He observed her; sparks glinted in the myopic eyes of this extraordinary woman. Evidently he had just stumbled, unwittingly, onto a guilty secret of hers.

"Well," and he smiled, "do you still commit infidelities to me with a false me?"

"I do not understand."

"Do you receive, at night, the visit of the incubus which resembles me?"

"No. Since I have been able to possess you in the flesh I have no need to evoke your image."

"What a downright Satanist you are!"

"Maybe. I have been so constantly associated with priests."

"You're a great one," he said, bowing. "Now listen to me, and do me a great favour. You know Canon Docre?"

"I should say!"

"Well, what in the world is this man, about whom I hear so much?"

"From whom?"

"Gevingey and Des Hermies."

"Ah, you consult the astrologer! Yes, he met the Canon in my own house, but I didn't know that Docre was acquainted with Des Hermies, who didn't attend our receptions in those days"

"Des Hermies has never seen Docre. He knows him, as I do, only by hearsay, from Gevingey. Now, briefly, how much truth is there in the stories of the sacrileges of which this priest is accused?"

"I don't know. Docre is a gentleman, learned and well bred. He was even the confessor of royalty, and he would certainly have become a bishop if he had not quitted the priesthood. I have heard a great deal of evil spoken about him, but, especially in the clerical world, people are so fond of saying all sorts of things."

"But you knew him personally."

"Yes, I even had him for a confessor."

"Then it isn't possible that you don't know what to make of him?"

"Very possible, indeed presumable. Look here, you have been beating around the bush a long time. Exactly what do you want to know?"

"Everything you care to tell me. Is he young or old, handsome or ugly, rich or poor?"

"He is forty years old, very fastidious of his person, and he spends a lot of money."

"Do you believe that he indulges in sorcery, that he celebrates the black mass?"

"It is quite possible."

"Pardon me for dunning you, for extorting information from you as if with forceps—suppose I were to ask you a really personal question—this faculty of incubacy ...?"

"Why, certainly I got it from him. I hope you are satisfied."

"Yes and no. Thanks for your kindness in telling me—I know I am abusing your good nature—but one more question. Do you know of any way whereby I may see Canon Docre in person?"

"He is at Nimes."

"Pardon me. For the moment, he is in Paris."

"Ah, you know that! Well, if I knew of a way, I would not tell you, be sure. It would not be good for you to get to seeing too much of this priest."

"You admit, then, that he is dangerous?"

"I do not admit nor deny. I tell you simply that you have nothing to do with him."

"Yes I have. I want to get material for my book from him."

"Get it from somebody else. Besides," she said, putting on her hat in front of the glass, "my husband got a bad scare and broke with that man and refuses to receive him."

"That is no reason why—"

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, nothing." He repressed the remark: "Why you should not see him."

She did not insist. She was poking her hair under her veil. "Heavens! what a fright I look!"

He took her hands and kissed them. "When shall I see you again?"

"I thought I wasn't to come here any more."

"Oh, now, you know I love you as a good friend. Tell me, when will you come again?"

"Tomorrow night, unless it is inconvenient for you."

"Not at all."

"Then, au revoir."

Their lips met.

"And above all, don't think about Canon Docre," she said, turning and shaking her finger at him threateningly as she went out.

"Devil take you and your reticence," he said to himself, closing the door after her.



CHAPTER XVI

"When I think," said Durtal to himself the next morning, "that in bed, at the moment when the most pertinacious will succumbs, I held firm and refused to yield to the instances of Hyacinthe wishing to establish a footing here, and that after the carnal decline, at that instant when annihilated man recovers—alas!—his reason, I supplicated her, myself, to continue her visits, why, I simply cannot understand myself. Deep down, I have not got over my firm resolution of breaking with her, but I could not dismiss her like a cocotte. And," to justify his inconsistency, "I hoped to get some information about the canon. Oh, on that subject I am not through with her. She's got to make up her mind to speak out and quit answering me by monosyllables and guarded phrases as she did yesterday.

"Indeed, what can she have been up to with that abbe who was her confessor and who, by her own admission, launched her into incubacy? She has been his mistress, that is certain. And how many other of these priests she has gone around with have been her lovers also? For she confessed, in a cry, that those are the men she loves. Ah, if one went about much in the clerical world one would doubtless learn remarkable things concerning her and her husband. It is strange, all the same that Chantelouve, who plays a singular role in that household, has acquired a deplorable reputation, and she hasn't. Never have I heard anybody speak of her dodges—but, oh, what a fool I am! It isn't strange. Her husband doesn't confine himself to religious and polite circles. He hobnobs with men of letters, and in consequence exposes himself to every sort of slander, while she, if she takes a lover, chooses him out of a pious society in which not one of us would ever be received. And then, abbes are discreet. But how explain her infatuation with me? By the simple fact that she is surfeited of priests and a layman serves as a change of diet.

"Just the same, she is quite singular, and the more I see her the less I understand her. There are in her three distinct beings.

"First the woman seated or standing up, whom I knew in her drawing-room, reserved, almost haughty, who becomes a good companion in private, affectionate and even tender.

"Then the woman in bed, completely changed in voice and bearing, a harlot spitting mud, losing all shame.

"Third and last, the pitiless vixen, the thorough Satanist, whom I perceived yesterday.

"What is the binding-alloy that amalgamates all these beings of hers? I can't say. Hypocrisy, no doubt. No. I don't think so, for she is often of a disconcerting frankness—in moments, it is true, of forgetfulness and unguardedness. Seriously, what is the use of trying to understand the character of this pious harlot? And to be candid with myself, what I wish ideally will never be realized; she does not ask me to take her to swell places, does not force me to dine with her, exacts no revenue: she isn't trying to compromise and blackmail me. I shan't find a better—but, oh, Lord! I now prefer to find no one at all. It suits me perfectly to entrust my carnal business to mercenary agents. For my twenty francs I shall receive more considerate treatment. There is no getting around it, only professionals know how to cook up a delicious sensual dish.

"Odd," he said to himself after a reflective silence, "but, all proportions duly observed, Gilles de Rais divides himself like her, into three different persons.

"First, the brave and honest fighting man.

"Then the refined and artistic criminal.

"Finally the repentant sinner, the mystic.

"He is a mass of contradictions and excesses. Viewing his life as a whole one finds each of his vices compensated by a contradictory virtue, but there is no key characteristic which reconciles them.

"He is of an overweening arrogance, but when contrition takes possession of him, he falls on his knees in front of the people of low estate, and has the tears, the humility of a saint.

"His ferocity passes the limits of the human scale, and yet he is generous and sincerely devoted to his friends, whom he cares for like a brother when the Demon has mauled them.

"Impetuous in his desires, and nevertheless patient; brave in battle, a coward confronting eternity; he is despotic and violent, yet he is putty in the hands of his flatterers. He is now in the clouds, now in the abyss, never on the trodden plain, the lowlands of the soul. His confessions do not throw any light on his invariable tendency to extremes. When asked who suggested to him the idea of such crimes, he answers, 'No one. The thought came to me only from myself, from my reveries, my daily pleasures, my taste for debauchery.' And he arraigns his indolence and constantly asserts that delicate repasts and strong drink have helped uncage the wild animal in him.

"Unresponsive to mediocre passions, he is carried away alternately by good as well as evil, and he bounds from spiritual pole to spiritual pole. He dies at the age of thirty-six, but he has completely exhausted the possibilities of joy and grief. He has adored death, loved as a vampire, kissed inimitable expressions of suffering and terror, and has, himself, been racked by implacable remorse, insatiable fear. He has nothing more to try, nothing more to learn, here below.

"Let's see," said Durtal, running over his notes. "I left him at the moment when the expiation begins. As I had written in one of my preceding chapters, the inhabitants of the region dominated by the chateaux of the Marshal know now who the inconceivable monster is who carries children off and cuts their throats. But no one dare speak. When, at a turn in the road, the tall figure of the butcher is seen approaching, all flee, huddle behind the hedges, or shut themselves up in the cottages.

"And Gilles passes, haughty and sombre, in the solitude of villages where no one dares venture abroad. Impunity seems assured him, for what peasant would be mad enough to attack a master who could have him gibbeted at a word?

"Again, if the humble give up the idea of bringing Gilles de Rais to justice, his peers have no intention of combating him for the benefit of peasants whom they disdain, and his liege, the duke of Brittany, Jean V, burdens him with favours and blandishments in order to extort his lands from him at a low price.

"A single power can rise and, above feudal complicities, above earthly interest, avenge the oppressed and the weak. The Church. And it is the Church in fact, in the person of Jean de Malestroit, which rises up before the monster and fells him.

"Jean de Malestroit, Bishop of Nantes, belongs to an illustrious line. He is a near kinsman of Jean V, and his incomparable piety, his infallible Christian wisdom, and his enthusiastic charity, make him venerated, even by the duke.

"The wailing of Gilles's decimated flock reaches his ears. In silence he begins an investigation and, setting spies upon the Marshal, waits only for an opportune moment to begin the combat. And Gilles suddenly commits an inexplicable crime which permits the Bishop to march forthwith upon him and smite him.

"To recuperate his shattered fortune, Gilles has sold his signorie of Saint Etienne de Mer Morte to a subject of Jean V, Guillaume le Ferron, who delegates his brother, Jean le Ferron, to take possession of the domain.

