang into the water, which reached his thighs, bounded on to the
+further bank, and vanished from sight behind a clump of pines. A moment
+afterwards some keepers and policemen rushed by, skirting the rivulet,
+and in their turn disappearing. It was a man hunt that had gone past, a
+fierce, secret hunt with no display of scarlet or blast of horns athwart
+the soft, sprouting foliage.
+
+“Some rascal or other,” muttered Pierre. “Ah! the wretched fellow!”
+
+Guillaume made a gesture of discouragement. “Gendarmes and prison!” said
+he. “They still constitute society’s only schooling system!”
+
+Meantime the man was still running on, farther and farther away.
+
+When, on the previous night, Salvat had suddenly escaped from the
+detectives by bounding into the Bois de Boulogne, it had occurred to him
+to slip round to the Dauphine gate and there descend into the deep ditch*
+of the city ramparts. He remembered days of enforced idleness which he
+had spent there, in nooks where, for his own part, he had never met a
+living soul. Nowhere, indeed, could one find more secret places of
+retreat, hedged round by thicker bushes, or concealed from view by
+loftier herbage. Some corners of the ditch, at certain angles of the
+massive bastions, are favourite dens or nests for thieves and lovers.
+Salvat, as he made his way through the thickest of the brambles, nettles
+and ivy, was lucky enough to find a cavity full of dry leaves, in which
+he buried himself to the chin. The rain had already drenched him, and
+after slipping down the muddy slope, he had frequently been obliged to
+grope his way upon all fours. So those dry leaves proved a boon such as
+he had not dared to hope for. They dried him somewhat, serving as a
+blanket in which he coiled himself after his wild race through the dank
+darkness. The rain still fell, but he now only felt it on his head, and,
+weary as he was, he gradually sank into deep slumber beneath the
+continuous drizzle. When he opened his eyes again, the dawn was breaking,
+and it was probably about six o’clock. During his sleep the rain had
+ended by soaking the leaves, so that he was now immersed in a kind of
+chilly bath. Still he remained in it, feeling that he was there sheltered
+from the police, who must now surely be searching for him. None of those
+bloodhounds would guess his presence in that hole, for his body was quite
+buried, and briers almost completely hid his head. So he did not stir,
+but watched the rise of the dawn.
+
+ * This ditch or dry moat is about 30 feet deep and 50 feet wide.
+ The counterscarp by which one may descend into it has an angle
+ of 45 degrees.--Trans.
+
+When at eight o’clock some policemen and keepers came by, searching the
+ditch, they did not perceive him. As he had anticipated, the hunt had
+begun at the first glimmer of light. For a time his heart beat violently;
+however, nobody else passed, nothing whatever stirred the grass. The only
+sounds that reached him were faint ones from the Bois de Boulogne, the
+ring of a bicyclist’s bell, the thud of a horse’s hoofs, the rumble of
+carriage wheels. And time went by, nine o’clock came, and then ten
+o’clock. Since the rain had ceased falling, Salvat had not suffered so
+much from the cold, for he was wearing a thick overcoat which little
+Mathis had given him. But, on the other hand, hunger was coming back;
+there was a burning sensation in his stomach, and leaden hoops seemed to
+be pressing against his ribs. He had eaten nothing for two days; he had
+been starving already on the previous evening, when he had accepted a
+glass of beer at that tavern at Montmartre. Nevertheless, his plan was to
+remain in the ditch until nightfall, and then slip away in the direction
+of the village of Boulogne, where he knew of a means of egress from the
+wood. He was not caught yet, he repeated, he might still manage to
+escape. Then he tried to get to sleep again, but failed, so painful had
+his sufferings become. By the time it was eleven, everything swam before
+his eyes. He once nearly fainted, and thought that he was going to die.
+Then rage gradually mastered him, and, all at once, he sprang out of his
+leafy hiding-place, desperately hungering for food, unable to remain
+there any longer, and determined to find something to eat, even should it
+cost him his liberty and life. It was then noon.
+
+On leaving the ditch he found the spreading lawns of the château of La
+Muette before him. He crossed them at a run, like a madman, instinctively
+going towards Boulogne, with the one idea that his only means of escape
+lay in that direction. It seemed miraculous that nobody paid attention to
+his helter-skelter flight. However, when he had reached the cover of some
+trees he became conscious of his imprudence, and almost regretted the
+sudden madness which had borne him along, eager for escape. Trembling
+nervously, he bent low among some furze bushes, and waited for a few
+minutes to ascertain if the police were behind him. Then with watchful
+eye and ready ear, wonderful instinct and scent of danger, he slowly went
+his way again. He hoped to pass between the upper lake and the Auteuil
+race-course; but there were few trees in that part, and they formed a
+broad avenue. He therefore had to exert all his skill in order to avoid
+observation, availing himself of the slenderest stems, the smallest
+bushes, as screens, and only venturing onward after a lengthy inspection
+of his surroundings. Before long the sight of a guard in the distance
+revived his fears and detained him, stretched on the ground behind some
+brambles, for a full quarter of an hour. Then the approach first of a
+cab, whose driver had lost his way, and afterwards of a strolling
+pedestrian, in turn sufficed to stop him. He breathed once more, however,
+when, after passing the Mortemart hillock, he was able to enter the
+thickets lying between the two roads which lead to Boulogne and St.
+Cloud. The coppices thereabouts were dense, and he merely had to follow
+them, screened from view, in order to reach the outlet he knew of, which
+was now near at hand. So he was surely saved.
+
+But all at once, at a distance of some five and thirty yards, he saw a
+keeper, erect and motionless, barring his way. He turned slightly to the
+left and there perceived another keeper, who also seemed to be awaiting
+him. And there were more and more of them; at every fifty paces or so
+stood a fresh one, the whole forming a _cordon_, the meshes as it were of
+a huge net. The worst was that he must have been perceived, for a light
+cry, like the clear call of an owl, rang out, and was repeated farther
+and farther off. The hunters were at last on the right scent, prudence
+had become superfluous, and it was only by flight that the quarry might
+now hope to escape. Salvat understood this so well that he suddenly began
+to run, leaping over all obstacles and darting between the trees,
+careless whether he were seen or heard. A few bounds carried him across
+the Avenue de St. Cloud into the plantations stretching to the Allée de
+la Reine Marguerite. There the undergrowth was very dense; in the whole
+Bois there are no more closely set thickets. In summer they become one
+vast entanglement of verdure, amidst which, had it been the leafy season,
+Salvat might well have managed to secrete himself. For a moment he did
+find himself alone, and thereupon he halted to listen. He could neither
+see nor hear the keepers now. Had they lost his track, then? Profound
+quietude reigned under the fresh young foliage. But the light, owlish cry
+arose once more, branches cracked, and he resumed his wild flight,
+hurrying straight before him. Unluckily he found the Allée de la Reine
+Marguerite guarded by policemen, so that he could not cross over, but had
+to skirt it without quitting the thickets. And now his back was turned
+towards Boulogne; he was retracing his steps towards Paris. However, a
+last idea came to his bewildered mind: it was to run on in this wise as
+far as the shady spots around Madrid, and then, by stealing from copse to
+copse, attempt to reach the Seine. To proceed thither across the bare
+expanse of the race-course and training ground was not for a moment to be
+thought of.
+
+So Salvat still ran on and on. But on reaching the Allée de Longchamp he
+found it guarded like the other roads, and therefore had to relinquish
+his plan of escaping by way of Madrid and the river-bank. While he was
+perforce making a bend alongside the Pré Catelan, he became aware that
+the keepers, led by detectives, were drawing yet nearer to him, confining
+his movements to a smaller and smaller area. And his race soon acquired
+all the frenzy of despair. Haggard and breathless he leapt mounds, rushed
+past multitudinous obstacles. He forced a passage through brambles, broke
+down palings, thrice caught his feet in wire work which he had not seen,
+and fell among nettles, yet picked himself up went on again, spurred by
+the stinging of his hands and face. It was then Guillaume and Pierre saw
+him pass, unrecognisable and frightful, taking to the muddy water of the
+rivulet like a stag which seeks to set a last obstacle between itself and
+the hounds. There came to him a wild idea of getting to the lake, and
+swimming, unperceived, to the island in the centre of it. That, he madly
+thought, would be a safe retreat, where he might burrow and hide himself
+without possibility of discovery. And so he still ran on. But once again
+the sight of some guards made him retrace his steps, and he was compelled
+to go back and back in the direction of Paris, chased, forced towards the
+very fortifications whence he had started that morning. It was now nearly
+three in the afternoon. For more than two hours and a half he had been
+running.
+
+At last he saw a soft, sandy ride for horsemen before him. He crossed it,
+splashing through the mire left by the rain, and reached a little
+pathway, a delightful lovers’ lane, as shady in summer as any arbour. For
+some time he was able to follow it, concealed from observation, and with
+his hopes reviving. But it led him to one of those broad, straight
+avenues where carriages and bicycles, the whole afternoon pageant of
+society, swept past under the mild and cloudy sky. So he returned to the
+thickets, fell once more upon the keepers, lost all notion of the
+direction he took, and even all power of thought, becoming a mere thing
+carried along and thrown hither and thither by the chances of the pursuit
+which pressed more and more closely upon him. Star-like crossways
+followed one upon other, and at last he came to a broad lawn, where the
+full light dazzled him. And there he suddenly felt the hot, panting
+breath of his pursuers close in the rear. Eager, hungry breath it was,
+like that of hounds seeking to devour him. Shouts rang out, one hand
+almost caught hold of him, there was a rush of heavy feet, a scramble to
+seize him. But with a supreme effort he leapt upon a bank, crawled to its
+summit, rose again, and once more found himself alone, still running on
+amid the fresh and quiet greenery.
+
+Nevertheless, this was the end. He almost fell flat upon the ground. His
+aching feet could no longer carry him; blood was oozing from his ears,
+and froth had come to his mouth. His heart beat with such violence that
+it seemed likely to break his ribs. Water and perspiration streamed from
+him, he was miry and haggard and tortured by hunger, conquered, in fact,
+more by hunger than by fatigue. And through the mist which seemed to have
+gathered before his wild eyes, he suddenly saw an open doorway, the
+doorway of a coach-house in the rear of a kind of chalet, sequestered
+among trees. Excepting a big white cat, which took to flight, there was
+not a living creature in the place. Salvat plunged into it and rolled
+over on a heap of straw, among some empty casks. He was scarcely hidden
+there when he heard the chase sweep by, the detectives and the keepers
+losing scent, passing the chalet and rushing in the direction of the
+Paris ramparts. The noise of their heavy boots died away, and deep
+silence fell, while the hunted man, who had carried both hands to his
+heart to stay its beating, sank into the most complete prostration, with
+big tears trickling from his closed eyes.
+
+Whilst all this was going on, Pierre and Guillaume, after a brief rest,
+had resumed their walk, reaching the lake and proceeding towards the
+crossway of the Cascades, in order to return to Neuilly by the road
+beyond the water. However, a shower fell, compelling them to take shelter
+under the big leafless branches of a chestnut-tree. Then, as the rain
+came down more heavily and they could perceive a kind of chalet, a little
+café-restaurant amid a clump of trees, they hastened thither for better
+protection. In a side road, which they passed on their way, they saw a
+cab standing, its driver waiting there in philosophical fashion under the
+falling shower. Pierre, moreover, noticed a young man stepping out
+briskly in front of them, a young man resembling Gérard de Quinsac, who,
+whilst walking in the Bois, had no doubt been overtaken by the rain, and
+like themselves was seeking shelter in the chalet. However, on entering
+the latter’s public room, the priest saw no sign of the gentleman, and
+concluded that he must have been mistaken. This public room, which had a
+kind of glazed verandah overlooking the Bois, contained a few chairs and
+tables, the latter with marble tops. On the first floor there were four
+or five private rooms reached by a narrow passage. Though the doors were
+open the place had as yet scarcely emerged from its winter’s rest. There
+was nobody about, and on all sides one found the dampness common to
+establishments which, from lack of custom, are compelled to close from
+November until March. In the rear were some stables, a coach-house, and
+various mossy, picturesque outbuildings, which painters and gardeners
+would now soon embellish for the gay pleasure parties which the fine
+weather would bring.
+
+“I really think that they haven’t opened for the season yet,” said
+Guillaume as he entered the silent house.
+
+“At all events they will let us stay here till the rain stops,” answered
+Pierre, seating himself at one of the little tables.
+
+However, a waiter suddenly made his appearance seemingly in a great
+hurry. He had come down from the first floor, and eagerly rummaged a
+cupboard for a few dry biscuits, which he laid upon a plate. At last he
+condescended to serve the brothers two glasses of Chartreuse.
+
+In one of the private rooms upstairs Baroness Duvillard, who had driven
+to the chalet in a cab, had been awaiting her lover Gérard for nearly
+half an hour. It was there that, during the charity bazaar, they had
+given each other an appointment. For them the chalet had precious
+memories: two years previously, on discovering that secluded nest, which
+was so deserted in the early, hesitating days of chilly spring, they had
+met there under circumstances which they could not forget. And the
+Baroness, in choosing the house for the supreme assignation of their
+dying passion, had certainly not been influenced merely by a fear that
+she might be spied upon elsewhere. She had, indeed, thought of the first
+kisses that had been showered on her there, and would fain have revived
+them even if they should now prove the last that Gérard would bestow on
+her.
+
+But she would also have liked to see some sunlight playing over the
+youthful foliage. The ashen sky and threatening rain saddened her. And
+when she entered the private room she did not recognise it, so cold and
+dim it seemed with its faded furniture. Winter had tarried there, with
+all the dampness and mouldy smell peculiar to rooms which have long
+remained closed. Then, too, some of the wall paper which had come away
+from the plaster hung down in shreds, dead flies were scattered over the
+parquetry flooring; and in order to open the shutters the waiter had to
+engage in a perfect fight with their fastenings. However, when he had
+lighted a little gas-stove, which at once flamed up and diffused some
+warmth, the room became more cosy.
+
+Eve had seated herself on a chair, without raising the thick veil which
+hid her face. Gowned, gloved, and bonneted in black, as if she were
+already in mourning for her last passion, she showed naught of her own
+person save her superb fair hair, which glittered like a helm of tawny
+gold. She had ordered tea for two, and when the waiter brought it with a
+little plateful of dry biscuits, left, no doubt, from the previous
+season, he found her in the same place, still veiled and motionless,
+absorbed, it seemed, in a gloomy reverie. If she had reached the café
+half an hour before the appointed time it was because she desired some
+leisure and opportunity to overcome her despair and compose herself. She
+resolved that of all things she would not weep, that she would remain
+dignified and speak calmly, like one who, whatever rights she might
+possess, preferred to appeal to reason only. And she was well pleased
+with the courage that she found within her. Whilst thinking of what she
+should say to dissuade Gérard from a marriage which to her mind would
+prove both a calamity and a blunder, she fancied herself very calm,
+indeed almost resigned to whatsoever might happen.
+
+But all at once she started and began to tremble. Gérard was entering the
+room.
+
+“What! are you here the first, my dear?” he exclaimed. “I thought that I
+myself was ten minutes before the time! And you’ve ordered some tea and
+are waiting for me!”
+
+He forced a smile as he spoke, striving to display the same delight at
+seeing her as he had shown in the early golden days of their passion. But
+at heart he was much embarrassed, and he shuddered at the thought of the
+awful scene which he could foresee.
+
+She had at last risen and raised her veil. And looking at him she
+stammered: “Yes, I found myself at liberty earlier than I expected....
+I feared some impediment might arise... and so I came.”
+
+Then, seeing how handsome and how affectionate he still looked, she could
+not restrain her passion. All her skilful arguments, all her fine
+resolutions, were swept away. Her flesh irresistibly impelled her towards
+him; she loved him, she would keep him, she would never surrender him to
+another. And she wildly flung her arms around his neck.
+
+“Oh! Gérard, Gérard! I suffer too cruelly; I cannot, I cannot bear it!
+Tell me at once that you will not marry her, that you will never marry
+her!”
+
+Her voice died away in a sob, tears started from her eyes. Ah! those
+tears which she had sworn she would never shed! They gushed forth without
+cessation, they streamed from her lovely eyes like a flood of the
+bitterest grief.
+
+“My daughter, O God! What! you would marry my daughter! She, here, on
+your neck where I am now! No, no, such torture is past endurance, it must
+not be, I will not have it!”
+
+He shivered as he heard that cry of frantic jealousy raised by a mother
+who now was but a woman, maddened by the thought of her rival’s youth,
+those five and twenty summers which she herself had left far behind. For
+his part, on his way to the assignation, he had come to what he thought
+the most sensible decision, resolving to break off the intercourse after
+the fashion of a well-bred man, with all sorts of fine consolatory
+speeches. But sternness was not in his nature. He was weak and
+soft-hearted, and had never been able to withstand a woman’s tears.
+Nevertheless, he endeavoured to calm her, and in order to rid himself of
+her embrace, he made her sit down upon the sofa. And there, beside her,
+he replied: “Come, be reasonable, my dear. We came here to have a
+friendly chat, did we not? I assure you that you are greatly exaggerating
+matters.”
+
+But she was determined to obtain a more positive answer from him. “No,
+no!” she retorted, “I am suffering too dreadfully, I must know the truth
+at once. Swear to me that you will never, never marry her!”
+
+He again endeavoured to avoid replying as she wished him to do. “Come,
+come,” he said, “you will do yourself harm by giving way to such grief as
+this; you know that I love you dearly.”
+
+“Then swear to me that you will never, never marry her.”
+
+“But I tell you that I love you, that you are the only one I love.”
+
+Then she again threw her arms around him, and kissed him passionately
+upon the eyes. “Is it true?” she asked in a transport. “You love me, you
+love no one else? Oh! tell me so again, and kiss me, and promise me that
+you will never belong to her.”
+
+Weak as he was he could not resist her ardent caresses and pressing
+entreaties. There came a moment of supreme cowardice and passion; her
+arms were around him and he forgot all but her, again and again repeating
+that he loved none other, and would never, never marry her daughter. At
+last he even sank so low as to pretend that he simply regarded that poor,
+infirm creature with pity. His words of compassionate disdain for her
+rival were like nectar to Eve, for they filled her with the blissful idea
+that it was she herself who would ever remain beautiful in his eyes and
+whom he would ever love....
+
+At last silence fell between them, like an inevitable reaction after such
+a tempest of despair and passion. It disturbed Gérard. “Won’t you drink
+some tea?” he asked. “It is almost cold already.”
+
+She was not listening, however. To her the reaction had come in a
+different form; and as though the inevitable explanation were only now
+commencing, she began to speak in a sad and weary voice. “My dear Gérard,
+you really cannot marry my daughter. In the first place it would be so
+wrong, and then there is the question of your name, your position.
+Forgive my frankness, but the fact is that everybody would say that you
+had sold yourself--such a marriage would be a scandal for both your
+family and mine.”
+
+As she spoke she took hold of his hands, like a mother seeking to prevent
+her big son from committing some terrible blunder. And he listened to
+her, with bowed head and averted eyes. She now evinced no anger, no
+jealous rage; all such feelings seemed to have departed with the rapture
+of her passion.
+
+“Just think of what people would say,” she continued. “I don’t deceive
+myself, I am fully aware that there is an abyss between your circle of
+society and ours. It is all very well for us to be rich, but money simply
+enlarges the gap. And it was all very fine for me to be converted, my
+daughter is none the less ‘the daughter of the Jewess,’ as folks so often
+say. Ah! my Gérard, I am so proud of you, that it would rend my heart to
+see you lowered, degraded almost, by a marriage for money with a girl who
+is deformed, who is unworthy of you and whom you could never love.”
+
+He raised his eyes and looked at her entreatingly, anxious as he was to
+be spared such painful talk. “But haven’t I sworn to you, that you are
+the only one I love?” he said. “Haven’t I sworn that I would never marry
+her! It’s all over. Don’t let us torture ourselves any longer.”
+
+Their glances met and lingered on one another, instinct with all the
+misery which they dared not express in words. Eve’s face had suddenly
+aged; her eyelids were red and swollen, and blotches marbled her
+quivering cheeks, down which her tears again began to trickle. “My poor,
+poor Gérard,” said she, “how heavily I weigh on you. Oh! do not deny it!
+I feel that I am an intolerable burden on your shoulders, an impediment
+in your life, and that I shall bring irreparable disaster on you by my
+obstinacy in wishing you to be mine alone.”
+
+He tried to speak, but she silenced him. “No, no, all is over between us.
+I am growing ugly, all is ended. And besides, I shut off the future from
+you. I can be of no help to you, whereas you bestow all on me. And yet
+the time has come for you to assure yourself a position. At your age you
+can’t continue living without any certainty of the morrow, without a home
+and hearth of your own; and it would be cowardly and cruel of me to set
+myself up as an obstacle, and prevent you from ending your life happily,
+as I should do if I clung to you and dragged you down with me.”
+
+Gazing at him through her tears she continued speaking in this fashion.
+Like his mother she was well aware that he was weak and even sickly; and
+she therefore dreamt of arranging a quiet life for him, a life of
+tranquil happiness free from all fear of want. She loved him so fondly;
+and possessed so much genuine kindness of heart that perhaps it might be
+possible for her to rise even to renunciation and sacrifice. Moreover,
+the very egotism born of her beauty suggested that it might be well for
+her to think of retirement and not allow the autumn of her life to be
+spoilt by torturing dramas. All this she said to him, treating him like a
+child whose happiness she wished to ensure even at the price of her own;
+and he, his eyes again lowered, listened without further protest, pleased
+indeed to let her arrange a happy life for him.
+
+Examining the situation from every aspect, she at last began to
+recapitulate the points in favour of that abominable marriage, the
+thought of which had so intensely distressed her. “It is certain,” she
+said, “that Camille would bring you all that I should like you to have.
+With her, I need hardly say it, would come plenty, affluence. And as for
+the rest, well, I do not wish to excuse myself or you, but I could name
+twenty households in which there have been worse things. Besides, I was
+wrong when I said that money opened a gap between people. On the
+contrary, it draws them nearer together, it secures forgiveness for every
+fault; so nobody would dare to blame you, there would only be jealous
+ones around you, dazzled by your good fortune.”
+
+Gérard rose, apparently rebelling once more. “Surely,” said he, “_you_
+don’t insist on my marrying your daughter?”
+
+“Ah! no indeed! But I am sensible, and I tell you what I ought to tell
+you. You must think it all over.”
+
+“I have done so already. It is you that I have loved, and that I love
+still. What you say is impossible.”
+
+She smiled divinely, rose, and again embraced him. “How good and kind you
+are, my Gérard. Ah! if you only knew how I love you, how I shall always
+love you, whatever happens.”
+
+Then she again began to weep, and even he shed tears. Their good faith
+was absolute; tender of heart as they were, they sought to delay the
+painful wrenching and tried to hope for further happiness. But they were
+conscious that the marriage was virtually an accomplished fact. Only
+tears and words were left them, while life and destiny were marching on.
+And if their emotion was so acute it was probably because they felt that
+this was the last time they would meet as lovers. Still they strove to
+retain the illusion that they were not exchanging their last farewell,
+that their lips would some day meet again in a kiss of rapture.
+
+Eve removed her arms from the young man’s neck, and they both gazed round
+the room, at the sofa, the table, the four chairs, and the little hissing
+gas-stove. The moist, hot atmosphere was becoming quite oppressive.
+
+“And so,” said Gérard, “you won’t drink a cup of tea?”
+
+“No, it’s so horrid here,” she answered, while arranging her hair in
+front of the looking-glass.
+
+At that parting moment the mournfulness of this place, where she had
+hoped to find such delightful memories, filled her with distress, which
+was turning to positive anguish, when she suddenly heard an uproar of
+gruff voices and heavy feet. People were hastening along the passage and
+knocking at the doors. And, on darting to the window, she perceived a
+number of policemen surrounding the chalet. At this the wildest ideas
+assailed her. Had her daughter employed somebody to follow her? Did her
+husband wish to divorce her so as to marry Silviane? The scandal would be
+awful, and all her plans must crumble! She waited in dismay, white like a
+ghost; while Gérard, also paling and quivering, begged her to be calm. At
+last, when loud blows were dealt upon the door and a Commissary of Police
+enjoined them to open it, they were obliged to do so. Ah! what a moment,
+and what dismay and shame!
+
+Meantime, for more than an hour, Pierre and Guillaume had been waiting
+for the rain to cease. Seated in a corner of the glazed verandah they
+talked in undertones of Barthès’ painful affair, and ultimately decided
+to ask Théophile Morin to dine with them on the following evening, and
+inform his old friend that he must again go into exile.
+
+“That is the best course,” repeated Guillaume. “Morin is very fond of him
+and will know how to break the news. I have no doubt too that he will go
+with him as far as the frontier.”
+
+Pierre sadly looked at the falling rain. “Ah! what a choice,” said he,
+“to be ever driven to a foreign land under penalty of being thrust into
+prison. Poor fellow! how awful it is to have never known a moment of
+happiness and gaiety in one’s life, to have devoted one’s whole existence
+to the idea of liberty, and to see it scoffed at and expire with
+oneself!”
+
+Then the priest paused, for he saw several policemen and keepers approach
+the café and prowl round it. Having lost scent of the man they were
+hunting, they had retraced their steps with the conviction no doubt that
+he had sought refuge in the chalet. And in order that he might not again
+escape them, they now took every precaution, exerted all their skill in
+surrounding the place before venturing on a minute search. Covert fear
+came upon Pierre and Guillaume when they noticed these proceedings. It
+seemed to them that it must all be connected with the chase which they
+had caught a glimpse of some time previously. Still, as they happened to
+be in the chalet they might be called upon to give their names and
+addresses. At this thought they glanced at one another, and almost made
+up their minds to go off under the rain. But they realised that anything
+like flight might only compromise them the more. So they waited; and all
+at once there came a diversion, for two fresh customers entered the
+establishment.
+
+A victoria with its hood and apron raised had just drawn up outside the
+door. The first to alight from it was a young, well-dressed man with a
+bored expression of face. He was followed by a young woman who was
+laughing merrily, as if much amused by the persistence of the downpour.
+By way of jesting, indeed, she expressed her regret that she had not come
+to the Bois on her bicycle, whereupon her companion retorted that to
+drive about in a deluge appeared to him the height of idiocy.
+
+“But we were bound to go somewhere, my dear fellow,” she gaily answered.
+“Why didn’t you take me to see the maskers?”
+
+“The maskers, indeed! No, no, my dear. I prefer the Bois, and even the
+bottom of the lake, to them.”
+
+Then, as the couple entered the chalet, Pierre saw that the young woman
+who made merry over the rain was little Princess Rosemonde, while her
+companion, who regarded the mid-Lent festivities as horrible, and
+bicycling as an utterly unaesthetic amusement, was handsome Hyacinthe
+Duvillard. On the previous evening, while they were taking a cup of tea
+together on their return from the Chamber of Horrors, the young man had
+responded to the Princess’s blandishments by declaring that the only form
+of attachment he believed in was a mystic union of intellects and souls.
+And as such a union could only be fittingly arrived at amidst the cold,
+chaste snow, they had decided that they would start for Christiania on
+the following Monday. Their chief regret was that by the time they
+reached the fiords the worst part of the northern winter would be over.
+
+They sat down in the café and ordered some kummel, but there was none,
+said the waiter, so they had to content themselves with common anisette.
+Then Hyacinthe, who had been a schoolfellow of Guillaume’s sons,
+recognised both him and Pierre; and leaning towards Rosemonde told her in
+a whisper who the elder brother was.
+
+Thereupon, with sudden enthusiasm, she sprang to her feet: “Guillaume
+Froment, indeed! the great chemist!” And stepping forward with arm
+outstretched, she continued: “Ah! monsieur, you must excuse me, but I
+really must shake hands with you. I have so much admiration for you! You
+have done such wonderful work in connection with explosives!” Then,
+noticing the chemist’s astonishment, she again burst into a laugh: “I am
+the Princess de Harn, your brother Abbé Froment knows me, and I ought to
+have asked him to introduce me. However, we have mutual friends, you and
+I; for instance, Monsieur Janzen, a very distinguished man, as you are
+aware. He was to have taken me to see you, for I am a modest disciple of
+yours. Yes, I have given some attention to chemistry, oh! from pure zeal
+for truth and in the hope of helping good causes, not otherwise. So you
+will let me call on you--won’t you?--directly I come back from
+Christiania, where I am going with my young friend here, just to acquire
+some experience of unknown emotions.”
+
+In this way she rattled on, never allowing the others an opportunity to
+say a word. And she mingled one thing with another; her cosmopolitan
+tastes, which had thrown her into Anarchism and the society of shady
+adventurers; her new passion for mysticism and symbolism; her belief that
+the ideal must triumph over base materialism; her taste for aesthetic
+verse; and her dream of some unimagined rapture when Hyacinthe should
+kiss her with his frigid lips in a realm of eternal snow.
+
+All at once, however, she stopped short and again began to laugh. “Dear
+me!” she exclaimed. “What are those policemen looking for here? Have they
+come to arrest us? How amusing it would be!”
+
+Police Commissary Dupot and detective Mondésir had just made up their
+minds to search the café, as their men had hitherto failed to find Salvat
+in any of the outbuildings. They were convinced that he was here. Dupot,
+a thin, bald, short-sighted, spectacled little man, wore his usual
+expression of boredom and weariness; but in reality he was very wide
+awake and extremely courageous. He himself carried no weapons; but, as he
+anticipated a most violent resistance, such as might be expected from a
+trapped wolf, he advised Mondésir to have his revolver ready. From
+considerations of hierarchical respect, however, the detective, who with
+his snub nose and massive figure had much the appearance of a bull-dog,
+was obliged to let his superior enter first.
+
+From behind his spectacles the Commissary of Police quickly scrutinized
+the four customers whom he found in the café: the lady, the priest, and
+the two other men. And passing them in a disdainful way, he at once made
+for the stairs, intending to inspect the upper floor. Thereupon the
+waiter, frightened by the sudden intrusion of the police, lost his head
+and stammered: “But there’s a lady and gentleman upstairs in one of the
+private rooms.”
+
+Dupot quietly pushed him aside. “A lady and gentleman, that’s not what we
+are looking for.... Come, make haste, open all the doors, you mustn’t
+leave a cupboard closed.”
+
+Then climbing to the upper floor, he and Mondésir explored in turn every
+apartment and corner till they at last reached the room where Eve and
+Gérard were together. Here the waiter was unable to admit them, as the
+door was bolted inside. “Open the door!” he called through the keyhole,
+“it isn’t you that they want!”
+
+At last the bolt was drawn back, and Dupot, without even venturing to
+smile, allowed the trembling lady and gentleman to go downstairs, while
+Mondésir, entering the room, looked under every article of furniture, and
+even peeped into a little cupboard in order that no neglect might be
+imputed to him.
+
+Meantime, in the public room which they had to cross after descending the
+stairs, Eve and Gérard experienced fresh emotion; for people whom they
+knew were there, brought together by an extraordinary freak of chance.
+Although Eve’s face was hidden by a thick veil, her eyes met her son’s
+glance and she felt sure that he recognised her. What a fatality! He had
+so long a tongue and told his sister everything! Then, as the Count, in
+despair at such a scandal, hurried off with the Baroness to conduct her
+through the pouring rain to her cab, they both distinctly heard little
+Princess Rosemonde exclaim: “Why, that was Count de Quinsac! Who was the
+lady, do you know?” And as Hyacinthe, greatly put out, returned no
+answer, she insisted, saying: “Come, you must surely know her. Who was
+she, eh?”
+
+“Oh! nobody. Some woman or other,” he ended by replying.
+
+Pierre, who had understood the truth, turned his eyes away to hide his
+embarrassment. But all at once the scene changed. At the very moment when
+Commissary Dupot and detective Mondésir came downstairs again, after
+vainly exploring the upper floor, a loud shout was raised outside,
+followed by a noise of running and scrambling. Then Gascogne, the Chief
+of the Detective Force, who had remained in the rear of the chalet,
+continuing the search through the outbuildings, made his appearance,
+pushing before him a bundle of rags and mud, which two policemen held on
+either side. And this bundle was the man, the hunted man, who had just
+been discovered in the coach-house, inside a staved cask, covered with
+hay.
+
+Ah! what a whoop of victory there was after that run of two hours’
+duration, that frantic chase which had left them all breathless and
+footsore! It had been the most exciting, the most savage of all sports--a
+man hunt! They had caught the man at last, and they pushed him, they
+dragged him, they belaboured him with blows. And he, the man, what a
+sorry prey he looked! A wreck, wan and dirty from having spent the night
+in a hole full of leaves, still soaked to his waist from having rushed
+through a stream, drenched too by the rain, bespattered with mire, his
+coat and trousers in tatters, his cap a mere shred, his legs and hands
+bleeding from his terrible rush through thickets bristling with brambles
+and nettles. There no longer seemed anything human about his face; his
+hair stuck to his moist temples, his bloodshot eyes protruded from their
+sockets; fright, rage, and suffering were all blended on his wasted,
+contracted face. Still it was he, the man, the quarry, and they gave him
+another push, and he sank on one of the tables of the little café, still
+held and shaken, however, by the rough hands of the policemen.
+
+Then Guillaume shuddered as if thunderstruck, and caught hold of Pierre’s
+hand. At this the priest, who was looking on, suddenly understood the
+truth and also quivered. Salvat! the man was Salvat! It was Salvat whom
+they had seen rushing through the wood like a wild boar forced by the
+hounds. And it was Salvat who was there, now conquered and simply a
+filthy bundle. Then once more there came to Pierre, amidst his anguish, a
+vision of the errand girl lying yonder at the entrance of the Duvillard
+mansion, the pretty fair-haired girl whom the bomb had ripped and killed!
+
+Dupot and Mondésir made haste to participate in Gascogne’s triumph. To
+tell the truth, however, the man had offered no resistance; it was like a
+lamb that he had let the police lay hold of him. And since he had been in
+the café, still roughly handled, he had simply cast a weary and mournful
+glance around him.
+
+At last he spoke, and the first words uttered by his hoarse, gasping
+voice were these: “I am hungry.”
+
+He was sinking with hunger and weariness. This was the third day that he
+had eaten nothing.
+
+“Give him some bread,” said Commissary Dupot to the waiter. “He can eat
+it while a cab is being fetched.”
+
+A policeman went off to find a vehicle. The rain had suddenly ceased
+falling, the clear ring of a bicyclist’s bell was heard in the distance,
+some carriages drove by, and under the pale sunrays life again came back
+to the Bois.
+
+Meantime, Salvat had fallen gluttonously upon the hunk of bread which had
+been given him, and whilst he was devouring it with rapturous animal
+satisfaction, he perceived the four customers seated around. He seemed
+irritated by the sight of Hyacinthe and Rosemonde, whose faces expressed
+the mingled anxiety and delight they felt at thus witnessing the arrest
+of some bandit or other. But all at once his mournful, bloodshot eyes
+wavered, for to his intense surprise he had recognised Pierre and
+Guillaume. When he again looked at the latter it was with the submissive
+affection of a grateful dog, and as if he were once more promising that
+he would divulge nothing, whatever might happen.
+
+At last he again spoke, as if addressing himself like a man of courage,
+both to Guillaume, from whom he had averted his eyes, and to others also,
+his comrades who were not there: “It was silly of me to run,” said he. “I
+don’t know why I did so. It’s best that it should be all ended. I’m
+ready.”
+
+
+
+
+V. THE GAME OF POLITICS
+
+ON reading the newspapers on the following morning Pierre and Guillaume
+were greatly surprised at not finding in them the sensational accounts of
+Salvat’s arrest which they had expected. All they could discover was a
+brief paragraph in a column of general news, setting forth that some
+policemen on duty in the Bois de Boulogne had there arrested an
+Anarchist, who was believed to have played a part in certain recent
+occurrences. On the other hand, the papers gave a deal of space to the
+questions raised by Sagnier’s fresh denunciations. There were innumerable
+articles on the African Railways scandal, and the great debate which
+might be expected at the Chamber of Deputies, should Mège, the Socialist
+member, really renew his interpellation, as he had announced his
+intention of doing.
+
+As Guillaume’s wrist was now fast healing, and nothing seemed to threaten
+him, he had already, on the previous evening, decided that he would
+return to Montmartre. The police had passed him by without apparently
+suspecting any responsibility on his part; and he was convinced that
+Salvat would keep silent. Pierre, however, begged him to wait a little
+longer, at any rate until the prisoner should have been interrogated by
+the investigating magistrate, by which time they would be able to judge
+the situation more clearly. Pierre, moreover, during his long stay at the
+Home Department on the previous morning, had caught a glimpse of certain
+things and overheard certain words which made him suspect some dim
+connection between Salvat’s crime and the parliamentary crisis; and he
+therefore desired a settlement of the latter before Guillaume returned to
+his wonted life.
+
+“Just listen,” he said to his brother. “I am going to Morin’s to ask him
+to come and dine here this evening, for it is absolutely necessary that
+Barthès should be warned of the fresh blow which is falling on him. And
+then I think I shall go to the Chamber, as I want to know what takes
+place there. After that, since you desire it, I will let you go back to
+your own home.”
+
+It was not more than half-past one when Pierre reached the
+Palais-Bourbon. It had occurred to him that Fonsègue would be able to
+secure him admittance to the meeting-hall, but in the vestibule he met
+General de Bozonnet, who happened to possess a couple of tickets. A
+friend of his, who was to have accompanied him, had, at the last moment,
+been unable to come. So widespread was the curiosity concerning the
+debate now near at hand, and so general were the predictions that it
+would prove a most exciting one, that the demand for tickets had been
+extremely keen during the last twenty-four hours. In fact Pierre would
+never have been able to obtain admittance if the General had not
+good-naturedly offered to take him in. As a matter of fact the old
+warrior was well pleased to have somebody to chat with. He explained that
+he had simply come there to kill time, just as he might have killed it at
+a concert or a charity bazaar. However, like the ex-Legitimist and
+Bonapartist that he was, he had really come for the pleasure of feasting
+his eyes on the shameful spectacle of parliamentary ignominy.
+
+When the General and Pierre had climbed the stairs, they were able to
+secure two front seats in one of the public galleries. Little Massot, who
+was already there, and who knew them both, placed one of them on his
+right and the other on his left. “I couldn’t find a decent seat left in
+the press gallery,” said he, “but I managed to get this place, from which
+I shall be able to see things properly. It will certainly be a big
+sitting. Just look at the number of people there are on every side!”
+
+The narrow and badly arranged galleries were packed to overflowing. There
+were men of every age and a great many women too in the confused, serried
+mass of spectators, amidst which one only distinguished a multiplicity of
+pale white faces. The real scene, however, was down below in the
+meeting-hall, which was as yet empty, and with its rows of seats disposed
+in semi-circular fashion looked like the auditorium of a theatre. Under
+the cold light which fell from the glazed roofing appeared the solemn,
+shiny tribune, whence members address the Chamber, whilst behind it, on a
+higher level, and running right along the rear wall, was what is called
+the Bureau, with its various tables and seats, including the presidential
+armchair. The Bureau, like the tribune, was still unoccupied. The only
+persons one saw there were a couple of attendants who were laying out new
+pens and filling inkstands.
+
+“The women,” said Massot with a laugh, after another glance at the
+galleries, “come here just as they might come to a menagerie, that is, in
+the secret hope of seeing wild beasts devour one another. But, by the
+way, did you read the article in the ‘Voix du Peuple’ this morning? What
+a wonderful fellow that Sagnier is. When nobody else can find any filth
+left, he manages to discover some. He apparently thinks it necessary to
+add something new every day, in order to send his sales up. And of course
+it all disturbs the public, and it’s thanks to him that so many people
+have come here in the hope of witnessing some horrid scene.”
+
+Then he laughed again, as he asked Pierre if he had read an unsigned
+article in the “Globe,” which in very dignified but perfidious language
+had called upon Barroux to give the full and frank explanations which the
+country had a right to demand in that matter of the African Railways.
+This paper had hitherto vigorously supported the President of the
+Council, but in the article in question the coldness which precedes a
+rupture was very apparent. Pierre replied that the article had much
+surprised him, for he had imagined that Fonsègue and Barroux were linked
+together by identity of views and long-standing personal friendship.
+
+Massot was still laughing. “Quite so,” said he. “And you may be sure that
+the governor’s heart bled when he wrote that article. It has been much
+noticed, and it will do the government a deal of harm. But the governor,
+you see, knows better than anybody else what line he ought to follow to
+save both his own position and the paper’s.”
+
+Then he related what extraordinary confusion and emotion reigned among
+the deputies in the lobbies through which he had strolled before coming
+upstairs to secure a seat. After an adjournment of a couple of days the
+Chamber found itself confronted by this terrible scandal, which was like
+one of those conflagrations which, at the moment when they are supposed
+to be dying out, suddenly flare up again and devour everything. The
+various figures given in Sagnier’s list, the two hundred thousand francs
+paid to Barroux, the eighty thousand handed to Monferrand, the fifty
+thousand allotted to Fonsègue, the ten thousand pocketed by Duthil, and
+the three thousand secured by Chaigneux, with all the other amounts
+distributed among So-and-so and So-and-so, formed the general subject of
+conversation. And at the same time some most extraordinary stories were
+current; there was no end of tittle-tattle in which fact and falsehood
+were so inextricably mingled that everybody was at sea as to the real
+truth. Whilst many deputies turned pale and trembled as beneath a blast
+of terror, others passed by purple with excitement, bursting with
+delight, laughing with exultation at the thought of coming victory. For,
+in point of fact, beneath all the assumed indignation, all the calls for
+parliamentary cleanliness and morality, there simply lay a question of
+persons--the question of ascertaining whether the government would be
+overthrown, and in that event of whom the new administration would
+consist. Barroux no doubt appeared to be in a bad way; but with things in
+such a muddle one was bound to allow a margin for the unexpected. From
+what was generally said it seemed certain that Mège would be extremely
+violent. Barroux would answer him, and the Minister’s friends declared
+that he was determined to speak out in the most decisive manner. As for
+Monferrand he would probably address the Chamber after his colleague, but
+Vignon’s intentions were somewhat doubtful, as, in spite of his delight,
+he made a pretence of remaining in the background. He had been seen
+going from one to another of his partisans, advising them to keep calm,
+in order that they might retain the cold, keen _coup d’œil_ which in
+warfare generally decides the victory. Briefly, such was the plotting and
+intriguing that never had any witch’s cauldron brimful of drugs and
+nameless abominations been set to boil on a more hellish fire than that
+of this parliamentary cook-shop.
+
+“Heaven only knows what they will end by serving us,” said little Massot
+by way of conclusion.
+
+General de Bozonnet for his part anticipated nothing but disaster. If
+France had only possessed an army, said he, one might have swept away
+that handful of bribe-taking parliamentarians who preyed upon the country
+and rotted it. But there was no army left, there was merely an armed
+nation, a very different thing. And thereupon, like a man of a past age
+whom the present times distracted, he started on what had been his
+favourite subject of complaint ever since he had been retired from the
+service.
+
+“Here’s an idea for an article if you want one,” he said to Massot.
+“Although France may have a million soldiers she hasn’t got an army. I’ll
+give you some notes of mine, and you will be able to tell people the
+truth.”
+
+Warfare, he continued, ought to be purely and simply a caste occupation,
+with commanders designated by divine right, leading mercenaries or
+volunteers into action. By democratising warfare people had simply killed
+it; a circumstance which he deeply regretted, like a born soldier who
+regarded fighting as the only really noble occupation that life offered.
+For, as soon as it became every man’s duty to fight, none was willing to
+do so; and thus compulsory military service--what was called “the nation
+in arms”--would, at a more or less distant date, certainly bring about
+the end of warfare. If France had not engaged in a European war since
+1870 this was precisely due to the fact that everybody in France was
+ready to fight. But rulers hesitated to throw a whole nation against
+another nation, for the loss both in life and treasure would be
+tremendous. And so the thought that all Europe was transformed into a
+vast camp filled the General with anger and disgust. He sighed for the
+old times when men fought for the pleasure of the thing, just as they
+hunted; whereas nowadays people were convinced that they would
+exterminate one another at the very first engagement.
+
+“But surely it wouldn’t be an evil if war should disappear,” Pierre
+gently remarked.
+
+This somewhat angered the General. “Well, you’ll have pretty nations if
+people no longer fight,” he answered, and then trying to show a practical
+spirit, he added: “Never has the art of war cost more money than since
+war itself has become an impossibility. The present-day defensive peace
+is purely and simply ruining every country in Europe. One may be spared
+defeat, but utter bankruptcy is certainly at the end of it all. And in
+any case the profession of arms is done for. All faith in it is dying
+out, and it will soon be forsaken, just as men have begun to forsake the
+priesthood.”
+
+Thereupon he made a gesture of mingled grief and anger, almost cursing
+that parliament, that Republican legislature before him, as if he
+considered it responsible for the future extinction of warfare. But
+little Massot was wagging his head dubiously, for he regarded the subject
+as rather too serious a one for him to write upon. And, all at once, in
+order to turn the conversation into another channel, he exclaimed: “Ah!
+there’s Monseigneur Martha in the diplomatic gallery beside the Spanish
+Ambassador. It’s denied, you know, that he intends to come forward as a
+candidate in Morbihan. He’s far too shrewd to wish to be a deputy. He
+already pulls the strings which set most of the Catholic deputies who
+have ‘rallied’ to the Republican Government in motion.”
+
+Pierre himself had just noticed Monseigneur Martha’s smiling face. And,
+somehow or other, however modest might be the prelate’s demeanour, it
+seemed to him that he really played an important part in what was going
+on. He could hardly take his eyes from him. It was as if he expected that
+he would suddenly order men hither and thither, and direct the whole
+march of events.
+
+“Ah!” said Massot again. “Here comes Mège. It won’t be long now before
+the sitting begins.”
+
+The hall, down below, was gradually filling. Deputies entered and
+descended the narrow passages between the benches. Most of them remained
+standing and chatting in a more or less excited way; but some seated
+themselves and raised their grey, weary faces to the glazed roof. It was
+a cloudy afternoon, and rain was doubtless threatening, for the light
+became quite livid. If the hall was pompous it was also dismal with its
+heavy columns, its cold allegorical statues, and its stretches of bare
+marble and woodwork. The only brightness was that of the red velvet of
+the benches and the gallery hand-rests.
+
+Every deputy of any consequence who entered was named by Massot to his
+companions. Mège, on being stopped by another member of the little
+Socialist group, began to fume and gesticulate. Then Vignon, detaching
+himself from a group of friends and putting on an air of smiling
+composure, descended the steps towards his seat. The occupants of the
+galleries, however, gave most attention to the accused members, those
+whose names figured in Sagnier’s list. And these were interesting
+studies. Some showed themselves quite sprightly, as if they were entirely
+at their ease; but others had assumed a most grave and indignant
+demeanour. Chaigneux staggered and hesitated as if beneath the weight of
+some frightful act of injustice; whereas Duthil looked perfectly serene
+save for an occasional twitch of his lips. The most admired, however, was
+Fonsègue, who showed so candid a face, so open a glance, that his
+colleagues as well as the spectators might well have declared him
+innocent. Nobody indeed could have looked more like an honest man.
+
+“Ah! there’s none like the governor,” muttered Massot with enthusiasm.
+“But be attentive, for here come the ministers. One mustn’t miss Barroux’
+meeting with Fonsègue, after this morning’s article.”
+
+Chance willed it that as Barroux came along with his head erect, his face
+pale, and his whole demeanour aggressive, he was obliged to pass Fonsègue
+in order to reach the ministerial bench. In doing so he did not speak to
+him, but he gazed at him fixedly like one who is conscious of defection,
+of a cowardly stab in the back on the part of a traitor. Fonsègue seemed
+quite at ease, and went on shaking hands with one and another of his
+colleagues as if he were altogether unconscious of Barroux’ glance. Nor
+did he even appear to see Monferrand, who walked by in the rear of the
+Prime Minister, wearing a placid good-natured air, as if he knew nothing
+of what was impending, but was simply coming to some ordinary humdrum
+sitting. However, when he reached his seat, he raised his eyes and smiled
+at Monseigneur Martha, who gently nodded to him. Then well pleased to
+think that things were going as he wished them to go, he began to rub his
+hands, as he often did by way of expressing his satisfaction.
+
+“Who is that grey-haired, mournful-looking gentleman on the ministerial
+bench?” Pierre inquired of Massot.
+
+“Why, that’s Taboureau, the Minister of Public Instruction, the excellent
+gentleman who is said to have no prestige. One’s always hearing of him,
+and one never recognises him; he looks like an old, badly worn coin. Just
+like Barroux he can’t feel very well pleased with the governor this
+afternoon, for to-day’s ‘Globe’ contained an article pointing out his
+thorough incapacity in everything concerning the fine arts. It was an
+article in measured language, but all the more effective for that very
+reason. It would surprise me if Taboureau should recover from it.”
+
+Just then a low roll of drums announced the arrival of the President and
+other officials of the Chamber. A door opened, and a little procession
+passed by amidst an uproar of exclamations and hasty footsteps. Then,
+standing at his table, the President rang his bell and declared the
+sitting open. But few members remained silent, however, whilst one of the
+secretaries, a dark, lanky young man with a harsh voice, read the minutes
+of the previous sitting. When they had been adopted, various letters of
+apology for non-attendance were read, and a short, unimportant bill was
+passed without discussion. And then came the big affair, Mège’s
+interpellation, and at once the whole Chamber was in a flutter, while the
+most passionate curiosity reigned in the galleries above. On the
+Government consenting to the interpellation, the Chamber decided that the
+debate should take place at once. And thereupon complete silence fell,
+save that now and again a brief quiver sped by, in which one could detect
+the various feelings, passions and appetites swaying the assembly.
+
+Mège began to speak with assumed moderation, carefully setting forth the
+various points at issue. Tall and thin, gnarled and twisted like a
+vine-stock, he rested his hands on the tribune as if to support his bent
+figure, and his speech was often interrupted by the little dry cough
+which came from the tuberculosis that was burning him. But his eyes
+sparkled with passion behind his glasses, and little by little his voice
+rose in piercing accents and he drew his lank figure erect and began to
+gesticulate vehemently. He reminded the Chamber that some two months
+previously, at the time of the first denunciations published by the “Voix
+du Peuple,” he had asked leave to interpellate the Government respecting
+that deplorable affair of the African Railways; and he remarked, truly
+enough, that if the Chamber had not yielded to certain considerations
+which he did not wish to discuss, and had not adjourned his proposed
+inquiries, full light would long since have been thrown on the whole
+affair, in such wise that there would have been no revival, no increase
+of the scandal, and no possible pretext for that abominable campaign of
+denunciation which tortured and disgusted the country. However, it had at
+last been understood that silence could be maintained no longer. It was
+necessary that the two ministers who were so loudly accused of having
+abused their trusts, should prove their innocence, throw full light upon
+all they had done; apart from which the Chamber itself could not possibly
+remain beneath the charge of wholesale venality.
+
+Then he recounted the whole history of the affair, beginning with the
+grant of a concession for the African Lines to Baron Duvillard; and next
+passing to the proposals for the issue of lottery stock, which proposals,
+it was now said, had only been sanctioned by the Chamber after the most
+shameful bargaining and buying of votes. At this point Mège became
+extremely violent. Speaking of that mysterious individual Hunter, Baron
+Duvillard’s recruiter and go-between, he declared that the police had
+allowed him to flee from France, much preferring to spend its time in
+shadowing Socialist deputies. Then, hammering the tribune with his fist,
+he summoned Barroux to give a categorical denial to the charges brought
+against him, and to make it absolutely clear that he had never received a
+single copper of the two hundred thousand francs specified in Hunter’s
+list. Forthwith certain members shouted to Mège that he ought to read the
+whole list; but when he wished to do so others vociferated that it was
+abominable, that such a mendacious and slanderous document ought not to
+be accorded a place in the proceedings of the French legislature. Mège
+went on still in frantic fashion, figuratively casting Sagnier into the
+gutter, and protesting that there was nothing in common between himself
+and such a base insulter. But at the same time he demanded that justice
+and punishment should be meted out equally to one and all, and that if
+indeed there were any bribe-takers among his colleagues, they should be
+sent that very night to the prison of Mazas.
+
+Meantime the President, erect at his table, rang and rang his bell
+without managing to quell the uproar. He was like a pilot who finds the
+tempest too strong for him. Among all the men with purple faces and
+barking mouths who were gathered in front of him, the ushers alone
+maintained imperturbable gravity. At intervals between the bursts of
+shouting, Mège’s voice could still be heard. By some sudden transition he
+had come to the question of a Collectivist organisation of society such
+as he dreamt of, and he contrasted it with the criminal capitalist
+society of the present day, which alone, said he, could produce such
+scandals. And yielding more and more to his apostolic fervour, declaring
+that there could be no salvation apart from Collectivism, he shouted that
+the day of triumph would soon dawn. He awaited it with a smile of
+confidence. In his opinion, indeed, he merely had to overthrow that
+ministry and perhaps another one, and then he himself would at last take
+the reins of power in hand, like a reformer who would know how to pacify
+the nation. As outside Socialists often declared, it was evident that the
+blood of a dictator flowed in that sectarian’s veins. His feverish,
+stubborn rhetoric ended by exhausting his interrupters, who were
+compelled to listen to him. When he at last decided to leave the tribune,
+loud applause arose from a few benches on the left.
+
+“Do you know,” said Massot to the General, “I met Mège taking a walk with
+his three little children in the Jardin des Plantes the other day. He
+looked after them as carefully as an old nurse. I believe he’s a very
+worthy fellow at heart, and lives in a very modest way.”
+
+But a quiver had now sped through the assembly. Barroux had quitted his
+seat to ascend the tribune. He there drew himself erect, throwing his
+head back after his usual fashion. There was a haughty, majestic,
+slightly sorrowful expression on his handsome face, which would have been
+perfect had his nose only been a little larger. He began to express his
+sorrow and indignation in fine flowery language, which he punctuated with
+theatrical gestures. His eloquence was that of a tribune of the romantic
+school, and as one listened to him one could divine that in spite of all
+his pomposity he was really a worthy, tender-hearted and somewhat foolish
+man. That afternoon he was stirred by genuine emotion; his heart bled at
+the thought of his disastrous destiny, he felt that a whole world was
+crumbling with himself. Ah! what a cry of despair he stifled, the cry of
+the man who is buffeted and thrown aside by the course of events on the
+very day when he thinks that his civic devotion entitles him to triumph!
+To have given himself and all he possessed to the cause of the Republic,
+even in the dark days of the Second Empire; to have fought and struggled
+and suffered persecution for that Republic’s sake; to have established
+that Republic amidst the battle of parties, after all the horrors of
+national and civil war; and then, when the Republic at last triumphed and
+became a living fact, secure from all attacks and intrigues, to suddenly
+feel like a survival of some other age, to hear new comers speak a new
+language, preach a new ideal, and behold the collapse of all he had
+loved, all he had reverenced, all that had given him strength to fight
+and conquer! The mighty artisans of the early hours were no more; it had
+been meet that Gambetta should die. How bitter it all was for the last
+lingering old ones to find themselves among the men of the new,
+intelligent and shrewd generation, who gently smiled at them, deeming
+their romanticism quite out of fashion! All crumbled since the ideal of
+liberty collapsed, since liberty was no longer the one desideratum, the
+very basis of the Republic whose existence had been so dearly purchased
+after so long an effort!
+
+Erect and dignified Barroux made his confession. The Republic to him was
+like the sacred ark of life; the very worst deeds became saintly if they
+were employed to save her from peril. And in all simplicity he, told his
+story, how he had found the great bulk of Baron Duvillard’s money going
+to the opposition newspapers as pretended payment for puffery and
+advertising, whilst on the other hand the Republican organs received but
+beggarly, trumpery amounts. He had been Minister of the Interior at the
+time, and had therefore had charge of the press; so what would have been
+said of him if he had not endeavoured to reestablish some equilibrium in
+this distribution of funds in order that the adversaries of the
+institutions of the country might not acquire a great increase of
+strength by appropriating all the sinews of war? Hands had been stretched
+out towards him on all sides, a score of newspapers, the most faithful,
+the most meritorious, had claimed their legitimate share. And he had
+ensured them that share by distributing among them the two hundred
+thousand francs set down in the list against his name. Not a centime of
+the money had gone into his own pocket, he would allow nobody to impugn
+his personal honesty, on that point his word must suffice. At that moment
+Barroux was really grand. All his emphatic pomposity disappeared; he
+showed himself, as he really was--an honest man, quivering, his heart
+bared, his conscience bleeding, in his bitter distress at having been
+among those who had laboured and at now being denied reward.
+
+For, truth to tell, his words fell amidst icy silence. In his childish
+simplicity he had anticipated an outburst of enthusiasm; a Republican
+Chamber could but acclaim him for having saved the Republic; and now the
+frigidity of one and all quite froze him. He suddenly felt that he was
+all alone, done for, touched by the hand of death. Nevertheless, he
+continued speaking amidst that terrible silence with the courage of one
+who is committing suicide, and who, from his love of noble and eloquent
+attitudes, is determined to die standing. He ended with a final
+impressive gesture. However, as he came down from the tribune, the
+general coldness seemed to increase, not a single member applauded. With
+supreme clumsiness he had alluded to the secret scheming of Rome and the
+clergy, whose one object, in his opinion, was to recover the predominant
+position they had lost and restore monarchy in France at a more or less
+distant date.
+
+“How silly of him! Ought a man ever to confess?” muttered Massot. “He’s
+done for, and the ministry too!”
+
+Then, amidst the general frigidity, Monferrand boldly ascended the
+tribune stairs. The prevailing uneasiness was compounded of all the
+secret fear which sincerity always causes, of all the distress of the
+bribe-taking deputies who felt that they were rolling into an abyss, and
+also of the embarrassment which the others felt at thought of the more or
+less justifiable compromises of politics. Something like relief,
+therefore, came when Monferrand started with the most emphatic denials,
+protesting in the name of his outraged honour, and dealing blow after
+blow on the tribune with one hand, while with the other he smote his
+chest. Short and thick-set, with his face thrust forward, hiding his
+shrewdness beneath an expression of indignant frankness, he was for a
+moment really superb. He denied everything. He was not only ignorant of
+what was meant by that sum of eighty thousand francs set down against his
+name, but he defied the whole world to prove that he had even touched a
+single copper of that money. He boiled over with indignation to such a
+point that he did not simply deny bribe-taking on his own part, he denied
+it on behalf of the whole assembly, of all present and past French
+legislatures, as if, indeed, bribe-taking on the part of a representative
+of the people was altogether too monstrous an idea, a crime that
+surpassed possibility to such an extent that the mere notion of it was
+absurd. And thereupon applause rang out; the Chamber, delivered from its
+fears, thrilled by his words, acclaimed him.
+
+From the little Socialist group, however, some jeers arose, and voices
+summoned Monferrand to explain himself on the subject of the African
+Railways, reminding him that he had been at the head of the Public Works
+Department at the time of the vote, and requiring of him that he should
+state what he now meant to do, as Minister of the Interior, in order to
+reassure the country. He juggled with this question, declaring that if
+there were any guilty parties they would be punished, for he did not
+require anybody to remind him of his duty. And then, all at once, with
+incomparable maestria, he had recourse to the diversion which he had been
+preparing since the previous day. His duty, said he, was a thing which he
+never forgot; he discharged it like a faithful soldier of the nation hour
+by hour, and with as much vigilance as prudence. He had been accused of
+employing the police on he knew not what base spying work in such wise as
+to allow the man Hunter to escape. Well, as for that much-slandered
+police force, he would tell the Chamber on what work he had really
+employed it the day before, and how zealously it had laboured for the
+cause of law and order. In the Bois de Boulogne, on the previous
+afternoon, it had arrested that terrible scoundrel, the perpetrator of
+the crime in the Rue Godot-de-Mauroy, that Anarchist mechanician Salvat,
+who for six weeks past had so cunningly contrived to elude capture. The
+scoundrel had made a full confession during the evening, and the law
+would now take its course with all despatch. Public morality was at last
+avenged, Paris might now emerge in safety from its long spell of terror,
+Anarchism would be struck down, annihilated. And that was what he,
+Monferrand, had done as a Minister for the honour and safety of his
+country, whilst villains were vainly seeking to dishonour him by
+inscribing his name on a list of infamy, the outcome of the very basest
+political intrigues.
