The Surprises Of Life Part 10

And with a kick he overturned Claudit's basket, whence fell the dead body of the much-lamented cuckoo hen.

The entire canton still echoes with this spectacular stroke. With blows and kicks the Gray Fox, the real one, was led back to his lair, and there, in a secret cellar, was discovered a collection of stolen hens, peacefully awaiting their turn to be cooked with accompaniment of cabbage. Everyone recognized his own hen, and everyone hastily seized it. Even Claudit's legitimate hens went by that road. But he was not the man to let himself be despoiled in silence.

"You say these hens are yours!" he cried. "I know nothing about it. I am willing to give them to you. But I shall let n.o.body steal the hens that belong to me."

And before a week had pa.s.sed, Claudit had, by the power of speech, got back all his hens, with, it was said, a few of doubtful ownership into the bargain.

To this insistence and its success he owed a return of public esteem.

But when a lock thereafter required his attention he was emphatically bidden to leave his basket at home.

XII

THE ADVENTURE OF MY CURe

I have had no very consecutive relations with the _cure_ of my village.

Many things stand between us. Our age, our occupations, our ideas. He follows one path, I another. Which does not prevent our occasionally meeting out in the country, or at the cross roads. We exchange greetings which vary according to the time of day; we occasionally talk of the weather, as it is, and as it should be to satisfy the peasants. In the crops we find yet another subject for a brief conversation. But we rarely venture beyond this circle of observations. His breviary claims him, and the finger marking the page of his interrupted reading is a delicate hint that the talk had best be brief. I have partridges to deliver, and must not linger, either. There is a slight awkwardness between us, even in saying good-bye. I am anxious not to say anything that may offend the simplicity of his faith, but I always fear one of those somewhat indiscreet suggestions which priests regard as part of their duty. On his side, it is evident that he dreads my so far forgetting myself as to make remarks which will oblige him to stand on the defensive. I cannot help seeing that I am an incomprehensible enigma to him, whereas his state of mind is not in the least puzzling to me.

How can I explain this mystery to him, without cruelly wounding him? We therefore part, after a few conventional words, regretting the necessity to stop short on the verge of a conversation which tempts us both, and aware that we have something to say to each other which we shall never say. To his last day he will undoubtedly regard me as an agent of the Devil. And on my side I can only silently sympathize with his sorrow in the recesses of my mind.

Abbe Mignot is a tall, robust, florid Burgundian, whose muscular frame seems better suited to field labour than to the unctuous gestures of the sacred ministry. The son of a vintner, he had begun life as a plowboy, when an aged singer, who had been a great sinner while she trod the boards of light opera in Paris, returned to her native village, there to acquire spiritual merit by good works, which the remuneration for vice out in the world enabled her to do. She reared altars, and munificently endowed them. She enriched the church with incomparable raiment. The pulpit praised the zeal of the excellent donor, who was earning Heaven by the virtues belonging to old age, and by preaching austerity to others.

One day this saintly lady, in quest of redemption, met at the edge of the village a dishevelled boy who was subduing the fierceness of a young bullock by the aid of sounding oaths and a shower of blows. The picture seemed to her beautiful, even though the music was profane. She questioned the child, whose precocious adolescence called up distant memories connected with this same muddy, rustic setting, and being suddenly vouchsafed light from on high, she conceived the plan of redeeming her very earliest sin (which had led to so many others), by means of the young bullock driver who seemed to her on the brink of perdition. Providence, and not chance, had set on her path this innocence to be saved from imminent peril. What an admirable priest the youth would make, when properly scrubbed, with his great clear eyes, his blond curls, his laughing insolence of a conquering hero! So the sinner who had turned away so many souls from the path to Heaven would redeem the past forever by leaving behind her an authentic servant of G.o.d, to keep up the necessary expiatory work after her death.

All would have been well had not the vintner hung mightily back. His son had cost him "a lot of money." He was just about to "bring him in something" now. This was not the time for sending him away.

"If he goes," he said, "I shall have to hire a servant.... That costs a great deal, counting his food. I can't afford it."

But the more obdurate the peasant was, the more obstinate became the devout lady in her resolve to accomplish the duty laid upon her by Heaven, as she declared. Negotiations were difficult, for Father Mignot had no liking for "skullcaps," as he called priests, and a double argument had to be used: one bag of money to repay him for his "pecuniary loss," and a second bag to allay the scruples of anticlericalism, aggravated by the circ.u.mstances. And this is what was called "The vocation of a.r.s.ene Mignot."

