The Queen Pedauque Part 7

"But let us pa.s.s that over and come to what is your special concern.

I thought of you, reverend sir, to transcribe and put into Latin some Greek MSS. of inestimable value. I confide in your knowledge and in your zeal, and have no doubt that your young disciple cannot but be of great help to you."

And addressing me specially he said:

"Yes, my son, I lay great hopes on you. They are based for a large part on the education you have received. For, you have been brought up, so to say, in the flames, under the mantel of the chimney haunted by Salamanders. That is a very considerable circ.u.mstance."

Without interrupting his speech, he took up an armful of MSS. and deposited them on the table.

"This," he said, showing a roll of papyrus, "comes from Egypt. It is a book of Zosimus the Panopolitan, which was thought to be lost and which I found myself in a coffin of a priest of Serapis.

"And what you see here," he added, showing us some straps of glossy and fibrous leaves on which Greek letters traced with a brush were hardly visible, "are unheard-of revelations, due, one to Gophar the Persian, the other to John, the arch-priest of Saint Evagia.

"I should be very glad if you would occupy yourselves with these works before any others. Afterwards we will study together the MSS.

of Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemy, of Olympiodorus and Stepha.n.u.s, which I discovered at Ravenna, in a vault where they have been locked up since the reign of that ignoramus Theodosius who has been surnamed the Great."

As soon as M. d'Asterac was gone, my tutor sat down over the papyrus of Zosimus and, with the help of a magnifying gla.s.s commenced to decipher it. I asked him if he was not surprised by what he had just heard.

Without raising his head he replied:

"My dear boy, I have known too many kinds of persons and traversed fortunes too various to be surprised at anything. This gentleman seems to be demented, less because he really is so, but from his thoughts differing in excess from those of the vulgar. But if one listened to discourses commonly held in this world, there would be found still less sense than in those of that philosopher. Left to itself, the sublimest human reason builds its castles and temples in the air and, truly, M.

d'Asterac is a pretty good gatherer of clouds. Truth is in G.o.d alone, never forget it, my boy. But this is really the book 'Jmoreth' written by Zosimus the Panopolitan for his sister Theosebia. What a glory and what a delight to read this unique MS. rediscovered by a kind of prodigy! I'll give it my days and night watches. How I pity, my boy, the ignorant fellows whom idleness drives into debauchery! What a miserable life they lead! What is a woman in comparison with an Alexandrian papyrus? Compare, if you please, this n.o.ble library with the tavern of the _Little Bacchus_ and the entertainment of this precious MS. with the caresses given to a wench under the bower; and tell me, my boy, where true contentment is to be found. For me, a companion of the Muses, and admitted to the silent orgies of meditation of which the rhetor of Madama speaks with so much eloquence, I thank G.o.d for having made me a respectable man."

CHAPTER IX

At Work on Zosimus the Panopolitan--I visit my Home and hear Gossip about M. d'Asterac.

During all the next month or six weeks, M. Coignard applied himself, day and night, just as he had promised, to the reading of Zosimus the Panopolitan. During the meals we partook of at the table of M. d'Asterac the conversation turned on the opinions of the gnostics and on the knowledge of the ancient Egyptians. Being only an ignorant scholar I was of little use to my good master. I did my best by making such researches as he wanted me to make; I took no little pleasure in it. Truly, we lived happily and quietly. At about the seventh week, M. d'Asterac gave me leave to go and see my parents at their cookshop. The shop appeared strangely smaller to me. My mother was there alone and sad. She cried aloud on seeing me fitted out like a prince.

"My Jacques," she said, "I am very happy!"

And she began to cry. We embraced, then wiping her eyes with a corner of her canvas ap.r.o.n she said:

"Your father is at the _Little Bacchus_. Since you left he often goes there; in your absence the house is less pleasant for him. He'll be glad to see you again. But say, my Jacques, are you satisfied with your new position? I regretted letting you go with that n.o.bleman; I even accused myself in confession to the third vicar of giving preference to your bodily well-being over that of your soul and not having thought of G.o.d in establis.h.i.+ng you. The third vicar reproved me kindly over it, and exhorted me to follow the example of the pious women in the Scriptures, of whom he named several to me; but there are names there that I'll never be able to remember. He did not explain his meaning minutely as it was a Sat.u.r.day evening and the church was full of penitents."

