The Revolt of the Angels - 10

Jehovah protect you, sir. You know him well. Oh, how well you know him,
and how perfectly you have understood his character.' The holy man
thought he discerned in me a messenger from Hell, concluded he was
eternally damned, and died suddenly of fright.
"The following century was the century of philosophy. The spirit of
research was developed, reverence was lost; the pride of the flesh was
diminished and the mind acquired fresh energy. Manners took on an
elegance until then unknown. On the other hand, the monks of my order
grew more and more ignorant and dirty, and the monastery no longer
offered me any advantage now that good manners reigned in the town. I
could bear it no longer. Flinging my habit to the nettles, I put a
powdered wig on my horned brow, hid my goat's legs under white
stockings, and cane in hand, my pockets stuffed with gazettes, I
frequented the fashionable world, visited the modish promenades, and
showed myself assiduously in the _cafés_ where men of letters were to be
found. I was made welcome in _salons_ where, as a happy novelty, there
were arm-chairs that fitted the form, and where both men and women
engaged in rational conversation.
"The very metaphysicians spoke intelligibly. I acquired great weight in
the town as an authority on matters of exegesis, and, without boasting,
I was largely responsible for the Testament of the curé Meslier and _The
Bible Explained_, brought out by the chaplains to the King of Prussia.
"At this time a comic and cruel misadventure befel the ancient Iahveh.
An American Quaker, by means of a kite, stole his thunderbolts.
"I was living in Paris, and was at the supper where they talked of
strangling the last of the priests with the entrails of the last of the
kings. France was in a ferment; a terrible revolution broke out. The
ephemeral leaders of the disordered State carried on a Reign of Terror
amidst unheard-of perils. They were, for the most part, less pitiless
and less cruel than the princes and judges instituted by Iahveh in the
kingdoms of the earth; nevertheless, they appeared more ferocious,
because they gave judgment in the name of Humanity. Unhappily they were
easily moved to pity and of great sensibility. Now men of sensibility
are irritable and subject to fits of fury. They were virtuous; they had
moral laws, that is to say they conceived certain narrowly defined moral
obligations, and judged human actions not by their natural consequences
but by abstract principles. Of all the vices which contribute to the
undoing of a statesman, virtue is the most fatal; it leads to murder. To
work effectively for the happiness of mankind, a man must be superior to
all morals, like the divine Julius. God, so ill-used for some time
past, did not, on the whole, suffer excessively harsh treatment from
these new men. He found protectors among them, and was adored under the
name of the Supreme Being. One might even go so far as to say that
terror created a diversion from philosophy and was profitable to the old
demiurge, in that he appeared to represent order, public tranquillity,
and the security of person and property.
"While Liberty was coming to birth amid the storm, I lived at Auteuil,
and visited Madame Helvetius, where freethinkers in every branch of
intellectual activity were to be met with. Nothing could be rarer than a
freethinker, even after Voltaire's day. A man who will face death
without trembling dare not say anything out of the ordinary about
morals. That very same respect for Humanity which prompts him to go
forth to his death, makes him bow to public opinion. In those days I
enjoyed listening to the talk of Volney, Cabanis, and Tracy. Disciples
of the great Condillac, they regarded the senses as the origin of all
our knowledge. They called themselves ideologists, were the most
honourable people in the world, and grieved the vulgar minds by refusing
them immortality. For the majority of people, though they do not know
what to do with this life, long for another that shall have no end.
During the turmoil, our small philosophical society was sometimes
disturbed in the peaceful shades of Auteuil by patrols of patriots.
Condorcet, our great man, was an outlaw. I myself was regarded as
suspect by the friends of the people, who, in spite of my rustic
appearance and my frieze coat, believed me to be an aristocrat, and I
confess that independence of thought is the proudest of all
aristocracies.
"One evening while I was stealthily watching the dryads of Boulogne, who
gleamed amid the leaves like the moon rising above the horizon, I was
arrested as a suspect, and put in prison. It was a pure
misunderstanding; but the Jacobins of those days, like the monks whose
place they had usurped, laid great stress on unity of obedience. After
the death of Madame Helvetius our society gathered together in the
_salon_ of Madame de Condorcet. Bonaparte did not disdain to chat with
us sometimes.
