Those thoughts were reasonable, and did not procure happiness. Two weeks sufficed to demonstrate that a deplorable era had just been inaugurated. Calame presented himself punctually, every three days, to take note of the progress of a malaise that he had anticipated; he observed visages, and with his sharp eyes he pinned the minutiae of the soul, as a collector pins butterflies. His silent irony made the embarrassment more precise, and augmented it.
“Are we going to see that imbecile all our lives, then, with his mocking airs?”
She called him an “imbecile” to avenge herself for a superiority that disabled her; then, in order to affirm in the face of the enemy her power over others and her misunderstood capacities, she handed down injunctions, in authoritarian terms, to her brats, and information too.
“Look at her,” said the poet. “Listen to her, above all. Register the orders that she hurls at her children, with conviction; wouldn’t you swear that she’s tossing a coin in the air to see whether it comes down heads or tails? But hazard seconds her so poorly that the prescription always come down on the inverse side of good sense. And that’s the rule, my friend, the ordinary rule: you can’t imagine how many young existences are irremediably compromised by the tutelary care that parents take to inculcate in their offspring the precious education of error; with the same care and the same conviction the children transmit to their children the legacy of hereditary stupidity. It’s a great pity, my friend, for certainly, she-cats, sows and lionesses, instructed by instinct, don’t impose such harmful nonsense on their progeniture. How many generations of such beings will it take to raise them as far as the dignity of brutes?”
“Melanie isn’t stupid, you know.”
“Alas, no, and that’s precisely what spoils her; for, in order to constitute a stupid individual, it only requires stupidity, but to obtain a perfect fool, it has to be combined with human pretention.”
“You’re exaggerating, Calame. One would only have to say one word to confound you.”
“Say it!”
“I’m searching for it.”
The mother of the family, under the gaze of the satirist, lost all her means and became foolish, heaping stupidities on stupidities with a sort of vertigo, as if she needed to give further reason to that attentive malice, and that amused him greatly.
For fear of exploding, she fled, as soon as she saw the accused Calamitous approaching; she took her two buckets and went to the river. The dog Noiraud watched for that exit and rapidly, shaving the walls, slipped into the house.
“Good day, Onuphre!”
“Good day, Noiraud! Is it better, poor doggy?”
“Well, yes,” noted Calame. “He’s making amends for men.”
One Friday, it happened that Onuphre had hidden an old piece of bread under his coat, and he was offering it to the dog when the housewife came back in.
“My children’s bread he’s giving to animals! A big slice of corn bread! And I should slave away, for that!”
“Cousin, it’s a bit of my share.”
“Your share? Is it you who’ve earned it? You’re the benefactor! We do the rest! Better not to abuse it, all the same!”
In her indignation, she had only set down one bucket; with a heroic gesture, she emptied the other over Noiraud.
“There, filthy beast!”
The water ran across the room and the dog on to the road; Dame Melanie had to return to the river
“This can’t go on!”
The misanthrope beamed; the philanthropist sighed.
“In a sense, you’re right, Calame; they’re not as nice as I thought, good people...” After a second sigh, he added: “For that, too, they’re to be pitied.” With a third sigh he concluded: “One would like to be able to do something to relieve them.”
“Haven’t you done enough?”
The opportunity came that same day. Melanie had not long returned from the river bank and she was chopping the cabbage into the cooking-pot when her man was brought home on a stretcher; having fallen from the scaffolding he had broken both his legs above the knee.
The despair of the wife was, inevitably, sincere and resounding. Her cries flayed the walls, rebounded in the street and frightened the chickens. Suddenly, however, she discovered Onuphre, whose tears exasperated her.
“It’s good, your work! Without you, would the misfortune have happened? Misfortune came into our house with you! Get out. You have no more wrong to do here!”
Calame intervened: “Come on, it isn’t his fault...”
“Not his fault? He cured my man expressly so that he could go up on the roofs again, and you say that it isn’t his fault! Would poor Ygene, stupid, have been able to fall from a roof if he hadn’t been able to go up there?”
That logic pleased the poet, but it devastated the saintly man. Calame saw him lower his head, ready to sink under remorse and already beating his breast: “It’s my fault.”
He observed for a few minutes, while Melanie returned to sob over the body of the injured man. At that precise moment the miracle worker moved his lips like a man praying; he friend jogged his elbow.
“Hey, you!” he cried, “Hey! I can guess what you’re thinking.”
“It’s my fault...”
“You’re not going to do what I think?”
“Yes. Let me be. I’m repairing.”
“I forb…”
He did not have time to finish; Dieudonat collapsed, unconscious, his legs broken above the knee, while Polygene got up from the stretcher shaking his legs and cried: “Oof! I’m better!”
The witnesses only showed a mediocre bewilderment; the liking for the marvelous was so pressing in people in those days, and their mysticism was characterized by such a voracious appetite for prodigies that the intervention of a supernatural force appeared to them to be the most natural thing of all. Some made the sign of the cross, others dispatched an Ave, and no one thought of coming to the aid of Calame, who was buckling under his heavy burden.
