Part 2

His talk upon marriage, the family, religion, property, the judiciary, the administration itself, was directed by the blackest psychology. But his chief victim was the _curé_ of Ecoulandres, an old friend who did not take abuse without virulent retaliation, which led to curious fencing bouts between the two.

The truth is that the two men had a great liking for each other. Both of them were remnants of the France of the eighteenth century, both suffering from the same stab of disillusion which the Revolution and the Empire had driven into their fondest dreams. The doctor found vent in wrath, the Abbé in resignation. Fundamentally alike in their wounded ideality, they sought each other out in the obstinate hope of agreeing, yet met only to offend, and to spend their strength in painful and useless strife, parting with bruised hearts and great oaths never to meet again, only to rush together on the following day.

The Abbé Jaud, like his inseparable enemy, was of more than ordinary height, and without the cassock clinging to his lean sides might at fifty paces have been taken for him. The doctor's excuse for frequenting the Abbé was that he could talk to him without stooping. When the two tall silhouettes were outlined against the horizon at the edge of the plain they might have been taken for one and the same man. They were, in truth, one man in two persons.

In their last years death naturally formed the inexhaustible topic of their conversation. The doctor had, he used to say, determined to die before the Abbé, in order to force him to perform an act of supreme hypocrisy by obliging him to bury with every formality the man who, having proclaimed himself an atheist all his days, had refused with his latest breath to put himself in order with the Church.

"One talks like that," said the Abbé. "When on the verge of the great step, one changes one's mind."

"Mine will not change."

"Then, my dear Doctor, I shall be under the painful necessity of letting you go unaccompanied to the grave."

"Not so. You will accompany me. You will mutter your Pater Nosters, let me assure you. You will sprinkle my coffin with holy water. You will sing psalms, clad in your finest stole. You will say a mass with all the fallals, and you will not leave me until you have provided me with a proper passport in due form."

"Cease blaspheming, or I must refuse to listen."

"A fine way to dispose of a difficulty! Do you know where I wish to be buried by your good agency, Abbé? In the unconsecrated part of the graveyard. Once upon a time the earth as well as the skies belonged to you. You laid claims to this planet as your property, and no one had the right to rot under ground save by your leave. Six feet of sod had to be wrested from you by main force to bury Molière! To-day, at last, we have taken back control over our earth. We have conquered the right to a peaceful return to nothingness. And now, to foster the illusion of getting even, and to shut yourselves to the very end in your secular spirit, you have devised nothing better than to create an unhallowed portion in the field of eternal rest. The other day, when I went there to select a spot to my liking, did not a fool of a peasant say to me: 'You mustn't be buried there, Doctor, that corner is reserved for those condemned to death.' To be 'condemned to death' seemed to that idiot the utmost of horror. He does not realize that he--that they--that you--that we are all in the same case, my poor Abbé. Well, I chose my spot. I had a great stake driven there, so that there should be no mistake. Go and have a look at it, Abbé, for it is there that you will with pomp and ceremony, according to your rites, deposit me in unhallowed ground."

"That will never be, my dear Doctor."

"That will surely be, my dear Abbé."

A few months later, the doctor, after lying in wait for plovers on the Plain (it was Christmas Eve, and he was then more than eighty years old), returned home shivering with fever. A pleurisy set in on the following day, and soon death was rapidly nearing.

The Abbé was by his bedside, as will have been surmised. When he saw that there was no hope of recovery:

"Come, my dear friend," he began, having sent away the bystanders, "do you not think it fitting, in this hour, to speak seriously of serious things?"

"Hush," said the dying man, placing a thin, feverish finger on the priest's lips. "We have said all there was to be said, and there is nothing more to say. Take the key under my pillow--open that drawer--and give me my will--the drawer on the left--hand me also a pen--I wish to add a line."

The Abbé did as he was requested. The trembling hand wrote a few words, then the head fell back on the pillow. The old man was dying. An hour later Doctor Jean du Pouët had breathed his last.