+
+The Chamber listened agape and quivering. This story of Salvat’s arrest,
+which none of the morning papers had reported; the present which
+Monferrand seemed to be making them of that terrible Anarchist whom many
+had already begun to regard as a myth; the whole _mise-en-scène_ of the
+Minister’s speech transported the deputies as if they were suddenly
+witnessing the finish of a long-interrupted drama. Stirred and flattered,
+they prolonged their applause, while Monferrand went on celebrating his
+act of energy, how he had saved society, how crime should be punished,
+and how he himself would ever prove that he had a strong arm and could
+answer for public order. He even won favour with the Conservatives and
+Clericals on the Right by separating himself from Barroux, addressing a
+few words of sympathy to those Catholics who had “rallied” to the
+Republic, and appealing for concord among men of different beliefs in
+order that they might fight the common enemy, that fierce, wild socialism
+which talked of overthrowing everything!
+
+By the time Monferrand came down from the tribune, the trick was played,
+he had virtually saved himself. Both the Right and Left of the Chamber*
+applauded, drowning the protests of the few Socialists whose
+vociferations only added to the triumphal tumult. Members eagerly
+stretched out their hands to the Minister, who for a moment remained
+standing there and smiling. But there was some anxiety in that smile of
+his; his success was beginning to frighten him. Had he spoken too well,
+and saved the entire Cabinet instead of merely saving himself? That would
+mean the ruin of his plan. The Chamber ought not to vote under the effect
+of that speech which had thrilled it so powerfully. Thus Monferrand,
+though he still continued to smile, spent a few anxious moments in
+waiting to see if anybody would rise to answer him.
+
+ * Ever since the days of the Bourbon Restoration it has been
+ the practice in the French Chambers for the more conservative
+ members to seat themselves on the President’s right, and for
+ the Radical ones to place themselves on his left. The central
+ seats of the semicircle in which the members’ seats are
+ arranged in tiers are usually occupied by men of moderate views.
+ Generally speaking, such terms as Right Centre and Left Centre
+ are applied to groups of Moderates inclining in the first place
+ to Conservatism and in the latter to Radicalism. All this is of
+ course known to readers acquainted with French institutions, but
+ I give the explanation because others, after perusing French
+ news in some daily paper, have often asked me what was meant by
+ “a deputy of the Right,” and so forth.--Trans.
+
+His success had been as great among the occupants of the galleries as
+among the deputies themselves. Several ladies had been seen applauding,
+and Monseigneur Martha had given unmistakable signs of the liveliest
+satisfaction. “Ah, General!” said Massot to Bozonnet in a sneering way.
+“Those are our fighting men of the present time. And he’s a bold and
+strong one, is Monferrand. Of course it is all what people style ‘saving
+one’s bacon,’ but none the less it’s very clever work.”
+
+Just then, however, Monferrand to his great satisfaction had seen Vignon
+rise from his seat in response to the urging of his friends. And
+thereupon all anxiety vanished from the Minister’s smile, which became
+one of malicious placidity.
+
+The very atmosphere of the Chamber seemed to change with Vignon in the
+tribune. He was slim, with a fair and carefully tended beard, blue eyes
+and all the suppleness of youth. He spoke, moreover, like a practical
+man, in simple, straightforward language, which made the emptiness of the
+other’s declamatory style painfully conspicuous. His term of official
+service as a prefect in the provinces had endowed him with keen insight;
+and it was in an easy way that he propounded and unravelled the most
+intricate questions. Active and courageous, confident in his own star,
+too young and too shrewd to have compromised himself in anything so far,
+he was steadily marching towards the future. He had already drawn up a
+rather more advanced political programme than that of Barroux and
+Monferrand, so that when opportunity offered there might be good reasons
+for him to take their place. Moreover, he was quite capable of carrying
+out his programme by attempting some of the long-promised reforms for
+which the country was waiting. He had guessed that honesty, when it had
+prudence and shrewdness as its allies, must some day secure an innings.
+In a clear voice, and in a very quiet, deliberate way, he now said what
+it was right to say on the subject under discussion, the things that
+common sense dictated and that the Chamber itself secretly desired should
+be said. He was certainly the first to rejoice over an arrest which would
+reassure the country; but he failed to understand what connection there
+could be between that arrest and the sad business that had been brought
+before the Chamber. The two affairs were quite distinct and different,
+and he begged his colleagues not to vote in the state of excitement in
+which he saw them. Full light must be thrown on the African Railways
+question, and this, one could not expect from the two incriminated
+ministers. However, he was opposed to any suggestion of a committee of
+inquiry. In his opinion the guilty parties, if such there were, ought to
+be brought immediately before a court of law. And, like Barroux, he wound
+up with a discreet allusion to the growing influence of the clergy,
+declaring that he was against all unworthy compromises, and was equally
+opposed to any state dictatorship and any revival of the ancient
+theocratic spirit.
+
+Although there was but little applause when Vignon returned to his seat,
+it was evident that the Chamber was again master of its emotions. And the
+situation seemed so clear, and the overthrow of the ministry so certain,
+that Mège, who had meant to reply to the others, wisely abstained from
+doing so. Meantime people noticed the placid demeanour of Monferrand, who
+had listened to Vignon with the utmost complacency, as if he were
+rendering homage to an adversary’s talent; whereas Barroux, ever since
+the cold silence which had greeted his speech, had remained motionless in
+his seat, bowed down and pale as a corpse.
+
+“Well, it’s all over,” resumed Massot, amidst the hubbub which arose as
+the deputies prepared to vote; “the ministry’s done for. Little Vignon
+will go a long way, you know. People say that he dreams of the Elysée. At
+all events everything points to him as our next prime minister.”
+
+Then, as the journalist rose, intending to go off, the General detained
+him: “Wait a moment, Monsieur Massot,” said he. “How disgusting all that
+parliamentary cooking is! You ought to point it out in an article, and
+show people how the country is gradually being weakened and rotted to the
+marrow by all such useless and degrading discussions. Why, a great battle
+resulting in the loss of 50,000 men would exhaust us less than ten years
+of this abominable parliamentary system. You must call on me some
+morning. I will show you a scheme of military reform, in which I point
+out the necessity of returning to the limited professional armies which
+we used to have, for this present-day national army, as folks call it,
+which is a semi-civilian affair and at best a mere herd of men, is like a
+dead weight on us, and is bound to pull us down!”
+
+Pierre, for his part, had not spoken a word since the beginning of the
+debate. He had listened to everything, at first influenced by the thought
+of his brother’s interests, and afterwards mastered by the feverishness
+which gradually took possession of everybody present. He had become
+convinced that there was nothing more for Guillaume to fear; but how
+curiously did one event fit into another, and how loudly had Salvat’s
+arrest re-echoed in the Chamber! Looking down into the seething hall
+below him, he had detected all the clash of rival passions and interests.
+After watching the great struggle between Barroux, Monferrand and Vignon,
+he had gazed upon the childish delight of that terrible Socialist Mège,
+who was so pleased at having been able to stir up the depths of those
+troubled waters, in which he always unwittingly angled for the benefit of
+others. Then, too, Pierre had become interested in Fonsègue, who, knowing
+what had been arranged between Monferrand, Duvillard and himself, evinced
+perfect calmness and strove to reassure Duthil and Chaigneux, who, on
+their side, were quite dismayed by the ministry’s impending fall. Yet,
+Pierre’s eyes always came back to Monseigneur Martha. He had watched his
+serene smiling face throughout the sitting, striving to detect his
+impressions of the various incidents that had occurred, as if in his
+opinion that dramatic parliamentary comedy had only been played as a step
+towards the more or less distant triumph for which the prelate laboured.
+And now, while awaiting the result of the vote, as Pierre turned towards
+Massot and the General, he found that they were talking of nothing but
+recruiting and tactics and the necessity of a bath of blood for the whole
+of Europe. Ah! poor mankind, ever fighting and ever devouring one another
+in parliaments as well as on battle-fields, when, thought Pierre, would
+it decide to disarm once and for all, and live at peace according to the
+laws of justice and reason!
+
+Then he again looked down into the hall, where the greatest confusion was
+prevailing among the deputies with regard to the coming vote. There was
+quite a rainfall of suggested “resolutions,” from a very violent one
+proposed by Mège, to another, which was merely severe, emanating from
+Vignon. The ministry, however, would only accept the “Order of the day
+pure and simple,” a mere decision, that is, to pass to the next business,
+as if Mège’s interpellation had been unworthy of attention. And presently
+the Government was defeated, Vignon’s resolution being adopted by a
+majority of twenty-five. Some portion of the Left had evidently joined
+hands with the Right and the Socialist group. A prolonged hubbub followed
+this result.
+
+“Well, so we are to have a Vignon Cabinet,” said Massot, as he went off
+with Pierre and the General. “All the same, though, Monferrand has saved
+himself, and if I were in Vignon’s place I should distrust him.”
+
+That evening there was a very touching farewell scene at the little house
+at Neuilly. When Pierre returned thither from the Chamber, saddened but
+reassured with regard to the future, Guillaume at once made up his mind
+to go home on the morrow. And as Nicholas Barthès was compelled to leave,
+the little dwelling seemed on the point of relapsing into dreary quietude
+once more.
+
+Théophile Morin, whom Pierre had informed of the painful alternative in
+which Barthès was placed, duly came to dinner; but he did not have time
+to speak to the old man before they all sat down to table at seven
+o’clock. As usual Barthès had spent his day in marching, like a caged
+lion, up and down the room in which he had accepted shelter after the
+fashion of a big fearless child, who never worried with regard either to
+his present circumstances or the troubles which the future might have in
+store for him. His life had ever been one of unlimited hope, which
+reality had ever shattered. Although all that he had loved, all that he
+had hoped to secure by fifty years of imprisonment or exile,--liberty,
+equality and a real brotherly republic,--had hitherto failed to come,
+such as he had dreamt of them, he nevertheless retained the candid faith
+of his youth, and was ever confident in the near future. He would smile
+indulgently when new comers, men of violent ideas, derided him and called
+him a poor old fellow. For his part, he could make neither head nor tail
+of the many new sects. He simply felt indignant with their lack of human
+feeling, and stubbornly adhered to his own idea of basing the world’s
+regeneration on the simple proposition that men were naturally good and
+ought to be free and brotherly.
+
+That evening at dinner, feeling that he was with friends who cared for
+him, Barthès proved extremely gay, and showed all his ingenuousness in
+talking of his ideal, which would soon be realised, said he, in spite of
+everything. He could tell a story well whenever he cared to chat, and on
+that occasion he related some delightful anecdotes about the prisons
+through which he had passed. He knew all the dungeons, Ste. Pelagie and
+Mont St. Michel, Belle-Ile-en-Mer and Clairvaux, to say nothing of
+temporary gaols and the evil-smelling hulks on board which political
+prisoners are often confined. And he still laughed at certain
+recollections, and related how in the direst circumstances he had always
+been able to seek refuge in his conscience. The others listened to him
+quite charmed by his conversation, but full of anguish at the thought
+that this perpetual prisoner or exile must again rise and take his staff
+to sally forth, driven from his native land once more.
+
+Pierre did not speak out until they were partaking of dessert. Then he
+related how the Minister had written to him, and how in a brief interview
+he had stated that Barthès must cross the frontier within forty-eight
+hours if he did not wish to be arrested. Thereupon the old man gravely
+rose, with his white fleece, his eagle beak and his bright eyes still
+sparkling with the fire of youth. And he wished to go off at once.
+“What!” said he, “you have known all this since yesterday, and have still
+kept me here at the risk of my compromising you even more than I had done
+already! You must forgive me, I did not think of the worry I might cause
+you, I thought that everything would be satisfactorily arranged. I must
+thank you both--yourself and Guillaume--for the few days of quietude that
+you have procured to an old vagabond and madman like myself.”
+
+Then, as they tried to prevail on him to remain until the following
+morning, he would not listen to them. There would be a train for Brussels
+about midnight, and he had ample time to take it. He refused to let Morin
+accompany him. No, no, said he, Morin was not a rich man, and moreover he
+had work to attend to. Why should he take him away from his duties, when
+it was so easy, so simple, for him to go off alone? He was going back
+into exile as into misery and grief which he had long known, like some
+Wandering Jew of Liberty, ever driven onward through the world.
+
+When he took leave of the others at ten o’clock, in the little sleepy
+street just outside the house, tears suddenly dimmed his eyes. “Ah! I’m
+no longer a young man,” he said; “it’s all over this time. I shall never
+come back again. My bones will rest in some corner over yonder.” And yet,
+after he had affectionately embraced Pierre and Guillaume, he drew
+himself up like one who remained unconquered, and he raised a supreme cry
+of hope. “But after all, who knows? Triumph may perhaps come to-morrow.
+The future belongs to those who prepare it and wait for it!”
+
+Then he walked away, and long after he had disappeared his firm, sonorous
+footsteps could be heard re-echoing in the quiet night.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IV.
+
+
+
+
+I. PIERRE AND MARIE
+
+
+ON the mild March morning when Pierre left his little house at Neuilly to
+accompany Guillaume to Montmartre, he was oppressed by the thought that
+on returning home he would once more find himself alone with nothing to
+prevent him from relapsing into negation and despair. The idea of this
+had kept him from sleeping, and he still found it difficult to hide his
+distress and force a smile.
+
+The sky was so clear and the atmosphere so mild that the brothers had
+resolved to go to Montmartre on foot by way of the outer boulevards. Nine
+o’clock was striking when they set out. Guillaume for his part was very
+gay at the thought of the surprise he would give his family. It was as if
+he were suddenly coming back from a long journey. He had not warned them
+of his intentions; he had merely written to them now and again to tell
+them that he was recovering, and they certainly had no idea that his
+return was so near at hand.
+
+When Guillaume and Pierre had climbed the sunlit slopes of Montmartre,
+and crossed the quiet countrified Place du Tertre, the former, by means
+of a latch-key, quietly opened the door of his house, which seemed to be
+asleep, so profound was the stillness both around and within it. Pierre
+found it the same as on the occasion of his previous and only visit.
+First came the narrow passage which ran through the ground-floor,
+affording a view of all Paris at the further end. Next there was the
+garden, reduced to a couple of plum-trees and a clump of lilac-bushes,
+the leaves of which had now sprouted. And this time the priest perceived
+three bicycles leaning against the trees. Beyond them stood the large
+work-shop, so gay, and yet so peaceful, with its huge window overlooking
+a sea of roofs.
+
+Guillaume had reached the work-shop without meeting anybody. With an
+expression of much amusement he raised a finger to his lips. “Attention,
+Pierre,” he whispered; “you’ll just see!”
+
+Then having noiselessly opened the door, they remained for a moment on
+the threshold.
+
+The three sons alone were there. Near his forge stood Thomas working a
+boring machine, with which he was making some holes in a small brass
+plate. Then François and Antoine were seated on either side of their
+large table, the former reading, and the latter finishing a block. The
+bright sunshine streamed in, playing over all the seeming disorder of the
+room, where so many callings and so many implements found place. A large
+bunch of wallflowers bloomed on the women’s work-table near the window;
+and absorbed as the young men were in their respective tasks the only
+sound was the slight hissing of the boring machine each time that the
+eldest of them drilled another hole.
+
+However, although Guillaume did not stir, there suddenly came a quiver,
+an awakening. His sons seemed to guess his presence, for they raised
+their heads, each at the same moment. From each, too, came the same cry,
+and a common impulse brought them first to their feet and then to his
+arms.
+
+“Father!”
+
+Guillaume embraced them, feeling very happy. And that was all; there was
+no long spell of emotion, no useless talk. It was as if he had merely
+gone out the day before and, delayed by business, had now come back.
+Still, he looked at them with his kindly smile, and they likewise smiled
+with their eyes fixed on his. Those glances proclaimed everything, the
+closest affection and complete self-bestowal for ever.
+
+“Come in, Pierre,” called Guillaume; “shake hands with these young men.”
+
+The priest had remained near the door, overcome by a singular feeling of
+discomfort. When his nephews had vigorously shaken hands with him, he sat
+down near the window apart from them, as if he felt out of his element
+there.
+
+“Well, youngsters,” said Guillaume, “where’s Mère-Grand, and where’s
+Marie?”
+
+Their grandmother was upstairs in her room, they said; and Marie had
+taken it into her head to go marketing. This, by the way, was one of her
+delights. She asserted that she was the only one who knew how to buy
+new-laid eggs and butter of a nutty odour. Moreover, she sometimes
+brought some dainty or some flowers home, in her delight at proving
+herself to be so good a housewife.
+
+“And so things are going on well?” resumed Guillaume. “You are all
+satisfied, your work is progressing, eh?”
+
+He addressed brief questions to each of them, like one who, on his return
+home, at once reverts to his usual habits. Thomas, with his rough face
+beaming, explained in a couple of sentences that he was now sure of
+perfecting his little motor; François, who was still preparing for his
+examination, jestingly declared that he yet had to lodge a heap of
+learning in his brain; and then Antoine produced the block which he was
+finishing, and which depicted his little friend Lise, Jahan’s sister,
+reading in her garden amidst the sunshine. It was like a florescence of
+that dear belated creature whose mind had been awakened by his affection.
+
+However, the three brothers speedily went back to their places, reverting
+to their work with a natural impulse, for discipline had made them regard
+work as life itself. Then Guillaume, who had glanced at what each was
+doing, exclaimed: “Ah! youngsters, I schemed and prepared a lot of things
+myself while I was laid up. I even made a good many notes. We walked here
+from Neuilly, but my papers and the clothes which Mère-Grand sent me will
+come in a cab by-and-by.... Ah! how pleased I am to find everything in
+order here, and to be able to take up my task with you again! Ah! I shall
+polish off some work now, and no mistake!”
+
+He had already gone to his own corner, the space reserved for him between
+the window and the forge. He there had a chemical furnace, several glass
+cases and shelves crowded with appliances, and a long table, one end of
+which he used for writing purposes. And he once more took possession of
+that little world. After glancing around with delight at seeing
+everything in its place, he began to handle one object and another, eager
+to be at work like his sons.
+
+All at once, however, Mère-Grand appeared, calm, grave and erect in her
+black gown, at the top of the little staircase which conducted to the
+bedrooms. “So it’s you, Guillaume?” said she. “Will you come up for a
+moment?”
+
+He immediately did so, understanding that she wished to speak to him
+alone and tranquillise him. It was a question of the great secret between
+them, that one thing of which his sons knew nothing, and which, after
+Salvat’s crime, had brought him much anguish, through his fear that it
+might be divulged. When he reached Mère-Grand’s room she at once took him
+to the hiding-place near her bed, and showed him the cartridges of the
+new explosive, and the plans of the terrible engine of warfare which he
+had invented. He found them all as he had left them. Before anyone could
+have reached them, she would have blown up the whole place at the risk of
+perishing herself in the explosion. With her wonted air of quiet heroism,
+she handed Guillaume the key which he had sent her by Pierre.
+
+“You were not anxious, I hope?” she said.
+
+He pressed her hands with a commingling of affection and respect. “My
+only anxiety,” he replied, “was that the police might come here and treat
+you roughly.... You are the guardian of our secret, and it would be
+for you to finish my work should I disappear.”
+
+While Guillaume and Madame Leroi were thus engaged upstairs, Pierre,
+still seated near the window below, felt his discomfort increasing. The
+inmates of the house certainly regarded him with no other feeling than
+one of affectionate sympathy; and so how came it that he considered them
+hostile? The truth was that he asked himself what would become of him
+among those workers, who were upheld by a faith of their own, whereas he
+believed in nothing, and did not work. The sight of those young men, so
+gaily and zealously toiling, ended by quite irritating him; and the
+arrival of Marie brought his distress to a climax.
+
+Joyous and full of life, she came in without seeing him, a basket on her
+arm. And she seemed to bring all the sunlight of the spring morning with
+her, so bright was the sparkle of her youth. The whole of her pink face,
+her delicate nose, her broad intelligent brow, her thick, kindly lips,
+beamed beneath the heavy coils of her black hair. And her brown eyes ever
+laughed with the joyousness which comes from health and strength.
+
+“Ah!” she exclaimed, “I have brought such a lot of things, youngsters.
+Just come and see them; I wouldn’t unpack the basket in the kitchen.”
+
+It became absolutely necessary for the brothers to draw round the basket
+which she had laid upon the table. “First there’s the butter!” said she;
+“just smell if it hasn’t a nice scent of nuts! It’s churned especially
+for me, you know. Then here are the eggs. They were laid only yesterday,
+I’ll answer for it. And, in fact, that one there is this morning’s. And
+look at the cutlets! They’re wonderful, aren’t they? The butcher cuts
+them carefully when he sees me. And then here’s a cream cheese, real
+cream, you know, it will be delicious! Ah! and here’s the surprise,
+something dainty, some radishes, some pretty little pink radishes. Just
+fancy! radishes in March, what a luxury!”
+
+She triumphed like the good little housewife she was, one who had
+followed a whole course of cookery and home duties at the Lycée Fénelon.
+The brothers, as merry as she herself, were obliged to compliment her.
+
+All at once, however, she caught sight of Pierre. “What! you are there,
+Monsieur l’Abbé?” she exclaimed; “I beg your pardon, but I didn’t see
+you. How is Guillaume? Have you brought us some news of him?”
+
+“But father’s come home,” said Thomas; “he’s upstairs with Mère-Grand.”
+
+Quite thunderstruck, she hastily placed her purchases in the basket.
+“Guillaume’s come back, Guillaume’s come back!” said she, “and you don’t
+tell me of it, you let me unpack everything! Well, it’s nice of me, I
+must say, to go on praising my butter and eggs when Guillaume’s come
+back.”
+
+Guillaume, as it happened, was just coming down with Madame Leroi. Marie
+gaily hastened to him and offered him her cheeks, on which he planted two
+resounding kisses. Then she, resting her hands on his shoulders, gave him
+a long look, while saying in a somewhat tremulous voice: “I am pleased,
+very pleased to see you, Guillaume. I may confess it now, I thought I had
+lost you, I was very anxious and very unhappy.”
+
+Although she was still smiling, tears had gathered in her eyes, and he,
+likewise moved, again kissed her, murmuring: “Dear Marie! How happy it
+makes me to find you as beautiful and as affectionate as ever.”
+
+Pierre, who was looking at them, deemed them cold. He had doubtless
+expected more tears, and a more passionate embrace on the part of an
+affianced pair, whom so grievous an accident had separated almost on the
+eve of their wedding. Moreover, his feelings were hurt by the
+disproportion of their respective ages. No doubt his brother still seemed
+to him very sturdy and young, and his feeling of repulsion must have come
+from that young woman whom, most decidedly, he did not like. Ever since
+her arrival he had experienced increasing discomfort, a keener and keener
+desire to go off and never return.
+
+So acute became his suffering at feeling like a stranger in his brother’s
+home, that he at last rose and sought to take his leave, under the
+pretext that he had some urgent matters to attend to in town.
+
+“What! you won’t stay to _déjeuner_ with us!” exclaimed Guillaume in
+perfect stupefaction. “Why, it was agreed! You surely won’t distress me
+like that! This house is your own, remember!”
+
+Then, as with genuine affection they all protested and pressed him to
+stay, he was obliged to do so. However, he soon relapsed into silence and
+embarrassment, seated on the same chair as before, and listening moodily
+to those people who, although they were his relatives, seemed to be far
+removed from him.
+
+As it was barely eleven o’clock they resumed work, but every now and
+again there was some merry talk. On one of the servants coming for the
+provisions, Marie told the girl to call her as soon as it should be time
+to boil the eggs, for she prided herself on boiling them to a nicety, in
+such wise as to leave the whites like creamy milk. This gave an
+opportunity for a few jests from François, who occasionally teased her
+about all the fine things she had learnt at the Lycée Fénelon, where her
+father had placed her when she was twelve years old. However, she was not
+afraid of him, but gave him tit for tat by chaffing him about all the
+hours which he lost at the École Normale over a mass of pedagogic trash.
+
+“Ah! you big children!” she exclaimed, while still working at her
+embroidery. “You are all very intelligent, and you all claim to have
+broad minds, and yet--confess it now--it worries you a little that a girl
+like me should have studied at college in the same way as yourselves.
+It’s a sexual quarrel, a question of rivalry and competition, isn’t it?”
+
+They protested the contrary, declaring that they were in favour of girls
+receiving as complete an education as possible. She was well aware of
+this; however, she liked to tease them in return for the manner in which
+they themselves plagued her.
+
+“But do you know,” said she, “you are a great deal behind the times? I am
+well aware of the reproaches which are levelled at girls’ colleges by
+so-called right-minded people. To begin, there is no religious element
+whatever in the education one receives there, and this alarms many
+families which consider religious education to be absolutely necessary
+for girls, if only as a moral weapon of defence. Then, too, the education
+at our Lycées is being democratised--girls of all positions come to them.
+Thanks to the scholarships which are so liberally offered, the daughter
+of the lady who rents a first floor flat often finds the daughter of her
+door-keeper among her school-fellows, and some think this objectionable.
+It is said also that the pupils free themselves too much from home
+influence, and that too much opportunity is left for personal initiative.
+As a matter of fact the extensiveness of the many courses of study, all
+the learning that is required of pupils at the examinations, certainly
+does tend to their emancipation, to the coming of the future woman and
+future society, which you young men are all longing for, are you not?”
+
+“Of course we are!” exclaimed François; “we all agree on that point.”
+
+She waved her hand in a pretty way, and then quietly continued: “I’m
+jesting. My views are simple enough, as you well know, and I don’t ask
+for nearly as much as you do. As for woman’s claims and rights, well, the
+question is clear enough; woman is man’s equal so far as nature allows
+it. And the only point is to agree and love one another. At the same time
+I’m well pleased to know what I do--oh! not from any spirit of pedantry
+but simply because I think it has all done me good, and given me some
+moral as well as physical health.”
+
+It delighted her to recall the days she had spent at the Lycée Fénelon,
+which of the five State colleges for girls opened in Paris was the only
+one counting a large number of pupils. Most of these were the daughters
+of officials or professors, who purposed entering the teaching
+profession. In this case, they had to win their last diploma at the École
+Normale of Sevres, after leaving the Lycée. Marie, for her part, though
+her studies had been brilliant, had felt no taste whatever for the
+calling of teacher. Moreover, when Guillaume had taken charge of her
+after her father’s death, he had refused to let her run about giving
+lessons. To provide herself with a little money, for she would accept
+none as a gift, she worked at embroidery, an art in which she was most
+accomplished.
+
+While she was talking to the young men Guillaume had listened to her
+without interfering. If he had fallen in love with her it was largely on
+account of her frankness and uprightness, the even balance of her nature,
+which gave her so forcible a charm. She knew all; but if she lacked the
+poetry of the shrinking, lamb-like girl who has been brought up in
+ignorance, she had gained absolute rectitude of heart and mind, exempt
+from all hypocrisy, all secret perversity such as is stimulated by what
+may seem mysterious in life. And whatever she might know, she had
+retained such child-like purity that in spite of her six-and-twenty
+summers all the blood in her veins would occasionally rush to her cheeks
+in fiery blushes, which drove her to despair.
+
+“My dear Marie,” Guillaume now exclaimed, “you know very well that the
+youngsters were simply joking. You are in the right, of course.... And
+your boiled eggs cannot be matched in the whole world.”
+
+He said this in so soft and affectionate a tone that the young woman
+flushed purple. Then, becoming conscious of it, she coloured yet more
+deeply, and as the three young men glanced at her maliciously she grew
+angry with herself. “Isn’t it ridiculous, Monsieur l’Abbé,” she said,
+turning towards Pierre, “for an old maid like myself to blush in that
+fashion? People might think that I had committed a crime. It’s simply to
+make me blush, you know, that those children tease me. I do all I can to
+prevent it, but it’s stronger than my will.”
+
+At this Mère-Grand raised her eyes from the shirt she was mending, and
+remarked: “Oh! it’s natural enough, my dear. It is your heart rising to
+your cheeks in order that we may see it.”
+
+The _déjeuner_ hour was now at hand; and they decided to lay the table in
+the work-shop, as was occasionally done when they had a guest. The
+simple, cordial meal proved very enjoyable in the bright sunlight.
+Marie’s boiled eggs, which she herself brought from the kitchen covered
+with a napkin, were found delicious. Due honour was also done to the
+butter and the radishes. The only dessert that followed the cutlets was
+the cream cheese, but it was a cheese such as nobody else had ever
+partaken of. And, meantime, while they ate and chatted all Paris lay
+below them, stretching away to the horizon with its mighty rumbling.
+
+Pierre had made an effort to become cheerful, but he soon relapsed into
+silence. Guillaume, however, was very talkative. Having noticed the three
+bicycles in the garden, he inquired of Marie how far she had gone that
+morning. She answered that François and Antoine had accompanied her in
+the direction of Orgemont. The worry of their excursions was that each
+time they returned to Montmartre they had to push their machines up the
+height. From the general point of view, however, the young woman was
+delighted with bicycling, which had many virtues, said she. Then, seeing
+Pierre glance at her in amazement, she promised that she would some day
+explain her opinions on the subject to him. After this bicycling became
+the one topic of conversation until the end of the meal. Thomas gave an
+account of the latest improvements introduced into Grandidier’s machines;
+and the others talked of the excursions they had made or meant to make,
+with all the exuberant delight of school children eager for the open air.
+
+In the midst of the chatter, Mère-Grand, who presided at table with the
+serene dignity of a queen-mother, leant towards Guillaume, who sat next
+to her, and spoke to him in an undertone. Pierre understood that she was
+referring to his marriage, which was to have taken place in April, but
+must now necessarily be deferred. This sensible marriage, which seemed
+likely to ensure the happiness of the entire household, was largely the
+work of Mère-Grand and the three young men, for Guillaume would never
+have yielded to his heart if she whom he proposed to make his wife had
+not already been a well-loved member of the family. At the present time
+the last week in June seemed, for all sorts of reasons, to be a
+favourable date for the wedding.
+
+Marie, who heard the suggestion, turned gaily towards Mère-Grand.
+
+“The end of June will suit very well, will it not, my dear?” said the
+latter.
+
+Pierre expected to see a deep flush rise to the young woman’s cheeks, but
+she remained very calm. She felt deep affection, blended with the most
+tender gratitude, for Guillaume, and was convinced that in marrying him
+she would be acting wisely and well both for herself and the others.
+
+“Certainly, the end of June,” she repeated, “that will suit very well
+indeed.”
+
+Then the sons, who likewise had heard the proposal, nodded their heads by
+way of assenting also.
+
+When they rose from table Pierre was absolutely determined to go off. The
+cordial and simple meal, the sight of that family, which had been
+rendered so happy by Guillaume’s return, and of that young woman who
+smiled so placidly at life, had brought him keen suffering, though why he
+could not tell. However, it all irritated him beyond endurance; and he
+therefore again pretended that he had a number of things to see to in
+Paris. He shook hands in turn with the young men, Mère-Grand and Marie;
+both of the women evincing great friendliness but also some surprise at
+his haste to leave the house. Guillaume, who seemed saddened and anxious,
+sought to detain him, and failing in this endeavour followed him into the
+little garden, where he stopped him in order to have an explanation.
+
+“Come,” said he, “what is the matter with you, Pierre? Why are you
+running off like this?”
+
+“Oh! there’s nothing the matter I assure you; but I have to attend to a
+few urgent affairs.”
+
+“Oh, Pierre, pray put all pretence aside. Nobody here has displeased you
+or hurt your feelings, I hope. They also will soon love you as I do.”
+
+“I have no doubt of it, and I complain of nobody excepting perhaps
+myself.”
+
+Guillaume’s sorrow was increasing. “Ah! brother, little brother,” he
+resumed, “you distress me, for I can detect that you are hiding something
+from me. Remember that new ties have linked us together and that we love
+one another as in the old days when you were in your cradle and I used to
+come to play with you. I know you well, remember. I know all your
+tortures, since you have confessed them to me; and I won’t have you
+suffer, I want to cure you, I do!”
+
+Pierre’s heart was full, and as he heard those words he could not
+restrain his tears. “Oh! you must leave me to my sufferings,” he
+responded. “They are incurable. You can do nothing for me, I am beyond
+the pale of nature, I am a monster.”
+
+“What do you say! Can you not return within nature’s pale even if you
+_have_ gone beyond it? One thing that I will not allow is that you should
+go and shut yourself up in that solitary little house of yours, where you
+madden yourself by brooding over the fall of your faith. Come and spend
+your time with us, so that we may again give you some taste for life.”
+
+Ah! the empty little house which awaited him! Pierre shivered at the
+thought of it, at the idea that he would now find himself all alone
+there, bereft of the brother with whom he had lately spent so many happy
+days. Into what solitude and torment must he not now relapse after that
+companionship to which he had become accustomed? However, the very
+thought of the latter increased his grief, and confession suddenly gushed
+from his lips: “To spend my time here, live with you, oh! no, that is an
+impossibility. Why do you compel me to speak out, and tell you things
+that I am ashamed of and do not even understand. Ever since this morning
+you must have seen that I have been suffering here. No doubt it is
+because you and your people work, whereas I do nothing, because you love
+one another and believe in your efforts, whereas I no longer know how to
+love or believe. I feel out of my element. I’m embarrassed here, and I
+embarrass you. In fact you all irritate me, and I might end by hating
+you. There remains nothing healthy in me, all natural feelings have been
+spoilt and destroyed, and only envy and hatred could sprout up from such
+ruins. So let me go back to my accursed hole, where death will some day
+come for me. Farewell, brother!”
+
+But Guillaume, full of affection and compassion, caught hold of his arms
+and detained him. “You shall not go, I will not allow you to go, without
+a positive promise that you will come back. I don’t wish to lose you
+again, especially now that I know all you are worth and how dreadfully
+you suffer. I will save you, if need be, in spite of yourself. I will
+cure you of your torturing doubts, oh! without catechising you, without
+imposing any particular faith on you, but simply by allowing life to do
+its work, for life alone can give you back health and hope. So I beg you,
+brother, in the name of our affection, come back here, come as often as
+you can to spend a day with us. You will then see that when folks have
+allotted themselves a task and work together in unison, they escape
+excessive unhappiness. A task of any kind--yes, that is what is wanted,
+together with some great passion and frank acceptance of life, so that it
+may be lived as it should be and loved.”
+
+“But what would be the use of my living here?” Pierre muttered bitterly.
+“I’ve no task left me, and I no longer know how to love.”
+
+“Well, I will give you a task, and as for love, that will soon be
+awakened by the breath of life. Come, brother, consent, consent!”
+
+Then, seeing that Pierre still remained gloomy and sorrowful, and
+persisted in his determination to go away and bury himself, Guillaume
+added, “Ah! I don’t say that the things of this world are such as one
+might wish them to be. I don’t say that only joy and truth and justice
+exist. For instance, the affair of that unhappy fellow Salvat fills me
+with anger and revolt. Guilty he is, of course, and yet how many excuses
+he had, and how I shall pity him if the crimes of all of us are laid at
+his door, if the various political gangs bandy him from one to another,
+and use him as a weapon in their sordid fight for power. The thought of
+it all so exasperates me that at times I am as unreasonable as yourself.
+But now, brother, just to please me, promise that you will come and spend
+the day after to-morrow with us.”
+
+Then, as Pierre still kept silent, Guillaume went on: “I will have it so.
+It would grieve me too much to think that you were suffering from
+martyrdom in your solitary nook. I want to cure and save you.”
+
+Tears again rose to Pierre’s eyes, and in a tone of infinite distress he
+answered: “Don’t compel me to promise.... All I can say is that I will
+try to conquer myself.”
+
+The week he then spent in his little, dark, empty home proved a terrible
+one. Shutting himself up he brooded over his despair at having lost the
+companionship of that elder brother whom he once more loved with his
+whole soul. He had never before been so keenly conscious of his solitude;
+and he was a score of times on the point of hastening to Montmartre, for
+he vaguely felt that affection, truth and life were there. But on each
+occasion he was held back by a return of the discomfort which he had
+already experienced, discomfort compounded of shame and fear. Priest that
+he was, cut off from love and the avocations of other men, he would
+surely find nothing but hurt and suffering among creatures who were all
+nature, freedom and health. While he pondered thus, however, there rose
+before him the shades of his father and mother, those sad spirits that
+seemed to wander through the deserted rooms lamenting and entreating him
+to reconcile them in himself, as soon as he should find peace. What was
+he to do,--deny their prayer, and remain weeping with them, or go yonder
+in search of the cure which might at last lull them to sleep and bring
+them happiness in death by the force of his own happiness in life? At
+last a morning came when it seemed to him that his father enjoined him
+with a smile to betake himself yonder, while his mother consented with a
+glance of her big soft eyes, in which her sorrow at having made so bad a
+priest of him yielded to her desire to restore him to the life of our
+common humanity.
+
+Pierre did not argue with himself that day: he took a cab and gave
+Guillaume’s address to the driver for fear lest he should be overcome on
+the way and wish to turn back. And when he again found himself, as in a
+dream, in the large work-shop, where Guillaume and the young men welcomed
+him in a delicately affectionate way, he witnessed an unexpected scene
+which both impressed and relieved him.
+
+Marie, who had scarcely nodded to him as he entered, sat there with a
+pale and frowning face. And Mère-Grand, who was also grave, said, after
+glancing at her: “You must excuse her, Monsieur l’Abbé; but she isn’t
+reasonable. She is in a temper with all five of us.”
+
+Guillaume began to laugh. “Ah! she’s so stubborn!” he exclaimed. “You can
+have no idea, Pierre, of what goes on in that little head of hers when
+anybody says or does anything contrary to her ideas of justice. Such
+absolute and lofty ideas they are, that they can descend to no
+compromise. For instance, we were talking of that recent affair of a
+father who was found guilty on his son’s evidence; and she maintained
+that the son had only done what was right in giving evidence against his
+father, and that one ought invariably to tell the truth, no matter what
+might happen. What a terrible public prosecutor she would make, eh?”
+
+Thereupon Marie, exasperated by Pierre’s smile, which seemingly indicated
+that he also thought her in the wrong, flew into quite a passion: “You
+are cruel, Guillaume!” she cried; “I won’t be laughed at like this.”
+
+“But you are losing your senses, my dear,” exclaimed François, while
+Thomas and Antoine again grew merry. “We were only urging a question of
+humanity, father and I, for we respect and love justice as much as you
+do.”
+
+“There’s no question of humanity, but simply one of justice. What is just
+and right is just and right, and you cannot alter it.”
+
+Then, as Guillaume made a further attempt to state his views and win her
+over to them, she rose trembling, in such a passion that she could
+scarcely stammer: “No, no, you are all too cruel, you only want to grieve
+me. I prefer to go up into my own room.”
+
+At this Mère-Grand vainly sought to restrain her. “My child, my child!”
+ said she, “reflect a moment; this is very wrong, you will deeply regret
+it.”
+
+“No, no; you are not just, and I suffer too much.”
+
+Then she wildly rushed upstairs to her room overhead.
+
+Consternation followed. Scenes of a similar character had occasionally
+occurred before, but there had never been so serious a one. Guillaume
+immediately admitted that he had done wrong in laughing at her, for she
+could not bear irony. Then he told Pierre that in her childhood and youth
+she had been subject to terrible attacks of passion whenever she
+witnessed or heard of any act of injustice. As she herself explained,
+these attacks would come upon her with irresistible force, transporting
+her to such a point that she would sometimes fall upon the floor and
+rave. Even nowadays she proved quarrelsome and obstinate whenever certain
+subjects were touched upon. And she afterwards blushed for it all, fully
+conscious that others must think her unbearable.
+
+Indeed, a quarter of an hour later, she came downstairs again of her own
+accord, and bravely acknowledged her fault. “Wasn’t it ridiculous of me?”
+ she said. “To think I accuse others of being unkind when I behave like
+that! Monsieur l’Abbé must have a very bad opinion of me.” Then, after
+kissing Mère-Grand, she added: “You’ll forgive me, won’t you? Oh!
+François may laugh now, and so may Thomas and Antoine. They are quite
+right, our differences are merely laughing matters.”
+
+“My poor Marie,” replied Guillaume, in a tone of deep affection. “You see
+what it is to surrender oneself to the absolute. If you are so healthy
+and reasonable it’s because you regard almost everything from the
+relative point of view, and only ask life for such gifts as it can
+bestow. But when your absolute ideas of justice come upon you, you lose
+both equilibrium and reason. At the same time, I must say that we are all
+liable to err in much the same manner.”
+
+Marie, who was still very flushed, thereupon answered in a jesting way:
+“Well, it at least proves that I’m not perfect.”
+
+“Oh, certainly! And so much the better,” said Guillaume, “for it makes me
+love you the more.”
+
+This was a sentiment which Pierre himself would willingly have re-echoed.
+The scene had deeply stirred him. Had not his own frightful torments
+originated with his desire for the absolute both in things and beings? He
+had sought faith in its entirety, and despair had thrown him into
+complete negation. Again, was there not some evil desire for the absolute
+and some affectation of pride and voluntary blindness in the haughty
+bearing which he had retained amidst the downfall of his belief, the
+saintly reputation which he had accepted when he possessed no faith at
+all? On hearing his brother praise Marie, because she only asked life for
+such things as it could give, it had seemed to him that this was advice
+for himself. It was as if a refreshing breath of nature had passed before
+his face. At the same time his feelings in this respect were still vague,
+and the only well-defined pleasure that he experienced came from the
+young woman’s fit of anger, that error of hers which brought her nearer
+to him, by lowering her in some degree from her pedestal of serene
+perfection. It was, perhaps, that seeming perfection which had made him
+suffer; however, he was as yet unable to analyse his feelings. That day,
+for the first time, he chatted with her for a little while, and when he
+went off he thought her very good-hearted and very human.
+
+Two days later he again came to spend the afternoon in the large sunlit
+work-shop overlooking Paris. Ever since he had become conscious of the
+idle life he was leading, he had felt very bored when he was alone, and
+only found relief among that gay, hardworking family. His brother scolded
+him for not having come to _déjeuner_, and he promised to do so on the
+morrow. By the time a week had elapsed, none of the discomfort and covert
+hostility which had prevailed between him and Marie remained: they met
+and chatted on a footing of good fellowship. Although he was a priest,
+she was in no wise embarrassed by his presence. With her quiet atheism,
+indeed, she had never imagined that a priest could be different from
+other men. Thus her sisterly cordiality both astonished and delighted
+Pierre. It was as if he wore the same garments and held the same ideas as
+his big nephews, as if there were nothing whatever to distinguish him
+from other men. He was still more surprised, however, by Marie’s silence
+on all religious questions. She seemed to live on quietly and happily,
+without a thought of what might be beyond life, that terrifying realm of
+mystery, which to him had brought such agony of mind.
+
+Now that he came every two or three days to Montmartre she noticed that
+he was suffering. What could be the matter with him, she wondered. When
+she questioned him in a friendly manner and only elicited evasive
+replies, she guessed that he was ashamed of his sufferings, and that they
+were aggravated, rendered well-nigh incurable, by the very secrecy in
+which he buried them. Thereupon womanly compassion awoke within her, and
+she felt increasing affection for that tall, pale fellow with feverish
+eyes, who was consumed by grievous torments which he would confess to
+none. No doubt she questioned Guillaume respecting her brother’s sadness,
+and he must have confided some of the truth to her in order that she
+might help him to extricate Pierre from his sufferings, and give him back
+some taste for life. The poor fellow always seemed so happy when she
+treated him like a friend, a brother!
+
+At last, one evening, on seeing his eyes full of tears as he gazed upon
+the dismal twilight falling over Paris, she herself pressed him to
+confide his trouble to her. And thereupon he suddenly spoke out,
+confessing all his torture and the horrible void which the loss of faith
+had left within him. Ah! to be unable to believe, to be unable to love,
+to be nothing but ashes, to know of nothing certain by which he might
+replace the faith that had fled from him! She listened in stupefaction.
+Why, he must be mad! And she plainly told him so, such was her
+astonishment and revolt at hearing such a desperate cry of wretchedness.
+To despair, indeed, and believe in nothing and love nothing, simply
+because a religious hypothesis had crumbled! And this, too, when the
+whole, vast world was spread before one, life with the duty of living it,
+creatures and things to be loved and succoured, without counting the
+universal labour, the task which one and all came to accomplish!
+Assuredly he must be mad, mad with the gloomiest madness; still she vowed
+she would cure him.
+
+From that time forward she felt the most compassionate affection for this
+extraordinary young man, who had first embarrassed and afterwards
+astonished her. She showed herself very gentle and gay with him; she
+looked after him with the greatest skill and delicacy of heart and mind.
+There had been certain similar features in their childhood; each had been
+reared in the strictest religious views by a pious mother. But afterwards
+how different had been their fates! Whilst he was struggling with his
+doubts, bound by his priestly vows, she had grown up at the Lycée
+Fénelon, where her father had placed her as soon as her mother died; and
+there, far removed from all practice of religion, she had gradually
+reached total forgetfulness of her early religious views. It was a
+constant source of surprise for him to find that she had thus escaped all
+distress of mind at the thought of what might come after death, whereas
+that same thought had so deeply tortured him. When they chatted together
+and he expressed his astonishment at it, she frankly laughed, saying that
+she had never felt any fear of hell, for she was certain that no hell
+existed. And she added that she lived in all quietude, without hope of
+going to any heaven, her one thought being to comply in a reasonable way
+with the requirements and necessities of earthly life. It was, perhaps,
+in some measure a matter of temperament with her; but it was also a
+matter of education. Yet, whatever that education had been, whatever
+knowledge she had acquired, she had remained very womanly and very
+loving. There was nothing stern or masculine about her.
+
+“Ah, my friend,” she said one day to Pierre, “if you only knew how easy
+it is for me to remain happy so long as I see those I love free from any
+excessive suffering. For my own part I can always adapt myself to life. I
+work and content myself no matter what may happen. Sorrow has only come
+to me from others, for I can’t help wishing that everybody should be
+fairly happy, and there are some who won’t.... I was for a long time
+very poor, but I remained gay. I wish for nothing, except for things that
+can’t be purchased. Still, want is the great abomination which distresses
+me. I can understand that you should have felt everything crumbling when
+charity appeared to you so insufficient a remedy as to be contemptible.
+Yet it does bring relief; and, moreover, it is so sweet to be able to
+give. Some day, too, by dint of reason and toil, by the good and
+efficient working of life itself, the reign of justice will surely come.
+But now it’s I that am preaching! Oh! I have little taste for it! It
+would be ridiculous for me to try to heal you with big phrases. All the
+same, I should like to cure you of your gloomy sufferings. To do so, all
+that I ask of you is to spend as much time as you can with us. You know
+that this is Guillaume’s greatest desire. We will all love you so well,
+you will see us all so affectionately united, and so gay over our common
+work, that you will come back to truth by joining us in the school of our
+good mother nature. You must live and work, and love and hope.”
+
+Pierre smiled as he listened. He now came to Montmartre nearly every day.
+She was so nice and affectionate when she preached to him in that way
+with a pretty assumption of wisdom. As she had said too, life was so
+delightful in that big workroom; it was so pleasant to be all together,
+and to labour in common at the same work of health and truth. Ashamed as
+Pierre was of doing nothing, anxious as he was to occupy his mind and
+fingers, he had first taken an interest in Antoine’s engraving, asking
+why he should not try something of the kind himself. However, he felt
+that he lacked the necessary gift for art. Then, too, he recoiled from
+François’ purely intellectual labour, for he himself had scarcely emerged
+from the harrowing study of conflicting texts. Thus he was more inclined
+for manual toil like that of Thomas. In mechanics he found precision and
+clearness such as might help to quench his thirst for certainty. So he
+placed himself at the young man’s orders, pulled his bellows and held
+pieces of mechanism for him. He also sometimes served as assistant to
+Guillaume, tying a large blue apron over his cassock in order to help in
+the experiments. From that time he formed part of the work-shop, which
+simply counted a worker the more.
+
+One afternoon early in April, when they were all busily engaged there,
+Marie, who sat embroidering at the table in front of Mère-Grand, raised
+her eyes to the window and suddenly burst into a cry of admiration: “Oh!
+look at Paris under that rain of sunlight!”
+
+Pierre drew near; the play of light was much the same as that which he
+had witnessed at his first visit. The sun, sinking behind some slight
+purple clouds, was throwing down a hail of rays and sparks which on all
+sides rebounded and leapt over the endless stretch of roofs. It might
+have been thought that some great sower, hidden amidst the glory of the
+planet, was scattering handfuls of golden grain from one horizon to the
+other.
+
+Pierre, at sight of it, put his fancy into words: “It is the sun sowing
+Paris with grain for a future harvest,” said he. “See how the expanse
+looks like ploughed land; the brownish houses are like soil turned up,
+and the streets are deep and straight like furrows.”
+
+“Yes, yes, that’s true,” exclaimed Marie gaily. “The sun is sowing Paris
+with grain. See how it casts the seed of light and health right away to
+the distant suburbs! And yet, how singular! The rich districts on the
+west seem steeped in a ruddy mist, whilst the good seed falls in golden
+dust over the left bank and the populous districts eastward. It is there,
+is it not, that the crop will spring up?”
+
+They had all drawn near, and were smiling at the symbol. As Marie had
+said, it seemed indeed that while the sun slowly sank behind the lacework
+of clouds, the sower of eternal life scattered his flaming seed with a
+rhythmical swing of the arm, ever selecting the districts of toil and
+effort. One dazzling handful of grain fell over yonder on the district of
+the schools; and then yet another rained down to fertilise the district
+of the factories and work-shops.
+
+“Ah! well,” said Guillaume gaily. “May the crop soon sprout from the good
+ground of our great Paris, which has been turned up by so many
+revolutions, and enriched by the blood of so many workers! It is the only
+ground in the world where Ideas can germinate and bloom. Yes, yes, Pierre
+is quite right, it is the sun sowing Paris with the seed of the future
+world, which can sprout only up here!”
+
+Then Thomas, François and Antoine, who stood behind their father in a
+row, nodded as if to say that this was also their own conviction; whilst
+Mère-Grand gazed afar with dreamy eyes as though she could already behold
+the splendid future.
+
+“Ah! but it is only a dream; centuries must elapse. We shall never see
+it!” murmured Pierre with a quiver.
+
+“But others will!” cried Marie. “And does not that suffice?”
+
+Those lofty words stirred Pierre to the depths of his being. And all at
+once there came to him the memory of another Marie*--the adorable Marie
+of his youth, that Marie de Guersaint who had been cured at Lourdes, and
+the loss of whom had left such a void in his heart. Was that new Marie
+who stood there smiling at him, so tranquil and so charming in her
+strength, destined to heal that old-time wound? He felt that he was
+beginning to live again since she had become his friend.
+
+ * The heroine of M. Zola’s “Lourdes.”
+
+Meantime, there before them, the glorious sun, with the sweep of its
+rays, was scattering living golden dust over Paris, still and ever sowing
+the great future harvest of justice and of truth.
+
+
+
+
+II. TOWARDS LIFE
+
+ONE evening, at the close of a good day’s work, Pierre, who was helping
+Thomas, suddenly caught his foot in the skirt of his cassock and narrowly
+escaped falling. At this, Marie, after raising a faint cry of anxiety,
+exclaimed: “Why don’t you take it off?”
+
+There was no malice in her inquiry. She simply looked upon the priestly
+robe as something too heavy and cumbersome, particularly when one had
+certain work to perform. Nevertheless, her words deeply impressed Pierre,
+and he could not forget them. When he was at home in the evening and
+repeated them to himself they gradually threw him into feverish
+agitation. Why, indeed, had he not divested himself of that cassock,
+which weighed so heavily and painfully on his shoulders? Then a frightful
+struggle began within him, and he spent a terrible, sleepless night,
+again a prey to all his former torments.
+
+At first sight it seemed a very simple matter that he should cast his
+priestly gown aside, for had he not ceased to discharge any priestly
+office? He had not said mass for some time past, and this surely meant
+renunciation of the priesthood. Nevertheless, so long as he retained his
+gown it was possible that he might some day say mass again, whereas if he
+cast it aside he would, as it were, strip himself, quit the priesthood
+entirely, without possibility of return. It was a terrible step to take,
+one that would prove irrevocable; and thus he paced his room for hours,
+in great anguish of mind.
+
+He had formerly indulged in a superb dream. Whilst believing nothing
+himself he had resolved to watch, in all loyalty, over the belief of
+others. He would not so lower himself as to forswear his vows, he would
+be no base renegade, but however great the torments of the void he felt
+within him he would remain the minister of man’s illusions respecting the
+Divinity. And it was by reason of his conduct in this respect that he had
+ended by being venerated as a saint--he who denied everything, who had
+become a mere empty sepulchre. For a long time his falsehood had never
+disturbed him, but it now brought him acute suffering. It seemed to him
+that he would be acting in the vilest manner if he delayed placing his
+life in accord with his opinions. The thought of it all quite rent his
+heart.
+
+The question was a very clear one. By what right did he remain the
+minister of a religion in which he no longer believed? Did not elementary
+honesty require that he should quit a Church in which he denied the
+presence of the Divinity? He regarded the dogmas of that Church as
+puerile errors, and yet he persisted in teaching them as if they were
+eternal truths. Base work it was, that alarmed his conscience. He vainly
+sought the feverish glow of charity and martyrdom which had led him to
+offer himself as a sacrifice, willing to suffer all the torture of doubt
+and to find his own life lost and ravaged, provided that he might yet
+afford the relief of hope to the lowly. Truth and nature, no doubt, had
+already regained too much ascendancy over him for those feelings to
+return. The thought of such a lying apostolate now wounded him; he no
+longer had the hypocritical courage to call the Divinity down upon the
+believers kneeling before him, when he was convinced that the Divinity
+would not descend. Thus all the past was swept away; there remained
+nothing of the sublime pastoral part he would once have liked to play,
+that supreme gift of himself which lay in stubborn adherence to the rules
+of the Church, and such devotion to faith as to endure in silence the
+torture of having lost it.
+
+What must Marie think of his prolonged falsehood, he wondered, and
+thereupon he seemed to hear her words again: “Why not take your cassock
+off?” His conscience bled as if those words were a stab. What contempt
+must she not feel for him, she who was so upright, so high-minded? Every
+scattered blame, every covert criticism directed against his conduct,
+seemed to find embodiment in her. It now sufficed that she should condemn
+him, and he at once felt guilty. At the same time she had never voiced
+her disapproval to him, in all probability because she did not think she
+had any right to intervene in a struggle of conscience. The superb
+calmness and healthiness which she displayed still astonished him. He
+himself was ever haunted and tortured by thoughts of the unknown, of what
+the morrow of death might have in store for one; but although he had
+studied and watched her for days together, he had never seen her give a
+sign of doubt or distress. This exemption from such sufferings as his own
+was due, said she, to the fact that she gave all her gaiety, all her
+energy, all her sense of duty, to the task of living, in such wise that
+life itself proved a sufficiency, and no time was left for mere fancies
+to terrify and stultify her. Well, then, since she with her air of quiet
+strength had asked him why he did not take off his cassock, he would take
+it off--yes, he would divest himself of that robe which seemed to burn
+and weigh him down.
+
+He fancied himself calmed by this decision, and towards morning threw
+himself upon his bed; but all at once a stifling sensation, a renewal of
+his abominable anguish, brought him to his feet again. No, no, he could
+not divest himself of that gown which clung so tightly to his flesh. His
+skin would come away with his cloth, his whole being would be lacerated!
+Is not the mark of priesthood an indelible one, does it not brand the
+priest for ever, and differentiate him from the flock? Even should he
+tear off his gown with his skin, he would remain a priest, an object of
+scandal and shame, awkward and impotent, shut off from the life of other
+men. And so why tear it off, since he would still and ever remain in
+prison, and a fruitful life of work in the broad sunlight was no longer
+within his reach? He, indeed, fancied himself irremediably stricken with
+impotence. Thus he was unable to come to any decision, and when he
+returned to Montmartre two days later he had again relapsed into a state
+of torment.
+
+Feverishness, moreover, had come upon the happy home. Guillaume was
+becoming more and more annoyed about Salvat’s affair, not a day elapsing
+without the newspapers fanning his irritation. He had at first been
+deeply touched by the dignified and reticent bearing of Salvat, who had
+declared that he had no accomplices whatever. Of course the inquiry into
+the crime was what is called a secret one; but magistrate Amadieu, to
+whom it had been entrusted, conducted it in a very noisy way. The
+newspapers, which he in some degree took into his confidence, were full
+of articles and paragraphs about him and his interviews with the
+prisoner. Thanks to Salvat’s quiet admissions, Amadieu had been able to
+retrace the history of the crime hour by hour, his only remaining doubts
+having reference to the nature of the powder which had been employed, and
+the making of the bomb itself. It might after all be true that Salvat had
+loaded the bomb at a friend’s, as he indeed asserted was the case; but he
+must be lying when he added that the only explosive used was dynamite,
+derived from some stolen cartridges, for all the experts now declared
+that dynamite would never have produced such effects as those which had
+been witnessed. This, then, was the mysterious point which protracted the
+investigations. And day by day the newspapers profited by it to circulate
+the wildest stories under sensational headings, which were specially
+devised for the purpose of sending up their sales.
+
+It was all the nonsense contained in these stories that fanned
+Guillaume’s irritation. In spite of his contempt for Sagnier he could not
+keep from buying the “Voix du Peuple.” Quivering with indignation,
+growing more and more exasperated, he was somehow attracted by the mire
+which he found in that scurrilous journal. Moreover, the other
+newspapers, including even the “Globe,” which was usually so dignified,
+published all sorts of statements for which no proof could be supplied,
+and drew from them remarks and conclusions which, though couched in
+milder language than Sagnier’s, were none the less abominably unjust. It
+seemed indeed as if the whole press had set itself the task of covering
+Salvat with mud, so as to be able to vilify Anarchism generally.
+According to the journalists the prisoner’s life had simply been one long
+abomination. He had already earned his living by thievery in his
+childhood at the time when he had roamed the streets, an unhappy,
+forsaken vagrant; and later on he had proved a bad soldier and a bad
+worker. He had been punished for insubordination whilst he was in the
+army, and he had been dismissed from a dozen work-shops because he
+incessantly disturbed them by his Anarchical propaganda. Later still, he
+had fled his country and led a suspicious life of adventure in America,
+where, it was alleged, he must have committed all sorts of unknown
+crimes. Moreover there was his horrible immorality, his connection with
+his sister-in-law, that Madame Théodore who had taken charge of his
+forsaken child in his absence, and with whom he had cohabited since his
+return to France. In this wise Salvat’s failings and transgressions were
+pitilessly denounced and magnified without any mention of the causes
+which had induced them, or of the excuses which lay in the unhappy man’s
+degrading environment. And so Guillaume’s feelings of humanity and
+justice revolted, for he knew the real Salvat,--a man of tender heart and
+dreamy mind, so liable to be impassioned by fancies,--a man cast into
+life when a child without weapon of defence, ever trodden down or thrust
+aside, then gradually exasperated by the perpetual onslaughts of want,
+and at last dreaming of reviving the golden age by destroying the old,
+corrupt world.
+
+Unfortunately for Salvat, everything had gone against him since he had
+been shut up in strict confinement, at the mercy of the ambitious and
+worldly Amadieu. Guillaume had learnt from his son, Thomas, that the
+prisoner could count on no support whatever among his former mates at the
+Grandidier works. These works were becoming prosperous once more, thanks
+to their steady output of bicycles; and it was said that Grandidier was
+only waiting for Thomas to perfect his little motor, in order to start
+the manufacture of motor-cars on a large scale. However, the success
+which he was now for the first time achieving, and which scarcely repaid
+him for all his years of toil and battle, had in certain respects
+rendered him prudent and even severe. He did not wish any suspicion to be
+cast upon his business through the unpleasant affair of his former
+workman Salvat, and so he had dismissed such of his workmen as held
+Anarchist views. If he had kept the two Toussaints, one of whom was the
+prisoner’s brother-in-law, while the other was suspected of sympathy with
+him, this was because they had belonged to the works for a score of
+years, and he did not like to cast them adrift. Moreover, Toussaint, the
+father, had declared that if he were called as a witness for the defence,
+he should simply give such particulars of Salvat’s career as related to
+the prisoner’s marriage with his sister.