“Help me, then!”
The taker of the broken thighs was laid down instead of the roofer. Polygene lent a hand with that; then, slowly, escorted by a crowd that commented on the event and recalled similar ones, the Prince was taken back to the hospice.
This time, the surgeons cut off both legs, but he did not even die.
In the meantime the town continued to discuss his case, and when his wounds had scarred over he found himself both legless and famous.
Two parties had already formed, one crying miracle, the other sorcery; as there were men in that land incapable of professing an opinion without transforming it into anger, a few blows were exchanged. Finally, the physicians judged that the stump of a Christian was good to be put outside, and they had him hoisted on to the cemetery tumbrel in order for him to be transported to the roofer’s house.
“It’s him! There he is!”
People came out of the houses.
The cart jolted over the cobblestones of the narrow streets; the recent amputee, still unused to his new platform, clung on to the bars. A multitude of people gathered in doorways followed him with terror or veneration. The cortege went through the outlying districts. It arrived. Melanie came running at the noise, recognized the Benefactor, and was not content. She had been living so well for a few weeks!
People of good will, desirous of being able to say that they had touched the saintly man, took hold of him like a sack of wheat and carried him into the house, bumping him as little as possible; the inevitable dispute was relative to the choice of the best place; the human parcel, pulled right and left, oscillating, deafened, saw himself planted alternately here and there, against the wall, against the dresser, against the leg of a table; finally, it was decided that it was appropriate to wedge him in the kneading trough, with a truss of straw, like a baby Jesus. Melanie was less and less content; she threw the people out and bolted the door.
“Where am I going to knead my bread now?”
When Polygene returned he found that
surprise, and words of frank cordiality.
“You’re my benefactor. I’ll never forget what you’ve done for me; you can stay here as long as you want, even if you’re going to inconvenience us.”
So saying, Polygene walked across the room.
“I’m limping now, you see.”
“Because my left kneecap was split since the other time.”
“It’s mine now.”
“It pains me, only to have been able to offer you a damaged kneecap.”
“One isn’t reproaching you for anything, damn it! You had a rotten kneecap, you passed it to me, and that’s it. Doesn’t alter the fact that you’re my benefactor. You’re going to be cared for here, you’ll see: worse than a brother.”19
The roofer did not dissimulate the importance of his own person in the least; he was no longer a common manual laborer but a beneficiary of a miracle, a man in favor whom the celestial powers had deigned to put in motion twice in succession. Noblesse oblige: he abstained from all oaths, talked loudly and spat a long way.
He summoned the work-yard and the companions came in chorus to render a visit to the shortened comrade. Then, before all of them, in a solemn voice, he awarded him the title of Benefactor and gave orders to his family to care for him worse than a child.
The good people congratulated Polygene unanimously, for everyone knows that it is scarcely agreeable to keep an impotent individual in one’s home.
“Especially,” said Melanie, “when he has his needs. He can’t be left in the kneading trough, that man. It’s necessary that I carry him outside, such as you see me, and that I hold him.”
Onuphre became red with confusion. That delicate affair, in fact, constituted his quotidian misery; every morning, during hours of retention, he envied the nature of the angels, and it was always necessary for him, in the end, to implore the aid of the housewife, who made it a vengeance never to offer it.
“Fortunate man!” said Calame. “Since you’re in the bread box, they treat you like a chick in a nest.”
The fact is that Dieudonat found himself too favored; his peers nourished him without him doing anything; the girls disputed as to which of them would bring him his food; when the sun shone they planted him like an espalier in front of the house or sat him in the middle of the road to that they could dance around him with the neighborhood children. And treats! They multiplied them especially when people came to see him. To whoever would hear it, Melanie repeated her formula: “He’s our benefactor; we’re not ingrates; he can have anything he wants here.”
When the visitors were wearing fine clothes, the hope of a gratuity rendered her more loquacious and she deigned to explain: “He produces miracles of a sort when he has his idea, so we pamper him, you see. He’s a saint.”
Calame glimpsed a long future of gaieties.
“Rejoice, my children! Courage! I’d despair of Melanie if she weren’t able to extract a profit from the windfall that God has provided in you.”
“What, then, is the windfall?”
“Having a saint in the domicile! Don’t you know that in our centuries of faith, the possession of a saint is an excellent means of making money, so lucrative that churches and convents dispute the fragments of the Blessed One, which are torn into strips, stolen by night, and for which people murder one another in order to have them? Do you not know, O Melanie, that monasteries are rare that conserve the totality of their saint, and rarer still are those can display him alive, as you’re going to do? Wealth has entered your home, O Melanie, better than if you kept an inn!”
In fact, Polygene’s house did not take long to become a place of pilgrimage; initially from the surrounding area, and then from further away, devotees of both sexes acceded to it in order to refresh themselves in the contemplation of an elect. Incurable cripples brought their legs to be cured, beautiful ladies gave their lovers a rendezvous there. Palfreys were seen on the road led by multicolored pages, with varvels and little bells tinkling; then candles were often burned before the door and on the sides of the kneading trough, where the trunk of the man gave the impression of a Buddha. To all these faithful, Melanie gladly sold, as is ordinarily done, medallions and small insignia with the effigy of her guest, molded in lead or tin.
