“Shut up, I order you,” replied Messire Watremetz, in an angry tone. “A truce on such remarks. I don’t regard it as prudent to stop in such a place and awaken the debauchees of this accursed quarter; it might cost you, Master Jester, to have extinguished the torch in your ill-timed frolics.”
“My Heaven have pity on my soul,” continued the poor sot-seuris, struggling against his strange adversary; it’s not a pretence, Monsieur Canon; say an exorcism and I’ll be liberated from the Devil.”
“March ahead,” Messire Watremetz ordered his varlets. “March, and leave this clown who picks such a bad time to laugh here.”
At that order, the sot-seuris testified so much despair that the canon finally understood that the poor fellow’s terror was not simulated. Dismounting, for none of is servants dared approach, he picked up the torch and succeeded in relighting it. Then, drawing nearer to the place where the sot-seuris was lying, he was only slightly astonished to see him lying next to the bloody cadaver of a woman and at grips with a large monkey, which, at the sight of the torch, abandoned the contest and went to take refuge on a roof.
Chilled by fear, Messire Watremetz, was getting ready to continue on his way, firstly to get out of such a den of cut-throats, and secondly to advise the provost that a murder had been committed, when the wailing of an infant made itself heard beneath the very feet of his mule. Apparently having fallen from the arms of the slain woman, the poor thing had doubtless rolled that far.
Moved to compassion by the sight of the innocent creature, Messire Watremetz wrapped it in his cloak and took it home with him, where his first concern was to wake up an aged sister named Berthe, who had been living with him for twenty years.
After having first complained at being abruptly awakened during her first sleep, and after having asked her brother, with a quinquegenarian bitterness, what he expected her to do with a child; after having enumerated the difficulties, fatigues, cares and late nights that the education of his protegé would infallible accumulate, the respectable lady commenced to care for it as the most tender mother would have done.
“It’s a charming little girl,” she said to Mademoiselle Cunégonde, her chambermaid and confidante; “she’s as pale, see, as the alabaster columns in the chapel of the Virgin. Go and fetch some milk, quickly, for the poor child is crying and dying of hunger... Oh, how slow you are! Jesus my gentle savior, I would already have been and come back at least twice... God be praised! Finally, here’s what I need. Here, look how the dear little one throws herself on the nourishment!
“Now that she’s finished, there she is, going to sleep. I want to keep her next to my bed, in order that her first whimper will wake me up and warn me that she needs help.”
The little girl, however, did not wake Madame Berthe up all night, and when, the day after Nones, her brother came to enquire about her, Mademoiselle Cunégonde responded that her mistress was still sound asleep.
On his return, the canon found Madame Berthe rocking the little girl on her knees, clad in clean and becoming linen.
After having listened patiently to his sister’s long dissertations on the manner of raising children, and the superiority of her knowledge of such matters, Messire Watremetz, in his turn, found a means of recounting the results of the investigation mounted by the provost with regard to the previous evening’s murder.
To judge by her dark complexion and strange garments, the woman slain in the accursed warren was a gypsy who exhibited a monkey and made it dance to earn her living. A few debauchees of the accursed quarter, where she had come to lodge cheaply, had seen her imprudently showing an adequately-stuffed purse; it had not required any more than that or thieves to put her to death. In any case, her ears, from which the ear-rings had been torn away, left no doubt as to the motive for the crime.
But where did the woman come from? Was she the mother of the foundling little girl? No one knew. Her wretched belongings, which were not worth four patards, except for a silver medallion attached to the infant’s neck,10 gave no indication as to that.
“In any case,” Dame Berthe interjected, who doubtless felt that it had been a long time since she had said anything, “Yes, Messire Watremetz, in any case, we won’t abandon her to the piteous fate in which she was left.
“First of all, it’s necessary to have her baptized, for her miscreant of a mother will not have done that, I’m sure. Such an idea hasn’t occurred to you, my brother, I know that for certain, even though you’re a priest, and what’s more, a canon.”
Messire Watremetz did not contradict Madame Berthe, who looked at him with a triumphant expression.
