He tried to cow them with an imperious look, but their evil aspect only quickened, and they moved more closely about him. Am I to be murdered, robbed? he thought, with real fright. Was he, Arsène de Richepin, to be torn to pieces in a Paris gutter, and disappear forever from sight?
Standing there, his heart pounding, he withdrew his purse, opened it, and tossed the golden and silver coins with one instinctive movement towards the men. There were women, now, among them, ragged, with black disheveled locks streaming about their shoulders, their dirty hands clenched into ominous fists.
The coins rose in the air, fell in the dangerous silence with loud tinkles into the gutter. The men followed the passage of the gleaming bits of money with empty and smoldering eyes. One or two of the women darted upon them, gathering them up with loud exultant screams. But to Arsène’s astonishment, none of the men made a movement. They merely stared at the women for an instant, then returned their savage regard to Arsène.
Precipitously now, and with confused amazement, he seized the knocker on the abbé’s door, and pounded it furiously. The sound echoed through the silent and crooked alley, into whose dusty and cavernous depths a few rays of the hot sun penetrated. The thickening throng moved closer; Arsène could smell the effluvia of their dirty bodies, and hear their snarling breath through their pale lips and broken teeth. Then he heard a mutter: “This is no gendarme.” The glittering circle of eyes moved nearer, to peer at him.
The door opened a crack, and the Abbé Mourion peeped through the aperture. Arsène, with great haste, exclaimed: “It is I, Monsieur l’abbé!”
Now the door was flung open. The abbé exclaimed with joy: “Monsieur! How thankful to God am I that you have come at last!”
He stretched out his arms to Arsène and embraced him feverishly. Arsène glanced back over his shoulder, with apprehension. The crowd, however, had relaxed. A few of the men had begun to smile sheepishly, and to scratch their heads. Others, however, deprived of prey, glowered with uncertain disappointment.
The abbé drew Arsène into his miserable little house. Then, looking at the throng, he said, gently: “It is well, my children. This is my dear friend.”
He closed the door. Darkness plunged over Arsène, and he blinked, trying to accustom himself to the gloom and dry dust of the little corridor in which he stood. The abbé took him by the arm, and led him into a small and barren chamber, and Arsène found himself in a hovel hardly less luxurious than that in which François Grandjean had lived. But this chamber was dominated by a great and noble crucifix which hung on the cracked and dripping wall.
Dim daylight crept through small barred windows near the ceiling. By this light Arsène perceived that the abbé had aged excessively, that he appeared smaller and more wizened than he remembered, that anguish and sorrow had withered his countenance. But his large soft eyes, brown and luminous, were more tender than before.
He smiled at Arsène. He indicated the wooden bench near a trestle table, and Arsène sat down upon it, gingerly. He was still shaken from his encounter in the streets.
“This flock of yours, Monsieur l’abbé, are somewhat noisome and dangerous. I feared for my life. I am certain that had you not so opportunely opened your door, I should have been torn to pieces.”
He spoke with hauteur, to hide the evidences of his past alarm. But the abbé, whose hands were tremulous, did not hasten to apologize. He sat down near Arsène and gazed at him with visible suffering. At length he said: “Monsieur, they are guarding me.”
Astonished, Arsène asked: “Why?”
The abbé was silent. He passed his veined hands over his face, as though inexpressibly weary. He shrank in his habit.
“I have been unfrocked; I have been excommunicated,” he whispered, dryly.
“Excommunicated!”
The abbé dropped his hands and regarded Arsène with simple and lofty anguish. “Monsieur, I have prayed constantly for deliverance. God has sent you to me. In a moment, I will tell you what you wish to know.”
He drew his shallow breath feebly, as if his heart was laboring. Arsène waited; then, in an effort to bring composure to the old man, he said:
“I have not forgotten the great debt I owe you, Monsieur l’abbé.”
Now a deeper shade passed over the old man’s face. He said: “He is living with me still, my poor Henri. We subsist on his earnings, which he acquires in cleaning the gutters of the more fortunate streets of Paris. Too, we have not been forgotten by my dear friend, François. Once a month, a packet of money is sent to us.”
