“L’Abbé,” said Catherine, “the worst part of your story is that the girl had no bosom. A woman with no bosom is like a bed without a pillow. But d’Anquetil, don’t you know what we might do now?”
“Yes,” he said, “play at ombre, which requires three people.”
“If you want to,” she continued. “But I pray you, my friend, call for pipes. Nothing is pleasanter than to smoke a pipe of tobacco while drinking wine.”
A lackey brought some cards, and the pipes, which we lighted. The room was soon filled with a thick smoke amidst which our host and Monsieur L’Abbé Coignard played solemnly at piquet.
Luck favoured my good master till the moment when Monsieur d’Anquetil thought he saw him for the third time marking fifty-five when he had but forty, and called him a Greek, a card-sharper and a knight of the road, and threw a bottle at his head, which broke on the table and deluged it with wine.
“You will have to give yourself the trouble of opening another bottle,” said the Abbé, “for we are very thirsty.”
“Willingly,” said Monsieur d’Anquetil, “but you must know, my Abbé, that a gentleman does not mark points that he has not made, and does not force cards except at the king’s table, where all sorts of people are met to whom one is under no obligation. Everywhere else it is villainous. Do you want to be taken for an adventurer then, Abbé?”
“It is a remarkable thing,” said my good master, “that at cards or dice people blame a practice recommended in the arts of war, in politics, and business, where one prides oneself on correcting a turn of ill-fortune. It is not that I do not pride myself on my honesty at cards. I am exact in my dealings thank God, and you were dreaming, Monsieur, just now when you thought you saw me mark points that I had not scored — were it otherwise I should invoke the example of the Bishop of Geneva of blessed memory, who made no scruples about cheating at cards. But I cannot help reflecting that men are more punctilious at cards than in serious matters and that they bring more honesty to bear on trictrac, where it is a passable hindrance and leave it out in battles or in treaties of peace where it would be troublesome. Ælian, Monsieur, has written a book in Greek on the subject of stratagem, showing to what excess ruse may be carried by great leaders.”
“L’Abbé,” said Monsieur d’Anquetil, “I have not read your Ælian, and shall not read him as long as I live, but I have been to the wars as every good gentleman has. I served the king for eighteen months. It is the noblest of callings. I will tell you exactly wherein it consists.
“It is a secret I may well confide to you since there is no one to hear me but you, some bottles, Monsieur, whom I am going to kill presently, and this girl here who is taking off her clothes.”
“Yes,” Catherine said, “my chemise is enough, I’m so hot.”
“Well, then,” said Monsieur d’Anquetil, “war, whatever the gazettes may say, simply consists in stealing chickens and pigs from the peasants. When soldiers are on campaign that is all they think about.”
“You are quite right,” said my good master, “and in the old days in Gaul they used to call the soldier’s doxy Madame Lightfinger. But I would beg of you not to kill my pupil, Jacques Tournebroche.”
“L’Abbé,” replied Monsieur d’Anquetil, “I’m obliged in honour to do so.”
“Ouf!” said Catherine, arranging the lace of her chemise at her throat, “now I feel better.”
“Monsieur,” continued my good master, “Jacques Tournebroche is of great help to me in a translation of Zozimus the Panopolitan, which I have undertaken. I should be infinitely obliged to you if you would not fight with him until after this great work is achieved.”
“I do not care a fig for your Zozimus,” replied Monsieur d’Anquetil, “I don’t care a fig. You hear me, l’Abbé? I care no more than did the king for his first mistress,” and he began to sing:
To shape the youthful squire of horse,
Steady in stirrup and set on his course,
The wits of woman must help him perforce —
Laire, lan, laire.
“Who is this Zozimus?”
“Zozimus, Monsieur,” replied the Abbé, “Zozimus of Panopolis, was a learned Greek who flourished in Alexandria in the third century of the Christian era, and wrote treatises on the spagyric art.”
“How do you think that affects me?” replied Monsieur d’Anquetil, “and why do you translate him?”
Strike the iron while ’tis hot
Quoth she, nor let her be forgot
Whose title was the Sultan’s fair —
Laire, lan, laire.
“Monsieur,” said my good master, “I grant you that there is no real use in doing so, and that it will not affect the course of the world. But in illustrating, with notes and commentaries, this treatise, which the Greek composed for his sister Theosebia....”
Catherine interrupted my good master’s discourse by singing in a shrill voice:
In spite of jealousy and rebuke
I’d see my husband made a duke,
I’m sick of the sight of his desk and chair —
Laire, lan, laire.
“I contribute,” went on my good master, “to the treasures of knowledge amassed by learned men, and I add my stone to the monument of true history which is rather that of maxims and opinions than of wars and treaties; for, Monsieur, the nobility of man....”
Catherine resumed:
I can hear the public murmuring
I know the sort of ballad they’ll sing,
The vulgar herd — but it’s my affair —
Laire, lan, laire.
Notwithstanding her my good master continued... “lies in his thought, and having regard to that it is not a matter of indifference to ascertain what idea of the nature of metals and of the qualities of matter this Egyptian had formed.”