"Recognizing him to be a great man, we thought him an ideologist like
ourselves. Our influence in the land was considerable. We used it in his
favour, and urged him towards the Imperial throne, thinking to display
to the world a second Marcus Aurelius. We counted on him to establish
universal peace; he did not fulfil our expectations, and we were
wrong-headed enough to be wroth with him for our own mistake.
"Without any doubt he greatly surpassed all other men in quickness of
intelligence, depth of dissimulation, and capacity for action. What
made him an accomplished ruler was that he lived entirely in the present
moment, and had no thoughts for anything beyond the immediate and actual
reality. His genius was far-reaching and agile; his intelligence, vast
in extent but common and vulgar in character, embraced humanity, but did
not rise above it. He thought what every grenadier in the army thought;
but he thought it with unprecedented force. He loved the game of chance,
and it pleased him to tempt fortune by urging pigmies in their hundreds
and thousands against each other. It was the game of a child as big as
the world. He was too wily not to introduce old Iahveh into the
game,--Iahveh, who was still powerful on earth, and who resembled him in
his spirit of violence and domination. He threatened him, flattered him,
caressed him, and intimidated him. He imprisoned his Vicar, of whom he
demanded, with the knife at his throat, that rite of unction which,
since the days of Saul of old, has bestowed might upon kings; he
restored the worship of the demiurge, sang _Te Deums_ to him, and made
himself known through him as God of the earth, in small catechisms
scattered broadcast throughout the Empire. They united their thunders,
and a fine uproar they made.
"While Napoleon's amusements were throwing Europe into a turmoil, we
congratulated ourselves on our wisdom, a little sad, withal, at seeing
the era of philosophy ushered in with massacre, torture, and war. The
worst is that the children of the century, fallen into the most
distressing disorder, formed the conception of a literary and
picturesque Christianity, which betokens a degeneracy of mind really
unbelievable, and finally fell into Romanticism. War and Romanticism,
what terrible scourges! And how pitiful to see these same people nursing
a childish and savage love for muskets and drums! They did not
understand that war, which trained the courage and founded the cities of
barbarous and ignorant men, brings to the victor himself but ruin and
misery, and is nothing but a horrible and stupid crime when nations are
united together by common bonds of art, science, and trade.
"Insane Europeans who plot to cut each others' throats, now that one and
the same civilisation enfolds and unites them all!
"I renounced all converse with these madmen and withdrew to this
village, where I devoted myself to gardening. The peaches in my orchard
remind me of the sun-kissed skin of the Mænads. For mankind I have
retained my old friendship, a little admiration, and much pity, and I
await, while cultivating this enclosure, that still distant day when the
great Dionysus shall come, followed by his Fauns and his Bacchantes, to
restore beauty and gladness to the world, and bring back the Golden Age.
I shall fare joyously behind his car. And who knows if in that day of
triumph mankind will be there for us to see? Who knows whether their
worn-out race will not have already fulfilled its destiny, and whether
other beings will not rise upon the ashes and ruins of what once was man
and his genius? Who knows if winged beings will not have taken
possession of the terrestrial empire? Even then the work of the good
demons will not be ended,--they will teach a winged race arts and the
joy of life."


CHAPTER XXII
WHEREIN WE ARE SHOWN THE INTERIOR OF A BRIC-A-BRAC SHOP, AND
SEE HOW PÈRE GUINARDON'S GUILTY HAPPINESS IS MARRED BY THE
JEALOUSY OF A LOVE-LORN DAME

Père Guinardon (as Zéphyrine had faithfully reported to Monsieur
Sariette) smuggled out the pictures, furniture, and curios stored in his
attic in the rue Princesse--his studio he called it--and used them to
stock a shop he had taken in the rue de Courcelles. Thither he went to
take up his abode, leaving Zéphyrine, with whom he had lived for fifty
years, without a bed or a saucepan or a penny to call her own, except
eighteenpence the poor creature had in her purse. Père Guinardon opened
an old picture and curiosity shop, and in it he installed the fair
Octavie.
