Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

“Very happy to see you, Monsieur Lantaigne. You come just in the nick of time!”

“I would venture, if Your Eminence did not deem me unworthy of …”

“You are, Monsieur Lantaigne, an eminent theologian and a priest of the highest possible learning in the canon law. You are an authority on knotty points of discipline. Your advice is precious on questions of the liturgy and, in general, on any point that concerns religion. If you had not come, I was going to send for you, as M. de Goulet can tell you. At the present moment I am in great need of your insight.”

And Monseigneur, with his gouty hand, well practised in benediction, waved the principal of the high seminary to a seat.

“Monsieur Lantaigne, be kind enough to listen to me. The venerable M. Laprune, the curé of Saint-Exupère, is just gone from here. I must tell you that this poor curé has this morning found a man hanged in his church. Just conceive his distress! He is beside himself. And in such a crisis, I myself need to take the advice of the most learned priest in my diocese. What ought we to do? Tell me!”

M. Lantaigne collected himself for a moment. Then, in the tone of a pedagogue, he began to expound the traditions concerning the purification of churches:

“The Maccabees, after having washed the temple profaned by Antiochus Epiphanes, in the year 164 before the Incarnation, celebrated its dedication. That is the origin, Monseigneur, of the festival called Hanicha—that is to say, renewal. In fact …”

And he developed his ideas.

Monseigneur listened with an air of admiration, and M. Lantaigne drew up from his inexhaustible memory endless texts relating to the ceremonies of purification, precedents, arguments, commentaries.

“John, Chapter X., verse 22 … the Roman Pontifical … the Venerable Bede, Baronius …”

He spoke for three-quarters of an hour.

After this the Cardinal-Archbishop replied:

“It should be noted that the hanged man was found in the porch of the side door, on the epistle side.”

“Was the inner door of the porch closed?” asked M. Lantaigne.

“Alas! alas!” answered Monseigneur, “it was not wide open … but neither was it completely shut.”

“Ajar, Monseigneur?”

“That’s it! Ajar.”

“And the suicide, Monseigneur, was within the space covered by the porch? That is a point which it is materially important to ascertain. Your Eminence perceives the whole importance of that?”

“Assuredly, Monsieur Lantaigne. … Monsieur de Goulet, was there not one arm of the hanged man which projected from the porch and jutted into the church?”

M. de Goulet replied with a blush and some incoherent syllables.

“I feel certain,” replied Monseigneur, “that the arm went beyond, or, at any rate, part of the arm.”

M. Lantaigne concluded from this that the church of Saint-Exupère was profaned. He quoted precedents and described the proceedings after the dastardly assassination of the Archbishop of Paris, in the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont. He travelled up the ages, passed through the Revolution, when the churches were transformed into armouries, referred to Thomas Becket and the impious Heliodorus.

“What scholarship! What sound doctrine!” said Monseigneur.

He rose and stretched out his hand for the priest to kiss.

“It is a priceless service that you have rendered me, Monsieur Lantaigne; be assured that I have a great esteem for your scholarship and accept my pastoral benediction. Farewell.”

And M. Lantaigne, dismissed, perceived that he had not been able to say a single word about the important business on which he had come. But, with the echoes of his own words all round him, full of his learning and his application of it, and much flattered, he descended the grand staircase still turning over in his own mind the matter of the suicide of Saint-Exupère and the urgent need for the purification of the parish church. Outside he was still thinking of it.

As he was descending the winding street of the Tintelleries, he met the curé of Saint-Exupère, the venerable M. Laprune, who, standing in front of cooper Lenfant’s shop, was examining the corks.

His wine had been turning sour, and this deterioration he attributed to the defective way in which his bottles were corked.

“It is deplorable,” he murmured, “deplorable!”

“And your suicide?” demanded Abbé Lantaigne.

At this question the worthy curé of Saint-Exupère opened his full, round eyes and asked in astonishment:

“What suicide?”

“The man who hanged himself in Saint-Exupère, the miserable suicide whom you found this morning in the porch of your church.”

M. Laprune, terrified, wondering from what he had just heard, whether he or M. Lantaigne had gone mad, replied that he had found no one hanged.

“What!” replied M. Lantaigne, surprised in his turn, “wasn’t a man found this morning hanged in the porch of a door on the epistle side!”

In sign of denial, the vicar twice revolved on his shoulders a face whereon shone the sacred truth.

Abbé Lantaigne now looked like a man taken with giddiness:

“But it was the Cardinal-Archbishop who has just told me himself that you found a man hanged in your church!”

“Oh!” replied M. Laprune, suddenly reassured, “Monseigneur wanted to amuse himself. He loves a jest. He is a capital hand at it, and knows how to keep within the bounds of seemliness. He has so much wit!”

But Abbé Lantaigne, raising heavenwards his fiery, sombre glance, exclaimed:

“The Archbishop has deceived me! This man will, then, never speak the truth, save when on the steps of the altar, taking the consecrated host in his hands, he pronounces the words: _Domine, non sum dignus_!”

VI

Now that he was no longer inclined to the saddle and liked to keep his room, General Cartier de Chalmot had reduced his division to cards in small cardboard boxes, which he placed every morning on his desk, and which he arranged every evening on the white deal shelves above his iron bedstead. He marshalled his cards day by day with scrupulous exactitude, in an order which filled him with satisfaction. Every card represented a man. The symbol by which he henceforth thought of his officers, non-commissioned officers and men, satisfied his craving for method and suited his natural bent of mind. Cartier de Chalmot had always been noted as an excellent officer. General Parroy, under whom he had served, said of him: “In Captain de Chalmot the capacity for obedience is exactly balanced by the power of command. A rare and priceless quality of the true military spirit.”

