by Théo Varlet
“You’re exaggerating,” Renard said, in his turn. “We’ve only talked about your plans among ourselves. Who could have reported it to him? And as for danger—we can answer for the Holy Father, can’t we, Etcheverry?”
“I’ll have the pulpit guarded by a cordon of troopers, Lieutenant. And I’ll disperse police throughout the cathedral.
Geronimo shrugged his shoulders, brandishing the debris of his pipe. “You don’t know them, Citizens, the dogs of the Inquisition. If I go up to the pulpit, they’ll have me; it’s as definite as the lines of a musical score.”
“Then don’t go up,” the major cut in. “No one’s forcing you, Jerome!”
“Except my duty! And Progress! And Liberty!”
The General Staff looked at him, embarrassed.
“Gentlemen,” hazarded Dupuy, “if you’ll permit, I think I have an answer. His Holiness can make his speech without going up to the pulpit personally.”
“From the choir, then?” said the new pope, dubiously. “People won’t be able to hear me.”
“From the pulpit. Very Holy Father! But without moving from the choir, while remaining in our midst. We’ll be able to protect you.”
“How do you expect him to speak from the pulpit without moving from the choir?” asked Renard. “Have you a telephonic loud-speaker you can lend him?”
“No, Monsieur Renard—but there’s a phonograph in the infirmary.”
“Good idea!”
“Bravo!”
“He’s found it!”
“Eureka!” exclaimed the monk.
Within five minutes, the apparatus was there, with a virgin disk and the recording stylus in place, in front of the orator, who collected himself. All the poilus, interested by the experiment, had turned toward the high table.
“A little hush, if you please!” shouted de Lanselles. “Over to you, Holy Father—speak into the microphone.” He switched on the machine, and Geronimo commenced, in a vehement voice: “Hermanos mios! Desde muy años. El tribunal de la abhorada Inquisicion ha hecho mas victimas...”
“Pass me the Benedictine!” Thévenard cut in, addressing himself to Lénac.
“…que las guerras, pestas, y uraganos. En cuanto a este animal feroz, Tortorado...”
A loud belch, from an unknown source, inscribed itself like a punctuation mark on the disk, but Geronimo did not pause. He continued to address his vengeful tirade to an imaginary audience, punctuated by various noises and drink-induced remarks in spite of Monocard’s order. Even the major, during the final excommunication, amused himself by launching a few solid Spanish oaths learned from his pupils into the microphone.
Renard was not pleased, and wanted to re-record the speech, but the monk refused, and Dupuy affirmed that the superfluous ornaments were scarcely audible. He changed the phonograph stylus and closed the box again, and then went to place it in the pulpit, ready for the appropriate moment.
Reassured, Geronimo resumed drinking, and lit another pipe—a briar that Jasmin had given to hm.
At five o’clock, following the program, they went out for the aerostatic ascent. Made of oiled silk by the local couturiers, inflated with the aid of the gasometer serving for the palace lighting, the yellow rotundity of the Geronimo I was swaying gently above the amazed crowd.
The medical orderly and ex-seminarian Paincarat, scorned by all because of his venomous slyness and cowardice, and forgotten—perhaps deliberately—in the distribution of expertise, had finally got the job, a month before, of supervising the construction of the balloon, provided that he took his place in the gondola during the ascent. Livid, but not daring to retreat under the jeers of his comrades, he followed the pilot, climbed over the wickerwork rim and, with a shout of “All away!” and to the rhythm of trumpets playing “Is there’re anything to drink up there?” the balloon lifted off in the midst of crazed shouts, triumphant among the partisans—Moors, University students and factory workers—reproving among the supporters of the Inquisition.
A light north-westerly breeze pushed the aerostat toward Port-sur-Seille.
“Even if they fly over the village, there’s no risk,” Renard replied to an objection by the major. “Our friends the Moors have been alerted.”
But the balloon was gaining altitude. It must have penetrated a violent counter-current, for after five minutes, it passed over the square again, at great speed, at a great height, heading westwards. It disappeared behind the domes of the cathedral.
