At the moment my good master pronounced this word a sudden shock overwhelmed us all four under a hail of glass, in such confusion that I found myself suddenly blinded and suffocated beneath Jael’s skirts, while Monsieur Coignard, in a stifled voice, denounced Monsieur d’Anquetil’s sword for having broken all the teeth he had left, and above my head Jael gave vent to cries which rent all the valleys of Burgundy. Meanwhile Monsieur d’Anquetil was promising the postilions to have them all hung. By the time I succeeded in freeing myself he had already jumped through a broken window; we followed him by the same way my good master and I, and then we all three drew Jael from the overturned carriage. She was unhurt and her first care was to re-adjust her hair.
“Thank Heaven,” said my good master, “I have escaped with the loss of a tooth, and one neither perfect nor white at that. Time, by its attack, had prepared it for its fall.”
Monsieur d’Anquetil, with legs wide apart and hands on his hips, was examining the over-turned carriage.
“The rogues have made it in a pretty state,” said he. “If we get the horses up, it will fall in the gutter. L’Abbé, it is good for nothing but to play spellicans with.”
The horses, fallen one over another, kicked each other with their hoofs. In a confused heap of cruppers, manes, flanks and steaming bellies, one of the postilions was buried, boots in air. The other was spitting blood in the ditch where he had been flung. And Monsieur d’Anquetil shouted at them:
“Fools! I do not know what keeps me from running my sword through your bodies!”
“Monsieur,” said the Abbé, “would it not first be better to drag that poor man from amidst the horses where he is buried?”
We all set to work, and when the horses were unharnessed and got up, we knew the extent of the damage.
There was a spring smashed, a wheel broken and one horse lamed. “Fetch a wheelwright,” said Monsieur d’Anquetil to the postilions, “and let all be made ready within an hour.”
“There is no wheelwright here,” said the postilions.
“A farrier.”
“There is no farrier.”
“A saddler.”
“There is no saddler.”
We looked round us. In the setting sun the vine-covered slopes stretched in long peaceful lines to the horizon. On the height smoke rose from a roof near by a belfry. On the other side the Saône, veiled in light mist, was gently effacing the ripple made by a boat which had just passed. The shadows of the poplars were lengthening on the bank. The sharp cry of a bird pierced the vast silence.
“Where are we?” asked Monsieur d’Anquetil.
“Two good leagues from Tournus,” replied the postilion who had fallen in the ditch, spitting blood as he did so, “and at least four from Mâcon.”
And raising his arm towards the roof smoking on the hill:
“That village up there must be Vallars. Its resources are small.”
“God’s thunder split you!” said Monsieur d’Anquetil.
While the horses, huddled together, nibbled at each other’s necks, we drew near the carriage lying sorrily on its side. The little postilion, who had been drawn from under the horses said:
“As for the spring, that could be remedied by a strong piece of wood fitted to the strap. The carriage would only be slightly more shaky. But there is the broken wheel! And the worst of it is my hat is underneath it.”
“Damn your hat,” said Monsieur d’Anquetil.
“Your Lordship does not perhaps know it was quite new,” said the little postilion.
“And the broken windows!” sighed Jael — sitting on her portmanteau on the road-side.
“If it were only the windows,” said my good master, “we could fill their places by lowering the blinds, but the bottles must be in exactly the same state as the windows. That is what I must make sure of as soon as the berline is right side up. I am equally troubled about my Boethius which I left under the cushions with several other good works.”
“They matter nothing,” said Monsieur d’Anquetil, “I have got the cards in my waistcoat pocket. But are we not going to sup?”
“I was thinking of that,” said the Abbé. “It is not in vain that God has given man for his use, the animals which people the earth, sky and water. I am an excellent angler, the careful watch for fish particularly suits my meditative spirit, and the Orne has seen me holding the insidious line and pondering the eternal verities. Have no fear about your supper. If Mademoiselle Jael will kindly give me one of the pins which support her attire I will soon make a hook of it, with which to fish in the river, and I flatter myself that I shall bring you two or three small carp before night-fall, which we will grill over a fire of brushwood.”
