Down There (Là-Bas)

by Joris-karl Huysmans

  "Ah, you consult the astrologer! Yes, he met the Canon in my own house, but I didn't know that Docre was acquainted with Des Hermies, who didn't attend our receptions in those days"

  "Des Hermies has never seen Docre. He knows him, as I do, only by hearsay, from Gévingey. Now, briefly, how much truth is there in the stories of the sacrileges of which this priest is accused?"

  "I don't know. Docre is a gentleman, learned and well bred. He was even the confessor of royalty, and he would certainly have become a bishop if he had not quitted the priesthood. I have heard a great deal of evil spoken about him, but, especially in the clerical world, people are so fond of saying all sorts of things."

  "But you knew him personally."

  "Yes, I even had him for a confessor."

  "Then it isn't possible that you don't know what to make of him?"

  "Very possible, indeed presumable. Look here, you have been beating around the bush a long time. Exactly what do you want to know?"

  "Everything you care to tell me. Is he young or old, handsome or ugly, rich or poor?"

  "He is forty years old, very fastidious of his person, and he spends a lot of money."

  "Do you believe that he indulges in sorcery, that he celebrates the black mass?"

  "It is quite possible."

  "Pardon me for dunning you, for extorting information from you as if with forceps-suppose I were to ask you a really personal question-this faculty of incubacy…?"

  "Why, certainly I got it from him. I hope you are satisfied."

  "Yes and no. Thanks for your kindness in telling me-I know I am abusing your good nature-but one more question. Do you know of any way whereby I may see Canon Docre in person?"

  "He is at Nîmes."

  "Pardon me. For the moment, he is in Paris."

  "Ah, you know that! Well, if I knew of a way, I would not tell you, be sure. It would not be good for you to get to seeing too much of this priest."

  "You admit, then, that he is dangerous?"

  "I do not admit nor deny. I tell you simply that you have nothing to do with him."

  "Yes I have. I want to get material for my book from him."

  "Get it from somebody else. Besides," she said, putting on her hat in front of the glass, "my husband got a bad scare and broke with that man and refuses to receive him."

  "That is no reason why-"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Oh, nothing." He repressed the remark: "Why you should not see him."

  She did not insist. She was poking her hair under her veil. "Heavens! what a fright I look!"

  He took her hands and kissed them. "When shall I see you again?"

  "I thought I wasn't to come here any more."

  "Oh, now, you know I love you as a good friend. Tell me, when will you come again?"

  "Tomorrow night, unless it is inconvenient for you."

  "Not at all."

  "Then, au revoir."

  Their lips met.

  "And above all, don't think about Canon Docre," she said, turning and shaking her finger at him threateningly as she went out.

  "Devil take you and your reticence," he said to himself, closing the door after her.

  CHAPTER XVI

  "When I think," said Durtal to himself the next morning, "that in bed, at the moment when the most pertinacious will succumbs, I held firm and refused to yield to the instances of Hyacinthe wishing to establish a footing here, and that after the carnal decline, at that instant when annihilated man recovers-alas!-his reason, I supplicated her, myself, to continue her visits, why, I simply cannot understand myself. Deep down, I have not got over my firm resolution of breaking with her, but I could not dismiss her like a cocotte. And," to justify his inconsistency, "I hoped to get some information about the canon. Oh, on that subject I am not through with her. She's got to make up her mind to speak out and quit answering me by monosyllables and guarded phrases as she did yesterday.

  "Indeed, what can she have been up to with that abbé who was her confessor and who, by her own admission, launched her into incubacy? She has been his mistress, that is certain. And how many other of these priests she has gone around with have been her lovers also? For she confessed, in a cry, that those are the men she loves. Ah, if one went about much in the clerical world one would doubtless learn remarkable things concerning her and her husband. It is strange, all the same that Chantelouve, who plays a singular rôle in that household, has acquired a deplorable reputation, and she hasn't. Never have I heard anybody speak of her dodges-but, oh, what a fool I am! It isn't strange. Her husband doesn't confine himself to religious and polite circles. He hobnobs with men of letters, and in consequence exposes himself to every sort of slander, while she, if she takes a lover, chooses him out of a pious society in which not one of us would ever be received. And then, abbés are discreet. But how explain her infatuation with me? By the simple fact that she is surfeited of priests and a layman serves as a change of diet.

