Part 10 (1/2)
And with a kick he overturned Claudit's basket, whence fell the dead body of the much-lamented cuckoo hen.
The entire canton still echoes with this spectacular stroke. With blows and kicks the Gray Fox, the real one, was led back to his lair, and there, in a secret cellar, was discovered a collection of stolen hens, peacefully awaiting their turn to be cooked with accompaniment of cabbage. Everyone recognized his own hen, and everyone hastily seized it. Even Claudit's legitimate hens went by that road. But he was not the man to let himself be despoiled in silence.
”You say these hens are yours!” he cried. ”I know nothing about it. I am willing to give them to you. But I shall let n.o.body steal the hens that belong to me.”
And before a week had pa.s.sed, Claudit had, by the power of speech, got back all his hens, with, it was said, a few of doubtful owners.h.i.+p into the bargain.
To this insistence and its success he owed a return of public esteem.
But when a lock thereafter required his attention he was emphatically bidden to leave his basket at home.
XII
THE ADVENTURE OF MY CURe
I have had no very consecutive relations with the _cure_ of my village.
Many things stand between us. Our age, our occupations, our ideas. He follows one path, I another. Which does not prevent our occasionally meeting out in the country, or at the cross roads. We exchange greetings which vary according to the time of day; we occasionally talk of the weather, as it is, and as it should be to satisfy the peasants. In the crops we find yet another subject for a brief conversation. But we rarely venture beyond this circle of observations. His breviary claims him, and the finger marking the page of his interrupted reading is a delicate hint that the talk had best be brief. I have partridges to deliver, and must not linger, either. There is a slight awkwardness between us, even in saying good-bye. I am anxious not to say anything that may offend the simplicity of his faith, but I always fear one of those somewhat indiscreet suggestions which priests regard as part of their duty. On his side, it is evident that he dreads my so far forgetting myself as to make remarks which will oblige him to stand on the defensive. I cannot help seeing that I am an incomprehensible enigma to him, whereas his state of mind is not in the least puzzling to me.
How can I explain this mystery to him, without cruelly wounding him? We therefore part, after a few conventional words, regretting the necessity to stop short on the verge of a conversation which tempts us both, and aware that we have something to say to each other which we shall never say. To his last day he will undoubtedly regard me as an agent of the Devil. And on my side I can only silently sympathize with his sorrow in the recesses of my mind.
Abbe Mignot is a tall, robust, florid Burgundian, whose muscular frame seems better suited to field labour than to the unctuous gestures of the sacred ministry. The son of a vintner, he had begun life as a plowboy, when an aged singer, who had been a great sinner while she trod the boards of light opera in Paris, returned to her native village, there to acquire spiritual merit by good works, which the remuneration for vice out in the world enabled her to do. She reared altars, and munificently endowed them. She enriched the church with incomparable raiment. The pulpit praised the zeal of the excellent donor, who was earning Heaven by the virtues belonging to old age, and by preaching austerity to others.
One day this saintly lady, in quest of redemption, met at the edge of the village a dishevelled boy who was subduing the fierceness of a young bullock by the aid of sounding oaths and a shower of blows. The picture seemed to her beautiful, even though the music was profane. She questioned the child, whose precocious adolescence called up distant memories connected with this same muddy, rustic setting, and being suddenly vouchsafed light from on high, she conceived the plan of redeeming her very earliest sin (which had led to so many others), by means of the young bullock driver who seemed to her on the brink of perdition. Providence, and not chance, had set on her path this innocence to be saved from imminent peril. What an admirable priest the youth would make, when properly scrubbed, with his great clear eyes, his blond curls, his laughing insolence of a conquering hero! So the sinner who had turned away so many souls from the path to Heaven would redeem the past forever by leaving behind her an authentic servant of G.o.d, to keep up the necessary expiatory work after her death.
All would have been well had not the vintner hung mightily back. His son had cost him ”a lot of money.” He was just about to ”bring him in something” now. This was not the time for sending him away.
”If he goes,” he said, ”I shall have to hire a servant.... That costs a great deal, counting his food. I can't afford it.”
But the more obdurate the peasant was, the more obstinate became the devout lady in her resolve to accomplish the duty laid upon her by Heaven, as she declared. Negotiations were difficult, for Father Mignot had no liking for ”skullcaps,” as he called priests, and a double argument had to be used: one bag of money to repay him for his ”pecuniary loss,” and a second bag to allay the scruples of anticlericalism, aggravated by the circ.u.mstances. And this is what was called ”The vocation of a.r.s.ene Mignot.”
