by Eugène Sue
Anselm followed the prelate, and both entered the bishop’s apartments.
“Anselm, you have just seen and heard things that, doubtlessly, left a disagreeable impression upon your mind. We shall take that up presently,” said Gaudry to the archdeacon when they were closeted together. “I summoned you to the palace because I am aware of your foible for the common folks of the bourgeoisie, and in order to afford you the opportunity to render a signal service to your favorites. Listen to me carefully.”
“I shall strive to meet your intentions, seigneur bishop.”
“You shall go to the bourgeois and artisans of the city and say to them: ‘Renounce, good people, that execrable spirit of novelty, that diabolical passion that drives the vassal to rise against his master. Abjure, soon as possible, the brazen and impious pride that persuades the artisan and townsman to withdraw from the seignioral authority and to govern themselves. Return to your trades, to your shops. The administration of public affairs can get along very well without you. You quit the Church for the Town Hall; you open your ears to the sound of your own belfry, and shut them to the chimes of the church bells. That is not good for you. You will end by forgetting the submission you owe to the clergy, to the nobles and to the King. Good people, never allow the distinctions of the stations in life to be confounded; each to his rights, each to his duties. The right of the clergy, of the nobility and of the King is to command and to govern; the duty of the serf and the bourgeois is to bow before the will of their natural masters. This communal and republican comedy, that you have been playing for now nearly three years, has lasted too long. Abdicate willingly your roles of Mayor, Councilmen and warriors. People at first laughed at your silly pranks, hoping you would return to your senses. But it takes too long; one’s patience is exhausted. The time has come to put an end to the Saturnalia. In order to avoid a just punishment, return of your own accord to the humility of your station in life. Cut your Councilmen’s robes into skirts for your wives; return your arms to people who know how to handle them; respectfully surrender to the Church, as an homage of atonement, that ear-splitting bell of that belfry of yours; it will enrich the chimes of the cathedral. Your superb banner will make a becoming altar-cloth, and as to your magnificent silver seal, melt it back into money wherewith to purchase some hogsheads of old wine which you will empty in honor of the restoration of the seigniory of your bishop in Jesus Christ. Do so, and all will be well, good people. The past will be forgiven you upon condition that you will henceforth be submissive, humble and penitent towards the Church, the noblemen and the King, and that of your own accord, you renounce your pestiferous Commune.’”
Anselm listened to the bishop with a mixture of amazement, indignation and profound anxiety. He did not interrupt the speaker to the end, wondering how that man, whom he could not deny either cleverness or sagacity, yet could be so untutored upon men and things as to conceive such a project. So profound was the emotion of the archdeacon that he remained silent for a while. Finally he answered the bishop in a grave and clear voice: “You solicit my assistance to advise the inhabitants of Laon to give up their charter, that very charter that both you and they have agreed to and sworn to uphold by a common accord?”
“That agreement was concluded by the chapter and council of seigneurs who governed during my absence, while I was away in England.”
“Must I remind you that, upon your return from London, and in consideration of a large sum paid by the bourgeoisie, you signed the charter with your own hand, that you sealed it with your own seal, and that you swore upon your faith that it would be faithfully observed?”
“I was wrong in doing so. The Church holds her seigniories from God alone. She may not alienate her rights. I am absolved from such engagements.”
“Have you returned the money that you received for your consent to the Commune? Has restitution been made?”
“The money I received represented, at the most, four years’ revenues that I habitually drew from the inhabitants of Laon. Three years have elapsed since the establishment of this Commune. I am only one year in advance of my vassals. My right is to tax at will and mercy. I shall double the tax of the current year, and being quits, I shall, if I please, demand the tax for the next year.”
“Yours would be such a right had you not alienated it. But you cannot repudiate your signature, your seal and your oath. Your engagement is binding.”
“What is there in a signature? One or two words placed at the bottom of a parchment! What is a seal? A lump of wax! What is an oath? A breath of air that is lost in space, and which the wind carries off!”