  "Just the same, she is quite singular, and the more I see her the less I understand her. There are in her three distinct beings.

  "First the woman seated or standing up, whom I knew in her drawing-room, reserved, almost haughty, who becomes a good companion in private, affectionate and even tender.

  "Then the woman in bed, completely changed in voice and bearing, a harlot spitting mud, losing all shame.

  "Third and last, the pitiless vixen, the thorough Satanist, whom I perceived yesterday.

  "What is the binding-alloy that amalgamates all these beings of hers? I can't say. Hypocrisy, no doubt. No. I don't think so, for she is often of a disconcerting frankness-in moments, it is true, of forgetfulness and unguardedness. Seriously, what is the use of trying to understand the character of this pious harlot? And to be candid with myself, what I wish ideally will never be realized; she does not ask me to take her to swell places, does not force me to dine with her, exacts no revenue: she isn't trying to compromise and blackmail me. I shan't find a better-but, oh, Lord! I now prefer to find no one at all. It suits me perfectly to entrust my carnal business to mercenary agents. For my twenty francs I shall receive more considerate treatment. There is no getting around it, only professionals know how to cook up a delicious sensual dish.

  "Odd," he said to himself after a reflective silence, "but, all proportions duly observed, Gilles de Rais divides himself like her, into three different persons.

  "First, the brave and honest fighting man.

  "Then the refined and artistic criminal.

  "Finally the repentant sinner, the mystic.

  "He is a mass of contradictions and excesses. Viewing his life as a whole one finds each of his vices compensated by a contradictory virtue, but there is no key characteristic which reconciles them.

  "He is of an overweening arrogance, but when contrition takes possession of him, he falls on his knees in front of the people of low estate, and has the tears, the humility of a saint.

  "His ferocity passes the limits of the human scale, and yet he is generous and sincerely devoted to his friends, whom he cares for like a brother when the Demon has mauled them.

  "Impetuous in his desires, and nevertheless patient; brave in battle, a coward confronting eternity; he is despotic and violent, yet he is putty in the hands of his flatterers. He is now in the clouds, now in the abyss, never on the trodden plain, the lowlands of the soul. His confessions do not throw any light on his invariable tendency to extremes. When asked who suggested to him the idea of such crimes, he answers, 'No one. The thought came to me only from myself, from my reveries, my daily pleasures, my taste for debauchery.' And he arraigns his indolence and constantly asserts that delicate repasts and strong drink have helped uncage the wild animal in him.

  "Unresponsive to mediocre passions, he is carried away alternately by good as well as evil, and he bounds from spiritual pole to spiritual pole. He dies at the age of thirty-six, but he has completely exhausted the possibilities of joy and grief. He has adored death, loved as a vampire, kisse
d inimitable expressions of suffering and terror, and has, himself, been racked by implacable remorse, insatiable fear. He has nothing more to try, nothing more to learn, here below.

  "Let's see," said Durtal, running over his notes. "I left him at the moment when the expiation begins. As I had written in one of my preceding chapters, the inhabitants of the region dominated by the châteaux of the Marshal know now who the inconceivable monster is who carries children off and cuts their throats. But no one dare speak. When, at a turn in the road, the tall figure of the butcher is seen approaching, all flee, huddle behind the hedges, or shut themselves up in the cottages.

  "And Gilles passes, haughty and sombre, in the solitude of villages where no one dares venture abroad. Impunity seems assured him, for what peasant would be mad enough to attack a master who could have him gibbeted at a word?

  "Again, if the humble give up the idea of bringing Gilles de Rais to justice, his peers have no intention of combating him for the benefit of peasants whom they disdain, and his liege, the duke of Brittany, Jean V, burdens him with favours and blandishments in order to extort his lands from him at a low price.

  "A single power can rise and, above feudal complicities, above earthly interest, avenge the oppressed and the weak. The Church. And it is the Church in fact, in the person of Jean de Malestroit, which rises up before the monster and fells him.

  "Jean de Malestroit, Bishop of Nantes, belongs to an illustrious line. He is a near kinsman of Jean V, and his incomparable piety, his infallible Christian wisdom, and his enthusiastic charity, make him venerated, even by the duke.