More than twenty years later, Abbe Mignot came to us with the remnants of his family: a widowed sister and three nephews without means of support. As I am telling nothing but what is strictly true, I have to admit that he met with a chilly reception. The old _cure_, whom we had just lost, had had enough to do to guard his eighty years from the heat and the cold, and to quaver out his ma.s.ses. Our peasants are not fond of being too closely questioned. When they saw this new man, still under forty, carrying his need for action into their very houses, breaking, from one day to the next, the happy-go-lucky traditions which had made his predecessor popular, they silently a.s.sumed the att.i.tude of self-defence. But the _cure_, being a peasant, knew his peasants. When he discovered his mistake, he had the sense to change his course, and to win back the discontented, one by one, without noise or waste of words.

And so, our village would have had no story, but for a hospital belonging to it, and standing in a hamlet two miles away. This hospital, privately endowed, was tended by four nuns of I know not what order.

Disease, however, never marred the spot by its presence. Against the express wish of the founder, a school had been established in it, and any sick person coming to ask admission was told that his presence would be dangerous to the school children, upon which he obediently went to die elsewhere. Two elderly spinsters, who did the work of servants, figured in the Sisters' conversation as "our incurables." By this means they were ent.i.tled to retain the inscription on the wall, announcing that hospital care might there be obtained.

Concerning the Sisters themselves there is nothing to say. They taught the catechism, sang off the key at ma.s.s, and made a great show of zeal toward the one they called "Mother." Their chief entertainment was luncheon at the _cure's_ on Sunday after church. A sweet dish and a little gla.s.s of Chartreuse crowned this extravagance. Then there would be much puerile chatter on topics drawn chiefly from the _Religious Weekly_. New recruits were proudly enumerated, eyes were rolled heavenward at talk of "apostates," and the latest miracles were related in minutest detail. A touch of politics occasionally spiced the heroic resolution to brave martyrdom. At parting, all were in a state of edification.

The trouble was that Abbe Mignot, without income, had four mouths to feed. The cost of the luncheon could not be brought within the limits of his budget. He made a frank confession of this to the "Mother," who answered haughtily that privation was the luxury of her estate, and that the Sisters would uncomplainingly return to sharing the "bread of the sick," at the hospital. Her words came true, for the very next week there was a patient at the hospital: the "Mother" herself, whom an attack of erysipelas carried off in three days. The school had to be dismissed and everything scientifically disinfected, before the scholars could return. This duty fell upon the new Mother, a charming young nun, whose beautiful eyes, gentle speech, and affable manners, created a sensation in the countryside.

Mother Rosalie was gifted with a beautiful soprano voice, which proved to be a source of divine refreshment to Abbe Mignot, who was fond of playing the organ. There can be no music without work. Work at their music threw the Mother and the _cure_ together. And as one study leads to another, the visits of Mother Rosalie to Abbe Mignot came to be fairly frequent. Presently there was gossip, and after a time what had at first been a playful buzzing became rumblings of scandal. Is it credible? The first threat of a storm came from the three Sisters at the hospital. These old maids, who had until that moment been totally insignificant, felt surging in them, of a sudden, an irrepressible wave of spleen, intensified and again intensified by the acid of celibacy.

Although touched in a sensitive spot by the discontinuance of luncheon at the rectory on Sundays, sole amus.e.m.e.nt of their lives, they had made no sign. But the moment their one-time host laid himself open to criticism, the hurricane burst, and the flood of heinous words came beating against the very walls of the sacred edifice.

Nothing can be hidden in a village. Life is carried on in broad daylight. The ditches, the stones, the bushes have eyes. Everyone knew very well that Abbe Mignot and "the pretty Mother," as she was currently called, had never met anywhere but in the church, the door of which was open to all. The pealing of the organ and the pure voice rising to the rafters ought, it would seem, to have counteracted the poison of malevolent insinuations.

"Certainly," said the peasants, "they are doing no harm, _as long as they keep on singing_!"

Occasionally, when the organ was silent, Mother Rosalie knelt in the confessional. Busybodies, stationed behind pillars, considered that she remained there too long, and that she confessed oftener than necessary.

This was all that any one could find to say against them. I did my best to defend them, when occasion arose, but the only effect of my pleading, I fear, was to give more importance to the spiteful words.

