Chapter 18

--Is it possible? Really! you are a Catholic and you keep some pie for your meals on a fast-day, on a Friday! A Friday! he repeated with an accent of the deepest indignation: has not your Curé then taught that it is forbidden to eat meat the day on which Our Lord Jesus Christ died to redeem you from your sins?

--I know it, answered the young girl colouring, but we are not able to attend to religion much. We do not belong to any parish.

--What do you mean by "we?" What is your calling?

--I am a travelling artiste, sir.

--A travelling artiste. What is that?

--I dance character dances, and I appear in _tableaux vivants_ and _poses plastiques_.

--_Poses plastiques_! at your age? Are you not ashamed to follow that calling?

--That is the calling which I was taught, sir; I know no other, replied the young girl, whose eyes filled with tears. I have always heard it said that when we gain our living honourably, we have nothing to reproach ourselves with.

--Honourably! that's a fine word!

--I mean to say, without wronging our neighbour.

--And you are talking nonsense. Can you think your life is honourable, when you do not discharge even the most elementary duty of a good Catholic, which is to keep the Friday as a fast-day? And not only that, you encourage others in your vices; in short, that wretched woman, to whom you have given that piece of meat, you incite her to disobey the Church....

--I did not think of that.

--And that little child, he continued with growing anger, that little child to whom you have given this bad example, whom you lead into a disorderly life by throwing him, before two ecclesiastics, some pie on a Friday.... You have caused this little child to offend. Do you not know then what Our Lord Jesus Christ has said about those who cause the little children to offend? But you know nothing about it. Do you take heed of the Divine Master's words, you who, at the beginning of your life, display your youth in sinful dances for the lewd pleasure of passers-by?

--I make my living as I can, replied Zulma, wounded by the rebuke.

--A fine way of making your living! You would do better to pray to the Holy Virgin.

--Will the Holy Virgin give me what I want to eat?

--Ah, they are all like that. Eating! Eating! They only think of eating! It appeals that they have said everything when they have said: "Who will give me to eat?" That is the great argument to excuse the lowest callings, and work on Sundays. Eating? Eating? Eh, unhappy child, and your soul? You must not think only of your body, which will be one day eaten by worms. Your soul also requires to eat.

Marcel interrupted.

--Uncle, I ask you to excuse this young person. She is ignorant of the duties of a Christian, and it is not her fault. This is a soul to guide.

--I do not say that it is not; I wish then that she may find someone to guide her.

Thereupon he opened his breviary; but he had not finished the second page of that potent narcotic before he was sound asleep.

LXXXI.

A LITTLE CONFESSION

"Let us not ask of the tree what fruit it bears."

CAMILLE LEMONNIER (_Mes Medailles_).

--Monsieur le Curé is a trifle abrupt, said Marcel, bat he has an excellent heart.

--Yes, he seems to be quickly offended. It is quite different with the old gentleman who came to see me at the Hospital. There is a good sort of a man!

--The Chaplain, no doubt.

--No, he is a judge. When I knew it, I was quite alarmed at it. A judge, that makes one think of the _gendarmes_. I was quite in order, fortunately. Besides, he is the president of a great Society, which enters everywhere, and knows what is going on everywhere. Ah, he is a man who frightened me very much the first time I saw him. But he is as kind as can be.

--You are talking, no doubt, of Monsieur Tibulle, President of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, and Judge of the Court at Vic.

--Monsieur Tibulle, that is he. A benevolent man, but who does good only to people who are religious and honest and right-minded--as he says. As I am an artiste, the Sister was afraid that he would not trouble himself about me, but he saw plainly that I was an honest girl.

--What do you mean by honest girl?

She looked at him attentively:

--You know very well, she said.

--But it is not enough to receive the Communion once, by chance, to be honest.

--Was I not obliged to go to confession before?

--Ah, I can explain it all now. You have been washed from your sins. That is well, my daughter, but you must not fall into them again.

--Fall where?

--Into your sins.

--That will be very hard, said Zulma with a sigh, for I commit so many of them.

--Many! so young! How old are you?

--Sixteen.

