Clochemerle

by Gabriel Chevallier

  “Are you disposed, my good friend, to recognize the rights of birth, or are you in league with revolutionaries? Are you by chance one of those priests who frequent public houses and set out to give religion certain tendencies? . . . Explain to him, Oscar. I never could understand your political gibberish.”

  “Doubtless, Baroness, you have been hearing accounts of this new tub-thumping revolutionary form of Christianity which tickles the ears of the masses. This is what the Baroness is referring to, my dear Ponosse. She wants to put down this interference with religion by socialist or extremist doctrines, which give it an anarchical tendency, a deplorable tendency, a revolutionary blasphemous tendency, which, in defiance of our ancient French traditions, of which we here are the . . . er . . . the hereditary, the . . . er . . . sanctified representatives, the anointed representatives, my dear Ponosse—that is correct, is it not, Baroness?—is leading us headlong. . . .”

  “That’ll do, Oscar! I take it that you have understood, Ponosse?”

  The curé of Clochemerle was utterly overwhelmed by the disturbance and commotion arising from that ill-fated day. He was fit for journeying only along smooth, easy paths, where the Evil One had set no ambush. With several repetitions of the sign of the Dominus vobiscum, he replied, stammering in his nervousness:

  “Well, Madame la Baronne . . . I lead a life of purity, I have none of the arrogance of ungodliness. I am a humble priest, only anxious to do his best. I cannot understand why you lay such grave charges at my door.”

  “What, Ponosse, then you don’t understand? What was that alarm bell that frightened the whole valley the other day? What was that scandal in your church? Must I hear all these things from strangers? Your first duty, Monsieur le Curé, was to refer the matter to the Lady of the Manor of Clochemerle. The château and the presbytery should work together—didn’t you know that? Your apathy, Monsieur Ponosse, is simply playing into the hands of the peasant landowners. If I had not taken the trouble to come here myself, I might have known nothing about it. Why did you not come?”

  “Madame la Baronne, I have nothing but an old bicycle. I can’t go uphill at my age. It hurts my legs—and I am short of breath.”

  “You had merely to borrow one of these motorcycles which will get up any hill. I am sorry to have to tell you that you are a half-hearted defender of your faith, my poor Ponosse. And now what do you propose to do?”

  “Indeed I have been considering the matter, Madame la Baronne. I have been praying to God for guidance. There are so many scandals—”

  The Curé Ponosse sighed deeply, and took the plunge.

  “Madame la Baronne, there is more to tell you. You know young Rose Bivaque, one of our Children of Mary, who is just eighteen?”

  “Isn’t she that blushing little silly—plump, my goodness—who sings less out of tune than the other little simpletons in the sisterhood?”

  The Curé Ponosse, by a show of consternation, let it be understood that he would be lacking in Christian charity if he assented to such a description.

  “Very well, then,” the Baroness went on, “what has the child been doing? She looks as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.”

  The curé of Clochemerle was quite overcome.

  “I—I can hardly tell you, Madame la Baronne. I fear we must face a conception which will not be . . . er . . . immaculate, alas!”

  “Do you mean that she is pregnant? Then say so. Say, someone has given her a child. Somebody did the same to me, and I’m still alive. (Estelle, sit up straight!) Yes, somebody did so to your respectable mother. There’s nothing nasty about it.”

  “It is not so much what happened, Madame la Baronne, as the absence of the sacrament which grieves me.”

  “That is true. I’d quite forgotten! Well, my dear Ponosse, they’re a nice lot, your Children of Mary! I can’t think what you teach them in your little gatherings. . . .”

  “Oh, Madame la Baronne!” exclaimed the Curé of Clochemerle, whose distress and fear had now reached their crowning point.

  The task of giving this information to the president of the Children of Mary had filled him with dread. He feared her reproaches, or, worse still, that she might resign. But the Baroness asked:

  “And who was the bright lad who showed such clumsiness? Is it known?”

  “You mean, Madame la Baronne, the . . . er—”

  “Yes, Ponosse, yes. Don’t look so bashful.”

  “It was Claudius Brodequin, Madame la Baronne.”

  “What is he doing, this boy?”

  “He is doing his military service. He was here on leave in April.”

