Là-bas

by J.-K. Huysmans

  CHAPTER V

  "Come right in and get warm. Ah, messieurs, you must not do that anymore," said Mme. Carhaix, seeing Durtal draw from his pocket somebottles wrapped in paper, while Des Hermies placed on the table somelittle packages tied with twine. "You mustn't spend your money on us."

  "Oh, but you see we enjoy doing it, Mme. Carhaix. And your husband?"

  "He is in the tower. Since morning he has been going from one tantruminto another."

  "My, the cold is terrible today," said Durtal, "and I should think itwould be no fun up there."

  "Oh, he isn't grumbling for himself but for his bells. Take off yourthings."

  They took off their overcoats and came up close to the stove.

  "It isn't what you would call hot in here," said Mme. Carhaix, "but tothaw this place you would have to keep a fire going night and day."

  "Why don't you get a portable stove?"

  "Oh, heavens! that would asphyxiate us."

  "It wouldn't be very comfortable at any rate," said Des Hermies, "forthere is no chimney. You might get some joints of pipe and run them outof the window, the way you have fixed this tubing. But, speaking of thatkind of apparatus, Durtal, doesn't it seem to you that those hideousgalvanized iron contraptions perfectly typify our utilitarian epoch?

  "Just think, the engineer, offended by any object that hasn't asinister or ignoble form, reveals himself entire in this invention. Hetells us, 'You want heat. You shall have heat--and nothing else.'Anything agreeable to the eye is out of the question. No more snapping,crackling wood fire, no more gentle, pervasive warmth. The usefulwithout the fantastic. Ah, the beautiful jets of flame darting out froma red cave of coals and spurting up over a roaring log."

  "But there are lots of stoves where you can see the fire," objectedmadame.

  "Yes, and then it's worse yet. Fire behind a grated window of mica.Flame in prison. Depressing! Ah, those fine fires of faggots and dryvine stocks out in the country. They smell good and they cast a goldenglow over everything. Modern life has set that in order. The luxury ofthe poorest of peasants is impossible in Paris except for people whohave copious incomes."

  The bell-ringer entered. Every hair of his bristling moustache wasbeaded with a globule of snow. With his knitted bonnet, his sheepskincoat, his fur mittens and goloshes, he resembled a Samoyed, fresh fromthe pole.

  "I won't shake hands," he said, "for I am covered with grease and oil.What weather! Just think, I've been scouring the bells ever since earlythis morning. I'm worried about them."

  "Why?"

  "Why! You know very well that frost contracts the metal and sometimescracks or breaks it. Some of these bitterly cold winters we have lost agood many, because bells suffer worse than we do in bad weather.--Wife,is there any hot water in the other room, so I can wash up?"

  "Can't we help you set the table?" Des Hermies proposed.

  But the good woman refused. "No, no, sit down. Dinner is ready."

  "Mighty appetizing," said Durtal, inhaling the odour of a peppery_pot-au-feu_, perfumed with a symphony of vegetables, of which thekeynote was celery.

  "Everybody sit down," said Carhaix, reappearing with a clean blouse on,his face shining of soap and water.

  They sat down. The glowing stove purred. Durtal felt the suddenrelaxation of a chilly soul dipped into a warm bath: at Carhaix's onewas so far from Paris, so remote from the epoch....

  The lodge was poor, but cosy, comfortable, cordial. The very table, setcountry style, the polished glasses, the covered dish of sweet butter,the cider pitcher, the somewhat battered lamp casting reflections oftarnished silver on the great cloth, contributed to the atmosphere ofhome.

  "Next time I come I must stop at the English store and buy a jar of thatreliable orange marmalade," said Durtal to himself, for by commonconsent with Des Hermies he never dined with the bell-ringer withoutfurnishing a share of the provisions. Carhaix set out a _pot-au-feu_ anda simple salad and poured his cider. Not to be an expense to him, DesHermies and Durtal brought wine, coffee, liquor, desserts, and managedso that their contributions would pay for the soup and the beef whichwould have lasted for several days if the Carhaixes had eaten alone.