+
+One evening when Thomas came home from the works, to which he returned
+every now and then in order to try his little motor, he related that he
+had that day seen Madame Grandidier, the poor young woman who had become
+insane through an attack of puerperal fever following upon the death of a
+child. Although most frightful attacks of madness occasionally came over
+her, and although life beside her was extremely painful, even during the
+intervals when she remained downcast and gentle as a child, her husband
+had never been willing to send her to an asylum. He kept her with him in
+a pavilion near the works, and as a rule the shutters of the windows
+overlooking the yard remained closed. Thus Thomas had been greatly
+surprised to see one of these windows open, and the young woman appear at
+it amidst the bright sunshine of that early spring. True, she only
+remained there for a moment, vision-like, fair and pretty, with smiling
+face; for a servant who suddenly drew near closed the window, and the
+pavilion then again sank into lifeless silence. At the same time it was
+reported among the men employed at the works that the poor creature had
+not experienced an attack for well-nigh a month past, and that this was
+the reason why the “governor” looked so strong and pleased, and worked so
+vigorously to help on the increasing prosperity of his business.
+
+“He isn’t a bad fellow,” added Thomas, “but with the terrible competition
+that he has to encounter, he is bent on keeping his men under control.
+Nowadays, says he, when so many capitalists and wage earners seem bent on
+exterminating one another, the latter--if they don’t want to
+starve--ought to be well pleased when capital falls into the hands of an
+active, fair-minded man.... If he shows no pity for Salvat, it is
+because he really believes in the necessity of an example.”
+
+That same day Thomas, after leaving the works and while threading his way
+through the toilsome hive-like Marcadet district, had overtaken Madame
+Théodore and little Céline, who were wandering on in great distress. It
+appeared that they had just called upon Toussaint, who had been unable to
+lend them even such a trifle as ten sous. Since Salvat’s arrest, the
+woman and the child had been forsaken and suspected by one and all.
+Driven forth from their wretched lodging, they were without food and
+wandered hither and thither dependent on chance alms. Never had greater
+want and misery fallen on defenceless creatures.
+
+“I told them to come up here, father,” said Thomas, “for I thought that
+one might pay their landlord a month’s rent, so that they might go home
+again.... Ah! there’s somebody coming now--it’s they, no doubt.”
+
+Guillaume had felt angry with himself whilst listening to his son, for he
+had not thought of the poor creatures. It was the old story: the man
+disappears, and the woman and the child find themselves in the streets,
+starving. Whenever Justice strikes a man her blow travels beyond him,
+fells innocent beings and kills them.
+
+Madame Théodore came in, humble and timid, scared like a luckless
+creature whom life never wearies of persecuting. She was becoming almost
+blind, and little Céline had to lead her. The girl’s fair, thin face wore
+its wonted expression of shrewd intelligence, and even now, however
+woeful her rags, it was occasionally brightened by a childish smile.
+
+Pierre and Marie, who were both there, felt extremely touched. Near them
+was Madame Mathis, young Victor’s mother, who had come to help Mère-Grand
+with the mending of some house-linen. She went out by the day in this
+fashion among a few families, and was thus enabled to give her son an
+occasional franc or two. Guillaume alone questioned Madame Théodore.
+
+“Ah! monsieur,” she stammered, “who could ever have thought Salvat
+capable of such a thing, he who’s so good and so humane? Still it’s true,
+since he himself has admitted it to the magistrate.... For my part I
+told everybody that he was in Belgium. I wasn’t quite sure of it, still
+I’m glad that he didn’t come back to see us; for if he had been arrested
+at our place I should have lost my senses.... Well, now that they have
+him, they’ll sentence him to death, that’s certain.”
+
+At this Céline, who had been looking around her with an air of interest,
+piteously exclaimed: “Oh! no, oh! no, mamma, they won’t hurt him!”
+
+Big tears appeared in the child’s eyes as she raised this cry. Guillaume
+kissed her, and then went on questioning Madame Théodore.
+
+“Well, monsieur,” she answered, “the child’s not old or big enough to
+work as yet, and my eyes are done for, people won’t even take me as a
+charwoman. And so it’s simple enough, we starve.... Oh! of course I’m
+not without relations; I have a sister who married very well. Her husband
+is a clerk, Monsieur Chrétiennot, perhaps you know him. Unfortunately
+he’s rather proud, and as I don’t want any scenes between him and my
+sister, I no longer go to see her. Besides, she’s in despair just now,
+for she’s expecting another baby, which is a terrible blow for a small
+household, when one already has two girls.... That’s why the only
+person I can apply to is my brother Toussaint. His wife isn’t a bad sort
+by any means, but she’s no longer the same since she’s been living in
+fear of her husband having another attack. The first one carried off all
+her savings, and what would become of her if Toussaint should remain on
+her hands, paralysed? Besides, she’s threatened with another burden, for,
+as you may know, her son Charles got keeping company with a servant at a
+wine shop, who of course ran away after she had a baby, which she left
+him to see to. So one can understand that the Toussaints themselves are
+hard put. I don’t complain of them. They’ve already lent me a little
+money, and of course they can’t go on lending for ever.”
+
+She continued talking in this spiritless, resigned way, complaining only
+on account of Céline; for, said she, it was enough to make one’s heart
+break to see such an intelligent child obliged to tramp the streets after
+getting on so well at the Communal School. She could feel too that
+everybody now kept aloof from them on account of Salvat. The Toussaints
+didn’t want to be compromised in any such business. There was only
+Charles, who had said that he could well understand a man losing his head
+and trying to blow up the _bourgeois_, because they really treated the
+workers in a blackguard way.
+
+“For my part, monsieur,” added Madame Théodore, “I say nothing, for I’m
+only a woman. All the same, though, if you’d like to know what I think,
+well, I think that it would have been better if Salvat hadn’t done what
+he did, for we two, the girl and I, are the real ones to suffer from it.
+Ah! I can’t get the idea into my head, that the little one should be the
+daughter of a man condemned to death.”
+
+Once more Céline interrupted her, flinging her arms around her neck: “Oh!
+mamma, oh! mamma, don’t say that, I beg you! It can’t be true, it grieves
+me too much!”
+
+At this Pierre and Marie exchanged compassionate glances, while
+Mère-Grand rose from her chair, in order to go upstairs and search her
+wardrobes for some articles of clothing which might be of use to the two
+poor creatures. Guillaume, who, for his part, had been moved to tears,
+and felt full of revolt against the social system which rendered such
+distress possible, slipped some alms into the child’s little hand, and
+promised Madame Théodore that he would see her landlord so as to get her
+back her room.
+
+“Ah! Monsieur Froment!” replied the unfortunate woman. “Salvat was quite
+right when he said you were a real good man! And as you employed him here
+for a few days you know too that he isn’t a wicked one.... Now that
+he’s been put in prison everybody calls him a brigand, and it breaks my
+heart to hear them.” Then, turning towards Madame Mathis, who had
+continued sewing in discreet silence, like a respectable woman whom none
+of these things could concern, she went on: “I know you, madame, but I’m
+better acquainted with your son, Monsieur Victor, who has often come to
+chat at our place. Oh! you needn’t be afraid, I shan’t say it, I shall
+never compromise anybody; but if Monsieur Victor were free to speak, he’d
+be the man to explain Salvat’s ideas properly.”
+
+Madame Mathis looked at her in stupefaction. Ignorant as she was of her
+son’s real life and views, she experienced a vague dread at the idea of
+any connection between him and Salvat’s family. Moreover, she refused to
+believe it possible. “Oh! you must be mistaken,” she said. “Victor told
+me that he now seldom came to Montmartre, as he was always going about in
+search of work.”
+
+By the anxious quiver of the widow’s voice, Madame Théodore understood
+that she ought not to have mixed her up in her troubles; and so in all
+humility she at once beat a retreat: “I beg your pardon, madame, I didn’t
+think I should hurt your feelings. Perhaps, too, I’m mistaken, as you
+say.”
+
+Madame Mathis had again turned to her sewing as to the solitude in which
+she lived, that nook of decent misery where she dwelt without
+companionship and almost unknown, with scarcely sufficient bread to eat.
+Ah! that dear son of hers, whom she loved so well; however much he might
+neglect her, she had placed her only remaining hope in him: he was her
+last dream, and would some day lavish all kinds of happiness upon her!
+
+At that moment Mère-Grand came downstairs again, laden with a bundle of
+linen and woollen clothing, and Madame Théodore and little Céline
+withdrew while pouring forth their thanks. For a long time after they had
+gone Guillaume, unable to resume work, continued walking to and fro in
+silence, with a frown upon his face.
+
+When Pierre, still hesitating and still tortured by conflicting feelings,
+returned to Montmartre on the following day he witnessed with much
+surprise a visit of a very different kind. There was a sudden gust of
+wind, a whirl of skirts and a ring of laughter as little Princess
+Rosemonde swept in, followed by young Hyacinthe Duvillard, who, on his
+side, retained a very frigid bearing.
+
+“It’s I, my dear master,” exclaimed the Princess. “I promised you a
+visit, you remember, for I am such a great admirer of your genius. And
+our young friend here has been kind enough to bring me. We have only just
+returned from Norway, and my very first visit is for you.”
+
+She turned as she spoke, and bowed in an easy and gracious way to Pierre
+and Marie, François and Antoine, who were also there. Then she resumed:
+“Oh! my dear master, you have no idea how beautifully virginal Norway is!
+We all ought to go and drink at that new source of the Ideal, and we
+should return purified, rejuvenated and capable of great renunciations!”
+
+As a matter of fact she had been well-nigh bored to death there. To make
+one’s honeymoon journey to the land of the ice and snow, instead of to
+Italy, the hot land of the sun, was doubtless a very refined idea, which
+showed that no base materialism formed part of one’s affections. It was
+the soul alone that travelled, and naturally it was fit that only kisses
+of the soul should be exchanged on the journey. Unfortunately, however,
+Hyacinthe had carried his symbolism so far as to exasperate Rosemonde,
+and on one occasion they had come to blows over it, and then to tears
+when this lover’s quarrel had ended as many such quarrels do. Briefly,
+they had no longer deemed themselves pure enough for the companionship of
+the swans and the lakes of dreamland, and had therefore taken the first
+steamer that was sailing for France.
+
+As it was altogether unnecessary to confess to everybody what a failure
+their journey had proved, the Princess abruptly brought her rapturous
+references to Norway to an end, and then explained: “By the way, do you
+know what I found awaiting me on my return? Why, I found my house
+pillaged, oh! completely pillaged! And in such a filthy condition, too!
+We at once recognised the mark of the beast, and thought of Bergaz’s
+young friends.”
+
+Already on the previous day Guillaume had read in the newspapers that a
+band of young Anarchists had entered the Princess’s little house by
+breaking a basement window. She had left it quite deserted, unprotected
+even by a caretaker; and the robbers had not merely removed everything
+from the premises--including even the larger articles of furniture, but
+had lived there for a couple of days, bringing provisions in from
+outside, drinking all the wine in the cellars, and leaving every room in
+a most filthy and disgusting condition. On discovering all this,
+Rosemonde had immediately remembered the evening she had spent at the
+Chamber of Horrors in the company of Bergaz and his acolytes, Rossi and
+Sanfaute, who had heard her speak of her intended trip to Norway. The two
+young men had therefore been arrested, but Bergaz had so far escaped. The
+Princess was not greatly astonished by it all, for she had already been
+warned of the presence of dangerous characters among the mixed
+cosmopolitan set with which she associated. Janzen had told her in
+confidence of a number of villanous affairs which were attributed to
+Bergaz and his band. And now the Anarchist leader openly declared that
+Bergaz had sold himself to the police like Raphanel; and that the
+burglary at the Princess’s residence had been planned by the police
+officials, who thereby hoped to cover the Anarchist cause with mire. If
+proof was wanted of this, added Janzen, it could be found in the fact
+that the police had allowed Bergaz to escape.
+
+“I fancied that the newspapers might have exaggerated matters,” said
+Guillaume, when the Princess had finished her story. “They are inventing
+such abominable things just now, in order to blacken the case of that
+poor devil Salvat.”
+
+“Oh! they’ve exaggerated nothing!” Rosemonde gaily rejoined. “As a matter
+of fact they have omitted a number of particulars which were too filthy
+for publication.... For my part, I’ve merely had to go to an hotel.
+I’m very comfortable there; I was beginning to feel bored in that house
+of mine.... All the same, however, Anarchism is hardly a clean
+business, and I no longer like to say that I have any connection with
+it.”
+
+She again laughed, and then passed to another subject, asking Guillaume
+to tell her of his most recent researches, in order, no doubt, that she
+might show she knew enough chemistry to understand him. He had been
+rendered thoughtful, however, by the story of Bergaz and the burglary,
+and would only answer her in a general way.
+
+Meantime, Hyacinthe was renewing his acquaintance with his
+school-fellows, François and Antoine. He had accompanied the Princess to
+Montmartre against his own inclinations; but since she had taken to
+whipping him he had become afraid of her. The chemist’s little home
+filled him with disdain, particularly as the chemist was a man of
+questionable reputation. Moreover, he thought it a duty to insist on his
+own superiority in the presence of those old school-fellows of his, whom
+he found toiling away in the common rut, like other people.
+
+“Ah! yes,” said he to François, who was taking notes from a book spread
+open before him, “you are at the École Normale, I believe, and are
+preparing for your licentiate. Well, for my part, you know, the idea of
+being tied to anything horrifies me. I become quite stupid when there’s
+any question of examination or competition. The only possible road for
+one to follow is that of the Infinite. And between ourselves what dupery
+there is in science, how it narrows our horizon! It’s just as well to
+remain a child with eyes gazing into the invisible. A child knows more
+than all your learned men.”
+
+François, who occasionally indulged in irony, pretended to share his
+opinion. “No doubt, no doubt,” said he, “but one must have a natural
+disposition to remain a child. For my part, unhappily, I’m consumed by a
+desire to learn and know. It’s deplorable, as I’m well aware, but I pass
+my days racking my brain over books.... I shall never know very much,
+that’s certain; and perhaps that’s the reason why I’m ever striving to
+learn a little more. You must at all events grant that work, like
+idleness, is a means of passing life, though of course it is a less
+elegant and aesthetic one.”
+
+“Less aesthetic, precisely,” rejoined Hyacinthe. “Beauty lies solely in
+the unexpressed, and life is simply degraded when one introduces anything
+material into it.”
+
+Simpleton though he was in spite of the enormity of his pretensions, he
+doubtless detected that François had been speaking ironically. So he
+turned to Antoine, who had remained seated in front of a block he was
+engraving. It was the one which represented Lise reading in her garden,
+for he was ever taking it in hand again and touching it up in his desire
+to emphasise his indication of the girl’s awakening to intelligence and
+life.
+
+“So you engrave, I see,” said Hyacinthe. “Well, since I renounced
+versification--a little poem I had begun on the End of Woman--because
+words seemed to me so gross and cumbersome, mere paving-stones as it
+were, fit for labourers, I myself have had some idea of trying drawing,
+and perhaps engraving too. But what drawing can portray the mystery which
+lies beyond life, the only sphere that has any real existence and
+importance for us? With what pencil and on what kind of plate could one
+depict it? We should need something impalpable, something unheard of,
+which would merely suggest the essence of things and beings.”
+
+“But it’s only by material means,” Antoine somewhat roughly replied,
+“that art can render the essence of things and beings, that is, their
+full significance as we understand it. To transcribe life is my great
+passion; and briefly life is the only mystery that there is in things and
+beings. When it seems to me that an engraving of mine lives, I’m well
+pleased, for I feel that I have created.”
+
+Hyacinthe pouted by way of expressing his contempt of all fruitfulness.
+Any fool might beget offspring. It was the sexless idea, existing by
+itself, that was rare and exquisite. He tried to explain this, but became
+confused, and fell back on the conviction which he had brought back from
+Norway, that literature and art were done for in France, killed by
+baseness and excess of production.
+
+“It’s evident!” said François gaily by way of conclusion. “To do nothing
+already shows that one has some talent!”
+
+Meantime, Pierre and Marie listened and gazed around them, somewhat
+embarrassed by this strange visit which had set the usually grave and
+peaceful workroom topsy-turvy. The little Princess, though, evinced much
+amiability, and on drawing near to Marie admired the wonderful delicacy
+of some embroidery she was finishing. Before leaving, moreover, Rosemonde
+insisted upon Guillaume inscribing his autograph in an album which
+Hyacinthe had to fetch from her carriage. The young man obeyed her with
+evident boredom. It could be seen that they were already weary of one
+another. Pending a fresh caprice, however, it amused Rosemonde to
+terrorize her sorry victim. When she at length led him away, after
+declaring to Guillaume that she should always regard that visit as a
+memorable incident in her life, she made the whole household smile by
+saying: “Oh! so your sons knew Hyacinthe at college. He’s a good-natured
+little fellow, isn’t he? and he would really be quite nice if he would
+only behave like other people.”
+
+That same day Janzen and Bache came to spend the evening with Guillaume.
+Once a week they now met at Montmartre, as they had formerly done at
+Neuilly. Pierre, on these occasions, went home very late, for as soon as
+Mère-Grand, Marie, and Guillaume’s sons had retired for the night, there
+were endless chats in the workroom, whence Paris could be seen spangled
+with thousands of gas lights. Another visitor at these times was
+Théophile Morin, but he did not arrive before ten o’clock, as he was
+detained by the work of correcting his pupils’ exercises or some other
+wearisome labour pertaining to his profession.
+
+As soon as Guillaume had told the others of the Princess’s visit that
+afternoon, Janzen hastily exclaimed: “But she’s mad, you know. When I
+first met her I thought for a moment that I might perhaps utilise her for
+the cause. She seemed so thoroughly convinced and bold! But I soon found
+that she was the craziest of women, and simply hungered for new
+emotions!”
+
+Janzen was at last emerging from his wonted frigidity and mysteriousness.
+His cheeks were quite flushed. In all probability he had suffered from
+his rupture with the woman whom he had once called ‘the Queen of the
+Anarchists,’ and whose fortune and extensive circle of acquaintance had
+seemed to him such powerful weapons of propaganda.
+
+“You know,” said he, when he had calmed down, “it was the police who had
+her house pillaged and turned into a pigstye. Yes, in view of Salvat’s
+trial, which is now near at hand, the idea was to damn Anarchism beyond
+possibility of even the faintest sympathy on the part of the
+_bourgeois_.”
+
+“Yes, she told me so,” replied Guillaume, who had become attentive. “But
+I scarcely credit the story. If Bergaz had merely acted under such
+influence as you suggest, he would have been arrested with the others,
+just as Raphanel was taken with those whom he betrayed. Besides, I know
+something of Bergaz; he’s a freebooter.” Guillaume made a sorrowful
+gesture, and then in a saddened voice continued: “Oh, I can understand
+all claims and all legitimate reprisals. But theft, cynical theft for the
+purpose of profit and enjoyment, is beyond me! It lowers my hope of a
+better and more equitable form of society. Yes, that burglary at the
+Princess’s house has greatly distressed me.”
+
+An enigmatical smile, sharp like a knife, again played over Janzen’s
+lips. “Oh! it’s a matter of heredity with you!” said he. “The centuries
+of education and belief that lie behind you compel you to protest. All
+the same, however, when people won’t make restoration, things must be
+taken from them. What worries me is that Bergaz should have sold himself
+just now. The public prosecutor will use that farcical burglary as a
+crushing argument when he asks the jury for Salvat’s head.”
+
+Such was Janzen’s hatred of the police that he stubbornly clung to his
+version of the affair. Perhaps, too, he had quarrelled with Bergaz, with
+whom he had at one time freely associated.
+
+Guillaume, who understood that all discussion would be useless, contented
+himself with replying: “Ah! yes, Salvat! Everything is against that
+unhappy fellow, he is certain to be condemned. But you can’t know, my
+friends, what a passion that affair of his puts me into. All my ideas of
+truth and justice revolt at the thought of it. He’s a madman certainly;
+but there are so many excuses to be urged for him. At bottom he is simply
+a martyr who has followed the wrong track. And yet he has become the
+scapegoat, laden with the crimes of the whole nation, condemned to pay
+for one and all!”
+
+Bache and Morin nodded without replying. They both professed horror of
+Anarchism; while Morin, forgetting that the word if not the thing dated
+from his first master Proudhon, clung to his Comtist doctrines, in the
+conviction that science alone would ensure the happiness and pacification
+of the nations. Bache, for his part, old mystical humanitarian that he
+was, claimed that the only solution would come from Fourier, who by
+decreeing an alliance of talent, labour and capital, had mapped out the
+future in a decisive manner. Nevertheless, both Bache and Morin were so
+discontented with the slow-paced _bourgeoise_ Republic of the present
+day, and so hurt by the thought that everything was going from bad to
+worse through the flouting of their own particular ideas, that they were
+quite willing to wax indignant at the manner in which the conflicting
+parties of the time were striving to make use of Salvat in order to
+retain or acquire power.
+
+“When one thinks,” said Bache, “that this ministerial crisis of theirs
+has now been lasting for nearly three weeks! Every appetite is openly
+displayed, it’s a most disgusting sight! Did you see in the papers this
+morning that the President has again been obliged to summon Vignon to the
+Elysée?”
+
+“Oh! the papers,” muttered Morin in his weary way, “I no longer read
+them! What’s the use of doing so? They are so badly written, and they all
+lie!”
+
+As Bache had said, the ministerial crisis was still dragging on. The
+President of the Republic, taking as his guide the debate in the Chamber
+of Deputies, by which the Barroux administration had been overthrown, had
+very properly sent for Vignon, the victor on that occasion, and entrusted
+him with the formation of a new ministry. It had seemed that this would
+be an easy task, susceptible of accomplishment in two or three days at
+the utmost, for the names of the friends whom the young leader of the
+Radical party would bring to power with him had been freely mentioned for
+months past. But all sorts of difficulties had suddenly arisen. For ten
+days or so Vignon had struggled on amidst inextricable obstacles. Then,
+disheartened and disgusted, fearing, too, that he might use himself up
+and shut off the future if he persisted in his endeavours, he had been
+obliged to tell the President that he renounced the task. Forthwith the
+President had summoned other deputies, and questioned them until he had
+found one brave enough to make an attempt on his own account; whereupon
+incidents similar to those which had marked Vignon’s endeavours had once
+more occurred. At the outset a list was drawn up with every prospect of
+being ratified within a few hours, but all at once hesitation arose, some
+pulled one way, some another; every effort was slowly paralysed till
+absolute failure resulted. It seemed as though the mysterious manœuvres
+which had hampered Vignon had begun again; it was as if some band of
+invisible plotters was, for some unknown purpose, doing its utmost to
+wreck every combination. A thousand hindrances arose with increasing
+force from every side--jealousy, dislike, and even betrayal were secretly
+prompted by expert agents, who employed every form of pressure, whether
+threats or promises, besides fanning and casting rival passions and
+interests into collision. Thus the President, greatly embarrassed by this
+posture of affairs, had again found it necessary to summon Vignon, who,
+after reflection and negotiation, now had an almost complete list in his
+pocket, and seemed likely to perfect a new administration within the next
+forty-eight hours.
+
+“Still it isn’t settled,” resumed Bache. “Well-informed people assert
+that Vignon will fail again as he did the first time. For my part I can’t
+get rid of the idea that Duvillard’s gang is pulling the strings, though
+for whose benefit is a mystery. You may be quite sure, however, that its
+chief purpose is to stifle the African Railways affair. If Monferrand
+were not so badly compromised I should almost suspect some trick on his
+part. Have you noticed that the ‘Globe,’ after throwing Barroux overboard
+in all haste, now refers to Monferrand every day with the most respectful
+sympathy? That’s a grave sign; for it isn’t Fonsègue’s habit to show any
+solicitude for the vanquished. But what can one expect from that wretched
+Chamber! The only point certain is that something dirty is being plotted
+there.”
+
+“And that big dunderhead Mège who works for every party except his own!”
+ exclaimed Morin; “what a dupe he is with that idea that he need merely
+overthrow first one cabinet and then another, in order to become the
+leader of one himself!”
+
+The mention of Mège brought them all to agreement, for they unanimously
+hated him. Bache, although his views coincided on many points with those
+of the apostle of State Collectivism, judged each of his speeches, each
+of his actions, with pitiless severity. Janzen, for his part, treated the
+Collectivist leader as a mere reactionary _bourgeois_, who ought to be
+swept away one of the first. This hatred of Mège was indeed the common
+passion of Guillaume’s friends. They could occasionally show some justice
+for men who in no wise shared their ideas; but in their estimation it was
+an unpardonable crime for anybody to hold much the same views as
+themselves, without being absolutely in agreement with them on every
+possible point.
+
+Their discussion continued, their various theories mingling or clashing
+till they passed from politics to the press, and grew excited over the
+denunciations which poured each morning from Sagnier’s newspaper, like
+filth from the mouth of a sewer. Thereupon Guillaume, who had become
+absorbed in reverie while pacing to and fro according to his habit,
+suddenly exclaimed: “Ah! what dirty work it is that Sagnier does! Before
+long there won’t be a single person, a single thing left on which he
+hasn’t vomited! You think he’s on your side, and suddenly he splashes you
+with mire!... By the way, he related yesterday that skeleton keys and
+stolen purses were found on Salvat when he was arrested in the Bois de
+Boulogne! It’s always Salvat! He’s the inexhaustible subject for
+articles. The mere mention of him suffices to send up a paper’s sales!
+The bribe-takers of the African Railways shout ‘Salvat!’ to create a
+diversion. And the battles which wreck ministers are waged round his
+name. One and all set upon him and make use of him and beat him down!”
+
+With that cry of revolt and compassion, the friends separated for the
+night. Pierre, who sat near the open window, overlooking the sparkling
+immensity of Paris, had listened to the others without speaking a word.
+He had once more been mastered by his doubts, the terrible struggle of
+his heart and mind; and no solution, no appeasement had come to him from
+all the contradictory views he had heard--the views of men who only
+united in predicting the disappearance of the old world, and could make
+no joint brotherly effort to rear the future world of truth and justice.
+In that vast city of Paris stretching below him, spangled with stars,
+glittering like the sky of a summer’s night, Pierre also found a great
+enigma. It was like chaos, like a dim expanse of ashes dotted with sparks
+whence the coming aurora would arise. What future was being forged there,
+he wondered, what decisive word of salvation and happiness would come
+with the dawn, and wing its flight to every point of the horizon?
+
+When Pierre, in his turn, was about to retire, Guillaume laid his hands
+upon his shoulders, and with much emotion gave him a long look. “Ah! my
+poor fellow,” said he, “you’ve been suffering too for some days past, I
+have noticed it. But you are the master of your sufferings, for the
+struggle you have to overcome is simply in yourself, and you can subdue
+it; whereas one cannot subdue the world, when it is the world, its
+cruelty and injustice that make one suffer! Good night, be brave, act as
+your reason tells you, even if it makes you weep, and you will find peace
+surely enough.”
+
+Later on, when Pierre again found himself alone in his little house at
+Neuilly, where none now visited him save the shades of his father and
+mother, he was long kept awake by a supreme internal combat. He had never
+before felt so disgusted with the falsehood of his life, that cassock
+which he had persisted in wearing, though he was a priest in name only.
+Perhaps it was all that he had beheld and heard at his brother’s, the
+want and wretchedness of some, the wild, futile agitation of others, the
+need of improvement among mankind which remained paramount amidst every
+contradiction and form of weakness, that had made him more deeply
+conscious of the necessity of living in loyal and normal fashion in the
+broad daylight. He could no longer think of his former dream of leading
+the solitary life of a saintly priest when he was nothing of the kind,
+without a shiver of shame at having lied so long. And now it was quite
+decided, he would lie no longer, not even from feelings of compassion in
+order that others might retain their religious illusions. And yet how
+painful it was to have to divest himself of that gown which seemed to
+cling to his skin, and how heartrending the thought that if he did remove
+it he would be skinless, lacerated, infirm, unable, do what he might, to
+become like other men!
+
+It was this recurring thought which again tortured him throughout that
+terrible night. Would life yet allow him to enter its fold? Had he not
+been branded with a mark which for ever condemned him to dwell apart? He
+thought he could feel his priestly vows burning his very flesh like
+red-hot iron. What use would it be for him to dress as men dress, if in
+reality he was never to be a man? He had hitherto lived in such a
+quivering state, in a sphere of renunciation and dreams! To know manhood
+never, to be too late for it, that thought filled him with terror. And
+when at last he made up his mind to fling aside his cassock, he did so
+from a simple sense of rectitude, for all his anguish remained.
+
+When he returned to Montmartre on the following day, he wore a jacket and
+trousers of a dark colour. Neither an exclamation nor a glance that might
+have embarrassed him came from Mère-Grand or the three young men. Was not
+the change a natural one? They greeted him therefore in the quiet way
+that was usual with them; perhaps, with some increase of affection, as if
+to set him the more at his ease. Guillaume, however, ventured to smile
+good-naturedly. In that change he detected his own work. Curé was coming,
+as he had hoped it would come, by him and in his own home, amid the full
+sunlight, the life which ever streamed in through yonder window.
+
+Marie, who on her side raised her eyes and looked at Pierre, knew nothing
+of the sufferings which he had endured through her simple and logical
+inquiry: “Why not take your cassock off?” She merely felt that by
+removing it he would be more at ease for his work.
+
+“Oh, Pierre, just come and look!” she suddenly exclaimed. “I have been
+amusing myself with watching all the smoke which the wind is laying
+yonder over Paris. One might take it to be a huge fleet of ships shining
+in the sunlight. Yes, yes, golden ships, thousands of golden ships,
+setting forth from the ocean of Paris to enlighten and pacify the world!”
+
+
+
+
+III. THE DAWN OF LOVE
+
+A COUPLE of days afterwards, when Pierre was already growing accustomed
+to his new attire, and no longer gave it a thought, it so happened that
+on reaching Montmartre he encountered Abbé Rose outside the basilica of
+the Sacred Heart. The old priest, who at first was quite thunderstruck
+and scarcely able to recognise him, ended by taking hold of his hands and
+giving him a long look. Then with his eyes full of tears he exclaimed:
+“Oh! my son, so you have fallen into the awful state I feared! I never
+mentioned it, but I felt that God had withdrawn from you. Ah! nothing
+could wound my heart so cruelly as this.”
+
+Then, still trembling, he began to lead Pierre away as if to hide such a
+scandal from the few people who passed by; and at last, his strength
+failing him, he sank upon a heap of bricks lying on the grass of one of
+the adjoining work-yards.
+
+The sincere grief which his old and affectionate friend displayed upset
+Pierre far more than any angry reproaches or curses would have done.
+Tears had come to his own eyes, so acute was the suffering he experienced
+at this meeting, which he ought, however, to have foreseen. There was yet
+another wrenching, and one which made the best of their blood flow, in
+that rupture between Pierre and the saintly man whose charitable dreams
+and hopes of salvation he had so long shared. There had been so many
+divine illusions, so many struggles for the relief of the masses, so much
+renunciation and forgiveness practised in common between them in their
+desire to hasten the harvest of the future! And now they were parting;
+he, Pierre, still young in years, was returning to life, leaving his aged
+companion to his vain waiting and his dreams.
+
+In his turn, taking hold of Abbé Rose’s hands, he gave expression to his
+sorrow. “Ah, my friend, my father,” said he, “it is you alone that I
+regret losing, now that I am leaving my frightful torments behind. I
+thought that I was cured of them, but it has been sufficient for me to
+meet you, and my heart is rent again.... Don’t weep for me, I pray
+you, don’t reproach me for what I have done. It was necessary that I
+should do it. If I had consulted you, you would yourself have told me
+that it was better to renounce the priesthood than to remain a priest
+without faith or honour.”
+
+“Yes, yes,” Abbé Rose gently responded, “you no longer had any faith
+left. I suspected it. And your rigidity and saintliness of life, in which
+I detected such great despair, made me anxious for you. How many hours
+did I not spend at times in striving to calm you! And you must listen to
+me again, you must still let me save you. I am not a sufficiently learned
+theologian to lead you back by discussing texts and dogmas; but in the
+name of Charity, my child, yes, in the name of Charity alone, reflect and
+take up your task of consolation and hope once more.”
+
+Pierre had sat down beside Abbé Rose, in that deserted nook, at the very
+foot of the basilica. “Charity! charity!” he replied in passionate
+accents; “why, it is its nothingness and bankruptcy that have killed the
+priest there was in me. How can you believe that benevolence is
+sufficient, when you have spent your whole life in practising it without
+any other result than that of seeing want perpetuated and even increased,
+and without any possibility of naming the day when such abomination shall
+cease?... You think of the reward after death, do you not? The justice
+that is to reign in heaven? But that is not justice, it is dupery--dupery
+that has brought the world nothing but suffering for centuries past.”
+
+Then he reminded the old priest of their life in the Charonne district,
+when they had gone about together succouring children in the streets and
+parents in their hovels; the whole of those admirable efforts which, so
+far as Abbé Rose was concerned, had simply ended in blame from his
+superiors, and removal from proximity to his poor, under penalty of more
+severe punishment should he persist in compromising religion by the
+practice of blind benevolence without reason or object. And now, was he
+not, so to say, submerged beneath the ever-rising tide of want, aware
+that he would never, never be able to give enough even should he dispose
+of millions, and that he could only prolong the agony of the poor, who,
+even should they eat today, would starve again on the morrow? Thus he was
+powerless. The wound which he tried to dress and heal, immediately
+reopened and spread, in such wise that all society would at last be
+stricken and carried off by it.
+
+Quivering as he listened, and slowly shaking his white head, the old
+priest ended by replying: “what does that matter, my child? what does
+that matter? One must give, always give, give in spite of everything!
+There is no other joy on earth.... If dogmas worry you, content
+yourself with the Gospel, and even of that retain merely the promise of
+salvation through charity.”
+
+But at this Pierre’s feelings revolted. He forgot that he was speaking to
+one of simple mind, who was all love and nothing else, and could
+therefore not follow him. “The trial has been made,” he answered, “human
+salvation cannot be effected by charity, nothing but justice can
+accomplish it. That is the gathering cry which is going up from every
+nation. For nearly two thousand years now the Gospel has proved a
+failure. There has been no redemption; the sufferings of mankind are
+every whit as great and unjust as they were when Jesus came. And thus the
+Gospel is now but an abolished code, from which society can only draw
+things that are troublous and hurtful. Men must free themselves from it.”
+
+This was his final conviction. How strange the idea, thought he, of
+choosing as the world’s social legislator one who lived, as Jesus lived,
+amidst a social system absolutely different from that of nowadays. The
+age was different, the very world was different. And if it were merely a
+question of retaining only such of the moral teaching of Jesus as seemed
+human and eternal, was there not again a danger in applying immutable
+principles to the society of every age? No society could live under the
+strict law of the Gospel. Was not all order, all labour, all life
+destroyed by the teaching of Jesus? Did He not deny woman, the earth,
+eternal nature and the eternal fruitfulness of things and beings?
+Moreover, Catholicism had reared upon His primitive teaching such a
+frightful edifice of terror and oppression. The theory of original sin,
+that terrible heredity reviving with each creature born into the world,
+made no allowance as Science does for the corrective influences of
+education, circumstances and environment. There could be no more
+pessimist conception of man than this one which devotes him to the Devil
+from the instant of his birth, and pictures him as struggling against
+himself until the instant of his death. An impossible and absurd
+struggle, for it is a question of changing man in his entirety, killing
+the flesh, killing reason, destroying some guilty energy in each and
+every passion, and of pursuing the Devil to the very depths of the
+waters, mountains and forests, there to annihilate him with the very sap
+of the world. If this theory is accepted the world is but sin, a mere
+Hell of temptation and suffering, through which one must pass in order to
+merit Heaven. Ah! what an admirable instrument for absolute despotism is
+that religion of death, which the principle of charity alone has enabled
+men to tolerate, but which the need of justice will perforce sweep away.
+The poor man, who is the wretched dupe of it all, no longer believes in
+Paradise, but requires that each and all should be rewarded according to
+their deserts upon this earth; and thus eternal life becomes the good
+goddess, and desire and labour the very laws of the world, while the
+fruitfulness of woman is again honoured, and the idiotic nightmare of
+Hell is replaced by glorious Nature whose travail knows no end. Leaning
+upon modern Science, clear Latin reason sweeps away the ancient Semitic
+conception of the Gospel.
+
+“For eighteen hundred years,” concluded Pierre, “Christianity has been
+hampering the march of mankind towards truth and justice. And mankind
+will only resume its evolution on the day when it abolishes Christianity,
+and places the Gospel among the works of the wise, without taking it any
+longer as its absolute and final law.”
+
+But Abbé Rose raised his trembling hands: “Be quiet, be quiet, my child!”
+ he cried; “you are blaspheming! I knew that doubt distracted you; but I
+thought you so patient, so able to bear suffering, that I relied on your
+spirit of renunciation and resignation. What can have happened to make
+you leave the Church in this abrupt and violent fashion? I no longer
+recognise you. Sudden passion has sprung up in you, an invincible force
+seems to carry you away. What is it? Who has changed you, tell me?”
+
+Pierre listened in astonishment. “No,” said he, “I assure you, I am such
+as you have known me, and in all this there is but an inevitable result
+and finish. Who could have influenced me, since nobody has entered my
+life? What new feeling could transform me, since I find none in me? I am
+the same as before, the same assuredly.”
+
+Still there was a touch of hesitation in his voice. Was it really true
+that there had been no change within him? He again questioned himself,
+and there came no clear answer; decidedly, he would find nothing. It was
+all but a delightful awakening, an overpowering desire for life, a
+longing to open his arms widely enough to embrace everyone and
+everything indeed, a breeze of joy seemed to raise him from the ground
+and carry him along.
+
+Although Abbé Rose was too innocent of heart to understand things
+clearly, he again shook his head and thought of the snares which the
+Devil is ever setting for men. He was quite overwhelmed by Pierre’s
+defection. Continuing his efforts to win him back, he made the mistake of
+advising him to consult Monseigneur Martha, for he hoped that a prelate
+of such high authority would find the words necessary to restore him to
+his faith. Pierre, however, boldly replied that if he was leaving the
+Church it was partly because it comprised such a man as Martha, such an
+artisan of deception and despotism, one who turned religion into corrupt
+diplomacy, and dreamt of winning men back to God by dint of ruses.
+Thereupon Abbé Rose, rising to his feet, could find no other argument in
+his despair than that of pointing to the basilica which stood beside
+them, square, huge and massive, and still waiting for its dome.
+
+“That is God’s abode, my child,” said he, “the edifice of expiation and
+triumph, of penitence and forgiveness. You have said mass in it, and now
+you are leaving it sacrilegiously and forswearing yourself!”
+
+But Pierre also had risen; and buoyed up by a sudden rush of health and
+strength he answered: “No, no! I am leaving it willingly, as one leaves a
+dark vault, to return into the open air and the broad sunlight. God does
+not dwell there; the only purpose of that huge edifice is to defy reason,
+truth and justice; it has been erected on the highest spot that could be
+found, like a citadel of error that dominates, insults and threatens
+Paris!”
+
+Then seeing that the old priest’s eyes were again filling with tears, and
+feeling on his own side so pained by their rupture that he began to sob,
+Pierre wished to go away. “Farewell! farewell!” he stammered.
+
+But Abbé Rose caught him in his arms and kissed him, as if he were a
+rebellious son who yet had remained the dearest. “No, not farewell, not
+farewell, my child,” he answered; “say rather till we meet again. Promise
+me that we shall see each other again, at least among those who starve
+and weep. It is all very well for you to think that charity has become
+bankrupt, but shall we not always love one another in loving our poor?”
+
+Then they parted.
+
+On becoming the companion of his three big nephews, Pierre had in a few
+lessons learnt from them how to ride a bicycle, in order that he might
+occasionally accompany them on their morning excursions. He went twice
+with them and Marie along the somewhat roughly paved roads in the
+direction of the Lake of Enghien. Then one morning when the young woman
+had promised to take him and Antoine as far as the forest of
+Saint-Germain, it was found at the last moment that Antoine could not
+come. Marie was already dressed in a chemisette of fawn-coloured silk,
+and a little jacket and “rationals” of black serge, and it was such a
+warm, bright April day that she was not inclined to renounce her trip.
+
+“Well, so much the worse!” she gaily said to Pierre, “I shall take you
+with me, there will only be the pair of us. I really want you to see how
+delightful it is to bowl over a good road between the beautiful trees.”
+
+However, as Pierre was not yet a very expert rider, they decided that
+they would take the train as far as Maisons-Laffitte, whence they would
+proceed on their bicycles to the forest, cross it in the direction of
+Saint-Germain, and afterwards return to Paris by train.
+
+“You will be here for _déjeuner_, won’t you?” asked Guillaume, whom this
+freak amused, and who looked with a smile at his brother. The latter,
+like Marie, was in black: jacket, breeches and stockings all of the same
+hue.
+
+“Oh, certainly!” replied Marie. “It’s now barely eight o’clock, so we
+have plenty of time. Still you need not wait for us, you know, we shall
+always find our way back.”
+
+It was a delightful morning. When they started, Pierre could fancy
+himself with a friend of his own sex, so that this trip together through
+the warm sunlight seemed quite natural. Doubtless their costumes, which
+were so much alike, conduced to the gay brotherly feeling he experienced.
+But beyond all this there was the healthfulness of the open air, the
+delight which exercise brings, the pleasure of roaming in all freedom
+through the midst of nature.
+
+On taking the train they found themselves alone in a compartment, and
+Marie once more began to talk of her college days. “Ah! you’ve no idea,”
+ said she, “what fine games at baseball we used to have at Fénelon! We
+used to tie up our skirts with string so as to run the better, for we
+were not allowed to wear rationals like I’m wearing now. And there were
+shrieks, and rushes, and pushes, till our hair waved about and we were
+quite red with exercise and excitement. Still that didn’t prevent us from
+working in the class-rooms. On the contrary! Directly we were at study we
+fought again, each striving to learn the most and reach the top of the
+class!”
+
+She laughed gaily as she thus recalled her school life, and Pierre
+glanced at her with candid admiration, so pink and healthy did she look
+under her little hat of black felt, which a long silver pin kept in
+position. Her fine dark hair was caught up behind, showing her neck,
+which looked as fresh and delicate as a child’s. And never before had she
+seemed to him so supple and so strong.
+
+“Ah,” she continued in a jesting way, “there is nothing like rationals,
+you know! To think that some women are foolish and obstinate enough to
+wear skirts when they go out cycling!”
+
+Then, as he declared--just by way of speaking the truth, and without the
+faintest idea of gallantry--that she looked very nice indeed in her
+costume, she responded: “Oh! I don’t count. I’m not a beauty. I simply
+enjoy good health.... But can you understand it? To think that women
+have an unique opportunity of putting themselves at their ease, and
+releasing their limbs from prison, and yet they won’t do so! If they
+think that they look the prettier in short skirts like schoolgirls they
+are vastly mistaken! And as for any question of modesty, well, it seems
+to me that it is infinitely less objectionable for women to wear
+rationals than to bare their bosoms at balls and theatres and dinners as
+society ladies do.” Then, with a gesture of girlish impulsiveness, she
+added: “Besides, does one think of such things when one’s rolling along?
+... Yes, rationals are the only things, skirts are rank heresy!”
+
+In her turn, she was now looking at him, and was struck by the
+extraordinary change which had come over him since the day when he had
+first appeared to her, so sombre in his long cassock, with his face
+emaciated, livid, almost distorted by anguish. It was like a
+resurrection, for now his countenance was bright, his lofty brow had all
+the serenity of hope, while his eyes and lips once more showed some of
+the confident tenderness which sprang from his everlasting thirst for
+love, self-bestowal and life. All mark of the priesthood had already left
+him, save that where he had been tonsured his hair still remained rather
+short.
+
+“Why are you looking at me?” he asked.
+
+“I was noticing how much good has been done you by work and the open
+air,” she frankly answered; “I much prefer you as you are. You used to
+look so poorly. I thought you really ill.”
+
+“So I was,” said he.
+
+The train, however, was now stopping at Maisons-Laffitte. They alighted
+from it, and at once took the road to the forest. This road rises gently
+till it reaches the Maisons gate, and on market days it is often crowded
+with carts.
+
+“I shall go first, eh?” said Marie gaily, “for vehicles still alarm you.”
+
+Thereupon she started ahead, but every now and again she turned with a
+smile to see if he were following her. And every time they overtook and
+passed a cart she spoke to him of the merits of their machines, which
+both came from the Grandidier works. They were “Lisettes,” examples of
+those popular bicycles which Thomas had helped to perfect, and which the
+Bon Marché now sold in large numbers for 250 francs apiece. Perhaps they
+were rather heavy in appearance, but on the other hand their strength was
+beyond question. They were just the machines for a long journey, so Marie
+declared.
+
+“Ah! here’s the forest,” she at last exclaimed. “We have now reached the
+end of the rise; and you will see what splendid avenues there are. One
+can bowl along them as on a velvet carpet.”
+
+Pierre had already joined her, and they rode on side by side along the
+broad straight avenue fringed with magnificent trees.
+
+“I am all right now,” said Pierre; “your pupil will end by doing you
+honour, I hope.”
+
+“Oh! I’ve no doubt of it. You already have a very good seat, and before
+long you’ll leave me behind, for a woman is never a man’s equal in a
+matter like this. At the same time, however, what a capital education
+cycling is for women!”
+
+In what way?”
+
+“Oh! I’ve certain ideas of my own on the subject; and if ever I have a
+daughter I shall put her on a bicycle as soon as she’s ten years old,
+just to teach her how to conduct herself in life.”
+
+“Education by experience, eh?”
+
+“Yes, why not? Look at the big girls who are brought up hanging to their
+mothers’ apron strings. Their parents frighten them with everything, they
+are allowed no initiative, no exercise of judgment or decision, so that
+at times they hardly know how to cross a street, to such a degree does
+the traffic alarm them. Well, I say that a girl ought to be set on a
+bicycle in her childhood, and allowed to follow the roads. She will then
+learn to open her eyes, to look out for stones and avoid them, and to
+turn in the right direction at every bend or crossway. If a vehicle comes
+up at a gallop or any other danger presents itself, she’ll have to make
+up her mind on the instant, and steer her course firmly and properly if
+she does not wish to lose a limb. Briefly, doesn’t all this supply proper
+apprenticeship for one’s will, and teach one how to conduct and defend
+oneself?”
+
+Pierre had begun to laugh. “You will all be too healthy,” he remarked.
+
+“Oh, one must be healthy if one wants to be happy. But what I wish to
+convey is that those who learn to avoid stones and to turn properly along
+the highways will know how to overcome difficulties, and take the best
+decisions in after life. The whole of education lies in knowledge and
+energy.”
+
+“So women are to be emancipated by cycling?”
+
+“Well, why not? It may seem a droll idea; but see what progress has been
+made already. By wearing rationals women free their limbs from prison;
+then the facilities which cycling affords people for going out together
+tend to greater intercourse and equality between the sexes; the wife and
+the children can follow the husband everywhere, and friends like
+ourselves are at liberty to roam hither and thither without astonishing
+anybody. In this lies the greatest advantage of all: one takes a bath of
+air and sunshine, one goes back to nature, to the earth, our common
+mother, from whom one derives fresh strength and gaiety of heart! Just
+look how delightful this forest is. And how healthful the breeze that
+inflates our lungs! Yes, it all purifies, calms and encourages one.”
+
+The forest, which was quite deserted on week days, stretched out in
+quietude on either hand, with sunlight filtering between its deep bands
+of trees. At that hour the rays only illumined one side of the avenue,
+there gilding the lofty drapery of verdure; on the other, the shady side,
+the greenery seemed almost black. It was truly delightful to skim,
+swallow-like, over that royal avenue in the fresh atmosphere, amidst the
+waving of grass and foliage, whose powerful scent swept against one’s
+face. Pierre and Marie scarcely touched the soil: it was as if wings had
+come to them, and were carrying them on with a regular flight, through
+alternate patches of shade and sunshine, and all the scattered vitality
+of the far-reaching, quivering forest, with its mosses, its sources, its
+animal and its insect life.
+
+Marie would not stop when they reached the crossway of the Croix de
+Noailles, a spot where people congregate on Sundays, for she was
+acquainted with secluded nooks which were far more charming
+resting-places. When they reached the slope going down towards Poissy,
+she roused Pierre, and they let their machines rush on. Then came all the
+joyous intoxication of speed, the rapturous feeling of darting along
+breathlessly while the grey road flees beneath one, and the trees on
+either hand turn like the opening folds of a fan. The breeze blows
+tempestuously, and one fancies that one is journeying yonder towards the
+horizon, the infinite, which ever and ever recedes. It is like boundless
+hope, delivery from every shackle, absolute freedom of motion through
+space. And nothing can inspirit one more gloriously--one’s heart leaps as
+if one were in the very heavens.
+
+“We are not going to Poissy, you know!” Marie suddenly cried; “we have to
+turn to the left.”
+
+They took the road from Acheres to the Loges, which ascends and
+contracts, thus bringing one closer together in the shade. Gradually
+slowing down, they began to exert themselves in order to make their way
+up the incline. This road was not so good as the others, it had been
+gullied by the recent heavy rains, and sand and gravel lay about. But
+then is there not even a pleasure in effort?
+
+“You will get used to it,” said Marie to Pierre; “it’s amusing to
+overcome obstacles. For my part I don’t like roads which are invariably
+smooth. A little ascent which does not try one’s limbs too much rouses
+and inspirits one. And it is so agreeable to find oneself strong, and
+able to go on and on in spite of rain, or wind, or hills.”
+
+Her bright humour and courage quite charmed Pierre. “And so,” said he,
+“we are off for a journey round France?”
+
+“No, no, we’ve arrived. You won’t dislike a little rest, eh? And now,
+tell me, wasn’t it worth our while to come on here and rest in such a
+nice fresh, quiet spot.”
+
+She nimbly sprang off her machine and, bidding him follow her, turned
+into a path, along which she went some fifty paces. They placed their
+bicycles against some trees, and then found themselves in a little
+clearing, the most exquisite, leafy nest that one could dream of. The
+forest here assumed an aspect of secluded sovereign beauty. The
+springtide had endowed it with youth, the foliage was light and virginal,
+like delicate green lace flecked with gold by the sun-rays. And from the
+herbage and the surrounding thickets arose a breath of life, laden with
+all the powerful aroma of the earth.
+
+“It’s not too warm as yet, fortunately,” exclaimed Marie, as she seated
+herself at the foot of a young oak-tree, against which she leant. “In
+July ladies get rather red by the time they reach this spot, and all the
+powder comes off their faces. However, one can’t always be beautiful.”
+
+“Well, I’m not cold by any means,” replied Pierre, as he sat at her feet
+wiping his forehead.
+
+She laughed, and answered that she had never before seen him with such a
+colour. Then they began to talk like children, like two young friends,
+finding a source of gaiety in the most puerile things. She was somewhat
+anxious about his health, however, and would not allow him to remain in
+the cool shade, as he felt so very warm. In order to tranquillise her, he
+had to change his place and seat himself with his back to the sun. Then a
+little later he saved her from a large black spider, which had caught
+itself in the wavy hair on the nape of her neck. At this all her womanly
+nature reappeared, and she shrieked with terror. “How stupid it was to be
+afraid of a spider!” she exclaimed a moment afterwards; yet, in spite of
+her efforts to master herself, she remained pale and trembling.
+
+Silence at last fell between them, and they looked at one another with a
+smile. In the midst of that delicate greenery they felt drawn together by
+frank affection--the affection of brother and sister, so it seemed to
+them. It made Marie very happy to think that she had taken an interest in
+Pierre, and that his return to health was largely her own work. However,
+their eyes never fell, their hands never met, even as they sat there
+toying with the grass, for they were as pure, as unconscious of all evil,
+as were the lofty oaks around them.
+
+At last Marie noticed that time was flying. “You know that they expect us
+back to lunch,” she exclaimed. “We ought to be off.”
+
+Thereupon they rose, wheeled their bicycles back to the highway, and
+starting off again at a good pace passed the Loges and reached
+Saint-Germain by the fine avenue which conducts to the château. It
+charmed them to take their course again side by side, like birds of equal
+flight. Their little bells jingled, their chains rustled lightly, and a
+fresh breeze swept past them as they resumed their talk, quite at ease,
+and so linked together by friendship that they seemed far removed from
+all the rest of the world.
+
+They took the train from Saint-Germain to Paris, and on the journey
+Pierre suddenly noticed that Marie’s cheeks were purpling. There were two
+ladies with them in the compartment.
+
+“Ah!” said he, “so you feel warm in your turn now?”
+
+But she protested the contrary, her face glowing more and more brightly
+as she spoke, as if some sudden feeling of shame quite upset her. “No,
+I’m not warm,” said she; “just feel my hands.... But how ridiculous it
+is to blush like this without any reason for it!”
+
+He understood her. This was one of those involuntary blushing fits which
+so distressed her, and which, as Mère-Grand had remarked, brought her
+heart to her very cheeks. There was no cause for it, as she herself said.
+After slumbering in all innocence in the solitude of the forest her heart
+had begun to beat, despite herself.
+
+Meantime, over yonder at Montmartre, Guillaume had spent his morning in
+preparing some of that mysterious powder, the cartridges of which he
+concealed upstairs in Mère-Grand’s bedroom. Great danger attended this
+manufacture. The slightest forgetfulness while he was manipulating the
+ingredients, any delay, too, in turning off a tap, might lead to a
+terrible explosion, which would annihilate the building and all who might
+be in it. For this reason he preferred to work when he was alone, so that
+on the one hand there might be no danger for others, and on the other
+less likelihood of his own attention being diverted from his task. That
+morning, as it happened, his three sons were working in the room, and
+Mère-Grand sat sewing near the furnace. Truth to tell, she did not count,
+for she scarcely ever left her place, feeling quite at ease there,
+however great might be the peril. Indeed, she had become so well
+acquainted with the various phases of Guillaume’s delicate operations,
+and their terrible possibilities, that she would occasionally give him a
+helping hand.
+
+That morning, as she sat there mending some house linen,--her eyesight
+still being so keen that in spite of her seventy years she wore no
+spectacles,--she now and again glanced at Guillaume as if to make sure
+that he forgot nothing. Then feeling satisfied, she would once more bend
+over her work. She remained very strong and active. Her hair was only
+just turning white, and she had kept all her teeth, while her face still
+looked refined, though it was slowly withering with age and had acquired
+an expression of some severity. As a rule she was a woman of few words;
+her life was one of activity and good management. When she opened her
+lips it was usually to give advice, to counsel reason, energy and
+courage. For some time past she had been growing more taciturn than ever,
+as if all her attention were claimed by the household matters which were
+in her sole charge; still, her fine eyes would rest thoughtfully on those
+about her, on the three young men, and on Guillaume, Marie and Pierre,
+who all obeyed her as if she were their acknowledged queen. If she looked
+at them in that pensive way, was it that she foresaw certain changes, and
+noticed certain incidents of which the others remained unconscious?
+Perhaps so. At all events she became even graver, and more attentive than
+in the past. It was as if she were waiting for some hour to strike when
+all her wisdom and authority would be required.
+
+“Be careful, Guillaume,” she at last remarked, as she once more looked up
+from her sewing. “You seem absent-minded this morning. Is anything
+worrying you?”
+
+He glanced at her with a smile. “No, nothing, I assure you,” he replied.
+“But I was thinking of our dear Marie, who was so glad to go off to the
+forest in this bright sunshine.”
+
+Antoine, who heard the remark, raised his head, while his brothers
+remained absorbed in their work. “What a pity it is that I had this block
+to finish,” said he; “I would willingly have gone with her.”
+
+“Oh, no matter,” his father quietly rejoined. “Pierre is with her, and he
+is very cautious.”
+
+For another moment Mère-Grand continued scrutinising Guillaume; then she
+once more reverted to her sewing.
+
+If she exercised such sway over the home and all its inmates, it was by
+reason of her long devotion, her intelligence, and the kindliness with
+which she ruled. Uninfluenced by any religious faith, and disregarding
+all social conventionalities, her guiding principle in everything was the
+theory of human justice which she had arrived at after suffering so
+grievously from the injustice that had killed her husband. She put her
+views into practice with wonderful courage, knowing nothing of any
+prejudices, but accomplishing her duty, such as she understood it, to the
+very end. And in the same way as she had first devoted herself to her
+husband, and next to her daughter Marguerite, so at present she devoted
+herself to Guillaume and his sons. Pierre, whom she had first studied
+with some anxiety, had now, too, become a member of her family, a dweller
+in the little realm of happiness which she ruled. She had doubtless found
+him worthy of admission into it, though she did not reveal the reason
+why. After days and days of silence she had simply said, one evening, to
+Guillaume, that he had done well in bringing his brother to live among
+them.
+
+Time flew by as she sat sewing and thinking. Towards noon Guillaume, who
+was still at work, suddenly remarked to her: “As Marie and Pierre haven’t
+come back, we had better let the lunch wait a little while. Besides, I
+should like to finish what I’m about.”
+
+Another quarter of an hour then elapsed. Finally, the three young men
+rose from their work, and went to wash their hands at a tap in the
+garden.
+
+“Marie is very late,” now remarked Mère-Grand. “We must hope that nothing
+has happened to her.”
+
+“Oh! she rides so well,” replied Guillaume. “I’m more anxious on account
+of Pierre.”
+
+At this the old lady again fixed her eyes on him, and said: “But Marie
+will have guided Pierre; they already ride very well together.”
+
+“No doubt; still I should be better pleased if they were back home.”
+
+Then all at once, fancying that he heard the ring of a bicycle bell, he
+called out: “There they are!” And forgetting everything else in his
+satisfaction, he quitted his furnace and hastened into the garden in
+order to meet them.
+
+Mère-Grand, left to herself, quietly continued sewing, without a thought
+that the manufacture of Guillaume’s powder was drawing to an end in an
+apparatus near her. A couple of minutes later, however, when Guillaume
+came back, saying that he had made a mistake, his eyes suddenly rested on
+his furnace, and he turned quite livid. Brief as had been his absence the
+exact moment when it was necessary to turn off a tap in order that no
+danger might attend the preparation of his powder had already gone by;
+and now, unless someone should dare to approach that terrible tap, and
+boldly turn it, a fearful explosion might take place. Doubtless it was
+too late already, and whoever might have the bravery to attempt the feat
+would be blown to pieces.
+
+Guillaume himself had often run a similar risk of death with perfect
+composure. But on this occasion he remained as if rooted to the floor,
+unable to take a step, paralysed by the dread of annihilation. He
+shuddered and stammered in momentary expectation of a catastrophe which
+would hurl the work-shop to the heavens.
+
+“Mère-Grand, Mère-Grand,” he stammered. “The apparatus, the tap... it
+is all over, all over!”
+
+The old woman had raised her head without as yet understanding him. “Eh,
+what?” said she; “what is the matter with you?” Then, on seeing how
+distorted were his features, how he recoiled as if mad with terror, she
+glanced at the furnace and realised the danger. “Well, but it’s simple
+enough,” said she; “it’s only necessary to turn off the tap, eh?”
+
+Thereupon, without any semblance of haste, in the most easy and natural
+manner possible, she deposited her needlework on a little table, rose
+from her chair, and turned off the tap with a light but firm hand.
+“There! it’s done,” said she. “But why didn’t you do it yourself, my
+friend?”
+
+He had watched her in bewilderment, chilled to the bones, as if touched
+by the hand of death. And when some colour at last returned to his
+cheeks, and he found himself still alive in front of the apparatus whence
+no harm could now come, he heaved a deep sigh and again shuddered. “Why
+did I not turn it off?” he repeated. “It was because I felt afraid.”
+
+At that very moment Marie and Pierre came into the work-shop all chatter
+and laughter, delighted with their excursion, and bringing with them the
+bright joyousness of the sunlight. The three brothers, Thomas, Francis
+and Antoine, were jesting with them, and trying to make them confess that
+Pierre had at least fought a battle with a cow on the high road, and
+ridden into a cornfield. All at once, however, they became quite anxious,
+for they noticed that their father looked terribly upset.