"Some days later the Marshal gathers the two hundred men of his military household and at their head marches on Saint Etienne. There, the day of Pentecost, when the assembled people are hearing mass, he precipitates himself, sword in hand, into the church, sweeps aside the faithful, throwing them into tumult, and, before the dumbfounded priest, threatens to cleave Jean le Ferron, who is praying. The ceremony is broken off, the congregation take flight. Gilles drags le Ferron, pleading for mercy, to the chateau, orders that the drawbridge be let down, and by force occupies the place, while his prisoner is carried away to Tiffauges and thrown into an underground dungeon.

"Gilles has, at one and the same time, violated the unwritten law of Brittany forbidding any baron to raise troops without the consent of the duke, and committed double sacrilege in profaning a chapel and seizing Jean le Ferron, who is a tonsured clerk of the Church.

"The Bishop learns of this outrage and prevails upon the reluctant Jean V to march against the rebel. Then, while one army advances on Saint Etienne, which Gilles abandons to take refuge with his little band in the fortified manor of Machecoul, another army lays siege to Tiffauges.

"During this time the priest hastens his redoubled investigations. He delegates commissioners and procurators in all the villages where children have disappeared. He himself quits his palace at Nantes, travels about the countryside, and takes the depositions of the bereft. The people at last speak, and on their knees beseech the Bishop to protect them. Enraged by the atrocities which they reveal, he swears that justice shall be done.

"It takes a month to hear all the reports. By letters-patent Jean de Malestroit establishes publicly the 'infamatio' of Gilles, then, when all the forms of canonic procedure have been gone through with, he launches the mandate of arrest.

"In this writ of warrant, given at Nantes the 13th day of September in the year of Our Lord 1440, the Bishop notes all the crimes imputed to the Marshal, then, in an energetic style, he commands his diocese to march against the assassin and dislodge him. 'Thus we do enjoin you, each and all, individually, by these presents, that ye cite immediately and peremptorily, without counting any man upon his neighbor, without discharging the burden any man upon his neighbour, that ye cite before us or before the Official of our cathedral church, for Monday of the feast of Exaltation of the Holy Cross, the 19th of September, Gilles, noble baron de Rais, subject to our puissance and to our jurisdiction; and we do ourselves cite him by these presents to appear before our bar to answer for the crimes which weigh upon him. Execute these orders, and do each of you cause them to be executed.'

"And the next day the captain-at-arms, Jean Labbe, acting in the name of the duke, and Robin Guillaumet, notary, acting in the name of the Bishop, present themselves, escorted by a small troop, before the chateau of Machecoul.

"What sudden change of heart does the Marshal now experience? Too feeble to hold his own in the open field, he can nevertheless defend himself behind the sheltering ramparts—yet he surrenders.

"Roger de Bricqueville and Gilles de Sille, his trusted councillors, have taken flight. He remains alone with Prelati, who also attempts, in vain, to escape. He, like Gilles, is loaded with chains. Robin Guillaumet searches the fortress from top to bottom. He discovers bloody clothes, imperfectly calcinated ashes which Prelati has not had time to throw into the latrines. Amid universal maledictions and cries of horror Gilles and his servitors are conducted to Nimes and incarcerated in the chateau de la Tour Neuve.

"Now this part is not very clear," said Durtal to himself. "Remembering what a daredevil the Marshal had been, how can we reconcile ourselves to the idea that he could give himself up to certain death and torture without striking a blow?

"'Was he softened, weakened by his nights of debauchery, terrified by the audacity of his own sacrileges, ravaged and torn by remorse? Was he tired of living as he did, and did he give himself up, as so many murderers do, because he was irresistibly attracted to punishment? Nobody knows. Did he think himself above the law because of his lofty rank? Or did he hope to disarm the duke by playing upon his venality, offering him a ransom of manors and farm land?

"One answer is as plausible as another. He may also have known how hesitant Jean V had been, for fear of rousing the wrath of the nobility of his duchy, about yielding to the objurgations of the Bishop and raising troops for the pursuit and arrest.

"Well, there is no document which answers these questions. An author can take some liberties here and set down his own conjectures. But that curious trial is going to give me some trouble.

"As soon as Gilles and his accomplices are incarcerated, two tribunals are organized, one ecclesiastical to judge the crimes coming under the jurisdiction of the Church, the other civil to judge those on which the state must pass.

"To tell the truth, the civil tribunal, which is present at the ecclesiastical hearings, effaces itself completely. As a matter of form it makes a brief cross-examination—but it pronounces the sentence of death, which the Church cannot permit itself to utter, according to the old adage, 'Ecclesia abhorret a sanguine.'

"The ecclesiastical trial lasts five weeks, the civil, forty-eight hours. It seems that, to hide behind the robes of the Bishop, the duke of Brittany has voluntarily subordinated the role of civil justice, which ordinarily stands up for its rights against the encroachments of the ecclesiastical court.

"Jean de Malestroit presides over the hearings. He chooses for assistants the Bishops of Mans, of Saint Brieuc, and of Saint Lo, then in addition he surrounds himself with a troop of jurists who work in relays in the interminable sessions of the trial. Some of the more important are Guillaume de Montigne, advocate of the secular court; Jean Blanchet, bachelor of laws; Guillaume Groyguet and Robert de la Riviere, licentiates in utroque jure, and Herve Levi, senescal of Quimper. Pierre de l'Hospital, chancellor of Brittany, who is to preside over the civil hearings after the canonic judgment, assists Jean de Malestroit.

"The public prosecutor is Guillaume Chapeiron, curate of Saint Nicolas, an eloquent and subtile man. Adjunct to him, to relieve him of the fatigue of the readings, are Geoffroy Pipraire, dean of Sainte Marie, and Jacques de Pentcoetdic, Official of the Church of Nantes.

"In connection with the episcopal jurisdiction, the Church has called in the assistance of the extraordinary tribunal of the Inquisition, for the repression of the crime of heresy, then comprehending perjury, blasphemy, sacrilege, all the crimes of magic.

"It sits at the side of Jean de Malestroit in the redoubtable and learned person of Jean Blouyn of the order of Saint Dominic, delegated by the Grand Inquisitor of France, Guillaume Merici, to the functions of Vice Inquisitor of the city and diocese of Nantes.

"The tribunal constituted, the trial opens the first thing in the morning, because judges and witnesses, in accordance with the custom of the times, must proceed fasting to the giving and hearing of evidence. The testimony of the parents of the victims is heard, and Robin Guillaumet, acting sergeant-at-arms, the man who arrested the Marshal at Machecoul, reads the citation bidding Gilles de Rais appear. He is brought in and declares disdainfully that he does not recognize the competence of the Tribunal, but, as canonic procedure demands, the Prosecutor at once 'in order that by this means the correction of sorcery be not prevented,' petitions for and obtains from the tribunal a ruling that this objection be quashed as being null in law and 'frivolous.' He begins to read to the accused the counts on which he is to be tried. Gilles cries out that the Prosecutor is a liar and a traitor. Then Guillaume Chapeiron extends his hand toward the crucifix, swears that he is telling the truth, and challenges the Marshal to take the same oath. But this man, who has recoiled from no sacrilege, is troubled. He refuses to perjure himself before God, and the session ends with Gilles still vociferating outrageous denunciations of the Prosecutor.

"The preliminaries completed, a few days later, the public hearings begin. The act of indictment is read aloud to the accused, in front of an audience who shudder when Chapeiron indefatigably enumerates the crimes one by one, and formally accuses the Marshal of having practised sorcery and magic, of having polluted and slain little children, of having violated the immunities of Holy Church at Saint Etienne de Mer Morte.

"Then after a silence he resumes his discourse, and making no account of the murders, but dwelling only on the crimes of which the punishment, foreseen by canonic law, can be fixed by the Church, he demands that Gilles be smitten with double excommunication, first as an evoker of demons, a heretic, apostate and renegade, second as a sodomist and perpetrator of sacrilege.

"Gilles, who has listened to this incisive and scathing indictment, completely loses control of himself. He insults the judges, calls them simonists and ribalds, and refuses to answer the questions put to him. The Prosecutor and advocates are unmoved; they invite him to present his defence.

"Again he denounces them, insults them, but when called upon to refute them he remains silent.

"The Bishop and Vice Inquisitor declare him in contempt and pronounce against him the sentence of excommunication, which is soon made public. They decide in addition that the hearing shall be continued next day—"

A ring of the doorbell interrupted Durtal's perusal of his notes. Des Hermies entered.

"I have just seen Carhaix. He is ill," he said.

"That so? What seems to be the matter?"

"Nothing very serious. A slight attack of bronchitis. He'll be up in a few days if he will consent to keep quiet."

"I must go see him tomorrow," said Durtal.

"And what are you doing?" enquired Des Hermies. "Working hard?"

"Why, yes. I am digging into the trial of the noble baron de Rais. It will be as tedious to read as to write!"

"And you don't know yet when you will finish your volume?"

"No," answered Durtal, stretching. "As a matter of fact I wish it might never be finished. What will become of me when it is? I'll have to look around for another subject, and, when I find one, do all the drudgery of planning and then getting the introductory chapter written—the mean part of any literary work is getting started. I shall pass mortal hours doing nothing. Really, when I think it over, literature has only one excuse for existing; it saves the person who makes it from the disgustingness of life."

