The Mysteries of New Orleans (The Longfellow Series of American Languages and Literatures)

by Baron Ludwigvon Reizenstein

  “Where and when, Lady Merlina, if it is permitted to me to ask?” the abbé repeated with a somewhat less rude gaze.

  “You are making rather too quick a use of your freedom as a member of the 99th degree,” Merlina commented, drawing in her neck even more and looking down the loose opening of her dress.

  “No more than you have permitted me, Lady Merlina,” Dubreuil responded, looking at the Hungarian sitting silent and cold in a negligent pose in his armchair, puffing his cigar with long breaths.

  “The prince of Württemberg?” Merlina declared in a questioning tone, as if she had only just thought of it and was dredging something out of her memory. “The German prince? Yes, I know him—on sight—when I worked at a coffee stand, I served him more than once. He came regularly at three in the morning to the French market—arrived in a hurry, downed two or three cups of chocolate, one after another, and rushed away as quickly as he had come.”

  “But how did you know who he was?” Dubreuil asked with an insistent tone.

  It was really a marvel that Merlina was so patient as to comply with the abbé’s curiosity.

  That was not her usual way.

  “How did I know the German prince, abbé? I only know him on sight—as I recall, I have only dealt with him personally once.”

  “Yes, but how?”

  “Damned inquisitorial procedure—the priest can be identified in every word! The Jesuits have branded your very tongue,” the Hungarian cried out with a cutting tone as he pulled his armchair away from the table and crossed his feet on the marble top.

  “It is the abbé’s right to be shameless,” Merlina responded on Dubreuil’s behalf.

  “Merlina, you were premature with your club cards,” the Hungarian remarked, turning a look of mockery at Abbé Dubreuil.

  Dubreuil appeared little concerned by this intermezzo, for he continued in his searching tone: “Yes, but in what way, Lady Merlina?”

  “Damned Jesuit!” the Hungarian interjected without excusing his manner in the least.

  “Give the Jesuit his rights, Lajos, Tartuffe was a Jesuit, after all, and …”

  “You do not offend me, abbé,” the Hungarian interrupted Dubreuil, “but I will slap you if you dare to make improper comparisons.”

  “One crow does not peck out the other’s eyes—wherever there is a millstone, then the miller and the miller’s wife are not far away,” the abbé responded dryly.

  “Not always,” Merlina interrupted, drawing her hand across her tiger’s brow.

  “Not always, Merlina?” the Hungarian asked, tossing his dead cigar butt between the abbé’s legs.

  “Not always, my millstone Lajos.”

  “Not always, my miller’s wife,” said the Hungarian, turning the allegory of Merlina around.

  “So, about the German prince …” Dubreuil pressed.

  Lajos stared at the abbé, but this time he said not a word.

  Without waiting for a new petition from the abbé, Merlina replied, “I saw the German prince for the first time—and spoke to him—when I was still on the plantation near Derbigny and Breton. He stayed there for about a week, walking the whole day in the swamps with an old Negro, looking for snakes and bullfrogs.”

  “Aha!” the abbé declaimed.

  “Aha? Why aha, huh?” the Hungarian asked.

  “Well, well—I just mean that, ha!” the abbé said in jest.

  “Don’t be so mysterious, Dubreuil—no one believes you,” the Hungarian remarked, then turning to Merlina, he asked: “Does the prince eat snakes and bullfrogs?”

  “He probably does eat them,” Merlina responded. “We often ate them on the plantation.”

  “The bullfrogs I can believe, but the snakes?” the Hungarian asked.

  “The snakes especially!” Merlina answered.

  “But of the snakes, you let the green snakes in particular go?”

  “Particularly not them” Merlina responded, “they are the best of all—with a dozen green snakes under your belt, you could drive ideas out of the devil’s head.”

  “How so, Merlina?” the abbé asked out of curiosity.

  “If the devil wants to embrace a female panther and sees that she has eaten green snakes, he runs away to hide in his hole in hell.”

  “Then the devil is a big idiot, with more than a damned close resemblance to an angel,” the Hungarian said.