+
+“My lads,” said he, “I’ve just been a coward. Ah! it’s a curious feeling,
+I had never experienced it before.”
+
+Thereupon he recounted his fears of an accident, and how quietly
+Mère-Grand had saved them all from certain death. She waved her hand,
+however, as if to say that there was nothing particularly heroic in
+turning off a tap. The young men’s eyes nevertheless filled with tears,
+and one after the other they went to kiss her with a fervour instinct
+with all the gratitude and worship they felt for her. She had been
+devoting herself to them ever since their infancy, she had now just given
+them a new lease of life. Marie also threw herself into her arms, kissing
+her with gratitude and emotion. Mère-Grand herself was the only one who
+did not shed tears. She strove to calm them, begging them to exaggerate
+nothing and to remain sensible.
+
+“Well, you must at all events let me kiss you as the others have done,”
+ Guillaume said to her, as he recovered his self-possession. “I at least
+owe you that. And Pierre, too, shall kiss you, for you are now as good
+for him as you have always been for us.”
+
+At table, when it was at last possible for them to lunch, he reverted to
+that attack of fear which had left him both surprised and ashamed. He who
+for years had never once thought of death had for some time past found
+ideas of caution in his mind. On two occasions recently he had shuddered
+at the possibility of a catastrophe. How was it that a longing for life
+had come to him in his decline? Why was it that he now wished to live? At
+last with a touch of tender affection in his gaiety, he remarked: “Do you
+know, Marie, I think it is my thoughts of you that make me a coward. If
+I’ve lost my bravery it’s because I risk something precious when any
+danger arises. Happiness has been entrusted to my charge. Just now when I
+fancied that we were all going to die, I thought I could see you, and my
+fear of losing you froze and paralysed me.”
+
+Marie indulged in a pretty laugh. Allusions to her coming marriage were
+seldom made; however, she invariably greeted them with an air of happy
+affection.
+
+“Another six weeks!” she simply said.
+
+Thereupon Mère-Grand, who had been looking at them, turned her eyes
+towards Pierre. He, however, like the others was listening with a smile.
+
+“That’s true,” said the old lady, “you are to be married in six weeks’
+time. So I did right to prevent the house from being blown up.”
+
+At this the young men made merry; and the repast came to an end in very
+joyous fashion.
+
+During the afternoon, however, Pierre’s heart gradually grew heavy.
+Marie’s words constantly returned to him: “Another six weeks!” Yes, it
+was indeed true, she would then be married. But it seemed to him that he
+had never previously known it, never for a moment thought of it. And
+later on, in the evening, when he was alone in his room at Neuilly, his
+heart-pain became intolerable. Those words tortured him. Why was it that
+they had not caused him any suffering when they were spoken, why had he
+greeted them with a smile? And why had such cruel anguish slowly
+followed? All at once an idea sprang up in his mind, and became an
+overwhelming certainty. He loved Marie, he loved her as a lover, with a
+love so intense that he might die from it.
+
+With this sudden consciousness of his passion everything became clear and
+plain. He had been going perforce towards that love ever since he had
+first met Marie. The emotion into which the young woman had originally
+thrown him had seemed to him a feeling of repulsion, but afterwards he
+had been slowly conquered, all his torments and struggles ending in this
+love for her. It was indeed through her that he had at last found
+quietude. And the delightful morning which he had spent with her that
+day, appeared to him like a betrothal morning, in the depths of the happy
+forest. Nature had resumed her sway over him, delivered him from his
+sufferings, made him strong and healthy once more, and given him to the
+woman he adored. The quiver he had experienced, the happiness he had
+felt, his communion with the trees, the heavens, and every living
+creature--all those things which he had been unable to explain, now
+acquired a clear meaning which transported him. In Marie alone lay his
+cure, his hope, his conviction that he would be born anew and at last
+find happiness. In her company he had already forgotten all those
+distressing problems which had formerly haunted him and bowed him down.
+For a week past he had not once thought of death, which had so long been
+the companion of his every hour. All the conflict of faith and doubt, the
+distress roused by the idea of nihility, the anger he had felt at the
+unjust sufferings of mankind, had been swept away by her fresh cool
+hands. She was so healthy herself, so glad to live, that she had imparted
+a taste for life even to him. Yes, it was simply that: she was making him
+a man, a worker, a lover once more.
+
+Then he suddenly remembered Abbé Rose and his painful conversation with
+that saintly man. The old priest, whose heart was so ingenuous, and who
+knew nothing of love and passion, was nevertheless the only one who had
+understood the truth. He had told Pierre that he was changed, that there
+was another man in him. And he, Pierre, had foolishly and stubbornly
+declared that he was the same as he had always been; whereas Marie had
+already transformed him, bringing all nature back to his breast--all
+nature, with its sunlit countrysides, its fructifying breezes, and its
+vast heavens, whose glow ripens its crops. That indeed was why he had
+felt so exasperated with Catholicism, that religion of death; that was
+why he had shouted that the Gospel was useless, and that the world
+awaited another law--a law of terrestrial happiness, human justice and
+living love and fruitfulness!
+
+Ah, but Guillaume? Then a vision of his brother rose before Pierre, that
+brother who loved him so fondly, and who had carried him to his home of
+toil, quietude and affection, in order to cure him of his sufferings. If
+he knew Marie it was simply because Guillaume had chosen that he should
+know her. And again Marie’s words recurred to him: “Another six weeks!”
+ Yes, in six weeks his brother would marry the young woman. This thought
+was like a stab in Pierre’s heart. Still, he did not for one moment
+hesitate: if he must die of his love, he would die of it, but none should
+ever know it, he would conquer himself, he would flee to the ends of the
+earth should he ever feel the faintest cowardice. Rather than bring a
+moment’s pain to that brother who had striven to resuscitate him, who was
+the artisan of the passion now consuming him, who had given him his whole
+heart and all he had--he would condemn himself to perpetual torture. And
+indeed, torture was coming back; for in losing Marie he could but sink
+into the distress born of the consciousness of his nothingness. As he lay
+in bed, unable to sleep, he already experienced a return of his
+abominable torments--the negation of everything, the feeling that
+everything was useless, that the world had no significance, and that life
+was only worthy of being cursed and denied. And then the shudder born of
+the thought of death returned to him. Ah! to die, to die without even
+having lived!
+
+The struggle was a frightful one. Until daybreak he sobbed in martyrdom.
+Why had he taken off his cassock? He had done so at a word from Marie;
+and now another word from her gave him the despairing idea of donning it
+once more. One could not escape from so fast a prison. That black gown
+still clung to his skin. He fancied that he had divested himself of it,
+and yet it was still weighing on his shoulders, and his wisest course
+would be to bury himself in it for ever. By donning it again he would at
+least wear mourning for his manhood.
+
+All at once, however, a fresh thought upset him. Why should he struggle
+in that fashion? Marie did not love him. There had been nothing between
+them to indicate that she cared for him otherwise than as a charming,
+tender-hearted sister. It was Guillaume that she loved, no doubt. Then he
+pressed his face to his pillow to stifle his sobs, and once more swore
+that he would conquer himself and turn a smiling face upon their
+happiness.
+
+
+
+
+IV. TRIAL AND SENTENCE
+
+HAVING returned to Montmartre on the morrow Pierre suffered so grievously
+that he did not show himself there on the two following days. He
+preferred to remain at home where there was nobody to notice his
+feverishness. On the third morning, however, whilst he was still in bed,
+strengthless and full of despair, he was both surprised and embarrassed
+by a visit from Guillaume.
+
+“I must needs come to you,” said the latter, “since you forsake us. I’ve
+come to fetch you to attend Salvat’s trial, which takes place to-day. I
+had no end of trouble to secure two places. Come, get up, we’ll have
+_déjeuner_ in town, so as to reach the court early.”
+
+Then, while Pierre was hastily dressing, Guillaume, who on his side
+seemed thoughtful and worried that morning, began to question him: “Have
+you anything to reproach us with?” he asked.
+
+“No, nothing. What an idea!” was Pierre’s reply.
+
+“Then why have you been staying away? We had got into the habit of seeing
+you every day, but all at once you disappear.”
+
+Pierre vainly sought a falsehood, and all his composure fled. “I had some
+work to do here,” said he, “and then, too, my gloomy ideas cane back to
+me, and I didn’t want to go and sadden you all.”
+
+At this Guillaume hastily waved his hand. “If you fancy that your absence
+enlivens us you’re mistaken,” he replied. “Marie, who is usually so well
+and happy, had such a bad headache on the day before yesterday that she
+was obliged to keep her room. And she was ill at ease and nervous and
+silent again yesterday. We spent a very unpleasant day.”
+
+As he spoke Guillaume looked Pierre well in the face, his frank loyal
+eyes clearly revealing the suspicions which had come to him, but which he
+would not express in words.
+
+Pierre, quite dismayed by the news of Marie’s indisposition, and
+frightened by the idea of betraying his secret, thereupon managed to tell
+a lie. “Yes, she wasn’t very well on the day when we went cycling,” he
+quietly responded. “But I assure you that I have had a lot to do here.
+When you came in just now I was about to get up and go to your house as
+usual.”
+
+Guillaume kept his eyes on him for a moment longer. Then, either
+believing him or deciding to postpone his search for the truth to some
+future time, he began speaking affectionately on other subjects. With his
+keen brotherly love, however, there was blended such a quiver of
+impending distress, of unconfessed sorrow, which possibly he did not yet
+realise, that Pierre in his turn began to question him. “And you,” said
+he, “are you ill? You seem to me to have lost your usual serenity.”
+
+“I? Oh! I’m not ill. Only I can’t very well retain my composure; Salvat’s
+affair distresses me exceedingly, as you must know. They will all end by
+driving me mad with the monstrous injustice they show towards that
+unhappy fellow.”
+
+Thenceforward Guillaume went on talking of Salvat in a stubborn
+passionate way, as if he wished to find an explanation of all his pain
+and unrest in that affair. While he and Pierre were partaking of
+_déjeuner_ at a little restaurant on the Boulevard du Palais he related
+how deeply touched he was by the silence which Salvat had preserved with
+regard both to the nature of the explosive employed in the bomb and the
+few days’ work which he had once done at his house. It was, thanks to
+this silence, that he, Guillaume, had not been worried or even summoned
+as a witness. Then, in his emotion, he reverted to his invention, that
+formidable engine which would ensure omnipotence to France, as the great
+initiatory and liberative power of the world. The results of the
+researches which had occupied him for ten years past were now out of
+danger and in all readiness, so that if occasion required they might at
+once be delivered to the French government. And, apart from certain
+scruples which came to him at the thought of the unworthiness of French
+financial and political society; he was simply delaying any further steps
+in the matter until his marriage with Marie, in order that he might
+associate her with the gift of universal peace which he imagined he was
+about to bestow upon the world.
+
+It was through Bertheroy and with great difficulty that Guillaume had
+managed to secure two seats in court for Salvat’s trial. When he and
+Pierre presented themselves for admission at eleven o’clock, they fancied
+that they would never be able to enter. The large gates of the Palace of
+Justice were kept closed, several passages were fenced off, and terror
+seemed to reign in the deserted building, as if indeed the judges feared
+some sudden invasion of bomb-laden Anarchists. Each door and barrier,
+too, was guarded by soldiers, with whom the brothers had to parley. When
+they at last entered the Assize Court they found it already crowded with
+people, who were apparently quite willing to suffocate there for an hour
+before the arrival of the judges, and to remain motionless for some seven
+or eight hours afterwards, since it was reported that the authorities
+wished to get the case over in a single sitting. In the small space
+allotted to the standing public there was a serried mass of sightseers
+who had come up from the streets, a few companions and friends of Salvat
+having managed to slip in among them. In the other compartment, where
+witnesses are generally huddled together on oak benches, were those
+spectators who had been allowed admittance by favour, and these were so
+numerous and so closely packed that here and there they almost sat upon
+one another’s knees. Then, in the well of the court and behind the bench,
+were rows of chairs set out as for some theatrical performance, and
+occupied by privileged members of society, politicians, leading
+journalists, and ladies. And meantime a number of gowned advocates sought
+refuge wherever chance offered, crowding into every vacant spot, every
+available corner.
+
+Pierre had never before visited the Assize Court, and its appearance
+surprised him. He had expected much pomp and majesty, whereas this temple
+of human justice seemed to him small and dismal and of doubtful
+cleanliness. The bench was so low that he could scarcely see the
+armchairs of the presiding judge and his two assessors. Then he was
+struck by the profusion of old oak panels, balustrades and benches, which
+helped to darken the apartment, whose wall hangings were of olive green,
+while a further display of oak panelling appeared on the ceiling above.
+From the seven narrow and high-set windows with scanty little white
+curtains there fell a pale light which sharply divided the court. On one
+hand one saw the dock and the defending counsel’s seat steeped in frigid
+light, while, on the other, was the little, isolated jury box in the
+shade. This contrast seemed symbolical of justice, impersonal and
+uncertain, face to face with the accused, whom the light stripped bare,
+probed as it were to his very soul. Then, through a kind of grey mist
+above the bench, in the depths of the stern and gloomy scene, one could
+vaguely distinguish the heavy painting of “Christ Crucified.” A white
+bust of the Republic alone showed forth clearly against the dark wall
+above the dock where Salvat would presently appear. The only remaining
+seats that Guillaume and Pierre could find were on the last bench of the
+witnesses’ compartment, against the partition which separated the latter
+from the space allotted to the standing public. Just as Guillaume was
+seating himself, he saw among the latter little Victor Mathis, who stood
+there with his elbows leaning on the partition, while his chin rested on
+his crossed hands. The young man’s eyes were glowing in his pale face
+with thin, compressed lips. Although they recognised one another, Victor
+did not move, and Guillaume on his side understood that it was not safe
+to exchange greetings in such a place. From that moment, however, he
+remained conscious that Victor was there, just above him, never stirring,
+but waiting silently, fiercely and with flaming eyes, for what was going
+to happen.
+
+Pierre, meantime, had recognised that most amiable deputy Duthil, and
+little Princess Rosemonde, seated just in front of him. Amidst the hubbub
+of the throng which chatted and laughed to while away the time, their
+voices were the gayest to be heard, and plainly showed how delighted they
+were to find themselves at a spectacle to which so many desired
+admittance. Duthil was explaining all the arrangements to Rosemonde,
+telling her to whom or to what purpose each bench and wooden box was
+allotted: there was the jury-box, the prisoner’s dock, the seats assigned
+to counsel for the defence, the public prosecutor, and the clerk of the
+court, without forgetting the table on which material evidence was
+deposited and the bar to which witnesses were summoned. There was nobody
+as yet in any of these places; one merely saw an attendant giving a last
+look round, and advocates passing rapidly. One might indeed have thought
+oneself in a theatre, the stage of which remained deserted, while the
+spectators crowded the auditorium waiting for the play to begin. To fill
+up the interval the little Princess ended by looking about her for
+persons of her acquaintance among the close-pressed crowd of sight-seers
+whose eager faces were already reddening.
+
+“Oh! isn’t that Monsieur Fonsègue over there behind the bench, near that
+stout lady in yellow?” she exclaimed. “Our friend General de Bozonnet is
+on the other side, I see. But isn’t Baron Duvillard here?”
+
+“Oh! no,” replied Duthil; “he could hardly come; it would look as if he
+were here to ask for vengeance.” Then, in his turn questioning Rosemonde,
+the deputy went on: “Do you happen to have quarrelled with your handsome
+friend Hyacinthe? Is that the reason why you’ve given me the pleasure of
+acting as your escort to-day?”
+
+With a slight shrug of her shoulders, the Princess replied that poets
+were beginning to bore her. A fresh caprice, indeed, was drawing her into
+politics. For a week past she had found amusement in the surroundings of
+the ministerial crisis, into which the young deputy for Angoulême had
+initiated her. “They are all a little bit crazy at the Duvillards’, my
+dear fellow,” said she. “It’s decided, you know, that Gérard is to marry
+Camille. The Baroness has resigned herself to it, and I’ve heard from a
+most reliable quarter that Madame de Quinsac, the young man’s mother, has
+given her consent.”
+
+At this Duthil became quite merry. He also seemed to be well informed on
+the subject. “Yes, yes, I know,” said he. “The wedding is to take place
+shortly, at the Madeleine. It will be a magnificent affair, no doubt. And
+after all, what would you have? There couldn’t be a better finish to the
+affair. The Baroness is really kindness personified, and I said all along
+that she would sacrifice herself in order to ensure the happiness of her
+daughter and Gérard. In point of fact that marriage will settle
+everything, put everything in proper order again.”
+
+“And what does the Baron say?” asked Rosemonde.
+
+“The Baron? Why, he’s delighted,” replied Duthil in a bantering way. “You
+read no doubt this morning that Dauvergne is given the department of
+Public Instruction in the new Ministry. This means that Silviane’s
+engagement at the Comédie is a certainty. Dauvergne was chosen simply on
+that account.”
+
+At this moment the conversation was interrupted by little Massot, who,
+after a dispute with one of the ushers some distance away, had perceived
+a vacant place by the side of the Princess. He thereupon made her a
+questioning sign, and she beckoned to him to approach.
+
+“Ah!” said he, as he installed himself beside her, “I have not got here
+without trouble. One’s crushed to death on the press bench, and I’ve an
+article to write. You are the kindest of women, Princess, to make a
+little room for your faithful admirer, myself.” Then, after shaking hands
+with Duthil, he continued without any transition: “And so there’s a new
+ministry at last, Monsieur le Député. You have all taken your time about
+it, but it’s really a very fine ministry, which everybody regards with
+surprise and admiration.”
+
+The decrees appointing the new ministers had appeared in the “Journal
+Officiel” that very morning. After a long deadlock, after Vignon had for
+the second time seen his plans fail through ever-recurring obstacles,
+Monferrand, as a last resource, had suddenly been summoned to the Elysée,
+and in four-and-twenty hours he had found the colleagues he wanted and
+secured the acceptance of his list, in such wise that he now triumphantly
+re-ascended to power after falling from it with Barroux in such wretched
+fashion. He had also chosen a new post for himself, relinquishing the
+department of the Interior for that of Finances, with the Presidency of
+the Council, which had long been his secret ambition. His stealthy
+labour, the masterly fashion in which he had saved himself while others
+sank, now appeared in its full beauty. First had come Salvat’s arrest,
+and the use he had made of it, then the wonderful subterranean campaign
+which he had carried on against Vignon, the thousand obstacles which he
+had twice set across his path, and finally the sudden _dénouement_ with
+that list he held in readiness, that formation of a ministry in a single
+day as soon as his services were solicited.
+
+“It is fine work, I must compliment you on it,” added little Massot by
+way of a jest.
+
+“But I’ve had nothing to do with it,” Duthil modestly replied.
+
+“Nothing to do with it! Oh! yes you have, my dear sir, everybody says
+so.”
+
+The deputy felt flattered and smiled, while the other rattled on with his
+insinuations, which were put in such a humorous way that nothing he said
+could be resented. He talked of Monferrand’s followers who had so
+powerfully helped him on to victory. How heartily had Fonsègue finished
+off his old friend Barroux in the “Globe”! Every morning for a month past
+the paper had published an article belabouring Barroux, annihilating
+Vignon, and preparing the public for the return of a saviour of society
+who was not named. Then, too, Duvillard’s millions had waged a secret
+warfare, all the Baron’s numerous creatures had fought like an army for
+the good cause. Duthil himself had played the pipe and beaten the drum,
+while Chaigneux resigned himself to the baser duties which others would
+not undertake. And so the triumphant Monferrand would certainly begin by
+stifling that scandalous and embarrassing affair of the African Railways,
+and appointing a Committee of Inquiry to bury it.
+
+By this time Duthil had assumed an important air. “Well, my dear fellow,”
+ said he, “at serious moments when society is in peril, certain
+strong-handed men, real men of government, become absolutely necessary.
+Monferrand had no need of our friendship, his presence in office was
+imperiously required by the situation. His hand is the only one that can
+save us!”
+
+“I know,” replied Massot scoffingly. “I’ve even been told that if
+everything was settled straight off so that the decrees might be
+published this morning, it was in order to instil confidence into the
+judges and jurymen here, in such wise that knowing Monferrand’s fist to
+be behind them they would have the courage to pronounce sentence of death
+this evening.”
+
+“Well, public safety requires a sentence of death, and those who have to
+ensure that safety must not be left ignorant of the fact that the
+government is with them, and will know how to protect them, if need be.”
+
+At this moment a merry laugh from the Princess broke in upon the
+conversation. “Oh! just look over there!” said she; “isn’t that Silviane
+who has just sat down beside Monsieur Fonsègue?”
+
+“The Silviane ministry!” muttered Massot in a jesting way. “Well, there
+will be no boredom at Dauvergne’s if he ingratiates himself with
+actresses.”
+
+Guillaume and Pierre heard this chatter, however little they cared to
+listen to it. Such a deluge of society tittle-tattle and political
+indiscretion brought the former a keen heart-pang. So Salvat was
+sentenced to death even before he had appeared in court. He was to pay
+for the transgressions of one and all, his crime was simply a favourable
+opportunity for the triumph of a band of ambitious people bent on power
+and enjoyment! Ah! what terrible social rottenness there was in it all;
+money corrupting one and another, families sinking to filth, politics
+turned into a mere treacherous struggle between individuals, and power
+becoming the prey of the crafty and the impudent! Must not everything
+surely crumble? Was not this solemn assize of human justice a derisive
+parody, since all that one found there was an assembly of happy and
+privileged people defending the shaky edifice which sheltered them, and
+making use of all the forces they yet retained, to crush a fly--that
+unhappy devil of uncertain sanity who had been led to that court by his
+violent and cloudy dream of another, superior and avenging justice?
+
+Such were Guillaume’s thoughts, when all at once everybody around him
+started. Noon was now striking, and the jurymen trooped into court in
+straggling fashion and took their seats in their box. Among them one saw
+fat fellows clad in their Sunday best and with the faces of simpletons,
+and thin fellows who had bright eyes and sly expressions. Some of them
+were bearded and some were bald. However, they all remained rather
+indistinct, as their side of the court was steeped in shade. After them
+came the judges, headed by M. de Larombière, one of the Vice-Presidents
+of the Appeal Court, who in assuming the perilous honour of conducting
+the trial had sought to increase the majesty of his long, slender, white
+face, which looked the more austere as both his assessors, one dark and
+the other fair, had highly coloured countenances. The public prosecutor’s
+seat was already occupied by one of the most skilful of the
+advocates-general, M. Lehmann, a broad-shouldered Alsatian Israelite,
+with cunning eyes, whose presence showed that the case was deemed
+exceptionally important. At last, amidst the heavy tread of gendarmes,
+Salvat was brought in, at once rousing such ardent curiosity that all the
+spectators rose to look at him. He still wore the cap and loose overcoat
+procured for him by Victor Mathis, and everybody was surprised to see his
+emaciated, sorrowful, gentle face, crowned by scanty reddish hair, which
+was turning grey. His soft, glowing, dreamy blue eyes glanced around, and
+he smiled at someone whom he recognised, probably Victor, but perhaps
+Guillaume. After that he remained quite motionless.
+
+The presiding judge waited for silence to fall, and then came the
+formalities which attend the opening of a court of law, followed by the
+perusal of the lengthy indictment, which a subordinate official read in a
+shrill voice. The scene had now changed, and the spectators listened
+wearily and somewhat impatiently, as, for weeks past, the newspapers had
+related all that the indictment set forth. At present not a corner of the
+court remained unoccupied, there was scarcely space enough for the
+witnesses to stand in front of the bench. The closely packed throng was
+one of divers hues, the light gowns of ladies alternating with the black
+gowns of advocates, while the red robes of the judges disappeared from
+view, the bench being so low that the presiding judge’s long face
+scarcely rose above the sea of heads. Many of those present became
+interested in the jurors, and strove to scrutinise their shadowy
+countenances. Others, who did not take their eyes off the prisoner,
+marvelled at his apparent weariness and indifference, which were so great
+that he scarcely answered the whispered questions of his counsel, a young
+advocate with a wide-awake look, who was nervously awaiting the
+opportunity to achieve fame. Most curiosity, however, centred in the
+table set apart for the material evidence. Here were to be seen all sorts
+of fragments, some of the woodwork torn away from the carriage-door of
+the Duvillard mansion, some plaster that had fallen from the ceiling, a
+paving-stone which the violence of the explosion had split in halves, and
+other blackened remnants. The more moving sights, however, were the
+milliner’s bonnet-box, which had remained uninjured, and a glass jar in
+which something white and vague was preserved in spirits of wine. This
+was one of the poor errand girl’s little hands, which had been severed at
+the wrist. The authorities had been unable to place her poor ripped body
+on the table, and so they had brought that hand!
+
+At last Salvat rose, and the presiding judge began to interrogate him.
+The contrast in the aspect of the court then acquired tragic force: in
+the shrouding shade upon one hand were the jurors, their minds already
+made up beneath the pressure of public terror, while in the full, vivid
+light on the other side was the prisoner, alone and woeful, charged with
+all the crimes of his race. Four gendarmes watched over him. He was
+addressed by M. de Larombière in a tone of contempt and disgust. The
+judge was not deficient in rectitude; he was indeed one of the last
+representatives of the old, scrupulous, upright French magistracy; but he
+understood nothing of the new times, and he treated prisoners with the
+severity of a Biblical Jehovah. Moreover, the infirmity which was the
+worry of his life, the childish lisp which, in his opinion, had alone
+prevented him from shining as a public prosecutor, made him ferociously
+ill-tempered, incapable of any intelligent indulgence. There were smiles,
+which he divined, as soon as he raised his sharp, shrill little voice, to
+ask his first questions. That droll voice of his took away whatever
+majesty might have remained attached to these proceedings, in which a
+man’s life was being fought for in a hall full of inquisitive, stifling
+and perspiring folks, who fanned themselves and jested. Salvat answered
+the judge’s earlier questions with his wonted weariness and politeness.
+While the judge did everything to vilify him, harshly reproaching him
+with his wretched childhood and youth, magnifying every stain and every
+transgression in his career, referring to the promiscuity of his life
+between Madame Théodore and little Céline as something bestial, he, the
+prisoner, quietly said yes or no, like a man who has nothing to hide and
+accepts the full responsibility of his actions. He had already made a
+complete confession of his crime, and he calmly repeated it without
+changing a word. He explained that if he had deposited his bomb at the
+entrance of the Duvillard mansion it was to give his deed its true
+significance, that of summoning the wealthy, the money-mongers who had so
+scandalously enriched themselves by dint of theft and falsehood, to
+restore that part of the common wealth which they had appropriated, to
+the poor, the working classes, their children and their wives, who
+perished of starvation. It was only at this moment that he grew excited;
+all the misery that he had endured or witnessed rose to his clouded,
+semi-educated brain, in which claims and theories and exasperated ideas
+of absolute justice and universal happiness had gathered confusedly. And
+from that moment he appeared such as he really was, a sentimentalist, a
+dreamer transported by suffering, proud and stubborn, and bent on
+changing the world in accordance with his sectarian logic.
+
+“But you fled!” cried the judge in a voice such as would have befitted a
+grasshopper. “You must not say that you gave your life to your cause and
+were ready for martyrdom!”
+
+Salvat’s most poignant regret was that he had yielded in the Bois de
+Boulogne to the dismay and rage which come upon a tracked and hunted man
+and impel him to do all he can to escape capture. And on being thus
+taunted by the judge he became quite angry. “I don’t fear death, you’ll
+see that,” he replied. “If all had the same courage as I have, your
+rotten society would be swept away to-morrow, and happiness would at last
+dawn.”
+
+Then the interrogatory dealt at great length with the composition and
+manufacture of the bomb. The judge, rightly enough, pointed out that this
+was the only obscure point of the affair. “And so,” he remarked, “you
+persist in saying that dynamite was the explosive you employed? Well, you
+will presently hear the experts, who, it is true, differ on certain
+points, but are all of opinion that you employed some other explosive,
+though they cannot say precisely what it was. Why not speak out on the
+point, as you glory in saying everything?”
+
+Salvat, however, had suddenly calmed down, giving only cautious
+monosyllabic replies. “Well, seek for whatever you like if you don’t
+believe me,” he now answered. “I made my bomb by myself, and under
+circumstances which I’ve already related a score of times. You surely
+don’t expect me to reveal names and compromise comrades?”
+
+From this declaration he would not depart. It was only towards the end of
+the interrogatory that irresistible emotion overcame him on the judge
+again referring to the unhappy victim of his crime, the little errand
+girl, so pretty and fair and gentle, whom ferocious destiny had brought
+to the spot to meet such an awful death. “It was one of your own class
+whom you struck,” said M. de Larombière; “your victim was a work girl, a
+poor child who, with the few pence she earned, helped to support her aged
+grandmother.”
+
+Salvat’s voice became very husky as he answered: “That’s really the only
+thing I regret.... My bomb certainly wasn’t meant for her; and may all
+the workers, all the starvelings, remember that she gave her blood as I’m
+going to give mine!”
+
+In this wise the interrogatory ended amidst profound agitation. Pierre
+had felt Guillaume shuddering beside him, whilst the prisoner quietly and
+obstinately refused to say a word respecting the explosive that had been
+employed, preferring as he did to assume full responsibility for the deed
+which was about to cost him his life. Moreover, Guillaume, on turning
+round, in compliance with an irresistible impulse, had perceived Victor
+Mathis still motionless behind him: his elbows ever leaning on the rail
+of the partition, and his chin still resting on his hands, whilst he
+listened with silent, concentrated passion. His face had become yet paler
+than before, and his eyes glowed as with an avenging fire, whose flames
+would never more be extinguished.
+
+The interrogatory of the prisoner was followed by a brief commotion in
+court.
+
+“That Salvat looks quite nice, he has such soft eyes,” declared the
+Princess, whom the proceedings greatly amused. “Oh! don’t speak ill of
+him, my dear deputy. You know that I have Anarchist ideas myself.”
+
+“I speak no ill of him,” gaily replied Duthil. “Nor has our friend
+Amadieu any right to speak ill of him. For you know that this affair has
+set Amadieu on a pinnacle. He was never before talked about to such an
+extent as he is now; and he delights in being talked about, you know! He
+has become quite a social celebrity, the most illustrious of our
+investigating magistrates, and will soon be able to do or become whatever
+he pleases.”
+
+Then Massot, with his sarcastic impudence, summed up the situation. “When
+Anarchism flourishes, everything flourishes, eh? That bomb has helped on
+the affairs of a good many fine fellows that I know. Do you think that my
+governor Fonsègue, who’s so attentive to Silviane yonder, complains of
+it? And doesn’t Sagnier, who’s spreading himself out behind the presiding
+judge, and whose proper place would be between the four
+gendarmes--doesn’t he owe a debt to Salvat for all the abominable
+advertisements he has been able to give his paper by using the wretched
+fellow’s back as a big drum? And I need not mention the politicians or
+the financiers or all those who fish in troubled waters.”
+
+“But I say,” interrupted Duthil, “it seems to me that you yourself made
+good use of the affair. Your interview with the little girl Céline
+brought you in a pot of money.”
+
+Massot, as it happened, had been struck with the idea of ferreting out
+Madame Théodore and the child, and of relating his visit to them in the
+“Globe,” with an abundance of curious and touching particulars. The
+article had met with prodigious success, Céline’s pretty answers
+respecting her imprisoned father having such an effect on ladies with
+sensitive hearts that they had driven to Montmartre in their carriages in
+order to see the two poor creatures. Thus alms had come to them from all
+sides; and strangely enough the very people who demanded the father’s
+head were the most eager to sympathise with the child.
+
+“Well, I don’t complain of my little profits,” said the journalist in
+answer to Duthil. “We all earn what we can, you know.”
+
+At this moment Rosemonde, while glancing round her, recognised Guillaume
+and Pierre, but she was so amazed to see the latter in ordinary civilian
+garb that she did not dare to speak to him. Leaning forward she
+acquainted Duthil and Massot with her surprise, and they both turned
+round to look. From motives of discretion, however, they pretended that
+they did not recognise the Froments.
+
+The heat in court was now becoming quite unbearable, and one lady had
+already fainted. At last the presiding judge again raised his lisping
+voice, and managed to restore silence. Salvat, who had remained standing,
+now held a few sheets of paper, and with some difficulty he made the
+judge understand that he desired to complete his interrogatory by reading
+a declaration, which he had drawn up in prison, and in which he explained
+his reasons for his crime. For a moment M. de Larombière hesitated, all
+surprise and indignation at such a request; but he was aware that he
+could not legally impose silence on the prisoner, and so he signified his
+consent with a gesture of mingled irritation and disdain. Thereupon
+Salvat began his perusal much after the fashion of a schoolboy, hemming
+and hawing here and there, occasionally becoming confused, and then
+bringing out certain words with wonderful emphasis, which evidently
+pleased him. This declaration of his was the usual cry of suffering and
+revolt already raised by so many disinherited ones. It referred to all
+the frightful want of the lower spheres; the toiler unable to find a
+livelihood in his toil; a whole class, the most numerous and worthy of
+the classes, dying of starvation; whilst, on the other hand, were the
+privileged ones, gorged with wealth, and wallowing in satiety, yet
+refusing to part with even the crumbs from their tables, determined as
+they were to restore nothing whatever of the wealth which they had
+stolen. And so it became necessary to take everything away from them, to
+rouse them from their egotism by terrible warnings, and to proclaim to
+them even with the crash of bombs that the day of justice had come. The
+unhappy man spoke that word “justice” in a ringing voice which seemed to
+fill the whole court. But the emotion of those who heard him reached its
+highest pitch when, after declaring that he laid down his life for the
+cause, and expected nothing but a verdict of death from the jury, he
+added, as if prophetically, that his blood would assuredly give birth to
+other martyrs. They might send him to the scaffold, said he, but he knew
+that his example would bear fruit. After him would come another avenger,
+and yet another, and others still, until the old and rotten social system
+should have crumbled away so as to make room for the society of justice
+and happiness of which he was one of the apostles.
+
+The presiding judge, in his impatience and agitation, twice endeavoured
+to interrupt Salvat. But the other read on and on with the imperturbable
+conscientiousness of one who fears that he may not give proper utterance
+to his most important words. He must have been thinking of that perusal
+ever since he had been in prison. It was the decisive act of his suicide,
+the act by which he proclaimed that he gave his life for the glory of
+dying in the cause of mankind. And when he had finished he sat down
+between the gendarmes with glowing eyes and flushed cheeks, as if he
+inwardly experienced some deep joy.
+
+To destroy the effect which the declaration had produced--a commingling
+of fear and compassion--the judge at once wished to proceed with the
+hearing of the witnesses. Of these there was an interminable procession;
+though little interest attached to their evidence, for none of them had
+any revelations to make. Most attention perhaps was paid to the measured
+statements of Grandidier, who had been obliged to dismiss Salvat from his
+employ on account of the Anarchist propaganda he had carried on. Then the
+prisoner’s brother-in-law, Toussaint, the mechanician, also seemed a very
+worthy fellow if one might judge him by the manner in which he strove to
+put things favourably for Salvat, without in any way departing from the
+truth. After Toussaint’s evidence considerable time was taken up by the
+discussions between the experts, who disagreed in public as much as they
+had disagreed in their reports. Although they were all of opinion that
+dynamite could not have been the explosive employed in the bomb, they
+indulged in the most extraordinary and contradictory suppositions as to
+this explosive’s real nature. Eventually a written opinion given by the
+illustrious _savant_ Bertheroy was read; and this, after clearly setting
+forth the known facts, concluded that one found oneself in presence of a
+new explosive of prodigious power, the formula of which he himself was
+unable to specify.
+
+Then detective Mondésir and commissary Dupot came in turn to relate the
+various phases of the man hunt in the Bois de Boulogne. In Mondésir
+centred all the gaiety of the proceedings, thanks to the guardroom
+sallies with which he enlivened his narrative. And in like way the
+greatest grief, a perfect shudder of revolt and compassion, was roused by
+the errand girl’s grandmother, a poor, bent, withered old woman, whom the
+prosecution had cruelly constrained to attend the court, and who wept and
+looked quite dismayed, unable as she was to understand what was wanted of
+her. When she had withdrawn, the only remaining witnesses were those for
+the defence, a procession of foremen and comrades, who all declared that
+they had known Salvat as a very worthy fellow, an intelligent and zealous
+workman, who did not drink, but was extremely fond of his daughter, and
+incapable of an act of dishonesty or cruelty.
+
+It was already four o’clock when the evidence of the witnesses came to an
+end. The atmosphere in court was now quite stifling, feverish fatigue
+flushed every face, and a kind of ruddy dust obscured the waning light
+which fell from the windows. Women were fanning themselves and men were
+mopping their foreheads. However, the passion roused by the scene still
+brought a glow of cruel delight to every eye. And no one stirred.
+
+“Ah!” sighed Rosemonde all at once, “to think that I hoped to drink a cup
+of tea at a friend’s at five o’clock. I shall die of thirst and
+starvation here.”
+
+“We shall certainly be kept till seven,” replied Massot. “I can’t offer
+to go and fetch you a roll, for I shouldn’t be readmitted.”
+
+Then Duthil, who had not ceased shrugging his shoulders while Salvat read
+his declaration, exclaimed: “What childish things he said, didn’t he? And
+to think that the fool is going to die for all that! Rich and poor,
+indeed! Why, there will always be rich and poor. And it’s equally certain
+that when a man is poor his one great desire is to become rich. If that
+fellow is in the dock to-day it’s simply because he failed to make
+money.”
+
+While the others were thus conversing, Pierre for his part was feeling
+extremely anxious about his brother, who sat beside him in silence, pale
+and utterly upset. Pierre sought his hand and covertly pressed it. Then
+in a low voice he inquired: “Do you feel ill? Shall we go away?”
+
+Guillaume answered him by discreetly and affectionately returning his
+handshake. He was all right, he would remain till the end, however much
+he might be stirred by exasperation.
+
+It was now Monsieur Lehmann, the public prosecutor, who rose to address
+the court. He had a large, stern mouth, and was squarely built, with a
+stubborn Jewish face. Nevertheless he was known to be a man of dexterous,
+supple nature, one who had a foot in every political camp, and invariably
+contrived to be on good terms with the powers that were. This explained
+his rapid rise in life, and the constant favour he enjoyed. In the very
+first words he spoke he alluded to the new ministry gazetted that
+morning, referring pointedly to the strong-handed man who had undertaken
+the task of reassuring peaceable citizens and making evil-doers tremble.
+Then he fell upon the wretched Salvat with extraordinary vehemence,
+recounting the whole of his life, and exhibiting him as a bandit
+expressly born for the perpetration of crime, a monster who was bound to
+end by committing some abominable and cowardly outrage. Next he
+flagellated Anarchism and its partisans. The Anarchists were a mere herd
+of vagabonds and thieves, said he. That had been shown by the recent
+robbery at the Princess de Harn’s house. The ignoble gang that had been
+arrested for that affair had given the apostles of the Anarchist doctrine
+as their references! And that was what the application of Anarchist
+theories resulted in--burglary and filth, pending a favourable hour for
+wholesale pillage and murder! For nearly a couple of hours the public
+prosecutor continued in this fashion, throwing truth and logic to the
+winds, and exclusively striving to alarm his hearers. He made all
+possible use of the terror which had reigned in Paris, and figuratively
+brandished the corpse of the poor little victim, the pretty errand girl,
+as if it were a blood-red flag, before pointing to the pale hand,
+preserved in spirits of wine, with a gesture of compassionate horror
+which sent a shudder through his audience. And he ended, as he had begun,
+by inspiriting the jurors, and telling them that they might fearlessly do
+their duty now that those at the head of the State were firmly resolved
+to give no heed to threats.
+
+Then the young advocate entrusted with the defence in his turn spoke. And
+he really said what there was to say with great clearness and precision.
+He was of a different school from that of the public prosecutor: his
+eloquence was very simple and smooth, his only passion seemed to be zeal
+for truth. Moreover, it was sufficient for him to show Salvat’s career in
+its proper light, to depict him pursued by social fatalities since his
+childhood, and to explain the final action of his career by all that he
+had suffered and all that had sprung up in his dreamy brain. Was not his
+crime the crime of one and all? Who was there that did not feel, if only
+in a small degree, responsible for that bomb which a penniless, starving
+workman had deposited on the threshold of a wealthy man’s abode--a
+wealthy man whose name bespoke the injustice of the social system: so
+much enjoyment on the one hand and so much privation on the other! If one
+of us happened to lose his head, and felt impelled to hasten the advent
+of happiness by violence in such troublous times, when so many burning
+problems claimed solution, ought he to be deprived of his life in the
+name of justice, when none could swear that they had not in some measure
+contributed to his madness? Following up this question, Salvat’s counsel
+dwelt at length on the period that witnessed the crime, a period of so
+many scandals and collapses, when the old world was giving birth to a new
+one amidst the most terrible struggles and pangs. And he concluded by
+begging the jury to show themselves humane, to resist all passion and
+terror, and to pacify the rival classes by a wise verdict, instead of
+prolonging social warfare by giving the starvelings yet another martyr to
+avenge.
+
+It was past six o’clock when M. de Larombière began to sum up in a
+partial and flowery fashion, in which one detected how grieved and angry
+he was at having such a shrill little voice. Then the judges and the
+jurors withdrew, and the prisoner was led away, leaving the spectators
+waiting amidst an uproar of feverish impatience. Some more ladies had
+fainted, and it had even been necessary to carry out a gentleman who had
+been overcome by the cruel heat. However, the others stubbornly remained
+there, not one of them quitting his place.
+
+“Ah! it won’t take long now,” said Massot. “The jurors brought their
+verdict all ready in their pockets. I was looking at them while that
+little advocate was telling them such sensible things. They all looked as
+if they were comfortably asleep in the gloom.”
+
+Then Duthil turned to the Princess and asked her, “Are you still hungry?”
+
+“Oh! I’m starving,” she replied. “I shall never be able to wait till I
+get home. You will have to take me to eat a biscuit somewhere.... All
+the same, however, it’s very exciting to see a man’s life staked on a yes
+or a no.”
+
+Meantime Pierre, finding Guillaume still more feverish and grieved, had
+once again taken hold of his hand. Neither of them spoke, so great was
+the distress that they experienced for many reasons which they themselves
+could not have precisely defined. It seemed to them, however, that all
+human misery--inclusive of their own, the affections, the hopes, the
+griefs which brought them suffering--was sobbing and quivering in that
+buzzing hall. Twilight had gradually fallen there, but as the end was now
+so near it had doubtless been thought unnecessary to light the
+chandeliers. And thus large vague shadows, dimming and shrouding the
+serried throng, now hovered about in the last gleams of the day. The
+ladies in light gowns yonder, behind the bench, looked like pale phantoms
+with all-devouring eyes, whilst the numerous groups of black-robed
+advocates formed large sombre patches which gradually spread everywhere.
+The greyish painting of the Christ had already vanished, and on the walls
+one only saw the glaring white bust of the Republic, which resembled some
+frigid death’s head starting forth from the darkness.
+
+“Ah!” Massot once more exclaimed, “I knew that it wouldn’t take long!”
+
+Indeed, the jurors were returning after less than a quarter of an hour’s
+absence. Then the judges likewise came back and took their seats.
+Increased emotion stirred the throng, a great gust seemed to sweep
+through the court, a gust of anxiety, which made every head sway. Some
+people had risen to their feet, and others gave vent to involuntary
+exclamations. The foreman of the jury, a gentleman with a broad red face,
+had to wait a moment before speaking. At last in a sharp but somewhat
+sputtering voice he declared: “On my honour and my conscience, before God
+and before man, the verdict of the jury is: on the question of Murder,
+yes, by a majority of votes.”*
+
+ * English readers may be reminded that in France the verdict of
+ a majority of the jury suffices for conviction or acquittal.
+ If the jury is evenly divided the prisoner is acquitted.--Trans.
+
+The night had almost completely fallen when Salvat was once more brought
+in. In front of the jurors, who faded away in the gloom, he stood forth,
+erect, with a last ray from the windows lighting up his face. The judges
+themselves almost disappeared from view, their red robes seemed to have
+turned black. And how phantom-like looked the prisoner’s emaciated face
+as he stood there listening, with dreamy eyes, while the clerk of the
+court read the verdict to him.
+
+When silence fell and no mention was made of extenuating circumstances,
+he understood everything. His face, which had retained a childish
+expression, suddenly brightened. “That means death. Thank you,
+gentlemen,” he said.
+
+Then he turned towards the public, and amidst the growing darkness
+searched for the friendly faces which he knew were there; and this time
+Guillaume became fully conscious that he had recognised him, and was
+again expressing affectionate and grateful thanks for the crust he had
+received from him on a day of want. He must have also bidden farewell to
+Victor Mathis, for as Guillaume glanced at the young man, who had not
+moved, he saw that his eyes were staring wildly, and that a terrible
+expression rested on his lips.
+
+As for the rest of the proceedings, the last questions addressed to the
+jury and the counsel, the deliberations of the judges and the delivery of
+sentence--these were all lost amidst the buzzing and surging of the
+crowd. A little compassion was unconsciously manifested; and some stupor
+was mingled with the satisfaction that greeted the sentence of death.
+
+No sooner had Salvat been condemned, however, than he drew himself up to
+his full height, and as the guards led him away he shouted in a
+stentorian voice: “Long live Anarchy!”
+
+Nobody seemed angered by the cry. The crowd went off quietly, as if
+weariness had lulled all its passions. The proceedings had really lasted
+too long and fatigued one too much. It was quite pleasant to inhale the
+fresh air on emerging from such a nightmare.
+
+In the large waiting hall, Pierre and Guillaume passed Duthil and the
+Princess, whom General de Bozonnet had stopped while chatting with
+Fonsègue. All four of them were talking in very loud voices, complaining
+of the heat and their hunger, and agreeing that the affair had not been a
+particularly interesting one. Yet, all was well that ended well. As
+Fonsègue remarked, the condemnation of Salvat to death was a political
+and social necessity.
+
+When Pierre and Guillaume reached the Pont Neuf, the latter for a moment
+rested his elbows on the parapet of the bridge. His brother, standing
+beside him, also gazed at the grey waters of the Seine, which here and
+there were fired by the reflections of the gas lamps. A fresh breeze
+ascended from the river; it was the delightful hour when night steals
+gently over resting Paris. Then, as the brothers stood there breathing
+that atmosphere which usually brings relief and comfort, Pierre on his
+side again became conscious of his heart-wound, and remembered his
+promise to return to Montmartre, a promise that he must keep in spite of
+the torture there awaiting him; whilst Guillaume on the other hand
+experienced a revival of the suspicion and disquietude that had come to
+him on seeing Marie so feverish, changed as it were by some new feeling,
+of which she herself was ignorant. Were further sufferings, struggles,
+and obstacles to happiness yet in store for those brothers who loved one
+another so dearly? At all events their hearts bled once more with all the
+sorrow into which they had been cast by the scene they had just
+witnessed: that assize of justice at which a wretched man had been
+condemned to pay with his head for the crimes of one and all.
+
+Then, as they turned along the quay, Guillaume recognised young Victor
+going off alone in the gloom, just in front of them. The chemist stopped
+him and spoke to him of his mother. But the young man did not hear; his
+thin lips parted, and in a voice as trenchant as a knife-thrust he
+exclaimed: “Ah! so it’s blood they want. Well, they may cut off his head,
+but he will be avenged!”
+
+
+
+
+V. SACRIFICE
+
+THE days which followed Salvat’s trial seemed gloomy ones up yonder in
+Guillaume’s workroom, which was usually so bright and gay. Sadness and
+silence filled the place. The three young men were no longer there.
+Thomas betook himself to the Grandidier works early every morning in
+order to perfect his little motor; François was so busy preparing for his
+examination that he scarcely left the École Normale; while Antoine was
+doing some work at Jahan’s, where he delighted to linger and watch his
+little friend Lise awakening to life. Thus Guillaume’s sole companion was
+Mère-Grand, who sat near the window busy with her needlework; for Marie
+was ever going about the house, and only stayed in the workroom for any
+length of time when Pierre happened to be there.
+
+Guillaume’s gloom was generally attributed to the feelings of anger and
+revolt into which the condemnation of Salvat had thrown him. He had flown
+into a passion on his return from the Palace of Justice, declaring that
+the execution of the unhappy man would simply be social murder,
+deliberate provocation of class warfare. And the others had bowed on
+hearing that pain-fraught violent cry, without attempting to discuss the
+point. Guillaume’s sons respectfully left him to the thoughts which kept
+him silent for hours, with his face pale and a dreamy expression in his
+eyes. His chemical furnace remained unlighted, and his only occupation
+from morn till night was to examine the plans and documents connected
+with his invention, that new explosive and that terrible engine of war,
+which he had so long dreamt of presenting to France in order that she
+might impose the reign of truth and justice upon all the nations.
+However, during the long hours which he spent before the papers scattered
+over his table, often without seeing them, for his eyes wandered far
+away, a multitude of vague thoughts came to him--doubts respecting the
+wisdom of his project, and fears lest his desire to pacify the nations
+should simply throw them into an endless war of extermination. Although
+he really believed that great city of Paris to be the world’s brain,
+entrusted with the task of preparing the future, he could not disguise
+from himself that with all its folly and shame and injustice it still
+presented a shocking spectacle. Was it really ripe enough for the work of
+human salvation which he thought of entrusting to it? Then, on trying to
+re-peruse his notes and verify his formulas, he only recovered his former
+energetic determination on thinking of his marriage, whereupon the idea
+came to him that it was now too late for him to upset his life by
+changing such long-settled plans.
+
+His marriage! Was it not the thought of this which haunted Guillaume and
+disturbed him far more powerfully than his scientific work or his
+humanitarian passion? Beneath all the worries that he acknowledged, there
+was another which he did not confess even to himself, and which filled
+him with anguish. He repeated day by day that he would reveal his
+invention to the Minister of War as soon as he should be married to
+Marie, whom he wished to associate with his glory. Married to Marie! Each
+time he thought of it, burning fever and secret disquietude came over
+him. If he now remained so silent and had lost his quiet cheerfulness, it
+was because he had felt new life, as it were, emanating from her. She was
+certainly no longer the same woman as formerly; she was becoming more and
+more changed and distant. He had watched her and Pierre when the latter
+happened to be there, which was now but seldom. He, too, appeared
+embarrassed, and different from what he had been. On the days when he
+came, however, Marie seemed transformed; it was as if new life animated
+the house. Certainly the intercourse between her and Pierre was quite
+innocent, sisterly on the one hand, brotherly on the other. They simply
+seemed to be a pair of good friends. And yet a radiance, a vibration,
+emanated from them, something more subtle even than a sun-ray or a
+perfume. After the lapse of a few days Guillaume found himself unable to
+doubt the truth any longer. And his heart bled, he was utterly upset by
+it. He had not found them in fault in any way, but he was convinced that
+these two children, as he so paternally called them, really adored one
+another.
+
+One lovely morning when he happened to be alone with Mère-Grand, face to
+face with sunlit Paris, he fell into a yet more dolorous reverie than
+usual. He seemed to be gazing fixedly at the old lady, as, seated in her
+usual place, she continued sewing with an air of queenly serenity.
+Perhaps, however, he did not see her. For her part she occasionally
+raised her eyes and glanced at him, as if expecting a confession which
+did not come. At last, finding such silence unbearable, she made up her
+mind to address him: “What has been the matter with you, Guillaume, for
+some time past? Why don’t you tell me what you have to tell me?”
+
+He descended from the clouds, as it were, and answered in astonishment:
+“What I have to tell you?”
+
+“Yes, I know it as well as you do, and I thought you would speak to me of
+it, since it pleases you to do nothing here without consulting me.”
+
+At this he turned very pale and shuddered. So he had not been mistaken in
+the matter, even Mère-Grand knew all about it. To talk of it, however,
+was to give shape to his suspicions, to transform what, hitherto, might
+merely have been a fancy on his part into something real and definite.
+
+“It was inevitable, my dear son,” said Mère-Grand. “I foresaw it from the
+outset. And if I did not warn you of it, it was because I believed in
+some deep design on your part. Since I have seen you suffering, however,
+I have realised that I was mistaken.” Then, as he still looked at her
+quivering and distracted, she continued: “Yes, I fancied that you might
+have wished it, that in bringing your brother here you wished to know if
+Marie loved you otherwise than as a father. There was good reason for
+testing her--for instance, the great difference between your ages, for
+your life is drawing to a close, whilst hers is only beginning. And I
+need not mention the question of your work, the mission which I have
+always dreamt of for you.”
+
+Thereupon, with his hands raised in prayerful fashion, Guillaume drew
+near to the old lady and exclaimed: “Oh! speak out clearly, tell me what
+you think. I don’t understand, my poor heart is so lacerated; and yet I
+should so much like to know everything, so as to be able to act and take
+a decision. To think that you whom I love, you whom I venerate as much as
+if you were my real mother, you whose profound good sense I know so well
+that I have always followed your advice--to think that you should have
+foreseen this frightful thing and have allowed it to happen at the risk
+of its killing me!... Why have you done so, tell me, why?”
+
+Mère-Grand was not fond of talking. Absolute mistress of the house as she
+was, managing everything, accountable to nobody for her actions, she
+never gave expression to all that she thought or all that she desired.
+Indeed, there was no occasion for it, as Guillaume, like the children,
+relied upon her completely, with full confidence in her wisdom. And her
+somewhat enigmatical ways even helped to raise her in their estimation.
+
+“What is the use of words, when things themselves speak?” she now gently
+answered, while still plying her needle. “It is quite true that I
+approved of the plan of a marriage between you and Marie, for I saw that
+it was necessary that she should be married if she was to stay here. And
+then, too, there were many other reasons which I needn’t speak of.
+However, Pierre’s arrival here has changed everything, and placed things
+in their natural order. Is not that preferable?”
+
+He still lacked the courage to understand her. “Preferable! When I’m in
+agony? When my life is wrecked?”
+
+Thereupon she rose and came to him, tall and rigid in her thin black
+gown, and with an expression of austerity and energy on her pale face.
+“My son,” she said, “you know that I love you, and that I wish you to be
+very noble and lofty. Only the other morning, you had an attack of
+fright, the house narrowly escaped being blown up. Then, for some days
+now you have been sitting over those documents and plans in an
+absent-minded, distracted state, like a man who feels weak, and doubts,
+and no longer knows his way. Believe me, you are following a dangerous
+path; it is better that Pierre should marry Marie, both for their sakes
+and for your own.”
+
+“For my sake? No, no! What will become of me!”
+
+“You will calm yourself and reflect, my son. You have such serious duties
+before you. You are on the eve of making your invention known. It seems
+to me that something has bedimmed your sight, and that you will perhaps
+act wrongly in this respect, through failing to take due account of the
+problem before you. Perhaps there is something better to be done....
+At all events, suffer if it be necessary, but remain faithful to your
+ideal.”
+
+Then, quitting him with a maternal smile, she sought to soften her
+somewhat stern words by adding: “You have compelled me to speak
+unnecessarily, for I am quite at ease; with your superior mind, whatever
+be in question, you can but do the one right thing that none other would
+do.”
+
+On finding himself alone Guillaume fell into feverish uncertainty. What
+was the meaning of Mère-Grand’s enigmatical words? He knew that she was
+on the side of whatever might be good, natural, and necessary. But she
+seemed to be urging him to some lofty heroism; and indeed what she had
+said threw a ray of light upon the unrest which had come to him in
+connection with his old plan of going to confide his secret to some
+Minister of War or other, whatever one might happen to be in office at
+the time. Growing hesitation and repugnance stirred him as he fancied he
+could again hear her saying that perhaps there might be some better
+course, that would require search and reflection. But all at once a
+vision of Marie rose before him, and his heart was rent by the thought
+that he was asked to renounce her. To lose her, to give her to another!
+No, no, that was beyond his strength. He would never have the frightful
+courage that was needed to pass by the last promised raptures of love
+with disdain!
+
+For a couple of days Guillaume struggled on. He seemed to be again living
+the six years which the young woman had already spent beside him in that
+happy little house. She had been at first like an adopted daughter there;
+and later on, when the idea of their marriage had sprung up, he had
+viewed it with quiet delight in the hope that it would ensure the
+happiness of all around him. If he had previously abstained from marrying
+again it was from the fear of placing a strange mother over his children;
+and if he yielded to the charm of loving yet once more, and no longer
+leading a solitary life, it was because he had found at his very hearth
+one of such sensible views, who, in the flower of youth, was willing to
+become his wife despite the difference in their ages. Then months had
+gone by, and serious occurrences had compelled them to postpone the
+wedding, though without undue suffering on his part. Indeed, the
+certainty that she was waiting for him had sufficed him, for his life of
+hard work had rendered him patient. Now, however, all at once, at the
+threat of losing her, his hitherto tranquil heart ached and bled. He
+would never have thought the tie so close a one. But he was now almost
+fifty, and it was as if love and woman were being wrenched away from him,
+the last woman that he could love and desire, one too who was the more
+desirable, as she was the incarnation of youth from which he must ever be
+severed, should he indeed lose her. Passionate desire, mingled with rage,
+flared up within him at the thought that someone should have come to take
+her from him.
+
+One night, alone in his room, he suffered perfect martyrdom. In order
+that he might not rouse the house he buried his face in his pillow so as
+to stifle his sobs. After all, it was a simple matter; Marie had given
+him her promise, and he would compel her to keep it. She would be his,
+and his alone, and none would be able to steal her from him. Then,
+however, there rose before him a vision of his brother, the
+long-forgotten one, whom, from feelings of affection, he had compelled to
+join his family. But his sufferings were now so acute that he would have
+driven that brother away had he been before him. He was enraged,
+maddened, by the thought of him. His brother--his little brother! So all
+their love was over; hatred and violence were about to poison their
+lives. For hours Guillaume continued complaining deliriously, and seeking
+how he might so rid himself of Pierre that what had happened should be
+blotted out. Now and again, when he recovered self-control, he marvelled
+at the tempest within him; for was he not a _savant_ guided by lofty
+reason, a toiler to whom long experience had brought serenity? But the
+truth was that this tempest had not sprung up in his mind, it was raging
+in the child-like soul that he had retained, the nook of affection and
+dreaminess which remained within him side by side with his principles of
+pitiless logic and his belief in proven phenomena only. His very genius
+came from the duality of his nature: behind the chemist was a social
+dreamer, hungering for justice and capable of the greatest love. And now
+passion was transporting him, and he was weeping for the loss of Marie as
+he would have wept over the downfall of that dream of his, the
+destruction of war _by_ war, that scheme for the salvation of mankind at
+which he had been working for ten years past.
+
+At last, amidst his weariness, a sudden resolution calmed him. He began
+to feel ashamed of despairing in this wise when he had no certain grounds
+to go upon. He must know everything, he would question the young woman;
+she was loyal enough to answer him frankly. Was not this a solution
+worthy of them both? An explanation in all sincerity, after which they
+would be able to take a decision. Then he fell asleep; and, tired though
+he felt when he rose in the morning, he was calmer. It was as if some
+secret work had gone on in his heart during his few hours of repose after
+that terrible storm.
+
+As it happened Marie was very gay that morning. On the previous day she
+had gone with Pierre and Antoine on a cycling excursion over frightful
+roads in the direction of Montmorency, whence they had returned in a
+state of mingled anger and delight. When Guillaume stopped her in the
+little garden, he found her humming a song while returning bare-armed
+from the scullery, where some washing was going on.
+
+“Do you want to speak to me?” she asked.
+
+“Yes, my dear child, it’s necessary for us to talk of some serious
+matters.”
+
+She at once understood that their marriage was in question, and became
+grave. She had formerly consented to that marriage because she regarded
+it as the only sensible course she could take, and this with full
+knowledge of the duties which she would assume. No doubt her husband
+would be some twenty years older than herself, but this circumstance was
+one of somewhat frequent occurrence, and as a rule such marriages turned
+out well, rather than otherwise. Moreover, she was in love with nobody,
+and was free to consent. And she had consented with an impulse of
+gratitude and affection which seemed so sweet that she thought it the
+sweetness of love itself. Everybody around her, too, appeared so pleased
+at the prospect of this marriage, which would draw the family yet more
+closely together. And, on her side, she had been as it were intoxicated
+by the idea of making others happy.
