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<h2 style="padding-top: 4em;">CHAPTER XV</h2> The memory of these frightful magisteria kept racing through his head next day, and, while smoking cigarettes beside the fire, Durtal thought of Docre and Johannès fighting across Gévingey's back, smiting and parrying with incantations and exorcisms. "In the Christian symbolism," he said to himself, "the fish is one of the representations of Christ. Doubtless the Canon thinks to aggravate his sacrileges by feeding fishes on genuine hosts. His is the reverse of the system of the mediæval witches who chose a vile beast dedicated to the Devil to submit the body of the Saviour to the processes of digestion. How real is the pretended power which the deicide chemists are alleged to wield? What faith can we put in the tales of evoked larvæ killing a designated person to order with corrosive oil and blood virus? None, unless one is extremely credulous, and even a bit mad. "And yet, come to think of it, we find today, unexplained and surviving under other names, the mysteries which were so long reckoned the product of mediæval imagination and superstition. At the charity hospital Dr. Louis transfers maladies from one hypnotized person to another. Wherein is that less miraculous than evocation of demons, than spells cast by magicians or pastors? A larva, a flying spirit, is not, indeed, more extraordinary than a microbe coming from afar and poisoning one without one's knowledge, and the atmosphere can certainly convey spirits as well as bacilli. Certainly the ether carries, untransformed, emanations, effluences, electricity, for instance, or the fluids of a magnet which sends to a distant subject an order to traverse all Paris to rejoin it. Science has no call to contest these phenomena. On the other hand, Dr. Brown-Sequard rejuvenates infirm old men and revitalizes the impotent with distillations from the parts of rabbits and cavies. Were not the elixirs of life and the love philtres which the witches sold to the senile and impotent composed of similar or analogous substances? Human semen entered almost always, in the Middle Ages, into the compounding of these mixtures. Now, hasn't Dr. Brown-Sequard, after repeated experiments, recently demonstrated the virtues of semen taken from one man and instilled into another? "Finally, the apparitions, doppelgänger, bilocations—to speak thus of the spirits—that terrified antiquity, have not ceased to manifest themselves. It would be difficult to prove that the experiments carried on for three years by Dr. Crookes in the presence of witnesses were cheats. If he has been able to photograph visible and tangible spectres, we must recognize the veracity of the mediæval thaumaturges. Incredible, of course—and wasn't hypnotism, possession of one soul by another which could dedicate it to crime—incredible only ten years ago? "We are groping in shadow, that is sure. But Des Hermies hit the bull's-eye when he remarked, 'It is less important to know whether the modern pharmaceutic sacrileges are potent, than to study the motives of the Satanists and fallen priests who prepare them.' "Ah, if there were some way of getting acquainted with Canon Docre, of insinuating oneself into his confidence, perhaps one would attain clear insight into these questions. I learned long ago that there are no people interesting to know except saints, scoundrels, and cranks. They are the only persons whose conversation amounts to anything. Persons of good sense are necessarily dull, because they revolve over and over again the tedious topics of everyday life. They are the crowd, more or less intelligent, but they are the crowd, and they give me a pain. Yes, but who will put me in touch with this monstrous priest?" and, as he poked the fire, Durtal said to himself, "Chantelouve, if he would, but he won't. There remains his wife, who used to be well acquainted with Docre. I must interrogate her and find out whether she still corresponds with him and sees him." The entrance of Mme. Chantelouve into his reflections saddened him. He took out his watch and murmured, "What a bore. She will come again, and again I shall have to—if only there were any possibility of convincing her of the futility of the carnal somersaults! In any case, she can't be very well pleased, because, to her frantic letter soliciting a meeting, I responded three days later by a brief, dry note, inviting her to come here this evening. It certainly was lacking in lyricism, too much so, perhaps." He rose and went into his bedroom to make sure that the fire was burning brightly, then he returned and sat down, without even arranging his room as he had the other times. Now that he no longer cared for this woman, gallantry and self-consciousness had fled. He awaited her without impatience, his slippers on his feet. "To tell the truth, I have had nothing pleasant from Hyacinthe except that kiss we exchanged when her husband was only a few feet away. I certainly shall not again find her lips a-flame and fragrant. Here her kiss is insipid." Mme. Chantelouve rang earlier than usual. "Well," she said, sitting down. "You wrote me a nice letter." "How's that?" "Confess frankly that you are through with me." He denied this, but she shook her head. "Well," he said, "what have you to reproach me with? Having written you only a short note? But there was someone here, I was busy and I didn't have time to assemble pretty speeches. Not having set a date sooner? I told you our relation necessitates precautions, and we can't see each other very often. I think I gave you clearly to understand my motives—" "I am so stupid that I probably did not understand them. You spoke to me of 'family reasons,' I believe." "Yes." "Rather vague." "Well, I couldn't go into detail and tell you that—" He stopped, asking himself whether the time had come to break decisively with her, but he