Collected Works of Eugène Sue
Page 422
1. — The general confession of Joan Darc transcribed by himself on the very day when he received it, and when that great soul unveiled itself to him in all its heroic simplicity.
2. — Notes which he had taken and preserved after his interviews with the emissary of George of La Tremouille, and which revealed the plot that was concocted against Joan by the people of the Court, the captains and the ecclesiastics, before the first meeting of the heroine and Charles VII.
3. — A copy of a contemporaneous chronicle entitled “Journal of the Siege of Orleans,” and another memoir written by Percival of Cagny, equerry to the Duke of Alençon, who did not leave Joan’s side from the time of the raising of the siege of Orleans down to the siege of Paris. These two manuscripts were a part of the documents that Bishop Peter Cauchon had gathered to draw up the indictment.
4. — One of the minutes of the process, containing the questions put to Joan, and her answers.
5. — A complete admission and detailed account of the machinations of Loyseleur and Bishop Cauchon to capture Joan’s confidence in her prison, as also of the plans they had laid during a long conversation before the trial.
These materials were given to me by the canon in the hope of enabling me some day to rehabilitate the memory of Joan Darc. As to himself, he realized that, pursued by inexorable remorse, he would soon die, or lose his senses. On that very morning he did not dare to take his seat on the platform among Joan’s judges, fearing she might recognize him. The spectacle of her martyrdom and agony finally overthrew him. After depositing these manuscripts in my hands, the canon left me precipitately and with a wild look. I know not what became of him.
The next morning I left Rouen with my grandson, and once again in Vaucouleurs I proceeded to write the story of Joan Darc. Thanks to the information I received from Denis Laxart and the documents of Canon Loyseleur, I have been able to draw up the above truthful narrative. To it I have attached the executioner’s knife, as an additional relic of our family.
Until now and in this country of Lorraine, the cradle of the virgin of Gaul, I have vainly sought to rehabilitate Joan in the eyes of her friends and even of her parents. All have given me the same answer that I received so often in Rouen and so many other towns:
“Despite her glory, despite her immense services rendered to France, Joan is guilty, Joan is criminal, Joan will burn in the everlasting flames of hell — THE INFALLIBLE CHURCH CONDEMNED HER!”
But the judgment of men passes — true glory is imperishable. Some day the Maid will be exalted and her murderers spat upon.
THE END
The Pocket Bible
OR, CHRISTIAN THE PRINTER: A TALE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Translated by Daniel de Leon
We now jump to the year 1534, to a story focussing on the struggle between the Roman Catholic Church and the Reformation. The narrative opens in Paris, now a large city of 400,000 people, a melting pot of ‘fanaticism, debauchery and ferocity.’ Descendants of the mariner, Eidiol and Jocelyn the Champion, still live in the city – Christian Lebrenn, his wife Bridget, his sons Herve and Odelin and his daughter, Hena, named of course after the virgin of the Isle of Sen. The family have adopted the profession of printer. As we meet the family, they are in turmoil, as someone familiar to their home has stolen money from the house. The parents suspect Herve, who has become moody and aloof, except with the priest that seems to have great influence over him – Fra Girard, a man of austere morals, who is adamantly opposed to what he calls the new heresies (the Protestant Reformation). Herve has even begun to wear an internally spiked belt which lacerates him as part of his fanatical beliefs. Even more dangerous, Herve has purchased a written document bestowing absolution of all sins on him, signed by the apostolic commissioner. This document covers the past, present and future. With such a tabula rasa to protect him, who knows where Herve’s worrying commitment will lead him?
This is another story in the series that draws heavily on specific historical events, with vivid descriptions of the excesses of the suppression of the Reformation.
CONTENTS
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE.
PART I. THE SOCIETY OF JESUS
INTRODUCTION.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XVIII.
CHAPTER XIX.
CHAPTER XX.
PART II. THE HUGUENOTS.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
EPILOGUE.
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE.
THE EPOCH COVERED by this, the 16th story of Eugène Sue’s dramatic historic series, entitled The Mysteries of the People; or, History of a Proletarian Family Across the Ages, extends over the turbulent yet formative era known in history as the Religious Reformation.
The social system that had been developing since the epoch initiated by the 8th story of the series, The Abbatial Crosier; or, Bonaik and Septimine, that is, the feudal system, and which is depicted in full bloom in the 14th story of the series, The Iron Trevet; or, Jocelyn the Champion, had been since suffering general collapse with the approach of the bourgeois, or capitalist system, which found its first open, or political, expression in the Reformation, and which was urged into life by Luther, Calvin and other leading adversaries of the Roman Catholic regime.
The history of the Reformation, or rather, of the conflict between the clerical polity which symbolized the old and the clerical polity which symbolized the new social order, is compressed within the covers of this one story with the skill at once of the historian, the scientist, the philosopher and the novelist. The various springs from which human action flows, the various types which human crises produce, the virtues and the vices which great historic conflicts heat into activity — all these features of social motion, never jointly reproduced in works of history, are here drawn in vivid colors and present a historic canvas that is prime in the domain of literature.