"And, charitably, it lessens the distress of us few who still love art."

"Few indeed!"

"And the number keeps diminishing. The new generation no longer interests itself in anything except gambling and jockeys."

"Yes, you're quite right. The men can't spare from gambling the time to read, so it is only the society women who buy books and pass judgment on them. It is to The Lady, as Schopenhauer called her, to the little goose, as I should characterize her, that we are indebted for these shoals of lukewarm and mucilaginous novels which nowadays get puffed."

"You think, then, that we are in for a pretty literature. Naturally you can't please women by enunciating vigorous ideas in a crisp style."

"But," Durtal went on, after a silence, "it is perhaps best that the case should be as it is. The rare artists who remain have no business to be thinking about the public. The artist lives and works far from the drawing-room, far from the clamour of the little fellows who fix up the custom-made literature. The only legitimate source of vexation to an author is to see his work, when printed, exposed to the contaminating curiosity of the crowd."

"That is," said Des Hermies, "a veritable prostitution. To advertise a thing for sale is to accept the degrading familiarities of the first comer."

"But our impenitent pride—and also our need of the miserable sous—make it impossible for us to keep our manuscripts sheltered from the asses. Art ought to be—like one's beloved—out of reach, out of the world. Art and prayer are the only decent ejaculations of the soul. So when one of my books appears, I let go of it with horror. I get as far as possible from the environment in which it may be supposed to circulate. I care very little about a book of mine until years afterward, when it has disappeared from all the shop windows and is out of print. Briefly, I am in no hurry to finish the history of Gilles de Rais, which, unfortunately, is getting finished in spite of me. I don't give a damn how it is received."

"Are you doing anything this evening?"

"No. Why?"

"Shall we dine together?"

"Certainly."

And while Durtal was putting on his shoes, Des Hermies remarked, "To me the striking thing about the so-called literary world of this epoch is its cheap hypocrisy. What a lot of laziness, for instance, that word dilettante has served to cover."

"Yes, it's a great old alibi. But it is confounding to see that the critic who today decrees himself the title of dilettante accepts it as a term of praise and does not even suspect that he is slapping himself. The whole thing can be resolved into syllogism:

"The dilettante has no personal temperament, since he objects to nothing and likes everything.

"Whoever has no personal temperament has no talent."

"Then," rejoined Des Hermies, putting on his hat, "an author who boasts of being a dilettante, confesses by that very thing that he is no author?"

"Exactly."



CHAPTER XVII

Toward the end of the afternoon Durtal quit work and went up to the towers of Saint Sulpice.

He found Carhaix in bed in a chamber connecting with the one in which they were in the habit of dining. These rooms were very similar, with their walls or unpapered stone, and with their vaulted ceilings, only, the bedroom was darker. The window opened its half-wheel not on the place Saint Sulpice but on the rear of the church, whose roof prevented any light from getting in. This cell was furnished with an iron bed, whose springs shrieked, with two cane chairs, and with a table that had a shabby covering of green baize. On the bare wall was a crucifix of no value, with a dry palm over it. That was all. Carhaix was sitting up in bed reading, with books and papers piled all around him. His eyes were more watery and his face paler than usual. His beard, which had not been shaved for several days, grew in grey clumps on his hollow cheeks, but his poor features were radiant with an affectionate, affable smile.

To Durtal's questions he replied, "It is nothing. Des Hermies gives me permission to get up tomorrow. But what a frightful medicine!" and he showed Durtal a potion of which he had to take a teaspoonful every hour.

"What is it he's making you take?"

But the bell-ringer did not know. Doubtless to spare him the expense, Des Hermies himself always brought the bottle.

"Isn't it tiresome lying in bed?"

"I should say! I am obliged to entrust my bells to an assistant who is no good. Ah, if you heard him ring! It makes me shudder, it sets my teeth on edge."

"Now you mustn't work yourself up," said his wife. "In two days you will be able to ring your bells yourself."

But he went on complaining. "You two don't understand. My bells are used to being well treated. They're like domestic animals, those instruments, and they obey only their master. Now they won't harmonize, they jangle. I can hardly recognize their voices."

"What are you reading?" asked Durtal, wishing to change a subject which he judged to be dangerous.

"Books about bells! Ah, Monsieur Durtal, I have some inscriptions here of truly rare beauty. Listen," and he opened a worm-bored book, "listen to this motto printed in raised letters on the bronze robe of the great bell of Schaffhausen, 'I call the living, I mourn the dead, I break the thunder.' And this other which figured on an old bell in the belfry of Ghent, 'My name is Roland. When I toll, there is a fire; when I peal, there is a tempest in Flanders.'"

"Yes," Durtal agreed, "there is a certain vigour about that one."

"Ah," said Carhaix, seeming not to have heard the other's remark, "it's ridiculous. Now the rich have their names and titles inscribed on the bells which they give to the churches, but they have so many qualities and titles that there is no room for a motto. Truly, humility is a forgotten virtue in our day."

"If that were the only forgotten virtue!" sighed Durtal.

"Ah!" replied Carhaix, not to be turned from his favourite subject, "and if this were the only abuse! But bells now rust from inactivity. The metal is no longer hammer-hardened and is not vibrant. Formerly these magnificent auxiliaries of the ritual sang without cease. The canonical hours were sounded, Matins and Laudes before daybreak, Prime at dawn, Tierce at nine o'clock, Sexte at noon, Nones at three, and then Vespers and Compline. Now we announce the curate's mass, ring three angeluses, morning, noon, and evening, occasionally a Salute, and on certain days launch a few peals for prescribed ceremonies. And that's all. It's only in the convents where the bells do not sleep, for these, at least, the night offices are kept up."

"You mustn't talk about that," said his wife, straightening the pillows at his back. "If you keep working yourself up, you will never get well."

"Quite right," he said, resigned, "but what would you have? I shall still be a man with a grievance, whom nothing can pacify," and he smiled at his wife who was bringing him a spoonful of the potion to swallow.

The doorbell rang. Mme. Carhaix went to answer it and a hilarious and red-faced priest entered, crying in a great voice, "It's Jacob's ladder, that stairway! I climbed and climbed and climbed, and I'm all out of breath," and he sank, puffing, into an armchair.

"Well, my friend," he said at last, coming into the bedroom, "I learned from the beadle that you were ill, and I came to see how you were getting on."

Durtal examined him. An irrepressible gaiety exuded from this sanguine, smooth-shaven face, blue from the razor. Carhaix introduced them. They exchanged a look, of distrust on the priest's side, of coldness on Durtal's.

Durtal felt embarrassed and in the way, while the honest pair were effusively and with excessive humility thanking the abbe for coming up to see them. It was evident that for this pair, who were not ignorant of the sacrileges and scandalous self-indulgences of the clergy, an ecclesiastic was a man elect, a man so superior that as soon as he arrived nobody else counted.

Durtal took his leave, and as he went downstairs he thought, "That jubilant priest sickens me. Indeed, a gay priest, physician, or man of letters must have an infamous soul, because they are the ones who see clearly into human misery and console it, or heal it, or depict it. If after that they can act the clown—they are unspeakable! Though I'll admit that thoughtless persons deplore the sadness of the novel of observation and its resemblance to the life it represents. These people would have it jovial, smart, highly coloured, aiding them, in their base selfishness, to forget the hag-ridden existences of their brothers.

"Truly, Carhaix and his wife are peculiar. They bow under the paternal despotism of the priests—and there are moments when that same despotism must be no joke—and revere them and adore them. But then these two are simple believers, with humble, unsmirched souls. I don't know the priest who was there, but he is rotund and rubicund, he shakes in his fat and seems bursting with joy. Despite the example of Saint Francis of Assisi, who was gay—spoiling him for me—I have difficulty in persuading myself that this abbe is an elevated being. It's all right to say that the best thing for him is to be mediocre; to ask how, if he were otherwise, he would make his flock understand him; and add that if he really had superior gifts he would be hated by his colleagues and persecuted by his bishop."

While conversing thus disjointedly with himself Durtal had reached the base of the tower. He stopped under the porch. "I intended to stay longer up there," thought he. "It's only half-past five. I must kill at least half an hour before dinner."

The weather was almost mild. The clouds had been swept away. He lighted a cigarette and strolled about the square, musing. Looking up he hunted for the bell-ringer's window and recognized it. Of the windows which opened over the portico it alone had a curtain.

"What an abominable construction," he thought, contemplating the church. "Think. That cube flanked by two towers presumes to invite comparison with the facade of Notre Dame. What a jumble," he continued, examining the details. "From the foundation to the first story are Ionic columns with volutes, then from the base of the tower to the summit are Corinthian columns with acanthus leaves. What significance can this salmagundi of pagan orders have on a Christian church? And as a rebuke to the over-ornamented bell tower there stands the other tower unfinished, looking like an abandoned grain elevator, but the less hideous of the two, at that.

"And it took five or six architects to erect this indigent heap of stones. Yet Servandoni and Oppenord and their ilk were the real major prophets, the ... zekiels of building. Their work is the work of seers looking beyond the eighteenth century to the day of transportation by steam. For Saint Sulpice is not a church, it's a railway station!