  “He will have to marry Rose. Or else he must go to prison, to penal servitude. I shall see that his colonel knows about it. Does this young soldier think he can treat the Children of Mary as though they were women in a conquered country? By the way, Ponosse, you must send Rose to see me. She will have to be looked after, to see that she doesn’t do anything foolish. Send her along tomorrow. To the château.”

  It was decreed that on this anniversary of Saint Roch’s Day—so often celebrated with the quiet ceremony which accorded with the easygoing temperament of the inhabitants of Clochemerle, and the natural kindliness to be found in a district where fine grape harvests were the order of the day—it was decreed that on that day, ill-fated beyond all others, Providence should withdraw its aid from its servant, the Curé Ponosse, and confront him with one of those sudden ordeals which he so heartily loathed. The Curé Ponosse was not one of those tiresome zealots who go about everywhere sowing the seeds of provocation and the fratricidal germs of sectarianism. Such exploits do more harm than good. He relied rather on the virtues of conciliation and sympathy than on the havoc wrought by the sword and the stake.

  Quaking with fear as he faced the Baroness, with terror-stricken fervor, the Curé Ponosse silently addressed incoherent entreaties to Heaven. They were somewhat as follows: “Spare me, O Lord, shield me from those disasters which Thou dost reserve for those whom Thou lovest best. If it pleaseth Thee some day to give me a seat at Thy right hand, I am willing that it should be the humblest place, and I shall stay in it in all humility. O Lord, I am only the poor Curé Ponosse, who cannot understand vengeance. I preach Thy reign of justice as best I can to the good vinegrowers of Clochemerle, whilst day by day I drink the wines of Beaujolais which restore my feeble strength. Bonum vinum laetificat. . . . O Lord, I am rheumatic, my digestion is poor, and Thou knowest well all the bodily infirmities that it hath pleased Thee to send me. I have no longer the fiery spirit, the power of resistance, of a young priest. O Lord, please pacify Madame la Baronne de Courtebiche!”

  But it was destined to be an altogether exceptional day. For the second time, at the peaceful hour of the siesta, a violent knocking was heard at his presbytery. Next there came the sound of Honorine’s dragging footsteps as she went to admit the visitor, and the corridor was filled with a confused noise of voices raised to their highest pitch, a most unusual occurrence in a dwelling in which the whispers of repentance and contrition were the general rule. At the door of the sitting room there suddenly appeared the profile of Tafardel, in a state of great excitement, holding in his hand sheets of paper on which he had just dashed down a string of acrimonious sentences constituting a preliminary outburst of his Republican indignation.

  The schoolmaster was still wearing his famous panama, which he had kept on his head as an indication of his firm resolve never to surrender to the forces of fanaticism and ignorance. However, on seeing the Baroness he removed it. Indeed, he was so taken by surprise at her presence that had he obeyed the impulse of the moment he would have fled there and then—if such flight would have been a matter that concerned himself alone. But a retreat on his part would have been equivalent to the defeat of a great party of which he was the faithful representative. It was not a mere clash between individuals, but a battle royal between opposing principles. Tafardel was merely an outward expression of the Revolution and its charter of emancipation. The
man of barricades and of liberty unfettered had come to challenge, on his own territory, a man of the Inquisition, a product of a period of mean and servile resignation in company with hypocritical persecution. Entirely disregarding the rest of the company, and without even greeting them, the schoolmaster charged down on the Curé Ponosse, with words of blazing anger:

  “Qui vis pacem para bellum, Monsieur Ponosse! I will not employ the odious methods of your sect of Loyola, I will not deal with you as though you were a traitor. I come to you as a worthy foe, with a sword in one hand and an olive branch in the other. The time has come to say good-by to imposture and deceit. The time has come to muzzle all the myrmidons of your Church, and to prefer peace to war! But, if it is war you want, you shall have it. I am fully armed. Then make your choice. It lies between peace and war, between liberty of conscience and—reprisals. Choose, Monsieur Ponosse. And beware of your choice!”

  Caught between the devil and the deep sea, the Curé Ponosse knew not which way to turn. He strove to pacify Tafardel:

  “My dear schoolmaster, I have never hindered you in what you teach. I cannot understand what you have against me. I have never attacked a living soul. . . .”