Cartier de Chalmot had always been scrupulous in the performance of his duty. Being upright, diffident, and an excellent penman, he had at last hit upon a system which fitted in with his abilities, and, in command of his division of cards, he applied his method with the utmost vigour.

On this particular day, having risen according to his custom at five o’clock in the morning, he had passed from his tub to his work-table; and, whilst the sun was mounting with solemn slowness above the elms of the Archbishop’s palace, the general was organising manœuvres by manipulating the boxes of cards that symbolised reality, and that were actually identical with reality to an intelligence which, like his, was excessively reverent towards everything symbolic.

For more than three hours he had been poring over his cards with a mind and face as wan and melancholy as the cards themselves, when his servant announced the Abbé de Lalonde. Then he took off his glasses, wiped his work-reddened eyes, rose, and half smiling, turned towards the door a countenance which had once been handsome and which in old age remained quite simple in its lineaments. He stretched out to the visitor who entered a large hand the palm of which had scarcely any lines, and said good-day to the priest in a gruff, yet hesitating voice, which revealed at the same time the diffidence of the man and the infallibility of the commander.

“My dear abbé, how are you? I am very glad to see you.”

And he pushed forward to him one of the two horsehair chairs which, with the desk and the bed, comprised all the furniture of this clean, bright, empty room.

The abbé sat down. He was a wonderfully active little old man. In his face of weather-worn, crumbling brick, there were set, like two jewels, the blue eyes of a child.

They looked at one another for a moment, understandingly, without saying a word. They were two old friends, two comrades-in-arms. Formerly a chaplain in the Army, Abbé de Lalonde was now chaplain to the Dames du Salut. As military chaplain, he had been attached to the regiment of guards of which Cartier de Chalmot had been colonel in 1870, and which, forming part of the division …, had been shut up in Metz with Bazaine’s army.

The memory of these homeric, yet lamentable, weeks came back to the minds of these two friends every time they saw one another, and every time they made the same remarks.

This time the chaplain began:

“Do you remember, general, when we were in Metz, running short of medicine, of fodder, running short of salt? …”

Abbé de Lalonde was the least sensual of men. He had hardly felt the want of salt for himself, but he had suffered much at not being able to give the men salt as he gave them tobacco, in little packets carefully wrapped up. And he remembered this cruel privation.

“Ah! general, the salt ran short!”

General Cartier de Chalmot replied:

“They made up for it, to a certain extent, by mixing gunpowder with the food.”

“All the same,” answered the chaplain, “war is a terrible thing.”

Thus spoke this innocent friend of soldiers in the sincerity of his heart. But the general did not acquiesce in this condemnation of war.

“Pardon me, my dear abbé! War is, of course, a cruel necessity, but one which provides for officers and men an opportunity of showing the highest qualities. Without war, we should still be ignorant of how far the courage and endurance of men can go.”

And, very seriously, he added:

“The Bible proves the lawfulness of war, and you know better than I how in it God is called Sabaoth—that is, the God of armies.”

The abbé smiled with an expression of frank roguishness, displaying the three very white teeth which were all that remained to him.

“Pooh! I don’t know Hebrew, not I. … And God has so many more beautiful names that I can dispense with calling him by that one. … Alas! general, what a splendid army perished under the command of that unhappy marshal! …”

At these words, General Cartier de Chalmot began to say what he had already said a hundred times:

“Bazaine! … Listen to me. Neglect of the regulations touching fortified towns, culpable hesitation in giving orders, mental reservations before the enemy. And before the enemy one ought to have no mental reservations … Capitulation in open country. … He deserved his fate. And then a scapegoat was needed.”

“For my part,” answered the chaplain, “I should beware of ever saying a single word which might injure the memory of this unfortunate marshal. I cannot judge his actions. And it is certainly not my business to noise abroad even his indubitable shortcomings. For he granted me a favour for which I shall feel grateful as long as I live.”

“A favour?” demanded the general. “He? To you?”

“Oh! a favour so noble, so beautiful! He granted me a pardon for a poor soldier, a dragoon condemned to death for insubordination. In memory of this favour, every year I say a mass for the repose of the soul of ex-Marshal Bazaine.”

But General Cartier de Chalmot would not let himself be turned from the point.

“Capitulation in open country! … Just imagine it. … He deserved his fate.”

And, in order to hearten himself up, the general spoke of Canrobert, and of the splendid stand of the ... brigade at Saint-Privat.

And the chaplain related anecdotes of a diverting kind, with an edifying climax.

“Ah! Saint-Privat, general! On the eve of the battle, a great rascal of a carabineer came to look for me. I see him still, all blackened, in a sheepskin. He cries to me: ‘To-morrow’s going to be warm work. I may leave my bones to rot there. Confess me, monsieur le curé, and quickly! I must go and groom my little mare.’ I say to him: ‘I don’t want to delay you, friend. Still, you must tell me your sins. What are your sins?’ In astonishment he looks at me and replies: ‘Why, all!’ ‘What, all?’ ‘Yes, all. I have committed all the sins.’ I shake my head. ‘All, my friend—that is a good many! … Tell me, hast thou beaten thy mother?’ At this question, my gentleman grows excited, waves his great arms, swears like a Pagan, and exclaims: ‘Monsieur le curé, you are mocking me!’ I reply to him: ‘Calm yourself, friend. You see now that you have not committed all the sins.’ …”

Thus the chaplain cheerily narrated pious regimental anecdotes. And then he deduced the moral from them. Good Christians made good soldiers. It was a mistake to banish religion from the Army.