+
+“What is the matter?” she now asked Guillaume in a somewhat anxious
+voice. “No bad news, I hope?”
+
+“No, no,” he answered. “I’ve simply something to say to you.”
+
+Then he led her under the plum-trees to the only green nook left in the
+garden. An old worm-eaten bench still stood there against the
+lilac-bushes. And in front of them Paris spread out its sea of roofs,
+looking light and fresh in the morning sunlight.
+
+They both sat down. But at the moment of speaking and questioning Marie,
+Guillaume experienced sudden embarrassment, while his heart beat
+violently at seeing her beside him, so young and adorable with her bare
+arms.
+
+“Our wedding-day is drawing near,” he ended by saying. And then as she
+turned somewhat pale, perhaps unconsciously, he himself suddenly felt
+cold. Had not her lips twitched as if with pain? Had not a shadow passed
+over her fresh, clear eyes?
+
+“Oh! we still have some time before us,” she replied.
+
+Then, slowly and very affectionately, he resumed: “No doubt; still it is
+necessary to attend to the formalities. And it is as well, perhaps, that
+I should speak of those worries to-day, so that I may not have to bother
+you about them again.”
+
+Then he gently went on telling her all that would have to be done,
+keeping his eyes on her whilst he spoke, watching for such signs of
+emotion as the thought of her promise’s early fulfilment might bring to
+her face. She sat there in silence, with her hands on her lap, and her
+features quite still, thus giving no certain sign of any regret or
+trouble. Still she seemed rather dejected, compliant, as it were, but in
+no wise joyous.
+
+“You say nothing, my dear Marie,” Guillaume at last exclaimed. “Does
+anything of all this displease you?”
+
+“Displease me? Oh, no!”
+
+“You must speak out frankly, if it does, you know. We will wait a little
+longer if you have any personal reasons for wishing to postpone the date
+again.”
+
+“But I’ve no reasons, my friend. What reasons could I have? I leave you
+quite free to settle everything as you yourself may desire.”
+
+Silence fell. While answering, she had looked him frankly in the face;
+but a little quiver stirred her lips, and gloom, for which she could not
+account, seemed to rise and darken her face, usually as bright and gay as
+spring water. In former times would she not have laughed and sung at the
+mere announcement of that coming wedding?
+
+Then Guillaume, with an effort which made his voice tremble, dared to
+speak out: “You must forgive me for asking you a question, my dear Marie.
+There is still time for you to cancel your promise. Are you quite certain
+that you love me?”
+
+At this she looked at him in genuine stupefaction, utterly failing to
+understand what he could be aiming at. And--as she seemed to be deferring
+her reply, he added: “Consult your heart. Is it really your old friend or
+is it another that you love?”
+
+“I? I, Guillaume? Why do you say that to me? What can I have done to give
+you occasion to say such a thing!”
+
+All her frank nature revolted as she spoke, and her beautiful eyes,
+glowing with sincerity, gazed fixedly on his.
+
+“I love Pierre! I do, I?... Well, yes, I love him, as I love you all;
+I love him because he has become one of us, because he shares our life
+and our joys! I’m happy when he’s here, certainly; and I should like him
+to be always here. I’m always pleased to see him and hear him and go out
+with him. I was very much grieved recently when he seemed to be relapsing
+into his gloomy ideas. But all that is natural, is it not? And I think
+that I have only done what you desired I should do, and I cannot
+understand how my affection for Pierre can in any way exercise an
+influence respecting our marriage.”
+
+These words, in her estimation, ought to have convinced Guillaume that
+she was not in love with his brother; but in lieu thereof they brought
+him painful enlightenment by the very ardour with which she denied the
+love imputed to her.
+
+“But you unfortunate girl!” he cried. “You are betraying yourself without
+knowing it.... It is quite certain you do not love me, you love my
+brother!”
+
+He had caught hold of her wrists and was pressing them with despairing
+affection as if to compel her to read her heart. And she continued
+struggling. A most loving and tragic contest went on between them, he
+seeking to convince her by the evidence of facts, and she resisting him,
+stubbornly refusing to open her eyes. In vain did he recount what had
+happened since the first day, explaining the feelings which had followed
+one upon another in her heart and mind: first covert hostility, next
+curiosity regarding that extraordinary young priest, and then sympathy
+and affection when she had found him so wretched and had gradually cured
+him of his sufferings. They were both young and mother Nature had done
+the rest. However, at each fresh proof and certainty which he put before
+her, Marie only experienced growing emotion, trembling at last from head
+to foot, but still unwilling to question herself.
+
+“No, no,” said she, “I do not love him. If I loved him I should know it
+and would acknowledge it to you; for you are well aware that I cannot
+tell an untruth.”
+
+Guillaume, however, had the cruelty to insist on the point, like some
+heroic surgeon cutting into his own flesh even more than into that of
+others, in order that the truth might appear and everyone be saved.
+“Marie,” said he, “it is not I whom you love. All that you feel for me is
+respect and gratitude and daughterly affection. Remember what your
+feelings were at the time when our marriage was decided upon. You were
+then in love with nobody, and you accepted the offer like a sensible
+girl, feeling certain that I should render you happy, and that the union
+was a right and satisfactory one.... But since then my brother has
+come here; love has sprung up in your heart in quite a natural way; and
+it is Pierre, Pierre alone, whom you love as a lover and a husband should
+be loved.”
+
+Exhausted though she was, utterly distracted, too, by the light which,
+despite herself, was dawning within her, Marie still stubbornly and
+desperately protested.
+
+“But why do you struggle like this against the truth, my child?” said
+Guillaume; “I do not reproach you. It was I who chose that this should
+happen, like the old madman I am. What was bound to come has come, and
+doubtless it is for the best. I only wanted to learn the truth from you
+in order that I might take a decision and act uprightly.”
+
+These words vanquished her, and her tears gushed forth. It seemed as
+though something had been rent asunder within her; and she felt quite
+overcome, as if by the weight of a new truth of which she had hitherto
+been ignorant. “Ah! it was cruel of you,” she said, “to do me such
+violence so as to make me read my heart. I swear to you again that I did
+not know I loved Pierre in the way you say. But you have opened my heart,
+and roused what was quietly slumbering in it.... And it is true, I do
+love Pierre, I love him now as you have said. And so here we are, all
+three of us supremely wretched through your doing!”
+
+She sobbed, and with a sudden feeling of modesty freed her wrists from
+his grasp. He noticed, however, that no blush rose to her face. Truth to
+tell, her virginal loyalty was not in question; she had no cause to
+reproach herself with any betrayal; it was he alone, perforce, who had
+awakened her to love. For a moment they looked at one another through
+their tears: she so strong and healthy, her bosom heaving at each
+heart-beat, and her white arms--arms that could both charm and
+sustain--bare almost to her shoulders; and he still vigorous, with his
+thick fleece of white hair and his black moustaches, which gave his
+countenance such an expression of energetic youth. But it was all over,
+the irreparable had swept by, and utterly changed their lives.
+
+“Marie,” he nobly said, “you do not love me, I give you back your
+promise.”
+
+But with equal nobility she refused to take it back. “Never will I do
+so,” she replied. “I gave it to you frankly, freely and joyfully, and my
+affection and admiration for you have never changed.”
+
+Nevertheless, with more firmness in his hitherto broken voice, Guillaume
+retorted: “You love Pierre, and it is Pierre whom you ought to marry.”
+
+“No,” she again insisted, “I belong to you. A tie which years have
+tightened cannot be undone in an hour. Once again, if I love Pierre I
+swear to you that I was ignorant of it this morning. And let us leave the
+matter as it is; do not torture me any more, it would be too cruel of
+you.”
+
+Then, quivering like a woman who suddenly perceives that she is bare, in
+a stranger’s presence, she hastily pulled down her sleeves, and even drew
+them over her hands as if to leave naught of her person visible. And
+afterwards she rose and walked away without adding a single word.
+
+Guillaume remained alone on the bench in that leafy corner, in front of
+Paris, to which the light morning sunshine lent the aspect of some
+quivering, soaring city of dreamland. A great weight oppressed him, and
+it seemed to him as if he would never be able to rise from the seat. That
+which brought him most suffering was Marie’s assurance that she had till
+that morning been ignorant of the fact that she was in love with Pierre.
+She had been ignorant of it, and it was he, Guillaume, who had brought it
+to her knowledge, compelled her to confess it! He had now firmly planted
+it in her heart, and perhaps increased it by revealing it to her. Ah! how
+cruel the thought--to be the artisan of one’s own torment! Of one thing
+he was now quite certain: there would be no more love in his life. At the
+idea of this, his poor, loving heart sank and bled. And yet amidst the
+disaster, amidst his grief at realising that he was an old man, and that
+renunciation was imperative, he experienced a bitter joy at having
+brought the truth to light. This was very harsh consolation, fit only for
+one of heroic soul, yet he found lofty satisfaction in it, and from that
+moment the thought of sacrifice imposed itself upon him with
+extraordinary force. He must marry his children; there lay the path of
+duty, the only wise and just course, the only certain means of ensuring
+the happiness of the household. And when his revolting heart yet leapt
+and shrieked with anguish, he carried his vigorous hands to his chest in
+order to still it.
+
+On the morrow came the supreme explanation between Guillaume and Pierre,
+not in the little garden, however, but in the spacious workroom. And here
+again one beheld the vast panorama of Paris, a nation as it were at work,
+a huge vat in which the wine of the future was fermenting. Guillaume had
+arranged things so that he might be alone with his brother; and no sooner
+had the latter entered than he attacked him, going straight to the point
+without any of the precautions which he had previously taken with Marie.
+
+“Haven’t you something to say to me, Pierre?” he inquired. “Why won’t you
+confide in me?”
+
+The other immediately understood him, and began to tremble, unable to
+find a word, but confessing everything by the distracted, entreating
+expression of his face.
+
+“You love Marie,” continued Guillaume, “why did you not loyally come and
+tell me of your love?”
+
+At this Pierre recovered self-possession and defended himself vehemently:
+“I love Marie, it’s true, and I felt that I could not conceal it, that
+you yourself would notice it at last. But there was no occasion for me to
+tell you of it, for I was sure of myself, and would have fled rather than
+have allowed a single word to cross my lips. I suffered in silence and
+alone, and you cannot know how great my torture was! It is even cruel on
+your part to speak to me of it; for now I am absolutely compelled to
+leave you.... I have already, on several occasions, thought of doing
+so. If I have come back here, it was doubtless through weakness, but also
+on account of my affection for you all. And what mattered my presence
+here? Marie ran no risk. She does not love me.”
+
+“She does love you!” Guillaume answered. “I questioned her yesterday, and
+she had to confess that she loved you.”
+
+At this Pierre, utterly distracted, caught Guillaume by the shoulders and
+gazed into his eyes. “Oh! brother, brother! what is this you say? Why say
+a thing which would mean terrible misfortune for us all? Even if it were
+true, my grief would far exceed my joy, for I will not have you suffer.
+Marie belongs to you. To me she is as sacred as a sister. And if there be
+only my madness to part you, it will pass by, I shall know how to conquer
+it.”
+
+“Marie loves you,” repeated Guillaume in his gentle, obstinate way. “I
+don’t reproach you with anything. I well know that you have struggled,
+and have never betrayed yourself to her either by word or glance.
+Yesterday she herself was still ignorant that she loved you, and I had to
+open her eyes.... What would you have? I simply state a fact: she
+loves you.”
+
+This time Pierre, still quivering, made a gesture of mingled rapture and
+terror, as if some divine and long-desired blessing were falling upon him
+from heaven and crushing him beneath its weight.
+
+“Well, then,” he said, after a brief pause, “it is all over.... Let us
+kiss one another for the last time, and then I’ll go.”
+
+“Go? Why? You must stay with us. Nothing could be more simple: you love
+Marie and she loves you. I give her to you.”
+
+A loud cry came from Pierre, who wildly raised his hands again with a
+gesture of fright and rapture. “You give me Marie?” he replied. “You, who
+adore her, who have been waiting for her for months? No, no, it would
+overcome me, it would terrify me, as if you gave me your very heart after
+tearing it from your breast. No, no! I will not accept your sacrifice!”
+
+“But as it is only gratitude and affection that Marie feels for me,” said
+Guillaume, “as it is you whom she really loves, am I to take a mean
+advantage of the engagements which she entered into unconsciously, and
+force her to a marriage when I know that she would never be wholly mine?
+Besides, I have made a mistake, it isn’t I who give her to you, she has
+already given herself, and I do not consider that I have any right to
+prevent her from doing so.”
+
+“No, no! I will never accept, I will never bring such grief upon you...
+Kiss me, brother, and let me go.”
+
+Thereupon Guillaume caught hold of Pierre and compelled him to sit down
+by his side on an old sofa near the window. And he began to scold him
+almost angrily while still retaining a smile, in which suffering and
+kindliness were blended. “Come,” said he, “we are surely not going to
+fight over it. You won’t force me to tie you up so as to keep you here? I
+know what I’m about. I thought it all over before I spoke to you. No
+doubt, I can’t tell you that it gladdens me. I thought at first that I
+was going to die; I should have liked to hide myself in the very depths
+of the earth. And then, well, it was necessary to be reasonable, and I
+understood that things had arranged themselves for the best, in their
+natural order.”
+
+Pierre, unable to resist any further, had begun to weep with both hands
+raised to his face.
+
+“Don’t grieve, brother, either for yourself or for me,” said Guillaume.
+“Do you remember the happy days we lately spent together at Neuilly after
+we had found one another again? All our old affection revived within us,
+and we remained for hours, hand in hand, recalling the past and loving
+one another. And what a terrible confession you made to me one night, the
+confession of your loss of faith, your torture, the void in which you
+were rolling! When I heard of it my one great wish was to cure you. I
+advised you to work, love, and believe in life, convinced as I was that
+life alone could restore you to peace and health.... And for that
+reason I afterwards brought you here. You fought against it, and it was I
+who forced you to come. I was so happy when I found that you again took
+an interest in life, and had once more become a man and a worker! I would
+have given some of my blood if necessary to complete your cure....
+Well, it’s done now, I have given you all I had, since Marie herself has
+become necessary to you, and she alone can save you.”
+
+Then as Pierre again attempted to protest, he resumed: “Don’t deny it. It
+is so true indeed, that if she does not complete the work I have begun,
+all my efforts will have been vain, you will fall back into your misery
+and negation, into all the torments of a spoilt life. She is necessary to
+you, I say. And do you think that I no longer know how to love you? Would
+you have me refuse you the very breath of life that will truly make you a
+man, after all my fervent wishes for your return to life? I have enough
+affection for you both to consent to your loving one another....
+Besides, I repeat it, nature knows what she does. Instinct is a sure
+guide, it always tends to what is useful and trite. I should have been a
+sorry husband, and it is best that I should keep to my work as an old
+_savant_; whereas you are young and represent the future, all fruitful
+and happy life.”
+
+Pierre shuddered as he heard this, for his old fears returned to him. Had
+not the priesthood for ever cut him off from life, had not his long years
+of chaste celibacy robbed him of his manhood? “Fruitful and happy life!”
+ he muttered, “ah! if you only knew how distressed I feel at the idea that
+I do not perhaps deserve the gift you so lovingly offer me! You are worth
+more than I am; you would have given her a larger heart, a firmer brain,
+and perhaps, too, you are really a younger man than myself.... There
+is still time, brother, keep her, if with you she is likely to be happier
+and more truly and completely loved. For my part I am full of doubts. Her
+happiness is the only thing of consequence. Let her belong to the one who
+will love her best!”
+
+Indescribable emotion had now come over both men. As Guillaume heard his
+brother’s broken words, the cry of a love that trembled at the thought of
+possible weakness, he did for a moment waver. With a dreadful heart-pang
+he stammered despairingly: “Ah! Marie, whom I love so much! Marie, whom I
+would have rendered so happy!”
+
+At this Pierre could not restrain himself; he rose and cried: “Ah! you
+see that you love her still and cannot renounce her.... So let me go!
+let me go!”
+
+But Guillaume had already caught him around the body, clasping him with
+an intensity of brotherly love which was increased by the renunciation he
+was resolved upon: “Stay!” said he. “It wasn’t I that spoke, it was the
+other man that was in me, he who is about to die, who is already dead! By
+the memory of our mother and our father I swear to you that the sacrifice
+is consummated, and that if you two refuse to accept happiness from me
+you will but make me suffer.”
+
+For a moment the weeping men remained in one another’s arms. They had
+often embraced before, but never had their hearts met and mingled as they
+did now. It was a delightful moment, which seemed an eternity. All the
+grief and misery of the world had disappeared from before them; there
+remained naught save their glowing love, whence sprang an eternity of
+love even as light comes from the sun. And that moment was compensation
+for all their past and future tears, whilst yonder, on the horizon before
+them, Paris still spread and rumbled, ever preparing the unknown future.
+
+Just then Marie herself came in. And the rest proved very simple.
+Guillaume freed himself from his brother’s clasp, led him forward and
+compelled him and Marie to take each other by the hand. At first she made
+yet another gesture of refusal in her stubborn resolve that she would not
+take her promise back. But what could she say face to face with those two
+tearful men, whom she had found in one another’s arms, mingling together
+in such close brotherliness? Did not those tears and that embrace sweep
+away all ordinary reasons, all such arguments as she held in reserve?
+Even the embarrassment of the situation disappeared, it seemed as if she
+had already had a long explanation with Pierre, and that he and she were
+of one mind to accept that gift of love which Guillaume offered them with
+so much heroism. A gust of the sublime passed through the room, and
+nothing could have appeared more natural to them than this extraordinary
+scene. Nevertheless, Marie remained silent, she dared not give her
+answer, but looked at them both with her big soft eyes, which, like their
+own, were full of tears.
+
+And it was Guillaume who, with sudden inspiration, ran to the little
+staircase conducting to the rooms overhead, and called: “Mère-Grand!
+Mère-Grand! Come down at once, you are wanted.”
+
+Then, as soon as she was there, looking slim and pale in her black gown,
+and showing the wise air of a queen-mother whom all obeyed, he said:
+“Tell these two children that they can do nothing better than marry one
+another. Tell them that we have talked it over, you and I, and that it is
+your desire, your will that they should do so.”
+
+She quietly nodded her assent, and then said: “That is true, it will be
+by far the most sensible course.”
+
+Thereupon Marie flung herself into her arms, consenting, yielding to the
+superior forces, the powers of life, that had thus changed the course of
+her existence. Guillaume immediately desired that the date of the wedding
+should be fixed, and accommodation provided for the young couple in the
+rooms overhead. And as Pierre glanced at him with some remaining anxiety
+and spoke of travelling, for he feared that his wound was not yet healed,
+and that their presence might bring him suffering, Guillaume responded:
+“No, no, I mean to keep you. If I’m marrying you, it is to have you both
+here. Don’t worry about me. I have so much work to do, I shall work.”
+
+In the evening when Thomas and François came home and learnt the news,
+they did not seem particularly surprised by it. They had doubtless felt
+that things would end like this. And they bowed to the _dénouement_, not
+venturing to say a word, since it was their father himself who announced
+the decision which had been taken, with his usual air of composure. As
+for Antoine, who on his own side quivered with love for Lise, he gazed
+with doubting, anxious eyes at his father, who had thus had the courage
+to pluck out his heart. Could he really survive such a sacrifice, must it
+not kill him? Then Antoine kissed his father passionately, and the elder
+brothers in their turn embraced him with all their hearts. Guillaume
+smiled and his eyes became moist. After his victory over his horrible
+torments nothing could have been sweeter to him than the embraces of his
+three big sons.
+
+There was, however, further emotion in store for him that evening. Just
+as the daylight was departing, and he was sitting at his large table near
+the window, again checking and classifying the documents and plans
+connected with his invention, he was surprised to see his old master and
+friend Bertheroy enter the workroom. The illustrious chemist called on
+him in this fashion at long intervals, and Guillaume felt the honour thus
+conferred on him by this old man to whom eminence and fame had brought so
+many titles, offices and decorations. Moreover, Bertheroy, with his
+position as an official _savant_ and member of the Institute, showed some
+courage in thus venturing to call on one whom so-called respectable folks
+regarded with contumely. And on this occasion, Guillaume at once
+understood that it was some feeling of curiosity that had brought him.
+And so he was greatly embarrassed, for he hardly dared to remove the
+papers and plans which were lying on the table.
+
+“Oh, don’t be frightened,” gaily exclaimed Bertheroy, who, despite his
+careless and abrupt ways, was really very shrewd. “I haven’t come to pry
+into your secrets.... Leave your papers there, I promise you that I
+won’t read anything.”
+
+Then, in all frankness, he turned the conversation on the subject of
+explosives, which he was still studying, he said, with passionate
+interest. He had made some new discoveries which he did not conceal.
+Incidentally, too, he spoke of the opinion he had given in Salvat’s
+affair. His dream was to discover some explosive of great power, which
+one might attempt to domesticate and reduce to complete obedience. And
+with a smile he pointedly concluded: “I don’t know where that madman
+found the formula of his powder. But if you should ever discover it,
+remember that the future perhaps lies in the employment of explosives as
+motive power.”
+
+Then, all at once, he added: “By the way, that fellow Salvat will be
+executed on the day after to-morrow. A friend of mine at the Ministry of
+Justice has just told me so.”
+
+Guillaume had hitherto listened to him with an air of mingled distrust
+and amusement. But this announcement of Salvat’s execution stirred him to
+anger and revolt, though for some days past he had known it to be
+inevitable, in spite of the sympathy which the condemned man was now
+rousing in many quarters.
+
+“It will be a murder!” he cried vehemently.
+
+Bertheroy waved his hand: “What would you have?” he answered: “there’s a
+social system and it defends itself when it is attacked. Besides, those
+Anarchists are really too foolish in imagining that they will transform
+the world with their squibs and crackers! In my opinion, you know,
+science is the only revolutionist. Science will not only bring us truth
+but justice also, if indeed justice ever be possible on this earth. And
+that is why I lead so calm a life and am so tolerant.”
+
+Once again Bertheroy appeared to Guillaume as a revolutionist, one who
+was convinced that he helped on the ruin of the ancient abominable
+society of today, with its dogmas and laws, even whilst he was working in
+the depths of his laboratory. He was, however, too desirous of repose,
+and had too great a contempt for futilities to mingle with the events of
+the day, and he preferred to live in quietude, liberally paid and
+rewarded, and at peace with the government whatever it might be, whilst
+at the same time foreseeing and preparing for the formidable parturition
+of the future.
+
+He waved his hand towards Paris, over which a sun of victory was setting,
+and then again spoke: “Do you hear the rumble? It is we who are the
+stokers, we who are ever flinging fresh fuel under the boiler. Science
+does not pause in her work for a single hour, and she is the artisan of
+Paris, which--let us hope it--will be the artisan of the future. All the
+rest is of no account.”
+
+But Guillaume was no longer listening to him. He was thinking of Salvat
+and the terrible engine of war he had invented, that engine which before
+long would shatter cities. And a new idea was dawning and growing in his
+mind. He had just freed himself of his last tie, he had created all the
+happiness he could create around him. Ah! to recover his courage, to be
+master of himself once more, and, at any rate, derive from the sacrifice
+of his heart the lofty delight of being free, of being able to lay down
+even his life, should he some day deem it necessary!
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK V.
+
+
+
+
+I. THE GUILLOTINE
+
+
+FOR some reason of his own Guillaume was bent upon witnessing the
+execution of Salvat. Pierre tried to dissuade him from doing so; and
+finding his efforts vain, became somewhat anxious. He accordingly
+resolved to spend the night at Montmartre, accompany his brother and
+watch over him. In former times, when engaged with Abbé Rose in
+charitable work in the Charonne district, he had learnt that the
+guillotine could be seen from the house where Mège, the Socialist deputy,
+resided at the corner of the Rue Merlin. He therefore offered himself as
+a guide. As the execution was to take place as soon as it should legally
+be daybreak, that is, about half-past four o’clock, the brothers did not
+go to bed but sat up in the workroom, feeling somewhat drowsy, and
+exchanging few words. Then as soon as two o’clock struck, they started
+off.
+
+The night was beautifully serene and clear. The full moon, shining like a
+silver lamp in the cloudless, far-stretching heavens, threw a calm,
+dreamy light over the vague immensity of Paris, which was like some
+spell-bound city of sleep, so overcome by fatigue that not a murmur arose
+from it. It was as if beneath the soft radiance which spread over its
+roofs, its panting labour and its cries of suffering were lulled to
+repose until the dawn. Yet, in a far, out of the way district, dark work
+was even now progressing, a knife was being raised on high in order that
+a man might be killed.
+
+Pierre and Guillaume paused in the Rue St. Eleuthère, and gazed at the
+vaporous, tremulous city spread out below then. And as they turned they
+perceived the basilica of the Sacred Heart, still domeless but already
+looking huge indeed in the moonbeams, whose clear white light accentuated
+its outlines and brought them into sharp relief against a mass of
+shadows. Under the pale nocturnal sky, the edifice showed like a colossal
+monster, symbolical of provocation and sovereign dominion. Never before
+had Guillaume found it so huge, never had it appeared to him to dominate
+Paris, even in the latter’s hours of slumber, with such stubborn and
+overwhelming might.
+
+This wounded him so keenly in the state of mind in which he found
+himself, that he could not help exclaiming: “Ah! they chose a good site
+for it, and how stupid it was to let them do so! I know of nothing more
+nonsensical; Paris crowned and dominated by that temple of idolatry! How
+impudent it is, what a buffet for the cause of reason after so many
+centuries of science, labour, and battle! And to think of it being reared
+over Paris, the one city in the world which ought never to have been
+soiled in this fashion! One can understand it at Lourdes and Rome; but
+not in Paris, in the very field of intelligence which has been so deeply
+ploughed, and whence the future is sprouting. It is a declaration of war,
+an insolent proclamation that they hope to conquer Paris also!”
+
+Guillaume usually evinced all the tolerance of a _savant_, for whom
+religions are simply social phenomena. He even willingly admitted the
+grandeur or grace of certain Catholic legends. But Marie Alacoque’s
+famous vision, which has given rise to the cult of the Sacred Heart,
+filled him with irritation and something like physical disgust. He
+suffered at the mere idea of Christ’s open, bleeding breast, and the
+gigantic heart which the saint asserted she had seen beating in the
+depths of the wound--the huge heart in which Jesus placed the woman’s
+little heart to restore it to her inflated and glowing with love. What
+base and loathsome materialism there was in all this! What a display of
+viscera, muscles and blood suggestive of a butcher’s shop! And Guillaume
+was particularly disgusted with the engraving which depicted this horror,
+and which he found everywhere, crudely coloured with red and yellow and
+blue, like some badly executed anatomical plate.
+
+Pierre on his side was also looking at the basilica as, white with
+moonlight, it rose out of the darkness like a gigantic fortress raised to
+crush and conquer the city slumbering beneath it. It had already brought
+him suffering during the last days when he had said mass in it and was
+struggling with his torments. “They call it the national votive
+offering,” he now exclaimed. “But the nation’s longing is for health and
+strength and restoration to its old position by work. That is a thing the
+Church does not understand. It argues that if France was stricken with
+defeat, it was because she deserved punishment. She was guilty, and so
+to-day she ought to repent. Repent of what? Of the Revolution, of a
+century of free examination and science, of the emancipation of her mind,
+of her initiatory and liberative labour in all parts of the world? That
+indeed is her real transgression; and it is as a punishment for all our
+labour, search for truth, increase of knowledge and march towards justice
+that they have reared that huge pile which Paris will see from all her
+streets, and will never be able to see without feeling derided and
+insulted in her labour and glory.”
+
+With a wave of his hand he pointed to the city, slumbering in the
+moonlight as beneath a sheet of silver, and then set off again with his
+brother, down the slopes, towards the black and deserted streets.
+
+They did not meet a living soul until they reached the outer boulevard.
+Here, however, no matter what the hour may be, life continues with
+scarcely a pause. No sooner are the wine shops, music and dancing halls
+closed, than vice and want, cast into the street, there resume their
+nocturnal existence. Thus the brothers came upon all the homeless ones:
+low prostitutes seeking a pallet, vagabonds stretched on the benches
+under the trees, rogues who prowled hither and thither on the lookout for
+a good stroke. Encouraged by their accomplice--night, all the mire and
+woe of Paris had returned to the surface. The empty roadway now belonged
+to the breadless, homeless starvelings, those for whom there was no place
+in the sunlight, the vague, swarming, despairing herd which is only
+espied at night-time. Ah! what spectres of destitution, what apparitions
+of grief and fright there were! What a sob of agony passed by in Paris
+that morning, when as soon as the dawn should rise, a man--a pauper, a
+sufferer like the others--was to be guillotined!
+
+As Guillaume and Pierre were about to descend the Rue des Martyrs, the
+former perceived an old man lying on a bench with his bare feet
+protruding from his gaping, filthy shoes. Guillaume pointed to him in
+silence. Then, a few steps farther on, Pierre in his turn pointed to a
+ragged girl, crouching, asleep with open mouth, in the corner of a
+doorway. There was no need for the brothers to express in words all the
+compassion and anger which stirred their hearts. At long intervals
+policemen, walking slowly two by two, shook the poor wretches and
+compelled them to rise and walk on and on. Occasionally, if they found
+them suspicious or refractory, they marched them off to the
+police-station. And then rancour and the contagion of imprisonment often
+transformed a mere vagabond into a thief or a murderer.
+
+In the Rue des Martyrs and the Rue du Faubourg-Montmartre, the brothers
+found night-birds of another kind, women who slunk past them, close to
+the house-fronts, and men and hussies who belaboured one another with
+blows. Then, upon the grand boulevards, on the thresholds of lofty black
+houses, only one row of whose windows flared in the night, pale-faced
+individuals, who had just come down from their clubs, stood lighting
+cigars before going home. A lady with a ball wrap over her evening gown
+went by accompanied by a servant. A few cabs, moreover, still jogged up
+and down the roadway, while others, which had been waiting for hours,
+stood on their ranks in rows, with drivers and horses alike asleep. And
+as one boulevard after another was reached, the Boulevard Poissonniere,
+the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle, the Boulevard St. Denis, and so forth, as
+far as the Place de la Republique, there came fresh want and misery, more
+forsaken and hungry ones, more and more of the human “waste” that is cast
+into the streets and the darkness. And on the other hand, an army of
+street-sweepers was now appearing to remove all the filth of the past
+four and twenty hours, in order that Paris, spruce already at sunrise,
+might not blush for having thrown up such a mass of dirt and
+loathsomeness in the course of a single day.
+
+It was, however, more particularly after following the Boulevard
+Voltaire, and drawing near to the districts of La Roquette and Charonne,
+that the brothers felt they were returning to a sphere of labour where
+there was often lack of food, and where life was but so much pain. Pierre
+found himself at home here. In former days, accompanied by good Abbé
+Rose, visiting despairing ones, distributing alms, picking up children
+who had sunk to the gutter, he had a hundred times perambulated every one
+of those long, densely populated streets. And thus a frightful vision
+arose before his mind’s eye; he recalled all the tragedies he had
+witnessed, all the shrieks he had heard, all the tears and bloodshed he
+had seen, all the fathers, mothers and children huddled together and
+dying of want, dirt and abandonment: that social hell in which he had
+ended by losing his last hopes, fleeing from it with a sob in the
+conviction that charity was a mere amusement for the rich, and absolutely
+futile as a remedy. It was this conviction which now returned to him as
+he again cast eyes upon that want and grief stricken district which
+seemed fated to everlasting destitution. That poor old man whom Abbé Rose
+had revived one night in yonder hovel, had he not since died of
+starvation? That little girl whom he had one morning brought in his arms
+to the refuge after her parents’ death, was it not she whom he had just
+met, grown but fallen to the streets, and shrieking beneath the fist of a
+bully? Ah! how great was the number of the wretched! Their name was
+legion! There were those whom one could not save, those who were hourly
+born to a life of woe and want, even as one may be born infirm, and
+those, too, who from every side sank in the sea of human injustice, that
+ocean which has ever been the same for centuries past, and which though
+one may strive to drain it, still and for ever spreads. How heavy was the
+silence, how dense the darkness in those working-class streets where
+sleep seems to be the comrade of death! Yet hunger prowls, and misfortune
+sobs; vague spectral forms slink by, and then are lost to view in the
+depths of the night.
+
+As Pierre and Guillaume went along they became mixed with dark groups of
+people, a whole flock of inquisitive folk, a promiscuous, passionate
+tramp, tramp towards the guillotine. It came from all Paris, urged on by
+brutish fever, a hankering for death and blood. In spite, however, of the
+dull noise which came from this dim crowd, the mean streets that were
+passed remained quite dark, not a light appeared at any of their windows;
+nor could one hear the breathing of the weary toilers stretched on their
+wretched pallets from which they would not rise before the morning
+twilight.
+
+On seeing the jostling crowd which was already assembled on the Place
+Voltaire, Pierre understood that it would be impossible for him and his
+brother to ascend the Rue de la Roquette. Barriers, moreover, must
+certainly have been thrown across that street. In order therefore to
+reach the corner of the Rue Merlin, it occurred to him to take the Rue de
+la Folie Regnault, which winds round in the rear of the prison, farther
+on.
+
+Here indeed they found solitude and darkness again.
+
+The huge, massive prison with its great bare walls on which a moonray
+fell, looked like some pile of cold stones, dead for centuries past. At
+the end of the street they once more fell in with the crowd, a dim
+restless mass of beings, whose pale faces alone could be distinguished.
+The brothers had great difficulty in reaching the house in which Mège
+resided at the corner of the Rue Merlin. All the shutters of the
+fourth-floor flat occupied by the Socialist deputy were closed, though
+every other window was wide open and crowded with surging sightseers.
+Moreover, the wine shop down below and the first-floor room connected
+with it flared with gas, and were already crowded with noisy customers,
+waiting for the performance to begin.
+
+“I hardly like to go and knock at Mège’s door,” said Pierre.
+
+“No, no, you must not do so!” replied Guillaume.
+
+“Let us go into the wine shop. We may perhaps be able to see something
+from the balcony.”
+
+The first-floor room was provided with a very large balcony, which women
+and gentlemen were already filling. The brothers nevertheless managed to
+reach it, and for a few minutes remained there, peering into the darkness
+before them. The sloping street grew broader between the two prisons, the
+“great” and the “little” Roquette, in such wise as to form a sort of
+square, which was shaded by four clumps of plane-trees, rising from the
+footways. The low buildings and scrubby trees, all poor and ugly of
+aspect, seemed almost to lie on a level with the ground, under a vast sky
+in which stars were appearing, as the moon gradually declined. And the
+square was quite empty save that on one spot yonder there seemed to be
+some little stir. Two rows of guards prevented the crowd from advancing,
+and even threw it back into the neighbouring streets. On the one hand,
+the only lofty houses were far away, at the point where the Rue St. Maur
+intersects the Rue de la Roquette; while, on the other, they stood at the
+corners of the Rue Merlin and the Rue de la Folie Regnault, so that it
+was almost impossible to distinguish anything of the execution even from
+the best placed windows. As for the inquisitive folk on the pavement they
+only saw the backs of the guards. Still this did not prevent a crush. The
+human tide flowed on from all sides with increasing clamour.
+
+Guided by the remarks of some women who, leaning forward on the balcony,
+had been watching the square for a long time already, the brothers were
+at last able to perceive something. It was now half-past three, and the
+guillotine was nearly ready. The little stir which one vaguely espied
+yonder under the trees, was that of the headsman’s assistants fixing the
+knife in position. A lantern slowly came and went, and five or six
+shadows danced over the ground. But nothing else could be distinguished,
+the square was like a large black pit, around which ever broke the waves
+of the noisy crowd which one could not see. And beyond the square one
+could only identify the flaring wine shops, which showed forth like
+lighthouses in the night. All the surrounding district of poverty and
+toil was still asleep, not a gleam as yet came from workrooms or yards,
+not a puff of smoke from the lofty factory chimneys.
+
+“We shall see nothing,” Guillaume remarked.
+
+But Pierre silenced him, for he has just discovered that an elegantly
+attired gentleman leaning over the balcony near him was none other than
+the amiable deputy Duthil. He had at first fancied that a woman muffled
+in wraps who stood close beside the deputy was the little Princess de
+Harn, whom he had very likely brought to see the execution since he had
+taken her to see the trial. On closer inspection, however, he had found
+that this woman was Silviane, the perverse creature with the virginal
+face. Truth to tell, she made no concealment of her presence, but talked
+on in an extremely loud voice, as if intoxicated; and the brothers soon
+learnt how it was that she happened to be there. Duvillard, Duthil, and
+other friends had been supping with her at one o’clock in the morning,
+when on learning that Salvat was about to be guillotined, the fancy of
+seeing the execution had suddenly come upon her. Duvillard, after vainly
+entreating her to do nothing of the kind, had gone off in a fury, for he
+felt that it would be most unseemly on his part to attend the execution
+of a man who had endeavoured to blow up his house. And thereupon Silviane
+had turned to Duthil, whom her caprice greatly worried, for he held all
+such loathsome spectacles in horror, and had already refused to act as
+escort to the Princess. However, he was so infatuated with Silviane’s
+beauty, and she made him so many promises, that he had at last consented
+to take her.
+
+“He can’t understand people caring for amusement,” she said, speaking of
+the Baron. “And yet this is really a thing to see.... But no matter,
+you’ll find him at my feet again to-morrow.”
+
+Duthil smiled and responded: “I suppose that peace has been signed and
+ratified now that you have secured your engagement at the Comédie.”
+
+“Peace? No!” she protested. “No, no. There will be no peace between us
+until I have made my _début_. After that, we’ll see.”
+
+They both laughed; and then Duthil, by way of paying his court, told her
+how good-naturedly Dauvergne, the new Minister of Public Instruction and
+Fine Arts, had adjusted the difficulties which had hitherto kept the
+doors of the Comédie closed upon her. A really charming man was
+Dauvergne, the embodiment of graciousness, the very flower of the
+Monferrand ministry. His was the velvet hand in that administration whose
+leader had a hand of iron.
+
+“He told me, my beauty,” said Duthil, “that a pretty girl was in place
+everywhere.” And then as Silviane, as if flattered, pressed closely
+beside him, the deputy added: “So that wonderful revival of ‘Polyeucte,’
+in which you are going to have such a triumph, is to take place on the
+day after to-morrow. We shall all go to applaud you, remember.”
+
+“Yes, on the evening of the day after to-morrow,” said Silviane, “the
+very same day when the wedding of the Baron’s daughter will take place.
+There’ll be plenty of emotion that day!”
+
+“Ah! yes, of course!” retorted Duthil, “there’ll be the wedding of our
+friend Gérard with Mademoiselle Camille to begin with. We shall have a
+crush at the Madeleine in the morning and another at the Comédie in the
+evening. You are quite right, too; there will be several hearts throbbing
+in the Rue Godot-de-Mauroy.”
+
+Thereupon they again became merry, and jested about the Duvillard
+family--father, mother, lover and daughter--with the greatest possible
+ferocity and crudity of language. Then, all at once Silviane exclaimed:
+“Do you know, I’m feeling awfully bored here, my little Duthil. I can’t
+distinguish anything, and I should like to be quite near so as to see it
+all plainly. You must take me over yonder, close to that machine of
+theirs.”
+
+This request threw Duthil into consternation, particularly as at that
+same moment Silviane perceived Massot outside the wine shop, and began
+calling and beckoning to him imperiously. A brief conversation then
+ensued between the young woman and the journalist: “I say, Massot!” she
+called, “hasn’t a deputy the right to pass the guards and take a lady
+wherever he likes?”
+
+“Not at all!” exclaimed Duthil. “Massot knows very well that a deputy
+ought to be the very first to bow to the laws.”
+
+This exclamation warned Massot that Duthil did not wish to leave the
+balcony. “You ought to have secured a card of invitation, madame,” said
+he, in reply to Silviane. “They would then have found you room at one of
+the windows of La Petite Roquette. Women are not allowed elsewhere....
+But you mustn’t complain, you have a very good place up there.”
+
+“But I can see nothing at all, my dear Massot.”
+
+“Well, you will in any case see more than Princess de Harn will. Just now
+I came upon her carriage in the Rue du Chemin Vert. The police would not
+allow it to come any nearer.”
+
+This news made Silviane merry again, whilst Duthil shuddered at the idea
+of the danger he incurred, for Rosemonde would assuredly treat him to a
+terrible scene should she see him with another woman. Then, an idea
+occurring to him, he ordered a bottle of champagne and some little cakes
+for his “beautiful friend,” as he called Silviane. She had been
+complaining of thirst, and was delighted with the opportunity of
+perfecting her intoxication. When a waiter had managed to place a little
+table near her, on the balcony itself, she found things very pleasant,
+and indeed considered it quite brave to tipple and sup afresh, while
+waiting for that man to be guillotined close by.
+
+It was impossible for Pierre and Guillaume to remain up there any longer.
+All that they heard, all that they beheld filled them with disgust. The
+boredom of waiting had turned all the inquisitive folks of the balcony
+and the adjoining room into customers. The waiter could hardly manage to
+serve the many glasses of beer, bottles of expensive wine, biscuits, and
+plates of cold meat which were ordered of him. And yet the spectators
+here were all _bourgeois_, rich gentlemen, people of society! On the
+other hand, time has to be killed somehow when it hangs heavily on one’s
+hands; and thus there were bursts of laughter and paltry and horrible
+jests, quite a feverish uproar arising amidst the clouds of smoke from
+the men’s cigars. When Pierre and Guillaume passed through the wine shop
+on the ground-floor they there found a similar crush and similar tumult,
+aggravated by the disorderly behaviour of the big fellows in blouses who
+were drinking draught wine at the pewter bar which shone like silver.
+There were people, too, at all the little tables, besides an incessant
+coming and going of folks who entered the place for a “wet,” by way of
+calming their impatience. And what folks they were! All the scum, all the
+vagabonds who had been dragging themselves about since daybreak on the
+lookout for whatever chance might offer them, provided it were not work!
+
+On the pavement outside, Pierre and Guillaume felt yet a greater
+heart-pang. In the throng which the guards kept back, one simply found so
+much mire stirred up from the very depths of Paris life: prostitutes and
+criminals, the murderers of to-morrow, who came to see how a man ought to
+die. Loathsome, bareheaded harlots mingled with bands of prowlers or ran
+through the crowd, howling obscene refrains. Bandits stood in groups
+chatting and quarrelling about the more or less glorious manner in which
+certain famous _guillotines_ had died. Among these was one with respect
+to whom they all agreed, and of whom they spoke as of a great captain, a
+hero whose marvellous courage was deserving of immortality. Then, as one
+passed along, one caught snatches of horrible phrases, particulars about
+the instrument of death, ignoble boasts, and filthy jests reeking with
+blood. And over and above all else there was bestial fever, a lust for
+death which made this multitude delirious, an eagerness to see life flow
+forth fresh and ruddy beneath the knife, so that as it coursed over the
+soil they might dip their feet in it. As this execution was not an
+ordinary one, however, there were yet spectators of another kind; silent
+men with glowing eyes who came and went all alone, and who were plainly
+thrilled by their faith, intoxicated with the contagious madness which
+incites one to vengeance or martyrdom.
+
+Guillaume was just thinking of Victor Mathis, when he fancied that he saw
+him standing in the front row of sightseers whom the guards held in
+check. It was indeed he, with his thin, beardless, pale, drawn face.
+Short as he was, he had to raise himself on tiptoes in order to see
+anything. Near him was a big, red-haired girl who gesticulated; but for
+his part he never stirred or spoke. He was waiting motionless, gazing
+yonder with the round, ardent, fixed eyes of a night-bird, seeking to
+penetrate the darkness. At last a guard pushed him back in a somewhat
+brutal way; but he soon returned to his previous position, ever patient
+though full of hatred against the executioners, wishing indeed to see all
+he could in order to increase his hate.
+
+Then Massot approached the brothers. This time, on seeing Pierre without
+his cassock, he did not even make a sign of astonishment, but gaily
+remarked: “So you felt curious to see this affair, Monsieur Froment?”
+
+“Yes, I came with my brother,” Pierre replied. “But I very much fear that
+we shan’t see much.”
+
+“You certainly won’t if you stay here,” rejoined Massot. And thereupon in
+his usual good-natured way--glad, moreover, to show what power a
+well-known journalist could wield--he inquired: “Would you like me to
+pass you through? The inspector here happens to be a friend of mine.”
+
+Then, without waiting for an answer, he stopped the inspector and hastily
+whispered to him that he had brought a couple of colleagues, who wanted
+to report the proceedings. At first the inspector hesitated, and seemed
+inclined to refuse Massot’s request; but after a moment, influenced by
+the covert fear which the police always has of the press, he made a weary
+gesture of consent.
+
+“Come, quick, then,” said Massot, turning to the brothers, and taking
+them along with him.
+
+A moment later, to the intense surprise of Pierre and Guillaume, the
+guards opened their ranks to let them pass. They then found themselves in
+the large open space which was kept clear. And on thus emerging from the
+tumultuous throng they were quite impressed by the death-like silence and
+solitude which reigned under the little plane-trees. The night was now
+paling. A faint gleam of dawn was already falling from the sky.
+
+After leading his companions slantwise across the square, Massot stopped
+them near the prison and resumed: “I’m going inside; I want to see the
+prisoner roused and got ready. In the meantime, walk about here; nobody
+will say anything to you. Besides, I’ll come back to you in a moment.”
+
+A hundred people or so, journalists and other privileged spectators, were
+scattered about the dark square. Movable wooden barriers--such as are set
+up at the doors of theatres when there is a press of people waiting for
+admission--had been placed on either side of the pavement running from
+the prison gate to the guillotine; and some sightseers were already
+leaning over these barriers, in order to secure a close view of the
+condemned man as he passed by. Others were walking slowly to and fro, and
+conversing in undertones. The brothers, for their part, approached the
+guillotine.
+
+It stood there under the branches of the trees, amidst the delicate
+greenery of the fresh leaves of spring. A neighbouring gas-lamp, whose
+light was turning yellow in the rising dawn, cast vague gleams upon it.
+The work of fixing it in position--work performed as quietly as could be,
+so that the only sound was the occasional thud of a mallet--had just been
+finished; and the headsman’s “valets” or assistants, in frock-coats and
+tall silk hats, were waiting and strolling about in a patient way. But
+the instrument itself, how base and shameful it looked, squatting on the
+ground like some filthy beast, disgusted with the work it had to
+accomplish! What! those few beams lying on the ground, and those others
+barely nine feet high which rose from it, keeping the knife in position,
+constituted the machine which avenged Society, the instrument which gave
+a warning to evil-doers! Where was the big scaffold painted a bright red
+and reached by a stairway of ten steps, the scaffold which raised high
+bloody arms over the eager multitude, so that everybody might behold the
+punishment of the law in all its horror! The beast had now been felled to
+the ground, where it simply looked ignoble, crafty and cowardly. If on
+the one hand there was no majesty in the manner in which human justice
+condemned a man to death at its assizes: on the other, there was merely
+horrid butchery with the help of the most barbarous and repulsive of
+mechanical contrivances, on the terrible day when that man was executed.
+
+As Pierre and Guillaume gazed at the guillotine, a feeling of nausea came
+over them. Daylight was now slowly breaking, and the surroundings were
+appearing to view: first the square itself with its two low, grey
+prisons, facing one another; then the distant houses, the taverns, the
+marble workers’ establishments, and the shops selling flowers and
+wreaths, which are numerous hereabouts, as the cemetery of Père-Lachaise
+is so near. Before long one could plainly distinguish the black lines of
+the spectators standing around in a circle, the heads leaning forward
+from windows and balconies, and the people who had climbed to the very
+house roofs. The prison of La Petite Roquette over the way had been
+turned into a kind of tribune for guests; and mounted Gardes de Paris
+went slowly to and fro across the intervening expanse. Then, as the sky
+brightened, labour awoke throughout the district beyond the crowd, a
+district of broad, endless streets lined with factories, work-shops and
+work-yards. Engines began to snort, machinery and appliances were got
+ready to start once more on their usual tasks, and smoke already curled
+away from the forest of lofty brick chimneys which, on all sides, sprang
+out of the gloom.
+
+It then seemed to Guillaume that the guillotine was really in its right
+place in that district of want and toil. It stood in its own realm, like
+a _terminus_ and a threat. Did not ignorance, poverty and woe lead to it?
+And each time that it was set up amidst those toilsome streets, was it
+not charged to overawe the disinherited ones, the starvelings, who,
+exasperated by everlasting injustice, were always ready for revolt? It
+was not seen in the districts where wealth and enjoyment reigned. It
+would there have seemed purposeless, degrading and truly monstrous. And
+it was a tragical and terrible coincidence that the bomb-thrower, driven
+mad by want, should be guillotined there, in the very centre of want’s
+dominion.
+
+But daylight had come at last, for it was nearly half-past four. The
+distant noisy crowd could feel that the expected moment was drawing nigh.
+A shudder suddenly sped through the atmosphere.
+
+“He’s coming,” exclaimed little Massot, as he came back to Pierre and
+Guillaume. “Ah! that Salvat is a brave fellow after all.”
+
+Then he related how the prisoner had been awakened; how the governor of
+the prison, magistrate Amadieu, the chaplain, and a few other persons had
+entered the cell where Salvat lay fast asleep; and then how the condemned
+man had understood the truth immediately upon opening his eyes. He had
+risen, looking pale but quite composed. And he had dressed himself
+without assistance, and had declined the nip of brandy and the cigarette
+proffered by the good-hearted chaplain, in the same way as with a gentle
+but stubborn gesture he had brushed the crucifix aside. Then had come the
+“toilette” for death. With all rapidity and without a word being
+exchanged, Salvat’s hands had been tied behind his back, his legs had
+been loosely secured with a cord, and the neckband of his shirt had been
+cut away. He had smiled when the others exhorted him to be brave. He only
+feared some nervous weakness, and had but one desire, to die like a hero,
+to remain the martyr of the ardent faith in truth and justice for which
+he was about to perish.
+
+“They are now drawing up the death certificate in the register,”
+ continued Massot in his chattering way. “Come along, come along to the
+barriers if you wish a good view.... I turned paler, you know, and
+trembled far more than he did. I don’t care a rap for anything as a rule;
+but, all the same, an execution isn’t a pleasant business.... You
+can’t imagine how many attempts were made to save Salvat’s life. Even
+some of the papers asked that he might be reprieved. But nothing
+succeeded, the execution was regarded as inevitable, it seems, even by
+those who consider it a blunder. Still, they had such a touching
+opportunity to reprieve him, when his daughter, little Céline, wrote that
+fine letter to the President of the Republic, which I was the first to
+publish in the ‘Globe.’ Ah! that letter, it cost me a lot of running
+about!”
+
+Pierre, who was already quite upset by this long wait for the horrible
+scene, felt moved to tears by Massot’s reference to Céline. He could
+again see the child standing beside Madame Théodore in that bare, cold
+room whither her father would never more return. It was thence that he
+had set out on a day of desperation with his stomach empty and his brain
+on fire, and it was here that he would end, between yonder beams, beneath
+yonder knife.
+
+Massot, however, was still giving particulars. The doctors, said he, were
+furious because they feared that the body would not be delivered to them
+immediately after the execution. To this Guillaume did not listen. He
+stood there with his elbows resting on the wooden barrier and his eyes
+fixed on the prison gate, which still remained shut. His hands were
+quivering, and there was an expression of anguish on his face as if it
+were he himself who was about to be executed. The headsman had again just
+left the prison. He was a little, insignificant-looking man, and seemed
+annoyed, anxious to have done with it all. Then, among a group of
+frock-coated gentlemen, some of the spectators pointed out Gascogne, the
+Chief of the Detective Police, who wore a cold, official air, and
+Amadieu, the investigating magistrate, who smiled and looked very spruce,
+early though the hour was. He had come partly because it was his duty,
+and partly because he wished to show himself now that the curtain was
+about to fall on a wonderful tragedy of which he considered himself the
+author. Guillaume glanced at him, and then as a growing uproar rose from
+the distant crowd, he looked up for an instant, and again beheld the two
+grey prisons, the plane-trees with their fresh young leaves, and the
+houses swarming with people beneath the pale blue sky, in which the
+triumphant sun was about to appear.
+
+“Look out, here he comes!”
+
+Who had spoken? A slight noise, that of the opening gate, made every
+heart throb. Necks were outstretched, eyes gazed fixedly, there was
+laboured breathing on all sides. Salvat stood on the threshold of the
+prison. The chaplain, stepping backwards, had come out in advance of him,
+in order to conceal the guillotine from his sight, but he had stopped
+short, for he wished to see that instrument of death, make acquaintance
+with it, as it were, before he walked towards it. And as he stood there,
+his long, aged sunken face, on which life’s hardships had left their
+mark, seemed transformed by the wondrous brilliancy of his flaring,
+dreamy eyes. Enthusiasm bore him up--he was going to his death in all the
+splendour of his dream. When the executioner’s assistants drew near to
+support him he once more refused their help, and again set himself in
+motion, advancing with short steps, but as quickly and as straightly as
+the rope hampering his legs permitted.
+
+All at once Guillaume felt that Salvat’s eyes were fixed upon him.
+Drawing nearer and nearer the condemned man had perceived and recognised
+his friend; and as he passed by, at a distance of no more than six or
+seven feet, he smiled faintly and darted such a deep penetrating glance
+at Guillaume, that ever afterwards the latter felt its smart. But what
+last thought, what supreme legacy had Salvat left him to meditate upon,
+perhaps to put into execution? It was all so poignant that Pierre feared
+some involuntary call on his brother’s part; and so he laid his hand upon
+his arm to quiet him.
+
+“Long live Anarchy!”
+
+It was Salvat who had raised this cry. But in the deep silence his husky,
+altered voice seemed to break. The few who were near at hand had turned
+very pale; the distant crowd seemed bereft of life. The horse of one of
+the Gardes de Paris was alone heard snorting in the centre of the space
+which had been kept clear.
+
+Then came a loathsome scramble, a scene of nameless brutality and
+ignominy. The headsman’s helps rushed upon Salvat as he came up slowly
+with brow erect. Two of them seized him by the head, but finding little
+hair there, could only lower it by tugging at his neck. Next two others
+grasped him by the legs and flung him violently upon a plank which tilted
+over and rolled forward. Then, by dint of pushing and tugging, the head
+was got into the “lunette,” the upper part of which fell in such wise
+that the neck was fixed as in a ship’s port-hole--and all this was
+accomplished amidst such confusion and with such savagery that one might
+have thought that head some cumbrous thing which it was necessary to get
+rid of with the greatest speed. But the knife fell with a dull, heavy,
+forcible thud, and two long jets of blood spurted from the severed
+arteries, while the dead man’s feet moved convulsively. Nothing else
+could be seen. The executioner rubbed his hands in a mechanical way, and
+an assistant took the severed blood-streaming head from the little basket
+into which it had fallen and placed it in the large basket into which the
+body had already been turned.
+
+Ah! that dull, that heavy thud of the knife! It seemed to Guillaume that
+he had heard it echoing far away all over that district of want and toil,
+even in the squalid rooms where thousands of workmen were at that moment
+rising to perform their day’s hard task! And there the echo of that thud
+acquired formidable significance; it spoke of man’s exasperation with
+injustice, of zeal for martyrdom, and of the dolorous hope that the blood
+then spilt might hasten the victory of the disinherited.
+
+Pierre, for his part, at the sight of that loathsome butchery, the abject
+cutthroat work of that killing machine, had suddenly felt his chilling
+shudder become more violent; for before him arose a vision of another
+corpse, that of the fair, pretty child ripped open by a bomb and
+stretched yonder, at the entrance of the Duvillard mansion. Blood
+streamed from her delicate flesh, just as it had streamed from that
+decapitated neck. It was blood paying for blood; it was like payment for
+mankind’s debt of wretchedness, for which payment is everlastingly being
+made, without man ever being able to free himself from suffering.
+
+Above the square and the crowd all was still silent in the clear sky. How
+long had the abomination lasted? An eternity, perhaps, compressed into
+two or three minutes. And now came an awakening: the spectators emerged
+from their nightmare with quivering hands, livid faces, and eyes
+expressive of compassion, disgust and fear.
+
+“That makes another one. I’ve now seen four executions,” said Massot, who
+felt ill at ease. “After all, I prefer to report weddings. Let us go off,
+I have all I want for my article.”
+
+Guillaume and Pierre followed him mechanically across the square, and
+again reached the corner of the Rue Merlin. And here they saw little
+Victor Mathis, with flaming eyes and white face, still standing in
+silence on the spot where they had left him. He could have seen nothing
+distinctly; but the thud of the knife was still echoing in his brain. A
+policeman at last gave him a push, and told him to move on. At this he
+looked the policeman in the face, stirred by sudden rage and ready to
+strangle him. Then, however, he quietly walked away, ascending the Rue de
+la Roquette, atop of which the lofty foliage of Père-Lachaise could be
+seen, beneath the rising sun.
+
+The brothers meantime fell upon a scene of explanations, which they heard
+without wishing to do so. Now that the sight was over, the Princess de
+Harn arrived, and she was the more furious as at the door of the wine
+shop she could see her new friend Duthil accompanying a woman.
+
+“I say!” she exclaimed, “you are nice, you are, to have left me in the
+lurch like this! It was impossible for my carriage to get near, so I’ve
+had to come on foot through all those horrid people who have been
+jostling and insulting me.”
+
+Thereupon Duthil, with all promptitude, introduced Silviane to her,
+adding, in an aside, that he had taken a friend’s place as the actress’s
+escort. And then Rosemonde, who greatly wished to know Silviane, calmed
+down as if by enchantment, and put on her most engaging ways. “It would
+have delighted me, madame,” said she, “to have seen this sight in the
+company of an _artiste_ of your merit, one whom I admire so much, though
+I have never before had an opportunity of telling her so.”
+
+“Well, dear me, madame,” replied Silviane, “you haven’t lost much by
+arriving late. We were on that balcony there, and all that I could see
+were a few men pushing another one about.... It really isn’t worth the
+trouble of coming.”
+
+“Well, now that we have become acquainted, madame,” said the Princess, “I
+really hope that you will allow me to be your friend.”
+
+“Certainly, madame, my friend; and I shall be flattered and delighted to
+be yours.”
+
+Standing there, hand in hand, they smiled at one another. Silviane was
+very drunk, but her virginal expression had returned to her face; whilst
+Rosemonde seemed feverish with vicious curiosity. Duthil, whom the scene
+amused, now had but one thought, that of seeing Silviane home; so calling
+to Massot, who was approaching, he asked him where he should find a
+cab-rank. Rosemonde, however, at once offered her carriage, which was
+waiting in an adjacent street.
+
+She would set the actress down at her door, said she, and the deputy at
+his; and such was her persistence in the matter that Duthil, greatly
+vexed, was obliged to accept her offer.
+
+“Well, then, till to-morrow at the Madeleine,” said Massot, again quite
+sprightly, as he shook hands with the Princess.
+
+“Yes, till to-morrow, at the Madeleine and the Comédie.”
+
+“Ah! yes, of course!” he repeated, taking Silviane’s hand, which he
+kissed. “The Madeleine in the morning and the Comédie in the evening...
+. We shall all be there to applaud you.”
+
+“Yes, I expect you to do so,” said Silviane. “Till to-morrow, then!”
+
+“Till to-morrow!”
+
+The crowd was now wearily dispersing, to all appearance disappointed and
+ill at ease. A few enthusiasts alone lingered in order to witness the
+departure of the van in which Salvat’s corpse would soon be removed;
+while bands of prowlers and harlots, looking very wan in the daylight,
+whistled or called to one another with some last filthy expression before
+returning to their dens. The headsman’s assistants were hastily taking
+down the guillotine, and the square would soon be quite clear.