Although highly wrought up by the prelate’s answer, Anselm restrained his indignation and proceeded: “You, then, persist in your purpose to break your oath and abolish the Commune of Laon?”
“Yes, I intend to smash it.”
“You refuse to keep your sacred engagement? Be it so! But the communiers of Laon have had their charter confirmed by the present King. They will turn to him to compel you to respect its clauses. You will have two foes to face — the people and the King.”
“To-morrow,” answered the bishop, “Louis the Lusty will be here at the head of a goodly number of knights and men-at-arms, — all resolved to crush those miserable bourgeois if they dare defend their Commune. It is all settled between us.”
“I can hardly believe what you say, seigneur bishop,” replied the archdeacon. “The King, who confirmed and swore to the charter for the enfranchisement of the bourgeois of Laon, and who received the price agreed upon, he surely will not be ready to perjure himself and commit such an infamy.”
“The King begins to listen to the voice of the Church. He understands that, though it be good politics and profitable withal, to sell charters of emancipation to the cities that are subject to lay seigniories, his rivals and ours, it is to seriously compromise his own power if he were to favor emancipation from the ecclesiastical seigniories. The King is determined to restore to the episcopal authority all the ecclesiastical cities that have been enfranchised, and to exterminate their inhabitants if they dare oppose his pleasure. To-morrow, perhaps this very day, the King will be in the city at the head of armed men. The nobles of the city have been apprised, like myself, of the pending arrival of the King. We shall notify our will to the people.”
“My presentiments did not deceive me when I urged the communiers to redouble their self-control and prudence!”
“You were on the right road. It is, therefore, that, aware of your influence with those clowns, I sent for you, to commission you to induce them to renounce their hellish Commune of their own free will, if they would escape a terrible punishment. We demand absolute submission.”
“Bishop of Laon,” Anselm answered solemnly and with a tremulous voice, “I decline the mission that you charge me with. I do not wish to see the blood of my brothers flow in this city. If your projects were but suspected, an uprising would break out on the spot among the people, and yourself, the clergy and the knights in the city would be the first victims of the rage of the communiers. Your houses would be burned down over your heads.”
“There is no insurrection to be feared,” put in the bishop laughing loudly. “John, my negro, will take by the nose the wildest of those clowns and will bring him on his knees to my feet, begging for mercy, trembling and penitent. I need but to say the word.”
“If you dare touch the rights of the Commune, then you, the priests and the nobles will all be exterminated by the people in arms. Oh, may heaven’s curse fall upon me before I shall by a single word help to unchain such a storm!”
“So, then, you, Anselm, a subordinate to my authority, you refuse the commission that I charge you with?”
“I swear to you upon the salvation of my soul, you are staking your life at a terrible game! May I not have to dispute your bleeding remains from the popular fury in order to give them Christian burial!”
CHAPTER V.
BOURGEOIS AND ECCLESIASTICAL SEIGNEUR.
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sp; THE BISHOP OF Laon had long remained steeped in revery. The tone of conviction, the imposing authority of the archdeacon’s character, left a profound impression upon the man. Though there was no crime he would recoil at in the satisfaction of his passions, yet he fervently clung to life. Accordingly, his blind contempt for the common people notwithstanding, he wavered for a moment in his projects, and, recalling to memory the triumphant revolts, that under similar circumstances, had in recent years been witnessed in other Communes of Gaul, he was lost in sombre, silent perplexity, when the sudden entry of Black John awoke him from his quandary.
“Patron,” said Black John, breaking into the room with a malefic grin, “one of the bourgeois dogs has himself walked into the trap. We are holding him, as well as his female, who, by Mahomet, is of the comliest. If the husband is a mastiff, the wife is a dainty greyhound, worthy of a place in the ecclesiastical kennels!”