“I clearly perceive,” said Jael, “that we are reduced to a savage state. But I cannot give you a pin, l’Abbé, unless you give me something in exchange, otherwise our friendship runs the risk of being broken. And I do not want that to occur.”
“Then I will make an advantageous bargain,” said my good master. “I will pay for your pin with a kiss, Mademoiselle.”
Thereupon, taking the pin, he put his lips to Jael’s cheek in an indescribably charming, graceful and becoming manner.
After wasting a good deal of time we decided on the most sensible method. The tall postilion, who spat blood no longer, was sent to Tournus with a horse to bring back a wheelwright, while his fellow lighted a fire in a sheltered spot, for the air was becoming fresh and the wind was rising.
We perceived on the road a hundred paces beyond the scene of our downfall, a hill of soft stone whose base was hollowed in places. In one of these hollows we decided to await the return of the postilion sent as a messenger to Tournus, warming ourselves meanwhile. The second postilion tied the three remaining horses, one of which was lamed, to the trunk of a tree, near by our cave. The Abbé, who had succeeded in making a line with some branches of willow, a string, a cork, and a pin, went off to angle, inclined thereto as much by his philosophic and meditative turn as by the design of bringing us some fish. Monsieur d’Anquetil remaining with Jael and me in the grotto proposed a game of ombre, which three can play at, and which, being Spanish, he said was suitable to such adventurous people as we were for the time being. And in truth, in this stone-pit, at night-fall, on a deserted road, our little party would not have seemed unworthy to figure in one of those encounters of Don Quigeot or Don Quichotte which amuse the servants. So we played at ombre. It is a game which needs to be taken seriously. I made many mistakes and my impatient partner began to be angry, when the fine and smiling countenance of my good master appeared before us in the fire-light. Untying his handkerchief Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard took out four or five small fish, which he cut open with his knife ornamented with the image of the late king as a Roman emperor on a triumphant column, and which he gutted as easily as if he had never lived anywhere but among the fish-wives in the market, so much did he excel in the smallest undertakings as in the greater. While he arranged this small fry over the ashes he said:
“I will confide to you that following the river on its downward course, looking for a favourable bank whence to fish, I perceived the Apocalyptic calèche which strikes terror into Mademoiselle Jael. It had stopped some way off behind our berline. You must have seen it pass by here while I was fishing in the river, and it must have brought consolation to the mind of Mademoiselle here.”
“We did not see it,” said Jael.
“Then it must have started off again, when night had already fallen; and at least you must have heard it.”
“We have not heard it,” said Jael.
“Then the night must be both blind and deaf. For it is scarcely believable that that calèche with neither a broken wheel nor a lame horse, should have stayed on the road. What could it do there?”
“Yes, what could it do there?” said Jael.
“This supper,” said my good master, “by its simplicity, recalls those repasts in the Bible, where the pious traveller shares fish from the Tigris wit
h an angel on the river bank. But we need bread, salt and wine. I shall try to get the provisions out of the berline where they are shut up, and see if by chance a bottle has not been preserved intact. For there are times when glass will not break under a blow which would shatter steel. Tournebroche, my son, please give me your flint and steel; and you, Mademoiselle, do not fail to turn the fish. I shall return immediately.”
He went off, his somewhat heavy step died away slowly on the road, and soon we heard nothing more.
“The night,” said Monsieur d’Anquetil, “reminds me of the one which preceded the battle of Parma. For you are not ignorant of the fact that I served under Villars and fought in the war of succession. I was among the scouts. We saw nothing. That is one of the artifices of war. They send men to reconnoître the enemy, who come back without having seen or heard anything. But they make reports out of it after the battle, and that is where the tacticians triumph. Well, then, at nine o’clock in the evening I was sent out as a scout with twelve troopers....”