I rea.s.sured my good mother as well as I could and told her that M.

d'Asterac made me work in Greek, which was the language in which the New Testament was written; this pleased her, but she remained pensive.

"You'll never guess, my dear Jacquot," she said, "who spoke to me of M.

d'Asterac. It was Cadette Saint-Avit, the serving-woman of the Rector of St Benoit. She comes from Gascony, and is a native of a village called Laroque-Timbaut, quite near Saint Eulalie, of which M. d'Asterac is the lord. You know that Cadette Saint-Avit is elderly, as the waiting-woman of a rector ought to be. In her youth she knew, in her country, the three Messieurs d'Asterac, one of whom was captain of a man-of-war and has since been drowned. He was the youngest. The second was colonel of a regiment, went to war and was killed. The eldest, Hercules d'Asterac, is the sole survivor of the three brothers. It is the same one in whose service you are for your good, at least I hope so. He dressed magnificently in his youth, was liberal in his manners but of a sombre humour. He kept aloof from all public business and was not anxious to go into the king's service, as his two brothers had done and found in it an honourable end. He was accustomed to say that it was no glory to carry a sword at one's side, that he did not know of a more ign.o.ble thing than the calling of arms, and that a village scavenger was, in his opinion, high over a brigadier or a marshal of France. Those were his sayings.

I confess it does not seem to me either bad or malicious, rather daring and whimsical. But in some way they must be blameable, as Cadette Saint-Avit said that the rector of her parish considered them to be contrary to the order established by G.o.d in this world and opposed to that part of the Bible where G.o.d is given a name which means Lord of Hosts, and that would be a great sin.

"This M. Hercules had so little sympathy with the court that he refused to travel to Versailles to be presented to his Majesty according to his birthright. He said, 'The king does not come to me and I do not go to him,' and anyone of sense, my Jacquot, can understand that such is not a natural saying."

My good mother looked inquiringly and anxiously at me and went on:

"What more I have to inform you about, my dear Jacquot, is still less believable. However, Cadette Saint-Avit spoke of it as of a certainty.

And so I will tell you that M. Hercules d'Asterac, when he lived on his estate, had no other care but to bottle the rays of the sun. Cadette Saint-Avit does not know how he managed it, but she is sure that after a time, in the flagons well corked and heated in water baths, tiny little women took form, charming figures and dressed like theatre princesses.

You laugh, Jacquot; however, one ought not to joke over such things when one can see the consequence. It is a great sin to create in such a way creatures who cannot be baptised and who never could have a part in the eternal blessings. You cannot suppose that M. d'Asterac carried those grotesque figures to a priest in their bottles to hold them over the christening font. No G.o.dmother could have been found for them."

"But, my dear mamma," I replied, "the dolls of M. d'Asterac were not in want of christening, they had no partic.i.p.ation in original sin."

"I never thought of that," said my mother. "And Cadette Saint-Avit herself did not mention it, although she was the servant of a rector.

Unhappily she left Gascony when quite young, came to France and had no more news of M. d'Asterac, of his bottles and his puppets. I sincerely hope, my dear Jacquot, that he renounced his wicked works, which could not be accomplished without the help of the devil."

I asked:

"Tell me, my dear mother, did Cadette Saint-Avit, the rector's servant, see the bodies in the bottles with her own eyes?"

"No, my dear child; M. d'Asterac kept his dolls very secret and did not show them to anybody. But she heard of them from a churchman of the name of Fulgence, who haunted the castle, and swore he had seen those little creatures step out of their gla.s.s prisons and dance a minuet. And she had every reason to believe it. It is possible to doubt of what one sees, but you cannot doubt the word of an honest man, especially when he belongs to the Church. There is another misfortune with such secret practices, they are extremely costly and it is hard to imagine, as Cadette Saint-Avit said, what money M. Hercules spent to procure all those bottles of different forms, those furnaces and conjuring books wherewith he filled his castle. But after the death of his brothers he became the richest gentleman of his province, and while he dissipated his wealth in follies, his good lands worked for him. Cadette Saint-Avit rates him, with all his expenses, as still a very rich man."

