The Queen Pedauque Part 20

Nothing proves, my son, that you have not been begot by a Sylph. It is the very thing I prefer to believe, in so far as your spirit, still delicate, shall grow in strength and beauty."

"Oh, sir! don't speak like that," replied my tutor, and smiled. "You oblige him to hide his spirit so as not to damage his mother's good name. But if you knew her better you could not but think with me that she never had any intercourse with a Sylph; she is a good Christian who has never accomplished the work of the flesh with any other man than her husband, and who carries her virtue written distinctly on her features, very different from the mistress of that other cookshop, Madame Quonion, about whom they talked so much in Paris, as well as in the provinces, in the days of my youth. Have you never heard of her, sir? Her lover was M.

Mariette, who later on became secretary to M. d'Angervilliers. He was a stout man, who left a jewel every time he visited his beloved; one day a Cross of Lorraine or a Holy Ghost; another day a watch or a chatelaine, or perhaps a handkerchief, a fan, a box. For her sake he rifled the jewellers and seamstresses of the fair of St Germain. He gave her so much that, finding his shop decorated like a shrine, the master-cook became suspicious that all that wealth could not have been honestly acquired. He watched her, and very soon surprised her with her lover. It must be said that the husband was but a jealous fellow. He flew into a temper, and gained nothing by it, but very much the reverse. For the amorous couple, plagued by his wrangling, swore to get rid of him. M.

Mariette had no little influence. He got a _lettre de cachet_ in the name of that unhappy Quonion. On a certain day the perfidious woman said to her husband:

"Take me, I beg of you, on Sunday next out to dinner somewhere in the country. I promise myself uncommon pleasure from such an excursion."

She became caressing and pressing, and the husband, flattered, agreed to all her demands. On the Sunday, he got with her into a paltry hackney coach to go to Porcherons. But they had hardly got to Roule when a posse of constables placed in readiness by Marietta arrested him, and took him to Bicetre, from whence he was sent to the Mississippi, where he still remains. Someone composed a song which finished thus:

'Un mari sage et commode N'ouvre les yeux qu'a demi Il vaut mieux etre a la mode, Que de voir Mississippi.'

And such is, doubtless, the most solid lesson to be derived from the example given by Quonion the cook.

"As to the story itself, it only needs to be narrated by a Petronius or by an Apuleius to equal the best Milesian fables. The moderns are inferior to the ancients in epic poetry and tragedy. But if we do not surpa.s.s the Greeks and Latins in story-telling it is net the fault of the ladies of Paris, who never cease enriching the material for tales by their ingenious and graceful inventions. You certainly know, sir, the stories of Boccaccio. I am sure that had that Florentine lived in our days in France he would make of Quonion's misfortune one of his pleasantest tales. As far as I am myself concerned I have been reminded of it at this table for the sole purpose, and by the effect of contrast, to make the virtue of Madame Leonard Tournebroche shine. She is the honour of cookshops, of which Madame Quonion is the disgrace. Madame Tournebroche, I dare affirm it, has never abandoned those ordinary commonplace virtues the practice of which is recommended in marriage, which is the only contemptible one of the seven sacraments."

"I do not deny it," said M. d'Asterac. "But Mistress Tournebroche would be still more estimable if she should have had intercourse with a Sylph, as Semiramis had and Olympias and the mother of that grand pope Sylvester II."

"Ah, sir," said the Abbe Coignard, "you are always talking to us of Sylphs and Salamanders. Now, in simple good faith, have you ever seen any of them?"

"As clearly as I see you this very moment," replied M. d'Asterac, "and certainly closer, at least as far as Salamanders are concerned."

"That is not sufficient, my dear sir, to make me believe in their existence, which is against the teachings of the Church. For one may be seduced by illusions. The eyes, and all our senses, are messengers of error and couriers of lies. They delude us more than they teach us, and bring us but uncertain and fugitive images. Truth escapes them, because truth is eternal, and invisible like eternity."

"Ah!" said M. d'Asterac, "I did not know you were so philosophical, nor of so subtle a mind."