And he told us of the war of succession, and of his love-passages in Italy; his recital lasted fully a quarter of an hour, after which he exclaimed:
“That rascal of an Abbé does not come back. I wager he is drinking all the wine left in the slings over there.”
Thinking then that my good master might be somewhat hampered I got up to go to his aid. The night was moonless, and while the sky glittered with stars the earth remained in such darkness that my eyes, dazzled by the light of the fire, could not penetrate it. Having gone but fifty steps on the road, which was pale in the darkness, I heard in front of me a terrible cry, which did not seem to issue from a human breast, a cry different from all the cries I had heard before, and which froze me with horror. I ran in the direction whence came the shriek of mortal distress. But the darkness and my fear made my steps tremble. Arrived at length at the spot where the carriage lay shapeless and magnified by the dark, I found my good master seated by the edge of the ditch, doubled in two.
I could not distinguish his face. I asked him tremblingly:
“What is the matter with you? Why did you cry out?”
“Yes — why did I cry out?” said he in a changed voice, a voice new to me. “I did not know that I cried out. Tournebroche, have you not seen a man? He knocked against me rather roughly in the dark. He gave me a blow with his fist.”
“Come, my good master, raise yourself,” I said.
Having raised himself up, he fell back heavily to earth.
I struggled to lift him up, and my hands were wet as I touched his breast.
“You are bleeding!”
“I am bleeding? I am a dead man. He has murdered me. I thought at first it was but a very rough blow. But it is a wound of which I feel I shall never recover.”
“Who has struck you, my good master?”
“It was the Jew. I did not see him, but I know it was he. How do I know it was he when I never saw him? Yes, how comes that? What strange happenings! It is unbelievable, is it not, Tournebroche? I have the taste of death in my mouth which cannot be defined.... It had to be, my God! But why here rather than there? There lies the mystery! Adjutorium nostrum in nomine Domini.... Domine, exaudi orationem meam...
He prayed for some time in a low voice, and then he said:
“Tournebroche, my son, take the two bottles which I drew from out the slings and put opposite. I can do no more. Tournebroche, where do you think the wound is? It is in the back I suffer the most, and it seems to me that my life is ebbing from my limbs. My mind is going.”
Murmuring these words he quietly fainted away in my arms. I tried to lift him up, but I had but the strength to lay him down on the road. His shirt open, I found the wound; it was in the chest, small and bleeding but little. I tore up my ruffles and applied the strips to the wound. I called out; I cried for help. Soon I thought I heard them coming to my assistance from the direction of Tournus, and I recognised Monsieur d’Astarac. So unexpected was this meeting I was not even surprised at it, overwhelmed as I was by the grief of thus holding the best of masters dying in my arms.
“What means this, my son?” demanded the alchemist.
“Come to my help, Monsieur,” I replied, “l’Abbé Coignard is dying. Mosaïde has murdered him.”
“It is true,” said Monsieur d’Astarac, “that Mosaïde came here in an old calèche in pursuit of his niece, and I accompanied him to exhort you, my son, to resume your work in my house. Since yesterday we have pressed close upon your berline, that we saw a short time ago go to pieces in a ditch. At that moment Mosaïde got out of the carriage, and, whether he went for a walk or whether, what is more likely still, he made himself invisible, as he has the power to do, I have not seen him since. It is possible he has already shown himself to his niece to curse her; for such was his design. But he has not murdered Abbé Coignard. It is the Elves, my son, who have killed your master, to punish him for having revealed their secrets. Nothing is more certain.”
“Ah! Monsieur,” I exclaimed, “what matters whether it be the Jew or the Elves; we must succour him.”
“My son, on the contrary, it matters very much,” replied Monsieur d’Astarac; “for if he had been struck by a human hand it would be very easy for me to heal him by a magical operation; but whereas he has drawn on himself the enmity of the Elves he cannot escape their infallible vengeance.”
As he spoke these last words, Monsieur d’Anquetil and Jael, drawn by my cries, came up with the postilion bearing a lantern.
“What!” said Jael, “is Monsieur Coignard ill?” And kneeling down by my good master’s side, she raised his head and made him inhale her salts.