  "This time I did it!" said Mme. Carhaix triumphantly, serving to each inturn a mahogany-colour bouillon whose iridescent surface was looped withrings of topaz.

  It was succulent and unctuous, robust and yet delicate, flavoured as itwas with the broth of a whole flock of boiled chickens. The diners weresilent now, their noses in their plates, their faces brightened by steamfrom the savoury soup, soup, two selected dishes, a salad, and adessert.

  "Now is the time to repeat the chestnut dear to Flaubert, 'You can'tdine like this in a restaurant,'" said Durtal.

  "Let's not malign the restaurants," said Des Hermies. "They afford avery special delight to the person who has the instinct of theinspector. I had an opportunity to gratify this instinct just the othernight. I was returning from a call on a patient, and I dropped into oneof these establishments where for the sum of three francs you areentitled to soup, two selected dishes, a salad, and a dessert.

  "The restaurant, where I go as often as once a month, has an unvaryingclientele, hostile highbrows, officers in mufti, members of Parliament,bureaucrats.

  "While laboriously gnawing my way through a redoubtable sole with sauceau gratin, I examined the habitues seated all around me and I found themsingularly altered since my last visit. They had become bony or bloated;their eyes were either hollow, with violet rings around them, or puffy,with crimson pouches beneath; the fat people had become yellow and thethin ones were turning green.

  "More deadly than the forgotten venefices of the days of the Avignonpapacy, the terrible preparations served in this place were slowlypoisoning its customers.

  "It was interested, as you may believe. I made myself the subject of acourse of toxicological research, and, studying my food as it went down,I identified the frightful ingredients masking the mixtures of tanninand powdered carbon with which the fish was embalmed; and I penetratedthe disguise of the marinated meats, painted with sauces the colour ofsewage; and I diagnosed the wine as being coloured with fuscin, perfumedwith furfurol, and enforced with molasses and plaster.

  "I have promised myself to return every month to register the slow butsure progress of these people toward the tomb."

  "Oh!" cried Mme. Carhaix.

  "And you will claim," said Durtal, "that you aren't Satanic?"

  "See, Carhaix, he's at it already. He won't even give us time to get ourbreath, but must be dogging us about Satanism. It's true I promised himI'd try and get you to tell us something about it tonight. Yes,"continued Des Hermies, in response to Carhaix's look of astonishment,"yesterday, Durtal, who is engaged, as you know, in writing a history ofGilles de Rais, declared that he possessed all the information there wasabout Diabolism in the Middle Ages. I asked him if he had any materialon the Satanism of the present day. He asked me what I was talkingabout, and wouldn't believe that these practices are being carried onright now."

  "But they are," replied Carhaix, becoming grave. "It is only too true."

  "Before we go any further, there is one question I'd like to put to DesHermies," said Durtal. "Can you, honestly, without joking, withoutletting that saturnine smile play around the corner of your mouth, tellme, in perfectly good faith, whether you do or do not believe inCatholicism?"

  "He!" exclaimed the bell-ringer. "Why, he's worse than an unbeliever,he's a heresiarch."

  "The fast is, if I were certain of anything, I would be inclined towardManicheism," said Des Hermies. "It's one of the oldest and it is _the_simplest of religions, and it best explains the abominable messeverything is in at the present time.

  "The Principle of Good and the Principle of Evil, the God of Light andthe God of Darkness, two rivals, are fighting for our souls. That's atleast clear. Right now it is evident that the Evil God has the upperhand and is reigning over the world as master. Now--and on this point,Carhaix, who is distressed by these t
heories, can't reprehend me--I amfor the under dog. That's a generous and perfectly proper idea."

  "But Manicheism is impossible!" cried the bell-ringer. "Two infinitiescannot exist together."

  "But nothing can exist if you get to reasoning. The moment you argue theCatholic dogma everything goes to pieces. The proof that two infinitiescan coexist is that this idea passes beyond reason and enters thecategory of those things referred to in Ecclesiasticus: 'Inquire notinto things higher than thou, for many things have shown themselves tobe above the sense of men.'