“The idiots! Why haven’t they opened the valve? They’ll kill themselves if they come down in Spain!”
The incident caused a chill, but no one could do anything to save the two unfortunates. It was even necessary not to let the population know that anything abnormal had occurred.
On Renard’s orders, the troopers went back into the palace, and took off their fantasy uniforms in order to don battle dress; then, surrounded by an armed guard, preceded and followed by Moorish police, Geronimo and his retinue went into the church and arranged themselves in the choir stalls to the left, next to the door of a hidden passage that communicated with the palace. To the right, facing them, were the Franciscans, the bishop and the clergy. In front of the choir, a dozen Moorish policemen on horseback—in order to be able to fire from higher up—took up their positions, clubs in hand and a bag of grenades slung over the shoulder. Twenty more were hidden in the nave, among the dense crowd. At the foot of the pulpit—a white marble platform supported by giant gilded cherubim, on which the loudspeaker of the phonograph was glittering—four poilus were on guard, with fitted bayonets.
No manifestation troubled the beginning of the service celebrated by the bishop. Orders had been given, and in the nave, partisans and adversaries were measuring one another with their gazes, awaiting the new pope’s speech. But when a Franciscan announced that His Holiness, afflicted by a sudden paralysis of the vocal cords, would harangue the faithful from the pulpit through the intermediary of angels, and not in person, the assembly became restless.
When the loudspeaker of the phonograph began to speak, with the distorted but recognizable voice of Geronimo, there was amazement to begin with. Everyone looked at one another, terrified. When the bacchic utterances, the belches and the doctor’s interjections and the footsteps of the barefoot slave-girls—all the noises of the feast, pitilessly recorded—were mingled, like an entire demonic choir, with the fulminations against Tortorado and his allies; and when the poilus in the choir, unable to contain themselves at these reminders of merriment, started laughing out loud; panic took hold of the people, who ran for the doors.
The doors, however, were guarded by Moorish police. In the milling crowd, trampled women howled. One even began to give birth in terror, and her crazed neighbors angrily stamped the child of Hell to death. The phonograph was still declaiming over the indescribable tumult.
Suddenly, a Dominican appeared on the choirmaster’s podium: the notary Alvarez himself—who boldly launched an anathema against the sacrilegious pope. Then, in a surge of madness, a riot broke out.
The Geronimist students grouped around the pulpit took the offensive, and fell with shortened arms upon the Tortoradists. Nothing could be seen but raised fists, and the sonorous vessel of stone filled with vociferations and frantic howling. Under the impulsion of unknown hands, the bells started ringing and the tocsin burst forth. From the choir, trumpets sounded the charge.
The Moorish policemen, in order to get clear, lashed out randomly with their clubs; several used their grenades, and the detonations and the acrid smoke completed the pandemonium. The troopers at the pulpit drove back the assailants with rifle-butts and bayonets, and carried away the phonograph, bent low over the choir.
The French, with Geronimo, beat a retreat by means of the hidden door and went back to the palace, while the people, forcing the barricades, spread out into the square, reinforcing the townspeople who had come running in response to the tocsin. A few rounds of machine-gun fire, however, followed by a cavalry charge, soo
n quieted the revolt and dispersed the rioters.
By eight o’clock in the evening, order was reestablished. The Tortoradists, vanquished, had gone home. There was no longer anyone in the streets but Geronimists, who were demanding that the remainder of the program be carried out. It was decided to satisfy them. A few fountains established in front of the palace, each one provided with two nozzles, began pouring out free alcohol, in the midst of a joyful turmoil, and acclamations celebrating the new pope and the French.
The inventors of the new liqueurs had used this distribution as a means of commercial propaganda, and artistic posters, stuck above each jet of alcohol, enjoined drinkers to: “Ask for the incomparable Progressinette in all the bars,” informed them that: “The only possible aperitif is Duranton Anisette,” or exhorted them to “Demand the genuine Nénestine.”