General Cartier de Chalmot approved of these maxims.

“I have always said so, my dear abbé. In destroying mystical beliefs you ruin the military spirit. By what right do you exact of a man the sacrifice of his life if you take away from him the hope of another existence?”

And the chaplain answered, with a smile full of kindliness, innocence and joy:

“You will see that there will be a return to religion. They are already going back to it on all sides. Men are not as bad as they appear and God is infinitely good.”

Then at last he revealed the object of his visit.

“I come, general, to ask a great favour of you.”

General Cartier de Chalmot became attentive; his face, already sad, grew sadder still. He loved and respected this old chaplain, and would have wished to give him pleasure. But the very idea of granting a favour was alarming to his strict uprightness.

“Yes, general, I come to ask you to work for the good of the Church. You know Abbé Lantaigne, head of the high seminary in our town. He is a priest renowned for his piety and learning, a great theologian.”

“I have met Abbé Lantaigne several times. He made a favourable impression on me. But …”

“Oh! general, if you had heard his lectures as I have done, you would be amazed at his learning. Yet I was able to appreciate but a trifling part of it. Thirty years of my life I have spent in reminding poor soldiers stretched on a hospital bed of the goodness of God. I have slipped in a good word along with a screw of tobacco. For another twenty-five years I have been confessing holy maidens, full of sanctity, of course, but less charming in character than were my soldiers. I have never had the time to read the Fathers; I have neither enough brain nor enough theology to appreciate M. l’abbé Lantaigne at his true worth, for he is a walking encyclopedia. But at least I can assure you, general, that he speaks as he acts, and he acts as he speaks.”

And the old chaplain, winking his eye roguishly, added:

“All ecclesiastics, unfortunately, are not of this kind.”

“Nor are all soldiers,” said the general, smiling a very wan smile.

And the two men exchanged a sympathetic glance, in their common hatred of intrigue and falsity.

Abbé de Lalonde, who was, however, capable of a little guile, wound up his eulogy of Abbé Lantaigne with this touch:

“He is an excellent priest, and if he had been a soldier he would have made an excellent soldier.”

But the general demanded brusquely:

“Well! what can I do for him?”

“Help him to slip on the violet stockings, which he has richly deserved, general. He is an admitted candidate for the vacant bishopric of Tourcoing. I beg you to support him with the Minister of Justice and Religion, whom, I am told, you know personally.”

The general shook his head. In fact, he had never asked anything of the Government. Cartier de Chalmot, as a royalist and a Christian, regarded the Republic with a disapproval that was complete, silent and whole-hearted. Reading no newspapers and talking with no one, he undervalued on principle a civil power of whose doings he knew nothing. He obeyed and held his tongue. He was admired in the châteaux of the neighbourhood for his melancholy resignation, inspired by the sentiment of duty, strengthened by a profound scorn for everything which was not military, intensified by a growing difficulty in thought and speech rendered obvious and affecting by the progress of an affection of the liver.

It was well known that General Cartier de Chalmot remained a faithful royalist in the depths of his heart. It was not so well known that one day in the year 1893 his heart had received one of those shocks which can only be compared with what Christians describe as the workings of grace, and which bring with the force of a thunderbolt deep and unlooked-for peace to a man’s innermost being. This event took place at five o’clock in the evening of the 4th of June in the drawing-rooms of the prefecture. There, among the flowers that Madame Worms-Clavelin had herself arranged, President Carnot, on his way through the town, had received the officers of the garrison. General Cartier de Chalmot, being present with his staff, saw the President for the first time, and instantly, for no apparent reason, on no explicable grounds, was pierced through and through by a terrible admiration. In a second, before the gentle gravity and honest inflexibility of the head of the State, all his prejudices fell away. He forgot that this sovereign was a civilian. He revered and loved him. He suddenly felt himself bound with ties of sympathy and respect to this man, sad and sallow like himself, but august and serene like a ruler. He uttered with a soldierly stutter the official compliment which he had learnt by heart. The President answered him: “I thank you in the name of the Republic and of our country which you loyally serve.” At this, all the devotion to an absent prince which General Cartier de Chalmot had stored up for twenty-five years welled forth from his heart towards the President, whose quiet face remained surprisingly immobile, and who spoke in a melancholy voice with no movement of cheek or lips, on which his black beard set a seal. On this waxen face, in these slow, honest eyes, on this feeble breast, across which blazed the broad red ribbon of his order, in the whole figure of this suffering automaton, the general perceived both the dignity of the leader, and the affliction of the ill-fated man who has never laughed. With his admiration there was mingled a strain of tenderness.

A year later he heard of the tragic end of this President for whose safety he would willingly have died, and whom he henceforth pictured in his thoughts as dark and stiff, like the flag rolled round its staff in the barracks and covered with its case.

From that time he had ignored the civil rulers of France. He cared to know nothing save of his military superiors, whom he obeyed with melancholy punctiliousness. Pained at the idea of answering the venerable Abbé de Lalonde by a refusal, he bethought himself for a moment, and then gave his reasons.

“A matter of principle. I never ask anything of the government. You agree with me, don’t you? … For from the moment that one lays down a rule for oneself …”

The chaplain looked at him with an expression of sadness that seemed as though thrown over his happy old face.