  "The wailing of Gilles's decimated flock reaches his ears. In silence he begins an investigation and, setting spies upon the Marshal, waits only for an opportune moment to begin the combat. And Gilles suddenly commits an inexplicable crime which permits the Bishop to march forthwith upon him and smite him.

  "To recuperate his shattered fortune, Gilles has sold his signorie of Saint Etienne de Mer Morte to a subject of Jean V, Guillaume le Ferron, who delegates his brother, Jean le Ferron, to take possession of the domain.

  "Some days later the Marshal gathers the two hundred men of his military household and at their head marches on Saint Etienne. There, the day of Pentecost, when the assembled people are hearing mass, he precipitates himself, sword in hand, into the church, sweeps aside the faithful, throwing them into tumult, and, before the dumbfounded priest, threatens to cleave Jean le Ferron, who is praying. The ceremony is broken off, the congregation take flight. Gilles drags le Ferron, pleading for mercy, to the château, orders that the drawbridge be let down, and by force occupies the place, while his prisoner is carried away to Tiffauges and thrown into an underground dungeon.

  "Gilles has, at one and the same time, violated the unwritten law of Brittany forbidding any baron to raise troops without the consent of the duke, and committed double sacrilege in profaning a chapel and seizing Jean le Ferron, who is a tonsured clerk of the Church.

  "The Bishop learns of this outrage and prevails upon the reluctant Jean V to march against the rebel. Then, while one army advances on Saint Etienne, which Gilles abandons to take refuge with his little band in the fortified manor of Mâchecoul, another army lays siege to Tiffauges.

  "During this time the priest hastens his redoubled investigations. He delegates commissioners and procurators in all the villages where children have disappeared. He himself quits his palace at Nantes, travels about the countryside, and takes the depositions of the bereft. The people at last speak, and on their knees beseech the Bishop to protect them. Enraged by the atrocities which they reveal, he swears that justice shall be done.

  "It takes a month to hear all the reports. By letters-patent Jean de Malestroit establishes publicly the 'infamatio' of Gilles, then, when all the forms of canonic procedure have been gone through with, he launches the mandate of arrest.

  "In this writ of warrant, given at Nantes the 13th day of September in the year of Our Lord 1440, the Bishop notes all the crimes imputed to the Marshal, then, in an energetic style, he commands his diocese to march against the assassin and dislodge him. 'Thus we do enjoin you, each and all, individually, by these presents, that ye cite immediately and peremptorily, without counting any man upon his neighbor, without discharging the burden any man upon his neighbour, that ye cite before us or before the Official of our cathedral church, for Monday of the feast of Exaltation of the Holy Cross, the 19th of September, Gilles, noble baron de Rais, subject to our puissance and to our jurisdiction; and we do ourselves cite him by these presents to appear before our bar to answer for the crimes which weigh upon him. Execute these orders, and do each of you cause them to be executed.'

  "And the next day the captain-at-arms, Jean Labbé, acting in the name of the duke, and Robin Guillaumet, notary, acting in the name of the Bishop, present themselves, escorted by a small troop, before the château of Mâchecoul.

  "What sudden change of heart does the Marshal now experience? Too feeble to hold his own in the open field, he can nevertheless defend himself behind the sheltering ramparts-yet he surrenders.

  "Roger de Bricqueville and Gilles de Sillé, his trusted councillors, have taken flight. He remains alone with Prelati, who also attempts, in vain, to escape. He, like Gilles, is loaded with chains. Robin Guillaumet searches the fortress from top to bottom. He discovers bloody clothes, imperfectly calcinated ashes which Prelati has not had time to throw into the latrines. Amid universal maledictions and cries of horror Gilles and his servitors are conducted to Nîmes and incarcerated in the château de la Tour Neuve.

  "Now this part is not very clear," said Durtal to himself. "Remembering what a daredevil the Marshal had been, how can we reconcile ourselves to the idea that he could give himself up to certain death and torture without striking a blow?