Monsieur l’Abbé Jérôme Coignard drank a great draught of wine while Catherine took up her song:
Pleasant to win the style of lord
Whether or no by naked sword,
If the end be fair, the means are fair —
Laire, lan, laire.
“L’Abbé,” said Monsieur d’Anquetil, “you drink nothing — what is more you talk wild nonsense. In Italy during the war of succession I was under the orders of a brigadier who translated Polybius. But he was an idiot. Why translate Zozimus?”
“If you want to know all,” said my good master, “I find therein a certain sensuality.”
“Well and good,” said Monsieur d’Anquetil, “but how can Monsieur Tournebroche help you, who at this moment is caressing my mistress?”
“By the knowledge of Greek,” said my good master, “which I have imparted to him.”
Monsieur d’Anquetil then turned to me and said, “What Monsieur, you know Greek! Then you are not a gentleman?”
“Monsieur,” I replied, “my father is the banner bearer to the Confraternity of Parisian Cooks.”
“That makes it impossible for me to kill you, Monsieur. I beg you to excuse me. But, l’Abbé, you are drinking nothing. You have deceived me. I thought you were a good toper, and I wished you to be my chaplain when I should have a house of my own.”
Nevertheless Monsieur Coignard was drinking out of the bottle and Catherine leant towards me and whispered in my ear:— “Jacques — I feel that I shall never love any one but you.”
These words, coming from a pretty person in her chemise, troubled me extremely, but Catherine put the finishing touch to my intoxication by making me drink out of her glass, which passed unnoticed in the confusion of a supper which had mounted to all our heads.
Monsieur d’Anquetil, breaking the neck of the bottle against the table, filled us fresh bumpers, and from that moment on I could not give an account of what was said and done around me. All the same I saw that Catherine had traitorously poured a glass of wine down her lover’s back between the neck and the coat collar. Monsieur d’Anquetil replied by pouring two or three bottles over the young lady in the chemise, whom he
thus turned into a sort of mythological figure, of the damp family of Nymphs and Naiads. She cried with rage and twisted herself about convulsively. At the same moment we heard heavy raps from the door-knocker in the silence of the night whereupon we all became suddenly still and dumb like enchanted guests. The knocks soon redoubled in strength and frequency, and Monsieur d’Anquetil broke the silence first by asking out loud with dreadful oaths, who this troublesome person might be. My good master, who in the most ordinary occurrences was often inspired with admirable maxims, rose up, and said with unction and solemnity, “What matters whose the hand that knocks so roughly against the closed door for a vulgar and possibly ridiculous motive; let us not ask, and let us take these blows as struck at the door of our hardened and corrupted souls. Let us say at each astounding blow: that is to warn us to amend our ways and think of our salvation which we neglect in the pursuit of pleasure; that is to make us disdain the good things of this world; that is to make us think on eternity. Thus, we shall obtain all possible profit from an occurrence otherwise slight and of but small account.”
“You are amusing, l’Abbé,” said Monsieur d’Anquetil, “with the vigour with which they knock they will burst in the door,” and indeed the knocker rattled like thunder.
“They are brigands,” cried the wine-sopped Catherine. “Jesus! we shall be massacred! it is our punishment for having turned out the little brother. I have told you a hundred times, d’Anquetil, ill-luck comes to the house whence they drive a monk.” —
“Stupid,” replied d’Anquetil, “this cursed friar makes her believe all the silliness he wishes. Thieves would be more polite, or at least more discreet. It is more likely the watch.”
“The watch! But that is worse still,” said Catherine.
“Bah!” said Monsieur d’Anquetil, “we will thrash them.”
My good master put a bottle in one pocket just for precaution and another bottle in the other pocket for equilibrium, as the story says. All the house shook under the furious blows of the knocker.
Monsieur d’Anquetil, whose soldierly qualities were awakened by this attack, cried out, “I will go and reconnoitre the enemy.”
Stumbling as he went he ran to the window where he had so lately and so liberally boxed his mistress’s ears, and then came back into the dining-room bursting with laughter.
“Ha! ha!” he cried, “do you know who is knocking? It is Monsieur de la Guéritaude in a clawhammer wig, with two big lackeys bearing lighted torches.”
“Impossible!” said Catherine, “by this time he is sleeping by the side of his elderly wife.”
“Then it is his very ghost,” said Monsieur d’Anquetil, “and we must believe that the ghost has taken the Revenue officer’s wig. Even a spectre could not imitate it so well, for it is so absolutely comic!”
“Do you really mean it? Are you not joking?” said Catherine; “is it really Monsieur de la Guéritaude?”
“It is he himself, Catherine, if I am to believe my eyes.”
“Then I am lost,” exclaimed the poor girl. “How unlucky women are. They never can leave us in peace. What will become of me? Messieurs, will you not hide yourselves in different cupboards?”
“That might be done,” said Abbé Coignard, “but how are we to take with us these empty bottles — for the most part broken, or at any rate with their necks knocked off, the débris of the demijohn, which Monsieur flung at my head, the cloth, the pasty, the plates, the candelabra, and the chemise of Mademoiselle here, which, owing to the wine with which it is soaked has become but a pink and transparent veil for her beauty?”