“Oh! how could I agree with you, general—I who beg of everybody? I am a hardened beggar. For God and the poor, I have pleaded with all the powers of the day, with King Louis Philippe’s ministers, with those of the provisional government, with Napoleon III.’s ministers, with those of the _Ordre Moral_ and those of the present Republic. They have all helped me to do some good. And since you know the Minister of Religion …”

At this moment a shrill voice called in the passage:

“Poulot! Poulot!”

And a stout lady in a morning wrapper, her white hair crowned with hair-curlers, entered the room with a rush. It was Madame Cartier de Chalmot, who was calling the general to déjeuner.

She had already shaken her husband with imperious tenderness, and exclaimed once more: “Poulot!” before she became aware of the presence of the old priest crushed up against the door.

She apologised for her untidy dress. She had had so much to do this morning! Three daughters, two sons, an orphan nephew and her husband—seven children to look after!

“Ah! madame,” said the abbé, “it is God himself who has sent you! You will be my providence.”

“Your providence, monsieur l’abbé!”

In her grey dressing-gown her figure revealed the ample dignity of classic motherhood. On her beaming moustachioed face shone a matronly pride; her large gestures expressed at once the briskness of a housewife habituated to work and the ease of a woman accustomed to official deference. The general disappeared behind her. She was his household goddess and his guardian angel, this Pauline who carried on her brave, energetic shoulders all the burden of this poverty-stricken, ostentatious house, who played the part of seamstress to the family, as well as cook, dressmaker, chambermaid, governess, apothecary, and even milliner with a frankly gaudy taste, and yet showed at big dinners and receptions an imperturbable good breeding, a commanding profile, and shoulders that were still beautiful. It was commonly said in the division that if the general became Minister of War, his wife would do the honours of the hôtel in the Boulevard Saint-Germain[F] in capital fashion.

[F] Where the French War Office is situated.

The energy of the general’s wife spread freely over into the outer world and flourished vigorously in pious and charitable works. Madame Cartier de Chalmot was lady patroness of three crêches and a dozen charities recommended by the Cardinal-Archbishop. Monseigneur Charlot showed a special predilection for this lady, and said to her sometimes, with his man-of-the-world smile: “You are a general in the army of Christian charity.” And, being a professor of orthodoxy, Monseigneur Charlot never failed to add: “And there is no charity outside the Christian charity; for the Church alone is in a position to solve the social problems whose difficulties perplex the minds of all and cause special anxiety to our paternal heart.”

This was just what Madame Cartier de Chalmot thought. She was lavishly, glaringly pious, and not free from the rather loud magnificence that was aptly accented by the sound of her voice and the flowers in her hats. Her faith, voluminous and decorative like the bosom which enshrined it, made a splendid show in drawing-rooms. By the breadth of her religious sentiments she had done much harm to her husband. But neither of them paid any heed to this. The general also believed in the Christian creed, although this would not have prevented him from having the Cardinal-Archbishop arrested on a written order from the Minister of War. Yet he was regarded with suspicion by the democracy. And the _préfet_, M. Worms-Clavelin himself, though little of a fanatic, regarded General Cartier de Chalmot as a dangerous man. This was his wife’s fault. She was ambitious, but the soul of honour and incapable of betraying her God.

“How can I be your providence, monsieur l’abbé?”

And when she heard that the point at issue was the raising to the bishopric of Tourcoing of Abbé Lantaigne, a man of such noble, steadfast piety, she caught fire and showed her courage.

“Those are the bishops we want. M. Lantaigne ought to be nominated.”

The old chaplain began to make use of this happy valiancy.

“Then, madame, induce the general to write to the Minister of Religion, who turns out to be his friend.”

She shook the crown of curlers on her head vigorously.

“No, monsieur l’abbé. My husband will not write. It is useless to persist. He thinks that a soldier ought never to ask for anything. He is right. My father was of this opinion. You knew him, monsieur l’abbé, and you know that he was a fine man and a good soldier.”

The old Army chaplain smote his forehead.

“Colonel de Balny! Yes, of course, I knew him. He was a hero and a Christian.”

General Cartier de Chalmot interposed:

“My father-in-law, Colonel de Balny, was chiefly commendable for having mastered in their entirety the regulations of 1829 on cavalry manœuvres. These regulations were so complicated that few officers mastered them in their completeness. They were afterwards withdrawn, and Colonel de Balny conceived such a disgust at this that it hastened his end. New regulations were imposed, possessing the unquestionable advantage of simplification. Yet I question whether the old state of things was not preferable. You must exact much from a cavalryman in order to get a little out of him. It is the same with the foot-soldier.”

And the general began anxiously to manipulate his division of cards drawn up in the boxes.

Madame Cartier de Chalmot had heard these same words very often. She always made the same reply to them. Once more this time she said:

“Poulot! how can you say that papa died of chagrin, when he fell down in an apoplectic fit at a review?”

The old chaplain, by a crafty wile, brought the conversation back to the subject which interested him.

“Ah! madame, your excellent father, Colonel de Balny, would have certainly appreciated the character of M. Lantaigne, and he would have offered up prayers that this priest might be raised to a bishopric.”

“I also, monsieur l’abbé, will offer up prayers for that,” answered the general’s wife. “My husband cannot, ought not to make any application. But if you think that my intervention will be useful, I will drop a word to Monseigneur. He doesn’t terrify me at all, our Archbishop.”

“Doubtless a word from your mouth …” murmured the old man. “... The ear of Monseigneur Chariot will be open to it.”