Arsène was embarrassed. He cursed himself that he had not remembered the abbé in a substantial manner. So he said: “All this shall be changed. I regret that I tossed your guardians my purse, Monsieur l’abbé. But as much as you desire shall be sent to you upon my return to the Hôtel du Vaubon. Why did you send no message to me, if you were in such dire misery?”
“You owed me nothing, Monsieur de Richepin,” replied the old man, with quiet dignity. A faint flush crept through his weary and withered flesh. “However, I knew that some day you would come. I urged this upon Henri, who believed you had forgotten him.”
“I did not forget,” said Arsène, with irritation, remembering how well he had forgotten. “But there were matters—. Moreover, I have just been married.”
“I understand,” said the old man, softly, gazing at him with a pleading look.
“You shall leave this deplorable spot at once. Tonight at the latest. I shall give you an address of a friend, who will undertake to establish you in more comfortable quarters—”
Now the joy disappeared from the abbé’s eyes. He appeared more agonized than ever. He regarded Arsène with piercing attention, as if he were attempting to judge him. “That is impossible,” he said.
“But why?”
But the old man’s penetrating regard intensified. He seemed seized by an extremity of wretched uncertainty and indecision.
“You have not told me why you have been excommunicated, driven from the Church,” continued Arsène, impatiently. “Is this a secret? Or do you wish to confide in me? I assure you of my interest, and my sympathy.”
The abbé lifted his head, as though listening with enormous concentration. Arsène repeated his last words, but the priest had the expression of one who was not aware of his immediate surroundings. He lifted a hand slowly, in a gesture commanding silence. Arsène listened also, with frowning alertness. From somewhere, in the depths of this hovel, came a faint moaning sound.
The priest rose. He appeared to increase in stature, his emaciated form rigid as iron. He spoke solemnly, and his eyes gleamed at Arsène in the dusk: “Monsieur, I must trust you. I have prayed for help; I believe God has sent you to me. Perhaps I am mistaken. But I must trust you. If you betray me, and others, I promise you that there will be no peace for you henceforth in your life.”
Arsène, inclined at first to be affronted at this audacious remark, rose and stood before the old man, his brows drawn together sharply over his aquiline nose. “Be assured, Monsieur l’abbé, that I shall not betray you,” he said coldly.
The old man beckoned, then, and Arsène followed him into another corridor, whose door was locked. He unlocked and opened the door of another chamber, in which there was no window. A sickly yellow taper stood on a table. On the floor was a straw pallet, and on this pallet, in the circle of ghostly light, lay a huddled and moaning young man.
Astonished, Arsène did not at first see the two villainous creatures who guarded this chamber and this man. Seeing them at last, he started, for their aspect was so ferocious, so menacing, that they would have intimidated the strongest heart. Ragged, bent but tall, with dank black locks streaming on their shoulders, daggers in their belts, and with bared wolfish teeth, they had less the appearance of men than of wolfish animals. Their black eyes glittered savagely upon Arsène. Now the young noble saw that on the table near the candle was laid a musket, primed and ready.
The abbé locked the door behin
d him. He said softly to the guardians: “It is well, my dear sons. This is a friend, sent by God to rescue our poor Alphonse.”
The men growled deep in their throats. They withdrew. They sat on the bench near the table, without removing their appalling regard from Arsène. The latter turned to the abbé with considerable apprehension:
“Explain!”
But the abbé had approached the pallet, and was now kneeling beside it. Arséne, peering over his shoulder, saw that the invalid was very young, hardly more than nineteen, and that he was horribly wounded. His dark bare right arm was lacerated in a dozen places, covered with thin white rags stained with blood. An open and oozing gash lay across his forehead, over which the tangled black hair fell in ragged points. His chest had been bared; it was covered with bloody bruises, and appeared crushed. His face was pathetically young, in its groaning unconsciousness, the eyes half open, and his bleeding lips twisted with torture.