“It is true that idiot has wet my chemise,” said Catherine, “and I shall catch cold. But it would perhaps suffice were we to hide Monsieur d’Anquetil in the upper room. I will pass off the Abbé as my uncle and Monsieur Jacques as my brother.”
“Not so,” said Monsieur d’Anquetil, “I will beg Monsieur de la Guéritaude myself to sup with us.” We implored him — my good master, Catherine, and myself — to do nothing of the kind; we besought him, we hung on his neck. All in vain. He seized a light and went down the steps. We followed him trembling. He opened the door. Monsieur de la Guéritaude stood there as he had described him to us in his wig, between two lackeys armed with torches. Monsieur d’Anquetil bowed ceremoniously to him and said:
“Do us the favour to come inside, Monsieur. You will meet some charming and uncommon people. A turnspit to whom Mademoiselle Catherine blows kisses from her window, and an Abbé who believes in God.”
And he bowed low.
Monsieur de la Guéritaude was a tall withered man, little inclined to that kind of pleasantry, which irritated him exceedingly, and his anger was visibly increased by the sight of my good master, unbuttoned, a bottle in his hand and two others in his pockets, and by the appearance of Catherine in her damp and clinging chemise.
“Young man,” said he to Monsieur d’Anquetil, coldly angry, “I have the honour to know your esteemed father, with whom I shall to-morrow consider to what town the king should send you to meditate on your disgraceful behaviour and your impertinence.
“The worthy gentleman, to whom I have lent money which I do not press for, can refuse me nothing. And our well-beloved prince, who is in exactly the same position as your father, is inclined to do me favour. So that is settled. I have put through more difficult things in my time, thank God! As to this young woman, since it is hopeless to expect better ways of her, before mid-day to-morrow I shall speak two words to Monsieur the head of the police, who, I know, is full willing to send her to the reformatory. I have no more to say to you. This house is mine. I have paid for it, and I mean to enter it.”
Then turning towards his lackeys, and designating my good master and me with the point of his stick, he said: “Throw those two drunkards out.”
Monsieur Jérôme Coignard was commonly of exemplary sweetness, and he was in the habit of saying that he owed this gentleness to the vicissitudes of his life, fortune having treated him like the pebbles that the sea polishes by rolling them in its ebb and flow. He bore insults calmly, as much through a Christian spirit as through philosophy. But what helped him most was his great contempt for mankind, from which he did not except himself. Nevertheless, this time he was angry out of all proportion, and entirely forgot his prudence.
“Hold your tongue! vile money-grubber!” he cried, waving his bottle like a club. “If these rogues dare come near me, I will break their heads, to teach them to respect my cloth, which bears sufficient witness to my sacred character.” In the torch-light, shining with perspiration, rubicund, his eyes starting from his head, his coat open, and his great paunch half out of his breeches, my good master seemed the sort of fellow who would not easily be driven into a corner. The rogues hesitated.
“Drag him out!” cried Monsieur de la Guéritaude to them. “Drag out this wine-skin! Do you not see you only have to push him into the gutter, and he’ll stay there until the sweepers come to throw him on the dust-heap? I would drag him out myself were I not afraid to soil my clothes.”
My good master fiercely resented these insults.
“Odious tax-gatherer!” said he, in a voice fit to echo in a church, “infamous hanger-on; savage sweater of the people! You pretend that this house is yours? If you want people to believe you, if you want them to know it is yours, write up over the door this word from the Gospel: Aceldama, which means, the price of blood. Then, bowing low, we will allow the master to enter his dwelling. Thief, bandit, homicide, write with the charcoal I will throw in your face, write with your dirty hand over the door your owner’s title. The price of the blood of the widow and the orphan, the price of the blood of the just, Aceldama. If not, stay outside and leave us within, usurer.”
Monsieur de la Guéritaude, who had never heard anything like this in his life, thought he had to do with a madman, as he might well believe, and rather to protect himself than to make an attack, he raised his big stick.
My good master, beside himself, flung his bo
ttle at the Revenue officer’s head, who fell full length on the pavement, crying out “He has killed me!” And as he was swimming in the wine out of the bottle it looked as if he had been assassinated.
His two lackeys wanted to fling themselves on the murderer, and one of the two, a stout fellow, thought he had him, when Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard gave him such a blow in the stomach with his head that the fool rolled in the gutter beside the financier.
He got up for his sins, and arming himself with a lighted torch threw it down the passage whence his enemy had fallen on him. My good master was no longer there, he had already fled the spot.
Monsieur d’Anquetil was there still with Catherine, and he it was who received the lighted torch in his face. This insult seemed unbearable to him: he drew his sword and plunged it into the body of the unlucky rogue, who thus learnt to his cost that it does not do to attack a gentleman.
Nevertheless my good master had not made twenty paces down the road before the second lackey, a long spidery-legged beggar, commenced running after him, calling to the watch, and crying “Stop him.”
Complete Works of Anatole France Page 66