"And the interior of the edifice is not more religious nor artistic than the exterior. The only thing in it that pleases me is good Carhaix's aerial cave." Then he looked about him. "This square is very ugly, but how provincial and homelike it is! Surely nothing could equal the hideousness of that seminary, which exhales the rancid, frozen odour of a hospital. The fountain with its polygonal basins, its saucepan urns, its lion-headed spouts, its niches with prelates in them, is no masterpiece. Neither is the city hall, whose administrative style is a cinder in the eye. But on this square, as in the neighbouring streets, Servandoni, Garanciere, and Ferrou, one respires an atmosphere compounded of benign silence and mild humidity. You think of a clothes-press that hasn't been open for years, and, somehow, of incense. This square is in perfect harmony with the houses in the decayed streets around here, with the shops where religious paraphernalia are sold, the image and ciborium factories, the Catholic bookstores with books whose covers are the colour of apple seeds, macadam, nutmeg, bluing.

"Yes, it's dilapidated and quiet."

The square was then almost deserted. A few women were going up the church steps, met by mendicants who murmured paternosters as they rattled their tin cups. An ecclesiastic, carrying under his arm a book bound in black cloth, saluted white-eyed women. A few dogs were running about. Children were chasing each other or jumping rope. The enormous chocolate-coloured la Villette omnibus and the little honey-yellow bus of the Auteuil line went past, almost empty. Hackmen were standing beside their hacks on the sidewalk, or in a group around a comfort station, talking. There were no crowds, no noise, and the great trees gave the square the appearance of the silent mall of a little town.

"Well," said Durtal, considering the church again, "I really must go up to the top of the tower some clear day." Then he shook his head. "What for? A bird's-eye view of Paris would have been interesting in the Middle Ages, but now! I should see, as from a hill top, other heights, a network of grey streets, the whiter arteries of the boulevards, the green plaques of gardens and squares, and, away in the distance, files of houses like lines of dominoes stood up on end, the black dots being windows.

"And then the edifices emerging from this jumble of roofs, Notre Dame, la Sainte Chapelle, Saint Severin, Saint Etienne du Mont, the Tour Saint Jacques, are put out of countenance by the deplorable mass of newer edifices. And I am not at all eager to contemplate that specimen of the art of the maker of toilet articles which l'Opera is, nor that bridge arch, l'arc de la Triomphe, nor that hollow chandelier, the Tour Eiffel! It's enough to see them separately, from the ground, as you turn a street corner. Well, I must go and dine, for I have an engagement with Hyacinthe and I must be back before eight."

He went to a neighbouring wine shop where the dining-room, depopulated at six o'clock, permitted one to ruminate in tranquillity, while eating fairly sanitary food and drinking not too dangerously coloured wines. He was thinking of Mme. Chantelouve, but more of Docre. The mystery of this priest haunted him. What could be going on in the soul of a man who had had the figure of Christ tattooed on his heels the better to trample Him?

What hate the act revealed! Did Docre hate God for not having given him the blessed ecstasies of a saint, or more humanly for not having raised him to the highest ecclesiastical dignities? Evidently the spite of this priest was inordinate and his pride unlimited. He seemed not displeased to be an object of terror and loathing, for thus he was somebody. Then, for a thorough-paced scoundrel, as this man seemed to be, what delight to make his enemies languish in slow torment by casting spells on them with perfect impunity.

"And sacrilege carries one out of oneself in furious transports, in voluptuous delirium, which nothing can equal. Since the Middle Ages it has been the coward's crime, for human justice does not prosecute it, and one can commit it with impunity, but it is the most extreme of excesses for a believer, and Docre believes in Christ, or he wouldn't hate Him so.

"A monster! And what ignoble relations he must have had with Chantelouve's wife! Now, how shall I make her speak up? She gave me quite clearly to understand, the other day, that she refused to explain herself on this topic. Meanwhile, as I have not intention of submitting to her young girl follies tonight, I will tell her that I am not feeling well, and that absolute rest and quiet are necessary."

He did so, an hour later when she came in.

She proposed a cup of tea, and when he refused, she embraced him and nursed him like a baby. Then withdrawing a little, "You work too hard. You need some relaxation. Come now, to pass the time you might court me a little, because up to now I have done it all. No? That idea does not amuse him. Let us try something else. Shall we play hide-and-seek with the cat? He shrugs his shoulders. Well, since there is nothing to change your grouchy expression, let us talk. What has become of your friend Des Hermies?"

"Nothing in particular."

"And his experiments with Mattei medicine?"

"I don't know whether he continues to prosecute them or not."

"Well, I see that the conversational possibilities of that topic are exhausted. You know your replies are not very encouraging, dear."

"But," he said, "everybody sometimes gets so he doesn't answer questions at great length. I even know a young woman who becomes excessively laconic when interrogated on a certain subject."

"Of a canon, for instance."

"Precisely."

She crossed her legs, very coolly. "That young woman undoubtedly had reasons for keeping still. But perhaps that young woman is really eager to oblige the person who cross-examines her; perhaps, since she last saw him, she has gone to a great deal of trouble to satisfy his curiosity."

"Look here, Hyacinthe darling, explain yourself," he said, squeezing her hands, an expression of joy on his face.

"If I have made your mouth water so as not to have a grouchy face in front of my eyes, I have succeeded remarkably."

He kept still, wondering whether she was making fun of him or whether she really was ready to tell him what he wanted to know.

"Listen," she said. "I hold firmly by my decision of the other night. I will not permit you to become acquainted with Canon Docre. But at a settled time I can arrange, without your forming any relations with him, to have you be present at the ceremony you most desire to know about."

"The Black Mass?"

"Yes. Within a week Docre will have left Paris. If once, in my company, you see him, you will never see him afterward. Keep your evenings free all this week. When the time comes I will notify you. But you may thank me, dear, because to be useful to you I am disobeying the commands of my confessor, whom I dare not see now, so I am damning myself."

He kissed her, then, "Seriously, that man is really a monster?"

"I fear so. In any case I would not wish anybody the misfortune of having him for an enemy."

"I should say not, if he poisons people by magic, as he seems to have done Gevingey."

"And he probably has. I should not like to be in the astrologer's shoes."

"You believe in Docre's potency, then. Tell me, how does he operate, with the blood of mice, with broths, or with oil?"

"So you know about that! He does employ these substances. In fact, he is one of the very few persons who know how to manage them without poisoning themselves. It's as dangerous as working with explosives. Frequently, though, when attacking defenceless persons, he uses simpler recipes. He distils extracts of poison and adds sulphuric acid to fester the wound, then he dips in this compound the point of a lancet with which he has his victim pricked by a flying spirit or a larva. It is ordinary, well-known magic, that of Rosicrucians and tyros."

Durtal burst out laughing. "But, my dear, to hear you, one would think death could be sent to a distance like a letter."

"Well, isn't cholera transmitted by letters? Ask the sanitary corps. Don't they disinfect all mail in the time of epidemics?"

"I don't contradict that, but the case is not the same."

"It is too, because it is the question of transmission, invisibility, distance, which astonishes you."

"What astonishes me more than that is to hear of the Rosicrucians actively satanizing. I confess that I had never considered them as anything more than harmless suckers and funereal fakes."

"But all societies are composed of suckers and the wily leaders who exploit them. That's the case of the Rosicrucians. Yes, their leaders privately attempt crime. One does not need to be erudite or intelligent to practise the ritual of spells. At any rate, and I affirm this, there is among them a former man of letters whom I know. He lives with a married woman, and they pass the time, he and she, trying to kill the husband by sorcery."

"Well, it has its advantages over divorce, that system has."

She pouted. "I shan't say another word. I think you are making fun of me. You don't believe in anything—"

"Indeed. I was not laughing at you. I haven't very precise ideas on this subject. I admit that at first blush all this seems improbable, to say the least. But when I think that all the efforts of modern science do but confirm the discoveries of the magic of other days, I keep my mouth shut. It is true," he went on after a silence,—"to cite only one fact—that people can no longer laugh at the stories of women being changed into cats in the Middle Ages. Recently there was brought to M. Charcot a little girl who suddenly got down on her hands and knees and ran and jumped around, scratching and spitting and arching her back. So that metamorphosis is possible. No, one cannot too often repeat it, the truth is that we know nothing and have no right to deny anything. But to return to your Rosicrucians. Using purely chemical formulae, they get along without sacrilege?"

"That is as much as to say that their venefices—supposing they know how to prepare them well enough to accomplish their purpose, though I doubt that—are easy to defeat. Yet I don't mean to say that this group, one member of which is an ordained priest, does not make use of contaminated Eucharists at need."

"Another nice priest! But since you are so well informed, do you know how spells are conjured away?"

"Yes and no. I know that when the poisons are sealed by sacrilege, when the operation is performed by a master, Docre or one of the princes of magic at Rome, it is not at all easy—nor healthy—to attempt to apply an antidote. Though I have heard of a certain abbe at Lyons who, practically alone, is succeeding right now in these difficult cures."

"Dr. Johannes!"

"You know him!"

"No. But Gevingey, who has gone to seek his medical aid, has told me of him."

"Well, I don't know how he goes about it, but I know that spells which are not complicated with sacrilege are usually evaded by the law of return. The blow is sent back to him who struck it. There are, at the present time, two churches, one in Belgium, the other in France, where, when one prays before a statue of the Virgin, the spell which has been cast on one flies off and goes and strikes one's adversary."

"Rats!"

