Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22)

by Marie Corelli

  “And Monseigneur, the Cardinal Bonpre, — has he also been served?”

  Madame Patoux opened her round eyes wide at him.

  “But certainly! Dost thou think, my little cabbage, thou wouldst get thy food before Monseigneur? That would be strange indeed!”

  Papa Patoux swallowed his ladleful of soup in abashed silence.

  “It was a beautiful day in the fields,” he presently observed— “There was a good smell in the earth, as if violets were growing, — and late in the autumn though it is, there was a skylark yet singing. It was a very blue heaven, too, as blue as the robe of the Virgin, with clouds as white as little angels clinging to it.”

  Madame nodded. Some people might have thought Papa Patoux inclined to be poetical, — she did not. Henri and Babette listened.

  “The robe of Our Lady is always blue,” said Babette.

  “And the angels’ clothes are always white,” added Henri.

  Madame Patoux said nothing, but passed a second helping of soup all round. Papa Patoux smiled blandly on his offspring.

  “Just so,” he averred— “Blue and white are the colours of the sky, my little ones, — and Our Lady and the angels live in the sky!”

  “I wonder where?” muttered Henri with his mouth half full. “The sky is nothing but miles and miles of air, and in the air there are millions and millions of planets turning round and round, larger than our world, — ever so much larger, — and nobody knows which is the largest of them all!”

  “It is as thou sayest, my son,” said Patoux confidently— “Nobody knows which is the largest of them all, but whichever it may be, that largest of them all belongs to Our Lady and the angels.”

  Henri looked at Babette, but Babette was munching watercress busily, and did not return his enquiring glances. Papa Patoux, quite satisfied with his own reasoning, continued his supper in an amiable state of mind.

  “What didst thou serve to Monseigneur, my little one?” he asked his wife with a coaxing and caressing air, as though she were some delicate and dainty sylph of the woodlands, instead of being the lady of massive proportions which she undoubtedly was,— “Something of delicacy and fine flavour, doubtless?”

  Madame Patoux shook her head despondingly.

  “He would have nothing of that kind,” she replied— “Soup maigre, and afterwards nothing but bread, dried figs, and apples to finish. Ah, Heaven! What a supper for a Cardinal-Archbishop! It is enough to make one weep!”

  Patoux considered the matter solemnly.

  “He is perhaps very poor?” he half queried.

  “Poor, he may be,” responded Madame,— “But if he is, it is surely his own fault, — whoever heard of a poor Cardinal-Archbishop! Such men can all be rich if they choose.”

  “Can they?” asked Henri with sudden vivacious eagerness. “How?”

  But his question was not answered, for just at that moment a loud knock came at the door of the inn, and a tall broadly built personage in close canonical attire appeared in the narrow little passage of entry, attended by another smaller and very much more insignificant-looking individual.

  Patoux hastily scrambled out of his chair.

  “The Archbishop!” he whispered to his wife— “He himself! Our own Archbishop!”

  Madame Patoux jumped up, and seizing her children, held one in each hand as she curtsied up and down.

  “Benedicite!” said the new-comer, lightly signing the cross in air with a sociable smile— “Do not disturb yourselves, my children! You have with you in this house the eminent Cardinal Bonpre?”

  “Ah, yes, Monseigneur!” replied Madame Patoux— “Only just now he has finished his little supper. Shall I show Monseigneur to his room?”

  “If you please,” returned the Archbishop, still smiling benevolently— “And permit my secretary to wait with you here till I return.”

  With this, and an introductory wave of his hand in the direction of the attenuated and sallow-faced personage who had accompanied him, he graciously permitted Madame Patoux to humbly precede him by a few steps, and then followed her with a soft, even tread, and a sound as of rustling silk in his garments, from which a faint odour of some delicate perfume seemed wafted as he moved.

  Left to entertain the Archbishop’s secretary, Jean Patoux was for a minute or two somewhat embarrassed. Henri and Babette stared at the stranger with undisguised curiosity, and were apparently not favourably impressed by his appearance.

  “He has white eyelashes!” whispered Henri.

  “And yellow teeth,” responded Babette.

  Meanwhile Patoux, having scratched his bullet-head sufficiently over the matter, offered his visitor a chair.

  “Sit down, sir,” he said curtly.