In view of the exceptional importance of some of the footnotes in which Sue refers the reader to the pages of original authorities in French cited by him, the pages of an accessible American edition are in those cases either substituted or added in this translation.
DANIEL DE LEON.
New York, February, 1910.
PART I. THE SOCIETY OF JESUS
INTRODUCTION.
WHAT GREAT CHANGES, sons of Joel, have taken place in Paris since the time when our ancestor Eidiol the Parisian skipper lived in this city, in the Ninth Century, at the time of the Northman invasion! How many changes even since 1350, when our ancestor Jocelyn the Champion fell wounded beside Etienne Marcel, who was assassinated by John Maillart and the royalists!
The population of this great city now, in the year 1534, runs up to about four hundred thousand souls; daily new houses rise in the suburbs and outside the city walls, whose boundaries have become too narrow, although they enclose from twelve to thirteen thousand houses. But now, the same as in the past, Paris remains divided into four towns, so to speak, by two thoroughfares that cross each other at right angles. St. Martin, prolonged by St. James Street, traverses the city from east to west; St. Honoré, prolonged by St. Antoine Street, traverses it from north to south. The Louvre is the quarter of the people of the court; the quarter of the Bastille, of the Arsenal, filled wi
th arms, and of the Temple is that of the people whose profession is war; the quarter of the University is that of the men of letters; finally the quarter of Notre Dame and St. Germain, where lie the convents of the Cordeliers, of the Chartreux, of the Jacobins, of the Augustinians, of the Dominicans and of many other hives of monks and nuns besides the monasteries that are scattered throughout the city, is that of the men of the Church. The merchants, as a general thing, occupy the center of Paris towards St. Denis Street; the manufacturers are found in the eastern, the shabbiest of all the quarters, where, for one liard, workingmen can find lodging for the night. The larger number of the bourgeois houses as well as all the convents are now built of stone, and are no longer frame structures as they formerly were. These modern buildings, topped with slate or lead roofs and ornamented with sculptured facades, become every day more numerous.
Likewise with crimes of all natures; their increase is beyond measure. With nightfall, murderers and bandits take possession of the streets. Their numbers rise to twenty-five or thirty thousand, all organized into bands — the Guilleris, the Plumets, the Rougets, the Tire-Laines, the latter of whom rob bourgeois, who are inhibited from carrying arms. The Tire-Soies, a more daring band, fall upon the noblemen, who are always armed. The Barbets disguise themselves as artisans of several trades, or as monks of several Orders and introduce themselves into the houses for the purpose of stealing. Besides these there are the bands of Mattes or Fins-Mattois, skilled cut-purses and pick-pockets; and finally the Mauvais-Garçons, the most redoubtable of all, who publicly, for a price chaffered over and finally agreed upon, offer their daggers to whomsoever wishes to rid himself of an enemy.
Nor is this the worst aspect presented by the crowded city. Paris runs over with lost women and courtesans of all degrees. Never yet did immorality, to which the royal court, the Church and the seigniory set so shocking a pace, cause such widespread ravages. A repulsive disease imported from America by the Spaniards since the conquests of Christopher Columbus poisons life at its very source.
Finally, Paris presents a nameless mixture of fanaticism, debauchery and ferocity. Above the doors of houses of ill fame, images of male and female saints are seen in their niches, before which thieves, murderers and courtesans uncover and bend the knee as they hurry by, bent on their respective pursuits. The Tire-Laines, the Guilleris and other brigands burn candles at the altars of the Virgin or pay for masses for the success of their crimes in contemplation. Superstition spreads in even step with criminality. Pious physicians are cited who regularly take the weekly communion, and who, bought by impatient heirs, poison with their pharmaceutical concoctions the rich patients, whose decease is too slow in arriving. The most horrid felonies have lost their dreadfulness, especially since the papal indulgences, sold for cash, insure absolution and impunity to the criminals. The virtues of the hearth and all good morals seem to have fled to the bosom of those families only who have discarded the paganism of Rome and, although styled heretics, practice the simplicity of evangelical morality. One of these families is that of Christian the Printer, the great-grandchild of Jocelyn the Champion’s son, who, due to the rapid progress made by the printing press, which rendered manuscript books useless and unnecessarily expensive, found it ever more difficult to earn his living at his trade of copyist and illuminator of manuscripts.
Accordingly, after the death of his father, who was the son of Jocelyn the Champion and continued to live at Vaucouleurs after witnessing the martyrdom of Joan of Arc, Allan Lebrenn moved to Paris, induced thereto by John Saurin, a master-printer of this city who, having during a short sojourn at Vaucouleurs been struck by the young man’s intelligence at his trade, promised to aid him in finding work in the large city. He accepted the offer and speedily succeeded in his new field. He married in 1465, died in 1474, and left a son, Melar Lebrenn, who was born in 1466 and was the father of Christian the Printer.