The general’s wife announced that she would be seeing the Archbishop at the inauguration of the Pain de Saint Antoine, of which she was president, and that there …

She interrupted herself:

“The cutlets! … Excuse me, monsieur l’abbé …”

She rushed out on to the landing and shouted orders to the cook from the staircase. Then she reappeared in the room.

“And there I shall draw him aside, and beg him to speak to the nuncio in favour of M. Lantaigne. Is that the right way to go to work?”

The old chaplain made as if to take her hands, yet without actually doing so.

“That’s just the way, madame. I am sure that the good Saint Anthony of Padua will be with you and will help you to persuade Monseigneur Charlot. He is a great saint. I mean Saint Anthony. … Ladies ought not to believe that he devotes himself exclusively to finding the jewels which they have lost. In heaven he has something better to do. To beg him for bread for the poor, that is assuredly far worthier. You have realised that, dear madame. The Pain de Saint Antoine is a fine work. I must inform myself more fully about it. But I shall take good care not to breathe a word of it to my good sisters.”

He was referring to the Dames du Salut, to whom he was chaplain.

“They have already too many undertakings. They are excellent sisters, but too much absorbed in trifling duties, and far too petty, the poor ladies.”

He sighed, recalling the time when he was a regimental chaplain, the tragic days of the war, when he accompanied the wounded stretched out on an ambulance litter and gave them a drop of brandy. For it was by doles of tobacco and spirits that he was in the habit of carrying on his apostolic labours. He again gave way to his love of talking about the fighting round Metz and told some anecdotes. He had several concerning a certain sapper, a native of Lorraine called Larmoise, a man full of resources.

“I did not tell you, general, how this great devil of a sapper used to bring me a bag of potatoes every morning. One day I asked him where he picked them up. Says he: ‘In the enemy’s lines.’ ‘You villain,’ I say to him. Thereupon he explains to me how he has found some fellow-countrymen among the German guards. ‘Fellow-countrymen?’ ‘Yes, fellow-countrymen, fellows from home. We are only separated by the frontier. We embraced one another, we talked about our relatives and friends. And they said to me: ”You can take as many potatoes as you like.”’”

And the chaplain added:

“This simple incident made me feel better than any reasoning how cruel and unjust war is.”

“Yes,” said the general, “these annoying intimacies occasionally occur at the points of contact of two armies. They must be sternly repressed, having due regard, of course, to the circumstances.”

VII

On the promenade along the ramparts that evening Abbé Lantaigne, head of the high seminary, fell in with M. Bergeret, a professor of literature who was considered a man of remarkable, but eccentric character. M. Lantaigne forgave him his scepticism and chatted with him willingly, whenever he met him under the elm-trees on the Mall. On his side, M. Bergeret had no objection to studying the mind of an intelligent priest. They both knew that their conversations on a seat in the promenade were equally displeasing to the dean of the Faculty and to the Archbishop. But Abbé Lantaigne knew nothing about worldly prudence, and M. Bergeret, very weary, discouraged, and disillusioned, had given up caring for fruitless considerations of policy.

Sceptical within the bounds of decorum and good taste, the assiduous devotions of his wife and the endless catechisms of his daughters had resulted in his being impeached of clericalism in the ministerial bureaux, whilst certain speeches that had been attributed to him were used against him, both by professing Catholics and professional patriots. Foiled in his ambitions, he still meant to live in his own way, and having failed to learn how to please, tried discreetly to displease.

On this peaceful and radiant evening M. Bergeret, seeing the head of the high seminary coming along his usual road, advanced several paces to meet the priest and joined him under the first elm-trees on the Mall.

“To me the place is happy where I meet you,” said Abbé Lantaigne, who loved, before a university man, to air his harmless literary affectations.

In a few very vague phrases they made a mutual confession of the great pity aroused in them both by the world in which they lived. It was Abbé Lantaigne alone who deplored the decay of this ancient city, so rich, during the Middle Ages, in knowledge and thought, and now subject to a few petty tradesmen and freemasons. In frank opposition to this, M. Bergeret said:

“In days gone by men were just what they are now; that is to say, moderately good and moderately bad.”

“Not so!” answered M. Lantaigne. “Men were vigorous in character and strong in doctrine when Raymond the Great, surnamed the balsamic doctor, taught in this town the epitome of human knowledge.”

The professor and the priest sat down on a stone bench where two old men, pale-faced and decrepit, were already sitting without saying a word. In front of this bench, green meadows, wreathed in light mist, stretched gently downwards to the poplars that fringed the river.

“Monsieur l’abbé,” said the professor, “I have, like everybody else, turned over the pages of the _Hortus_ and the _Thesaurus_ of Raymond the Great in the municipal library. Moreover, I have read the new book that Abbé Cazeaux has devoted to the balsamic doctor. Now, what struck me in that book …”

“Abbé Cazeaux is one of my pupils,” interrupted M. Lantaigne. “His book on Raymond the Great is based on facts, which is praiseworthy; it is founded on theology, which is still more praiseworthy and rare, for theology is lost in this decadent France, which was the greatest of the nations as long as she was the most theological.”

“This book of M. Cazeaux’s,” answered M. Bergeret, “appeared to me to be interesting from several points of view. For want of a knowledge of theology I lost myself in it more than once. Yet I fancied I could see in it that the blessed Raymond, rigidly orthodox monk as he was, claimed for the teacher the right of professing two contradictory opinions on the same subject, the one theological and in accordance with revelation, the other purely human and based on experience or reason. The balsamic doctor, whose statue adorns so sternly the courtyard of the Archbishop’s palace, maintained, according to what I have been able to understand, that one and the same man may deny, as an observer or as a disputant, the truths which, as a Christian, he believes and confesses. And it seemed to me that your pupil, M. Cazeaux, approved of a system so strange.”

