And the priest who heard this blasphemous and savage tirade on the part of Martine Doucet, retreated from her in amazement and horror, and presently gave out that she was possessed of a devil, and was unfit to be admitted to the Holy Sacrament. Whereat, when she heard of it, Martine laughed loudly and ferociously.
“Look you! — what a charitable creature a priest is!” she cried— “If you don’t do the things he considers exactly right and fitting, he tells your neighbours that the devil has got you! — and so little does he care to pick you out of the clutches of this same devil, that he refuses you the Sacrament, though THAT is said to drive away Satan by the mere touch of it! But wait till I ASK to have the Sacrament given to me! — it will be time enough then to refuse it! Many a fat chicken of my stock has the reverend father had as a free gift to boil in his soup maigre!” and again she laughed angrily— “But no more of them does he get to comfort his stomach while doing penance for his soul! — the hypocrite! He must find another silly woman to cheat with his stories of a good God who never does anything but kill and curse us every one! — he has had all that he will ever get out of Martine Doucet!”
It was to this redoubtable virago that Henri and Babette had betaken themselves in the market place directly school was over. She always held the same stall in the same position on market days, — and she sat under her red umbrella on a rough wooden bench, knitting rapidly, now keeping an eye on her little lame son, coiled up in a piece of matting beside her, and anon surveying her stock-in-trade of ducks and geese and fowls, which were heaped on her counter, their wrung necks drooping limply from the board, and their yellow feet tied helplessly together and shining like bits of dull gold in the warm light of the September sun. She listened with an impassive countenance while Babette poured out her story of the great Cardinal, — the Cardinal Felix Bonpre, whom people said was a saint, — how he had come unexpectedly to stay two nights at the Hotel Poitiers, — how “petite maman” had declared he was so good that even angels might visit him, — how kind and gentle and grand he seemed,— “Yes,” said Babette somewhat eagerly, “there was no doubt that he LOOKED good, — and we have told him all about Fabien and he has promised to bless him and ask Our Lord to cure his lameness.”
“Well, and of what use is that, mignonne?” demanded Martine, clicking her knitting-needles violently and stooping over her work to wink away the sudden tears that had risen in her bold brown eyes at Babette’s enthusiastic desire to benefit her afflicted child.— “Asking our Lord is poor business, — you may ask and ask, but you never get answered!”
Babette hung her curly brown head despondingly, and looked appealingly at her brother. Now Henri was a decided cynic; — but his sister exercised a weird fascination over him, — a sort of power to command which he always felt more or less constrained to obey. He stared solemnly at Martine, and then at the little Fabien, who, half rising from his mat, had listened with a visibly painful interest to Babette’s story.
“I think you might let us take Fabien and see if a Cardinal CAN do anything,” he said with a kind of judicial air, as of one who, though considering the case hopeless, had no objection to try a last desperate remedy. “This one is a very old man, and he must know a good deal. He could not do any harm. And I am sure Babette would like to find out if there is any use at all in a Cardinal. I should like it too. You see we went into Notre Dame last night, — Babette and I, — and everything was dark, — all the candles were out at Our Lady’s statue — and we had only ten centimes between us. And the candles are ten centimes each. So we could only light one. But we lit that one, and said an Ave for Fabien. And the candle was all by itself in the Cathedral. And now I think we ought to take him to the Cardinal.”
Martine shook her head, pursed up her lips, and knitted more violently than ever.
“It is all no use — no use!” she muttered— “There is no God, — or if there is, He must be deaf as well as blind!”
But here suddenly the weak plaintive voice of Fabien himself piped out —
“Oh, mother, let me go!”
Martine looked down at him.
“Let thee go? To see the Cardinal? Why he is nought but an old man, child, as helpless as any of us. What dost thou think he can do for thee?”
“Nothing!” and the boy clambered up on his crutch, and stood appealingly before his mother, his fair curls blowing back in the breeze,— “But I SHOULD like to see him. Oh, do let me go!”
Babette caught him by the hand.
“Yes, oh yes, Martine!” she exclaimed— “Let him come with us!”
Martine hesitated a moment longer, but she could never altogether resist an imploring look in her boy’s eyes, or refuse any request he made of her, — and gradually the hard lines of her mouth relaxed into a half smile. Babette at once perceived this, and eagerly accepted it as a sign that she had gained her point.
“Come, Fabien!” she exclaimed delightedly— “Thy mother says yes! We will not be long gone, Martine! And perhaps we will bring him home quite well!”
Martine shook her head sorrowfully, and paused for a while in her knitting to watch the three children crossing the market-place together, Henri supporting her little son on one side, Babette on the other, both carefully aiding his slow and halting movements over the rough cobbles of the uneven pavement. Then as they all turned a corner and disappeared, she sighed, and a couple of bright tears splashed down on her knitting. But the next moment her eyes were as bold and keen and defiant as ever while she stood up to attend to two or three customers who just then approached her stall, and her voice was as shrill and sharp as any woman’s voice could be in the noisy business of driving a bargain. Having disposed of three or four fat geese and fowls at a good profit, she chinked and counted the money in her apron pockets, hummed a tune, and looked up at the genial sky with an expression of disfavour.