+
+Pierre for his part wished to lead his brother away. Since the fall of
+the knife, Guillaume had remained as if stunned, without once opening his
+lips. In vain had Pierre tried to rouse him by pointing to the shutters
+of Mège’s flat, which still remained closed, whereas every other window
+of the lofty house was wide open. Although the Socialist deputy hated the
+Anarchists, those shutters were doubtless closed as a protest against
+capital punishment. Whilst the multitude had been rushing to that
+frightful spectacle, Mège, still in bed, with his face turned to the
+wall, had probably been dreaming of how he would some day compel mankind
+to be happy beneath the rigid laws of Collectivism. Affectionate father
+as he was, the recent death of one of his children had quite upset his
+private life. His cough, too, had become a very bad one; but he ardently
+wished to live, for as soon as that new Monferrand ministry should have
+fallen beneath the interpellation which he already contemplated, his own
+turn would surely come: he would take the reins of power in hand, abolish
+the guillotine and decree justice and perfect felicity.
+
+“Do you see, Guillaume?” Pierre gently repeated. “Mège hasn’t opened his
+windows. He’s a good fellow, after all; although our friends Bache and
+Morin dislike him.” Then, as his brother still refrained from answering,
+Pierre added, “Come, let us go, we must get back home.”
+
+They both turned into the Rue de la Folie Regnault, and reached the outer
+Boulevards by way of the Rue du Chemin Vert. All the toilers of the
+district were now at work. In the long streets edged with low buildings,
+work-shops and factories, one heard engines snorting and machinery
+rumbling, while up above, the smoke from the lofty chimneys was assuming
+a rosy hue in the sunrise. Afterwards, when the brothers reached the
+Boulevard de Menilmontant and the Boulevard de Belleville, which they
+followed in turn at a leisurely pace, they witnessed the great rush of
+the working classes into central Paris. The stream poured forth from
+every side; from all the wretched streets of the faubourgs there was an
+endless exodus of toilers, who, having risen at dawn, were now hurrying,
+in the sharp morning air, to their daily labour. Some wore short jackets
+and others blouses; some were in velveteen trousers, others in linen
+overalls. Their thick shoes made their tramp a heavy one; their hanging
+hands were often deformed by work. And they seemed half asleep, not a
+smile was to be seen on any of those wan, weary faces turned yonder
+towards the everlasting task--the task which was begun afresh each day,
+and which--’twas their only chance--they hoped to be able to take up for
+ever and ever. There was no end to that drove of toilers, that army of
+various callings, that human flesh fated to manual labour, upon which
+Paris preys in order that she may live in luxury and enjoyment.
+
+Then the procession continued across the Boulevard de la Villette, the
+Boulevard de la Chapelle, and the Boulevard de Rochechouart, where one
+reached the height of Montmartre. More and more workmen were ever coming
+down from their bare cold rooms and plunging into the huge city, whence,
+tired out, they would that evening merely bring back the bread of
+rancour. And now, too, came a stream of work-girls, some of them in
+bright skirts, some glancing at the passers-by; girls whose wages were so
+paltry, so insufficient, that now and again pretty ones among them never
+more turned their faces homewards, whilst the ugly ones wasted away,
+condemned to mere bread and water. A little later, moreover, came the
+_employés_, the clerks, the counter-jumpers, the whole world of
+frock-coated penury--“gentlemen” who devoured a roll as they hastened
+onward, worried the while by the dread of being unable to pay their rent,
+or by the problem of providing food for wife and children until the end
+of the month should come.* And now the sun was fast ascending on the
+horizon, the whole army of ants was out and about, and the toilsome day
+had begun with its ceaseless display of courage, energy and suffering.
+
+ * In Paris nearly all clerks and shop-assistants receive
+ monthly salaries, while most workmen are paid once a
+ fortnight.--Trans.
+
+Never before had it been so plainly manifest to Pierre that work was a
+necessity, that it healed and saved. On the occasion of his visit to the
+Grandidier works, and later still, when he himself had felt the need of
+occupation, there had come to him the thought that work was really the
+world’s law. And after that hateful night, after that spilling of blood,
+after the slaughter of that toiler maddened by his dreams, there was
+consolation and hope in seeing the sun rise once more, and everlasting
+labour take up its wonted task. However hard it might prove, however
+unjustly it might be lotted out, was it not work which would some day
+bring both justice and happiness to the world?
+
+All at once, as the brothers were climbing the steep hillside towards
+Guillaume’s house, they perceived before and above them the basilica of
+the Sacred Heart rising majestically and triumphantly to the sky. This
+was no sublunar apparition, no dreamy vision of Domination standing face
+to face with nocturnal Paris. The sun now clothed the edifice with
+splendour, it looked golden and proud and victorious, flaring with
+immortal glory.
+
+Then Guillaume, still silent, still feeling Salvat’s last glance upon
+him, seemed to come to some sudden and final decision. He looked at the
+basilica with glowing eyes, and pronounced sentence upon it.
+
+
+
+
+II. IN VANITY FAIR
+
+THE wedding was to take place at noon, and for half an hour already
+guests had been pouring into the magnificently decorated church, which
+was leafy with evergreens and balmy with the scent of flowers. The high
+altar in the rear glowed with countless candles, and through the great
+doorway, which was wide open, one could see the peristyle decked with
+shrubs, the steps covered with a broad carpet, and the inquisitive crowd
+assembled on the square and even along the Rue Royale, under the bright
+sun.
+
+After finding three more chairs for some ladies who had arrived rather
+late, Duthil remarked to Massot, who was jotting down names in his
+note-book: “Well, if any more come, they will have to remain standing.”
+
+“Who were those three?” the journalist inquired.
+
+“The Duchess de Boisemont and her two daughters.”
+
+“Indeed! All the titled people of France, as well as all the financiers
+and politicians, are here! It’s something more even than a swell Parisian
+wedding.”
+
+As a matter of fact all the spheres of “society” were gathered together
+there, and some at first seemed rather embarrassed at finding themselves
+beside others. Whilst Duvillard’s name attracted all the princes of
+finance and politicians in power, Madame de Quinsac and her son were
+supported by the highest of the French aristocracy. The mere names of the
+witnesses sufficed to indicate what an extraordinary medley there was. On
+Gérard’s side these witnesses were his uncle, General de Bozonnet, and
+the Marquis de Morigny; whilst on Camille’s they were the great banker
+Louvard, and Monferrand, the President of the Council and Minister of
+Finances. The quiet bravado which the latter displayed in thus supporting
+the bride after being compromised in her father’s financial intrigues
+imparted a piquant touch of impudence to his triumph. And public
+curiosity was further stimulated by the circumstance that the nuptial
+blessing was to be given by Monseigneur Martha, Bishop of Persepolis, the
+Pope’s political agent in France, and the apostle of the endeavours to
+win the Republic over to the Church by pretending to “rally” to it.
+
+“But, I was mistaken,” now resumed Massot with a sneer. “I said a really
+Parisian wedding, did I not? But in point of fact this wedding is a
+symbol. It’s the apotheosis of the _bourgeoisie_, my dear fellow--the old
+nobility sacrificing one of its sons on the altar of the golden calf in
+order that the Divinity and the gendarmes, being the masters of France
+once more, may rid us of those scoundrelly Socialists!”
+
+Then, again correcting himself, he added: “But I was forgetting. There
+are no more Socialists. Their head was cut off the other morning.”
+
+Duthil found this very funny. Then in a confidential way he remarked:
+“You know that the marriage wasn’t settled without a good deal of
+difficulty.... Have you read Sagnier’s ignoble article this morning?”
+
+“Yes, yes; but I knew it all before, everybody knew it.”
+
+Then in an undertone, understanding one another’s slightest allusion,
+they went on chatting. It was only amidst a flood of tears and after a
+despairing struggle that Baroness Duvillard had consented to let her
+lover marry her daughter. And in doing so she had yielded to the sole
+desire of seeing Gérard rich and happy. She still regarded Camille with
+all the hatred of a defeated rival. Then, an equally painful contest had
+taken place at Madame de Quinsac’s. The Countess had only overcome her
+revolt and consented to the marriage in order to save her son from the
+dangers which had threatened him since childhood; and the Marquis de
+Morigny had been so affected by her maternal abnegation, that in spite of
+all his anger he had resignedly agreed to be a witness, thus making a
+supreme sacrifice, that of his conscience, to the woman whom he had ever
+loved. And it was this frightful story that Sagnier--using transparent
+nicknames--had related in the “Voix du Peuple” that morning. He had even
+contrived to make it more horrid than it really was; for, as usual, he
+was badly informed, and he was naturally inclined to falsehood and
+invention, as by sending an ever thicker and more poisonous torrent from
+his sewer, he might, day by day, increase his paper’s sales. Since
+Monferrand’s victory had compelled him to leave the African Railways
+scandal on one side, he had fallen back on scandals in private life,
+stripping whole families bare and pelting them with mud.
+
+All at once Duthil and Massot were approached by Chaigneux, who, with his
+shabby frock coat badly buttoned, wore both a melancholy and busy air.
+“Well, Monsieur Massot,” said he, “what about your article on Silviane?
+Is it settled? Will it go in?”
+
+As Chaigneux was always for sale, always ready to serve as a valet, it
+had occurred to Duvillard to make use of him to ensure Silviane’s success
+at the Comédie. He had handed this sorry deputy over to the young woman,
+who entrusted him with all manner of dirty work, and sent him scouring
+Paris in search of applauders and advertisements. His eldest daughter was
+not yet married, and never had his four women folk weighed more heavily
+on his hands. His life had become a perfect hell; they had ended by
+beating him, if he did not bring a thousand-franc note home on the first
+day of every month.
+
+“My article!” Massot replied; “no, it surely won’t go in, my dear deputy.
+Fonsègue says that it’s written in too laudatory a style for the ‘Globe.’
+He asked me if I were having a joke with the paper.”
+
+Chaigneux became livid. The article in question was one written in
+advance, from the society point of view, on the success which Silviane
+would achieve in “Polyeucte,” that evening, at the Comédie. The
+journalist, in the hope of pleasing her, had even shown her his “copy”;
+and she, quite delighted, now relied upon finding the article in print in
+the most sober and solemn organ of the Parisian press.
+
+“Good heavens! what will become of us?” murmured the wretched Chaigneux.
+“It’s absolutely necessary that the article should go in.”
+
+“Well, I’m quite agreeable. But speak to the governor yourself. He’s
+standing yonder between Vignon and Dauvergne, the Minister of Public
+Instruction.”
+
+“Yes, I certainly will speak to him--but not here. By-and-by in the
+sacristy, during the procession. And I must also try to speak to
+Dauvergne, for our Silviane particularly wants him to be in the
+ministerial box this evening. Monferrand will be there; he promised
+Duvillard so.”
+
+Massot began to laugh, repeating the expression which had circulated
+through Paris directly after the actress’s engagement: “The Silviane
+ministry.... Well, Dauvergne certainly owes that much to his
+godmother!” said he.
+
+Just then the little Princess de Harn, coming up like a gust of wind,
+broke in upon the three men. “I’ve no seat, you know!” she cried.
+
+Duthil fancied that it was a question of finding her a well-placed chair
+in the church. “You mustn’t count on me,” he answered. “I’ve just had no
+end of trouble in stowing the Duchess de Boisemont away with her two
+daughters.”
+
+“Oh, but I’m talking of this evening’s performance. Come, my dear Duthil,
+you really must find me a little corner in somebody’s box. I shall die, I
+know I shall, if I can’t applaud our delicious, our incomparable friend!”
+
+Ever since setting Silviane down at her door on the previous day,
+Rosemonde had been overflowing with admiration for her.
+
+“Oh! you won’t find a single remaining seat, madame,” declared Chaigneux,
+putting on an air of importance. “We have distributed everything. I have
+just been offered three hundred francs for a stall.”
+
+“That’s true, there has been a fight even for the bracket seats, however
+badly they might be placed,” Duthil resumed. “I am very sorry, but you
+must not count on me.... Duvillard is the only person who might take
+you in his box. He told me that he would reserve me a seat there. And so
+far, I think, there are only three of us, including his son.... Ask
+Hyacinthe by-and-by to procure you an invitation.”
+
+Rosemonde, whom Hyacinthe had so greatly bored that she had given him his
+dismissal, felt the irony of Duthil’s suggestion. Nevertheless, she
+exclaimed with an air of delight: “Ah, yes! Hyacinthe can’t refuse me
+that. Thanks for your information, my dear Duthil. You are very nice, you
+are; for you settle things gaily even when they are rather sad.... And
+don’t forget, mind, that you have promised to teach me politics. Ah!
+politics, my dear fellow, I feel that nothing will ever impassion me as
+politics do!”
+
+Then she left them, hustled several people, and in spite of the crush
+ended by installing herself in the front row.
+
+“Ah! what a crank she is!” muttered Massot with an air of amusement.
+
+Then, as Chaigneux darted towards magistrate Amadieu to ask him in the
+most obsequious way if he had received his ticket, the journalist said to
+Duthil in a whisper: “By the way, my dear friend, is it true that
+Duvillard is going to launch his famous scheme for a Trans-Saharan
+railway? It would be a gigantic enterprise, a question of hundreds and
+hundreds of millions this time.... At the ‘Globe’ office yesterday
+evening, Fonsègue shrugged his shoulders and said it was madness, and
+would never come off!”
+
+Duthil winked, and in a jesting way replied: “It’s as good as done, my
+dear boy. Fonsègue will be kissing the governor’s feet before another
+forty-eight hours are over.”
+
+Then he gaily gave the other to understand that golden manna would
+presently be raining down on the press and all faithful friends and
+willing helpers. Birds shake their feathers when the storm is over, and
+he, Duthil, was as spruce and lively, as joyous at the prospect of the
+presents he now expected, as if there had never been any African Railways
+scandal to upset him and make him turn pale with fright.
+
+“The deuce!” muttered Massot, who had become serious. “So this affair
+here is more than a triumph: it’s the promise of yet another harvest.
+Well, I’m no longer surprised at the crush of people.”
+
+At this moment the organs suddenly burst into a glorious hymn of
+greeting. The marriage procession was entering the church. A loud clamour
+had gone up from the crowd, which spread over the roadway of the Rue
+Royale and impeded the traffic there, while the _cortège_ pompously
+ascended the steps in the bright sunshine. And it was now entering the
+edifice and advancing beneath the lofty, re-echoing vaults towards the
+high altar which flared with candles, whilst on either hand crowded the
+congregation, the men on the right and the women on the left. They had
+all risen and stood there smiling, with necks outstretched and eyes
+glowing with curiosity.
+
+First, in the rear of the magnificent beadle, came Camille, leaning on
+the arm of her father, Baron Duvillard, who wore a proud expression
+befitting a day of victory. Veiled with superb _point d’Alençon_ falling
+from her diadem of orange blossom, gowned in pleated silk muslin over an
+underskirt of white satin, the bride looked so extremely happy, so
+radiant at having conquered, that she seemed almost pretty. Moreover, she
+held herself so upright that one could scarcely detect that her left
+shoulder was higher than her right.
+
+Next came Gérard, giving his arm to his mother, the Countess de
+Quinsac,--he looking very handsome and courtly, as was proper, and she
+displaying impassive dignity in her gown of peacock-blue silk embroidered
+with gold and steel beads. But it was particularly Eve whom people wished
+to see, and every neck was craned forward when she appeared on the arm of
+General Bozonnet, the bridegroom’s first witness and nearest male
+relative. She was gowned in “old rose” taffetas trimmed with Valenciennes
+of priceless value, and never had she looked younger, more deliciously
+fair. Yet her eyes betrayed her emotion, though she strove to smile; and
+her languid grace bespoke her widowhood, her compassionate surrender of
+the man she loved. Monferrand, the Marquis de Morigny, and banker
+Louvard, the three other witnesses, followed the Baroness and General
+Bozonnet, each giving his arm to some lady of the family. A considerable
+sensation was caused by the appearance of Monferrand, who seemed on
+first-rate terms with himself, and jested familiarly with the lady he
+accompanied, a little brunette with a giddy air. Another who was noticed
+in the solemn, interminable procession was the bride’s eccentric brother
+Hyacinthe, whose dress coat was of a cut never previously seen, with its
+tails broadly and symmetrically pleated.
+
+When the affianced pair had taken their places before the prayer-stools
+awaiting them, and the members of both families and the witnesses had
+installed themselves in the rear in large armchairs, all gilding and red
+velvet, the ceremony was performed with extraordinary pomp. The curé of
+the Madeleine officiated in person; and vocalists from the Grand Opera
+reinforced the choir, which chanted the high mass to the accompaniment of
+the organs, whence came a continuous hymn of glory. All possible luxury
+and magnificence were displayed, as if to turn this wedding into some
+public festivity, a great victory, an event marking the apogee of a
+class. Even the impudent bravado attaching to the loathsome private drama
+which lay behind it all, and which was known to everybody, added a touch
+of abominable grandeur to the ceremony. But the truculent spirit of
+superiority and domination which characterised the proceedings became
+most manifest when Monseigneur Martha appeared in surplice and stole to
+pronounce the blessing. Tall of stature, fresh of face, and faintly
+smiling, he had his wonted air of amiable sovereignty, and it was with
+august unction that he pronounced the sacramental words, like some
+pontiff well pleased at reconciling the two great empires whose heirs he
+united. His address to the newly married couple was awaited with
+curiosity. It proved really marvellous, he himself triumphed in it. Was
+it not in that same church that he had baptised the bride’s mother, that
+blond Eve, who was still so beautiful, that Jewess whom he himself had
+converted to the Catholic faith amidst the tears of emotion shed by all
+Paris society? Was it not there also that he had delivered his three
+famous addresses on the New Spirit, whence dated, to his thinking, the
+rout of science, the awakening of Christian spirituality, and that policy
+of rallying to the Republic which was to lead to its conquest?
+
+So it was assuredly allowable for him to indulge in some delicate
+allusions, by way of congratulating himself on his work, now that he was
+marrying a poor scion of the old aristocracy to the five millions of that
+_bourgeoise_ heiress, in whose person triumphed the class which had won
+the victory in 1789, and was now master of the land. The fourth estate,
+the duped, robbed people, alone had no place in those festivities. But by
+uniting the affianced pair before him in the bonds of wedlock,
+Monseigneur Martha sealed the new alliance, gave effect to the Pope’s own
+policy, that stealthy effort of Jesuitical Opportunism which would take
+democracy, power and wealth to wife, in order to subdue and control them.
+When the prelate reached his peroration he turned towards Monferrand, who
+sat there smiling; and it was he, the Minister, whom he seemed to be
+addressing while he expressed the hope that the newly married pair would
+ever lead a truly Christian life of humility and obedience in all fear of
+God, of whose iron hand he spoke as if it were that of some gendarme
+charged with maintaining the peace of the world. Everybody was aware that
+there was some diplomatic understanding between the Bishop and the
+Minister, some secret pact or other whereby both satisfied their passion
+for authority, their craving to insinuate themselves into everything and
+reign supreme; and thus when the spectators saw Monferrand smiling in his
+somewhat sly, jovial way, they also exchanged smiles.
+
+“Ah!” muttered Massot, who had remained near Duthil, “how amused old
+Justus Steinberger would be, if he were here to see his granddaughter
+marrying the last of the Quinsacs!”
+
+“But these marriages are quite the thing, quite the fashion, my dear
+fellow,” the deputy replied. “The Jews and the Christians, the
+_bourgeois_ and the nobles, do quite right to come to an understanding,
+so as to found a new aristocracy. An aristocracy is needed, you know, for
+otherwise we should be swept away by the masses.”
+
+None the less Massot continued sneering at the idea of what a grimace
+Justus Steinberger would have made if he had heard Monseigneur Martha. It
+was rumoured in Paris that although the old Jew banker had ceased all
+intercourse with his daughter Eve since her conversion, he took a keen
+interest in everything she was reported to do or say, as if he were more
+than ever convinced that she would prove an avenging and dissolving agent
+among those Christians, whose destruction was asserted to be the dream of
+his race. If he had failed in his hope of overcoming Duvillard by giving
+her to him as a wife, he doubtless now consoled himself with thinking of
+the extraordinary fortune to which his blood had attained, by mingling
+with that of the harsh, old-time masters of his race, to whose corruption
+it gave a finishing touch. Therein perhaps lay that final Jewish conquest
+of the world of which people sometimes talked.
+
+A last triumphal strain from the organ brought the ceremony to an end;
+whereupon the two families and the witnesses passed into the sacristy,
+where the acts were signed. And forthwith the great congratulatory
+procession commenced.
+
+The bride and bridegroom at last stood side by side in the lofty but
+rather dim room, panelled with oak. How radiant with delight was Camille
+at the thought that it was all over, that she had triumphed and married
+that handsome man of high lineage, after wresting him with so much
+difficulty from one and all, her mother especially! She seemed to have
+grown taller. Deformed, swarthy, and ugly though she was, she drew
+herself up exultingly, whilst scores and scores of women, friends or
+acquaintances, scrambled and rushed upon her, pressing her hands or
+kissing her, and addressing her in words of ecstasy. Gérard, who rose
+both head and shoulders above his bride, and looked all the nobler and
+stronger beside one of such puny figure, shook hands and smiled like some
+Prince Charming, who good-naturedly allowed himself to be loved.
+Meanwhile, the relatives of the newly wedded pair, though they were drawn
+up in one line, formed two distinct groups past which the crowd pushed
+and surged with arms outstretched. Duvillard received the congratulations
+offered him as if he were some king well pleased with his people; whilst
+Eve, with a supreme effort, put on an enchanting mien, and answered one
+and all with scarcely a sign of the sobs which she was forcing back.
+Then, on the other side of the bridal pair, Madame de Quinsac stood
+between General de Bozonnet and the Marquis de Morigny. Very dignified,
+in fact almost haughty, she acknowledged most of the salutations
+addressed to her with a mere nod, giving her little withered hand only to
+those people with whom she was well acquainted. A sea of strange
+countenances encompassed her, and now and again when some particularly
+murky wave rolled by, a wave of men whose faces bespoke all the crimes of
+money-mongering, she and the Marquis exchanged glances of deep sadness.
+This tide continued sweeping by for nearly half an hour; and such was the
+number of those who wanted to shake hands with the bridal pair and their
+relatives, that the latter soon felt their arms ache.
+
+Meantime, some folks lingered in the sacristy; little groups collected,
+and gay chatter rang out. Monferrand was immediately surrounded. Massot
+pointed out to Duthil how eagerly Public Prosecutor Lehmann rushed upon
+the Minister to pay him court. They were immediately joined by
+investigating magistrate Amadieu. And even M. de Larombière, the judge,
+approached Monferrand, although he hated the Republic, and was an
+intimate friend of the Quinsacs. But then obedience and obsequiousness
+were necessary on the part of the magistracy, for it was dependent on
+those in power, who alone could give advancement, and appoint even as
+they dismissed. As for Lehmann, it was alleged that he had rendered
+assistance to Monferrand by spiriting away certain documents connected
+with the African Railways affair, whilst with regard to the smiling and
+extremely Parisian Amadieu, was it not to him that the government was
+indebted for Salvat’s head?
+
+“You know,” muttered Massot, “they’ve all come to be thanked for
+guillotining that man yesterday. Monferrand owes that wretched fellow a
+fine taper; for in the first place his bomb prolonged the life of the
+Barroux ministry, and later on it made Monferrand prime minister, as a
+strong-handed man was particularly needed to strangle Anarchism. What a
+contest, eh? Monferrand on one side and Salvat on the other. It was all
+bound to end in a head being cut off; one was wanted.... Ah! just
+listen, they are talking of it.”
+
+This was true. As the three functionaries of the law drew near to pay
+their respects to the all-powerful Minister, they were questioned by lady
+friends whose curiosity had been roused by what they had read in the
+newspapers. Thereupon Amadieu, whom duty had taken to the execution, and
+who was proud of his own importance, and determined to destroy what he
+called “the legend of Salvat’s heroic death,” declared that the scoundrel
+had shown no true courage at all. His pride alone had kept him on his
+feet. Fright had so shaken and choked him that he had virtually been dead
+before the fall of the knife.
+
+“Ah! that’s true!” cried Duthil. “I was there myself.”
+
+Massot, however, pulled him by the arm, quite indignant at such an
+assertion, although as a rule he cared a rap for nothing. “You couldn’t
+see anything, my dear fellow,” said he; “Salvat died very bravely. It’s
+really stupid to continue throwing mud at that poor devil even when he’s
+dead.”
+
+However, the idea that Salvat had died like a coward was too pleasing a
+one to be rejected. It was, so to say, a last sacrifice deposited at
+Monferrand’s feet with the object of propitiating him. He still smiled in
+his peaceful way, like a good-natured man who is stern only when
+necessity requires it. And he showed great amiability towards the three
+judicial functionaries, and thanked them for the bravery with which they
+had accomplished their painful duty to the very end. On the previous day,
+after the execution, he had obtained a formidable majority in the Chamber
+on a somewhat delicate matter of policy. Order reigned, said he, and all
+was for the very best in France. Then, on seeing Vignon--who like a cool
+gamester had made a point of attending the wedding in order to show
+people that he was superior to fortune--the Minister detained him, and
+made much of him, partly as a matter of tactics, for in spite of
+everything he could not help fearing that the future might belong to that
+young fellow, who showed himself so intelligent and cautious. When a
+mutual friend informed them that Barroux’ health was now so bad that the
+doctors had given him up as lost, they both began to express their
+compassion. Poor Barroux! He had never recovered from that vote of the
+Chamber which had overthrown him. He had been sinking from day to day,
+stricken to the heart by his country’s ingratitude, dying of that
+abominable charge of money-mongering and thieving; he who was so upright
+and so loyal, who had devoted his whole life to the Republic! But then,
+as Monferrand repeated, one should never confess. The public can’t
+understand such a thing.
+
+At this moment Duvillard, in some degree relinquishing his paternal
+duties, came to join the others, and the Minister then had to share the
+honours of triumph with him. For was not this banker the master? Was he
+not money personified--money, which is the only stable, everlasting
+force, far above all ephemeral tenure of power, such as attaches to those
+ministerial portfolios which pass so rapidly from hand to hand?
+Monferrand reigned, but he would pass away, and a like fate would some
+day fall on Vignon, who had already had a warning that one could not
+govern unless the millions of the financial world were on one’s side. So
+was not the only real triumpher himself, the Baron--he who laid out five
+millions of francs on buying a scion of the aristocracy for his daughter,
+he who was the personification of the sovereign _bourgeoisie_, who
+controlled public fortune, and was determined to part with nothing, even
+were he attacked with bombs? All these festivities really centred in
+himself, he alone sat down to the banquet, leaving merely the crumbs from
+his table to the lowly, those wretched toilers who had been so cleverly
+duped at the time of the Revolution.
+
+That African Railways affair was already but so much ancient history,
+buried, spirited away by a parliamentary commission. All who had been
+compromised in it, the Duthils, the Chaigneux, the Fonsègues and others,
+could now laugh merrily. They had been delivered from their nightmare by
+Monferrand’s strong fist, and raised by Duvillard’s triumph. Even
+Sagnier’s ignoble article and miry revelations in the “Voix du Peuple”
+ were of no real account, and could be treated with a shrug of the
+shoulders, for the public had been so saturated with denunciation and
+slander that it was now utterly weary of all noisy scandal. The only
+thing which aroused interest was the rumour that Duvillard’s big affair
+of the Trans-Saharan Railway was soon to be launched, that millions of
+money would be handled, and that some of them would rain down upon
+faithful friends.
+
+Whilst Duvillard was conversing in a friendly way with Monferrand and
+Dauvergne, the Minister of Public Instruction, who had joined them,
+Massot encountered Fonsègue, his editor, and said to him in an undertone:
+“Duthil has just assured me that the Trans-Saharan business is ready, and
+that they mean to chance it with the Chamber. They declare that they are
+certain of success.”
+
+Fonsègue, however, was sceptical on the point. “It’s impossible,” said
+he; “they won’t dare to begin again so soon.”
+
+Although he spoke in this fashion, the news had made him grave. He had
+lately had such a terrible fright through his imprudence in the African
+Railways affair, that he had vowed he would take every precaution in
+future. Still, this did not mean that he would refuse to participate in
+matters of business. The best course was to wait and study them, and then
+secure a share in all that seemed profitable. In the present instance he
+felt somewhat worried. However, whilst he stood there watching the group
+around Duvillard and the two ministers, he suddenly perceived Chaigneux,
+who, flitting hither and thither, was still beating up applauders for
+that evening’s performance. He sang Silviane’s praises in every key,
+predicted a most tremendous success, and did his very best to stimulate
+curiosity. At last he approached Dauvergne, and with his long figure bent
+double exclaimed: “My dear Minister, I have a particular request to make
+to you on the part of a very charming person, whose victory will not be
+complete this evening if you do not condescend to favour her with your
+vote.”
+
+Dauvergne, a tall, fair, good-looking man, whose blue eyes smiled behind
+his glasses, listened to Chaigneux with an affable air. He was proving a
+great success at the Ministry of Public Instruction, although he knew
+nothing of University matters. However, like a real Parisian of Dijon, as
+people called him, he was possessed of some tact and skill, gave
+entertainments at which his young and charming wife outshone all others,
+and passed as being quite an enlightened friend of writers and artists.
+Silviane’s engagement at the Comédie, which so far was his most notable
+achievement, and which would have shaken the position of any other
+minister, had by a curious chance rendered him popular. It was regarded
+as something original and amusing.
+
+On understanding that Chaigneux simply wished to make sure of his
+presence at the Comédie that evening, he became yet more affable. “Why,
+certainly, I shall be there, my dear deputy,” he replied. “When one has
+such a charming god-daughter one mustn’t forsake her in a moment of
+danger.”
+
+At this Monferrand, who had been lending ear, turned round. “And tell
+her,” said he, “that I shall be there, too. She may therefore rely on
+having two more friends in the house.”
+
+Thereupon Duvillard, quite enraptured, his eyes glistening with emotion
+and gratitude, bowed to the two ministers as if they had granted him some
+never-to-be-forgotten favour.
+
+When Chaigneux, on his side also, had returned thanks with a low bow, he
+happened to perceive Fonsègue, and forthwith he darted towards him and
+led him aside. “Ah! my dear colleague,” he declared, “it is absolutely
+necessary that this matter should be settled. I regard it as of supreme
+importance.”
+
+“What are you speaking of?” inquired Fonsègue, much surprised.
+
+“Why, of Massot’s article, which you won’t insert.”
+
+Thereupon, the director of the “Globe” plumply declared that he could not
+insert the article. He talked of his paper’s dignity and gravity; and
+declared that the lavishing of such fulsome praise upon a hussy--yes, a
+mere hussy, in a journal whose exemplary morality and austerity had cost
+him so much labour, would seem monstrous and degrading. Personally, he
+did not care a fig about it if Silviane chose to make an exhibition of
+herself, well, he would be there to see; but the “Globe” was sacred.
+
+Disconcerted and almost tearful, Chaigneux nevertheless renewed his
+attempt. “Come, my dear colleague,” said he, “pray make a little effort
+for my sake. If the article isn’t inserted, Duvillard will think that it
+is my fault. And you know that I really need his help. My eldest
+daughter’s marriage has again been postponed, and I hardly know where to
+turn.” Then perceiving that his own misfortunes in no wise touched
+Fonsègue, he added: “And do it for your own sake, my dear colleague, your
+own sake. For when all is said Duvillard knows what is in the article,
+and it is precisely because it is so favourable a one that he wishes to
+see it in the ‘Globe.’ Think it over; if the article isn’t published, he
+will certainly turn his back on you.”
+
+For a moment Fonsègue remained silent. Was he thinking of the colossal
+Trans-Saharan enterprise? Was he reflecting that it would be hard to
+quarrel at such a moment and miss his own share in the coming
+distribution of millions among faithful friends? Perhaps so; however, the
+idea that it would be more prudent to await developments gained the day
+with him. “No, no,” he said, “I can’t, it’s a matter of conscience.”
+
+In the mean time congratulations were still being tendered to the newly
+wedded couple. It seemed as if all Paris were passing through the
+sacristy; there were ever the same smiles and the same hand shakes.
+Gérard, Camille and their relatives, however weary they might feel, were
+forced to retain an air of delight while they stood there against the
+wall, pent up by the crowd. The heat was now becoming unbearable, and a
+cloud of dust arose as when some big flock goes by.
+
+All at once little Princess de Harn, who had hitherto lingered nobody
+knew where, sprang out of the throng, flung her arms around Camille,
+kissed even Eve, and then kept Gérard’s hand in her own while paying him
+extraordinary compliments. Then, on perceiving Hyacinthe, she took
+possession of him and carried him off into a corner. “I say,” she
+exclaimed, “I have a favour to ask you.”
+
+The young man was wonderfully silent that day. His sister’s wedding
+seemed to him a contemptible ceremony, the most vulgar that one could
+imagine. So here, thought he, was another pair accepting the horrid
+sexual law by which the absurdity of the world was perpetuated! For his
+part, he had decided that he would witness the proceedings in rigid
+silence, with a haughty air of disapproval. When Rosemonde spoke to him,
+he looked at her rather nervously, for he was glad that she had forsaken
+him for Duthil, and feared some fresh caprice on her part. At last,
+opening his mouth for the first time that day, he replied: “Oh, as a
+friend, you know, I will grant you whatever favour you like.”
+
+Forthwith the Princess explained that she would surely die if she did not
+witness the _début_ of her dear friend Silviane, of whom she had become
+such a passionate admirer. So she begged the young man to prevail on his
+father to give her a seat in his box, as she knew that one was left
+there.
+
+Hyacinthe smiled. “Oh, willingly, my dear,” said he; “I’ll warn papa,
+there will be a seat for you.”
+
+Then, as the procession of guests at last drew to an end and the vestry
+began to empty, the bridal pair and their relatives were able to go off
+through the chattering throng, which still lingered about to bow to them
+and scrutinise them once more.
+
+Gérard and Camille were to leave for an estate which Duvillard possessed
+in Normandy, directly after lunch. This repast, served at the princely
+mansion of the Rue Godot-de-Mauroy, provided an opportunity for fresh
+display. The dining-room on the first floor had been transformed into a
+buffet, where reigned the greatest abundance and the most wonderful
+sumptuousness. Quite a reception too was held in the drawing-rooms, the
+large red _salon_, the little blue and silver _salon_ and all the others,
+whose doors stood wide open. Although it had been arranged that only
+family friends should be invited, there were quite three hundred people
+present. The ministers had excused themselves, alleging that the weighty
+cares of public business required their presence elsewhere. But the
+magistrates, the deputies and the leading journalists who had attended
+the wedding were again assembled together. And in that throng of hungry
+folks, longing for some of the spoils of Duvillard’s new venture, the
+people who felt most out of their element were Madame de Quinsac’s few
+guests, whom General de Bozonnet and the Marquis de Morigny had seated on
+a sofa in the large red _salon_, which they did not quit.
+
+Eve, who for her part felt quite overcome, both her moral and physical
+strength being exhausted, had seated herself in the little blue and
+silver drawing-room, which, with her passion for flowers, she had
+transformed into an arbour of roses. She would have fallen had she
+remained standing, the very floor had seemed to sink beneath her feet.
+Nevertheless, whenever a guest approached her she managed to force a
+smile, and appear beautiful and charming. Unlooked-for help at last came
+to her in the person of Monseigneur Martha, who had graciously honoured
+the lunch with his presence. He took an armchair near her, and began to
+talk to her in his amiable, caressing way. He was doubtless well aware of
+the frightful anguish which wrung the poor woman’s heart, for he showed
+himself quite fatherly, eager to comfort her. She, however, talked on
+like some inconsolable widow bent on renouncing the world for God, who
+alone could bring her peace. Then, as the conversation turned on the
+Asylum for the Invalids of Labour, she declared that she was resolved to
+take her presidency very seriously, and, in fact, would exclusively
+devote herself to it, in the future.
+
+“And as we are speaking of this, Monseigneur,” said she, “I would even
+ask you to give me some advice.... I shall need somebody to help me,
+and I thought of securing the services of a priest whom I much admire,
+Monsieur l’Abbé Pierre Froment.”
+
+At this the Bishop became grave and embarrassed; but Princess Rosemonde,
+who was passing by with Duthil, had overheard the Baroness, and drawing
+near with her wonted impetuosity, she exclaimed: “Abbé Pierre Froment!
+Oh! I forgot to tell you, my dear, that I met him going about in jacket
+and trousers! And I’ve been told too that he cycles in the Bois with some
+creature or other. Isn’t it true, Duthil, that we met him?”
+
+The deputy bowed and smiled, whilst Eve clasped her hands in amazement.
+“Is it possible! A priest who was all charitable fervour, who had the
+faith and passion of an apostle!”
+
+Thereupon Monseigneur intervened: “Yes, yes, great sorrows occasionally
+fall upon the Church. I heard of the madness of the unhappy man you speak
+of. I even thought it my duty to write to him, but he left my letter
+unanswered. I should so much have liked to stifle such a scandal! But
+there are abominable forces which we cannot always overcome; and so a day
+or two ago the archbishop was obliged to put him under interdict....
+You must choose somebody else, madame.”
+
+It was quite a disaster. Eve gazed at Rosemonde and Duthil, without
+daring to ask them for particulars, but wondering what creature could
+have been so audacious as to turn a priest from the path of duty. She
+must assuredly be some shameless demented woman! And it seemed to Eve as
+if this crime gave a finishing touch to her own misfortune. With a wave
+of the arm, which took in all the luxury around her, the roses steeping
+her in perfume, and the crush of guests around the buffet, she murmured:
+“Ah! decidedly there’s nothing but corruption left; one can no longer
+rely on anybody!”
+
+Whilst this was going on, Camille happened to be alone in her own room
+getting ready to leave the house with Gérard. And all at once her brother
+Hyacinthe joined her there. “Ah! it’s you, youngster!” she exclaimed.
+“Well, make haste if you want to kiss me, for I’m off now, thank
+goodness!”
+
+He kissed her as she suggested, and then in a doctoral way replied: “I
+thought you had more self-command. The delight you have been showing all
+this morning quite disgusts me.”
+
+A quiet glance of contempt was her only answer. However, he continued:
+“You know very well that she’ll take your Gérard from you again, directly
+you come back to Paris.”
+
+At this Camille’s cheeks turned white and her eyes flared. She stepped
+towards her brother with clenched fists: “She! you say that she will take
+him from me!”
+
+The “she” they referred to was their own mother.
+
+“Listen, my boy! I’ll kill her first!” continued Camille. “Ah, no! she
+needn’t hope for that. I shall know how to keep the man that belongs to
+me.... And as for you, keep your spite to yourself, for I know you,
+remember; you are a mere child and a fool!”
+
+He recoiled as if a viper were rearing its sharp, slender black head
+before him; and having always feared her, he thought it best to beat a
+retreat.
+
+While the last guests were rushing upon the buffet and finishing the
+pillage there, the bridal pair took their leave, before driving off to
+the railway station. General de Bozonnet had joined a group in order to
+vent his usual complaints about compulsory military service, and the
+Marquis de Morigny was obliged to fetch him at the moment when the
+Countess de Quinsac was kissing her son and daughter-in-law. The old lady
+trembled with so much emotion that the Marquis respectfully ventured to
+sustain her. Meantime, Hyacinthe had started in search of his father, and
+at last found him near a window with the tottering Chaigneux, whom he was
+violently upbraiding, for Fonsègue’s conscientious scruples had put him
+in a fury. Indeed, if Massot’s article should not be inserted in the
+“Globe,” Silviane might lay all the blame upon him, the Baron, and wreak
+further punishment upon him. However, upon being summoned by his son he
+had to don his triumphal air once more, kiss his daughter on the
+forehead, shake hands with his son-in-law, jest and wish them both a
+pleasant journey. Then Eve, near whom Monseigneur Martha had remained,
+smiling, in her turn had to say farewell. In this she evinced touching
+bravery; her determination to remain beautiful and charming until the
+very end lent her sufficient strength to show herself both gay and
+motherly.
+
+She took hold of the slightly quivering hand which Gérard proffered with
+some embarrassment, and ventured to retain it for a moment in her own, in
+a good-hearted, affectionate way, instinct with all the heroism of
+renunciation. “Good by, Gérard,” she said, “keep in good health, be
+happy.” Then turning to Camille she kissed her on both cheeks, while
+Monseigneur Martha sat looking at them with an air of indulgent sympathy.
+They wished each other “Au revoir,” but their voices trembled, and their
+eyes in meeting gleamed like swords; in the same way as beneath the
+kisses they had exchanged they had felt each other’s teeth. Ah! how it
+enraged Camille to see her mother still so beautiful and fascinating in
+spite of age and grief! And for Eve how great the torture of beholding
+her daughter’s youth, that youth which had overcome her, and was for ever
+wresting love from within her reach! No forgiveness was possible between
+them; they would still hate one another even in the family tomb, where
+some day they would sleep side by side.
+
+All the same, that evening Baroness Duvillard excused herself from
+attending the performance of “Polyeucte” at the Comédie Française. She
+felt very tired and wished to go to bed early, said she. As a matter of
+fact she wept on her pillow all night long. Thus the Baron’s stage-box on
+the first balcony tier contained only himself, Hyacinthe, Duthil, and
+little Princess de Harn.
+
+At nine o’clock there was a full house, one of the brilliant chattering
+houses peculiar to great dramatic solemnities. All the society people who
+had marched through the sacristy of the Madeleine that morning were now
+assembled at the theatre, again feverish with curiosity, and on the
+lookout for the unexpected. One recognised the same faces and the same
+smiles; the women acknowledged one another’s presence with little signs
+of intelligence, the men understood each other at a word, a gesture. One
+and all had kept the appointment, the ladies with bared shoulders, the
+gentlemen with flowers in their button-holes. Fonsègue occupied the
+“Globe’s” box, with two friendly families. Little Massot had his
+customary seat in the stalls. Amadieu, who was a faithful patron of the
+Comédie, was also to be seen there, as well as General de Bozonnet and
+Public Prosecutor Lehmann. The man who was most looked at, however, on
+account of his scandalous article that morning, was Sagnier, the terrible
+Sagnier, looking bloated and apoplectical. Then there was Chaigneux, who
+had kept merely a modest bracket-seat for himself, and who scoured the
+passages, and climbed to every tier, for the last time preaching
+enthusiasm. Finally, the two ministers Monferrand and Dauvergne appeared
+in the box facing Duvillard’s; whereupon many knowing smiles were
+exchanged, for everybody was aware that these personages had come to help
+on the success of the _débutante_.
+
+On the latter point there had still been unfavourable rumours only the
+previous day. Sagnier had declared that the _début_ of such a notorious
+harlot as Silviane at the Comédie Française, in such a part too as that
+of “Pauline,” which was one of so much moral loftiness, could only be
+regarded as an impudent insult to public decency. The whole press,
+moreover, had long been up in arms against the young woman’s
+extraordinary caprice. But then the affair had been talked of for six
+months past, so that Paris had grown used to the idea of seeing Silviane
+at the Comédie. And now it flocked thither with the one idea of being
+entertained. Before the curtain rose one could tell by the very
+atmosphere of the house that the audience was a jovial, good-humoured
+one, bent on enjoying itself, and ready to applaud should it find itself
+at all pleased.
+
+The performance really proved extraordinary. When Silviane, chastely
+robed, made her appearance in the first act, the house was quite
+astonished by her virginal face, her innocent-looking mouth, and her eyes
+beaming with immaculate candour. Then, although the manner in which she
+had understood her part at first amazed people, it ended by charming
+them. From the moment of confiding in “Stratonice,” from the moment of
+relating her dream, she turned “Pauline” into a soaring mystical
+creature, some saint, as it were, such as one sees in stained-glass
+windows, carried along by a Wagnerian Brunhilda riding the clouds. It was
+a thoroughly ridiculous conception of the part, contrary to reason and
+truth alike. Still, it only seemed to interest people the more, partly on
+account of mysticism being the fashion, and partly on account of the
+contrast between Silviane’s assumed candour and real depravity. Her
+success increased from act to act, and some slight hissing which was
+attributed to Sagnier only helped to make the victory more complete.
+Monferrand and Dauvergne, as the newspapers afterwards related, gave the
+signal for applause; and the whole house joined in it, partly from
+amusement and partly perhaps in a spirit of irony.
+
+During the interval between the fourth and fifth acts there was quite a
+procession of visitors to Duvillard’s box, where the greatest excitement
+prevailed. Duthil, however, after absenting himself for a moment, came
+back to say: “You remember our influential critic, the one whom I brought
+to dinner at the Cafe Anglais? Well, he’s repeating to everybody that
+‘Pauline’ is merely a little _bourgeoise_, and is not transformed by the
+heavenly grace until the very finish of the piece. To turn her into a
+holy virgin from the outset simply kills the part, says he.”
+
+“Pooh!” repeated Duvillard, “let him argue if he likes, it will be all
+the more advertisement.... The important point is to get Massot’s
+article inserted in the ‘Globe’ to-morrow morning.”
+
+On this point, unfortunately, the news was by no means good. Chaigneux,
+who had gone in search of Fonsègue, declared that the latter still
+hesitated in the matter in spite of Silviane’s success, which he declared
+to be ridiculous. Thereupon, the Baron became quite angry. “Go and tell
+Fonsègue,” he exclaimed, “that I insist on it, and that I shall remember
+what he does.”
+
+Meantime Princess Rosemonde was becoming quite delirious with enthusiasm.
+“My dear Hyacinthe,” she pleaded, “please take me to Silviane’s
+dressing-room; I can’t wait, I really must go and kiss her.”
+
+“But we’ll all go!” cried Duvillard, who heard her entreaty.
+
+The passages were crowded, and there were people even on the stage.
+Moreover, when the party reached the door of Silviane’s dressing-room,
+they found it shut. When the Baron knocked at it, a dresser replied that
+madame begged the gentlemen to wait a moment.
+
+“Oh! a woman may surely go in,” replied Rosemonde, hastily slipping
+through the doorway. “And you may come, Hyacinthe,” she added; “there can
+be no objection to you.”
+
+Silviane was very hot, and a dresser was wiping her perspiring shoulders
+when Rosemonde darted forward and kissed her. Then they chatted together
+amidst the heat and glare from the gas and the intoxicating perfumes of
+all the flowers which were heaped up in the little room. Finally,
+Hyacinthe heard them promise to see one another after the performance,
+Silviane even inviting Rosemonde to drink a cup of tea with her at her
+house. At this the young man smiled complacently, and said to the
+actress: “Your carriage is waiting for you at the corner of the Rue
+Montpensier, is it not? Well, I’ll take the Princess to it. That will be
+the simpler plan, you can both go off together!”
+
+“Oh! how good of you,” cried Rosemonde; “it’s agreed.”
+
+Just then the door was opened, and the men, being admitted, began to pour
+forth their congratulations. However, they had to regain their seats in
+all haste so as to witness the fifth act. This proved quite a triumph,
+the whole house bursting into applause when Silviane spoke the famous
+line, “I see, I know, I believe, I am undeceived,” with the rapturous
+enthusiasm of a holy martyr ascending to heaven. Nothing could have been
+more soul-like, it was said. And so when the performers were called
+before the curtain, Paris bestowed an ovation on that virgin of the
+stage, who, as Sagnier put it, knew so well how to act depravity at home.
+
+Accompanied by Duthil, Duvillard at once went behind the scenes in order
+to fetch Silviane, while Hyacinthe escorted Rosemonde to the brougham
+waiting at the corner of the Rue Montpensier. Having helped her into it,
+the young man stood by, waiting. And he seemed to grow quite merry when
+his father came up with Silviane, and was stopped by her, just as, in his
+turn, he wished to get into the carriage.
+
+“There’s no room for you, my dear fellow,” said she. “I’ve a friend with
+me.”
+
+Rosemonde’s little smiling face then peered forth from the depths of the
+brougham. And the Baron remained there open-mouthed while the vehicle
+swiftly carried the two women away!
+
+“Well, what would you have, my dear fellow?” said Hyacinthe, by way of
+explanation to Duthil, who also seemed somewhat amazed by what had
+happened. “Rosemonde was worrying my life out, and so I got rid of her by
+packing her off with Silviane.”
+
+Duvillard was still standing on the pavement and still looking dazed when
+Chaigneux, who was going home quite tired out, recognised him, and came
+up to say that Fonsègue had thought the matter over, and that Massot’s
+article would be duly inserted. In the passages, too, there had been a
+deal of talk about the famous Trans-Saharan project.
+
+Then Hyacinthe led his father away, trying to comfort him like a sensible
+friend, who regarded woman as a base and impure creature. “Let’s go home
+to bed,” said he. “As that article is to appear, you can take it to her
+to-morrow. She will see you, sure enough.”
+
+Thereupon they lighted cigars, and now and again exchanging a few words,
+took their way up the Avenue de l’Opera, which at that hour was deserted
+and dismal. Meantime, above the slumbering houses of Paris the breeze
+wafted a prolonged sigh, the plaint, as it were, of an expiring world.
+
+
+
+
+III. THE GOAL OF LABOUR
+
+EVER since the execution of Salvat, Guillaume had become extremely
+taciturn. He seemed worried and absent-minded. He would work for hours at
+the manufacture of that dangerous powder of which he alone knew the
+formula, and the preparation of which was such a delicate matter that he
+would allow none to assist him. Then, at other times he would go off, and
+return tired out by some long solitary ramble. He remained very gentle at
+home, and strove to smile there. But whenever anybody spoke to him he
+started as if suddenly called back from dreamland.
+
+Pierre imagined his brother had relied too much upon his powers of
+renunciation, and found the loss of Marie unbearable. Was it not some
+thought of her that haunted him now that the date fixed for the marriage
+drew nearer and nearer? One evening, therefore, Pierre ventured to speak
+out, again offering to leave the house and disappear.
+
+But at the first words he uttered Guillaume stopped him, and
+affectionately replied: “Marie? Oh! I love her, I love her too well to
+regret what I have done. No, no! you only bring me happiness, I derive
+all my strength and courage from you now that I know you are both happy.
+... And I assure you that you are mistaken, there is nothing at all the
+matter with me; my work absorbs me, perhaps, but that is all.”
+
+That same evening he managed to cast his gloom aside, and displayed
+delightful gaiety. During dinner he inquired if the upholsterer would
+soon call to arrange the two little rooms which Marie was to occupy with
+her husband over the workroom. The young woman, who since her marriage
+with Pierre had been decided had remained waiting with smiling patience,
+thereupon told Guillaume what it was she desired--first some hangings of
+red cotton stuff, then some polished pine furniture which would enable
+her to imagine she was in the country, and finally a carpet on the floor,
+because a carpet seemed to her the height of luxury. She laughed as she
+spoke, and Guillaume laughed with her in a gay and fatherly way. His good
+spirits brought much relief to Pierre, who concluded that he must have
+been mistaken in his surmises.
+
+On the very morrow, however, Guillaume relapsed into a dreamy state. And
+so disquietude again came upon Pierre, particularly when he noticed that
+Mère-Grand also seemed to be unusually grave and silent. Not daring to
+address her, he tried to extract some information from his nephews, but
+neither Thomas nor François nor Antoine knew anything. Each of them
+quietly devoted his time to his work, respecting and worshipping his
+father, but never questioning him about his plans or enterprises.
+Whatever he might choose to do could only be right and good; and they,
+his sons, were ready to do the same and help him at the very first call,
+without pausing to inquire into his purpose. It was plain, however, that
+he kept them apart from anything at all perilous, that he retained all
+responsibility for himself, and that Mère-Grand alone was his
+_confidante_, the one whom he consulted and to whom he perhaps listened.
+Pierre therefore renounced his hope of learning anything from the sons,
+and directed his attention to the old lady, whose rigid gravity worried
+him the more as she and Guillaume frequently had private chats in the
+room she occupied upstairs. They shut themselves up there all alone, and
+remained together for hours without the faintest sound coming from the
+seemingly lifeless chamber.
+
+One day, however, Pierre caught sight of Guillaume as he came out of it,
+carrying a little valise which appeared to be very heavy. And Pierre
+thereupon remembered both his brother’s powder, one pound weight of which
+would have sufficed to destroy a cathedral, and the destructive engine
+which he had purposed bestowing upon France in order that she might be
+victorious over all other nations, and become the one great initiatory
+and liberative power. Pierre remembered too that the only person besides
+himself who knew his brother’s secret was Mère-Grand, who, at the time
+when Guillaume was fearing some perquisition on the part of the police,
+had long slept upon the cartridges of the terrible explosive. But now why
+was Guillaume removing all the powder which he had been preparing for
+some time past? As this question occurred to Pierre, a sudden suspicion,
+a vague dread, came upon him, and gave him strength to ask his brother:
+“Have you reason to fear anything, since you won’t keep things here? If
+they embarrass you, they can all be deposited at my house, nobody will
+make a search there.”
+
+Guillaume, whom these words astonished, gazed at Pierre fixedly, and then
+replied: “Yes, I have learnt that the arrests and perquisitions have
+begun afresh since that poor devil was guillotined; for they are in
+terror at the thought that some despairing fellow may avenge him.
+Moreover, it is hardly prudent to keep destructive agents of such great
+power here. I prefer to deposit them in a safe place. But not at
+Neuilly--oh! no indeed! they are not a present for you, brother.”
+ Guillaume spoke with outward calmness; and if he had started with
+surprise at the first moment, it had been scarcely perceptible.
+
+“So everything is ready?” Pierre resumed. “You will soon be handing your
+engine of destruction over to the Minister of War, I presume?”
+
+A gleam of hesitation appeared in the depths of Guillaume’s eyes, and he
+was for a moment about to tell a falsehood. However, he ended by replying
+“No, I have renounced that intention. I have another idea.”
+
+He spoke these last words with so much energy and decision that Pierre
+did not dare to question him further, to ask him, for instance, what that
+other idea might be. From that moment, however, he quivered with anxious
+expectancy. From hour to hour Mère-Grand’s lofty silence and Guillaume’s
+rapt, energetic face seemed to tell him that some huge and terrifying
+scheme had come into being, and was growing and threatening the whole of
+Paris.
+
+One afternoon, just as Thomas was about to repair to the Grandidier
+works, some one came to Guillaume’s with the news that old Toussaint, the
+workman, had been stricken with a fresh attack of paralysis. Thomas
+thereupon decided that he would call upon the poor fellow on his way, for
+he held him in esteem and wished to ascertain if he could render him any
+help. Pierre expressed a desire to accompany his nephew, and they started
+off together about four o’clock.
+
+On entering the one room which the Toussaints occupied, the room where
+they ate and slept, the visitors found the mechanician seated on a low
+chair near the table. He looked half dead, as if struck by lightning. It
+was a case of hemiplegia, which had paralysed the whole of his right
+side, his right leg and right arm, and had also spread to his face in
+such wise that he could no longer speak. The only sound he could raise
+was an incomprehensible guttural grunt. His mouth was drawn to the right,
+and his once round, good-natured-looking face, with tanned skin and
+bright eyes, had been twisted into a frightful mask of anguish. At fifty
+years of age, the unhappy man was utterly done for. His unkempt beard was
+as white as that of an octogenarian, and his knotty limbs, preyed upon by
+toil, were henceforth dead. Only his eyes remained alive, and they
+travelled around the room, going from one to another. By his side, eager
+to do what she could for him, was his wife, who remained stout even when
+she had little to eat, and still showed herself active and clear-headed,
+however great her misfortunes.
+
+“It’s a friendly visit, Toussaint,” said she. “It’s Monsieur Thomas who
+has come to see you with Monsieur l’Abbé.” Then quietly correcting
+herself she added: “With Monsieur Pierre, his uncle. You see that you are
+not yet forsaken.”
+
+Toussaint wished to speak, but his fruitless efforts only brought two big
+tears to his eyes. Then he gazed at his visitors with an expression of
+indescribable woe, his jaws trembling convulsively.
+
+“Don’t put yourself out,” repeated his wife. “The doctor told you that it
+would do you no good.”
+
+At the moment of entering the room, Pierre had already noticed two
+persons who had risen from their chairs and drawn somewhat on one side.
+And now to his great surprise he recognised that they were Madame
+Théodore and Céline, who were both decently clad, and looked as if they
+led a life of comfort. On hearing of Toussaint’s misfortune they had come
+to see him, like good-hearted creatures, who, on their own side, had
+experienced the most cruel suffering. Pierre, on noticing that they now
+seemed to be beyond dire want, remembered what he had heard of the
+wonderful sympathy lavished on the child after her father’s execution,
+the many presents and donations offered her, and the generous proposals
+that had been made to adopt her. These last had ended in her being
+adopted by a former friend of Salvat, who had sent her to school again,
+pending the time when she might be apprenticed to some trade, while, on
+the other hand, Madame Théodore had been placed as a nurse in a
+convalescent home. In such wise both had been saved.
+
+When Pierre drew near to little Céline in order to kiss her, Madame
+Théodore told her to thank Monsieur l’Abbé--for so she still respectfully
+called him--for all that he had previously done for her. “It was you who
+brought us happiness, Monsieur l’Abbé,” said she. “And that’s a thing one
+can never forget. I’m always telling Céline to remember you in her
+prayers.”
+
+“And so, my child, you are now going to school again,” said Pierre.
+
+“Oh yes, Monsieur l’Abbé, and I’m well pleased at it. Besides, we no
+longer lack anything.” Then, however, sudden emotion came over the girl,
+and she stammered with a sob: “Ah! if poor papa could only see us!”
+
+Madame Théodore, meanwhile, had begun to take leave of Madame Toussaint.
+“Well, good by, we must go,” said she. “What has happened to you is very
+sad, and we wanted to tell you how much it grieved us. The worry is that
+when misfortune falls on one, courage isn’t enough to set things right..
+.. Céline, come and kiss your uncle.... My poor brother, I hope
+you’ll get back the use of your legs as soon as possible.”
+
+They kissed the paralysed man on the cheeks, and then went off. Toussaint
+had looked at them with his keen and still intelligent eyes, as if he
+longed to participate in the life and activity into which they were
+returning. And a jealous thought came to his wife, who usually was so
+placid and good-natured. “Ah! my poor old man!” said she, after propping
+him up with a pillow, “those two are luckier than we are. Everything
+succeeds with them since that madman, Salvat, had his head cut off.
+They’re provided for. They’ve plenty of bread on the shelf.”
+
+Then, turning towards Pierre and Thomas, she continued: “We others are
+done for, you know, we’re down in the mud, with no hope of getting out of
+it. But what would you have? My poor husband hasn’t been guillotined,
+he’s done nothing but work his whole life long; and now, you see, that’s
+the end of him, he’s like some old animal, no longer good for anything.”
+
+Having made her visitors sit down she next answered their compassionate
+questions. The doctor had called twice already, and had promised to
+restore the unhappy man’s power of speech, and perhaps enable him to
+crawl round the room with the help of a stick. But as for ever being able
+to resume real work that must not be expected. And so what was the use of
+living on? Toussaint’s eyes plainly declared that he would much rather
+die at once. When a workman can no longer work and no longer provide for
+his wife he is ripe for the grave.
+
+“Savings indeed!” Madame Toussaint resumed. “There are folks who ask if
+we have any savings.... Well, we had nearly a thousand francs in the
+Savings Bank when Toussaint had his first attack. And some people don’t
+know what a lot of prudence one needs to put by such a sum; for, after
+all, we’re not savages, we have to allow ourselves a little enjoyment now
+and then, a good dish and a good bottle of wine.... Well, what with
+five months of enforced idleness, and the medicines, and the underdone
+meat that was ordered, we got to the end of our thousand francs; and now
+that it’s all begun again we’re not likely to taste any more bottled wine
+or roast mutton.”
+
+Fond of good cheer as she had always been, this cry, far more than the
+tears she was forcing back, revealed how much the future terrified her.
+She was there erect and brave in spite of everything; but what a downfall
+if she were no longer able to keep her room tidy, stew a piece of veal on
+Sundays, and gossip with the neighbours while awaiting her husband’s
+return from work! Why, they might just as well be thrown into the gutter
+and carried off in the scavenger’s cart.
+
+However, Thomas intervened: “Isn’t there an Asylum for the Invalids of
+Labour, and couldn’t your husband get admitted to it?” he asked. “It
+seems to me that is just the place for him.”
