by Eugène Sue
“Good brother, you are no longer angry, are you? If you only knew my alarm at seeing you look so wicked!”
A heavy knock resounded at the street door, followed immediately by the sonorous and merry voice of the Franc-Taupin singing his favorite song:
“A Franc-Taupin had an ash-tree bow,
All eaten with worms, and all knotted its cord;
Derideron, vignette on vignon!! Derideron!”
A tremor ran through Hervé. Quickly recalling himself, he ran to the casement, opened it, and leaning forward, cried out: “Good evening, uncle!”
“Dear nephew, I am back from St. Denis. I did not wish to return to Paris without telling you all good-day!”
“Oh, dear uncle, a great misfortune has happened! La Catelle is dying. She sent for mother, who left at once. I could not accompany her, being obliged to remain here with Hena in father’s absence. We feel uneasy at the thought that mother may have to come back all alone on this dark night.”
“All alone! By the bowels of St. Quenet, of what earthly use am I, if not to protect my sister!” replied Josephin. “I shall start on a run to La Catelle’s, and see your mother home. Be not uneasy, my lad. When I return I shall embrace you and your sister, if you are not yet in bed.”
The Franc-Taupin hastened away. Hervé shut the window, and returned in a state of great excitement to Hena, who inquired:
“Why did you induce uncle to go to-night after mother? She is to stay all night at La Catelle’s. Why do you not answer me? Why is your face so lowering? My God! What ails you? Brother, brother, do not look upon me with such eyes! I am trembling all over.”
“Hena, I love you — I love you carnally!”
“I — do not comprehend — what — you say. I do not understand your words. You now frighten me. Your eyes are bloodshot.”
“The kind of love you feel for that monk — that love I feel for you! I love you with a passionate desire.”
“Hervé, you are out of your mind. You do not know what you say!”
“I must possess you!”
“Good God, am I also going crazy? Do my eyes — do my ears deceive me?”
“Hena — you are beautiful! Sister, I adore you—”
“Do not touch me! Mercy! Hervé, brother, you are demented! Recognize me — it is I — Hena — your own sister — it is I who am here before you — on my knees.”
“Come, come into my arms!”
“Help! Help! Mother! Father!”
“Mother is far away — father also. We are alone — in the dark — and I have received absolution! You shall be mine, will ye nil ye!”
The monster, intent upon accomplishing his felony in obscurity, knocked down the lamp with his fist, threw himself upon Hena, and gripped her in his arms. The girl slipped away from him, reached the staircase that led to the lower floor, and bounded down. Hervé rushed after her, and seized her as she was about to clear the lowest steps. The distracted child called for help. Holding her with one hand, her brother tried to gag her with the other, lest her cries be heard by the neighbors. Suddenly the street door was thrown open, flooding the room with moonlight, and disclosing Bridget on the threshold. Thunderstruck, the mother perceived her daughter struggling in the arms of her brother, and still, though in a smothered voice, crying: “Help! Help!” The wretch, now rendered furious at the danger of his victim’s escaping him, and dizzy with the vertigo of crime, did not at first recognize Bridget. He flung Hena behind him, and seizing a heavy iron coal-rake from the fireplace, was about to use it for a club, not even recoiling before murder in order to free himself from an importunate witness. Already the dangerous weapon was raised when, by the light of the moon, the incestuous lad discovered the features of his mother.
“Save yourself, mother,” cried Hena between her sobs; “he is gone crazy; he will kill you. Only your timely help saved me from his violent assault.”
“Infamous boy!” cried the mother. “That, then, was your purpose in removing me from the house. God willed that half way to La Catelle’s I met her brother-in-law—”
“Be gone!” thundered back Hervé, a prey to uncontrollable delirium; and raising the iron coal-rake which he had lowered under the first impulse of surprise at the sight of his mother, he staggered towards Bridget yelling: “Be gone!”
“Matricide! Dare you raise that iron bar against me — your mother?”
“All my crimes are absolved in advance! Incest — parricide — all are absolved! Be gone, or I kill you!”