"One of these churches is at Tougres, eighteen kilometres from Liege, and the name of it is Notre Dame de Retour. The other is the church of l'Epine, 'the thorn,' a little village near Chalons. This church was built long ago to conjure away the spells produced with the aid of the thorns which grew in that country and served to pierce images cut in the shape of hearts."

"Near Chalons," said Durtal, digging in his memory, "it does seem to me now that Des Hermies, speaking of bewitchment by the blood of white mice, pointed out that village as the habitation of certain diabolic circles."

"Yes, that country in all times has been a hotbed of Satanism."

"You are mighty well up on these matters. Is it Docre who transmitted this knowledge to you?"

"Yes, I owe him the little I am able to pass on to you. He took a fancy to me and even wanted to make me his pupil. I refused, and am glad now I did, for I am much more wary than I was then of being constantly in a state of mortal sin."

"Have you ever attended the Black Mass?"

"Yes. And I warn you in advance that you will regret having seen such terrible things. It is a memory that persists and horrifies, even—especially—when one does not personally take part in the offices."

He looked at her. She was pale, and her filmed eyes blinked rapidly.

"It's your own wish," she continued. "You will have no complaint if the spectacle terrifies you or wrings your heart."

He was almost dumbfounded to see how sad she was and with what difficulty she spoke.

"Really. This Docre, where did he come from, what did he do formerly, how did he happen to become a master Satanist?"

"I don't know very much about him. I know he was a supply priest in Paris, then confessor of a queen in exile. There were terrible stories about him, which, thanks to his influential patronage, were hushed up under the Empire. He was interned at La Trappe, then driven out of the priesthood, excommunicated by Rome. I learned in addition that he had several times been accused of poisoning, but had always been acquitted because the tribunals had never been able to get any evidence. Today he lives I don't know how, but at ease, and he travels a good deal with a woman who serves as voyant. To all the world he is a scoundrel, but he is learned and perverse, and then he is so charming."

"Oh," he said, "how changed your eyes and voice are! Admit that you are in love with him."

"No, not now. But why should I not tell you that we were mad about each other at one time?"

"And now?"

"It is over. I swear it is. We have remained friends and nothing more."

"But then you often went to see him. What kind of a place did he have? At least it was curious and heterodoxically arranged?"

"No, it was quite ordinary, but very comfortable and clean. He had a chemical laboratory and an immense library. The only curious book he showed me was an office of the Black Mass on parchment. There were admirable illuminations, and the binding was made of the tanned skin of a child who had died unbaptized. Stamped into the cover, in the shape of a fleuron, was a great host consecrated in a Black Mass."

"What did the manuscript say?"

"I did not read it."

They were silent. Then she took his hands.

"Now you are yourself again. I knew I should cure you of your bad humour. Admit that I am awfully good-natured not to have got angry at you."

"Got angry? What about?"

"Because it is not very flattering to a woman to be able to entertain a man only by telling him about another one."

"Oh, no, it isn't that way at all," he said, kissing her eyes tenderly.

"Let me go now," she said, very low, "this enervates me, and I must get home. It's late."

She sighed and fled, leaving him amazed and wondering in what weird activities the life of that woman had been passed.



CHAPTER XVIII

The day after that on which he had spewed such furious vituperation over the Tribunal, Gilles de Rais appeared again before his judges. He presented himself with bowed head and clasped hands. He had once more jumped from one extreme to the other. A few hours had sufficed to break the spirit of the energumen, who now declared that he recognized the authority of the magistrates and begged forgiveness for having insulted them.

They affirmed that for the love of Our Lord they forgot his imprecations, and, at his prayer, the Bishop and the Inquisitor revoked the sentence of excommunication which they had passed on him the day before.

This hearing was, in addition, taken up with the arraignment of Prelati and his accomplices. Then, authorized by the ecclesiastical text which says that a confession cannot be regarded as sufficient if it is "dubia, vaga, generalis illativa, jocosa," the Prosecutor asserted that to certify the sincerity of his confessions Gilles must be subjected to the "canonic question," that is, to torture.

The Marshal besought the Bishop to wait until the next day, and claiming the right of confessing immediately to such judges as the Tribunal were pleased to designate, he swore that he would thereafter repeat his confession before the public and the court.

Jean de Malestroit granted this request, and the Bishop of Saint Brieuc and Pierre de l'Hospital were appointed to hear Gilles in his cell. When he had finished the recital of his debauches and murders they ordered Prelati to be brought to them.

At sight of him Gilles burst into tears and when, after the interrogatory, preparations were made to conduct the Italian back to his dungeon, Gilles embraced him, saying, "Farewell, Francis my friend, we shall never see each other again in this world. I pray God to give you good patience and I hope in Him that we may meet again in great joy in Paradise. Pray God for me and I shall pray for you."

And Gilles was left alone to meditate on his crimes which he was to confess publicly at the hearing next day. That day was the impressive day of the trial. The room in which the Tribunal sat was crammed, and there were multitudes sitting on the stairs, standing in the corridors, filling the neighbouring courts, blocking the streets and lanes. From twenty miles around the peasants were come to see the memorable beast whose very name, before his capture, had served to close the doors those evenings when in universal trembling the women dared not weep aloud.

This meeting of the Tribunal was to be conducted with the most minute observance of all the forms. All the assize judges, who in a long hearing generally had their places filled by proxies, were present.

The courtroom, massive, obscure, upheld by heavy Roman pillars, had been rejuvenated. The wall, ogival, threw to cathedral height the arches of its vaulted ceiling, which were joined together, like the sides of an abbatial mitre, in a point. The room was lighted by sickly daylight which was filtered through small panes between heavy leads. The azure of the ceiling was darkened to navy blue, and the golden stars, at that height, were as the heads of steel pins. In the shadows of the vaults appeared the ermine of the ducal arms, dimly seen in escutcheons which were like great dice with black dots.

Suddenly the trumpets blared, the room was lighted up, and the Bishops entered. Their mitres of cloth of gold flamed like the lightning. About their necks were brilliant collars with orphreys crusted, as were the robes, with carbuncles. In silent processional the Bishops advanced, weighted down by their rigid copes, which fell in a flare from their shoulders and were like golden bells split in the back. In their hands they carried the crozier from which hung the maniple, a sort of green veil.

At each step they glowed like coals blown upon. Themselves were sufficient to light the room, as they reanimated with their jewels the pale sun of a rainy October day and scattered a new lustre to all parts of the room, over the mute audience.

Outshone by the shimmer of the orphreys and the stones, the costumes of the other judges appeared darker and discordant. The black vestments of secular justice, the white and black robe of Jean Blouyn, the silk symars, the red woollen mantles, the scarlet chaperons lined with fur, seemed faded and common.

The Bishops seated themselves in the front row, surrounding Jean de Malestroit, who from a raised seat dominated the court.

Under the escort of the men-at-arms Gilles entered. He was broken and haggard and had aged twenty years in one night. His eyes burned behind seared lids. His cheeks shook. Upon injunction he began the recital of his crimes.

In a laboured voice, choked by tears, he recounted his abductions of children, his hideous tactics, his infernal stimulations, his impetuous murders, his implacable violations. Obsessed by the vision of his victims, he described their agonies drawn out or hastened, their cries, the rattle in their throats. He confessed to having wallowed in the elastic warmth of their intestines. He confessed that he had ripped out their hearts through wounds enlarged and opening like ripe fruit. And with the eyes of a somnambulist he looked down at his fingers and shook them as if blood were dripping from them.

The thunder-struck audience kept a mournful silence which was lacerated suddenly by a few short cries, and the attendants, at a run, carried out fainting women, mad with horror.

He seemed to see nothing, to hear nothing. He continued to tell off the frightful rosary of his crimes. Then his voice became raucous. He was coming to the sepulchral violations, and now to the torture of the little children whom he had cajoled in order to cut their throats as he kissed them.

He divulged every detail. The account was so formidable, so atrocious, that beneath their golden caps the bishops blanched. These priests, tempered in the fires of confessional, these judges who in that time of demonomania and murder had never heard more terrifying confessions, these prelates whom no depravity had ever astonished, made the sign of the Cross, and Jean de Malestroit rose and for very shame veiled the face of the Christ.

Then all lowered their heads, and without a word they listened. The Marshal, bathed in sweat, his face downcast, looked now at the crucifix whose invisible head and bristling crown of thorns gave their shapes to the veil.

He finished his narrative and broke down completely. Till now he had stood erect, speaking as if in a daze, recounting to himself, aloud, the memory of his ineradicable crimes. But at the end of the story his forces abandoned him. He fell on his knees and, shaken by terrific sobs, he cried, "O God, O my Redeemer, I beseech mercy and pardon!" Then the ferocious and haughty baron, the first of his caste no doubt, humiliated himself. He turned toward the people and said, weeping, "Ye, the parents of those whom I have so cruelly put to death, give, ah give me, the succour of your pious prayers!"

Then in its white splendour the soul of the Middle Ages burst forth radiant.

Jean de Malestroit left his seat and raised the accused, who was beating the flagstones with his despairing forehead. The judge in de Malestroit disappeared, the priest alone remained. He embraced the sinner who was repenting and lamenting his fault.

A shudder overran the audience when Jean de Malestroit, with Gilles's head on his breast, said to him, "Pray that the just and rightful wrath of the Most High be averted, weep that your tears may wash out the blood lust from your being!"