The will when opened ran thus:

"I die in absolute unbelief, refusing to perform any act of faith. I bequeathe my fortune, which amounts approximately to 100,000 francs, to the church of Ecoulandres, for the purchase, under the direction of M. the Abbé Jaud, of ornaments of the cult, as sumptuous as the sum permits. This in the hope that the sight of such wealth in contrast with their own poverty will awaken appropriate sentiment in the souls of my fellow citizens. I desire to be buried in the unconsecrated part of the cemetery, in the spot where six months ago I caused a stake to be driven. If the Church should refuse me her prayers, the disposition above described will be held null and void. In that case I name as my sole legatee Toussaint Giraudeau, apothecary of Sainte Hermine, and President of the Masonic Lodge named 'Fraternity.' I desire him to distribute the inheritance as he shall think best among those Masonic activities most especially directed against superstition and mummery."

Under the signature were added these words:

"I shall be dead within the hour. Nothing to change," and the name, in a large, shaky handwriting, which, by the emphasis of the downward stroke told, however, of an inflexible will.

The Abbé Jaud's first impulse was one of haughty refusal, but his second was to go and consult his bishop, who made clear to him that highest duty lay in presenting every obstacle to Free Masonry. He was obliged to obey. The doctor in his grave had the last word, his face twisted with sardonic laughter under the holy water sprinkled by the discomfited Abbé.

The infants born before their time who filled in the cemetery of Ecoulandres, "the corner reserved for those condemned to death," gained this much by the event, that the earth they lay in was blessed. In that respect, at least, one of the doctor's predictions was unfulfilled.

But the Abbé's real revenge, although he was perhaps unaware of it, was that the sight of the magnificent golden chalices and monstrances ornamented with precious stones, far from arousing rebellion in the hearts of the poor, as the doctor had intended, only increased the fervour of the faithful, and provoked the piety of the indifferent by wonder at the splendour in which the power of the Invisible revealed itself. Victory and defeat on both sides. Blows struck in the darkness of the Unknown. And so passes the life of man.

III

MALUS VICINUS

Saint-juirs is the name of a village in the canton of Sainte Hermine. Lying on the slope of a hill, it overlooks a fresh, grassy valley planted with poplars and watered by a brook which has no recorded name. A very modest Romanesque church laboriously hoists skyward a heavy stone belfry amid a clump of elm and nut trees. The ruins of an old castle degenerated from the dignity of a stronghold to the simple rank of a country residence testifies that here, possibly, some notable event may have taken place. But as the inhabitants have forgotten it, and have no care to search it out, they live in absolute indifference to a thing that is not their direct business. Their village appears to them like all other villages, their church, their houses, their fields, their beasts, like all other churches and houses and fields and beasts. They only vaguely take in the idea of other countries on the earth. The newspapers tell them of unknown lands and of strange doings; it all seems to belong to some other world. What does it matter to them, anyhow, since they have no intention of ever stirring, and since nothing will ever happen to them? For them the past is without interest, and the future does not mar the peace of their slumbers. The present means the crops, the flocks, and the weather. For the things of Heaven there is the _curé_, for the things of earth there are the mayor, the notary, the customs officer, and the tax collector: a simplification of life.

Markets and fairs purvey to the restless cravings of such as are curious about outside happenings, but no inhabitant of Saint-Juirs would entertain the absurd idea that any trace of an event worth relating was to be found in his own village. Love itself is without drama, owing to the lack of stiffness in rustic morals, which precludes excesses of imagination by reducing to the proportions of newspaper items the conjunctions natural to our kind. There are, doubtless, disputes in Saint-Juirs as elsewhere, in connection with property rights, for "thine" and "mine," which are the foundation of "social order," are likewise a permanent cause of disorder among men. Trespassing in a pasture, the use of a well, a right of way, the branch of a tree reaching beyond a line, a hedge encroaching upon a ditch, result in quarrels, lawsuits, and dissension in families, the importance of which is no less to the small townspeople than was the feud between Capulets and Montagues to Verona. Centuries pass, the man of the past and the man of to-day meet on common ground in displaying the same old violence, to which sometimes even the excuse of interests involved is wanting, as happened when Benvolio drew his sword upon a burgher of Verona who had taken the liberty to cough in the street, and thereby waked his dog asleep in the sunshine.

