La Dame de Monsoreau (42 page)

Then Chicot restored his money to his purse, his purse to his pocket, and leaning against the window, already touched by the sunlight, he forgot Gorenflot in a profound meditation.

However, the brother collector pursued his way, with his wallet on his shoulder, and a meditative air on his face that may have struck passers-by as an evidence of^the devout workings of his mind ; but it was really nothing of the sort. Gorenflot was trying to hit on one of those magnificent lies which laggard monk and soldier are equally clever in inventing, a lie always the same in texture, but embroidered according to the liar's fancy.

As soon as Brother Gorenflot got a glimpse of the convent gates they seemed to him even gloomier-looking than usual, and the presence of several monks conversing at the entrance and anxiously gazing in every direction was not calculated to ease his mind, while the bustle and excitement among them, as soon as they saw him coming out of the Eue Saint-Jacques, gave him one of the greatest frights he had ever had in his life.

"It's of me they're talking; they're pointing at me and waiting for me ; they have been searching for me all night; my absence has created a scandal ; I 'm lost! "

His brain reeled; a wild idea of flight came into his head; but several monks were already running to meet him ; they would pursue him undoubtedly. Brother Gorenflot knew his own weak points : he was not cut out for a runner ; he would be overtaken, garrotted, and dragged to the convent; he might as well be resigned.

He advanced meekly, then, toward his companions, who seemed to feel a certain hesitation about speaking to him.

" Alas ! " sighed Gorenflot, " they pretend not to know me ; I am unto them a stumbling-block."

At length one of the monks ventured to approach and said :

" Poor, dear brother! "

Gorenflot heaved a sigh and raised his eyes to heaven.

" You know the prior is waiting for you ? " said another.

" Ah ! great heavens ! "

" Yes," added a third, " he said you were to be brought to him as soon as you entered the convent."

" The very thing I feared," commented Gorenflot.

And, more dead than alive, he entered the gate, which was shut behind him.

" Ah! it's you," cried the brother porter. " Come quick, quick; the reverend prior, Joseph Foulon, is waiting for you."

And the brother porter, taking Gorenflot's hand, led, or rather dragged him, to the prior's room.

There, too, the door was shut behind him.

Gorenflot lowered his eyes, fearing to meet the angry gaze of the abbot; he felt he was alone, abandoned by the world, and about to have an interview with his justly irritated superior.

" Ah, you are here at last," said the abbot.

" Reverend " — stammered the monk.

" What anxiety you have given me ! " continued the prior.

" You are very kind, father," answered Gorenflot, astonished at the indulgent tone of his superior, which he did not expect.

" You were afraid to return after last night's scene, I suppose ? "

" I confess I did not dare to do so," said the monk, a cold sweat breaking out on his forehead.

" Ah ! dear brother, dear brother," said the abbot, " what you did was very imprudent, very rash."

" Let me explain, father."

" Oh, what need is there of explaining ? Your sally " —

" If there is no need of explaining," said Gorenflot, " so much the better, for it would be a difficult task for me to do so."

" I can readily understand that you were carried away for a moment by your intense enthusiasm — enthusiasm is a holy sentiment, sometimes a virtue ; but virtues, when exaggerated, become almost vices; the most honorable sentiments, when carried too far, are reprehensible."

" Excuse me, father," said Gorenflot, " but though you may understand, I don't, at least, fully. Of what sally are you speaking ? "

" Of the one you made last night ? "

" Outside the convent ? " timidly inquired the monk,

" No ; in the convent."

" I made a sally in the convent, did I ? You are sure it was I."

" Of course it was you."

Gorenflot scratched his nose. He was beginning to understand that he and the prior were playing at cross-purposes.

" I am as good a Catholic as you, but your audacity terrified me."

" My audacity," said Gorenflot; " then I have been audacious ? "

" Worse than audacious, my son; you have been rash."

" Alas ! father, you must pardon the errors of a nature that is not yet sufficiently disciplined; I will try to amend."