And with one accord everybody in the room knelt down and prayed for the assassin. When the orisons were hushed there was an instant of wild terror and commotion. Driven beyond human limits of horror and pity, the crowd tossed and surged. The judges of the Tribunal, silent, enervated, reconquered themselves.

With a gesture, brushing away his tears, the Prosecutor arrested the proceedings. He said that the crimes were "clear and apparent," that the proofs were manifest, that the court would now "in its conscience and soul" chastise the culprit, and he demanded that the day of passing judgment be fixed. The Tribunal designated the day after the next.

And that day the Official of the church of Nantes, Jacques de Pentcoetdic, read in succession the two sentences. The first, passed by the Bishop and the Inquisitor for the acts coming under their common jurisdiction, began thus:

"The Holy Name of Christ invoked, we, Jean, Bishop of Nantes, and Brother Jean Blouyn, bachelor in our Holy Scriptures, of the order of the preaching friars of Nantes, and delegate of the Inquisitor of heresies for the city and diocese of Nantes, in session of the Tribunal and having before our eyes God alone—"

And after enumerating the crimes it concluded:

"We pronounce, decide, and declare, that thou, Gilles de Rais, cited unto our Tribunal, art heinously guilty of heresy, apostasy, and evocation of demons; that for these crimes thou hast incurred the sentence of excommunication and all other penalties determined by the law."

The second judgment, rendered by the Bishop alone, on the crimes of sodomy, sacrilege, and violation of the immunities of the Church, which more particularly concerned his authority, ended in the same conclusions and in the pronunciation, in almost identical form, of the same penalty.

Gilles listened with bowed head to the reading of these judgments. When it was over the Bishop and the Inquisitor said to him, "Will you, now that you detest your errors, your evocations, and your crimes, be reincorporated into the Church our Mother?"

And upon the ardent prayers of the Marshal they relieved him of all excommunication and admitted him to participate in the sacraments. The justice of God was satisfied, the crime was recognized, punished, but effaced by contrition and penitence. Only human justice remained.

The Bishop and the Inquisitor remanded the culprit to the secular court, which, holding against him the abductions and the murders, pronounced the penalty of death and attainder. Prelati and the other accomplices were at the same time condemned to be hanged and burned alive.

"Cry to God mercy," said Pierre de l'Hospital, who presided over the civil hearings, "and dispose yourself to die in good state with a great repentance for having committed such crimes."

The recommendation was unnecessary. Gilles now faced death without fear. He hoped, humbly, avidly, in the mercy of the Saviour. He cried out fervently for the terrestrial expiation, the stake, to redeem him from the eternal flames after his death.

Far from his chateaux, in his dungeon, alone, he had opened himself and viewed the cloaca which had so long been fed by the residual waters escaped from the abattoirs of Tiffauges and Machecoul. He had sobbed in despair of ever draining this stagnant pool. And thunder-smitten by grace, in a cry of horror and joy, he had suddenly seen his soul overflow and sweep away the dank fen before a torrential current of prayer and ecstasy. The butcher of Sodom had destroyed himself, the companion of Jeanne d'Arc had reappeared, the mystic whose soul poured out to God, in bursts of adoration, in floods of tears.

Then he thought of his friends and wished that they also might die in a state of grace. He asked the Bishop of Nantes that they might be executed not before nor after him, but at the same time. He carried his point that he was the most guilty and that he must instruct them in saving their souls and assist them at the moment when they should mount the scaffold. Jean de Malestroit granted the supplication.

"What is curious," said Durtal, interrupting his writing to light a cigarette, "is that—"

A gentle ring. Mme. Chantelouve entered.

She declared that she could stay only two minutes. She had a carriage waiting below. "Tonight," she said, "I will call for you at nine. First write me a letter in practically these terms," and she handed him a paper. He unfolded it and read this declaration:

"I certify that all that I have said and written about the Black Mass, about the priest who celebrated it, about the place where I claimed to have witnessed it, about the persons alleged to have been there, is pure invention. I affirm that I imagined all these incidents, that, in consequence, all that I have narrated is false."

"Docre's?" he asked, studying the handwriting, minute, pointed, twisted, aggressive.

"Yes, and he wants this declaration, not dated, to be made in the form of a letter from you to a person consulting you on the subject."

"Your canon distrusts me."

"Of course. You write books."

"It doesn't please me infinitely to sign that," murmured Durtal. "What if I refuse?"

"You will not go to the Black Mass."

His curiosity overcame his reluctance. He wrote and signed the letter and Mme. Chantelouve put it in her card-case.

"And in what street is the ceremony to take place?"

"In the rue Olivier de Serres."

"Where is that?"

"Near the rue de Vaugirard, away up."

"Is that where Docre lives?"

"No, we are going to a private house which belongs to a lady he knows. Now, if you'll be so good, put off your cross-examination to some other time, because I am in an awful hurry. At nine o'clock. Don't forget. Be all ready."

He had hardly time to kiss her and she was gone.

"Well," said he, "I already had data on incubacy and poisoning by spells. There remained only the Black Mass, to make me thoroughly acquainted with Satanism as it is practised in our day. And I am to see it! I'll be damned if I thought there were such undercurrents in Paris. And how circumstances hang together and lead to each other! I had to occupy myself with Gilles de Rais and the diabolism of the Middle Ages to get contemporary diabolism revealed to me." And he thought of Docre again. "What a sharper that priest is! Among the occultists who maunder today in the universal decomposition of ideas he is the only one who interests me.

"The others, the mages, the theosophists, the cabalists, the spiritists, the hermetics, the Rosicrucians, remind me, when they are not mere thieves, of children playing and scuffling in a cellar. And if one descend lower yet, into the hole-in-the-wall places of the pythonesses, clairvoyants, and mediums, what does one find except agencies of prostitution and gambling? All these pretended peddlers of the future are extremely nasty; that's the only thing in the occult of which one can be sure."

Des Hermies interrupted the course of these reflections by ringing and walking in. He came to announce that Gevingey had returned and that they were all to dine at Carhaix's the night after next.

"Is Carhaix's bronchitis cured?"

"Yes, completely."

Preoccupied with the idea of the Black Mass, Durtal could not keep silent. He let out the fact that he was to witness the ceremony—and, confronted by Des Hermies's stare of stupefaction, he added that he had promised secrecy and that he could not, for the present, tell him more.

"You're the lucky one!" said Des Hermies. "Is it too much to ask you the name of the abbe who is to officiate?"

"Not at all. Canon Docre."

"Ah!" and the other was silent. He was evidently trying to divine by what manipulations his friend had been able to get in touch with the renegade.

"Some time ago you told me," Durtal said, "that in the Middle Ages the Black Mass was said on the naked buttocks of a woman, that in the seventeenth century it was celebrated on the abdomen, and now?"

"I believe that it takes place before an altar as in church. Indeed it was sometimes celebrated thus at the end of the fifteenth century in Biscay. It is true that the Devil then officiated in person. Clothed in rent and soiled episcopal habits, he gave communion with round pieces of shoe leather for hosts, saying, 'This is my body.' And he gave these disgusting wafers to the faithful to eat after they had kissed his left hand and his breech. I hope that you will not be obliged to render such base homage to your canon."

Durtal laughed. "No, I don't think he requires a pretend like that. But look here, aren't you of the decided opinion that the creatures who so piously, infamously, follow these offices are a bit mad?"

"Mad? Why? The cult of the Demon is no more insane than that of God. One is rotten and the other resplendent, that is all. By your reckoning all people who worship any god whatever would be demented. No. The affiliates of Satanism are mystics of a vile order, but they are mystics. Now, it is highly probable that their exaltations into the extra-terrestrial of Evil coincide with the rages of their frenzied senses, for lechery is the wet nurse of Demonism. Medicine classes, rightly or wrongly, the hunger for ordure in the unknown categories of neurosis, and well it may, for nobody knows anything about neuroses except that everybody has them. It is quite certain that in this, more than in any previous century, the nerves quiver at the least shock. For instance, recall the newspaper accounts of executions of criminals. We learn that the executioner goes about his work timidly, that he is on the point of fainting, that he has nervous prostration when he decapitates a man. Then compare this nervous wreck with the invincible torturers of the olden time. They would thrust your arm into a sleeve of moistened parchment which when set on fire would draw up and in a leisurely fashion reduce your flesh to dust. Or they would drive wedges into your thighs and split the bones. They would crush your thumbs in the thumbscrew. Or they would singe all the hair off your epidermis with a poker, or roll up the skin from your abdomen and leave you with a kind of apron. They would drag you at the cart's tail, give you the strappado, roast you, drench you with ignited alcohol, and through it all preserve an impassive countenance and tranquil nerves not to be shaken by any cry or plaint. Only, as these exercises were somewhat fatiguing, the torturers, after the operation, were ravenously hungry and required a deal of drink. They were sanguinaries of a mental stability not to be shaken, while now! But to return to your companions in sacrilege. This evening, if they are not maniacs, you will find them—doubt it not—repulsive lechers. Observe them closely. I am sure that to them the invocation of Beelzebub is a prelibation of carnality. Don't be afraid, because, Lord! in this group there won't be any to make you imitate the martyr of whom Jacques de Voragine speaks in his history of Saint Paul the Eremite. You know that legend?"

"No."