The shop-front presented an attractive appearance: there were Flemish
angels in green copes, after the manner of Gérard David, a Salomé of the
Luini school, a Saint Barbara in painted wood of French workmanship,
Limoges enamel-work, Bohemian and Venetian glass, dishes from Urbino.
There were specimens of English point-lace which, if her tale was true,
had been presented to Zéphyrine, in the days of her radiant girlhood, by
the Emperor Napoleon III. Within, there were golden articles that
glinted in the shadows, while pictures of Christ, the Apostles,
high-bred dames, and nymphs also presented themselves to the gaze. There
was one canvas that was turned face to the wall so that it should only
be looked at by connoisseurs; and connoisseurs are scarce. It was a
replica of Fragonard's _Gimblette_, a brilliant painting that looked as
if it had barely had time to dry. Papa Guinardon himself remarked on the
fact. At the far end of the shop was a king-wood cabinet, the drawers of
which were full of all manner of treasures: water-colours by Baudouin,
eighteenth-century books of illustrations, miniatures, and so forth.
But the real masterpiece, the marvel, the gem, the pearl of great price,
stood upon an easel veiled from public view. It was a _Coronation of the
Virgin_ by Fra Angelico, an exquisitely delicate thing in gold and blue
and pink. Père Guinardon was asking a hundred thousand francs for it.
Upon a Louis XV chair beside an Empire work-table on which stood a vase
of flowers, sat the fair Octavie, broidery in hand. She, having left her
glistering rags behind her in the garret in the rue Princesse, no longer
presented the appearance of a touched-up Rembrandt, but shone, rather,
with the soft radiance and limpidity of a Vermeer of Delft, for the
delectation of the connoisseurs who frequented the shop of Papa
Guinardon. Tranquil and demure, she remained alone in the shop all day,
while the old fellow himself was up aloft working away at the deuce
knows what picture. About five o'clock he used to come downstairs and
have a chat with the habitués of the establishment.
The most regular caller was the Comte Desmaisons, a thin, cadaverous
man. A strand of hair issued from the deep hollow under each cheek-bone,
and, broadening as it descended, shed upon his chin and chest torrents
of snow in which he was for ever trailing his long, fleshless,
gold-ringed fingers. For twenty years he had been mourning the loss of
his wife, who had been carried off by consumption in the flower of her
youth and beauty. Since then he had spent his whole life in endeavouring
to hold converse with the dead and in filling his lonely mansion with
second-rate paintings. His confidence in Guinardon knew no bounds.
Another client who was a scarcely less frequent visitor to the shop was
Monsieur Blancmesnil, a director of a large financial establishment. He
was a florid, prosperous-looking man of fifty. He took no great interest
in matters of art, and was perhaps an indifferent connoisseur, but, in
his case, it was the fair Octavie, seated in the middle of the shop,
like a song-bird in its cage, that offered the attraction.
Monsieur Blancmesnil soon established relations with her, a fact which
Père Guinardon alone failed to perceive, for the old fellow was still
young in his love-affair with Octavie. Monsieur Gaétan d'Esparvieu used
to pay occasional visits to Père Guinardon's shop out of mere curiosity,
for he strongly suspected the old man of being a first-rate "faker."
And then that doughty swordsman, Monsieur Le Truc de Ruffec, also came
to see the old antiquary on one occasion, and acquainted him with a plan
he had on foot. Monsieur Le Truc de Ruffec was getting up a little
historical exhibition of small arms at the Petit Palais in aid of the
fund for the education of the native children in Morocco and wanted Père
Guinardon to lend him a few of the most valuable articles in his
collection.
"Our first idea," he said, "was to organise an exhibition to be called
'The Cross and the Sword.' The juxtaposition of the two words will make
the idea which has prompted our undertaking sufficiently clear to you.
It was an idea pre-eminently patriotic and Christian which led us to
associate the Sword, which is the symbol of Honour, with the Cross,
which is the symbol of Salvation. It was hoped that our work would be
graced by the distinguished patronage of the Minister of War and
Monseigneur Cachepot. Unfortunately there were difficulties in the way,
and the full realisation of the project had to be deferred. In the
meantime we are limiting our exhibition to 'The Sword.' I have drawn up
an explanatory note indicating the significance of the demonstration."