  "'Was he softened, weakened by his nights of debauchery, terrified by the audacity of his own sacrileges, ravaged and torn by remorse? Was he tired of living as he did, and did he give himself up, as so many murderers do, because he was irresistibly attracted to punishment? Nobody knows. Did he think himself above the law because of his lofty rank? Or did he hope to disarm the duke by playing upon his venality, offering him a ransom of manors and farm land?

  "One answer is as plausible as another. He may also have known how hesitant Jean V had been, for fear of rousing the wrath of the nobility of his duchy, about yielding to the objurgations of the Bishop and raising troops for the pursuit and arrest.

  "Well, there is no document which answers these questions. An author can take some liberties here and set down his own conjectures. But that curious trial is going to give me some trouble.

  "As soon as Gilles and his accomplices are incarcerated, two tribunals are organized, one ecclesiastical to judge the crimes coming under the jurisdiction of the Church, the other civil to judge those on which the state must pass.

  "To tell the truth, the civil tribunal, which is present at the ecclesiastical hearings, effaces itself completely. As a matter of form it makes a brief cross-examination-but it pronounces the sentence of death, which the Church cannot permit itself to utter, according to the old adage, 'Ecclesia abhorret a sanguine.'

  "The ecclesiastical trial lasts five weeks, the civil, forty-eight hours. It seems that, to hide behind the robes of the Bishop, the duke of Brittany has voluntarily subordinated the rôle of civil justice, which ordinarily stands up for its rights against the encroachments of the ecclesiastical court.

  "Jean de Malestroit presides over the hearings. He chooses for assistants the Bishops of Mans, of Saint Brieuc, and of Saint Lô, then in addition he surrounds himself with a troop of jurists who work in relays in the interminable sessions of the trial. Some of the more important are Guillaume de Montigné, advocate of the secular court; Jean Blanchet, bachelor of laws; Guillaume Groyguet and Robert de la Rivière, licentiates in utroque jure, and Hervé Lévi, senescal of Quimper. Pierre de l'Hospital, chancellor of Brittany, who is to preside over the civil hearings after the cano
nic judgment, assists Jean de Malestroit.

  "The public prosecutor is Guillaume Chapeiron, curate of Saint Nicolas, an eloquent and subtile man. Adjunct to him, to relieve him of the fatigue of the readings, are Geoffroy Pipraire, dean of Sainte Marie, and Jacques de Pentcoetdic, Official of the Church of Nantes.

  "In connection with the episcopal jurisdiction, the Church has called in the assistance of the extraordinary tribunal of the Inquisition, for the repression of the crime of heresy, then comprehending perjury, blasphemy, sacrilege, all the crimes of magic.

  "It sits at the side of Jean de Malestroit in the redoubtable and learned person of Jean Blouyn of the order of Saint Dominic, delegated by the Grand Inquisitor of France, Guillaume Merici, to the functions of Vice Inquisitor of the city and diocese of Nantes.

  "The tribunal constituted, the trial opens the first thing in the morning, because judges and witnesses, in accordance with the custom of the times, must proceed fasting to the giving and hearing of evidence. The testimony of the parents of the victims is heard, and Robin Guillaumet, acting sergeant-at-arms, the man who arrested the Marshal at Mâchecoul, reads the citation bidding Gilles de Rais appear. He is brought in and declares disdainfully that he does not recognize the competence of the Tribunal, but, as canonic procedure demands, the Prosecutor at once 'in order that by this means the correction of sorcery be not prevented,' petitions for and obtains from the tribunal a ruling that this objection be quashed as being null in law and 'frivolous.' He begins to read to the accused the counts on which he is to be tried. Gilles cries out that the Prosecutor is a liar and a traitor. Then Guillaume Chapeiron extends his hand toward the crucifix, swears that he is telling the truth, and challenges the Marshal to take the same oath. But this man, who has recoiled from no sacrilege, is troubled. He refuses to perjure himself before God, and the session ends with Gilles still vociferating outrageous denunciations of the Prosecutor.

  "The preliminaries completed, a few days later, the public hearings begin. The act of indictment is read aloud to the accused, in front of an audience who shudder when Chapeiron indefatigably enumerates the crimes one by one, and formally accuses the Marshal of having practised sorcery and magic, of having polluted and slain little children, of having violated the immunities of Holy Church at Saint Etienne de Mer Morte.