“Oh, yes, ’tis a fine day!” she muttered,— “And the heavens look as if the saints lived in them; — but by and by the clouds will come, and the cold! — the sleet, the snow, the frost and the bitterness of winter! — and honest folk will starve while thieves make a good living! — that is the way the wise God arranges things in this world.”
She gave a short laugh of scorn, and resumed the clicking of her needles, not raising her eyes from her work even when her neighbour, the old woman who sold vegetables at the next stall, ventured to address her.
“Where is thy unfortunate boy gone to, Martine?” she enquired,— “Is it wise to let him be with the Patoux children? They are strong and quick and full of mischief, — they might do him fresh injury in play without meaning it.”
“I will trust them,” answered Martine curtly,— “They have taken him to see a Cardinal.”
“A Cardinal!” and the old woman craned her withered neck forward in amazement and began to laugh feebly,— “Nom de Jesus! That is strange! What does the Cardinal want with him?”
“Nothing,” said Martine gruffly— “It seems that he is an old man who is kind to children, and the girl Babette has a fancy to get his blessing for my Fabien, — that is all.”
“And that is little enough,” responded the old vegetable-vendor, still laughing, or rather chuckling hoarsely— “A blessing is not worth much nowadays, is it Martine? It never puts an extra ounce of meat in the pot-au-feu, — and yet it is all one gets out of the priests for all the prayers and the praise. Last time I went to confession I accused myself of the sin of envy. I said ‘Look here, my father, I am a widow and very old; and I have rheumatism in all my bones, and I have only a bit of matting to sleep on at home, and if I have a bad day with the market I can buy no food. And there is a woman living near me who has a warm house, with a stove in it, — and blankets to cover her, and a bit of money put by, and I envy her her blankets and her stove and her house and her money. Is that a sin?’ And he said it was a sin; but that he would absolve me from it if I said ten Paters and ten Aves before Our Lady of Bon-Secours. And then he gave me his blessing, — but n
o blankets and no stove and no money. And I have not said ten Paters and Aves yet, because my bones have ached too much all the week for me to walk up the hill to Bon-Secours. And the blessing has been no use to me at all.”
“Nor is it likely to be!” scoffed Martine— “I thought you had given up all that Church-nonsense long ago.”
“Nay — nay — not altogether,” — murmured the old woman timidly— “I am very old, — and one never knows — there may be truth in some of it. It is the burning and the roasting in hell that I think of, — you know that is very likely to happen, Martine! — because you see, in this life we have nothing but trouble, — so whoever made us must like to see us suffering; — it must be a pleasure to God, and so it is sure to go on and on always. And I am afraid! — and if a candle now and then to St. Joseph would help matters, I am not the one to grudge it, — it is better to burn a candle than burn one’s self!”
Martine laughed loudly, but made no answer. She could not waste her time arguing against the ridiculous superstitions of an old creature who was so steeped in ignorance as to think that a votive candle could rescue her soul from a possible hell. She went on knitting in silence till a sudden shadow came between her and the sunlight, and a girl’s voice, harsh, yet with a certain broken sweetness in it, said —
“A fine morning’s killing, aye! All their necks wrung, — all dead birds! Once they could fly — fly and swim! Fly and swim! All dead now — and sold cheap in the open market!”
A shrill laugh finished this outburst, but Martine knew who it was that spoke, and maintained her equanimity.
“Is that you again, Marguerite?” she said, not unkindly— “You will tire yourself to death wandering about the streets all day.”
Marguerite Valmond, “la folle” as she was called by the townsfolk, shook her head and smiled cunningly. She was a tall girl, with black hair disordered and falling loosely about her pale face, — her eyes were dark and lustrous, but wild, and with a hunted expression in them, — and her dress was composed of the strangest remnants of oddly assorted materials and colours pinned about her without any order or symmetry, the very idea of decent clothing being hardly considered, as her bosom was half exposed and her legs were bare. She wore no head-covering, and her whole aspect was that of one who had suddenly awakened from a hideous dream and was striving to forget its horrors.
“I shall never be tired!” she said— “If I could be tired I should sleep, — but I never sleep! I am looking for HIM, you know! — it was at the fair I lost him — you remember the great fair? And when I find him I shall kill him! It is quite easy to kill — you take a sharp glittering thing, so!” and she snatched up a knife that lay on Martine’s counter— “And you plunge it — so!” and she struck it down with singular fury through the breast of one of the “dead birds” which were Martine’s stock-in-trade. Then she threw the knife on the ground — rubbed her hands together, tossed her head, and laughed again— “That is how I shall do it when I meet him!”
Martine said nothing. She simply removed the one stabbed bird from among the others, and setting it aside, picked up the knife from the ground and went on knitting as calmly as ever.
“I am going to see the Archbishop,” proceeded Marguerite, tossing back her dishevelled locks and making one or two fantastic dance-steps as she spoke— “The great Archbishop of this wonderful city of Rouen! I want to ask him how it happened that God made men. It was a mistake which He must be sorry for! The Archbishop knows everything; — he will tell me about it. Ah! — what a beautiful mistake is the Archbishop himself! — and how soon women find it out! Bon jour, Martine!”
