Part 17 (1/2)
”Young man,” he said in an icy fit of pa.s.sion to M. d'Anquetil, ”I have the honour to know your father, of whom I will inquire, not later than to-morrow, the name of the town to which the king shall send you to meditate over the shame of your behaviour and impertinence. That worthy n.o.bleman, to whom I have lent some money I do not reclaim, can refuse me nothing. And our well-beloved Prince, who is in precisely the same position as your father, has always a kindness for me. Consider it a matter done. I have settled, thank G.o.d, others more difficult. Now as to that lady yonder, of whom neither repentance nor improvement can be expected. I'll say to-morrow before noon, two words to the Lieutenant of Police, whom I know to be well disposed, to send her to the spittel. I have nothing else to say to you. This house is my property, I have paid for it and I intend to enter when I like.” Then, turning to his flunkeys, and pointing out my tutor and myself with his walking stick, he said:
”Throw these two drunkards out.”
M. Jerome Coignard was commonly of an exemplary forbearance, and he used to say that he owed his gentleness to the vicissitudes of life; chance having treated him as the sea treats the pebbles--that is, polis.h.i.+ng them by means of the rolling of flood and ebb. He could easily stand insults, as much by Christian spirit as by philosophy. But what helped him best thereto was his deep-rooted contempt of mankind, not excepting himself. However, for once he lost all measure and forgot all prudence.
”Hold your tongue, vile publican,” he shouted and brandished a bottle like a crowbar. ”If yonder rascals dare to approach me I'll smash their heads, to teach them respect for my cloth, which proves in an ample way my sacred calling.”
In the faint glimmer of the torches, s.h.i.+ny from sweat, his eyes starting out of their sockets, his coat unb.u.t.toned, and his big belly half out of his breeches, he looked a fellow not easy to be got rid of. The lackeys hesitated.
”Out with him, out with him,” shouted M. de la Gueritude; ”out with this bag of wine! Can't you see that all you have to do is to push him in the gutter, where he'll remain till the scavengers throw him into the dustcart? I would throw him out myself were I not afraid to pollute my clothes.”
My good tutor flew into a pa.s.sion, and shouted in a voice worthy to sound in a church:
”You odious money-monger, infamous partisan, barbarous evildoer, you pretend this house to be yours? So that everyone may know it belongs to you, inscribe on the door the gospel word _Aceldema_, which in our language means Bloodmoney. And then we'll let the master enter his dwelling. Thief, robber, murderer, write with the piece of charcoal I throw in your face, write with your own filthy hand, on the floor, your t.i.tle deed. Bloodmoney of the widow and orphans, bloodmoney of the just.
_Aceldema_. If not, out with you, man of quant.i.ties! We'll remain.”
M. de la Gueritude had never in his life heard anything of this sort, and thought he had to deal with a madman, as one might easily suppose, and, more for defence than attack, he raised his big stick. My good tutor, out of his senses, threw a bottle at the head of the contractor, who fell headlong on the floor, howling, ”He has killed me!” And as he was swimming in red wine he really looked as though murdered. Both the flunkeys wanted to throw themselves on the murderer, and one of them, a burly fellow, tried to grasp him, when M. Coignard gave the fellow such a b.u.t.t that he rolled in the stream beside the financier.
Unluckily he rose quickly, and, arming himself with a still burning torch, jumped into the pa.s.sage, where bad luck awaited him. My good master was no longer there; he had taken to his heels. But M. d'Anquetil was still there with Catherine, and he it was who received the burning torch on his forehead, an outrage he could not stand. He drew his sword, and drove it to the hilt in the unlucky knave's stomach, teaching him, at his own expense, how fatal it may be to attack a gentleman. Now M.
Coignard had not got twenty yards away from the house when the other lackey, a tall fellow, with the limbs of a daddy-longlegs, ran after him, shouting for the guard.
”Stop him! Stop him!” The footman ran faster than the abbe, and we could see him, at the corner of the Rue Saint Guillaume, extending his arms to catch M. Coignard by the collar of his gown. But my dear tutor, who had more than one trick, veering abruptly, got behind the fellow, tripped him up, and sent him on to a stone post, where he got his head broken. It was done before M. d'Anquetil and I, running to the abbe's a.s.sistance, could reach him. We could not leave M. Coignard in this pressing danger.
”Abbe,” said M. d'Anquetil, ”give me your hand. You're a gallant man.”
”I really cannot help thinking,” my good master replied, ”that I have been somewhat murderously inclined; but I am not cruel enough to be proud of it. I am quite satisfied so long as I am not reproached too vehemently. Such violence does not lie in my habits, and as you can see, sir, I am better fitted to lecture from the chair of a college on belles-lettres than I am to fight with lackeys at the corner of a street.”
”Oh!” replied M. d'Anquetil, ”that's not the worst of the whole business. I fully believe you have knocked the Farmer-general on the head.”
”Is it true?” questioned the abbe.
”As true as that I have perforated with my sword yonder scoundrel's tripes.”
”Under such circ.u.mstances we ought to ask pardon of G.o.d, to whom alone we are responsible for the blood shed by us, and secondly to hasten to the nearest fountain, there to wash ourselves, because I perceive that my nose is bleeding.”
”Right you are, abbe,” said M. d'Anquetil; ”for the blackguard now dying in the gutter has cut my forehead. What an impertinence!”
”Forgive him,” said the abbe, ”as you wish to be forgiven yourself.”
At the place where the Rue de Bac loses itself in the fields, we fortunately found along the wall of a hospital a little bronze Triton, shooting a spirt of water into a stone tub. We stopped to wash and drink, for our throats were dry.
”What have we done,” said my master, ”and how could I have lost my temper, usually so peaceable? True men must not be judged by their deeds, which depend on circ.u.mstances, but rather, on the example of G.o.d our Father, by their secret thoughts and their deepest intentions.”
”And Catherine,” I asked, ”what has become of her through this horrible adventure?”
”I left her,” was M. d'Anquetil's answer, ”breathing into the mouth of her financier, to revive him. But she had better save her breath. I know La Gueritude. He is pitiless. He'll send her to the spittel, perhaps to America. I am sorry for her. She was a fine girl. I did not love her, but she was mad after me. And, an extraordinary state of things, I am now without a mistress.”
”Don't bother,” said my good tutor. ”You'll soon find another, not different, or hardly differing in essentials, from her. What you look for in a woman, as it appears to me, is common to all females.”