  “Lajos, what would you do if you knew I had green snakes in my body, if you sensed devilishness rising in yourself?”

  “For a panthress?” the Hungarian responded, clapping his teeth together.

  “Sure, what else?” Merlina responded.

  “If I felt a bit of the devil …”

  “A bit of love …” the abbé supplied a word for the Hungarian.

  “Dubreuil, be quiet or you will get a slap—now, if I felt a bit of the devil coming on, and I knew or you told me you had green snakes in your body, I would make the beast dance, Merlina.”

  “Infamous!” the abbé proclaimed.

  “My Lajos, you’re bigger than the devil!” Merlina shouted, drunk with high spirit. She rushed to the Hungarian, who defended himself with his hands, dropping his feet from the table and standing in order to fetch a fresh cigar from his coat pocket.

  Merlina returned to her place, murmuring and purring, scratching her woolly hair in all directions.

  This appeared to irritate the abbé. He was perfectly happy to see Satan playing with the tiger-cat, as she opened his cold lips to warm life with her burning tongue. In this way Dubreuil was like an old bawd who likes to watch a couple making love. We have already seen him at Parasina Brulard’s, where he had the same command that appeared to belong to the Hungarian in the mill. One can understand how Parasina could be interested in the wretched little body of the preacher only by contemplating the peculiarities and strange whims of female sexuality from a darker side.

  Today the woman is everything, and tomorrow she will be nothing. The sexual relationship forces her to take the veil, and the same relationship drives her into the arms of the goddess Libido. Black or white—it is all the same!

  “Lady Merlina,” Dubreuil grasped the line of conversation once more and moved closer to the zambo negresse, “then you came to know the German prince in this way?”

  The Hungarian had returned to the place where he had been sitting when he had finished bandaging his burn.

  “Not precisely in this manner,” Merlina responded after a rather long pause. “Before he left our plantation, he came to me—perhaps it was simply by chance—and asked me whether I knew of congo snakes. I said yes, and he promised me a good reward if I could catch one before our next meeting and keep it for him.”

  “Aha!” Dubreuil responded.

  “You have no idea what sort of animal that is, abbé,” Lajos remarked.

  “The congo snake is the most poisonous beast in Louisiana, it is wider than it is long and has two fleshy things on its belly which almost look like feet,” Merlina declared.

  “And you were supposed to catch and keep this ugly, poisonous beast for the prince, Lady Merlina?” Dubreuil asked once more. He glanced at the Hungarian, who was staring at Merlina’s shadow on the wall.

  “Yes!” the zambo negresse responded.

  The Hungarian had finally completed his study of the shadow; he stood up and slouched back down in the chair at the round table.

  “Now abbé,” he began, “it is high time you bring your ‘reversal’ to an end for Lady Merlina and me. We have wandered completely away from our original subject due to your silly curiosity and fruitless chatter. Put an end to your interconnections and leave the rest to idle talk.”

  “Oh well,” Dubreuil tossed off languidly, and then he began.

  “A vile episode happened to me this evening. So vile that even a novelist could use it to some effect. I have to go back at least thirty-five years if I am to develop this nonsense suitably. Oh well! I will make it quick, so I can be free of my tormenters as quick
ly as possible. It is known to you as well as the entire mill that Mistress Evans is entirely under my holy slippers, despite her tremendous wealth. The fact that my influence is so great that she permits herself to be locked up like a nun along with her daughter is almost too odd to be believable. I have forbidden them on pain of the most dreadful pains of hell to receive any male other than the prince of Württemberg. The reason for this should be obvious to anyone in the mill. I have also ordered the strictest clausura for Miss Dudley, pious as a lamb, and I have promised the sweetest reward that heaven provides. I have even demanded that she break completely with her female friends. She has done it, and she will follow my commands in the future …”

  “Until she has been throttled, and her blood has been transformed into gold for us,” the Hungarian interrupted the abbé for an instant.

  Dubreuil continued, “Mother and daughter are so unbelievably blind that it would take a trained oculist to break their stare. I can do what I want with them. They dance the way I whistle. When I weep with emotion over their sins, they cry along with me. If I say to Miss Dudley, ‘Miss, the Lord wishes that you make a general confession, for your sins cry unto heaven,’ the dumb little goose really thinks she has sins, and she throws her naked knees on crude wooden steps and calls on God’s mercy, for the intercession of the Mother of God and all the saints from A to Z—and all of this for nothing and less than nothing. The little goose is that stupid! The mother, of course, is not much better—but her torments of soul are not as interesting, having spent her better years having babies. Ha, ha! This playing angel and manipulating longing for the Savior and his boob of a foster-father, the carpenter Joseph—it is inconceivable to me how people can still be so dumb and allow themselves to be ruled by us priests. Ha, ha, the stupid people will never shake off this pious bunch of feelings and superstitions. Oh well, we priests do quite well in exploiting this stupidity—where there are sheep, there must be a shepherd! And if there is a God in heaven, He cannot begrudge us priests any more than the devil is upset with us, whom we have so splendidly, magnificently represented.”

  “You’re getting disgusting, abbé, with your eternal preaching tone,” the Hungarian remarked. “Even if all you priests are atheists, the old filth still clings to your tonsure. Get to the heart of the matter!”

  Now Dubreuil recounted that he happened to pass through Live Oak Square, and he saw the prince helping a young girl from a cab and talking for a while at the window of an old tenement. Since he suspected there was an adventure afoot, he passed by the building several times after the prince and the girl had entered and threw several glances into the poor chamber within. When he saw the count, he had to conclude that the count’s family, of which the prince had spoken positively, lived there. A second quick glance through the window revealed to him the beautiful girl of whom Mistress Evans had often spoken. Finally he saw the prince settle in so intimately with this family that his limitless curiosity caused him to knock on the door and enter.

  Then Dubreuil told of the corybantic fit of the unhappy Celestine, hiding nothing of his earlier shameful deeds from them. A sprinkle of sarcasm and ironic comments managed to spice up the dreadful crimes of this monster in priest’s clothing, and soon Lajos and then Merlina were rapt with marvel.

  “You have made little progress since you seduced that angel and bankrupted her mind, abbé—you must have been barely out of diapers—really fabulous, very mythological. That is better than the tale of Hercules, who strangled snakes while still in his cradle,” Lajos declared to Abbé Dubreuil, in cutting sentences, now that the latter’s narrative was at an end.

  “Well,” he responded, turning his mouth into a repellent smile, “I was only twenty-two then—not very young for us Creoles.”

  “I envy your great knowledge, abbé. Being a papal attaché at twenty-two is always enviable,” the Hungarian remarked in a tone that left open whether it was irony or admiration.

  “You must have come down in the world, Monsieur Dubreuil, not to have gone any further than preacher in a chapel and father confessor to an old woman,” Merlina commented.

  “It was owing to Father Rothaan’s work that my advancement was held up,” Dubreuil responded.17

  “What sort of being is Father Rothaan?” Merlina asked languidly.

  “That is the general of the Jesuits, Lady Merlina.”

  “Did he fear the little giant?” Lajos added in mockery.

  “In matters of the petticoat, yes,” Dubreuil declared weightily.

  “The petticoat?” the Hungarian repeated.

  “What else? The general spat poison and flames when he discovered I had seduced his mistress,” Dubreuil answered.

  “You’re a dreadful person, abbé. What foolishness, seducing the mistress of the Jesuit general!” the Hungarian declaimed, with a touch of fun.

  “Isn’t that so?” the abbé intoned.

  “You are always dealing with mistresses, abbé.”

  “Excuse me,” Dubreuil countered, “think of Miss Dudley Evans.”

  “She’s a mistress, too, abbé—heaven with all its angels and saints make use of her …” the Hungarian said.

  “Splendid, Lajos! You outstrip Rabelais and Aristophanes!” the abbé proclaimed.

  “So that justifies you in your lament, ‘Everything went wrong’—that you recognized the madwoman to be a seduced former parishioner?” Merlina returned to the old theme.

  “Well, yes. I had wanted to make a new acquaintance and refresh an old one,” Dubreuil responded.