Having delivered himself of these remarks, Monsieur Le Truc de Ruffec
produced a pocket-case stuffed full of papers. Picking out from a medley
of judgment summonses and other odds and ends a little piece of very
crumpled paper, he exclaimed, "Ah, here it is," and proceeded to read as
follows: "'The Sword is a fierce Virgin; it is _par excellence_ the
Frenchman's weapon. And now, when patriotic sentiment, after suffering
an all too protracted eclipse, is beginning to shine forth again more
ardently than ever ...' and so forth; you see?"
And he repeated his request for some really fine specimen to be placed
in the most conspicuous position in the exhibition to be held on behalf
of the little native children of Morocco, of which General d'Esparvieu
was to be honorary President.
Arms and armour were by no means Père Guinardon's strong point. He dealt
principally in pictures, drawings, and books. But he was never to be
taken unawares. He took down a rapier with a gilt colander-shaped hilt,
a highly typical piece of workmanship of the Louis XIII-Napoleon III
period, and presented it to the exhibition promoter, who, while
contemplating it with respect, maintained a diplomatic silence.
"I have something better still in here," said the antiquary, and he
produced from his inner shop--where it had been lying among the
walking-sticks and umbrellas--a real demon of a sword, adorned with
fleurs-de-lys, a genuine royal relic. It was the sword of
Philippe-Auguste as worn by an actor at the _Odéon_ when _Agnès de
Méranie_ was being performed in 1846. Guinardon held it point downwards,
as though it were a cross, clasping his hands piously on the cross-bar.
He looked as loyal as the sword itself.
"Have her for your exhibition," said he. "The damsel is well worth it.
Bouvines is her name."
"If I find a buyer for it," said Monsieur Le True de Ruffec, twirling
his enormous moustachios, "I suppose you will allow me a little
commission?"
Some days later, Père Guinardon was mysteriously displaying a picture to
the Comte Desmaisons and Monsieur Blancmesnil. It was a newly discovered
work of El Greco, an amazingly fine example of the Master's later style.
It represented a Saint Francis of Assisi standing erect upon Mont
Alverno. He was mounting heavenward like a column of smoke, and was
plunging into the regions of the clouds a monstrously narrow head that
the distance rendered smaller still. In fine it was a real, very real,
nay, too real El Greco. The two collectors were attentively
scrutinizing the work, while Père Guinardon was belauding the depth of
the shadows and the sublimity of the expression. He was raising his arms
aloft to convey an idea of the greatness of Theotocopuli, who derived
from Tintoretto, whom, however, he surpassed in loftiness by a hundred
cubits.
"He was chaste and pure and strong; a mystic, a visionary."
Comte Desmaisons declared that El Greco was his favourite painter. In
his inmost heart Blancmesnil was not so entirely struck with it.
The door opened, and Monsieur Gaétan quite unexpectedly appeared on the
scene.
He gave a glance at the Saint Francis, and said:
"Bless my soul!"
Monsieur Blancmesnil, anxious to improve his knowledge, asked him what
he thought of this artist who was now so much in vogue. Gaétan replied,
glibly enough, that he did not regard El Greco as the eccentric, the
madman that people used to take him for. It was rather his opinion that
a defect of vision from which Theotocopuli suffered compelled him to
deform his figures.
"Being afflicted with astigmatism and strabismus," Gaétan went on, "he
painted the things he saw exactly as he used to see them."
Comte Desmaisons was not readily disposed to accept so natural an
explanation, which, however, by its very simplicity, highly commended
itself to Monsieur Blancmesnil.
Père Guinardon, quite beside himself, exclaimed:
"Are you going to tell me, Monsieur d'Esparvieu, that Saint John was
astigmatic because he beheld a woman clothed with the sun, crowned with
stars, with the moon about her feet; the Beast with seven heads and ten
horns, and the seven angels robed in white linen that bore the seven
cups filled with the wrath of the Living God?"
"After all," said Monsieur Gaétan, by way of conclusion, "people are
right in admiring El Greco if he had genius enough to impose his
morbidity of vision upon them. By the same token, the contortions to
which he subjects the human countenance may give satisfaction to those
who love suffering,--a class more numerous than is generally supposed."