The peaceful inhabitant of Saint-Juirs is a stranger to such vagaries. Yet a Latin inscription above a door on the church square testifies to the fact that a local scholar took to heart those neighbourly quarrels to the point of wishing to leave some memory of them to posterity. A plain stone door-frame gives access to a little garden surrounded by high walls. Behind box hedges a house may be seen, rather broad than high, built apparently as far back as the last century, and looking much like other houses of the period. A servant comes out carrying a laundry basket. A woman is sewing at the window. The door closes again. Nothing more. Mechanically the eye travels back to the cracked stone whereon stands deeply engraved the following wise epigraph: "Malus vicinus est grande malum."

I have often passed by, and while freely granting that a bad neighbour is indeed a great evil, have always wondered what epic strife was recorded by this dolorous exclamation. Was the inscription the vengeance of the impotent, the amiable irony of a philosopher, resigned to the inevitable, or the triumphant cry of the unrighteous, eager to deceive by blaming for his own fault the inoffensive being who had no choice but to remain silent? I gazed at the house of God, twenty paces distant. I wondered whether this ecclesiastical Latin might not be ascribed to some man of the church. Who else would know the sacred language sufficiently well to attain this degree of epigraphic platitude? Was there not in the mildness of the method of revenge a flavour of the seminary? A real man harassed by a bad neighbour would have responded by blows in kind. A priest was more likely to strike back with a sentence out of the breviary. So I reflected, questioning the unanswering stone, and never dreaming that chance would one day bring me the solution of the problem.

Chance knocked at my door a few years ago in the shape of a little account book found in the study of a lawyer, my neighbour, and fallen through inheritance into the possession of a friend of mine. It is a manuscript copy-book of which only a dozen pages are covered by accounts. On the parchment cover the two words "Malus vicinus" met my eye. Turning over the blank pages I discovered that the little notebook had been commenced at both ends--accounts at the front, and notes at the back of the volume. I found various items of information concerning births, deaths, and inheritances. At the beginning the date 1811. The well-known names of several Saint-Juirs families passed under my eyes. Then came the fateful title "Malus vicinus," followed by a long and terribly tangled story. It was the secret of the door that was there revealed to me. A priests' quarrel, as I had fancied.

The Abbé Gobert and the Abbé Rousseau, both natives of Saint-Juirs, had been ordained upon leaving the seminary of Luçon, in about 1760. The book contains nothing concerning their families. One may suppose them both to have been of good middle-class origin. Each manifestly had "a certain place in the sun." They were warm friends up to the time of their ordination, which brought about inevitable separation. Abbé Gobert was installed as vicar at Vieux Pouzauges whose _curé_ was to sit in the Constituency among the partisans of the new order; Abbé Rousseau was sent to Mortagne-sur-Sèvres, in the heart of what was destined to be the territory of the Chouans.

Concerning their life up to the beginning of the Revolution we know nothing, except that they remained on friendly terms. They often visited each other. The walk from Pouzauges to Mortagne following the ridge of the hills of the Woodland is one of the most picturesque in our lovely western France, so rich in beautiful landscapes. Very pleasant are its valleys, watered by crystalline brooks flowing musically over pebbly beds; they are everywhere intersected by hedges behind which in serried ranks rise shady thickets, inviolate sanctuary of rural peace. There might the peasant be born and die with never the least knowledge of the outer world. Thirty years ago specimens of the kind were still to be found. If, however, you follow one of the road-cuts under the heavy, overarching boughs and laboriously climb the steep rise amid granite rocks and thick tufts of gorse mingling with brambles, which drape themselves from one to another tree stump centuries old, you emerge suddenly and as if miraculously into the very sky, whence all the earth is visible. Northward as far as the Loire, where rise the towers of Saint Peter's in Nantes, westward as far as the sea, stretches an immense garden of verdure bathed in that translucent bluish light which unites earth and sky and gives the sense of our planet launched in infinite space. But to this day man and beast contemplate this marvellous spectacle with the same indifferent eye.