--Sixteen; and so grown-up already. But what are the sins that you can commit at sixteen?

--Many. The Curé of the Hospital has assured me so. He said to me that I was a cup of iniquity.

--Oh, he has exaggerated; I feel sure that he has exaggerated. What sins do you commit then?

--I do not say my prayers, I do not fast on Friday, I do not go to Mass.

--What then?

--Others besides.

--What are they?

--I do not know; there are so many.

--Which are those that you commit by preference? The sins which you have just related to me are infractions of the Church's laws. But the others ... you do not know what are the sins which you take pleasure in committing?

--They all give me pleasure. If I sin, it is because it gives me pleasure, is it not? If it did not give me pleasure, I should not sin.

--But, after all, there are pleasures which you love more than others.

--Assuredly. Are not all pleasures sins?

--All those which are not innocent, yes.

--How can I distinguish innocent pleasures from those which are not so?

--Your conscience is the best judge.

--And when my conscience says nothing?

--That is not a sin.

--Well, Monsieur le Curé of the Hospital has accused me of a heap of sins for which my conscience does not reproach me at all.

--My child, habit sometimes hardens the heart, but you are not of an age to have a hardened heart. I feel certain that your heart, on the contrary, is kind and tender, and that if you commit faults, it is through ignorance. What are then those great faults?

--Must I tell you them in order to be an honest girl?

--Yes, I should like to hear them; I might be able to give you some good advice. Advice is not to be despised, particularly in your condition, exposed as you are, young and pretty as you are.

--Pretty! you think me pretty?

--Yes, said Marcel smiling; am I the first to tell you so, and don't you know it?

--Oh, no, you are not the first. When I am passing by somewhere, or when I am taking part in the outside show, I often hear them say: Eh, the pretty girl! But you are the first from whom it has given me so much pleasure to hear it. Is that a sin too?

--A little sin of vanity, but extremely pardonable. If you have no greater ones than that, you are really an honest girl.

He looked at her and smiled. Zulma caught his look, and blushed.

--Where are you going to stay at Nancy?

--The gentleman who paid my fare, gave me also the address of a house where I can rest for a day or two while I am waiting for news from my company: the _Hôtel du Cygne de la Croix_.

--I know it, said Ridoux who had just woke up, it is a respectable house, the best which a young person like you could meet with. I have no doubt but that you will be welcomed there and at a moderate price, being recommended by the worthy Monsieur Tibulle. The mistress of the establishment is a conscientious lady, well-disposed and observing her religious duties. She is not one who will give you meat on a Friday. Monsieur Tibulle takes a great interest in you then?

--Yes, sir. He has even said that if I wished, he would find a more suitable position for me; but what position could he give me?

--He might find you some ... he is an influential man. I invite you to follow his advice. He is a member of the _Society for the protection of poor young girls_.

--But, no doubt, I shall not see him again.

--Then, said Marcel, I, for my part, would wish to be useful to you; but unfortunately, you are only passing through, and I also am not here for long. Nevertheless, if for one cause or another you should have need of anyone ... you understand ... a young girl might find herself at a loss in a huge town ... you will enquire for the Abbé Marcel at this address.

-Many thanks, sir.

They had arrived. The travellers separated. The young girl with her small amount of luggage directed her steps in all confidence towards the inn which the old member of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul had acquainted her with, while Ridoux and Marcel took their way to the Place d'Alliance, where resided the Comtesse de Montluisant.

LXXXII.

THE CHURCH-WOMAN.

"Devotion is the sole resource of coquettes: when they are become old, God becomes the last resource of all women who know not aught else to do."

MME. DE REUX.

As _his uncle_ had foreseen, the young Curé pleased the old lady greatly. She examined him with satisfaction and predicted that he would make his way.

--You have not deceived me, she said to Ridoux, here is a priest such as we require. We are encumbered with awkward, ridiculous, red-raced men, who bring religion into disrepute. Why not send all those peasants back to their village, and select men like Monsieur l'Abbé? It is a shame, an absolute shame to allow you to stagnate in this way. I shall reproach Monseigneur severely for it.

