At his command, his wife, a fat woman with a white cap surmounted by a felt hat, put sheets on the bed in the ground floor room. She helped us to undress Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard and to put him to bed. Then she went off to find the priest.
Meanwhile Monsieur Coquebert examined the wound.
“You see,” said I, “it is but small and bleeds only a little.”
“That is not a good sign and does not please me at all, my young Monsieur — I like a big wound that bleeds.”
“I see that for a saw-bones and a village barber you have not bad taste,” said Monsieur d’Anquetil, “nothing is worse than these small deep wounds which look like mere nothings. Talk to me of a fine gash in the face. That is pleasant to look at and heals immediately. But you must know, my good fellow, that this wounded man is my chaplain and my partner at piquet. Are you man enough to put him on his feet again, in spite of your face, which is rather that of a purge-giver?”
“At your service,” replied the surgeon-barber, bowing. “But I also set broken bones and I dress wounds. I will examine this one.”
“Be quick about it, Monsieur,” said I. “Patience,” said he. “First we must wash it, and I am waiting till the water is hot in the kettle.”
My good master, who had revived a little, said slowly in quite a strong voice:
“Lamp in hand he will visit all the corners of Jerusalem, and that which was hidden in darkness shall be brought forth to daylight.”
“What are you saying, my good master?”
“Leave me alone, my son,” he replied, “I am occupied with thoughts suitable to my condition.”
“The water is hot,” said the barber. “Hold this basin close to the bed. I am going to wash the wound.”
While he was passing a sponge filled with warm water over my good master’s chest, the priest entered the room with Madame Coquebert. He held in his hand a basket and some scissors.
“Here is the poor man, then,” said he, “I was going to my vines, but one must tend those of Jesus Christ first of all. My son,” he added, drawing near him, “offer up your affliction to Our Saviour. May be it is not so serious as you think. After all, we must comply with the Will of God.” Then turning to the barber he asked:
“Monsieur Coquebert, is it a very urgent case, and can I go to my vineyard? The white grapes can wait, it does no harm if they are over-ripe, and even a little rain will but render the wine better and more abundant. But the red should be picked immediately.”
“You say true, Monsieur le curé,” replied Coquebert, “I have grapes in my vineyard which are all covered with mildew and which have escaped the heat of the sun only to perish in the rain.”
“Alas!” said the curé, “damp and dryness are the vinegrower’s two enemies.”
“Nothing is truer,” said the barber, “but I must probe the wound.” So saying he put his finger forcibly in the place.
“Ah! Executioner!” exclaimed the patient. “Remember,” said the curé, “that the Saviour forgave His executioners.”
“They were not barbers,” said the Abbé.
“That is wickedly said,” said the curé.
“You must not chide a dying man for his pleasantries,” said my good master. “But I suffer cruelly, this man has murdered me and I die a second time. First it was at the hands of a Jew.”
“What does he mean?” asked the curé.
“The best thing, Monsieur le curé, is not to trouble oneself,” said the barber. “One should never wish to understand the speeches of the sick. They are but ravings.”
“Coquebert,” said the curé, “you do not speak rightly. One must listen to the sick in confession, and some Christian who has said nothing good in his life may finish by pronouncing the words which shall open Paradise to him.”
“I only speak of things temporal,” said the barber.
“Monsieur le curé,” said I in my turn, “my good master, Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard, is not delirious, and it is only too true that he has been assassinated by a Jew named Mosaïde.”
“In that case,” replied the curé, “he should see God’s special favour therein Who willed that he should perish by the hand of a descendant of those who crucified His Son. The ways of Providence in this world are always admirable. Monsieur Coquebert, may I go to my vineyard?”
“You may go, Monsieur le curé,” replied the barber. “The wound is no light one, but it is not the kind of which one dies at once. It is, Monsieur le curé, one of those wounds which play with the sick person like a cat with a mouse, and at that game we may gain some time.”
“That is well,” said Monsieur le curé. “Let us thank God, my son, for what life He has left you, but it is precarious and transitory. One must always be ready to leave it.”