As an accompaniment to the dances that were immediately organized, a few films were projected on s screen erected on the façade of the cathedral. From behind the main altar Lénac had filmed a part of the scene at vespers, and had the unfortunate idea of concluding the session with that overly recent memory.
Overexcited by the new libations of the fountains, groups ran through the city streets howling the Marseillaise, the Internationale and the Ça ira. Doors were broken down, houses invaded and looted. It was necessary to send out the police again. All night, the bawling of drunkards, the screams of violated women and the explosions of grenades rose up toward the stars, and the cadenced tread of patrols resonated on the cobblestones.
In his room, the new pope, exhausted by the glorious day, fell asleep, his pipe in his mouth and a mug of Benedictine within arm’s reach, over Paroles d’un croyant.26
III. The Messengers from Toledo
Six days after the events that we have just reported, toward sunset, three individuals stopped at the door of the inn kept by Master Alfonso Escobardo on the outskirts of Valencia on the road to Toledo. It had rained during the day—for it was the end of November—and their mules, mud-stained to the withers, attested that the travelers had scarcely rested all day. Having confided their mounts to the stable-lad, they went into the main hall, after a second of hesitation at the sight of two customers—Moorish policemen—who were sat at a table drinking in the company of agreeable serving-girls, Carmencita and Rosina. Policemen though they were, attached to section three of bureau B, who had come to interrogate the innkeeper, suspected of harboring agents of Tortorado, the Moors, having completed their search without result, had allowed themselves to be offered a glass of Alicante, and then another, and were now larking about with the girls, having completely forgotten their mission. They were even chatting with scant restraint, and Master Alfonso Escobardo, while attending to his bottles and jars, was listening with interest as they talked about the actions and intentions of the “devils.”
“You’re well in with them, are you, you big rogue?” said Rosina tenderly. “I’ll give you a kiss and you can tell me more.”
They only darted a vague glance at the newcomers, whose features were hidden beneath wide-brimmed felt hats that were pulled down, and capes pulled up to their eyes.
“What would you like, my lord pilgrims?” enquired the innkeeper.
“We’ve come for the cheeses,” replied the shortest of the three, who seemed to be the leader.
“They’re ready,” said Alfonso.
“That’s good,” the stranger concluded.
Without another word, the innkeeper went through a door with them, which he closed again carefully and bolted. After which, lighting a lantern, he took them along a corridor, then down a stairway, into a cellar cluttered with bottles and enormous jars. Moving aside an old round millstone lying on the ground, he uncovered a trapdoor, beneath which a wooden ladder plunged into darkness. He pointed to it with one hand and held out the lantern to them with the other.
“Have a good trip, my lords. My humble respect to His Paternity.”
“Silence!” the leader ordered.
And the three travelers disappeared, one after another, into the tunnel. But Escobardo remarked, silently, that he only knew two of them, and that those two seemed to be keeping a close eye on the third.
“Bah!” he concluded, closing the trapdoor. “A new recruit.”
In his monastic cell, with a smoking torch in his hand, Tortorado was examining with meditative attention the contents of a vast cupboard hollowed out in the thickness of the wall. There were eight Lebel rifles there, two light machine-guns, two revolvers, and a heap of grenades and cartridges—in brief, all the booty taken five months previously from Venette’s unfortunate poilus.
Grim attention contracted the Inquisitor’s hate-filled face, and his bulbous nose quivered, while he contemplated the diabolical weapons.
“He who has killed with the sword shall perish by the sword,” he murmured. “The fake banknotes have begun their work of liberation. These will complete it…if someone will reveal their manipulation to us!”
In the narrow tunnel, Master Escobardo’s two acquaintances marched one in front and the other behind their companion. Whenever he slowed down, the first pulled him brutally, and the second pricked him with the point of his dagger. The light of the lantern illuminated muddy pools, slime, fleeing rats, and even bones on the floor. Spiders’ webs hung down from the vaults; bats took fright, brushing the travelers with their silent flight. The heavy atmosphere, saturated with a sepulchral odor, was only refreshed at long intervals, when they passed under shafts at the top of which daylight could be glimpsed, in a tangle of brambles.