+
+“Oh dear, no,” the woman answered. “People spoke to me of that place
+before, and I got particulars of it. They don’t take sick people there.
+When you call they tell you that there are hospitals for those who are
+ill.”
+
+With a wave of his hand Pierre confirmed her statement: it was useless to
+apply in that direction. He could again see himself scouring Paris,
+hurrying from the Lady President, Baroness Duvillard, to Fonsègue, the
+General Manager, and only securing a bed for Laveuve when the unhappy man
+was dead.
+
+However, at that moment an infant was heard wailing, and to the amazement
+of both visitors Madame Toussaint entered the little closet where her son
+Charles had so long slept, and came out of it carrying a child, who
+looked scarcely twenty months old. “Well, yes,” she explained, “this is
+Charles’s boy. He was sleeping there in his father’s old bed, and now you
+hear him, he’s woke up.... You see, only last Wednesday, the day
+before Toussaint had his stroke, I went to fetch the little one at the
+nurse’s at St. Denis, because she had threatened to cast him adrift since
+Charles had got into bad habits, and no longer paid her. I said to myself
+at the time that work was looking up, and that my husband and I would
+always be able to provide for a little mouth like that.... But just
+afterwards everything collapsed! At the same time, as the child’s here
+now I can’t go and leave him in the street.”
+
+While speaking in this fashion she walked to and fro, rocking the baby in
+her arms. And naturally enough she reverted to Charles’s folly with the
+girl, who had run away, leaving that infant behind her. Things might not
+have been so very bad if Charles had still worked as steadily as he had
+done before he went soldiering. In those days he had never lost an hour,
+and had always brought all his pay home! But he had come back from the
+army with much less taste for work. He argued, and had ideas of his own.
+He certainly hadn’t yet come to bomb-throwing like that madman Salvat,
+but he spent half his time with Socialists and Anarchists, who put his
+brain in a muddle. It was a real pity to see such a strong, good-hearted
+young fellow turning out badly like that. But it was said in the
+neighbourhood that many another was inclined the same way; that the best
+and most intelligent of the younger men felt tired of want and
+unremunerative labour, and would end by knocking everything to pieces
+rather than go on toiling with no certainty of food in their old age.
+
+“Ah! yes,” continued Madame Toussaint, “the sons are not like the fathers
+were. These fine fellows won’t be as patient as my poor husband has been,
+letting hard work wear him away till he’s become the sorry thing you see
+there.... Do you know what Charles said the other evening when he
+found his father on that chair, crippled like that, and unable to speak?
+Why, he shouted to him that he’d been a stupid jackass all his life,
+working himself to death for those _bourgeois_, who now wouldn’t bring
+him so much as a glass of water. Then, as he none the less has a good
+heart, he began to cry his eyes out.”
+
+The baby was no longer wailing, still the good woman continued walking to
+and fro, rocking it in her arms and pressing it to her affectionate
+heart. Her son Charles could do no more for them, she said; perhaps he
+might be able to give them a five-franc piece now and again, but even
+that wasn’t certain. It was of no use for her to go back to her old
+calling as a seamstress, she had lost all practice of it. And it would
+even be difficult for her to earn anything as charwoman, for she had that
+infant on her hands as well as her infirm husband--a big child, whom she
+would have to wash and feed. And so what would become of the three of
+them? She couldn’t tell; but it made her shudder, however brave and
+motherly she tried to be.
+
+For their part, Pierre and Thomas quivered with compassion, particularly
+when they saw big tears coursing down the cheeks of the wretched,
+stricken Toussaint, as he sat quite motionless in that little and still
+cleanly home of toil and want. The poor man had listened to his wife, and
+he looked at her and at the infant now sleeping in her arms. Voiceless,
+unable to cry his woe aloud, he experienced the most awful anguish. What
+dupery his long life of labour had been! how frightfully unjust it was
+that all his efforts should end in such sufferings! how exasperating it
+was to feel himself powerless, and to see those whom he loved and who
+were as innocent as himself suffer and die by reason of his own suffering
+and death! Ah! poor old man, cripple that he was, ending like some beast
+of burden that has foundered by the roadside--that goal of labour! And it
+was all so revolting and so monstrous that he tried to put it into words,
+and his desperate grief ended in a frightful, raucous grunt.
+
+“Be quiet, don’t do yourself harm!” concluded Madame Toussaint. “Things
+are like that, and there’s no mending them.”
+
+Then she went to put the child to bed again, and on her return, just as
+Thomas and Pierre were about to speak to her of Toussaint’s employer, M.
+Grandidier, a fresh visitor arrived. Thereupon the others decided to
+wait.
+
+The new comer was Madame Chrétiennot, Toussaint’s other sister, eighteen
+years younger than himself. Her husband, the little clerk, had compelled
+her to break off almost all intercourse with her relatives, as he felt
+ashamed of them; nevertheless, having heard of her brother’s misfortune,
+she had very properly come to condole with him. She wore a gown of cheap
+flimsy silk, and a hat trimmed with red poppies, which she had freshened
+up three times already; but in spite of this display her appearance
+bespoke penury, and she did her best to hide her feet on account of the
+shabbiness of her boots. Moreover, she was no longer the beautiful
+Hortense. Since a recent miscarriage, all trace of her good looks had
+disappeared.
+
+The lamentable appearance of her brother and the bareness of that home of
+suffering chilled her directly she crossed the threshold. And as soon as
+she had kissed Toussaint, and said how sorry she was to find him in such
+a condition, she began to lament her own fate, and recount her troubles,
+for fear lest she should be asked for any help.
+
+“Ah! my dear,” she said to her sister-in-law, “you are certainly much to
+be pitied! But if you only knew! We all have our troubles. Thus in my
+case, obliged as I am to dress fairly well on account of my husband’s
+position, I have more trouble than you can imagine in making both ends
+meet. One can’t go far on a salary of three thousand francs a year, when
+one has to pay seven hundred francs’ rent out of it. You will perhaps say
+that we might lodge ourselves in a more modest way; but we can’t, my
+dear, I must have a _salon_ on account of the visits I receive. So just
+count!... Then there are my two girls. I’ve had to send them to
+school; Lucienne has begun to learn the piano and Marcelle has some taste
+for drawing.... By the way, I would have brought them with me, but I
+feared it would upset them too much. You will excuse me, won’t you?”
+
+Then she spoke of all the worries which she had had with her husband on
+account of Salvat’s ignominious death. Chrétiennot, vain, quarrelsome
+little fellow that he was, felt exasperated at now having a _guillotine_
+in his wife’s family. And he had lately begun to treat the unfortunate
+woman most harshly, charging her with having brought about all their
+troubles, and even rendering her responsible for his own mediocrity,
+embittered as he was more and more each day by a confined life of office
+work. On some evenings they had downright quarrels; she stood up for
+herself, and related that when she was at the confectionery shop in the
+Rue des Martyrs she could have married a doctor had she only chosen, for
+the doctor found her quite pretty enough. Now, however, she was becoming
+plainer and plainer, and her husband felt that he was condemned to
+everlasting penury; so that their life was becoming more and more dismal
+and quarrelsome, and as unbearable--despite the pride of being
+“gentleman” and “lady”--as was the destitution of the working classes.
+
+“All the same, my dear,” at last said Madame Toussaint, weary of her
+sister-in-law’s endless narrative of worries, “you have had one piece of
+luck. You won’t have the trouble of bringing up a third child, now.”
+
+“That’s true,” replied Hortense, with a sigh of relief. “How we should
+have managed, I don’t know.... Still, I was very ill, and I’m far from
+being in good health now. The doctor says that I don’t eat enough, and
+that I ought to have good food.”
+
+Then she rose for the purpose of giving her brother another kiss and
+taking her departure; for she feared a scene on her husband’s part should
+he happen to come home and find her absent. Once on her feet, however,
+she lingered there a moment longer, saying that she also had just seen
+her sister, Madame Théodore, and little Céline, both of them comfortably
+clad and looking happy. And with a touch of jealousy she added: “Well, my
+husband contents himself with slaving away at his office every day. He’ll
+never do anything to get his head cut off; and it’s quite certain that
+nobody will think of leaving an income to Marcelle and Lucienne....
+Well, good by, my dear, you must be brave, one must always hope that
+things will turn out for the best.”
+
+When she had gone off, Pierre and Thomas inquired if M. Grandidier had
+heard of Toussaint’s misfortune and agreed to do anything for him. Madame
+Toussaint answered that he had so far made only a vague promise; and on
+learning this they resolved to speak to him as warmly as they could on
+behalf of the old mechanician, who had spent as many as five and twenty
+years at the works. The misfortune was that a scheme for establishing a
+friendly society, and even a pension fund, which had been launched before
+the crisis from which the works were now recovering, had collapsed
+through a number of obstacles and complications. Had things turned out
+otherwise, Thomas might have had a pittance assured him, even though he
+was unable to work. But under the circumstances the only hope for the
+poor stricken fellow lay in his employer’s compassion, if not his sense
+of justice.
+
+As the baby again began to cry, Madame Toussaint went to fetch it, and
+she was once more carrying it to and fro, when Thomas pressed her
+husband’s sound hand between both his own. “We will come back,” said the
+young man; “we won’t forsake you, Toussaint. You know very well that
+people like you, for you’ve always been a good and steady workman. So
+rely on us, we will do all we can.”
+
+Then they left him tearful and overpowered, in that dismal room, while,
+up and down beside him, his wife rocked the squealing infant--that other
+luckless creature, who was now so heavy on the old folks’ hands, and like
+them was fated to die of want and unjust toil.
+
+Toil, manual toil, panting at every effort, this was what Pierre and
+Thomas once more found at the works. From the slender pipes above the
+roofs spurted rhythmical puffs of steam, which seemed like the very
+breath of all that labour. And in the work-shops one found a continuous
+rumbling, a whole army of men in motion, forging, filing, and piercing,
+amidst the spinning of leather gearing and the trembling of machinery.
+The day was ending with a final feverish effort to complete some task or
+other before the bell should ring for departure.
+
+On inquiring for the master Thomas learnt that he had not been seen since
+_déjeuner_, which was such an unusual occurrence that the young man at
+once feared some terrible scene in the silent pavilion, whose shutters
+were ever closed upon Grandidier’s unhappy wife--that mad but beautiful
+creature, whom he loved so passionately that he had never been willing to
+part from her. The pavilion could be seen from the little glazed
+work-shop which Thomas usually occupied, and as he and Pierre stood
+waiting there, it looked very peaceful and pleasant amidst the big
+lilac-bushes planted round about it. Surely, they thought, it ought to
+have been brightened by the gay gown of a young woman and the laughter of
+playful children. But all at once a loud, piercing shriek reached their
+ears, followed by howls and moans, like those of an animal that is being
+beaten or possibly slaughtered. Ah! those howls ringing out amidst all
+the stir of the toiling works, punctuated it seemed by the rhythmical
+puffing of the steam, accompanied too by the dull rumbling of the
+machinery! The receipts of the business had been doubling and doubling
+since the last stock-taking; there was increase of prosperity every
+month, the bad times were over, far behind. Grandidier was realising a
+large fortune with his famous bicycle for the million, the “Lisette”; and
+the approaching vogue of motor-cars also promised huge gains, should he
+again start making little motor-engines, as he meant to do, as soon as
+Thomas’s long-projected motor should be perfected. But what was wealth
+when in that dismal pavilion, whose shutters were ever closed, those
+frightful shrieks continued, proclaiming some terrible drama, which all
+the stir and bustle of the prosperous works were unable to stifle?
+
+Pierre and Thomas looked at one another, pale and quivering. And all at
+once, as the cries ceased and the pavilion sank into death-like silence
+once more, the latter said in an undertone: “She is usually very gentle,
+she will sometimes spend whole days sitting on a carpet like a little
+child. He is fond of her when she is like that; he lays her down and
+picks her up, caresses her and makes her laugh as if she were a baby. Ah!
+how dreadfully sad it is! When an attack comes upon her she gets frantic,
+tries to bite herself, and kill herself by throwing herself against the
+walls. And then he has to struggle with her, for no one else is allowed
+to touch her. He tries to restrain her, and holds her in his arms to calm
+her.... But how terrible it was just now! Did you hear? I do not think
+she has ever had such a frightful attack before.”
+
+For a quarter of an hour longer profound silence prevailed. Then
+Grandidier came out of the pavilion, bareheaded and still ghastly pale.
+Passing the little glazed work-shop on his way, he perceived Thomas and
+Pierre there, and at once came in. But he was obliged to lean against a
+bench like a man who is dazed, haunted by a nightmare. His good-natured,
+energetic face retained an expression of acute anguish; and his left ear
+was scratched and bleeding. However, he at once wished to talk, overcome
+his feelings, and return to his life of activity. “I am very pleased to
+see you, my dear Thomas,” said he, “I have been thinking over what you
+told me about our little motor. We must go into the matter again.”
+
+Seeing how distracted he was, it occurred to the young man that some
+sudden diversion, such as the story of another’s misfortunes, might
+perhaps draw him from his haunting thoughts. “Of course I am at your
+disposal,” he replied; “but before talking of that matter I should like
+to tell you that we have just seen Toussaint, that poor old fellow who
+has been stricken with paralysis. His awful fate has quite distressed us.
+He is in the greatest destitution, forsaken as it were by the roadside,
+after all his years of labour.”
+
+Thomas dwelt upon the quarter of a century which the old workman had
+spent at the factory, and suggested that it would be only just to take
+some account of his long efforts, the years of his life which he had
+devoted to the establishment. And he asked that he might be assisted in
+the name both of equity and compassion.
+
+“Ah! monsieur,” Pierre in his turn ventured to say. “I should like to
+take you for an instant into that bare room, and show you that poor,
+aged, worn-out, stricken man, who no longer has even the power of speech
+left him to tell people his sufferings. There can be no greater
+wretchedness than to die in this fashion, despairing of all kindliness
+and justice.”
+
+Grandidier had listened to them in silence. But big tears had
+irresistibly filled his eyes, and when he spoke it was in a very low and
+tremulous voice: “The greatest wretchedness, who can tell what it is? Who
+can speak of it if he has not known the wretchedness of others? Yes, yes,
+it’s sad undoubtedly that poor Toussaint should be reduced to that state
+at his age, not knowing even if he will have food to eat on the morrow.
+But I know sorrows that are just as crushing, abominations which poison
+one’s life in a still greater degree.... Ah! yes, food indeed! To
+think that happiness will reign in the world when everybody has food to
+eat! What an idiotic hope!”
+
+The whole grievous tragedy of his life was in the shudder which had come
+over him. To be the employer, the master, the man who is making money,
+who disposes of capital and is envied by his workmen, to own an
+establishment to which prosperity has returned, whose machinery coins
+gold, apparently leaving one no other trouble than that of pocketing
+one’s profits; and yet at the same time to be the most wretched of men,
+to know no day exempt from anguish, to find each evening at one’s hearth
+no other reward or prop than the most atrocious torture of the heart!
+Everything, even success, has to be paid for. And thus that triumpher,
+that money-maker, whose pile was growing larger at each successive
+inventory, was sobbing with bitter grief.
+
+However, he showed himself kindly disposed towards Toussaint, and
+promised to assist him. As for a pension that was an idea which he could
+not entertain, as it was the negation of the wage-system such as it
+existed. He energetically defended his rights as an employer, repeating
+that the strain of competition would compel him to avail himself of them
+so long as the present system should endure. His part in it was to do
+good business in an honest way. However, he regretted that his men had
+never carried out the scheme of establishing a relief fund, and he said
+that he would do his best to induce them to take it in hand again.
+
+Some colour had now come back to his checks; for on returning to the
+interests of his life of battle he felt his energy restored. He again
+reverted to the question of the little motor, and spoke of it for some
+time with Thomas, while Pierre waited, feeling quite upset. Ah! he
+thought, how universal was the thirst for happiness! Then, in spite of
+the many technical terms that were used he caught a little of what the
+others were saying. Small steam motors had been made at the works in
+former times; but they had not proved successes. In point of fact a new
+propelling force was needed. Electricity, though everyone foresaw its
+future triumph, was so far out of the question on account of the weight
+of the apparatus which its employment necessitated. So only petroleum
+remained, and the inconvenience attaching to its use was so great that
+victory and fortune would certainly rest with the manufacturer who should
+be able to replace it by some other hitherto unknown agent. In the
+discovery and adaptation of the latter lay the whole problem.
+
+“Yes, I am eager about it now,” at last exclaimed Grandidier in an
+animated way. “I allowed you to prosecute your experiments without
+troubling you with any inquisitive questions. But a solution is becoming
+imperative.”
+
+Thomas smiled: “Well, you must remain patient just a little longer,” said
+he; “I believe that I am on the right road.”
+
+Then Grandidier shook hands with him and Pierre, and went off to make his
+usual round through his busy, bustling works, whilst near at hand,
+awaiting his return, stood the closed pavilion, where every evening he
+was fated to relapse into endless, incurable anguish.
+
+The daylight was already waning when Pierre and Thomas, after
+re-ascending the height of Montmartre, walked towards the large work-shop
+which Jahan, the sculptor, had set up among the many sheds whose erection
+had been necessitated by the building of the Sacred Heart. There was here
+a stretch of ground littered with materials, an extraordinary chaos of
+building stone, beams and machinery; and pending the time when an army of
+navvies would come to set the whole place in order, one could see gaping
+trenches, rough flights of descending steps and fences, imperfectly
+closing doorways which conducted to the substructures of the basilica.
+
+Halting in front of Jahan’s work-shop, Thomas pointed to one of these
+doorways by which one could reach the foundation works. “Have you never
+had an idea of visiting the foundations?” he inquired of Pierre. “There’s
+quite a city down there on which millions of money have been spent. They
+could only find firm soil at the very base of the height, and they had to
+excavate more than eighty shafts, fill them with concrete, and then rear
+their church on all those subterranean columns.... Yes, that is so. Of
+course the columns cannot be seen, but it is they who hold that insulting
+edifice aloft, right over Paris!”
+
+Having drawn near to the fence, Pierre was looking at an open doorway
+beyond it, a sort of dark landing whence steps descended as if into the
+bowels of the earth. And he thought of those invisible columns of
+concrete, and of all the stubborn energy and desire for domination which
+had set and kept the edifice erect.
+
+Thomas was at last obliged to call him. “Let us make haste,” said he,
+“the twilight will soon be here. We shan’t be able to see much.”
+
+They had arranged to meet Antoine at Jahan’s, as the sculptor wished to
+show them a new model he had prepared. When they entered the work-shop
+they found the two assistants still working at the colossal angel which
+had been ordered for the basilica. Standing on a scaffolding they were
+rough-hewing its symmetrical wings, whilst Jahan, seated on a low chair,
+with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and his hands soiled with clay,
+was contemplating a figure some three feet high on which he had just been
+working.
+
+“Ah! it’s you,” he exclaimed. “Antoine has been waiting more than half an
+hour for you. He’s gone outside with Lise to see the sun set over Paris,
+I think. But they will soon be back.”
+
+Then he relapsed into silence, with his eyes fixed on his work.
+
+This was a bare, erect, lofty female figure, of such august majesty, so
+simple were its lines, that it suggested something gigantic. The figure’s
+abundant, outspread hair suggested rays around its face, which beamed
+with sovereign beauty like the sun. And its only gesture was one of offer
+and of greeting; its arms were thrown slightly forward, and its hands
+were open for the grasp of all mankind.
+
+Still lingering in his dream Jahan began to speak slowly: “You remember
+that I wanted a pendant for my figure of Fecundity. I had modelled a
+Charity, but it pleased me so little and seemed so commonplace that I let
+the clay dry and spoil.... And then the idea of a figure of Justice
+came to me. But not a gowned figure with the sword and the scales! That
+wasn’t the Justice that inspired me. What haunted my mind was the other
+Justice, the one that the lowly and the sufferers await, the one who
+alone can some day set a little order and happiness among us. And I
+pictured her like that, quite bare, quite simple, and very lofty. She is
+the sun as it were, a sun all beauty, harmony and strength; for justice
+is only to be found in the sun which shines in the heavens for one and
+all, and bestows on poor and rich alike its magnificence and light and
+warmth, which are the source of all life. And so my figure, you see, has
+her hands outstretched as if she were offering herself to all mankind,
+greeting it and granting it the gift of eternal life in eternal beauty.
+Ah! to be beautiful and strong and just, one’s whole dream lies in that.”
+
+Jahan relighted his pipe and burst into a merry laugh. “Well, I think the
+good woman carries herself upright.... What do you fellows say?”
+
+His visitors highly praised his work. Pierre for his part was much
+affected at finding in this artistic conception the very idea that he had
+so long been revolving in his mind--the idea of an era of Justice rising
+from the ruins of the world, which Charity after centuries of trial had
+failed to save.
+
+Then the sculptor gaily explained that he had prepared his model there
+instead of at home, in order to console himself a little for his big
+dummy of an angel, the prescribed triteness of which disgusted him. Some
+fresh objections had been raised with respect to the folds of the robe,
+which gave some prominence to the thighs, and in the end he had been
+compelled to modify all of the drapery.
+
+“Oh! it’s just as they like!” he cried; “it’s no work of mine, you know;
+it’s simply an order which I’m executing just as a mason builds a wall.
+There’s no religious art left, it has been killed by stupidity and
+disbelief. Ah! if social or human art could only revive, how glorious to
+be one of the first to bear the tidings!”
+
+Then he paused. Where could the youngsters, Antoine and Lise, have got
+to, he wondered. He threw the door wide open, and, a little distance
+away, among the materials littering the waste ground, one could see
+Antoine’s tall figure and Lise’s short slender form standing out against
+the immensity of Paris, which was all golden amidst the sun’s farewell.
+The young man’s strong arm supported Lise, who with this help walked
+beside him without feeling any fatigue. Slender and graceful, like a girl
+blossoming into womanhood, she raised her eyes to his with a smile of
+infinite gratitude, which proclaimed that she belonged to him for
+evermore.
+
+“Ah! they are coming back,” said Jahan. “The miracle is now complete, you
+know. I’m delighted at it. I did not know what to do with her; I had even
+renounced all attempts to teach her to read; I left her for days together
+in a corner, infirm and tongue-tied like a lack-wit.... But your
+brother came and took her in hand somehow or other. She listened to him
+and understood him, and began to read and write with him, and grow
+intelligent and gay. Then, as her limbs still gained no suppleness, and
+she remained infirm, ailing and puny, he began by carrying her here, and
+then helped her to walk in such wise that she can now do so by herself.
+In a few weeks’ time she has positively grown and become quite charming.
+Yes, I assure you, it is second birth, real creation. Just look at them!”
+
+Antoine and Lise were still slowly approaching. The evening breeze which
+rose from the great city, where all was yet heat and sunshine, brought
+them a bath of life. If the young man had chosen that spot, with its
+splendid horizon, open to the full air which wafted all the germs of
+life, it was doubtless because he felt that nowhere else could he instil
+more vitality, more soul, more strength into her. And love had been
+created by love. He had found her asleep, benumbed, without power of
+motion or intellect, and he had awakened her, kindled life in her, loved
+her, that he might be loved by her in return. She was his work, she was
+part of himself.
+
+“So you no longer feel tired, little one?” said Jahan.
+
+She smiled divinely. “Oh! no, it’s so pleasant, so beautiful, to walk
+straight on like this.... All I desire is to go on for ever and ever
+with Antoine.”
+
+The others laughed, and Jahan exclaimed in his good-natured way: “Let us
+hope that he won’t take you so far. You’ve reached your destination now,
+and I shan’t be the one to prevent you from being happy.”
+
+Antoine was already standing before the figure of Justice, to which the
+falling twilight seemed to impart a quiver of life. “Oh! how divinely
+simple, how divinely beautiful!” said he.
+
+For his own part he had lately finished a new wood engraving, which
+depicted Lise holding a book in her hand, an engraving instinct with
+truth and emotion, showing her awakened to intelligence and love. And
+this time he had achieved his desire, making no preliminary drawing, but
+tackling the block with his graver, straight away, in presence of his
+model. And infinite hopefulness had come upon him, he was dreaming of
+great original works in which the whole period that he belonged to would
+live anew and for ever.
+
+Thomas now wished to return home. So they shook hands with Jahan, who, as
+his day’s work was over, put on his coat to take his sister back to the
+Rue du Calvaire.
+
+“Till to-morrow, Lise,” said Antoine, inclining his head to kiss her.
+
+She raised herself on tip-toes, and offered him her eyes, which he had
+opened to life. “Till to-morrow, Antoine,” said she.
+
+Outside, the twilight was falling. Pierre was the first to cross the
+threshold, and as he did so, he saw so extraordinary a sight that for an
+instant he felt stupefied. But it was certain enough: he could plainly
+distinguish his brother Guillaume emerging from the gaping doorway which
+conducted to the foundations of the basilica. And he saw him hastily
+climb over the palings, and then pretend to be there by pure chance, as
+though he had come up from the Rue Lamarck. When he accosted his two
+sons, as if he were delighted to meet them, and began to say that he had
+just come from Paris, Pierre asked himself if he had been dreaming.
+However, an anxious glance which his brother cast at him convinced him
+that he had been right. And then he not only felt ill at ease in presence
+of that man whom he had never previously known to lie, but it seemed to
+him that he was at last on the track of all he had feared, the formidable
+mystery that he had for some time past felt brewing around him in the
+little peaceful house.
+
+When Guillaume, his sons and his brother reached home and entered the
+large workroom overlooking Paris, it was so dark that they fancied nobody
+was there.
+
+“What! nobody in?” said Guillaume.
+
+But in a somewhat low, quiet voice François answered out of the gloom:
+“Why, yes, I’m here.”
+
+He had remained at his table, where he had worked the whole afternoon,
+and as he could no longer read, he now sat in a dreamy mood with his head
+resting on his hands, his eyes wandering over Paris, where night was
+gradually falling. As his examination was now near at hand, he was living
+in a state of severe mental strain.
+
+“What, you are still working there!” said his father. “Why didn’t you ask
+for a lamp?”
+
+“No, I wasn’t working, I was looking at Paris,” François slowly answered.
+“It’s singular how the night falls over it by degrees. The last district
+that remained visible was the Montague Ste. Genevieve, the plateau of the
+Pantheon, where all our knowledge and science have grown up. A sun-ray
+still gilds the schools and libraries and laboratories, when the
+low-lying districts of trade are already steeped in darkness. I won’t say
+that the planet has a particular partiality for us at the École Normale,
+but it’s certain that its beams still linger on our roofs, when they are
+to be seen nowhere else.”
+
+He began to laugh at his jest. Still one could see how ardent was his
+faith in mental effort, how entirely he gave himself to mental labour,
+which, in his opinion, could alone bring truth, establish justice and
+create happiness.
+
+Then came a short spell of silence. Paris sank more and more deeply into
+the night, growing black and mysterious, till all at once sparks of light
+began to appear.
+
+“The lamps are being lighted,” resumed François; “work is being resumed on
+all sides.”
+
+Then Guillaume, who likewise had been dreaming, immersed in his fixed
+idea, exclaimed: “Work, yes, no doubt! But for work to give a full
+harvest it must be fertilised by will. There is something which is
+superior to work.”
+
+Thomas and Antoine had drawn near. And François, as much for them as for
+himself, inquired: “What is that, father?”
+
+“Action.”
+
+For a moment the three young men remained silent, impressed by the
+solemnity of the hour, quivering too beneath the great waves of darkness
+which rose from the vague ocean of the city. Then a young voice remarked,
+though whose it was one could not tell: “Action is but work.”
+
+And Pierre, who lacked the respectful quietude, the silent faith, of his
+nephews, now felt his nervousness increasing. That huge and terrifying
+mystery of which he was dimly conscious rose before him, while a great
+quiver sped by in the darkness, over that black city where the lamps were
+now being lighted for a whole passionate night of work.
+
+
+
+
+IV. THE CRISIS
+
+A GREAT ceremony was to take place that day at the basilica of the Sacred
+Heart. Ten thousand pilgrims were to be present there, at a solemn
+consecration of the Holy Sacrament; and pending the arrival of four
+o’clock, the hour fixed for the service, Montmartre would be invaded by
+people. Its slopes would be black with swarming devotees, the shops where
+religious emblems and pictures were sold would be besieged, the cafés and
+taverns would be crowded to overflowing. It would all be like some huge
+fair, and meantime the big bell of the basilica, “La Savoyarde,” would be
+ringing peal on peal over the holiday-making multitude.
+
+When Pierre entered the workroom in the morning he perceived Guillaume
+and Mère-Grand alone there; and a remark which he heard the former make
+caused him to stop short and listen from behind a tall-revolving
+bookstand. Mère-Grand sat sewing in her usual place near the big window,
+while Guillaume stood before her, speaking in a low voice.
+
+“Mother,” said he, “everything is ready, it is for to-day.”
+
+She let her work fall, and raised her eyes, looking very pale. “Ah!” she
+said, “so you have made up your mind.”
+
+“Yes, irrevocably. At four o’clock I shall be yonder, and it will all be
+over.”
+
+“‘Tis well--you are the master.”
+
+Silence fell, terrible silence. Guillaume’s voice seemed to come from far
+away, from somewhere beyond the world. It was evident that his resolution
+was unshakable, that his tragic dream, his fixed idea of martyrdom,
+wholly absorbed him. Mère-Grand looked at him with her pale eyes, like an
+heroic woman who had grown old in relieving the sufferings of others, and
+had ever shown all the abnegation and devotion of an intrepid heart,
+which nothing but the idea of duty could influence. She knew Guillaume’s
+terrible scheme, and had helped him to regulate the pettiest details of
+it; but if on the one hand, after all the iniquity she had seen and
+endured, she admitted that fierce and exemplary punishment might seem
+necessary, and that even the idea of purifying the world by the fire of a
+volcano might be entertained, on the other hand, she believed too
+strongly in the necessity of living one’s life bravely to the very end,
+to be able, under any circumstances, to regard death as either good or
+profitable.
+
+“My son,” she gently resumed, “I witnessed the growth of your scheme, and
+it neither surprised nor angered me. I accepted it as one accepts
+lightning, the very fire of the skies, something of sovereign purity and
+power. And I have helped you through it all, and have taken upon myself
+to act as the mouthpiece of your conscience.... But let me tell you
+once more, one ought never to desert the cause of life.”
+
+“It is useless to speak, mother,” Guillaume replied: “I have resolved to
+give my life and cannot take it back.... Are you now unwilling to
+carry out my desires, remain here, and act as we have decided, when all
+is over?”
+
+She did not answer this inquiry, but in her turn, speaking slowly and
+gravely, put a question to him: “So it is useless for me to speak to you
+of the children, myself and the house?” said she. “You have thought it
+all over, you are quite determined?” And as he simply answered “Yes,” she
+added: “‘Tis well, you are the master.... I will be the one who is to
+remain behind and act. And you may be without fear, your bequest is in
+good hands. All that we have decided together shall be done.”
+
+Once more they became silent. Then she again inquired: “At four o’clock,
+you say, at the moment of that consecration?”
+
+“Yes, at four o’clock.”
+
+She was still looking at him with her pale eyes, and there seemed to be
+something superhuman in her simplicity and grandeur as she sat there in
+her thin black gown. Her glance, in which the greatest bravery and the
+deepest sadness mingled, filled Guillaume with acute emotion. His hands
+began to tremble, and he asked: “Will you let me kiss you, mother?”
+
+“Oh! right willingly, my son,” she responded. “Your path of duty may not
+be mine, but you see I respect your views and love you.”
+
+They kissed one another, and when Pierre, whom the scene had chilled to
+his heart, presented himself as if he were just arriving, Mère-Grand had
+quietly taken up her needlework once more, while Guillaume was going to
+and fro, setting one of his laboratory shelves in order with all his
+wonted activity.
+
+At noon when lunch was ready, they found it necessary to wait for Thomas,
+who had not yet come home. His brothers François and Antoine complained
+in a jesting way, saying that they were dying of hunger, while for her
+part Marie, who had made a _crême_, and was very proud of it, declared
+that they would eat it all, and that those who came late would have to go
+without tasting it. When Thomas eventually put in an appearance he was
+greeted with jeers.
+
+“But it wasn’t my fault,” said he; “I stupidly came up the hill by way of
+the Rue de la Barre, and you can have no notion what a crowd I fell upon.
+Quite ten thousand pilgrims must have camped there last night. I am told
+that as many as possible were huddled together in the St. Joseph Refuge.
+The others no doubt had to sleep in the open air. And now they are busy
+eating, here, there and everywhere, all over the patches of waste ground
+and even on the pavements. One can scarcely set one foot before the other
+without risk of treading on somebody.”
+
+The meal proved a very gay one, though Pierre found the gaiety forced and
+excessive. Yet the young people could surely know nothing of the
+frightful, invisible thing which to Pierre ever seemed to be hovering
+around in the bright sunlight of that splendid June day. Was it that the
+dim presentiment which comes to loving hearts when mourning threatens
+them, swept by during the short intervals of silence that followed the
+joyous outbursts? Although Guillaume looked somewhat pale, and spoke with
+unusual caressing softness, he retained his customary bright smile. But,
+on the other hand, never had Mère-Grand been more silent or more grave.
+
+Marie’s _crême_ proved a great success, and the others congratulated her
+on it so fulsomely that they made her blush. Then, all at once, heavy
+silence fell once more, a deathly chill seemed to sweep by, making every
+face turn pale--even while they were still cleaning their plates with
+their little spoons.
+
+“Ah! that bell,” exclaimed François; “it is really intolerable. I can
+feel my head splitting.”
+
+He referred to “La Savoyarde,” the big bell of the basilica, which had
+now begun to toll, sending forth deep sonorous volumes of sound, which
+ever and ever winged their flight over the immensity of Paris. In the
+workroom they were all listening to the clang.
+
+“Will it keep on like that till four o’clock?” asked Marie.
+
+“Oh! at four o’clock,” replied Thomas, “at the moment of the consecration
+you will hear something much louder than that. The great peals of joy,
+the song of triumph will then ring out.”
+
+Guillaume was still smiling. “Yes, yes,” said he, “those who don’t want
+to be deafened for life had better keep their windows closed. The worst
+is, that Paris has to hear it whether it will or no, and even as far away
+as the Pantheon, so I’m told.”
+
+Meantime Mère-Grand remained silent and impassive. Antoine for his part
+expressed his disgust with the horrible religious pictures for which the
+pilgrims fought--pictures which in some respects suggested those on the
+lids of sweetmeat boxes, although they depicted the Christ with His
+breast ripped open and displaying His bleeding heart. There could be no
+more repulsive materialism, no grosser or baser art, said Antoine. Then
+they rose from table, talking at the top of their voices so as to make
+themselves heard above the incessant din which came from the big bell.
+
+Immediately afterwards they all set to work again. Mère-Grand took her
+everlasting needlework in hand once more, while Marie, sitting near her,
+continued some embroidery. The young men also attended to their
+respective tasks, and now and again raised their heads and exchanged a
+few words. Guillaume, for his part, likewise seemed very busy; Pierre
+alone coming and going in a state of anguish, beholding them all as in a
+nightmare, and attributing some terrible meaning to the most innocent
+remarks. During _déjeuner_, in order to explain the frightful discomfort
+into which he was thrown by the gaiety of the meal, he had been obliged
+to say that he felt poorly. And now he was looking and listening and
+waiting with ever-growing anxiety.
+
+Shortly before three o’clock, Guillaume glanced at his watch and then
+quietly took up his hat. “Well,” said he, “I’m going out.”
+
+His sons, Mère-Grand and Marie raised their heads.
+
+“I’m going out,” he repeated, “_au revoir_.”
+
+Still he did not go off. Pierre could divine that he was struggling,
+stiffening himself against the frightful tempest which was raging within
+him, striving to prevent either shudder or pallor from betraying his
+awful secret. Ah! he must have suffered keenly; he dared not give his
+sons a last kiss, for fear lest he might rouse some suspicion in their
+minds, which would impel them to oppose him and prevent his death! At
+last with supreme heroism he managed to overcome himself.
+
+“_Au revoir_, boys.”
+
+“_Au revoir_, father. Will you be home early?”
+
+“Yes, yes.... Don’t worry about me, do plenty of work.”
+
+Mère-Grand, still majestically silent, kept her eyes fixed upon him. Her
+he had ventured to kiss, and their glances met and mingled, instinct with
+all that he had decided and that she had promised: their common dream of
+truth and justice.
+
+“I say, Guillaume,” exclaimed Marie gaily, “will you undertake a
+commission for me if you are going down by way of the Rue des Martyrs?”
+
+“Why, certainly,” he replied.
+
+“Well, then, please look in at my dressmaker’s, and tell her that I
+shan’t go to try my gown on till to-morrow morning.”
+
+It was a question of her wedding dress, a gown of light grey silk, the
+stylishness of which she considered very amusing. Whenever she spoke of
+it, both she and the others began to laugh.
+
+“It’s understood, my dear,” said Guillaume, likewise making merry over
+it. “We know it’s Cinderella’s court robe, eh? The fairy brocade and lace
+that are to make you very beautiful and for ever happy.”
+
+However, the laughter ceased, and in the sudden silence which fell, it
+again seemed as if death were passing by with a great flapping of wings
+and an icy gust which chilled the hearts of everyone remaining there.
+
+“It’s understood; so now I’m really off,” resumed Guillaume. “_Au
+revoir_, children.”
+
+Then he sallied forth, without even turning round, and for a moment they
+could hear the firm tread of his feet over the garden gravel.
+
+Pierre having invented a pretext was able to follow him a couple of
+minutes afterwards. As a matter of fact there was no need for him to dog
+Guillaume’s heels, for he knew where his brother was going. He was
+thoroughly convinced that he would find him at that doorway, conducting
+to the foundations of the basilica, whence he had seen him emerge two
+days before. And so he wasted no time in looking for him among the crowd
+of pilgrims going to the church. His only thought was to hurry on and
+reach Jahan’s workshop. And in accordance with his expectation, just as
+he arrived there, he perceived Guillaume slipping between the broken
+palings. The crush and the confusion prevailing among the concourse of
+believers favored Pierre as it had his brother, in such wise that he was
+able to follow the latter and enter the doorway without being noticed.
+Once there he had to pause and draw breath for a moment, so greatly did
+the beating of his heart oppress him.
+
+A precipitous flight of steps, where all was steeped in darkness,
+descended from the narrow entry. It was with infinite precaution that
+Pierre ventured into the gloom, which ever grew denser and denser. He
+lowered his feet gently so as to make no noise, and feeling the walls
+with his hands, turned round and round as he went lower and lower into a
+kind of well. However, the descent was not a very long one. As soon as he
+found beaten ground beneath his feet he paused, no longer daring to stir
+for fear of betraying his presence. The darkness was like ink, and there
+was not a sound, a breath; the silence was complete.
+
+How should he find his way? he wondered. Which direction ought he to
+take? He was still hesitating when some twenty paces away he suddenly saw
+a bright spark, the gleam of a lucifer. Guillaume was lighting a candle.
+Pierre recognised his broad shoulders, and from that moment he simply had
+to follow the flickering light along a walled and vaulted subterranean
+gallery. It seemed to be interminable and to run in a northerly
+direction, towards the nave of the basilica.
+
+All at once the little light at last stopped, while Pierre, anxious to
+see what would happen, continued to advance, treading as softly as he
+could and remaining in the gloom. He found that Guillaume had stood his
+candle upon the ground in the middle of a kind of low rotunda under the
+crypt, and that he had knelt down and moved aside a long flagstone which
+seemed to cover a cavity. They were here among the foundations of the
+basilica; and one of the columns or piles of concrete poured into shafts
+in order to support the building could be seen. The gap, which the stone
+slab removed by Guillaume had covered, was by the very side of the
+pillar; it was either some natural surface flaw, or a deep fissure caused
+by some subsidence or settling of the soil. The heads of other pillars
+could be descried around, and these the cleft seemed to be reaching, for
+little slits branched out in all directions. Then, on seeing his brother
+leaning forward, like one who is for the last time examining a mine he
+has laid before applying a match to the fuse, Pierre suddenly understood
+the whole terrifying business. Considerable quantities of the new
+explosive had been brought to that spot. Guillaume had made the journey a
+score of times at carefully selected hours, and all his powder had been
+poured into the gap beside the pillar, spreading to the slightest rifts
+below, saturating the soil at a great depth, and in this wise forming a
+natural mine of incalculable force. And now the powder was flush with the
+flagstone which Guillaume has just moved aside. It was only necessary to
+throw a match there, and everything would be blown into the air!
+
+For a moment an acute chill of horror rooted Pierre to the spot. He could
+neither have taken a step nor raised a cry. He pictured the swarming
+throng above him, the ten thousand pilgrims crowding the lofty naves of
+the basilica to witness the solemn consecration of the Host. Peal upon
+peal flew from “La Savoyarde,” incense smoked, and ten thousand voices
+raised a hymn of magnificence and praise. And all at once came thunder
+and earthquake, and a volcano opening and belching forth fire and smoke,
+and swallowing up the whole church and its multitude of worshippers.
+Breaking the concrete piles and rending the unsound soil, the explosion,
+which was certain to be one of extraordinary violence, would doubtless
+split the edifice atwain, and hurl one-half down the slopes descending
+towards Paris, whilst the other on the side of the apse would crumble and
+collapse upon the spot where it stood. And how fearful would be the
+avalanche; a broken forest of scaffoldings, a hail of stonework, rushing
+and bounding through the dust and smoke on to the roofs below; whilst the
+violence of the shock would threaten the whole of Montmartre, which, it
+seemed likely, must stagger and sink in one huge mass of ruins!
+
+However, Guillaume had again risen. The candle standing on the ground,
+its flame shooting up, erect and slender, threw his huge shadow all over
+the subterranean vault. Amidst the dense blackness the light looked like
+some dismal stationary star. Guillaume drew near to it in order to see
+what time it was by his watch. It proved to be five minutes past three.
+So he had nearly another hour to wait. He was in no hurry, he wished to
+carry out his design punctually, at the precise moment he had selected;
+and he therefore sat down on a block of stone, and remained there without
+moving, quiet and patient. The candle now cast its light upon his pale
+face, upon his towering brow crowned with white hair, upon the whole of
+his energetic countenance, which still looked handsome and young, thanks
+to his bright eyes and dark moustaches. And not a muscle of his face
+stirred; he simply gazed into the void. What thoughts could be passing
+through his mind at that supreme moment? Who could tell? There was not a
+quiver; heavy night, the deep eternal silence of the earth reigned all
+around.
+
+Then Pierre, having quieted his palpitating heart, drew near. At the
+sound of his footsteps Guillaume rose menacingly, but he immediately
+recognised his brother, and did not seem astonished to see him.
+
+“Ah! it’s you,” he said, “you followed me.... I felt that you
+possessed my secret. And it grieves me that you should have abused your
+knowledge to join me here. You might have spared me this last sorrow.”
+
+Pierre clasped his trembling hands, and at once tried to entreat him.
+“Brother, brother,” he began.
+
+“No, don’t speak yet,” said Guillaume, “if you absolutely wish it I will
+listen to you by-and-by. We have nearly an hour before us, so we can
+chat. But I want you to understand the futility of all you may think
+needful to tell me. My resolution is unshakable; I was a long time coming
+to it, and in carrying it out I shall simply be acting in accordance with
+my reason and my conscience.”
+
+Then he quietly related that having decided upon a great deed he had long
+hesitated as to which edifice he should destroy. The opera-house had
+momentarily tempted him, but he had reflected that there would be no
+great significance in the whirlwind of anger and justice destroying a
+little set of enjoyers. In fact, such a deed might savour of jealousy and
+covetousness. Next he had thought of the Bourse, where he might strike a
+blow at money, the great agent of corruption, and the capitalist society
+in whose clutches the wage-earners groaned. Only, here again the blow
+would fall upon a restricted circle. Then an idea of destroying the
+Palace of Justice, particularly the assize court, had occurred to him. It
+was a very tempting thought--to wreak justice upon human justice, to
+sweep away the witnesses, the culprit, the public prosecutor who charges
+the latter, the counsel who defends him, the judges who sentence him, and
+the lounging public which comes to the spot as to the unfolding of some
+sensational serial. And then too what fierce irony there would be in the
+summary superior justice of the volcano swallowing up everything
+indiscriminately without pausing to enter into details. However, the plan
+over which he had most lingered was that of blowing up the Arc de
+Triomphe. This he regarded as an odious monument which perpetuated
+warfare, hatred among nations, and the false, dearly purchased,
+sanguineous glory of conquerors. That colossus raised to the memory of so
+much frightful slaughter which had uselessly put an end to so many human
+lives, ought, he considered, to be slaughtered in its turn. Could he so
+have arranged things that the earth should swallow it up, he might have
+achieved the glory of causing no other death than his own, of dying
+alone, struck down, crushed to pieces beneath that giant of stone. What a
+tomb, and what a memory might he thus have left to the world!
+
+“But there was no means of approaching it,” he continued, “no basement,
+no cellar, so I had to give up the idea.... And then, although I’m
+perfectly willing to die alone, I thought what a loftier and more
+terrible lesson there would be in the unjust death of an innocent
+multitude, of thousands of unknown people, of all those that might happen
+to be passing. In the same way as human society by dint of injustice,
+want and harsh regulations causes so many innocent victims, so must
+punishment fall as the lightning falls, indiscriminately killing and
+destroying whatever it may encounter in its course. When a man sets his
+foot on an ant-hill, he gives no heed to all the lives which he stamps
+out.”
+
+Pierre, whom this theory rendered quite indignant, raised a cry of
+protest: “Oh! brother, brother, is it you who are saying such things?”
+
+Yet, Guillaume did not pause: “If I have ended by choosing this basilica
+of the Sacred Heart,” he continued, “it is because I found it near at
+hand and easy to destroy. But it is also because it haunts and
+exasperates me, because I have long since condemned it.... As I have
+often said to you, one cannot imagine anything more preposterous than
+Paris, our great Paris, crowned and dominated by this temple raised to
+the glorification of the absurd. Is it not outrageous that common sense
+should receive such a smack after so many centuries of science, that Rome
+should claim the right of triumphing in this insolent fashion, on our
+loftiest height in the full sunlight? The priests want Paris to repent
+and do penitence for its liberative work of truth and justice. But its
+only right course is to sweep away all that hampers and insults it in its
+march towards deliverance. And so may the temple fall with its deity of
+falsehood and servitude! And may its ruins crush its worshippers, so that
+like one of the old geological revolutions of the world, the catastrophe
+may resound through the very entrails of mankind, and renew and change
+it!”
+
+“Brother, brother!” again cried Pierre, quite beside himself, “is it you
+who are talking? What! you, a great scientist, a man of great heart, you
+have come to this! What madness is stirring you that you should think and
+say such abominable things? On the evening when we confessed our secrets
+one to the other, you told me of your proud and lofty dream of ideal
+Anarchy. There would be free harmony in life, which left to its natural
+forces would of itself create happiness. But you still rebelled against
+the idea of theft and murder. You would not accept them as right or
+necessary; you merely explained and excused them. What has happened then
+that you, all brain and thought, should now have become the hateful hand
+that acts?”
+
+“Salvat has been guillotined,” said Guillaume simply, “and I read his
+will and testament in his last glance. I am merely an executor.... And
+what has happened, you ask? Why, all that has made me suffer for four
+months past, the whole social evil which surrounds us, and which must be
+brought to an end.”
+
+Silence fell. The brothers looked at one another in the darkness. And
+Pierre now understood things. He saw that Guillaume was changed, that the
+terrible gust of revolutionary contagion sweeping over Paris had
+transformed him. It had all come from the duality of his nature, the
+presence of contradictory elements within him. On one side one found a
+scientist whose whole creed lay in observation and experiment, who, in
+dealing with nature, evinced the most cautious logic; while on the other
+side was a social dreamer, haunted by ideas of fraternity, equality and
+justice, and eager for universal happiness. Thence had first come the
+theoretical anarchist that he had been, one in whom science and chimeras
+were mingled, who dreamt of human society returning to the harmonious law
+of the spheres, each man free, in a free association, regulated by love
+alone. Neither Théophile Morin with the doctrines of Proudhon and Comte,
+nor Bache with those of St. Simon and Fourier, had been able to satisfy
+his desire for the absolute. All those systems had seemed to him
+imperfect and chaotic, destructive of one another, and tending to the
+same wretchedness of life. Janzen alone had occasionally satisfied him
+with some of his curt phrases which shot over the horizon, like arrows
+conquering the whole earth for the human family. And then in Guillaume’s
+big heart, which the idea of want, the unjust sufferings of the lowly and
+the poor exasperated, Salvat’s tragic adventure had suddenly found place,
+fomenting supreme rebellion. For long weeks he had lived on with
+trembling hands, with growing anguish clutching at his throat. First had
+come that bomb and the explosion which still made him quiver, then the
+vile cupidity of the newspapers howling for the poor wretch’s head, then
+the search for him and the hunt through the Bois de Boulogne, till he
+fell into the hands of the police, covered with mud and dying of
+starvation. And afterwards there had been the assize court, the judges,
+the gendarmes, the witnesses, the whole of France arrayed against one man
+and bent on making him pay for the universal crime. And finally, there
+had come the guillotine, the monstrous, the filthy beast consummating
+irreparable injustice in human justice’s name. One sole idea now remained
+to Guillaume, that idea of justice which maddened him, leaving naught in
+his mind save the thought of the just, avenging flare by which he would
+repair the evil and ensure that which was right for all time forward.
+Salvat had looked at him, and contagion had done its work; he glowed with
+a desire for death, a desire to give his own blood and set the blood of
+others flowing, in order that mankind, amidst its fright and horror,
+should decree the return of the golden age.
+
+Pierre understood the stubborn blindness of such insanity; and he felt
+utterly upset by the fear that he should be unable to overcome it. “You
+are mad, brother!” he exclaimed, “they have driven you mad! It is a gust
+of violence passing; they were treated in a wrong way and too
+relentlessly at the outset, and now that they are avenging one another,
+it may be that blood will never cease to flow.... But, listen,
+brother, throw off that nightmare. You can’t be a Salvat who murders or a
+Bergaz who steals! Remember the pillage of the Princess’s house and
+remember the fair-haired, pretty child whom we saw lying yonder, ripped
+open.... You do not, you cannot belong to that set, brother--”
+
+With a wave of his hand, Guillaume brushed these vain reasons aside. Of
+what consequence were a few lives, his own included? No change had ever
+taken place in the world without millions and millions of existences
+being stamped out.
+
+“But you had a great scheme in hand,” cried Pierre, hoping to save him by
+reviving his sense of duty. “It isn’t allowable for you to go off like
+this.”
+
+Then he fervently strove to awaken his brother’s scientific pride. He
+spoke to him of his secret, of that great engine of warfare, which could
+destroy armies and reduce cities to dust, and which he had intended to
+offer to France, so that on emerging victorious from the approaching war,
+she might afterwards become the deliverer of the world. And it was this
+grand scheme that he had abandoned, preferring to employ his explosive in
+killing innocent people and overthrowing a church, which would be built
+afresh, whatever the cost, and become a sanctuary of martyrs!
+
+Guillaume smiled. “I have not relinquished my scheme,” said he, “I have
+simply modified it. Did I not tell you of my doubts, my anxious
+perplexity? Ah! to believe that one holds the destiny of the world in
+one’s grasp, and to tremble and hesitate and wonder if the intelligence
+and wisdom, that are needful for things to take the one wise course, will
+be forthcoming! At sight of all the stains upon our great Paris, all the
+errors and transgressions which we lately witnessed, I shuddered. I asked
+myself if Paris were sufficiently calm and pure for one to entrust her
+with omnipotence. How terrible would be the disaster if such an invention
+as mine should fall into the hands of a demented nation, possibly a
+dictator, some man of conquest, who would simply employ it to terrorize
+other nations and reduce them to slavery.... Ah! no, I do not wish to
+perpetuate warfare, I wish to kill it.”
+
+Then in a clear firm voice he explained his new plan, in which Pierre was
+surprised to find some of the ideas which General de Bozonnet had one day
+laid before him in a very different spirit. Warfare was on the road to
+extinction, threatened by its very excesses. In the old days of
+mercenaries, and afterwards with conscripts, the percentage of soldiers
+designated by chance, war had been a profession and a passion. But
+nowadays, when everybody is called upon to fight, none care to do so. By
+the logical force of things, the system of the whole nation in arms means
+the coming end of armies. How much longer will the nations remain on a
+footing of deadly peace, bowed down by ever increasing “estimates,”
+ spending millions and millions on holding one another in respect? Ah! how
+great the deliverance, what a cry of relief would go up on the day when
+some formidable engine, capable of destroying armies and sweeping cities
+away, should render war an impossibility and constrain every people to
+disarm! Warfare would be dead, killed in her own turn, she who has killed
+so many. This was Guillaume’s dream, and he grew quite enthusiastic, so
+strong was his conviction that he would presently bring it to pass.
+
+“Everything is settled,” said he; “if I am about to die and disappear, it
+is in order that my idea may triumph.... You have lately seen me spend
+whole afternoons alone with Mère-Grand. Well, we were completing the
+classification of the documents and making our final arrangements. She
+has my orders, and will execute them even at the risk of her life, for
+none has a braver, loftier soul.... As soon as I am dead, buried
+beneath these stones, as soon as she has heard the explosion shake Paris
+and proclaim the advent of the new era, she will forward a set of all the
+documents I have confided to her--the formula of my explosive, the
+drawings of the bomb and gun--to each of the great powers of the world.
+In this wise I shall bestow on all the nations the terrible gift of
+destruction and omnipotence which, at first, I wished to bestow on France
+alone; and I do this in order that the nations, being one and all armed
+with the thunderbolt, may at once disarm, for fear of being annihilated,
+when seeking to annihilate others.”
+
+Pierre listened to him, gaping, amazed at this extraordinary idea, in
+which childishness was blended with genius. “Well,” said he, “if you give
+your secret to all the nations, why should you blow up this church, and
+die yourself?”
+
+“Why! In order that I may be believed!” cried Guillaume with
+extraordinary force of utterance. Then he added, “The edifice must lie on
+the ground, and I must be under it. If the experiment is not made, if
+universal horror does not attest and proclaim the amazing destructive
+power of my explosive, people will consider me a mere schemer, a
+visionary!... A lot of dead, a lot of blood, that is what is needed in
+order that blood may for ever cease to flow!” Then, with a broad sweep of
+his arm, he again declared that his action was necessary. “Besides,” he
+said, “Salvat left me the legacy of carrying out this deed of justice. If
+I have given it greater scope and significance, utilising it as a means
+of hastening the end of war, this is because I happen to be a man of
+intellect. It would have been better possibly if my mind had been a
+simple one, and if I had merely acted like some volcano which changes the
+soil, leaving life the task of renewing humanity.”
+
+Much of the candle had now burnt away, and Guillaume at last rose from
+the block of stone. He had again consulted his watch, and found that he
+had ten minutes left him. The little current of air created by his
+gestures made the light flicker, while all around him the darkness seemed
+to grow denser. And near at hand ever lay the threatening open mine which
+a spark might at any moment fire.
+
+“It is nearly time,” said Guillaume. “Come, brother, kiss me and go away.
+You know how much I love you, what ardent affection for you has been
+awakened in my old heart. So love me in like fashion, and find love
+enough to let me die as I want to die, in carrying out my duty. Kiss me,
+kiss me, and go away without turning your head.”
+
+His deep affection for Pierre made his voice tremble, but he struggled
+on, forced back his tears, and ended by conquering himself. It was as if
+he were no longer of the world, no longer one of mankind.
+
+“No, brother, you have not convinced me,” said Pierre, who on his side
+did not seek to hide his tears, “and it is precisely because I love you
+as you love me, with my whole being, my whole soul, that I cannot go
+away. It is impossible! You cannot be the madman, the murderer you would
+try to be.”
+
+“Why not? Am I not free. I have rid my life of all responsibilities, all
+ties.... I have brought up my sons, they have no further need of me.
+But one heart-link remained--Marie, and I have given her to you.”
+
+At this a disturbing argument occurred to Pierre, and he passionately
+availed himself of it. “So you want to die because you have given me
+Marie,” said he. “You still love her, confess it!”
+
+“No!” cried Guillaume, “I no longer love her, I swear it. I gave her to
+you. I love her no more.”
+
+“So you fancied; but you can see now that you still love her, for here
+you are, quite upset; whereas none of the terrifying things of which we
+spoke just now could even move you.... Yes, if you wish to die it is
+because you have lost Marie!”
+
+Guillaume quivered, shaken by what his brother said, and in low, broken
+words he tried to question himself. “No, no, that any love pain should
+have urged me to this terrible deed would be unworthy--unworthy of my
+great design. No, no, I decided on it in the free exercise of my reason,
+and I am accomplishing it from no personal motive, but in the name of
+justice and for the benefit of humanity, in order that war and want may
+cease.”
+
+Then, in sudden anguish, he went on: “Ah! it is cruel of you, brother,
+cruel of you to poison my delight at dying. I have created all the
+happiness I could, I was going off well pleased at leaving you all happy,
+and now you poison my death. No, no! question it how I may, my heart does
+not ache; if I love Marie, it is simply in the same way as I love you.”
+
+Nevertheless, he remained perturbed, as if fearing lest he might be lying
+to himself; and by degrees gloomy anger came over him: “Listen, that is
+enough, Pierre,” he exclaimed, “time is flying.... For the last time,
+go away! I order you to do so; I will have it!”
+
+“I will not obey you, Guillaume.... I will stay, and as all my
+reasoning cannot save you from your insanity, fire your mine, and I will
+die with you.”
+
+“You? Die? But you have no right to do so, you are not free!”
+
+“Free, or not, I swear that I will die with you. And if it merely be a
+question of flinging this candle into that hole, tell me so, and I will
+take it and fling it there myself.”
+
+He made a gesture at which his brother thought that he was about to carry
+out his threat. So he caught him by the arm, crying: “Why should you die?
+It would be absurd. That others should die may be necessary, but you, no!
+Of what use could be this additional monstrosity? You are endeavouring to
+soften me, you are torturing my heart!” Then all at once, imagining that
+Pierre’s offer had concealed another design, Guillaume thundered in a
+fury: “You don’t want to take the candle in order to throw it there. What
+you want to do is to blow it out! And you think I shan’t be able
+then--ah! you bad brother!”
+
+In his turn Pierre exclaimed: “Oh! certainly, I’ll use every means to
+prevent you from accomplishing such a frightful and foolish deed!”
+
+“You’ll prevent me!”
+
+“Yes, I’ll cling to you, I’ll fasten my arms to your shoulders, I’ll hold
+your hands if necessary.”
+
+“Ah! you’ll prevent me, you bad brother! You think you’ll prevent me!”
+
+Choking and trembling with rage, Guillaume had already caught hold of
+Pierre, pressing his ribs with his powerful muscular arms. They were
+closely linked together, their eyes fixed upon one another, and their
+breath mingling in that kind of subterranean dungeon, where their big
+dancing shadows looked like ghosts. They seemed to be vanishing into the
+night, the candle now showed merely like a little yellow tear in the
+midst of the darkness; and at that moment, in those far depths, a quiver
+sped through the silence of the earth which weighed so heavily upon them.
+Distant but sonorous peals rang out, as if death itself were somewhere
+ringing its invisible bell.
+
+“You hear,” stammered Guillaume, “it’s their bell up there. The time has
+come. I have vowed to act, and you want to prevent me!”
+
+“Yes, I’ll prevent you as long as I’m here alive.”
+
+“As long as you are alive, you’ll prevent me!”
+
+Guillaume could hear “La Savoyarde” pealing joyfully up yonder; he could
+see the triumphant basilica, overflowing with its ten thousand pilgrims,
+and blazing with the splendour of the Host amidst the smoke of incense;
+and blind frenzy came over him at finding himself unable to act, at
+finding an obstacle suddenly barring the road to his fixed idea.
+
+“As long as you are alive, as long as you are alive!” he repeated, beside
+himself. “Well, then, die, you wretched brother!”
+
+A fratricidal gleam had darted from his blurred eyes. He hastily stooped,
+picked up a large brick forgotten there, and raised it with both hands as
+if it were a club.
+
+“Ah! I’m willing,” cried Pierre. “Kill me, then; kill your own brother
+before you kill the others!”