The abbé lifted the taper from the table and held it in his hand as he gently examined the youth. He touched the hot and wounded brow. He sighed deeply. But he said with quietness: “There seems less fever. God is good. This poor child will recover.” He made the sign of the cross over the sufferer, who appeared to feel the presence of this gentleman, for his groanings slackened, and he seemed to listen intently from the depths of the crimson hell in which he writhed. A faint smile appeared on those broken lips; he sighed as a child sighs, and instinctively moved closer to the priest, who had begun to weep, the tears running down his face. The guardians, forgetting Arsène, crept near; they gazed over the shoulder of the abbé. One of them sobbed aloud, and now Arsène discovered a faint resemblance between this older man and the youth.
Hearing that sob, the priest looked up and smiled tenderly at the man.
“You have done well, Jacques. Your son will live, by the grace of God.”
He rose, beckoned to Arsène, and together they left the chamber, returning to the other. The abbé moved with increasing feebleness, as though he bore a great weight on his frail shoulders. He looked at Arsène with anguish:
“For two weeks, this child has lain at the point of death in this house. He will recover. But he must be moved at once.”
He sat down. His trembling hands sank on the knees of his worn habit. The faint daylight rimmed his white head like a halo. He spoke in a low voice:
“Two weeks ago, the landlord of this quarter rode through in his carriage, attended by his grooms and lackeys. You have seen the misery of this quarter, Monsieur. At times, such misery arouses the jaded amusement of the powerful, the oppressors, and they visit their tenants in their wretchedness, from some perverted desire to gloat, to laugh, to despise.”
He paused, then lifting his head he regarded Arsène with such powerful and blazing wrath, such strong white fury, that the young man involuntarily recoiled:
“Monsieur, what thought have you, and others like you, given to the people of Paris? You have considered that the world consists only of your nobility, your privileges, your narrow circle of parasites, gilded scoundrels, fools and plotters, the corrupt circle of sycophants, robbers and oppressors about the Court. Have you thought of the teeming millions beyond that circle? Have you reflected that these are men also, not beasts, not animals, but creatures in your own image, with hearts and blood and souls like your own, with the same capacity for suffering and grief and hunger and longing? These are your brothers, flesh of your flesh, and you have thought them less than your dogs, meaner than your horses, because they have neither name, nor title nor estates nor power! What influence have the doctrines of the humble Christ had upon you, this Christ who declared that all men are brothers, that the least are no less worthy than the greatest? What have the abjurations of charity, mercy, justice and compassion had upon you? None! They were only cant spoken by fat priests, bought with your gold, arrayed in the silks and the velvets and the laces you have bestowed upon them, for the promise that they would protect you from the hot and steaming bodies of your brothers, for the promise that these would not disturb your soft beds and your privileges and your power! For the promise that they would seduce these millions upon millions, and threaten them with mystical horrors if they dared to revolt and demand their place as men in the sun of God!”
He pointed a trembling finger at Arsène, and his wrath grew:
“It is you, Monsieur de Richepin, who have destroyed the Church and its servants, you who have traduced its name and prostituted its glory and its strength. You who have made it a charnal house and a stench in the nostrils of men. Was there no last bulwark for the wretched whom you oppressed, that you must take from them their last hope and force them to believe that the crucifix was no refuge for them, but a sign of their slavery, their starvation and their hopelessness? It is you who have made the Christ their oppressor, and for this there is no forgiveness in all of heaven!”
He clenched his hands before him, and shook them in his access of frenzied agony:
“It is you who have ordained that the keys of St. Peter lie in a dead and jeweled hand, that the man, crowned with the three crowns shall be no servant of God, humble and poor and compassionate, but a golden and lifeless image in a carved chair from whose hollowness shall come your rapacious and cruel voices! You have bought the vicar of Christ, Monsieur de Richepin! And with that purchase, you have bought your own damnation.”
The little chamber resounded with his strong and passionate voice. Arsène listened; unable to move, caught in a nightmare, in which his heart pounded and his limbs were dead. He could not look away from this little old priest, embued now with power and dread authority and mighty anger.
