“What is going to happen about this business in the church?”
“Wait and see!” Piéchut replied, and rising he went off to shut himself up in the room where he liked to smoke his pipe and meditate.
Noémie said to her children: “He has thought out everything already!”
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Baroness Intervenes
AT THE CURÉ Ponosse’s door there arrived in due course the Baroness Alphonsine de Courtebiche. She emerged from a creaking and groaning limousine, perched high on its wheels like a phaeton. It dated from 1911, and resembled a ducal coach unearthed from some outhouse and given a new lease of life by the addition of a queer outlandish engine. In other hands than those of its aged chauffeur this unblushing and graceless old vehicle would have been ludicrous. But the broken-winded superannuated old bus proved, not only by the armorial bearings it displayed on its doors, but by the mere fact of its carrying a consignment of the Courtebiche family, that the possession of the most up-to-date specimens of the motorcar is a matter which may be left to those who have made fortunes by selling soap. Nothing can be ridiculous in the case of a family which can produce an unbroken genealogical tree dating back to the year 960 and adorned in several places by illegitimate children born of the flattering fancy taken by the monarch of the period to certain women of this august lineage.
The Baroness, then, stepped briskly from her car with her daughter, Estelle de Saint-Choul, and her son-in-law, Oscar de Saint-Choul, on either side of her, and knocked loudly at the door of the presbytery, greatly put out at having to come and visit this “insignificant little village priest, Ponosse.” This did not imply that she disowned Ponosse’s spiritual authority. Ever since she had lived in retirement, the Baroness had looked to the Curé of Clochemerle for all her ordinary spiritual needs, no longer caring to make a journey to Lyons each time she wanted her transgressions canceled, in order to visit a subtle Jesuit, Father Latargelle, who had been her spiritual adviser over a long period at a time when her life contained many passionate episodes. “Poor old Ponosse,” she would say, “is quite good enough for a dowager with her regular humdrum life. It flatters the dirty old fellow to hear a Baroness’ confession.” We may now record the following words spoken in the course of a confidential chat with a country neighbor, the Marquise d’Aubenas-Theizé.
“I need hardly tell you, my dear, that I should not have confided in this country bumpkin when I had interesting confessions to make. But now there are nothing but an old woman’s peccadilloes, and a flick of a feather brush is all that is needed for them. No more delicious sins for you and me, my dear. Virtue has become, for us, a matter of necessity.”
The reader will gather from the foregoing the kind of attitude adopted by the Baroness Courtebiche towards the Curé Ponosse. She looked upon him, in fact, as one of her servants. He looked after her soul, just as her manicurist attended to her hands and her masseuse to her body. In her opinion the ills, bodily and spiritual, of a great lady with a thousand years of noble ancestry behind her were still objects to be held in great respect by members of the rascally common herd; she considered she did them great honor by showing no embarrassment in disclosing them. However, when she required the curé’s services she sent her chauffeur to fetch him in the car and bring him to the château: (“I don’t want to catch any peasant’s fleas in that confessional of yours.”)
He heard her confession in a small private chapel at the château which was reserved for this purpose. She chose days on which she had no guests, and this allowed her to ask him to stay to dinner, a meal which was served with as little ceremony as possible to prevent his feeling shy.
Never before had the Baroness appeared at the presbytery unless her visit were known in advance. This new departure of hers put her in an ill humor. Scarcely had the knocker fallen, with an echo which resounded through an immense and chilly corridor, when she turned to her son-in-law and remarked:
“Oscar, my friend, you will be firm with Ponosse!”
“Most certainly, Baroness,” replied the puny Saint-Choul, who was the feeblest of men and terrified by his mother-in-law’s excessive firmness.
“I hope that Ponosse isn’t off somewhere drinking with all those vinegrowers. If so, he will have to be fetched in double-quick time. It’s unheard of that he should not have come to ask for our advice after what has happened.”
So saying, she drummed on the door, striking it with her rings, while she tapped her foot impatiently on the ground.