Abbé Lantaigne, quite animated by what he had just heard, drew his red silk handkerchief from his pocket, unfurled it like a flag, and with flushed face and mouth wide open flung himself fearlessly on the challenge thrown down.

“Monsieur Bergeret, as to whether one can have, on the same subject, two distinct opinions, the one theological and of divine origin, the other purely rational or experimental and of human origin, that is a question which I answer in the affirmative. And I am going to prove to you the truth of this apparent contradiction by a most common instance. When, seated in your study, before your table loaded with books and papers, you exclaim, ‘It is incredible! I have just this moment put my paper-knife on this table and now I do not see it there. I see it, I’m sure I see it, and yet I no longer see it,’ when you think in this way, Monsieur Bergeret, you have two contradictory opinions with respect to the same object, one that your paper-knife is on the table because it ought to be there: that opinion is based on reason; the other that your paper-knife is not on the table, because you do not see it there: that opinion is based on experience. There you have two irreconcilable opinions on the same subject. And they are simultaneous. You affirm at the same time both the presence and the absence of the paper-knife. You exclaim, ‘It is there, I am sure of it,’ at the very moment you are proving it is not there.”

And, having finished his demonstration, Abbé Lantaigne waved his chequered, snuff-besprinkled silk handkerchief, like the flaming banner of scholasticism.

But the professor of literature was not convinced. He had no difficulty in showing the emptiness of this sophism. He replied quite gently in the rather weak voice that he habitually husbanded, that, in looking for his paper-knife, he experienced fear and hope, by turns and not simultaneously, the result of an uncertainty which could not last; for it ended by his making sure whether the knife was on the table or not.

“There is nothing, monsieur l’abbé,” added he, “nothing in this instance of the boxwood knife that is applicable to the contradictory judgment which the blessed Raymond, or M. Cazeaux, or you yourself, might form on such or such a fact recorded in the Bible, when you state that it is at the same time both true and false. Allow me, in my turn, to give you an instance. I choose,—not, of course, in order to ensnare you, but because this incident comes of its own accord into my mind,—I choose the story of Joshua causing the sun to stand still. …”

M. Bergeret passed his tongue over his lips and smiled. For in truth he was, in the secret places of his soul, a Voltairean:

“... Joshua causing the sun to stand still. Will you tell me, straight out, monsieur l’abbé, that Joshua made the sun stand still and did not make it stand still?”

The head of the high seminary had by no means an air of embarrassment. Splendid controversialist as he was, he turned to his opponent with flashing eyes and heaving breast.

“After every reservation has been expressly made with respect to the true interpretation, both literal and spiritual, of the passage in Judges which you attack and against which so many unbelievers have blindly dashed themselves before you, I will reply to you fearlessly. Yes, I have two distinct opinions as to the interpretation of this miracle. I believe as a natural philosopher, for reasons drawn from physics, that is to say, from observation, that the earth turns round a motionless sun. And as a theologian I believe that Joshua caused the sun to stand still. There is here a contradiction. But this contradiction is not irreconcilable. I will prove it to you at once. For the idea which we form of the sun is purely human; it only concerns man and could not be applicable to God. For man, the sun does not turn round the earth. I grant it, and I am willing to decide in favour of Copernicus. But I will not go so far as to force God to become a Copernican like myself, and I shall not inquire whether, for God, the sun turns or does not turn round the earth. To speak truly, I had no need of the text of Judges in order to know that our human astronomy is not the astronomy of God. Speculations as to time, number and space do not embrace infinity, and it is a mad idea to wish to entangle the Holy Spirit in a physical or mathematical difficulty.”

“Then,” asked the professor, “you admit that, even in mathematics, it is permissible to have two contradictory opinions, the one human, the other divine?”

“I will not risk being reduced to that extremity,” answered Abbé Lantaigne. “There is in mathematics an exactitude which practically reconciles it with absolute truth. Numbers, on the contrary, are only dangerous because the reason, being tempted to seek in them for its own principle, runs the risk of going so far astray as to see nothing in the universe save a system of numbers. This error has been condemned by the Church. Yet I will answer you boldly that human mathematics are not divine mathematics. Doubtless, however, it would not be possible for one to contradict the other, and I prefer to believe that you do not wish to make me say that for God three and three can make nine. But we do not know all the properties of numbers, and God does.

“I hear that there are priests, regarded as eminent, who maintain that science ought to agree with theology. I detest this impertinence, I will say this impiety, for there is a certain impiety in making the immutable and absolute truth walk in harmony with that imperfect and provisional truth which is called science. This madness of assimilating reality to appearance, the body to the soul, has produced a multitude of miserable, baneful opinions through which the apologists of this period have allowed their foolhardy feebleness to be seen. One, a distinguished member of the Society of Jesus, admits the plurality of inhabited worlds; he allows that intelligent beings may inhabit Mars and Venus, provided that to the earth there be reserved the privilege of the Cross, by which it again becomes unique and peculiar in the Creation. The other, a man who not without some merit occupied in the Sorbonne the chair of theology which has since been abolished, grants that the geologist can trace the vestiges of preadamites and reduces the Genesis of the Bible to the organisation of one province of the universe for the sojourn of Adam and his seed. O dull folly! O pitiable boldness! O ancient novelties, already condemned a hundred times! O violation of sacred unity! How much better, like Raymond the Great and his historian, to proclaim that science and religion ought no more to be confused with each other than the relative and the absolute, the finite and the infinite, the darkness and the light!”