  "Manicheism, you see, must have had some good in it, because it wasbathed in blood. At the end of the twelfth century thousands ofAlbigenses were roasted for practising this doctrine. Of course, Ican't say that the Manicheans didn't abuse their cult, mostly made up ofdevil worship, because we know very well they did.

  "On this point I am not with them," he went on slowly, after a silence.He was waiting till Mme. Carhaix, who had got up to remove the plates,should go out of the room to fetch the beef.

  "While we are alone," he said, seeing her disappear through the stairwaydoor, "I can tell you what they did. An excellent man named Psellus hasrevealed to us, in a book entitled _De operatione Daemonum_, the factthat they tasted of the two excrements at the beginning of theirceremonial, and that they mixed human semen with the host."

  "Horrible!" exclaimed Carhaix.

  "Oh, as they took both kinds of communion, they did better than that,"returned Des Hermies. "They cut children's throats and mixed the bloodwith ashes, and this paste, dissolved in liquid, constituted theEucharistic wine."

  "You bring us right back to Satanism," said Durtal.

  "Why, yes, as you see, I haven't strayed off your subject."

  "I am sure Monsieur Des Hermies has been saying something awful,"murmured Mme. Carhaix as she came in, bearing a platter on which was apiece of beef smothered in vegetables.

  "Oh, Madame," protested Des Hermies.

  They burst out laughing and Carhaix cut up the meat, while his wifepoured the cider and Durtal uncorked the bottle of anchovies.

  "I am afraid it's cooked too much," said the woman, who was a great dealmore interested in the beef than in other-world adventures, and sheadded the famous maxim of housekeepers, "When the broth is good the beefwon't cut."

  The men protested that it wasn't stringy a bit, it was cooked justright.

  "Have an anchovy and a little butter with your meat, Monsieur Durtal."

  "Wife, let's have some of the red cabbage that you preserved," saidCarhaix, whose pale face was lighted up while his great canine eyes werebecoming suspiciously moist. Visibly he was jubilant. He was at tablewith friends, in his tower, safe from the cold. "But, empty yourglasses. You are not drinking," he said, holding up the cider pot.

  "Let's see, Des Hermies, you were claiming yesterday that Satanism haspursued an uninterrupted course since the Middle Ages," said Durtal,wishing to get back to the subject which haunted him.

  "Yes, and the documents are irrefutable. I'll put you into a position toprove them whenever you wish.

  "At the end of the fifteenth century, that is to say at the time ofGilles de Rais--to go no further back--Satanism had assumed theproportions that you know. In the sixteenth it was worse yet. No need toremind you, I think, of the demoniac pactions of Catherine de Medici andof the Valois, of the trial of the monk Jean de Vaulx, of theinvestigations of the Sprengers and the Lancres and those learnedinquisitors who had thousands of necromancers and sorcerers roastedalive. All that is known, too well known. One case is not too well knownfor me to cite here: that of the priest Benedictus who cohabited withthe she-devil Armellina and consecrated the hosts holding them upsidedown. Here are the diabolical threads which bind that century to this.In the seventeenth century, in which the sorcery trials continue, and inwhich the 'possessed' of Loudun appear, the black religion nourishes,but already it has been driven under cover.

  "I will cite you an example, one among many, if you like.

  "A certain abbe Guibourg made a specialty of these abominations. On atable serving as tabernacle a woman lay down, naked or with her skirtslifted up over her head, and with her arms outstretched. She held thealtar lights during the whole office.

  "Guibourg thus celebrated masses on the abdomen of Mme. de Montespan, ofMme. d'Argenson, of Mme. de Saint-Pont. As a matter of fact thesemasses were very frequent under the Grand Monarch. Numbers of women wentto them as in our times women flock to have their fortunes told withcards.

  "The ritual of these ceremonies was sufficiently atrocious. Generally achild was kidnapped and burnt in a furnace out in the country somewhere,the ashes were saved and mixed with the blood of another child whosethroat had been cut, and of this mixture a paste was made resemblingthat of the Manicheans of which I was speaking. Abbe Guibourgofficiated, consecrated the host, cut it into little pieces and mixed itwith this mixture of blood and ashes. That was the material of theSacrament."