In those days, the preaching of the Gospel to peasants still stupefied from serfdom, by a clergy whose leaders prided themselves upon their unbelief, in nowise resembled the stultifying mummeries of to-day. When Abbé Gobert and Abbé Rousseau, arm in arm, stopped at some farmhouse for noonday rest after a frugal meal, their free speech would doubtless startle many a modern seminarist. Their views of the future were perhaps not very different. The ardent liberalism of the good _curé_ of Pouzauges could not have been unknown to his vicar, and how could the latter, open as he was to the new ideas, have refrained from unbosoming himself to his friend?

Meanwhile, every day witnessed the rising of the revolutionary tide. Under a tranquil surface, unknown forces were gathering for the devastating tempests soon to rage. Finally the hurricane broke loose, and its tornadoes of fire and iron shook the quiet Woodland. There was no time for reflection. Everyone was swept into the conflict without a chance to know his own mind. Abbé Rousseau, belonging to the "White Vendée," could not refuse to follow his boys when they asked him to accompany them, declaring that they were "going to fight God's battle." Abbé Gobert of the "Blue Vendée" found nothing to answer when his compatriots told him that they refused to make common cause with the foreigner against France, and that the Revolution was nothing more or less than the fulfilment of the Gospels on earth, despite the Pharisees of the ancient order, who while invoking the name of heaven appropriated all earthly privileges.

The adventures of the two Abbés during the war are not set down in the manuscript. There is mention of Abbé Rousseau being transferred to Stofflet's army, but no comment. Further on a note of three short lines in telegraphic style tells us that Abbé Gobert, "following his fatal bent," secularized himself, took up arms, and was left for dead at the taking of Fontenay. We are not told what saved him.

The writer of the little book now makes a jump to the Consulate, and we learn that the "reëstablishment of the cult," at the Concordat, resulted in the installation of Abbé Rousseau as officiating priest in his native place of Saint-Juirs. Three years later, Gobert, then a "refugee in Paris," where he "was writing for the newspapers," returned to his old home, his fortune having been increased by an inheritance from his uncle Jean Renaud, owner of the house now adorned by the Latin inscription. Destiny, after having violently separated the two men and set them at odds in a bitter war, now suddenly brought them together in their native place, where they might have the opportunity for an honest searching of their consciences, for justifications, and, before the end of life, possibly, reconciliation.

On the day after his arrival Gobert came face to face with Abbé Rousseau in the church square. He went straight to him, with hands outstretched. The other, not having had time to put himself on guard, was unable to withstand a friendly impulse. The eyes of each scrutinizingly questioned the other, but every dangerous word was avoided. The Abbé, moreover, cut short the interview with the excuse of being expected at the bedside of a sick man. They had parted with the understanding that they should soon see each other again, but two days later, Gobert, going up to the Abbé who was passing, received a curt bow from him, unaccompanied by a word of even perfunctory courtesy. It meant the end of friendly intercourse. The meeting between the "annointed of the Lord" and the "unfrocked priest" had created a scandal in the community of the faithful, and Master Pierre Gaborit, President of the vestry board, had called his _curé_ roundly to account. Could a chaplain of the King's armies afford to be seen consorting with a tool of Satan, a renegade living amid the filth of apostasy, a man who, the report ran, had danced the Carmagnole at the foot of the scaffold?

The disconcerted Abbé listened, shaking his head.