“Monsieur l’abbé,” said the professor, “you despise science.”

The priest shook his head.

“Not so, Monsieur Bergeret, not so! I hold, on the contrary, according to the example of Saint Thomas Aquinas and all the great doctors, that science and philosophy ought to be held in high esteem in the schools.

“One does not despise science without despising reason; one does not despise reason without despising man; one does not despise man without insulting God. The rash scepticism which lays the blame on human reason is the first step towards that criminal scepticism that defies the divine mysteries. I value science as a gift which comes to us from God. But if God has given us science, he has not given us _His_ science. His geometry is not ours. Ours speculates on one plane or in space; His works in infinitude. He has not deceived us: that is why I consider that there is a true human science. He has not taught us all: that is why I declare the powerlessness of this science, even though true, to agree with the truth of truths. And this discrepancy, every time that it occurs between the two, I see without fear: it proves nothing, neither against heaven, nor earth.”

M. Bergeret confessed that this system seemed to him as clever as it was bold, and ultimately consonant with the interests of the faith.

“But,” added he, “it is not our Archbishop’s doctrine. In his pastoral letters, Monseigneur Charlot speaks voluntarily of the truths of religion being confirmed by the discoveries of science, and especially by the experiments of M. Pasteur.”

“Oh!” answered Abbé Lantaigne in a nasal voice that hissed with scorn, “His Eminence observes, in philosophy at least, the vow of evangelical poverty.”

At the moment when this phrase was lashing the air beneath the quincunxes, a corpulent great-coat, capped by a wide clerical hat, passed in front of the bench.

“Speak lower, monsieur l’abbé,” said the professor; “Abbé Guitrel hears you.”

VIII

M. _le Préfet_ Worms-Clavelin was chatting with Abbé Guitrel in the shop of Rondonneau junior, goldsmith and jeweller. He leant back in an arm-chair and crossed his legs so that the sole of one of his boots stuck up towards the placid old man’s chin.

“Monsieur l’abbé, it is useless for you to speak: you are an enlightened priest; you see in religion a collection of moral precepts, a necessary discipline, and not a set of antiquated dogmas, of mysteries whose absurdity is only too little mysterious.”

As a priest, M. Guitrel had excellent rules of conduct. One of these rules was to avoid scandal and to hold his tongue, rather than expose the truth to the mockery of unbelievers. And, as this precaution agreed with the bent of his character, he observed it scrupulously. But M. _le préfet_ Worms-Clavelin was lacking in discretion. His vast, fleshy nose, his thick lips, seemed like a powerful apparatus of suction and absorption, whilst his receding forehead, above his great pale eyes, betrayed his opposition to all moral delicacy. He persisted, marshalled against Christian dogmas the arguments of the masonic lodges and the literary cafés, and concluded by saying that it was impossible for an intelligent man to believe a word of the Catechism. Then, bringing down his fat, beringed hand on the priest’s shoulder, he said:

“You don’t answer, my dear abbé; you are of my opinion.”

M. Guitrel, in some sort a martyr, was forced to confess his faith.

“Pardon me, monsieur _le préfet_; that little book, the Catechism, which it is the fashion to despise in certain quarters, contains more truths than the great treatises on philosophy which make such a vast noise in the world. The Catechism unites the most learned metaphysics with the most effective simplicity. This appreciation is not mine; it is that of an eminent philosopher, M. Jules Simon, who ranks the Catechism above Plato’s _Timæus_.”

The _préfet_ dared not contradict the opinion of an ex-minister. He remembered at the same time that his official superior, the present Secretary of State for the Home Department, was a Protestant. He said: “As an official I respect all religions equally, Protestantism as well as Catholicism. As a man, I am a freethinker, and if I had any preference as to dogma, let me tell you, monsieur l’abbé, that it would be in favour of the Reformed Party.”

M. Guitrel replied in an unctuous voice: “There are, doubtless, among Protestants, many persons eminently estimable from the point of view of morals, and I dare say many exemplary persons, if they are judged from the world’s standpoint. But the so-called reformed Church is but a limb hacked from the Catholic Church, and the place of the wound still bleeds.”

Indifferent to this powerful phrase, borrowed from Bossuet, M. _le préfet_ drew from his case a big cigar, lighted it, and holding out the case to the priest:

“Will you accept a cigar, monsieur l’abbé?”

Being densely ignorant of ecclesiastical discipline, and believing that tobacco-smoking was forbidden to the clergy, he offered a cigar to M. Guitrel in order to make him look awkward or to lead him astray. In his ignorance he believed that by this offer he was leading a wearer of the cassock into sin, making him fall into disobedience, perhaps into sacrilege, and almost into apostasy. But M. Guitrel placidly took the cigar, slipped it carefully into the pocket of his great-coat, and said urbanely that he would smoke it after supper in his room.

Thus M. _le préfet_ Worms-Clavelin and Abbé Guitrel, professor of sacred rhetoric at the high seminary, conversed in the goldsmith’s office. Near them, Rondonneau junior, contractor to the Archbishop, who also worked for the prefecture, listened to the conversation discreetly, without taking part in it. He was preparing his mail, and his bald pate came and went among his account-books and the samples of commercial jewellery heaped up on the table.

With a brusque movement M. _le préfet_ stood upright, pushed Abbé Guitrel to the other end of the room, into the recess of the window, and whispered in his ear:

“My dear Guitrel, you know that the bishopric of Tourcoing is vacant.”