"Well, to refresh your soul I will tell you. This martyr, who was very young, was stretched out, his hands and feet bound, on a bed, then a superb specimen of femininity was brought in, who tried to force him. As he was burning and was about to sin, he bit off his tongue and spat it in the face of the woman, "and thus pain drove out temptation," says the good de Voragine."

"My heroism would not carry me so far as that, I confess. But must you go so soon?"

"Yes, I have a pressing engagement."

"What a queer age," said Durtal, conducting him to the door. "It is just at the moment when positivism is at its zenith that mysticism rises again and the follies of the occult begin."

"Oh, but it's always been that way. The tail ends of all centuries are alike. They're always periods of vacillation and uncertainty. When materialism is rotten-ripe magic takes root. This phenomenon reappears every hundred years. Not to go further back, look at the decline of the last century. Alongside of the rationalists and atheists you find Saint-Germain, Cagliostro, Saint-Martin, Gabalis, Cazotte, the Rosicrucian societies, the infernal circles, as now. With that, good-bye and good luck."

"Yes," said Durtal, closing the door, "but Cagliostro and his ilk had a certain audacity, and perhaps a little knowledge, while the mages of our time—what inept fakes!"



CHAPTER XIX

In a fiacre they went up the rue de Vaugirard. Mme. Chantelouve was as in a shell and spoke not a word. Durtal looked closely at her when, as they passed a street lamp, a shaft of light played over her veil a moment, then winked out. She seemed agitated and nervous beneath her reserve. He took her hand. She did not withdraw it. He could feel the chill of it through her glove, and her blonde hair tonight seemed disordered, dry, and not so fine as usual.

"Nearly there?"

But in a low voice full of anguish she said, "Do not speak."

Bored by this taciturn, almost hostile tete-a-tete, he began to examine the route through the windows of the cab. The street stretched out interminable, already deserted, so badly paved that at every step the cab springs creaked. The lamp-posts were beginning to be further and further apart. The cab was approaching the ramparts.

"Singular itinerary," he murmured, troubled by the woman's cold, inscrutable reserve.

Abruptly the vehicle turned up a dark street, swung around, and stopped.

Hyacinthe got out. Waiting for the cabman to give him his change, Durtal inspected the lay of the land. They were in a sort of blind alley. Low houses, in which there was not a sign of life, bordered a lane that had no sidewalk. The pavement was like billows. Turning around, when the cab drove away, he found himself confronted by a long high wall above which dry leaves rustled in the shadows. A little door with a square grating in it was cut into the thick unlighted wall, which was seamed with fissures. Suddenly, further away, a ray of light shot out of a show window, and, doubtless attracted by the sound of the cab wheels, a man wearing the black apron of a wineshop keeper lounged through the shop door and spat on the threshold.

"This is the place," said Mme. Chantelouve.

She rang. The grating opened. She raised her veil. A shaft of lantern light struck her full in the face, the door opened noiselessly, and they penetrated into a garden.

"Good evening, madame."

"Good evening, Marie. In the chapel?"

"Yes. Does madame wish me to guide her?"

"No, thanks."

The woman with the lantern scrutinized Durtal. He perceived, beneath a hood, wisps of grey hair falling in disorder over a wrinkled old face, but she did not give him time to examine her and returned to a tent beside the wall serving her as a lodge.

He followed Hyacinthe, who traversed the dark lanes, between rows of palms, to the entrance of a building. She opened the doors as if she were quite at home, and her heels clicked resolutely on the flagstones.

"Be careful," she said, going through a vestibule. "There are three steps."

They came out into a court and stopped before an old house. She rang. A little man advanced, hiding his features, and greeted her in an affected, sing-song voice. She passed, saluting him, and Durtal brushed a fly-blown face, the eyes liquid, gummy, the cheeks plastered with cosmetics, the lips painted.

"I have stumbled into a lair of sodomists.—You didn't tell me that I was to be thrown into such company," he said to Hyacinthe, overtaking her at the turning of a corridor lighted by a lamp.

"Did you expect to meet saints here?"

She shrugged her shoulders and opened a door. They were in a chapel with a low ceiling crossed by beams gaudily painted with coal-tar pigment. The windows were hidden by great curtains. The walls were cracked and dingy. Durtal recoiled after a few steps. Gusts of humid, mouldy air and of that indescribable new-stove acridity poured out of the registers to mingle with an irritating odour of alkali, resin, and burnt herbs. He was choking, his temples throbbing.

He advanced groping, attempting to accustom his eyes to the half-darkness. The chapel was vaguely lighted by sanctuary lamps suspended from chandeliers of gilded bronze with pink glass pendants. Hyacinthe made him a sign to sit down, then she went over to a group of people sitting on divans in a dark corner. Rather vexed at being left here, away from the centre of activity, Durtal noticed that there were many women and few men present, but his efforts to discover their features were unavailing. As here and there a lamp swayed, he occasionally caught sight of a Junonian brunette, then of a smooth-shaven, melancholy man. He observed that the women were not chattering to each other. Their conversation seemed awed and grave. Not a laugh, not a raised voice, was heard, but an irresolute, furtive whispering, unaccompanied by gesture.

"Hmm," he said to himself. "It doesn't look as if Satan made his faithful happy."

A choir boy, clad in red, advanced to the end of the chapel and lighted a stand of candles. Then the altar became visible. It was an ordinary church altar on a tabernacle above which stood an infamous, derisive Christ. The head had been raised and the neck lengthened, and wrinkles, painted in the cheeks, transformed the grieving face to a bestial one twisted into a mean laugh. He was naked, and where the loincloth should have been, there was a virile member projecting from a bush of horsehair. In front of the tabernacle the chalice, covered with a pall, was placed. The choir boy folded the altar cloth, wiggled his haunches, stood tiptoe on one foot and flipped his arms as if to fly away like a cherub, on pretext of reaching up to light the black tapers whose odour of coal tar and pitch was now added to the pestilential smell of the stuffy room.

Durtal recognized beneath the red robe the "fairy" who had guarded the chapel entrance, and he understood the role reserved for this man, whose sacrilegious nastiness was substituted for the purity of childhood acceptable to the Church.

Then another choir boy, more hideous yet, exhibited himself. Hollow chested, racked by coughs, withered, made up with white grease paint and vivid carmine, he hobbled about humming. He approached the tripods flanking the altar, stirred the smouldering incense pots and threw in leaves and chunks of resin.

Durtal was beginning to feel uncomfortable when Hyacinthe rejoined him. She excused herself for having left him by himself so long, invited him to change his place, and conducted him to a seat far in the rear, behind all the rows of chairs.

"This is a real chapel, isn't it?" he asked.

"Yes. This house, this church, the garden that we crossed, are the remains of an old Ursuline convent. For a long time this chapel was used to store hay. The house belonged to a livery-stable keeper, who sold it to that woman," and she pointed out a stout brunette of whom Durtal before had caught a fleeting glimpse.

"Is she married?"

"No. She is a former nun who was debauched long ago by Docre."

"Ah. And those gentlemen who seem to be hiding in the darkest places?"

"They are Satanists. There is one of them who was a professor in the School of Medicine. In his home he has an oratorium where he prays to a statue of Venus Astarte mounted on an altar."

"No!"

"I mean it. He is getting old, and his demoniac orisons increase tenfold his forces, which he is using up with creatures of that sort," and with a gesture she indicated the choir boys.

"You guarantee the truth of this story?"

"You will find it narrated at great length in a religious journal. Les annales de la saintete. And though his identity was made pretty patent in the article, the man did not dare prosecute the editors.—What's the matter with you?" she asked, looking at him closely.

"I'm strangling. The odour from those incense burners is unbearable."

"You will get used to it in a few seconds."

"But what do they burn that smells like that?"

"Asphalt from the street, leaves of henbane, datura, dried nightshade, and myrrh. These are perfumes delightful to Satan, our master." She spoke in that changed, guttural voice which had been hers at times when in bed with him. He looked her squarely in the face. She was pale, the lips pressed tight, the pluvious eyes blinking rapidly.

"Here he comes!" she murmured suddenly, while women in front of them scurried about or knelt in front of the chairs.

Preceded by the two choir boys the canon entered, wearing a scarlet bonnet from which two buffalo horns of red cloth protruded. Durtal examined him as he marched toward the altar. He was tall, but not well built, his bulging chest being out of proportion to the rest of his body. His peeled forehead made one continuous line with his straight nose. The lips and cheeks bristled with that kind of hard, clumpy beard which old priests have who have always shaved themselves. The features were round and insinuating, the eyes, like apple pips, close together, phosphorescent. As a whole his face was evil and sly, but energetic, and the hard, fixed eyes were not the furtive, shifty orbs that Durtal had imagined.

The canon solemnly knelt before the altar, then mounted the steps and began to say mass. Durtal saw then that he had nothing on beneath his sacrificial habit. His black socks and his flesh bulging over the garters, attached high up on his legs, were plainly visible. The chasuble had the shape of an ordinary chasuble but was of the dark red colour of dried blood, and in the middle, in a triangle around which was an embroidered border of colchicum, savin, sorrel, and spurge, was the figure of a black billy-goat presenting his horns.

Docre made the genuflexions, the full-or half-length inclinations specified by the ritual. The kneeling choir boys sang the Latin responses in a crystalline voice which trilled on the ultimate syllables of the words.

"But it's a simple low mass," said Durtal to Mme. Chantelouve.

