"He doesn’t lead a humdrum life, that canon!" said Des Hermies, when Durtal had related to him the details of the Black Mass. "It’s a veritable seraglio of hystero-epileptics and erotomaniacs that he has formed for himself. But his vices lack warmth. Certainly, in the matter of contumelious blasphemies, of sacrilegious atrocities, and sensual excitation, this priest may seem to have exceeded the limits, to be almost unique. But the bloody and investuous side of the old sabbats is wanting. Docre is, we must admit, greatly inferior to Gilles de Rais. His works are incomplete, insipid; weak, it I may say so."
"I like that. You know it isn’t easy to procure children whom one may disembowel with impunity. The parents would raise a row and the police would interfere."
"Yes, and it is to difficulties of this sort that we must evidently attribute the bloodless celebration of the Black Mass. But I am thinking, just now of the women you described, the ones that put their heads over the chafing-dishes to drink in the smoke of the burning resin. They employ the procedure of the Aissaouas, who hold their heads over the braseros whenever the catalepsy necessary to their orgies is slow in coming. As for the other phenomena you cite, they are known in the hospitals, and except as symptoms of the demoniac effluence they teach us nothing new. Now, another thing. Not a word of this to Carhaix, because he would be quite capable of closing his door in your face if he knew you had been present at an office in honour of Satan."
They went downstairs from Durtal’s apartment and walked along toward the tower of Saint Sulpice.
"I didn’t bring anything to eat, because you said you would look after that," said Durtal, "but this morning I sent Mme. Carhaix — in lieu of desserts and wine — some real Dutch gingerbread, and a couple of rather surprising liqueurs, an elixir of life which we shall take, by way of appetiser, before the repast, and a flask of crême de céléri. I have discovered an honest distiller."
"Impossible!"
"You shall see. This elixir of life is manufactured from Socotra aloes, little cardamom, saffron, myrrh, and a heap of other aromatics. It’s inhumanly bitter, but it is exquisite."
"I am anxious to taste it. The least we can do is fete Gevingey a little on his deliverance."
"Have you seen him?"
"Yes. He’s looking fine. We’ll make him tell us about his cure."
"I keep wondering what he lives on."
"On what his astrological skill brings him."
"Then there are rich people who have their horoscopes cast?"
"We must hope so. To tell you the truth, I think Gevingey is not in very easy circumstances. Under the Empire he was astrologer to the Empress, who was very superstitious and had faith-as did Napoleon, for that matter-in predictions and fortune telling, but since the fall of the Empire I think Gevingey’s situation has changed a good deal for the worse. Nevertheless he passes for being the only man in France who has preserved the secrets of Cornelius Agrippa, Cremona, Ruggieri, Gauric, Sinibald the Swordsman, and Tritemlus."
While discoursing they had climbed the stair and arrived at the bell-ringer’s door.
The astrologer was already there and the table was set.
All grimaced a bit as they tasted the black and active liqueur which Durtal poured.
Joyous to have all her family about her, Mama Carhaix brought the rich soup. She filled the plates.
When a dish of vegetables was passed and Durtal chose a leek, Des Hermies said, laughing, "Look out! Porta, a thaumaturge of the late sixteenth century, informs us that this plant, long considered an emblem of virility, perturbs the quietude of the most chaste."
"Don’t listen to him," said ’the bell-ringer’s wife. "And you, Monsieur Gevingey, some carrots?"
Durtal looked at the astrologer. His head still looked like a sugar-loaf, his hair was the same faded, dirty brown of hydroquinine or ipecac, powders, his. bird eyes had the same startled look, his enormous hands were covered with the same phalanx of rings, he had the same obsequious and imposing manner, and sacerdotal tone, but he was freshened up considerably, the wrinkles had gone out of his skin, and his eyes were brighter, since his visit to Lyons.
Durtal congratulated him on the happy result of the treatment.
"It was high time, monsieur, I was putting myself under the care of Dr. Johannes, for I was nearly gone. Not possessing a shred of the gift of voyance and knowing no extralucid cataleptic who could inform me of the clandestine preparations of Canon Docre, I could not possibly defend myself by using the laws of countersign and of the shock in return."
"But," said Des Hermies, "admitting that you could, through the intermediation of a flying spirit, have been aware of the operations of the priest, how could you have parried them?"
"The law of countersigns consists, when you know in advance the day and hour of the attack, in going away from home, thus throwing the spell off the track and neutralising it, or in saying an hour beforehand, ’Here I am. Strike!’
The last method is calculated to scatter the fluids to the wind and paralyse the powers of the assailant. In magic, any act known and made public is lost. As for the shock in return, one must also know beforehand of the attempt if one is to cast back the spells on the person sending them before one is struck by them.
"I was certain to perish. A day had passed since I was bewitched. Two days more and I should have been ready for the cemetery."
"How’s that?"
"Every individual struck by magic has three days in which to take measures. That time past, the ill is incurable. So when Docre announced to me that he condemned me to death by his own authority and when, two hours later, on returning home, I felt desperately ill, I lost no time packing my grip and starting for Lyons."
"And there?" asked Durtal.
"There I saw Dr. Johannès. I told him of Docre’s threat and of my illness. He said to me simply, ’That priest can dress the most virulent poisons in the most frightful sacrileges. The fight will be bitter, but I shall conquer,’ and he immediately called in a woman who lives in his house, a voyant.
"He hypnotised her and she, at his injunction, explained the nature of the sorcery of which I was the victim. She reconstructed the scene. She literally saw me being poisoned by food and drink mixed with menstrual fluid that had been reinforced with macerated sacramental wafers and drugs skilfully dosed. That sort of spell is so terrible that aside from Dr. Johannès no thaumaturge in France dare try to cure it.
"So the doctor finally said to me, ’Your cure can be obtained only through an invincible power. We must lose no time. We must at once sacrifice to the glory of Melchisedek.’
"He raised an altar, composed of a table and a wooden tabernacle. It was shaped like a little house surmounted by a cross and encircled, under the pediment, by the dial-like figure of the tetragram. He brought the silver chalice, the unleavened bread and the wine. He donned his sacerdotal habits, put on his finger the ring which has received the supreme benedictions, then he began to read from a special missal the prayers of the sacrifice.
"Almost at once the voyant cried, ’Here are the spirits evoked for the spell. These are they which have carried the venefice, obedient to the command of the master of black magic, Canon Docre !’
"I was sitting beside the altar. Dr. Johannès placed his left hand on my head and raising toward heaven his right he besought the Archangel Michael to assist him, and adjured the glorious legions of the invincible seraphim to dominate, to enchain, the spirits of Evil.
"I was already feeling greatly relieved. The sensation of internal gnawing which tortured me in Paris was diminishing. Dr. Johannès continued to recite his orisons, then when the moment came for the deprecatory prayer, he took my hand, laid it on the altar, and three times chanted:
"’May the projects and the designs of the worker of iniquity, who has made enchantment against you, be brought to naught; may any influence obtained by Satanic means, any attack directed against you, be null and void of effect; may all the maledictions of your enemy be transformed into benedictions from the highest summits of the eternal hills; may his fluids of death be transmuted into ferments of life; finally, may the Archangels of Judgement and Chastisement decide the fate of the miserable priest who has put his trust in the works of Darkness and Evil.’