" Yes, but meanwhile I cannot help having my fears about you and about the consequences of this outbreak."

" What ! " exclaimed Gorenflot, " the thing is known outside ? "

" Of course; were you not aware that your sermon was heard by more than a hundred laymen ? "

" My sermon ?" murmured Gorenflot, more and more astonished.

" I confess that it was fine, and that it was natural for you to have been intoxicated by the unanimous applause you received. But to go so far as to propose a procession in the streets of Paris, to offer to lead it, harness on back, helm on head and partisan on shoulder, and to summon all good Catholics to join you, — that, you must admit, was going rather far."

Gorenflot stared at the prior with eyes in which might be read every note in the gamut of wonder.

" Now," continued the prior, " there is one way of arranging everything. The religious fervor that seethes in your generous heart would do you harm in Paris, where there are so many ungodly eyes to keep a watch on you. I desire that you should expend it"-

" Where, father ? " asked Gorenflot, convinced that he was going to be sent at once to thj dungeon.

" In the province."

" In exile ! " cried Gorenflot.

" My dear brother, something much worse may happen to you if you stay here."

" Why, what can happen to me ?"

" A trial which would probably end in your perpetual imprisonment, if not in your execution."

Gorenflot turned frightfully pale. He could not see why he should suffer perpetual imprisonment and even death for getting tipsy in an inn and spending a night outside his convent.

" While, my dear brother, by submitting to temporary banishment, you not only escape danger, but you plant the flag of our faith in the province. What you have done and said last night exposes you to peril, for we are immediately under the eyes of the King and his accursed minions ; but in the province you can do and say the same things with comparative safety. Start, therefore, as soon as you can, Brother Gorenflot. It may be even already too late, and the archers may have received orders to arrest you."

" Mercy on us, reverend father, what is this you are saying ? " stammered the monk, shaking all over with terror, for, as the prior, whose mildness at first had delighted him, went on, he was astounded af the proportions his sin, at the worst a very venial one, assumed ; " archers, you say ? And what have I to do with archers ? "

" You may have nothing to do with them, but they may have got something to do with you."

" But in that case some one must have informed against me."

" I am quite sure of it. Start, then ; start immediately."

" Start, reverend father!" said Gorenflot, completely disheartened. u That is very easy to say; but how am I to live when I have started?"

" Oh, nothing easier. You have supported others by collecting alms until now ; from this out, you will support yourself by doing the same. And then, there is no reason why you should be anxious. The principles you developed in your sermon will gain you so many followers in the province that I am quite sure you can never want for anything. Go, go, in God's name, and, above all, do not return until you are sent for."

And the prior, after tenderly embracing Brother Gorenflot, pushed him with gentleness, but with a firmness there was no resisting, to the door of the cell.

There the entire community was assembled, awaiting the exit of Brother Gorenflot.

As soon as he appeared, every one made a rush at him, and tried to touch his hands, his neck, his robe. The veneration of some went even so far that they kissed the hem of his garment.

" Adieu," said one monk, pressing him to his heart, " adieu; you are a holy man ; do not forget me in your prayers."

" Bah ! " said Gorenflot to himself, "la holy man. That 's good!"

" Adieu," said another, wringing his hand, " brave champion of the faith, adieu ! Godefroi d,e Bouillon was of little account in comparison with you."

" Adieu, martyr! " said a third, kissing the end of his cord ; " blindness prevails among us at present, but the light will come soon."

And, in this fashion, was Gorenflot carried from arm to arm and from kisses to kisses until he came to the gate of the street, whicn closed behind him as soon as he passed through it.

Gorenflot looked back at that gate with' an expression it would be vain to attempt to describe, and, for some distance, walked backwards, his eyes turned on it as if he saw there the exterminating angel with the flaming sword banishing him from its precincts.

The only words that escaped him outside the gate were these :

" Devil take me if they are not all mad ; or, if they are not, then, God of mercy ! it is I who am ! "

PART II.

CHAPTER XXVII.