“I have in fact,” answered the priest, “learnt of the death of Monseigneur Duclou. It is a great loss for the Church of France. Monseigneur Duclou’s merits were only equalled by his modesty. He excelled in preaching. His pastoral addresses are models of hortatory eloquence. Shall I dare to recall to mind that I knew him in Orleans, at the time when he was still Abbé Duclou, the revered curé of Saint-Euverte, and that at that time he deigned to honour me with his gracious friendship? The news of his premature death was particularly distressing to me.”

He was silent, letting his lips droop in sign of grief.

“It’s not a question of that,” said the _préfet_. “He is dead; it is a question of filling his place.”

M. Guitrel’s face changed. Now, screwing up his little eyes till they were quite round, he looked like a rat who sees bacon in the larder.

“You must know, my dear Guitrel,” continued the _préfet_, “that this business has nothing whatever to do with me. It is not I who appoint the bishops. I am not the keeper of the seals, nor the nuncio, nor the Pope. God be thanked!”

And he began to laugh.

“By the bye, on what terms do you stand with the nuncio?”

“The nuncio, monsieur _le préfet_, looks upon me with friendliness, as a humble and dutiful servant of the Holy Father. But I do not flatter myself that he especially heeds me, in the humble station in which I have been placed and where I am content to remain.”

“My dear abbé, if I speak to you about this affair—quite between ourselves, isn’t it?—it is because there is a question of sending a priest from my county town to Tourcoing. I hear on good authority that the name of Abbé Lantaigne, head of the high seminary, is being brought forward, and it is not impossible that I may be asked to supply confidential information about the candidate. He is your ecclesiastical superior. What do you think of him?”

M. Guitrel answered, with downcast eyes:

“It is certain that Abbé Lantaigne would bring to the episcopal see once sanctified by the apostle Loup both eminent piety and the precious gifts of eloquence. His Lenten sermons preached at Saint-Exupère have been justly admired for their logical arrangement of ideas and power of expression, and it is commonly recognised that some of the sermons would fall in no respect short of perfection, if there were present in them that unction, that perfumed and consecrated oil, if I may dare so to call it, which alone penetrates the heart.

“The curé of Saint-Exupère took pleasure in being the first to declare that M. Lantaigne, in speaking the word from the pulpit of the most venerable church in the diocese, had deserved well of the great apostle of the Gauls who laid the first stone of it, by reason of an ardour and a zeal whose very excesses were excused by their benevolent origin. He only deplored the orator’s excursions into the domain of contemporary history. For it must needs be confessed that M. Lantaigne has no fear of walking on embers that are still burning. M. Lantaigne is distinguished by piety, learning and talent. What a pity that a priest worthy of being raised to the highest positions in the Church should believe it to be his duty to proclaim a devotion, doubtless praiseworthy in principle, but reckless in its results, to an exiled family from whom he has received favours. He takes pleasure in showing a copy of the _Imitation de Jésus-Christ_, bound in purple and gold, which was given to him by the Comtesse de Paris, and he displays far too freely the extent of his gratitude and fidelity. And what a misfortune that an arrogance, excusable perhaps in such lofty talent, should lead him even to the lengths of speaking publicly under the quincunxes about the Cardinal-Archbishop in terms which I dare not repeat! Alas! failing my voice, all the trees on the Mall would re-utter these words that fell from the mouth of M. Lantaigne, in the presence of M. Bergeret, professor of literature: ‘In brain alone, His Eminence observes the evangelical vow of poverty!’ Such sayings are habitual with him, and was he not heard to say at the last ordination, when His Eminence advanced clothed in those pontifical ornaments which he bears with so much dignity, notwithstanding his short stature: ‘Golden cross, wooden bishop’? Most unseasonably he thus censured the magnificence with which Monseigneur Charlot delights to celebrate the offices as well as to regulate the ordering of his official banquets, and especially the dinner which he gave to the general in command of the new army-corps, and to which you were invited, Monsieur _le préfet_. And in particular any better agreement between the prefecture and the archbishopric offends Abbé Lantaigne, who is far too inclined, unfortunately, to prolong the painful misunderstandings from which Church and State suffer equally, in scorn of the precepts of St. Paul and the teaching of His Holiness Leo XIII.”

The _préfet_ opened his mouth quite wide, being in the habit of listening with it. He burst out:

“This Lantaigne is steeped in the most detestable spirit of clericalism! He owes me a grudge? What has he got against me? Am I not tolerant and liberal enough? Did I not shut my eyes when on all sides the monks and nuns re-entered the convents, the schools? For if we vigorously uphold the essential laws of the Republic, we hardly enforce them. But priests are incorrigible. You are all the same. You cry out that you are being oppressed as soon as you yourself are not oppressing. And what does he say about me, this Lantaigne of yours?”

“Nothing definite can be set forth against the administration of M. _le préfet_ Worms-Clavelin, but an uncompromising soul like M. Lantaigne never forgives either your association with freemasonry or your Jewish origin.”

The _préfet_ shook the ash from his cigar. “The Jews are no friends of mine. I have no ties in the Jewish world. But be tranquil, my dear abbé, I give you my word that M. Lantaigne shall not be bishop of Tourcoing. I have enough influence in the bureaux to checkmate him. … Just listen to me, Guitrel: I had no money when I started out in life. I made connections for myself. Connections are worth nearly as much as wealth. I have many and good ones. I shall be on the watch to see that Abbé Lantaigne cuts his own throat in the bureaux. Besides, my wife has a candidate for the bishopric of Tourcoing. And that candidate is you, Guitrel.”