“I shall get the Archbishop to give him a dressing-down!” she added.
Let us now leave this noble lady to wait for old Honorine to come and open the door, and give the reader a pen portrait of no less a personage than the Baroness Alphonsine de Courtebiche. The subject is by no means an uninteresting one.
Until she was past the age of fifty, the Baroness still showed traces of her earlier beauty, to which her own conception of her mission on earth added a lofty prestige. Entirely disregarding the Revolution, as though it were not an historical fact, she treated the population of the valleys above which her castle held so commanding a position as if they were in a state of serfdom, living on a feudal estate restored to her family. For she considered this a legitimate restoration of a social order, a desirable consummation in that it put the remainder of the population into that position of inferiority which was so unquestionably theirs.
The Baroness was a beautiful and vigorous woman, whose height was not less than five feet seven inches. Between the ages of twenty and forty-seven she had been a truly magnificent creature, with splendidly rich outlines and skin of a very attractive texture, eyes which were mirrors of love, a mouth that gave promise of headlong flights of passion, hips whose suppleness of movement was irresistible. One could not but admire in those sinuous movements the suggestion they contained of mastery, even of ostentation, which in any other woman would have savored of the fishwife, but which in her, thanks to her inheritance of grace and charm, was invariably in good style, with all the ease and freedom conferred by noble birth, enriched and heightened by an alluring pertness. Well set-up over thighs worthy of a wrestler, her pelvis, a right royal feature, had been by no means the least of her attractions at a period when the canons of feminine beauty were based on classical opulence. As for her torso, at the time when corsets were worn it was adorned by a lovely bosom, held high and enclosed in an open corsage, a basket filled with twin fruits of rare perfection.
But this alluring form was that of a woman of good breeding and, as such, beyond the reach of vulgar familiarities—a subtle distinction of which every man was immediately conscious; it left the boldest among them almost trembling, in the face of this imperious lady who with shameless impudence would gather from her wooers’ glances how readily they would respond to the exactions of her amorous nature. Such was the Baroness in earlier life, a tireless Amazon for a period of twenty-seven years, devoted almost exclusively to love.
Let us now give some particulars of the principal events in the life of this exalted lady. At the age of twenty Alphonsine d’Eychaudailles d’Azin, sprung from a very ancient family of the Grenoble district (claiming descent from the Marguerite de Sassenage who was the mistress of Louis the Eleventh and bore him a daughter)—a family unhappily in great financial straits—married the Baron Guy de Courtebiche, eighteen years older than herself and already somewhat past his prime. His wealth, however, was still considerable, despite the fact that since his majority he had done nothing but lead a gay life. Guy de Courtebiche (Bibiche to his greatest friends) maintained an idle and costly existence in Paris, where he maintained at great expense a certain Laura Tolleda, a famous demimondaine, who had scoffed at him times without number (but that was a peculiar taste of his), and led him along the road to ruin with a stinging contempt. On seeing the lovely Alphonsine, Courtebiche found her even more imposing than his Laura; she had the additional advantage of being presentable everywhere. The impression she gave of a masterful nature attracted
him irresistibly, prone as he was (though he himself was unconscious of this) to a kind of moral masochism which had always made him the slave of women who humiliated him. Alphonsine was urgently persuaded by her family not to let this opportunity of a brilliant match escape her. The advice was superfluous; her greedy nature impelled her to snatch at this prospect of independence. Furthermore, though on the eve of physical collapse, Guy de Courtebiche, with the glamour of Paris still upon him, had great prestige in the eyes of a girl living in the country.
The Baron had interests in the Lyonnais. The young couple owned an apartment in Paris, another in Lyons, and the château at Clochemerle. Both in Paris and Lyons the beautiful Alphonsine created a sensation. A duel was fought on her behalf, which made a great stir and put the finishing touch to the reputation she already enjoyed.