"That's true," replied my good master. "There are days on which my soul is heavier, and with preference attached to bed and table. But last night I broke a bottle on the head of an extortioner, and my mind is very much exalted over it. I feel myself capable of dissipating the phantoms which are haunting you, and to blow off all that mist. For after all, sir, these Sylphs are but vapours of your brain."

M. d'Asterac stopped him with a kind gesture and said:

"I beg your pardon, abbe; do you believe in demons?"

"Without difficulty I can reply," said my good master, "that I believe of demons all that is reported of them in the Scriptures, and that I reject as error and superst.i.tion all and every belief in spells, charms and exorcism. Saint Augustine teaches that when the Scriptures exhort us to resist the demons, it requires us to resist our pa.s.sions and intemperate appet.i.tes. Nothing is more detestable than the deviltries wherewith the Capuchins frighten old women."

"I see," said M. d'Asterac, "you do your best to think as an honest man.

You hate as much as I do myself the coa.r.s.e superst.i.tions of the monks.

But, after all, you do believe in demons, and I have not had much trouble to make you avow it. Know, then, that they are no other than Sylphs and Salamanders, ignorance and fear have disfigured them in timid imaginations. But, as a fact, they are beautiful and virtuous. I will not lead you in the ways of the Salamanders, as I am not quite sure of the purity of your morals; but I can see no impediment, abbe, to a frequentation of the Sylphs, who inhabit the fields of air, and voluntarily approach man in a spirit of friendliness and affection, so that they have been rightly named helping genii. Far from driving us to perdition, as the theologians believe, who change them into devils, they protect and safeguard their terrestrial friends. I could make you acquainted with numberless examples of the help they give. But to be short I'll repeat to you one single case which was told to me by Madame la Marechale de Grancey herself. She was middle-aged, and a widow for several years, when, one night, in her bed, she received the visit of a Sylph, who said to her: 'Madame, have a search made in the wardrobe of your deceased husband. In the pocket of a pair of his breeches a letter will be found, which, if it became known, would ruin M. des Roches, my good friend and yours. Find that letter and burn it.'

"The marechale promised not to neglect this recommendation and inquired after news of the defunct marechal from the Sylph, who, however, disappeared without giving any reply. On waking she summoned her women, and bade them look if some of the late marechal's garments remained in his wardrobe. The attendants reported that nothing was left, and that the lackeys had sold them all to old clothes dealers. Madame de Grancey insisted on her women trying to find at least one pair of breeches.

"Having searched in every corner they finally discovered a very old-fashioned pair of black satin, embroidered with carnations, and handed them to their mistress, who found a letter in one of the pockets, which contained more than would have been needed to incarcerate M. des Roches in one of the state prisons. She burned the letter at once, and so that gentleman was saved by his good friends the Sylph and the marechale.

"Are such, I ask you, abbe, the manners of demons? But let me give you another startling hit on the matter, which will impress you more, and will I am sure go to the heart of a learned man such as yourself. It is doubtless known to you that the Academy of Dijon is rich in wits. One of them, whose name cannot be unknown to you, living in the last century, prepared with great labour an edition of Pindar. One night, worrying over five verses the sense of which he could not disentangle, so much was the text corrupt, he dozed off, quite despairing, at c.o.c.kcrow.

During his sleep, a Sylph, who wished him well, transported his spirit to Stockholm into the palace of Queen Christina, conducted him to the library, and took from one of the shelves a ma.n.u.script of Pindar's showing him the difficult pa.s.sage. The five verses were there, as well as two or three annotations which rendered them perfectly intelligible.

"In the violence of his contentment, our savant woke up, struck a light, and pencilled down the verses as they appeared to him in his sleep.

After that he went to sleep again profoundly. On the following morning, thinking over his night's adventure, he at once resolved to try to get a confirmation. M. Descartes happened at that very time to be in Sweden, reading to the queen on philosophy. Our Pindarist knew him, but was on still closer terms with M. Chanut, the Swedish amba.s.sador in France. He wrote requesting him to forward a letter to M. Descartes, in which he asked him to be informed if there really was in the queen's library at Stockholm a ma.n.u.script of Pindar containing the version he mentioned.