These last words spoken, my father entered the shop. He embraced me tenderly and confided to me that the house had lost half its pleasantness in consequence of my departure and that of M. Jerome Coignard, who was honest and jovial. He complimented me on my dress and gave me a lesson in deportment, a.s.suring me that trade had accustomed him to easy manners by the continuous obligation he was under to greet his customers like gentlemen, if as a fact they were only vile riff-raff. He gave me, as a precept, to round off the elbows and to turn my toes outward and counselled me, beyond this, to go and see Leandre at the fair of Saint Germain and to adjust myself exactly on him.

We dined together with a good appet.i.te, and we parted shedding floods of tears. I loved them well, both of them, and what princ.i.p.ally made me cry was that, after an absence of six weeks only, they had already become somewhat strange to me. And I verily believe that their sadness was caused by the same sentiment.

CHAPTER X

I see Catherine with Friar Ange and reflect--The Liking of Nymphs for Satyrs--An Alarm of Fire--M. d'Asterac in his Laboratory.

When I came out of the cookshop, the night was black. At the corner of the Rue des Ecrivains I heard a fat and deep voice singing:

"Si ton honneur elle est perdue La bell', c'est tu l'as bien voulu."

And soon I could see on the other side, whence the voice sounded, Friar Ange, with wallet dangling on his shoulder, holding Catherine the lacemaker round the waist, walking in the shadow with a wavering and triumphal step, spouting the gutter water under his sandals in a magnificent spirit of mire which seemed to celebrate his drunken glory, as the basins of Versailles make their fountains play in honour of the king. I put myself out of the way against the post in the corner of a house door, so as not to be seen by them, which was a needless precaution as they were too much occupied with one another. With her head lying on the monk's shoulder, Catherine laughed. A moonray trembled on her moist lips and in her eyes, like the water sparkles in a fountain; and I went my way, with my soul irritated and my heart oppressed, thinking on the provoking waist of that fine girl pressed by the arm of a dirty Capuchin.

"Is it possible," I said to myself, "that such a pretty thing could be in such ugly hands? And if Catherine despises me need she render her despisal more cruel by the liking she has for that naughty Friar Ange?"

This preference appeared singular to me and I conceived as much surprise as disgust at it. But I was not the disciple of M. Jerome Coignard for nothing. This incomparable teacher had formed my mind to meditate.

I recalled to myself the satyrs one can see in gardens carrying off nymphs, and reflected that if Catherine was made like a nymph, those satyrs, at least as they are represented to us, are as horrible as yonder Capuchin. And I concluded that I ought not to be so very much astonished by what I had just seen. My vexation, however, was not dissipated by my reason, doubtless because it had not its source there.

These meditations got me along through the shadows of the night and the mud of the thaw to the road of Saint Germain, where I met M. Jerome Coignard, who was returning home to the Cross of the Sablons after having supped in town.

"My boy," he said, "I have conversed of Zosimus and the gnostics at the table of a very learned ecclesiastic, quite another Peiresc. The wine was coa.r.s.e and the fare but middling, but nectar and ambrosia floated through the discourse."

Then my dear tutor spoke of the Panopolitan with an inconceivable eloquence. Alas! I listened badly, thinking of that drop of moonlight which had this very night fallen on the lips of Catherine the lacemaker.

At last he came to a stop and I asked on what foundation the Greeks had established the liking of the nymphs for satyrs. My teacher was so widely learned that he was always ready to reply to all questions. He told me:

"That liking is based on a natural sympathy. It is lively but not so ardent as the liking of the satyrs for the nymphs, with which it corresponds. The poets have observed this distinction very well.

Concerning it I'll narrate you a singular adventure I have read in a MS.

belonging to the library of the Bishop of Seez. It was (I still have it before my eyes) a collection in folio, written in a good hand of last century. This is the singular fact reported in it. A Norman gentleman and his wife took part in a public entertainment, disguised, he as a satyr, she as a nymph. By Ovid it is known with what ardour the satyrs pursue the nymphs; that gentleman had read the 'Metamorphoses.' He entered so well into the spirit of his disguise that nine months after, his wife presented him with a baby whose forehead was horned and whose feet were those of a buck. It is not known what became of the father beyond that he had the common end of all creatures, to wit, that he died, and that beside that capriped he left another younger child, a Christian one and of human form. This younger son went to law claiming that his brother should not get a part of the deceased father's inheritance for the reason that he did not belong to the species redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ. The Parliament of Normandy, sitting at Rouen, gave a verdict in his favour, which was duly recorded."