The Arm and the Darkness

by Taylor Caldwell

  “It may be true, what you say, Monseigneur,” whispered Louis. He dropped his hand and looked at the Cardinal with complete anguish. “It may be I dare not delve too deeply in myself.” He halted, and over him swept the avalanche of his emotions, confused, chaotic, and desperate. The pale smoothness of his countenance flushed feverishly.

  “It began, this morning, with the book I borrowed from your Eminence.”

  “Ah,” said the Cardinal, smoothing his imperial between his fingers with a sensuous slowness.

  “I found a passage in that book which echoed the more undisciplined thoughts which sometimes assail me. I have told you, Monseigneur, of these thoughts, in the past. For some time I have believed that I had conquered them, driven them out of my mind like demons. When I read that book this morning, they returned like dark and conquering armies.”

  “So!” exclaimed the Cardinal, more and more delighted. His strange eyes glowed with a molten light, and he leaned on his elbow towards Louis.

  The young man clenched his hands together, and blue lines appeared deeply beside his pale lips.

  “I wished to flee,” said Louis, with desperate and simple majesty. “But where could I flee, except into death? I longed for death. A coldness came over me, and a sensation which assured me that my spirit was dying, my heart was expiring. After a moment or two I felt nothing except paralysis. I felt neither pain nor sorrow; I was no longer a man. This sensation has not passed. It is with me still. I am afraid,” he added, in a lower tone, “that I have truly died.”

  The Cardinal murmured softly. Then, in the gentlest of voices, he said: “But this is not the symbol of death of the heart, my poor young friend. It is the mournful and unreconciled agony of a wounded soul that has temporarily lost all interest in men and all communication with God, from very exhaustion resulting from too strong a sensibility. You are too intense. Ah, I have read the strong emotions under that calm exterior of yours, Louis! Those who suffer and rejoice too strongly are vulnerable to all the disembodied storms and visitations which infest the universe. They are leaves in the wind. But, take heart. Men like yourself are beloved of God, for their consciousness of Him is tremendous. They can become saints, or devils, more easily than others.”

  Louis looked at him with an earnest passion, hanging on his words.

  “How can Monseigneur understand this, for surely he has not felt this, himself!”

  The Cardinal smiled in a peculiar way, and his eyes shifted.

  Louis’ desperate passion mounted.

  “Today,” he cried, “I have felt that I want neither the love of men nor God! I do not want even death!”

  The Cardinal was surprised. He had not suspected that Louis was capable of such extremities of emotion and misery. He had thought him inspired only by hatred. For a moment his unfathomable eyes softened in spite of himself. He felt a mysterious motion of his heart, such as a man feels in his amazement when recognizing a brother behind the face of a stranger. Pity took him by the throat. Such a man as this, he thought, had better be dead, for he lacks the implacability which is in myself. He is too single-hearted, and, paradoxically, too strong.

  He began to speak, with a low and unaccustomed hesitation, watching Louis closely, meanwhile:

  “I have often thought, Louis, that there is a hunger in you, a want, both of the spirit and the body. You lack a certain joyousness, though you are still young. But, alas, it is not age only that brings with it the dark void of weariness. I have seen old men laugh with joy at the morning, and young men hang themselves for very emptiness of heart. It is that which afflicts you: an emptiness of heart!”

  Louis listened with an intensity that betrayed how closely the Cardinal had touched him. His large smooth lips shook; desperate hunger glittered in his eyes.

  The Cardinal did not look directly at him now, but gazed at the shining windows reflectively.

  “We are priests, Louis, dedicated to God. But we are also men. For the health of our souls, we ought not to deprive ourselves of female companionship.”

  Louis sprang to his feet, his face flaming. Breath came harshly through his clenched teeth. He tried to speak, but could not. The Cardinal, out of the corner of his eyes, observed these phenomena, with mingled surprise and amused cunning.

  Richelieu placed the tips of his fingers delicately together, and allowed an expression of melancholy gentleness to pervade his features.