More than twenty years later, Abbe Mignot came to us with the remnants of his family: a widowed sister and three nephews without means of support. As I am telling nothing but what is strictly true, I have to admit that he met with a chilly reception. The old _cure_, whom we had just lost, had had enough to do to guard his eighty years from the heat and the cold, and to quaver out his ma.s.ses. Our peasants are not fond of being too closely questioned. When they saw this new man, still under forty, carrying his need for action into their very houses, breaking, from one day to the next, the happy-go-lucky traditions which had made his predecessor popular, they silently a.s.sumed the att.i.tude of self-defence. But the _cure_, being a peasant, knew his peasants. When he discovered his mistake, he had the sense to change his course, and to win back the discontented, one by one, without noise or waste of words.
And so, our village would have had no story, but for a hospital belonging to it, and standing in a hamlet two miles away. This hospital, privately endowed, was tended by four nuns of I know not what order.
Disease, however, never marred the spot by its presence. Against the express wish of the founder, a school had been established in it, and any sick person coming to ask admission was told that his presence would be dangerous to the school children, upon which he obediently went to die elsewhere. Two elderly spinsters, who did the work of servants, figured in the Sisters' conversation as ”our incurables.” By this means they were ent.i.tled to retain the inscription on the wall, announcing that hospital care might there be obtained.
Concerning the Sisters themselves there is nothing to say. They taught the catechism, sang off the key at ma.s.s, and made a great show of zeal toward the one they called ”Mother.” Their chief entertainment was luncheon at the _cure's_ on Sunday after church. A sweet dish and a little gla.s.s of Chartreuse crowned this extravagance. Then there would be much puerile chatter on topics drawn chiefly from the _Religious Weekly_. New recruits were proudly enumerated, eyes were rolled heavenward at talk of ”apostates,” and the latest miracles were related in minutest detail. A touch of politics occasionally spiced the heroic resolution to brave martyrdom. At parting, all were in a state of edification.
The trouble was that Abbe Mignot, without income, had four mouths to feed. The cost of the luncheon could not be brought within the limits of his budget. He made a frank confession of this to the ”Mother,” who answered haughtily that privation was the luxury of her estate, and that the Sisters would uncomplainingly return to sharing the ”bread of the sick,” at the hospital. Her words came true, for the very next week there was a patient at the hospital: the ”Mother” herself, whom an attack of erysipelas carried off in three days. The school had to be dismissed and everything scientifically disinfected, before the scholars could return. This duty fell upon the new Mother, a charming young nun, whose beautiful eyes, gentle speech, and affable manners, created a sensation in the countryside.
Mother Rosalie was gifted with a beautiful soprano voice, which proved to be a source of divine refreshment to Abbe Mignot, who was fond of playing the organ. There can be no music without work. Work at their music threw the Mother and the _cure_ together. And as one study leads to another, the visits of Mother Rosalie to Abbe Mignot came to be fairly frequent. Presently there was gossip, and after a time what had at first been a playful buzzing became rumblings of scandal. Is it credible? The first threat of a storm came from the three Sisters at the hospital. These old maids, who had until that moment been totally insignificant, felt surging in them, of a sudden, an irrepressible wave of spleen, intensified and again intensified by the acid of celibacy.
Although touched in a sensitive spot by the discontinuance of luncheon at the rectory on Sundays, sole amus.e.m.e.nt of their lives, they had made no sign. But the moment their one-time host laid himself open to criticism, the hurricane burst, and the flood of heinous words came beating against the very walls of the sacred edifice.
Nothing can be hidden in a village. Life is carried on in broad daylight. The ditches, the stones, the bushes have eyes. Everyone knew very well that Abbe Mignot and ”the pretty Mother,” as she was currently called, had never met anywhere but in the church, the door of which was open to all. The pealing of the organ and the pure voice rising to the rafters ought, it would seem, to have counteracted the poison of malevolent insinuations.
”Certainly,” said the peasants, ”they are doing no harm, _as long as they keep on singing_!”
Occasionally, when the organ was silent, Mother Rosalie knelt in the confessional. Busybodies, stationed behind pillars, considered that she remained there too long, and that she confessed oftener than necessary.
This was all that any one could find to say against them. I did my best to defend them, when occasion arose, but the only effect of my pleading, I fear, was to give more importance to the spiteful words.