’You,’ he said to me, ’are delivered. Heaven has cured you. May your heart therefore repay the living God and Jesus Christ, through the glorious Mary, with the most ardent devotion.’
"He offered me unleavened bread and wine. I was saved. You who are a physician, Monsieur Des Hermies, can bear witness that human science was impotent to aid me — and now look at me!"
"Yes," Des Hermies replied, "without discussing the means, I certify the cure, and, I admit, it is not the first time that to my knowledge similar results have been obtained. No thanks," to Mme. Carhaix, who was inviting him to take another helping from a plate of sausages with horseradish in creamed peas. "But," said Durtal, "permit me to ask you several questions. Certain details interest me. What were the sacerdotal ornaments of Dr. Johannès?"
"His costume was a long robe of vermilion cashmere caught up at the waist by a red and white sash. Above this robe he had a white mantle of the same stuff, cut, over the chest, in the form of a cross upside down."
"Cross upside down?"
"Yes, this cross, reversed like the figure of the Hanged Man in the old-fashioned Tarot card deck, signifies that the priest Melchisedek must die in the Old Man — that is, man affected by original sin — and live again the Christ, to be powerful with the power of the Incarnate Word which died for us."
Carhaix seemed ill at ease. His fanatical and suspicious Catholicism refused to countenance any save the prescribed ceremonies. He made no further contribution to the conversation, and in significant silence filled the glasses, seasoned the salad, and passed the plates.
"What sort of a ring was that you spoke of?"
"It is a symbolic ring of pure gold. It has the image of a serpent, whose head, in relief, set with a ruby, is connected by a fine chain with a tiny circlet which fastens the jaws of the reptile."
"What I should like awfully to know is the origin and the aim of this sacrifice. What has Melchisedek to do with your affair?"
"Ah," said the astrologer, "Melchisedek is one of the most mysterious of all the figures in the Holy Bible. He was king of Salem, sacrificer to the Most High God. He blessed Abraham and Abraham gave him tithes of the spoil of the vanquished kings of Sodom and Gomorrah. That is the story in Genesis 14:18-20. But Saint Paul cites him also, in Hebrews 7, and in the third verse of that chapter says that Melchisedek, ’without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of day, nor end of life, but made like unto the Son of God, abideth, a priest continually.’ In Hebrews 5:6 Paul, quoting Psalm 110:4, says Jesus is called ’a priest forever after the order of Melchisedek.’
"All this, you see, is obscure enough. Some exegetes recognise in him the prophetic figure of the Saviour, others, that of Saint Joseph, and all admit that the sacrifice of Melchisedek offering to Abraham the blood and wine of which he had first made oblation to the Lord prefigures, to follow the expression of Isidore of Damietta, the archetype of the divine mysteries, otherwise known as the holy mass."
"Very well," said Des Hermies, "but all that Scripture does not explain the alexipharmacal virtues which Dr. Johannès attributes to the sacrifice."
"You are asking more than I can answer. Only Dr. Johannès could tell you. This much I can say. Theology teaches us that the mass, as it is celebrated, is the re-enaction of the Sacrifice of Calvary, but the sacrifice to the glory of Melchisedek is not that. It is, in some sort, the future mass, the glorious office which will be known during the earthly reign of the divine Paraclete. This sacrifice is offered to God by man regenerated, redeemed by the infusion of the Love of the Holy Ghost. Now, the hominal being whose heart has thus been purified and sanctified is invincible, and the enchantments of hell cannot prevail against him if he makes use of this sacrifice to dissipate the Spirits of Evil. That explains to you the potency of Dr. Johannès, whose heart unites, in this ceremony, with the divine heart of Jesus."
"Your exposition is not very clear," Carhaix mildly objected.
"Then it must be supposed that Johannes is a man amended ahead of time, an apostle animated by the Holy Ghost?"
"And so he is," said the astrologer, firmly assured.
"Will you please pass the gingerbread?" Carhaix requested.
"Here’s the way to fix it," said Durtal. "First cut a slice very thin, then take a slice of ordinary bread, equally thin, butter them and put them together. Now tell me if this sandwich hasn’t the exquisite taste of fresh walnuts."
"Well," said Des Hermies, pursuing his cross-examination, "aside from that, what has Dr. Johannes been doing in this long time since I last saw him?"
"He’ leads what ought to be a peaceful life. He lives with friends who revere and adore him. With them he rests from the tribulations of all sort — save on — that he has been subjected to. He would be perfectly happy if he did not have to repulse the attacks launched at him almost daily by the tonsured magicians of Rome."
"Why do they attack him?"
"A thorough explanation would take a long time. Johannes is commissioned by Heaven to break up the venomous practices of Satanism and to preach the coming of the glorified Christ and the divine Paraclete. Now the diabolical Curia which holds the Vatican in its clutches has every reason of self-interest for putting out of the way a man whose prayers fetter their conjurements and neutralise their spells."
"Ah!" exclaimed Durtal, "and would it be too much to ask you how this former priest foresees and checks these astonishing assaults?"
"No indeed. The doctor can tell by the flight and cry of certain birds. Falcons and male sparrow-hawks are his sentinels. If they fly toward him or away from him, to East or West, whether they emit a single cry or many; these are omens, letting him know the hour of the combat so that he can be on guard. Thus he told me one day, the sparrow-hawks are easily influenced by the Spirits, and he uses them as the hypnotist makes use of somnambulism, as the spiritist makes use of tables and slates."
"They are the telegraph wires for magic dispatches."
"Yes. And of course you know that the method is not new. Indeed, its origin is lost in the darkness of the ages. Ornithomancy is world-old. One finds traces of it in the Holy Bible, and the Zohar asserts that one may receive numerous notifications if one knows how to observe the flight and distinguish the cries of birds."
"But," said Durtal, "why is the sparrow-hawk chosen in preference to other birds?"
"Well, it has always been, since remotest antiquity, the harbinger of charms. In Egypt the god with the head of a hawk was the one who possessed the science of the hieroglyphics. Formerly in that country the hierogrammatists swallowed the heart and blood of the hawk to prepare themselves for the magic rites. Even today African chiefs put a hawk feather in their hair, and this ’bird is sacred in India."
"How does your friend go about it," asked Mme. Carhaix, "raising and housing birds of prey? — because that is what they are."
"He does not raise them nor house them. They nest in the high bluffs along the Saone, near Lyons. They come and see him in time of need."
Durtal, looking around this cozy dining-room and recalling the extraordinary conversations which had been held here, was thinking, "How far we are from the language and the ideas of modern times. All that takes us back to the Middle Ages," he said, finishing his thought aloud.
"Happily!" exclaimed Carhaix, who was rising to go and ring his bells.