--It is the fault of the Grand-Vicar Gobin, said Ridoux; he had taken a dislike to my nephew.

--I have known that. He was a very harsh and a very tiresome man. Too frozen virtue which has melted, I am told. I do not want to believe it. He is the talk of the town. It is abominable, but I do not pity him. That is what comes of not making religion amiable. Although we are old, Monsieur Marcel, we are of the new school; we firmly believe that religion and agreeable gaiety ought to proceed in harmony. We want conciliatory and amiable priests. In this way the women let themselves be won over. I may confess it to you, I who am double your age; and in so far as we shall have the women, the world is ours.

While asking himself, what influence this more than middle-aged lady could exercise over the Bishop's decisions, Marcel quickly perceived that in order to be successful, he had only to be in the good graces of this estimable dowager, and, in spite of the remembrance of Suzanne, he tried to be amiable and witty.

But soon his ideas of ambition returned to him in this sumptuous drawing-room, surrounded with comfort and luxury: he thought that he had only to wish it, in order to become himself too, one of the great of the earth, and it appeared to him that the Comtesse do Montluisant ought to be the instrument of a rapid fortune.

The old lady was one of those women, very numerous in the world, who make of religion a convenient chaperone for their intrigues and their affairs of gallantry. When they are old, and can scarcely _venture_ any longer on their own account, they generously place their experience and their small talents at another's service, and willingly assist the intrigues of others. That is called _lending the hand_, and more than once the old lady had countenanced, through perfectly Christian charity, the secret interviews of sweet sheep with their tender pastor.

The deduction must not be made from this that all the devout are courtesans when they are young and procuresses in their ripened age.

Whatever may be said, all are not hypocritical and vicious. Vice usually comes in the long run, and hypocrisy, which oozes from the old arches of the temples, and from the antique wainscoting of the sacristies, falls at length upon their shoulders like an unwholesome drizzling rain, but for the most part they begin with conviction and good faith.

They attend church frequently, not only because it is _good form_, not only through want of occupation and through habit, but from inclination.

The melodies of the organ, the odour of incense, the singing of the choir, the meditation and silence, the flowers, the wax-tapers, the gilding, the pictures, the mysterious light which filters through the stained-glass windows, the radiant face of the Virgin, the sweet and pale countenance of Christ, the statues of the saints, the niches, the old pillars, the small chapels, all this mystic poetry pleases them, everything enchants and intoxicates them, even to the sanctimonious and hypocritical face of the beadle and the sacristan.

It is their element, their centre, their world. They attach themselves to the old nave as sailors attach themselves to their ship.

They know all the little corners and recesses of the temple. They have knelt at all the chapels and burnt tapers before all the saints. But there is always one place which they have an affection for, and where they are invariably to be found. Why? Mystery! What do they do there? Mystery again. They remain there for whole hours, motionless, dreaming, their eyes fixed on vacancy, their thoughts one knows not where, and in their hands a book of prayers which they open from time to time as if to recall themselves to reality.

A young priest passes by. He recognizes them. He bows and smiles to them like old acquaintances. In fact, he sees them there every day at the same place. Godly sheep! They look at him passing by, and, while pretending to read their psalms, they follow him with that deep, undefinable, mysterious look, which inspires fear.

What connection is there between their prayers and reveries, and the lively behaviour of this red-faced Abbé?

How he must laugh, and how he must inwardly despise these women, who can find no better employment for the day than to mutter _Paternosters_, devoid of meaning, before an image of wood or stone, or to remain in the vague sanctimonious contemplation of a _mysterious unknown_.

Poor women! who, better led, better instructed in their duties and mission in life, would have become excellent mothers, might have been the light and joy of some hearth which now remains deserted, and who, lost and misled by a false education and a detestable system of morality, fall into wasting mysticism, hysterical ecstasies, a contemplative and useless existence, into degrading practices and shameful superstitions, and instead of being the fruitful animating springs of moral and social progress, become the passive instruments, the unfruitful _things_ of the priest, that is to say the agents of reaction.