Meanwhile, Abbe Mignot and Mother Rosalie continued happy in their music and their friendship. I never knew Mother Rosalie, and will not invent a psychology for her. We exchanged a few words on several occasions, and I received the impression of a remarkably refined nature. Whatever I might say beyond this would be drawn from my imagination. With regard to the Abbe, the reader is as well qualified to judge him as I. Bound over to continence by an adept in the reverse, he resigned himself to inevitable fate, the cruelty of which he had recognized when it was too late.

Heaven, chance, or destiny had thrown a friendly soul in his path, a prisoner of the same destiny. He surrendered to the delight of the a.s.sociation, happy to come out of himself, to give a little of his life, to receive something of a human life in return, and to feel his pleasure shared. They did not conceal themselves, having nothing to conceal. This seemed to them a safeguard, under the eyes of their brothers in humanity.

The "scandal" lasted three months. One fine day, without warning, an elderly, hunchbacked Sister descended from the coach, and having entered the hospital, exhibited, along with her t.i.tles as the new "Mother," the order to "Sister Rosalie" to return _within the hour_ to the convent.

Sister Rosalie bowed her head in submission, asked whether time would be allowed her for one leave-taking, and upon receiving a negative answer, retired to her chamber, "to pray and to obey." She came out with faltering steps, and departed never to return.

The following day was Sunday. The event had been kept secret for the sake of a more dramatic climax. When the priest, coming before the altar, met the shock of the sardonic joy twisting the lips of the hunchbacked Mother and her three acolytes in the charity of the Lord, he fell a step backward, as if mocked by Satan himself. Pale, shaken, he was unable to restrain the trembling of his lips. The thunderbolt had struck. In the anguish of death he retained the appearance of life, and must play the part of a living man. By an heroic effort he regained self command. Violently the _Introit_ rang out, as if from depths beyond the grave, and in it were mingled the tragedy of the man and of the G.o.d.

There was but one word at the end of ma.s.s:

"_Monsieur le cure_ made the pretty Mother sing too much. She has gone away to rest."

Last month I met Abbe Mignot out among the rocks of Deux Fontaines. He sat with knitted brows at the foot of a bush, and nervously turned the pages of his breviary. He was evidently making a desperate effort to fasten down his wandering attention. He did not notice me, and had not my dog run up to him, I should have turned and walked away, to avoid disturbing him in his lonely struggle. When he saw me he rose, afraid of having been caught betraying something of himself. I held out my hand in friendship, and this time I would gladly have stopped for a talk had I not seemed to read in his eyes an entreaty to pa.s.s on without speaking. I obeyed the silent appeal. But yielding to an obscure need--

"_Monsieur le cure_," I said, "you ought to be careful. There are snakes among those stones. You must have been warned before?"

"Yes, I know," he answered in a m.u.f.fled voice. "This place is infested with vipers--most pernicious beasts, _Monsieur_. I hope that on your side you will be able to guard against them."

XIII

MASTER BAPTIST, JUDGE

What kind of justice did Saint Louis dispense under his oak tree?

History does not tell us that he was a doctor of law. Everything leads us to suppose that he owed extremely little if anything at all to Papinian, Ulpian, or Tribonian. He was, of course, a Saint, and those among us chosen by Providence to make Its Supreme Will known receive appropriate inspiration from on high. King Solomon, like other Asiatic kings, who are by their people regarded as mouthpieces of divine wisdom, consulted no text when he spoke the famous judgment upon which his glory still rests.

Jews or Christians, the ancient leaders of the people judged in equity, and without too great difficulty arrived at an approximate justice, superior to the "judgments of G.o.d," which had too often what looked like the iniquitous unfairness of chance. Codes, by their inflexible rules applied to every case, have overthrown the ancient order, under which an arbitrary procedure fitted the law to each individual transgression.

Laws and judges have since become more flexible, they would otherwise be intolerable, but they are still too rigid to bend felicitously to the modifications by which natural right might be promoted. In addition to which, gratuitous "justice" not infrequently ruins the person seeking it.

For all these reasons--fear of the law, which pounces upon poor people they know not whence, fear of the hardened judge who refers the case to his learning rather than to his conscience--our peasants in Western France with difficulty make up their minds to set in motion the so-called "protective" machinery of the law. Even the settlement of a dispute before a justice of the peace seems an extreme measure, and they have recourse to it only under great stress, which is a matter for rejoicing, for such is the "social order," that without this fortunate tendency, mankind, being entirely composed of people who complain, or have reason to complain, law courts would need to be made big enough to accommodate the entire human race.