"Yes," said Des Hermies, "and what is mighty strange in this day of crass materialism is the idea of battles fought in space, over the cities, between a priest of Lyons and prelates of Rome."
"And between this priest and the Rosicrusians and Canon Docre."
Durtal remembered that Mme. Chantelouve had assured him that the chiefs of the Rosicrucians were making frantic efforts to establish connections with the devil and prepare spells.
"You think that the Rosicrucians are satanizing?"
"They would like to, but they don’t know how. They are limited to reproducing, mechanically, the few fluidic and veniniferous operations revealed to them by the three brahmins who visited Paris a few years ago.
"I am thankful, myself," said Mme. Carhaix, as she took leave of the company, "that I am not mixed up in any of this frightful business, and that I can pray and live in peace."
Then while Des Hermies, as usual, prepared the coffee and Durtal brought the liqueur glasses, Gevingey filled his pipe, and when the sound of the bells died away — dispersed and as if absorbed by the pores of the wall — he blew out a great cloud of smoke and said, "I passed some delightful days with the family with whom Dr. Johannes is living. After the shocks which I ’had received, it was a privilege without equal to complete my convalescence in that sweet atmosphere of Christian Love. And, too, Johannès is of all men I have ever met the most learned in the occult sciences. No one, except his antithesis, the abominable Docre, has penetrated so far into the arcana of Satanism. One may even say that in France these two are the only ones who have crossed the terrestrial threshold and obtained, each in his field, sure results. But in addition to the charm of his conversation and the scope of his knowledge — for even on the subject in which I excel, that of astrology, he surprised me — Johannès delighted me with the beauty of his vision of the future transformation of peoples. He is really, I swear, the prophet whose earthly mission of suffering and glory has been authorised by the Most High."
"I don’t doubt it," said Durtal, smiling; "but his theory of the Paraclete is, if I am not mistaken, the very ancient heresy of Montanus which the Church has formally condemned."
"All depends on the manner in which the coming of the Paraclete is conceived ," interjected the bell-ringer, returning at that moment. "It is also the orthodox doctrine of Saint Irenaeus, Saint Justin, Scotus Erigena, Amaury of Chartres, Saint Doucine, and that admirable mystic, Joachim of Floris. This was the belief throughout the Middle Ages, and I admit that it obsesses me and fills me with joy, that it responds to the most ardent of my yearnings. Indeed," he said, sitting down and crossing his legs, "if the third kingdom is an illusion, what consolation is left for Christians in face of the general disintegration of a world which charity requires us not to hate?"
"I am furthermore obliged to admit," said Des Hermies, "that in spite of the blood shed on Golgotha, I personally feel as if my ransom had not been quite effected."
"There are three kingdoms," the astrologer resumed, pressing down the ashes of his pipe with his finger. "Of the Old Testament, that of the Father, the kingdom of fear. Of the New Testament, that of the Son, the kingdom of expiation. Of the Johannite Gospel, that of the Holy Ghost, the kingdom of redemption and love. They are the past, present and future; winter, spring and summer. The first, says Joachim of Floris, gives us the blade, the second, the leaf, and the third, the ear. Two of the Persons of the Trinity have shown themselves. Logically the Third must appear."
"Yes, and the Biblical texts abound, conclusive, explicit, irrefutable," said Carhaix. "All the prophets, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Zachariab, Malachi, speak of it. The Acts of the Apostles is very precise on this point. In the first chapter you will read these lines, ’This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.’ Saint John also announces the tidings in the Apocalypse, which is the gospel of the second coming of Christ, ’Christ shall come and reign a thousand years.’ Saint Paul is inexhaustible in revelations of this nature. In the epistle to Timothy he invokes the Lord ’who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearance and his kingdom.’ In the second epistle to the Thessalonians he writes, ’And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the Spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming.’ Now, he declares that the Antichrist is not yet, so the coming which he prophesies is not that already realised by the birth of the Saviour at Bethlehem. In the Gospel ac-cording to Saint Matthew, Jesus responds to Caiaphas, who asks Him if He is the Christ, Son of God, ’Thou hast said, and nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven.’ And in another verse He says to His apostles, ’Watch, therefore, for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.’
"And there are other texts I could put my finger on. No, there is no use in talking, the partisans of the glorious kingdom are supported with certitude by inspired passages, and can, under certain conditions and without fear of heresy, uphold this doctrine, which, Saint Jerome attests, was in the fourth century a dogma of faith recognised by all. But what say we taste a bit of this crême de céléri which Monsieur Durtal praises so highly?"
It was a thick liqueur, syrupy like anisette, but even sweeter and more feminine, only, when one had swallowed this inert semi-liquid, there lingered in the roots of the papillae a faint taste of celery.
"It isn’t bad," said the astrologer, "but there’s no life to it," aid he poured into his glass a stiff tot of rum.
"Come to think of it," said Durtal, "the third kingdom is also announced in the words of the Paternoster, ’Thy kingdom come.’"
"Certainly," said the bell-ringer.
"But you see, interjected Gevingey, "heresy would gain the upper hand and the whole belief would be turned into nonsense and absurdity if we admitted, as certain Paracletists do, an authentic fleshly incarnation. For instance, remember Fareinism, which has been rife, since the eighteenth century, in Fareins, a village of the Doubs, where Jansenism took refuge when driven out of Paris after the closing of the cemetery of Saint Medard. There a priest, François Bon-jour, reproduced the ’convulsionist’ orgies which, under the Regency, desecrated the tomb of Deacon Pins. Then Bon-jour had an affair with a woman and she claimed to be big with the prophet Elijah, who, according to the Apocalypse, is to precede the last arrival of Christ. This child came into the world, then there was a second who was none other than the Paraclete. The latter did business as a woollen merchant in Paris, was a colonel in the National Guard under Louis-Philippe, and died in easy circumstances in 1866. A tradesman Paraclete, a Redeemer with epaulettes and gold braid!
"In 1886 one Dame Brochard of Vouvray affirmed to whoever would listen that Jesus was reincarnate in her. In 1839 a pious madman named David published at Angen a brochure entitled The Voice of God, in which he assumed the modest appellation of ’only Messiah of the Creator Holy Ghost,’ and informed the world that he was a sewer contractor and wore a beard a yard and a half long. At the present moment his throne is not empty for want of successors. An engineer named Pierre Jean rode all over the Mediterranean provinces on horseback announcing that he was the Holy Ghost. In Paris, Berard, an omnibus conductor on the Pantheon-Courcelles line, likewise asserts that he incorporates the Paraclete, while a magazine article avers that the hope of Redemption has dawned in the person of the poet Jhouney. Finally, in America, from time to time, women claim to be Messiahs, and they recruit adherents among persons worked up to fever pitch by Advent revivals."
"They are no worse than the people who deny God and Creation," said Carhaix. "God is immanent in His creatures. He is their Life principle, the source of movement, the foundation of existence, says Saint Paul. He has His personal existence, being the ’I AM,’ as Moses says.