Guy de Courtebiche, bald, shaky on his legs, and with a yellow complexion arising from premature organic disease, destined to send him to an early grave, had soon ceased to be an acceptable husband. Alphonsine continued to live under the same roof with him after their children were born, for the sake of his title and his wealth, and also to look after him, since her own natural strength gave her a protective spirit. She began looking around for compensations in quarters where neither vanity nor pride of rank entered into consideration. Her only difficulty in this matter was a multiplicity of alternatives, a difficulty so great that selection became a matter of much anxious thought. Her numerous escapades, quite openly pursued, were carried out with an unblushing impertinence that silenced the tongues of slander; for her very lack of hypocrisy deprived them of material on which to work.
When she found herself a widow with wealth at her disposal, the Baroness decided that she preferred a life of independence to a form of subjection which was not congenial to her. She lived in dashing style, and her expenditure constantly increased with her advancing years. This made grave inroads on her fortune, which she administered with an imperial unconcern and a contempt for middle-class economy which inevitably endangered an inheritance. About halfway through the war she found herself faced with serious financial difficulties and some distressing entanglements of a sentimental nature, which were indications that her reign was over. She placed herself in the hands of her notary as though he had been her surgeon. But there was worse to come. At the age of forty-nine Alphonsine confronted herself ruthlessly before her mirror. As a result of this she obtained some general instructions with which, in that spirit of determination she brought to bear on everything, she immediately undertook to conform. The first and most important was to allow the natural grayness of her hair to appear without further concealment. “I have had my full share of enjoyment,” she said to herself. “I have nothing to regret. It now remains for me to grow old decently and not allow myself to be a toy for unscrupulous young scamps.”
She gave up her apartment in Paris, reduced her staff to a minimum, and dismissed in motherly fashion a few youths who, attracted by her reputation, had come to her to obtain one of those certificates of manhood which she had so long and so generously handed out to others of their age. Living at Clochemerle for a great part of the year, and spending most of the winter at Lyons, she decided to turn to God. This she did in no servile spirit, thinking of God as a being of her own world, who had not made her an Eychaudailles d’Azin (and a beautiful and high-spirited woman into the bargain) if she were not intended to lead the life of a great lady, with all the benefits and privileges due to a woman of refinement and high birth. This conviction was so firmly established in her mind that, even at the period of her triumphs, she had never entirely given up religious observances. Her spiritual welfare was in the keeping of an ingenious interpreter of the Scriptures, Father Latargelle, who was well acquainted with certain tyrannical needs which God has implanted in us mortals. This Jesuit, whose smile combined subtlety with a touch of skepticism, believed in a certain doctrine of utility which he placed at the service of the Church. “Better a sinner who professes faith,” so he thought, “than one who does not. And if that sinner is a person of influence, better still. Allegiance in high places is a source of the Church’s strength.”
Anxious to steer a middle course, the Baroness successfully avoided the snare of bigotry. As president of the Children of Mary at Clochemerle, she kept a watchful eye over the affairs of the parish and gave advice to Ponosse. At Lyons she organized relief committees and work centers for poor unemployed women and might often be seen at the Archbishop’s palace. Never forgetting that she was once the beautiful Alphonsine, one of the most fêted women of her generation, she maintained an attitude of unquestionable authority and, as a relic of her adventurous past, displayed a fine lack of decorum in her speech. This in no wise shocked the dignitaries of the Church, for they must have been at close quarters with much that is base and vile to have attained to their exalted office, but it sometimes filled the artless Ponosse with rustic bewilderment. The Baroness was still full of energy, and displayed with brisk unconcern a rather excessive plumpness due to the relaxation of certain disciplines involved in the preservation of beauty. But for some years past she had complained of increasing deafness. This little infirmity redoubled her lofty aristocratic manner of speech; and since her forty-fifth year a certain virile quality had appeared in the tones of her voice. All this only served to emphasize the blunt abruptness of her character.
