“Now, he lies, my good seigneur,” she said, “I have borne in my heart for a long time the image of a handsome knight whom I love and whom I once saw vanquish in a tourney.”
Who wants to hear, who wants to know, the adventures of Monseigneur Simon Brade-vie?
VI
“What knight has such good fortune, noble lady?” enquired Simon Brade-vie.
The lady covered her blushing face with both hands, like a rose hiding its flower in a large bouquet of foliage. It could not be easily glimpsed between her fingers.
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VII
“Tell me at least in which tourney,” said Simon.
“I will tell you that soon.”
“Well than, climb on to the rump of my horse, Madame, and let’s run in pursuit of your ravisher.”
The lady leapt nimbly on to the rump and embraced the knight’s breastplate with her beautiful arms, who soon felt it warm up as if the lady’s hands were on fire.
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VIII
They did not take long to catch up with the knight of whom the lady had spoken, and who, far from fleeing, was standing calmly in the middle of a clearing. As soon as he saw Simon and the lady coming he stated to laugh so loudly that he nearly fell down in the grass.
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IX
Simon Brade-vie raised his lance as if to strike him, but that fit of anger increased the other’s hilarity further, who said: “Do you know, Simon, against whom you have come to fight? Against Satan in person. Do you know what lady it is whose cause you have taken up? A chatelaine of the stewardship of Hell.”
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X
“False or true, it matters little to me. I have sworn to serve this lady against you, To horse, lance at the ready, for I want to keep my promise, and I shall not be seen to replace on my horse’s neck the shield that I have raised to fight, my beautiful golden shield which the anchored sable cross. Let’s go, take the field, and may victory be to the best!”
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XI
The demon, for it really was a demon, whistled in a strange manner, and a horse as hideous as its master suddenly appeared; he bestrode it, uprooted an oak to make a lance of it, and rushed upon the brave knight at a great gallop.
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XII
Simon avoided the terrible thrust, and struck his enemy so well in the middle of the breast that the lance emerged from the middle of the back more than ten handspans. Instead of falling, the demon laughed more loudly than ever, for he had never ceased laughing, and he stated capering and maneuvering his horse, as if the lance had not traversed his torso.
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XIII
Then, drawing his sword, he ran at Simon, and both started cutting and thrusting at one another with their swords. The forest resounded with the terrible blows they delivered. But the contest was not equal, for the demon’s were effective and broke Simon’s armor, while the armor of the demon was unaffected.
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XIV
Addressing a mental prayer to God, Simon suddenly envisaged a means that succeeded for him; he gripped his sword by the point and started striking the demon with the hilt, where there were relics of Saint Géry and a fragment of the true cross.
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XV
If you had seen the demon writhe under those blows! If you had heard his clamors! Oh, he was no longer laughing this time, I can answer for that.
“Mercy, mercy! Oh, I beg you, brave knight, mercy! Have pity on my suffering, each of those blows is burning and killing me!”
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XVI
“Will you liberate that lady and rehabilitate her honor?” demanded the knight.
“Yes, yes, but cease your thrusts, I beg you.”
“And do you swear never tempt or induce any of my family to evil?”
“I swear it,” cried the demon, “but cease your thrusts!”
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XVII
“And you, whom I have aided and served on this occasion, are you veritably a chatelaine of the stewardship of Hell?”
“Alas, yes,” said the lady, “but since I have known you, brave knight, I would like to be an angel, for perhaps you might love me.”
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XVIII
“I can only love my lady, the beautiful and good Agnès de Saveuse,” the knight replied, “so cease these accolades and genuflections, and if my aid is no longer necessary to you, go wherever you please.”
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XIX
“You are a brave knight, and the boldest one could see,” said the chatelaine of Hell. “I am the wife of Lucifer, prince of the somber empire; if it ever comes about that one of yours dies in a state of mortal sin, and falls into the gulfs of Hell in consequence, let him implore me by saying your name, and the eternal flames will be less dolorous for him than any other. I will be less unhappy too, for I shall have had someone speak to me of Simon Brade-vie.
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XIII. The Apparition
While Lorette commenced the ballad of Simon Brade-vie, Asrael, sustained by the knees of his mistress and his eyes closed in a voluptuous languor, continued idly to deliver himself to the puerile and tender joys of before, but as the boatwoman sang and the legend unfolded, he opened his eyes, lifted his head, raised himself up on his knees and, folding his arms over his chest, he started listening gravely and sadly. That song, which spoke of Hell, of the amour of a demon, had awakened his dreams, rendering him the memory of his present situation.
When Lorette had finished the song, she was very surprised to see Mamert with is head bowed over his breast, and his eyes filled with tears.
“Poor chatelaine of Hell!” he murmured, finally.