M. Descartes, an extremely courteous man, replied to the academician of Dijon that, as a fact, her Majesty possessed a ma.n.u.script of Pindar, and that he had himself read there the verses, with the various readings contained in the letter."

M. d'Asterac, who had been peeling an apple during his narration, looked at M. Coignard to enjoy the success of his discourse.

My dear tutor smiled and said:

"Ah, sir! I clearly see that I flattered myself with an idle hope, and that one cannot make you give up your vain imaginations. I confess with a good grace that you have shown us an ingenious Sylph, and that I actually wish for such an obliging secretary. His a.s.sistance would be particularly useful to me on two or three pa.s.sages in Zosimus the Panopolitan which are very obscure. Could you not be so good as to give me the means to evoke, if necessary, some Sylph librarian as expert as that of Dijon?"

M. d'Asterac replied gravely:

"That's a secret, abbe, that I will willingly unveil to you. But be warned that you would be a lost man should you communicate it to a profane person."

"Don't be uneasy," said the abbe. "I have a strong desire to know so fine a secret, but I will not conceal from you that I do not expect any effect from it, as I do not believe in Sylphs. Instruct me, if you please."

"You request me?" replied the cabalist. "Well, then, know that whenever you want the a.s.sistance of a Sylph, you have but to p.r.o.nounce the simple word _Agla_, and the sons of the air will at once come to you. But understand, M. Abbe, that the word must be spoken by the heart as well as by the lips, and that faith alone gives it its virtue. Without faith it is nothing but a useless murmur. p.r.o.nounce it as I do at this moment, putting in it neither soul nor wish, it has, even in my own mouth, but a very slight power, and at the utmost some of the children of light, if they have heard it, glide into this room, the light shadows of light.

I've divined rather than seen them on yonder curtain, and they have vanished when hardly visible. Neither you nor your pupil has suspected their presence. But had I p.r.o.nounced that magic word with real fervour you would have seen them appear in all their splendour. They are of a charming beauty. Now, sir, I have entrusted you with a grand and useful secret. Let me say again, do not divulge it imprudently. And do not sneer at the example of the Abbe de Villars, who, for having revealed their secrets, was murdered by the Sylphs, on the road to Lyons."

"On the Lyons road?" said my good tutor. "How strange!"

M. d'Asterac left us suddenly.

"I will now for the last time," said the abbe, "visit that n.o.ble library where I have enjoyed such austere pleasures and which I shall never see again. Do not fail, Tournebroche, to be at nightfall at the Bergeres Circus."

I promised to be there; it was my intention to lock myself in my room for the purpose of writing to M. d'Asterac, and my dear parents, asking them to kindly excuse me for not taking personal leave of them, as I had to fly after an adventure wherein I was more unlucky than guilty.

When I reached the door of my room, I heard heavy snoring from within.

Peeping in I saw M. d'Anquetil in my bed, sleeping, his sword at the bedside, playing cards strewn all over the quilt. For a moment I felt tempted to run him through with his own sword, but the temptation did not last, and I left him sleeping. Notwithstanding my grief I could not help laughing when I thought that Jahel, being locked and bolted in by Mosaide, could not rejoin him.

So I went to my tutor's room, to write my letters, where I disturbed five or six rats, who had begun to make a meal off his Boethius, which had remained on the night table. I wrote to my mother and to M.

d'Asterac, and I composed the most touching epistle to Jahel. My tears fell on this when I read it over for a second time. "Perhaps," I said to myself, "the faithless girl will cry too, and her tears will mix with mine."

Then, overwhelmed as I was by fatigue and sorrow, I threw myself on my tutor's bed, and soon went off into a kind of semi-sleep, troubled by dreams, erotic and sinister. I was awakened by the taciturn Criton, who had entered the room and presented to me, on a silver salver, a sort of curling paper, whereon a few badly written words were scribbled in pencil. Someone expected me at once outside the castle. The note was signed "Friar Ange, unworthy Capuchin." I went as quickly as I could, and found the little friar seated on the bank of a ditch in a state of pitiable dejection. Wanting strength to get up, he looked at me with his big dog's eyes, nearly human and full of tears; his sighs moved his beard and chest. In a tone which really pained me he said:

"Alas! Monsieur Jacques, the hour of trial has come to Babylon, as it is said in the prophets. At the request of M. de la Gueritude, the Lieutenant of Police had Mam'selle Catherine taken by the constables to the spittel, from whence she'll be sent to America by the next convoy.