It is they who have caused thinkers to doubt the noble part which woman is called to fulfil; who have compelled Proudhon to say: "Woman is the desolation of the just," and that other apostle of socialism, Bebel, that she is incapable of helping in the reconstitution of Society:

"_Slave of every prejudice, affected by every moral and physical malady, she will be the stumbling-block of progress. With her must be used, morally certainly, perhaps physically, the peremptory reason to the slaves of the old race: The Stick_!" We are far from the divine book of Michelet, _Love_.

No, do not let us beat woman, even with a rose, as the Arab proverb says. She is a sick child, foolishly spoiled, who requires only to be cured and reformed by another education. The Comtesse was not like this. Skilful and intelligent, she knew _what talking meant_, and how to read in wise men's eyes and between the lines of letters. Therefore, she had learnt in good time, how to bring together two things which the profane suppose to be so opposed to one another, and which form the secret of the Temple: _Religion and pleasure_.

"And she was quite right," Veronica would have said, "for how can pleasure hurt God."

LXXXIII.

CONVENTICLE.

"Je, dist Panurge, me trouve bien du conseil des femmes, et mesmement de vieilles."

RABELAIS (_Panurge_).

They took a light repast, and it was decided that Marcel should repair to the Palace that very day.

--There is no time to lose, said the Comtesse. The Curé of St. Marie is much coveted, and we have competitors in earnest. There is firstly the Abbé Matou, who is supported by all the fraternity of the Sacred Heart; he is young, active, wheedling and honey-tongued. He is the man I should choose myself, if I did not know you. He has had certainly a funny little story formerly with some communicants, but that is passed and gone, and as, after all, he is an intelligent priest and very Ultramontane, Monseigneur would he desirous of nominating him in order to rehabilitate him in public esteem. He is dangerous.

Now we have little Kock. He has rendered important services. But he is the son of an inn-keeper, and he has common manners. Let us pass him by. There is yet the _Sweet Jesus_. Do you know the sweet Jesus, Abbé Ridoux?

--Yes, it is the Abbé Simonet.

--The Abbé Simonet, said Marcel, I know him; we were together at the Seminary. Do they call him the sweet Jesus? He was a terrible lazy fellow.

--Well, he is not so among the ladies, I assure you They all are madly in love with him. He confesses the wives of the large and small shop-keepers, and he has enough to do. The gentry used to go to the Abbé Gobin. Now he has gone away, what will become of all the sinners of the Old-Town? Supposing they were all to fall upon that poor Simonet! It is enough to make one shudder. Dear _Sweet Jesus_! When I see him wandering in the Cathedral with his long fair hair, and his down-cast eyes, I understand the infatuation of the women. He is nice enough to eat; yes, gentlemen, to eat. Ah, you do not know as well as we do, how religion gains by young and handsome pastors for its interpreters, and with what rapidity the holy flock increases. It is an astonishing thing. I fear that we must strive very hard against the _Sweet Jesus_.

--We will strive, said Ridoux.

--And we will employ every means. Go, dear Abbé, hasten to Monseigneur's, he is warned of your visit, and before entering on the struggle, it is well to reconnoitre the ground. Go, I have good hopes that we shall have St. Marie.

Thus Marcel found himself enlisted, in spite of himself. The Curé of St. Marie was, to tell the truth, perfectly indifferent to him. That one or another mattered to him but little. He had considered that it was perhaps indispensable that he should quit Althausen for the sake of his reputation and the tranquillity of his heart. His heart? Was it then no longer Suzanne's? More than ever: but he thought by this time that if there are reconciliations with heaven, there were none such with his maid-servant, and that to rid himself of her, he must first quit Althausen. Suzanne from time to time could come to Nancy, and it was much more easy and less perilous for him to contrive interviews with her there, than in that village where they were spied upon by all. Afterwards they would see....

LXXXIV.

AT THE PALACE.

"This world is a great ball where fools, disguised Under the laughable names of Eminence and Highness Think to swell out their being and exalt their baseness In vain does the equipage of vanity amaze us; Mortals are equal: 'tis but their mark is different."

VOLTAIRE (_Discourse sur l'Homme_).

Marcel felt oppressed at heart, when he put his foot again, for the first time after five years, within the episcopal Palace.