“I like your pity, Mamert, truly! Your pity for an evil angel! For a demon! Fie!”
“Why, then have less compassion for the amorous sufferings of a demon than the amorous sufferings of a human? Is it because he is condemned to eternal punishment? Is it because there can be no more hope for him? Is it because he is an object of fear and that it is necessary for him to live in an isolation even more frightful that the eternal fires? What! When, after having let himself fall into a very mild error, when, after having thought that a mortal might love him and help him to support existence with less despair, when, after so much imaginary happiness he finds himself rejected into all the bitterness of his punishment, you do not want anyone to feel compassion for him!”
“If he were a Christian, yes—but a demon!”
So, then, if I were a demon, Lorette, you would immediately take back the love that you have given me? My tears and my despair would not matter to you? You would summon your priests and their rites to drive me away? You would thank Heaven for having been liberated from me?”
“Oh, Mamert, you, that would be quite different; any anyway, you’re not a demon.”
“But what if I were? What if I had renounced for you the attributes of the infernal angels? What if, in order to see you, to receive your caresses, I were incurring p
erils without number and a torture that lasts not years but an eternity? You would reject me fearfully? You would curse me?”
“What would it matter to me what you are? Would you be any less my Mamert, my happiness, my joy, my soul, my life? Would not Hell with you be better than Paradise in losing you?”
“You’re deceiving me, Lorette, and you’re allowing yourself to be deceived by the illusions of your love. If it were necessary to swear an oath to accomplish the promises you make, alas, you would soon be seen to recoil and to recant.”
“Ingrate! You don’t know, then, how much I love you? Well then, since you still doubt me, become a demon if you really are one; assume your terrible face and your fork, and you’ll see whether I love you any less!”
“Lorette, my Lorette!” cried Asrael, in a voice whose melody no longer had anything mortal about it.
The young woman went pale and shivered, for it was no longer Mamert that she was holding in her arms. It was a creature of supernatural beauty who was waving two azure and gold wings in the air. A circle of fire ringed his forehead with a dazzling band, and the gracious form of his limbs revealed a celestial origin.
“Do you still love me, Lorette? Tell me, do you still love me?” demanded the infernal angel, kneeling at the boatwoman’s feet.
She threw herself into his arms, crying: “Yours forever!”
“Be my companion for eternity, then. I will change your mortal nature into an immortal essence; you will become an infernal spirit; you will have the elements in your power; nature will obey you; at the slightest sign from your hand, thunder would rumble; at the slightest word from your mouth, the waves would roar and rise up to form tempests.”
Lorette’s eyes sparkled with surprise, pride and amour.
“Persevere in your tenderness for me, and all those marvels will be accomplished. One more year on earth, and you will quit it to share my power, to wear the immortal ring that circles my head.”
“Oh! This isn’t a dream?”
“It’s a dream that will last throughout eternity!” replied Asrael, passing an iron ring over her finger.
XIV. The Shepherd
Happiness is only found in heaven. What is named happiness on earth only offers a pale and icy reflection of the ineffable joys with which the elect intoxicate themselves; their transports succeed one anther endlessly, without lassitude, always renascent, always more vivid and sweeter. God is there, who inundates them with sublime ecstasies and immutable joys.
Among humans, the transports of delight and the bliss of affections deteriorates, weakens, wearies and dies away, and even their memory, alas, often ends up becoming a burden. Satiety, an incurable evil, satiety, a chill that numbs and kills, always waits close to happiness, which it soon stifles with its embrace; it blows over the human heart, and the blood that vivifies that heart with a generous warmth slows down, contracts, and scarcely flows.
After six months of amour with Asrael, Lorette felt that satiety. To begin with, on seeing her, nothing seemed to have changed in her; she surrounded Asrael with the same caresses, she spoke the same amorous words to him. But there were on her forehead I know not what wrinkles formed by a mysterious ennui; her gaze no longer shone, and through the soft intonations of her voice a constraint was revealed.
The reproved angel understood that change without feeling it himself, and that change made his despair. In vain he tried to reawaken in Lorette’s soul the amour that had been extinguished; his efforts, his reproaches, his tears and his cares only ended up provoking impatience and hastening distaste.
And the distaste came; it had come; the distaste that causes one to curse what had once made one pant with delight; the distaste that struggles against habit and against the decency that prevents one from breaking the bonds one has assumed; the distaste that is the harsh expiation of temporary human joys, the deadly evidence of their poverty and their annihilation. The boatwoman’s imagination, ardent and hence full of inconstancy, surrendered to the force of sensations; and those sensations were rapidly consumed and extinguished. Lightning hurls an immense flame that sets the entire horizon alight, but lightning only flashes, and dies.