Hardly were these appalling words uttered, when the sound of numerous and rapidly approaching steps penetrated into the apartment through the door that Bridget had left open. Almost immediately a troop of patrolling archers, under the command of a sergeant-at-arms, and led by a man in a black frock with the cowl drawn over his head, halted and drew themselves up before the house of Christian. The Franc-Taupin had met them a short distance from the Exchange Bridge. A few words, exchanged among the soldiers, notified him of the errand they were on. Alarmed at what he overheard, he had quickly retraced his steps and followed them at a distance. The sergeant in command stepped in at the very moment that Hervé uttered the last menace to his mother.
“Does Christian Lebrenn dwell here?” asked the soldier. “Answer quickly.”
Ready to sink distracted, Bridget was not at first able to articulate a word. Hena gathered strength to rise from the floor where Hervé had flung her, and ran to Bridget, into whose arms she threw herself. Hervé dropped at his feet the iron implement he had armed himself with, and remained motionless, savage of mien, his arms crossed over his breast. The man whose face was hidden by the cowl of his black frock — that man was John Lefevre, the disciple of Ignatius Loyola — whispered a few words in the ear of the sergeant. The latter again addressed Bridget, now in still more peremptory tones:
“Is this the dwelling of Christian Lebrenn, a typesetter by trade?”
“Yes,” answered Bridget, and greatly alarmed by the visit of the soldiers, she added: “My husband is not at home. He will not be back until late.”
“You are the wife of Christian Lebrenn?” resumed the sergeant, and pointing to Hena and then to Hervé: “That young girl and that young man are your children, are they not? By order of Monsieur John Morin, the Criminal Lieutenant, I am commissioned to arrest Christian Lebrenn, a printer, his wife, his son and his daughter as being charged with heresy, and to take them to a safe place.”
“My husband is not at home!” cried Bridget, her first thought being to the safety of Christian, although herself stupefied with fear at the threatened arrest. That instant, and standing a few steps behind the archers, the Franc-Taupin, taller by a head than the armed troop before him, caught the eyes of Bridget. With a sign he warned her to keep silent. He then bent his long body in two, and vanished.
“Do you want to make us believe your husband is not at home?” resumed the sergeant. “We shall search the house.” Then turning to his men: “Bind the hands of that young man, of the young girl and of the woman, and keep guard over the prisoners.”
John Lefevre, his face still concealed under the cowl of his frock, could not be recognized by Bridget. He knew the inmates of the house, at whose hearth he had often sat as a friend. He motioned to the sergeant to follow him, and taking a lanthorn from the hand of one of the archers, mounted the stairs, entered the chamber of the married couple, and pointing with his finger to a cabinet in which Christian kept his valuables, said to him:
“The papers in question must be in there, in a little casket of black wood.”
The key stood in the lock of the cabinet. The sergeant opened the two doors. From one of the shelves he took down a casket of considerable proportions.
“That is the one,” said John Lefevre. “Give it to me. I shall place it in the hands of Monsieur the Criminal Lieutenant.”
“That Christian must be hiding somewhere,” remarked the sergeant, looking under the bed, and behind the curtains.
“It is almos
t certain,” answered John Lefevre. “He rarely goes out at night. There is all the greater reason to expect to find him in at this hour, seeing he spent part of last night out of the house.”
“Why did they not try to arrest him during the day at the printing office of Monsieur Estienne?” the sergeant inquired while keeping up his search. “He could not have been missed there.”
“As to that, my friend, I shall say, in the first place, that, due to the untoward absence of Monsieur the Criminal Lieutenant, who was summoned early this morning to Cardinal Duprat’s palace, our order of arrest could not be delivered until too late in the evening. In the second place, you know as well as I that the artisans of Monsieur Estienne are infected with heresy; they are armed; and might have attempted to resist the arrest of their companion. No doubt the archers would have prevailed in the end. But Christian might have made his escape during the struggle, whereas the chances were a thousand to one he could be taken by surprise at his house, in the dark, along with his family.”