My good master gravely made reply.
“Exist on this earth as not existing, possess without possessing, for the image of this world passes.” Taking up his basket and his scissors Monsieur le curé said:
“Judging from your speech, my son, rather than from your habit and your bands that I see spread on that stool, I know that you belong to the Church and lead a holy life. Have you taken holy orders?”
“He is a priest,” said I, “doctor of theology and professor of eloquence.”
“In what diocese?” asked the curé.
“Of Séez in Normandy, Suffragan to Rouen.”
“A notable ecclesiastical province,” said Monsieur le curé, “but which yields much in antiquity and celebrity to the diocese of Rheims of which I am a priest.”
And he went out. Monsieur Jérôme Coignard passed the day peacefully. Jael wished to stay the night with the sick man. Towards eleven o’clock in the evening, I left Monsieur Coquebert’s house and sought a lodging at the inn of the worthy Gaulard. I found Monsieur d’Astarac on the place, and his shadow in the moonlight stretched nearly across its whole expanse. He put his hand on my shoulder as was his habit and said with his accustomed gravity:
“It is time that I re-assured you, my son, I merely accompanied Mosaïde for that reason. I see you have been cruelly tormented by goblins. These little spirits of the earth have assailed you, deceived you by all sorts of phantasmagoria, seduced you by a thousand lies, and finally driven you to leave my house.”
“Alas, Monsieur!” I replied, “it is true I left your roof with an apparent ingratitude for which I ask your pardon. But I was pursued by the police-sergeants, not by goblins. And my good master has been assassinated. That is no phantasy.”
“You may be certain of it,” replied the great man, “the unfortunate Abbé has been mortally struck by the Sylphs whose secrets he has revealed. He took from a cupboard some stones which are the handiwork of the Sylphs, and which the latter had left in an imperfect state, differing greatly in brilliancy and pureness from the diamond.
“It is this greed — and the name of Alga indiscreetly pronounced which has vexed them the most. Now understand, my son, it is impossible for philosophers to arrest the vengeance of these irascible people. I learnt by a supernatural channel and also from Criton’s report the sacrilegious larceny of Monsieur Coignard, who insolently plumed himself on surprising the art by which Salamanders, Sylphs and Gnomes, ripen the morning dew and insensibly transform it into crystal and diamond.”
“Alas! Monsieur, I assure you he never thought of doing so, and that it was that horrible Mosaïde who struck him down with a dagger-thrust on the road.”
This speech extremely displeased Monsieur d’Astarac, who invited me in a manner not to be denied to talk no more in such fashion.
“Mosaïde,” added he, “is a good enough cabalist to reach his enemies without running after them. Know, my son, that had he wished to kill Monsieur Coignard, he could have done it easily in his room, by the operation of magic. I see that you are still ignorant of the first elements of the science. The truth is that this learned man, informed by the faithful Criton of his niece’s flight, took post to regain her, and if need be, to bring her back to his ho
use. Which is what he would certainly have done, had he but discerned in the unhappy being’s soul some gleam of repentance and regret. But seeing her quite corrupted and debauched, he preferred to excommunicate and curse her by all the Globes, the Wheels and the Beasts of Ezekiel. That is precisely what he has just done, before my eyes, in the calèche where he is quartered apart, so as not to share the bed and the board of Christians.”
I was silent, amazed at such maunderings, but this extraordinary man spoke with such eloquence that it did not leave me untroubled.
“Why,” said he, “will you not allow yourself to be enlightened by the advice of a philosopher? What wisdom can you oppose to him, my son? Consider then, that yours is less in quantity without differing in essence. To you, as to me, nature appears as an infinite multitude of images, which one must recognise and classify and which form a sequence of hieroglyphs. You easily distinguish many of these signs to which you attach a meaning, but you are too inclined to content yourself with a vulgar and literal one, and do not sufficiently seek the ideal and the symbolical. Nevertheless, the world is only conceivable as a symbol, and all that is seen in the universe is but pictured writing, which the vulgar among mankind spell out without understanding. Beware, my son, of drawling and braying in this universal tongue, like the savants who fill the academies. But rather receive at my hand the key of all knowledge.”
