Chicot the Jester Part 35

"Ah! yes, he is a very virtuous man, our King Henri III."

"I do not know if he be virtuous; but I know that I have never seen anything there to make me blush."

"You blush!"

At this moment M. Boutromet entered with the omelet and two more bottles.

"Bring it here," cried the monk, with a smile, which showed his thirty-two teeth.

"But, friend, I thought you had a discourse to p.r.o.nounce."

"It is here," cried Gorenflot, striking his forehead.

"At half-past nine."

"I lied; it was ten."

"Ten! I thought the abbey shut at nine."

"Let it shut; I have a key."

"A key of the abbey!"

"Here, in my pocket."

"Impossible; I know the monastic rules. They would not give the key to a simple monk."

"Here it is," said Gorenflot, showing a piece of money.

"Oh, money! you corrupt the porter to go in when you please, wretched sinner! But what strange money!"

"An effigy of the heretic, with a hole through his heart."

"Yes, I see it is a tester of the Bearn king's, and here is a hole."

"A blow with a dagger. Death to the heretic. He who does it is sure of Paradise."

"He is not yet drunk enough;" so thought Chicot; and he filled his gla.s.s again.

"To the ma.s.s!" cried Gorenflot, drinking it off.

Chicot remembered the porter looking at the hands of the monks, and said--

"Then, if you show this to the porter----"

"I enter."

"Without difficulty?"

"As this wine into my stomach." And the monk absorbed a new dose.

"And you p.r.o.nounce your discourse?"

"And I p.r.o.nounce my discourse. I arrive--do you hear? The a.s.sembly is numerous and select. There are barons, counts, and dukes."

"And even princes?"

"And even princes. I enter humbly among the faithful of the Union----"

"The Union--what does that mean?"

"I enter; they call Brother Gorenflot, and I advance----"

At these words the monk rose. "And I advance," continued he, trying to do so, but at the first step he rolled on the floor.

"Bravo!" cried Chicot; "you advance, you salute the audience and say----"

"No, it is my friends who say, Brother Gorenflot--a fine name for a leaguer, is it not?"

"A leaguer," thought Chicot: "what truths is this wine going to bring out?"

"Then I begin." And the monk rose, and leaned against the wall.

"You begin," said Chicot, holding him up.

"I begin, 'My brothers, it is a good day for the faith, a very good day, my brothers; it is a very good day for the faith.'"

After this, as Chicot loosed his hold, Gorenflot fell full length again on the floor, and before many minutes a loud snoring was heard.

"Good," said Chicot, "he is in for twelve hours sleep. I can easily undress him."

He then untied the monk's robe, and pulled it off; then rolled Gorenflot in the tablecloth, and covered his head with a napkin, and hiding the monk's frock under his cloak, pa.s.sed into the kitchen.

"M. Boutromet," said he, "here is for our supper, and for my horse; and pray do not wake the worthy Brother Gorenflot, who sleeps sound."

"No, no; be easy, M. Chicot."

Then Chicot ran to the rue St. Etienne, put on the monk's robe, took the tester in his hand, and at a quarter to ten presented himself, not without a beating heart, at the wicket of the Abbey St. Genevieve.

CHAPTER XIX.

HOW CHICOT FOUND OUT THAT IT WAS EASIER TO GO IN THAN OUT OF THE ABBEY.

Chicot, from the cloak and other things under the monk's robe, looked much larger across the shoulders than usual. His beard was of the same color as Gorenflot's, and he had so often amused himself with mimicking the monk's voice and manner of speaking that he could do it perfectly. Now, everyone knows that the beard and the voice are the only things which are recognizable from under the depths of a monk's hood. Chicot exhibited his coin, and was admitted without difficulty, and then followed two other monks to the chapel of the convent. In this chapel, built in the eleventh century, the choir was raised nine or ten feet above the rest of the building, and you mounted into it by two lateral staircases, while an iron door between them led from the nave to the crypt, into which you had to descend again. In this choir there was a portrait of St. Genevieve, and on each side of the altar were statues of Clovis and Clotilda.