"The Holy Ghost, through Christ in glory, will be immanent in all beings. He will be the principle which transforms and regenerates them, but there is no need for him to be incarnate. The Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father through the Son. He is sent to act, not to materialise himself. It is downright madness to maintain the contrary, thus falling into the heresies of the Gnostics and the Fratricelli, into the errors of Dulcin de Novare and his wife Marguerite, into the filth of abbé Beccarelli, and the abominations of Segarelli of Parma, who, on pretext of becoming a child the better to symbolise the simple, naif love of the Paraclete, had himself diapered and slept on the breast of a nurse."
"But," said Durtal, "you haven’t made yourself quite clear to me. If I understand you, the Holy Ghost will act by an infusion into us. He will transmute us, renovate our souls by a sort of ’passive purgation’ — to drop into the theological vernacular."
"Yes, he will purify us soul and body."
"How will he purify our bodies?"
"The action of the Paraclete," the astrologer struck in, "will extend to the principle of generation. The divine life will sanctify the organs which henceforth can procreate only elect creatures, exempt from original sin, creatures whom it will not be necessary to test in the fires of humiliation, as the Holy Bible says. This was the doctrine of the prophet Vintras, that extraordinary unlettered man who wrote such impressive and ardent pages. The doctrine has been continued and amplified, since Vintras’s death, by his successor, Dr. Johannès."
"Then there is to be Paradise on earth," said Des Hermies.
"Yes, the kingdom of liberty, goodness, and love."
"You’ve got me all mixed up," said Durtal. "Now you announce the arrival of the Holy Ghost, now the glorious advent of Christ. Are these kingdoms identical or is one to follow the other?"
"There is a distinction," answered Gevingey, "between the coming of the Paraclete and the victorious return of Christ. They occur in the order named. First a Society must be recreated, embraced by the third Hypostasis, by Love, in order that Jesus may descend, as He has promised, from the clouds and reign over the people formed in His image."
"What role is the Pope to play?"
"Ah, that is one of the most curious Points of the Johannite doctrine. Time, since the first appearance of the Messiah, is divided, as you know, into two periods, the period of the Victim, of the expiate Saviour, the period in which we now are, and the other, that which we await, the period of Christ bathed in the spittle of mockery but radiant with the superadorable splendour of His person. Well, there is a different pope for each of these eras. The Scriptures announce these two Sovereign pontificate and so do my horoscopes, for that matter.
"It is an axiom of theology that the spirit of Peter lives in his successors. It will live in them, mare or less hidden, until the longed-for expansion of the Holy Ghost. Then John, who has been held in reserve, as the Gospel say; will begin his ministry of love and will live in the souls of the new popes."
"I don’t understand the utility of a pope when Jesus is to be visible," said Des Hermies.
"To tell the truth, there is no use in having one, and the papacy is to exist only during the epoch reserved for the effluence of the divine Paraclete. The day on which, in a shower of meteors, Jesus appears, the pontificate of Rome ceases."
"Without going more deeply into questions which we could discuss the rest of our lives," said Durtal, "I marvel at the placidity of the utopian who imagines that man is perfectible. There is no denying that the human creature is born selfish, abusive, vile. Just look around you and see. Society cynical and ferocious, the humble heckled and pillaged by the rich traffickers in necessities. Everywhere the triumph of the mediocre and unscrupulous, everywhere the apotheosis of crooked politics and finance. And you think you can make any progress against a stream like that? No, man has never changed. His soul was corrupt in the days of Genesis and is not less rotten at present. Only the form of his sins varies. Progress is the hypocrisy which refines the vices.
"All the more reason," Carhaix rejoined, "why society — if it is as you have described it — should fall to pieces. I, too, think it is putrefied, its bones ulcerated, its flesh dropping off. It can neither be poulticed nor cured, it must be interred and a new one born. And who but God can accomplish such a miracle?"
"If we admit," said Des Hermies, "that the infamousness of the times is transitory, it is self-evident that only the intervention of a God can wash it away; for neither socialism nor any other chimera of the ignorant and hate-filled workers will modify human nature and reform the peoples. These tasks are above human forces."
"And the time awaited by Johannes is at hand," Gevingey proclaimed. "Here are some of the manifest proofs. Raymond Lully asserted that the end of the old world would be announced by the diffusion of the doctrines of Antichrist. He defined these doctrines. They are materialism and the monstrous revival of magic. This prediction applies to our age, I think. On the other hand, the good tidings was to be realized, according to Our Lord, as reported by Saint Matthew, ’When ye shall see the abomination of desolation... stand in the holy place.’ And isn’t it standing in the holy place now? Look at our timorous, sceptical Pope, lukewarm and politic, our episcopate of simonists and cowards, our flabby, indulgent clergy. See how they are ravaged by Satanism, then tell me if the Church can fall any lower."
"The promises are explicit and cannot fail," and with his elbows on the table, his chin in his hands, and his eyes to heaven, the bell-ringer murmured, "Our father, thy kingdom come!"
"It’s getting late," said Des Hermies, "time we were going."
While they were putting on their coats, Carhaix questioned Durtal. "What do you hope for if you have no faith in the coming of Christ?"
"I hope for nothing at all."
"I pity you. Really, you believe in no future amelioration?"
"I believe, alas, that a dotard Heaven maunders over an exhausted Earth."
The bell-ringer raised his hands and sadly shook his head When they had left Gevingey, Des Hermies, after walking in silence for some time, said, "You are not astonished that all the events spoken of tonight happened at Lyons." And as Durtal looked at him inquiringly, he continued, "You see I am well acquainted with Lyons. People’s brains there are as foggy as the streets when the morning mists roll up from the Rhone. That city looks magnificent to travellers who like the long avenues, wide boulevards, green grass, and penitentiary architecture of modern cities. But Lyons is also the refuge of mysticism, the haven of preternatural ideas and doubtful creeds. That’s where Vintras died, the one in whom, it seems, the soul of the prophet Elijah was incarnate. That’s where Naundorff found his last partisans. That is where enchantment is rampant, because in the suburb of La Guillotière you can have a person bewitched for a louis. Add that it is likewise, in spite of its swarms of radicals and anarchists, an opulent market for a dour Protestant Catholicism; a Jansenist factory, richly productive of bourgeois bigotry.
"Lyons is celebrated for delicatessen, silk, and churches. At the top of every hill — and there’s a hill every block — is a chapel or a convent, and Notre Dame de Fourviere dominates them all. From a distance this pile looks like an eighteenth century dresser turned upside down, but the interior, which is in process of completion, is amazing. You ought to go and take a look at it some day. You will see the most extraordinary jumble of Assyrian, Roman, Gothic, and God knows what, jacked together by Bossan, the only architect for a century who has known how to create a cathedral interior. The nave glitters with inlays and marble, with bronze and gold. Statues of angels diversify the rows of columns and break up, with impressive grace, the known harmonies of line. It’s Asiatic and barbarous, and reminds one of the architecture shown in Gustave Moreau’s Herodiade.