He stopped for a moment and continued his speech in a more familiar tone:
“You are pursued, my son, by foes less terrible than the Sylphs. And your Salamander will have no trouble in ridding you of the goblins as soon as you ask her to do so. I repeat, that I only came here with Mosaïde to give you this good advice and to press you to return to me and continue your work. I understand that you wish to be with your good master until the end. I give you full permission. But do not fail to return hereafter to my house. Farewell! I return to Paris this night with the great Mosaïde whom you have so unjustly suspected.”
I promised him all he wished, and dragged myself as far as my wretched bed in the inn, on which I fell, overwhelmed with sorrow and fatigue.
XIX
THE following day, at early dawn, I returned to the surgeon’s and there I found Jael by my good master’s bedside, sitting up straight on her straw-bottomed chair, her head enveloped in her black mantle, attentive, serious, and docile like a sister of charity. Monsieur Coignard, very red in the face, was dozing. “He has not had a good night,” she said in a low voice. “He wandered, he sang, he called me sister Germaine, and made advances to me. I am not offended at that, but it shows how upset he is.”
“Alas!” I explained, “if you had not betrayed me, Jael, and scoured the roads with that fine gentleman, my good master would not lie on this bed with his breast pierced.”
“It is just our friend’s misfortune,” she replied, “which causes my consuming regret. But as for the rest it is not worth a thought and I cannot conceive, Jacques, how you can dwell on it at such a moment.”
“The thought is always with me,” I answered.
“I,” said she, “I never think of it at all. You yourself provide more than three fourths of your unhappiness.”
“What do you mean by that, Jael?”
“I mean, my friend, that if I supply the stuff you apply the embroidery, and that your imagination enriches the simple reality far too much. I swear to you that at this present hour I do not myself remember the quarter of what causes you sorrow, and you ponder so obstinately on this subject that your rival is more present to you than even to myself. Think no more of it and let me give this cooling drink to the Abbé who is just waking up.”
At this moment Monsieur Coquebert approached the bed with his surgical case, dressed the wound afresh, and said out loud that it was well on the road to recovery. Then drawing me aside he said, “I can assure you, Monsieur, this good Abbé will not die from the blow he has received. But truth to tell I much fear he will not get over a rather bad attack of pleurisy occasioned by his wound. Just now he is in a condition of high fever. But here comes Monsieur le curé.”
My good master recognised him quite well and asked politely how he did.
“Better than the vines,” replied the curé. “For they are all spoilt with blight and maggots notwithstanding that the clergy of Dijon held a fine procession against them this year, with cross and banners. But we must have a finer one next year and burn more wax-lights. It will also be necessary for the ecclesiastical court to excommunicate afresh the flies which destroy the grapes.”
“Monsieur le curé,” said my good master, “they say that you wanton with the girls among the vines. Fie! That is not fitting at your age. In my youth I was, like you, fond of the sex. But years have improved me, and latterly I let a nun pass without speaking to her. You treat damsels and bottles in another fashion, Monsieur le curé. But you do worse still in not saying masses for which you are paid, and in trafficking in the goods of the Church. You are a bigamist and a simonist.”
On hearing these words Monsieur le curé was sadly surprised; his mouth remained opened, and his chaps fell mournfully on either side of his big face.
“What an unworthy insult to the character I bear!” he sighed at last, his eyes on the ceiling. “What a way he talks so near to the judgment-seat of God. Oh! Monsieur l’Abbé, is it for you to talk in such fashion, who have led such a holy life, and have studied so many books?”
My good master raised himself on his elbow. Fever gave him back, in melancholy and unnatural fashion, the jovial air we had loved to see on him.