remembered that he wanted her aid in getting information about Docre. "That what? Tell me." He shook his head, hesitating, not to tell her a lie, but to insult and humiliate her. "Well," he went on, "since you force me to do it, I will confess, at whatever cost, that I have had a mistress for several years—I add that our relations are now purely amical—" "Very well," she interrupted, "your family reasons are sufficient." "And then," he pursued, in a lower tone, "if you wish to know all, well—I have a child by her." "A child! Oh, you poor dear." She rose. "Then there is nothing for me to do but withdraw." But he seized her hands, and, at the same time satisfied with the success of his deception and ashamed of his brutality, he begged her to stay awhile. She refused. Then he drew her to him, kissed her hair, and cajoled her. Her troubled eyes looked deep into his. "Ah, then!" she said. "No, let me undress." "Not for the world!" "Yes!" "Oh, the scene of the other night beginning all over again," he murmured, sinking, overwhelmed, into a chair. He felt borne down, burdened by an unspeakable weariness. He undressed beside the fire and warmed himself while waiting for her to get to bed. When they were in bed she enveloped him with her supple, cold limbs. "Now is it true that I am to come here no more?" He did not answer, but understood that she had no intention of going away and that he had to do with a person of the staying kind. "Tell me." He buried his head in her breast to keep from having to answer. "Tell me in my lips." He beset her furiously, to make her keep silent, then he lay disabused, weary, happy that it was over. When they lay down again she put her arm about his neck and ran her tongue around in his mouth like an auger, but he paid little heed to caresses and remained feeble and pathetic. Then she bent over, reached him, and he groaned. "Ah!" she exclaimed suddenly, rising, "at last I have heard you cry!" He lay, broken in body and spirit, incapable of thinking two thoughts in sequence. His brain seemed to whir, undone, in his skull. He collected himself, however, rose and went into the other room to dress and let her do the same. Through the drawn portière separating the two rooms he saw a little pinhole of light which came from the wax candle placed on the mantel opposite the curtain. Hyacinthe, going back and forth, would momentarily intercept this light, then it would flash out again. "Ah," she said, "my poor darling, you have a child." "The shot struck home," said he to himself, and aloud, "Yes, a little girl." "How old?" "She will soon be six," and he described her as flaxen-haired, lively, but in very frail health, requiring multiple precautions and constant care. "You must have very sad evenings," said Mme. Chantelouve, in a voice of emotion, from behind the curtain. "Oh yes! If I were to die tomorrow, what would become of those two unfortunates?" His imagination took wing. He began himself to believe the mother and her. His voice trembled. Tears very nearly came to his eyes. "He is unhappy, my darling is," she said, raising the curtain and returning, clothed, into the room. "And that is why he looks so sad, even when he smiles!" He looked at her. Surely at that moment her affection was not feigned. She really clung to him. Why, oh, why, had she had to have those rages of lust? If it had not been for those they could probably have been good comrades, sin moderately together, and love each other better than if they wallowed in the sty of the senses. But no, such a relation was impossible with her, he concluded, seeing those sulphurous eyes, that ravenous, despoiling mouth. She had sat down in front of his writing table and was playing with a penholder. "Were you working when I came in? Where are you in your history of Gilles de Rais?" "I am getting along, but I am hampered. To make a good study of the Satanism of the Middle Ages one ought to get really into the environment, or at least fabricate a similar environment, by becoming acquainted with the practitioners of Satanism all about us—for the psychology is the same, though the operations differ." And looking her straight in the eye, thinking the story of the child had softened her, he hazarded all on a cast, "Ah! if your husband would give me the information he has about Canon Docre!" She stood motionless, but her eyes clouded over. She did not answer. "True," he said, "Chantelouve, suspecting our liaison—" She interrupted him. "My husband has no concern with the relations which may exist between you and me. He evidently suffers when I go out, as tonight, for he knows where I am going; but I admit no right of control either on his part or mine. He is free, and I am free, to go wherever we please. I must keep house for him, watch out for his interests, take care of him, love him like a devoted companion, and that I do, with all my heart. As to being responsible for my acts, they're none of his business, no more his than anybody else's." She spoke in a crisp, incisive tone. "The devil;" said Durtal. "You certainly reduce the importance of the rôle of husband." "I know that my ideas are not the ideas of the world I live in, and they appear not to be yours. In my first marriage they were a source of trouble and disaster—but I have an iron will and I bend the people who love me. In addition, I despise deceit, so when a few years after marriage I became smitten on a man I quite frankly told my husband and confessed my fault." "Dare I ask you in what spirit he received this confidence?" "He was so grieved that in one night his hair turned white. He could not bear what he called—wrongly, I think—my treason, and he killed himself." "Ah!" said Durtal, dumbfounded by the placid and resolute air of this woman, "but suppose he had strangled you first?" She shrugged her shoulders and picked a cat hair off her skirt. "The result," he resumed after a silence, "being