In the country, sources of disagreement abound. The limb of a tree stretching beyond a fixed boundary, a vagrant root, a fruit dropping on the wrong side of a hedge, the use of a stream, a right of way, may bring up interpretations of customs giving to conflicting interests occasion for dispute. Before coming to the last expedient of going to law, quarrels, insults, and blows perform their office of preparing the way for reconciliation, which eventually results from nervous or muscular exhaustion. A good hand-to-hand fight would const.i.tute a "judgment of G.o.d" not without its merits, but for the temptation to "appeal" by nocturnal reprisals on innocent crops.

All that might take one very far. Which is the reason why we often find in country districts certain natural-born arbiters, who bear the same relation to judges that sorcerers do to doctors. The judge is the Hippocrates of social maladies, even as the physician is the judge of physiological disorders. The power to judge and the power to heal are acquired by some mysterious method concerning which rustic clients and patients have very misty notions. Judge and physician often make mistakes, and these create in men's minds a dismay greater than the comfort induced by their most authentic successes.

Is even learning absolutely necessary to make one competent to judge and to heal? In olden days this ability was a gift from heaven, a matter exclusively of divine inspiration, which invested a man with the requisite faculties. Why should it no longer be the same? The peasant's slow wit still clings to the old conceptions and retains the imprint of past beliefs. He therefore prefers the wizard to the doctor, whom science has stripped of the prestige of mysteriousness. In the same way, he prefers--rather than to seek advice from competent sources--to consult concerning his rights, or the conduct of his affairs, one of his own sort, totally ignorant, and playing the part of doctor of law from inspiration.

I once knew, long, long ago, alas, one of these improvised Solomons, whose reputation for legal knowledge had spread from parish to parish over a considerable area of the Woodland of the Vendee. Baptist Merian, better known by the name of Master Baptist, was a peasant of uncouth appearance, who personally looked after the property apportioned to him by heaven and the inheritance laws. He was a big fellow whose once-powerful muscles were becoming overlaid with fat as he neared his seventieth year, the period when I first happened upon him in the exercise of his functions. His purplish, pockmarked face very nearly concealed in its fleshy folds two small gray eyes which pierced an interlocutor directly through. He had a voice of thunder, and the gestures of a thunderer. He had the imposing utterance of one pa.s.sing absolute judgments on men and things. He was like Zeus whose frown shook Olympus, when he gave orders to take the mare to pasture or harness the oxen to the plough. And yet he was at bottom a timorous spirit, very attentive to the suggestions of prudence, and careful never to push any matter to a violent issue.

His adversary, whoever contradicted him, was generally called a "blockhead," and when Master Baptist had thus p.r.o.nounced himself nothing remained for the sentenced one but to bow his head in silence, which was what all around him were in the habit of doing. No one could have told whence he derived his legal authority. He made no claim to anything so contemptible as a knowledge of the law, for he could scarcely read, and with difficulty could sign his name. He was none too pleasant a neighbour, and had on various occasions started lawsuits which he had wisely brought to a close by a more or less advantageous settlement, giving as his reason that the judge in his opinion was a "blockhead."

The consideration he enjoyed was not lessened by this, for he continued to speak of his litigations as if he had won his cases; it was even noticeable that the magistrate who had earned that unpleasant epithet from his client lost, to a certain extent, the respect in which the community had held him.

Master Baptist was not one of those geniuses who need to blow their horn. Respectful of everybody's right to manage his own affairs, he never ventured to offer advice to any one. At the most, if he saw a field which did not carry out his idea of a proper rotation of crops, or a field badly fenced, or an animal in poor condition, he would express his view that the owner was a "blockhead," and public opinion could do nothing but record the condemnation, from which there was no appeal. Far from protesting against Master Baptist's uniform verdicts, people would at the least disagreement, the first difficulty, come running to him to explain their case, inquire what their chances were of success, and often beg him to arbitrate.

With great dignity, with benevolence, even, he would receive these visitors--if it were winter, by the hearth in the kitchen, which is the countryman's parlour; if warm weather, by the house door, a few feet from the black drain into which the sink emptied the odoriferous extract of culinary operations. Comfortably seated in a quaint semicircular armchair, the wool-stuffed cushion of which was covered with ticking, he would listen to the men who had come to consult him and who remained standing, cap in hand, while they told their interminable and tangled stories. When they stopped for lack of breath, Master Baptist would ask questions, which usually called forth prolix replies. Finally he would speak: