The Angel Asrael

by S. Henry Berthoud

  In the meantime, a man appeared remarkable for his rotundity and his grotesque attire; he wore a tiny cutlass suspended on a large gold chain. “Well, Courcou,” exclaimed Marini, in the impatient tone of a man demanding good news although he knows only too well the impossibility of learning any, “Has your research finally been fortunate? Have the sounds of the horn been heard?”

  “May God protect our god King,” relied that singular individual in a grave and capable tone. “Some misfortune has surely overtaken him. His gracious Majesty said to me as he left: ‘Prince of cooks, we shall bring you back, before the angelus chimes, roe deer, partridges, or even a boar, although the poachers scarcely leave me any...’”

  “Fatal imprudence,” murmured the priest, drawing away from Courcou—who, in spite of the dolor he was experiencing, was no less sensible to the abrupt manner in which a conversation not calculated to flatter his vanity had terminated. “We’ve warned him many a time of the attempts at seduction that the treacherous Louis never ceases to make with regard to all of us. Too good, too confident, he didn’t want to believe us; and now he’s fallen into the ambush of his mortal enemy! Great God! It will be the same with Provence as with Anjou, then!”17

  As he launched himself outside the vestibule in his distress, however, he heard the cries of the people whom anxiety had gathered outside the palace:

  “Joy! Joy! The King! The King!”

  And René, only having for an escort a hermit armed with a knotty stick, advanced surrounded by an immense crowd expressing its joy by noisy acclamations.

  “Sire!” cried Marini, carried away by his impetuous zeal. “In what affliction you have plunged your faithful subjects! Is he a King to trouble and entire town for a frivolous pleasure? To expose his liberty and the salvation of the kingdom thus?”18

  “Marini,” the King replied, mildly, “You attachment almost gives bitterness to your remonstrations. At any rate,” he added, turning toward two venerable old men who were advancing toward him weeping with joy, we’re grateful to you for it, and we shall take it into account, like that if our loyal and faithful servants Jéhan Binée and Jehan Cossa.19 But by Saint Hubert, it’s necessary to admit that no peril as great ever menaced our royal head. If this courageous hermit had not come to my rescue, my traitorous hunters, in spite of my cries and futile efforts, would have delivered me to my cousin the King of France. He would doubtless not have failed to lodge me in his black towers, which scarcely please anyone but him, apart from the fact that in order to get out it’s necessary to pay such huge ransoms!”

  Stifling a sigh, he went on: “Come on, Courcou, serve us supper; we’ll do honor to it, for this venerable hermit and I, although both old, have acted like young men today, me in exposing myself with such scant prudence, and him in striking as I would have been able to do when I fought next to my uncle the Cardinal de Bar with my brave brother-in-arms the Bishop of Amiens.”20

  The stranger replied to these words by making a respectful bow. Although he seemed to be as old as René, everything in him announced a more than ordinary strength. The melancholy expression of his features inspired an interest that could not be defined; and his noble manners, full of ease, seemed to announce that he was highly-born. In those times it was not extraordinary to see seigneurs who, suddenly renouncing the world, went to seek in a pious solitude the calm and happiness that they had been unable to find in the milieu of courts.

  They went into the banqueting hall, preceded by Master Courcou. The latter filled with wine a golden goblet that René emptied in a single draught; after which he presented to the king a small bunch of silver keys, with which the Prince opened the padlocks of the closed the immense lockers with which the table was covered. They contained forty-eight different dishes; there were storks, roasted herons, partridges and pheasants; in the middle, a peacock rose up artistically ornamented with its rich plumage and its long tail, which was as marvelous to see as it was delicious to savor.

  While Courcou took from its sheath the little cutlass that he wore suspended from a golden chain, and sliced with ease and skill, and showed by means of a smile of satisfaction how highly he esteemed the high functions that he acquitted, René’s eye suddenly filled with tears.

  “Alas!” he cried, with bitterness, “I find no one at my table but a cenobite. Even he has only sat down out of obedience; and yet, I was once surrounded by my son Antoine d’Anjou and his brother Nicolas; their sisters Marguerite and Yolande and my noble son-in-law Ferry de Vendemour...21 Not a single one of my grandsons remains to me, whose joyous caresses could still charm my distressed soul! Oh, if God had conserved them for me, I would not have been expelled from my estates, a feeble old man.”

  Wiping away his tears after a moment’s pause he added: “But let God’s will be done!”

  The meal was silent. As Marini was saying grace, a child of about fifteen came in precipitately and ran to embrace the Prince with the effusion of joy that only belongs to that age of innocence.

  “Oh, there you are, my dear Bertrand,”22 said the King, passing his hand through the blond hair. “By your redness and your fatigue I see that you have been searching for me too, in great anxiety.” And using his royal hand to serve him food, he seemed to take pleasure in seeing the appetite with which Bertrand did honor to his repast.

  “This child,” said René to the hermit, “is an orphan; he’s a legacy given to me by his father, Claude Alamanon, who died poor in the service of my son-in-law Vendemour. Endowed with an extraordinary and precocious talent for poetry, he does not cede to any troubadour for composing and singing ballads. But what I appreciate most in him is the rare qualities of his heart. He loves me with a tender amity; he seems to forget the tastes of his age to yield to all the weaknesses of mine; if I want to tell stories, he is always ready to listen. If I remember my misfortunes, he weeps with me; one might think that he had no other pleasures but mine, no other troubles but mine.”

  The child then came to sit down beside the prince.

  “Fetch your mandolin, Bertrand,” René said to him, and sing us one of your ballads—the one you composed during our last voyage to Navarre, the subject of which you borrowed from an event of the region.”

  The child obeyed, and, taking off the light blue mantle that covered his shoulders, he began the following ballad:

  “Interred in a prison in Burgundy, the brave sire Vadales incessantly reported his thoughts to the pleasant land of Navarre.

  “‘Traitor Commercy,’ he was heard to cry, may Heaven punish you, for if you had not betrayed our valiant warriors, King René would not be groaning in irons. Barbezan23 would be defending him still and I would be with Marguerite, my beloved daughter.

  “In the morning her kisses would come to wake her father; in the evening she would sing the ballad that I sang to her mother, and bitter and delicious tears would flow over my cheeks, at the memory of the one whose cherished image would be retraced by the grace and ingenuousness of Marguerite.

  “More than one young knight would come to ask me for her hand; but neither the splendor of his birth nor the wealth of his possessions would decide my choice; if a simple troubadour made Marguerite’s heart beat faster, a simple troubadour would be her spouse.

  “But where is my spirit straying? I am dreaming of my daughter’s betrothal, and perhaps she is groaning, oppressed by some cowardly suzerain, for she has no point of support, no protector. Her father is captive, far away from her.

  “One day, the doors of his prison opened noisily. Someone said to him: ‘Take up your sword and lance; mount your horse.’

  “He is free, he departs. He soon reaches the end of his journey; he has scarcely paused on the way, for he is going to see his daughter again.

  “Already he perceives the Château de Vadales, but O surprise! It is not the banner with the azure field and the silver hind that floats over the towers of his fortress; it is the sinister flag of the coward de Commercy.

  “What has become of Marguerite?
At that thought he feels faint and the reins of his horse escape his hands. Suddenly he hears the sounds of the clarion and the hoofbeats of a hundred men-at-arms.

  “At their head is young Hugues d’Ostremont, a Cambrésian seigneur. ‘Warrior,’ he shouts to Vadales, ‘come fight with us against the man who has stolen the orphan’s domain.’ The signal for the assault is given, and Vadales and Hugues d’Oisy cast down the sinister flag of Commercy.

  “‘Brave knight,’ said Vadales, mounted on the breach, ‘noble and valiant Hugues, you have protected the poor orphan, and her father, on this breach, offers you Marguerite’s hand.’

  “What was Marguerite’s joy when she saw her father again! What sudden blush covered her cheeks, what soft tears shone in her eyes when he said to her: ‘Marguerite, here is your husband!’

  “Soon the rumor of the noble marriage spread through the land. It was celebrated by a brilliant tourney; for the subjects of the good King liked their forefathers’ games; only those of the grim Louis of France are as grim as their master.

  “The bride was led to the altar, and when the chaplain had said: ‘Baron Hugues d’Ostremont, noble seigneur de Cambrésis, Marguerite is yours…Damoiselle, Hugues d’Ostremont is your husband,’ the vassals uttered cries of joy, and magnificent feasts and noisy dances commenced everywhere.

  “Fleeing those importunate festivities, it is under a pure sky, to the mountain that neighbors the château, that the two spouses go to deliver themselves without witnesses to tender caresses and tender conversation.

  “They shelter from the fires of the sun beneath a steep rock that extends menacingly above their heads. An eglantine-bush crowns it, and on raising her eyes, Marguerite perceives flowers swaying softly in the breath of the wind.

  “She points them out to her spouse. Hugues has already climbed the mountain; he picks the charming flowers, and Marguerite, under the rock, lifts her hands to receive the roses.

  “O terror! The rock, with a horrible din, comes away, rolls, bounds, and the unfortunate couple have disappeared under its enormous debris.

  “Marguerite! Marguerite! That plaintive cry resounds all night in the gorges of the mountain, sparkling with torchlight. Finally, what a spectacle for a father! Vadales discovers his daughter; she is lying, bloody, next to her spouse, her hand still holding the fatal eglantine.”

  Suddenly, the hermit, who has covered his face with his hands, utters a cry and falls down, pale and unconscious. People gather around him, and water is sprinkled on his face. But a reliquary concealed on his bosom escapes and rolls to the feet of the King; it contains a desiccated rose and two locks of hair, one blonde the other black, enlaced in two rings such as those a priest gives to spouses whose union he is blessing.

  Vadales—for it was him—returned to his hermitage in spite of René’s efforts to retain him in his court. But the Prince and the troubadour often went to visit him, and more than once, during the winter, in those pleasant places sheltered from the wind, the monarch was seen warming himself in the mild sun of Provence, chatting familiarly with his young favorite and the pious old man. He often held his court of justice there, and his humblest subjects came to approach him without dread and implore his benefits or his protection. Travelers are still show the debris of the hermitage; they are known in the locale as “good King René’s hearth.”

  A STORY HEARD WHILE LISTENING AT DOORS

  1824

  There is more poetry than one thinks in the ordinary

  events of life. Unfortunately, habit prevents us from

  understanding it; it is like a man who is envied

  universally for an income of a hundred thousand écus,

  but who finds no enjoyment in his fortune, because he

  has been habituated since the cradle to the wellbeing it

  procures, and the pleasures that another would find

  therein have become for him needs as necessary as

  drinking, sleeping and eating.

  (Contes misanthropiques,

  unpublished work by the author.)24

  I experience a happiness that I cannot describe when, sunk in my large armchair of antique form, I start leafing through the books scattered on my old oak desk.

  The silence, the solitude and physical wellbeing distract me insensibly from my reading, gradually stimulating my imagination, and causing my ideas to flow. Sparse and vague at first, they wander amid I know not how many different things; then, suddenly, inspiration springs forth unexpectedly, forceful and imperious. Subjugated by a sort of mechanical ecstasy that partakes simultaneously of somnolence and fever, I write and write and write without pausing; and, more than once, I have surprised myself writing in spite of the darkness and without perceiving the energetic remonstrations of my stomach, fasting since I got out of bed.

  When such sensations eventually cease I experience fatigue and distaste; everything around me seems cold, deserted and arid.

  Oh, how I would like then to see a young woman’s smile, to hear her speak, to sit down next to her, holding a hand that she would abandon to me. How she would see my forehead blossom under the youthful kisses of a little boy who would climb up on my knees and say the naïve words to me that a father shivers on hearing.

  But I’m alone, in the world, alone! And I stay there, sadly sitting next to my half-extinct hearth, while the tempest howls or the rain resonates on my windows, which is its lashing.

  Nevertheless, when a beautiful sky encourages me, I sometimes overcome that collapse; I wrap myself in a cloak and I go to wander through the poorest and most solitary streets.

  There is in that silent obscurity, in the solitude of an entire city, I know not what poetry, which relaxes and soothes.

  And then, at long intervals, one sees a vacillating lantern, the yellow-gray light of which is reflected her and there like a luminous fog. Then one hears resounding on the pavement, and dying away further on, the hasty footsteps of furtive couples, whose double shadow looms up on a wall illuminated by a street-lamp, and suddenly disappears. And then the two-part song of a few drinkers, to whose hoarse voices distance lends a harmony full of charm; and then the guttural sounds of a hurdy-gurdy, a few notes of which the wind brings, comes to add further to the spells I am recounting.

  I have not told you yet all the pleasures of a night-prowler.

  On the curtains, or the panes of the majority of lighted windows, bizarre or gracious silhouettes are designed; sometimes the crooked profile of an old man, sometimes the slim figure of a young woman who, semi-naked with her arms raised, is gathering and putting up her hair.

  A luminous beam that escapes a poorly-closed shutter is another stroke of good fortune; I put my eye to it avidly and, almost always, a scene full of naivety is offered to me, such as our old Flemish painters take pleasure in reproducing.

  There is an indescribable charm in surprising, by that means, people who believe that they are devoting themselves without witnesses to the ordinary actions of life: an entire family gathered around a big table, at which a grandmother in a Flemish bonnet fulfills the function of steward; a young seamstress half-bent over her work-frame, entirely intent on the narrow hem that is extending under her fingers; or lovers who are chatting close—very close—beside one another; or spouses delivering themselves to the altercations to which the shrill character of our housewives is so well-adapted.

  Once, among others, I saw an old shoemaker working next to a cast iron stove while his wife, a septuagenarian at least, was turning one of those large spinning-wheels with a handle, known only in Flanders, I believe. A young woman was kneeling in front of the stove in order to warm herself more comfortably; she had just come home, for her cheeks were still chapped by cold.

  At every moment that group, disposed as Teniers would have wanted them, and whom a flickering lamp left in semi-obscurity, was animated by the play of the light, in the most picturesque fashion; those effects were produced by false gleams that escaped the cracks in the stove, and which cast th
eir red and sudden reflections on the pale physiognomy of the young woman, the stunted features of the old woman and the shiny bald head of the shoemaker.

  “Holy Virgin!” said the good woman. “What are you telling us, my daughter?”

  “It’s a very horrible death,” said the shoemaker, in a dogmatic tone, “but it doesn’t astonish me at all, for the family has always been unlucky, and I know, on the account of the talion,25 his great-grandfather, and his grandfather, things that are not good to know. I had them from my father, who was a porter at the Abbaye du Saint-Aubert, and he learned them on good authority, for it was monsieur the prior who told him. You know, Marthe, that while my mother was alive, that monsieur the prior often came to chat with her, for he was not proud and did not deny his cousin, who was not a near relative, but not so very distant.

  “I’ll tell you about it. Listen.

  “One day, when his talion, a good gardener, was working in his suburban garden and he was grafting a pear-tree, an old woman arrived at his gate and asked him for alms.

  “Pierre, as Philippe’s talion was called, replied to her: ‘There’s nothing to give; let the good Lord assist you.’ And he resumed grafting his pear-tree.

  “The old woman did not go away, but set about begging more insistently, saying that she was dying of hunger and that she had had nothing to eat for two days.

  “Finally, Pierre, sick of those jeremiads, shouted at her brutally to go away or that she’d regret it.

  “The beggar woman did not do as she as bid, and asked more insistently. Then Pierre went to her, pushed her away and caused her to fall.

  “In her fall she struck her head against the block of stone in the middle of the threshold that stopped the two battens of the gate, and the impact was so rude that she had a large wound on the forehead.