Melar Lebrenn followed his father’s occupation, and worked long after his father’s death in John Saurin’s establishment, where his services were highly appreciated. But after John Saurin’s death, Melar Lebrenn, who had in the meantime married and had three children, Christian and two daughters, was dismissed by Saurin’s successor, a man named Noel Compaign. Compaign was a religious bigot. He was incensed at what he termed Melar Lebrenn’s unbelief, hounded him with odious calumnies, and spoke of him to the other members of the guild as dishonest and otherwise unfit. Melar Lebrenn soon felt the effect of these calumnies; his trade went down; his savings were consumed; his family was breadless; he had nothing left to him but the legends and relics of his family, that were handed down from generation to generation.
Under these circumstances Melar Lebrenn made one more and desperate effort to rise to his feet. He knew by reputation Henry Estienne, the most celebrated printer of the last century. Estienne’s goodness of heart as well as his knowledge were matters of common repute. Melar Lebrenn decided to turn to him, but he found Estienne strongly prejudiced against him through the calumnies that Compaign had circulated. But Melar Lebrenn was not yet discouraged. He explained to Estienne circumstantially the reason of Compaign’s hatred, and offered Estienne to serve him on trial. The offer was accepted, and Melar Lebrenn soon acquitted himself so well both as a typesetter and a reader of proof, that Master Henry Estienne, judging from the falseness of the accusations concerning Melar Lebrenn’s skill at his trade, concluded he was equally wronged in his private character. From that time on, Estienne took a deep interest in Melar and was soon singularly attached to him, as much by reason of his skill, as for the probity of his character and the kindness of his heart.
The two daughters of Melar Lebrenn were carried away by the pest that swept over Paris in 1512; his wife survived them only a short time; and Melar himself died in 1519. His only surviving child, Christian, married Bridget Ardouin, an embroiderer in gold and silver thread. Christian entered the printing establishment of Henry Estienne as an apprentice at his twelfth year. After the death of the venerated Henry Estienne, Christian remained under the employ of Robert Estienne, his father’s heir in virtue and his superior in scientific acquirements. The editions that Robert Estienne issued of the old Greek, Hebrew or Latin authors are the admiration of the learned by the correctness of the text, the beauty of the type, and the perfection of the printing. Among other things he published a pocket edition of the New Testament, translated into French, a veritable masterpiece of typography. The bonds that united Master Robert Estienne and his workman Christian Lebrenn became of the closest.
Three children were born of the marriage of Christian Lebrenn with Bridget Ardouin — a boy, born in 1516, and at the commencement of this history eighteen years of age; a girl in 1518, and a boy in 1520. The latter is named Odelin; he is an apprentice in the establishment of Master Raimbaud, one of the most celebrated armorers of Paris. The eldest son is named Hervé, in memory of his mother’s father, and he follows his father Christian’s profession of printer. The girl is named Hena in remembrance of the Virgin of the Isle of Sen.
CHAPTER I.
THE THEFT.
IT WAS ONE evening towards the middle of the month of August of 1534. Christian Lebrenn occupied a modest house situated at about the center of the Exchange Bridge. Almost all the other bridges thrown over the two arms of the Seine are, like this one, lined with houses and constitute a street under which the river flows. The kitchen, where the meals were taken, was on the first floor, even with the street; behind this room, the door and window of which opened upon the public thoroughfare, was a smaller one, used for bed chamber by Hervé, Christian’s eldest son, and the younger brother Odelin, the apprentice at Master Raimbaud’s. At the time, however, when this narrative opens, Odelin was absent from Paris, traveling in Italy with his master, who had gone to Milan in order to study the process by which the Milanese armors, as celebrated as those of Toledo, were manufactured. The upper floor of Christian’s house consisted of two rooms. One of these he occupied himself with his wife Brid
get; his daughter Hena occupied the other. Finally, a garret that served as storeroom for winter provisions, topped the house and had a window that opened upon the river.
On this evening Christian was in an animated conversation with his wife. It was late. The children were both asleep. A lamp lighted the room of the husband and wife. Near the window, with its small lozenge-shaped panes fastened between ribs of lead, lay the embroideries at which Bridget and Hena had been at work. In the rear of this rather spacious chamber stood the conjugal bed, surmounted with its canopy and enclosed by its curtains of orange serge. A little further away was a little book-case containing in neat rows the volumes in the printing of which Christian and his father contributed at the printing establishment of Masters Henry and Robert Estienne. In the same case Christian kept under lock his family legends and relics, together with whatever else that he attached special value to. Above the case an old cross-bow and battle axe hung from the wall. It was always well to have some arms in the house in order to repel the attacks of bandits who had of late grown increasingly bold. Two flat leather covered coffers for clothes and a few stools completed the humble furnishings of the room. Christian seemed greatly troubled in mind. Bridget, looking no less concerned than her husband, dropped the work that she expected to finish by lamp-light, and stepped towards her husband. With his eyes fixed upon the ground, his elbows upon his knees and his head in his hands, the latter observed:
“There can be no doubt. The person who stole the money, here, in this room, out of that case, and without breaking the lock, must be familiar with our house.”
“I can assure you, Christian, since yesterday when we discovered the theft, I have been in a continuous fever.”
“None but we and our children enter this room.”