“Quit your jokes!” remarked the bishop with impatience. “What is the matter now? Speak up!”
“A minute ago there was a rap at the main gate. I was in the yard with the serfs who are exercising in arms. I peeped through the wicket and saw a burly fellow, with a casque that fell over his nose, and bursting in his steel corselet, and as incommoded by his sword as a dog to whose tail a kettle has been tied. A young and pretty woman accompanied him. ‘What do you want?’ said I to the man. ‘To speak with the seigneur bishop, and on the spot, too, on grave matters.’ To hold one of these dogs of communiers in pawn, struck me as timely. After sending one of the men to see through the loopholes in the tower whether the bourgeois was alone, I opened the door. Oh, you would have laughed,” Black John proceeded, “had you seen the good man embrace his wife before crossing the threshold of the palace, as though he were stepping into Lucifer’s house, and heard his wife say: ‘I shall wait for you here; my uneasiness will be shorter than if I had remained at the Town Hall.’ By Mahomet! I said to myself, my patron is too fond of receiving pretty penitents to leave this charmer outside; and taking her up like a feather I carried her into the yard. I had a good mind to shut the gate in the husband’s face, but I considered it was better to keep him too here. His little wife, furious like a cat in love, screamed and scratched my face when I took her up in my arms, but after she was allowed to join her gander of a husband, she put on airs of bravery and spat in my face. They are both in the next room. Shall they be brought in?”
The announcement of the arrival of one of the communiers, the objects of the bishop’s hatred, revived the anger of the seigniorial ecclesiastic, that had been checked for a moment by the words of Archdeacon Anselm. The bishop jumped up, crying out: “By heaven! By the Pope’s navel! That bourgeois arrives in time! Bring him in!”
“His wife too?” asked the negro, opening the door. “She will act as a counter-irritant to your worship,” and without waiting for his master’s answer, the negro vanished.
“Take care!” Anselm said, more and more alarmed. “Take care what you are about to do! The Councilmen are elected by the inhabitants! To do violence to one of their chosen men would be a moral offence!”
“We have had enough remonstrances!” cried out Gaudry with haughty impatience. “You seem to forget that I am your superior, your bishop!”
“It is your conduct that would make me forget it. But it is for the sake of the episcopacy, for the sake of the salvation of your soul, for the sake of your own life that I adjure you not to apply the match to a conflagration that neither yourself nor the King might be able to extinguish!”
“What!” exclaimed the bishop with a wrathful sneer; “What! That conflagration could not be extinguished even in the blood of those damned dogs, of the revolted clowns, themselves?”
The prelate had just pronounced these execrable words, when Ancel Quatre-Mains entered, accompanied by his wife, Simonne, and preceded by Black John, who, leaving them at the door of the apartment, withdrew again with a smile on his cruel lips. The Councilman was pale and deeply moved. The good nature, habitual to his features, had now made place to an expression of deliberate firmness. It must, nevertheless, be admitted that his casque thrown too far back on his head and his stomach protruding below his steel corselet imparted to the townsman an almost grotesque appearance that could not fail to strike the Bishop of Laon. Accordingly breaking out in a loud guffaw, not unmixed with rage and disdain, and pointing to Ancel, he said to the archdeacon: “Here have you a bright sample of the gallant men who are to cause bishops, knights and kings to tremble and retreat. By the blood of Christ, what a grotesque appearance!”
The Councilman and his wife, who drew close to him, looked at each other, unable to understand the words of the bishop. No less alarmed than her husband, two distinct sentiments seemed to fill Simonne’s mind — fear of some danger to Ancel and horror for Gaudry.
“Well, now, seigneur Councilman, august elective magistrate of the illustrious Commune of Laon!” said the prelate in a jeering and contemptuous accent. “You wanted to see me. Here I am. What do you want?”
“Seigneur bishop, I have had no ambition, and so I haven’t, of coming here. I’m merely fulfilling a duty. This month I’m the judicial Councilman. As such, I am charged with the trials. It is in that capacity that I have come here to fill my office.”