"And there is an endless stream of pilgrims. They strike bargains with Our Lady. They pray for an extension of markets, new outlets for sausages and silks. They consult her on ways and means of getting rid of spoiled vegetables and pushing off their shoddy. In the centre of the city, in the church of Saint Boniface, I found a placard requesting the faithful, out of respect for the holy place, not to give alms. It was not seemly, you see, that the commercial orisons be disturbed by the ridiculous plaints of the indigent."
"Well," said Durtal, "it’s a strange thing, but democracy is the most implacable of the enemies of the poor. The Revolution, which, you would think, ought to have protected them, proved for them the most cruel of regimes. I will show you some day a decree of the Year II, pronouncing penalties not only for those who begged but for those who gave."
"And yet democracy is the panacea which is going to cure every ill," said Des Hermies, laughing. And he pointed to enormous posters everywhere in which General Boulanger peremptorily demanded that the people of Paris vote for him in the coming election.
Durtal shrugged his shoulders. "Quite true. The people are very sick. Carhaix and Gevingey are perhaps right in maintaining that no human agency is powerful enough to effect a cure.
CHAPTER XXI
Durtal had resolved not to answer Mme. Chantelouve’s letters. Every day, since their rupture, she had sent him inflamed missive, hut, as he soon noticed, her Maenad cries were subsiding into plaints and reproaches. She now accused him of ingratitude, and repented having listened to him and having permitted him to participate in sacrileges for which she would have to answer before the heavenly tribunal. She pleaded to see him once more. Then she was silent for a while week. Finally, tired, no doubt, of writing unanswered letters, she admitted, in a last epistle, that all was over.
After agreeing with him that their temperaments were incompatible, she ended:
"Thanks for the trig little love, ruled like music-paper, that you gave me. My heart cannot be so straitly measured, it requires more latitude -"
"Her heart! " he laughed, then he continued to read:
"I understand that it is not your earthly mission to satisfy my heart but you might at least have con-ceded me a frank comradeship which would have permitted me to leave my sex at home and to come and spend an evening with you now and then. This, seemingly, so simple, you have rendered impossible. Farewell forever. I have only to renew my pact with Solitude, to which I have tried to be unfaithful -"
"With solitude! and that complacent and paternal cuckold, her husband! Well, he is the one most to be pitied now. Thanks to me, he had evenings of quiet. I restored his wife, pliant and satisfied. He profited by my fatigues, that sacristan. Ah, when I think of it, his sly, hypocritical eyes, when he looked at me, told me a great deal.
"Well, the little romance is over. It’s a good thing to have your heart on strike. In my brain I still have a house of ill fame, which sometimes catches fire, but the hired myrmidons will stamp out the blaze in a hurry.
"When I was young and ardent the women laughed at me. Now that I am old and stale I laugh at them. That’s more in my character, old fellow," he said to the cat, which, with ears pricked up, was listening to the Soliloquy, "Truly, Gilles de Rais is a great deal more interesting than Mme. Chantelouve. Unfortunately, my relations with him are also drawing to a close. Only a few more pages and the book is done. Oh, Lord! Here comes Rateau to knock my house to pieces."
Sure enough, the concierge entered, made an excuse for being late, took off his vest, and cast a look of defiance at the furniture. Then he hurled himself at the bed, grappled with the mattress, got a half-Nelson on it, and balancing himself, turning half around, hurled it onto the springs.
Durtal, followed by his cat, went into the other room, but suddenly Rateau ceased wrestling and came and stood before Durtal.
"Monsieur, do you know what has happened?" he blubbered.
"Why, no."
"My wife has left me."
"Left you! but she must be over sixty."
Rateau raised his eyes to heaven.
"And she ran off with another man?"
Rateau, disconsolate, let the feather duster fall from his listless hand.
"The devil! Then, in spite of her age, your wife had needs which you were unable to satisfy?"
The concierge shook his head and finally succeeded in Saying, "It was the other way around."
"Oh," said Durtal, considering the old caricature, shrivelled by bad air and "three-six," "hut if she is tired of that sort of thing, why did she run off with a man?"
Rateau made a grimace of pitying contempt, "Oh, he’s impotent. Good for nothing-"
"Ah! "
"It’s my job I’m sore about. The landlord won’t keep a concierge that hasn’t a wife."
"Dear Lord," thought Durtal, "how hast thou answered my prayers! Come on, let’s go over to your place," he said to Des Hermies, who, finding Rateau’s key in the door, had walked in.
"Righto! since your housecleaning isn’t done yet, descend like a god from your clouds of dust, and come on over to tine house."
On the way Durtal recounted his concierge’s conjugal misadventure.
"Oh!" said Des Hermies, "many a woman would be happy to wreathe with laurel the occiput of so combustible a sexagenarian. Look at that! Isn’t it revolting?" pointing to the walls covered with posters.
It was a veritable debauch of placards. Everywhere on lurid coloured paper in box car letters were the names of Boulanger and Jacques.
"Thank God, this will be over tomorrow."
"There is one resource left," said Des Hermies. "To escape the horrors of present day life never raise your eyes. Look down at the sidewalk always, preserving the attitude of timid modesty. When you look only at the pavement you see the reflections of the sky signs in all sorts of fantastic shapes; alchemic symbols, talismanic characters, bizarre pentacles with suns, hammers, and anchors, and you can imagine yourself right in the midst of the Middle Ages."
"Yes, but to keep from seeing the disenchanting crowd you would have to wear a long-vizored cap like a jockey and blinkers like a horse."
Des Hermies sighed. "Come in," he said, opening the door. They went in and sitting down in easy chairs they lighted their cigarettes.
"I haven’t got over that conversation we had with Gevingey the other night at Carhaix’s," said Durtal. "Strange man, that Dr Johannes. I can’t keep from thinking about him. Look here, do you sincerely believe in his miraculous cures?"
"I am obliged to. I didn’t tell you all about him, for a physician can’t lightly make these dangerous admissions. But you may as well know that this priest heals hopeless cases.
"I got acquainted with him when he was still a member of the Parisian clergy. It came about by one of those miracles of his which I don’t pretend to understand.
"My mother’s maid had a granddaughter who was paralyzed in her arms and legs and suffered death and destruction in her chest and howled when you touched her there. She had been in this condition two years. It had come on in one night, how produced — nobody knows. She was sent away from the Lyons hospitals as incurable. She came to Paris, underwent treatment at La Salpetrière, and was discharged when nobody could find out what was the matter with her nor what medication would give her any relief. One day she spoke to me of this abbé Johannes, who, she said, had cured persons in as bad shape as she. I did not believe a word, but hearing that the priest refused to take any money for his services I did not dissuade her from visiting him, and out of curiosity I went along.
"They placed her in a chair. The ecclesiastic, little, active, energetic, took her hand and applied to it, one after the other, three precious stones. Then he said coolly, ’Mademoiselle, you are the victim of consanguineal sorcery.’
"I could hardly keep from laughing.
’Remember,’ he said, ’two years back, for that is when your paralytic stroke came on. You must have had a quarrel with a kinsman or kinswoman?’