  “Female society brings with it a soothing quality; the uses of a woman’s mind are sweet as April rain. Purged of the purely sensual elements which afflict and burn the average man, a priest may find a lofty delight in association with women, especially if these women possess intelligence, wit, and sensibility. If temptation arises, the priest possesses a spiritual fortitude which enables him to resist in silence. Out of that inner conflict, the priest attains a greater strength.”

  Now he turned his eyes mildly upon Louis. The young man had been listening as though he had been attending the words of an archangel. His lips were trembling.

  Ah ha! though the Cardinal. So, I have it!

  “Reflect,” he continued, tranquilly, and with a pure and steadfast look. “Do not deprive yourself of permitted and unsullied joys. Such was not the intention of God, except for those who feel called to the cloistered life. But you and I, Louis, live in a world of men. And women.”

  Louis spoke in a quivering voice, which would have given a pang to a less venal and terrible man: “Your Eminence has rescued me—! He has given me hope, removed the blackness of guilt from my heart—!”

  The Cardinal put his hand to his lips to conceal an irrepressible smile. But his eyes remained serious and gentle.

  “Guilt, Louis? What imagination is yours! How you young devotees torture yourselves, when a moment’s conversation with one who understands can relieve your self-flagellations!”

  Louis sat down abruptly, for his legs were shaking too violently to sustain his weight. He leaned forward towards the Cardinal, and his face was living flesh and no longer marble.

  “I have been guilty, then, of defiling myself in my thoughts, Monseigneur! I have sullied innocence with evil imaginings. What I thought was wickedness, then, is pure and natural. Alas, I can plainly see that my mind is vicious—” He paused, unable to continue.

  The Cardinal raised his hand with a gesture of ineffable affection.

  “You see, Louis, you run to extremes. Remember, at all times, priest though you are, you are only a man, with a man’s self-deception. Partake of innocent joys and tender companionship. They will not debase you.”

  Louis was silent. He heaved deep and releasing breaths. Joy glimmered on his broad white brow. The Cardinal was flooded with revivifying and malignant amusement.

  Near the fireplace was another door, smaller and not so massive as the door leading to the ante-chamber where those who desired an audience with the Cardinal waited. Now there came a short and peremptory knock on this door.

  “Ah,” said Richelieu, “it is our dear Père Joseph! He returned this morning. Bid him enter, Louis.”

  As in a bemused dream, the young priest rose and walked with a faltering step to the door. The Cardinal watched his passage, and a glittering pinpoint of light brightened in his eyes.

  CHAPTER XV

  There was a saying among the irreverent in Paris that Père Joseph was always preceded by a great stench.

  To the Huguenot great magnates, the stench was more than physical, for it had in it that most dangerous of qualities: spiritual mysticism. A malefactor like his Eminence, le Duc de Richelieu, could be understood. There was the human element in him, and however colossal his crimes, however cunning and merciless his schemes, men found a common humanity in him, inflamed and swollen out of proportion though it was. They could, at times, laugh at him, seeing themselves in him become gigantic and grotesque. But they could not laugh at François le Clerc du Tremblay, the Capuchin mystic, the epileptic Père Joseph.

  Even the Cardinal’s madness was a human madnes
s, occasioned by tainted blood and excess of ambition and excruciating sensibility. It could be understood, despised, feared and meditated upon. But the madness of Père Joseph transcended humanity, became one with those horrible mysteries dimly scented beyond the dark forest of reality. It was one with demons, with black angels, with subterranean monsters, with supernatural apparitions. The devout, though fearing him, believed that the Capuchin’s madness was the result of an ecstasy-in-God. But others felt a real terror and frightfulness in him, as if he were not flesh but a being visiting briefly and terribly from some ghastly outer-place beyond the world. The Cardinal’s cogency was familiar. It was the cogency of all the great conquerors and oppressors, and though hated, it could be comprehended. But there was a cogency in Père Joseph which suggested that behind him was an invisible and appalling host come from unfathomable places.

  He could not be touched by a human hand. There were some who believed he was not flesh at all, but a spectre, this alter ego of Cardinal Richelieu, his closest intimate.