It was there formerly--five years ago, quite an abyss--he had dreamed of a future embroidered with gold and silk, but it was there also that he had seen his first illusions and his inmost beliefs flee away.

Nothing had changed; the Palace was always the same; there were the same faces, the same porter with the wan complexion, the same attendants, at once haughty and servile. Nevertheless, nobody recognized him. This priest, browned by the sun, old before his years through disappointment, almost bent beneath the load of his secret troubles, was different from the young and brilliant curate, who, full of hope had launched himself formerly into the illimitable future.

The lacqueys of the episcopal palace saluted him respectfully for his good looks; but when he gave his name, they eyed from head to foot with disdain and insolence this obscure country Curé, of whose disgrace they were aware.

--Monseigneur is much engaged, said a kind of _valet de chambre_ with a sneaking look; I don't think he can receive you. You will call again to-morrow. Monseigneur has given orders not to be disturbed.

--Then I will wait.

--Wait if you wish to, replied the lacquey, but you run the risk of waiting a long time.

If it had not been for the valet's insolence, Marcel would no doubt have gone away, and perhaps, would have abandoned the affair; but, humiliated at hearing himself addressed in that tone, he became obstinate.

--Can you not then inform Monseigneur that the Curé of Althausen desires to speak with him?

--Althausen! Ah, well! I believe that the Curé of Mattaincourt and Monsieur le Curé of the Cathedral have called and not been received, replied the valet; consequently, he added _in petto_, we shall not disturb ourselves for a junior like you.

--Can I speak with _Monseigneur_ the Secretary?

--Monsieur l'Abbé Gaudinet does not like to be disturbed, and I believe besides that he is in conference with his Lordship.

Marcel was aware that in the episcopal Palace the village Curés are treated with less regard than the dogs in the back-yard; therefore he took his own part, and he had just sat down on a bench without saying a word, deliberating with himself whether be ought to wait or to go away, when a little priest with a busy and important air, with spectacles on his nose and a pen behind his ear, quickly crossed the anteroom.

--Is it not Monsieur l'Abbé Gaudinet? said Marcel rising.

--Ah, cried the former, Monsieur le Curé of Althausen, I think?

It was the Secretary, and he aspired, as may be remembered, to the envied post of curate at St. Nicholas. He thought to obtain the good graces of Ridoux by rendering a service to Marcel.

--Monseigneur is really too much engaged, said he, but I will obtain admittance for you anyhow.

And he made him go into a small apartment next to the Bishop's private cabinet.

--I will call you when it is time, he said to him and went out.

Marcel, left alone, heard the sound of a voice in Monseigneur's cabinet, and he recognized perfectly old Collard's.

He would have been failing in good clerical traditions, if he had not gently drawn near the door and listened with all his ears; struck with amazement, he heard the singular conversation which follows.

LXXXV.

LITTLE PASTIMES.

"One thing which it is necessary to take into account, is that they are very precocious. A French girl of fifteen is as much developed as regards the sex and love, as an English girl of eighteen. This is accounted for essentially by Catholic education and by the Confessional, which brings forward young girls to so great an extent."

MICHELET (_L'Amour_).

--Let us see, little one; look me right in the face. Madame de Montinisant has assured me that you were very nice, very sweet, very submissive, very modest, in fact ail the good qualities in the superlative, and that you were worthy of entering into the sisterhood of the Holy Virgin, in spite of your youth; is that quite true?

--Yes, Monseigneur.

--Ah, ah! It is true, do you say? I am going to know exactly, I am going to know if you are truthful or not. God has bestowed on Bishops the gift of divining everything. Did you know that?

--No, Monseigneur.

--Ah, ah! You are smiling; you believe perhaps that it is not true; wait, wait, you shall see indeed. Is it long since she made her first communion?

--Nearly two years, Monseigneur.

--Two years, ah, ah! Then the little girl is fourteen.

--Only thirteen, Monseigneur.

--Thirteen! thirteen! that is very nice. At thirteen one is already a grown-up girl. Are you already a grown-up girl, little rogue?

--I don't know.