"It was true. Poor Marie had been unjustly accused of the theft of a watch which was an heirloom belonging to an aunt of hers. The aunt had sworn vengeance.
"’Your aunt lives in Lyons?’
"She nodded.
"’Nothing astonishing about that,’ continued the priest. ’In Lyons, among the lower orders, there are witch doctors who know a little about the witchcraft practised in the country. But be reassured. These people are not powerful. They know little more than the A B C’s of the art. Then, mademoiselle, you wish to be cured?’
"And after she replied that she did, he said gently, ’That is all. You may go.’
He did not touch her, did not prescribe any remedy. I came away persuaded that he was a mountebank. But when, three days later, the girl was able to raise her arms, and all her pain had left her, and when, at the end of a week, she could walk, I had to yield in face of the evidence. I went back to see him, had occasion to do him a service; and thus our relations began."
"But what are his methods?"
"He opens, like the curate of Ars, with prayer. Then he evokes the militant archangels, then he breaks the magic circles and chases — ’classes,’ as he says — the spirits of Evil. I know very well that this is confounding. Whenever I speak of this man’s potency to my confreres the smile with a superior air or serve up to me the specious arguments which they have fabricated to explain the cures wrought by Christ and the Virgin. The method they have imagined consists in striking the patient’s imagination, suggesting to him the will to be cured, persuading him that he is well, hypnotising him in a waking state — so to speak. This done — say they — the twisted legs straighten, the sores disappear, the consumption-torn lungs are patched up, the cancers become benign pimples, and the blind eyes see. This procedure they attribute to miracle workers to explain away the supernatural — why don’t they use the method themselves if it is so simple?"
"But haven’t they tried?"
"After a fashion. I was present myself at an experiment attempted by Dr. Luys. Ah, it was inspiring! At the charity hospital there was a poor girl paralyzed in both legs. She was put to sleep and commanded to rise. She struggled in vain. Then two interns held her up in a standing posture, but her lifeless legs bent useless under her weight. Need I tell you that she could not walk, and that after they had held her up and pushed her along a few steps, they put her to bed again, having obtained no result whatever."
"But Dr. Johannès does not cure all sufferers, without discrimination?"
"No. He will not meddle with any ailments which are not the result of spells. lie says he can do nothing with natural ills, which are the province of the physician. He is a specialist in Satanic affections. He has most to do with the possessed whose neuroses have proved obdurate to hydrotherapeutic treatment."
"What does he do with the precious stones you mentioned?"
"First, before answering your question, I must explain the significance and virtue of these stones. I shall be telling you nothing new when I say that Aristotle, Pliny, all the sages of antiquity, attributed medical and divine virtues to them. According to the pagans, agate and carnelian stimulate, topaz consoles, jasper cures languor, hyacinth drives away insomnia, turquoise prevents falls or lightens the shock, amethyst combats drunkenness.
"Catholic symbolism, in its turn, takes over the precious stones and sees in them emblems of the Christian virtues. Then, sapphire represents the lofty aspirations of the soul, chalcedony charity, sard and onyx candor, beryl allegorises theological science, hyacinthe humility, while the ruby appeases wrath, and emerald ’lapidifies’ incorruptible faith.
"Now in magic," Des Hermies rose and took from a shelf a very small volume bound like a prayer book. He showed Durtal the title: Natural magic, or: The secrets and miracles of nature, in four volumes, by Giambattista Porta of Naples. Paris. Nicolas Bonfour rue Neuve Nostre Dame at the sign Saint Nicolas. 1584.
"Natural magic," said Des Hermies, "which was merely.
the medicine of the time, ascribes a new meaning to gems. Listen to this. After first celebrating an unknown stone, the Alectorius, which renders its possessor invincible if it has been taken out of the stomach of a cock caponised four years before or if it has been ripped out of the ventricle of a hen, Porta informs us that chalcedony wins law suits, that carnelian stops bloody flux ’and is exceeding useful to women who are sick of their flower,’ that hyacinth protects against lightning and keeps away pestilence and poison, that topaz quells ’lunatic’ passions, that turquoise is of advantage against melancholy, quartan fever, and heart failure. He attests finally that sapphire preserves courage and keeps the members vigorous, while emerald, hung about one’s neck, keeps away Saint John’s evil and breaks when the wearer is unchaste.
"You see, antique philosophy, medieval Christianity, and sixteenth century magic do not agree on the specific virtues of every stone. Almost in every case the significations, more or less far-fetched, differ. "Dr. Johannès has revised these beliefs, adopted and rejected great numbers of them, finally he has, on his own authority, admitted new acceptations. According to him, amethyst does cure drunkenness; but moral drunkenness, pride; ruby relieves sex pressure; beryl fortifies the will; sapphire elevates the thoughts and turns them toward God.
"In brief, he believes that every stone corresponds to a species of malady, and also to a class of sins; and he affirms that when we have chemically got possession of the active principle of gems we shall have not only antidotes but preventatives. While waiting for this chimerical dream to be realized and for our medicine to become the mock of lapidary chemists, he uses precious stones to formulate diagnoses of illnesses produced by sorcery."
"How?"
"He claims that when such or such a stone is placed in the hand or on the affected part of the bewitched a fluid escapes from the stone into his hands, and that by examining this fluid he can tell what is the matter. In this connection he told me that a woman whom he did not know came to him one day to consult him about a malady, pronounced incurable, from which she had suffered since childhood. He could not get any precise answers to his questions. He saw no signs of venefice. After trying out his whole array of stones he placed in her hand lapis lazuli, which, he says, corresponds to the sin of incest. He examined the stone.
"’Your malady,’ he said, ’is the consequence of an act of incest.’
’Well,’ she said, ’I did not come here to confessional,’ but she finally admitted that her father had violated her before she attained the age of puberty.
"That, of course, is against reason and contrary to all accepted ideas, but there is no getting around the fact that this priest cures patients whom we physicians have given up for lost."
"Such as the only astrologer Paris now can boast, the astounding Gevingey, who would have been dead without his aid. I wonder how Gevingey came to cast the Empress Eugenie’s horoscope."
"Oh, I told you. Under the Empire the Tuileries was a hotbed of magic. Home, the American, was revered as the equal of a god. In addition to spiritualistic seances he evoked demons at court. One evocation had fatal consequences. A certain marquis, whose wife had died, implored Home to let him see her again. Home took him to a room, put him in bed, and left him. What ensued? What dreadful phantom rose from the tomb? Was the story of Ligeia re-enacted? At any rate, the marquis was found dead at the foot of the bed. This story has recently been reported by Le Figaro from unimpeachable documents.
"You see it won’t do to play with the world spirits of Evil.
I used to know a rich bachelor who had a mania for the occult sciences. He was president of a theosophic society and he even wrote a little book on the esoteric doctrine, in the Isis series. Well, he could not, like the Peladan and Papus tribe, be content with knowing nothing, so he went to Scotland, where Diabolism is rampant. There he got in touch with the man who, if you stake him, will initiate you into the Satanic arcana. My friend made the experiment. Did he see him whom Bulwer Lytton in Zanoni calls the dweller of the threshold’? I don’t know, but certain it is that he fainted from horror and returned to France exhausted, half dead."