The old priest flung out his arms and stood like one awaiting crucifixion, his agonized eyes lifted as if imploring help from a blind and hidden heaven.
“Monsieur, I tell you now that out of this muck, this chaos, this suffering, this evil and this torment, this starvation and hopelessness, this oppression and wickedness and tears, this violence and bitterness, this ignorance and cruelty, will come a frightful revolt, a death and a fury! And when this revolt comes, it will sweep away, as in a burning and dreadful flood, thrones, kings, nobles, privileges, power and priests! It will destroy the oppressors of the people in a cauldron of blood. How long do you believe the people will endure, Monsieur? They have endured so long, these nameless children, these suffering men and women, these lightless and diseased and starving masses! They have endured so long that God must be deafened with their cries, and must at last stir in His remoteness and take revenge.”
The abbé groped for his bench, as though his limbs would no longer sustain him. He fell upon it. His head dropped upon his breast. He wept aloud, rocking back and forth, as if his grief were too great for endurance. Arsène took a step towards him, his own thoughts in chaos, his compassion choking him.
The abbé spoke again at last, in a lower, and more hoarse voice:
“Such a one, the landlord, came to this quarter, Monsieur. His carriage, winding through these narrow streets, struck down a child, in the gutter. The wheels rode over the child, mangling it. The horses struck at it. The landlord and his entourage laughed, as at some delicious joke. This was only the spawn of the canaille, whom the wheels and the horses had crushed!
“This youth, this poor Alphonse, seeing this, was maddened. In him had begun to burn the fire that will sweep like a conflagration through Paris, through France, through the world. He leapt upon the step of the carriage, in his excess of madness. He tore the fat landlord from his seat. He dragged him into the gutter. Before a soul could interfere, he had throttled him, he had ground him into the streaming gutters, he had kicked his face to a pulp, he had killed him.
“I have known this Alphonse from birth, Monsieur. A youth of intelligence, of fire, of thought. He trusted me. He ran to me for a hiding-place. But not before the lackeys and the grooms had fallen upon him, seeking to tear him to shreds. He shook them off, and covered with blood, made his way to me. I have hidden him here.<
br />
“We have been well guarded, as you have seen, Monsieur. The gendarmes have come for Alphonse, on many occasions. But they dared not carry this house by assault. The masters are becoming wise. They prefer to temporize, to threaten, to promise, to bribe, in an attempt to secure Alphonse. But their patience will soon be exhausted. Hourly, I expect a formidable force to arrive, which we shall not be able to resist. I expect that much blood shall flow in these gutters. But at the last we shall not be able to protect Alphonse any longer. The death of scores will not serve to save him.
“My own superiors have come to me, demanding that I deliver Alphonse to the tender mercy of his oppressors. I have refused. I have been threatened, and cajoled. Still, I have refused. And so, because of my crime of ‘interfering with the proper justice of the law, and persisting in my defiance of those placed by God above me,’ I have been divested of my religious authority, I have been excommunicated.”
He rose, approached Arsène, seized him by the arm. Now he pleaded, urgently, in wild words:
“Monsieur, I believe God has sent you to me. You have spoken of a debt you owe me. You owe me nothing. I have done nothing. But in the name of this imagined debt, I implore you to help me, to help this wretched and hunted youth!”
Most enormously moved, Arsène laid his hand on the withered hand that held him.
“Monsieur l’abbé, you have no need to plead with me. I have already thought of a way. Tonight, I shall return with a force of comrades, at midnight. We shall take Alphonse from this house. We shall carry him to a place which no one will dare assail, a hidden place. There he shall be restored to health. After that, perhaps we shall smuggle him from France. The final plans will be perfected after his recovery.”
He held the old and weeping man in his arms, and spoke strongly:
“Be of good cheer, my poor friend. Nothing is hopeless, nothing is lost. At midnight, then. In the meantime, I must go at once, and seek out my comrades, for this work.”
The Arm and the Darkness Page 51