She shook her head. Indeed, at that moment the choir boys passed behind the altar and one of them brought back copper chafing-dishes, the other, censers, which they distributed to the congregation. All the women enveloped themselves in the smoke. Some held their heads right over the chafing-dishes and inhaled deeply, then, fainting, unlaced themselves, heaving raucous sighs.

The sacrifice ceased. The priest descended the steps backward, knelt on the last one, and in a sharp, tripidant voice cried:

"Master of Slanders, Dispenser of the benefits of crime, Administrator of sumptuous sins and great vices, Satan, thee we adore, reasonable God, just God!

"Superadmirable legate of false trances, thou receivest our beseeching tears; thou savest the honour of families by aborting wombs impregnated in the forgetfulness of the good orgasm; thou dost suggest to the mother the hastening of untimely birth, and thine obstetrics spares the still-born children the anguish of maturity, the contamination of original sin.

"Mainstay of the despairing Poor, Cordial of the Vanquished, it is thou who endowest them with hypocrisy, ingratitude, and stiff-neckedness, that they may defend themselves against the children of God, the Rich.

"Suzerain of Resentment, Accountant of Humiliations, Treasurer of old Hatreds, thou alone dost fertilize the brain of man whom injustice has crushed; thou breathest into him the idea of meditated vengeance, sure misdeeds; thou incitest him to murder; thou givest him the abundant joy of accomplished reprisals and permittest him to taste the intoxicating draught of the tears of which he is the cause.

"Hope of Virility, Anguish of the Empty Womb, thou dost not demand the bootless offering of chaste loins, thou dost not sing the praises of Lenten follies; thou alone receivest the carnal supplications and petitions of poor and avaricious families. Thou determinest the mother to sell her daughter, to give her son; thou aidest sterile and reprobate loves; Guardian of strident Neuroses, Leaden Tower of Hysteria, bloody Vase of Rape!

"Master, thy faithful servants, on their knees, implore thee and supplicate thee to satisfy them when they wish the torture of all those who love them and aid them; they supplicate thee to assure them the joy of delectable misdeeds unknown to justice, spells whose unknown origin baffles the reason of man; they ask, finally, glory, riches, power, of thee, King of the Disinherited, Son who art to overthrow the inexorable Father!"

Then Docre rose, and erect, with arms outstretched, vociferated in a ringing voice of hate:

"And thou, thou whom, in my quality of priest, I force, whether thou wilt or no, to descend into this host, to incarnate thyself in this bread, Jesus, Artisan of Hoaxes, Bandit of Homage, Robber of Affection, hear! Since the day when thou didst issue from the complaisant bowels of a Virgin, thou hast failed all thine engagements, belied all thy promises. Centuries have wept, awaiting thee, fugitive God, mute God! Thou wast to redeem man and thou hast not, thou wast to appear in thy glory, and thou sleepest. Go, lie, say to the wretch who appeals to thee, 'Hope, be patient, suffer; the hospital of souls will receive thee; the angels will assist thee; Heaven opens to thee.' Impostor! thou knowest well that the angels, disgusted at thine inertness, abandon thee! Thou wast to be the Interpreter of our plaints, the Chamberlain of our tears; thou wast to convey them to the Father and thou hast not done so, for this intercession would disturb thine eternal sleep of happy satiety.

"Thou hast forgotten the poverty thou didst preach, enamoured vassal of Banks! Thou hast seen the weak crushed beneath the press of profit; thou hast heard the death rattle of the timid, paralyzed by famine, of women disembowelled for a bit of bread, and thou hast caused the Chancery of thy Simoniacs, thy commercial representatives, thy Popes, to answer by dilatory excuses and evasive promises, sacristy Shyster, huckster God!

"Master, whose inconceivable ferocity engenders life and inflicts it on the innocent whom thou darest damn—in the name of what original sin?—whom thou darest punish—by the virtue of what covenants?—we would have thee confess thine impudent cheats, thine inexpiable crimes! We would drive deeper the nails into thy hands, press down the crown of thorns upon thy brow, bring blood and water from the dry wounds of thy sides.

"And that we can and will do by violating the quietude of thy body, Profaner of ample vices, Abstractor of stupid purities, cursed Nazarene, do-nothing King, coward God!" "Amen!" trilled the soprano voices of the choir boys.

Durtal listened in amazement to this torrent of blasphemies and insults. The foulness of the priest stupefied him. A silence succeeded the litany. The chapel was foggy with the smoke of the censers. The women, hitherto taciturn, flustered now, as, remounting the altar, the canon turned toward them and blessed them with his left hand in a sweeping gesture. And suddenly the choir boys tinkled the prayer bells.

It was a signal. The women fell to the carpet and writhed. One of them seemed to be worked by a spring. She threw herself prone and waved her legs in the air. Another, suddenly struck by a hideous strabism, clucked, then becoming tongue-tied stood with her mouth open, the tongue turned back, the tip cleaving to the palate. Another, inflated, livid, her pupils dilated, lolled her head back over her shoulders, then jerked it brusquely erect and belaboured herself, tearing her breast with her nails. Another, sprawling on her back, undid her skirts, drew forth a rag, enormous, meteorized; then her face twisted into a horrible grimace, and her tongue, which she could not control, stuck out, bitten at the edges, harrowed by red teeth, from a bloody mouth.

Suddenly Durtal rose, and now he heard and saw Docre distinctly.

Docre contemplated the Christ surmounting the tabernacle, and with arms spread wide apart he spewed forth frightful insults, and, at the end of his forces, muttered the billingsgate of a drunken cabman. One of the choir boys knelt before him with his back toward the altar. A shudder ran around the priest's spine. In a solemn but jerky voice he said, "Hoc est enim corpus meum," then, instead of kneeling, after the consecration, before the precious Body, he faced the congregation, and appeared tumefied, haggard, dripping with sweat. He staggered between the two choir boys, who, raising the chasuble, displayed his naked belly. Docre made a few passes and the host sailed, tainted and soiled, over the steps.

Durtal felt himself shudder. A whirlwind of hysteria shook the room. While the choir boys sprinkled holy water on the pontiff's nakedness, women rushed upon the Eucharist and, grovelling in front of the altar, clawed from the bread humid particles and drank and ate divine ordure.

Another woman, curled up over a crucifix, emitted a rending laugh, then cried to Docre, "Father, father!" A crone tore her hair, leapt, whirled around and around as on a pivot and fell over beside a young girl who, huddled to the wall, was writhing in convulsions, frothing at the mouth, weeping, and spitting out frightful blasphemies. And Durtal, terrified, saw through the fog the red horns of Docre, who, seated now, frothing with rage, was chewing up sacramental wafers, taking them out of his mouth, wiping himself with them, and distributing them to the women, who ground them underfoot, howling, or fell over each other struggling to get hold of them and violate them.

The place was simply a madhouse, a monstrous pandemonium of prostitutes and maniacs. Now, while the choir boys gave themselves to the men, and while the woman who owned the chapel, mounted the altar caught hold of the phallus of the Christ with one hand and with the other held a chalice between "His" naked legs, a little girl, who hitherto had not budged, suddenly bent over forward and howled, howled like a dog. Overcome with disgust, nearly asphyxiated, Durtal wanted to flee. He looked for Hyacinthe. She was no longer at his side. He finally caught sight of her close to the canon and, stepping over the writhing bodies on the floor, he went to her. With quivering nostrils she was inhaling the effluvia of the perfumes and of the couples.

"The sabbatic odour!" she said to him between clenched teeth, in a strangled voice.

"Here, let's get out of this!"

She seemed to wake, hesitated a moment, then without answering she followed him. He elbowed his way through the crowd, jostling women whose protruding teeth were ready to bite. He pushed Mme. Chantelouve to the door, crossed the court, traversed the vestibule, and, finding the portress' lodge empty, he drew the cord and found himself in the street.

There he stopped and drew the fresh air deep into his lungs. Hyacinthe, motionless, dizzy, huddled to the wall away from him.

He looked at her. "Confess that you would like to go in there again."

"No," she said with an effort. "These scenes shatter me. I am in a daze. I must have a glass of water."

And she went up the street, leaning on him, straight to the wine shop, which was open. It was an ignoble lair, a little room with tables and wooden benches, a zinc counter, cheap bar fixtures, and blue-stained wooden pitchers; in the ceiling a U-shaped gas bracket. Two pick-and-shovel labourers were playing cards. They turned around and laughed. The proprietor took the excessively short-stemmed pipe from his mouth and spat into the sawdust. He seemed not at all surprised to see this fashionably gowned woman in his dive. Durtal, who was watching him, thought he surprised an understanding look exchanged by the proprietor and the woman.

The proprietor lighted a candle and mumbled into Durtal's ear, "Monsieur, you can't drink here with these people watching. I'll take you to a room where you can be alone."

"Hmmm," said Durtal to Hyacinthe, who was penetrating the mysteries of a spiral staircase, "A lot of fuss for a glass of water!"

But she had already entered a musty room. The paper was peeling from the walls, which were nearly covered with pictures torn out of illustrated weeklies and tacked up with hairpins. The floor was all in pieces. There were a wooden bed without any curtains, a chamber pot with a piece broken out of the side, a wash bowl and two chairs.

The man brought a decanter of gin, a large one of water, some sugar, and glasses, then went downstairs.