"Monsieur," replied the Comte Desmaisons, stroking his luxuriant beard
with his long, thin hand, "we must love those that love us. Suffering
loves us and attaches itself to us. We must love it if life is to be
supportable to us. In the knowledge of this truth lies the strength and
value of Christianity. Alas! I do not possess the gift of Faith. It is
that which drives me to despair."
The old man thought of her for whom he had been mourning twenty years,
and forthwith his reason left him, and his thoughts abandoned
themselves unresistingly to the morbid imaginings of gentle and
melancholy madness.
Having, he said, made a study of psychic matters, and having, with the
co-operation of a favourable medium, carried out experiments concerning
the nature and duration of the soul, he had obtained some remarkable
results, which, however, did not afford him complete satisfaction. He
had succeeded in viewing the soul of his dead wife under the appearance
of a transparent and gelatinous mass which bore not the slightest
resemblance to his adored one. The most painful part about the whole
experiment--which he had repeated over and over again--was that the
gelatinous mass, which was furnished with a number of extremely slender
tentacles, maintained them in constant motion in time to a rhythm
apparently intended to make certain signs, but of what these movements
were supposed to convey there was not the slightest clue.
During the whole of this narrative Monsieur Blancmesnil had been
whispering in a corner with the youthful Octavie, who sat mute and
still, with her eyes on the ground.
Now Zéphyrine had by no means made up her mind to resign her lover into
the hands of an unworthy rival. She would often go round of a morning,
with her shopping-basket on her arm, and prowl about outside the curio
shop. Torn betwixt grief and rage, tormented by warring ideas, she
sometimes thought she would empty a saucepanful of vitriol on the head
of the faithless one; at others that she would fling herself at his
feet, and shower tears and kisses on his precious hands. One day, as she
was thus eyeing her Michel--her beloved but guilty Michel--she noticed
through the window the fair and youthful Octavie, who was sitting with
her embroidery at a table upon which, in a vase of crystal, a rose was
swooning to death. Zéphyrine, in a transport of fury, brought down her
umbrella on her rival's fair head, and called her a bitch and a trollop.
Octavie fled in terror, and ran for the police, while Zéphyrine, beside
herself with grief and love, kept digging away with her old gamp at the
_Gimblette_ of Fragonard, the fuliginous Saint Francis of El Greco, the
virgins, the nymphs, and the apostles, and knocked the gilt off the Fra
Angelico, shrieking all the while:
"All those pictures there, the El Greco, the Beato Angelico, the
Fragonard, the Gérard David, and the Baudouins--Guinardon painted the
whole lot of them himself, the wretch, the scoundrel! That Fra Angelico
there, why I saw him painting it on my ironing-board, and that Gérard
David he executed on an old midwife's sign-board. You and that bitch of
yours, why, I'll do for the pair of you just as I'm doing for these
pictures."
And tugging away at the coat of an aged collector who, trembling all
over, had hidden himself in the darkest corner of the shop, she called
him to witness to the crimes of Guinardon, perjurer and impostor. The
police had simply to tear her out of the ruined shop. As she was being
taken off to the station, followed by a great crowd of people, she
raised her fiery eyes to Heaven, crying in a voice choked with sobs:
"But don't you know Michel? If you knew him, you would understand that
it is impossible to live without him. Michel! He is handsome and good
and charming. He is a very god. He is Love itself. I love him! I love
him! I love him! I have known men high up in the world--Dukes, Ministers
of State, and higher still. Not one of them was worthy to clean the mud
off Michel's boots. My good, kind sirs, give him back to me again."


CHAPTER XXIII
WHEREIN WE ARE PERMITTED TO OBSERVE THE ADMIRABLE CHARACTER
OF BOUCHOTTE, WHO RESISTS VIOLENCE BUT YIELDS TO LOVE. AFTER
THAT LET NO ONE CALL THE AUTHOR A MISOGYNIST

On coming away from the Baron Everdingen's, Prince Istar went to have a
few oysters and a bottle of white wine at an eating-house in the Market.