  "What a horrible priest!" cried Mme. Carhaix, indignant.

  "Yes, he celebrated another kind of mass, too, that abbe did. It wascalled--hang it--it's unpleasant to say--"

  "Say it, Monsieur des Hermies. When people have as great a hatred forthat sort of thing as we here, they need not blink any fact. It isn'tthat kind of thing which is going to take me away from my prayers."

  "Nor me," added her husband.

  "Well, this sacrifice was called the Spermatic Mass."

  "Oh!"

  "Guibourg, wearing the alb, the stole, and the maniple, celebrated thismass with the sole object of making pastes to conjure with. The archivesof the Bastille inform us that he acted thus at the request of a ladynamed Des Oeillettes:

  "This woman, who was indisposed, gave some of her blood; the man whoaccompanied her stood patiently beside the bed where the scene tookplace, and Guibourg gathered up some of his semen into the chalice, thenadded powdered blood and some flour, and after sacrilegious ceremoniesthe Des Oeillettes woman departed bearing her paste."

  "My heavenly Saviour!" sighed the bell-ringer's wife, "what a lot offilth."

  "But," said Durtal, "in the Middle Ages the mass was celebrated in adifferent fashion. The altar then was the naked buttocks of a woman; inthe seventeenth century it was the abdomen, and now?"

  "Nowadays a woman is hardly ever used for an altar, but let us notanticipate. In the eighteenth century we shall again find abbes--amonghow many other monsters--who defile holy objects. One Canon Dueroccupied himself specially with black magic and the evocation of thedevil. He was finally executed as a sorcerer in the year of grace 1718.There was another who believed in the Incarnation of the Holy Ghost asthe Paraclete, and who, in Lombary, which he stirred up to a feverishpitch of excitement, ordained twelve apostles and twelve apostolines topreach his gospel. This man, abbe Beccarelli, like all the other priestsof his ilk, abused both sexes, and he said mass without confessinghimself of his lecheries. As his cult grew he began to celebratetravestied offices in which he distributed to his congregationaphrodisiac pills presenting this peculiarity, that after havingswallowed them the men believed themselves changed into women and thewomen into men.

  "The recipe for these hippomanes is lost," continued Des Hermies withalmost a sad smile. "To make a long story short, Beccarelli met with avery miserable end. He was prosecuted for sacrilege and sentenced, in1708, to row in the galleys for seven years."

  "These frightful stories seem to have taken away your appetite," saidMme. Carhaix. "Come, Monsieur des Hermies, a little more salad?"

  "No, thanks. But now we've come to the cheese, I think it's time to openthe wine," and he uncapped one of the bottles which Durtal had brought.

  "It's a light Chinon wine, but not too weak. I discovered it in a littleshop down by the quay," said Durtal.

  "I see," he went on after a silence, "that the tradition of unspeakablecrimes has been maintained by worthy successors of Gilles de Rais. I seethat in all centuries there have been fallen priests who have daredcommit sins against the Ho
ly Ghost. But at the present time it all seemsincredible. Surely nobody is cutting children's throats as in the daysof Bluebeard and of abbe Guibourg."

  "You mean that nobody is brought to justice for doing it. They don'tassassinate now, but they kill designated victims by methods unknown toofficial science--ah, if the confessionals could speak!" cried thebell-ringer.

  "But tell me, what class of people are these modern covenanters with theDevil?"

  "Prelates, abbesses, mission superiors, confessors of communities; andin Rome, the centre of present-day magic, they're the very highestdignitaries," answered Des Hermies. "As for the laymen, they arerecruited from the wealthy class. That explains why these scandals arehushed up if the police chance to discover them.

  "Then, let us assume that the sacrifices to the Devil are not precededby preliminary murders. Perhaps in some cases they aren't. Theworshippers probably content themselves with bleeding a foetus which hadbeen aborted as soon as it became matured to the point necessary.Bloodletting is supererogatory anyway, and serves merely to whet theappetite. The main business is to consecrate the host and put it to aninfamous use. The rest of the procedure varies. There is at present noregular ritual for the black mass."