"Evidently all is not rosy in that line of work," said Durtal. "But it is only spirits of Evil that can he evoked?"
"Do you suppose that the Angels, who, of earth, obey only the saints, would ever consent to take orders from the first comer?"
"But there must be an intermediate order of angels, who are neither celestial nor infernal, who, for instance, commit the well-known asininities in the spiritist seances."
"A priest told me one day that the neuter larvae inhabit an invisible, neutral territory, something like a little island, which is besieged on all sides by the good and evil spirits. The larvae cannot long hold out and are soon forced into one or the other camp. Now, because it is these larvae they evoke, the occultists, who cannot, of course draw down the angels, always get the ones who have joined the party of Evil, so unconsciously and probably involuntarily the spiritist is always diabolizing."
"Yes, and if one admits the disgusting idea that an imbecile medium can bring back the dead, one must, in reason, recognise the stamp of Satan on these practises."
"However viewed, Spiritism is an abomination."
"So you don’t believe in theurgy, white magic?"
"It’s a joke. Only a Rosicrucian who wants to hide his more repulsive essays at black magic ever hints at such a thing. No one dare confess that he satanizes. The Church, not duped by these hair-splitting distinctions, condemns black and white magic indifferently."
"Well," said Durtal, lighting a cigarette, after a silence, "this is a better topic of conversation than politics or the races, but where does it get us? Half of these doctrines are absurd, the other half so mysterious as to produce only bewilderment. Shall we grant Satanism? Well, gross as it Is, it seems a sure thing. And if it is, and one is consistent, one must also grant Catholicism-for Buddhism and the like are not big enough to be substituted for the religion of Christ."
"All right. Believe."
"I can’t. There are so many discouraging and revolting dogmas in Christianity -"
"I am uncertain about a good many things, myself," said Des Hermies, "and yet there are moments when I feel that the obstacles are giving way, that I almost believe. Of one thing I am sure. The supernatural does exist, Christian or not. To deny it is to deny evidence — and who wants to be a materialist, one of these silly freethinkers?"
"It is mighty tiresome to be vacillating forever. How I envy Carhaix his robust faith!"
"You don’t want much!" said Des Hermies. "Faith is the breakwater of the soul, affording the only haven in which dismasted man can glide along in peace."
CHAPTER XXII
"You like that?" asked Mme. Carhaix. "For a change I served the broth yesterday and kept the beef for tonight. So we’ll have vermicelli soup, a salad of cold meat with pickled herring and celery, some nice mashed potatoes an au gratin, and a dessert. And then you shall taste the new cider we just got."
"Oh!" and "Ah!" exclaimed Des Hermies and Durtal, who, while waiting for dinner, were sipping the elixir of life. "Do you know, Mme. Carhaix, your cooking tempts us to the sin of gluttony-If you keep on you will make perfect pigs of us."
"Oh, you are joking. I wonder what is keeping Louis." "Somebody is coming upstairs," said Durtal, hearing the creaking of shoes in the tower.
"No, it isn’t his step," and she went and opened the door. "It’s Monsieur Gevingey."
And indeed, clad in his blue cape, with his soft black hat on his head, the astrologer entered, made a bow, like an actor taking a curtain call, rubbed his great knuckles against his massive rings, and asked where the bell-ringer was.
"He is at the carpenter’s. The oak beams holding up the big bell are cracked and Louis is afraid they will break down."
"Any news of the election?" and Gevingey took out his pipe and filled it.
"No. In this quarter we shan’t know the results until nearly ten o’clock. There’s no doubt about the outcome, though, because Paris is strong for this democratic stuff. General Boulanger will win hands down."
"This certainly is the age of universal imbecility."
Carhaix entered and apologised for being so late. while his. wife brought in the soup he took off his goloshes and said, in answer to his friends’ questions, "Yes; the dampness had rusted the frets and warped the beams. It was time for the carpenter to intervene. He finally promised that he would be here tomorrow and bring his men without fail.
Well, I am mighty glad to get back. In the streets everything whirls in front of my eyes. I am dizzy. I don’t know what to do. The only places where I am at home are the belfry and this room. Here, wife, let me do that," and he pushed her aside and began to stir the salad.
"How good it smells!" said Durtal, drinking in the incisive tang of the herring. "Do you know what this perfume suggests? A basket funnelled fireplace, twigs of juniper snapping in it, in a ground-floor room opening on to a great harbour. It seems to me there is a sort of salt water halo around these little rings of gold and rusted iron. Exquisite," he said as he tasted the salad.
"We’ll make it again for you, Monsieur Durtal," said Mme. Carhaix, "you are not hard to please."
"Alas!" said her husband, "his palate isn’t, but his soul is. When I think of his despairing aphorisms of the other night ! However, we are praying God to enlighten him. I’ll tell you," he said to his wife, "we will invoke Saint Nolasque and Saint Theodulus, who are always represented with bells. They sort of belong to the family, and they will certainly be glad to intercede for people who revere them and their emblems."
"It would take a stunning miracle to convince Durtal," said Des Hermies.
"Bells have been known to perform them," said the astrologer. "I remember to have read, though I forget where, that angels tolled the knell when Saint Isidro of Madrid was dying."
"And there are many other cases,’ said Carhaix. "Of their own accord the bells chimed when Saint Sigisbert chanted the De Profundis over the corpse of the martyr Placidus, and when the body of Saint Ennemond, Bishop of Lyons, was thrown by his murderers into a boat without oars or sails, the bells rang out, though nobody set them in motion, as the boat passed down the Saone."
"Do you know what I think?" asked Des Hermies, looking at Carhaix. "I think you ought to prepare a compendium of hagiography or a really informative work on heraldry."
"What makes you think that?"
"Well, you are, thank God, remote from this epoch and fond of things which it knows nothing about or execrates, and a work of that kind would take you still further away. My good friend, you are the man forever unintelligible to the coming generations. To ring bells because you love them, to give yourself over to the abandoned study of feudal art or monasticism would make you complete — take you clear out of Paris, out of the world, back into the Middle Ages."
"Alas," said Carhaix, "I am only a poor ignorant man. But the type you speak of does exist. In Switzerland, I believe, a bell-ringer has for years’ been collecting material for a heraldic memorial. I should think," he continued, laughing, "that his avocation would interfere with his vocation."
"And do you think," said Gevingey bitterly, "that the profession of astrologer is less decried, less neglected?"
"How do you like our cider?" asked the bell-ringer’s wife. "Do you find it a bit raw?"
"’No, it’s tart if you sip it, but sweet if you take a good mouthful," answered Durtal.
"Wife, serve the potatoes. Don’t wait for me. I delayed so long getting my business done that it’s time for the angelus. Don’t bother about me. Go on eating. I shall catch up with you when I get back."
And as her husband lighted his lantern and left the room the woman brought in on a plate what looked to be a cake covered with golden brown caramel icing.
