“Monsieur,” responded the aged Nicodème, rather heatedly, “I gather from the language you hold that you are a libertine and a debauchee.”
“Monsieur,” said my good master, “I am a Christian, and as for living in debauchery, I could not think of such a thing, having enough to do to gain my daily bread, wine, and tobacco. Such as you see me, Monsieur, I know no orgy but the silent orgies of meditation, and the only feast I sit down to is the feast of the Muses. But I, as a wise man, consider that it is a bad thing to outbid in shamefacedness the teachings of the Catholic religion, which on this subject allows a good deal of liberty, and adjusts itself easily to people’s customs and prejudices. I take you to be tainted with Calvinism and to be leaning to the heresy of iconoclasm. For, in truth, one does not know whether your zeal will not go so far as to burn images of God and the saints, from hatred of the humanity evident in them. Such words as modesty, decency, and shame, which come so readily from your mouth, have as a matter of fact no precise and constant meaning. Custom and nice feeling can alone define them with truth and moderation. I only acknowledge poets, artists, and pretty women, as judges in these delicate matters. What an extraordinary notion, to set up a row of attorneys in judgment on Grace and Pleasure!”
“But, Monsieur,” replied the aged Nicodême, “we have nothing to do with Smiles or Graces, still less with images of God and the saints, and you are maliciously fastening a quarrel on us. We are decent people, who wish to turn aside the eyes of our sons from improper sights, and one knows well enough what is decent and what is not. Do you wish, Monsieur l’Abbé, that our young people should be open to every temptation of the streets?”
“Ah! Monsieur,” replied my good master. “ We must all be tempted. It is the lot of men and Christians on this earth. And the most formidable temptation comes from within — not from without. You would not take so much trouble to remove from the shop windows any sketch of nude women if, as I have done, you had studied the lives of the Fathers of the desert. There you would have seen how, in a frightful wilderness, far from any carved or painted shape, torn with hair-shirts, macerated with penance, faint from fasting, tossing on a bed of thorns, the anchorites were penetrated to the very marrow with the prickings of carnal desire. In their wretched cells they saw visions a thousand times more voluptuous than this allegory which offends you in Monsieur Blaizot’s window.
“The devil, or, as free-thinkers would say, nature, is a better painter of lascivious scenes than Giulio Romano himself. He surpasses all the Italian and Flemish masters in grouping, movement, and colour. Alas! one is powerless against his glowing pictures. Those that shock you are of small account in comparison, and you would do wisely to leave to the care of the Lieutenant de Police, as your fellow citizens are willing it should be left, the guardianship of public decency. Truly your ingenuousness astonishes me; you have little notion what a man is, and what society is, and of the fever and insurgence of a great city. Oh! the silly grey-beards, who in the midst of all the uncleanness of a Babylon where every lifted curtain shows the eye or the arm of a courtesan, where busy humanity touch and quicken one another in the public squares, fall a-groaning and complaining of a few naughty pictures hung up on book-sellers’ stalls; and carry their lamentations even to the very Parliament of the kingdom when a woman has shown her legs to some fellows in a dancing-saloon — just the most ordinary sight in the world for them.”
Thus spoke my good master from the top of his ladder. But Monsieur Nicodème stopped his ears in order not to hear him, and cried out on his cynicism.
“Heavens!” he sighed, “what can be more disgusting than a naked woman, and how shameful to compromise, as does this Abbé, with an immorality which is the ruin of a country, for people can only exist by purity of morals.”
“It is true, Monsieur,” said my good master, “that peoples are strong only so long as they preserve their morals; but by that is understood a community of rules, opinions, and interests, and a generous-minded obedience to law; not trifles such as occupy you. Beware, moreover, lest shamefacedness, failing as a charm, become but a piece of stupidity, and less the artless dullness of your fears present a ridiculous spectacle and one not a little indecent.”
But Monsieur Nicodème had already left the place.
XVIII. JUSTICE
MONSIEUR L’ABBÉ COIGNARD, who should rather have been nourished at the Prytaneum by a grateful republic, gained his bread by writing letters for servant-girls in a stall near the cemetery of the Innocents. There he happened to serve in the office of secretary to a Portuguese lady who was crossing France, with her nigger-boy. She gave him a liard for a letter written to her husband, and an êcu of six livres for another to her lover. It was the first êcu my good master had handled since the feast of St. John; and since he was openhanded, even to magnificence, he straightway took me to the Tomme d’Or, on the Quai de Grève, close to the Town-hall, where the wine is not doctored, and the sausages are of the best. And the big dealers, who buy apples on the Mall, go there ordinarily towards midday to try to best one another. It was spring-time, and sweet to be alive on such a day. My good master had our table spread on the embankment, and we hearkened, as we dined, to the lapping of the water under the oars of the boatmen. A light caressing breeze laved us with gentle breath, and we were glad to be alive and in the sunlight. While we were eating our fried gudgeons a noise of men and horses at our elbow made us turn round.
Guessing what made us curious a dingy little old man, at the next table, said, with an obliging smile:
“It is nothing, gentlemen — a servant-girl whom they are taking to be hanged for stealing some bits of lace from her mistress.”