“Indeed, my sister, indeed; you’ll hold her over the baptismal font, and I’ve found a godfather.”
“I don’t want him!” exclaimed Madame Berthe, shrilly. “Myself, I’ve chosen the provost of the church, and I certainly won’t depart from my choice.”
“I’ll go and inform Monseigneur the Bishop, then, that you refuse to be his co-mother,” the canon continued, with a smile of satisfaction, conceit and malice; and he pretended to leave.
“Monseigneur the Bishop! Monseigneur the Bishop, my brother! He would deign? How did you do that? How did he come to offer? For, I’m sure that you haven’t asked him for such a favor; in your eyes, any villain would have been a co-father good enough for me. Of, the worthy Bishop! I recognize him by that action!”
Messire Watremetz allowed that eruption of his sister’s joy to exhale, after which he resumed speaking in these terms:
“I told Monseigneur about my adventure yesterday evening, and he immediately said that he wanted to hold the little orphan over the baptismal font, and associate himself in that fashion with our good work. You can imagine that I refrained from refusing. The provost won’t take offence, and it will be better...”
Madame Berthe tried to form a smile of good humor, a smile so unaccustomed to her old and sullen physiognomy that all her efforts were unable to produce anything more than an equivocal grimace.
A few days later the baptism took place in the Episcopal church, with a pomp that redressed by the height of at least two inches the somewhat curbed stature of Madame Berthe. The child was given the name Lydorie.
An ostentatious feast was held after the baptism in the bishop’s house.
Canon Watremetz being a great lover of good wine, and above all of beautifully-organized meals, went to visit the kitchens beforehand As he arrived there he heard a child crying bitterly, while the voice of Master Magalouffe, the bishop’s chief cook was scolding the poor thing with an extreme anger.
Messire Watremetz thought highly of Magalouffe, and, as the latter was glad to return the compliment, honored him with a familiar bounty. When he arrived he found the cook shouting at the top of his voice and striking his son, aged six or seven, furiously, with a roast peacock that he was holding in his hand. The bird’s neck formed, in human’s hand the shaft of a long pliant whip, which, although not very redoubtable, was nevertheless causing the little fellow the greatest alarm.
“Hay, hey, Magalouffe,” asked the canon, interposing himself between the beater and the beaten, “whence comes such wrath against little Séverin?”
“Messire Canon,” the cook replied, “if I weren’t choking with range, I’d be weeping with despair. By my divine patron Sainte Marthe, it’s as if my arms were broken, and for the first time I’ve come to curse the noble profession of cook.
“See whether I’m not right! Was ever a more beautiful, fatter and magnificent peacock ever spoiled in a culinary laboratory?
“Yesterday, at vespers, the scullions, the cutlery valets, the boiler-heaters and the sauce-makers were working hard on today’s feast. One couldn’t imagine, Messire Canon, a wiser and more worthy menu for a repast!
“In order only to cite the most admirable, for vanity, thank God, is not one of my traits, examine these thin slices of fried deer-antler, this roasted suckling-pig, buttered and embalmed by aromatic herbs, Tours plums and Greek grapes.
> “Look, above all, at this gilded soup; assuredly, I don’t say it out of conceit, but there are only two cooks in the world capable of fabricating one like it, to wit, Taillavant, head chef of His Majesty the King of France and me, Jacques Magalouffe, who invented it with him in the times when I was in the royal kitchens in Paris. Few other hands than his or mine are able to cut slices of prime bread in that fashion, imbibe them in a layer of honey, white wine and egg-yolks, and then fry them in soft lard and make them float without sinking to the bottom, in a juice of rose-water sprinkled with saffron and impalpable flecks of gold.”
During that long digression, Magalouffe’s ire had cooled, but it boiled over again at the sight of a new peacock that was brought to him to replace the one with which he had thrashed little Séverin.
“A feast with such a menu ought to earn me the praise of everyone!” he added, trembling with indignation and raising his voice to the maximum possible. Malediction! This little reprobate has plunged me into an abyss of confusion and opprobrium. It only remains for me to throw away my white baton of Episcopal cook and go to hide myself humbly behind the poorest housewife, who puts a cheap smoked duck to cook in an earthenware pot once a week, on Sunday.