  The secretary smiled pallidly and took the proffered accommodation. Patoux again meditated. He was not skilled in the art of polite conversation, and he found himself singularly at a loss.

  “It would be an objection no doubt, and an irreverance perhaps to smoke a pipe before you, Monsieur — Monsieur—”

  “Cazeau,” finished the secretary with another pallid smile— “Claude Cazeau, a poor scribe, — at your service! And I beg of you, Monsieur Jean Patoux, to smoke at your distinguished convenience!”

  There was a faint tone of satire in his voice which struck Papa Patoux as exceedingly disagreeable, though he could not quite imagine why he found it so. He slowly reached for his pipe from the projecting shelf above the chimney, and as slowly proceeded to fill it with tobacco from a tin cannister close by.

  “I do not think I have ever seen you in the town, Monsieur Cazeau,” he said— “Nor at Mass in the Cathedral either?”

  “No?” responded Cazeau easily, in a half-querying tone— “I do not much frequent the streets; and I only attend the first early mass on Sundays. My work for Monseigneur occupies my whole time.”

  “Ah!” and Patoux, having stuffed his pipe sufficiently, lit it, and proceeded to smoke peaceably— “There must be much to do. Many poor and sick who need money, and clothes, and help in every way, — and to try and do good, and give comfort to all the unhappy souls in Rouen is a hard task, even for an Archbishop.”

  Cazeau linked his thin hands together with an action of pious fervour and assented.

  “There is a broken-hearted creature near us,” pursued Patoux leisurely— “We call her Marguerite La Folle; — I have often thought I would ask Pere Laurent to speak to Monseigneur for her, that she might be released from the devils that are tearing her. She was a good girl till a year or two ago, — then some villain got the ruin of her, and she lost her wits over it. Ah,’tis a sad sight to see her now — poor Marguerite Valmond!”

  “Ha!” cried Henri suddenly, pointing a grimy finger at Cazeau— “Why did you jump? Did something hurt you?”

  Cazeau had indeed “jumped,” as Henri put it, — that is, he had sprung up from his chair suddenly and as suddenly sat down again with an air of impatience and discomfort. He rapidly overcame whatever emotion moved him, however, and stretched his thin mouth in a would-be amiable grin at the observant Henri.

  “You are a sharp boy!” he observed condescendingly— “and tall for your age, no doubt. How old are you?”

  “Eleven,” replied Henri— “But that has nothing to do with your jumping.”

  “True,” and the secretary wriggled in his chair, pretending to be much amused— “But my jumping had nothing to do with you either, my small friend! I had a thought, — a sudden thought, — of a duty forgotten.”

  “Oh, it was a thought, was it?” and Henri looked incredulous. “Do thoughts always make you jump?”

  “Tais-toi! Tais-toi!” murmured Patoux gently, between two whiffs of his pipe— “Excuse him, Monsieur Cazeau, — he is but a child.”

  Cazeau writhed amicably.

  “A delightful child,” he murmured— “And the little girl — his sister — is also charming — Ah, what fine dark eyes! — what hair! Will she not come and speak to me?”

  He held
out a hand invitingly towards Babette, but she merely made a grimace at him and retired backwards. Patoux smiled benevolently.

  “She does not like strangers,” he explained.

  “Good — very good! That is right! Little girls should always run away from strangers, especially strangers of my sex,” observed Cazeau with a sniggering laugh— “And do these dear children go to school?”

  Patoux took his pipe out of his mouth altogether, and stared solemnly at the ceiling.

  “Without doubt! — they are compelled to go to school,” he answered slowly; “but if I could have had my way, they should never have gone. They learn mischief there in plenty, but no good that I can see. They know much about geography, and the stars, and anatomy, and what they call physical sciences; — but whether they have got it into their heads that the good God wants them to live straight, clean, honest, wholesome lives, is more than I am certain of. However, I trust Pere Laurent will do what he can.”

  “Pere Laurent?” echoed Cazeau, with a wide smile— “You have a high opinion of Pere Laurent? Ah, yes, a good man! — but ignorant — alas! very ignorant!”

  Papa Patoux brought his eyes down from the ceiling and fixed them enquiringly on Cazeau.