“And yet he still escapes us,” observed the sergeant, after some fresh searches. Noticing the door of Hena’s chamber, he entered and rummaged that room also, with no better results, and said: “Nothing in this direction either.”
“Come, let us investigate the garret. Give me the lanthorn, and follow me. If he is not there either, then we must renounce his capture for to-night. Fortunately we got the woman and the children — besides this,” added the Jesuit, tapping upon the casket under his arm. “We shall find Christian, sure enough.”
Saying this, John Lefevre opened the panel leading to the nook where stood the ladder to the attic; he climbed it, followed by the sergeant, arrived in the garret which had served as refuge to the unknown, noticed the mattress, some crumbs of bread and the remains of some fruit, pens and an inkhorn on a stool, and, scattered over the floor, fragments of paper covered with a fine and close handwriting.
“Somebody was hiding here, and spent some time, too!” exclaimed the sergeant excitedly. “This mattress, these pens, indicate the presence of a stranger of studious habits;” and running to the dormer window that opened upon the river, he mused: “Can Christian have made his escape by this issue?”
While the archer renewed his search, vainly rummaging every nook and corner of the garret, John Lefevre carefully collected the bits of paper that were strewn over the floor, assorted them, and kneeling down beside the stool, on which he placed the lanthorn, examined the manuscript intently. Suddenly a tremor ran over his frame, and turning to the sergeant he said:
“There is every reason to believe that Christian Lebrenn is not in the house. I think I can guess the reason of his absence. Nevertheless, before quitting the place we must search the bedroom of his two sons. It is in the rear of the ground floor room. Let us hurry. Your expedition is not yet ended. We shall probably have to leave Paris to-night, and carry our investigation further.”
“Leave Paris, reverend Father?”
“Yes, perhaps. But I shall first have to notify the Criminal Lieutenant. What a discovery! To be able at one blow to crush the nest of vipers! — ad majorem Dei gloriam!”
John Lefevre and the sergeant re-descended to the ground floor. After a few whispered words to the soldier, the Jesuit departed, carrying with him the casket in which the chronicles of the Lebrenn family were locked.
The chamber occupied by Hervé was ransacked as vainly as had been the other apartments of the house. During these operations Bridget had striven to allay the fright of her daughter. Hervé, somber and sullen, his hands bound like his mother’s and sister’s, remained oblivious to what was happening around him. Giving up the capture of Christian, the sergeant returned to his prisoners and announced to Bridget that he was to carry both her and her children away with him. The poor woman implored him to take pity on her daughter who was hardly able to keep her feet. The sergeant answered harshly, that if the young heretic was unable to walk she would be stripped and dragged naked over the streets. Finally, addressing his archers, he concluded:
“Three of you are to remain in this house. When Christian raps to be let in you will open the door, and seize his person.”
Bridget could not repress a moan of anguish at hearing the order. Christian, she reflected, was fatedly bound to fall into the trap, as he would return home unsuspecting. The three archers locked themselves up on the ground floor. The others, led by their chief, left the house, and, taking Bridget and her two children with them, marched away to lead them to prison.
“For mercy’s sake,” said the unhappy mother to the sergeant, “untie my hands that I may give my daughter the support of my arm. She is so feeble that it will be impossible for her to follow us.”
“That’s unnecessary,” answered the sergeant. “On the other side of the bridge you will be separated. You are not to go to the same prison as your daughter.”
“Good God! Where do you mean to take her to?”
“To the Augustinian Convent. You are to go to the Chatelet. Come, move on, move quickly.”
Hervé, who had until then remained sullenly impassive, said impatiently to the sergeant:
“If I am to be taken to a convent, I demand to go to the Cordeliers.”
“The Criminal Lieutenant is to decide upon that,” replied the sergeant.
After a short wait, the archers took up their march. Alas! How shall the pain and desolation of Hena and her mother be described at learning they were not to be allowed even the consolation of suffering this latest trial in each other’s company? Nevertheless, a ray of hope lighted Bridget’s heart. Her last words with the sergeant had been exchanged near the cross that stood in the middle of the bridge, and close to which the archers were passing at the time. Christian’s wife saw the Franc-Taupin on his knees at the foot of the crucifix, gesticulating wildly, raising his head and crying out like a frantic devotee:
“Lord! Lord! Thy eye has seen everything. Thy ear has heard everything; there is nothing hidden from Thee. Have pity upon me, miserable sinner, that I am! Thanks to Thee he will be saved. I hope so! In the name of the most Holy Trinity.”