“I plucked the skin of the peacock you see at my feet without a scraper, without missing a feather; after which, enveloping its delicate neck with thin bandages, I put the noble bird on the spit with my own hands, not without instructing Séverin to dampen the bandages from time to time with cold water, in order that the plumage and the rich down of the peacock were not caught by the flames... Sainte Marthe give me patience! The miscreant started studying I don’t know what fragment of parchment that would even have confused Monseigneur’s chaplain. When I thought I would be able to dress my peacock and recover its skin, I saw—what infamy!—I saw, Messire the Canon, that its neck and its down were as hot and black as coals!”
“You know how to read, then, Séverin?” the canon asked the weeping child.
“Alas, yes, Master Watremetz,” replied the poor boy, finally emerging from the corner in which he had crouched.
“Read!” cried Magalouffe. “Read! Where will that take him? I ask you!”
“To be a canon,” said Séverin. “The chaplain told me so.”
“Canon? Canon? Oh, for a start, he’s losing his mind. I’ll...”
“Calm down, my dear Magalouffe, and forgive Séverin—come on, out of amity for me.”
Magalouffe bowed, and replaced his hat on his bald head.
“Since your son has fortunate dispositions for study, I want to cultivate them myself, and we’ll make him, if not a canon, at least a chaplain with some good benefit.”
“Alas,” sighed Magalouffe, “A stranger, someone other than my son, will therefore receive the white baton of the episcopal cook from my dying hand!”
And with tears in his eyes and a heart constricted by a profound sadness, he set about preparing a new peacock. This time, he sprinkled the down and the neck himself, in order that the recent misadventure was not renewed.
So much care did not remain unfruitful, and a murmur of admiration went up among the guests when Magalouffe served the beautiful bird, reclad in its gilded plumage, the tail deployed and the neck dressed, as if it were still alive on the perch.
Messire Watremetz kept the promise that he had made faithfully, and Séverin, from the very next day onwards, became his assiduous disciple.
*
Let us allow fourteen years to go by now, and return to the episcopacy of Monsieur Godefroi de Fontaine in 1233.
Séverin had become a mild and laborious young man. The good Canon Watremetz, so joyous a companion himself at eighteen, marveled to see his pupil studying the scarcely attractive science of theology with an extreme ardor and perseverance. Séverin’s fervent piety and the ardent desire, the obsession, that it inspired in him of entering holy orders, smoothed out the harsh difficulties of an ingrate labor for the young man.
The only relaxation that Séverin had was spending two or three hours every day copying missals and manuscripts and coloring capital letters and illustrations. He had even attained an extraordinary perfection in that kind of work, of which the most renowned rubricators would have been proud. Messire Watremetz owed to that talent of Séverin’s a library of fourteen volumes, a veritable phenomenon, a rich literary treasure in the epoch we are attempting to depict.
We have omitted to say that four years previously, Madame Berthe had left her brother’s home in order to go and live with another old and infirm relative, who resided in the castellany of Marcoing. The worthy lady had taken Lydorie with her; she was only rarely seen in Cambrai, although her amity for Messire Watremetz, bitter as it was but very sincere, had not suffered any deterioration. When his sister departed, Messire Watremetz had persuaded Séverin’s father to let him come to live with him.
When Dame Berthe’s aged relative had rendered her soul and she returned to live in Messire Watremetz’s house, Séverin was awaiting the moment when it would be granted to him to receive orders—an epoch for which he sighed impatiently, as if after the object of his entire life’s desire.
Oh, he thought, emotionally, at every moment, blessed by my savior, blessed be Our Lady his immaculate mother, who, in her mercy, has granted it to me to spend the rest of my days amid the holy duties and mild jubilations of the clergy! To aid sufferers, reconcile sinners with heaven and themselves, encourage the dying, console the afflicted and find one’s heart beating more rapidly after having completed a work agreeable to the Lord. And then to accomplish the sublime mysteries of a God who, under the appearances of bread and wine, descends from Heaven at the voice of a humble priest—that’s the life that awaits me on earth.