  But already Tafardel, with forefinger raised to give it emphasis, was quoting a maxim of profound human significance, which he completed in his own way:

  “Trahit sua quemque voluptas . . . et pissare legitimum! Doubtless, Monsieur, in order to place your domination on a firmer footing you would prefer to see, as in the centuries of oppression, a constantly increasing number of disgusting puddles due to the urgency of certain overwhelming needs? The time for that is past, Monsieur Ponosse. The spread of enlightenment, the march of progress, is irresistible. From now onwards the people will relieve themselves in structures designed for that object. Take that for granted. The slate will not cease to be moistened, nor the channels to serve their purpose, Monsieur!”

  This extraordinary speech was more than the Baroness’ patience could endure. From its very beginning she had trained on him the terrible, searching fire of her lorgnette. Suddenly, with an insolence nothing less than superb, and in that tone of voice which had already crushed many a brave spirit, she asked:

  “Who is that abominable little whippersnapper?”

  Had the presence of a scorpion suddenly been revealed to him, the schoolmaster could not have been more violently startled. Trembling with rage so that his spectacles shook in a manner that boded ill, and though he knew the Baroness by sight—as did everyone at Clochemerle—he cried out:

  “Who is it that dares to insult a member of the teaching body?”

  As an admonitory outburst this was ridiculously feeble and quite insufficient to upset a fighting Amazon like the Baroness. Realizing who it was she had to deal with, the Baroness replied, with a composure that was in itself an insult:

  “The humblest of my footmen, Mr. Schoolmaster, is better acquainted than yourself with the subject of politeness. No servant of mine would dare to express himself with such grossness in the presence of the Baroness Courtebiche.”

  These words acted on Tafardel as an inspiration of the great Jacobin tradition. He retorted:

  “Oh, so you are the ‘noble’ Courtebiche? Citizeness, I don’t care a damn for your insinuations. There was a time when the guillotine would have made short work of them.”

  “Indeed! Well, I consider all your high-flown nonsense the ravings of a lunatic. There was a time when people of my rank had clodhoppers like yourself strung up without further ado, having taken care that they should previously have been flogged in the public market place. A good system of education for ill-bred serfs!”

  The meeting was turning out very badly. Hemmed in between two opposing forces which cared nothing for the Christian neutrality of his home, the poor Curé Ponosse did not know whom to listen to. Trickling over his body, cramped in its new cassock, he felt the sweat of anguish. He had good reasons for taking care not to offend the nobility as represented by the Baroness, the most generous donor in the parish. Equally he had good reasons for humoring the Republic in the person of Tafardel, secretary to a town council which was the legal owner of the presbytery and fixed its rent. It appeared at this moment as though disaster had come, when a personage who had hitherto kept completely in the background displayed an ability to take a situation in hand no less striking than it was opportune, directing the discussion with a firmness of which no one could have believed him capable.

  Ever since Tafardel’s arrival, Oscar de Saint-Choul had been positively trembling with delight. This unappreciated nobleman cultivated a genuine talent for the construction of an endless succession of solemn grammatical periods, so crammed with relative clauses that unhappy victims of this dialectic found their thoughts wandering helplessly in the maze of Saint-Choulian arguments, where they ended by becoming completely lost. Unhappily, constantly snubbed as he was by a mother-in-law who used the methods of the horsewhip in her dealings with humanity, and condemned to silence by a sullen wife, Oscar de Saint-Choul rarely had an opportunity of displaying his prowess. It worried him considerably.

  He had realized, almost as soon as Tafardel opened his mouth, that Fate had sent him a doughty antagonist, a man whose eloquence was worthy of his own, one with whom it would be a real pleasure to hold a prolonged debate. Accordingly, with an abundance of saliva which in his case invariably preceded the verbal flow, he remained on the lookout for the slightest break in the thrust and parry of repartee in order to fall headlong on this tenacious disputant and corner him to the best advantage. Silence fell at last, after the Baroness’ final retort. Saint-Choul immediately took two steps forward.

  “Excuse me, I have a few words to say. I am Oscar de Saint-Choul, Monsieur. And your name, Monsieur?”