Now, she no longer wept if Asrael went away; now, she no longer went up on deck in order to see him coming from further away. When he sang out to announce his return, she no longer ran to him. Far from it; she listened with indifference when he said: “Lorette, it’s necessary that I leave, that I leave you for a day, a week, a month...” When she had seen him draw away, she experienced satisfaction; it seemed to her that she had become freer, and that she could breathe more easily.
But inconstancy is a sentiment that causes remorse, or at least shame. One blushes at such mobility of affection, one criticizes oneself, or rather seeks to justify it, and sometimes succeeds in that by means of some paradox with which one dupes oneself. Thus, Lorette attributed her felony in amour to a laudable sentiment of piety and the fear of Hell. She even ended up persuading herself that if Mamert had always remained Mamert, that without the fatal night on which he had shown himself adorned with his demonic attributes, she would have continued to love him faithfully forever.
Once that interpretation was found, she convinced herself of it, and her indifference to Asrael was embittered and envenomed by all the hatreds of a deceptive devotion—so thoroughly that an idea took possession of her, dominated her, exalted her, and became her only idea: to get away from Asrael and then to doom Asrael.
But she feared that; a pact bound her to him; it was necessary to break it, that terrible pact. How? What power could do it? None...
Would not God take pity on her? Would he snatch her away from the demon that held her, from the wretch that had cast her into an infamous trap? For, after all, it was not a demon that she had believed that she loved; it was a man. She had been deceived in a cowardly fashion, unworthily deceived!
My God, what had she done to be deceived in that fashion? She had loved him so much, had found so much happiness in loving him! She had surrendered herself to her love with such a great abandon! And him! He had been thinking of nothing but dooming her. He had looked out for her most tender words, he had troubled her in order better to receive her. In sum, was it not in the midst of the most intoxicating ecstasy, was it not when she no longer retained enough reason to know what she was doing, that he had obliged her to contract that infamous pact? That he had damned her!
Damned? No, she would not be. God would not permit an angel of darkness to triumph. God would suggest to her the means of becoming free again; for, after all, means must exist. A Christian soul cannot find itself delivered, without defense, to the mercy of a demon.
She had loved him, however, she had loved him when he precipitated her thus into the abyss. That is a crime too odious to remain unpunished. It cries out for vengeance, and it is necessary that the vengeance come. It would come!
Yes—and it is God, there was no doubt about it, that has given her the thought—certain shepherds know means of warding off demons and defeating all their ruses. It is necessary that she consult one. After all, what is she risking? She will still remain free to take the resolution that suits her. Indeed, there is, not far from the shore where her boat is moored, an old shepherd who enjoys a great renown for wisdom in magic. A little while ago she saw him directing his flock toward a field not far away. Come on; it’s necessary to go find him, and perhaps he will render poor Lorette a means of salvation.
Lorette wrapped her head in a large veil of woolen cloth such as women of her caste wore in those days, and headed for the field in which the shepherd had parked his flock.
She saw the mysterious individual standing in the distance, at the corner of a copse, his eyes raised to the sky, and, according to every appearance, absorbed by a profound meditation. From beneath the gray cloak that covered him, a large pleat of which revealed the right shoulder, a thin and semi-naked arm emerged, holding an oak staff. Two dogs were coming and going around the ewes, holding them in respect, and turni
ng toward their master from time to time a gaze that seemed to be interrogating his desire. But the shepherd remained impassive, and nothing could extract him from his reverie, not even the barking of the two animals, which, as soon as they perceived Lorette, hurtled toward her and prevented her from advancing.
She remained thus, frightened, not daring to take another step, and appealing to the shepherd with loud cries. He finally deigned to hear her and lowered the eyes that had been fixed on the heavens toward her. He whistled in a shrill manner; immediately, the dogs, humble and submissive, fell silent and returned as quickly as possible to huddle against their master’s feet.
Lorette, recovering somewhat from her fright, advanced toward the shepherd, who received her with an imperturbable gravity.
“Shepherd,” she said, in a voice slightly distorted by the emotion she felt, “here are two gold coins, in order for you to give me some good advice.
The shepherd took the boatwoman’s gift and put them in the fold of a sleeve of his cloak. Then, still without saying a word, he looked at Lorette again.
“Tell me, shepherd—it’s not for my own account, by the way, that I’m consulting you—when one has made a pact with a demon, is there any means of breaking it?”
“Has the person that you wish to serve ever received any infernal object as a gift?”
“Yes, only one,” Lorette replied, her face reddening, and who, by means of a small movement of her left hand hid that hand beneath the pleats of her veil. “Yes, a ring.”
“How is that ring fashioned?”
“Of iron, but it shines with a very particular gleam.”
“Yes, in such a manner that it can even be seen through a veil,” said the shepherd, taking Lorette’s left hand.
The Angel Asrael Page 26