“Bon jour, Marguerite!” responded Martine quietly.
Singing to herself, the crazed girl sauntered off. Several of the market women looked after her.
“She killed her child, they say,” muttered the old vegetable-seller— “But no one knows—”
“Sh — sh — sh!” hissed Martine angrily— “What one does not know one should not say. Mayhap there never was a child at all. Whatever the wrong was, she has suffered for it; — and if the man who led her astray ever comes nigh her, his life is not worth a centime.”
“Rough justice!” said one of the market porters, who had just paused close by to light his pipe.
“Aye, rough justice!” echoed Martine— “When justice is not given to the people, the people take it for themselves! And if a man deals ill by a woman, he has murdered her as surely as if he had put a knife through her; — and ’tis but even payment when he gets the knife into himself. Things in this life are too easy for men and too hard for women; men make the laws for their own convenience, and never a thought of us at all in the making. They are a selfish lot!”
The porter laughed carelessly, and having lit his pipe to his satisfaction went his way.
A great many more customers now came to Martine’s stall, and for upwards of an hour there was shrill argument and driving of bargains till she had pretty well cleared her counter of all its stock. Then she sat down again and looked to right and left of the market-place for any sign of the Patoux children returning with her little son, but there was not a glimpse of them anywhere.
“I wonder what they are doing!” she thought— “And I wonder what sort of a Cardinal it is they have taken the child to see! These great princes of the Church care nothing for the poor, — the very Pope allows half Italy to starve while he shuts himself up with his treasures in the Vatican; — what should a great Cardinal care for my poor little Fabien! If the stories of the Christ were true, and one could only take the child to Him, then indeed there might be a chance of cure! — but it is all a lie, — and the worst of the lie is that it would give us all so much comfort and happiness if it were only true! It is like holding out a rope to a drowning man and snatching it away again. And when the rope goes, the sooner one sinks under the waves the better!”
VI.
The Cardinal was still in his room alone with the boy Manuel, when Madame Patoux, standing at her door under the waving tendrils of the “creeping jenny” and shading her eyes from the radiance of the sun, saw her children approaching with Fabien Doucet between them.
“Little wretches that they are!” she murmured— “Once let them get an idea into their heads and nothing will knock it out! Now I shall have to tell Monseigneur that they are here, — what an impertinence it seems! — and yet he is so gentle, and has such a good heart that perhaps he will not mind . . .”
Here she broke off her soliloquy as the children came up, Babette eagerly demanding to know where the Cardinal was. Madame Patoux set her arms akimbo and surveyed the little group of three half-pityingly, half derisively.
“The Cardinal has not left his room since breakfast,” she answered— “He is playing Providence already to a poor lad lost in the streets, and for that matter lost in the world, without father or mother to look after him, — he was found in Notre Dame last night,—”
“Why, mother,” interrupted Henri— “how could a boy get into Notre Dame last night? When Babette and I went there, nobody was in the church at all, — and we left one candle burning all alone in the darkness, — and when we came out the Suisse swore at us for having gone in, and then locked the door.”
“Well, if one must be so exact, the boy was not found actually in Notre Dame, obstinate child,” returned his mother impatiently— “It happened at midnight, — the good Cardinal heard someone crying and went to see who it was. And he found a poor boy outside the Cathedral weeping as if his heart were breaking, and leaning his head against the hard door for a pillow. And he brought him back and gave him his own bed to sleep in; — and the lad is with him now.”
Little Fabien Doucet, leaning on his crutch, looked up with interest.
“Is he lame like me?” he asked.
“No, child,” replied Madame compassionately— “He is straight and strong. In truth a very pretty boy.”
Fabien sighed. Babette made a dash forward.
“I will go an
d see him!” she said— “And I will call Monseigneur.”
“Babette! How dare you! Babette!”
But Babette had scurried defiantly past her mother, and breathless with a sense of excitement and disobedience intermingled, had burst into the Cardinal’s room without knocking. There on the threshold she paused, — somewhat afraid at her own boldness, — and startled too at the sight of Manuel, who was seated near the window opposite the Cardinal, and who turned his deep blue eyes upon her with a look of enquiry. The Cardinal himself rose and turned to greet her, and as the wilful little maid met his encouraging glance and noted the benign sweetness of his expression she trembled, — and losing nerve, began to cry.
“Monseigneur . . . Monseigneur . . .” she stammered.
“Yes, my child, — what is it?” said the Cardinal kindly— “Do not be afraid, — I am at your service. You have brought the little friend you spoke to me of yesterday?”
Babette peeped shyly at him through her tears, and drooping her head, answered with a somewhat smothered “Yes.”
“That is well, — I will go to him at once,” — and the Cardinal paused a moment looking at Manuel, who as if responding to his unuttered wish, rose and approached him— “And you, Manuel — you will also come. You see, my child,” went on the good prelate addressing Babette, the while he laid a gently caressing hand on her hair— “Another little friend has come to me who is also very sad, — and though he is not crippled or ill, he is all alone in the world, which is, for one so young, a great hardship. You must be sorry for him too, as well as for your own poor playmate.”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22) Page 462