"He was a good fellow, and a godly one, when I knew him formerly, at the seminary. He is perhaps not as guilty as they say--I hoped to bring him back into the fold----"

"One does not bring back the Devil," replied Gaborit, violently. "You do not wish to be a stumbling block, do you, _Monsieur le Curé_?"

"No--no----" replied the Abbé, who already saw himself denounced, excommunicated, damned.

From that day onward relations between the priest and his ancient comrade limited themselves to a mutual raising of the hat, for the Abbé never found the courage to ignore "the renegade," as Gaborit would have wished him to. That is why the latter conceived the plan of forestalling any eventual relapse into weakness by fostering between the man of God and the man of the Devil every possible cause for enmity.

Abbé Rousseau owned the house next to Gobert's, and Gaborit had rented it for his newly married son. A party wall, a common well, contiguous fields and rights of way through them, were more than sufficient to give rise to daily friction. After some resistance, Abbé Rousseau, under the pretext that he could have "no dealings with Satan's emissary," let himself be convinced that he must refuse all customary "rights" to the "enemy." Gobert's remonstrances obtained no attention, and thereupon followed lawsuits. A bucket of lime was thrown into his well. The trees in his orchard were hacked with a bill hook. His hens disappeared. Investigation by a bailiff ensued, and the arrival of the police, who had first been to take instructions at the rectory. For a trifling bribe, the servant of the "accused" permitted the "revolutionary" cow to stray into the clerical hay field. This time Abbé Rousseau could do no less than to denounce the crime from the pulpit. A somewhat distorted version of the entire Revolution was rehearsed.

Gobert, who like Talleyrand, similarly unfrocked, would perhaps have ended in the arms of the Church, had he been important enough to stimulate the zeal of a Dupanloup, experienced more surprise than anger at all these vexations. What surprised him most was to find that justice was unjust. Having become a philosopher, however, he resigned himself. Only the loss of his friend caused him grief. He ended by suspecting Gaborit's manoeuvres, and several times sought opportunity for an explanation with Abbé Rousseau himself, but was met by obstinate silence.

It was then that, for the sake of reaching his former fellow student in spite of everything, by a word in the language familiar to both, he had had engraved on the lintel of his door the inscription which denounced Gaborit as the cause of their common misfortune. Daily, as he came out of his rectory, Abbé Rousseau could read the touching appeal which laid his guilt upon another. But the "glory of God" never permitted him to answer, as in the depth of his heart he would have liked to do.

He was the first to die. To the great scandal of all Gobert, "the excommunicated," followed him to the grave. On the very next day he gave orders to have the inscription removed, since it served no further purpose. The masons were soon at work, and a clumsy blow had already split the stone, when the ex-abbé was carried off suddenly by a pernicious fever. Things remained as they may be seen at the present day. Gobert went without church ceremonies to rest in the graveyard, not far from his old friend. They are still neighbours, but good neighbours, now, and for a long time!

IV

AUNT ROSALIE'S INHERITANCE

Mademoiselle Rosalie Rigal was by unanimous admission the most important person in the village. And yet the hamlet of St. Martin-en-Pareds, in the Woodland of the Vendée, boasts a former court notary who without great difficulty was allowed to drop out of the profession, and a retired sergeant of police who keeps the tobacconist's shop. Around these dignitaries are grouped a few well-to-do farmers and a dozen or more small landowners who, although obliged to work for a living, have a sense of their importance in the State. When they speak of "my field," "my cow," "my fence," the ring of their voice expresses the elation of the conqueror who in this infinite universe has set his clutch upon a portion of the planet and has no intention of letting go.

No one is unaware that the chief joy of country people is to surround themselves with hedges or walls, and to despise those who cannot do as much. That their admiration, their esteem, their respect, go out automatically to wealth is a trait they share with city people, which spares us the necessity of a detailed psychological analysis. Who, then, shall explain the unanimous deference with which St. Martin-en-Pareds honoured Miss Rosalie Rigal?