I was informed of it by Jeannette the hurdy-gurdy player, who saw Catherine brought in a cart to the spittel, as she left it herself after having been cured of an evil ailment by the surgeon's art--at least I hope so, please G.o.d! And Catherine is to be transported, and no reprieve to be expected."

And Friar Ange at this point in his discourse groaned and shed tears abundantly. After doing my best to console him I asked if he had nothing else to tell me.

"Alas! M. Jacques," he replied. "I have intimated the essential, and the remainder floats in my head like the Spirit of G.o.d on the waters, without comparison if you please. The matter is dark altogether.

Catherine's misfortune has taken away my senses. It needed the necessity of giving you important news to bring me to the threshold of this cursed house, where you live in company with all sorts of devils, and it was with dismay, and after having recited the prayer of Saint Francis, that I ventured to knock at the door for the purpose of handing to a lackey the note I wrote to you. I do not know if you have been able to read it, as I have but little practice in forming letters, and the paper was not of the best to write on, but you see it is the honour of our holy order not to give way to the vanities of our century! Ah! Catherine at the spittel! Catherine in America! Is it not enough to break the hardest heart? Jeannette herself wept abundantly, and did so in spite of her jealousy of Catherine, who prevails over her in youth and beauty just as Saint Francis surpa.s.ses in holiness all the other blessed ones. Ah, M.

Jacques! Catherine in America! Such are the strange ways of Providence.

Alas! our holy religion is true, and King David was right in saying that we are like the gra.s.s of the field--is not Catherine at the spittel? The stones on which I am sitting are happier man I, notwithstanding that I wear the signs of a Christian and a monk. Catherine at the spittel!"

He sobbed again. I waited till the torrent of his sorrow had pa.s.sed away, and then asked him if he had any news of my parents.

"M. Jacques," he replied, "'tis they who have sent me to you, bearer of a pressing message. I must tell you that they are not very happy, through the fault of Master Leonard, your father, who pa.s.ses in drinking and gambling all the days G.o.d has given him. And savoury fumes of roasting geese and fowls do not now arise to the signboard of _Queen Pedauque_ swinging sadly in the damp wind which rusts it. Where are the times when the smell of your father's cookshop perfumed the Rue Saint Jacques, from the _Little Bacchus_ to the _Three Maids_? Since yonder sorcerer visited it, everything wastes away, beasts and men, in consequence of the spell he has thrown on it. And vengeance divine is manifest there since that fat Abbe Coignard made his entry, and I was cast out. It was the beginning of the evil, inaugurated by M. Coignard, who prides himself on the depths of his knowledge, and the distinction of his manners. Pride is the spring of all evil. Your pious mother was very wrong, M. Jacques, not to have been satisfied with such teaching as I charitably gave you, and which would have made you fit to superintend the cooking, to manage the larding, and to carry the banner of the guild after the demise, the funeral service and the obsequies of your worthy father, which cannot be very far off, as all life is transitory and he drinks to excess."

It may be easily understood how sorely I was afflicted by this news. My tears and those of Friar Ange mixed freely together. However, I inquired after my mother.

Friar Ange replied:

"G.o.d, who afflicted Rachel in Rama, has sent to your mother, Monsieur Jacques, sundry tribulations for her good, and to chastise Master Leonard for the sin he committed by maliciously expelling, in my humble person, our Lord Jesus Christ from his cookshop. He has transferred most of the purchasers of poultry and pies to the daughter of Madame Quonion, who turns the spit at the other end of the Rue Saint Jacques. Your mother sees with sorrow that the other house is blessed at the cost of her own, and that her shop is now deserted to such a degree that, figuratively speaking, moss covers its threshold. She is sustained in her trials, firstly, by her devotion to Saint Francis; secondly, by the consideration of the progress of your worldly position, which enables you to wear a sword like a man of condition.