  “Ernest Tafardel. But I acknowledge no saint, Citizen Choul.”

  “That is perfectly understood, my dear De Tafardel.”

  The reader will hardly believe it; but this little prefix, enunciated by a man who bore it by right of inheritance, was balm to the schoolmaster’s soul. It even gave him a feeling in Saint-Choul’s favor; and this enabled the latter to make a brilliant start.

  “I am venturing to intervene, my dear De Tafardel, because it appears to me that, at the stage we have reached in our discussion of two doctrines equally deserving of respect, each of which has its region of the sublime, its—how shall I put it?—its zone of human fallibility—it appears to me, I say, that the need of an impartial mediator is making itself felt. In greeting you, I bow to a great-hearted public servant, a magnificent example of that noble pleiad of teachers who undertake the delicate task of molding the younger generation. I salute you as an incarnation of all that is best in the spirit of the elementary school, with all its basic, its fundamental, its granitic character—yes, granitic—for it is that indestructible rock which is the support, the prop, the very foundation of our dear country, our beloved nation, which has been revived and restored by great waves of democratic feeling, which I for one can by no means unreservedly endorse, but whose contribution to the general welfare I am no less ready to admit, seeing that for a century past they have been, as it were, magnificent illustrations in the great history of the character and genius of France. It is for these reasons that without hesitation I proclaim you all, Republican schoolmasters and freethinkers alike, a hereditary corporation. Nothing that is hereditary can leave us unmoved. And in virtue of this, my dear friend, you are one of us, an aristocrat in the realm of thought. Give me your hand. Let us make a covenant that shall be above all parties, with one sole desire in our hearts, to contribute to our mutual betterment.”

  On the point of yielding to this amiable person, Tafardel, feeling uneasy in his mind, had to make a fresh declaration of his convictions.

  “I am a disciple of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Mirabeau, and Robespierre. And I beg to remind you of the fact, Citizen!”

  Oscar de Saint-Choul, who had stepped forward, received point-blank a strong whiff of Tafardel’
s breath. He realized that the schoolmaster’s eloquence was a formidable business, and that to face him in any enclosed place was a thing to be avoided.

  “Every sincere opinion is its own justification,” he said. “But let us take some fresh air. We shall feel freer out of doors. Baroness, I will join you again presently.”

  “But I had something to tell Monsieur Ponosse,” the schoolmaster objected.

  “My dear friend,” Saint-Choul replied, drawing him away, “I quite understand. But you shall give me your message for him. I will convey it to him faithfully.”

  Shortly afterwards the Baroness found them by the church, engaged in animated conversation and obviously delighted with each other. Oscar de Saint-Choul was holding forth with great vigor, and emphasizing the flow of his rhetorical periods by swinging his eyeglass at the end of its string with a firm assurance that his mother-in-law would never have recognized. She was irritated by that pedantic manner of his; she would never admit that this young man was a less perfect imbecile than she had believed him to be. Having once classified people, intellectually or socially, the matter became definitely settled for all time.

  “Oscar, my friend,” she said to him scornfully, “leave this person and come with me. We are going back.”

  She had not even a glance for the unfortunate Tafardel who, nevertheless, was prepared to salute her. For the schoolmaster had allowed himself to fall a victim to Saint-Choul’s aristocratic manner, accompanied as it was by flattering remarks, such as: “Good heavens, my dear friend, why, you and I represent the element of culture—the select few, no less—in this illiterate country. Let us be friends! And I hope that you will be kind enough one of these days to come to the house. You will find there will be no ceremony; you will be treated as an intimate friend, and we will exchange a few ideas. Meetings between two men of culture and distinction are a pleasure for both. In saying that I am thinking no less of you than of myself.” But the Baroness’ humiliating arrogance had stirred up a revival of all the schoolmaster’s turbulent feelings, now reinforced by rancor and vexation at the thought that these people had nearly made a fool of him. He had been considering the possibility, while Saint-Choul was talking to him, of modifying his article in the Vintners’ Gazette, and toning down some of the expressions he had used. Tone them down! No, he would on the contrary make them stronger, and insert some biting reference to that Courtebiche woman, that incorrigible, boorish “noble”!