“Mademoiselle,” said I, “you are the cause of his undoing. His death is the vengeance for your elopement. It is Mosaïde who has killed him.”
She lifted her face over my good master, pale with horror and glistening with tears.
“Do you suppose, then, it is so easy to be a pretty girl without causing unhappiness?” she asked.
“Alas!” I replied, “what you say is only too true. But we have lost the best of men.”
At this moment Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard gave a deep sigh, turned up the whites of his eyes, asked for his copy of Boethius, and fell unconscious again.
The postilion was of opinion we should bear the wounded man to the village of Vallars, situated half a league away on the hill.
“I will fetch the quietest of the three horses which remain to us,” said he. “We will fasten the poor man safely on, and take him at a slow pace. I think he is very ill. He has just the look of a courier who was assassinated on St. Michael’s Day, on the road four posts from here, near Senecy, where my intended lives. The poor devil blinked his eyelids and turned up the whites of his eyes like a whore, with all respect to you, Messieurs. And your Abbé did likewise when Mademoiselle tickled his nose with the salts. It is a bad sign for the wounded; as to the girls, they do not die for turning up their eyes in such fashion. Your lordships know that well. And it is a far cry the Lord be praised from the thrills of love to the rigors of death. But it is the same turn of the eye. Stay here, Messieurs, I will go and fetch the horse.”
“The rustic is amusing,” said Monsieur d’Anquetil, “with his turned-up eyes and his die-away lady. In Italy I have seen soldiers die with a fixed stare and their eyes starting out of their head. There is no law about dying of a wound, even among soldiers, where exactitude is pushed as far as it will go. But have the goodness, Tournebroche, in default of some one better qualified to present me to this black-clad gentleman who wears diamond buttons on his coat and whom I divine to be Monsieur d’Astarac.”
“Ah! Monsieur,” I replied, “take it as done. I have no care for anything but to help my good master.”
“So be it,” said Monsieur d’Anquetil.
And approaching Monsieur d’Astarac he said: “Monsieur, I have taken your mistress from you. I am ready to give you satisfaction.”
“Monsieur,” replied Monsieur d’Ast
arac, “thanks be to Heaven, I have no connection with any woman, and I do not know what you mean by speaking thus.”
At this moment the postilion returned with a horse. My good master had regained consciousness a little. We all four raised him up, and with great difficulty we succeeded in placing him on the horse, on which we fastened him. Then we set out. I sustained him on one side, Monsieur d’Anquetil on the other. The postilion held the bridle and carried the lantern. Jael followed us crying. Monsieur d’Astarac had regained his calèche. We advanced carefully. All went well while we kept to the road. But when we had to climb the steep path between the vines, my good master, slipping with every movement of the horse, lost the small amount of strength remaining to him and fainted away once more. We judged it expedient to take him off his horse and to carry him in our arms. The postilion held him by the arm-pits and I carried his feet. The ascent was steep, and I thought several times I should sink down under my living cross on the stones of the path. At length the hill became easier. We threaded our way through a little path bordered with hedges, which twisted up the hillside, and soon we perceived on our left the first roofs of Vallars. At the sight we put down our dismal burden and stopped a moment to take breath. Then taking up our load again we pushed on as far as the village.
A rosy light showed in the east above the horizon. The morning star in the paling heavens shone as white and peaceful as the moon, whose slim crescent paled in the west. The birds began to sing: my good master heaved a sigh.
Jael ran before us, knocking at the doors in quest of a bed and a surgeon. Laden with baskets and hampers the vine-growers were going to the vintage. One of them told Jael that Gaulard in the square had lodging for travellers whether on horse or on foot.
“As to the surgeon, Coquebert,” he added, “you see him over there under the barber’s basin which serves him as a sign. He is leaving his house to go to his vineyard.”
He was a little man, very civil. He told us that since his daughter had married a short time ago he had a bed in his house which would take the wounded man.
Complete Works of Anatole France Page 73