that you are now almost free, that your second husband tolerates—" "Let us not discuss my second husband. He is an excellent man who deserves a better wife. I have absolutely no reason to speak of Chantelouve otherwise than with praise, and then—oh, let's talk of something else, for I have had sufficient botheration on this subject from my confessor, who interdicts me from the Holy Table." He contemplated her, and saw yet another Hyacinthe, a hard, pertinacious woman whom he had not known. Not a sign nor an accent of emotion, nothing, while she was describing the suicide of her first husband—she did not even seem to imagine that she had a crime on her conscience. She remained pitiless, and yet, a moment ago, when she was commiserating him because of his fictitious parenthood, he had thought she was trembling. "After all, perhaps she is acting a part—like myself." He remained awed by the turn the conversation had taken. He sought, mentally, a way of getting back to the subject from which Hyacinthe had diverted him, of the Satanism of Canon Docre. "Well, let us think of that no more," she said, coming very near. She smiled, and was once more the Hyacinthe he knew. "But if on my account you can no longer take communion—" She interrupted him. "Would you be sorry if I did not love you?" and she kissed his eyes. He squeezed her politely in his arms, but he felt her trembling, and from motives of prudence he got away. "Is he so inexorable, your confessor?" "He is an incorruptible man, of the old school. I chose him expressly." "If I were a woman it seems to me I should take, on the contrary, a confessor who was pliable and caressible and who would not violently pillory my dainty little sins. I would have him indulgent, oiling the hinges of confession, enticing forth with beguiling gestures the misdeeds that hung back. It is true there would be risk of seducing a confessor who perhaps would be defenceless—" "And that would be incest, because the priest is a spiritual father, and it would also be sacrilege, because the priest is consecrated.—Oh," speaking to herself, "I was mad, mad—" suddenly carried away. He observed her; sparks glinted in the myopic eyes of this extraordinary woman. Evidently he had just stumbled, unwittingly, onto a guilty secret of hers. "Well," and he smiled, "do you still commit infidelities to me with a false me?" "I do not understand." "Do you receive, at night, the visit of the incubus which resembles me?" "No. Since I have been able to possess you in the flesh I have no need to evoke your image." "What a downright Satanist you are!" "Maybe. I have been so constantly associated with priests." "You're a great one," he said, bowing. "Now listen to me, and do me a great favour. You know Canon Docre?" "I should say!" "Well, what in the world is this man, about whom I hear so much?" "From whom?" "Gévingey and Des Hermies." "Ah, you consult the astrologer! Yes, he met the Canon in my own house, but I didn't know that Docre was acquainted with Des Hermies, who didn't attend our receptions in those days" "Des Hermies has never seen Docre. He knows him, as I do, only by hearsay, from Gévingey. Now, briefly, how much truth is there in the stories of the sacrileges of which this priest is accused?" "I don't know. Docre is a gentleman, learned and well bred. He was even the confessor of royalty, and he would certainly have become a bishop if he had not quitted the priesthood. I have heard a great deal of evil spoken about him, but, especially in the clerical world, people are so fond of saying all sorts of things." "But you knew him personally." "Yes, I even had him for a confessor." "Then it isn't possible that you don't know what to make of him?" "Very possible, indeed presumable. Look here, you have been beating around the bush a long time. Exactly what do you want to know?" "Everything you care to tell me. Is he young or old, handsome or ugly, rich or poor?" "He is forty years old, very fastidious of his person, and he spends a lot of money." "Do you believe that he indulges in sorcery, that he celebrates the black mass?" "It is quite possible." "Pardon me for dunning you, for extorting information from you as if with forceps—suppose I were to ask you a really personal question—this faculty of incubacy ...?" "Why, certainly I got it from him. I hope you are satisfied." "Yes and no. Thanks for your kindness in telling me—I know I am abusing your good nature—but one more question. Do you know of any way whereby I may see Canon Docre in person?" "He is at Nîmes." "Pardon me. For the moment, he is in Paris." "Ah, you know that! Well, if I knew of a way, I would not tell you, be sure. It would not be good for you to get to seeing too much of this priest." "You admit, then, that he is dangerous?" "I do not admit nor deny. I tell you simply that you have nothing to do with him." "Yes I have. I want to get material for my book from him." "Get it from somebody else. Besides," she said, putting on her hat in front of the glass, "my husband got a bad scare and broke with that man and refuses to receive him." "That is no reason why—" "What do you mean?" "Oh, nothing." He repressed the remark: "Why you should not see him." She did not insist. She was poking her hair under her veil. "Heavens! what a fright I look!" He took her hands and kissed them. "When shall I see you again?" "I thought I wasn't to come here any more." "Oh, now, you know I love you as a good friend. Tell me, when will you come again?" "Tomorrow night, unless it is inconvenient for you." "Not at all." "Then, au revoir." Their lips met. "And above all, don't think about Canon Docre," she said, turning and shaking her finger at him threateningly as she went out. "Devil take you and your reticence," he said to himself, closing the door after her. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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