As for the rest of the time, far from the perils of the world, I shall spend it in the peaceful frolics of study and the work of rubrication, striving to testify to my dear benefactor, Messire Canon Watremetz, how fortunate he has been for me, and to prove my gratitude to him.
Madame Berthe’s pupil, thanks to the gusts of contradiction and tenderness, bitterness and exaggerated kindness of the woman who had educated her, was far from possessing the quietude of tastes and mildness of Séverin. A veritable little demon, by turns whimsical, docile, noisy, taciturn, foolish, tender, and enthusiastic, she was always pleasing, because it was impossible for such a lovely creature to displease anyone. Messire the Canon was infatuated with Lydorie; Madame Berthe scolded her twenty times between matins and vespers and embraced her as many times.
Lydorie was dressed as richly as a townswoman of quality. No one complained about it; no young woman with large bright eyes had ever put on with so much style and grace two brightly colored dresses and bonnet, which designed such palpitating forms so well.
Everyone in the house yielded to her slightest caprices: the varlets, Messire the Canon, Madame Berthe and Séverin, like everyone else.
One day when she chanced to see the young man painting a beautiful missal, she had a sudden whim to become a rubricator herself; and immediately, it was necessary for Séverin to teach her to extend colors and put gold on blank vellum.
During that lesson it became necessary more than once for Séverin to guide Lydorie’s scantly docile fingers; playful and laughing, she rejoiced in the professor’s long admonitions, and out of malice, took pleasure in spreading large patches of red or black in the middle of the white margin, which spoiled it horribly. But she did not care a jot, and reveled in recommencing, not without having promised beforehand to be attentive and careful, and having feigned a magisterial gravity.
When Séverin went back to his bedroom, he started praying. Without wanting to, all his thoughts gradually became memories of the recent lesson; he could not think about anything else.
First he was afflicted by that, as a mortal sin, and he promised himself that he would not risk such a peril again. But Lydorie came to beg him in a fashion so coquettish and so polite not to abandon such a hopeful pupil, and she became so joyously annoyed by
his scowls of refusal, that he could not keep it up, and it was necessary for him to give in.
From that moment on, thoughts very different from thoughts of devotion and the clergy took possession of his imagination. The life of a priest began to appear to him severe and isolated, and when he saw some townsman out for a walk with his wife, while a little boy rode a stick beside them, Séverin’s heart was constricted; he experienced a vague sadness, and the need for I know not what good fortune—but he felt at least that it could not be possessed all alone and in the recollection of study.
For her part, Lydorie always found the lessons in rubrication too short, and the frolicsome young woman, mocking and childish, became thoughtful and more serious. Sitting next to Séverin, she took pleasure in meekly doing what he told her to do; or, he read to her aloud some beautiful story from the Holy Bible, and the voice of the clerk became tremulous, and Lydorie’s eyes filled with tears when he read the page that recounted the amours of Jacob and Rachel.
Now, almost every day Séverin opened the book at that touching place.
Meanwhile, the feast of Trinity had come, and the epoch when Séverin was to receive the first orders of the clergy was arriving rapidly, for it was set for the day of the Nativity.
The poor young man shed bitter tears at the idea of that day, of which he had once dreamed with ardent desire.
In the thirteenth century the feast of the Trinity was celebrated in Cambrésis by a pompous procession. Old authors even claim that it is necessary to see in that custom the origin of the procession of Cambrai that, until 1682, did indeed take place on the Monday of Trinity.
All the guilds of the town took part in that procession, and, trumpets at the head and ensigns deployed, marched clad in their distinctive doublets.
After the ceremony the guilds went to escort with honor, back to the residence of their kings, the statuettes to the benevolent patrons they invoked: Sainte Pélagie for the weavers and mercers; Saint Sébastien for the archers; Saint Maur for the bakers and Notre-Dame-du-Mont-Carmel for the mulquiniers.
The Angel Asrael Page 5
