T six o’clock in the evening Abbé Guitrel got out of the train in Paris and called a cab in the station-yard. Then, driving in the dusk through the murky, rain-swept streets, dotted with lights, he made for Number 5, Rue des Boulangers. There, in a narrow, rugged, hilly street, above the coopers and the cork-dealers, and amidst a smell of casks, lived his old friend Abbé Le Génil, chaplain to the Convent of the Seven Wounds, who was a popular Lenten preacher in one of the most fashionable parishes in Paris. Here Abbé Guitrel was in the habit of putting up, whenever he visited Paris in the hope of expediting the progress of his tardy fortunes. All day long the soles of his buckled shoes tapped discreetly upon the pavements, staircases and floors of all sorts of different houses. In the evening he supped with M. Le Génil. The two old comrades from the seminary spun each other merry yarns, chatted over the rates charged for38 mass and sermon, and played their game of manille. At ten o’clock Nanette, the maid, rolled into the dining-room an iron bedstead for M. Guitrel, who always gave her when he left the same tip—a brand-new twenty-sou piece.
On this occasion, as in the past, M. Le Génil, who was a tall, stout man, smacked his great hand down on Guitrel’s flinching shoulder, and rumbling out a good-day in his deep organ note, instantly challenged him in his usual jolly style:
“Well, old miser, have you brought me twelve dozen masses at a crown each, or are you, as usual, going to keep to yourself the gold that your pious provincials swamp you with?”
Being a poor man, and knowing that Guitrel was as poor as himself, he regarded this sort of talk as a good jest.
Guitrel went so far as to understand a joke, though, being of a gloomy temperament, he never jested himself. He had, he explained, been obliged to come to Paris to carry out several commissions with which he had been charged, more especially the purchase of books. Would his friend, then, put him up for a day or two, three at the most?
“Now do tell the truth for once in your life!” answered M. Le Génil. “You have just come up to smell out a mitre, you old fox! To-morrow39 morning you will be showing yourself to the nuncio with a sanctimonious expression. Guitrel, you are going to be a bishop!”
Hereupon the chaplain of the Convent of the Seven Wounds, the preacher at the church of Sainte-Louise, made a bow to the future bishop. Mingled with his ironic courtesy there was, perhaps, a certain strain of instinctive deference. Then once more his face fell into the harsh lines that revealed the temperament of a second Olivier Maillard.[1]
[1] An eccentric priest of the fifteenth century. His sermons were full of denunciations against his enemies. He once attacked Louis XI, who threatened to throw him into the Seine. Maillard replied: “The King is master, but tell him that I shall get to heaven by water sooner than he will by his post-horses.”
“Come in, then! Will you take some refreshment?”
M. Guitrel was a reserved man, whose compressed lips showed his determination not to be pumped. As a matter of fact, it was quite true that he had come up to enlist powerful influence in support of his candidature, but he had no wish to explain all his wily courses to this naturally frank friend of his. For M. Le Génil made, not only a virtue of his natural frankness, but even a policy.
M. Guitrel stammered:
“Don’t imagine ... dismiss this notion that ...”
40 M. Le Génil shrugged his shoulders, exclaiming, “You old mystery-monger!”
Then, conducting his friend to his bedroom, he sat down once more beneath the light of his lamp and resumed his interrupted task, which was that of mending his breeches.
M. Le Génil, popular preacher as he was both in Paris and Versailles, did his own mending, partly to save his old servant the trouble and partly because he was fond of handling a needle, a taste he had acquired during the years of grinding poverty that he had endured when he first entered the Church. And now this giant with lungs of brass, who fulminated against atheists from the elevation of a pulpit, was meekly sitting on a rush-bottomed chair, occupied in drawing a needle in and out with his huge red hands. In the midst of his task he raised his head and glancing shyly towards Guitrel with his big, kindly eyes, exclaimed:
“We’ll have a game of manille to-night, you old trickster.”
But Guitrel, hesitating, yet firm, stammered out that he would be obliged to go out after dinner. He was full of plans, and after pushing on the preparations for a meal, he gobbled down his food, to the great disgust of his host, who was not only a great eater, but a great talker. He refused to wait41 for dessert, but, retiring to another room, shut himself in, drew a layman’s suit from his portmanteau and put it on.
When he appeared again, his friend saw that he was dressed in a long, severe, black frock-coat, which seemed to have the drollery of a disguise. With his head crowned by a rusty opera-hat of prodigious height, he hastily gulped down his coffee, mumbled a grace and slipped out. Leaning over the stair-rail, Abbé Le Génil shouted to him:
“Don’t ring when you come in, or you’ll wake Nanette. You’ll find the key under the mat. One moment, Guitrel, I know where you’re going. You old Quintilian, you, you’re just going to take an elocution lesson.”
Through the damp fog, Abbé Guitrel followed the quays along by the river, passed the bridge of Saint-Pères, crossed the Place du Carrousel, unnoticed by the indifferent passers-by, who scarcely took the trouble even to glance at his huge hat. Finally he halted under the Tuscan porch of the Comédie-Fran?aise. He carefully read the playbill in order to make sure that the arrangements had not been changed, and that Andromaque and the Malade Imaginaire would be presented. Then he asked at the second pay-box for a pit ticket.
