Dieudonat

by Edmond Haraucourt

  In fact, everyone was his friend, so much did he need to be liked and so much did he radiate tender benevolence; because he had renounced his mind, his heart filled him entirely, and overflowed from him in sudden commiserations, desires for offerings and perpetual sympathies. He accosted people without knowing them, and immediately he had known them for months. He escorted the travelers who unwound the long ribbon of the roads and cheered up their journey by chatting or singing, while he chased away the gadflies that bloodied the rumps of the horses with handfuls of ferns.

  Nothing pleased him as much as giving: a facile joy for that rich pauper, a joy sometimes doubled, for his new childhood had just discovered a game and a gaiety therein of which he never wearied. The game was simple and quotidian; one invites some carter to share a frugal meal, and the fellow never fails to say, after having eaten: “A good cup of wine, with that, that’s what’s needed.”

  “I just happen to have a very old bottle hidden in this thicket.”

  One dives into the thicket, one pretends to search, one curses, one delays, and when the moment arrives when the traveler begins to mock, one reappears with the wine! On another day, it is a slice of lard, or an aune of black pudding that emerges triumphantly from the deserted wood. People open their mouths wide to marvel before opening it to eat.

  “You’re not a sorcerer, at times?”

  “Perhaps so, perhaps...”

  As for saying what or how, the great child will not consent to that, so good does the farce seem to him and so funny are the expressions of his stupefied guests.

  Those companions of an hour disappear; one will never encounter them again; they leave nothing behind them, not having hollowed out in the memory any furrow of pain or having sown any seed of care. In any case, Dieudonat is very often alone, for there is always something unknown or marvelous over there, tempting him and calling him away from the high road. If the solitude ceases to please him and he has a desire to see faces, he has soon made his entry into a farmstead or an inn.

  At the farm, his accoutrement initially amused the young men and women, but he was scarcely moved by that, and his good humor soon disarmed the mockery. In the inns the adventure was more scabrous; the innkeeper and his prudent wife were suspicious of a fellow so strangely clad, who exhibited neither money nor luggage, and who held out a ham or a fat goose as payment for a night in the barn; they sniffed a thief; more than once he had to make himself scarce under the threat of archers. He ran away then without sadness or rancor, avoiding the police as one avoids the rain; insults and downpours are accidents of the journey, and life is good anyway. Off to elsewhere! As soon as he was over the hill he forgot the country, the people or the shower; a gust of the breeze swept away the past and a ray of sunlight gilded the whole future, the future being of such short duration!

  One day, however, he espies a girl sitting on the edge of a ditch; she is very young, with the stature of a woman and the gaze of a child; over her forehead tanned by the sun, her chestnut-colored hair has metallic reflections, and her face shines, with a patina of sunlight varnished with sweat, and her features are immobile in the heat, with the consequence that she gives the impression of a statue made of bronze. Her profound mouth and her enamel eyes are open in an astonishment mingled with languor, and under the thin shadow of a hawthorn she is dappled by light. Her cows are grazing in the sunlight nearby, russet between the green of the meadow and the blue of the sky.

  Dieudonat stops and contemplates: has that grave child, with eyes as stupid and dreamy as those of her animals, so chaste in her brutality, so poetic in her coarseness, whom one senses to be almost saintly by virtue of ignorance, not emerged from a missal or a legend? She resembles the Shepherdess of France,14 who was dazzled when voices came to speak to her in the tree...

  “Good day, girl!”

  He approaches, and the candid child, under the gaze of a man, lowers her eyes like a sly dog, peeping from below and laughing underneath. But he does not pay any heed to that, and draws nearer.

  “Tell me your name…”

  “Clementine.”

  “I perceive in your basket there a raw onion and hard bread; that’s a meager feast, girl, and I have a pullet in my satchel that’s much better, with wine—not to mention apples. Shall we eat together, eh?”

  He installs himself beside the cowherd, who makes room for him, and the provisions appear; a gleam of covetousness light up in the child’s angelic eyes; she squints at the victuals, and when her young teeth sink into the soft flesh or make the bones crack, when her unctuous lips kiss and suck the golden drumsticks, she blinks her eyes voluptuously, and all of human animality spreads over her visage of a virginal brute. She drinks, and her cheeks light up. Laborers pass by in the distance. She crunches the apples, shifts her legs, laughs, showing the depths of her red gullet, and her clogs bump into one another on the slope of the bank. The bushes behind are a convenient hiding place; the laborers in the distance and up above are silhouettes who see nothing, and thousands of bees are buzzing infinitely over the hill planted with vines. If Dieudonat wanted...

  But he no longer wants, and does not even understand that the shepherd’s hour is sounding in the shepherdess.

  She lies down on her back, and her eyelashes come together like diaphanous wings; they are still fluttering slightly. One might think that she is waiting: for sleep, perhaps, or a dream? Dieudonat thinks so, at least, and nothing more; sitting two paces away from her, he admires with delight the ephemeral wellbeing that he has put into one of God’s creatures.