Then, being prudent as well as powerful, he paid a visit to his friend,
Théophile Belais, for his pockets were full of bombs, and he wanted to
secrete them in the musician's cupboard. The composer of _Aline, Queen
of Golconda_ was not at home. However, the Kerûb found Bouchotte busily
working up the rôle of Zigouille; for the young artiste was booked to
play the principal part in _Les Apaches_, an operetta that was then
being rehearsed in one of the big music halls. The part in question was
that of a street-walker who by her obscene gestures lures a passer-by
into a trap, and then, while her victim is being gagged and bound,
repeats with fiendish cruelty the lascivious motions by which he had
been led astray. The part required that she should appear both as mime
and singer, and she was in a state of high enthusiasm about it.
The accompanist had just left. Prince Istar seated himself at the piano,
and Bouchotte resumed her task. Her movements were unseemly and
delicious. Her tawny hair was flying in all directions in wild
disordered curls; her skin was moist, it exhaled a scent of violets and
alkaline salts which made the nostrils throb; even she herself felt the
intoxication. Suddenly, inebriated with her intoxicating presence,
Prince Istar arose, and with never a word or a look, caught her into his
arms and drew her on to the couch, the little couch with the flowered
tapestry which Théophile had procured at one of the big shops by
promising to pay ten francs a month for a long term of years. Now Istar
might have solicited Bouchotte's favours; he might have invited her to a
rapid, and, withal, a mutual embrace, and, despite her preoccupation and
excitement, she would not have refused him. But Bouchotte was a girl of
spirit. The merest hint of coercion awoke all her untamable pride. She
would consent of her own accord, yes; but be mastered, never! She would
readily yield to love, curiosity, pity, to less than that even, but she
would die rather than yield to force. Her surprise immediately gave
place to fury. She fought her aggressor with all her heart and soul.
With nails, to which fury lent an added edge, she tore at the cheeks and
eyelids of the Kerûb, and, though he held her as in a vice, she arched
herself so stiffly and made such excellent play with knee and elbow,
that the human-headed bull, blinded with blood and rage, was sent
crashing into the piano which gave forth a prolonged groan, while the
bombs, tumbling out of his pockets, fell on the floor with a noise like
thunder. And Bouchotte, with dishevelled locks, and one breast bare,
beautiful and terrible, stood brandishing the poker over the prostrate
giant, crying:
"Be off with you, or I'll put your eyes out!"
Prince Istar went to wash himself in the kitchen, and plunged his gory
visage into a basin where some haricot beans lay soaking; then he
withdrew without anger or resentment, for he had a noble soul.
Scarcely had he gone when the door-bell rang. Bouchotte, calling upon
the absent maid in vain, slipped on a dressing-gown and opened the door
herself. A young man, very correct in appearance and rather
good-looking, bowed politely, and apologising for having to introduce
himself, gave his name. It was Maurice d'Esparvieu.
Maurice was still seeking his guardian angel. Upheld by a desperate
hope, he sought him in the queerest places. He enquired for him at the
houses of sorcerers, magicians, and thaumaturgists, who in filthy hovels
lay bare the ineffable secrets of the future, and who, though masters
of all the treasures of the earth, wear trousers without any seats to
them, and eat pigs' brains. That very day, having been to a back street
in Montmartre to consult a priest of Satan, who practised black magic by
piercing waxen images, Maurice had gone on to Bouchotte's, having been
sent by Madame de la Verdelière, who, being about to give a fête in aid
of the fund for the Preservation of Country Churches, was anxious to
secure Bouchotte's services, since she had suddenly become--no one knew
why--a fashionable artiste.
Bouchotte invited the visitor to sit down on the little flowered couch;
at his request she seated herself beside him, and our young man of
fashion explained to the singer what Madame de la Verdelière desired of
her. The lady wished Bouchotte to sing one of those _apache_ songs which
were giving such delight in the fashionable world. Unfortunately Madame
de la Verdelière could only offer a very modest fee, one out of all
proportion to the merits of the artiste, but then it was for a good
cause.
Bouchotte agreed to take part, and accepted the reduced fee with the
accustomed liberality of the poor towards the rich and of artists
towards society people. Bouchotte was not a selfish girl; the work for
the preservation of country churches interested her. She remembered with
sobs and tears her first communion, and she still retained her faith.