  He was eight years older than the Cardinal, and at this time he was nearly fifty. Short, powerful, of a gorilla-like appearance, with long prehensile hands and long prehensile toes visible through his sandles, robed, cowled, lunging of gait, he inspired fright or repulsion at first glance. Under that robe, the Capuchin’s habit, coarse and dirty, one caught the outline of strong gnarled limbs and a torso like the trunk of a tree. If he ever bathed, the matter was open to doubt, for he was surrounded by an aura of powerful and repelling smells which seemed less to come from his flesh than to emanate from his colossal vitality.

  All this was enough to disgust the fastidious, but it was his face, his head, that were the most hypnotizing, powerful and fearful. He had an enormous furrowed forehead, continually wrinkling, like an ape’s forehead. It was dark, almost russet in color, as was all the skin of his over-large countenance. His bulging eyes were enormous, burning, fierce, terrible, and of a fiery blueness, glittering with passion and inhuman mysticism. The nose was jagged, crooked, very acquiline, like the beak of a vulture, or an eagle. His beard was long and bushy, dark red and unkempt and dirty, streaked with gray, and it covered the lower half of his great face and fell on his ape’s broad chest. Through this tangle of hair could be glimpsed a wide twisted mouth, sagacious and mobile.

  Yet, he was no malefactor like the Cardinal. Had he been, he would have inspired less fear. There was no stain upon his private life, and even his enemies conceded that there was no personal lust for power in him. Had he had this lust, they could have understood him, could have felt the presence of his flesh. He was incapable of the silken intrigues of the Cardinal, the venality, the human viciousness. This lack in him appalled.

  He had arrived from Rome and had reached the Palais-Cardinal only a few minutes ago. He had come directly to the Cardinal, who trusted him as he trusted no other man. Did he deceive Father Joseph? No one, not even the Cardinal, knew this.

  It was difficult for the Cardinal, whose greatest weakness was a pride in blood, to be amiable to those of low birth or beginnings, however he might respect their intellect or admire their attainments (and he was lavish in this admiration). Father Joseph, therefore, pleased him because the uncouth Capuchin was of noble blood. He was the eldest son of one Jean le Clerc, Chancellor of the Duc d’Alençon, and Premier Président des Requêtes du Palais. His ancestors had been unusually brilliant administrators and lawyers, and his mother had sprung from the great landed nobility. Moreover, Father Joseph had inherited from his grandfather on his mother’s side, Monsieur Claude de La Fayette, one of four baronies, and had been known at Court, in his earlier days, as the Baron de Maffliers. His father and mother had both been Calvinists.

  Therefore, in his association with Father Joseph, the Cardinal felt no sensitive feeling of degradation. He was an equal in blood, and the Cardinal believed in blood as he did not believe in God. (He had an intense and unremitting hatred for the plebeian, and often said: “Where the people enter, they defile, not deliberately and with malice, but innocently, like a beast dropping ordure, out of the instinct of their natures.” He believed that a deliberate defilement came from a superior comprehension of the enormity of the defilement, and so, could be forgiven. But the innocent defiling of the people he could not forgive, for it sprang from the very nature of them, and could never be cured, being intrinsic. When the Cardinal felt this truth most keenly, he was filled with an insane rage, and, like Nero, experienced a desire to burn Paris as Rome had been burned, to cure it of its stenches. Sometimes he felt that he could burn the whole world.)

  When Père Joseph entered the chamber, the Cardinal sat upright in his bed, and stretched out his hands, which quivered. His impaling eyes softened, glowed. He smiled with love and delight.

  “My dear friend!” he exclaimed. “My dear good friend!”

  He had not seen the Capuchin for a long time, but they had corresponded frequently and regularly. Père Joseph smiled in return, his dark dour smile which yet had something singularly beautiful in it. He kissed the Cardinal’s white extended hand, with sincere humility, and then pressed it between his brown and calloused hands. They did not speak for a few moments, but their eyes beamed at each other, filled with unspoken things. The Cardinal’s mortal pallor brightened into evanescent health. His long pointed countenance, somber and melancholy, took on vivacity. He sighed deeply. Père Joseph, himself, was greatly moved. The austere yet passionate blue eyes became as gentle as summer skies. His enormous russet beard trembled.