‘And indeed, as he spoke, we saw, seated at the tail of a cart between two mounted police-sergeants, a girl, quite pretty, her appearance bewildered, her bosom forced into relief by the drag of her arms, which were bound behind her back. She passed in a moment, and yet I shall always see before my eyes that vision of a white face, and that look that already stared out upon nothing.
“Yes, gentlemen,” said the dingy little old man, “she is the servant of Madame Josse, the councillor’s wife, and to make herself smart when going with her lover to Ramponneau’s stole from her mistress a lace head-dress in point à Alençon, and then, having committed the theft, ran away. She was taken in a house by the Pont-au-Change, and at once confessed her crime. Accordingly she was not put to the torture for more than an hour or two. What I tell you, gentlemen, I know to be true, as I am beadle at the court where she was tried.”
The dingy little old man attacked his sausage, for it was getting cold, and continued:
“She should be at the scaffold by now, and in five minutes, perhaps a little more, perhaps a little less, the pretty rogue will have given up the ghost. Some of the hanged give no trouble to the executioner. No sooner is the cord round their neck than they quietly expire. But there are others who positively live at the rope’s end, and make a furious to-do about it. The most demoniacal of all was a priest, who was sentenced last year for forging the Royal signature on lottery tickets. For more than twenty minutes he fought like a carp on the end of a line.
“He! He! “chuckled the little old man, “the Abbé was modest and did not want the honour of a step up in the world. I saw him when they took him out of the cart. He cried and struggled so that the hangman said to him: ‘ Do not be a child, Monsieur l’Abbé!’ But the oddest thing was, that, there being another thief along with him, he was, at first, taken for the chaplain, and that by the executioner, whom the police-officer had the greatest difficulty in undeceiving. Wasn’t that amusing?”
“No, Monsieur,” replied my good master, “letting the fish, he had held to his lips for some moments, fall on his plate. “No, it is not amusing, and the thought that that nice-looking girl is at this moment yielding up her soul spoils the taste of my gudgeons for me, and the joy of seeing the sky above, which smiled on me but a moment back.”
“Ah, Monsieur l’Abbé,” sai
d the little official, “if you are so sensitive as all that, you could never have witnessed without fainting what my father saw with his own eyes, when yet a child, at Dijon, his native town. Have you ever heard speak of Hélène Gillet?”
“Never,” said my master.
“In that case I will tell you her story, as my father, many a time, told it to me.”
He drank off his wine, wiped his lips with a corner of the cloth, and recounted the history I here repeat.
XIX. THE BEADLE’S STORY
IN the year 1624, in the month of October, Hélène Gillet, aged twenty-two, daughter of the governor-royal of Bourg-en-Bresse, who was still under the paternal roof, along with her brothers yet of tender years, showed such visible signs of being with child that it was the talk of the town, and the young girls of Bourg ceased to associate with her. It was noticed next that her figure went down, and such comments were made that the Lieutenant-Criminel ordered her to be examined by a jury of matrons. These latter reported that she had been with child and that her confinement had taken place at least fifteen days before. On their report, Hélène Gillet was put in prison and was questioned by the Court of First Instance. She there made a confession:
“‘Some months ago,’ she told them, ‘a young man from the neighbourhood, who was staying at my uncle’s house, came to my father’s to teach the boys to read and write. He possessed me but once. It was through a servant who locked me up in a room with him. There he ravished me.’ And when they asked her why she had not cried for help, she replied that surprise had taken away her voice. Pressed by the judges, she added, that in consequence of this violation she became with child and was delivered prematurely. Far from having helped on the birth, she would not have known what it was, had not a servant revealed to her the true nature of the occurrence.
“The magistrates, dissatified with her replies, did not know, all the same, how to contradict them, when an unexpected witness came forward to furnish certain proofs of the accusation. A soldier, who happened to pass when out walking by the garden of Monsieur Pierre Gillet, the governor-royal, father of the accused, saw in a ditch, at the foot of the wall, a raven trying to pull away a cloth with its beak. He went up to it to see what it was and found the body of a little child. He immediately informed the authorities. The child was wrapped in a chemise marked with the letters H. G. on the neck. It was proved to have been a full-term child, and Hélène Gillet, convicted of infanticide, was condemned to death according to custom. On account of the honourable post held by her father she was permitted to enjoy the privilege accorded those of noble birth, and the sentence ran that her head should be cut off.
“An appeal having been made to the Parliament of Dijon, she was conducted under the guard of two archers to the capital of Burgundy, and shut in the conciergerie of the Palace. Her mother, who had gone with her, withdrew to the house of the Bernardine nuns. The case was heard by the members of Parliament on Monday the 12th of May, the last sitting before Whitsuntide. On the report of Counsellor Jacob the judges confirmed the sentence of the Bourg Court of First Instance, ordering that the condemned should be led to execution with the cord round her neck. It was generally remarked that this circumstance of infamy was added in a strange and unusual fashion to the punishment of a noble, and such severity, which was against all rules, was greatly blamed. But the decree admitted of no appeal, and had to be carried out immediately.