The three walked for an interminable half-hour.
Three light raps on the door of the cell interrupted Tortorado’s sinister reverie. Closing the cupboard, he went to open the door.
A Dominican bowed in front of him.
“The messengers from Toledo for Your Paternity,” he announced—and, on a sign of assent, he introduced the mysterious travelers who had gone into Master Escobardo’s cellar half an hour earlier. As soon as they were in the cell they uncovered their heads respectfully.
“It’s you, Pedro…and Sanchez…good,” said Tortorado. “But who’s this?” And he pointed to the unknown man whom the other two had treated roughly, and who was looking at him, pale and trembling.
“I’m a faithful servant of the Church,” the wretch stammered, in bad Latin. “My name is Paincarat.”
Pedro interrupted. “He’s one of them, Reverend Father. A demon from Valencia—one of those who fell in Toledo and whom we captured. He affects to hate his own kind. He claims to be the author of anonymous notes that Your Paternity has been received for some time.”
The Inquisitor’s nose quivered as he listened to the story of the balloon’s catastrophic crash, which had delivered this traitor to him.
In Toledo, a procession had been organized in order to enthuse the minds of the faithful and prepare for the general crusade demanded by Tortorado against the demons of Valencia. It was the day after Geronimo’s consecration. The balloon, whose pilot had been trying all night to free it from the current that was drawing it over Castille, had arrived over Toledo out of ballast and had landed just at the moment of the elevation on the temporary altar, whose candles had set fire to the envelope. The gas exploded. Of the two aeronauts, one was killed on the spot; the other—Paincarat—had fallen on an awning and had been retrieved unharmed. Because of the frightful panic accompanying the fall of the diabolical machine, the Inquisitions hirelings were able to protect the survivor from the holy fury of the crowd and lock him in the dungeons of the Holy Office, which fully intended to torture and burn the demon from Valencia.
It is certain that any other of the poilus of the eighth, fallen into the hands of the Inquisition, would have conducted himself properly, and would have died on the pyre mocking his executioners—but Paincarat, alone among them, was a coward, and had long been holding a grudge against his leaders and comrades. The major, the anticlerical Thévenard, had taken a dislike to him and showered hi
m with rebukes. Renard was almost openly scornful of him. Moreover—a supreme grievance—he had been overlooked in the distribution of new grades; he alone did not have his manufacture, and it was with great difficulty that he had obtained the job of supervising the construction of the aerostat. Stupid and sectarian, incapable of any understanding of the work of civilization that Monocard and the monk were attempting, he had seen nothing but a frightful sacrilege in the battle conducted against the Inquisition, the methods of which he had always admired since his days in the seminary. The remorse of collaborating, even indirectly, in that impious work had driven him to redeem his sin in the possible measure and to send Tortorado notes in Latin in which he denounced the plans of the Blue-Helmets.
Thus, as soon as he was in the presence of the judges of Toledo, the traitor had thrown himself on his knees, had implored their clemency and recalled his secret services. In brief, he had shown himself to be so vile, so abject and so resolute in all ignominy that he had been sent to Tortorado, who would be able to make the best use of him.
The good news that Pedro and Sanchez had brought—among other items, that a royal army was being prepared to come to deliver Valencia—and the heavy bag of gold that they gave him were not as gentle a balm for the Inquisitor as the sight of Paincarat. Finally, Divine Providence had sent him the instructor necessary for the sacred battalion of resolute Dominicans that he intended to form!
He fixed the wretch with a profound and penetrating gaze, then took him to the cupboard, which he opened.
“You regret having made a pact with demons; you repent your crimes; you have decided to redeem your soul by absolute obedience to my orders? That’s good. But in order for me to give you absolution and for me to snatch you from the hellfire that is ready to devour you, it is first necessary for you to show me, in the greatest detail, how these weapons are used...”