“Oh, oh! Greetings to you, seigneur prosecutor!” replied the prelate sneeringly, bowing before the baker. “May we at least know the subject of the process?”
“Certes, seigneur bishop, seeing the action is against yourself and against John, your African servant, I shall inform you of the charge.”
“And while my husband is fulfilling a judicial mission,” pertly put in Simonne, “he shall also demand justice and indemnity for the insults hurled at me by the noble dame of Haut-Pourcin, the wife of one of the episcopals of the city, so please your seigneur bishop!”
“By heaven, my negro John was right, I have never seen a prettier creature!” observed the dissolute bishop, attentively examining the baker’s wife, whom until that instant he had taken little notice of; and seeming to reflect for a moment he asked: “How long have you been married, little darling? Answer your bishop truthfully!”
“Five years, monseigneur.”
“My good man,” resumed Gaudry addressing the Councilman, “you must have ransomed your wife from the right of the first night at the time when the canon of Amaury was charged with its supervision?”
“Yes, seigneur,” answered the baker, while his wife, casting down her eyes, blushed with shame at hearing the bishop refer to that infamous right of the bishop of Laon, who, before the establishment of the Commune had the right to demand “first wedding night of the bride” — a galling shame, that, occasionally, the husband managed to redeem with a money payment.
“That miserable beggar of old Amaury!” exclaimed the prelate with a cynical outburst of laughter. “It was all in vain for me to tell him: ‘When a bride and bridegroom come to announce at church their approaching wedding, inscribe on a separate roll the names of the brides that are comely enough to induce me to exact from them the amorous tax of nature.’ But there were none of these according to Amaury; and yet I have before my eyes a striking proof of his fraudulence or his blindness. Almost all the brides were homely, according to him!”
“Happily, seigneur bishop, those evil days are gone by,” answered Ancel, hardly able to restrain his indignation. “Those days will never return when the honor of husbands and wives was at the mercy of bishops and seigneurs!”
“Brother,” put in the archdeacon, painfully affected by the words of the bishop, and addressing Ancel, “believe me, the Church herself blushes at that monstrous right, that prelates enjoy when they are at once temporal seigneurs.”
“What I do know, Father Anselm,” the baker answered with judicial deliberateness and raising his head, “is that the Church does not forbid the ecclesiastics to use that monstrous right, we see them using it and deflowering young brides.”
“By the blood of Christ!” cried
out the bishop, while the archdeacon remained silent, unable to gainsay the baker; “that right proves better than any argument how absolutely the body of the serf, the villein or the non-noble vassal is the absolute and undisputed property of the lay or ecclesiastical seigneur. Accordingly, so far from blushing at that right, the Church claims it back for its own seigneurs, and excommunicates those who dare contest it.”
The archdeacon, not daring to contradict the bishop, seeing the bishop spoke the truth, lowered his head in mute pain. The Councilman resumed with a mixture of sly good nature and firmness: “I am, seigneur bishop, too ignorant in matters of theology to discuss the orthodoxy of a right that honorable folks speak of only with indignation in their hearts and shame on their brows. But, thanks be to God, since Laon has become an enfranchised Commune, that abominable right has been abolished, along with many others. Among the latter is the right of demanding goods without money, and of taking some one else’s horse without paying for it. This, seigneur bishop, leads me to the matter that has brought me here.”
“You, then, mean to start a process against me?”
“I am fulfilling my functions. An hour ago, Peter the Fox, tenant farmer of Colombaik the Tanner, deposed before the Mayor and Councilmen assembled at the Town Hall that you, Bishop of Laon, kept, against all right, a horse belonging to the said Colombaik, and that you refuse to pay the price demanded by the owner.”
“Is that all?” the bishop asked laughing. “Have I committed no other sin? Have you no other charges to bring against me?”