“There is a good Catholic who will not fail to be saved,” said the sergeant, making the sign of the cross and looking at the kneeling figure of the Franc-Taupin, who furiously smote his chest without intermission, while the archers redoubled their pace and marched away, dragging their prisoners behind them.
“God be blessed!” said Bridget to herself, understanding the information that Josephin meant to convey. “My brother has seen everything and heard everything. He will remain in the neighborhood of the house. He expects to save Christian from the danger that threatens him. He will inform Christian that his daughter has been taken to the Augustinian Convent and I to the Chatelet prison.”
Such indeed was the purpose of the Franc-Taupin. When the archers had disappeared he drew near to Christian’s house and contemplated it sadly and silently by the light of the moon. Accidentally his eyes fell upon a scapulary that had dropped near the threshold. He recognized it, having more than once seen it hanging on the breast of Hervé. The strings of the relic had snapped during the struggle of Hena with her brother, and the bag being thus detached from Hervé’s neck it had slipped down between his shirt and his jacket, and dropped to the ground. The Franc-Taupin picked up the relic, and opened it mechanically. Finding therein the letter of absolution, he ran his eye hurriedly over the latter, and at once replaced it in the scapulary.
CHAPTER XIII.
CALVINISTS IN COUNCIL.
WHILE THE EVENTS narrated in the previous chapter were occurring at his house, Christian Lebrenn was climbing in the company of his mysterious guest the slope of Montmartre, along the path that led to the abbey.
“Monsieur Lebrenn,” said Monsieur John, who had been in deep silence, “I should feel guilty of an act of ingratitude and of mistrust were I any longer to withhold from you my name. Perhaps it is not unknown to you. I am John Calvin.”
“I feel happy, monsieur, in h
aving given asylum to the chief of the Reformation, to the valiant apostle who has declared war to Catholicism, and who propagates the new ideas in France.”
“Alas, our cause already counts its martyrs by the thousands. Who knows but I may soon be added to their number? My life is in the hands of the Lord.”
“Our enemies are powerful.”
“Among these, the most redoubtable ones will be the Jesuits, the sectarians whose secret you surprised. Their purposes were not so well concealed but that I already had intimation of the endeavors of their chief to gather around himself active, devoted and resolute men. Hence the lively interest I felt in the narrative of your relative, the one-time page of Ignatius Loyola, when the latter was still a military chieftain. That revelation, coupled with yours, has given me the key to the character of the founder of the Society of Jesus, his craving after power, and the means that he uses in order to satisfy his ambition. The military discipline, that turns the soldier into a passive instrument of his captain, is to be applied to the domination of souls, which are to be rendered no less passive, no less servile. His project is to center in himself, to direct and to subjugate human conscience, thanks to a doctrine that extenuates and encourages the most detestable passions. Ignatius Loyola said the word: ‘The penitent of a Jesuit will see the horizon of his most ardent hopes open before him; all paths will be smoothed before his feet; a tutelary mantle will cover his defects, his errors and his crimes; to incur his resentment will be a dreaded ordeal.’”
“I shuddered as I heard that man distribute the empire of the world among his disciples in the name of such an impious doctrine. It cannot choose — the painful admission must be made — but impart to the Jesuits a formidable power until man be regenerated. Thanks, however, to God, the Reformation also now counts fervent adepts.”
“The disciples of the Reformation are still few in number, but their influence upon the masses of the people is no less extensive, due to the moral force of our doctrine. All straightforward, pure and generous souls are with us. Men of learning, poets, merchants, enlightened artisans like yourself, Monsieur Lebrenn; rich men, bourgeois, artists, professors; even military men will gather this evening at our meeting to confess the true Evangelium.”