The narrow seats behind the empty stalls were already almost filled when he sat down and opened42 an old newspaper, not to read, but to keep himself in countenance, while he listened to the talk going on around him. He had a quick ear, and it was always by the ear that he observed, just as M. Worms-Clavelin listened with his mouth. His neighbours were shop-hands and artists’ assistants who had obtained seats through friendship with a scene-shifter or a dresser. It is a little world of simple-minded folk, keenly bent on sight-seeing, very well satisfied with themselves, and busied with bets and bicycles. The younger members are peaceful enough in reality, although they assume a jaunty military air, being automatically democratic and republican, but conservative in their jokes about the President of the Republic. As Abbé Guitrel caught the words that flew hither and thither all round him, words which revealed this frame of mind, he thought of the fancies cherished by Abbé Lantaigne, who still dreamt, in his hermit-like seclusion, of bringing such a class as this back to obedience to monarchy and priestcraft. Behind his paper Abbé Guitrel chuckled at the idea.
“These Parisians,” thought he, “are the most adaptable people in the world. To the provincial mind they are quite incomprehensible, but would to God that the republicans and freethinkers of the diocese of Tourcoing were cut out on the same model! But the spirit of Northern France is as43 bitter as the wild hops of its plains. And in my diocese I shall find myself placed with violent Socialists on one side and fervid Catholics on the other.”
He foresaw the trials that awaited him in the see once held by the blessed Loup, and so far was he from shrinking at the contemplation of them, that he invoked them on himself, with an accompaniment of such loud sighs that his neighbour looked at him to see if he were ill. Thus Abbé Guitrel’s head seethed with fancies of his bishopric amid the murmur of frivolous chatter, the banging of doors and the restless movements of the work-girls.
But when at the signal the curtain slowly rose, he instantly became absorbed in the play. It was the delivery and the gestures of the actors on which his attention was riveted. He studied the notes of their voices, their gait, the play of their features, with all the intent interest of an experienced preacher who would fain learn the secret of noble gesture and pathetic intonation. Whenever a long speech echoed through the theatre, he redoubled his attention and only longed to be listening to Corneille, whose speeches are longer, who is more fond of oratorical effects and more skilful in emphasising the separate points of a speech.
44 At the moment when the actor who played Orestes was reciting the great classic harangue “Avant que tous les Grecs ...” the professor of sacred elocution set himself to store up in his mind every attitude and intonation. Abbé Le Génil knew his old friend well; he was perfectly aware that the crafty preacher was in the habit of going to the theatre to learn the tricks of oratory.
To the actresses M. Guitrel paid far less attention. He held women in contempt, which fact by no means implies that his thoughts had always been chaste. Priest as he was, he had in his time known the promptings of the flesh. Heaven only knows how often he had dodged, evaded or transgressed the seventh commandment! And one had better ask no questions as to the kind of women who also knew this about him. Si iniquitates observaveris, Domine, Domine quis sustinebit? But he was a priest, and had the priestly horror of the woman’s body. Even the perfume of long hair was abhorrent to him, and when his neighbour, a young shop-assistant, began to extol the beautiful arms of a famous actress, he replied by a contemptuous sneer that was by no means hypocritical.
However, he remained full of interest right up to the final fall of the curtain, as he saw himself in fancy transferring the passion of Orestes, as rendered by an expert interpreter, into some45 sermon on the torments of the damned or the miserable end of the sinner. He was troubled by a provincial accent which spoilt his delivery, and between the acts he sat busily trying to correct it in his mind, modelling his correction on what he had just heard. “The voice of a bishop of Tourcoing,” thought he, “ought not to savour of the roughness of the cheap wines of our hills of the Midlands.”
He was immensely tickled by the play of Molière with which the performance concluded. Incapable of seeing the humorous side of things for himself, he was very pleased when anyone else pointed them out to him. An absurd physical mishap filled him with infinite joy and he laughed heartily at the grosser scenes.
In the middle of the last act he drew a roll of bread from his pocket and swallowed it morsel by morsel, keeping his hand over his mouth as he ate, and watching carefully lest he should be caught in this light repast by the stroke of midnight; for next morning he was to say Mass in the chapel of the Convent of the Seven Wounds.
He returned home after the play by way of the deserted quays, which he crossed with his short, tapping steps. The hollow moan of the river alone filled the silence, as M. Guitrel walked along through the midst of a reddish fog which doubled the size of everything and made his hat look an46 absurd height in the dimness. As he stole by, close to the dripping walls of the ancient H?tel-Dieu, a bare-headed woman came limping forward to meet him. She was a fat, ugly creature, no longer young, and her white chemise barely covered her bosom. Coming abreast of him, she seized the tail of his coat and made proposals to him. Then suddenly, even before he had time to free himself, she rushed away, crying:
“A priest! What ill luck! Plague take it! What misfortune is coming to me?”
M. Guitrel was aware that some ignorant women still cherish the superstition that it is unlucky to meet a priest; but he was surprised that this woman should have recognised his profession even in the dress of a layman.
“That’s the penalty of the unfrocked,” thought he. “The priest, which still lives in him, will always peep out. Tu es sacerdos in ?ternum, Guitrel.”