  "Well, then, is a priest absolutely essential to the celebration ofthese offices?"

  "Certainly. Only a priest can operate the mystery of Transubstantiation.I know there are certain occultists who claim to have been consecratedby the Lord, as Saint Paul was, and who think they can consummate averitable sacrifice just like a real priest. Absurd! But even in defaultof real masses with ordained celebrants, the people possessed by themania of sacrilege do none the less realize the sacred stupration ofwhich they dream.

  "Listen to this. In 1855 there existed at Paris an association composedof women, for the most part. These women took communion several times aday and retained the sacred wafer in their mouths to be spat out laterand trodden underfoot or soiled by disgusting contacts."

  "You are sure of it?"

  "Perfectly. These facts were revealed by a religious journal, _Lesannales de la saintete_, and the archbishop of Paris could not denythem. I add that in 1874 women were likewise enrolled at Paris topractise this odious commerce. They were paid so much for every waferthey brought in. That explains why they presented themselves at thesacred table of different churches every day."

  "And that is not the half of it! Look," said Carhaix, in his turn,rising and taking from his bookshelf a blue brochurette. "Here is areview, _La voix de la septaine_, dated 1843. It informs us that fortwenty-five years, at Agen, a Satanistic association regularlycelebrated black masses, and committed murder, and polluted threethousand three hundred and twenty hosts! And Monsignor the Bishop ofAgen, who was a good and ardent prelate, never dared deny themonstrosities committed in his diocese!"

  "Yes, we can say it among ourselves," Des Hermies returned, "in thenineteenth century the number of foul-minded abbes has been legion.Unhappily, though the documents are certain, they are difficult toverify, for no ecclesiastic boasts of such misdeeds. The celebrants ofDeicidal masses dissemble and declare themselves devoted to Christ. Theyeven affirm that they defend Him by exorcising the possessed.

  "That's a good one. The 'possessed' are made so or kept so by thepriests themselves, who are thus assured of subjects and accomplices,especially in the convents. All kinds of murderous and sadistic folliescan be covered with the antique and pious mantle of exorcism."

  "Let us be just," said Carhaix. "The Satanist would not be complete ifhe were not an abominable hypocrite."

  "Hypocrisy and pride are perhaps the most characteristic vices of theperverse priest," suggested Durtal.

  "But in the long run," Des Hermies went on, "in spite of the mostadroit precautions, everything comes out. Up to now I have spoken onlyof local Satanistic associations, but there are others, more extensive,which ravage the old world and the new, for Diabolism is quite up todate in one respect. It is highly centralized and very capablyadministered. There are committees, subcommittees, a sort of curia,which rules America and Europe, like the curia of a pope.

  "The biggest of these societies founded as long ago as 1855 is thesociety of the Re-Theurgistes-Optimates. Beneath an apparent unity it isdivided into two camps, one aspiring to destroy the universe and reignover the ruins, the other thinking simply of imposing upon the world ademoniac cult of which it shall be high priest.

  "This society has its seat in America. It was formerly directed by oneLongfellow, an adventurer, born in Scotland, who entitled himself grandpriest of the New Evocative Magism. For a long time it has had branchesin France, Italy, Germany, Russia, Austria, even Turkey.

  "It is at the present moment moribund, or perhaps quite dead, butanother has just been created. The object of this one is to elect anantipope who will be the exterminating Antichrist. And those are onlytwo of them. How many others are there, more or less importantnumerically, more or less secret, which, by common accord, at teno'clock the morning of the Feast of the Holy Sacrament, celebrate blackmasses at Paris, Rome, Bruges, Constantinople, Nantes, Lyons, and inScotland--where sorcerers swarm!