  “Ignorant?” he began, when at this juncture Madame Patoux entered, and taking possession of Henri and Babette, informed Monsieur Cazeau that the Archbishop would be for some time engaged in conversation with Cardinal Bonpre, and that therefore he, Monsieur Cazeau, need not wait, — Monseigneur would return to his house alone. Whereupon the secretary rose, evidently glad to be set at liberty, and took his leave of the Patoux family. On the threshold, however, he paused, looking back somewhat frowningly at Jean Patoux himself.

  “I should not, if I were you, trouble Monseigneur concerning the case you told me of — that of — of Marguerite Valmond,” — he observed— “He has a horror of evil women.”

  With that he departed, walking across the Square towards the Archbishop’s house in a stealthy sort of fashion, as though he were a burglar meditating some particularly daring robbery.

  “He is a rat — a rat!” exclaimed Henri, suddenly executing a sort of reasonless war-dance round the kitchen— “One wants a cat to catch him!”

  “Rats are nice,” declared Babette, for she remembered having once had a tame white rat which sat on her knee and took food from her hand,— “Monsieur Cazeau is a man; and men are not nice.”

  Patoux burst into a loud laugh.

  “Men are not nice!” he echoed— “What dost thou know about it, thou little droll one?”

  “What I see,” responded Babette severely, with an elderly air, as of a person who has suffered by bitter experience; and, undeterred by her parents’ continued laughter she went on —

  “Men are ugly. They are dirty. They say ‘Come here my little girl, and I will give you something,’ — then when I go to them they try and kiss me. And I will not kiss them, because their mouths smell bad. They stroke my hair and pull it all the wrong way. And it hurts. And when I don’t like my hair pulled the wrong way, they tell me I will be a great coquette. A coquette is to be like Diane de Poitiers. Shall I be like Diane de Poitiers?”

  “The saints forbid!” cried Madame Patoux,— “And talk no more nonsense, child, — it’s bed-time. Come, — say good-night to thy father, Henri; — give them thy blessing, Jean — and let me get them into their beds before the Archbishop leaves the house, or they will be asking him as many questions as there are in the catechism.”

  Thus enjoined, Papa Patoux kissed his children affectionately, signing the cross on their brows as they came up to him in turn, after the fashion of his own father, who had continued this custom up to his dying day. What they thought of the benediction in itself might be somewhat difficult to define, but it can be safely asserted that a passion of tears on the part of Babette, and a fit of demoniacal howling from Henri, would have been the inevitable result if Papa Patoux had refused to bestow it on them. Whether there were virtue in it or not, their father’s mute blessing sent them to bed peaceably and in good humour with each other, and they trotted off very contentedly beside their mother, hushing their footsteps and lowering their voices as they passed the door of the room occupied by Cardinal Bonpre.

  “The Archbishop is not an angel, is he?” asked Babette whisperingly.

  Her mother smiled broadly.

  “Not exactly, my little one. Why such a foolish question?”

  “You said that Cardinal Bonpre was a saint, and that perhaps we should see an angel come down from heaven to visit him,” replied Babette.

  “Well, you could not have thought the Archbishop came from heaven,” interpolated Henri, scornfully,— “He came from his own house over the way with his own secretary behind him. Do angels keep secretaries?”

  Babette laughed aloud, — the idea was grotesque. The two children were just then ascending the wooden stairs to their bedroom, the mother carrying a lighted candle behind them, and at that moment the rich sonorous voice of the Archbishop, raised to a high and somewhat indignant tone, reached them with these words— “I consider that you altogether mistake your calling and position.”

  Then the voice died away into inaudible murmurings.

  “They are quarrelling! The Archbishop is angry!” said Henri with a grin.

  “Perhaps Archbishops do not like saints,” suggested Babette.

  “Tais-toi! Cardinal Bonpre is an archbishop himself, little silly,” said Madame Patoux— “Therefore those great and distinguished Monseigneurs are like brothers.”