The elder of Alphonsine’s two children, Tristan de Courtebiche, having been at various staff headquarters throughout the war, was now attached to an embassy in Central Europe. A young man of fine presence, he was his mother’s pride. “With the face I have given him,” she would say, “he will always get on. The heiresses had better look out for themselves.” On the other hand, at the time when the Baroness went into retirement, she saw no signs of any forthcoming engagement for her daughter Estelle, who was then twenty-six. She was much vexed about it, but under no illusion as to the cause.
“I should like to know,” she confided to the Marquise d’Aubenas-Theizé, “who would care to take on that great flabby apathetic creature!”
However, she admitted her own guilt in this setback.
“I have been far too fond of men, my dear. You have only to look at poor Estelle to see that. The only success I’ve ever had was with boys!”
It was true that Estelle was merely a caricature of her mother when she was at the height of her beauty. From her mother she inherited her powerful build. But her flesh, over this robust frame, lacked firmness, and was not harmoniously distributed. In this large body of hers there was too much lymph and too little life. The Baroness, in spite of her superabundant vitality, which reminded one of an impetuous horsewoman, had not been lacking in womanliness. Estelle, on the contrary, was frankly masculine. The beautiful voluptuous lower lip of the Eychaudailles d’Azin family in Estelle’s case was undisguisedly thick and coarse. The young woman’s disagreeable expression added no attractions to the insipidity of her flabby anæmic appearance. However, the sight of this somewhat mountainous maiden aroused the feeble ardor of the weakly Oscar to an unaccustomed violence. In the Baroness’ daughter this puny young aristocrat sought instinctively something which he himself lacked, the pounds and inches which he needed to make him worthy of the name he bore. The extreme poverty of the rival suitors secured his own acceptance, in spite of the fact that Saint-Choul, almost an albino, displayed behind his monocle, the wearing of which involved many frowning grimaces, the pink and febrile eye of an uneasy rooster. As a match it lacked brilliance, but it offered certain advantages and it saved the family’s face. Oscar de Saint-Choul possessed a manor house near Clochemerle of honorable dimensions though in bad repair, and of land which allowed him to live as a man of property if he avoided all extravagance. The Baroness had no illusions about her son-in-law.
“He is an incompetent person,” she would say of him. “They might make him a Deputy in their Republic.”
She busied herself to bring this about.
At last, a pitter-pat
of cautious footsteps in down-at-heel slippers was heard. Honorine half opened the door, as though it were a drawbridge about to be raised. She disliked people coming to the house to monopolize her curé, and had a reputation of being disagreeable to visitors. But with Alphonsine de Courtebiche it was quite a different story. The arrival of the Archbishop himself could not have produced a greater effect.
“Is it really Madame la Baronne?” she said. “Well, I can’t hardly believe it!”
“Is Ponosse here?” the Baroness asked, in a tone of voice in which she might have said “My servant.”
“Oh! yes, he’s here all right, Madame la Baronne. Please come in. I’ll go and fetch him. He’s out in the garden under the trees, taking a bit of fresh air.”
She showed the Baroness, Estelle, and her husband into a dark and musty little room into which the daylight never penetrated. The curé’s home smelled of tobacco, wine, and stale food; it had all the odors of an old bachelor’s establishment.
“Heavens!” exclaimed the Baroness when the servant had left the room, “This ecclesiastical virtue has an unpleasant smell!”
At that moment, with a scarlet face which betrayed the workings of an imperfect digestion, the curé entered, torn between feelings of uneasiness and an overanxiety to please.
“Madame la Baronne,” he said, “this is a great honor. . . .”
But the Baroness was in no mood for vapid compliments.
“None of your holy unction, please, Ponosse! Just sit down and answer me. Am I, or am I not, president of the Children of Mary?”
“Most certainly you are, Madame la Baronne.”
“Am I the parish’s principal benefactress?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“Tell me, Ponosse, am I the Baroness Alphonsine de Courtebiche, née d’Eychaudailles d’Azin?”
“You are, Madame la Baronne!” Ponosse answered in terror.
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