"Mashed potatoes, I thought you said!"
"Au gratin. Browned in the oven. Taste it. I put in everything that ought to make it very good."
All exclaimed over it.
Then it became impossible to hear oneself. Tonight the bell boomed out with unusual clarity and Power. Durtal tried to analyse the sound which seemed to rock the room. There was a sort of flux and reflux of sound. First, the formidable shock of the clapper against the vase, then a sort of crushing and scattering of the sounds as if ground fine with the pestle, then a rounding of the reverberation; then the recoil of the clapper, adding, in the bronze mortar, other sonorous vibrations which it ground up and cast out and dispersed through the sounding shutters.
Then the bell strokes came further apart. Now there was only the whirring as of a Spinning wheel; a few crumbs were Slow about falling. And now Carhaix returned.
"It’s a two-sided age," said Gevingey, pensive. "People believe nothing, yet gobble everything. Every day a new Science is invented. Nobody reads that admirable Paracelsus who rediscovered all that had ever been found and created everything that had not. Say now to your congress of scientists that, according to this great master, life is a drop of the essence of the stars, that each of our Organs corresponds to a planet and depends upon it; that we are, in consequence, a foreshortening of the divine sphere. Tell them — and this, experience attests — that every man born tinder the sign of Saturn is melancholy and pituitous, taciturn and solitary, poor and vain; that that sluggish star predisposes to superstition and fraud, directs epilepsies and varices, hemorrhoids and leprosies; that it is, alas! the great purveyor to hospital and prison — and the scientists will shrug their shoulders and laugh at you. The glorified pedants and homiletic asses!"
"Paracelsus," said Des Hermies, "was one of the most extraordinary practitioners of occult medicine. He knew the now forgotten mysteries of the blood, the still unknown medical effects of light. Professing — as did also the cabalists, for that matter — that the human being is composed of three parts, a material body, a soul, and a perispirit called also an astral body, he attended this last especially and produced reactions on the carnal envelope by procedures which are either incomprehensible or fallen into disuse. He cared for wounds by treating not the tissues, but the blood which came out of them. However, we are assured that he healed certain ailments."
"Thanks to his profound knowledge of astrology," said Gevingey.
"But if the study of the sidereal influence is so important," said Durtal, "why don’t you take pupils?"
"I can’t get them. Where will you unearth people willing to study twenty years without glory or profit? Because, to be able to establish a horoscope one must be an astronomer of the firs? order, know mathematics from top to bottom, and one must have put in long hours tussling with the obscure Latin of the old masters. Besides, you must have the vocation and the faith, and they are lost."
"Just the way it is with bell ringing," said Carhaix.
"No, you see, messieurs," Gevingey went on,. "the day when the grand sciences of the Middle Ages fell foul of the systematic and hostile indifference of an impious people was the death-day of the soul in France. All we can do now is fold our arms and listen to the wild vagaries of society, which by turns shrieks with farcical joy and bitter
"We must not despair. A better time is coming," said Mme. Carhaix in a conciliating tone, and before she re-tired she shook hands with all her guests.
"The people," said Des Hermies, pouring the water into the coffee-pot, "instead of being ameliorated with time, grow, from century to century, more avaricious, abject, and stupid. Remember the Siege, the Commune; the unreasonable infatuations, the tumultuous hatreds, all the dementia of a deteriorated, malnourished people in arms. They certainly cannot compare with the naif and tender-hearted plebes of the Middle Ages. Tell us, Durtal, how the people acted when Gilles de Rais was conducted to the stake."
"Yes, tell us," said Carhaix, his great eyes made watery by the smoke of his pipe.
"Well, you know, as a consequence of unheard-of crimes, the Marshal de Rais was condemned to be hanged and burned alive. After the sentence was passed, when he was brought back to his dungeon, he addressed a last appeal to the Bishop, Jean de Malestroit, beseeching the Bishop to intercede for him with the fathers and mothers of the children Gilles had so ferociously violated and put to death, to be present when he suffered.
"The people whose hearts he had lacerated wept with pity. They now saw in this demoniac noble only a poor man who lamented his crimes and was about to confront the Divine Wrath. The day of execution, by nine o’clock they were marching through the city in processional. They chanted psalms in the streets and took vows in the churches to fast three days in order to help assure the repose of the Marshal’s soul."
"Pretty far, as you see, from American lynch law," said Des Hermies.
"Then," resumed Durtal, "at eleven they went to the prison to get Gilles de Rais and accompanied him to the prairie of Las Biesse, where tall stakes stood, surmounted by gibbets.
"The Marshal supported his accomplices, embraced them, adjured them to have ’great displeasure and contrition of their ill deeds’ and, beating his breast, he supplicated the Virgin to spare them, while the clergy, the peasants, and the people joined in the psalmody, intoning the sinister and imploring strophes of the chant for the departed:
"Nos timemus diem judicii
Quia mali et nobis conscii,
Sed tu, Mater summi concilii,
Pata nobis locum refugii,
O Maria.
Tunc iratus Judex -"
"Hurrah for Boulanger!"
The noise as of a stormy sea mounted from the Place Saint Sulpice, and a hubbub of cries floated up to the tower room. " Boulanger -lange -" Then an enormous, raucous voice, the voice of an oyster woman, a push-cart peddler, rose, dominating all others, howling, "Hurrah for Boulanger!"
"The people are cheering the election returns in front of the city hall," said Carhaix disdainfully.
They looked at each other.
"The people of today!" exclaimed Des Hermies.
"Ah," grumbled Gevingey, "they wouldn’t acclaim a sage, an artist, that way, even — if such were conceivable now — a saint."
"And they did in the Middle Ages."
"Well, they were more naif and not so stupid then," said Des Hermies. "And as Gevingey says, where now are the saints who directed them? You cannot too often repeat it, the spiritual councillors of today have tainted hearts, dysenteric souls, and slovenly minds. Or they are worse. They Corrupt their flock. They are of the Docre order and Satanize.
"To think that a century of positivism and atheism has been able to overthrow everything but Satanism, and it cannot make Satanism yield an inch."
"Easily explained!" ’cried Carhaix. "Satan is forgotten by the great majority. Now it was Father Ravignan, I believe, who proved that the wiliest thing the Devil can do is to get people to deny his existence."
"Oh, God I" murmured Durtal forlornly, "what whirl-winds of ordure I see on the horizon!"
"No," said Carhaix, "don’t say that. On earth all is dead and decomposed. But in heaven! Ah, I admit that the Paraclete is keeping us waiting. But the texts announcing his coming are inspired. The future is certain. There will be light," and with bowed head he prayed fervently.
Des Hermies rose and paced the room. All that is very well," he groaned, "but this century laughs the glorified Christ to scorn. It contaminates the supernatural and vomits on the Beyond. Well, how can we hope that in the future the offspring of the fetid tradesmen of today will be decent? Brought up as they are, what will they do in Life?"
"They will do," replied Durtal, "as their fathers and mothers do now. They will stuff their guts and crowd out their souls through their alimentary canals."