  “That is why they are quarrelling!” declared Henri glibly,— “A boy told me in school that Cain and Abel were the first pair of brothers, and they quarrelled, — and all brothers have quarrelled ever since. It’s in the blood, so that boy says, — and it is his excuse always for fighting HIS little brother. His little brother is six, and he is twelve; — and of course he always knocks his little brother down. He cannot help it, he says. And he gets books on physiology and heredity, and he learns in them that whatever is IN the blood has got to come out somehow. He says that it’s because Cain killed Abel that there are wars between nations; — if Cain and Abel had never quarrelled, there would never have been any fighting in the world, — and now that it’s in the blood of every body—”

  But further sapient discourse on the part of Henri was summarily put an end to by his mother’s ordering him to kneel down and say his prayers, and afterwards bundling him into bed, — where, being sleepy, he speedily forgot all that he had been trying to talk about. Babette took more time in retiring to rest. She had very pretty, curly, brown hair, and Madame Patoux took a pride in brushing and plaiting it neatly.

  “I may be like Diane de Poitiers after all,” she remarked, peering at herself in the small mirror when her thick locks were smoothed and tied back for the night— “Why should I not be?”

  “Because Diane de Poitiers was a wicked woman,” said Madame Patoux energetically,— “and thou must learn to be a good girl.”

  “But if Diane de Poitiers was bad, why do they talk so much about her even now, and put her in all the histories, and show her house, and say she was beautiful?” went on Babette.

  “Because people are foolish,” said Madame, getting impatient— “Foolish people run after bad women, and bad women run after foolish people. Now say thy prayers.”

  Obediently Babette knelt down, shut her eyes close, clasped her hands hard, and murmured the usual evening formula, heaving a small sigh after her “act of contrition,” and looking almost saintly as she commended herself to her “angel guardian.” Then her mother kissed her, saying —

  “Good-night, little daughter! Think of Our Lady and the saints, and then ask them to keep us safe from evil. Good-night!”

  “Good-night.” responded Babette sleepily, — but all the same she did not think of Our Lady and the saints half as much as of Diane de Poitiers. There are few daughters of Eve to whom conquest does not seem a finer thing than humility; and the s
overeignty of Diane de Poitiers over a king, seems to many a girl just conscious of her own charm, a more emphatic testimony to the supremacy of her sex, than the Angel’s greeting of “Blessed art thou!” to the elected Virgin of the world.

  III.

  Meanwhile a somewhat embarrassing interview had taken place between the Archbishop of Rouen and Cardinal Bonpre. The archbishop, seen by the light of the one small lamp which illumined the “best room” of the Hotel Poitiers was certainly a handsome and imposing personage, broad-chested and muscular, with a massive head, well set on strong square shoulders, admirably adapted for the wearing of the dark violet soutane which fitted them as gracefully as a royal vesture draping the figure of a king. One disproportionate point, however, about his attire was, that the heavy gold crucifix which depended by a chain from his neck, did not, with him, look so much a sacred symbol as a trivial ornament, — whereas the simple silver one that gleamed against the rusty black scarlet-edged cassock of Cardinal Bonpre, presented itself as the plain and significant sign of holiness without the aid of jewellers’ workmanship to emphasize its meaning. This was a trifle, no doubt; — still it was one of those slight things which often betray character. As the most brilliant diamond will look like common glass on the rough red hand of a cook, while common glass will simulate the richness of the real gem on the delicate white finger of a daintily-bred woman, so the emblem of salvation seemed a mere bauble and toy on the breast of the Archbishop, while it assumed its most reverent and sacred aspect as worn by Felix Bonpre. Yet judged by mere outward appearance, there could be no doubt as to which was the finer-looking man of the two. The Cardinal, thin and pale, with shadows of thought and pain in his eyes, and the many delicate wrinkles of advancing age marking his features, would never possess so much attractiveness for worldly and superficial persons as the handsome Archbishop, who carried his fifty-five years as though they were but thirty, and whose fresh, plump face, unmarred by any serious consideration, bespoke a thorough enjoyment of life, and the things which life, — if encouraged to demand them, — most strenuously seeks, such as good food, soft beds, rich clothing, and other countless luxuries which are not necessities by any means, but which make the hours move smoothly and softly, undisturbed by the clash of outside events among those who are busy with thoughts and actions, and who, — being absorbed in the thick of a soul-contest, — care little whether their bodies fare ill or well. The Archbishop certainly did not belong to this latter class, — indeed he considered too much thought as mischievous in itself, and when thought appeared likely to break forth into action, he denounced it as pernicious and well-nigh criminal.