  He sat down in the tall gilt-and-crimson chair at the Cardinal’s side. Louis had removed himself at a distance. A bitter jealousy filled him, the old chronic jealousy which had so afflicted all his life. He stood near the window, but in shadow, tall, black-robed, and faintly sinister. From out that shadow his eyes glinted watchfully, and with haughty disdain. There was a new hatred in his heart, joining with all the other hatreds.

  He had seen Père Joseph only once, and then at a distance, and before he, himself, had been ordained. He had been very young, then, and his father had taken him and Arsène to visit his old Calvinist friend, the governor of the Huguenot walled city of Saumur, Monsieur du Plessis-Mornay. The governor was also a distant relative, and Armand sincerely liked him, as he liked few others. The visit had been more or less secret, and Armand, only lately a convert to Mother Church, had been furtive.

  At that time, the Catholics, a bigoted minority, were allowed free religious worship in Saumur, and no one interfered with them. Du Plessis-Mornay was a true liberal, full of tolerance and humor. His friends had protested the presence of the Catholics, prophesying that they were the nucleus of disease, a nucleus which would fill the city eventually with pestilence. But du Plessis-Mornay was essentially a man of good-will, and could credit no others with malignance. He championed the Catholics against both real and fancied oppressions, and always lent an ear to their interminable and whining complaints against their Huguenot townsmen. Hating oppression of all kinds, he was tenderly sensitive to its slightest manifestation, bending backwards to be severe with his Huguenot fellows and refusing to listen to their justified anger and warnings against the Catholics. “These Catholics worm their way unobstrusively into the confidence and pity of their enemies,” a friend had told him sternly. “They are meek and humble, while they are still impotent. They invoke the tolerance and indignation of worthy men in their own behalf, while they, in the meantime, plot to destroy these same men.” But du Plessis-Mornay refused to credit this, having no slyness or viciousness in himself.

  However, he had his own distrust of religious orders, and for a long while, though permitting the Catholics their churches, would allow no friars into the city. Father Joseph, in his indomitable determination, resolved to remedy this. He ingratiated himself with the abbess of Fontevrault, Madame de Bourbon, old aunt of the King, and asked her to intercede with his Majesty for the introduction of the Capuchins into Saumur. Du Plessis-Mornay, though an intrepid gentleman, dared not offend t
he King’s relative when she placed her demands before him, and a Capuchin house had been founded.

  Passionately elated with his success, Père Joseph had addressed an open meeting of the Catholics in one of the streets of Saumur. Armand, driving with his sons in his carriage, had been forced to halt because of the crowds. He and the two boys were, therefore, exposed to the wild and jubilant eloquence of Père Joseph. He had stood on a little elevation, wild, dark-robed, gesticulating against the quiet warm sky, inspiring his audience with his fervor and magnificent oratory. Arsène had amused his father with ribald comments and exaggerated mimickings, but Louis, still very young, had immediately decided to devote his life to God.

  That had been the first and the last time, until today, that Louis had seen his Gray Eminence, the familiar of the Cardinal. But he never forgot that vehement and tremendous figure, nor the sound of that compelling voice. Père Joseph had become a semi-divine and limitless dream to him. But he forgot that dream today. He saw in Père Joseph, though still sensible to his tremendous personality and power, a man who was the Cardinal’s only real friend. His egotism was so gigantic that he could not endure the spectacle of anyone whom he served, revered or liked, to be engrossed in another, to the forgetfulness of himself. In all his few relationships, he loomed as the most important element. To be debased to the stature of a mere secretary, a little man, to the Cardinal, poured venom into his veins. His pale and handsome countenance took on a greenish tinge. He literally trembled. Here was one before whom he was nothing at all. He saw the expression on the Cardinal’s face, deep, strong, fond and tender, and remembered that never had his master looked at him in this manner. His old yearning for love and complete absorption (that old chronic sickness of his lonely soul) assailed him in full force once more, and made him physically ill. The look the two exchanged was eloquent with the memory of years of trust, affection and struggle, and with a thousand things not known to him. He was more jealous of the implications of those glances than he was of Père Joseph himself.