  But suddenly, God’s creature, without saying what fly has stung her, leaps up, uttering loud cries. Her shrill voice springs forth, pierces the landscape and flies like a volley of arrows through the vertical rays that are falling from the sun. Fear or pain? That call of a wounded animal has ripped through the calm of the distances; the curbed countrymen have raised their heads and are searching.

  “Help! Help!”

  Dieudonat leans toward the girl, who is writhing in the grass and whose feet are agitating furiously toward the little white clouds stationary in the blue sky. From the summits of the nearby hills, peasants armed with pitchforks are running with long strides, and the girl is still howling.

  “It’s Clementine, with a vagabond!”

  The men, congested by running, their brows sweating, arrive and surround the couple; the bare legs of the young cowherd are beating the grass, outside her tucked up shirts. No need to be a sorcerer to work out what has just happened; everyone divines it except the sorcerer. Blows rain down on his back and shoulders; rustic fists crush his face; then he begins to understand.

  “Sirs, I assure you...”

  “No one is listening. The virgin of the fields gets up, with the aid of women who had arrived belatedly, to pull down her skirts, and she moans, she hides her eyes behind her fists, she strives to weep, to speak, and stammers words salted by tears.

  “Is this what it looks like? Say?”

  “Yes, that’s what it is.”

  The vagabond tries in vain to deny it; his victim only cries louder, affirming, swearing, that she is a woman and is desolate in consequence. The matrons interrogate her; then she recounts, with precision, how the thing happened and how it went; as the details are narrated, the women and the men shake their heads and simulate anger, but their blood is up and, for want of anything better, blows are expended on the face of the innocent man; he bleeds, and the blows are redoubled; the sight of blood always stimulates the indignation of consciences.

  Dieudonat, soundly beaten, partially bruised, was put in handcuffs, and, in stages was taken all the way to the town where human justice sat.

  The judge was dressed in a black robe bordered with fake ermine, in which the tails flowed like equally black tears, to demonstrate to the accused that mourning is being worn for them in advance. The good vagabond was able to observe that the preliminary mourning in question is worn for a long time, for he waited two full months while his case was invest
igated. He did not complain, having a docile humor, adapting to everything and finding a new pleasure in each new condition; his prison reminded him vaguely of a certain cell in a monastery where he had once lived.

  “As far as I remember, I stayed there for seven years; it must have been monotonous, seven years always similar. Here, at least, one has the unexpected.”

  The pomp of justice obtained his admiration, He also admired the perspicacity of human justice, for it was demonstrated to him as clearly as daylight that he was well known, and that his name was Onuphre.

  But the major astonishment came to him from learning that the young virgin with the limpid eyes had neither exaggerated nor lied when she had denounced the irreparable loss of her virginity; the sweet child was pregnant! The physicians attested it, and she wept a great deal in front of the judge, of shame, chagrin and anger; she wept and cried, showing her fist to the malefactor who had got her drunk, forced and beaten her, and she recounted the episodes of the drama with such a furious conviction that even the innocent man was moved by it.

  In spite of his candor he soon divined that the virgin had probably lapsed before knowing him and that she had denied her voluntary sin in order to replace it with another for which she was less responsible. The idea did not appear to him to be stupid; in any case, he was touched by the trouble that the child was giving herself in order to save her rustic honor; he felt pity for her distress and approved of her energy.

  Poor thing, she’s quite right; she’s sparing herself miseries...

  He encouraged her with his gaze and, smiling at her in worthy amity, he confessed everything for which she reproached him.

  What can they do to me?

  They did not take long to furnish him with that information; there and then, he was sentenced to be hanged, after having made honorable amends on the parvis of the cathedral.

  It was thus that Dieudonat, who had possessed so many ladies and damsels, without anyone seeking to quarrel with him, in the days when he was a prince, was judged good for the gallows as soon as he was a eunuch and poor.

  XXVI. He encounters charity

  He emerged from the tribunal with his eyes cheerful and his heart at ease.

  “You see how everything works out? If I remember correctly, I had promised to expiate a heap of abominable sins, and in truth, I didn’t give them any further thought! Thanks to that shepherdess, I’m going to settle my account and keep my promise, without having to do anything myself. The good judge has taken charge of everything; it’s very convenient. When shall I be hanged, sir jailer?”

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  He was moved to another cell, which he observed with pleasure because of the novelty. As soon as he was alone and imprisoned, he inspected his penultimate dwelling; the lodgings lacked comfort; light, although it cost nothing, was eked out there parsimoniously; it fell from a ventilation shaft pierced near the vault; the walls of sticky stone were oozing; for furniture, a bed of straps with a staved-in mattress and a brown blanket, a full pitcher and an empty ladle. He smiled benevolently at those things, which represented destiny.

  “It’s claimed that the last night of those condemned to death is terribly spent; perhaps phantoms, devils and remorse come? We shall see.”

  He sat down on his bed and waited curiously. Nothing came. He raised his unique eye toward his skylight and judged from the pink tint that he discerned in a tiny path of sky that the sun was setting; that example appeared to him to be a good example to follow; he lay down. Gradually, the pink patch turned gray, and the gray turned blue; then the dungeon became completely black.

  “It’s necessary to admit that if this eve is stirring, as is assured, I’ve scarcely perceived anything so far. Bah! Let’s be patient.”