“At least cede them relics,” said Calame. “It’s a great pity that you didn’t reclaim the cousin’s legs. Isn’t it possible to recover them?”
For want of anything better, the housewife started to cut little rectangles of cloth from the amputee’s hose, of which he had no further need; afterwards, she cut up his surcoat, and after that, discreetly, the grandmother’s garments, to whom it was high time to offer a new dress. The roofer’s old clothes, this wife’s and those of his children went the same way in their turn, and when the family’s rags ran out, more were discovered in second-hand clothing shops. Melanie bought some well-used garment, put it on the holy man, and cut it up before the eyes of the client.
“Very good! Very good!” cried Calame. “But you’re forgetting his hair and his beard, which can be sold like bread. Not to mention that I can see a tooth in his mouth that is loose, thanks to Gertrude, which will be worth its weight in gold.”
The best day of the week was Sunday, when idlers wander around in crowds and are inclined to devotion; in addition, the roofer remaining at home all day, the pilgrims had the double advantage of being able to contemplate both the healer and the healed. They were abundant; the commerce prospered; the matron got a taste for it. The entire household was now dressed in new clothes; the house itself was replastered, repainted and rethatched, and its mistress wore around her waist a demi-girdle of silver-plated metal from which a chaplet and a bunch of keys hung, as from the belly of a bourgeois wife.
Suddenly, in the manner of Saint Agnes, a miraculous cure was produced; in the presence of thirty-seven witnesses, a virgin who had been lame for thirty-four springs, fell in ecstasy, threw away her crutches and danced before the kneading trough, like David before the ark. Her sticks were hung on the wall, and, the good example having been provided, more cures followed in the next fortnight. Under the row of lined-up crutches, Melanie hung a collection-box for offerings.
Onuphre was desolated by all of it.
“I’m not a saint! I’m just a humble sinner overwhelmed by the weight of his sins.”
The hostess pinched him covertly in order to impose silence on him, and Calame battled with her against the simpleton’s scruples.
The old disagreements between the harpy and the clerk had vanished in prosperity; Melanie renounced treating as an imbecile a man who was able to find such good arguments to defend her purse; she valued his ingenuity, consulted him, listened to him, and even invited him to supper, for he paid his whack in kind. Every afternoon, the troubadour came to amuse himself at the expense of the crowd, savoring the credulity of the idlers, encouraging the tricks of the tradeswoman and delighting in the sad faces that his friend pulled in the midst of his adorers. He also invented embellishments, sometimes costly but always of great effect, such as gilding the kneading trough, decorating it with images, planting flowers in the straw and burning grains of incense in the grandmother’s foot-warmer.
At the beginning of lent, the clientele increased further. Calame composed a canon of little Latin verses in honor of the Blessed Onuphrius, and the little girls, arranged in front of the fireplace, intoned canticles and sang in chorus, with voices so falsetto that Melanie wept in admiration.
“One might think we were in a real church, eh, Ygene?”
“It’s bad, what you’re doing,” said Onuphre. “We’re deceiving Christians...”
“Deceiving them, you say? We’re selling hem hope, and you say we’re deceiving them? Name me one food more comforting for irredeemably anemic souls! Being happy is believing that one is, and above all that one will be.”
Melanie nodded her head in approval. “How well he speaks, all the same!”
“Calm your conscience, Dame Polygene: you are, with your relics, an
incontestable benefactress of men, even if this fellow isn’t their benefactor.”
At such words, the slattern hiccupped with laugher, which made the keys on her belly rattle; and in the evening, the family counted the receipts. Everyone blossomed; even Noiraud was tolerated in the dwelling, and figured at the foot of the kneading trough; he owed that favor to the intervention of Calame, who had invoked the precedents of Saint Roch and Saint Anthony; hieratically seated on his hindquarters, the pooch watched the pilgrims file past like an attribute of his master. People said “Onuphre and his dog,” and the people, in passing, patted the dog’s head, hoping to get closer to the saint via the beast.
XXXV. Having already lost his legs, he is disposed
to lose his footing
In the middle of Lent, however, a malevolent preacher sent by Milord the Bishop, one of those black and white monks always ready to thunder against something or someone, surged into the pulpit to denounce the impostures that were scandalizing the region, devilments that would soon lead their man to the pyre. His precise information caused the entire town to tremble.
Calame hastened to bring the news.
“Beware, good people! Beware! The torch is burning! The wind is turning! Onuphre, you’re no longer worth more than your dog’s four horseshoes. Fanatic, miscreant, demon-possessed, sorcerer, you’re all of that at the same time! Highwayman, cutpurse, eunuch condemned to death for the rape of a cowherd, hanged man escaped from prison, you’ve been seen, at the hospital, picking up the leg of an amputee in order to transmute it into a ham, and Polygene ate it! Beware, beware! You were alone in the kneading trough before, but you’re all in it now!”
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