+
+The brick was already descending, but Guillaume’s arms must have
+deviated, for the weapon only grazed one of Pierre’s shoulders.
+Nevertheless, he sank upon his knees in the gloom. When Guillaume saw him
+there he fancied he had dealt him a mortal blow. What was it that had
+happened between them, what had he done? For a moment he remained
+standing, haggard, his mouth open, his eyes dilating with terror. He
+looked at his hands, fancying that blood was streaming from them. Then he
+pressed them to his brow, which seemed to be bursting with pain, as if
+his fixed idea had been torn from him, leaving his skull open. And he
+himself suddenly sank upon the ground with a great sob.
+
+“Oh! brother, little brother, what have I done?” he called. “I am a
+monster!”
+
+But Pierre had passionately caught him in his arms again. “It is nothing,
+nothing, brother, I assure you,” he replied. “Ah! you are weeping now.
+How pleased I am! You are saved, I can feel it, since you are weeping.
+And what a good thing it is that you flew into such a passion, for your
+anger with me has dispelled your evil dream of violence.”
+
+“I am horrified with myself,” gasped Guillaume, “to think that I wanted
+to kill you! Yes, I’m a brute beast that would kill his brother! And the
+others, too, all the others up yonder.... Oh! I’m cold, I feel so
+cold.”
+
+His teeth were chattering, and he shivered. It was as if he had awakened,
+half stupefied, from some evil dream. And in the new light which his
+fratricidal deed cast upon things, the scheme which had haunted him and
+goaded him to madness appeared like some act of criminal folly, projected
+by another.
+
+“To kill you!” he repeated almost in a whisper. “I shall never forgive
+myself. My life is ended, I shall never find courage enough to live.”
+
+But Pierre clasped him yet more tightly. “What do you say?” he answered.
+“Will there not rather be a fresh and stronger tie of affection between
+us? Ah! yes, brother, let me save you as you saved me, and we shall be
+yet more closely united! Don’t you remember that evening at Neuilly, when
+you consoled me and held me to your heart as I am holding you to mine? I
+had confessed my torments to you, and you told me that I must live and
+love!... And you did far more afterwards: you plucked your own love
+from your breast and gave it to me. You wished to ensure my happiness at
+the price of your own! And how delightful it is that, in my turn, I now
+have an opportunity to console you, save you, and bring you back to
+life!”
+
+“No, no, the bloodstain is there and it is ineffaceable. I can hope no
+more!”
+
+“Yes, yes, you can. Hope in life as you bade me do! Hope in love and hope
+in labour!”
+
+Still weeping and clasping one another, the brothers continued speaking
+in low voices. The expiring candle suddenly went out unknown to them, and
+in the inky night and deep silence their tears of redeeming affection
+flowed freely. On the one hand, there was joy at being able to repay a
+debt of brotherliness, and on the other, acute emotion at having been led
+by a fanatical love of justice and mankind to the very verge of crime.
+And there were yet other things in the depths of those tears which
+cleansed and purified them; there were protests against suffering in
+every form, and ardent wishes that the world might some day be relieved
+of all its dreadful woe.
+
+At last, after pushing the flagstone over the cavity near the pillar,
+Pierre groped his way out of the vault, leading Guillaume like a child.
+
+Meantime Mère-Grand, still seated near the window of the workroom, had
+impassively continued sewing. Now and again, pending the arrival of four
+o’clock, she had looked up at the timepiece hanging on the wall on her
+left hand, or else had glanced out of the window towards the unfinished
+pile of the basilica, which a gigantic framework of scaffoldings
+encompassed. Slowly and steadily plying her needle, the old lady remained
+very pale and silent, but full of heroic serenity. On the other hand,
+Marie, who sat near her, embroidering, shifted her position a score of
+times, broke her thread, and grew impatient, feeling strangely nervous, a
+prey to unaccountable anxiety, which oppressed her heart. For their part,
+the three young men could not keep in place at all; it was as if some
+contagious fever disturbed them. Each had gone to his work: Thomas was
+filing something at his bench; François and Antoine were on either side
+of their table, the first trying to solve a mathematical problem, and the
+other copying a bunch of poppies in a vase before him. It was in vain,
+however, that they strove to be attentive. They quivered at the slightest
+sound, raised their heads, and darted questioning glances at one another.
+What could be the matter? What could possess them? What did they fear?
+Now and again one or the other would rise, stretch himself, and then,
+resume his place. However, they did not speak; it was as if they dared
+not say anything, and thus the heavy silence grew more and more terrible.
+
+When it was a few minutes to four o’clock Mère-Grand felt weary, or else
+desired to collect her thoughts. After another glance at the timepiece,
+she let her needlework fall on her lap and turned towards the basilica.
+It seemed to her that she had only enough strength left to wait; and she
+remained with her eyes fixed on the huge walls and the forest of
+scaffolding which rose over yonder with such triumphant pride under the
+blue sky. Then all at once, however brave and firm she might be, she
+could not restrain a start, for “La Savoyarde” had raised a joyful clang.
+The consecration of the Host was now at hand, the ten thousand pilgrims
+filled the church, four o’clock was about to strike. And thereupon an
+irresistible impulse forced the old lady to her feet; she drew herself
+up, quivering, her hands clasped, her eyes ever turned yonder, waiting in
+mute dread.
+
+“What is the matter?” cried Thomas, who noticed her. “Why are you
+trembling, Mère-Grand?”
+
+François and Antoine raised their heads, and in turn sprang forward.
+
+“Are you ill? Why are you turning so pale, you who are so courageous?”
+
+But she did not answer. Ah! might the force of the explosion rend the
+earth asunder, reach the house and sweep it into the flaming crater of
+the volcano! Might she and the three young men, might they all die with
+the father, this was her one ardent wish in order that grief might be
+spared them. And she remained waiting and waiting, quivering despite
+herself, but with her brave, clear eyes ever gazing yonder.
+
+“Mère-Grand, Mère-Grand!” cried Marie in dismay; “you frighten us by
+refusing to answer us, by looking over there as if some misfortune were
+coming up at a gallop!”
+
+Then, prompted by the same anguish, the same cry suddenly came from
+Thomas, François and Antoine: “Father is in peril--father is going to
+die!”
+
+What did they know? Nothing precise, certainly. Thomas no doubt had been
+astonished to see what a large quantity of the explosive his father had
+recently prepared, and both François and Antoine were aware of the ideas
+of revolt which he harboured in his mind. But, full of filial deference,
+they never sought to know anything beyond what he might choose to confide
+to them. They never questioned him; they bowed to whatever he might do.
+And yet now a foreboding came to them, a conviction that their father was
+going to die, that some most frightful catastrophe was impending. It must
+have been that which had already sent such a quiver through the
+atmosphere ever since the morning, making them shiver with fever, feel
+ill at ease, and unable to work.
+
+“Father is going to die, father is going to die!”
+
+The three big fellows had drawn close together, distracted by one and the
+same anguish, and furiously longing to know what the danger was, in order
+that they might rush upon it and die with their father if they could not
+save him. And amidst Mère-Grand’s stubborn silence death once more
+flitted through the room: there came a cold gust such as they had already
+felt brushing past them during _déjeuner_.
+
+At last four o’clock began to strike, and Mère-Grand raised her white
+hands with a gesture of supreme entreaty. It was then that she at last
+spoke: “Father is going to die. Nothing but the duty of living can save
+him.”
+
+At this the three young men again wished to rush yonder, whither they
+knew not; but they felt that they must throw down all obstacles and
+conquer. Their powerlessness rent their hearts, they were both so frantic
+and so woeful that their grandmother strove to calm them. “Father’s own
+wish was to die,” said she, “and he is resolved to die alone.”
+
+They shuddered as they heard her, and then, on their side, strove to be
+heroic. But the minutes crept by, and it seemed as if the cold gust had
+slowly passed away. Sometimes, at the twilight hour, a night-bird will
+come in by the window like some messenger of misfortune, flit round the
+darkened room, and then fly off again, carrying its sadness with it. And
+it was much like that; the gust passed, the basilica remained standing,
+the earth did not open to swallow it. Little by little the atrocious
+anguish which wrung their hearts gave place to hope. And when at last
+Guillaume appeared, followed by Pierre, a great cry of resurrection came
+from one and all: “Father!”
+
+Their kisses, their tears, deprived him of his little remaining strength.
+He was obliged to sit down. He had glanced round him as if he were
+returning to life perforce. Mère-Grand, who understood what bitter
+feelings must have followed the subjugation of his will, approached him
+smiling, and took hold of both his hands as if to tell him that she was
+well pleased at seeing him again, and at finding that he accepted his
+task and was unwilling to desert the cause of life. For his part he
+suffered dreadfully, the shock had been so great. The others spared him
+any narrative of their feelings; and he, himself, related nothing. With a
+gesture, a loving word, he simply indicated that it was Pierre who had
+saved him.
+
+Thereupon, in a corner of the room, Marie flung her arms round the young
+man’s neck. “Ah! my good Pierre, I have never yet kissed you,” said she;
+“I want it to be for something serious the first time.... I love you,
+my good Pierre, I love you with all my heart.”
+
+Later that same evening, after night had fallen, Guillaume and Pierre
+remained for a moment alone in the big workroom. The young men had gone
+out, and Mère-Grand and Marie were upstairs sorting some house linen,
+while Madame Mathis, who had brought some work back, sat patiently in a
+dim corner waiting for another bundle of things which might require
+mending. The brothers, steeped in the soft melancholy of the twilight
+hour, and chatting in low tones, had quite forgotten her.
+
+But all at once the arrival of a visitor upset them. It was Janzen with
+the fair, Christ-like face. He called very seldom nowadays; and one never
+knew from what gloomy spot he had come or into what darkness he would
+return when he took his departure. He disappeared, indeed, for months
+together, and was then suddenly to be seen like some momentary passer-by
+whose past and present life were alike unknown.
+
+“I am leaving to-night,” he said in a voice sharp like a knife.
+
+“Are you going back to your home in Russia?” asked Guillaume.
+
+A faint, disdainful smile appeared on the Anarchist’s lips. “Home!” said
+he, “I am at home everywhere. To begin with, I am not a Russian, and then
+I recognise no other country than the world.”
+
+With a sweeping gesture he gave them to understand what manner of man he
+was, one who had no fatherland of his own, but carried his gory dream of
+fraternity hither and thither regardless of frontiers. From some words he
+spoke the brothers fancied he was returning to Spain, where some
+fellow-Anarchists awaited him. There was a deal of work to be done there,
+it appeared. He had quietly seated himself, chatting on in his cold way,
+when all at once he serenely added: “By the by, a bomb had just been
+thrown into the Cafe de l’Univers on the Boulevard. Three _bourgeois_
+were killed.”
+
+Pierre and Guillaume shuddered, and asked for particulars. Thereupon
+Janzen related that he had happened to be there, had heard the explosion,
+and seen the windows of the café shivered to atoms. Three customers were
+lying on the floor blown to pieces. Two of them were gentlemen, who had
+entered the place by chance and whose names were not known, while the
+third was a regular customer, a petty cit of the neighbourhood, who came
+every day to play a game at dominoes. And the whole place was wrecked;
+the marble tables were broken, the chandeliers twisted out of shape, the
+mirrors studded with projectiles. And how great the terror and the
+indignation, and how frantic the rush of the crowd! The perpetrator of
+the deed had been arrested immediately--in fact, just as he was turning
+the corner of the Rue Caumartin.
+
+“I thought I would come and tell you of it,” concluded Janzen; “it is
+well you should know it.”
+
+Then as Pierre, shuddering and already suspecting the truth, asked him if
+he knew who the man was that had been arrested, he slowly replied: “The
+worry is that you happen to know him--it was little Victor Mathis.”
+
+Pierre tried to silence Janzen too late. He had suddenly remembered that
+Victor’s mother had been sitting in a dark corner behind them a short
+time previously. Was she still there? Then he again pictured Victor,
+slight and almost beardless, with a straight, stubborn brow, grey eyes
+glittering with intelligence, a pointed nose and thin lips expressive of
+stern will and unforgiving hatred. He was no simple and lowly one from
+the ranks of the disinherited. He was an educated scion of the
+_bourgeoisie_, and but for circumstances would have entered the École
+Normale. There was no excuse for his abominable deed, there was no
+political passion, no humanitarian insanity, in it. He was the destroyer
+pure and simple, the theoretician of destruction, the cold energetic man
+of intellect who gave his cultivated mind to arguing the cause of murder,
+in his desire to make murder an instrument of the social evolution. True,
+he was also a poet, a visionary, but the most frightful of all
+visionaries: a monster whose nature could only be explained by mad pride,
+and who craved for the most awful immortality, dreaming that the coming
+dawn would rise from the arms of the guillotine. Only one thing could
+surpass him: the scythe of death which blindly mows the world.
+
+For a few seconds, amidst the growing darkness, cold horror reigned in
+the workroom. “Ah!” muttered Guillaume, “he had the daring to do it, he
+had.”
+
+Pierre, however, lovingly pressed his arm. And he felt that he was as
+distracted, as upset, as himself. Perhaps this last abomination had been
+needed to ravage and cure him.
+
+Janzen no doubt had been an accomplice in the deed. He was relating that
+Victor’s purpose had been to avenge Salvat, when all at once a great sigh
+of pain was heard in the darkness, followed by a heavy thud upon the
+floor. It was Madame Mathis falling like a bundle, overwhelmed by the
+news which chance had brought her. At that moment it so happened that
+Mère-Grand came down with a lamp, which lighted up the room, and
+thereupon they hurried to the help of the wretched woman, who lay there
+as pale as a corpse in her flimsy black gown.
+
+And this again brought Pierre an indescribable heart-pang. Ah! the poor,
+sad, suffering creature! He remembered her at Abbé Rose’s, so discreet,
+so shamefaced, in her poverty, scarce able to live upon the slender
+resources which persistent misfortunes had left her. Hers had indeed been
+a cruel lot: first, a home with wealthy parents in the provinces, a love
+story and elopement with the man of her choice; next, ill-luck steadily
+pursuing her, all sorts of home troubles, and at last her husband’s
+death. Then, in the retirement of her widowhood, after losing the best
+part of the little income which had enabled her to bring up her son,
+naught but this son had been left to her. He had been her Victor, her
+sole affection, the only one in whom she had faith. She had ever striven
+to believe that he was very busy, absorbed in work, and on the eve of
+attaining to some superb position worthy of his merits. And now, all at
+once, she had learnt that this fondly loved son was simply the most
+odious of assassins, that he had flung a bomb into a café, and had there
+killed three men.
+
+When Madame Mathis had recovered her senses, thanks to the careful
+tending of Mère-Grand, she sobbed on without cessation, raising such a
+continuous doleful wail, that Pierre’s hand again sought Guillaume’s, and
+grasped it, whilst their hearts, distracted but healed, mingled lovingly
+one with the other.
+
+
+
+
+V. LIFE’S WORK AND PROMISE
+
+FIFTEEN months later, one fine golden day in September, Bache and
+Théophile Morin were taking _déjeuner_ at Guillaume’s, in the big
+workroom overlooking the immensity of Paris.
+
+Near the table was a cradle with its little curtains drawn. Behind them
+slept Jean, a fine boy four months old, the son of Pierre and Marie. The
+latter, simply in order to protect the child’s social rights, had been
+married civilly at the town-hall of Montmartre. Then, by way of pleasing
+Guillaume, who wished to keep them with him, and thus enlarge the family
+circle, they had continued living in the little lodging over the
+work-shop, leaving the sleepy house at Neuilly in the charge of Sophie,
+Pierre’s old servant. And life had been flowing on happily for the
+fourteen months or so that they had now belonged to one another.
+
+There was simply peace, affection and work around the young couple.
+François, who had left the École Normale provided with every degree,
+every diploma, was now about to start for a college in the west of
+France, so as to serve his term of probation as a professor, intending to
+resign his post afterwards and devote himself, if he pleased, to science
+pure and simple. Then Antoine had lately achieved great success with a
+series of engravings he had executed--some views and scenes of Paris
+life; and it was settled that he was to marry Lise Jahan in the ensuing
+spring, when she would have completed her seventeenth year. Of the three
+sons, however, Thomas was the most triumphant, for he had at last devised
+and constructed his little motor, thanks to a happy idea of his father’s.
+One morning, after the downfall of all his huge chimerical schemes,
+Guillaume, remembering the terrible explosive which he had discovered and
+hitherto failed to utilise, had suddenly thought of employing it as a
+motive force, in the place of petroleum, in the motor which his eldest
+son had so long been trying to construct for the Grandidier works. So he
+had set to work with Thomas, devising a new mechanism, encountering
+endless difficulties, and labouring for a whole year before reaching
+success. But now the father and son had accomplished their task; the
+marvel was created, and stood there riveted to an oak stand, and ready to
+work as soon as its final toilet should have been performed.
+
+Amidst all the changes which had occurred, Mère-Grand, in spite of her
+great age, continued exercising her active, silent sway over the
+household, which was now again so gay and peaceful. Though she seldom
+seemed to leave her chair in front of her work-table, she was really
+here, there and everywhere. Since the birth of Jean, she had talked of
+rearing the child in the same way as she had formerly reared Thomas,
+François and Antoine. She was indeed full of the bravery of devotion, and
+seemed to think that she was not at all likely to die so long as she
+might have others to guide, love and save. Marie marvelled at it all. She
+herself, though she was always gay and in good health, felt tired at
+times now that she was suckling her infant. Little Jean indeed had two
+vigilant mothers near his cradle; whilst his father, Pierre, who had
+become Thomas’s assistant, pulled the bellows, roughened out pieces of
+metal, and generally completed his apprenticeship as a working
+mechanician.
+
+On the particular day when Bache and Théophile Morin came to Montmartre,
+the _déjeuner_ proved even gayer than usual, thanks perhaps to their
+presence. The meal was over, the table had been cleared, and the coffee
+was being served, when a little boy, the son of a doorkeeper in the Rue
+Cortot, came to ask for Monsieur Pierre Froment. When they inquired his
+business, he answered in a hesitating way that Monsieur l’Abbé Rose was
+very ill, indeed dying, and that he had sent him to fetch Monsieur Pierre
+Froment at once.
+
+Pierre followed the lad, feeling much affected; and on reaching the Rue
+Cortot he there found Abbé Rose in a little damp ground-floor room
+overlooking a strip of garden. The old priest was in bed, dying as the
+boy had said, but he still retained the use of his faculties, and could
+speak in his wonted slow and gentle voice. A Sister of Charity was
+watching beside him, and she seemed so surprised and anxious at the
+arrival of a visitor whom she did not know, that Pierre understood she
+was there to guard the dying man and prevent him from having intercourse
+with others. The old priest must have employed some stratagem in order to
+send the doorkeeper’s boy to fetch him. However, when Abbé Rose in his
+grave and kindly way begged the Sister to leave them alone for a moment,
+she dared not refuse this supreme request, but immediately left the room.
+
+“Ah! my dear child,” said the old man, “how much I wanted to speak to
+you! Sit down there, close to the bed, so that you may be able to hear
+me, for this is the end; I shall no longer be here to-night. And I have
+such a great service to ask of you.”
+
+Quite upset at finding his friend so wasted, with his face white like a
+sheet, and scarce a sign of life save the sparkle of his innocent, loving
+eyes, Pierre responded: “But I would have come sooner if I had known you
+were in need of me! Why did you not send for me before? Are people being
+kept away from you?”
+
+A faint smile of shame and confession appeared on the old priest’s
+embarrassed face. “Well, my dear child,” said he, “you must know that I
+have again done some foolish things. Yes, I gave money to some people
+who, it seems, were not deserving of it. In fact, there was quite a
+scandal; they scolded me at the Archbishop’s palace, and accused me of
+compromising the interests of religion. And when they heard that I was
+ill, they put that good Sister beside me, because they said that I should
+die on the floor, and give the very sheets off my bed if I were not
+prevented.”
+
+He paused to draw breath, and then continued: “So you understand, that
+good Sister--oh! she is a very saintly woman--is here to nurse me and
+prevent me from still doing foolish things. To overcome her vigilance I
+had to use a little deceit, for which God, I trust, will forgive me. As
+it happens, it’s precisely my poor who are in question; it was to speak
+to you about them that I so particularly wished to see you.”
+
+Tears had come to Pierre’s eyes. “Tell me what you want me to do,” he
+answered; “I am yours, both heart and soul.”
+
+“Yes, yes, I know it, my dear child. It was for that reason that I
+thought of you--you alone. In spite of all that has happened, you are the
+only one in whom I have any confidence, who can understand me, and give
+me a promise which will enable me to die in peace.”
+
+This was the only allusion he would venture to make to the cruel rupture
+which had occurred after the young man had thrown off his cassock and
+rebelled against the Church. He had since heard of Pierre’s marriage, and
+was aware that he had for ever severed all religious ties. But at that
+supreme moment nothing of this seemed of any account to the old priest.
+His knowledge of Pierre’s loving heart sufficed him, for all that he now
+desired was simply the help of that heart which he had seen glowing with
+such passionate charity.
+
+“Well,” he resumed, again finding sufficient strength to smile, “it is a
+very simple matter. I want to make you my heir. Oh! it isn’t a fine
+legacy I am leaving you; it is the legacy of my poor, for I have nothing
+else to bestow on you; I shall leave nothing behind me but my poor.”
+
+Of these unhappy creatures, three in particular quite upset his heart. He
+recoiled from the prospect of leaving them without chance of succour,
+without even the crumbs which he had hitherto distributed among them, and
+which had enabled them to live. One was the big Old’un, the aged
+carpenter whom he and Pierre had vainly sought one night with the object
+of sending him to the Asylum for the Invalids of Labour. He had been sent
+there a little later, but he had fled three days afterwards, unwilling as
+he was to submit to the regulations. Wild and violent, he had the most
+detestable disposition. Nevertheless, he could not be left to starve. He
+came to Abbé Rose’s every Saturday, it seemed, and received a franc,
+which sufficed him for the whole week. Then, too, there was a bedridden
+old woman in a hovel in the Rue du Mont-Cenis. The baker, who every
+morning took her the bread she needed, must be paid. And in particular
+there was a poor young woman residing on the Place du Tertre, one who was
+unmarried but a mother. She was dying of consumption, unable to work, and
+tortured by the idea that when she should have gone, her daughter must
+sink to the pavement like herself. And in this instance the legacy was
+twofold: there was the mother to relieve until her death, which was near
+at hand, and then the daughter to provide for until she could be placed
+in some good household.
+
+“You must forgive me, my dear child, for leaving you all these worries,”
+ added Abbé Rose. “I tried to get the good Sister, who is nursing me, to
+take an interest in these poor people, but when I spoke to her of the big
+Old’un, she was so alarmed that she made the sign of the cross. And it’s
+the same with my worthy friend Abbé Tavernier. I know nobody of more
+upright mind. Still I shouldn’t be at ease with him, he has ideas of his
+own.... And so, my dear child, there is only you whom I can rely upon,
+and you must accept my legacy if you wish me to depart in peace.”
+
+Pierre was weeping. “Ah! certainly, with my whole soul,” he answered. “I
+shall regard your desires as sacred.”
+
+“Good! I knew you would accept.... So it is agreed: a franc for the
+big Old’un every Saturday, the bread for the bedridden woman, some help
+for the poor young mother, and then a home for her little girl. Ah! if
+you only knew what a weight it is off my heart! The end may come now, it
+will be welcome to me.”
+
+His kind white face had brightened as if with supreme joy. Holding
+Pierre’s hand within his own he detained him beside the bed, exchanging a
+farewell full of serene affection. And his voice weakening, he expressed
+his whole mind in faint, impressive accents: “Yes, I shall be pleased to
+go off. I could do no more, I could do no more! Though I gave and gave, I
+felt that it was ever necessary to give more and more. And how sad to
+find charity powerless, to give without hope of ever being able to stamp
+out want and suffering! I rebelled against that idea of yours, as you
+will remember. I told you that we should always love one another in our
+poor, and that was true, since you are here, so good and affectionate to
+me and those whom I am leaving behind. But, all the same, I can do no
+more, I can do no more; and I would rather go off, since the woes of
+others rise higher and higher around me, and I have ended by doing the
+most foolish things, scandalising the faithful and making my superiors
+indignant with me, without even saving one single poor person from the
+ever-growing torrent of want. Farewell, my dear child. My poor old heart
+goes off aching, my old hands are weary and conquered.”
+
+Pierre embraced him with his whole soul, and then departed. His eyes were
+full of tears and indescribable emotion wrung his heart. Never had he
+heard a more woeful cry than that confession of the impotence of charity,
+on the part of that old candid child, whose heart was all simplicity and
+sublime benevolence. Ah! what a disaster, that human kindness should be
+futile, that the world should always display so much distress and
+suffering in spite of all the compassionate tears that had been shed, in
+spite of all the alms that had fallen from millions and millions of hands
+for centuries and centuries! No wonder that it should bring desire for
+death, no wonder that a Christian should feel pleased at escaping from
+the abominations of this earth!
+
+When Pierre again reached the workroom he found that the table had long
+since been cleared, and that Bache and Morin were chatting with
+Guillaume, whilst the latter’s sons had returned to their customary
+occupations. Marie, also, had resumed her usual place at the work-table
+in front of Mère-Grand; but from time to time she rose and went to look
+at Jean, so as to make sure that he was sleeping peacefully, with his
+little clenched fists pressed to his heart. And when Pierre, who kept his
+emotion to himself, had likewise leant over the cradle beside the young
+woman, whose hair he discreetly kissed, he went to put on an apron in
+order that he might assist Thomas, who was now, for the last time,
+regulating his motor.
+
+Then, as Pierre stood there awaiting an opportunity to help, the room
+vanished from before his eyes; he ceased to see or hear the persons who
+were there. The scent of Marie’s hair alone lingered on his lips amidst
+the acute emotion into which he had been thrown by his visit to Abbé
+Rose. A recollection had come to him, that of the bitterly cold morning
+when the old priest had stopped him outside the basilica of the Sacred
+Heart, and had timidly asked him to take some alms to that old man
+Laveuve, who soon afterwards had died of want, like a dog by the wayside.
+How sad a morning it had been; what battle and torture had Pierre not
+felt within him, and what a resurrection had come afterwards! He had that
+day said one of his last masses, and he recalled with a shudder his
+abominable anguish, his despairing doubts at the thought of nothingness.
+Two experiments which he had previously made had failed most miserably.
+First had come one at Lourdes, where the glorification of the absurd had
+simply filled him with pity for any such attempt to revert to the
+primitive faith of young nations, who bend beneath the terror born of
+ignorance; and, secondly, there had been an experiment at Rome, which he
+had found incapable of any renewal, and which he had seen staggering to
+its death amidst its ruins, a mere great shadow, which would soon be of
+no account, fast sinking, as it was, to the dust of dead religions. And,
+in his own mind, Charity itself had become bankrupt; he no longer
+believed that alms could cure the sufferings of mankind, he awaited
+naught but a frightful catastrophe, fire and massacre, which would sweep
+away the guilty, condemned world. His cassock, too, stifled him, a lie
+alone kept it on his shoulders, the idea, unbelieving priest though he
+was, that he could honestly and chastely watch over the belief of others.
+The problem of a new religion, a new hope, such as was needful to ensure
+the peace of the coming democracies tortured him, but between the
+certainties of science and the need of the Divine, which seemed to
+consume humanity, he could find no solution. If Christianity crumbled
+with the principle of Charity, there could remain nothing else but
+Justice, that cry which came from every breast, that battle of Justice
+against Charity in which his heart must contend in that great city of
+Paris. It was there that began his third and decisive experiment, the
+experiment which was to make truth as plain to him as the sun itself, and
+give him back health and strength and delight in life.
+
+At this point of his reverie Pierre was roused by Thomas, who asked him
+to fetch a tool. As he did so he heard Bache remarking: “The ministry
+resigned this morning. Vignon has had enough of it, he wants to reserve
+his remaining strength.”
+
+“Well, he has lasted more than a twelvemonth,” replied Morin. “That’s
+already an achievement.”
+
+After the crime of Victor Mathis, who had been tried and executed within
+three weeks, Monferrand had suddenly fallen from power. What was the use
+of having a strong-handed man at the head of the Government if bombs
+still continued to terrify the country? Moreover, he had displeased the
+Chamber by his voracious appetite, which had prevented him from allowing
+others more than an infinitesimal share of all the good things. And this
+time he had been succeeded by Vignon, although the latter’s programme of
+reforms had long made people tremble. He, Vignon, was honest certainly,
+but of all these reforms he had only been able to carry out a few
+insignificant ones, for he had found himself hampered by a thousand
+obstacles. And thus he had resigned himself to ruling the country as
+others had done; and people had discovered that after all there were but
+faint shades of difference between him and Monferrand.
+
+“You know that Monferrand is being spoken of again?” said Guillaume.
+
+“Yes, and he has some chance of success. His creatures are bestirring
+themselves tremendously,” replied Bache, adding, in a bitter, jesting
+way, that Mège, the Collectivist leader, played the part of a dupe in
+overthrowing ministry after ministry. He simply gratified the ambition of
+each coterie in turn, without any possible chance of attaining to power
+himself.
+
+Thereupon Guillaume pronounced judgment. “Oh! well, let them devour one
+another,” said he. “Eager as they all are to reign and dispose of power
+and wealth, they only fight over questions of persons. And nothing they
+do can prevent the evolution from continuing. Ideas expand, and events
+occur, and, over and above everything else, mankind is marching on.”
+
+Pierre was greatly struck by these words, and he again recalled the past.
+His dolorous Parisian experiment had begun, and he was once more roaming
+through the city. Paris seemed to him to be a huge vat, in which a world
+fermented, something of the best and something of the worst, a frightful
+mixture such as sorceresses might have used; precious powders mingled
+with filth, from all of which was to come the philter of love and eternal
+youth. And in that vat Pierre first marked the scum of the political
+world: Monferrand who strangled Barroux, who purchased the support of
+hungry ones such as Fonsègue, Duthil and Chaigneux, who made use of those
+who attained to mediocrity, such as Taboureau and Dauvergne; and who
+employed even the sectarian passions of Mège and the intelligent ambition
+of Vignon as his weapons. Next came money the poisoner, with that affair
+of the African Railways, which had rotted the Parliament and turned
+Duvillard, the triumphant _bourgeois_, into a public perverter, the very
+cancer as it were of the financial world. Then as a just consequence of
+all this there was Duvillard’s own home infected by himself, that
+frightful drama of Eve contending with her daughter Camille for the
+possession of Gérard, then Camille stealing him from her mother, and
+Hyacinthe, the son, passing his crazy mistress Rosemonde on to that
+notorious harlot Silviane, with whom his father publicly exhibited
+himself. Then there was the old expiring aristocracy, with the pale, sad
+faces of Madame de Quinsac and the Marquis de Morigny; the old military
+spirit whose funeral was conducted by General de Bozonnet; the magistracy
+which slavishly served the powers of the day, Amadieu thrusting himself
+into notoriety by means of sensational cases, Lehmann, the public
+prosecutor, preparing his speeches in the private room of the Minister
+whose policy he defended; and, finally, the mendacious and cupid Press
+which lived upon scandal, the everlasting flood of denunciation and filth
+which poured from Sagnier, and the gay impudence shown by the
+unscrupulous and conscienceless Massot, who attacked all and defended
+all, by profession and to order! And in the same way as insects, on
+discovering one of their own kind dying, will often finish it off and
+fatten upon it, so the whole swarm of appetites, interests and passions
+had fallen upon a wretched madman, that unhappy Salvat, whose idiotic
+crime had brought them all scrambling together, gluttonously eager to
+derive some benefit from that starveling’s emaciated carcass. And all
+boiled in the huge vat of Paris; the desires, the deeds of violence, the
+strivings of one and another man’s will, the whole nameless medley of the
+bitterest ferments, whence, in all purity, the wine of the future would
+at last flow.
+
+Then Pierre became conscious of the prodigious work which went on in the
+depths of the vat, beneath all the impurity and waste. As his brother had
+just said, what mattered the stains, the egotism and greed of
+politicians, if humanity were still on the march, ever slowly and
+stubbornly stepping forward! What mattered, too, that corrupt and
+emasculate _bourgeoisie_, nowadays as moribund as the aristocracy, whose
+place it took, if behind it there ever came the inexhaustible reserve of
+men who surged up from the masses of the country-sides and the towns!
+What mattered the debauchery, the perversion arising from excess of
+wealth and power, the luxuriousness and dissoluteness of life, since it
+seemed a proven fact that the capitals that had been queens of the world
+had never reigned without extreme civilisation, a cult of beauty and of
+pleasure! And what mattered even the venality, the transgressions and the
+folly of the press, if at the same time it remained an admirable
+instrument for the diffusion of knowledge, the open conscience, so to
+say, of the nation, a river which, though there might be horrors on its
+surface, none the less flowed on, carrying all nations to the brotherly
+ocean of the future centuries! The human lees ended by sinking to the
+bottom of the vat, and it was not possible to expect that what was right
+would triumph visibly every day; for it was often necessary that years
+should elapse before the realisation of some hope could emerge from the
+fermentation. Eternal matter is ever being cast afresh into the crucible
+and ever coming from it improved. And if in the depths of pestilential
+workshops and factories the slavery of ancient times subsists in the
+wage-earning system, if such men as Toussaint still die of want on their
+pallets like broken-down beasts of burden, it is nevertheless a fact that
+once already, on a memorable day of tempest, Liberty sprang forth from
+the vat to wing her flight throughout the world. And why in her turn
+should not Justice spring from it, proceeding from those troubled
+elements, freeing herself from all dross, flowing forth with dazzling
+limpidity and regenerating the nations?
+
+However, the voices of Bache and Morin, rising in the course of their
+chat with Guillaume, once more drew Pierre from his reverie. They were
+now speaking of Janzen, who after being compromised in a fresh outrage at
+Barcelona had fled from Spain. Bache fancied that he had recognised him
+in the street only the previous day. To think that a man with so clear a
+mind and such keen energy should waste his natural gifts in such a
+hateful cause!
+
+“When I remember,” said Morin slowly, “that Barthès lives in exile in a
+shabby little room at Brussels, ever quivering with the hope that the
+reign of liberty is at hand--he who has never had a drop of blood on his
+hands and who has spent two-thirds of his life in prison in order that
+the nations may be freed!”
+
+Bache gently shrugged his shoulders: “Liberty, liberty, of course,” said
+he; “only it is worth nothing if it is not organised.”
+
+Thereupon their everlasting discussion began afresh, with Saint-Simon and
+Fourier on one side and Proudhon and Auguste Comte on the other. Bache
+gave a long account of the last commemoration which had taken place in
+honour of Fourier’s memory, how faithful disciples had brought wreaths
+and made speeches, forming quite a meeting of apostles, who all
+stubbornly clung to their faith, as confident in the future as if they
+were the messengers of some new gospel. Afterwards Morin emptied his
+pockets, which were always full of Positivist tracts and pamphlets,
+manifestos, answers and so forth, in which Comte’s doctrines were
+extolled as furnishing the only possible basis for the new, awaited
+religion. Pierre, who listened, thereupon remembered the disputes in his
+little house at Neuilly when he himself, searching for certainty, had
+endeavoured to draw up the century’s balance-sheet. He had lost his
+depth, in the end, amidst the contradictions and incoherency of the
+various precursors. Although Fourier had sprung from Saint-Simon, he
+denied him in part, and if Saint-Simon’s doctrine ended in a kind of
+mystical sensuality, the other’s conducted to an inacceptable regimenting
+of society. Proudhon, for his part, demolished without rebuilding
+anything. Comte, who created method and declared science to be the one
+and only sovereign, had not even suspected the advent of the social
+crisis which now threatened to sweep all away, and had finished
+personally as a mere worshipper of love, overpowered by woman.
+Nevertheless, these two, Comte and Proudhon, entered the lists and fought
+against the others, Fourier and Saint-Simon; the combat between them or
+their disciples becoming so bitter and so blind that the truths common to
+them all at first seemed obscured and disfigured beyond recognition. Now,
+however, that evolution had slowly transformed Pierre, those common
+truths seemed to him as irrefutable, as clear as the sunlight itself.
+Amidst the chaos of conflicting assertions which was to be found in the
+gospels of those social messiahs, there were certain similar phrases and
+principles which recurred again and again, the defence of the poor, the
+idea of a new and just division of the riches of the world in accordance
+with individual labour and merit, and particularly the search for a new
+law of labour which would enable this fresh distribution to be made
+equitably. Since all the precursory men of genius agreed so closely upon
+those points, must they not be the very foundations of to-morrow’s new
+religion, the necessary faith which this century must bequeath to the
+coming century, in order that the latter may make of it a human religion
+of peace, solidarity and love?
+
+Then, all at once, there came a leap in Pierre’s thoughts. He fancied
+himself at the Madeleine once more, listening to the address on the New
+Spirit delivered by Monseigneur Martha, who had predicted that Paris, now
+reconverted to Christianity, would, thanks to the Sacred Heart, become
+the ruler of the world. But no, but no! If Paris reigned, it was because
+it was able to exercise its intelligence freely. To set the cross and the
+mystic and repulsive symbolism of a bleeding heart above it was simply so
+much falsehood. Although they might rear edifices of pride and domination
+as if to crush Paris with their very weight, although they might try to
+stop science in the name of a dead ideal and in the hope of setting their
+clutches upon the coming century, these attempts would be of no avail.
+Science will end by sweeping away all remnants of their ancient
+sovereignty, their basilica will crumble beneath the breeze of Truth
+without any necessity of raising a finger against it. The trial has been
+made, the Gospel as a social code has fallen to pieces, and human wisdom
+can only retain account of its moral maxims. Ancient Catholicism is on
+all sides crumbling into dust, Catholic Rome is a mere field of ruins
+from which the nations turn aside, anxious as they are for a religion
+that shall not be a religion of death. In olden times the overburdened
+slave, glowing with a new hope and seeking to escape from his gaol,
+dreamt of a heaven where in return for his earthly misery he would be
+rewarded with eternal enjoyment. But now that science has destroyed that
+false idea of a heaven, and shown what dupery lies in reliance on the
+morrow of death, the slave, the workman, weary of dying for happiness’
+sake, demands that justice and happiness shall find place upon this
+earth. Therein lies the new hope--Justice, after eighteen hundred years
+of impotent Charity. Ah! in a thousand years from now, when Catholicism
+will be naught but a very ancient superstition of the past, how amazed
+men will be to think that their ancestors were able to endure that
+religion of torture and nihility! How astonished they will feel on
+finding that God was regarded as an executioner, that manhood was
+threatened, maimed and chastised, that nature was accounted an enemy,
+that life was looked upon as something accursed, and that death alone was
+pronounced sweet and liberating! For well-nigh two thousand years the
+onward march of mankind has been hampered by the odious idea of tearing
+all that is human away from man: his desires, his passions, his free
+intelligence, his will and right of action, his whole strength. And how
+glorious will be the awakening when such virginity as is now honoured by
+the Church is held in derision, when fruitfulness is again recognised as
+a virtue, amidst the hosanna of all the freed forces of nature--man’s
+desires which will be honoured, his passions which will be utilised, his
+labour which will be exalted, whilst life is loved and ever and ever
+creates love afresh!
+
+A new religion! a new religion! Pierre remembered the cry which had
+escaped him at Lourdes, and which he had repeated at Rome in presence of
+the collapse of old Catholicism. But he no longer displayed the same
+feverish eagerness as then--a puerile, sickly desire that a new Divinity
+should at once reveal himself, an ideal come into being, complete in all
+respects, with dogmas and form of worship. The Divine certainly seemed to
+be as necessary to man as were bread and water; he had ever fallen back
+upon it, hungering for the mysterious, seemingly having no other means of
+consolation than that of annihilating himself in the unknown. But who can
+say that science will not some day quench the thirst for what lies beyond
+us? If the domain of science embraces the acquired truths, it also
+embraces, and will ever do so, the truths that remain to be acquired. And
+in front of it will there not ever remain a margin for the thirst of
+knowledge, for the hypotheses which are but so much ideality? Besides, is
+not the yearning for the divine simply a desire to behold the Divinity?
+And if science should more and more content the yearning to know all and
+be able to do all, will not that yearning be quieted and end by mingling
+with the love of acquired truth? A religion grafted on science is the
+indicated, certain, inevitable finish of man’s long march towards
+knowledge. He will come to it at last as to a natural haven, as to peace
+in the midst of certainty, after passing every form of ignorance and
+terror on his road. And is there not already some indication of such a
+religion? Has not the idea of the duality of God and the Universe been
+brushed aside, and is not the principle of unity, _monisme_, becoming
+more and more evident--unity leading to solidarity, and the sole law of
+life proceeding by evolution from the first point of the ether that
+condensed to create the world? But if precursors, scientists and
+philosophers--Darwin, Fourier and all the others--have sown the seed of
+to-morrow’s religion by casting the good word to the passing breeze, how
+many centuries will doubtless be required to raise the crop! People
+always forget that before Catholicism grew up and reigned in the
+sunlight, it spent four centuries in germinating and sprouting from the
+soil. Well, then, grant some centuries to this religion of science of
+whose sprouting there are signs upon all sides, and by-and-by the
+admirable ideas of some Fourier will be seen expanding and forming a new
+gospel, with desire serving as the lever to raise the world, work
+accepted by one and all, honoured and regulated as the very mechanism of
+natural and social life, and the passions of man excited, contented and
+utilised for human happiness! The universal cry of Justice, which rises
+louder and louder, in a growing clamour from the once silent multitude,
+the people that have so long been duped and preyed upon, is but a cry for
+this happiness towards which human beings are tending, the happiness that
+embodies the complete satisfaction of man’s needs, and the principle of
+life loved for its own sake, in the midst of peace and the expansion of
+every force and every joy. The time will come when this Kingdom of God
+will be set upon the earth; so why not close that other deceptive
+paradise, even if the weak-minded must momentarily suffer from the
+destruction of their illusions; for it is necessary to operate even with
+cruelty on the blind if they are to be extricated from their misery, from
+their long and frightful night of ignorance!
+
+All at once a feeling of deep joy came over Pierre. A child’s faint cry,
+the wakening cry of his son Jean had drawn him from his reverie. And he
+had suddenly remembered that he himself was now saved, freed from
+falsehood and fright, restored to good and healthy nature. How he
+quivered as he recalled that he had once fancied himself lost, blotted
+out of life, and that a prodigy of love had extricated him from his
+nothingness, still strong and sound, since that dear child of his was
+there, sturdy and smiling. Life had brought forth life; and truth had
+burst forth, as dazzling as the sun. He had made his third experiment
+with Paris, and this had been conclusive; it had been no wretched
+miscarriage with increase of darkness and grief, like his other
+experiments at Lourdes and Rome. In the first place, the law of labour
+had been revealed to him, and he had imposed upon himself a task, as
+humble a one as it was, that manual calling which he was learning so late
+in life, but which was, nevertheless, a form of labour, and one in which
+he would never fail, one too that would lend him the serenity which comes
+from the accomplishment of duty, for life itself was but labour: it was
+only by effort that the world existed. And then, moreover, he had loved;
+and salvation had come to him from woman and from his child. Ah! what a
+long and circuitous journey he had made to reach this finish at once so
+natural and so simple! How he had suffered, how much error and anger he
+had known before doing what all men ought to do! That eager, glowing love
+which had contended against his reason, which had bled at sight of the
+arrant absurdities of the miraculous grotto of Lourdes, which had bled
+again too in presence of the haughty decline of the Vatican, had at last
+found contentment now that he was husband and father, now that he had
+confidence in work and believed in the just laws of life. And thence had
+come the indisputable truth, the one solution--happiness in certainty.
+
+Whilst Pierre was thus plunged in thought, Bache and Morin had already
+gone off with their customary handshakes and promises to come and chat
+again some evening. And as Jean was now crying more loudly, Marie took
+him in her arms and unhooked her dress-body to give him her breast.
+
+“Oh! the darling, it’s his time, you know, and he doesn’t forget it!” she
+said. “Just look, Pierre, I believe he has got bigger since yesterday.”
+
+She laughed; and Pierre, likewise laughing, drew near to kiss the child.
+And afterwards he kissed his wife, mastered as he was by emotion at the
+sight of that pink, gluttonous little creature imbibing life from that
+lovely breast so full of milk.
+
+“Why! he’ll eat you,” he gaily said to Marie. “How he’s pulling!”
+
+“Oh! he does bite me a little,” she replied; “but I like that the better,
+it shows that he profits by it.”
+
+Then Mère-Grand, she who as a rule was so serious and silent, began to
+talk with a smile lighting up her face: “I weighed him this morning,”
+ said she, “he weighs nearly a quarter of a pound more than he did the
+last time. And if you had only seen how good he was, the darling! He will
+be a very intelligent and well-behaved little gentleman, such as I like.
+When he’s five years old, I shall teach him his alphabet, and when he’s
+fifteen, if he likes, I’ll tell him how to be a man.... Don’t you
+agree with me, Thomas? And you, Antoine, and you, too, François?”
+
+Raising their heads, the three sons gaily nodded their approval, grateful
+as they felt for the lessons in heroism which she had given them, and
+apparently finding no reason why she might not live another twenty years
+in order to give similar lessons to Jean.
+
+Pierre still remained in front of Marie, basking in all the rapture of
+love, when he felt Guillaume lay his hands upon his shoulders from
+behind. And on turning round he saw that his brother was also radiant,
+like one who felt well pleased at seeing them so happy. “Ah! brother,”
+ said Guillaume softly, “do you remember my telling you that you suffered
+solely from the battle between your mind and your heart, and that you
+would find quietude again when you loved what you could understand? It
+was necessary that our father and mother, whose painful quarrel had
+continued beyond the grave, should be reconciled in you. And now it’s
+done, they sleep in peace within you, since you yourself are pacified.”
+
+These words filled Pierre with emotion. Joy beamed upon his face, which
+was now so open and energetic. He still had the towering brow, that
+impregnable fortress of reason, which he had derived from his father, and
+he still had the gentle chin and affectionate eyes and mouth which his
+mother had given him, but all was now blended together, instinct with
+happy harmony and serene strength. Those two experiments of his which had
+miscarried, were like crises of his maternal heredity, the tearful
+tenderness which had come to him from his mother, and which for lack of
+satisfaction had made him desperate; and his third experiment had only
+ended in happiness because he had contented his ardent thirst for love in
+accordance with sovereign reason, that paternal heredity which pleaded so
+loudly within him. Reason remained the queen. And if his sufferings had
+thus always come from the warfare which his reason had waged against his
+heart, it was because he was man personified, ever struggling between his
+intelligence and his passions. And how peaceful all seemed, now that he
+had reconciled and satisfied them both, now that he felt healthy, perfect
+and strong, like some lofty oak, which grows in all freedom, and whose
+branches spread far away over the forest.
+
+“You have done good work in that respect,” Guillaume affectionately
+continued, “for yourself and for all of us, and even for our dear parents
+whose shades, pacified and reconciled, now abide so peacefully in the
+little home of our childhood. I often think of our dear house at Neuilly,
+which old Sophie is taking care of for us; and although, out of egotism,
+a desire to set happiness around me, I wished to keep you here, your Jean
+must some day go and live there, so as to bring it fresh youth.”
+
+Pierre had taken hold of his brother’s hands, and looking into his eyes
+he asked: “And you--are you happy?”
+
+“Yes, very happy, happier than I have ever been; happy at loving you as I
+do, and happy at being loved by you as no one else will ever love me.”
+
+Their hearts mingled in ardent brotherly affection, the most perfect and
+heroic affection that can blend men together. And they embraced one
+another whilst, with her babe on her breast, Marie, so gay, healthful and
+loyal, looked at them and smiled, with big tears gathering in her eyes.
+
+Thomas, however, having finished his motor’s last toilet, had just set it
+in motion. It was a prodigy of lightness and strength, of no weight
+whatever in comparison with the power it displayed. And it worked with
+perfect smoothness, without noise or smell. The whole family was gathered
+round it in delight, when there came a timely visit, one from the learned
+and friendly Bertheroy, whom indeed Guillaume had asked to call, in order
+that he might see the motor working.
+
+The great chemist at once expressed his admiration; and when he had
+examined the mechanism and understood how the explosive was employed as
+motive power--an idea which he had long recommended,--he tendered
+enthusiastic congratulations to Guillaume and Thomas. “You have created a
+little marvel,” said he, “one which may have far-reaching effects both
+socially and humanly. Yes, yes, pending the invention of the electrical
+motor which we have not yet arrived at, here is an ideal one, a system of
+mechanical traction for all sorts of vehicles. Even aerial navigation may
+now become a possibility, and the problem of force at home is finally
+solved. And what a grand step! What sudden progress! Distance again
+diminished, all roads thrown open, and men able to fraternise! This is a
+great boon, a splendid gift, my good friends, that you are bestowing on
+the world.”
+
+Then he began to jest about the new explosive, whose prodigious power he
+had divined, and which he now found put to such a beneficent purpose.
+“And to think, Guillaume,” he said, “that I fancied you acted with so
+much mysteriousness and hid the formula of your powder from me because
+you had an idea of blowing up Paris!”
+
+At this Guillaume became grave and somewhat pale. And he confessed the
+truth. “Well, I did for a moment think of it.”
+
+However, Bertheroy went on laughing, as if he regarded this answer as
+mere repartee, though truth to tell he had felt a slight chill sweep
+through his hair. “Well, my friend,” he said, “you have done far better
+in offering the world this marvel, which by the way must have been both a
+difficult and dangerous matter. So here is a powder which was intended to
+exterminate people, and which in lieu thereof will now increase their
+comfort and welfare. In the long run things always end well, as I’m quite
+tired of saying.”
+
+On beholding such lofty and tolerant good nature, Guillaume felt moved.
+Bertheroy’s words were true. What had been intended for purposes of
+destruction served the cause of progress; the subjugated, domesticated
+volcano became labour, peace and civilisation. Guillaume had even
+relinquished all idea of his engine of battle and victory; he had found
+sufficient satisfaction in this last invention of his, which would
+relieve men of some measure of weariness, and help to reduce their labour
+to just so much effort as there must always be. In this he detected some
+little advance towards Justice; at all events it was all that he himself
+could contribute to the cause. And when on turning towards the window he
+caught sight of the basilica of the Sacred Heart, he could not explain
+what insanity had at one moment come over him, and set him dreaming of
+idiotic and useless destruction. Some miasmal gust must have swept by,
+something born of want that scattered germs of anger and vengeance. But
+how blind it was to think that destruction and murder could ever bear
+good fruit, ever sow the soil with plenty and happiness! Violence cannot
+last, and all it does is to rouse man’s feeling of solidarity even among
+those on whose behalf one kills. The people, the great multitude, rebel
+against the isolated individual who seeks to wreak justice. No one man
+can take upon himself the part of the volcano; this is the whole
+terrestrial crust, the whole multitude which internal fire impels to rise
+and throw up either an Alpine chain or a better and freer society. And
+whatever heroism there may be in their madness, however great and
+contagious may be their thirst for martyrdom, murderers are never
+anything but murderers, whose deeds simply sow the seeds of horror. And
+if on the one hand Victor Mathis had avenged Salvat, he had also slain
+him, so universal had been the cry of reprobation roused by the second
+crime, which was yet more monstrous and more useless than the first.
+
+Guillaume, laughing in his turn, replied to Bertheroy in words which
+showed how completely he was cured: “You are right,” he said, “all ends
+well since all contributes to truth and justice. Unfortunately, thousands
+of years are sometimes needed for any progress to be accomplished....
+However, for my part, I am simply going to put my new explosive on the
+market, so that those who secure the necessary authorisation may
+manufacture it and grow rich. Henceforth it belongs to one and all....
+And I’ve renounced all idea of revolutionising the world.”
+
+But Bertheroy protested. This great official scientist, this member of
+the Institute laden with offices and honours, pointed to the little
+motor, and replied with all the vigour of his seventy years: “But that is
+revolution, the true, the only revolution. It is with things like that
+and not with stupid bombs that one revolutionises the world! It is not by
+destroying, but by creating, that you have just done the work of a
+revolutionist. And how many times already have I not told you that
+science alone is the world’s revolutionary force, the only force which,
+far above all paltry political incidents, the vain agitation of despots,
+priests, sectarians and ambitious people of all kinds, works for the
+benefit of those who will come after us, and prepares the triumph of
+truth, justice and peace.... Ah, my dear child, if you wish to
+overturn the world by striving to set a little more happiness in it, you
+have only to remain in your laboratory here, for human happiness can
+spring only from the furnace of the scientist.”
+
+He spoke perhaps in a somewhat jesting way, but one could feel that he
+was convinced of it all, that he held everything excepting science in
+utter contempt. He had not even shown any surprise when Pierre had cast
+his cassock aside; and on finding him there with his wife and child he
+had not scrupled to show him as much affection as in the past.
+
+Meantime, however, the motor was travelling hither and thither, making no
+more noise than a bluebottle buzzing in the sunshine. The whole happy
+family was gathered about it, still laughing with delight at such a
+victorious achievement. And all at once little Jean, Monsieur Jean,
+having finished sucking, turned round, displaying his milk-smeared lips,
+and perceived the machine, the pretty plaything which walked about by
+itself. At sight of it, his eyes sparkled, dimples appeared on his plump
+cheeks, and, stretching out his quivering chubby hands, he raised a crow
+of delight.
+
+Marie, who was quietly fastening her dress, smiled at his glee and
+brought him nearer, in order that he might have a better view of the toy.
+“Ah! my darling, it’s pretty, isn’t it? It moves and it turns, and it’s
+strong; it’s quite alive, you see.”
+
+The others, standing around, were much amused by the amazed, enraptured
+expression of the child, who would have liked to touch the machine,
+perhaps in the hope of understanding it.
+
+“Yes,” resumed Bertheroy, “it’s alive and it’s powerful like the sun,
+like that great sun shining yonder over Paris, and ripening men and
+things. And Paris too is a motor, a boiler in which the future is
+boiling, while we scientists keep the eternal flame burning underneath.
+Guillaume, my good fellow, you are one of the stokers, one of the
+artisans of the future, with that little marvel of yours, which will
+still further extend the influence of our great Paris over the whole
+world.”
+
+These words impressed Pierre, and he again thought of a gigantic vat
+stretching yonder from one horizon to the other, a vat in which the
+coming century would emerge from an extraordinary mixture of the
+excellent and the vile. But now, over and above all passions, ambitions,
+stains and waste, he was conscious of the colossal expenditure of labour
+which marked the life of Paris, of the heroic manual efforts in
+work-shops and factories, and the splendid striving of the young men of
+intellect whom he knew to be hard at work, studying in silence,
+relinquishing none of the conquests of their elders, but glowing with
+desire to enlarge their domain. And in all this Paris was exalted,
+together with the future that was being prepared within it, and which
+would wing its flight over the world bright like the dawn of day. If
+Rome, now so near its death, had ruled the ancient world, it was Paris
+that reigned with sovereign sway over the modern era, and had for the
+time become the great centre of the nations as they were carried on from
+civilisation to civilisation, in a sunward course from east to west.
+Paris was the world’s brain. Its past so full of grandeur had prepared it
+for the part of initiator, civiliser and liberator. Only yesterday it had
+cast the cry of Liberty among the nations, and to-morrow it would bring
+them the religion of Science, the new faith awaited by the democracies.
+And Paris was also gaiety, kindness and gentleness, passion for knowledge
+and generosity without limit. Among the workmen of its faubourgs and the
+peasants of its country-sides there were endless reserves of men on whom
+the future might freely draw. And the century ended with Paris, and the
+new century would begin and spread with it. All the clamour of its
+prodigious labour, all the light that came from it as from a beacon
+overlooking the earth, all the thunder and tempest and triumphant
+brightness that sprang from its entrails, were pregnant with that final
+splendour, of which human happiness would be compounded.
+
+Marie raised a light cry of admiration as she pointed towards the city.
+“Look! just look!” she exclaimed; “Paris is all golden, covered with a
+harvest of gold!”
+
+They all re-echoed her admiration, for the effect was really one of
+extraordinary magnificence. The declining sun was once more veiling the
+immensity of Paris with golden dust. But this was no longer the city of
+the sower, a chaos of roofs and edifices suggesting brown land turned up
+by some huge plough, whilst the sun-rays streamed over it like golden
+seed, falling upon every side. Nor was it the city whose divisions had
+one day seemed so plain to Pierre: eastward, the districts of toil, misty
+with the grey smoke of factories; southward, the districts of study,
+serene and quiet; westward, the districts of wealth, bright and open; and
+in the centre the districts of trade, with dark and busy streets. It now
+seemed as if one and the same crop had sprung up on every side, imparting
+harmony to everything, and making the entire expanse one sole, boundless
+field, rich with the same fruitfulness. There was corn, corn everywhere,
+an infinity of corn, whose golden wave rolled from one end of the horizon
+to the other. Yes, the declining sun steeped all Paris in equal
+splendour, and it was truly the crop, the harvest, after the sowing!
+
+“Look! just look,” repeated Marie, “there is not a nook without its
+sheaf; the humblest roofs are fruitful, and every blade is full-eared
+wherever one may look. It is as if there were now but one and the same
+soil, reconciled and fraternal. Ah! Jean, my little Jean, look! see how
+beautiful it is!”
+
+Pierre, who was quivering, had drawn close beside her. And Mère-Grand and
+Bertheroy smiled upon that promise of a future which they would not see,
+whilst beside Guillaume, whom the sight filled with emotion, were his
+three big sons, the three young giants, looking quite grave, they who
+ever laboured and were ever hopeful. Then Marie, with a fine gesture of
+enthusiasm, stretched out her arms and raised her child aloft, as if
+offering it in gift to the huge city.
+
+“See, Jean! see, little one,” she cried, “it’s you who’ll reap it all,
+who’ll store the whole crop in the barn!”
+
+And Paris flared--Paris, which the divine sun had sown with light, and
+where in glory waved the great future harvest of Truth and of Justice.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THREE CITIES TRILOGY ***
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will
+be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
+law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
+so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the
+United States without permission and without paying copyright
+royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
+of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
+and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
+the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
+of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
+copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
+easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
+of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
+Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away--you may
+do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
+by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
+license, especially commercial redistribution.
+
+START: FULL LICENSE
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
+Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at
+www.gutenberg.org/license.
+
+Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+
+1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
+destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your
+possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
+Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
+by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the
+person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph
+1.E.8.
+
+1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
+paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this
+agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the
+Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
+of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual
+works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
+States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
+United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
+claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
+displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
+all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
+that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting
+free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm
+works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
+Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily
+comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
+same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when
+you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
+in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
+check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
+agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
+distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
+other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no
+representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
+country other than the United States.
+
+1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
+immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear
+prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work
+on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed,
+performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
+
+ This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+ most other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the
+ United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
+ you are located before using this eBook.
+
+1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is
+derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
+contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
+copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
+the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
+redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
+either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
+obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm
+trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
+additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
+will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works
+posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
+beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
+any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
+to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format
+other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official
+version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm website
+(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
+to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
+of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain
+Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the
+full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+provided that:
+
+* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+ the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+ you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
+ to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has
+ agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
+ Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
+ within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
+ legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
+ payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
+ Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
+ Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
+ Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+ you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+ does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+ License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
+ copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
+ all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm
+ works.
+
+* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
+ any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+ electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
+ receipt of the work.
+
+* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+ distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than
+are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
+from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
+the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
+forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
+Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
+contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
+or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
+other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
+cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
+with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
+with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
+lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
+or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
+opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
+the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
+without further opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO
+OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
+damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
+violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
+agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
+limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
+unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
+remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in
+accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
+production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
+including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
+the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
+or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or
+additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any
+Defect you cause.
+
+Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
+computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
+exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
+from people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future
+generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
+Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at
+www.gutenberg.org
+
+Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
+U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,
+Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
+to date contact information can be found at the Foundation's website
+and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
+
+Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without
+widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
+DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular
+state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
+donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be
+freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
+distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of
+volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
+the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
+necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
+edition.
+
+Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
+facility: www.gutenberg.org
+
+This website includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+