  “Now you will leave that alone,” Merlina said.

  “Yes, I now find myself in a very uncomfortable situation. The prince, who had always held me to be a very pious and respectable man, will now have an entirely different attitude toward the life and work of Abbé Dubreuil,” the Creole remarked with gentle irony.

  One could see that the abbé had previously believed that the prince had respected him and held him to be a man of honor. He did not have the slightest notion that the prince was pursuing him, and that he had only visited the house of Mistress Evans to confirm the truth of a letter he had received ten months before from a friend in Texas. The letter said:

  Dear friend,

  I have learned by accident that the Creole Abbé Dominique Dubreuil resides in New Orleans, and that he has already acquired a considerable reputation as a preacher. If this is the same scoundrel who was active a few years ago under the name “Gonzales,” and who precipitated so many families into misfortune, I beseech you to use all your powers to thwart the plans of this dreadful priest, who gains entry into a family circle, where he is most respected and sought after. I draw special attention to the pretentions which this scoundrel has as a father confessor for young girls. In Mexico he committed the greatest acts of shame under this cover. Be careful of yourself, for this snake is capable of any deed. Many greetings from my family. If your researches in nature bring you back to our vicinity, do not hesitate to do us the honor of a visit.

  Respectfully,

  J.S.

  San Antonio, 21 May 18—

  “Washing yourself white is no magic,” the Hungarian remarked. “You are so inventive in every other matter, abbé, and yet you see problems here?”

  “What good is it to present the matter differently once distrust has descended on the prince?”

  “You had a brother, abbé—he looked precisely like you—and thirty-two years have passed since then, as you admitted yourself.”

  “Aha!” Dubreuil cried out.

  “At last your ‘aha!’ has a reason,” the Hungarian responded.

  This discourse was interrupted by the appearance of a man, whose torso was already emerging from the secret entry into what we know as the actual center of the Hamburg Mill, the salon.

  Merlina turned about and called, “Who’s there?”

  “Death or Merlina,” the new arrival responded, adding, “When New Orleans sleeps, the mill is awake—the members of the 99th and 100th degree bring death
and destruction.”

  Dubreuil, a member of the 99th degree, answered, “From the north comes smoke, and no one is alone in his tent.”

  “Howl gate, scream city! All of Philistia cowers! The waters of Dimon are filled with blood—in the night cometh destruction over Ar in Moab, it is gone!” said Lajos, the member of the 100th degree.

  The man who had just arrived stood and shook hands with Lajos and Dubreuil.

  Merlina stood from her easy chair and spoke, raising both arms in the air: “This is the burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus, there will no longer be a city, but only a tumbled pile of stones!”

  These words were exchanged as often as one of Merlina’s gang advanced to the 99th degree.

  Lajos, despite having spoken his lines in a solemn tone, thought to himself: “Such nonsense is used for the most prosaic undertakings. If anyone overheard us, he would marvel at the dreadful curses binding the members and what sort of majesty and dignity they conjure up. You will have to console yourself, Prophet Isaiah, that your verses have found a refuge in the mouths of the arsonists of the Hamburg Mill.”

  Dubreuil probably thought the same. But no one dared reveal his contempt to the others.

  Lajos, with his cold, deadly skepticism, a murderer and robber by habit; Dubreuil, the posthumous son of Sodom and Gomorrah; Lombardi (for he was the one who had just entered), who hid the heart of a hyena and the poison of a rattler behind his disgusting cynicism—all three of them lied to one another about their exclusive dedication to the mill, although they clung together and punctually gathered as members of the 99th and 100th degree. Lombardi thought he had influence over Lajos, as Lajos did over Dubreuil, and yet the priest’s slyness dominated both of them. If Lajos often treated the abbé in a casual and disrespectful manner, he committed the error of not seeing why the abbé permitted this, and why he submitted to this protectorate. The same was the case with Lombardi. Without suspecting it, he had stepped behind Lajos, and, though he was the Pontifex Maximus of the mill, he had become the obedient servant of both the Hungarian and Merlina.