  "Then, outside of these universal associations and local assemblies,isolated cases abound, on which little light can be shed, and that withgreat difficulty. Some years ago there died, in a state of penitence, acertain comte de Lautree, who presented several churches with statueswhich he had bewitched so as to satanize the faithful. At Bruges apriest of my acquaintance contaminates the holy ciboria and uses them toprepare spells and conjurements. Finally one may, among all these, citea clear case of possession. It is the case of Cantianille, who in 1865turned not only the city of Auxerre, but the whole diocese of Sens,upside down.

  "This Cantianille, placed in a convent of Mont-Saint-Sulpice, wasviolated, when she was barely fifteen years old, by a priest whodedicated her to the Devil. This priest himself had been corrupted, inearly childhood, by an ecclesiastic belonging to a sect of possessedwhich was created the very day Louis XVI was guillotined.

  "What happened in this convent, where many nuns, evidently mad withhysteria, were associated in erotic devilry and sacrilegious rages withCantianille, reads for all the world like the procedure in the trials ofwizards of long ago, the histories of Gaufredy and Madeleine Palud, ofUrbain Grandier and Madeleine Bavent, or the Jesuit Girard and LaCadiere, histories, by the way, in which much might be said abouthystero-epilepsy on one hand and about Diabolism on the other. At anyrate, Cantianille, after being sent away from the convent, was exorcisedby a certain priest of the diocese, abbe Thorey, who seems to have beencontaminated by his patient. Soon at Auxerre there were such scandalousscenes, such frenzied outbursts of Diabolism, that the bishop had tointervene. Cantianille was driven out of the country, abbe Thorey wasdisciplined, and the affair went to Rome.

  "The curious thing about it is that the bishop, terrified by what he hadseen, requested to be dismissed, and retired to Fontainebleau, where hedied, still in terror, two years later."

  "My friends," said Carhaix, consulting his watch, "it is a quarter toeight. I must be going up into the tower to sound the angelus. Don'twait for me. Have your coffee. I shall rejoin you in ten minutes."

  He put on his Greenland costume, lighted a lantern, and opened the door.A stream of glacial air poured in. White molecules whirled in theblackness.

  "The wind is driving the snow in through the loopholes along the stair,"said the woman. "I am always afraid that Louis will take cold in hischest this kind of weather. Oh, well, Monsieur des Hermies, here is thecoffee. I appoint you to the task of serving it. At this hour of day mypoor old limbs won't hold me up any longer. I must go lie down."

  "The fact is," sighed Des Hermies, when they had wished her good night,"the fact is that mama Carhaix is rapidly getting old. I have vainlytried to brace her up with tonics. They do no good. She has worn herselfout. She has climbed too many stairs in her life, poor woman!"

  "All the same, it's very curious, what you have told me," said Durtal."To sum up, t
he most important thing about Satanism is the black mass."

  "That and the witchcraft and incubacy and succubacy which I will tellyou about; or rather, I will get another more expert than I in thesematters to tell you about them. Sacrilegious mass, spells, andsuccubacy. There you have the real quintessence of Satanism."

  "And these hosts consecrated in blasphemous offices, what use is made ofthem when they are not simply destroyed?"

  "But I already told you. They are used to consummate infamous acts.Listen," and Des Hermies took from the bell-ringers bookshelf the fifthvolume of the _Mystik_ of Goerres. "Here is the flower of them all:

  "'These priests, in their baseness, often go so far as to celebrate the mass with great hosts which then they cut through the middle and afterwards glue to a parchment, similarly cloven, and use abominably to satisfy their passions.'"

  "Holy sodomy, in other words?"

  "Exactly."

  At this moment the bell, set in motion in the tower, boomed out. Thechamber in which Durtal and Des Hermies were sitting trembled and adroning filled the air. It seemed that waves of sound came out of thewalls, unrolling in a spiral from the very rock, and that one wastransported, in a dream, into the inside of one of these shells which,when held up to the ear, simulate the roar of rolling billows. DesHermies, accustomed to the mighty resonance of the bells at short range,thought only of the coffee, which he had put on the stove to keep hot.

  Then the booming of the bell came more slowly. The humming departed fromthe air. The window panes, the glass of the bookcase, the tumblers onthe table, ceased to rattle and gave off only a tenuous tinkling.