“It is true,” said he, “that I have studied the ancient writers. But I am far from being as well read as was the second vicaire of my lord bishop of Séez. Although he looked a donkey, and was one, he was a greater reader than I. For he was crosseyed, and looking askew he read two pages at a time. What do you say to that, you old rascal of a curé, you old gallant who runs after wenches in the moonlight? Curé, your lady-love looks like a witch. She has a beard on her chin, she is the surgeon-barber’s wife. He is fully cuckold and it serves the homunculus right, whose whole medical knowledge reaches no further than the giving of a clyster.”
“Lord God, what is he saying?” exclaimed Madame Coquebert. “He must have the devil in him.”
“I have heard many sick people talk in delirium,” said Monsieur Coquebert, “but no one of them talked so wickedly.”
“I perceive,” continued the curé, “that we shall have more difficulty than I thought in bringing this sick man to a good end. He is of a more bitter humour and has more impurity in his disposition than I had at first remarked. His speeches are unseemly in an ecclesiastic and a sick person.”
“It is the effect of the fever,” said the surgeon-barber.
“But,” went on the curé, “this fever, if it does not go down may lead him to hell. He has very seriously failed in what is owing to a priest. I shall, nevertheless, return to-morrow to exhort him, for I owe him, by example of Our Lord, infinite pity. But on this score I feel a lively anxiety. Ill-luck will have it that there is a crack in my winepress, and all the workmen are in the vineyards. Coquebert, do not fail to speak a word to the carpenter, and to call me to the sick man here should his condition become suddenly worse. A host of cares, Coquebert!”
The next day was such a good one for Monsieur Coignard that we nursed the hope that we might yet keep him with us. He took some soup and sat up in bed. He spoke to each of us with his usual gentleness and grace. Monsieur d’Anquetil, who was lodging at Gaulard’s, came to see him and, rather thoughtlessly, asked him to play piquet. My good master smilingly promised to do so the following week. But the fever took hold of him at nightfall. Pale, his eyes swimming in unutterable terror, shuddering, and with chattering teeth, he cried:
“There he is, the old Jew! It is the son Judas Iscariot fathered on a she-devil in the shape of a goat. But he shall be hanged on his father’s fig-tree, and his entrails shall be shed on the earth. Stop him... he is killing me....! I am cold.�
�� A moment after, throwing back his coverings, he complained of being too hot. “I am very thirsty,” said he, “give me some wine. And let it be cool. Madame Coquebert, make haste to go and cool it in the cistern, for the day promises to be burning.”
It was night time but he confused the hours in his brain.
“Be quick about it,” he re-iterated, to Madame Coquebert, “but do not be as simple-minded as the bellringer of Séez Cathedral, who, on going to draw the bottles from the well where he had put them, perceived his reflection in the water and began crying out ‘Hello! Messieurs! Come to my help quickly, for there are antipodeans down there who will drink our wine if we do not see to it.’”
“He is cheerful,” said Madame Coquebert. “But a short time ago he made very shocking accusations against me. Had I deceived Coquebert it would not have been with Monsieur le curé, having regard to his age and position.”
Monsieur le curé came in at that very moment.
“Well, Monsieur l’Abbé,” said he to my master, “in what humour are you to-day? What is there new?”
“Thank God,” said Monsieur Coignard, “there is nothing new in my soul. For, as St. Chrysostom said, avoid novelties. Do not adventure on paths which are as yet untried; one wanders unendingly when one begins to wander. I have sad experience of it. And I am lost for having followed unbeaten tracks. I listened to my own counsel and it led me to the pit. Monsieur le curé, I am a miserable sinner; the number of my iniquities oppresses me.”
“Those are noble words,” said Monsieur le curé, “it is God Himself Who dictates them to you. I recognise His inimitable style. Are you not desirous that we should join in furthering the salvation of your soul a little?”
“Willingly” said Monsieur Coignard, “for my impurities rise up against me. I see both great and small rear themselves before me. I see some that are red and some that are black. I see some of the very basest astride of dogs and pigs, and I see others that are fat and stark naked, with teats like leather bottles, and stomachs falling in big folds, and enormous buttocks.”
Complete Works of Anatole France Page 74