HOW BROTHER GORENFLOT FOUND OUT HE WAS A SOMNAMBULIST, AND HIS BITTER GRIEF THEREAT.

BEFORE the day, the woful day we have now reached, when our poor monk became the victim of such unheard-of persecution, Brother Gorenflot had led a contemplative life, which is the same as saying that he went forth on his expeditions early, if he felt like breathing the fresh air ; late, if he thought he should enjoy basking in the sun. As he had an abiding faith in God and the abbey kitchen, the rather mundane extras procured by him — only on very rare occasions, however — at the Corne d'Abondance were his solitary outside luxuries. Moreover, these extras depended pretty much on the caprices of the faithful, and the money paid for them had to be deducted from the alms collected by Brother Gorenflot at his stopping-place in the Rue Saint-Jacques. These alms reached the convent safely enough, though somewhat diminished by the amount left here and there by the good monk on the way. Of course, Chicot was a great resource, a friend who was equally fond of good feasts and of good fellows. But Chicot was very eccentric in his mode of life. Gorenflot would sometimes meet him three or four days in succession ; and then, a fortnight, a month, six weeks would elapse without any sign of him ; it might be that he was shut up with the King, or was attending him on some pilgrimage, or off on some expedition in furtherance of his own affairs or hobbies. Gorenflot, then, was one of those monks for whom, as for certain soldiers born in the regiment, the world begins with the superior of the house, that is to say, with the colonel of the convent, and ends when the trencher is cleared. Consequently, this soldier of the church, this child of the uniform, — if we may be permitted to apply

to him the picturesque expression which we used a short time ago in connection with the defenders of the country, — had never taken it into his head that, some time or other, he would have to plod laboriously through the country in search of adventures.

Still, if he even had some money — but the prior's answer to his demand had been plain ; without any apostolic embellishment whatever, like that versicle from Saint Luke :

" Seek and thou shalt find."

Gorenflot, at the very thought that he should have to go so far to seek, felt tired already.

However, the principal thing was to get clear of the peril that threatened him, an unknown peril indeed, but, if the prior were to be believed, not the less imminent on that account. The poor monk was not one of those who could disguise their appearance and escape by some clever metamorphosis. He resolved, therefore, in the first place, to gain the open country. Having come to this decision, he made his way, and at a rather rapid pace, through the Porte Bordelle, and passed cautiously, making himself as small as possible, the station of the night-patrol and the guardhouse of the Swiss, afraid that those archers, about whom the abbot of Sainte Genevieve had been so entertaining, might turn out to be realities of a peculiarly grasping kind.

But once in the open air, once in the level country, when he had gone five hundred steps from the city gate, when he saw the early spring grass growing on the slope of the fosse, having pierced the already verdant turf, as if to offer a seat to the tired wayfarer, when he saw the joyous sun near the horizon, the solitude on his right and left, and the bustling city behind him, he sat down on the ditch by the roadside, rested his double chin on his big fat hand, scratched the end of his stumpy nose with the index finger, and fell into a revery attended by an accompaniment of groans.

Except that he lacked a harp, Brother Gorenflot was no bad sample of one of those Hebrews who, hanging their harps on the willow, supplied, at the time of Jerusalem's desolation, the famous versicle " Super flumina Babylonis" and the subject of numberless melancholy pictures.

Brother Gorenflot's groans were the deeper because it was now near nine, the hour when the convent dined, for the monks, being, like all persons detached from the world, nat-

urally backward in civilization, still followed, in the year of grace 1578, the custom of the good King Charles V., who used to dine at eight in the morning, after his mass.

As easy would it be to count the grains of sand raised by a tempest on the seashore as to enumerate the contradictory ideas that seethed in the brain of the famished Gorenflot.

His first idea, the one, we may as well say, he had most trouble in getting rid of, was to return to Paris, go straight to the convent, and tell the abbot he most decidedly preferred a dungeon to exile, that he would consent to submit to the discipline, the whip, the knotted whip, yea, even the impace, provided only his superiors pledged their honor to see to his meals, which, with his consent, might be reduced to five a day.