  A step was heard on the stair. Carhaix entered, covered with snow.

  "Cristi, boys, it blows!" He shook himself, threw his heavy outergarments on a chair, and extinguished his lantern. "There were blindingclouds of snow whirling in between the sounding-shutters. I can hardlysee. Dog's weather. The lady has gone to bed? Good. But you haven'tdrunk your coffee?" he asked as he saw Durtal filling the glasses.

  Carhaix went up to the stove and poked the fire, then dried his eyes,which the bitter cold had filled with tears, and drank a great draughtof coffee.

  "Now. That hits the spot. How far had you got with your lecture, DesHermies?"

  "I finished the rapid expose of Satanism, but I haven't yet spoken ofthe genuine monster, the only real master that exists at the presenttime, that defrocked abbe--"

  "Oh!" exclaimed Carhaix. "Take care. The mere name of that man bringsdisaster."

  "Bah! Canon Docre--to utter his ineffable name--can do nothing to us. Iconfess I cannot understand why he should inspire any terror. But nevermind. I should like for Durtal, before we hunt up the canon, to see yourfriend Gevingey, who seems to be best and most intimately acquaintedwith him. A conversation with Gevingey would considerably amplify mycontributions to the study of Satanism, especially as regards veneficesand succubacy. Let's see. Would you mind if we invited him here todine?"

  Carhaix scratched his head, then emptied the ashes of his pipe on histhumbnail.

  "Well, you see, the fact is, we have had a slight disagreement."

  "What about?"

  "Oh, nothing very serious. I interrupted his experiments here one day.But pour yourself some liqueur, Monsieur Durtal, and you, Des Hermies,why, you aren't drinking at all," and while, lighting their cigarettes,both sipped a few drops of almost proof cognac, Carhaix resumed,"Gevingey, who, though an astrologer, is a good Christian and an honestman--whom, indeed, I should be glad to see again--wished to consult mybells.

  "That surprises you, but it's so. Bells formerly played quite animportant part in the forbidden science. The art of predicting thefuture with their sounds is one of the least known and most disusedbranches of the occult. Gevingey had dug up some documents, and wishedto verify them in the tower."

  "Why, what did he do?"

  "How do I know? He stood under the bell, at the risk of breaking hisbones--a man of his age on the scaffolding there! He was halfway intothe bell, the bell like a great hat, you see, coming clear down over hiships. And he soliloquized aloud and listened to the repercussions of hisvoice making the bronze vibrate.

  "He spoke to me also of the interpretation of dreams about bells.According to him, whoever, in his sleep, sees bells swinging, is menacedby an accident; if the bell chimes, it is presage of slander; if itfalls, ataxia is certain; if it breaks, it is assurance of afflictionsand miseries. Finally he added, I believe, that if the night birds flyaround a bell by moonlight one may be sure that sacrilegious robberywill be committed in the church, or that the curate's life is in danger.

  "Be all that as it may, this business of touching the bells, getting upinto them--and you know they're consecrated--of attributing to them thegift of prophecy, of involving them in the interpretation of dream--anart formally forbidden in Leviticus--displeased me, and I demanded,somewhat rudely, that he desist."

  "But you did not quarrel?"

  "No, and I confess I regret having been so hasty."

  "Well then, I will arrange it. I shall go see him--agreed?" said DesHermies.

  "By all means."

  "With that we must run along and give you a chance to get to bed, seeingthat you have to be up at dawn."

  "Oh, at half-past five for the six o'clock angelus, and then, if I wantto, I can go back to bed, for I don't have to ring again till a quarterto eight, and then all I have to do is sound a couple of times for thecurate's mass. As you can see, I have a pretty easy thing of it."

  "Mmmm!" exclaimed Durtal, "if I had to get up so early!"

  "It's all a matter of habit. But before you go won't you have anotherlittle drink? No? Really? Well, good night!"

  He lighted his lantern, and in single file, shivering, they descendedthe glacial, pitch-dark, winding stair.