  He went to sleep. The rats trotted around his slumber, and he had already been snoring for several hours, dreaming of the earthly paradise where the animals strolled in amicable promiscuity, when a fantastic screech woke him with a start.

  “Here come the specters!”

  The lock alone had uttered that shrill cry of pain, which was still grating in the darkness. The door opened slightly; a shaft of light, sprung from some muted lantern, cut through the darkness; a human silhouette penetrated into the cell, and the door closed again.

  How emotional I am! And how well I’ve done to accept my fate without saying anything! Nothing is more amusing than a prison door.

  The lantern was unmasked and placed on the floor, and the phantom entered into the luminous sector. It was a woman of young but lugubrious appearance, enveloped in a wretched mantle; without saying a word she came to sit down on the bed beside the prisoner, and turned toward him.

  “Are you alive, Madame?”

  Without responding, she began to smile slowly; the lantern illuminated her fully. Her face would have been ugly without the benevolence of that smile, very soft and very humble, which rose from the mouth to the eyes like a ray of sunlight climbing a hill after a storm. She had dog-like eyes, round and devoted. She unfastened her mantle, which slid from her shoulders toward her hips; underneath it, she was only wearing a woolen skirt over a chemise of coarse fabric, tied around the neck, which her two breasts caused to bulge; her rump hollowed out the mattress.

  Finally, she said: “Good evening.”

  “Good evening,” he replied.

  They looked at one another amicably, but in silence; she appeared to be experiencing some embarrassment.

  “I’ve come.”

  “I see...”

  “You were asleep?”

  “I was asleep.”

  “I woke you up?”

  “I’ll have plenty of time to rest; I’m dying tomorrow morning.”

  “You don’t seem sad.”

  “Sad? No...why would I be?”

  “Because of…tomorrow.”

  “Because they’re going to hang me? Well, I’ve done all sorts of things in my life, but never that; the opportunity has presented itself; I’m taking advantage of it. And then, I’ll tell you: I need to expiate; I promised.”

  “You’re funny! I’ve often seen condemned men...”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, masses! I’m the jailer’s daughter...Gertrude…”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. My father is the jailer, and I’m his daughter, you understand?”

  “Perfectly. You’re the jailer’s daughter and you live in the prison.”

  “That’s right.”

  The silence that followed denounced the difficulties of the conversation. The visitor, who apparently had other things to say, waited to be aided; while waiting, she caressed her knees with a circular movement of her open palms, and contemplated the lantern with a blissful expression. Finally, she decided to cough. Out of politeness, Dieudonat coughed too. A new silence fell in the dungeon. The rats observed from the edges of their holes.

  The young woman gathered her courage and turned to the man.

  “So, just like that, you were condemned to death?”

  “My God, yes.”

  “It’s a moment to pass. It’s necessary to be reasonable.”

  “As you say; it’ll be over quickly.”

  “Oh, yes, it’s very quick. He knows his job, the executioner, and he isn’t malevolent. Only I’ve seen a great many of them, over time, and I can’t get used to it, and it troubles me, the idea that there’s a man in the house, fully alive, and that soon he won’t be anyone, nothing but a heap.”

  “That’s known as ‘mortal remains.’”

  “Exactly. So, every time there’s an execution, the night before, it’s stronger than me, I turn back and forth in my bed, and I think about the poor fellow who’s all alone in his black corner, like a sick dog, and who’s waiting for the moment without a soul to talk to him, all alone. Then, by necessity, I decide to come; so, I come, like this.”

  “To keep him company?”

  “Exactly.”

  “That’s kind of you.”

  “No, it’s somethi
ng else, inside me, which commands me...”

  “That’s known as ‘the heart.’ You have a good heart.”

  “I don’t know how I have a heart, but I believe it’s a heavy heart; no one would ever be hanged, if it depended on me. All the same, a woman, there are little favors she can offer, aren’t there, if she cares to? Even if one were a princess, one wouldn’t have anything more, and it would be just the same.”

  “The most beautiful woman in the world...”

  “I give what I have; I’m not a beautiful girl.”

  He coughed again, but he understood quickly that that response was not enough; he searched for another.”

  “You’re charitable...”

  “It doesn’t cost me anything, and it passes their time.”

  “Does it give you a little pleasure too?”

  “No, to tell the truth; of pleasure, I wouldn’t have any, without the idea that a poor fellow who’ll never have any more is getting it from me.”

  “It’s unnecessary to feel sorry for yourself; the happiness that one gives is as much happiness that one obtains, isn’t it?”

  “Exactly. I think like you, and I wouldn’t exchange my pleasure for theirs.”

  “The more one gives, the more one has.”

  “Exactly! And when I’m the most content is when they seem well content. Although that, you see, one finds it when one’s like me, and doesn’t have a liking for the thing; but them, it’s in relation to their worry, or because they’re afraid. Necessary not to hold it against them, don’t you think? They weep when one talks to them. Then, I weep with them; it makes them a sort of sister, you understand?”

  “A species of angel.”

  “Necessary not to say that, because, after all, it’s a mortal sin—fornication, so the almoner says...”