“And indeed, on the same day, at half-past three in the afternoon, Hélène Gillet was led to the scaffold, the bells tolling the while, in a procession, heralded by trumpets, which sounded such a peal that all the good folk of the town heard it in their houses, and falling on their knees prayed for the soul of her who was about to die. The deputy King’s-attorney advanced on horseback followed by his attendants. Then came the condemned woman in a cart, the cord round her neck according to the decree of Parliament.
“She was attended by two Jesuit fathers and two Capuchin brothers, who held up before her Jesus dying on the Cross. Near by stood the headsman with his sword and the headswoman with a pair of shears. A company of archers surrounded the cart. Behind pressed a crowd of curious people where might have been discerned many small tradesmen, bakers, butchers, masons, from whom a great tumult arose.
“The procession stopped on the place called Place Morimont not, as might be thought, because it was the place of public execution, but in remembrance of the mitred and croziered abbots of Morimont, who formerly had their house there. The wooden scaffold was set up on some stone steps adjoining a humble chapel where the monks were wont to pray for the souls of the victims.
“Hélène Gillet ascended the steps with the four religious, the headsman, and his wife the heads-woman. The latter, having withdrawn the cord which encircled the victim’s neck, cut her hair with shears half a foot long and bandaged her eyes; the religious prayed aloud. The headsman, however, began to tremble and turn pale. He was one, Simon Grandjean, a feeble-looking man, and as gentle and timorous of appearance as his wife, the headswoman, was savage. He had taken communion that morning in prison, and yet he felt upset and without courage to put this child to death. He leant over towards the crowd:
“‘Your pardon, all of you,’ he said, ‘if I do what I have to do badly. I have a fever on me I have been unable to shake off for three months.’
“Then tottering, wringing his hands, lifting his eyes to heaven, he fell on his knees before Hélène Gillet, and twice asked her pardon. He asked a blessing from the priests, and when the headswoman had arranged the victim on the block he lifted his sword.
“The Jesuits and the Capuchins cried out ‘Jesus! Mary!’ and a groan went up from the crowd. The blow, which should have severed the neck, made a large gash on the left shoulder, and the poor creature fell over on her right side.
“Simon Grandjean, turning to the crowd, exclaimed:
“‘ Let me die!’
“Hooting arose, and some stones were thrown on the scaffold where the headswoman was replacing the victim on the block.
“Her husband again took his sword. Striking a second time, he deeply gashed the neck of the poor girl, who fell on the sword, which slipped from the hands of the executioner.
“This time the uproar from the crowd was terrible, and such a hail of stones showered on the scaffold that Simon Grandjean and the Jesuits and the Capuchins jumped down. They managed to gain the low-roofed chapel and shut themselves in. The headswoman, left alone with the victim, looked for the sword. Not seeing it, she took the cord with which Hélène Gillet had been led there, knotted it round the neck, and setting her foot on her chest tried to strangle her.
“Hélène, seizing the cord with both hands, defended herself, all bleeding as she was; whereupon the woman Grandjean dragged her by the cord, head downwards, to the edge of the platform, and, having got her to the stone steps, she cut her throat with the shears.
“She was at it when the butchers and the masons, upsetting the archers and the police, rushed the approaches of the scaffold and chapel: a dozen strong arms lifted Hélène Gillet and carried her, insensible, to the shop of Maître Jacquin, the barber-surgeon.
“The crowd of people which flung itself on the chapel-door would soon have forced it. But the two Capuchin brothers and the two Jesuit fathers opened it, being terrified. And holding up their crosses with outstretched arm, they made a way with great difficulty through the riot.
“The headsman and his wife were stoned, and struck down with hammers, and their bodies dragged through the streets, Hélène Gillet, however, recovering consciousness at the surgeon’s, asked to drink. Then, while Maître Jacquin was dressing her wound, she said:
“‘ Shall I not have anything more to suffer?’
“It was found that she had suffered two blows with the sword, six cuts from the shears, which had slashed her lips and throat, and that her loins had been deeply cut by the sword, over which the heads-woman dragged her while trying to strangle her; and finally that her whole body was bruised b
y the stones the crowd had thrown on the scaffold.
“Nevertheless she was healed of all her wounds.
Left in the hands of Jacquin the surgeon, under guard of a sheriff’s officer, she asked continually:
“‘Is it not over? Will they kill me?
“The surgeon, and some charitable people who stood by her, were urgent in reassuring her. But only the king could grant her her life. Févret, the advocate, drew up a petition which was signed by many notables of Dijon, and carried to his Majesty. Festivities were being held at the court at that moment on account of the marriage of Henrietta - Maria of France with the King of England. On the score of this marriage, Louis the Just granted the favour asked.
“He gave a full pardon to the poor girl, deeming, as the letters of remission said, that she had suffered tortures which equalled, nay even surpassed, the penalty of her sentence.
“Hélène Gillet, restored to life, withdrew into a convent at Brest where she practised up to the time of her death, the strictest piety. Such,” said the little official, “is the true history of Hélène Gillet, as every one in Dijon knows. Do you not find it entertaining, Monsieur l’Abbé?”
Complete Works of Anatole France Page 87